Dick McDonough

1925

1925, October 29 (Thu): Eddie Lang-guitar, Dick McDonough-banjo, Columbia RECORDING SESSION, NYC. (3)

Ross Gorman and His Earl Carroll Orchestra

I’M SITTING ON TOP OF THE WORLD

The first of five Ross Gorman recording sessions featuring Eddie Lang on guitar is a defining moment for Lang and a pivotal one for McDonough. Eddie Lang was not a regular member of the Gorman band and was called into the recording session to play a feature role on one of Gorman's charts. Was the orchestration specifically written for him, or is it a modified chart highlighting his extraordinary talents? Whatever the case may be, the guitarist delivers.

When recording banjo and acoustic guitar players in the day (even into the nineteen fifties), the player sat on a stool or a chair placed on a riser near the microphone, which was on a stand. This would apply to Lang as he is very close to the microphone used for the session. Eddie has to wait halfway through the chart before making his entrance, and this is precisely when the score transitions from run-of-the-mill to inspired. With his left hand positioned squarely in the middle of the guitar neck (prime real estate), Lang has his core single-string improvisational line worked out for 14 bars (in F) and blemishes it with bent notes, slides, and slurs. A two-bar trombone break (Miff Mole) launches an unaccompanied cornet (Red Nichols) and guitar duet as the orchestra lays out for eight bars. Eddie wraps up the bridge with his trademark augmented chord run and then accompanies the cornet for another six bars. But there's more. The orchestra returns for thirty bars (now in the key of Eb), and the guitarist is back with a two-bar single-string fill and then proceeds to accompany a clarinet, muted trumpet duo (catch the low G in his Eb chord and the slide to C7, very cool). Lang closes the record with an Eb7. Technically and harmonically, this is the work of a pioneering jazz guitar master. At the time, there wasn't another guitarist on the planet with jazz chops at this level.

Can this be the first orchestra recording scored to feature a jazz guitar solo, along with jazz guitar accompaniment? 

Now for McDonough. 

We shouldn't underestimate the significance this recording had on the role of the guitar, guitar players, and would-be guitar players; imagine being Dick McDonough at this session! He's been in the Ross Gorman rhythm section playing banjo and tenor-guitar since August (McDonough's first recording session was with Gorman on August 3rd), and a few months later, Eddie Lang walks into the Columbia recording studio to record with "your" band. McDonough spoke to Frank Victor about this encounter. "I finally got an opportunity to hear Eddie Lang play privately. It was worth waiting for, and I assure you that the occasion was a great inspiration for me. I decided then and there that the six-string guitar was the only instrument for me and buckled down to some real work." (8) McDonough did just that. By 1928, the six-string guitar became Dick McDonough's main axe, setting his path.