Schenck’s profile offers Howard’s old motivation of homesickness to explain his leaving Hines, indicating that he may not have enjoyed the band’s touring duties. He left the band some time before its next record date in August. His last recording with Hines was on February 10, 1937. Howard stayed with Hines through 1937, making it the most extensive single gig in his life. Schuller also mentions the “even more aggressive” solo on the Decca version “exploding with a fascinating double-stop passage at mid-point.” Howard’s violin finishes “ I Want A Lot of Love” with chordal stops and pizzicato-which Priestly points out as a quote from the English folk song “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Howard works in the reference so that it stays lyrical even for listeners who don’t know the original tune. There is little doubt that Wills heard ‘Cavernism’ over the radio, since Hines for many years had a nightly broadcast from the Grand Terrace over a nationwide NBC network hookup, and ‘Cavernism’ was one of the band’s big hits.” As one knowledgeable commentator points out, Wills’s “ Playboy Stomp” of 1937 is a near precise contrafact of “Cavernism” demonstrating such musical cross-pollination. In the musicologist’s view, the solo “sounds for all the world like one of the early recordings of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. In The Swing Era, Gunther Schuller gives special praise to Howard’s violin on the Brunswick version. Howard’s violin is a rarity on record, so his solos on two recordings of “ Cavernism” provide a hint as to what impressed so many contemporaries. Darnell Howard is directly to the right of Hines (center). In Essential Jazz Records, Eric Thacker contrasts Howard’s “astringent, very Chicagoan, clarinet tone…with Simeon’s liquid enunciation.” It’s impossible to know for sure, but with Simeon also playing alto solos and Cecil Irwin on tenor, Hines had to have been impressed by the sheer variety of sounds in his reed section. For the instrumental take of “ Rosetta” on Brunswick, Howard plays clarinet around Simeon’s baritone lead. He gets to introduce “ Blue Drag” with low register chanting and closes “ Wolverine Blues” with soft, sardonically sour tones in gently oscillating lines. Howard doesn’t get a solo on every side but still receives a respectable amount of the spotlight. The band recorded 11 sessions during Howard’s tenure, mainly for the Brunswick label but also three for the newly formed Decca label. We knew it was a mistake, but the audience thought he was doing something funny.”Įven on an instrument he cared little for, Howard was still able to hold down his section responsibilities playing a diverse repertoire at the Grand Terrace that included accompaniments for shows, dance numbers, sweet ballads, and virtuosic custom arrangements. If he made a mistake playing violin or clarinet, he would always cover it up by making a comedy of it. Hines echoed Mundy’s evaluation of Howard, explaining that Howard “didn’t care too much about saxophone” but “he loved the violin and his clarinet. The Hines band may have wanted a more uniform and streamlined sound. Each player’s unique sound contributed to a transparent texture that made even basic harmonies an event. The lead alto on Oliver’s sides, presumably Howard, fits right in with a tentet that played more like it had a six-person front line than airtight brass and reed sections. Howard had experience playing lead alto, but times and styles change. On sax, he wasn’t on a par with Omer Simeon, who played lead alto. The only thing was, he would sometimes get a little flat, and we used to give him hell about that. His musicianship was excellent and he was innovative at all times. I didn’t play violin in the band because Darnell was already there, and he was a very, very good violin player.
Once he began playing with small groups later on in his career, he never returned to the instrument on record and later referred to it as a “toy.” Tenor saxophonist and arranger Jimmy Mundy summarized Howard’s musical priorities:
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Saxophone seemed like more of a professional necessity to Howard. With Hines, Howard seems to have played most of the clarinet solos while section mate Omer Simeon handled the alto and baritone sax solos and took occasional clarinet solos. Otherwise, work with Hines may have been lucrative enough to make the side hustles superfluous. Milt Hinton recalled that Howard and trumpeter/vocalist Walter Fuller would hire Hines sidemen to play venues outside Chicago when the Grand Terrace closed for the summer. The Grand Terrace schedule likely left little time for him to work with other bands on the side.
Howard had added yet another Chicago hotspot to his resume and reached a national audience through it. The innovative pianist’s big band also broadcast over the radio across the country, recorded for Brunswick, and would tour as far as New York and the deep into the south.
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