Dizzy Gillespie Story - Spending Time With The Writings of Max Harrison

June 2, 2019, 7:00 am

≫ Next: The Evolution of the Don Ellis Orchestra - Part 2

≪ Previous: Artie Shaw: The Anchorite, Parts 1 -3, Complete - Gene Lees

Many of Max Harrison’s singular comments on Jazz and its makers were reprinted in A Jazz Retrospect which is made up of a selection of his 1950s/60s reviews from the Jazz Review and Jazz Monthly magazines.

Max belongs to a select group of original thinkers that include Philip Larkin, Benny Green, Martin Williams and Stanley Crouch who speak their mind very directly about their likes and dislikes about Jazz, often in a style that is as much caustic and acerbic as it is literary.

His writings about John Lewis and Tadd Dameron have previously featured on JazzProfiles, to which we now add this insightful, yet, very opinionated essay on the early recordings of Dizzy Gillespie.

“Gillespie's innovations long since passed into the life blood of jazz and it scarcely is necessary to discuss the elements of his style now. Yet although the extent of his influence cannot be questioned, his position in the music has for many years been quite different from what it was just after World War II, when bop made its first impact. For non-American listeners that impact was initially felt through the records he made, several with Charlie Parker, for obscure, long-defunct companies such as Guild or Musicraft in 1945-46. To have gone on listening to these for some thirty years has been a considerable enrichment because, although on first acquaintance they seemed to possess a rather contrived audacity, they have retained a power to delight, even astonish. Uneven in musical quality they certainly are, but all contain great moments, and it long ago became obvious that the finest of them are among the classics of recorded jazz, their value as unlikely to diminish in the future as it did in the past.

Many factors went into the making of postwar jazz: some were the creation of individuals and some were the result of a cross-fertilisation of ideas; some had been for years developing in the jazz of the 1930s, even of the late '20s, others had come from spontaneous insights. The early Gillespie records were the first attempt at a synthesis of all the playing and thinking which had gone on, but if by 1945 the key musicians were ready, the record company supervisors were not. It took them a while to grasp that something fresh had occurred, and so on many sessions boppers were confronted with players whose ideas had been completely formed in the 19305. In view of the new music's deep roots this was not too damaging, but unquestionably these early performances, in terms of style, are less than completely integrated.

Melancholy baby, Cherokee and On the Alamo, recorded under the clarinetist Joe Marsala's name, are representative here, setting Gillespie in a tight, jivey late-swing framework. He sounds like a disciple of Roy Eldridge—not in the negative sense of a Johnny Letman, mechanically echoing the mannerisms, but as one who has divined further possibilities within that idiom and can see where they might lead. His continuity already is better than Eldridge's, his use of the upper register less illogical. Blue and boogie, the first item recorded under Gillespie's own name, finds him in comparable circumstances but achieving more positive results. The underlying pulse is wrong, and his execution is less immaculate than it soon became, yet the lengthy trumpet solo, although loosely put together, includes features of melodic invention, rhythmic structure, harmonic thinking and tone-colour that were to remain characteristic. Everything else in the performance is made to sound redundant, and, the 1944 recordings of Parker with Tiny Grimes and Thelonious Monk's with Coleman Hawkins notwithstanding, this improvisation is the earliest fully-fledged statement that we have from a major postwar jazz musician.

Soon Gillespie recorded with a more apt personnel, including Parker and Clyde Hart, who pecks out the chord changes with discretion and sympathy, and was among the few pianists qualified for this sort of music in 1945. Grooving high and Dizzy atmosphere are typical of the boppers' initially rather drastic renewal of the jazz repertoire, and are fertile ground for improvisation, their themes packed with musical incident yet enigmatically honed to bare essentials. Parker, indeed, is especially fluent, revealing a side of his musical personality not much represented on studio recordings: his tone has an airy, singing luminosity reminiscent of Benny Carter, and the alto saxophone solos on both these pieces are full of grace and elegance. This delicacy again characterised his work on the 1946 Ornithology session, and, to a lesser degree, the Relaxing at Camarillo date of the following year, but it was always rare.

Gillespie has two solos in Grooving high the first of which begins strikingly but collapses with a miscalculated descending phrase which leads into a bland guitar solo by Remo Palmieri. Later the tempo halves and he plays some beautifully shaped legato phrases that would then have been quite beyond any other trumpeter; this passage later provided the basis for Tadd Dameron's fine song If you could see me now. On the faster Dizzy atmosphere he takes a daring solo which conveys the essential spirit of the bop solo style and in itself is almost enough to explain the commanding position Gillespie held in the immediate postwar years. After the solos there is an attractive unison passage for trumpet and alto saxophone which flows into a deftly-truncated restatement of the theme—a neat formal touch.

The date which produced Hot house and Salt peanuts had a still better personnel, including Al Haig at the piano. Using the chord sequences of popular songs as the basis for new compositions was common during this period (though not an innovation, as so often claimed), and Dameron's Hot house is a superior instance of the practice, supplanting the usual AABA pattern of four eight-bar phrases with one of ABCA. Gillespie's solo here is effectively poised over Haig's responsive accompaniment, and, as on One bass hit part 1, contains definitive illustrations of the bop use of double-time. Parker digs deeper than at the previous date and shows himself well on course for his great Koko session, which took place a few months later and is dealt with on an earlier page.

Salt peanuts is a good, rather aggressive theme based on an octave-jump idea, and this arrangement, which includes some interesting harmonic touches, draws from the two-horn ensemble a fuller sound than usual. Parker seems less assured than before, yet Haig is good and Gillespie better. His entry could scarcely be more arresting, and emphasises as clearly as any moment on these recordings the absolute freshness of his imagination at this time: surely nobody else would then have dared to attempt this passage on the trumpet. The rest of his improvisation is played with equal conviction, but in another version of this piece, recorded soon after, some of the intensity is replaced with a sharper clarity of organisation.

Although Parker's work was uneven almost throughout 1945, there is no doubt of the added emotional depth he gave to these recordings, and Gillespie noticeably dominates more in his absence. Twelve months after the Salt peanuts date the trumpeter led a session on which—at last—all the participants were bop adepts. Sonny Stitt, who shared with Sonny Criss a reputation (which really belonged to John Jackson) of being the first man to emulate Parker's style, has a fair sixteen-bar solo in Oop bop sh'bam that is close to the master in tone yet far simpler in melodic and rhythmic concept. Its effect is completely obliterated, however, by Gillespie. The trumpeter did other fine things at this date, such as his solo on That's Earl, brother and his imaginative accompaniment to Alice Roberts's singing in Handfulla gimme, but on Oop bop sh'bam he plays with unrelenting intensity and perfect balance between detail and overall form that produce a masterpiece of jazz improvisation, worthy to stand beside Louis Armstrong's stop-time chorus on Potato head blues of almost exactly nineteen years before.

Despite the originality of their small combo work, to which almost equally powerful expression was given on several other titles in this series, including Confirmation, Bebop and Shaw 'nuff, the boppers were unable to establish a comparable orchestral idiom. In fact, due to its intimacy and relative complexity, bop, like New Orleans jazz, was inherently a music for small groups. The harmonic vocabulary, which scarcely was more advanced than Duke Ellington's of several years before, could easily have been written into band scores, but melodic and rhythmic subtleties derived from the leading soloists' improvisations could not. The linear shapes of the reed and brass scoring in Gillespie's earlier big bands, like that of Billy Eckstine which preceded them, did incorporate some new ideas, but included no innovations of ensemble texture comparable to those then being carried forward by Gil Evans with Claude Thornhill's band which are discussed elsewhere in this book. The boppers were able only to adapt their style to the big band rather than the converse.

Their best arranger was Gil Fuller, who, while possessing a good sense of traditional swing band style, and having an acute awareness of any large ensemble's requirements, managed to sacrifice fewer of the new ideas, to compromise less with the old. In fact, his scores, which are less subtle of mood and texture than Ellington's but more complex than Count Basic's, seem, in their use of the orchestra as a virtuoso instrument, to descend from Sy Oliver's work for Jimmy Lunceford. Marked differences arise because of Fuller's wider melodic, harmonic and rhythmic vocabularies, yet both men used their orchestras as vehicles for dazzling ensemble display, with sudden contrasts that, however aggressive, never descended to Kentonesque melodrama. Fuller's imagination, like Oliver's, was disciplined, in a sense almost conservative, and his scores are characterised by clarity of texture, an exceptional fullness of sound whether loud or soft. And yet if there are orchestral scores which at least partially embody the spirit of the little bands of the mid-19405 they are Gerald Wilson's Grooving high, Oscar Pettiford's Something for you, both of 1945, and Fuller's 1946 Things to come, an adaptation of the small combo Bebop. Unfortunately they were all played too fast in the recording studio to produce their complete effect, and Fuller got this conception over more successfully in The scene changes, which he recorded for the obscure Discovery label three years later.

On neither Things to come nor One bass hit part 2 are Gillespie's solos at all happy (in fact he does better on Pettiford's Something for you). His inventive power is as evident as before, yet it is as if he had difficulty in shaping his material in relation to the heavier sounds and thicker textures of this setting—which is surprising in view of his prewar experience in swing bands. The above comments on the orthodox nature of his orchestra's library are borne out by a conventional statement of Dameron's excellent Our delight theme or by the saxophone writing in One bass hit part 2, but on the former, and also in Ray's idea, Gillespie responds to the themes' melodic substance with masterful solos that are better aligned with their accompaniment. On Emanon, basically a rather old-fashioned powerhouse blues, there are uncommonly forceful exchanges between leader and band, some agreeably pungent ensemble dissonance, a piano solo by John Lewis, and a striking passage for unaccompanied trumpet section. There seems no escaping the fact that in such relatively backward-looking pieces as this the boppers' attempts at orchestral jazz succeeded best.

It was also in 1946 that Gillespie made his first recordings with strings. These were of Jerome Kern melodies and remained unissued for many years because of objections made by that composer's widow to the allegedly bizarre treatment to which they were subjected. During 1950 he made another attempt and recorded eight miscellaneous titles which suggest that Mrs. Kern may have been right, even if for the wrong reasons. Eddie South, on some delightful records made in Paris with Django Reinhardt during the late 19305, proved that the violin is a fully viable jazz instrument, but this lead has never been followed up (least of all by the crudities of Stuff Smith). En masse, certainly, strings have been a consistent failure in this music, and it has been widely accepted that they cannot be employed in jazz due to their inherent sweetness. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a large number of works by twentieth-century composers, such as Schoenberg's String Trio, Bartok's Quartets Nos. 4 and 5, Xenakis's ST/4, or Boulez's Livre, which prove that this whole family of instruments can yield sounds as invigorating, indeed as harsh, as any found in jazz. In short what is wrong with the use of strings on jazz dates is the incompetence of the arrangers employed, and never was this more so than with Gillespie's 1950 attempts, where they were only one of a number of apparently irreconcilable factors.

For Swing Low, sweet chariot Johnny Richards wrote an absurd light-music introduction for the strings and then established the rhythm with—of all things in a Negro spiritual—Latin American percussion; a male voice choir sings not the rather sultry original melody but a commonplace new one, presumably also by Richards; Gillespie's trumpet solo has better continuity than we might expect in these circumstances, but a final touch of incongruity is provided by a return of the strings' introduction. On Alone together and These are the things I love the strings interrupt less often, and he manages a few dashing phrases in Lullaby of the leaves, but he never really sounds involved and it is impossible to understand his enthusiasm for this project, which was carried through at his instigation. On the Alamo typifies the whole enterprise, for although Gillespie blows with real power here, the trumpet passages are separated by interludes of quite offensive gentility from piano and strings —light music at its heaviest. If Interlude in C, a tasteless hodge-podge on a theme from Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, seems to have the thinnest string writing of all it may only be due to comparison with that composer's far richer alternative being unavoidable.

The virtually complete musical failure of these 1950 items with strings may seem unimportant until we recall that already the previous year, with his conventionally-instrumentated band, Gillespie had recorded such inanities as You stole my wife, you horse-thief. A random sampling of his small combo recordings from about this period tells the same tale, and shows an almost catastrophic decline from the masterpieces of just a few years before. The champ, an excellent theme, gives rise to a fine trombone solo from J. J. Johnson, but Gillespie merely reshuffles his mannerisms, and the other players are frankly exhibitionistic. Tin tin deo or Birk's works, also from 1951, are only negative in their restraint—despite some good moments from Milt Jackson's vibraharp on the latter and Stardust, which features the trumpeter throughout, is distressingly pedestrian. The reunion session with Parker compelled Gillespie to make an altogether exceptional effort (e.g. his solos on take 2 of Relaxing with Lee or take 4 of An oscar for Treadwell), but the overall impression left by most of his records from this time is of an artist who no longer wishes to dominate, or even to control, his surroundings. And rarely did he ever again. Perhaps the reasons for this were psychological as much as artistic, but Gillespie's rarely swerving downward path from the classic small combo recordings he made during the immediate post war years was among the most saddening features of the jazz landscape in the 1950’s.

Jazz Review, November 1959”

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The Evolution of the Don Ellis Orchestra - Part 2

June 3, 2019, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Lenny McBrowne & the 4 Souls - "Dearly Beloved"

≪ Previous: Dizzy Gillespie Story - Spending Time With The Writings of Max Harrison

“I was a pimply teenager in 1967 when one afternoon my high school music appreciation teacher smiled slyly, put an index finger to his lips and placed the turntable stylus down on ar unidentified disc.

Glenn Stuart had turned my class on to Dvorak and even Stockhausen with a similar sense of drama but when the brassy introduction of Indian Lady pumped out of the speakers sounding like a wall of electric bagpipes, I was shocked. Eight minutes later, after being knocked out by two astounding Don Ellis trumpet solos- the relentless pounding of a behemoth rhythm section lead by Steve Bohannon. and over-the-top solos by tenor sax virtuoso Ron Starr and trombonist. Ron Myers, was stricken for life!

It was the beginning of an obsession that music teacher Stuart, moonlighting as Ellis' first trumpet, was only too happy to indulge. In the coming months I became a roadie for Don Ellis and his entourage of crack, young. LA musicians. At the tender age of 15, I walked in the back stage door of local LA. night clubs and witnessed the most thrilling musical experiences of my impressionable, young life.

A year before. Don and his 20-piece orchestra had :pretty much "blown away" attendees at the establishment Monterey Jazz Festival, prompting jazz critic Leonard Feather to comment: "I almost wrote that he 'stopped the show cold,' but by the time Ellis and his men were through, the stage was an inferno."

Electric Bath was the first of a string of recordings where Don Ellis experimented with every traditional concept of orchestration. Over the next 8 years, from album to album, Don reasoned: Why not integrate two drummers, percussion, electric guitar, and keyboards in the big band format? How about three bass players? Or an electric string and woodwind quartet? What would a vocal instrumental quartet sound like? Don knew no

boundaries Together with composers like Hank Levy, … , Ellis propagated the notion of utilizing radical time signatures, quarter-tones, electronic effects, and even a sitar (...) to stir and excite even the most jaded ear.

Ellis wasn't purposely trying to break tradition or shake the staid big band establishment In fact, he embraced the tradition of harmony, voicing, counterpoint etc in orchestral composition. Yet, he was a wildly imaginative, hyper-kinetic trumpet player and ambitious arranger/composer with a diverse and prestigious musical background. Sadly, though driven at times like a mad scientist to realize his ideas and visions, Don didn't have much time on earth. When he died at 44 years old on December 17, 1978 of cardiomyopathy (a heart disease he learned six years earlier would kill him), Ellis had already impacted the musical landscape more than any of his big band contemporaries.”

- Ben Brooks, March, 1998, Notes to the CD reissue of Electric Bath

As Jazz columnist Charles Waring has noted “Forty years on from his death, Don Ellis is almost a forgotten figure, known only to the jazz cognoscenti and a small group of passionate aficionados endeavouring to keep his name alive.

Consequently, many of his recordings are out of print but given Ellis significance as a musician, BGO, a redoubtable UK reissue label, aimed to rectify what is a profoundly disappointing situation by offering twofers combining six of Don’s most significant albums” [paraphrase]:

[1] Don Ellis at The Fillmore/Don Ellis Goes Underground

[BGO CD 1143]

[2] Tears of Joy/Connection

[BGO CD 1317]

[3] Shock Treatment/Autumn

[BGO CD 1333]

Each of these two-fers contains a wealth of information in the booklets that accompany them made up from remarks by Don himself and Jazz critics which formed the liner notes to the original LPs, as well as, by noted authorities on the historical significance of Don, his band and his music.

Combining it all into one feature would be overwhelming for the reader.

So the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has decided to take each of these two-fers and make then into separate features - Parts 2,3 and 4 - of “The Evolution of the Don Ellis Orchestra.”

Let’s start with [1] Don Ellis at The Fillmore/Don Ellis Goes Underground [BGO CD 1143]

As far as I have been able to determine, the original liner notes to Don Ellis Goes Underground are made up solely of a listing of the band’s personnel and a delineation of the solos on the various tracks.

Here are Don Ellis comments which were written in 1970 and form the original liner notes to Don Ellis at The Fillmore.

“Listen. I don’t want to play it safe. I don’t believe in playing it safe.”

- Don Ellis

“I BELIEVE this album marks a milestone in the development of the band. Not only is it the freest within the concepts with which we are working, but I also believe it is the best band I have ever had, with basically the same guys blowing and rehearsing together for several years. We take pride in being able to play the shit out of things that no other bands have even attempted.

Final Analysis (composed and arranged by Don Ellis)

This was our opening number, and is basically in 4/4 plus 5/4 with an occasional 5/4 and/or 1 1/2 plus 1 1/2 (or 3). Glenn Ferris is the amazing trombonist who has made quite a reputation for his hair as well as lor his playing. (However just before the weekend he shaved off all his hair - the only way we recognize him now is by his playing.) Jay Graydon plays a solo on guitar with all of the sound coming out of a plastic tube inserted in his mouth, I follow him on electrophonic trumpet using a Ring Modulator and some octave doublings. The drum exchanges feature our percussionist section with Ralph Humphrey leading, then Lee Pastora on conga, Ron Dunn on drums and me playing the third drum set. (I started getting into drums seriously about a year ago, and decided to write myself into the drum routines so I'd have something to make me practice.) The ending explains itself and is a sort of musical reductio ad absurdum stolen from some of the best-known classical composers (who should have known better),

Excursion II (Composed by John Klemmer, arranged by Les Hooper)

John Klemmer is one of the most astounding tenor players I have ever heard. He never ceases to astonish all of us by what he does in the solo cadenza in this piece - and each time he does it differently.

The Magic Bus Ate My Doughnut (Composed and arranged by Fred Selden) Fred Selden has been an important member of the band for several years now. He first started playing in one of my student rehearsal bands, and as our lead sax player has been contributing some of our most intriguing and exciting scores. The first section of the Bus is m a pattern of 3/4,4/4,3/4,5/4 and goes to 4/4,5/4 for a contrapuntal segment between the trumpets, trombones and saxes. Fred plays the alto solo against this pattern.

The Blues (Composed and arranged by Don Ellis) It always feels good to play the blues. The opening trumpet solo is supposed to be only two bars long, but I got into a thing with the audience this night and it got rather involved. The trio playing the theme is comprised of Sam Falzone, clarinet; Jack Coan, trumpet; and Ernie Carlson, trombone.

Salvatore Sam (Composed and arranged by Don Ellis)

This is the first of a series of musical portraits I am doing of various guys in the band. Sam and I have been associated ever since I lived in Buffalo, New York, where he played in a combo I had. He moved out to California to be with the band and has been with it since the very beginning (except for about a year when he moved back to Buffalo). The piece moves from a funky 4/4, 3/4 to a fast 7/8 which has a 6/8 bar for every fourth measure. Sam does his thing.

Flock Odyssey (Composed and arranged by Hank Levy}

Hank Levy was one of the first outside writers to contribute scores to our library. He caught on to the unusual meters amazingly fast, and now conducts college stage bands in Baltimore, Maryland, concentrating on the new rhythms. All the band agrees that this is one of his most beautiful charts. The first part is in a slow 7/4 and the middle section is in 12/8 divided 2-2-3, 2-3. Listen especially to the exciting cross-rhythms our drummer, Ralph Humphrey, gets going. Glenn Ferris plays the trombone solo.

Hey Jude (Composed by Lennon & McCartney, arranged by Don Ellis)

I don't know if The Beatles will recognize their tune, but I wanted to do something different with a melody that everyone could recognize, in my hope that this would also give an insight into how we work with original material. The opening cadenza is all done live (no overdubbing or editing) and is just how the Fillmore audience heard it. The effects are all done on solo trumpet using a Ring Modulator and various echo and amplifying devices. When we first started doing this arrangement it was fairly straightforward, but as you can hear, it has been getting further out every time we play it. Jay Graydon (on guitar) gives some tasty and incredible answers to my statements on the second chorus.

Antea (Composed and arranged by Hank Levy)

We've had this chart by Hank Levy in me book for some time, but it wasn't until recently that it really started to gel. It's in 7/4 and the rhythm section really burns. We find it curious that occasionally when we get a new arrangement it will "happen" immediately, but other tunes will take awhile. Sometimes we'll play them only sporadically with perhaps less than perfect results, but then there will come a night when we pull it out again and this time it will pull together and cook. That is exactly what happened here.

Old Man's Tear (Composed and arranged by John Klemmer)

This is John Klemmer's first arrangement for the band. It is a musical portrait of an old man's life - his joys and sorrows - a very sensitive and warm thing. It is also quite a challenge to play on the trumpet.

Great Divide (Composed and arranged by Don Ellis)

The title comes from the fact that this is a piece in 13/4 divided 3-3-2, 3-2. It was originally commissioned for the stage band at San Jose State College under the direction of Dwight Cannon. It was also originally supposed to be played much slower, but one night sometime ago we played it at a faster tempo and found it made a great closer. Sam Falzone is on tenor; the fantastic alto solo is by Lonnie Shetter, one of the truly overwhelming technicians on his instrument. The band was set up flat on the floor of the Fillmore in front of the stage, and at the end you can hear the musicians walking out into the audience ad-libbing on the theme. This take was from Saturday night and as the musicians walked out playing, the audience started clapping and cheering and stood up. Since we were on the floor already, this meant that the musicians couldn't see me to get the cues for the last ensemble section which is done from out in the audience. We were really worried, but at the last minute I ran up on the stage in back of the band and somehow the rhythm section sort of half turned around, looked over their shoulders and we got it together.

Pussy Wiggle Stomp (Composed and arranged by Don Ellis)

We normally don't do encores, but the audience was so groovy, we couldn't resist. I hadn't planned to put this on the album either (since it was already recorded on our "Autumn" album), but we got such an inspired, different take we felt it had to go on. This was the absolute fastest we ever tried to play this tune, but the guys all hung on we were really excited by this time! Sam Falzone is on tenor, and the drum exchanges are Ralph, Ron and me. The drum routine is a thing that has been developing over the last couple of years, and I really find it exciting when all three drums are kicking the band in unison. During the trumpet solo you can hear the Fillmore audience doing the syncopated clapping in 7. This really gassed us, because we figured this was probably the first time they had ever heard something in a fast 7 - and it showed how hip they were to be able to pick right up on it and keep it going in time! Toward the end of my solo I tried to bring the band in, but they missed the cue and as I descend back into the low register wondering what I am going to do now, you can hear our tuba player, Doug Bixby, cry out: "Try again!"

The whole weekend was a real high spot in our lives, and I am pleased that it has been captured so beautifully on record by Phil Macey and Brent Dangerfield, making it possible for you to share it with us.”

- Don Ellis, 1970

Jazz columnist for the Record Collector, contributor to MOJO and co-founder of www.soulandjazzandfunk.com, Charles Waring wrote the following booklet notes to [1] Don Ellis at The Fillmore/Don Ellis Goes Underground

[BGO CD 1143] in 2014.

“IT'S FAIR TO SAY that these days Don Eliss's name means absolutely nothing to the majority of the general public. In some ways, then, he's the forgotten man of jazz and yet, ironically, it's quite probable that many people around the world have encountered his music at some point in their lives; especially given the fact that Ellis scored film director William Friedkin's 1971 box office blockbuster movie. The French Connection (and its 1975 sequel, French Connection II), which memorably starred Gene Hackman as the uncompromising hard-nosed cop, 'Popeye’ Doyle. But though his music reached the masses via the distinctive and arresting soundscapes he created for film soundtracks, Ellis was much more than a movie composer. He was, in fact, a remarkable musician - a trumpeter by trade - who broke down the boundaries that separated jazz from other genres such as classical, rock and world music with a series of pathfinding albums that he recorded during a fertile five-year tenure with Columbia Records in the late '60s and early '70s.

An accomplished composer as well as a virtuoso trumpet player, Donald Johnson Ellis was also a published musical theorist and authored two books (The New Rhythms Book and Quarter Tones and wrote poetry too. He was. then, something of a polymath or a renaissance man but he wasn't a fusty, dry academic - the serious intent of much of his music is often leavened with humour and Ellis, deemed eccentric by some, often took to donning a cape on stage. Also, in concert he would usually explain the complexities of his music in engaging terms to a rapt audience. Evidently, he wanted his music to entertain as well as educate and enthral. But his period in the sun was spectacularly and tragically brief due to a heart condition that killed him at the age of forty-four in 1978. After that, Ellis's music largely fell into obscurity though his memory and music was kept alive by a small coterie of fanatics among the jazz cognoscenti. Up until recently, much of his music had been out of print though slowly but surely, some of his albums are finally seeing daylight again. This new BGO twofer revives one of Ellis's most collectable albums, 1969's 'The New Don Ellis Band Goes Underground', alongside 1970's 'At Fillmore', a combustible double live album that captures the trumpeter's legendary big band at the zenith of their powers.

It's a tad ironic, perhaps, that Don Ellis - a trumpeter and composer renowned for his wild experimentalism and being at the forefront of cutting-edge jazz in the 1960s and 70s - should have begun his professional career playing in the ranks of the Glenn Miller band. But in 1956 that's exactly what Ellis did. Just 21-years-old, the Los Angeles-born son of a Methodist minister was fresh out of Boston University with a degree in music composition. The Miller band - still running long after its founder had perished in 1944 - might have been an orthodox dance music ensemble whose changeless repertoire fed on wartime nostalgia but the experience provided some valuable lessons in writing and arranging for brass that Ellis took with him to his next job. That was playing in an army band (Ellis was conscripted in 1956) alongside fellow musicians-cum-draftees Cedar Walton and Eddie Harris (pianist Walton later became a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers while saxophonist Harris carved out his own unique niche with a soul and funk-infused brand of jazz in the '60s and 70s).

But it was after he finished his two-year mandatory stint with the US military that Ellis's career quickly accelerated. He relocated to New York - deemed the jazz capital of the world back then - and got spotted by another trumpeter, the mighty Maynard Ferguson, who plucked Ellis from obscurity and gave him a seat in the horn section of his trailblazing big band. The year was 1959 and Ellis - then 25 - soaked up the experience of playing with a large ensemble that was redefining big band jazz. But after nine months with Ferguson, Ellis quit to further his experience elsewhere and landed a gig playing with another jazz heavy - Charles Mingus - and appeared on the bassist's 1959 Columbia album, 'Mingus Dynasty'. Possessing an inquiring musical mind, Ellis was drawn to the newest developments in modern jazz and fell under the spell of the otherworldly sounds that were emanating from the Big Apple's avant-garde scene. He recorded sessions with two of its leading lights - reedman Eric Dolphy and the jazz theorist George Russell - and in 1960 cut his debut session as a leader, the LP ‘Time Passes' for the Candid label.

This BGO twofer reissue catches up with the trumpeter/composer nine years later in 1969 when he was signed to the moneyed major label, Columbia Records, whose jazz roster at that time included such luminaries as Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck and Maynard Ferguson. By then, Ellis had ten albums under his belt (including three each for Pacific Jazz and Columbia) and was leading one of the most forward-thinking big bands in contemporary jazz. He had also established himself as one of the most original musicians and composers working within the jazz idiom - not only was he writing complex pieces in unorthodox and asymmetrical time signatures and employing unique, customised instruments (for example, his specially-made quarter tone trumpet) but he was also experimenting with electronics by using sound processors such as ring modulators, wah-wah pedals and echoplex effects.

Ellis was undoubtedly pushing the creative envelope but ironically the medium with which he was mainly expressing himself was regarded as old hat by many - the big band. Big bands had mostly gone the way of the dinosaur by the 1960s but a few remained that had fought off extinction such as those led by jazz aristocrats, Duke Ellington and Count Basie. But they were the exception to the rule and continued to maintain their legendary large groups (which they had been doing since the 1930s) even when it was unfashionable and tantamount to economic suicide to do so. But they weren't alone. There were a few other, mainly younger musicians, who desired to explore the big band format as well; among them Maynard Ferguson and duo. Mel Lewis & Thad Jones, who took the large ensemble framework, modernised it and fashioned it after their own image into something new, vital, exciting and relevant.

Don Ellis, too, sought to express the inner urges of his musical psyche with a large canvas approach in the late 1960s. He had signed a deal with Columbia in 1967 after a four-year stint at Dick Bock's iconic west coast label, Pacific Jazz, where he had begun to make a name for himself with albums such as 'Essence' and 'Live At Monterey'. In fact, Columbia's interest in Ellis was initially prompted by a scintillating performance from the trumpeter's big band at the Monterey Jazz Festival in September 1966, which evidently blew the minds of many people that witnessed it. Ironically, Ellis's band preceded Duke Ellington's on the same bill and according to legend received one of the longest standing ovations ever experienced at the festival.

Signed to Columbia by the legendary A&R man, John Hammond - who was responsible for 'discovering' the likes of Count Basie. Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan - Ellis debuted for the label with an extraordinary meld of jazz, classical and Indian styles called 'Electric Bath' in 1967, which with its liberal use of electronics (especially the echoplex) demonstrated the trumpeter/bandleader embracing rock aesthetics. The album was nominated for a Grammy and was a commercial success, peaking at #8 on the US jazz charts.

Two more noteworthy Columbia albums -'68's 'Shock Treatment' and '69's 'Autumn' - essayed the Ellis band's continuing evolution as a 1960s extension of Stan Kenton's innovative '40s orchestra and demonstrated that the trumpeter was a leading architect of what eventually came to be known as fusion.

In 1969, Ellis made what was perhaps his most overtly commercial studio album, though ironically, it was titled ‘The New Don Ellis Orchestra Goes Underground'. In essence it was Ellis putting his own spin on a handful of rock, soul and pop hits of the day in addition to presenting a clutch of relatively short original tunes. He also produced the entire album except for one track, which was helmed by Blood, Sweat & Tears keyboard player, Al Kooper (at the time signed to Columbia).

In terms of personnel, the Ellis band included in its ranks at that time flutist and reed man, Fred Selden. alongside saxophonists Sam Falzone (who doubled on clarinet) and John Klemmer; there was also keyboardist Pete Robinson (whose musical armoury consisted of Fender Rhodes, acoustic piano, clavinet, harpsichord and ring modulator) and guitarist Jay Graydon. The trumpet section included noted man with a horn, Stu Blumberg, while legendary '60s session player, Carol Kaye (a member of the famous LA session mafia, 'The Wrecking Crew', and who played on myriad pop and rock sessions including the Beach Boys''Pet Sounds' album) shared bass duties with Gary Todd and John Julian. Drums duties were also divided between Ralph Humphrey and Rick Quintinal. The session included the presence of the girl group, The Blossoms, on background vocals (they cut a clutch of 45s for different labels in the '50s. '60s and 70s and their members at one time included Darlene Love and Gloria Jones).

The album opens with a far-out deconstruction of the Al Kooper-penned Blood, Sweat & Tears' track, 'House In The Country' (taken from the group's 1968 debut LP, 'Child Is Father To The Man') - but you wouldn't recognise it from the intro, which consists of eerie keyboard tintinnabulations created by a ring-modulator effect (which was specially designed for Ellis's band by inventor, Tom Oberheim, who would find fame in the 70s as the creator of the Oberheim polyphonic synthesiser). The intro crescendos to a cacophonous climax before heavily-accented big band chords blare out and Rick Quintinal's propulsive drum groove kicks in. At this point the song is recognizable as the infectious Blood, Sweat & Tears' number but it proceeds at breakneck speed and features rapidly-articulated horn passages, which alternate with ring modulator keyboard effects and wordless backing voices from The Blossoms. It's short but punchy and to the point.

The tension of the opener is dispelled by the relaxed sonorities of the easy listening style number, 'Don't Leave Me'- a cover of a Harry Nilsson song from the singer/songwriter's 1968 LP, 'Aerial Ballet' - featuring some terrific lead trumpet playing by Don Ellis.

'Higher' - which undoubtedly takes its inspiration from Sly & The Family Stone's lysergic anthem, 'I Want To Take You Higher' - is a brassy slice of big band uptempo soul-funk fronted by lead vocalist, Patti Allen, which works up to a stomping gospel-fuelled climax.

Then comes one of the album's most complex pieces, 'Bulgarian Bulge', a traditional Eastern European folk dance transfigured into a jaunty big band showcase piece (a live version of the track appeared on Ellis's 1971 Columbia LP, ‘Tears Of Joy'). The provenance of the tune stems from a recording of Bulgarian folk musicians that Ellis was sent by Plovdiv-born jazz musician, Milcho Leviev. who ended up defecting from his then communist mother country in 1970 to move to Los Angeles where he was promptly given a job in the trumpeter's band. Interestingly, Ellis - who often verbally introduced each song on stage prior to performing it - described it at one of his late-'60s US gigs thus: "it's a Bulgarian folk song which was sort of smuggled out of the country by a friend of mine who's a Bulgarian jazz composer and pianist. This is like an ethnic record that you can't buy anywhere outside of the Iron Curtain. He sent it to me and it just completely blew my mind."

What blew Ellis's mind wasn't just the fact that piece was taken at an impossibly fast tempo but also because it was characterised by an unusual rhythmic pulse. Said Ellis: "This band is famous for playing a lot of things in unusual time sequences, different meters and such... I thought I knew quite a lot about what was happening metre-wise until I came across this record: this is a whole new concept to me. It's a very fast 16 and it's in 33/16. But that's not the only thing: it alternates between 33 and 36 when you least expect it. So I just put this record on thinking these are not professional musicians or anything; they're just Bulgarian folk musicians and they're sitting down playing this wild stuff. I couldn't believe it so I said well if they can do it, there’s no reason we can't."

Evidently, though, it took a while for Ellis's band (despite their advanced technical prowess) to grasp the polyrhythmic intricacies of 'Bulgarian Bulge' and render it as it was played on the original Bulgarian vinyl record. Explained Ellis: "I wrote it out for the band and after much cursing and saying it was impossible - in fact I brought in a tape and played it to the guys -the next week they had it down cold."

Ellis's arrangement also spotlights what he called 'a band within a band', and focuses attention on different, smaller, sections of his ensemble that provide contrasts of tone, texture and colour as well as dynamics. The trumpeter's spoken in-concert preambles often elicited amusement from his audience. On one such occasion prior to a performance of 'Bulgarian Bulge' he told his listeners: "To get you in the mood for this thing so that you feel like a Bulgarian peasant, sort of settle back, lie down on the grass - if that's where you are - and imagine that these lights are the sun and you're out in the Bulgarian fields watching whatever they watch, doing a little Bulgarian stew grooving to 33/16."

After the hypnotic rhythmic swirl that 'Bulgarian Bulge' generates, on the next track Ellis reconfigures singer/songwriter Laura Nyro's 'Eli's Coming' (a key track on her 1968 Columbia LP, 'Eli & The Thirteenth Confession') into a thrilling big band number. The track is more commercially slanted than the rest of the album, which may be due to the presence of Al Kooper in the producer's chair. At 2:40 and continuing to the fade a reflective, bluesy coda ensues that features backing vocals. The track was released as a single by Columbia to garner radio play but didn't witness any chart action.

'Acoustical Lass' closed side one of the original vinyl LP; a bluesy tableau that is an Ellis original and features his mournful flugelhorn over a ruminative, Hispanic-tinged, backcloth where Jay Graydon's strummed acoustic guitar chords offer sparse accompaniment.

Heavy brass and bass notes with punctuating percussion kick off the slow-churning funk groove that is 'Good Feelin.’ Ellis plays an effects treated trumpet and is counterpoised by backing vocalists. A fiery rock guitar solo from Jay Graydon (who went on to play on Steely Dan sessions and produced Al Jarreau records) leads to a baroque-flavoured passage with harpsichords and bucolic flutes before a rising brass fanfare leads to a pastiche of old time jazz. After this a tightly-interlocked contrapuntal horn passage leads to the restatement of the main funk groove. In terms of its composition and mesh of styles, 'Good Feelin’’ has much in common with the kind of jazz-meets-rock bag that Maynard Ferguson's big band were recording for CBS during the same timeframe.

By contrast 'Send My Baby Back' is an orthodox mid-paced soul ballad with a shuffle groove that spotlights soulful vocalist Patti Allen, whose stirring, throat-shredding lead is cushioned by slick supporting harmonies from The Blossoms.

‘Love For Rent' is a funk jam that was written and arranged by Fred Selden. The piece has a breakdown section where Ellis's echoplex-laden trumpet expels shards of fractured sound before the funk groove resumes. At 2:59 there's a brief respite from the relentless beat before it resumes with a blaring Jay Graydon solo.

The Isley Brothers' 1969 funk-soul smash, 'It's Your Thing', gets reworked with Patti Allen - who howls and screams like a distaff James Brown - on lead vocals in a fairly orthodox fashion while 'Ferris Wheel' - a Don Ellis composition written to illustrate the trombone work of Glenn Ferris - is a lazy blues with rock undertones.

The album's final track is 'Black Baby', which again features Patti Allen. This time she doesn't sing but softly speaks a short poem, beginning with the line "Oh black baby, you were born to bear a heavy load." Behind Allen's sombre words is Ellis's desolate, lonesome trumpet intoning a mournful blues melody. Allen's voiceover ceases around the two-minute mark and allows Ellis's horn to shine in the spotlight. Though renowned as a trumpet technician, Ellis demonstrates here that he could also play simply and with a deep sense of feeling.

Released in 1969, 'The New Don Ellis Band Goes Underground' rose to #20 in America's jazz charts and on that basis was deemed a commercial success. Given its rock, funk and soul inflections plus the short duration of its tracks and inherent lack of extended solos, it couldn't really be described as a jazz record - and looking back, it's not clear whether the idea to chase a younger, newer audience by covering pop material was Ellis's or Columbia's. One thing was for sure though - the band was certainly getting some media attention.

In fact, Ellis and his cohorts had played a plethora of well-attended concerts (including support slots with big name acts) to get the band noticed as well as doing occasional TV appearances. His band had a big fan base among college students in particular during a time that represented the apex of the counterculture age. It was an era when musical barriers (as well as social, political and racial ones) were becoming challenged, blurred, eroded and in some cases, torn down completely. Experimentation and cross-pollination were almost de rigueur and during the late-'60s some cutting-edge jazz acts (with Miles Davis, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Charles Lloyd leading the way) were crossing over to the rock world and playing in venues that were normally not the natural preserve of horn players. Bill Graham's Fillmore West in San Francisco was one such venue where jazz bands could play on the same bill as rock and soul acts - and in June 1970, Ellis's band supported Quicksilver Messenger Service and singer/songwriter, Leon Russell, for three consecutive nights (Ellis had played the Fillmore just once before in 1966 with his Hindustani Jazz Sextet, which supported The Grateful Dead). All three June 1970 performances by the Ellis band were captured on tape by Columbia and became the source for the double LP, 'At Fillmore'.

The LP opens with 'Final Analysis', a lengthy, barnstorming big band number that showcases some top-notch solo work (especially from trombonist Glenn Ferris, whose turns in the spotlight elicit wild whoops of approval from the audience) as well adroitly-executed ensemble passages. Listen out, too, tor Don Ellis playing a wild trumpet solo using a wah-wah pedal (something that Miles Davis was also doing in 1970) and an outre spell ot ring-modulator playing from keyboardist Pete Robinson. Ellis also plays drums, doubling on snare and creating some propulsive polyrhythms in tandem with the band's sticks man Ralph Humphrey and percussionists Ron Dunn and Lee Pastora during an extended drum solo that eventually builds to a raucous climax. The piece is also notable for several false endings - a trick that Ellis often used to generate both excitement and humour in a live setting.

'Excursion II' begins as an introspective mood piece penned by John Klemmer but quickly explodes into a pulsating showcase for the tenor saxophonist's unfettered melodic forays, which grow increasingly febrile and free jazz-like with each solo salvo (it's worth noting that after Klemmer left Ellis's band he began to make his mark as a solo artist and helped lay the groundwork for what became smooth jazz in the 70s and '80s).

The humorously-titled 'The Magic Bus Ate My Doughnut' - a wry dig at rock and pop psychedelia, perhaps, and penned by Fred Selden - clocks in at under three minutes and can almost be described as a short interlude. It begins as an off-kilter big band groove in an unusual time signature - though it still manages to swing - and then, via an eerie bridge passage of blaring horn stabs, morphs into a smoother kind of track over which a serpentine saxophone solo unravels.

'The Blues' opens with Ellis on solo wah-wah trumpet. From it he produces an array of strange sounds, much to the audible delight of the audience, which seems to marvel at Ellis's ingenuity. A slow, syncopated blues pulse on ride cymbals offers a discernible groove while Ellis's solo horn is accompanied by a brass section that stylistically resembles an antique, early twentieth century New Orleans jazz band. For all his modernism and electronic gadgets, Ellis knew the value of tradition - and musical simplicity. In fact, in purely practical terms, The Blues' (an original Ellis number) with its relaxed tempo and sparser instrumentation must have given some of the band members a bit of a breather after the dazzling and challenging complexity of the preceding pieces on the album.

On 'Salvatore Sam' the Don Ellis Orchestra seem to return to normal with a rapidly-played and strident opening horn passage - but the riffing quickly subsides to allow a soulful blues to emerge, which is later contrasted with some more manic horn blowing. A plaintive saxophone solo (from the song's inspiration, Sam Falzone) then follows before the band burst into another frantic - and this time quasi-Latin - section. The piece concludes with a descent into free jazz anarchy.

A soft cymbal splash and a lone vibraslap - a Latin percussion instrument that resonates like an angry rattle snake - begin the meditative 'Rock Odyssey', which is distinguished by subtle horn charts framing Ellis's eloquent solo horn. Around the 3:15 mark, though, an addictively funky groove is introduced that allows Ellis's trumpet to range more freely with a series of jabbing lines and motifs that eventually work towards a noisy climax. An interlude of stately, fanfare-like brass appears briefly before the funk groove resumes, with Glenn Ferris providing a slippery trombone solo. There's another false ending on this track, which was written by former Stan Kenton arranger and saxophonist, Hank Levy - the piece seems to end and the audience cheers only for the cymbal and vibraslap to remerge and a reprise of the slower and moodier first part of the song, which dissolves with a soft natural fade.

Next up is an incredible lysergic deconstruction of The Beatles' evergreen sing-along anthem,'Hey Jude'. Paul McCartney probably wouldn't have identified it as one of his songs on hearing Ellis's Intro and it's likely that many fans of the Fab Four would probably have described the trumpeter's interpretation as musical sacrilege. The track starts as a whirling, whinnying maelstrom of electronic sound effects generated by Don Ellis's trumpet. Then at 3:10 there's an abrupt silence. A mock brass band arrangement follows with the Ellis Orchestra enunciating the recognisable melodic contours of 'Hey Jude' - though it's slightly comic in its presentation and at one point even sounds positively vaudevillian. Ellis then has another solo trumpet spot while manipulating his sound through an array of effects, including echo, ring modulator and distortion. In fact his use of the echoplex - where time delay effects mean that he can harmonise with himself - is very prescient and foreshadows music making far beyond the 1970s. A fairly orthodox rendition of 'Hey Jude's' coda - the "na, na, na, na-na-na, na" sing-along bit -with the full big band ends this extraordinary rendition on a euphoric high.

'Hey Jude' is a hard performance to follow but on the 'At Fillmore' LP, it precedes four more tracks. 'Antea' builds from an intro of explosive brass fanfares into a chunk of engaging Lalo Schifrin-esque cinematic big band funk complete with a dazzling solo from Ellis. On the evidence of this track, there's no doubt that Don Ellis was a leading early architect of what came to be known as jazz-fusion.

The John Klemmer-written 'Old Man's Tear' is an exquisitely-wrought ballad which demonstrates unequivocally that Don Ellis was more than a gifted technician and could play with deep feeling. The arrangement, too, unlike some of the uptempo pieces on this album, is far from 'over-the-top' and shows subtlety and restraint - and the indelible influence of the Stan Kenton band - though Ellis does indulge in a wild, effects-laden cadenza towards the end of the song.

It's back to a turbo-charged big band workout on the fiercely contrapuntal The Great Divide,' an Ellis original which contrasts different sections of the band - brass with reeds, for example - in an exchange of antiphonal phrases. It also has a false ending and just when it appears to conclude, the song's quirky rhythmic and melodic motif resurfaces again but is eventually drowned out by the rising cheers of the audience.

"You really want one more?" asks Don Ellis to a Fillmore crowd that seems to be eating out of his hand. No sooner than they answer - a tumultuous, resounding "yeah!" - the trumpeter's orchestra breaks into the brilliant 'Pussy Wiggle Stomp', rightly regarded as one of the ensemble's classic tunes. This scintillating live rendition actually eclipses the studio version - which had appeared on the 1968 Columbia LP 'Autumn' - and features an astonishing performance from Don Ellis (on drums as well as on trumpet; check out the duelling solo drums near the end of the piece). And, of course, the band indulges in several false endings, just to keep the audience on its toes (ironically, when the real end arrives, it actually seems to catch the audience by surprise).

If anyone doubted the abilities of Don Ellis and his orchestra, then the incredible big band feast that was 'At Fillmore' proved that the trumpeter was in a league of his own and managed to make other big bands from the same timeframe seem pedestrian by comparison. While being adventurous and innovative it was also commercially successful, peaking at #8 in the American jazz album charts.

A year later, in 1971, and while still at Columbia, Ellis was asked to score William Friedkin's cop thriller, The French Connection, and composed an eerily memorable score that took his music to a much wider audience. More film scores followed in the early 70s - including Kansas City Bomber and The Seven-Ups (the latter a Philip D'Antoni-directed cop thriller starring Roy Scheider) - as well as two more albums on Columbia, 1971's live album 'Tears Of Joy', and 1972's 'Connection'. Ellis then recorded for the German label, MPS, for a couple of albums before landing at Atlantic Records in 1977.

But a couple of years prior to that Don Ellis starting experiencing health problems. They stemmed from a serious heart condition that almost took his life in 1975. Granted a reprieve, he survived, recuperated and returned to doing what he loved best - making music. When the Atlantic deal came along, Ellis worked on what would turn out to be his last studio album, the space-themed, 'Music From Other Galaxies and Planets', released in 1977, which was followed by an appearance by his band on the Atlantic compilation, 'Live At Montreux'. But a few months after its release, Don Ellis's health started to deteriorate again and as a result, he ceased playing live on the advice of his doctor. In fact, he never played his trumpet in public again and on 17th December 1978 he succumbed to a fatal cardiac arrest. He was just forty-four years old.

Although he was tragically cut down in his prime, Don Ellis was an underappreciated maverick genius - but fortunately for us he left a rich legacy of recorded music behind. Though, for a couple of decades, he seemed to be a cult figure appreciated by just a small but devoted band of aficionados, many of his recordings have become available again in the digital age and there now seems to be a wider appreciation of his work, evidenced by the global acclaim that an award-winning film about his life, called Electric Heart, elicited when it was released in 2009.

The two albums featured on this BGO reissue - one studio, one live - capture Don Ellis in what was arguably the most productive phase of his career. During those four years (1967-1971) Ellis was uncompromising in the pursuit of his unique aesthetic vision and as a result shook up the jazz world with his radical new approach to large ensemble music.

He was, without doubt, a man ahead of his time. Or, as the great Maynard Ferguson so appositely put it:"Jazz had to invent a new term when it came to Don Ellis."

- Charles Waring, 2014

Jazz columnist for Record Collector,

contributor to MOJO and co-founder

of www.soulandjazzandfunk.com

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Lenny McBrowne & the 4 Souls - "Dearly Beloved"

June 3, 2019, 8:34 am

≫ Next: Harry South - FURTHER SOUTH - "I Want To Be Happy"

≪ Previous: The Evolution of the Don Ellis Orchestra - Part 2

Drummer Lenny McBrowne's quintet performing "Dearly Beloved" with Don Sleet on trumpet, Daniel Jackson on tenor, Terry Trotter, piano and bassist Herbie Lewis.

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Harry South - FURTHER SOUTH - "I Want To Be Happy"

June 3, 2019, 9:44 am

≫ Next: DCI 1983 - Madison Scouts - Strawberry Soup

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DCI 1983 - Madison Scouts - Strawberry Soup

June 3, 2019, 11:15 am

≫ Next: Up Jumped the Devil, The Real Life of Robert Johnson - Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow

≪ Previous: Harry South - FURTHER SOUTH - "I Want To Be Happy"

How about some Don Ellis "Strawberry Soup" courtesy of the Madison Scouts Drum and Bugle Corps. Power and precision - just the way Don would have liked it.

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Up Jumped the Devil, The Real Life of Robert Johnson - Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow

June 4, 2019, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Previn, Potts and Porgy

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One music critic called Robert Johnson “the Shelley, Keats, and Rimbaud of the blues all rolled into one.”

I’ve always been a Jazz guy in the sense that I appreciate The Blues within the context of this style of music [Think Count Basie’s Big Band with the blues belters Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams] rather than as a separate and distinct genre.

Beyond Jazz, it seems The Blues and its 12-bar structure lends itself to other adaptations as it’s also heard in Rock, Folk Music, and myriad other forms of popular music.

The Blues as a phenomena in Black culture, both as a pattern of music and as a state of mind, is something I’ve encountered through my reviews of books by Albert Murray which have appeared previously on these pages.

And while, over the years, I’ve heard some music by Robert Johnson, Son House, Charlie Patton, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Big Boy Crudup, B.B. King, Booker White and John Lee Hooker, the Blues and its makers in pure form has never been my specific field of interest.

In general terms, I knew very little about the background of Blues singers until I read Ted Gioia’s Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters who Revolutionized America Music [Norton paperback, 2009].

And, if truth be told, if it wasn’t for the fact that I read everything I can get my hands on that Ted writes, I doubt I would have gotten this far on the subject. Of the many Blues musicians that Ted deals with in his book, I was particularly intrigued by the iconic Blues musician Robert Johnson and the story [myth?] of how his Mephistophelian deal with The Devil resulted in his escalation to genius and greatness, not to mention his early death at the age of 27 when The Devil comes to claim his part of the bargain - Johnson’s soul!

Among Ted’s many acknowledgements, he mentions “...Gayle Dean Wardlow, a native Mississippian who has been researching the music for forty years.” Add ten more years to that and we now arrive at:

Up Jumped the Devil, The Real Life of Robert Johnson - Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow, Chicago Review, 326 pages, $30

The book was reviewed in the May 31, 2019 edition of the Wall Street Journal as “‘Up Jumped the Devil’ Review: Cross Road Blues” By David Kirby,

The editorial at JazzProfiles is posting Mr. Kirby’s treatment to coincide with the release of the book on this date - June 4, 2019.

“More nonsense has been said and written about Robert Johnson than any other musician, and thus it is with fear and trembling that one opens yet another book on the enigmatic blues guitarist. Not to worry: From the get-go, “Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson” by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow bristles with photos, maps, deeds, census reports and graphics of every kind to back up their authoritative account of Johnson’s birth, training, travels, tragedies, triumphs and contributions to roots music. To all popular music, really: All you have to do is open your Pandora or Spotify account to hear song after song that might not be blues but still uses the basic 12-bar template: a line, the repetition of that line and a third line that embellishes the first. The music critic Bruce Cook called Johnson “the Shelley, Keats, and Rimbaud of the blues all rolled into one,” and like those poets, Johnson still shapes the art of his successors.

With as much precision as can be applied to a case as muzzy as this one, the authors report that Johnson was born to Julia Majors and Noah Johnson “on or about May 8, 1911” in Hazlehurst, Miss. Julia’s husband, Charles Dodds, had fled to Memphis, possibly to avoid being lynched after he was said to share a mistress with a white man. Julia and Noah quarreled so fiercely that she left with Robert, three other children and no plan to care for them. Eventually Julia ended up in Memphis herself, where she left her brood with Charles Dodds (who had changed his name to “Charles Spencer” to avoid detection) and set out on her own.

Thus 2-year-old Robert found himself in a house full of strangers and at the beginning of a life shot through with rootlessness and uncertainty. But the Spencer house was just a short walk from Beale Street, with its many black clubs and theaters. On its sidewalks, “guitar players strolled up and down the street, and blind musicians took their posts on their favorite street corners to entertain passersby with spirituals, blues, and pop tunes,” and as the boy grew, he naturally found himself on Beale Street more and more often. In Memphis, Johnson was also first exposed to hoodoo, the folk magic based on West African beliefs that was practiced in secret by slaves and became a way for African-Americans to seek the power that was denied to them by white society.

Which brings us to the elephant in the room, namely, the mature Robert Johnson’s supposed deal with the devil. According to legend, Johnson was just a journeyman musician. Then he disappeared for a spell, and when he returned, suddenly he could play licks that no other mortal could. How could that be? Only one way: There had to have been intervention from beyond, and God certainly wouldn’t be lending his powers to a juke-joint barrelhouser whose job was to drive an audience mad and, as one of Johnson’s contemporaries put it, make the women in the room start “shakin’ them fannies and . . . talkin’ trash.”

Yes, no less a contemporary than Son House testified that Johnson underwent a miraculous transformation. Yes, there is a longstanding folk belief that a musician can meet the devil at a crossroad and acquire supernatural powers in exchange for his soul; the 19th-century violinist Niccolò Paganini was also said to have signed a similar compact with the Prince of Darkness. And yes, Johnson himself wrote a song called “Cross Road Blues,” made popular by the English psychedelic band Cream. But he doesn’t mention the devil in it; instead, he talks about his sadness, his need for a woman and a friend.

More germane to the story is the fact that Johnson sometimes played his guitar in the cemetery at midnight, often with his mentor Ike Zimmerman. Cemeteries are quiet and restful, and there’s a deep spiritual resonance there akin to that in churches. Zimmerman’s daughter Loretha observed that if other people were afraid of graveyards at night, her father wasn’t: “He wasn’t never scared, but he wasn’t meeting the devil neither.”

But Zimmerman was far from his only teacher. Like innovators in every field, Johnson was a sponge, soaking up chords and progressions and showbiz tricks of every kind from the other bluesmen whose paths he crossed every day. He took in the world around him in careful detail; his one true hit recording, “Terraplane Blues,” is about a snazzy new 1936 Hudson Terraplane car parked near the Spencer home in Memphis that Robert admired. (And, yes, the authors include a photo of that model.) He was shameless about stealing from other musicians, and he was protective of his own skills, often turning his back to the audience when he spotted a rival.

Blues musicians often performed as duos, with one chunking out the rhythm while the other picked a melody. Not Johnson. He played both parts at once, the way one might play a piano, drawing out almost-voicelike sounds as he bent or hammered the strings. Once, another musician let him play his electric guitar, the authors recount, but Johnson handed it back, saying he “couldn’t make it talk.” Besides, lugging an amp around would hamper his train-hopping lifestyle. Then there was the simple fact that many of the jukes and parties and porches he played had no electricity.

At the age of 17, Johnson had married 14-year-old Virginia Travis, but she and their unborn baby died in childbirth the following year. His acquaintances recall a profound change in character, with Johnson taking to drink and cursing God so savagely that his listeners fled. Whether or not that event accounts for his standoffishness, he spent the rest of his life avoiding close relationships, though that didn’t stop him from going home with the women who came out to see him play. One friend remembers that “them gals pulled at him all the time.” Son House drew on his own experience with jealous husbands and boyfriends when he told Johnson simply, “You liable to get killed.”

Which is exactly what happened, though the various accounts of his murder and its coverup only add to Johnson’s mystique. According to Mr. Conforth and Ms. Wardlow, Johnson was carrying on with one Beatrice Davis, and when her husband not only discovered the affair but learned that Johnson was playing at the Three Forks juke joint on the night of Aug. 13, 1938, he handed Beatrice a jar of corn liquor in which he had dissolved several mothballs. Johnson drank from the jar during a break in his show, and though the aggrieved husband said years later that he hadn’t meant to kill him, Johnson began to hemorrhage violently and died three days later, a few months after his 27th birthday. Out of expediency or the desire to sidestep the possibility of foul play or both, the authorities were told that Johnson probably died of syphilis. He was buried in a simple wooden box under a churchyard pecan tree.

Cultural historians refer to a group of musicians including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison as the 27 Club because they all died at that age. The term reappears in the media when yet another musician dies at 27 (Kurt Cobain in 1994, Amy Winehouse in 2011), but it’s seldom mentioned that one of the club’s founding members was Robert Johnson. Yet in addition to sharing a lifespan with the others, he pioneered a twangy blues that echoed through their music and continues to resound today. He succeeded not by signing a contract offered to him by a sooty stranger but, as Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow show down to the last detail, by starting from an early age to listen, steal from others and play without ceasing. If only he’d been more careful about what he drank.

—Mr. Kirby is the author of “Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll.”

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Previn, Potts and Porgy

June 5, 2019, 7:00 am

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Andre Previn was right about the deluge that followed Samuel Goldwyn’s 1959 release of his film version of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

It seems as though every Jazz group had a recorded version of it and each of these had a different “take” on the tunes that made up Gershwin’s memorable score.

Actually, I rather liked the outpouring. It was wonderful to hear so many unique adaptations of these timeless Gershwin melodies.”

Over the years, however, one of these adaptations have remained my favorite - The Bill Potts Big Band: The Jazz Soul of Porgy and Bess. It was originally issued as a United Artist LP and subsequently as a Capitol Records CD [CDP 7 95132 2].

Many of the aspects that make Bill Potts an arranger of singular style and substance are detailed in the following CD insert notes by Andre Previn.

“In the musical history of the twentieth century there have been a shamefully large number of instances wherein a noteworthy musical work has been acclaimed at its premiere and has subsequently, through either public apathy or a lack of performances, declined into near oblivion.

George Gershwin's opera, Porgy and Bess, is an encouraging example of the reversal of this procedure. When it was first heard in 1935 there was quite some dissension among the critics about its lasting values, and although it was heralded as something of a milestone by much of the audience, it certainly did not create a national furore at the time.

Since then, each subsequent revival has brought it greater acclaim and greater popularity until now, in 1959, it has become a staple in the repertoire of almost every country in the world. Road companies have taken it to the four corners of the earth, symphonic suites are played by orchestras everywhere, countless recordings have been distributed, and surely every singer of great or little note has programmed its highlights.

Nonetheless, it seems as though the next few years will bring about an undreamed-of amount of hearing for the music of "Porgy." Samuel Goldwyn's motion picture production of the opera was premiered in June, 1959 and since it was one of the most widely publicized and heralded pictures in many years, it prompted practically every recording artist in the business to bring forth an album of selections from the score. Apart from the movie soundtrack version there will be literally dozens of vocal albums, symphonic syntheses, reissues of the various Broadway casts, dance bands, choral arrangements, novelty groups, and jazz versions.

Now, just within the framework of the last-mentioned category; never before have so many jazz artists of so many divergent styles attempted interpretations of the same music. The range covers the entire compass of jazz from the excellent to the indifferent to the downright pointless; many of them attempting to the best of their musical ethics to say something interesting and important and many, alas, simply cashing in on what looks like a sure thing. Since this plethora of recordings was well known in advance by all recording artists, it became a matter of courage for Jack Lewis to join the pack with an album led by a relatively unknown musical personality, realizing that every giant in jazz would be recording the score. The man he chose to lead and orchestrate the score was a man whose musical personality has unfortunately hitherto been unknown to the general public, namely: Bill Potts.

The term, "musician's musician," is an overworked one but nonetheless very true in Bill's case. His name has cropped up innumerable times in musicians' discussions of their favorite arrangers. This alone is quite notable, since Bill has chosen up to now to remain in the Washington, D.C. area for all of his productive life. He was the head arranger for Willis Conover's "The Orchestra," an organization which, in the opinion of visiting musicians, rivalled the Washington Monument and the National Art Gallery as one of the indispensable attractions in the Capital. Since the unfortunate demise of "The Orchestra," Bill has contributed scores to a great many bands, but it is only with this album that he is presented fully and correctly.

In the fall of 1958 I was one of the aforementioned visiting musicians in Washington; it was at that time that I first met him. He is a young man of Dickensian proportions with added touches of Peter Ustinov and Captain Ahab. This imposing structure, however, houses one of the most soft-spoken and self-effacing gentlemen I have ever met. His musical curiosity is insatiable; he is willing to talk music until six in the morning, pause for coffee, then start over again.

Generally, it was Bill's habit to begin these musical discussions with me while seated in his small open sports car and considering that I, as a Californian, have grown more and more thin-blooded, I can think of no greater compliment to Bill's opinions and ideas than to say that I hardly noticed the cold. At the time I was halfway through my assignment as the musical director of the film version of Porgy and Bess and Bill was in the process of writing his jazz version of the score.

With typical candor he made what seemed like an amazing and somewhat apprehensive confession to me; the fact that he had never before been called upon to arrange and orchestrate another composer's music, but had restricted himself solely to his own originals. Now, half a year later, after hearing the results of his labors, I can only say that he never should have wasted a moment worrying about it.

One of the most difficult attributes to come by in today's jazz scene is originality. By that I don't necessarily mean a "far-out" method of playing or writing but rather an immediately recognizable personal imprint upon the music rendered. This is, God knows, as true of arrangers as it is of performers. Too many gifted facile writers pattern themselves wholly or in part after the few innovators. The Basie school of writing currently has the largest following, closely followed by the imitators of Ellington, Gil Evans, Gerry Mulligan, Bill Holman, John Lewis, etc. Bill Potts is an originator in the truest and best sense of that word. It is impossible to hear more than eight bars of any of his arrangements without recognizing the man behind the pencil.

His style is made up of many things: there is an ever-present aura of strength and vitality, an awareness of all the possible dynamic shadings from pp to ff, a rare concern for voice-leading, and a strong preference for ensembles rather than interludes between solos.

His arrangements have a wonderfully timeless quality about them; he is not concerned with the fad of the moment or of the year, nor does he strive for orchestral effects simply for the sake of the effects. The orchestrations are sensible and mature, while creating the same feeling of freedom and spontaneity usually found in a solo voice. And over all they swing from bar one right through to the end of the coda.

It is my personal opinion that the detailed analyses of record albums, section by section, solo by solo should be separate from the notes. That's why I will not go into them here. The personnel of the orchestra conducted by Bill Potts is indeed a gleaming one, as can be gathered by the listing qf its members, and the band plays with an esprit and a precision hardly ever encountered in a "one-time-together" studio ensemble. …

Having worked on the film version of "Porgy" for a period covering six months; having been exposed to the music of the score innumerable times; having written some two and a half hours worth of orchestrations of the score—I'm sure it would be natural for me to be practically immune to further versions of it; proof of the strength of the music and of Bill Potts' unique creativity is that I found myself listening to this album with the attentiveness and pleasure of a premiere performance.

The Musician's Union requires by law that arrangers be paid a certain amount per page of four bars each; if that law were changed to read that arrangers be paid per each new idea, Bill Potts could retire today a rich man.”

—ANDRE PREVIN May 12,1959

The following video features Bill Potts’ arrangement of Bess, You Is My Woman with solos by Phil Woods on alto saxophone and Charlie Shavers on muted trumpet.

↧

The Brass Connection - "Giant Steps"

June 5, 2019, 9:13 am

≫ Next: Harry James: Parts 1-6 Complete

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Trombonists Doug Hamilton, Ian McDougall, Jerry Johnson, Bob Livingston and John Capon performing John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" with solos by Lorne Lofsky on guitar and Frank Falco on piano.

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Harry James: Parts 1-6 Complete

June 6, 2019, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Harry James - Jazz Conoisseur

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Some think he is “the best of all,” others accuse him of having gone too blatantly commercial. Like in many things in life, the truth about Harry James lies somewhere in the middle. …

As a trumpet player, James has a very personal tone, rich in vibrato, and brilliant technique - and yet, an exaggerated tendency towards self-display, towards circus-like playing can be overheard even in recordings; even those that are to be taken seriously. Strict jazz loyalists regard only a part of James' historical repertoire as acceptable, but whenever he was serious about mounting a performance, it was something which had a great deal of substance.

- Willie Gschwendner, insert notes to Laserlight, The Jazz Collector Edition: Harry James and His Orchestra

“If a poll were taken to pick the most famous trumpeters in the history of twentieth-century music, chances are that Louis Armstrong and Harry James would top most lists. Armstrong, of course, also has a most secure place in the jazz pantheon, but James does not, due to the "burden" of having achieved enormous commercial success early in his career. It's ironic that while few judge Armstrong's achievements on the basis of such hits as "Hello, Dolly", James is still viewed in many quarters mainly as an early-Forties purveyor of schmaltzy ballads such as "You Made Me Love You" and such virtuoso pop-classical fare as "Flight of the Bumble Bee".

But there are few trumpet players in modern history who could sound equally convincing on Armstrong’s “Cornet Chop Suey” or the challenging bebop harmonies of Ernie Wilkins’s “Jazz Connoisseur.””

- Bill Kirchner, insert notes to Harry James Verve Jazz Masters 55

I realize that Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller constituted “The Big Three” during the Swing Era when big bands ruled the roost [I guess a case could be made for Tommy Dorsey’s outfit as well], but my introduction to that era came in the form of retrieved 78 rpm acetates by the Harry James Big Band, or, Orchestra as it was called in those days.

These sides by the James “outfit” [a commonly used descriptor from that time; perhaps a leftover from the jargon of the Wild West days] were salvaged by me when I was doing some exploring one day in the cellar of the family home.

I gather James was idolized by my parents during their courting years hence the trove of discs by the James big band that I discovered molding away in the cellar.

Besides helping to skyrocket James’ career to stardom in a career already boosted by an early spotlight when he played with Benny Goodman’s famous band in the late 1930’s, Harry’s big band also helped launch the careers of vocalists Helen Forrest, Frank Sinatra and Dick Haymes. His was the first “name” band that drummer Buddy Rich performed with at the beginning of what would become a long and illustrious career.

And speaking of “jargon,” it’s fun to go back and read the Jazz press from that era and encounter the slang of that day: words like outfit, killer-diller, jump, “hot” chair [the solo chair in the brass or reed section], kicks, rocks [small R], and boy/girl singer, among many other colloquialisms unique to the Swing Era.

Harry James went well beyond the initial big band era and continued to lead swinging aggregations until his death in 1983, including many long stints at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas which was to become a home base of sorts for him during the last 25 years of his career.

Much like Woody Herman, who is usually heralded for it while Harry is not, for many years, James provided opportunities for many musicians and arrangers, both young and old, to have the experience of playing in a big band.

And just like Woody, he was well-loved as “The Old Man.” Given all the musicians who passed through Harry’s bands over the years, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would say an unkind word about him.

There’s another quality that distinguishes Harry’s playing: he was able to make the transition from Swing Era phrasing to the modern Jazz idiom in his solos. The same cannot be said about many other stalwarts from the big band era including Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa and the much beloved, Woody Herman.

Given this legacy and the fact that Harry James was an important part of my Jazz upbringing, I thought it would it might be great fun to pay homage to him with a multi-part essay on these pages featuring the writings of George T. Simon, Ross Firestone, Bill Kirchner and Peter Levinson, in addition to my own observations and remembrances.

Let’s begin with George T. because unlike many others writers on the subject of Harry James, Mr. Simon was there at the beginning of what was to become one of the most storied callings in Jazz History.

“It was on a day in mid-September of 1936 that Glenn Miller and Charlie Spivak invited me to go with them to hear a recording session of a band by their former boss, Ben Pollack. He had just arrived in town to do a date for Brunswick, and Glenn, who had always been telling me what a great drummer Pollack was, said, "Now you can hear for yourself."

The band was composed of young musicians, the good kind that Ben had a knack for discovering (he had started Miller, Spivak, Benny Goodman, Jack Teagarden and many other stars). Pollack, I soon found out, was a helluva drummer, and the young, fat man in the reed section, Irving Fazola, was a magnificent clarinetist.

And then, of course, there was the long, lean, hungry-looking trumpeter whom I'd raved about in a column a few months earlier — without even knowing his name — after having heard a Pollack band broadcast from Pittsburgh, and whose rip-roaring style proved to be even more exciting in person. The session became quite something, with Miller and Spivak joining the band and later both spouting raves about the new kid trumpeter.

He, of course, was Harry James, and his playing on these records drew another rave notice from me. "Irving Goodman, Benny's brother, read it in Metronome,' James revealed years later, "and he started listening to me. Finally he convinced Benny he ought to get me into his band." In December, 1936, James joined Goodman, replacing Irving.

Harry was only twenty years old then, but he already had had as much experience as many of the band's veterans, having blown his horn in dance bands since he had been thirteen. His impact on the Goodman band in general and its brass section in particular (he played both lead and hot) was immense.

What's more, his unfailing spirit and enthusiasm seemed to infect the other musicians — he was extremely well-liked and respected, despite his age. And obviously he enjoyed his new environment. Even after he had been with the band for a year and a half and reports persisted that several of the Goodman stars would follow Gene Krupa's move and start their own bands, Harry remained steadfast. "Benny's too great a guy to work for!" he exclaimed in the spring of 1938, insisting that he wouldn't even consider leaving for at least a year. It turned out to be a very short year. In January, 1939, James left Goodman to start his own band.

Benny didn't seem to mind. He gave Harry his blessings and some cash in return for an interest in the band. Eventually James paid him back many times that amount in return for his release.

The new band's first engagement was in Philadelphia at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel. It opened there on February 9, and the March, 1939, issue of Metronome carried this capsule review with the heading "James Jumps."

Harry James' new band here in the Ben Franklin sure kicks — and in a soft way, too. Outfit gets a swell swing, thanks mostly to great arrangements by Andy Gibson, to Dave Matthews' lead sax, Ralph Hawkins' drumming and Harry's horn.

Hotel management insists upon unnaturally soft music. Band complies, producing stuff reminiscent of the original Norvo group. However, in last supper sets it gives out and really rocks!

Some rough spots still obvious: brass intonation varies; saxes, brilliant most of the

time, not yet consistent. Missed: a good hot clarinet and ditto trombone. Personalities of Harry as leader and Beatrice Byers, warbler, fine.—Simon

Also in February, on the twentieth, the new band cut its first records for Brunswick, for whom Harry had previously made several sides with pickup bands that usually included some of Count Basie's men. The new sides by his own big band weren't very impressive at first, but even the best groups suffered acoustical malnutrition from the company's woefully small, dead-sounding studios.

The band, however, did impress its live audiences and radio listeners, and James seemed happy. "No, I don't think I made any mistake when I left Benny," he said. "When I was with Benny, I often had to play sensational horn. I was one of a few featured men in a killer-diller band. Each of us had to impress all the time. Consequently, when I got up to take, say, sixteen bars, I'd have to try to cram everything into that short space."

Right from the start, James began to feature -himself more on ballads— tunes like "I Surrender, Dear,""Just a Gigolo,""I'm in the Market for You" and "Black and Blue.""Playing what you want to play is good for a guy's soul, you know," he explained.

As for the band itself he insisted: "I want to have a band that really swings and that's easy to dance to all the time. Too many bands, in order to be sensational, hit tempos that you just can't dance to." Maybe it's just coincidental, but just at the time James made this statement, Glenn Miller's band, with its extremely fast tempos, had started coming into its own. "We're emphasizing middle tempos," Harry continued. "They can swing just as much and they're certainly more danceable."

The band provided much color, even with its uniforms. Harry had been brought up in a circus, and his tastes often showed it. His men were attired in red mess jackets, and with them they wore white bow ties and winged collars that went with full dress outfits. Harry had a flashy way of playing his horn, too, visually (he'd puff his cheeks so that they'd look as if they were about to pop) as well as aurally, so that you couldn't help noticing him and his band.

He was in those days — and he continued to be, for that matter — a refreshingly straightforward, candid person. His personal approach was much more informal than his band's uniforms, and he succeeded in creating and retaining a rapport with his men that must have been the envy of many another bandleader.

One of his closest friends turned out to be a young singer James says he heard quite by accident one night on the local radio station WNEW's "Dance Parade" program in New York. (Louise Tobin, who was then married to James, insists that she had first drawn his attention to the voice.)

As Harry recalls, it happened in June, 1939, when his new band was playing at the Paramount Theater in New York. James, lying in bed, listening to Harold Arden's band from the Rustic Cabin in Englewood, New Jersey, was immensely impressed when he heard the band's boy vocalist sing. But Harry failed to note his name, so the next night, after his last show, he traveled over to the Rustic Cabin to find out. "I asked the manager where I could find the singer," he recalls, "and he told me, 'We don't have a singer. But we do have an MC who sings a little bit.'"

The singing MC's name turned out to be Frank Sinatra. He crooned a few songs, and Harry was sufficiently convinced to ask him to drop by the Paramount to talk more. "He did, and we made a deal. It was as simple as that. There was only one thing we didn't agree on. I wanted him to change his name because I thought people couldn't remember it. But he didn't want to. He kept pointing out that he had a cousin up in Boston named Ray Sinatra and he had done pretty well as a bandleader, so why shouldn't he keep his name?" Even way back then, Sinatra was a pretty persuasive guy!

The new vocalist recorded his first sides with the band on July 13,1939. They were "From the Bottom of My Heart" and "Melancholy Mood," and though they were musical enough, they sounded very tentative and even slightly shy, like a boy on a first date who doesn't quite know what to say to his girl.

In those days Sinatra, despite an outward cockiness, needed encouragement, and he got it from James, with whom he established a wonderful rapport.

The first indication I had of Frank's lack of confidence came in August when I dropped into the Roseland to review the band. As I was leaving, Jerry Barrett, Harry's manager, came running after me to find out what I thought of the new singer. "He wants a good writeup more than anybody I've ever seen," he said. "So give him a good writeup, will you, because we want to keep him happy and with the band."

The writeup commended Sinatra for his "very pleasing vocals" and his "easy phrasing," praise that was nothing compared with that I had for the band itself: "a band that kicks as few have ever kicked before!" In addition, it did what Harry had said he wanted to do: it played exceptionally well for dancing, producing even waltzes, tangos and rumbas. It also spotted several fine soloists, including Dave Matthews on alto sax, Claude Lakey on tenor sax, Dalton Rizzotti on trombone and Jack Gardner on piano.

The band was doing well around New York. But after Roseland it went out to Los Angeles and into a plush restaurant called Victor Hugo's. "The owner kept telling us we were playing too loud," Harry recalls. "And so he wouldn't pay us. We were struggling pretty good and nobody had any money, so Frank would invite us up to his place and Nancy would cook spaghetti for everyone."

After the West Coast debacle, the band went into the Sherman Hotel in Chicago. The future wasn't looking so bright anymore. What's more, Frank and Nancy were expecting their first baby, who turned out to be little Nancy.

Meanwhile — nearby at the Palmer House—Tommy Dorsey was having boy singer problems. He was told about "the skinny kid with James," heard him and immediately offered him a job. Frank talked it over with Harry. Aware of the impending arrival and the necessity for a more secure future, James merely said, "Go ahead." And Sinatra did.

Sinatra's contract with James still had five months to run. "Frank still kids about honoring our deal," Harry recently noted. "He'll drop in to hear the band and he'll say something like 'O.K., boss'— he still calls me 'boss'— I'm ready anytime. Just call me and I'll be there on the stand.'"

Sinatra's voice had become an important one in the James band. Jack Matthias had written some pretty arrangements for him, including some in which the band sang glee club backgrounds in a strictly semi-professional way. For me the two best vocals Sinatra sang with James were "It's Funny to Everyone but Me" and "All or Nothing at All," which was re-released several years later and only then became a bestseller. Possibly the worst side he ever recorded was the James theme, "Ciribiribin."

With Sinatra gone, James naturally began looking for a replacement. He found him quite by accident one afternoon when the band was rehearsing in New York at the World Transcription studios at 711 Fifth Avenue. Larry Shayne, a music publisher, had brought along a young songwriter to audition some tunes. Harry listened, then turned to Shayne and said, "I don't like the tunes too much, but I sure like the way the kid sings." The kid was Dick Haymes.”

To be continued in Part 2

The following video features Harry performing Sleepy-Time Gal. It is the first tune that I ever heard him play.

"Harry James was a deep, deep, deep man; he may not have been academically educated guy, but he was street educated. He was as perceptive as anybody I have ever known. His first exposure to life was to circus people. If you want to learn about life, those are the people you want to talk to."

- Joe Cabot, trumpet play in and eventually musical director of The Harry James Orchestra

Continuing now with Part 2 of our extensive feature on Harry James from George T. Simon's seminal The Big Bands, 4th Edition.

“If ever there was a nervous band singer, it was Dick Haymes. The son of a top vocal coach, Marguerite Haymes, he was incessantly aware of all the problems that singers faced: stuffed-up nasal passages, sore throats, frogs, improper breathing, wrong stances, etc. As a result he looked completely self-conscious whenever he prepared to sing. I still have visions of his routine at the Fiesta Ballroom, at Broadway and Forty-second Street, where the band was playing shortly after Dick joined. As he prepared to sing, he'd clear his throat a couple of times and then invariably take his handkerchief out of his breast pocket and put it to his mouth for a second. Then he'd approach the mike with long steps, look awkwardly around him, take a deep breath and start to sing.

And how he could sing! There wasn't a boy singer in the business who had a better voice box than Dick Haymes — not even Bob Eberly, whom Dick worshiped so much and who amazed Dick and possibly even disillusioned him by doing something no highly trained singer would ever do: smoke on the job! Haymes sang some exquisite vocals on some comparatively obscure James recordings of "How High the Moon" (as a ballad), "Fools Rush In,""The Nearness of You" and "Maybe." They appeared on a minor label called Varsity, with which Harry had signed early in 1940 after his Brunswick and Columbia sides (the two labels were owned by the same company) had shown disappointing sales.

But though his records may not have been selling sensationally, James continued to hold the admiration of his fellow musicians. In the January, 1940, Metronome poll he was voted top trumpeter in two divisions: as best hot trumpeter and as best all-round trumpeter.

During this period the band returned to New York's Roseland, where it sounded better than ever, swinging sensationally throughout the evening. But Harry was thinking ahead. He wanted to be able to play more than just ballrooms and in the too few hotel spots that didn't boycott high-swinging bands. "You know what I want to do?" he confided to me one evening. "I'm going to add strings and maybe even a novachord. Then we'll be able to play anywhere."

My reactions, like that of any jazz-oriented critic who couldn't see beyond the next beat, was one of horror. James add strings? What a wild, scatterbrained idea! "You're out of your mind," I told him. A few weeks later he announced he was giving up the idea, explaining that he'd planned it only because he figured that was how he could cop an engagement in a class New York hotel spot. But when the hotel operator insisted upon owning a piece of the band too, Harry shelved his plans.

During the summer of 1940 the band appeared at the Dancing Campus of the New York World's Fair. It had begun to settle into a wonderful groove, with the ensemble sounds matching those of such brilliant soloists as James himself, Dave Matthews on alto and Vido Musso and Sam Donahue on tenor saxes. In a fit of critical enthusiasm that caused Benny Goodman to appear in my office to ask incredulously, "Do you really think so?" I had noted in Metronome that "strictly for swing kicks, Harry James has the greatest white band in the country, and, for that matter, so far as this reviewer is concerned, the greatest dance-bandom has ever known. And that's leaving out nobody!"

But Harry never seemed to be quite satisfied. In the fall he made several personnel changes, explaining that "the boys need inspiration, so I decided to call in some fresh blood." One of the most surprising moves was installing Claude Lakey, who had joined the band on tenor sax and then had switched into the trumpet section, as new leader of the saxes in place of Matthews.

But the most important move was still to come. Harry had finished his contract with Varsity Records (if you think the Brunswick sound was bad, listen to some of the Varsity sides!) and had returned to Columbia, which by now was getting some great results out of its large Liederkranz Hotel studio. The company had a very astute A&R producer named Morty Palitz who, Harry recently said, "suggested I add a woodwind section and a string quartet. I settled for the strings."

Remember how those of us who knew everything had warned Harry against such a move less than a year before? Harry just didn't have sense enough to listen to us, though. He added the strings and recorded such trumpet virtuoso sides as "The Flight of the Bumble Bee,""The Carnival of Venice" and the two-sided "Trumpet Rhapsody" all complete with a string section. And on May 20, 1941, he recorded "You Made Me Love You," his schmaltzy trumpet backed by the dainty sounds of his strings. Despite our grave warnings, the record proved to be a smash hit, and the James band was on the way to stardom.

He recorded the tune for a very simple reason: he loved the way Judy Garland sang the song. I remember his raving about her during those very quiet nights when he and I used to sit in the Blue Room of the Hotel Lincoln, where the musicians would sometimes outnumber the customers. In addition to music, we shared another passion, baseball and, at that time, the Brooklyn Dodgers in particular. (For the sake of the record it should be noted that James eventually became a staunch fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, for whom he still roots today.) It was a curious routine that we followed: we'd sit in the Lincoln all night and talk about baseball and then during the afternoons we'd go out to Ebbets Field to watch the Dodgers. And what would we be talking about out there? Music, of course.

In June, James recorded a swinging salute to his favorite team, "Dodgers' Fan Dance." He also tried to emulate them literally by playing ball with his team in Central Park on almost every clear afternoon. There was an unconfirmed rumor that before James would hire a musician, he'd find out how well he could play ball — after which he'd audition him with his instrument. Certainly he had some athletic-looking guys in his band during those days.

"Dodgers' Fan Dance" wasn't much of a hit. But "You Made Me Love You," of course, was, and from then on the character of the James band changed for good. It still played its powerful swing numbers, but it began interspersing them more and more with many lush ballads that featured Harry's horn, blown, as I noted in a Metronome review, "with an inordinate amount of feeling, though many may object, and with just cause, to a vibrato that could easily span the distance from left field to first base."

Ironically, "You Made Me Love You" wasn't released until several months after it had been recorded. Perhaps the Columbia people agreed with some of the jazz critics. But they were wrong, too.

The hit was backed by one of the greatest of all James ballad sides, "A Sinner Kissed an Angel," which proved once again what a great singer Haymes had become. During this period Dick also recorded several other outstanding sides: "I'll Get By,""You Don't Know What Love Is" and probably his greatest James vocal of all, "You've Changed."

With singers like Sinatra and Haymes, Harry apparently felt he didn't need to feature a girl vocalist. Previously he had carried several, Bernice Byers and then Connie Haines during the band's earliest days. And in May, 1941, he had hired Helen Ward, Goodman's original singer to make a recording of "Daddy." Then later, for a while, he spotted a very statuesque show-girl type named Dell Parker, who in July, 1941, was replaced by petite Lynn Richards. But few sang much or sang well. Definitely the best was yet to come.

The best turned out to be Helen Forrest, who'd recorded some great sides with Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman but who suddenly quit the latter, "to avoid having a nervous breakdown. Then just on a hunch," Helen recently revealed, "I decided to contact Harry. I loved the way he played that trumpet, with that Jewish phrasing, and I thought I'd fit right in with the band. But Harry didn't seem to want me because he already had Dick Haymes to sing all the ballads and he was looking for a rhythm singer. Then Peewee Monte, his manager, had me come over to rehearsal, and after that the guys in the band took a vote and they decided they wanted me with them. So Harry agreed.

"I've got to thank Harry for letting me really develop even further as a singer. I'll always remain grateful to Artie and Benny. But they had been featuring me more like they did a member of the band, almost like another instrumental soloist. Harry, though, gave me the right sort of arrangements and setting that fit a singer. It wasn't just a matter of my getting up, singing a chorus, and sitting down again."

What James did, of course, was to build the arrangements around his horn and Helen's voice, establishing warmer moods by slowing down the tempo so that two, instead of the usual three or more choruses, would fill a record. Sometimes there'd even be less; many an arrangement would build to a closing climax during Helen's vocal, so that she would emerge as its star.

Helen, who was just as warm a person as she sounded, blended ideally with the schmaltzier approach that was beginning to turn the James band into the most popular big band in the land and that helped Helen win the 1941 Metronome poll. True, there were times when she tended to pour it on a little too thick with a crying kind of phrasing, but then she was merely reflecting the sort of unctuous emotion that Harry was pouring out through his horn.

It may not have been what his real jazz fans wanted, but Harry was beginning to care less and less what they thought and more and more about the money and squarer customers who kept pouring in.

Helen turned out a whole series of excellent ballad sides that helped the band's stock soar. Many of them, beginning with her first vocal, "He's I-A in the Army and He's A-I in My Heart," dwelled upon the-boy-in-the-service-and-his-girl-back-home theme. Thus came such recordings as "I Don't Want to Walk Without You,""He's My Guy,""That Soldier of Mine" and "My Beloved Is Rugged," plus plain but equally sentimental ballads, like "Make Love to Me,""But Not for Me,""Skylark,""I Cried for You,""I Had the Craziest Dream" and "I've Heard That Song Before."

The band personnel began to improve, too. A young tenor saxist, who was still a guardian of another bandleader, Sonny Dunham, joined and became one of the James fixtures for the next twenty-five years. This was Corky Corcoran, a great third baseman, who was released by Dunham upon Harry's payment to him of the costs of the seventeen-year-old saxist's recent appendicitis operation. The reeds had already been bolstered by the addition of two excellent alto saxists, Sam Marowitz in the lead chair, and Johnny McAfee, who, after Haymes left at the end of 1941, contributed some very good vocals. James had also featured another singer, Jimmy Saunders.

An indication of what lay ahead appeared when the band entered the select winner's circle of the Coca-Cola radio show, which spotted the bands with the most popular records. Previous victors had been Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Freddy Martin and Sammy Kaye, all Victor artists. Then, in March, 1942, the James band broke their hold with its recording of "I Don't Want to Walk Without You." What's more, two months later the band and the record copped honors for the show's favorite recording of all!”

To be continued in Part 3 ....

The following posting continues and concludes the George T. Simon portion of our planned, extended profiles on Harry James as drawn from the 4th edition of his pioneering work on The Big Bands.

“The new formula of Harry's schmaltzy horn and Helen's emotional voice, with swing numbers interspersed, was certainly beginning to pay off. In the spring of 1942 the band broke records on two coasts—at the Meadowbrook in Cedar Grove, New Jersey, and at the Palladium in Hollywood, where it drew thirty-five thousand customers in one week and eight thousand of them in a single evening!

To those of us who had been enraptured by the band's tremendous free-swinging drive, the change in musical emphasis was disappointing. In a review of a radio program during its record-breaking Palladium stay, I concluded, after deploring the band's muddy-sounding rhythmic approach, that "it would be a shame to discover that the Harry James band had really lost that thrilling drive that sparked its performances for such a long time."

But the band just kept going on to bigger and bigger things. In the summer of 1942 it won Martin Block's "Make Believe Ballroom" poll, unseating what most people considered the number-one band in the country, Glenn Miller's. And then, when shortly thereafter, Glenn enlisted in the Army Air Force, his sponsor, Chesterfield cigarettes, selected James to replace him. By then, the band was appearing on commercial radio five nights a week— three times for Chesterfield, once for Coca-Cola and once again for Jello as part of "The Jack Benny Show" emanating from New York.

While in the East the band again played the Meadowbrook. And it also repaid a debt to Maria Kramer, owner of the Lincoln Hotel, where it had spent so many of its earlier nights, by playing the spot at quite a loss in income.

But it left the engagement early when it was summoned to Hollywood to appear in the movie version of Best Foot Forward.

Barry Ulanov, who preferred jazz to schmaltz, summed up the reason for the James success in a December, 1942, Metronome review that began:

Rarely has the public's faith in a band been so generously rewarded as it has in the organization headed by Harry James. Of the number one favorites of recent years, Harry's gives its fans the most for its money. . . . His taste is the public's taste, and his pulse runs wonderfully right along with that of the man in the street and the woman on the dance floor. . . .

Whether or not you agree with or accept Harry James' taste doesn't matter in appraising this band. It's not the band of tomorrow. It's not an experimental outfit. It's not even the brilliant jazz crew that Harry fronted a couple of years ago. It's just a fine all-around outfit that reflects dance music of today perfectly.

One further indication of the band's commercial success: the day it was to open a twelve-thousand-five-hundred-dollar-a-week engagement at New York's Paramount Theater was a nasty, rainy one. The doors were to open at a quarter to ten. At five in the morning the lines began forming, and if a batch of extra police hadn't arrived, there could have been a riot.

And still another sign: Columbia Records announced in June, 1942, that it was running into a shellac famine because of James. That band's version of "I've Heard That Song Before" had become the company's all-time biggest seller at 1,250,000 copies! "Velvet Moon" and "You Made Me Love You" had passed the one million mark. And "All or Nothing at All" and "Flash," the former featuring Sinatra, the latter a James original, a coupling that had sold 16,000 copies when it had been released three years earlier, had been reissued and had sold 975,000 copies to date!

Meanwhile the band was signed to appear in two more movies, Mr. Co-Ed with Red Skelton and A Tale of Two Sisters, as Harry kept growing closer and closer to the movie scene, and particularly to one of its most glamorous stars. She was Betty Grable, who occupied a table every night at the Astor Roof when the band appeared there in the spring of 1943.

During that engagement it became increasingly obvious that Harry was far more interested in pleasing his public, and in Miss Grable, then he was in playing any more outstanding jazz. The band performed its ballads as well as usual, but the men seemed to be blowing listlessly. "The stuff instead of sounding solid, sounds stolid, on the pompous side," I noted in my July, 1943, review. "You get the feeling that the men are plodding through the notes. . . . I don't know whether it's because they are living too well, or because they just aren't capable of playing more rhythmically. . . ."

Perhaps my thoughts were going back too much to those early days when the band had such tremendous spirit, when it was filled with laughs and good humor and ambition and a healthy desire to play and swing and succeed. Now success had come, but the inspiration seemed to have disappeared.

Harry, himself, seemed far less interested in his music. Of course, with someone like Betty Grable around, most of us could hardly blame him.

But Harry had worries, too. The armed services were taking some of his best men. And, what's more, they were constantly beckoning in his direction too.

On July 5 in Las Vegas, Nevada, Harry James married Betty Grable. One month later his draft board classified him 4-F.

But his draft problems were by no means over. Rumors kept persisting that he would be reclassified I-A. On February 11, 1944, he took his pre-induction physical. Then Harry put his entire band on notice with an invitation "to stick around and see what happens." There really wasn't much to stick around for because his radio series sponsor announced that the band would be dropped from the program in March.

And then it happened: at the very last minute, James was re-classified 4-F because of an old back injury. Quickly he called together some of his old men. He had been featuring Buddy DiVito and Helen Ward (Helen Forrest had begun her career as a single late in 1943) as his singers, but the latter was replaced by Kitty Kallen when the band returned to the Astor Roof on May 22. Juan Tizol, meanwhile, had come over from Duke Ellington's band to fill a James trombone chair.

The band's success continued. After its Astor engagement, where an improved rhythm section was noted, it went on a record-breaking tour, highlighted by a sixty thousand throng at the Rubber Bowl in Akron, Ohio, and terminating in California, where it began another healthy schedule on Coca-Cola's Spotlight Band radio series, and where Harry broke something other than a record — his leg. How? Playing baseball, of course.

The James band had not made any good new recordings for more than two years; the AFM ban saw to that. Finally, on November 11, 1944, the companies and Petrillo ended their war. Immediately James went into Columbia's New York studio to record four sides, including a fine version of "I'm Beginning to See the Light," featuring his pretty, new vocalist, Kitty Kallen, plus his first jazz combo opus in many a year, "I'm Confessing" which spotted the great Willie Smith, Jimmie Lunceford's former alto saxist, who had just joined the band, and a brilliant pianist named Arnold Ross.

When the band returned East to play at Meadowbrook, Barry Ulanov noted a stronger emphasis on jazz, praising James for playing swinging things instead of merely playing it safe. "He has taken advantage of his unassailable commercial position to play good music, to diminish the amount of tremulous trash which formed the bulk of his sets when he was coming up. Now, if he will just drop those meaningless strings. . . ."

But Harry wasn't listening. He increased his string section to two full dozen. "With a section as big as that," I wrote in July, 1945, "somebody ought to be able to produce impressive sounds." But nobody did.

The more I saw Harry in those days, the more I realized he had become less and less interested in his music. He had broadened his career as an entertainer when in January, 1945, he had been signed for the Danny Kaye radio series, where, in addition to leading and blowing his horn, he also acted as a stooge and a comedian of sorts. And he seemed to like his new roles — perhaps even more than his music.

He developed other consuming interests. With his wife, he devoted a great deal of his time to horseracing, running his own nags and spending much time at the tracks. He became so successful that he could choose the spots he wanted to play with his band, and, if he felt like concentrating on affairs apart from music, he'd do so.

But in 1946 the bottom began to fall slowly out of the band business. The big-paying steady dates were disappearing. James, who had refused to play one-nighters for almost two years, ostensibly because he wanted to remain where the action was, announced in February that he would again tour with his band.

His financial overhead was high. But Harry was not drawing his usual big crowds. It must have been a big blow to him and his pride. In December, 1946, just ten years after he had joined Benny Goodman's band, Harry James announced that he was giving up. Ironically, Goodman made a similar announcement that very month.

But then something — nobody knows just what — changed Harry's mind. A few months later, he was back again with a brand new, streamlined band. It jumped. He jumped. And there were just four fiddles, and they had very little to do.

How come the sudden change? A healthy and happy-looking Harry James talked about it in the summer of 1947: "First of all, I've settled a few problems in my mind, problems nobody ever knew I had and which I didn't bother telling anyone about. But when you're worried and upset, you don't feel like playing and you certainly can't relax enough to play anything like good jazz."

It was like the old days in more ways than one. James cut his price in half; he played one-nighters everywhere and on every one of them he blew his brilliant jazz, just the way he had when he first started his band.

And then there was the new group's contagious enthusiasm. "The most important thing that makes me want to play," he said, "is this new band of mine. You know what I've had in the past. Well, now I've got me a bunch of kids and their spirit kills me. They're up on the bandstand wanting to play all the time, so how can I possibly not feel like blowing! I haven't had a bunch like this since my first band."

Harry made that statement thirty years ago. And, with just a few short time-outs, he has been leading a group ever since, at times only a small one, but most of the time a big, swinging band with a booting brass section and a swinging sax section and rhythm quartet to match — and with no strings attached!

It has played mostly in Nevada—forty weeks out of each year, to be precise. In 1966 he brought his band back to New York for a few weeks, and a wonderfully swinging outfit it was, too, with some youngsters, and some veterans like Corky Corcoran and Louis Bellson, who had just replaced Buddy Rich on drums. And there were some of the old arrangements and there were some new swinging ones.

But most of all, there was Harry James, happy, effervescent, boasting without reservations that "this is the best band I've ever had in my life! These young musicians, they're getting so much better training and they can do so

much more!"

It was the Harry James of old, enthusiastic about his music, anxious to please and to be appreciated. He looked about thirty pounds heavier, with a few gray hairs here and there, but he was still blowing his potent horn, still getting and giving his musical kicks via one of the country's greatest bands.

It was quite a sight to see and quite a sound to hear!”

"Harry James was a genius. He could read all of the highly syncopated charts at sight, and he played fantastic jazz solos—different every time. ... He was also a good conductor and a fine arranger."

- Arthur Rollini, member of the reed section of the 1937-38 Benny Goodman Orchestra

“By January 1937, then, through the almost random process of comings and goings and casually hired replacements and all the other accidents of circumstance that commonly determined the course of a big band's personnel, the Benny Goodman trumpet section finally completed its evolution and had formed itself into the classic triumvirate of Harry James, Ziggy Elman and Chris Griffin.

This powerhouse trio, as it came to be called, played with a precision and drive and spirit-rousing joyfulness that added even more excitement to the band's performances, and it was the perfect vehicle for executing the Jimmy Mundy killer-dillers that Benny was now favoring. For Hammond, who much preferred Fletcher Henderson's more subtle and relaxed approach to orchestration, "the loud, meaningless 'killer' arrangements which Benny instructs Jimmy Mundy to pound out in mass production each week are definitely detracting from the musicianship of the orchestra." But even he had to admit "there has never been a better trumpet section except in one of Fletcher Henderson's old bands."

This was not an uncommon opinion. Glenn Miller, for one, considered it "the Marvel of the Age.""The best compliment we ever got," Chris Griffin remembers, "is when Duke Ellington once said we were the greatest trumpet section that ever was, as far as his liking." In most trumpet sections one man played lead and the others held down the less demanding second and third trumpet chairs….

In the Goodman band, though, the lead was alternated among all three players. "They switched the parts around because there were so many high notes for the trumpets they'd wear one guy out," Jess Stacy explains. "They had to switch the parts. If they hadn't, one guy would have died."

- Ross Firestone, Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life & Times of Benny Goodman

''His solo work poured out of his horn with a sense of inevitability that no other trumpeter could equal with such consistency."

- Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles, continues its in-depth look at the career of trumpeter and band leader, Harry James with a reprinting of the following inserts notes that Jazz musician, bandleader, author and editor Bill Kirchner penned for Verve Jazz Masters 55: Harry James [314 529 902-2]. The CD provides a wonderful retrospective of the music produced by the bands that Harry led in the 1950's and 1960's.

Still to come in future postings about Harry are Gunther Schuller’s take on him in The Swing Era and a synopsis of the salient aspects of his career as drawn from Peter Levinson’s Trumpet Blues: The Life of Harry James.

“If a poll were taken to pick the most famous trumpeters in the history of twentieth-century music, chances are that Louis Armstrong and Harry James would top most lists. Armstrong, of course, also has a most secure place in the jazz pantheon, but James does not, due to the "burden" of having achieved enormous commercial success early in his career. It's ironic that while few judge Armstrong's achievements on the basis of such hits as Hello, Dolly, James is still viewed in many quarters mainly as an early-Forties purveyor of schmaltzy ballads such as You Made Me Love You and such virtuoso pop-classical fare as Flight of the Bumble Bee.

To be sure, there was a strong element of commercialism in James's musical persona, but. there was an intense jazz side as well. His playing gave witness to the varied influences of his favorite trumpeters: Armstrong, Muggsy Spanier, Bunny Berigan, Buck Clayton., and Clifford Brown. There have been few trumpeters in jazz history who could sound equally convincing on Armstrong's Cornet Chop Suey and the challenging bebop harmonies of Ernie Wilkins's Jazz Connoisseur. James pulled it all off effortlessly, while leaving no doubt who was playing. (''His solo work", observed composer, conductor, and historian Gunther Schuller in The Swing Era: "poured out of his horn ... with a sense of inevitability that no other trumpeter could equal with such consistency.") Combine these elements with an eloquent jazz ballad style - there are several examples in this collection - a passion for the blues, and breathtaking execution, and you have a unique, and great, jazz musician.

Born in 1916 in Albany, Georgia, Harry Hagg James was the son of a circus bandleader and he spent much of his childhood in this unusual musical environment, (His adult fondness for such showpieces as Carnival of Venice no doubt stemmed from early exposure to brass band music.) He began playing drums at age seven and three years later commenced trumpet lessons with his father. The boy evidently learned quickly: While in his teens, he played in succession of bands in Texas, where his family had settled, and by the time he was nineteen had graduated to the national with the Ben Pollack band. His popularity, however, was established with his 1937- 38 stint in the most renowned of Benny Goodman's Orchestras, enabling him to go on his own and become one of the most successful bandleaders of the Swing Era — before reaching the age of thirty.

With the unofficial demise of the Swing Era at the end of 1946, James disbanded his orchestra, as did a number of other bandleaders, but he formed a new band soon afterward and led it intermittently throughout the next decade. In the late Fifties he began what was arguably the most artistically fruitful period of his career: During this time, he acquired a base at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, where his band played for several months of each year when not touring. James also commissioned a slew of charts from first-rate composer-arrangers: Ralph Burns, Bob Florence, Neal Hefti, Thad Jones and, most of all, Ernie Wilkins. The last three, not coincidentally, had written extensively for Count Basie, whose band James admired and, to some extent, imitated in approach.

(The two Burns compositions, released here for the first time, are from a November 1961 session in which James recorded eight Burns originals. Hommage a Swee Pea is a tribute to Burns's friend Billy Strayhorn, the longtime Duke Ellington collaborator and compositional alter ego. Rosebud was a nickname for a well-known groupie.)

But the James band was more than just a Basie copy — its leader was too strong a musical personality to settle for that. His own playing continued to grow in scope — including an assimilation of Clifford Brown's music — and in the series of nine albums recorded for MGM between January 1959 and March '64, he demonstrated his artistry in a variety of settings. There was a Bob Crosby-like album of big band Dixieland as well as a mainstream small-group date, updated orchestrations of Swing Era fare, and challenging postbop vehicles (The Jazz Connoisseur, its sequel A Swinging Serenade, and Walkin'). As a soloist, James was at his peak, and his former sidemen remember his musicianship with awe. "On a scale of one to ten," recalls lead trumpeter Rob Turk, "Harry was a fifty."

"He was the greatest musician I ever played with," tenor saxophonist Jay Corre says. Both Corre and bassist Red Kelly mention that James had what must have been a photographic memory (and a phonographic ear). He not only had his own parts memorized but those of every band member as well. If a player was absent, James would play the missing part on trumpet. And Ray Sims played an occasional game with the leader: Sims would pull out any chart and display a random two measures of his second trombone — even from an arrangement that the band had not played in years — and James would invariably identify the piece correctly.

If James was a prodigious musician, his band was more than capable of supporting him. The James band heard on these sixteen tracks was one of the finest jazz orchestras of its era. Its most celebrated members were drumming phenomenon Buddy Rich (in residence from 1962 to '66), the great lead alto saxophonist Willie Smith (a longtime James sideman who originally had achieved fame with Jimmie Lunceford), and tenor saxophonist Corky Corcoran — but there were other notable soloists, including tenor saxophonists Corre and Sam Firmature, trombonist Sims (older brother of Zoot), and pianist Jack Perciful.

Harry James continued to play magnificently and lead his orchestra until his death in 1983. The music contained in this collection, all recorded during what was arguably his most creative period, makes a strong case for a reevaluation of his place both in jazz history and in the jazz pantheon. In a musical tradition that celebrates individuality, he was truly one of a kind.”

-Bill Kirchner, November 1995

The following video features Harry on Ernie Wilkins’s Jazz Connoisseur.

“While it is fashionable for jazz writers to pick out the relatively few "pure jazz" sides in the more commercially successful bands, using either the paucity or plenitude of such evidence to respectively condemn or praise their subject, it is a quite unrealistic approach and ultimately inaccurate. A discriminating historian cannot avoid looking at the totality of an artist's creativity; he must look at all facets of his work. And if we look at the James band's full recorded output in its first peak period (late 1941 through 1942), we discover not only a more balanced selection of its three repertory elements—ballad vocals, novelty vocals, and jazz instrumentals—but a considerable improvement in all three areas, especially in the quality of the jazz instrumentals.”

- Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era

“James's own playing had lost none of its assurance; his solo work poured out of his horn—as it was to throughout his career—with a sense of inevitability that no other trumpeter could equal with such consistency. In a long and truly remarkable career as a trumpet player James hardly ever missed a note. He played extraordinarily well almost until the day he died, an astonishing achievement for a brass player.”

- Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era

In addition to George T. Simon’s The Big Bands, the other invaluable reference for the big band/swing era is Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era, The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945.

Simon’s book emphasizes reportage, and well it should , after all he was there while it was happening and posting reports to magazines such as Metronome and to newspapers about developments in the big bands.

Schuller is a musician and his approach is more one of analysis and evaluation and his work includes many notations to explain what’s happening in the music itself that helps distinguish one big band from another.

Here’s his take on Harry James as we continue our expansive profile of the music of this great Jazz musician.

"It is probably difficult for most jazz aficionados to think of the late Harry James as a major jazz figure. And perhaps one is justified in considering his right for a place in the jazz pantheon a controversial and qualified one. But if one looks at the full life-long record and chooses not to remember only the period of his greatest public popularity—the early 1940s—then one discovers a musician who devoted the greater part of his career to the cause of jazz. For the truth is that, in its baldest outlines, his life was involved almost continuously with jazz, certainly in his early days with Ben Pollack and Goodman, but also later, though less in the limelight, as leader of his own band for nearly thirty-five years, featuring outstanding jazz soloists such as Willie Smith, Ray Sims, Corky Corcoran, Buddy Rich, Red Kelly, and Jack Perciful and hard-swinging progressive arrangements by Ray Conniff and (in later years) Neal Hefti and Ernie Wilkins—all with a minimum of commercial intrusions.

James was undoubtedly the most technically assured and prodigiously talented

white trumpet player of the late Swing Era and early postwar years, both as an improvising jazz and blues player and as a richly expressive ballad performer. He was, unlike many other Armstrong disciples, a creative musician, unwilling to merely imitate the master. Indeed, James extended Armstrong's melodic and rhythmic conception in two dramatically divergent and quite personal directions: the one as a brilliant, often brash virtuoso soloist equipped with unlimited technique, accuracy and endurance; the other as a romantic popular song balladeer, at times carrying Armstrong's melodic style to its ultimate commercial extreme.

Yet, one can only speculate why a fine jazz player like James felt that he could fulfill his band-leading ambitions only via the most commercial of routes. Perhaps he wanted to ensure financial success and stability for himself and his orchestra first, before devoting himself to more progressive forms of jazz. Or perhaps, deep down, he realized that his eclectic talents were not sufficient to create a new and deeply original style which could survive as, for example, that of Armstrong or Gillespie or Hawkins or Ellington.

In any case James's orchestra was from the very outset commercially oriented, in striking contrast to the excellent jazz credentials he had already garnered, not only in his years with Goodman but with a variety of small groups featuring variously a nucleus of Basie musicians in 1937 and 1938 (Buck Clayton, Herschel Evans, Walter Page, Jo Jones) or his 1939 Boogie Woogie Trio with Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons (hear James's fine blues trumpet on Home James), or with Teddy Wilson (Just a Mood) and Lionel Hampton (1938). With such numbers as the schmaltzy Chiribiribin, the empty virtuosity of Flight of the Bumble Bee, and the mercilessly pretentious pastiche, Concerto for Trumpet, James set his band on an entirely different path from, say, the one Krupa had chosen a year earlier. Even bona fide jazz pieces like King Porter Stomp, Two O'Clock Jump and Feet Draggin Blues were either cheapened (with the boogie-woogie intrusions on Two O'Clock) or listlessly, unswingingly performed (as on Feet Draggin). In any case, the "jazz" instrumental were hardly distinctive, being lesser imitations of the Goodman-via-Henderson manner, occasionally mildly "updated" by James's tenorman, Dave Matthews. It is possible—and has been so reported (by George Simon)—that James played a healthy sampling of "sensationally swinging" numbers on dance and ballroom dates, but certainly the recordings made for Brunswick between February and November 1939 do not indicate any such predilection.

The arrival of Frank Sinatra, to be replaced a half-year later by Dick Haymes (when Sinatra joined Tommy Dorsey), may have tipped James's approach even more in a populist direction. Though Sinatra's big success came with Dorsey, there is no question that James had discovered a major singing and musical talent, and that his presence had a more than casual impact on his band's popularity. Of these early nine Sinatra sides All or Nothing at All is the most impressive, showing the then twenty-three-year-old singer as already the possessor of a rich, warm baritone voice with a relatively straight unembellished delivery. He also barely got through the long high F at the end of the song. A moderate commercial success, the record became a big hit a few years later when rere-leased by Columbia and when Sinatra was already firmly established as one of the top popular singers of the land, even threatening Bing Crosby in his number one position.

It is interesting to note that in these early recordings James is trying to be more crooningly "vocal" in his trumpet-playing than Sinatra in his singing; he abandons virtually all taste and standards in his emphasis on an exaggeratedly saccharine, cheap vibrato—something that undoubtedly impressed a musically illiterate audience, but which was technically the easiest thing to do and a gross aberration of both Armstrong's and the old classical cornet soloists' lyric style. (James knew this latter tradition well, for his father, who taught young Harry trumpet, was a conductor of traveling circus bands, where much of that earlier turn-of-the-century cornet-style survived well into the thirties and forties.)

After one year with the Varsity label, for whom James recorded a series of unimpressive, stiffly played sides and whose distribution was so poor in any case that the recordings would have had no impact, James returned to Columbia in early 1941. One of Columbia's producers, Morty Palitz, who had had some success with using woodwinds in recordings with Mildred Bailey and Eddie Sauter, as well as Alec Wilder's 1939-40 Octets, suggested that James add woodwinds and a string quartet. Harry opted for the strings, sensing that here his commercial hold on a larger audience could best be expanded. And to everyone's surprise—and to the jazz critics' utter dismay—James succeeded where others, like Shaw and Miller, had previously failed.

While James clung to a jazz approach—just barely—with such swing numbers as Strictly Instrumental, Record Session, Sharp as a Tack, Jeffries Blues, and Crazy Rhythm, the big successes were his absolutely non-jazz-related "hat trick" of recordings of Eli-Eli, Rimsky Korsakov's Flight of the Bumble Bee, and the old cornet-solo favorite, Carnival of Venice, as well as the crooning vocals of Dick Haymes enveloped in strings (like You Made Me Love You, My Silent Love). Oddly enough, these ballads were in their own way quite effective, the strings adding some contrasting color and, I suppose, for many casual listeners "a bit of class." But it was James's own playing, totally convincing and authoritative, that made these recordings popularly successful.

It wasn't the first time— nor the last—that an offering of questionable aesthetic taste would succeed with a large segment of the public by virtue of its irresistible combination of technical mastery and novelty of conception. For the fact remains that James's radiantly brassy tone, combined with an overbearing vibrato, was totally original and instantly recognizable.

No one had ever dared to go that far—even James's section-mate in the Goodman band, Ziggy Elman—and, on purely commercial terms, it is that kind of nervy authority, technical perfection, and unequivocal recognizability that succeeds. It succeeds because it is clearly identifiable, therefore precisely labelable and therefore, in turn, marketable. James had stumbled onto a powerful formula for success, knowing incidentally, whatever his inclinations as a jazz musician may have been, that to compete directly with Glenn Miller or Count Basie or Goodman was folly, and would not garner him "a place in the sun." The formula he chose turned out to be irresistible: a star instrumentalist, technically invincible, romantic ballad singers (Sinatra, Haymes, Helen Forrest), and heady arrangements using strings, all superimposed on the vestiges of a jazz orchestra.

If the formula had had considerable commercial success with Dick Haymes— incidentally a first-rate musician, masterful in his phrasing—it was to turn into an incredible bonanza when James acquired Helen Forrest, who left Goodman's employ abruptly in late 1941, as the band's singer. (Haymes left James around the same time, attaining even greater acclaim with both Goodman and Dorsey.) The point about Helen Forrest's success with James was not so much how well she sang—she always had done that—but how effectively the James orchestra and its arrangers supported her singing, enhancing it, and drawing from her many truly magical performances.

James was the first (except for Ellington) to exploit and capitalize fully on the presence of a band singer by creating special musical frameworks for that singing talent, tailor-made, so to speak, at the same time craftily exploiting the need during the tense wartime years for the comforting reassurance of sentimental ballads.

Previously, band singers simply got up and delivered their songs in whatever fashion their talent permitted—as I have said elsewhere, singing, as it were, in parallel to the band but not really with it or in it. (This was not true, to be sure, of a few of the major vocal artists, like Jimmy Rushing with Basie, or Billie Holiday with Teddy Wilson, or Mildred Bailey with Eddie Sauter.) "Boy" and "girl" singers were simply a necessary appurtenance of a dance band in a realm where crooned "love and moon-in-June" lyrics were deemed to be an absolute trade prerequisite.

James saw that a singer of Helen Forrest's potential could achieve much more than that, could in fact be a dominant force in the popular success of an orchestra, in effect a co-leader. Of course, James did not foresee how such a development would affect the future course of jazz. But the results were soon fully audible and visible: as other bands, especially Dorsey (with Sinatra) copied the formula, singers took over the popular music field, jazz as swing was more or less driven out—certainly as a leading force. In turn a new form of jazz, namely bop, primarily instrumental and represented by smaller combos was to take over. By the end of the decade the split between the instrumental and vocal factions of jazz was irreparable, and eventually it would lead to a further separation in the form of the rock phenomenon, again a primarily vocal form of popular music.

While it is fashionable for jazz writers to pick out the relatively few "pure jazz" sides in the more commercially successful bands, using either the paucity or plenitude of such evidence to respectively condemn or praise their subject, it is a quite unrealistic approach and ultimately inaccurate. A discriminating historian cannot avoid looking at the totality of an artist's creativity; he must look at all facets of his work. And if we look at the James band's full recorded output in its first peak period (late 1941 through 1942), we discover not only a more balanced selection of its three repertory elements—ballad vocals, novelty vocals, and jazz instrumentals—but a considerable improvement in all three areas, especially in the quality of the jazz instrumentals.

In such pieces as Strictly Instrumental (originally written by Edgar Battle for the Lunceford band), The Clipper, Crazy Rhythm, James's own Let Me Up, and especially The Mole, the band developed an interesting synthesis of the lyrical-vocal and swinging jazz. The link between the two tendencies was the string section, integrated at its best in a way that no other band (even Shaw, who certainly tried) had ever succeeded in doing. It was to become a formula much imitated in those war years, especially successfully by Sy Oliver and Tommy Dorsey.

In this way James found a new middle ground where strings and bona fide jazz instruments could coexist in friendly partnership. The results of this fusion were particularly effective on The Mole, where the strings seem to be no longer an intrusive element but rather one of the co-equal choirs of the orchestra. Particularly effective is the use of high floating violin harmonics, a device all but unknown to early jazz arrangers, in the final chorus Equally fetching is the superbly played muted trumpet quartet, an idea James had first developed when still in the Goodman band.

Just as the use of strings—and by mid-1942 a French horn—in a generally lyrical approach affected the way the James band played jazz in those years, so, too, conversely jazz in the form of swing often affected the treatment of ballads.

There were, of course, those outright lushly sentimental ballads like But Not for Me, I Had the Craziest Dream, and By The Sleepy Lagoon (the latter filching the entire introduction to Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, Suite No. 2). But there were also songs like I've Heard That Song Before, a fine Helen Forrest vocal, played with a bouncy "rockin' chair" beat and swing that very few, if any, white bands had as yet achieved (and certainly not in ballads), and which was a fine precursor of the broadly swinging beat and style of James's superb 1944 I’m Beginning To See the Light.

Another development worth noting is the gradually increased integration of James's solos into the overall framework or arrangement. Whereas James had begun his band-leading career by appropriating all the solo space he could— with a few exceptions, like Vido Musso's extended solos on Jeffries Blues—he had by early 1942 returned to a more modest policy. Listen to how beautifully James's solo on Crazy Rhythm, for example, is assimilated into the ensemble.

The two arrangers who managed this wide range of assignments for James in those years were Dave Matthews and Leroy Holmes. Matthews was a great admirer and student of Duke Ellington and brought some of the master's tone colors and voicings to the James band, notably on Let Me Up and I’m Beginning To See the Light. Notice how Matthews uses Ellington's old Mood Indigo trio of muted trumpet and trombone plus low-register clarinet in the former title, not this time in a sustained song-like theme, but in a jauntily moving jump/riff tune. The Duke-ish harmonization and voicing of the last eight bars of I’m Beginning are particularly fetching , as is Alan Reuss's guitar coda with its fade-away blues-ish single-note line and final chord in harmonics. I’m Beginning seems to me to attain the kind of admirable synthesis I spoke of earlier: it is a song, a vocal (sung well by Kitty Kallen), it uses strings (quite idiomatically), yet it is unquestionably a jazz performance.

Leroy Holmes composed and arranged such brilliant scores as Prince Charming and The Mole, well-made swing-riff tunes, smartly arranged, that did much to keep the jazz flame alive in James's band.

By the time the recording ban had run its course in 1944, James had revamped his personnel extensively; he had brought in Willie Smith and Corky Corcoran, the fine band pianist Arnold Ross and two superior rhythm section members, Alan Reuss and Ed Mihelich, a strong driving bass player who had already done wonders for the Krupa rhythm section. With the further addition of outstanding arranging talent in the persons of Johnny Thompson and Ray Conniff, the James band moved unqualifiedly into a leading position as one of the finest performing ensembles of the mid- and late-1940s, while perpetuating a harmonically, rhythmically advanced swing/dance-band style. Its singers—like Kitty Kallen, Ginnie Powell, and Buddy DeVito, all representing a new breed of vocalist who had been weaned on Anita O'Day, Peggy Lee, and Frank Sinatra—continued the trend of a more instrumentalized type of singing, with at least an awareness of jazz as a strongly rhythmic language.

But above all the band concentrated in its repertory on a substantial amount of jazz instrumentals, mostly created by Ray Conniff, who had already contributed so importantly to Artie Shaw's 1944 band. Friar Rock, Easy, I've Never Forgotten, 9:20 Special, Tuxedo Junction, What Am I Gonna Do?, Moten Swing, Vine Street Blues are all striking examples of the kind of exuberant swing and blistering drive the James band could produce during this period.

James's own playing had lost none of its assurance; his solo work poured out of his horn—as it was to throughout his career—with a sense of inevitability that no other trumpeter could equal with such consistency. In a long and truly remarkable career as a trumpet player James hardly ever missed a note. He played extraordinarily well almost until the day he died, an astonishing achievement for a brass player. His brilliant bravura solo on Friar Rock is but one typical example of his extraordinary facility and flawless execution.

As I pointed out earlier, Harry James reverted increasingly in the ensuing years to a primarily jazz policy, albeit basically in what one might call a "progressive swing" idiom. In this respect James's career reverses the much more common pattern: tracing a gradual decline from high idealism (and even experimentalism) through various stages of compromise to commercial accommodation and ultimate artistic demise. James started at the other end; he sowed his commercial oats during his band's youthful years, achieving a security and fame early on which permitted him in later years to more or less play the kind of jazz-as-dance-music he knew best, always with an adequate measure of musical spontaneity and freedom, to keep his improvisatory and virtuosic skills well honed.

To his credit, James succumbed to a bop influence in his own playing only fleetingly, the Gillespie model being always a temptation for most trumpet players. In James's case these were minor flirtations that never deterred him from being his own man, instrumentally and creatively. Nor did he in the heyday years of bop, the late forties, like so many others turn his band into a bop ensemble. He had always admired Basie from his earliest days in New York, and it was perhaps inevitable that James's post-1950 bands were built upon the Basie model, especially since two of Basie's top arrangers, Ernie Wilkins and Neal Hefti, were responsible for most of the James book in the last three decades.

It is also significant that by the early 1950s James had been cured of his initial conspicuous reliance on singers, and that during this entire later period—with but a few exceptions to re-create revivals of earlier successes—James worked entirely without singers—and no strings!”

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles concudes it extended feature on the life and music of Harry James with a series of reviews on the biography written by Peter Levinson which he entitled Trumpet Blues: The Life of Harry James.

At the time of its publication in 1999 by Oxford University Press, Mr. Levinson was one of the foremost Jazz publicists for over two and a half decades. He would go on to write biographies of Nelson Riddle and Tommy Dorsey.

He knew Harry personally for 24 years: "I first met James in the fall of 1959 when I was a young MCA talent agent. During the next twenty-four years, or until his death in July 1983,I spent considerable time with him in New York, Las Vegas, Hollywood—on the road, at personal appearances, and during recording sessions. I also wrote several magazine articles on him over the years.

Through knowing him, I discovered the other side of stardom in the music business. Here was a musician who combined both extraordinary talent and dashing good looks, who could play a romantic ballad like no other trumpeter, which had enabled him to achieve enormous success; yet this was also a man who ruined his life through serious addictions to alcohol and gambling."

The title of the book is obviously drawn from these serious addiction [and, of course, by the composition with the same title that Harry co-wrote with Jack Matthias].

More about Peter Levinson can be discerned from the following obituary written by Douglas Martin that appeared in The New York Times [November 15, 2008] which is followed by three reviews of Trumpet Blues: The Life of Harry James.

Peter Levinson, Publicist and Biographer of Jazz Greats, Is Dead at 74

“Peter J. Levinson, a music publicist who parlayed his close familiarity with jazz personalities into rich and sometimes intimate biographies of them, died on Oct. 21 at his home in Malibu, Calif. He was 74.

The cause was injuries suffered from a fall, said Dale Olson, a publicist and his longtime friend.

Nearly two years ago Mr. Levinson received a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the neurodegenerative disease popularly called Lou Gehrig’s disease. With the aid of his talking computer he was able to write and carry on business until the day he died.

Mr. Levinson handled publicity for stars including Dave Brubeck, Rosemary Clooney, Stan Getz, Woody Herman, the Modern Jazz Quartet and Mel Tormé. He publicized the hit television series “Dallas” and the film “Kramer vs. Kramer” (1979), which won an Academy Award for best picture. He helped to orchestrate the campaign to issue a postage stamp honoring Duke Ellington.

In an interview in 2004 with Tom Nolan on the Web site januarymagazine.com, Mr. Levinson said he had never planned to become an author. “I can’t say that I set a path for myself to do this,” he said. “It just occurred to me.”

“If you work as a publicist,” he added, “you’re working not only with artists but with managers and agents and so forth. You get an understanding of what careers are all about.”

Mr. Levinson’s first book was “Trumpet Blues: The Life of Harry James” (1999), a biography of the trumpeter and bandleader. Mr. Levinson mined his reminiscences from 24 years of knowing James, as well as from 200 interviews with musicians and James’s friends, to paint a portrait that pulled few punches.

“Long before there was sex, drugs and rock and roll, there was sex, alcohol and big-band swing,” People magazine said about the book. “And as this surprisingly absorbing biography suggests, trumpet player Harry James could have been the role model for Mick Jagger.”

Mr. Levinson next wrote “September in the Rain: The Life of Nelson Riddle” (2001), about the arranger known for his work with Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole. Variety praised Mr. Levinson’s detailed description of the artistic and personal relationship between Sinatra and Riddle, again drawing from his experiences with both. But the review also complained that mountains of “mundane detail” got in the way of the Sinatra story.

His next book was “Tommy Dorsey: Livin’ in a Great Big Way” (2005), which told how Sinatra patterned himself after Dorsey, the trombonist and bandleader, in everything from his way of breathing while singing to his wardrobe to his dashing self-assuredness.

A fourth book, “Puttin’ on the Ritz: Fred Astaire and the Fine Art of Panache — a Biography,” is scheduled to be published in March.

Mr. Levinson was born on July 1, 1934, in Atlantic City and graduated from the University of Virginia, where he began writing about jazz artists and producing jazz concerts. He continued to produce concerts while serving in the Army in Korea. He then took a job as a music publicist with Columbia Records, after a brief stint as a freelance writer.

He eventually started his own publicity firm in New York and later expanded it to Los Angeles.

Mr. Levinson is survived by his wife, Grace Diekhaus, and a brother, Dr. John Levinson, of Wilmington, Del.

In his 2004 interview, he said his publicity background not only helped him gather material for books but also helped him promote them. When publicists for the Harry James book failed to get him radio appearances, he said, he personally set up 23 interviews with disc jockeys.

Peter J. Levinson - Trumpet Blues: The Life of Harry James

Reviewed by Tom Nolan for the January Magazine

For many jazz fans, trumpet player Harry James was at best superfluous and at worst a sellout: a musician of formidable technique who abandoned the fiery style that made him a star of the Benny Goodman Orchestra in the late 1930s, only to adopt a much more schmaltzy, flashy, commercial manner that led to a remarkable number of hit records throughout the 40s.

To dance music lovers, James was the leader for three decades of a consistently satisfying big band whose earliest incarnation gave Frank Sinatra his start and whose 1950s version found its most lucrative gigs at the casino hotels in Vegas and at Tahoe.

But most of America knew Harry James simply as the husband of movie star Betty Grable, the blonde pinup who caused World War II G.I.s to croon, "I want a gal, just like the gal, who married Harry James..."

None of these versions of James would necessarily warrant publishing a major biography at century's end; but Peter J. Levinson, a long-time music publicist and first-time author, has produced one in Trumpet Blues. And in putting together all the Harry Jameses -- jazz player, big-band leader, celebrity husband (as well as promiscuous womanizer, unrecovered alcoholic and ruinous gambler) -- he's not only made James a much more interesting figure than might have been imagined, but written one of the most engrossing and compelling jazz biographies in many years.

As shown by Levinson (whose own professional acquaintance with his subject is woven discreetly and effectively throughout the book), Harry James was both "one of the most essential trumpeters and bandleaders in the history of American music," and a man who lived "a sad and misguided life."

Born to circus performer parents (his father was a bandmaster, his mother a trapeze artist and horse rider), Harry Haag James was reared as a prodigy and learned that performing well was the price of approval. By age 3, he was a featured drummer; by 9, he played trumpet; at 12, he was leading a band. Schooled by his father, a stern taskmaster, James studied the classic trumpet repertoire and developed the iron chops and bravura technique of a circus musician; but he also soaked up the jazz and blues of his native Texas and loved Louis Armstrong's playing. After a stint with the influential Ben Pollack Orchestra, and an early first marriage, James joined the wildly popular Benny Goodman band in 1936 at the startlingly early age of 20. He was an instant sensation, and the rest of his life was lived in the spotlight.

By 20, too, his bad habits were formed: heavy drinking, incessant gambling and compulsive promiscuity. In his decades of success, James found no reason to change, remaining (in the words of one of his band members) "a perpetual teenager as a man," someone who "served all his appetites and all his desires. He wasn't terribly concerned with other people."Indeed, his dark sides had a tendency to eclipse his skill on the silver trumpets.

James' self-centered existence had its colorful aspects. A great sports fan, he was very serious about his band's baseball team and often hired band members as much for their athletic prowess as their musical abilities. A lover of Western movies, he eventually arranged to star in one (Outlaw Queen, 1957). And as a big-band leader for much of his life, he participated to an expected degree in the antics and merriment that punctuated the dullness of life on the road.

But antics aside, Harry James was aloof. "Harry never got close to people," one of his drummers said. "I don't think anybody really liked him." His first of three wives, singer Louise Tobin (one of the hundreds of subjects Levinson interviewed), spoke of James'"inhuman side," his "cold, icy stare" and his "absolute indifference to his own children."

Levinson traces the roots of James' stunted personality -- his "deeply ingrained loneliness and insecurity" -- to a childhood in which he received no proper nurturing: "It appears... he grew up not... knowing the meaning of love." From boyhood on, Levinson writes, "[James] needed an audience to feel alive, special, important, and loved. Without it, he believed he really wasn't worth very much." Lacking any real education, he "wouldn't allow people to get close to him -- they might find out he was a fraud." Only on the bandstand did James feel fulfilled and safe, according to singer Helen Forrest: "He was at peace and he knew he was loved, when he was playing the trumpet.... He knew nobody could hurt him." Another singer, Marion Morgan, thought that James "gave all his warmth and love through his trumpet. There just wasn't much left."

Levinson recounts James' life in straightforward prose, clearly and with a wealth of detail, against a vivid backdrop of the 1940s swing years and the postwar entertainment era of the 50s and 60s. A number of other famous folk necessarily do cameo turns: drummer Buddy Rich, Frank Sinatra, singers Dick Haymes and Helen Forrest, and bandleaders Phil Harris and Glenn Miller.

The good-looking, high-living James -- slickly packaged by record and movie people, quipped trumpeter Pete Candoli, "like a WASP Cesar Romero" -- thought his success ride would never end. Certainly his work never did. His poor gambling luck, which found him losing millions of his own dollars (plus some of Betty Grable's), kept him touring virtually to his dying day. (James said he didn't fear death: "It's just another road trip.")

Peter Levinson's book is sort of the antithesis of his subject's trumpet style: not flashy, not schmaltzy, not full of fireworks. But in its own solid way it swings. Trumpet Blues is the biographical equivalent of a well-produced LP, with not a single weak or wasted track.

Novelist Ross Macdonald once said in defense of biography: "The more we know about a man, the more in a way we can love him." Harry James may not emerge as loveable, even after this thorough and convincing depiction; but he does now seem interesting and understandable. I thank Peter Levinson for so capably and comprehensively telling me a story I never dreamed I'd want to hear. January 2000

TOM NOLAN, a contributing editor of January Magazine, is also the author of Ross Macdonald: A Biography(Scribner).

Peter J. Levinson - Trumpet Blues: The Life of Harry James

By Jack Sohmer, DECEMBER 1999 JazzTimes

A working associate and friend of Harry James from 1959 to his death in 1983, former booking agent and publicist Peter Levinson offers a no-nonsense look at the trumpeter’s lifetime career in music, from a childhood spent in his father’s traveling circus band, through his many years as a superstar celebrity, to his final decline as both artist and man. Although undoubtedly sincere in his professed love for jazz, Levinson surprisingly says very little about the music itself. Most notably, he neglects to describe in his own words how James differed in style and technique from other trumpet players, how his bands ranked musically in comparison with those of his contemporaries, and finally, how we should reconcile his blatant commercialism in the 1940s and ’50s with his oft-expressed admiration for Louis Armstrong and other jazzmen.

Levinson is especially strong in ferreting out the details of James’ early career as a circus bandsman, but he is too quick in glossing over his first big-time gig with the Ben Pollack band of the mid-1930s. The far more well-chronicled 1937-38 Benny Goodman period is treated better, thanks to already published research and a plethora of personal interviews with such important primary sources as Harry’s first wife, Louise Tobin, who sang with Goodman in 1939, and about 200 other musicians, friends, and business associates. Because of them, we learn much about the man behind the horn. Apparently a lusty guy from puberty onwards, Harry never learned to restrain his impulses, even when married to one of the most popular pin-up girls of the 1940s, top-ranking Hollywood actress Betty Grable. Even his sidemen marveled at his insatiable appetite, endurance, and, especially, his indiscriminate taste. Beautiful or ugly, young or old, they were all grist for his mill. Harry’s legendary exploits in hotel bedrooms were only exceeded by his gargantuan thirst for booze and his self-destructive need to gamble away every dollar he earned, habits that ultimately even consumed Betty’s considerable savings as well. Levinson reports that by the time of her death in 1973, eight years after their 22-year-long marriage had ended, Harry and Betty had lost around $24 million at both the Las Vegas gaming tables and the track. His drinking, however, was by far the more serious of their problems, having eventually led him, on several occasions, to treat Betty like a punching bag. In 1965, Betty finally sued for divorce on the grounds of extreme cruelty. Harry kept his band working in Las Vegas and on the road to pay off his debts, but he had already lost the best meal ticket he was ever to have.

Harry loved his horn first and foremost, with baseball running a close second, and from his youth he was gifted with such great chops that he never even had to warm up before playing, much less engage in routine practicing as most hornmen do. It all came so easily to him. But, as was also the case with Bix Beiderbecke and Bunny Berigan, that superhuman tolerance for round-the-clock heavy drinking ultimately demanded its prize. Perhaps because of the better medical care available in the 1970s Harry did not die as young as Bix and Bunny had, but all accounts indicate that toward the end there was scarcely anything left of the one-time musical powerhouse. He was only 67 at the time of his death, but he looked much, much older. Additionally, because of cancer and the loss of his teeth, he had not been able to blow a note for some time.

Levinson did a good job of piecing together Harry’s story from those who knew him personally, but in some cases his knowledge of jazz history is way off. For example, he says that in 1937, when Johnny Hodges recorded Harry’s swing instrumental, “Peckin’,” lyrics were added and the title was changed to “Foolin’ Myself.” Actually, “Foolin’ Myself,” a tune that Billie Holiday also recorded, has nothing to do with “Peckin’” except that both were recorded at the same session. Indeed, Hodges’ “Peckin’” was initially rejected and did not surface on record until the late 1970s, when it appeared on a bootleg LP. Elsewhere, Levinson says that Lionel Hampton’s first recording on vibes was Louis Armstrong’s 1931 “Shine,” but the discographies, as well as Louis’ and Hamp’s own accounts, tell us that it was “Memories of You,” which was recorded five months earlier. Perhaps these gaffes are not too important in themselves, but they do cast doubt on the credibility of some of Levinson’s other remarks.

In the course of reading, you may discover things you probably never knew about Harry’s relationship with his most illustrious stars—Frank Sinatra and Buddy Rich—among many other sidemen, singers, and show biz buddies. For example, the late Helen Forrest, who had sung with Artie Shaw and Goodman before joining James, tells of her unrequited love for the very much still married bandleader, who continually romanced his “chirp,” all the while putting off her dreams of marriage on the grounds that his father objected to her being Jewish! Harry was also seeing Betty during this time, and when she got pregnant the busy trumpet player was forced to ask Louise for a divorce. This being 1943, if a hot film property and WWII dream girl like Grable were involved in a sex scandal, it would have wrecked her career, and Harry’s as well. Too much was at stake. Louise was high-pressured into a quickie Mexican divorce by Harry’s lawyer, thus freeing her errant husband to marry Betty and save the day for Hollywood.

Like other pre-rock superstars, such as Sinatra and Rich, whose most supportive fans in the ’50s and ’60s were either big Vegas spenders or their middle-class wannabes, Harry was having the ball of his life. Ever the kid and thinking that the gravy train would never stop, he never even thought of saving or investing his money. It was only a matter of time, then, before his losses put him into serious debt to the mob. In a short time, he was virtually an indentured servant, his expensive ongoing payroll for his band and staff, his unpaid back taxes, and his continuing jones for the bottle and the tables eventually reducing him to financial ruin.

In his prime, a period that lasted far longer for him than it did for most trumpeters, Harry James was the living definition of a celebrity virtuoso, a modern-day Paganini or Liszt. He could swing with great flamboyance and heat, he could play the blues with sincerity, and he could endow ballads with “schmaltzy” romanticism. But, perhaps most importantly, in his latter years he could finally turn his band around to reflect his longstanding love for the Basie sound, which he demonstrated not only in his choice of arrangements by Neal Hefti and the late Ernie Wilkins, but also in his own adaptations of the styles of Buck Clayton and Harry Edison. James was certainly no musical innovator in the sense of a Louis, Roy, or Dizzy, but he was unquestionably the most technically well-endowed, versatile, and influential trumpeter of his time. It’s just a shame that he never grew up.”

Trumpet Blues: The Life of Harry James by Peter Levinson

By R.J. DELUKE

March 8, 2004 All About Jazz

“Miles Davis thought he was wonderful. Clark Terry said he could do it all. That’s a couple of pretty fair trumpet players talking about another.

About Louis Armstrong?

No.

His name was Harry James and his fascinating and somewhat tragic story is told in “Trumpet Blues, The Life of Harry James,” by Peter J. Levinson (Oxford University Press). Levinson lays out a good account of one of America’s classic musicians. A white trumpeter from the swing age, he might be known more for his buttery trumpet solos on some hits from a bygone era, his marriage to Hollywood pinup girl Betty Grable, and his striking good looks in movie appearances. Some may remember he hired a young Frank Sinatra. In the pantheon of trumpeters, from Louis to Roy Eldridge, to Dizzy, on to Miles, Fat Navarro, Clifford Brown and forward, his name rarely comes up.

Levinson points out the error of that omission in the book, illustrating that James had the chops and ability that place him among the all-time greats on the instrument. Indeed, Satchmo had the upmost respect for him. Lionel Hampton said he sounded “black” (a compliment), as did current drummer Kenny Washington who went back to study James on record. “Don’t go to sleep on Harry James. He’s a bad dude,” said trumpeter Terry, getting to the crux of the issue.

Yet at the crux of the book is Levinson’s contention that despite the fact that trumpeters like Arturo Sandoval, Kenny Dorham, Maynard Ferguson, and the aforementioned Miles, Roy, Louis and Diz have all praised his astounding technique and virtuosity, “in line with the way American pop culture has long enjoyed disposing of its musical heroes, sixteen years after his death, Harry James musical greatness is almost completely forgotten,”

His book, he says, is an attempt to document James life and keep it in the public eye.

And what a life! For those who know of James trumpet genius, there is still plenty more to know. He grew up in a traveling circus where he performed as a contortionist and a drummer before switching to trumpet as a young child, eventually leading a circus band, like his father. His mother was an acrobat and taught him some of those tricks. But music became his calling and the book chronicles his meteoric rise, through the bands of Ben Pollak and Benny Goodman, to becoming the nation’s biggest star with the hottest band. There’s far more to his career than the legendary “You Made Me Love You” solo, beloved for decades by so many, and bemoaned by some critics as too “schmaltzy.”

Along the way, his fondness for alcohol, women and gambling are vices that create trouble and eventually help do him in. Nonetheless, the journey is intriguing and Levinson brings it out in great detail.

While it may be tragic to see so many artists who had their personal demons, their lives are extremely colorful. Books about churchgoers who stay home at night are not going to stay open very long.

Despite all the glitz – his womanizing (“Do you have to get laid every night?” roommate and pianist Jess Stacy once asked), his high-profile marriages (Grable was the love of his life, as its turns out), his public displays (he once punched out actor George Raft at the Palladium) and his celebrity status that he so craved – James was an extraordinary player and musician who could play “modern” when he wanted to.

The book is also a good glimpse at the Big Band era and how it rose and fell. James was part of it all, in concert halls, on radio programs, in Las Vegas and later in the new medium of television. Benny Goodman, Mel Torme, Helen Forest, Buddy Rich, Sinatra and many more talents were all part of the James story at one time or another.

And it isn’t the story of just a troubled man, but a person who stood up for blacks, even though he was raised in the south in an era when it was synonymous with racism. (Where Artie Shaw once had to convince Billie Holiday to use the service elevator of the hotel where they were performing because blacks weren’t allowed in the regular elevators, James told his whole band to pack up when told a hotel didn’t have a room for one black band mate. The hotel gave in). It’s about a person who loved music and who was loyal to those in his band. He fought through the bleak times of swing music and survived it all in an industry that has swallowed up lesser men and women.

Levinson did a good job in carrying out his task and the story is compelling. Colorful incidents and anecdotes abound, as one would expect, but the author does a good job of placing it all in historical perspective and painting a good picture of who harry James wanted to be and who he was. It’s a very worthy read and at provides a worthy documentation that musicologists should consider when considering the history of music in America.

James died in 1983 on the 40th anniversary of his marriage to his beloved Betty Grable. In music, he knew all the changes. In life, there may have been a few he wished he could have made but never really did. Those of the world War II generation can still say, “You Made Me Love You,” Harry.”

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Harry James - Jazz Conoisseur

June 6, 2019, 9:08 am

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Doris Day in the JazzJournal

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Doris Day: a great entertainer, not a symbol of repression

Joan Merrill remembers a singer and actress whose work will chime with many jazz fans

By Jazz Journal-June 1, 2019

She never won an Oscar, never won a Grammy. But, except for perhaps Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, no other American entertainer left such an impressive legacy as Doris Day.

She did 39 movies, 600 recordings, which include 18 albums, and five seasons of the sitcom The Doris Day Show, plus television specials. According to Ultimate Movie Rankings, nearly 60% of Day’s movies topped $100 million in domestic gross box office sales. In the 1960s she was the No. 1 box office female star for four years, a record matched only by Shirley Temple. Two of Day’s songs won Oscars: Secret Love from Calamity Jane(1953) and Que Será, Será from The Man Who Knew Too Much(1956).

Day was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004, five Golden Globe awards – including the Cecil B. DeMille Award – as well as the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the LA Critics’ Career Achievement Award. She might have been honoured by the Kennedy Center or received an
honorary Oscar if she had wanted them, but she shunned the spotlight and never sought fame.

Her fans, however, thought differently. They thought she deserved these honours and were disappointed she didn’t get them. Will Friedwald, author of A Popular Guide To The Great Jazz And Pop Singers(Pantheon, 2010), said of Day’s singing: “At her very best, she’s worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald, yet she’s never gotten a fraction of their respect”. And renowned film critic Molly Haskell said, “I think Doris Day is the most underrated, underappreciated actress that has ever come out of Hollywood”.

But now, in death, Day is still underappreciated. Obituaries mention how, due to the roles she sometimes played – a virtuous woman resisting the advances of playboys – she symbolized the sexual repression of the 1950s. As if she chose those roles, as if she declared that image for herself. It was a great entertainer who died, not a symbol.

‘Day was perfectly aware that the material given her was often bad, but she had no control over the matter’
Critics also seem to blame her for the inferiority of some of her songs and movies, as if she had chosen them. Day was perfectly aware that the material given her was often bad, but she had no control over the matter. She gave each project her best effort and should be lauded for that.

Let’s take a closer look at her legacy. Doris Day had parallel careers as movie star and recording artist. Her film career lasted from 1948 to 1968 and her recording contract with Columbia Records from 1947 to 1967. From 1968 to 1973, she appeared in a TV sitcom, The Doris Day Show, which was among the Top 20 in the Nielsen ratings for two straight years. (Her husband and manager Marty Melcher, who died suddenly in 1968, had signed a contract for this show without her knowledge.) And she excelled in each field: recording, movies, and television.

When CBS offered to renew the sitcom, Day declined and moved to Northern California in 1973, spending the rest of her life concentrating on her animal welfare foundation, The Doris Day Animal Foundation. In her animal activism, Day also helped launch World Spay Day, opened a pet-friendly hotel and encouraged people to adopt pets from shelters.

When Day died on 13 May 2019, she hadn’t made a record or a film for almost 50 years. Does her work have lasting value? What exactly is her legacy?

To read the rest of this article, use this link:
https://jazzjournal.co.uk/2019/06/01/the-legacy-of-doris-day/

↧

Tiny Capers / CLIFFORD BROWN jazz immortal FEATURING ZOOT SIMS

June 7, 2019, 12:38 pm

≫ Next: John Lewis Quintet featuring Bill Perkins - Easy Living

≪ Previous: Doris Day in the JazzJournal

Clifford Brown (tp)
Zoot Sims (ts)
Bob Gordon (bs)
Stu Williamson (vtb)
Russ Freeman (p)
Joe Mondragon (b)
Carson Smith (b)
Shelly Manne (ds)

Recorded at Capitol Recording Studios, Los Angeles, California on July 12 & August 8, 1954

↧

John Lewis Quintet featuring Bill Perkins - Easy Living

June 7, 2019, 3:32 pm

≫ Next: Celebrating the 80th Birthday of Trombonist Bill Watrous with Steven D. Harris

≪ Previous: Tiny Capers / CLIFFORD BROWN jazz immortal FEATURING ZOOT SIMS

↧

Celebrating the 80th Birthday of Trombonist Bill Watrous with Steven D. Harris

June 8, 2019, 7:00 am

≫ Next: The Jeff Hamilton Trio

≪ Previous: John Lewis Quintet featuring Bill Perkins - Easy Living

The following feature resulted from Steven Harris happening upon a reference on Kentonia [an Internet chat group devoted to the music of Stan Kenton] that trombonist Bill Watrous would have turned 80 on June 8th [2019; Bill died on July 2, 2018].

Steven sent along the following 1986 interview with Bill and, at his request, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles is bringing it up on these pages on June 8th in celebration of the 80th anniversary of Bill’s birth.

As to a Kenton - Watrous combination, given the former’s affinity for the sound of the trombone, one could only wonder what might have been had Bill taken his many talents on the instrument onto the Kenton Band.

Steven D. Harris is the author of The Kenton Kronicles: A Biography of Modern America’s Man of Music, Stan Kenton. New and Used Hardcover and Paperback version are still available via online sellers such as Amazon, AbeBooks or at www.stan-kenton.com.

Just a word in passing, you may come across some technical glitches involving spacing, et al and we ask you to accommodate them as they are the result of formatting using two, different platforms.

Jazz–cussion from the Vaults:

Bill Watrous chats with Steven D. Harris

Originally published in the Nov. 2014 issue of JazzElite.

Bill Watrous, a staggering trombone master still at 75, has been aligned with the jazz scene since the late 1950s––and remains a strong asset to the art, now as much in an instructional capacity as for his phenomenal playing chops. (Yes, too, he sings on the side.) His tone is one of such control and beauty that, for some long-time listeners, it surpasses his technical playing edge. Even in musical gimmickry, the Watrous surrealisms astound. There’s one past bit in which Bill successfully “talks” through his horn, speaking the Pledge of Allegiance––a fete that would have surely brought smiles to a baffled Ed Sullivan.

Bill––who is often vested and blue-jeaned in the manner that was his dress style 50 years back––has conducted master jazz classes since 2000, when he became an adjunct prof.at USC's Thornton School of Music. (Sometimes, by request, he’ll take the workshops out of town.) In 2011, Houston State U. in Huntsville, Texas launched a large–scale event in his namesake: the annual Bill Watrous Jazz Festival functions as a competition for music students at both high school and college level.

Musically, Bill's inspiration and aspiration, from the start of his teens, was jazz.

He'd already seen Bird and Clifford Brown in action, which he calls "a heck of a time to absorb greatness, while at a formative age." In high school, he was part of the marching band and from his sophomore year, the swing band. His early claim of an all–time favorite trombonist was Vic Dickenson, though he currently cites Carl Fontana. (Still elsewhere, he's rated Urbie Green at the top of the trombone totem poll, making it appear that a singular choice "favorite" is just too hard). Aside from some pointers in 1962 by composer–pianist Herbie Nichols (the obscure but terrific talent who hipped Bill to jazz "turnarounds"), he had no formal lessons. During his long stint in the service––a period he refers to as "a total musical waste"––Bill availed himself for any and every off duty jazz jam or rehearsal that he could blow on.

He arrived in SoCal from the East in 1958, sharing a single room with a group of jazz wannabees. They formed a quintet called 4+1, joined the union and secured a job four nights a week, playing––as Bill relays––"every bebop tune known to mankind." After a Navy transfer to New York in 1959, Bill found himself among name musicians, playing Dixieland dates in Greenwich Village and his home state of Connecticut. Back in civilian life, he obtained studio work on the Merv Griffin Show (1965–68) and as a CBS staff player ('67–69). The period marked his first solo efforts on record, when Bill appeared on bandleader Johnny Richards' final album in 1966: Aqua Se Habla Espanol.

The next year, under hisfull birth name of William Russell Watrous, his debut disc hit the market––though any aspect of jazz was coincidental. In a sort of subliminal nod to Tommy Dorsey, Bill put the famously smooth T.D. legato and breath–defying technique to good use, backed by the Richard Burke Strings. The next Watrous outing called In Love Again (which was no less Muzak–laden) showed off his best commercial balladry.

Bill’s third album (1969) had a slightly different slant: a synthesis of jazz, pop and vocal backings. A curio selling point was derived from the elongated title. The name smacks like a psychedelic time warp, so typically late ‘60s: Love Themes for the Underground, the Establishment and Other Subcultures Not Yet Known (with support from the Walter Raim Concept).

In 1971, Bill partook in the new jazz–rock–pop exhilaration, joining the group Ten Wheel Drive, but later questioned the intent. "We tried to take the music everywhere but where it belonged," he said, adding that it was "always too loud, over–amplified or overblown." He'd hoped, without results, that it would progress into a more sophisticated ensemble, one along the lines of Chicago. (Bill would later play back–up for that group on their 1995 disc Night & Day.)

Early 1972 found Watrous rehearsing his first ensemble, an offshoot of 10WD, which also constituted a jazz–rock mix. He named it Eclipse, comparing it to a "scaled down version of the Thad & Mel approach, with touches of Don Ellis thrown in." Its members were mostly lab band grads from North Texas State. However, the sextet's social commentary proved too prevalent for them to survive past that initial season.

At this same juncture, Bill was forging ahead with a larger ambition. He would organize the remnants of two powerhouse but defunct New York big bands: those of Bill Berry and Al Cohn. (Bill had been meditating on such a leadership role since 1969.) The 16–man unit, with Bill as front man, made its club debut in April, 1972. By the next year, it was reshaped, fine–tuned and retitled. Columbia Records head John Hammond was keenly impressed, signing them to a record deal. The fact that it was a major label did little to propel their colossal jazz find. Scant marketing was provided them and the band never did receive the proper packaging (or engagements for that matter) it so deserved.

The irony: while their second big band release was nominated for a Grammy (The Tiger of San Pedro, 1975), Columbia would drop Bill just after the fact. To compound things, the band's first and only road tour in 1976 proved so disastrous that they decided to 180–it, turning the bus around and, with bruised spirits, headed home. It would be another 18 years before the public would hear any further samplings of the Watrous big band on disc (1993)––and only one more in the years since, with Space Available (1996).

THE WATROUS DISPOSITION (AND OTHER PASSIONS)

Bill seems not to prescribe to the forced P–Correctness pill, leading to certain detractors. I have found some of his original axioms refreshing. He’ll often interject them, in witty dialogues, in the space of a tune. (Imagine a hybrid of Clemens with thinkers Sahl and Carlin). Some of his standard song title puns are Damn That Dream, I Can’t Believe You’re In–Laws With Me and When Your Liver Has Gone (dedicated to Bill’s late blowing partner, trumpeter Danny Stiles).

Then there’s the cool Watrous temperament at times of unpredictable displacement. One occurred at Alfonse’s (a Toluca Lake jazz club) in 1989, when this writer was present. A few choruses into Teach Me Tonight, in which Bill couraged a vocal refrain, a determined drunk made himself known. The sloshed offender disrupted a few vocal intervals with the kind of unsettling whistles that might stop an artist cold. Bill saved his comeuppance for afterwards. “Tell you what,” he calmlyassailed into the guy, “let’s play ‘horse.’ I’ll cover the front end; you just be yourself.” (Note that a similar account with Gerry Mulligan, who was less calm, happened in 1956––the live moment was actually caught on tape and issued by Pacific Jazz.)

Something scarcely known about Bill is his one equal attachment outside of jazz: a life-long penchant for baseball. He was gifted with a power arm––in fact, enough to attract a major league scout (for the New York Yankees, no less) when he was not yet 20. No alas for jazz, his batting practice was edged out (if only barely) for the musical woodshed––the trombone had won out.

He had never stopped contemplating the “what ifs” when, at the late age of 45, Bill was offered a legitimate chance in the Minor Leagues––this time with the Midland Cubs of Texas. The manager was stupefied at the music man's still-powerful slugging stance and, without hesitation, was ready to sign him on as a designated hitter. The meager pay and bus travel to places “nowhere” (as Bill described it) helped him arrive at a decision, after careful contemplation. Again, Bill would leave his swinging for the jazz field.

The Bill Watrous Story continues with his own career reflections with the writer, progressing up to 1986 for our first taped encounter.

Jazz Capsule: In Conversation with Bill Watrous

The interview to follow was taped June 29, 1986 when Bill was this writer’s in–studio guest for 90 minutes on Artistry in Jazz, originating from radio station KPCC–FM on the campus of Pasadena City College (CA). A week prior, the writer had heard Bill’s quartet during a two–night stand at Donte’s jazz club in North Hollywood (Bill graciously allowed my cassette–taping), which is how our on–air meet was arranged. The following transcribed Q&A appears in print for the first time ever in JazElite (November, 2014 issue).

Bill, let's begin with my introduction to your music around 1976–77, a few years after your first big band release in ’74: a product you prescribed under the tag Manhattan Wildlife Refuge. That band came on the heels of another one through [trumpeter] Bill Berry. I sort of owe the fact that I have that band to Bill, because I played in his when it was called the New York band. It's now called the L.A. band...a good bunch with good players and, overall, good charts. Sho [a samba written by Berry around 1970] was probably the best chart we had then.

In order to record this band, we had to grab people to hurry up and do some writing, because we didn't have enough quality [material]...just soloists and a hot rhythm section that could go on for hours. After Bill Berry had moved to California, I managed to salvage some of what was left of my solos and start a big band with that. I had help from [drummer–director] Bobby Rosengarden from the Dick Cavett Show, where I was working [in the TV studio band]. He contributed a few charts with John Charles, a good arranger. Rather sooner than later, I came up with a middle of the road library of stuff that I could play. Later on, we got some charts for the actual album.

About the Manhattan Wildlife Refuge: Just how and why did you pick such a bizarre working title? I was vacationing in Maine at my old fishing camp. Just prior to the formation of the band, I was thinking of a name, which I hadn't given much thought to. I happened to be driving by the moosehorn nature reserve and thought, hey, how 'bout a band with that name? We'll get the rock and roll kids tricked into listening to us! So I came up with one of those names that doesn't denote the fact that it's a big band, you know? It could mean anything. Anytime you can get the attention of some of these people, you have at least gotten them to the door. They'll either like it or not like it. Still, it didn't work.

You were born in what I think was a grand year to be alive in America. We were just coming out of the Depression and not yet into the next war, plus the swing era was at its peak and doing just that: swinging in 1939. I don't remember much that day! I'm told that when I was born, it was during a terrible and vicious electrical rain and thunderstorm. 90 mph winds and the power went out [laughs]. Maybe that's what happened to me.

There is a list of brass stylists that you got your musical nourishment from. But your first influence was really your own dad, Ralph Watrous, who got you started on the same horn he played, when you were six; correct? Yeah, he was a player. He had been with a lot of the vaudeville bands up to that time and some of the not–so–important to the well-known big bands. He even did a couple of engagements with Paul Whiteman. He played with Irving Aaronson's Commanders, Joe Herbert's Broadway Rebels and Florida Shorty and his “Sons of Beaches.” It's true––it was a real band. With lights going on and off every time they hit the bass drum and the palm trees showing.

You seemed fixed for trouble from the start, seeing how your dad had so many horns lying around for you to tamper with. But somehow you never got scolded? [Laughs]...I used to grab 'em and take them out of the cases when I'd get home, starting from first and second grade. I would break into the cases and put them together and experiment. He was really understanding about this, unlike some fathers would be. He'd come home and find an Olds trombone bell with a Bach slide, or a King’s slide in with a Reynolds bell––and then find peanut butter and Bosco all over everything.

Were your parents resistant to your vocation, since musicians then––save for the symphonic “longhairs”––were typically frowned upon…or were your folks more tolerant? Both my folks wanted me to be a doctor; they didn't want me to be in music in all. In fact, my father was really upset when he got word, through my music teacher in grammar school, that there was a possibility I was getting serious about it. He didn't want me to be hurt. Now that I'm getting on in my years in the business and looking back upon things, I know what he was talking about…to try and break into the music business. Even now, with all the [jazz] polls and albums behind me...You still always have to prove something to the public, to the club owners. Painful is what it is.

Your one “live” album from ’82 was actually attempted in England, taped at what loosely might be called a jazz joint, the Pizza Express. How did that work out for you? That was my first time in Europe. I basically took advantage of the situation and stretched out. It was the longest performance that I have ever committed to albums of any kind. Mole Jazz [the record firm] didn't seem to worry about that too much. They just put out all of the performances [highlights] just as they are. This is one of a series of clubs run by a fellow in London. There's this one and [also] Pizza in the Park. It's a little basement club––you walk down stairs and there's no air in the place, whatsoever. The pizza, well, you can eat it. It's not a New York pizza...but it's alright.

I understand that during your visit there in London, you got to play the same historic pipe organ used for the Royal Albert Hall? What a moment to remember. Yes, I have a distinction of having played that. It's a monster; one of the most physically huge instruments I have ever seen. It turns out that it was being tuned that day and the guy maintaining the organ let me sit down at it. I'm not a great organist by any means, but I can experiment around on it. Boy, that's an exciting instrument.

I've only heard a handful of trombone players that come close to your speed, agility and technical level––Jiggs Whigham and Bill Reichenbach come to mind. Frank Rosolino was very soulful and fine at triple tonguing, but you touch more on playing in layers and circular breathing, which regulates air flow to the horn. Can you cover how this process of using overtones is applied? I mean, you sound like a trombone ventriloquist, manipulating the embouchure to create two or more simultaneous tones. What's the specific name for it...and just how does one accomplish this feat? Very carefully! It's called multiphonics. It goes back to [pianist] Carl Maria von Weber's time, about the time of Beethoven. He wrote multiphonics for a French horn soloist. I believe [it was] the first time it was ever publicly written down, for someone to do that. It's a technique of playing one note and "singing" another one at the same time. Then you get an overtone thrown in, hence, the completion of the triad. If you "move" the voice you're singing carefully, you might get four notes. Albert Mangelsdorff [the avant–garde trombonist from Frankfurt] is probably the most prominent multiphonics technician. That's basically all he does. He gives concerts just by himself.

To add to the list of 'bone virtuosos not yet mentioned, there was a wonderful session you did with Carl Fontana in 1984. Though it was made only two years ago, the album doesn't seem to be available anywhere. Is there a reason for that? Let's put it this way [with a hint of contempt]: It's not available at all. The company that produced this album is no longer in existence. However, it was a date with Carl and myself. We each did a ballad and four other [up tempo] tunes.

One story you wished to share involves Birdland, a New York jazz spot that can only be described as––though the word is overused––legendary. I know it was of great regret to a slew of players when the club was forced to shutter its doors in 1965, after 16 years. Yeah, but then it opened up under the name of Lloyd Price's Turntable and become a disco joint. I don't know why the city of New York doesn't go and renovate that entire surrounding area and return Birdland––we LOVED that club. I'm proud and honored to have played there twice. The second time I was much wiser...I was armed with at least one $5 bill a week for this little guy.

The "guy" you refer to leads us to the anecdote we’ve been saving, all about a not–so–nice emcee: A midget named Pee Wee Marquette, who I was surprised to find guesting on the CBS "David Letterman Show" a few months ago. For folks that don't know, he was a little three–foot tall dude. I can't tell you what it was that Lester Young called him on the air, so you'll just have to imagine. [Author's note: Pres referred to Marquette as "a half a m–f*#!”] Pee Wee was the doorman, the maître d' and more or less the stage manager at Birdland, “the Jazz Corner of the World." He had this funny, tiny little voice that used to peel out over the microphone. [Bill gives a sample of Pee Wee's squeaky vocal tones.] He had a habit of extorting money from the various people that worked there. You know, $5 a week would be good for him.

So true! When trombonist Jimmy Knepper was new to the Kenton band in ’59, Pee Wee––so I hear––conned him out of just that much in a single night. If you figure a five or six–piece group, that's an extra 30 bucks a week. In 1961, that was nice bucks. One of the nights we were there, he saw me standing backstage, smoking. I was into Dunhill's tobacco with this great big Sherlock Holmes–type pipe. [Bill manifests into Pee Wee again, with a voice that is fittingly shrill and irritating.] He says: "Hey, baby, you oughtn't to be lightin' that pipe with that big 'ol wooden match. What y'all need is a Beattie jet lighter!" Say what? "Yeah, a Beattie jet lighter––I got one right here." He rolls his sleeve up and he’s got watches, bracelets and all kinds of stuff. He finally comes up with this jet lighter.

So what happened? He pushes the button down and, sure enough, it looks like a miniature blowtorch––I was impressed. "Wow, how much for that?" [Bill continues his impression of Pee Wee]: "Tell 'ya what: Since yo' a friend o'mine, I'll give it to you for $15." I didn't have that; I had $7.50––and I needed subway fare home to Brooklyn. So he says, "Tell 'ya what, baby; I'll let you have it for $7." I gave him the money, then the gig is over. I leave Birdland and I'm strolling up 7th Avenue, grooving. You know how you groove after the gig? I was in heaven...[until] I looked in the Optima cigar store. There on the display counter was a Beattie jet lighter for $4.50! It ruined my whole evening.

Ouch. Does the encounter end there? Well, the next time I see him..."Aw, there you are, you little nerd. I know what you did, Pee Wee. YOU ARE A CHEAT AND A LIAR! You charged me $7 for a lighter I could have got up the street for $4.50." He looks at me and says: "Hey, baby, y'all let the buyer beware!" [Author's note: The Beattie jet lighter, which then cost as high as $22.50 for sterling platings––an extravagant sum in 1961––was discontinued the same year of Bill's upsetting purchase from Pee Wee.]

Bill, you've collaborated with arranger Pat Williams, whom you've known since 1960, on a number of projects––but none as grandiose as your latest effort, soon to be released: an album called Someplace Else. Tell us about this recording made last May [1985], which has you backed by a count of 89 musicians. Pat and I had been discussing this project for about a year before we finally decided to do it––some originals that Pat would write, plus some classical things. He wanted to put me "live" [as in "real time"] in front of a large orchestra at 20th Century–Fox studios. I did a suite of music by Debussy and an aria that Maria Callas used to sing...and also a suite comprising Yesterdays and [I'm] Getting Sentimental Over You, which are woven together, this big fabric with the orchestra. It was made for compact disc, but we'll have records and tapes, too.

[Author's update: Bill first recorded with Pat in 1968 (Verve's "Shades of Today") and they remained friends

for some 50 years. Both men were born weeks apart in 1939 and died just weeks apart in July, 2018, aged 79.]

Another recent album you're on is the film soundtrack of City Heat (1984), scored and conducted by a guy we hope to have on this radio show in the future, Lennie Niehaus. The highlight, for me, has you blowing back–up for Joe Williams, who sings the main theme. Have you previewed the film yet? Yes; I actually enjoyed it. First of all, I'm a Clint Eastwood fan anyway and the two of them [he and co–star Burt Reynolds] are hilarious.

Around 1957, before joining the Navy band, you played some dates with a major trumpet king named Roy Eldridge. That's impressive, considering you were just 17 when "Little Jazz" hired you. Yeah, it was just before I went in the service. Roy came to New London, Connecticut; I lived in Niantic [nearby]. He wanted a "hot" trombone player and it just so happens I was the hottest trombone player in Niantic, or even New London. It was a hell of an honor, really. He was just [so] supportive and easy going and, gosh, what a player.

When did you get to audition for the magnificent Kai Winding, who became such a mentor to you? That was four years later, after I got out of the service [1961]. A lot of the stuff was really hard; it was written for just four trombones and a rhythm section. I couldn't read very well. I didn't know one phrase from another, as far as reading. I could play any kind of stuff [as an improviser], but I couldn't really "get in" and read the music. It's no problem now, since that's all been taken care of. But at that time, hey, what did I have to do for four years in the Navy except hang around [or] sit in and blow at clubs? You don't need music there.

I'd like our listeners to hear what I first heard in 1983, when you did a radio interview with Leonard Feather. The track is called This is Love from the Sammy Nestico release (and label) Dark Orchid. Your added overdubbed effects are a bit novel here––but on an artistic level, I must say it really sounds inventive. Tell us about it. The way this particular cut came about was I played the melody through the tune and then Victor Feldman played a piano solo. A lot of this was tracked over. Sam had the bright idea that he would write the piano solo out for me to double on the trombone, which is what I did. I played what Victor played on the fender Rhodes and it was my idea to add a whistling track. I got it on one take. So it's piano, trombone and whistling which, unfortunately, I can't do in public! For those of you who don't know, Sam was probably––in addition to being superbly talented as a writer––one of the best trombone players of the day. Tommy Dorsey used to say that Sam Nestico, when he was in the Air Force [band], was his favorite trombone player. But [instead] he quit it to write.

I should also let fans know that you do more than play the trombone, sing or do bits as the jazz whistler. You've managed to pull off some more pretty accurate impersonations. Besides Pee Wee and jazz producer John Hammond, there’s the great Dane, Mr. Winding, who we sadly lost in 1982. What do you think Kai would say if he could be with us now in the studio? [Watrous dives straight into his next impression]: "What are ya' talkin' about, man? You tryin' to say that trombone players are weird?" You have to know the man.

Since I know Kai's voice from his historical narrative on the LP Trombone Panorama (1957), I can say that you really have his vocal mannerisms down. Wasn't he living in the Bahamas when he passed away? No, he was living in Spain. He went to the Bahamas for treatments for the [brain] tumor that he had. I miss him [something] awful. I know that the people who knew him feel the same––he is irreplaceable, you could really say. The folks that were really close to Kai––as he preferred to be called [see author's note below]––knew what a value he was on the trombone scene––and the music scene in general. So is J.J. [Johnson]; God bless him. He's still around for us to listen to, although he isn't playing much anymore. But he certainly was [another] tremendous contributor.

[Author’s note: The correct pronunciation "Ky" is still often mispronounced "Kay." Much of the confusion stemmed from the initials J&K, used for

the two–trombone albums made with his mid–1950s collaborator, J.J. Johnson. Prior to that, his one-time boss Stan Kenton (1946-47) would also

refer to him as “Kay.” Kai allowed for the variant of his name for years, but by the latter 1960s, he made the habit of kindly correcting people.]

I grew up on one specific album, made in ’55, that I’m sure you’re aware of: Jay & Kai + 6. And to think, in the mid–60s, you got to make four albums with him. I don't think Kai ever really got the respect he deserved. I remember going out on the road with him and, when there were times we'd go through rehearsals, he would just walk through it. I felt cheated, because I wanted to hear him really play. Then we'd get to a music school [gig] and this guy Kai would haul off and wail like you've never heard! I don't think it's ever been [caught] on records just how wild Kai could play when he wanted to.

Bill, we can't cover your bio properly without mentioning some of your other favorite players who boosted your career and supported you. Ah, I guess the people, when I think back to when I got to New York, who were nicest to me––outside of Kai––were guys like Bob Brookmeyer. He and Clark Terry would always let me sit in and play with them. So would Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. I could always go down to the Half Note [in New York City] and sit in any time after I got through workin' the Copa. I'm standing there in my stupid tuxedo, going up to play the last set with Al and Zoot! I used to LOVE it. I guess Al and Phil Woods go down in my mind as two of the most perfect jazz musicians there are. Clark Terry is another one and this young fellow, Wynton Marsalis. And Freddie Hubbard; I don't see any brass player trying to get along in this world without checking out Freddie. I mean, there's nothing the man can't do. He's the kind of trumpet player that I would like to be on trombone––I'd like to be able to handle a horn that way.

There‘s one recent album of his (from 1983) that you play on, with Allyn Ferguson conducting, that I really enjoy. The track that stands out on “Ride Like the Wind” is Two Moods For Freddie. That cut is very interesting. There were a bunch of similar things that Freddie and I both did on our solos, but I never noticed it before. I have the tape of it, but it's because I don't listen to my own stuff. I really don't.

Let's delve into your many big band experiences, from sit–ins with Basie to recording with Woody and Maynard. And I mustn’t forget the neglected Johnny Richards, a whiz at orchestral jazz drama. Who were some others? I played with Quincy Jones for about a year and half, when Quincy had his big band. We worked the Apollo Theatre up in Harlem. What a program that was––and what a schedule. We were exhausted after two weeks, because we were doing three shows a day. They were scattered from around noon all the way through the wee small hours, showing movies in between. That tells you how long you have to wait around.

Did you appear on the live album of Quincy's from 1963, when he backed Billy Eckstine at Basin Street East? I might have been, yeah. Redd Foxx was the comedian and Frieda Payne was on the bill, too. That was a hot band, then I played on Thad and Mel's [the Jones–Lewis] band later on. Woody, I guess he's my favorite bandleader of all. I played with him after Phil Wilson [who left in 1965]. We played the Riverboat Room and Woody taped us there [for Columbia Records]. Sal Nistico was still on the band, [then] he cut out. I wound up playing with Johnny Richards’ band on the East Coast in the mid-sixties, which is about as close to Stan's band as I could get.

But you never did get to play with the exciting “Artistry” band. People often ask me if I had ever played with Stan Kenton. I currently advise them, "No, but I have played with Ken Stanton," which is not exactly a joke. He was a bandleader in Long Island, New York that I used to play an occasional club date with. I met the real Stan at Carnegie Hall in 1975, as part of the Newport Jazz Festival. [Author's note: Excellent recordings of this date have since surfaced on the internet under Wolfgang’s Vault.] It was a big band bill of my Manhattan Wildlife Refuge, Maynard Ferguson and Stan, who was very complimentary and very gracious upon meeting me. I was impressed with his warmth about the whole thing. He shook my hand, said he enjoyed my playing and added it was going to be great band.

What was your overall impression of the man, Stanley Newcomb? Kenton had a very warm but imposing manner. It seemed like his huge hands could easily cover two keyboards, if they were laid side to side. He had so many bands through the years, more so than even Woody had at that point. My favorite was the one that recorded "Contemporary Concepts" [in 1955]. It was absolutely sensational. That album, to me, is probably one of the ultimate big band albums of all time.

Since relocating to California, you aptly revised your big band under the moniker Refuge West, though lately I've heard nothing of it. I temporarily put it in mothballs [in part, Bill claims, because of issues with the L.A. Local 47 Musicians’ Union]. But I'm gonna start it up again...we're going to start rehearsing again in a few weeks, after about two years [off]. Actually, I've been too busy doing clinics, getting my [last] album done and traveling. Then there's being a daddy. I have a boy almost three years old––and he is demanding. [Author’s note: Bill later wrote and recorded a piece for his only son: A Hot One for Jason appears on his 1991 quartet release Bone–ified.]

You also wrote a piece for your daughter Cheryl, but how about one for your wife, MaryAnn? I have written one for her; it's called La Zorra [by the 1981 Watrous Quartet; like Cheryl, the first version from 1976 was recorded by Bill with the Danny Stiles Five]. It's on another one of those Harry Lim [produced] albums, actually the last in the series we did. The album is dedicated to her. Oddly enough, I owe MaryAnn the fact that the [band] library still exists. Remember in February, all the many days of rain we had? MaryAnn came in from the garage and said, "Hey, honey, do you know you're band library is standing in about a half an inch of water?" I said, "No, but if you'll hum a couple of bars..." Sure enough, I ran out and there was the band library, [soaking] in water. I got it just in time to save it from permanent wreckage. I had music spread out all over the grass and backyard, draped over tables, drying out. And then, geez, a wind came up and blew the drum book [apart]. It was an awful afternoon.

[Author's note: Not all of the charts survived. One was a lovely Gordon Goodwin arrangement of Never Let Me Go (1983). A live performance exists in the writer's collection, as does

another rarely played original by Hank Levy (circa 1976) called Bread & Watrous, also known under the pun-painful titles Bridge Under Troubled Watrous and Still Watrous Run Deep.]

I first saw Refuge West five years after your move to L.A in '76. I was thrilled to hear it, since your big band dates are so infrequent. You played at Plaza Gardens, Disneyland in 1981 and I was present again for your return in '83 at another section of the park. We did some other things in '84. We were at Donte's all during the Olympics, every weekend. That was a nice experience. We tried to record there, but the band that I had, they were not my original guys. There were an awful lot of subs and the tape just sounded gross. When we really got down to mixing it, we got lots of separation...things that just had no business being there. So we scrapped the whole project. That sort of disillusioned me about big bands in general, for the time being.

[Author's note: It was in '81 at Disneyland when Bill announced, rather excitedly, that the band was about to do

a Direct-To-Disc double-album of new material. However, it never did materialize, largely due to lack of funds.]

In the trombone spot, Bill, you may just hold the record for winnings in the Down Beat poll, which had you in the #1 position for six years straight. That [started] during the year my first big band album came out. I think I was third [in votes] this year.

Do you personally feel polls like this are important? Anytime anybody breaks down and sends in a ballot with your name on it, as far as I'm concerned, that's a compliment.

↧

The Jeff Hamilton Trio

June 9, 2019, 10:02 am

≫ Next: Tom Pierson - Last Works

≪ Previous: Celebrating the 80th Birthday of Trombonist Bill Watrous with Steven D. Harris

↧

Tom Pierson - Last Works

June 10, 2019, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Al Cohn and "The Brothers"

≪ Previous: The Jeff Hamilton Trio

The great jazz master Gil Evans called Pierson " the best unknown composer I know ".

The Los Angeles Times wrote " highest praise for Tom Pierson's haunting music ".

The Philadelphia Daily News called Pierson's music " brilliant".

Columnist Matthew Lippman wrote " a performance I shall never forget... an exhaustingly beautiful experience ".

Dr. George Butler of CBS Sony said about Pierson's jazz orchestra," From my vantage point, this is the most exciting, original, and creative big band in the world."

Producer John Snyder called Pierson " world-class ".

Critic Jeff Levenson said he was “the best-kept secret in town ".

Ted Drozdowski in The Boston Phoenix described him as "possibly inimitable".

Richmond Shepard in The Wall Street Transcript referred to Pierson's

"exciting, moving, profound compositions ... the best, most original jazz I've heard in a long time ... he's a brilliant artist... a treat to be remembered and treasured ".

Nihon Keizai Shimbun called Pierson " a genius ".

In explaining his approach to big-band composing, Tom Pierson has been quoted as saying that he is “interested in a more creative form. Traditional form uses choruses — the cyclical repetition of a harmonic pattern — to organize the composition.

I often use a kind of rondo idea, alternating the written themes with open- ended solos. . . .Sometimes ‘style’ starts to limit the feelings you can put into the music. That’s why music that imitates older styles is often so weak emotionally. You have to unlock those stylistic limitations to make room for the complete honesty of your feeling.”

[Excerpted from Jack Bowers All About Jazz review of Planet of Tears 1989, Auteur CD 1229, Japan]

The alternating of “the written theme with open-ended solos …” is certainly on display Tom Pierson Orchestra - Last Works a double CD released by the Japanese label Auteur 3491/3492. Order information can be located via this link.

Interestingly, I received a preview copy of this music while I was deeply into researching the features about the Don Ellis Orchestra which have recently been appearing on these pages and I found the coincidence of music by another very original orchestrator coming into my life at the same time as my postings about the innovative Ellis big band were coming to fruition to be ironically interesting, to say the least. [It’s also coincidentally interesting because Tom later wrote in a message - “For me, the Don Ellis Orchestra was the last truly creative big band”!].

Tom also said in an early email: “I hope my music speaks to you.” Given the expansive state of mind I was in after trying to digest all that the Ellis music had to offer in the way of creativity and innovation, how could Tom’s efforts not reach through to me?

Irony upon irony, Tom’s message also indicated that he was in Los Angeles “from 1978 to 1984;” Don Ellis died in 1978!!

But at this point, the coincidental parallels with Don Ellis end and we move onto an examination of Tom work’s as a composer-arranger in which, stylistically, he is very much his own man, although one about whom the late Gil Evans has written: “Tom Pierson is the best unknown composer I know!”

I took me awhile to remember, but I had “met” Tom some years ago when I purchased my boxed copy of the Smithsonian Institute’s Big Band Renaissance: The Evolution of the Jazz Orchestra which was compiled and edited by Bill Kirchner.

Tom’s orchestra appeared on the second to the last track on the fifth and final disc of this set performing Planet of Tears the title tune of a 1989 CD which was issued as Auteur CD 1229.

This is what Bill wrote about Tom’s music in his annotation as contained in the booklet which accompanies the set:

“Few jazz composer-arrangers have had a background as unusual as that of Tom Pierson (b. 1948). A classical piano prodigy, he soloed with the Houston Symphony while in his early teens, and later studied at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. Pierson went on to conduct Leonard Bernstein's Mass at the Metropolitan Opera and to score films for Robert Altman and Woody Allen, but he left promising careers in conducting and film-scoring in order to write his own music, including that for his own jazz orchestra.

From his classical background Pierson brings a strong sense of form and superior skill as an orchestrator, but his jazz instincts prompt him to give considerable space to the improvising soloist. His writing also incorporates, in highly effective ways, the musical languages of rock and John Coltrane. Planet of Tears admirably displays Pierson's approach. At the core of Planet is a four-bar motif in 9/8 meter; the entire piece develops from this thematic kernel. The mood is reminiscent of early-60s Coltrane, and its intensity is sustained by Scott Robinson (b. 1959). Robinson, heard here on soprano saxophone, performs on all of the saxophones, flutes, and clarinets, as well on trumpet and trombone; he is the most gifted multi-instrumentalist since Ira Sullivan. Drummer Pheeroan akLaff also distinguishes himself, employing both power and subtlety when needed.”

In the 1980s Pierson led an orchestra in Los Angeles and, in the latter half of the decade, in New York. He moved to Japan in 1991 to play and teach, and resides there at this writing.

When coupled with Tom’s earlier explanation of how he approaches his Jazz orchestrations - “I often use a kind of rondo idea, alternating the written themes with open- ended solos” - the following excerpt from Bill Kirchner’s helps form a more complete guide to Tom’s work:

“From his classical background Pierson brings a strong sense of form and superior skill as an orchestrator, but his jazz instincts prompt him to give considerable space to the improvising soloist.”

If you are looking for a contemporary parallel to Tom Pierson’s writing in today’s big band scene, probably the closest one you could find would be with the arrangements of Maria Schneider.

In addition to similarities in form - “alternating the written themes with open- ended solos” - both Maria and Tom emphasize texture and rhythm in their orchestrations.

I explained “texture” and “rhythm” this way in an early posting about Maria, and this annotation also fits what I hear in Tom’s approach to large group arranging:

“When writing about the music of Maria Schneider [Tom Pierson], the “texture” of her music is often stressed as that quality which makes it so unique and so appealing.

But what is a musical definition of “texture” which joins with melody, harmony and rhythm [meter] as a fourth building block used to create a musical composition?

Ironically, of the four basic musical atoms, the most indefinable yet the one we first notice is – “texture.”

“Texture” is the word that is used to refer to the actual sound of the music. This encompasses the instruments with which it is played; its tonal colors; its dynamics; its sparseness or its complexity.

Texture involves anything to do with the sound experience and it is the word that is used to describe the overall impression that a piece of music creates in our emotional imagination.

Often our first and most lasting impression of a composition is usually based on that work’s texture, even though we are not aware of it. Generally, we receive strong musical impressions from the physical sound of any music and these then determine our emotional reaction to the work.

Beyond the texture or sound of her music and the lasting physical and emotional impact it can create, Ms. Schneider’s [Mr. Pierson’s] music is also heavily rhythmic – the most visceral and fundamental of all the musical elements.

Music takes place in time and like many great composers, Ms. Schneider [Mr. Pierson] uses rhythms and the relationships between rhythms to express many moods and musical thoughts.

She [he] uses rhythm to provide a primal, instinctive kind of foundation for the other musical thoughts [themes and motifs] to build upon.

This combination of powerful, repetitive rhythmic phrases and the manner in which she textures the sound of her music over them provides many of Ms. Schneider’s [Mr. Pierson’s] compositions with a magisterial quality.”

This combination of powerful, repetitive rhythmic phrases and the manner in which he textures the sound of his music over them provides Tom Pierson’s compositions with their distinctive qualities because as Aristotle asserts: “We are all different with regard to those things we have in common.”

Maria’s textural and rhythmic emphasis becomes a totally different aural proposition when Tom applies his creativity to these musical elements because as he asserts in the second part of his explanation of how he writes for large ensembles:

“Sometimes ‘style’ starts to limit the feelings you can put into the music. That’s why music that imitates older styles is often so weak emotionally. You have to unlock those stylistic limitations to make room for the complete honesty of your feeling.”

Or, put another way, while the form may be similar to that of Schneider’s, there the similarities end because Pierson’s textual pallette employs different colors and his powerful rhythmic foundation is based on the remarkable rhythmic skills of drummer Pheeroan akLaff, who is rhythmically ably assisted and abetted throughout by bassist Kanoa Mendenhall.

Another attribute that Pheeroan and Kanoa bring to Tom’s music is the ability to hold it all together as five of the thirteen tracks on Last Works are over ten minutes long.

At this point, I wrote to Tom and asked him to consider providing some comments on how he went about composing and arranging each of the tracks that make up Last Works. Here’s his reply [BTW … Tom has a preference for lowercase and I have left his spellings as submitted]:

“I'll be happy to comment about composing last works. Here goes!

!. abandoned - This is a recent piece. Because I compose at the piano (so did Stravinsky!) my thematic material often is difficult (dare I say "unsuitable") for the instruments that end up having to play it! The opening theme of "Abandoned" is in this category. I am grateful for the skill of the players in executing this awkward melody so accurately.

2. chandra lowery's samba - I wrote this for a recording with trombonist Todd Lowery. Chandra Lowery is Todd's wife, and I thought my melody sang well to the words "Chan-dra Low-er-y's Sam-ba". The Todd Lowery version didn't turn out, so I arranged it for my own band. However, I was afraid Todd began looking askance at me. Hence, a new rule: never name a song after another guy's wife.

3. by the martyr's decree - This one is from the early 80s, just after I formed the first incarnation of my big band in LA. I've always written very slowly, so as an experiment I forced myself to write a complete, fully orchestrated work each day for a week. Of those five compositions, two remain in my book - "Fright" and "By The Martyr's Decree". (A third, "Telepathy", became part of my trio repertory. Two were thrown out.)

4. times remembered - This was one of the first pieces I wrote for big band. Believe it or not, I was unfamiliar with the Bill Evans composition with almost the same title. I would never steal something like that, and, after so many years, I'm afraid this title is wedded to my composition.

5. winter's end - Like "Chandra", this was written for someone else who declined to record it. I was producing the organist Charles Earland for CBS. Earland's managers and I had "creative differences". Specifically, I thought Charley sounded best raw, backed by his young touring guys, and the managers wanted a polished, adult-contemporary, studio musician type of sound. I felt Charley was just not comfortable in that situation. So, we parted ways. Actually, CBS never paid me or the recording studio, and the recording we made (It was smoking!) was never released.

6. dark story - This melody seemed like a rock song when it came to me. I was not sure it could be expanded into a big band composition because of that stylistic incongruity. What made it work was the expansion of the pure triads of the melody into the slightly pan-diatonic voicing concept for the interludes and the coda.

7. the pharaoh's serpent - A "pharaoh's serpent" is an actual thing, the burning of a particular chemical compound resulting in a long, serpentine ash. There is also the nuance of drummer Pheeroan's name.

8. elipsis - This is the very first thing I wrote for big band. Though I have polished the orchestration over the years, the composition is essentially what I wrote in 1980. This piece has developed a reputation for its difficulty. We tried to record it for The Hidden Goddess, but it didn't come out.

A composer sitting at his desk "creating" can easily depart from what is practical. "Inspiration" takes over, and the music soon challengers the performers' limits. Beethoven was notorious for challenging the players' limits. If they would complain, Beethoven would say, "What do I care for your stupid violin!" Once I watched a recording session of Johnny Richards, Kenton's arranger. One of the brass players complained about the demands of a particular passage. Richards answered, "Is the note on the horn?"

That said, I have learned over the years to avoid unnecessary difficulties…

By the way, "Elipsis" is a deliberate misspelling. I didn't want the meaning of the real word, just its sound.

9. sultry - A recent work. Shu Enomoto's interpretation of my melody was much more delicate than I had anticipated, and it influenced the performance of the entire band.

10. 45/8 - This is a time signature, like 9/8 or 12/8. I wrote the first version of this piece for my electric sextet in the mid 70s. The climactic vamp ("Blue" Lou Marini's solo) was a complicated series of 2s and 3s, totalling 45 eighth notes for the complete talea [repeated rhythmic pattern]. Besides being impossible to play, it was hard to swing in 45/8!

When planning last works,I wanted to include this composition. However, a complete rewriting was in order. In addition to orchestrating for big band, the composition itself was 60% rewritten. Things which had originally been improvised in a 6 piece electric band had to be composed anew for 16 acoustic players.

I decided that mixing 2s and 3s in the vamps was unnecessary, so I wrote new vamps using only 3s. After the composition was finished, I happened to count the 3s in "Blue" Lou's solo. There were 15, 15x3 equalling the 45 of the original 45/8. Completely an accident!

11. in god's name - This one almost didn't make the cut. Now I'm very glad I included it. Slight revisions in the orchestration from the original late 80s version.

12. two becoming 3 - My titles always come after the composition is finished. This title inadvertently turned out to have musical relevance. The piece begins with duple phrase lengths - 2 bars, 4 bars, 8 bars. It evolves into triple phrase lengths - 3 bars. The climax is in quintic phrases - 5 bars, or 2+3. Two becoming Three!

13. among strangers - from the late 80s. I loved this thematic material but the form needed improvement. My rewriting shortened certain sections, as well as improving the orchestration. I love this one.

Tom concluded the booklet insert notes with the following remarks which I thought would also make a fitting conclusion to this piece:

“In last works I've had the privilege ol hearing my music played by the best musicians in the world. No composer could ask lor a greater gilt

When I formed my big band at the end ot the 70's. I thought the future of jazz lay in improvisation over more extended compositional forms. a way to escape the constant repetition ol choruses. This was just before the jazz establishment turned away from a creative future and pointed everyone’s attention squarely at the past.

The goal of creativity is to connect the past to the future. You can't do without either. You don't necessarily have to be 'far out', but you must be fresh. When I was young, musicians who played 50 year old licks wore straw hats and worked in pizza parlors (This is not a slur on authentic traditional jazz). From the music's beginnings until 1980, jazz was an expanding, creative art form What happened?

Creativity requires a search, and that search does not take place among old recordings. It is a search to connect life experience to the basics of the art form - pitch, rhythm, structure, texture, contrast, dynamics, etc. Copping old licks is like cutting out photos from old magazines and calling it oil painting. It's an avoidance of artistic responsibility. By the way. how do you like my new poem? It starts “'I had a dream, that one day..." Plagiarism in 4 or more words? (Miles reference intended) How much of the "jazz" ol the last 37 years has simply been plagiarism?

Of course it's not about these or any words. It's about sound. The compositions on these CDs span 40 years of my personal "search for beauty", using the words of my friend, the pianist Ben Aronov

I hope these sounds touch something in you.”

↧

Al Cohn and "The Brothers"

June 11, 2019, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Jazz Life: A Journey for Jazz Across America in 1960 [From the Archives]

≪ Previous: Tom Pierson - Last Works

“Cohn had a broad, heavy tone; he played in an uncomplicated style, employing regular phrase lengths and idiomatic bop figures.”

- Leroy Ostransky, The New Grove Encyclopedia of Jazz

“Cohn was the consummate jazz professional His arrangements me foursquare and unpretentious and his saxophone-playing a model of' order and accuracy. He was perhaps never more completely himself than as one of the Four Brothers, the legendary Woody Herman saxophone section. Later in life, though, his soloing took on a philosophical authority, unexciting but deeply satisfying.”

- Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.

“Cohn was a swinging, modern Basie-oriented arranger and a tenor saxophonist of the Lester Young School. … Underrated by the public, his playing was always admired by his contemporaries for its structure, sound and swing.”

- Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler, The Encyclopedia of Jazz.

While working on a more extended piece about tenor saxophonist and composer-arranger Al Cohn, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to celebrate his memory with a brief recapitulation of some of the highlights of his career.

Influenced by the vibratoless, "cool" sound of Lester Young, Cohn was greatly admired for his playing, especially with Woody Herman's band of the late 1940s and in tandem with tenorist Zoot Sims during the 1950s and 1960s. Cohn was also an accomplished arranger of both jazz and commercial music.

Born in 1925, Cohn grew up in Brooklyn listening to musicals by Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. He took piano and clarinet lessons, but had no serious interest in music until his early teens, when he heard Benny Goodman and Lester Young. Cohn had little formal training on the tenor, but he did play it in his high school band. He also arranged for the band by transcribing big-band charts from recordings.

Cohn first worked for Joe Marsala (1943) and then for Georgie Auld's band (1943—46), where he began composing and arranging in earnest. After brief stints with Buddy Rich and Alvino Rey, Cohn replaced Herbie Steward in Woody Herman's Second Herd (1948—49). He became part of the "Four Brothers" sax sound with Sims, Stan Getz, and Serge Chaloff— all of whom had developed personal interpretations of Lester Young's sound. Cohn contributed two standards to the Herman book, "The Goof and I" and "Music To Dance To"

Limited to brief solo parts, Cohn left Herman's group to work for Charlie Ventura and Artie Shaw. During the early 1950s, he recorded as a leader (The Progressive Al Cohn, Savoy) and began a long career as an arranger for television, working for Sid Caesar, Ernie Kovacs, and The Hit Parade and other shows.

In 1957 Cohn and Sims fronted a respected band that was known through its performances at the Half Note in New York. The Cohn-Sims band, with personnel changes, remained intact until 1969. Their music remained cool, well ordered, and lyrical. During the early 1970s, Cohn was active in Hollywood studios as an arranger and played the sax solos in the film Lenny, about the life of comedian Lenny Bruce.

He also returned to collaborations with Sims (Body and Soul, Muse). In 1976 Cohn's jazz reputation was revived by a series of albums for Don Schlitten's Xanadu label (Play It Now, Al Cohn's America, True Blue, and others). He later appeared in small groups with his son Joe, a guitarist (Overtones, Concord Jazz).

Cohn died of cancer in 1988 at the age of sixty-two.

When the celebrated tenor saxophonist Stan Getz was asked who his favorite tenor saxophonist was, he would often reply: “My sound; Zoot Sims’ swing; Al Cohn’s ideas.”

The meaning of Stan’s quotation speaks for itself, but perhaps, it also implies what I’ve always thought about Al’s playing and that is he played his solos like a composer which was his fundamental strength.

As to the title of this piece, Al had Many “brothers” including Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Jimmy Giuffre, Allen Eager, Bob Cooper, Bill Holman, Dave Pell, and a host of other tenor saxophonists who played in the manner of Lester Young’s “cool style,” but two of my favorites from Prez’s tenor sax school are Bill Perkins and Richie Kamuca.

Fortunately for me and for lots of other Jazz fans, the “complete sessions” that Al, Bill and Richie recorded for RCA along with some previously unreleased tracks from June 24th and June 25th, 1955 sessions have been gathered onto a CD entitled The Brothers: Cohn, Perkins and Kamuca [RCA BMG 74321477922].

The following video tribute features Al, Bill and Richie on Bill Potts’ Hags from the June 25, 1955 date along with Jimmy Raney on guitar, Hank Jones on piano, John Beal on bass and Chuck Flores on drums.

↧

Jazz Life: A Journey for Jazz Across America in 1960 [From the Archives]

June 12, 2019, 7:00 am

≫ Next: George Handy by Jeff Sultanof

≪ Previous: Al Cohn and "The Brothers"

The following story cannot be written today. It can only be told. You couldn’t complete this trek; there’s nothing like it to be seen, anymore.

With this in mind, William Claxton and Joachim E. Berendt did the Jazz World a vital service when they left us with remembrances of their 1960 Jazz Journey as documented through their written annotations and Bill’s superb photographs.

Both new and used copies are still available of Jazz Life: A Journey for Jazz Across America in 1960 and it’s large, folio format would make a wonderful addition to your “Jazz coffee table.” Taschen is the publisher and you can locate more information about the book at www.taschen.com.

Foreword -

William Claxton

“Early in October of 1959 I received a telephone call from Germany. The person introduced himself as Joachim-Ernst Berendt, a musicologist living in Baden-Baden. In very good English, he explained that he was coming to America to do a study of "America's great art — jazz." He went on to say that he needed a photographer to work with him — a photographer who liked and understood jazz. He had seen a great deal of my work published in European magazines and on record covers and thought that I would be the perfect choice to work with him — "because your pictures have soul." He went on to explain that the book would be mainly a collection of my images to augment his writings about jazz. There would be interviews with musicians, descriptions of the various places where one hears jazz, and a look at the origins of jazz as well as the art itself. He made it all sound a bit erudite, but it seemed like a very important project, and I was thrilled by his offer.

The chance to photograph many of my jazz heroes, in addition to the many unknown and yet-to-be-discovered jazz musicians all around America, was too tempting to resist. Yes, I replied, I would very much like to do it, but please give me more details. He said he would follow up our conversation with a letter. Before hanging up, he mentioned that he would like to meet me in New York City in April and spend two weeks covering the jazz scene there. After renting a car we would then tour the entire United States exploring the world of jazz, its roots, its creators and the environments in which they thrived. We would spend some time in New Orleans, Memphis, Chicago, Hollywood and a dozen other more offbeat places. And, oh yes, our work would be published as a hardcover book by the German publisher Burda Verlag in the spring of 1961.

What young photographer wouldn't be astonished by such an opportunity? I turned to my wife, Peggy Moffitt, and excitedly told her of the offer. Taking the role of the more practical person, she asked what I would be paid. Oh, my god, I'd forgotten to ask. I quickly called back Mr. Berendt, or I should say Dr. Berendt, and asked the question. He said that he was prepared to pay me $7,000 plus all expenses for working and traveling the four or five months needed to complete the task. It sounded like seven million dollars to me at the time. I hung up the telephone and told Peggy delightedly. She smiled and sadly said, "What about me?" You see, we had only been married a few months. So, a dark cloud appeared over my head with a lot of lightning flashes in the center of the storm. I was excited but depressed at the thought of leaving my bride for so long. Once again I called Berendt and told him of my marital status. "We are still young marrieds," I pleaded, and asked what the possibilities were of taking Peggy with us. He was sorry, he said, but he could not find any more room in his budget to pay for that.

So, I ask you, what is a young (and talented and ambitious) photographer to do when offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity like this? After much conversation and weighing the pros and cons of my accepting this job and leaving Peggy in Los Angeles to possibly work on her modeling career, we agreed that I should accept the offer.

I shall refer to Joachim-Ernst Berendt as "Joe" from now on. Joe and I planned to meet at Idyllwild Airport (it wasn't named JFK yet) in New York on the day he arrived from Frankfurt, Germany. Peggy and her sister drove me to LAX that morning. I was not feeling well but boarded the plane anyway. Before it left the terminal, I became very ill and went into the restroom. The next thing I knew, we were landing not in New York but in San Francisco. The flight attendant explained that they had changed planes and that I was obviously on the wrong flight. I finally took another one from San Francisco into New York. I'd kept Joe waiting for five hours, but the airline had alerted him as to my new arrival time. Joe and his friend, the Hungarian jazz guitarist Attila Zoller, whisked me off in Attila's new Buick into Manhattan. I don't think that I made a very good first impression on Joe. I was pale white and feeling terrible. We checked into the Hotel Alwyn, on West 58th Street and Seventh Avenue. The place was slightly rundown (and wanted cash upfront) and was a notorious hangout for junkies. Joe remarked, "Isn't it a wonderful place? Musicians hang out here. That's good, no?"

The next morning I awoke, still very ill, to a call from Peggy. She said that she would take the next plane out of Los Angeles and would be with me later that night. Just hearing her voice made me feel better. I told Joe that I couldn't work with him on what was to be our first day together. He was very kind and understanding, explaining that he had lots of research to do and contacts to make.

With Peggy at my side, I recovered quickly. We decided that she would stay in New York while I was on the road and work on her modeling career. She had signed with the Plaza Five Agency, and she was excited about working in New York, which was still very much the center of the fashion world. Peggy arranged to stay with another model from the same agency. We thought everything was going to be just fine. More about Peggy's saga later. I introduced Joe to George Avakian, head of the jazz department at Columbia Records; Jack Lewis of RCA Victor; and Ahmet Ertegun and his brother Nesuhi of Atlantic. Joe was very impressed that I knew such important people in the jazz recording world. All of these fellows helped us make contact with the top musicians and arrangers in the New York area. I was curious as to how Joe would be accepted by the super-hip players themselves. It was soon apparent that not only had he done his homework about the music and the musicians, but that he could deal with them in a knowledgeable, sincere and authentic manner. Most of them took to him right away. It helped that he was from another country, which made him even more interesting to them. He could talk endlessly about "America's most important art form."

After several days of Joe taping interviews on his portable Nagra recording machine and my shooting pictures with my Nikon F and Leica M3 cameras (and an old used Rolleiflex camera that Richard Avedon had given me a few years earlier) with a modest assortment of lenses, and an enormous amount of fresh film, we set out in our rented 1959 Chevrolet Impala. You know the model — it had giant tail fins bent over to a flat position and big fish-like tail lights, and somehow the rental agent had managed to leave a cardboard license cover over the official plate that read "See the U. S. A. in Your Chevrolet"— how appropriate! Joe's plan for our jazz odyssey was to start in Manhattan; cover Philadelphia and Washington, D. C.; drive down the Eastern seaboard states and over to New Orleans and Biloxi; go up the run up to Boston's Berklee School of Music; and end up at the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, Rhode Island.

Upon leaving Manhattan, we crossed the George Washington Bridge then headed for Newark, New Jersey, to meet with Professor Bradford and the choir he directed at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. We spent Sunday afternoon and most of the evening listening to, recording and photographing that wonderful, swinging group. This was the first of many church choirs we visited while grooving on the soul sounds and discovering the origins of much of the jazz we were exploring.

In Philadelphia we met Joe Williams backstage at the Paramount Theatre and had a wonderful interview and photo session with this affable and unique performer. We photographed the trumpeter Lee Morgan with his buddy, drummer Lex Humphries, in front of the city hall where the Liberty Bell was kept. I kept pointing out to my German cohort how old the various buildings and monuments were; most of them dated from the 1700s. This did not impress him. In Germany, he said, "we have so many buildings built before the year 900." He reminded me constantly of how young America was by comparison.

From the very beginning of the trip, I managed to do most of the driving. I was a good driver and enjoyed it, but I wasn't sure about Joe's driving abilities. Finally he took the wheel just outside of Philadelphia as we headed towards Washington, D. C. "Joe!" I shouted. "You're going way too fast. There's a speed limit here. And each state has its own laws. So please be careful!""Ja, ja," he replied, "but the roads are so good here and this car is really fast." He did finally slow down, but he enjoyed giving me mini-lectures on all kinds of subjects. Joe was very knowledgeable and lectured at various universities in Germany. But he suddenly developed a peculiar habit of punctuating his sentences with either the gas pedal or the brake pedal and then swerving all over the road. Oh, God, I thought, how am I going to put up with this for the next 15,000 miles?

We had a nice photo opportunity and interview moment with Buck Hill, a jazz postman in Washington, D. C. Buck would take time out from delivering the mail to play his alto saxophone a cappella for the kids in his neighborhood. Some of the children would dance, some would sing and some jumped rope. It was a delightful and rather bizarre experience. I photographed guitarist Charlie Byrd seated under a shady tree next to the Potomac River across from the Jefferson Memorial.

Back on the road again, and Joe was at the wheel. I decided to give him a second chance at piloting the big Chevy Impala down the highway. We went through North Carolina at a fairly safe speed. But when we crossed the state line into South Carolina, Joe started going right through stoplights, barely missing other cars and cursing the other drivers. Finally I shouted out to him that he was driving through the red signals and stopping at the green ones. No, he shouted back, he was correct, because the red was on the top of the signal and the green was on the bottom. "No, Joe, it was like that in North Carolina but in South Carolina it was reversed." Then it dawned on me. "Joe, you are color blind, and what's more, you are red-green colorblind." He slowed the car down and looked over at me and said, "That's right, how did you know?" From that moment on, I drove the car for most of the journey.

The food at the restaurants on the main highways was largely pretty bad. That did not seem to bother Joe. He did, however, have a sweet tooth, as did I, so we would stop at ice-cream parlors almost every afternoon. Three o'clock was usually ice cream time. Joe's other vice was that he wanted to meet young "schwarze girls" (black girls) with the idea of dating them. He considered them so beautiful and exotic, and many are, but I warned him that this was not a good idea. The civil rights movement had not yet begun, and one had to be very careful about such relationships. Being a visiting European was not novel enough to escape a possible bad scene and put a quick end to our relatively innocent jazz-seeking trip.

We would try to entertain ourselves with the car radio, but there was no such thing as a jazz radio station once you left New York, only hillbilly and church music. At almost every little village, we would check to see if there was any local music being performed, but rarely did we find anything good except in the choirs of local churches, which seemed to be performing or practicing all day. Near Savannah, Georgia, we started to search for St. Simons Island in the Sea Islands near Brunswick. Joe had heard or read about a group of Negroes who spoke and sang in an African language dating back to the 1700s, and lived on the island. It was very difficult to find. Most of the residents were friendly at first, but then would hardly speak to us when they heard what we were seeking. The black people along the road were usually frightened by us and wouldn't speak at all. Incidentally, these are the same Sea Islands that George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward researched for their Porgy and Bess in the early 1930s. The next day was Sunday, and we found our little village of islanders just as they were coming from church. Joe was smart and brought along a couple of bottles of whisky. After the introductions and a nice visit, the islanders performed for us. They sang mostly jubilees, shouts and work songs mixed with a few religious songs. It was sheer joy for them and for us. The music wasn't jazz, but we could certainly sense the roots of jazz.

Crossing Florida, Joe and I were fascinated at having to dodge the alligators that occasionally crawled across the highway. We arrived in Biloxi and met the leading jazz musicians at Carmen Massey's music school. It was very funny to hear these young musicians speaking like New York hipsters but with a deep Southern accent.

Visiting New Orleans was like being in Dixieland Jazz heaven, if such a place existed. Lots of wonderful food and music everywhere. Striptease clubs had replaced many of the famous old jazz joints, but they had jazz musicians in the pit bands. We owed much of the success of our New Orleans visit to the young jazz musicologist, Richard Allen, who, when he wasn't teaching jazz history at Tulane University, would take Joe and me around "Orlans" and introduce us to just about every celebrity in the New Orleans jazz scene. We met almost every member of the three important marching bands: the Tuxedo Brass Band, the Eureka Brass Band and the George Williams Brass Band. We photographed two funerals and one Creole club celebration.

When a member of a band or lodge dies, his fellow band members and friends accompany the coffin from the funeral home or church to the cemetery while the band plays a dirge (a slow and solemn piece of music). After the burial ceremonies, the bands break into a joyful tune, and everyone dances and sings along with the marching bands as they head through the French Quarter to a clubhouse, where a party ensues. The young tough guys of the city, who can't play instruments, add to the gala march by dancing and swinging colorful parasols and umbrellas. They are known as the "Second Liners."

At the suggestion of Dr. Harry Oster, the folk-music specialist from Louisiana State University, we took a side trip to the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. This prison was famous because it was the largest in the United States — home for over three thousand prisoners, including many blues players, dating back to the great Leadbelly in the 1930s. Dr. Oster promised that we would find many excellent musicians there. The morning we arrived at the prison gates, the guard was stern but obliging and had us ushered through to the warden's office. The warden listened as Joe explained that we wanted to photograph and record some of the jailed musicians. He took a puff on his cigar and asked which "side" we wanted to visit: "The nigger side or the white side?" Joe quickly replied, " Oh, the Negro side. Aren't there more musicians there?" The warden gave us an icy look and said, "Okay, but I can't give you a guard escort; we're short of men. You are on your own." I got a lump in my throat, but I kept quiet.

We took a long walk through high barbed-wire fences until we came to the last gate. Once inside the gate, Dr. Oster asked to see a blues singer named Hoagman Maxey. The group of black prisoners parted silently and let us through to meet Hoagman. He greeted us warmly and started to introduce us to several of the musicians. Once the music started, everyone became friendly and we photographed and recorded several of them. My fear disappeared and we actually enjoyed ourselves, as did the prisoners. After leaving the prison, I got a delayed reaction to being surrounded by a thousand or so prisoners with no guard. It was a bit unnerving. The music and stories that we heard were both depressing and inspiring, but above all authentic. All in all, we left New Orleans with a wonderful feeling. We had heard such good ol' happy jazz, dined on delicious food and met genuinely warm and friendly people.

Before leaving New York to start on our journey of jazz, pianist-singer Mose Allison had suggested that since we were planning to visit Mississippi, we should look up his parents, who lived in a town there called Tippo. We studied our road map and found Tippo, which comprised two dirt crossroads in the middle of cotton fields deep in the Delta country. On the four corners of the crossroads were the Allison Mercantile Store, the Allison Gas Station, the U. S. Post Office (Mrs. Mose Allison was Postmistress), and the local schoolhouse where Mrs. Allison was principal.

Mr. and Mrs. Allison greeted us cordially at their large, unpretentious farmhouse, which was surrounded by screened-in porches. It was very hot weather, and the air conditioners were going full blast but were hardly effective.

We were invited to stay for lunch, their big meal of the day. The menu consisted of fried chicken, ham steak with red-eye gravy, hominy grits, biscuits, and collard greens, followed by strawberry shortcake. During lunch Mrs. Allison spoke of their annual summer trips to Europe; they had just come back from Germany. She excused herself and went to hunt for snapshots to show her German guest. During that time, the black maid who had served the lunch started to collect the dishes and clear the table. As she walked past Mr. Allison, he turned and patted her on her rear. She let out a little giggle and danced out towards the kitchen. Mr. Allison said affectionately, "We love our niggers." We found this attitude prevalent throughout the South during our trip in 1960.

We drove on up the road along the Mississippi River toward Memphis, the home of W. C. Handy, the first great "composer" of jazz music. There was no traditional jazz being played there that we could find. Everything was hard bop. It was nothing like New Orleans. We visited the Handy monument and photographed Gene "Bow Legs" Miller and his combo performing while standing right next to the monument. And we lucked out and came across the Memphis Jug Band, led by a tub bass player named Will Shade.

They performed for us on the dock right next to the Memphis Queen River Boat on the Mississippi River. Workers on the boat and dock joined in with the band as though it were just an ordinary thing to do. Quite remarkable and colorful. Early one Saturday morning, we arrived in St. Louis. The city seemed dead. We met with the old trumpeter Dewey Jackson in his home, but he said, "Don't blow jazz no more, I'm a house painter now." However, I did some good photographs of him in his home against a setting of his memorabilia. We were told that St. Louis had always been a home for great trumpet players. There was a strong German community. Generations of musicians were trained in both military and classical music featuring brass instruments. And, of course, Miles Davis was from St. Louis. We heard several jazz combos that were popular there, and a nightclub called the Mellow Cellar was very much alive and kicking with modern jazz much like what we'd heard in New York.

And then, somehow, we found ourselves in a place called the Faust Club late one night. We were told that we could hear some good ragtime there. We looked forward to perhaps finding a new Scott Joplin. While seated in the dark, dingy club, we listened to a rather masculine woman singing the blues accompanied by another lady outfitted in a tailored man's suit playing a tenor saxophone. "Joe," I said quietly, "we are the only guys in the place. We're surrounded by lesbians." Joe replied, "Ja, but some are so good-looking!" We were treated very well and even had complimentary drinks sent to us. But it was not an exciting evening of music.

Being a scholar, Joe Berendt knew more about the roots of American music than I did. He announced to me, as we were driving through the Midwest, that Kansas City was, after New Orleans, probably the most important city in the history of jazz. Two great styles had originated there, swing in the 1930s and bebop in the early forties. Upon arriving in Kansas City we went immediately to the Olive Street home of Charlie "Bird" Parker's mother, Mrs. Adie B. Parker.

But our brief visit was too much for her; she was still overcome with emotion by the loss of her genius son five years earlier. It was terribly sad. Evidently many well-meaning people had knocked on her door to inquire about him. We did visit his grave, however, and I photographed it. We went to the Local No. 627 Musicians' Union, where many of the young and old players hung out. They would have impromptu jam sessions almost every afternoon, and many of them still played in the spirit of the old Kansas City.

We visited the Kismet Club where Jay McShann's group played. McShann, one of the star pianists and bandleaders of Kansas City, was the first to appreciate and hire Charlie Parker in 1937, when Bird was just developing his original and intricate style of playing. He went on to become, in my opinion, the most imitated or at least the most influential player in jazz since Louis Armstrong. The first time that I ever "discovered" a new young jazz player was during this visit to Kansas City. After all, I am a photographer, not a musician. But when Joe and I heard young bebop trumpeter Carmell Jones play, we both knew that we were hearing something special. I telephoned a good friend, Richard Bock, my former boss and partner at Pacific Jazz Records in Hollywood, and told him about Carmell. A few months later, Bock recorded him. As it frequently turns out, I was not the first to "discover" Carmell Jones; the word was already out that he was a comer.

I was looking forward to Chicago. I have always thought of it as a place of extremes — especially the brutally hot and cold weather— and a friendly big city, much friendlier than New York. What we thought of as the original Chicago 1920s-style jazz was barely present during our visit to the Windy City. Most of that kind of jazz had made its way to New York by the 1930s. What we did find was great gospel music, the blues and, of course, modern jazz. Joe interviewed Muddy Waters while I photographed him, although I got my best images of him at the Newport Jazz Festival a few months later. One of the many young blues singers we encountered called himself "Clear Waters," a nod to Muddy's fame. We also met Memphis Slim, who actually came from Memphis but was the most popular bluesman in Chicago at this time. Everybody wanted to record him. Jump Jackson gave us a blues party in his studio, which was really a large garage that he'd fixed up on the South Side of Chicago. So many musicians showed up that they had to open the garage doors.

We met the Ramsey Lewis Trio. They were all dressed for the special occasion in sharp-looking suits, ties and hats — very slick and handsome. I took them out and photographed them on Michigan Avenue with the Chicago skyline behind them. The most amusing incident that happened in Chicago was when we met up with Jack Teagarden. He was playing at the London House. He remembered that I'd photographed him while he was appearing on Bobby Troup's Stars of Jazz television show in Los Angeles a few years back. In a very friendly gesture, Mr. Teagarden invited Joe and me to have dinner with him after the show, which would end about midnight. He invited us to have some of his "famous Oklahoma chili," and he also mentioned to me quietly that he was "on the wagon now; haven't had a drink in three months."

After the last show we met him outside the club. He was very drunk but charming and polite as always. We hopped into a cab, trailed by another taxi with some of his other friends, and headed out to the South Side to have that promised chili dinner. However, the first stop was a butcher shop, which was of course closed at that hour in the morning. Teagarden woke the butcher and his wife, who lived upstairs. They reluctantly opened the meat counter and provided the special cut of beef that Teagarden specifically ordered. From there we proceeded to the place he was staying with a friend while working in Chicago. We arrived at a dark and sinister-looking apartment house in the South Side, the mostly black section of town. On the second-floor landing, Teagarden went from door to door with his key, drunkenly trying to open each one. Finally a door sprang open. Singing at the top of his voice, he staggered into a rather rundown apartment, followed by a small group of equally drunk pals and Joe and me. Bottles of cold beer were opened, and Teagarden started pulling out pots and pans and commenced cooking. I thought to myself that chili takes a long time to make... like a couple of hours, doesn't it? There was an old upright piano there, and his pianist, Don Ewell, began to play. It became a nice little party, while Teagarden cooked away. I got very tired and looked into the bedroom, hoping to take a little nap. There was only a dirty mattress on the floor. So I went back to the main room and fell asleep on the couch, which had stuffing popping out in various places.

Suddenly I was awakened by a loud noise and a man's voice shouting "Police!" Two uniformed cops and an older plain-clothesman walked in. The older officer suddenly recognized Jack Teagarden. "Teagarden, what the hell are you doin' here?""Makin" chili!" he said. "It's about to be served, sit down and join us." The policeman replied, "We got a call about a break-in here; this isn't your house, is it?" Teagarden said, "Hell, no, this is my friend Roosevelt Sykes's place." The older cop held up his hands and said, "Roosevelt lives next door in that big apartment house. You're in the wrong house!" Teagarden chuckled and said, "Well, we might as well enjoy our grub for now, sit down." The two younger uniformed policemen were dismissed and Teagarden's old pal sat down and had a five-o'clock-in-the-morning breakfast of chili and beans with us.

Joe and I headed west to Southern California, where we were lucky to enjoy many good musical experiences: Benny Carter rehearsing his Kansas City Suite with the Count Basie Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl; a Duke Ellington recording session; and a great deal of activity in the jazz clubs, including the long run of the Lighthouse All-Stars, who played all day Sunday at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach. The band included many of Hollywood's best jazz musicians, along with such guests from the East Coast as Max Roach, Lee Konitz and Miles Davis. Joe loved the idea of swimming in the Pacific Ocean and stepping right into a jazz club with many of the customers still in wet swimming suits and sipping cold beer. It was the good life.

Joe had seen many of the LP covers for which I'd photographed jazz musicians in unlikely places—Shorty Rogers in his son's treehouse, the Lighthouse All-Stars dressed in dark suits and ties standing right on the sandy Hermosa beach, Chet Baker and his crew on a sailboat—so he expected to see musicians in an outdoor Southern California atmosphere. I explained that jazz musicians are pretty much the same the world over. They work late hours and sleep most of the day. They are truly a nocturnal breed. The Lighthouse provided an exception to this rule. So when Joe met the very congenial and gregarious vibraphonist Terry Gibbs, he got the idea of asking Terry to throw an afternoon jazz party for us at his house in North Hollywood, an area of the San Fernando Valley [north of Los Angeles]. It would be an amusing way to meet, interview and photograph the terrific jazz musicians in the Los Angeles area.

Terry agreed and did indeed host a party at his house one Sunday afternoon. Great jazz folk showed up. Most of them said that they had never been near a swimming pool in the bright sunlight at such an early hour (it was 2 P. M.) in their entire lives. The guests included Horace Silver, Wynton Kelly, Sonny Stitt, Med Flory, Herb Ellis, and about fifteen other jazz musicians. When they weren't taking a dip in the pool, they were in Terry's living room jamming while still in their wet swimsuits. It turned into a wonderful and unique party.

The great Shelly Manne was the most sought-after jazz drummer for recording sessions and live performances. Shelly invited us to his stables, where he demonstrated what a terrific horseman he was. His wife, Flip, had introduced him to horses, and he displayed as much finesse with them as he did with his percussion instruments.

A few days later we headed north on Highway 101, planning to take Highway 1 and go up the beautiful California coast to Big Sur on our way to San Francisco. We stopped at a hamburger and malt shop just north of Ventura for lunch. When we walked into the small, rather modest cafe, a middle-aged man and woman wearing white aprons were standing behind the counter. We nodded hello and sat down in a booth. We heard the man say something to his wife in German, and she smiled as she greeted us with the menus. In an attempt to be friendly, Joe spoke German to her. She just stared at him and then walked away to get our food. They were not at all friendly from that moment on. When we finished our cheeseburgers and malted milks, I stood up and walked to the cash register to pay for our lunch. Joe was standing next to me. When the man took my money, I saw his arm. It had numbers tattooed along the entire length of his forearm. I thought, "Oh, my God. He was a survivor of the Holocaust and is most likely Jewish." I took my change and thanked him. He said nothing. Joe and I walked out. Once on the sidewalk, I asked Joe if he had seen the numbers on the man's arm. He had, indeed, and was visibly shaken. We didn't speak much for the next hundred miles.

Everyone falls in love with San Francisco while driving into the city. The Golden Gate Bridge, the Oakland Bay Bridge, the beautiful peninsula with the city skyline gleaming through the fog... It's a cosmopolitan city, an area of many intellectuals, and home to the most traditional of jazz music. This was 1960, and many of the pioneers were alive and working in the area. We came across Kid Ory, Earl Hines, Muggsy Spanier, Joe Sullivan and Darnell Howard. One could listen to the revival of New Orleans jazz, Chicago-style jazz and ragtime as well as modern jazz, all set against an 1840s Gold Rush backdrop. The Montgomery Brothers (Buddy, Monk and Wes) had left their hometown of Indianapolis and settled in the Bay Area. You could easily hear the Dave Brubeck Quartet with Paul Desmond, the Cal Tjader group, and the visiting Thelonious Monk at the Black Hawk club in the span of a week. Musicians loved to come to San Francisco. Jazz and poetry had not died there as they had in most other cities of America. We listened to alto sax man Pony Poindexter and some of the leftover fifties Beats reciting their poetry. We visited Cal Tjader, and he played "congas" on coffee cans aboard his boat docked in San Francisco Bay.

While traveling across the country, I'd kept trying to impress Joe with the antiquity of a town, village or some statuary. He was never phased. Europe was much, much older. But when I drove him across the Golden Gate into the redwood forests, whose trees were two and three-thousand years old, Joe was ecstatic; he could not believe what majestic trees we were seeing and touching. With all of his education and sophistication, he had never once even heard of these forests. I loved watching his wonderment. At last I had excited him with something native and singular to the United States.

The Monterey Jazz Festival wouldn't happen until fall, so we planned to meet there later for the final tour of our trip. But while in the Bay area I introduced Joe to Jimmy Lyons, the founder of the MJF; Ralph Gleason, the best-known jazz critic in the area; and the popular jazz disc jockey Pat Henry. This knowledgeable trio could answer many of Joe’s questions about the jazz history of the Bay area.

We moved on to Las Vegas, which struck Joe as the “emerald city” in the middle of the dry, sandy desert. Many musicians lived there at that time because of the great stage shows that the big gambling casinos and hotels would produce to attract patrons. On our first night we enjoyed the Marlene Dietrich show at the Sands Hotel. Louis Armstrong opened her act, and his show was almost as long and as grandly produced as Ms. Dietrich's. Most surprising was the Duke Ellington Orchestra performing from midnight to 4 A. M. in the lounge of one of the big hotels, not in the showroom — an odd sight, wonderful as they were to hear. I spoke with Duke, and he lamented the fact that his acclaimed orchestra had been relegated to the bar scene where no one except loyal fans ever bothered to leave the gaming tables and slot machines to listen.

Later I took Joe to meet the great jazz duo of Jackie Cain and Roy Krai. Not only did he enjoy their joyous music, but it was great fun to be shown Las Vegas from their musician's point of view.

When we arrived in Detroit it seemed that jazz was everywhere, and all of it was modern post-bop music. I wanted to shoot some local musicians against a background of a typical Detroit automobile-manufacturing center of the world. So Joe rounded up the alto saxophonists Charles McPherson and Ira Jackson, bassist McWilliam Wood, and trumpeter Lonnie Hellyer. I shot them in ties and jackets in front of Ford's Rouge River Plant, presumably called the Rouge River because the industrial waste dumped into it had colored the river red.

Joe and I spent some time with pianist Barry Harris and baritone sax player Pepper Adams. We photographed a group of blues musicians in front of Joe Battle's Record Shop on Hastings Street, then had a fantastic evening with J. J. Johnson, Freddie Hubbard and Albert Heath, who were playing at a private birthday party for a local politician. I guess the most astonishing person we met in Detroit, or anywhere for the matter, was Roland Kirk (he hadn't yet changed his name to Rahsaan Roland Kirk). He was blind and managed to play three saxophones at once: the manzello, stritch and tenor. Kirk was remarkable, for not only did he play well, he also managed to be a comedian and storyteller during his show.

Again we visited New York City (the "Apple"). Gerry Mulligan showed me the spot in Central Park where he had rehearsed his big band when he could not afford a rehearsal studio. Up in Harlem we visited with Mary Lou Williams, who had just opened her used clothing shop for the Bel Canto Foundation, an organization formed to aid needy musicians and their families. I met a young actor named Ben Caruthers at the party; Ben had just appeared in the John Cassavetes film Shadows, which co-starred my friend, dancer Lelia Goldoni. Ben was now trying to learn to play tenor saxophone. Ben looked so much like a real and handsome jazzman holding the instrument that I wanted to photograph him. I took him and his girlfriend downtown to Times Square and shot him as a street musician. Before we were through, I was approached by three different policemen, all of whom said that if I didn't have a photo permit, I would "have to get out of there" or hand over a ten or twenty dollar bill. Luckily I had a few dollars in my pocket.

I photographed a Dizzy Gillespie recording session in a recording studio on Tenth Avenue. Dizzy was an affable and generous man. That was easy enough, but there were many other musicians whom I thought needed to be photographed against a more interesting background. I ended up shooting Charlie Mariano and Toshiko Akiyoshi posing in one of those "self-photo-for-25-cents" booths; Donald Byrd practicing his trumpet while traveling uptown on the "A" strain; the Modern Jazz Quartet in a midtown ballet studio; and Lee Konitz laughing with his pal Warne Marsh while seated on those huge rocks in Central Park.

We traveled up to Newport, Rhode Island, for the annual jazz festival. I usually don't care for jazz festivals because the atmosphere is unsuited to jazz music. The places are too big and the outdoor sound systems too blaring. I prefer small, intimate venues. But this year (1960), Newport offered a little variation that interested me. The producer of the festival, George Wein, had so many musicians to choose from that he had to leave many very interesting ones off the roster. So Charlie Mingus, being an angry activist, put together a group of artists who were left out of the big festival and called them the Newport Rebels. They performed next door to the main festival at Cliff Walk Manor. Aside from himself, his group included such important jazz personalities as Thelonious Monk, Max Roach, Ornette Coleman, Abbey Lincoln, Sonny Rollins, Allen Eager, and the great Coleman Hawkins, to name just a few. It turned out to be a small, more relaxed festival on a grassy cliff overlooking the beautiful bay. Mingus painted the signs, sold the tickets and popcorn and emceed his event, and it was wonderful. One didn't feel overwhelmed by the giant crowd and sound systems.

One hot, rainy night a riot broke out just outside the Hotel Viking, which was the official headquarters for the festival. The riot consisted mostly of drunken and bored college students raising hell. In the terribly crowded lobby of the hotel I suddenly spotted Peggy standing and looking forlorn and wet, clinging to her little overnight bag and lost in the sea of mischievous college youths. We hadn't seen each other in months. She had been living in New York City and pursuing her modeling career. During that hot summer she'd had only her winter wardrobe and not very much money. She surprised me with her sudden visit in the midst of the rain and beer-soused riot. But we were both in heaven when we saw each other. I gave her the bad news that we had to share the hotel room with Joe, as rooms were so scarce. She was near tears, but not because of that news. Rubbing her head, she told me she had been hit on the head by a bottle of beer, luckily an empty one, as she entered the hotel. So, our meeting was both divine and miserable. Later that night, tucked into our single twin bed, while Joe lay in the other one, we heard him call out in the dark: "It's okay, Peggy and Bill, I am asleep now!"

After the festival, I put Peggy on the train back to New York and continued my travels with Joe. This time we went up to Boston to visit the Berklee College of Music. The Director, Lawrence Berk, and his staff were teaching music students from all over the world to play jazz. It was such a unique place of learning. I don't think there was any school like it in the entire world teaching jazz exclusively at that time.

While we were there, Mr. Berk put together a jazz group from his classes to play for us. It consisted of students from all over the world, including Southern Rhodesia, Turkey, Canada, Yugoslavia, Hungary and of course, the U.S.A. And the group really swung. While in Boston we were interviewed by Father Norman O'Connor, known as the "Jazz Priest," on his famous Jazz with Father O'Connor television show. Gerry Mulligan was there as well, lending his musical brilliance to the show as well as his smart-alecky, bad-boy kind of charm. I'd known Father O'Connor for years; I was so drawn to him as a friend that I had asked him to marry Peggy and me. But this was not to be, for I wasn't a Catholic.

As soon as we returned to New York City, Peggy wanted to see the latest Hitchcock movie, Psycho. We caught a 10 A. M. screening at a Third Avenue movie house, and it was great. For me Psycho was an entertaining and scary diversion after traveling around the country meeting only jazz musicians. But Peggy had been living alone for months in a lonely New York apartment, and now she was afraid to take a shower. We took a few together until she felt safe enough to bathe alone.

Joe, Peggy and I spent a Sunday afternoon near the Washington Square Arch in Greenwich Village, listening to the various folk and blues singers, a few jazz players and the usual soapbox orators. It was indeed a musical cross-section of America and a very moving experience. In fact, it was a lovely way to end our journey... our jazz odyssey of 1960.”

William Claxton

Beverly Hills, California

Spring 2005

[William Claxton died in 2008]

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George Handy by Jeff Sultanof

June 13, 2019, 7:00 am

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Jeff Sultanof, is an arranger, composer, saxophonist, and music editor. In addition to his original work, among his other, notable achievements are the reconstructing and editing of the scores of Robert Farnon as well as the editing for publication of a number of the scores of Gerry Mulligan and Gil Evans.

Jeff also has editions available throughwww.ejazzlines.com. He is also the author of the recently published Experiencing Big Band Jazz: A Listener's Companion [Rowman and Littlefield]

Jeff was an occasional contributor to Gene Lees’ Jazzletteruntil Gene’s passing in 2010. He wrote the following essay on the relatively obscure arranger, composer and pianist George Handy for the May, 1997 edition of Jazzletter. Having been a fan of George’s music for many years, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles wrote to Jeff and requested his permission to post his narrative about George to the blog and he very kindly granted it.

The photos that populate Jeff’s piece and the video that you will find at its conclusion were not part of the original publication.

"George Handy by Jeffrey Sultanof

May 1997 Jazzletter

2014 Introduction

I am very appreciative of Steven Cerra reminding me that I wrote this essay about one of the great composers of the mid-twentieth century, George Handy. Such musicologists as Ben Bierman have written about Handy, but he remains a figure few big band enthusiasts know.

I have resisted extensive revision of this article, and except for a few words and factual corrections, this article stands as is. The discography has been dropped due to the availability of all of the tracks discussed here; it has been replaced by an afterword.

A special thanks to my late colleague Gene Lees, who gave me the opportunity to write for an American publication, coached me, and helped me to become a better writer.

On April 10, at St. Peter's Church on East 54th Street in New York City, about a hundred and twenty-five people assembled to pay tribute to a man whose name has been forgotten by the jazz world at large. If you are a serious big-band fan, or were a musician working or listening to the latest sounds in 1945-46, George Handy's name will loom in memory. You may love or hate the music he created, but if you’ve heard it, you've never forgotten it.

One of my pleasures is sharing music with people, particularly those who have heard a lot of music and have pretty developed tastes. Big-band fans are a special treat for me. Some of them surprise me by telling me they were "into" the new jazz sounds of the mid-forties before any of their friends. Other will even have happy memories of seeing big bands at the Strand or Paramount theaters. I like to play Boyd Raeburn recordings for them. Most have never heard George Handy's versions of “There's No You,” “Temptation” or “Out of This World,” and these recordings usually have them utterly fascinated. When I played these recordings for musicians during my college days, they lit up in delight at these three-minute gems.

Ray Passman organized the event at St. Peter's. Raeburn vocalist David Allyn assembled the band, which included such musicians as Jerry Dodgion, Dean Pratt, Leo Ball, Loren Schoenberg, Wayne Andre, Ted Nash, Jimmy Madison, Bill Crow, Danny Bank, and, on lead alto, Hal McKusick, who'd come in from Sag Harbor to honor his former roommate's memory. Judy Scott had the unenviable job of singing Handy's tough arrangements — unenviable for the good reason that she and most of the band had never seen this music before, sight-reading it on the spot. George Handy's music is a body of work that I least expect can be sight-read effectively, but the results were well-intentioned and, on the whole, rather good. And those who attended had a wonderful time listening to the reminiscences of Allyn and McKusick. Bill Kirchner delivered a thoughtful appreciation of George, and Handy's widow Elaine thanked us all for coming and honoring George's memory. It was a chaotic but special evening.

The service sent me right back to the original recordings. Once again I reminded myself of the two-year period in which a major American composer expressed himself through a dance-band instrumentation. I had the same feelings when I first heard these recordings twenty-seven years ago, and thought the same thoughts when I was sitting in St. Peter's listening to much of this music played under Allyn's direction. What a human tragedy; what a tragedy for American music.

For George Handy was an original voice when American music needed him the most. He arrived at an important crossroad when some writers for big band were trying to blend classical music and jazz. Certainly this had been attempted before. Milhaud, Copland, Sowerby, Gruenberg, Carpenter, Stravinsky, and other "classical" composers had tried and for the most part given up. But the younger composer-arrangers for big bands had extensive backgrounds in concert music study and usually a wider musical vocabulary than those who came before them. Handy was blessed to write for an ensemble that embraced the most modern of big-band musics — several months before Stan Kenton began his Progressive Jazz period — and Handy’s work had a level of maturity that permitted him to express himself fully. Pete Rugolo, Ralph Burns, and Paul Weston all came to hear Raeburn's band and admired Handy tremendously. But the band was too controversial for many listeners, and its recordings received poor distribution. Fortunately, the bulk of Raeburn's library (and the bulk of Handy's lifework) was recorded for radio transcriptions and programs intended for overseas broadcast to servicemen. Since 1972, this music has been easier to hear than it was when it was first performed. And the scores survived, stored for many years in three cardboard boxes in a basement in Long Island. Unusual and at times eccentric, Handy's music still sounds fresh and original.

George Hendleman was born in Brooklyn in 1920. His mother was his first piano teacher, and George went on to study at Juilliard and New YorkUniversity. He also studied privately with Aaron Copland, which, he said, "did neither one of us any good." The standard jazz reference books tell us that he played with Michael Loring in 1938 and Raymond Scott in 1941, and in 1944 he joined Raeburn's organization.

Boyd Raeburn, born October 27, 1913, in Faith, South Dakota, had a downright bizarre career as a bandleader. His original ensemble was a pretty bad mickey-mouse group headquartered in Chicago and toured the Midwest states. In 1939, he changed musical direction and led a swing band, but, like many territory bands, it sounded like a lot of other groups. In 1942, he hired Gerry Valentine and Budd Johnson to write the band's book. June Christy sang with this edition under her original name, Shirley Luster.

By 1944, an almost completely new band was playing in Washington, D.C. This was a fabulous unit, with such musicians as Johnny Bothwell, Earl Swope, Serge Chaloff, Sonny Berman, and Don Lamond. Ed Finckel, George (The Fox) Williams, Milt Kleeb, and Handy (who came aboard in May) wrote wonderful arrangements. Then Handy met singer-comedienne and film star Betty Hutton, who got him a job at Paramount Pictures. The band continued to tour and was clearly rising toward great heights when Finckel left to join Gene Krupa. In desperation, Raeburn called Handy in California. His timing was fortuitous, as Handy had grown to hate writing for motion pictures. He rejoined the band in mid-1945.

Handy's arrangements from 1944 are well-written and already show a unique imagination — try “Who Started Love?” — but his compositions and arrangements during his second period with the band are in a class by themselves. Handy started off straightforwardly enough with such originals as “Tonsillectomy,” “Forgetful,” “Rip Van Winkle,” and “Yerxa,” the titles on the band's first record date with Ben Pollack's Jewell label on October 15, 1945. “Tonsillectomy” is an innocuous swing tune perfect for dancing. “Forgetful” is burdened by a sub-par lyric by Jack Segal; Handy had the misfortune or bad judgment to write several songs with Segal, all with wonderful melodies and less-than-wonderful words. “Forgetful” is the first opportunity we have to sample the direction in which Handy would go. An unusual introduction, at times quite dissonant and loud, goes in and out of tempo, finally leading into an impressionistic background for the vocal by David Allyn. Even the ending is rather strange, with trumpets singing out a mocking ‘nyah-nyah’ figure. Except for Red Norvo's “Smoke Dreams,” this was perhaps the most unusual big-band recording with a vocal up to that time. “Rip Van Winkle” is a cute little song and a great record; if Pollack's label had enjoyed decent distribution, this probably would have been a hit. “Yerxa” is an Ellingtonian Johnny Hodges-style feature for Hal McKusick's alto saxophone, harmonically ambiguous at times (reportedly the melody is based on an exercise McKusick used to play). Attempts to dance to it would have been futile, given that the band goes into double time for two bars.

These records caused quite a stir among musicians when they were originally released. I've heard arrangers say that they were proud possessors of well-worn original copies. Not only were the arrangements terrific, but the band's personnel was strong. Such musicians as Si Zentner, Ray Linn, Britt Woodman, Wilbur Schwartz (Glenn Miller's lead clarinetist), Harry Klee, Lucky Thompson, and Dave Barbour all played with Raeburn during George Handy's tenure with the band.

But Raeburn was having trouble keeping the band working. He subsisted on limited touring, radio transcriptions, and recordings for the U.S. Government.

Because of the Armed Forces Radio Service, many live recordings of all types of music were distributed for re-broadcast to overseas servicemen. In producing a series called One-Night Stand, they preserved sustaining (unsponsored) radio broadcasts of many bands, especially during periods when such ensembles could not make commercial records. Because of two recording bans ordered by American Federation of Musicians head James Caesar Petrillo, the years 1942 through 1944 and ten months of 1948 would be almost entirely a musical blank without these broadcasts.

In addition, AFRS created its own series. The one closest to the heart of many jazz fans was the Jubilee program, where bands led by Benny Carter, Harry James, Earl Hines, Benny Goodman, Count Basie and Jimmy Mundy performed. The Billy Eckstine band's best performances were recorded for Jubilee.

Raeburn did three shows for the Jubilee series, including one for which Handy conducted his “Jazz Symphony in Four Movements.” The first movement later became the Raeburn theme, “Dalvatore Sally.”

“Dalvatore Sally” was featured on the band's next commercial record date, February 5, 1946. By now, time and tempo changes, dramatic dissonant introductions, and polytonal backgrounds for vocals were hallmarks of his arrangements for the band. Historians have cited the influences of Stravinsky, Ravel, and Debussy. My ears also detect Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Ives, a composer Handy might have heard since the music of this controversial figure was being championed by Bernard Herrmann on radio and John Kirkpatrick in the concert hall. Kirkpatrick gave the first public performance of the “Concord Sonata” for piano, a work that is still challenging listening.

Handy's arrangement of “Temptation” is quite far out; Ginny Powell (Mrs. Raeburn) was the band's female vocalist, and very few singers could have done as well with this setting as she did.

According to David Allyn, the arrangement of “I Only Have Eyes for You” was written the night before the session, so that Allyn would have something to record. If a Handy arrangement could be considered laid back, this is it. But it supports Allyn's voice beautifully.

The bulk of Handy's best work for Raeburn was preserved on non-commercial sources. On Jubilee, such arrangements as “Picnic in the Wintertime,” “There's No You,” and “Memphis in June” were recorded. “Picnic in the Wintertime” is a stunning arrangement that includes quotes from “Jingle Bells” throughout, and the orchestral effects Handy uses warrant close study. As complex as it is, it is not difficult to sing to. “There's No You” quotes from “Clair de Lune” in such a subtle way that the listener might miss it. This is another piece that has so much in it that I hear new things these many years later. “Memphis in June” is a masterpiece. Handy created a subtle, beautiful setting for Ginny Powell that enhances Hoagy Carmichael's rural imagery of an afternoon in the south. Carmichaelrecorded this song himself on the long-defunct ARA label, but he loved Raeburn's version and obtained a copy of the radio transcription. Also on transcription is Handy's arrangement for Allyn of “Out of This World,” another masterpiece.

Raeburn was well-liked in the business and, reportedly Duke Ellington and Harry James invested money in the band. Had Raeburn had the personality of Stan Kenton, one of the great salesmen in big band history who also led one of the most controversial ensembles in American music, he might have made a success of the band.

By August, when the band was playing at the Club Morocco, there was trouble brewing. According to Dr. Jack McKinney, who wrote a book about the Raeburn band that has never been published, Ginny Powell was not happy with Handy's arrangements and insisted that her husband take a more active role in setting the band's musical direction. Raeburn, caught in the middle, ultimately sided with his wife. Handy quit, and the band's esprit de corps would never be the same.

Handy moved on. He wrote music for Buddy Rich, Bob Chester, Benny Goodman, and Alvino Rey. Few of these arrangements were ever played publicly, though Rey recorded Handy's composition “Stocking Horse” for radio transcription. It later turned up on a Hindsight LP. “Stocking Horse” is another mini-tone poem, beautifully realized. Even though it did not have the dissonance of his Raeburn work, this piece could only have been composed by George Handy. Unfortunately, “Stocking Horse” has six trumpets parts, all equally important, and few bands are equipped to play it.

Handy had another major opportunity when Norman Granz commissioned him to write five minutes of anything he wanted for an album to be titled “The Jazz Scene.” This limited edition album of twelve-inch 78s was an ambitious undertaking for Granz, who did not yet have his own label and could only record musicians who were not contracted to other labels. On October 15, 1946, an orchestra was assembled to record Ralph Burns'“Introspection” and Handy's “The Bloos.” It took five hours to get the performance that was finally released, and even that performance is a little scrappy. But what music! At times satiric, ironic, and yet subtle, this work is another incredible tour de force that must be heard many times to be appreciated. It is the most unusual version of the blues I've ever heard.

But it was not released for three-and-a-half years, and by then Handy's career had lost its momentum. In a sketch by Granz, Handy is quoted as saying that "the only thing (sic) worthwhile in my life is my wife Flo and my boy Mike. The rest stinks, including the music biz and all connected."

We know nothing of Handy until in the mid-1950s he made two albums for an RCA subsidiary called label X, which later became Vik. “Handyland

U.S.A.

” is a pretty straightforward small-group date which seems to have been recorded in a hurry. For “Handy, by George” Handy wrote for a ten-piece ensemble. The music is fascinating, clearly the work of a gifted composer. Ultimately, it did not matter. When RCA killed the Vik label in 1957, it deleted the entire catalogue.

Handy wrote some wonderful music and played piano for Zoot Sims on albums for ABC-Paramount and Riverside, but by 1960 he was a forgotten man. He continued to write, primarily for the New York Saxophone Quartet.

But nothing that was heard widely. Judy Scott told me that she asked Handy to write arrangements for her when she performed in the Catskill Mountains. Somehow the Borscht Belt and Handy make a strange pairing, but George lived most of his later years near Monticello, New York, with his second wife, Elaine Lewis. One of his last pieces was an adaptation for big band of a movement of one of his saxophone quartets, which he called “Worry? No. Waltz!.” It was played at the concert of the Raeburn band's music by the Mike Crotty band at the Smithsonian Institution in 1980. A proposed New York concert of Raeburn music by Crotty's ensemble never happened.

There is a strange footnote to all this. In 1980, a man named Bill Schremp marketed many of the Raeburn scores. He placed an ad for these in the musicians' union newspaper. When I saw this ad, I bought copies of all the arrangements listed and made my own scores from the parts.

Seeing that this large order came from Warner Bros., where I was then music editor, Schremp called me and was surprised to find he was talking to a twenty-six-year-old big-band arranger/historian who knew the Raeburn recordings intimately. Schremp had high hopes for his publishing company, because he believed there was a market for this music for high school and college stage bands. I was skeptical. Raeburn’s was hardly a ‘name’ band, and this music needed extensive rehearsal if bands were to play it at all.

Like Raeburn, Bill pressed on, believing that the incredible wealth of music he was making available would make his venture a success. He subsequently added works from the Elliot Lawrence, Sauter-Finegan, and Ray McKinley libraries to his catalog. For the first time, important pieces by Johnny Mandel, Tiny Kahn, Gerry Mulligan, Eddie Sauter, and Ed Finckel were available, as well as the work of younger talents such as Mike Crotty and Bill Kirchner, whom Schremp raved about. The band directors in the main could not have cared less. Schremp's sales were poor indeed, and his company did not last long. An ironic postscript to all of this came from a conversation with Raeburn’s son, Bruce Boyd, now affiliated with TulaneUniversity. Bruce told me Schremp never had any rights to distribute this music, and Bruce never knew about it until after Schremp’s company went out of business. Bruce still has the Raeburn library.

I doubt that there will ever be a large audience for the music of George Handy, just as there is a select audience for that of one of his contemporaries, Robert Graettinger. But there is no question that Handy's music will continue to stir the imagination of anyone who makes its acquaintance. He was a unique voice in a cookie-cutter field. In my own case, his music showed one way that disparate musical styles could co-exist when many still believe that they could not. His music will continue to inspire arrangers of tomorrow, those at least who seek it out and give it a chance.

In that sense, it was not in vain.

Afterword - 2014

Back in 1997, I included a discography, which is now unnecessary. MP3s are now available for most if not all of the performances discussed in this article. CDs are still available as well.

Except for a handful of pieces, most of Handy’s work for Raeburn exists as original parts as played by the musicians. I have written out scores of these compositions and arrangements, and they will hopefully be published sometime soon by Jazz Lines Publications. “The Bloos” was published by Margun Music, and is now available from Music Sales.

A loose end. Handy and Jack Segal wrote a song called “If Love Is Trouble” that was recorded by Johnny Hartman with the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra. For years it was assumed that Handy wrote the arrangement, even though it is not in his style. It is now generally acknowledged that Jimmy Mundy is the arranger of this recording.

Happy listening!!!

— Jeff Sultanof"

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Kenny Dorham by Gene Feehan

June 14, 2019, 7:00 am

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By 1962 when the following article was written, trumpeter Kenny Dorham had been an active jazz musician for more than two decades and one of the first trumpeters to fuse the innovations of bop into a personal style. In this interview with Gene Feehan, Kenny reflects on his long and varied career in jazz.

For much of his career, Dorham was somehow considered a “second-tiered” trumpeter when compared to the playing of Dizzy, Miles, Clifford Brown and other modern Jazz trumpet luminaries.

Kenny’s name is still rarely mentioned today which is surprising given the number of high profile groups that he performed with, the huge discography he was involved with both under his own name and with other significant Jazz musicians, and the fact that he created a style or sound on the trumpet that is as instantly recognizable as Diz’s, Miles’ or Brownie’s.

Rummaging around a loaned collection of Down Beat magazine's recently, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles found Gene’s piece about Kenny and thought thought it might serve to enhance the body of writings about Kenny that have appeared on the blog as a way of remembering him or, if you will, memorializing him.

“TRUMPETER Kenny Dorham is not mentioned in Barry Ulanov's History of Jazz in America. He is not pictured in the Orrin Keepnews-Bill Grauer Pictorial History of Jazz. No reference to him and his 23 years of participation in jazz appears in Marshall Stearns'Story of Jazz, although Bo Diddley, Reb Spikes, and Snake Hips Tucker find a niche in the listings.

In short, if one were to be introduced for the first time to the story of contemporary jazz trumpet, one might well surmise that the horn is played almost exclusively by Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. Yet at least one important critic has emphatically stated, "Dorham has become a consummate and masterful trumpeter, one of the key voices in modern jazz."

Yet it would appear that the 38-year-old Dorham is still a relatively unknown quantity to many jazz fans, despite his clearly felt impact on today's music. "I've always gone my own way," he maintains stoutly. "I don't know how you can play jazz and not be yourself."

Dorham would not describe himself as a reticent man, but like anyone else with a long story to tell, he must find a keenly tuned and attentive ear. This may explain why his role in the bop movement is so little appreciated, except by musicians he's worked with and a few fans and critics.

"You know," he recalled, "my love of jazz was motivated as a little kid by my sister. She used to sing commercials for Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper, and one day she came home when I was about 7 or 8 with some records by Louis Armstrong [he pronounced it Lou-iss]. When I was 15, in 1939, she bought me a trumpet. My father was already a guitarist, and my mother and sister could play piano real well. My sister encouraged me to learn the horn. I'd been fooling around with piano since I was 7, so I knew chords at least. So, when I took up the horn, I had a basic grounding in music."

When Dorham went into Anderson High School in Austin, Texas, he had three idols on the horn: Bix Beiderbecke, Roy Eldridge, and Bunny Berigan.

He said he liked Beiderbecke's overall musicianship, adding, "Bix sounded like a piano player, because he knew all the changes. However, Roy had more happening than anyone else. Others I dug were Harry Edison, Ziggy Elman, Buck Clayton, Basie's brass, and Erskine Hawkins' band."

He really got his start in 1939, he said, with the school's marching band. One of his friends in that band was Bo Rhambo, who played both trumpet and tenor saxophone, and when they weren't jamming together, Rhambo was busy writing arrangements for the group in a Count Basie or Glenn Miller vein.

Dorham tried the West Coast between October and December, 1943, and though it was a good way to break in, he was back in Houston with Illinois Jacquet's big band by early the next year. About that time he was playing a lot of growls and used mutes made of hats with the brims cut off for other effects. In July, 1944, he decided to try New York City, and one of the first places he checked into was Minton's.

"After I'd taken my first solo," he recalled, "Lockjaw Davis, the bandmaster, came over and said, 'You've got a standing invitation here, man.' From then on, it was like a dream, playing every night with guys I'd only heard about: Bud, Fats, Dexter, Serge, Wardell, Lips, and many others."

In the spring of 1945, Gillespie let out the word that he was holding auditions, and a houseful of guys turned out including Henry Boozier and Dorham, who'd been working as a team for some time. When it got down to Dorham, he said to Gillespie,

"I don't go unless Henry comes along, too. And that's how Diz got two trumpets for one chair."

After that, which was about October, 1946, he went with Billy Eckstine's big band, in its time, as Dorham recalled, "the best band in the country. It had a tremendous rhythm section: Art Blakey, Tommy Potter, and Richard Ellington on piano. It had excellent soloists, too, like Gene Ammons and Leo Parker. Those six months I was with Eckstine were a groove. Billy brought me in as trumpet soloist to replace Fats Navarro, who had replaced Diz. I was only 22, but already I was accepted on my merits. Billy was a great leader; he'd always let you go when you were having a great night."

Dorham's memories of Charlie Parker reflect Parker's diversity as a human being and an artist, in that they seem to have no particular line of development or follow any logical line of growth. But fragments, as an archeologist will testify, offer their own story:

"Bird knew a lot about the strangest things, like how a car's engine is put together and how it functions. . . . He never was a big one for rehearsals. In fact, in all the years I played with him, he called only one, and that was for a couple of new guys who'd just joined the band. . . . I had heard Bird long before I came to New York, and right from the start he was my favorite soloist. His speed especially influenced me, but even today I can't get anywhere near it. ...

"Bird never practiced that I know of, but he was always able to hit the bandstand like a ball of fire. It's funny, but he never got disturbed when the rest of the band couldn't keep up with him. . . . He always said something sweet about Diz. . . . He'd play themes from The Rite of Spring (just a quarter or a half-step off) on the 12th chorus or so. The musicians dug it, but I don't think the audience knew what was going on. . . .

"No one today plays as fast as he did. In fact, Max Roach developed his own speed by playing with Bird. Max would challenge him by laying down a real fast beat on an opening chorus and, by the second, Bird would be pulling away. . . . He believed in what I call 'bandstand mileage': that is, to put together on the bandstand things you might not have practiced at home — kind of a trial-and-error process. What he meant was — know how to reach the audience and still be able to play yourself at the very top of your ability."

On the next point Dorham was firmly insistent: "Today, Bird would be as much out in front as he ever was. You'd have to change the sax before anyone could play it like he did. . . . Actors, performers, and musicians, when they're up on a stage, know the principle of 'the fourth wall.' What it means is that you're aware of the audience and yet you have to preserve a sense of detachment so you can create a piece of music or a role internally. Bird knew that concept best of all. It's an idea that may seem incomprehensible to some performers, but it's absolutely necessary for peak performance. ... To develop that concept a bit further, Bird would become inspired by a person in the audience, and direct his playing accordingly, whether humorous or sarcastic or whatever. We called those things he did nursery rhymes. Once, back in the spring of 1949, at the Royal Roost, a real beat-looking chick yelled, ‘Pay My Wild Irish Rose.' Bird glanced at her and threw in an out-of-key phrase from The Lady Is a Tramp. We all broke up."

MEMORIES OF Parker are not Dorham's sole stock in trade. He has a wealth of observations on other aspects of today's music, from jazz in movies to advice to young musicians.

"Movies are starting to offer opportunities to jazzmen to play and write, and, of course, so does TV," he said. "I collaborated with Duke Jordan, Kenny Clarke, and Barney Wilen on the score of the French film, Witness in the City, as far back as 1959. I actually got on screen in the current Les Liaisons Dangereuses."

Some years ago, a critic observed that the trumpet had taken a subsidiary position to the saxophone in modern jazz and cited the Chet Baker-Gerry Mulligan and Miles-Bird playing relationships as major evidence. Dorham doesn't agree with the theory and maintains that the trumpet is secondary only in terms of the playing ability of any given musician compared with another in his group.

"For another thing," he said, "the trumpet has only three valves, while the sax has at least seven times more keys or, as I call them, referent points. Also, you've got to remember that the trumpet has been explored more; it's a much more antiquated instrument, you might say."

Dorham, something of a singer, too, though his singing is not equal to his playing, had a few things to say on that subject as well:

"Singing has always been important to me. I still study to keep my pipes open. My band experience included some nine months of vocal work with Diz in 1945, until Dexter Armstrong came in on my reference. My major influence was Charles Brown, who, in turn, has had an impact on Ray Charles — a lot of impact! When you come from the Southwest, as I did, you develop a kind of echo, which is evident both in your horn and your voice."

In the area of composing, Dorham has been working steadily over the years. More than a year ago, he composed and arranged a 25-minute work that he submitted to (and hopes will be performed by) the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. He wrote the first two parts, Fairy Tale, a 10-minute ballad, and Lotus Blossom, an Oriental melody, and has been trying to get trombonist J. J. Johnson to do the final section.

Working conditions for jazzmen are a controversial topic, but Dorham doesn't take as dim a view as some others.

"Since I came to New York," he said, "I'd say the general quality of conditions has improved. The appeal of a leader's name is very important, which is why I worked as often as I could with Bird, Max, and the big bands. . . .

"But in today's music world, I'm just as likely to end up talking about my work before the UN Jazz Society — that's how much the business has changed. You'll generally find that where guys are making real money today they're only playing background. I've discovered that everybody's looking at me for a bargain, but I'm still optimistic."

"One last key point: club owners should know how, when, and where to showcase new talent. On the average, a band hits a club three times a year. It plays the same repertoire, and this becomes tiresome to the listener. If the band and its writers can't come up with some new charts, the public is being cheated, I think. And that means that, sooner or later, the club owner is going to lose his audience.

Dorham is aware of "the kiddies," as Jo Jones so often refers to young musicians, and their problems: "I don't care whether you want to learn trombone, tympani, or tuba, my best advice is to start off by studying piano. I did it, and it helped me enormously. It's the yardstick in music because of its voicings, its blends of sounds and, over-all, because it expresses more than any other instrument. . . . It leads you to a better theoretical foundation, and it gives you a chance to play more than one note at a time. Then you can move on to develop your playing of the instrument of your choice.

"The future of jazz may well come from such establishments and experiments as the Lenox, Mass., School of Music [now inactive], the Berklee School in Boston, and the North Texas State University bands and groups. A student is able to acquire this formal type of education in music rather than to have to hunt for it, hit or miss. He can concentrate his energies into a relatively small span of time, thus getting the greatest benefit out of it.”

Source

Down Beat

September 27, 1962

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