Jazz Backstory

John Levy: Musician Turned Manager

2012-01-27T11:17:00.011-05:00

Anyone in the arts who needs a manager loves to find one who has paid the same dues: artist first, manager second. When a musician needs a manager, it’s a comfort to know that the person running their career has experienced similar trials and tribulations, someone who knows the areas of concern, and doesn’t have to be educated about the day-to-day issues related to the work of a musician. John Levy, owner of John Levy Enterprises Inc., passed away on January 20, 2012, just three months shy of his one-hundredth birthday. John fit the description of musician turned manager better than anyone else in the entertainment industry.

John was born in New Orleans on March 12, 1912, and he ignored his father’s advice to find work in postal system for security. He became a jazz bassist and played with the greats, or the soon-to-be greats.

Typical of the musical chairs that went on in the heyday of jazz, John moved from being the bassist with Billie Holiday, to a brief stint with Buddy Rich, and then into a fruitful relationship with George Shearing. Eventually his skills with the day-to-day logistics of playing gigs became apparent, and John became a full-time manager. His client list eventually included Cannonball Adderley, Ramsey Lewis, Nancy Wilson, Dakota Staton and Joe Williams.

In our interview for the Hamilton College Jazz Archive, conducted in May of 1995, John related the atmosphere in the fifties, and the exponential growth of his business:

JL: That was the time when Basie finally broke up and had the six pieces, because it was really rough out there for big bands. But groups like George [Shearing’s] was really hot, and Dave Brubeck, and that was the hottest things going, playing the colleges. The big band just cost too much to travel. And the economics of it at that time was even worse than they are now. I mean they’re bad enough now, but for a big band it was terrible. But anyway, that’s how I got into that end of the business. And then one by one different people came along. And for years I’d known Joe Williams. And when he left the Basie band he called me one day and said “come and take this telephone out of my hands.” And that was it. No contract. No nothing. And the other people I guess came along through the record companies. In those days, especially Capitol Records, almost anybody who was anybody that came through the label that didn’t have management (in jazz that is) I’d get a call and they’d say “do you want to manage this person?” Or they’d recommend me. I remember Dakota Staton was one. So a lot of the people that I had at that time were on the Capitol label. Nancy Wilson came along through that. Through Cannonball I met Nancy, and it just went from one to the other. And all of a sudden I found myself —

MR: Somebody take the phone out of your hands —

JL: Yeah. I needed somebody to take the phone, that’s right, that’s right.

Just like musicians are hired on their reputations, the quality and honesty of managers is a topic of conversation with musicians. Nancy Wilson, a longtime client of John’s, talked about the start of their relationship:

NW: I met Cannonball though, with Rusty Bryant, in New York City, on the corner standing at 52nd and Broadway. That’s where we met. Cannonball had just come up. He was with John Levy. John Levy, I knew the name. If you were in this business, you knew who John Levy was. John Levy was the former bass player with George Shearing, who became George’s road manager, eventually his manager, and because he did such a good job for George, that just opened the door. By the time I went with John, he had Ramsey Lewis, Gene Harris, The Three Sounds, he had Cannonball, I mean he had so many wonderful artists that he nurtured and made sure that they took care of the business and did wonderful things for them. So the object of my strategy was, if I’m going to do this, the only person who I would trust to help and be there for me would be John Levy.

MR: What a rare commodity — to have a musician, a fine musician, who would step into that role. “I want to be with him.”

John himself spoke about the challenge and the changing responsibilities of being a manager in today’s music business:

JL: Managers like myself, they don’t exist today with the upcoming people, because in most cases they are lawyers or accountants that do the managing. And they have no idea of what it’s about, but there’s so much legal stuff going on, as I call it “legalistic” — the legalese of the business.

MR: Is it getting harder?

JL: Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. A person like myself who is not a lawyer, and I know about contracts, I know enough about it, I’ve been it long enough that I can draft one and I know exactly what’s happening with it. But they won’t accept that. You have to be a lawyer. Because you can, the record company can be sued if the artist signs with them without having a lawyer represent them. So it’s gotten to that point, where, like everything else in this country, anything you do, you have to have a lawyer almost to do it. Normally oh, it’s just pages. I have a contract, a Nancy Wilson contract that has forty pages on it, for Columbia Records. Forty pages. And it gives you one thing on page five and takes it away on page nine.

MR: And then it’s got something right at the end that says “if we forgot to say anything in this contract” you know — don’t forget about that.

JL: They’ve got it worded, and you’ve got to go through all of that stuff today. And it makes it a little difficult.

John was not a man who was afraid to say no to the powers that be, and he related the status of a project he was working on during our 1995 interview:

MR: I think the musicians must have always thought of you as being on their side.

JL: That’s right. And I was always on their side. I still am.

MR: Yeah. That’s good.

JL: Oh, yeah. When it comes down to negotiations and anything about money, well what about the musicians? And you know, we’re talking about a tour next year with Nancy and Joe, for Columbia Artists. The people at Columbia Artists were talking about, “well, the sidemen, how do you want to work that?” You know, okay, we know what Nancy gets, we know what Joe gets, the group that’s going to work with them together and we worked all the details of that out, who’s going to play for who, and we won’t carry a lot of musicians, we’ll carry a small group. And it got down to the point of what the musicians are going to get paid. So the first couple of figures they brought us I said “oh, na, na, na, na, na. They have to get more than that.” And they have to get certain conditions and certain things for them. Because I still feel like a musician.

John found time to author the book Men, Women and Girl Singers and subtitled My Life as a Musician Turned Talent Scout, written with his wife Devra Hall. He was honored frequently for his contributions to the music business, and in 2006 he received the highest award in the jazz world, the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award.

Musical Baggage

2011-12-22T16:11:00.003-05:00

Jazz and blues groups who are able to play every gig with the same set of members are rare today. Most musicians play with multiple working groups, and band leaders need to have a roster of accomplished musicians who can fill key spots when their preferred member is not available. When opening the book to decide who to call for any given gig, some factors are more important than others. The finest musician in the area might not get the call if he/she brings with him what I call “musical baggage.”

“Subbing” is taking the place of someone on a combo or big band gig without the benefit of a rehearsal. The musician will want to make a good impression whenever the call comes in. There are obvious requirements for being a good sub, including accurate sight reading, soloing ability, having suitable gear to do the gig (an electronic keyboard and appropriate amp come to mind) and playing in a style that fits the given ensemble. Having a respectable number of tunes memorized is a plus. (When was the last time you saw a blues band on stage with music stands?) It’s important to find your place in the ensemble, especially if you are not the lead player in the section. Often when band leaders are looking for musicians to play in the short- or long-term they have a choice of players who can fill the bill on any given instrument. What makes a band leader choose one musician over another? There are issues that go beyond excellent musicianship and technical skills.

Assuming a choice of four different but equal players on an instrument, why does player B get my first call while players A, C and D might not? For me it comes down to being free of baggage on the gig. Baggage may refer to frequent tardiness which puts the band leader on edge before the start wondering where the person is and hoping there is enough set up time. Excessive gabbing with fellow musicians in between songs is also baggage. It’s more commonly seen at rehearsals, but sometimes it’s demonstrated on actual gigs when as soon as the song ends it’s time to converse with whoever happens to be in proximity. Do they bring inappropriate volume baggage? Players should have the ability to match their volume not only with the rest of the band but also play at a volume appropriate for the room. It’s unpleasant when a band leader has to face a complaint from the club owner at night’s end that the band was too loud. Is the musician versatile enough to play within the context of the music, and does he take care to play in a manner that befits the style? For example, if the player is a progressive jazz drummer who has accepted a rock & roll gig, he should play simply and with a strong groove and not feel compelled to fill every space. The music should be allowed to breathe. Baggage also includes the player with the need to fuss with equipment after every song. There is nothing more annoying than having to wait to count off a tune because the sub on second tenor is clamping on his third reed of the set, in search of the perfect sound. Especially as a sub, the player should be attentive to the band leader, or a subsequent call may not materialize.

A sub might keep in mind that it’s important to know the appropriate attire for the gig, what time it starts, and what the pay will be so as to avoid any awkward situations at night’s end. Though it’s a good time to network and subs may want to have business cards ready, they should be aware of the distinction between making connections and looking like they’re out to steal the gig.

When it comes to subbing, leave the musical baggage in the closet.

Nice Guys Finish First

2011-12-09T14:45:00.012-05:00

I am not a huge fan of Christmas music (see my posting “Christmas Time is Here,” 11/30/09) but there is no lack of hip holiday jazz. This past Wednesday I decided to spin two hours worth on my weekly WHCL radio show and I received an unexpected gift in the form of some memories.

The Jazz Archive interviewing has focused mostly on older musicians for obvious reasons. These jazz veterans invariably offered wisdom and humor via their stories and a wonderful aura of class. As the years progressed we met with artists from the middle generation. Some were already established, others were paying their dues (a process that rarely ends). Their experiences are surely worth documenting but I found that often the wisdom/class thing had yet to emerge. When I played selections from John Pizzarelli’s CD Let’s Share Christmas and Jingle All the Way by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, I recalled two real-life stories that were not documented in their interviews but are now worth sharing.

My older daughter, Alanna, did her student teaching in New York City in 2002. She’s an instrumental music teacher now, and it’s her personal mission to make music in school memorable for her junior high students. One day she called me from New York City and said “Dad, the John Pizzarelli Trio is playing the Blue Note tonight. Can you get me in?” My kids have this notion that I’m a much bigger fish than I am, but nevertheless I figured the least I could do was try. Not wanting to waste any time, I went right to the top and called Ruth Pizzarelli (John’s mother and Bucky’s wife, who we had met numerous times at Hamilton). Ruth quickly took action and asked for the details about what Alanna wanted (number of guests, time) and said she’d call me back. About ten minutes later she did return the call and said it was all set up, that Alanna and a friend would be guests of the band, and thus not have to pay the $50 per set cover charge.

When Alanna got to the door and gave her name, she was taken to a table where John’s sister was sitting. In addition to the free cover charge, it was also insisted upon that Alanna and her guest receive a free steak dinner, and stay the whole night, not just for one set. Before the gig started, John approached the table dressed as a waiter complete with apron, pen and pad, and pretended nobody at the table knew who he was. Everybody got a good laugh out of it, and John joined his sister and Alanna for a few minutes of conversation before taking the stage with his trio.

After a while, Alanna went into the ladies’ room and called me on her cell phone, breathlessly explaining what John had done, and how she thought it was so cool. So there you go — John made a fan for life and it’s a great story for the kid and me too.

The second story involves my younger daughter Janine, who was fortunate to attend Hamilton at a time when the Archive was actively engaged in the interview process. One day she called and said “Dad, Béla Fleck’s coming to campus. I think you should interview him.” I thought it was a good idea but rather a long shot, as often the more success a performer has received, the less likely it is to be able to get through his “people” (i.e. manager, agent) to get a yes or no. It’s interesting to note that when younger artists come to perform at Hamilton, certain Young Lions feel it is not worth their time to sit for an interview, in stark contrast to the majority of the above-mentioned veterans. Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult to obtain a “yes” to Béla’s interview once the appropriate contacts were made. All-in-all, the interview itself was a memorable one. Béla seemed to enjoy it, and he provided some welcome insights from a performer who plays — of all unusual things — jazz banjo.

The story here, however, is my daughter’s interaction with Béla that day. She scored the job of escorting Béla from his sound check on campus, to the location where the interview was to occur. It was a long walk across campus, and I was pleased she was going to have some private time talking to him, as it was a job many of her classmates would envy.

The surprising thing about this walk was that Béla didn’t talk about himself at all. He asked questions of my daughter, such as what her plans were upon graduation. Being undecided at that time, Janine discussed her ambitions with Béla. He gave her this piece of advice: “be very careful what you decide to do from here, because that decision will influence the rest of your life.” Janine took this as sage advice. She hadn’t previously considered that her choice for master’s education needed to be judiciously considered, as that decision is close to irrevocable.

Though I doubt Béla remembers the incident, it stuck with Janine in a big way. What he said was practical advice, which every parent appreciates. Janine was happy about her one-on-one time with Béla, and he made a fan for life.

So there are two examples of nice guys finishing first, and deservedly so. The stories speak for themselves. It is nice to know that jazz class is being carried on as more and more veterans leave us.

Béla and John belong to a small circle of accomplished musicians who appeal to multiple generations. They’re among the artists that everyone in our family enjoys, other examples being Nik Kershaw, Eric Clapton and Moxy Früvous.

By the way, if you want some hip Christmas tunes the above mentioned CD’s will fill the bill. John Pizzarelli sings and plays beautifully over superb arrangements by Johnny Mandel, Don Sebesky and other top arrangers while the Flecktones take your well-worn holiday tunes to places where no band has ever gone before. The opening version of “Jingle Bells” is worth the price of admission, and their take on “The 12 Days of Christmas” has a new surprise every four bars, perfect for listeners with a short attention span, like yours truly.

And by the way, Béla, if you’re reading this, I hope you gets lots of residuals off your tunes that NPR so frequently employs as bumper music.

When Less Equals More

2011-11-23T12:00:00.001-05:00

The music I love has always had to pass the good groove test. In the mid-60’s I had my AM radio next to my ear waiting for songs like “Green Onions,” “I Feel Good (I Got You)” and Doris Troy’s “Just One Look,” songs that had killer grooves. I was also fascinated by well crafted arrangements that employed the layering of parts and the skillful use of horns and strings. When my listening expanded to jazz, it was the economical swing of Count Basie or the melodic improvisation of Paul Desmond that pulled me in. Recordings with torrents of notes played by emotional instrumentalists were rarely found on my record shelf.

I recall a friend telling me to listen to John Coltrane. I bought an LP called “Om” having no idea what to expect. It started out with the chanting of “Om,” followed by avante garde, cacophonous screaming on the saxophone accompanied by gongs and cymbals. It was not music I cared for at all, and I’m surprised I ever bought another Coltrane record. Even when I did, his playing demonstrated the virtuosic (typical was his classic “Giant Steps” where he plays page after page of running the chords); or the intense and extended soul searching. There is no doubt it was important music, but it didn’t appeal to me. While my sax hero Cannonball Adderley could play ferociously fast, the albums I liked best were from his middle period in the sixties, where he was playing soul jazz with their ear-catching melodies and formative funk. Even though he typically only had two horns, they meshed perfectly in the arrangements written by his brother Nat and Joe Zawinul. Those things appealed to me, along with Cannon’s great tone and soulful approach. People compare his playing to a Gospel preacher delivering a sermon, and he did have a highly vocal approach to his improvising. When I started playing, I didn’t recognize this concept until I started working with guys who played as if soloing is a competitive sport. At first I was enraptured by this type of playing. Later I came to think of it as an exercise in self-indulgence; too much information for a listener to comprehend. This type of player often likes to surround himself with musicians who play the same way, so a quartet results with too much information times four. It makes the listener (or at least this listener) want to wave a white flag.

On the other hand, some players are capable of playing a ton of music if they want to, but they choose their moments. I find that the better your rhythm section, the more likely you can afford to play less, and be able to choose your moments. If the rhythm players lay down a sparse but tight groove, the soloist can play more melodically instead of just running the changes. For me, playing with a well oiled rhythm section is the Holy Grail because I don’t feel I have an overabundance of technique on any of my instruments. I love to play melodic phrases— licks that can be whistled or sung back to you. If I’m playing with people who are fighting each other for dominance, I feel I have to join the fray and start playing a whole bunch of notes in an attempt to fit in on the bandstand. I am not someone who cares to or is even capable of doing that. Jon Hendricks related a story about Count Basie’s interview with a British reporter. The reporter asked Basie why he chose to play so economically. Basie replied “that’s all I can play.” It’s really true. If you can find people who complement the way you play, that’s the way to go.

My first real experience in a big band, and an important period of growth for me, was playing in a group under Chuck Mangione while in high school. Chuck had written some outstanding jazz ensemble charts before he became well-known. I remember having a couple of solo opportunities. At one point Chuck pulled me aside, and his comments had a sobering effect. He said that what I was doing was pretty much bullshit. Nice phraseology, but in retrospect he was correct. I was playing as fast as I could with little thought of the context or what served the song. The co-conductor of the band, drummer Vinnie Ruggerio, was trying to tell me the same thing in a different way. Specifically, I had a solo spot on a James Brown song, a one-chord vamp, and Vinnie was telling me “look, just get down low on your horn, on that low B flat, play something real good rhythmically and honk away.” I remember dismissing his advice, thinking he was foolish for telling me that, because the song was in the key of B and here’s this drummer telling me to honk on a B flat. I completely missed the point of what he was trying to say, but it was the same message Chuck had. The point was not to play everything I knew, especially because I barely knew anything. The first requirement is to improvise within the groove. Perhaps you’ve heard the anecdote about the cymbal that came flying across the bandstand when a young Charlie Parker tried to play many notes, beyond his capability. Jo Jones threw the cymbal as a critique of Bird’s effort. Chuck Mangione delivered the same message to me that day. It took a while for me to think of it as a favor.

Almost all young improvisers go through a phase of overplaying. It’s a way to deal with an inability to create melodic statements over chord changes. Sometimes it takes years to develop that skill, and sometimes the skill doesn’t mature at all. Even though it can be painful for the young player to hear, it helps to have someone point it out, even though it may not sink in until many a chorus later.

Tales of the Big Bands: Sidemen Stories

2011-10-01T10:10:00.011-04:00

The previous parts of our Tales of the Big Bands focused on Ellington and Basie. In my opinion, Duke Ellington and his band represented the pinnacle of big band composition while Count Basie and his men achieved the essence of swing. I am constantly amazed, when I listen and read about the swing era, at the number of bands that existed and managed to find work, and the players who literally engaged in musical chairs, moving from one band to the next. Our last installment on big bands features a sampling of sidemen anecdotes and perhaps will include your favorite big band.

We’ll start out with arguably the most popular big band of all, the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Saxophonist Jerry Jerome was with Glenn’s band in 1937, a short-lived group that broke up and then reformed without Jerry. He never enjoyed the hits and the popularity of the second Miller band, but has no regrets:

JJ: George Simon had given me an A minus rating in the band [with the Cliquot Club Eskimos]. He said “George Seravo and Jerry Jerome would be the outstanding players in the band.”

MR: You mean in print he had done this?

JJ: Yeah. He was the editor of Metronome Magazine. So Glenn came over and said he liked my playing and would I like to join the band. I said “Glenn, what does it pay?” Because I was still interested in going back to medical school. He says “$45 a week.” I said “that’s that I’m getting with Harry Reiser.” And I couldn’t see any advancement that way. He says “yeah, we’re going to grow and I’m recording next week.” I says “really?” “Yeah” he says “recording at Decca.” “Oh, that sounds pretty good to me.” So I made my decision, I left Harry and went with Glenn. And this is a cute story, Monk. I went into the studio to record the first thing with Glenn. And I got to recognize some of the musicians: Manny Klein, Charlie Spivak, Will Bradley. This is the kind of players. I says “oh my God what am I doing here?” And Glenn says “now Jerry in ‘I Got Rhythm’ would you take 32 bars?” “Wow. I’m playing jazz? Hey, this is it. It’s worth the 45 bucks.” And I played my first record with Glenn with “I Got Rhythm,” with Hal MacIntyre. We were the only two people that had been with the new group that Glenn had gotten up, and I couldn’t figure what I was doing with this band, until I got up to Raymour Ballroom to rehearse for opening that job, there wasn’t any of these guys, just Hal and myself, and all new players. I said to Glenn “what happened to Charlie Spivak and Manny Klein?” “Oh” he says “they’re buddies of mine you know, and I wanted to make a real good record for my first big band record.” So he said they came in.

MR: He got the ringers.

JJ: I didn’t know. And then we went to work. And it was work.

MR: He was a task master?

JJ: Oh, unbelievable. I didn’t mind, you know it was all new for me you know. He was a task master but he wanted perfection. And he was also struggling for an identity. You know in those days, band leaders had identity, a hook.

MR: A sound.

JJ: A sound, something. You know even a guy like Kay Kayser would ... his sound was his personality. Just introducing the band, “Here comes sassy Sully Mason to sing a tune.” But that was how you could identify him. Or Shep Fields blowing water through a straw, you know a bubbling rhythm. Whatever pleases. And Glenn had trouble. He was not a trombone player like Tommy Dorsey. In fact he was rather pedestrian I thought. You know I didn’t think his jazz amounted to very much. And proof is, he never really fronted with his trombone, playing. He would lead the band up front and go back and play with the section. And so he had to use his arranging acumen.

MR: Because he wasn’t a really outgoing type personality, right? So he couldn’t push that part of it.

JJ: Oh, not at all. But Glenn was a great learning experience. I learned what playing notes properly is and how to really play by the mark. Glenn would say “crescendo — diminuendo” and he says “keep it under — keep it above.” But one thing that comes to mind that’s so cute, when I played my solo for “I Got Rhythm” with Glenn, I listened to it and it’s a chorus and you know you can do a thousand of those on a recording, you never do the same thing, you’re improvising, you know. So we went out on our first one nighter after we did our recording somewhere along the line, and I got out and played, and played a totally different chorus, which is a soloist’s preference I would think. Glenn came over to me and he said “Jerry, when you stand up and play your solo, I wish you’d play the one that’s on the record.” I said “why?” He says “well” he says “I consider that part of the arrangement. People expect it. They buy the record and they expect to hear that.” Oh, wow.

MR: I sometimes wonder, some of those classic trumpet solos in some of the Miller arrangements, were they improvised first and then someone actually wrote them out? You know like in “String of Pearls?” Even though it might have been improvised first, it became a part of the arrangements.

JJ: Without question. There have been a lot of Miller bands that have come along the line and I notice that most of them that stand up, play the solos that are on the record. And I think that’s for identity. It makes it sound more like the Miller band. So he had a point. But the Part B of that statement is when I joined Benny Goodman, and I got up and stood up and played “Undecided” on a one nighter, and I played what I’d played on the record, and Benny came over to me and he said “did you like what you played on the record?” “Oh,” I said “thank you, Benny.” Yeah. See that’s the difference. Benny didn’t — you know.

MR: Glenn Miller was not jazz band per se, it was more of a dance.

JJ: Yeah. And the best. Really he was great. His tempos were great, and he strove for an audience reaction too. What do you like? What can I play for you?

MR: Well you went from one tough leader to another with Benny Goodman.

JJ: Well that’s a relative word, Monk, “tough.” Because they weren’t tough as far as I’m concerned. I understood Glenn. I was a confidante of Glenn’s. Glenn and I were close. I might tell you this it’s an interesting bit of history from my point of view, and that is I stayed with Glenn until he broke the band up. I think it was New Year’s Eve that we had our last gig. And he said “I’ll call you when I reorganize.” He had to get some more money and get his second band started. He called me three months later in March, and I met him at the Rialto Bar in New York. I’ll never forget that, on 49th Street, which is sort of Musician’s Alley at that time. All the hotels where the musicians stayed and the bars and all of that you know, sort of a little place. And Glenn said “I’m reorganizing and I’d like to have you come back. But” he says “I want you to be a third partner with me and Chummy MacGregor” the piano player. He says “we’ll draw the same salary, put up a car, split gasoline ... the third bona fide partner.” And I had just joined Red Norvo. And I loved that band. Just a small band, I think it was nine men, but it had a lot of tenor saxophone playing, and playing with Glenn was very restrictive, it was reading a lot of music, and an occasional 32 bars, but he’d never let a guy blow. In other words if he’s cooking, forget about it, it was never a situation like that. I turned him down. And he was very crestfallen. He asked if I would come and rehearse the saxes for him at the studio that night, which I did. And in the sax section there was a kid who came out from I think Detroit at that time, was Tex Benecke. And he took my place in the section. And he was the right guy for that band, without question. He did better by getting Tex.

When I interviewed saxophonist and arranger Dave Pell in 1996 I could tell that he was a bit of a cut-up, a man who never lacked in confidence or the willingness to take a chance. Much of his early career was spent with a lower tier of big bands, but he and his sidemen always wanted them to sound as polished as possible. Their efforts to ensure this could even include upstaging the leader.

DP: Oh, it was fun. But a lot of players that you play with, I was in Bobby Sherwood’s band and I took Zoot Simms’ place. He moved to first alto and I played his tenor chair. Well I’m sitting next to Zoot all night. I mean what could be bad about that? We’re both kids you know. This was in the ‘40’s. And I quit the band I was with in the ‘40’s and stayed on the West Coast and got the job in the relief band. And Stan Getz, myself, you know, great players were sitting in the relief band, a Latin band. And we’re having a great time. But you’re learning from the guy, like Stan was the greatest dressing room player that ever lived. He’d get out front and he’d choke.

MR: No kidding?

DP: Oh he was terrible. He was so insecure and such an introvert that he couldn’t get up like me, no, I don’t give a damn, I’m going to get up and play you know.

MR: For our students that will watch this, can you explain relief band?

DP: A relief band is — the main attraction has got to go out and get a 20 minute break, and you had to have a live band on stage. And usually a different kind of band so that you could do the rumba, like we had a Latin band playing a Four Brothers type tenor book. And then we’d play Freddie Martin style and then we’d play Latin and then we’d do this and then the other bands, whoever the name band was at The Palladium, which was every four or five weeks, we’d just sit there and said hello the guys and you know it was great. But I stayed in L.A. and I didn’t have to go on the road so I really enjoyed it.

MR: And then you went with Tony Pastor later on?

DP: No I was with Tony Pastor getting there. And the story about Tony Pastor, I get to California and I say, “Gee Tony, this is great. Good-bye. I’m quitting.” He says ‘you can’t leave me in L.A., this is wilderness. There’s no guys.” I said “Good-bye.” And so he says “well stay with me until we leave California and then you can quit. So six weeks later I left the band. But I had fun with Tony because I’d run out the microphone to beat him to his own solos. Because he didn’t really like to play. But the only way I could get to play was to be a cocky kid and run up to the mike when he’s ready to play and I’m up there playing already. “Sorry, Tony.”

MR: Sounds like you didn’t lack for self confidence.

DP: Oh, no, I was a smart ass, it was just terrible. But that’s kind of a thing that you have to do. It’s almost like the sidemen on the band, they keep watching the leader. And watching all the mistakes he makes. And all the wrong things he does. Because in the back of his mind, I’m going to be a leader some day and I ain’t never gonna put myself — I mean Les Brown, I had a great time with Lester’s band and played on every tune, you know I had a great book to play, and we had [Don] Fagerquist and all the good players. And I remember as I went out every time to play a solo out front, we’d just didn’t stand up, we’d go out front — show biz. And I remember kicking over Lester’s horn at least once a night. “Oh, I tripped, ohhh, I’m so sorry, Oh, Les I’ll fix it later.” Well he didn’t play too well. And we didn’t like him playing in the band with us, because the saxes sounded so good. But when he played he played awful. And so if his horn didn’t work, he wouldn’t play. And Les after years and years he finally figured out I was doing it on purpose. You know, “I’m so clumsy, Les, I’m sorry.” But I was kicking over his horn so he wouldn’t play. Terrible, terrible. But I always wanted to be a leader and you know, even in the worst way, you want to be a leader somehow, and you want to be able to so “no, no, my tempo.” And then the drummer in the back says “no, Dave, that’s the wrong tempo, you’ve got to kick it up here.”

MR: Well when you became a leader I assume you kept your horn out of the way.

An elderly gentleman who often comes to my gigs goes into his own bit of heaven when I fill his request for “Intermission Riff.” He never fails to tell anybody around him that Stan Kenton was a genius. The Stan Kenton Orchestra probably was the most controversial of all big bands. Stan’s idea of what a big band should sound like didn’t necessarily include the basic parameters that were normally expected. Trombonist Eddie Bert spent time with Kenton and was shocked to learn what Stan wanted and didn’t want from his band:

MR: I wanted to play a little piece here — see if it jogs your memory.

[audio interlude]

EB: Well I know it’s Stan’s band.

MR: Yeah.

EB: It’s probably Maynard.

MR: “Cuban Carnival.”

EB: Oh yeah.

MR: And you’re on this, I think around ’46 or so.

EB: No, it must have been ’47.

MR: Okay.

EB: I joined him in ’47.

MR: All right. ’47. What did you think of his music?

EB: Well he featured trombones. That’s why I wanted to go with that band. And he was very popular. I mean guys were poll winners in the band, like Shelly Manne and Art Pepper. So I figured well let me go. Because Kai [Winding] had done great on the band and Kai and I were friends. So I went with the band. And it was like a family that band. He was a great guy to work for.

MR: Some people didn’t think he swung very good.

EB: No. That he didn’t. One night we played in Mankato, Minnesota. Mankato Ballroom. And generally Stan would like spread out. But this night the bandstand was small. So we were like this. And the band started swinging. And of course we all wanted to swing. So the band was swinging and he stopped it. He said “this is not Basie. This is Stan Kenton.” So we were looking at each other like — damn.

MR: That’s really curious.

EB: Yeah I don’t know, he just didn’t understand swinging.

MR: I never thought about it backwards though, I mean like at that point how would you stop swinging?

EB: I know. We all looked at each other like what is he talking about. I mean Shelly is a swinger. You know, Shelly Manne. Well we always used to go out after the gig and go blow somewhere, wherever we were. But when you get on the bandstand it was Stan Kenton.

MR: But people who came to Kenton expecting to dance, was that a problem?

EB: We used to play the “Concerto to End All Concertos” and that was like all different tempos. And I swear I’d see people dancing. I don’t know what they were doing but they were dancing. You know you’d have the crowd in the front they were all standing there, and then in the back would be people dancing. Well maybe they caught the changes, I don’t know.

MR: Interesting.

EB: But his band was very popular. He had like a machine. In other words, he had a guy that would go out a month in advance and set everything up, have pictures in all the music stores, have the records. It was his advance man. Then Stan would leave after the gig, wherever we were, he’d have his car, and he’d leave and do interviews and be on the radio in whatever city we were in, and it was like a machine. So it all kept rolling like that.

There certainly was rivalry between the big bands during the swing era. The competition for gigs and for the best sidemen were much like sports teams are today. Two of the most celebrated big bands were, interestingly enough, led by clarinet players. Their playing could be distinguished from one another, but they did share a certain lack of social grace. Trumpeter John Best is one of those musicians who made the rounds in almost all the best big bands. He was not a man who took kindly to insults, and may have landed in the wrong spot with Artie Shaw. He also speaks about the power of the Musicians Union during the big band era. George Simon’s influence in advancing a musician’s career is again shown here:

JB: I also enrolled in Duke that fall [1932] and I stayed there six weeks and left again. But Les [Brown] graduated from Duke four years later. In the meantime I went back to Chapel Hill, ten miles away, at the University, the campus. And I was playing with Les’ band and also a campus band, and that was the end of my schooling after that. I wound up going to Chicago in 1936 with some fellows that I had met with the Biagini band in Savannah, Georgia. Hank Biagini had a band down there. And I came down to join the band, but I had laid off for three weeks and I had no endurance. So I didn’t get the job. But I met all those guys — they were the nucleus of a band that was organized in Chicago that fall. That would be 1936. It was a pretty good band. It was reviewed. We played Frank Dailey’s Meadowbrook. I got an honorable mention write-up by George Simon, and Glenn Miller was with George Simon and they came in there and that was the first time I’d met Glenn. I had heard him before and seen him before. But they heard me play and it was favorable mention.

MR: The first time that your name showed up in print as far as the music magazine?

JB: Yeah. And that band broke up at the end of ‘36. So I decided I’d try to get a New York card. You have to sit out six months time, residence. You are eligible to work after three months, certain type of work. So you’ve got to sweat it out. Well I was sweating it out for three months. And I got a knock on the door and a trumpet player that I had played with, Biagini. He had Artie Shaw with him. Well I had heard of Artie Shaw, in fact I had a record that I had bought of Artie Shaw, with strings on it, and Peg LaCentra sang the vocal on it. And a song called “I’ll Remember” I think it was. And Artie said he was organizing a new band. And he had had string bands and lost a lot of money on it, because the people just wouldn’t go for it. He was going to organize a band with the same instrumentation as Benny. And he had an opening for another trumpet. So I said well — maybe I shouldn’t say all this, Artie might listen.

MR: Please, do.

JB: Anyway well I’ll go ahead with it. I said “Artie, I’ve been here three months, you know, starving. And I don’t want to lose the three months time.” He said “I’m a personal friend of Jacob” — I don’t remember his name — the President of the New York Local [Musicians Union]. He said “I’ll see that your time goes on.

MR: Because if you left New York, then you’d lose your three months? Is that the idea?

JB: Right. If they pull that card out, the union card out, your transfer card. So I said well that’s fine you know. Well at the end of the six months, I asked the manager for my card. He pulled it out and it said withdrawn, March 31^st. So that kind of upset me a little bit. It was a while there that I was pretty angry at Mr. Shaw. And in September of that year I left Artie and I went back to North Carolina.

MR: So you never at that point got into the New York Local. Because they just pulled your card and you had to start over?

JB: Well in a way I’m glad I didn’t because the way it turned out it was good. And you get mad — I got mad at Artie. He had a recording date and this was in the 1937 band, September. And I’d been in that band too. But after the union card thing, I was not too friendly. So he had one of those transcription dates in New York. Like we’d play in Wildwood, New Jersey, and there was a new tune out, I can’t remember the name of it, and my part had the release on the tune. So I played it, and the saxophone player, a good friend, Freddie Petrie, he turned around and gave me the “yeah!” you know, encouraging. I got through, sat down, and at the end of the thing Shaw said “John, is that the best you can play that?” I said “Artie” — at that time it was my best attempt. He said “I’ll play that tomorrow on the recording.” And I said “well, as of right now, Artie, you can play every other solo I have in the book.” And that kind of shook him up. He said “well what does that mean?” I said “two weeks or tonight, any way you want, either way I’ll leave tonight.” And I did leave in two weeks. I went back to North Carolina. Eight months, I worked in a furniture store and did local, you know, playing around Charlotte, Spartanburg, and a couple of colleges there. Eight months, and Artie had told me and some of those guys that I didn’t hear enough of the early Louis Armstrongs, which I didn’t. And meantime I had bought a lot of those records and listened to them and I finally realized what they were talking about. Like “Wild Man Blues” and all those old things. So I wrote Artie a letter somewhere in that time. He called me up and said “do you want to come back?” So I did, I went back to join him in Boston, to Roseland Square Ballroom I think. Billie Holiday was in the band. And I stayed in that band until I joined the Glenn Miller band. Three or more years.

Drummer Sonny Igoe could be listed as the definition of a journeyman musician. He held down the drum chair in many of the best bands of the era, reminding us that very few big band musicians ever got close to being rich. Sonny relates his experience with the other great clarinet player, Benny Goodman:

SI: I can remember when I started with Benny Goodman’s band, now we’re talking 19 — what would that be, — 19 —

MR: ‘48?

SI: ’48 and ’49. That’s right. I was going to say ’47. And there’s a long story concerned with this, and it’s the thing I told you before. You can’t do anything alone. Somebody’s got to help you. So I had come off the road playing with three what we would call back in those days B bands. They weren’t like the Benny Goodman or that sort of thing. They were like a guy named Tommy Reed who had a band that was made up of all ex-servicemen. I went out to San Francisco to play with him. And then I was with Les Elgart’s band at the Meadowbrook, and then I was with a lady bandleader named Ina Ray Hutton, I don’t know if you ever heard of her. She used to have a girl band but now she had a guy band. And then all those jobs fizzled out and then from one to another you get a call, “would you like to audition for Ina Ray Hutton?” Sure, because I don’t have a gig. And I wasn’t married yet or anything like that. So those bands, Tommy Reed, Ina Ray Hutton and Les Elgart were 90 dollar bands. That’s a week on the road with hotels and meals you had to pay your own.

MR: You had to pay your own.

SI: Yeah. And you know you wonder, 90 bucks, how did I ever do that? So okay now a long thing goes on, and I know that Benny Goodman is rehearsing a new band. And I had also heard that he was getting a drummer every day. He didn’t like anybody. So guys were telling me — there used to be a hangout in New York called Charlie’s Tavern, where everybody used to go because beers were a nickel and we could hang around there, drink beer, lie, you know tell a lot of lies. So anyway, this guy goes “hey Sonny, you ought to go up to Benny’s rehearsal” he said “he’s having trouble finding somebody he likes.” I said “he’ll probably hire Shelly Manne or somebody like that.” But I thought about it and it came to me that I had the acquaintance of a man who was an insurance executive who was a friend of Benny Goodman’s. He loved musicians. He loved to talk to us and all that kind of stuff. So I asked him. His name was Eddie Furst. And I said “Ed, do you think you could introduce me to Benny Goodman so I could audition?” He said “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that, I’ll call him.” So he called me the next day and said “we’re going up Thursday at 11:00” or whatever the heck it was. Right? So he takes me and we go up there and he’s rehearsing at MCA in New York. They had an auditorium. And they were rehearsing in there. And I had a very good ear. I memorize very quickly, luckily. It’s another lucky thing, you can’t teach it. So anyway we go up there and the band in playing and they were rehearsing this one tune three or four times through, five or six times through, whatever. And I’m listening to it. And I’m getting that down pretty good already, and I’ll see if I can play that tune. But you never know, you might have to go up there and sight read. So anyway I could read passably. But anyway they take a break. And so Benny said “Eddie, how are you?” And he comes over and shakes his hand. And he says “this is the young man I was telling you about, Benny.” And he said “oh, nice to meet you Sonny,” he said “why don’t you play the next set,” he says. He says “we’ll take a ten minute break” or something like that and he says “you play the next set.” The drummer was from Philadelphia and he was very inexperienced. Scared to death. Not that I wasn’t nervous, Benny Goodman, my God, this was a whole new strata for me. And this kid, I don’t think he played with anybody. But anyway he was so accommodating. I said “do you mind if I use your drums to play the next set” or something. He said “oh please” he said “please.” And we introduced ourselves and all that kind of stuff. A very nice guy. But he wasn’t ready for that. I wasn’t sure I was, you know because I was going like this [taps], but I knew several guys in the band from Charlie’s Tavern and around town. So anyway okay I sit in. And they play that tune that I had sat through five or six times. And I had the part up, like I pretend I’m reading it. And so anyway I didn’t have to really read much of it, it wasn’t that complex, but there was a couple of starts and stops and a few things in it. And I went through it [claps] just like that. So Benny looked up like this. And he said “stay up there, Pops.”

MR: Pops. He called you Pops already.

SI: Everybody. Yeah he called everybody Pops. So anyway he says “stay up there, Pops.” So anyway I stayed up there and I played a few more tunes I got lucky enough to get through. And then he said “okay, everybody’s through, we’ll play with the quartet.” So he said “stay up there, Pops.” So Buddy Greco was the piano player and Benny, and bass player was a fellow named Clyde Lombardi. And so we played with just a small group for about an hour. And so then he packed up and walked out. He didn’t say a word to me, that was it. So oh he did say “come back tomorrow, bring your own drums in.” Something like that. So I go back tomorrow, and then I played the whole rehearsal. And then again at the end he goes through the small band, because he loved playing with the small group too. And we played that. And so it’s going on three weeks now. And I get a call from another clarinet player, a guy named Jerry Wald. You ever hear that name? Anyway he was going into the Paramount Theater. And he asked me if I’d be interested in doing the Paramount with him. And I said “I’m rehearsing with Benny.” He said “well did he hire you yet?” I said “I’ve been doing it for three weeks he hasn’t said a word.” He says “well listen, I can give you another couple of days and then I’ll have to get somebody else. He says, “but the job is yours if you want it.” And I said “okay, thank you, very nice of you.” So anyway the next day I’m at rehearsal with Benny, right? Now Benny used to walk around as I call tooteling all the time. He’d go [scats]. And he comes up to me and gives me a nudge, and he’s tooteling. Like this. He says “get your suit yet, Pops?” And I said “what do you mean get my suit yet?” He says, “you know, your uniform.” Because the band was going to Sacks Fifth Avenue for tuxedo coats. So I said no. He said “why don’t you get your uniform?” I said “nobody told me I was hired.” He said “nobody told you you were hired? You were hired the first day.” He said “nobody said anything?” I said “no, you never said anything.” He said “he’s supposed to — where’s what’s his name —” the manager. “Come up here. Talk to him.” So okay. Now the big decision of my life comes up, right? So the guy says “oh Sonny it was my fault,” he says, “I apologize.” He said “you got the job” and he said “you’ve got to get your uniform.” And he said “now how much money do you want?” Nobody ever asked me that before. Right? I can remember Gene Krupa saying “if you ever play with Benny Goodman he respects you if you ask for a lot of money.” But I didn’t feel as though I was that secure you know. But that ran through my mind. So I had come from these, like I said, these 90 dollar bands. Never made more than 90 bucks a week. So I kind of haltingly said “how about 125?” He says “well I think we can make that.” And I could almost hear him going chuckle-chuckle-chuckle. So anyway that’s the way that went. I was the lowest paid guy in the band. I would have swept out the bus, I don’t care. But I spent a year with Benny until he broke up the band. I spent a year with him. And I really felt as though I learned a lot, I came a long way experience-wise and how to really play in a band and gee to have somebody as good as him. A lot of guys said he used to be very bad on a lot of people. But he never once said anything to me about my playing. He never said you’re playing too loud, you’re rushing, you’re dragging, you’re doing this, you’re doing that. Never said anything. So that put me over the top from the standpoint of having to audition with other bands if I went with — so I went from Benny Goodman to Woody Herman, you know and that was my next step. But it was funny in those days the way everybody said you’ve got to watch “boy you’re working for Benny — did you get ‘the ray’ yet?” I have a story about “the ray” if you’re interested.

MR: I am.

SI: The thing is that he would, he even said to us one night at the Palladium in Hollywood he says “you’ve heard a lot about the ray” he says “I’m not really mad at anybody.” He said “sometimes I daydream and my mind wanders and I just happen to be looking in somebody’s direction. I’m not trying to stare them down or anything like that.” So now we’re in Canada doing a whole string of one-nighters in the hockey rinks. They used to put the boards down on the ice so people could dance, and then they would build this tremendous movie set for the band. They’d have the saxes down here and each section up. The drums were like up there. Way up at the top. You couldn’t hear anything. You couldn’t hear the band you were so far away. And so and Benny’s down there. So we play the first set and Benny, he’s looking around and puzzled. And he looks up at me, and I had another small set down in front for the small group. So he looked up at me and he goes — you know what that means. You come on down here and play down here. So not a word was said. So I pick up my sticks and brushes and go down to the other set. And I played a set down there and I’m in seventh heaven because the whole band is right here in my ear. Oh what a feeling that is. That’s why when people play music today all they do is turn up the bass. You hear bluh-bluh-bluh. It doesn’t sound like music. But when you have the brilliance of the brass and the saxophones right, oh man, it’s hi-fi, the original hi-fi. So anyway okay we take a break. Now we’re coming back up and I’m down front now and I got a little closer and got myself comfortable and I have my music stand here in case I need some charts. And Benny’s right over my music stand like this, eye level. I’m kind of kitty corner to him. If I look there, there he is. Now he had the habit of having his clarinet under his arm like this, holding it this way. So he was in that pose looking right at me. And I could hear some murmurs in the background, guys in the sax section saying “uh-oh, look’s like it’s Sonny’s turn in the barrel tonight” or something like that and all these kinds of things. So he’s just looking at me over the top of my stand. Just staring at me. And geez I’d had enough. So I stood up, and this is true, I stood up and I went like this in front of his eyes. He never budged. And the band, everybody’s having hysterics. They thought I’d get canned right then. He said “sit down kid, what are you doing?” He never knew I did it. So he says “okay let’s go.” And we went on to the next number. That story got around town in New York even. “Geez I heard what you did to Benny.” It was funny. He never even acknowledged it. But I did see him ride some guys sometimes and I felt sorry for them. I think it was one of those things that every once in a while if he got in that mood if he knew he could ride you he’d ride you.

In 1964, as a 14-year-old aspiring saxophonist, my parents took me to see the Glenn Miller Orchestra under the direction of Ray McKinley in a Rochester, NY auditorium. The band sounded much like the records I had come to know. I stood at the front of the stage staring up at the saxmen in their matching blue sport coats, picturing myself as a member. At the time it didn’t occur to me that I was born too late and had missed the era where such gigs were prevalent. Conducting these interviews for the jazz archive has enabled me to vicariously experience the thrill of the sound, the challenge of the travel, and first-hand stories of the colorful characters of the time.

WHCL

2011-09-21T10:43:00.003-04:00

Every semester I do a two hour per week jazz show at the Hamilton College radio station, WHCL 88.7 FM. This semester I will be doing it from 12 noon to 2 PM EST on Wednesdays when the college is in session. The show can be heard on-line via streaming.

Tales of the Big Bands: Basie, Part 3

2011-08-18T15:56:00.020-04:00

The top echelon singers loved the Basie band. Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra are among the most recognizable names that recorded with Count Basie. Basie also had the good fortune and sense to employ hip singers as part of the orchestra. You’ll recognize the names Billy Holiday, Helen Humes, Jimmy Rushing, and the subject of our final Basie blog entry, Joe Williams, Basie’s “Number One Son.”

Many of the quotes and images in this blog entry were obtained during interview sessions conducted for the purpose of creating a 1996 documentary on Joe’s life entitled “A Portrait in Song,” which was produced by Burrill Crohn.

Joe joined the Basie band on Christmas Day in 1954. He was not a total unknown to the Count. Joe sat in a number of times with Basie’s septet at the Brass Rail in Chicago, and the Count must have heard something he liked. Basie signed Joe up when his “new testament” band came to fruition. The Joe and Basie combination was an instant success, resulting in the early 1955 release of “Count Basie Swings/Joe Williams Sings,” which contained Joe’s signature song, “Every Day I Have the Blues.” Trombonist Bill Hughes was a young man at that time and was thrilled to be a part of this ensemble.

BH: I think when [Joe] first joined this band he had performed with Basie’s sextet or something, somewhere before. Basie had heard him. I had never heard the guy until he came in and when he came in I looked at him, you know, like the pants were a little high, his wardrobe wasn’t all that great, and I was saying I wonder why Basie’s hiring this guy, until I heard him sing that night. Then I was saying I wonder what took him so long to hire this guy. And I remember I was young then and I remember walking down the streets of New York and almost every record store you’d hear this sound coming out and it would be Joe Williams singing these things. And I would be saying to myself, wow, I’m a part of this. And the band was so hot. And Basie was so hot. And every night man, it was just a joy to go and play this music. Actually I don’t think the Basie band would have survived as long as it has without Joe having been that catalyst back in 1954.

An observation often made about the Basie band is that they could sound like a small group even though it was a large ensemble. Basie must have had that in mind when he signed Joe on with no arrangements ready for him. The band was able to set riffs and create head arrangements for the first couple of weeks until things could be written down that suited Joe’s voice and unique abilities. Joe talked about those first few months in the band:

JW: We had no arrangements. None at all. We got to Jackson, Mississippi I guess it was. And they had a place they called the Two Spot. And we were there about four or five days. And I got together with Ernie Wilkins and Frank Foster and arranged “Every Day I Have the Blues,” “Teach Me Tonight,” — Foster did “In the Evening,” and something else. And there was “Every Day I Fall in Love,” and something else he did. But yeah, that was ’55. And when we got back we had these things to present, plus the things they were doing that were head [arrangements], like “Roll ‘em Pete” and “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”

It would be inevitable that Joe would be compared with Mr. Five-by-Five, Jimmy Rushing, whose fifteen year tenure with the orchestra ended in 1950. But Joe didn’t look backwards. He was confronted with the considerable shadow of Jimmy Rushing when he went to England with the band in 1957:

(The photograph of Joe and Jimmy above was taken at

the Newport Jazz Festival in 1962.)

JW: We went [to England] in 1957 and one of the critics stated at the end of his obvious critique or review, that most of the applause was given to a young singer named Joe Williams, who is no Jimmy Rushing. I said I certainly hope so. I wasn’t trying to be a Jimmy Rushing either. That’s why I fought Basie so hard, it’s that if they asked me did I know anything of Jimmy Rushing’s. I told them no, I didn’t. And I didn’t, really. It would have been simple for me to learn, I could learn his stuff in one night and perform it. But that was not the object of the exercise. I wasn’t singing 1930’s, 1940’s, or even 1950 music. I was adding things that I wanted to present, that’s all. And I’m glad it found favor, not only with the musicians but with the audiences as well. I had to fight to get him to do it. But I learned from it. He would sit, after we presented it, and it was enthusiastically received by the public, then he would look at me and go — and I gleaned what he meant, that he wouldn’t have to say anything, like if you believe in something strong enough, fight for it, even those that are closest to you. Because he was paying for the arrangements in those days.

Basie taught Joe that if he believed strongly enough in the direction he wanted to take, and if he worked for it, it would pay off in the end. Joe also learned a bit about when to get off the stage. Joe talked about a trip to Stockholm, Sweden in 1956.

JW: So Basie said to me “you’ve been killing them in the States, everybody just loves you over there.” He said “let’s see what you’re going to do now, ‘cause none of these people understand English. [There were] ten thousand people standing on their chairs and they were busy, you know, like screaming and hollering. And I said to Mr. Basie, “what are we going to do, Bas?” He says “for once you’re going to quit while you’re ahead.” I never forgot that lesson, man.

Another musical lesson from Basie offered a poignant description of Basie’s character:

JW: As a leader, I watched and observed [Basie]. He never saw mistakes. Those of us who knew, it was like, gee that wasn’t what we do 98 times out of a hundred. That was an accident. And so instead of looking where it came from, he’d always happen to be looking someplace else. Somebody over there you know. He missed it. He never heard it. He did something marvelously unusual. [When a musician did something that pleased him] he would go light up like a Christmas tree. What I learned from him was that when you were working with first class musicians particularly, or any musician for that matter, you live with what they contribute. You don’t have to give them direction necessarily or anything. Let them find their own level of what goes in support of what, according to their own depth and perception. You have to. And that way you get an unusual presentation and one that is always fresh and refreshing to you. You don’t get tired.

Considering all the young men who passed through Count Basie’s orchestra, Joe must have been very special to earn the moniker “Basie’s Number One Son.” When Joe decided it was time to move on and leave the band, in 1961, the Count attended Joe’s first gig with the Sweets Edison quintet.

While great singers all love performing in front of stellar bands, the feeling is not always mutual. Vocalists, by their very presence on stage, move the spotlight off the instrumentalists. A singer needed to earn his/her respect with the band both musically and from their personal character. Many musicians spoke of Joe’s musical talent — his ability to sing blues, ballads and anything in between in any key. The second part of the equation was addressed by baritone saxophonist John Williams, who crossed paths with Joe during the singer’s many appearances with the Basie orchestra in the 1970’s:

JW: Well in reference to being a singer I always like to say that if Joe Williams isn’t the greatest singer in the world, there’s none greater. And in reference to being a human being, I think that one of the greatest attributes that a human being could have is good manners. And this is the one thing that I noticed about him that made him sort of, I mean set him apart from many of the other performers with whom I’ve worked. And Basie used to say “God doesn’t like ugly,” in reference to people who are ill-mannered. And I could see why he was proud to call Joe his Number One Son because Joe always, from the moment I met him, was a person who had very good manners. And it starts with self-respect. He had self-respect so it was very easy for him to show us respect. And I just didn’t feel like a lowly baritone player who had very few solos to play, just an ensemble player, a guy supporting the front line. I felt just as important in Joe’s presence as one of the featured musicians. So anyway, good manners was the thing that really caught my attention.

Joe’s respect for other performers included fellow singers as well. In the concert documentary mentioned above, Joe performed live at Hamilton College, with the Count Basie Orchestra under the direction of Grover Mitchell. He surprised the producer and production staff when on his first song (“Every Day I Have the Blues,” his signature tune), he invited Chris Murrell, the then-current Basie vocalist, to join him on stage and trade verses. After the concert we asked both Bill Hughes and Joe himself why he chose this moment to spotlight another singer.

BH: Yeah, he invited Chris. He’s very generous with the microphone. But most of the great jazz singers I’ve ever seen have been generous with the microphone. They are eager to have their fellow artists come up and show what they can do.

JW: I vowed within myself that if ever I found someone who wanted that microphone as badly as I wanted it, then I would share it with them. My manager John [Levy] used to give me hell about it because he says you share your space and your time with the musicians and you’ll have people say “wow!” and you say “put the spotlight on somebody else.” He said “then you have to go back and grab them again.” Well I feel as though I can. I can afford to present someone. Because I don’t have to stand there and have them keep that spotlight on me.

The Jazz Archive continues to acquire interviews. In July of 2011 we visited Iola Brubeck, wife of Dave Brubeck, and she reminisced about Count Basie and Joe Williams.

IB: I should have brought this up when we were talking about the idea for The Real Ambassadors because Joe Williams was a part of that. That summer I was in New York and I went to Central Park and Joe Williams was with the Basie band, and he was just so great. And the night before I had gone to a Broadway musical. And I said to myself Joe Williams said more and reached me more emotionally with the Basie band that night than that big production I’d seen the night before. And that was one of the reasons why I started thinking in terms of a Broadway show.

MR: He was a big help to us getting this started.

IB: That’s what I understand. Well I loved Joe Williams. He was a wonderful, wonderful man. He was another example of a black man who, right at the height of the sort of division that was going on in jazz was not effected by that. And I can remember in Europe one time, Joe and some other musicians were sitting outside a hotel in the summertime, on a sort of patio, and our car pulled up and Dave and I got out of the van and Joe got up from where he was sitting with the other musicians and came over and they embraced, he gave Dave a hug and so forth. And it was just kind of a way of him saying “cool it guys.”

Joe left Basie in the early sixties and went on to a successful solo career lasting over three decades. In 1995 when the Hamilton College Jazz Archive was founded we were fortunate to have Joe lend his credibility and his name as we contacted musicians to request interviews. He passed three years later. The College recognized his contribution by designating my position the Joe Williams Director of the Hamilton College Jazz Archive.

The Count Basie Orchestra swings on, and its succession of leaders all played in the orchestra when The Count was at the helm. Its current conductor is drummer Dennis Mackrel.

Tales of the Big Bands: Basie, Part 2

2011-08-07T16:28:00.009-04:00

In Basie, Part 1 we listened to musicians speak about the magic of the Count Basie sound. The day-to-day stories of sidemen also yield an inside look at the trials and tribulations of playing in a touring band. Let’s return to bassist Jimmy Lewis, who offered us his view on the Basie swing machine in Part 1.

When musicians recall bad or difficult gigs, it is rarely about the music, but more often about logistics. Jimmy offered up a memorable story about getting to one of those out-of-the-way gigs.

MR: Let me ask you about a little thing. You had a story about flying with Basie?

JL: Yeah, you know we had some Army camps to do. We had to ride in the Army planes, the ones with two tails and that big thing in the middle. So one day we got on this thing going to one of the camps, and it was noisy, this thing was so noisy you couldn’t hear. Now Billy Eckstine and all those guys were used to riding. But me, I was scared to death. We all had parachutes. Basie had on a parachute over by the door you know. So we were going to Corpus Christi, Texas. So the plane took off, but before we got there, something happened just before we got ready to land. They couldn’t get the landing gear down. So the guy kept punching it in back, there was some long pole they couldn’t get it down. So the man said “we’re going to have to circle around and go further, and come back around again.” So they went around, and started back to see if we could land, and still couldn’t get it open. So one of the guys, the one who was right by the back door here, pulled that big door open. Now we were flying. So I said “what’s this — what are you doing?” The guy said “well see, we’re trying to get a little more air in the plane.” I said “air in the plane!” I said “man, we don’t need no more air.” So he said “well, I’ll tell you, we’re having a problem with the landing gear, and you might have to bail out.” And Basie looked at me. He said “what do you mean bail out?” And so he asked the pilot, he said “look, are you going to bail out too?” The pilot said “no, I’ve got to stay with the plane.” Basie said “well I’m going to stay with you,” he said, “I’m going on with you. Because if I jump out and I pull this string and the ‘chute don’t open up, man, I can’t fly — I don’t have no wings.” Well everybody was laughing. And so Billy teased me, he said “man, we’re going to crash” — oh baby, I don’t know what to do. And I’m running back and forth. It’s funny, you know I’d never been in a plane before anyway.

MR: Something finally happened because you’re here with us.

JL: So we get to Corpus Christi, Texas. Now, so finally we land. Everybody set there about fifteen minutes before they got out of the plane. It was quiet — boy you could hear a mouse — quiet you know. So everybody started getting out one by one, taking off the parachute, taking their instruments and go outside. We got outside, and we had to play under some trees. We get out there, and set up under these trees out there, in the hot summertime. Oh, man, it looked like a big field. And people, as far as you could see. And they had all these big speakers about like that. So they set the band stand up, all the band stands, they put the music, you know the fella he’d taken care of all that. And so then Basie went up to test the piano to see if it was in tune you know. So then he called us, his band. We got up there and Basie was telling about this trip, how much trouble we had with the plane and all that. So the people settled down. We started playing. As soon as we started playing, all these little chrysalis come out of the tree and started falling on the bandstand. And it’s falling in the bell of the horns, and the guys would dump it out and keep playing. I got me some string, tying it all around my pants legs you know, in case they would crawl up my leg. And so when we finished the job, now we’ve got to take this same plane and go to California. So me and Wendell Cully, we walked out to the plane and looked in, and we see all these parachutes on the seats, and Cully said, “they look like dead people, man.” He said “we can’t take this thing, can we?” I said “no.” So I said well let’s go tell Basie we don’t think we’re going to go on this. So we went and told Basie and he said “I don’t blame you, but,” he said “I’ve got to stay with the band and so you go ahead and see if you can get a train out, and meet us in California.” So we did. We got a train. We got to California three days later. And I think we missed one gig. But we got to the gig and we played and everything. So we asked Basie, “how was the trip?” He said “man that was the worst trip I ever had.”

Travel was not the only daily challenge. Road bands, especially the black bands, often times had to settle for less-than-optimal accommodations. Musicians always shared rooms, in some cases even the boss had to share a room with one of the sidemen. Clark Terry, who is always good for an inside story, shared this anecdote with his friend Joe Williams about rooming with the Count:

CT: I have to tell you my favorite Basie story.

JW: Yeah, yeah.

CT: Yeah you know what am I telling you? Well we’re playing Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, and this was during a period when we were not allowed to stay in the big hotel, we were relegated to the homes of Miss Brown, Miss Jones, Miss Green and so forth.

JW: Oh, those were the good old days. “Have you had your breakfast?” “No, M’am.”

CT: So we were in Miss Green’s or Brown’s or somebody’s home, and she said “well I’ve got one room left and I’ve got two beds in it, and one is a big bed and one is a little bed, and I can take two of ‘em.” So Basie and I are the only two left. So I’m going there with Basie, and the big bed is in the middle of the room, a huge bed and he’s got that. And my bed is a little slab up against the wall. So I said okay, it’s beautiful. At least it’s some place to sleep other than the basement of the police station. So here we are, now Basie can’t get to sleep with the light out.

JW: I know, yeah.

CT: He had to have that light on. And he had to read his comic book every night and he’d laugh, ah, ha, ha, ho, ha, ha. Well I couldn’t go to sleep with the light on. So I said well I know what I’ll do, I’ll just play possum and wait until I hear the comic book hit his belly. Then I’ll know he’s asleep. Well I should preface this by saying that it’s always customary for people when they go to bed we all empty our pockets on the dresser, you know, and undress and put the pajamas on and go to sleep. So I had put all my things there and Basie put all his things on the dresser. We didn’t have that far, just the little table top that we put our stuff on. So the light is right by this little table top, and so I had to get up and go over, and when I heard the book go “plop” on his belly, I eased over to the light and grabbed the chain and pulled the chain. Now the minute I pulled the chain, before I released it, he starts turning in the bed saying “put it back.” I was never sure whether he said put the lights back or whether —

JW: Oh Lord. “Put it back.”

CT: “Put it back.”

Almost without exception, Basie alums talk about the skill that the Count displayed in leading his band. While being a man of few words, his approach to hiring and maintaining his band with the members he wanted was as unique as his playing. Trombonist Benny Powell joined the newly formed Basie band after the small group experiment, and addressed Basie’s leadership personality:

BP: I joined [Basie’s] band when I was 21. I’ll tell you the essence of my experience with Basie. I don’t know if it’s the essence but it’s certainly the beginning. I was at the Apollo Theater working for a week in Joe Thomas’ band. Also in the band was Charlie Fowlkes, who had been with Basie. Basie was on a hiatus and he was about to form another band. So Charlie Fowlkes told me where the rehearsal was going to be, and invited me to the rehearsal. So I went, and it was nice. Pretty uneventful. I can’t remember — at this particular time there were a couple of jobs I wanted. The job with Charlie Ventura. Benny Green had been there and he was about to leave, so I really wanted a small situation to play in. Then I was waiting to hear from Illinois Jacquet also. In the meantime, the Basie thing comes up, I make the rehearsal and that’s fine. Charlie Fowlkes tells me when the next rehearsal is. And I come back and I make that also. I don’t know how many rehearsals we did, but pretty soon we started working, and the first date I played with Basie was October 31 I think, 1951. So I think at this time we would go out of town for maybe one night or two nights a weekend, and come back in town. Well this went on for just a little while, a couple of weeks. In the meantime, from Basie I’m trying to find out if I’m hired, if I have a job or shall I tell Illinois Jacquet that, you know, no. But there was a strange quirk about Basie. If he had something that you wanted, he would sort of play a cat and mouse with you, you know, dangle it in front of you. Anyway, he knew I wanted him to say yes, Benny, you’re hired. So the first time, well you know I was sort of in awe of him anyway. I think I was all of 21 and he was the world famous Count Basie, so I would sort of find myself next to him by my own design, and I would say “Mr. Basie, how do you like the trombone section?” He’d say “it sounds all right.” And that’s all I got out of that conversation. So maybe the next weekend I got brave enough to say “Mr. Basie, are you satisfied with the trombones?” He said “yeah, it sounds pretty good.” That’s all I got out of that one. Next time I went to him, I can’t remember, each time I would disguise it. But finally I said “Mr. Basie, what I’m trying to find out is, you know, am I hired? Am I with the band?” He said “you’re here aren’t you kid?” And every time after that for about four or five times, that’s what I’d get. “You’re here aren’t you, kid?” So finally I stopped asking him. And during the twelve years, I don’t think he ever said “yes, Benny, you’ve got a job. You’re hired.” But he was a wonderful man. I loved him. I was always in awe of older musicians.

The “old” Count Basie would have been 47 when Benny joined the band in 1951.

Benny’s best known Basie moment is his eight-bar bridge on the classic April in Paris recording, at the :50 spot.

The Basie mode of leadership should be a chapter in a book about how to be a boss. Butch Miles talked about his way of silent but positive reinforcement, and it reminds us that although the Count was a man of few words, he was not someone to be disrespected:

BM: Oh, [Basie] was wonderful. He was a wonderful boss because he never told you what to do or what to play. I asked our band manager at that time — it was Sonny Cohn — and Cup [Cohn] sat right in front of me on the band bus, and after I’d been with the band about maybe two weeks, you know I said “Sonny, you know, Basie hasn’t said anything to me about whether he wants it this way, or he doesn’t want it that way,” I said, because I’d worked with a number of other people who’d made it quite clear what they wanted and the way that they wanted it. And Basie didn’t say a word. And so Cup just looked at me, he says, “well if it’s wrong, he’ll tell you, and if it’s not, he’ll just let you go.” And that was why he had great professionals in the band who took care of the business so well, because they were professionals. Basie didn’t hire somebody that just turned 16 with an incredible reputation but couldn’t play. So one time — I can’t remember if Al [Grey] was still on the band at that point or not, but we had a trumpet problem and somebody recommended a young trumpet player from Chicago. He flew in to New York, and since we made it pretty much a point to not rehearse, there was no rehearsal again or audition, it was kind of like a closed shop. You got in on a recommendation or if Basie had heard you play himself and wanted you to come in with the band. And I can’t remember the young man’s name but he came in and he was all full of fire and brimstone. He was ready to show the world that he was like the greatest trumpet player in the world, probably like in his early twenties or something, although that doesn’t have anything to do with it. And the night of his first gig with the band he made the absolute mistake of thinking that Basie was a real cream puff and he lipped off to him. He said something sassy or nasty, right before the job. I never saw this happen before. Basie fired him, right then.

MR: The guy didn’t play a note yet?

BM: Not with the band. Basie fired him, right then, gave him his ticket home and told him good-bye. He never did play a note, not with the band. He came in all hot, you know had his hat over to the side. It didn’t work like that. The band was a very well oiled machine and it was a band, it was a big band, it was a full ensemble. Basie played the band like he played the piano. And it had to work like that. You couldn’t have eighteen or nineteen superstars up there ‘cause it never works. So the band was as a unit. And it had to be that way. Oh we had stars. We had Jimmy Forrest, we had Al Grey, we had Curtis Fuller at one point, we had Bobby Plater, Charlie Fowlkes, a great baritone saxophonist, you know, various people that passed through the band from time to time over the years. But you didn’t have anybody that ran roughshod through the band. Basie wouldn’t stand for that. He just would not. And I never saw him get mad at anybody in the band except that one time. He was a very affable, easy going, wonderful man and just marvelous to work for, but you did not sass him.

Trombonist Al Grey was nicknamed “Fab” and was thrilled to become a Basie member, but quickly became frustrated when, as the new guy, he could not get in the queue for solo space. Al spoke to my colleague Michael Woods and related a story of one of the few times that Basie stepped out of his silent mode with a fatherly gesture:

AG: [Y]ou must also remember that when I joined the band, Count Basie’s personnel had been the same for like twelve, fourteen years, same personnel. So when I joined the band, I didn’t have no name at all. I was called the “new boy” and I didn’t used to like that. And that was on me for a whole year, until the next person came into the band, and this is when I got my name. But then, when I did get my name, I had become so prominent with that band until Basie said, “oh, this is the fabulous one — Fab.” And that is my name today, they call me “Fab” but that comes from Count Basie who started calling me fabulous because I could go out and get standing ovations every night, every night. Standing ovations, until this became a big part of Count Basie’s band, until when we’d go out where we’d have Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, that meant that Count Basie’s band didn’t have no chance to play, but opening number, a middle number, and like the featured drum number, and then they would bring Ella on and then Frank. This is where it was always sad moments, too, because here you have all these great musicians sitting there playing the music for the singers, you see? And they never got that good, and had no opportunity to express themselves. And I know many won’t even take a day or two to talk about this but I’ve gone far enough in life that I feel as though I do have that privilege to speak about that because in a sense in music that would be a no-no, all these different things that come on with bands. I myself, after joining, we recorded that day and then a few days later we go to England, and here this is still the days where they didn’t have that many baths in the hotels, but we still stayed like in the clean hotels and things. And we could really completely tell the difference of the treatment.

MW: In other words, you were treated differently in Europe?

AG: Completely different. You was treated like an artist. Like artists are supposed to be treated. And they would roll out the royal carpet to you and you was treated that way. And you was accepted that way. Well, I myself, leaving the United States, it was a long time in my belief, gee, how is it this much of a difference, you see? And again, a lot of this that I am speaking about, wasn’t permissible a few years ago to even make statements. But here this is to the Hamilton College, and I would want the students and everything to know what you have come here to talk about, okay? But for myself, when I first got over there, there was no music written out for me. And that just drove me crazy after playing solos night after night and a lot of them with Dizzy Gillespie. Now I come in to Count Basie’s band, and there’s no music written for me.

MW: So he had to do much of the music by memory?

AG: Well on that particular tour, the musicians had been in the band so long they only took three books with them. And that was Snooky’s book, Lockjaw’s book, and my book. And they saved all this money for not taking all the rest of these books. It used to run into big costs, you know. And here I am buried in the music, now I want to solo so bad, ‘cause Joe Newman just went out there and he just performed like ever. And here’s Sonny Payne and Frank Wess and me, and Henry Coker who was a trombone player, and Benny Powell. Now I get no chance to play, nothing, nothing.

MW: Was there any etiquette by which you could kind of go to Basie and say, hey, you know, I want you to throw me a solo here?

AG: Well, it boiled down to where I felt as though that coming from Dizzy I should get a few bars. So one day we were in line, this is when you had to jump off the bus and run in and get in line because you know that the bath is going to run out. So that means that you’re going to have to go down the hall to get a bath. So this particular day I jumped off and run in and I get in line and here I am, the new boy and everything, and everybody was always jumping in front of me because I was the new boy. So you’re the new boy and you’d better recognize it and accept it if you’re going to stay in that band. And so this day I was getting ready to sign in for this band, and Marshall Royal ran in and said “Royal” and, he was the Straw Boss, and they gave him this last bath. And I just went off in the lobby of this hotel. I just went to hollering and screaming and cussing and going on. And of course you know this is a no-no, you know you’re not supposed to do like that in the Queen Hotel, and because I was completely so uptight from not playing any solos. And you’d pick up the paper the next day and they’re talking about Marshall and Snooky and all these guys that did all this last night, and you don’t see your name or anything like that because you hadn’t did anything, see? And so he got this last bath and I just went off because I was so upset from not playing. But Count Basie was sitting in the corner over there. He would always wait until last because you know he had his suite coming and everything like that. And he finally got my attention and he beckoned me and he says “come over here.” And I says, well I said “I was in line and I was correct to get my bath and he just stepped in front of me.” And Basie said “well he’s Straw Boss, you know how they are.” And he tried to calm me down. But I went in to saying “well look, I don’t know why you hired me because I come over here and you won’t let me play anything.” And this is when he came up and I had never heard him cuss or anything like that but he came up with a cuss word, and said “one minute — you just got here. Now when we get back to New York, we’re going to fix up music and everything for you, but you just got here and so we can’t do nothing about it and this is not an old jam band and so we’re not going to have no jam session,” and he says “but you know I like you, and I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to let you come down and have a bath in my room and there’s an extra room over here, the suite, and you can stay there tonight.” And this is like he became like my father. Because then I would listen to everything he had to say.

Basie’s promise to Al would soon be realized. Check out this rare Count Basie piece for a marvelous track featuring them both.

Our three-part series on Basie will wrap up in the next installment with stories and reminiscing about the great Joe Williams, Basie’s number one son.

Tales of the Big Bands: Basie, Part 1

2011-07-24T12:14:00.011-04:00

For many fans of big band music, the Count Basie Orchestra was the epitome of what an 18-person ensemble could and should sound like. Throughout his five decade career, Basie (a/k/a “The Chief”), held tight to his inner compass of what and how his bands should play. Though he was a man of few words, he made his feelings and intentions known through subtle but forceful direction. The Hamilton College Jazz Archive oral history project focused first on Basie alums and we are blessed with a wealth of material about Count Basie and his career. The first entry will focus on why his band sounded like it did.

We heard from Clark Terry in his conversation with Joe Williams at the end of our Ellington blog post. Clark spent time with both bands, and offers his opinion on Basie’s number one strength:

CT: I’ll tell you about this cat, Basie. Although Ellington was more endowed with harmony and theory and so forth, Basie was the king as far as tempo, and he taught us all the greatest lesson in the world and that is the utilization of space and time. They say he learned it through the medium of just socializing at Kansas City at the Cherry Blossom and the little places where you would have people sit, in a small room like this where you would have gingham tablecloths and he’d play a little bit with Jo Jones, and Walter Page, or Freddie [Green], and The Fiddler [Claude Williams], or whoever was there, and he’d go socializing. Bing-a-dink and he’d go over there socialize “yeah, baby, how you doing?” Bing-a-dink, go over there and have another taste over there and have two or three tastes. Meanwhile Jo Jones and Biggun [Walter Page] are still going [scats]. And he’d come in [scats]. So he was so endowed with rhythm and utilization of space and time, so he knew exactly the way a tune should be before you played it. Now the one, the best example is when Neal Hefti was writing for the band, he brought in a tune and passed it out, and Basie played it and Basie shook his head. He said “what’s the matter, you don’t like the arrangement, Chief?” He said “no.” He said “what’s wrong with it?” He said “the tempo.” Well the tune was about here [claps]. So he said “well what do you think it should be?” “About here” [claps slowly]. Well the tune was [scats]. He brought it in to be [scats slowly].

JW: That was “L’il Darling.”

CT: He heard it. Right away he said “uh oh.” And look at the result. If he’d a kept it up there it would have just been another also-ran tune. He was the king of space, time.

Basie’s band of the late 1930’s was the loosest of his aggregations, operating more like a large combo. Much of the music they played was created on stage or in rehearsals and called “head arrangements,” only to be written down later. Harry “Sweets” Edison talked of the challenge of becoming a part of such a swinging band, and associating with Basie’s fellow musicians:

MR: At the time you joined the Basie band, how much of the music was written out?

SE: We didn’t have any music.

MR: That was my question. Now how did that work? And how did you learn what to play when you first got in there?

SE: Well, that’s an interesting question. Because when I first joined the band, everybody in the Count Basie band had played with Bennie Moten’s band. So they all knew what they wanted to play. They all had notes to different — like “One O’Clock Jump,” “Swinging the Blues,” “Out the Window.” It was a head arrangement you know. They just, the brass section would get together and they would play, set a riff behind a melody Basie would play on the piano. The saxophones would go in to another room and they would set a riff. And when we all came back to the rehearsal hall, we’d all have an arrangement, you know? So that went on with me for about a couple of years. And finally I told Basie I said “I’m going to quit.” He says “why? You sound good.” I said “well all these arrangements that you play every night — I can’t find a note. I can’t find a note to ‘Swinging the Blues’ and playing it fast.” I haven’t had a chance...I really was disgusted.

MR: Discouraged, huh?

SE: Yes. So I said “I’d rather for you to take my notice.” He said “well if you find a note tonight that sounds good, play the same damn note every night.” So that’s what I did. He encouraged me to sit there. And it was very difficult. Because when they played a tune like “Out the Window” or of course “One O’clock Jump” wasn’t too fast, you could find a note, but “Jumpin’ at the Woodside.” Hell they’re playing and you’re trying to find a note to play, and it’s passed, and they’re finished before you can find a note.

MR: There’s no rehearsal time to do that. You’re playing every night, right?

SE: Sure, sure. But he encouraged me, and I stayed there for twenty years in and out you know. And had it not been for Count Basie, I wouldn’t be here with you, because nobody would have never heard about me. He gave me a chance and I had so much fun I don’t know why he kept me with the band because I was having a ball. You know every night was fun to me. Just absolutely — sitting next to Lester Young — gee whiz, what a thrill you know. Jo Jones. Walter Page. Freddie Green, Buck Clayton, sitting next to him — you know it wasn’t but three trumpets, Buck Clayton, Ed Lewis and myself; there was two trombones, and four saxophones. And four rhythm section. So I should have paid him to be in the band because I was having so much fun.

One of the first things an aspiring big band musician had to learn was the difference between two-beat and four-beat — a subtle but profound change in the basic feel of swing. Trumpeters Snooky Young and Gerald Wilson were both Basie alums and often played a musical game of tag team in and out of various bands. They talk about that subtle swing difference, when they were interviewed together on September 30, 1995 in Los Angeles:

GW: When I joined Count Basie, who do you think I was supposed to replace? Snooky Young. Snooky left the band. They were playing someplace, and Basie called me and he says “Snooky there had to go back East, Gerald,” and I played a couple of days with him at the Lincoln Theater. I think you left and so they didn’t have a trumpet player. So I went and played a couple of days at the Lincoln, and so Basie said “well look, Snooky had to go and he’s going to re-join us when we get to Chicago. You come on and go to Chicago with us and then Snooky will be back.” I said “fine” you know. So I left with the Count Basie Band, which I loved. I mean let me tell you, that was another great day for me to be able to join a band like Count Basie, because I was going to get a chance as a writer to sit where swing had really started. And remember that there was the original rhythm section, which they called the “All American Rhythm Section,” with Walter Page, Jo Jones, Count and Freddie Green. So for me that was going to be another education deal. Because I’m going to sit here now as a writer, I can just observe really what’s going on. And what’s going on with this swing. Because you must remember the Count Basie band and that rhythm section, they’re the ones that put the word in, the real meaning into swing. All bands had to change to that type of rhythm section. All bands. The Lunceford band would have had to change, Duke Ellington. Everybody. If you’re not playing this type of rhythm, you’re not into the newest form of rhythm that would finally take over the world. And because you must remember that bebop had no rhythm of their own. They had to use that same kind of rhythm in their first efforts. So it was a great day for me. But Basie had more in mind, by the way, because when we got to Chicago, Snooky didn’t show up. He didn’t show up. And I said, you know I thought I was going to come back home. But he had other ideas. He also needed a writer at that time. And I was the man.

MR: That must have been a thrill. Is it possible to put into words what that rhythm section did?

GW: Well you know, you remember Jo Jones was an innovator into drumming. Jo Jones was a real innovator. He had some things going that drummers had not been doing. Walter Page had been one of the first to start the walking bass rather than playing the root and the fifth. In other words Boom Boom BOOM Boom. In earlier days, they just played the one note. Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom. So Page started walking on the chords more or less. And Freddie Green, who had you know, nobody can play the guitar, rhythm guitar, like Freddie Green. To this day.

SY: That’s right.

GW: To this day. He never bothered about a solo.

SY: You know when I left Lunceford’s band and getting back to what he’s saying, I went directly into Basie’s band. And those two bands was night and day. I mean Lunceford’s rhythm was a two beat rhythm thing, you know. And it was great and all like that, but you’d come out of that and move into Basie’s band, I almost felt like I didn’t know how to read music. ‘Cause everything was laying so different.

MR: Especially for a lead trumpet, right?

SY: That’s right.

MR: Because you’ve got to be in sync.

SY: That’s right. And I had to learn how to play with Basie’s band, because, well, can you explain that better than I can? Because it’s very difficult, because you asked a question that kind of hit on that, and I left from one band and went directly into this band, this swing band what you’re saying. And I noticed a difference. But Lunceford had great rhythm and everything, but it was a two beat rhythm. And so most bands was playing two beats. Not like Lunceford’s band did though.

GW: Yeah, Lunceford had the two beats.

SY: They had the two beats, Lunceford’s band.

GW: But they had to get that, you know to play jazz, the ultimate jazz beat is when you’re playing four four. It’s the ultimate rhythm. And they had this thing. Jo had it going here, he had it going here, and it was the thing that all bands needed, and still to this day, I mean the band you play with now, all bands, you’ve got to have this.

The early 50’s were challenging years for big bands. Even the Basie band was struggling economically and the Count pared down to a 7-piece group for a number of years. Bassist Jimmy Lewis found that the Count’s knack for creating intense swing could be applied to a small group as well as a big band:

MR: Is this when Basie had the small group?

JL: Yes, the small group. We had Wardell Gray, Clark Terry, Gus Johnson on drums, Freddie Green on guitar, me on bass and like we used Bud DeFranco playing tenor. … We worked the Brass Rail [Chicago] down at the loop. We opened up one night and all the people were sitting at the table, and so Basie started off real soft. We started playing soft you know. I thought I was playing louder than anybody, I mean I’m just playing it. Basie says “don’t play so loud.” He said “they’ll hear ya.” So I cut down on the bass. And Basie set a tempo and then he’d watch the people’s feet. He said “okay, everybody’s starting to feel you over the conversation.” He said “now Gus, pick up your sticks.” Gus was playing with brushes. He said “pick up your sticks.” He said “we’ve got ‘em now.” And by the time we opened up, everybody turned and you couldn’t believe it. Buddy DeFranco walked out to the stand, and man, everybody would start to play. He and Clark Terry started doing tricks. Clark would take his horn, take the mouthpiece off and just put it in the end of a glass and blow you know, and make all kinds of funny sounds you know. And Gus Johnson, then here comes Wardell Gray. He’d walk up and he’d just play something like Lester Young. … And Freddie Green boy, he was like a metronome sitting there. And you couldn’t get away from him. The tempo might move up a little bit, I’d get excited, and Freddie would say “Come back here. Right here.” And boy that thing would take off. And Basie, he’d sit there and give signs. He had all kinds of signs. He’d do his face, you know when he’d want you to play louder or softer you know. And when he’d get ready to close a number he’d double his fists. And like if he wanted some excitement, he’d stand up from the piano and look at you. And boy, and Gus was sitting on the drums and you’d hear this thing, it sounded like it was coming up out of the floor. And boy the people just went crazy.

We will hear again from Jimmy Lewis in a subsequent Basie blog entry.

The heyday of the big bands occurred before the Civil Rights era. While some swing bands made tentative moves towards integration after the Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson, Gene Krupa combination, there was an obvious distinction between black and white bands for many years. Grover Mitchell, a Basie trombonist and an eventual leader of the band, reminds us why the Ellington and Basie orchestras were able to sound as they did:

MR: The Basie groups that you played with had some marvelous players, and some of the best ensembles that he had. Who were your favorite bandmates?

GM: Well we had some genius-level people you know. Ellington’s band and Basie’s band, the one thing that caused them in some way to be at the ability level that we were able to maintain was we, in the older days and prior to 1964, we couldn’t get jobs in studios you know. We couldn’t play at the networks and all that. And so Ellington and Basie had access to the greatest black musicians alive. In other words, that’s what we had to aspire to. And you couldn’t think of going to NBC or ABC or be in a Hollywood studio, which later I did, and quite successfully. But in those days they had access to the greatest black musicians available. The greatest. And so they had their choice. That’s something.

MR: That’s a really important statement. I haven’t heard it put quite that way.

GM: I know, most people won’t say it. They’re afraid to say it. But I know it. Because we would sit there and our greatest competition was each other because we, you know, until Clark Terry and those guys in 1964 and ‘63 started getting into the networks and all that kind of stuff. There was a couple of guys here and there you know; CBS was pretty good, they had a guy over there. And a New York contractor named Lou Shoobe, he was quite fair, and so some guys got jobs. But for the most part you couldn’t even dream of getting a studio job, it was just unheard of in those days.

Both Grover and Clark Terry spent time in Duke’s and the Count’s bands. It’s not a stretch to say that this is tantamount to a classical musician touting the fact that he spent one part of his career with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy then moved on to the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein.

Tenor saxophonist Frank Foster is high on the list of important Basie figures. He was one half of the two tenor team of Frank [Foster] and Frank [Wess], in the New Testament Band. Foster became one of Basie’s most dependable writers, but even he was subject to the Basie musical scrutiny.

MR: How about the first time you brought an arrangement to Basie?

FF: The first arrangement I brought to the Basie band was one I brought from Korea with me that I had played with a band in Korea. It was an original cha-cha-cha.

MR: No kidding.

FF: And the band needed a couple of Latin flavored songs for the dancers that they were playing. And they only had one mambo. So this was a mambo, not a cha-cha-cha.

MR: You wrote a mambo?

FF: Yeah. This was an original sort of thing based on a mambo groove, and it was very simple. And I brought it in to the band and we played it. And Basie encouraged me to continue writing. And the results of that encouragement were “Blues Backstage,” and “Blues in Hoss’ Flat,” and eventually “Shiny Stockings.” But it’s not all peaches and cream or roses as it were. If you could count the arrangements that were rejected as stacked up against those that were accepted, the stacks would be pretty even.

MR: No kidding.

FF: Right.

MR: So you’d take it into a rehearsal and did it take him a long time to decide?

FF: No. It never took him a long time. If the arrangement played down the first time and nobody had to decipher it as though it were hieroglyphics and it swung, it was in. Generally if it took too long and people had to labor over phrases and how does this go and what does this mean, and if it sounded like too much dissonance, or too many “pregnant nineteenths” as Basie used to say...

MR: Did he say that?

FF: Yeah he said “son, when you write an arrangement, don’t put too many pregnant nineteenths in there.” So I knew what he meant by “pregnant nineteenths.” And if was too busy, too overloaded, every time it got rejected. Which brings me to the story of “Shiny Stockings.” We were playing a place in Philadelphia called Pep’s Bar. And we’d just arrived in town that morning and we had to rehearse that day because it was customary to rehearse on the opening day of each nightclub engagement. For the Basie band that was practically the only time we ever rehearsed, was the opening day of an engagement at Birdland or Storyville or the Blue Note or the Crescendo or this place in Philadelphia. But we had arrived late and checked in late at the hotel, a long trip from somewhere. Everybody is tired, ill-tempered, hungry, and no one felt like rehearsing. You know we’d rather have done anything than rehearse. But we had to rehearse that day. And I brought “Shiny Stockings” in. And the first rehearsal of “Shiny Stockings,” it just sounded like a 43 car pile-up on the New York Thruway. Everybody ran into everybody. I said oh my, he’ll never play this song and I put so much into it. Well Mr. Basie must have heard something, because with that horrible rehearsal, he must have understood how tired everyone was and how unwilling we were to rehearse and that was the result of our attitudes. He must have heard something because we played it and played it and played it and I guess you could say the rest is history.

MR: I guess so.

FF: But many other songs that sounded like that in rehearsal never got played. And we had an expression, if we were rehearsing something and it wasn’t going well, either because it was too busy or the harmonies weren’t right or it sounded amateurish, we had an expression, “Pasadena,” which meant pass it in. And after we worked on that chart for about ten, fifteen minutes, Marshall Royal, who was the straw boss, he’d say “Pasadena.” And I guess this was sort of code terminology so that if the arranger was somebody outside the band, he wouldn’t know what we were talking about, but you’d see all this music converging on one spot, and it was being passed in.

MR: Well I guess it was a left handed compliment to say I was rejected by Count Basie.

FF: I’ll tell you, Basie, he would always make it up, because years after, this must have been in the early 60’s now, “Shiny Stockings” was introduced to the book in 1955, Basie pulled me over in the corner and he said “kid, you know you wrote that ‘Shiny Stockings?’” I said “yeah.” He said “you really put one down that time, boy.”

MR: It was five years later, huh?

FF: Yeah, right.

MR: He was a man of few words most of the time?

FF: Definitely. But every word meant something.

MR: Just like his playing, right?

FF: Right, exactly. Like his playing.

A non-Basie musician offered a brief story that summed up the respect and admiration that jazz musicians had for Basie and his band. Alto saxophonist Jerry Dodgion was never an official member, but did have the opportunity to play on the 1966 LP “Hollywood Basie’s Way.”

MR: You played on this particular record with Basie. Remember that one?

JD: Sure I do.

MR: Nice record. How did that come about?

JD: Well I knew almost everybody in the band because I’d gone to hear the band so much in those years. And one day Billy Mitchell called me and he said “what are you doing Thursday?” I said “I’m not doing anything, why?” He said “well would you like to make a recording date with Count Basie?” I said “that’s why I’m alive.” I mean that’s the dream, I mean unbelievable, I thought that’s never going to happen. Well he said Bobby Plater had to take off, because he was writing a date for Lockjaw that was scheduled at the exact same time so he couldn’t be there, so would I come in and play. I said great. So I got to play with Marshall Royal, with Basie, and that was always a dream too, you know, because [Royal was] the consummate lead alto player for that band. As Thad [Jones] used to say, “tailor made lead alto.” That was really a thrill. Wonderful.

It’s bittersweet to reflect on the fact that six of the nine Basie alums quoted here are now deceased.

Our next blog will spotlight road stories originating from Basie band members.

Tales of the Big Bands: Ellington

2011-07-13T14:43:00.009-04:00

At least half of the 300+ individuals we’ve interviewed for the Hamilton College Jazz Archive experienced significant big band work during their careers. Some toiled with obscure bands before they found their way into the small group scene, studio work, and other means of employment. Other well-known musicians spent their whole careers in various big bands. Only a handful of musicians stayed with one band for more than a few years; most of them played musical chairs. They sought better pay and more challenging musical situations, while balancing the road life with home and family. This blog entry will start a series of entries comprised of stories from big band musicians.

A legitimate place to start is with Duke Ellington. Ellington is America’s greatest jazz composer, a man who was able to hold a band together for 50 years and who deservedly is a household name.

In 1964 bassist John Lamb was living in the Philadelphia area making $48 a week as a mail boy in the office of the Acme Food Market chain. He was invited to play a “socialite gig.” Someone recorded it and passed the tape through channels to Duke Ellington. John relates the result of that fortunate incident:

JL: One day I came home after a long day and I saw this telegram. It says “Opportunity if interested give me a call.” So a few days later I called and it was a woman that answered the phone who happened to be a member of a very prominent family in New Jersey. As a matter of fact at one time he was Attorney General. His name was Walter Reed. And it was his wife, Mrs. Reed, had written the telegram, and she said “I have this thing, I’m a friend of Duke Ellington’s and maybe we could set you up with some kind of contact there. All you have to do is come over to the house and we’ll have a little party and we’ll have some Cornish hens, bring your family and your kids and all that and I’ll invite a few other people and I’m going to invite some musicians to play along with you.” And in the back of my mind I said she wants some free music for her party. And so this went along and we set up a date and I piled my son in the back of the station wagon and my wife, and the bass and we went over to Riverton, New Jersey. And we played and she stuck a tape recorder down there. I was aware that the tape recorder was there so what I decided to do I decided to play in the style of Jimmy Blanton. So I was playing in the style of Jimmy Blanton, you know that very basic, driving beat. And so a few weeks later she shoved it in front of Duke when he came to the Steel Pier. So later I was living in a housing project by then and I was comfortable, my kids were walking around. I got this phone call “good evening, Mr. Lamb?” “Yes.” “This is Duke Ellington.” I said “who?” “Duke Ellington.” I said “just a moment please.” So I went back in there and told my wife “that’s Duke Ellington on the phone.” She was very cool about that. So I walked back in and I says “yes, what can I do for you, Mr. Ellington?” And he says “well look here, Mr. Lamb, we’d like you to come up to New York and play some things with us.” So okay, fine. We set up a date. He said “well we’re up at a place called Freedom Land, why don’t you try coming up there” — like say Tuesday or so. “Fine.” “Bye.” That was it. So I hopped on the train at North Station in Philly. Took my bass. This was before we had the wheel, and I carried it. Hopped on the train, went up to New York, got off the train, this was all on a Tuesday. Got off the train and got on another train and went up to the Bronx, and we ran out of subway. And so I had to take a taxi from there. So I took a taxi on over to Freedom Land, which at that time was sort of like a resort area or an entertainment place. And I walked in the place back there, back to the tents. I saw this guy walking around with his slippers on and I said that looks like Johnny Hodges. I’d seen his pictures you know. And I walked back through there and I says “where’s the band” I asked the guy. He says “oh back there.” So I went back into the tent, walked in and there was this guy sitting up with his blue outfit on, he had this blue bandana around his head. And the television was blasting, blaring, it was distorted, I mean it was so loud. And he was fixed on that television set. Turns out that it was Duke. And I was approached by the band boy and he says “are you here, the new bass player?” I said “yeah.” And he says “hey Duke, the bass player’s here.” And Duke stands up and he walks, very gracious, a very nice man. He was like a perfect six feet, a perfect mannequin so to speak, you know, so graceful. Even in that outfit that he had on. And he was very soft spoken and as a matter of fact I says hmmm I’m in the presence of something here, but I don’t know what it is. And he told me he says “well yeah,” he says “you want to take the next set? The second half of the show?” “Yeah.” He said “okay.” Then the band boy says “can he read?” “Yeah, I can read.” You know. So I went on up and did — Peck Morrison was the bass player at the time, he was there for a short time. And so I went in and played the second show. The first tune we did was “Stomping at the Savoy.” I saw this blur, you know, he was kicking off the tune and I didn’t — most band leaders will do something like this [gestures] you know. I didn’t see none of that, he just did like that and the band started. I says uh oh, this is a train. So I hopped on the train and we didn’t quit until the end. It was in the key of D flat. “Stomping at the Savoy.” Okay, the next tune I did was one of the tunes from his “Far East Suite,” he had written that. And I looked at the music and I says this is written in fourths, I says that’s going to be very muddy, I can’t play that that low, with a low A on the bottom. So I reversed everything and made it like this. And somebody says he had noticed that I was changing Duke’s music for the notes. He said “what’s he doing?” So I changed the music around and played, it was a bass solo in the very beginning. As a matter of fact that same thing was recorded afterwards and it received an award. So we played that Far East thing and Cootie [Williams] says “uh huh, that’s all.” Because everybody shook their head. So that was the end of that and the bass player came back out.

MR: Talk about trial by fire.

JL: Yeah, that’s what it was. So I went in and did that and went on back to Philly. The next day another bass player was supposed to come by. But somebody was supposed to pick him up and the person didn’t pick him up. And he didn’t get the gig of course, he never showed up. He was depending upon somebody’s word, whereas I took the train and lugged that thing up there and that probably made the difference. And the ability to play the bass notes. That’s all it is is playing the bottom, whatever is required. And shortly after that I got another phone call back in Philly, it was from Mercer [Ellington]. Mercer says “hey John, Pop wants you to come up to New York” on like Monday or so in a couple of weeks. Well I had to quit my job, you know, I had a day job. And so I said “okay I’ll arrange that.”

MR: Yeah. Interesting. This was 1964?

JL: Yeah, ’64, right. 1964.

MR: What kind of salary did he offer you?

JL: Well my being naïve about salaries, anything was better than what I was getting, $48 a week, and so they decided to start me off with scale. They had to pay me the scale. It was about $60 or something a night I guess.

MR: $60 a night?

JL: Yeah probably $60 a job or something like that. And the stars were getting all the money. And my being, not knowing anything about charges and all that, and prices, I was just happy to get a gig. I had been making $48 a week at Acme Markets. So $60 a night was great, huh? And compared to $50 a week at that other place years ago. And so I worked my way up. Gradually it began to increase.

The late Louie Bellson was one of Ellington’s favorite drummers and was able to witness the almost mystical collaboration between Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.

MR: Did you get a chance to see Ellington and Strayhorn, how they collaborated on their music? It seems like such a fascinating thing the way they pulled that off.

LB: Well you know Strayhorn joined Ellington as a lyricist from what I hear, and Billy Strayhorn told me that he didn’t think that Duke knew at first that he arranged. So Duke gave Strayhorn an assignment for lyrics, and he said “I’ll check you out when I get back, we’ve got to go to Europe.” So when they came back from Europe, Billy said “I write arrangements also.” So Duke said “really?” He said “do you have one?” He said “yeah.” And that was “Take the A Train.” And Strayhorn told me that Duke put his arm around him and said “you’re with me forever.”

MR: Wow.

LB: But you know that was a perfect match. Because nobody in that band, even the guys that had been there for years like Harry Carney, they couldn’t tell the difference, whether Strayhorn wrote the composition or whether Duke did it. That’s how close it was.

MR: Amazing.

LB: They were an exceptional twosome. I would say they were both geniuses, really. Very superstitious. Don’t ever whistle in the dressing room; Duke and Strayhorn never put a button, a finé on an arrangement. They got down to letter S and then just let it fizzle out, then they worked it out at the rehearsal, but never really put like boom, the finale there.

MR: They didn’t write it you mean?

LB: They didn’t write it. They worked it out at rehearsal, see? And never wore a shirt with buttons all the way down, there was only maybe three buttons this way and then the slipover, and no color yellow, but blue was the favorite color. And I made the mistake once of giving him a gift for his birthday, a pair of shoes, he says “no, no, no, don’t do that, don’t do that. That means you’re going to be walking out of my life.”

MR: No kidding?

LB: I said “oh really?” And so I exchanged those for a blue sweater. But they both had that great originality that you look for, that you strive for, and it came natural for them. You know Ellington never really went to school to learn how to write music. And Strayhorn may have had a little bit, but they had that God given talent to be able to sit down and write music but it was strictly their style. They weren’t getting it from somebody else. There it was. In the voicing in the reed section, the voicings in the brass section, being able to supply the soloists. He knew every soloist, what their range was, so when he wrote something for you, it was perfect, just like you getting a brand new set of clothes and they fit perfect. And he gave you the greatest introductions in the world. He really set you up you know. One thing, when I joined the band, Strayhorn and I roomed together for almost three weeks. And I made the mistake of telling Strayhorn one night, we were just talking and I said “Strayhorn, how did Duke voice that ‘Caravan?’ thing? Boy, man, I could really see the camels coming when they play that one part.” And he went like this to me “ahhh.” And I said “oh, excuse me, I’m invading your privacy.” So I didn’t say a word, and I guess Strayhorn had talked to Duke about me asking and so forth, and nothing happened for about oh, three or four months, and all of a sudden we were doing a one-nighter and Duke got up on the piano, this was before the people came in, and he said “come here, sit down by the piano.” He explained to me how he voiced “Caravan.” What notes he gave to Johnny Hodges, what notes he gave to Procope, Carney, and so forth. “This is what I did.” So I thought to myself man, here the great Duke Ellington is taking time out to show me some voicings.

The early 50’s was a time of significant racial tension, depending on where you were in the country. Here Louie addresses that part of traveling with a big band.

MR: Was there ever any problem in certain parts of the country with any racial subjects coming up?

LB: Well yes. In 1951 they had the Big Show of 1951, which consisted of Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughan and Duke Ellington’s band. They were the three big stars. Now besides that they had Peg Leg Bates, Timmy Rodgers, Stump and Stumpy, Patterson and Jackson, all these wonderful acts — tap dancing acts, you know. It took us a week to rehearse that whole show, playing with Nat King Cole and Sarah, Duke, and all these acts. So after we finished rehearsing for a week, Duke finally discovered that hey, we’re getting ready to go down to the deep south you know? And in those days, you had segregated audiences. And we couldn’t, the whites couldn’t play with the blacks at that time you see. And in those days it was “colored,” you didn’t use the word “blacks” see? So now the big problem is, Duke called me in the dressing room and says “what are we going to do? I can’t find a drummer to take your place, because it would be a week’s rehearsal and the guys that can do it, they’re all busy.” So Duke says “you mind being a Haitian?” I said “no, okay, that’s all right” you know. So we got through it okay. It was a little tense, because the situation was still down there, and the audience, because they told Jack Costanzo with Nat King Cole he couldn’t appear because of the racial thing you know. But some spots it was a little rough. But we got through it. I think through Ellington’s peaceful ways and the wonderful attitude that the band had you know, kind of rubbed off on everybody. But still it existed.

MR: Well it’s nice that the music had a part in helping that situation to move along a little faster.

LB: Well you know we played a gig in Mississippi and there the townspeople were wonderful, they came to the rescue, where we couldn’t stay in certain hotels. I mean these people came from wealthy families too. They had Strayhorn and Duke and Clark Terry stay in one house, and Carney and Russell Procope and myself in another house, and all on down the line. Beautiful homes and they fed us. So you know, along with the bad there’s some good too. And these were situations that we got over, we dealt with it. Sometimes it’s almost like a slap in the face but you realize what the situation is and you go straight ahead because you’ve got something to do that’s valued and I think when you do that you realize that none of those things should bother the musicality of something. It’s the fact that whoever’s playing that music doesn’t make a difference, let’s play it and show where the peace and love is.

The late trombonist Grover Mitchell was a player who was lucky enough to spend time in both the Ellington and Basie bands, eventually leading the Basie Orchestra in 1995. Grover describes the discipline, or lack thereof, that resulted with a band that carried all the positives and negatives associated with a large family.

MR: I heard [Ellington] had his own method of discipline.

GM: Look, let me tell you, just to give you an anecdote. The first night, I lived in the San Francisco area. We had left the Monterey Jazz Festival. This was the second year, 1960 I guess it was. And we got to San Francisco in this club that we played that was owned by the DuPonts called The Nevey. And the first night was just absolutely gorgeous. The band just roared. This was my first night with these people, see? And the second night, it seemed like everybody was late. There was a nucleus in this band that was always on time. You could always figure you would see Lawrence Brown, you know he was very dapper and he was sitting there and never late and all that stuff. And oh, Lou the trumpet player there, and the rhythm section pretty much would be there. And so some of the guys were out milling around in the audience and I mean here I am in what was my hometown then, trying to make this big impression and you know I was really embarrassed you know what I mean? So he had this funny old medley or something that he could play with two or three guys on the stand, and he would go through this act, you know “Ladies and Gentlemen, we’ve been successful over the years” and he’d go into these unison type things with maybe six people up there. So I told him I says “wow, Duke, man this is terrible, this is embarrassing, all of my friends are here.” And he says “look, I don’t worry about these people. Number one, these people are not going to drive me crazy. I live for the night that this band is great. Tonight means nothing to me.” I said “oh, how can you say that?” Because here are these guys milling around, and Jimmy Hamilton was sitting there, he was playing and I’m all upset, and I says “Jimmy, look at all these people walking around out here, and we should be up on the bandstand playing” you know and he looks at me like I’m crazy and the waiter comes up to the bandstand and says “Mr. Hamilton, your steak is ready.” And right in the middle of the tune he steps over the rail and starts cutting on a steak. And so about a week later we were playing at an Air Force Base outside of Sacramento called Mather Air Force Base now. There’s no place to go. So here’s the band, and they’ve got to play. There’s no place for these guys to fool around and you know, this whole military atmosphere, and so the band is just roaring, beautiful. And so I hear the piano player, Duke, saying dink-dink-dink-dink; dink-dink-dink-dink. And so I looked around, and he over there and he says [whispers] “see what I mean?” So. That’s the way he was. And nothing bothered him.

I think it’s safe to say that a “rich jazz sideman” is an oxymoron. Life as a big band sideman was strenuous, sometimes monotonous, and occasionally exciting, but rarely financially rewarding. Salary issues played a role in the decision of moving from one band to another. Because of union regulations, loyalties, and simple good manners, leaving one band for a competitor had to be undertaken with caution. In this clip, trumpeter Clark Terry relates to his friend Joe Williams the behind-the-scenes story of his move from Basie to Ellington:

CT: Joseph, I’ve got a Basie story.

JW: Count Basie?

CT: Yeah. I don’t know if everybody knows about this, but when I was with the Basie band, and when I left the Basie band to join Duke, you know I left, well we had kicked it around a little bit and he had sent his scouts around, and one time Joe Morgan said “you want to join the band?” And I used to like his little hat that he used to wear. And he said “I’ll get you a hat like this if you’ll join.” So finally we talked about it long enough and I finally decided well I think I’d like to join Duke’s band. This is when, at this time, Basie was down to a quintet. So we were working in Chicago —

JW: At the Brass Rail.

CT: At the Brass Rail, right. So Duke finally he comes around and he says “I’d like to discuss things with you.” So he says “okay?” He says “but we can’t do it out in public, so later on I’ll have to come to your hotel.” So I says “okay, I’m at the Southway.” He says “all right, I’ll come by and I’ll call you when I get in the lobby and I’ll hurriedly get out of the lobby and meet you in your room.” So I says “okay.” So he comes to the hotel, and he calls up and I says “oh, all right.” So he says “I’ll meet you on your floor and I’ll meet you at the elevator and show me where it is.” So Duke gets off the elevator about the same time I come out my door. And just as I walk out of my door and Duke steps off the elevator, and next door to me is Freddie Green. Freddie Green opens his door and steps out. He says “woah,” and went back and slammed the door. So of course Duke and I went on with our business. But that night on the gig, Freddie, I walked in and you know, Pep [Freddie Green] would look at you like this, he didn’t even say hello. “If you don’t you’re a fool.” So the funny thing is, the conversation with me and Duke, he says “well now we’ve agreed on the bread and everything,” and for me it was a big bread in those days. ‘Cause I was making with Basie $125 a week, and the last part of my stint with the Basie band I got a raise, $15 raise, so I’m making $140 a week. And Duke says, Duke would give me $225 a week.

JW: All right.

CT: Oh, man, that was great big bread for me, you know, ‘cause there was cats in there making three and four and five, but I didn’t know it. But to me, that was big bread. So that day he says to me, he says “well you know, it’s just not proper protocol for a person to snatch somebody out of his buddy’s band. So we’ll have to strategically work this out.” I said “okay, what do you suggest?” He said “well I’ll tell you what I think. I think you should maybe just get sick and tell Bill [Basie] that you’re going to go home and recuperate and while you’re home recuperating I’ll put you on salary.” Yeah? Wow man. Ain’t no better deal than that. So I went back and told Bas’ that I put my notice in, I said “no Bas’, I’m just not feeling good, I just need to go home and just get on.” And he said “okay, well when you get yourself together you can come on back, because this is always home for you.” So I said “thanks, Bill, I appreciate it very much.” So I went home, I’m on salary, and right away the first check, wham, so before I get home, you know?” So this went on and on until the band just happened to come through St. Louis, three months later, I’m on salary for three months, and they’re coming through St. Louis playing the Keel Auditorium on November the 11th, Armistice Day. And I just happened to join the band. That was the Big Show with Sarah Vaughan, Peg Leg Bates, Patterson and Jackson and all them from the Big Show. I don’t know if it was ‘51 or ‘52. But anyhow, I left and went with the band. I stayed with the band for almost ten years you know? And years later, I went up to the Carnegie Hall when Basie was already sick and he had to take a little side elevator to ride up, this was before they installed the thing that they’ve got there now. And I went backstage to see him and I’m standing at the top and he’s coming up and I said “you know one thing?” I said “I have a confession to make to you, something that’s been bugging me for years and years.” He said “yeah? what is it?” I said “when I left the band you know, I told you I was sick and going home,” I said “I wasn’t really sick.” He said “um humm.” I said “the reason I did that is because Duke had made me an offer I couldn’t pass up.” He said “um humm.” He said “why do you think I took the raise back, you think I didn’t know that?”

Clark will help us transition to the next entry which will focus on my favorite big band, the Count Basie Orchestra.

It's Not the Notes, It's the Rests

2011-06-23T09:59:00.003-04:00

Some things in music seem obvious to me now but took a long time to figure out. A prime example is that students have much more trouble NOT playing than playing. When they have a measure with a three beat note followed by a rest, the rest becomes hard because it’s a place that you’re not supposed to play, but you still have to count it. It seems difficult for students to feel the concept of a space being as important as a note, so I encourage them to think of rests as “notes of silence.” In addition, long notes are harder than short notes. The method books all had us play whole notes first, then we played half notes, then quarter notes, then the “fast” notes like eighth notes. As kids learn to play more notes per beat, the concept of “faster” becomes a problem, because eighth notes are not necessarily fast. But that’s how they start to think of them — they’re faster notes so they try to play them as fast as they can. Consequently, the long notes become harder to play because they require too much time. We get lazy and cut them short. It comes back to being able to feel and keep a pulse inside you while you’re playing and while you’re not playing. And so long notes become hard, and long rests are next to impossible.

It’s doubly hard for students to play eighth or sixteenth notes and then arrive at half notes, or — God forbid — whole notes, and not completely cheat on the proper number of beats. Thus the long notes become harder than the short notes, and similarly, the slower the tempo the more difficult it all becomes.

Fast music requires a certain finger dexterity that has to be learned along with articulation and hand-eye coordination. Of course this can be difficult to learn. But once you master that, suddenly the slow passages become hard as we become impatient and we can’t seem to relax and feel the beat. It’s easier to feel a fast beat; a slow beat challenges our short attention spans. I find myself writing “PLAY THE RESTS” in my boldest pen in a hopeful attempt to remind students to keep this concept in their head when practicing at home.

You might think this counting issue only applies to young musicians, but I have heard adult working musicians who also have not learned this. I have heard and have played with pianists who drop rests or shorten long notes in an apparent attempt to keep the song moving forward. Take this example for clarification: think of the first two measures in the song “Yesterday.” The time-challenged piano player may play this phrase and on the syllable “day” almost immediately skip to the note for the word “all.” Not only have they cheated on the length of the long note for the syllable “day” but they also ignore the rest that occurs on beat 1 before the word “all.” The majority of listeners in the room may not notice the hiccup in time, but those who do may feel inclined to fling their drink at the pianist, who obviously would not be aware of the time faux pas.

Tips for Aspiring Singers

2011-06-15T17:09:00.004-04:00

Some skilled singers are regarded as musicians by their fellow instrumentalists. As regularly encountered on gigs though, those who approach a piano player and want to sing rarely impress due to lack of musical homework.

“American Idol” and its spinoffs may give the impression that anyone can be a successful singer as long as they’re given a microphone and the spotlight. As a pianist, I enjoy the role of an accompanist, and have played this role with many vocalists of varying degrees of talent. Legendary stories abound of amateur singers boldly desiring their 15 minutes:

Once a woman approached me at the piano and asked if she could sing a song. I said “sure, what do you want to sing?” She said “I don’t know, what do YOU know?” I said “How about ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’?” She said “oh yes, yes, yes, that’s a great one. Have you got the words?”

From my friend Rick Montalbano, there was the singer who said “that key is too high, can you do it in minor?”

A variation of this theme is from Bill Crow, who accumulated many jazz stories over the years and has put them in a great volume called “Jazz Anecdotes.” Someone requested “When Sunny Gets Blue” from the band. The singer says “I’d like to do it, but I only know the first line.” The piano player says “no problem, I’ll feed you as we go long.” They start the tune and the singer sings “When Sunny gets blue…” and expectantly looks over at the pianist. He whispers to her: “B flat minor 7 to E flat 9.”

Here’s my advice to aspiring singers as to how they can best enter the real world of performing on stage with a band:

DO...

… buy your own microphone, cable and stand

… aim at buying your own portable PA system

… acknowledge your accompanists on stage

… make it your business to have your own collection of lead sheets tailored for you (melody and chords, intros and endings, in keys that fit your range)

… Learn how PA equipment works and offer to help pack up at the end of gigs

… know your lyrics, but be able to make up alternatives on the spot if you forget them

… be able and willing to sing songs that may not be your favorites

… learn how to introduce songs and engage the audience

… learn the etiquette of performing with a band and sitting in (go see live music)

… consider learning the piano or guitar so you have a better understanding of chords and song structure

… read about and listen to your favorite singers, then listen to the artists who influenced them; and learn from instrumentalists also

DON’T...

… give your accompanists dirty looks if he/she makes a mistake

… stop singing if something goes wrong

… make apologies if you are not in great voice

… be careless with equipment, especially if it’s not yours

… be shy when opportunity knocks (be ready)

… think about acting like a diva unless you have earned it!

A general fact to keep in mind is that any musician who wants to work needs to be as valuable as possible. This means having personality and versatility to complement your talent.

Jazz Code

2011-05-31T17:55:00.007-04:00

If jazz musicians’ conversations are often practical in nature, as posited in my last blog entry, what are those practical chats like? I have been fortunate to witness numerous ad hoc groups of musicians before a performance. The designated leader typically creates an hour long set by suggesting songs and waiting for a veto by a sideman (it rarely happens). Once they hit the stage, most of the conversation becomes nonverbal. For lack of a better term, I will call this jazz code.

The most frequently asked question non-musicians ask of jazz artists is how do they know what to play when they improvise. I think the second-most-asked question is how do they know where they are in the song and how do they all come out together at the end. It’s not really such a mysterious thing, but there are messages being sent between band members that audience members might not realize.

The question boils down to how musicians function as a band. How do they know when to stop? How do they know who’s turn it is in the improvisation spotlight? A lot of this negotiation is done nonverbally. Occasionally you hear a verbal command: “take it out,” or counting off the tempo. More often than not, bandstand etiquette for creating a spontaneous performance or an arrangement is done with eye contact and hand signals.

If there are music stands on stage and the musicians are getting up charts to read, you are less likely to see physical gesturing, hand signals, motioning, and spontaneity with instruments. Because the band members are reading charts, order and length of solos will be more scripted. But it’s not unheard of for jazz musicians to literally meet on the bandstand. Typically in today’s market a jazz musician lands a gig and then assembles a band for the date. Some players they may know well, some they may not. The latter is a situation when bandstand signals are more likely to come into play.

Some information we could call defaults: things that are understood unless indicated otherwise. For instance, there’s a collection of standard songs most jazz musicians know. In those songs, standard keys are expected. When someone calls “Misty” or “There Will Never Be Another You,” the musicians expect to play them in the standard key of E flat (the leader may hold up three fingers to indicate three flats). The exception might be if you have a singer on the bandstand, especially a female singer, as most standards were not written in friendly keys for women. So unless you say different, i.e. “let’s do ‘Misty’ in G” (which will get you some raised eyebrows, scrambling for music or some other reaction), you’re going to play in the standard key.

It’s rare that the feel of a song is changed. If you call “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be,” it’s expected you’re going to play it as a swing/shuffle with a medium tempo groove. In the case of “A Day in the Life of a Fool” or “Girl from Ipanema,” bossa novas is the understood groove. If you want to play “Girl from Ipanema” as a swing tune, you’d better be sure you announce it to the band. (Actually I’m not sure whether that’s ever been done before in music history.)

Other defaults depend on the band’s make-up, but if you have a quartet of piano, bass, drums and a horn, the roles are pretty well defined. The horn (saxophone or trumpet), in addition to usually leading the group, is going to take care of the melody. If the sax player wants the piano player to take the melody at the bridge, he probably will mention it beforehand. After the melody is stated, usually once, it’s time for people to solo over the form, and again it’s expected that the leader, or the wind player, is going to solo first. There’s no particular reason for this, it’s just the way things are normally done. The first soloist is free to play around the form as many times as he wants, and the audience members well might ask how do the other players know how long this is going to be? In fact they usually don’t. But the soloists have a number of things they can do. Most obvious is when they get to the last couple of measures of the form, they play something that indicates they’re done with their statement — perhaps a downward melodic line or a decrease in intensity. It’s hard to describe what this is, but it’s obvious when you hear it. That’s an example of an audio cue. In addition, there’s the physical cue: typically pointing your horn or nodding at the next soloist. It could be something subtle, such as making direct eye contact with the next soloist, or turning towards that person. It’s a handing off of the baton. This is something that experienced band members anticipate.

As a particular solo is coming to an end and the form is ready to loop again, hip rhythm section players are attuned for a change, and they adjust their playing accordingly. A good drummer will probably move his basic cymbal beat somewhere else, to give the music a different flavor as the next soloist starts out. For a piano or bass solo, the rhythm section may come down in volume so as to match that particular instrument. It behooves all the musicians on stage to be aware when this is happening.

Not every tune on a jazz gig will include a bass and/or drum solo, depending on the bassist or drummer of course. (It may be their gig, and if so they may be determined they are going to get solo spots on every tune.) Ordinarily, an extra hand signal/gesture to the drummer is required for a drum solo. After getting the attention of the rest of the musicians, the leader might hold up four fingers and point to the drummer. The translation is: drum solo, but we’re going to trade four measures back and forth. The wind instrument and/or piano gets the first four measures of the form then the drummer gets the next four. It’s a back and forth pattern and the form remains intact. It usually works out because most often you’re playing a 12-measure form. If you go around twice, you’re back at the top where the melody comes back in. If you’re playing 32-bars, something different may happen. Sometimes you trade fours with the drums, and then the drummer may get the whole eight bars of the bridge. That’s another hand signal to the band. It’s similar with the bass although the bass may solo over the whole form.

After everybody’s had their say, the leader may point to his head, indicating to all a return to the head (the melody). They might also point to their head and hold up one finger: we’re going to play the melody one time. If you get to the end of that one time and the band leader then decides it should be extended, you may see a circular motion with his hand — let’s go around again.

And then there’s the tag. A tag is usually the last four bars played three times. The tag can be cued by simply lifting the horn up, or by altering the melody notes, something to indicate we’re adding the tag. There’s a specific chord pattern the rhythm section plays during this tag that musicians call a turnaround.

Most of these things are just ingrained. You don’t go to a book to learn this, you learn it on the bandstand after a couple of times of fumbling — what the heck did that mean — you’re expected to absorb it.

There are some words and signals that are almost becoming a lost art, that I’ve only seen a couple of times from an older generation of musicians. One that really caught my ear on the bandstand is when the then-89-year-old violinist Claude “Fiddler” Williams decided to tweak the form of an A-A-B-A song. It’s typical way to shorten the whole length of the performance. After going through the form a couple of times, instead of going back to the A, you can take a shortcut back to the bridge. So you’d play the form A-A-B-A; B-A. But you have to let the band members know that this is going to happen. So as we were approaching the end of the third A, he said “channel.” I was caught off guard, what is a channel? It didn’t take me long to figure out that “channel” was Claude’s preferred word for “bridge.” Architecturally a channel is not a bridge, but I understood what he meant. If you were lucky enough to have played with Lester Young, you would have heard “George Washington.” That was his preferred word for “bridge.” It’s tweaking the form on the fly.

The more guys on the bandstand, and the more loose the session, the more nonverbal communication you’re likely to see if you look closely. One of the things I was lucky enough to witness over the years with the jazz archive were jazz parties. Veteran musicians are grouped together by promoters to play sets. There is a designated leader, but it’s still a loose organization of guys who may or may not have shared the bandstand before. Here is when nonverbal signals really come in handy.

This writer and Kenny Davern on October 13, 2006

I saw clarinetist Kenny Davern make a gesture in a jam session with three or four wind players — something I only saw once. When one of the horn players was soloing and the bridge was coming, Kenny, as leader, subtly lifted his right hand, looked at the other horn players, and made what looked to be an “okay” sign with his thumb and forefinger. Three or four measures later the bridge arrived, and all the horn players lifted their horns and started playing long sustained tones — beautiful harmony — as if they were reading music that some hip arranger had written out for them. It then became clear to me what he had signaled. He was telling his fellow wind players to choose appropriate notes from the chord and play long tones softly behind the soloist. As a wind player, if you land on a note that someone else is on, one of you has to make the decision to go somewhere else. If you hit the note that the leader is on, it would be etiquette for you to be the one to move. When the bridge came to the end you would stop and the soloist goes on. Afterwards I told Kenny that I’d never seen that before. He said “oh you mean footballs.” So not only was it a nonverbal communication to play whole notes, it even had its own non-musical phraseology, “footballs.” They were whole notes, but who wants to call them whole notes? “Footballs” was far more hip. I have yet to see anybody else do that, and it’s probably a fossil of a hand signal and if used nowadays on the bandstand, your fellow band members would probably think you were just giving them encouragement (i.e. you guys are doing fine).

Footballs could be called a riff, although a riff is usually a little melodic phrase that’s going to be played behind a soloist. There are two ways to do this. Sometimes you’ll see one of the horn players, while someone else is playing they’ll whisper something in their bandmate’s ear. You might wonder what is being said. It’s possible the musician is singing a phrase (a riff) in the other guy’s ear, indicating that everyone will play this riff behind the soloist when the next section arrives. A decent musician will be able to play it the first time, because they hear it within the context of the song and the chord structure. Or, the leader can play it softly one time to their bandmates, and it is expected that everybody is going to get it, hopefully the first time. That riff then becomes a background figure, almost like an arranger had written it for them, but it happens spontaneously on the bandstand. I had the luck of doing this with Clark Terry on a gig one time. He just turned to us and played the absolute coolest riff you could imagine, expecting us to get it. I remember I didn’t get it the first time, it took two attempts. It was a perfect riff, but not all that simple, because I was playing with a guy who’d been doing this for about sixty years.

Though well known by jazz players, jazz code is not a common vernacular for musicians of all genres. By its very nature, much of jazz music is unscripted. Jazz code enables a professional and polished performance.

Jazz Chat

2011-05-25T09:03:00.008-04:00

Imagine you are watching a table full of animated jazz musicians having a conversation. All these musicians are household names for the well informed: Milt Hinton, Frank Wess, Nat Adderley and Joe Williams. They seem to be enjoying each other’s company. What are they talking about? I would imagine they were discussing which band swung more, Basie or Ellington. Or perhaps they were having a debate about whether tenor sax player Lester Young really deserved the title “Prez” or did it rightfully belong to Coleman Hawkins.

Exactly this situation happened to me early in the interview process, on a jazz cruise on which dozens of well known musicians were sailing. I had a reason to approach the table as I had an urgent question for Joe Williams, who was helping to coordinate the interview process. To my delight I was invited to join them around the table. Wow, I thought — now I’m really going to hear jazz insights from the masters in an informal setting.

Frank Wess had the floor as I sat down, and he was discussing, in full animation, a National Geographic special he had seen on TV which had filmed copulating camels. Usually mild-mannered Frank, with his nasal tone of voice, was mimicking the sound they were making and saying “you never saw something so uuugleee in your whole life.” The others chimed in about other weird copulating animal pictures they had seen, and they were having a good old time laughing and trying to top each other’s stories.

This was a eureka moment for me. I would have fully expected these old friends to be talking shop and trading stories about the good old days. But for the entire time I sat with them, the subject of music never arose.

I know now that discussions about music, for them, are more often of a practical nature. Maybe they’ll suggest you check your calendar to see if you’re available for a gig next month. Most discussion occurs just prior to hitting the stage, such as deciding which songs to play and who will be featured where.

It’s like this in jazz, just as it’s like this in nursing for example. When nurses sit around the table at lunch time, they’re not talking about the last wound they dressed or what medication regimen some patient is on. They’re not talking shop. That talk is reserved for conversation in the operating room or on the unit. In mixed company, where there are nurses and non-nurses present (spouses for example), talking shop would probably be considered rude and unnecessary because it excludes others from the conversation. Who wants to talk shop off the job, or in the case of the jazz musicians, off the bandstand?

Obviously there are jazz stories to be traded, and jazz musicians love to do this too. It is likely to be heard upon announcement of a fellow musician who recently passed, or who is sick. At that time will flow forth funny or poignant first-hand memories about their fallen comrade, or reminisces about what things were like on the bandstand with that person.

I love to hear those stories too, but they are best passed on a one-on-one basis. In the last few years of Kenny Davern’s life, I was fortunate to be what I consider his close friend. From New Mexico, Kenny frequently telephoned me just to “shoot the shit,” and in those conversations he talked about minutia of note choices or funny stories, not one of which I had ever heard or seen before in print. I always felt fortunate to have had that experience with Kenny, as he was an extraordinarily well-read man with a sarcastic and caustic wit which flowed from him easily and often caught me off-guard. On the last weekend he visited our area, a couple of months before his abrupt passing, my wife, Kenny and I went out to lunch. During that conversation, we both enjoyed Kenny’s company, but he certainly didn’t talk shop. The conversation was broadened for the more inclusive audience.

Kenny was an eminent conversationalist and clearly one of the best clarinetists of his day. Recently I was called by someone writing a biography about Kenny and the biographer told me something I didn’t know, that Kenny practiced excessively every day. Now that I think about it, it makes sense because of the facility he maintained on the clarinet. But as well as I knew him, Kenny never mentioned his practice regimen to me. Maybe he just assumed this is a practice that all musicians of quality pursue, and so there was never a reason to discuss that daily habit. Thus I propose the following unwritten law: the higher in the jazz hierarchy one rises to, the less likely that person is to have incessant discussions about the craft. Nurses do their job. They don’t need to talk about what they do, because all other nurses know simple nursing truths.

Thoughts on Improvisation

2011-03-24T11:08:00.015-04:00

The study of jazz has come a long way from the days when saxophonist Don Menza was a student at a State University of New York at Fredonia and related that the practice rooms were adorned with “No Jazz Playing” signs and only half jokingly added that practicing jazz was considered a felony, playing Dixieland was a misdemeanor. We can witness the many and varied approaches to teaching a skill that had previously been passed on for many years through listening and imitation. Jazz theorists have codified and analyzed the art of improvisation to a point where it is possible to put a name and justification on almost every lick and phrase. Yet there has always been a mysterious magic to what great soloists do. Countless artists have created lasting extemporaneous musical statements long before modes, enclosures and symmetric diminished scales were considered part of a jazz musician’s vocabulary. In my role as director of the Hamilton College Jazz Archive I often asked interviewees to try to relate their thought process during improvisation. The following are excerpts taken from those interviews.

Clark Terry is a true statesmen of jazz and has long believed in the value of jazz education. Clark was interviewed in 1995 by his friend the late Joe Williams. Clark responded to a question about the role of music theory in creating an improvised solo. He takes us back to a time before musical terms were labeled and intellectualized.

Clark Terry

Clark Terry: You have to remember that years before people who came into this field, years before they knew anything about theory or harmony, composition, counterpoint, etc., they gave in to their feelings. And they were indulging in, for lack of a better term they called it “get off.” This is long before the term “improvisation” was coined, pertaining to playing music. They used to call it “get off,” which simply meant that the first chorus you played a melody, and thereafter you’d use the melody as a guidewire to simply superimpose extemporaneously a melody around this given melody. So you “get off” the melody. Even then the guys were giving vent to their feelings and expressing themselves and they would use certain things that would help them get from point A to point B. First of all the one thing that we teach our students today regardless of how much theory or harmony or composition will get in their brain, they’ve got to know when to use it. They’ve got to listen for when to use it or how to use it. Heads loaded with something they don’t know how to use it, don’t know where to use it or when to use it. So this is a lesson that we try real hard to get our students to understand. Back in those days, they didn’t know anything as you mention about these technical terms. They had nobody around to teach it. But they were determined to give in to their feelings and express themselves, and “get off.” So what’d they do? They played the Blues as the main vehicle, and they played the standard tunes, and then superimposed melody around it. But on the Blues they figured out a good way to give vent to their feelings is that somebody had to change the melody, even without knowledge, to figure out, there’s the tonic, that’s the one; then you go up the scale, one two three, that’s the third, they’d lower that a half-step, that’s the minor third; you go up one, two, three, four, five, lower that, so you’ve got a tonic, a minor third, a flatted fifth, and they didn’t know then that it constituted a half diminished. All they knew is they called them the “blue notes.” “Man you’ve got your blue notes?” “Yeah, baby I’ve got ‘em down, I’m working on F sharp now, I’m going to have that tomorrow.” …. Now you can’t pick out more beautiful and important notes in playing the Blues than those three. Then you go into your seventh. That’s all. Just that one note, those two notes or those three. Because after a while they begin to hear all of the relative notes that constitute the scale, and then they’re going to hear the four, they’re going to hear the flat five, some people call it the augmented seventh the flat sixth, the major seventh, they’ll hear the whole scale then. But after a while they’re going to be involved with playing those blue notes. The tonic, minor third and the flatted fifth, and they got it.

Bill Charlap

Bill Charlap grew up in a musical environment well after the era that Clark Terry describes. Music is often called the universal language and he finds the use of language an appropriate metaphor in describing his thought process or lack thereof when improvising. He also emphasizes the importance of listening to the sounds and the space that surround you in any given situation.

Bill Charlap: One should not be sitting there doing analytical thought when you’re improvising. It’s like language. You don’t think about the next word you’re going to say, you don’t think about how to spell it or what that word is, you just say it. It’s the same for me at the piano. Same for any musician worth their salt as a jazz musician. You think a phrase and you play that phrase. I don’t think, gee that’s the third, that’s the seventh, that’s a dotted eighth, sixteenth, there’s a whole rest here — all the technical things. … I hearken it to language because in language you have to know how to conjugate, you have to know how to speak properly, how to get your ideas across in many different ways. You might say I walked up the mountain, and you might say I slowly walked up the mountain and then I ran and then I stopped and I took a rest, I had a ham sandwich, and then I got to the top of the mountain. There’s a lot of different ways to get there. And I know many different ways, just as you would in a conversation, but you don’t think about it, you just think of what you want to express. That’s the best analogy I can give for what happens when I’m improvising. Behind it is a great deal of knowledge and experience and the ability to listen. The most important thing is to listen to the players around you, or if you’re playing solo, to listen to the air. Listen to the space, and listen to what the space needs. And if it doesn’t need anything, don’t play anything.

Ken Peplowski

Intuition plays an important role in creating your own sound, according to saxophonist and clarinetist Ken Peplowski. Ken also belongs to a younger generation of jazz artists who had access to the growing body of codified information about how to play jazz. His advice on the subject of jazz theory is basically, “learn it then forget it,” a phrase that most teachers would find difficult to pass on to their students. Ken speaks about dealing with “mistakes” and the opportunities they may present. He compares the best improvising to a mystical experience.

Ken Peplowski: A big part of improvising is forgetting what you know and just using your ear and going on intuition. Because sometimes they get very hung up in the schools on, if you have this chord you have to play this pattern over it, this is what John Coltrane did when he played. But the reason why those musicians were famous and why they were so loved is because they were individuals, with their own style and their own sound. And you have to encourage students to explore on their own also. It’s great to learn all this stuff because any knowledge is good knowledge. The trick is later to forget that. It’s like things you feed into a computer and then out comes something else. Whatever you read or whatever you live, it all comes into your music. So you can’t sit there while you’re playing and think about every single chord and what can I play over this? Because the best moments when you’re improvising, you’re actually — I hate to say this — but it’s almost an out-of-body experience. You can actually listen to yourself playing. You’re just sailing through the changes and saying oh, hey, how did I play that?

Monk Rowe: And how do I get out of something that I didn’t mean to play? Did that ever happen to you?

Ken Peplowski: Yeah. Oh, of course. In fact sometimes you can do that. You play little tricks on yourself. You paint yourself into a corner and then you try to get out of it. But as Dizzy Gillespie said one time, “you’re only a half step away from salvation at any given moment.” Because when you look at a chord and you look at extensions of the chord, you keep adding thirds onto the chord, you have every note in the chromatic scale anyway. So it’s all how it comes out at the end, how you resolve a phrase. So to me the object is not to think about every chord as an individual thing, but the whole thing is a big picture. And your object is to get from point A to point B and tell a story and have a flow to it — a beginning, a middle and an end. And getting back to the schools, that’s what I try to bring to the students, to show them how they can maybe assimilate these bits of knowledge they have, and try to find their own way of negotiating these chord changes, not forgetting the knowledge that they have. It’s important to learn that stuff but sometimes individuality is not stressed enough.

Ken is not the only player to attest to this feeling of being a conduit of the music. In a 1994 interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, Sonny Rollins stated that “There are some occasions where I can stand back and listen to myself play. I’m just the person standing there, moving my fingers. Certain times it’s an out of body experience.”

Joe Wilder

Trumpeter Joe Wilder is the consummate professional and a musician who has performed at the highest levels of classical and jazz music. He echoes Bill Charlap’s comments about the importance of listening and reacting to your musical surroundings and reminds us that a bit of mental preplanning can go a long way in creating effective improvisations. When asked about his thought process he offered his own connection to language and added an athletic metaphor.

Joe Wilder: These things come to you automatically. I mean usually if I’m going to play something while someone else is playing, I’ll try to think of something that I would like to start, to introduce my solo with, and it’s something that’s relative to the nature of the piece itself, and something that fits kind of harmonically with what’s going on. And I usually try to think about that. And I also think it’s just — improvisation it’s like giving a speech or something like that. You have a subject, and your interpretation of it may differ from mine, but it’s still basically the same subject so that’s a theme that you’re improvising around. And you try to play something that enhances it, and also adds a little different flavor to it. So you don’t come in and play exactly what the person played before you. You may even extract some of what he played as a lead in to what you’re going to do, so you get that dove-tailing, and it’s like passing the baton in a relay race. You do it smoothly. You’re running and you pick up the same speed as that person whom you’re going to accept the baton from or pass it to, and you get that smooth transition. If you listen to a lot of improvisation in different groups, they have that smooth transfer from one to the other. That’s the way it comes off.

Dan Barrett

Most serious students of jazz hope to make at least part of their living by playing it. Those of us who are practicing musicians know that what you would like to play and what you need to play are not always the same thing. Trombonist and arranger Dan Barrett is a frequent guest at jazz events across the country and a recording artist for Arbors Records. When asked about what students should practice in their study of jazz he offered some practical advice:

Dan Barrett: I would advise [students] that in their practicing as they’re playing scales and as they’re playing exercises and trying to improve their technique, I would take about 25 or 30% of that time and use it to study songs. And go out and buy sheet music, not just lead sheets with the chord symbols, but shell out the bucks that it takes and go out and buy Cole Porter songs and go out and buy Gershwin songs. And look at them and look at the piano parts, even if you don’t play piano. And it takes forever, I mean if you’re not a piano player, but it’s worth the effort to sit at a keyboard and hear how those inner voices move. And if the student spent a little bit of his practice time, doing that, analyzing these songs by these great songwriters he’d learn how to construct a line. Because after all these are great composers. And what we’re trying to do in jazz ostensibly is to compose, even though we’re composing spontaneously. And I think what better way to learn to compose then examining music by a great composer. So not only would you profit from that knowledge that you can gain by analyzing that music, but also you’ll learn these great songs. Once student said “well this is all well and good, but when are we going to get into the Lydian modes and all of that?” And I say, “somebody else can teach you that better than I can,” and I said “I think any knowledge is good.” And I said “it’d probably benefit you greatly to know about that. But I’ll tell you something. Playing in clubs, I’ve received five dollars here and there to play ‘Body and Soul’ and I’ve received ten dollar tips to play ‘Stardust,’ but I don’t think I’ve ever made a dime to play a Dorian mode or a Lydian mode. So it’s great to know about that stuff, but I think you’d be better off and stand a much greater chance to make a living in a fairly competitive business if you learn these songs and learn them correctly, so you make people happy.

Dan reminds us of the value of studying great and memorable melodies. If we recognize that one way to look at improvising is “composing spontaneously” as Dan states, or “superimposing a new melody over the original” as Clark Terry states, then we might well ask what makes for a good melody.

Slide Hampton

Trombonist and arranger Slide Hampton offers his opinions on the subject of a good melody.

Monk Rowe: What to you makes a good melody?

Slide Hampton: Well like anything else, [it’s] the construction of a melody. The way that it resolves naturally from one note to the other. And of courses you know you have a lot of practice in that all of the great people that came before you that wrote melodies. There’s so many great melodies that started I don’t know how long ago, a thousand years ago even maybe. But to have a melody that a person can listen to. I thought about that recently — a melody that a person can listen to that they never heard before but they still can appreciate it and enjoy it. The beauty of it. Of course you can always enjoy a melody that you know, if it’s something that you like. But to be able to play a melody or to write a melody or compose a melody that people can listen to and say yeah I like that, although I haven’t heard it before. I think that’s one of the things that — the standards that I try to look for in playing or writing a melody.

Conveying the idea that an improvisation can be melodic and enjoyable to listen to may be the most important lesson a teacher can impart.

Bill Watrous

Thoughts from one last interviewee here include two brief statements from trombonist extraordinaire, Bill Watrous. A number of years ago I had the great fortune to be able assemble an all star group to record “Jazz Life” which contains some of my own compositions, and Bill Watrous and trumpeter Wendell Brunious are on the recording. In one instance, on a tune they had never seen, they were able to pull off a seamless transition between solos that reminded me of Joe Wilder’s description of that moment soloists face. The tune is entitled, “Beyond Category” and was written for Clark Terry. There are eight bars from Wendell followed by another eight from Bill.

In addressing my question about improvisation, Bill referred to that 16-bar moment in an interview which was conducted in March of 1999, on the day after that session.

Monk Rowe: Is it possible for you to describe to a younger player what you think about when you improvise? Is it the chords that are behind you? Are you thinking about what you played six measures ago and where you re going with it? Is it possible to put that into words?

Bill Watrous: I’m thinking ahead frankly. And what I’m basically doing is I’m thinking counterpoint as I’m going. And I’m listening to the textures that the rhythm section is putting out. I’m listening very carefully to the bass and drums and the piano and trying to get a mattress to bounce on so to speak. And if everything is planned, understandable, that’s coming down, then it’s not difficult, no problem at all to just close my eyes and go and play. It’s the same with Wendell. Both of us played on one of those tunes that you had the other day, when it was not clear who was going to play, and the changes weren’t necessarily—

Monk Rowe: I was blown away by that.

Bill Watrous: Both of us just closed our eyes and just went with it. See if you blunder ahead all the time, you’ll never get anything. But if you play a little bit and then stop for a second and listen to where it’s going, and go there, there’s no problem. That’s the secret in that stuff. But people that are trying to have this constant ongoing flow, you can’t have an ongoing flow if you don’t know where the heck you’re going.

Monk Rowe: To go there, as you say, you need to have spent some years developing your ear.

Bill Watrous: Oh yeah.

Monk Rowe: What do you suggest to players to do that?

Bill Watrous: I would suggest this: I would suggest that they take those Abersold CD’s and play along and put them on, even if they don’t know the tune, and just try and feel their way through there, not getting into a panic but just going where they suggest that you go. And if you listen, if you really honestly listen, and have the ability to listen, of course that has to be developed too, ear training is one major part of this thing, if you can teach them to hear a tone and produce it on their instrument, and then hear a series of tones and do that. And if you equate what you hear with what’s coming out of your instrument, it makes it a lot easier. It makes it a much simpler job than if you’re just shooting in the dark. You have to close your eyes. I tell a lot of young players, don’t have your nose dripping on the paper man, listen to what this thing is doing, close your eyes and get into the capsule and go there. Just let your ear and your feelings sort of take you someplace. It’s worth trying. And I always get people to try to do that.

I have heard a number of artists suggest that students get their noses out of the music but that’s the first time someone has said they should stop dripping on it.

Lastly, Bill addressed the issue of “playing outside” or “playing free,” phrases that I personally feel are too frequently used to justify unfortunate note choices. I’m reminded of Dizzy Gillespie’s description of an unwanted tenor player nicknamed “The Demon,” who dominated jam sessions at Minton’s. Dizzy described him as “the first freedom player — free of harmony, free of rhythm, free of everything.” Bill was addressing a question about the times when he himself might go outside “it” — in Bill’s case “it” meaning the song and its chord progression.

Monk Rowe: Do you feel compelled to bring it back in?

Bill Watrous: I keep it in sight. While I’m doing it I keep it in sight all the time. Because I feel that if you don’t do that then you’re just B.S.ing everybody. I really believe that. I think that if you’re going to play outside, you better damn well know where the inside is while you’re doing it and keep it in mind and have at least a smattering of an idea as to where you’re coming from. If you’re going somewhere, you better have roots. You’ve got to have them. I think you really do. Yet there’s a lot of players that absolutely don’t care. They have no roots, I mean there’s no anchor anywhere, and they don’t want one. You’ve heard them, you’ve heard these type of players that just ramble on and they hope for a series of happy accidents. And sometimes you get them.

He obviously feels that a sometimes series of happy accidents does not cut it.

I think many non-musicians or even non-improvising musicians have the impression that after they state the melody jazz performers just proceed to play anything they want. But only in what is called “free jazz” is that even close to the truth. Improvising — making it up as you go along — in the context of most jazz performances is accomplished within a fairly structured framework. The improviser first needs to be aware of the time, the beat and the rhythm, or even the most astute note choices will sound off. Even if an improviser chooses to create phrases that seem to conflict with the steady beat — to “play against the time” — they are acknowledging where the time is. Secondly, the soloist is trying to choose from a pallet of notes that match the chords. Depending on the number of chords per measure and the tempo of the song, this can be a daunting task (think Bebop!). Again, the improviser may choose to play “outside the chord” but in doing so acknowledges what is inside. As Bill Watrous said in the last excerpt, “if you want to go outside, you better know what’s inside.”

Also, the soloist is trying to “get off” the melody but has to be aware that the melody was written within a defined and repeated structure — typically a 32-bar AABA form or a 12- or 16-bar Blues. Losing sight of this may find you committing a classic faux pas, ending your solo in the middle of the form thus garnering a mystified look from the bandmates, who know where they are in the structure.

For me, improvising is a type of problem solving (not a particularly romantic description I admit). But if the “problem” of creating something new within the aforementioned parameters is solved melodically and memorably, the romance will come along with it.

My favorite improvisers have had this rare ability to spontaneously create mini-melodies, licks or phrases that somehow sound just right for the moment. There really is no explaining it, for that is what makes it magical. A well known jazz method declares “Anyone Can Improvise.” Maybe. And perhaps anyone can sculpt a marble statue, compose a sonnet or choreograph a pas de deux. But what elevates the very few into that rare place that makes us pay repeated attention? What inspires us to imitate their innovation? If someone figures out what exactly that is and codifies it, I would rather not know. I would rather keep the magic unexplainable.

Jazz Conversations

2011-03-19T10:23:00.007-04:00

Great News!

Our collection of over 300 interviews with jazz musicians, arrangers, writers and critics, the jazz greats and the supporting cast from the 1930’s to the present, is now available online and free to the public courtesy of the Hamilton College Jazz Archive. Listeners can click on a link and read the transcripts or listen to interviews with some of the jazz world’s most well-known musicians, including Dave Brubeck, Lionel Hampton, Oscar Peterson and George Shearing as well as former members of bands led by Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton and the Dorsey Brothers. Interviews are searchable by subject and name. Selected video excerpts may also be viewed at the archive website. 

The collection focuses primarily on artists associated with mainstream jazz and the swing era. The interviews, which range from 30 to 120 minutes, reveal the learning processes employed by musicians prior to the establishment of jazz education programs, and the realities of making a career in the jazz world. Those interviewed discuss stories of life on the road and in the New York City recording scene, as well as race relations past and present, in the jazz world and beyond. Anecdotes are woven throughout the interviews In addition to jazz lore, there is a wealth of material illuminating American society in the twentieth century. Stories about the depression, World War II, spirituality and commitment to the art form abound — all first-hand accounts.

The Jazz Archive was established by jazz enthusiast and Hamilton alumnus Milt Fillius Jr. ’44 who recognized the urgent need to document the life stories of notable jazz figures. It is physically located on the Hamilton College campus in Clinton, New York.

Interviews with Oscar Peterson, George Shearing, Clark Terry and Milt Hinton were conducted by jazz vocalist Joe Williams, who was instrumental in establishing the reputation of this oral history project. Approximately one-third of those interviewed are now deceased.

The interview transcripts and audio recordings are online as part of the Hamilton College Library Digital Collection which is comprised of several other notable holdings including those related to the Civil War and to communal societies.

Hamilton College is one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges. It is independent, highly selective, coeducational and residential. Originally founded in 1793 as the Hamilton-Oneida Academy, Hamilton is now comprised of approximately 1,800 diverse and talented students from nearly all 50 states and approximately 40 countries. More information on the college can be found here.

Salmon for Lunch with Sir George and Joe

2011-02-16T15:04:00.008-05:00

Our blog this time refers to a backstory about my brief encounter with Sir George Shearing, who passed away this last Monday at the age of 91, and the singer Joe Williams, who helped our archive get on its feet in its early days.

British-born George Shearing belongs in a select group of jazz musicians who qualify as household names. His personal style, especially in the late 1950’s, bridged the gap between easy listening and sophisticated jazz. In a typical 1957 household, George Shearing LP’s would share shelf space with instrumental offerings by Mantovani and Ray Conniff. Certainly the Shearing recordings were the hippest of this genre. His “Shearing Sound” led to many imitators. He had a way of blending his “locked hands” piano style with vibes and guitar, making the melody prominent while employing jazz harmonies and enough improvisation to satisfy jazz fans.

The early days of the archive included the enjoyable but daunting task of setting up interview sessions with Joe Williams as the interviewer. One of these situations arose with George Shearing. Considering that Joe lived in Las Vegas and George lived in New York City, and they were both VIP jazz musicians — busy recording and touring artists — putting them together in the same hotel room with cameras, lights and audio recorders was no small task. After numerous attempts, we finally brought them together in New York on March 8, 1996 at a hotel near Lincoln Center. Transportation arrangements were made to pick up Joe at his hotel, and Sir George at his apartment. George arrived, accompanied by his wife Ellie.

The moment finally arrived when we had them both seated in their respective chairs, lights and sound in place, ready to roll. At that point Joe suggested “perhaps we should eat lunch first.” So the phone was picked up and room service was ordered. It occurred to me at the time that we could just film the wait and film the lunch, perhaps somewhere between the salad and the salmon something would be said that we would be glad was caught on tape. Many poignant conversations occurred when musicians were simply talking off the cuff without a camera rolling. But I had come to know Joe Williams a bit, and a suggestion to roll the cameras while they were eating might have resulted in me being on the receiving end of one of Joe’s wide-eyed stares that tended to melt me in my tracks. It wouldn’t have been the first or the last time.

So lunch was ordered, eaten, cleared away, and the interview finally started actually as Joe finished his last bite. The session is only 26 minutes, but yielded this humorous anecdote from George about his first band experience in England:

GS: There was an all blind band in 1937. Fifteen musicians. Fifteen blind guys, taught to be musicians, from being chair caners, buskin makers...

JW: What?

GS: They caned chairs. They made buskins, and they were taught to play instruments and be musicians. And the scores were done in Braille. We had Lunceford’s “Stratosphere,” Benny Carter’s “Night Fall.”

JW: Did you have his suite too?

GS: Yeah, we had all the Braille charts. And I’m the only one that didn’t need it, and I’d pick it up by ear right away. The theme song for the band by the way was “I’ll See You In My Dreams.” And the only fully sighted man was a man named Claude Bampton, who was a kind of semi-professional band leader in England. He had this huge baton, you know “whit, whit, whit,” [sings] “I’ll See You In My Dreams.” One night, you know blind people always have to set up in a theater a little bit earlier than the sighted. It takes us a bit longer. And Claude said “okay fellas, you ready?” One guy said “no, just a minute, I lost my eye.” His glass eye had fallen out, rolled across the stage, and there was fifteen blind guys down on the floor...

JW: Oh, wait a minute, George...

GS: I kid you not, this is the God’s honest truth. Fifteen blind guys down on the floor looking for this eye.

JW: And you found it?

GS: They found it. And they didn’t massacre it at all, they found it. He put it in. “Whit, whit, whit” ... “I’ll See You In My Dreams.”

The George Shearing Quintet set the template for other combos to follow. The great singers were especially fond of George Shearing. His impeccable accompaniment was employed by a long list, including Mel Torme, Peggy Lee, Nancy Wilson and, of course, Joe Williams. He made his mark as a composer as well as a performer, authoring a number of long lasting jazz standards, most notably “Lullaby of Birdland.”

The term “Sir” George is not used here lightly — George was knighted by the Queen of England in June of 2007. Hamilton College also awarded George an honorary doctorate degree in 1994.

I have a long list of memorable moments that came from this terrific gig as jazz archive director. I’ve been in rooms one-on-one with hundreds of jazz artists, and, on occasion, with pairs of the finest jazz musicians there are. In some occasions, the memories are connected with unforeseen occurrences. Lunch with George and Joe would qualify as one of them.

Moody

2010-12-12T17:07:00.006-05:00

The history of jazz now spans a hundred plus years. The founding fathers have long since passed into music history, and, sadly, the ranks of the second and third generations of master musicians is becoming thin. On December 9^th we lost James Moody, saxophonist, vocalist, band leader and a man who spread optimism wherever he went. I met James Moody in San Diego on February 13, 1998. Our interview was delightful, mostly because James had a knack for putting people at ease.

Along with his high level of musicianship, he was also known for his relaxed and humorous bandstand personality. As a disciple of Dizzy Gillespie, James gathered musical knowledge as well as tips on how to engage an audience and keep your musicians loose:

JM: But Diz man, I’d be playing, we’d be on the bandstand, and Dizzy would come up and whisper in my ear “Moody your fly’s open,” and man I’d be very — and then he’d look at me with that look you know.

Like many musicians, James was able to remember the circumstances and the feeling of his first infatuation with music, realized through a storefront window:

MR: How did you come to the saxophone? Was it your first choice of instruments?

JM: I just loved the way it looked, and loved the way it sounded.

MR: Yeah?

JM: Yeah. I told my wife Linda, I told her “honey,” I says “in Newark, New Jersey where I lived, around the corner from where I lived, I lived on West Street, and if you went down the block and turned a corner, that was Springfield Avenue, there was a music store there called Dawn & Kirchner. And they used to have these windows, and they were just lined up with saxophones, you know, just lined up. And boy I used to go and just press my nose in it and look at it. Oh, man.” And finally one day my uncle bought me, he got me a saxophone, but it didn’t look like those, it was silver and it was alto, second hand, you know. But later on I finally got a nice horn. But the first horn I got, when I got it, oh man, I dug it. I put it in the bed next to me and just looked at it. I was out man.

MR Oh, that’s nice, that’s nice. I wish we had a photo of that.

JM: Yeah. Sixteen years old.

MR: And that was an alto?

JM: Alto, yeah. And you know what? It must have been a Conn because it had one of those screw things on it. Because I even forgot what — like in those days, I mean it didn’t mean anything, Conn or whatever, it was a saxophone.

James’ early career received a boost with a serendipitous incident. While in Europe as a young man, he recorded a spontaneous version of “I’m in the Mood for Love.” The numbers of records sold involving a jazz hit certainly pales in comparison with a rock hit, but indeed this did become a hit for James and brought him back to the United States. His version of the song became known as “Moody’s Mood for Love.” James related the story behind the engaging saxophone introduction:

MR: So up until that point, even when you recorded “Moody’s Mood for Love,” it was all coming from your ear?

JM: All by ear. “Moody’s Mood for Love,” the same thing. What I did was, I was playing tenor, so Lars Gullen, who was a very fantastic baritone jazz player in Sweden — good musicians in Sweden boy, wonderful — he had this beat up looking silver alto sitting by him at the record date. I asked him do you mind if I look at it? He said no. In the old days it was different. You played other people’s horns. You know you would never do that now. So anyway, they says you have one more cut to do, what would you like to do? I said how about “I’m in the Mood for Love?” Okay? And they said okay. So Gus Aphalia — this is the truth — the arranger, he went into the john and jotted down the harmonies, and then came back out and put them up on the thing, and we did it in one take. Now here’s why it sounded like it sounded. When they hit the chord — boom — [scats]. I’m trying to find the notes, because it’s alto now, not tenor. And people said oh you must have been inspired. I said yeah, I’m inspired to try and find the notes, that’s what I was inspired.

“Moody’s Mood for Love” became one of his theme songs and his version was eventually covered with a vocal version by Eddie Jefferson and King Pleasure.

On the strength of this record James returned to the United States, against his better judgement. While in his later years he may have struck us as a man who was always upbeat and full of optimism, he had his share of negative experiences in his life. The most telling was in dealing with the racism pervading much of the United States during his early years. He related one incident which he experienced as a band leader traveling in the south:

JM: Because I had had it, like with the racism that went on. I mean it was — remember I told you about the Brook Benton Revue? We were on the tour, and, I forget just where we were, but I had a hundred dollar bill. So I went into the donut shop to get some donuts. They said they didn’t have any change. So I went across the street to an automobile company, where they sell automobiles, asked for change, they didn’t have it there. So I said oh the heck with it. I got back on the bus. So when I got on the bus, in a minute, Brook Benton called me and says “hey, Moody.” I said “what?” He says “this state trooper wants to see you.” So I thought he was joking, a state trooper. I looked out, sure enough there’s a state trooper down there. So I get off, and the state trooper looks at me, and he says “what’s your name?” I told him I says “James Moody.” He says, “what do you do?” I said “well see, my name’s on the bus there,” I said “I’m with the band here.” And Brook says “maybe —” he says “get the hell out of here, get over here, I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to him.” So he says “how much money do you have?” I says “I don’t know, maybe four or five hundred dollars.” So he says “let me see it.” So I reached in one pocket and pulled out my traveler’s checks. And in another pocket I had cash, but something told me don’t do it. So I gave him the traveler’s checks, about seven, eight hundred bucks in traveler’s checks, because I had to pay the band. And so he looks at the traveler’s checks, he looks at me and he says “too much money.” So what am I supposed to say to the guy? Too much money? I mean I didn’t say anything. He looked again, “too much money.” I said “well,” I says, “I’m the leader here,” and I said “and I have to pay the musicians. I haven’t paid them all.” He says “too much money.” So he put it down and he looked at me again. “Too much” — he must have said this about fifteen or twenty times, then he called for another car, and another car came with a lieutenant, and they talked, and then a captain came and they talked. After this crap went on about a half hour, forty-five minutes, they came over again and did it again. “Too much money — too much money.” And then I mean he just gave me the traveler’s checks back and he left. Now you know what happened? When I went in to the automobile store, evidently they said there’s a negro over here with a hundred dollar bill, he probably stole it. So the cops came, and that’s how that came about.

Unlike some of his contemporaries who started their careers during the early years of bebop, James lived a long and full life, passing away at the age of 85. He was able to reap some of the benefits when jazz became a respected music in the United States. He received honors from the International Jazz Hall of Fame and was named an National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. Still he was less than happy with the fact that a man in his position was unable to call his own shots when recording an album at the age of 72. During the interview we listened to an excerpt from his then most recent release entitled “Moody Plays Mancini.”

MR: How did this album come about?

JM: Well the company wanted a concept. And that’s the thing nowadays, concept.

MR: Right.

JM: So we came up with the concept. Frank Sinatra before this. And then after this, Mancini, so that was the concept. But that’s how that came about.

MR: Does that bother you at all? That you need to do a concept?

JM: Yes it does, I have to be truthful, yes it does. Because you see what I think is that, and it’s been like this for a long time, the artist or the musician should make the records, and the record companies should sell them. But it’s the other way around. They want to make the records and then they want you to sell them. I mean that’s the impression I get.

MR: That the people that hold the purse strings are not musicians.

JM: No, they never are … But you know what I would love to do? I would love to be able to go into the studio with the musicians that I want, and the engineer should be there, and I’d just do what I wanted to do, the way I wanted to do it, and that would be it. Rather than somebody stopping me — hold it, take one more take. I’d like to just be able to do that.

James was one of those people who make me think I should be more like him — to do my best to spread a positive attitude and engage with people I barely know. He was a self-described romantic, but could still swing the music while romanticizing it. He never failed to acknowledge the emotional and career support that his wife Linda provided for him. I felt privileged to spend 90 minutes with such a man, and of the 300+ interviews I’ve experienced, his was the only one which ended with the interviewee asking of me “can I get a hug?”

In Search of A Sound

2010-11-28T16:02:00.007-05:00

Music is a combination of sounds, and with jazz music our listening experience can vary from the relative simplicity of the piano-bass-drums trio to the complexity of the Duke Ellington Orchestra consisting of 18 or so musicians, each with his own individual sound. What makes the sound of any individual jazz musician compelling is a complex issue. Since high school I’ve been in love with the sound of Cannonball Adderley. His saxophone sound is buoyant, emotional and deep-bodied, and it’s a sound I have tried to emulate as best I can. At the same time I can’t separate Cannonball’s alto sax sound from the sound of his band, especially in the Joe Zawinul years of the 1960’s. Those two things together represent my favorite jazz sound. I got to see Cannonball and his band a few times and I feel safe in saying that Cannonball’s sound was a direct reflection of the man that he was.

The subject of an instrumentalist’s sound was often discussed in our jazz archive interviews. The artists who had their formative years in the thirties and forties took great pride in finding a sound that distinguished them from their fellow players. Harry “Sweets” Edison in particular talked about the importance of not sounding like the guy sitting next to him in his interview in March of 1995:

SE: Most of the musicians in those days demanded respect because they were an artist. And they were all individualists. Everybody had a sound of their own. They could be identified on the record. Like if Billie Holiday would sing on the record you’d know it’s nobody but Billie Holiday. She’s the only one sounded like that. If Louis Armstrong, he can hit one note on a record, and you know it’s Louis Armstrong. Nobody sounded like Lester Young. Like Coleman Hawkins. Like Bunny Berigan. Like Benny Goodman, Chu Berry, Dizzy Gillespie. They all had a sound that they could be recognized. And that was our ambition in my day to not be an imitator, but an originator, you know. And as they used to say they’d rather be the world’s worst originator than the world’s greatest imitator. Because there’s nobody like the man that first sounded like that. You can never capture his feeling. So we all wanted to be individualists. I made many, many records with Billie Holiday and it was always a joy just to be in her company because she was just absolutely — I met her when she was about 19 years old. And what a voluptuous, beautiful girl she was. She was absolutely just gorgeous. And she had a sound that when you hear her on a record, you know that’s Billie Holiday. And that’s what we strived for in those days. Nowadays it seems like musicians have their idols and they don’t venture any place else but what their idol is playing. Like Charlie Parker. All alto players sound like Charlie Parker. All the tenor players nowadays sound like John Coltrane. All the trumpet players either sound like Miles or Dizzy. So there’s no originality nowadays with the musicians.

MR: Well, you know finding that original sound I guess is not that easy.

SE: Well we did it.

MR: You sure did.

Of course there are mechanical considerations for what makes a sound on any instrument. On a saxophone you have multiple factors, the horn, the mouthpiece, the reed, et cetera, but a 2010 interviewee, baritone saxophonist Gary Smulyan basically dismissed these technical considerations when it comes to what comprises an individual’s sound:

MR: I could tell that sound, in the general sense of the word, seems to be very important to you. Because when someone asked you about the biggest difference between playing alto and moving to baritone it was all about the sound.

GS: Um hum. Well to me in music, general sound is first. Sound comes before anything. I mean if you listen to all the great musicians in this music, they all have individual sounds. That’s the first thing that you hear that grabs you, right? If you listen to, just the tenor saxophone, right? John Coltrane, Johnny Griffin, Gene Ammons, Joe Lovano, Joshua Redman, Chris Potter, Don Byas, Frank Wess, and the list goes on and on, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Georgie Auld, they all play the tenor saxophone but they all have — Al Cohn, Zoot Sims — I could go on all day — Tina Brooks, Hank Mobley. You know they play one note and you know who they are immediately. And to me that’s like the defining thing about being a musician, and for me the most important thing is your sound. And I’ve given a lot of thought and a lot of practice to try to really develop a sound that’s personal and unique to me, because that’s the first thing that people hear. I mean you could be a great technician but if you don’t have a good sound no one’s going to want to hear you and you’re not going to be able to get past your sound. And it’s really the identifying characteristic of who you are as a musician. And your sound is not in the instrument, the sound is not — in my case — it’s not in the saxophone, it’s not in the reed, it’s not in the mouthpiece and it’s not in the ligature. The sound is something that you carry within your very being. And that’s what comes out. So take someone like Sonny Rollins, right? I think that if you gave Sonny Rollins 50 different tenor saxes, 50 different reeds and 50 different ligatures, he’s going to sound like Sonny Rollins, with some variation because maybe the instruments aren’t comfortable. Maybe his comfort level behind the instrument isn’t the same. But essentially what’s going to come out is Sonny Rollins. Because his sound is not in the instrument. And I tell that to my students. I say don’t look for the magic instrument, because there’s no magic instrument.

Every jazz musician is a product of what he or she listens to on the way up. Some musicians tend to grab onto one or two artists for their sources, while others may sample from a wider array of sounds, and not only the sound of their own instrument. Musicians often say they get ideas about their sound from players who don’t play like instruments, it’s more about conception, phrasing, and note choices.

The “Three ations” from Clark Terry is often quoted when the discussion of sound and absorbing influences comes up. Clark was interviewed in 1995 by Joe Williams, the late singer, who was helpful us with our then-budding archive.

CT: We call them the “ation stages,” you’ve got to go through them “ation stages.” Everybody imitated somebody as the first step. The first cat didn’t hear nothing but railroad tracks. He imitated that [scats]. Or whatever. You’ve got to imitate something.

JW: You go from imitation to assimilation, from assimilation to innovation.

Saxophonist Jerry Dodgion also spoke on creating a sound and quoted fellow saxman Pepper Adams who summed it up even more succinctly:

MR: You were influenced by Charlie Parker. Is that a fair statement?

JD: Well sure.

MR: Wasn’t everybody I guess.

JD: I guess, sure. I mean I was never good enough to copy anybody … [but one time] when Pepper spoke he says “well you know when you copy from one person that’s plagiarism. But if you copy from everybody it’s called research.”

Tenor saxophonist Ernie Watts was interviewed in 2003 and has been featured on hundreds of recordings and related the practical considerations that influenced his sound:

MR: You’ve got a very distinctive sound. And I’m wondering was there a period of trying different mouthpieces and all that, and were you trying to sound like somebody to arrive at your own thing?

EW: No it evolved through the music business. The only person I ever really tried to sound like was Trane. Because that was where I’m coming from. That’s where I plugged into. Everybody has someone they emulate when they’re a kid, when they’re learning how to play. And so Coltrane was it for me. I developed my sound, interestingly enough, from playing pop music. When you play pop music, when you play pop solos on all of these records, and you have eight bars in the middle of the tune and then you get to play on the fade while they fade it out and then the DJ tries to fade it out as fast as he can, as soon as they hear the vocal end and the saxophone start you’re out of there.

MR: It’s their cue.

EW: Unless you bought the record, and then you get to hear the saxophone solo go for like twenty bars at the end of some of these things. But on the radio as soon as the DJ hears the saxophone solo you’re out of there. So anyway, I started working on my sound and concentrating on my sound when I realized with pop music, in order for it to be pop music, it has to be within a certain genre. It’s set up a certain way, production-wise it’s set up a certain way, harmonically it’s very simple structured music. As a soloist within that genre you can’t do anything harmonically. You can’t play chromatically through that music. You can’t do anything in that music that is intricate or evolved on a technical or harmonic level. Because at that point it’s not pop music. You take that music to a different place and it’s out of context with the music, therefore it is not right for the music. So you don’t go to a pop session and play a Charlie Parker solo. So what happens is the idiom of the music is so simple harmonically that the only way you can establish a style is to have a sound that is recognizable. So that when you play one note, when you play three notes it’s recognizable because it’s a unique tone quality. And I recognized that in the music. And so I developed my sound. It’s a combination of the stuff I grew up listening to, it’s a combination of Coltrane with a softer edge, but it’s still that center and it’s still that intensity, but it’s just very simplified.

The essence of what makes a musician’s sound distinctive and identifiable remains mostly undefinable and magical. It’s the same magic that makes a melody stick in our head, and the same magic that makes a particular improvised solo a classic.

The Right Notes

2010-10-25T13:13:00.014-04:00

In the last blog entry the subject of “wrong notes” was addressed by quotes from players from what is best described as the hard bop school. This post-bop style places them squarely in the modern jazz era and helps us understand their comments and opinions more clearly.

An annual duty of mine at Hamilton College deals with an earlier style of jazz. Once a year at Fallcoming we host a group of hand-picked musicians who perform an evening concert of traditional and mainstream jazz. This year our group proved wildly successful. It was comprised of a sextet covering several generations, but one that was able to perform as if they were a seasoned road band. The sextet was: Bucky Pizzarelli (guitar), Nicki Parrott (bass), Evan Christopher (clarinet), Randy Sandke (trumpet), Jackie Williams (drums) and leader Dick Hyman (piano).

Thanks to John Herr for providing the excellent photographs of the Fallcoming event.

Above, Dick Hyman and this writer after the concert.

I know for a fact that the last time these six artists performed as a band was one year ago during Fallcoming 2009. They were so well received that we invited them back as a unit. This group of musicians can function as a working ensemble because they know the repertoire that Dick Hyman is likely to call, a mix of standards from the golden era of songwriting (the 30’s and 40’s), and jazz classics that predate those decades, what we can call New Orleans/Dixieland music.

These musicians would address the question of wrong notes from a different viewpoint. There is much less of the “anything works” approach. The musicians create improvisation in a well-defined playing field where wrong notes sound less like hip choices and more like mistakes. Nonetheless, their playing is highly inventive, and arguably harder. Their note choices may be more constrained by the theory behind the music, but if you had heard this concert you’d have been astounded by the inventiveness of the improvised melodies and rhythms.

A big part of the success of this event has to be attributed to Mr. Hyman, who has had an amazing career as a pianist, composer, arranger, film scorer, and concert organizer. Aside from my admiration for his playing, I am jealous of his experiences throughout his career, including the years of steady work in New York City’s studios. His day-to-day schedule included everything from jazz to semi-classical music. He also was called upon to provide incidental music for soap operas and game shows, and he played keyboards on many pop hits during the emergence of Rock & Roll.

I asked Dick Hyman about this time in his life during his first interview, in March of 1995:

MR: What kind of people did you play behind?

DH: Ivory Joe Hunter, Ruth Brown, whom I’m working with now, Laverne Baker, The Coasters, The Drifters. I remember that terrible record “White Christmas” that was so popular.

MR: Did you play on that?

DH: I did. But we did all that stuff. And if you asked me what we thought of it, we always —we said to each other can you imagine we said to each other, in twenty years, this was in 1955 or so, in twenty years people will be saying to each other, “listen darling, they’re playing our song.” And you know that’s exactly what happened. All of that funny music that we laughed at became classic in Rock. And go figure it out.

MR: Well people, even musicians who’ve never done studio work, may not realize that you don’t have to like everything you play on in a studio. It’s not possible.

DH: No, no. What you have to like is being able to play it well.

That last statement ought to be written inside the instrument cases of young musicians. Dick was also called upon to do things which he might never have anticipated. He played mallet percussion, he whistled on a number of hit records, and was one of the first musicians to employ the Moog synthesizer.

Mr. Hyman is a pianist who seemingly can play anything that he can think of, in any style. He once recorded an LP with twelve different versions of the song “A Child is Born” as if played by twelve different and contrasting piano players. It’s interesting to watch him spin out his melodic and improvised phrases. His facial expression may not change at all, but the thought process behind his creations is magical.

I asked him about that thought process in our second interview, from March of 2001.

MR: I had a question also about trying to define hard things — and that is the concept of what you choose to play when you’re improvising.

DH: Oh. You mean what piece or what ideas?

MR: No. Where does improvising come from?

DH: It comes from your background and from the ideas of whomever you may be playing with, and also your technical capability. The ideas of — I’ve used this analogy before — the ideas are rather like a kaleidoscope which you shake up so that it produces different images each time but they’re made up of the same colored jewels and bits of paper. They are liable to be the same ideas in a different form every time you shake it up unless you keep adding to the kaleidoscope and put in different jewels, different colored pieces of paper, and then when you shake it up the next time it’s going to be a bit different. But there is very little, I think, of improvisation that hasn’t been thought of before or that you haven’t somehow used. The point is to keep replenishing the supply and keep on mixing it up differently. And a way that you can — certainly the tool that you use is just technique. If I’m in good shape technically I will try things that I wouldn’t otherwise. If I’m not in shape technically I won’t try to do certain things, I’ll stay where it’s safe and I know that I’ve been before. But if I feel very loose and in good shape and I’ve played a lot then I really can stretch out and try things that maybe I’ve heard other people do and see if I can get my version of, try things, just let the fingers go where they may, and pose certain problems for myself and see how I can get out of them, and just sometimes there are, too, moments where you don’t quite know where an idea comes from. Those are precious and they’re rare. If you’re lucky you’re recording them or you can write them down and they become compositions. But you watch for those. Sometimes you can chase them. If you have to compose something on a deadline of course, you really go out and you try to grab the muse and bring her back. Sometimes you can be successful. Some people use drugs and liquor to get to that stage. I’m not sure that works. I do think that, in my case, in the first part of the day might be the most creative part, and that possibly is because I’ve been thinking about the things through the night that I want to get to the next day.

It was a thrill to watch Dick Hyman in action as well as hear him. At times on this jazz concert he would employ the Basie technique, a simple raise of the eyebrow or the point of a finger indicating where the music should be sent. On a number of occasions he got up from the piano and walked over to the horn players while the drummer or bassist was soloing, had a slight word with them about something he wanted them to do, then walked back to the piano to hear the results.

I was invited to sit in on a tune at this latest Fallcoming event, and I wished I had the adjectives to describe the feeling. Let's just say being surrounded by that assemblage of talent makes it much easier to find the right notes.

Dick Hyman has recently put all of his skills into a huge project entitled Dick Hyman: A Century of Jazz Piano released on the Arbors jazz label in 2009. This is a serious collection of piano music performed by Dick Hyman, spanning the era from pre-Ragtime all the way to free improvisation. It includes five CD’s and a DVD, and Dick is currently working on an accompanying method book. It is well worth checking out.

A Wrong Note?

2010-10-03T15:46:00.003-04:00

Let’s return to the initial reason for this blog: the resource of the Hamilton College Jazz Archive. Our interview sessions now number 300 + and I was recently reflecting on how my questions have changed since we started the project in 1995. While we didn’t go into the sessions with a set agenda, there were questions I often asked of interviewees. A sampling of these questions are: (1) at what point did this particular musician think they could make a living in jazz; (2) what was the learning process before formal collegiate jazz education programs; and (3) what was your worst gig ever (a question that rarely worked).

In the last couple of years my interviewees have been from a significantly younger set of musicians, typically in their late twenties to mid-thirties. The experiences of these musicians are far different from the veterans who started their careers in the 1930’s. A question I have been asking of late is: in jazz improvisation, what constitutes a wrong note? My most recent interviewee, tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson, said what others of his generation have been saying. In short, there is no wrong note. I thought of all the mistakes I have made while soloing over the years. Perhaps I was wrong about them being wrong.

Of course these musicians went on to explain and qualify their answers. But first we need to take a look at what constitutes a wrong note in music. A wrong note in classical music is much more apparent than in jazz, especially in jazz improvisation. In classical music, if a performer plays a note not written by the composer, it’s a wrong note. Even people who take a certain perverse pride in saying they’re tone deaf, can sense an incorrect pitch in a familiar classical piece. Victor Borge, the highly accomplished pianist/comedian, made a career out of well placed mistakes, incorrect notes that people could identify in the midst of classical performances.

I can remember listening to both Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, two trumpeters with vastly different sounds and approaches, but both of them often played notes that struck me as being incorrect, unintended, and from my definition at that time, a “mistake.” However, if Miles Davis played a note, with that fragile tone of his, it took on a certain extra poignancy, whether or not he intended it. When Dizzy Gillespie played a wrong note, he could, being that he was Dizzy Gillespie.

In jazz improvisation the playing field is different. Jazz artists are spontaneously creating melodies, phrases and licks that usually correspond to a scale or a choice of notes that “match” the underlying chords. But jazz vocabulary has changed a great deal from when Sweets Edison was ready to quit the Basie band in the late thirties because he felt he was playing too many “wrong” notes. Nowadays there is a certain attitude of anything goes, because anything can be justified or codified by the jazz theory and pedagogy currently being taught at the university level.

When Javon Jackson said there is no such thing as a wrong note, he went on to say that even playing a C sharp over a C chord can be made to work. It depends on where you place it in the phrase, if you leave it hanging out there at the end of a phrase it more likely will sound incorrect than if you resolve it with a certain intent. We must admit though, that Javon Jackson’s C sharp will sound less questionable than a timid junior high player playing a C sharp over a C chord. The tone, the intent, and the confidence all make a difference in how we perceive what people play.

Joe Magnarelli, hard bop trumpeter of some renown, had this to say about the question of right and wrong notes:

JM: I think a wrong note is when you give up on that note. When you give up on it then it’s wrong but, because there’s no wrong notes, really, there’s no wrong notes. You can make any note valid on any chord. I mean think about it. If you have a G major chord and you play an A flat, depending on how you resolve that A flat, it could be a beautiful thing. Now if you go back to study classical music you’ll find things like that all over the place. And I think being sure of yourself and having faith in yourself to play something that doesn’t sound good and then play your way out of it. I mean I have done that. I played something I like and I’ll think to myself in that split second, wow, what was that, you know? And then I just play it again and develop that thing and bring it back into the solo, that’s the key. But if you play something and you make a face or you musically give up on it, then it’s wrong.

Tenor saxophonist Ralph LaLama (of the same generation as Joe Magnarelli and Javon Jackson) is very big on tension and release in his solos, and constantly improvises with that concept in mind. He was very succinct and thoughtful in his response to my question.

MR: In jazz improvisation, to you, what constitutes a wrong note?

RL: Well okay that’s a good question. It’s like beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, okay? I think there are wrong notes. A lot of people don’t. I do. I really do. Because you have a background, you have a chord, and then you could use all twelve notes but it’s how you organize them. You know what I mean? It’s the organization. Sometimes you might put a wrong note in a wrong part of the beat or something, and it sounds wrong. And I just get this tension up my spine. You know what I mean? But, then technically you can play a wrong note, technically meaning theoretically it could be a wrong note but it sounds right. You know, because of the placement. You know Thad Jones was the master of it. Coltrane too. Sonny Rollins, all those masters, Joe Henderson. As far as theoretically, in other words we have a chord, we have a scale and we have the chord tone. So if you play outside of that, it could be considered wrong. But if you know how to phrase it exactly right and resolve it right that’s another thing. It’s in the resolution. You can resolve a wrong note and make it right see. And then sometimes I know when I hit a wrong note, you know like I say I feel it up my spine.

What constitutes a wrong note certainly can be addressed and thought of in many ways. The style of music has a great deal to do with it. If you’re playing modal jazz and improvising on one chord at length, the tendency to play non-scale tones is certainly there and almost required, because your palette is limited. In this case I can embrace the “no wrong notes” philosophy. If an accomplished jazz musician is consistently playing notes chosen for a purpose, placing them in a phrase, in time, and with confidence. This goes double when they stray away and play outside the chord changes (see the last blog posting for a definition of chord change).

I think that all the musicians who addressed this question would say that if you play something by accident, take responsibility for it, account for it, and try to make it work. That’s part of what makes modern jazz sound different than classic jazz.

This weekend I traveled to SUNY Fredonia to participate in the annual alumni jazz reunion concert. I had some challenging improvised solo opportunities and I tried to keep this right/wrong note topic in mind. On the way home I had a few regrets over notes I stumbled upon. Whether or not I was able to recover and turn them into “right” notes remains in the ears of the beholder.

Jazz Language Primer

2010-07-21T19:47:00.002-04:00

Jazz has its own language. Some of these words were invented by the musicians, while others were coined by critics and historians to describe what the players do:

Axe — a musical instrument.

Break — a spot in the tune where everyone stops except for one player. This player will fill in this hole in the tune and it is usually two or four measures long.

Blue note — a note that is purposely played a half step lower than usual, typically the third, fifth or seventh note of the eight-note scale. Blues singers first did this, later they were copied by instrumentalists.

Bridge — not all songs have a bridge but most standards do (see Standards). Jazz musicians for years have adapted popular songs from the 30’s and 40’s and they often are written in an A-A-B-A form. The music to each A is the same or similar; the B section (the bridge) offers something new.

Changes — the chords to a particular song. The changes provide the blueprint for the improvisations. The term “rhythm changes” is shorthand for the chords to the song “I Got Rhythm” and new melodies have been written over these changes.

Chart — a written piece of music (the whole arrangement or an individual part).

Chorus — usually refers to the part of the song that has the title. Jazz players also use the term to describe improvising once through the whole song (i.e. each player takes one chorus).

Comp — the guitar, or piano and bass play the changes behind the soloist(s), improvising the rhythm to fit the feel of a particular performance. Freddie Green, long time guitarist with the Count Basie Orchestra, had a comping style named after him, a steady chunking strum on each beat.

Cutting contest — two like instruments “battling” each other by trading improvised choruses. It’s more competitive than a jam session, and sometimes is used to establish a reputation.

Gig — any musical job. The word has now entered the mainstream, often irking musicians, especially when a DJ refers to their “gigs.”

Head arrangement — a band arrangement that has been created in rehearsals or on-the-spot by the players. It is committed to memory and may later be written down on paper if it is a keeper.

Inside/outside — when an improviser uses notes that correspond to the change (chord) they are playing inside. Going outside is experimenting with notes that may sound wrong, especially to traditionalists or new listeners.

Jam session — An informal gathering of jazz players playing standards and blues. This is a valuable tool for aspiring musicians and used to be the accepted way to learn jazz.

Laying out — refers to a player in the rhythm section who purposely does not play at all for a length of time (also called “strolling”). The bassist rarely lays out.

Rhythm section — bass, drums, piano and/or guitar. They provide the background for the soloists and set up the groove. The rhythm section instruments can also solo, or a rhythm section can be a band by itself.

Standards — songs that jazz musicians are expected to have memorized. These tunes are typically from the 30’s and 40’s and were written by the great songwriters (George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Jerome Kern, etc). Knowing standards allows musicians who have never previously met to play a whole night together without written music. Newer tunes are constantly added to this list.

Tag — adding a phrase at the end of the song. The tag is usually cued by the group leader when it’s time to go “home” (i.e. to end the piece). The tag is usually the last four measures played extra times.

Taste — a now out-of-date term (which replaced bread) referring to the monetary compensation for a gig.

Walking — when the bass player plays one note for every beat of the music. Essential in swing music.