Remembering William "Buddy" Collette, 1921-2010 [From The Archives]

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it might be fun to revisit this feature on Buddy Collette which first posted to the blog in September, 2010 so that we could add the video which is located below this lead-in photo and also to reflect once again about a musician whose music gave us so much personal enjoyment over the years.

© -Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

One of my most enduringly favorite albums is Little Band – Big Jazz: Conte Candoli All Stars.

It was recorded on February 3, 1960 and in addition to a rhythm section of Vince Guaraldi [p], Leroy Vinnegar [b] and Stan Levey [d], Conte’s trumpet is joined by Buddy Collette on tenor saxophone.

I bought the album for $1.98 [+tax] off a rack that was located near a checkout stand at a super market.

Produced by Crown Records [CLP 5162], it is made up of six compositions penned and arranged by Conte [Guaraldi co-authored two tunes].

I gather from talking about the recording with Conte, that this was a hastily put-together session. Yet, as you can hear from the audio track that accompanies the following video, the music is warm sounding and wonderfully appealing.

Aside from the Pacific Jazz recordings that he made with The Original Chico Hamilton Quintet in the mid-1950s, on which he plays alto saxophone, flute and clarinet, this LP was really my first exposure to Buddy Collette’s playing in a more conventional small group setting [Hamilton group included a cello and a guitar in addition to Collette woodwinds and reeds].

It was also the first time that I heard Buddy play tenor saxophone.  I was quite taken with his tenor style which was somewhat different than the Lester Young- influenced sound of tenor saxophonists Bob Cooper, Bill Perkins, Bill Holman and Richie Kamuca or what came to be known as the “hard bop” tenor tone of Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon and Hank Mobley. Buddy played with a more “legit” tone [fuller, richer, sonorous] that was less hollow sounding than the former group and less harsher sounding than the latter.

Ironically, I was to soon hear quite a bit more of Buddy on tenor, as well as, on alto sax, flute and clarinet, because shortly after I purchased the Crown LP, he began appearing regularly at Jazz City with his own quintet with Gerald Wilson [tp], Al Viola [g], Wilfred Meadowbrooks [b] and Earl Palmer [d].

As is recounted in the excerpt below which is taken from Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles an oral history project which has also been published by the University of California Press, Buddy was very instrumental in the integration of Local 767 [black] into Local 47 [white] of the AFL-CIO American Federation of Musicians.

Over the years, Buddy became a fixture at the Vine Street Hollywood office of Local 47. He would drop into rehearsals at one of the halls available there for this purpose, lead and perform with his own group to raise money for the union’s Trust Fund [whose mission is to provide live instrumental programs of high quality as a free, public service] and serve the organization in various administrative capacities.

Buddy was especially generous with his time in encouraging young musicians by conducting clinics at local highs schools and teaching on the faculties of a number of prominent, Los Angeles area colleges and universities.

Not surprisingly, Buddy’s music always reflected his warm personality and dignified bearing.

And as a studio musician, Buddy led by example: he showed up on time, was courteous to all around him and just “nailed’ whatever he was playing on whatever instrument.

The first time I met him, I had just passed the test and audition to gain my musicians’ union card and was exiting the building along with two friends who had done the same.

Buddy saw us coming, held the door open and, guessing at the reason for our high spirits said to us as we passed him, “Be good to the music, now.”

When these same friends and I went to see him perform with his quintet later that year at Jazz City, he recognized us, came back to our table, and honored our request to write out the “changes” for us to his tune Soft Touch.

My life would subsequently move in different directions that took me away from performing music, but some 25-years later I would be back at the union, this time to talk with its leadership about health and welfare benefits.

Buddy was there and when the meeting was over he came up to me and asked if I was still playing!

After visiting for a while with Buddy, I went home and dug out my copy of Little Band – Big Jazz: Conte Candoli All Stars.

While it played on the turntable [no CDs yet], I remember thinking how timeless the music was in terms of its gentle swing, the easy flow of its melodies and its well-constructed solos. The whole album just comes together almost effortlessly.

I’ll bet that Buddy presence had a lot to do with this: he was always “…good to the music.”

What follows are some of Peter Jacobson’s insert notes to Buddy’s Studio West album with vocalist Irene Krall [reissued on CD as V.S.O.P. #104], the aforementioned selections from Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles[pp. 154-159] describing Buddy's involvement with the amalgamation of Locals 767 & 47, and a video tribute to Conte Candoli which features another cut from Little Band – Big Jazz: Conte Candoli All Stars as its soundtrack [Mambo Diane].

© -Peter Jacobson, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“William Marcell Collette, better known as Buddy Collette, has been one of the most active reed men on the West Coast since World War II. Born in Los Angeles, August 6, 1921, he studied piano before turning to clarinet and saxophone in high school. Since then he has been one of the most accomplished multi-instrumentalists both in jazz and the Hollywood studios, displaying equal facility and remarkable technique on tenor and alto saxophone, flute and clarinet. This versatility was the result of an insatiable curiosity and constant drive to expand his musical horizons and abilities. He has studied at the Los Angeles Conservatory, the California Academy of Music, the American Operatic Laboratory and under many leading teachers including Merle Johnston, Martin Ruderman, Sorcorso Pirolo and Franklyn Marks. In addition to this impressive background, he has paid his dues in the many clubs and after hours joints on Central Avenue, on the road and in the Hollywood and Western Ave. jazz clubs of the fifties and sixties.

Beginning in the late 30's, Buddy Collette worked with various bands in and around Central Ave. He played with the Woodman Brothers, Cee Pee Johnson, Les Hite, among others, before joining the Naval Reserve in 1942. After the war, he helped organize a group with Charles Mingus and Lucky Thompson which never recorded. For the next few years, Buddy Collette undertook the rigorous and thorough musical training mentioned above, while backing up the Treniers and Louis Jordan, and performing with Gerald Wilson and Benny Carter, to name a few.

In 1950, he began working with the studio orchestra of Jerry Fielding which performed on the Grouch Marx show, remaining there until 1960. In 1956 he had joined Chico Hamilton in the first incarnation of the Chico Hamilton Quintet. Shortly thereafter, he formed his own band which, with personnel changes, he has kept together over many years, well into the late 1960's. Since the late 1950's Buddy Collette has been in great demand in the recording studios for sound track work and television shows. He has appeared on numerous recordings under his own name, with Chico Hamilton, Jimmy Giuffre, Barney Kessel, Red Norvo, Quincy Jones, Red Callender, and many others.”

© -Central Avenue Sounds Editorial Committee, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The Amalgamation of Local 767 and Local 47

“With gigs in Hollywood, jams on Central Avenue, and classes at schools such as the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, Buddy started meeting more musi­cians from Local 47, the white union, who were also unhappy with segregated locals.

We thought about it, especially a bunch of the guys who had been in the service, and Mingus, who hadn't been in the military. We kept thinking, "Man, we'll never make it with two unions, because we're getting the leftovers." All the calls came to 47. Maybe now and then they might want a black band for a sideline call, where the music had been recorded and they wanted to show the black group. You'd wind up making a hundred dollars, maybe. That was a lot of money, but that may not happen for another year or two, while at Local 47 that was happening all the time. I knew it was because I was around those guys. I'd go to The Jack Smith Show with Barney Kessel and some other guys at other shows. A bunch of those guys would be doing this all the time, working those radio shows and things. They'd be pulling down maybe two or three hundred dollars a week. But it wasn't going to get better, I felt, with the two unions. That was a real shaft.

The actual beginning of the amalgamation, I'll give Mingus credit for that. He was always fighting the battle of the racial thing. He got a job with Billy Eckstine at the Million Dollar Theatre on Broadway. Mingus was the only nonwhite or black in the band. Since Billy Eckstine was a black leader, he figured, "Why couldn't there be a few blacks in there?" Mingus was the only one, and he let them know that he didn't like it. And he could be tough on you. Everybody in the band had to hear it every day: "You guys are prejudiced! You should have some more blacks. You could hire Buddy Collette there." So my name was being tossed around every day until the guys even hated me without knowing me!

I was finally invited down and I was curious about the band. We wanted to meet people that understood what we were talking about: the unions getting together, people getting together, stopping all this. I met their flutist, Julie Kinsler, who supported the idea and drummer Milt Holland. Milt said, "Man, we've been wanting to do this, too. I know about six or eight people that think just the way you guys do. We can get together and start meetings or something." Mingus and I lit up, because that was the first time we heard anybody who was really excited about it. The next day Mingus and I met with a few of the guys who felt the same way. They wanted to call a big meeting. I said, "Well, I don't think we should call a meeting, because the guys that I know, they don't like meet­ings too much." Instead, most of us had been studying for a few years and I said that we need a thing where we can learn the music, possibly like a symphony rehearsal orchestra together. Milt said, "If that's what you want, that's easy. I know all the people from that world." That was the beginning of the Community Symphony Orchestra.

We also wanted to make sure more blacks were placed in different circuits, because at that time we had only worked clubs. If we did play the Orpheum Theatre or the Million Dollar, it was in a black band or when an all-black show would be there. But the other shows, if they'd need twenty musicians, then blacks wouldn't get the call at all, no matter how good you were. It just didn't happen. So that was the idea: can we show that it can work? So Milt said, "Okay, get as many people as you can, then we'll fill in." Milt was beautiful, is still beautiful. So I got Bill Green, me, Britt Woodman, Jimmy Cheatham, John Ewing, Red Callen-der, and another little kid named James McCullough. That wasn't a big number, but those were the only people that we could say were in the right direction, who had probably enough behind them to take advantage of this thing and who were also interested in playing this kind of music. Mingus wasn't there. Didn't want to do symphony music. He always wanted to do his own stuff. He was with us in a way, but it wasn't his world.

So we scheduled a rehearsal and the excitement started mounting. People were on the phones trying to get people who just wanted to be there. "Interracial symphony? Let's do that." We got the top clarinetists and flutists. Later on we got Arthur Cleghorn, who was one of the finest flutists at that time. Joe Eger was a great French horn player. John Graas was classical, and into jazz with the French horn. A lot of enthusiasm. Some would approach our rehearsal like it was one they were getting paid for downtown. We had something like five flutists, when you only needed three. They just wanted to be there. The orchestra had about sixty-five pieces. The orchestra was at Humanist Hall, Twenty-third and Union, and then we moved every now and then to Hollywood, Le Conte Junior High School, near Sunset and Gower. This was just rehearsals, but people could come.

The first night we had a conductor who was world renowned, Eisler Solomon. And he was excited, he really was. That got us in the papers. The press was there snapping pictures like crazy. People were really buzz­ing. That first night we also had a black bass player named Henry Lewis. He was playing so good he sounded like three basses. Later on he got to be a conductor. He even conducted here for a while. A very fine talent. He was only about nineteen years old then. Later he married an opera singer, Marilyn Home. We had other great conductors, too. Peter Cohen, Dr. Al Sendry, Dr. Walker.

The orchestra kept getting better, and we began to publicize what we were doing. We had a board to set policy. We had meetings, and we wanted to let people know what the orchestra was about. The main aims were to bring about one union in L.A., black and white under the same roof.

Then somebody said, "We're doing okay on the classical. Why don't we concentrate on a jam session for the jazz, and we can also get more of the people who aren't in tune with jazz to also understand that part." So we had Monday night for classical, and then we got Sunday afternoon for jazz, and we'd invite the classical people. The Sunday built up really great. We had great jam sessions.

We then got a hold of "Sweets" Edison, who was working with Jose­phine Baker. We wanted to get her and some other names to appear on one of the Sunday afternoon things. She didn't have to perform, but come out publicly. So she was playing the RKO or one of the theaters down­town, and she agreed to come between shows. And that place, Humanist Hall, you could not believe it; we really exceeded the limit. The place could hold about two hundred people; we had about five hundred in there. When she got on stage, she said, "I wonder why you have two unions," something to that effect. "Well, I think it should be one, and I don't know why you people are wasting time. You've got all these beau­tiful people here." She just kept talking about how there was coming a time when people could work together. Bang! Zing! So finally she looks down in the audience, and there were two little girls, one black and one white, and they're about five years old. She knew when you've got some­thing to work, right? So she said, "You and you, come up here." And they both dance up on the stage, and she whispers. And they grabbed each other and they hugged like that and they wouldn't let go. And she winked. "These kids will show you how to do it" and walked out. And the crowd was [freezes in astonishment] great!

Later on we got to Nat King Cole. He was great and did the same thing for us. We got the Club Alabam and just had all the people in the world. Sinatra didn't do a thing for us, but he sent a statement saying, "Well, there should be one union."

We were building an organization of sorts. We'd get money for mail­ings and notified people. We got Marl Young and Benny Carter into it. But we had a few years of hard work before a lot of the guys came in. Part of it was rehearsals and the jam sessions, and there were meetings.

Then I ran for president of Local 767. You see, we had all the publicity and people were doing fine, but we didn't know how to pull it off. So the next thing would be, "Maybe we'll have to be officers so we can move it from that standpoint." Because our officers at the black local didn't want it. Our place was not a great union. The building was kind of tearing down and the pianos were terrible. We really didn't have that much. But, the way they thought, at least it was still ours. So we set up a whole slate and we ran. The incumbent guy beat me by about twenty votes out of about four hundred. We did win a couple of seats on the board of direc­tors. Marl Young, Bill Douglass, and John Anderson were running also, I think. But we still didn't have enough power.

Elections were every year in our local. So the next year we tried again. We ran Benny Carter for president and he lost to the same guy by the same number of votes I did. But this time I ran for the board and got in. Marl got in. Bill Douglass won the vice-president's spot. Now we got a little power underneath the president, who was Leo Davis, who was a nice man.

So we were able to move through resolutions and proposals toward a meeting with Local 47. And finally we got negotiations going. We pretty much had to drag 47 into it, because it finally got to the point where if we wanted it and they didn't, why didn't they want it? They were getting more members into the thing; we could work better together. But they stalled. James Petrillo, president of the American Federation of Musi­cians, stalled. A lot of people at 47 stalled. But the more it kept coming out that "Is it a racial thing or what is it?" they had to say, "Well, no, it's not that. We just don't know what to call it or how to do it or we can't because it's never been done before and . . ." So the big stall goes. In the meantime we're checking out information, too—how it could be done. Finally, they had no excuse.

It took about three years, but we brought the unions together in 1953. Looking back, the amalgamation helped a lot of musicians, gave them a better focus or a better picture of what they had to do to be on a more broad scope of understanding, not just the Central Avenue—type jobs. The ones who really benefited were the ones who wanted to have a suc­cessful career in music rather than just being a leader or somebody who has a record out. It began to make better players out of the good players, and the ones who weren't doing it had to decide to either back away or get serious. If somebody was just doing nightclubs, they were probably doing basically the same. But anybody who wanted to meet with people and experiment with different kinds of music and do studios and records and be like a top craftsperson, then I think they benefited a lot.

Plus there's better health and welfare, and pension benefits. It wasn't that we weren't doing it well with 767; it's just that it wasn't a big business thing over there. It was just kind of an afterthought. And it did allow some periods to be very lucrative for a lot of black musicians who were doing recording and shows through the years, shows like The Carol Burnett Show, The Danny Kaye Show, The Flip Wilson Show. Those shows began to hire people because they were all in the same union, and the word got around who could play, who couldn't. The other way we were isolated.

It was a step in the right direction. It wasn't designed to solve every­thing. It was trying to get people together. And maybe that's the hard thing, because thirty-five years later, people still have trouble getting to­gether. It was a great historical step, the first time there was an amalgamation in musicians unions. Since then, there were thirty or forty of the locals that followed our method of amalgamating. I think what we found in playing music and being in an artistic thing is that color is not very important; it s what the people can share with each other. And I can look back and say that if there were still black and white at these times, we'd have a lot of problems.

John McLaughlin Plays Bill Evans

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“In terms of style, what musical influences are you aware of? The role of bebop in your melodic lines is evident, but there's a lot more. Where does it come from?”

“It's more a personality characteristic of putting things together in my own way, which is analytic. Rather than just accept the nuances or syntax of a style completely, I'll abstract principles from it and then put it together myself. It may come out resembling the [original] style, but it will be structured differ­ently, and that may be what gives it its identity. I've often thought that one reason I developed an identity, which I wasn't aware of until recently - people were telling me I had an identity, but I wasn't aware of one! I was just trying to play - is that I didn't have the kind of facile talent that a lot of people have, the ability just to listen and transfer something to my instrument. I had to go through a terribly hard analytical and building process. In the end I came out ahead in a sense because I knew what I was doing in a more thorough way.”

“Do you mean because of analyzing the elements in your own music?”

“In other people's music, too. If I liked something and wanted to be influenced by it, I couldn't just take it whole hog like some people can, like getting it more or less by osmosis. I had to consciously abstract principles and put them into my own structure.”

- Len Lyons, The Great Jazz Pianists [p. 221]

In some form or fashion, I think I’ve read this answer/explanation in just about every “How did it all begin?” interview that Bill Evans ever gave and, given his immense popularity, especially during the last decade of his life [he died in 1980], he gave a lot of interviews.

He would sometimes add as a corollary, that musicians who developed early due to some simplistic, innate ability to play Jazz, usually burned out early too because they lacked a depth of awareness about what they were doing.

Bill has also made the statement that his stature as a Jazz pianist was due to “2% talent and 98% hard work.”

Both his “… putting things together in my own way…” and “…98% hard work” references were always heartening and encouraging to me because things didn’t come easy for me in the music.

I also had to break things down and reconstruct them step-by-step in order to find my way through, although, in my case, the results weren’t nearly as effective as Bill’s.

Bill’s music touched so many Jazz musicians, whatever the instrument. Larry Bunker, gave up a lucrative studio career for about one year to go on the road as Bill's drummer.

When I once asked him why he took on this opportunity at such financial sacrifice, he laughed and asked me: “Wouldn’t you have?”

Because piano and guitar parallel each other in so many ways [each is a chording instrument], I always thought that the lyrical nature of Bill’s approach to music would be a natural for the guitar.

But because of his prior musical preferences – mostly to do with Jazz-Rock Fusion and therefore little to do with lyrical – I never expected that the guitarist that would come forth with a treatment of Bill’s music would be John McLaughlin.

Not only did John step-up with a superb compilation of tunes associated with Bill, he did so by putting them into the context of a acoustic guitar quartet and added an acoustic bass guitar!

John explains how it all came about in the following insert notes to Time Remembered: John McLaughlin Plays Bill Evans [Verve 314 519 861-2; paragraphing modified].

© -John McLaughlin/Verve Records, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“I can recall quite vividly the very first time I heard Bill Evans play. I was about seventeen years old and had already been subjugated by Miles Davis with his record "Milestones." His following record was the now "classic" record, "Kind of Blue."

Naturally I bought this record for Miles, but, was astonished to hear the pianist Bill Evans, who seemed to me to have a kind of empathic communication with Miles and his way of playing.

Among the many qualities Miles had, poignancy was one of his most eloquent; Bill understood this exceptionally well, and had the capability of encouraging this while accompanying Miles. Bill played many different kinds of harmonies that, though I couldn't understand them at all, were so "right." I spent many hours listening to that recording and, I can add, listen regularly to now.

A couple of years later I heard his first trio record with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian. This was a turning point in my life. The next six months were spent listening almost exclusively to this record, and trying to analyze it while marveling at the interaction between the three players. It was on this record that I heard Bill's compositions for the first time and, although incapable of playing them, did my best to try to understand his harmonic and rhythmic conceptions which were so new to me. It was only much later, on having discovered the music of Ravel, Debussy, and Satie, that I began to understand the origins of Bill's harmonic viewpoint.

Time passed and I remained as I remain to this day one of his most ardent fans. By the time I took up residence in the USA in the late sixties, I had already had the opportunity to see Bill play in person several times at the Ronnie Scott's club in London, which was for me just marvelous.

In the USA, I lived not too far from the Village Vanguard, a club in Greenwich Village that has hosted the greatest jazz musicians of our epoch. I would go regularly to see Bill play there and I recall one particular night when Bill's trio came on stage to play the second set, Bill began an introduction to Nardis and he went into what I can only call a state of grace. He played some of the most beautiful music I have ever had the privilege to witness. I was there with saxophonist Dave Liebman, and we were both in a state of total astonishment.

The idea of recording Bill's music exclusively with guitars dates back at least eleven or twelve years. The reason behind the exclusivity of guitars is probably due to the fact that to me, Bill was a thorough romantic. The acoustic guitar is, without doubt, one of the most romantic instruments, and I felt that I could do justice to his music in this way.

At the beginning of 1992, I decided that the time had come and began work on the selection of Bill's compositions and the conception of how to realize this already long dream of recording his music in this way. I decided to employ six guitars, five acoustic and one acoustic bass guitar. This proved to be an arduous task of even greater proportions that I had imagined.

To help me in this work I asked for the help of my own student, Yan Maresz, himself a composition graduate of the Julliard school in New York, who also plays bass guitar on this recording. Bill himself was a composition major at the Manhattan School of Music, and in the analysis of his works we discovered that it was essential to keep the integrity of his very subtle counterpoint, both rhythmically and melodically.

In a sense this work was almost "classical," and to solve this problem, I had the good fortune to meet a classical guitar quartet - The Aighetta Quartet - in my part of the world. Prior to my meeting them, they were not familiar with Bill's music, but subsequently became enamored with the compositions and devoted hundreds of hours to mastering the parts and particularly the task o/ adapting their style o/ music.

There remained, however, the thorny problem of improvisation. For all his classical training, Bill was a jazz musician and a supreme improviser, and in the majority of his recorded works, improvisation has equal importance with his compositions.

Naturally I needed to include this element in my work and whereas in a normal jazz situation, the group plays the head and then improvise around the changes, this could not apply to this project.

To solve this problem, I took the artistic liberty of writing new music for the five other musicians upon which I would improvise. This also proved to be quite demanding. If you listen carefully to Bill's records, after the composition and the improvisation begins, there is always a forward movement, a kind of further development in the piece.

This is what I have done in this recording. What was quite tricky was to have Bill's music lead into mine in the most natural way possible while at the same time giving this forward movement and allowing me to improvise, while keeping the essential characteristics of his piece.  And of course, the reverse was necessary, to leave my music and improvisation and flow naturally back into Bill's tune for the ending.

Altogether this record was a real labor of love and one that I am very happy to have made. Firstly for Bill and his music which has enriched my life, secondly for the guitar, and the combination of these two elements.

I give my heartfelt thanks to Frangois Szonyi, Pascal Rabatti, Alexandre Del Fa and Philippe Loli of the Aighetta Quartet, to Yan Maresz for his great work in the preparation of the scores, to Abraham Wechter for my wonderful instrument, Jim D'Addario for his strings, and most profoundly of all, to Bill Evans.

John Mclaughlin June 10, 1993”

The following video montage features John, Yan and The Aighetta Quartet on their version of Bill’s We Will Meet Again.

Johnny Smith: Quiet and Dignified

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

"As far as I'm concerned, no one in the world plays the guitar better than he. They might play it differently, but nobody plays better. Johnny could easily overplay because he's got chops unlimited, but his musical taste would not allow him to make an over­statement. As a result, he makes beautiful music."

- Barney Kessell, Jazz guitarist

The few times I was in his presence – mainly accompanying friends to the guitar clinics he was conducting – Johnny Smith, who died on June 12^th at the age of ninety-five - struck me as a quiet and dignified man.

He was universally adored by Jazz guitarists.

Although he reappeared on the Jazz scene from time-to-time, most of his now-legendary recordings were made in the 1950s.

Before opening a guitar store in Colorado Springs, CO in 1958, Johnny was very active in the New York studios.

Fortunately for Jazz fans, and notwithstanding their commercial aspects, in what has become an almost customary act of conscience and consideration, Michael Cuscuna and his fine team at Mosaic Records have assembled Johnny’s classic recordings into an 8 CD set and issued it as The Complete Roost Johnny Smith Small Group Sessions [MD8-216].  The set is still available at www.mosaicrecords.com/.

The highlights of Johnny’s career, the reasons for his relocation to Colorado and his own thoughts about his music are covered in detail in the accompanying booklet to the Mosaic set which were written in 2002 by Vincent Pelote of the Institute of Jazz Studies which is on the campus of Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, NJ.

Here are excerpts from the introduction [paragraphing modified].

© -Vincent Pelote/Mosaic Records, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Johnny Smith hasn't been a household name since his hit single Moonlight in Vermont in 1952. There is the occasional magazine or newspaper article, but it is largely the guitar community (a rather clannish bunch) who still sings the praises of this titan of the guitar. Guitarist Barney Kessel once said about Smith: "As far as I'm concerned, no one in the world plays the guitar better than he. They might play it differently, but nobody plays better. Johnny could easily overplay because he's got chops unlimited, but his musical taste would not allow him to make an over­statement. As a result, he makes beautiful music." Kessel's comments are indicative of the universal respect that Smith enjoys among his fellow guitarists. While Smith himself steadfastly maintains that he does not consider himself a jazz player, critics and musicians alike continue to hail him as a giant among the jazz guitar elite.

John Henry Smith, Jr. was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on June 25, 1922. His father, a foundry worker, played five-string banjo on which the young man got to "plunk around a bit" whenever his dad's musical friends dropped by the Smith household. When the Depression closed down the foundries in Birmingham, the Smiths had to leave to find work. After stays in New Orleans and Chattanooga, the family finally settled in Portland, Maine. It was during this time that Smith's love for the guitar began to grow and he eventually taught himself how to play. He worked out a deal with the local Portland pawnshops: in exchange for keeping their guitars in tune, they let him hang around and play the instruments.

Smith diligently practiced and pro­gressed to the point where, by age 13, he had a number of adults studying under him. In fact, one of those adults gave Johnny his first guitar while the young man was a sopho­more in high school. Some of his early influences included Django Reinhardt, Andres Segovia, Charlie Christian and Les Paul. Smith listened to a wide spectrum of music and musicians on radio and records, but was really drawn to the freedom, spontaneity and creativity of jazz and whole­heartedly appreciated the musicianship and improvisational skill it demanded. Smith played for a short time in the Fenton Brothers dance band, then joined Uncle Lem & His Mountain Boys, a local hillbilly band. The Depression was still going strong, but young Smith was earning as much as $4.00 a night — good money at that time. He even­tually dropped out of high school to concentrate on his music.

At 18, Smith left the Mountain Boys to form his own group, the Airport Boys (an early indicator of his lifelong love of flying). The trio used the interesting instrumentation of two guitars and a stringed bass for which Smith wrote arrangements. When World War II broke out, the guitarist enlisted in the Army Air Corps, but faulty vision in one eye forced him out of flight school. Smith then joined the Air Corps band. Since his favored instrument was not suited to a military band, Smith was given a cornet and an Arban method book and told to lock himself in the latrine for two weeks and practice until he could play it. Faced with the prospect of either learning the cornet (he couldn't read music at the time) or being shipped off to mechanics school, he practiced intensely and became accomplished enough to join the band. He even advanced to first chair in the 364th Air Corps Band out of Macon, Georgia.

The fol­lowing year he was reassigned to the 8th Air Corps in Montgomery, Alabama, and was ordered to form a jazz band. Smith managed to assemble a quartet from the avail­able talent with the unusual instrumentation of two guitars, a mandolin and a bass. Glenn Miller (at that time an Air Corps major) heard Smith with his group and tried to "req­uisition" him for his own band, but the Air Corps nixed it.

After the war, Smith returned to Portland and became a staff musician at the NBC radio affiliate there. He also played guitar in the local nightclubs and trumpet in the pit band of a Portland vaudeville theater. In 1946, conductor Eugene Ormandy invited the guitarist to join the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, an offer he declined.

That same year Smith's boss at the Portland station sent a demo recording of Smith's playing to Roy Shields, the music director at NBC in New York City. Shields was sufficiently impressed and hired the guitarist as a staff musician. Smith's well-known reluctance to consider himself a jazz guitarist may have its roots in his tenure at the network, where he was often called upon to play everything from classical to polkas. This was an extremely busy time for Smith. Besides per­forming on as many as 35 radio (and later television) programs a week for NBC, he also played jobs with the New York Philharmonic (under Dimitri Mitropoulos), the Philadelphia Symphony (under Ormandy), and the NBC Symphony Orchestra (under the legendary Arturo Toscanini).

In an interview with Bob Campbell in 2001, Smith talked about his tenure with the volatile maestro: "Toscanini was a genius, but he was a tyrant with a nasty temper. He'd fly into towering rages. One time in rehearsal he jerked his beautiful gold watch from out of his vest pocket and slammed it down on the podium, sending parts spray­ing all over the stage. I walked on eggshells playing under his direction. I was very careful not to set him off."

In 1950 and '51, Smith served as guitarist for Benny Goodman's orchestra and sextet, which also included Terry Gibbs. His only high-profile recording from this period is an April 1, 1951 Goodman broadcast on WNEW which was issued on Columbia as the Benny Goodman trio plays for the Fletcher Henderson Fund to benefit the then critically ill arranger. Buck Clayton, Lou McGarity, Smith and Eddie Safranski joined the trio of Goodman, Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa in various combinations. The gui­tarist is featured on After You've Gone, Honeysuckle Rose and One O'clock Jump.

Smith signed with Roost Records in 1952 and struck gold on his first session as a leader with his beautiful rendition of Moonlight in Vermont with Stan Getz. He talked about the piece in an interview with Edward Berger in 1990 (for the book on Teddy Reig: Reminiscing in Tempo: The Life and Times of a Jazz Hustler): "Why Moonlight in Vermont took off I really don't know. Other guitar players have told me that they were intrigued by my use of closed voicings in harmonizing the melody. On a piano, you can play a closed-voiced chord while keeping your fingers together. But on the guitar, you really have to spread out and, to my knowledge, no other guitar player had used this approach before."

Whatever the reason for its success, Moonlight in Vermont was voted Jazz Record of the Year 1952 in Down Beat. Besides garnering praise by critics and musicians, it went on to become one of the bestselling instrumental singles of all time. It was the first of many outstanding recordings that established the guitarist's tasteful trademark style of lush, complex, legato chordal voicings, interspersed with lightning-fast runs, all executed perfectly with a clear, rich sound and clean articulation.

Moonlight also began a long and successful associa­tion with producer Teddy Reig, who owned the Roost label. Smith told Bergen "My first impression of Teddy Reig was of a hard-nosed businessman. Neither one of us had any high expectations of having a big hit. One thing I will say for him: he never pushed me to change my name! With a name like John Smith, everybody I talked to about becom­ing a professional musician would advise me to adopt a more distinctive name. It got to the point that I decided to keep it just out of spite!" Reig was more than just Smith's record producer. He also acted as the guitarist's manager and arranged tours for Smith with both Stan Kenton's and Count Basic's orchestras.

During the '50s, Smith was also a frequent headliner at Manhattan's jazz clubs, especially Birdland, where he would appear up to 22 weeks a year. But he rarely recorded as a sideman. Notable exceptions are the first Jazz Studio session for Decca in October 1953 with Joe Newman, Bennie Green, Frank Foster, Paul Quinichette, Hank Jones, Eddie Jones and Kenny Clarke, a Hank Jones Trio date with Ray Brown for Clef two months later and Johnny Richards' ambitious annotations of the muses on February 22, 1955 for Legende, a subsidiary of Roost. When his quartet backed up Ruth Price, Beverly Kenney and Jeri Southern on Roost/Roulette albums, he received co-leader billing as he did on the 1962 Art Van Damme album A Perfect Match for Columbia.

In 1958, Smith's second wife died, leaving him with the responsibility of raising their four-year-old daughter, Kim. Smith realized that in order to do this properly he would have to seriously cut back on his playing and recording activities. He also felt he had to find a more conducive set­ting for raising a daughter than New York City, so he moved to Colorado Springs in February 1958 and opened his own guitar center. He flew back to Manhattan only when record dates required it.

In 1965, Teddy Reig left Roulette, the company to which he'd sold Roost in 1958. He made a production deal with Verve, which resulted in three more Johnny Smith albums in 1967—68. Smith's last commercially released recording, solo performances originally recorded in February 1976, were coupled with 1994 George Van Eps solos on a Concord Jazz CD entitled LEGENDS.

When Joe Bushkin called Smith in 1976 for a Bing Crosby tour with dates in the United States, the United Kingdom and Norway, the guitarist couldn't say no. "I had backed Bing on some orchestra dates years ago, but I wanted to get to know him. I had tremendous respect for him and we had a lot of common interests like hunting and fishing. So I said yes." Milt Hinton was the bassist and Jake Hanna the drummer. A Bushkin album 100 Years of Recorded Sound on United Artists came out of that tour.

Smith has lived happily in Colorado for the past 44 years [55 years until his death in 2013], dividing his time between operating the center, teaching, playing and enjoying life. He retired the guitar in the mid '80s. Today, he lives with Sandy, his wife of 42 years, in the same house he bought in 1958. Though retired from playing, Smith is far from forgotten. Awards and accolades continue to come his way. In 1998, the guitarist received the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal, which is awarded annually by the Smithsonian Institution for distinguished cultural contributions in public service, the arts, science or history. In 1999, the JVC Jazz Festival in New York honored Smith with a gala tribute featuring a pantheon of jazz guitar greats, both veterans and rising stars.

When introduced, Smith, who made a rare trek to Manhattan, said with characteris­tic modesty: "I never considered myself a jazz player — just a guitar player who tried to supply what was missing." The beautiful recordings in this set, regardless of the labels, are a testament to the legacy of a brilliant musician.”

Hank Jones: Urbane, Suave and Debonair

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Urbanity, one will concede, is a most fitting term to describe the aura of Hank Jones's piano, which conjures to mind the sophisti­cation of the city. It is a late-at-night aura, generous in understatement, deploring the obvious, suggesting rather than declaring.

Actually, Henry "Hank" Jones and his piano do recall all of this. But the point should be noted that Hank Jones is not a Manhattan cocktail lounge-type pianist. Far from it. Not only is his musical sophistication much more genuine, but Jones himself is a schooled musician of great inven­tiveness and fertility of expression. In a word, the sophistication is no veneer, the urbanity no pose.

Hank Jones plays an awful lot of piano. His music is sensitive, pretty (but not just pretty), abundant in ideas and through it all there is a jazz beat - he uses both hands equally well, inci­dentally, this being a habit which seems to have eluded so many modern young pianists. One of the more interesting facets to Hank Jones is his flair for saying something new with an old song - ….”

- Original liner notes to Urbanity [Clef MGC 707; Verve 314 537 747-2]

“Never much of a composer,…, Jones is not given to wholesale reassessment of standard progressions but prefers to concentrate on the sound of a tune. … Jones colors every chord …. His delicacy and balance, that tiptoeing, tap-dancing feel, are among the qualities which have enhanced and prolonged his reputation as a great accompanist….”

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

“Hank Jones has been a central piano figure on the world scene for close to a half century; I had the pleasure of introducing him on records, as a sideman in a 1944 Hot Lips Page date. He was the eldest of three brothers: Thad Jones followed him on the path to fame, as a Count Basie sideman, from 1954. Two years later Elvin Jones moved from Pontiac, Michigan, the brothers' home, to New York, where he became a member of the Bud Powell Trio.

Hank, like most other pianists of the day, was strongly impressed by Bud Powell, but like Tommy Flanagan and others from the Detroit area, he transcended the bop idiom to become an eclectic interpreter of everything from time-proof ballads to swing and bop standards. …

Over the decades Hank Jones has recorded in a multitude of settings, from small combo dates to big bands to accompanying Ella Fitzgerald and other singers.

However, all that is needed for a complete demonstration of his singular artistry is a well conceived repertoire, fine acoustic conditions, and a piano worthy of him. On this occasion Hank blended these three elements into what is undoubtedly a highlight in the fast-growing and invaluable Maybeck Hall series.”

- Leonard Feather, notes to Hank Jones: Live at Maybeck Recital Hall #16 [Concord CCD-4502]

“Hank believes that the melody should be stated pretty clearly initially and recapped at the end - of course, the improvisation occurs in the middle sections. He adds that, for variety's sake, an artist can re-harmonize parts of the melody - that is, use a different chord or set of chords under the melody note or notes. (Some overdo this treating re-harmonization as an intellectual exercise; Hank never overdoes it.) …

The influence of pianist Art Tatum is certainly evident in these solo pieces. Hank remembers when he heard Tatum on a record for the first time. He thought it was a trick recording that used two pianists at once. (When discovering that it was a single pianist, Hank was amazed - and delighted.)

Tatum epitomized swing, harmonic sophistication, and technique, not for its own sake, but for the sake of music. Hank's [playing often] … reflects Tatum's presence - the touch, the arpeggiated runs, and the harmony.

Key selections are vital in determining the col­ors of the music. [For example], The standard key for “Little Girl Blue”  is F major; Hank chooses D- flat, which gives the tune a more somber cast. Certain songs sound better in certain keys - ideally, the artist should experiment by playing the song in all keys, then choosing which key fits best. (If a pianist and a bassist are playing a ballad together, they should consider the sharp keys - G, D, A, and E - as the bass has the same open strings. The harmonic and acoustic sound is more sonorous and profound than when the other keys are used.)

Hank’s harmonies are very sophisticated. Like Tatum, he places notes within a given chord in a pleasing way. His extensions of the chord, such as altered ninths or elevenths, never sound muddy.

He has, as a trademark, a light, delicate touch. Like a Ping-Pong ball bouncing over keys.

Hank’s knowledge of tunes is certainly reflected in his playing. His approach reveals his assimilation of the repertoire, his technical command of the piano, his taste and understatement… and his overall superb musicianship.”

- Steve Kuhn, Jazz pianist, notes to the CD version of Urbanity  [Verve 314 537 747-2]

Hank Jones has to be considered one of the smoothest and versatile pianists in Jazz history.

I met Hank Jones on a number of occasions. Always amiable and polite, it was difficult to get him to talk very much about himself or his music. “I prefer to let the music speak for itself,” he said.

Hank continued: “It is hard to look back or to analyze. I’m always looking forward to what I’m going to play next. It keeps the mind focused.”

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to remember Hank on these pages with this brief piece.

Hank’s music has a consistently melodic quality about it and is played with impeccable taste and subtlety.  It’s accessible, always swings and creates a lightness of spirit in me that makes me feel happy, joyous and free.

No furrowed brows; no looks of consternation trying to figure out what he’s playing. His music just washes over you and helps clear away the cares of the day.

Here’s what Gene Lees had to say about Hank and his music.

© -Gene Lees, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Two major pianists, Oscar Peterson and Andre Previn, have told me that Hank Jones is their favorite pianist, and to make the statement more forceful, Andre added, ‘Regardless of idiom.’

Like many another major jazz musician, Hank Jones might have become a ‘classi­cal’ musician had he not been black. I once heard Hank warming up on Chopin for a recording session, and was deeply impressed by his approach to that music. But black musicians did not aspire to con­cert careers when Hank was coming up — this was long before Andre Watts — and Hank became a jazz pianist, leading the way for two other musicians in the Jones family: the late Thad Jones, trumpeter and brilliant composer and arranger, and the remarkable drummer Elvin Jones.

Though he was born deep in the South, he grew up in Pontiac, Michigan, and seems to consider Michigan his home state. He was given solid musical training, but his father did not have it in mind that Hank should or would be a jazz musician. He gained his first experience in a church choir, and later played with regional bands, particularly in the Detroit area. When he went to New York in 1944, Hank heard the new music of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, which he assimilated into his own playing. He was on a number of historic Charlie Parker recording dates.

Hank Jones is a particular favorite of other pianists, who admire his enormous but unprepossessing facility, his harmonic subtlety and sophistication, and his unfail­ing taste. He is a rich and sympathetic accompanist—he was Ella Fitzgerald's for several years — and an elegant soloist. He has played and recorded with almost eve­ryone in jazz, including artists as varied as Milt Jackson, John Kirby, Howard McGhee, Coleman Hawkins, Julian (Cannonball) Adderley, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw. Indeed, he was a member of Shaw's last Gramercy Five group, and took part in Shaw's last recording session in 1954.

He tours the world constantly, though he has cut back on his New York studio work, preferring to spend his off time on his four-hundred-acre farm in upstate New York, not far from Cooperstown — always the impeccable jazz player, always in demand, admired and liked by everyone who has come into contact with his gentle humor and considerate warmth.

Hank wanted to farm that land, but his wife, Teddy, ever the realist, gave him a choice: ‘Do you want to be a farmer or a musician?’

Music won. But the farm remains his refuge.”