Jazz Profiles: OSIE JOHNSON: An Undistinguished Distinctive Drummer

Monday, January 9, 2012

OSIE JOHNSON: An Undistinguished Distinctive Drummer

“In studio work, you’re always under the gun. You’re expected to play the parts right no matter how difficult they are …. It’s a matter of being precise and right, all the time. It’s brain surgery, that’s what it is. And every operation has to be a success. There are no failures – a failure and you’re gone.”

- Alvin Stoller, drummer

Burt Korall, a writer who, among his other significant writings about Jazz, authored two books on Drummin’ Men: The Heartbeat of Jazz, only makes one reference to him when he cites him as “… the gifted drummer, Osie Johnson,” on page 200 of the second volume, The Bebop Years.

There is also a reference to Osie in Gary Giddins’ Vision of Jazz: The First Century where in the context of talking about Bud Powell and the drummers he performed with he notes: “He worked only with the best: Max Roach, Kenny Clarke, Roy Haynes, Art Blakey, Art Taylor, Osie Johnson – percussionists who complemented his dynamics, speed, and shifting rhythms.” [p. 321]

Outside of incidental references such as these, you’d be hard-pressed to find any information about Osie other than in the ever-reliable Encyclopedia of Jazz.

The lack of mention of Osie is made even more striking by the fact that this was a drummer who was everywhere, and I mean everywhere apparent, on the New York studio and Jazz scene especially in the 1950s and mid-1960s.

Osie worked with all of the top arrangers –Manny Albam [with whom, he was close friends], Quincy Jones, Oliver Nelson, Bob Brookmeyer, Hal McKusick, Al Cohn, Gerry Mulligan, George Russell – the list is endless. The Lord Discography cites Osie’s name as having appeared on 670 recording sessions!

He toured with pianists Earl “Fatha” Hines, Erroll Garner and Dorothy Donegan as well as tenor saxophone legend Coleman Hawkins and clarinetist Tony Scott. Osie, who made his own album as a singer – A Bit of the Blues [RCA CD 74321609832] - was a favorite of vocalists Carmen McRae and Dinah Washington, both of whom he wrote arrangements for in the 1950s.

Osie had studied theory and harmony in high school in Washington, D.C. and privately, so he knew music and was an excellent reader, both of which may help explain why he was so heavily in demand at recording sessions.

He was the staff drummer for extended periods of time on both the NBC and CBS studio orchestras in New York City and he appeared as a freelance percussionist on a slew of independent TV commercials and radio jingles.

Perhaps, part of the reason for his obscurity was due to the fact that he died in 1966 at the relatively young age of 43 from renal system infections that led to kidney failure.

Fortunately, Georges Paczynski in the second volume of his prize-winning Une Histoire de la Batterie de Jazz has three entire pages devoted to Osie and his style of drumming. Fortunately, that is, for those who read French as the work has not [to my knowledge] been translated into English.

Paczynski includes Osie along with Harold “Doc” West, Rossiere “Shadow” Wilson, Gus Johnson, Gordon “Specs” Powell and Alvin Stoller in his chapter entitled – La fin de l’ère swing - les batteurs charnières. With charnières translated to mean “hinge” or “pivotal,” the author is grouping Osie among those drummers whom he considers to be among those who made the successful transition from the Swing Era to Bebop.

Many better known Swing Era drummers never did make this transition, among them Davy Tough and Gene Krupa.

To be able to do so was a considerable accomplishment as it required getting out of playing down into the drum kit [think hands on snare and an incessant bass drum beat] and playing up, onto the cymbals using the snare and the bass drum for accents.

Keeping time in this manner involved a total reorientation in the way in which a drummer thought about time.

Drummers like Osie and the other transition drummers in Paczynski’s grouping who accommodated the change in style did so by keeping things simple.

They became, first-and-foremost, timekeepers with a steady ride cymbal beat and an accent here and there. Nothing complicated requiring the independence and heightened coordination of a Max Roach or a Philly Joe Jones or a Joe Morello.

More drumming to establish a pulse and to keep things moving along. Clean, simple, and staying out of the way; Osie just blended in with the musical environment instead of trying to dominate it – it was a style of drumming that was more felt than heard.

In fact, Osie’s drumming bordered on the indistinct and yet, everyone loved playing with him precisely because as Paczynski explains:

« En fait, il est absolument impossible d'identifier Osie Johnson. A l'inverse d'un musicien qui ne peut investir son jeu trop personnel et « engage » dans tous les contextes musicaux, il est capable de s'adapter avec plus ou moins de bonheur a toute proposition musicale, et est constamment sollicite en tant que tel. »

A very loose translation of which would read:

“In fact, it is absolutely impossible to identify [in the sense of classifying] Osie Johnson. He was the opposite of those who try and interject their personality into the music. Instead, he tried to contentedly fit himself into all musical contexts, and he was sought out by other musicians precisely because of his willingness to do so.”

A number of times in his essay, Paczynski stresses the fact that Osie emphasized drumming “fundamentals” in his playing: a rock solid beat, precision in the placement of accents, a perfect placement of kicks and fills and a clear and uncomplicated sound from both the drums and the cymbals.

Oh, and he was an excellent reader for as Alvin Stoller, Osie’s counterpart as an in demand studio drummer on the West Coast stated: “In studio work, you’re always under the gun. You’re expected to play the parts right no matter how difficult they are …. It’s a matter of being precise and right, all the time. It’s brain surgery, that’s what it is. And every operation has to be a success. There are no failures – a failure and you’re gone.”

More indications of what makes Osie’s style so distinctive can be found in the following question that was put to the online drummer chat group:

“What do you all recommend for tuning a 5x14 brass snare to capture a tight, crisp sound with minimal after ring? The snare sound I'm after is similar to the following:

1. Osie Johnson's playing on "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" from Sonny Stitt's Now! (mp3 attached). The first 20 seconds of the track provide a good snapshot of Johnson's crisp snare sound.

In order to achieve that kind of sound, do I need to have

a) both top and bottom heads tuned the same
b) the top head tuned higher/tighter than the bottom head
c) the bottom head tuned higher/tighter than the top head
d) ??

At the moment, I have my Tama 5x14 brass snare tuned with top head close to 90 and bottom head a little over 80, I believe (according to my Drum Dial). I have a standard Remo Coated Ambassador on the batter side.

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer!”

An answer to this question might also serve to explain the title of our piece on Osie – “An Undistinguished Distinctive Drummer.”

The title is not a Zen koan [an insoluble intellectual problem: think – “What was your true nature before you mother and father conceived you?”]

Osie Johnson was unfortunately undistinguished as a drumming stylist, and yet, his drumming was immediately discernible. He was distinctive without trying to be so.

Most of Osie’s distinctiveness did begin with the sound of his snare drum, which he tightened to within an inch of its "life." How he kept it from tearing in two is beyond me.

So the choice from the chat group options would be – “a) both top and bottom heads tuned the same” - although a much more complete answer might address everything from the quality and composition of the maple shell that formed Osie’s snare drum to the type of drum heads he used, ad infinitum.

The most instructive portion of the chat group question is the example that was sent along with the annotation - The first 20 seconds of the track provide a good snapshot of Johnson's crisp snare sound.

We have used the very same track - "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone" from Sonny Stitt's Now! - in our video tribute to Osie, but we would rephrase the chat group statement to read: The first 20 seconds of the track provide a good snapshot of Osie Johnson's approach to drumming.

For in addition to his distinctively crisp snare sound, this short segment reveals Osie playing time on the hi-hat before switching to the ride cymbal, his gentle but insistent sense of swing and the lightness of his touch which allowed him to fit into the music almost seamlessly.

This is a perfect illustration of the drummer as an accompanist and also the reason why melody and harmony guys loved working with Osie: his drums are not resonating and booming, his accents are not distracting and he isn’t calling attention to himself with complicated drumming figures.

On this track, Osie is a musician among a group of musicians intent on making music and therein lies the key to his success and to his distinctiveness.

Whatever the musical context – piano trio Jazz, small group Jazz or big band Jazz – Osie always sounds just right; he fits in.

And he always nails it, characteristically.

For all of his blending in, I would venture to say that anyone – musician or not – that is familiar with Osie Johnson’s playing would recognize it … “after [listening to] the first 20 seconds” of a recorded track.

Very few drummers have ever been as distinctively undistinguished as Osie Johnson.

Chapter 8, Robert Gordon, Jazz West Coast

“The Counce quintet is one of the great neglected jazz bands of the 1950s. The reasons for this neglect are difficult to pinpoint.” Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz In California [New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, p.318].

The French author, Alain Tercinet, in his West Coast Jazz [Marseille, Editions Parentheses, 1986] concurs with Ted as well as with Bob Gordon’s following evaluation of the “Hard Sound” of the Curtis Counce group as noted in this rough translation:

“The music of the quintet gains its worth by the quality of its interpreters more than its originality. A ‘pinch’ of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, a ‘touch’ of the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet and a ‘wink of the eye’ at experimentation best define its music. The group is comparable to Shelly Manne and His Men in that both bring ‘echoes’ of New York hard bop to ‘the edge of the Pacific’ [i.e.: the West Coast].” [pp. 252 -253]

Through Gioia, Tercinet and Bob Gordon’s appraisals, it’s great to be reminded once again of the exciting music produced by the Curtis Counce Group.

Jack Sheldon on trumpet, Harold Land on tenor saxophone, Carl Perkins on piano, Curtis Counce on bass and Frank Butler on drums made up the original powerhouse group whose aggressive and hard-hitting style of Jazz certainly belied Grover Sales wrap that West Coast Jazz “… recordings … today strike us as bloodless museum pieces ….”

As was the case in his earlier Chapter 6 on the subject, it is this point in contention that Bob takes on directly and discredits in “California Hard II.”

CALIFORNIA HARD - II

It is hard to understand why the Curtis Counce Group failed to achieve the recognition ‑ either popular or critical ‑ it deserved. Perhaps it's because the group was so difficult to pigeonhole. As a Los Angeles‑based group it couldn't remotely be identified with the West Coast school. Stylistically, the Curtis Counce Group fit quite naturally with such groups as the Jazz Messengers or the Horace Silver Quintet, but such a comparison tended to upset the East Coast‑West Coast dichotomy that then figured so prominently in jazz criticism. So, stuck as they were thousands of miles from the centre of editorial power, the musicians in the group turned out their own brand of hard-swinging jazz in relative obscurity. It wouldn't be fair to say they were totally ignored by the influential critics, but they were seldom evaluated at their true worth.

We've already discussed most of the band's principals. Bassist Curtis Counce had played with Shorty Rogers and numerous West Coast groups, and was one of the few black musicians to have gained acceptance in the Hollywood studios; he had just returned from a European tour with the Stan Kenton orchestra when he set about forming a band in August of 1956. Tenor saxophonist Harold Land had of course been a mainstay of the Max Roach‑Clifford Brown quintet. Trumpeter Jack Sheldon, shared the front line with Land, was born 30 November 1931 in Jacksonville, Florida and moved to LA in 1947, where he studied music for two years at LA City College. Following a two-year stint in the air force, he gigged around town with Jack Montrose, Art Pepper, Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon and Herb Geller; he was also a charter member of the group centered around Joe Maini and Lenny Bruce.

The rhythm section of the Curtis Counce Group was anchored by two exceptional musicians, pianist Carl Perkins and drummer Frank Butler. Carl Perkins (no relation to the rock‑and‑roll singer) had been born in Indianapolis, Indiana, 16 August 1928. A self‑taught pianist, Perkins had come up through the rhythm‑and‑blues bands of Tiny Bradshaw and Big Jay McNeely, and had forged a blues‑drenched modern style for himself. He had developed an unorthodox style and often played with his left arm parallel to the keyboard. Frank Butler was born on 18 February 1928 in Wichita, Kansas and had made jazz time with Dave Brubeck, Edgar Hayes and Duke Ellington, among others.

None of the musicians in the band was a household name, although Harold Land had gained some fame during his stay with the Clifford Brown‑Max Roach band. But this was, above all, a group, and it was as a co‑operative unit that the band excelled. Everyone is familiar with all‑star bands that somehow or other don't quite make it ‑ the chemistry between the players is somehow wrong; perhaps an ego or two gets in the way. The Curtis Counce Group was that sort of band's antithesis; a living, working example of a unit wherein the whole is much greater than the sum of its components. Although the original idea to form the group was Curtis Counce's, the band functioned as a collaborative affair. 'We were all close friends within the group,' Harold Land remembers, 'so it was a good idea for all of us, because we all liked each other personally as well as musically.'

The Curtis Counce Group was formed in August 1956, played its first gig at The Haig in September, and entered the recording studios a month later. Lester Koenig always had an ear for promising musicians, and in the latter part of the 1950s he recorded a fascinating assortment of exciting and forward-looking groups and musicians, including Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, for his Contemporary label. The Curtis Counce Group was one of his happiest finds. The musicians entered the studio on 8 October for their first session, and the band's chemistry was evident from the start. The first tune recorded was Harold Land's 'Landslide', a dark yet forceful hard‑bop theme. Harold leads off with some big‑toned tenor work and is followed by some thoughtful Sheldon and grooving Carl Perkins. Two other originals were contributed by members of the band: 'Mia' by Carl Perkins, and Jack Sheldon's blues line 'Sarah'.

'Mia' sports a bright, bouncy tune with unexpected chord progressions and sparks swinging solos by all hands. Everybody digs deeply into the blues on 'Sarah', but Carl Perkins is especially impressive in his solo; throughout his all too short career Perkins displayed a close affinity for the blues. 'Time after Time' serves as a vehicle for Harold Land's tender yet muscular ballad style. 'A Fifth for Frank', as the title suggests, is a showcase for Frank Butler. Frank's driving support for the band throughout the session belies his relative inexperience ‑ this was in fact his first recording. A sixth tune, Charlie Parker's 'Big Foot' (recorded by Parker as both 'Air Conditioning' and 'Drifting on a Reed' for Dial), was also recorded at this original session, but was not issued until later. To round out the initial album, a tune recorded at the group's second session ‑ held a week later on 18 October ‑ was used. 'Sonar' (written by Gerald Wiggins and Kenny Clarke), is taken at a bright tempo and has plenty of room for stretching out by all of the musicians.

The first album, titled simply The Curtis Counce Group [Contemporary S-7526; OJCCD-606-2], was released early in 1957 and immediately gained favourable attention. Nat Hentoff awarded the album four stars in an admiring review in Down Beat magazine. Yet somehow national stature seemed to elude the band. Undoubtedly the main reason for this was that the Curtis Counce Group was not a traveling band. Harold Land does remember that the group 'went to Denver one time, but as far as getting back east, it never did happen'. In Los Angeles the band enjoyed an in‑group reputation ‑ they were especially well‑liked by fellow musicians ‑ but they never achieved the popularity of, say, the Chico Hamilton Quintet. They did play regularly around Los Angeles. 'There was another spot down on Sunset: the Sanborn House,' Harold remembers. 'We played there quite a while, longer than we did at The Haig, and the group built up quite a following. The Haig was very small, but this was a larger club.'

In the meantime, the band continued to record prolifically for Contemporary. The group's second album contained tunes cut at various sessions held in 1956 and throughout 1957. In addition to 'Sonar', the band recorded a swinging version of 'Stranger in Paradise' at the second session of 15 October 1956; this tune and the aforementioned 'Big Foot' were on the second album, which was originally entitled You Get More Bounce with Curtis Counce [Contemporary C-7539; OJJCD-159-2].

Two more tunes were recorded 22 April 1957 ‑ 'Too Close for Comfort' and 'Counceltation'. The latter is an original by the leader. Curtis was studying composition with Lyle 'Spud' Murphy at the time, and 'Counceltation' is an experimental piece based on Murphy's twelve‑tone system. The tune is interesting, but smacks a little too much of the classroom. As if to balance this, another tune of Counce's, a bright blues named 'Complete', was recorded at a session in May. Everybody gets to let down his hair on 'Complete', and Jack Sheldon contributes a funky Miles Davis‑influenced solo in Harmon mute. A ballad version of 'How Deep is the Ocean', also recorded at the May session, and an up‑tempo 'Mean to Me', recorded in September, complete the album. When the album was released late in 1957, the Curtis Counce Group was riding high, but unfortunately several unforeseen events would soon contribute to the band's early demise. Chief among these was the tragic death of pianist Carl Perkins in March of 1958; an additional strong factor was the rapid decline of jazz, clubs in LA in the closing years of the decade. But before we examine the final recordings of the Curtis Counce band, let's look at a couple of other hard-swinging groups that were playing around southern California during this same period.

Perhaps the most famous neo-bop group to be formed in LA in the mid-fifties was that of Chet Baker. As you'll remember, Chet formed his own quartet following the break-up of the original Gerry Mulligan Quartet in 1953, and worked mostly in a quartet format for the next several years. He spent the autumn of 1955 and the winter and spring of 1956 in Europe, headquartered in Paris, recording in a variety of contexts with groups composed of American and European musicians. The most interesting of these recordings were made with the quartet he accompanied to

France

, which featured the highly original pianist Richard Twardzik. Unfortunately Twardzik died suddenly in Paris in October 1955, another young victim of drugs. When Baker finally returned to the

in the spring of 1956, he went about forming a quintet that would change his image among jazz fans and which would temporarily slow the decline in his fortunes.

For his front-line companion Baker chose Phil Urso, a tenor saxophonist in the Zoot Sims, Al Cohn tradition. Born 2 October 1925 in Jersey City, New Jersey, Urso had played with the bands of Elliot Lawrence, Woody Herman, Terry Gibbs and Oscar Pettiford, among others. Chet's rhythm section featured three young lions. Pianist Bobby Timmons and bassist Jimmy Bo were both born in Philadelphia; Bond on 27 January 1933 and Timmons on 19 December 1935. Both had played with name jazzmen while still in their teens, and Bond was in addition a graduate of Juilliard. Drummer Peter Littman was born in Medford, Massachusetts 8 May 1935 and had worked with Boston musicians Herb Pomeroy and Charlie Mariano before joining Chet Baker's quartet prior to the European tour. The quintet this formed, while not as powerful or exciting as the Curtis Counce Group, was a solid, swinging modern unit, and definitely more extroverted than the trumpeter's previous groups had been.

The new Chet Baker Quintet soon got a chance to record for Pacific jazz. In a series of sessions held in late July 1956, the quintet taped sixteen numbers, and eight of these found their way on to an album entitled Chet Baker & Crew. (Some of the remaining tunes were eventually released on a Crown LP, and several more were issued on various Pacific jazz anthologies.) The album's opener - and hardest-swinging number - is a piece entitled 'To Mickey's Memory', an original by Harvey Leonard based on 'I'll Remember April' changes. For this one number the quintet is augmented by percussionist Bill Loughbrough, playing an invention of his called 'chromatic timpani'. The experimental percussion set is interesting, but doesn't add anything to jazz drumming that Max Roach hadn't introduced years before. Worse, the extra drum set exacerbates Peter Littman's tendency to rush the beat. Still, it is a swinging performance, and Chet Baker's forceful new personality on trumpet comes through marvelously.

None of the album's remaining performances exceeds that of 'Mickey's Memory', but there is no serious let-down either. Bob Zieff’s 'Slightly above Moderate' features some unusual progressions and elicits thoughtful solos by Baker, Urso and Timmons. Another number by Zieff, 'Medium Rock', also has unexpected changes, but in this case the solos are rather pedestrian. Phil Urso contributes two originals to the proceedings: 'Halema', a ballad, and 'Lucius Lu', a funky number in the 'Doxy' mould. 'Revelation', by Chet's former boss Gerry Mulligan, is given a driving performance, but once again the tempo picks up slightly. Al Cohn's 'Something for Lisa' is taken at a brisk but comfortable pace that sparks especially happy solos by Urso and Baker. The album's most unexpected number is Miff Mole's tender 'Worrying the Life out of Me', which features a sensitive solo by Chet. Strangely enough, a stronger performance than any of those on the album was relegated to a Pacific jazz anthology. A version of Al Haig's 'Jumpin' Off a Clef' features hard-driving solos by Baker, Urso and Timmons, and an especially tight rhythm section. The performance was later released on an album entitled The Hard Swing.

Perhaps because Chet Baker's contract with Pacific Jazz was soon to be up, Dick Bock recorded his star trumpet player often in a variety of contexts during the latter part of 1956. There were no further recordings by his working quintet, but different sessions saw Chet backed by a quartet, a sextet and even a (small) big band. We'll examine the sextet recordings in a later chapter but one of the two quartet sessions from this period deserve special attention here. On 6 November Chet was reunited with his former pianist Russ Freeman. Actually it was Freeman' session, but the band was billed as the Chet Baker-Russ Freeman Quartet on the album. The rhythm section included Freeman's fellow members of the Shelly Manne Quintet of the time - Shelly and Leroy Vinnegar. The three had been working together for well over a year and it showed. Few rhythm sections of the day were tighter, or exhibited more strength. Certainly their playing goaded Chet Baker into a superior performance. Shelly Manne remembers the date as an especially happy occasion:

Sometimes you go into a studio, and for some strange reason - the set-up is right, everything feels right, you can he clearly, all your creative juices are flowing, and everything perfect - it's kinda like magic almost. And those are the times when you really make some great records .... Russ and I had found almost a new way of playing in the rhythm section together: a kind of looser, freer way, where we were integral part of melody lines and what was happening rhythmically, without just being stuck in the background .... Leroy was such a strong walker; he gave us a foundation to lean on .... And Chet was such a loose, free player that it work perfectly with him.

Certainly Chet Baker never played with more fire than he on this date. The album opens with a blistering 'Love Nest.' Woody Woodward, Bock's right-hand man at Pacific Jazz remembers that a couple of earlier attempts at the piece had produced unsatisfying takes. Woodward then suggested that trumpeter use a Harmon mute on the next take. Baker – who suffering from some bad teeth - was reluctant, due to the increased pressure needed to blow through the mute, but agreed to try anyway. The resulting performance proved Woodward right; Chet seems to pull out all the stops in his driving solo. The next piece, Billy Strayhorn's 'Lush Life', is given an exquisite ballad performance; neither Freeman nor Baker strays far from the written tune. The rest of the album's numbers are all Russ Freeman originals. 'Say When', based on the time-tested 'I Got Rhythm' changes, is the most conventional. 'Amblin,’ a slow blues, shows off Freeman's sparse, sinewy style to great advantage. Never one to waste resources, Freeman places each note with care in exactly the right spot. 'Fan Tan' starts out in a remote key, then bounces blithely along to its tonic. Perhaps Freeman's finest composition on the album is the beautiful mood piece 'Summer Sketch', a languid ballad that evokes sultry afternoons. 'An Afternoon at Home' is taken at an engaging middle tempo, while 'Hugo Hurwhey' is pushed along at a rapid, but not breakneck, pace. In the fascinating fours on the latter piece each musician truly takes a solo, unsupported by the other instruments. All four musicians acquit themselves admirably on this album; it remains one of the high points of the Pacific Jazz catalogue.

Two other short-lived groups in the hard-bop mould had a brief moment on the LA stage around this time, and strangely enough, one of these bands had its genesis in the Stan Kenton orchestra. The first of these groups was the Red Mitchell Quartet, which was formed early in 1957. This was definitely a young and forward-looking band. Tenor saxophonist James Clay had been born in Dallas, Texas on 8 September 1935. A proponent of the big-toned tenor style favored in the south west, Clay also played a singularly muscular flute. Lorraine Geller was the group's pianist. The youngest member of the quartet was Billy Higgins. Higgins was born in Los Angeles on 11 October 1936 and took up drums at the age of twelve, serving his apprenticeship in rhythm-and-blues bands around the area.

Once again Lester Koenig recognized the potential of the young musicians and invited them to record. A session was held the night of 26 March 1957, and enough tunes for a complete album were taped in one sitting. The direction favored by the musicians can be charted by listing the tunes chosen for recording. These include Charlie Parker's 'Scrapple from the Apple', Miles Davis's 'Out of the Blue', Sonny Rollins's 'Paul's Pal' and Clifford Brown's 'Sandu'. There are also two originals by Red Mitchell, 'Rainy Night' and 'I Thought of You', as well as a burning version of the Irving Berlin standard 'Cheek to Cheek'. The leader's mastery of the bass is exhibited throughout. On 'Scrapple from the Apple', taken at the expected rapid pace, Mitchell doubles the lead line with James Clay on the head. And on his own ballad 'I Thought of You', Red states the theme on his very melodic bass. James Clay plays flute on both 'I Thought of You' and 'Rainy Night', as well as on 'Paul's Pal'. The quixotic Sonny Rollins fine on the latter tune lends itself admirably to Clay's approach on the flute. Still, the most satisfying performances are those which feature straight-ahead blowing by all hands: 'Scrapple', 'Sandu' and 'Cheek to Cheek'.

This was an auspicious debut for the quartet (it was, incidentally, the first appearance on record for Billy Higgins) but unfortunately it didn't lead to any further albums. The Red Mitchell Quartet was an early victim of the deteriorating Los Angeles club scene that took place in the waning years of the decade. A short time after recording this album, the group disbanded. For Lorraine Geller, whose sympathetic piano work contributed so much to the quartet's sound, it would be a maternity leave: she became a mother before the year's end. Tragically, she died of an apparent heart attack the following year, on 10 October 1958. James Clay, discouraged by the lack of job opportunities, returned to Dallas, although he later recorded heavily with both Ray Charles and Hank Crawford. Billy Higgins, of course, went on to become one of the most influential drummers of the 1960s. We'll return to both Higgins and Red Mitchell later in this narrative.

In the summer of 1957 LA also had a brief taste of another group with an even harder edge than the Red Mitchell Quartet. This was the Pepper Adams-Mel Lewis group. Baritone saxophonist Park Adams was born in Rochester, New York, on 8 October 1930, but spent his formative jazz years in Detroit. He began on tenor sax but switched to the larger horn when he got the chance to buy one at a discount while working in a music shop. While in Detroit from 1946 to 1951 he grew close to a group of local musicians who would loom large in the New York jazz scene of the fifties: Kenny Burrell, Paul Chambers, Tommy Flanagan, Frank Foster, Bill Evans (later Yusef Lateef), Elvin and Thad Jones, Donald Byrd and Doug Watkins. These and other Motor City jazzmen, under the tutelage of pianist Barry Harris, forged an exciting musical environment in Detroit in the post-war years. When Adams was hired by Stan Kenton in 1956, brusque, aggressive baritone style was a revelation for the Kentonians. Drummer Mel Lewis would later recall, 'We called him the Knife because when he'd get up to blow, his playing had almost a slashing effect on the rest of us. He'd slash, chop, and before he was through cut everybody down to size.” [Quoted by John Tynan in notes to Pacific Jazz PJM-407]

Following a brief stint with Kenton, Pepper Adams moved on to the Maynard Ferguson big band, then to Chet Baker's quintet. (Unfortunately, this particular Baker group was never recorded.) Then, in 1957, he moved to LA to freelance, and renewed his friendship with Mel Lewis. Undaunted by the sparseness of clubs in the area, the two decided to form a band. The group worked only two paid engagements, at Zucca's Cottage in Pasadena, before they were forced to disband due to lack of jobs. Fortunately, Adams and Lewis were able to record two albums he summer of 1957, leaving posterity at least a taste of what might have been.

The first session, for the Mode label, was held on 12 July. Lewis and Adams were joined by trumpeter Stu Williamson, pianist Carl Perkins and bassist Leroy Vinnegar for the date. The album opens with a relaxed 'Unforgettable', on which Stu Williamson's fluid trumpet balances Pepper Adams's horn nicely. A burning, searing 'Baubles, Bangles and Beads' shows how Adams gained his nickname of the Knife: he indeed cuts the others down to size. Adams also provided two original compositions for the date. 'Freddie Froo' has an up-tempo hard-bop theme, and Stu Williamson and Carl Perkins both take solos that show them to be more than comfortable in the genre. 'Muezzin,' taken at a slightly slower tempo, sports a Latin-tinged theme. 'My One and Only Love', the album's ballad, showcases Pepper Adams's tender side. Mel Lewis and Leroy Vinnegar provide propulsive support to the soloist throughout the proceedings.

The second album was recorded for Pacific Jazz (which by now had adopted the World Pacific label) a month later, on 22 August. For this date the co-leaders were joined by Lee Katzman, who had played trumpet with the two in Kenton's band, as well as pianist Jimmy Rowles and an old friend of Pepper's from Detroit, bassist Doug Watkins. The album was released under the title Critics' Choice, in honor of Pepper Adams having recently been chosen New Star on baritone sax in Down Beat critics' poll. It is, on the whole, a more satisfying album than the previous one, exhibiting a larger range of moods. Four of the album's six tunes are originals by Adams's youthful companions from Detroit. Tommy Flanagan's 'Minor Mishap' has a rhythmically propulsive theme that spurs both Adams and Katzman into strong solos. 'High Step', by Barry Harris, has a very relaxed feel, although Mel Lewis does prod Adams into some exciting double time. Thad Jones supplied two of the album's tunes: the storming 'Zec' and the laid back '5021'. On '5021' the theme breaks in and out of 3/4 time, although the solos are all in straight four. Bassist Doug Watkins states the theme in the ballad 'Alone Together', which is mostly a vehicle for Pepper Adams's baritone. The remaining number is 'Blackout Blues', wherein each musician contributes to a searching look into the heart of the blues.

Shortly after the two albums were recorded, Pepper Adams gave up on LA and moved back to the Apple. There he was featured on a series of exciting Blue Note and Riverside recordings, usually in the company of fellow Detroiter Donald Byrd. The Los Angeles recordings, and especially Critics' Choice, hold up well when compared with those cut later in NYC. It's a shame the Pepper Adams-Mel Lewis group couldn't make a go of it on the Coast, but they were by no means the only musicians to face hard times in those years

Perhaps the most poignant example of the break‑up of a working band was that of the Curtis Counce Group, if only because the group had shown so much promise from inception. They did manage to hold together through 1957 when so many bands fell by the wayside, but finally broke a early in 1958. But before the group disbanded they manage produce two more albums, both enduring legacies of jazz in fifties.

The group's final recording for the Contemporary label titled ‑ when it was finally released in 1960 ‑ Carl's Blues [Contemporary S-7574; OJCCD-423-2]. The title was, unfortunately, especially apt, both because 'C Blues' by pianist Carl Perkins is one of the album's highlights and because Perkins died shortly after the tune was recorded. The album contains tunes cut at three sessions in all. J Sheldon's 'Pink Lady', a smoking work‑out on the standard ‘I Got Rhythm' changes, and a spirited version of 'Love Walked In’ are from the earliest date, held on 22 April 1957. There is also a grooving version of Horace Silver's Latin‑flavoured tune 'Nica’s Dream', recorded 29 August. The tempo here is slower and more deliberate than Horace Silver’s justly famous Blue Note recording, but the Curtis Counce performance is no less expressive.

The album’s remaining tunes were recorded at Carl Perkins's final session on 6 January 1958. For this date, Gerald Wilson replaced Jack Sheldon in the group's trumpet chair, although Wilson plays on only two tunes. One track, 'The Butler Did It', is an unaccompanied drum solo by Frank Butler. 'I Can't Get ' features Harold Land and the rhythm section, and the performance gives a strong indication of Land's growing powers improviser. The two tunes featuring the entire quintet are ‘Larue’ and the aforementioned 'Carl's Blues'. The ballad ‘Larue’ was written by Clifford Brown for his wife; Harold Land plays an especially tender solo on the tune. 'Carl's Blues', written by Perkins expressly for the session, is a leisurely examination of the blues and a fitting epitaph for the pianist.

Carl Perkins died on 17 March 1958, just five months short of his thirtieth birthday, another victim of drug abuse. He was the at of the Curtis Counce Group, and it is not surprising e quintet did not long outlive him. When Les Koenig issued his third album, several years after the selections en recorded, he had this to say about the band.

While it lasted, the Curtis Counce Group was one of the most exciting ever organized in Los Angeles. Counce picked four men who almost immediately achieved a togetherness only long‑established bands seem to have. Today, Carl Perkins is dead, and the members of the group have gone off in different directions ... It would be difficult under the best of conditions to recapture the feeling of the 1957 quintet. Without Perkins whose unique piano style was basic to the group's special sound, it is impossible.[Quoted in Nat Hentoff’s notes to Contemporary 7574]

It is tempting to wonder how the band would have been received had it been based in New York; certainly it would have give some of the more famous groups of the fifties a run for the money.

Carl's Blues was not, however, the final recording of the band. A month after Perkins's death the restructured quintet recorded for Dootsie Williams's Dooto (Dootone) records. Counce, Land and Butler remained from the original group. The trumpeter the date was Rolf Ericsson. Ericsson, born in Stockholm,

Sweden

on 29 August 1927, had moved to the States in 1947 and had worked with various bands including those of Charlie Barnet, Elliot Lawrence and Woody Herman. He was a member of Lighthouse All‑Stars in 1953. The new pianist was Elmo Hope native New Yorker, whose brief tenure on the Coast in the late fifties sparked several outstanding recordings. Hope, born on June 1923, was a childhood friend of Bud Powell and an active participant of the New York jazz scene of the forties and early fifties, although he remained little known to the public at large. Hope's piano was not as blues‑oriented as that of Carl Perkins but was instead sinewy and spare, the hard‑bop piano style pared to its very essence. In view of the band's restructuring, it is significant that the group was billed as the Curtis Counce Quintet rather than the Curtis Counce Group.

This set is unfortunately something of a let‑down after the three previous albums. Contemporary and Pacific jazz were the class of the West Coast independents, and however one may quibble over Les Koenig's or Dick Bock's choice of artists or material on any given record, their records were always superbly engineered and professionally produced. The Dootone album Exploring the Future [Dooto LP DTL 247; CDBOP 007], is noticeably inferior to the Contemporaries in recording quality, and there seems to have been a lack rehearsal time as well. Of course this was not the tight working band of a year earlier ‑ Carl Perkins's death and Jack Sheldon's departure obviously disrupted the group's cohesiveness ‑ but a couple of the numbers could have benefited from an additional take or two.

There is also the matter of the album's 'theme'. The group was definitely not ‘Exploring the Future’, but was diligently laboring the well‑established vineyards of hard bop. The futuristic album cover, showing Curtis Counce floating through the void in a space suit, and the choice of titles, which include 'Into the Orbit', 'Race for Space', 'Exploring the Future', and 'The Countdown', promise things the album simply can't deliver. (It is possible that some of the names were tagged on to untitled numbers after they had been recorded, a common enough practice.) All of this is not to say, however, that the album is a lure: the record does deliver a satisfying amount of modern, hard‑driving jazz.

Four of the album's eight numbers were written by Elmo Hope; all are decidedly in the hard‑bop vein. 'So Nice', the record's opener, has a catchy tune and driving solos by Ericsson, Land and Hope. Rolf Ericsson's tone is brash, and fits well in the hard‑bop context, but his trumpet playing suffers in comparison with Jack Sheldon's fluid yet funky work. 'Into the Orbit' seems well-named, since each soloist is launched into his solo at a doubled‑up tempo. 'Race for Space' is a rapid minor‑key theme which has a burning solo by Harold Land. And 'The Countdown', the album's closing number, sounds very much as if it were used by Hope as a set‑closer; it features the rhythm section working as a trio. 'Exploring the Future' has a nice theme that is attributed to Dootsie Williams, but since he is also credited on the album for Denzil Best's classic 'Move', one wonders. 'Move' serves largely as a drum solo for Frank Butler. The album also has two ballads. 'Someone to Watch Over Me' is a solo vehicle for Curtis Counce's bass, while Ericsson, Land and Hope all contribute tender solos on 'Angel Eyes'.

Although this was the last recording of the band under Curtis Counce's leadership, two additional sessions featured largely the or same personnel. The first of these was under the leadership of Hope. On 31 October 1957 the Elmo Hope Quintet ‑ Stu Williamson, Harold Land, Hope, Leroy Vinnegar, Frank Butler -, recorded three tunes for Pacific Jazz: 'Vaun Ex', 'St Elmo's Fire’ and 'So Nice'. All three of course were the pianist's compositions. Whether Dick Bock had originally planned on an entire album for the group or not, these were the only tunes recorded (or at least ever released) by Pacific Jazz. Two of the numbers were released on anthologies the following year; all three eventually found their way on to an Art Blakey reissue in the early 1960s. The recording quality on these Pacific jazz sides is noticeably superior to that of the Curtis Counce Dootone album, but it's also true that the Dootone sides exhibit a bit more uninhibited fire.

Perhaps the definitive recordings from this period came under the leadership of Harold Land for Contemporary records. Harold in the Land of Jazz (reissued later as Grooveyard) is significant both as the first album released under Harold Land's name and as Carl Perkins's last recording. The sessions were held on 13 and 14 January 1958, and the musicians were Rolf Ericsson, Land, Carl Perkins, Leroy Vinnegar and Frank Butler. These Contemporary recordings combine the fire of the Dooto recordings and the recording quality of the Pacific Jazz session.

The album opens with a driving arrangement of Kurt Weill's 'Speak Low'. The interplay between Land and Frank Butler here ‑ as always ‑ seems nothing short of miraculous. The two had been playing together almost daily since the formation of the Curtis Counce Group, of course, but beyond that Land and Butler could communicate on a telepathic level that was sometimes almost frightening. 'We've always been close friends, Land would later remember, 'and we were born on the same day of the month in the same year [Butler on 18 February, Land or 18 December 1928] ... and even our wives get sick and tired of our talking about how "in tune" we are with each other [laughs]. At times during one of Land's solos, the saxophonist will begin a phrase and Butler will immediately jump in, the two finishing together. 'Delirium', Harold Land's tune, is composed of descending sixteen‑bar phrases following each other like an endless succession of waves. 'You Don't Know What Love is serves as a solo vehicle for Land, who names it as one of his favorite ballads. Elmo Hope's 'Nieta' features Latin rhythm and some unconventional chord progressions. Two of the remaining tunes were written by Land. 'Smack Up' is a boppish tune which is propelled by some strong rhythmic accents, while the ballad '

Lydia

's Lament' is a tender tribute to Harold's wife

The remaining tune, and the album's high point, is the Carl Perkins composition 'Grooveyard'. It has a relaxed and timeless theme with roots in both gospel and the blues, and yet it has none of the self-conscious posturing of so many of the soul tunes of the day. Land, Ericsson and especially Perkins reach deep into the jazz tradition with their solos. The performance remains a fitting tribute to the composer.

Bassist Leroy Vinnegar, a childhood friend of Perkins from Indianapolis, described the pianist as:

the kind of musician who played with you; who played the things you heard. He not only played the chords, he played the beauty in the chords - his own way. And his time was perfect. In that respect he was what you'd call a rhythm section pianist. A man with time like Carl's was so important to a bassist, because you're supposed to play those changes together. [Notes to Contemporary 7550]

The album Grooveyard remains in print to this day, and like many of the Blue Note albums cut at the same time, it has survived the changing winds of fashion and still offers a moving listening experience.

Two other albums recorded around this same time also feature Harold Land, albeit as a sideman, and-round out the picture of his growing maturity on the tenor sax. The first, cut almost a year earlier (the same month as Way Out West) was Herb Geller's Fire in the West [Jubilee 1044] As was the case with the Way Out West album, this one featured some visiting musicians. Kenny Dorham, Clifford Brown's replacement, was in town with the Max Roach Quintet and played trumpet on the date; Ray Brown, visiting with the Oscar Peterson Trio, sat in on bass. The rest of Geller's sidemen were all locals of the harder persuasion: Harold Land, pianist Lou Levy and drummer Lawrence Marable.

In a way, the album reflects its hybrid origins. Many of the arrangements - they are all by Geller - sound somewhat in the West Coast vein, but once the soloing begins there is (as the album title suggests) plenty of fire. Four of the tunes are Geller originals: 'S' Pacific View', with its minor-key theme; 'Marable Eyes' and 'An Air for the Heir', both boppish up-tempo swingers; and 'Melrose and Sam', which features a contrapuntal head. As a ballad vehicle, Herb chose the Harold Arlen tune 'Here's what I'm Here for'. All of the soloists swing hard in three on Fats Waller's 'Jitterbug Waltz'. Probably the most satisfying performance of all comes on Bud Powell's 'The Fruit', which spurs all hands into driving solos. The album was recorded for the jubilee label, has long been out of print, and is somewhat scarce even on the second-hand market.

One year later (17 March 1958) Harold Land again recorded as a sideman, this time for Hampton Hawes. The album For Real! features a quartet composed of Land, Hawes, a fast-rising young bassist named Scott La Faro and drummer Frank Butler. Although this was a pick-up group, assembled only for the recording session, Butler, Land and Hawes had gigged with one another often enough to feel familiar with each other's styles. Moreover, the blowing-session format is one that held special appeal for Hawes and Land, both of whom favor straight-ahead swinging.

The album opens with 'Hip', a basic B flat blues of Hamp's that is given an interesting twist in the head, which consists of eleven-bar phrases. 'Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams', taken as a slow ballad, elicits tender yet soulful solos from both Hawes and Land. Everybody grooves on Little Benny Harris's bebop standard 'Crazeology'. Two pieces, 'Numbers Game' and 'For Real', are attributed jointly to Hawes and Land; they are based very loosely - on 'Has Anybody Seen My Gal' and 'Swanee River', respectively. The album is brought to a burning conclusion with a flying run-down of 'I Love You'. Throughout the album Scott La Faro exhibits the chops that would shortly thrust him into the front ranks of bassists, while Frank Butler provides his usual propulsive accompaniment on all tunes.

Unfortunately, this was Hampton Hawes's last album for quite some time. Shortly thereafter he was busted for a narcotics violation and spent several years removed from the scene. His playing was sorely missed by the Los Angeles musicians. Leonard Feather, in the liner notes for this album, recounts a conversation he had regarding Hampton Hawes with pianist Andre Previn. Previn told Feather, “Hamp has never been fully acknowledged for his influence. Half the people who are said to have been influenced by Horace Silver actually owe a lot to Hamp, who's more technical than Horace; that technique, combined with the feeling, has shaped the style of a lot of people.” [Notes to Contemporary 7589]

A similar argument might be made for Harold Land. At the time this album was recorded, Land was coming into his own as one of the finer tenor saxophonists in jazz, and certainly he was not - during this period, anyway - given his due. For the most part, this was directly related to his refusal to move from Los Angeles. New York City has long been recognized as the jazz capital of the world (dating at least from 1924, when Louis Armstrong moved east from Chicago to join Fletcher Henderson's band), and any serious musician who failed eventually to move there has been somewhat suspect in the eyes of both fellow musicians and the more influential critics. Moreover, Land just as steadfastly refused to involve himself in the Hollywood studio scene, which would have at least paid him handsomely. 'I never had any urge, despite the financial rewards, to be programmed to play anything and everything on any day at any hour,' he once told Leonard Feather. [“First Generation Still Generating,” Calendar Section, The Los Angeles Times, April 25, 1982, p. 61] Instead, Land devoted his energies totally to his music, and without fanfare slowly established himself as a major soloist. How well he succeeded will become apparent when we examine a series of albums he recorded around the turn of the decade.

In 1989, subsequent to the publication of Bob’s book, and thanks to the diligence of Ed Michel’s perusal of the Contemporary Records vault, a fifth album of the group’s music was released as Sonority [Contemporary CCD 7655].

Ed revels how his “creation” came about in the following insert notes to these recordings:

“I always feel like I’m being given a treat when I get to work on materials from the Contemporary vault (not only because one of the things I’d hoped for in my salad days was to grow up to turn out something like Les Koenig): but this batch of Curtis Counce previously‑unreleased takes strikes some sort at special nerve. They were all recorded around the time I was starting out in the record business (for Contemporary’s down‑the‑street rival Pacific Jazz, run by the estimable Richard Bock), and featured players I was hearing with great regularity at the time on the active and exciting L.A. scene. And "active" and "exciting" are appropriate words to describe things.

In a recent set of Art Pepper notes, Gary Giddins refers to 'the cool posturing of those improvising beach boys who tried to recreate California jazz as fun in the midnight sun…,’ which pretty well reflects what was, at the time West Coast Jazz was getting lots of press, the Official New York Party Line on matters west of either Philly or, in the musings of particularly open-minded writers, Chicago. It’s a little frightening to see this view coming around again as ‘the way it really was.’ Looking backward at art can certainly be an iffy business. There was certainly a great deal more going on along the Hollywood‑South Central‑East LA‑Beach Cities axes

(for the life of me, I can't recall anything at all happening in the San Fernando Valley, which might be just another regional blindness) than one would have expected after reading the (non-local) critics.

One of LA’s many joys was the music made by Curtis Counce and his associates. In what was, certainly, an often largely caucasian‑complected bandstand scene, Curtis's was a black face you could see with regularity in many contexts, It's my recollection that I first became aware of him during a Shorty Rogers‑ Shelly Manne stint at Zardi's, when he was featured on an ear‑opening "Sophisticated Lady." Harold Land was everywhere, and playing in a way that hardly fit any descriptions of an effete West Coast style. Jack Sheldon always seemed to be in the company of the lamentably‑undervalued alto saxophonist Joe Maini (you could catch them in the band at, if memory serves, Strip City, just off Pico Boulevard's Record Distributor's Row, around the corner on Western, where, more likely than not, Lenny Bruce was working as M.C.). And Carl Perkins. who really did play with his left hand cocked around so his thumb was aimed toward the bottom of the keyboard, ‘fingering’ bass notes with his elbow, was always working at some joint on Pico or somewhere south, more often than not with Frank Butler (who Miles Davis managed to find interesting enough to use on a few early Columbia sides).

Pianist‑composer Elmo Hope was in town from New York, and for some reason part of my job involved my spending a good deal of time driving him around to various record companies where he was selling his compositions (actually, I know for certain that he sold "So Nice" and "Origin" to both Pacific Jazz and Contemporary because I took him to both offices and watched negotiations go down, record business practices are learned under apprenticeship/ observation conditions. and I assumed everybody did business that way; I may have been right). And in addition to his splendid trumpet work and arranging in all sorts of contexts, Gerald Wilson was establishing his reputation as the leader of a remarkable, talent‑fostering band….

So it was a sweet surprise to find these cuts waiting in the can a bit more than 30 years after they'd been recorded, a reminder that there was a good deal more going an along the Pacific Rim than made the popular magazine covers. Or‑ more accurately than "surprise"‑ a reminder, and for some of us, lucky enough to have been mousing adolescently around the edge of the scene, no surprise at all.”

‑Ed Michel

In retrospect, we are fortunate that this music was recorded when it was as in 1963, just a few years after these splendid recordings were made, Curtis died of a heart attack while in an ambulance on its way to a hospital. He was thirty seven years old.

Visitors to the blog may have noticed that the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has a penchant for portraying videos along with the featured postings.

As intended, the sound tracks that accompany these videos serve as an audio example of the music/musician under discussion.

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The Imperfect Art - Ted Gioia

""If improvisation is the essential element in Jazz, it may also be the most problematic. Perhaps the only way of appreciating its peculiarity is by imagining what 20th century art would be like if other art forms placed an equal emphasis on improvisation. Imagine T.S. Eliot giving nightly poetry readings at which, rather than reciting set pieces, he was expected to create impromptu poems - different ones each night, sometimes recited at a fast clip; imagine giving Hitchcock or Fellini a handheld camera and asking them to film something - anything - at that very moment, without the benefits of script, crew, editing, or scoring; imagine Matisse or Dali giving nightly exhibitions of their skills - exhibitions at which paying audiences would watch them fill up canvas after canvas with paint, often with only two or three minutes devoted to each 'masterpiece.' These examples strike us as odd, perhaps even ridiculous, yet conditions such as these are precisely those under which the Jazz musician operates night after night, years after year."

Jazz And African Rhythms - Grover Sales

"The rhythm of jazz sets it apart from other music, since rhythm has always been the most potent and body-based in the entire spectrum of sound. Gunther Schuller in his Early Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968) claims that African rhythm is, by far, the most complicated form of music that exists. Only in the last half of this century, and only with the aid of sophisticated electronic devices, has the non-African mind been able to measure and comprehend the complexity of African rhythm. We have learned that master African drummers can sense and create differences of 1/12 second while engaged in ensemble playing that produces seven to eleven different musical lines. What is remarkable is not the number of lines, but, as Schuller notes: 'in the case of a seven-part ensemble, six of the seven lines may operate in different metric patterns... staggered in such a way that the downbeats of these patterns rarely coincide.'" Grover Sales, Jazz: America’s Classical Music [New York, DaCapo, 1992, P. 27]

The Drummer

"The drummer is generally the member of the band most underrated by the audience and least discussed in the jazz historical and analytical literature. Since drummers don't play harmonies and melodies in the same way as other instrumentalists, audience members and even some musicians have a tendency to deprecate the musical knowledge of the person sitting behind the drum set. Many mistakenly assume that the drummer just plays rhythm and therefore doesn't participate in the melodic and harmonic flow of the music. From an interactive perspective, however, the drum set represents a microcosm of all the interactive processes we have discussed, including harmonic and melodic sensitivity." [p. 51] [Click on image to see a YouTube on The Art of Jazz Drumming Part 2 featuring Chris Potter's quintet with Lewis Nash on drums. Lewis begins his solo at 5:57 minutes]

The Drums in Jazz

"The basis of Jazz has always been rhythmic. The development of jazz and its innovation from the early days of ragtime at the turn of the century to the many highly sophisticated, exciting and challenging styles of jazz that can be heard today, has always derived from that basis. In the European concert tradition, the drums serve as a noise-making device, aiming to create additional intensity or dramatic fortissimo effects. They do not effect the continuity of the music and could even be left out without creating the breakdown of a Beethoven or a Tchaikovsky symphony. In Jazz the drumbeat is the ordering principal which creates the space within which the music happens. The beat of a swinging drummer forms the basis of the musical continuity of a jazz performance." - Introduction to the Properbox set - THE ENGINE ROOM: A History of Jazz Drumming from Storyville to 52nd Street."

Jazz Improvisation

A Re-Posting of Chapter 3, Robert Gordon, Jazz West Coast

On the few occasions that I met Shorty Rogers over the years, I found him to be an extremely modest and very humble man. Most of these meetings took place in the 1950s and early 1960s, mainly because Larry Bunker - Shorty’s primary drummer of choice during those years - was also my mentor and friend.

However, aside from the times I met Shorty while in Larry’s company, I was also very energetically involved in my own recording activities [commercials, jingles, some movie and TV sound tracking] and these often brought me to the RCA studios on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, CA in the 1950s where Shorty was entrenched as a Jazz artists and repertoire executive for the RCA Victor label.

On occasion, Shorty allowed me to sit in the booth with he, the recording engineer and other principals should I be fortunate enough to be at the RCA studios on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood while an album he was supervising or was involved with in some way was, to use a phrase that he was fond of at the time - “under construction.”

Also around this time, I was gigging at a few Jazz clubs in the San Fernando Valley [north and west of Los Angeles]. Shorty and I both lived in Van Nuys, a suburb located in the central part of that valley. Then, as now, many musicians lived in “The Valley” because of its ease of access to the movie, TV and recording studies in various parts of Los Angeles and because of its affordable housing and laid-back lifestyle.

Later in the decade of the 1960s, for both personal and professional reasons, I turned away from Jazz for a while and it would appear that Shorty did, too.

The Jazz West Coast “Marching and Chowder Society” of those earlier, heydays was a loosely formed aggregation at best, but for those of us who were aware of it as a distinctive style of Jazz, we all knew that Shorty had a huge involvement in making it unique.

In order to understand many of the reasons why that was so, I can think of no better explanations of Shorty’s profound contributions to this style than the ones to be found in the following, third chapter of Bob Gordon’s book on the subject of Jazz on the West Coast during the decade of the 1950s.

SHORTY ROGERS AND HIS GIANTS

If the recording ban of 1948 did not mark the demise of bebop, it did herald the birth of a new phase of modern jazz. In September of that year a nine-piece band led by Miles Davis played a short engagement at New York's popular jazz club, the Royal Roost. The group differed markedly from the typical bebop combos of the day in both size and instrumentation. Six horns (trumpet, trombone, French horn, tuba, alto and baritone saxophones) gave the band's arrangers a broad palette of orchestral colors to work with. And basically the Miles Davis nonet was an arranger's band. It had been formed as a vehicle for the ideas of a group of young musicians who gravitated around Miles and Gil Evans, the arranger for the Claude Thornhill orchestra. Although the band was not to prove a popular success (it would make only two brief public appearances), the Miles Davis nonet would exert an influence over the subsequent development of jazz entirely out of proportion to its brief moment on stage.

In 1947 Gil Evans had caused quite a stir with a series of adventurous arrangements for Claude Thornhill - notably 'Robbin's Nest', 'Anthropology', 'Yardbird Suite' and 'Donna Lee'. These in turn led to a fruitful and longstanding friendship between Evans and Miles Davis. The two met when Evans approached Davis to obtain recording clearance for the latter's tune 'Donna Lee'. Miles, who had been favorably impressed with Evans's writing, gladly gave his consent in return for instructions in arranging. Thus the trumpeter joined a group of musicians who met often at the New York apartment of Evans to discuss theory and share discoveries. Arranger/baritone

saxophonist Gerry Mulligan and trumpeter John Carisi of the Thornhill band were regular participants, as were pianist John Lewis and composers George Russell and John Benson Brooks. When the Thornhill band broke up temporarily in 1948 (largely due to the recording ban), these informal seminars took on an added importance. Miles, who was working fairly steadily with various pick-up groups at the Royal Roost, suggested forming a rehearsal band as an outlet for the group's creative energies. The instrumentation that was finally settled upon came about, Evans would later recall, because nine pieces represented 'the smallest number of instruments that could get the sound and still express all the harmonies the Thornhill band used. Miles wanted to play his idiom with that kind of sound." [Joe Goldberg, Jazz Masters of the Fifties, New York: Macmillan, 1965, p. 69]

Once rehearsals were under way, Miles began looking for a job for the band. He succeeded in talking the owners of the Roost into booking the nonet as relief band for the Count Basie unit during a two-week stand in September. The engagement was hardly a smashing success, however. Recently-issued recordings, taken from air checks of a broadcast from the Roost, reveal a great deal of crowd noise and general inattention during the band's performance. More to the point, Miles wasn't offered a return engagement. But if the bulk of the crowd missed the significance of the band's offerings, a few astute listeners were quick to grasp the innovative character of the music. Among these was Pete Rugolo, Stan Kenton's chief arranger. Kenton recorded for Capitol records, and Capitol executives had already decided to jump heavily into modern jazz as soon as the ban was lifted. Rugolo had the ears of the Capitol brass and managed to land Miles a contract with the label. The resulting twelve recorded performances proved to be the true legacy of the Miles Davis nonet.

There were three Capitol sessions in all; two were held shortly after the ban was lifted in January and April of 1949, with a third following almost a year later in March 1950. Each produced four tunes. The bulk of the arrangements were penned by Gerry Mulligan ('Godchild', 'Jeru', 'Venus de Milo', 'Rocker', 'Darn that Dream') and John Lewis ('Move', 'Budo', 'Rouge'). Gil Evans contributed two charts ('Boplicity' and 'Moondreams') and Miles and John Carisi a chart apiece ('Deception' and '

Israel

'). Initial sales of the recordings must have disappointed Capitol officials, as witness the lengthy gap between the second and third sessions, but the sides quickly caught on among fellow musicians, and critical reaction was quite favourable: French writer Andrd Hodeir examined the performances at length in his book Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence. The Miles Davis sides remain milestones in the jazz discography.

Years later, when Capitol issued these performances on a long-playing record, the album was titled Birth of the Cool, and so the collective performances have been referred to ever since. If some question remains whether the Miles Davis sides or the contemporaneous recordings of Lennie Tristano were the true progenitors of cool jazz, there is no doubt that the Davis recordings heavily influenced the musicians who came to be associated with that school. The differences that set the nonet apart from the mainline bop combos of the day went far beyond the obvious points of size and instrumentation. The focus of any bebop performance was the individual solos, and any theme was given cursory treatment - its sole function was to set up a harmonic framework for the soloists to build upon during their flights. Nor was a theme indispensable: many of Charlie Parker's most memorable records feature Parker soloing over an agreed upon chord sequence, start to finish.

The focus of the Davis nonet performances, on the other hand, was the arrangement - and not just because the three-minute time limit of the era's 78 rpm records tended to emphasize arrangements at the expense of soloists. Even in the band's five performances at the Roost, where soloists were allowed room to stretch out, the arrangements took precedence. And on the best of the studio recordings, the soloists are tightly integrated into the total performance. In the Gil Evans arrangement of 'Boplicity', for example, Miles alternates between lead voice and soloist in such a seamless manner that one must listen carefully to determine just which role he is filling at any given moment.

Another batch of recordings, cut at the same time (and coincidentally also for the Capitol label), may have had more to do with the development of cool jazz than the Miles Davis sides. These were the recordings of pianist Lennie Tristano and a coterie of followers that included saxophonists Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh and guitarist Billy Bauer. Tristano, has been called a 'conservative revolutionary', and the oxymoron is quite apt. Although he came to prominence at the height of the bebop era, Tristano steadfastly followed his own path, influenced at least as much by his studies in European concert forms as by the jazz tradition as reinterpreted by Gillespie and Parker. When playing one of their infrequent New York nightclub dates, Tristano and his men were likely to open with a two-part Bach invention, a practice that underscored the pianist's focus on linear invention.

Tristano eschewed easy excitement and his music was deliberately unemotional - some would say to the point of being cold-blooded. His rhythm sections were reduced to the role of timekeepers; the drummer was expected to play an even pulse on brushes, and neither he nor the bassist was allowed to add rhythmic accents. Thus the listener was forced to concentrate on the melodic or contrapuntal lines of the soloists. It was a demanding music which tended to exasperate casual listeners and club owners alike. 'People have to listen,' Lennie once explained. 'That bothers them. They only want music they can feel like the warmth in a heated room.' [Quoted in Martin Shouten’s notes to Capitol M-11060] Still, for a listener willing to make the effort, it was a music which paid intellectual dividends.

The series of performances Tristano and his men recorded for Capitol in the spring of 1949 are outstanding examples of his style. 'Wow', 'Crosscurrent', 'Marionette' and 'Sax of a Kind' offer technical difficulties such as constantly shifting meters and keys that the soloists thread with ease. But perhaps the most fascinating performances came almost as afterthoughts at the end of one of the sessions. When they had finished recording the more conventional tunes, Tristano asked that the tapes be left running, and the musicians proceeded to record two impromptu group improvisations. There were no themes, no given key signatures or tempi, no guidelines whatever; the musicians simply began improvising, blending their lines as best they could into the collective group effort. (The engineers reportedly threw their hands up in horror and left the control booth, but the tapes were left running.) These performances were later released albeit reluctantly on the part of the Capitol brass - under the titles 'Intuition' and 'Digression', but while they enjoyed a certain in-group reputation, they had no immediate influence upon developments of the day. They would later be recognized, however, as forerunners of the free jazz of the 1960s.

The two 'free' performances aside, the influence of the other Tristano recordings and of the Miles Davis sides was pervasive. It would seem a remarkable coincidence that two unrelated groups of musicians (that Lee Konitz appeared in both groups was happenstance), working independently, would record the definitive statements of a new style of jazz almost simultaneously. Actually, it's now apparent that the cool approach to jazz was one of those ideas 'in the air' as the forties drew to a close. Other manifestations of the style could be found in a number of widely scattered sources. A youngster named Stan Getz vaulted to prominence in 1948 with an exquisite solo on Woody Herman's recording of 'Early Autumn', and set a standard for a legion of similarly-minded, Lester Young-inspired tenor saxophonists. Tadd Dameron's composition 'Lady Bird', recorded the same year, emphasized flowing, legato lines - as opposed to the jagged leaps and twists of a typical bebop melody - and also featured the Prez-inspired tenors of Allen Eager and Wardell Gray. And a host of young arrangers attempted, with varying degrees of success, to apply their knowledge of twentieth-century classical music theory to their jazz writing. The title of George Russell's 'A Bird in Igor's Yard', the best of these syntheses, clearly delineates the composer's intentions. Not that cool jazz immediately shouldered bebop aside; these developments seemed at the time merely advances in the parent style. Indeed, most of the records we've been discussing would undoubtedly have been thought of as bebop at the time they were released. As so often happens, it's only in retrospect that we can discern that a corner had been turned.

With the advantage of hindsight, we can also see why certain traits of cool jazz would appeal to a group of white musicians who would make their home in the Los Angeles area the following decade. Many were casualties of the break-up of one or another of the big bands; almost all were alumni of those bands. They came lured by the congenial climate and by the possibility of landing a lucrative job in the movie and recording studios. These musicians had, for the most part, received more formal musical training than had their black counterparts, and it's not surprising that the theoretical and disciplined approach to jazz of the Miles Davis and Lennie Tristano groups would appeal to them. When they in turn began recording, their performances would reflect a similar approach. Thus grew the offspring of the cool idiom that came to be called West Coast jazz.

Which brings us to Shorty Rogers.

If any one musician was identified in the public's mind with the term West Coast jazz it was certainly Shorty Rogers, and this fact more than amply illustrates the many paradoxes that stem from the use of such labels. Rogers - whose given name was Milton Michael Rajonsky - was born in Lee, Massachusetts on 14 April 1924, and was raised in New York City, where he attended the High School of Music and Arts, of 'Fame' fame. His first professional job came at the age of eighteen, when he joined Will Bradley's band. Six months later he moved on to the Red Norvo sextet, staying with Norvo until called by the draft in 1943. While billeted with the Army Port of Embarkation band at Newport News, Virginia, Rogers first tried his hand at arranging: 'simple things', he remembers, 'like a sustained whole-note background with somebody else playing the melody'.[Robert Gordon personal interview with Shorty Rogers, January 20, 1983; all further unreferenced quotations by Shorty Rogers are from this interview]. He also became a close friend of bassist Arnold Fishkin, who had traveled to California with Les Brown and who spoke glowingly of life out on the Coast.

Shortly after he was mustered out in 1945, Shorty joined the high-powered trumpet section of Woody Herman's First Herd. He began to attract attention the following year with his playing and writing for Woody's band-within-a-band, the Woodchoppers, on numbers like 'Fan It' and 'Nero's Conception'. He also added a big-band chart, 'Back Talk', to the Herman book. In the summer of 1946 Herman and his crew headed for Hollywood for an extended stay, and when the band returned to New York in the autumn Rogers and his wife Michele (Red Norvo's sister) chose to stay behind. Shorty played briefly with Charlie Barnet and then hired on with Butch Stone's band, which featured such players as Stan Getz, Herbie Steward, Arnold Fishkin and drummer Don Lamond. The move to California became permanent around this time when Michele returned from a mysterious shopping-trip one day and announced that she had placed a down payment on a house. The Butch Stone job was by no means steady, and for a while Fishkin and fellow bassist Joe Mondragon had to move in with Shorty and Michele to help defray expenses.

In the autumn of 1947 Shorty rejoined Woody Herman in the latter's Second Herd, the famed 'Four Brothers' band. Stan Getz and Herbie Steward, in addition to their gig with Butch Stone, had been playing a job at Pontrelli's (a Spanish-style ballroom in LA) in a unique band that featured four tenors - Getz, Steward, Zoot Sims and Jimmy Giuffre - using charts by Giuffre and Gene Roland. Herman dropped by one night, was impressed by the sound, and hired the four en masse for his new Herd. He also hired Rogers, Fishkin and Lamond, effectively wiping out the Butch Stone band. Giuffre then penned an arrangement featuring three tenors (Getz, Steward, Sims) and the baritone sax of Serge Chaloff, using the voicings he and Gene Roland had worked out for the four tenors. The chart, entitled 'Four Brothers', made Giuffre's reputation and supplied a sound and a tag for this edition of the Herman band. Shorty also came into his own with a series of exciting charts for this band: 'Keen and Peachy' (a collaboration with Ralph Burns), 'I've Got News for You', 'That's Right', 'Lemon Drop', 'Keeper of the Flame' and 'More Moon'. For a break from Woody's vocal on 'I've Got News', Rogers scored a portion of Charlie Parker's solo from the record 'Dark Shadows' for the sax section, thus anticipating the unit called Supersax by some twenty years. When Shorty finally left Herman in December of 1948, it was to join the 'Innovations in Modern Music' orchestra that Stan Kenton was then forming.

By the time Shorty Rogers joined Kenton, his arranging style had fully matured. It was, however, a style somewhat at odds with Kenton's. Whatever one thinks of Stan Kenton - and there seems to be precious little middle ground between his ardent fans and vehement detractors - he was always recognized as a man absolutely determined to go his own way. A largely self-taught pianist and arranger, Kenton had formed his first big band in 1940, writing the bulk of the band's library himself. The band hit it big with the youthful crowds at the Rendezvous ballroom in Balboa, a beach resort some forty miles south of LA, the following year. Kenton struggled to keep the band together through the war years, and by 1946 his was one of the most popular bands in

America

. Although by this time Kenton had hired other arrangers, notably Pete Rugolo and Gene Roland, he still had definite ideas about the band's musical direction. In a phrase, that would be 'Bigger is Better'. By 1948 the band's line-up included five trumpets, five trombones and five saxes. The Innovations orchestra would take the next inevitable step and add a string section. At full strength, the Innovations unit would number forty players.

Kenton was a bit hesitant about hiring Shorty, feeling that the trumpeter's name was identified too closely in the public's mind with Woody Herman, but did so anyway at the insistence of his lead trumpeter, Buddy Childers. It's possible that Shorty had reservations of his own. It was well known in jazz circles that Kenton's was not a hard-swinging band. Kenton himself simply wasn't that interested in swinging - his focus lay elsewhere - and left such matters in the hands of leaders like Herman and Basie. Shorty set out to prove that Kenton's band could swing, given the proper arrangements. Less than a month after he had joined Kenton, the band - sans strings - recorded Shorty's 'Jolly Rogers', the first in a series of infectious swinging charts that would include 'Round Robin', 'Sambo', and the Latin-tinged 'Viva Prado'. In the meantime, Shorty was gaining on-the-job experience writing for instruments like French horn, tuba and strings; experience that would prove invaluable when he would later come to write scores for movie soundtracks. At this time Shorty also forged friendships with musicians who would form the nucleus of the West Coast school: Milt Bernhart, Bud Shank, Bob Cooper, Art Pepper and Shelly Manne.

Art Pepper's case was special. Art, a native Angeleno, was a white youngster who had learned to play alto by sitting in with the black bands in Central Avenue clubs. He was a natural jazzman whose earthy playing impressed any musician who heard him. The affinity between Shorty's writing and Art's playing quickly became apparent. Kenton had wanted a series of scores featuring various stars and facets of the Innovations orchestra, and Shorty responded with several charts, the best of which was simply titled 'Art Pepper'. As recorded in May 1950, it showed both Shorty's quick mastery of writing for the expanded orchestra and Art's ability quickly to set a mood and at the same time be able to swing like hell on the up-tempo sections. Time and again over the years, Shorty's writing would stir Art Pepper to some of his greatest improvisations.

The first Innovations tour ran until June 1950, when Kenton disbanded for a six-month rest. (There were a couple of recording sessions later in the year.) The second Innovations concert tour was scheduled for early 1951, but by this time Shorty decided he'd had enough of the road. He continued to write and occasionally play for Kenton, but wanted no part of touring. It was time to settle and put down roots. For a time it was the old story of casuals and one-nighters, the usual scuffle to survive. Then, late in 1951, two breaks came his way and Shorty's decision to settle in Hollywood began to pay dividends.

The first break came in October. Gene Norman, an independent record producer and entrepreneur, called Shorty with plans for a record session featuring some Los Angeles musicians. Would Shorty be interested? Shorty agreed and immediately began working on scores and rounding up sidemen. Most of the musicians had been working with Shorty in the Kenton band. Art Pepper and Jimmy Giuffre, along with bassist Don Bagley and Shelly Manne, came directly from Kenton, as did John

Graas and Gene Englund, the French horn and tuba players of the Innovations orchestra. Shorty had enjoyed writing for the latter two instruments, and wanted to try for a sound reminiscent of the Miles Davis Birth of the Cool band. The final musician called was Hampton Hawes, the youthful veteran of Charlie Parker's band and the Central Avenue clubs. Hamp's presence ensured that the rhythm section would swing especially hard.

The session was held on 8 October 1951, and the performances turned out to be gems of modem jazz small-band writing and playing. The first tune recorded set the mood - a sprightly blues called 'Popo' that was destined to become Shorty's theme. The tune itself is only a simple blues riff, with a four-bar intro for the soloists, but the melody is the infectious kind that is hard to put aside, once heard. Pepper, Giuffre, Rogers and Hawes all contribute well-constructed solos. Two other performances from the session are especially noteworthy. The first is Art Pepper's soulful rendering of 'Over the Rainbow'. The melody itself is never overtly stated; Pepper simply soars over the varied phrasings of the other horns, which sketch the ballad's harmonic framework. The other classic performance, a Rogers original called 'Sam and the Lady', features an ongoing conversation between Shorty and Art throughout. Of the remaining three tunes, Shorty wrote two - 'Didi' and 'Apropos' - and Jimmy Giuffre contributed another in his quartet series: 'Four Mothers'. The session was very loose, and the musicians can be heard shouting encouragement to one another as if in a nightclub. Shorty says that this was not affected; the musicians simply felt especially exuberant at the way the proceedings were going.

Comparisons between these recordings (released in a Capitol album entitled Modern Sounds) and the Birth of the Cool recordings are inevitable, if only because both sessions featured intermediate-sized bands using a French horn and tuba. But the intentions of the musicians involved were really quite dissimilar. The Miles Davis nonet was formed primarily to allow its arrangers to experiment with new concepts; the Rogers band was formed simply to produce some records. In the Davis band the arrangements were paramount; Shorty's and Giuffre's charts were meant to set off the soloists. Finally, the Rogers recording session was a one-shot affair, although it would lead to many other opportunities, as we shall see. The Shorty Rogers recordings have been disparaged - by those who dislike the style - as the forerunners of West Coast jazz. While this is no doubt true, it's also true that they avoid the pitfalls (such as over-arranging, bland solos and lifeless rhythm sections) that would come to plague some later examples of the style. Certainly they were far from slavish copies of the Miles Davis recordings.

The records were not immediately released, but shortly after the session a second break came Shorty's way. In December he got a call from Howard Rumsey, who was leading a band at the Lighthouse Cafe, a waterfront bar in the nearby community of Hermosa Beach. Rumsey, despite a cool demeanor that resembles that of a New York hipster, is a native Californian, born in the desert community of Brawley on 7 November 1917. After first studying both piano and drums, he took up bass while attending Los Angeles City College. One of his first professional jobs was with Vido Musso's band, where he met a young pianist named Stan Kenton. Rumsey was a charter member of the original Kenton band, which he left in 1943. He spent some time with the bands of Freddie Slack and Charlie Barnet, but declined all opportunities to go back on the road. Finally, between jobs in the post-war years, he found himself in the town of Hermosa Beach, which he remembered as having had a thriving nightlife during the boom years of the war. The town was now dead, but one club with a Polynesian decor at least had a bandstand. It was called the Lighthouse. Rumsey approached the owner, John Levine, and suggested some live music:

I asked him, 'How about putting on a Sunday jam session?' 'Kid, are you gonna try to tell me what to do with this place? Everybody else has.' I talked some more. Finally he said, 'OK, let's try it out.'

The next Sunday I put together a fine combo, opened the front doors - there was no PA system, but we kept the music loud enough to roar out into the street - and within an hour Levine had more people in the room than he'd seen in a month. That was Sunday afternoon, 29 May 1949.' [Quoted by Leonard Feather, ‘Rumsey’s Thirty Years with All That Jazz,’ Los Angeles Times, Calendar Section, May 27, 1979, p.3]

So began the jazz policy that would turn the Lighthouse into a name known throughout the world. The musicians for that historic first gig, by the way, were Don Dennis, trumpet, Dick Swink, tenor, Arnold Kopitch, piano, Bobby White, drums and of course Rumsey on bass.

During the next couple of years Levine and Rumsey began to expand musical operations. At first there was live music only at the weekend; Tuesdays through to Thursdays Rumsey played records for the patrons, 'a DJ without a radio'. he remembers. But gradually the live music expanded to six nights a week. The band consisted of whoever was available on a given night, but the caliber of the musicians steadily grew: Teddy Edwards, Sonny Criss and Hampton Hawes were soon regulars, and Wardell Gray a frequent visitor. Finally in 1951 Rumsey decided to go with a permanent group, and the Lighthouse All-Stars were born. The first 'official' Lighthouse band consisted of Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre, pianist Frank Patchen, Rumsey and Shelly Manne. Other musicians (Teddy, Hamp, Bob Cooper) were added at the weekend or on special occasions.

One of the famous - the musicians say infamous - Lighthouse traditions began around this time: the grueling Sunday marathon sessions, which lasted from two in the afternoon until two the following morning. Musicians remember those sessions with a mixture of fond memories and awe. 'You look back, and the physical accomplishment - aside from the creative accomplishment - is amazing,' says Shorty. 'All those hours!' Some aspects could be quite amusing. 'We'd start at two,' Shorty recalls, 'and I'd look out and there'd be people sitting in bathing-suits, listening to the music. And then, just as I'd be about ready to collapse at two in the morning, I'd look again and they were still there - two in the morning in their bathing-suits!' Yet despite the physically demanding aspects of the job, it was a steady gig, and Shorty remembers those days with affection. 'Just a wonderful time, a family feeling. A lot of personal friendships and relationships were started then. It was just great.'

Two recordings done 'live' during that period serve as a permanent reminder of the ambience that was a Lighthouse concert in the early fifties. The first, recently issued on the Xanadu label, finds Art Pepper sitting in for Giuffre with the basic quintet of 1951. It's hard to remember, listening to the exuberant playing on the record, that these musicians were often denigrated as founders of the West Coast school. Shorty and Art both had an affinity for bop standards, and they wail their way through tunes like 'Scrapple from the Apple', 'Tin Tin Deo', 'Lullaby in Rhythm', and a blistering 'Cherokee'. As usual, Pepper shines on the ballads, especially 'Body and Soul' and 'Over the Rainbow'. There are also happy romps through 'Robbin's Nest', 'Jive at Five' and of course 'Popo'. The warmth of all the musicians comes through even though the concert was taped on a home recorder.

The other recording was a more professional undertaking by the fledgling Contemporary record company. Recorded over a year later in February 1953, it was an attempt to capture a typical Sunday marathon session 'live'. Rogers, Giuffre, Patchen, Rumsey and Manne are augmented by guests Bob Cooper, Milt Bernhart, Hampton Hawes and Stan Kenton's amazing young lead trumpet, Maynard Ferguson, although not all of these musicians play on every number. One of the numbers recorded that day, a Teddy Edwards original titled 'Sunset Eyes', would become something of a hit for the All-Stars. 'Bernie's Tune' was an almost obligatory selection, having become famous through a recent recording by the fledgling Gerry Mulligan Quartet. Hampton Hawes, subbing for Frank Patchen on several tunes, turned in an especially memorable performance on 'All the Things You are' in a quartet format with Shorty as the sole horn. Shorty contributed several tunes for the proceedings - 'Morgan Davis', 'Creme de Menthe' and 'Comin' Thru the Rye Bread'. There were also performances of Jimmy Giuffre's 'Four Others' and the traditional 'La Soncailli'. The recordings were eventually issued on Contemporary's first long-playing album, Sunday jazz ala Lighthouse.

The first records to be released under the Lighthouse All-Stars banner, however, were studio performances cut the previous summer. Shorty, Milt Bernhart, Jimmy Giuffre, Bob Cooper, Frank Patchen, Rumsey and Shelly Manne recorded four tunes, two each by Rogers and Giuffre. The performances are quite varied. 'Swing Shift', Shorty's up-tempo swinger, is balanced by Giuffre's ballad 'Out of Somewhere'. 'Viva Zapata!' (the title was no doubt inspired by the Brando movie then playing) is out of Shorty's Latin bag. It features sparkling solos by Shorty and Frank Patchen, with a marvelous interlude by conga drummer Carlos Vidal and Shelly Manne. The remaining tune, 'Big Girl', is Jimmy Giuffre's take-off on a rhythm and blues number, complete with a honking solo by the composer. Although it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, the record seems to have made quite a few sales to the youth audience. These selections were initially released as 78 rpm singles on the Lighthouse label, and later reissued on a Contemporary LP.

The year 1952 indeed seems to have been a turning-point for the West Coast musicians. That summer Capitol records finally released the six tunes from the 'Popo' session of the previous October, and Gene Norman made sure they received plenty of airplay on his local jazz show. Later that fall, the Gerry Mulligan Quartet recording of 'Bernie's Tune' also became a hit. All of these recordings spread the word that new things were happening on the Coast.

In January 1953 Shorty got an even bigger break when he was asked to record for the RCA label. Jack Marshall, the producer who had midwifed the Modern Sounds session for Gene Norman, joined RCA and promptly invited Shorty to record. The line-up for this session remained much as it had for the earlier Capitol recordings. Milt Bernhart was added on trombone, and bassist Joe Mondragon replaced Don Bagley, but the remaining personnel (Art Pepper, Jimmy Giuffre, John Graas, Gene Englund, Hampton Hawes and Shelly Manne) were all hold-overs. The RCA session produced eight tunes, and several invite comparison with those of the earlier Capitol session. 'Morpo', Shorty's up-tempo blues fine, is reminiscent of 'Popo', although it doesn't have the infectious lilt of the original. 'Bunny', on the other hand, is a truly memorable ballad, and proved that Rogers could write thoughtful slow pieces as well as up-tempo swingers. Naturally enough, 'Bunny' serves as a showcase for Art Pepper, and recalls the altoist's success on the earlier 'Over the Rainbow'. 'I just loved Art's playing so much,' Shorty remembers. 'I thought, hey, I've got an album to do and Art Pepper's gonna be there, and what a waste not to feature him on a number.' Hampton Hawes is spotlighted on 'Diablo's Dance', a sprightly Rogers original. None of the other tunes is especially memorable. 'Pirouette' is a graceful ballad borrowed from a film score Shorty had been working on. 'Mambo del Crow' is the album's Latin number, and its relationship to the popular 'Viva Zapata!' is obvious. 'The Pesky Serpent' and 'Indian Club' are both Jimmy Giuffre originals, and while the former is a nice enough tune, the latter features a rather embarrassing tom-tom and minor-key melody line that echoes Hollywood's idea of American Indian music. Shelly Manne does supply a good, Latin-tinged original in 'Powder Puff .

All in all, the level of inspiration of both writers and soloists seems to have flagged somewhat from the earlier Capitol session. Perhaps the staid atmosphere of the Victor studios was intimidating; whatever the reason, the RCA album (titled simply Shorty Rogers and His Giants) did not reach the creative levels of the Capitol sides. But the association with RCA definitely had its advantages. The prestige of being recorded by a major label certainly helped open some doors, and the larger company's marketing strengths could obviously help record sales. Still, the thought processes of the RCA executives must have been perplexing to the jazz musicians. Soon after the original album had been recorded, RCA officials approached Jack Marshall with an idea.

'Hey, we have a title for an album, but we need someone to do it.'

'What's the title?' Jack asked.

'Cool and Crazy. Can Shorty do it?'

'Sure,' Marshall replied, and so an album was born.

The Cool and Crazy album was to be a big-band session, and Shorty remembers its gestation like this. 'I got a chance to do this album, and I wanted to do it with a big band. And although it's been done many times since ... at that time it either hadn't been done or had been done only a few times ... for a band that wasn't an established traveling band to go in and cut a big-band album. So I got a chance to do the gig, and the majority of players I wanted to use were in Kenton's band. So I called Stan and said I wanted to come over ... and I said, "I have a chance to do this album, and I want to use this guy and that guy," and about seventy or eighty per cent of them were in his band, and I told Stan I didn't want to be raiding his band, and I said, "Stan, how do you feel about it?"

"'Go for it," he said, "whatever I can do to help, you have my blessings." And it was just that kind of a wonderful attitude - a giving attitude - that he had that helped me, and made feel right about using all the guys.'

Actually, seventy or eighty per cent might be a little low. The personnel for the two sessions (26 March and 2 April 1953) were: Maynard Ferguson, Conrad Gozzo, John Howell, Tom Reeves and Rogers, trumpets; Milt Bernhart, Harry Betts and John Halliburton, trombones; John Graas, horn; Gene Englund, tuba; Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Bob Cooper and Jimmy Giuffre, saxes; Marty Paich, piano; Curtis Counce, bass; and Shelly Manne, drums. Only Gozzo, Paich and Counce were neither Kenton sidemen nor alumni.

The album turned out to be a great success, and indeed the original ten-inch LP version of Cool and Crazy is a prized collector's item, traded for astronomical sums on the secondhand market. Every performance is memorable. 'Coop de Graas' features, as might be expected, a running conversation between Bob Cooper and John Graas. The title of 'Infinity Promenade' also suggests its principal soloist, Maynard Ferguson. Maynard, a young man from Montreal,

Canada

, had wowed Kenton's audiences with his stratospheric flights. For this number Shorty had written an impressively high unison line for the trumpets, but Maynard thought he could improve upon it. 'Hey Shorts,' he called between takes. 'Would it be OK on the repeat if I did it an octave higher?' 'Be my guest!' Shorty replied. The results, as captured on record, can send chills down the spine of the most jaded listener.

'Short Stop' is another in a long line of swinging up-tempo blues lines from Shorty's pen., and features a melody line that clings resolutely to a single note while the harmonies move on below. 'Boar-Jibu' uses the Four Brothers sound of three tenors and a baritone. It is taken at a tempo just on the up side of medium and has solos by Art Pepper on tenor and Jimmy Giuffre on baritone. Milt Bernhart is featured on 'Tale of an African Lobster', a ballad that also shows Maynard and the trumpet section to advantage. Both 'Contours' and 'Chiquito Loco' are Latin-flavoured. Milt Bernhart once again solos on the former, while Shorty and Art Pepper share the spotlight on the latter. Finally there is the fascinating 'Sweetheart of Sigmund Freud' (marvelous title), wherein Art Pepper on, tenor leads a rumbly sax section with Shank, Cooper and Giuffre on baritones, a sort of inverted Four Brothers sound.

Seldom have big bands swung so hard or produced such a joyous sound. Some twenty years later Rogers was invited to tour

England

and play a series of concerts with a big band comprised of British musicians. He was to bring his own charts. The few arrangements his hosts specifically asked for were, sure enough, those recorded at the Cool and Crazy session.

The success of the Cool and Crazy LP led directly to another RCA big-band album, this one honoring the bandleader most admired by Shorty and his musicians, Count Basie. The album, Shorty Rogers Courts the Count, was quite on par with Cool and Crazy. It is by now a commonplace of jazz criticism that Shorty and many of the West Coast musicians were inspired more by Count Basie and Lester Young than by Charlie Parker; that is, they were essentially swing-era musicians rather than boppers.

And of course that's true. The white musicians of Shorty's generation had grown up in the big-band era and most had launched their careers in one of those bands. Many would have been content to have remained big-band sidemen had not the sharp decline of the bands in the post-war years made it impossible to do so. There was certainly no lack of competent and eager musicians from which to choose when it came time to gather a band for the new recording. The word quickly spread when Shorty began working on the arrangements, and when the time arrived, as Shorty said, 'Everybody was ready for the session.'

The instrumentation was strengthened somewhat for this session: an additional trombone and sax were added. Many of the same musicians returned, but there were some important new additions. Shorty's boyhood idol, Harry 'Sweets' Edison, was on hand for this go-round, and Zoot Sims (a native Angeleno) added his highly original solo voice to the band. Other newcomers included valve trombonist Bob Enevoldsen and altoist Herb Geller (who replaced Art Pepper). In addition to penning new arrangements of nine Basie classics, Shorty also contributed three originals in the Basie mode. None of the Basie charts slavishly follows the original, but all achieve the feeling and relaxed swing of the Basie orchestra. 'It's our tribute to Basie and that's the whole reason we did it,' Shorty would later explain. 'It expresses the way myself and all the guys feel about him.'

Typical of the Rogers treatments on the album is 'Swingin' the Blues'. The tune is taken at a much slower tempo than the original (there are more than enough flag-wavers on the album) and the saxes get into a relaxed groove that still manages to swing mightily. Their blending here is marvelous, and the texture can only be described as creamy. A tune-by-tune exposition of the numbers isn't necessary here; every jazz fan is (or ought to be) familiar with the Basie library. The tunes chosen are the cream of the crop: 'Jump for Me', 'Topsy', 'It's Sand, Man', 'Doggin' Around', 'H & J', 'Taps Miller' and 'Tickletoe'. Shorty's originals, very much in the same vein, manage to fit in well. 'Basie Eyes' is second cousin to 'A Smooth One'. 'Over and Out' is the obligatory flag-waver, an up-tempo blues. And 'Walk, Don't Run' spotlights Shorty in cup mute and Jimmy Giuffre's Prez-inspired sub-tone clarinet. But what an opportunity was missed when Sweets Edison was - for some unfathomable reason - not allowed any solo space. It is just this touch that keeps the album from being the perfect gem it might have been.

At this point we must leave Rogers and company for a while. In 1954, when the Basie album was recorded, Shorty Rogers and for that matter the Los Angeles jazz scene in general - was flying high; national and even international attention was focused on the music being produced in the Hollywood studios, and much of this attention was the result of Shorty's own labors. There was, however, one other major influence at work in the southland at the time, and to pick up that thread in the narrative we have to return to 1952, the year Gerry Mulligan arrived in Los Angeles.

Chapter 4, Robert Gordon, "Jazz West Coast"

Having recently run a four-part feature about Gerry Mulligan on JazzProfiles, which can be found in the blog’s archives beginning on August 27,2009 and continuing consecutively through September 16^th, the editorial staff is delighted to revisit one of Jazz’s greatest artists, this time through the chapter in Bob Gordon’s book devoted to one of the earliest periods in Mulligan’s career.

THE GERRY MULLIGAN QUARTET

In 1952 and 1953, as both began to attract national attention, the names of Shorty Rogers and Gerry Mulligan were often linked primarily because both were headquartered in southern California. Actually, the pair presented striking contrasts, both in their personalities and in appearance. Whereas Shorty was diminutive and stocky, with dark curly hair, Gerry Mulligan was tall and thin (just this side of emaciated at the time), with an unruly shock of red hair. Both men had a ready sense of humor, but Shorty's was the puckish sort of a schoolboy in a chemistry lab let's mix the green and yellow liquids and see what happens while Gerry's humor tended to be dry and, at times, acerbic. Both, however, were extroverted soloists, and they shared an impatience with those who would over-intellectualize the music. 'Jazz music is fun to me,' is the way Mulligan began the liner notes to one of his own albums. And Shorty's favorite explanation for the genesis of his musical experiments has always been: 'Why did I do it? Because I thought it would be fun.'

Gerry was born Gerald Joseph Mulligan on 6 April 1927 in the New York City borough of Queens. His father was an industrial engineer and the family was constantly on the move; at one time or another they lived in Marion, Ohio; Chicago; Kalamazoo; Detroit; and Reading, Pennsylvania. Gerry received a strict Irish-Catholic upbringing, and it may have been his rebellion from this that set him on the way to becoming a jazz musician. He would later remember the time in Marion when the idea first occurred to him.

I was on my way to school, when I saw the Red Nichols bus sitting in front of a hotel. I was in the second or third grade, and that was probably when I first wanted to become a band musician and go on the road. It was a small old Greyhound bus with a canopied observation platform, and on the bus was printed 'RED NICHOLS AND HIS FIVE PENNIES'. It all symbolized travel and adventure. I was never the same after that.' [Joe Goldberg, Jazz Masters of the Fifties, New York: Macmillan, 1965, p. 14]

Gerry received the usual childhood piano lessons and later was given instructions on clarinet and arranging by Sammy Correnti, a former dance-band musician. By the time his formal schooling ended at the age of seventeen the family had moved to Philadelphia, where Mulligan joined the society band of Tommy Tucker as arranger. Gerry hit the road with Tucker, but his arrangements proved to be a bit too adventurous for the conservative bandleader, and he soon returned to Philly. Here he landed a job as staff arranger for radio station WCAU, whose band was led by Elliot Lawrence. During this period Gerry made frequent trips to New York, where he was offered encouragement by none other than Charlie Parker. In 1946 Gerry moved permanently to the Apple, where he was hired by Gene Krupa. Krupa's recording of the Mulligan original 'Disc jockey jump' became a hit, and Gerry's reputation among fellow musicians began to grow. The following year Gerry landed a job as arranger for Claude Thornhill, which led to a friendship with Gil Evans and eventually to the Birth of the Cool recordings.

As has been pointed out, Mulligan penned five of the twelve Capitol sides: Jeru', 'Godchild', 'Venus de Milo', 'Rocker', and 'Darn that Dream'. Andre Hodeir, in his book jazz: Its Evolution and Essence, has painstakingly analyzed the scores of the best of the Miles Davis recordings and found the rhythmic complexities of two of Mulligan's scores especially fascinating:

The exposition of 'Godchild' drastically 'reconsiders' the traditional structure of this classical thirty-two-bar theme with bridge. The addition of first two beats and then four to the initial phrase makes the first period cover seventeen and a half bars instead of sixteen. The bridge, on the other hand, is half a bar shorter than customary ... Jeru' is still more revolutionary. It includes four choruses in all. The exposition begins in the traditional way with a double eight-bar phrase.The fact that the bridge has twelve bars would not be surprising in itself if five of them - from the fourth to the eighth - were not in 3/4 time. The reprise covers nine bars. Here, then, is an exposition with an uneven number of bars and beats. The same is true of the final re-exposition. [Andre Hodier, Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence [New York: DaCapo, 1975, p. 134].

With the artistic (if not financial) success of the Birth of the Cool recordings, Mulligan's reputation - at least among fellow musicians - was assured. As is so often the case though, this in-group reputation did not lead to an equivalent financial security. The next few years found Mulligan scuffling simply to get by. He continued to supply arrangements for Claude Thornhill, Elliot Lawrence and others ('Elevation' was something of a hit for Lawrence in 1949) and worked such gigs as he could find. As we have seen, the years around the turn of the decade were hard on working musicians. The frustrations inevitably took their toll, and some time during this period Gerry became ensnared in a drug habit, the occupational disease that wrecked the lives and careers of so many musicians in those years. Although he eventually was able to break free (several years later in California) the habit simply made Gerry's situation worse. There is little to show for the period except for a recording session for Prestige in the summer of 1951. Gerry's arrangements for a ten-piece band for this session show the influence of the Miles Davis nonet and at the same time anticipate the writing he would do for a similar group in Los Angeles.

Shortly following the Prestige session Gerry left New York for California, hitch-hiking on an odyssey that would take almost a year, with stop-overs in Reading and Albuquerque. Once in Los Angeles Mulligan quickly sold some arrangements to Stan Kenton ('Youngblood' and 'Swing House') and played some weekend marathon sessions at the Lighthouse. His fortunes began to turn when he landed a job on the Monday-night session at The Haig, a small club (actually, a converted bungalow) on Wilshire Boulevard. These sessions featured a rotating group of musicians that included altoist Sonny Criss, trumpeter Ernie Royal, pianists Jimmy Rowles or Fred Otis, bassists Joe Comfort, Red Mitchell or Joe Mondragon, drummers Alvin Stoller or Chico Hamilton, and assorted visitors. One of the musicians who chanced to sit in that summer of 1952 was a young trumpeter named Chet Baker, who had gained local fame when he was chosen by Charlie Parker for a quintet Parker was fronting during a visit to the Coast.

Chesney Baker was born in Yale, Oklahoma on 23 December 1929, and moved to California in 1940. He began instrumental training at Glendale Junior High, first on trombone, then on trumpet. He remembers that he had some- difficulties because: 'I would rely too much on my ear instead of the notes.’ [Quoted by Bob Rosenblum in notes to Artist House 9411] Nevertheless Chet progressed rapidly on his instrument. In 1946 he was drafted and wound up playing with the 298th Army Band in Berlin. Discharged in 1948, he found the Los Angeles scene a little slow and re-enlisted to play with the Presidio Army Band in San Francisco, where he spent most of his off-duty hours jamming in local clubs. He was discharged once again in 1952 and began playing local jobs around LA. The turning-point came when he heard that Charlie Parker was auditioning for a trumpet player. 'When I got to his club every trumpet player in LA was there. I got up and played two tunes and he stopped the audition and hired me on the spot. I was twenty-two at the time. [Ibid] The job with Parker lasted several months before the altoist returned to New York. 'When Bird went east,' Chet remembers, 'he told Dizzy and Miles, "You better look out, there's a little white cat out on the West Coast who's gonna eat you up."' [Ibid]

Shortly after that Chet was introduced to Gerry Mulligan at one of the concerts at The Haig. It wouldn't be correct to say that the two found instant rapport with one another, but over a period of time - playing together weekly at the Monday-night sessions - Mulligan and Baker began to realize that each had an affinity for the other's playing. The Gerry Mulligan Quartet was not formed instantly; it evolved over a period of months. Richard Bock, who served as publicity man for The Haig and who had been an A & R man and producer for Discovery records, thought that Mulligan ought to be recorded and suggested a few trial tapings. On 10 June 1952, Bock and a few of The Haig's regulars met at the Laurel Canyon bungalow of Phil Turetsky, a recording engineer. It was to have been a quartet date, but Jimmy Rowles missed the session for some reason. A trio comprised of Mulligan, Red Mitchell and Chico Hamilton nevertheless taped three selections on Turetsky's Ampex recorder. In July they tried again. This time Chet Baker was invited, but although Rowles made this session, Chico Hamilton was absent. The drumless quartet (with Joe Mondragon on bass) taped two more pieces.

In the meantime, Mulligan and his crew were working on a new concept during the regular concerts at The Haig. Bock recounts what happened next:

In mid-July of 1952, The Haig booked the Red Norvo Trio for an engagement of indefinite length. The trio at that time consisted of Red Mitchell on bass and Tal Farlow on guitar. Inasmuch as the trio did not use a piano, and since Gerry had insisted that he would rather play the Monday-night sessions without the piano, Haig owner John Bennett decided to put the piano in storage. It was this decision that brought Chet Baker, Chico Hamilton and a young bass player from Long Beach by the name of Bob Whitlock to form the first Mulligan pianoless quartet.' [Notes to Pacific Jazz PJ-8]

Gerry and the others experimented with the format before the live audiences until things began to gel. In the meantime, Bock was so impressed with the group sound that he borrowed some money and set up a new record company specially to record the quartet. Thus was born the Pacific jazz label. Bock continues the story:

After five Monday nights, Gerry felt the quartet was ready to record. On the afternoon of 16 August 1952, at the Turetsky bungalow again, we recorded the memorable 'Bernie's Tune' and 'Lullaby of the Leaves'. That record, released as a single in the autumn of 1952, put Pacific Jazz in business. The quartet rapidly became a West Coast sensation. [Ibid]

It did indeed, and not only in Los Angeles. Less than a month after the initial Pacific Jazz session the quartet traveled up the coast for an engagement at the Blackhawk in San Francisco. Because of prior commitments, Bob Whitlock couldn't make the trip, and Carson Smith filled in on bass. In San Francisco the group was invited to record (on the recommendation of Dave Brubeck) for the independent Fantasy label. The four tunes recorded at that session helped to spread the quartet's fame. There were two Mulligan originals, 'Line for Lyons' (Jimmy Lyons, who would later produce the Monterey jazz Festivals) and 'Bark for Barksdale', and two standards, the Latin-flavoured 'Carioca' and the classic Rodgers and Hart ballad 'My Funny Valentine'. This last tune became an even bigger hit than 'Bernie's Tune'. It features Chet Baker, accompanied at first only by a walking bass, then by the other members of the quartet singing a capella, and finally by some exquisite counterpoint by Mulligan's baritone sax.

The following month found the quartet back in LA and once again recording for Pacific Jazz. With Bob Whitlock back on bass, the group recorded six more tunes, enough - with the addition of 'Bernie's Tune' and 'Lullaby of the Leaves' - to fill a ten-inch LP. Mulligan contributed three originals: 'Nights at the Turntable', 'Soft Shoe' and 'Walkin' Shoes'. All are taken at easy middle tempos and highlight the comfortable interplay between the musicians - especially Mulligan and Baker. Chet Baker also contributed an original for the session, an up-tempo piece aptly called 'Freeway'. Two standards, 'Frenesi' and a jaunty 'Aren't You Glad You're You', complete the bill.

With this nucleus of twelve sides (eight for Pacific Jazz and four for Fantasy) the Gerry Mulligan Quartet had provided a sampling of their wares for the record-buying public. Not surprisingly, most of these tunes are taken at a medium tempo, where the interplay between the horns of Baker and Mulligan is shown to best advantage. One of the highlights of a Mulligan quartet performance, whether on record or in concert, is the improvised weaving of contrapuntal lines of the horns and bass. The influence here is at least as much King Oliver as J.S. Bach, and the comment has often been made that the quartet was at times playing a sort of neo-Dixieland. Although this was meant as a put-down, it is an observation to which Mulligan - who has always felt respect and admiration for his jazz elders - would readily assent. Gerry knew just where his quartet stood in relation to the evolution of jazz. 'The idea of a band without a piano is not new,' he wrote, in the liner notes introducing his first Pacific Jazz album. 'The very first jazz bands didn't use them (how could they? They were either marching or riding in wagons.') In fact, it would be useful to reprint here Mulligan's comments from the same liner notes, explaining the concept on which his quartet was based:

I consider the string bass to be the basis of the sound of the group; the foundation on which the soloist builds his line, the main thread around which the two horns weave their contrapuntal interplay. It is possible with two voices to imply the sound of or impart the feeling of any chord or series of chords as Bach shows us so thoroughly and enjoyably in his inventions.

When a piano is used in a group it necessarily plays the dominant role; the horns and bass must tune to it as it cannot tune to them, making it the dominant tonality. The piano's accepted function of constantly stating the chords of the progression makes the solo horn a slave to the whims of the piano player. The soloist is forced to adapt his line to the changes and alterations made by the pianist in the chords of the progression.

It is obvious that the bass does not possess as wide a range of volume and dynamic possibilities as the drums and horns. It is therefore necessary to keep the overall volume in proportion to that of the bass in order to achieve an integrated group sound.[Notes to Pacific Jazz PJLP-1]

These notes were in response to the controversy over the pianoless group then raging in the press, and they clearly show Mulligan as an articulate and knowledgeable musician. But they also tend to leave an impression of Mulligan as a solemn intellectual, preoccupied with the theories behind his music, and this is wide of the mark. Actually, Gerry is quite impatient with those who would scrutinize, rather than enjoy, the music. Some seven years after he wrote the notes above, he would write (in the album notes for a later edition of the quartet):

Jazz music is fun to me. All music can be fun for that matter, but what I mean is we usually have a hell of a good time playing and listening to each other.

But some of the people who do the most talking about jazz (that may even be the basic problem right there!) don't seem to get any real fun out of listening to it. It seems to me that all the super-intellectualizing on the technique of jazz and the lack of response to the emotion and meaning of jazz is spoiling the fun for listeners and players alike. [Notes to Columbia LP 1307]

Certainly the quartet offered the crowds at The Haig enjoyment as well as intellectual stimulation. Soon after the initial Pacific jazz single was released the quartet became The Haig's star attraction, moving from the off-night slot to the weekends. Throughout a tenure that lasted from the autumn of 1952 to the summer of 1953, Mulligan and his crew consistently drew overflow crowds. The Haig was a small room (capacity about eighty-five), and as Bock remembers it, 'on weekends more people could be found outside waiting in line to get in than were actually inside'.[Notes to Pacific Jazz PJ-8] An article in Time magazine (2 February 1953) helped to spread the group's fame. That fame edged into notoriety when Mulligan stopped the quartet in mid-performance one night to chew out the audience for talking while the band was playing, an occasion that was duly noted by the jazz press., Mulligan answered his critics in an interview in Down Beat magazine - and incidentally proved that he could be as tactless with fellow musicians as he was with an audience.

Most of The Haig's customers are there to listen to the music - those who aren't don't matter. It's a small place, and when anyone starts talking it not only annoys those who are trying to listen, but disturbs the continuity of our collective musical thinking. I know the people talk, laugh and carry on down there at the Lighthouse all the time when Rumsey's band is playing - but they blast all night long anyway, so it doesn't matter. [Down Beat May 20, 1953, p. 4]

The first five months of 1953 found the quartet at the height of its popularity, and Mulligan took advantage of the situation to record heavily. In January there was another trip north to San Francisco, where the group cut four more sides for Fantasy records: 'The Lady is a Tramp', 'Moonlight in Vermont', 'Limelight' and 'Turnstile'. By this time Carson Smith had permanently replaced Bob Whitlock as the group's bassist. An even more important change in personnel took place when Chico Hamilton left the group. Chico had proved to be the perfect drummer for the quartet, displaying an ability to swing like hell while keeping his volume to a level compatible with the group sound. However, The Haig's small size made it impossible for Gerry to pay his sidemen much more than union scale. When Hamilton was offered a lucrative job as accompanist for Lena Horne, he felt he couldn't refuse. His replacement was Larry Bunker, a versatile musician who also played vibes, and who was one of the few drummers capable of adequately filling in behind Chico Hamilton.

At the end of January Mulligan once again entered the recording studios, but not with the quartet. This time it was with a much larger group: a ten-piece band that would be dubbed a tentette. Gerry would later remember its genesis as follows: 'When we were first playing at The Haig with the quartet, I started the tentette as a rehearsal band to have something to write for. After a time, Gene Norman, a Los Angeles promoter and disc jockey, came to me and said he'd like to record the band. Since no one else had suggested recording us, I said yes. [Quoted by Pete Welding in notes to Mosaic MR5-102] Mulligan came to regret that snap decision. Norman did not have a union recording license of his own and planned to offer the date to Capitol records if he could use their license, the same arrangement he had used to record the initial Shorty Rogers session. Neither Gene Norman nor Mulligan was aware that Capitol officials had already planned to approach Gerry with an offer of their own, but once Norman had made his offer to Capitol, they felt it would be unethical to proceed. The session was eventually recorded for Gene Norman and released by Capitol. Gerry later felt that had he recorded directly for the label he might have had 'more albums to show for our work'. [Ibid]

The tentette, as Gerry has pointed out, was essentially the quartet 'combined with the ensemble instrumentation of the Miles Davis nonet'. That is, there were two trumpets, a (valve) trombone, French horn, tuba, an alto and two baritone saxophones, bass and drums. Comparisons are inevitable between the tentette and both the Miles Davis and Shorty Rogers mid-sized bands, but the similarities with the Davis nonet are necessarily more pronounced, simply because Mulligan wrote and played for both groups. Three of the tentette performances relate directly to the Miles Davis sides. 'Rocker' was recorded by both groups, and Gerry's arrangement stays basically the same, although he does drop a variation on the theme that was included at the close of the earlier version. 'Ontet', on the other hand, is Gerry's expansion of the out-chorus on his earlier chart of 'Godchild'. And Gerry's 'A Ballad' clearly reflects the influence of Gil Evans's writing on 'Moondreams'.

Of the remaining five performances, four are Mulligan originals. 'Walkin' Shoes' is the only piece that appears in the repertoire of both the quartet and tentette. 'Westwood Walk', taken at a brighter pace, features Chico Hamilton booting the band along. (Chico was replaced by Larry Bunker on the second of the tentette's two recording sessions, however.) 'Simbah' is taken at the fastest tempo of all, while 'Flash' features Mulligan's aggressive piano and the Konitz-like alto of Bud Shank. Finally, 'Takin' a Chance on Love' showcases Gerry's piano all the way.

Unfortunately, the tentette sides were somewhat buried under all the hoopla surrounding the quartet. They enjoyed a certain in-group reputation among musicians, but this was not enough to get the tentette back into the studios. The experience Mulligan gained writing for the group undoubtedly paid dividends later in his writing for the Concert Jazz Band of the sixties, but that is beyond the scope of this narrative. Perhaps the most important achievement of the performances at the time was to show that Chet Baker could play a more forceful and aggressive horn than he had previously exhibited on the quartet sides.

One other group of performances recorded early in 1953 found Mulligan and company straying from the quartet format. Lee Konitz; came through California with Stan Kenton's band and sat in at various times with the quartet. Several of these collaborations - caught live at The Haig as well as in the recording studio were taped by Richard Bock and released for Pacific Jazz. These sides are fascinating studies of the effect Konitz had on the quartet and vice versa.

There is, it might be added, considerable confusion about the dates of these meetings. For that matter, the entire Pacific jazz catalogue is a discographical quagmire. Apparently few files were kept documenting the label's recording sessions. The liner notes to the twelve-inch album Lee Konitz Plays with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet give 25 January 1953 as the date for the five recordings, and Bock himself - on another album - gives 10 June as the date for one of the 'studio' (actually Turetsky's bungalow) sessions. But other sources show that Lee Konitz was out of town with the Kenton band on 10 June. The standard discography, Jorgen Jepsen's jazz Records (currently under revision), lists 25 and 30 January and 1 February as the dates for all of the Konitz recordings, but in each case indiscriminately mixes live performances with those obviously taped in a studio or other controlled environment. Without going into too much detail, a good ‘guesstimate' is as follows. The most likely date for the live performances seems to be 25 January (a Sunday evening). At least three of the studio cuts - 'I Can't Believe that You're in Love with Me', 'Lady be Good' and 'Sextet' - had to have been recorded at about the same time. (All three were issued on a ten-inch LP, PJLP-2, which was reviewed in the 20 May issue of Down Beat.)The remaining studio cuts, 'Broadway' and 'Almost Like Being in Love', may have been recorded at some later date.

Whenever they were recorded, the performances from The Haig show a less introspective, more fiery Konitz than was usually the case in these early years. On the up-tempo numbers, 'Too Marvelous for Words', 'I'll Remember April', 'All the Things You are' and a recently discovered 'Bernie's Tune', Lee reels off chorus after chorus of effortless improvisation. Perhaps the lack of a piano freed his imagination. The two ballads, 'Lover Man' and 'These Foolish Things', find Konitz closer to his usual relaxed and lyrical style. Gerry selflessly allows the altoist the bulk of the solo space on all these sides and is content mainly to provide sympathetic counter-lines and riffs. Baker, for some reason, sounds tentative and even intimidated in his few solos from this session.

The studio recordings, on the other hand, are something of a let-down. The solos are kept short, since the sides are limited to the three-minute format of a 78 rpm single, and this in turn gives too much prominence to the opening and closing themes, making the records sound over-arranged. Still, the musicians get into a nice relaxed groove on several of the sides, and on an alternate take of 'Lady be Good' Lee Konitz momentarily regains some of the fire he had shown on the live performances.

As interesting as the Konitz and tentette sessions are, however, it is still the quartet that holds our attention, and the basic group was far from idle in the early months of 1953. In February the quartet, with its new rhythm section of Carson Smith and Larry Bunker, returned to the studios and recorded four tunes, 'Makin' Whoopee', 'Cherry', 'Motel' and 'Carson City Stage'. These were released with four of the Lee Konitz collaborations on the album mentioned above. The group recorded three more tunes in March, 'Festive Minor', 'All the Things You are' and 'My Old Flame', although the latter tune was the only one released at the time.

A month later the group recorded a series of tunes that would be released on PJLP-5, the second album devoted strictly to the quartet. 'Love Me or Leave Me', 'Swing House' and ‘Jeru' were cut on 27 April, while 'Dam that Dream', 'I May be Wrong', 'I'm Beginning to See the Light', 'The Nearness of You' and 'Tea for Two' were done at additional sessions on 29 and 30 April. Mulligan's originals, 'Swing House' and ‘Jeru', are especially interesting. The first is based on 'Sweet Georgia Brown' changes and features some delicious 'French horn' harmonies in the chase chorus. This version of 'Jeru' (Gerry's nickname) is fascinating simply because it does away with the unorthodox meters and structure that Gerry had used on the

Birth of the Cool arrangement of the tune. Here we have a conventional thirty-two-bar, AABA framework. (The change is not unlike that which Duke Ellington's 'Concerto for Cootie' underwent in being transformed into the pop song 'Do Nothing till You Hear from Me'.) 'Tea for Two', incidentally, was entitled 'Tea or Two' on some earlier issues of the original ten-inch LP, and although Mulligan's version is obviously based on the Youmens and Caesar standard, the melody line is delightfully altered. The new title could well represent an insider's joke.

Finally, the quartet was recorded live at The Haig one more time on 20 May 1953. Only two of the performances, 'Five Brothers' and 'I Can't Get Started', were originally released, but seven additional performances have recently been issued on a five-record Mosaic album that offers all of the quartet (including the Konitz) sides and tentette performances we've been discussing. The additional tunes taped at this final live session are 'Ide's Side', 'Haig and Haig', 'My Funny Valentine', and - with a visiting Chico Hamilton sitting in for Larry Bunker - 'Aren't You Glad You're You', 'Get Happy', 'Poinciana' and 'Godchild'. The musicians all seem to be having a ball on these sides, and it's a shame the tapes were buried for so long.

These were the final recorded performances of the original Gerry Mulligan Quartet - with the possible exception of the previously mentioned Lee Konitz session in June. Shortly thereafter Gerry was arrested on a narcotics charge and was sentenced to a ninety-day stay on the California Honor Farm. When he was released, Gerry felt that he had had enough of California for a while. Chet Baker no doubt helped to confirm Gerry's decision. As one of Mulligan's friends remembers it, 'Chet met Gerry when he got out of jail and said, "I want four hundred dollars a week." This to a guy who'd just taken a bust and didn't have a job.’ [Goldberg, op cit., p. 16] Chet's own version is a little different. Both he and Mulligan had won the Down Beat polls during Gerry's confinement, and Baker says it was Mulligan who brought up the subject of re-establishing the group.

All I wanted was $300 a week and he started laughing like I was asking for something outrageous. Up to this point all I was making was $120 a week, six nights a week. So that was the end of the group. Our original band never went on tour. Three hundred dollars a week was nothing! And that's what really pissed me off. I worked for him for eleven months without asking for a raise, but after we both won the polls I figured, Jesus, it's time to get a little more bread. [Quoted in Rosenblum, op cit]

In any event, the quartet did not get together again and Mulligan left for New York. There have been reunions of Mulligan and Baker; once in 1957 for a Pacific Jazz album (cut in New York), and again in 1974 for a Carnegie Hall concert, which was recorded by CTI Records. If the two aren't close friends, they nevertheless still respect each other's playing, and the 1974 recordings show that there is still an uncanny empathy when the two play together.

Meanwhile, back in the summer of 1953, Richard Bock found himself with a struggling young record company and his star artist temporarily unavailable. Naturally he turned to Chet Baker, who had formed a quartet of his own. The results were a series of records that made Chet a star in his own right. Chet cut his first solo side ('Isn't It Romantic') on 24 July, with a quartet consisting of Russ Freeman, piano, Red Mitchell, bass and Bobby White, drums. A few days later he recorded three additional numbers; then on 29 and 30 July he recorded fourteen pieces with a quartet that featured Russ Freeman and his stablemates from the Mulligan quartet, Carson Smith and Larry Bunker. All told there were enough tunes for two ten-inch LPs and a number of singles.

In Russ Freeman, Chet had found an ideal collaborator. Freeman was born 28 May 1926 in Chicago and moved to Los Angeles in the 1930s, where he studied classical piano. He was one of the first of the white pianists on the Coast to adapt to the post-war modern-jazz styles, and was soon in demand whenever there was need of a hard-swinging rhythm section. Russ backed Charlie Parker for a time during the altoist's first stay in California, and later made jazz time with Howard McGhee and Dexter Gordon. In the early fifties he was with Art Pepper and Wardell Gray, and briefly filled the piano chair with the Lighthouse All-Stars. His is a sparse style, with no unnecessary notes, and perhaps because of this his reputation is much higher among fellow musicians than with the general public. He is also a jazz composer whose lines are truly original, rather than merely new melodies grafted on to standard chord progressions. Several of Freeman's originals were featured in these early Chet Baker sessions, including 'Maid in Mexico', 'Russ Job', 'Batter Up', 'No Ties', 'Band Aid', 'Bea's Flat' and 'Happy Little Sunbeam'.

If the empathy between Chet Baker and Russ Freeman was not quite as complete as that between Baker and Mulligan, it was none the less striking. More than any other musician, Russ could break Chet free of his introspective shell, and the bland quality that marred much of the trumpeter's work was usually kept to a minimum whenever Russ Freeman was present. Baker returned the favor by being an especially sensitive interpreter of the pianist's compositions. 'He's the only one who could play my songs the way I hear them. He had such an innate feeling for them,' Freeman would later tell an interviewer. [John Tynan, “Straight Talk from Russ Freeman, Down Beat, March 14, 1963, p. 20] These two facets of the collaboration are best illustrated by two tunes cut in the July sessions. Baker romps through 'All the Things You are' with an abandon that puts to rest any doubts about his ability to generate a fire; while his jaunty interpretation of Freeman's 'Happy Little Sunbeam' strikes the perfect evocation of the mood suggested by the tune's tide.

Pacific Jazz continued to record its new star, but unfortunately Richard Bock seemed to get sidetracked by a bid for mass popularity. This resulted in an album entitled Chet Baker Sings, which is, from a jazz standpoint, an unmitigated disaster. The very worst faults of Baker's trumpet style - a tendency towards introspection, a limited emotional and dynamic range - are multiplied tenfold by his soft, quavering voice. No doubt the singer's small-boyish vocals brought out the mothering instinct in some of the females of his audience, but hard-core jazz enthusiasts were and remain turned off. On the other hand, the popularity of the album probably helped underwrite many other more worthy jazz offerings.

With one exception (a seven-piece ensemble album which we'll examine in the next chapter) there is little that needs to be said of the remaining records produced by Chet Baker during this period. They featured him in a variety of contexts: there was a Chet Baker and Strings album for Columbia which was almost as innocuous as the vocal album; a live recording by the quartet (with Bob Neel in for Larry Bunker) at a concert at the University of Michigan; a sextet session with Bob Brookmeyer and Bud Shank that has some nice arrangements by Johnny Mandel and Jack Montrose; and another 'strings' album for Pacific Jazz. None of these is outstanding, and the strings albums are not even of average interest. The next year in which Chet Baker recorded albums of importance was 1956, and we'll return to him then.

In the meantime, Gerry Mulligan had gone his own way. His next record was taped in concert at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, during a European tour, and is thus somewhat out of our purview. The new quartet consisted of Bob Brookmeyer on valve-trombone, Red Mitchell, bass and Frank Isola, drums. The recordings are of interest if only because of the new personnel, but they suffer in comparison with the Mulligan-Baker sides. Although Bob Brookmeyer has a definite affinity for Gerry's music, the range and timbre of the valve-trombone is so similar to that of the baritone sax there is little effective contrast between the two horns. The formation of a quartet with a trumpet as the lead voice had to wait until Mulligan returned to California.

Gerry did return in December of 1954 for a concert tour that introduced his new trumpet player, Jon Eardley. Red Mitchell remained the quartet's bassist, and Chico Hamilton rejoined Mulligan for this tour. Pacific Jazz's first twelve-inch LP captured the quartet - and a sextet - at two stops along the tour, Stockton and San Diego. The concert at Stockton, on 3 December, opens with an impromptu blues. Gerry's comments to late arrivals, 'I think maybe I'll play some blues while you get seated,' gives the number its title, 'Blues Going Up'. Jon Eardley proves to be a more than adequate replacement for Chet Baker, displaying a fat tone that at times suggests an updated Bix Beiderbecke. Eardley is also featured on the Rodgers and Hart ballad 'Little Girl Blue'. 'Piano Blues' finds Gerry at the keyboard, playing in a traditional, down-home style. Gerry returns to the baritone sax for the closing number, Charlie Parker's 'Yardbird Suite', taken at a relaxed yet swinging up tempo. There is also a brief taste of the quartet's theme, 'Utter Chaos'.

The San Diego concert on the fourteenth introduced Gerry's new sextet. Larry Bunker replaced Chico Hamilton, and Mulligan, Eardley and Mitchell were joined by Bob Brookmeyer and tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims on three numbers. The first, 'Western Reunion', is a straight-ahead swinger on the familiar 'I Got Rhythm' foundations. The four horns combine timbres nicely and afford Mulligan the opportunity to produce a full band sound. 'I Know, Don't Know How' is an original ballad of Gerry's, while 'The Red Door' is a composition of Zoot's. On the latter number, Jon Eardley lays out, and Bob Brookmeyer plays piano. These three numbers were the only sextet performances released on the original twelve-inch LP, but several additional numbers from both concerts were later issued on various Pacific jazz anthologies. These were, according to Jepsen, 'Bark for Barksdale', 'Soft Shoe' and 'Blues for Tiny' by the quartet and 'There'll Never be Another You', 'Polka dots and Moonbeams' and 'Flamingo' by the sextet. However, at least one of the quartet performances, 'Soft Shoe', is quite obviously a studio recording. It's tempting to hope that other studio performances of the short-lived quartet with Eardley may some day be unearthed, for it is a well balanced band, quite on a par with the Mulligan-Baker quartet.

These concerts marked Mulligan's last appearance in California for some time. He spent the next several years in New York, working with the sextet format and recording a series of albums for the Emarcy label. When Gerry Mulligan returned to New York at the close of 1954, he left a musical scene far different from the one he had found upon his arrival in Los Angeles a short two years earlier. The catchphrase West Coast jazz was being bandied about in the jazz press and, much to his irritation, Gerry's name was often linked with the music. Gerry was quite right in rejecting the linkage; his quartet was sui generis and belonged to no school save that of Mulligan himself. At the same time, though, the national popularity of the quartet did much to draw attention to jazz in southern California and helped smooth the way for other musicians who were trying to be heard. As we have seen, Pacific jazz owed its very existence to the Mulligan quartet, and that label and the other independent companies that sprang up in its wake were largely responsible for launching the careers of many southland musicians who had been anonymous before Gerry had arrived. Gerry Mulligan's help may have been inadvertent, but it was indispensable nevertheless.

Chapter 5 Re-posting of Bob Gordon's "Jazz West Coast"

I’ve always been grateful that my folks decided to re-locate to California in the mid-1950’s as one great benefit of the move was that I was able to experience Jazz on the West Coast first-hand. Over the years, it was great fun to have easy access to the Jazz Clubs in Hollywood, the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, and the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa via California’s nascent [and relatively un-crowded] freeway system where I could listen to the many manifestations of what Bob Gordon refers to as - The West Coast Sound.

For example, one night in 1959, I attended a concert at the recently-built [1958] Santa Monica Civic Auditorium that featured the Dave Brubeck Quartet and afterwards I continued down the Pacific Coast Highway to catch the closing sets of the Lighthouse All-Stars. Talk about halcyon days gone by!

Also relatively new at this time [1950] was the Union Hall of Musicians Local 47 of the American Federation of Musicians chapter of the AFL-CIO where on any given day you could listen to or be performing in rehearsal bands of all shapes and sizes.

One day it might be the Onzy Matthews Big Band with a trumpet section of Bud Brisbois, Ollie Mitchell, Dalton Smith, Bobby Bryant and Freddie Hill; Horace Tapscott, Lou Blackburn, Dick “Slyde” Hyde and Don Smith on trombone; Joe Maini, Clifford Scott, Curtis Amy, Jay Migliori and Sydney Miller on reeds; Ray Crawford, guitar, Jim Crutcher, bass and Charles “Chiz Harris, drums.

Another day it might be Marty Paich working through his charts with the likes of Al Porcino, Conte Candoli, Jack Sheldon on trumpet, a trombone section that included Bob Enevoldsen and George Roberts with Vince DeRosa close-by on French Horn, a saxophone section that was made up of Art Pepper, Bill Perkins, Jimmy Giuffre and Bill Hood and a rhythm section of Victor Feldman on piano & vibes, Scott LaFaro on bass and Mel Lewis on drums.

Or you might walk in on a small group rehearsal involving Curtis Amy on tenor, Carmel Jones on trumpet, Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, Frank Strazzeri on piano, Jimmy Bond on bass and Frank Butler on drums.

Union hall happenings like these were a microcosmic reflection of the “West Coast Sound,” a sound that was everywhere apparent in the greater Los Angeles area. It was so vibrant in its many expressions that it was difficult to understand why it was so often criticized, if not ostracized, as a lifeless and limpid style of Jazz not worthy of serious attention.

As was the case with the preceding chapters on Central Avenue, Shorty Rogers and Gerry Mulligan, Bob Gordon’s next chapter continues to further our understanding of the evolution of the modern Jazz scene that developed in Los Angeles, primarily during the 1950s.

THE WEST COAST SOUND

Chief among Pacific Jazz's competitors in the southland's independent record derby was Lester Koenig's Contemporary records. Koenig had founded Good Time jazz records in the post-war years to record traditional Dixieland and New Orleans revivalist groups, and the Contemporary label was a natural outgrowth of the parent company. As we have seen, the first Lighthouse All-Stars recordings were released on Contemporary. (Actually, the 78 singles were issued on the Lighthouse label, and that trademark and logo was then used for Contemporary's Lighthouse series of 45s and long-playing albums.) In addition to Howard Rumsey and the Lighthouse crew, Koenig signed Shelly Manne (the All-Stars' drummer at the time) to a long-term contract. Shelly was given carte blanche with regards to recording sessions and sidemen, and the liberty he enjoyed paid dividends for Koenig and the Contemporary label.

The first session under Shelly's own name was held on 6 April 1953, shortly following the Shorty Rogers Cool and Crazy sessions, and featured a number of the same sidemen. The band was a septet, and the instrumentation was slightly unusual: the front line consisted of three saxes and a valve-trombone. Art Pepper's alto, Bob Cooper's tenor and Jimmy Giuffre's baritone were joined by Bob Enevoldsen on trombone and the rhythm section of Marty Paich, Curtis Counce and of course Shelly. However, in both this and a second session held later in July, the featured artists were really the writers. For the initial session Shorty Rogers contributed two arrangements, an original entitled 'Mallets' and a chart on a traditional Mexican folk theme, 'La Mucura'. Both are Latin-tinged. 'Mallets', as the title suggests, features Shelly using mallets throughout. The remaining two arrangements were by Bill Russo, a trombonist and writer then with Stan Kenton. 'You and the Night and the Music' has lovely alto work by Art Pepper (recording under the name Art Salt for contractual reasons) on both section lead and solo. Russo's second piece, 'Gazelle', is aptly named, for the difficult theme runs and leaps at a brisk pace.

There were two changes in personnel at the second session, held on 20 July. Altoist Bud Shank replaced Art Pepper, who was away on the first of numerous absences from the scene, and Joe Mondragon replaced Curtis Counce. Shorty Rogers and Bill Russo each contributed an additional chart for this date. Shorty's ballad 'Afrodesia' was written with Art Pepper in mind, but Bud Shank fills in admirably; Russ's minor-key number is named 'Sweets'. Pianist Marty Paich contributed an arrangement of 'You're My Thrill' which seems influenced by Russo's writing on 'You and the Night and the Music'. Finally, there is Jimmy Giuffre's 'Fugue', an attempt to stretch the boundaries of jazz writing. 'Fugue' is atonal, and the rhythm section plays melodies or counter-lines rather than time. There is, however, a repeated figure - as old as a Kansas City riff - that ties the arrangement together.

When these eight numbers were first released on a long-playing record, the album was entitled The West Coast Sound, and indeed these arrangements - much more than the Shorty Rogers Capitol sides - set the style for much of what came to be called West Coast jazz. The valve-trombone is used here not as the ensemble lead, but is treated as a member of the sax section. The inner voices - trombone and tenor sax - are given the most dissonant notes (they are often voiced in minor seconds), thus thickening the ensemble sound. There are many contrapuntal passages, even aside from the formal 'Fugue'. Perhaps most importantly, the writing definitely takes precedence over the solos: often each horn gets only half a chorus to blow in. Moreover, Shelly confines himself to brushes (or mallets) for the most part, and there are few 'bombs' dropped. The result is an intellectual music that exhibits a great deal of craftsmanship but little warmth or swing. At the time it was recorded it was certainly a new and fresh sound, and that may have had much to do with the music's initial acceptance. But it palled rather quickly and made one long for some uninhibited, straight-ahead blowing.

Several months later the Lighthouse AU-Stars once again recorded for Contemporary. By this time the key members of the original All-Stars - Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre and Shelly Manne - had left to form Shorty's working group, the Giants. The second-generation members who met in the studio on 20 October included the Swedish trumpet star Rolf Ericsson saxophonists Herb Geller, Bud Shank and Bob Cooper, pianist Claude Williamson, and a most important new addition, Max Roach. In retrospect, it might seem strange that the fiery drummer of Charlie Parker's quintet and the acknowledged father of modem jazz drumming would take a job on the Coast, which was already gaining a reputation for a laid-back style, but the All-Stars - especially in concert at the club - were always exponents of straight-ahead blowing. Max was with the All-Stars six months, starting in September 1953. Shelly Manne had recommended Max as his replacement, and Howard Rumsey phoned New York to see if the drummer was interested. He was. 'I called him - he needed work,' Rumsey recalls. 'When he finished he told me it was the only job he ever had for a six-month period.’ [Letter to the author June 12, 1983] Max seemed to enjoy working with the All-Stars, although it may be significant that he left as soon as his contract expired. Bob Cooper remembers Max telling him that he liked working in a 'clean' atmosphere; the always professional Rumsey saw to it that drugs were off-limits at the club. In any case, the California musicians certainly enjoyed working with Max Roach.

Four tunes were recorded at the October session, Shorty Rogers's 'Mambo Los Feliz', Jimmy Giuffre's beautiful arrangement of the Victor Young standard 'Love Letters' and two originals by Bob Cooper, 'Witch Doctor' and 'Jazz Invention'. Jack Costanzo was added on bongos for 'Mambo Los Feliz' and 'Witch Doctor', and Milt Bernhart's trombone was added on the latter tune. 'Love Letters' features a contrapuntal arrangement that has the four horns passing the melody from player to player, as well as a haunting piano solo by Claude Williamson. Bob Cooper's 'Jazz Invention', which also features contrapuntal lines throughout, shows that the saxophonist had come into his own as a jazz composer. Coop's arrangement is thoughtful yet genial, which, come to think of it, is quite accurate as a sketch of Cooper himself.

An even more ambitious attempt at showcasing the West Coast composers came with Shelly Manne's second album. Where the first album had featured an ensemble dominated by reeds, the ensemble on the new LP was composed of a brass choir (two trumpets, valve-trombone and tuba) plus rhythm. Again, the recording was done in two sessions. The first, held on 18 December 1953, had Ollie Mitchell and Shorty Rogers on trumpets, Bob Enevoldsen back on trombone, Paul Sarmento on tuba, and the rhythm section of Russ Freeman, Joe Mondragon and Shelly. All of the album's pieces, incidentally, were original compositions. Shorty Rogers must have enjoyed the challenge of working with the unorthodox instrumentation; his 'Shapes, Motions, and Colors' shows that he was capable of much more than the swinging big-band riffs that had become his trademark. Each composer was invited to comment on his own work for the album's liner notes, and Shorty's personality comes through clearly in his statement.

I didn't consciously try for any specific overall form, preferring free forms in my own thinking. I did however use many devices within this free form, but as ends in themselves and not as means to an end. I realized, after I finished this work, that it had taken the shape of a first rondo, but the form was really a result of an instinct for balance ... This is a reflection of my likes in music. I tried only to write what I like, not concerning myself with such thoughts as: Is it jazz? or: Is it legitimate? or: Will anyone like it? [Notes to Contemporary 2511].

'Dimension in Thirds', by Marty Paich, is fairly conventional, yet clearly shows the talent that the youthful Paich was developing. Jimmy Giuffre once again offers an atonal composition, 'Alternation', and once again the rhythm section plays melodies or counter-lines, rather than time. The resulting piece is much closer to the Third Stream experiments that would take place later in the decade than to any works of the other West Coast writers. By the same token, 'Alternation' is further removed from jazz than any other piece on this album.

The outstanding composition to come out of the second session, which was held on 17 March 1954, was 'Etude de Concert' by Jack Montrose. The piece features a number of different moods, instrumental combinations and tempi, highlighted by Shorty Rogers's swinging trumpet. Montrose combines classical techniques with jazz feeling better than any of the other composers, and 'Etude' remains an important work. Its secret is found in Montrose's own comments: "'Etude de Concert" is first and last a jazz composition. The main objective I had in mind was that it must swing.” [Ibid]] Bob Cooper's 'Divertimento for Brass and Rhythm' is more conventional, but Coop also remembers the necessity to swing. The sixth selection, Bill Holman's 'Lullaby', is so named for the childlike directness and simplicity of the theme. On this second session Don Fagerquist and Marty Paich replaced Ollie Mitchell and Russ Freeman on trumpet and piano.

Another Lighthouse All-Stars album cut the same year had the participants experimenting with forms and instruments not usually (at the time) associated with jazz. Saxophonists Bud Shank and Bob Cooper had originally begun doubling on flute and oboe, respectively, while members of the Kenton Innovations orchestra. Cooper, born on 6 December 1925 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, had joined Kenton in 1945 and was a mainstay of the sax section in the post-war years. In 1946 he married Kenton's popular vocalist, June Christy. Although he is adept on just about any of the woodwinds, he gained special recognition as being one of the very few jazzmen to have mastered the difficult oboe. Bud Shank was born Clifford Everett Shank Jr. in Dayton, Ohio on 27 May 1926. He had played with the bands of Charlie Barnet, Alvino Rey and Art Mooney before joining Kenton in 1951, and had taken up the flute as a double expressly to audition for the Innovations orchestra.

In 1953, as members of the Lighthouse All-Stars, Shank and Cooper began experimenting with duets featuring their alternate woodwinds. The audience enjoyed the fresh sounds of the duets and asked for more, and their burgeoning popularity suggested a recording date. By February 1954 everyone felt ready, and the quintet entered the Contemporary studios to record eight tunes. In addition to 'head' arrangements of two jazz standards, 'Night in

Tunisia

' and 'Bag's Groove', the musicians had written six originals specifically for the flute and oboe combination. Bob Cooper contributed three of the tunes, 'Warm Winds', 'Still Life' and 'Hermosa Summer'. Bud Shank's offering was a bright number called 'Happy Town'; Claude Williamson wrote 'Aquarium'; and Max Roach penned a number entitled 'Albatross'. Shank and Cooper also play alto flute and English horn on several of the numbers, achieving a darker coloration with the lower-pitched instruments. The flute and oboe combination works well on the slower mood numbers, but is less effective on the up-tempo pieces, which tend to sound anemic. The group sound begins to pall over the length of a full album, but the experiments did help to legitimize the use of such 'exotic' instruments in the jazz arsenal.

The culmination of the Contemporary/Shelly Manne experimental series came on 10 September 1954 when Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre and Shelly met in the studios to tape an album entitled simply The Three. Rogers, Giuffre and Manne had been playing together for over five years: in various editions of the Herman and Kenton bands, with the Lighthouse All-Stars, and in Shorty's own group, the Giants. They had in that time developed, in Giuffre's words, 'a mutual instinct which enables us to work together in volume, motion and sound'. [Notes to Contemporary 3584] As was the case with the flute and oboe duets, the trio first experimented with the combination on the job, informally, as the mood struck them. Again, a recording date was suggested, and again, several tunes were composed specifically for the instrumentation. Two of the tunes, 'Autumn in New York' and Charlie Parker's 'Steeplechase', were in the Giants' regular book. Two more tunes were composed especially for the date, Shorty's 'Three on a Row' and Jimmy's 'Pas de Trois'. As the name suggests, 'Three on a Row' is based on a twelve-tone row Finally, two of the numbers were worked out in the studio Shelly Manne's 'Flip' (Shelly's wife's nickname) is a head arrangement featuring the horns in two-part canon. The sixth piece, 'Abstract No. F, is a completely free improvisation.

The trio sounds somewhat empty on first hearing; the lack of the jazz pulse usually supplied by the bass is especially disconcerting. But the versatility of the musicians helps matter greatly. Shelly Manne, as has often been noted, is an extremely melodic drummer, and here he often functions as a third voice Jimmy Giuffre divides his playing time almost equally between three horns - clarinet, tenor and baritone saxes - which significantly extends the range of colors available to the trio Most importantly, the three can and do swing. One method Shorty uses to avoid excessive repetition in 'Three on a Row' is to vary the tempi and accents in the various statements an( permutations of the tone row. He succeeds admirably, and the performance is far from the rigid and sterile statement one might expect from such a premise. 'Steeplechase' turns out to be , straight-ahead swinger, with Giuffre starting out on tenor and switching to the more assertive baritone for a surging solo. The album's capstone is 'Abstract No. F, which recalls Lennie Tristano's 'Intuition' and anticipates the free jazz of the sixties a, well. The lack of a piano is an advantage here, as there is no implied tonal centre. The two horns listen closely to each other and respond quickly to changes in direction. Moreover, 'Abstract' breaks into swing, something the Tristano free pieces never managed to do.

A short four days later, a sequel to The Three was recorded This time the participants were Shelly Manne and Russ, Freeman, so the album was naturally enough entitled The Two Russ and Shelly had worked together both at the Lighthouse an in the original edition of the Giants, and had developed empathy that went beyond the usual partnership expected of two rhythm-section instruments. As Russ Freeman remembered it

Playing on the job, Shelly and I used to do things together in the rhythm section, not just counterpoint to the horns, but between us. Instead of playing a drum solo or a piano solo, in some spots, we'd play a solo at the same time, trying to fee each other out, with an awareness of each other being there And Shelly would add, 'We enjoyed playing together so much that we kept talking about making an album, just the two of us, because of the freedom we'd have ... We have a lot of confidence in each other, particularly in each other's time. We're not afraid to try unusual things metre-wise.' [Ibid]

'The Sound Effects Manne' is a perfect introduction to the method the two had worked out. A thirty-two-measure tune, Russ carries the melody for the first sixteen, with Shelly playing a counter-line; then the two switch roles for the second sixteen. Throughout the 'solos'. Russ and Shelly take turns as lead voice or in offering a supporting role to the other. The fine Matt Dennis tune 'Everything Happens to Me' serves as a ballad vehicle for Russ, with Shelly providing sympathetic accompaniment. The two swing so hard on 'Billie's Bounce' that the absence of a bass is hardly felt, and this is also true for 'With a Song in My Heart', which is taken at a very rapid tempo. The two remaining tunes -'A Slight Minority' and 'Speak Easy' - are both Russ Freeman originals (as is 'Sound Effects Manne'). 'Minority' is a ballad, while 'Speak Easy' is a thirty-two-bar AABA piece; both showcase the thoughtful yet swinging interplay between Russ and Shelly. The teamwork these two demonstrate throughout the session would pay dividends later in the decade when they would be reunited in Shelly's own working quintet.

The experiments we've been discussing in this chapter suffered the fate that happens to so many similar artistic searches. At first they were lavishly praised as fresh and original; then a reaction set in and they were damned (often by the same critics!) as straying too far from their jazz heritage. Andre Hodeir, one of the most thoughtful critics ever to write about jazz, had this to say about the West Coast musicians:

Men like Bill Holman, Shorty Rogers and Jimmy Giuffre are certainly excellent musicians; they have proved it on many occasions. Why do they apparently find it necessary to think in terms of two types of works, the 'normal' and the 'experimental'? An attitude as artificial as this cannot help being reflected in an alternation of failures that do not at all make up for each other. The medium-size-group sessions ... under the aegis of Shelly Manne are revealing. They show us what mistakes can be made by estimable jazzmen working without any doctrine except, perhaps, the most detestable - eclecticism. The risks taken here are inversely proportional to the jazz level achieved: the closer one gets to the language of jazz, the more commonplace becomes the performance. That is exactly the opposite of what should have happened; or, to be more precise, a maximum of jazz discipline should have been combined with a maximum of musical risks. Such as they are, the pieces included on the Shelly Manne records suffer from a distressing lack of unity.' [Andre Hodeir, Jazz: Its Evolution and Its Essence, New York: DaCapo, 1975, p. 276]

Hodeir seems to miss the point here, however. Of course the works are eclectic. There is a wide cross-section of musicians at work here, and certainly no jazz musician is going to sit down and compose a piece hewing to any preconceived strictures of 'doctrine'. In the case of the first two Shelly Manne albums, there were no givens - with the exception of the instrumentation. Each composer or arranger was specifically enjoined to write whatever he wished. Under such conditions it makes no sense to complain about lack of unity.

Nor could the musicians be blamed for dividing their works into 'normal' and 'experimental' modes - the very nature of the recordings assured that. Most of the experimental works were never played outside the recording studios. There seems to have been a picture in the minds of jazz writers at the time of attentive audiences sitting in Hollywood clubs listening to twenty-piece orchestras play the latest atonal scores from the pens of the West Coast musicians. In reality, a typical jazz-club patron would be listening to a quartet or quintet working out on 'Donna Lee' or 'Now's the Time'. The flute and oboe duets, it is true, were originally played before live audiences at the Lighthouse, but they would typically represent only a small portion of an evening's program.

On the other hand, Hodeir is nearer the mark when he says that 'the closer one gets to the language of jazz, the more commonplace becomes the performance'. Numbers like 'You're My Thrill' and 'You and the Night and the Music' from the first album are little more than scaled-down big-band dance charts with slightly advanced harmonies, the sort of music that Dave Pell would later manufacture in a seemingly endless series of albums.

In any case, the albums we've been discussing sold well and paved the way for additional sessions - both conventional and experimental - on various labels, including Contemporary, Pacific Jazz, and a host of other independent labels that sprang up in their wake. Not all of the musicians on the Coast were experimenting with exotic forms and instruments, of course, but the atmosphere at the time was very conducive to such experiments. One such experiment, whose significance would not be fully realized until the following decade, was that of joining the samba rhythms of

Brazil

with those of jazz.

Laurindo Almeida, a Brazilian concert guitarist, first came to prominence in this country as a featured soloist with Stan Kenton in 1947. Laurindo had been born in Sao Paolo on 2 September 1917 and had taken up the guitar as a youth. By the time Kenton invited him to the States for a concert tour, Almeida had become famous in his native country playing Spanish concert-style acoustic guitar. His extensive musical training - he had played staff radio jobs in Rio de Janeiro and led an orchestra at Casino de Urca in that city - helped land him a job in the movie studios when Kenton disbanded following the 1947 tour. While working on the soundtrack of A Song is Born, Almeida would relax between takes playing duets with bassist Harry Babasin, and a fast friendship developed between the two.

In 1952 Almeida and Babasin were reunited when the bassist subbed for another musician on a club date the guitarist was working. As Babasin remembers it, 'During the evening Laurindo would play several sets of solo guitar, and rather than hang around the bar or take a walk, I found myself joining him on bass.[John Tynan, “The Real Story of Bossa Nova, Down Beat, November 8, 1962, p. 21] The chemistry between the two was still working, and Babasin began to wonder what would happen if the guitarist were to be backed by a regular jazz combo. The opportunity finally came in 1953, when a quartet composed of Almeida, altoist Bud Shank, Babasin and drummer Roy Harte began to rehearse in the back room of Harte's Drum City, a Hollywood music shop. Roy Harte, a veteran of the Boyd Raeburn and Les Brown bands, takes up the tale.

We rehearsed for about a month. It was Harry's idea, and his bass parts provided the lead rhythmically. Actually we rehearsed for our own education - to see whether Laurindo would swing. Of course, we all knew how great he was as a formal guitarist, but we wanted to find out if he could swing in jazz.

Our main purpose was to achieve the light, swinging feel of the baiao - combined with jazz blowing. In order to get this, I played brushes on a conga drum, not a snare drum. This gave it a light feeling. Actually, I was trying to play with my right hand to Bud's jazz blowing, and with my left I was putting in the samba colour with Laurindo's playing. [Ibid, 22]

Things gelled from the first, and the group soon landed an engagement at The Haig. In September the quartet entered the Pacific jazz studios to record six tunes for a ten-inch LP. Three of the tunes, 'Blue Baiao', 'Carinoso' and 'Nono', were standards of the Brazilian repertoire, and a fourth, 'Tocata', was written especially for the recording by one of

Brazil

's foremost classical composers, Radames Gnattali. Harry Babasin contributed an original called 'Noctambulism', and the sixth tune, 'Hazardous', was written by Dick Hazard. The music is instantly appealing; the infectious samba rhythms fit in quite well with the jazz feeling, and Bud Shank's pure alto tone is a perfect complement to Almeida's unamplified guitar. Listeners at The Haig were enthusiastic, and Babasin wanted very much to continue, but Almeida preferred to continue with his classical concert work. A second ten-inch album was cut the following year, but there were no further live performances by the group.

In late 1953 Laurindo Almeida returned to

Brazil

for a visit and took with him twenty-five copies of the first album. 'I gave copies to many of my friends, and it was given close attention,' he remembers.[Ibid] It is tempting to argue that these experiments linking Brazilian samba rhythms with jazz led to the music called bossa nova, which made such an impact on the popular music of the early 1960s, but there is no positive proof of this. No doubt there was some influence at work here, but the Brazilian musicians had already been exposed to the Latin-jazz fusion of some Charlie Parker and especially Dizzy Gillespie recordings of the late forties. But whether the Laurindo Almeida. sides were the progenitors of bossa nova or not, they certainly exhibited characteristics of that style some nine years before bossa nova became a national craze.

The Laurindo Almeida-Bud Shank quartet sides were not the only recordings on which Harry Babasin and Roy Harte collaborated. In fact Roy Harte had formed his own label, Nocturne, prior to the Almeida session. The label was short-lived, but Harte did record some interesting albums while it was in existence.

The first Nocturne album introduced two rising young jazzmen, Herbie Harper and Bob Gordon. Trombonist Harper, whose album this was, was a veteran of the big bands, having played with Johnny 'Scat' Davis, Gene Krupa, Charlie Spivak, Benny Goodman and Charlie Barnet. Herbie was born in Salina, Kansas on 2 July 1920 and was raised in Amarillo, Texas. Bob Gordon (no relation to the author) was a baritone saxophonist who, at the time the album was cut, was rapidly developing an individual voice on the large instrument. Gordon was born in St Louis on 11 June 1928 and had been a California resident since the forties. He had played with the bands of Shorty Sherock, Alvino Rey and Billy May. The rhythm section for the recording date was Jimmy Rowles on piano, Harry Babasin and Roy Harte on bass and drums. Both of the hornsmen favor a straight-ahead blowing style, which results in relaxed yet swinging versions of Jeepers Leapers', Gerry Mulligan's 'Five Brothers', 'Herbstone' (A Harper original) and 'Jive at Five'. There are also ballad performances of 'Dinah' and 'Summertime'. Bob Gordon, despite the inclusion of 'Five Brothers', exhibits an individual style that is not beholden to Gerry Mulligan.

The second Nocturne set marked Bud Shank's first recording as a leader. The Nocturne house rhythm section of Jimmy Rowles, Harry Babasin and Roy Harte returned, and Bud's ex-boss Shorty Rogers provided the second horn. Shorty, moreover, supplied all six of the album's tunes: 'Shank's Pranks', 'Casa de Luz', 'Lotus Bud', 'Left Bank', 'Jasmine' and 'Just a Few'. Two of the tunes, 'Shank's Pranks' and 'Lotus Bud', were minor hits at the time; 'Shank's Pranks' features a bright, catchy tune based on diverging lines, while 'Lotus Bud' is a beautiful ballad with an engaging alto flute solo by Shank. Rogers, by the way, plays flugelhorn on all numbers, imparting a dusky coloration that blends well with both alto sax and alto flute.

As national interest began to focus on the Los Angeles jazz scene, sparked by the growing controversy over 'West Coast jazz' in the trade press, recording activity in the area grew apace. By 1954, a seemingly endless stream of albums issued by both independent and major labels gushed forth from the Coast. Some of the artists represented certainly would not have considered themselves West Coast jazzmen, but were recorded under the banner none the less. Stan Getz, for example, formed a quintet with Bob Brookmeyer in 1953 which, although often on tour, was headquartered in Los Angeles and recorded prolifically there for Norman Granz's Norgran label. Two tunes from their first Norgran album, 'Crazy Rhythm' and 'Willow Weep for Me', became jazz equivalents of hits. 'Crazy Rhythm' is highlighted by some improvised contrapuntal lines by Getz and Brookmeyer of the type that would become the group's trademark. 'Willow' features Stan in his most lovely ballad style. Whether or not they were true West Coast jazzmen, Getz's cool, Lestorian tenor and Brookmeyer's genial valve-trombone certainly fit in well with the West Coast sound. An album taped at a pair of concerts held in LA's Shrine Auditorium in November 1954 (but unfortunately long out-of-print) gives the best idea of the alchemy that existed between the two. Getz and Brookmeyer, backed by pianist Johnny Willams, bassist Bill Anthony and drummer Art Mardigan or Frank Isola, romp through up-tempo numbers like 'Open Country', 'It Don't Mean a Thing' and 'Feather Merchant', and play at their lyrical best on ballads like 'Polka dots and Moonbeams' and 'We'll be Together Again'.

Earlier that year Maynard Ferguson recorded the first of many albums for Mercury records' subsidiary label, Emarcy. This was an octet session with Maynard on trumpet or valve-trombone; Herbie Harper on trombone; Bud Shank, Bob Cooper and Bob Gordon on alto, tenor and bari saxes; and a rhythm section of Russ Freeman, Curtis Counce and Shelly Manne. The arrangements by Willie Maiden were in the by now familiar West Coast style, and so Maynard - whose trumpet style is anything but cool - became allied in the public's mind with the West Coast jazzmen. A contrapuntal version of 'The Way You Look Tonight' is the album's up-tempo swinger, while both 'Over the Rainbow' and 'All God's Children Got Rhythm' feature Ferguson's patented stratospheric trumpet range.

Another West Coast musician to come into prominence at the time was altoist Lennie Niehaus. Niehaus, born in St Louis on 11 June 1929, moved to LA at the age of seven. He had a very thorough grounding in music theory, including a BA in music from Los Angeles State, and had played for Jerry Wald and Stan Kenton before being drafted. Discharged in 1954, he returned to LA and began playing casuals around town. Niehaus happened to sit in with Shorty Rogers one night at The Haig. Shelly Manne was so impressed he mentioned the altoist to Les Koenig, and Niehaus was promptly signed to a contract with Contemporary records. He recorded his first album less than a month later, in July 1954.

The first of many Lennie Niehaus albums for Contemporary featured a quintet composed of Niehaus, Jack Montrose and Bob Gordon on alto, tenor and baritone saxes, Monty Budwig on bass, and Shelly Manne on drums. Four standards ('I'll Take Romance', 'You Stepped Out of a Dream', 'I Remember You', 'Day by Day') and four originals ('Bottoms Up', 'Whose Blues', 'Prime Rib', 'Inside Out') were all scored by Niehaus, and his formal training is quite evident - perhaps too evident. The writing is highly contrapuntal; even the rhythm-section parts are largely written. The altoist also gets the bulk of the solo space and ona ten-inch LP there isn't that much space to go around. The result is a one-man showcase for the leader, whose talent is large indeed, but not large enough to support such a burden.

Niehaus is an accomplished altoist, with an awesome technique and a seemingly inexhaustible storehouse of ideas, but his work on the Contemporary albums is somewhat lacking in emotion; a listener soon longs for the earthy, blues-tinged soul of a Parker or Sonny Criss. The one number in which the players let their hair down is the up-tempo 'Whose Blues', which features an exchange between the three saxophonists. Bob Gordon's surging baritone is especially impressive here.

A second album taped a month later expands the instrumentation to an octet by adding trumpeter Stu Williamson, valve trombonist Bob Enevoldsen, and pianist Lou Levy. The remaining players are all hold-overs from the first session. Again there are eight tunes, including four originals ('Figure 8', 'Patti-Cake', 'Night Life' and 'Seaside'). No new ground is covered or even attempted, and many of the faults of the first album are exacerbated by the increased instrumentation. Even more than the first, this is a writer's album, as three more potential soloists vie for the same limited space. Again, it's largely Niehaus supported by a seven-piece ensemble, and again his playing is technically adroit and emotionally bland. Shortly after this album was taped Niehaus rejoined Kenton, although he continued to record albums for Contemporary - largely in the same vein as those mentioned above - for several years.

Another composer-arranger whose work was superficially similar to that of Lennie Niehaus was tenor saxophonist Jack Montrose. Montrose's background was very similar to that of Niehaus. Born 30 December 1928 in Detroit, Michigan, Montrose attended high school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and like Niehaus - took his BA in music at Los Angeles State. Montrose was with Jerry Gray's band in 1953 and played with Art Pepper in 1954. Like Niehaus, Montrose favored contrapuntal rather than vertical writing, but Montrose usually managed to breathe a little more individuality into his scores; there is less of the and feel of the classroom in his writing.

Jack Montrose's first major writing assignment was for a Chet Baker ensemble album cut for Pacific jazz in December 1953. The seven-piece ensemble consisted of Baker, Herb Geller on alto and tenor saxes, Montrose on tenor, Bob Gordon on baritone, and a rhythm section of Russ Freeman, Joe Mondragon and Shelly Manne. Montrose arranged all eight tunes for the session, including three standards ('Moonlight Becomes You', 'Little Old Lady' and 'Goodbye') and five originals ('Ergo', 'Bockhanal', 'Headline', 'A Dandy Line' and 'Prodefunctus'). Although the writing does tend to get over-elaborate at times, Montrose allows plenty of room for blowing (given the space limitations of a ten-inch LP). Chet Baker, of course, gets the majority of the solo space, but none of the other musicians is relegated solely to a supporting role. The two best performances are on the up-tempo 'Bockhanal' and 'A Dandy Line'. 'Bockhanal' is a blues with two equal but complementary melody fines, in the manner of Charlie Parker's 'Chasin' the Bird'.

Montrose quickly became house arranger for Pacific Jazz, writing for a variety of artists and instrumentations in the next few years. He supplied the arrangements and played for Bob Gordon's debut album, Meet Mr. Gordon, recorded in June 1954. In fact Montrose and Gordon were close friends as well as extremely compatible players, and the baritone saxophonist appeared on all of the albums which Montrose arranged until Gordon's tragic death in a car accident in 1955. We'll examine three of these albums in upcoming chapters, including one that featured trumpeter Clifford Brown supported by a contingent of West Coast jazzmen.

The years 1953 and 1954 were pivotal ones for jazz in Los Angeles. As 1953 opened, the Gerry Mulligan Quartet and the Lighthouse All-Stars were just beginning to attract national attention, and Shorty Rogers had yet to record his second album. By December 1954, the Los Angeles jazz scene had received international scrutiny, and musicians who had been obscure sidemen a short two years before had achieved national reputations and lucrative recording contracts. For good or ill and in retrospect it seems largely ill - West Coast jazz had become a catchphrase in the jazz press. And as is so often the case, writers who had initially heralded the new style quickly became satiated and switched to being vehement detractors. When the Gerry Mulligan Quartet made their first trip north to San Francisco in late 1952, Ralph J. Gleason - at the time West Coast editor of Down Beat - wrote, 'The Gerry Mulligan Quartet is certainly the freshest and most interesting sound to come out of jazz in a long time.’ [Down beat, September 9, 1953, p. 15] But by September 1953, some critics were having second thoughts. Nat Hentoff, in his 'Counterpoint' column in Down Beat, was moved to ask:

But was the quartet really that brilliantly original? Weren't the chords more barbershop harmony than anyone except a few musicians publicly noted? Was the counterpoint that contrapuntal or was that revived praiseword used quite loosely at times? And don't the records - some of them - sound kind of dull on rehearing? As one who lauded the group loudly at initial hearings, I'm just wondering. Anyone for reflection? [Down Beat May 19, 1954, p. 16]

Many of the critics seemed annoyed at the attention given the West Coast musicians. Chet Baker won the Down Beat readers' poll for best trumpet in 1953 and 1954, which particularly incensed some writers, although he had won the critics' own New Star Award in the same magazine in 1953. Nat Hentoff observed (with some justification) that '... Baker certainly is a rewarding soloist. But I cannot get particularly excited about [his] present work. When there are giants in the land like Dizzy Gillespie, I marvel at Chet winning polls."' But of course Chet Baker could hardly be blamed for the voting preferences of Down Beat readers. Years later, a bemused Baker would took back on the vagaries of his youthful popularity with irony:

I feel right now [1977] I can play twice as good as I could play when I won the Down Beat poll. And right now I'm twenty-second or something. I'm twice as good now as I was then, so the whole thing is kind of dumb. Yeah I played some nice things on that first Gerry Mulligan album. It was a different style - soft, melodic. I think people were wanting and needing something like that and it just happened that at the time I came along with it and it caught on. But I don't think I was one-half the trumpet player that Dizzy was, or Kenny Dorham. Clifford was around then, Jesus Christ! So it just didn't make sense to me that I should have won the poll. It was kind of a temporary fad kind of thing that was bound to work itself out. [Quoted by Bob Rosenblum in notes to Artists House 9411]

In the meantime, as the critics were arguing the respective merits of the white upstarts from the West Coast versus the established black jazz stars of New York City, a group of Los Angeles-based musicians were serving up a harder style of jazz in relative obscurity. Most of their achievements would not be recognized until years later, but the foundations were firmly laid in 1954.

Chapter 6, Robert Gordon, Jazz West Coast

With his writings in this chapter and subsequently in Chapter 7, Bob Gordon convincingly makes the case for the Los Angeles-based Jazz that was overlooked when, for the most part, critics largely based in New York City turned the Jazz styles being played on both coasts in the 1950s into a competition by implying that somehow the styles of Jazz offered by the likes of Gerry Mulligan, Shorty Rogers and Dave Brubeck was somehow, by its nature, less-than-worthy.

They asserted that the abundant sunshine, Hawaiian shirts and healthy, outdoor-based California lifestyle was certainly no match for the smelly, dank cellars [aka “Jazz clubs"] and heavily populated, more cosmopolitan New York cityscape as a breeding ground for creating the only True Jazz.

I’ll leave the obvious racial connotations out of this comparison and as to the balmy description of California, these critics obviously had not read Mark Twain’s description of San Francisco to wit: “The coldest winter I ever spent was the summer I spent in San Francisco.”

To the musicians on the Los Angeles Jazz Scene of the 1950’s, such journalistic categorizations were little more than derisive slurs prompting the universally esteemed drummer, Shelly Manne, to occasionally conclude a set by announcing: “Richie Kamuca on tenor saxophone from Philadelphia, PA, Joe Gordon on trumpet from Boston, MA, Russ Freeman on piano from Chicago, IL, Monty Budwig on bass from Pender, NE and me, Shelly Manne from New York City, and we play ‘West Coast Jazz!’”

Looking back, it all seems such a contrived waste as public listening tastes would soon turn away from Jazz and the surfeit of riches that was the 1950’s Jazz Scene in the

United States

would be gone forever, little helped by all of this essayistic bickering.

But while it lasted, and to help set the record straight, there were some other forms and styles of Jazz being played in Los Angeles during the 1950s and Bob Gordon describes them well in the following chapter entitled:

CALIFORNIA HARD – I

Early in 1954, shortly before Max Roach's contract with the Lighthouse was due to expire, promoter Gene Norman approached the drummer with the offer of a concert tour if Max would form a band. Max readily agreed and his first step was to call New York City. He reached the man he was looking for, a talented young trumpet player named Clifford Brown, and offered him a spot as co-leader of a quintet. Clifford jumped at the opportunity and flew out to Los Angeles as soon as he could wrap things up in New York. Thus was formed one of the most rewarding partnerships in jazz and one of the strongest jazz combos in the history of the music.

Clifford Brown was just beginning to come into his own when he got the call from Max. He was born 30 October 1930 in Wilmington, Delaware, and received his first trumpet at the age of thirteen from his father, a non-professional musician. While in high school, Clifford studied piano and arranging, in addition to playing trumpet in the school band. Following high school Brown first majored in mathematics at Delaware State College, but soon transferred to Maryland State on a music scholarship. There he played and arranged for the fifteen-piece jazz ensemble. While still in his teens Clifford jammed with such major stars as Miles Davis, Fats Navarro and J. J. Johnson in nearby Philadelphia; it was at one of these sessions that he first met and played with Max Roach. Fats Navarro in particular encouraged and influenced the youngster. During this same period, Brown played a one-week gig with Charlie Parker, who was favorably impressed. Things came to an abrupt halt, however, when Clifford was seriously hurt in an automobile accident in June 1950. He was hospitalized for almost a year.

In 1952 and 1953 Brownie (as he was affectionately called by fellow musicians) toured with the rhythm-and-blues outfit of Chris Powell's Blue Flames. He played and recorded with Tadd Dameron in the summer of 1953, then joined Lionel Hampton's big band that August. During a European tour the same autumn, Clifford recorded with some French musicians and fellow members of the Hampton band. Brownie left Hampton in December and was almost immediately hired by Art Blakey (on Charlie Parker's recommendation) for a new group the drummer was forming. Shortly after, on the evening of 21 February 1954, this group recorded an evening's performance at Birdland, and the resulting albums (A Night at Birdland, Volumes 1 & 2, for Blue Note) marked Clifford's arrival as a soloist of the first rank. These same albums convinced Max Roach out on the Coast that Brownie would be the perfect trumpeter for his new group.

The Max Roach-Clifford Brown quintet suffered a few growing pains at first. Sonny Stitt, Roach's first choice as saxophonist, flew out to LA with Clifford, but left the group six weeks later, to be replaced by Teddy Edwards. Pianist Carl Perkins and bassist George Bledsoe filled out the original edition of the quintet. These were the musicians recorded at one of the Gene Norman concerts in April 1954. Despite poor recording quality and some heavy-handed editing of the tenor-sax and piano solos, these sides give a clear indication of the excitement that the team of Brown and Roach could spark. 'All God's Chillun Got Rhythm' showcases Brownie's seemingly inexhaustible stream of ideas at a rapid tempo, and features one of Max Roach's fiery yet melodic drum solos. Unfortunately the solos of both Teddy Edwards and Carl Perkins have been edited to a chorus each. 'Tenderly' is Clifford's solo vehicle, and the mood is very similar to his already famous treatment of 'Once in a While' on the earlier Birdland albums. 'Sunset Eyes' is an original composition of Teddy Edwards, and the tenor saxophonist finally gets a chance to stretch out a little. The final cut from this concert is 'Clifford's Axe', a medium-tempo swinger based on 'The Man I Love' changes. This one is Clifford all the way, sparked by Max's sympathetic yet forceful support. 'Clifford's Axe' gives notice of exciting things to come. These sides were eventually released on a 'Gene Norman Presents' LP.

Between this concert and the group's next recording session, some important personnel changes were to take place. Teddy Edwards left the group, to be replaced by an almost unknown tenor saxophonist named Harold Land. Land, who had been born in Texas and raised in San Diego, brought to the quintet a big-toned tenor sound which complemented Brownie's silvery trumpet lines. Land's induction into the quintet was pure serendipity. He had moved to LA from San Diego earlier the same year and was scuffling between occasional gigs in the time-honored manner. Harold spent much of his all too copious spare time jamming at informal sessions held at the house of another saxophonist, Eric Dolphy. Dolphy, a native Angelino, was the same age as Land (twenty-five) and the practice and jam sessions held at his home were already the stuff of legend among the black Los Angeles musicians. Harold Land remembers what happened next:

Eric Dolphy and I were very close friends, even before I moved to Los Angeles. He'd come down to San Diego and we'd play together, and when I moved up here, we'd go over to his house and have sessions that would last from morning until night, practically - everybody loved to play so much ... one day I was over there playing and Max Roach came by - he'd heard about our all-day sessions. And the next day Max came by with Brownie; they heard me play and asked me if I'd like to be part of their group. And naturally I was just ... I thought it was the best opportunity I'd ever had to that point in my career. [Personal interview with Harold Land, March 10, 1983. All further unreferenced quotations by Harold Land are from this interview.]

About the same time, a new pianist and bassist were added to the group. Richie Powell, the new pianist, was the younger brother of Bud Powell and a family friend of Max Roach. Initially Richie had wanted to take up drums, and as a youth he prevailed upon Roach for help, often dropping by Max's house, before Max was even awake, for lessons. Max finally suggested that Richie take up piano, since an obvious talent for keyboards ran in the family. Richie took the suggestion and soon proved Max right. When the young pianist came through LA with the Johnny Hodges band, he was invited to join Max and Brownie and gladly accepted. The new bassist, George Morrow, was - like Harold Land - a veteran of the Eric Dolphy marathon sessions. With the addition of Land, Powell and Morrow, the classic edition of the Max Roach-Clifford Brown band was realized.

But before the group got the chance to record on its own, Clifford took part in a fascinating collaboration with some of the West Coast musicians. Dick Bock of Pacific Jazz wanted to record the new trumpet star with some of his players, and asked Jack Montrose to write the arrangements for a seven-piece ensemble. Tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims - a native Angelino who had long made his residence in New York City - was on one of his occasional leaves of absence from the Apple and added his distinctive voice to the proceedings. The remaining personnel were all West Coast regulars: Stu Williamson on valve-trombone, Bob Gordon on baritone sax, and the rhythm section of Russ Freeman, Joe Mondragon and Shelly Manne.

Of the three tunes recorded at this session, two - 'Daahoud' and 'Joy Spring' - were originals of Brownie that would soon be recorded by his own quintet. The up-tempo 'Daahoud' features a potent yet relaxed solo by Clifford, who seems to fit in very comfortably with the westerners. Zoot Sims, Stu Williamson and Russ Freeman all have fine solos, no doubt inspired by Brownie's presence. 'Joy Spring', on the other hand, suffers somewhat in comparison with the Roach-Brown version, which would be recorded less than a month later. The tune's line is rather complex, and Jack Montrose's arrangement - with numerous counter-fines - is simply too busy to let the classic purity of Clifford's tune come through. If this bothered Brownie, he didn't let it show in his solo. The third tune recorded at the session was a Jack Montrose composition, 'Finders Keepers'. It sounds more typically West Coast-ish, and perhaps for that reason the solos by Brown and Zoot Sims are quite laid-back.

The second Pacific Jazz session took place just a month later, on 13 August, with but one personnel change: Carson Smith in on bass. Again, Brownie contributed two originals, but this time there were also two standards. 'Gone with the Wind' features driving solos by Bob Gordon, Zoot Sims and Brownie. Montrose's arrangement of 'Blueberry Hill' moves between 3/4 and 4/4 time, but has straight-ahead blowing on the solos by Clifford, Stu Williamson and Gordon. Brownie's two originals - neither of which was ever recorded by the quintet - are 'Bones for Jones' and 'Tiny Capers'. Both feature solos by Brownie, Zoot Sims and Russ Freeman. The arrangement and solos on 'Tiny Capers' are especially impressive (it has often been anthologized on Pacific jazz collections) and 'Capers' vies with 'Daahoud' as the best side of the collaboration.

Between the two Pacific jazz sessions, however, came the momentous first studio recordings of the Max Roach-Clifford Brown quintet. These recordings announced the arrival of one of the decade's outstanding jazz units and are basic to any library of modem jazz. Brownie and Max had signed with Emarcy, a jazz subsidiary of the Mercury label, and their first recording session took place on 2 August 1954. It would be a hectic month, with seven recording sessions (including the second Pacific Jazz date) taking place in less than two weeks. The band recorded three tunes on 2 August. 'Delilah', a Victor Young composition from the score of the movie Samson and Delilah, has Max supporting the group with mallets, in keeping with the Middle Eastern flavor of the tune. The solos, however, are straight jazz. 'Darn that Dream' is a solo vehicle for Harold Land. 'Parisian Thoroughfare', written by Richie Powell's older brother Bud, features an 'American in Paris' introduction and coda, but again the solos are hard-swinging jazz.

Three more recording sessions followed hard on the heels of the first. On 3 August, the group recorded Duke

Jordan

's 'Jordu', a version of 'Sweet Georgia Brown' entitled 'Sweet Clifford' and 'Ghost of a Chance', a solo feature for Brownie.

'Jordu' proved to be especially popular, and soon became a staple in jam sessions. The next session, on 6 August, finally saw the quintet recording the definitive versions of Brownie's 'Joy Spring' and 'Daahoud'; both show Clifford at his lyrical best. The third tune, 'Milama', features an awe-inspiring flight by Brownie and an intense drum solo by Max. Finally, on 10 August, the quintet recorded swinging versions of 'Stompin' at the Savoy' and 'I Get a Kick Out of You', and the rhythm section taped a trio version of 'I'll String Along'.

With enough numbers on tape to fill two LPs, the quintet could afford a rest, but the Emarcy officials - no doubt impressed by the group's productivity - scheduled two additional informal sessions. The first, held the following day (11 August), was a collaboration between the two co-leaders and some impressive local talent. Altoists Herb Geller and Joe Maini and tenor saxophonist Walter Benton joined forces with Clifford and a rhythm section of pianist Kenny Drew, bassist Curtis Counce and Max. Four extended performances were recorded; each would fill one entire side of a twelve-inch album. There were two up-tempo numbers ('Caravan' and 'Coronado') and two ballads ('Autumn in New York' and 'You Go to My Head'). 'Caravan', taken at an especially breakneck speed, shows off the chops of the locals (Clifford's and Max's are taken for granted). Herb Geller is particularly impressive in a Birdlike flight, and Walter Benton and Joe Maini negotiate the flying changes with ease. There are equally strong, strong solos on 'Coronado' and the two ballads. These four performances, recorded at the height of the West Coast jazz craze, gave clear notice that LA had its share of more aggressive musicians as well.

The second Emarcy date was a true jam session. It came one day after the second Pacific Jazz session (on 14 August) and featured - in addition to all five members of the Brown-Roach quintet - trumpeters Maynard Ferguson and Clark Terry, Herb Geller, pianist Junior Mance, bassist Keter Betts and singer Dinah Washington. Not all of the musicians were featured on each tune, of course. Enough numbers were recorded to fill two LPs, jam Session and Dinah jams. Particularly impressive is the trumpet duel featuring all three trumpeters on a blistering 'Move'. Dinah Washington more than holds her own in the fast company and manages to invest ballads such as 'Darn that Dream' with more than a hint of the blues.

Finally, on 30 August, the quintet capped off a hectic month by recording one more Gene Norman concert. The group recorded four tunes from their working repertoire, 'Jordu', 'Parisian Thoroughfare', 'I Get a Kick Out of You' and “I Can't Get Started'. By this time the personnel of the quintet was firmly fixed, and the performances show the confidence that comes from working together night after night. As had been the case with the earlier concert tapes, there is some editing of solos, but Harold Land's gutsy solo on 'Parisian Thoroughfare' is here in full. All of Brownie's solos are left intact, of course, and again one can only wonder at the endless stream of ideas that flow from his horn.

Shortly following this second Gene Norman live date, the quintet moved permanently back to the East Coast. They were headquartered in Philadelphia, near Brownie's Wilmington home, although they were on the road much of the time. There were numerous additional recordings for Emarcy, but all took place in New York and so are beyond the scope of this book. Two major events in the group's short-lived history need to be noted, though. In November 1955 during an engagement in Chicago, Harold Land was called home to Los Angeles on family business. Sonny Rollins happened to be in Chicago at the time, on one of his sabbaticals from the jazz scene, and Max invited him to fill the vacant tenor chair. This resulted in an even stronger unit, for although Harold Land was a major voice, he was still growing at the time, and Sonny Rollins was quite simply the best tenor sax in jazz in the mid-fifties. Tragically, the revamped group had only a short time left in its existence. On 27 June 1956 the car carrying Clifford Brown, Richie Powell and Richie's wife skidded off a rain-slick portion of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, killing all three. Max Roach carried on - Kenny Dorham filled in for Brownie for a time, to be followed by another rising young trumpet star, Booker Little - but it was years before Max could bring himself to play any of Clifford's tunes. Brownie's voice was stilled just as he was reaching full maturity, and we will never know what he - or the quintet could have accomplished if he had been given the time.

The Max Roach-Clifford Brown group was, while it lasted, one of the finest examples of a style that came to be called post-bop or hard bop. As the names imply, this style was a successor to bebop, and its practitioners favored a harder, more aggressive approach to jazz. In large part, hard bop was a reaction to the excesses of the cool and West Coast styles, a deliberate attempt to regain some of the fire and emotion that had been lost in the more esoteric experiments. The year 1954 proved to be seminal for this approach. As had been the case with the first statements of cool jazz in 1948 and 1949, the idea seemed to be 'in the air', and several groups, working independently, came up with similar ideas. There were the Art Blakey recordings at Birdland in February, of course, and the subsequent formation of the Roach-Brown quintet. In April (the month of the first Roach-Brown recordings) Miles Davis led a group into the Prestige recording studios in New York for an historic session. There the musicians (Miles, J. J. Johnson, Lucky Thompson, Horace Silver, Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke) recorded extended performances of 'Walkin" and 'Blue W Boogie'. And late in the year Art Blakey recorded some equally important performances for Blue Note with his new group, the first edition of the jazz Messengers. The group had Kenny Dorham on trumpet, Hank Mobley on tenor, Horace Silver on piano and Doug Watkins on bass, and the recordings they made in November 1954 and February of the following year - including 'Doodlin", 'The Preacher', 'Stop Time' and 'Hippy' - quickly gained stature as prototypes of the new style. By the beginning of 1955 the battle lines were firmly drawn, and for the remainder of the decade it became a staple (if not cliché ) of jazz criticism to contrast the East Coast hard boppers with the more laid-back West Coast jazz musicians.

There were, however, players on both coasts who stubbornly refused to be so conveniently pigeonholed. The years 1955 to 1957 saw an explosion (albeit a rather muffled one) of harder swinging music in California, although there was little recognition of this at the time. The musicians who favored this approach were, for the most part, poorly received by club owners and recording executives, and their jobs were few and far between. When they did get a chance to record, their albums were largely ignored by the influential East Coast critics. Despite all these handicaps, these Underground musicians (as Leonard Feather would later so aptly tag them) produced a body of work whose importance is only now coming to be fully recognized.

It would of course be wrong to think of this Underground as a monolithic body. Many of the musicians discussed here recorded with representatives of the West Coast style, and often the difference between a 'hard' or 'cool' approach to jazz was a matter of degree, not kind. Herb Geller, to cite one instance, was a member of the Lighthouse All-Stars for a time, and had played variously with such 'West Coasters' as Shorty Rogers and Chet Baker. Nevertheless, his alto work was basically more impassioned (especially during this period) than that of players like Lennie Niehaus or Bud Shank, as his work on the Clifford Brown session mentioned above shows.

Herb Geller was a rarity among West Coast musicians: a native Los Angelino. He was born 2 November 1928, and started out on saxophone at age eight, later adding clarinet and piano to his studies. At an early age he heard and was influenced by Benny Carter, although Charlie Parker later cast his spell on the youngster, as he did with most saxophonists coming of musical age in the forties. Geller's first professional job was with violinist Joe Venuti in 1946, and he later played in the bands of Jimmy Zito, Jack Fina, Lucky Millinder, Jerry Wald and Claude Thornhill. While with Thornhill in 1950, Geller settled briefly in New York, where he met and married pianist Lorraine Walsh. The Gellers returned to California in 1951, where Herb worked briefly with Billy May and then joined Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse crew in 1952.

Lorraine Walsh Geller was also an important musician, born in Portland, Oregon on 11 September 1928. Her first professional job was with Anna Mae Winburn's Sweethearts of Rhythm. Later she settled in New York, where she worked briefly with Jerry Wald and in a duo with bassist Bonnie Wetzel. Moving to Los Angeles with Herb, she played occasional gigs with Shorty Rogers, Maynard Ferguson and Zoot Sims. In 1954 the Gellers formed their own quartet, which they managed to keep together on an intermittent basis until Lorraine's tragically early death in 1958.

Two albums cut by the Gellers for Emarcy in late 1954 and early 1955 showcase their styles. On the first, Herb and Lorraine are joined by card-carrying members of the LA Underground, Curtis Counce and Lawrence Marable. Counce, born in Kansas City, Missouri on 23 January 1926, took up bass at an early age and started touring with the Nat Towles band at the age of fifteen. In 1954 he settled in Los Angeles, where he studied composition with Lyle (Spud) Murphy and worked with Edgar Hayes. In his early years in California Counce played briefly with Benny Carter, Wardell Gray, Billy Eckstine and a visiting Bud Powell. Counce was one of the first black musicians to break into the ranks of the largely white studio musicians, and from 1954 to 1956 he was the bassist in Shorty Rogers's Giants. Lawrence Marable, another Los Angeles native, was born on 21 May 1929. A distant relative of the legendary bandleader Fate Marable, Lawrence was largely self-taught on drums. From 1947 on, Marable was a mainstay of Central Avenue rhythm sections, making jazz time with Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Stan Getz, Hampton Hawes and Zoot Sims, among others.

The first album of the Gellers, a ten-inch LP, stands in marked contrast to the contemporaneous albums of altoist Lennie Niehaus. This is a blowing session, plain and simple, and everyone gets a chance to stretch out. Herb Geller exhibits a penchant for picking tunes that are surprising but welcome additions to the jazz library. Leroy Anderson's 'Sleigh Ride', taken at a breakneck pace, is one such vehicle, and No& Coward's ballad 'A Room with a View' is another. Lorraine Geller would later name her solo on the album's 'Alone Together' as a personal favorite, and everybody shines on an up-tempo version of 'You Stepped out of a Dream'.

In May 1955 the Gellers returned to the Emarcy studios with a new rhythm section. Red Mitchell and Mel Lewis were just beginning to make names for themselves at this time. Keith Mitchell was born on 20 September 1927 in New York City. His first instruments were piano and alto sax, but he soon switched to bass. He began playing professionally in the late forties, gigging around town with Jackie Paris and Charlie Ventura. In 1949 he joined Woody Herman and toured with the Herd until 1951. Hospitalized for over a year with tuberculosis in 1951, he returned to the scene with Red Norvo in 1952 and later played with Gerry Mulligan, staying behind in California when Mulligan left for New York. Mel Lewis was born Melvin Sokoloff in Buffalo, New York on 10 May 1929. He was trained by his father, a professional drummer, and like Lawrence Marable, made his professional debut at the age of fifteen. He honed his trade in the big bands of Boyd Raeburn, Alvino Rey, Ray Anthony and Tex Beneke. Lewis joined Stan Kenton in 1954, touring with him until 1956, when he settled in Los Angeles to freelance.

This second Herb Geller album is every bit as swinging as the first, and the added space made available on a twelve-inch LP allows plenty of room for stretching out. Highlights include Geller's slashing Birdlike alto on 'Arapahoe' (as one would suspect, a workout on 'Cherokee' changes) and his blues-drenched work on 'Come Rain or Come Shine'. Lorraine is particularly impressive on 'Love', a tour de force for unaccompanied piano. Herb Geller's compositional abilities are evident on 'The Answer Man', 'Patterns' and 'Two of a Kind'. Each of these tunes is a true original; none uses 'standard' chord changes. All of the performances display a rhythmic thrust that is a far cry from the blandness of some of the West Coast studio recordings.

Joe Maini, the altoist who appeared with Herb Geller on the Clifford Brown All-Stars date, was also an exponent of the Charlie Parker school. Maini in fact was one of those jazzmen who came up in the forties and patterned not only his music but, unfortunately, his whole lifestyle on Parker. Born 8 February 1930

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