Woody Herman, "Road Father" - Three Appreciations

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

There is an old admonition that states: “If you can’t say or write something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.”

When that someone is Woody Herman, saying something nice is never a problem.

Woody was one of the most beloved musicians in the history of Jazz. He was good to everyone and nearly everyone who entered his beneficent realm did their utmost to be good to him.

Over the half a century that he led his big bands and small groups, Woody became known to a host of young musicians whom he helped begin their careers in the Jazz World as the “Road Father.”

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to remember the Road Father on these pages with appreciations by three distinguished writers that more-or-less cover the beginnings, middle years and closing years of Woody’s career.

George T. Simon

Woody Herman

The Big Bands, 4th Ed.

New York: Schirmer Books, 1981

"HE'S a clean-cut-looking lad with a nice smile that should attract the dancers; he sings very nicely and plays good clarinet, both attributes that command musical respect, and he's very much of a gentleman and real all-around nice guy whom you'd like to know even better off the stand."

That's what I wrote about Woody Herman in January, 1937. It was a part of the very favorable review I'd accorded his brand new band at New York's Roseland Ballroom. As the years went by, I realized my wish. I got to know Woody "even better off the stand," very much better, in fact, and discovered, as so many others have during the past thirty years, that this is one of the real pros, both as a performer and as a mature human being. His warmth, his enthusiasm, his intelligence and his integrity—in addition, of course, to his musical taste, talent and perception—have made him one of the most thoroughly successful and popular leaders of all time.

He's always had good bands, and one major reason has been that musicians invariably like to work for him. Nat Pierce, who served as his pianist, arranger and general aide for many years, recently put it this way: "We never feel we're actually working for the man. It's more like working with him. He appreciates what we're doing and he lets us know it. And the guys appreciate him and respect him. So they work all the harder."

Jake Hanna, the superb drummer who, after having played for other leaders, finally blossomed in Woody's band, has this explanation: "Woody's flexible. He goes along with the way the band feels instead of sticking strictly to the book. That makes it always interesting and exciting for us. If a man's really blowing, Woody doesn't stop him after eight bars because the arrangement says so. He lets him keep on wailing."

"Flexible" is the key word here. Woody has managed through the years to adjust himself to the wants, talents and even the personalities of his musicians; yet he has retained their respect so completely that he has rarely had to assert himself as their leader. He has succeeded, too, in adjusting his music to the times, so that during its thirty-year history his band has never sounded old-fashioned even while staying within the bounds of general public acceptance. "I think," he once told writer Gene Lees in Down Beat, "I'm a good organizer and a good editor."

Leonard Feather once wrote: "No name bandleader has ever been better liked by the men who worked for him as well as those for whom he works." That comment reminds me of what happened during the band's initial Roseland date. Woody had both a loud band and high musical ideals. The ballroom manager, a man named Joe Belford, who looked like a Green Bay lineman, used to bellow to the band to play waltzes, rumbas, tangos and sambas, none of which it had in its books and none of which it would have played on principle anyway. Woody handled Joe beautifully. He'd just bust out in a grin, bellow back kiddingly at Belford, tell him to get lost and quit bothering him. And he'd continue playing what he wanted to. So good-natured was Woody's approach, and yet so firm and so positive, that Belford not only took it but became one of the band's biggest fans.”

Doug Ramsey -

Woody Herman 1963: The Swingin’est Band Ever [Verve Records ‎– 314 589 490-2, Philips ‎– PHS 600-065]

Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of Its Makers

Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1989. You can locate more information on this book and how to purchase it by going here.

“Some jazz soloists travel around the country appearing with pickup local rhythm sections. If Woody Herman decided to strike out as a single, in many cities he could put together seventeen-piece bands

composed entirely of his alumni. Legions of musicians have passed through the Herman herds since "The Band That Plays the Blues" was formed in 1936. In New York and Los Angeles Woody could depopulate the studios by recalling the herdsmen.

There are so many Herman graduates in the lounges, pits, clubs, and sound stages of Los Angeles and Las Vegas that in his madder moments Woody dreams a scene DeMilleian in scope. Along the desert highway between the movie capital and the gambling mecca runs a line of horn players interrupted every few miles by a rhythm section, a straight lineup band like the one Herman used to perch on the back bar at the Metropole in New York, but infinite. Woody patrols in a jeep, keeping the time straight and shouting out the number of the next tune.

The Who's Who quality of that imaginary lineup is staggering. Among the trumpeters are Conte and Pete Candoli, Sonny Berman, Bill Chase, Don Ellis, Nat Adderley, Shorty Rogers, Red Rodney, Ernie Royal, Cappy Lewis, Al Porcino; trombonists Bill Harris, Carl Fontana, Bill Watrous, Urbie Green; bassists Oscar Pettiford, Chubby Jackson, Red Mitchell, Red Kelly; pianists Jimmy Rowles, Vince Guaraldi, Lou Levy, Nat Pierce, Dave McKenna; vibraharp-ists Milt Jackson, Terry Gibbs, Red Norvo, Margie Hyams; drummers Dave Tough, Cliff Leeman, Don Lamond, Shelly Manne, Jake Hanna, Chuck Flores; guitarists Chuck Wayne and Billy Bauer; and of course the pantheon of saxophonists, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Herbie Steward, Gene Ammons, Flip Phillips, Al Cohn, Serge Chaloff, Al Belletto, Bill Perkins, Richie Kamuca, Don Lanphere, Sal Nistico, Joe Romano, Frank Tiberi, Leonard Garment. Leonard Garment?...

Herman says he lost track of the number of Third Herds somewhere along the way. I can't recall whether the band still carried that subtitle when the music in this collection was recorded in late 1962. This was a newly formed band, one of the most exciting Woody fronted in the sixties. It had in abundance the qualities Woody is able to impart to seventeen men; vitality, joy, humor, a time feeling that seems to spring from a single pulse and that mysterious artful something that sets Herman apart as a leader.

It had marvelous soloists in Sal Nistico, one of the most exciting of those Italian-American tenor men who keep popping onto the jazz scene from upstate New York; trumpeter Bill Chase and trombonist Phil Wilson, high note specialists who were not only magnificent lead players but trenchant improvisers; and Nat Pierce, a pianist who also has provided some of Herman's most serviceable arrangements over the past two decades. The ensemble sound of this band was unfailingly bright and full. The superb rhythm section was sparked by drummer Jake Hanna, as perfect for this band as was Dave Tough for the First Herd.”

Gary Giddins

Rhythm-a-ning: Jazz Tradition and Innovation in the 80’s

New York: Da Capo Press, 1985

“Woody Herman must be one of the least disliked persons on earth. It isn't just sentimentality. Herman's name is a quality brand, representing craftsmanship, integrity, and receptiveness to new ideas. So when it was announced that Herman—who has been a traveling performer since the age of eight and a bandleader since 1936—was coming off the road to settle in a room of his own (opening night: December 27, 1981), there was considerable hoopla. It was widely assumed that Herman would be delighted to plant his feet on one patch of earth. But Herman is of another school, almost another world.

In the '30s and '40s, musicians roamed the land in herds. Crisscrossing a grid of interstate highways and back roads, corralled in buses, billeted according to celebrity status and race, and developing a collective, arcane wit to complement the music and to fight fatigue, they moved from town to town, ballroom to ballroom, glad for the occasional two-week stay but always ready to pack up after the gig for another long trip. Swing bands, fifteen to twenty strong on the average, were one of the Depression's more unlikely phenomena. Although many were sickly sweet or bland and derivative, more than a few were hot, impetuous, energetic, inventive, and inspired. These were the bands that combined strong leaders, brilliant soloists, adventurous writers, and the best songs of a golden age of song writing. Individual in their style of presentation as well as in their music, they coexisted in an atmosphere of friendly, if sometimes tension-ridden, competition. The stubbornest road musicians probably got to know America better than any of its other citizens, certainly than any of its other artists. But few were either stubborn or strong enough to survive the social and economic changes that followed World War II. And only two—Count Basie and Woody Herman—were also both gifted and lucky enough to survive into the '80s. They are as obsolete as buffalo, and just as grand. …

Herman occupies a unique place among the handful of great bandleaders who survived the era that gave them life. Ellington is beyond time, and Ellingtonia is a language unto itself; Basie employs a variety of writers (including a few Herman alumni) but invariably stamps them with the Basie signature. Herman's Herds, however, have served in the role of a Greek chorus, commenting on, interpreting, and reworking the changes in jazz. Herman keeps up with fashions yet refuses to succumb to their excesses. His bands have been as distinct from one another as they have been from other outfits, but they've all been governed by Herman's sense of taste, proportion, and adventure. He disdains fusion and is appalled when gifted musicians leave his band to play sound tracks and jingles or compromise their individuality to play trash. He didn't stay on the road 46 years to compromise.”

The Forgotten Ones - Leo Parker by Gordon Jack

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

The following feature first appeared in the November 2015 edition of JazzJournal. You can locate more information about the magazine by going here.

Just like Cecil Payne, Sahib Shihab, Gary Smulyan and many others Leo Parker began on the alto saxophone before eventually switching to the baritone which became his instrument of choice. Born on the 18th. April 1925 in Washington D.C. he studied the alto in high-school and Sonny Stitt remembered him playing at local sessions there with Roger ‘Buck’ Hill and Leo Williams.

By 1944 he was living in New York and sitting-in at Minton’s with among others Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Max Roach. It was because of his appearances at the club that he was invited to take part in what is considered to be the first bebop recording date on the 16th. February 1944 for the Apollo label. Coleman Hawkins was the leader and he was keen to record with some of the younger musicians like Gillespie, Roach, Don Byas and Oscar Pettiford. He told Budd Johnson who played baritone on the date and was responsible for some of the arrangements, “I want to see what these cats are doing. What better way to do it than to get them together on a record date?” A twelve-piece group recorded three titles including the premier of Woody’n You and six days later they did Disorder At The Border, Feeling Zero and Rainbow Mist. The latter was Hawkins’s fresh look at Body And Soul and although Parker does not solo on either session, his presence reveals how highly he was rated by his peers.

Later that year he joined the trail-blazing Billy Eckstine band eventually sitting in a section with Sonny Stitt, John Jackson and Dexter Gordon who were known as “The Unholy Four” possibly because of their extra-musical activities. Jackson is a somewhat obscure figure now but he was a well-respected lead alto man at the time. Gordon told Ira Gitler in Jazz Masters Of The ‘40s, “The band was a little rough. I thought the reed section was the best - the most cohesive and the most together.” Initially Leo played second alto (Charlie Parker – no relation - was very briefly there on lead) but when Rudy Rutherford left, Eckstine bought him a baritone and persuaded him to make the switch.

He left the Eckstine band in 1946 and in March of that year he worked at the Spotlite club first with Benny Carter and then with Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy’s group (Milt Jackson, Al Haig, Ray Brown and Stan Levey) had been appearing in Los Angeles with Charlie Parker. On their return to New York, Charlie had stayed on the west coast so Leo was selected to take his place on baritone. In an interview for JJ (September 1999) Stan Levey told me, “Leo was a very good player. He got all over the horn and had all of Bird’s licks down but he died much too young”.

His first recorded baritone solo took place two months later on a Sarah Vaughan date with a string section and a small group featuring Bud Powell, Freddie Webster and Kenny Clarke. Tadd Dameron did the arrangements which included his classic If You Could See Me Now and Leo is heard on My Kinda Love. In January 1947 he recorded four sides with Fats Navarro for Savoy where he proved to be a fluent and mature soloist with a big sound that owed something to Harry Carney and a conception that owed everything to Charlie Parker. Indeed, in a Metronome interview that year with Barry Ulanov he said, “I learned to blow from Charlie Parker”. One of the titles –Ice Freezes Red – was dedicated to “Ice” – an ardent Eckstine fan and “Red” - Eckstine’s valet. It is a Navarro original based on Indiana, notable for a Bebop quote from Parker.

1947 was the year he joined Illinois Jacquet who had just signed an exclusive recording contract with RCA. The Jacquet group who appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1948 was one of the most popular in the country. He remained with the band off and on until 1954 and Illinois was once asked if his approach had influenced Parker’s playing, “Yes, I think so but remember that Leo was one of the leaders of the bop school so he had that thing going too.”  The tenor-man also claimed that Leo was one of his favourite soloists – “He had big ears. You couldn’t play anything that would get past him”. Joe Newman who was in the band was similarly impressed, “Leo Parker was undoubtedly the best baritone player I had heard at that time. He didn’t sound like a baritone. He played it like a tenor more or less and he had such fire in him whatever he played. Plus he played good ballads.” Leo had numerous solos with the band – Jumpin’ At The Woodside, Music Hall Beat, Diggin’ The Count, Embryo, Mutton Leg, Symphony In Sid, For Truly, Saph and Jivin’ With Jack The Bellboy. The latter recorded in January 1947 included Miles Davis who had just left Billy Eckstine. He was in the section but does not solo.

Three months after Bellboy was recorded Parker was booked into Smalls Paradise in Harlem for a “Battle of the Baritone Sax” with Serge Chaloff who was working with Georgie Auld at the time. Miles and Hal Singer were on the bill and the rhythm section included Jimmy Butts and Art Blakey. There is a mystery concerning the pianist whose name on the flyer was Earnie Washington aka “The Mad Genius of the Piano”. There has been speculation over the years that Earnie Washington might have been a pseudonym for Thelonious Monk, or more lightly it was just a typo for Ernie Washington who was active in New York jazz circles in the ‘40s and often played at Smalls.

In 2013 Uptown Records released a previously unknown 1947 Toronto concert by the Jacquet band. The enthusiastic audience can be heard responding to the JATP-style excitement generated by the ensemble and although Parker is given equal billing with the leader he only solos on Music Hall Beat, Lady Be Good, Bottoms Up and Mutton Leg. Illinois’s brother Russell has an effective vocal on a slow, down-home blues – Throw It Out Of Your Mind Baby - the burlesque tempo being a perfect setting for his Jimmy Rushing-style delivery. Russell later worked with Ike and Tina Turner. The dynamic, hard swinging Illinois approach with its rich mixture of bebop and R&B was an ideal environment for Parker. It allowed him to indulge in one of his favourite devices of repeatedly accenting the tonic in the lower register. Dexter Gordon who was Parker’s roommate when they were with Billy Eckstine once said, “Leo could play – lots of bottoms”. This occasionally led to him being dismissed by some critics as merely a crowd-pleasing R&B-style honker.

For most of 1947 Parker was busy in the studios whenever Jacquet was on the road with JATP.  His recording of Mad Lad with Sir Charles Thompson in the late summer helped raise his profile sufficiently for him to start working with his own groups around town. It became his nickname and his inspired performance was something of a hit. In October while working with Gene Ammons in Chicago they recorded four titles for the Aladdin label with Junior Mance who was making his recording debut. His first date as a leader later that month was for Savoy with Ammons again together with Howard McGhee. In December he was featured with Dexter Gordon on the famous Settin’ The Pace Parts 1 & 2, an up-tempo riff based on I Got Rhythm. Leo successfully stands toe to toe with Gordon in the sort of duel the tenor-man had made all his own with both Wardell Gray and Teddy Edwards. Two weeks later a session with Joe Newman, J.J. Johnson and Gordon included Solitude which revealed a tender more lyrical side of his musicality not always apparent when on-stage with Jacquet’s high-energy organization.

After 1948 his career was frequently interrupted by the personal problems that were so common among musicians of his generation.  A 1957 Nat Hentoff survey of 409 NYC jazz musicians found that 16% were regular heroin users and over half smoked marijuana. He continued working intermittently around NYC, Washington and Chicago and in 1953 his booking office – Universal Attractions – placed the following item in Down Beat’s Band Directory: “Leo Parker, after a short recent stint with Gene Ammons is now out on his own with a six-piece group playing many R&B locations, one-niters and some clubs.  Band is gutty, frenetic and features Oscar Pettiford’s brother Ira on bass and trumpet”.

The following year he recorded with Bill Jennings who had worked extensively with Louis Jordan but nothing else is known of his activities for the remainder of the ‘50s. His friend pianist John Malachi who had worked with him in the Eckstine band said that he carried on playing possibly in some R&B venues, but he was certainly not forgotten by his fellow performers. In 1956 Leonard Feather interviewed several leading musicians for his Encyclopaedia Yearbook of Jazz asking them to nominate their favourite instrumentalists.  Erroll Garner, Bud Powell and Lester Young all listed Parker on baritone.  He was hospitalised with lung problems for a while and he may have toured Europe with Ray Charles around 1960 but I have been unable to confirm this.

He managed to get his career back on track thanks to Ike Quebec who arranged for him to make two Blue Note albums in 1961 which find him in top form.  Let Me Tell You ‘Bout It (by Robert Lewis) and Low Brown (by Yusef Salim) reflect a sixties soul-influence without laying it on too thick but a highlight is TCTB aka Taking Care Of  The Business. A theme-less up-tempo romp on Sweet Georgia Brown it has Leo and tenor-man Bill Swindell storming through a series of exciting choruses in the free-wheeling manner of his 1947 date with Dexter Gordon.

He started getting brief club engagements again and things seemed to be improving for him. However on the 11th. February 1962 after arranging a further recording session with Blue Note he returned to his hotel where he suffered a heart attack and died while running a bath.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

As Leader

Leo Parker 1947-1950 (Classics 1203)

Legendary Bop, Rhythm & Blues Classics (Essential Media 94231 33512)

Rollin’ With Leo (Blue Note 50999 2 65140 2 4)

Let Me Tell You ‘Bout It (Blue Note 0946 3 11491 2 2)

The Last Sessions (Phono 870337)

As Sideman

Sir Charles Thompson (Delmark CD DD-450)

Illinois Jacquet: Toronto 1947 (Uptown UPCD 27.73)

Dexter Gordon: 1947-1952 (Classics 1295)

Bill Jennings: Architect Of Soul Jazz (Fresh Sound FSR-CD 816)

LALO = BRILLIANCE By GENE LEES

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

Thanks to his work as a Jazz composer, movie score writer for many of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films and writer of a series of TV themes including the one for the Mission Impossible series, Lalo Schifrin has achieved an iconic stature.

And deservedly so.

He has been a creatively consistent force in popular music at the highest level for over 60 years.

But most people don’t remember that it all began when Dizzy Gillespie took a chance on him when he was playing piano with Xavier Cugart and was largely unknown in Jazz circles.

In the following story, Gene Lees explains how it all began for Lalo. It’s a wonderful story and it couldn’t happen to a nicer person.

"BECAUSE Dizzy Gillespie is infinitely unpredictable (he has given up his northbound trumpet for a straight model, just when the world was getting —' used to the unorthodox horn), the music business has learned not to be surprised by his surprises.

Thus, when word went around the business last year that Gillespie had hired Xavier Cugat's pianist, the standard response was, "Well, that's Birks for you."

But as usual, Gillespie knew more than people knew he knew. Certainly in this case he knew precisely what he was doing. The association of pianist and arranger Lalo Schifrin with the Gillespie quintet has proved one of the trumpeter's most fruitful of recent years. So close is the collaboration that Gillespie compares it to that of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington.

Schifrin was not, of course, Cugat's pianist at any time. A young freelance arranger working in New York, he had contributed arrangements to Cugat's book. And at that, they weren't standard Cugat arrangements. Schifrin added a distinct jazz tinge to the Cugat library.

More to the point, Schifrin was, and always had been, a jazz musician. Though he was born in Argentina, he had worked consistently with jazz groups, in his native country and in France.

Gillespie also knew this about Schifrin: he had studied composition with the noted Latin American 12-tone composer Juan-Carlos Paz, had led a highly successful 16-piece jazz band in his native Buenos Aires, and had taken four first prizes at the Paris Conservatory (in composition, harmony, fugue, and counterpoint). Finally, Schifrin already was working on the now-famous Gillespiana Suite, the idea for which had come to the young Argentinian when he first met Gillespie a few years ago during Dizzy's State Department tour of South America with a big band.

Lalo was a man with a lot of background.

Boris Schifrin  29 years ago (Lalo was a childhood nickname that stuck), he is the son of a musician. His father, Luis, led the second violin section of the Theater Colon Orchestra, one of South America's best symphony organizations, for 30 years.

When he was 10, Lalo started studying piano with a Russian teacher, Andreas Karalis, who had been the head of the Kiev Conservatory until his political convictions made it prudent for him to leave. At 16, Lalo started studying harmony with Juan-Carlos Paz. In the meantime, he was studying sociology and law at the University of Buenos Aires.

"Then I decided it had to be music," he recalled. "So I applied for a scholarship to the Paris Conservatory."

By now he was a draftee in the Argentine army. By luck, he was released from service in time to accept the scholarship and left for the French capital. There he studied with a celebrated disciple of Maurice Ravel.

"In the meantime," Schifrin said, "I was playing with French jazz groups. I played with Bobby Jaspar, who at that time was playing mostly tenor; Jean-Louis Chauton, baritone; Jean-Louis Viale, drums; and Benoit Quersin, the bassist, who now owns the Blue Note night club in Brussels."

He also played at the third International Festival of Jazz in Paris' Salle Pleyel, as a representative of Argentina. That was in 1955. In 1956 he went home to Buenos Aires and formed a 16-piece band. It was his country's first band in what Lalo calls "the Basie-Gillespie tradition."

"I wrote all the arrangements and put together the best musicians in town," Schifrin said. "The band was a big hit, and that we had not expected. We did concerts, radio and TV broadcasts, and dances. We had another book for dances, which I also wrote.

"A few months later, Dizzy came down on that State Department tour. It was the first American band to visit Argentina.

"We played for the musicians in Dizzy's band. The next day Dizzy asked me if I would write something for him. That's when I got the idea to write a Gillespiana suite."

But the time for the suite was not yet.

IN 1957, SCHIFRIN started writing for motion pictures. One of the films for which he did an underscore was called El Jefe, meaning the chief or leader. The score was strictly jazz. For it, he won an Argentine academy award. A ballad from the score also became a pop hit.

The following year, Schifrin picked up his second Argentine academy award, this one for a non-jazz, 12-tone score utilizing the curious sextet instrumentation of violin, viola, cello, tympani, alto saxophone, and baritone saxophone.

Schifrin decided it was time to go to the United States.

Shortly after his arrival in New York City, he put together a trio comprising himself, bassist Eddy DeHaas, and drummer Rudy Collins. Collins is now in the Gillespie quintet with him; he replaced Chuck Lampkin, who has been drafted. The trio played Basin Street East and the Embers. Schifrin also began to do studio arranging.

"It was ironic," he said. "They gave me more Latin American things to write than anything. They evidently couldn't believe I was a jazz musician.

"This was the period when I was writing for Cugat. I did a lot of work for him. There are several albums of my charts. I changed the sound of the band somewhat. Cugat liked it. He told me that all his life he had wanted to do something like it, but the business end of it had pushed him to do other things.

"All this time I had been carrying the idea for the Gillespiana Suite in my head. One day I wrote a sketch of it and took it to Dizzy."

Gillespie not only liked the sketch but also liked Schifrin's playing enough to hire him to replace Junior Mance, who had left the trumpeter.

If Schifrin had changed the sound of the Cugat band somewhat, he also changed that of the Gillespie quintet. After the bluesy sound of Mance, Schifrin's Latin American effects resulted in a considerable change of texture and, to an extent, of rhythmic emphasis.

But there was no clash. "Don't forget," Schifrin points out, "that Dizzy is the composer of Manteca, Lorraine, A Night in Tunisia, and Con Alma. He worked with Chano Pozo years ago. Dizzy has always had a sympathy for Latin American music."

To the listener, it sounds these days as if the group has been heavily Latinized. Sometimes whole sets are made up of Latin tunes, in which Gillespie seems to find even more than his usual freedom. Schifrin claims otherwise: "We've really added only a few Latin things to the book, including the thing we call Safari, which is really African, and the Gillespiana Suite. All the other Latin tunes were in the book before I came."

Rehearsals on the quintet version of Gillespiana began shortly after Schifrin joined the group. "Then Dizzy commissioned me to write it for big band," he said. "That was the original idea anyway.

"We did it in concert with a big band in Carnegie Hall in March, 1961. In fact, I wrote all the arrangements for the concert, including a work called Tunisian Fantasy, which was based on A Night in Tunisia. Of all the works I've written for Dizzy, I was most happy with that one.

"It is a work in three movements. They're called A Night in Tunisia; The Casbah, which is a development on the bridge of the tune; and Tunisian Promenade, which is based on the interlude of the tune. It's really a duet for trumpet and bass with orchestra.

"The whole concert was recorded, but it hasn't been released yet."

SCHIFRIN continues to write at a furious pace. He has just completed a jazz piano sonata (the Modern Jazz Quartet publishes his music), which Bill Evans will probably record. Schifrin is scheduled himself to record, for Roulette, an extended work for small group, which is to be a choreographic poem, based probably on the Faust legend.

He says there is no nationalism in his use of Latin American rhythms. "I use them for color," he explained. "And they seem to work well with Dizzy.

"I have always had a great sympathy for Dizzy's music — his dramatic conception of both harmony and melody. And he always has been interested in different rhythmic effects. You know, when Dizzy uses Latin American rhythms — like when he's playing the cowbell while Leo Wright is soloing—they're absolutely authentic. He picks them up so easily it's amazing.

"You know, the man is a genius.

"It seems to me that there is enough room in jazz for all possible influences. I've just done a composition for the quintet called Mount Olive, which is based on Middle Eastern rhythms and scales.

"Jazz is music.

"It happens that it is facing certain problems at present. I think most creative musicians today are facing problems.

"Recently we've seen the introduction of Greek modes by young musicians; the use of polytonal harmony along with excursions into the atonal, a field which Lennie Tristano started exploring years ago; polyrhythmic things like Dave Brubeck is doing; different effects of timbre like Gil Evans uses. And there have been other explorations, using classical influences — for example, the music of John Lewis, Gunther Schuller, and J. J. Johnson. Don't overlook J. J. — he's something else as a composer. All of these explorations are having a revolutionary effect on the form of jazz, aiming toward escaping the constant use of simple theme and variations in the old way.

"Of course, there will always be guys who just want to blow. But the writers are becoming more important. They can give the player form and inspiration and support. The first to use that conception was Duke Ellington. For a long time he was alone."

GILLESPIE is of the view that his pianist is likely to be one of the writers contributing much to that development.

"Lalo has improved a lot as a pianist since he joined the group," said the trumpeter, who didn't bother to point out that every musician who has ever worked with him remembers that period of his life as one of great growth under Gillespie's almost off-handed teaching.

"People from other countries," Gillespie said, "they listen to records, get ideas. . . . But it's not the same as playing jazz all the time.

"A couple of things confused Lalo at first. But he's improved enormously, now that he's been here a while."

Lalo is well-schooled in Chopin, Beethoven, and other great classical writers for the keyboard. Yet his approach to jazz piano is quite unclassical, except for his fluency in playing long lines and runs. Sometimes he hammers at the keyboard in a stiff-wristed manner reminiscent of Dave Brubeck's.

He applies Latin American methods to jazz, in a highly personal way. Sometimes he can be heard repeating a left-handed chord in rhythmic unity with the running Latin chords (octaves with fifths, or sometimes fifths and sixths in between) while he is playing at surprising speed with his right. But the ideas are jazz ideas. As often as not, a solo will start with a single line and gradually develop into a powerful and exciting excursion into the Latin toward the end.

All this music comes from a somewhat unkempt, rather serious, and usually confused-looking young man who somehow reminds one of Bill Dana's television character, Jose Jiminez. Unsmiling when you meet him, Schifrin looks as if he'll, never in a million years, know what's happening.

The slightly discombooberated air is probably related to the fact that English is not his native language and he has to listen carefully to it. The subtlety of a joke will pass by when he has first met a person. Later, as his ears become attuned to the acquaintance's speech, his big, easy sense of humor manifests itself. He is a thoroughly cultivated young man of polished tastes, who may be found in intense conversation about Goethe or quoting the poetry of Paul Valery in French.

"Lalo is really something," Gillespie said. "And he hasn't really begun to show people his potential. He won't, until he gets a chance to use strings. He has ideas about strings that will scare you, using them percussively and that sort of thing.

"We're all going to hear a lot more from Lalo."

Source

Down Beat Magazine

April 12, 1962