Remembering Willie Bobo: 1934-1983

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

Picture this; two drummers talking beside a drum kit that’s set-up inside the Professional Drum Shop on Vine Street in Hollywood, CA just across the street from Local 47, the Musicians’ Union.

One drummer sits down at the drum kits and says - “Check this out” whereupon he turns off the snare drum strainer which gives the drum a tom tom sound and proceeds to lay down a wicked timbales Latin beat using that drum and a cow bell that’s mounted to the back of the bass drum.

“Hey, Man, that’s wicked. Where you’d learn that?”

“Willie Bobo.”

“Oh, yeah,” the other drummer says, “let me use the kit” whereupon he sits down behind the drums and used the timbales-sounding snare and the cow bell to play a tight clave beat that sounds like a combination of a mambo and a cha cha.

“Wow. Where’d you pick that up?”

“Willie Bob.”

Back in the day, every self-respecting drummer was expected to have a cow bell mounted on his bass drum and know how to play authentic Latin clave and son clave beats on it.

And not a Farmer John’s cow bell that was salvaged from a barn yard. We’re talkin’ about a finely tempered and tuned musical cow bell - an instrument - that was manufactured to produce a “harmonic sound” that blended in with the music and not the clanging sound produced by the bell cow leading the herd to pasture.

And any self-respecting drummer learned how to play Latin licks on that cow bell by listening to Willie Bobo who was a fixture on timbales with the groups headed-up by Tito Puente, George Shearing and Cal Tjader for much of the 1950s and early 1960s.

Willie was The Main Man; he was the source of cookin’ Latin Jazz and since just about every Jazz combo had some Latin Jazz tunes in their book of arrangements, many Jazz drummers got to trot out their Bobo Bop licks when these tunes were called.

The liner notes to the CD reissue of Spanish Grease and Uno, Dos, Tres - 1*2*3, two albums that Willie recorded for Creed Taylor at Verve in 1965 offer some very illuminating comments about Willie’s career.

“Barely out of his teens, Willie Bobo emerged as one of the finest percussionists of the mambo era, equally adept on bongos, congas, timbales, and trap drums. His all-percussion albums with Tito Puente and Mongo Santamaria still stand as touchstones of the African-Cuban art. Bobo pushed the envelope of early Latin jazz with bandleaders George Shearing, Cal Tjader, and Herbie Mann, and with his own group he helped to pioneer Latin soul and funk in the Sixties, paving the way for the boogaloo craze. In the following decade he became a familiar face to millions of television viewers playing the role of a musician on The Bill Cosby Show.

Bobo recorded Spanish Grease and Uno, Dos, Tres 1 *2*3 at the peak of his career as a leader, during the transitional period following the decline of the mambo and preceding the rise of salsa.

Reissued here on a single CD, these albums show him reaching out beyond traditional Latin forms with a multi-ethnic band playing an eclectic repertoire of rock, blues, jazz, and pop, including covers of chart-topping hits of the day as well as standards and original tunes.

Bobo unites all of his disparate influences into one seamless, soulful Latin groove, held together by his solid percussion and earthy sense of swing. And though his music received little critical attention at the time, Bobo's imaginative recombination of African-Cuban, African-American, and mainstream pop-rock elements had an important impact on later salsa, Latin rock, and Latin jazz that is readily apparent in retrospect.

‘He had a colorful career,' says Latin-music historian, scholar, and disc jockey Max Salazar, whose knowledge of Bobo's life and music comes both from research and firsthand experience with the artist. ‘He knew the powers that be, but he made his own breaks and capitalized on them.’

Born William Correa on February 28, 1934, Bobo was raised in an East Harlem, New York barrio. His father played Puerto Rican folk music on the guitar-like cuatro, but young Willie was more attracted to the brassy, urbane mambo and became a band boy for Machito's legendary Afro-Cubans. At fourteen he took up the bongos, then the congas, timbales, and trap drums, under the tutelage of Cuban percussion master Mongo Santamaria, who had just arrived in New York.

‘Willie was mesmerized by Mongo,’ says Salazar, ‘and Mongo took him on as a student and taught him everything about the drums.’ In 1951 Mongo became Tito Puente's conga player, and for a while Willie backed jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams, who gave him the nickname Bobo. Then in 1954 he joined Santamaria in Puente's band, replacing Manny Oquendo on bongos. ‘Willie Bobo came in only because Mongo Santamaria convinced Tito to hire him,’ says Salazar. ‘Puente had heard about this kid, Bobo, who was very good on drums, so Tito did not want him — that jealousy thing, I guess. They were both excellent drummers, but Tito Puente was the undisputed timbal champ at the time. He called himself the King of the Timbales, and Bobo used to make fun of that.’

‘Willie Bobo always mocked Tito Puente; he mimicked him, says salsa pioneer Eddie Palmieri, who grew up idolizing Puente. ‘When Tito played vibes, Willie played timbales, and since Tito played a lot of vibes, Willie was not only the bongo player, he was a whole show on stage. It was fun to see.’

Despite their personal friction, the percussion section of Puente, Santamaria, and Bobo is generally regarded as not only Puente's best but one of the finest in Latin-music history, and their albums Top Percussion and Puente in Percussion, augmented respectively by drummers Francisco Aquabella and Carlos "Potato" Valdez, are among the all-time percussion classics.

"Still,' continues Salazar,

the jealousy existed, because a lot of times Bobo would show up Puente on the timbales. Puente tolerated the newcomer because Bobo was incredible on bongos, congas, and timbales, and most of all because Willie was recommended by Mongo.

And Bobo tolerated Puente because he was his boss; this is how he pai one night at Birdland Puente is introducing his musicians, but when he comes to his rival, he introduces him as "Willie Boborosa". He mispronounced his name deliberately, over network radio.

Puente consented to Bobo's performing and recording with Shearing in 1955 but not when Willie and Santamaria cut the album Mas Ritmo Caliente with Shearing's former vibraphonist, Cal Tjader, two years later. "At that time he considered Tjader a real threat to his throne," adds Salazar. "So he exploded, and he humiliated Bobo and Mongo to the point where they quit. Tjader then broke up his group so he could get these two guys. He sent them airplane tickets and everything, and Mongo and Bobo went flying out to the West Coast and joined Tjader."

For the next three years, Bobo played timbales and trap drums in Tjader's California-based quintet and sextet, recording on such Latin-jazz landmarks as Tjader Goes Latin, Latin for Lovers, and A Night at the Blackhawk. "Willie was really playing his maximum there," says Eddie Palmieri, "because he was influenced by jazz. He wanted to be a jazz drummer, but he and Mongo had a routine, because they had already been with Tito." During the same period he recorded such Santamaria albums as Yambu, Mongo, and Our Man in Havana. When Mongo split with Tjader in 1961 to form his own band in New York, Bobo went with the Cuban percussionist, but he soon left to join Herbie Mann's group. In 1963 he struck out on his own and cut sessions with Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie, among others. He organized a group of his own to substitute for Count Basie at the bandleader's club in Harlem and was so successful that A&R man Teddy Reig signed him for a series of albums on the Tico and Roulette labels.

Then Bobo signed with Verve in 1965 and recorded Spanish Grease for producer Creed Taylor.

Having established himself as a bandleader and solo recording artist, Bobo moved back to Los Angeles and landed the role on Cosby. It is ironic that he achieved his greatest exposure playing the part of a musician. Willie traveled to Ghana with Santana to make the film Soul to Soul, and he performed and recorded with Herbie Mann and others, but his brand of Latin soul was eclipsed by the salsa movement of the Seventies, which emphasized the Cuban roots of the music and downplayed its funk and jazz connections.

By the time he died of brain cancer in 1983, at forty-nine, Bobo was an obscure figure. Had he lived to see the current Latin-jazz boom, he would surely have made a comeback, but a decade ago his music was perceived as too jazzy for Latin dancers and too funky for jazz purists. A native New Yorker, he had settled in Los Angeles, cut off from the Latin-jazz wellspring; perhaps he could have gone home again, but then came his final illness, and it was too late.

Though his fans never forgot him, his reputation among the general public languished after his death. But with the growing international awareness of Latin-music history today, Bobo's contributions are beginning to be recognized.

His unique sound can be heard as a precursor to the whole panoply of contemporary Latin jazz, Latin rock, and even Latin hip-hop, but you don't need a sense of history to appreciate it. After all, Bobo never intended it as art for the cognoscenti but as lighthearted, danceable party music with a jazzy, streetwise edge.

So just sit back, get in the groove, and enjoy!

Larry Birnbaum

July 1994 Reissue

Willie and the band perform Nessa on the following video tribute.

Bill Crow: On Becoming A Bassist By GENE FEEHAN

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

Bassist Bill Crow is one of the “good guys” in the music and the editorial staff at JazzProfiles always finds room on these pages for more about such exemplary musicians.

Everytime I think of Bill it reinforces one thing he taught me and that is - above all else, “Jazz in fun.”

Whenever I start to think too much about the music and get overly analytical and theoretical, I remember what I lovingly refer to as THE CROW ADMONITION - relax and enjoy the music - Jazz is fun.

Gene Freehan wrote the following piece in 1963. At the time, Bill had been a professional musician for a little more than a decade. He has since added 5 more decades.

This year marks Bill’s 65th anniversary as a professional Jazz musician.

“RAY BROWN once defined a bassist's greatest assets as "good time, good intonation, and a big sound." While agreeing that this is a solid, workable definition, Bill Crow would add another factor.

"If you have those qualities," he explained, "and don't find out how to relate them to the musicians you're playing with, you'll still not be contributing much to the group. That may seem like a simple-minded statement of something everyone should know, but it's surprising how often poor contact between musicians is the principal difficulty in playing well together.

"Group playing is never a one-plus-one-plus-one relationship. With sensitive players you sound better than you do by yourself — and with the other kind you sound worse."

The 35-year-old bassist, currently with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, continued, "Bass players and drummers especially must get into each others' hip pockets. They must agree on the basic feeling of the music, and they can only do this by listening carefully to each other and adjusting to each other's feeling. My personal tastes run to drummers who play in a medium-volume range with a hearty swing, leaving enough open space for the rest of the music to be heard clearly."

The slim, quietly intense bassist ranged freely over the three decades of musical experience that have contributed to his present position as one of the most solidly respected contemporary jazz musicians. The years have brought him from childhood studies of piano and trumpet and at least another half-dozen instruments, through school bands, a stint in the Army's musical fold, a brief period with society bands, and subsequent hitches with Teddy Charles, Stan Getz, Claude Thornhill, Terry Gibbs, Marian McPartland, Benny Goodman, and the Mulligan sextet, big band, and three editions of the baritonist's quartet.

Recalling his early studies of bass, Crow said, "Though I learned it through the

horror system—standing on a bandstand with musicians you admire with a bass you don't know how to play, and figuring like mad where the next right note might be — I became a much better player after studying for a couple of years with Fred Zimmerman of the New York Philharmonic. He taught me bowing technique and was able to straighten out a highly original and awkward fingering system I had developed while favoring a weak left hand." (He had damaged several tendons in high school going through a glass door that had been slammed in his face. But thanks to a good surgeon in Seattle, Wash., he said, and many years of fingering basses, the hand is fine now.)

Crow's studies with pianist Lennie Tristano, however, were somewhat less than satisfying.

"That was before I started playing bass," he recalled. "I was a valve trombonist at the time. I wasn't comfortable in the almost mystic atmosphere Lennie permitted some of his students to generate around him. He gave me good material to work with, but we just didn't hit a teacher-pupil relationship that meant anything to me. It's very hard to play a wind instrument around a lot of people who are holding their breath all the time. One of my last lessons with Lennie was conducted from the bathtub. He was getting ready for work, listening to my lesson through a crack in the bathroom door. . . . Maybe I sounded better from in there.

"I'm not studying formally at the moment, since I've learned how to set up problems and work out solutions by myself. And I'm still learning, as everyone does, by listening. Everything a musician hears teaches him something, even if it just makes him aware of what he doesn't care for. That's why I've enjoyed New York so much. I've worked with and heard so many different players and figured out my own point of view a little more clearly with each one. That's also why I like traveling now and then. ... I like to hear what's going on in different places." Having played drums and a number of horns "with varying amounts of success," Crow took up the bass in 1950. "I was conned into it by Buzzy Bridgeford when he was playing drums at the Altamont Hotel in Tupper Lake, N.Y. The boss wouldn't pay for a bass player, but he would hire a trombonist, so Buzz aced me into the job. He rented me a bass and begged me to learn how to play it 'just well enough to have the sound there.' Since he was the guy who also taught me about swing, got me my first jazz job in Seattle, and then got me to come to New York, I did what he said — and ended up liking the instrument better than any of the others I'd played."

After that summer, the trombonist-cum-bassist eked out a living for a while as a job printer in the Bronx, working occasional dates around New York, and traveling for a short time as drummer-vocalist-stooge with the musical clown Mike Riley.

Crow's last appearance as a drummer was on a Moore-McCormack Lines cruise to Argentina in 1951.

"I played with a strange jack-of-all-trades band that included society music, Latin tunes, an Irish tenor, a Jewish accordionist, an Italian saxophonist, a fat comedian, funny hats, and everybody singing, doing comedy, Hawaiian dances, kiddie numbers — the works. The time was so hard to get swinging that I'd wind up every night after the gig with a big knot in my stomach, and I'd go up on the top deck where nobody could hear me and scream a few times for relief. But, oh — the things I learned on that job!"

A strong believer in the principle of adaptation, Crow mused, "I wouldn't have learned what I know about bass playing if I hadn't worked with all kinds of bands. Even dull bands can be instructive if you're not stuck on them forever. You find the guy in the band who has the best musical attitude, and you work with him to get something going. Then, when you get Into a better band, you know a little about how to fix things when they go wrong. You don't learn to be a mechanic on a car that never breaks down."

He has no reluctance about naming his early influences. "Jazz hit me right in the middle of the seventh grade," he explained. "I heard Louis, Duke. Red Nichols, and that record of Profoundly Blue by Edmond Hall with Charlie Christian, Israel Crosby, and Meade Lux Lewis through Al Bennest, my school music teacher in Kirkland, Wash. There was also an appliance store in Kirkland where I found 78s by Don Byas, Pres, Louis Jordan, and Nat Cole. I've always felt that Nat was a bigger influence than people realize today.

"Louis Armstrong is pretty much taken for granted now that he's old and a little tarnished, but listen to his records from the 1920s. He started so much — like certain melodic figures and ways of phrasing them — that have become the abc's of the jazz tradition. He invented enough things in those days—and cleaned up the things other people had invented — to keep everybody busy copying him for years and years, just as Bird did later on."

Crow continued to listen to all kinds of jazz on the radio, while he built up a record collection with wages from after-school jobs.

"That mid-1940s Boyd Raeburn band killed me, and so did Claude Thornhill's," he said. "But then I went into the Army, where I played baritone horn in the concert band and drums in the dance band. I picked up the valve trombone there during my infatuation with Chicago jazz and Brad Gowans."

It was during his Army stint that Crow came into contact with modern jazz musicians and where he first found out, among other things, about Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, modern chords, goatees, berets, the hip vernacular, and drape suits from Fox Brothers in Chicago. He has since outgrown his fondness for the last four items but retains an affection for the rest, though he has been known to pine occasionally for the sound of the early Basie band "before he went out and hired all that heavy artillery."

CROW HAS SOME cogent comments about his more recent history. "Working in a record studio," he said, "is a special problem, because the musicians are usually separated either by distance or low, padded walls or both, so they won't 'leak' into each other's mikes. It's not easy to get a good feeling going with a guy who's sitting 40 feet away from you.

"That's why I liked recording at the Village Vanguard, where we cut that Mulligan big-band LP. We were all close together on a small stand. We had control of the room sound after playing there for a couple of weeks, and the band sounded marvelous.

"I hit it off right away with Mel Lewis [at the time, drummer with Mulligan band]; he knew the book and got me into the feel of the band very quickly. Clark Terry and I were new on the band at the start of that gig, and the band was recorded just at the point where we were starting to feel at home. The rest of the band had been together long enough to have developed a strong group spirit. The book was very interesting, the soloists were unusual, and Gerry is very good at getting the most out of a band. It was a beautiful situation. ... I was very proud of us all."

Crow's role in the current Mulligan quartet has opened up doors of perception he values highly. Of his associates in the group, he said, "Bob Brookmeyer never ceases to amaze me. He's my favorite combination of seriousness about music and delight in the outrageous. He never fails to excite my imagination. It's always a rare treat to play with him.

"Gerry, besides his ability to play that unwieldy ox of a horn so well, always has been quite clear about what the structure of the quartet should be — what each instrument is expected to contribute. I've learned a lot from him about the function of the bass line in this particular situation, and he's allowed me considerable freedom to hunt around for new approaches to his music.

"At the moment we have a new LP in the can with a tune on it called Four for Three (four guys playing in 3/4) that is one of the most interesting things Gerry's written lately. Gus Johnson was on drums when we made it, although Dave Bailey is back with us now. We've also been messing around with a thing of Gerry's that seems to keep trying to become a bossa nova, although we find ourselves spending most of our efforts avoiding the heavy-handed abuses of that rhythm that assaults us from every jukebox and radio."

Some months ago, Art Davis said that the bass is now at a point where it can be developed in several directions — more so than any other instrument — because there are more fine performers playing bass now than at any other time.

Crow's reaction: "I wouldn't say more than any other instrument. We have one advantage, in that we haven't been as paralyzed by the influence of a couple of great players the way saxophonists were by Pres and Bird. There have been many great bass players, but nobody has become so fashionable that his conception became the only one. Each guy has developed pretty much his own way.

"But I think that the tendency among young bassists to spread out into new ways of playing has come hand in hand with the spreading out of all the players around them. I agree with Art that there are more good bassists now than there have ever been — that's a very healthy situation."                                                                     

Source:

Downbeat Magazine

May 9. 1963

Enrico Pieranunzi - My Songbook

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

“When Chet decided that we should play a particular piece it was because at that moment he needed exactly that piece to express himself. For him each piece was a living thing he would return to again and again and whose features, whether happy or sad, he rediscovered every time. He knew the lyrics to almost all of the titles we played, the stories they contained, and in his performances he revived those stories. … His ear was extraordinary, as was his ability to force the audience into listening to what his trumpet and his voice had to say.”

– Enrico Pieranunzi, Jazz pianist, composer, arranger

If you substitute “Enrico” for “Chet” in the above quotation and “piano” in place of “trumpet,” Enrico Pieranunzi could have been writing about himself, especially the part about “... for him each piece was a living thing ….”

That’s the way Enrico feels about his music as though “ … each piece was a living thing he would return to again and again and whose features, whether happy or sad, he rediscovered every time.”

Born in Rome on December 5, 1949, Enrico Pieranunzi’s development as a Jazz artist has much in common with that of his contemporary, Michel Petrucciani, the late French, Jazz pianist [1962-1999]

Both began studying piano at an early age: Petrucciani at the age of four and Pieranunzi at the age of five; each urged on by fathers who were guitarists.  

Both were classically trained for many years and, as a consequence, developed a style of playing that fused classical technique with Jazz.

Early in their careers, each fell heavily under the spell of, and worked in the harmonic tradition of pianist Bill Evans, and each developed into pianists of considerable technical ability who matured out from under the weight of Evans’ influence to find their own voice.

Both Enrico and Michel performed with a whole host of Jazz luminaries during the formative and later stages of their careers: Petrucciani with the likes of Clark Terry, Charles Lloyd, Lee Konitz, Wayne Shorter, Jim Hall, Dave Holland, Tony Williams, Eddy Louiss, Stephane Grappelli while Pieranunzi has performed with, among others, Frank Rosolino, Sal Nistico, Kenny Clarke, Johnny Griffin, Chet Baker, Joey Baron, Art Farmer, Jim Hall, Marc Johnson, Lee Konitz, Phil Woods, Charlie Haden, Mads Vinding, Billy Higgins Chris Potter, and Kenny Wheeler.

Although both Pieranunzi and Petrucciani primarily favor the piano-bass-drums trio format, each has had their original compositions arranged for small group: Both Worlds, a sextet album that features Petrucciani’s works arranged by Bob Brookmeyer and Don’t Forget the Poet on which Pieranunzi arranged his own tunes for a quintet featuring Bert Joris on trumpet and flugelhorn and Stefano D’Anna on soprano and alto saxophones.

Pieranunzi issued his first LP in 1975. Since then, he has performed widely with his own group at European and American jazz festivals and in a variety of European Jazz clubs.

His recorded work falls basically into three categories:

[1] as accompanist with others such as Art Farmer, Chet Baker, & Phil Woods,

[2] as the leader of various piano-bass-drums-trio configurations and his own instrumental groups and in

[3] his solo piano recordings and his of recorded homages to Italian film composers.

Among pianists working in the harmonic tradition of the late Bill Evans, Enrico Pieranunzi has achieved a rare individuality, bringing an unrivaled sense of line and sheer sonority to the style.

Along with the advanced harmonic language, Pieranunzi belongs to what has been described as a native bel canto tradition that extends to classical pianists as brilliant as Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Maurizio Pollini and film composers like Nino Rota and Enrico Morricone, both of whom he has performed with on a number of well-known Italian movies.

Enrico’s teaching experience, in jazz and in classical music, is also noteworthy. He has served as a full professor of piano at the “Conservatorio di Musica” in Frosinone. His latest CD is dedicated to the music of Domenico Scarlatti, which not surprisingly combines jazz improvisation with classical music.

Thankfully, given the scope of his talent, his discography is immense which affords us the opportunity to sample his beautiful approach to Jazz in a variety of contexts.

Lately, however, Enrico has been expanding his repertoire to include more emphasis on the human voice and you can hear Pieranunzi new avenue for Jazz expression on ENRICO PIERANUNZI  My Songbook with Simona Severini [Via Veneto Jazz VVJ-106 which was released in January 2016 by Jando Music|Via Veneto Jazz.

The Jando Music|Via Veneto Jazz press release for My Songbook states that Enrico Pieranunzi’s music on it would “... surely surprise his longtime fans. The renowned Italian pianist has worked wonders on this engaging album and reveals himself as an ingenious songwriter with a deft technique and a restless imagination.

The album contains eleven of Pieranunzi’s own compositions, music and lyrics, that flow effortlessly thanks to acclaimed vocalist Simona Severini, who exudes a wonderful sensibility and interplays well with her expressive voice.  Pieranunzi and Severini started collaborating in 2012, on the occasion of the tribute record to Lucio Dalla and have continued working together since then.

The compositions are artfully arranged by Pieranunzi, in different formations ranging from duo to sextet, with an astonishing range of expression that shows off the quality of the musicians involved, among Italy’s best-known jazz players (Luca Bulgarelli, Nicola Angelucci and two guests Rosario Giuliani and Francesco Lento).

My Songbook is a fascinating listening experience made possible by Enrico Pieranunzi masterful blending of instrumental and vocal Jazz.

See what you think as the following video features Enrico as joined by  Simona Severini, voice, Francesco Lento, trumpet, Rosario Giuliani, alto sax, Luca Bulgarelli, bass and Nicola Angelucci, drums performing Pieranunzi’s original composition - Night Bird.

The CD is available via Forced Exposure via this link and as an Mp3 download or audio CD through Amazon.com.

Lou Caputo Not So Big Band - "Uh Oh!"

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

In 1959, one of my most cherished LP acquisitions was Gerry Mulligan’s Columbia LP What Is There To Say [CL 1307].

Gerry was a taskmasters who demanded the highest quality of playing from the members of his band.

The fact that he was a musical genius didn’t make him any easier to deal with.

And then, of course, there was the matter of his pianoless quartet which placed inordinate demands on the bass player to not only frame the chord but to get the harmony right - let alone to also anchor the time.

Bill Crow was the bassist on this LP and to say that he got all of this right and then some would be an understatement. He nailed it. So much so that he would continue to Gerry’s bassist of choice in a variety of small and big band settings throughout the 1960s.

Bill even contributed my favorite composition on What Is There To Say. The tune is entitled News from Bluesport, and I really liked it because it was one of the first cookers that I remember hearing in ¾ time, a time signature that was fairly new to Jazz in 1957.

Fast forward 58 years - where does the time go? - and imagine my surprise when Bill and News from Blueport both turned up on Lou Caputo Not So Big Band’s latest CD Uh Oh! which is due for release on June 3, 2016.

You can locate order information about the new recording at www.loucaputo.com.

Jim Eigo at Jazz Promo Services sent along the following media release after which you will find a video featuring Lou’s band performing their version of News from Blueport.

“The "Not So Big Band" is the brainchild of talented multi-instrumentalist Lou Caputo. It is a big band that consists of twelve musicians as opposed to the sixteen-piece or larger variety. This band is a working band, playing together for over 10 years. The band has performed for over a decade at "The Garage" in Greenwich Village, as well as performances at the "John Birks Gillespie Auditorium" located in the "Baha'i Center" in NYC , also at "Trumpets" and a regular attraction at St Peter's Mid Day Jazz series along with concerts at Hofstra and Montclair Universities.

The band has two CD's out (Urban Still Life & Not So Big Band) that have enjoyed considerable airplay and both have been very well received, by the jazz press. A third CD (UH OH!) will be released in 2016. All of our music is currently available from most digital vendors like iTunes, CD baby and through streaming services, such as Spotify.

Lou Caputo, a native of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has done almost every kind of job that a musician can be asked to do.

He has performed in jazz clubs in London (Ronnie Scott's) and all over the Northeast area as well. A multi-instrumentalist (saxophones, clarinets and flutes) he has performed in show bands with the likes of Lou Rawls, Harry Connick Jr, The Temptations, The Four Tops and Shirley Bassey. He has also performed with Howard Johnson's five Ban Saxophone group (Beartones) as well as Warren Smith's Composers Orchestra and The Ellington and Dorsey bands. He is a member of Jack Jeffers New York Classics and has performed with The Cotton Club Orchestra Recently Lou performed on Harry Connick's album "Your Songs"

Also featured in "The Not So Big Band" are noted musicians like percussionist Eddie Montalvo (Grammy nominee, Latin Grammy winner, Fania All-Stars), saxophonist Virginia Mayhew (Saxophone Journal Saxophonist of the Year), trumpeter John Eckart (Performed with Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lee Konitz), legendary bassist and jazz author Bill Crow (performed with Gerry Mulligan and Phil Woods), Geoffery Burke (performs with Harry Connick Jr.) Warren Smith who has performed with everyone from John Cage and Gil Evans to Barbra Streisand and all stops in between. Just to cite some of the band members.

Jazz Is "Serious" Music - Grover Sales

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

"It was difficult for the public, and impossible for the musical establishment, to take "seriously" a music played by a black subculture and white dropout rebels in dives and dance halls; whose leaders were hailed as "Satchmo'," "Prez," and "Bird"; whose recorded masterpieces bore such frivolous names as Potato Head Blues, Taxi War Dance, and Shaw 'Nuff. How could anyone be serious about a music bursting with such wild humor, parody, and lewd shrieks? A music wedded to sexy dancing and profane lyrics? A music that sent players and listeners alike into states of holy-roller ecstasy? How could you be "serious" and have such a screaming good time?"

- Grover Sales, Jazz author, educator and publicist

By way of background, the following appeared in www.jazzhouse.org as an obituary following Grover Sales’ death in 2004. You can locate the complete text for Jazz Is "Serious" Music in Jazz: America’s Classical Music [New York: Prentice Hall, 1984; New York: Da Capo Paperback Edition, 1992]. Grover is filling-in while the editorial staff at JazzProfiles develops its reviews of three, new books on the subject of Jazz.

“Strongly opinionated and superbly literate, longtime Bay Area resident Grover Sales was the kind of jazz critic who left no doubt about where he stood on issues ranging from the genius of Lenny Bruce to the paucity of gay jazz musicians.

During a career that spanned 50 years Sales [1919-2004] wrote about jazz, film and cultural politics and published widely in the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Tiburon Ark and Gene Lees' Jazzletter. He wrote three books: Jazz: America's Classical Music, a biography of John Maher and, with his wife Georgia, The Clay-Pot Cookbook, which sold more than 800,000 copies.

Sales was also publicist for the Monterey Jazz Festival from its birth in 1958 until 1965, and for the hungry i nightclub. He also did freelance publicity work for artists such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Judy Garland and Dick Gregory, and wrote liner notes for several Fantasy recordings.

Over the years, he taught jazz history courses at Stanford University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, San Francisco State University and the JazzSchool.

Sales became a jazz fan at 16, after hearing a broadcast of Benny Goodman's band with drummer Gene Krupa, and later became what he called "an inveterate Ellington groupie" after hearing a recording of "Black And Tan Fantasy".

After serving in the Army Air Corps in Southeast Asia during World War II, Sales studied at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and then settled in the Bay Area, where he received a BA in history from the University of California at Berkeley.

In addition to his wife, Sales is survived by a daughter and two stepsons.”

Jazz Is "Serious" Music

From its earliest times, "respectable" people, regardless of color, scorned jazz as low-class trash not to be mentioned in the same breath with "serious" music. This condescending posture still crops up in record catalogues, critical essays, and news columns that erect a mythical fence separating jazz from "serious" composition.

Even jazz enthusiast Leonard Bernstein fell into this trap in 1947 when he wrote, "Serious music in America would today have a different complexion and direction were it not for the profound influence upon it of jazz." (Esquire.) This inference that jazz is not "serious" might have amused John Coltrane, who spent his days practicing and his nights on the bandstand. "No one,"said Ellington, "is as serious about his music as a serious jazz musician." When a student asked Dizzy Gillespie during a band break if he ever played any "serious" music, the puckish trumpeter grew serious indeed: "Just what do you think we're doin' up here—foolin' around?" Bassist Ray Brown told the Chevron School Broadcast: "One of the great fallacies of all time is that the classical players felt the jazzman, if he were good, just rolled out of bed one morning and was able to do everything on his instrument. But if you want to play a two-octave D scale [he demonstrates] you have to study, practice, you don't luck up on it, and you spend the same amount of time a guy would who plays in a symphony orchestra."

It was difficult for the public, and impossible for the musical establishment, to take "seriously" a music played by a black subculture and white dropout rebels in dives and dance halls; whose leaders were hailed as "Satchmo'," "Prez," and "Bird"; whose recorded masterpieces bore such frivolous names as Potato Head Blues, Taxi War Dance, and Shaw 'Nuff. How could anyone be serious about a music bursting with such wild humor, parody, and lewd shrieks? A music wedded to sexy dancing and profane lyrics? A music that sent players and listeners alike into states of holy-roller ecstasy? How could you be "serious" and have such a screaming good time?

Another little-known aspect of jazz that renders its lack of seriousness all the more absurd is that jazz players have pushed the technical frontiers of many instruments far beyond classical boundaries, doing things on the string bass, drums, brass, and reeds that symphony players said couldn't—or shouldn't—be done. Left to their own devices with no music school to interfere, they experimented and, like most American inventors, became pragmatists: "If you plug it into the wall and it lights up, then it works." When Charlie Mingus found that classical string bassists rarely used the third finger of the left hand, "I started using the third finger all the time."

This break-the-rules attitude does much to explain why jazz players often develop techniques that astonish symphony musicians. When I introduced a concert pianist to Art Tatum on records, his first reaction was, "All right — who are those guys?" On hearing a fast Charlie Parker solo, a symphony clarinetist insisted I was spinning a 33 rpm disc at 45 rpm. Classical musicians marvel at Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen who strums the double bass like some giant guitar. The Trombone Concerto Rimsky-Korsakov wrote as an endurance contest is something J.J.Johnson and the late Kai Winding could play in their sleep. This determination to play what the Academy considered unplayable is one reason why jazz blossomed with such richness and variety within an amazingly short time. But there were other catalysts of jazz's sudden growth that made it, in the words or composer Virgil Thomson, "the most astounding spontaneous musical event to take place anywhere since the Reformation." … to be continued