Benny Green - RENOVATION - Drops Friday 9.18.2026

 

Good morning,

Just a note that pianist-composer Benny Green will release Renovation, his new solo piano album, THIS FRIDAY, September 18, 2026 via Sunnyside Records.

Recorded live at Dizzy's Club in New York City, Renovation is Green's first live solo recording, featuring 13 tracks that include eight originals alongside compositions by Bobby Timmons, Randy Weston, Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser, and Matt Dennis and Tom Adair. The album continues a solo piano lineage that began with Green's feature on Art Blakey's Not Yet and continued through his studio recordings Green's Blues and Solo, this time bringing that thread before a live audience. Green has recorded for Blue Note, Telarc, Criss Cross, and Sunnyside, and spent formative years with Betty Carter, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Freddie Hubbard, and the Ray Brown Trio.

Find the full press release and usual assets below, and let me know if you'd like to schedule an interview with Benny. He has a full tour coming up - if Benny is going to be in your area and you'd like to come through, just let me know. 

All the best,
Lydia

OSCAR PETERSON PROTÉGÉ, JAZZ MESSENGER AND ACCLAIMED PIANIST-COMPOSER BENNY GREEN ANNOUNCES RENOVATION

RECORDED LIVE AT DIZZY’S CLUB IN NEW YORK CITY, GREEN’S FIRST LIVE SOLO PIANO ALBUM DRAWS FROM FOUR DECADES OF TRIO LANGUAGE AND BLUE NOTE FEELING

FEATURING EIGHT GREEN ORIGINALS ALONGSIDE PIECES BY BOBBY TIMMONS, RANDY WESTON, HOAGY CARMICHAEL & FRANK LOESSER, AND MATT DENNIS & TOM ADAIR

OUT SEPTEMBER 18, 2026 VIA SUNNYSIDE RECORDS

Pianist, composer and bandleader Benny Green is proud to announce Renovation, his new solo piano album, out September 18, 2026 on Sunnyside Records. Recorded live at Dizzy’s Club in New York City, the 13-track album marks his first live solo recording, with eight Green originals alongside pieces by Bobby Timmons, Randy Weston, Hoagy Carmichael & Frank Loesser, and Matt Dennis & Tom Adair.

“With my performing and recording activities of the past 40-plus years having been primarily centered around piano-bass-drums trios, I embraced the solitude of the 2020 lockdown as a golden opportunity to redirect my instrumental focus toward exploring the expansive freedom that playing solo provides me,” Green says.

“As Harold Mabern Jr. has said, ‘The piano knows what it can do — it wants to hear what you can do,’” he continues. “And I realized that liberated from the inevitable chemistry parameters that are conditionally subjective to whom I’m playing with, I can roam wherever I choose when playing solo, free from the need to cue other members to unscripted, spontaneous musical gear changes in the moment.”

Critics have recognized Green’s authority for decades. Leonard Feather of the Los Angeles Times called Green the “prototypical modern jazzman”; All About Jazz called him “one of the most gifted jazz pianists around” and a “consummate jazz pianist”; and DownBeat, writing on his 2023 Sunnyside album Solo, described “the master pianist in transition.”

Oscar Peterson named Green his protégé in 1992, chose him as the first recipient of Toronto’s Glenn Gould International Protégé Prize in Music, and later invited him to record the two-piano album Oscar and Benny.

Born in New York City in 1963 and raised in Berkeley, California, Green first heard jazz through his father, a tenor saxophonist whose record collection included Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles and many of the music’s founding voices. He began piano lessons at 7, played his first paid performance at 12, made his major concert-stage debut at 15 with the Monterey Jazz Festival High School All-Stars, and by his late teens was working with vocalist Faye Carol and NEA Jazz Master trumpeter Dr. Eddie Henderson.

In 1982, at 19, he returned to New York City, where Walter Bishop Jr. and Walter Davis Jr. mentored him during his first year in town, and where his earliest gigs included work with Barry Altschul, Bobby Watson and Jo Jones Jr.

Betty Carter hired Green in 1983, beginning four years of international touring with the vocalist. He played on her Grammy Award-winning Verve album Look What I Got before joining Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers from 1987 to 1989. He joined Freddie Hubbard’s quintet in 1989 and recorded Live at Fat Tuesday’s with Hubbard in 1992. That same year, he joined the Ray Brown Trio, his longest sideman tenure, remaining with Brown for four and a half years.

As a leader, Green recorded two albums for the Dutch Criss Cross label in the late 1980s before signing with Blue Note Records in 1990, where he made seven leader albums across the decade, plus two for Toshiba-EMI. He went on to record for Telarc, including his 2001 solo piano album Green’s Blues and two duo albums with guitarist Russell Malone. In 1998, Peterson invited Green to record Oscar and Benny. In the 2010s, Green began recording for Sunnyside, with albums including Magic Beans, Live in Santa Cruz, Happiness, Then and Now, Benny’s Crib and Solo.

During Green’s Jazz Messengers tenure, Blakey would sometimes turn off his snare drum and send the other musicians offstage mid-set, leaving Green alone to play a long solo piano medley. In the studio in Milan in 1988, while recording his first album as a member of the Messengers, Blakey also gave him the chance to play what became the only solo piano track in the Jazz Messengers’ discography: “I’ll Never Be the Same,” chosen on the spot after Green had been listening to versions by Art Tatum and by Louis Armstrong with Oscar Peterson.

Green’s recorded solo-piano history before Renovation began with his feature on Blakey’s Not Yet, followed by Green’s Blues in 2001 and Solo in 2022; all were studio recordings. Renovation places that solo thread before an audience.

“In live performance,” Green says, “this newfound freedom allows me to tune in more directly to the mood and vibe of a live audience when I enter a room, so that regardless of whatever I’d preconceived as an opening selection, I can respond untethered by allowing abrupt diversions from my pre-planned choices of selections.”

The title carries several meanings. Musically, Green describes Renovation as a conscious refresh of the setting that has defined much of his working life. Personally, it refers to the renovation of his home in Berkeley, where his family moved in 1968. His wife is overseeing a major project there, adding rooms, building a deck and bringing new love to the 100-year-old house his parents left to him and his sister.

On Renovation, Green channels what he has long loved about piano-bass-drums trios into solo piano: the bassist’s melodic pulse, the drummer’s ride cymbal and snare, and the pianist’s single-note storytelling. He draws on the flowing lines of Sonny Clark, Barry Harris, Cedar Walton and Kenny Barron, and the two-fisted swing of Fats Waller, Erroll Garner, Hank Jones and Ray Bryant. He also admires pianists who treated the instrument, in his words, “in ways not per se intended to impress, but rather to paint.”

As a composer, Green’s reference remains the small-group language that first seized him as a listener: Charlie Parker’s 1947 quintet with Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, Tommy Potter and Max Roach; the classic Blue Note records of the 1950s and ’60s; the Miles Davis Quintets; and the expanded frontlines of Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.

“When I write,” Green says, “I’m channeling the textures of horns playing melodies together in a quintet or sextet to the piano. My main inspiration as a composer stems especially from classic Blue Note records and the Jazz Messengers. I strive to write singable, swinging melodies that channel some sort of feeling of the blues that a listener can remember.”

Renovation opens with “For Duke Pearson,” a piece that began when Wynton Marsalis commissioned Green to write a new original composition as a big band arrangement for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Premiered at Rose Hall in New York City and later scaled down for solo piano, the piece tips its hat to the titular pianist-composer-arranger — one of Green’s favorites of the 1960s.

“Seoul Station,” a minor-key original theme, combines Green’s love of Blue Note with his affection for jazz audiences in Korea; its title refers to the principal train hub in Korea while nodding to Hank Mobley’s Soul Station. 

“Cedar Would” honors Cedar Walton, one of Green’s foremost heroes as a pianist and composer. “I’ve waited all my life to write something in honor of how much his sound means to me,” Green says, “and I’ve put my heart into this piece.”

“This Here” brings Bobby Timmons directly into the program. While preparing to become a Jazz Messenger, Green listened closely and played along with Blakey bands featuring Horace Silver, Timmons and Walton in the piano chair. On Renovation, Green plays Timmons’ “romping blues waltz,” which he finds to be a perennial audience favorite.

Green also turns to “The Night We Called It a Day,” the Matt Dennis and Tom Adair ballad whose melody has long drawn him in; after hearing Dennis sing and play it online, Green brought its haunted mood into the live recording date at Dizzy’s Club.

For Green, the format harkens back to those nights with Blakey. “This was a character-building challenge,” Green says, “as my solo endeavor was sandwiched between a powerhouse sextet, presented to live audiences, and I needed to maintain a strong level of sound and feeling for the continuity of the shows.

“As Art would remind us, ‘You’ve got to project beyond the floodlights,’” Green recalls. “Meaning not to just play to and for ourselves, but to actually reach into the hearts and minds of our listeners.”

Tracklisting:

1. For Duke Pearson

2. Constitutional

3. Cedar Would

4. This Here

5. Hi-Fly

6. Two Sleepy People

7. Seoul Station

8. Blues for Junior

9. My Girl Bill

10. The Night We Called it a Day

11. Wiggin’

12. Sophy’s Chant

13. Ernie’s Uncle

Tour Dates:

Sept 17 – University of Tennessee Chattanooga
Sept 19-20 – Venue TBA (Philadelphia, PA)
Sept 22 – Jazz, TX (San Antonio, TX)
Sept 23 – Monks (Austin, TX)
Sept 25-26 – The Jazz Corner (Hilton Head, SC)
Sept 28-29 – University of Missouri, Kansas City
Sept 30 – Crystal Bridges (Arkansas)
Oct 1 – Keystone Korner (Baltimore, MD)
Oct 22-25 – Dizzy’s with Carl Allen Tribute to Jazz Messengers
Oct 31 – Scullers (Boston, MA)
Nov 1 – William Paterson with Carl Allen Tribute to Jazz Messengers
Nov 6 - University of New Hampshire
Nov 12-15 – Cotton Club Tokyo, Japan
Nov 19-22 – JazzCultural (NYC)
Nov 30 – Kuumbwa (Santa Cruz, CA)

BILL EVANS TRIO - The Sesjun Radio Shows

This 12 minute plus track is from the "broadcast live" on December 6, 1979 "De Meerkoet" Lelystad, The Netherlands and features Bill Evans on piano, Marc Johnson on bass and Joe La Barbera on drums. The sound quality is excellent and each of the soloists demonstrate inventiveness and exquisite technique. If you ever wanted to know what the last Bill Evans Trio was all about, check this out.

Bill Evans Alone - Notes by Bill Evans [Verve V6/8792 LP; Verve CD 833-801-2]

© Introduction. Copyright ® Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected, all rights reserved.

“Simultaneously, Evans took the next logical step in his sequence of unaccompanied piano recordings for Verve by cutting Alone, a recital entirely devoid of extra piano tracks. Recorded in September and October 1968, this may be seen as a logical extension of his search for further clarity of line and texture, as he had said in the liner notes to Further Conversations - but in his own notes for Alone he did not mention this….. 

Certainly the music on Alone is much more unified and intense than that on Further Conversations from the previous year. Here, Evans does not have to consider embellishment, accompaniment or any other aspect of multiple piano tracks. He pares his playing to essentials and concentrates on his involvement with the music. Because of the absence of all other accompaniment, Evans can be as flexible as he needs to be and takes appropriate advantage. He adopts the simplest of approaches: exposition, improvisation, resolution. He also allows himself complete freedom of invention harmonically, rhythmically and melodically. Apart from his natural ability, the resulting power and logic is largely due to his certain vision and thorough preparation.

Talking to Marian McPartland just prior to the recording, Evans was in a decisive mood. "You can hear that I know exactly what I am doing," he said. "There's no doubt in my mind when I play. I know the reason for everything I do." As if ruminating on his upcoming solo sessions, he elaborated: "If you play too many things at one time, your whole approach will be vague. You won't know what to leave in and what to take out. I would say to a young musician: know very clearly what you're doing and why - play much less, but be very clear about it ... Take an idea - any idea - play it upside down, backwards, change the rhythm, and so on. Take any combination of notes that might occur to you and try to find 18 different ways of doing it." With a set of standard songs on Alone, he practiced what he preached.

As Evans attempts to penetrate the surface meaning of each tune he reaches different and deeper levels of meaning and inspiration, involving himself not only in any "message" a song might have but also in the beauties to be found in the study and redeployment of its components. Again in his album notes, Evans observes: "As you can readily see from the length of the tracks, I did get involved perhaps most successfully in 'Never Let Me Go'."22 Running for over 14 minutes, the song provides Evans with sufficient raw material to play himself through most of his own personal licks and cliches into fresh and invigorating musical waters. His inspiration is palpable. Other songs are given less magical transformations, but nothing from these sessions is wholly without its own small successes and surprises, the album being a formidable achievement at a time when Evans's relationship with Verve was winding down. Certainly Doug Ramsey in his Down Beat review agreed, making one especially prescient point. "When the dust subsides from the meaningless battles for recognition waged by so many of his contemporaries," wrote Ramsey, "[Evans] will still be there, playing his music as he hears it. And he hears it beautifully."” 

• Keith Shadwick, Bill Evans - Everything Happens to Me - A Musical Biography [2002]

“His playing on the Alone conveyed a feeling of unaffected nobility. Evans made no special effort to produce beautiful tone, but did so anyway — it was simply the way he played. There was much oscillation between keys a major third apart, except on the superbly paced "Never Let Me Go," which built and arched consistently in one tonality and unified mood. There are two "bonus" tracks on the CD release, chips off the workbench block that Evans would surely not have wanted to be issued — witness the disdain with which he casually finger-flicked the endings away, as if to say: No good, forget that one!

This LP won him his third Grammy award.”

• Peter Pettinger, Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings [1988]

The Grammy Award-winning Alone was Bill Evans' first single piano solo album following in the footsteps of his 1963 Verve session Conversations With Myself (three pianos overdubbed) and his 1967 Further Conversations With Myself, also on Verve (two pianos overdubbed).

For this Compact Disc release, we have included two recently discovered, previously unreleased tracks. Track 6 is a medley of All The Things You Are (the abrupt beginning is as it exists on the original tape) and Joe Zawinul's beautiful waltz Midnight Mood. Evans' only other earlier interpretation of All The Things You Are was also done solo (for Riverside) and also did not see release until many years after it was recorded. The final track is an alternate take of A Time For Love.

• Richard Seidel

The following are Bill Evans' liner notes from the original LP:

“Perhaps the hours of greatest pleasure in my life have come about as a result of the capacity of the piano to be in itself a complete expressive musical medium. In retrospect, I think that these countless hours of aloneness with music unified the directive energy of my life. At those times when I have achieved this sense of oneness while playing alone, the many technical or analytic aspects of the music happened of themselves with positive rightness which always served to remind me that to understand music most profoundly one only has to be listening well. 

Perhaps it is a peculiarity of mine that despite the fact that I am a professional performer, it is true that I have always preferred playing without an audience. This has nothing to do with my desire to communicate or not, but rather I think it is just a problem of personal self-consciousness which had to be conquered through discipline and concentration. Yet, to know one is truly alone with one's instrument and music has always been an attractive and conducive situation for me to find my best playing level. Therefore, what I desired to present in a solo piano recording was especially this unique feeling.

As you can readily see from the length of the tracks, I did get involved perhaps most successfully in Never Let Me Go. It is difficult to make a qualitative judgment, however, since one always must be wary of falling prey to indulgence in a too subjective feeling unsupported by musical content.

My solo piano professional experience has been negligible and it is sad that this great tradition in jazz is in danger of extinction because of the prevalent public attitude relegating a single pianist to background for conversation or dinner. 

Therefore, I hope that my playing has sufficient merit to carry the listener without distraction to the musical feeling I have strived to accomplish in these recorded performances.” - Bill Evans

New Release - Jon Dryden - Some of My Lies Are True

 © Introduction Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Jon Dryden, who serves as a Lecturer in Jazz Studies at San Jose State University and is a Jazz Piano Instructor at Santa Clara University, has a new recording out which I’d like to call to your attention.

Recorded in NYC and produced by Jesse Harris, it features Anson Jones on vocals, Chris Lightcap on bass, and Dan Rieser on drums. 

Here's the album on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/0Ta4Mspe04pKMsuQmqWRBe?si=IyrX96nFRqCN4WDB7cPPkg

"Shorty Rogers - The Gentle Giant" by Howard Lucraft

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The following interview/article appeared in the February, 1979 issue of Jazz Journal [Vol. 32, No. 2].

With the 1952 release of the music on Modern Sounds and the Cool and Crazy LP on RCA the following year, Shorty Rogers was hailed as the father of West Coast Jazz. But as Shorty explains - “ … we never made any premeditated attempt to play anything different or specific that could be labelled 'West Coast Jazz'. We just played our jazz.”

Ten years or so after these recordings by Shorty spawned the West Coast style of Jazz, both he and the style were pretty much fading from public view as Rock ‘n Roll and Folk Music claimed the popular listening audience.

Shorty and many of his cohorts transitioned to the Hollywood studios where they found lucrative work writing and playing for movies, TV shows and radio jingles.

Humble and self-effacing to a fault, when one considers the amount of music Shorty wrote for big bands and small groups in the 1950s and adds to that what he contributed to the Woody Herman and Stan Kenton orchestras during the prior five years, his composing and arranging output is staggering both in terms of proportion and the consistently high quality of musicianship. 

Shorty’s music is as instantly recognizable as that of Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn, Woody Herman-Ralph Burns, Stan Kenton-Pete Rugolo-Bill Russo-Bill Holman, Count Basie-Neal Hefti, Henry Mancini, Gil Evans, Thad Jones or Gerry Mulligan, to name but a few distinctive, composer-arrangers, and yet his name is rarely mentioned in such circles. His brass sonorities, especially the pairing of upper register trumpets with lower register bass trombones and tubas, are unequaled for their range and density and a light, airy swing underscores all of his orchestrations. Shorty’s music is always moving.

Fortunately, a ton of Shorty’s music has made its way to digital platforms and if you are looking for something new and different, I urge you to explore the world [universe?] of cool and crazy modern sounds that Shorty Rogers created from about 1945 - 1965.

“WHAT HAPPENED to Shorty Rogers diminutive doyen of the West Coast movement of the fifties?

The answer is that Shorty is alive and well — in teeveeland. You've all heard that melodramatic chase music in the American cops and robbers TV shows. Well, Shorty has written a good deaf of that.

Shorty dropped by for a cuppa recently and was delighted to hear that his RCA Victor big band album, originally titled Cool And Crazy was a hit reissue in Europe as Blues Express. The album was recorded around 1951. Yes, it was nearly three decades ago that people began talking about "the new West Coast Jazz". The knowing ones claimed: "West Coast Jazz is everyone writing and playing like Shorty Rogers."

Says Shorty: "I've been told that quite a few times and it's a great compliment. You know, we never made any premeditated attempt to play anything different or specific that could be labelled 'West Coast Jazz'. We just played our jazz. Actually we spent a lot of time listening to all the records coming from the East Coast. We tried to learn from them.

"Just before that I had been playing and writing for Stan Kenton. A bunch of us came out of the Kenton (Innovations) band together — Bud (Shank), Coop (Bob Cooper, the late), Johnny Graas and others. I started teaching the cats composition and arranging. At the same time I myself was studying composition with Dr. Wesley La Violette — to keep one step ahead of my students!"

Prior to the RCA Cool And Crazy date Shorty had done one previous album as leader — for well-known jazz producer Gene Norman. It was called Modern Sounds. Gene sold the tapes to Capitol Records who released the session as an EP. It was the very first jazz of its type to come out of the West Coast. Several years later it was reissued as an LP on Capitol with tracks by Gerry Mulligan on the other side.

Shorty recalled the personnel of the Modern Sounds date as Don Bagley (b), Shelly Manne (d), Hampton Hawes (p), Gene Englund (tuba). Jimmy Giuffre (ts), Art Pepper (as), Milt Bernhart (tb) and Shorty Rogers (t). Titles included four Rogers originals (Popo, Didi, Apropos and Sam The Lady) plus Giuffre's Four Mothers and Over The Rainbow. 'It was kind of a Mites Davis small group sound," Shorty commented, "a few horns with a tuba on the bottom."

Jack Lewis was working for Gene Norman all that time as associate producer. He did all the leg work — put it all together. And as a result of working with us on that Modern Sounds album, Jack got very enthused. When he went over to RCA, he got the OK to produce the Cool and Crazy album.

"The big band was my idea. Most of us were still working for Stan Kenton at the time. I remember going to Stan and saying: 'Don't get upset with us, Stan'. And Stan, the beautiful guy that he is, gave me his blessing.

"We did all new things — all my originals. We all thought up the weird titles. Milt Bernhart named The Sweetheart Of Sigmund Freud. Shelly (Manne) christened Tale Of The African Lobster. Infinity Promenade was one of my titles."

I asked Shorty to run down the personnel on the Cool and Crazy date.

"You should know — you were there!" he answered.

The musicians included Maynard Ferguson, Conrad Gozzo, Uan Rasey, Sweets Edison, Conrad Gozzo, Uan Rasey, Bob Enevoldsen, Bud Shank, Jimmy Giuffre, Art Pepper, Bob Cooper, Herb Geller, Don Bagley, Marty Paich and Shelly Manne. Shorty played the trumpet solos. (It was before he had switched to flugelhorn.)

The recording took place in an early RCA Victor studio in Hollywood — now a record pressing plant.

Shorty commented: "It was a poor studio, soundwise. It had a gigantic high ceiling. It was originally constructed for the recording of film background music. We had 16 men but it looked like a little teeny band."

There was only one other major record studio in Los Angeles at that time — Radio Recorders. Today there are probably hundreds. Jazz record dates then were a Hollywood event. Shorty recalled: "In those days Shelly would get a jazz record date some seven weeks in advance. The word would go out. Musicians would ask: 'Can we come and sit in the booth'?"

It was around this time that Shorty started a regular evening gig at the famous Lighthouse Club in Hermosa Beach, some 25 miles from Hollywood. I remember driving down there one night with Shorty. We were stopped by a policeman for an alleged dangerous left turn. "Where are you going?" asked the officer. When we told him the cop replied: "Oh, isn't that the place where they all smoke marijuana?" When Shorty and I told John Levine, the Lighthouse owner, of the cop's comments, John was furious. He vowed he would sue the police department for a million dollars.

"But those were really good days musically,” Shorty said.

“And even more as Shorty was with the first Lighthouse All-Stars group. They played every night of the week except Monday. The group had Frank Patchen (p), Jimmy Giuffre (ts) and Shelly Manne (d) in addition to bassist-leader Howard Rumsey and Shorty. Trombonist Milt Bernhart was added later. On weekends Howard would hire extra players — like Gerry Mulligan and Art Pepper.

"Sunday we had jazz all day," Shorty recalled., "The Lighthouse is just half a block from the beach. People would come into the club in their bathing suits in the afternoon. And at two in the morning, when we closed, some of them would still be sitting there in their swimsuits."

From the Lighthouse Shorty went to the Haig. This club — just a wooden hut really — was on famed Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, opposite the well-known Ambassador Hotel. The Haig has long been torn down to make a modern office building. Shorty's band there was Giuffre, Shelly, Russ Freeman (p) and Joe Mondragon (b).

Then Shorty had an offer to move over to Zardi's on Hollywood Boulevard (now a porno film theatre). Freeman left and Marty Paich came in on piano, followed by Pete Jolly who had just arrived in town. The period was circa 1954.

Johnny Dankworth came to Hollywood at this time. It was his first visit here. He came with drummer Allan Ganley. I got Abe Most to lend Johnny an alto and arranged for him to sit in with Shorty's group. Teddy Wilson, Stan Getz and Gene Krupa were in Hollywood at that time working on the Benny Goodman Story film and they were all in the audience at Zardi's that night.

"They were very good days for jazz," Shorty sighed. "People could sit and listen to jazz for just the price of a 75-cent beer."

After this Shorty started getting active in composing and arranging. "I felt I wanted to do more writing. I tried to keep up the playing in clubs. But it does take a lot out of you even though I was much younger then.

"The transition came about through film composer Leith Stevens. Leith used to come down to the Lighthouse to listen to us. He hired me to help him do some arranging on the Marlon Brando picture The Wild One.

"My work on that picture attracted a lot of attention. I think it was the first time that jazz had been used in a film with that aggressive approach.

"Then Leith recorded an album of the music for Decca. It became a hit LP. One of the people who heard about it was film composer Elmer Bernstein. Elmer had me orchestrate and arrange a lot of jazz sequences for The Man With The Golden Arm. This also attracted a lot of attention and again there was a big-selling album out of the picture.

"All of a sudden people were calling me up for jazz arrangements. I didn't know what was going on. I was just trying to have fun. I was also teaching an awful lot (the same guys) and playing at night. It was kinda hectic but being young I enjoyed it.

"About ten years later it became hard to keep up the playing. It was reduced to an odd Saturday night here and there. It was hard to keep my chops up. The Lord wanted me to rest my lip and start working the pencil harder. I still practise the trumpet at home but I look around first to make sure no-one is listening!"

Shorty has almost forgotten the rhythm and blues records he made at that time under the name of Boots Brown. "The first time we went into the studio we had a hit but, do you know, I can't even remember the title now. We did two sessions of four tunes each. I had a wild bunch of rock & roll stars! — Bud Shank, Gerry Mulligan and Jimmy Giuffre. It has a tongue-in-cheek thing that we used to do at the Lighthouse for a gag. It was again Jack Lewis's idea to record the Boots Brown group."

At first Shorty was just arranging and orchestrating for other film and TV writers. Then he got some composing work on his own for television. For the past couple of years Shorty has been doing episodes of Starsky And Hutch, The Goldbergs and The Love Boat. Before that he wrote for The Partridge Family, Occasional Wife, Mr Deeds Goes To Town, I Dream Of Jeannie, I Spy and Mod Squad ("plus others —- I can't remember them all!").

A turning point came for Shorty when he met film composer Earle Hagen. "I consider him my teacher. He took me under his wing and trained me — showed me how to do it. You could never pay Earle. All he would ever accept in appreciation was golf balls!

"Writing for television envelopes you completely. At that time I had a show to write and record every week. It became a tremendous rat race. I didn’t [at first] realize the differences between composing and arranging. They’re two different worlds! It became so much I didn't have a chance to think of anything else. Just to meet the weekly deadline was my life.

"So.. .currently the Lord wants me not to work so hard although I'm still keeping my hand in and working on a few TV shows. But now I'm considering my health. I worked for so many years without taking care of myself. I thank God for my health — and now I want to sort of water it and make it grow."

A few of the old Giants still work with Shorty (on his TV assignments) — Bud Shank, Shelly Manne and Bob Cooper. Russ Freeman worked with Shorty at Columbia for many years. "Some of Russ's tunes are not to be believed. I love his work. He's incredible."

What does Shorty think of the many new directions in jazz? Does he feel it is all jazz?

"I like everything I hear...Chick Corea and all the fusion things. I dig it. I'm not trying to be nice. I just like the things I hear today."

Different inflections, feel?? "Yes, but it's easy for me. I've written a lot of rock things. It would be an enjoyable thing to go out again with a band. I'd play some of my olden arrangements along with some fusion things.

"I love the electronics today. When I'm writing for the studios I write in a lot of synthesizers, phasers etc. But when it's on television it goes by and people forget it. It's not like an album that you take home and play over and over. I’d like to to an album that had different time signatures and then do a

complete about-face and play some of the Basie things." (You may recall Shorty's Basie-style compositions on his Shorty Courts the Count LP in the fifties).

Shorty has lived in the same house in the San Fernando Valley for 25 years. In the "Garden Room" where he works the old jazz scores and parts are still all stacked high ("the room hasn't been cleaned in 25 years").

Would Shorty like to take the old scores and the original Giants on a tour of Europe?

"Yes, it would be fun. I put it in the Lord's hands. If he wants me to do it, I'm ready."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

British bandleader Howard Lucraft emigrated to the United States and settled in Los Angeles in 1951 since when he has been active as a composer/arranger and broadcaster. His early credits include compositions and arrangements for Stan Kenton and his specially commissioned Los Angeles Suite was performed at the Hollywood Bowl. His Jazz International show for American Forces Radio had more than 100 million listeners and he has been a prolific writer for newspapers and magazines including the Los Angeles Times, Variety, Down Beat and Melody Maker. He is a director and treasurer of the American Society of Music Arrangers and consultant and adviser to Westwood Entertainment Corporation in Los Angeles.