Stan Kenton - "Bogota"

 

The Creative World of Stan Kenton -The Ken Hanna Interview - Part 6

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

“[During the Summer of 1941] The Rendezvous would close at midnight and a sextet (mostly from the Kenton band) would go down to a bar a block away called the Bamboo Room. It was owned and operated by the same guy who had the lease on the Rendezvous Ballroom, so we were always welcome.

They had a back room where the six of us could jam and a few people would sit and listen, no dancing. There was myself, Red Dorris, Jack Ordean, Chico Alvarez, drummer Mel Patterson and Ted Repay. Ted was a marvelous piano player. Stan had known him in the thirties and hired him for a while in 1942 to focus more on composing and arranging. He was really needed, as that band was going through a metamorphosis after Carlos Gastel got a hold of it. Ted relieved a lot of pressure from Stan. Playing the Bamboo Room was a kick and we did it all summer long. 

Almost every night, we'd walk past the Rendezvous on the way home, and it was always totally black except for one light. There's Stan, sitting in the dark at the piano, writing another arrangement which might be in front of us the next night. That'll give you some idea of the total effort the man put in. It was a remarkable achievement. He would work sixteen, eighteen hours a day, at least. That's one of the reasons why the man became so successful.”

• Howard Rumsey, the first bassist in the Kenton Orchestra, 1941

“July 9,1943 

Dear Ken:

I know you are anxious to hear about the arrangements you sent, so here goes. We have rehearsed two...I HAVE FAITH and NOW WE KNOW. I want to sincerely tell you that I was stunned with the outcome. I liked them both very much. I changed two or three little voicings in the arrangements, but outside of that touched nothing. You actually have me enthused about the possibility of getting more from you.

I am going to return your score of I HAVE FAITH and put circles around the parts that I thought were exceptional. The arrangement will be broadcast this coming Wednesday over CBS on a show that comes out of here at 9:30 PMl. Try to listen in. If you want, I will have airchecks made of these tunes and have them sent to you so you may hear them played. We haven't been able to rehearse SUNDAY, MONDAY OR ALWAYS yet because of lack of time, but will get at it light away and I will let you know how it turns out. We never came to any agreement as to how much you were to receive for each score, so until then I will send you money on account until we come to some understanding.

It is hard to believe that you have improved like you have in the past year. I am taking the liberty of enclosing some tunes I would like very much to have. If it is alright with you, I prefer to stay on these ballads for the present...of course, Ken, I would be glad to get as many arrangements from you as possible, but will be thrilled if I only get one each week. You have probably heard about us getting the Hope show this tall and about signing for a picture at Paramount. Things are looking better than they have for some time.

As ever, 

Stan.”

• As quoted in Steven Harris, The Kenton Kronicles [2000]

Kenton 70's music had something in common with the bands of other eras in that a select number of arrangers played a key role in shaping the orchestra's identity. Pete Rugolo, Bill Russo, Gerry Mulligan, Bill Holman, Lennie Niehaus, Johnny Richards, Joe Coccia, Dee Barton and many other “pencil pushers” [Gene Lees’ term] gave the band its signature sound as derived from the music they wrote for it from 1941 - 1969.

Ken Hanna, Willie Maiden and Hank Levy continued this tradition as the three principal arrangers for the band during the decade of the 1970s. Fortunately, they participated in interviews in which they shared their experiences about Stan and what it was like to write for the band.

The following interview with Ken Hanna appears in Lillian Arganian’s Stan Kenton: The Man and His Music [1989]. And while the focus of these look-backs is what was happening with Stan’s music in the 1970s, as you’ll see as you read the following interview, the relationships between Stan, Ken Hanna and Hank Levy reached all the way back to the 1940s formative years of the band.

“HANNA: When Stan formed the Neophonic Orchestra [circa 1965-1968], I called him and asked him if I could write something for it. I wrote Tiare. I thought that would be my swan song, the last thing I would ever write. But a couple of years later, something happened that led me back to Stan.

Lillian Arganian [L.A.]: What was that?

HANNA: I was shipwrecked in Mexico for a year. During that time, Stan and some other people sent me money to keep me afloat, literally. The boat and me.

L.A.: You're talking about literally shipwrecked or is this just a colorful way of speaking?

HANNA: Not at all. I was run aground in Mexico. Stan's A & R man, Lee Gillette, heard about it, and stopped in to visit me down there. He told Stan and they took up a little pool and sent me money. When I got back I went in to see Stan. He was putting a band together again and starting Creative World, making the break from Capitol. He said, "Why don't you go ahead and write something? Write Tiare.' You did for the Neophonic." I couldn't figure out what a tune like this would be doing on a dance album or in a dance band, but I wrote it. I knew what he was doing—he was just trying to get me off my butt. Then one day, I was clerking in a music store, just to keep the wolf away from the door, when I got a phone call from some guy in Cleveland. "Stan wants you to write for us." I was in Los Angeles, still living on a boat — not the one that got wrecked, but another one. Got a plane ticket, took off, joined Stan in Syracuse and stayed on the bus for two years.

L.A.: You had already written "Tiare" for the Neophonic Orchestra. What did he mean, write it again?

HANNA: Score it down for the dance orchestra.

L.A.: Was this the late sixties? 

HANNA: No, early seventies. 

L.A.:  Besides "Tiare," what did you write about that time? 

HANNA: "Bon Homme Richard."That was for Dick Shearer. All within a year or two of each other I wrote "Lonely Windrose," "Fragments of a Portrait," "Beeline   East," and  "Theme for Autumn." "Tiare" was actually first written in 1948.

L.A.: All of your compositions seem to have change built right into them — I think that's why Stan must have liked your style so much. They start off in a certain way and then there are all these different kinds of progressions-changes of tonality, rhythmic changes. They add to the color of the Stan Kenton sound.

HANNA: This was what he liked so much in the later years, the idea of making almost every tune a concert piece.

L.A.: They sound like concert pieces. 

HANNA: Sure. So that, if you didn't have something, or at least try to get something unique and unusual and different, in each arrangement, I don't think he was ever completely satisfied.

L.A.: Some composers cook with their material for years, and  some others seem to get it all in a flash. In your own case, how long would, say, something like "Fragments of a Portrait" have been cooking in your head before they played it?

HANNA: In advance? Not at all.

L.A.: You got right down and . . .

HANNA: Just sat down at the piano and, in the course of doodling around, just working on melody lines, why, I came up with that, and then gradually it evolved into a full lead sheet. And then from there on I made the arrangement.

L.A.: How long does it take to make the arrangement?

HANNA: That depends. If it goes really well you can do something maybe in three days. Somebody else can do it in six hours.

L.A.: When did you first start writing?

HANNA: I started copying records when I was about sixteen.

L.A.: Did you always want to be a musician?

HANNA: No. I wanted to be a baseball player.

L.A.: Until you were sixteen?

HANNA: Even after. In fact, I became captain of the Kenton softball team.

L.A.: You did! (Laughs.) There must have been a dividing point where you said well one of these has to be my career, and you chose music. 

HANNA: Well—it seems as though I was always winding up in music one way or another. Somebody would call or I would stumble into something that led to music. It was in and out. A lot of it depended on finances. 

L.A.: You got involved in it by listening to records and copying down what you heard, making arrangements, and you found that you enjoyed that? HANNA: Um-hm.

L.A.: How did you evolve into the kind of composer you are now, with all that imagination and invention and creativity?

HANNA: You don't start out with that. You get there by listening to all types of music, and by practicing, analysis, and reproduction. A lot of it is just plain old copy-work.

L.A.: Are there people you particularly admired in composing that you perhaps wanted to emulate, or that influenced you in some way?

HANNA: Certain classical writers I've always liked. The Romantics. People like Debussy, Ravel, Ibert. Stravinsky.

And every dance band that ever came along, when I was studying music and getting started. So I was soaking it up, even though I didn't know it. 

L.A.: Do you recall when you began to feel the urge or pull toward changing around the tonalities and the time structure in your compositions? I'm thinking of a work like "Beeline East," where, instead of playing the exact same thing all the way through for three minutes, it comes to a point where it slows down: "Ba-ba-BA-Bah!" and then you modulate it to a different tonality and pick up the tempo again.

HANNA: Kenton wanted every tune to be concert-length, so we'd be playing as a five- or six-, seven-minute number what other dance bands would be playing as a three-minute arrangement. Hank Levy's things run nine minutes. 

L.A.: So this was because he wanted pieces that were more concertized? HANNA: He wanted spark, he wanted the whole works. On every arrangement. If it wasn't strong, it couldn't get played.

L.A.: Do you have a favorite chord structure or arrangement that you use to experiment? 

HANNA: No. There are patterns that you get into. You don't mean to; you don't want to. But you get used to doing the same thing and pretty soon you say hey — Did I write that? And you go look up and see what you did two or three years ago, and your tune might be pretty close to the same thing. You might have written it twice, and didn't know it. 

L.A.: What would be a typical pattern for you? You do a lot of different things. 

HANNA: My patterns, my devices - like any arranger's — are always pretty much the same. I like to write for trombone solo, for example. Maybe because I played trombone originally, before switching to trumpet. 

L.A.: Dick Shearer and Mike Suter were kidding about you. They were saying how difficult it is for a trombone player to play whole notes because they run out of oxygen, and pretty soon the band is here and they're in Hawaii. And one of them said "Ken Hanna lives!" They found your music beautiful, but somewhat challenging to play because of the wind problem. 

HANNA: Good.

L.A.: (Laughs.) You don't care about that, do you. "Play it anyway, buddy." HANNA: Stan never cared about it. He said, "Play it."

LA.: They're not the only ones who said that.

HANNA: Trumpet players—they hated me.

L.A.: Why did they hate you? 

HANNA: Too many notes, too high, too long. 

L.A.: Too high?

HANNA: Um-hm. That was their complaint. But somebody else's come along and give them the same thing, and they'd say, "Hey, Great." But remember, I wrote a lot of ballad things. And I would be thinking one tempo, which would be a reasonably playable tempo, and Stan would then slow it down to a crawl.

L.A.: (Laughs.)

HANNA: That means the notes get longer. Oh yeah.

L.A.:  Well  you're  not  to  blame. (Laughs.)  Kenton has said that you wrote most of the romantic ballads.

HANNA: Ya, well he liked to tag people with different titles, you know, so it was a good way for him to present me. On the ballad side.

L.A.: But ballads aren't the only thing you did.

HANNA: I guess I probably lean that way more than any other.

L.A.: "Bogota," I'm thinking of. On the London record.

HANNA: Most of what we recorded over in London that was mine had to be

thrown out, because the recording quality was so poor. I've written lots of

things that were never recorded, a lot of things that were never played. Stan was very unusual in that we always knew whether or not our arrangements were going to get played.

L.A.: How did you know that? 

HANNA: At rehearsals Stan would let the arrangers and composers rehearse their own works. You could tell after the first hour. You just had a way of sensing it, that he liked it or he didn't like it. In the earlier days, in the forties, we would rehearse and rehearse and tunes would get played until they worked in. You had to take time to work tunes in. It takes time for an arrangement to jell. We worked our tails off to make sure that the arrangements were right, and a lot of them he really rammed home. In the later days it never happened that way. It was a weird change to see. 'Cause I was there both times.

L.A.: In the later days he wouldn't give it

time to jell?

HANNA: I remember one guy wrote six or eight arrangements, originals, for a record date. Stan rehearsed them for two days, picked them all up, and threw them into the trash basket. With a few choice words.

L.A.: You first met Stan, then, in the forties?

HANNA: I guess the first time I really became aware of Stan Kenton would be in 1941, when we listened to air checks coming from Balboa. 

L.A.: What is an aircheck? 

HANNA: That was the popular name used for half-hour and hour segments of the band playing from some ballroom, sometimes on transcription, sometimes direct, that were broadcast on the air, sometimes nationally. Every band had a special night.

L.A.: The exposure for the Stan Kenton band must have been terrific. I understand people would stay tuned to their radios for news of the war, and when the East Coast stations went off the air the Pacific Coast stations came in. 

HANNA: He had a clear field. Stan came to my home town, Baltimore, in 1942, for a night club date. I had a band of my own then, and one of my musicians wanted to try out with Stan. He didn't make it, but he told me that Stan was looking for a writer. That's where my first love was. Always has been. So I went to the club and introduced myself to Stan. He suggested that I try doing a couple of sample arrangements and bring them to a rehearsal. This was a very unusual thing because I'd been turned down by everybody, practically.

L.A.: I can't believe it. 

HANNA: Harry James . . . 

L.A.: I can't believe it. 

HANNA: Sammy Kaye . . .

L.A.: Why would they turn you down? 

HANNA: In those days they didn't give you much of an opportunity to get your foot in the door.

L.A.: Why didn't they like your kind of music? I think it's fabulous. 

HANNA: They'd never heard it. 

L.A.:   They hadn't heard it, but they wouldn't give you a chance anyway? HANNA: No. No, they had their own writers, their own pet way of going, and you just, it was very difficult to enter into the writing end at all. In those days I would have written anything, for free, just to hear it played. So Stan was good enough to say, "Write something and let me hear it and bring it into our rehearsal."

L.A.: Was he merely looking for something new, or did he specifically need a writer at the time?

HANNA: He needed a writer. His other writers were back on the Coast, and he was doing his own writing. He wasn't really satisfied with the people who had been doing his writing for him. It didn't fit the sound that he wanted.

L.A.: The strain that you're talking about, that he was looking for, I can hear in your music. How is it that what you write sounds like what Stan wants to

hear? Were you already writing in what we might call a Stan Kenton style, which he recognized and loved, or did you join the band first and then figure out what he wanted?

HANNA: I had an advantage of sorts. I did an awful lot of copying records in

the early days of my writing. I would take these arrangements off the record

to use in my own band.

L.A.: How do you do that?

HANNA: You sit down, with a lot of patience . . .

L.A.: You can hear all that?

HANNA: Yes.

L.A.: You can hear what everybody's doing on a record?

HANNA: You have to go slowly. You work with a piano and make the chords and the melody structure and so forth. So having done that often enough I could duplicate the sounds of Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Stan Kenton—you name it, I could come pretty close to the style that they had. And so in that way I was able to maybe jump in there and get his sound. L.A.: Was the music you were writing for your own band substantially different from what you did for Stan? 

HANNA: I was writing pretty much in the style of what you could say was standard dance bands in those days. Once in a while I took a crack at trying to do an original tune. It was a long time before I had the courage to really get in and write any of my own material. 

L.A.: That started when you joined Stan's band?

HANNA: A little bit prior, but mostly with Stan and then on. 

L.A.:  What  were  those first  two arrangements you did for him? 

HANNA: I don't remember exactly. They were standards, one ballad and one rhythm tune. They had the Kenton sound because I used that same type of voicing, particularly in the saxes. He seemed  to be very pleased with the results, and that led to our keeping in contact with each other. By mail, usually, or phone. As long as he was on the East Coast, he would send me tunes, and I would arrange them, whether for the

vocalists or for the band, and send them back to him.

L.A.: In other words, you did not join Stan's band per se at that time? HANNA: No. I was going to, but all of a sudden Uncle Sam was right behind me. So I enlisted in the Navy, and that postponed my joining the band for three and a half years. Stan and I had an agreement all during the war years that I would keep writing for him and send him the tunes. I was stationed in Baltimore, so that was fortunate. I had a piano, and one solid location where I could do all the work. So we kept in touch with each other. And I would go out and catch the band whenever they were close to Baltimore.

L.A.: When you joined, did you play in the band too, as well as write? HANNA: Oh yes. In 1946 1 joined on trumpet. I stayed for two years, then went back to Baltimore and taught for two years at the GI School of Music. L.A.: What did you teach? 

HANNA: A little bit of everything. Whatever somebody else didn't want to do, I did. I had orchestras to conduct, such as state bands, and taught arranging, composing, a little bit of theory

L.A.: What do you teach, when you teach arranging?

HANNA: Everyone's talent and ability and understanding is at a different level. First thing you start out with is a grounding in theory. And build up from there to the use of chords and melodic lines and an understanding of transposition. During this time Stan had his Innovations Orchestra on the road, and when he passed through Baltimore he said "Why don't you come out to the Coast? I'm gonna put the dance band back together and you can start writing again." So I packed up, bag and baggage, and brought the family out here. Since then it's been my home. In 1951 I went back to work for Stan for not quite a year, while he was putting the dance band together. But he had quite a few people writing for him then, Shorty Rogers and others, and he had as much music as he could use at that time. So in order to keep the family together I became a salesman, a purchasing agent, I did a little bit of everything. A few years later some friends of mine talked me into putting a band together out here. We spent a couple of years rehearsing it and cut a couple of recordings with it. I wrote "Bogota" for that band. We played a few dates locally, up in L. A. 

L.A.: Then what happened to it?

HANNA: Money. Money happened to it. I got out of that and didn't do any more writing until the Neophonic. That's when I went back and called Stan and asked if I could write something for him.

L.A.: And that was "Tiare." 

HANNA: That was "Tiare." 

L.A.: What are some of the things you wrote for Stan in the earlier period? HANNA: I remember vividly, the first original I did for Stan was about 1948, and that was "Somnambulism." 

L.A.: The Progressive Jazz era. That's great.

HANNA: We were doing concert pieces then. He was getting into it in a big way. Where we all wore the ascots. I did quite a few arrangements backing up June Christy, and, in the early days, Anita O’Day and Red Dorris. 

L.A.: Are you still writing? 

HANNA: Yes, I'm free-lancing and doing a little bit of teaching. Every once in a while I'll do a semester up here at San Diego State.

L.A.: Whom are you free-lancing for? 

HANNA:  Anybody that  happens to need some music at the time. Groups, singers, big dance bands. 

L.A.: Why don't you do something on your own, form another orchestra or something? You're a wonderful composer. Your music should get more of a hearing.

HANNA: It might surprise you to know that I tried desperately about 1971 or '72 to get my own band together. Another one. I was hoping to go out and play a lot of the music that Kenton never played, actually. 

L.A.: That you wrote that . . .

HANNA: That I wrote, that other people wrote. 'Cause we had tons of music coming into that band that was never heard. Literally. 

L.A.: I've often wondered about that. With so many full-time arrangers and composers on the Kenton band at any given time, and so few pieces ever getting on record, one has to wonder what became of all the rest of the music that was written. Where is it, what happened to it. It'll never be heard, and that's terrible.

HANNA: Well I was very frustrated about the whole thing because doing the clinics I knew we had a choice of an awfully good bunch of good musicians. Excellent musicians. 

L.A.: You mean students? 

HANNA: Students. College, university people. They knew what they were doing. In fact a lot of them later on came to play with the Kenton band. Out of those clinics. And I wanted to put together a band  composed of those

people. I had a list seven miles long of people who wanted to get into it. I

wanted to put a band out on the road. But Stan blocked me every step of the way.

L.A.: Why is that?

HANNA: Expense.  I'm pretty sure, primarily expense.

L.A.: You mean you wanted to put it together for yourself or for him?

HANNA: For myself.

L.A.: But he was opposed to the idea because he thought you'd go under?

HANNA: Yes, I think that was the basic reason.  He probably felt he couldn't help me financially, and where that kind of money would come from was anybody's guess, because by that time it was beginning to get a little bit expensive to take a band out on the road. 

L.A.: What are some of your compositions that are not on recordings? HANNA:  "Sensitive"  has  been recorded, I'm pretty sure, but I don't think it's been released. "Turido" I don't think has been released. "No Media Noche.""Montiya.""Morea." 

.A.: What kind of composition is "Morea"?

HANNA: Supposedly representative of the South Seas.

L.A.: Is it in classical style like your other works?

HANNA: It's got a little bit of classical form to it, but written for a dance band. "Westwind'' is a ballad I wrote that ties in with "Morea." It's part of a suite I tried to do, dealing with the South Pacific. "Sensitive" is a theme for trombone and piano, with the full band, "Querida." "Serapo." "Lazy Tiger." And I've done arrangements for "You Go To My Head," "This Is All I Ask," "You Must Believe," "Snowfall," "Wave," "The Song Is You," "Send in the Clowns" — not the recorded one, that's Dave Barduhn's — "Autumn in New York," and "Summer Knows."

L.A.: That's a pretty wild arrangement you did of "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life" that opens the London album. Just sensational. I guess that's on the Brigham Young album too, isn't it.

HANNA: Yes. Macumba Suite is also on Brigham Young. 

L.A.: Hank Levy's compositions are on some of the same albums as yours. You and he were good friends, weren't you? 

HANNA: You better bet your boots. He played in my band the first job he ever got, back in Baltimore.

L.A.: How did you meet him? 

HANNA: We needed a saxophone player. He was the only one in town that had a baritone. So I hired him. We were always close from then on. Later, when I was stationed in Baltimore, I recruited him for the Navy.

L.A.: Is that doing him a favor? (Laughs.)

HANNA: (Laughs.) He came into the Navy, and I happened to be there. 

L.A.: Did you influence each other? 

HANNA: No. I don't think I had an influence on him. Although he played in my orchestra, I don't recall that he ever wrote anything for me at the time. It wasn't until he got into the Navy that he started writing. We were both interested in the same type of music. He was playing Kenton arrangements even in my band. I was out here on the Coast writing for Stan when he got out of the service, and I got him a job playing with Stan. He took Bob Gioga's place. Stayed for a few months, then left for family reasons. During that time he started writing for Kenton a little bit. Then later he got to writing for other orchestras back in Baltimore, and got into his business of school stage bands, writing for them.

L.A.: He's very important in the clinics, isn't he? Really believed in them. HANNA:  He's tremendous  with  the students. He's fabulous. 

L.A.: You must have been a popular favorite when you went up to his college, Towson State, because of your friendship with him.

HANNA: Well no, he had so much going on there, and the Kenton band was so overwhelming to the students. Everybody got along with everybody; it wasn't a question of who had any more influence.

L.A.: It was really exciting to the students? It wasn't just a week away from home?

HANNA: They'd go out of their minds working. Never stopped from morning 'til night. They had to be recommended by their teachers to get there in the first place. We would mail out flyers to let them know about it at the different schools in each area. 

L.A.: Most of them knew about the Stan Kenton Orchestra and what they would be getting into, and that was why they came?

HANNA: Oh absolutely. 

L.A.: Would you ever get feedback as to how these clinics might have affected their lives?

HANNA: I've had some very good people who are turning out very good

arrangements whom I hope we might have helped in some way. But you can only do so much in a week. The arranging thing is tricky; it's not like, say, a trumpet section where if a guy has problems you can straighten him out pretty fast. Incidentally, the clinics were very well supervised. The big ones, like at Drury, Towson State and Redlands, would have gone on for years longer if Stan had been able to continue. 

L.A.: Did Stan have a favorite among your compositions?

HANNA: If he did it would have to be between "Tiare" and "Bogota." 

L.A.: When you rejoined him in the seventies, how long did you stay? HANNA: Almost until his death. Stan and 1 have always been very close. Twice when he was sick I went out and fronted the band. We were out there sometimes for about three months. It was a matter of just getting on and off the bus and doing the date where we were and trying to explain to all the promoters where Stan wasn't. 'Cause we didn't let anybody know. The band would have been down the drain. Promoters would have cancelled like flies. So we kept it going during those periods of his illness. Actually, for quite a while, maybe a year, the band wasn't really in existence. He was that ill. He kept going as long as he could, and then he just had to call it quits.

L.A.: What most impressed you about him? What do you feel was his biggest contribution to music? 

HANNA: (Pauses.) You know you're asking for an awful lot there. I can't wrap up anything like that. One thing that was so fantastic about him throughout most of his years was his memory.

L.A.: For people?

HANNA: For people, for anything. Now that doesn't sound like it fits into a music situation. But I'll give you ten to one that if Stan hadn't had that fantastic memory, he might have been long forgotten. He made more friends by having such a fantastic memory. I met him, spoke to him for about fifteen minutes and came back three days later — he remembered my name. First name and last name. That's the thing that struck you. He would go back, year after year, to different places, where he'd played before, and he'd talk to a guy and say "Hi, Jack, how are you?" It would be Jack. Another thing was his ability to dramatize the music. Six-foot-four, arms like an eagle's wings — watching him conduct, he'd be all over the place.

That was very dramatic. And that helped put the music across. 

L.A.: Brought out some more of the excitement that was already there. HANNA: Ya. People'd look at that and they'd think, Wow,

L.A.: What about his impact on the American musical scene? 

HANNA: I've heard other people say, and I agree with it, a lot of the voicings that they use now in television and movies, radio and bands, other bands, those voicings were not being used at all, the sound and the scope of the sound, until he started doing it. For so many years, the saxes in every dance band in the country played 1-2-3-4, and if you had a fifth, he doubled the lead. Wrote the score right down the chord. Always. Never any change. You could see a little of that branching out in the Miller sax section, where the saxes would open every once in a while. But Stan opened 'em up fast, and big. He opened up the brass. It couldn't get too big for him. And dimension. Every time he'd add a new man he was adding another dimension to it.

L.A.: That's adding an interval to the harmonic structure? 

HANNA: Um-hm. Um-hm. Um-hm. 

L.A.: Like a seventh or a ninth or a tenth? Something dissonant.

HANNA: It's not his alone — those devices have been used throughout the years by some of the classical writers. I don't know how far back we can go, but you'll hear it in recent classical writers. He got more out of a dance band than had been tried. He heard certain sounds. When I first joined the band, we all used vibrato. When I was last with the band, nobody used vibrato. He wanted that cold, icy feel of.... He was fishing a lot. Trying to find the right sound for his sax section. He never did find it. Probably the guy who came closest was Lennie Niehaus. And the ones he did himself. But at least we got into voicings in the saxes that were different from what other bands were using. 

L.A.: You've obviously made sacrifices yourself to stay with music, just as Stan did. So you have something in common with him. Given the choice, he would get experimental, and it seems to me that there's some of that in you too. 

HANNA: Sure there is. Anybody who writes music, I'm sure, feels a certain amount of satisfaction from hearing his own work. You get up there in front of a band and rehearse your own music — it never sounds exactly like you expected it to. That's the biggest thrill of all.”

Pacific Jazz Records A History of the Label and Its Artists, 1952-1965 by Jim Harrod - A Review

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

"During the last half-century, New York's preeminence in the jazz world has faced a serious challenge only once. For a brief period following World War II, California captured the imagination of jazz fans around the world. 'West Coast Jazz' suddenly became a catchword, a fad, a new thing. Jazz writers even wrote

about a battle of West Coast versus East Coast, as though an actual war was taking place."

—TED GIOIA, AUTHOR OF WEST COAST JAZZ

One of the more arresting aspects of Pacific Jazz Records, A History of the Label and Its Artists, 1952-1965 [McFarland 2026] is the unique backstory about how the book came to be in the first place.

Jim Harrod is a close friend so I’ve heard the story of its origins over numerous get-togethers. But each time I reflect on how a young man in Sheridan, Wyoming came of age in the Jazz World by listening to recordings of Jazz artists issued by a then still somewhat obscure record company based in Los Angeles, it never fails to cause me to shake my head in amazement.

Here’s how Jim describes this journey in his Preface which also provides an overview of how the process of writing the book evolved.

“My interest in jazz blossomed in the mid-1950s when I was exposed to the music through a friend in high school, Jon Brooder, and a radio program, Willie's Waxworks, on the local AM radio station, KWYO. Willie's Waxworks was hosted by Bill Emery, who managed one of the record shops in town at Mossholder's Furniture. Jon had accompanied Bill on a visit to the West Coast in 1955 when Bill visited friends in Los Angeles that he had established during his time in the city in the early 1950s when he met Ray Avery, Woody Woodward, and Danny Alguire. 

Woody invited Bill and Jon to attend several recording sessions at Pacific Jazz during their visit and Dick Bock gave Jon an armful of the latest Pacific Jazz releases to take home. Bill's visit in 1951 coincided with the emergence of Pacific Jazz and Contemporary Records. Bill's selection of jazz records at Mossholder's favored the West Coast labels he knew intimately through contacts with Dick Bock at Pacific Jazz and Les Koenig at Contemporary. My initial jazz library was built around releases from these companies.

Bill and I maintained a friendship that included seeing one another when he visited California to see his Los Angeles jazz friends. My visits to my hometown in later years always included a visit with Bill, and during a visit in 1994 I suggested that we should consider writing a history of the Pacific Jazz label. We began working on compiling a complete list of every release on the label including later releases on World Pacific. List members at the organissimo online jazz forum suggested that I compile an online resource containing all of the labels issued by Bock's Pacific Jazz and World Pacific companies.

Initial planning included a discography. Additional research revealed that myriad inconsistencies rendered a definitive discography impossible, so that task is left to the professional jazz discographers to tackle. Hopefully they will find this history that includes details of every AFM contract on file at AFM Local No. 47 of assistance in that task.

Writing the history was delayed as the background of co-founder Roy Harte was scant. This obstacle was overcome when Roy's son, Rex Harte, shared details of Roy's musician logbooks that he maintained meticulously during his big band years in the swing era. Roy's logs provide intimate details of the time Roy spent with Muggsy Spanier, Bobby Sherwood, George Paxton, Johnny Richards, Billie Rogers, Boyd Raeburn, Jerry Wald, Lucky Millinder, Ike Carpenter, and others.

The inconsistencies that discouraged the inclusion of a discography also presented a challenge regarding how to present an orderly history of the label. The opening chapters offer biographies of the people and places that figure prominently in the evolution of Pacific Jazz and World Pacific. The yearly activity of the labels presented a similar challenge. Recording sessions for specific releases were often weeks or months apart. When a finished album reached the marketplace its review was often months later. An album released in 1956 might not receive a review in the music press until 1957. The history unfolds in the following chronological fashion.

The yearly activity chapters begin with the earliest recording session date. If additional recording sessions were needed to complete an album, reviews of the album follow the last session date. Noteworthy news concerning the label is inserted in the narrative according to the date it was published in the music media. Each chapter ends with a listing of the albums released that year including various numerical series, speed formats, and matrix numbers.

Matrix numbers are listed as they present the best evidence regarding when planned releases entered the production schedule at Pacific Jazz.”

Jim’s Pacific Jazz history, which celebrates the accomplishments of it principals, Dick Bock and Roy Harte, becomes a welcome addition to the books that have been written in recent years about the pioneering entrepreneurs who managed independent record labels that documented the halcyon days of modern Jazz following the close of World War II among them: Tad Hershorn, Norman Granz, The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice, Richard Cook, Blue Note Records which celebrates the work of Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff and  Ashley Kahn, The House That Trane Built which fetes Creed Taylor’s productions. 

As an aspiring Jazz drummer in Los Angeles in the late 1950s, I looked forward to the next Pacific Jazz release because the music on them celebrated the Jazz heroes that I’d heard performing in the local Jazz clubs, concert halls and festivals. I usually found out about them by reading Downbeat, Metronome, the Jazz Review and many other, sadly, short-lived magazines devoted to Jazz.

Radio airplay was also a source of information about forthcoming albums, especially after the development of KNOB- FM in the greater Los Angeles area which was hailed as the “world’s first all Jazz radio station.”

Finding Pacific Jazz albums in record stores was another matter because unlike the “big guys” - Columbia, RCA and Capitol - independent labels such as Pacific Jazz, Nocturne and Contemporary Record had limited budgets for marketing and distribution.

Thank goodness for the "I can order it for you and it should be here in a few days” mantra of the locally owned record store which enabled me to acquire some of the Pacific Jazz recordings detailed in Jim’s book.

This is how I “met” the original Gerry Mulligan Quartet featuring Chet Baker on trumpet, the early editions of Shorty Rogers and His Giants and the wonderful recordings that trumpet Clifford Brown made with Zoot Sims with music arranged by Jack Montrose and a host of other marvelous recordings made by a number of Jazz artists that were “before my time.”

Later, after I became active in the music, many of the Los Angeles based Jazz players that I enjoyed would be featured on Pacific Jazz recordings including the Jazz Crusaders, Joe Pass and Les McCann and the Gerald Wilson Orchestra.

Due to an accident of geography, I had the advantage of being able to acquire and listen to the many fine recordings issued on Pacific Jazz. In a way, perusing Pacific Jazz Records, A History of the Label and Its Artists, 1952-1965 becomes an exercise in visiting old friends. 

But for those of you with limited exposure to the West Coast Jazz scene from 1945-1965, Jim’s book will help open a whole new world for you as it provides a road map to use and discover many new listening experiences involving artists primarily based in southern California during this period.

For as annotated on the book’s back cover:

“From its modest beginning in the back of a drum shop, Pacific Jazz became one of the most respected and successful independent jazz record labels in America, starting with a single 78 rpm release in 1952 that introduced the Gerry Mulligan Quartet. Its exponential growth during the 1950s launched the jazz careers of Mulligan, Chet Baker, Chico Hamilton, and Bud Shank. With expansion in the mid '50s and a name change to World Pacific, the catalog included folk, comedy, pop, vocal, Latin, and world music genres featuring artists such as Kimio Eto and Ravi Shankar. Jazz releases continued to introduce major artists in the 1960s including the Jazz Crusaders, Les McCann, Curtis Amy, Paul Bryant, Clare Fischer, Joe Pass, Gerald Wilson, and Carmell Jones. Dick Bock sold Pacific Jazz to Liberty Records in the spring of 1965, ending its 13-year run as an independent jazz label. This history covers in depth all 13 years of the transformative record label's independence.”

Jim writes the way he talks in an easy to understand almost off-handed manner which makes his book a pleasure to read. While important technical information is included, Jim’s narrative brings to life the artists and the music they made.

Using a chronological approach, the book focuses on key albums that were issued during each year of the label’s thirteen-year existence.

For example, this annotation about Clifford Brown’s sole excursion on Pacific Jazz which was made even more unique because of it emphasis on arrangements, something that often distinguished the West Coast based Jazz musicians from their East Coast brethren who often favored the more informal blowing sessions:

“The Thursday evening, August 12, 1954, Clifford Brown session was scheduled from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Capitol Recording Studios on Melrose Avenue. The AFM contract listed Clifford Brown, trumpet; Russell Freeman, piano; Joe Mondragon, bass; Robert Gordon, baritone saxophone; Sheldon Manne, drums; Stu Williamson, valve-trombone; Jack "Zoot" Sims, tenor saxophone. The contract also credited Maury Dell as copyist and Clifford Brown as arranger although Bock's liner notes credit Jack Montrose as sole arranger on the Clifford Brown ensemble sessions. The second Clifford Brown session occurred on Wednesday, September 8,1954, at Capitol Recording Studio "A" from 4:30 to 8:00 p.m. Carson Smith replaced Joe Mondragon on bass and the AFM contract noted Jack Montrose, arranger, plus Maury Dell and Joe Estren as copyists. 

The Clifford Brown ensemble sessions endured an extended period of gestation, unusual for Dick Bock as albums normally reached the retail market within a month or two after taping.

Will Thornbury asked Dick Bock about the Clifford Brown sessions thirty years after they were recorded. "The thing that I didn't want to do was to record Clifford in the same context that he had been recorded, and the same context he was always recorded in and a lot of people including Max Roach hated me for doing this because it was not what they wanted to do and it wasn't the setting that they had conceived that was Clifford's normal setting. The chance to record Clifford was a great one, and I thought let's try to do something different, and see what happens, put him in another context. It is one of the few albums that is unique from the rest of his albums. I don't think it is any better than the albums that Clifford recorded with Max Roach, in fact their albums are in some ways superior performances because they're more integrated, they're tightly knit, they're really well rehearsed because that's the way they play on the job. I think it was successful, a good counterpart to Clifford, he wrote for the session and played beautifully on it."

Or the following description of The Mastersounds, a quartet with the same instrumentation as The Modern Jazz Quartet, but with a looser, more swinging feeling which made their music somewhat more accessible than that of the more classically constructed approach of the MJQ. The fact that The Mastersounds drew their music from the popular Broadway shows during the 1950s such as The King and I, Kismet and The Flower Drum Song may also have contributed to their recordings being among the label’s best-sellers. The following extract also shows Jim’s efforts to locate and include album reviews from the major music magazines including Downbeat, Metronome and The Billboard.

“AFM contracts for the Mastersounds first two albums on World Pacific are not in the files at Local No. 47 in Los Angeles. The mention in The Billboard that Bock had two packages already in the works indicates that the sessions may have been recorded independently by the Mastersounds in San Francisco where they burst onto the local jazz scene at Dave Glickman's Jazz Showcase. Ads in the San Francisco Examiner for the jazz club carried a byline, "Pacific Jazz New ' Stars of '57" indicating that Bock had signed the quartet prior to the August 9, 1957, date of the newspaper. Jepsen dates the session for Jazz Showcase Introducing.... The Mastersounds, PJM-403, to September 12, 1957, and The King and I—A Modern Jazz Interpretation by the Mastersounds, PJM-405, to September 19, 1957, both in Los Angeles.47 Don Gold extended a three-star cautious review of PJM-403 in Down Beat. "It may be trifle too early to determine the full value of the group, flaws and virtues are apparent, additional time together may benefit."48 Metronome's review of PJM-403 was less critical. "A capable, well-rehearsed group, playing some imaginative arrangements of both standards and originals, they swing."49 The King and I—A Modern Jazz Interpretation by the Mastersounds, PJM-405, was reviewed in The Billboard under their "Sound" section, not the "Jazz Albums" area. "The unusual sounds produced by The Mastersounds only reflect their good taste and top musicianship in this collection of tunes from The King and I."

Jazz is a reflection of the times in which it is created and this was no less the case during the period that Pacific Jazz was in existence.

Jim offers commentary on some of these socio-cultural influences then in vogue in southern California such as the coffee houses that spawned the Jazz and Poetry movement and the music associated with it which found its way onto a number of Pacific Jazz recordings.

The surfing craze, the advent of interest in folk music and the forerunners of bossa nova, soul and funk and one world, international music were chronicled on Pacific Jazz recordings well before they later reached national prominence.

Pacific Jazz was also involved in some of the earliest efforts to create a larger listening audience for Jazz with its involvement in the Jazz International’s education efforts.

Much of the music described and discussed in Pacific Jazz Records, A History of the Label and Its Artists, 1952-1965 reflects the spirit of exploration, joy of discovery and sense of entrepreneurial adventure that dominated California culture during these years.

This risk-taking even extended to some of the recording techniques employed by Dick Bock and his associates at Pacific Jazz:

“Jack Tracy gave Cy Touff, His Octet & Quintet, PJ-1211, four stars in Down Beat. "This is high caliber fare, and achieves a compulsive swing and joy which is practically guaranteed to make you pat a hole in the floor." John Tynan wrote an extended article for Down Beat about the recording session at the Forum Theater and Bock's decision to use the theater to record. The musicians were set up on stage in front of a large curtain. The only lighting was supplied by overhead stage lights, and Bock had solved the chilly temperature problem encountered with the Jack Sheldon session.

The musician's sound projected out into the theater seating area and provided perfect acoustical balance. "Reverberations are completely lacking ... rather the music fills the theater and filters back to the performers, making for an extremely true sound."

The reader can also get a sense of these “Wild Wild West” qualities through the book's many photos, album covers [especially those associated with William, Claxton] and posters.

Jim’s  book is a professional achievement written by someone passionate enough to turn his personal interest into a well-researched, well-written behind-the-scenes look at what went into making this music happen.

The work is an invaluable addition to the canon of books on the subject of Jazz in California from 1945 to 1965 along with Ted Gioia’s West Coast Jazz: Jazz in California 1945 - 1960, Robert Gordon’s, Jazz West Coast and my own self-published trilogy, West Coast Jazz - A Reader, Vols. 1, 2, and 3.

The photo that adorns the cover of the book shows Bobby Troop, the host of the Stars of Jazz TV Program, interviewing Dick Bock.  We’ve come full circle here as Jim is also the author of Stars of Jazz: A Complete History of the Innovative Television Series, 1956-1958 which McFarland published in 2020!

For order information go here.

[Winner of the 2025 Jazz Journalist Association Special Citation for Historic Writings, Steven Cerra is a professional Jazz drummer and the author of anthologies on Gerry Mulligan, Bill Evans, Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck, Shelly Manne, Jazz West Coast Readers Vols. 1-3, Profiles in Jazz, Vol.1, Jazz Drummers A Reader Vols. 1-2, Jazz Saxophonists A Reader, Vol. 1, 2 & 3, Jazz Piano A Reader, Vols. 1, 2 & 3 and Jazz Trumpet A Reader Vols. 1 and 2. He also hosts the jazzprofiles.blogspot and cerra.substack blogs.]