The Clark Terry - Bob Brookmeyer Quintet and The Power of Positive Swinging

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

It is true that at the Half Note, the staff refers to Terry and Brookmeyer as "Mumbles and Grumbles." "Mumbles" is the title of a widely popular Terry recording, and "Grumbles" alludes to Brookmeyer's occasionally sardonic view of the world and the foibles of its inhabitants, including his own. Yet I wonder if at base, the two are actually that disparate.

Both are the antithesis of pretentiousness off as well as on the stand. Both have never regarded jazz as so "serious" that it cannot also be unabashed fun. And both are very much themselves. Beneath Terry's gentleness and open good will and beneath Brookmeyer's wry (and sometimes self-deprecating) wit are an insistence on going their own ways. Each has resisted being compressed into any one "bag" and accordingly, the two together are — to use a favorite Duke Ellington commendation — beyond category.

- Nat Hentoff, Distinguished and Esteemed Jazz author and critic

When I acquired my copy of Clark Terry-Bob Brookmeyer Quintet: The Power of Positive Swinging [Mainstream LP 56054] in 1965, I never gave the subtitle much thought.

From the vantage point of the 20 years preceding 1965, Modern Jazz, to use the term collectively and inclusively, had experienced a surge of both stylistic growth and popular approval and it seemed that this would continue to be the case going forward.

Unfortunately, the music and many of its musicians took themselves too seriously, not to mention, taking the music in directions that caused it to lose its future audiences to Rock ‘n Roll.

Looking back on the post 1965 Jazz World many years later, a re-reading of the following insert notes by Nat Hentoff, this time as they appeared in the CD version of Clark Terry-Bob Brookmeyer Quintet: The Power of Positive Swinging [Mainstream JK 57117], helped the subtitle of the recording become more understandable.

Sadly so because in many ways 1965 was a year when Jazz began its descendance as a music with a broad appeal and continued its ascendancy as an "art form," an increasingly obscure one at that.

“EVER since critics and other verbalizers began to involve themselves with jazz, categorizations have grown through the music like weeds. And also like weeds, these stylistic labels are often difficult to cut down so that you can experience the music directly. One index of the singular pleasures to be had from the music of the Clark Terry & Bob Brookmeyer Quintet is that it not so much defies categories but rather ignores them. Their invitation to simply make contact with the music itself is so immediate and infectious that only the most rigidified academic would try to sort this combo and the music it plays into some constrictingly neat niche.

"That," observes Mr. Brookmeyer, himself chronically reluctant to verbalize about music, "is what our music is for - pleasure, not historical diagnosis. We all enjoy each other personally, and perhaps it's that mutual enjoyment that comes out in the music." As of August, 1965, Brookmeyer and Terry will have been together four years. They are not together all the time, of course, because their multiple skills often occupy them in other assignments. But their nights as co-leaders of this unit usually add up to about three months a year, with New York's Half Note their basing point. And in addition, they play other locations and cities from time to time.

Heightening the evident pleasure which Brookmeyer and Terry absorb from this association is their pride in the group. "This," Brookmeyer notes, "is ours. Clark and I have always worked for other people and whatever renown -or notoriety, if you will - we've accumulated has been with other people. After all that time, it's a continuing enjoyment for us to shape our own band."

As you can hear on this set, the relaxed cohesion of the co-leaders is buttressed by a similar collective flow of skills in the rhythm section. Dave Bailey and Bill Crow have been with the group for two and a half years and are also colleagues of Brookmeyer in the Gerry Mulligan Quartet. Pianist Roger Kellaway, the most recent of a series of resourceful pianists with Brookmeyer and Terry, blends into the section with attentive resiliency.

"Roger," notes Brookmeyer in a rare surge of adjectives, "is one of the most impressive, versatile talents I've heard in recent years. He can play any way; and no matter what way it is, it's clear he's not jiving. He really is able to become part of a wide range of contexts."

The initial "Dancing On The Grave" by Brookmeyer has become the combo's theme song. It is a cheerful kind of "walpurgisnacht [usually a night when something nightmarish occurs]," and Brookmeyer considers it unnecessary to be specific about what the title implies. Each listener is left to his own connotations. The "Battle Hymn Of The Republic" is a particular favorite at the Half Note, especially for Frank Canterino, the chef-in-chief of the establishment. "We refer to the song," says Brookmeyer, "as getting Frank out of the kitchen." In this head arrangement, incidentally, the musicians sound as if the battle has already been won and all that's left to do is to celebrate.

"The King," a number written by Count Basic, is a distillation of the verb "to swing" - both in its original manifestation and in this version. "Ode To A Flugelhorn" points up Clark Terry's brisk mastery of this instrument which seems particularly attuned to his qualities of wit, lithe grace and concern for textural values.

Brookmeyer arranged the vintage "Gal In Calico" having been attracted to the song because it allowed the combo to explore yet another nuance of mood. "Green Stamps," by Brookmeyer, is an ebullient event, marked by a series of exchanges between the co-leaders which turns into a circle of wit. "Hawg Jawz" is Clark Terry's and it particularly reflects Clark's antic humor. It also is an illustration - by Terry and Brookmeyer - of the art of breakmanship. Their dialogue of breaks here is consistently fresh, pointed, and relevant.

"Simple Waltz" is by Clark and in this song too, there are quick-witted ripostes by the two leaders as well as solos by them that reveal their easy - and unerring - sense of swing. The final "Just An Old Manuscript," a Don Redman/Andy Razaf collaboration, is a model of how a combo can achieve a wholly relaxed, organic unity.

In recalling the nearly four years of his association with Terry, Brookmeyer observes that "It was a pleasure from the very beginning, from the first rehearsal-talk over in my apartment." "And yet," Brookmeyer adds, "we're very disparate personalities."

It is true that at the Half Note, the staff refers to Terry and Brookmeyer as "Mumbles and Grumbles." "Mumbles" is the title of a widely popular Terry recording, and "Grumbles" alludes to Brookmeyer's occasionally sardonic view of the world and the foibles of its inhabitants, including his own. Yet I wonder if at base, the two are actually that disparate.

Both are the antithesis of pretentiousness off as well as on the stand. Both have never regarded jazz as so "serious" that it cannot also be unabashed fun. And both are very much themselves. Beneath Terry's gentleness and open good will and beneath Brookmeyer's wry (and sometimes self-deprecating) wit are an insistence on going their own ways. Each has resisted being compressed into any one "bag" and accordingly, the two together are — to use a favorite Duke Ellington commendation — beyond category.

What does, then, link their personalities is independence. And it is an independence secure enough in itself to be flexible. They are flexible in terms of music and flexible with regard to their ability to respond fully to each other and to the rest of the musicians in the combo so that this unit is an egalitarian meeting of compatible spirits. It gives pleasure because it takes pleasure in itself.

Clark Terry distills the essence of the Terry/Brookmeyer fusion: "It seemed to me there's too much put-down music, put-on music, hurray-for-me music and the-hell-with-everybody-music. So we thought we'd have some compatible music."

Nat Hentoff Original sleeve notes from 1965

The following video tribute to The Clark Terry-Bob Brookmeyer Quintet features Clark, Bob, Roger, Bill and Dave on Count Basie’s The King.

"KENNY CLARKE: Dropping Bombs on Paris" by Mike Zwerin

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

The late Paris-based jazz musician and International Herald Tribune writer Mike Zwerin posted a 41-week series entitled Sons of Miles to Culturekiosque Jazznet [unfortunately, the page no longer exists]. In this series, Zwerin looks back at Miles Davis and the leading jazz musicians he influenced in a series of interviews and personal reminiscences. Here is the Kenny Clarke piece in that series. It was published on July 2, 1998 so add 20+ years to any math in the article.

Kenny Clarke was one of the originators of Bebop drumming almost out of self-defense.

He frequented Minton's Playhouse in the Upper West Side of Manhattan's Harlem district at a time when alto saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker and trumpeter John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie were creating the style of Jazz which has come to be known as Bebop.

Bird and Diz played many of their original compositions at blisteringly fast tempos.

The Swing era style of Jazz that preceded Bebop usually found the drummer playing four beats to the bar on the bass drum, something that was almost utterly impossible to do on the flag-waving Bebop up-tempos.

To keep pace with these barn burners, Kenny Clarke devised a method of playing drums that brought the timekeeping off the floor and put it on the ride cymbal using the right hand while using the left hand on the snare and right foot on the bass drum to accent the beat with pronounced licks and kicks [a practice that came to be known as "dropping bombs"]. The left foot was used to play the second and fourth beat of each bar on the hi-hat cymbals as a way of maintaining and sustaining the time.

Sometimes these hand-to-foot accents were phoneticized as "klook-mop" and when shorten to Klook, it became Kenny Clarke's nickname.

In the 1940s, drummers such as Max Roach, Stan Levey, Art Blakey and Shelly Manne embellished and expanded on what Kenny's was doing and Clarke's playing came full circle as it eventually incorporated "what the young guys were laying down."

© Copyright ® Mike Zwerin, copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with permission.

"Kenny Clarke, the father of bebop drumming, first came to Europe with the Edgar Hayes Blue Rhythm Band in 1937; about the same time as those other backwards stake-claimers; Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster.

"We played Brussels and I just came down to see what Paris was like. I liked it right away." Clarke laughed: "I even liked Brussels."

Clarke - or Klook, as he was known - was born in 1914 and had been living in France so long he could even laugh about liking Brussels (the French tell Belgian jokes, which are sort of like Polish jokes).

He settled in Paris in the 1950s because he wanted "a certain quality of life." It was not a matter of money; on the contrary, he had been busy in New York - too busy: "Economically everything was all right, but there was something I had to clear up in my mind. You know people look for different things in life, but all I wanted was peace and quiet" - there was a twinkle in his eye - "and money."

Clarke knew something was seriously wrong when he found himself hiding from Miles Davis, who was offering him work. Miles always wanted only the best, and he knew where to look for it: "Miles knocked on my door, so I told the little girl I was with to tell him I'm out. He just kept knocking, said 'Klook, Klook, I know you're in there.' I just didn't feel like going on that gig. I'd been recording for Savoy Records almost every day. I was tired, man."

One evening in 1955 he turned on his tv to watch a Maurice Chevalier spectacular and recognized the back of the conductor's head: "When he turned around, sure enough it was Michel Legrand. I called up the station and we got together that night at Basin Street East. I was working there with Phineas Newborn.

"I told him how tired I was of New York. He said he could get me on his uncle Jacques Helian's big band, 'a real jazz band' he called it. I was ready. The following September he sent me a first-class ticket on the Liberté and I left with everything I owned."

Klook came back and recorded with the Modern Jazz Quartet; their first album. The MJQ's leader John Lewis wanted Klook to play with them. The MJQ turned out to be extremely successful. Asked if he ever regretted leaving that gold mine just before it panned out, Clarke answered without hesitation: "Not for one minute. Well, I've thought about that. Someone said: 'Klook, you should have stayed here and made all that money.' But money's only good when you need it."

Klook had nothing against money. He was in fact known to be a hard negotiator, and he did well in Europe. But he was someone who followed his own inclinations; who wanted to take life, and music, on his own terms.

Back in the late 30s he got tired of playing like Buddy Rich - boom boom boom boom on the bass drum. He took the main beat away from the bass drum and put it up on the ride cymbal. The beat became lighter. The bass drum was then used only for kicking accents. "Dropping bombs" it was called. In 1940, Teddy Hill fired Clarke for dropping bombs with his big band.

One year later Hill called Clarke and asked him to organize a band for Minton's, a club he was managing on 118th street in Harlem. He hired the eccentric and then unknown pianist Thelonious Monk. Dizzy Gillespie ("a saint," said Clarke) sat in regularly; as did Charlie Christian and Charlie Parker ("a prophet"). And that's how bebop was born.

After a three-year spell in the Army, which brought him back to Paris ("I made a lot of friends, real friends"), he returned to New York; "sort of disgusted with everything. I didn't know what to do. I didn't feel like playing. Dizzy talked me into playing again."

Fate continually pushed him to Paris. He was back again in 1948 with the legendary Dizzy Gillespie big band ("One night in Sweden the band was swinging so hard, Dizzy jumped up on the piano").

During the early '50s a lot of African American musicians began taking Moslem names. In the terrible, up-tight Eisenhower 50s, before the Civil Rights Movement, there was a practical as well as a religious reason. On police cards they could be listed as Moslem instead of "colored." As silly as this may seem, some keepers of segregated hotels were persuaded that they were visiting Arab dignitaries. Clarke called himself Liaqat Ali Salaam.

Klook followed his own vision. American musicians who settled in Europe tended to be more open, more interested in life's variety, more interesting than average. These people were non-conformists in a metier known for non-conformism.

Despite their concertizing in major halls by then; playing the White House and teaching in universities, jazz musicians retained their outlaw side. Europe still appealed to it. It was hard for the computers to keep track of people who were working in three countries in a week, some of them behind the Iron Curtain, and getting paid cash-to-boot.

French residence, a Dutch wife, Danish plates on their Swedish car and plenty of work in Germany - it was tailor-made.

In his book "Notes and Tones," the drummer Arthur Taylor quoted Clarke as saying in 1972: "To organize, you must be organized within yourself first. Because otherwise it turns out like the trade unions, in other words gangsterism. The Black Panther, for example, that's all gangsterism."

And commenting on the Afro hairdo craze: "I think it's a whole lot of needless work. The time it takes them to keep their hair in an Afro could be spent reading." These were not terribly politically correct things for a black man to say at that time. But Europe gave Clarke his own perspective.

In the early '70s, when big bands were about as dead as they would ever be, Clarke co-led, with the Belgian arranger-pianist Francy Boland, one of the best of them. This all-star Euro-Americano aggregation created some of the fattest, most swinging big band sounds ever, and almost single-handedly kept the genre in the public's ears - at least the European public. Americans were concentrating on electricity. "Fusion," they called it.

With electronic jazz, form beat content. How music was reproduced or amplified, the quality of the sound reproduction, tended to be considered more important than its stuff. While Herbie Hancock traveled with a big pile of computer magazines, and George Duke's table talk was more like an engineer's than a musician's, Klook said: "You shouldn't become wrapped up in technical things as far as music is concerned, because music comes from the heart."

In other words, lifestyle comes first: "That's it. If music can help me along the road, so much the better. There's a difference in the mentality here. People are not afraid to walk around their neighborhood, to become friends; socially you feel adjusted. As a black man, as a musician - as a person, I've been lucky to be able to live here.

"I found a little house in Montreuil [a Paris suburb] about four years after I got here. Things were going good, so I just bought it. And when I bought the house I said, "Well, here I am. This is home.""

Martial Solal: The Early Years [From the Archives with Additions]

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

“Martial Solal has always gone his own way, along a straight and rising path which compels respect: some forty years without ever deviating from the goal to be achieved.”

- Philippe Baudoin, Jazz writer and critic

“The lyricism, the reassuring feeling that things were on the right path, the audacious attitude of a musician who plumbed right to the depths of himself and made music from Jazz and Jazz from music. It was from Martial that I secretly went to the Club Ringside each night to draw these things from.”

- Bobby Jaspar, tenor saxophonist, writing in the magazine, Jazz Hot, in 1955

“What first attracted me to Solal's music were dismissals of it as 'not jazz'. It may appear too easy a paradox, yet almost the best advice that one can offer to people who want to find out about jazz is to attend to those whose work is supposedly 'not jazz'. Besides their music often being of high quality in itself, it may offer a rethinking of jazz essentials and even, in a few cases, indicate a new direction for the art.”

- Max Harrison, Jazz writer and critic, October, 1967, Jazz Monthly

As Philippe Baudoin explains in his CD sleeve notes to The Complete Vogue Recordings of Martial Solal: 3 Volumes [74321409322; 74321409332; 74321606372]:

“Martial Solal has always gone his own way, along a straight and rising path which compels respect: some forty years [now fifty, since this writing] without ever deviating from the goal to be achieved. The Solal of today is contained in embryo on most of the tracks on these CDs. And when asked what he feels when he listens to these early discs, Martial Solal fires off a typically pithy comment: ‘I get the impressions that I’m listening to one of my pupils.’ Does he know what a magnificent compliment he is paying them?”

“Idiosyncratic,” “ individualistic,”  “independent” - all are words often used in association with pianist Martial Solal’s approach to Jazz.

Jazz musicians and Jazz fans alike have been making these comments about Martial style dating back to his first appearances at Club St. Germain and the Ringside in the mid 1950’s when as part of the house rhythm section he accompanied Americans passing through Paris including J.J. Johnson, Clifford Brown, Don Byas, Bob Brookmeyer and Lucky Thompson, among many others.

Of the Vogue sessions which present Martial in solo, trio, quartet, sextet and big band sessions, Mr. Baudoin went on to say:

“One senses in him, particularly since 1954, a desire to expand the language of piano and harmonics, to use all the registers of the instrument to the full, a desire not to neglect its percussive possibilities, to separate the two hands to the maximum (contrapuntally) or, on the contrary, to bring them together as is linked and in parallel movement during forward passages.

He also maintains a constant vigil to ensure that he never allows himself to succumb for the easy, to the temptation of the pretty, to the warbling of the keyboard player or to the showing off of the bravura virtuoso.

Such musical discipline (rare in Jazz) demands a mastery of technique of a very high order, which must be maintained unceasingly if its aspirations are to be met.”

Writing in the October, 1967 Jazz Monthly, I found the following observation by Max Harrison to be similar to my reactions to Solal:

“What first attracted me to Solal's music were dismissals of it as 'not jazz'. It may appear too easy a paradox, yet almost the best advice that one can offer to people who want to find out about jazz is to attend to those whose work is supposedly 'not jazz'. Besides their music often being of high quality in itself, it may offer a rethinking of jazz essentials and even, in a few cases, indicate a new direction for the art.

Thus each considerable stylistic change in Duke Ellington's output was greeted by his followers as a betrayal of what had gone before, as a subsidence into 'not jazz'. But, as Edmund Wilson says, "It is likely to be one of the signs of the career of a great artist that each of his successive works should prove for his admirers as well as for his critics not at all what they had been expecting, and cause them to raise cries of falling-off.”. Later musicians were able to go one better than Ellington, and the work of Lester Young, Charlie Parker and Ornette Coleman among others was proclaimed as 'not jazz' almost from the moment they appeared.

Sure enough, Solal proved to be among the best jazz pianists. Like Django Reinhardt, the guitarist, he is not merely outstanding among European players but within the whole context of the music. This is no place for a biography, yet it should be noted that Solal was born at Algiers in 1927, made his first attempts at jazz during 1940, and reached Paris in 1950. The first record the present writer encountered was Kenny Clarke plays Andre Hodeir, on which musical interest is largely divided between the scores and Solal's contributions. He is prominently featured and takes long, strikingly imaginative solos, Bemsha swing containing one of the best. However, Solal is a natural jazz musician and besides fitting into the sophisticated compositional climate of Hodeir's writing he could, in 1957, take a perceptive and sympathetic role in some recordings with Sidney Bechet. Impressive is the way Solal is able to simplify his harmony to accommodate the older man yet still produce ingenuities like the reharmonisations of that repeated-note figure in It don't mean a thing.

Solal has a very fine keyboard technique —that is, skill in employing his instrument, which is not the same thing as facility, which is what all too many pianists have. Solal possesses that kind of agility, too, as it happens, but he uses it instead of being used by it. …

Not surprisingly, a lot of his music - and some of that on Solal’s earlier discs - seems fragmentary at first, but, as with Art Tatum, continued listening reveals an underlying unity.”

Aside from his early Vogue recordings, my other exposure to Martial’s extraordinary gifts as a Jazz pianist came from two LP’s he recorded for US labels: Martial Solal [subtitled “The Debut of Europe’s Greatest Jazz Pianist”] on Capitol [T-10261] and Martial Solal at Newport ‘63 [subtitled “First American Recording by Europe’s Greatest Jazz Pianist!”] RCA Victor [LSP-2777].

The Capitol LP combines five trio tracks on which Martial is joined by bassist Guy Pedersen and drummer Daniel Humair with five tracks on which he plays solo piano.

The uncredited liner notes to the album state that:

“PARIS JAZZ BUFFS saw a new star rise above the southern horizon in 1950 when (still in his early twenties) Martial Solal left his native Algiers to try his luck in the French capital.

Success wasn't easy; for three months, Paris, a frequent stopping-place for American jazz greats, didn't give this son of France a chance. Then he landed a spot with a variety show and soon was doing solo and combo work in Left Bank cabarets. For several years he was a regular at the Club St.-Germain; now he is also frequently in the public's eye and ear with his credits for movie and television scores. From the beginning of his career on the continent Solal's marks of individuality were clear: clean, two-handed technique comparable to legit pianism but not derived from it; subtlety and richness of color effects in the best French impressionist vein; and a free-wheeling compositional style that looks toward larger forms and sparks his improvisations on standards.

Working with visiting Americans (including J. J. Johnson, Kenny Clarke and Don Byas) he learned from them and they from him; now his growing reputation throughout Europe demands spreading the good word stateside with these, the first recordings under his own banner released in America.”

Martial Solal at Newport ‘63 was produced by George Avakian who, after a long tenure with Columbia Records, moved to RCA Victor. George made these comments about Martial in the liner notes that he wrote for this recording:

“Years and years after he has already made it in other segments of the American press, a musician in the world of Jazz begins to hope that someday he’ll break into Time magazine. But pianist Martial Solal, an Algerian-born Frenchman who plays more like and American than perhaps any other foreigner in the history of this highly American music, hit Time within two weeks of his arrival in New York.

The accolade was well-deserved. Solal is known by every American Jazzman who has ever worked in Europe; he has played with the best, and has earned their warm respect for his originality and across-the-board musicianship. But the American Jazz public had hardly heard of this extraordinary pianist, characterized by Time as an ‘amazingly adept virtuoso’ who ‘pursues unconventional harmonic flights’ and whose ‘imagination is rich to the point of bursting.’ …

Listening to Martial Solal is a rewarding experience whether one chooses to analyze his work, or just enjoy it passively. His most obvious characteristic is a gift for musical invention; he puts all his resources into the creation of melodic variations which are easy on the ears, but are nonetheless brilliantly imaginative, original, and so tastefully understated that on first hearing one fails to realize the full value of what he has offered.

For instance, his technique is one of the most prodigious in Jazz, yet it is never exploited for its own sake, but only in the service of completely musical ideas.

Solal has a rare sense of sonority; he evokes sounds and emotions which are richer than one expects from so limited a palette as the piano.

As an improviser, he develops his variations in a long-lined shape which retains elements of the original melody to a degree that is often forgotten in this day of stating a theme at the beginning and ending of a piece, with no reference to it in between.

Thematic development and variation and changes of tempo are all well-integrated in his balanced work, which leaves plenty of room for improvisation but none for boredom.”

What impressed me most when I heard his early recordings was Martial’s utmost confidence, enthusiasm and individuality.

I agree with Richard Cook and Brian Morton when they note in their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.: “We do not exaggerate nor is it possible to overestimate the sheer artistry of Solal’s work. He has an astonishing gift for complex voicings, There can be few better straight-ahead piano improvisors anywhere in the world. He is also a remarkable composer, creating complex themes out of simple intervals and brief melodic lines.”

This latter gift of making memorable tunes out of basic riffs and phrases is on exhibition in the following video which features his original composition Middle Jazz from his “debut” album on Capitol with Guy Pedersen on bass and his long-time associate, Daniel Humair, on drums.

Donte's Jazz Club - Two Remembrances

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

From time-to-time, conversations among my Jazz buddies turns to Donte’s Jazz club and this usually brings forth a whole host of remembrances of seeing various musicians at that venue from 1966 until its closing in 1988.

Everyone from the Clare Fischer Big Band, to Med Flory and Buddy Clark’s Supersax, to the quartet the pianist/vibraphonist Victor Feldman co-led with flute player and saxophonist Tom Scott, to Mike Barone’s Big Band to Michel Petrucciani with Charles Lloyd’s Quartet to tenor saxophonists Warne Marsh and Zoot Sims along with a whole host of other Jazz groups was put forth as a string of “those-were-the-days,” pleasant memories.

I was so accustomed to it being at its familiar location on Lankershim Blvd. in North Hollywood just up the street from the offices of Universal Studios that I didn’t realize Donte’s was closing until it read this column by the esteemed Jazz critic and author Leonard Feather in the April 2, 1988 edition of the Los Angeles Times.

I thought it would be fun to share it with you along with a “Caught in the Act” feature about the 1973 appearance at Donte’s of the Patrick Williams Concert Jazz Orchestra that Harvey Siders filed in the March 15, 1973 edition of Downbeat to give you a sense of the club’s history and the many unique performance that took place there in the 20+ years of its existence.

Leonard Feather in the April 2, 1988 edition of the Los Angeles Times.

“Carey Leverette sits in the booth-sized, litter-cluttered office in back of Donte's. At 63 and in uncertain health, he looks tired. He says he has been tired for years.

Soon, though, there will be time, not for booking musicians and taking out trash and washing dishes and filling salt and pepper shakers and buying food and liquor and paying bills, but time to lie back and reminisce. After tonight, Donte's, the room he founded 22 years ago and that became one of the world's most famous jazz clubs, will no longer be his property or his burden.

As he talks about the future--about Koichi Akemoto, the Japanese businessman who will take over the club next week, redecorate it and make all the improvements for which Leverette has had no money--he flashes back to the past.

"It all began," he says, "when I was a dancer and choreographer. I met a lot of musicians at MGM and all the studios where I worked; I loved their music. With a partner, John Riccella, I found this empty building on Lankershim (in North Hollywood). We fixed it up and opened with just a piano bar.

"That was June 22, 1966. We started with Hampton Hawes on piano and Red Mitchell on bass. John didn't think we could afford a drummer, so I took some money out of my own pocket and hired Donald Bailey.

"In October, Sunny McKay, who was a waitress here when we opened, and her husband, Bill McKay, bought out Riccella. Bill took care of the kitchen and Sunny handled the staff, the hosting and all that stuff; they were here in the daytime and I'd come in for the evening and look after the bar, the bookings, the publicity. So there were three of us to share the responsibilities."

Soon it was decided that a piano bar wasn't enough; it was replaced by a bandstand, and Donte's began to book small groups, even big bands--first, Mike Barone, who was there every Wednesday for five years; then national name bands, starting with Stan Kenton, who one night observed: "You're probably wondering how Donte's can afford a big band. Well, our guys can outdrink the customers."

The glory years saw Woody Herman, Mercer Ellington (soon after he inherited the band from his father) and Count Basie, who, says Leverette, "was so eager to play he'd sit down at the piano and start a set before we'd had time to turn the room over and cover his fee."

Buddy Rich, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Gerald Wilson, Don Piestrup, Don Menza and Bill Holman brought in their big bands. So did Louie Bellson, who was a Thursday regular for almost three years.

"I remember Redd Foxx used to walk in, take over the mike and tell dirty stories--particularly when Pearl Bailey was here with Louie; it made her very nervous," Leverette says.

Comedians liked Donte's; Mort Sahl became a popular attraction.

"We'd book him only on weekends, because he brought in the doctors and lawyers who had to get up early and couldn't be here on weekdays," Leverette says.

In the early days certain rituals were followed. Once a year Sunny McKay, who was of Iranian origin, celebrated Persian New Year with appropriate cuisine. Every Monday for years, the late Jack Marshall, a studio guitarist, organized "Guitar Night," at which Joe Pass was a regular for most of a decade. Larry Carlton, in an augury of things to come, broke records with his early fusion group.

Off or on the bandstand, celebrities used to flock to Donte's. Clint Eastwood, a big band fan, came in often. Frank Sinatra was there, and Herb Alpert. Carmen McRae, who worked the room often, attracted fellow singers.

"One night," Leverette recalls, "Sarah Vaughan and Morgana King came in to hear Carmen, and the three of them were on stage singing together.

"Dizzy Gillespie came in one night and sat reading the fourth trumpet parts in Bill Berry's band. Doc Severinsen did the same thing once with Bellson's orchestra. Actually, Tommy Newsom brought in the entire 'Tonight Show' band several times, without Doc. He loved giving the men a chance to really loosen up and play at length."

About 10 years ago Sunny and the ailing Bill McKay (now deceased) sold out their interest in the room. Operating it more or less single-handedly--despite the help of such aides as veteran bartender Bob Powell--proved difficult for Leverette and the room began to fall on hard times; the national names gave way to local, scale musicians; checks, as Leverette readily admits, began to bounce. He remembers what he calls the "faithfulness and unfaithfulness" of certain musicians.

"Art Pepper would never play anywhere else; he said I helped him out in lean times, and he became our regular New Year's Eve attraction. But I felt very hurt when I would call certain other musicians, some of whom got their big break here, and ask them to play for one of our anniversary parties, and they'd be too busy or refer me to a manager."

Caught in the Act - Pat Williams  Concert Jazz Orchestra - Harvey Siders

Donte's, North Hollywood, Calif. Personnel: 20 strings, including 10 violins. 4 violas, 4 cello, 2 contra basses, Tom Scott, reeds, (lutes; Larry Carlton. guitar; Clare Fischer, piano; Jim Hughart. electric and acoustic bass; Mark Stevens, drums; Larry Bunker, percussion; Brandy Artist vocal.

“Considering today's shrinking budgets, film and TV producers prefer composers who can coax big sounds from small forces. That's just one of the reasons that Pat Williams gets so many scoring assignments. The same rule of economics applies to clubs. Give them duos and trios, but keep the big bands away. Now put the two realities together and that means Pat Williams brought a combo into Donte's and made it sound like the Los Angeles Philharmonic, right? Wrong!

He brought in his Concert Jazz Orchestra, which consists of 20 strings, plus the half-dozen swingers listed above.

Where did Donte's put them all? They did what they do every time they book the Mormon Tabernacle Choir: they removed enough tables so that the artists nearly outnumbered the patrons. The tragedy there is that not enough people heard this holiday for strings.

Williams had to wait for his fiddlers to seat themselves before he could inch his way through the wall-to-wall crowd to his wall-to-wall ensemble. It left him with just enough room to conduct.

In contrast to the congestion. Pat's charts revealed the type of expansiveness that marks his orchestral thinking. For starters, Adagio (from Bach's Toccata. Adagio and Fugue in C for Organ) gave Williams a chance to juxtapose a standard string quartet with the full complement of strings. Both sounds were gorgeous.

The members of the chamber group were widely separated, yet the intimacy of their phrasing and the consistency of the dynamics never suffered. When the full strings reinforced the theme, the result was not the high-caloric sounds one hears from Muzak; this was the full-bodied, highly disciplined blend one expects from a symphony orchestra.

The rhythm section entered unobtrusively, with Bunker shaking a chocallo (show-ki-yo) about the size of a pepper mill. Scott's flute doubled Carlton's guitar over a polite rock beat while the strings continued their legato comments.

It came to a typically baroque ending as the minor mode resolved to a simple major triad. With the nervousness of the opening out of the way. Pat turned to his fans and remarked; ‘25 years at the conservatory, and here we are in a saloon.’

There was a Bachian flavor to the intro of the next number. What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life, but it quickly dissolved to a subtle jazz waltz with Scott playing tenor in the alto range over the descending root tones of Carlton's guitar. Lush strings flirted with a genteel rhythm section until Bunker soloed on vibes. Then the flavor became more rock bound — but never unsubtle — as Scott returned on tenor over Fischer's intense com-ping.

After Carlton took a brief guitar solo, Williams somehow managed to skip four bars and sent the strings into a tricky modulation for the out chorus without the rhythm section. When the rhythm section realized what had happened, they quickly and unobtrusively filled the gap and very few in the club could have been aware of the short-lived harmonic detour.

The Not So Fast Blues, like the previous Chart, was done by Jack Cortner (I don't know who he is, but based on the sounds he creates, I'd like to know him.) The tempo had a teasing come hither quality, and the head was comprised of flute doubling vibes. When Scott took off on his own, it was that half-breathed, half-played, "Kirkish" [Rahsaan Roland Kirk] sound that found Scott doubling himself.

It was deliciously dirty, especially effective against sustained string chords. Stevens laid down a triplet beat to lend a 3-against-4 feel. And there was the usual intelligent comping by Fischer. As for his locked hands solo, it was so full and so sweeping, the only way to label it is "body by Fischer."

Following another mallet solo by Bunker, the strings were supposed to reinforce the out chorus, but Williams' vague cue managed to bring in only some of the string. But their response was a high register do, and the petal point added to the momentum. The others eventually joined in and it built to a very satisfying climax.

Williams told the crowd (or was it a rhetorical aside to Cortner?) "Never write blues with a pick-up bar." But the warning was too "in;" only a handful of listeners could have realized anything had gone wrong. It's a wonder there weren't more mishaps, considering the whole project had been preceded by one three-hour rehearsal!

A newcomer named Brandy Artise sang three numbers and made a fine impression. She's deep-throated, with a clear voice quality and equally clear enunciation. She conveys a Nina Simone flair for dramatics, but there's a slight wobble to her vibrato on sustained tones, which should make up tempo tunes her forte.

Yet her best effort came on a slow, wordless Williams original. The Witch And The Lady. It was introduced by a rhapsodic cello solo by Gloria Strassner and highlighted by the interplay between voice and cello and then voice and flute. Also to the singer's credit is her firm intonation, which she displayed on another Williams tune. Act of Love. (It has a tricky release that would throw the average vocalist.)

Williams then gave us an exercise in the relationship between melody and counter-melody with a piece he calls Governor in Missouri, an arrangement of a Robert Farnon countermelody to Shenandoah. Fischer opened it with a solemn statement of the familiar tune, then the strings, in all their resonance, came in with their flowing counter theme. The chart was an excellent showcase for Scott's alto and the whole setting had a gentle repose thai carried over to the next offering, Silent Spring.

This and the Adagio were the only familiar-sounding charts in the set, thanks to Pat's recent A&R recording, Patrick Moody Williams: Carry On — a familiarity that breeds contentment. As on the recording, cellist Strassner was featured, and her warm silken tone turned the lyrical interlude into the highlight of the set for this pair of ears.

The middle section featured flutist Scott over a tranquil rock foundation, and the final section heard cellist Strassner soaring over massed strings and that persistent yet mild rock pulse in one of Williams' most inspired amalgams of legitimate and pop conceptions.

Silent Spring successfully embodied the essence of the evening's experiment: written and improvised solos cast in a symphonic mold, yet never far removed from the soulful syncopation of jazz-rock.

One further observation about Silent Spring. It is constructed to reach an inner climax, then to let the listener down gently, fully satisfied —something akin to Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings. That intent was successfully executed, which must have been a source of extra comfort to Williams, even "in a saloon."

For a set-closer, Williams unleashed the awesome collective dexterity of the strings in a unison flurry called The Witch — reminiscent of the breathtaking speed Bartok called for in the finale to his Concerto For Orchestra.

Those dazzling presto runs plus some electronic effects turned The Witch into a highly visual piece, underscoring Williams' approach to writing: his arrangements aren't merely charts; they're cues. He could easily have persuaded us that this was a chase sequence from one of his recent assignments. The Streets of San Francisco.” — Harvey Siders