Scott LaFaro and the LA Bassists [From the Archives with Additions]

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

The late Scott LaFaro’s claim to fame as a bassist centers on his two year association with pianist Bill Evans and the handful of recordings he made for Riverside Records before his tragic death July 6, 1961 at the age of 25.

While in New York, Scotty also worked with Stan Getz, Ornette Coleman and pianist Don Friedman, but what isn’t generally known or acknowledged is his earlier involvement with musicians in California, particularly his associations with other bassists, principally in Los Angeles.

This was a defining time in LaFaro’s career and is as important as his New York years because it was the germination period in his stylistic development.

This backstory is eloquently told in Scotty’s sister, Helene LaFaro - Fernandez’s biography: Jade Visions: The Life and Music of Scott LaFaro [University of North Texas Press].

The comments of the other bassists who knew Scotty during his stay in Los Angeles from 1955-1959 contain insights in helping us understand how Scotty’s approach to playing Jazz evolved, what it entailed and the nature of the impact it had on Jazz bass playing.

“Scotty was living in the spare bedroom of a house owned by Herb and Lorraine Geller. Scotty had met alto saxophonist Herb Geller through Lorraine, who was the house pianist at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, where Scotty occasionally sat in. Herb and Lorraine had recently bought a house nestled in the Hollywood Hills. They invited Scotty to move into their spare bedroom, solving his housing problem until I arrived in early October. 

He loved the solitude of the place and being surrounded by the scrub, natural state of the vegetation. He sent home photos with comments and started setting out the advantages of the family's impending move. In the pictures he looked happy.

Herb had a great record collection of jazz recordings. Scotty said he heard a lot of people for the first time listening to Herb's records. And he practiced, practiced, practiced. Scotty, in an interview with Nat Hentoff for liner notes for the 1958 The Arrival of Victor Feldman album, said about this period," I couldn't find enough work and besides, I definitely needed the practice." In Los Angeles it took six months to get a union card. Until you had it, you couldn't take studio work or a steady job. Pretty much all you could do was casuals and sit in whenever possible.

Not only was the house in a peaceful and beautiful location, but there were jam sessions at the Gellers' as well. Jack Sheldon, Don Friedman, Terry Trotter, Clare Fischer, and Joe Maini were some of those who would drop in. Scotty would make the rounds with Herb, Don, and other friends to the many clubs that were featuring jazz. He did some fill-in work with the band for singer Marigold Hill at the Stardust Room in Long Beach. Another casual gig Scotty had was a garden wedding with Joanne Grauer, jazz pianist and teacher, who was then just seventeen. She told me she was thrilled to play with such an outstanding player. She had also been working with Gary Peacock and, looking back, she remarks she felt really blessed. She said she believed then that all bass players played that well, but soon thereafter had a rude awakening.

Drummer Freddie Gruber also met Scotty and played with him on casuals — first in a couple of clubs in the El Monte area then later at the Hillcrest with Paul Bley and Dave Pike. Although Scotty worked in Paul Bley's group for just a limited period of time, Paul remembers that when he hired Scotty, he put him in the front. When asked why he was putting the bass player blocking the view of the vibraphone player Paul replied, "because he was the best player in the band. He was a star; he ‘paid the rent' because he was a virtuoso player. The only other person who played across all areas like that was Charlie Mingus. Scotty took bass playing to another level. He went to the top of the heap career wise. Nobody could move their fingers around the bass as fast as he could."

Charles Lloyd, composer and saxophonist, has had an incredible personal journey as well as an accomplished career spanning many years in jazz with excursions into many other genres of music. There is a depth to his voice over the phone that is a reflection of the richness of his soul. I was fortunate to be able to talk to Charles about his close friendship with Scotty.

Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, Charles had come to Los Angeles in 1956 to attend the University of Southern California. Scotty met Charles at some jam sessions with Don Cherry late that year and they made an immediate, deep connection. Now that Scotty had returned to Los Angeles, they began to play together, gigging around town with Don, Harold Land, Billy Higgins, Elmo Hope, and Terry Trotter. Charles said he was "still high from those days ... we just got together and played. We just loved to play. It was like the holy grail with us. We had our mission. We were just growing, learning. There was such a rich group of people."

Their youthful exuberance — to share the joy they found in their music — brought to mind one particular gig:" We played this wedding in Glendale (a Los Angeles suburb) . It was like a community center or something. The bandstand was behind a white picket fence. There was Billy Higgins, Don Cherry and Scott La-Faro. The pianist was Terry Trotter. Imagine Higgins alone ... and Scotty playing together, and Terry ... punching out those Bud Powell, Tommy Flanigan chords and stuff. We were so excited to play. We were just making this music ... it was very un-picket fence. We were sound Brahmans, we had gone beyond the Concord and the space barriers. We knew we were going to send this couple into infinity with the richness of this indigenous art form ... off in bliss in hope—the whole thing. That was our impetus. We didn't get that far. The father ran up, waving his hands.' Please, please stop. Stop ... Please, no more ... please just leave. I'll pay you now, just leave.' That union would have been cemented by that music. I'm convinced of it to this day."

Scotty and Charles became very close friends, best friends— sharing stories, dreams and aspirations as well as food and fun. As for music, Charles said, "Scotty had it ... he had the magic. He had wonderful integrity, an excellent musician. He had this awesome, adventurous technique. An innovator. He and Ornette were like astronauts. Scotty liked freshness, he was always pushing himself. He was and is enormously important to music." ...

Scotty made other lasting friends during this time. Pianist Don Friedman recalls: "I first heard Scott when he was playing with Buddy Morrow at the Palladium late in '56. Then I was on the road with Buddy DeFranco from November, '56 till July of '57. Buddy asked me to drive a new car he had bought in St. Louis back to LA while he flew, which I did, taking Vic Feldman along. Not long after that I met Scott up at Herb s place and we became good friends. A little later Scotty and I worked a gig with Chet Baker at Peacock Lane on the corner of Hollywood and Western. The gig was for a week. Larance Marable was the drummer and Richie Kamuca the saxophonist. As I recall, Chet didn't finish the week. The cops were looking for him and he literally escaped from the club and never came back. I don't remember if we finished the week without him."

Scotty also met pianist, composer, and arranger Clare Fischer. Clare relates, "Scotty and I became good friends. We had an immediate musical rapport that was sensational. We did a lot of listening and talking. Besides technique, he had governing, control. I think he was the first bass player who was fleet footed in the musical sense." Clare remembers he was in San Jose traveling with Cal Tjader when he heard about Scotty s accident. "What a trauma, it struck me right down—that someone I was developing such a relationship with would suddenly not be there."

Besides jamming at the Gellers', pianist Terry Trotter recalls he and Scotty played pool, went to the movies, and smoked a bit of weed together. "Scotty and I connected in music and as people. He was humorous, funny. With his  work he could be difficult and temperamental. He had a wonderful musical gift."

This was the time when a lot of talented musicians were in Los Angeles and would become part of what was known as the West Coast Jazz scene. It was in Los Angeles that Scotty first heard Ray Brown. The swing and perfection in his style really impressed Scotty. Cecelia Brown, Ray’s widow, recently recalled that when Ray was teaching clinics he said that Scotty was one of the top five bassists and innovators, putting him in the company of Jimmy Blanton, Oscar Pettiford, Milt Hinton, and Paul Chambers. Scott would love knowing that!

Scotty became friends with other bass players who were in Los Angeles during this time as well. Don Payne, who grew up in nearby Santa Ana, and had just returned from a stint in the U.S. Army. Don was renting a furnished guest house on Glen Green just off Beachwood Drive in the Hollywood Hills. Johnny Mandel lived next door in an identical pad. Scotty would take his bass up and the two of them would practice for hours. Don said that he had been getting help from Percy Heath and wanted to share that with Scott. He added that "Scott was working on the high register—16th note scale partials that became part of his soloing later with Bill Evans. I really like the way he played on recordings with Hampton Hawes and Victor Feldman made there in LA." Neighbors on the same street were Red Mitchell and Leroy Vinnegar. The older two bass players took Don, twenty-five, and Scotty, twenty-two, under their wing, as it were. Scotty came to consider Red Mitchell one of his mentors.

Hal Gaylor, a Canadian who has since worked with performers as disparate as Tony Bennett and Ornette Coleman, was another bass player who was in Los Angeles at the time. He recalls that he and Scotty talked of the coincidence that they both played the clarinet before starting on the bass and that both of their fathers were violinists. They would rehearse together, spend a couple of hours playing, exchanging stuff. Hal said, "No matter what you had, someone else had something else. We'd play for each other. The music was just so exciting, there was just so much going on then. Scotty was a bit isolated, but if you knew him, he had a warm side. He had drive, not a lot of patience. Often he'd be a little cool, but when he got inspired, he got very excited and it showed. Scotty was one of the greatest exponents of jazz of that era. He is important like Jimmy Blanton, Oscar Pettiford and Charlie Mingus." Later in 1958, Don Payne and Hal would drive across the country to New York and when Scotty later returned to New York, he would renew these friendships. Scotty and Don remained friends throughout the rest of Scott's life.

Gary Peacock, who later also played bass with Bill Evans, first met Scotty and heard him play at the Lighthouse. He said:

“I think it was with Stan Levey, Vic Feldman and Richie Kamuca. It was scary. I mean he - whew. I was listening to him and I thought JC, he was something. A wonderful thing that he gave me at that time, without giving me anything, was that he showed me what was possible; there was the potential; there was potential technically and potential musically that hadn't even been tapped yet. In that sense he was so far ahead of everybody else at that time. It was just scary. But also encouraging and enlightening. Inspirational, like - Wow! And he had only been playing for a year and a half or two years! That was the other part that was scary. In two years he did this? What did he do? Play twenty-four hours a day? But apparently before that he had some training with the clarinet or something. Scotty kicked everybody's ass.

Also when we met, we talked briefly about always striving, moving forward constantly ... we kinda put the kibosh on that. Brings you more in the moment. What we were doing ... had a tendency to be crowded with all this thinking that's going on, kinda has a tendency to stop to think of what the possibilities are of the moment. But in spite of all that, there was very little of that in his playing.”

There was a lot happening in jazz in Los Angeles. Many clubs booked groups a week or a month at a time. Miles Davis and John Coltrane played at Jazz City in Hollywood. Charlie Haden was playing regularly with Paul Bley at the Hillcrest on Washington Boulevard. The IT Club was down the street. The Haig on Wilshire booked Gerry Mulligan. The Slate Brothers on La Cienega. The Renaissance, Crescendo, and Interlude all along Sunset. Cosmo's Alley on Yucca. The guys who weren't working would drop by and sit in during the sets and after hours. The strip clubs, The Pink Pussycat and Largo Strip Club on Sunset Boulevard, booked some cool talent like Herb Geller as well. Duffy's Gaiety at Cahuenga and Franklin, a club run for a time by Sally Marr, Lenny Bruce's mother, booked Joe Maini and Don Payne when Lenny was also on the bill.

Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach was ground zero. There was jazz nightly and, on Sunday, twelve-hour jam sessions. Shorty Rogers, Victor Feldman, Lorraine Geller, Herb Geller, Maynard Ferguson, Bud Shank, Hampton Hawes, Marty Paich, Shelly Manne, Stan Levey, as well as bigger luminaries of the time — Miles Davis and Chet Baker — all played there.

When I spoke with Howard Rumsey in the fall of 2005, be said that "few show progress like Scotty did. I was amazed at the progress I saw in his playing. I saw him for at least four years total. I was so happy every time he came to the Lighthouse because I knew the musicians wanted to play with him and I wanted to hear him. What was evident about Scotty ... he had his life organized ... he always knew what he was going to do next. He was just outstanding. He had a falsetto sound that was unique and a walking sound that was big, different. I think that coming from a string family he knew what a string bass should sound like. What he accomplished in seven years no other bass player has done. 

Scotty was very intelligent. In my mind the history of the development of bass playing went from Blanton to Scotty. He and Blanton were bright stars — shooting stars that fell from the skies. His work with Bill was an even greater achievement than that as a soloist. No bass player with Bill has the same empathy as he and Scott had. With all the musicians I've met few have made the impact that Scotty did on me. He had an unlimited capacity."

Summer brought Scotty an opportunity to work with Pat Moran in Lake Tahoe. She recalls: "When we were working. Gene Gammage (the drummer) and I would get frustrated with Scotty—he didn't want to come out and have some fun. It was so beautiful in Tahoe in those days, but he would stay in the cabin and practice two or three hours every day with a metronome, playing exercises from a clarinet exercise book, then go to work and play all night." ….