The Creative World of Stan Kenton - Part 1

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For about 12 years, from the New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm band [1952] until the mid-1960s I followed the goings-on of Stan Kenton’s Orchestra through its many iterations.

Mostly through its recordings, but also through the occasional concert appearance, the evolution of the orchestra in terms of personnel and its music was constantly on my “radar screen.”

Although the big band era was largely over by the 1950s, there was a pool of musicians seasoned in large group environments still available for Stan to be able to restock various, future versions of his orchestra. The band’s sound was influenced by a variety of composers and arrangers that wrote for it and, in so doing, changed its musical “personality” under Stan's watchful eye [ear?].

Thanks to the beauty of long-playing records, I even caught up to the band’s 1940’s origins as the music on its 78rpms from this era was reissued on them.

I was living in Los Angeles when the band morphed into the Neophonic Orchestra and performed a series of concerts at the Dorothy Chandler from 1965-67, I missed these concerts [I was out of the country for much of 1965].

Subsequently, the Kenton band essentially went missing as it became a part-time affair while Stan recovered from the disappointing commercial failure of the Neophonic Orchestra and concerned himself with family matters.

And then, as if out of nowhere, it was back; fully reformed and appearing at an extensive schedule of concerts, many to do with clinics held on college campuses around the country.

But the Kenton bands from the late 1960s until his death in 1979 sounded different and I could never quite figure out why until I found some possible explanations in Michael Sparke’s seminal - Stan Kenton: This Is An Orchestra [2010].

In sharing these excerpts from Michael’s Kenton book, I plan to use them as a point-of-departure for a multi-part feature covering the Kenton bands and their recordings during the last decade or so of Stan’s career [he died in 1979].

The Creative World of Stan Kenton [1970]

“Several prominent jazzmen had dabbled briefly with their own record labels in the past: Gillespie with Dee Gee, Herman on Mars, Mingus and Debut. All had quickly found it unprofitable, and had sold out to an established company. Even Sinatra and Reprise had finally succumbed. Kenton had the advantage of access to his entire back catalog, on lease from Capitol and Decca Records, plus a highly loyal if relatively small fan-base on which to build. Even so, Kenton LPs were not prone to fly off the shelves, and Stan knew that more than anything else it was personal appearances that stimulated record sales. The time had come to form a new orchestra!

"The band was really just thrown together, you know," commented drummer John Von Ohlen. But how it was thrown! Stan was no longer able to afford high-profile names, but with [trombonist] Dick Shearer's help he assembled a band of largely untried youngsters whose technical skills and reading ability were the equal of more experienced musicians, and whose ensemble playing was more accurate and energetic than any other permanent, touring orchestra of the period.

At the same time, the band assumed a rougher, less polished "edge" than that associated with earlier orchestras. In better times, musicians had risen through the ranks of lesser groups until they were good enough to join the big-name bands. Youngsters with special promise learning on the job, like Bob Cooper or Bill Holman or Marvin Stamm, had been surrounded by older, accomplished veterans from whom they could learn and take advice. Now, the training grounds provided by second-grade bands no longer existed, and the men moved straight from music school into one of the few touring bands that still remained, such as Stan Kenton, Woody Herman, or Buddy Rich. 

They were often highly proficient players, but lacked maturity and experience, especially essential to play meaningful solos with style and substance.

Kenton (himself approaching the age when many retire altogether) explained the solo dilemma best of all: "The problem is these guys are often young and immature, and haven't had the opportunity to grow. They fail to develop continuity, and they play something out of context that could fit into any tune. They know their chords, they're very well schooled, but they lack the taste that comes with experience. Playing solos should be like telling a story, it's got to have a beginning, and it has to develop and serve a purpose, and then it has to die. Players like Zoot Sims and Lee Konitz and Charlie Parker, when they played 'Body and Soul,' they played 'Body and Soul,' they didn't just play a lot of jibber-jabber." Nor was the position improved by the fact most arrangements coming into the new book were concert-length, extending far beyond the old three-minute playing time encouraged by Capitol, permitting the soloists to stretch out at lengths rarely allowed in the past.

But the problems extended beyond the solos, though few went as far as tenor sax alumnus Kim Richmond, who comments, "The bands [during the Seventies] used almost all college students, and the intonation-suffered tremendously. I stopped buying the recordings of the band because I was so disappointed in that." 

Jiggs Whigham had his own explanation: "The bands of the Seventies didn't have the same sound. It may have had something to do with the changing times, something the Germans call 'Zeitgeist.' Sociologically there had been a breakdown in respect for authority, and this is reflected in the changing styles of music. You cannot separate music from the time in which it is created. The mores of the time color society and its culture, and the Seventies were not as disciplined as earlier times."”

To be continued in Part 2