The Creative World of Stan Kenton - Part 5

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

In developing a broader understanding and appreciation of Kenton 70's music to share with you in these continuing features on the subject we are fortunate that so many of the band members from that era were available [many continue to be] to participate in interviews in which they shared their experiences about Stan and what it was like to be on the band.

The following interview appears in excerpts from Lillian Arganian’s Stan Kenton: The Man and His Music [1989], Lillian was for many years associated with Michigan State University. A violinist herself and a lifelong fan of Kenton’s music, her book contains 24 interviews with musicians and arranger’s associated with the Kenton Band in the 1970s.

Since the trombone section has always been a major part of the Kenton Sound, I thought it might be fun to continue our look at the Creative World of Stan Kenton in the decade of the 1970s with the following interview from Lillian’s book with trombonists Dick Shearer and Mike Suter.

If you ever wanted to know what the true costs were - from many points of view, financial and otherwise - of being on the Kenton Band in the 1970s, you’ll get a close look by reading this interview.

Mike SUTER: Southern Illinois, remember we did that? 

Dick SHEARER: And I had to go up and. . . 

SUTER: Stan's ultimate band!

L.A.: Why was that? 

SUTER: Thirty-seven hundred people.

Lillian Arganian.: (Laughs.) What was this?

SUTER: They brought us to Southern Illinois  University to play at the

half-time.

L.A.: Oh, the Stan Kenton band? At half-time?

SUTER: It was their band day.

L.A.: You're kidding!

SUTER: So there were like 25 high school bands...

L.A.: Oh, wow.

SUTER: And the Stan Kenton band ... 

L.A.: (Laughs.)

SUTER: We played "MacArthur Park." Well fine. Pop-da-da-daa-dot-dot-dot-daa. You can't do that with thirty-seven hundred people. It went pop-dot-dot-daa-dudugududum-dot-dot. It was ponderous, it was terrible, the people loved it, and it was the perfect-sized band for Stan.

L.A.: (Laughs.) Thirty-seven hundred? 

SUTER: He finally had enough people in his band!

SHEARER: And I'm the only one that went Duh-duh-duh-da-duh-duh-

duh-'duh. (Laughs.) I thought about that old joke.

L.A.: What's the old joke? 

SHEARER: This piccolo player dies and goes to Heaven, and the Lord grants him one wish. Says he wants to play with great musicians. So poof there he's in the Grand Canyon and he looks up, and there's five thousand trumpets. Four thousand trombones. A thousand sousa-phones. God only knows how many drummers, and clarinet players and all this. Goes up to the podium and plays that little solo march in "The Stars and Stripes Forever."

SUTER: You can imagine what it was like when they all came in after that. L.A.: It would have knocked him over! 

SHEARER: Would you like five thousand people playing two quarter notes in your ear?

SUTER: That's what was happening with Dick. It was him against literally the world.

SHEARER: I had a two-bar solo every time it happened. I'm the only one who played it. Duh-duh-duh-da-dee-duh- duh-duh. I'd walk up to the microphone and do that, just me and a couple of soft woodwinds, then I'd step back and all of a sudden WHAAACHHH! Duh-duh-

duh-da-dee-da-da-da.  Da-da-daa-da- dee-da-da-da. WHOH WHOH-WHOH WHOH-WHOH!

SUTER: It was really; it was weird.

L.A.: Stan must have loved it. That's his idea of a band, all right.

SUTER: We kidded him about it. We said he finally got enough people in his band to make him happy.

L.A.: A new high in tone color! Why do you suppose Stan favored trombones so much?

SHEARER: What he said to me was, when he was a young kid, and used to go down and hear the shows 'n' stuff, and he'd hear those trombones in the pit orchestra with that sound they used to get, he'd say "Someday I'm gonna have a band with a bunch of trombones." He loved the sound of it. He just loved that rich sound — that's why the band had a lot of low horns in it. Stanley always said, you need  that  bottom.  You  get  a good bottom and the top comes out straight. That's why he had the trumpets up there.

L.A.: More people wrote for trombone, then, among Kenton's arrangers. SUTER: We had more music in every chart than any other horn. 

SHEARER: The trumpet book was two inches thick, the saxophone book was two inches thick, the trombone books were three-and-a-half inches thick. SUTER: There were things you'd look forward to playing, like "Tonight." We played that maybe twice a month. There were three hundred tunes in the book. Once a month you played at least everything once. But some of 'em were killers, where you'd be playing nothing but whole notes. And it hurts to play whole notes.

SHEARER: Ken Hanna lives. 

SUTER: Ya. Ken Hanna's stuff. Terrible for trombone players. All you're doing is playing long tones. And pretty soon the band's in Poughkeepsie and you're in Hawaii someplace, blowing your lungs out. 

L.A.: (Laughs.) My gosh. 

SUTER: That's where "How's Hawaii?" comes from. That's what that means. Because you hyperventilate and you're sitting there in your chair and you're playing your pitch but you don't really know where you are sometimes. 

L.A.: My gosh. 

SUTER: Playing is physical. 

L.A.: It takes a lot out of you. 

SUTER: That's the thing Stan would do — he'd come up, there'd be a bass player sitting in his chair playing an upright bass, and Stan would walk along and hit him in the shoulder. "Stand up, so I can't knock you down." You'd hear that sort of stuff. And he'd talk about it at the one-day clinics. It's a physical thing. You've got to get involved with it. And he'd show 'em. He'd always use bass, because that was his little thing. He'd show how you have to embrace a bass, how you have to hold it, interact with it. And you have to do that with any horn. It's hard work. He used to talk about that — you can't swing with your brain, you gotta swing somehow with your body. You've gotta have some kind of physical motion in there. 

L.A.: It's miraculous that the music never left him, even after his last illness. SHEARER: First couple of times he sat down at the piano, everybody was nervous, wondering whether the operation had affected that. He sat down and started playing. "What's the name of that?" And it just came right out. At other times he'd get up there with the band, and couldn't remember the bridge to what he was playing. 

SUTER: Ya, the chops were a trained reflex action with him. He never lost them. He never had a lot. But there were nights when he was the best emotional piano player in the world. I can't remember where it was in New York, but one night he played "Body and Soul" and the whole band missed the cue. Stan played his chorus and he looked up and gave his downbeat and there are nineteen guys in the band sitting there looking at him. Nobody made a move to pick up their horn. Nobody even knew that we were playing a concert. And that doesn't happen to me. I mean I'm not sayin' that for shock value. We all just blew it. We all just missed it. He would do that, once every three or four months. He'd get out alone and he'd play something really great.

L.A.: Some of the best piano music I've heard him do is on his Chicago album. 

SHEARER: There's another album called Stan Kenton Solo. It's all just him and there's times in there where you can hear his whole life. It's very emotional stuff. 

SUTER: It's the hardest one to listen to.

SHEARER: Ya. Hard to listen____

L.A.: What did Stan like about you? He must have singled you out for some reason to be such a close friend. 

SHEARER: I don't know. Just one of those things that happen. We'd get along very well. We had dinner together almost every night for years, and ... you know, many a night we'd sit there and not say a word! At dinner. But he was perfectly content. All he had to do was look up, there was somebody there . . . 

SUTER: I think that had a lot to do with it. I can speak about that relationship as an outsider. Dick did things for Stan that Stan didn't want to do. Dick took care of the hiring on the band. Stan did the firing. That was their agreement. But also, Dick made no other demands. I mean, one of the tests of a friendship is, you know, you can spend a couple of days together and not have to entertain one another. 

SHEARER: Um-hm. 

SUTER: I think long before they were friends, Stan trusted Dick. That allowed their friendship to blossom. 

L.A.: Why were you so dedicated to Kenton?

SHEARER: I enjoyed it. It's what I wanted to do. I never thought about that when I joined the band, that I'd be doin' all that stuff someday. 'Cause he was a pain in the ass to me at times. He and I used to go around and around. I'd have to fight with him to go out, on our nights off. "Let's go to a movie, let's do something, come on!" Well I'd get 'im going. We'd go out and eat and we'd go see some band somewhere, or catch a film, or some concert, and he comes back and he says, "God damn that was great! We gotta do this more often!" Next time we had a night off, I hadda kick him in the butt again. "I gotta go see 'Hello Dolly.' " Pearl Bailey was doin' it. We were in Toronto. We had a night off from the clinic. And I had a hassle with him. We finally got him so he'd go down there, and I sent a note backstage to Pearl that Stan was there. And I'm lookin' over at 'him and he's just smilin', oh he's havin' a good time. Pearl got Stan up on stage, and everybody in the place stood up. And he gives me that look as he walks by me, and he gets up there, and afterwards we're in the dressing room. He just had a ball. But to get him to do stuff like that, he'd just as soon go to his room and get juiced. 

L.A.: As band manager, you had quite a lot of responsibility toward the running of the band, didn't you? 

SHEARER: I used to have to call and make reservations and all that, plus do the payroll.

L. A.: That's quite a load on you, isn't it? Plus playing the book. 

SHEARER: Well it got to be a load. It got to be a little scary now and then. You lose $3,000, you wonder where it went. (Laughs.) 

L.A.: (Laughs.)

SUTER: Did he think he was paying us a lot of money?

SHEARER: Well, you know . . . 

SUTER:  No I mean really, I'm not making a joke.

SHEARER: Oh, Christ yes, Mike! 

SUTER: He thought he was? 

SHEARER: That's one thing Stanley could never get straight in his mind. He was back twenty years ago. I fought with him for I don't know how long. I finally got the base pay up to $250. 

SUTER: You know what happened last summer.

SHEARER: I know, it went right back down.

SUTER: It was the lowest paying band ... in the world.

SHEARER: He thought it was a lot of money!

L.A.: The lowest paying band in the world?

SUTER: The lowest paying band in the world.

L.A.: How would he get away with that? 

SUTER: People worked for him, didn't they?

L.A.: (Laughs.) That's what I'm wondering.

SUTER: There's no union on the road. Who're you gonna call? 

L.A.: Would he pay more if you were stationary somewhere? 

SUTER: No. You always got paid the same, no matter what. But I mean, if you went out with him, you knew beforehand what you were gonna get. So it was my fault that I got paid that little. I'm not saying it was bad. It just was. 

L.A.: Maybe the prestige of it made it worth it. 

SUTER: Whatever.

SHEARER: (Laughs.) That and a hotdog won't get you a cup of coffee. Here's

a payroll sheet from 1968. That was the base pay then. A hundred and fifty

bucks.

SUTER:   'Course now,  motel rooms were — people will use this argument...

SHEARER: It was still the same ten years later.

SUTER: Um-hm.

SHEARER: The prices went up and everything.

L.A.: You mean out of that base salary you had to pay for your own motel

room?

SHEARER: Oh ya.

SUTER: Ya.

SHEARER: Except we had a thing later on where anything over eight dollars the band picked up. So you knew it cost you fifty-six dollars a week for your room, and the band picked up everything else. That's why we started staying at Holiday Inns, Ramadas, nice places, where it would cost us — the band itself — up to sixteen dollars a night. The guys would pay eight of that and we'd pick up the rest of it.

L.A.: Was that fairly recently? 

SHEARER: It got started around 70, 71. We used to give the guys their money back. They would pay their bill . . .

SUTER: Ya, we paid our own bills. 

SHEARER: And I'd reimburse 'em. 

SUTER:  Every two weeks  we'd get reimbursed.

SHEARER: With the exception of when we went to Europe, then we paid all the bills and got the money back from the guys later.

SUTER: At the same time I was on Stan's band — I joined for $250, plus overages — at that very same time Maynard was paying $400 and Maynard paid for the rooms. Woody paid $400 and paid for the rooms. We worked more and got paid less than any band. I joined the band, played the first night at the St. Nicholas Hotel. Had a night off. Then worked 135 straight nights. I joined the band two days before Stan set his record. 

L.A.: What record?

SUTER: A hundred and thirty-five nights without a break. We broke for Christmas.

SHEARER: You've got to have at least twenty to twenty-five grand a week, now. And you couldn't possibly earn that much. You're talking about five, six thousand dollars every night. To make that, you've got to have a hell of a good name.

SUTER: The worst part is, the recording company never made money. So guess who made up that money? The band did. The publishing company never made money. Guess who made up that money? The band did. So if the band made — the band was working for $2500 a night — what we made on the road went to support the entire Creative World. Not just the band. They made as much for the Kenton band as they would for Maynard Ferguson, yet their guys were getting a hundred and fifty dollars a week plus motel rooms more than we were.

SHEARER: And Stan was always broke! (Laughs.)

L.A.: Kenton's life story is peppered with the times that he could have gone more commercial and made the money. 

SUTER: That's okay. That's what he wanted to do. And we chose to stay with him. The people who went on the band chose it — nobody held a gun to our heads. So we don't have any right to complain about it. And I'm not. I enjoyed what I did.

SHEARER: But the band was not one of the highest-grossing bands. That was part of the problem. They would book us for $2500 a night, $2,000 a night. We used to have a hell of a party every time the band broke $20,000. We didn't have too many of those.

L.A.: But he would do it because he wanted to play that kind of music, right? SHEARER: Well, he'd try to keep working. It got a little bit better in the later years.

L.A.: That's what I think is heroic about him, to want to stick with his music even though it wasn't really commercially rewarding. How many people do you know who will do that? 

SHEARER: (Looking in accounts book.) Okay, let's see. This week was $9970. We had a $6900 week. We had an $8,000 week. This was all 1968. Thirty-four hundred. At $3400, we were still on the road all week.

L.A.: How much did you have to pay the members of the band? About twenty people—that's $4,000 right there, isn't it?

SHEARER:  The net payroll was $3,000. Not gross. Net. Which still had to be met on the Coast. 

SUTER: But we never missed a payroll. 

SHEARER: No. 

SUTER: We were— 

SHEARER: There were times when we were late. Gross, $8,000. $10,000. We must have had a hell of a time then. $9,000. $9,000. $7,000. This is still 1968. In 1978 it was better. We were probably around 19-20. When we'd go to Europe it would be another story. 

L.A.: Why was that? 

SHEARER:  We'd  make a lot more money over there. But then again we had a lot more expenses. When we were in Rome, it cost the guys eight bucks a night, and the hotel room was $40. So we picked up the other $32 ourselves. Stan did.

SUTER: When the band had the occasional five- or six-thousand-dollar job, the band didn't get paid any more. 

SHEARER: No. See that's the way . .. 

L.A.: Would it go to Creative World, then?

SUTER: Yeah, exactly! 

SHEARER: It would go there, sure. 

SUTER: It would go to Stan Kenton Incorporated. Or whatever you want to call it.

SHEARER: 'Course, some weeks we only worked three days. Well the band was paid for the whole week. 

SUTER: Um-hm.

SHEARER: Bus expense. Every time the band would fly somewhere . . . 

L. A.: As long as you're leveling with me, tell me this: would a guy join the Stan Kenton band because it was the only offer he got? 

SUTER: No.

L.A.: Or because he wanted to be in the Stan Kenton band? 

SUTER: Ya. Um-hm. 

SHEARER: You joined because you wanted to be in Stan's band. 

L.A.: If you had three offers, and two of them were from Maynard Ferguson and Woody Herman . . . 

SUTER: Yeah, if you were in your right mind you wouldn't join Stan's band. Businesswise it was the worst mistake I ever made. But like I said, I decided when I was twelve.

L.A.:  You  said  it  was  because you wanted to play bass trombone. Is that the only reason you wanted to join? 

SUTER: That's the only reason I wanted to join.

SHEARER: How many bass trombone . . .

LA.: They don't have bass trombones in the other orchestras?

SUTER: They do, but they're nothin'.

SHEARER: Nothin’. They're nothin'.

SUTER: I mean, there's some substance to what was happening there.

L.A.: Would you say that Kenton created his own idiom, or wouldn't you jo that far? Classical jazz, is there such a thing?

SUTER: Whatever it was, he made it himself. Ya. I would go that far. 

L.A.: He's got his own definition of what he did, right?

SUTER: Oh ya. He had his own definition of what swing was. 

L.A.: Isn't that why he doesn't fit neatly into anybody's category? 

SUTER: That's true. 

L.A.: Why they're always shaking their fists at him? 

SUTER: Sure.

L.A.: Because he made his own kind of music.

SUTER: Yep. 

L.A.: Would you call that classical jazz? 

SUTER: No. 

L.A.: Concert jazz.

SUTER: I'd call it Stan Kenton. I don't even call it jazz. I don't think Stan Kenton ever played jazz, or his band ever played jazz, after 1954. 

L.A.: What would you call that kind of music?

SUTER: Stan Kenton. I'm not being evasive.

L.A.: Come on. You can't label a kind of music "Stan Kenton." 

SUTER: I sure as hell can. 

SHEARER: He used to call it "concert jazz."

L.A.: Nobody's ever put the whole picture together.

SHEARER: Nothing will happen about Stanley 'til about two years from now. L.A.: And then what? 

SHEARER: Then they'll get some kind of movement goin' and all of a sudden everybody's gonna realize what great things he's done.

L.A.: Stan's a cultivated taste. Not that many people in the United States even care about him, or know who he is. But the people who are involved in music do. Disc jockeys do. Musicians do. 

SUTER: He used to say some little dumb things that just killed me. We played a concert in Jackson, Michigan, once, at Central High School. Somebody had let off a stink bomb. We smelled it, it was no big deal. It wasn't in the auditorium, it was in some other part of the school. And he was straight. We're playing the gig, played the first half, came back for the second half, and he said, "I understand somebody let off a stink bomb in the school here. I understand some of you people thought it was the band. Well, I'm sorry somebody let off a stink bomb." He turned to walk back, took about four steps, and turned around. Walked back to the mike, said, "We thought it was you." (Laughs.) I couldn't play the next two tunes.

SHEARER: He'd always say things like that. Sometimes he'd forget about how great some of the acoustics were. And he'd be straight as an arrow and he'd say something to me that would just floor me, and people in the front two seats are just dying laughing'. And he catches them out of the corner of his eye, he says (whispers) "Can they hear me?" And I says "Oh yes. Because you said it right into my microphone." 

L.A.: (Laughs.)

SHEARER: He would do things to try to break us up. We were working at some country club. The bandstand was up about this high, and there were bushes. We're playing some ballad, Stanley disappears. All of a sudden he peeks through the bushes, goes "VERY INTERESTING." That stopped the trombones. And when he'd tell us some corny joke just before the curtain would go up, he'd time it perfectly. Curtain would go up and he'd give the downbeat right at the punch line. Jamieson was on the band. That poor guy. I'd have to send him away, he'd start laughin' so hard. Took us twenty minutes to get through the first eight bars of "Rainy Day." He'd always do stuff like this. 

SUTER: I got him once, though. It was in Michigan. We played up at Mott Community College. Their band leader had this multi-colored patchwork vest on. He came around. Bus pulled up to the clinic. He came out the door, waving at the bus, and he came running around to the side of the bus. And just as he reached for the bus door I said "Stan whatever you do, don't laugh at his vest."

L.A.: (Laughs.)

SUTER: Well that did it. Door opens— "Mr. Kenton, how are ya!" and Stan's just draped over the thing, tears running down his face. Poor guy never knew what hit him.

SHEARER: Oh I'd get him good. Any time someone would go weird he'd look over at me. "Dick! Are you behind this?" We'd always do strange things when he'd have his back to us.

SUTER: He stopped the band one time in Springfield, Ohio. We were at the St. Nicholas Hotel. You had stolen Keim's mouthpiece. We were playing "Peanut Vendor." And Keim's sittin’ there, with no mouthpiece. Stan got mad and stopped the band. "Who's got his mouthpiece?" Dick reached in his vest. Put the mouthpiece back. We started it again.

SHEARER: I was probably the only one to get away with it. 

SUTER: I got Dick one night and almost got fired for it. Dick would drop a dime in your mouthpiece -then you'd blow, and nothing would happen. Dick told me that I would never get him. Well that was an immediate challenge. SHEARER: Wrong choice of words. 

SUTER: So this is like a year and a half later. We were in Jeff City, Missouri. We had some game that used golf tees in our rooms. I took a golf tee with me. We were playing "Intermission Riff." Two other tenor trombones go out front to play their solos. Dick stays in the middle. The two bass trombones move in to the inside of the section, so when the jazz players come back they can just sit down on the outside, 'cause it's the last thing before intermission, and it made the logistics of playing the chart a lot easier. So we moved on in. Dick turned around and was saying somethin’ to the trumpets. I took the golf tee and put it in his mouthpiece. No big deal, he discovered that. 'Cause he always, always looked. So I took a dime, and it went: "CLANG!" And Dick's turned to the trumpets, he could see it went clang. He knew the dime was in there. I knew I had 'im. He picked up his horn and dropped the dime out. Stan was so mad at me. It was obvious who did it. None of us were playing. Sodersack and I were giggling, and I was on the floor. 

SHEARER: And I was laughin'. 

SUTER: Oh, he was mad. "I want to see you at the break." He bawled me out. I didn't pay any attention to any of it. (Laughs.)

L.A.: I suppose if it went on all the time, he really couldn't single you out.

SUTER: That  band  was like the Waltons.

LA.: (Laughs.)

SUTER: We'd get to the hotel after the job: "Goodnight Stan." "Goodnight Mike." "Goodnight Stan." "Goodnight Dick." "Goodnight Dick." "Goodnight Mike." "Goodnight Tom." "Goodnight George." (Laughs.)

SHEARER: (Laughing.) It was awful. You couldn't get off the bus for five

minutes! I forgot all about that.