Johnny Mandel on the West Coast: Part 1 - The Smithsonian Interview

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

The following is excerpted from the JOHNNY MANDEL [1925-2020] NEA Jazz Master (2011) interview that was conducted by Bill Kirchner on April 20-21, 1995 in New York City. The 179 page transcript is in the Archives Center, National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian which can be reached at www.archivescenter@si.edu.

This portion of the interview deals with a period in Johnny’s life when he had recently moved to California from New York in 1953. 

In the conversation with Bill, Johnny talks about individual musicians he worked with in California and his views of the West Coast style of Jazz which was in vogue in California from 1945-1965.

Kirchner: Alright so we get to the point where you got off Basie's band and moved to California.

Mandel: Yeah it's a whole other beginning of a whole other phase really, so... 

Kirchner: Which is the end of '53 right? 

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: Now, if I'm not mistaken one of the first things you did when you got there was you did some string charts for Chet Baker.

Mandel:  Yeah, I did. Kirchner: I just...

Mandel: I did some stuff for the Dave Pell Octet, that was good and I did some string charts, yeah that's right Chet Baker and strings. I still knew very little about string writing.

Kirchner: It was also a very small string section.

Mandel: Yeah

Kirchner: It was about eight fiddle players.

Mandel: And the guys weren't all that great, and then later on I think a year or so later we did some stuff with just four cellos with Chet. And I don't like writing for small string sections, they just don't sound good.

Kirchner: You can only do one or two or three way voicing or else it's too thin to amount to anything.

Mandel: Yeah, so I started writing them thinner so I could get more lines, more voices and that wouldn't sound good at all.

Kirchner: Now, how did you meet Chet in the first place?

Mandel: I think Dick Bock [owner of Pacific Jazz Records] set that up. I had met Dick during the time I was getting my card, when I came back to town he and Woody Woodward [handle the administration for the label]  grabbed me to do a lot of work. Those guys sort of, you know, getting started in California, especially in those days was very tough. I came in with sort of a New York reputation but no work and no connections at all and I'm not very good at that sort of thing.

Kirchner: What was your plan, did you consciously want to get into film writing or was that an afterthought?

Mandel: Well I had thought I had a way of getting into Warner Brothers, it turned out I didn't at all and then I was really kicking myself for having left Basie. I should never have done it, but you know I do those kinds of things for 5 minutes and then go on to something else and forget about it. And you know I was writing more and more and playing less and I'd keep getting worse and I really started thinking that with Basie, as much as I was enjoying myself that... somebody else really should be sitting there, that could really play and I'd just come to that point where you get the fork in the road and you really have to make a choice; one or the other and I was always pulled away from my playing by my writing.  And I was just about 29 when I quit that and realized, that you know, they are both full-time jobs and everybody eventually has to do that. Billy Byers had to do it and he was good. He kept his trombone and writing up and did them both very well; but almost everyone stops playing.

Kirchner: Bob Brookmeyer is one of the few notable exceptions.

Mandel: He's another one too.  Bobby Brookmeyer is just miraculous, there's another great trombone stylist I completely neglected to mention earlier. There's only one of them too and as a writer as well.

Kirchner: Yeah, he's one of the few, well I guess Al Cohn didn't play much for years.

Mandel: He didn't play much for years and he didn't really start playing his best until he became a full-time saxophone player, is when he finally gave up writing, which I really hated to see. I used to beg him to keep writing but he had spent so many years trying to raise a family and writing music he didn't like and his eye, he only had one eye after 1949 or ‘50 and as a matter-of-fact he was out of the business for a while working for his father, who I think was - Dave Cohn was in the garment business at the time. And when he came with Elliot [Lawrence’s big band in the early 1950s] that was his first foray back into music, he had been out of music for a while, after his eye operation. And so he made it on one eye since then, and he used to do shows for Ralph Burns and you know he was just doing a whole lot of music he didn't like and…

Kirchner: A lot of Broadway shows.

Mandel: When he finally got free of his marriage and a whole lot of other things and the kids were grown up enough, he decided he wasn't gonna write anymore music and his one eye was just killing him. He became a full-time saxophone player and that's what he ended up spending his life and when he started doing that and put all his energy in the saxophone, whoo man!

Kirchner: Yeah, really.

Mandel: He was always good before that but became more than good after that.

Kirchner: I think it's one of the small ironies of the jazz business that he ended up marrying [arranger] George Handy's ex-wife.

Mandel: Yeah, Flo.

Kirchner: Yeah, Flo, who is also a talented composer. 

Mandel: Very, yeah and you know who's sister she was? 

Kirchner: Ella Mae Morse [led her own big band] during the Swing Era].

Mandel: Ella Mae Morse's kids sister, yeah. I knew her from the time she was 16 years old, a wonderful girl.

Kirchner: And a very talented composer.

Mandel: Very talented composer and a wonderful singer.

Kirchner: I'd heard that yeah.

Mandel: I loved the way she sang. Yeah.

Kirchner: So you're in LA, you did the four string charts for Chet Baker, "You Don't Know What Love Is," “I Love You," "The Wind," which was Russ Freeman's tune and, "Love."

Mandel: Yeah, I actually wrote the bridge to that, or finished the bridge for him.

Kirchner: Oh yeah?

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: It was interesting you used an alto flute on that.

Mandel: I guess I did, yeah.

Kirchner: With Bud Shank, that's about the first time I can remember hearing an alto flute on a jazz record.

Mandel: I guess I just needed something that went lower than the regular flute. 

Kirchner: But that was pretty unusual for that time right?

Mandel: It never occurred to me then I don't think, and I always liked the way Bud played it. 

Kirchner: Oh yeah, I love his flute playing.

Mandel: I do too, I was...

Kirchner: It's too bad that he stopped.

Mandel: I was very distressed 'cause I wasn't able to use him anymore, he just wouldn't take flute calls and he was my favorite player.

Kirchner: Yeah, he was a terrific flute player.  So also Chet recorded one of your tunes, "Tommyhawk."

Mandel: That's true, he recorded a couple different of my tunes, yeah, "Tommyhawk," that's right. You know more about me than I do, so read on.

Kirchner: [laughs] And I guess what a couple years later you did some charts for that record that Chet Baker and Art Pepper did together, The Playboys of Jazz, it was a three horn...

Mandel: It was?

Kirchner: Thing with Chet and Art Pepper and Richie Kamuca.

Mandel: What'd I write?

Kirchner: I forget.

Mandel: Oh, you don't have it here?

Kirchner: No, I don't

Mandel: Okay

Kirchner: That's one thing I didn't find in the discography.

Mandel: Well if you can't help me, I sure can't.

[They both laugh]

Kirchner:   But you did a fair amount, I guess all that was set up through Dick Bock then?

Mandel: Well some of it, and then one person tells another you know, and so forth.

Kirchner: Did you get to know Chet, very much?

Mandel: Yeah, yeah, he was still a kid when I knew him, he was a nice kid, I liked Chet and what a musician.

Kirchner: Yeah

Mandel: And a wonderful singer, he was just a natural.

Kirchner: Yeah, absolutely.

Mandel: He was wonderful you know, Gerry really came up with something when he came up with Chet, then after that when Chet left town, I graduated to Jack Sheldon and Jack Sheldon was quite something in those days, in the 50s still and the 60s. He did a great deal, we did a lot of work together and had an awful lot of laughs.

Kirchner: There is one story that I heard, that we might as well bring up now that when you did the score to, "The Sandpiper," and you had him as a solo trumpet...

Mandel: Yep

Kirchner: And I'm told you just wrote Miles on the top of his part.

Mandel:  I might have.  I was going after that thing there's no doubt about it, that's what I wanted because I heard it in conjunction with all the scenery in that movie, it just seemed like the perfect way to go, but I didn't copy Gil [Evans].

Kirchner: No, not at all. Jack is a very underrated trumpet player.

Mandel: Yeah he is, well he plays a lot more trumpet now but he plays a lot of notes. He's gotten into, he's learned how to read, he's really gone and studied the trumpet and he's got total mastery of it but he's still great, there's only one Jack Sheldon.

Kirchner: Yeah, it's funny the way his career went, for a while he was doing a lot of TV acting, the only jazz musician ever to be the lead on a TV sitcom.

Mandel: I know, what a funny guy, he and Joe Maini [alto sax]used to work together and they were hysterical.  I don't know, I'm gonna tell a story on tape here. Joe Mondragon was my bass player for a long time, I just loved the way Joe Mondragon played.  He and Jack Sheldon used to work a lot together and [laughs] I don't know if this story belongs on this tape or not but it's -they were playing a dance somewhere and Jack, you know Jack cannot stop with one-liners and there was this girl who was more than fine at the dance and she was with her fiance and Jack just kept zinging those one - he couldn't take his eyes off the girl, he couldn't stop, he just couldn't leave her alone and the guy finally really started getting hot and he goes over to Jack and says, "Look this is my fiance, this is the girl I'm going to marry, I'd really appreciate it," he was very nice, "if you'd please stop, layoff." And Jack couldn't lay off, the night wore on, everybody got into their cups pretty well, finally Jack just went overboard and said something the guy hauls off and hits him square in the mouth and knocks him out. [laughs] And Dragon sees that and he runs, and this is the days before guns, he runs to his bass case and pulls out a gun, now I never saw Dragon with a gun before and in those days people didn't have guns, you know it wasn't like that. You saw a gun that was very unusual and he goes up to the mic and starts waving it, and he says, "Alright you guys, everybody it's all over, the dance is finished everybody get out, everybody, get out stop the music the dance is finished,' and he turns to that guy, he says, "do you know what you did, you hit a trumpet player in the mouth, that is a mortal sin."

[They both laugh]

Mandel: He says, "All right everybody out," I mean, you know he said, "I'd like to kill you, but you just don't realize what a terrible thing you did." He said, "Everybody gets out, go on out of here," and Jack is starting to come-to, and he opens one eye and he points, and he says, "She can stay."

[They both laugh]

Mandel: Okay, you can edit that out because it doesn't really belong on the tape.

Kirchner: It's a great story.

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: Well Joe Mondragon is part Indian right?

Mandel: Yeah, not part, all.

Kirchner: All?

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: Well I...

Mandel: Apache.

Kirchner: And part Mexican too right?

Mandel: Well the Apaches are that far south...

Kirchner: Yeah, yeah.

Mandel: That I think that's Mexican Indian really.

Kirchner: Don't mess with him.

Mandel: No, what a wonderful man he was and what a great bass player.

Kirchner: Yeah, apparently he hipped Miles to the, "Concierto de Aranjuez," you know the...

Mandel: Yeah wouldn't surprise me at all.

Kirchner: First, "Sketches of Spain," he played Miles the original guitar recording and Miles loved it and played it for Gil, and that's where they got the idea to do it in, the "Sketches of Spain."

Mandel: I'm sorry I didn't know Miles a lot better. 

Kirchner: How well did you know him?

Mandel: Not really well we were never in the same place at the same time. He was always on the East Coast and I was always on the West. I don't know, as years went by I moved away, in 1970 from Los Angeles in general and lived up north of Malibu ever since. And I just don't get in much and don't hang, and I miss it, that's why I hit the jazz festivals and cruises and things 'cause I gotta be with the guys. You know it's, I like to feel like I used to feel, I mean I'm very happy living the way I am now but once you're a road rat man, it gets in you and old musicians are like prizefighters, we'll get to all that later on.  You know you like to get with your - or old baseball players you like to hang and rap, not necessarily live the old days, it's just there's a kind of bonding that goes on that, until you don't have it anymore you don't realize what you had.

Kirchner: Yeah, well it's one of the big tragedies of New York that there are no more Jim and Andy's or any places like that.

Mandel: Yeah, yeah, it was just one of the wonderful things about being part of the music fraternity and jazz musicians truly, really, love one another.  You go see, "A Great Day in Harlem."

Kirchner: Yeah I did Mandel: It's all very true man. 

Kirchner: Yeah.

Mandel: These are all like your brothers you know, there's a kinship, jazz musicians share something that no one else shares with them.

Kirchner: And there are very few real schmucks. 

Mandel: That's right, really, very few. 

Kirchner: The ones that are, stand out.

Mandel: And usually they weren't schmucks, they'd just get difficult once in a while like Mingus and people like that, but they weren't really schmucks.

Kirchner: Yeah, but it's kind of a whole era that's gone.

Mandel: Yeah, like I don't know, it's not something I like to really dwell on much, you know you wonder how people like Benny Carter deal with it who is you know eighty-six, eighty-seven, eighty-eight, whatever Benny is, all his contemporaries are dead.

Kirchner: I think Woody Herman said something very wise, he said that, "You make younger friends because if you don't, you find out one day that you don't have any friends left."

Mandel: Absolutely true and that's what Benny does too, I wanted to - one day when I really got morose I wanted to call him up and ask him how he dealt with and I realized what the answer would be before I ever called him, I says, if I asked him how you deal with it, he says, "I don't, why should you, you know, where is that gonna take you?" You just keep making younger friends, that's it exactly.

Kirchner: I mean, I've gotten a couple phone calls from him just to call and say, "Hi how are you?" And it's like gee, Benny Carter's calling me, you know is God next?

Mandel:  Right, yeah, because I still have that awe of him.

Kirchner: Sure. Let's see, just before you stopped playing, apparently you played with Zoot Sims at The Haig.

Mandel:  Yeah, that was really the last work I did. 

Kirchner: Playing bass trumpet?

Mandel: Yeah, I played with Zoot and Jimmy Rowles and I can't remember who played drums, we worked at The Haig, that place where Gerry [Mulligan] used to work. And we were there for a couple months and it was real nice but it was at that time I really, as wonderful as it was with Zoot, I just didn't want to play anymore, it was getting harder and harder to play and write and I knew I was having to become a full-time writer.

Kirchner: And...

Mandel:  So, I just put the horn down and haven't missed it since, really haven't, when I hear a big band play I miss it, I want to become part of that, I want, you know - and when Basie would come around, I'd always, you never forget your part you know, on arrangements you used to play. And I'd see Benny Powell and he'd say, "that's right, you never forget your part," you know. We'd sing right along with them, with our old parts 'cause you know you memorize everything, you don't read it. But that's the only time I'd miss it, being part of the section sound, being a soloist like I used to enjoy doing, was really just too frustrating because I couldn't play what I envisioned and what I heard. So when it got like that and I knew I would never be able to practice again like that, in order to do it, I said the hell with it, it was that time.

Kirchner: So was it after that, that Chico Hamilton made you an offer that you turned down, he wanted you to join his group.

Mandel: Don't even remember that.

Kirchner: It's in Ted Gioia's book called, "West Coast Jazz," apparently when he was putting together that group with Buddy Collette...

Mandel: Yeah, I gotta be honest with you I never was a convert to West Coast jazz, I always thought it was a very kind of weak cousin to East Coast jazz; in fact I just never identified it as something in itself really. I always liked the way the east coasters played but I like living on the West Coast.  I always thought there was something a little effeminate about the way they played, not that that's bad, it's just not something - you know you come out of Basie and some of the most hard swinging kind of things and everything else sounds so pallid next to it.

Kirchner: Yeah, I guess... 

Mandel: You get spoiled...

Kirchner: Sure.

Mandel: When you've had it that good.

Kirchner: Yeah, I guess it depends, like somebody like Shelly Manne for example, sounded...

Mandel: A wonderful drummer, but not a great big band drummer.

Kirchner: You don't think huh?

Mandel: No, I don't think, but I thought he was probably the tastiest drummer I've ever known and one who had the best sense of sound. You'd never have to write a part for Shelly, he would listen and always knew exactly what to play and what a guy to have, man, there was nobody like Shelly, he was funny, he was just one the most marvelous men I've ever known.

Kirchner: But he sounded...

Mandel: And a hell of a drummer he just wasn't the big band drummer that...

Kirchner: Mel Lewis was.

Mandel: Mel Lewis or Tiny Kahn or Shadow Wilson in his day or, Papa Jo Jones, you know the great Gus Johnson the great big-band drummers, Sid Catlett, Cliff Leeman in his day, Buddy Rich, those were the big band drummers. Shelly was not that, he had so many other things.

Kirchner: Yeah he sounded very different in all those different settings like sometimes he would sound like, like you were talking about, quintessential quote, "West Coast jazz."

Mandel: Yeah, l just didn't like West Coast jazz.

Kirchner: Yeah.

Mandel:  But I never thought it really had much merit, it was watered down East Coast jazz.

Kirchner: But then he would have some of his own groups, you know and he would have people like Victor Feldman and Joe Gordon and...

Mandel: Oh he had some, he was a wonderful small band drummer... 

Kirchner: Yeah.

Mandel: I didn't mean that he wasn't a wonderful, he was a wonderful drummer.

Kirchner: Sure.

Mandel: I loved him in the small band settings.

Kirchner: I think his own taste tended to be more aggressive than some of the people he worked for.

Mandel: Un hm, but I never thought he was aggressive enough in a big band, he wasn't a rock type of drummer you could drive a truck over and he wouldn't budge like Mel Lewis was.

Kirchner: Yeah

Mandel: And his sense of sound I don't think made it for a big-band as well as it did for a small band. Whereas Tiny Kahn was never as great a small band drummer even though he did a lot of small band work as he was a big band drummer.

Kirchner: Well he and Mel Lewis were very close.

Mandel: Well that was Mel's original inspiration, Tiny, that's who Mel wanted to be like and he was right.

Kirchner: Yeah, they're not interchangeable, I mean...

Mandel: No.

Kirchner: You can tell one from the other...

Mandel: Oh sure, they're not alike at all.

Kirchner: I don't know, I hear a certain - there's an affinity of approach there between...

Mandel: It was the time sense that Mel had.

Kirchner: Yeah.

Mandel: That he loved about Tiny.  Tiny was a musician with not much technique, just all feel...

Kirchner: The same with Mel.

Mandel: He wasn't a great technical drummer, he wasn't a great technical arranger but everything he did was perfect.

Kirchner: Yeah, it's like...

Mandel: You know, 'cause taste is above all the arbiter of greatness I think. Count Basie was -nobody really realized how good a piano player Count Basie was in his early days, he was a terror if you listen to the Bennie Moten things from 1932 on.  He played more damn piano than Fats on those records, which is really saying something and never did with his own band that much piano. But the man had such great taste that those few ideas he used to throw around, that if anybody else did you'd be sick of him within a few days, lasted all his life because he had taste like no one did and he had the best time. And Tiny was like that, Sweets is like that.

Kirchner: Yeah, Mel was like that too.

Mandel: Yeah, Mel had a lot more variety though in his playing.

Kirchner: Yeah.

Mandel: He could do a lot of things, especially when he got with his own band.

Kirchner: Yeah, the best drum solos I ever heard Mel play were in small groups where -I heard him one night play a brush solo on, "Body and Soul," done at ballad tempo that was just superb.

Mandel: Oh, that's the kind of thing Shelly did so well, that kind of thing, shading, and subtleties of playing. He might've been the best drummer when it came to dynamics.

Kirchner: And he had wonderful time.

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: Let's see at this point...

Mandel: I don't remember the Chico Hamilton thing at all...

Kirchner: I'll have to, I'll make a...

Mandel: But thank you Chico, if you made the offer.

Kirchner: [laughs] And you did a little bit of writing for - we talked earlier about that Bill Perkins octet record.

Mandel: Oh yeah, um-hm.

Kirchner: Did you write, "Just a child," specifically for that date or you had written that tune...

Mandel: I guess I did, yeah, that was when the tune happened and then Stan Getz recorded it later, something I never realized until I heard a documentary that they did on Stan after he died, I never realized he recorded that song and it was perfect for him.

Kirchner: Absolutely and then Bill did it again.

Mandel: Bill did it again?

Kirchner: Yeah, do you know that album he did that's a totally Johnny Mandel album.

Mandel: Oh, that one, yeah.

Kirchner: With Victor Feldman and John Pisano.

Mandel: Oh that's right, yeah.

Kirchner: Around 1970.

Mandel: I guess so, yeah.

Kirchner: So at that point you did that, Hal McKusick did a recording of, "Tommyhawk," on that Jazz workshop record.

Mandel: I guess he did, yeah, these are all, this is like seeing - this must be what dying's like. 

Kirchner: I hope not.  [laughs] 

Mandel:  I hope so, I'm enjoying this.

Kirchner: I mean the janitor's gone, if we have a corpse here [laughs] it's gonna be awfully awkward.

Mandel: Yeah, but I mean your whole life flashes before your eyes.

To be continued in Part 2.