The Creative World of Stan Kenton -The Ken Hanna Interview - Part 6

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“[During the Summer of 1941] The Rendezvous would close at midnight and a sextet (mostly from the Kenton band) would go down to a bar a block away called the Bamboo Room. It was owned and operated by the same guy who had the lease on the Rendezvous Ballroom, so we were always welcome.

They had a back room where the six of us could jam and a few people would sit and listen, no dancing. There was myself, Red Dorris, Jack Ordean, Chico Alvarez, drummer Mel Patterson and Ted Repay. Ted was a marvelous piano player. Stan had known him in the thirties and hired him for a while in 1942 to focus more on composing and arranging. He was really needed, as that band was going through a metamorphosis after Carlos Gastel got a hold of it. Ted relieved a lot of pressure from Stan. Haying the Bamboo Room was a kick and we did it all summer long. 

Almost every night, we'd walk past the Rendezvous on the way home, and it was always totally black except for one light. There's Stan, sitting in the dark at the piano, writing another arrangement which might be in front of us the next night. That'll give you some idea of the total effort the man put in. It was a remarkable achievement. He would work sixteen, eighteen hours a day, at least. That's one of the reasons why the man became so successful.”

- Howard Rumsey, the first bassist in the Kenton Orchestra, 1941

“July 9,1943 

Dear Ken:

I know you are anxious to hear about the arrangements you sent, so here goes. We have rehearsed two...I HAVE FAITH and NOW WE KNOW. I want to sincerely tell you that I was stunned with the outcome. I liked them both very much. I changed two or three little voicings in the arrangements, but outside of that touched nothing. You actually have me enthused about the possibility of getting more from you.

I am going to return your score of I HAVE FAITH and put circles around the parts that I thought were exceptional. The arrangement will be broadcast this coming Wednesday over CBS on a show that comes out of here at 9:30 PMl. Try to listen in. If you want, I will have airchecks made of these tunes and have them sent to you so you may hear them played. We haven't been able to rehearse SUNDAY, MONDAY OR ALWAYS yet because of lack of time, but will get at it light away and I will let you know how it turns out. We never came to any agreement as to how much you were to receive for each score, so until then I will send you money on account until we come to some understanding.

It is hard to believe that you have improved like you have in the past year. I am taking the liberty of enclosing some tunes I would like very much to have. If it is alright with you, I prefer to stay on these ballads for the present...of course, Ken, I would be glad to get as many arrangements from you as possible, but will be thrilled if I only get one each week. You have probably heard about us getting the Hope show this tall and about signing for a picture at Paramount. Things are looking better than they have for some time.

As ever, 

Stan.”

- As quoted in Steven Harris, The Kenton Kronicles [2000]

Kenton 70's music had something in common with the bands of other eras in that a select number of arrangers played a key role in shaping the orchestra's identity. Pete Rugolo, Bill Russo, Gerry Mulligan, Bill Holman, Lennie Niehaus, Johnny Richards, Joe Coccia, Dee Barton and many other “pencil pushers” [Gene Lees’ term] gave the band its signature sound as derived from the music they wrote for it from 1941 - 1969.

Ken Hanna, Willie Maiden and Hank Levy continued this tradition as the three principal arrangers for the band during the decade of the 1970s. Fortunately, they participated in interviews in which they shared their experiences about Stan and what it was like to write for the band.

The following interview with Ken Hanna appears in 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.

And while the focus of these look-backs is what was happening with Stan’s music in the 1970s, as you’ll see as you read the following interview, the relationships between Stan, Ken Hanna and Hank Levy reached all the way back to the 1940s formative years of the band.

“HANNA: When Stan formed the Neophonic Orchestra [circa 1965-1968], I called him and asked him if I could write something for it. I wrote Tiare. I thought that would be my swan song, the last thing I would ever write. But a couple of years later, something happened that led me back to Stan.

Lillian Arganian: What was that?

HANNA: I was shipwrecked in Mexico for a year. During that time, Stan and some other people sent me money to keep me afloat, literally. The boat and me.

L.A.: You're talking about literally shipwrecked or is this just a colorful way of speaking?

HANNA: Not at all. I was run aground in Mexico. Stan's A & R man, Lee Gillette, heard about it, and stopped in to visit me down there. He told Stan and they took up a little pool and sent me money. When I got back I went in to see Stan. He was putting a band together again and starting Creative World, making the break from Capitol. He said, "Why don't you go ahead and write something? Write Tiare.' You did for the Neophonic." I couldn't figure out what a tune like this would be doing on a dance album or in a dance band, but I wrote it. I knew what he was doing—he was just trying to get me off my butt. Then one day, I was clerking in a music store, just to keep the wolf away from the door, when I got a phone call from some guy in Cleveland. "Stan wants you to write for us." I was in Los Angeles, still living on a boat — not the one that got wrecked, but another one. Got a plane ticket, took off, joined Stan in Syracuse and stayed on the bus for two years.

L.A.: You had already written "Tiare" for the Neophonic Orchestra. What did he mean, write it again?

HANNA: Score it down for the dance orchestra.

L.A.: Was this the late sixties? 

HANNA: No, early seventies. 

L.A.:  Besides "Tiare," what did you write about that time? 

HANNA: "Bon Homme Richard." That was for Dick Shearer. All within a year or two of each other I wrote "Lonely Windrose," "Fragments of a Portrait," "Beeline   East," and  "Theme for Autumn." "Tiare" was actually first written in 1948.

L.A.: All of your compositions seem to have change built right into them — I think that's why Stan must have liked your style so much. They start off in a certain way and then there are all these different kinds of progressions-changes of tonality, rhythmic changes. They add to the color of the Stan Kenton sound.

HANNA: This was what he liked so much in the later years, the idea of making almost every tune a concert piece.

L.A.: They sound like concert pieces. 

HANNA: Sure. So that, if you didn't have something, or at least try to get something unique and unusual and different, in each arrangement, I don't think he was ever completely satisfied.

L.A.: Some composers cook with their material for years, and  some others seem to get it all in a flash. In your own case, how long would, say, something like "Fragments of a Portrait" have been cooking in your head before they played it?

HANNA: In advance? Not at all.

L.A.: You got right down and . . .

HANNA: Just sat down at the piano and, in the course of doodling around, just working on melody lines, why, I came up with that, and then gradually it evolved into a full lead sheet. And then from there on I made the arrangement.

L.A.: How long does it take to make the arrangement?

HANNA: That depends. If it goes really well you can do something maybe in three days. Somebody else can do it in six hours.

L.A.: When did you first start writing?

HANNA: I started copying records when I was about sixteen.

L.A.: Did you always want to be a musician?

HANNA: No. I wanted to be a baseball player.

L.A.: Until you were sixteen?

HANNA: Even after. In fact, I became captain of the Kenton softball team.

L.A.: You did! (Laughs.) There must have been a dividing point where you said well one of these has to be my career, and you chose music. 

HANNA: Well—it seems as though I was always winding up in music one way or another. Somebody would call or I would stumble into something that led to music. It was in and out. A lot of it depended on finances. 

L.A.: You got involved in it by listening to records and copying down what you heard, making arrangements, and you found that you enjoyed that? HANNA: Um-hm.

L.A.: How did you evolve into the kind of composer you are now, with all that imagination and invention and creativity?

HANNA: You don't start out with that. You get there by listening to all types of music, and by practicing, analysis, and reproduction. A lot of it is just plain old copy-work.

L.A.: Are there people you particularly admired in composing that you perhaps wanted to emulate, or that influenced you in some way?

HANNA: Certain classical writers I've always liked. The Romantics. People like Debussy, Ravel, Ibert. Stravinsky.

And every dance band that ever came along, when I was studying music and getting started. So I was soaking it up, even though I didn't know it. 

L.A.: Do you recall when you began to feel the urge or pull toward changing around the tonalities and the time structure in your compositions? I'm thinking of a work like "Beeline East," where, instead of playing the exact same thing all the way through for three minutes, it comes to a point where it slows down: "Ba-ba-BA-Bah!" and then you modulate it to a different tonality and pick up the tempo again.

HANNA: Kenton wanted every tune to be concert-length, so we'd be playing as a five- or six-, seven-minute number what other dance bands would be playing as a three-minute arrangement. Hank Levy's things run nine minutes. 

L.A.: So this was because he wanted pieces that were more concertized? HANNA: He wanted spark, he wanted the whole works. On every arrangement. If it wasn't strong, it couldn't get played.

L.A.: Do you have a favorite chord structure or arrangement that you use to experiment? 

HANNA: No. There are patterns that you get into. You don't mean to; you don't want to. But you get used to doing the same thing and pretty soon you say hey — Did I write that? And you go look up and see what you did two or three years ago, and your tune might be pretty close to the same thing. You might have written it twice, and didn't know it. 

L.A.: What would be a typical pattern for you? You do a lot of different things. 

HANNA: My patterns, my devices - like any arranger's — are always pretty much the same. I like to write for trombone solo, for example. Maybe because I played trombone originally, before switching to trumpet. 

L.A.: Dick Shearer and Mike Suter were kidding about you. They were saying how difficult it is for a trombone player to play whole notes because they run out of oxygen, and pretty soon the band is here and they're in Hawaii. And one of them said "Ken Hanna lives!" They found your music beautiful, but somewhat challenging to play because of the wind problem. 

HANNA: Good.

L.A.: (Laughs.) You don't care about that, do you. "Play it anyway, buddy." HANNA: Stan never cared about it. He said, "Play it."

LA.: They're not the only ones who said that.

HANNA: Trumpet players—they hated me.

L.A.: Why did they hate you? 

HANNA: Too many notes, too high, too long. 

L.A.: Too high?

HANNA: Um-hm. That was their complaint. But somebody else's come along and give them the same thing, and they'd say, "Hey, Great." But remember, I wrote a lot of ballad things. And I would be thinking one tempo, which would be a reasonably playable tempo, and Stan would then slow it down to a crawl.

L.A.: (Laughs.)

HANNA: That means the notes get longer. Oh yeah.

L.A.:  Well  you're  not  to  blame. (Laughs.)  Kenton has said that you wrote most of the romantic ballads.

HANNA: Ya, well he liked to tag people with different titles, you know, so it was a good way for him to present me. On the ballad side.

L.A.: But ballads aren't the only thing you did.

HANNA: I guess I probably lean that way more than any other.

L.A.: "Bogota," I'm thinking of. On the London record.

HANNA: Most of what we recorded over in London that was mine had to be

thrown out, because the recording quality was so poor. I've written lots of

things that were never recorded, a lot of things that were never played. Stan was very unusual in that we always knew whether or not our arrangements were going to get played.

L.A.: How did you know that? 

HANNA: At rehearsals Stan would let the arrangers and composers rehearse their own works. You could tell after the first hour. You just had a way of sensing it, that he liked it or he didn't like it. In the earlier days, in the forties, we would rehearse and rehearse and tunes would get played until they worked in. You had to take time to work tunes in. It takes time for an arrangement to jell. We worked our tails off to make sure that the arrangements were right, and a lot of them he really rammed home. In the later days it never happened that way. It was a weird change to see. 'Cause I was there both times.

L.A.: In the later days he wouldn't give it

time to jell?

HANNA: I remember one guy wrote six or eight arrangements, originals, for a record date. Stan rehearsed them for two days, picked them all up, and threw them into the trash basket. With a few choice words.

L.A.: You first met Stan, then, in the forties?

HANNA: I guess the first time I really became aware of Stan Kenton would be in 1941, when we listened to air checks coming from Balboa. 

L.A.: What is an aircheck? 

HANNA: That was the popular name used for half-hour and hour segments of the band playing from some ballroom, sometimes on transcription, sometimes direct, that were broadcast on the air, sometimes nationally. Every band had a special night.

L.A.: The exposure for the Stan Kenton band must have been terrific. I understand people would stay tuned to their radios for news of the war, and when the East Coast stations went off the air the Pacific Coast stations came in. 

HANNA: He had a clear field. Stan came to my home town, Baltimore, in 1942, for a night club date. I had a band of my own then, and one of my musicians wanted to try out with Stan. He didn't make it, but he told me that Stan was looking for a writer. That's where my first love was. Always has been. So I went to the club and introduced myself to Stan. He suggested that I try doing a couple of sample arrangements and bring them to a rehearsal. This was a very unusual thing because I'd been turned down by everybody, practically.

L.A.: I can't believe it. 

HANNA: Harry James . . . 

L.A.: I can't believe it. 

HANNA: Sammy Kaye . . .

L.A.: Why would they turn you down? 

HANNA: In those days they didn't give you much of an opportunity to get your foot in the door.

L.A.: Why didn't they like your kind of music? I think it's fabulous. 

HANNA: They'd never heard it. 

L.A.:   They hadn't heard it, but they wouldn't give you a chance anyway? HANNA: No. No, they had their own writers, their own pet way of going, and you just, it was very difficult to enter into the writing end at all. In those days I would have written anything, for free, just to hear it played. So Stan was good enough to say, "Write something and let me hear it and bring it into our rehearsal."

L.A.: Was he merely looking for something new, or did he specifically need a writer at the time?

HANNA: He needed a writer. His other writers were back on the Coast, and he was doing his own writing. He wasn't really satisfied with the people who had been doing his writing for him. It didn't fit the sound that he wanted.

L.A.: The strain that you're talking about, that he was looking for, I can hear in your music. How is it that what you write sounds like what Stan wants to

hear? Were you already writing in what we might call a Stan Kenton style, which he recognized and loved, or did you join the band first and then figure out what he wanted?

HANNA: I had an advantage of sorts. I did an awful lot of copying records in

the early days of my writing. I would take these arrangements off the record

to use in my own band.

L.A.: How do you do that?

HANNA: You sit down, with a lot of patience . . .

L.A.: You can hear all that?

HANNA: Yes.

L.A.: You can hear what everybody's doing on a record?

HANNA: You have to go slowly. You work with a piano and make the chords and the melody structure and so forth. So having done that often enough I could duplicate the sounds of Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Stan Kenton—you name it, I could come pretty close to the style that they had. And so in that way I was able to maybe jump in there and get his sound. L.A.: Was the music you were writing for your own band substantially different from what you did for Stan? 

HANNA: I was writing pretty much in the style of what you could say was standard dance bands in those days. Once in a while I took a crack at trying to do an original tune. It was a long time before I had the courage to really get in and write any of my own material. 

L.A.: That started when you joined Stan's band?

HANNA: A little bit prior, but mostly with Stan and then on. 

L.A.:  What  were  those first  two arrangements you did for him? 

HANNA: I don't remember exactly. They were standards, one ballad and one rhythm tune. They had the Kenton sound because I used that same type of voicing, particularly in the saxes. He seemed  to be very pleased with the results, and that led to our keeping in contact with each other. By mail, usually, or phone. As long as he was on the East Coast, he would send me tunes, and I would arrange them, whether for the

vocalists or for the band, and send them back to him.

L.A.: In other words, you did not join Stan's band per se at that time? HANNA: No. I was going to, but all of a sudden Uncle Sam was right behind me. So I enlisted in the Navy, and that postponed my joining the band for three and a half years. Stan and I had an agreement all during the war years that I would keep writing for him and send him the tunes. I was stationed in Baltimore, so that was fortunate. I had a piano, and one solid location where I could do all the work. So we kept in touch with each other. And I would go out and catch the band whenever they were close to Baltimore.

L.A.: When you joined, did you play in the band too, as well as write? HANNA: Oh yes. In 1946 1 joined on trumpet. I stayed for two years, then went back to Baltimore and taught for two years at the GI School of Music. L.A.: What did you teach? 

HANNA: A little bit of everything. Whatever somebody else didn't want to do, I did. I had orchestras to conduct, such as state bands, and taught arranging, composing, a little bit of theory

L.A.: What do you teach, when you teach arranging?

HANNA: Everyone's talent and ability and understanding is at a different level. First thing you start out with is a grounding in theory. And build up from there to the use of chords and melodic lines and an understanding of transposition. During this time Stan had his Innovations Orchestra on the road, and when he passed through Baltimore he said "Why don't you come out to the Coast? I'm gonna put the dance band back together and you can start writing again." So I packed up, bag and baggage, and brought the family out here. Since then it's been my home. In 1951 I went back to work for Stan for not quite a year, while he was putting the dance band together. But he had quite a few people writing for him then, Shorty Rogers and others, and he had as much music as he could use at that time. So in order to keep the family together I became a salesman, a purchasing agent, I did a little bit of everything. A few years later some friends of mine talked me into putting a band together out here. We spent a couple of years rehearsing it and cut a couple of recordings with it. I wrote "Bogota" for that band. We played a few dates locally, up in L. A. 

L.A.: Then what happened to it?

HANNA: Money. Money happened to it. I got out of that and didn't do any more writing until the Neophonic. That's when I went back and called Stan and asked if I could write something for him.

L.A.: And that was "Tiare." 

HANNA: That was "Tiare." 

L.A.: What are some of the things you wrote for Stan in the earlier period? HANNA: I remember vividly, the first original I did for Stan was about 1948, and that was "Somnambulism." 

L.A.: The Progressive Jazz era. That's great.

HANNA: We were doing concert pieces then. He was getting into it in a big way. Where we all wore the ascots. I did quite a few arrangements backing up June Christy, and, in the early days, Anita O’Day and Red Dorris. 

L.A.: Are you still writing? 

HANNA: Yes, I'm free-lancing and doing a little bit of teaching. Every once in a while I'll do a semester up here at San Diego State.

L.A.: Whom are you free-lancing for? 

HANNA:  Anybody that  happens to need some music at the time. Groups, singers, big dance bands. 

L.A.: Why don't you do something on your own, form another orchestra or something? You're a wonderful composer. Your music should get more of a hearing.

HANNA: It might surprise you to know that I tried desperately about 1971 or '72 to get my own band together. Another one. I was hoping to go out and play a lot of the music that Kenton never played, actually. 

L.A.: That you wrote that . . .

HANNA: That I wrote, that other people wrote. 'Cause we had tons of music coming into that band that was never heard. Literally. 

L.A.: I've often wondered about that. With so many full-time arrangers and composers on the Kenton band at any given time, and so few pieces ever getting on record, one has to wonder what became of all the rest of the music that was written. Where is it, what happened to it. It'll never be heard, and that's terrible.

HANNA: Well I was very frustrated about the whole thing because doing the clinics I knew we had a choice of an awfully good bunch of good musicians. Excellent musicians. 

L.A.: You mean students? 

HANNA: Students. College, university people. They knew what they were doing. In fact a lot of them later on came to play with the Kenton band. Out of those clinics. And I wanted to put together a band  composed of those

people. I had a list seven miles long of people who wanted to get into it. I

wanted to put a band out on the road. But Stan blocked me every step of the way.

L.A.: Why is that?

HANNA: Expense.  I'm pretty sure, primarily expense.

L.A.: You mean you wanted to put it together for yourself or for him?

HANNA: For myself.

L.A.: But he was opposed to the idea because he thought you'd go under?

HANNA: Yes, I think that was the basic reason.  He probably felt he couldn't help me financially, and where that kind of money would come from was anybody's guess, because by that time it was beginning to get a little bit expensive to take a band out on the road. 

L.A.: What are some of your compositions that are not on recordings? HANNA:  "Sensitive"  has  been recorded, I'm pretty sure, but I don't think it's been released. "Turido" I don't think has been released. "No Media Noche.""Montiya.""Morea." 

.A.: What kind of composition is "Morea"?

HANNA: Supposedly representative of the South Seas.

L.A.: Is it in classical style like your other works?

HANNA: It's got a little bit of classical form to it, but written for a dance band. "Westwind'' is a ballad I wrote that ties in with "Morea." It's part of a suite I tried to do, dealing with the South Pacific. "Sensitive" is a theme for trombone and piano, with the full band, "Querida." "Serapo." "Lazy Tiger." And I've done arrangements for "You Go To My Head," "This Is All I Ask," "You Must Believe," "Snowfall," "Wave," "The Song Is You," "Send in the Clowns" — not the recorded one, that's Dave Barduhn's — "Autumn in New York," and "Summer Knows."

L.A.: That's a pretty wild arrangement you did of "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life" that opens the London album. Just sensational. I guess that's on the Brigham Young album too, isn't it.

HANNA: Yes. Macumba Suite is also on Brigham Young. 

L.A.: Hank Levy's compositions are on some of the same albums as yours. You and he were good friends, weren't you? 

HANNA: You better bet your boots. He played in my band the first job he ever got, back in Baltimore.

L.A.: How did you meet him? 

HANNA: We needed a saxophone player. He was the only one in town that had a baritone. So I hired him. We were always close from then on. Later, when I was stationed in Baltimore, I recruited him for the Navy.

L.A.: Is that doing him a favor? (Laughs.)

HANNA: (Laughs.) He came into the Navy, and I happened to be there. 

L.A.: Did you influence each other? 

HANNA: No. I don't think I had an influence on him. Although he played in my orchestra, I don't recall that he ever wrote anything for me at the time. It wasn't until he got into the Navy that he started writing. We were both interested in the same type of music. He was playing Kenton arrangements even in my band. I was out here on the Coast writing for Stan when he got out of the service, and I got him a job playing with Stan. He took Bob Gioga's place. Stayed for a few months, then left for family reasons. During that time he started writing for Kenton a little bit. Then later he got to writing for other orchestras back in Baltimore, and got into his business of school stage bands, writing for them.

L.A.: He's very important in the clinics, isn't he? Really believed in them. HANNA:  He's tremendous  with  the students. He's fabulous. 

L.A.: You must have been a popular favorite when you went up to his college, Towson State, because of your friendship with him.

HANNA: Well no, he had so much going on there, and the Kenton band was so overwhelming to the students. Everybody got along with everybody; it wasn't a question of who had any more influence.

L.A.: It was really exciting to the students? It wasn't just a week away from home?

HANNA: They'd go out of their minds working. Never stopped from morning 'til night. They had to be recommended by their teachers to get there in the first place. We would mail out flyers to let them know about it at the different schools in each area. 

L.A.: Most of them knew about the Stan Kenton Orchestra and what they would be getting into, and that was why they came?

HANNA: Oh absolutely. 

L.A.: Would you ever get feedback as to how these clinics might have affected their lives?

HANNA: I've had some very good people who are turning out very good

arrangements whom I hope we might have helped in some way. But you can only do so much in a week. The arranging thing is tricky; it's not like, say, a trumpet section where if a guy has problems you can straighten him out pretty fast. Incidentally, the clinics were very well supervised. The big ones, like at Drury, Towson State and Redlands, would have gone on for years longer if Stan had been able to continue. 

L.A.: Did Stan have a favorite among your compositions?

HANNA: If he did it would have to be between "Tiare" and "Bogota." 

L.A.: When you rejoined him in the seventies, how long did you stay? HANNA: Almost until his death. Stan and 1 have always been very close. Twice when he was sick I went out and fronted the band. We were out there sometimes for about three months. It was a matter of just getting on and off the bus and doing the date where we were and trying to explain to all the promoters where Stan wasn't. 'Cause we didn't let anybody know. The band would have been down the drain. Promoters would have cancelled like flies. So we kept it going during those periods of his illness. Actually, for quite a while, maybe a year, the band wasn't really in existence. He was that ill. He kept going as long as he could, and then he just had to call it quits.

L.A.: What most impressed you about him? What do you feel was his biggest contribution to music? 

HANNA: (Pauses.) You know you're asking for an awful lot there. I can't wrap up anything like that. One thing that was so fantastic about him throughout most of his years was his memory.

L.A.: For people?

HANNA: For people, for anything. Now that doesn't sound like it fits into a music situation. But I'll give you ten to one that if Stan hadn't had that fantastic memory, he might have been long forgotten. He made more friends by having such a fantastic memory. I met him, spoke to him for about fifteen minutes and came back three days later — he remembered my name. First name and last name. That's the thing that struck you. He would go back, year after year, to different places, where he'd played before, and he'd talk to a guy and say "Hi, Jack, how are you?" It would be Jack. Another thing was his ability to dramatize the music. Six-foot-four, arms like an eagle's wings — watching him conduct, he'd be all over the place.

That was very dramatic. And that helped put the music across. 

L.A.: Brought out some more of the excitement that was already there. HANNA: Ya. People'd look at that and they'd think, Wow,

L.A.: What about his impact on the American musical scene? 

HANNA: I've heard other people say, and I agree with it, a lot of the voicings that they use now in television and movies, radio and bands, other bands, those voicings were not being used at all, the sound and the scope of the sound, until he started doing it. For so many years, the saxes in every dance band in the country played 1-2-3-4, and if you had a fifth, he doubled the lead. Wrote the score right down the chord. Always. Never any change. You could see a little of that branching out in the Miller sax section, where the saxes would open every once in a while. But Stan opened 'em up fast, and big. He opened up the brass. It couldn't get too big for him. And dimension. Every time he'd add a new man he was adding another dimension to it.

L.A.: That's adding an interval to the harmonic structure? 

HANNA: Um-hm. Um-hm. Um-hm. 

L.A.: Like a seventh or a ninth or a tenth? Something dissonant.

HANNA: It's not his alone — those devices have been used throughout the years by some of the classical writers. I don't know how far back we can go, but you'll hear it in recent classical writers. He got more out of a dance band than had been tried. He heard certain sounds. When I first joined the band, we all used vibrato. When I was last with the band, nobody used vibrato. He wanted that cold, icy feel of.... He was fishing a lot. Trying to find the right sound for his sax section. He never did find it. Probably the guy who came closest was Lennie Niehaus. And the ones he did himself. But at least we got into voicings in the saxes that were different from what other bands were using. 

L.A.: You've obviously made sacrifices yourself to stay with music, just as Stan did. So you have something in common with him. Given the choice, he would get experimental, and it seems to me that there's some of that in you too. 

HANNA: Sure there is. Anybody who writes music, I'm sure, feels a certain amount of satisfaction from hearing his own work. You get up there in front of a band and rehearse your own music — it never sounds exactly like you expected it to. That's the biggest thrill of all.”