Frank Griffith Interview with Gordon Jack

                                                      

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights 

reserved.

Gordon Jack is a frequent contributor to the Jazz Journal and a very generous friend in allowing JazzProfiles to re-publish his perceptive and well-researched writings on various topics about Jazz and its makers.

Gordon is the author of Fifties Jazz Talk An Oral Retrospective and he also developed the Gerry Mulligan discography in Raymond Horricks’ book Gerry Mulligan’s Ark.

The following article was published in the June 2010 edition of Jazz Journal. 

For more information and subscriptions please visit www.jazzjournal.co.uk

© -Gordon Jack/JazzJournal, copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with the author’s permission.

“Prior to arriving in London in 1996 where he is Music Lecturer and Director of Performance at Brunel University, Frank Griffith had spent fifteen years working and studying in New York City. Ron Carter, Jon Hendricks, Mel Lewis, Lionel Hampton, Jack McDuff and Mel Torme’ were just a few of the leaders he performed with there at that time. He studied with Manny Albam, Bob Brookmeyer and Bob Mintzer and recorded with Billy Drummond, Tom Harrell, John Pizzarelli and Chris Rogers. While he was preparing for an engagement at London’s Pizza On The Park with his nonet we met to discuss his career.

“I was born in Eugene, Oregon in 1959 and one of our claims to fame is the ‘Red Nichols Archive’ which is held in the University of Oregon there. When I was six I started on clarinet and played a lot with my mother who was a fine pianist, but around fourteen or so I decided to concentrate on the saxophone because I didn’t want to get stuck with all the girls playing clarinet in the school marching band.

“A couple of years later I was in the high-school stage band and we were getting into the newer sounds, playing originals by Freddie Hubbard and Herbie Hancock – although we still did numbers like In The Mood. Miles, Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane became very important about then and I listened to ‘Birth Of The Cool’ a lot because it had ‘early’ Miles with an ensemble. The solos were pretty short so he wasn’t so exposed as he was with Bird where he was really in the hot-seat. I was beginning to realize too what great writers Gil Evans and Mulligan were. I liked Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster and some post-bop ‘fifties’ people like Zoot Sims and Stan Getz. A little later I discovered Joe Henderson and Sonny Rollins who were very innovative - their music had a bit more fire with a distinct ‘edge’. Of course I listened to Benny Goodman and I loved his After You’ve Gone recording with Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton. It’s in Ab which is very difficult on the clarinet.” For lesser mortals improvising in four flats is very difficult on any instrument. 

“In 1980 I moved to the east coast and ended up studying at the City College of New York. I wasn’t supposed to take any gigs at first because the union had a rule that you had to live in the city for six months before you could work as a musician. Eventually I joined Larry Elgart’s band which was good experience although it paid very little. He played alto but he didn’t improvise a note so if the chart called for an alto solo he asked me to play it.” The band usually played society functions in a style that has sometimes been dismissed as the ‘Business-man’s Bounce’. There is a lovely story in Bill Crow’s book ‘Jazz Anecdotes’ concerning drummer Karl Kiffe. Trying to get Karl to adapt to the band’s approach Elgart told him, ‘When the band starts to swing I want you to play more on the ride cymbal.’ Karl innocently replied, ‘When the band starts to swing, will you please raise your hand. “In the mid eighties there was a lot of work in Manhattan and by then I knew a lot of songs so I got called for club dates, parties, functions and weddings.  I also did some TV work playing on a very popular day-time ‘Soap’ called ‘All My Children’ for ABC thanks to a recommendation from Dick Lieb.” Lieb had played trombone with Gil Evans, Woody Herman and Kai Winding.

“When I was at City College I met Ron Carter who was a professor there. After I finished my course he hired me to arrange for some of his different bands one of which was an all-string nonet – four cellos, piccolo bass and a rhythm section which was a challenge. He was very like Bob Brookmeyer who I studied with a few years later. If he was disenchanted, he’d sure let you know – he didn’t mince words. We played together sometimes at student concerts and he used to bring in major league drummers like Lewis Nash, Joe Chambers and Charli Persip and playing with those guys was the best musical education you could get.

“John Lewis was teaching a jazz history course at the college on a part-time basis and he was a real intellectual and a classicist as you know. His classes didn’t get any more modern than Basie from the ‘Lester’ era. He really loved that band and he would go through the entire personnel of all the 1937 recordings for instance down to who was on third trumpet. He was also a big fan of blues pianists like Jimmy Yancey, Albert Ammons, Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith and James P. Johnson. Dick Katz was a good friend of his and he told me that he always played their records whenever they had dinner together.  

“I started working with Jack McDuff when I finished college in 1984 and he was a pretty tough and unpredictable character. The group was organ, tenor, guitar and drums and he sometimes carried a singer. He wrote good arrangements but a lot of the stuff was riff-based so it was easy to memorise. Organ groups were very popular back in the sixties when George Benson was with him and Jack had been very big then. By the time I was there he’d been driving all over the States in a van with his organ in the back and he’d had it pretty rough so it wasn’t easy being on the road with him. The money wasn’t too good either - just bare survival wages, not even ‘scale’ because there is no such thing as ‘scale’ on the road. It didn’t matter too much when we were in Harlem because you could get home after the gig but when you’re stuck out in the wilds of Indiana or Ohio and the motel staff throw you out at 9 am even though you haven’t had any sleep – then it’s not so much fun. Jack didn’t care anyway because he slept in the van to save money which was the kind of life he led. It was rough and ready stuff. It taught me a valuable lesson because no matter how tired or hungover you were, those people in Tuscaloosa, Alabama or wherever paid their money at the door and they wanted a show which is what Jack gave them every night – he kept the customers satisfied right until the end.

“1984 was also the year I played lead alto in the Glenn Miller band and a lot of my parts were actually for clarinet. Some of the best arrangements had been written for Buddy DeFranco when he was leading the band – charts by Bill Finegan, Dave Grusin, Chico O’Farrill and George Williams and we all looked forward to playing them.” DeFranco ran the band from 1966 to 1974. “We didn’t have to play the original solos note-for-note from the early repertoire like the usual imitation Miller bands did - guys could express themselves. We played a lot of concert venues all over the country as well as the famous Sunnybrook Ballroom in Pottstown, Pennsylvania where all the great bands played.” The huge Sunnybrook Ballroom was popular with band-leaders because they got a percentage of the door. Basie, Duke, Goodman, Herman, Thornhill, Raeburn, the Dorsey brothers and many others had appeared there regularly but the attendance record was set by Glenn Miller’s band in February 1942. 7,300 dancers packed into the ballroom for the band’s final engagement before the leader disbanded to join the US Army Air Force.

“In 1986 I enrolled at the Manhattan School of Music where I studied for my Masters Degree with Bob Mintzer who was a wonderful teacher. These were one-on-one lessons and I was lucky to get him. He was very busy with recording sessions and he was doing a Broadway show at the time which is a strange gig for someone like Bob. It was one of those dreadful Andrew Lloyd Webber things which was pretty big at the time – ‘Starlight Express’. He demanded a lot and he could be critical but in a healthy way. He was just a really good guy and we still keep in touch. 

“I also studied with Danny Bank for about a year. He had a huge sound on that old Conn baritone but he also played great clarinet, alto and flute. He’d had polio as a kid which made it difficult for him to get around so he usually had one of his students help him. Because of his problem, if all the guys in the band were standing on the job, Danny would have to sit.” Bruce Talbot, an old playing colleague of mine once asked him why he didn’t seem to take any solos. Danny told him that it was because everyone else could get to the mike far quicker than he could. Danny Bank has played with just about everyone from Charlie Parker to the Four Lads. Tom Lord lists 412 jazz sessions and he has probably been on just as many pop record dates.

“Bob Brookmeyer along with Manny Albam ran a course for writers in New York which was sponsored by B.M.I. Publishing from 1988 to 1990. He was direct and provocative as a teacher and not always terribly worried about people’s feelings. He could be brutally honest but despite everything the students idolised him and still do. He wanted us to get away from conventional writing and explore new forms and shapes – to re-invent ourselves basically. Sometimes on Sundays a few of us would visit his house in Goshen, a small village in Orange County which is in upstate New York. He wasn’t paid for this but he gave his time freely because he wanted to share the gospel of writing. He’s really into modern classical composers and I remember once when we were having dinner there he put some Milton Babbitt on the stereo because he was very keen for us to understand it.  He kept saying, ‘Isn’t that wild!’ but I have to admit that it wasn’t really my cup of tea and neither was Ligeti, another of his favourite composers. Jazz-wise too he has open ears because he likes weird and wonderful stuff. He once went to see Julian Hemphill’s big band to check it out. He said, ‘They’re up to something and I can appreciate what they’re doing because they’re not just trying to recreate Fletcher Henderson or Thad Jones. The  problem with their music is that it’s too much in your face at all times. It never relaxes. There’s no release, just tension that’s all too predictable.’ 

“Manny Albam was a bit more of a ‘nuts and bolts’ man but they worked really well together. He was a very skilled writer and great at talking about orchestration but he wasn’t innovative in the way Bob is. They were very good friends and when Brookmeyer was living in Holland he had Manny send him videos of all the New York Giants games because Bob is a big football fan.

“Around 1988 I played a few times with Mel Lewis at the Village Vanguard although I wasn’t a regular. We used to finish up with one of Thad’s great war-horses – Little Pixie – and I was always given a chance to solo on it which was good for me. I played a lot of small group gigs with Mel, sometimes for dancing because he loved playing for dancers. One of them was a four-hour river-boat trip on Long Island Sound between Connecticut and New York. Mel wasn’t driving at the time so he arrived with his floor tom-tom which doubled as a bass drum, one cymbal, a hi-hat and snare which were all carried on his back.” Such a minimal kit is not that unusual. Back in 1952 Chico Hamilton used a floor tom turned on its side with a pedal attachment because Gerry Mulligan did not want him to use a bass drum.

“I started writing for Lionel Hampton in 1988 and he was one of the richest jazz musicians ever – very successful owning a lot of property. He was also notorious for under-paying while over-earning. He had a New Year’s Eve gig at the Hotel Meridian in Paris and he wanted me to write a medley of French songs. Comme Ci, Comme Ca then C’est Si Bon leading into a flag-waver on Cole Porter’s I Love Paris which isn’t French at all but it’s what Lionel wanted. He had an evil manager at the time who was under-paying the band which led to all kinds of hassles with the union. I did about two years of writing and some playing for Hampton but whenever I gave him a bill for my charts he had the manager do the dirty work when it came time for me to collect my fee. He never wanted to pay the going rate which always led to a scene but I wasn’t in a position to argue because the band already had my music. I had to take it on the chin but it was great working with Hampton who was a legend.” In 1988 the August 15th. issue of Jet Magazine reported that all 17 members of the band were prepared to strike if Hampton refused to pay the fee negotiated by Local 802 for a tour of Japan. The magazine does not say how the problem was resolved after the leader threatened to disband and reform with just a trio or quartet. 

“As you know Buddy Rich died in 1987 but a few years later I played in some concerts in Queens and Brooklyn billed as “The Buddy Rich Band Featuring Mel Torme’”. The show was built around Mel rather than the band which is what you’d expect because he was such a superb performer - he could do everything which was the problem of course. He had perfect pitch, wrote great arrangements and he was a wonderful drummer but all that talent came with a colossal ego because he was completely focused on himself. 

“One of my last recordings before I left New York was with Tom Harrell in 1990 and it’s thanks to Alastair Robertson that it was eventually released on Hep Jazz. Tom is a schizophrenic and he’s been on heavy medication for decades. I wanted him on the date so I contacted him through his girl-friend who negotiated for him. He doesn’t really interact socially – he’s much happier on his own but he can be very eloquent and articulate when he’s relaxed. I sent him some music and then went to his house in Upper Manhattan so the two of us could rehearse for about half an hour. He had just done a week’s jazz gig in Toronto so he was in good nick chops-wise and the album came out very well.

“I left the States in 1996 because I wanted to try something different and London seemed like a good option. I was married to an English girl and I found a lot of opportunities here that I didn’t have in New York. Teaching at Brunel University allowed me to become a bandleader which is expensive and I found the life-style suited me better. London and New York are built on very strong foundations culturally unlike Los Angeles for instance which is a city built on freeways. There’s a lot of musicians in both cities keen to make music – I can call guys who will rehearse and play for very little money and they come out in droves.

“I formed my nonet in 1997 and a couple of years later we performed some of the ‘Birth Of The Cool’ material at the Kingston Jazz Festival. We did Gil Evans’s Moondreams, and Gerry Mulligan’s Rocker and Venus De Milo. It was Franca Mulligan who gave us Gerry’s charts which reflect so much maturity for someone who was only 21 at the time. He should be ‘lionized’ for his work with Miles and his love of melodies really comes across when you study the orchestrations – those melodies are infectious.” Mulligan’s contribution to the Davis concept was even more important than has sometimes been acknowledged. He arranged seven of the twelve charts recorded by the ensemble. John Carisi, composer of Israel said at the time, ‘Gerry wrote more than anybody’.  

“We have 150 arrangements in the pad and I will continue working with my nonet in 2010 as we have bookings at both the Ealing and Marlborough Jazz Festivals, the Watermill at Dorking and the Pizza On The Park in London. The ‘Pizza’ date will be particularly interesting as we’re doing a ‘Tribute To Mel Torme’ using some of Marty Paich’s arrangements from the famous ‘Shubert Alley’ album and vocalist Iain Mackenzie will be our ‘Mel’. 

“I’ve already mentioned my earliest influences but some of the people I listen to now include Pete Christlieb, Tommy Smith, Julian Arguelles, Tony Coe and Mark Turner who is from the Warne Marsh school. Favourite writers would include Gerald Wilson, Bob Florence, Kenny Wheeler, Maria Schneider and Bob Brookmeyer who turns out gems with every album. Eddie Daniels too has always been very important for me as the modern, post-bop voice on clarinet. It was a great thrill when he performed my chart on Shine with the Wayne State University Big Band at the 2009 Detroit Jazz Festival which celebrated the centenary of Benny Goodman’s birth.””

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

As leader

Frank Griffith Sextet (With Tom Harrell). The Suspect (Hep CD 2077).

Frank Griffith Nonet. Live Ealing Jazz Festival (Hep CD 2081).

Frank Griffith Nonet. The Coventry Suite (33 Jazz 112 CD). 

As sideman

Joe Derise Tentet. Mad About You (Audiophile AP-215).

John Pizzarelli. All Of Me (Novus 63129-2 CD).

John Pizzarelli. Naturally (Novus 63151-2 CD).

Joe Temperley. Easy To Remember. (Hep CD 2083 CD).

Jimmy Deuchar. The Anglo/American/Scottish Connection. (Hep CD 2007).

Pete Cater Big Band. The Right Time. (Vocalion CDSA 6815).