Stan Kenton: The Early Years, 1941-1947 by Edward F. Gabel - Part 1

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

“This is the story of the personal relationship between Stan Kenton and his friend Ed Gabel during the first years of the first Kenton orchestra -1941 through 1947.

It is an adventure story about a young man who shared the great bandleader's professional and personal life. It depicts the hectic world of life on the road with a traveling orchestra.

Ed Gabel shares an intimate behind the scenes view of Stan Kenton the man, as well as Stan Kenton the bandleader. He also reveals how Anita O'Day came to join the band and how June Christy acquired her stage name.

We also get a feel for the effects World War II had on the day to day life of the average American.

Gabel's work chronicles those early years. Gabe was there; he knows whereof he speaks and he places those early years in their proper place — the embryonic years! This is a significant personal work and adds greatly to the written history of the prodigious Stanley Newcomb Kenton.”

- Anthony J. Agostinelli, Editor, THE (Kenton) NETWORK Newsletter

Here’s Ed’s Prologue to his fascinating book of remembrances. 

AN ARTIST OF RHYTHM

“Stanley Newcomb Kenton was such a gigantic figure in the world of modern American music that, to attempt to write something that will capture his stature is, at best, to write a less than adequate essay. What does one satisfactorily say about a person who was at once an international public figure, a bandleader, a composer, an arranger, an educator, a father figure to his bandsmen and women, an innovator, a cultivator of creative talent and a mentor to so many young men and women? These were only some of the roles that Stanley played in his musical and professional career.

Wichita, Kansas has the legal right to claim Stanley Newcomb Kenton as a native son. He was born there on the cold morning of December 15, 1911 (not February 19, 1912 as has been widely believed).

The early days of his childhood were not unlike those of any average boy, except that his family moved frequently. By the age of five he'd moved from Kansas to Colorado and then to California.

What time wasn't spent in going to school or helping his father repair automobiles was spent debating with his mother who, inasmuch as she was a piano teacher, tried to convince her son that he should study music. She eventually convinced him that he was meant for music and, after experimenting with various horns and reeds, he finally decided the piano would be his chosen instrument.

By the time Stanley was fourteen the piano had become an integral part of his life. Fourteen is an age that finds most boys worrying about whether or not they'll make the high school baseball team, or if they've enough nerve to ask the girl next door to the dance Saturday night. These things didn't concern Stanley, but something else did. He wondered whether he'd become as talented a pianist as his idol, Earl "Father" Hines.

Music was beginning to dominate his life and he was coming to believe that no matter what happened, music would always be the most important part of his life. He didn't realize it at the time but he was destined to become the foremost leader in the field of modern music.

Stanley graduated from Bell High School in Los Angeles in 1930, during the dark days of the depression. He was an awkward eighteen year old, standing six feet, four inches tall, with long arms, large hands and a rich baritone voice. He would have liked to have gone to a university to study the piano but his family's finances precluded that option.

Instead of going to school, Stanley spent his time working in small neighborhood bands, which were a good proving ground for his music and modern style. During 1933 and '34 he played in beer joints from San Diego to Bakersfield, earning the price of dinner one day and never knowing whether he'd go hungry the next. His financial situation gradually improved in the mid-thirties when motion picture and radio studios provided work. In 1940 he was appointed assistant musical director at Earl Carroll's Theater in Hollywood.

Stan was now becoming more and more aware of the stagnant state of the music business. In 1940 he began to ask himself what he could do about it. He was frustrated by the lack of progress in the development of new musical concepts. The nation had entered a new period of growth and was recovering from the effects of the depression. It seemed to Stan that the time was ripe for experimenting with new musical sounds and theories. Day and night, every spare moment was spent at the piano writing musical arrangements. It was then that he conceived the idea of having his own dance band.

Stan found that hiring musicians was no easy job. In order to portray his musical ideas to the public he needed musicians who understood music in the same way he did. It took weeks of auditioning and of weeding out misfits before he felt he had the nucleus of the band he wanted. But now that he had a band and a book of new arrangements he had no place to play. With an instinctive belief in himself and his band he was able to talk the owner of the Rendezvous Ballroom at Balboa, California into giving the band a job on a trial basis.

The Stan Kenton Orchestra opened on Memorial Day weekend, 1941, and played at Balboa for four months. During that time word spread like wildfire all over southern California about this drastically different style of music. His popularity spread to the east coast through weekend radio broadcasts over the Mutual Network.

There were plenty of disappointments ahead. Not everyone was ready to accept the new Kenton style of music. Some music trade papers and magazine reporters wrote raving reviews; others did not. What really mattered was that music fans enthusiastically began to support the band. A new dance step - the Balboa Shuffle - a tribute to the new band, was born in southern California.

With west coast acceptance assured it was time to venture to the east coast and the Midwest to try and establish a national following. Stan wondered if the rest of the country would accept the band, with its staccato beat of the rhythm section, melodic blend of the saxophones and the soaring brass ensemble sounds.

Struggling with payroll and transportation obstacles made it virtually impossible to continue on, but sheer determination and an iron will kept him from giving up. He continued to fight for his beliefs and gained the respect of the entire music business - even those who disagreed with his musical ideas. This respect filtered down to the general public and gradually more and more people became familiar with the Artistry In Rhythm sound.

As a tribute to Stan and his years of hard work, Look magazine, in January of 1946, predicted that the Kenton organization would be the band of the year, then sat back and watched their prediction come true. The previous year the band had won every popularity poll and had run up high grosses wherever they appeared.

Kenton was a living legend in the music business before the age of forty. Music was his whole life and band members were his family. He had a total commitment to music and had twelve separate orchestras in his lifetime. He created the musical concepts that resulted in the Artistry In Rhythm, Innovations In Modern Music and Progressive Jazz Orchestras.

The fame of the Stan Kenton Orchestra spread throughout the western world in the 1960's and ‘70’s. Stan had now taken his orchestra to the concert stage in the United States and Europe. The band made several trips to Europe where the fans clamored for tickets to sold out concerts. During this phase of modern music, Stan developed his idea of teaching his musical concepts to young college and university music students. Under his direction the orchestra appeared in schools throughout the country and the program became known as the "Stan Kenton Orchestra in Residence." Music lessons were for one and two week periods and were very popular with the students.

Even in the 1970’s Stan still found it hard to lead the band without stumbling over his feet now and then. Over a period of many years he'd fallen off the bandstand too many times to mention; once even breaking a rib and a toe due to his exuberant conducting.

Stan had the greatest personality of anyone in the music business and a sense of showmanship that had no equal. He had a way of making a perfect stranger feel immediately comfortable while talking to him. And after talking to him, whether one agreed or disagreed, there's one point everyone did agree on -that the originator of "Artistry In Rhythm" was truly an artist.

Superlatives abound and the list could go on and on.   Stanley was at home on the road, playing the musical venues of the world, performing his special brand of music. That music captured the minds, hearts and bodies of his followers and blew away his detractors with its sound and fury. The blare of the trumpets, the majesty of the trombones, the middle-horned sweetness of the mellophoniums, the husky, reedy sound of the saxes, the drive of the rhythm section, enhanced by "latinesque" pulsations, all blended into a whole that, within each of us, struck chords, feelings and emotions that were often difficult to fathom or sort out.

We could only experience Stanley and his music alone, within ourselves. We might have attended a concert or dance with someone else; he or she might have sat right next to us, but it was only in our "aloneness" that we sensed what was happening with the music.

Stanley established forever the sound and direction of the music of television, films and the characteristic sound of American jazz orchestras. His bands remained alive and active while other orchestras went into hiatus or out of existence. In the face of the receding trend in the big band business, Stanley added strings (the Innovations period), or French horns (the late fifties) or mellophoniums (early sixties). He was not about to give up his mission and his quest for inventiveness.

The early years, when the nature of his music was being formulated, were ones marked by overwhelming popular acclaim. All the popular mass market magazines selected Stanley's orchestras as style setters, the most popular and its performers as stars of quality and competence. As evidence, consider that the alumni of these orchestras went on to achieve individual fame and acclaim. Their names and accomplishments are legion and are well known to the world as jazz pacesetters.

The Kenton music was exciting, interesting and new, as his music was throughout his career. The greats and near greats gravitated to his orchestras -"I've got to play or arrange for that Stan Kenton band!" The recordings made during that period and beyond were, in great part, responsible for the success of Capitol Records.

In all, Stanley achieved a lasting greatness, leaving a legacy to American music that few others have managed. He provoked controversy amongst some traditionalists and some others resistant to innovation. Undaunted, he pursued his goals, influenced others to do the same, and became the standard bearer of all that is and was great in modern big band music.”

Edward F. Gabel