Working on a Marty Paich writing assignment:
It is hard to disagree with Ted Gioia’s claim that “Marty Paich is one of the unsung heroes of West Coast Jazz.”
Throughout the decade of the 1950's, Paich was active in West Coast Jazz performance while also working intensively in the studios. He not only played on, but arranged and produced, numerous West Coast jazz recordings, including albums by Ray Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, Terry Gibbs, Stan Kenton, Shelly Manne, Anita O'Day, Dave Pell, Art Pepper, Buddy Rich, Shorty Rogers, and Mel Tormé. His professional and personal association with Tormé, though occasionally a difficult one, would last decades. Many jazz critics feel their work together with the Marty Paich Dektette to be the high point of their respective careers.
One of Marty's enduring contributions to the “West Coast Sound” was the development of arrangements that “… are gems of control and restraint; they boot the musicians along without unduly distracting attention from the soloists.” [Bob Gordon, Jazz West Coast: The Los Angeles Jazz Scene of the 1950s, London: Quartet Books, 1986, p. 177]. Marty also became quite adept at voicing his arrangements to accentuate the signature sound of some of the more notable West Coast Jazz instrumentalists such as Jack Sheldon’s puckish trumpet and the full, mellow alto saxophone tone of Art Pepper.
Charles Barber described Marty’s skills as a composer arranger as follows:
“The music of Marty Paich is characterized by a wide-ranging catholicity of style, a tremendous sense of color, and impeccable taste. He was never a musical braggart, and never put himself first. His dedication was to the music he wrote and arranged, to the text it endorsed, and to the artists with whom he worked. Although notoriously perfectionist and demanding in the studio and onstage, Marty was a man of uncommon humility."
