Exploring The Scene with The Poll Winners - Barney, Ray and Shelly

 © -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

This post features another recording from our earliest Jazz experiences which the editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to commend to you as a reminder, if you’ve heard it before, or as an invitation to move your ears in a different direction, if you’ve not heard it previously.

Actually, this post highlights what is the fourth in a series of albums on Contemporary Records by The Poll Winners and it was issued under the title The Poll Winners Barney Kessel, Shelly Manne and Ray Brown: Exploring the Scene [s-7581; OJCCD 969-2].

Since guitarist Barney Kessel, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Shelly Manne regularly scored high in jazz fans' polls of the day, Contemporary's decision to record them as a trio was commercially impeccable. But they were also a committed musical group too as indicated by the quality of their performances on this disc and their three previous LPs: [1] The Poll Winners [1957, OJCCD 156], The Poll Winners Ride Again [1958 OJCCD-607] and Poll Winners Three [OJC 692].

[There is also a reunion recording from 1975 entitled The Poll Winners/ Straight Ahead OJCCD-409].

As the lead voice in the trio, guitarist Barney Kessel best fits this description from Richard Cook and Brian Morton’s The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.:”The blues he heard as a boy in Oklahoma, the swing he learned on his first band job and the modern sounds of the West Coast school': Nesuhi Ertegun summary of Kessel, written in 1954, still holds as good as any description.  Kessel has often been undervalued as a soloist down the years: the smoothness and accuracy of his playing tend to disguise the underlying weight of the blues which informs his improvising and his albums from the 1950s endure with surprising consistency.”

Along with Paul Chambers and Ron Carter, Ray Brown was probably the most frequently recorded bassist in modern Jazz. His big sound, uncluttered rhythm and tasteful melodic sense developed into bass lines that were among the best in the business.

Shelly Manne’s cool melodicism, restrained dynamism, and sophisticated playing made him one of the finest musicians in modern Jazz - whatever the instrument. Jack Brand in his bio on Shelly called him “the most melodic Jazz drummer who ever lived."

Although not as common as piano-bass-drums Jazz trios, this is one of the best of the guitar-bass-drums version of the trio format even though it existed only for recording purposes.

The always dependable Leonard Feather prepared the liner notes to the original LP and they contain a wealth of background information about the musicians and the music on this album.

“DESPITE THE ELEPHANT ON THE COVER, and in an election year to boot [1960], the polls relevant to the participants in this album are those conducted annually by three leading U.S. magazines with jazz oriented readers: Down Beat, Metronome, and Playboy. Each year for the past four years Barney Kessel, Ray Brown, and Shelly Marine won first place in all three polls as the most popular jazz guitarist, bassist, and drummer. And each year Contemporary has acknowledged the poll results with a new Poll Winners album.

The "scene" explored by Messrs. Kessel, Brown, and Manne in this fourth set of improvisations is, of course, the jazz scene - particularly the scene of the past few years during which their poll winning activities took place. Jazzmen are among the most non-conforming of all non-conformists, and a run-down of the nine selections in this album illustrates the point very well. Their composers are among today's best-known jazz players. Yet what a group of strongly individual personalities they are! They range from ebulliently swinging Erroll Gamer to brilliant, moody Miles Davis, from lyrical Brubeck to the far-out cry of Ornette Coleman, from the subtle sophistication of John Lewis to the blues-rooted Horace Silver, and the gospel-rooted soul jazz of Bobby Timmons. Together, the nine pieces represent a cross-section of today's many-faceted and fascinating jazz world.

CERTAINLY NOT LEAST among the strongly individual talents in that world are Barney Kessel, Ray Brown, and Shelly Manne. Barney has been "on the scene" since the mid-1940s when he played with Artie Shaw, appeared in the movie short Jammin' the Blues, and toured with Jazz at the Philharmonic. He was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, October 17,1923, was self-taught, and received early encouragement from Charlie Christian. When he arrived in Los Angeles in 1942, he knew no one, and had not one cent in his pockets, yet within a few years he was known internationally. He won the Esquire Silver Award in 1947, first of many accolades to come his way. He has played and recorded with most of the top jazz artists (Oscar Peterson, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, etc.) and since 1953, as an exclusive Contemporary artist, has made a number of his own albums. Barney has also been extremely active in motion picture, radio, and TV studio recording. In 1960 he formed his own quartet, and is currently appearing in the nation's leading jazz clubs.

Ray Brown was bom in Pittsburgh, October 13,1926. While not yet twenty he played with Dizzy Gillespie. Much of his playing since 1951 has been with Oscar Peterson's trio -which for a time in '52 - '53 included Barney Kessel. Ray Is generally conceded to be the bassist of the past decade. He received his first award, Esquire's New Star, in 1947 and has won the Down Beat poll every year since 1953. the Metronome poll every years since 1955, and the Playboy poll each year since it began in 1957.

In addition to his playing on Contemporary's three previous albums, Ray has recorded several of his own albums and a great many with Peterson for Verve Records.  He is on the faculty of the Advanced School of Contemporary Music in Toronto, Canada, and lives in nearby Downsview when not on tour.

During the past year, Shelly Manne has been one of the busiest of all jazzmen: leader of his own group, composer of the score for the movie, The Proper Time, impresario of his own jazz club, the Manne Hole in Hollywood, and constantly in demand for studio recording work for motion pictures, TV, and records. Born in New York City, June 11,1920, Shelly's first playing was done there on 52nd Street in the early 1940s. In the twenty years since, he's played with almost every major jazz figure - in small groups and big bands. He won the first of his eleven Down Beat plaques in 1947, the year in which Barney and Ray won their first national awards. Since 1952 he has lived in the San Fernando Valley, near Los Angeles; since 1953 has been an exclusive Contemporary recording artist.

Little Susie is a blues by pianist Ray Bryant, named for his daughter. It was written in 1957, but became popular in 1960 as a single, and is the title song of Bryant's recent trio album (Columbia CL 1449/stereo CS 8244).

The Duke, Dave Brubeck's best-known composition, was written in 1955 as a tribute to Duke Ellington. It was recorded several times by Brubeck's quartet for Columbia. The first version is on Jazz: Red Hot and Cool (CL 699).

So What was conceived by Miles Davis as a setting for an improvised recording by his sextet. It is described by pianist Bill Evans as "a simple figure based on 16 measures of one scale, 8 of another, 8 more of the first." It is on Miles' Kind of Blue (Columbia CL 1355/stereo CS 8163). For the Poll Winners' version, Shelly used two unusual percussion instruments. The lujon is a teakwood box enclosing six tubes of different lengths. On top of each tube is an aluminum plate, which is struck by a mallet producing a marimba-like sound. The lujon is the brainchild of Bill Loughborough of San Francisco, also the inventor of the boo-bam. The second instrument Shelly plays is a mbira, a small, African thumb-piano which is shaken to produce rhythmic sounds; at the same time the thumbs can produce tones by activating light metal strips. The pitch of neither instrument can be controlled; Shelly's "melodic lines" are not intended to be accurate melodically or harmonically. They serve to heighten the primitive intensity of this hypnotic work.

Misty was written by Erroll Garner in the early 1950s, and has been recorded by him several times. It’s a lovely ballad which has achieved a popularity both in and out of jazz. An interesting treatment with piano and orchestra is heard in Garner's Other Voices (Columbia CL 1014).

Doodlin' is by Horace Silver, the pianist-composer. It’s a blues, dates from 1956, and was recorded by Silver for Blue Note on Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (BLP 1518).

The Golden Striker is by John Lewis, pianist and musical director of the Modern Jazz Quartet. It comes from Lewis' 1957 original film score for No Sun in Venice. The Golden Striker was inspired by the life-size figures which revolve and strike the hours atop a building near St. Mark's in Venice. (Atlantic 1334/stereo 3D 1334.)

Li’l Darlin' was written in 1957 by ace arranger and trumpet-leader Neal Hefti for Count Basie, and is one of Hefti's own favorites. It is usually associated with Basie who recorded it for Roulette (52003/stereo SR 52003.)

The Blessing is by Omette Coleman, one of his first compositions, recorded by him for Contemporary (M3551/stereo S7551). It was written in 1952 in a park at Fort Worth, Teas at two in the morning, but not recorded until 1958.

This Here by pianist Bobby Timmons, was recorded in 1959 and made popular by Cannonball Adderley's Quintet, of which Timmons was a member. It’s a jazz waltz, which Cannonball describes in his delightfully informal introduction to his recording In San Francisco (Riverside 12-311/stereo 1157) as having "all sorts of properties. Ifs simultaneously a shout and a chant, depending upon whether you know anything about roots of church music and all that kind of stuff. I don't mean, un, Bach chorales and so - that's different, you know what I mean. This is soul, you know what I mean. You know what I mean? (laughter) All right.. It’s really called This Here, however for reasons of soul and description we have corrupted it to become 'dishyere."'

The style and outlook of the nine composers represented are extremely varied, yet the album has its own consistency and unity because Barney, Ray and Shelly have transformed the material at hand, playing it in their own highly personal way, and bringing to it new meanings, new emotional content.

In listening to the three hours of their recorded music now available, one realizes The Poll Winners are not just three jazz stars who get together to record because they won the popularity polls. They have a separate identity as a group. Their ensemble sound is more than the result of the unusual instrumentation, and more than the sum of their strongly individual talents.

Nat Hentoff has described what they do as a "three-way conversation."

Shelly explains: "You know the minute you do something, Barney and Ray are going to pick it up and make something of it. I think this interplay - back and forth - is the most wonderful way to play, it's the kind of playing I really enjoy the most."

- Leonard Feather

Produced by LESTER KOENIG

Cover photo of Manne, Brown, and Kessel by William Claxton. design by Guidi/Tri-Arts. Elephant from the collection of Don Badertscher Antiques. Album front and liner © 1960 Contemporary Records. Inc. Printed in U.S.A.

Barney Kessel: An Interview With Gene Lees

 © -  Steven A. Cerra - copyright protected; all rights reserved.

"The important things for a musician to be concerned with are (1) whether you are able to play what you sincerely think, and (2) to have what you think be worth the playing."   

- Barney Kessel, Jazz guitarist

Guitarist Barney Kessel, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Shelly Manne helped me to come of age in Jazz.

Initially through the series of “Poll Winner” recordings they made under the auspices of Les Koenig at Contemporary Records and later through professional associations and personal friendships, Barney, Ray and Shelly made endearing and enduring impressions on me and on my life.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it might be fun to look back at Barney Kessel during a critical juncture in his career as described in the following interview he gave to Jazz author, editor and publisher, Gene Lees in 1961.

"If, at some future time, somebody writes a study of the forces that have formed the playing of Barney Kessel, it will be interesting to note whether any mention is made of (a) boxcars and (b) contemporary business management concepts.

For these are in fact two of the major influences in Kessel's playing, boxcars being the earliest and such books as James T. McKay's The Management of Time being the latest.

Kessel, in fact, talks more like a management consultant specialist (or efficiency expert, to resurrect the now-unfashionable synonym) than a musician. He is intensely concerned with the ordering of his music, his life, and, to whatever extent it is possible, his environment.

In case that suggests to you that he is just another of the breed of businessmen jazzmen, check with anyone who heard his quartet during its engagements in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere a few weeks ago. Making his first tour in years, Kessel startled eastern-based musicians and the public alike with his earthy, powerful, and astonishingly skillful playing. It was a far cry from what the majority expected from a "west coast" musician, and above all, one who has shown a distressing lack of disdain for the money to be made from Hollywood studio dates.

Yet once you scratch below the surface, you find there is no contradiction here. There is a consistency of style in everything a man does, schizoid temperaments and rank imitators excepted, and Kessel is nothing if not consistent. His efficiency fixation is reflected in his personal habits (he neither smokes nor drinks and keeps himself in shape by diligent thrice-daily exercising), in his attitude to his future (he has decided to keep up some of his Hollywood studio work for the sake of his bank account while leaving every six months to make eight-week national tours for the sake of his self), and his approach to his instrument (he'd like to learn classical guitar but feels that the time is better spent developing his jazz playing, since that is his chief purpose in life).

One of the views expressed in The Management of Time actually had a great deal to do with Kessel's return to the road as a jazz musician. McKay said the world is changing so fast that many ideas are obsolete before they are off the drawing board. The individual who merely tries to do a good job, but nothing more, is doomed to be left behind. Part of each day, McKay insisted, must be spent in self-development.

Kessel agreed. He decided he was not developing in the Hollywood studios. But instead of moaning about the pity of it all while enjoying the pleasures of his mink-lined trap, he took the kind of direct action that seems typical of him: he formed a quartet, packed up, and went back on the road.

"Working in Los Angeles has every advantage except musical growth," he said. "Once you've arrived at the point where, while you are not wealthy, there is at least no urgency about what you're going to eat and where you're going to sleep, there's time to look around and ask, 'Is what I'm doing what I really want to do?'

"Supposedly you've arrived, when you do this kind of work in Los Angeles. But the question is have you arrived so far as you yourself are concerned? Acclaim means nothing to me unless I feel I'm earning it myself. I have won the Down Beat poll all this time without having played in public in seven years.

"In jazz, the great stress is on individuality. In commercial work, the stress is on subduing it, so that the performance has no individualism.

"I began as a youngster wanting only to play jazz. Later, my goals changed to going to Hollywood and developing the skills necessary to being a competent studio musician, which is, for the reason I mentioned, exactly the opposite of playing jazz.

"I went into commercial work a long time ago. I left it in 1953 to go on the road with the Oscar Peterson Trio. For 10 months, I was completely in jazz. Then, for seven years, I was back in Hollywood and the commercial field. At last I came to the time where I found there was no chance to develop myself in jazz. And so I felt I had to get back into it.

"Now I'm realizing more about what my personal needs are. I want to enjoy as high a standard of living as possible and have permanent roots in a community, but I also want to be in an environment where I can continue to participate in jazz and develop. That's why I want to make two tours a year.

"It was bad to become completely enmeshed in studio work. On the other hand, it isn't in my best interests to stay on the road all the time. The plan now is to keep a group constantly intact and work with it in the Los Angeles area most of the year, plus doing as much studio work as presents itself, plus making the tours. This would keep the group in front of the public and at the same time serve as a stimulant for me so that I could return to the community with the feeling that I'd been able to express myself on the road.

"It's ironic. I started out wanting only to play jazz, then changed my goals, and now I want to play jazz again."

Kessel thinks he may have come full circle in another way, as well.

"I remember when Lennie Tristano and the cool school were the rage, I used to get write-ups saying that my playing was too earthy." His not-handsome face suddenly burst into one of the brightest smiles to be found anywhere in jazz. "Now earthiness seems to be fashionable. It is accepted again."

Kessel's playing can, in fact, be almost startlingly earthy. In the midst of a long and sophisticated flow of intelligently-chosen notes, you'll suddenly hear a nasal twang that comes right out of the blues and is a first cousin to hillbilly playing. This sound is one that has been attributed to the corruptive influence of the rock-and-roll dates Kessel has played in Hollywood. Actually, it predates his Hollywood experience by a good many years.

"I came from a little town of 30,000 in Oklahoma, called Muskogee," Kessel said. "The railway tracks ran right by my house. The first guitar players I ever heard were tramps and hoboes who used to sit in the boxcars playing.

"So this bending of strings, this twang, is something I grew up with. I think that when something is genuinely part of one's previous experience, then that is valid for that person. But sometimes these things can be affected, and the question I would ask about a lot of younger musicians trying to play with a blues flavor is, am I being me? Who are they being?'

"You know, there's another thing I've heard about my playing. It's been said that I copy Charlie Christian.

"There's no doubt that I was a fan of his. I idolized his playing, and when I was in high school, I waited for his records to come out. And I think I sounded like him in the early years of my playing.

"But we both came from Oklahoma. I grew up only about 150 miles from where he lived. He was only about five or six years older than I, and I played with many musicians he had been playing with before he went with Benny Goodman. They taught me how to play. So I was exposed to the same influences Charlie Christian was.

"But I don't think that my playing today sounds as much like Charlie Christian as Charlie Christian sounded like Al Casey and Eddie Durham. I invite anybody to listen to Eddie Durham on Jimmy Lunceford records and particularly Al Casey on Buck Jumpin'. On Buck Jumpin' you'll hear snatches of material Charlie Christian played with the Benny Goodman Sextet.

"But Charlie Christian completely deserves the position he now holds. It's easier to fly the ship across the Atlantic after Lindbergh did it."

If Kessel resists the imputations of excessive Charlie Christian influence, he confesses fully and gladly to the influence of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. In doing, he provides a most succinct statement of their significance.

"Charlie Parker's chief contribution was liberation from the old melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic concepts," Kessel said. "Up until that time, many die-hards felt that the rhythm section's function was to keep the horns from rushing or dragging with a steady thump-thump 4/4. The rhythm section players were so busy being timekeepers that they couldn't lend the beauty and dimension that percussion lends in classical music.

"Charlie Parker's and Dizzy's influence on the rhythm section was indirect. They didn't tell the section how to play, but their songs were so different that the rhythm section had to adapt itself for it to make sense.

"I felt an enormous sense of release because of Dizzy and Charlie Parker and that little band that they had. Until that time, it seemed to me that the highest point of development in jazz was to be found in the Benny Goodman Sextet and in the Basie band with Lester Young and Harry Edison. And I felt that I was saying all I could say in the context that existed, namely in an environment erected by the big bands of the early 1940s.

"Many musicians had begun to feel confined. There was a movement on the west coast, which I was part of, before we ever heard Parker. We were making up our own songs with more interesting chord changes and melodic lines than most of the songs being played by the big bands. But it was nothing like what Charlie Parker and Dizzy did. It wasn't up to that. But the desire was there.

"They liberated jazz. And now, because of them, I can see that the possibilities in jazz music are infinite. I feel that the future trends will consist in taking one of these elements — rhythm, harmony, melody — and focusing more attention on it than the others.

"It seems to me that, in the broad sense of it, the shifting into what we call fads is simply a turning with intensity to one of these elements.

"The current Miles Davis seems to stress simplicity and harmony, and less frequent chord changes, with more emphasis on melodic invention. In other words, the action comes from the melody, and not from the harmony.

"In Art Blakey, on the other hand, the stress is on the rhythm. John Coltrane has been emphasizing the harmonic aspects of it.

"Art Tatum was harmonic, to me. I don't think I could sing one note of melody from Tatum. And I think that what made Charlie Parker a giant was that he developed all three facets of his music to the marked degree that he did."

If Kessel sees the possibilities in the future of jazz as being "infinite," this doesn't mean he is happy with current trends. In fact, he says that during his recent tour he heard only two things that impressed him to any great extent: Nina Simone and Gil Evans' writing for his new band. He also liked Art Blakey and Horace Silver — the leaders, their arrangements, and the ensemble playing. "The soloists weren't too inspiring," he said.

"The jazz world has lost its Messiah, and they're running around looking for a leader. Have you ever stopped to think why there's a Sonny Rollins, a John Coltrane, an Ornette Coleman?

"Why are so many musicians insisting on going against the grain, when it's so much easier and more logical to go with it?

"I think it's a matter of wanting to belong, wanting to be accepted, and realizing there's only a certain amount of acceptance in being a second-hand Charlie Parker or a second-hand Lester Young — even though the way they played was natural and with the grain.

"It's healthy that some are seeking to be something other than second-hand versions of somebody else, but not too much of the music coming out of it is valid.

"Frankly, I find some of the musicians I've encountered on the road rather ridiculous. They're like children, the way they dress, the way they talk. It seems everything is Something else' these days. Or is it 'out of sight'?

"It seems to me that the standard of musicianship is higher than it used to be — the number of people who are playing well and how well they are playing. But so far as inventiveness is concerned — no. They're all playing follow the leader.

"The thing that disturbs me is that musicians in general are so hungry for acceptance by musicians on their own level that they will allow their own musical individualism to remain dormant, just for a slap on the back from somebody who says, That's great, man, you sound just like Bird, or Miles, or whoever it is.

"Yet as far as the new voices coming out are concerned, only time will tell how valuable they really are. Maybe 300 years from now, the Encyclopedia Brittanica will say: 'Jazz music — a limited musical form in which the work of Art Tatum will serve to illustrate what was possible within the form.'

"It may be that none of us is saying anything that will be valid in the future."

Kessel, in point of fact, feels that even though the possibilities of jazz are "infinite" there is still a very real danger that jazz will kill itself off, "because the people in it do not have the discipline over themselves as people to go on and develop themselves as musicians, or to develop the music to any great extent."

This concern has been voiced by a variety of mature jazz musicians recently. Dizzy Gillespie summed it up a few months ago by saying that young musicians seemed interested only in what the masters did, not in probing into the why. Paul Desmond made a parallel observation, commenting wryly, "Diversitysville—let a hundred flowers bloom." So consistent has this criticism of younger musicians been that Kessel's view on it must be taken seriously.

"To be a success in anything," he said, "there are certain requirements. And I don't think musicians nowadays — this is generally speaking — sit down and analyze the requirements for being successful, both in the musical and business sense.

"You're going to be a musician? You've got to be friendly towards the public, well-groomed and have clean clothes freshly pressed, and you have to remember that as long as anyone is buying a ticket to hear you, you must communicate to them.

"Too many musicians are doing research when a performance is expected. People are coming to hear the result of your experiments, your findings, and it should be palatable. But musicians are often still experimenting on the public's time and money.

"The lack of discipline manifests itself in many other ways, too. They are not punctual. If they were getting an unemployment check and the window closed at 3 o'clock, they'd be there at 3. But if the rehearsal starts at 3, they're there at 3:40.

"Lack of discipline is also seen in the desperate desire to bypass fundamentals in music, not to go through that experience. By fundamentals, I mean such things as practicing scales. In the case of horn players, warming up with long tones, trying to improve their tone and intonation. Many of them have bad intonation and don't even know it.

"They should also be spending time in learning to interpret different idioms of music, all the nuances. And dynamics? All of these bands play at one level — double forte — all night long."

Kessel's doesn't.  It is a group not only with a wide range of dynamics but with an infectious vitality and a general lack of pretension that is altogether refreshing.   This group's purpose seems to be to swing — and to produce melodies. On the whole, it does both.

Kessel has surrounded himself with young musicians (though, at 37, he can hardly be considered old). The drummer is Stan Popper, a loud but tasteful player ("I like a drummer who participates," says Kessel) from Oakland, Calif., who used to work with Pony Poindexter in San Francisco. The pianist is Marvin Jenkins, a Los Angeles musician who doubles flute on those tunes in which the group chooses to explore the delicacy in its potential. The bassist is Jerry Good, a San Franciscan with a big sound who has earned the respect of bassists encountered on the tour.

Evaluation of art is always a personal matter. Beyond certain obvious factors of technique, there are no clear-cut lines, despite the attempts of some to establish an absolute esthetic. So I will, I hope, be forgiven for lapsing into the first person to convey an impression of the group.

Put simply, it knocked me out. Kessel is an astonishing guitarist. Frankly, I had forgotten that jazz guitar of this kind existed, though Wes Montgomery had reminded me of it of late. If Montgomery's octave passages have left musicians and others impressed, what must the impression be when Kessel plays widely separated counter lines — descending figures on the low strings against climbing melodies on top? His chording is sudden, startling, and extremely fast. His tone — like Montgomery's — is distinctly string-y, and far from the "horn" sound that used to be common on amplified guitar. Further, he has begun to adapt one facet of classical playing to his work—the use of the balls of the fingers and thumb to produce a softer sound than the pick or fingernails can give. This is quite effective on ballads. (Kessel does not wish to explore classical guitar, though he plays Bach with a pick in his hotel room; he feels the classical approach would take the bite out of his jazz playing, that the two techniques are, to an extent, mutually antagonistic.)

Above and beyond technique, Kessel is a vital and inventive musician. Finally, he is a swinger — a powerful, hard-driving swinger when he wants to be, though also one of the most lyrical of ballad players when that is his wish. And if funk you want, funk he can and will give you.

His group is presentable — and punctual. Kessel sees to it. Yet its members, such as Popper, seem to have only respect for him. Drummer Popper seems as proud as a kid just graduated from high school to be working with him.

That is Barney Kessel. Do boxcars and business management concepts seem so far apart now?

I think that jazz generally," he summed up, "is subject to the way people will be thinking about it. If the people who are playing it become more disciplined as human beings and stress originality, while learning and analyzing the musicians of former periods and other styles of music, then I think jazz will progress.

"I wish every young musician would read Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address and remember the circumstances of it. Douglas made a long, wordy speech; Lincoln followed him and made a very short speech and said, 'The world will little note nor long remember what we say here.' But his is the speech that is remembered, because he was saying something.

"The essence of it is what you're saying. The instrument is merely a tool, a link, a way of getting out to the public what you are feeling. To me, guitar is only a tool. I'm not partial to hearing guitar players over trumpeters or trombonists or saxophonists.

"The important things for a musician to be concerned with are (1) whether you are able to play what you sincerely think, and (2) to have what you think be worth the playing."                                                                               

Source: January 5, 1961

“Barney Kessel: Why He’s Back on the Road”

Down Beat

Barney, Ray and Shelly [From the Archives]

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Guitarist Barney Kessel, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Shelly Manne helped me to come of age in Jazz.

Initially through the series of “Poll Winners” recordings they made under the auspices of Les Koenig at Contemporary Records and later through professional associations and personal friendships, Barney, Ray and Shelly made endearing and enduring impressions on me and on my life.

Here are some thoughts about what made Barney, Ray and Shelly such special players and people as excerpted from Nat Hentoff’s insert notes to The Poll Winners [Contemporary S-7535; OJCCD-156-2].

© -Nat Hentoff, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The reason for the alfresco exuberance of the Maypole wielders on the cover of this album is that all three won all three of the major American jazz popularity polls for 1956 — Down Beat, Metronome and Playboy.

While the election to these non-posthumous Valhalla’s is evidently quite gratifying, I expect that these three musicians are also deeply heartened by the sure knowledge that this re­spect and appreciation for their skills and souls is shared by the most exacting of all jazz audiences, their fellow jazzmen. Barney, Shelly and Ray cut through the lines of style, age and temperament. They are dug by jazzmen of all persuasions, because they in turn have not limited themselves to any one county of jazz. They're in place almost anywhere in the whole pleasure dome. …

Barney's strength, blues-blood, and sensitivity to others' musical needs as well as his own. Shelly's command of the drum as a thorough instrument, not just as a time-keeping device; his presence when needed as a third voice and the unobtrusiveness of his presence when that quality too is required. Ray for the fullness, firmness and tightness of his voice; his power, which propels when it's only suggested; and the flame, like his colleagues', of the perennial ‘amateur de jazz.’

The music in this set is primarily conversational, and it is conversation between three spirits with much in common in terms of life-view and way of living as well as music.

It is a conversation between experts whose knowledge has gone so far that they can never now regard themselves as experts, knowing not what they'll discover next time they talk.

And it's a conversation essentially for kicks, the kicks that come best and most frequently when you talk with your peers and are thereby in no need to worry whether your quick allusion will be picked up or whether you'll goof a spiral reference. It's not often that we amateurs, literally as well as French-figuratively, have a chance to hear this much of this kind of talk.”

Exploring The Scene with The Poll Winners - Barney, Ray and Shelly

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

This post features another recording from our earliest Jazz experiences which the editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to commend to you as a reminder, if you’ve heard it before, or as an invitation to move your ears in a different direction, if you’ve not heard it previously.

Actually, this post highlights what is the fourth in a series of albums on Contemporary Records by The Poll Winners and it was issued under the title The Poll Winners Barney Kessel, Shelly Manne and Ray Brown: Exploring the Scene [s-7581; OJCCD 969-2].

Since guitarist Barney Kessel, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Shelly Manne regularly scored high in jazz fans' polls of the day, Contemporary's decision to record them as a trio was commercially impeccable. But they were also a committed musical group too as indicated by the quality of their performances on this disc and their three previous LPs: [1] The Poll Winners [1957, OJCCD 156], The Poll Winners Ride Again [1958 OJCCD-607] and Poll Winners Three [OJC 692].

[There is also a reunion recording from 1975 entitled The Poll Winners/ Straight Ahead OJCCD-409].

As the lead voice in the trio, guitarist Barney Kessel best fits this description from Richard Cook and Brian Morton’s The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.:”The blues he heard as a boy in Oklahoma, the swing he learned on his first band job and the modern sounds of the West Coast school': Nesuhi Ertegun summary of Kessel, written in 1954, still holds as good as any description.  Kessel has often been undervalued as a soloist down the years: the smoothness and accuracy of his playing tend to disguise the underlying weight of the blues which informs his improvising and his albums from the 1950s endure with surprising consistency.”

Along with Paul Chambers and Ron Carter, Ray Brown was probably the most frequently recorded bassist in modern Jazz. His big sound, uncluttered rhythm and tasteful melodic sense developed into bass lines that were among the best in the business.

Shelly Manne’s cool melodicism, restrained dynamism, and sophisticated playing made him one of the finest musicians in modern Jazz - whatever the instrument. Jack Brand in his bio on Shelly called him “the most melodic Jazz drummer who ever lived."

Although not as common as piano-bass-drums Jazz trios, this is one of the best of the guitar-bass-drums version of the trio format even though it existed only for recording purposes.

The always dependable Leonard Feather prepared the liner notes to the original LP and they contain a wealth of background information about the musicians and the music on this album.

“DESPITE THE ELEPHANT ON THE COVER, and in an election year to boot [1960], the polls relevant to the participants in this album are those conducted annually by three leading U.S. magazines with jazz oriented readers: Down Beat, Metronome, and Playboy. Each year for the past four years Barney Kessel, Ray Brown, and Shelly Marine won first place in all three polls as the most popular jazz guitarist, bassist, and drummer. And each year Contemporary has acknowledged the poll results with a new Poll Winners album.

The "scene" explored by Messrs. Kessel, Brown, and Manne in this fourth set of improvisations is, of course, the jazz scene - particularly the scene of the past few years during which their poll winning activities took place. Jazzmen are among the most non-conforming of all non-conformists, and a run-down of the nine selections in this album illustrates the point very well. Their composers are among today's best-known jazz players. Yet what a group of strongly individual personalities they are! They range from ebulliently swinging Erroll Gamer to brilliant, moody Miles Davis, from lyrical Brubeck to the far-out cry of Ornette Coleman, from the subtle sophistication of John Lewis to the blues-rooted Horace Silver, and the gospel-rooted soul jazz of Bobby Timmons. Together, the nine pieces represent a cross-section of today's many-faceted and fascinating jazz world.

CERTAINLY NOT LEAST among the strongly individual talents in that world are Barney Kessel, Ray Brown, and Shelly Manne. Barney has been "on the scene" since the mid-1940s when he played with Artie Shaw, appeared in the movie short Jammin' the Blues, and toured with Jazz at the Philharmonic. He was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, October 17,1923, was self-taught, and received early encouragement from Charlie Christian. When he arrived in Los Angeles in 1942, he knew no one, and had not one cent in his pockets, yet within a few years he was known internationally. He won the Esquire Silver Award in 1947, first of many accolades to come his way. He has played and recorded with most of the top jazz artists (Oscar Peterson, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, etc.) and since 1953, as an exclusive Contemporary artist, has made a number of his own albums. Barney has also been extremely active in motion picture, radio, and TV studio recording. In 1960 he formed his own quartet, and is currently appearing in the nation's leading jazz clubs.

Ray Brown was bom in Pittsburgh, October 13,1926. While not yet twenty he played with Dizzy Gillespie. Much of his playing since 1951 has been with Oscar Peterson's trio -which for a time in '52 - '53 included Barney Kessel. Ray Is generally conceded to be the bassist of the past decade. He received his first award, Esquire's New Star, in 1947 and has won the Down Beat poll every year since 1953. the Metronome poll every years since 1955, and the Playboy poll each year since it began in 1957.

In addition to his playing on Contemporary's three previous albums, Ray has recorded several of his own albums and a great many with Peterson for Verve Records.  He is on the faculty of the Advanced School of Contemporary Music in Toronto, Canada, and lives in nearby Downsview when not on tour.

During the past year, Shelly Manne has been one of the busiest of all jazzmen: leader of his own group, composer of the score for the movie, The Proper Time, impresario of his own jazz club, the Manne Hole in Hollywood, and constantly in demand for studio recording work for motion pictures, TV, and records. Born in New York City, June 11,1920, Shelly's first playing was done there on 52nd Street in the early 1940s. In the twenty years since, he's played with almost every major jazz figure - in small groups and big bands. He won the first of his eleven Down Beat plaques in 1947, the year in which Barney and Ray won their first national awards. Since 1952 he has lived in the San Fernando Valley, near Los Angeles; since 1953 has been an exclusive Contemporary recording artist.

Little Susie is a blues by pianist Ray Bryant, named for his daughter. It was written in 1957, but became popular in 1960 as a single, and is the title song of Bryant's recent trio album (Columbia CL 1449/stereo CS 8244).

The Duke, Dave Brubeck's best-known composition, was written in 1955 as a tribute to Duke Ellington. It was recorded several times by Brubeck's quartet for Columbia. The first version is on Jazz: Red Hot and Cool (CL 699).

So What was conceived by Miles Davis as a setting for an improvised recording by his sextet. It is described by pianist Bill Evans as "a simple figure based on 16 measures of one scale, 8 of another, 8 more of the first." It is on Miles' Kind of Blue (Columbia CL 1355/stereo CS 8163). For the Poll Winners' version, Shelly used two unusual percussion instruments. The lujon is a teakwood box enclosing six tubes of different lengths. On top of each tube is an aluminum plate, which is struck by a mallet producing a marimba-like sound. The lujon is the brainchild of Bill Loughborough of San Francisco, also the inventor of the boo-bam. The second instrument Shelly plays is a mbira, a small, African thumb-piano which is shaken to produce rhythmic sounds; at the same time the thumbs can produce tones by activating light metal strips. The pitch of neither instrument can be controlled; Shelly's "melodic lines" are not intended to be accurate melodically or harmonically. They serve to heighten the primitive intensity of this hypnotic work.

Misty was written by Erroll Garner in the early 1950s, and has been recorded by him several times. It’s a lovely ballad which has achieved a popularity both in and out of jazz. An interesting treatment with piano and orchestra is heard in Garner's Other Voices (Columbia CL 1014).

Doodlin' is by Horace Silver, the pianist-composer. It’s a blues, dates from 1956, and was recorded by Silver for Blue Note on Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (BLP 1518).

The Golden Striker is by John Lewis, pianist and musical director of the Modern Jazz Quartet. It comes from Lewis' 1957 original film score for No Sun in Venice. The Golden Striker was inspired by the life-size figures which revolve and strike the hours atop a building near St. Mark's in Venice. (Atlantic 1334/stereo 3D 1334.)

Li’l Darlin' was written in 1957 by ace arranger and trumpet-leader Neal Hefti for Count Basie, and is one of Hefti's own favorites. It is usually associated with Basie who recorded it for Roulette (52003/stereo SR 52003.)

The Blessing is by Omette Coleman, one of his first compositions, recorded by him for Contemporary (M3551/stereo S7551). It was written in 1952 in a park at Fort Worth, Teas at two in the morning, but not recorded until 1958.

This Here by pianist Bobby Timmons, was recorded in 1959 and made popular by Cannonball Adderley's Quintet, of which Timmons was a member. It’s a jazz waltz, which Cannonball describes in his delightfully informal introduction to his recording In San Francisco (Riverside 12-311/stereo 1157) as having "all sorts of properties. Ifs simultaneously a shout and a chant, depending upon whether you know anything about roots of church music and all that kind of stuff. I don't mean, un, Bach chorales and so - that's different, you know what I mean. This is soul, you know what I mean. You know what I mean? (laughter) All right.. It’s really called This Here, however for reasons of soul and description we have corrupted it to become 'dishyere."'

The style and outlook of the nine composers represented are extremely varied, yet the album has its own consistency and unity because Barney, Ray and Shelly have transformed the material at hand, playing it in their own highly personal way, and bringing to it new meanings, new emotional content.

In listening to the three hours of their recorded music now available, one realizes The Poll Winners are not just three jazz stars who get together to record because they won the popularity polls. They have a separate identity as a group. Their ensemble sound is more than the result of the unusual instrumentation, and more than the sum of their strongly individual talents.

Nat Hentoff has described what they do as a "three-way conversation."

Shelly explains: "You know the minute you do something, Barney and Ray are going to pick it up and make something of it. I think this interplay - back and forth - is the most wonderful way to play, it's the kind of playing I really enjoy the most."

- Leonard Feather

Produced by LESTER KOENIG

Cover photo of Manne, Brown, and Kessel by William Claxton. design by Guidi/Tri-Arts. Elephant from the collection of Don Badertscher Antiques. Album front and liner © 1960 Contemporary Records. Inc. Printed in U.S.A.