“… Carmell had the ability to blow everyone out of the studio, but it was not his nature….”
- Todd Selbert
“… he was a native of the JayHawkState – Kansas City, Kansas, to be exact – and his melodically engaging, hard-swinging style is firmly grounded in the grand Jazz tradition that was nurtured across the border in Kansas City, Missouri.”
- Orrin Keepnews
“Jones had a lovely take-my-time way about his trumpet playing, even though he could play an almost old-fashioned hot style when he chose – a legacy of his KayCee roots – and he was a more than capable member of a Horace Silver front line, engaging in superb interplay with tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson.”
- Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.
Everything you need to know about Carmell is on view in the above photograph by Francis Wolff.
Carmell was a sweet, gentle man and a brilliant trumpet player.
While on the subject of Jazz trumpet players as a result of our recent feature on Ryan Kisor, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it would be nice to spend a little time reflecting on the music of the late, Carmell Jones [1936-1996].
At the urging of John William Hardy, Carmell came to California from his native Kansas City in 1960.
Around this time, the German Jazz critic Joachim Berendt was making his way across the country from Los Angeles to New York along with photographer William Claxton. Berendt’s written account of this journey along with a series of Claxton’s stunning photos documenting their stops along the way would be published by Taschen in a compilation entitled Jazz Life.
Along the way, Berendt and Claxton had met Carmell and they, too, urged him to head West.
Claxton introduced Carmell to Dick Bock at Pacific Jazz Records and Jones became involved in a series of recordings for the label both as a leader and as a sideman. John William Hardy would write some of the liner notes for Carmell’s Pacific Jazz LP’s.
Once in California, Carmell’s remarkable talents as a Clifford Brown-inspired trumpet player found him gigs-a-plenty for as his close friend and confidant John William Hardy said: “Carmell loves, really loves, to play anywhere and anytime, with anyone and everyone.”
During his relatively short stay on the Left Coast from 1960 to 1964, Carmell would work with saxophonist Bud Shank’s quintet, the quintet that was co-led by tenor saxophonist Curtis Amy and drummer Frank Butler, the big band led by Onzy Matthews, Harold Land, Dexter Gordon, Med Flory, Shelly Manne, Gary Peacock, Dennis Budimir, Gerald Wilson, Frank Strazzeri, among many others.
As John William Hardy wrote in the liner notes to The Remarkable Carmell Jones:
“The long and short of it is this: Carmell Jones did come west and, during the past year, has enjoyed the first chapter in a success story that should continue on and on. For this rather ingenuous young man has not only impressed his fellow jazzmen and listeners with his playing, but perhaps as importantly has captured their friendship and support with his quiet integrity, his modesty, sincerity, dependability and all round solidity of character. Carmell has grown immensely as a musician….”
Michael Cuscuna at Mosaic Records obtained the rights to reissue a number of Carmell’s recordings for Bock’s label and has made them available in his limited edition Mosaic Select CD series.
In the booklet notes to the Mosaic set, Michael made these observations about Carmell:
"In the spring of 1964, Carmell Jones came to New York to join Horace Silver's new quintet. He made a strong impression on a town overflowing with great talent. He made impressive appearances on Booker Ervin's The Blues Book, Charles McPherson's Bebop Revisited (both for Prestige) and, of course, Horace Silver's most celebrated album Song for My Father (Blue Note).
The following year he recorded his own Jay Hawk Talk for Prestige. But in August, he quit Silver's band and moved to Germany where he remained until 1980. Carmell was by all account a very sweet person; one can even hear it in his playing. Horace Silver once told me that Carmell had a hard time adjusting to the faster, harder style of people on the East Coast; he believed that the main reason for the rejected live session he made with the quintet in August, 1964 at Pep's Lounge in Philadelphia was hecklers at the bar, calling out to Carmell, "Let's see what this California boy can do!" and the like. Horace said that Joe Henderson's lone-wolf aloofness would drive Jones crazy, especially when he would knock on Joe's hotel room door and get no answer when he knew full well the saxophonist was there.
Germany provided a calmer life style, a steady income in radio orchestras without a lot of travel and opportunities to pursue a modest jazz career. When he finally returned to the U.S. in 1980, he eschewed the coasts and return to his birthplace Kansas City. His last recording in 1982 was then Florida-based Revelation Records, founded by John William Hardy, the man who had urged him to come to Los Angeles and written the liner notes for the first albums in this set.
If it weren't for the lasting impact of Song for My Father, Carmell might have been written out of jazz history. These three discs revive an important body of work by an extraordinary musician.
October 2002”
We were on the LeftCoast when Carmell stopped by in the early 1960’s.
Sure glad we were.
The following video features Carmell on his original composition Somara which he performed as a member of bassist Red Mitchell and tenor saxophonist Harold Land's Quintet with Frank Strazzeri, piano and Leon Petties, drums.
“Mitchell was known for a fluent improvising style in which pulled-off (rather than plucked) notes in a typically low register (Mitchell used a retuned bass) suggest a baritone saxophone rather than a stringed instrument; Scott LaFaro was later sanctified for a broadly similar technique.”
- Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.
“The basic sound of the Mitchell-Land group is one that the musicians find elusive of verbalization. "Hard" is an adjective that has been applied too often lately to any brand of jazz with a substantial degree of aggressiveness; the implication that hardness involves harshness seems to invalidate the use of the term here. It is more relevantly a jubilant, sinewy, cohesive sound, in which the key factors are self-confidence and the kind of group feeling that can only stem from musicians who have been working together and listening to one another closely over an extended period.”
- Leonard Feather, Jazz author and critic
Among the unique voices in modern Jazz that always impress me every time I hear them are Red Mitchell's singing bass lines and Harold Land’s “Texas Tenor Sax Sound,” the blues-inflected, “moan within the tone” that Cannonball Adderley ascribed to this style.
Imagine my delight then when I learned that Red and Harold had teamed up in a new quintet that featured Carmell Jones on trumpet, Frank Strazzeri on piano and Leon Petties on drums.
Although the group disbanded after only about a one year stint, it was one of the finest bands on the West Coast playing a style with an emphasis on “heat” rather than the “cool” usually associated with Jazz on the Left Coast during the 1950s and early 1960s [all of which was exaggerated marketing nonsense to begin with].
Gene Lees offered these observations and thoughts on Red in his Cats of Any Color: Jazz, Black and White:
“Back in the 1950s, two names loomed very large on the bass: Ray Brown and Red Mitchell, idols of other bass players. Mitchell has to be accounted one of the most influential of jazz bassists, in a line with Walter Page, Jimmy Blanton, and Charles Mingus, if only because one of his proteges. Scott LaFaro, influenced just about every younger bass player since his death at twenty-four — almost the same age at which Blanton died. But more bassists have obvious audible debts to LaFaro and to Mitchell, who remains, as Mingus did, a phenomenon of one.
No one sounds like Mingus. No one sounds like Red Mitchell. What makes his playing so really odd is that he developed an approach to the instrument as if it were a saxophone, extracting from it melismatic vocal effects, glissandi that bespeak enormous strength in the left hand. At times he would play bottom notes on the first and third beats of die bar and then strum the rest of the chord on two and four on the top three strings, using the backs of his fingers a little like one of the techniques heard in flamenco guitar.
He developed a huge sound, producing tones that lasted forever, and did things on the instrument that no one else had ever done, and possibly no one else will ever do. He long has been looked on as something of a curiosity because he changed the tuning of his bass from the conventional fourths to fifths. One of the things one would not figure out for oneself is that the tuning actually could affect the sound of his instrument by altering the nature of its resonance.
Ted Gioia in his definitive West Coast Jazz: Jazz in California, 1945-1960 offered these comments about Harold Land beginning with his early association with Max Roach and Clifford Brown’s Quintet before the group moved to New York and Harold, who chose to stay in Los Angeles, was replaced by Sonny Rollins:
“His early Coleman Hawkins sound had by now broadened to include a fluent command of the bebop idiom, complete with a polished technique that could navigate the most challenging progressions and tempos. Throughout his career Land has shown a continued ability to assimilate new sounds and musical ideas. First grounded in the music of the big band era tempered with a dose of R&B, Land later assimilated the modern jazz vocabulary and made it his own, just as, in the 1960s, he would adopt many of the musical mannerisms developed by John Coltrane and his followers.
A restless stylist, Land has been the jazz leopard who continually tries to change his spots. His stint with the Brown/Roach Quintet was no exception: For two years Land further refined his craft within the confines of this world-class ensemble, slowly forging a quintessential hard bop sound that would reach its fullest expression in his later work as a leader and with the Curtis Counce group.”
Sadly, Red and Harold’s quintet only made one recording together - Hear Ye!!!! [Atlantic Jazz 1376-2] which the distinguished Jazz author and critic Leonard Feather annotated in the following insert notes to the original LP.
“The record debut of the Red Mitchell-Harold Land Quintet may mark a turning point not only in the career of this group, but in the whole image of West Coast jazz.
For too many years this slogan was associated with a brand of music, emanating exclusively from Los Angeles, that employed tautly scored little performances with all the shine and sparkle of a prune. It was claimed at times that this represented a new trend in jazz, that the music had its own validity and was not a mere faded reflection of some ideas that had become desiccated on their way west from New York. Time has killed theory and music alike.
Red Mitchell and Harold Land were never a part of that scene. True, they have worked at times with some of the musicians said to typify West Coast jazz, but this has no more direct bearing on their musical ambitions than Red's TV shows with Mahalia Jackson or Harold's Las Vegas excursion with Brook Benton. Both were interested in a new, fresh, bold sound, one that could give the tired West Coast slogan a valuable meaning.
That their paths crossed, leading to the creation of what John Tynan in Down Beat aptly called "the most stimulating and creatively alive jazz group resident on the West Coast," was the product of a series of fortuities. Red, a New Yorker, had worked in the East with Chubby Jackson (as pianist doubling on bass), Charlie Ventura and Woody Herman. He moved to Hollywood in 1952, when he began a two year membership in the Red Norvo Trio.
"I can't remember exactly where and when I met Harold," says Red, "but I heard him with the Clifford Brown-Max Roach group around 1954-5, and then really got to listen to him extensively a year or two later when he was with Curtis Counce's combo.
I guess there was a mutual respect thing going; we started hanging out more, got to like each other a lot personally, and found out we had a lot of things in common, a lot of musical ideas and ideals.."
"It seemed a natural thing for us to get together. Even our families had grown close — our wives and sons — and somehow we started out with an idea for a quartet. But we wanted a fuller sound, and different voicings, and we had this concept of using the bass as a third voice on some things, so we agreed that the quintet is a perfect jazz instrumentation,"
"I can't remember exactly where and when I met Red," says Harold, completing the mutual oblivion pact, "but I think it was in San Diego, where I lived before I came to Los Angeles. He played there in a little group that Woody Herman had with Bill Harris and Bags, in 1950. That was four years before I moved north."
"The first time we played together was at an art exhibit, with a quartet. By that time I had known and admired Red's work for a long while. We both got to thinking that we could provide a few fresh approaches to the quintet sound. We felt there weren't enough well-organized, tightly-knit combos on the scene. . ."
The three sidemen lined up by these two leaders were all logical choices. "Carmell had come out to the coast primarily to work with Harold; he dug him that much," says Red. "Of course, I knew him well too; he had sat in with me several times. Frank Strazzeri and I had worked together a lot, and Leon Petties came here from San Diego, like Harold, and had been jobbing with Harold's quartet. I had known Leon since he sat in with me in 1956, when I was with Hamp Hawes' Trio; in fact, I had tried to get Hamp to hire him."
The five musicians began rehearsing in the summer of 1961. All but Petties doubled as writers, and all five had identical feelings concerning the group's objectives and musical potential.
"There has been so little of this kind of music organized out here," Red points out. "Curtis had a fine group, but it didn't last too long. We realized, too, that forming a group like this in Los Angeles and trying to keep it together was not the easiest thing in the world."
Despite the evident handicaps, the men were unflaggingly cooperative in making- rehearsals. All made sacrifices of one kind or another to keep the group intact. (On one occasion, in order not to miss a rehearsal, Red turned down a gig that would have meant a whole TV series for him.)
The basic sound of the Mitchell-Land group is one that the musicians find elusive of verbalization. "Hard" is an adjective that has been applied too often lately to any brand of jazz with a substantial degree of aggressiveness; the implication that hardness involves harshness seems to invalidate the use of the term here. It is more relevantly a jubilant, sinewy, cohesive sound, in which the key factors are self-confidence and the kind of group feeling that can only stem from musicians who have been working together and listening to one another closely over an extended period.
Fortunately the opportunities for the quintet, though limited by their geographical situation, have exceeded their original expectations. In addition to stretching out for several weeks at Los Angeles' Town Hill club, they have worked every Monday at Shelly's Manne Hole for several months, played weekend concerts at Le Grand Theatre, and have gigged at the Renaissance and other local spots. With the release of this album they plan to make their first joint trip East.
It is a healthy sign that a group of this type has been able to get going in Southern California. After having lived out here for a year, this writer can attest to the frustrations that beset Los Angeles jazzmen whose ambitions are analogous with those of, say, a Blakey or Silver or Adderley in New York. Removed by thousands of miles not only from the principal jazz clubs but also from the booking agencies' headquarters, most of the record companies, and many of the influential jazz critics, the musicians in Los Angeles are sometimes tempted to become bitter as they see extensive publicity and work opportunities falling in the path of other groups, whose musical value may be equal to their own but is certainly not so far superior as to justify the great disparity in recognition.
Had the above-mentioned New York groups been stationed in Los Angeles during the past six or seven years while Red, Harold & Co. were transplanted to New York, it is entirely possible that jazz history might have been written a little differently.
Although I have stressed the importance of the group's overall sound, obviously no combo that relies heavily on improvisation can be any stronger than its weakest solo link. The steel links in this chain know no weaknesses; all ensemble considerations aside, this is, man for man, as strong an alliance of compatible talents as you will find on the scene today — and this does not just mean the California scene.
Harold Land, in the course of these sides, manages to communicate all the essential values of contemporary jazz: not merely the harmonic knowledge and technical virtuosity, but the obvious respect for basics, the understanding of the blues force in jazz, the emotional quality without which all his equipment would be earth-bound. He is a modernist whose respect for tradition and traditionalists has prevented him from transgressing beyond the true orbit of this music. The influences are clear from time to time — Coleman Hawkins, whose Body And Soul, played a large part in forming his love of the instrument; Lucky Thompson, whose warmth of sound and fluency of style impressed him a few years later; and of course Charlie Parker, whose soul was Bird's legacy to a whole generation. Above and beyond the influences, Harold is vitally and consistently himself, both as instrumentalist and composer.
Red Mitchell, whether playing arco (as in his solo during the title number) or in the round, clear pizzicato that has made him the most consistently respected bassist of the past decade, remains the most supple and subtle of artists. He takes pride in his work, in his associates, in his remarkable bass fiddle with its big sound, and in the compositions he has contributed to the books. Rosie's Spirit, named for his wife, is an energizing up-tempo sample of his writing,
Carmell Jones is the most recent Californian of the five. Born in 1936 in Kansas City, Kansas, he took up trumpet at 11, studied locally, went to the University of Kansas for two years and moved to Los Angeles in August 1960. Originally influenced by Miles Davis, and for a while by Chet Baker, he was traumatically impressed by a Clifford Brown record; it is clear from the lyrical timbre and the Brownie-like touches in much of his phrasing that he remembers Clifford very well. Samara, a slow and beguiling minor theme, is an admirable example of his promising work as a composer.
Born in Rochester, N. Y., where he studied at the Eastman School of Music, Frank Strazzeri lived in New Orleans and Las Vegas before moving to Hollywood early in 1960. He names Teddy Wilson and Bud Powell as early influences, Al Haig and Hank Jones as overall preferences. Trained empirically in every phase of jazz — he has worked in Dixieland bands as well as with Sweets Edison, Kenny Dorham and Conte Candoli — Frank has developed amazingly in the past year. He might be called a West Coast equivalent of McCoy Tyner or Wynton Kelly in terms of fluidity, technique and imagination.
Leon Petties, since he moved to L.A. from San Diego, has gigged with Buddy Collette, and worked with Shorty Rogers a few times when Shorty took over Harold's quartet en masse for a series of engagements. Petties is admired by his colleagues in the quintet for his steady time, taste and consistency.
These are the men of whom Tynan reported: "They are the happiest jazz news to sing out on the coast in years." The key word is "happiest." If you are among those who have expressed alarm at the neurotic trend in modern jazz, and are looking for a group that is fresh, vital, integrated (in both senses of the word), you will find the joyous answer in the Mitchell-Land Quintet.”
Jazz 'toons There was always music in Forrest Westbrook's house
By Robert Bush, The San Diego Reader, July 8, 2015
When local jazz pianist Forrest Westbrook passed away last year, his daughters Leslie and Yvonne had to clean out his City Heights apartment.
“We had the daunting task of clearing out 10,000 LPs, 4000 CDs, 33 speakers (hooked up!), and other audio equipment scattered about,” Leslie Westbrook informed The Reader via email. She also came across a potential treasure: “I did not know the tapes existed. Among the detritus of a lifetime, we came across...several boxes of reel-to-reels.”
The tapes included a never-released session led by Kansas City musician Carmell Jones (best known as the trumpeter on Horace Silver’s “Song for my Father”) with her father and bassist Gary Peacock.
“The process of releasing it [started with] finding a way to listen to the tapes to begin with. I didn’t know if they were still any good or how they would sound. My father had left his music to his best friend Jim West who lives in San Diego. Jim very kindly gave the tapes to me and my sister so we could try to get the music out to the world.”
Wall Street Journal writer Marc Myers put Leslie Westbrook in touch with Jordi Pujol, the founder of the Spanish record label Fresh Sound and an avid West Coast jazz fan. “So we met and talked about how we might do this. First we had to hear them! We took the tapes to an engineer in the San Fernando Valley — had a listen and went Wow! Then Jordi went about the arduous task of listening to the tapes and deciding if there was enough for a CD. There turned out to be enough for two or three.”
The mystery tapes were recorded in L.A. in 1960 and have been released on Fresh Sound as Carmell Jones: Previously Unreleased Los Angeles Session.
I asked Leslie Westbrook what she remembered about her dad the jazz musician. “Everything! I was breast-fed on jazz. I met Count Basie (and got his autograph) when my pop was working with June Christy. My father practiced his piano every day, and when I was a kid when I asked if I could watch TV, he said ‘Sure — with the volume turned off.’ So, I had a jazz soundtrack to my cartoons!
“My father was very modest, never promoted himself, and was very reluctant to record. [But] there was always music in the house.”
One often hears a lot about the vicissitudes of Life: how it moves in circles; exists in parallel universes; is always in the present because the past is a memory and the future hasn’t happened, yet.
But then, someone reaches out to you, in this case via the Jazz Journalists Association, and the next thing you know, Life is reconnecting with previous social circles and bringing past associations into the present.
I know this sounds philosophical, let alone confusing, but perhaps it will all become less so when I add a few more details about the sequence of events.
The “reaching out” was done by Leslie Westbrook, a journalist based in Carpinteria, CA [a coastal community located a few miles south of Santa Barbara].
It seems Nanette Evans, the wife of the late, iconic Jazz pianist, Bill Evans, had sent Leslie a link to my blog posting about one of Gene Lees’ Jazzletter Bill Evans essays. Gene and Bill were close friends for over twenty years [Bill died in 1980 at the age of fifty-one.]
Leslie was friends with Gene [who died in 2010] and Gene’s wife Janet who passed away in 2013.
Per the original contact message concerning Gene’s essay on Bill, I shared with Leslie that Gene had allowed me copyright permission to post a number of his Jazzletter essays on my blog as a way of experimenting with a digital format for his writings.
Leslie wrote in return that her father was pianist Forrest Westbrook and she also sent me a link to the Robert Bush San Diego Reader article on Forrest that forms the lead-in to this posting.
After I read Mr. Bush’s piece with its reference to the Fresh Sound Carmell Jones Quartet CD [FSR 867] on which her Dad, Forrest, appears with Gary Peacock on bass and Bill Schwemmer on drums, I asked her if a preview copy was available.
She graciously wrote back and indicated that she would ask Jordi to send one along.
Here’s where the small world part comes in.
In the introduction to my blog posting on Kenny Clarke I had written that Bill Schwemmer gave me one of my earliest drum lessons. The lesson contained some important points about how to play a ride cymbal beat and Bill used a recording on which Kenny Clarke plays to demonstrate this “feeling.” It was a lesson that I never forgot.
That lesson probably occurred in the summer of 1960 around the time that Forrest Westbrook along with Bill and Gary were recording with trumpeter Carmell Jones who had recently arrived in Los Angeles [August, 1960].
It also turns out that I had met her Dad, “back-in-the-day,” which I shared with her, but I didn’t tell her the context because I wanted to save it for this piece.
Sometime during the early 1960’s, Forrest Westbrook appeared at the Starlight Club with Wilfred Meadowbrooks on bass and Foreststorn Hamilton on drums.
Located at the corner of Moorpark and Tujunga in Studio City, CA, The Starlight Club is one of the many small, neighborhood bars that populate the San Fernando Valley, an area north of Los Angeles that became the home of many of the Jazz and Studio musicians based in southern California due to the surge of newly created affordable housing that filled out the Valley in the 1950s and 60s.
Off night and weekend Jazz gigs in these neighborhood cabarets abounded for the Valley-based musicians whose “day gig” often consisted of working in the Hollywood movie, TV and recording studios. [Oh, for the good old days when one could actually make a living as a musician.]
Of course, Foreststorn is better known by his nickname “Chico” and it was at this point in career that he was transitioning from “The Original Chico Hamilton Quintet” format with its woodwinds-guitar-cello front line to the quintet that he led from about 1963-66 that featured Charles Lloyd on tenor saxophone and flute, George Bohanon on trombone, Gabor Szabo on guitar and Al “Sparky” Stinson on bass.
I knew about Chico’s gig at The Starlight Room because I was friends with Sparky Stinson and we checked out the group when Sparky was talking with Chico about becoming a member of the soon-to-be-unveiled “New” Chico Hamilton Quintet.
Sparky would call and and ask me if I wanted to go with him and listen to the “Forest Meadow Forest Trio,”his take on Forrest [Westbrook], Meadow[brooks] and Forest[storn]. [Did I mention that musicians sometimes have very weird senses of humor?]
I had heard Wilfred and Chico before, but Forrest Westbrook’s piano playing was new to me and it just knocked me out. He reminded me of a cross-between Lennie Tristano and Wynton Kelly because he’d get these low rumbling riffs going on the bass keys ala Tristano while sprinkling blues-inflected single-notes phrases in the middle and higher registers of the piano; shades of Kelly at his best.
Well, one thing led to another, and Sparky and I sat in with Forrest for a portion of a last set on two, separate occasions.
It’s one thing to listen to another musician from a place in the audience, but quite another to “feel” their music from the drum chair as it is being played. Forrest really explored the piano the way that Lennie Tristano, Thelonious Monk and Cecil Taylor explored the instrument: the words free, adventurous, and unexpected come to mind. And when he went out on these forays, he expected the drummer to “stay-at-home” so as to become a beacon for his “return home” [i.e.: to more conventional playing].
You have to keep in mind that Forrest was doing this stuff years before the “Free Movement” came into vogue. In actuality it was more rhythmic displacement [where the motif is moved to different beats in a bar, keeping the motif's rhythmic structure intact.] than “Free Jazz” and some of his contemporaries including pianists Bill Evans, Paul Bley, and some of Dave Brubeck’s wild rides before he got into the odd time signatures also display this approach.
Discipline and a great awareness of where you are in the music are essential when taking liberties with Jazz structures and Forrest was absolutely masterful at this in a very non-ostentatious way. He wasn’t showing off; but he wasn’t playing it safe, either. It’s just how he heard the music. One minute he’s laying down this far out stuff and the next he’s popping single-note blues phrases that cook the time along like Count Basie, Red Garland or Wynton Kelly.
In addition to the more direct reconnections with my past associations with Forrest Westbrook and Bill Schwemmer, there was also a six-degrees-of-separations connection with bassist Gary Peacock and trumpeter Carmell Jones as I heard both of them perform at the Drift Inn, a combination seafood restaurant and Jazz Club, as members of alto saxophonist Bud Shank’s quintet which also featured Dennis Budimir on guitar and Frankie Butler on drums. Located in Malibu, California, its bamboo decor with tiki-heads popping out everywhere was very reminiscent of the early years of another beach town Jazz club - The Lighthouse Cafe - which was located further south in Hermosa Beach, Ca.
Gary and drummer Gene Stone were members of one of pianist Claire Fischer’s earliest trio and bassist Harvey Newmark and I spent a glorious afternoon auditioning with Claire at his beautiful Laurel Canyon home in the San Fernando Valley foothills when Gary went to New York and Gene joined another band.
With the exception of my reference to Bill Schwemmer’s drum lesson in the introduction to my blog posting about Kenny Clarke, all of these memories lay dormant for many, many years.
The arrival of Leslie’s note and Jordi Pujol’s kindness in sending along a preview copy of Carmell Jones Quartet CD [Fresh Sound FSR 867] shook these recollections free from my subconscious.
Here’s more about Forrest’s career from Jodi’s insert notes to the CD:
“Another rewarding thing about these early Carmell Jones recordings is to discover a pianist as highly talented as Forrest Westbrook. It is hard to understand how he remained so overlooked for so long, and that no record producer offered him a record date until years later. These recordings, found only a year ago, make the neglect of such a fine artist a matter for great regret.
Forrest, a second generation Californian, was born in Los Angeles, California on August 29, 1927. He grew up in the small town of Nuevo, California where he attended Nuevo Elementary School and Perris Valley High School. He studied piano from the age of seven and had a natural musical talent inherited from his mother, Flossie Jolly Westbrook, who played the piano and sang in church choirs.
In the 1950s, he was part of the West Coast jazz movement in Los Angeles, playing clubs, even burlesque houses, and jamming with friends at home, which always required large living rooms to accommodate his piano and audio equipment.
In July 1954, Forrest Westbrook played The Tiffany Club with the Art Pepper-Jack Montrose Quintet that included his good friend Bob Whitlock on bass, and Billy Schneider on drums. They alternated sets with the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet.
While jazz was trying to survive in a rock and roll world, Westbrook worked jazz clubs, toured with jazz singer June Christy, appearing at an NAACP benefit with Count Basie and with Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars in 1963, among other gigs and occasional studio dates. Although reluctant to record — he felt that improvisational jazz was an art that should be left to its time and space — he did record two albums. He played Electar on the first album of electronic jazz on Verve records titled: "Gil Melle Tome VI, the Jazz Electronauts". His lasting musical legacy is what he considered his real music — preserved for posterity in the album "This Is Their Time, Oh Yes!" on Bill Hardy's Revelation label.”
The following video features Forrest on Willow Weep for Me from the Carmell Jones Quartet CD [Fresh Sound FSR 867].
