Harold in the Land of Jazz [From the Archives]

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

The “Harold” in the title of this piece is tenor saxophonist Harold Land [1928-2001]. If you were an Los Angeles based Jazz fan or musician, “Harold” would have been enough as he was a widely-respected player in this city’s Jazz scene for over half-a-century, although, sadly, not as well known outside of it.

At a round-table discussion on West Coast jazz held in 1988, Buddy Collette offered a few words about fellow saxophonist Harold Land:

"Harold"s been one of the finest tenor players I've heard and I have hardly heard a write-up about what this man has been doing through the years. . . . I've known him for 30 years, 35 years, and he's been playing jazz morning, noon and night. ... In New York he would have gotten more."

"It is all too telling that Harold Land is best remembered in the jazz world for the brief time he was performing on the East Coast with the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet. Land's thirty-five years of exceptional work since that time are often treated as an elaborate footnote to this early apprenticeship. The recordings, however, tell no lies. They document Land's major contributions to jazz both during and after his work with Brown and Roach. They reveal that he was one of the most potent voices on the West Coast scene throughout the period.

Those aware of Land's origins in Houston, Texas, where he was born on February 18, 1928, often hear a lingering Texas tenor sound in his playing. In fact, Land and his family spent only a few months in the Lone Star State. Soon his family moved to Arizona, and just a few years later they settled in San Diego. At an early age Land began taking piano lessons, at the instigation of his mother, but switched to tenor after hearing Coleman Hawkins's influential 1939 recording of "Body and Soul.""

- Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz, Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960

After gaining experience with local bands in San Diego he moved to Los Angeles, where he joined the quintet led by Clifford Brown and Max Roach as a replacement for Teddy Edwards. He was with this band for 18 months, but left to play with Curtis Counce (1956-8). Land then led his own groups, or shared leadership with Red Mitchell (1961-2) and Bobby Hutcherson (1967-71); in the 1950s and 1960s he also worked with the Gerald Wilson Big Band. From 1975 to 1978 he led a quintet with Blue Mitchell, and thereafter has worked as a freelance, mainly in California but also touring overseas.

It seems that the only two people who did not lament tenor saxophonist Harold Land’s continuance with the initial version of the legendary quintet led by drummer Max Roach and trumpeter Clifford Brown were Harold and me.

When I asked Harold about his decision to quit the group and return to Los Angeles for family reasons, he said: “Do you know how often I get asked that question? I have no regrets. For the last 45 years I’ve been in the California sunshine near my family and friends. Going on the road is a drag, nothin’ but hard times. The work here has been all right over the years and I’m happy sleepin’ in my own bed at night.”

I really enjoyed having Harold’s unique tenor sax sound, a sound that was so different than many of the Lester Young inspired tones on the West Coast Jazz scene, within driving distance and it was always a gas to hear him play in Jazz clubs or concert venues as a member of Gerald Wilson or Oliver Nelson’s big bands or as the co-leader in groups he fronted with trumpeter Red Mitchell, vibist Bobby Hutcherson and trumpeter Blue Mitchell.

Sadly feature articles about Harold in Jazz publications were a rarity, but I did find this in -

down beat

June 6, 1960

A VOICE IN THE WESTERN LAND

by John Tynan

“Harold  Land, one of the  towering figures on contemporary-jazz tenor saxophone and standard-bearer of the new jazz on the west coast, isn't out to prove a thing to anybody but himself.

Living in Los Angeles since he left the Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet some four years ago, the quiet, serious Land has been content to take his chances with the rest of the jazz branch of Local 47, AFM, and take his gigs where he finds them. Currently leading a quintet at Los Angeles' Masque club, he is decidedly optimistic about the present state of modern jazz in the southern slice of the Golden State.

Since his Roach-Brown days, Land said, the music and the musicians in the L.A. area have taken an upward turn. "It has improved," he commented, "especially in recent months. The few new jazz clubs that have opened have helped a lot; also the jazz concerts we've had recently have done much to re-stimulate interest."

During the last couple of years Los Angeles has become notorious among musicians as a jazz graveyard where night-club work is concerned. Land, however, somehow has managed to work with reasonable consistency in this drought.

"Having a place to play makes a world of difference to the musician — because just playing at home just doesn't make it at all," he commented dryly. "The musicians of Los Angeles have had so few places to play jazz; that's been one the biggest holdbacks. It meant that the few sessions that were going on would be dominated by just the few cats who showed up early and this made the sessions less enjoyable for the rest.

"Also, this situation made it very hard to keep a group together."

Land is frank in admitting his inclination to take things for granted in the development of jazz in Los Angeles. "There have been important changes in the playing of local musicians," he said, "but being so closely involved with my own playing, possibly I've been inclined to take these changes in stride."

In Land's view, Los Angeles musicians generally "seem  more conscientious than they were five years ago." Why? "It's rather hard to say, but for one

thing, there are countless musicians being influenced by what they hear from the east coast."

And is this increasing influence restricted only to the Negro jazzmen?

"No, I can hear this influence in the playing of both white and colored musicians."

In Land's view, Miles Davis and his more recent associates have been the most important influences on jazz musicians generally in recent years, "Miles, 'Trane, Cannonball and the 'Rhythm Section' (Philly Joe Jones, Paul Chambers, and Red Garland) have been the main influence," he said.

Why?

"For one thing, it's in the way they work as a unit. This is outstanding. Then, too, each individual's playing is important. As a matter of fact, the individuals' influence has been the most important factor, in my opinion.

"You could possibly say that these are the most influential men in jazz today, as I see it."

While not exclusively signed with any record company, Land can count albums under his own name on Contemporary Records (Harold in the Land of

Jazz) and High Fidelity Records (The Fox). Moreover, he has played as side-man on more jazz LPs than he can count.

Today he sums up his aim succinctly: "I want to get said as much as I possibly can on the instrument in my own group or in any group where I could be happy. Or to be playing in a group where all the musicians would be completely in accord; to me this is the ultimate in playing."

"Yet," Land added with more than a suggestion of wistfulness, "that's only happened once—with the Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet. That was the happiest musical family I've ever been in. With Max, Clifford, Richie Powell, and George Morrow, every night was more exciting than the one before.

"It can happen again. But it hasn't happened completely as yet with the musicians I've been working with."

Land's search for the perfect empathy may well be as elusive as he contends, but observers have noted a remarkable musical rapport between the tenorist and the drummer with whom he apparently prefers to work, Frank Butler. Still, Land refuses to commit himself on this point for fear of offending other musicians.

Since his days with Roach and Brown, Land now feels that he has matured. "I have more to offer," he said. "I've learned a bit more since then."

For all his love of big-band sounds, he is happiest, he said, playing with small groups because of the blowing freedom this affords. But "a serious big band is beautiful," he remarked, "and I guess Gil Evans, Ernie Wilkins, and Quincy Jones are among my favorite arrangers. And don't leave out Gil Fuller and John Lewis and their charts for Dizzy Gillespie's big band years ago. This has been a long time ago, but age doesn't make any difference. They were good then, and they're still good."

Land is a typically west coast jazz son. Born in Houston, Texas, 31 years ago, he was reared and schooled in San Diego, Calif., which he left for Los Angeles eight years ago to seek his fortune. While pecuniary fortune may have eluded him thus far, he ranks today among the highest artistic earners in the top tenor bracket.”

Fortunately Harold does have a considerable discography and I thought it might be fun to focus on Harold in the Land of Jazz Contemporary 162-2, OJCCD 162-2 one of his earliest recordings as its always been among my favorites for a variety of reasons including [1] his front line pairing with Swedish-born trumpeter Rolf Ericsson, [2] a hard-driving rhythm section made up of Carl Perkins, piano, Leroy Vinnegar, bass and Frank Butler, drums, [3] six intriguing original compositions by Harold, Carl Perkins and pianist Elmo Hope, [4] some sophisticated hard bop arrangements by Harold and Elmo, including their take on the standards Speak Low and You Don’t Know What Love Is, and last but not least, [5] the following informative and instructive liner notes by Nat Hentoff, whose collective writings were one of my earliest sources of information about Jazz.

As an added feature, I’ve posted individual videos of the 8 tracks in the order that they appear on the CD version of the recording at the end of Nat’s notes so that you can sample the music on this recording at your leisure.

IN VIEW OF THE CURRENT VOGUE among musicians of such terms as "earthy" and "roots" when appraising the authenticity of a jazzman, I cannot resist noting the aptness of Harold Land's name in this alfresco context. His playing is as deeply rooted in jazz tradition as anyone's now in jazz. His capacity for communicating the blues, his wholeness of pulsation and his insistence on "keeping the emotion free" when he plays — all these elements make him a modernist whose language would not be alien to Sidney Bechet or Tommy Ladnier or Speckled Red.

Harold's reputation among musicians has been increasing rapidly in the past three years, and most jazzmen returning East after a Western campaign would agree with John Tynan of Down Beat that "Land ... of current California tenorists, consistently proves his leadership in the realm of ideas and uninhibition." British critic Tony Hall extends his accolade beyond state lines when he describes Land as "one of the most satisfying, soulful, exciting, inventive and highly personal tenors in jazz today."

It's to be hoped that this beginning chorus of international hosannas — and this, his first LP as leader — will finally bring Harold some of the wider public recognition and attendant gigs his jazz quality merits. Several months ago, Vic Feldman wrote to me his conviction that Land "is for my money the best tenor on any coast. The other day he told me that he is seriously thinking of taking a day job if nothing more happens soon," Some weeks later, during a time when his future didn't seem quite as bleak, I asked Land what advice he might have for a young musician, and his quick answer nonetheless was: "Be a plumber." Yet, when you hear him play, it will become insistently evident, I feel, that were Land given a chance to start life again, he'd wind up with some kind of horn, if only a vocationally, because jazz is so unselfconsciously essential a part of his self-expression.

Harold was born December 18, 1928, in Houston, Texas, but from the age of five, he was raised in San Diego. His interest in music didn't become activated until high school, "Colernan Hawkins and Body and Soul had a lot to do with drawing me in," he recalls. When he was about 16, his family bought him a saxophone; he took private lessons for a little over half a year; and "ever since, I've learned it on my own." In 1946, as he came out of high school, Land started playing professionally around San Diego. "I played clubs, casuals, every type of gig —picnics too." Lucky Thompson meanwhile became a strong influence because of "his fluidity and his beautiful, big, round sound," Around 1948, Land heard Charlie Parker and was intensely drawn to his "completely new approach in terms of phrasing, sound and harmonic conception, and yet I also realized that all this was just his inner voice - there was no way for it to come out any other way."

In 1954, Land moved to Los Angeles and "it was crackers and peanut butter for quite a while." Later that year, however, Clifford Brown brought Max Roach to a jam session in Los Angeles because he'd heard a tenor he liked. Max hired Land, and Harold stayed with the Roach-Brown unit a little over two years. He left the group and returned to the Coast when his grandmother, to whom he was closely attached, was stricken with what turned out to be a fatal illness.

Land feels his time with Roach and Brown was valuable in broadening his scope. "Working side by side with such a tremendous musician as Clifford Brown," explains Land, "was inspiring each night. He was such a master of phrasing." Back in Los Angeles, Land has worked with the Curtis Counce unit (with whom he appears along with Carl Perkins and Frank Butler on Contemporary CS 526 and CJ 559) and has headed his own group intermittently.

The late Carl Perkins (born August 16, 1928 in Indianapolis, died March 16, 1958 in Los Angeles) is described by his childhood friend, Leroy Vinnegar, as "the kind of musician who played right with you; who played the things you heard. He not only played the chords, he played the beauty in the chords — his own way. And his time was perfect. In that respect he was what you'd call a rhythm section pianist. A man with time like Carl's was so important to a bassist, because you're supposed to play those changes together.”

Harold Land, who selected Perkins, as he did all the musicians for this set, spoke of Carl as "a completely individual player who was also able to provide such warmth in his accompaniment. His chord constructions were beautiful; his solos were always interesting; he knew how to use space so that his phrasing too was beautiful. And there was no end to the funk in his playing."

Bassist Leroy Vinnegar, who has appeared frequently on Contemporary and whose first album as a leader is Leroy Walks! (Contemporary C542) was born July 3, 1928, in Indianapolis; has been in Los Angeles since 1954; and has worked with Barney Kessel, Art Tatum, Stan Getz, a year and a half with Shelly Manne, as well as heading his own units.

Drummer Frank Butler, whose initial recording appearance was on the first volume of The Curtis Counce Group (Contemporary C3526) was born February 18, 1928, in Wichita, Kansas; was raised in Kansas City; worked in San Francisco for a time from 1949. playing with Dave Brubeck and Billie Holiday, among others; moved to Southern California and a stay with Edgar Hayes; traveled the country with his own trio; played with Duke Ellington in 1954; and later worked with Perez Prado and Curtis Counce. "Frank," notes Land, "is completely relaxed at all tempos and at the same time, provides a constant spark. He's an authentic individualist."

Trumpeter Rolf Ericsson was born in Stockholm, Sweden, August 29, 1927, and came to the United States in 1947 where he worked with Benny Carter, Charlie Barnet, Elliot Lawrence, Charlie Ventura and Woody Herman. He was back in Sweden from 1950-1952; and during his second American stay, he played with Charlie Spivak, Stan Kenton, Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars, Harry James, and Les Brown. He toured Sweden with an American combo in the summer of 1956, and has been working in the States since. "I like the way Rolf plays," says Land, "because of his conception and the fact that he too plays with a spark."

Speak Low is a song that Land has liked for a long time, and he used to play it often with the Max Roach group.

Delirium is by Harold, and its title was suggested to him by the seemingly unending flow of sixteen bar phrases. There is, then, a quality of corybantic "delirium" to this concept of phrases into infinity.

You Don't Know What Love Is is one of Harold's favorite ballads. His interpretation, for this listener, is a moving experience in controlled intensity and in a jazzman's ability to make the most familiar standard an urgently personal statement.

Nieta is by Elmo Hope, the pianist-composer-arranger, who collaborated with Land on the arrangements for the album. The song intrigues Land because "the chords in the channel are like the surrounding eights, but he changes the melody so it doesn't sound that way. Hope is another man who hasn't yet been sufficiently recognized. You'll hear in this song how differently lie can set his progressions from most other writers,"

Carl Perkins' ironically titled, Grooveyard, Land feels, "expresses a great deal of the essence of Carl's style — the voicings of the chords, the way the melody is constructed, and the way he phrases." Perkins' work in this, his last composition, is a particularly cogent example of how thoroughly a player can be rooted in jazz tradition — and in the current "soulful" extension of that tradition — and yet be strikingly personal. The same is true of Land. "After all," says Land, "what 'soul' means is the expression of your own soul through everything you've lived and felt."

Lydia's Lament, also by Land, is named for his wife. "I guess it refers to her sadder moments. The idea of the song was that I just wanted to try to portray a mood of some depth and sadness."

Smack Up, another by Land, received its title because the first phrase brought the words "smack up" to Harold's mind. All he feels is necessary to say about its structure is that "the middle goes into a sort of minor movement. His playing here, as throughout the set, indicates his continuing search for what he terms "a freer way of playing tenor, one that's more emotionally stimulating and more adventurous than, let's say, the 'four brothers approach." Land would not call either his playing or the collective work of the group an example of any "hard school" of jazz. "The term has no meaning to me," he adds, "because I can't think of any approach that's warmer than what we believe in."”

[N.B.: Promised Land the 8th track on the CD was not included on the original LP]

By NAT HENTOFF May 10, 1958

Nat Hentoff is the well-known jazz critic and author, He writes regularly on both jazz and non-jazz subjects for a host of magazines, has also co-authored two books: Hear Me Talkin' to Ya & The Jazz Makers (with Nat Shapiro) both published by Rinehart. 

Cover photo hy Walter Zerlinden         

Cover design by Guidi/Tri-Arts

Victor Feldman: A Long Way from Piccadilly by John Tynan

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

Strictly speaking, I know he was just doing his job as the West Coast Editor of Down Beat [1955-1965], but if John Tynan had not written profiles about them for the magazine, many of the superb Jazz musician performing on “The Left Coast” would have gone from relative obscurity to total obscurity.

As a case in point, the following piece covers approximately the first decade of Victor Feldman’s career in the United States and I daresay that without the stints he had with Cannonball’s group and the recordings he made with Miles Davis for Columbia, only his fellow musicians and fans in Los Angeles, CA would known about the work of this standout player.

“THE SHOCKED-HAIRED kid in the white shirt presented an appealing picture to the packed house as he mounted the stool behind a set of drums almost as tall as he was. Around him the tested veterans of Glenn Miller's famed AEF orchestra nudged one another. Waiting for Major Miller's downbeat, they watched the youngster heft the sticks. They smiled encouragement. Then, as the kid slammed the band into the opening measures of the first number, audience and sidemen alike knew suddenly that Victor Feldman, aged 10, had arrived.

"It was easy to see that the kid had a whole lot of talent," said an ex-Miller sideman recently. "We knew then that his future in music was going to be an escalator up."

From the huge city on the Thames, where Feldman was born on April 7, 1934, to the bucolic suburbia of Woodland Hills, Calif., where he now lives with his wife, Marilyn, and infant son, Joshua, stretches a highway of musical aspiration and achievement unusual in jazz.

With a plethora of dues-paying in his wake, Feldman at 29 is considered by those alert to what is vital in contemporary jazz as one of the more fertile pianists now active and a vibraharpist of strength, skill, and an inventiveness almost on a par with his piano prowess.

But what today of the drumming that caused him to be heralded at 7 in England's music press as "child genius," "Kid Krupa," and like superlatives?

Recently, after a 2:30 p.m. breakfast of hotcakes and honey at his home (he works with his trio nightly at The Scene in Hollywood until 2 a.m.), he discussed at length the chain of circumstances that led him virtually to abandon drums in favor of piano and vibes. Feldman delved back to beginnings.

"I started playing when I was about 6," he began, his English-accented voice still furred from sleep. "I started on drums."

His older brothers, he went on, were "always rehearsing, having group rehearsals. I got brought up in that environment. I guess I had some kind of natural ability, and I started to play.

"What happened was that my uncle had been a very prominent and fine drummer. He came around to the house and heard me play and decided it would be good if I played in public with my brothers. Bob played clarinet and Monty played accordion,  and later piano."

The Feldman trio was to endure as a working and celebrated jazz group from 1941 till '48, years during which it played in a variety of settings and for wartime causes such as Red Cross benefits and Aid-to-Russia fund drives.

"At 9," Feldman continued, "I took piano lessons from a local teacher who taught me kind of farmyard tunes. I think maybe my ear must have been a bit developed then, because I hated to play them. And the effort was enough to learn to read. It was kind of very hard for me to learn to read."

"Meanwhile, I was playing drums all the time," Feldman emphasized. "I was playing concerts and so on. I wanted a set of vibes. I used to go into the drum shop and mess around with the xylophone and marimbas. I used to love it. But I couldn't seem to get my wish. You know, it was a lot of money, particularly in England at that time. It was during the war; money was scarce. I can understand now why I didn't get it at that time. I finally did get a set of vibes when I was about 13. I remember coming home from school and setting them up. It was very exciting."

Study with Carlo Krahmer, a well-known London mallet man, followed, and the teenaged vibist began to blossom under tuition. But for the broader aspects of musical learning, Feldman's parents sent him, when he was about 15, to the London College of Music. Here the youngster came a cropper, not so much over his studies but because of his teacher's attitudes.

"This guy," he recalled unsentimentally, "used to put jazz down, and he used to bring racial prejudice into it. And that really made me hate him. He used to say something about the colored guys on Tottenham Court Road. I felt resentment swelling in me. I wanted to say something but I didn't have the tools of expression to tell him off. Besides, in England you're the little one and he's the big man.

Anyway, I went into the harmony class in the middle of the term, and I didn't really get too much out of that. In fact, I quit after a few months."

THE NEW SOUNDS of bebop began hypnotizing younger British jazzmen after the war. By the time Feldman's interlude at the London College of Music had raced its unhappy course, bop had taken firm hold. In the jazz clubs and hangouts throughout London's west end, local trumpeters aped Dizzy Gillespie, Fats Navarro, and Miles Davis. Drummers kloop-mopped with Kenny Clarke and dropped bombs a la Max Roach. And the alto sax men were little Birds to a fledgling.

"My brothers took me down to the Club 11, where everything was changing musically," Feldman said.

For Feldman, his drumming influences up till the entry of bop had been, he said, Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich— and from records, at that. "I'd prefer to say Buddy Rich than Gene Krupa," he confessed in latter-day cognizance. "But by the time I went down to the bebop club, I'd been listening. I'd heard Charlie Parker. I hadn't heard Kenny Clarke yet. That was to come."

In the Feldman home some discord jangled. "My parents wanted me to go into a trade," he said. "You know, something 'in case you can't make a living.' "

With both brothers not dependent on music for a living, the youngest felt himself ill-equipped to argue the point. Besides, he was bogged at the time in a period of adolescent indecision.

"I went and stared," he said somberly, "outside the tailor and cutter on Gerrard St. But I couldn't make that. I'd been playing since I was 7, where my brothers started playing when they were 14, 15. So it was harder to make my parents understand that I couldn't do anything else. Yet I understood their point. So it was kind of frustrating."

One day at the Club 11, Tony Crombie, a drummer prominent on London's modern-jazz scene, gave Feldman's burgeoning career a decisive nudge.

"He gave me a chord chart he'd written himself," he recalled and smiled. "I remember he charged me five shillings for it.

"I started voicing chords on the piano. And then somebody else gave me the chords to Embraceable You the way Bird used to play it — the altered changes and so on. It took me a long time to figure it out.

"Sometimes when I teach the occasional pupils I have now, I give the chart to them. It seems to help them a lot so far as voicing chords and everything."

Still predominantly a drummer, Feldman became an habitue of the Club 11, a fuzz-cheeked fixture of the bop groups blowing there. Gradually, he said, he turned to comping chords on piano ("It kind of opened up something for me"). Pretty soon he was alternating between drums and piano. Then he began playing vibes.

Feldman believes his father, now deceased, helped him get his first professional band job with pianist Ralph Sharon. (Sharon since 1953 has lived in the United States. He is now music director for singer Tony Bennett.) This meant one-night stands and a trip to Switzerland with the Sharon band in 1949.

Feldman, in company with many another musician, abhors one-nighters and road work in general, but after he left Sharon and joined Roy Fox, the one-night stands continued — as did Feldman's misery with the execrable food, the abominable weather, and the grueling schedule. Now he was paying dues.

Just about the time the sun was setting on the British empire, Feldman was auditioning for the piano chair with Eddie Carroll's band for an extended engagement in India. Then he was summoned for military duty.

"The idea of going to India," he said, "really fascinated me. I wanted to get away from the English weather, and I wasn't very well, anyway. The [Carroll] band was very commercial, and the guys were very nice and good musicians. It was just that that brand of music wasn't my type. But I went along with it and did the audition. About three days later I got called up."

It was as though the bottom had fallen out of his life.

"It didn't seem like I was going to be put in the band or anything," he recalled gloomily. "I hated the army or anything like that. . . .

"I remember Eddie got me deferred. He had been a lieutenant, I think. I was supposed to report when I got back from India. I didn't report when I got back. You can quote any of that; I don't care. They can't do anything. Some people in America might read it and say, 'Golly, he's not patriotic—he hates the army.'"

RETURNED TO England from India in 1953, Feldman said he was starved for a steady jazz job. He joined Ronnie Scott's band, a modern little-big outfit with trumpet, trombone, four reeds, vibes, and rhythm section.

It was during Feldman's tenure with this band that he made the crucial decision to emigrate to the United States.

He recalled:

"I remember Ronnie saying — and I respected him and still do  —one day in a café, with a certain look in his face, that Victor ought to go to America. The way he said it, he seemed so sure. I had been thinking of it in my mind, and it gave me added confidence."

Feldman after that directed his thinking more and more toward the U.S.

"We played for nothing at an American base," he said of Scott's band, "just so we could hear Woody Herman's band. You see, there weren't any American bands coming over to England at that time. The union ban was still on. So I heard my first American band with adult ears since Glenn Miller. I was just knocked out completely."

Feldman met and became friendly with such Herman sidemen of the time as trumpeter Al Porcino, drummer Chuck Flores, baritone sax man Jack Nimitz, tenor man Bill Perkins, trumpeter Dick Collins, bassist Red Kelly, pianist Nat Pierce, and bass trumpeter Cy Touff. Their brief encounter with the young Englishman was probably forgotten by most of them, but later, in New York, it was to be happily remembered.

In October, 1955, Feldman made the plunge and sailed on the French liner Liberte, landing in New York City on Oct. 25. He said:

"I stayed in the Manhattan Towers Hotel on 91st St. Then I went 'round to Charlie's, and I started to meet musicians. They were very, very friendly, I found. It was very nice. If it hadn't been like that, I probably would've gone back in a couple of weeks."

Feldman sweated out his Local 802 union card for the prescribed three months, working casuals; his first in America, he recalled, was with a group led by trombonist Willie Dennis. It was an anxious, frustrating period, a baptism by fire of sorts in the New York jazz jungle. "I had my return ticket in case I couldn't make it here," he said.

Fate, as they say, took a hand in Feldman's destiny. Woody Herman's band was in town, and Feldman ran into Cy Touff.

"Cy asked me if I was interested in going with the band," he recalled. "He said Woody would be interested. Woody spoke to me about joining the band. . . .

"I didn't want to go on the road. Even as great a feeling as it was — to go with Woody's band — I just didn't want to go on the road, 'cause I know how my physical and mental capabilities work on the road. It's a bit too rough for the kind of personality I am. But naturally I just couldn't turn it down. I wasn't working much in town and Woody was so nice and everything. He made me feel so relaxed.

"I went with the band [playing vibes]. . . . Woody went overboard to make me feel relaxed. He said I could wear whatever I wanted on the stand."

Off and running in his first "name" job in the United States, Feldman found himself on the band bus with many of the Herdsmen he had met in England as well as such men as pianist Vince Guaraldi, tenor man Bob Hardaway, trumpeter John Coppola, and others.

Following nine months with the Herd, on the road constantly, Feldman welcomed a respite from one-night stands when Herman disbanded and took a small group to work in Las Vegas. But Vegas didn't appeal to him. ("To have to live in Vegas is like having to live in a madhouse. It's like a cup of money jingling all over the place. Completely ridiculous.")

Feldman first visited California with Herman's small group.

"I liked the West Coast," he said. "I'd been hearing about it. Vince [Guaraldi] was telling me about it, and he said he thought I'd like it better out here. He was right. I feel there's more of a compromise between the European way of life and the New York madhouse."

WHEN  HERMAN'S small group disbanded for a vacation, Feldman returned to England for a couple of months in 1957. Since then he has been back a half-dozen times.

"The first time," he recalled with a smile, "it was funny to see the smaller roads and the smaller cars. Everything was of different dimensions. After having been in Vegas, when I went back to England it was like going to a rest home."

Back in this country after his visit home, Feldman rejoined the Herman band and took a medical examination for U.S. Army induction. He passed the medical.

"This thing was haunting me again," he said candidly. "I knew that I'd have to come back to America and serve in the army — or might have to serve in the army — or I could just decide not to go back. I decided to come back and take my chance.

"I failed the second medical. I have a chest - an asthma thing there." That settled that.

"I was with Woody for quite a number of months," he said of his second stint as vibist with the Herd. "I just couldn't stand one-night stands anymore. Against the advice of musicians who'd been out to L.A., I decided that I was going to come out here. I rented a car. It was one of those deals where you drive the car out. I got taken on that. I never got the money back at the end of the trip — and I needed the money like mad. I got to L.A. with $150-$200."

Before locating a cheap apartment in Hollywood, Feldman stayed at the homes of Monty Budwig and Bob Hardaway. Then he began exploring the jazz scene.

"I met Leroy Vinnegar and played with him. And I met Carl Perkins. Carl showed me a lot. I learned a lot just from watching him play and going around to his house. He didn't know the name of any chord, hardly; he didn't know much more than what a C minor or a C major was, or a major or minor chord. But the way he voiced his chords — I never heard anything like it in my life."

At first, Feldman played many jobs around Los Angeles still on drums, working for the rent.

"I was very fortunate," he said, "in winding up playing at the Lighthouse. I went and played there one day, and a couple of weeks later I got a call to work there. I ended up working at the Lighthouse for 18 months." At the Lighthouse he played both vibes and piano.

"The Lighthouse was what set me on my feet," he went on, "because it was a steady gig. Howard [Rumsey] was very nice to me, and it was a ball playing with Rosolino and Levey and Conte [Candoli]. Bob Cooper, too. It was a very relaxed atmosphere."

While still at the Lighthouse, Feldman began getting more and more calls for a variety of record dates. He got movie studio calls too. Gradually he stopped playing drums altogether.

He finally left the Lighthouse, he said, "because I felt I had been in one place too long and I was getting the feeling I had in England. Musically, you can stay in one place just so long. If it is a jazz gig that's what can happen. If it's a commercial thing, that's something else."

The Victor Feldman Trio began making appearances around the Los Angeles area. Bob Whitlock was the trio's bassist, as now; the drummer at the time was John Clauder. The present drummer is fellow-Englishman Colin Bailey.

While his trio was working at a now-defunct Hollywood jazz room, Feldman first met Marilyn; he married her some nine months later.

"I decided all of a sudden," he said, "that I'd like to take her to England." He had saved some money, and away went the newly weds. In the three months they were gone, Feldman played at the Blue Note in Paris and appeared with Kenny Clarke on a Dinah Shore TV special.

Before the England-France trip, however, another important jazz element entered his life:

"Cannonball Adderley called me about a month before I went back to England. He called me to make a record with Ray Brown, Wes Montgomery, Louis Hayes, and himself. It completely knocked me out."

Then, while in England, Feldman received a cable from Adderley with a definite offer of a job as pianist-vibist with the altoist's group.

"I was very knocked out about that," Feldman said.

The first job he played with the Adderley group was the  1960 Monterey Jazz Festival. ("I remember we played This Here that night, and I got lost on it.")

But life on the road with Cannonball began to be the same old thing after awhile, and Marilyn was now pregnant. He said: "I was getting that old feeling back again about being on the road, which I'd been on since I was 15. Although I was having a ball playing, there was this tug of war going on with me. Had I been single, I would have stayed maybe a little longer."

He left Adderley in 1961.

Back in Hollywood, Feldman found things "very slow." It is invariably "very slow" for a musician active in studio work after he returns from a stint of road work; the contacts he's made and the contractors who hire musicians for such work tend to forget about him. Out of sight, out of mind. The musician comes back and starts from scratch.

After a couple of months, however, Feldman had an offer to go with Peggy Lee. The singer was to work for six weeks in England, then head south for the French Riviera for 10 days. So it was back on the jet for Victor Feldman.

After Peggy Lee, Feldman's activity with his trio increased. He recorded the music from the show Stop the World, I Want to Get Off for Pacific Jazz, and the score of A Taste of Honey for Infinity.

Last summer, in a domestic musical atmosphere curiously clouded with parochial recrimination, the Benny Goodman Band flew off on a special tour of the USSR. Feldman went along.

"There's always this temptation to travel," said Feldman. "There was something about that I couldn't turn down. I take an interest in world affairs. I wanted to see for myself what it was like. I always felt that both sides have such a lot of propaganda. Most of my ideas were confirmed. . . ."

VICTOR FELDMAN is such a busy Hollywood musician these days that his wife frequently despairs at seeing so little of him, as she puts it.

He is now signed to an exclusive recording contract with Fred Astaire's Ava records. One of the first recording projects under the pact was to record an album of compositions by Russian jazz musicians unearthed by Leonard Feather during his trip to Russia to hear the Goodman band. Recently the Feldman trio cut for Ava the soundtrack music from the highly praised picture David and Lisa.

"The other day," Feldman said with considerable relish, "I was fortunate enough to record with Miles Davis. When I was 16, I went to Paris with a friend of mine. Charlie Parker was supposed to play; he never did play there. But meanwhile, we'd walk along the Paris streets and I'd be singing Miles Davis solos. We'd learnt them off the records. I'd never, ever thought that I would record with Miles."

And it is a long way from Piccadilly, isn't it?”

Source:

June 6, 1963

Down Beat