Part 2 - "My Friend, Buddy D." - Terry Gibbs

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

This is from Terry Gibbs’ autobiography - Good Vibes: A Life in Jazz [Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2003].

"Buddy and I were really meant for each other. They say that opposites attract and onstage, we work completely different. Offstage, we were pretty much alike, but onstage. Buddy worked more routinely than I did. He would almost make the same announcement every time, where I never knew what I was going to say. One time when he started to make the same announcement that he had made the night before on the same song, I stopped him and said "This is jazz. You can't say the same thing that you said last night. We may have the same people that we had last night and they want to hear you say something different."

We were great for each other in that Buddy took no prisoners when he played. When you follow his playing, you'd better play good. He kept me honest and I kept him loose. My philosophy has always been that when you're playing music, you've got to be serious. But in between songs, be like you are off the bandstand. Buddy has a great sense of humor and is very funny. So now, when we work together, whether it is a little club or a big festival, we have fun on the bandstand.

Buddy has a lavalier mic that he attaches to his tie so that it picks up the notes on the clarinet evenly. Sometimes if he's playing with a regular mic on a stand in front of him, and he moves to either side, some notes would get lost. That's why he uses that lavalier mic. I was going to make an announcement on a mic that was on a stand close to where Buddy was standing and when I went to talk, the mic wasn't working. So I went to Buddy's mike on his tie, which is near where his belly button would be, and made my announcement from his belly. Buddy just stood there and played straight for me.

I haven't taken my vibes on the road with me for the last twenty-five years. The promoter or club owner supplies a set of vibes for me wherever I play. I usually get to see the vibes and adjust them before I go on stage. I have a run that I make and if that sounds fairly good, then it's straight ahead. I never know what kind of instrument they're getting for me and even though they may all look alike, they're still all different. To start with, different companies make different sounding bars and some sets are taller than others. There's always something that's not to my liking, but at least I get to see the set before we play.

We were on tour in Europe and were playing at the Cork Festival in Cork. Ireland. We got there about a half-hour before we had to play, but the vibes were already on stage, so I couldn't get a chance to adjust them. When we were announced, I went on stage and being that I work very loose, I made my usual run on the vibes to see what adjustments it needed. After I make that dumb run, I usually say, "And now for my second song . . ." This way, they think that I'm trying to be funny. I usually have to adjust the bars so that they're not pressing against the damper bar, which could make them sound dead. I usually have to loosen the damper bar so I can make them sound livelier. When I made my dumb run, every note rang into the next one. You couldn't tell one note from another. There is a metal tube about a foot and a half long that connects the damper bar to the pedal. That's what I would normally adjust. When I went to adjust that, I saw that instead of the metal tube, there was a piece of thread connecting the damper bar to the pedal. I was afraid to fool with that, because if it broke, the whole vibes set was liable to collapse, right on the stage. I played the whole concert like that, with every note ringing into the next one. If anybody is familiar with my playing they know that I play a lot of notes. The weirdest thing was that we got a standing ovation and I was never so embarrassed in all my life.

I don't really play for an audience. I want them to like what I'm playing but if I don't think that I played good, then I go home sick. I have to like what I'm playing first.

Now for the weirdest part of the story. About six months later. Buddy went back to Cork and played the festival with three clarinet players. Some man came over to him and said, "Would you please deliver a message to Mr. Gibbs when you see him? Please tell him that I enjoyed his performance so much when you were here together, I went and bought those vibes that he played on." That guy had to be either a complete idiot or he was in love with me.

Sometimes when Buddy and I were booked in Europe together, we wouldn't see each other until we got to the stage where we were performing. I live in Los Angeles and he lives in Florida so we get to Europe at different times. We met on stage in Germany for the Berlin Jazz Festival. When Buddy walked towards me, he looked strange. We hugged when we saw each other, but his face looked weird. He said, "Is there anything wrong with my face? It feels like I have a bump in my jaw." What bump? It looked like somebody added another face to his face. I didn't want to panic him. because at that time, cancer was starting to get to a lot of people and that's the first thing that came to my mind. I don't know how he played the concert, but he did and sounded very good. When he got home and took all kinds of tests, he found out he was allergic to a lot of different foods, including wheat, and he had to stay away from pasta for a few years. Can you imagine telling an Italian not to eat pasta? That's like telling Buddy not to play the clarinet for a year.

My Dream Band CDs were now out and doing very well and I wanted to record with Buddy because Palo Alto Records had gone out of business. We needed CDs out so we could get some work. I talked with Dick Bock, who helped me produce the Dream Band albums and thought we'd do another live date. We got a booking in Chicago at Joe Segal's Jazz Showcase. We were there for six days. Even though Buddy and I were co-leaders, he let me run the show.

We talked about songs we were going to record and then I wrote little arrangements for them. Buddy is a good arranger but he let me do them anyway. Plus, he liked the original songs that I wrote. I didn't want to just go in and jam, so after writing the melodies out with the little syncopations, I would always write interludes between the choruses. For the first three days we were at the Jazz Showcase, we played the songs that we were going to record. It was sort of a rehearsal, so that when we recorded the next three days, we wouldn't have to have our noses in the music.

Buddy was starting to remind me more and more of Benny Goodman. He was really into the clarinet and practiced every day. The clarinet was his life. Also like Benny, he was getting a little foggy. During those first three days, he kept forgetting the interlude that I wrote on

Horace Silver's song, "Sister Sadie." So I said to him, "After you finish playing your choruses, you have to play the interlude with me, because if I come in alone, it will sound like a mistake. I have an idea. I almost know when you're through with your choruses, so I'll lean over my vibes and to get your attention, I'll wave my right hand, and that will give you the cue for the interlude." He said, "Great. Wave your hand and that will remind me to come in with the interlude."

The next day, we started to record. We were playing "Sister Sadie" and when I figured that Buddy was about to finish playing, I leaned over my vibes and waved my right hand to cue him for the interlude. He saw me waving, stopped playing, got a bewildered look on his face, and said, "What do you want?" That broke up the band. He eventually got it all straightened out and the date came out great.

The band was getting tighter every night. We just finished playing "Fifty-Second Street Theme," the song that Bird and Diz closed their sets with, and we played it real fast. Neil Tesser, who wrote for one of the Chicago papers, was in the club to review us. When I walked by him to go to the dressing room, he stopped me and said, "When Buddy was playing his choruses on 'Fifty-Second Street Theme.' he played so good that when you had to follow him, I felt sorry for you. Then when you got into it, I felt sorry for John Campbell, who had to follow YOU."

I also took care of the business for Buddy and me. for Buddy was, without a doubt, the worst businessman I ever met. The reason I say this is because of a story he told me. He was at home when he got a call from a club owner in Montreal asking him if he was available to play his club on a certain date. Buddy, who can't remember where he is half the time, looked at his schedule and told the club owner that he was available. Then the club owner casually said to Buddy, "I heard that you played in Toronto last week. How did it go?" Buddy, who is the nicest and most honest man I ever met, said, "I bombed. Nobody came into the club to see me." The club owner immediately hung up on him. Never said another word. When Buddy told me this, I said, "Why did you tell him you bombed?" He said, "I DID bomb." I asked, "Didn't the audience like you?" He said, "Yes, they gave me a standing ovation." I said, "Why didn't you tell him that they loved you and gave you a standing ovation instead of telling him that you bombed?" That's Buddy being a little too honest for his own good. If anybody calls him and asks him if he and I are available, he always says, "Call Terry."

A few years later, we played Ronnie Scott's again. On our day off we had to fly to Edinburgh, Scotland, to do a TV show that Ronnie had arranged for us. Our wives were with us at the time. After the TV show, the producers took us to dinner at the Grand Hotel, one of the fanciest places in Edinburgh. A lot of people who saw the show were there and they applauded us when we walked in. I think we had four different waiters serving us. We all ordered food and some wine.

For some reason I always thought it was phony when they brought you a bottle of wine, put some in a glass for you to taste, and then you would give them your opinion. Most people don't know a good wine from a bad wine. I always wanted to do this stupid tiling but never had the nerve to do it. The waiter brought the wine to our table, poured a little in a glass, and handed it to me.

The only wines that I know the taste of are Manischewitz and Rokeach. two kosher wines that you drink on Passover. They're both so sweet that they can make you sick.

I took the glass of wine, shook it around a little (that's because I've seen people who think they're connoisseurs do it), took a sip. and for no reason whatsoever, went "Ecchh." and spit it out like it tasted terrible. Needless to say that even though Buddy and his wife broke up. Rebekah didn't talk to me the rest of the night.

We were called to do a tribute to Benny Goodman in Arvada, Colorado, and for that show, we had Louie Bellson on drums, Tal Farlow on guitar, plus a pianist and bass player from Denver, Colorado. Buddy and I always tried to stay away from doing tributes to Benny because we were starting to be compared to Benny and Lionel and wanted our own identity.

At first we were very negative about the idea, but the money was good and they told us there would be two parts to the show. Besides the Benny Goodman tribute, the second half would be a tribute to Duke Ellington because Louie Bellson played with Duke. We figured that was okay because we played a lot of Ellington songs and there was no other connection there.

It turned out to be so successful that now we were getting calls to do another tribute to Benny. Once again the money was good. All we had to do was play songs that Benny made famous and play bebop choruses on them. We were already playing "Air Mail Special," which was a big hit for Benny. An agent by the name of Bob Davis booked us to do a Benny Goodman tribute at a club in Berkeley, California, called Kimball's. He wanted to make it an all-star band and he added Herb Ellis on guitar. Butch Miles on drums. Milt Hinton on bass, and Larry Novak on piano. He also put together a tour to Japan to go with that job. I got Ralph Kaffel, the president of Fantasy Records, to let me produce a live album while we were at Kimball's. I picked all the songs and did the same routine that we did on our first album. "Chicago Fire." We played for three nights, worked out little head arrangements, and then recorded the next three nights. The people went nuts, because the Benny Goodman sound is a very exciting thing. We even used a lot of the routines that Benny did by jamming for two or three choruses at the end of each song to give it added excitement.

Butch Miles was the perfect drummer for that kind of a groove. Not only did we break up the audience, but we also packed the club every night. I think they set a record for the amount of dinners they served.

We left for Japan the day after we closed at Kimball's. I was going to mix and master the record when I got back. I was sort of the leader of the group and the guys in the band looked to me for leadership. When we recorded, being that I produced the album, I called all the shots. I tried to make each night a different concert so if Herbie played first on "Don't Be That Way" on Thursday, after we played the melody on that same song on Friday, I may have called on Buddy to play first. I called a lot of audibles on stage while we were playing. When you do that, it makes it hard to edit. You can't pick a chorus from a take on Friday and put it into a Saturday performance. To start with, the sound would be different in the club and also, the tempo would be different.

All I could do besides work with the engineer in mixing the album was to pick the best takes. As a producer, you can't pick the take that you played best on, even though there is a tendency to want to do that. You can't think as a performer; you have to put your producer's hat on. So I picked the takes that had the best group feel. After we made that long trip and arrived in Japan, everybody went to sleep except me.

The contract the Tom Cassidy Agency made with the Japanese promoter said that one quarter of the money would be sent to him a few months before the signing of the contract. When I got there, I had to pick up 20,000 dollars. I was really wiped out but I sat down with the promoter who gave me 20,000 dollars in American one-hundred-dollar bills. Even though they were packed in 1.000 dollar wrappers, I had to count it out in front of the man I was dealing with. That wasn't the hardest part of what I had to do. I didn't want to walk around with 20,000 dollars in cash, so I made packages and gave each musician part of their salary for the ten-day tour. Buddy, Herbie, and I made the same amount of money, so I gave most of the money to the three sidemen. I was so tired after counting out everybody's money. I found that I was short a hundred dollars in one of the packages. Luckily, when I started to count each package again, I found out that I had miscounted the first one or I never would have gone to sleep.

I had been in Japan before with Steve Allen but never with a jazz group. The audience kind of scared me at the first concert. After we played the first chorus of "Seven Come Eleven," I came in and played the first bunch of choruses. When I finished and Buddy came in, nobody applauded for me. People usually applaud for the soloists after they play their solos. I thought they didn't like how I played and felt like I just bombed. They didn't applaud for Buddy, Herb, or anybody in the band until the song was over. Then they really applauded. I found out that the Japanese people are so humble and polite that they think they are insulting you by making any noise while the band is playing. When they didn't applaud for Buddy after he finished, I selfishly felt good.

At the end of the concert, the audience demanded two encores. I didn't realize until I checked the contract the next day that it said, "two fifty-minute sets with a twenty-minute intermission and two encores on the end." I think that the Japanese people were used to getting two encores at the end of every show.

At one of the concerts, after our two encores, I was already downstairs in the dressing room and had my tuxedo jacket and shirt off, both of them very wet with sweat. The Japanese people bang their feet on the ground when they want you to play more and they were banging so hard, you could hear it downstairs in the dressing room. The promoter ran down and asked us to please get back on the stage and play another song. I had to put my funky wet shirt and tux jacket on again and we did another encore.

Since the concert was a tribute to Benny Goodman, Buddy, Herb, and I took turns at the mic talking about Benny. I told more stories about him being a foggy idiot than about his great clarinet playing so it seemed like I was putting him down. But I always closed by saying that it was the thrill of my life playing with him.

When Herb spoke, he really put Benny down because Charlie Christian was Herb's idol and he thought that Benny stole all of Charlie's songs by putting his name down on the records as co-writer. Herb really didn't like Benny Goodman. Sometimes he would put Benny down for five minutes but he always ended by saying, "But Benny was one swell guy."

When Buddy spoke, the first thing he said was, "Is this really a tribute to Benny Goodman?" Then he would defend Benny by telling the audience that in the days of the big bands, when the bandleader commissioned you to write an original song for the band, it was protocol for the bandleader to put his name on the song as co-writer. But Herb never bought into that.

Amongst some of Buddy's mishigasses, he liked to buy luggage. I'm not exaggerating when I say that at one time, he had about thirty different pieces of luggage. Another mishigas is that he collected fake copies of famous watches. He once had about five different fake Rolexes that he bought for twenty-five dollars each. A strange thing happened to Buddy after one of the concerts. We played a private party and were in the band room. This Japanese guy was talking to Buddy and couldn't speak English too well. I was standing with Buddy while this guy was telling him, in very broken English, that he liked playing clarinet and that Buddy was his favorite clarinet player. He was so in awe of Buddy and was really nervous just being around him.

All of a sudden he said, "You're so good, I've got to give you something." took his watch off his hand, and gave it to Buddy. Buddy looked embarrassed and tried to give it back to him, but the guy kept insisting that it was a gift from him to Buddy. As he handed it to him. Buddy didn't even look at it. I took it out of Buddy's hand and walked over to Larry Novak and showed it to him. Neither of us could believe what kind of watch it was. Buddy also had a bunch of fake Patek Philippe watches, but this one looked like a real one. When Buddy finished talking with that nice man, I showed Buddy the watch and he actually turned purple. It WAS a real one. The nice gentleman came to another concert the next night and brought the case for that watch to Buddy. We later found out that he was a multi-millionaire ship builder. When we got back to the States, Buddy had the watch appraised and was told that it was worth 10,000 dollars. Buddy hardly ever wears it. He's afraid he'll lose it so he wears the fake one most of the time. We had a very successful engagement in Japan and when we got back to the United States, we all went our separate ways. Japan was a ball.

I went back to Berkeley to mix the tapes from the date. The songs we mixed all seemed to be winners so we did the same thing that we did on the first album that Buddy and I did for Palo Alto. Ralph Kaffel and I couldn't figure out which were the best songs, so Ralph suggested that we put out two CDs and release them six months apart. Then he would pay everybody for two record dates.

The two CDs were called "Memories of You" and "The Kings of Swing." Buddy and I liked the name "The Kings of Swing" so every time we did a tribute to Benny Goodman, that's what we called ourselves. That's the second time that Ralph Kaffel put a name on one of my bands. He also came up with the name "The Dream Band."

Buddy and I continue to try and play together any time we are called. Unfortunately, we don't have an agent, so we haven't been playing together as often as we would like to. I think that besides my Dream Band, the most exciting and fun thing for me is playing with Buddy. We have been playing on and off as co-leaders for better than twenty years and have never come close to having an argument. I don't care who you are, when you get two people together, sometimes one person's ego can get in the way, or one of the wives can say something to her husband that can cause an argument. Our wives get along great and really like each other.

Buddy and I have become like brothers. I've been very fortunate to have worked with two of the greatest clarinet players that ever lived. In the thirties and forties, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw were way ahead of all the other clarinet players. Everyone that played the clarinet either copied Benny or Artie. Then Buddy came along in the fifties and was the inspiration for practically every clarinet player since then, including Eddie Daniels, who came out of the Buddy DeFranco school, and who has now found his own voice. I was lucky to have played with both Benny and Buddy. They both were great instrumentalists and boy, could they swing.”

Part 1 - "My Friend, Buddy D." - Terry Gibbs

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

This is from Terry Gibbs’ autobiography - Good Vibes: A Life in Jazz [Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2003].

“Since 1980, besides doing some TV shows with Steve Allen, I worked a lot with Buddy DeFranco and also worked as a single doing clinics and playing colleges using the Dream Band library. Working with Buddy has been the most creative and musically fun thing that I've done in the last twenty years.

I first met Buddy back in the 1940s. I think I was with Woody Herman's band and he was playing clarinet with Tommy Dorsey. We both went on to become leaders of our own bebop quartets and always felt the same way about music, especially Bird and Diz. They were our gods.

It wasn't until 1980 that Buddy and I played together. We never even played opposite each other in clubs or festivals. Sometimes we would meet on the road when he and [accordionist] Tommy Gumina had their group.

I remember Tommy, Buddy, and I appearing on a talk show with three other guests who were scientists. The host of the show was pretty hip but also knowledgeable about various subjects. It was a funny show in that when he talked to the scientists. Buddy, Tommy, and I didn't know what they were talking about at all. Because this was our younger days, the three of us were being silly. We would purposely answer every question from the host with the hippest language ever used. WE didn't even know what we were talking about. We'd just say something stupid and break up laughing. I have a photo of us on the show with Buddy, Tommy, and I breaking up and the three scientists looking like somebody just died.

I think that from the 1940s until the time we worked opposite each other in England in 1980, I was only in Buddy's company about five times. Our friendship started at Ronnie Scott's club in London, England, where we were booked as two separate attractions. We met at the rehearsal where Buddy was going to play a half-hour with a rhythm section and I was going to follow him and do the same. The reason I was going to follow him was not that I was the main attraction, it was because Ronnie Scott mentioned to us that it would be nice if we played one song together at the end of the set. Being that I sweat a lot. Buddy was nice enough to let me go on last so I wouldn't have to sit around all wet, waiting for the last song. The vibes that the club rented for me to play hadn't shown up for the rehearsal, so I rehearsed my part of the show playing two-finger piano. Buddy and I still hadn't played together.

After Buddy and I each played with our groups, I introduced Buddy and told the audience we were going to have a jam session. This was true because at the rehearsal, we never talked about what we were going to play. Buddy and I looked at each other on the stage and we picked "Lester Leaps In" for its "I Got Rhythm" chord changes, which we both knew. We also knew that the chord changes to that song wouldn't hang up the rhythm section. We thought that that part of the show was going to be a throwaway.

Immediately, we started to click, playing individual choruses, then eight bars each, then fours, twos, and ones. Then we played together and jammed for about three or four choruses. By the time we got to the end, the people in the audience were standing and cheering. We didn't believe it. Ronnie was so knocked out that he said, "Why don't you guys play two songs next time?" We did and broke it up again. This time we added Charlie Parker's "Now's the Time." We both knew the bebop songs so there was no problem there.

As the nights went on, we were playing less individually and more together. We weren't just knocking out the people in the audience, but also the guys in the rhythm section. But mostly, we knocked ourselves out. We were having the time of our lives playing together. Because Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton made the sound of the clarinet and vibes so popular, you could take any two idiots who play those instruments and it would sound good. What Buddy and I found out was that we had something special. Buddy, being a little pessimistic, wasn't sure if it was just this engagement, but I knew that there was something special there.

When we got done at Ronnie's, we agreed that when we got back to the States, we should occasionally try to work together.

I don't know how. but word must have gotten back to somebody in the States because when we got home, I got a call from my old friend Jim Washburn, one of the producers on Operation: Entertainment. Jim was now in charge of entertainment at KCET, the PBS television station in Los Angeles. He wanted us to do an hour-long TV show, which of course we did. That was the first time that Buddy and I ever worked together in the United States.

We hired Frank Collette on piano, Andy Simpkins on bass, and Jimmie Smith on drums and the show came out great. Word was really starting to get out about us because we got a call from Herb Wong, a producer for Palo Alto Records, who wanted us to record an album. After meeting with Herb, we decided to record the album live, because Buddy and I played better before an audience. It was much looser; we'd have the freedom to stretch out more, and we wouldn't be restricted to how many choruses we could play.

We booked ourselves into THE hot club in L.A. called Carmelo's. It was the perfect place to play in and record because it almost reminded me of a Fifty-Second Street club. It wasn't too big or too small; the audience was right next to the stage and it was great for getting them involved in what we were saying and playing.

We recorded about twenty songs and were going to pick about nine or ten for the album. When he listened to the tapes. Herb Wong didn't know which ones to pick because they were all so hot. So he told us that since he couldn't make up his mind, he would pay everybody for two albums and put them out six months apart.

A few months after the album "Jazz Party—First Time Together" came out, we got a surprise call from The Tonight Show telling us that Johnny Carson heard our version of "Air Mail Special" and wanted Buddy and me to play it on the show. This knocked us out. They flew Buddy in from Florida and put him up in a nice hotel. It seemed like a lot of other people liked "Air Mail Special" also. John Wilson reviewed the album for The New York Times:

“Both he (DeFranco) and Gibbs are wild swingers, which they daringly establish by opening this, their first disc together with a Goodman-Hampton specialty, "Air Mail Special." Goodman and Hampton were pretty exuberant on this number, but DeFranco and Gibbs outdo them, neither one ever sounding like his Swing Era counterpart.”

Those were very strong words coming from somebody who had never been one of my biggest fans.

We did The Tonight Show again about six months later. When we were on the first time, we didn't go on until near the end of the show. When we played our last song with the Doc Severinsen band, the show ended while we were in the middle of the song. I got to talking to Johnny before the second show and mentioned that to him. He said.

"Don't worry, I'll tell the producer to put you on first," which he did.

The Tonight Show helped us a lot, for we got booked into the lounge at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas for three weeks. We took Jimmie Smith with us and hired two local musicians who I had played with before to play bass and piano. We really broke it up and they asked us if we would like to play in the main room, using a big band. It was in a show starring Wayland Flowers, a ventriloquist who did an act with a puppet called Madame. We played there for five weeks and it was great.

Even though we had rooms at the hotel, they gave us the famous Jerry Lewis dressing room to change our clothes in. It was more of a suite of rooms than a dressing room. Every night, we'd have a lot of celebrities come backstage and tell us how much they enjoyed our playing. Playing the main room was much easier because we did two shows and would get through by midnight. In a way, the lounge was more fun because Las Vegas never had many jazz attractions play there, so after all the shows were done, we'd draw all the hip entertainers and showgirls. The people who were vacationing there would come in to see us and get a double treat by seeing a lot of famous people.

A piano player from Australia named Ron came in and told us that he could get us to play in his country. He said that his brother Stan, who was a very prominent attorney, was also a big jazz fan and was now promoting jazz concerts. He wanted his brother to hear us in person and asked us where we would be appearing in the near future.

After Las Vegas, we were on our way to Europe to do a tour for George Wein. We told Ron our itinerary and he told us that Stan would be in London at the same time and we could possibly meet there.

Buddy and I went by ourselves and George supplied us with a rhythm section. We told George that we didn't want any other horns to play with us because we had our arrangements down. All we had to do was give the rhythm section our little lead sheets that were not too hard. Any other horn would ruin the sound that we got with the vibes and clarinet.

We were starting to get known as the bebop answer to Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton. You would think that the rhythm section of John Lewis on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Pierre Michelot on bass, who I didn't know, would be a ball to play with. In some ways it was okay, but they weren't made for each other. I never got to know how good Pierre was because when they backed us up, John was playing Chopin etudes, and Elvin sounded like he was starting World War VII. Maybe if they all had played the same style, we would have had more fun. We didn't know what style to go with; we just wanted to play some straight-ahead bebop.

Timing in life is everything. For example, if you are standing on a corner and move away and somebody else stands where you were and two minutes later gets hit by a car, that's bad timing. This may be a strange comparison to what happened to us, but it's all about timing.

As part of the tour, we were to play Ronnie Scott's club in London and Shelly Manne was to play drums with us. George Wein hired two English musicians to play in the rhythm section along with Shelly. Stan, the attorney from Australia, was to come into the club on our first night. He called us from his hotel in London and told us that the trip from Australia made him too tired to come in and see us and he would come the next night.

This is where the timing comes in. The first night was a catastrophe. It rained and there weren't many people in the club. The sound system was screwing up all over the place and Shelly was having trouble playing with the pianist and bass player. The next night, when Stan came in to see us, the place was packed. The P. A. system was working and Shelly had had a long talk with the other musicians. That night we swung our tuches off and the audience gave us a standing ovation. We were a winner. That's what I mean by timing.

When Stan heard us and saw how packed the place was and the audience's reaction, when it came to talking about our fee, we were in the driver's seat. I handled the business for Buddy and me and got us a great deal. Besides the money that we agreed upon, I told Stan that we wouldn't go unless we could take our wives with us, have business class seats on the airplane, and our hotels and food paid for. He was still knocked out by our last show, so he agreed to everything.

We were to play three one-nighters in Sydney, Adelaide, and Melbourne, and he was going to try and book some more jobs, which we would be paid extra for. I also asked for a deposit on the signing of the contract. When we got back to the States and I got the contract from Stan, I couldn't understand anything that was written on it. Stan, being a trial attorney, had drawn up a contract that had "the party of the first part" and "the party of the second part" in every other sentence. I didn't have the slightest idea what this was all about. I wasn't sure who the party of the first part was compared to the party of the second part. So in any sentence that I didn't understand, I wrote "by mutual agreement" so he couldn't make us do anything other than what we first agreed upon without talking about it first. He called me from Australia and told me that I was the best attorney that he ever worked with.

Stan really treated us great. In fact, he gave us a credit card to use for food just in case we wanted to eat at some place other than the hotel we were staying at. I think that if I didn't have children and grandchildren that my wife and I would live in Australia, because it's so beautiful.

Before we left for Australia, Buddy and I got called to play in the band that did the music for the Burt Reynolds picture, "Sharkey's Machine." Burt handpicked most of the musicians and was a big jazz fan, which I didn't know. Bob Florence wrote the arrangements, and Joe Williams and Sarah Vaughan sang the theme song. Just to mention a few musicians on the date, Shelly Manne played drums, Ray Brown played bass. Art Pepper and Marshal Royal played alto sax, Conte and Pete Candoli and Harry (Sweets) Edison were on trumpets. Carl Fontana and Bill Watrous were on trombones, plus Buddy and myself. It was definitely an all-star band.

I wanted to meet Burt but didn't want to bug him. When I saw him talking with Pete Candoli, I walked over to them. Burt was standing there with a book under his arm and I saw that it was The Encyclopedia of Jazz by Leonard Feather. I didn't want to interrupt the conversation but it didn't look like I would be intruding, so I said, "Burt, my name is Terry Gibbs. I just want to say hello."

He looked nervous and started stuttering and fumbling, looking like he was in awe of me. "Are you kidding? I know who you are. I ASKED for you!" We talked for about a minute and then he said, "Would you mind meeting somebody?" I didn't know what he had in mind so I said sure. He took me over and introduced me to Sally Field, who ALSO had The Encyclopedia of Jazz under her arm. When Burt said, "Sally, this is Terry Gibbs," all of a sudden, SHE got flustered. Both of them seemed like they were in awe of every musician there. I felt like asking for a raise.”

To be continued in Part 2.

Part 3 -The Terry Gibbs Dream Band from "Terry Gibbs Good Vibes - A Life in Jazz"

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

“I know this band and its music very well, having spent many happy hours listening at the Seville. The music embodies the quality that means the most to me in a big band: unrestrained joy, and the ability to lift you off your chair with its power.

Mel Lewis was and still is the state-of-the-art big-band drummer.”

— Bob Florence, composer, arranger, bandleader

The band, perhaps the best of its time, obviously was caught at its zenith....

"Forceful, flowing, full of fire, playing in tune, admirably handling dynamics and shading within each arrangement, it literally blows you away."

—Burt Korall (International Musician)

"Unrestrained joy is exactly what the listener gets on...."

—Jim Bisco (Buffalo Evening News)

"Dream Band has all the right stuff: tight ensemble passages, vigorous solos and sharp arrangements."

— Eric Shepard (Journal-News, Nyack, NY)

“Terry's band is timeless. The best of the hot!”

— Buddy Rich, drummer, bandleader

"I really believe this band should go down as one of the great ensemble bands," Gibbs says. "I think it rates with Basic's band of the Fifties, Woody's Second Herd, Benny Goodman's band with Gene Krupa and Artie Shaw's with Buddy [Rich]."

The reference to Goodman is significant because Gibbs adopted Benny's strategy of having the arrangers weave his vibes in and out of numbers as Goodman's did for his clarinet. "I didn't want to just play a vibes solo and then step back and let the band play," Gibbs explains.

If a direct comparison is to be made of Gibb's exciting band, the inevitable one is to Woody Herman's Second Herd, the celebrated Four Brothers band. And, perhaps, it's not mere coincidence that most of the Gibbs musicians (including the leader) once played for Herman.

"I think you have to give Chubby Jackson a lot of credit for the spirit of the band," Gibbs says. "He always had enthusiasm, and I probably picked up some of that from him." Gibbs wasn't the only cheerleader, though. Not in a band where Frank Rosolino, Joe Maini, and Conte Candoli were constantly shouting encouragement.

- As quoted in the insert notes by Jay Roebuck, a DJ with an LA-based FM Jazz radio station, to Terry Gibbs Dream Band Main Stem Volume Four 

Here’s the conclusion of Terry reminiscences about the Dream Band from his autobiography - Good Vibes: A Life in Jazz [2003]

“In 1985, there were some big bands making some noise: Rob McConnell, Frank Capp and the Juggernaut, Bob Florence, and Bill Holman to name a few, had some albums out and were getting a lot of airplay. I still wasn't sure if I wanted to put them out, even though I had something on tape that was already a winner.

Gene Norman heard that I had some unreleased tapes of my big band. He called me and asked if I was interested in putting them out with his record company. I still wasn't sure if I wanted to sell the tapes to anybody but I agreed to meet with him at his office on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. He really flipped out over the sound and the performance of the band and made me a very decent offer for the tapes. I thought about it and told him that if he put out the tapes as a four-record set that I'd be interested.

The reason that I wanted a four-record set was that those were the days of albums and cassettes. If he put out one album at a time, there would only be one or two songs on each side because some of the songs were twelve minutes long. He told me that he could edit and cut the songs so that he could get about twenty minutes of music on each side, which meant cutting a lot of the solos out. Once again, I insisted on a four-record set. I saw his point when he told me that he couldn't make any money by putting them all out at one time. He was right, because he was going to pay me a good amount of money for the tapes but I passed on the deal.

In 1986, Dick Bock, who once owned Pacific Jazz Records, heard about the tapes from Buddy Rich. Dick was now producing for Fantasy Records. One of Dick's fortes was editing tapes. He had a great feel for splicing the tape in the right place so that you'd never know that a four-minute song was once a twelve-minute song. He was a very successful record producer and was very interested in getting me with Fantasy Records. Dick and I had a meeting and I told him the same thing I told Gene Norman about cutting the tapes. He asked me to lend him the tapes so that he could show me what kind of an editing job he could do without ruining the feel of the arrangements and the solos. I made him a cassette of "Opus One." He also asked me not to listen to the original take of "Opus One" for about a month so that I could get the original out of my head.

After a month went by, I met with him again at his office in Hollywood. He played me the edited version and even though he took a lot of the solos out, it sounded good. All of the band ensembles were there and that was the highlight of the band. It almost sounded like the original version we recorded in the studio when the band first started, except that this was live and all the fire of all the guys yelling and carrying on was still there.

We took the cassette that Dick put together up to Fantasy Records in Berkeley, California, where we met with Ralph Kaffel, the president of Fantasy. I was surprised when Ralph told me that he had been a big fan of mine for years. Ralph loved what he heard and wanted to buy the master tapes. The money he offered me was not as much as Gene Norman offered, but he gave me some other things that were even more important to me than the money. To start with, Fantasy Records was a major jazz label, so I knew their distribution would be good. I wanted to make sure that every disc jockey in the country was supplied with an album, so I asked Ralph for the use of Fantasy's phone number. Then I called every disc jockey and made sure that they had the album. If they didn't, then one would be sent to them immediately. There was a good feeling between Ralph, Dick, and I, so I made the deal. That turned out to be one of the smartest moves I ever made, because the Dream Band records are now known all over the world.

When the Dream Band albums first came out, it was the biggest success I ever had in my life. There were two jazz radio stations in Los Angeles then: KKGO and KLON. I turned on one station and heard four or five songs in a row from the albums. Then I'd go to the other station to see what was happening, and THEY were playing four or five in a row. This happened all over the country.

When we were at the Seville, Wally Heider worked from his big truck, which was built like a small studio. There was no room to park the truck at the Sundown, so he ad-libbed a studio in the back room.

What Wally did was something I've never seen any recording engineer do. He taped wires on the floor in front of the saxophone section, the trumpet section, and the trombone section. Then he put mikes all over the place. In the back room where he was with his equipment, he had light bulbs set up on the wall. There were four light bulbs on top for the trumpets, three light bulbs underneath for the trombones, and five light bulbs for the saxes. If you looked at the wall it looked just like a band set-up. When somebody had a solo, the moment they stood up. their foot hit a wire and the light bulb went on in the back room where Wally was. He knew exactly who and when somebody was going to play a solo. This was genius to me. That's why the solos sounded right up front. Berrel helped out a lot because he knew the arrangements and every once in a while, he could alert Wally when he thought there was a solo coming up.

Indirectly. I helped make Wally a millionaire. In 1968, I got him a job on the Operation: Entertainment show that I conducted. Wally didn't belong to the union so all he could do was get a balance for the band. Then all the engineer at ABC had to do was make the whole band louder or softer. If he thought the bass was too loud, it was none of his business; he couldn't touch anything. As it turned out, the sound of the show was so good that the president of Filmways came to Wally and offered him a million dollars for his company. Wally traveled with us to all of the shows and on the last show, when we came back to Los Angeles, there was either a Mercedes or a Rolls Royce waiting for him at the airport. Filmways bought that for him to go along with the new job that he had as president of the Wally Heider Studios.

When you recorded those days, everything was two-track. If you were watching the band play and heard the trumpet solo, you'd hear it on the left side. When you heard the tapes, the trumpet was on the left side because that's where Conte sat. When I took the tapes to Fantasy in 1986, I brought them to their young hotshot engineers and they said, "What do you want us to do with it?" I said, "What can you do to make it better?" They said, "Nothing. It's perfect. All we can do is make it a little brighter." It was that good.

Sometimes the band almost looked like a comedy act. When I'd go make an announcement, everybody was talking and carrying on. Once in a while, if anybody had something silly to say, I would play straight man for them. All the guys had their own personalities and I would try to bring it out of them. Even with all the ad-lib talking and carrying on, they knew that when it came to playing the music, they "took care of business," which meant, don't fool with the music. Play the music like it's written and like we rehearsed it. When we were not playing music, if anyone had something stupid to say, they got up and said it. All of that added more spirit and more fun to the band.

Everybody loved Frank Rosolino. Before I counted off the first song I would say, "Here it is . . ." and snap my fingers. After two or three minutes of this, the audience became part of our act and they'd start saying, "Here it is" also. Then I'd say, "One, two, three . . ." stop, and say, "FRANK! How's your foot? How's your car?" Any question at all. Frank would jump up immediately and start rambling about whatever was going on in his brain. You never knew what he was going to do on stage. I liked that because it added a lot of spirit to the band.

Frank had these little silly things he would do. I'd be ready to tap off the tune, "One, two, three . . ." and before I could get to four he'd stop me. "Hey, T . . .T . . .Terry! Terry!" He did a great imitation of Wally Heider stuttering. I said, "What happened?" and he said, "You know who likes your playing?" I said "No, who?" and he said, "That's what I'm asking YOU! Do you know who likes your playing?"

One time he stood up, threw his music on the floor, and started running on top of it. I said, "Frank, what are you doing?" Frank said, "I'm running over my music." What this did was add more energy to the band. The guys would laugh and the audience would break up too.

Frank was a great yodeler. He would talk for about five minutes, and by the time he got done telling me about what was wrong with his car or his foot, he wound up yodeling. By that time, the band and the audience were in hysterics. That's when I would tap off the band and hit them in the head with our opening song.

Bill Putnam, who owned a recording studio and who was a great engineer, always came into every club the band played. When we got done with our set, Bill came over to me and said, "You know, Terry. I know why your band is so good. You never start out with a first set. You always start out with your third set."

Al Porcino could be the worst and the best for a band; it was all according to what mood he was in. When he was in a good mood, he'd just sit there and play the hell out of his part. But sometimes he could be a big pain in the ass. He always wanted to be a bandleader so he was always trying to tell me how to run my band. He was one of the best lead trumpet players I ever played with. Al and Ray Triscari both played lead and they were both equally as good. But Al was a little more aggressive than Ray, so he sort of took charge of the trumpet section.

Most of the music we played was written for record dates so it was all very high powered. When we recorded, I wanted every tune to be a home run. The club was always packed with celebrities and I wanted to really knock them out. So I picked this set out where every song was like a closing song and we really tore up the place. One home run after another. The next night we had a gang of celebrities again, so I figured I'd play the same set. As I was calling out the numbers, Porcino said, "What are we doing? Playing all FLAG WAVERS?" Then the guys in the trumpet section all said, "What are we playing? All flag wavers? How about our chops?" I'd have to say something silly to get everybody back into the fun we were having.

Vic Schoen wrote a suite for two bands that was recorded with Les Brown and a band that Vic put together for the date. Les was the musical director of The Steve Allen Show at the time that my band was at the Seville. Steve asked me if I would do the suite with my band and Les' band. All the guys in Les' band heard my band play at the club a lot of times and were really afraid to play opposite us. It was almost like we were Mike Tyson in his prime. The only person who wasn't afraid was [trumpeter] John Audino, who later joined my band. They all knew that our band was something else. I never saw and didn't know the music at all, so Les came to me and said, "Terry, do you want me to conduct it for you and show you how it goes?" Al Porcino, who talked very slowly, said. "L-e-s! W-e h-a-v-e o-u-r O-W-N b-a-n-d l-e-a-d-e-r!" And that was it. Even though Al and I used to argue a lot, he had enough respect for me to let Les know that the band was our little family and that we didn't need any help from anybody. It was a great piece of music and it came off great. I think that was the first time that Les ever heard our band, and he was very impressed.

I believed in hitting a home run immediately. In fact, I may have picked that up from Woody Herman. I always started out with a closing tune so that the whole band is standing up at the end of the song. That is, whoever COULD stand up would stand up.

Even though the band knew that Wally was there, they didn't act like it was a record date, which it actually wasn't. Wally was just experimenting with different microphones. He was in the back room and didn't know if Joe Maini was lying on the floor or Frank Rosolino was standing on somebody's shoulders. He never knew if they were near their mikes. Luckily, on the takes I picked, they were all sitting in their seats. I have some takes where, all of a sudden, you don't hear the lead alto. Joe Maini may have been lying on the floor or going out to dance with one of the girls. He'd break up a couple and start dancing with both of them, and for laughs, he'd wind up dancing with the guy. You never knew what these guys were going to do. Everybody had a good time.

On volumes 4 and 5, everybody knew they were record dates, and so everybody sat in their seats. They still carried on, making all kinds of noise, cheering every soloist, or just having fun.

If you listen closely to the Dream Band CDs, there are a lot of times when I'm soloing that you can hear Frank Rosolino yelling, "Hammer, baby! Hammer, baby!" Conte's schtick was when I'd call out the number of the song instead of its name. I'd say, "All right guys, let's play number thirty-four," and then Conte would ask, "What number is that?" That's also on some of the CDs. On "Flying Home," which is on volume 3, when I'm soloing and really getting into it, Joe Maini yells out, "Ohhhhhhhhh, SHIT!" In the same chorus he yells, "JEEEESUS CHRIST!" We couldn't edit that out because Wally recorded those albums on two tracks and if you tried to make those few bars softer, then it would ruin the continuity of the solo. So "Ohhhhhhhhh, SHIT!" And "JEEESUS CHRIST!" are on "Flying Home." So when you listen to the records, you hear a lot of yelling, which really is just a bunch of guys having fun.

I conducted the band on a telethon for the blind, which had Florence Henderson singing. We had an intermission and some of the guys in the band went outside and smoked some pot. They must have gotten something completely different than regular pot. Florence was singing "Some Enchanted Evening." It was more of a concert arrangement than a jazz arrangement. In the middle of the song, Med Flory stood up and started to play bebop behind her. I didn't believe it because there was nothing written for him to play. This was all live and I didn't know what to do, so I said, "Sit down!" And he said, "I CANT!" I kept telling him to sit down and he kept playing through her song. Every time I'd tell him to sit down, he'd stop long enough to say, "I CANT!" She didn't know what was happening at all because she never heard the arrangement played like that. I couldn't stop Med and Med couldn't sit down, he was so stoned out.

We weren't working steady with the band, so when I got a call for a job on the road for the quartet that paid a decent amount of money, I took it. Joe Glaser's office booked us in Las Vegas for a few weeks and then we went on to San Francisco. ….

When we got back to Los Angeles, I put the band together again and we played at Shelly's Manne Hole for a few weeks. Those days, they allowed you to smoke in nightclubs in California. I never allowed smoking on the bandstand because I thought that it looked cheap. Drinking was different because the guys could put their drinks underneath their stands and they could sip on them. Ray Triscari was in the band longer than anybody was and one time, I caught him smoking on the bandstand. When the set was over, we went into the band room and I said. "Ray, of all guys, you know that I don't like smoking on the bandstand. I don't mind you drinking, but smoking really looks terrible." I was really bugged with him.

Now, like I said, you never knew what my band was going to do. Shelly wanted us to close at ten to two so he could get everybody out of the place. We always closed the night with "Billie's Bounce" at about twenty to two. I had it timed so that at whatever bar or letter it was, I'd play six choruses, the band would come in with a background, and then we'd play the ensemble on out, and it always came out perfect. Because the club was always packed and the band was swinging. I brought a bottle of cognac in on the first night and Conte, Ray, John Audino. and I would drink most of it. Then the next night, John would bring one in and I'd bring one in also. Then Conte and Ray would bring one in, and little by little, we'd have four or five bottles of cognac going around. The good thing about the band was that even though I allowed drinking on the bandstand, it never got to the point where they couldn't play their part.

On the night that I caught Ray smoking, we were playing our last song and, like every night, when I got to my sixth chorus, the band was supposed to come in and play a background. Nobody came in. I figured they were a little juiced and having fun, so I kept playing. I played my seventh chorus and my eighth chorus and still nobody came in. Now I was getting bugged because they were ruining my timing on finishing the song by ten to two when I got to my next chorus, nobody came in. but everybody in the audience started applauding. I figured they all loved me. Wonderful, I'll play another chorus. They still didn't come in and now I'm really bugged so I turned around, ready to give them hell, and EVERYBODY, all fifteen musicians, were puffing on cigarettes. There was so much smoke you couldn't see the band. All I saw was a cloud of smoke. They were bugged with me because half of them didn't smoke and they had to keep puffing on their cigarettes until I turned around.

I wrote a song called "It Might as Well Be Swing" which starts out with the band playing the melody and then I come in with a bell note on the fourth beat. We were only working one or two nights a week at the Sundown and I was playing at Jimmy Maddin's other club called the Sanbah five nights a week with a different rhythm section. When you play with a big band, it's a completely different feel than playing with a quartet, especially with Mel Lewis playing drums, because he sat on it rather than giving it a little edge, like you would play with a little band. With a little band, the rhythm section gives you that little edge and you play more on top. Now, after playing five nights a week with a little band, when I came to work with the big band, sometimes I would feel uncomfortable playing, because there was a difference in the time.

On the first set, I played "It Might as Well Be Swing" and was getting ready to hit my bell note on the fourth beat, but heard the band still holding their note. I thought, "This is going to be a weird night for me." because I was already having trouble with the time. After the next eight bars, I was ready to play the fourth beat again and the band was still holding their note. The third time this happened, I said to myself, "Wait a minute. I can't be THAT screwed up. There's something wrong here." What they did was, they were holding their note for four beats instead of three. So they were playing a 5/4 bar while I was playing in four, so I never came down with the note.

To me, Richie Kamuca was the most unheralded saxophone player of all time. I felt like he was in the same class as Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, and Al Cohn; he was as good as any of those guys. He could have been one of the Four Brothers and the sound wouldn't have changed. Everything he played was so melodic and beautiful. Richie and Bill Perkins were two introverted guys who became completely nuts on my band. Nobody could play in the band and be introverted. They couldn't help it.

Richie was also very handsome. I was standing in front of the band when I noticed this gorgeous blonde staring right at me. It looked like she was really hitting on me. She started to walk towards me, came to within three inches of me, and walked right PAST me to Richie and gave him the biggest kiss in the world. Fluffed me off completely. It was Richie she was looking at, not me.

Richie wasn't a big band lover. Even though he played a lot of solos, it was really never enough because we had so many great soloists and I had to let everybody play. What made the band so good was that it was an ensemble band. He loved little bands more than anything, but he loved our big band.

Every once in a while, it got so loose that I would get bugged and say, "I'm breaking up the band." What I meant by loose is that the guys had to be on time for every set. I didn't care if they showed up naked, just so long as they showed up on time.

In 1961, we were finally getting a chance to do a record date and get paid for it. After the first break, I sent Berrel out to find the guys so we could get ready to record again. He came back alone and said, "They're not here." I said, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THEY'RE NOT HERE? WE'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A RECORD DATE!" He told me that they had all gone down to the Hollywood Palladium, a few blocks away, to hear Harry James' band. Richie and I were alone in the dressing room and I said to him, "You know, Richie, after we do this record date, I'm definitely breaking up the band." He said, "Oh, Terry, you can't break up the band. Don't do it. It's too good." Everybody finally came back and we got back up on the bandstand. On the song, "The Big Cat," at the end, the trombones just vamp and I noodle around for a while and then I cut off the band. While the vamping was going on — and this lasted about a minute — Richie knew I was serious about breaking up the band and he didn't want it to happen. So he started yelling behind me while I was playing the vamp: "GO GET 'EM TERRY! GO AHEAD, TERRY!" which wasn't his bag because he was such an introvert. But he was egging me on. He was having a great time and didn't want me to break up the band. You can hear him saying that on the CD.

Bill Perkins, who everybody called "Perk," was also very introverted but not on this band. He was just starting to listen to John Coltrane and was getting a little bit influenced by him. Perk's style came out of the Lester Young school. When we recorded at the Summit, he had a solo on a song called "Soft Eyes." Being that we were a straight-ahead swing band, he came to me and said, "Terry, do you mind if I get a little out on my solo on 'Soft Eyes'? I've been listening to Trane and I love some of the things he's been doing." I never tell anybody how to play their solo, plus it wasn't really out, but it was a little different for Perk.

Charlie Kennedy was quiet and shy and had a funny sense of humor. In his younger days, Charlie worked with Gene Krupa and recorded a song called "Disc Jockey Jump" with Gene and played a solo on it that became very famous. Charlie's sound was closer to Charlie Parker than anybody in the band, even more than Joe Maini's. On Volume 2, called The Sundown Sessions, Charlie played a solo on "It Could Happen to You" and you'd swear it was Bird.

Charlie was also a very humble human being and a very nice person, but he had to give up the music business because he couldn't be around it without getting in trouble with dope. In 1986, after the CD came out, I started up the Dream Band again and called Charlie to play lead alto because by then, Joe Maini had died. We were going to play at the Playboy Jazz Festival, and when I called Charlie he said, "Let me think about it." He called me later and said, "I don't want to do it. I can't play again; I haven't played in years." We had a few months to get prepared but he just wouldn't do it. I think he didn't feel that he could be around the jazz scene without getting in trouble.

Jack Nimitz took Jack Schwartz' place and he was nicknamed "The Admiral," I suppose, after Admiral Nimitz. Jack Nimitz was more of a soloist than Jack Schwartz was and got to be very much in demand doing studio work. The only guy in the original band who really did any studio work was Ray Triscari, but Ray would take off record dates to do our fifteen-dollar job. When Porcino left, John Audino took his place. John was doing the Hollywood Palace show and so was Ray. They loved the band so much that when we had a job to play, they both would take off that show. It wasn't just giving up the 200 and some-odd dollars that the show paid; they were giving up the pension fund money and the money that goes for their health and welfare benefits. They gave up a whole lot when they gave up those shows. The money wasn't important to them because they felt just like I did. It probably was the happiest part of their lives too.

I didn't name it the Dream Band. When the first CD came out, Ralph Kaffel. the president of Fantasy, named it that. The album was just titled The Dream Band. I was against it because I hated names put on bands. Originally, we were called "The Exciting Terry Gibbs Big Band," but the name "Dream Band" stuck so much that every album was called "The Terry Gibbs Dream Band." When people talk to me about the band, they always address it as the Dream Band and leave my name out completely.

Joe Maini was, as the cliché goes, "one of a kind." Joe was also a street person. He'd use four-letter words even if he were talking to his mother. That was part of his vocabulary and he couldn't help it. When Bob Gefaell bought the Sundown from Jimmy Maddin. he renamed it the Summit. He loved the band so much, he decided he wanted to broadcast from there. Since it was his club, Bob decided he was going to be the announcer. The first broadcast was aired coast-to-coast on a show called Monitor. That day happened to be Joe Maini's birthday. I told Berrel to bring the whole band except Joe to the band room and I told them, "When we get to 'Cotton Tail,' and all the saxophones stand up on the saxophone chorus, go right into 'Happy Birthday.'" We played a few tunes and Bob Gefaell was announcing his heart away. We started "Cotton Tail," and when the saxophones stood up to play that great chorus that Al Cohn wrote, we went right into "Happy Birthday." Everybody in the band sang, and the audience did too. Everybody applauded, and Joe was really touched because he was a very warm guy. Then everybody stopped playing and were applauding him when all of a sudden Joe reached for the mike. Bob Gefaell, not knowing much about Joe. made the mistake of handing it to him. I thought, "Oh, NOOOO, not on the air!"

Joe's timing was perfect. He took the microphone and said, "Terry, this makes me feel so good . . ." then he paused a while and then said, " .. .that MY DICK IS TURNING PURPLE!" and handed the mike right back to Bob. Bob stammered and stuttered and didn't know what to say after that. He looked dumbfounded. I immediately said to the guys, "Take it from the sax chorus" and we went out swinging with Bob Gefaell looking like he was in shock.

One night, Harold Land played tenor sax with the band. For the first three sets we were playing mostly ensemble arrangements, but on the last set I let him stretch out on one of the blues things and he played about thirty some-odd choruses. When he got done, Joe Maini had to follow him. Joe didn't own a clarinet but there was one right next to him that Med used to play on two of the arrangements. After Harold played his thirty choruses and tore up the house, Joe didn't know what to play to follow him, so he picked up Med's clarinet and played Jimmy Dorsey's chorus from "Fingerbustin'," which had nothing to do with the blues. It was just a clarinet chorus that Jimmy made famous and it broke up the whole band. Joe was so talented. The title "Fingerbustin"' perfectly describes the type of a song it was. and it wasn't easy to play, especially when you played it on a strange clarinet.

I think that Conte Candoli was the favorite soloist of everyone in the band. When Conte played a solo, all the other trumpet players looked at him with admiration. Conte, who was married at that time, was seeing a Swedish girl named Kris who he eventually married after he got his divorce.

We were playing at a club called King Arthur's in Canoga Park and Kris came in with Conte. Conte was so in love with her that he was flipping out. Every once in a while, he would stand up in the middle of a number and throw kisses to Kris in the audience. Some of the people in the audience knew Conte's wife, so John Audino, who loved Conte, didn't want anybody to know what Conte was doing. So whenever Conte stood up to throw kisses to Kris, John stood up and also threw kisses to Kris. It looked weird to see two guys standing up throwing kisses to the same girl.

I was working in Toronto when I got a call from Jerry Lewis. Jerry liked to pantomime to big band records. I think that when Jerry started in show business, that was his act. He did it to a Count Basie record in one of his movies called "The Errand Boy" in a scene where he was sitting at a conference table. Jerry was a big fan of my band and loved a song we recorded called "Nose Cone" and wanted to do pantomime to it for another movie that he was now doing. I couldn't fly in so he asked me if I minded if somebody else played my solo. I said, "No, go ahead." They had my part written out and Larry Bunker played it. Playing somebody else's solo is the hardest thing in the world to do, especially mine, because I play four billion notes. Plus, I never know which mallet I'm going to use. In classical music, everything is usually right-left-right-left. But when you're playing jazz, who knows where your hands are going? Larry told me it was the hardest thing he ever had to read and he was one of the big studio players who could read anything. He did it but they never used it in the picture ….

I was back east when I got a call from Ray Linn, who was contracting the Monterey Jazz Festival. He asked me to put the Dream Band together again to play at the festival. Cannonball Adderley, Oscar Peterson. Dave Brubeck, and Dizzy Gillespie were some of the people also playing on the festival. I gave Ray names of who I wanted to play in the band. I also wanted to make sure that they were all paid a decent amount of money so I told him that if he could work the money situation out for the musicians, he should call me back and we'd arrange a fee for me. About a week later, Ray called me back and said, "I got all the guys you asked for." He agreed to what I wanted and I said great. This was a hard job for the guys in the band. Not only did they have to play our music, but they had to be the house band also. This meant that they had to play Johnny Richards' arrangements and play music for other people, music that they really didn't enjoy playing. They were getting paid well and I suppose that's why they accepted the job.

I flew in and they called a rehearsal for three o'clock, the afternoon of the night of the show. Duke Ellington was the emcee and he was going to introduce the band, so I figured we'd open up with something he wrote, "Main Stem." I hadn't seen the guys in six months. Everybody came to our rehearsal: Dizzy, Oscar, Cannonball . . . They all came because they had heard about the band.

I tapped off "Main Stem" and the band played the heck out of the chart. You could have sworn that we had been playing together for the last six months. It was so perfect, that I said, "No rehearsal. See you guys in the dressing room tonight."

I put two bottles of cognac and gin in the dressing room. It was like old times and we were all glad to be together again. When we got on the stage, the curtain was closed. Duke Ellington was in front of the curtain introducing the band while Lou Levy, Mel Lewis, and Buddy Clark were playing the blues, which was the chord changes to "Main Stem." Duke had an eloquent way of speaking, and when he finished introducing the band, we could have played one chord and we would have been a winner. I had it planned so that when Duke said, "Terry Gibbs" and the curtain opened, I was going to go right into the ensemble of "Main Stem."

We were all on the stage with the curtain closed while Duke was introducing us and here is what was going on backstage. This was October and the World Series was going on. All four trumpet players had portable radios with their earphones in their ears, listening to the ballgame. They were just standing around, not even sitting in their chairs. Frank Rosolino was sitting on somebody's shoulders, just carrying on. Joe Maini was lying on the floor, kicking his feet, and the rest of the saxes were in hysterics because of what Joe was doing. The rhythm section was still swinging and Duke was still talking. It looked so disorganized that it didn't make any sense. The curtain was closed, so I didn't care, because nobody could see us anyway. When Duke said. "Terry Gibbs!" you'd think that everyone would sit back in their seats. The curtain opened up and everybody was still doing what they were doing. Joe was on the floor kicking his feet, Frank was still on somebody's shoulders, and the four trumpet players were yelling, "Hey! It's a home run!" It almost looked like Spike Jones' band.

With my dumb sense of humor, I let it go on for a while. Why not? They were all having fun. I knew the music was going to be good no matter what, so when the band finally came in, it was like a powerhouse. Not only did we break it up and get a standing ovation, they made us come back at the end of the show after Dizzy, Oscar, and everybody else had played. We had to play another half-hour. The only person in the whole place who wasn't shocked to see the band so disorganized was Duke Ellington, who was used to seeing a loose band. His band was loose, but this was ridiculous….

People always ask me why the Dream Band wasn't much more successful. Actually, it was as successful as I wanted it to be. I was happy playing the Sundown and the Summit, making my eleven dollars a night. I didn't want the band just playing anywhere. That's why I left the Cloister. I just wanted to have fun. We were a complete winner. We played to a packed house full of celebrities every night. The club owner made money, and we had the times of our lives. Just listening to the band was the greatest thrill I ever had, and I had the best seat in the house. Sometimes when I was in front of the band, I would turn my back to them and cup my hands so I could hear them louder, if that was possible. As loud as they played, it was never loud enough for me. It was a great feeling. We were accepted by everybody in Hollywood. Even though every movie star came in to see us, WE were the stars. What could be better?””