Howard Rumsey: 1917-2015 - The Los Angeles Times Obituary 7/25/2015

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

Whether you are a musician, a club owner, recorded producer or concert impresario, Jazz has always been a tough business to be in.

I mean one answer to the question - “How do you make a million dollars playing Jazz?” is to “Start with two million dollars!” - basically says it all.

So when a nice guy comes along and touches the lives of Jazz musicians, fans, record labels, club owners and concert promoters in such a positive way, the least we can do is call attention to him as a way of saying “Thank You.”

Such a person was bassist, bandleader and Jazz entrepreneur Howard Rumsey who passed away on July 15, 2015.

I knew Howard Rumsey for 57 years and every time we met he asked after me, gave me words of encouragement and told me “How nice it is to see you again.”

Here’s Steve Chawkins’ loving tribute to Howard which appeared in the July 25, 2015 of The Los Angeles Times.

"Howard Rumsey, a bass player who turned a down-at-the-heels sailors’ hangout in Hermosa Beach, CA into ground zero for West Coast jazz, has died. He was 97.

Rumsey, whose Lighthouse Cafe provided a hip, popular show-place for established musicians and a proving ground for up-and-coming players, died July 15 in Newport Beach, his friend Ken Poston, director of the Los Angeles Jazz Institute, said.

"He came along at precisely the right time," Poston said, "and was able to establish what became an iconic place in the history of jazz."

In 1949, the Lighthouse drew a rough crowd of longshoremen and merchant seamen. Rumsey, a tall, self-effacing musician who played dime-a-dance halls along the coast before hitting the road with big bands, wandered in for a beer one afternoon in May. Tired of traveling, he was patching together local gigs and tried to talk owner John Levine into letting him stage Sunday afternoon jazz performances.

"Hey, kid," Levine said, "Sunday is the worst day of the week for the liquor business."

But Rumsey persisted. "I pointed to the empty club and said, 'What can you lose?'" he told The Times in 1989.

"The next week we propped open the two front doors and blasted music out onto the street, and in a couple of hours there were more people in there than he'd seen in six weeks."

Rumsey drew on his old pals from Stan Kenton's big band, and within a couple of years, his Lighthouse All-Stars played hard-driving bebop six nights a week. Big names in jazz — drummer Shelly Manne, composer-trumpeter Shorty Rogers, saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre — were part of the house combo.

In later years, Max Roach, Miles Davis and Lee Morgan swung by to play. Cannonball Adderley, Art Blakey, Wes Montgomery — all eventually took their turns.

One night, reclusive pianist Thelonious Monk came in.

"He was trying to be very incognito, sitting quietly at the end of the bar," Rumsey recalled. "Then his name was announced. He walked to the piano, played 'Round Midnight,' got up, took a bow and walked right out the front door. I never saw him again."

In the early days, African American musicians had a tough time navigating around local police officers, who sometimes tailed them through town. To the chagrin of Levine and Rumsey, many quit coming and didn't resume for several years.

Rumsey "just had to stick with it and overcome it," Poston said.

"He became a trusted member of the community and was able to break down some of that stuff."

At Levine's urging, Rumsey joined the local Chamber of Commerce. He wrote music columns for a local newspaper. The Lighthouse co-sponsored an annual beauty contest and participated in parades.

In addition to acting as the club's frontman, Rumsey booked talent, announced acts, kibitzed with the guests, made people feel at home and, occasionally, picked up his bass. On busy Saturday nights, the Lighthouse turned away hundreds of would-be patrons, many of them students from UCLA and USC.

In 1956, NBC's Dave Garroway, and the Monitor TV program, riding a wave of interest in California's far-out beach scene, gave the Lighthouse national exposure. "We just step out of the ocean and start for the music," Garroway said, as a couple in swimsuits emerged from the surf and walked barefoot down the street.

"Oh, your feet will still leave little wet footprints on Pier Avenue every step of the way to John Levine's Lighthouse Cafe," Garroway said as the camera panned over a sun-baked crowd and the new sounds of California cool played in the background. "This is jazz — modern jazz—not for the cultist or the sectarian, but free-swinging music improvised with enthusiasm."

Critics suggested that East Coast jazz and West Coast jazz were essentially different, but Rumsey didn't completely buy it. In 2009, he offered his own description of the West Coast strain to jazz writer Marc Myers: "It's the music of happy — in a hurry."

Born Nov. 17, 1917, in Brawley, Calif., Rumsey started piano lessons when he was 4. By the time he was 18, he was playing bass in clubs. When Stan Kenton wanted him to play with his band at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa Beach, the great jazzman asked permission from Rumsey's mother, who at the time ran a chicken pie shop in San Diego.

Ultimately, Rumsey spent two years on the road with Kenton's band.

"He made a professional musician out of me — which was rather hard to do," Rumsey said in Ken Koenig’s award-winning 2005 documentary, Jazz on the West Coast: The Lighthouse.

At the Lighthouse, Rumsey started annual collegiate jazz competitions, cultivating his audience and his future players at the same time. He took his Lighthouse All-Stars on college tours and, at one of them, met future wife Joyce. They were married for 47 years until her death in 1998.

In 1970, Levine, whom Rumsey said he saw as a second father, died suddenly.

When the club's new owner, Levine's son John, wanted to feature blues more prominently, Rumsey opened another jazz spot — the Concerts by the Sea club in Redondo Beach. After retiring in 1985, Rumsey pursued a quiet life of golfing in Hemet.

Eventually, he moved back to Newport Beach. In his later years, he was an elder statesman of local jazz.

"Whenever Howard showed up, it was a big deal," Poston said. "The musicians loved it, the patrons loved it—it was just a great scene."

And so it was for Rumsey.

"When you have great jazz improvisationalists working together, it's like the aperitif of life," he told The Times in 1999. "There's nothing more elegant and beautiful.""

Howard Rumsey, Founding Father of West Coast Jazz, Dies at 97

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

Ken Poston, the Founder and Director of the Los Angeles Jazz Institute, sent along the following regarding the recent passing of Howard Rumsey and I thought I’d share it with you as I doubt that anyone had a closer working relationship with Howard over the last three decades of his life than Ken did.

“Howard Rumsey, one of the most significant figures in modern jazz and one of the founding fathers of “West Coast Jazz”  died on July 15 in Newport Beach, California.   He was 97

His primary instrument was the string bass but it was his talent as a bandleader and nightclub operator that created an amazing legacy which touched the lives and careers of countless musicians and fans.

Howard Rumsey was born on November 7, 1917 in Brawley CA in the heart of the Imperial Valley.   He took piano lessons for 8 years followed by drums, trumpet and eventually the string bass.

He left Brawley after High School to attend Los Angeles City College where he continued his musical studies.   He also began playing with a number of local bands around Southern California.  His first job of note was with Vido Musso’s band joining a rhythm section that included a young Stanley Kenton on piano.

After a stint with Gus Arnheim he joined the band of Johnny Scat Davis  and toured throughout the United States.  They played all the major ballrooms and theaters which gave Howard an opportunity to see the music business, as he liked to say, “from the top down”.  

After Scat Davis, Howard joined Stanley Kenton’s newly formed Orchestra which debuted during the summer of 1941 at Balboa Beach. It was during his stay with Kenton that he started to develop a reputation in the jazz world and was the featured soloist on an early Kenton number titled “Concerto for Doghouse”. He stayed with Kenton until 1942 then returned to Southern California where he worked with a variety of bands including Charlie Barnet, Freddie Slack and Barney Bigard.

1949 was a major turning point in his career when he approached John Levine, owner of a small saloon on Pier Ave. in Hermosa Beach and convinced him to establish a weekly jam session on Sunday afternoons.    Before long, The Lighthouse Cafe became the primary destination for modern jazz in Southern California.

The Sunday “Modern Jazz Concerts” were so successful that it wasn’t long before a Wednesday through Sunday format was established. The Sunday sessions put the Lighthouse on the map.   They started at 2 in the afternoon and ended at 2 in morning with visiting musicians sitting in throughout the day and evening.  

Howard had a unique vision in what the Lighthouse could become and subsequently created one of the most iconic jazz clubs of all time.   By the early 1950s, the Lighthouse was the headquarters of the burgeoning west coast jazz movement and the house band, Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All Stars, became internationally renowned. Between 1952 and 1962   The collective members of the Lighthouse All Stars reads like a who's who of modern jazz.   Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre, Bob Cooper, Art Pepper, Maynard Ferguson, Hampton Hawes, Shelly Manne, Russ Freeman, Max Roach, Bud Shank, Conte Candoli, Stan Levey, Frank Rosolino, Victor Feldman, Claude Williamson and Vince Guaraldi all graced the Lighthouse stage throughout the 1950s.  

Howard also understood the importance of developing an audience and was tireless in his promotion of the club’s activities.  He knew that his core audience was college aged students so he and the All Stars performed at numerous high schools and colleges throughout the year.

He was also a pioneer in jazz education long before any such thing existed.  In 1954 he started an Inter-Collegiate Jazz Festival that happened every Easter Week until the mid 1960s.   The All Stars acted as judges and awards were given to the most promising groups and individuals.   It was a time when jazz wasn’t part of most University curriculums and it provided a showcase for aspiring young musicians.   The list of students who took part in the Easter Week festivities include such future luminaries as Les McCann, Charlie Haden, Charles Lloyd, Charlie Shoemake, Mike Wofford, Gabe Baltazar, Pete Christlieb, Lanny Morgan, Tommy Tedesco, Bob Florence, Don Rader, Ray Manzarek, Barry Zweig, Harvey Newmark, Steve Cerra and Daryl Dragon.

The above photo features the 1962 Intercollegiate Jazz Festival winners with from left to right Barry Zweig, guitar, Steve Cerra, drums, Harvey Newmark, bass, Ernie Del Fante, flute and alto sax and John Bellah, piano.

In 1971 Howard left the Lighthouse and opened his own club, Concerts By the Sea, which was located on the Redondo Beach Pier.  It was a unique venue that quickly became one of Southern California’s top jazz rooms until Howard retired in 1985.   

Upon his retirement, he led a quiet life but still continued his relentless support of live jazz and was especially interested in encouraging young musicians just starting out.

He could often be seen at venues throughout Southern California listening to the music and supporting the artists.   It was always a special treat when Howard was in the house and it wasn’t uncommon to see people lined up at the breaks just to say hello and thank him for all the things he had made possible through the years.

Last May, Howard was honored by the Los Angeles Jazz Institute with a Five Day Festival that celebrated his immense contributions to the jazz scene in Southern California and beyond.   Fans and musicians came from all over the world to pay tribute.

Howard was a double lifetime member of The Los Angeles , American Federation of Musicians, Local 47.

He leaves behind a truly remarkable legacy that will continue to impact the jazz world for many years to come.”

The following video features bassist Howard and the Lighthouse All Stars on Bill Holman’s Latin for Lovers featuring Conte Candoli, trumpet, Frank Rosolino, trombone, Bob Cooper, tenor saxophone, Sonny Clark, piano and Stan Levey drums.