West Coast Jazz Box

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

“There was something special about the West Coast jazz scene of the Fifties and early Sixties. Those of us privileged enough to have lived through that era — to have heard favorite musicians holding forth at the Lighthouse, the Haig, the Black Hawk, or Zardi's (or later, at places like the Jazz Workshop, the Renaissance, or Shelly's Manne-Hole) — tend to smile broadly whenever someone's comments or a snatch of music conjures up that scene.” 

- Bob Gordon, author Jazz on the West Coast

Because I was “there” and had a professional involvement with it as a musician, I often get asked about what recordings to buy that feature the West Coast style of Jazz which existed mainly in California from 1945-1965.

My recommendation is pretty straightforward - West Coast Jazz Box: An Anthology of California Jazz - a 4 CD collection that was issued by Fantasy in 1998 [4CCD-4425-2].

The musical selections in the set are a comprehensive representation of all facets of the styles of West Coast Jazz that were played during this twenty year period and the following booklet annotations about the music by Bob Gordon, author of the definitive Jazz on the West Coast, and by the boxed set’s producers Ralph Kaffel and Eric Miller are unsurpassed in providing a brief synopsis of this “moment in time” in the history of Jazz.

Bob Gordon

“I may as well own up to this at the beginning: there is no general agreement upon the definition of the term "West Coast Jazz." The phrase has been bandied around for over four decades now, but as with many a catch phrase, it seems to mean pretty much what a given speaker wants it to mean. Like the word "jazz" itself, most everybody has a vague idea of what the term encompasses, but when it gets down to particulars, the arguments begin. So if you've already glanced at the listings for this album and decided that a particular performance doesn't fit your idea of West Coast Jazz, not to worry: you'll probably enjoy it anyway, whether or not you believe it's truly West Coast Jazz.

My personal preference for such a definition has always been: "That music produced by jazz musicians residing at the time on the West Coast."This seems to me the only definition inclusive enough to include the entire scene, from Dexter and Warden's Central Avenue duels, to musicians like Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, and Shorty Rogers, to the experiments of Ornette Coleman.

As to the origins of the term, nobody — to my knowledge, anyway — has ever taken credit (or accepted blame) for coining the phrase. When it first came into general use, the vocal wars between the boppers and moldy figs were beginning to wind down, and it's possible the trade journals felt the need for a new cause celebre to boost circulations. This cynical view, however, fails to acknowledge that in the first half of the Fifties, at least, there did seem to be certain stylistic differences between much of the jazz being produced in California and much of the jazz emanating from the East Coast. (I've emphasized "much" in both cases because many musicians from both coasts stubbornly refused to fit into their assigned pigeonhole.)

Basically, the differences were these: many of the West Coast musicians took their inspiration from such "cool" influences (there's another one of those damned terms) as Lennie Tristano and the Miles Davis Birth of the Cool band, while the mainstream of jazz in New York City could easily be recognized as a direct descent of bebop. As long as one remembers that such generalizations are generalizations — that there was cool jazz being played in New York and fire-breathing bebop being performed in Hollywood — the distinction can be useful. In any case, by the end of the decade, such differences became ever less apparent.

The musicians, of course, were loath to be so pigeonholed. Shelly Manne can be heard on a "live" recording introducing the members of his working band—one of the hottest units on either coast at the time—as a "West Coast Group." Shelly then goes on (in a native New Yorker's accent that he was never quite able to shake) to list the hometowns of his musicians: Joe Gordon (Boston, Massachusetts), Richie Kamuca (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), and Monty Budwig (Nyack, New York), gleefully saving Victor Feldman (London, England) for last. Rarely has a musician's disdain for such labels been as forcefully, if tactfully, expressed.

And yet, and yet...

There was something special about the West Coast jazz scene of the Fifties and early Sixties. Those of us privileged enough to have lived through that era—to have heard favorite musicians holding forth at the Lighthouse, the Haig, the Black Hawk, or Zardi's (or later, at places like the Jazz Workshop, the Renaissance, or Shelly's Manne-Hole)—tend to smile broadly whenever someone's comments or a snatch of music conjures up that scene. This set should bring back fond memories for those already familiar with West Coast jazz, and perhaps it will provide some feeling for the ambiance of the period for those to whom the term is just a phrase remembered from the jazz histories.”

Ralph Kaffel 1998

I've wanted to assemble this compilation of West Coast jazz classics for many years now, but something always came up to dislodge it from its place on the year's release schedule.

The publication of Robert Gordon's Jazz West Coast (1986) and Ted Gioia's West Coast Jazz (1992) served as pointed reminders to quit procrastinating and get down to business. This year, we did.

Eric Miller and I finally decided that nothing would keep us from making this long rumored project a reality. Eric, Bob Gordon, and I — each with our own personal favorites — were responsible for selecting the contents. My own criteria were simple: to pick the tracks which not only had made a musical impact, but were solid sellers that enjoyed substantial radio play. For example, I still remember vividly the excited anticipation of initial releases by artists like the Chico Hamilton Quintet and Hampton Hawes, or the latest from the Lighthouse All-Stars, following their previews on KNOB-FM (the "Jazz KNOB" in Long Beach).

At this point I must confess to more than a little "partisanship" with respect to this music. My first job in the record business, circa 1956, was as a salesman for California Record Distributors in Los Angeles, a wholesale distributor owned, as it happened, by Contemporary Record's owner Lester Koenig. Richard Bock's Pacific Jazz Records was one of the distributor's most important labels. I always looked forward to attending the recording sessions at Contemporary's Studios (actually, the warehouse) on Melrose Place and at Pacific Jazz Studios on Third Street.

Koenig and Bock were very different personalities with unique approaches to recording and running their businesses, but I had the same great admiration for both of them and for the music they were producing.

Acquiring the Contemporary catalog in 1984, therefore — and keeping it in print, for the most part — was a major thrill for me on a personal level, as was the ability to work with Dick Bock on a few projects in the 1980’s, an association unfortunately brought to a halt by his untimely passing.

I'm sure that Lester and Dick would have enjoyed The West Coast Jazz Box, made possible to a large extent by their passion for the music.”

Eric Miller 1998

“Los Angeles had a vibrant jazz scene in the 1950s and '60s. I hung out a lot at Sam's Record Shop (the Birdland of jazz stores) at 5162 West Adams Boulevard, and Sleepy Stein did his KNOB-FM jazz show from just behind Sam's storefront windows.

Within 20 blocks of this store (and my house) were located some two dozen jazz clubs, where many of the artists in this collection played. The clubs included the It Club, the Zebra Lounge, the Parisian Room, and the Intermission Room.

Norman Granz presented his Jazz At The Philharmonic concerts twice a year in L.A. His artists included Ella, Oscar, Hawk, Pres, and Art Tatum, to name just a few. Sundays were my days for the Lighthouse, in Hermosa Beach, when I could borrow the car.

The bustling Hollywood club scene included Shelly's Manne-Hole, the Renaissance, Donte's, and Gene Norman's Crescendo and the Interlude.

Beside Contemporary and Pacific Jazz, great jazz was produced and recorded by the fledgling Hifijazz label under the direction of David Axelrod; Nocturne Records, co-owned by musicians Harry Babasin and Roy Harte; the aforementioned Normans, Granz and Gene; and the Tampa, Andex, and Mode labels.

Some 400 miles to the north, jazz was just as active in San Francisco, with its pioneering Fantasy Records — whose roster included Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, Cal Tjader, and Vince Guaraldi — as well as live jazz at the Black Hawk, the El Matador, the Jazz Workshop, and many more.

All things considered, I appreciate those years more and more with the passage of time, and see them as the "52nd Street days" of West Coast Jazz.”

The following video includes images and graphics from West Coast Jazz Box: An Anthology of California Jazz [Fantasy 4CCD-4425-2] as set to the track from the boxed set by alto saxophonist Lennie Niehaus performing Whose Blues with Jack Montrose, tenor sax, Bob Gordon, Baritone sax, Monty Budwig, bass and Shelly Manne, drums.

Shorty Rogers - The Art of Jazz - by Alyn Shipton

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

“It was William Claxton who set up the photo shoot for Shorty Rogers in this improvised spaceman's headgear plus formal suit jacket and tie. As Shorty told the author, "I don't normally wander around wearing a space helmet."”

"The original ten-inch LP version of Cool and Crazy is a prized collector's item . . . every performance is memorable. . . . Seldom have big bands swung so hard or produced such a joyous sound."

- Robert Gordon, Jazz West Coast (Quartet, 1986)

Periodically, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles enjoys searching out material that covers some aspect of  West Coast Jazz or the Cool School or Jazz on the West Coast and posting it to these pages as part of a recurring theme.

Jazz in California from 1945-1965 was our first exposure to the music and it’s always fun to find new and/or additional “takes” on this style of the music’s evolution.

The following is from Alyn Shipton’s The Art of Jazz: A Visual History [2020] and you can locate order information through its publisher by going here. The book is also available through online booksellers.

Not surprisingly, this excerpt about trumpeter, composer-arranger and bandleader Shorty Rogers is from the “Birth of the Cool and West Coast Jazz” chapter.

“In its issue dated November 4, 1953, Downbeat carried a full-page advertisement from RCA, mainly focused on the music of trumpeter and arranger Shorty Rogers. With the strapline "Modern Jazz by the Man and the Band Who Make It Best," it referred readers to two of Rogers's albums, Cool and Crazy and The Giants, plus an EP plugging the forthcoming Columbia movie Hot Blood (even though everything about it, from the cover image to the tune "Blues for Brando," shows that it was in fact hastily rebranded from an earlier tie-in to Marlon Brando's The Wild One, even down to the cast photograph!) There was also a puff for a compilation LP called Crazy and Cool, linked visually and by title to Rogers's album but featuring other contemporary players in RCA's stable.

Rogers was well known as a former trumpeter and arranger for Woody Herman and Stan Kenton, and had been based in Los Angeles for some time, writing for the Hollywood studios, arranging jazz where he could (including part of Chet Baker's album with strings), and leading his small band, the Giants. His small-band arranging took forward many of the ideas in the Miles Davis nonet; his big-band writing developed out of his time with Kenton. Yet as the 1950s went on, Rogers, with his impish grin and short beard, became the unlikely focus of the cool movement. This was due more than anything to the marketing department at RCA, which initially had no intention of signing him. He recalled that he was helped by a colleague who had worked on his earlier Capitol album Modern Sounds:

Jack Lewis went to RCA and told them they should record Shorty Rogers. They said, "Gee we don't know about that, but we have a title, and we'd love to get the album made. We don't know who to do it with."

He said, "What's the title?"

They said, "Cool and Crazy."

Jack spoke on my behalf and then it wound up being me.

[The cartoon that RCA's design department added to Cool and Crazy pepped up the zany image of the record title, and bore little relationship to the music— there is, for example, no guitar on the record, despite the character second from the right!]

This big-band album compounded the zaniness of its cartoon cover with enigmatic song titles (many of them dreamed up by trombonist Milt Bernhardt and drummer Shelly Manne) that emphasized the Cool and Crazy Idea, such as "Tales of an African Lobster," "Sweetheart of Sigmund Freud," "infinity Promenade," and "Coup de Graas" (named after the band's French horn player, John Graas). "We had fun with the titles," recalled Shorty, "and it became a fun thing to have the title say more than I'm a tune'!"

A residency for his small band led not only to one of the most famous of Rogers's tunes, but also to an album that gave his record labels plenty of visual ideas for marketing. Playing at a nightclub called Zardi's, where the band had a residency of several months, the graffiti "Martians Go Home '' had been written on the men's room wall. Shorty recalled:

“Someone told the girls who were waitresses about it, so it became a funny thing for the people that worked there. They'd say to one another, "Martians go home," and everyone would laugh. It became like a stone rolling down hill, and the thing was getting larger and larger, so we got on the bandstand one night, and I said, "Everyone listen, we have a new original we're going to play now for the first time, and it's entitled Martians Go Home."

The bartender fell down laughing, and all the people working there were laughing, too. And the audience was wondering what all these crazy people were laughing at. I told the rhythm section, "Just play a blues in F," and while they were playing, I sang a little riff to Jimmy Giuffre, and we played this simple little repetitive melody. We had our little joke, and we thought that was the end of it. But the next night, we got to work, and before we got up on the bandstand, people were saying, "Play that Martians Go Home thing." So it just became something associated with us.”

A Classic of Jim Flora's record-cover designs, this seems incredibly busy, yet the only two musicians actually depicted are Shorty with his trumpet on the left, and the central figure of Count Basie (whose music is interpreted on the album) at the whimsical piano.

On the French issue of the first album featuring the tune, there is a motif of a Martian spacecraft (looking suspiciously like a ride cymbal!! next to a boomerang (to symbolize the return homei. More Martian tunes followed by public request, and when the band moved from RCA to the Atlantic label, their first album was Martians Come Back. For this, Shorty posed in a transparent plastic space helmet. It fit the image of being both cool and slightly crazy, and even when Rogers was touring internationally in the nineties, with the Lighthouse All Stars, audiences still came up requesting the "Martian" tunes, at least in part prompted by memories of those original record sleeves.

West Coast Jazz - "It either speaks to you or it don't"

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

“All in all, the Davis [Birth of the Cool] Nonet was much like a band of apostles, gathered together for a brief time before scattering in their several separate directions, each inspired to proselytize others in turn ….

Although the [West Coast Jazz] movement was never as monolithic as the term suggested, a certain convergence of aesthetic values could be seen in many of the West Coast recordings. The music was often highly structured, rebelling against the simple head charts of East Coast modern jazz and reflecting a formalism that contrasted sharply with the spontaneity of bebop. Counterpoint and other devices of formal composition figured prominently in the music. Larger ensembles — octets, nonets, tentettes — continued to thrive in West Coast jazz circles, long after they had become an endangered species elsewhere. Unusual instruments were also embraced with enthusiasm, and many of them — such as flute and flugelhorn — eventually came to be widely used in the jazz world. Relaxed tempos and unhurried improvisations were frequently the norm, and the music often luxuriated in a warm romanticism and melodic sweetness that was far afield from the bop paradigm.”

- Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz

The subtitle of this piece in quotation marks is a paraphrasing of a number of remarks attributed to Louis Armstrong when he was asked about Jazz.

Along these lines, another famous remark attributable to Pops was his answer to the question of “What is Jazz” - his reply - “If you gotta ask, you’ll never know.”

Strongly opinionated and superbly literate, longtime Bay Area resident Grover Sales [1920-2004] was the kind of jazz critic who left no doubt about where he stood on issues ranging from the genius of Lenny Bruce to the paucity of gay jazz musicians.

During a career that spanned 50 years Sales wrote about jazz, film and cultural politics and published widely in the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Tiburon Ark and Gene Lees' Jazzletter. He wrote three books: Jazz: America's Classical Music, a biography of John Maher and, with his wife Georgia, The Clay-Pot Cookbook, which sold more than 800,000 copies.

Sales was also publicist for the Monterey Jazz Festival from its birth in 1958 until 1965, and for the hungry i nightclub. He also did freelance publicity work for artists such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Judy Garland and Dick Gregory, and wrote the liner notes for several Fantasy recordings.

Over the years, he taught jazz history courses at Stanford University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, San Francisco State University and the JazzSchool.

Sales became a jazz fan at 16, after hearing a broadcast of Benny Goodman's band with drummer Gene Krupa, and later became what he called "an inveterate Ellington groupie" after hearing a recording of "Black And Tan Fantasy".

After serving in the Army Air Corps in Southeast Asia during World War II, Sales studied at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and then settled in the Bay Area, where he received a BA in history from the University of California at Berkeley.

If you were a Jazz fan living in the San Francisco Bay area, sooner or later, you met Grover Sales.

Columnist, author, instructor in Jazz Studies at Stanford University in nearby Palo Alto, CA and for many years, Publicity Director of the Monterey Jazz Festival, Grover seemed to be everywhere in the world of Bay Area Jazz.

I met him on several occasions and he was always welcoming, engaging and directly to the point and I am constantly referencing Jazz: America’s Classical Music [New York: Prentice Hall, 1984; New York: Da Capo Paperback Edition, 1992].

However, while I aligned with Grover on most subjects to do with Jazz, he and I agreed to disagree on the relative merits of West Coast Jazz, hence the subtitle of this piece.

Here’s Grover’s take on the subject.

“WEST COAST COOL

Miles Davis's "Birth of the Cool" records spawned a working alliance of Los Angeles based musicians — the West Coast school — that nearly cornered the jazz market in the early 1950s. Predominately white, their records sold well among a post-war college crowd that scarcely knew any other type of jazz existed. Their schooled technical precision, versatility, and arranging skills were much in demand in Hollywood studios and "name" recording sessions that provided a steady source of well-paid work. Adapting the easy facility and vibratoless timbres of "The Birth of the Cool," the West Coast group was given to exercises in counterpoint and arhythmical improvisations infused with a spirit of emotional restraint. With rare exceptions—Shelly Manne, Art Pepper, Gerry Mulligan, Red Mitchell—few of these once-heralded poll winners emerged in the 1960s as figures of influence or major repute: Pete Rugulo, Shorty Rogers, Russ Freeman, Howard Rumsey, Stu and Claude Williamson, Lennie Niehaus, Marty Paich, Bob Cooper, Jimmy Giuffre, Bill Holman, Bob Enevoldsen, and Andre Previn, whose trio topped jazz record sales and became a major concert attraction before he developed into a front-rank symphony conductor.

For all their technical expertise, most of the West Coast group recordings for Contemporary and Pacific Jazz today strike us as bloodless museum pieces, a neatly packaged soundtrack for the cold war. However this group was neither wholly white nor "cool:” their ranks included some like-minded blacks—drummer Chico Hamilton, bassist Leroy Vinnegar, and reedman Buddy Collette, who so immersed himself in the movement that when Leonard Feather played his tenor solos for Miles Davis in a down beat "Blindfold Test," Miles snorted, "All those ofay (white) tenor players sound alike to me." Pianist Hampton Hawes and saxman Art Pepper, both fixtures in the West Coast scene, never succumbed to "cool" but forged ahead with a hard-driving blues format rooted in bebop. The Parker-inspired piano of Hawes seemed at variance with the laid-back approach of his western colleagues.

An eastern transplant, Gerry Mulligan formed an unusual pianoless quartet (Prestige 24016) whose records sold well and bear repeated hearings today. They still beguile us with his witty, inventive interplay with trumpeter Chet Baker, a Miles Davis spinoff with a ravishing tone and incisive attack reminiscent of Bix.”

By way of a rebuttal, I’ve turned to the following excerpts from Ted Gioia’s The History of Jazz which is now available in a Second Edition through Oxford University Press via this link. [Some readers may also be familiar with Ted as the author of West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California from 1945-1960 which is also published by OUP and can be found in a paperback format from the University of California Press].

The "cool" movement, as it soon came to be known, presented an especially promising alternative to the bop paradigm. Spearheaded by the younger generation, most of them in their early twenties at the close of the 1940s, cool jazz was — like bop — an overtly modernist music with radical implications. Its exponents shared many of the aesthetic values of the boppers — an allegiance to contemporary trends in music, a predilection for experimentation, a distaste for conformity, and a view of jazz as an underground movement—and many had served as sidemen in prominent bop groups. Miles Davis, who would emerge as the leader of the new cool players, had worked with Parker even more, had looked up to the altoist as a guide and mentor. The Modern Jazz Quartet, which would become something of a definitive cool combo, got its start as the rhythm section of Dizzy Gillespie's big hand. But even those with weaker links to bop — Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, Paul Desmond, Art Pepper — could not avoid its pervasive influence. They realized that bop was the defining style of the age, and that even an attempt to sidestep the idiom would invariably be interpreted as rebellion against it. 

Davis had left Parker's band at the close of 1948, disturbed by Bird's increasingly erratic and self-destructive behavior. His new source of inspiration, arranger Gil Evans, was in many ways the antithesis of Parker. A dowdy, introspective country boy from Canada, Evans came to 52nd Street clubs wearing a cap and carrying a paper sack full of radishes, munching on them during the performance. "Man, he was something else," Davis would write in his autobiography. "I didn't know any white people like him." Evans was little known at the time, even in jazz circles. His biggest claim to fame, to the extent he enjoyed any, was due to his forward-looking arranging for the Claude Thornhill orchestra ….

Although Davis’ work the following year would be dubbed as the "Birth of the Cool" (an inspired and influential title selected by Pete Rugolo, then serving as Davis's producer at Capitol Records), the Thornhill band was its acknowledged model in many respects. By implication, the Thornhill 1946-47 band should be seen as the "incubation" of the cool. In Davis's words: "The Birth of the Cool album came from some of the sessions we did trying to sound like Claude Thornhill's band. We wanted that sound, but the difference was that we wanted it as small as possible. …”

Was this jazz? Winthrop Sargeant, classical music critic for The New Yorker, expressed his doubts. Instead, he staked a claim for the Davis Nonet as an outgrowth of the Western classical tradition. It sounded, to his ears, like the work of an

impressionist composer with a great sense of aural poetry and a very fastidious feeling for tone color. The compositions have beginnings, middles and endings. The music sounds more like that of a new Maurice Ravel than it does like jazz. I, who do not listen to jazz recordings day in and day out, find this music charming and exciting. ... It Miles Davis were an established "classical" composer, his work would rank high among that of his contemporary colleagues. But it is not really jazz.

Jazz fans apparently agreed with Sargeant's characterization — they virtually ignored the band. In time, the Davis Nonet would be lauded as one of the most innovative groups in the history of jazz, but during its brief tenure, the Nonet drew little attention or praise. Its employment was limited to a few performances at the Royal Roost, and even there the group was billed below the Count Basie band, with whom it shared the stage. After making a few recordings for Capitol Records, the Nonet disbanded.

The cool "school," as it came to be called, may well have benefited from this early failure. The members of the Nonet would have more success as individuals in promoting the cool sound than as part of a single unit. Davis would continue to refine his sound, in a variety of settings, and by the mid-1950s had developed a deeply personal conception of jazz, one that would exert enormous influence on later jazz musicians. Pianist John Lewis would build a major concert-hall career as musical director of the Modern Jazz Quartet, a quintessential cool band remarkable for its longevity and popularity, as well as its consistently high musical standards. Lee Konitz's later work would secure his reputation as one of the most accomplished and creative altoists of his day, and a leading exponent of the cool. Gerry Mulligan would play an important role in developing cool jazz on the West Coast. Gunther Schuller, who had played French horn with the Nonet, would become a key figure in promoting the "Third Stream"—an ambitious and controversial offshoot of cool jazz that aimed to break down barriers between classical and jazz idioms. Even hardened bopper Max Roach, the drummer on the Davis sessions, would bring a measured dose of the cool aesthetic to his pathbreaking mid-1950s band with Clifford Brown. All in all, the Davis Nonet was much like a band of apostles, gathered together for a brief time before scattering in their several separate directions, each inspired to proselytize others in turn ….

A number of signal events marked the shift from hot to cool on the coast. Gerry Mulligan's relocation to California after the completion of the Davis Nonet sessions created a formal link to the nascent East Coast cool movement. In addition, a host of former Stan Kenton sidemen, now settled in southern California, fueled the progressive tendencies of this music, each with greater or lesser ties to the cool aesthetic. The Lighthouse, a jazz club in Hermosa Beach, which had formerly featured some of the more bop-oriented black players, became a regular performance venue for many of these ex-Kentonians. The Lighthouse came to serve as a public workshop for emerging jazz trends on the coast, with a panoply of players (Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre, Bob Cooper, Bud Shank, Shelly Manne, and many others) pursuing an almost equal diversity of styles, from hot to cool, retrograde to avant-garde. The worst of this music settled for an easy banality, an aural dose of laudanum, but more often the Lighthouse crew tapped into the freewheeling creative currents of the time. Perhaps even more important than clubs like the Lighthouse were the independent record companies on the West Coast — notably Les Koenig's Contemporary label, Richard Bock's Pacific label, and the Weiss brothers' Fantasy label — which recorded and promoted the new music. In response to their efforts, "West Coast jazz" gained an international following and emerged as a viable alternative to the hegemony of East Coast models of improvisation and composition.

Although the movement was never as monolithic as the term suggested, a certain convergence of aesthetic values could be seen in many of the West Coast recordings. The music was often highly structured, rebelling against the simple head charts of East Coast modern jazz and reflecting a formalism that contrasted sharply with the spontaneity of bebop. Counterpoint and other devices of formal composition figured prominently in the music. Larger ensembles — octets, nonets, tentettes — continued to thrive in West Coast jazz circles, long after they had become an endangered species elsewhere. Unusual instruments were also embraced with enthusiasm, and many of them — such as flute and flugelhorn — eventually came to be widely used in the jazz world. Relaxed tempos and unhurried improvisations were frequently the norm, and the music often luxuriated in a warm romanticism and melodic sweetness that was far afield from the bop paradigm. Although the West Coast sound has often been criticized for being stylized and conventional, the work of many leaders of the movement — Gerry Mulligan, Jimmy Giuffre, Shelly Manne, Shorty Rogers, Dave Brubeck — reveals the exact opposite: a playful curiosity and a desire to experiment and broaden the scope of jazz music were trademarks of their efforts. It was perhaps this very openness to new sounds that allowed many later leaders of the jazz avant-garde — Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Charles Mingus, Paul Bley — to hone their styles while resident on the Coast.”

So while Ted concurs with Grover’s “... bloodless museum pieces” assessment when he states: “[t]he worst of this music settled for an easy banality, an aural dose of laudanum, …” his broader evaluation of the elements associated with West Coast Jazz finds many creative and notable attributes in the style of Jazz on the West Coast, circa 1945-1965 for to reiterate his point in conclusion: 

Although the West Coast sound has often been criticized for being stylized and conventional, the work of many leaders of the movement  … reveals the exact opposite: a playful curiosity and a desire to experiment and broaden the scope of jazz music were trademarks of their efforts. It was perhaps this very openness to new sounds that allowed many later leaders of the jazz avant-garde — Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Charles Mingus, Paul Bley — to hone their styles while resident on the Coast.”

Westcoasting

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

Shelly Manne liked to introduce his band members in this ironic manner: 'On tenor—Richie Kamuca from Philadelphia, PA; on trumpet — Joe Gordon from Boston, Mass.; on bass—Monty Budwig from Pender, Nebraska; our pianist is Victor Feldman from London, England; I'm Shelly Manne from New York City—WE PLAY WEST COAST JAZZ!'

In 1992, Chronicle Books published a coffee table sized book entitled California Cool: West Coast Jazz of the 1950s and 1960s. Edited by Graham Marsh, it is essentially a compilation of the album cover art from the period nicely reproduced in color on thick paper.

The following essays by photographer William Claxton who had a great deal to do with creating the most prominent album cover art “look” of this period, Jazz author and essayist Leonard Feather who was the Jazz Critic for the Los Angeles Times newspaper for many years and Brian Case provide an excellent short summary of the main characteristics of Jazz on the West Coast or - “West Coast Jazz.”

Reasonably priced used and new copies of the book can still be sourced through online booksellers.

Foreword

- William Claxton

“The jazz scene on the West Coast of the USA, notably California, in the 1950s was indeed a real and prolific musical happening. Early in 1955 a book of my photographs was published, called Jazz West Coast. It was accompanied by two 12-inch LPs with the same title, and served to sum up what was happening musically at that time. This book was a success, and the media picked up the title and made a great deal of this 'school' of jazz from the West Coast.

The question of geographic limitations and origins of any art form can best be left to the historians and, in this case, the musicologists. In the 30s, 40s and early 50s, jazz compatriots from the East Coast—the Apple, Philly, the Windy City and other points west—had always strayed to the Pacific shores long enough to play a few gigs and to have their pictures taken. In the early 50s a group of young, healthy (well, mostly healthy) arrangers and writers — such as Shorty Rogers, Gerry Mulligan, Bill Holman, Marty Paich, Lennie Niehaus, Jack Montrose and Jimmy Giuffre — and young players — such as Chet Baker, Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Jack Sheldon, Shelly Manne and Bob Brookmeyer— were, indeed, in the right place at the right time. They were musically sophisticated, educated, and sought new ways for jazz expression. Some jazz journalists have implied that this was largely a white musician's movement when, in fact, during this period the black players, who had long been an important force in the Los Angeles jazz scene, were treated as new stars and were now gracing the covers of their own albums. Important names like Benny Carter, Harry 'Sweets' Edison, Chico Hamilton, Gerald Wilson, Buddy Collette, Dexter Gordon, Red Callender, Ray Brown, Hampton Hawes, Wardell Grey and Harold Land were to be seen and heard everywhere during this prolific period.

On the New York scene the photographers and designers were producing album covers with a hard-edged, gutsy look (sweaty musicians in smoke-filled clubs); while out in California, we — myself, along with others, such as the brilliant Bob Guidi of Tri-Arts—were creating album covers with a different look . . . covers that reflected this new, laid-back West Coast sound. We worked for all the major record companies, but the majority of the most amusing covers were for Richard Bock's Pacific Jazz Records, Les Koenig's Contemporary and Good Time Jazz labels, and the Weiss brothers' Fantasy Record sin San Francisco, plus a dozen other neophyte labels that sprang up overnight.

This early 50s recording phenomenon came about for various reasons: the advent of the 33 ⅓ rpm long-playing record, for one thing, which gave us, the graphic designers and photographers of that time, a generous 12x12" format to use as a billboard to display our art and to sell the recording artist. This engineering and commercial event happily coincided with renewed interest in jazz.

By 1955, the rush to produce jazz LPs and their cover art became so frantic (recording day and night), that we had constantly to invent new ways to sell these jazz artists visually.

The sheer volume of work produced created a problem of just what to do next with any one of these blossoming young jazz musicians. I would shoot Shorty Rogers in a space helmet, then the following week i'd shoot him up high in his kid's tree house; then atop the windy Hollywood hills with his quintet, when the title of the album became Wherever the Five Winds Blow. Indeed, the photograph of a group would often determine the title of the album: Chet Baker and his quartet perched on a beautiful yacht became Chet Baker and Crew; visiting Easterner, Sonny Rollins, wanted to wear a cowboy hat on his cover, so I took him to the Mojave Desert, added a six-shooter and created Sonny Rollins Way Out West; I put Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars on the Santa Monica Beach, piano and all; for a Jazz West Coast anthology for Pacific Jazz, I had a diver in his black wetsuit clutching a bright, shiny trumpet as he sprang from the salty, foaming Pacific Ocean; for The Poll Winners Ride Again I put Barney Kessel, Shelly Manne and Ray Brown on a merry-go-round. The ideas went on and on ... new juxtapositions of palm trees, sunshine and sandy beaches with jazzmen. All in all we had fun while creating a cool look . . . California Cool.”

CLICKIN' WITH CLAX

- Leonard Feather

“The term 'the art of jazz photography' is a misnomer; a better phrase would be 'photography devoted to jazz musicians, by photographers who love and understand jazz'. That, of course, is one of several ways in which one can characterize the work of William Claxton.

Born in Southern California, with a mother who was a semi-professional singer and an elder brother who played boogie-woogie piano, William was seven when, fascinated by a musical short featuring Cab Calloway and Lena Home, he assembled a scrapbook devoted to them. While in his early teens, he was exposed to live jazz on a memorable scale, hearing Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, Art Tatum and Fats Waller in a single matinee at the Streets of Paris in Hollywood.

Later idols were Billie Holiday and Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy and Bird, Bud Powell, and the name bands of the 1940s. Meanwhile, a teenage neighbourhood friend, Richard Lang, had turned him on to photography.

While photographing the Gerry Mulligan Quartet at the Haig club on Wilshire Boulevard, Claxton met Richard Bock of the newly formed Pacific Jazz Records. His photographs on the record covers became almost as important as the music inside. Claxton became an integral part of that organization and was soon shooting for almost every important record company in the country. His record cover art has won many awards. His ubiquitous appearance at recording sessions and his easy rapport with the musicians led Shorty Rogers to dedicate a tune to him, 'Clickin' With Clax'.

Over the years, Claxton's work expanded beyond jazz. On an assignment for a major magazine he met a young actress, Peggy Moffitt. He suggested that she became a fashion model. She did, indeed, become a very successful model and also became Mrs William Claxton. She went to work for fashion designer Rudi Gernreich, and Claxton photographed most of his collections on Peggy, including the notorious Topless Swimsuit. Rudi, Peggy and Clax became a formidable threesome and produced some memorable work in the 60s and 70s.

For a while, Claxton was largely removed from jazz; instead of musicians, his close friends and subjects were film stars. He worked mainly doing special photography on motion picture sets for the major magazines and continued his fashion photography with Peggy and Rudi Gernreich. The latter part of the 6Os was spent living in Paris and London.

By that time, though, he had accumulated a veritable gold mine of jazz photographs, representing every era from New Orleans origins (shot on location) to post-bebop days.

During his early years as a jazz photographologist, Claxton had some memorable encounters. 'In June of 1952,' he recalls, 'I was still very green and naive; I was shooting with a big old 4x5 Speed Graphic with film plates and flash bulbs — I hadn't yet discovered the technique of available light. At this time I had a chance to shoot Bird at the Tiffany Club on Seventh Street. I hung out with him till the place closed,then brought him and his young fans to my parents' home in Pasadena. Bird was delightful; he entertained us and played for us. I improvised a studio in my bedroom and posed him with his fans in a formal portrait. It's pretty good for a kid photographer. I've never seen Bird look happier.'

Like a very few other jazz experts, Claxton has an eye for more than the obvious picture presented by his subjects. Often, along with the settings in which he showed them, they became metaphors for the Zeitgeist, for a whole era of musical evolution.”

West Coasting

- Brian Case

“Listening to veteran tenorman Teddy Edwards' reminiscences of the West Coast can make your mouth water. 'Everybody was in town because the war was in the Pacific. Soldiers, sailors, whole families had moved to the West. Los Angeles was a 24-hour town during that period. I'm sure that the 40s was the most productive period in American history in the arts and everything else. Everything was in full production, employment was at its highest peak, everything was in motion -and money was almost running down the street to meet you. Nobody thought about the war hitting America. The whole thing was alive and in motion.' In the war years the population of LA quadrupled, and Central Avenue became the Harlem of the West Coast, with clubs like Jack's Basket, Cafe Society, Casablanca and the Jungle Room, in the words of Hampton Hawes, 'jumping in to the sunrise'.

In 1945 Diz and Bird made the scene at Billy Berg's, bringing Bebop to the Coast. Few jazzmen linked with the region were born there. Out-of-town big band musicians on Blue Goose buses saw the palm trees and failed to climb back aboard. Teddy Edwards had been with the Ernie Fields Orchestra. 'We played there and then went on. The bus broke down above Cheyenne, Wyoming, and all you could see was snow. I thought, you can have all this stuff. I'm going back to California.' Tenorman Brew Moore made it in a go!-man-go! trip that allegedly inspired Jack Kerouac's On the Road. 'Billy Faier had a 1949 Buick and somebody wanted him to drive it out to California so he rode through Washington Square shouting, "Anyone for the Coast?" And I was just sitting there on a bench and there wasn't shit shaking in New York so I said, Hell, yes.' But the migrant who put the West Coast Sound on the map travelled by thumb, packing a baritone saxophone and a case full of arrangements.

Crew-cut Gerry Mulligan was responsible for some of the arrangements on the highly influential 'Birth of the Cool' album by Miles Davis, and when he formed his pianoless quartet with Chet Baker in 1952, the music shared that velvet melancholy elegance at low decibel levels. Weatherless, neatly contrapuntal, the sounds from The Haig were afar cry from the blowing sessions and cutting contests between Dexter Gordon and Wardell Cray on Central Avenue. A Time magazine article on the group set the seal upon the white West Coast sound, encouraging a rash of topographicality among record producers, after which many blazing black musicians suddenly experienced 'the LA slows'. The greatest musician in California, Art Pepper, was white and didn't feel right: 'I wanted to be a black because I felt such an affinity for the music.' Shorty Rogers, along with Mulligan, the linchpin in the West Coast movement, viewed his band, The Giants, as an update on Count Basie and the Kansas City Seven. But the copy-writers had taken over and a half-truth was born: West Coast cool, East Coast hot.

If California had the weather, it also had the film studios which provided steady work for schooled ex-big band players tired of the road. Some, like the talented Lennie Niehaus, quit the scene and wound up working for Clint Eastwood, but for many jazzmen, playing film scores by Henry Mancini or Elmer Bernstein didn't burst the spirit's slumber. Bud Shank, whose flute was always in demand for deathbed scenes, teamed with Laurindo Almeida off the lot to experiment with bossa nova. 'Was I on "The Last Detail"?' said the late Shelly Manne. 'I can't remember. Probably was. I was doing two or three a week, and I didn't always see the title. Often it hadn't got one.' He lived for the after-hours gigs, for blowing at Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse and the Blackhawk, and finally founded his own club, Shelly's Manne Hole.

Contemporary and Pacific album covers emphasized fun and sunshine in primary colours. The West Coast looked like a theme park. Visiting Brooklynite Sonny Rollins, kitted out as a gunslinger in a stetson and posing by a cactus for Contemporary's 'Way Out West', was embarrassed for decades about it until he learned that the sight of a black cowboy so influenced Courtney Pine, then a black Londoner at school, that he took up the tenor.

The long-playing record fed an expanding market, and sales techniques came up with stereotypical images for the hi-fi. Finally, the whole West Coast thing was oversold, and a reaction set in which was unfair too. Good music was playing on both coasts, often, since travel is an economic necessity, by the same cats. Dexter Gordon, born there, played everywhere. The West had its legends: Pepper, Mister Chet, the preternaturally on-it drummer, Frank Butler, Sonny Criss, who gave Bird a run for his money, and not forgetting the forever tantalizing promise of trumpet player Dupree Bolton, jailed forever. Ironically enough, it was Contemporary which first put Ornette Coleman, a Texan revolutionary whose music split both coasts, on to the market.”