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.

Buddy DeFranco - Tommy Gumina Quartet

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

“This album  marks the inauguration of what may become an important alliance in modem music. Though individually known for years to wide but disparate audiences, Tommy Gumina and Buddy De Franco might have seemed, to the average observer, a most improbable pair of subjects for the kind of close musical cooperation that can be observed in these sides. Actually their teaming was the result of a lucky accident, combined with one very important factor: the decision of Decca's Sonny Burke that Gumina and De Franco ought to be heard together on an LP

"The way I met Tommy," Buddy recalls, "you would never have dreamed that we'd have wound up with a group of our own. What happened was that one day I needed a piano player for a gig. I had Frank DeVito booked on drums and he asked me whether I could use an accordion player instead. My immediate reaction was: 'Not on your life!'. But when Frank explained that this was not just another accordion player— this was something else. And it didn't take me long to find out how right he was.

"After recording my composition King Philip with Les Brown for Decca, I had talked to sonny Burke about doing a date of my own. He already had Tommy under contract, so the suggestion that we do something together was very logical from his point of view. By that time there was a real musical marriage between Tommy and me. We got a job together at Ben Pollack's on Sunset, more or less as a place to break in some of the material we wanted to work out together for the album. What you hear on these sides is largely what we were working out on that job."

- Leonard Feather, original liner notes to the Decca Album Pacific Standard (Swingin’) Time, [DL 74031 Stereo]

I met Jack Tracy, the esteemed former editor of Downbeat Magazine and long-time Jazz record producer very late in life and quite by accident.

Initially, my contact with him was through an internet chat group that focused on the West Coast Style of Jazz that predominated in California from about 1945-65.

We later met in person at a number of the biannual 4-day Jazz festivals sponsored by the Los Angeles Jazz Institute.

He was a great supporter of this blog and an earlier contributor to it as a guest writer.

Jack was from the Minneapolis St-Paul area and moved to Chicago during his tenure as Downbeat’s editor in the 1950s. He started producing Jazz records for the Chess label based in the Windy City before Mercury Records, at the urging of Quincy Jones, convinced him to relocate to Hollywood, CA in 1961 to become their resident producer of Jazz recordings on the West Coast. Artists he worked with included Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Oscar Peterson, Woody Herman, Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, Del Close, Harry Nilsson, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and Terry Gibbs

Jack always maintained that one of the greatest results from “that move West was getting to produce a number of albums by the Buddy DeFranco - Tommy Gumina Quartet. I just loved that group. The musicianship was something else.”

We recently ran across some memorabilia associated with Jack that reminded us of about the DeFranco-Gumina Quartet recordings and we thought it might be fun to develop this feature about them for the blog.

Prior to the association with Mercury, the group recorded one LP for Decca Records - Pacific Standard (Swinging’!) Time: The Buddy DeFranco Tommy Gumina Quartet [DL 740331] and Jordi Pujol provided these insert notes for its reissue as a Fresh Sound CD along with the first Mercury LP - Presenting the Buddy DeFranco Tommy Gumina Quartet [MG 20685].

“Buddy De Franco won his first Down Beat poll in 1945 as the foremost clarinetist in jazz, and his last one was awarded by the International Jazz Critics poll m 1960. During this 15-year span, his career changed direction often and was accompanied by frustration. Known mainly as a sideman for Tommy Dorsey and Count Basie, among others, until 1950, he led a big band after that for a while, but spent most of the '50s touring with a quartet and recording with different instrumental combinations.

His co-leader on this CD, accordionist Tommy Gumina, remains a relatively unknown name for most of jazz fans. Born in Milwaukee, Wis. in 1931. where he began studying music, Gumina had been pushing hard on his chosen instrument since the age of eleven. After two years of study there he began taking lessons in Chicago from Andy Rizzo, according to him, "the greatest accordion teacher who ever lived. A fantastic teacher. He taught 'em all—Leon Sash and all the rest." Before starting with Rizzo, Gumina already had played his first solo concert when he was 12. At 15 he gave his first major concert, a recital consisting of works by Bach, Paganini, Chopin, and DeFalla.

Graduating from Milwaukee's Don Bosco High School in 1949. he made a successful appearance in New York City on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts radio program.

"That's where I first began digging jazz," he recalled, "in New York. George Shearing was highly popular in |azz then. He'd always been an idol of mine. Also, I was close to Bud Powell."

Following his New York period, Gumina returned to Milwaukee and worked in clubs there "as an act in the Contino field." In those days Dick Contino was the most popular accordion player, and he was billed as "The World's Greatest Accordionist." But, Tommy noted, "I stick with jazz and always wanted to make the instrument a jazz instrument.”

It was while working a Milwaukee night club in 1951 that Gumina was heard by Harry James. "Harry dug what I was doing and asked me to join the band as a featured performer. The following year, I did,"

"At that time," he recalled. "I thought I was playing pretty good. But my bebop conception conflicted with the Harry James style, so I had to compromise. So far as playing real jazz was concerned, this put me back five years. But Harry was real great to me. For five years I was his shadow."

He left the James band following "18 weeks of one-nighters and locations." He shuddered at the memory. "That trip did it. I went back to doing a single act in Las Vegas, Reno — that circuit."

Forsaking the night-club circuit in 1957. he returned to Milwaukee, where he started a record label called Continental and cut a couple of singles that made a little noise. The same year saw Gumina and his family pack up and head west They settled in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, where Gumina gigged around town. Then he was signed to a Decca contract and got a king-size reputation as a competent and talented journeyman on his instrument. In 1958 he struck musician's gold — job security: a staff job at the American Broadcasting Co.rs Hollywood television studios.

Early in 1960, Buddy de Franco and Tommy Gumina joined forces to form a new quartet with Ralph Pena (soon replaced by Bob Stone) on bass and Frank DeVito on drums.

This new alliance with Gumina, was as rewarding and exciting musically for the clarinetist as it was bookable. In March the group debuted for four weeks at the "Pick-a-Rib"—a nightclub and restaurant at 8250 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, owned by drummer Ben Pollack — playing assertive, driving, modern jazz and sharing the spot with Barney Bigard’s Dixieland combo. When he began playing with DeFranco, Gumina left ABC to work with the quartet full time.

As was the case with the Joe Mooney (ace) and Andy Fitzgerald (cl) partnership of 1945, the clarinet-accordion blend was fully exploited m the new group. The basic difference here, however, is that, while the Mooney quartet concentrated on achieving intimate and, for the time, experimental tonal effects, DeFranco and Gumina were intent on getting an ensemble sound suggesting the blast and drive of a big band.

But this overall shouting effect so successfully achieved by the group on the up tempo swingers is by no means the definitive mark of this versatile quartet. DeFranco is the shining light in solo work, and when he blows freely on swingers like How High the Moon, the tension and exhilaration reach coruscating heights.

That spring young San Diego drummer John Guerin replaced DeVito, and with bassist Don Greif the quartet made its first foray away to play a date at a club called Cure's in Milwaukee. Then, in June, they played a successful engagement at the Crescendo in Hollywood and a Sunday appearance at The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach.

In this new setting. Buddy's fleet, fluid clarinet gained a new perspective. Gumina's accordion gave the DeFranco clarinet the tonal rapport it needed. Besides the enhanced over-all sound, the use ol appealing arrangements written by both of them added strong listener interest. The relationship was one of outlook, of emphasis on melody and rhythm. on lyricism and stimulation. Gumina was the key man in the group. He disciplined the accordion to a lean, crisp line of attack, and he phrases very much in the airy, impressionistic manner ot fellow accordionist Joe Mooney. The quality of airiness, of lightness, floats through all the pieces, abetted by lovely voicings in the ensembles and spurred by the quartet's weapons-grade propulsion.

On the first two albums recorded by the quartet, "Pacific Standard (Swingin't) Time," and "Presenting..." De Franco is not only warmed by Gumina's (ire but is also driven along by the accordionist's strongly swinging attack and by the sturdy rhythm support of bassists Bob Stone and Bill Plummer, and drummers Frank De Vito and John Guerin. This is straightforward, thoughtfully conceived but unpretentious small-group jazz with a character all its own.” -Jordi Pujol

I realize that the accordion has a rather contentious history in Jazz mainly to do with objections about the sound quality [or lack of it] of the instrument. But I think that if you spend any time listening to the exceptional improvisations that Tommy develops on the Decca and four Mercury albums, you’ll come away with a totally different perception of the instrument’s worth in the music.