The Creative World of Stan Kenton - Part 5

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

In developing a broader understanding and appreciation of Kenton 70's music to share with you in these continuing features on the subject we are fortunate that so many of the band members from that era were available [many continue to be] to participate in interviews in which they shared their experiences about Stan and what it was like to be on the band.

The following interview appears in excerpts from Lillian Arganian’s Stan Kenton: The Man and His Music [1989], Lillian was for many years associated with Michigan State University. A violinist herself and a lifelong fan of Kenton’s music, her book contains 24 interviews with musicians and arranger’s associated with the Kenton Band in the 1970s.

Since the trombone section has always been a major part of the Kenton Sound, I thought it might be fun to continue our look at the Creative World of Stan Kenton in the decade of the 1970s with the following interview from Lillian’s book with trombonists Dick Shearer and Mike Suter.

If you ever wanted to know what the true costs were - from many points of view, financial and otherwise - of being on the Kenton Band in the 1970s, you’ll get a close look by reading this interview.

Mike SUTER: Southern Illinois, remember we did that? 

Dick SHEARER: And I had to go up and. . . 

SUTER: Stan's ultimate band!

L.A.: Why was that? 

SUTER: Thirty-seven hundred people.

Lillian Arganian.: (Laughs.) What was this?

SUTER: They brought us to Southern Illinois  University to play at the

half-time.

L.A.: Oh, the Stan Kenton band? At half-time?

SUTER: It was their band day.

L.A.: You're kidding!

SUTER: So there were like 25 high school bands...

L.A.: Oh, wow.

SUTER: And the Stan Kenton band ... 

L.A.: (Laughs.)

SUTER: We played "MacArthur Park." Well fine. Pop-da-da-daa-dot-dot-dot-daa. You can't do that with thirty-seven hundred people. It went pop-dot-dot-daa-dudugududum-dot-dot. It was ponderous, it was terrible, the people loved it, and it was the perfect-sized band for Stan.

L.A.: (Laughs.) Thirty-seven hundred? 

SUTER: He finally had enough people in his band!

SHEARER: And I'm the only one that went Duh-duh-duh-da-duh-duh-

duh-'duh. (Laughs.) I thought about that old joke.

L.A.: What's the old joke? 

SHEARER: This piccolo player dies and goes to Heaven, and the Lord grants him one wish. Says he wants to play with great musicians. So poof there he's in the Grand Canyon and he looks up, and there's five thousand trumpets. Four thousand trombones. A thousand sousa-phones. God only knows how many drummers, and clarinet players and all this. Goes up to the podium and plays that little solo march in "The Stars and Stripes Forever."

SUTER: You can imagine what it was like when they all came in after that. L.A.: It would have knocked him over! 

SHEARER: Would you like five thousand people playing two quarter notes in your ear?

SUTER: That's what was happening with Dick. It was him against literally the world.

SHEARER: I had a two-bar solo every time it happened. I'm the only one who played it. Duh-duh-duh-da-dee-duh- duh-duh. I'd walk up to the microphone and do that, just me and a couple of soft woodwinds, then I'd step back and all of a sudden WHAAACHHH! Duh-duh-

duh-da-dee-da-da-da.  Da-da-daa-da- dee-da-da-da. WHOH WHOH-WHOH WHOH-WHOH!

SUTER: It was really; it was weird.

L.A.: Stan must have loved it. That's his idea of a band, all right.

SUTER: We kidded him about it. We said he finally got enough people in his band to make him happy.

L.A.: A new high in tone color! Why do you suppose Stan favored trombones so much?

SHEARER: What he said to me was, when he was a young kid, and used to go down and hear the shows 'n' stuff, and he'd hear those trombones in the pit orchestra with that sound they used to get, he'd say "Someday I'm gonna have a band with a bunch of trombones." He loved the sound of it. He just loved that rich sound — that's why the band had a lot of low horns in it. Stanley always said, you need  that  bottom.  You  get  a good bottom and the top comes out straight. That's why he had the trumpets up there.

L.A.: More people wrote for trombone, then, among Kenton's arrangers. SUTER: We had more music in every chart than any other horn. 

SHEARER: The trumpet book was two inches thick, the saxophone book was two inches thick, the trombone books were three-and-a-half inches thick. SUTER: There were things you'd look forward to playing, like "Tonight." We played that maybe twice a month. There were three hundred tunes in the book. Once a month you played at least everything once. But some of 'em were killers, where you'd be playing nothing but whole notes. And it hurts to play whole notes.

SHEARER: Ken Hanna lives. 

SUTER: Ya. Ken Hanna's stuff. Terrible for trombone players. All you're doing is playing long tones. And pretty soon the band's in Poughkeepsie and you're in Hawaii someplace, blowing your lungs out. 

L.A.: (Laughs.) My gosh. 

SUTER: That's where "How's Hawaii?" comes from. That's what that means. Because you hyperventilate and you're sitting there in your chair and you're playing your pitch but you don't really know where you are sometimes. 

L.A.: My gosh. 

SUTER: Playing is physical. 

L.A.: It takes a lot out of you. 

SUTER: That's the thing Stan would do — he'd come up, there'd be a bass player sitting in his chair playing an upright bass, and Stan would walk along and hit him in the shoulder. "Stand up, so I can't knock you down." You'd hear that sort of stuff. And he'd talk about it at the one-day clinics. It's a physical thing. You've got to get involved with it. And he'd show 'em. He'd always use bass, because that was his little thing. He'd show how you have to embrace a bass, how you have to hold it, interact with it. And you have to do that with any horn. It's hard work. He used to talk about that — you can't swing with your brain, you gotta swing somehow with your body. You've gotta have some kind of physical motion in there. 

L.A.: It's miraculous that the music never left him, even after his last illness. SHEARER: First couple of times he sat down at the piano, everybody was nervous, wondering whether the operation had affected that. He sat down and started playing. "What's the name of that?" And it just came right out. At other times he'd get up there with the band, and couldn't remember the bridge to what he was playing. 

SUTER: Ya, the chops were a trained reflex action with him. He never lost them. He never had a lot. But there were nights when he was the best emotional piano player in the world. I can't remember where it was in New York, but one night he played "Body and Soul" and the whole band missed the cue. Stan played his chorus and he looked up and gave his downbeat and there are nineteen guys in the band sitting there looking at him. Nobody made a move to pick up their horn. Nobody even knew that we were playing a concert. And that doesn't happen to me. I mean I'm not sayin' that for shock value. We all just blew it. We all just missed it. He would do that, once every three or four months. He'd get out alone and he'd play something really great.

L.A.: Some of the best piano music I've heard him do is on his Chicago album. 

SHEARER: There's another album called Stan Kenton Solo. It's all just him and there's times in there where you can hear his whole life. It's very emotional stuff. 

SUTER: It's the hardest one to listen to.

SHEARER: Ya. Hard to listen____

L.A.: What did Stan like about you? He must have singled you out for some reason to be such a close friend. 

SHEARER: I don't know. Just one of those things that happen. We'd get along very well. We had dinner together almost every night for years, and ... you know, many a night we'd sit there and not say a word! At dinner. But he was perfectly content. All he had to do was look up, there was somebody there . . . 

SUTER: I think that had a lot to do with it. I can speak about that relationship as an outsider. Dick did things for Stan that Stan didn't want to do. Dick took care of the hiring on the band. Stan did the firing. That was their agreement. But also, Dick made no other demands. I mean, one of the tests of a friendship is, you know, you can spend a couple of days together and not have to entertain one another. 

SHEARER: Um-hm. 

SUTER: I think long before they were friends, Stan trusted Dick. That allowed their friendship to blossom. 

L.A.: Why were you so dedicated to Kenton?

SHEARER: I enjoyed it. It's what I wanted to do. I never thought about that when I joined the band, that I'd be doin' all that stuff someday. 'Cause he was a pain in the ass to me at times. He and I used to go around and around. I'd have to fight with him to go out, on our nights off. "Let's go to a movie, let's do something, come on!" Well I'd get 'im going. We'd go out and eat and we'd go see some band somewhere, or catch a film, or some concert, and he comes back and he says, "God damn that was great! We gotta do this more often!" Next time we had a night off, I hadda kick him in the butt again. "I gotta go see 'Hello Dolly.' " Pearl Bailey was doin' it. We were in Toronto. We had a night off from the clinic. And I had a hassle with him. We finally got him so he'd go down there, and I sent a note backstage to Pearl that Stan was there. And I'm lookin' over at 'him and he's just smilin', oh he's havin' a good time. Pearl got Stan up on stage, and everybody in the place stood up. And he gives me that look as he walks by me, and he gets up there, and afterwards we're in the dressing room. He just had a ball. But to get him to do stuff like that, he'd just as soon go to his room and get juiced. 

L.A.: As band manager, you had quite a lot of responsibility toward the running of the band, didn't you? 

SHEARER: I used to have to call and make reservations and all that, plus do the payroll.

L. A.: That's quite a load on you, isn't it? Plus playing the book. 

SHEARER: Well it got to be a load. It got to be a little scary now and then. You lose $3,000, you wonder where it went. (Laughs.) 

L.A.: (Laughs.)

SUTER: Did he think he was paying us a lot of money?

SHEARER: Well, you know . . . 

SUTER:  No I mean really, I'm not making a joke.

SHEARER: Oh, Christ yes, Mike! 

SUTER: He thought he was? 

SHEARER: That's one thing Stanley could never get straight in his mind. He was back twenty years ago. I fought with him for I don't know how long. I finally got the base pay up to $250. 

SUTER: You know what happened last summer.

SHEARER: I know, it went right back down.

SUTER: It was the lowest paying band ... in the world.

SHEARER: He thought it was a lot of money!

L.A.: The lowest paying band in the world?

SUTER: The lowest paying band in the world.

L.A.: How would he get away with that? 

SUTER: People worked for him, didn't they?

L.A.: (Laughs.) That's what I'm wondering.

SUTER: There's no union on the road. Who're you gonna call? 

L.A.: Would he pay more if you were stationary somewhere? 

SUTER: No. You always got paid the same, no matter what. But I mean, if you went out with him, you knew beforehand what you were gonna get. So it was my fault that I got paid that little. I'm not saying it was bad. It just was. 

L.A.: Maybe the prestige of it made it worth it. 

SUTER: Whatever.

SHEARER: (Laughs.) That and a hotdog won't get you a cup of coffee. Here's

a payroll sheet from 1968. That was the base pay then. A hundred and fifty

bucks.

SUTER:   'Course now,  motel rooms were — people will use this argument...

SHEARER: It was still the same ten years later.

SUTER: Um-hm.

SHEARER: The prices went up and everything.

L.A.: You mean out of that base salary you had to pay for your own motel

room?

SHEARER: Oh ya.

SUTER: Ya.

SHEARER: Except we had a thing later on where anything over eight dollars the band picked up. So you knew it cost you fifty-six dollars a week for your room, and the band picked up everything else. That's why we started staying at Holiday Inns, Ramadas, nice places, where it would cost us — the band itself — up to sixteen dollars a night. The guys would pay eight of that and we'd pick up the rest of it.

L.A.: Was that fairly recently? 

SHEARER: It got started around 70, 71. We used to give the guys their money back. They would pay their bill . . .

SUTER: Ya, we paid our own bills. 

SHEARER: And I'd reimburse 'em. 

SUTER:  Every two weeks  we'd get reimbursed.

SHEARER: With the exception of when we went to Europe, then we paid all the bills and got the money back from the guys later.

SUTER: At the same time I was on Stan's band — I joined for $250, plus overages — at that very same time Maynard was paying $400 and Maynard paid for the rooms. Woody paid $400 and paid for the rooms. We worked more and got paid less than any band. I joined the band, played the first night at the St. Nicholas Hotel. Had a night off. Then worked 135 straight nights. I joined the band two days before Stan set his record. 

L.A.: What record?

SUTER: A hundred and thirty-five nights without a break. We broke for Christmas.

SHEARER: You've got to have at least twenty to twenty-five grand a week, now. And you couldn't possibly earn that much. You're talking about five, six thousand dollars every night. To make that, you've got to have a hell of a good name.

SUTER: The worst part is, the recording company never made money. So guess who made up that money? The band did. The publishing company never made money. Guess who made up that money? The band did. So if the band made — the band was working for $2500 a night — what we made on the road went to support the entire Creative World. Not just the band. They made as much for the Kenton band as they would for Maynard Ferguson, yet their guys were getting a hundred and fifty dollars a week plus motel rooms more than we were.

SHEARER: And Stan was always broke! (Laughs.)

L.A.: Kenton's life story is peppered with the times that he could have gone more commercial and made the money. 

SUTER: That's okay. That's what he wanted to do. And we chose to stay with him. The people who went on the band chose it — nobody held a gun to our heads. So we don't have any right to complain about it. And I'm not. I enjoyed what I did.

SHEARER: But the band was not one of the highest-grossing bands. That was part of the problem. They would book us for $2500 a night, $2,000 a night. We used to have a hell of a party every time the band broke $20,000. We didn't have too many of those.

L.A.: But he would do it because he wanted to play that kind of music, right? SHEARER: Well, he'd try to keep working. It got a little bit better in the later years.

L.A.: That's what I think is heroic about him, to want to stick with his music even though it wasn't really commercially rewarding. How many people do you know who will do that? 

SHEARER: (Looking in accounts book.) Okay, let's see. This week was $9970. We had a $6900 week. We had an $8,000 week. This was all 1968. Thirty-four hundred. At $3400, we were still on the road all week.

L.A.: How much did you have to pay the members of the band? About twenty people—that's $4,000 right there, isn't it?

SHEARER:  The net payroll was $3,000. Not gross. Net. Which still had to be met on the Coast. 

SUTER: But we never missed a payroll. 

SHEARER: No. 

SUTER: We were— 

SHEARER: There were times when we were late. Gross, $8,000. $10,000. We must have had a hell of a time then. $9,000. $9,000. $7,000. This is still 1968. In 1978 it was better. We were probably around 19-20. When we'd go to Europe it would be another story. 

L.A.: Why was that? 

SHEARER:  We'd  make a lot more money over there. But then again we had a lot more expenses. When we were in Rome, it cost the guys eight bucks a night, and the hotel room was $40. So we picked up the other $32 ourselves. Stan did.

SUTER: When the band had the occasional five- or six-thousand-dollar job, the band didn't get paid any more. 

SHEARER: No. See that's the way . .. 

L.A.: Would it go to Creative World, then?

SUTER: Yeah, exactly! 

SHEARER: It would go there, sure. 

SUTER: It would go to Stan Kenton Incorporated. Or whatever you want to call it.

SHEARER: 'Course, some weeks we only worked three days. Well the band was paid for the whole week. 

SUTER: Um-hm.

SHEARER: Bus expense. Every time the band would fly somewhere . . . 

L. A.: As long as you're leveling with me, tell me this: would a guy join the Stan Kenton band because it was the only offer he got? 

SUTER: No.

L.A.: Or because he wanted to be in the Stan Kenton band? 

SUTER: Ya. Um-hm. 

SHEARER: You joined because you wanted to be in Stan's band. 

L.A.: If you had three offers, and two of them were from Maynard Ferguson and Woody Herman . . . 

SUTER: Yeah, if you were in your right mind you wouldn't join Stan's band. Businesswise it was the worst mistake I ever made. But like I said, I decided when I was twelve.

L.A.:  You  said  it  was  because you wanted to play bass trombone. Is that the only reason you wanted to join? 

SUTER: That's the only reason I wanted to join.

SHEARER: How many bass trombone . . .

LA.: They don't have bass trombones in the other orchestras?

SUTER: They do, but they're nothin'.

SHEARER: Nothin’. They're nothin'.

SUTER: I mean, there's some substance to what was happening there.

L.A.: Would you say that Kenton created his own idiom, or wouldn't you jo that far? Classical jazz, is there such a thing?

SUTER: Whatever it was, he made it himself. Ya. I would go that far. 

L.A.: He's got his own definition of what he did, right?

SUTER: Oh ya. He had his own definition of what swing was. 

L.A.: Isn't that why he doesn't fit neatly into anybody's category? 

SUTER: That's true. 

L.A.: Why they're always shaking their fists at him? 

SUTER: Sure.

L.A.: Because he made his own kind of music.

SUTER: Yep. 

L.A.: Would you call that classical jazz? 

SUTER: No. 

L.A.: Concert jazz.

SUTER: I'd call it Stan Kenton. I don't even call it jazz. I don't think Stan Kenton ever played jazz, or his band ever played jazz, after 1954. 

L.A.: What would you call that kind of music?

SUTER: Stan Kenton. I'm not being evasive.

L.A.: Come on. You can't label a kind of music "Stan Kenton." 

SUTER: I sure as hell can. 

SHEARER: He used to call it "concert jazz."

L.A.: Nobody's ever put the whole picture together.

SHEARER: Nothing will happen about Stanley 'til about two years from now. L.A.: And then what? 

SHEARER: Then they'll get some kind of movement goin' and all of a sudden everybody's gonna realize what great things he's done.

L.A.: Stan's a cultivated taste. Not that many people in the United States even care about him, or know who he is. But the people who are involved in music do. Disc jockeys do. Musicians do. 

SUTER: He used to say some little dumb things that just killed me. We played a concert in Jackson, Michigan, once, at Central High School. Somebody had let off a stink bomb. We smelled it, it was no big deal. It wasn't in the auditorium, it was in some other part of the school. And he was straight. We're playing the gig, played the first half, came back for the second half, and he said, "I understand somebody let off a stink bomb in the school here. I understand some of you people thought it was the band. Well, I'm sorry somebody let off a stink bomb." He turned to walk back, took about four steps, and turned around. Walked back to the mike, said, "We thought it was you." (Laughs.) I couldn't play the next two tunes.

SHEARER: He'd always say things like that. Sometimes he'd forget about how great some of the acoustics were. And he'd be straight as an arrow and he'd say something to me that would just floor me, and people in the front two seats are just dying laughing'. And he catches them out of the corner of his eye, he says (whispers) "Can they hear me?" And I says "Oh yes. Because you said it right into my microphone." 

L.A.: (Laughs.)

SHEARER: He would do things to try to break us up. We were working at some country club. The bandstand was up about this high, and there were bushes. We're playing some ballad, Stanley disappears. All of a sudden he peeks through the bushes, goes "VERY INTERESTING." That stopped the trombones. And when he'd tell us some corny joke just before the curtain would go up, he'd time it perfectly. Curtain would go up and he'd give the downbeat right at the punch line. Jamieson was on the band. That poor guy. I'd have to send him away, he'd start laughin' so hard. Took us twenty minutes to get through the first eight bars of "Rainy Day." He'd always do stuff like this. 

SUTER: I got him once, though. It was in Michigan. We played up at Mott Community College. Their band leader had this multi-colored patchwork vest on. He came around. Bus pulled up to the clinic. He came out the door, waving at the bus, and he came running around to the side of the bus. And just as he reached for the bus door I said "Stan whatever you do, don't laugh at his vest."

L.A.: (Laughs.)

SUTER: Well that did it. Door opens— "Mr. Kenton, how are ya!" and Stan's just draped over the thing, tears running down his face. Poor guy never knew what hit him.

SHEARER: Oh I'd get him good. Any time someone would go weird he'd look over at me. "Dick! Are you behind this?" We'd always do strange things when he'd have his back to us.

SUTER: He stopped the band one time in Springfield, Ohio. We were at the St. Nicholas Hotel. You had stolen Keim's mouthpiece. We were playing "Peanut Vendor." And Keim's sittin’ there, with no mouthpiece. Stan got mad and stopped the band. "Who's got his mouthpiece?" Dick reached in his vest. Put the mouthpiece back. We started it again.

SHEARER: I was probably the only one to get away with it. 

SUTER: I got Dick one night and almost got fired for it. Dick would drop a dime in your mouthpiece -then you'd blow, and nothing would happen. Dick told me that I would never get him. Well that was an immediate challenge. SHEARER: Wrong choice of words. 

SUTER: So this is like a year and a half later. We were in Jeff City, Missouri. We had some game that used golf tees in our rooms. I took a golf tee with me. We were playing "Intermission Riff." Two other tenor trombones go out front to play their solos. Dick stays in the middle. The two bass trombones move in to the inside of the section, so when the jazz players come back they can just sit down on the outside, 'cause it's the last thing before intermission, and it made the logistics of playing the chart a lot easier. So we moved on in. Dick turned around and was saying somethin’ to the trumpets. I took the golf tee and put it in his mouthpiece. No big deal, he discovered that. 'Cause he always, always looked. So I took a dime, and it went: "CLANG!" And Dick's turned to the trumpets, he could see it went clang. He knew the dime was in there. I knew I had 'im. He picked up his horn and dropped the dime out. Stan was so mad at me. It was obvious who did it. None of us were playing. Sodersack and I were giggling, and I was on the floor. 

SHEARER: And I was laughin'. 

SUTER: Oh, he was mad. "I want to see you at the break." He bawled me out. I didn't pay any attention to any of it. (Laughs.)

L.A.: I suppose if it went on all the time, he really couldn't single you out.

SUTER: That  band  was like the Waltons.

LA.: (Laughs.)

SUTER: We'd get to the hotel after the job: "Goodnight Stan." "Goodnight Mike." "Goodnight Stan." "Goodnight Dick." "Goodnight Dick." "Goodnight Mike." "Goodnight Tom." "Goodnight George." (Laughs.)

SHEARER: (Laughing.) It was awful. You couldn't get off the bus for five

minutes! I forgot all about that.

Stan Kenton: An Introduction

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

“The emerging consensus … is that the Kenton output was, as a whole, neither as terrible as its critics insisted nor as celestial as its devotees pretended. At times, of course, it could be either of the extremes, but the plain truth about the Kenton orchestra was that it was so much else as well. One should speak of the ‘Kenton sound’ only with trepidation; it is better to refer to the Kenton ‘sounds.’ …
The band’s range of expression was, in fact, nothing short of awe-inspiring. There may have been better big bands, certainly there were more consistently excellent big bands, but for sheer expressiveness, none could match the Kenton ensemble of the postwar years.”

- Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-60 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 144-45; paragraphing modified]:

In spite of the controversy that has always surrounded the man and his music and perhaps sometimes because of it,  Stan Kenton has been of interest to me from the first time I heard his magnificent 1946 version of Concerto to End all Concertos. To give you some idea of how long ago this was, the record speed was 78 rpm!

When I put these extended [12"] 78's on the record player, all heck broke loose as the majesty and the power of Kenton’s music presented itself. I was hooked then and have been hooked ever since. What grand stuff this is!

The music seemed to possess me, both emotionally and intellectually. It was as though the music came alive and brought me into a new dimension along with it.

Ever since that first encounter with his music, I’ve listened to the various iterations of Stan’s orchestras and the constant transformations in his music.

In doing so, I’ve come to appreciate the following, succinctly-stated observations about Stan and his music as drawn from the WorldRecords.com website:

“For all the power, beauty, and majesty of his music, Stan Kenton remains an enigma. That may be a little dramatic but it's the kind of drama that Kenton himself would have appreciated.

Certainly much of his oeuvre encompasses a long series of contradictions: he put together a series of the hardest swinging big bands in the history of American music, but he often seemed to be on an impossible dream kind of quest for a new jazz art music hybrid in which swing was not necessarily the thing.

He was one of the first white bandleaders to regularly hire black musicians, but in an infamous moment around 1956, he complained that white jazzmen were under appreciated.

He was constantly looking for ways to push the boundaries of the music into the future he was the first musician to popularize the term "progressive jazz" yet he also constantly carried the torch for the great early players like Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines.

Taken philosophically, Kenton would seem to add up to a series of unresolved chords, but musically, Kenton was among the most consistently inspired of American Musical icons. For nearly 40 years, he led one great band after another, which were marked not only by the ambitiousness of the leader's musical vision, but by the quality of musicians and arrangers whom he unfailingly surrounded himself with.

Every unit he led in front of the public or in a recording studio had something to recommend it, and even if his ideas could occasionally be pretentious, the point is that his music was constantly driven by new ideas.

Over the course of his long career the thing that Kenton feared most wasn't failure but the idea of repeating himself. He was a spiritual kinsman to both Frank Sinatra and Miles Davis, two other musical icons who, at every stage of their development, refused to stop evolving and who could never stomach the idea of doing something that they had done before.”

So how best to spend some time with this fascinating man on JazzProfiles?

Since Lillian Arganian has kindly granted the editorial staff permission to use The Introduction to her work, Stan Kenton: The Man and His Music, we thought that this would be an excellent place to begin a multi-part profile on Stan.

© -Lillian Arganian, used with the author’s permission; copyright protected, all rights reserved.

“Balboa Beach. June 14, 1982, 9:35 p.m. Site of the Rendezvous Ballroom.

A more perfect setting could not be imagined for what happened here 41 years ago. Dramatic and colorful, it's a stage set for the launching of something of great moment.

A pier runs to the left of the site into the incredible green sea, now darkened. From its edge lovers could turn to face the expanse of miniature gold city lights in the distance to the right, the exotic silhouette of romantic palms to the left. Walking back, they would hear the roaring Pacific, crashing to shore in giant bursts of white foam, hissing away in huge swirls.

And, roaring back, the bold, brash new music of Stanley Newcomb Kenton and his Orchestra, a scant 300 yards away in the Rendezvous Ballroom on Ocean Front Boulevard.

They began here, the five musical decades of Kenton's life, as he progressed from playing in other people's bands in the mid-1930s to putting together his first orchestra at the end of 1940. A booking on Memorial Day, 1941, and through the summer of that year gave his young band the solid footing it needed before heading East. It was to be an international career before it ended with his death on August 25,1979, and though he stipulated in his will that there be no "ghost band" there is Kenton music being heard everywhere in the world today, through the quicksilver scattering of his ideas that have danced into so many corridors of music they can never again be contained.

Stan Kenton the Man was a figure of complexity and simplicity; of contradiction and straight-ahead logic; of enormous psychic awareness and sensitivity; of characteristics at war with each other but at home within the same person, a seeker of the farthest frontiers of music and imagination. If he had to be summed up in one word, the word would be: Innovator.

Stan the Man's music was daring and brilliant. Exquisitely tender and pensive. Quick-paced. Exotic. Lush. Sensual. New. Different. Polytonal. Atonal. Massive. Emotional. Unleashed. If it had to be summed up in one word, the word would be: Exciting.

Stan Kenton was his music.

No phase of it was left untouched by the man, from playing piano, composing and arranging to leading the band, expanding its horizons, stretching and nurturing his musicians, promoting his concerts and records, making his own records and organizing his own direct-mail organization, speaking for jazz, entering the world of education and fostering the art form in an extensive clinic program in colleges and universities that lasted twenty years.

Married and divorced three times, Stan fathered three children and at one time owned a beautiful home in Beverly Hills. But his calling was his music and his true home was the road. And so it has not been the intention of this book to present the life of Stan Kenton in biographical or chronological form, but rather to touch upon key ideas of his musical thoughts and to ask questions—some of which will remain unanswered—as to his aims, directions, and ultimate achievements as a twentieth-century American musician. And to see what his life and music were all about by discussing their facets with some of those most closely involved—his musicians—and their interactions with him.

Whether sidemen, arrangers, composers, vocalists, educators, a combination of two or more of these, or related through kinship of idea or admiration, all were part of the Kenton orbit and understood its sphere of influence. From the early meeting in 1934 with Bob Gioga, who played on the first Stan Kenton Orchestra, through Dick Shearer and Mike Suter, who played on the last, they cover the entire span of his career. A strict chronology was not followed because many of the characters came in and out of Kenton's life in more than one period, but the book should be seen to have its own logic of presentation as the story unfolds.

It may be helpful to keep in mind certain key times in Kenton's career as a guide in tracing the progression of the several phases of his innovations and developments. While most big band leaders were content to settle into a specific style and trademark, Kenton explored. For Kenton the adventure could not be too extreme. Many will remember the revolutionary City of Glass from the late forties-early fifties period. Written by Bob Graettinger, this unusual concert work would not have been touched by any other band leader of the time, nor probably any symphonic conductor. The author has seen some of the Graettinger charts in the Kenton Archives at North Texas State University, courtesy of Leon Breeden, and the courage it took to take on one of those—graphs, for graphs are what they are—is unimaginable. That Kenton championed this music alone guarantees him a place in modern American musical history. But that was but a single episode in a highly episodic life.

Kenton's birth, long considered to be February 19,1912, in Wichita, Kansas, was established as December 15,1911 by Dr. William F. Lee in his book, Stan Kenton: Artistry in Rhythm (Creative Press, 1980). Both dates continue to be observed in celebrations and tributes. Kenton spent his early youth in Colorado and moved with his family to California, where after a time they settled in Bell.

Kenton has said he became addicted to music at the age of fourteen, following a visit to his home of his cousins, Billy and Arthur, who impressed him with their playing of jazz. Even before that, he'd had piano lessons and used to fall asleep at night with radio headphones over his ears. Young Stanley formed a combo in high school, called the Belltones, who played dances and parties.

For several years he played in territory bands and in speakeasies, working his way up from fifty cents a night to forty dollars a week. Meeting Everett Hoaglund in 1934 seems to have been a turning point; perhaps because he learned from the man's professionalism, or perhaps because some of the musicians he met at this time later went with him.

By the autumn of 1940 Kenton had made the decision to go off on his own. He formed a rehearsal band, wrote his theme song, composed original charts and arrangements of standard tunes, cut several dubs, lined up his own bookings, premiered at a Huntington Beach ballroom, just north of Balboa. Kenton and his men substituted one night at the Rendezvous in Balboa for the Johnny Richards band, and through a mysterious set of circumstances inherited the summer job there when the owner cancelled Richards' band and hired his.

At some point in the early forties the band picked up the name "Artistry in Rhythm." It was an active band, changing personnel with the coming and going of its sidemen into the armed services. In the autumn of 1947 the "Progressive Jazz" Orchestra was formed, centering on the music of Pete Rugolo, with its many striking influences of classical composers such as Bartok, Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy, and Milhaud.

Stan's highly creative "Innovations" Orchestra was put together at the end of 1949 and premiered in 1950, going on tour in 1950 and '51. It was the most unusual idea of its time, and probably comes closest to what Stan was striving for all his life, continuing in the experimental vein that predated it in the Progressive Jazz concept and that went on after it. Long before he had one he'd dreamed of a band that played concerts instead of dances. Sprinkled throughout this book is a quote in his words made at the time of the premiere of this new phase of his music. Though the time frame of its formal existence was relatively short, the idea was a lasting one.

Jazz greats were the stars on the famous "swing" bands of the early- to mid-fifties, when performers such as Lee Konitz, Lennie Niehaus, Frank Rosolino, Gerry Mulligan, Charlie Mariano, Maynard Ferguson and many others seared into the consciousness of impressionable young musicians who knew they "had to" join the Kenton band one day. For the Kenton band was always its own catalyst for attracting future musicians to it, just as it made the reputations of those who were associated with it. Known as "New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm," the band took Europe by storm in the first of Kenton's many trips abroad in 1953. In 1959 Kenton first became involved with jazz clinics at the universities, an involvement that developed into a passionate commitment that endured all the rest of his life. Many feel it was his most important achievement.

Two widely differing musical ideas and a brainstorm found their conception in the sixties: the "Mellophonium" Band, or "New Era in Modern American Music" Orchestra, of 1960-63, which recorded such fabulous discs as West Side Story and Adventures in Time, both written by Johnny Richards, was one. The "Neophonic" Orchestra, which premiered at the Los Angeles Music Center in 1965 presenting some of the most original music ever written for an American band, was the other.

The brainstorm was the creation of Creative World, a Kenton organization that started as a promotional vehicle and later developed to pressing and distributing its own records. Its importance in keeping interest in both Kenton and jazz alive cannot be overestimated, for the sixties saw the rise of rock to dominating proportions on the popular music scene.

Rock crashed head-on into Kenton in the seventies and lost, in that Kenton simply superimposed "the Kenton sound" onto it, through such records as 7.5 on the Richter Scale. Kenton also became entranced with the time revolution of the seventies, instigated by Don Ellis and carried on by Hank Levy, bringing on a whole new but still very much Kentonesque sound.

Stan Kenton's amalgam of twentieth-century European classical influences with jazz in his own original compositions, such as "Shelly Manne" and "June Christy," produced works of startling quality and interest. Many of his works have never been recorded, perhaps never heard. He could be maddeningly modest at times.

Madcap humor was as much a part of his life as were the clashing of chords and brass choirs. A classic favorite was his disappearing act. Stan would mysteriously vanish while leading the band, as stealthily as a fox. Moments later he would reappear—through the parted fronds of a stage palm!

The Kenton band of nearly forty years hurtled through the night in one gigantic card game. Only the players changed, while Kenton stayed on. A remarkable rendering of the Kenton philosophy turned up on the back of some score sheets, dated Dec. 1966, during Leon Breeden's researches at NTSU, which he very kindly shared with the author. In Stan's own writing were these words:

A bus is many things to a band over and above transporting it from engagement to engagement and place to place.

It is serenity - - belongs to the musicians and they belong to it. It carries not only the musician, but their (sic) necessary personal items such as clothing and other objects contributing to his being in addition to the most important reason for his very existance (sic) and his justification for living, his musical instrument which is his identity.

A bus is more important than a hotel room. A hotel room is temporary. The bus is permanent. A visit to a restaurant is a fleeting intermission.

A musician's seat on the bus becomes his personal area both above and below & is so private that no one infringe(s) by placing any thing foreign to him in his retreat.

A bus is refuge and escape from the outside world.

A bus is a symbol of a musician's dreams and aspirations. It can become a sanctuary of elation and satisfaction or a den of despair and disappointment all determined by how and in what manner he and his horn have performed. A bus can be any thing from a horror chamber from which there seems no escape to a vehicle taking him to the highest level of exalted achievement.

A bus is sometimes a dressing room a warm up room a library a place of meditation, on it dreams of the future take shape and foundations are lain to help them become realities.

A bus is a recreation center a rumpus room a private meeting place in which no one is admitted unless their interests are common.

Talk and conversation is in almost every case is (sic) dominated by discussions revolving around music. Occasionally talk drifts away to other things but only for a moment then back to music.

'I feel this way'

'I dig that'

'I find that'

'My taste tells me'

'He thinks'

'They thought'

What do you do

What are your feelings

etc. etc. —One nighters—

Constant movement.

Travel—eat—play music—travel eat sleep travel et (sic) play music and the cycle continues.

No one remembers where they played last night or where they play tomorrow. It is only today that counts. The day of

the week and the date of the month is forgotten, sometimes even the month itself.

—Hit & run—/Goody box/ Water jug/ Rules/ Root /Beer Coolers/Tire checks/Day sheets/Laundry/A. C. & Heat/Iron lung/Coffin/Chops/Axe & horn/Misfits/Numbers/

Anticipation of the job &/Crowd raport. (sic)

Kenton's legacy reaches far beyond the glossary of supertalents who spent time with him and went on to great success in their own careers, people like Art Pepper and Mel Lewis and Conte Candoli and Stan Getz and Laurindo Almeida and the whole encyclopedia of them. To borrow a quote from Hank Levy in his own chapter, that's "just touching the top."

The Kenton Wall of Brass is thriving in the hundreds of international drum corps who pour onto the fields every summer playing richly orchestrated arrangements with full colorations of brass and percussion. "Kenton music lends itself to our art form," Scott Stewart explains. Stewart is director of the Madison Scouts, who favor a decidedly Kenton style in their jazzistic approach, balanced horn line and warmth of interpretation. Madison drives people crazy whenever it performs "Malaguena," won an international championship with "MacArthur Park," and has played other Kenton favorites. The Blue Devils of Concord, California, a consistent international finalist, has ripped into "Pegasus"; the Garfield Cadets of New Jersey have done a medley from Adventures in Time, Les Eclipses of Canada has done music from Cuban Fire; the Grossmen from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and others have done "Artistry in Rhythm"; the Freelancers, of Sacramento, California, and others have performed "Malaga." But whatever the work being played, a Kentonesque concert of brass comes right at the wildly cheering throngs of appreciative fans at every show, in dauntless presentations of fire and talent highlighted by intrepid soloists.

Coincidentally, these young people also ride on the bus, do one-nighters, and live on the road, at least during the summers.

Kenton's legacy of new American music and his propensity to experimentation is somewhat more difficult to trace, though interesting ideas have been attempted by The Orchestra in Los Angeles, whose name was later changed to The New American Orchestra, following the departure of co-founder Allyn Ferguson. Some of the problems and concepts of such a venture are discussed in the chapters on Ferguson and Jack Elliott, present director of the orchestra. Some similarities with Kenton's Neophonic exist, however, such as writers Russ Garcia, Bill Russo, John Williams, Morty Stevens, Dave Grusin, Dick Grove, Oliver Nelson, Lalo Schifrin, Bill Holman, Gerry Mulligan and Ferguson. Also Claus Ogerman, who wrote an arrangement for the Neophonic, Manny Albam, who wrote for Stan at the time of his Innovations Orchestra, and Don Sebesky, who played trombone with Kenton. Musicians common to both orchestras are George Roberts, Bud Shank, Bill Perkins, Vince DeRosa, Art Maebe, Richard Perissi, Lloyd Ulyate, John Audino, Henry Sigismonti, Chuck Domanico, Gene Cipriano, John Lowe, Virginia Majewski, Gerald Vinci, and Shelly Manne (as a guest soloist).

Many people feel that a decided Kenton influence exists in the far more sophisticated kinds of music being written for films and TV.  Academy-award winning composer John Williams, for just one example (E. T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Superman, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and the music for the L. A. Olympics), was one of Stan's Neophonic writers.

Even more exciting is the direction being taken by people such as Bud Shank and Bill Russo, now Director of the Contemporary American Music Program at Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois, in erasing the dividing lines between jazz and classical music in brand-new creative ways. Both were with Kenton during his Innovations period and learned from the experience. Where this direction will ultimately lead is a fascinating question for our times.

Stan Kenton willed all his music, that is, the scores and charts, to North Texas State University, in Denton, Texas. Why he chose to do so will be seen in the chapters on Leon Breeden, Gene Hall and Bobby Knight, as the background and structure of their fine jazz program are explored in some depth. Gene Hall, one of the principal originators of the jazz clinics in 1959, founded the NTSU program in 1947, the first of its kind in the country. Leon Breeden continued its development from 1959 to 1981, bringing great honors to it and earning prestige and recognition for his efforts. North Texas' 1 O'Clock Jazz Lab Band was chosen by Kenton to appear with the Los Angeles Neophonic in 1966, was the first university band ever to appear at the White House, in 1967, and was the official big band at the Montreux International Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 1970, among other honors. Breeden has his own extraordinary story to tell concerning his relationship with Kenton and the future of the music at NTSU, a heartening one for all Kenton fans.

Bob Gioga was a close friend of Kenton's, tracing their friendship back to the Hoaglund band in 1934. He played baritone sax and was band manager for 12 years, from 1941-1953. George Faye joined for a year and a half in 1942 and played tenor trombone. Buddy Childers came on as trumpet player in January of 1943 and was with Kenton over a span of 11V2 years. Pete Rugolo, composer and arranger and closely identified with Kenton's "Progressive Jazz" period, joined the band in 1945. June Christy was vocalist in April, 1945 for two years and also made several tours and recordings. Shelly Manne was Kenton's drummer starting in February, 1946, off and on until 1952; Milt Bernhart played trombone in the band off and on from 1946 to 1952; both came back for the Neophonic. Bill Russo was trombonist and composer-arranger off and on from January, 1950, through October, 1953, returning to write for and conduct the Neophonic in 1966.

Shorty Rogers was trumpet player and composer-arranger on the band in 1950, stayed for a year and a half and continued to write for Kenton afterwards, including a ballet for the Neophonic. Jim Amlotte joined as trombonist in 1956 and was band manager from 1959-69; Dalton Smith was lead trumpet player off and on from 1959-1970; both were involved with the Kenton clinics and the Neophonic. Bud Shank came on in late 1949 for two and one half years, played in the Neophonic, taught in the clinics and was involved with the Collegiate Neophonic in 1967.

Mike Suter was bass trombonist in 1963 and again from 1973-75 and in 1978. He was both a student and a teacher in the clinics and is a close friend of Dick Shearer's. Shearer was band manager and trombonist for the last 13 years of the band, though he left on August 21, 1977. (The band broke up on August 20, 1978.) A joint chapter on Shearer and Suter in addition to individual ones has been included, since they triggered each other's memories in many details.

Hank Levy, Director of Jazz Studies at Towson State University in Towson, Maryland, composed for Kenton chiefly in the seventies, though he was on the band for six months in 1953. George Roberts was bass trombonist on the Kenton band from 1951-53 and again later on; he had his group of forty trombones play for the dedication of the Kenton Memorial in Balboa in September, 1981. Ken Hanna, composer-arranger-trumpet player, began his long association with Kenton in 1942, writing some of the band's finest charts in the seventies. Ross Barbour sang with the Four Freshmen, a group that made several appearances, tours and recordings with Kenton. The Freshmen, still concertizing, though without Barbour, proudly claim to have owed their style to the Kenton sound. What is surprising is the number of groups who imitate the Freshmen—and who therefore are perpetuating the Kenton sound as well.

Big bands are enjoying a resurgence in popularity, which assures a future to the new ones being formed, some of which have a Kentonish verve and brightness about them. Kenton records are being played on radio both by deejays on the new shows and by long-time advocates of his music. Perhaps none can equal the devotion of Randy Taylor, big band host on Miami University public radio station WMUB in Oxford, Ohio, who plays a special 4-hour all-Kenton show every Friday night from 7 to 11. Taylor, former Kenton archivist, began the practice as a memorial tribute in August, 1982, and has continued it in response to public demand.

Memorial concerts testify to the enduring values of Kenton's music and the loyalty felt to him by his fans. At Clarenceville High School in Livonia, Michigan (affectionately dubbed "Montreux North" by host Dick Purtan) one of the first such concerts was held on February 19, 1982, with Dick Shearer fronting the band.

By 7:30 p.m. the lobby was jammed for a performance scheduled to begin at 8. By 7:35, after the auditorium doors were opened, almost all seats were taken. Guests sat back and surveyed the scene: Blue seats, aqua carpeting. Orchid lighting on the stage, set up to show a piano at left, where Kenton would have sat, congas nearby and percussion at back left. Rows of aqua-and-tan chairs poised like sentinels. Saxophones parked, slightly aslant, trombones "face down" behind them. A pleasing, sensual avant-garde look about it all. The audience, mostly dressed in sharp, youthful, sporty attire, looks alert and intelligent.

Opening remarks, and then Shearer whips the band into a crescendo that threatens to tear the walls down, leading into Willie Maiden's "A Little Minor Booze." In a rainbow of colors and moods, he takes them through "Here's That Rainy Day," "Minor Riff," "Two Moods for Baritone," "Opus in Chartreuse," "Body and Soul," "Roy's Blues," "Street of Dreams," "Intermission Riff," "Send in the Clowns," "Stompin' at the Savoy," "Yesterdays," "Opus in Pastels" and "Peanut Vendor." The second half of the program goes quickly, and suddenly it's time for The Theme. Pianist Chuck Robinette does it proud: weaving Kenton music in and out as he spins the haunting threads of Artistry. Everyone anticipates what's coming and tries to prepare for it, but with the electrifying entrance of the saxes a universal chill slips through the audience like a single emotion: "Baa-baa ... ba-ba-ba-ba baa-baaa ..." Before it is over there are few if any dry eyes either on stage or anywhere in the room. And the realization dawns that "Artistry in Rhythm," like its creator, has become immortal.

In his own ways and by avenues that will perhaps not be felt for some time in all their scope, Stan Kenton was the greatest force in twentieth-century American music.

His sweeping sense of music favored extremes in dynamics and tonal expanse, tormenting crescendos to ear-splitting highs, tension and release. It became its own genre, consuming the categories of "concert jazz" and "classical jazz" and adding enough character of its own to be labeled unto itself.

No one can measure the effects of the priceless gift he bestowed upon people and how it contributed both to their own flourishing and to new forms of American music: the gift of listening. It was a selfless, most generous form of encouragement. In the total freedom allowed his composers and arrangers to create, his band became a vehicle for their creativity; but by a curious reciprocity everything that passed through it somehow became "Stan Kenton music." Kenton was influenced by the musicians who came to him, but none left his band untouched by the Kenton experience.

Stan the Man had the integrity of his own conviction and would gladly have dispensed with the need for money and sacrificed all his time to artistic endeavor. He was not satisfied to cater to the public taste of his time, but insisted on going in his own direction, whoever listened or did not.

Stan Kenton's music was the headiest combination of love, emotion, intellect, form, freedom, boldness and fire ever known.

It still burns, its sparks igniting life wherever they touch down.”