Quincy Jones's Morning Orange Juice - "Kind of Blue"[From the Archives with Additions]

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

Kind of Blue has been on my mind a lot recently. Whatever the nature of the neurological or sensory impulse, occasionally I find the music of some Jazz recording playing in my head.

Most of the time, the music brought back in these memories is from LP's [vinyl] that I listened to often when Jazz first formed its youthful impression on me.

I popped the digital version of this classic Miles album in my CD player and while listening to it, I began a casual rereading Ashley Kahn's book on the making of Kind of Blue recording which included a review of it that I found tucked away in the dust jacket by Don Heckman writing for the LA Times on Sunday, March 30, 1997. 

I had a hunch about a missing aspect of what makes this record so astonishingly special and sure enough after doing further research there is no mention of it. The overall musicianship on display is considerable, I mean, a front-line of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley; Bill Evans on piano and the legendary Paul Chambers on bass. 

But there are few kudos for the drummer Jimmy Cobb who was new to the group for this recording [replacing the legendary Philly Joe Jones who had become undependable because of personal problems].

Philly Joe was a very busy drummer; always filling in space.

Yet the moody, modal music on Kind of Blue would have been overwhelmed by Philly's very busy style and benefited immensely by Cobb's just-play-time-and-stay-out-of-the-way approach. Jimmy gave the music space and in so doing allowed it to breathe and come to life.

Also, Jimmy is using a 22" [it may have even been as large as 24" in diameter] K-Zildjan ride cymbal which had just come into vogue at that time and whose overtones just washed under the music to give it all a very melancholy sound, something which is part of the music's appeal.

I tried one of these large cymbals on a few occasions and you really had to keep up with it or it would eat you alive.

With the horn players all struggling to learn how to solo in a modal environment, a busy drummer like Philly Joe would have been an unwanted distraction. If there's one thing you need to play Jazz its concentration; Philly's drumming brought fire but it was not a platform over which you could reflect and think. He'd run over you if you'd stopped to do this.

No discredit to Philly but without Jimmy playing time on this big cymbal with its beautifully harmonic overtones washing over everything, the music on Kind of Blue wouldn't have had the same feel or sound to it. 

"Wynton Marsalis has commented in an interview he gave to Ben Sidran: "Harmony is not the key to our music. Harmony is used in motion. And motion is rhythm. And rhythm is the most important aspect. I mean everything is important. But whenever you find a valid rhythmic innovation, that changes the music. If you change the rhythm, you change the music."

Jimmy Cobb's style of drumming changed the rhythm on Kind of Blue and enhanced the impact its modal Jazz had on the listener.

In celebration of all of this subconscious revelation, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it might be fun to re-post this excerpt from Ashley Kahn very fine book Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece.

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

“That will always be my music, man.
I play Kind of Blue every day – it’s my orange juice.
It still sounds like it was made yesterday.

Kind of Blue can be heard as a recapitulation of almost every step of the jazz tradition that preceded it."
-Quincy Jones, composer-arranger, musician, impresario

For many of us growing up listening to Jazz on records in the 1950s, the day we first heard the Kind of Blue album has no doubt been timed and dated somewhere in our memory bank of significant encounters with the music.

Returning to the music on this recording over the years has always been a satisfying experience and many of the reasons why this is so are described in Ashley Kahn’s Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece [New York: DaCapo Press, 2000].

As is the case with the classic recording which practically plays itself into one’s subconscious, Mr. Kahn’s work is a sensitive and unassuming narrative of how this phenomena of an album came together. He does an admirable job of capturing the circumstances that brought about a great work of art and presents this recounting in a manner that is both readable and interesting. This is not an academic “study,” but rather a well-written story of how a group of musicians gathered together on two fateful days in March and April 1959, respectively, to create a masterpiece.

What follows is Mr. Kahn’s Introduction to his work in which he details his considerable efforts at research, interviews and editing in order to bring the reader as many fresh insights into the making of the album as possible. 


“ON A DECEMBER MORNING in 1999, millennium mania and snowflakes swirled about me as I entered a squat, near‑windowless building on Tenth Avenue. The awning outside read "Sony Music Studios." Inside, down a dimly lit corridor lined with posters of rock and rap artists, thick doors with porthole windows led into fully furnished studios, where large consoles with matrices of red and white lights stood next to racks full of the latest sound equipment. People lost in concentration scurried past me.

The few times I had visited the place before, I had felt the same way: This hi‑tech beehive, a monument to Sony's global technological superiority, seemed somehow transitory. I felt that a careless flip of a switch could plunge the entire place into darkness. Maybe it was the signs of constant renova­tions‑plastic sheeting covering doorways‑that created the feeling of imper­manence, or perhaps it was the rotation of posters from one visit to the next. It didn't surprise me to learn that Sony Music had built their recording center in the remains of the old Twentieth Century‑Fox Movietone reposi­tory. Where dusty film canisters had once stored a week‑by‑week chronicle of the world's troubles and triumphs, four stories of state‑of‑the art studios now operated: new technology rising phoenix‑like from the vestiges of old.

Four months earlier, for The New York Times, I had written an appreciation of Miles Davis's melancholy masterpiece Kind of Blue on the fortieth anniversary of its release. Now I had been granted a rare opportunity to hear the complete master tapes of the two sessions that produced the album. Sony Music‑the parent company of Columbia Records, which released Kind of Blue and remained Miles's record label for the majority of his career ­did not often send to their subterranean archives in upstate New York and allow the reel‑to‑reel tapes to be auditioned. When dealing with priceless and irreplaceable forty‑year‑old recordings, even the wear on the tape is a consid­eration. For a jazz fan like me, the occasion had the rarified, historic air of, say, the unearthing of an Egyptian tomb.

The receptionist directed me to room 305. Equipment dedicated to sound reproduction, including a turntable in a stone base with a speed lever reading "78 rpm," filled the room. Sitting amid the machines, scattered tape reels, vinyl records of varying formats, and general clutter was an engineer trained in audio formats new, old and ancient. In this room, I was convinced, whatever means of capturing audio information have ever existed‑wax cylinders to the latest computer‑driven, digital discs‑all came back to life.

Delicately, the engineer placed a reel of reddish‑brown, half‑inch ribbon onto a tape machine, manufactured expressly to play back archival three­-track tapes. He paused, asked if I was ready. (Ready? I had been giddy with anticipation for weeks.) He hit the "play" button.

The tape threaded its way across the playback heads and I heard the voices of Miles Davis and his producer, Irving Townsend, the instantly recognizable sound of Miles's trumpet, John Coltrane's tenor, Cannonball Adderley's alto and the other musicians. I listened to their harmonized riffs start and stop and grew acclimated to the rhythm of the recording process. A few engineers who had heard that the masters were being played that day dropped by and quietly pulled up chairs or stood in the corner to listen.

What could I hear or intuit that would reveal the secret of that spring day when Davis assembled his famed sextet (Coltrane, Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb with pianist Wynton Kelly taking over from Evans on one number) in a converted church in downtown Manhattan? I was flooded with questions, hungry for details. How did this band talk while creating music for the ages? Was that Coltrane's voice or Adderley's? How - ­if at all ‑ did they prepare? What was Miles like in the studio? Why did that take end? I had learned that the three master reels, the few rolls of black-­and‑white film, and the less‑than‑distinct memories of the drummer, a photographer, and a tape operator who were in the East Thirtieth Street studio on that day back in 1959 were about all the evidence there was of the making of the album. The dearth of related material only heightened the album's mystique and intensified my desire to uncover anything that might throw light on what seemed such a shadowy, skeletal moment.

As the first full take of "Freddie Freeloader" began playing, I put down my pen and focused on the music. By the time Coltrane began soloing, I was transported to an austere twilight world that requested silence and contem­plation. I was familiar with the album from years of dedicated listening but the music's seductive spell had not lessened‑it still held the power to quiet all around it.

Still acknowledged as the height of hip four decades after it was recorded, Kind of Blue is the premier album of its era, jazz or otherwise. Its vapory piano‑and‑bass introduction is universally recognized. Classical buffs and rage rockers alike praise its subtlety, simplicity and emotional depth. Copies of the album are passed to friends and given to lovers. The album has sold millions of copies around the world, making it the best‑selling recording in Miles Davis's catalog and the best‑selling classic jazz album ever. Signifi­cantly, a large number of those copies were purchased in the past five years, and undoubtedly not just by old‑timers replacing worn vinyl: Kind of Blue is self‑perpetuating, continuing to cast its spell on a younger audience more accustomed to the loud‑and‑fast esthetic of rock and rap.


The album’s appeal was certainly enhanced by Miles’ personal mystique. Cool, well-dressed, endlessly inspired, and uncompromising in art and life, Davis was and still is a hero to jazz fans, African Americans and an interna­tional musical community. "Miles Davis is my definition of cool," Bob Dylan has said. "I loved to see him in the small clubs playing his solo, turn his back on the crowd, put down his horn and walk off the stage, let the band keep playing, and then come back and play a few notes at the end."

Since his death in 1991, Davis's legend has only grown larger. But even before his passing, Kind of Blue was the recording that a vast majority called his defining masterwork. If someone has only one Miles album‑or even only one jazz recording‑more often than not, Kind of Blue is it. Even twenty‑five

 years ago, as jazz guitarist John Scofield relates, the album had already become as common as a cup of sugar:



I remember at Berklee School [of Music in Boston) in the early seventies, hanging out at this bass player's apartment and they didn't have Kind of Blue. So at two in the morning he said he'd just go to the neighbor's and ask for their copy, not knowing the people, assuming that they'd have it! And they did. It was like Sergeant Pepper.

In the church of jazz, Kind of Blue is one of the holy relics. Critics revere it as a stylistic milestone, one of a very few in the long tradition of jazz performance, on equal footing with seminal recordings by Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Charlie Parker's bebop quintets. Musicians acknowledge its influence and have recorded hundreds of versions of the music on the album. Record producer, composer, and Davis confidant Quincy Jones hails it as the one album (if that were the limit) that would explain jazz.

Yet, Kind of Blue lives and prospers outside the confines of the jazz community. No longer the exclusive possession of a musical subculture, the album is simply great music, one of a very, very few musical recordings our culture allows into the category marked "masterpiece." Many of its admirers are forced to reach back before the modern era to find its measure. Drummer Elvin Jones hears the same timeless sublimity and depth of feeling "in some of the movements of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or when I hear Pablo Casals play unaccompanied cello." "It's like listening to Tosca," says pianist/ singer Shirley Horn. "You know, you always cry, or at least I do."


In the fin‑de‑siecle frenzy, Kind of Blue proved its evergreen appeal, becoming a fixture in the first tier of countless "Best of the Century" surveys and "Top 100" polls. Hollywood film in the nineties employed the album as an instant signifier of hip. In the Line of Fire shows secret serviceman Clint Eastwood, the cool loner at home, listening to "All Blues." In Pleasantville, a group of fifties high‑schoolers are intellectually awakened to the tune of "So What." In Runaway Bride, Julia Roberts's character bestows an original vinyl copy of Kind of Blue on Richard Gere.

As I began the research for this book, Sony Music was in the midst of producing high‑quality repackaging of Miles's recordings and of jazz in general, a fortunate change from the offhand reissue strategy of previous decades. They graciously provided me complete access to all information, photographs and recordings in their archives, and facilitated contact with former employees. I located session and tape logs that disclosed the identity of the recording staff who worked on Kind of Blue, most of whom‑like the members of the sextet save for drummer Jimmy Cobb‑are no longer with us. My conversations with Columbia engineers of that era painted a picture of what it was like to work in the 3oth Street Studio, the former church where the album was born. Sifting through company files, I glimpsed the inner workings of the marketing and promotion departments which first brought Kind of Blue to market.

To bring the reader as near as possible to the actual creation of the album, I have placed the transcription and discussion of the record sessions at the heart of the book. The unedited studio dialogue, false starts and break­downs‑herein reproduced for the first time‑offer a rare glimpse of the inner workings of those two days in the studio. The transcribed chatter alone, revealing Cannonball Adderley's irrepressible sense of humor and Miles's constant ribbing of his producer, will delight those who love the music that occasioned it.


I stumbled on a number of surprises in my research. There were Bill Evans's original liner notes, neatly handwritten and hardly edited. Engineer Fred Plaut's photographs, never published before now, showing the sheet music for a tune's modal infrastructure. Proof that the famously dark and intense cover shot of Miles was taken during a live performance at the Apollo Theater. Never‑before‑published radio conversations with Adderley and Evans in which they spoke of Miles and the album in detail, conveying a personal dimension lacking from previously published interviews.

Beyond the new information my research yielded about Kind of Blue, I was equally drawn by the more mystical aspects of the album. The legend of its pure, one‑take creation. The alchemic blending of classical and folk music influences. The interplay of Miles's less‑is‑more philosophy with the styles of the equally spare Bill Evans and his other, more voluble sidemen. The drama of Davis driven by an endless search for new styles creating a masterwork, then leaving it behind for his next endeavor. I was challenged to examine what is true in the mythology of the recording. Was the album really impromptu and unplanned? Did Miles really compose all the music? Did it change the jazz terrain forever, and if so, how?

To do the album justice, I needed to transport myself back to the place and time that brought it forth. I spoke with as many musicians, producers, and critics as possible‑those who were involved in making the album, were influenced by the music, or who analyzed its effects. Eventually I conducted more than fifty interviews for this book, including talks with veteran jazzmen who knew or worked with Miles, newer arrivals who grew up with his music, producers, music industry executives, deejays, writers, and witnesses of the jazz scene of the 1950s. Priority was given to the people still alive who were present at the two Kind of Blue recording sessions: drummer Jimmy Cobb, photographer Don Hunstein, and tape operator Bob Waller. I found that though a few musicians and producers were reluctant to speak, burned out on the subject of Miles or simply burned by the trumpeter in uncompli­mentary portrayals in interviews or in his autobiography, many were eager to share their memories and insights. I gave special attention to those who worked with Miles in and around 1959, or soon after: Jimmy Heath, Dave Brubeck, George Russell, John Lewis, Joe Zawinul and Herbie Hancock; producers George Avakian and Teo Macero; and engineer Frank Laico.

Some saw Kind of Blue as the sound of 1950s New York; some as a high point in Miles's career trajectory; others as one more successful product of a record label at the height of its dominance. As the anecdotes coalesced, the structure for the book that suggested itself was a reverse telescopic path­ - beginning with Miles's arrival in New York, then following his career course before closing in, take‑by‑take, on the album's two recording sessions. From there, the book moves outward again to trace the album's influence. Side­bars add further context: Columbia Records' rise to prominence and its role in the success of Kind of Blue; the unique acoustical properties that made music recorded at the 30th Street Studio distinctive; the eponymous Freddie Freeloader.

When I spoke of writing this celebration of Kind of Blue, whether to music
professionals or to fans, reaction was uniformly positive: "You know, that's a good idea"; "Let's hear more about that album"; "It's about time." Then after a pause, with little or no solicitation, a testimonial would follow.

QUINCY JONES: "That will always be my music, man.
I play Kind of Blue every day‑it's my orange juice. It still sounds like it was made yesterday."

CHICK COREA: "It's one thing to just play a tune, or play a program of music, but it's another thing to practically create a new language of music, which is what Kind of Blue did."

GEORGE RUSSELL: "Kind of Blue is just one of those amazing albums that emerged from that period of time. Miles's solo on 'So What' is one of the most beautiful solos ever."

With the clarity of memory usually reserved for national disasters, personal traumas, or first romantic encounters, many I interviewed recalled their first hearing of Kind of Blue. Some encountered the music when it first appeared in 1959: on a late‑night radio station in Cleveland; in a Wisconsin furniture store selling records; live in a New York nightclub or at an outdoor festival in Toronto; on a jukebox in a Harlem watering hole. Others came across it in the sixties: among the mono LPs a friendly salesclerk with a flowered tie was selling off at a dollar a disc; playing at a late‑night party down in Greenwich Village. One acquaintance admitted hearing Kind of Blue in a college class on Zen.

Kind of Blue's aphrodisiac properties were mentioned frequently in reminiscences of listeners male and female, young and not‑so‑young. Jazz veteran Ben Sidran recalls that "clearly it was just a great seduction record. I can close my eyes and remember situations with long forgotten girls." Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, when asked for his favorite make‑out music, answered, "For slow action, I put on Kind of Blue." Because of "the trance‑like atmosphere that it created, it's like sexual wallpaper. It was sort of the Barry White of its time," remembers Steely Dan's Donald Fagen. Essayist/playwright Pearl Cleage was turned on to the album in the late seventies: "I will confess that I spent many memorable evenings sending messages of great personal passion through the intricate improvisa­tions of Kind of Blue when blue was the furthest thing from my mind. . . . "

My own discovery of the music came in the mid‑seventies, when a high­ school buddy yanked a dog-eared album out of my father's record collection and explained: "This is a classic." Between the scratches and pops (Dad must play this one a lot, I recall thinking) a stark, moody world unveiled itself. Though the sound was far simpler and sadder than any of the peppy, big band music I then thought of as jazz, it was somehow immediately familiar.

If you are already a fan of the album, perhaps a "first time" story of your own comes to mind. Or ask the friend who turned you on to Kind of Blue. Bring that memory with you to the world we're about to enter. Use this book as a primer, a listening guide, a way to understand that there is even more to these forty minutes of great jazz performance than meets the ear. Allow this book to show you that occasionally that which is the least outspoken has the most to say.”

Part 4- "Quincy Jones - A Morning Light" by Raymond Horricks

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

4

“Quincy left the band after South America.

"I could've gone on balling with Dizzy, but I had writing to do and I wanted to be with my family," he explained.

Soon after this came the call from Creed Taylor, the recording manager at ABC Paramount. Was Quincy ready to make a big band LP of his own jazz works? "The day after Creed called I started planning the parts for my 'This Is How I Feel About Jazz' LP," the arranger recalls.

In the notes he made concerning this, his finest record so far, Quincy outlined his continuing attitude towards composing and arranging jazz. "This is," he wrote, "an attempt on my part to supply the settings, select the proper cast and musically portray my feelings about some of the less cerebral and more vital or basic elements contained in jazz. Trying to put into words the essence of these elements has made me realize that jazz is much easier to play than to say."

"At a recent Newport Jazz Festival," he continued, "one of the topics for panel discussion was 'The Future of Jazz'. As a member of this panel, I stated my preference for a 'natural growth' instead of a 'forced or blueprinted development'. Because of lack of time to explain this point thoroughly, it could possibly have been assumed that I was unaware of the possibilities uncovered only by advancement of jazz techniques.

"Such an assumption would be clarified, I hope, after hearing this album, as it has given me ample opportunity to present most of my favourite musicians and soloists in settings conducive to swinging and to their unlimited self-expression. (These latter elements comprise the most distinctive characteristics of jazz. Original voices are created and not mapped out, meaning you can't make a race horse out of a mule.)"

Quincy contributed six scores in all to "This Is How I Feel About Jazz". Hearing the record through later, I was convinced that not since Benny Carter had there been a jazz arranger so naturally matured at the tender age of twenty-four. Each of his qualities had been uncorked and poured into it. Heart, warmth, vitality, humour (sometimes sophisticated, sometimes puckish), and always impeccable taste. Musical efficiency, musical imagination, and the ability to fire an ensemble and its soloists, most of all rhythmically. One other quality I tried to describe in reviewing the record for Jazz Monthly. This was his being in line with the jazz tradition.

Beginning with a point Quincy had made in his notes, I wrote: "His arranging and composition, so different from the all-experimentalist writing of Macero and Russo, wishes to advance the known substances in jazz. In other words, to promote a natural growth, using what has been said already in jazz as a direct aid to saying newer things; and this without juxtaposing jazz and classical writing techniques and strange instrumental combinations. More than any other younger jazz inventor he seems to appreciate what has happened in jazz as well as what he himself wants to happen.

"At the present time too many modern arrangers are only preaching about the importance of the tradition in jazz. Jones is prepared to practise what he preaches, and throughout this, his arranger's showcase, his finger never leaves the pulse of jazz past as well as jazz present. The six arrangements it contains, if concerned with men and music of the post-Minton's age in jazz, are also in line with the grand tradition in jazz scoring—the tradition of Carter and Redman and Henderson, and even before that, of Jelly Roll Morton."

Three of the six scores were Quincy's own compositions: Stockholm Sweetnin', Evening In Paris and Boo's Blues, The remaining three were compositions he'd been considering using for some time: Walkin’, originally popularized by Miles Davis and a blues straight out of the gutbucket; Sermonette, by Cannonball Adderley and an instance of the spiritual's place in jazz; and A Sleepin’ Bee, by Harold Arlen, a song from the show House of Flowers. This show, although not a commercial success on Broadway, was blessed with an Arlen music score and lyrics by Truman Capote, the wombat-like author of Other Voices, Other Rooms. Quincy saw it and was captivated by the song and by Diahann Carroll's delivery of it.

Quincy gave considerable thought to astute programming as well as to purely aesthetic ideals in writing for the LP. In the set he had scores of varying texture and impact, performed by an orchestra of shifting proportions with a wide selection of soloists. (Tenorman Zoot Sims flew all the way from Washington, D.C. to New York to take just one solo with the band.)

There are many interesting finds in the scoring. The use of a baritone-anchor and the flute on top, for instance, gives the ensemble a range of nearly five octaves; so effective in the big band pieces. The verve and economy of the brass parts in Walkin' is reminiscent of a 'head' arrangement at its best; also, the very relaxed pulse of this performance, sustained through nearly eleven minutes. The orchestration of Clifford Brown's trumpet chorus in Stockholm Sweetnin.' This is particularly audacious. Every melodic turn Brownie improvised for the original record has been used, even the little double-tempo runs he used to link the main phrases. Cleverly grouping small units within the ensemble and frequently moving the lead from low-voiced to high-voiced units and back again, Quincy effects an imaginative and at the same time respectfully sensitive orchestration of the chorus. The flute and double bass alternating one bar ad libbed with one bar written to give an improvised feel to the opening of A Sleepin’ Bee; and the phrases following, so richly ensembled. Lastly, the very delicate impressionist sketch supporting the free jazz tenor in Evening In Paris; so deftly drawn. All these are typical of Quincy Jones at his most enterprising.

A little after the release of this record the arranger signed to return to Paris and work for Nicole Barclay's record company. He has written prolifically and well since then. "The atmosphere in Paris is so relaxed that it makes work easy," he wrote in one of his letters. "How can I describe all I feel for this city? Life doesn't seem like the race that it is in America and yet really you are working just as hard." He has a modern apartment on the Boulevard Victor Hugo, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, and from now on he intends to work there for six months of every year. The other six he will spend in New York.”

Part 3- "Quincy Jones - A Morning Light" by Raymond Horricks

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

3

“I examined Quincy's leather travelling grip when we met in London in 1957. As if in defiance of the grey July day, it was bright with colour: stuck over with labels of all sizes and shapes from the different countries where music had taken him. There were so many of them that at first I thought the grip had served several musicians. However, this wasn't so. They all tied in with Quincy's movements, and little by little, pausing over first one and then another, I followed the pattern of his working life.

The American cities he'd passed through with Hampton as a musical apprentice of seventeen. Canada and Mexico, Paris and Western Europe, the Scandinavian countries, and then North Africa: the extent of his 1953 touring with Hampton. Athens, the Middle East and on to Pakistan with Dizzy Gillespie's band; then back to New York before setting off on a South American tour with Gillespie. Each told of something achieved, of some new experience befallen the musician. The last batch of labels proclaimed his return to Paris, as staff arranger for Nicole Barclay, and with the intention of studying composition privately under the aged Nadia Boulanger, intimate associate of Igor Stravinsky and musical and spiritual leader for several of the world's finest composers.

It was while I was examining the grip, and inwardly reflecting that at twenty-four Quincy was already one of the most-travelled musicians in jazz, that he said I didn't look like a writer.

"You know," and his smile was disarming, "I've always imagined a writer as someone — well, someone kinda fat, who peers out at you from behind thick-lensed glasses, and has a lot of awkward questions for you."

I straightened up at that, fast. Any second now, I thought, and he's going to say how spare I look. I'd better change the subject. So I pointed at the grip, and said — if a little obviously — that he'd collected more travel labels in the few months he was with Dizzy's band than he had in the rest of his life.

He said "yes" to this, and then, almost without realizing it, I had a load of questions for him about this band. Not awkward questions, as it happened, because Quincy has a retentive memory — and he is an easy conversationalist, with an alert way of speaking and an almost Max Beerbohm-ish sense of humour. Questions, though, that let him lead me 'backstage' where this unique band was concerned; to learn, if posthumously, of the part he had played as its musical director.

In recalling the conversation we had then, I find there are a few facts with which I need to preface it. In the first place, the 1956 tour of the Middle East by the Dizzy Gillespie big band was sponsored by the United States Government.

The State Department, recognizing that jazz music was an important cultural export — perhaps a means of improving international relations—authorized The American National Theatre Academy to send a sizeable jazz unit overseas as part of its $2,500,000 propaganda programme.

It was Professor Marshall Stearns, founder of The Institute of Jazz Studies in New York, who suggested building a big band about Dizzy Gillespie, the greatest modern trumpeter, and at that time without a band of his own. This was ultimately approved, and Stearns himself was retained as a lecturer to go with the band. Plans went ahead for the band to leave New York in the late spring of 1956.

Because the State Department had agreed to underwrite the difference between the tour's cost and its receipts the band had a sure start. It missed meeting those characters, straight out of the pages of Scott Fitzgerald, who usually get their hands on a big band venture. The money was there to pay for arrangements, uniforms, travel tickets, everything. Salaries for sidemen were to be generous, and this too was important, for it meant that the band would have noted soloists which the normal big band (Ellington and Basie apart) cannot afford. But there was one problem: the non-availability of Gillespie himself at the time the band was to go into rehearsal.

Though overjoyed at the prospect of fronting a big band (and at a salary rumoured to be near that of the U.S. President) the trumpeter was contracted to tour Europe in the spring of 1956 with Norman Granz's "Jazz At The Philharmonic" unit. After much debate it was finally agreed that Dizzy should make the tour with Granz — and in his absence the actual organization of the new band be entrusted to a deputy, Quincy Jones. Though already arranging for the band, and busily practising trumpet after hardly touching the instrument in two years, he had to find time to hire the musicians and then go down and rehearse them.

RH. Those must have been the busiest few weeks of your life, even more than when you were in Europe with Hampton.

QJ. So right. I was kept as busy as a one-armed wallpaper hanger with lice. I scored Jessica's Day, Rocking Chair, The Champ, School Days, I Can't Get Started, Night In Tunisia and Hey, Pete (which we used to play with the stage lights off during the Middle East tour).

RH. Ernie Wilkins also scored for the band. Dizzy's Business adapted

from a movement of The Drum Suite was one of his, I remember. And Doodlin’ the Horace Silver blues. Was he able to take charge of any rehearsals for you ?

QJ. No. Ernie was busy making The Drum Suite and the Andy Kirk albums for RCA Victor. I was even lucky to get him to rehearsals. Up until a week before leaving, deep inside I was not sure about Ernie going — but he didn't let me down. I had the rehearsal headache alone for two weeks, planning two concert programmes, getting the music written and getting it rehearsed. Lorraine, Dizzy's wife, was of great assistance. She was behind me all the way too, in every decision I made.

RH. Where in New York did the band do its rehearsing?

QJ. At Ames' Studios on 52nd and 7th Avenue.

RH. Were the musicians paid by the State Department at this stage, or did they have to fit in the rehearsals between their other paid work ?

QJ. The rehearsals were paid for, fortunately — and this helped to get the full respect of all the musicians involved. But the payments were almost cut the last week—a misunderstanding on some official's part. Four days to go before the tour started and the money stopped! We made it though!

RH. Then there was the problem of several musicians you wanted for the band not being available at the time of the tour.

QJ. Well, the original band Dizzy and I decided on in New York had Idrees Sulieman and Ermet Perry as the other two trumpets; Melba Liston, Jimmy Cleveland and Frank Rosolino, trombones; Gigi Gryce, Ernie Wilkins, Lucky Thompson, Jerome Richardson and Sahib Shihab, saxophones; Walter Bishop, piano; Nelson Boyd, bass; Charlie Persip, drums; and a Cuban conga drummer called 'Potato'.

Anyway, it was a good idea — too damn good. Money, previous commitments, and a thousand and one other reasons prevented me moulding the band with these men. All kinds of guys were hitting on me to get places in the band, of course, and half of them were probably great but I had to be sure — there was no room for any chances. Lucky Thompson couldn't get back from Paris in time. Gigi Gryce changed his mind about going after he'd already called one replacement, who'd called another replacement. Finally, in desperation, I called Phil Woods long distance on the Birdland tour, and he accepted the alto solo book.

When the band was finally settled I had Ermet Perry, Joe Gordon, Carl Warwick and myself as the trumpets; Melba Listen, Frank Rehak and Rod Levitt, trombones; Phil Woods, Jimmy Powell, Ernie Wilkins, Billy Mitchell and Marty Flax, saxophones; and the same rhythm section as planned.

I happened on several of the men quite accidentally. Rod Levitt had played in my band in Seattle. I hadn't seen him in five or six years, and then one day I was walking home and met him in the street in New York. There and then I asked him if he'd go to the Middle East with Dizzy Gillespie. At first he thought I was crazy. But I knew he was a good bass trombonist and a wonderful musician too. So I asked him again. When he realized I was serious he agreed.

For tenor I first tried to get Budd Johnson. Then he became the contractor for Benny Goodman's band, so that was that. I tried to find Benny Golson, on tour in Florida with Earl Bostic—no luck. Jerome Richardson had accepted, but between times he was called by the Roxy house band, one of the first Negroes ever to be in the house band there. I couldn't halt that kind of progress, could I ? Finally, I thought of a guy I'd heard on records and at sessions at The Bluebird in Detroit. It was a long shot, but worth a try. Billy Mitchell, he was called. I sat down at the 'phone to call Thad Jones who'd played in Detroit with him and who I thought might have his number. Suddenly the 'phone rang on me, and who should it be but Billy! Cannonball Adderley had passed through Detroit with his band and told Billy about my problem. So he was hired.

Frank Rehak was working with his father as a plumber but wanted to play trombone again, so he was hired. Joe Gordon was with Herb Pomeroy's big band in Boston, and I stole him! Dizzy had set Melba Listen and the rhythm section before he left for Europe. And Carl Warwick too, who was an old childhood buddy of his. 

RH. Did you have to turn away anyone you'd have liked to have in

the band? 

Q.J. After it was too late, as you'd expect, I had offers from all kinds

of guys! Milt Hinton was one. Wow!

RH. That must have been a real disappointment, both for them and for you.

Another point, Quincy. With the kind of shouting brass figures

that Wilkins and Melba Liston as well as yourself were writing for the band, how exactly did you distribute the demanding lead trumpet parts?

QJ. Ermet Perry played most of the lead trumpet parts. He's like a rock. Joe Gordon played lead on Cool Breeze. I played lead on I Can't Get Started, My Reverie, Flamingo and Yesterdays — all the ballads, in fact, because my chops were tired. Rehak played all the trombone leads (great too!)

RH. I noted that Dizzy had all the trumpet section change to the 45-degree angle instrument he'd developed. With all its bells pointing upwards and outwards like that the section must have disseminated its sounds better.

QJ. I found the 45-degree angle horn better for reading too. And it added a 3rd to the top register. I got pretty used to it after a while.

RH. After hiring the right musicians — the men you knew would make it musically — you had to find out at the rehearsals if they got on together. What I mean is, a collection of great performers don't of necessity make a great band — not if they can't get on together as human beings. And yet you can't apply too much discipline, simply because they are human beings; if you try to hold down strong personalities you take the edge off their natural enthusiasms. And this starts to show when they play then. Did you have any conflicting temperaments to reconcile?

QJ. There were no tempers. The guys were on guard, and were the best disciplined band I ever fronted at rehearsals. I even remember most of the guys showing up for rehearsals at the height of the blizzard with arms full of injections. (No, not dope; we had no narcotics problems with the band, but shots for typhoid, etc.) We got an almost impossible job done, thanks to their enthusiasm.

RH. What route did you take when the band left New York?

Well, let's see now. We left New York, by air, and picked up Dizzy in Rome. He was there waiting at the airport with his 45-degree angle horn out—and playing Sweet Lorraine for his wife, who'd come with us. He had no idea who was in the band unt we got out of the plane. It was funny when he saw cats like Joe Gordon and Billy Mitchell — he was quite surprised. Once the tour began Dizzy solidified the band's morale. It was as if a flock of sheep had at last found its shepherd. And Dizzy's sense of humour knows no limits. 

RH.  And then it was on to work in the more intense heat of the Middle East.

QJ. Yes. So right. We balled all the way down to Abadan, Persia-Dacca, Pakistan—Karachi, Pakistan—Beirut, Lebanon—Damascus, Syria—one other city in or near Syria, I forget the name of it—Ankara, Turkey—Istanbul, Turkey—Belgrade, Yugoslavia— Zagreb, Yugoslavia—and finally, Athens. Flying all the way, of course.

RH. Was there anyone to look after the band while it was there? You know, the luggage, and that sort of thing.

QJ. Yes. Dizzy's cousin, Boo Fraizer (Boo's Blues). He was a disc-jockey in North Carolina and he took a leave of absence to be our band boy. He's a groovy little cat too. There wasn't a lot of work for him to do though. We hung out together a lot.

RH. Once in the Middle East the concerts brought you in contact with so many different peoples, each with its own traditions and way of life. On account of these, the audience reception must have varied perceptibly between the cities you visited. Often you were representing the culture of the newest civilization in the world in cities with cultural traditions of their own going back more than 2,000 years. And political attitudes too. When you played in Athens the anti-Western feeling over the Cyprus situation was at its worst.

Q.J. Well, thinking back, I'd say Athens was the most unmusical of the cities we went to. And our stay there wasn't too pleasant because of a cultural attache (an American) who didn't appreciate jazz—and who let us know it as often as he could.

On the other hand, Belgrade was a bitch. There was a wonderful radio orchestra there which we loved to listen to. The musicians were very warm and friendly. They reminded us very much of musicians in New York, which was surprising, because the Yugoslavs have only been allowed to dig jazz for the last eight years.

RH. Which reminds me of Marshall Stearns' story of the communist party member in Yugoslavia who, after meeting the band, exclaimed in wonderment, "But you're all so unorganized—until you begin to play." The band's team spirit and coordinated swing, without its keeping a tight rein on outstanding individuals, represented a new kind of freedom for him.

QJ.  Yes. In Yugoslavia we had some of our most enthusiastic audiences. Perhaps they spoiled us for Athens which came after them.

RH. And Persia ? How did you find it there ?

QJ. Persia was very, very crude. It was still like five hundred years ago there. The audiences were very warm though, once they caught on to what we were doing. When we arrived, we found they hadn't even heard of Louis Armstrong! We felt very close to them, and to the people of Pakistan, mainly because of a link we found between the rhythms in their native music and the rhythms in ours.

RH. U.S.I.S. had made all the arrangements for the tour, of course,

QJ. The lay-out of the tour made everything look good. We always had good hotels. But we all got 'Karachi tummy' when we were in Pakistan, and Charlie Persip went down so bad with it that we had to use a Pakistani drummer part of the time.

RH. Marshall Stearns, reporting on the poverty that was everywhere the band played, mentioned you giving away a suit of clothes.

QJJ. That was in Persia. Billy Mitchell and I bought a suit of clothes for a sailor — also shoes. The poor guy earned only $ 1.80 a month in the navy. When we told him how much an American sailor earned he wouldn't believe us.

Everyone was poor in Persia it seemed. The living conditions were quite nasty there. I remember, Ernie Wilkins' saxophone had been misplaced in New York, so when he reached Abadan he went out to borrow one. Wow! He found saxophone players there who had used one reed for more than a year!

RH. Were you able to do any arranging work while actually on the tour?

QJ. Ernie Wilkins was my room-mate after Syria, and we spent a lot of time together trying to force each other into writing. Phil Woods too. He was very interested in learning to arrange. He's a very talented little cat.

RH. Dizzy arranged his Tour De Force for the band in Athens, which surprised me because he must have been kept continually busy as diplomat-extraordinary, meeting people and so on. Still, I can't think of a better choice for this than Dizzy, with his brilliant, natural showmanship, and persistent sense of humour.

QJ. Dizzy was always with cobras or camels or something for personal reasons and publicity purposes, but really I think he enjoyed every minute of it. I expect you saw the famous photograph of Diz blowing the snake-charmer's pipe, and the snake draped around his neck. Well, I bought that pipe afterwards. I have it at home in New York. All kinds of native drums I bought too. My apartment in New York has all sorts of souvenirs from all over the world. It looks like a modern museum. My favourite is the 45-degree trumpet which Dizzy gave me. It was his personal, gold-plated one.

RH. Dizzy can clown, and yet, underneath it all, he manages to remain an idealist. As a man, as well as a musician. That incident in Ankara, when he refused to let the band play at a diplomatic garden party unless the poor children crowding outside the walls were let in. That's typical Dizzy. The band itself, of course, non-segregated, with eight coloured musicians and four white musicians, was designed to break through any colour barriers.

QJ. We certainly couldn't understand why the people in the street in Pakistan were segregated — because they all looked the same colour to us!

RH. That would be the caste system. Something perhaps even more difficult to break through than the colour bar.

QJ. I got slapped by a performing monkey in a Pakistan street. Had a scar on my forehead for a week. I couldn't get a reputable antiseptic so I had to put shaving lotion on it — and didn't it sting!

RH. After the tour, and after the band had returned to New York, it went into Norman Granz' studios, and recorded almost its entire concert programme at one free-wheeling session. Most of the time with first 'takes'. I know that these recordings have been criticized on account of imperfect balances, some internal ones too, but I feel that by letting the session run as freely as a concert the engineers caught something of the band's real life spontaneity, something of the spirit of its public playing. The men knew the scores well, and to have insisted on continual 're-takes' might have taken the edge off their spirit. Might have made the performances seem mechanical. Did you feel this way at the time of the session?

QJ. No. I was disappointed with the session, and having to record seventeen numbers in two hours, all 'first takes' and with no one there in the control room to supervise the session. I think 're-takes' would have improved these particular recordings without spoiling the band's spirit.

RH. I remember your own Jessica's Day, always an interesting score for me, with the small-group ensemble set within the larger ensemble, was one of these performances. Immediately after these sessions didn't Benny Golson at last come into the band?

O.J Yes, Benny joined the band prior to its leaving for South America. As soon as he joined he wrote Stablemates, Whisper Not and several other wonderful things for Dizzy — and he played the end!

Benny was the only change for the South American tour, after Ernie Wilkins had dropped out. I was out of the band for a while when we got back from the Middle East. I had some writing to do, and as the band was playing theatres, playing only two or three tunes at each show, the library wasn't really marred by a change of personnel. Ronald Jones Jnr. (son of Basie's former lead man) deputized for me then. I knew the South American tour was coming off though, and while I was out of the band I'd play a little trumpet at home each day just to keep my chops in order.

RH. Where did the South American tour take you ?

QJ. Quito, Ecuador—Guayaquil, Ecuador—Buenos Aires, Argentina —Montevideo, Uruguay—Rio de Janeiro, Brazil—Sao Paulo—and Bella Horizonte, Brazil, Again flying all the way. I met Villa-Lobos in Rio. Benny Golson, Father Crowley and myself all went to his house one afternoon. A profound individual.

RH. That meant you passed through several zones of climate. Did these affect your playing, or were they with you all the way ?

QJ. No, to the last. Exactly the opposite. The climate was all against us. In the Middle East it had been as hot as hell, but hadn't interfered with our playing. In the South Americas it was winter — and as cold as a whore's heart. In Quito we caught hell at an altitude of 5,000 feet. Bad intonation and bad breathing on account of the rarefied atmosphere. Dizzy was smart and let Joe Gordon show off on all the trumpet solos. Joe almost killed himself — he was really ill after the concert, and had to drop out of the band. In Buenos Aires we used a trumpet player called Franco Corvini, but after that we made do with the four trumpets.

RH. One last point, Quincy. Did you, on either one of the tours, come up against any difficulties on account of language?

QJ. No. No language problems at all. Our music acted like an international language, and people everywhere accepted us on account of it. I picked up about twenty words of each language, though, and was really confused at the end of the two tours!”