"Shorty Rogers - The Gentle Giant" by Howard Lucraft

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

The following interview/article appeared in the February, 1979 issue of Jazz Journal [Vol. 32, No. 2].

With the 1952 release of the music on Modern Sounds and the Cool and Crazy LP on RCA the following year, Shorty Rogers was hailed as the father of West Coast Jazz. But as Shorty explains - “ … we never made any premeditated attempt to play anything different or specific that could be labelled 'West Coast Jazz'. We just played our jazz.”

Ten years or so after these recordings by Shorty spawned the West Coast style of Jazz, both he and the style were pretty much fading from public view as Rock ‘n Roll and Folk Music claimed the popular listening audience.

Shorty and many of his cohorts transitioned to the Hollywood studios where they found lucrative work writing and playing for movies, TV shows and radio jingles.

Humble and self-effacing to a fault, when one considers the amount of music Shorty wrote for big bands and small groups in the 1950s and adds to that what he contributed to the Woody Herman and Stan Kenton orchestras during the prior five years, his composing and arranging output is staggering both in terms of proportion and the consistently high quality of musicianship. 

Shorty’s music is as instantly recognizable as that of Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn, Woody Herman-Ralph Burns, Stan Kenton-Pete Rugolo-Bill Russo-Bill Holman, Count Basie-Neal Hefti, Henry Mancini, Gil Evans, Thad Jones or Gerry Mulligan, to name but a few distinctive, composer-arrangers, and yet his name is rarely mentioned in such circles. His brass sonorities, especially the pairing of upper register trumpets with lower register bass trombones and tubas, are unequaled for their range and density and a light, airy swing underscores all of his orchestrations. Shorty’s music is always moving.

Fortunately, a ton of Shorty’s music has made its way to digital platforms and if you are looking for something new and different, I urge you to explore the world [universe?] of cool and crazy modern sounds that Shorty Rogers created from about 1945 - 1965.

“WHAT HAPPENED to Shorty Rogers diminutive doyen of the West Coast movement of the fifties?

The answer is that Shorty is alive and well — in teeveeland. You've all heard that melodramatic chase music in the American cops and robbers TV shows. Well, Shorty has written a good deaf of that.

Shorty dropped by for a cuppa recently and was delighted to hear that his RCA Victor big band album, originally titled Cool And Crazy was a hit reissue in Europe as Blues Express. The album was recorded around 1951. Yes, it was nearly three decades ago that people began talking about "the new West Coast Jazz". The knowing ones claimed: "West Coast Jazz is everyone writing and playing like Shorty Rogers."

Says Shorty: "I've been told that quite a few times and it's a great compliment. You know, we never made any premeditated attempt to play anything different or specific that could be labelled 'West Coast Jazz'. We just played our jazz. Actually we spent a lot of time listening to all the records coming from the East Coast. We tried to learn from them.

"Just before that I had been playing and writing for Stan Kenton. A bunch of us came out of the Kenton (Innovations) band together — Bud (Shank), Coop (Bob Cooper, the late), Johnny Graas and others. I started teaching the cats composition and arranging. At the same time I myself was studying composition with Dr. Wesley La Violette — to keep one step ahead of my students!"

Prior to the RCA Cool And Crazy date Shorty had done one previous album as leader — for well-known jazz producer Gene Norman. It was called Modern Sounds. Gene sold the tapes to Capitol Records who released the session as an EP. It was the very first jazz of its type to come out of the West Coast. Several years later it was reissued as an LP on Capitol with tracks by Gerry Mulligan on the other side.

Shorty recalled the personnel of the Modern Sounds date as Don Bagley (b), Shelly Manne (d), Hampton Hawes (p), Gene Englund (tuba). Jimmy Giuffre (ts), Art Pepper (as), Milt Bernhart (tb) and Shorty Rogers (t). Titles included four Rogers originals (Popo, Didi, Apropos and Sam The Lady) plus Giuffre's Four Mothers and Over The Rainbow. 'It was kind of a Mites Davis small group sound," Shorty commented, "a few horns with a tuba on the bottom."

Jack Lewis was working for Gene Norman all that time as associate producer. He did all the leg work — put it all together. And as a result of working with us on that Modern Sounds album, Jack got very enthused. When he went over to RCA, he got the OK to produce the Cool and Crazy album.

"The big band was my idea. Most of us were still working for Stan Kenton at the time. I remember going to Stan and saying: 'Don't get upset with us, Stan'. And Stan, the beautiful guy that he is, gave me his blessing.

"We did all new things — all my originals. We all thought up the weird titles. Milt Bernhart named The Sweetheart Of Sigmund Freud. Shelly (Manne) christened Tale Of The African Lobster. Infinity Promenade was one of my titles."

I asked Shorty to run down the personnel on the Cool and Crazy date.

"You should know — you were there!" he answered.

The musicians included Maynard Ferguson, Conrad Gozzo, Uan Rasey, Sweets Edison, Conrad Gozzo, Uan Rasey, Bob Enevoldsen, Bud Shank, Jimmy Giuffre, Art Pepper, Bob Cooper, Herb Geller, Don Bagley, Marty Paich and Shelly Manne. Shorty played the trumpet solos. (It was before he had switched to flugelhorn.)

The recording took place in an early RCA Victor studio in Hollywood — now a record pressing plant.

Shorty commented: "It was a poor studio, soundwise. It had a gigantic high ceiling. It was originally constructed for the recording of film background music. We had 16 men but it looked like a little teeny band."

There was only one other major record studio in Los Angeles at that time — Radio Recorders. Today there are probably hundreds. Jazz record dates then were a Hollywood event. Shorty recalled: "In those days Shelly would get a jazz record date some seven weeks in advance. The word would go out. Musicians would ask: 'Can we come and sit in the booth'?"

It was around this time that Shorty started a regular evening gig at the famous Lighthouse Club in Hermosa Beach, some 25 miles from Hollywood. I remember driving down there one night with Shorty. We were stopped by a policeman for an alleged dangerous left turn. "Where are you going?" asked the officer. When we told him the cop replied: "Oh, isn't that the place where they all smoke marijuana?" When Shorty and I told John Levine, the Lighthouse owner, of the cop's comments, John was furious. He vowed he would sue the police department for a million dollars.

"But those were really good days musically,” Shorty said.

“And even more as Shorty was with the first Lighthouse All-Stars group. They played every night of the week except Monday. The group had Frank Patchen (p), Jimmy Giuffre (ts) and Shelly Manne (d) in addition to bassist-leader Howard Rumsey and Shorty. Trombonist Milt Bernhart was added later. On weekends Howard would hire extra players — like Gerry Mulligan and Art Pepper.

"Sunday we had jazz all day," Shorty recalled., "The Lighthouse is just half a block from the beach. People would come into the club in their bathing suits in the afternoon. And at two in the morning, when we closed, some of them would still be sitting there in their swimsuits."

From the Lighthouse Shorty went to the Haig. This club — just a wooden hut really — was on famed Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, opposite the well-known Ambassador Hotel. The Haig has long been torn down to make a modern office building. Shorty's band there was Giuffre, Shelly, Russ Freeman (p) and Joe Mondragon (b).

Then Shorty had an offer to move over to Zardi's on Hollywood Boulevard (now a porno film theatre). Freeman left and Marty Paich came in on piano, followed by Pete Jolly who had just arrived in town. The period was circa 1954.

Johnny Dankworth came to Hollywood at this time. It was his first visit here. He came with drummer Allan Ganley. I got Abe Most to lend Johnny an alto and arranged for him to sit in with Shorty's group. Teddy Wilson, Stan Getz and Gene Krupa were in Hollywood at that time working on the Benny Goodman Story film and they were all in the audience at Zardi's that night.

"They were very good days for jazz," Shorty sighed. "People could sit and listen to jazz for just the price of a 75-cent beer."

After this Shorty started getting active in composing and arranging. "I felt I wanted to do more writing. I tried to keep up the playing in clubs. But it does take a lot out of you even though I was much younger then.

"The transition came about through film composer Leith Stevens. Leith used to come down to the Lighthouse to listen to us. He hired me to help him do some arranging on the Marlon Brando picture The Wild One.

"My work on that picture attracted a lot of attention. I think it was the first time that jazz had been used in a film with that aggressive approach.

"Then Leith recorded an album of the music for Decca. It became a hit LP. One of the people who heard about it was film composer Elmer Bernstein. Elmer had me orchestrate and arrange a lot of jazz sequences for The Man With The Golden Arm. This also attracted a lot of attention and again there was a big-selling album out of the picture.

"All of a sudden people were calling me up for jazz arrangements. I didn't know what was going on. I was just trying to have fun. I was also teaching an awful lot (the same guys) and playing at night. It was kinda hectic but being young I enjoyed it.

"About ten years later it became hard to keep up the playing. It was reduced to an odd Saturday night here and there. It was hard to keep my chops up. The Lord wanted me to rest my lip and start working the pencil harder. I still practise the trumpet at home but I look around first to make sure no-one is listening!"

Shorty has almost forgotten the rhythm and blues records he made at that time under the name of Boots Brown. "The first time we went into the studio we had a hit but, do you know, I can't even remember the title now. We did two sessions of four tunes each. I had a wild bunch of rock & roll stars! — Bud Shank, Gerry Mulligan and Jimmy Giuffre. It has a tongue-in-cheek thing that we used to do at the Lighthouse for a gag. It was again Jack Lewis's idea to record the Boots Brown group."

At first Shorty was just arranging and orchestrating for other film and TV writers. Then he got some composing work on his own for television. For the past couple of years Shorty has been doing episodes of Starsky And Hutch, The Goldbergs and The Love Boat. Before that he wrote for The Partridge Family, Occasional Wife, Mr Deeds Goes To Town, I Dream Of Jeannie, I Spy and Mod Squad ("plus others —- I can't remember them all!").

A turning point came for Shorty when he met film composer Earle Hagen. "I consider him my teacher. He took me under his wing and trained me — showed me how to do it. You could never pay Earle. All he would ever accept in appreciation was golf balls!

"Writing for television envelopes you completely. At that time I had a show to write and record every week. It became a tremendous rat race. I didn’t [at first] realize the differences between composing and arranging. They’re two different worlds! It became so much I didn't have a chance to think of anything else. Just to meet the weekly deadline was my life.

"So.. .currently the Lord wants me not to work so hard although I'm still keeping my hand in and working on a few TV shows. But now I'm considering my health. I worked for so many years without taking care of myself. I thank God for my health — and now I want to sort of water it and make it grow."

A few of the old Giants still work with Shorty (on his TV assignments) — Bud Shank, Shelly Manne and Bob Cooper. Russ Freeman worked with Shorty at Columbia for many years. "Some of Russ's tunes are not to be believed. I love his work. He's incredible."

What does Shorty think of the many new directions in jazz? Does he feel it is all jazz?

"I like everything I hear...Chick Corea and all the fusion things. I dig it. I'm not trying to be nice. I just like the things I hear today."

Different inflections, feel?? "Yes, but it's easy for me. I've written a lot of rock things. It would be an enjoyable thing to go out again with a band. I'd play some of my olden arrangements along with some fusion things.

"I love the electronics today. When I'm writing for the studios I write in a lot of synthesizers, phasers etc. But when it's on television it goes by and people forget it. It's not like an album that you take home and play over and over. I’d like to to an album that had different time signatures and then do a

complete about-face and play some of the Basie things." (You may recall Shorty's Basie-style compositions on his Shorty Courts the Count LP in the fifties).

Shorty has lived in the same house in the San Fernando Valley for 25 years. In the "Garden Room" where he works the old jazz scores and parts are still all stacked high ("the room hasn't been cleaned in 25 years").

Would Shorty like to take the old scores and the original Giants on a tour of Europe?

"Yes, it would be fun. I put it in the Lord's hands. If he wants me to do it, I'm ready."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

British bandleader Howard Lucraft emigrated to the United States and settled in Los Angeles in 1951 since when he has been active as a composer/arranger and broadcaster. His early credits include compositions and arrangements for Stan Kenton and his specially commissioned Los Angeles Suite was performed at the Hollywood Bowl. His Jazz International show for American Forces Radio had more than 100 million listeners and he has been a prolific writer for newspapers and magazines including the Los Angeles Times, Variety, Down Beat and Melody Maker. He is a director and treasurer of the American Society of Music Arrangers and consultant and adviser to Westwood Entertainment Corporation in Los Angeles.

Shorty Rogers with Harold Arlen and The Wizard of Oz

 I will be continuing my periodic visits on my Substack blog to Mr. Rogers neighborhood - no, not Fred, Shorty - and I thought I’d focus on one particular album to discuss the nature and structure of his big band arrangements which Ted Gioia describes this way in his seminal work on the subject of "West Coast Jazz, Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960":

“ … [Shorty’s] arrangements could swing without ostentation; his solos were executed with untroubled fluency; his compositions seemed to navigate the most difficult waters with a relaxed, comfortable flow that belied the often complex structures involved.”

Put another way, Ted associates this “swing without ostentation” with the concept of -“Sprezzatura” - “The ability to do difficult things with apparent ease.” [the concept is attributed to Baldassare Castiglione, count of Casatico, Italian courtier, diplomat, soldier and prominent Renaissance author].

Since the Renaissance was a 15th and 16th century Italian reawakening that was partially based on the rediscovery of the cultural and artistic achievements of the ancients Greece and Rome, perhaps it’s appropriate to apply the following ancient Roman maxim to Shorty as it parallels sprezzatura”:

“Ars Est Celare Artem” - “The perfection of art is to conceal it.”

- Ovid, Roman poet; Proverbs 12:23

The feature will post to my Substack blog on March 17th and access is free to everyone. cerra.substack.com.

Shorty Rogers - The Art of Jazz - by Alyn Shipton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He said, "What's the title?"

They said, "Cool and Crazy."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shorty Rogers and The Wizard of Oz

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

“If ever a “Wiz there was” at adapting superior popular songs to big band modern jazz, it's curly-bearded Shorty Rogers.”

- John Tynan, West Coast Editor Down Beat 

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to continued its visit to Mr. Rogers neighborhood - no, not Fred, Shorty - and thought we’d focus on one particular album to discuss the nature and structure of his big band arrangements which Ted Gioia describes this way in his seminal work on the subject of West Coast Jazz, Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960:

“ … [Shorty’s] arrangements could swing without ostentation; his solos were executed with untroubled fluency; his compositions seemed to navigate the most difficult waters with a relaxed, comfortable flow that belied the often complex structures involved.”

Put another way, Ted associates this “swing without ostentation” with the concept of  -“Sprezzatura” - “The ability to do difficult things with apparent ease.” [ the concept is attributed to Baldassare Castiglione, count of Casatico, Italian courtier, diplomat, soldier and prominent Renaissance author].

Since the Renaissance was a 15th and 16th century Italian reawakening largely based on the rediscovery of the cultural and artistic achievements of ancient Greece and Rome, perhaps it's appropriate to apply the following Roman maxim to Shorty's talents and skills as it parallels sprezzatura”:

“Ars Est Celare Artem” - “The perfection of art is to conceal it.”

- Ovid, Roman poet; Proverbs 12:23

As Ted Gioia also points out ” Rogers recorded prolifically between 1951 and 1963e but his visibility in jazz was hindered by his virtual retirement from performing situations since the early 1960s.  Rogers [had not ]actually left the music world; … [he]simply applied … [his] skills elsewhere, in studio work or academic pursuits. Rogers But his lengthy absence from the jazz world has meant that his work, once widely known, is now largely unfamiliar to many jazz fans and critics.” [paraphrased].

Not surprisingly, there is another ancient Roman saying that describes this development as well, although the original intent of the adage may have been different:

“Ut Saepe Summa Ingenia In Occulto Latent” - “How often the greatest talents are shrouded in obscurity.”

- Plautus, Roman playwright [c. 254-184 BC]

We’ve been doing our part to remedy this Shrouded Shorty Situation [sorry, I couldn’t resist] with periodic features about Rogers on this page.

Although Shorty often expressed his fondness for the easy swing of the Count Basie band and tried to reflect that in his big band arrangements, I’ve long been of the opinion that Shorty also had an affinity for some aspects of Duke Ellington’s approach to writing for a big band.

I don’t want to force comparisons here because the Duke maintained his own orchestra for almost 50 years, while Shorty would assemble a band as needed for recording projects.

But both men tried to reflect the singular features of members in their band by voicing arrangements to reflect, incorporate or emphasize certain aspects of their tone, timbre, range, improvisational style or just the unique sound of the instrument itself.

With regard to the latter, the Duke was one of the first to add the baritone saxophone to his sax section; he employed a valve trombone; emphasized muted trumpets and plunger trombones.

Shorty came of age during a period of high register trumpets, pedal tone bass trombones, electric guitars and vibraphones and blended all of these in his arrangements, along with French horns, tubas, piccolos and flutes.

So Duke takes into consideration the singular characteristics of trumpeters Cootie Williams, Ray Nance and Clark Terry, trombonist Tricky Sam Lofton, valve trombonist Juan Tizol, alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges and baritone saxophonist Harry Carney when voicing his arrangements.

Shorty, on the other hand, would score for upper register trumpet screamers like Maynard Ferguson and Al Porcino, the master of the clarinet’s lower register, Jimmy Giuffre, Bob Enevoldson’s valve trombone, Frank Rosolino’s tenor trombone, John Graas’ French horn, Gene Englund’s tuba,  the flutes of Paul Horn and Bud Shank, Art Pepper’s alto saxophonist, vibraphonist Larry Bunker, and guitarist Barney Kessel. Of course, you need to leave lots of room in your arrangements for kicks, licks and fills by Mel Lewis, the personification of big band drumming in the modern era, and Shorty certainly accommodated this “need.”

Duke wrote much of the music for his band and seldom arranged the works of other composers. Shorty, too, wrote many compositions for his big band recordings but he wasn’t averse to orchestrating the music composed by others, especially the songs composed by those usually associated with the Great American Songbook.

Which brings me to the album featured in the title of this piece Shorty Rogers and his Orchestra featuring The Giants The Wizard of Oz and other Harold Arlen songs which was released in 1959 as RCA Victor LPM-1997 and reissued on CD in 1996 [RCA BMG Spain 74321453792].

John Tynan, the West Coast editor of down beat magazine and a great fan of Shorty and his music, wrote the following liner notes for the 1959 LP.

If ever a “Wiz there was” at adapting superior popular songs to big band modern jazz, it's curly-bearded Shorty Rogers. Shorty's singular quality in this area is his capacity to get the most out of the music at hand from the standpoint of orchestration, yet hew strictly to a swinging jazz line. The success of his recent album, CHANCES ARE IT SWINGS (LPM/LSP-1975), in which the tunes were those of Robert Allen, is a perfect case in point. This time the lure was the superlative songs of Harold Arlen who, with lyricist E. Y. Harburg, wrote the score for M-G-M's film version of the fantasy. In addition to the Oz music, this album proffered a tempting opportunity to present five other enduring Arlen melodies.

Results of the trumpeter-arranger's jazz pilgrimage to the Emerald City of Oz for an audience with the Wizard are tangible evidence that in jazz it's not only what you do but the way you do it. As Shorty sees it, the issue reduces itself to a two-way proposition—the manner in which one handles certain music and the substance of the music per se.

Contemplating the score from the Judy Garland film classic, Rogers confesses he's been wigged by the Wiz since childhood. And from time to time, the vagrant thought occurred that a jazz adaptation of this music should prove an interesting challenge to him as arranger-orchestrator. "The one thing that gassed me about this music," he declares, "is that it's so well suited to a fairy tale. It's gay, light in spirit... and even when done in jazz it's still got that cute, merry quality."

As Shorty tells it, this album might never have happened had it not been for pianist Lou Levy's choice of tunes in his album SOLO SCENE, recorded under Shorty's supervision some years ago. "Lou's album was the first I did for Victor," Rogers recalls, "and from the production end it's my favorite. Anyway, one of the tunes on the date was Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead. This revived my interest in the music from The Wizard of Oz' and from that time on I've wanted to orchestrate it — but in a special way. Lou's treatment of the tune was so great, I wanted to orchestrate it in a similar style — I mean to use Lou's solo as direct basis for the instrumentation. And that's just what I did here. In several sections of the arrangement all I did was merely orchestrate what Lou played. So, in a way you could say that Lou Levy is indirectly responsible for this album." Also included on the SOLO SCENE album were Harold Arlen's That Old Black Magic and that perennial vehicle for jazz improvisation, Get Happy. In the Rogers' arrangements of those songs in this set, the Levy influence is again apparent. The out chorus of Get Happy is taken straight from Levy's solo.

As in CHANCES ARE IT SWINGS, Rogers has utilized the small-band-within-a-big-band format, one integrated with the other or in opposition. There are frequent occasions, also, when the arrangement is split between small and big units. On Let's Fall in Love, for example, the small group — consisting of vibes, guitar, clarinet and muted trumpet with the rhythm section —  take over on the first bridge from the block-busting brass. Again, in If I Only Had a Brain, the big and small groups alternate, creating a framework for the soloists.

Heard throughout in solo spots both on trumpet and flugelhorn is the effervescent Shorty constantly chased by the horns of Jimmy Giuffre (clarinet and tenor), Barney Kessel—(guitar), Bob Enevoldsen (valve-trombone), Herb Geller (tenor), Bud Shank (alto and tenor), Larry Bunker (vibes), Don Fagerquist (trumpet in the small group) and Frank Rosolino, whose gymnastic solo trombone is heard only in The Merry Old Land of Oz. Joe Mondragon is responsible for the occasional bass interludes, and his rhythm mate, Mel "The Tailor" Lewis, sews up the time with relentless imaginative drive. Pete Jolly whose piano is an unfailing asset both in rhythm section and solo, takes charge on Over the Rainbow which here takes the form of a miniature concerto for Pete's considerable talent. In keeping with the overall ebulliency of this album the opening Afro-Cuban track proclaims in overture fashion, We're off to See the Wizard. There can be no doubt that Shorty and the boys were granted the sought-for audience in Oz.... Quite obviously, the Wizard dug the scene.”                                                                                                      —JOHN TYNAN