Gordon Jack is a frequent contributor to the Jazz Journaland a very generous friend in allowingJazzProfilesto re-publish his insightful and discerning writings on various topics about Jazz and its makers.
Gordon is the author of Fifties Jazz Talk An Oral Retrospectiveand he also developed the Gerry Mulligan discography in Raymond Horricks’ bookGerry Mulligan’s Ark.
The following obituary was published in the 12 July, 2020 edition of Jazz Journal.
A COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE INNOVATIVE TELEVISION SERIES 1956-1958
BY JAMES A. HARROD
“The first Stars Of Jazz broadcast took place on Monday 25 June 1956 at 10.30 PM and it featured the Stan Getz Quartet and Kid Ory’s Creole Jazz Band. It followed the Lawrence Welk Show and that was its regular time-slot for the duration of the series which was seen locally in Los Angeles on Channel 7 on the KABC network. The show which was sponsored by Budweiser was eventually broadcast coast-to-coast for the final 29 programmes of the series. Stars Of Jazz with its innovative camera work and fresh production values received an Emmy from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, together with a Down Beat award as well as recognition from Theme magazine, TV Radio Life, TV Radio Mirror and TV Guide.
It benefitted from appointing the multi-talented Bobby Troup as its host and his laid-back but informed delivery probably helped relax musicians on what was a live TV show. He was a consummate performer and was clearly at home in a television environment having worked on the NBC Musical Chairs quiz show with Johnny Mercer, Stan Freberg, Mel Blanc and Peggy King.
Others who had auditioned for the role included Leonard Feather, Les Koenig, Dick Bock, Howard Rumsey, Sleepy Stein, Gene Norman, Stan Kenton and John Tynan. Whenever he was unavailable Johnny Green, Johnny Mercer, Mel Torme’, Andre’ Previn or Jerry Colonna stood in for him. On one occasion the Bobby Troup quintet with Bob Enevoldsen on trombone and tenor were the featured guest stars and that show was hosted by Stan Kenton.
This fascinating book is the product of more than 20 years research by the author Jim Harrod who is a member of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, the Jazz Journalists Association and the Los Angeles Jazz Institute .He has adopted an almost forensic attention to detail in accessing AFM contracts to identify every Stars Of Jazz performer. Complete personnels and repertoire including composer and lyricist where appropriate are listed for all 130 shows. Biographical details of the major performers are also included and his research has been helped by Jimmie Baker’s scripts which were available at the Los Angeles Jazz Institute. The book includes many previously unpublished photographs by the celebrated Ray Avery who attended most of the shows.
The series featured artists who were performing in Los Angeles clubs at the time like Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Bob Cooper, Billie Holiday, Anita O’Day, Chris Connor, Dave Pell and Benny Carter. Occasionally New York-based groups like Cannonball Adderley’s quintet, the MJQ, Oscar Peterson’s trio and the Jazz Messengers appeared when they were in town as did big bands led by Charlie Barnet, Shorty Rogers, Count Basie, Harry, James and Les Brown.
Jim Harrod reveals a compelling treasure- trove of totally new material in this somewhat forgotten window on the mid-fifties west coast jazz scene.
Stars Of Jazz
A Complete History Of The Innovative Television Series 1956 -1958.
By James A Harrod, published by McFarland & Company Inc.
225 pp. ISBN 978-1-4766-7770-5 (print), ISBN 978-1-4766-3779-2 (ebook)
“Critical praise lauded the programs seen that summer in newspapers where the local stations broadcast Stars of Jazz. National publications like Down Beat and Metronome continued to mention and praise the series. Despite this, Stars of Jazz has fallen into oblivion.”
There’s never been anything like it before, and I doubt that there will ever be anything like it again - a regular, weekly series devoted to Jazz on a major television network. A series about Jazz which even won an Emmy award!
The backdrop for these opening remarks was the ABC television series, Stars of Jazz which aired from 1956 - 1958.
[As a point in passing, Steve Allen, a television personality and fine pianist, produced 26 half-hour Jazz Scene USA programs in 1962 but these were syndicated on regional and local television stations and not televised nationally on one of the major networks].
On two previous occasions, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles posted blog features about Ray Avery, the late photographer and Jazz recordings maven, who became the unofficial “official” photographer of the Stars of Jazz . A compilation of Ray photographs from these shows was published in 1995 by the Danish firm Jazz Media with editorial guidance from Cynthia T. Sesso
Cynthia is a major authority on Jazz photography, and licenses Ray’s work along with the images of a number of other photographers who specialized in Jazz. You can locate more about Cynthia and her work at her website. She may also have copies of Ray’s book about Stars of Jazz still available for sale.
There the matter stood for almost 25 years until Jefferson, North Carolina based McFarland’s recent publication of James A Harrod, Stars of Jazz: A Complete History of the Innovative Television Series, 1956 - 1958.
In addition to concise annotations of all 130 episodes of the show which aired over the three year period from 1956-1958, Mr. Harrod’s work contains and Introduction that places the musical groups that appeared on the television show within the larger context of the West Coast Jazz scene of the 1950s, an interview with Ray Avery, the previously referenced unofficial “official” photographer of the program as conducted by Jazz columnist and record producer Will Thornbury, a discography, a filmography and chapter notes that convey the detailed nature of the research that he conducted in writing the book.
Also on hand is an outstanding assemblage of Ray Avery’s photographs curated by Cynthia Sesso that offer both behind-the-scenes views as well as portraits of the musicians appearing in front of the camera, very few of which have ever been made available in previous publications. Each episode and each related photograph has expert commentary by Mr. Harrod which further enriches the reader’s vicarious experience of this landmark television series on the subject of Jazz.
It’s not easy to make a book about a television series interesting, especially one, the remnants of which have been stored away in garage boxes, private collections, and university archival vaults since it ceased airing over 60 years ago.
But Mr. Harrod’s clear, concise, conversationalist-like writing style succeeds in accomplishing this task with a detailed and descriptive trip into a Jazz World that is no more and, if you blinked while it was in existence, you more than likely would have missed its brief appearance of the national entertainment stage
The background for how the series came to be is contained in these excerpts from the book’s Introduction.
“Norman Granz gave jazz performance in Los Angeles a boost when he launched his Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) concert at the Philharmonic Auditorium in July of 1944. The success of that event motivated Granz to take his concept on national tours of the United States in the following years. Gene Norman helped to fill the concert performance demand when he began his Just Jazz concerts in the late 1940s.
A jazz enthusiast, Gene Norman became Los Angeles' leading disc jockey via programs on various local radio stations. Gene Norman's Just Jazz concerts featured leading jazz artists such as Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter, Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, Lionel Hampton, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole, June Christy, Chet Baker, Shorty Rogers, Art Pepper, Red Norvo, Dave Brubeck, Max Roach, Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Cal Tjader, and Erroll Garner at venues including the Embassy Auditorium, the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, and the Shrine Auditorium. Gene Norman and Frank Bull inaugurated their Dixieland Jubilee programs at the Shrine Auditorium in the late 1940s to satisfy the legions of traditional jazz fans in Los Angeles.
Norman introduced the Snader Telescriptions (1950-1952), a prototype MTV-styled concept documenting recording personalities and jazz artists of the era, on NBC-TV. He hosted one of the first televised jazz concerts on KTLA, as well as The Gene Norman Show and Campus Club on KHJ. …
Los Angeles became a national focal point for jazz when the Gerry Mulligan Quartet attracted media attention in the fall of 1952. The subsequent founding of Pacific Jazz Records accelerated the recognition of the West Coast as a center of new trends in jazz. In a similar fashion, Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars launched the modern jazz series at Les Koenig's Contemporary Records and introduced a style of playing that became known as West Coast Jazz. Norman Granz established Clef and Norgran Records as a vehicle to record artists associated with his JATP organization. All three were headquartered in Los Angeles. …
Los Angeles was experiencing a continuing jazz renaissance in the spring of 1956. Nightclubs featuring jazz were thriving. Tiffany Club, Crescendo, Interlude, Zardi's Jaz-zland, Oasis, Peacock Lane, Jazz City, the Lighthouse, and The Haig were booking top names in modern jazz. Traditional jazz bastions included Royal Room, Astor's, 881 Club, 400 Club, and Beverly Cavern.
Jazz was making inroads on television as well. Ed Sullivan featured jazz occasionally and other personality shows like The Nat King Cole Show featured jazz, most notably shows with Norman Granz introducing stars from his JATP organization. But the unheralded program that presented jazz regularly, night after night, was Steve Allen's Tonight. ...
Steve Allen's Tonight was one of the first network programs to regularly feature African American artists. When the show premiered in September of 1954, the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision from May 17,1954, permeated news headlines. This was during the early years of the civil rights struggle and it would be another year before Rosa Parks launched the Montgomery bus boycott after she refused to yield her seat in the black section to a white passenger.
Allen's roster of guest artists from the first six months of 1956, noted above, provides ample proof that Tonight continued to present artists on the basis of talent, not color. The production team who conceived Stars of Jazz at KABC shared the same conviction, that guest artists would be hired based on talent, not the color of their skin.
Stars of Jazz was created by a group of Channel 7 KABC employees including producers, directors, writers, cameramen, and assorted technicians who were serious fans of jazz. They were keenly aware of the absence of a dedicated TV show featuring jazz. The petition to develop and present a show devoted to jazz was led by Peter Robinson, Bob Arbogast, Norman Abbott, and Jimmie Baker who had been badgering the station's executive in charge of programming, Selig J. Seligman, for years. He finally relented and in the spring of 1956 gave Peter Robinson and Baker, the producers who would shepherd the show, a green light. He told them there was no budget for the show but they could have dead studio time and a bare bones staff, no frills. They would have to stick to musician scale, write their own material, scrape together their stage sets, and they could produce four shows. If they didn't land a sponsor by the end of the fourth show it would be canceled. …
Stars of Jazz was seen in Los Angeles on Channel 7, K ABC, from June of 1956 through April of 1958, a total of 92 shows. In mid-April of 1958 the show was granted network status where it was seen on 70-plus ABC stations across the country. KABC recorded 29 episodes for distribution before being canceled by ABC headquarters in New York in October of 1958. It resumed local-only broadcast in Los Angeles for the remainder of the year and nine final episodes. The disposal of the Stars of Jazz kinescopes sealed its fate. Surviving episodes or portions of episodes have surfaced on YouTube, making access and viewing of the program easier for audiences. Available YouTube segments are listed with each episode.”
Many of the elements that came together to make Stars of Jazz “innovative” are detailed in the book’s Coda, among them:
“Stars of Jazz was seen on over 70 stations in 39 states and Canada when it debuted on ABC's national network in the spring of 1958. The move to network broadcast was facilitated by the introduction of videotape technology that quickly gained a presence on all three national TV networks.
CBS had 14 Ampex VT-1000 videotape machines in its New York headquarters and nine in Hollywood. NBC opened its Hollywood center in April of 1958 and was in the final stages of completing a million-dollar videotape center in New York in the fall of 1958. ABC had six videotape machines in its Chicago center that was a hub for distribution to other ABC affiliates. KABC had six videotape machines in its television center in Hollywood. …
Troup spoke with Wally George at the Los Angeles Times about the challenges of presenting jazz on television in March of 1958. He credited the success of Stars of Jazz to imaginative programming, the scripts, musical examples, historical images, and creative camera work. He pointed out that the chief difficulty in presenting a show of this type was to give it visual appeal: "No one will watch long if the same standard shots are used time and again. We try to combine sight and sound into an attractive package. At times we may have ended up in left field, but at least no one can accuse the show of not trying."
Baker tapped William Claxton as artistic consultant when the show was being formulated. Claxton's eye for photography had been a major factor in the success of Dick Bock's Pacific Jazz label, and Claxton was instrumental in placing Pacific Jazz artists like Chet Baker, Jack Montrose, Chico Hamilton, and Bud Shank on Stars of Jazz.
The visual presentation of jazz was innovative although the finger painting and artist sketching on stage might have been the "left field" that Troup mentioned. The films of Charles and Ray Eames, the visuals of devices with a beat, water in motion, and other films that conveyed motion with a cadence presented jazz for the eye as well as the ear. John Wilson's film, ABC's of Jazz, likewise presented a visualization of jazz for viewers. It is regrettable that the planned visuals by John Hoppe for a future edition of Stars of Jazz were not realized. His special effects on The Bing Crosby Show dazzled the Stars of Jazz team who asked Hoppe to create effects for an episode.
One of the greatest assets of Stars of Jazz during the two and a half years it ran on Los Angeles television was the camera crew. Baker provided detailed breakdowns on every number performed as a guideline for the cameramen to follow as the jazz musicians performed the tune, but the cameramen's intuitive knowledge of music and what to focus on made every show a gem to watch and behold. The camera work seen on Stars of Jazz has not been equaled or surpassed by any television jazz program before or since.”
As the book makes clear, all styles of Jazz were represented on the program,
and some of the original makers of the music such as Paul Whiteman, Jack Teagarden, Red Nichols, Ray Bauduc and Red Norvo were still alive in the late 1950s and made appearances on the program
For those of us who were fortunate to view the series wholly or in part when it originally aired, it’s easy to agree with Hr. Harrod when he concludes:
“Hopefully, this history and the increasing availability of Stars of Jazz on internet sites like YouTube will raise an awareness of this landmark series that deserves recognition in critical media studies and histories.”
He sang as though he had just
half a voice. No volume, it was all about confiding. Sometimes he croaked out
a line, next minute he'd released a word as though he was doubtful about
delivering it to the world at large. Bobby Troup never played to the gallery,
never went for the big one. Yet, despite - or rather because of - such
reluctance, allied to a lemon-twist quality that fell oddly on unaccustomed
ears, the man from Harrisburg,
PA.
still qualified as Mr. Cool, the vocal equivalent of a Paul Desmond alto solo
maybe. He sounded like no one else. And no one else has ever sounded like him.”
- Fred Dellar, Mojo Magazine
We wrote about composer,
pianist and vocalist Bobby Troup in an earlier feature about him and Julie
London which you can locate in the blog archives by going here.
Many of us first
“met” Bobby in the 1950s when he hosted the Emmy award winning ABC television
series, Stars of Jazz.
Can you imagine -
a regular, weekly series on a major television network devoted to Jazz?
It was cool and so
was Bobby.
Since it was based
in Los
Angeles, most of the groups that appeared on the show were associated with
was then labeled the “West Coast” school of Jazz.
There are two
wonderful books on this subject: Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 and Robert Gordon, Jazz West Coast, The Los Angeles Jazz Scene of the 1950s.
A number of years
ago, The California Institute of Jazz made available to those in attendance at
its Spring 1999 4-day festival celebrating West Coast Jazz , a wonderful CD of
the music from the Stars of Jazz series.
Ken Poston, the
director of the institute, wrote the following in the insert booklet which
accompanied the compendium:
“This anthology has been
assembled exclusively for JAZZ
WEST COAST II, presented by the California Institute for the Preservation of
Jazz. All of the material comes from various Bobby Troup Stars of Jazz television
broadcasts. Stars of Jazz debuted in the summer of 1956 on KABC, Los
Angeles. It was unheard of in the mid 1950s to
televise jazz on a regular basis, but because of the dedication of producer
Jimmie Baker, program director Pete Robinson and host Bobby Troup the program
aired for over two years. It was sponsored by Budweiser and eventually went
from a local to network broadcast. The selections on this disc represent the
incredible range of artists that were beamed into your living room every night.”
—Ken Poston
Incidentally,
Ken’s organization, which now carries the name – The Los Angeles Jazz Institute
[LAJI] – continues to sponsor semi-annual, four day festivals, as well as,
one-day commemorative events. You can find out more about these programs by visiting
Ken’s website.
In addition to the
LAJI’s repository of goodies, Ray Avery, the late photographer and Jazz
recordings maven, was allowed to photograph the Stars of Jazz.
A compilation of
Ray photographs from these shows was published in 1998.
Cynthia T. Sesso,
who in her own right is a major authority on Jazz photography, licenses Ray’s
work along with the images of a number of other photographers who specialized
in Jazz.
Cynthia has been a
great friend to JazzProfiles over the years in allowing us to use photographs
by her clients on these pages.
You can find out
more about Cynthia and her work at her website.
She may also have copies of Ray’s book about Stars of Jazz still
available for sale.
Her are some
excerpts from the book’s introduction regarding how Ray came to be involved
with the show and Bobby Troup’s role as contained in an interviewthat
Ray gave to Will Thornbury.
“…, my photography
flowed naturally out of my involvement in my record store. At that time I
wasn't well known as a photographer. I just happened to be there and I had an
entrée because I was in the record business. Most of the small record companies
knew about me because I was carrying their product in my store, they would
invite me to record sessions. I was very seldom paid for a session, except if
they bought some photos. …
One day a friend
of mine asked if I'd seen "Stars Of Jazz" and I said I hadn't, so I
checked the newspaper and found out when it was going to be on. I just went
down, I think it was the second or third show, and I asked them if I could
photograph it. They were very friendly and said yes, of course, just be careful
and don't fall over any cords or walk in front of any cameras."
The host for all
but two Stars of Jazz episodes was Bobby Troup. He embodied the essence of the
show - straightforward, genuine and creative. Perhaps some of the show's
viewers from outside the jazz world were pulled in through Troup's
accessibility. He wore a crew cut. He was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in business and had written
many of the nation's favorite songs "Route 66", "Daddy",
"Lemon Twist", songs that crossed over from the jazz to the popular
charts. In addition to writing songs, he was also an active musician and would
perform often on the show.
"Bobby was
the perfect man", notes Jimmie Baker. 'There were some people who wanted
to have a bigger name, but nobody else could do it. Nobody else had the appeal
that Bobby had." Avery adds, "Bobby was a good musician, had written
great songs and he could be a great master of ceremonies. That's a combination
they couldn't find in anyone else. He spoke really well - he didn't want any of
those corny jazz lines in the script, which was good. He was a really good
interviewer. He made people feel so comfortable when they were there. And of course
they respected him as a musician, many of the sets featured Bobby at the
piano."
"All the
musicians had so much faith in the presentation of "Stars of
Jazz"," Troup says. "They thought it was the best jazz show
they'd ever seen. Did you know the story of how "Stars of Jazz" got
started? Pete Robinson, Jimmie Baker, and Bob Arbogast were all jazz buffs. I
mean they really loved jazz, and there was this executive, Seligman, graduated
from Harvard, Phi Beta Kappa, and they were on him constantly to let them do
this jazz show. Finally just to get them out of his hair, he said 'OK, I'll
give you a studio, a camera, you have to write it, you have to arrange every
musician, no more than scale, and I'll give you three weeks to run the show.' The
first show was Stan Getz. And they screened quite a few people and for some
reason or another they picked me to be the host. I'm sure glad they did. Every
night was a highlight, every night. I did the show for scale, it amounted to
$60 maybe $70 a night. When we went network I got scale for network, which was
more."
Avery adds, "in
those days there weren't the camera men that there are today. Now you go to a
concert and there's fifty people with cameras, but before, maybe half a dozen
of us would show up. Consequently, the photos taken in my early period are the
ones that are in demand now because not many people have them."”
Ironically, Seligman,
who authorized Stars of Jazz and was very boastful of the program when it won
an Emmy Award, never supported the show for a regular timeslot when it went
national on ABC.
Despite the
critical acclaim it received, the show was cancelled of January, 1959 due to
“low ratings.” Seligman was also responsible for ordering that the tapes of the
130 episodes of Stars of Jazz be erased so that they could be reused. After
all, each tape cost $400. Of course, what was recorded on them was priceless!
I guess “Those
whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad?”
Mercifully, Jimmy
Baker of the show’s production team was able to save 35mm’s and 81 of the early
kinescopes, all of which now reside for posterity in the UCLA Film Library.
More of the music
from the series is available on a commercial RCA CD - Bobby Troup Stars of Jazz
[74321433962] - from which we’ve drawn the music for the following tribute.
In his insert
notes to the recording, Pete Robinson, one of the show’s producers, wrote the
following:
“It has been
observed that People Who Live in Glass Houses Shouldn't Throw Stones, and since
Bobby Troup's particular glass house is a collective one, consisting of 17- and
24-inch television screens the country over, it is most important that his
participation in the realm of jazz be exemplary. It is.
As one playing of
the enclosed collection will attest, Mister Troup's qualities of tempo,
intonation, taste and interpretation place him in good stead as a jazz singer
of considerable merit. Nominations in the Down
Beat and Playboy polls add
further to his vocal status.
These fans,
however, will come as no surprise to the initiated. Bobby's work has had more
than a little exposure on records. What IS new is the extraordinary group of
jazz musicians who herewith are represented in tandem with Troup. Bobby's
presence as narrator of ABC-TV's "Stars of Jazz" for the past three
years has found him rubbing elbows with players from every corner of jazz. (A
total of 714 of them at this writing, for those who find security in
statistics.)
It was, then, only
a matter of time until an elite group of these jazzmen should come together
with Troup for the purpose of recording. When Shorty Rogers and Jimmy Rowles became available to
provide arrangements, the time was ripe.”
The audio track on
the video is Bobby singing Free and Easy which
he co-wrote with Henry Mancini. The trumpet solos are by Pete and Conte Candoli
and Jimmy Rowles wrote the arrangement.
He sang as though he had just half a voice. No volume, it was all about confiding. Sometimes he croaked out a line, next minute he'd released a word as though he was doubtful about delivering it to the world at large. Bobby Troup never played to the gallery, never went for the big one. Yet, despite - or rather because of - such reluctance, allied to a lemon-twist quality that fell oddly on unaccustomed ears, the man from Harrisburg, PA. still qualified as Mr. Cool, the vocal equivalent of a Paul Desmond alto solo maybe. He sounded like no one else. And no one else has ever sounded like him.”
- Fred Dellar, Mojo Magazine
We wrote about composer, pianist and vocalist Bobby Troup in an earlier feature about him and Julie London which you can locate in the blog archives by going here.
Many of us first “met” Bobby in the 1950s when he hosted the Emmy award wining ABC television series, Stars of Jazz.
Can you imagine - a regular, weekly series on a major television network devoted to Jazz?
It was cool and so was Bobby.
Since it was based in Los Angeles, most of the groups that appeared on the show were associated with was then labeled the “West Coast” school of Jazz.
There are two wonderful books on this subject in English: Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 and Robert Gordon, Jazz West Coast, The Los Angeles Jazz Scene of the 1950s.
A number of years ago, The California Institute of Jazz made available to those in attendance at its Spring 1999 4-day festival celebrating West Coast Jazz , a wonderful CD of the music from the Stars of Jazz series.
Ken Poston, the director of the institute, wrote the following in the insert booklet which accompanied the compendium:
“This anthology has been assembled exclusively for JAZZ WEST COAST II, presented by the California Institute for the Preservation of Jazz. All of the material comes from various Bobby Troup Stars of Jazz television broadcasts. Stars of Jazz debuted in the summer of 1956 on KABC, Los Angeles. It was unheard of in the mid 1950s to televise jazz on a regular basis, but because of the dedication of producer Jimmie Baker, program director Pete Robinson and host Bobby Troup the program aired for over two years. It was sponsored by Budweiser and eventually went from a local to network broadcast. The selections on this disc represent the incredible range of artists that were beamed into your living room every night.”
—Ken Poston
Incidentally, Ken’s organization, which now carries the name – The Los Angeles Jazz Institute [LAJI] – continues to sponsor semi-annual, four day festivals, as well as, one-day commemorative events. You can find out more about these programs by visiting Ken’s website.
In addition to the LAJI’s repository of goodies, Ray Avery, the late photographer and Jazz recordings maven, was allowed to photograph the Stars of Jazz.
A compilation of Ray photographs from these shows was published in 1998.
Cynthia T. Sesso, who in her own right is a major authority on Jazz photography, licenses Ray’s work along with the images of a number of other photographers who specialized in Jazz.
Cynthia has been a great friend to JazzProfiles over the years in allowing us to use photographs by her clients on these pages.
You can find out more about Cynthia and her work at her website. She may also have copies of Ray’s book about Stars of Jazz still available for sale.
Her are some excerpts from the book’s introduction regarding how Ray came to be involved with the show and Bobby Troup’s role as contained in an interviewthat Ray gave to Will Thornbury.
“…, my photography flowed naturally out of my involvement in my record store. At that time I wasn't well known as a photographer. I just happened to be there and I had an entrée because I was in the record business. Most of the small record companies knew about me because I was carrying their product in my store, they would invite me to record sessions. I was very seldom paid for a session, except if they bought some photos. …
One day a friend of mine asked if I'd seen "Stars Of Jazz" and I said I hadn't, so I checked the newspaper and found out when it was going to be on. I just went down, I think it was the second or third show, and I asked them if I could photograph it. They were very friendly and said yes, of course, just be careful and don't fall over any cords or walk in front of any cameras."
The host for all but two Stars of Jazz episodes was Bobby Troup. He embodied the essence of the show - straightforward, genuine and creative. Perhaps some of the show's viewers from outside the jazz world were pulled in through Troup's accessibility. He wore a crew cut. He was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in business and had written many of the nation's favorite songs "Route 66", "Daddy", "Lemon Twist", songs that crossed over from the jazz to the popular charts. In addition to writing songs, he was also an active musician and would perform often on the show.
"Bobby was the perfect man", notes Jimmie Baker. 'There were some people who wanted to have a bigger name, but nobody else could do it. Nobody else had the appeal that Bobby had." Avery adds, "Bobby was a good musician, had written great songs and he could be a great master of ceremonies. That's a combination they couldn't find in anyone else. He spoke really well - he didn't want any of those corny jazz lines in the script, which was good. He was a really good interviewer. He made people feel so comfortable when they were there. And of course they respected him as a musician, many of the sets featured Bobby at the piano."
"All the musicians had so much faith in the presentation of "Stars of Jazz"," Troup says. "They thought it was the best jazz show they'd ever seen. Did you know the story of how "Stars of Jazz" got started? Pete Robinson, Jimmie Baker, and Bob Arbogast were all jazz buffs. I mean they really loved jazz, and there was this executive, Seligman, graduated from Harvard, Phi Beta Kappa, and they were on him constantly to let them do this jazz show. Finally just to get them out of his hair, he said 'OK, I'll give you a studio, a camera, you have to write it, you have to arrange every musician, no more than scale, and I'll give you three weeks to run the show.' The first show was Stan Getz. And they screened quite a few people and for some reason or another they picked me to be the host. I'm sure glad they did. Every night was a highlight, every night. I did the show for scale, it amounted to $60 maybe $70 a night. When we went network I got scale for network, which was more."
Avery adds, "in those days there weren't the camera men that there are today. Now you go to a concert and there's fifty people with cameras, but before, maybe half a dozen of us would show up. Consequently, the photos taken in my early period are the ones that are in demand now because not many people have them."”
Ironically, Seligman, who authorized Stars of Jazz and was very boastful of the program when it won an Emmy Award, never supported the show for a regular timeslot when it went national on ABC.
Despite the critical acclaim it received, the show was cancelled of January, 1959 due to “low ratings.” Seligman was also responsible for ordering that the tapes of the 130 episodes of Stars of Jazz be erased so that they could be reused. After all, each tape cost $400. Of course, what was recorded on them was priceless!
I guess “Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad?”
Mercifully, Jimmy Baker of the show’s production team was able to save 35mm’s and 81 of the early kinescopes, all of which now reside for posterity in the UCLA Film Library.
More of the music from the series is available on a commercial RCA CD - Bobby Troup Stars of Jazz [74321433962] - from which we’ve drawn the music for the following tribute.
In his insert notes to the recording, Pete Robinson, one of the show’s producers, wrote the following:
“It has been observed that People Who Live in Glass Houses Shouldn't Throw Stones, and since Bobby Troup's particular glass house is a collective one, consisting of 17- and 24-inch television screens the country over, it is most important that his participation in the realm of jazz be exemplary. It is.
As one playing of the enclosed collection will attest, Mister Troup's qualities of tempo, intonation, taste and interpretation place him in good stead as a jazz singer of considerable merit. Nominations in the Down Beat and Playboy polls add further to his vocal status.
These fans, however, will come as no surprise to the initiated. Bobby's work has had more than a little exposure on records. What IS new is the extraordinary group of jazz musicians who herewith are represented in tandem with Troup. Bobby's presence as narrator of ABC-TV's "Stars of Jazz" for the past three years has found him rubbing elbows with players from every corner of jazz. (A total of 714 of them at this writing, for those who find security in statistics.)
It was, then, only a matter of time until an elite group of these jazzmen should come together with Troup for the purpose of recording. When Shorty Rogers and Jimmy Rowles became available to provide arrangements, the time was ripe.”
The audio track on the following video is the Dave Pell Octet performing Marty Paich's arrangement of Mountain Greenery.
