Jack, Dave and Les - Sperling, Pell and Brown - That Is!

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

Imagine strolling into the Professional Drum Shop [PDS] on Vine Street across from Local 47 of the Musicians Union on a bright sunny day in Hollywood CA to buy a pair of drum sticks and, while doing so, coming across the illustrious group of drummers featured in this photograph taken by William Claxton.

Believe it or not, it was a common occurrence after Bob Yeager and Chuck Molinari opened the doors of the PDS in 1959.

Although not as well known to the Jazz public as Shelly Manne, Joe Morello, and Mel Lewis, Jack Sperling, wearing the dark glasses in the above Claxton photo, was one heckuva of a drummer.

[BTW – the other drummer in the lower left of the photo is Lloyd Morales, who, like Jack, would also work with Les Brown’s band and was very active on the Las Vegas scene in the 1960s.]

Jack was one of the very few drummers who could get around a two bass drum kit as easily as Louie Bellson.  He could do the showman stuff as you’ll see in the following video with Peggy Lee singing Fever [Max Bennett is the bassist], but most of the time, he played with very little, wasted motion.

Hank Mancini loved Jack’s drumming and used him on some of the early Peter Gunn episodes and on many of his subsequent albums, movie scores and TV soundtracks.

Jack could read up-side-down fly specks on a wall across a room. He tuned his drums to have a ringing sound so that the full beauty of the drum’s tone came through: his snare drum crackled, his tom toms boomed and his bass drum thudded.

It takes a great deal of tension on the drum heads to tune them this way. As a result, the stick rebounds come flying off the drums so you have to have the hand and wrist strength [and speed] to take this action back into the drums.

Jack’s fills [short drum breaks] were crisp and precise, his solos were musical and fit the tone of the piece and his time-keeping was impeccable.

I always thought that Jack along with Alvin Stoller and Irv Kluger were the unsung heroes among studio drummers. I’m sure that there are others who could be added to this list.

I first became familiar with Sperling’s superb playing when he was a member of the Les Brown Band. I also heard Jack on occasion with tenor saxophonist Dave Pell’s Octet. Dave was also one of the featured players in Les’ band.

During the heyday of Jazz on the West Coast, many musicians may have aspired to work with The Stan Kenton Orchestra, but Stan’s music was often daunting to execute and difficult to play; full of bravura.

While it could be daring in its own way Les Brown’s music was more accessible.

Seeing Jack Sperling in the Claxton photo also reminded me of the fact that the first, formal Jazz composition I ever played on was Dance for Daddy, one of the arrangements for his octet that Dave Pell made available through his music publishing firm.

In addition to Jack, Dave’s group also included others on the Les Brown Band such as Don Fagerquist on trumpet, Ray Sims on trombone and Rolly Bundock on bass.

Here’s a video tribute to the Dave Pell octet that features his group performing Dance for Daddy.

In the 1950s, Les Brown’s band was somewhat of a fixture at the spacious Hollywood Palladium. As Scott Yanow explains: “The Hollywood Palladium was the in-spot in Los Angeles It was open six nights a week and its daily attendance was between 5 and 8,000. The Les Brown Orchestra was able to satisfy both dancers and Jazz fans with its emphasis on standards, melodic playing and concise solos.”

During this time, Les and the band also had a long association with comedian Bob Hope’s radio and TV shows, recording contracts with Capitol Records and Columbia Records, not to mention the lucrative studio work which was ongoing throughout this period for many of the band members including Ronnie Lang, Don Paladino, Conrad Gozzo, Ted and Dick Nash and the aforementioned Messer’s Sperling, Pell, Sims and Bundock.

All of which combined to form the impression in my mind that Les and the band came of age in the 1950s.  Nothing could be farther from the truth as Les had paid his dues in the business dating back to the earliest years of the big band era.

For as Leonard Feather explains in his liner notes to the band 1953 Concert at the Palladium LP [Coral CRL 5700]: “It was a Duke University that Les, along with some fellow-collegians, started his first band. The Duke Blue Devils, as they called themselves, stayed together professionally until late 1937. After several months as a busy free-lance arranger, Les started a new band.

In later years his personal contributions as an instrumentalist and arranger became less and less frequent, though he continued to play clarinet occasionally. Though unwilling to feature himself as a soloist, Les is neither the figurehead nor the "businessman-only" bandleader type; he is the musical guide and mentor of everything that happens in the band.

The band business has undergone many vital changes in the past fifteen years. Of the few orchestras that have lived through all the vicissitudes of those years, some have made radical adjustments in style to cope with the new demands of a younger generation; others, through failing to recognize these demands, have waned in popular appeal. Still others have suffered inevitable and damaging changes in personnel.

Through the entire era, Les Brown alone has continued to move along smoothly in a straight line. His changes in style and personnel have been minor, his popularity has persisted unflaggingly. Yet he has never had the allegiance of the type of fan cult that has elevated the Goodmans, the Kentons, and Hermans to prizewinning pinnacles.”

The young musicians in my circle of friends and I referred to Les’ orchestra as the “fanfare band” because many of its arrangements began and ended with them.

In retrospect, it may have been an apt characterization because the band had a lot to celebrate: a bevy of great musicians, a wonderful sound, and a host of talented arrangers including Skip Martin, Frank Comstock, Wes Hensel, Ed Finckel, Bob Higgins, and Ben Homer.

Here’s a detailed overview of the band’s history from George T. Simon’s magnificent opus – The Big Bands 4^th Ed. [New York: Schirmer, 1981] at the end of which you will find our video tribute to Les Brown and the Band of Renown.

The audio track features a nice sampling of Jack Sperling’s stellar big band drumming Frank Comstock’s arrangement of Juan Tizol’s Caravan with solos by Dave Pell on tenor and Ray Sims on trombone.

“LES BROWN refers to his band as "The Malted Milk Band." If you equate malted milks with leading a relaxed, youthful life, with liking and trusting people, with enjoying what you're doing, with retaining a certain amount of unabashed naivete, then Les's description is quite accurate.

This band had fun. The guys always seemed to take pride in their music, and for good reason: it was always good music. Maybe it wasn't as startlingly creative as Ellington's or Goodman's or that of some other bands, but it was never music that the men would have any cause to be ashamed of. The ar­rangements (many of the early ones were written by Les himself) were top-notch, and throughout most of the band's history the playing of them was equally good.

Les's spirit and musicianship pervaded his band. Few leaders have ever been accorded such complete respect by their sidemen. Back in 1940 I wrote in Metronome what now, more than a generation later, still holds true:

It's difficult to find a better liked and more respected leader in the entire dance band business than Les Brown. Of course, a healthy personality and an honest character don't make a great leader by themselves. But they help an awful lot when the guy can do other things such as make fine arrangements, rehearse and routine a band intelligently, treat men as they want to be treated, and then impress himself on the public by playing a good clarinet. . . . Talk to some of the fellows in his band. A number of them have had better offers, for there have been some lean Brown band days, but they've refused them. "This band's too fine and a guy can't be happier than when he's working for Les. He knows just what he wants, how to get it, and he treats you right." So explain men as they ruthlessly turn down a Miller or a Goodman or a Dorsey in rapid succession.

Though there always existed a warm, close relationship among the mem­bers of the band, a preoccupation with musical precision prevented an equally close rapport with their audiences. Thus, during its first three or four years, the band made a stronger impact on other musicians than it did on the public.

Organized at Duke University, the band, known as the Duke Blue Devils, left the college in the spring of 1936 as a complete unit. The men, almost all still undergraduates, spent the summer at Budd Lake, New Jersey, and then, with the exception of two men who returned to school in the fall, took to the road for a year. During the summer of 1937, they played at Playland Casino in Rye, New York. Les recalls that "the guys made twenty-five bucks a week, and I made all of thirty-five. I was pretty green in those days. I remember that the song pluggers used to come up to see me to talk business, but most of the time I'd go off between sets with the guys and play shuffleboard."

The band broke up right after Labor Day—the parents of most of the boys had decided that their sons should go back to college and get their degrees. So Les moved in with' another arranger named Abe Osser, later better known as Glenn Osser, and supported himself by writing for Larry Clinton, Isham Jones, Ruby Newman and Don Bestor. For the summer season of 1938, Les returned to Budd Lake, fronting a local band which had also served as a road band for Joe Haymes. There he finally noticed a very pretty girl who had hung around the bandstand during the band's engagement two years earlier—noticed her enough to marry her. Today Les and Claire (Cluny) Brown are one of the most popular and respected couples in West Coast musical circles, parents of two grown children, a daughter, Denny, mother of two boys, and Les, Jr., a businessman, who married Missi Murphy, daughter of actor and former Senator George Murphy.

Meanwhile back at Budd Lake. The romance had been good; the band had been only fair. Les wanted out before the end of the season so he could go with Larry Clinton as chief arranger. But the customers liked Les and his band, so the management wouldn't let him quit.

At that time, RCA Victor had a very shrewd A&R chief named Eli Oberstein, who saw great promise in Brown. (Les had switched from Decca to Victor's subsidiary Bluebird label.) Oberstein convinced Les he should organ­ize a better band and arranged a booking in the Green Room of New York's Edison Hotel, for which Les received a hundred dollars a week—quite a salary for him in those days. The twelve-piece outfit wasn't an astounding success, but it satisfied the management and soon attracted booker Joe Glaser, who threw his support, financial as well as otherwise, behind the outfit. Thus began a warm relationship that was to last more than a quarter of a century.

Glaser was intensely devoted to the band. One summer, while Metronome was running its annual dance-band popularity poll, I received a telephone call from him. He wanted to buy 250 copies of the magazine. When I asked him why, he said he needed them for his friends, so they could use the ballot to vote for Les. When I told him we couldn't sell them to him because we wanted the contest to reflect a true picture of our regular readers' tastes (with our circulation, 250 votes could have made a strong impact), he said nothing and hung up. Our attitude must have made quite an impression, however, because for a long time thereafter, Les subsequently told me, Glaser kept referring to me as "What's his name—the guy at Metronome who couldn't be bought."

When it was formed in late 1938, the band had twelve men. As its engage­ments grew (it played the Arcadia Ballroom in New York and also spent a good part of the summer of 1940 at the New York World's Fair Dancing Campus), its personnel also grew, in quality as well as in numbers. It featured a couple of excellent tenor saxists in Wolffe Tannenbaum and Stewie McKay; a brilliant lead saxist, Steve Madrick, who later became the chief audio engi­neer for NBC-TV's "Today" show; and, starting in the summer of 1940, a very attractive seventeen-year-old ex-dancer from Cincinnati named Doris Day.

Doris had been discovered by the Bob Crosby band, but something went wrong. One report had it that a member of the band had made some pretty serious passes at the very young lady, which frightened her so that she gave her notice. In any event, Les heard her at the Strand Theater, was immedi­ately impressed, and, having heard the grapevine stories about her unhappiness, offered her a job in what was probably his most boyishly charming manner. She accepted and joined the band in New England in August of 1940, eventually to become one of its most important assets.

Twenty-five years later, Doris told me, "I was awfully lucky working with Les. The boys were so great. They softened things up for me when everything could have disillusioned and soured me."

Doris's stay with the band lasted less than a year. She recorded a few sides. Says Les, "I remember the first one was a thing called 'Beau Night in Hotchkiss Corners.' What was she like? Very easy to work with—never a problem."

How was she as a performer? I reviewed the band both at the Arcadia and at Glen Island Casino during the fall of 1940 and came away with this impres­sion: "And there's Doris Day, who for combined looks and voice has no apparent equal: she's pretty and fresh-looking, handles herself with unusual grace, and what's most important of all, sings with much natural feeling and in tune."

However, the band's chief failing still remained evident: it lacked intimacy, "Only at times does it ever get really close to the dancers," continued the same review. More novelties and more spotlighting of soloists were suggested.

That winter the band went to Chicago for a two-week engagement at Mike Todd's Theater Cafe. It stayed for six months. But before it returned East, Doris had left. She'd fallen in love with a trombonist in Jimmy Dorsey's band, become Mrs. Al Jorden and retired — temporarily.

During the following summer, the band really found itself. It spent the entire season at Log Cabin Farms in Armonk, New York, where the guys had a ball. Most of the men lived in houses in the area, and during the day they played softball and tennis and went through quite a health-kick routine. The band took on a new, even younger girl singer (some reports stated she was only fourteen, though she didn't look it) named Betty Bonney and with her made its first hit record, a timely opus called "Joltin' Joe DiMaggio." Inasmuch as the band was made up preponderantly of avid Yankee fans (Joe Glaser had a season's box at Yankee Stadium that Les and his friends fre­quently occupied), the effort proved to be quite a labor of love.

The band's approach, which up till then had been good but always quite serious, began to reflect the personalities of its members, and the rapport between musicians and audiences that had been missing for all the previous years was finally established. They had a very personable, romantic singer named Ralph Young, and a brilliant clarinetist named Abe Most, each of whom had a wild sense of humor. One of their favorite gags involved Most's pretending to sing a pretty ballad. Abe happened to have a horrible voice, but Ralph would sneak a mike off behind the bandstand and supply the sounds while Abe would lip-sync. Then, of course, as Abe would reach the climax of his chorus, Ralph would sing ridiculous lyrics or stop singing altogether, while Abe continued mouthing to no avail.

But the band's big novelty hits were performed by a cherubic baritone saxist named Butch Stone. "I caught him first when he was with Larry Clin­ton's band at Loew's State Theater in New York," reports Les. "I remembered he did a thing called 4My Feet's Too Big,' and he broke me up. Right after that, Larry was commissioned an Air Force captain, and so I offered Butch a job, and he's been with me ever since."

Stone was just one of many replacements Les started to make—not all of his own volition—when the draft started gobbling up some of the best musi­cians around. "It got so you wouldn't hire a guy," Les reports, "unless you were sure he was 4-F."

But the band continued to sound better and better all the time. And it found the formula for reaching the dancers and holding them—not merely through novelties but via some lovely ballads, like "Tis Autumn," which Les arranged, and a series of swinging versions of the classics, most of them scored by Ben Homer, including such items as "Bizet Has His Day," "March Slav" and "Mexican Hat Dance." Obviously the band had found its commercial groove. In October of 1941, it started a one-month engagement at Chicago's Blackhawk Restaurant and I stayed for almost five. It followed that with a series of lengthy dates at top hotel rooms like the Cafe Rouge of the Hotel Pennsylvania, New York's prestige room, and the College Inn of Chicago's Hotel Sherman, the most coveted spot in that city. In 1942 it scored a big hit at the Palladium in Holly­wood, made its first movie, Seven Days Leave, with Lucille Ball, Victor Mature and Carmen Miranda, then began a whole series of appearances on the Coca Cola-sponsored radio show that emanated from service camps throughout the country. "We'd just travel and blow, and blow and travel, and travel and blow some more," Les relates. "Tommy Dorsey was supposed to have done the most of those Coke shows, but I'm sure we were a close second —it must have been something like eighty-two for him to seventy-six for us."

For several years, Les had been calling Doris, who by then had become a mother. For him she had remained the ideal girl singer—the ice-cream-soda girl for the ice-cream-soda band—and he wanted her back. It was during the band's Coke travels that he called her one more time. "We were in Dayton, Ohio, and I told her that's as close as we'd be coming to Cincinnati, where she was living. 'So how about it?' I asked her. And when she couldn't quite seem to make up her mind because of her kid, I told her the band would send her son and her mother ahead to the Pennsylvania Hotel, where we were going to open in a few days, and fix them up there and everything if she'd join us right away in Ohio. That's when she agreed to come back."

With Doris in the band again, Les started turning out a series of successful records, such as "My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time," "You Won't Be Satisfied," and Doris' biggest hit with the band, "Sentimental Journey."

The first time the band played the tune, the reaction was negligible. "It was at one of those late-night rehearsals we used to have at the Hotel Pennsylvania," Doris recalls. "Nobody was especially impressed. But after we played it on a couple of broadcasts, the mail started pouring in. Before that I don't think we'd even planned to record it. But of course we did—right away—and you know the rest."

This was the same period in which Les recorded his other big hit, "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm." To show you how imperceptive recording companies can be, it wasn't released until almost five years later. "We did it between recording bans," Les reports. "We'd taken it along as one of those extra numbers you sometimes get a chance to do on a date, and we did the whole thing in fifteen minutes. For years after that it stayed in the barrel at Columbia.

"Then one night in 1948, when we were running out of tunes, we played it as a band number on one of our Hope shows. The reaction was terrific. Right away we got a wire from Columbia telling us to get into the studio the next day and record it. I wired back, 'Look in your files.' They did, and of course they found it and released it, and it became a big hit. I've often won­dered if Columbia had released it when we first did it whether it would have been as big for us. I have a feeling it might not have made it then. And you know what? Columbia still has a lot of things of ours that they've never released."

Actually, by the time the record came out, Les had given up his band, sup­posedly for good. It happened late in 1946, and the move wasn't entirely sur­prising to some of us. In the February issue of Metronome, after praising the band, especially saxists Steve Madrick, Ted Nash and Eddie Scherr, trum­peters Don Jacoby and Jimmy Zito, trombonist Warren Covington, pianist Geoff Clarkson, and Doris Day, "now THE band singer in the field, who is singing better than ever and displaying great poise," I concluded with: "As for Les himself, he is becoming sort of an enigma these days, apparently more interested in songs and the publishing field, less eager and enthusiastic about his band. . . . Such a change is discouraging and causes some uneasy wonder­ing about the Brown future."

A few months later he verified his retirement plans, first verbally, then actively. He quit in December, 1946. "I wanted to settle in L.A., where the weather would be nice and I could relax. It rained steadily for the first twelve days."

Les's plan was to take twelve months off. But he had a contract for a March date at the Palladium. "I'd forgotten all about it. The guys had taken other jobs. But the management wouldn't let me out of it, even though I had no band." So he reorganized. "I think we rehearsed about three times before we opened. We had some great men. But the band was uneven."

They broadcast twice a night from the Palladium. "Stan Kenton heard one of our early shows one night and, according to the guy he was with, said he thought the band sounded terrible. He was right. But then later on that same night, he tuned in our second broadcast, without knowing who it was, and asked the same guy he was with, 'Whose band is that? It sounds great!' He was right again. That's just how unpredictable we were with that new group."

Two years later, Les still had a band. But, he noted then, "I've given up the idea of being the number-one band in the country. It's not worth it. I'd much rather stay here in California, maybe doing radio work like I'm doing. . . . I've got a home here and I can be with Cluny and the kids and I can make a pretty good living."

Thirty-five years after he had emigrated to there, Les was still in Califor­nia. For most of those years he earned an excellent living from radio and television shows—Bob Hope's, Dean Martin's, the Grammy Awards salutes, etc. He and his band also traveled extensively with Hope to service camps all over, a regimen that Les gladly surrendered in the latter 1970s in favor of one that allowed him to remain at home in his warm, delightful, early-Amer­ican style abode in Pacific Palisades,, where he and Clare spend evenings lis­tening to classical music and entertaining their many friends.

Several nights a week, Les still leaves home to play west coast gigs with his band, but in the winter of 1981 he concluded what he insisted would be his final one-nighter tour. And this time, even more so than in 1946, when he issued a similar statement, he really meant it. Or at least, that's what he was saying!” [pp. 99-106].

Metropole Orkest - Jerry van Rooyen/ Come Fly with Me

Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw - Henk Meutgeert/Riffs n Rhythms

The Dizzy Gillespie Story – Spending Time with The Writing of Max Harrison

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

Those of you who scroll the columnar or left-hand side of the blog may have come across Max Harrison’s singular comments about Tadd Dameron’s recording of Fountainbleau as reprinted from A Jazz Retrospect which is made up of a selection of his 1950s/60s reviews from the Jazz Review and Jazz Monthly magazines.

Max belongs to a select group of original thinkers that include Philip Larkin, Benny Green, Martin Williams and Stanley Crouch, to name a few, who speak their minds very directly about their likes and dislikes about Jazz, often in a style that is as much caustic and acerbic as it is literary.

The editorial staff thought we’d bring more of Max’s writing up on JazzProfiles, this time with a feature on the early recordings of Dizzy Gillespie.

© -Max Harrison/Jazz Review, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Gillespie's innovations long since passed into the life blood of jazz and it scarcely is necessary to discuss the elements of his style now. Yet although the extent of his influence cannot be questioned, his position in the music has for many years been quite different from what it was just after World War II, when bop made its first impact. For non-American listeners that impact was initially felt through the records he made, several with Charlie Parker, for obscure, long-defunct com­panies such as Guild or Musicraft in 1945-46. To have gone on listen­ing to these for some thirty years has been a considerable enrichment because, although on first acquaintance they seemed to possess a rather contrived audacity, they have retained a power to delight, even astonish. Uneven in musical quality they certainly are, but all contain great moments, and it long ago became obvious that the finest of them are among the classics of recorded jazz, their value as unlikely to diminish in the future as it did in the past.

Many factors went into the making of postwar jazz: some were the creation of individuals and some were the result of a cross-fertilisation of ideas; some had been for years developing in the jazz of the 1930s, even of the late '20s, others had come from spontaneous insights. The early Gillespie records were the first attempt at a synthesis of all the playing and thinking which had gone on, but if by 1945 the key musicians were ready, the record company supervisors were not. It took them a while to grasp that something fresh had occurred, and so on many sessions boppers were confronted with players whose ideas had been completely formed in the 19305. In view of the new music's deep roots this was not too damaging, but unquestionably these early performances, in terms of style, are less than completely integrated.

Melancholy baby, Cherokee and On the Alamo, recorded under the clarinetist Joe Marsala's name, are representative here, setting Gillespie in a tight, jivey late-swing framework. He sounds like a disci­ple of Roy Eldridge—not in the negative sense of a Johnny Letman, mechanically echoing the mannerisms, but as one who has divined further possibilities within that idiom and can see where they might lead. His continuity already is better than Eldridge's, his use of the upper register less illogical. Blue and  boogie, the first item recorded under Gillespie's own name, finds him in comparable circumstances but achieving more positive results. The underlying pulse is wrong, and his execution is less immaculate than it soon became, yet the lengthy trumpet solo, although loosely put together, includes features of melodic invention, rhythmic structure, harmonic thinking and tone-colour that were to remain characteristic. Everything else in the per­formance is made to sound redundant, and, the 1944 recordings of Parker with Tiny Grimes and Thelonious Monk's with Coleman Hawkins notwithstanding, this improvisation is the earliest fully-fledged statement that we have from a major postwar jazz musician.

Soon Gillespie recorded with a more apt personnel, including Parker and Clyde Hart, who pecks out the chord changes with discre­tion and sympathy, and was among the few pianists qualified for this sort of music in 1945. Grooving high and Dizzy atmosphere are typical of the boppers' initially rather drastic renewal of the jazz repertoire, and are fertile ground for improvisation, their themes packed with musical incident yet enigmatically honed to bare essentials. Parker, indeed, is especially fluent, revealing a side of his musical personality not much represented on studio recordings: his tone has an airy, singing luminosity reminiscent of Benny Carter, and the alto saxophone solos on both these pieces are full of grace and elegance. This delicacy again characterised his work on the 1946 Ornithology session, and, to a lesser degree, the Relaxing at Camarillo date of the following year, but it was always rare.

Gillespie has two solos in Grooving high the first of which begins strikingly but collapses with a miscalculated descending phrase which leads into a bland guitar solo by Remo Palmieri. Later the tempo halves and he plays some beautifully shaped legato phrases that would then have been quite beyond any other trumpeter; this passage later provided the basis for Tadd Dameron's fine song If you could see me now. On the faster Dizzy atmosphere he takes a daring solo which conveys the essential spirit of the bop solo style and in itself is almost enough to explain the commanding position Gillespie held in the immediate postwar years. After the solos there is an attractive unison passage for trumpet and alto saxophone which flows into a deftly-truncated restatement of the theme—a neat formal touch.

The date which produced Hot house and Salt peanuts had a still better personnel, including Al Haig at the piano. Using the chord sequences of popular songs as the basis for new compositions was common during this period (though not an innovation, as so often claimed), and Dameron's Hot house is a superior instance of the practice, supplanting the usual AABA pattern of four eight-bar phrases with one of ABCA. Gillespie's solo here is effectively poised over Haig's responsive accom­paniment, and, as on One bass hit part 1, contains definitive illustrations of the bop use of double-time. Parker digs deeper than at the previous date and shows himself well on course for his great Koko session, which took place a few months later and is dealt with on an earlier page.

Salt peanuts is a good, rather aggressive theme based on an octave-jump idea, and this arrangement, which includes some interesting harmonic touches, draws from the two-horn ensemble a fuller sound than usual. Parker seems less assured than before, yet Haig is good and Gillespie better. His entry could scarcely be more arresting, and emphasises as clearly as any moment on these recordings the absolute freshness of his imagination at this time: surely nobody else would then have dared to attempt this passage on the trumpet. The rest of his improvisation is played with equal conviction, but in another version of this piece, recorded soon after, some of the intensity is replaced with a sharper clarity of organisation.

Although Parker's work was uneven almost throughout 1945, there is no doubt of the added emotional depth he gave to these recordings, and Gillespie noticeably dominates more in his absence. Twelve months after the Salt peanuts date the trumpeter led a session on which—at last—all the participants were bop adepts. Sonny Stitt, who shared with Sonny Criss a reputation (which really belonged to John Jackson) of being the first man to emulate Parker's style, has a fair sixteen-bar solo in Oop bop sh'bam that is close to the master in tone yet far simpler in melodic and rhythmic concept. Its effect is completely obliterated, however, by Gillespie. The trumpeter did other fine things at this date, such as his solo on That's Earl, brother and his imaginative accompaniment to Alice Roberts's singing in Handfulla gimme, but on Oop bop sh'bam he plays with unrelenting intensity and perfect balance between detail and overall form that produce a masterpiece of jazz improvisation, worthy to stand beside Louis Armstrong's stop-time chorus on Potato head blues of almost exactly nineteen years before.

Despite the originality of their small combo work, to which almost equally powerful expression was given on several other titles in this series, including Confirmation, Bebop and Shaw 'nuff, the boppers were unable to establish a comparable orchestral idiom. In fact, due to its intimacy and relative complexity, bop, like New Orleans jazz, was inherently a music for small groups. The harmonic vocabulary, which scarcely was more advanced than Duke Ellington's of several years before, could easily have been written into band scores, but melodic and rhythmic subtleties derived from the leading soloists' im­provisations could not. The linear shapes of the reed and brass scoring in Gillespie's earlier big bands, like that of Billy Eckstine which preceded them, did incorporate some new ideas, but included no innovations of ensemble texture comparable to those then being carried forward by Gil Evans with Claude Thornhill's band which are discussed elsewhere in this book. The boppers were able only to adapt their style to the big band rather than the converse.

Their best arranger was Gil Fuller, who, while possessing a good sense of traditional swing band style, and having an acute awareness of any large ensemble's requirements, managed to sacrifice fewer of the new ideas, to compromise less with the old. In fact, his scores, which are less subtle of mood and texture than Ellington's but more complex than Count Basic's, seem, in their use of the orchestra as a virtuoso instrument, to descend from Sy Oliver's work for Jimmy Lunceford. Marked differences arise because of Fuller's wider melodic, harmonic and rhythmic vocabularies, yet both men used their orchestras as vehicles for dazzling ensemble display, with sudden contrasts that, however aggressive, never descended to Kentonesque melodrama. Fuller's imagination, like Oliver's, was disciplined, in a sense almost conservative, and his scores are characterised by clarity of texture, an exceptional fullness of sound whether loud or soft. And yet if there are orchestral scores which at least partially embody the spirit of the little bands of the mid-19405 they are Gerald Wilson's Grooving high, Oscar Pettiford's Something for you, both of 1945, and Fuller's 1946 Things to come, an adaptation of the small combo Bebop. Unfortunately they were all played too fast in the recording studio to produce their complete effect, and Fuller got this conception over more successfully in The scene changes, which he recorded for the obscure Discovery label three years later.

On neither Things to come nor One bass hit part 2 are Gillespie's solos at all happy (in fact he does better on Pettiford's Something for you). His inventive power is as evident as before, yet it is as if he had difficulty in shaping his material in relation to the heavier sounds and thicker textures of this setting—which is surprising in view of his prewar ex­perience in swing bands. The above comments on the orthodox nature of his orchestra's library are borne out by a conventional statement of Dameron's excellent Our delight theme or by the saxophone writing in One bass hit part 2, but on the former, and also in Ray's idea, Gillespie responds to the themes' melodic substance with masterful solos that are better aligned with their accompaniment. On Emanon, basically a rather old-fashioned powerhouse blues, there are uncommonly forceful exchanges between leader and band, some agreeably pungent ensemble dissonance, a piano solo by John Lewis, and a striking passage for unaccompanied trumpet section. There seems no escaping the fact that in such relatively backward-looking pieces as this the boppers' attempts at orchestral jazz succeeded best.

It was also in 1946 that Gillespie made his first recordings with strings. These were of Jerome Kern melodies and remained unissued for many years because of object ions made by that composer's widow to the allegedly bizarre treatment to which they were subjected. Dur­ing 1950 he made another attempt and recorded eight miscellaneous titles which suggest that Mrs. Kern may have been right, even if for the wrong reasons. Eddie South, on some delightful records made in Paris with Django Reinhardt during the late 19305, proved that the violin is a fully viable jazz instrument, but this lead has never been followed up (least of all by the crudities of Stuff Smith). En masse, certainly, strings have been a consistent failure in this music, and it has been widely accepted that they cannot be employed in jazz due to their inherent sweetness. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a large number of works by twentieth-century composers, such as Schoenberg's String Trio, Bartok's Quartets Nos. 4 and 5, Xenakis's ST/4, or Boulez's Livre, which prove that this whole family of in­struments can yield sounds as invigorating, indeed as harsh, as any found in jazz. In short what is wrong with the use of strings on jazz dates is the incompetence of the arrangers employed, and never was this more so than with Gillespie's 1950 attempts, where they were only one of a number of apparently irreconcilable factors.

For Swing Low, sweet chariot Johnny Richards wrote an absurd light-music introduction for the strings and then established the rhythm with—of all things in a Negro spiritual—Latin American percussion; a male voice choir sings not the rather sultry original melody but a commonplace new one, presumably also by Richards; Gillespie's trumpet solo has better continuity than we might expect in these circumstances, but a final touch of incongruity is provided by a return of the strings' introduction. On Alone together and These are the things I love the strings interrupt less often, and he manages a few dashing phrases in Lullaby of the leaves, but he never really sounds involved and it is impossible to understand his enthusiasm for this project, which was carried through at his instigation. On the Alamo typifies the whole enterprise, for although Gillespie blows with real power here, the trumpet passages are separated by interludes of quite offensive gen­tility from piano and strings —light music at its heaviest. If Interlude in C, a tasteless hodge-podge on a theme from Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, seems to have the thinnest string writing of all it may only be due to comparison with that composer's far richer alternative being unavoidable.

The virtually complete musical failure of these 1950 items with strings may seem unimportant until we recall that already the previous year, with his conventionally-instrumentated band, Gillespie had recorded such inanities as You stole my wife, you horse-thief. A random sampling of his small combo recordings from about this period tells the same tale, and shows an almost catastrophic decline from the master­pieces of just a few years before. The champ, an excellent theme, gives rise to a fine trombone solo from J. J. Johnson, but Gillespie merely reshuffles his mannerisms, and the other players are frankly exhibitionistic. Tin tin deo or Birk's works, also from 1951, are only negative in their restraint—despite some good moments from Milt Jackson's vibraharp on the latter and Stardust, which features the trumpeter throughout, is distressingly pedestrian. The reunion session with Parker compelled Gillespie to make an altogether exceptional effort (e.g. his solos on take 2 of Relaxing with Lee or take 4 of An oscar for Treadwell), but the overall impression left by most of his records from this time is of an artist who no longer wishes to dominate, or even to control, his surroundings. And rarely did he ever again. Perhaps the reasons for this were psychological as much as artistic, but Gillespie's rarely swerving downward path from the classic small combo recor­dings he made during the immediate post war years was among the most saddening features of the jazz landscape in the 1950’s.

Jazz Review, November 1959”

"Stella by Starlight" - The Maynard Ferguson Orchestra

This arrangement of Stella by Starlight is by trombonist Slide Hampton who also solos on it along with Jimmy Ford on alto saxophone and Maynard on trumpet. Featuring Frankie Dunlop's propulsive drumming, the chart ends with six notes that span five octaves.

Since "stratospheric" was a word that was often associated with Maynard trumpet work, we asked the crackerjack graphics team at CerraJazz LTD to use images appropriate to this moniker while developing the following video.

They placed Maynard in the stars - where else?

Ray Brown: “The Will to Swing”

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

Has anyone ever had a more illustrious career in Jazz than Raymond Matthews Brown?

By the time of his passing in 2002, it seems that Ray Brown had worked with anyone and everyone of significance during the Jazz scene of the second half of the Twentieth [20^th] Century.

The list of Ray’s musical associates is as impressive as it is unending, beginning with an offer to join Dizzy Gillespie’s big band in 1945 on the very first day that he arrived in New York City from his native Pittsburgh!

Over the years, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles met Ray on a number of occasions.  It was almost impossible not to as he was everywhere on the Hollywood musical scene: in the studios, at clubs and in concerts.  You couldn’t miss him if you tried.

We never met anyone who enjoyed playing Jazz more than Ray Brown.

We once remarked to him that he reminded us of Ernie Banks, the outstanding shortstop who played for the Chicago Cubs baseball team from 1953-1971.  Ernie loved the game so much that he often said: “It’s a great day for a ball game, let’s play two!”

Upon hearing this analogy, Ray just smiled, giggled and nodded in agreement.

The giggle and the smile were as infectious as his enthusiasm for all things Jazz.

We were reminded of Ray recently when we read the following description of him as recounted by pianist Oscar Peterson to Gene Lees in the insert notes to Oscar double CD – The Will to Swing [Verve 047 703 2]:

“Although he would record in many formats; with a string section, with a big band, as a soloist, and as a sideman in dates featuring various of the great soloists contracted to the Granz labels; Peterson did most of his work in a trio format. But his first American recordings were in a duo with Ray Brown, who would become as close to him as a brother.

Oscar has described Ray as ‘the epitome of forethought. Sympathetic forethought,’ He said. ‘His talent is almost ethereal... He is a walking sound. Ray has a sound that he walks around with that he can't even describe . . . The fact of having the instrument under his hands makes him approach it that way. There are very few people like that. I think Dizzy's like that with a horn.’

‘And the other thing that Ray has is an innate mechanism, something within himself, that will adjust him to any situation; and consequently he will adjust that situation to what he thinks it should be. Ray has that mechanism within him, like a tuning fork, that keeps him straight.’

‘I think the reason I worked with Ray and can still work with Ray is that I challenge him. I challenged him at every level, just as he's challenged me. I tried to stay on top of Ray, and he'd say, “Go ahead. You press all you want. I'm gonna be there.” And that was a good feeling between us.’

Peterson and Brown stayed together without interruption for fourteen years — longer, as Ray put it, ‘than most cats stay with their wives.’”

The following video provides a sampling of Ray’s powerful bass work. As one of the seminal bass players in Jazz once described to Gene Lees: “My heart is in that sound.”

Joining him on this trio version of Irving Berlin’s Remember are pianist Benny Green and drummer Jeff Hamilton.  The track is from Ray’s BassFace Telarc CD [CD-83340].

  

Chet Baker: The Comeback

[c] –Steven A. Cerra, Introduction, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

I always thought that for Chet Baker, playing a beautiful, melodic solo was as easy as putting the trumpet to his lips.

It seems, however, that there was a time during his career when placing the trumpet against his lips was more excruciating than musically rewarding.

The cause of this agonizing pain was the dark side of drug addiction which caught up to Chet one night in 1968 when a group of San Francisco San Francisco junkies “… relieved him of his dope money and his teeth and made him decide he’d have to give up heroin or die.”

Doug Ramsey continues the story in his insert notes to the 1974 CD, She Was Too Good To Me [CBS Associated ZK 40804; LP originally by Creed Taylor for CTI Records].

Recorded in 1974, this was “… Chet’s first major recording since the night in San Francisco in ’68 …” when Chet encountered every brass player’s nightmare – losing one’s teeth!

Or as Chet explains to Doug: “Believe me, when a trumpet player has had his teeth pulled, it is a comeback.”

“Baker says that with the lack of self-pity that is as characteristic as the absence of hyperbole when he evaluates his artistry, past and present.

Of those early triumphs in the polls, he says, ‘I never really believed that I deserved it. As far as my playing now, I believe I have progressed conceptually, which is the important thing. At the time I won the polls, my style was very lyrical, a style the average person could listen to and understand without being overwhelmed with technique. I can still play that way, very cool, few notes, lots of empty spaces. I can also play very fly, very hard. I believe I play ten times better now than I did then. And I don't want to lose people, I want them to understand what I play on my horn.’

In this album, you’ll hear Chet play both ways, cool and “very fly." The lyricism is intact. The tone, if anything, is deeper and fuller. The celebrated similarity between Baker's instrumental and vocal phrasing is vividly displayed on those two gorgeous ballads of regret, "She Was Too Good To Me" and "What’ll I Do." The sense of loss expressed by the lyrics has never been more poignantly interpreted. And you’ll surely be able to "understand what I play on my horn" in the 16 bars of trumpet between the vocal sections of "She Was Too Good To Me." It's a classic melodic statement, in a league with Bobby Hackett's 1939 "Embraceable You," Jack Sheldon's bridge on "Then I’ll Be Tired Of You" with the Hi-Los, and Chet’s own "My Funny Valentine."

On the faster pieces, the springiness of phrasing; the floating, easy swing; the intelligent lines; the high personal sound with a touch of added brilliance; all of these elements testify to the continued vitality of an important trumpet artist. …”

With the assistance of the crackerjack graphics team at CerraJazz LTD, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has developed the following videos to demonstrate both “the fly” and “the lyrical” aspects of Chet’s playing on She Was Too Good To Me.

The first video features Chet on Hank Mobley’s Funk in Deep Freeze while the second spotlights him on Rodgers and Hart’s She Was Too Good To Me. Assisting Chet on the first performance are Hubert Laws on flute, Bob James on electric piano, Ron Carter on bass and drummer Steve Gadd.  Don Sebesky arranged the strings and conducted the orchestra for the music on the second video.

Artistic perfection is something that every musician strives for.

With Chettie, even with broken teeth, artistic accomplishment seemed to occur as though he was in a continual state of grace and the Jazz Gods had shined a ray through him.

George Shearing, 1919-2011: A Tribute

[c] –Steven A. Cerra, Introduction, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

For a variety of reasons, February 14^th is a very significant date around our place. 

Unfortunately, this year added another basis to its significance as pianist George Shearing died on February 14, 2011.

George has been the subject of two previous features on JazzProfiles which you can locate by going here and here.

Sir George Shearing [he was knighted in 2007] had been one of our Jazz heroes for many years, again, for a variety of reasons including the unusual [for the times and since then, too] instrumentation of his quintet with its front-line of vibraphone and guitar, the block chording of what came to be known as “The Shearing Sound” [explained both in the previous features and in the following obituary], his wonderful wit, often applied at his own expense, his engaging way with an audience [he actually talked to them, although he could never see them as he was blind at birth], his intricate and intriguing compositions including Lullaby of Birdland, Conception and From Rags to Richards [a play on words involving the surname of his long-time vibist, Emil Richards], his marvelous albums with vocalists including Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole, Mel Torme and John Pizzarelli, his longevity and his humanity.

The phrase “what a guy” becomes an understatement when applied to Sir George Shearing.

In the 1940s and 1950s, his early years in Jazz, George was often criticized for limiting the length of the solos played by his group.

At a time when many soloists were “stretching out,” sometimes to the point of playing lengthy and utterly boring solos, George would state the theme, give each member of the group one chorus, himself two, re-state the theme and end the tune.

In some cases, if the tune was taken at a very fast clip [tempo], the recorded track would be over in two or three minutes.

In talking with musicians who have worked in George’s quintets over the years, to a person, each of them stated that George’s shortened approach to soloing was a challenge that they welcomed.

Creating a good solo in a short period of time is not the easiest thing to, but when it is done well, it becomes a musical gem.

You can hear an example of George’s attenuated style of playing Jazz in the soundtrack to the following video tribute to George.  The tune is pianist Ray Bryant’s “Pawn Ticket.” Sadly, Ray, also died this year on June 2nd.

I think that the musicians on this recording comprise one of the very best quintet that George ever put together: Jean “Toots” Thielemans on guitar, Emil Richards on vibes, Al McKibbon on bass and drummer Percy Brice.

The video is followed by George’s obituary as it appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald March 22, 2011. It is a modification of one that appeared earlier in The Los Angeles Times.

[c] –Steven A. Cerra, Introduction, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“George Shearing started playing piano at the age of five but didn't receive formal training until his teenage years at a school for the blind. Shearing, the elegant pianist who expanded the boundaries of jazz by adding an orchestral sensibility and a mellow aesthetic to the music, has died aged 91.

A prolific songwriter, Shearing once introduced Lullaby of Birdland - written in 1952 in celebration of the fabled New York nightspot and its radio show - by saying: ''I have been credited with writing 300 songs. Two-hundred-and-ninety-nine enjoyed a bumpy ride from relative obscurity to total oblivion. Here is the other one.''

Shearing, who was born blind, first came to the US from England in 1946. His first job was intermission pianist at a New York club during a Sarah Vaughan engagement. He took a similar post at another club during an Ella Fitzgerald engagement and sometimes filled in for her pianist, Hank Jones.

He continued as a struggling, unknown until early 1949, when he hit on a formula that would establish his jazz identity.

Leonard Feather - the jazz critic, producer and composer who discovered Shearing in 1937 - suggested the pianist add a guitarist and a vibraphonist to the standard rhythm section to make up a quintet. The personnel in that first group were diverse, both in race and gender, and included John Levy on bass, Denzil Best on drums, Marjorie Hyams on vibraphone and Chuck Wayne on guitar.

The group went into the recording studio and came out with September in the Rain, which sold nearly 1 million records. Their first New York engagement came in April 1949 at the Cafe Society Downtown. They then went on a national tour and by the end of the year, Shearing's group was voted the No.1 combo in a reader poll by jazz magazine Down Beat.

With this group, Shearing developed what came to be known as ''the Shearing Sound'', which involved not only the make-up of the band - vibes and guitar generally were not both found in quintets - but also the style in which he played the piano. He used the ''block chords'' technique to create a big, lush, orchestral sound.

In his book The Jazz Years: Earwitness to an Era, Feather wrote that Shearing ''developed a new and unprecedented blend for his instrumentation''.

In that technique, a New York Times writer noted some years ago, ''both hands play melodies in parallel octaves with a shifting cloud of chords in between''.

Shearing worked primarily with his quintet for much of the next three decades. The personnel shifted but over the years included some of the finest names in jazz, including Cal Tjader and Gary Burton on vibes and Joe Pass and Toots Thielemans on guitar.

From the early 1950s on, Shearing had steady work in recording studios, first with MGM, where he was under contract from 1950 to 1955, and then with Capitol Records for 14 years. With Capitol, he recorded albums with some of the best singers of the day, including Peggy Lee, Nancy Wilson and Nat King Cole, and achieved substantial chart success in the late 1950s and early '60s.

Though the commercially successful quintet was his bread and butter, Shearing began to feel limited by it and grew tired of life on the road. At one point, he told New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliett that his quintet played 56 concerts in 63 days.

''George drives himself harder than you notice,'' bassist Al McKibbon once told Feather. ''One night in Oklahoma City, I saw him literally fall asleep in the middle of a chorus of Tenderly. He woke up with a start and carried right on.''

Shearing disbanded the group in 1978. For most of the rest of his career, he appeared mainly in solo, duo or trio settings.

His work in duos and recording contracts with Concord Records and then Telarc in the 1980s seemed to revitalise him. He recorded five albums with singer Mel Torme that were successful both critically and commercially.

His autobiography, Lullaby of Birdland, was published in 2004.

Born August 13, 1919, in the Battersea district of London to working-class parents, Shearing was one of nine children. He started playing piano and accordion at the age of five but didn't receive any formal musical education until he spent four of his teenage years at Linden Lodge, a school for the blind.

It was there that he learnt Bach, Liszt and music theory. It was also during this time that he became interested in jazz, listening to recordings by American pianists Meade Lux Lewis, Earl Hines, Art Tatum and Fats Waller.

At Linden Lodge, Shearing showed enough potential to earn a number of scholarship offers from universities. But after graduating, he went to work in a local pub where he earned about $5 a week and tips for his playing. Within a year, he joined Claude Bampton's big band, a 15-piece unit made up of blind musicians.

Feather discovered Shearing playing as a swing accordionist in a London jam session. He quickly arranged for Shearing to record for English Decca and, although that recording date was not Shearing's first, it was the one that set his career in motion.

With Feather's help, Shearing got a regular radio program on the BBC. He had a Dixieland band and was also his country's leading boogie-woogie pianist. He was soon being called Britain's answer to the great American pianist Teddy Wilson and for seven consecutive years was chosen most popular jazz pianist by Melody Maker magazine.

While playing in an air-raid shelter, Shearing met his first wife, Beatrice Bayes. They married in 1941 and had one daughter before divorcing in the early 1970s. He later married Eleanor Geffert, who survives him, as does his daughter.

Over the years, he played for three US presidents - Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan - as well as the Queen. He was knighted in 2007.

An anecdote he related to Feather said much of his sharp wit: ''When we were preparing to be received [by the Queen], I was told the directive is: 'Do not extend your hand until the Queen extends hers.' I said, 'Well, either somebody's going to have to cue me or she'll have to wear a bell.' But somebody did cue me.'”

Julie London, Bobby Troup and The China Trader

[c] –Steven A. Cerra, Introduction, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The China Trader is not there anymore.

Originally located at 4200 Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake, Ca, it was a Chinese restaurant that had a South Sea islands and nautical theme with lots of tiki heads and bamboo sprouting from every nook and cranny.

For a time it was best known for being the birthplace of the Hawaiian Eye drink [think Mai Tai].

The '60s detective, ABC television show Hawaiian Eye was filmed at Warner Bros. studios in nearby Burbank, CA and The China Trader was the after-work hangout of its stars, Robert Conrad, Connie Stevens and Anthony Eisley and of many members of the crew.

The Hawaiian Eye drink was concocted there in their honor.

The Falcon Theater is in The China Trader’s place today.

Toluca Lake is a very upscale community located between Burbank and North Hollywood, CA. Warner Brothers and Universal Pictures studios are only a few miles away. A 10 minute ride over the Barham Pass takes you into Hollywood.

There really is a lake in Toluca Lake and it is surrounded by very fashionable homes and a country club that offers access to a marvelous golf course.  Bob Hope is probably the best known of Toluca Lake’s many long-time residents, but numerous luminaries associated with the entertainment business live in the community.

For many years, composer, pianist and vocalist Bobby Troop held forth at The China Trader in Toluca Lake.  He and his wife, actress and song stylist, Julie London, were residents of nearby Studio City. Since his piano was already stationed in the lounge, Bobby could and did walk to work on some of the nights he appeared at The China Trader.

Throughout most of the 1970s, Bobby and Julie were in the cast of the hit NBC TV show, Emergency!.  The popularity of the show only served to enhance the gatherings at The China Trader when Bobby was appearing there.

Bobby appeared solo on Thursday and Sunday nights and with a trio on Friday and Saturday nights.

Given his low-key temperament, unassuming personality and acerbic wit, Bobby always kept the atmosphere in the bar relaxed and cordial.

Julie dropped by occasionally and when she did, their were always numerous pleadings for her to sing, but she rarely did.

Bobby was one of the most comfortable-in-his-own-skin musicians I ever knew.  I first met him in 1962 when we were both involved with the Surfside 6 television show; he as an actor, and me as a member of the band that recorded the soundtrack for the series.

Over the years, I kept in touch with Bobby as The China Trader was a stone’s throw away from my home.  I even subbed as the drummer is his trio on a few occasions.

With 40-plus movie and television appearances to his credit and a slew of royalty checks coming in from songs he wrote like Route “66,” Daddy and Lemon Twist, Bobby was a very busy guy and a fairly well-off one, too. Good for him; not too many musicians make more than a few schimolies in the music “business.”

He was very pleased and proud of writing the tune – The Meaning of the Blues.

Interestingly, when Julie was in the mood to sing during her visits to be with Bobby at The China Trader, she invariably sang this tune.

And to close here's excerpt from James Gavin’s insert notes to her album All About the Blues which Bobby produced for Capitol [7243 5 38695 2 6] which aptly describes one of Julie's many gifts:

“LPs were her true medium. The queen of the make-out album, London recorded over 30 for Liberty between 1955 and 1969. Supported by a goose-down blanket of strings or just guitar and bass, she sounded so intimate that she seemed to be breathing into your ear. Men drooled over the cheesecake covers, which showed her snuggled in bed, posed in an alley as a scantily-clad courtesan, or seated backwards in an Eames chair, legs pointed up in a V. ‘I'm sure she hated all that,’ says Arthur Hamilton, the songwriter who wrote Cry Me A River, her breakthrough hit of 1955. ‘That wasn't Julie at all. She wasn't trying to seduce her audience; she just blotted them out. She hid inside the song. She didn't like to perform, she didn't like getting dressed, she didn't like that image she had to live up to.’”