Nascent Lennie Niehaus

For different reasons, the author Max Harrison and the alto saxophonist, composer and arranger, Lennie Niehaus have been people I have admired over the years, so what better way to celebrate them on Jazzprofiles than to feature a Marx Harrison article on Lennie Niehaus that was originally published in the March, 1958 edition of Jazz Monthly.

Somewhat ironically, as Ted Gioia points out in his seminal West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 [p. 163]:

“Despite the striking virtues of his playing, Niehaus never achieved more than passing notice from the critics. One notable exception, however, was Max Harrison,…, whose insightful essay on Niehaus captures the essential virtues of the altoist’s work ….”

Lennie’s plaintive wail on many of the Stan Kenton’s mid-1950s albums such as Back to Balboa, Cuban Fire and The Stage Door Swings, to my ears the quintessential sound of West Coast Jazz, and Max’s acerbic wit and unconventional views each had a powerful impact on my appreciation of Jazz at a very early [impressionable?] age.

If I may be so bold, Max and I do disagree on one aspect of Lennie’s career as I happen to very much enjoy Stan Kenton and Lennie‘s playing during his stints with the Kenton Orchestra. However, not to belabor the point, Max and I do agree on the four wonderful recordings that Lennie made for Contemporary records in the 1950s that are the subject of his essay.

I have taken the liberty of augmenting Max’s essay with the addition of Volume 4: The Quintets & Strings [Contemporary C-3510; OJCCD 1858-2] which was not referenced in Max’s essay, as well as, with the inclusion of excerpts from the original Contemporary LP liner notes by John S. Wilson, Arnold Shaw, Lester Koenig, and Barry Ulanov, respectively. Lennie was also very gracious in granting me time to answer a few interview questions about these albums at recent events sponsored by the Los Angeles Jazz Institute at which he appeared.

[Incidentally, the Los Angeles Jazz Institute is currently offering as it’s latest members only CD: Stan Kenton’s Artistry in Comedy – “rare recordings captured by his friend Jimmy Valentine at dances and concerts from November 7, 1948 through September 29, 1962.” You can find out the details by calling [562] 985-7065].

Lastly, I hope that Max will forgive me for taking some liberties with the paragraphing of his original essay. And lest you get confused, Max’s writings are in blue while everyone else is in the other color.

“It was unfortunate Niehaus first became widely known as a result of the tours he undertook in the mid-1950s with Stan Kenton’s band, for the records he was then producing under his own name made it obvious that he had nothing in common with that master of the unintentionally comic bombast.

The second thing to be learnt from them was that Niehaus had little to learn about playing the alto saxophone. His ease and fluency conveyed a feeling of relaxation and security that is always rare, and his attack and swing were almost equally striking.

But the most notable feature of the twenty-six performances considered here is the consistency of his inventive power in improvisation. He never seems to be at a loss for a good melodic idea, and even though his phrasing is concise and pre-eminently logical, an element of the unexpected is never absent.

Lester Koenig noted: “He is a remarkable alto soloist, with a sense of flowing melodic line, lovely cool tone, and a strong feeling for rhythm. He is a thoughtful and serious musician, who composes in his own style, with definite ideas of where he is going and what he wants to achieve.”

In some ways, Niehaus first LP – Lennie Niehaus Vol. 1 ‘The Quintets’ [Contemporary C-3518; OJCCD- 1933-2] – with a quintet instrumentation remains the most informative of his abilities as a soloist.

The scored passages are generally brief, and, apart from a few meandering contributions from Jack Montrose and Bob Gordon on tenor and baritone saxophones respectively, the leader fills all the available solo space with notable effect.

His consistency makes it hard to single out an performance as exceptional, though the quick-fire Whose Blues? Is a reminder that real spontaneity is less a matter of technical command than of a steady flow of ideas. Almost impressive in this respect are Prime Rib, with its double-time phrases, and the breaks of You Stepped Out of a Dream.

Niehaus wrote the arrangements for all the recordings dealt with here, and these show a nicely understated skill, nearly always being shorn of unnecessary gesture. As his was a musical family, he began his studies early and thus had a better chance of acquiring sound theoretical knowledge than many jazzmen. This places an agreeable variety of writing techniques at his disposal, but he is aware of the dangers of over-elaboration in the modest circumstances of small combo jazz.

The Original Jazz Classic CD tray plate notes offer this overview of the recording.

“Lennie Niehaus’s first album is his most intimate. The music is rich in the colorful, complex writing that he would pursue on larger canvasses as his career progressed, while the compact sound of the quintet focuses attention on Niehaus, the fluent, Parker-inspired yet quite personal alto saxophonist. What emerges are well-balanced performances from two distinct ensembles.

Eight tracks recorded in 1954 … feature an inspired three-saxophone front line with Jack Montrose and Bob Gordon, plus the great Monty Budwig/Shelly Manne rhythm section. Four additional titles by a 1956 unit with Manne, Stu Williamson, Hampton Hawes, and red Mitchell were added for a 12-inch release, and represent Niehaus, a paragon of West Coast Jazz, in his most East Coast mood.”

On the sleeve of his second LP [Zounds! The Lennie Niehaus Octet! – Contemporary C-3540; OJCCD- 1892-2] he [Lennie] writes: “With the more intellectual and academic approach there is a tendency for … work to become contrived and esoteric. It must be remembered that most modern jazz compositions written during the past few years are no more ‘modern’ than things Bartok, Berg, Schoenberg and others wrote twenty of thirty years ago.”

Such a viewpoint is healthy, first because it is historically and technically realistic, and second because it is a corrective to the attitude of many jazzmen who in the past have imagined themselves to be daring iconoclasts while purveying what actually was simple and conservative music.

On the octet performances on his second LP Niehaus still occupies most of the solo space and is fully able to justify this. His arrangements are similar in general style to many others being written on the West Coast at that time, and what individual character they possess is due more to certain technical details than to an overall new approach. Such features most often arise from his concern with unity, and he is fond of deriving introductions, bridge passages and codas from the theme, or part of it, whenever possible. Instances are Night Life, Have You Met Miss Jones? and Circling the Blues; also typical of Niehaus is the way the introduction to The Night We Called It A Day recurs in sequential form to effect a modulation.

The first batch of octet scores have a pleasingly full texture, with the themes announced mainly in block chords. By the jazz standards of his time, Niehaus had a quite extensive, though in no way personal, harmonic vocabulary, so these parallel chords often are interesting, and are effectively distributed over the ensemble.

The result, however, could easily have been a rather too consistent harmonic richness, so he occasionally scores a passage for the horns without the rhythm section, as in How About You?, or has the drums only supply interjections, as on Figure Eight. He has many similar procedures to ensure variety, such as the bridge to Night Life, first played in block chords then scored contrapuntally on its return.

Another example is the first section of the code on The Way You Look Tonight, where each horn plays a separate line based on a different part of the theme; the result is of considerable harmonic and contrapuntal interest, and one regrets this passage only being four bars long. Even drum solos are made to further the development of the piece, as in The Way You Look Tonight, where, the piano and bass silent, the percussionist for a while alternates bars with the front line. There is a similar episode on Seaside.

Such devices, though, are very far from exhausting the scope of an ensemble … [featuring Lennie - alto sax, Jack Montrose - tenor sax and Bill Perkins - baritone sax, Stu Williamson - trumpet, Bob Enevoldsen - value trombone, Lou Levy – piano, Monty Budwig – bass and Shelly Manne – drums], and Niehaus appears to have been conscious of the almost unrelieved homophony of the above scores.

Since Max doesn’t discuss the four compositions featuring Octet No. 2, made up of Lennie – alto sax, Bill Perkins moving to tenor sax, Pepper Adams – baritone sax, Vince De Rosa – French Horn, Frank Rosolino – trombone, James McAlister – tuba, Red Mitchell – bass, and Mel Lewis – drums, that also appear on Zounds!, I thought perhaps the following comments from the original LP liner notes by Arnold Shaw might prove descriptive in this regard:

“ The fact is that the four new arrangements are less linear. The various horns do not have completely free, independent lines, and the drive is toward a coordinated swinging beat. ‘I still don’t go for blowing arrangements,’ Lennie said recently. ‘I like to write backgrounds and interludes, and my goal is a swinging line’ Whether the octet is taking an ensemble chorus or Lennie weaving, at break-neck speed around the ensemble, the Niehaus combo jumps and rocks and swings.”

In his third LP [Lennie Niehaus The Octet #2, Vol. 3 Contemporary C-3503; OJCCD 1767-2] there is a certain amount of section differentiation though not enough.

Alto saxophone and trombone contrast tellingly with the full band on Cooling It, as do alto and tenor in Bunko, yet such antiphony is infrequent, and counterpoint mainly conspicuous by its absence.

I thought, since Max gives rather short shrift to this album in his essay, the following comments about the recording’s personnel and Lennie’s playing from John S. Wilson’s liner notes to the album might prove germane.

“The present bath of octet selections is played by a slightly different group than the preceding set. Newcomers to this octet, but familiar figures on the West Coast jazz scene, are Jimmy Giuffre on baritone saxophone, Bill Holman on tenor and Pete Jolly on piano. Along with the holdovers – Stu Williamson on trumpet, Bob Enevoldsen on valve trombone, Monty Budwig on bass, Shelly Manne on drums and, of course, Niehaus himself – they make up a select group of top-ranking Coast jazzmen.

Niehaus’ playing has an ease, an unharried continuity which can only be accomplished by a musician who is beyond being consciously concerned with technique, whose feeling in performance is instinctively a swinging one and who can, consequently, devote himself completely to the creative requirements of his performance. There can be no doubt that these creative requirements are exceedingly demanding. ….

[Niehaus’] tone is almost unique among modern alto saxophonists. It is rich, rounded and warmly full-blooded and yet light enough not to clog up the quickly moving line of his style. It gives a vitality to his playing which is missing in some of the more wraith-like attacks adopted by current alto men.

A rich tone and a riding sense of swing would be of little use to Niehaus, of course, if his ideas were routine. Fortunately, his concepts are fresh and provocative not only in his individual solo performances but in his writing, too.”

As previously noted, not included in Max’s article was any reference to Lennie Niehaus, Vol. 4: The Quintets & Strings [Contemporary C 3510; OJCCD 1858-2] that tracks with strings and Lennie on alto, strings augmented by Lennie on alto, Bill Perkins on tenor and Bob Gordon on baritone and four cuts with a quintet fronted by Lennie on alto and Stu Williamson on trumpet with a rhythm section of Hawes, Budwig and Manne.
In his liner notes, Barry Ulanov offered the following reflections on Lennie’s playing:

“The alto is to the present jazz era what the tenor saxophone was to the one just before it; a great many musicians play it, and some of them inordinately well. As a result, the instrument currently enjoys much favor with the jazz public …. But if it has reached high jazz rank, it has also suffered: there is a terrible sameness about the work of all too many of these stars, a monotony based on the brilliant examples of a Parker, a Konitz or the like ….

All of which explains why I enjoy the playing of Lennie Niehaus as much as I do ….
One can say that it is his sound, a quite modern one, that makes him so welcome betwixt and alongside his colleagues; but others offer a not dissimilar sound. Perhaps, then, it is his beat; but that too, though not as familiar among present-day altoists, can be heard and felt on his horn. If not the sound and the beat, then the length of his lines. This, maybe, but not all by itself, for the long line is very much with us these days on alto, and good to have, but not any guarantee of identity.

No, not one of these things, but all of them in copious abundance, and held together, as he holds everything else in the proceedings in balance and bearing, by a widely resourceful musicianship. Thus diversity, thus originality; thus ripeness and no monotony and, for what it is worth, my very high esteem for Lennie Niehaus."

On his fifth record [Lennie Niehaus Vol. 5: The Sextet, Contemporary C-3524; OJCCD 1944-2] for sextet, however, Niehaus included well-paced duets between alto and tenor saxophones and trumpet and baritone saxophone in Thou Swell, and Three of a Kind has an adroit fugal introduction and coda.


There are effective dialogues between soloist and ensemble here, also, particularly on Belle of the Ball and As Long As I Live, some imaginative scored background to solos ….

The Original Jazz Classic CD tray plate notes offer this overview of the recording.

“In the mid-1950’s, Lennie Niehaus avoided cliché, incorporated audacious harmonic ideas, and distilled the essentials of big band writing into arrangements for small groups. His recordings are still notable in the 21st century for their freshness and daring.

In this fifth of his series of albums for the Contemporary label, Niehaus sets himself the chamber music challenge of achieving proportion among four horns, bass and drums, without piano to cushion the sound, delineate the harmonies, and unify the ensemble.

The result was a collection of pieces performed with gem-like clarity by players who executed his writing perfectly and brought to their solos the creativity that made them star improvisers.

Niehaus’ alto saxophone was matched by Bill Perkins, Jimmy Giuffre, Stu Williamson, Shelly Manne, and the brilliant, underappreciated bassist Buddy Clark.”

In solo Niehaus is as good as before, although the only other improvisations of real merit on these recordings are by pianist Lou Levy in the first octet disc and by Stu Williamson on both trumpet and valve trombone in the sextet LP. Indeed, the assurance and conviction of the latter’s work on the former instrument in Thou Swell, I Wished on the Moon, Knee Deep and As Long As I Live mark it as being among his best on record. Bill Perkins, on tenor saxophone, is also heard to pleasing, if rather nonchalant, effect in Three of a Kind and As Long As I Live. The gulf (in terms of invention) between the leader and several of his other bandsmen, however, is rather clearly shown by the chase passages of Whose Blues? and Rick’s Tricks, and even more by the long series of twelve- and – twenty-four bar solos in Circling the Blues.

The point is confirmed in a different way by Niehaus’ success with slow ballads, particularly The Night We Called It a Day and Our Love is Here To Stay on the octet records. Best, however, is the quintet Day by Day, which begins and ends with some exceptionally subtle harmonic writing that creates a feeling of remoteness which is quite contrary to the original melody’s banality and exactly appropriate to Niehaus’ very sensitive improvisation.

This can stand beside Jimmy Giuffre’s beautiful Lotus Bud recorded with Shorty Rogers or Art Pepper’s Jazz Chorale recorded with John Graas. The same side of Niehaus’ musical personality is also reflected in two compositions, Night Life and Debbie, slow lyrical pieces of some melodic distinction. Also attractive are Take It from Me, which has a forty bar chorus instead of the usual thirty-two, and Elbow Room, a blues with a bridge.

Writing and playing like this did show perfectly explicit promise for Niehaus’ further growth. Despite a few excellent later recordings [I Swing for You, Mercury MG 36118; Lone Hill Jazz CD 10241], such as his striking version of Perkins’s Little Girl Blues and Benny Golson’s Four Eleven West, that promise was not really fulfilled, eventually he stopped making LPs, and, finally, dropped out of sight. Presumably Niehaus must be regarded as another casualty of the hostile circumstances in which jazz has always found itself.


As we know, the “hostile environment” for Jazz that Max refers to was to become even more hostile as the years rolled along, and Lennie was to survive it by taking his orchestrating skills into the Hollywood studies and to become a prolific writer for films. But we’ll save that part of Lennie’s story for another time.

While preparing this feature on Lennie Niehaus, the editors of Jazzprofiles couldn’t help but agree with Ted Gioia’s following assessment of Lennie Niehaus:

“His powerful technical command of the saxophone, his intuitive linear approach to improvisation, and his sweet tone made Niehaus a likely candidate as the next alto star on the coast.” West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 [p. 163]:

And while a Niehaus star did ascend, it would take on a different form.

Whatever Happened to Larry Bunker?

By Mal Sands, LA Jazz Scene, May 1994 [copyright; all rights reserved]
“That is the question that many people, including myself, have been asking for several years now in jazz clubs and at concerts and festivals, especially those that celebrate the ‘West Coast sound’ of the 1950s.

Bunk, as he is fondly called by friends and colleagues, was right there at the evolution of the California Cool movement.

He was a mainstay of the L.A. jazz nightclub scene during the 50s, 60s and 70s and worked with such legends as Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Shorty Rogers, Bill Evans and Peggy Lee. By the time the 1980’s rolled around, Bunker had all but disappeared from public performance in the clubs. Only on the rarest occasions and for the best of friends would Bunker extend his services as a sideman.

I asked saxophonist Gary Foster about Bunker’s whereabouts and he told me that Bunker was alive and well and busy working in the studios where he has been for over forty years now. It was through Foster that I got to meet this legendary percussionist who I had wondered about for so many years. The first thing that impresses one about Bunker is his very casual attitude and laid-back demeanor. He is such an easy-going, down-to-earth, regular kind of guy, that after a few minutes, I was so comfortable with him, I felt that I already knew him.

Our first meeting took place in a recording studio in Burbank, … [but] it was several months before I had the opportunity to interview him.

I drove out to his beautiful, Spanish-styled home in the [Hollywood] hills above Los Feliz and spent the better part of three hours chatting and asking him questions, and listening to his stories, recollections and opinions about himself, his career and all of the legendary musicians and assorted characters that he knew and worked with.

I began the interview by asking Bunker to give me a brief biography. He was born in Long Beach, CA on November 4, 1928. He took up drums in grammar school at the age of seven and began fooling around with the piano at the age of ten. … He became self-taught on both [drums and piano], as well as, tenor saxophone, which he played briefly in junior high school.

After high school, Bunker enlisted in the army for a one and a half year stint in 1946. During that period he played drums and piano with several different outfits. Upon his discharge in 1948, he settled in Monterey, CA. It was shortly thereafter that he first learned how to play the vibraphone.”

LA Jazz Scene [LAJ]: You played both drums and piano as a youngster. At what age did you start playing the vibes?

Larry Bunker [LB]: It was 1950. I was 21 or 22 and I was playing drums with a trio that included the Hammond organ and the guitar. The organist, who was the leader, asked me if I’d ever played the vibraphone and I said, “No, I’ve never played one in my life.” He said, “Well, the fact that you know harmony and are an improvising player and know the keyboard and drums, it’s a natural for you. I’ve got an old set of vibes in my garage. Why don’t you take it home and work out a couple of tunes and we’ll see what happens.” Now I was aware of Lionel Hampton and just beginning to get into Milt Jackson. So I took the thing home, figured out how to put it together and spent three days just doing exercises and playing scales.

LB: So I went on the job and did the first set on drums and then the guys asked: “What have you worked out?” I said that I had worked out a solo on a song and when he asked my what I wanted to play I said just play anything. So we played a couple of standard ballads and then some up-tempo things and got screaming applause from the audience. We came off the bandstand and there were people in the audience, musicians I had worked with who came up to me and said: “Geez, Larry, I didn’t know you played the vibes. How long have you been doing that?” I said: “Three days.”

LAJ: Wow! That’s amazing! Now in the 1950s when you were playing drums and vibes in Monterey, the Dave Brubeck Trio featuring Cal Tjader on drums and vibes was doing more or less the same thing up in San Francisco, correct?

LB: Sure, exactly! And I used to hear the radio broadcasts of that group in San Francisco and I was aware of Cal and what he was doing on vibes. Not long after that, I left Monterey to tour with a very bad four-piece band that got me back to Los Angeles. I moved back in with my Mom in the house that I had lived in since I was nine years old and set up shop there. We had a piano, drums and a set of vibes right there in the living room and that’s where I set up shop.

LB: In 1951, I got the job of drumming at the Lighthouse with Howard Rumsey, Hampton Hawes, Teddy Edwards and Sonny Criss, among others. That was three or four nights a week. On Mondays I had an invitation to jam sessions on the East side of LA, mostly to play vibes, so that’s how the whole thing got started for me here in town in 1951.

LAJ: Were you becoming better known as a drummer or as a vibist?

LB: It seemed like it was happening both ways, but I worked mostly as a drummer with occasional gigs on vibes. On rare occasions I played both like when I was with Georgie Auld when I worked with him both in town and on a tour back East. The idea was that he and I would tour and we would pick up a piano player and a bassist wherever we were. I took drums and vibes with me and he featured me on both. We traveled cross-country by car and worked at the old Blue Note in Chicago and also hit Philadelphia, Minneapolis and several other places.

LAJ: By car, huh? That must have been quite an experience. Now was this around the same time as the ‘West Coast Jazz’ movement was beginning?

LB: Yes, exactly. In 1951-52, things were really starting to happen in LA. As guys were leaving the road bands and setting up in Southern California. Within a year or two, Shelly Manne, Art Pepper, Shorty Rogers, Bud Shank, Bob Cooper, Don Bagley and Frank Rosolino had all left Stan Kenton. That’s when this whole West Coast thing started. I replaced Chico Hamilton in piano-less Gerry Mulligan’s Quartet with Chet Baker.

Dick Bock formed Pacific Jazz Records and I started to record with these guys. We were in the studio two or three times a week making different albums. It was also at that time that I recorded my first motion picture soundtrack. I received a called from an old Russian viola player, named , Franz Waxman, who was scoring the movie Stalag 17, starring William Holden and he needed a jazz vibist and a drummer. I said that I did both so he hired me to play in the Paramount studio 75-piece orchestra.

LB: I was absolutely awestruck. As an 8-year old kid, I had lived to blocks away from the place and ride past it on my way to school without any idea that I would ever see the inside of a place like that. I was very intimidated, but I got through it and that’s how I started working in the studios.

LAJ: And it was also during this period that you began working the club circuit with Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Art Pepper and later on with Shorty Rogers and Bud Shank, right?

LB: Right. I worked with Chet and Gerry at The Haig.

LAJ: What did you think of those individuals?

LB: Chet Baker was unbelievable. I have never been as impressed with anyone more than I have been with him, with the exception of Bill Evans, who I worked with later. Baker could come up with something every night, every set that would just bring you out of your seat. He was a stunning, creative musician, but a horse’s ass as a human being and became legendary for that. … just an all-around bad-ass, but a brilliant musician. Gerry Mulligan was okay. He was kind of stand-offish, but appreciative of my work and that was all right.

LAJ: How about other players during these early West Coast Jazz years? [interjection]

LB: I worked with Stan Getz at Zardi’s and that wasn’t too pleasant. This was just after his bust for holding up a drugstore, for which he did some time in the county slam. I worked with Art Pepper at the Surf Club in downtown L.A. with Hampton Hawes and Joe Mondragon. I really enjoyed Art’s playing, but didn’t enjoy being around him because he was so heavily into junk at that point. He would show up an hour late for work and it was always the same story. “My battery went dead,” or “I had a flat tire.” On the bandstand he was either trying to play, keep from nodding off or looking to score. I had no contact with him socially and had no reason to. Shorty Rogers, Bud Shank, Bob Cooper and Bill Perkins were all good cats and professional musicians.
As far as other drummers were concerned, there was a period in the 50s that Shelly Manne was the drummer of choice. He, Mel Lewis and Stan Levey kind of had the jazz scene sewed-up. I kind of got what was left over.

LAJ: Every year, just before the Playboy Jazz Festival, Mark Cantor hosts an evening of rare jazz film clips from his private collection. At last year’s program he showed a clip from a television show that was broadcast in the late 1950s with the Art Pepper Quartet featuring you on the piano. Cantor said that you were a last-minute replacement for Pepper’s regular pianist, Carl Perkins, who apparently was too high on dope that night to make the gig. Do you recall that?

LB: I don’t, but several other people mentioned seeing that same clip, so I guess it must have happened. When I first started playing with Bud Shank in 1960 or ’61 here in town, he hired me as a vibraphone player and a pianist. His regular drummer was Chuck Flores and his bassist for a short while was Scott LaFaro, who later left for New York to work with Bill Evans. His place was taken by Gary Peacock. Scott, unfortunately was killed in a car crash at a very young age.

LAJ: You also worked with Bill Evans. What was that experience like?

LB: Phenomenal! Bill Evans was my hero, and my association with him is probably the highlight of my career. I worked with him for about a year and a half between 1963 and ’65 and the projects that I did with him are the things that I am most proud of. We recorded three of four albums together. Trio 65 is the one I am most fond of.

LAJ: That was an excellent album. Your work with Bill Evans was exclusively on drums, correct?

LB: Yes. I never played vibes with Bill. My best vibes work in my opinion was with Dave Grusin in the early 1980s.

LAJ: You also became involved with Latin music when it became hot in the mid-fifties. How did that come about?

LB: I had no interest in Latin music whatsoever, until I started listening to the radio and heard all the great Latin jazz bands that were playing in New York.

LAJ: Are we talking about Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez and Machito?



LB: Exactly, and that triggered my interest. The more I listened to it, the more I liked it and tried to play it. I auditioned for Bobby Short in ’54 or ’55, and he told me that he did a couple of Caribbean-type numbers in his act and that I was required to play the congas. Well, I had never played the congas in my life and told him so, but I wanted the job so I went out a bought a set of congas. These were the old ones that looked like skins nailed to a pickle barrel. Tune-able instruments were still a thing of the future. As a result, I started working with Latin bands here in town, primarily with Eddie Cano, who was a crossover musician. His style was very Latin-oriented, yet he was really like a jazz piano player. I played and recorded with him on vibes, but occasionally played Latin hand percussion and became known for that.

LB: During that period I received a great many calls to do hand percussion in the studios because most of the guys in town, the true Latin drummers, had no concept of reading music. They were authentic players but they couldn’t start or stop when they were supposed to and if you were doing a motion picture that required sight-reading and playing with a jazz feeling, they really didn’t do that.

LAJ: I didn’t realize that you played hand percussion instruments. Are there any recordings of you playing these?

LB: Yes, there was an album I did in 1972 with Pat Williams called Threshold which we recorded at the Phil Ramone studio in New York. The rhythm section included Mike Melvoin, Jim Hughart, John Guerin and Larry Carlton. People like Tom Scott, Buddy Childers, Billy Byers and Marvin Stamm were also involved. I was the utility percussion man and played congas, bongos, vibes, marimba, chimes and tympani. That album won a Grammy.

LAJ: Do you miss the L.A. jazz scene of the 1950s? What were some of your favorite clubs and hangouts of that era?

LB: Jazz City is one I miss. They used a lot of local musicians and occasionally would bring in some headliners. It was there that I first saw Miles Davis in person. He had John Coltrane, red garland, Paul Chambers and “Philly” Joe Jones with him. It was there that I got to see and meet Cannonball Adderley for the first time. I also worked there with a variety of people including Barney Kessel and Conte Candoli. I also worked there with Shorty Rogers opposite Lenny Bruce.

LAJ: Lenny Bruce; what was he like?



LB: Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. We also worked across the street at a place called Peacock Lane. We would do a set and then Lenny would do a set and offend everybody and then we would have to come back on and try to calm everybody back down. In the 1960s I worked and hung-out at Shelly’s Manne Hole all the time. In the 1970s it was Donte’s.

LAJ: Do you have any desire to work clubs again?

LB: At this point, I really don’t think so. It was fun while I was doing it in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, but by the ‘80s it got to be less and less gratifying. It was no longer emotionally satisfying so I decided to hang it up. I think I have said everything I’m going to say in that way.

LAJ: Do you have any idea how many recordings you have made, either jazz, television and motion picture soundtracks, commercial jingles or whatever, all together? Even a ballpark figure?

LB: No idea. It’s not something I ever considered important.

LAJ: Of the many recordings that you have made, are there any with you as a leader?

LB: Only one. It was an album that I produced and did at the old Shelly’s Manne Hole with vibraphonist Gary Burton. We had met and became great friends and I became a great admirer of his. He was working with George Shearing at the time and would stay at my house when George was in town. We decided that we should record together. This was in late 1963 when Gary was barely out of his teens. I contacted engineer Bones Howe and we rented Wally Heider’s portable recording equipment and went into the Manne Hole to record. We had to postpone the date a couple of weekends due to the [J.F.] Kennedy assassination. We did it with Mike Wofford on piano and Bob West on bass and I spent the next couple of years trying to sell the thing. There were no takers. I finally gave the masters to a producer named Jackie Mills and he got it marketed. It wasn’t out very long and sold maybe about 20 copies. I never realized a dime from the thing.

LAJ: That’s too bad. Where is the record now?

LB: In limbo. Several years after we recorded it, Gary called me from New York and told me it had surfaced in Europe entitled “The Gary Burton Quartet.”

LAJ. But it was actually “The Larry Bunker Quartet, right?”

LB: Yeah, but you got to remember that when he called in 1967 or ’68, Gary Burton was hot. Nobody over there knew who the hell “Larry Bunker” was. The masters were eventually lost but surfaced some twenty years later in Japan. I got a call from a guy who wanted to issue it over there on the Vault records label. I said “fine.” In the meantime, a set of alternate master takes surfaced in Spain and was issued on the Fresh Sound label.

LAJ: So there are two different versions of the album?

LB: Yes, and maybe even three.

LAJ: Who is your favorite vibes player?

LB: Milt Jackson, hands down. There’s nobody like him. He has influenced so may vibe players and you can hear it in their playing. Gary is phenomenal and he really has kind of revolutionized the vibraphone insofar as what’s possible to play on it. He, too, has had a profound influence, especially on the younger players that have come up. But the guy who still touches my heart is Milt.
LAJ: And on drums?

LB: Elvin Jones, Tony Williams and Dave Weckl.


LAJ: Throughout your long and distinguished career you have worked with many of the jazz legends and greats. Is there anyone living or dead that you didn’t get to work with, but wish you could have?

LB: Oh sure. John Coltrane, Miles Davis. I would have loved to gig with those cats. I got to play with Dizzy at the Monterey Jazz festival back in the ‘60s and I did actually get to play once with Charlie Parker when I played a couple of tunes on piano at a dance job with him in L.A. at a place called the “Five-Four Ballroom. Some guys I knew where playing with them so I went down to catch the gig. There was a tune they wanted to play and the piano player didn’t know it. Larance Marable saw me and called me up to the stand and said: “You know that tune, don’t you?” I said: “Sure.” So I sat in and comped for Bird.

LAJ: What do you do for recreation or relaxation during your leisure time?

LB: Mainly I just stay at home and listen to classical music on my cable radio hook-up. I am able to get symphony broadcasts from all over the country.

LAJ: Classical music?

LB: Yes, I have become totally caught up in classical music, particularly when it comes to playing tympani. I have been playing tympani seriously now for ten or twelve years and really enjoy it. As a matter of fact, if I knew then what I know now, I might have gotten some serious training and become a timpanist with a major symphony orchestra. Unfortunately it is too late now. You don’t decide at the age of sixty-five that you’re going to change careers and look for an almost non-existent job as a concert timpanist.

LAJ: So what’s next for Larry Bunker?

LB: To just keep doing what I’m doing. Working in the studios and making a living."

Norman Granz: Jazz Impresario

[
Over the years, Jazz has had many heroes, but few have done as much for it as Norman Granz who, ironically, never contributed an actual note to the music.

Alex Barris offers this brief chronicle of some of the achievements of one of the great patrons of Jazz. The photograph of Mr. Granz is by William P. Gottlieb and is in the Library of Congress/Gershwin Fund.

By Alex Barris The Jazz Report Summer 1996

“Jazz lover are, by and large, a jaded lot. You need only mention a few words like ‘producer’ or ‘promoter’ and your jaded jazz fan will react as though you had used a dirty word. Of course, sometimes they are right. But not always.

For example, I maintain – and have for some time – that jazz has had no greater friend, certainly among non-musicians, than Norman Granz. Yes, I know about John Hammond, George Wein, Leonard Feather, George Simon, Ira Gitler and Whitney Balliett. I’ll still put Granz ahead of them.

Okay, some reasons. First of all there was Jazz at the Philharmonic [JATP], which, starting in 1943, presented a long-running series of concert tours, attracting countless thousands of young people to the wonders of jazz. True, some of them tended to get noisy, stomped and applauded and cheered and behaved like – well, exuberant kids. (So Had Sinatra fans before that, and Presley, Beatle and Michael Jackson fans since).


But JATP fans got to hear the giants of jazz like Lester Young and Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, Bud Powell and Willie Smith. And it was at a JATP concert in New York that people outside of Canada were introduced to Oscar Peterson.

In the 1940s and 1950s, racially segregated audiences were still the norm. Not with Granz. He insisted, and got it written into contracts, that in travel arrangements and in accommodations for his musicians, there must be no segregation. And he did not hesitate to cancel dates if these conditions were not met. More, he insisted that the same rules apply to buying tickets and seating arrangements. Which explained why JATP simply did not play in the U.S. south. Granz stuck to his principles.

Then, in 1944, there was Jammin’ the Blues, the first and arguably still the best movie short made that dealt with jazz, presenting Lester Young, Harry Edison, Barney Kessel, Illinois, Jacquet, John Simmons, Red Callender and Sidney Catlett in a jam session atmosphere that was revolutionary for a Hollywood studio (Warner Brothers, in this case, who did not care a hang about jazz but wanted to give the wizard photographer Gjon Mili a shot at directing and allowed Granz to function as producer of the 10-minue film).


Credit Granz also for introducing millions of jazz fans to the brilliant work of graphic artist David Stone Martin (No, Granz did not discover him, nor did he claim to).

Martin had done some album covers for Asch records in 1944. But it was when Granz began to record his JATP albums with Asch that record buyers became aware of Martin’s remarkable work.
And when Granz left Asch to form Clef he persuaded David Stone Martin to join Clef. Indeed Martin’s splendid line drawing of a trumpeter (for which Charlie Shavers was the unwitting model) became Granz’s logo on Clef and later on Verve album covers.


Over a period of two decades, Martin was to produce more than 200 album covers for Granz, most of them startlingly imaginative.

Of course, JATP was only one aspect of Granz’s producing-recording career. There was also once-in-a-lifetime projects such as The Jazz Scene a magnificent package recorded in 1949 (on six 12-inch 78 rpm discs) that presented, in various combinations, such diverse artists as Duke Ellington, Neal Hefti, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Buddy Rich and Bud Powell.

This was issued (on Mercury) in a limited and numbered edition. Only 5,000 copies were made (mine is number 4396). It was later reissued on LP, but it’s hard to find.
[A CD version is still available at: http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Scene-Various-Artists/dp/B0000046TH/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1211735841&sr=1-1].

My own favorite on this album is the combination Lester Young, Buddy Rich and Auy Guy (code name of Nat King Cole, who was under contract to Capitol) playing I Want To Be Happy. The package also had some marvelous photos by Mili [see below for photo of Louis Armstrong and Roy Eldridge] and some equally exquisite drawings by Martin [see above for cover art].

And then, just a few years after that, there was The Astaire Story, in which the famed dancer introduced and sang some of his movie hits, backed by such stellar jazzmen as Oscar Peterson, Charlie Savers, Barney Kessel, Flip Phillips and Ray Brown. Once again, Martin supplied a memorable sketch of Astaire for the cover.


Most of all, however, I think Granz deserves a lot of credit for his dedication to jazz and to the musicians who played it. One important manifestation of that dedication was during the dark decade starting in the mid-50s, when the explosion of rock ‘n roll all but wiped out the market for many jazz artists.

It was during those years that Grant went stubbornly on, recording some of the greatest jazz artists – in many cases, saving them from virtual extinction, at a time when nobody else would touch them. Among those recorded by Granz during those lean years: Art Tatum, Benny Carter, Roy Eldridge, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins,
Zoot Sims, Joe Pass, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Teddy Wilson, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, Hank Jones and Stan Getz.

Granz also initiated the Ella Fitzgerald “songbook” albums and made no less that 27 albums with Art Tatum, and later fought to regain control of them (he had sold Verve to MGM) so that he could reissue the Tatum albums.

No doubt, the cynics will argue that Granz did all these things to make money. Perhaps. But even if that’s true (and I don’t think it is in every case) the fact that he did them was of immense help to the beleaguered jazz community.

And, finally, I have one more reason for respecting Granz, and I’m willing to admit some prejudice here, because we happen to agree. Once, on a European tour, a reporter asked him which musician most typified jazz for him. Oscar Peterson, who was present, urged Granz to name his idol, Art Tatum. But Granz disagreed: “No,” he said, “it’s Roy Eldridge who embodies what jazz is all about. He’s a musician for whom it’s far more important to dare, to try to achieve a particular peak – even if he falls on his ass in the attempt – than it is to play it safe. That’s what jazz is all about.”

Even if you disagree with his choice of that particular musician, you can’t argue with his yardstick."

Shelly Manne - Jazz "Today"

The Jazzprofiles editorial staff is indebted to Mr. Jim Harrod of Jazz Research for this Ray Avery photograph of drummer Shelly Manne from the November 1956 edition of Jazz Today and the Add Manne and Vinnegar: Serve Piping Hot article by Jack Maher from the July 1957 edition of Jazz Today.

As you read the cover subject comments below, the reader may wish to keep in mind that by the mid-1950s, the Jazz world was still experiencing the [relatively “new”] transition from big bands to small groups. Indeed, the November 1956 edition of Jazz Today also contains a feature article entitled: A History of the Small Group in Jazz!

ABOUT THE COVER SUBJECT

“Shelly Manne, our cover subject for this month, is about as much representative of the small group movement today as can be found. His recordings with the varied and sundry personnel of the Los Angeles area, and, with his own group reflects the strength and popularity of the three, four, five and six piece bands on both coasts.

Through his development from Kenton’s and other big bands, to leader of his own combo there is a note of integrity and excellence of musicianship. Shelly is a leader now but is always first a musician, putting his musicianship before any other consideration. Shelly as the new leader in the new world of small group Jazz is the very essence of this month’s Jazz Today.”


ADD MANNE and VINNEGAR: SERVE PIPING HOT – Jack Maher

“Time, and the application of it, has taken another and more perfect turn through the recent performances of a rhythm duo operating on the far West Coast. Responsible for this new, invigorating concept of the drum and bass duo are Shelly Manne and Leroy Vinnegar. To be ultra-truthful, there’s nothing new about the Manne-Vinnegar team. What they have done is to solidify and expand the rhythm team all at once.

The solidification comes from the feeling of unity that Shelly’s drumming and Leroy’s bass are able to produce. Shelly’s concept of drums is primarily four-four. He uses the high-hat as a point of emphasis most times in a very slight way. This gives his rhythmic line an evenness rather than a predominantly two-four feeling. Leroy, in accordance with this, throbs his bass line, with that same four-four concept and with the added value of a big, round, sound making each note sound for its full value. The linear effect of the two instruments played separately is really as if they were one. The drums providing a sharp, critical percussion and the bass a wide, controlled full-sounding note value to each stroke of tempo.

The expansion takes place in the individual ability of each of the musicians in himself. Leroy often plays through the notes that go to make a particular chord, instead of just sounding the same notes over and over again. He uses also, often in concert with Shelly and a pianist, a triple-plucking technique that presents an effective variant to the usually strong, straight quarter-note line. Shelly’s use of counter-rhythm figures, bass drum punctuation and counter-tempo variation in the high-hat broadens the usual repetitive playing of the drummer. His concept in figures behind a soloist often has all the variety and all the freshness of the distinctively individual and stimulating melodic ideas he has in his solos.

Together these two individuals form a near perfect basis for any soloist: non-intrusive, fresh and inspiring, and, what’s of the utmost importance, a unified feeling and sound. A feeling and sound that has compactness, pressure and pulse.

After writing the above impression of the Manne-Vinnegar team, we went by way of Bell long-distance telephone to the Northridge, California home of Shelly Manne for verification or, if necessary, disputation by Shelly himself. What follows are the impressions Shelly Had on the position and functions of the rhythm section.



‘What I like to hear, and strive for myself, in a rhythm section, is a section. I want to hear three men playing together as a section, the same as a brass section or a sax section with all the members playing together, not as sometimes happens an individual drum section, bass section and piano section. It’s all important that members of the rhythm section, and in fact the whole band, to be at one with one another. There’s a need for personal as well as musical regard for one another.

It’s most important too, for the bass and drums to have the same sense of time, the same swing feeling, and mutual respect for one another’s abilities. They must be open to hear what’s going on around them, and aware and flexible enough to fit with the whole band. Sometimes we play things along with the horns, at other times we play contrapuntal figures. In any case, the rhythm men have to be sensitive and equipped enough to respond to one another and to the other members of the band.

As far as the importance of the rhythm section today is concerned, I think it’s just as important now as it ever was. The pulsation is the important thing. Even when you don’t have the constant pulsation, when you eliminate it, the swing, the pulsation itself must be there – implied if you like – for it to swing. I don’t seriously believe you can ever do away with the rhythm section altogether in jazz. For variety and development you can have the rhythm section stop playing for a chorus or two, we do, and the effect when they come pounding back in is twice as exciting.


About Leroy” We first met when he sat in when Shorty and I had the group and then I heard him around Los Angeles with other bands. I was very impressed with him and still am. He’s got all those qualities I mentioned and we have a similar time sense. He plans to do a lot of studying in the future.”

And about drummers in general: ‘You know, I think a lot of drummers are confusing funk with soul. Playing the high-hat, for instance, seems to be a lost art. I like the feeling of having a snap on two and four but not the heavy predominance that’s so much in evidence today: the heavy two-four accent is becoming a crutch. I think I need to spend more time with the high-hat – go back and listen to some of those old Basie records with Jo Jones – they have some wonderfully colorful effects.

The drummer tends to imitate the leaders on his instrument, instead of developing something of his own. It seems to me that all the really big people in jazz all have had that identifiable individuality.’

After reading this series of quotations, I think you can see just why Shelly and Leroy are quite possibly the best two man rhythm team in the country – there’s a personal and musical understanding between them that’s evident on every tune they play.”

Should you like to know more about Shelly Manne, perhaps "... the most musical drummer who ever lived," Jack Brand and Bill Korst have put together a magnificent biography, discography and filmography of his career entitled Shelly Manne: Sounds of a Different Drummer copies of which can be obtained at http://www.percxpress.com/book.htm.

Jimmy Giuffre - The Quiet Man

Saddened by the recent passing of Jimmy Giuffre, the editorial staff of Jazzprofiles thought it appropriate to pause in its preparation of other articles for the site and to offer a celebration of his memory by making available to its readers these exquisite insert notes that Mr. Davis created for the Mosaic series [Jimmy Giuffre - The Complete Capitol and Atlantic Recordings MD6-176]. It has taken some liberties with the paragraphing.

These notes form a discourse on just how much thought Jimmy Giuffre put into his music, as well as, an indication of Mr. Davis’ thoughtful insights about Giuffre and how he created this music.

Given a long history of animosity between musicians and those who write about music (or merely write about it, as some musicians would say), I hope that Jimmy Giuffre won’t take my suggestion that he would have made an excellent jazz critic the wrong way.

I simply mean that during his most prolific period as a recording artist, beginning with the release of his first 10” LP for Capitol in 1954, Giuffre in interviews and liner notes provided his listeners with a running commentary on his motives and methods, revealing in the process a great deal of knowledge of such other disciplines as philosophy and psychoanalysis.

Reading Giuffre on Giuffre, a critic might despair, because this is one of the rare instances in which a performer has already been as fair and impartial a judge of his own successes and failures as anyone could hope to be.

(Especially for an artist as committed to public trial and error as Giuffre was during the period in which he recorded most frequently. There is also a sense in which a new piece of music can be heard as a critique of the work that came before it – yet another way in which Giuffre beat after-the-fact commentators like myself to the punch).

Best of all, despite seeming to rebuke the jazz rank-in-file of the 1950s for their conformist tendencies, Giuffre never lapsed into what I call the existential fallacy, that leap of hubris by which an artist (or for that matter, any individual) presumes that his new direction is one that everybody should follow.

In one of his earliest pronouncement – a Down Beat [November 30, 1955] article published under his byline in 1955, in which he explained his decision to limit the bass and drums on his controversial new album Tangents in Jazz [Capitol T-634] – he was careful to point out in his lead that he wasn’t trying to “preach a sermon” in order to bring the rest of Jazz into line. “It’s just one way,” he reiterated at the end, “and every man must go his own way.”

Giuffre gave the fullest explanation of his “way” of that time in the liner notes to Tangents in Jazz, answering a series of “leading questions” put to him by an unidentified interviewer (if not annotator Will MacFarland, then possibly Giuffre serving as his own devil’s advocate, a` la Edmund Wilson or Norman Mailer).

“What is this music?” Giuffre was asked.

His reply – “jazz, with a non-pulsating beat” – accurately describes not only Tangents in Jazz, but also the more experimental of his Capitol recordings of a year earlier and some of his atonal work of the same period with Shorty Rogers, Teddy Charles and Shelly Manne. It also applies to most of Giuffre’s subsequent recordings, including even so deceptively “conventional” an effort as his 1957 “cover” of Meredith Wilson’s score for The Music Man.

“The beat is implicit, Giuffre went on to explain, [I]n other words, acknowledged but unsounded. The two horns [in this case, Jack Sheldon on trumpet and Giuffre on clarinet, tenor or baritone] are the dominant but not domineering voices. [Ralph Pena’s] bass usually functions somewhat like a baritone sax. [Artie Anton’s] drums play an important but non-conflicting role ….

I’ve come to feel increasingly inhibited and frustrated by the insistent pounding of the rhythm section. With it, it’s impossible for the listener or the soloist to hear the horn’s true sound. I’ve come to believe, or [to] fully concentrate on the solo line. An imbalance of advances has moved the rhythm from a supportive to a competitive role ….

[T]o the degree that the beat was there to guide dancers, it is, of course, no longer necessary to concert jazz ….

Several of today’s writers have dropped sounded beat for contrast, but never for an entire work. I’ve written works completely lacking sounded beat, but the difference between this music and all previous work is the use of drums. My previous attempts at this approach, while achieving some of the clarity I sought, were always vaguely unsatisfactory to me until I realized the trouble: the drums, by their nature, cannot carry a simultaneous or overlapping line; when the drums is struck any other note is obliterated, and attention is torn away from any other line. In this music, the drum lines are integrated but isolated.”

That may be fine during written passages, Giuffre’s interlocutor challenged, but how can such “isolation” be guaranteed during improvised solos, where a drummer’s responses are impossible to predict?

“By writing rests in the ad lib parts [and] allowing the drums to fill,” Giuffre answered, in effect arguing that composition and improvisation could overlap - a notion that may have struck some listeners of 1955 as far more treasonous than dispensing with the beat, even though it summarizes a lot of Duke Ellington and is practically a truism for today’s jazz avant-garde. “Classical music, once the rhythm is stated, [assumes] the freedom to move unaccompanied, and if jazz is going to continue to grow, it needs this same freedom,” Giuffre insisted, acknowledging that by taking such a giant leap, he risked sacrificing a “large segment of the usual jazz audience.”

Giuffre ultimately did pay a price for his boldness, once going ten years between new releases (after Free Fall in 1963) and being omitted from most contemporary roll calls of the 1950s. Luckily, Giuffre underestimated the progressivism of ‘50s jazz buffs. Although never a force in mainstream culture like Stan Kenton or Dave Brubeck, and never a cause celebre like Lennie Tristano or Ornette Coleman, Giuffre appealed to many of the same listeners, for similar reasons.

Having been acclimated to revolution by bebop in the late 1940s, modern jazz devotees of the 1950s kept their ears peeled for another uprising, and Giuffre was clearly up to something new.

The crux of the controversy that surrounded Giuffre following the release of Tangents in Jazz , reaching a crescendo with the introduction of the first of his several drummer-less trios a year later, was his aversion to the sort of drum thunder then coming to be identified by many as the very heartbeat of jazz.

But in complaining of “an imbalance of advances” in modern jazz, Giuffre was also questioning what he felt was an over-emphasis on harmonic movement at the expense of linear development and subtler aspects of timbre (he later characterized chord changes as “vertical prison” [Loren Stephens, “The Passionate Conviction,” Jazz Review, February, 1960], and in the liner notes to Tangents in Jazz, he identified being “fed a steady stream of chords” by a pianist or a bassist and “fighting a steady beat” as twin evils. Another way of putting it might have been to say that the innovations of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie had followed too quickly on the heels of those of Lester Young, with the result that Young’s still hadn’t been fully absorbed).

Giuffre’s displeasure with the chordal underpinnings of bop gave him something in common with Miles Davis and Gerry Mulligan, in addition to anticipating Ornette Coleman. His solution was to substitute melodic counterpoint – which he called “slow motion counterpoint” – for harmonic structure, as well as pronounced beat.

Giuffre told Nat Hentoff in 1957 [“Jimmy Giuffre: Blues in Counterpoint” Saturday Review, July 13,1957]:

“The result is a certain feeling of suspension, of dissonance, if it’s handled right. In slow-motion counterpoint, for example, if one melody is an eight-note pattern that is changing notes often, the other melody changes notes much less often, perhaps every four bars. And for rhythmic interest, the slow-changing line can be broken up by repeated notes and rests. A third line and possibly a fourth could be proceeding at other varying rates of speed simultaneously."

Perhaps in response to a question from Hentoff about where this left the listener, Giuffre went on to explain:

“the contrast between lines made possible by this approach provides the clarity that is necessary to follow all the lines. [A]nd to a certain extent, the listener will have more time to absorb each harmonic feeling, because in my writing, the harmonies are the results of lines, rather than lines being fitted to the harmonies."

Were he less theoretically inclined, or less articulate, the native Texan could just have said that the folk-like material he was then writing for his trio allowed even the most casual listener an easy way in. But in outlining the principles of slow-motion counterpoint in such detail, he was paying tribute to his mentor and the theory’s father, Dr. Wesley La Violette, a Los Angeles-based classical composer and proto-guru whose other followers included Shorty Rogers and John Graas. “He had a great influence on my life,” Giuffre years later told Ted Gioia [West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California 1945-1960, New York: Oxford University Press , 1992]. “His scope of music is limitless …. It has given me the staff of life.”

Giuffre in the 1950’s was a man on a quest, much like Coltrane was a decade later. The difference was that Giuffre’s quest, like his music, was more muted, and that it manifested itself intellectually rather than spiritually. All jazz musicians seek their own sound, or at least pay lip service to that concept. The next step for those who find an individualistic means of expression is to attempt to broaden it into a group sound. For Giuffre, sound was a key to finding out who he was as a person, not just as a musician.

A former sideman with a variety of big bands, including those of Buddy Rich and Woody Herman, Giuffre was 33 when he began recording as a leader – a ripe age for a jazzman, by that day’s standard. He already enjoyed a reputation as a composer and arranger based on the success of his Four Brothers for Woody Herman’s Second Herd in 1947.

(Giuffre has always been quick to point out that he borrowed the idea of four tenor saxophonists – or in the case his anthem for Herman, three tenors and a baritone – playing in harmonic parallel and without a vibrato from Gene Rowland, his former roommate at North Texas State University).

He was in steady demand for gigs and recording sessions around Los Angeles in reward for a versatility that wasn’t limited to his being equally adept on three horns. On Howard Rumsey and the Lighthouse All-Stars’ 1952 recording Big Girl, Giuffre honked like a rock ‘n roller; at the opposite extreme, on Chant of the Cosmos, with Shorty Rogers three years later, he blew unpitched air through his horn without striking a note.

Such versatility is usually thought of as commendable in a musician, but Giuffre soon talked as though it was an elaborate mask for his insecurities, not as an improviser, but as a man.

“I began to see that I … had been changing my personally all the time he told Hentoff [op.cit.]. If I was playing with a Basie-type group, I’d sound more like them, and the same with a bop unit. I was a little bit of Stan Getz and Miles Davis and Charlie Parker and a thousand different things, depending on who I was with."

In a subsequent interview with Dom Cerulli [“Jimmy Giuffre: I’m a Trio Now, he Says, But I Used to Just be a Boor,” Down Beat, September 19, 1957], Giuffre expanded on this theme in a way that his identity crisis wasn’t just musical:

“With the group [the original Jimmy Giuffre 3, with Jim Hall on guitar and Ralph Pena on bass], I’ve found that since the background follows the soloist, I’ve been shaking off all schools. Before, when I felt I was playing in an original manner, I was actually playing like a whole bunch of guys ....

[Dr. La Violette] helped me break down a lot of the inhibitions I’ve had. He made me realize I could do things my own way. The clarinet helped, too. There was only one way I could play it, in the middle and low registers. My lip’s just not ready to play in the high register. I don’t know if I can do it. I think I can, but we’ll see.

As I began to play the way I felt, it became comfortable. I could hear these voices saying I must play the other way. But it felt so good, I said, “The hell with it.” It has reached the point where a lot of the musical ideas I have might be considered old-fashioned or bluesy. I used to wonder, “What will the cats think? What will Miles think? What will Getz think? And Stan is miles ahead of me in technique. But something strange happened. I began to hear it in the music of the Modern Jazz Quartet, Horace Silver, in Gerry Mulligan, in the Getz group with Bobby Brookmeyer.

They were playing with this mood of the old-fashioned blues. It has a fresh new way about it. It sounds like a modern man playing with the old blues feel.”

Revealing that his first wife accused him of being a boor as a human being while a Lighthouse All-Star – a blinkered individual who demonstrated no interest in the solos of his fellow band members and who would go to his room to practice between sets – Giuffre explained to Cerulli that upon forming the 3, he had “developed an interest in [things other than music] and other human beings.”

Said Jim Hall in the same article: “Jimmy has a theory: Through finding yourself and getting a grip on yourself personally, you can do the same thing musically. There is a direct connection between personal and musical directness.”

Still later, in 1959, Giuffre responded to Lorin Stephens’s question “Why was sound so important to you?” by admitting that “perhaps it comes from childhood/”
“It was sort of like not wanting to go out unless I was dressed properly. I couldn’t release the music inside of me unless it sounded perfect – that was the first consideration – to have beautiful sound quality.”

“But why so important?” Stephens persisted.

“Well, it goes with my personality, I’m sure. I won’t accept the thing that I am an introverted personality, which some have tried to make me out. I have gone through periods, and I won’t say that I have shaken them off completely, but I have gone through periods where I was quiet: I like the pastoral, the country; I like Debussy and Delius – I like peaceful moods.”

Joe Morello - Drummer Extraordinaire

To continue with the Dave Brubeck theme as introduced in the “Seeing Out a Bit” posting, JazzProfiles now turn its attention to the drummer extraordinaire of the DBQ – Joe Morello – for further and deserved elaboration.

To paraphrase Ted Gioia from his chapter entitled The San Francisco Scene in the 1950’s from his seminal West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California 1945-1960:

“At the start of 1956 Brubeck made a personal decision that proved to be a most important change in his group. After three years with the quartet, drummer Joe Dodge decided to leave. Brubeck took a chance by hiring Joe Morello. Actually, little risk accrued from this decision as Morello was a masterful choice as his polished virtuosity and marked creativity made an immediate contribution to the quartet.
Described by some critics as a sort of purgatory for jazz drummers, Morello was to absolutely flourish in the confines of this supposedly ‘unswinging’ ensemble, especially with its high visibility, daring improvisations and later experimentation with odd or unusual time signatures.

All these factors helped launch Morello to a position of preeminence in the world of jazz drumming and with good cause. The leap into the limelight was no concoction of media hype but well-deserved fame for an exceptional musician.” [p.96].
Morello was born in Springfield, MA and after gigging around New York in the early 1950’s and recording with guitarist Tal Farlow and arranger-composer Gil Melle’s group, pianist Marian McPartland brought him into her trio along with bassist Bill Crow where they appeared together at The Hickory House on new York’s famed 52nd street from 1954-56.

In her book, All in Good Time, Marian talks about how the word on the street was all about this “fabulous” young drummer from Springfield. But given how many times she had been disappointed after actually hearing the Mr. Fabulous in question, she remained skeptical. Nevertheless, given her generous heart, Marian decided to give Morello a chance to sit in although when he showed up “… he looked less like a drummer than a student of nuclear physics.”

I really don’t remember what the tune was, and it isn’t too important. Because in a matter of seconds, everyone in the room realized that the guy with the diffident air was a phenomenal drummer. Everyone listened. His precise blending of touch, taste and almost unbelievable technique were a joy to listen to…. I will never forget it. Everyone knew that here was a discovery. [Pp.34-35.]As Gioia concludes:

With the Brubeck quartet, this powerful young workhorse on drums continued to have the same effect on audiences, but now in larger concert halls rather than in small clubs. Soon Morello was no loner a discovery, but a known commodity, emulated by a generation of young percussionists. [p. 98 paraphrased]
When in 1938, the legendary photographer Alfred Stieglitz was presented with one of the only 500 copies of Ansel Adams’ photographic masterpiece – Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail – Stieglitz declared: “I am an idolater of perfect workmanship and this is perfect workmanship.”

I, too, am an idolater of the perfect workmanship that is to be found in the drumming of Joe Morello as primarily exemplified in the many recordings he made with the Dave Brubeck Quartet from 1956-68. Sadly, Joe made too few recordings outside the DBQ including those under his own name.

Joe is a complete musician who listens actively to what the soloist is saying and tries to contribute to it. Equally as important in this context is that Joe can play brushes as well as he can play sticks so he doesn’t mind reverting to these unwieldy clumps of wire to express his drumming something which cannot be said about many contemporary Jazz drummers [some of whom don’t even carry a set of wire brushes in their kit].

Joe is a constantly inventive drummer. Unlike an Art Blakey or an Art Taylor or a Roy Haynes, Joe is not a drummer who played a prepared number of figures over and over again during his drums solos be these over a few bars or over a chorus or open-ended.

Although he played them with authority, Art Blakey repeated the same configurations in every solo he played. He may have combined these drum figures differently, but throughout his long and distinguished career Art’s arsenal essentially remained the same “licks,” “kicks” and “fills”.

While Max Roach and Philly Joe Jones were considerably more sophisticated in their approach to the instrument and had a larger repertoire of invented drum figures that they employed, they were also limited to what they had practiced and memorized when it came time to taking a solo.

Joe is from a school of drummers that includes Buddy Rich and Louie Bellson. They are drummers who, for all intents and purposes, know no limits and can create endlessly on the instrument. [Alan Dawson, Ed Shaughnessy and Dave Weckl are also in this category].

Like a professional athlete, these drummers essentially slow down the pace of things and are able to visualize and/or conceptualize how they are going to build a solo, especially and extended one.

What enables them to do this is their technical command of the instrument, a facility that is garnered over long hours of practice, as well as, the gift of talent.

Bill Evans once remarked to the effect that playing an instrument well was 98% hard work and 2% talent.

According the Eric Nisenson in his work Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest:

Any good Jazz musician has developed from hard work and hard thought, a personal conception. When he improvises successfully on the stand or in the recording studio, it is only after much thought, practice and theory have gone into that conception, and it is that conception which makes him different from other Jazz musicians. Once he knows what he is doing, in other words, he can let himself go and find areas of music through improvisation that he didn’t know existed. Jazz improvisation, therefore, is based on a paradox – that a musician comes to a bandstand so well prepared that he can fly free through instinct and soul and sheer musical bravery into the musical unknown. It is a marriage of both sides of the brain ….” [p, 53].

Morello devoted himself to mastering the drum rudiments [originally 26 but later expanded to 40] through long hours of practice essentially using only the snare drum. Drum rudiments are typically practiced slowly at first to gain control and to be able to initiate them or to alternate them with either hand.

Once these exercises are brought to a level of controlled speed on the snare drum, they can be expanded to include the tom toms that extend from the top of the bass drum shell and those that rest on the floor beside the bass drum through the use of telescoping legs. They can even be interwoven with the use of the bass drum as played with a foot pedal although very, very few drummers are able to execute this feat [no pun intended].

For those interested in the more technical aspects of drum rudiments, a narrative explanation can be found at http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/appendix/drumrudiments/Drumrudiments.html. For the notation of drum rudiments go here -http://www.vicfirth.com/education/rudiments.html or to this site as sponsored by the Percussive Arts Society -http://www.pas.org/Resources/rudiments/rudiments.html.

Joe also spent long hours developing the independence of limbs that enabled him to use all four of these at the same time on different parts of the instrument, sometimes playing against one another in contrasting time signatures.

If a drummer doesn’t have to think about how to play a rhythmic pattern, he can begin to think of what he wants to play, how he wants it to sound [what drums and/or cymbals to employ to produce this sound] and how to “tell his story” either in fragments [four bar, eight bar, 12 bar etc. exchanges with the horns] or in an extended solo.

Just as it is incumbent for a horn soloist to “say something” in their solo, preferably something more than just a linking pf phrases that have been heard many times before as played by other musicians, so too the drummer has to originate ideas that fit the context of the piece that is being performed and which generate a certain interest in and make a contribution to the piece in their own right.

Beyond the customary long drum solo piece that is intended as a highlight of many of the DBQ concerts there are a number of tracks that demonstrate what Marian McPartland described as Morello’s “precise blending of touch, taste and unbelievable technique ….”

For touch and taste, one need only listen to his brushwork accompaniment to alto saxophonist Paul Desmond’s enchanting and stirring solo on These Foolish Things from the Jazz Goes to Junior College Columbia recording [CL 1034/Sony Japan Sleeve CD 9523].

Desmond was a lover of ballads and he would use them as a platform upon which to build lyrically layered and titillating textured solos. He also once described himself as “the world’s slowest alto saxophone player." And while he was slowly weaving his wonderful solos he preferred that the drummer stay out of the way and simply keep time [quietly].

Paul was a major exponent of the style of drumming that the legendary tenor saxophonist Lester Young once described as “a little tinky boom.”

While they initially clashed when Joe first came on board the USS Brubeck bringing all of his firepower to bear, Paul and Joe were later to become close friends.

And although Joe is anything but “a little tinky boom” drummer he can lay down sensitive and unobtrusive brushwork behind a soloist, even helping to achieve new heights in the intensity of their solo as is the case with Desmond’s magnificent exposition on These Foolish Things.

More of Joe’s magnificent brushwork can be heard again behind a Paul Desmond solo, this time on a more up tempo version of Tangerine on the The Dave Brubeck Quartet in Europe album [Columbia CL 1168/SRCS 9529] and this album is also an excellent place to hear Joe as a fabulous colorist with his use of tympani mallets on Nomad and The Golden Horde.

These Jazz Impression albums are also an excellent superb point from which to enjoy his marvelously constructed extended drum solos such as Watusi Drums on The Dave Brubeck Quartet in Europe, his intriquing finger drum solo meant to sound like and Indian “tabla” drum on Calcutta Blues from Jazz Impressions of Eurasia [Columbia CL 1251/CK 48531] and his clattering homage to the noises of Chicago’s on Sounds of the Loop from Jazz Impressions of the USA [Columbia CL 984].

However, Joe may have reached a pinnacle of extended drum solos with the one he recorded on Castilian Drums from The Dave Brubeck Quartet at Carnegie Hall [Sony Jazz 2K61455/Sony Japan 9365-6] performance given at this distinguished hall of the arts in February, 1963.

In 1961, RCA released Joe’s first album under his own name which was fitting entitled It’s About Time [RCA LPM-2486] which finds Joe in the company of a quintet made up of Phil Woods [alto sax], Gary Burton [vibes] John Bunch [piano] and Gene Cherico [bass]. It’s a corker of an album that was subsequently released in CD as Joe Morello [RCA Bluebird 9784-2-RB] and combines the six quintet tracks that made up the original LP with 9 tracks from previously unreleased 1961-62 big band sessions that were arranged and conducted by Manny Albam and which featured a bevy of prominent New York studio players.

Joe’s drumming on these recordings is hard-driving and aggressive and is an example of his ability to play in a cooking, straight-ahead manner which was not always possible in the more formalized and structured setting of the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

I hope that in listening to these recordings and spending time in the company of Morello’s unparalleled talent that they will serve to confirm for you the adage -“God places occasional geniuses in our midst to help inspire the rest of us to greatness.” Joe Morello is one such genius.

Hank Mancini: Jazz Musician

Following service with the Army during WW II, Hank Mancini embarked on a decade-long apprenticeship as a free lance arranger and musician that included work on radio shows, providing the music for little man Billy Barty’s vaudeville act, developing music for choreographer Nick Castle and being a house arranger for Universal-International Pictures for most of the 1950’s.


As Mancini explained: I once referred to the music department at Universal as a salt mine, but it was a good salt mine, and younger composers in film today do not have access to that kind of on-the-job training. Being on staff there I was called upon to do everything. I mean everything. Whenever they needed a piece of source music, music that comes from a source in the picture, such as a band, a jukebox, or a radio, they would call me in. I would do an arrangement on something that was in the Universal library, or I would write a new piece for a jazz band or a Latin band or whatever. I guess in every business you have to learn the routine--in film scoring, the clichés--before you can begin to find your own way.

Aided by his own big band background from his days growing up in West Aliquippa, PA and serving as an assistant to Max Adkins in Pittsburgh, PA, during this stint with Universal, Mancini was tapped to be the lead arranger for the two best-known swing biopics, "The Glenn Miller Story" in 1954 and "The Benny Goodman Story" in 1956.

Little did anyone realize at the time that these apprenticeship and time in the salt mine would ultimately make Mancini one of the most successful film composers of his time. He had a knack for writing catchy tunes which was one of the major keys to his success. And what a success it was as from 1958 and through most of the 1960’s, Mancini so dominated the television and film music scene that everything else seemed to be either an attempt to clone his sound or a reaction against it.

Hank’s breakthrough came though Blake Edwards, a former editor at Universal who remembered Mancini's work on Orson Welles' 1958 film noir, "Touch of Evil," in which Mancini supplemented the canned source music used for the soundtrack with some Jazz inspired music and included Conrad Gozzo on lead trumpet and Shelly Manne on drums to insure that the music was phrased properly.

Edwards was extremely impressed with Mancini’s score for this film and asked him to write music for a Peter Gunn, a new television series he was now directing. Since he was working on a small budget, Edwards asked Mancini to write for a jazz ensemble of 11 players

At a time when many television programs were using uninspired canned or “generic” orchestral backgrounds, Mancini opted to use modern Jazz with innovative Jazz themes accompanying Gunn’s every move. The harmonies fit the mood of the show, which was a key to its success, and they served to lend the character even more of an air of suave sophistication.


Mancini's music, “especially the pounding, menacing sounding theme,” proved almost as popular as the series, and RCA rushed out an album featuring the title song and other pieces. The label first offered Shorty Rogers the recording job, but he refused RCA’s request insisting they use the composer himself. Although television soundtracks had been released on albums before, Music from "Peter Gunn" was a phenomenon. It reached #1 on Billboard's chart, stayed there 10 weeks, and stayed on the list for the next two years. It was so successful, RCA put together a sequel and Mancini received an Emmy nomination for the theme and won two Grammy awards for the first album.

Mancini’s Peter Gunn theme with its hip, bluesy, brass texture and insistent piano-and-bass line became as associated with crime fiction as Monty Norman’s theme for the James Bond films was to become associated with spy films.


These two albums – The Music from Peter Gunn and More Music from Peter Gunn contain a wealth of small group and big band Jazz that is often overlooked either because of their commercial success at the time or because they were overshadowed by the many success of Mancini’s later career.


I thought it might be fun to remind readers of Jazz Profiles about this music or make it available through this review to listeners that may be new to it.

In talking with trumpeter Pete Candoli many years later, he shared the view that “In all the years of studio dates that I worked on in Hollywood, I’ve never enjoyed doing anything more. The musicianship on these dates was first-rate and Hank’s scores were always beautifully written and fun to play on.”


Vibist Victor Feldman also recalled these dates with fondness and affection: “These were some of my earliest studio recording dates and it was a thrill to be around such an incredibly talented bunch of musicians. Hank couldn’t have been nicer and the themes and ‘charts’ [arrangements] were so wonderfully crafted and just a blast to play.”


The first of these albums [the two have now been combined into one CD] highlights Mancini’s skill in employing an endless variety of orchestral voicing in making 11 musicians sound like a full big band. With the success of the initial album, RCA granted Hank a budget for a full orchestra and the sound he achieves on these tracks is even more rewarding.

Brassy trombones, either as soloists or in a trombone choir, chords played in the background by a “block chord” combination of vibes-piano-guitar as made famous by the George Shearing Quintet, descending figures being howled out through a bevy of French Horns, bass trombones blatting pedal tones [with or without mutes], “Shout Choruses” on tunes like Fall Out, Timothy,” and Blue Steel that would rival anything ever written by any big band arranger past or present, flute choirs phrased in unison with piccolos “on top” and the rarely heard bass flute [where else?] on the bottom, marimbas, a solo feature that highlights the brushwork of drummer iconic studio drummer Shelly Manne, beautiful ballads in the form of Dreamland, Joanna, Blues for Mother and A Quiet Gass – it’s all here; beautifully and consummately played by a group of world class musicians that populated the Hollywood Studios during the day and its many Jazz clubs at night.

In the music from Peter Gunn, Hank Mancini has given us a feast for the ages; do yourself a favor and partake.

With the 70 anniversary of Benny Goodman's famed Carnegie Hall Concert just a few days away, the editorial staff of JazzProfiles thought the following commemorative article might be of interest to its readers.

When Carnegie Hall Swung
Benny Goodman headlined and Jess Stacy stole the show
By TOM NOLAN

January 12, 2008; The Wall Street Journal

"Sunday evening, January 16, 1938: Benny Goodman and his Swing Orchestra" read the placard 70 years ago in front of New York City's most prestigious classical-music venue. "The First Swing Concert in the History of Carnegie Hall."
Headlining this sanctum sanctorum must have seemed the only thing that Goodman, the 28-year-old, Chicago-born clarinet player, big-band leader and "king of swing," might then do to top a phenomenal 2½-year ride to the peak of the popular-music world. New York seemed to agree. Carnegie Hall sold out at once: all 3,900 seats.
At 8:45 p.m. that Sunday night, a nervous Goodman, in white tie and black tailcoat, launched the band into the evening's first number: "Don't Be That Way." The tempo was restrained, the orchestra tentative, the soloists polite. But 2½ minutes into the tune, drummer Gene Krupa jolted the ensemble to life with an explosive two-bar break. The event would need more such jolts. This "definitive program of swing music" came saddled with program elements that kept the concert out of step for its first half-hour.
A "20 years of jazz" segment and a quarter-hour "jam session" with guest players from the Count Basie and Duke Ellington orchestras proved wearying. Not until Goodman's trio and quartet -- specialty combos featuring first the impeccably brilliant pianist Teddy Wilson and then the rhythmically enthusiastic vibraphonist Lionel Hampton -- took the stage did the concert gain traction.
Goodman was at his best in small-group settings, where his melodic ease, great technique and strong sense of swing were on full display. The trio's "Body and Soul" and the quartet's "The Man I Love" and "Avalon" charmed the audience -- and the quartet's five-minute upper-tempo "I Got Rhythm" positively sizzled.
After intermission, the orchestra too was in fine form, demonstrating, for the Carnegie Hall crowd, just what this swing-era fuss was all about.
"Bei Mir Bist Du Schon" had the concert audience clapping in time (if unhiply on the wrong beat); and at the close of the band's euphoric performance of "Swingtime in the Rockies," the Carnegie crowd let out a roar worthy of Harlem's Savoy Ballroom. Then Goodman called again on his trio and quartet, for three more numbers.
It was good pacing to go from combo to big-band and back, but it also seemed emblematic of a schism that ran through the jazz world of the late 1930s: the split between young swing-music idolizers, hooked on the big bands' riffs, and an earlier generation of traditionalists who felt "true jazz" was played only by small groups of collectively improvising players.
This concert's earlier "history of jazz" segment paid homage to the "classic" jazz of the '20s; its most effective moment, for many, was when Bobby Hackett, a 22-year-old cornet player from Rhode Island, re-created the late Iowa cornetist Bix Beiderbecke's melancholy 1927 version of "I'm Comin' Virginia."
Beiderbecke had died an alcoholic's death in New York in 1931. A generation of jazzmen were haunted by his lyrical sound. Several of the men on stage, including Goodman, had played with Bix back in the day. Jess Stacy, the Goodman orchestra's outstanding pianist, had his style shaped through crucial exposure to Beiderbecke in 1923, in Davenport, Iowa, when Bix came aboard the riverboat an 18-year-old Stacy worked on.
"He played the pian-a," Stacy told pianist Marian McPartland decades later on her NPR program "Piano Jazz," "and he played [the type of] harmony like [he had], you know, [in his own] 'In a Mist'?" Stacy was referring to Beiderbecke's Debussy-like composition for keyboard. Beiderbecke had steeped himself in the sounds of such modern-classicists as Ravel, Elgar and MacDowell. "He played 'Clarinet Marmalade,' with that type harmony. Back in my head, I'd known that that was possible. But I didn't know how to do it, you know? But when I heard him do it -- it just bowled me over."
Bix, with his relaxed manner and modernist harmonies, seemed, for some, the ghost at the banquet of this swing-music concert, with his implied reproach: Mine was the path you might have taken. But toward the end of this longish evening, Benny Goodman found a way to merge these opposing visions of jazz via "Sing Sing Sing" -- the most raucous and elaborate of his big band's signature items, a "killer-diller" that had evolved into an epic.
The number began with a vengeance, as Krupa beat a tattoo beneath the snarling brass and strutting reeds. Riff patterns unfolded smoothly, and then Goodman's clarinet emerged, full of subtle spirit and insinuation. "Sing Sing Sing" rolled on and on -- through a false ending and a surprise return, a raucous Harry James trumpet solo, and three rhythmic ad-lib choruses by Benny that conjured the intimacy of an after-hours session even as they worked their way up to a tentative high C.
And then, after 9½ minutes, Goodman, in true jam-session fashion, turned "Sing Sing Sing" over to Stacy, who'd never before been featured on this number: "Take it, Jess."
The pianist began to unfurl a long, driving, ruminative meditation on "an old A-minor chord" -- a thoughtful exploration that would still sound fresh 70 years later. "I used to listen to records every night," Stacy told McPartland. "I listened to a lot of Ravel; I listened to Debussy and MacDowell. If you'll notice, in that chorus a little MacDowell crept in there." His extraordinary three-chorus, two-minute solo, which stretched from steamboat-stride to barely audible Impressionist ripples, induced what one witness called "a magical stillness." At last the band, booted by Krupa, returned for a thrilling half-chorus finale.
Benny Goodman's one-night stand at Carnegie Hall faded into the mists of memory -- until 1950, when acetate recordings of the event were issued on an LP that became one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time. An eventual CD version, "Benny Goodman: Live at Carnegie Hall" (Columbia), introduced still younger listeners to the concert that began as a press agent's brainstorm and turned into legend. Most all who heard the recording (including Goodman) thought Stacy stole the show with his two-minute soliloquy -- a solo seeded with the subtle phrasings and harmonic shadings that the pianist first encountered so long before, when a 20-year-old cornet player in Davenport came aboard the riverboat to play the piano.
Mr. Nolan is editor of "The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Detective," by Ross Macdonald (Crippen &Landru).