Before he became a sizzling Jazz-Rock Fusion superstar for Warner Bros. and Columbia Records during the 1970s [and beyond], pianist-composer Herbie Hancock made seven LPs under his own name for Blue Note Records in the 1960s.
A few of these albums were hugely successful, especially for someone like Herbie, who during the 1960s was still primarily a Jazz musician and who was largely unknown to the greater public.
That lack of recognition would begin to change almost immediately with Herbie’s first LP for Blue Note – Takin’ Off - which contained the commercial hit tune – Watermelon Man. [conguero/band leader Mongo Santamaria also recorded a very successful version of the song].
The year was 1962, which was also a seminal year for Herbie as he joined the Miles Davis quintet along with Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Ron Carter on bassist and drummer Tony Williams. This was to be Miles’ last “classic” Jazz quintet before he moved on to add more Rock ‘n Roll elements to his music along with a host of electronic instruments as these made their appearance in the late 1960s.
Herbie’s additional Blue Note LP’s were to all have at least one horn fronting a rhythm section, with one exception, an album he recorded in August 1963 that almost went unnoticed.
Entitled Inventions and Dimensions, it is a piano-bass-drums trio album although Osvaldo “Chihuahua” Martinez plays Latin percussion on all but one track.
The album marked the first time that Herbie had ever worked with bassist Paul Chambers and, for many of us, it was the first chance to hear Willie Bobo play a Jazz drum kit. Throughout most of his career, Willie was primarily known as a timbales player and Latin percussionist
As Nat Hentoff explains in his liner notes to the original LP, Inventions and Dimensions gets it title
“… [from the fact that it] reflects Hancock's increasing preoccupation with releasing himself from what he terms the customary jazz ‘assumptions.’ Usually, he explains, ‘you assume there'll be chords on which to base your improvisations and you assume most of the time that the playing will be in 4/4 and that the bass will automatically walk. On this date, I told the musicians not to assume anything except for a few rules I set for each piece, and every time those rules were different. As it happened, Paul Chambers did often play a walking or a recurring rhythm, but that was because he wanted to play that way. I didn't suggest it, and he could have done whatever he wanted. There were no specific chord change on any of the tunes except Mimosa, nor did any of the tunes have a melody to begin with.’”
The musical departure inherent in this last sentence is what caught my ear when I first heard the album.
But the music on this recording is no exercise in what came to be known as Free Jazz in the sense of doing away with all musical rules and conventions.
According to Bob Belden in his insert notes Herbie Hancock: The Complete Blue Note Sixties Sessions
“On August 30, 1963, Herbie went to Englewood Cliffs to record another Blue Note album. Instead of the typical Blue Note dates he was creating, Herbie sought to do something different, something that reflected what he felt about his playing at the time. Since he had been on the road steadily since May, he may not have had enough time to write complex new material. His associations with more open musicians may have planted the seed of adventure, but the confidence of being Miles Davis's pianist had a lot to do with Herbie's next album.”
To my ears, what is so compelling about this recording is best exemplified in the track entitled A Jump Ahead, which we have used as the soundtrack to the video tribute to Herbie’s Blue Note years located at the end of this piece.
As Herbie denotes above in the Nat Hentoff quotation, A Jump Ahead does not have a conventional melody or theme.
Instead, the tune gets its structure from a four-bar ostinato played by bassist Paul Chambers.
An ostinato is a short melody pattern that is constantly repeated in the same part at the same pitch.
Nat Hentoff’s notes contain this further elabaoration:
“The rule which Hancock set for A Jump Ahead was for Paul Chambers to select an introductory four-bar pedal tone. ‘Then there come sixteen bars of time,’ Hancock points out, ‘in which what I improvise is based on the pedal tone Paul played during the first four bars. Another four-bar break follows, for which Paul selects another note. I never knew what Paul would play, and that's how this one got titled. He was always a jump ahead. Incidentally, since any one note can be related to all twelve tones on the keyboard, I had complete freedom to utilize Paul's pedal notes any way I wanted to. Those notes acted as a note in a chord, but I formed the chords in my own way. Again, there was no preconceived melody, and the harmony came from the notes Paul chose.’”
Structurally, A Jump Ahead is what may be referred to as tonal music.
And in tonal music, a pedal tone is a sustained tone, played typically in the bass. Sometimes called a pedal point, a pedal tone is a non-chord tone.
The term “pedal tone” comes from the organ’s ability to sustain a note indefinitely using the pedal keyboard which is played by the feet; as such, the organist can hold down a pedal point for lengthy periods while both hands perform higher-register music on the manual keyboards.
In effect, Chambers acts like the organ pedal keyboard while Herbie plays over it using both hands on the piano keyboard.
One other point that may be of interest is Willie Bobo’s use of very thick/heavy drumsticks that really serve to crackle & pop the snare drum and crash the cymbals. Such large sticks take great control and using them masterfully,Willie generates tremendous swing on this six-and-a-half minute cut.
Paul’s four-bar ostinato can be heard at the outset of the track, again at 18 seconds, and again at 35 and 53 seconds and so on.
Each time it is followed by a 16-bar improvisation that Herbie conceives based on the pedal tone that Paul selects.
In effect, A Jump Ahead is the Jazz equivalent of the geometric head-start in which one never catches-up.
To my ears, Herbie’s solo really hits its stride on A Jump Ahead at around the 2:42 mark [which Willie conveniently underscores with a cymbal crash!] and just soars thereafter.
It’s hard to forget the first time I heard pianist Benny Green beboppin’ and testifyin’ as both he and the circumstances surrounding the experience made a lasting impression on me.
The date was January 16, 1994. a Sunday evening in Southern California. I had moved to San Francisco a couple of years, earlier.
Since I had business meetings scheduled in Los Angeles for most of the week of January 17th that year, I decided to fly into Burbank, CA where my folks lived and have dinner with them Sunday night in order to get an early start on Monday.
My parents generally liked to watch TV following dinner, so I rolled my well-stuffed tummy into the rental car and took the Hollywood Freeway over to Catalina’s Bar & Grill, which was then located just up the street from the original Shelly’s Manne Hole.
I had no idea who was playing at Catalina’s. My plan was to catch the first set along with an after-dinner drink and then get back to my hotel for a good night’s sleep prior to the advent of the workweek.
A lot had changed since the closing of Shelly’s club in the early 70’s including the disappearance of any and all free parking on the surrounding streets.
After virtually spending my young, adulthood in Hollywood, I still knew my way around and I was able to find a free parking spot at the nearby Ivar Theater.
As I walked up to the club, the name “Benny Green” was on the marquee. The only Jazz musician I knew by that name was “Bennie Green,” a trombonist. I thought he had passed away in the late 1970’s [1923-1977].
Upon entering, the maitre d’ asked me if I had a reservation, and when I said I didn’t he informed me that I was lucky - there was still a seat at the bar.
When I looked out at the seating in the club, I saw what he meant by “lucky:” the placed was packed.
Fortunately, the one remaining seat at the bar offered a clear view of the bandstand [everyone else seated at the bar had a clear view into one another’s eyes, if you know what I mean].
I placed my order with the barkeep and while he was filling it I asked him who was performing that night.
He said: “You are in luck: [the second time within 5 minutes that someone had used that word with me] pianist Benny Green, with Christian McBride and Kenny Washington.”
It took me a minute to place them, but I had remembered hearing both Benny and drummer Kenny Washington on tenor saxophonist Ralph Moore’s Images CD [Landmark LCD-1520-2] which was recorded in 1989.
You can hear a cut from this album as Ralph’s version of Elmo Hope’s One Second, Please forms the soundtrack to the following tribute to Jazz drumming. Benny’s solo begins at 2:32 minutes and both he and Ralph trade 8-bar solos with Kenny Washington starting at 3:27. Peter Washington is on bass.
“Christian McBride,” Benny’s bassist that night, was a name that was new to me.
Vague recollections and newness were soon to be replaced by a smile of recognition when the music commenced.
Benny, Christian and Kenny were in fine form that night, so much so that I forgot to drink my wine during the first set, finished it during intermission and had a coffee while staying for the second show.
To use a particularly apt phrase given what was to come later that night, Benny and the Boys blew-the-place-down; it was some of the most inspiring and swinging Jazz that I had heard in years.
Benny plays in a style that is marked by carefree exuberance and daring. At the same time, he exhibits phenomenal technical precision.
There’s plenty of Bud Powell, Horace Silver and Walter Bishop, Jr. on display, so in this regard, much of what he plays is “in the tradition,” yet, he puts it together in such a way that he makes it sound original.
And he swings, oh does he swing; thus never forgetting the first rule of Jazz.
After the set concluded, I made my way up toward the bandstand to express my appreciation to Benny, but soon concluded that this was not a good move because judging from the mob scene around him it seemed that every one in the club had the same idea.
Instead, I “talked drums” with Kenny Washington who was taking his cymbals down and putting them in their carrying-case. “You play?” he asked. “Did” I responded before telling him how much his playing reminded me of Philly Joe Jones to which he responded with a knowing smile.
Is there a better joy in Life than the first-hand experience of well-played Jazz in the intimate surroundings of a Jazz club?
With this thought in mind, out the door I went, past Shelly Manne’s old club [talk about many first-hand Jazz listening experiences when the World was young!], got in my rental car and headed-off to my hotel.
For reasons of convenience, I had chosen one across from the Burbank [CA] airport which was a relatively quick drive from Catalina’s in Hollywood.
I happily settled into with the music still playing in my mind and fell off to sleep almost instantly.
I was to be lucky again for a third time.
At 4:30 AM, I was awakened by sound that made me think that I had fallen asleep inside KW’s bass drum while he was dropping “bombs” with it.
The infamous January 17, 1994 earthquake had struck that morning and a very large portion of the greater Los Angeles area and the San Fernando Valley in north west portion of that county was particularly hard-hit by it.
Many of my business meetings for that week were scheduled in cities heavily affected by what was later referred to as The Northridge Quake of 1994.
I spent most of that morning rescheduling these and, fortunate once again given the severe interruptions in the flight schedule caused by the jolt, I was able to catch an afternoon flight home to the Bay area.
Shortly after this incident, I learned that pianist Benny Green was born and raised in Berkeley, CA, a part of this very same “Bay area” when I read in a local newspaper that Berkeley’s [a suburb east of San Francisco, CA] own “Benny Green … would be appearing for a week with bassist Ray Brown trio featuring Jeff Hamilton on drums at Yoshi’s Jazz Club and Sushi Bar.”
What an irresistible combination!
Although the original Yoshi’s was located in a converted home in a residential district, because of the refurbished premise’s proximity to a business zone, the club had managed to get a commercial license which enabled it to offer food and entertainment.
So off I went one rainy Spring evening, taking the BayBridge [US Highway 101] east from my downtown San Francisco flat, connecting to Interstate 80 east, then to California State Highway 24 toward Berkeley and Walnut Creek before exiting at Claremont Avenue.
All of these meanderings were necessary just to cover a mere 14 miles!
Set back from the street with a most unassuming entrance and hardly no parking of its own, Yoshi’s had the good sense to be within walking distance of the Dryer’s Grand Ice Cream factory’s parking lot on College Avenue. And College Avenue was also the home of one of the locations of Barney’s Gourmet Hamburgers.
With the money saved from the Free Parking, I filled my tummy with one of Barney’s best and headed over to catch the 8:00 PM set and more of Benny Green’s ferociously swinging piano. Once again, although I hadn’t planned to, Benny, Ray and Jeff played so well that night that I stayed for the second and final set.
In the fall of 1994, Benny was back at Yoshi’s, but this time he brought in his own trio comprised again of Christian McBride [b] and Kenny Washington. I was there often and got to chat with Benny during the breaks. I told him my earthquake story; Kenny Washington and I also “talked more drums.”
As you can hear in the soundtrack to the following video, Benny writes catchy tunes. This one is entitled Nice Pants in which Benny and the trio are accompanied by a horn section made up of Byron Stripling [tp], John Clark [Fr.H], Delfayo Marsalis [tb], Herb Besson [tuba], Jerry Dodgion [as/fl] and Gary Smulyan [bs]. Benny and Bob Belden did the horn arrangement.
In addition to Benny funky solo, some highlights in the music to the following video include: Christian playing in unison with Benny’s left hand in the Call and Response sequence, first with the piano at 0:58 seconds and then with the horns at 1:20 minutes, KW launching into a shuffle beat when Benny begins his solo at 1:42 minutes and the long quotation from Work Song beginning at 3:51 of Christian’s solo.
For the next few years, Benny continued to appear at the original Yoshi’s with Ray Brown and his own trio, although in each case, Gregory Hutchinson replaced Jeff Hamilton in the drum chair.
And while living in San Francisco is always fraught with feeling a few tremors, I am delighted to report that the geological shaking was minimal during this period of time.
Here’s more about the formative years in and influences on Benny Green’s career from Stanley Crouch’s insert notes to Benny’s Prelude CD [Criss Cross 1038].
“'I began studying with a teacher named Carl Andrews, who was instructing me in jazz harmony. I studied with him for about two years.' Green would try to get in jam sessions and play jazz whenever he could. 'I would go hear pianists Bill Bell and Ed Kelly, who taught me a lot at that time. Dick Whittington was also a big help and Smith Dobson gave me some important pointers. I was starting to understand the music much better and could see how much more is needed to learn.'
At about sixteen, Green was hired by a singer named Faye Carroll and began performing with her frequently. He learned a lot while with the singer because she gave him a lot of room top/ay, which is how jazz musicians really develop their skills. No matter how many classes they might take or how many improvisations they might memorize or techniques they might work out, unless those materials are brought to the level of performance function, they are largely academic. It is within the sweating demands of the moment, when everything is in motion and every decision has to count, that the jazz player must be able to create musical logic expressive of the emotional qualities that define the individual sensibility. Aware of that, Green would sit in with the best musicians he could, which he did with trumpeter Eddie Henderson after meeting him in San Francisco.
'I sat in with Eddie whenever it was possible, and a few months later he called me to work with him. He was working with a tenor player named Hadley Calliman. Both of them encouraged me a lot. I learned so much being around Eddie. He played me tapes of live gigs with Herbie Hancock that were fascinating to me because of the way the music moved through so many forms, and how one performance could slide through many colors. It was very inspirational and added to what I was already trying to learn. My father had turned me on to Art Tatum, Bud Powell, and Monk. I was trying to get a scope of all the eras, so I was listening to a lot of musicians, particularly Red Garland, Tommy Flanagan, Wynton Kelly, Herbie Hancock, and McCoy Tyner.'
By the time Green got out of high school, he was doing trio jobs of his own, which allowed him to work at making the things he was listening to and discovering function within his own improvisational efforts. He was listening to Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers when they would come to town and he was noticing that there was something different going on in the music of the musicians who were from New York. He could hear a more powerful level of swinging, a deeper groove, a more substantial grasp of rhythmic components that fuel the phrasing of jazz. He knew he had to move east. 'I had that on my mind for the last few months that I was in California, regardless of what I was doing. I worked for those months with a band led by the bassist Chuck Israels, which was about twelve pieces. Then I got to play with Joe Henderson for one night before I left. I knew if I was going to be serious about this music, I had to go where the sound I was hearing from the musicians in New York was coming from. I knew I was missing a lot being in California. There was a focus to swinging I heard coming from New York, which was more definite, more disciplined. In the Bay Area, a lot of the musicians played with a very loose feeling. So I moved to New York when I was nineteen, in 1982.'
Shortly after Green got to New York, he heard Walter Bishop with Junior Cook
and Bill Hardman. He approached Bishop about studying with him and became a student of the older pianist, who helped him a great deal. 'He showed me a lot about comping because I was impressed by the big sound he got out of the instrument.' Bishop was the link to Bud Powell and he was willing to show Green how he voiced his chords. But, most importantly, Bishop encouraged Green to look for his own music, not just emulate somebody else. 'Walter said that there are three stages of development: imitation, emulation, innovation. Not to say that a musician gets to all three, but those are the logical stages of development. He got me to think about the extensions of the tradition of the piano that have come since Bud Powell'.
At that time Walter Davis and John Hicks also gave Green valuable instructions. Bishop introduced Green to alto saxophonist Bobby Watson, who eventually hired the pianist. While working with Watson, he met pianist James Williams, who also encouraged him to work on his music and stick with it. Williams' encouragement was in line with the assistance and inspiration the young pianist had received from Mulgrew Miller, whom he had heard with Woody Shaw just before leaving the Bay Area. Green was strongly impressed by the sense of tradition and the personal approach within Miller's piano work. Miller also pointed him in productive directions by giving him specific and useful advice. Johnny O’Neil was also very helpful. O'Neil had just joined Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and was willing to share his knowledge with Green. 'I had heard Donald Brown with Art when the band recorded live in San Francisco. Hearing such a fresh voice was enlightening. I'm grateful to Donald, Mulgrew and James for being at once so inspirational and supportive.'
Green freelanced around New York for about a year, then was called to audition for Betty Carter, who had heard him on a job on Long Island. Green started working with the singer in April of 1983 and remained in her group a few weeks short of four years. 'Betty is a great musician and you learn from her in every possible way. She is a master of pacing. She understands rhythm and tempo and how they fit with harmony and melody perfectly. And most of all Betty Carter swings* Her gig is very challenging because she has very precise things she wants to achieve but she is also very spontaneous. She also helps to heighten her musicians' awareness of their role within an ensemble. That was a very good job for me and it is a very good job for any young musician. Like Art Blakey because she's always finding young musicians, giving them work, teaching them a lot of music, and encouraging them to dedicate themselves. Betty Carter is a great musician and a great person.'
In April of 1987, Green left the singer's band for the Jazz Messengers. 'Playing with Art Blakey has been, by far, the greatest experience of my life. I never have before and I'm sure I never will again come in contact with a greater musical spirit. When Art comes on the bandstand, whatever else is going on in life is forgotten and the music takes over. Art truly practices what he preaches in washing away the dust of every day life with music. And this is certainly the musician's job. As I mature, I hope to come closer to being able to achieve this on my own.'
For his first time out, Benny Green has put together a group of players that have come to New York from such different places that it is obvious how wide the message of jazz still stretches. Terence Blanchard is from New Orleans, Javon Jackson is from Denver, Peter Washington is from Los Angeles, and Tony Reedus is from Memphis. Green chose each of them because he wanted to have a date of players from his age group and musicians who were inspirations to him. Each of the young men is gathering a list of credits and is working at his craft, doing the homework that is so obvious in what they play as they move through the program. The concerns heard in the thoughts and the playing of the leader are sustained in the work of the rest of the players, which makes for a date that shows, again, just how much dedication and how much courage these young people have. They are far from conventional in that they have chosen the path of greatest resistance and are obviously intent on adding their artistic signatures to the declaration of musical democracy that is jazz. Such young people are of priceless importance, and pianist Benny Green should be commended for putting together such a solid ensemble and for making such an honest statement on his first date as a leader.”
Stanley Crouch (N.Y.C., 1988)
Here’s another sampling of Benny’s piano work on Bopag’in, the Jimmy Heath tune that forms the audio track on a tribute to vibist Milt Jackson.
While visiting the blog, we thought you might like to look at and listen to something beautiful. The music is pianist Vince Guaraldi's Theme to Grace which he performs with Tom Beeson on bass and Lee Charlton on drums along with the St. Paul's Church of San Rafael Choir directed by Barret Mineah. The music was recorded in performance on May 21, 1965 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, CA.
A few months before his work at Grace Cathedral, Vince recorded the soundtrack tunes for the Peanuts television show for which he was to become internationally famous.
Vince died of a heart attack in 1976; he was only 47.
One of my most enduringly favorite albums is Little Band – Big Jazz: Conte Candoli All Stars.
It was recorded on February 3, 1960 and in addition to a rhythm section of Vince Guaraldi [p], Leroy Vinnegar [b] and Stan Levey [d], Conte’s trumpetis joined by Buddy Collette on tenor saxophone.
I bought the album for $1.98 [+tax] off a rack that was located near a checkout stand at a super market.
Produced by Crown Records [CLP 5162], it is made up of six compositions penned and arranged by Conte [Guaraldi co-authored two tunes].
I gather from talking about the recording with Conte, that this was a hastily put-together session. Yet, as you can hear from the audio track that accompanies the following video, the music is warm sounding and wonderfully appealing.
Aside from the Pacific Jazz recordings that he made with The Original Chico Hamilton Quintet in the mid-1950s, on which he plays alto saxophone, flute and clarinet, this LP was really my first exposure to Buddy Collette’s playing in a more conventional small group setting [Hamilton group included a cello and a guitar in addition to Collette woodwinds and reeds].
It was also the first time that I heard Buddy play tenor saxophone. I was quite taken with his tenor style which was somewhat different than the Lester Young- influenced sound of tenor saxophonists Bob Cooper, Bill Perkins, Bill Holman and Richie Kamuca or what came to be known as the “hard bop” tenor tone of Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon and Hank Mobley. Buddy played with a more “legit” tone [fuller, richer, sonorous] that was less hollow sounding than the former group and less harsher sounding than the latter.
Ironically, I was to soon hear quite a bit more of Buddy on tenor, as well as, on alto sax, flute and clarinet, because shortly after I purchased the Crown LP, he began appearing regularly at Jazz City with his own quintet with Gerald Wilson [tp], Al Viola [g], Wilfred Meadowbrooks [b] and Earl Palmer [d].
As is recounted in the excerpt below which is taken from Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles an oral history project which has also been published by the University of California Press, Buddy was very instrumental in the integration of Local 767 [black] into Local 47 [white] of the AFL-CIO American Federation of Musicians.
Over the years, Buddy became a fixture at the Vine StreetHollywood office of Local 47. He would drop into rehearsals at one of the halls available there for this purpose, lead and perform with his own group to raise money for the union’s Trust Fund [whose mission is to provide live instrumental programs of high quality as a free, public service] and serve the organization in various administrative capacities.
Buddy was especially generous with his time in encouraging young musicians by conducting clinics at local highs schools and teaching on the faculties of a number of prominent, Los Angeles area colleges and universities.
Not surprisingly, Buddy’s music always reflected his warm personality and dignified bearing.
And as a studio musician, Buddy led by example: he showed up on time, was courteous to all around him and just “nailed’ whatever he was playing on whatever instrument.
The first time I met him, I had just passed the test and audition to gain my musicians’ union card and was exiting the building along with two friends who had done the same.
Buddy saw us coming, held the door open and, guessing at the reason for our high spirits said to us as we passed him, “Be good to the music, now.”
When these same friends and I went to see him perform with his quintet later that year at JazzCity, he recognized us, came back to our table, and honored our request to write out the “changes” for us to his tune Soft Touch.
My life would subsequently move in different directions that took me away from performing music, but some 25-years later I would be back at the union, this time to talk with its leadership about health and welfare benefits.
Buddy was there and when the meeting was over he came up to me and asked if I was still playing!
After visiting for a while with Buddy, I went home and dug out my copy of Little Band – Big Jazz: Conte Candoli All Stars.
While it played on the turntable [no CDs yet], I remember thinking how timeless the music wasin terms of its gentle swing, the easy flow of its melodies and its well-constructed solos. The whole album just comes together almost effortlessly.
I’ll bet that Buddy presence had a lot to do with this: he was always “…good to the music.”
What follows are some of Peter Jacobson’s insert notes to Buddy’s Studio West album with vocalist Irene Krall [reissued on CD as V.S.O.P. #104], the aforementioned selections from Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles[pp. 154-159] describing Buddy's involvement with the amalgamation of Locals 767 & 47, and a video tribute to Conte Candoli which features another cut from Little Band – Big Jazz: Conte Candoli All Stars as its soundtrack [Mambo Diane].
“William Marcell Collette, better known as Buddy Collette, has been one of the most active reed men on the West Coast since World War II. Born in Los Angeles, August 6, 1921, he studied piano before turning to clarinet and saxophone in high school. Since then he has been one of the most accomplished multi-instrumentalists both in jazz and the Hollywood studios, displaying equal facility and remarkable technique on tenor and alto saxophone, flute and clarinet. This versatility was the result of an insatiable curiosity and constant drive to expand his musical horizons and abilities. He has studied at the Los Angeles Conservatory, the California Academy of Music, the American Operatic Laboratory and under many leading teachers including Merle Johnston, Martin Ruderman, Sorcorso Pirolo and Franklyn Marks. In addition to this impressive background, he has paid his dues in the many clubs and after hours joints on Central Avenue, on the road and in the Hollywood and Western Ave. jazz clubs of the fifties and sixties.
Beginning in the late 30's, Buddy Collette worked with various bands in and around Central Ave. He played with the Woodman Brothers, Cee Pee Johnson, Les Hite, among others, before joining the Naval Reserve in 1942. After the war, he helped organize a group with Charles Mingus and Lucky Thompson which never recorded. For the next few years, Buddy Collette undertook the rigorous and thorough musical training mentioned above, while backing up the Treniers and Louis Jordan, and performing with Gerald Wilson and Benny Carter, to name a few.
In 1950, he began working with the studio orchestra of Jerry Fielding which performed on the Grouch Marx show, remaining there until 1960. In 1956 he had joined Chico Hamilton in the first incarnation of the Chico Hamilton Quintet. Shortly thereafter, he formed his own band which, with personnel changes, he has kept together over many years, well into the late 1960's. Since the late 1950's Buddy Collette has been in great demand in the recording studios for sound track work and television shows. He has appeared on numerous recordings under his own name, with Chico Hamilton, Jimmy Giuffre, Barney Kessel, Red Norvo, Quincy Jones, Red Callender, and many others.”
“With gigs in Hollywood, jams on Central Avenue, and classes at schools such as the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, Buddy started meeting more musicians from Local 47, the white union, who were also unhappy with segregated locals.
We thought about it, especially a bunch of the guys who had been in the service, and Mingus, who hadn't been in the military. We kept thinking, "Man, we'll never make it with two unions, because we're getting the leftovers." All the calls came to 47. Maybe now and then they might want a black band for a sideline call, where the music had been recorded and they wanted to show the black group. You'd wind up making a hundred dollars, maybe. That was a lot of money, but that may not happen for another year or two, while at Local 47 that was happening all the time. I knew it was because I was around those guys. I'd go to The Jack Smith Show with Barney Kessel and some other guys at other shows. A bunch of those guys would be doing this all the time, working those radio shows and things. They'd be pulling down maybe two or three hundred dollars a week. But it wasn't going to get better, I felt, with the two unions. That was a real shaft.
The actual beginning of the amalgamation, I'll give Mingus credit for that. He was always fighting the battle of the racial thing. He got a job with Billy Eckstine at the Million Dollar Theatre on Broadway. Mingus was the only nonwhite or black in the band. Since Billy Eckstine was a black leader, he figured, "Why couldn't there be a few blacks in there?" Mingus was the only one, and he let them know that he didn't like it. And he could be tough on you. Everybody in the band had to hear it every day: "You guys are prejudiced! You should have some more blacks. You could hire Buddy Collette there." So my name was being tossed around every day until the guys even hated me without knowing me!
I was finally invited down and I was curious about the band. We wanted to meet people that understood what we were talking about: the unions getting together, people getting together, stopping all this. I met their flutist, Julie Kinsler, who supported the idea and drummer Milt Holland. Milt said, "Man, we've been wanting to do this, too. I know about six or eight people that think just the way you guys do. We can get together and start meetings or something." Mingus and I lit up, because that was the first time we heard anybody who was really excited about it. The next day Mingus and I met with a few of the guys who felt the same way. They wanted to call a big meeting. I said, "Well, I don't think we should call a meeting, because the guys that I know, they don't like meetings too much." Instead, most of us had been studying for a few years and I said that we need a thing where we can learn the music, possibly like a symphony rehearsal orchestra together. Milt said, "If that's what you want, that's easy. I know all the people from that world." That was the beginning of the Community Symphony Orchestra.
We also wanted to make sure more blacks were placed in different circuits, because at that time we had only worked clubs. If we did play the Orpheum Theatre or the Million Dollar, it was in a black band or when an all-black show would be there. But the other shows, if they'd need twenty musicians, then blacks wouldn't get the call at all, no matter how good you were. It just didn't happen. So that was the idea: can we show that it can work? So Milt said, "Okay, get as many people as you can, then we'll fill in." Milt was beautiful, is still beautiful. So I got Bill Green, me, Britt Woodman, Jimmy Cheatham, John Ewing, Red Callen-der, and another little kid named James McCullough. That wasn't a big number, but those were the only people that we could say were in the right direction, who had probably enough behind them to take advantage of this thing and who were also interested in playing this kind of music. Mingus wasn't there. Didn't want to do symphony music. He always wanted to do his own stuff. He was with us in a way, but it wasn't his world.
So we scheduled a rehearsal and the excitement started mounting. People were on the phones trying to get people who just wanted to be there. "Interracial symphony? Let's do that." We got the top clarinetists and flutists. Later on we got Arthur Cleghorn, who was one of the finest flutists at that time. Joe Eger was a great French horn player. John Graas was classical, and into jazz with the French horn. A lot of enthusiasm. Some would approach our rehearsal like it was one they were getting paid for downtown. We had something like five flutists, when you only needed three. They just wanted to be there. The orchestra had about sixty-five pieces. The orchestra was at Humanist Hall, Twenty-third and Union, and then we moved every now and then to Hollywood, Le Conte Junior High School, near Sunset and Gower. This was just rehearsals, but people could come.
The first night we had a conductor who was world renowned, Eisler Solomon. And he was excited, he really was. That got us in the papers. The press was there snapping pictures like crazy. People were really buzzing. That first night we also had a black bass player named Henry Lewis. He was playing so good he sounded like three basses. Later on he got to be a conductor. He even conducted here for a while. A very fine talent. He was only about nineteen years old then. Later he married an opera singer, MarilynHome. We had other great conductors, too. Peter Cohen, Dr. Al Sendry, Dr. Walker.
The orchestra kept getting better, and we began to publicize what we were doing. We had a board to set policy. We had meetings, and we wanted to let people know what the orchestra was about. The main aims were to bring about one union in L.A., black and white under the same roof.
Then somebody said, "We're doing okay on the classical. Why don't we concentrate on a jam session for the jazz, and we can also get more of the people who aren't in tune with jazz to also understand that part." So we had Monday night for classical, and then we got Sunday afternoon for jazz, and we'd invite the classical people. The Sunday built up really great. We had great jam sessions.
We then got a hold of "Sweets" Edison, who was working with Josephine Baker. We wanted to get her and some other names to appear on one of the Sunday afternoon things. She didn't have to perform, but come out publicly. So she was playing the RKO or one of the theaters downtown, and she agreed to come between shows. And that place, Humanist Hall, you could not believe it; we really exceeded the limit. The place could hold about two hundred people; we had about five hundred in there. When she got on stage, she said, "I wonder why you have two unions," something to that effect. "Well, I think it should be one, and I don't know why you people are wasting time. You've got all these beautiful people here." She just kept talking about how there was coming a time when people could work together. Bang! Zing! So finally she looks down in the audience, and there were two little girls, one black and one white, and they're about five years old. She knew when you've got something to work, right? So she said, "You and you, come up here." And they both dance up on the stage, and she whispers. And they grabbed each other and they hugged like that and they wouldn't let go. And she winked. "These kids will show you how to do it" and walked out. And the crowd was [freezes in astonishment] great!
Later on we got to Nat King Cole. He was great and did the same thing for us. We got the Club Alabam and just had all the people in the world. Sinatra didn't do a thing for us, but he sent a statement saying, "Well, there should be one union."
We were building an organization of sorts. We'd get money for mailings and notified people. We got Marl Young and Benny Carter into it. But we had a few years of hard work before a lot of the guys came in. Part of it was rehearsals and the jam sessions, and there were meetings.
Then I ran for president of Local 767. You see, we had all the publicity and people were doing fine, but we didn't know how to pull it off. So the next thing would be, "Maybe we'll have to be officers so we can move it from that standpoint." Because our officers at the black local didn't want it. Our place was not a great union. The building was kind of tearing down and the pianos were terrible. We really didn't have that much. But, the way they thought, at least it was still ours. So we set up a whole slate and we ran. The incumbent guy beat me by about twenty votes out of about four hundred. We did win a couple of seats on the board of directors. Marl Young, Bill Douglass, and John Anderson were running also, I think. But we still didn't have enough power.
Elections were every year in our local. So the next year we tried again. We ran Benny Carter for president and he lost to the same guy by the same number of votes I did. But this time I ran for the board and got in. Marl got in. Bill Douglass won the vice-president's spot. Now we got a little power underneath the president, who was Leo Davis, who was a nice man.
So we were able to move through resolutions and proposals toward a meeting with Local 47. And finally we got negotiations going. We pretty much had to drag 47 into it, because it finally got to the point where if we wanted it and they didn't, why didn't they want it? They were getting more members into the thing; we could work better together. But they stalled. James Petrillo, president of the American Federation of Musicians, stalled. A lot of people at 47 stalled. But the more it kept coming out that "Is it a racial thing or what is it?" they had to say, "Well, no, it's not that. We just don't know what to call it or how to do it or we can't because it's never been done before and . . ." So the big stall goes. In the meantime we're checking out information, too—how it could be done. Finally, they had no excuse.
It took about three years, but we brought the unions together in 1953. Looking back, the amalgamation helped a lot of musicians, gave them a better focus or a better picture of what they had to do to be on a more broad scope of understanding, not just the Central Avenue—type jobs. The ones who really benefited were the ones who wanted to have a successful career in music rather than just being a leader or somebody who has a record out. It began to make better players out of the good players, and the ones who weren't doing it had to decide to either back away or get serious. If somebody was just doing nightclubs, they were probably doing basically the same. But anybody who wanted to meet with people and experiment with different kinds of music and do studios and records and be like a top craftsperson, then I think they benefited a lot.
Plus there's better health and welfare, and pension benefits. It wasn't that we weren't doing it well with 767; it's just that it wasn't a big business thing over there. It was just kind of an afterthought. And it did allow some periods to be very lucrative for a lot of black musicians who were doing recording and shows through the years, shows like The Carol Burnett Show, The Danny Kaye Show, The Flip Wilson Show. Those shows began to hire people because they were all in the same union, and the word got around who could play, who couldn't. The other way we were isolated.
It was a step in the right direction. It wasn't designed to solve everything. It was trying to get people together. And maybe that's the hard thing, because thirty-five years later, people still have trouble getting together. It was a great historical step, the first time there was an amalgamation in musicians unions. Since then, there were thirty or forty of the locals that followed our method of amalgamating. I think what we found in playing music and being in an artistic thing is that color is not very important; it s what the people can share with each other. And I can look back and say that if there were still black and white at these times, we'd have a lot of problems.
