The Lighthouse Café And [Other] West Coast Jazz Classics [From the Archives]

In May, 2014, The Lighthouse Cafe' will celebrate the 65th anniversary of the advent of Jazz at that fabled, beach front watering hole courtesy of Howard Rumsey's All-Stars

Both the Club [which now has Jazz only on the occasional Sunday] and Howard, bless his soul, are still with us, and what with the "reappearance" of the video tribute that populates this piece, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it would get a running head start in celebrating the forthcoming historic occasion of the birthplace of Jazz on the West Coast.

Not without importance, too, is the fact that the marvelous documentary Jazz on the West Coast: The Lighthouse Café continues to be available on DVD.

The film affords a vicarious view of what the club was like in its heyday and its soundtrack has many examples of the finest in West Coast Jazz.

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

The Western Regional Office [AKA: The Guest Room that serves this purpose] recently received an upgrade in the form of a new TV set and an up-scaled DVD player [more dpi’s].

In order to test out the latter, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles once again viewed Ken Koenig’s excellent film -  Jazz on the West Coast: The Lighthouse Café – the title of which is perhaps a more appropriate context in which to understand the role of the club.

As a note in passing, in a recent conversation with Ken Koenig, the producer of the Lighthouse Café film, Ken mentioned that he was down to the last 100 or so DVD copies and that he was not planning on reordering more once this batch was gone.

Should you have an interest in seeing a trailer of the film and/or wish to have information about how to order it, both can be located via this link to RoseKing Productions.

It’s hard to imagine Jazz on the West Coast or as some prefer, West Coast Jazz, without the role that this famous beachfront club located at 30 Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach, CA played in its development.

Under the musical direction of bassist Howard Rumsey and with the support and patronage of club owner John Levine, Jazz was on prominent display at The Lighthouse Café from Sunday, May 28, 1949 until after Mr. Levine’s death in 1971.

In addition to Ken’s wonderful film, there is lots more information about The Lighthouse Café, the musicians that worked it during this 22 year period and the nature of the music that was played there in these three, excellent books, although Mr. Tercinet’s treatment requires that you bring your best French language skills along in order to read it.

Mr. Gioia’s book is still available as are some used copies of Mr. Tercinet’s, and Bob Gordon’s books, both of which are no longer in print. You can also find Bob's book on JazzProfiles by searching for it in the blog archives.

From time-to-time, the Los Angeles Jazz Institute [LAJI] captures the flavor of the music played at The Lighthouse Café with 3 and 4-day festivals during which it occasionally pays tribute to the club and the music that was performed there with featured concerts, films and panel discussions.

You can check out more information about the about the LAJI by clicking here.

Here’s an excerpt from the May, 1999 Jazz West Coast II program that indicates the variety of tributes that the LAJI sponsored in celebration of the 50^th anniversary of The Lighthouse Café:

The first-rate JazzProfiles photography staff took this snapshot of some of the former Lighthouse All-Stars who participated in the panel discussion about the significance of the club and the music created there that was moderated at the May 1999 event by Ken Poston, who heads-up the LAJI.

This YouTube will provide you with a sampling of the type of Jazz that was on offer at The Lighthouse Café:

The album covers and photographs for many of the West Coast Jazz recordings from the 1950 and 1960s form a unique genre which is fairly well-documented in the following, largely pictorial books.

Around the same time that preparations were being made to observe the 50^th anniversary of the beginning of Jazz at The Lighthouse Café, Michael Cuscuna was reissuing the following Pacific Jazz LP’s as part of the West Coast Classics, Blue Note CD series.

[Pacific Jazz along with a number of other primarily Jazz labels including Blue Note had been acquired by EMI by the time these albums were released as CDs.]

Bud Shank & Bill Perkins - CDP 93159

Jack Sheldon Quartet & Quintet – CDP 93160

Jack Montrose Sextet – CDP 93161

Cy Touff : His Octet & Quintet – CDP 93162

Bill Perkins Octet : On Stage CDP 93163

Chet Baker & Russ Freeman Quartet – CDP 93164

Original Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Chet Baker [2 CDs] – CDP 94407

Bud Shank-Bob Copper: Blowin’ Country – CDP 94846

Bob Brookmeyer: Traditionalism Revisited – CDP 94847

Teddy Edwards: Sunset Eyes – CDP 94848

Earl Anderza: Outta Sight – CDP 94849

Curtis Amy-Dupree Bolton: Katanga! – CDP 94850

You can see the cover art for all of these albums in the following video beginning at 3:36 minutes.

Entitled West Coast Jazz: A Tribute, this video offers an indication of the wider range of music and musicians playing Jazz on the West Coast in the 1950s and 60s, many of whom were also featured at The Lighthouse Café as guest artists.

Here is a discography of recordings by the Lighthouse All-Stars as well as some annotated remarks about the group and its music from Richard Cook and Brian Morton’s always helpful Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD: 6^th Edition [p. 1281]

Sunday Jazz A La Lighthouse

Original Jazz Classics OJC 151 Rumsey; Shorty Rogers (t); Milt

Bernhart(tb); Jimmy Giuffre, Bob Cooper (ts); Hampton Hawes,

frank Patchen (p); Shelly Manne (d). 7/52-2/53.

Volume 3

Original Jazz Classics OJC 266 As above, except add Rolf

Ericsson (t), Frank Rosolino (tb), Bud Shank (as&f), Herb Geller

(as), Max Roach, Stan Levey (d), Carlos Vidal, Jack Costanza

(perc). 7/52-8/56.

Sunday Jazz A La Lighthouse Vol. 2

Original Jazz Classics OJC 972 As above, except add Chet Baker

(t),Russ Freeman, Lorraine Geller, Claude Williamson (p); omit

Kosolino, Levey, Vidal, Costanza, Geller, Hawes, Patchen. 3-9/53-

Oboe /Flute

Original Jazz Classics OJC 154 Rumsey; Bob Cooper (ob, ts);

BudShank (f, as); Buddy Collette (f); Claude Williamson, Sonny

Clark (p); Max Roach, Stan Levey (d). 2/54-9/56.

In The Solo Spotlight

Original Jazz Classics OJC 451 Rumsey; Conte Candoli, Stu

Williamson (t); Frank Rosolino (tb); Bob Enevoldsen (vtb); Bud

Shank Lennie Niehaus (as); Bob Cooper, Richie Kamuca (ts);

Bob Gordon, Pepper Adams (bs); Claude Williamson, Dick

Shreve (p); Stan Levey (d). 8/54-3/57.

Volume 6

Original Jazz Classics OJC 386 Rumsey; Conte Candoli (t);

Frank Rosolino (tb); Stu Williamson (vtb); Bud Shank (as); Bob

Cooper (ts); Claude Williamson (p); Stan Levey (d). 12/54-3/55.

Lighthouse At Laguna

Original Jazz Classics OJC 406 Rumsey; Frank Rosolino (tb);

BudShank (as,f); Bob Cooper (ts); Claude Williamson,

Hampton Hawes (p); Barney Kessel (g); Red Mitchell (b); Shelly

Manne, Stan Levey (d). 6/55.

Music For Lighthousekeeping

Original Jazz Classics OJC 636 Rumsey; Conte Candoli (t);

Frank Rosolino (tb); Bob Cooper (ts); Sonny Clark (p); Stan

Levey (d). 10/56.

Mexican Passport

Contemporary 14077-2 As for OJC 151, 266,406 and 636

above. 52-56.

“Rumsey … was a canny organizer, and his Lighthouse All Stars - the name which all these CDs go under - offered the pick of the West's best in the mid-'50s. Their Sunday afternoon concerts are still talked about by veterans of the Hermosa Beach scene, effectively 12-hour jam sessions that started in the afternoon and went on into the small hours. There are live sessions on OJCs 151, 972 and 406 (though the latter was cut at Laguna Beach) and part of OJC 154; the rest are studio dates. To catch the excitement of these sessions, the best is Sunday Jazz A La Lighthouse Vol. 2: a buzzing crowd, band­stands full of the hottest players; with 25 minutes of previously unreleased material, this one's a best buy. Sound is at times more atmospheric than accurate, but it's a terrific document of those sessions. The first volume is also excellent, with some fine work by Hawes, but the Laguna set is more like a formal concert, with a guest spot by Kessel and two tracks by the Hawes-Mitchell-Manne trio.

The studio dates are more in the familiar West Coast language and are rather more efficiently styled. Considering the stellar line-up, In The Solo Spotlight is a shade disappointing, with too many of the features emerging as glib showcases. While none of the others really stands out, followers of the style will find much to satisfy, not least in the consistently superb drumming by Manne and Levey. Mexican Passport compiles the various Latinesque tracks which the band made across their albums.”

For those of us fortunate enough to have experienced the musical magic that took place during the 22 years that the Lighthouse Café featured Jazz on a regular basis, I’m sure you will find it easy to join with me in giving Howard Rumsey a big “Thank You” for his role in making all of this happen.

And thank goodness for the books, photographs, films and recordings that make it possible for everyone, then and now, to gain an appreciation of Jazz at the Lighthouse Café and Jazz on the West Coast during the vibrant and creative years of their glory days.

Given the poor documentation of so many periods in the history of Jazz, it’s a relief to know that this one wasn't missed.

Latin Tribute to West Side Story - Nueva Manteca

Remembering William "Buddy" Collette, 1921-2010 [From The Archives]

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it might be fun to revisit this feature on Buddy Collette which first posted to the blog in September, 2010 so that we could add the video which is located below this lead-in photo and also to reflect once again about a musician whose music gave us so much personal enjoyment over the years.

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

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 trumpet is 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 Street Hollywood 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 Jazz City, 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 was in 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] and the aforementioned selections from Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles[pp. 154-159] describing Buddy's involvement with the amalgamation of Locals 767 and 47, 

© -Peter Jacobson, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“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.”

© -Central Avenue Sounds Editorial Committee, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The Amalgamation of Local 767 and Local 47

“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, Marilyn Home. 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.

Jimmy Smith - Jazz Scene USA 1962

Stan Kenton-Malaguena

The Four Freshmen: A Vocal Quartet with Quarter Tones [From The Archives]

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

I received so many requests to bring this feature up, so here goes.

What's especially fun about this essay is that it "unlocks" the secret of how The Four Freshmen created their unique sound.

In retrospect, it’s amazing to consider having ever taken The Four Freshmen for granted.

Yet for many years, that’s exactly what I did.

I mean, as a Jazz vocal group, they were still right up there with The Pied Pipers, The Hi-Lo’s, and Mel Torme’s Mel-tones, but I was spoiled back in the days when The Four Freshman made their first, recorded appearances in the early 1950s.

Good vocal Jazz was everywhere, so one had a tendency in those days to expect marvelous music from a newly arrived group on the scene.

But somehow, The Four Freshmen demanded a closer listening and I kept going back and back and doing just that – listening more closely to the point when it finally dawned on me that something very special was going on in their music.

But what?

Why were The Four Freshmen above-the-line; why did I eventually come to view them as virtually being in a class by themselves?

The reasons for their uniqueness is in The Four Freshmen’s use of quarter tones and the manner in which they “voice” their chords as explained in the following excerpt from the insert notes to The Complete Capitol Four Freshmen Fifties Session, a nine-disc set issued by Michael Cuscuna and his team at Mosaic Records [MD9-203].

At least I had enough of a discriminating sense to jump on a copy of this set when it first appeared. It was issued in a limited edition of 3,500 and my copy is numbered “0079.”

The Mosaic set notes were prepared by Ross Barbour, one of the Freshmen’s founding members. In them, Ross not only describes what gave the group its distinctive sound, but also how the group got its start with the Stan Kenton Orchestra, an association that would continue for almost three decades, and ultimately came to be recorded by Capitol Records.

Ross’s annotations and remembrances are followed with an article by William H. Smith that also touches on the roots of the group and the reasons why The Four Freshmen successfully carry on to this day.

© -  Ross Barbour/Mosaic Records, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Bob Flanigan and Don and Ross Barbour are cousins. Our mothers were sisters. My brother Don and I are from Columbus, Indiana. Bob Flanigan is from Greencastle, Indiana.

When we were just grade-schoolers, we would go to our mothers' family reunions and at noon the Fodreas would all stand and sing the Doxology before we ate. (Praise God from whom all blessings flow, etc.) In mother's family, there were 10 girls and two boys. They all sang in quartets, choirs and choruses. They sang harmony so right it made the rafters ring. It took our breath away.

The way they sang those notes made a different sound from playing those notes on a keyboard. I never understood why they were so different until I read an article in an old Barbershopper's newsletter. The harmonizer of September 1954, Paul Vandervoort of Hey wood, Illinois, wrote the article, and he got his information from The Outline of Knowledge Encyclopedia, and an article entitled "Sound Physics."

It seems that in about 1700, the musical scale was quite complicated. An octave had 20 or more notes in it. Between F and G, for instance, there was F sharp, G double flat and G flat. That was called the "perfect diatonic scale."

Johann Sebastian Bach came along and changed all this. He formed what is known as the "tempered scale" by choos­ing 12 of the 20-plus notes, and having his piano tuned that way. It was a lot simpler, but the beautiful quarter tones were left out. People's ears could still hear them and harmony singers knew how to use them to make what are called over­tones, but they were just not on a keyboard anymore.

Bob, Don and I were hearing those overtones or harmonics as kids, and we became addicted to them. We couldn't get enough. I sang in quartets in high school and in college, and I sang with the Four Freshmen for 29 years. I never got enough. I have been a Freshmen fan since I retired undefeated in 1977, and I still need to hear overtones.

In our early Four Freshmen days, we rehearsed without instruments. If a chord we sang couldn't stand up and say its name (I'm a D-ninth or I'm an F-seventh), we would change it until it did.

We used bass and guitar for our background, but they never played the exact notes we were singing. Our harmony could happen almost unfettered by the demand of a key­board — demand that would channel us back into Bach's 12 half-steps per octave.

If my note was a major seventh, I could sing it on top of the note — sing it sharp, you might say, so it and the tonic note became a little less than a half-step apart. That's what makes it buzz in your ear.

If we wanted a dominant seventh to ring, we'd sing it on the bottom of the pitch — especially if the voice leading was going down through that dominant seventh.

A major third should be sung brightly on top of the pitch, and a minor third should hang on the bottom.

We were singing those notes not because they were writ­ten and the piano said the pitch was "there." We sang them because they harmonized. They made overtones in our ears.

And we didn't discover some great breakthrough in har­mony. Good barbershop singers do it all the time; in fact singers have been doing it since at least the year 1700.

It may be that we were the first modern vocal group the world noticed who put the emphasis on harmony and over­tones, but we won't be the last. Other groups are bound to succeed in doing it because there is something in people's ears that needs harmony. That thing can make your hair stand up when a chord rings. It can make you shout right out loud!

That article about "Sound Physics" goes on to say that Handel, the great composer, "could not stand to hear music played in the tempered scale." He had an organ built that would play all the notes in the perfect diatonic scale. Boy! That would be a bear to play!

In 1947, Hal Kratzsch was 22, Bob 21, Don 20 and I was 18. We were all freshmen at Arthur Jordan Conservatory in Indianapolis. We'd all sung in vocal groups before and singing harmony parts came naturally to us.

Bob had been a member of a Greencastle vocal group that had a radio show in Indianapolis for a while. He went into the service out of high school, and played trombone through his army time in Germany, except when the dance band needed a bass player. He learned to play bass on the job. After the service he enrolled in A.J.C. in 1947.

Don played guitar through high school and a couple of years in Arabia with the Air Force. I had graduated from high school in the spring of 1947. Don and I came to college together that fall.

Hal, who was from Warsaw, Indiana, played trumpet in high school and in the Navy in the South Pacific. He came from the service to Indiana University for a year before trans­ferring to A.J.C.

Hal and I met in theory class. He had the idea of putting together a quartet. At that time, we thought a modern vocal group needed a girl to sing lead, so Hal, Don and I rehearsed with a girl named Marilyn for almost a month, before we found out that Marilyn's mom wouldn't let her go sing with three guys in late-night places.

When we got Bob in the group, our sound really started to take shape. Bob's lead voice has influenced generations... strong and clear.

Hal knew from instinct how to sing the bottom part, and he did it his way. He seldom sang the tonic, and often sang the ninth or passing tones through the chords. His pitch was so secure, we could stand our chords up on his note.

Don had such a wide range. We needed his upper regis­ter in his second part, and he came through with it so well and so strong. I was a natural baritone or third voice. It was more natural for me to sing harmonies than to sing melodies. It was up to us to fill in — to color — that large area between Bob and Hal.

With voices like these we could make rainbows of color chords, so we did. In the beginning we chose our own notes — made up our own individual parts, but we didn't do it straight through a song. On Poinciana, we would agree to sing "oh" in unison. Then "poin" was a chord to solve. After we had that one, then we went for "ci" and the notes had to flow from "poin" to "ci", then on to "ana." Okay, let's try it from the top. Are there any chords we can make stronger? Let's try making two chords out of "ci" — when I do this, you do that. Maybe a whole hour goes by and you haven't tried all the ideas. But you should keep trying because the next idea may just make all of you jump and shout.

We were trying to sound like Stan Kenton's vocal group, The Pastels. There were five of them and four of us, but that didn't stop us. Mel Torme had a five-part group with Artie Shaw's band called The Mel Tones. We tried to copy them, too. The way it turned out, we invented a sound by trying to get a five-part sound with four voices. (Other elements to our sound came about serendipitously. At a show in El Paso on December 8, 1951, Don broke a high E string on his guitar, and he didn't have a spare. Well, the show had go on, so Don replaced it with a third string and tuned it an octave lower. From that day on, Don's guitar didn't sound like other guitars. It was great for our sound. The lower string added a density to the range where we sang.)

We went on the road Sept. 20, 1948, working lounges (most of them dingy dives) around the Midwest for a year and a half, honing our music and our stage presentation.

In February 1950, we were working the Pla Bowl Lounge in Calumet City, Illinois. We'd work until 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. and then we would go to jam sessions. The 19th was a Sunday night — the end of our week. Mondays were off. We went to the High Note in Chicago for a session that began about 4:00 a.m. Monday. The place was full of the right people — Marian McPartland, Roy Kral and Jackie Cain, Jeri Southern, and one of our favorites, Mary Ann McCall. She was on stage singing with the Max Miller Trio. It was a song we knew so we got up there, too, and sang "dooooo" with her. It must have sounded pretty good because at the end of the song, Mary Ann said on the microphone, "Hey, Woody, we're ready to go." A guy at the bar stood up and said something back to her. We caught our breath. It was Woody Herman!

In the next few minutes, he and Mary Ann explained how Woody was going to put together a new band in a few months; he would call it "The Band That Plays the Music You Want to Dance To," or some such title. He wanted us four to play in the band, and sing as a quartet a half dozen tunes a night.

We loved the Herman Herds and the way Mary Ann sang. Oh! It seemed that life couldn't get any better. Just one month later, Stan Kenton had us reaching for the moon (our own record contract) and believing it was possible.

Stan heard us in the Esquire Lounge in Dayton, Ohio, on Tuesday, March 21. He was on tour with the Innovations Orchestra and some disc jockey friends brought Stan to hear us after his show. He must have understood that we didn't usually tremble and sound short of breath when we sang. He knew we were overwhelmed by his presence. It could be that our worshipping his every move triggered some of his devotion to our quartet.

He could tell we didn't know what we were doing. I heard him say in an interview one time that we were doing things by ear that were way beyond our musical education, but we were making sounds he liked to hear.

That night he planned for us to go to New York and meet him and Pete Rugolo. He would see that we made some good audition tapes for Capitol's executives to hear. He would talk those executives into signing us to our own contract, and we would begin making records. Stan made it happen just that way.

He'd later say, "You guys have gotta succeed, you can't fail. You're part of my ego!" Let me pause here in the story to explain that Stan had his managers handle our career. They found us work, and helped us choose uniforms. We received mail at Stan's 941 N. LaCienega address for two or three years, and we couldn't get him to take a penny for it. He didn't even want us to give him Christmas presents. The prestige he added to this quartet by just saying, "Stan Kenton likes the Four Freshmen," was priceless. The help­ful care he gave us year after year kept good things coming our way. I have said it before and it always sounds like I am bragging, but Stan treated us like we were his own kids. We were part of his ego.

On April 10, we left Green Bay on the 7:10 train to Chicago. We caught the 2:40 p.m. train to New York and tried to sleep that night, but we were too keyed up. None of us slept. Our dreams were coming true before our very eyes.

My diary says: "Tried to sing in the dining caboose, almost got thrown in the caboose, Yippee Ky-0-Ky-A."

We arrived in New York at 10:30 a.m. on April 11, full of youthful steam. We slept for an hour and a half at the Dixie Hotel before we went to Pete Rugolo's dressing room at the Paramount Theater. He was conducting the orchestra for Billy Eckstine.

We waited in the dressing room while Pete did the show. We could hear the show from there. Does life get better than this? When Pete came back, we sang a couple of tunes for him. Pete was pleased but surprised we sang for him since that's what we were to do the next day in the studio. Later that night, we went to Bop City to hear Lionel Hampton and the George Shearing group with Denzil Best.

The next evening (Wednesday April 12), we ate at the Automat and went to Pete's dressing room again, where we met up with Stan Kenton and his manager, Bob Allison, who gave us $65. This was travel money and we thought, at the time, it was from Capitol records. Now we know that Capitol didn't pay groups to go to New York to record audition tapes. That money must have come from Stan himself, just to make sure that the cost of the trip didn't leave us broke.

We were in good hands, and we were on our way!”

  

© -  William H. Smith/The Wall Street Journal, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Four Freshman: A Vocal Group at the Top of Its Class

By WILLIAM H. SMITHAugust 20, 2008

The Wall Street Journal

“Widely known for basketball, the Indy 500, and a plethora of covered bridges, Indiana also proudly claims The Four Freshmen as its own. The legendary vocal/instrumental group will celebrate its 60th anniversary at a reunion, sponsored by The Four Freshmen Society, of band members past and present -- there have been 23 lineups to date -- at the Sheraton Indianapolis City Centre, Aug. 21 to 23. Commemorative concerts continue to air across the country during PBS fund-raising drives, and a highlight of 2008 will be the Freshmen's Oct. 25 performance before Russian fans at the prestigious Great Hall of the Moscow Performing Arts Center.

Although not the first successful vocal group, The Four Freshmen was, without question, the most innovative. Inspired by Artie Shaw's Mel-Tones with Mel Torme, as well as by The Pastels, a five-voice group with Stan Kenton, the Freshmen soon developed their own unique style of harmony -- singing a five-part sound with four voices and playing instruments as well. Every vocal group that followed -- except for those that sang with no or minimal chord structure -- was influenced by the Freshmen, including The Lettermen, Manhattan Transfer, Take Six, the Beatles and the Beach Boys. (At The Four Freshmen's Jan. 14 performance at Palm Desert, Calif.'s McCallum Theatre, I sat in the audience next to the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson -- one of the Freshmen's most enthusiastic fans, who listened to their records as a teenager and wanted to emulate their unique sound in his arrangements.)

The close harmony of this unique quartet had its genesis at Butler University's Jordan Conservatory in Indianapolis, when Hal Kratzch, along with Don Barbour and his brother Ross, formed "Hal's Harmonizers." In an interview at his home in Simi Valley, Calif., Ross Barbour recalled that "we tried a few lead singers, but it was only after our cousin Bob Flanigan, with his strong high voice, joined the group that we started getting that Freshmen sound." The four went on the road in 1948 as The Toppers, but the name was soon changed to The Four Freshmen. (Both Ross Barbour and Bob Flanigan, the only survivors of that quartet, received honorary doctorates at Butler this May.)

Stan Kenton heard the Freshmen in March 1950 at the Esquire Lounge in Dayton, Ohio, and gave them their first big break by introducing the group to his own recording label, Capitol Records. The Freshmen had developed their trademark sound by structuring chords much like the trombone section of Kenton's own band, and Mr. Barbour maintains that the success of one of their biggest-selling albums, "Four Freshmen and Five Trombones," can in a large way be attributed to Pete Rugolo, the arranger the quartet and Kenton shared.

The Four Freshmen's signature tune is "It's a Blue World Without You," released in 1952, a song that continues to send chills up and down the spines of audiences as soon as the first a capella chords resound. But the Freshmen gained their first national exposure when they appeared on CBS's "Steve Allen Show" on Christmas Day in 1950, and their popularity lasted not only through the decade that later gave birth to rock 'n' roll but into the mid-1960s -- the era of Bob Dylan and the Beatles -- and beyond. Despite this generational change, the Freshmen continued playing universities around the country and, according to Mr. Barbour, "the multitude of college kids remained loyal fans."

Over their 60 years of performing throughout the U.S. and abroad, the Freshmen have recorded some 45 albums and 70 singles, and have received numerous honors, including six Grammy Awards. Down Beat magazine awarded the quartet the Best Jazz Vocal group honor in 1953 and again, 57 years later, in 2000, an example of the quartet's timeless appeal. The present lineup placed No. 1 in this same category in the 2007 JazzTimes Readers Poll.

"The Four Freshmen have endured for the simple reason that they are top in their class," said Charles Osgood, anchor of "CBS Sunday Morning," when a profile of the group aired in August 1994. Steven Cornelius of the Toledo Blade put it this way in April 2005: "There is no Dorian Gray youth potion at work, just a healthy retirement system." When a member leaves, he is replaced with an equally talented musician.

The present lineup of this multifaceted, ultra-talented quartet of vocalists and instrumentalists now comprises Vince Johnson, baritone, playing bass and guitar; Bob Ferreira, bass voice, playing drums; Brian Eichenberger, lead voice, playing guitar and bass; and Curtis Calderon, singing second part, and playing trumpet and flugelhorn. Although the other three Freshmen joke about it, Mr. Johnson accompanies his bass with some of the best whistling since Bing Crosby.

Bob Flanigan -- introducing the current quartet on their recent DVD, "The Four Freshmen Live From Las Vegas" -- vows that "this group is the best Four Freshmen of all time." On the DVD, Mr. Flanigan, reflecting on his 44 years with the Freshmen, remembers all the "Bad roads . . . Bad food . . . Good and Bad Hotels . . . and millions of air-miles in DC3s to 747s."

Long live The Four Freshmen. May they never graduate!

Mr. Smith writes about jazz and the big-band era for the Journal

For tour dates and venues, go to www.fourfreshmen.com.”