Jane Ira Bloom - "Sixteen Sunsets"

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

"an artist beyond category."

- Nat Hentoff

"A true jazz original...a restlessly creative spirit, and a modern day role model for any aspiring musician who dares to follow his or her own vision."

- Bill Milkowski

To be honest with you, until Amanda Bloom and Jim Eigo of Jazz Promo Services contacted me with an offer to listen to Jane Ira Bloom’s Sixteen Sunsets [Outline OTL 141], I didn’t know anything about the music of Jane Ira Bloom.

I had heard the name - “Jane Ira Bloom” - and I liked it because of the way it sounded and because it is not often that you hear a three name reference made up of three, single syllables. I liked the name, too, because it reminded me of Blossom Dearie, a unique song stylist whose music has always been among my favorites.

But after reading the following background information on Jane Ira Bloom, I thought I might be missing something.

© -Jim Eigo/JazzPromoServices, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Jane Ira Bloom has been developing her unique voice on the soprano sax for over 30 years. A pioneer in the use of live electronics and movement in jazz, she is a seven-time winner of the Jazz Journalists Award for Soprano Saxophone, winner of the Downbeat International Critics Poll for soprano sax, and a recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim fellowship. Her continued commitment to new music has led to collaborations with Charlie Haden, Ed Blackwell, Kenny Wheeler, Rufus Reid, Matt Wilson, Bob Brookmeyer, Julian Priester, Mark Dresser, Bobby Previte, Billy Hart, Mark Helias, Min Xiao-Fen and Fred Hersch among others.

With 15 albums as leader/producer and a constant live performance schedule with her trio and quartet, JIB has performed at Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, the United Nations, The Smithsonian, New York's Museum of Modern Art, and Cathedral of St. John the Divine, as well as leading Jazz Festivals including: Montreal, JVC, and San Francisco. JIB has also been involved in world music collaborations. She has participated in several international and 'remote' events for large ensemble including a performance at the United Nations that linked musicians in Korea, China, New York and San Diego.

With numerous awards for her creativity including a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition and a 2009 residency at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, JIB is also the recipient of the 2007 Mary Lou Williams Women In Jazz Award for lifetime service to jazz, the Jazz Journalists Award For Soprano Sax of the Year for 2001, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2012 & 2014, the Downbeat International Critics Poll for Soprano Saxophone, the Charlie Parker Fellowship for Jazz Innovation and the International Women in Jazz: Masters Award. She is also the first musician commissioned by the NASA Art Program and even has an asteroid named in her honor by the International Astronomical Union, named asteroid 6083janeirabloom. Her latest release Sixteen Sunsets was nominated for a 2014 Grammy Award for best surround-sound album.

The subject of numerous media profiles on network television, on radio, and in major national magazines, JIB has recorded and produced 15 album projects since 1977 for CBS, Arabesque, ENJA and Artistshare Records, and founded her own record label & publishing company (Outline Music). A professor at the New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music in New York City, she holds degrees from Yale University, the Yale School of Music, and continues to find inspiration in creating exploratory music with improvising musicians from around the world.”

And after I listened to the music on Jane Ira Bloom’s Sixteen Sunsets [Outline OTL 141], I knew I had been missing something - the music of Jane Ira Bloom was a revelation, to say the least.

The CD title Sixteen Sunsets is derived from the following quotation by Joseph Allen, a US Astronaut:

“The sun truly ‘comes up like thunder,’ and it sets just as fast. Each sunrise and sunset lasts only a few seconds. But in that time you see at least eight different bands of color come and go, from a brilliant red to the brightest and deepest blue. And you see sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets every day you’re in space. No sunrise or sunset is ever the same.”

I have long thought that the ephemeral nature of Jazz was best served when the music was played as a ballad. Slower tempos give the musician a chance to think and if the tune they are improvising on has an interesting structure, they can create beautiful alternate melodies because the slower time allows them more space with which to work.

“No sunrise or sunset is ever the same.”

I think the same can be said for Jazz improvisations that are weaved over slower or ballad tempos because the musician has time to think about the chord progression and not just react to it as is often the case with faster tempos.

Over the years, I talked about this observation with a large number of musicians and I received comments back ranging from “Does anyone play slow tempos anymore?” [Bud Shank] to “These days, whenever I play a ballad, I expect a bottle to come flying over my head.” [Bill Perkins]

The implication of those remarks by Bud and Bill is that playing beautiful tunes at slower tempos had fallen out of favor with today’s Jazz audience.

Imagine my surprise then when I played Jane Ira Bloom’s Sixteen Sunsets, for not only she she play beautiful tunes at slower tempos, but she plays them all on soprano saxophone, an instrument that I had come to dread because of the muscular way it had be handled by John Coltrane imitators in the years since John’s death in 1967.

Drawn from The Great American Songbook [with the exception of Billie Holiday and Mal Waldron’s  Left Alone], Jane Ira Bloom renders fourteen exquisite improvisations that have time to breathe, grow and develop and which almost single-handedly seem to make a concerted case for reinstating the ballad to a prominent place in the Jazz repertoire.

If you enjoy pretty music, music that absorbs your senses, music that touches your imagination with the magnitude of its beauty, then the music on Sixteen Sunsets is for you.

Here are more comments and insights about Jane Ira Bloom and the music on her new CD from the media release information put together by Jim Eigo.

© -Jim Eigo/JazzPromoServices, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

"Absolutely Mesmerizing!"

-John Henry/Audiophiie Audition

"Sixteen Sunsets... shows the infinite possibilities of the soprano saxophone."

-Marc Phillips/ The Vinyl Anachronist

" one of the most gorgeous tones and hauntingly lyrical ballad conceptions of any soprano saxophonist"

-Kevin Whitehead

“Award winning soprano saxophonist Jane ira Bloom has always had a special feeling for ballad performances and she's finally released a project that showcases her expressive interpretations of American songbook standards and slow tempo originals. Sixteen Sunsets is her first all-ballads album, her 15th album as leader and fifth recording on the Outline label. The project pairs Bloom with long-time bandmates Cameron Brown on bass, drummer Matt Wilson, and newcomer pianist Dominic Fallacaro. She had been working on this slow tempo repertoire in concerts in NYC in the two years since her last "Wingwalker" release and then brought this band together to record in May 2013. Sixteen Sunsets was recorded in 5.1 high resolution surround sound at Avatar Studio B in NYC with renowned audio engineer and co-producer Jim Anderson. The album features nine American songbook classics including Gershwin's "I Loves You Porgy" and Kern's "The Way You Look Tonight" in addition to five originals from Bloom's own ballad book. Photographic legend Jay Maisel contributed the breathtaking image for the album cover artwork. In addition to the stereo CD on Outline Records (OTL141) Sixteen Sunsets is available in 5,1 high resolution surround sound on Pure Audio Blu-ray (Pure Audio Records 55017) and was nominated for a 2014 Grammy Award for best surround-sound album.

"I grew up listening to these songs and knowing the lyrics. They were a part of my earliest listening experiences so playing them is like breathing to me. As time's gone by it's been easier to let the meaning of the songs come through the horn."

- Jl Bloom

Bloom has been developing her unique voice on the soprano sax for over 30 years. She's a seven-time winner of the Jazz Journalists Award for Soprano Saxophone and recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim fellowship. Her music is lyrical and provocative.”

My three favorites tracks on Sixteen Sunsets are But Not for Me, Darn That Dream and My Ship [Kurt Weill].

We've drawn annotations about the first, two tunes from Ted Gioia's The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire, and developed the video that concludes this features using My Ship as the soundtrack to give you a taste of Jane Ira Bloom’s playing on the CD.

Sixteen Sunsets may have been my first exposure to Jane Ira Bloom’s music, but I can assure you that it won’t be my last.

But Not for Me [ [paraphrased, p. 51]

“On Ella Fitzgerald’s But Not For Me collaboration with Andre Previn, Previn offers a clever reharmonization during his solo, reminding us of why he once had a sizable following among jazz fans, while Fitzgerald, for her part, is in top form.

The song gained some traction with jazz players during the 1940’s —Harry James even enjoyed a modest hit with his 1941 recording, which featured vocalist Helen Forrest—but Gershwin's composition was better suited for the cool jazz stars of the 1950’s. Chet Baker may have lacked Ella's technique and range, but his 1954 recording of "But Not for Me" ranks among his finest moments in the studio, both for its quintessentially cool vocal and his lyrical trumpet solo, four months later, Miles Davis recorded the song for his Bags' Groove album, and his two released takes find him playing it initially in a medium tempo similar to Baker's approach, while the second take is faster, and a better setting for his front-line bandmate Sonny Rollins. Ahmad Jamal delivered an appealingly understated piano performance on his live recording from the Pershing from 1958, which was one of the best-selling jazz albums of the period. The Modern Jazz Quartet and Kenny Burrell offered similarly subdued interpretations around this same time.

Most later jazz renditions of "But Not for Me" have kept to the cool ethos. But Coltrane offered a dissenting view with his 1960 recording from his My Favorite Things album. He incorporates his "Giant Steps" chord substitution scheme into the Gershwin piece, and the result is a case study in the advanced harmonic concepts of the time, worthy of inclusion in the curriculum of any jazz educational institution. Dexter Gordon dispenses with the Coltrane chord changes but achieves a similar energy level on his 1967 recording in Copenhagen, an intense 15-minute outing on "But Not for Me"—including nine full tenor choruses that persuasively demonstrate why this saxophonist was such a formidable combatant at a jam session.”

Darn that Dream [Paraphrased, p. 76]

“I've recorded it myself, and was attracted to the song because of Van Heusen's skill in building sturdy harmonic structures with minimal reliance on conventional circle-of-fifths movement. The melody, filled with spacious interval leaps that move up in thirds and fourths, effectively matches the yearning sentiments of the words. The bridge is a bit of a letdown after such a lively main theme, but works well in context as a sedate interlude before the finale, in which the lyrics both bless and curse dreamtime visions of romantic bliss.

Even song connoisseur Alec Wilder ... praises the spirit of "sophistication and chance-taking" this song represents, and suggests that it was only the pervasiveness of jazz in American culture at the time that allowed listeners to accept such a daring composition. By the same token, I find it almost inconceivable that a song this complex could receive significant airplay or sales nowadays.”

My Ship

Maynard Ferguson - [From the Archives]

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

"Because of Birdland’s low ceiling, the sound is tighter, more compact, more intimate than any other club. With no echo, no real ambiance to the sound, the impact is immedi­ate. The band's power nails patrons to their seats."

- Bret Primack, Jazz author and producer

This feature originally posted in two-parts way back in July 2008 and represents one my earliest efforts at developing extended blog features.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles decided to repost it on these pages largely to do with the usual reasons for "having it all in one place" and to add videos that were not a part of the initial uploads.

But the overriding reason for revisiting it may have more to do with the fact Maynard's band always personified something about Jazz that captivated me from the first time I heard the music - its excitement!

To say that Maynard's early big bands really blew me away would be less a poor attempt at a play on words and more to do with the fact that the pulse and power of the sound they generated just swept me away in their energy.

The drumming of the late, Jake Hanna on Maynard's A Message from Newport and Frankie Dunlop's drum work on A Message from Birdland became the standard by which I judged my own big band work. I memorized Frankie's closing solo on The Mark of Jazz so completely that I even included his [very few] mistakes!

Over the years, Maynard's "big bop nouveau big band" always had it critics: too loud, too fast; too much screaming trumpets; too emotional; too uncontrolled; too little dynamics...."

Who cared. His bands swung like heck, put a charge in people and usually left them a bit red-in-the-face from all the cheering, shouting and applauding that accompanied experiencing the band in concert.

Maynard taught me the true nature of Jazz - it's passion.

I miss Maynard.

Maynard Ferguson was active in the world of Jazz for over a half century. During most of this period, he could usually be found leading various big bands with whom he regularly explored the stratospheric regions of the trumpet’s range. This is a man who could play controlled, full tones [not just squeaks] on the instrument up to a double high C – often!

Concerning his early mastery of these high notes, Gene Lees, for many years Maynard’s neighbor in Ojai, CA, commented in Jazz Lives: 100 Portraits in Jazz: “… he equates it with the once unattainable four minute mile and says with a laugh, ‘Now I’ve got two or three kids in my band who can play that high.’” [p. 88]

I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that I have always had great respect for Maynard’s talents, both as a musician and as a businessman in the world of Jazz. Despite some rocky financial times in the mid-1960s, overall he was successful enough at the latter so that in his case being a Jazz businessman wasn’t a contradiction in terms.

Through listening to recordings and viewing films, I was able to review his career with the Stan Kenton Orchestra and with the Paramount Pictures studio orchestra which took place from about 1950 – 1955.

I am also somewhat familiar with the spiritual hiatus he took to India in the late 1960’s which would revitalize him to continue his career, first with a band based in England in the early 1970’s, and then at the end of that decade with what would ultimately become his Big Bop Nouveau band which he led until his death on August 23, 2006.

To my ears, however, one of the great highpoints in Maynard’s career and the period I enjoy the most was the eight years or so he fronted various versions of The Birdland Dream Band, beginning in 1956 and ending in 1964.

Strictly speaking, there were only three recordings issued under that rubric: Birdland Dream Band, Vol. 1 [RCA 74321581102], Birdland Dream Band Vol. 2 [RCA 74321580572] and Live at Peacock Lane [Fresh Sound FSCD 1016].

I’m taking a certain poetic license with these terms “Birdland Dream Band” to include in this period the Roulette albums – A Message from Newport [52012; on CD as Blue Note CDP 793 2722] and A Message from Birdland [52027; on CD as Blue Note CDP 97447], as well as, The New Sounds of Maynard Ferguson and His Orchestra 1964 [Fresh Sound FSCD 2010, a reissue of Cameo LP’s 1040 and 1066, The New Sound of Maynard Ferguson and Come Blow Your Horn].

Another primary reason for focusing on this particular period in Maynard’s career is that is affords the editors of Jazzprofiles with an opportunity to insert as the conclusion to this feature, Bret Primack’s excellently crafted "One Night at Birdland – A Reconstruction" which is excerpted from the insert notes of the now out-of-print Mosaic The Complete Roulette Recordings of the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra MD 10-156]. 

© -Mosaic Records/Bret Primack: copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with permission.

All of Bret’s insert notes for this Mosaic set are extremely informative and detailed, but this treatment for what was to be issued as the Roulette LP A Message from Birdland is particularly insightful and entertaining about both the recording and the setting in which it was made.

By way of background, with close friend tenor saxophonist Willie Maiden as his partner, Maynard used the steady studio gig at Paramount as a means of bankrolling a library of big band arrangements. Both were twenty-six years old in 1955 when they began building a library with arrangements that could be adapted to different set ups for the traditional big band. Funding some arrangements was one thing, but they lacked the necessary financing to put together a band to actually play them.

Until, that is, “Fate” in the form of Maynard’s friend, drummer Sid Bulkin, intervened. As Primack tells it in his Mosaic insert notes:

“… Sid Bulkin met with Birdland owner Morris Levy and Vik Records A&R man Jack Lewis. Levy and Lewis were looking for someone to briefly front a Birdland Dream Band, and Bulkin successfully served as Maynard’s intermediary.”
When Ferguson went to New York in 1956 to meet with Levy and Lewis, his big band book consisted of arrangements by Jazz’s best: Manny Albam, Jimmy Giuffre, Bill Holman, Willie Maiden, Johnny Mandel, Marty Paich and Ernie Wilkins. Once in New York, he would add charts by Al Cohn.

With a book like this, it’s no wonder that Levy and Lewis agreed to put up the money for a Birdland Dream Band that was to initially include:

Trumpets: Maynard [and valve trombone], Al DeRisi, Nick Travis and Joe Ferrante
Trombones: Jimmy Cleveland, Sonny Russo [or Eddie Bert]
Alto Sax: Herb Geller
Tenor Sax: Al Cohn and Budd Johnson
Baritone Sax: Ernie Wilkins
Piano: Hank Jones; Bass: Milt Hinton; Drums: Jimmy Campbell [or Don Lamond]
The band opened at Birdland on August 30, 1956 for an engagement that ran until September 25th. This Birdland “Dream Band” would produce Volumes 1 and 2 that were originally issued on Vik and later reissued on Bluebird/RCA as noted above.

From the opening refrains of Jimmy Giuffre’s Blue Birdland [which was to remain Maynard’s theme song throughout his career], to the closely harmonized lines of Bob Brookmeyer’s Still Water Stomp [with Maynard on valve trombone and a sound to pre-sage the Mulligan Concert Jazz Band and Johnny Mandel’s unison trumpets on Little Girl Kimbi [which Neal Hefti no doubt related to “girl talk”], the band plays in the spirited manner that was to become Maynard’s trademark for over 50 years.
With Mel Lewis on drums, Richie Kamuca on tenor and charts like Bill Holman’s Goodbye Mr. Chops, Johnny Mandel’s Groover Wailin’ and Marty Paich’s haunting Early Hours [featuring Richie], one could be excused if while listening to Maynard Ferguson and his Dreamband Orchestra ’56: Live at Peacock Lane the band sounds like a precursor to the Terry Gibbs Big band that came into existence three years later.


Jordi Pujol, owner and producer of Fresh Sound Records, explains the background to the gig and the recording date this way:

“Following the immediate and tremendous impact made by the new Ferguson [Birdland Dream] band, he was contracted to play over the Christmas holiday at Pete Vescio’s ‘Peacock’ Lane venue in Los Angeles, and for which job Maynard put together another all-star band. The very well-known recording engineer, the late Wally Heider, came to the club one night and recorded this superb concert performance. …. [Ferguson] once said: ‘my conception of an ensemble is that everybody must really be enjoying what they are doing and be happy on the band.”
The band Maynard put together for the Peacock Lane gig consisted of:

Trumpets – Maynard [and valve trombone], Tom Slaney [lead], Ed Leddy, Joe Burnett
Trombones - Bob Fitzpatrick, Bob Burgess
Alto Sax – Herb Geller
Tenor Sax – Richie Kamuca, Nino Tempo
Baritone Sax – Willie Maiden
Piano – Paul Moer; Bass – Red Kelly; Drums – Mel Lewis

With the promise of steady employment at Birdland, Maynard returned to New York in 1957 to put together a working band. He obviously couldn’t afford to keep the studio musicians who made up the original New York Birdland Dream Band on the payroll so he opted instead for young talent based around a three trumpet, two trombones, four saxes, and three rhythm configuration.

For this first working band – the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra – Maynard made two key additions that not only resulted in a exceptional trombone tandem, but also brought forth some sterling, new arrangements to go with the previously assembled charts. When Don Sebesky [lead trombone] and Slide Hampton [valve trombone] came on the band, they along with Willie Maiden wrote compositions that took the band in a fiery and vigorous new direction. Or as Duke Ellington always maintained, sooner or later, the tone and tenor of a band will begin to reflect the personality of it’s leader. The writing of Maiden, Sebesky, and Hampton insured that this would become a sooner rather than a later proposition as far as Maynard's band was concerned.

And although, I have written this piece chronologically to this point, in terms of my personal listening experience, I first encountered the band through its blistering and blazing 1958 Roulette LP – A Message from Newport – and then worked my way back to the earlier Vik/RCA recordings. After I heard this recording for the first time, it took a few hours to catch my breath and regain my composure from all of the excitement it generated in me.

The music on this LP is spine-tinglingly full of thrills and excitement. If you like upper register, unison trumpet section work with vibrato shakes, trills and squeals, then you need look no further than this album. Maynard’s high note playing, aided and abetted by the other trumpeters and arrangements that serve to launch him into the stratosphere, has never sounded more scintillating, let alone more musical.

Or as Down Beat [10/1/1959] reported:

“The band’s strengths included it’s raw, almost primitive power of ensemble when it roars; the always impressive use of dynamics; Maynard’s brilliant horn work; the writing by members of the band; and a feeling that Maynard can best describe only as ‘esprit de corps.’

“About the only adverse comment steadily made by the Ferguson band is that it opened like a jackhammer and belted, without letup, through the remainder of the set. Yet Maynard’s band is built on excitement, on the exhilarating sound of the trumpet, on the ability of the band to rocket through furious tempos, and on the ensemble’s ability to build to a crescendo like a juggernaut rolling downhill.”
The full roster for the electrifying band on this highly recommended LP included:

Trumpets: Maynard [and valve trombone], Bill Chase, Clyde Reasinger, Tom Slaney
Trombones: Don Sebesky, Slide Hampton
Alto Sax: Jimmy Ford
Tenor Saxes: Carmen Leggio, Willie Maiden
Baritone Saxes: Jay Cameron
Piano: John Bunch; Bass: Jimmy Rowser; Drums: Jake Hanna

With the exception of the opening track, And We Listened, which was composed and arranged by Bob Friedman, who was an instructor at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, the album is a showcase for the new arranging troika of Hampton, Maiden and Sebesky.

Dom Cerulli was the Associate Editor of Down Beat when he concluded his liner notes to the album with this assessment of Maynard at this point in his career:

“Somehow, through personnel changes and depression times for big bands, Maynard has managed to keep his band together and working [this would continue as a prophetic statement for almost 50 years from this writing!].

He is an enthusiastic, hard-working band leader on-stage and off. He has retained that technical mastery of his horn which made him famous ,but has added to it nearly a decade of experience, growth and ability as a jazz man. He can now move audiences by what he plays as well as how he plays.”
……. To be continued with a review of the Roulette LP A Message from Birdland, Bret Primack’s essay, "A Night at Birdland – A Reconstruction," and some closing comments centered around Maynard’s 1964 band and his temporary hiatus from the scene shortly thereafter.

For me, A Message from Birdland is Maynard Ferguson and his ‘smaller’ [2 less trombones; one less saxophone] big band at its best. Bret Primack’s construct of a night at the club in which to frame a review of the album is a wonderful blending of both fiction and music criticism so rather than compete with it I thought perhaps it would be wiser to just serve up the best “as is.” 

© -Mosaic Records/Bret Primack: copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with permission.

“Descending the stairs to the jammed basement nitery, Ferguson acknowledges the greetings of the racially mixed throng, primed for an evening of high‑octane musical invigoration. At the first level down, patrons queue up before a tiny cage purchasing tickets for entry.

Down another flight and Maynard comes waist to face with Pee Wee Marquette, a uniformed midget who doubles as Maitre d' and MC.

"Maynard the Fox, Maynard the Fox," the manikin shrieks, his stentorian falsetto audible all the way to Brooklyn.

"Hello Pee Wee." Recoiling, Ferguson reaches for his wallet and scans the bar. Having played Birdland for six­teen weeks out of the last fifty‑two, Ferguson is no stranger to Pee Wee's shtick. In a pint‑sized act of extortion, Mr. Marquette, dubbed half a motherfucker by Lester Young, requires each performing musician to fork over a monetary taste. The penalty for disobedience is sobering: an elbow to the testicles if Pee Wee is working the door, and even worse, mispronunciation of one's name from the bandstand.

Everyone who plays Birdland knows there is nothing worse than a microphone in the hands of this mad dwarf juiced out of his nut. Accordingly, Pee Wee once announced Ferguson's former ensemble, called the Birdland Dream Band, as the Birdland Bird Band.

"Now baba, you know what Gene Krupa laid on me. Buddy Rich too."

From the bar, the sardonically elegant percussionist Philly Joe Jones, no stranger to scams, flashes Maynard his trademark toothy grin. As with most musicians who have graced Birdland's notorious stage, Philly Joe is a frequent guest at the dark, smoky boite de nuit. Earlier in the week, he sat in, taking the drum kit from Frankie Dunlop and swinging the Ferguson orchestra madly.

Remembering that Stan Kenton's orchestra works Birdland frequently, Ferguson asks Pee Wee, "How much did Stan give you?"Entering the jazz consciousness as part of Kenton's Innovations Orchestra, Ferguson understands Stan's revul­sion for the small‑time chiselers and tawdry hustlers who inhabit the Jazz business, but Pee Wee's antics are chump change compared to the fiendish agents, callous club owners, tone deaf producers, egotistical critics, and mis­cellaneous leeches jazz musicians habitually encounter.

Pee Wee's parasitic supplications are stalled by the tumultuous arrival of an obese cannonball, bolting down the stairs as if the sky is falling. Producer Teddy Reig has arrived, to shepherd tonight's performance onto a long playing record. Ferguson glances at his watch and con­cludes that Ramsey Lewis has five minutes until break time. Is it possible for Reig, an insatiable gourmand, to consume his customary Birdland burger deluxe before Ferguson's first set begins? Soon Reig journeys backstage, a Titanic passenger in search of a lifeboat. Astonishingly, his hefty presence causes barely a ripple in this cabaret, where picturesque oddballs are the bill de faire.

Attentive to the music, the table crowd eats and drinks heartily, a mix of devotees, tourists, celebrities and assorted denizens of the wee small hours. Like Ava Gardner, Sammy Davis, Jr. and his blond Swedish wife, some ambassador, or perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Nine‑to‑Five, out for a night on the town that won't cost their first male born.

Riding the final crest of the bebop wave, Birdland is the hang, a musical oasis for accomplished improvisers where the finest jazz on planet Earth is presented with a mini­mum of pretense. The club's let‑it‑all‑hang‑out ambiance encourages musicians to stretch the boundaries with spirited audience encouragement. Live radio broadcasts from the club, hosted by Symphony Sid, compound the excitement. Who can forget the night eighteen‑year‑old Lee Morgan', crackling trumpet break with Dizzy's big band on A NIGHT IN TUNISIA left the audience thunderstruck. Or the final reunion of Bird, Dizzy and Bud Powell just a few months ­before Parker's untimely demise. Not surprisingly. the cats have been coming down to check out the band all week. To Maynard's left, at the bar, Tadd Dameron is hanging with Philly Joe, not far from Georgie Auld and Terry Gibbs. Miles came by last night and stayed for two sets, noting new pianist's Joe Zawinul's chops and Slide Hampton’s perspicacious arrangements.

In front of the bar, several rows of bleacher‑style benches house underage patrons and anyone wising to luxuriate Birdland's liberal admission policy. The inhabitants of the ­bullpen, or peanut gallery, pay only the admission fee, and then stay the night sans further disbursement.

As Maynard walks through the club, instant recognition – his career is ascending.

In this year's Down Beat reader's poll, he occupies the third trumpet position behind Dizzy and Miles. And in the big band category, the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra, only on the boards for two years, is right up there with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Stan Kenton and Woody Herman. Maynard’s high wire upper register trumpet act, which he works without a net, never falls to wow an audience.

Respect for the musicians in this subterranean taberna­cle runs from high to hero worship, still some noisemakers ­produce a cacophonic murmur, thankfully overshadowed by the paid proceedings. One table of these regular, includes a group of Hebraic racketeers, fixated on horses and mathematical speculation. Their reputed financial interest in Birdland has spawned rumors that mob money governs owner Morris Levy. But Levy, a one‑man business cash machine who also owns Roulette Records, files his own marching orders.

Nevertheless, conjecture abounds regarding the murder ­of Birdland bouncer Irving Levy, Morris's brother. Last January, the younger Levy tried to hush an addled patron, who promptly pulled out a pistol and shot him. The thug thought his honor had been impugned when Irving seemed to cast a wary eye on his wife, a part time prostitute. Fortunately, the ill‑starred episode had little or no impact on Birdland itself.

To the right of the stage, through a pair of swinging doors, Maynard is greeted by Birdland manager Oscar Goodstein. Sitting at a cash register inspecting the night’s take, Goodstein smiles, but is obviously engrossed in matters of greater import. Reportedly a minority partner in the ­club, Goodstein is a former attorney who venerates celebrities. Each night, before the music begins, he dines with his wife and two young daughters at the club.

Along with Birdland kingpin Morris Levy, he genuinely enjoys jazz. But unlike Levy, whose persona is that of a Brooklyn street fighter, Goodstein conducts business with a pretense of nicety. Goodstein can also be generous, some­times lending money to musicians and letting them pay as they play, up to a certain dollar amount. But it takes a tight‑fisted taskmaster to run a successful Jazz carnival so to most musicians, Oscar Goodstein is but another in a long line of irksome club owners.

Meticulously eluding the tangle of microphone wires leading to a temporary engineering outpost set up to docu­ment the evening's festivities, Maynard greets a uniformed man working the service bar, and then stumbles upon his orchestra. Only numbering twelve, they are nevertheless too many for the dressing room so the group is scattered about the backstage area. Some use the time to woodshed. Ramsey Lewis is playing TICK TACK, his first set closer, but away from the stage, muted brass players disturb no one. Trumpeter Don Ellis uses every waking moment practicing scales. Clyde Reasinger, new to the lead trumpet book, is working on his upper register, although his previous attempts to mimic Maynard's supernatural reach have proved futile.

Willie Maiden, with earphone and portable radio, chain smokes while monitoring the progress of his beloved Yankees. Although in a pensive moment, he will admit to certain fascination with the first place standing of the newly relocated Los Angeles Dodgers. He is, after all, a baseball fan.

Hunched in a corner, Slide Hampton, trombone on lap, sketches out the lead trombone part for an arrangement based on the works of Chopin he's titled MY MAN CHOPIN. Bassist Jimmy Rowser sits nearby, bemused by Hampton's ability to work without a score.

Regal in red sport coats, band members receive Ferguson enthusiastically, their relationship obviously not mired in the prototypical leader/sideman groove. Although most are in their twenties, the musicians have backgrounds as diverse as Vienna, Detroit and Houston, but are united by an enduring devotion to the music. The baleful working conditions ‑ ungodly hours, austere travel and sub‑average remuneration ‑ are quickly forgotten once the music begins; the experience of playing in a blazing big band akin to a prolonged orgasm with the hottest chick in town.

At the sound of sustained applause and Pee Wee's intro­duction of Lewis's trio, the orchestra wanders through the swinging doors and onto the bandstand. While juggling his alto and tenor saxophones, Carmine Leggio acknowledges to baritone saxophonist John Lanni that tonight is indeed, “my last gig with the band." The Westchester‑based sax‑man looks to go with Woody's band in a few weeks.

The Birdland gig is also trombonist/arranger Don Sebesky’s swan song. The Kenton band awaits although Sebesky will regularly contribute charts to the Ferguson’s book. It's not often that an up‑and‑coming arranger has the opportunity to ply his craft without creative limitations.

As the band takes the stage, Ferguson gingerly places his mammoth silver Conn Constellation trumpet onto the bar while drinking a glass of water. His valve trombone and baritone horn are already in place on the bandstand. The debonair, nattily attired thirty‑one‑year‑old has been blow­ing audiences away for the past seventeen years, yet he never falls to feel the anticipation just before he plays. Thanks to the band's bustling schedule, he has avoided the daily practice regimen the trumpet mandates. Clutching his horn, he blows some air through to push out the saliva.

With Willie Maiden's downbeat, the band breaks into BLUE BIRDLAND, the Jimmy Giuffre composition that serves as Maynard's theme. After the first few bars. Pee Wee grabs the microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a real ­treat in store for you tonight here at Birdland. a man who plays a lot of trumpet. That's right, the young man with the horn, the only and one, everybody put your hands together for Maynardddd Ferguson and his Birdland Dream Band. Maynard the Fox! Maynard the Fox!" As Ferguson walks on, his trumpet screams the out chorus of the chorus an octave above the trumpet section. The audience is mesmerized, Maynard's upper register, a dazzling gift from God.

Only trumpet players comprehend the monumental obstacles Ferguson conquers every time he soars into the stratosphere. The heart of the difficulty lies in the physical properties of the instrument itself. A musically sound upper register requires superhuman strength and coordination. Lips must vibrate expeditiously, a reservoir of air must be routed through the horn unremittingly, and the placement of the lips on the mouthpiece must be precise.

The theme ends to excited applause with the audience eager for the impending fireworks. Not missing a beat, Ferguson announces “This is OLEO,” and Joe Zawinul’s fleet piano initiates the Sonny Rollins composition. A version of the song performed at Birdland earlier in the year, when the Ferguson orchestra played opposite the Miles Davis Sextet, featuring Cannonball and Coltrane, inspired Slide Hampton to fashion this perfectly crafted, seamless tapes­try of harmony, texture and melody.

The visceral potency and brute strength of the orchestra are indelible. In front of the trumpets, saxophonist Carmen Leggio feels as if a vibrating power plant is ripping through him. Along with the orchestra itself, the audience is devoured by Frankie Dunlop's steamroller percussion. Dunlop not only swings the band hard, but adds enthusias­tic, richly‑shaded accents and flourishes. The brass plays so loud that Dunlop practically drives his foot into the bass drum, socking the rhythms out in perfect synchronization with the brass section, topped by Ferguson's penetrating trumpet. The effect is staggering.

Because of Birdland’s low ceiling, the sound is tighter, more compact, more intimate than any other club. With no echo, no real ambiance to the sound, the impact is immedi­ate. The band's power nails patrons to their seats.

Slide Hampton plays a trombone solo and quickly demonstrates that his improvisational prowess is on a par with his arranging facility. He's followed by twenty‑five­ year‑old Jerry Tyree, who played with Hampton back in Indianapolis along with the Montgomery Brothers, and his jazz solos seem to improve by the set.

A recent Jazz For Moderns tour included the Ferguson orchestra, Dave Brubeck's quartet and Sonny Rollins's trio. Rather than ride the band bus, Tyree chauffeured Rollins's newly acquired Cadillac so that the leviathan tenor man could practice while traveling. Obviously motivated from listening to Rollins's exercises, Tyree began wood-shedding exuberantly shortly thereafter.

In keeping with the orchestra's family ambiance, Hampton's Brooklyn brownstone houses not only his own kin and saxophonists Charles Davis and Eric Dolphy, but also band members Tyree and Josef Zawinul. The Maynard Ferguson Orchestra is Austrian Zawinul's first American gig and his comping and solos have made an immediate impression. Although he was a hero in his native Vienna, Zawinul was compelled nevertheless to assure Ferguson that he could "sving my ass off" when he auditioned for the band. Zawinul's roots, deep in Tatum and Powell, along with his rousing facility, mark him as a serious prospect.Jimmy Ford takes the next solo, a passionate cry of existence. His searing alto saxophone rides above the band, a whirlwind of emotional intensity. Then Ferguson steps to bat and drives it all home, soaring to a lusty cli­max. With Dunlop’s propulsion, a truly thermonuclear dynamic, the band is wound tight, ready to explode.

On the heels Of OLEO'S balls‑to‑the‑wall climax, a wel­come bit of balladry appears with Benny Golson's STARFIRE. On display here, the orchestra's more soothing side, as delineated by Ferguson's middle register. The quest for provocative arrangements has led Ferguson to saxophon­ist/composer Benny Golson. The former Jazz Messenger has a distinctive touch, and his ballads never fail to glisten like jewels in the moonlight.

Just as the audience regains composure. Ferguson introduces THE MARK OF JAZZ, another Slide Hampton incendiary device. Named for the Philadelphia DJ Sid Mark, one of the band’s most vocal supporters, the tune is an unstop­pable juggernaut. Jimmy Ford's Incandescent alto swiftly builds the intensity. Composer/arranger Hampton’s trom­bone adds fuel to the fire, along with Ferguson's towering trumpet, Bowser's ambulating bass and Dunlop's kinetic percussion.

The emotional fervor surrounding performances by the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra is built on electrifying solos, Dunlop's propulsive percussion and sharply etched section work. The band's breakneck tempos and intricate arrange­ments mandate symbiotic instrumental blending in each ensemble passage. Accordingly, every instrumental grouping within the orchestra is a living, breathing, entity. When the brass section plays, they attack notes together with measured impact, ending notes in unison, precisely. This is the essence of the music, its fountainhead. What makes it more than just some musicians reading charts. They don't just play the notes, they play music, utilizing good sound, dynamics and intonation. The difference is immediately palatable.

TO cool things down, Ferguson calls for another Benny Golson original, NIGHT LIFE, a medium tempo minor blues which features Hampton, Tyree and Zawinul once again. This tune is actually FIVE SPOT AFTER DARK named after the ­great Greenwich Village club. On a live Birdland session for Roulette Records, that title would never fly. Philadelphian Golson is best known for his work with Art Blakey’s inde­structible quintet, and the composition has the feel that is one of the Ferguson orchestra's hallmark,.

For dramatic effect, the Victor Young standard STELLA BY STARLIGHT, is unrivaled. Inspired by the grand‑scale arrangements that Bill Holman and Bill Russo created for the the Kenton orchestra, Slide Hampton's chart is guaranteed to convert the most fervent big band skeptic. With shifting tempos and double‑barreled solos by Hampton, Ford, Ferguson and Dunlop, the chart climaxes in frenetic riffs followed by long pauses, the last six notes spanning five octaves. Lest patrons risk over‑ excitement, the management retains a tank of oxygen near the bandstand. A licensed physician is also on call.

The ensuing ballad, LONELY TIME, is a moving feature for the emotive tenor saxophone of Willie Maiden. West Coast arranger Marty Paich, who has contributed several charts to the band's book, has a way of using dynamics to bring out the more pastel shades of the band's personality. The backbone of the orchestra, Maiden's tenor echoes the liquid emotion of Lester Young, another effective contrast to the more demonstrative aspects of the Ferguson experience. This composition was known as VELVET in the Birdland Dream Band book.

But Maiden’s original BACK IN THE SATELLITE AGAIN quickly relaunches the band. At under three minutes, this breath-taking vehicle for the breakneck solos of Ford, Ferguson and Dunlop, mirrors the space race the dominates the headlines. With the cold war in a lock, public enemy number one, Nikita Khrushchev has challenged American technological superiority by launching the first man‑made satellite, much to the dismay of America's rocket scientists, but it is a matter of public record that there is no Russian equivalent of the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra.

Willie Maiden’s second original of the evening is THREE MORE FOXES, a trumpet joust for Jerry Tyree, Don Ellis and Maynard. Cutting contests have long been a staple of jazz performances, but this arrangement is more of a spring­-board for individual capabilities than instrumental rivalry. Although Ferguson is the principal soloist, leader and architect of the orchestra, he is intent on using the band as showcase for individual talent. Recognizing his particu­lar trumpet niche, he is not threatened when other trumpeters solo and impress the audience with their acumen, as is the case with the foxes Tyree and Ellis.

The closer, SEA ISLE STOMP, is a Don Sebesky original written for a favorite performance venue on the Jersey shore. Twenty‑year‑old Sebesky takes the first solo, fol­lowed by the impassioned tenor of Carmen Leggio. With tonight his concluding engagement, and in mourning over the recent death of best friend, Holmes Junebug Lindsay, Leggio's solos have an extra bite, catalyzed by the emotional turmoil that envelops him.

Finally. the band strikes up BLUE BIRDLAND and Pee Wee offers his concluding pronouncements, fueled by demon rum and a fat money clip. With the clock set to strike four, the few dozen remaining listeners contemplate climbing the stairs for a pre‑dawn rendezvous with reality.

In conclusion, Maynard picks up his horn and hangs over double high C, a source of bemusement for trumpeter Jerry Tyree, who tells section mate Don Ellis, "that mother­fucker is poppin' off those high notes like we're just getting started.”

After the final chord, the band packs up to more enthu­siastic applause. The Maynard Ferguson Orchestra goes back on the road this weekend, for a couple of college dance dates hundreds of miles apart, then more clubs, con­certs and other postal zones along their perpetual caravan.

A dazed but satiated audience slowly files out. Some even express the inclination for another set, if Ferguson's chops can stand it. Back on the street, they linger in front of the club, basking in the afterglow of the performance. The sun will arrive soon, but most in attendance are too up to sleep. Maynard's music the antithesis of a lullaby. And so they scatter to coffee shops, after hours clubs and long rides home.

Yet Birdland is not long for Broadway. Within four years, audiences will dwindle to the point of invisibility. In fact, jazz will just about disappear from midtown Manhattan altogether. The coming invasion of youthful musical superfluity, spearheaded by Chubby Checker and a bundle of bands from Britain, will focus the music industry on other, more lucrative forms of expression. Outside the mass market ­area, jazz will be relegated to highbrow status, like its classical cousin. Birdland's next incarnation will be the short-lived Lloyd Price's Turntable. In a twist of fate, Slide Hampton will become Lloyd Price’s musical director and lead Price’s band at the club. Not long after the Turntable takes its final spin, the site will be occupied by a succession of discotheques and girly bars.

In 1977, the club will be gussied up for a farewell flutter in celebration of a newly-released live Birdland recording on the Columbia label involving Charlie Parker. The night survivors will reconvene to recall a time and place where the joy of creation and the ardor of camaraderie had not yet been pulverized by ego and the almighty dollar.

Today, jazz clubs in midtown Manhattan are as extant as bread in a Chinese restaurant. 52nd Street is skyscrapered, save the 21 Club. The buildings on Broadway remain, with new tenants. Ed Sullivan passed away long ago and his theater now houses David Letterman’s TV Show. Aping Steve Allen, Letterman likes to focus a street camera on Broadway’s most bizarre attractions, notably a strip joint called Flashdancers.

The [Birdland] striped canopy that once stood there is no more. In keeping with our present predicament, a walk down the hallowed stairway today leads only to pleasures of the flesh. However, the music played by the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra on that fateful June night in 1959 survives!”

- Bret Primack, June 1992

Maynard eventually issued 14 albums during his approximately six year stint with Roulette Records between 1958-1964, although the actual recording that was underwritten by the label would end in March, 1962.

During this period, a host of excellent players would replace or join with the original members of the 12-piece band including Chet Ferretti, Rick Keifer, and Rolf Ericsson, Bill Berry, Dusko Goykovich, and Don Rader [tp], Bill Byers, Ray Winslow, Kenny Rupp [tb], Lanny Morgan, Don Menza, Joe Farrell, Ronnie Cuber, Frank Hittner [saxes, Mike Abene, Jaki Byard [p], Gene Cherico, John Neeves, Linc Millman [b], Stu Martin, Rufus Jones [d].

The arrangers adding charts to the book was broadened to include Mike Abene, Jaki Byard, Benny Golson, Tom McIntosh, Don Menza, Bill Mathieu, and Don Rader.

With the help of DJ Sid Mark, Maynard recorded two tremendous LP’s for the Cameo-Parkway Label in 1964 which have been subsequently been collected an issued on Fresh Sound as The New Sounds of Maynard Ferguson and his Orchestra, 1964 [FSCD 2010], but these were to be a fitting swan song for this exciting period in Maynard’s career.


Soon thereafter, the “Dream" became for Maynard and the band a nightmare of financial issues with the IRS, problems booking the band, and a period of deep, personal despair the caused he and his family to seek refuge abroad.

Of course, many of us who have followed Maynard career over the years since this time know that the story ends well and that Maynard became a living example of the adversity adage: “if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.”

And while, I’m happy for Maynard and respectful of all of his musical achievements throughout the years, I can never forget the excitement that the music of the Birdland Dream Band generated in me “when the world was young.”

Maynard Ferguson - A Message from Newport - The Fugue

Maynard Ferguson - A Message from Birdland - Stella by Starlight

Maynard Ferguson - A Message from Birdland - The Mark of Jazz

Benny Golson - "Soul Me" One More Time

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

“Although he has contributed several staple pieces to the hard-bop repertoire, Benny’s playing style owes more to such swing masters as Coleman Hawkins and Lucky Thompson; a big crusty tone and a fierce momentum sustain his solos, and they can take surprising and exciting turns ….[paraphrase, p.585]

Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6^th Ed.

It seems that I have loved Benny Golson’s compositions from the moment I first heard them. They are based on easy-to-remember melodies, which is something that drummers cherish because you can carry these tunes in your head while others are improvising on them.

Benny’s songs just seem to fall so logically on the ear.

Whisper Not, Along Came Betty, I Remember Clifford, Killer Joe, Domingo, and Blues March, among a host of others, are all Jazz standards whose tonal patterns are instantly recognized by Jazz fans all over the world.

As Dan Morgenstern has commented: “… Benny Golson’s gifts as a composer, arranger and player are of the sort that can stand the test of time.”

Fortunately, Benny is still around, still making music and doing interviews like the following one with the “Dean” of Jazz writers, Nat Hentoff.

After Benny’s chat with Nat, you’ll find some thoughts and anecdotes about Benny by Gene Lees, another esteemed Jazz writer.

We conclude this feature on Benny with a video tribute to him as developed by the graphics wizards at CerraJazz LTD. The tune on the audio track is Benny’s original – Soul Me and he performs it along with Curtis Fuller on trombone, Ray Bryant on piano, Tommy Bryant on bass and Al Harewood on drums.

By NAT HENTOFF

The Wall Street Journal April 1, 2009

© -Nat Hentoff/The Wall Street Journal, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“When the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was preparing its Jan. 24 tribute, "Benny Golson at 80," I was asked for a couple of lines to be included in the introduction. Hearing in memory Benny's "I Remember Clifford" and "Whisper Not," I told the producer: "His melodies are so natural and lasting, it's as if they invented themselves, as Benny keeps doing."

After the event, Benny reminded me that, in 1957, I produced the album "Benny Golson's New York Jazz Scene" for Contemporary Records, his first as the leader of his Jazztet. Back then, as now in his new Concord Music Group release "New Time, New 'Tet" (Amazon), I was drawn -- in his tenor saxophone improvisations and compositions -- to their flowing sense of ordered liberty, with the inner warmth of an adventurous romanticist.

Benny also reminded me that in 1958 -- when I was asked to phone some of the musicians chosen for the historic Art Kane photograph in Esquire magazine, "A Great Day in Harlem" -- I had told him where and when to be at 10 that morning on a Harlem street. Although Benny was a Dizzy Gillespie sideman at the time, he was not yet a member of the jazz pantheon and, he recalls, he felt like asking for autographs from such legends there as Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie, Roy Eldridge and Rex Stewart.

Since then, after joining Art Blakey and then heading his own series of groups in an abundance of recordings -- with his original compositions being performed by many other leaders, too -- Benny has become an international jazz master, having also received that designation by the National Endowment for the Arts.

He now has over a thousand manuscript pages of his autobiography (tentatively titled "Whisper Not") during which, he tells me, "I have more to say about Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Farmer, Clifford Brown and John Coltrane than anybody else."

Benny and Coltrane were friends in Philadelphia when Benny was 12 and John two years older. In a January "Down Beat" interview, Benny said of his fellow boyhood student: "He was always a little ahead of the rest of us. When we got to where he was, he was always somewhere else, always reaching. . . . He always got to it."

During my conversations with Coltrane years later -- when, as influential as he had become, he was still urgently searching -- he told me, "This music is as serious as life itself."

Hearing me recount that memory, Benny nodded in agreement. "That's why," he said, "when I play, I can't assume the role of an entertainer. Entertainers second-guess their audience, working to find out what they want to hear. My first obligation is to myself, when I play and when I write -- to say who I am, what I'm feeling, exploring in this jazz adventure, and what my dreams are."

A few weeks before, I'd heard Benny on National Public Radio during the Saturday morning program hosted by Scott Simon, an informed, intuitive interviewer. He asked Benny: "Is it a time of your life when you ask what you hope people take from your music?"

Said Benny: "I hope they can look into my heart's core to understand that what they hear is the reflection of my inner parts -- my thinking, my curiosity, my imagination."

In his current, often surprising recording, "New Time, New 'Tet,'" they'll also hear his twilit tribute to Chopin ("L'adieu"), a favorite composer when he was exploring, as a child, his first instrument, the piano. And, also unexpectedly, a virile, joyful celebration of "Verdi's Voice" (credited to Giuseppe Verdi, arranger Benny Golson).

Among other intriguing signs of Benny's insistence on continuing to renew himself are a rejuvenated "Whisper Not"; the Thelonious Monk-Kenny Clarke "Epistrophy"; and "Gypsy Jingle-Jangle," which comes from a time when, watching a Frankenstein movie on television at 4 in the morning, Benny's imagination lit up on seeing "a band of gypsies dancing around a campfire, accompanying themselves with a violin, accordion, tambourine, hand claps and cheerful shouts, as women danced wildly, spinning and jumping up and down. As my head matched their beat, I envisioned a band of hip jazz musicians walking into that happy camp-fire scene, asking shyly, 'Can we sit in?'"

You may find yourself at the campfire, moving in new ways, with Benny, Eddie Henderson (trumpet), Steve Davis (trombone), Mike LeDonne (piano), Buster Williams (bass) and Carl Allen (drums). For Benny and his new Jazztet comrades, music is indeed as serious as their continuing memories, fantasies and delights in being jazz musicians.

One performance especially, Benny's "From Dream to Dream," reminded me of conversations I had in my younger days with other jazz-struck friends about which tracks on which albums to play when making love. Jazz can be intimately erotic -- as when Johnny Hodges or Ben Webster of Duke Ellington's band was playing a ballad and, Duke told me, "a yearning sigh would come out of the dancers and become part of the music."

"'From Dream to Dream,'" I said to Benny, "may lead to a slight increase in the population. Where did this song come from as you started to conceive it?"

"It was based," he said, "on life. Life's rewards and disappointments. And disappointments are followed by dreams. I'm a dreamer. In life, in my music, I'm always involved in what's coming, in what could come. That's part of the adventure."

For listeners around the world, Benny Golson's past is also continually rewarding. Another recording released by the Concord Music Group is "The Best of Benny Golson" (Amazon), in which he is joined by such soul mates between 1957 and 2004 as Art Blakey, Art Farmer, Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris, Ray Bryant and Paul Chambers.

Included in this set from Benny's 1957 first album as leader is the first "Whisper Not." In his notes, Marc Myers, host of JazzWax.com (a site often recommended by musicians), writes: "Benny's arrangement opens with a 'quiet-please' cymbal roll before proceeding like a cat walking on a fence. Listen as gently rising and falling lines are echoed by Julius Watkins's French horn and Jimmy Cleveland's trombone.

Benny recalls that the melody came so fast when he wrote it that he could hardly get the notes down on paper."

"Whisper Not" has been recorded 189 times. He often gets requests for it and "I Remember Clifford Brown," among his other classics. Of course, he never plays them the same way twice.

At one point in our conversation, Benny suddenly said, "I'm so privileged to be a jazz musician -- to say who I am and get paid for it."”

© -Gene Lees, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Often one finds that the friendships of prominent jazz musicians go back to sem­inal high schools such as Cass Tech in Detroit, Wendell Phillips and Austin high schools in Chicago, Granoff in Philadel­phia, and Jefferson High in Los Angeles. And even when they do not originate in the same school, many such relationships go back to early youth. One such case is that of Benny Golson and a boy from North Carolina named John Coltrane. They grew up together musically, playing in rowdy local commercial bands to learn their craft. And they got fired together from one. Benny's mother consoled them: "One day both of you are going to be so good that that band will not be able to afford you."

Benny studied music at Howard Uni­versity, whose faculty officially frowned on jazz. The saxophone was not considered an "appropriate" instrument. Benny signed up for clarinet and practiced the saxophone in the laundry room, where no one could hear him. Already, composition was one of his main interests. He grew impatient with the academic rigidity he found at Howard and left before gradua­tion, joining the band of Bull Moose Jack­son and going on the road. He worked with Tadd Dameron and the big bands of Lio­nel Hampton (1953) and Dizzy Gillespie (1956-57), then joined drummer Art Blakey, with whom he worked in 1958 and '59. Blakey, like Horace Silver, was a major mentor of young jazzmen, and Benny's reputation, both as a composer and player, grew.

Many of Golson's compositions, such as "Killer Joe" and "I Remember Clif­ford," have become part of the permanent jazz repertoire. In 1959, he and Art Farmer —a Silver and Gerry Mulligan alumnus — formed their Jazztet, a sextet that at first featured trombonist Curtis Fuller and Art's brother Addison on bass. The group lasted until 1962.

Then Benny broke into television and film scoring in Hollywood, writing scores at all the major studios. He moved back to New York City in 1987, where he soon found himself busier than he had ever been, in all forms of composition and as a player too. In May 1992, Benny was awarded an honorary doctorate by William Paterson College. He teaches there.

One year, backstage at the Newport Jazz Festival, Benny ran into John Coltrane, who reminded him of the time they got fired in Philadelphia. "Remember what your mother said?" John asked. "Do you think they'd be able to afford us now?"”