"The Forgotten Ones:" Don Fagerquist - Gordon Jack [From the Archives]

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

Gordon Jack, author of Fifties Jazz Talk: An Oral Retrospective and a frequent contributor to JazzJournal “dropped by” the editorial offices of JazzProfiles recently with a generous offer to post his piece on trumpeter Don Fagerquist [1927-1974] to the blog.

Don was one of the musicians based on the Left Coast who always knocked me out.

He had one of the most beautiful sounds that I ever heard on trumpet; plus, he was one heckuva swinger, which always caught me by surprise. Here’s this lyrical, pretty tone, and the next thing you know the guy is poppin’ one terrific Jazz phrase after another.

The trumpet seemed to find him. His was one of the purest tones you will ever hear on the horn. In Don Fagerquist, the instrument found one of its clearest forms of expression.

Don never seemed to get outside of himself. He found big bands and combos to work in that both complimented and complemented the way he approached playing the trumpet.

His tone was what musicians referred to as “legit” [short for legitimate = the sound of an instrument often associated with its form in Classical music].

No squeezing notes through the horn, no half-valve fingering and no tricks or shortcuts. Even his erect posture in playing the instrument was textbook.

If you had a child who wished to play trumpet, Don would have been the perfect teacher for all facets of playing the instrument.

He was clear, he was clean and he was cool.

His sound had a presence to it that just snapped your head around when you heard it; it made you pay attention to it.

No shuckin’ or jiving’, just the majesty of the trumpeter’s clarion call . When the Angel Gabriel picked trumpet as his axe [Jazz talk for instrument], he must have had Don’s tone in mind.

Here’s the full text of Gordon’s article which appeared in the July 2014 edition of JazzJournal. You can locate more information about JazzJournal by going here.

© -  Gordon Jack/JazzJournal; used with the author’s permission; copyright protected; all rights reserved.

                                           

“Don Fagerquist’s distinctive trumpet sound graced the bands of Gene Krupa, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman and Les Brown as soloist and section leader for a number of years from the mid-forties. Although a prolific recording artist (Tom Lord lists 364 sessions)  he is almost unknown today and for that reason it is worth highlighting a few comments about him from former colleagues: “I loved Don’s playing” (Gerry Mulligan); “Marvellous. He was ahead of his time” (Herb Geller); “He was a genius – a class act” (Dave Pell); “A tremendous jazz player” (Arno Marsh); “He really is a player - he’s the best” (Les Brown) and “He was a great improviser…everyone liked him” (Phil Urso).

Carl Saunders one of the most in-demand trumpeters in Los Angeles has cited him as a primary influence along with Kenny Dorham and Freddie Hubbard. (Bill Perkins once told me that “Carl idolised him”). In 1956 when Leonard Feather conducted a poll exclusively for musicians, both George Shearing and Urbie Green listed Don as one of their favourite trumpeters. Despite these testimonials his name has rarely been included on a list of the music’s finest soloists except once in 1955 when he secured fifth place in Metronome magazine’s annual poll. Robert Gordon probably said it best in his book (Jazz West Coast) “Don Fagerquist (was) a much underrated soloist. No doubt he was largely ignored because he laboured so often in the commercial vineyards of the Dave Pell Octet.”

Don who came from a musical family was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on the 6th. February 1927. He joined the Mal Hallett orchestra in 1943 which was based in Boston, working along the eastern side of the United States. The band included Buddy Wise, Sonny Rich, Dick Taylor and John Williams and in an enthusiastic Metronome review in 1944 George Simon said, “17 year old Don Fagerquist plays most of the lead…and then lets loose with some impressive jazz.” Like many of his generation his primary influences at this time were Harry James and Roy Eldridge.

In 1944 he began a long association with Gene Krupa that lasted off and on until 1950. He recruited Buddy Wise and Dick Taylor from Hallet’s band for Gene and they can all be heard soloing on one of Krupa’s biggest hits, Disc Jockey Jump by the nineteen year old Gerry Mulligan. It has a standard  AABA form with an A section resembling Four Brothers although as Gerry once ruefully pointed out it was recorded  nearly a year before Jimmy Giuffre’s classic. Don was the featured trumpet soloist and he can be heard on numerous other titles with the band like Leave Us Leap, Up An Atom, Lover and Opus One which are all good examples of his work at that time. The latter featured Anita O’Day and Don took leave of absence from the band in 1949 to work with her small group for about six months. Tiny Kahn was on drums but unfortunately they were never recorded.

That same year Artie Shaw was having tax problems so he decided to return to the music business with a new big band to help pay his debt to the IRS. Don was recruited along with some of the very best of the young modernists like Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, Herbie Steward, Jimmy Raney and Dodo Marmarosa. The leader also commissioned writers like George Russell, Johnny Mandel and Tadd Dameron to contribute new material which was performed with his old hits like Frenesi, Begin the Beguine, I Cover the Waterfront and Stardust.  Don was heard not only with the big band but also with a fresh edition of the Gramercy Five which successfully revisited numbers like Summit Ridge Drive, Grabtown Grapple and Cross Your Heart.

He left the Shaw band in 1950 to re-join Gene Krupa for a while and then early in 1951 he took Don Ferrara’s place with Woody Herman who was beginning a month’s residency at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. In July that year Charlie Parker was recorded with the band at the Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City performing staples like Lemon Drop, Four Brothers, Caldonia, The Goof and I and More Moon. After the concert Don and Doug Mettome played with Parker at a local club. Fagerquist split the lead book with Conte Candoli and didn’t get too many solos but he can be heard on Celestial Blues, Moten Stomp and Singing in the Rain from a July 1952 recording session that was notable for a Woody Herman vocal on Early Autumn. A few months later after a Hollywood recording date he left Herman to join Les Brown who had a residency on the Bob Hope Show. He is prominently featured with the ‘Band of Renown’ on a double CD recorded at the Hollywood Palladium in 1953 on numbers like Rain, Happy Hooligan, Jersey Bounce and From This Moment On. This was when he and his family relocated to Los Angeles, eventually settling in Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley.

His instrument of choice was a Calicchio trumpet which he played throughout his career and by the time he joined Les Brown his mature lyrical style was in full bloom. Rather like Clifford Brown (another well- schooled musician) he had a thorough knowledge of harmony and he was able to negotiate every chord change in a sequence with an effortless flow of melodic creativity - unlike Chet Baker for instance who could read music but was an ‘ear’ player when it came to improvisation.

Early in 1953 Dave Pell formed an octet with sidemen from Les  Brown’s band like Ray Sims, Ronny Lang and Fagerquist which proved to be very popular commercially leading some critics to accuse it of playing ‘Mortgage-paying jazz’. The public could not get enough of Pell’s octet and according to John Tynan writing in Downbeat it became, “The busiest small group in California”. The arrangements were by some of the finest Los Angeles-based writers like Shorty Rogers, Johnny Mandel, Andre Previn and Marty Paich and most of the charts had a guitar doubling the lead giving the group a bigger sound than might be expected from eight pieces.  Don’s lyrical trumpet on lead or soloing was an essential ingredient in the success of the group. He made eleven albums with Pell who in an interview with Marc Myers once said, “He had chops to do anything he thought of…he would steal the album again and again”.

The mid-fifties until December 1969 was a period of intense recording activity for him and after years of being on the road, the security of regular studio work must have seemed particularly attractive. In 1956 he joined the staff at Paramount Studios where he eventually performed on 85 film sound–tracks. He also became a first-call trumpet for recording sessions with artists as diverse as Shelly Manne, Red Norvo, Mel Torme, Buddy DeFranco, Art Pepper, Georgie Auld, Ray Charles, Nancy Wilson, Junior Mance and numerous others. He was on several of Ella Fitzgerald’s celebrated Song Book albums and he did Sinatra dates after Harry Edison stopped making them. He can also be heard on Barbra Streisand’s hit On A Clear Day. He performed on Hoagy Sings Carmichael soloing on Skylark, Winter Moon, Rockin’ Chair and Ballad in Blue prompting sleeve-note writer George Frazier to claim that Don was a new name to him, which was a surprising admission for a former DownBeat contributor.

One particularly memorable session was the 1954 Jazz Studio 2 album with Herb Geller, Milt Bernhart and Jimmy Giuffre. It includes classic versions of two of the most sophisticated ballads in the repertoire (Laura and Darn That Dream) on a recording that would merit five stars except for the presence of John Graas on french horn. He was a fine instrumentalist who had been a member of the Cleveland Symphony but the horn has more than eleven feet of tubing making it unsuitable for swiftly articulated bebop choruses. It also happens to be the most difficult of the brass family with an unforgiving mouthpiece – smaller than a trumpet’s. The only performer who seemed able to overcome the horn’s inherent problems was Julius Watkins.

A year later Don and Charlie Mariano recorded with singer Helen Carr who began her short career with Charles Mingus in 1949. It is a particularly intimate date with interesting material like Not Mine, I Don’t Want To Cry Anymore and Moments Like This - numbers you don’t hear every day. It also includes Cole Porter’s delightful Down In The Depths Of The 90thFloor which is available on YouTube.

That same year he recorded four titles under his own name with a Four Brothers saxophone section including Zoot Sims, Dave Pell, Bill Holman and Bob Gordon. Jordi Pujol has released it on his Jazz City series as Portrait of a Great Jazz Artist - a title that does not overstate Fagerquist’s immense talent. Also included on the CD are performances with Russell Garcia, Heinie Beau and Les Brown.

Even better was his only other date as a leader in 1957 where he was able to stretch out on a selection of superior standards arranged by Marty Paich. As always he decorates his melodic lines with chromatic runs embellished with delicate grace notes revealing a soloist of rare originality and taste. His warm sound has echoes of the great Bobby Hackett who of course was one of Miles’s favourites.

Throughout the sixties he continued to be very much in demand with artists like Louie Bellson, Billy May, Jo Stafford, Sammy Davis Jr., Henry Mancini, Elmer Bernstein, Sarah Vaughan and Neal Hefti. His last recording was in 1969 with Charlie Barnet’s big band playing a selection of current pop songs arranged by Billy May. There followed an unexplained gap in his activities until 1973 when along with Dave Pell, Jimmy Rowles, Ray Brown and Frank Capp he worked on a TV show hosted by Tom Kennedy for several months.

Don Fagerquist died in Los Angeles from a kidney complaint on January 24th. 1974

For more on this unsung giant go here to locate 26 of his solo transcriptions with Les Brown, Dave Pell, Marty Paich and Mel Torme.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

As Leader

Portrait of a Great Jazz Artist (Jazz City Series FSR 2212)

Eight by Eight (V.S.O.P. Records 4CD)

As Sideman

Gene Krupa: Drummin’ Man (Columbia 501647 2)

Artie Shaw: The Complete Thesaurus Transcriptions 1949 (Hep CD 89/90)

Les Brown: Live at the Hollywood Palladium (Jasmine JASCD 407)

Helen Carr (Bethlehem CDSOL-6085)

Jazz Studio 1/2: Complete Sessions (Lonehill Jazz LHJ 10145)

Dave Pell Octet: Jazz for Dancing and Listening (Jazz City Series FSR 2242)

I have selected The Girl Next Door track from the Fresh Sound anthology Don Fagerquist: Portrait of a Jazz Artist [FSR 2212] for the following video tribute to Don.

Russ Garcia did the arrangement which has Don stating the melody as a ballad [0:00 – 1:07 minutes], then doubling the time [1:08 – 2:30 minutes] to allow Don to show off his Jazz chops before restating the theme as a ballad [2:31 minutes]. You might want to especially listen for the very clever ending in which Don plays a remarkably hip cadenza [3:16 minutes].

Jazz has had many great trumpet stylists over its almost 100 year history, but I don’t think that anyone has even played the horn prettier than Don Fagerquist.

The Forgotten Ones - Buddy Collette: The Gordon Jack Essay [From the Archives]

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

“If I were going to pick a guy to open the Hollywood studio doors as Jackie Robinson did for baseball, Buddy would have been the man”.

- Gerald Wilson, trumpet player, bandleader, educator

“A spiritual father to Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, James Newton and myself. Buddy was a sage and saint. The doors he opened for us are innumerable and monumental.”

- Charles Lloyd, tenor saxophonist, flutist, bandleader

UK-based author and essayist Gordon Jack “dropped by” the editorial offices of JazzProfiles recently to share the following piece on Buddy Collette which first appeared in the March 2015 issue of Jazz Journal. You can locate more information about the magazine via this link.

© -  Gordon Jack/JazzJournal; copyright protected, all rights reserved, used with the author’s permission.

“Buddy Collette should be remembered not only as a consummate multi-instrumentalist equally at home on flute, clarinet, alto or tenor but also for the major part he played in integrating the Los Angeles Federation of Musicians’ Locals in 1953. Until then two different locals operated in many US cities – one for black performers and one for white.

He was born in Los Angeles in 1921 and began learning the piano when he was ten but a couple of years later he switched to the saxophone.  His family lived in the Watts area and Britt Woodman and Charles Mingus were neighbours. It was Britt’s brother who taught Buddy the clarinet and by the mid-thirties he was a member of The Woodman Brothers Biggest Little Band In The World.

Buddy also had his own band around this time playing occasional Saturday night dances but he needed a bass player. A chance meeting with Mingus who was studying the cello solved the problem. Buddy encouraged him to take up the bass and introduced him to Red Callender who became Mingus’ first teacher, charging $2.00 a lesson. After considerable wood-shedding Charles joined Collette’s band for occasional engagements at the Odd Fellows Hall in Watts and over the years Buddy and Mingus remained very close.

Around 1937 he started working at the Follies Theatre backing acts like Tempest Storm, Lily St.Cyr and vaudeville comedian Joe Yule (Mickey Rooney’s father). A little later in 1940 he began studies with the celebrated Lloyd Reese who had acquired a reputation as one of the finest jazz educators on the west coast. While studying with Reese he joined the very popular Cee Pee Johnson band who were usually to be heard at Central Avenue venues like the Club Alabam. Buddy was on baritone and it was possibly when the band appeared at Hollywood’s Rhumboogie that Orson Welles heard them and decided to use them in Citizen Kane. They can be seen briefly during a party scene at the end of the film.

When the US entered WWII in 1941 he joined an all-black US Navy Reserve band serving with Clark Terry, Jerome Richardson and the Royal brothers - Ernie and Marshal.  After the war the Central Avenue scene continued to thrive with clubs like Lovejoy’s, the Last Word and the Turban Lounge featuring young stars like Dexter Gordon, Wardell  Gray, Sonny Criss, Buddy and his friend Bill Green.

Collette started to organise a little band with John Anderson, Britt Woodman, Spaulding Givens, Mingus, Oscar Bradley and Lucky Thompson who had stayed in town after his booking with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker at Billy Berg’s in 1946. They rehearsed at Mingus’ house and their first booking was at the Down Beat which was the hottest spot on Central Avenue. It was a collaborative group so they decided to call themselves The Stars Of Swing. That was to be on a sign outside the club but Lucky Thompson had other ideas. On opening night the club sign said, Lucky Thompson And The All Stars. Mingus apparently wanted to kill him and three days later after the original sign was reinstated Lucky left the group to be replaced by Teddy Edwards

With aid of the GI Bill Buddy began studying at the American Operatic Laboratory, the California Academy of Music and the L.A. Conservatory of Music. This was the time that he began concentrating on the flute studying with Henry Woempner who was the top flutist at MGM. He also had harmony lessons with Franklyn Marks and Wesley La Violette who numbered Shorty Rogers, Marty Paich and Jimmy Giuffre among his students.

For a time in the late forties when work was scarce he went on the road with Joe Liggins’ R&B band on baritone. Joe had just had a big hit with The Honeydripper and the band was working mostly down south where prejudice was severe and very difficult to take. Another southern trip involved Buddy performing with Eddie “Rochester” Anderson who was famous for his work with Jack Benny. Around this time he was playing alto in Benny Carter’s band at the Hollywood Palladium and he was also teaching music at Jordan High School in Watts. The fourteen year old Frank Morgan whose father had played guitar with the Ink Spots, together with Sonny Criss and Eric Dolphy were some of his students. Eric and Buddy were close friends until Dolphy’s untimely death in 1964.

With his superior sight-reading skills Collette was beginning to get regular calls for record dates in the late ‘40s on alto with people like Ivie Anderson, Johnny Otis, Gerald Wilson, Ernie Andrews and Charles Mingus. Then around 1950 he made history by becoming the first black musician to be hired for a national TV show. Jerry Fielding, who had replaced Billy May as musical director for Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life show hired him after hearing his flute performance in Bizet’s Carmen with the Community Symphony Orchestra.  

Duke Ellington wanted him – “So I can feature that flute of yours” - but Buddy was by now doing too well in L.A. He started playing tenor with Herb and Lorraine Geller at a club on Main Street that had the benefit of a weekly radio broadcast. Around this time Gerry Mulligan who had just opened at the Haig sometimes rehearsed his quartet with Chet Baker at an apartment Buddy was sharing with Jimmy Cheatham.  

In 1953 Buddy along with Benny Carter, Gerald Wilson and Red Callender convinced the authorities that there should only be one musician’s local in L.A. James C. Petrillo president of the American Federation of Musicians was against it but with the help of high-profile show-business personalities like Josephine Baker, Nat Cole and Frank Sinatra they were finally successful in their fight to integrate the two unions. As a result a lot of black musicians were later contracted to do the Carol Burnett, Danny Kaye and Flip Wilson shows. Years later Gerald Wilson said, “If I were going to pick a guy to open the Hollywood studio doors as Jackie Robinson did for baseball, Buddy would have been the man”.

Early in 1955 he was playing at Lake Tahoe with Lena Horne and Chico Hamilton was on drums. It was Chico’s ambition to leave the singer and organise a new group with a different sound. Fred Katz had been recruited on cello, Carson Smith was on bass together with the young Jim Hall on guitar who was working in a book-store at the time. Buddy Collette with his multi-instrumentalist skills was to be the final and very important ingredient in what became one of the most distinctive small groups of the era.

Chico had obtained a booking for the quintet at The Strollers a small club in Long Beach about 20 miles south of L.A. Buddy was working with Scatman Crothers at the Tailspin Club in Hollywood so for the first week of the engagement Bob Hardaway took his place. Once Collete was on the stand the group became extremely popular in part thanks to regular broadcasts from the club by disc-jockey Sleepy Stein on KFOX. Prices probably helped too because there was no cover charge unless one of the bigger acts like the Ink Spots were appearing when the door-price would be $1.00.

Collette contributed a number of his intriguing originals like A Nice Day, Blue Sands, Buddy Boo and Sleepy Slept Here - the latter was used by Stein as a theme on his nightly radio show. The quintet of course provided an ideal showcase for his solo abilities. On alto his highly structured lines recalled the elegance of Benny Carter and his tenor had much of the light swing of Lester Young. He was one of the very few performers who could make a convincing case for the flute as a solo jazz instrument and his clarinet playing was acknowledged by Down Beat critics when they voted him the New Star on the instrument in 1956. He stayed with the quintet for about eighteen months but life on the road was tough. He was making about $300.00 a week with Chico which was what he could earn for half an hour on the Groucho Marx show. The studio scene meant good money and short hours which gave him more time for continued study.

In 1957 he appeared on the Stars of Jazz TV show with Gerald Wilson and was booked again for the show in 1958 with Abbey Lincoln. Throughout the late fifties he made numerous albums with Benny Goodman, Buddy Rich, Quincy Jones, Peggy Lee and Herbie Mann. His 1956 recording of Cycle was notoriously dismissed by Miles Davis in a 1958 Down Beat Blindfold Test – “All those white tenor players sound alike to me…unless it’s Zoot Sims or Stan Getz”.

Nelson Riddle often used black performers like Plas Johnson, Harry Edison, Joe Comfort and Buddy for albums with Rosemary Clooney, Nat Cole and Sinatra. Buddy can be clearly seen on the LP cover of Sinatra’s 1960 Swingin’ Session!!! sitting next to Riddle. He has an eight bar solo on Should I and Frank apparently always asked for him whenever he was on the west coast. Apart from his considerable studio work he kept performing with his own quartet at local clubs the Haig, the Cellar and Shelly’s Manne Hole.

In 1962 he made one of his rare visits to NYC because Mingus needed help with music for his Town Hall concert which featured 30 musicians. The occasion turned out to be a disaster described by Clark Terry as, “The most bizarre and chaotic scene I have ever witnessed!”  The following year he was back in the city at the invitation of Norman Granz to conduct the band at Basin Street East accompanying Ella Fitzgerald.

In L.A. the jazz scene was changing like it was everywhere else in the ‘60s and ‘70s. He was still getting a lot of studio calls though from people like Jerry Fielding, Paul Weston, Harry Zimmerman and Billy May. He always had private students but in 1973 he started teaching at California State University, moving on to Loyola Marymount University and later California State Polytechnic Institute at Pomona. In 1994 he helped establish the Jazz America summer teaching programme aimed at young players. The 23 January 1990 was declared Buddy Collette Day in L.A. and in 1998 he was honoured by the mayor as a Los Angeles Living Cultural Treasure.

Buddy Collette died on 19 September 2010. In the March 2011 Jazztimes Charles Lloyd wrote a moving tribute calling him, “A spiritual father to Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, James Newton and myself. Buddy was a sage and saint. The doors he opened for us are innumerable and monumental.”

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

As leader

Cool, Calm & Collette (Fresh Sound Records FSR 2249)

An Original Westcoaster (Fresh Sound Records FSR 2250)

Buddy Collete & His West Coast Friends (Fresh Sound Records FSR 2248)

As Sideman

The Complete Pacific Jazz Recordings Of The Chico Hamilton Quintet (Mosaic MD6-175)

Conte Candoli All Stars, Little Big Band Jazz (Fresh Sound Records FSR 1629)

John Graas Nonet, Jazzmantics (Lone Hill Jazz LHJ 10149)

Red Callender, Swingin’ Suite (Fresh Sound Records FSR-CD 458)

Harry James - Cornet Chop Suey and Jazz Connoisseur Part 4

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

"Harry James was a genius. He could read all of the highly syncopated charts at sight, and he played fantastic jazz solos—different every time. ... He was also a good conductor and a fine arranger."

- Arthur Rollini, member of the reed section of the 1937-38 Benny Goodman Orchestra

“By January 1937, then, through the almost random process of comings and goings and casually hired replacements and all the other accidents of circumstance that commonly determined the course of a big band's personnel, the Benny Goodman trumpet section finally completed its evolution and had formed itself into the classic triumvirate of Harry James, Ziggy Elman and Chris Griffin.

This powerhouse trio, as it came to be called, played with a precision and drive and spirit-rousing joyfulness that added even more excitement to the band's performances, and it was the perfect vehicle for executing the Jimmy Mundy killer-dillers that Benny was now favoring. For Hammond, who much preferred Fletcher Henderson's more subtle and relaxed approach to orchestration, "the loud, meaningless 'killer' arrangements which Benny instructs Jimmy Mundy to pound out in mass production each week are definitely detracting from the musicianship of the orchestra." But even he had to admit "there has never been a better trumpet section except in one of Fletcher Henderson's old bands."

This was not an uncommon opinion. Glenn Miller, for one, considered it "the Marvel of the Age." "The best compliment we ever got," Chris Griffin remembers, "is when Duke Ellington once said we were the greatest trumpet section that ever was, as far as his liking." In most trumpet sections one man played lead and the others held down the less demanding second and third trumpet chairs….

In the Goodman band, though, the lead was alternated among all three players. "They switched the parts around because there were so many high notes for the trumpets they'd wear one guy out," Jess Stacy explains. "They had to switch the parts. If they hadn't, one guy would have died."

- Ross Firestone, Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life & Times of Benny Goodman

''His solo work poured out of his horn with a sense of inevitability that no other trumpeter could equal with such consistency."

- Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles, continues its in-depth look at the career of trumpeter and band leader, Harry James with a reprinting of the following inserts notes that Jazz musician, bandleader, author and editor Bill Kirchner penned for Verve Jazz Masters 55: Harry James [314 529 902-2]. The CD provides a wonderful retrospective of the music produced by the bands that Harry led in the 1950's and 1960's.

Still to come in future postings about Harry are Gunther Schuller’s take on him in The Swing Era and a synopsis of the salient aspects of his career as drawn from Peter Levinson’s Trumpet Blues: The Life of Harry James.

“If a poll were taken to pick the most famous trumpeters in the history of twentieth-century music, chances are that Louis Armstrong and Harry James would top most lists. Armstrong, of course, also has a most secure place in the jazz pantheon, but James does not, due to the "burden" of having achieved enormous commercial success early in his career. It's ironic that while few judge Armstrong's achievements on the basis of such hits as Hello, Dolly, James is still viewed in many quarters mainly as an early-Forties purveyor of schmaltzy ballads such as You Made Me Love You and such virtuoso pop-classical fare as Flight of the Bumble Bee.

To be sure, there was a strong element of commercialism in James's musical persona, but. there was an intense jazz side as well. His playing gave witness to the varied influences of his favorite trumpeters: Armstrong, Muggsy Spanier, Bunny Berigan, Buck Clayton., and Clifford Brown. There have been few trumpeters in jazz history who could sound equally convincing on Armstrong's Cornet Chop Suey and the challenging bebop harmonies of Ernie Wilkins's Jazz Connoisseur.  James pulled it all off effortlessly, while leaving no doubt who was playing. (''His solo work", observed composer, conductor, and historian Gunther Schuller in The Swing Era: "poured out of his horn ... with a sense of inevitability that no other trumpeter could equal with such consistency.") Combine these elements with an eloquent jazz ballad style - there are several examples in this collection -  a passion for the blues, and breathtaking execution, and you have a unique, and great, jazz musician.

Born in 1916 in Albany, Georgia, Harry Hagg James was the son of a circus bandleader and he spent much of his childhood in this unusual musical environment, (His adult fondness for such showpieces as Carnival of Venice no doubt stemmed from early exposure to brass band music.) He began playing drums at age seven and three years later commenced trumpet lessons with his father. The boy evidently learned quickly: While in his teens, he played in succession of bands in Texas, where his family had settled, and by the time he was nineteen had graduated to the national with the Ben Pollack band. His popularity, however, was established with his 1937- 38 stint in the most renowned of Benny Goodman's Orchestras, enabling him to go on his own and become one of the most successful bandleaders of the Swing Era — before reaching the age of thirty.

With the unofficial demise of the Swing Era at the end of 1946, James disbanded his orchestra, as did a number of other bandleaders, but he formed a new band soon afterward and led it intermittently throughout the next decade. In the late Fifties he began what was arguably the most artistically fruitful period of his career: During this time, he acquired a base at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, where his band played for several months of each year when not touring. James also commissioned a slew of charts from first-rate composer-arrangers: Ralph Burns, Bob Florence, Neal Hefti, Thad Jones and, most of all, Ernie Wilkins. The last three, not coincidentally, had written extensively for Count Basie, whose band James admired and, to some extent, imitated in approach.

(The two Burns compositions, released here for the first time, are from a November 1961 session in which James recorded eight Burns originals. Hommage a Swee Pea is a tribute to Burns's friend Billy Strayhorn, the longtime Duke Ellington collaborator and compositional alter ego. Rosebud was a nickname for a well-known groupie.)

But the James band was more than just a Basie copy — its leader was too strong a musical personality to settle for that. His own playing continued to grow in scope — including an assimilation of Clifford Brown's music — and in the series of nine albums recorded for MGM between January 1959 and March '64, he demonstrated his artistry in a variety of settings. There was a Bob Crosby-like album of big band Dixieland as well as a mainstream small-group date, updated orchestrations of Swing Era fare, and challenging postbop vehicles (The Jazz Connoisseur, its sequel A Swinging Serenade, and Walkin'). As a soloist, James was at his peak, and his former sidemen remember his musicianship with awe. "On a scale of one to ten," recalls lead trumpeter Rob Turk, "Harry was a fifty."

"He was the greatest musician I ever played with," tenor saxophonist Jay Corre says. Both Corre and bassist Red Kelly mention that James had what must have been a photographic memory (and a phonographic ear). He not only had his own parts memorized but those of every band member as well. If a player was absent, James would play the missing part on trumpet. And Ray Sims played an occasional game with the leader: Sims would pull out any chart and display a random two measures of his second trombone — even from an arrangement that the band had not played in years — and James would invariably identify the piece correctly.

If James was a prodigious musician, his band was more than capable of supporting him. The James band heard on these sixteen tracks was one of the finest jazz orchestras of its era. Its most celebrated members were drumming phenomenon Buddy Rich (in residence from 1962 to '66), the great lead alto saxophonist Willie Smith (a longtime James sideman who originally had achieved fame with Jimmie Lunceford), and tenor saxophonist Corky Corcoran — but there were other notable soloists, including tenor saxophonists Corre and Sam Firmature, trombonist Sims (older brother of Zoot), and pianist Jack Perciful.

Harry James continued to play magnificently and lead his orchestra until his death in 1983. The music contained in this collection, all recorded during what was arguably his most creative period, makes a strong case for a reevaluation of his place both in jazz history and in the jazz pantheon. In a musical tradition that celebrates individuality, he was truly one of a kind.”

-Bill Kirchner, November 1995

The following video features Harry on Ernie Wilkins’s Jazz Connoisseur.

GARY SMULYAN INTERVIEW WITH GORDON JACK [From the Archives]

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

Gordon Jack is a frequent contributor to the Jazz Journal and a very generous friend to these pages in his allowance of JazzProfiles republishings of his excellent writings. He is the author of Fifties Jazz Talk An Oral Retrospective and he developed the Gerry Mulligan discography in Raymond Horrick’s book Gerry Mulligan’s Ark.

The following article was first published in Jazz Journal, October 2010.

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“The baritone saxophone was once dismissed by a writer in Downbeat magazine as nothing more than a ‘Bottom-Heavy Monster’ but it was Harry Carney’s huge, indomitable sound and concept on the instrument that became one of the defining qualities of probably the greatest jazz ensemble ever – the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Leo Parker, Cecil Payne, Serge Chaloff and Pepper Adams showed how well it could adapt to the harmonic intricacies of bebop and Gerry Mulligan’s melodic creativity was uninhibited by what many considered to be no more than a section horn. Nick Brignola, Ronnie Cuber, Lars Gullin, Bob Gordon, Ronnie Ross and John Surman are just a few who have added to the lore as has Grammy award winner Gary Smulyan. Unlike a lot of contemporary players Gary’s baritone does not extend to a low A (C concert) which prompted my first question when we met on his visit to the UK in March 2010.

“I much prefer a conventional Bb baritone because a low A weakens the power of the lower register, whereas the Bb horn has a much more open and singing quality down there.” (Alex Stewart’s highly informative book on New York big bands – ‘Making The Scene’ – says there is yet another price to be paid for a low A. Many musicians insist that it does not blend so well with the other saxophones in the section because the extra length on the instrumental bell alters the entire overtone series. Danny Bank** who might just be the most recorded baritone player in history has also highlighted intonation problems at the top of the horn – GJ.) “ Danny is a Master and if he says that I’ll go along with it too but don’t forget Nick Brignola played one as does Ronnie Cuber and they both sound amazing.

“I was born in Bethpage, New York in 1956 and started playing alto when I was eight but by the time I was 13 I was fooling around on the bass-guitar. Rock’n’Roll was the big thing for kids back then and I got together with a couple of friends because we really liked Eric Clapton’s ‘Cream’ – the group he had with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. We rehearsed in a garage and did one gig at a high-school prom but we weren’t very successful.

“I wasn’t aware of jazz at all but one night I was twiddling a radio dial and found Ed Beach’s famous ‘Just Jazz’ show on WRVR. He played Fats Waller’s African Ripples and that was a defining moment in my life in terms of changing direction. I started hanging out at Sonny’s Place in Long Island which was one of the clubs everyone from New York used to play. Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, Jimmy Knepper, Lee Konitz and Ray Nance all played there – the list goes on and on. Throughout high-school I was really getting into the music, playing at Sonny’s three or four nights a week and sitting in with

some of those guys. This was before I had a driving licence so my parents used to drop me off at the club at nine and pick me up at 1:30 in the morning.

“One night Bob Mover was there with Chet Baker. I was about 16 and although we didn’t know each other, I started talking to Bob during an intermission. I told him I played alto and asked if I could sit in. He went over to the juke-box and put on Bird’s record of Just Friends telling me to sing along with Charlie Parker’s solo. I passed the test because I sang it from the beginning to the end and that was my audition to sit-in with Chet who was very nice to me incidentally. We played a couple of numbers and Bob and I became good friends from that day forward.

“My influences then were Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, Phil Woods and Gene Quill. I also liked Frank Strozier a lot who was one of the true giants of the alto saxophone with a mature and original sense of harmony that was very advanced.

“The first well known band I played with was Woody Herman’s thanks to a recommendation from my friend Glenn Drewes who was playing trumpet with the band. I was 22 and I got a call from Bill Byrne the road-manager asking if I wanted to replace Bruce Johnstone who was leaving. He is a New Zealender and an unsung giant of the instrument – I wish more people knew about him because Bruce is truly amazing.” (One of his very best solos on record can be found on a 1973 recording of Macarthur Park with Maynard Ferguson’s big band on Vocalion SML 8429 - GJ). “I’d never played a baritone before but I jumped at the chance to play with Herman. I went out and bought a Yamaha and joined them two weeks later in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I was told that Woody’s pet peeve was alto players who doubled on baritone – he really hated that. He wanted guys who specialised on the instrument where the baritone was their ‘voice’. Every day I was convinced that he was going to say, ‘You know kid, nice try – we’ll see you later’ but he never did.

“Woody was one of the best band-leaders I ever worked for because he led the band without seeming to. He never told anybody what to do, it was all very subtle and I was thrilled to share the stage with him. I loved the three tenors and baritone voicing and it was an honour and a privilege to play some of the same parts Serge Chaloff had played. Four Brothers was still in Jimmy Giuffre’s handwriting and the saxes used to perform it out front of the band every night.” (Gene Allen who played with the band in the early sixties told me in a 2000 interview that he liked the concept of a tenor lead. However he preferred a conventional sax section of two altos, two tenors and a baritone because it gave the writers more flexibility and tone colours – GJ.)

“The band played all kinds of dates including Elks clubs and the American Legion. One night we might be in Carnegie Hall the next some dance out in the mid-west. That was what was so valuable because you had to play all kinds of music which wasn’t always satisfying but it was a gig. Woody had been doing that kind of thing all through his career.” (There is a photo in William Clancy’s fascinating book ‘Chronicles Of The Herds’ showing Gary with the band at Disneyland, California in August 1979 – GJ.)

“In 1979 we played the Monterey Jazz Festival with Dizzy Gillespie, Slide Hampton and Stan Getz as guests. I remember Stan played What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life? which luckily was recorded because it was absolutely stunning. One of my favourite records is ‘Focus’ which is one of the pivotal jazz records of all time. The way Stan reacted to Eddie Sauter’s great string writing was brilliant and Roy Haynes sounds just great on that album too.

“I stayed with Woody for two years. During that time I decided to say goodbye to my alto because I discovered I really was a baritone player and just before I left the band I switched from a Yamaha to a Conn.

“I moved to New York in 1980 and started subbing at the Village Vanguard with Mel Lewis which is how everyone gets into the band – you see if the chemistry works and how things fit. Gary Pribek who had been with Buddy Rich was on baritone but he wanted to move over to tenor. Eventually the tenor chair opened up allowing him to make the switch which is when they offered the baritone chair to me and I’m still there – I’m probably due for a gold watch. Bob Brookmeyer was the musical director and I think his writing was going in a different direction to where the band was at that time but we learnt so much under his direction and tutelage. It was an incredibly beneficial experience for all of us to work with him.” (Talking about that period Bob Brookmeyer told me back in 1995, ‘I was becoming very experimental and giving them music that was not suitable for them so by 1982 I had written myself out of Mel’s band – GJ.)

“I played Monday nights at the Vanguard but the early eighties was a slow time for extra gigs. I was doing a lot of commercial work like weddings, bar-mitzvahs and other dance band stuff but it was really unsatisfying music. I’d always enjoyed cooking and as there was so little happening for me musically that was artistically satisfying I decided to get away from music for a while and do something else that was creative. I did an eight-month intensive culinary course at the New York Restaurant School and then worked for a year and a half at a French restaurant in Pearl River, New York doing twelve hour shifts.” (In 1991 Gary told writer Arnold Jay Smith, ‘After that, four-hour weddings and bar-mitzvahs looked pretty good!’ – GJ).

“I realised that I had been trying to run away from music which was my one true calling. I started putting more into playing and taking my career seriously which is when things started happening. I was free-lancing all over town playing with a whole host of people thanks to rediscovering a sense of commitment as a musician after spending so many hours on my feet in a hot kitchen.” (The Lee Konitz nonet, the George Coleman octet, the Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin big band, Tito Puente, Lionel Hampton, the Carnegie Hall Jazz  Band, the Smithsonian Masterworks Orchestra and the Tom Harrell octet are just a few of the many notable New York ensembles Gary performed with from the mid eighties – GJ.)

“I had the good fortune to be part of the Philip Morris Superband led by Gene Harris which did three world-tours with B.B.King and Ray Charles as guests. One of the  concerts was recorded at the Town Hall in NYC in 1989 and I had a stop-time chorus on Ol’ Man River arranged by Torrie Zito which was pretty well received on the night.” (Gary is being really modest here because the sleeve note refers to this solo as ‘One of the evening’s highlights…that rendered even the normally talkative leader Gene Harris almost at a loss for words.’ From the audience reaction on the CD it sounds as though he received a well deserved standing ovation – GJ). “That same year I had the great pleasure of performing in Charles Mingus’ magnum opus Epitaph conducted by Gunther Schuller at Avery Fisher Hall.

“When Gerry Mulligan passed away Ronnie Cuber, Nick Brignola and I did some concerts together as a tribute which was followed by an album of Gerry’s music together with some other material associated with him. He wasn’t a direct influence but anyone who has played the baritone is going to be influenced in some way by Mulligan even if it’s through the back door. I mean, I owned all his records and I loved the CJB. I recognised his genius and brilliance but I was more attracted to a hard-bop style of playing so stylistically I gravitated more to Pepper Adams. Gerry came out of Pres really. You can hear it in his time-feel whereas Pepper was from the post-bop era – a much more aggressive style of playing which is my approach but I still listen to Lester Young and Gerry too.

“Pepper Adams (along with Charlie Parker) is my main influence because his playing has all the characteristics a great improviser requires – an original and personal sound, a well developed harmonic conception, a keen wit and a ferocious sense of swing. For me he was the most important post-bop baritone player and his influence is still felt today. I must mention Harry Carney whose sound and approach paved the way for everyone who played the instrument and who followed in his footsteps. Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s beautiful writing showcased the baritone because Harry was featured so prominently.

“John Surman is someone else I really admire. About five years ago he played a solo concert in a small theatre at the Montreal Jazz Festival. During the evening he’d been playing electronics, soprano sax and bass clarinet and for an encore he played ‘Round Midnight on the baritone. He used all Monk’s changes and it was one of the most stunning versions of Monk’s classic I’ve ever heard – I can still hear it because John is amazing.

“Getting back to the ‘Three Baritone Band’ we still work occasionally and a whole bunch of people have come through since Nick Brignola died, like Charles Davis, Howard Johnson and the brilliant Scott Robinson.” (An excellent example of multi-instrumentalist Robinson’s stunning work on baritone can be found on Bob Brookmeyer’s 1997 ‘Celebration’ CD – Challenge Records CHR 70066. Bob said at the time, ‘He did an absolutely amazing job sounding to me like Mulligan - if Gerry had been born 30 years later - plus all the personal history Scott brings’ – GJ).

“I’ve made two CDs with Mark Masters that I’m really pleased with beginning with a release featuring Clifford Brown material.” (Jack Montrose, who arranged a famous 1954 album for the trumpeter which included Zoot Sims and Bob Gordon, is present in the sax section. He also arranged three titles for the Masters session – GJ).

“The other one that might be a surprise is dedicated to Frankie Laine because I’m a huge fan. He had a real blues sensibility in his approach and he was incredibly soulful. He was also a skilful composer and lyricist helping to create a wonderful body of tunes that are both beautiful and harmonically interesting from a jazz musician’s point of view. Unlike a lot of pop singers from that era he collaborated with some of the really great songwriters like Hoagy Carmichael, Matt Dennis, Billy Strayhorn and Mel Torme.” (Probably the two finest examples of Frankie Laine’s work as a lyricist are We’ll Be Together Again with Carl Fischer and What Am I Here For with Duke Ellington. In 1996 the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame honoured him with its Lifetime Achievement Award – GJ).

“Unfortunately he’s best remembered for country & western schlock like Rawhide but in my opinion he was a truly great jazz singer as he demonstrated on a 1955 album with Buck Clayton, J.J.Johnson, Kai Winding and Budd Johnson.

“On the subject of recordings ‘Hidden Treasures’ with Christian McBride and Billy Drummond featured the line-up that I really like to work with – baritone, bass and drums only. Although the bass develops the harmonic line, I am free to create within that structure without having a piano or guitar leading me in the direction they want. Without those constraints I can take the music where I want to take it.” (‘More Treasures’ where pianist Mike LeDonne drops out for four titles has a similar line-up – GJ).   

“I feel honoured and privileged to have shared the bandstand over the years with so many of my musical heroes. Through all of those experiences I’ve had some great times both on and off the stand and I feel I have really grown as a musician.”

** Danny Bank died three months after this interview on June 5th. 2010.