The Three Sounds "Groovin' Hard Live at The Penthouse, 1964-68"

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

Another quality that Gene Harris garnered from his role models was an ethos of professionalism, of performance consistency  … [Pianist Benny] Green himself observed this about 25 years ago during his first sustained road-time with Harris on a One Hundred Golden Fingers tour in Japan.

"We were doing one-night concerts, and we'd only get to play for maybe 12 minutes each night; barely get a chance to touch the piano or warm up during the day" Green recalls. "My God, every night Gene Harris would play a different piece with the trio, and to say that he rocked the house is an understatement. It was a sermon. Whether he was playing a ballad or a groover, his spirit never, ever let up. I don't know how the man did it. His performance ethic was like nothing else I've ever seen.

"It's essential for a master to know their own limitations and his strengths and I don't think we have any recorded examples of Gene attempting to do something that he could not do well. The music he chose to play, the tempos, the keys and just the feeling that he instilled in his performances, was a homerun every time. He went deep-deep-deep into what he could do well, which was a whole lot. He's known, rightfully, as a blues master, but his ballad playing would give you goosebumps, cause you to tear up.

He understood on a very profound level that music is an emotional transference. It's some kind of spiritual channeling. I think at all times, with the Three Sounds and in later years, he had no inner conflict, intellectually speaking, that led him to subdue elements of the Black Baptist Church experience, where he came from, in favor of more esoteric jazz elements.

There's an art to creating that balance with taste. He knew what he was, what he had to offer, and that's what he gave us. So at the end of the day, when we think of Gene, we're not talking about how fast he could play or how much of an innovator he was, but we all have to say, 'Hallelujah, what a spirit. His music makes me feel like nothing else.' That's no small feat."

- Pianist Benny Green as told to Ted Panken, excerpted from the insert notes to “Groovin’ Hard: Live at The Penthouse 1964-68.

As the decade of the 1950’s drew to a close, Blue Note Records executives Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff went on recording and releasing. Blue Note recorded sixty-eight sessions during 1958-9, not all of them producing results which Lion deemed worthy of release, but still setting an extraordinarily high standard for the label. There were several new names to add to the leadership roster: saxophonists Tina Brooks and Jackie McLean, trombonist Bennie Green, trumpeters Dizzy Reece and Donald Byrd, and pianists Walter Davis and Duke Pearson. But the most important additions to the ranks were two groups.

One was Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers which had originally recorded on the label in 1955 and which returned to Blue Note after stints with Columbia, RCA, Bethlehem, and Atlantic

The other was the Three Sounds.

As explained in Richard Cook’s Biography of Blue Note Records: “The piano trio was becoming one of the most popular of jazz units. Small enough to offer the kind of closely focused sound which wouldn't deter listeners who didn't want to try too hard with their jazz, it was still able to carry all the sophistications which a more committed follower expected. At least two figures outside the hard-bop arena - Oscar Peterson and Erroll Garner - had won huge audiences with the format, often made up of people who rarely listened to any other kind of jazz (which is why Garner's Concert By the Sea album can still be found in old LP accumulations as a lone example of a jazz album). But besides Garner and Peterson, many younger pianists were following the format to considerable success, and soon every jazz label had at least one such trio on its books, playing what was often a kind of hip cocktail music: Red Garland at Prestige, Ahmad Jamal at Argo, Bill Evans at Riverside (though Evans was perhaps more self-consciously 'artistic', he probably appealed to much the same people who bought the other records).

Blue Note hadn't gone too far in that direction, but when he heard the trio from Washington DC called the Three Sounds, Lion went after that market in a serious way. The group had made a single set for Riverside with Nat Adderley, and when they arrived in New York, Lion signed them and cut some initial sessions on 16 and 28 September 1958, eventually released as Introducing The Three Sounds (BLP 1600). The trio was Gene Harris (piano), Andrew Simpkins (bass) and Bill Dowdy (drums), and that is the group which eventually cut sixteen albums for Blue Note over a ten-year period (only later on were Dowdy and then Simpkins replaced).

Although they had originally featured a saxophonist, it was when Harris took centre stage and began making the most benign and good-hearted improvisations on popular material that the Sounds began to click. Light, bluesy, discreetly swinging - Dowdy was a drummer who believed in gentle persuasion, not bullying or bravado - their music was almost a definition of jazz formula. Harris would state the melody, maybe out of tempo, maybe with his partners there; then take a chorus or two where he gradually built the genteel intensity and fashioned a modest improvisation, probably with some locked-hands touches along the way; then a return to the tune, with a tag at the close. The steady mid-tempo lope was the normal setting, but ballads -where Harris would really arpeggiate the melody line - might follow a funereal beat and double the duration.

As a result, all their records were the same. If you liked one of them, you'd like any one of them, and in one of those curious situations where the law of diminishing returns doesn't seem to apply, the Three Sounds sold consistently well over their Blue Note life. It didn't hurt that Lion released more than twenty singles off the various albums. As smart background music, the Three Sounds were as fine as anybody could wish.

Long after the trio ended, Harris continued as an old-school jazz entertainer, having spent most of his adult life pleasing crowds of one sort or another. The Scottish guitarist Jim Mullen, who toured with him in later years, recalled how it worked:

“Gene used to say that these people have come out to see us, and it's our job to give them a fantastic time. He used to say at the end of the evening, 'If you leave here with a smile on your face, remember that Gene Harris put it there.' I've never seen anyone turn a room of strangers into family that way. We never rehearsed. He'd do this big rubato solo piano introduction with no clue as to what's coming up. Then he'd just start playing and you had to be ready to jump in there. That's how he wanted it.””

The Three Sounds disbanded in 1973. Bassist Andy Simpkins died in 1999 and Gene Harris died a year later in 2000. Bill Dowdy is still with us aged 83.

But thanks to the ever resourceful George Klabin and Zev Feldman and their team at Resonance Records, the story of The Three Sounds lives on with the scheduled release on January 13, 2017 of deluxe CD and digital editions of a never-before-issued album by the group entitled “Groovin’ Hard: Live at The Penthouse 1964-68.

Included with be a 20-page insert booklet with rare photos of the group and essays by producers Klabin and Feldman, Seattle radio personality, Jim Wilke and noted Jazz journalist, Ted Panken.

Antje Hübner of Hubtone PR is handling the public relations for the project and she sent along the following media release about the forthcoming recording.

Los Angeles, December 2, 2016 - Resonance Records is proud to announce the release of Groovin’ Hard: Live at the Penthouse 1964 - 1968, a soulful collection of never-before-heard live recordings made over the course of five years during four separate engagements by the legendary Three Sounds featuring Gene Harris at Seattle's long-time local treasure, Charles Puzzo, Sr.'s now late, lamented jazz club, the Penthouse. This album stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the best titles in the Three Sounds' illustrious and extensive recorded catalog.                                                              

The Three Sounds, led by pianist Gene Harris, was one of the preeminent "soul jazz" piano trios from the mid-'50s through the 1960s. In its heyday, the Three Sounds was one of the top-selling jazz acts in the world with a string of hit records on Blue Note Records between 1958 and 1962; indeed, during that period, no other Blue Note act sold as many records as the Three Sounds. After they left Blue Note, the Three Sounds also made a number of acclaimed, top-selling albums for Verve, Mercury, Limelight and other labels.

In addition to the Three Sounds' own immensely successful albums recorded over the course of their 15 years together, Harris and his mates also collaborated on recordings with many of the foremost figures in jazz of the era such as Lester Young, Sonny Stitt, Stanley Turrentine, Johnny Griffin, Anita O'Day, Lou Donaldson and others. The Three Sounds' collective recorded catalogue occupies an important place in the history of recorded jazz.

As a jazz pianist, Gene Harris was not only popular with fans, he was an important influence on a generation of pianists who followed him, such as Monty Alexander, Benny Green and many others. He had monumental technique, but that technique was always put in the service of deep feeling and groove. Monty Alexander notes, "His touch on the piano was crystal clear, immediately bringing up the feeling of blues as well as that cross between church and blues. He was greasy! He brought up soulful emotions." Harris's ever-present groove explains why the Three Sounds have remained relevant into the hip-hop era; a sample of their "Put On Train" was prominently featured in the Beastie Boys song, "What Comes Around" from their album, Paul's Boutique.

Resonance Records' own connection with the Three Sounds goes back to founder George Klabin's childhood. Klabin recounts, "When I was 13 years old I fell in love with modern jazz. One of the very first jazz groups I discovered was the Three Sounds featuring pianist Gene Harris. I purchased many of their records and listened to them over and over, to the point where I could play them in my head. The Three Sounds were my introduction to bluesy, funky style jazz and I have cherished them and collected their recordings ever since."

So it should come as no surprise that Resonance's first forays into discovering and releasing archival recordings were two Gene Harris albums, live recordings made in London after Harris resumed his music career after a short-lived retirement: Live in London (issued in 2001) and Another Night in London (issued in 2006). Those two albums came to be after Gene Harris's widow, Janie, knowing how much George Klabin loved the Three Sounds, sent copies of the tapes to Klabin.

Shortly after the release of Live in London, producers Zev Feldman and George Klabin began exploring in earnest the idea of going deeper into the pursuit of searching out and releasing previously unheard archival material by top jazz artists. Feldman says "It's been so exciting working on these projects with George over the years, and he's certainly made me an even bigger Gene Harris fan than I already was! What's interesting is that this was actually one of the very first projects we talked about when we started on the journey of releasing archival material, and it's taken all these years to bring it to fruition, which is very fulfilling."

In the course of this project Klabin met and befriended Jim Wilke, the Seattle-based jazz radio personality, producer and engineer. Wilke had amassed a large library of tapes by top jazz artists in live performance at the Penthouse during the 60s, recorded during live broadcasts of his KING-FM radio show, Jazz From The Penthouse. Fifty years later Wilke is still active in jazz radio and live recording on location, and estimates he's recorded and produced well over a thousand recordings at clubs, concerts and festivals. When Klabin learned of the existence of this extraordinary Penthouse library, given his affinity for the Three Sounds, his attention was immediately drawn to the several recordings of the group preserved for posterity by Wilke. Klabin determined that the first title Resonance would release from this archive would be this album Groovin' Hard: Live at the Penthouse 1964 - 1968.

The material on this album — hand-picked by George Klabin — is made up of jazz standards: ("Bluesette," "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" and "Yours Is My Heart Alone"); soulful treatments of popular tunes of the day ("The Shadow of Your Smile," "Girl Talk" and the theme from "Caesar and Cleopatra"); and the soulful originals, "Blue Genes"; "Rat Down Front" and "The Boogaloo." The repertoire is rounded out by Ray Brown's rousing jazz waltz, "A.M. Blues." Four of the compositions in the album's repertoire have never been released on any other Three Sounds' album: "The Shadow of Your Smile," "Rat Down Front," "Bluesette" and "The Boogaloo."

"Gene Harris was a guy that brought such feeling and emotion to the piano," Feldman says. "He had a groove, and he played for the people. It's really hard not to enjoy what he's doing. There's something very special about him and these recordings illustrate an important part of his legacy."

Resonance is proud to be able to bring this remarkable previously unknown recording to the public. We are particularly pleased to have been able to do so with friendship and support of the Puzzo family and Jim Wilke.

Once again, consistent with its mission to honor the traditions of great American music, Resonance Records has pulled out all the stops in creating this release. The deluxe CD package includes a 20-page book, presented in a beautifully designed digipak by Burton Yount, with rare photos by Francis Wolff, Ray Avery and Howard Lucraft, as well as essays by Resonance producers Zev Feldman and George Klabin, jazz radio personality and recording engineer Jim Wilke, who originally recorded all of the material on the album, and noted author and jazz journalist, Ted Panken, who interviewed pianists Monty Alexander and Benny Green for his essay. The limited-edition, hand-numbered LP pressing on 180-gram black vinyl was released on Record Store Day's Black Friday event on November 25, 2016 and was mastered by the legendary Bernie Grundman at Bernie Grundman Mastering and pressed at Record Technology, Inc. (RTI).

Resonance Records — a multi-GRAMMY® Award-winning label (most recently for John Coltrane's Offering: Live at Temple University tor "Best Album Notes") — prides itself in creating beautifully designed, informative packaging to accompany previously unreleased recordings by the jazz icons who grace Resonance's catalog. Such is the case with The Three Sounds Featuring Gene Harris/Groovin' Hard: Live at the Penthouse 1964 - 1968.

Pre-order on iTunes and receive 2 tracks instantly: "Girl Talk" and "Blue Genes" https://itunes.apple.com/us/aibum/groovin-hard-live-at-penthouse/id1175108777

ABOUT THE LABEL - Resonance Records continues to bring archival recordings to light. Headquartered in Beverly Hills, CA, Resonance Records is a division of Rising Jazz Stars, Inc. a California 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation created to discover the next jazz stars and advance the cause of jazz. Current Resonance Artists include Richard Galliano, Polly Gibbons, Tamir Hendelman, Christian Howes and Donald Vega. www.ResonanceRecords.org

The following video features The Three Sounds on the Blue Genes track from the forthcoming CD that was issued on a Resonance Records sampler entitled Jazz Haunts and Magic Vaults.

                                                                   

Pres: The Story of Lester Young by Luc Delannoy

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

Manhattan, March 19, 1959

“Nearly three hundred people assembled in front of the Universal Funeral Chapel at the corner of Fifty-second Street and Lexington Avenue, six blocks from the Alvin Hotel where Lester had lived. After the eulogy was delivered by his friend the Reverend O. D. Dempsey, Count Basie's wife read from her husband's telegram: ‘If I were going to compliment anyone, I’d certainly do it for a guy like Pres Young. As a jazzman, he was tops.’

Al Hibbler sang. Everyone there wanted to participate. A few pictures were taken — the uninvited were quickly sidelined. Billie Holiday, raw from alcohol and tears, left supported by Paul Quinichette and Budd Johnson. Elaine Swaine was taken home by Ira Gitler.

Others stayed around, hiding their pain behind a mask of dignity. The family thanked everybody, and little by little the crowd broke up. Jimmy Rushing, Jo Jones, Dizzy, Henry "Red" Allen, Tyree Glenn, Illinois Jacquet, Dickie Wells, Gene Cedric, Billy Taylor, Toni Scott, Sonny Greer, Milt Hinton, Buddy Tate, Ed Lewis, Rudi Blesh, John Hammond, Norman Granz, Leonard Feather, Alan Morrison, Gunther H., Dan Morgenstern, and others.

A small cortege of close friends was formed. It reached Evergreen Cemetery, Queens, an hour later.

From that moment on, all that remained was one man’s musical legacy and a few memories . . ."

- Luc Delannoy, Pres: The Story of Lester Young

I have always thought of the late tenor saxophonist Lester Young as somewhat of a mystical and mysterious figure.

Descriptions of his behavior and quotes attributed to him created the image of a very quixotic person, this despite the fact that the phrasing in his solos struck me as very simple and direct. How to explain this paradox?

This chimerical impression of Lester was somewhat clarified by a reading of pianist Bobby Scott’s insightful essay entitled “The House in the Heart” which appeared earlier on these pages.

And now, thanks to a friend’s generosity, a reading of Luc Delannoy’s Pres: The Story of Lester Young [translated from the French by Elena B. Odio] has served to further dispel my fanciful perceptions of Lester.

Pres: The Story of Lester Young was published in 1993 by the University of Arkansas Press.

Each of the book’s twenty-two [22] chapters is thematic and sequential and written in a style that is easy to read and full of information about what made Lester “tick.”

By way of example, here is Chapter Ten - The Confirmation.

“During the night of October 31, 1936, after headlining with the Duke Ellington Orchestra at the Paseo Ballroom, Count Basie and his orchestra left Kansas City with the blessing of every musician in the city With them in the bus headed for the East Coast, the musicians took their new costumes; some even had new instruments. Basie carefully cradled a small leather briefcase in his lap, in which he filed the band's repertoire: twelve arrangements!

Lester left the midwestern city with no regrets; for him another episode comparable to that of the Blue Devils was beginning, complete with road trips, small paychecks, excellent musical relations, and the emergence of solid friendships. Just hours before they were to leave, the young Gene Ramey payed him a visit and gave him a magnificent Conn tenor sax.

The band's first stop was in Chicago where Willard Alexander had negotiated an engagement at the Grand Terrace from November 6 through December 3. The Grand Terrace was more of a music-hall auditorium than a jazz club; the decor was luxurious, admission was expensive, and the rather stodgy audience that attended preferred musical reviews to concerts.

That afternoon, when the orchestra entered the room to rehearse, the musicians were taken aback on seeing dozens of dancers going over their numbers for the evening show. At a loss, Basie telephoned Willard Alexander and explained to him that he couldn't see the least purpose for bringing him in; his repertoire I was not ready, and they were demanding that his orchestra play light music; furthermore, he really didn't see how he could fit into a musical show. The best thing would be to leave town on the spot. But Willard didn't see things in the same light: the Grand Terrace performances were being transmitted on the air and it was imperative for the orchestra to appear in order for it to get exposure.

The first evening was a true disaster. Fitted into their tight new uniforms and jammed behind music stands, the musicians played without conviction, deciphering with difficulty the parts they were furnished without explanation. The audience let its displeasure be known, and the management of the Grand Terrace threatened to break the contract if there was no improvement.

The first show of sympathy came from the chorus girls who, while amused at the situation, tried to comfort the musicians. Fletcher Henderson, who had just finished a four-week engagement at the Terrace, came to the rescue by offering Basie several arrangements and themes of his own so that Basie could put together enough of a repertoire to please the public. Indirectly, he was also helping a musician whom he admired, but from whom he had been forced to part ways several years earlier: Lester Young.

After going over the material a few times, the orchestra managed to overcome its fears and to familiarize itself with the new arrangements furnished by Henderson. The act was far from perfect, but the ensemble didn't present itself badly.

One morning, after a particularly exciting night at the Terrace, John Hammond entered the cafeteria where the musicians were having lunch. Casually, he took Basie, Lester, Jo, Walter, Tatti Smith, and Jimmy Rushing to one side. He had a simple proposal to make: since he had been unable to void the contract signed by Basie with Decca before it entered into effect, he wanted to make use of the few hours left before the musicians turned in to record them in an independent studio named "Jones-Smith Incorporated." This was truly a stroke of genius on the part of John Hammond.

The place was shabby. The studio was one small room measuring 12 by 15 feet. It was much too small to set up a grand piano, and it was lacking both sound-proofing and the acoustical panels you find in studios today. I had one engineer. There were two microphones, but I chose to use just one. The acoustics were so poor that a blow to the bass drum together with vibrations from the double bass sometimes flattened the needle on the record tracks. (John Hammond)

So Jo Jones used nothing but a snare drum and a hi-hat.

The situation was entirely new to Lester, Jo, and Smith; here they were about to record for the first time, when only that morning at eight o'clock they had been sipping coffee, recording being the last thing on their minds: "Basie's face was full of energy and conveyed his enthusiasm. . . . Walter maintained his self-assurance, Jimmy too. . . . Tatti was quiet but active; Lester was thrilled, Jo was generous and bossy" (John Hammond).

In three hours (from 10:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M.), the group recorded "Shoe Shine Boy," "Evenin'," "Boogie Woogie," and "Lady Be Good," a classic written by George Gershwin in 1924.

The discographies of Count Basie and Lester Young give October 9, 1936, as the date of this recording session, but it was really November 9, for the engagement at the Grand Terrace had begun on November 6. Hammond, Young, and Jones also confirmed that the recording took place then. At the end of September and beginning of October, Young was in California and Basie was in Kansas City, making preparations for the upcoming tour. But two contradictory pieces of information do remain: Lewis Porter claims the Chicago Defender referred in its news columns to a visit made by Basie to Chicago in September of 1936, and a few years later, Jo Jones "thought" he remembered that the session had taken place on his birthday, i.e., on October 8, 1936.

At that time, there were several Hawkins records on the market, and practically all the saxophonists knew the solo parts by heart. When Lester's recording went into circulation two months later, everyone — except those in his entourage — expected to see more of the musical standards set by "Bean."

The recording contains two major pieces: a highly original version of Gershwin's "Lady Be Good" done in the key of D, and the famous "Shoe Shine Boy," where Lester's chorus is considered by many to be one of the best of his career and one which highlights Lester's originality: First, there are the liberties he takes with the standard four-beat measure. He never ceases to accentuate it at his discretion, sometimes placing the stress slightly ahead of or behind the beat. Then there is the rhythmic accompaniment generated by his very style. The rhythm section guarantees a kind of steady, supple, and continuous breathing effect, with neither interruptions nor special effects. Then he lays out his own rhythmic and melodic ideas on the soft carpeting that has been rolled out for him.

Later, when the full Basie orchestra made recordings, it became more apparent how Lester's style and the aerial effects it created were cradled by Jo Jones' technique. Jones' use of cymbals to mark the beat (instead of the bass drum as before) created a lightness that had not existed until then in the rhythm section, and which was itself driven by the style of Lester Young. One could speak in this regard of a veritable "Lester Young Effect," and its impact was immediate.

Lester had broken once and for all with the powerful, turbulent "tidal wave" phrases of Coleman Hawkins. Here, in fact, was a musician more inclined toward simplicity and the restructuring of melody than toward the quest for complex harmonies. This was someone who played more readily by scale than by chord; someone who didn't systematically base his improvisations on harmony, but on fresh interpretations of a single melody. And so in the process of reusing old material, Lester never ceased revisiting both his immediate, and distant, musical past, where Hawkins, by contrast, refused to look back.

Let us also point out that, contrary to the popular opinion of the time — which only took notice of Hawkins' panting vibrato — Lester used nothing but an authentic vibrato. It is a discreet vibrato, to be sure, but it is no less there, affecting the height and the rhythm of the notes, especially when these are repeated (and such repetition is a Young characteristic).

As Andre Hodeir has reminded us, "all the great jazz improvisers have created a sound out of their phrases, and their phrases out of their sound." And that is exactly what is surprising in Lester's case: this sweet, soft, relaxed sound, a sound that is beautiful and pure, that conveys a preoccupation that is spiritual to start with, one that is no longer strictly physical.

At last, to take up a well-known cliche, Lester was a melodic improviser who worked on a "horizontal" plane, whereas Hawkins was the prototypical "vertical" improvisor, who relied on the harmonies of a piece. Admittedly, it was not the progression of chords that was of principal interest to Lester; he limited himself to tonics, to dominant chords and to their extensions, showing a clear preference for melodic development. Hawkins, by contrast, organized a whole progression that deviated from the chords, including "passing chords," and a few extensions.

No sooner did this record appear on the Vocalion-Brunswick label than a passionate debate began to rage. Charlie Parker and Charlie Christian were the first ones to buy and decipher it in Kansas City. Gene Ramey remembers having heard Parker around the Kansas City nightclubs: "He would get up and play the Prez solos note for note; his alto sounded like the Prez' Bird was so influenced by Young. . . .”

And when Bird left to go on tour with Georgie Lee, during the summer of 1937, the first things he packed to take with him were Lester's recordings.

But if you don't count Bird and Charlie Christian, Hammond, the Basie musicians, and a few friends, Lester's music received negative ratings in most jazz circles. This didn't prevent Lester from being perfectly sure of his originality; nor did he have any qualms about advertising it.

I had never heard Hawk, other than on a few records. Everybody copied him. The jazz world was under Hawk’s spell. But me, I couldn't imagine myself copying Hawk, or anybody else. You had to have a style that was truly your own. You can't be a stylist if all you do is concentrate on not copying someone . . . , because I meant to be original. Originality, that's the trick. You may well possess tone, technique, and a bunch of other things, but if you have no originality, you don't really go anywhere. You have to be original. (Lester Young)

And forty-eight years later, Miles Davis, who was the first to realize a synthesis of the Young and Parker styles, also took Lester's lessons to heart. In an interview granted to Francis Marmande for Le Monde, he reminded us of what matters most in jazz, which also happens to be what it currently lacks most:

The underlying task, the core of the task, is sound. Sound, you understand. Sound is your very own voice; you have to seek it out . . . , sound is in charge of your person. . . . You are the sound. You are your own sound. There is very little sound, original sound, in creative music. Plenty of perfectionism, to be sure, lots of repetition, but very little sound.

But even though that November session may have confirmed each musician in his manner of playing, it certainly did not eradicate the problems that the Basie orchestra was having. The assistance of Fletcher Henderson had been invaluable, but the musicians still needed several days to regain their self-confidence. The time remaining in the engagement was spent getting to know one another and resolving some technical problems in musical placement. In fact, thanks to these explosive moments, the bonds of friendship within the orchestra grew tighter. When Lester was not jamming all night in a Chicago nightclub with Jo Jones and their new friend, Roy Eldridge, he was either in the company of Buck Clayton or that of Herschel Evans, whose personality he grew to appreciate more and more.

The Young-Evans relationship is often presented in terms of a deep rivalry, a real enmity, according to some. Yet this notion is false; the only source of discord among them was their concept of the instrument. Evans was a follower of Hawkins, as was Chu Berry. It is apparent that there was a certain distrust when they first began to play in the Basie orchestra, a certain mutual suspicion, concerning the role each was to assume.

The stroke of genius on Basie's part consisted of having matched these two opposite musical personalities, who were constantly trying to surpass each other for recognition. They both had their fits of pride and their tantrums, but by living and working together, Evans and Young learned how to understand each other better, how to appreciate each other, and finally how to be good friends.

A quarrel between Herschel and Lester? It was more like a quarrel between two brothers. I was always a kind of messenger between them. ... I was always trying to get them together in a cafe or a restaurant. ... In a way, most of the time they were like twins. (Jo Jones).

Lester's decision to hold the saxophone at a forty-five-degree angle must be attributed to the outbursts of pride he experienced so often in his youth. "Since Mr. Evans absolutely wants to play in that manner — read: loudly a la Hawkins — since he wants to be noticed and to capture the attention of the public, I am going to hold my instrument so that it is the first thing people see when they look at the orchestra." Footnoting this image probably ought to be the fact that Lester was afraid of not being heard. By slanting his saxophone in that way and by projecting it forward, he believed that the sound was not smothered by the orchestra and reached the audience more freely.

This awkward pose, this impression of levitation on Lester's part, though in no way delivering a better sound from his instrument, did enable him to attract attention. Better yet, as we shall see, his pose was to engender a curious epidemic. . . . The regional press was the first to notice it at the time:

“If you have seen the famous Basie orchestra, the musician who most certainly stood out first before your eyes was Lester Young. He sits a little slumped over, in a strange position at the end of the saxophone section, and seems completely absorbed in his part. When he advances for a solo, you begin to notice something unusual about this fabulous gentleman with the round face. He holds his sax crosswise, nearly horizontally, and plays in the direction of the ceiling.”

Such was the way in which Lester was first depicted. The "fractured" neck, the sax borne in quasi-mystical ecstasy (an albatross, they called it), the search for recognition of his completely rethought style of music. And it was original.

The following video montage features Lester in a setting that was rarely heard - Lester playing the clarinet.

Billy Eckstine: The Evolution of The First Bebop Big Band [From the Archives]

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

“BILLY ECKSTINE, ..., had a modern, swinging band during the mid-forties. He had been singing with Earl Hines for a number of years when one of his fellow bandsmen, Dizzy Gillespie, suggested to Billy that he ought to go out with his own crew.

It was a sensible suggestion, because Billy, an outstandingly handsome man with a great deal of charm, had built up quite a following not merely among musicians, who admired him as a person and as a singer, but also among a segment of the public that followed the jazz-oriented bands.

In the spring of 1944 Billy left the Earl. He took with him the band's chief arranger and tenor saxist, Budd Johnson, who, along with Gillespie, became one of the two musical directors of the new group. So great was the emphasis upon instrumental music and what was then considered to be progressive jazz that Billy's strong, masculine but highly stylized vocals were often subjugated to the playing of some young, budding jazz stars like Charlie and Leo Parker, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Fats Navarro, Howard McGhee, Kenny Dorham, Lucky Thompson, Gene Ammons and Dexter Gordon. And for a while Eckstine also featured a timid young girl vocalist with a marvelously clear, vibrant voice. To this day Sarah Vaughan still looks back fondly on her association with the band and credits it for much of her musical development.”

- George T. Simon, The Big Bands, 4th Ed.

Within the mere three years of its existence, Billy Eckstine's band at one time or another featured just about every "modernist" on the scene. A tentative listing of the alumni reads like a real "Who's Who of Bebop!”  It is forever to be regretted that this band had so little opportunity to record [in part due to the Musicians’ Union recording ban then in effect] and that Eckstine was rarely able to convince producers (and audiences) that the real quality of his band was its musical potential. More so, of course, than his own vocals, although these are often of the highest quality.

As the story goes, before Gillespie was to really settle in on 52nd Street in the mid-1940’s, he became an important part of the newly formed Billy Eckstine orchestra. Gillespie and bassist Oscar Pettiford had had a falling out, and while Oscar remained at the Onyx (with Joe Guy on trumpet and Johnny Hartzfield on tenor), Dizzy moved across the street to the Yacht Club with Budd Johnson in tow. On the same show with them was their old colleague from the Earl Hines band, Billy Eckstine, billed as X-tine, thanks to his booking agent Billy Shaw.

Eckstine's, or X-tine's, career was not exactly roaring along. It was decided that he head a big band but, at first, he and Shaw argued about the basic philosophy.

Eckstine was committed to the new sounds and convinced Shaw he wanted Gillespie as his musical director and Charlie Parker, working at the time with Carroll Dickerson at the Rhumboogie in Chicago, as the leader of his reeds. In June 1944 the Billy Eckstine band was born.

BILLY ECKSTINE   

“It was a whole evolvement of something new, aside from the trite ways of doing things. When I started my band we got bad, bad reports on it. Even the William Morris office, they said, "Why don't you just get a band like in the vein of the Basic band and with good vocals of yourself, and you just sell the band on your vocals and things like that." But they didn't stop to realize that I was already hooked into this thing. If you look at some of the early downbeat write-ups,' Christ, they used to pan hell out of me. They said I kept singing, I was running all over the place and wouldn't sing the melodies, which was just a way of seeking at that particular point—you're hearing things also. Now when we all got together, when the different guys got together, I saw the reason why I wanted to sing—well, now we call it "changes" and because it was new usage.

When we recorded "Cottage for Sale" I ended it on major seventh. We had a guy in the control room named Emile Cote, who was a head of the Pet Milk Singers, as the A&R [laughs] man. When I hit that, he came out and said, "Well, I think we got a good balance on that. Now shall we go back in and do the thing?" I said, "Hey, that was it." "Oh, you're not going to end that on that note." I said, "Well, why not, it's a major seventh." Then he gave me the old cliche about Beethoven or somebody giving a lesson and a kid hit the major seventh and then left, walked off, and he had to run downstairs and resolve it. Well, I said, "I ain't gonna resolve it." Those kind of things during that era, and getting to what you've seen, it was a feeling among a nucleus at that time of younger people, of hearing something else. We didn't knock. You see that's the other thing that was so funny about the guys then. You couldn't find one guy, you take Dizzy, Bird, any of the guys that were in my original band, we never knocked nobody else's music.

My God, my band, when I started, the guy that gave me my music to get started was Basie. I went over here to the Hotel Lincoln and walked in there with Basie, and he said, "I understand you're gonna start a band," and I said, "Yeah, man, I ain't got no music." So he turns around to Henry Snodgrass and told him, "Give him the key." I went back in the back in the music trunk and just took scores of Basie's music to help me be able to play a dance. We didn't have any music. The only things that we had in our vein of things was "A Night in Tunisia" that Diz had written. As we kept doing these one-nighters, we were constantly writing. "Blue 'n Boogie" was a head arrangement. We were constantly just sitting down everywhere we'd go and have a rehearsal and putting things together on these kind of things. Little head arrangements and riffs that Diz started or Bird started. "Good Jelly Blues" and "I Stay In The Mood For You"—Budd Johnson wrote that on the same type of a thing. And the little things I wrote—"I Love The Rhythm In A Riff" and "Blowing The Blues Away," they were just more or less—we were gradually getting our music together, but when we started out we didn't knock anybody's music like that. My God, I don't think there was a time that we ever were anywhere where another band was that all our band, if we were off, was not right there listening to them. It wasn't a knock, of putting their music down in preference for ours. It was just another step, it was another step beyond. I guess, possibly the same thing happened back when Louie took his step past King Oliver, maybe, who knows. I wasn't around to pay any attention to music then, but possibly the same type of thing happened then.

Then another very important thing, too. Our music was more studied. Up until that point, you didn't have the musicianship, other than Ellington, Lunceford, like that, where you had some great schooled musicians up there on that stand. But a lot of the other bands, there were a lot of guys who couldn't read a note, even some of the first Basic band that came East. It was a head-arrangement band. When here we came on, in my band and in Earl's band, all musicians, seasoned musicians. But when we came along these were all new usages of chords, new voicings, the arrangers were hearing things, began to write. And another thing that happened, my band ruined a whole lot of musicians who had been bullshitting before. But everywhere we would go with my band, after it was together about two months, we'd look out into the audience, and the young, the real young, was out there going, "Yeah, man." It was hitting that young; it was the music of the young really, and because the young, a lot of them, were in the war in Europe, the widespread popularity never was acquired, never was achieved.

I'll never forget, though, we used to have more problems with the powers that be, the agents. Christ, that's where I had the problem. They wanted me to sing, and play "One O'Clock Jump"; the things that were famous or something of Glenn Miller's or something of Tommy Dorsey's; in other words, let the band copy other successful things and you sing. That wasn't my idea of what I wanted to do. Shit, if 1 wanted to do that I could have gone with—'cause after I left Earl and went back to 52nd Street, I started getting calls from certain bands, different bands like Kenton. They wanted me to come in the band as a vocalist, but I wouldn't go because I said, "Hell, if I'm gonna break up my own band, what am I gonna go with somebody else for when I couldn't make my own successful? And here's some guys who are gonna try more or less to copy what we're starting, and I'm gonna go with them? No way!"

So it was always a fight, a fight, man. Christ almighty, I'll never forget, they came down to the Riviera in St. Louis. And I was working in there with my band, and the William Morris office sent some schmuck down there to do a report on the band. He came back and said, "There's no love vein in the band." Imagine this guy gonna go dig a swinging band: "there's no love vein in the band." So when Billy Shaw, God rest his soul, whom I loved, when Billy called me—Billy believed in me— and he said, "Hey B, we're getting rapped, and this guy come back here sayin' 'There's no love vein in the band.' " I said, "Well, shit, he didn't check into it. Now me and Dizzy been goin' together for years. There's the love vein" [laughter].

Well you know what he told me to do: "Well, why don't you get a real pretty girl, with a big ass, to sing?" Didn't listen to Sass [Sarah VaughanJ. He's gonna tell me about some chick with a big ass, and here's a girl with the greatest voice that I've ever heard. He never even heard that. Well, that's the kinda shit you went through in those days and on. Man, it just got to the point—I think it discouraged a lot of people. It even carried on over into Diz's band, so Diz's band wasn't successful.

It was musically successful. So was mine. Now it's the "legendary Billy Eckstine band," and some of these same guys that are now calling it a legend rapped the shit out of me. Leonard Feather, he rapped the shit out of me. Every time we'd come in, "the band was out of tune," and the this and the that, and now it's the "legendary Billy Eckstine band."

I don't want this to appear racist, but nevertheless, it's factual. Anything that the black man originates that cannot be copied right away by his white contemporaries is stepped on. It was copied. Shit, Woody Herman, get a load of his things — "Northwest Passage." All those things were nothing but a little bit of the music that we were trying to play. All of those things. All they did was that. Shit, but they got the down beat number one band, yap, yap, yap, all of this kind of shit, but Woody better not have Jit nowhere near where my band was. Nowhere. And I can say it now because it's all over and I don't have to appear egotistical, but he better not have lit anywhere where we were. And that goes for any of them, because let me show you, we would play, and the guys that were in that band will tell you one thing; we played against Jimmie Lunceford at the Brooklyn Armory. Jimmie Lunceford, big star of the thing, and we were the second band. We ate his ass up like it was something good to eat, so much to the point — I'll never forget this, Freddie Webster, God rest his soul, was with Lunceford at the time, and Freddie wrote a letter to a buddy of ours in California, and all he wrote on the letter was, "Did you hear about the battle of jazz?" He says, "Billy Eckstine," no, "B and his band, life; Jimmie Lunceford," in very small letters, "Jimmie Lunceford and us, death" [Laughter]. That's what he wrote on this thing.

Musicians—that's the other thing—young musicians would be around us like this all the time listening, and they knew what we were trying to do. Arrangers started hearing. The technical aspect of the music was grasped first. People who knew something about music right away said, "Hey, this is something else." It's the moldy guys that relied so much on their ear. They didn't have the ear to follow this—it's the same as this Emile Cote that heard this major seventh, he didn't hear that thing resolved where he was waiting for it to resolve. And when I said, "Here's a cottage for sale," and he didn't hear that [sings]. He didn't hear that. All he heard was "da" and he was waiting for "daa."* [*The conventional ending would be the tonic. Eckstine, like many instrumentalists of the time, ended a half step below the tonic.]

That's what he's waiting for. His ear had been indoctrinated into that type of listening. But arrangers jumped on this. You'd be surprised, you know how many free arrangements I used to get? Every town I'd go into, some little young musician who's studying would bring me up an arrangement to play. He is voicing it off of the new voicings, the new thing; nine out of ten of them you couldn't use, but you could see the seeking, trying to, hearing this kind of music which used to inspire us.

And again to get back to the love thing, Diz and Sonny [Stitt], all the different guys will tell you this, that was in the band. We used to get in a town and, man, it was like the bus getting in at twelve o'clock— I wouldn't call rehearsal. The guys would go on to the hall, set up, jam, or Bird would take the reed section, sit and run through things. Just at night, the Booker Washington Hotel, there in St. Louis for Christ sake, when we was working the Riviera, the people used to move out, we'd rehearse four o'clock in the morning. Sit right in the room; the reed section would be there blowing all night. It was a love where everybody was seeking things like that, trying and learning. Sass and myself used to learn things on the piano.

I'll never forget, Diz wrote an arrangement of "East of the Sun" for Sass. We worked out the ending of it [sings]. We'd work out things vocally, because every aspect of music could fit into this. There was a way to do it vocally; there was a way we heard it vocally; a way it was done instrumentally; the way it was done rhythmically: everything had a new concept to it. It wasn't just one trumpet player playing his style which was an innovative thing. Or one saxophone. There was a collective unit of the whole concept. It was the camaraderie in that band. Me and Diz, the other night at the concert,*[*Newport Festival Tribute to Charlie Parker in 1974], we were breaking up laughing at different little things that we used to do in the band.

We still have big laughs, any time we get together—like the other night, Sonny and all of us were up there, and I swear to Christ that you would have thought that some great comic was in. We were breaking up in there laughing, remembering incidents that happened, which then were morbid. Riding these Goddamn Jim Crow cars through the South were these dirty cracker conductors, we all sitting in the aisles and all of this bullshit, in a little car that's got eight seats, and here we getting on there with twenty guys and no room. And now we just sit laughing about it. The different incidents where a guy would say, "Hey, ain't no more room. You all sleep, stay in the baggage car," and we get back in the baggage car and open all the doors, get undressed and lay back there in the baggage car, smelling the hay and shit, traveling. But we can sit back and laugh about these kind of things now. You had to then. You'd have never gotten through it. We said the same statement the other night, Diz and I. You had to make your own fun. You had to make it, 'cause, Christ almighty, this was during the war. We couldn't get a bus because you couldn't get priority then for gasoline.

So the only way, Billy Shaw worked some strings—this was '44—where if I would play for the troops, whenever I would get into the town—if there was an Army camp there—go right out and do a free show for the troops, then they would give me a priority for a bus. But I had to do a certain amount of them every week. Now, if I happened to be booked in such a place where there ain't no Army camps where we are, they look and see that I don't play no Army, they snatched the bus without even telling me. We go out one morning to get the bus, there ain't no bus. Now we got to run and grab all of this crap, look at the train schedule—and there was always an hour, and hour and one-half late, these trains in those days. You know, the troops and things. Jumping on you is the guys with their bass and amplifiers, for the book, and valets getting on these trains with this and what are you gonna do. If you can survive through that, man, you gotta make your own humor. I'm telling you, boy. And arguments, fights with soldiers and these crackers down South, and man you'd get in fights with them all the time. It drove me crazy.

And the guys still stuck it out, 'cause we'd get on the stand at night, regardless of what problem we had during the day, there's our chance to let it out. And, baby, some of the times when we've had the worst problems during the day, we'd get on the stand at night and, man, you never heard a band play like that in your life. We'd be wailing, because now's our chance to relax and do what we want to do. We were just waiting to get to that stand.”

[Sources, Ira Gitler’s Jazz Masters of the 40’s, Bill Kirchner, ed. The Oxford Companion to Jazz, Downbeat, Esquire, Jazz Review, Jazz Monthly and Metronome magazine archives, Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era, George T Simon, The Big Bands, 4th Ed., Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th. Ed, Barry Kernfeld, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, and Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler, The Encyclopedia of Jazz.]