Benny Carter, 1907 – 2003: A Tribute [From the Archives]

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

One bright, sunny day “when the world was young,” a business luncheon found me in Pasadena, CA.

Located a few miles northeast of Los Angeles, CA., and because of this proximity, always considered a part of “old” California, the city is nestled in a valley just below the majestic San Gabriel Mountains.

The site for the meeting was The Athenaeum Club which is adjacent to the California Institute of Technology [Cal Tech] campus.

The Athenaeum is a members-only club that offers dining and lodging privileges to Cal Tech faculty, students and alumni, as well as, to employees of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at the Huntington Museum/Library, both of which are also in Pasadena.

I was early for the meeting and the maître d'hôtel welcomed me to visit the club’s inner courtyard and gardens while I waited for my party to arrive.

Upon entering these areas, I noticed a vaguely familiar face seated on a bench in a shaded alcove. He was hunched over with this hands on his knees looking at an LP cover.

At his feet was a bag with the distinctive logo of Poo Bah's a record store that for many years was situated in an old house in Pasadena at the corner of Wilson and Walnut.

As I walked in his direction, it dawned on me that the man starring so intently at album cover was saxophonist Bill Perkins.

I had met Bill many years earlier during the making of his Quietly There LP as Victor Feldman and Larry Bunker, both of whom I studied with, invited me to a few of its recording sessions in the fall of 1966.

Bill looked up as I approached where he was sitting, smiled and with a brief nod in my direction, went back to examining the album.

I caught enough of a look at the album cover to recognize it as Benny Carter’s Aspects [United Artists 4017/5017S].

My recognition of it startled me into saying to him: “I have that record and you are Bill Perkins.”

To which he smiled, nodded and ask me to sit down.

I had forgotten that Bill had an engineering degree from Cal Tech which granted him alumni privileges at The Athenaeum. If I remember correctly, he was there to attend some sort of forum on acoustics that was scheduled to take place in one of the club’s small conference rooms. Bill had a long-standing interest in recording music.

After exchanging a few brief pleasantries, Bill looked down at the LP that he was still holding in his hands and said: “I was supposed to play on this date, but couldn’t make it, so Buddy Collette took my place.”

During the course of our brief conversation, I was struck by the respect that Bill evidenced for Benny Carter. I had always known of “Perk’s” fondness for the playing of tenor saxophonist Lester Young, but his knowledge of Benny’s career and his appreciation for his gifts as a musician was something that I hadn’t expected from such a “modern” musician.

When I said as much, Bill commented that while Benny’s first arrangements dated back to those he did for the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra in the late 1920s, the charts on the Aspects album prove that his writing was up-to-date and current. “You might think that you were listening to Hefti or Mancini.”

Bill also offered that much of what Benny wrote during his career went unnoticed because it wasn’t recorded under his own name or because he wrote it for others while not calling attention to himself. “The man was such a Pro: he just did his job and went on to the next one.” [I was almost tempted to say, “Just like you, Bill,” but had the good sense not to]

Bill then looked at me over his reading glasses and said: “Do you realize that Benny Carter has been around since the very beginning of Jazz?”

What neither of us realized when Bill made this statement was that Benny was to also be around for another twenty years! He lived from 1907-2003!!

My luncheon guests arrived and I said goodbye to Bill and thanked him for the nice chat.

When I came across the Aspects CD recently, I remembered this brief visit with Bill and the memory of it also served to remind me that I had been remiss about not honoring Benny Carter – one of the Founding Fathers of Jazz - and his eight-decade contributions to its development with a piece on JazzProfiles plus a tribute video.

What follows is the editorial staff at JazzProfiles efforts to remedy this oversight.

The audio track to this video is Benny Carter’s arrangement of June is Busting Out All Over which features solos by trumpeter Joe Gordon, Frank Rosolino on trombone, Benny on alto saxophone and Shelly Manne on drums.

And here are the insert notes that Ed Berger of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University prepared for the CD release of this recording. Ed is also the author of Benny Carter: A Life in American Music.

© -Ed Berger, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“In a seven-decade recording career as notable for its sustained creativity as for its unprece­dented longevity, Benny Carter has created master­pieces in several eras and many different genres. Yet even amidst this monumental body of work, Aspects is a landmark. Apart from its considerable intrinsic musical value. Aspects attests to Carter's continued mastery of a genre he helped pioneer: big band Jazz. Carter, of course, was a prime architect of the swing era through his prescient arrangements for Fletcher Henderson and others in the late 1920s and earlv 1930s. as well as for his own legendary orchestras beginning in 1933.

By 1958, when Aspects was recorded. Carter was deeply ensconced in the Hollywood stu­dios as an arranger, composer, and player, dividing his time between many diverse film and television assignments and occasional Jazz recordings. The latter included several memorable small group ses­sions but, apart from a few isolated tracks. Aspects was the only big band recording by Carter as leader from 1946 (when he disbanded his last regular orchestra) to 1987 (the year of his epic encounter with the American Jazz Orchestra).

Despite this four-decade hiatus, Carter had by no means divorced himself from big band arranging and composing. In addition to jazz-influenced film and television scores, he wrote material for two Basie albums, Kansas City Suite (1960) and The Legend (1961), which became milestones of the "New Testament" Basie orchestra.

Carter's activities as arranger/conductor for many top vocalists yielded big band gems for Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong, among others. But Aspects stands virtually alone as documentation of his unique orchestral approach during a transitional period for jazz in general and for Carter in particular.

The "jazz calendar" concept might at first glance seem a contrived and limiting marketing department gimmick. Indeed, when the album was repackaged only a couple of years after its release, its title was changed from Aspects to Jazz Calendar to further underscore the theme. But the idea yield­ed some fine material, and for those months for which no appropriate pieces existed Carter (and in one case Hal Schaefer) provided attractive originals.

The musicians Carter assembled for Aspects included many big band veterans who formed the pool of versatile Hollywood studio play­ers. While not a working band, they played togeth­er on a daily basis in various combinations and per­mutations in the exacting world of studio work, often under Carter's baton. What the band may have lacked in individual character it more than made up for in precision and polish.

Furthermore. Carter's writing is so distinctive that any orchestra performing his work—from a college stage band to top-flight professionals such as these — immediately takes on some of the musical character of the arranger.

The reed section is the signature of any Carter-led orchestra, and Aspects is no excep­tion. The saxes serve as a cushion for the soloists, provide melodic counterpoint to the brass, and leap to the fore in the patented solo passages for which Carter is famous. But here Carter achieves a bal­ance among the sections which was not always pre­sent on his early arrangements. Although this orchestral symmetry is evident throughout, it is per­haps best demonstrated by the remarkable "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" where Carter ingeniously alternates melodic, harmonic, and even rhythmic roles among the saxes, trumpets, and trombones.

The unifying clement throughout is Carter's sublime alto. While Carter shines on every track, high points include his two quintessential choruses on his own "March Wind," the way he integrates his solo work into his arrangement on "June Is Bustin...", his brief melody statement and solo on -September Song," and his work on the two small group performances: "One Morning In May" and "August Moon." (Incidentally, some 35 years later Carter incorporated the latter's haunting theme into his Tales Of The Rising Sun suite.)

Among the other fine soloists, Frank Rosolino and the underrated Joe Gordon stand out. The spark supplied by Shelly Manne must also be noted. His swing, drive, and taste show why he was so in demand as a big band drummer before con­centrating on small group settings.

The discovery that the mono and stereo issues of Aspects contain different takes for four tracks is a fascinating discographical anomaly. In the early days of stereo, separate recording setups were used for the stereo and mono versions. Apparently, during mastering, different takes were inadvertently used. Although the routines arc the same, there are slight differences in the perfor­mances. For example, the tempos are faster on the stereo versions of "June Is Bustin..." and "Swingin" In November." Another discographical oddity: Leonard Feather, who wrote the original liner notes, points out that it is Carter who plays the sleigh bells that open and close "Sleigh Ride In July" — yet another double for the multi-instrumentalist!

Almost forty years have passed since the recording of Aspects. By 1958, at age 51, Benny Carter was already being viewed as a historic figure if not an elder statesman of jazz. Incredibly, in 1996, as this album is being prepared for reissue, Carter has just completed two major commissions: one for the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and one for the Library of Congress. Both involved extend­ed works, with Carter himself as the featured soloist. With a constant flow of classic reissues such as Aspects and ambitious new recording pro­jects, this is indeed a fortuitous time for Benny Carter fans.

- Ed Berger

Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University (Co-author, Benny Carter: A Life in American Music)”

Manne on Gunn [From the Archives]

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

“Manne’s men do the Peter Gunn music with a kind of tough-guy cartoon expression, but this was a great combo anyway and Candoli and Geller seldom knew how to be boring.”

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

Traditionally, Monday nights were a “dark night” for gigging musicians.

There were exceptions, of course.  One example that comes to mind is the Terry Gibbs Dream Band which was made up of studio musicians who played local gigs around Hollywood with Terry’s band on Monday nights.

Probably the most famous, let alone most enduring, Monday off-night gig was the one involving New York City studio musicians and the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra at the Village Vanguard, a tradition which continues to this very day.

But for me and many other musicians, one benefit of being off on Mondays was that for a few years, we all got to catch Peter Gunn when it premiered from 9:00 to 9:30 on Monday nights, on NBC-TV.

It starred Craig Stevens as Peter Gunn and also starred Lola Albright as his girl, Edie Hart; Herschel Bernardi as Lt. Jacoby; Hope Emerson as Mother, at whose nightclub Edie sings. The program was created and directed by Blake Edwards who, in a stroke of genius, tapped Henry Mancini as its Musical Director. The Executive Producer was Gordon Oliver, the sponsor was Bristol-Myers and filming was done at Universal-International Studios in Hollywood [when it was still had a “back lot” and before it developed a theme park on it].

The bonanza of Jazz-on-Television the program launched is described in the following excerpt from Lester Koenig’s insert notes to Shelly Manne and His Men Play Peter Gunn [Contemporary S 75-60/OJCCD 946-2]:

Peter Gunn is an adult mystery with a different kind of hero: a private eye who is literate, suave, well-groomed, and—digs jazz. The weekly show hit the NBC-TV network September 22,1958, and zoomed to a success which is, in part, the result of its jazz score, composed and arranged by Henry Mancini, known as Hank to the leading jazz stars in the Los Angeles area who have played for his soundtracks. Since November 1958, Shelly Manne and Victor Feldman have been regular mem­bers of the band which records the show's score. When Shelly became enthused about the idea of recording an album of Mancini originals from Peter Gunn, he invited Feldman to appear with him as a guest star.

Aside from its own considerable merits, the fact that a jazz score has created so much attention is a reflection of the staying power of the new marriage of jazz and TV, a nuptial which seems to have eclipsed the short-lived, annulled wedding of jazz and poetry. Jazz has taken an increasing part in the everyday living of the nation, and a summation of jazz in 1958 reveals, as leading critic Leonard Feather points out in the February 1959 issue of Playboy: 

‘... Jazz — both modern and traditional—filled video screens... CBS' hour-long show, The Sound of Jazz... the first Timex all-star jazz show, emceed by Steve Allen, was seen on NBC... a unique effort to offer it on an educational level was undertaken when NBC launched a 13-week series, The Subject Is Jazz... Bobby Troup's Stars of Jazz was projected to the full ABC network,.. Disc jockey Art Ford kicked off his own weekly show on New York's Channel 13. In Chicago, WBBM-TV presented Jazz in the Round... CBS launched a-five-nights-a-week-series, Jazz is My Beat.’

Other examples come to mind. In September a Westinghouse spectacular featured Benny Goodman, Andre Previn, Shelly Manne, and Red Mitchell. Previn also made a guest appearance on the Steve Allen show. And jazz as part of the score for dramatic pictures and TV shows made a tremendous impact when Walter Wanger engaged Johnny Mandel to write a jazz score for I Want to Live (which featured Shelly Manne); when Revue Productions' Stan Wilson used a jazz group for the score of the weekly M Squad; and when Spartan Productions engaged Hank Mancini as Musical Director for Peter Gunn.”

Pete Rugolo’s Jazz scores for Thriller and Richard Diamond, Elmer Bernstein’s for Johnny Staccato and Lalo Schifrin’s for Mannix would also come into focus, but as Jazz fans everywhere know, this abundance of TV Jazz scores would wane and be pretty much gone by the close of the decade of the 1960’s.

Les Koenig, who owned Contemporary Records, took great care to create a studio atmosphere which took into consideration these factors:

“For jazz musicians to be free to express themselves, and to make personal statements, they need the kind of relaxed atmosphere not commonly found in recording studios. The average record date takes only three hours. But, like a barbecue fire which always seems to be glowing at its best after you've removed the steaks, jazz record dates usually begin to develop a 'feeling' just as the three-hour time limit is up.

At Contemporary we've tried to break this time barrier by scheduling sessions of at least six or nine hours. In the case of Peter Gunn we took four three-hour sessions and as a result an exceptionally close rapport was achieved; each musician felt free to contribute his ideas and suggestions came so thick and fast Shelly was often in the position of a moderator at a heated Town Hall session.

That The Men were able to approach each of Mancini's pieces with a fresh, spontaneous, and valid conception is a tribute to their outstanding talents, as well as to the vitality of Mancini's provocative new jazz themes.”

—LESTER KOENIG January 1959

These notes appeared on the original album liner.

Orrin Keepnews made these comments about Shelly Manne and His Men Play Peter Gunn [Contemporary S 75-60/OJCCD 946-2] when it was released as a CD:

“For the most part, television music was a vast jazz wasteland before the Peter Gunn series debuted in the fall of 1958. The show's score both made a name for composer Henry Mancini and changed the sound of televised drama. It was inevitable that Shelly Manne, Hollywood studio mainstay and a proven champion at jazz interpreta­tions of Broadway shows, would give Mancini's music a more expansive blowing treatment, and the resulting album reminds us that there was more to Peter Gunn than its dramatic theme and the classic ballad "Dreamsville." Fans of Manne's Men should note that the album was taped during the brief tenure of alto saxophonist Herb Geller, and that it makes winning use of the vibes and marimba of added starter Victor Feldman, whose piano would shortly be heard to superb advantage on the band's Blackhawk recordings (OJCs 656-660).”

We've selected A Profound Gass by Shelly and The Men and coupled it with a montage on "beatniks" as our video tribute to Peter Gunn TV series and its era.

Rudy Van Gelder - The Well-Tempered Engineer by Burt Korall

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

Rudy van Gelder died on August 25, 2016. He was 91 years old. The Jazz World owes him an enormous debt of gratitude not only for what he did in preserving so much recorded Jazz, but also because of the absolutely first-rate way in which he did it.

Subsequent to his death, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles, as an homage to him, re-posted an earlier feature entitled “Rudy van Gelder - 1924-2016 - A Signature Sound” which was based on James Rozzi’s November, 1955 article that appeared in Audio Magazine, and a 2-part interview that Ben Sidran conducted with Rudy in December 1985 which was included in his book, Talking Jazz: An Oral History.

I recently located the following article about Rudy by Burt Korall from the January 1956 issue of Metronome Magazine and thought it would make an excellent addition to the blog archived material on Rudy.

“With a flourish of the maitre d's hand we were seated. When the orders had been taken, the conversation reverted back to recordings, sound and the responsibility of the recording engineer to the artists, to himself, and especially to those who devour the end product ... the listeners.

It is most essential to identify my dinner companion, for he is the subject of tfiis piece, and, in my opinion, possessed of the greenest thumb for transferring sound to wax.

I first became aware of Rudy Van Gelder and his enigmatic recording studio through very expansive commendation of his work by various musicians and singers. If the commendation didn't come directly, it would usually occur in the in the context of a conversation  that was generally overheard in any one of the gathering places for people in the music business.

In just this fashion (spreading the news by word of mouth) Rudy's House of Sound has become a most important counterpart of many an artist's recording personality.

It is interesting to note that his species of recording  magic is performed in a room the size of a large living-room, and certainly the sound quality belies its comparative smallness If you've heard the current Jerri Winters vocal album (among many others),  with a string section, assorted horns and rhythm, you have somewhat of an indice into the capacity of this man and his living-room.

After hearing jazz musicians swear by him and singers refuse to do their dates anywhere else because of the undeniable quality of his recording procedures, my curiosity was pushed to a point where it demanded satisfaction. I had to find out the whok story.

Music and Rudy Van Gelder have been having a love affair for about fifteen years, take or leave a year (an affair I know his charming wife will excuse), and as in any affair of the heart, one must find an appropriate way to manifest one's love.

Rudy found his basic interest in the technical aspect of sound could best nurture this affair by bettering recording techniques, or at least making them more valid. For a few years, there was experimentation. The seeds of his ideas were sowed and cared for until in 1946, with Alfred Lyon and Blue Note Records as his first client, some of the full grown produce were harvested.

Time told the story of success, but under the foundation of all this experimentation, technical data and knowledge of microphones and sound relations lies a soul and this is the heart of the matter.

One concedes as a matter of obvious fact that every arranger arid musician feels a responsibility to his audience of getting the best of himself across to them under any conditions, but it is somewhat of a rarity when a recording engineer (a comparative middleman in the process), feels as intensely about it as Rudy does.

This factor takes the recording situation beyond the capabilities of his equipment into the sphere of artistic understanding. It is this and only this that engenders this man with the patience and limitless good will that permits full grasp of the meaning of a recording date and what it should be. The basic strength derived from complete understanding of his function both as an engineer and a human being allows for the capture of that particular quality that has led him to a place of leadership in his field.

It is a matter of overall satisfaction to Rudy: "Burt, I want things to be right for the artist's benefit as well as myself. His satisfaction is my satisfaction. It is ample reward, for a recording date if it can become a lasting rather than ephemeral thing, art, if you will, if the one most closely associated with the recording is able to approach it in a way that will induce the best out of air concerned."

Experimentation in technical as well as happy human relations continues out in Hackensack, and if you happen to catch Rudy between dates, it is likely he is on his way to his optometry practice In New York City to see a patient. Yes, whether it be eyes, or more important to us, eears, Rudy Van Gelder makes things just a bit more distinct and believable."

January, 1956

METRONOME - Music USA

by Burt Korall

Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie

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

“Regardless of any preferences as to style or performer, if you are a Jazz fan, then you are a fan of Count Basie’s music. It really is as simple as that. In the over 60 years of my association with this music, I’ve never met anyone who claimed otherwise regarding this equation.”  

- The Editorial Staff at JazzProfiles

The full title of this work is Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie As Told To Albert Murray - and therein lies the conundrum because if you know anything at all about the personality of Bill [never William] Basie and Albert [never Al] Murray, you, like me, are scratching your head in wonder at the pairing.

You can take solace from the fact that we are not alone in musing about these two working in concert to produce this volume as Dan Morgenstern, the distinguished Jazz critic and Director Emeritus of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, also emphasized this “odd couple” in his Introduction to the book.

However, he also goes on to reconcile this enigma by explaining how the two built on their strengths and offset their weaknesses to produce an autobiography of a Jazz Master that was long in coming and almost didn’t arrive.

INTRODUCTION

DAN MORGENSTERN

When Albeit Murray told me that he was going to be, as he put it, Count Basie's co-writer on the great man's autobiography, I was both baffled and elated. Elated because Basie, a notoriously difficult interview subject at best, had for years been stalling journalists and scholars with the excuse that he was saving anything worth talking about for a (hypothetical) book; baffled not so much because I knew that Murray had other literary irons in the fire, but because these two, on the face of it, made such an odd couple.

Basie was laid back, laconic, taciturn, the incarnation of the man-of-few-words, while Murray was intense, animated, a brilliant and enthusiastic talker, a veritable verbalist. What I should have known is what this wonderful book made obvious: that Albert Murray is also a brilliant listener, and that these two remarkable men shared a gift for editing — Basie of music, Murray of speech. By the time he sat down with his co-writer, Basie was a master of the art of artistic economy, of knowing what to leave out — both when it came to playing the piano and to editing and enhancing arrangements — and exactly what to leave in. That was something Murray understood and accepted from the start, and that understanding created the climate of trust that made the relationship, almost from the start, like one between old friends.

Which, in a way, they were, these two masters of the blues idiom. Murray was far from a stranger to Basie's realm of swinging and stomping the blues, and I cannot, in all honesty, think of another writer who could have made Basie come to life so fully on the printed page, in what throughout sounds like Count's own true voice. Such a minor miracle could only have been wrought by a writer able to combine the very different requirements of reporter and poet — the former to sort out and render the many facts of a rich and long professional life; the latter to capture every nuance and rhythm of the speech and thought of a man who, while often disarmingly straightforward and self-deprecating, was as complex and mysterious as any artist worthy of the name.

What Basie clearly didn't want his book to be was any kind of expose, as he makes crystal clear near the end of Good Morning Blues: "I know you can get away with putting almost anything in a book these days. But I don't want any more outhouses in mine than I have already put in here."

That's putting it plain enough, and Basie-Murray do adhere to it. Not that the Count makes himself out to be some kind of saint; the narrative is full of good times recalled without regret. Basie makes clear that he liked to take a drink, loved the company of pretty women, and was far from averse to playing the horses. He is frank about scheming to further his career, as in how he managed to become a member of Bennie Moten's band though Moten was a fellow piano player: "I have always been a conniver and began saying to myself, I got to see how I can connive my way into that band." But that, of course, is nothing dishonest, and Basie does not shy away from telling it like it was when it comes to unfair dealings he encountered. But he does not tattle or smirk.

Nor does he dwell on the many injustices, big and small, that he inevitably encountered in his many years on the road during (and after) the official reign of Jim Crow. He doesn't gloss over the negatives, but, as he explains, "If I haven't spent a lot of time complaining about all of these things, it's not because I want anybody to get the impression that all that was not also a part of it. It was [but] you don't let that stop you if [you know] what you really want to be."

One of the finest moments in this book is when Basie discovers that what he really wants to be is a jazz musician. Prior to his discovery (one morning in Oklahoma) of the great Blue Devils band (which is to say, the blues as transformed to instrumental jazz, and with that unique 4/4 beat that he did so much to bring out into full hearing of the world), he merely wanted to be a part of show business, but now he is about to find his calling. It was a storyteller's masterstroke to depart from chronology and begin the narrative with this epiphanic moment and its emblematic slogan, Once a Blue Devil, always a Blue Devil.

There is much to learn from this plainspoken, non tendentious book, which, alas, Count Basie did not live to see published — though he read and approved a first draft that essentially was what we find here — and which is the fruit of a seven-year-plus labor of love. It involved, for the co-author, frequent visits to the Basie home in Freeport, Bahamas, many trips to spots where the Basie band was in residence for more than a night or two, and countless hours of researching transcribing, and editing, resulting in one of the best and most authentic of all jazz autobiographies and biographies.

What was Basie's secret as a leader of two of the greatest bands in jazz history — the old and new testament ones? As it emerges from his own story, there is the key element of the band as an extension of family life—of a very special kind of togetherness. Thad Jones, speaking with Royal W. Stokes, put it so very well: "There was a roundness and a togetherness about everything we did that was very exceptional . . . coming from that strong and binding family circle. It was incredible that a man could organize people to form this strong bond of friendship and generate such a warm, human feeling toward one another, concern for each other's welfare, and consistently maintain it, as Mr. Basie did. That's true genius."

And then there was Basie's time. As another great Basie trumpeter, Harry Sweets Edison, that one from the old testament band, told Stanley Dance (for The World of Count Basie, which makes a fitting counterpoint to this book): "[Basie] was and is the greatest for stomping off the tempo. He noodles around on the piano until he gets it just right."

That incomparable noodling set the tempo just right for more than five decades of the swingingest music this side of heaven. There were times when the band would get to swing so hard that Basie, having set that tempo (and kept it there) just right, would lift his hands from the keyboard, and just sit there with the most blissful expression on his benign countenance. That, an onlooker felt, was a man fulfilled—one of the lucky ones. As long as there's recorded music, Count Basie will keep us tapping our feet, and with Al Murray as an added starter to that incomparable All-American Rhythm Section, he tells us how.”

One of the most revealing aspects of Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie As Told To Albert Murray is how much thought or, if you will, forethought that Count Basie put into everything he did over the course of a career that spanned a half century.

Because he was a man of few words and preferred a blues-based, straight-ahead approach to Jazz, one gets the impressions that there’s not very much to it and that Basie fifty year evolution as a bandleader just happened.

But after reading the 16 chapters that make up Basie’s autobiography, I came to the realization that it was well-thought out and planned every step of the way.

Basie’s career developed as it did because The Count wanted it to happen that way.

Of course, he fell under the sway of other musicians he respected. As a case in point, the following excerpt indicated how important Billy Eckstine was in convincing Basie to re-establish a big band in the early 1950’s at a time when many considered them to be a thing of the past.

Part Two

THE COMEBACK, 1950-1954

“The main one who was really responsible for me deciding to get a full band back together again when I did was Billy Eckstine. I have to give him a whole lot of credit for that. And no matter how much I give him, it will never really be enough. Because he was the one who just kept on after me and kept on after me and wouldn't let me alone until finally I just said, hell, Fd go along with it.

My co-writer has reminded me that a lot of people who were around during that time still like to think of the band that I began to work with that next year as the Birdland Band, and they have a point. Because Bird-land, near the corner of the east side of Broadway at Fifty-second Street, was known as the jazz corner of the world in those days, and that was where things finally began happening for the new band, just as the Famous Door was where the first band really broke into the big time about fourteen years earlier.

So I'm not forgetting Birdland, and I'm not forgetting Norman Granz either. Because without all of those fantastic gigs in Birdland, it would not have been the same story for us, at least I don't think so; and I also have to say that all those records that Norman began bringing out on Mercury and then Clef and then Verve labels were also very, very important. That was the main way the new band got nationwide exposure.

Those first records were not big hits or anything like that, but there were disc jockeys playing them, and they were on the jukeboxes; and when we were out on those early tours, everywhere we went there were almost always some people waiting for us, mainly because they were already familiar with how the new band sounded on tunes like "Bleep Bleep Blues," "Sure Thing," "Why Not?," "Fancy Meeting You," "Cash Box," and "Tom Whaley" from those Mercury and Clef LP's that Norman was distributing all over the country, along with his Jazz at the Philharmonic releases that were so popular at that time. Because I really didn't give a damn about going back into the big-band thing at that time. I'm not saying that I didn't miss it.

Some people insist that all during that time with the combo I was always talking about how much I missed that bigger sound of the full band. Even my wife claims that I used to mope around the house grumbling and complaining about not being able to hear my music the way I was used to.

But the combo was doing all right [Basie led a septet for a few years in the late 1940’s following the demise of his big band]. There was no problem about getting bookings for it, and those guys were burning it up every set, every night. It worked me a little bit hard, but I was getting used to it, and I was having a ball. I really was. But Billy came by to see us one night. I forget exactly when it was, but it was while we were working in the Capitol Lounge in, Chicago. Whenever it was, he started in on me and that was just the beginning.

"Man," he said, "what you doing messing around out here with this stuff for?" Of course, all of Billy's close friends know damn well that he didn't really use nice little words like "crap," "stuff," "fooling around," "messing around," but we'll just pretend he did, because he really wasn't talking dirty to be nasty. That was just his way of showing how much he liked you. Instead of coming somewhere and telling how much he loved you, he would come in and cuss you out, just like some people show you how glad they are to see you by slapping you and pushing and carrying on like that.

"Man, goddamn, we don't need you out here with this old crap. We need you out here with a big band again."

And every time I saw him from then on, it was the same thing.

"Man, what you keep fooling around with little old one- and two-piece stuff for? Get your goddamn big band back together. Man, hell, you look funny up there messing around with that little old two- and three-piece crap. Stop kidding yourself. This is small garbage for you, Base. This ain't your goddamn thing. Hell, your goddamn thing is a goddamn big band, man." Now, he might have said, "your thing," but

what he actually said was a word that begins with the letter s.

The thing about Billy was that he was really sitting on top of the world of show business at that time. He had a whole gang of hit records out, and he was getting top billing at some of the biggest theaters from coast

to coast, beginning with the Paramount in Times Square. And that's the way it had been for a couple of years or so. Of course, he had already become one of the top band singers back when he was with Earl Hines's great band. And for a few years at the end and right after the war, he had also led his own wonderful band that had all of those great stars like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro, Sarah Vaughan, Budd Johnson, Gene Ammons, Art Blakey, and I don't know how many others in it. But at the time I'm talking about now, he was working as a single and he was the top male vocalist in the country, and everybody was talking about the great Mr. B. and everywhere you went you could hear that big, wonderful voice on the radio and the jukeboxes.”

Serendipity [or “fate”] also played a role in the direction that the Basie band took, witness the following excerpt about how drummer Sonny Payne became a member of what became referred to at the “New Testament” Band:

“By this time, that current band was really getting there. But before the year was out, we found ourselves with a hell of an emergency on our hands, Shortly after we opened in Birdland for the Christmas holidays, Gus Johnson had an attack of appendicitis and had to go into the hospital for an operation. That was just two days before Christmas. But that just shows how fate works sometimes.

Because the guy we brought in to pinch-hit for Gus was Sonny Payne, and he came in and hit a home run with the bases loaded. That was not any reflection on Gus at all. Absolutely not, because Gus, even up to this very minute, is still one of the great drummers. He's got a great sense of timing, and he can hold things together. Everybody speaks of him as being a great man for backing a band. He can set things behind a big band or any kind of band or any kind of group. It doesn't make any difference. He's a great drummer even if he's just playing by himself. He can do it from one and two on up. He's just an all-around great guy to have in your organization.

But fate is a funny thing. Sonny Payne came in there, and right away he touched off a new spark in that band, and we had to keep him as much as we all loved Gus. Naturally people noticed that Sonny was more of a showman than Gus was, but I wouldn't say that showmanship was what made the difference. It was not that easy. You can't see any stick twirling and trickerlating on those next records, but you can hear and feel a difference in the band.”

But one thing remains clear throughout a reading of Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie As Told To Albert Murray and that is Bill Basie’s unswerving devotion to how he wanted to play Jazz. Of course, as he puts it, he was very accommodating of fate along the way and was always “game” - willing to take a chance.

So to wrap things up for the time being, I'll just say whatever happens from here on in I can't complain. I've had my breaks, and I really can't squawk. Whatever else happens, I'm still going to have to say I've been blessed. I've been very lucky. Fate has been very good to me. It really has, and I'm thankful. That's why I never sit down to a meal without first pausing to give thanks. Every time I think about how many years I've been able to do what I enjoy doing and make a pretty good living and also make a name for myself and a reputation that stands for something, I realize how much I have to be thankful for.

And of course, I was also game. I was always game. I have to put that in here, too. If something came up, I was willing to try it. That doesn't mean that I was always changing what I was doing because I was out there trying to latch onto the latest thing to come along. Some people are like that. Not me. Naturally there are things that come up over the course of the years, and you have to adjust to them because that is the way life is. But I've seen people get away from who they are and what they can do—something they are just wonderful at—just because they think they have to try to be something else. You don't have to do that. You don't have to leave from where you are. I've never forgotten that. You can still be yourself and grow and keep up with the times. If you are going to grow.

When I say I was always game, I mean being willing to take a big chance on yourself because you want to do what you want to do, because when I say that I'm thinking about how I jumped at the offer to go out on the Columbia Wheel with Katie Krippen, and the things I did out on the TOBA* with Gonzelle White's Jamboree, and how I got my job playing organ at the Eblon Theatre in Kansas City, and how I left the Eblon the first time to join the Blue Devils and the second time just to see if there was any way to get with Bennie Moten. And so on to how I did what I did to take over that job at the Reno and start that Three, Three, and Three outfit that got me the attention that brought me back to New York and into the big time. [*TOBA = Theater Owners Booking Association, a circuit of theater owners who booked talent into a string of 80 theaters extending from the East Coast across the South and back across the Midwest with Kansas City being the farthest stop west.]

I was always willing to say, "Let's see what happens," when something came up that looked like it might help me get a little closer to where I wanted to be, and since that's the way I still am, that really is old Count Basie right on up to date, motor scooter and all. As my co-writer says, autobiographies don't have endings. It's like when I segue into the out-chorus of "One O'Clock Jump" to wrap up a dance set or a concert or a stage or nightclub show. I'm not saying this is the end. I'm just saying that's all for now. I'm saying: to be continued, until we meet again. Meanwhile, keep on listening and tapping your feet.”

Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie As Told To Albert Murray is a joy to read not only because it is choc-a-block with details about all aspects of Count Basie’s career, but also because the narrative flows so easily.

I suspect that the latter has a lot to do with Albert Murray’s skills as a writer. Although it’s Basie telling his story, it’s Murray writing and editing it in such as way as to make the process of reading it similar to the excitement one feels while reading an enthralling novel or an exciting mystery.

It’s also an interesting documentary on the development of Jazz in Kansas City which complements the many studies of the evolution of the music in New Orleans, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. This book goes a long way toward rectifying the fact that Kansas City Jazz is often overlooked as a major wellspring for the music.

Lastly, it is a delightful read about a world-gone-by, never to come again. But you can visit it vicariously through a reading of this marvelous autobiography which was a longtime in coming, but well worth the wait.

The following video montage features the New Testament Basie Band performing Neal Hefti’s composition and arrangement of The Flight of the Foo Birds.

Joris Roelofs: “The Kids Are Fine” [From the Archives]

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

“All around they see not rivals but mentors. Gravitating to living masters and young gurus, they talk not of themselves but of the greatness of others. As a result, their sound is pure, their language is concise. Although perpetually young-looking, they are the opposite of naïve. Their groove is light and precise and the smile in their eyes maintains a near-constant  sparkle.”

- pianist Aaron Goldberg commenting on Joris Roelofs

It’s hard to imagine that someone who is only twenty-eight years old could already be so proficient in today’s Jazz world.

Such is truly the case with Joris Roelofs who was born 1984 in Aix-en-Provence (France), raised in Amsterdam (Netherlands), and plays saxophones, clarinet, bass clarinet and flute. He began to play classical clarinet at the age of six, and the alto saxophone at the age of twelve.

For one so young, Joris has a considerable list of accomplishments and associations.

He was a member of the Vienna Art Orchestra from 2005-2010. Joris also plays lead alto in the Jazz Orchestra Of The Concertgebouw in the Netherlands. He graduated in 2007 as a Master of Music at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. In 2001 Joris won the Pim Jacobs Price. In 2003 he received, as a first non-American, the Stan Getz/Clifford Brown Fellowship Award in the US, organized by the International Association Of Jazz Education (IAJE). The IAJE also honored him with a “First Level” price. In 2004 Joris received the first prize of the prestigious Deloitte Jazz Award in the Netherlands, a Dutch Award for young musicians who are just about to start their international carrier. In 2008 he was selected for the Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition.

Among others, Joris played with Brad Mehldau, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Christina Branco, Lionel Loueke, Joshua Redman, Chris Potter, Chris Cheek, Eric Harland, Lewis Nash, Aaron Goldberg, Greg Tardy, Ralph Peterson, Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Pete King, Sonny Fortune, Greg Hutchinson, WDR Big Band, Ari Hoenig, Matt Penman, Alegre Correa.

He was recently asked by Brad Mehldau to perform with him at the Carnegie Hall in New York and Sanders Theatre in Boston. At age 16 Joris performed the famous clarinet introduction of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue for a TV show with the Orkest van het Oosten, and in that same show was also featured as a soloist with the Jazz Orchestra Of The Concertgebouw. He also recorded as a special clarinet soloist with the Metropole Orchestra with Laura Fygi (2004). As a leader he performed several times at the North Sea Jazz Festival, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Smalls Jazz Club in NYC, among other places.

In October 2008 he did a European release tour with Ari Hoenig, Aaron Goldberg and Johannes Weidenmueller to promote his debut album Introducing Joris Roelofs. In 2009 and 2010 he did his second and third tour with Aaron Goldberg, Greg Hutchinson, Reginald Veal, Joe Sanders. Joris also plays in a trio with Jesse van Ruller and Clemens van der Feen, they released their album Chamber Tones and toured in Japan. Joris’ new CD Live At The Bimhuis will come out the end of August/2011. As a sideman Joris has been playing at a large number of international jazz festivals and jazz clubs, all over the world. He moved to New York City in March 2008.

Pianist Aaron Goldberg wrote these thoughts about Joris and Jazz in New York City for Introducing Joris Roelofs:

“New York remains an artist-magnet. The intrepid flow in from everywhere, their paint brushes or their saxophones on their back, often still searching for a place to sleep. Some show up with a point to prove, and they are usually the first to attract notice. On occasion others arrive with a different kind of special mission. Instead of a moral to teach or an agenda to push, these brave selves search for a lesson to learn. Tey are driven by the love of their art.

All around they see not rivals but mentors. Gravitating to living masters and young gurus, they talk not of themselves but of the greatness of others. As a result, their sound is pure, their language is concise. Although perpetually long-looking, they are the opposite of naïve. Their groove is light and precise and the smile in their eyes maintains a near-constant  sparkle.

Perhaps they have some metaphysical guardian, a Vajravarahi [Tibetan Buddhist diety that helps free one from suffering and gain enlightenment through meditations] to help uproot the ego?

Or maybe their meditations just focus on the truly important: line and melody, mouthpiece and embouchure, narrative and harmony, and the rest follows inevitably. These are the true faithful. From the inside they may see only detours, but their paths are straight and their bearing upright. From the outside they glow like the enlightened. More importantly, they are a joy to listen to. Joris Roelofs is one of the rare arrivals.”

With all of this by way of background, “The Kids” such as Joris, Aaron, bassist Matt Penman and drummer Ari Hoenig “are doing just fine” as you can hear for yourself on the sound track to the following video montage.

The tune is pianist Aaron Goldberg’s The Rules which is an excellent example of the kind of tension-and-release, repetitive phrases and sustained tones can create in Jazz. Aaron takes the first solo, followed by Ari on drums with Joris’s solo closing it out before the piece’s “surprise” ending.

[BTW, if the music of Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh, and Lennie Tristano comes to mind while listening to Joris' quartet, your memory is a credit to modern Jazz history].

Joris Roelofs recordings are available as audio CD’s and Mp3 downloads from a number of online retailers.