Harry "Sweets" Edison - The Barbara Gardner Interview

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

“Bravo, Barbara!

I want to congratulate Barbara Gardner for the splendid work she's done on articles interviewing jazz vocalists. So far I've read articles about Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Nancy Wilson, and Joe Williams, and all of them were great.

Miss Gardner is a sensitive, engrossing writer, with a beautiful fund of wittiness and charm and humor. I hope in the future, she will continue to write inspiring, warm-hearted articles on vocalists as she has so beautifully done in the past.

Roy E. Lott

St. Louis, Mo.”

- Chords and Discords, January 28, 1965, Down Beat

The following interview appeared in the January 28, 1965 edition of Down Beat and while it does not involve a vocalist, it does involve Barbara’s assured and eloquent way of putting the person she is interviewing at ease which allows for a flowing almost conversational style of interviewing.

It’s always a pleasure to feature Barbara’s work on JazzProfiles most particularly in this case because the editorial staff has wanted to do a piece on Sweets Edison for some time, but couldn’t seem to find a vehicle that would do him justice.

Following Barbara’s interview, you’ll find YouTube videos that features Harry Edison’s quartet with Arnold Ross on piano, Joe Comfort on bass and Alvin Stoller on drums. The group was formed to work the Tuesday night sessions at The Haig, which for a time, was the busiest Jazz club in Hollywood. The music on the video is from a Pacific Jazz LP entitled ‘Sweets’ at The Haig: The Harry Edison Quartet [PJLP - 4] which was recorded in 1953 on portable Ampex equipment [which accounts for the poor audio quality; you may have to crank up you speakers].

“THE "IN" MAN of the time was the President of the tenor saxophone, Lester  Young.   He  watched and listened to the 21-year-old musician.

"We're going to call you Sweetie-Pie," said the president jokingly to the talented, but young, trumpet player.

In a few months the nickname had been shortened to Sweets, and from that time until now, the given name, Harold Edison, seldom has been heard.

The name Sweets has stuck, as has the purity and clarity of his trumpet tone, unimpaired since the day he joined Young and other leading jazzmen in the Count Basie Band in 1937. The more than 20 years intervening have been marked by a surprisingly even level of acceptance and security. He remained almost without interruption with Basie until the 1950 collapse of the big band. For the-next few years, he toured the country, either as a single or as a star attraction with such performers as bandleader-drummer Buddy Rich and entertainer Josephine Baker.

In 1953 he decided to make a stand on the West Coast. This was a courageous decision, for the West Coast then was riding the crest of the "cool" movement. Modernists and experimentalists were setting the tone, and it was a tribute to Edison's ability as a musician that he, a swing-era trumpeter, was able to survive in this environment.

In fact, he actually prospered and came to enjoy an economically sound footing not easily found in jazz. For the next five years he was the master "soul bearer" of the West Coast. Frank Sinatra never recorded without him. Nelson Riddle's trumpet section swelled with his stinging, swinging horn. The movies Man with the Golden Arm, Pal Joey, Joker Is Wild, House Boat, The Girl Most Likely all boast the steady, lyric trumpet of Sweets Edison on the soundtrack. He was on first call at two of Hollywood's major film studios.

In September, 1958, Edison put the West Coast cushion of financial security and musical acceptance behind him and moved east to resume the unstable, roving life he had led for 15 years — that of a traveling musician.

"I think anybody used to traveling — they get that urge, you know?" he said. "Just want to get on the road — see some of your old friends."

When he formed his own quintet, he found that traveling the nightclub scene was not without change. The first twang of unfamiliarity he heard was in the ever-changing, driving Basie band sound.

"Different band . . .," Edison murmured. "Different band altogether. The band Basie has today is more rehearsed. They don't have the soloists like he had in the old band: Lester Young — the president of the modern style — Hershel Evans, Jo Jones, Buck Clayton — all these guys were the epitome of their profession. There were none greater in those days."

It is interesting that while he makes this statement as unequivocally today as he did in 1958, the personnel of the Basie band has undergone numerous changes in the last six years and more than 75 percent of current Basie-ites have joined the band in the last three years. In singling out individual members, Edison pays special attention to one trumpet player who left the band a few years ago and who has been hailed repeatedly as an Edison disciple.

"I liked Joe Newman with that band," Edison said. "I like him very much. Now, about any influence I might have had on the younger guys. ... I guess Joe Newman plays more like myself than anybody. Of course, we played together for quite some time in Basie's band. He's a good trumpet player. He might use a few things I use, but he's got his own style."

Newman, told of this remark, smiled and shrugged expressively.

"Sweets was a great influence on me musically," Newman admitted. "I listened to him while I was growing up—musically. But now, I just play like myself, I think."

THE TENDENCY to disclaim emulation in music goes perhaps as far back as the tendency to accuse itself. Edison is included. Every leading critic or writer who has attempted to analyze his work has come up with the assertion that in the early days of his career Edison was a Roy Eldridge emulator. Edison has his own thoughts on this:

"I never tried to emulate him. He adapted himself to playing in the high register of his horn — this I never do. I usually play in the bottom register of my horn, which may be poor, but I try."

Eldridge is not listed among his current favorite trumpet players.

"Miles is a good trumpet player," Edison said. "I like him very much. He has a good style — a very relaxed style. I like Dizzy Gillespie, who I think is just — well, he's just marvelous on his horn. And, naturally, Louis Armstrong to me is the daddy of all the trumpet players because if it hadn't been for him, I don't think we'd have known what the trumpet would have been all about."

Edison looks paternally on the younger generation of musicians.

"The younger musicians are not like the older generation, naturally," he said. "Discipline is one thing most of them don't have nowadays. Like anything else—in other areas besides music — the young people don't have that discipline. Even in school, they're not like we used to be. But some people — the worse they act, the more publicity they get. And some others, the better they act, they never get any. So who knows? Who's to say who's right and who's wrong? You never know."

As a successful transitional trumpeter, Edison is sensitive to the various attempts to categorize jazz.

"They keep saying 'mainstream jazz' and 'progressive jazz,' but I think music is music," he declared. "All these names are just new names for music. If it sounds good, and if it is good, then it's just music."

He is not bothered by the various tags and names, and the trend to change the name of the music from jazz to "modern music" or "progressive sounds" has no validity for him.

"I can't find another name for jazz — no more than just good music," he said.

As for his own style, Edison states it simply:

"I like to play on the beat. I like to swing. Anything I play, I like to play at a tempo that's not going to drag people — it's not going to drag myself. I think it should be danceable, and to play something danceable, you have to stomp it off at a dance tempo."

A bit of the subtle Edison wit was discernible in his comment on a critic's remark that he plays occasional cascades of notes.

"Umm . . . 'cascade,' " he mused. "I've never run across that word musically. . . .

But evidently, the writer must have had something in mind. They're always bringing up new words for music, maybe that's a new one. As long as it was favorable, I hope he — whoever wrote it — I hope he enjoyed it."

THE GOOD OL' DAYS bear resplendent memories for Edison, and he still clings tenaciously to thoughts of the period when he was surrounded by undisputed giants of his profession.

"We had more fun then than they do nowadays," he reflected. "Well, it has to do with the taxes. You have to make so much money now to exist. In those days you could make a little money and live like a king. If you made $2 a night, that would last you two or three days. Now, $2 won't even buy you cigarettes for a day."

Did Edison ever actually work for $2 a night? He threw back his head, clapped his hands, and exclaimed:

"Are you kidding? Two dollars a day was big money— that was room rent and food for a week."

While most musicians have preferences in types of music or places to play, Edison regards these preferences only as other whims of the pampered generation.

"If they were playing from 9 to 4," he said, "they would say, 'Certainly would like to get some concerts— get something easy for a change.' Then when they play concerts, they say they are not getting a chance to play. So I just say if you play any place, you're blessed — with so many musicians out of work."

His personal experience with unemployment has been mostly quite brief. He joined forces with singer Joe Williams for a while but then left to drift around New York and points east as a single or a recording artist. Finally, he returned to the West Coast to settle into the same groove he was in before he went east in 1958. He works the studio jobs, some club dates, flits across the country on special assignments for the major labels or studios.

Having spent so much time as a favored musician in an environment conducive to democratic living, Edison has developed a balanced, middle-class attitude toward Jim Crow and its opposite, Crow Jim.

"Well, I really don't like to talk about the race question," he said, his soft, rather gravelly voice dropping. "Because I really don't have any qualms about it at all. I think a person is a person."

Discarding the Crow Jim premise that only Negroes can truly play jazz, he continued:

"God made us all the same — so if one man's got a soul, then why shouldn't another person have one?"

He thought the matter over a second and concluded, "We've [Negroes] had more misery than anybody else, so naturally we play the blues better than anybody.

That's typical race music. That comes from being sad. You have money today — tomorrow you might get put out. That's all in your music."”

Harold Land - The Hard Bop Legacy [1928-2001] [From the Archives]

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

At a round-table discussion on West Coast jazz held in 1988, Buddy Collette offered a few words about fellow saxophonist Harold Land:

Harold"s been one of the finest tenor players I've heard and I have hardly heard a write-up about what this man has been doing through the years. . . . I've known him for 30 years, 35 years, and he's been playing jazz morning, noon and night. ... In New York he would have gotten more.

It is all too telling that Harold Land is best remembered in the jazz world for the brief time he was performing on the East Coast with the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet. Land's thirty-five years of exceptional work since that time are often treated as an elaborate footnote to this early apprenticeship. The recordings, however, tell no lies. They document Land's major contributions to jazz both during and after his work with Brown and Roach. They reveal that he was one of the most potent voices on the West Coast scene throughout the period.

Those aware of Land's origins in Houston, Texas, where he was born on February 18, 1928, often hear a lingering Texas tenor sound in his playing. In fact, Land and his family spent only a few months in the Lone Star State. Soon his family moved to Arizona, and just a few years later they settled in San Diego. At an early age Land began taking piano lessons, at the instigation of his mother, but switched to tenor after hearing Coleman Hawkins's influential 1939 recording of "Body and Soul."

- Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz, Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960

"IN VIEW OF THE CURRENT VOGUE among musicians of such terms as "earthy" and "roots" when appraising the authenticity of a jazzman, I cannot resist noting the aptness of Harold Land's name in this alfresco context. His playing is as deeply rooted in jazz tradition as anyone's now in jazz. His capacity for communicating the blues, his wholeness of pulsation and his insistence on "keeping the emotion free" when he plays — all these elements make him a modernist whose language would not be alien to Sidney Bechet or Tommy Ladnier or Speckled Red."

- Nat Hentoff, Jazz author, critic and educator

"Harold Land is one of the most satisfying, soulful, exciting, inventive and highly personal tenors in jazz today."

- Tony Hall, British Jazz critic

“Looking back, it seems the quality and fervor of the music created a decade ago in Los Angeles was more significant than many of us then realized. Despite opportunities to hear some of these vigorous happenings via records, important musicians of the time were ignored partly because of a geographical handicap, and partly because lack of popular acceptance had driven much of their music underground. That the excitement of the period is not merely an hallucination induced by retrospect or nostalgia is proved beyond doubt with this reissue of The Fox [Contemporary S-7619;OJCCD-343-2]

In 1959, when it was recorded, Harold Land was one of the underrated, underground musicians gigging around Los Angeles. A soft-spoken man whose personality rarely suggests the incandescence of his instrumental sound….

His early influences were the big, warm tones of Coleman Hawkins and Lucky Thompson; later Charlie Parker's new concepts helped determine his direction....

Harold decided in 1954 to try his luck in Los Angeles. For several months there

were various odd jobs, none very rewarding.

The turning point came one night when Clifford Brown took his combo-leading partner, Max Roach, to hear Harold play in a session at Eric Dolphy's house. "Eric had known me since the San Diego days, and after I moved to L.A. we became good friends" Harold says. "He was beautiful. Eric loved to play anywhere, any hour, of the day or night. So did I. In fact, I still do!'

The unofficial audition led to Harold's being hired by Brown and Roach. As jazz night club audiences around the country were exposed to the freshness and vitality of Land's playing, he seemed to be well on his way; but in 1956 he had to leave the quintet and return to Los Angeles because of illness in the family.

If, during the balance of the 1950s, he had continued to tour with name groups, there is little doubt that his reputation would have been established sooner and much more firmly on an international level. Land is philosophical about it. "We were making progress in Los Angeles, even if nobody was aware of it. There wasn't much money, but we were having a lot of beautiful musical moments!'”-

- Leonard Feather, Jazz author, critic, record producer, insert notes to The Fox [Contemporary S-7619;OJCCD-343-2]

It seems that the only two people who did not lament tenor saxophonist Harold Land’s continuance with the initial version of the legendary quintet led by drummer Max Roach and trumpeter Clifford Brown were Harold and me.

When I asked Harold about his decision to quit the group and return to Los Angeles for family reasons, he said: “Do you know how often I get asked that question? I have no regrets. For the last 45 years I’ve been in the California sunshine near my family and friends. Going on the road is a drag, nothin’ but hard times. The work here has been all right over the years and I’m happy sleepin’ in my own bed at night.”

I really enjoyed having Harold’s unique tenor sax sound, a sound that was so different than many of the Lester Young inspired tones on the West Coast Jazz scene, within driving distance and it was always a gas to hear him play in Jazz clubs or concert venues as a member of Gerald Wilson or Oliver Nelson’s big bands or as the co-leader in groups he fronted with trumpeter Red Mitchell, vibist Bobby Hutcherson and trumpeter Blue Mitchell.

Harold Land was born in Houston, TX in 1928 but grew up in San Diego, and became interested in music while in high school; he began playing saxophone when he was about 16 years old. After gaining experience with local bands in San Diego he moved to Los Angeles, where he joined the quintet led by Clifford Brown and Max Roach as a replacement for Teddy Edwards. He was with this band for 18 months, but left to play with Curtis Counce (1956-8). Land then led his own groups, or shared leadership with Red Mitchell (1961-2) and Bobby Hutcherson (1967-71); in the 1950s and 1960s he also worked with Gerald Wilson. From 1975 to 1978 he led a quintet with Blue Mitchell, and thereafter has worked as a freelance, mainly in California but also touring overseas.

According to Mark Gardner in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz:  “Land is a fluent modern stylist whose dry tone and individual manner of improvising at first owed little to the work of other musicians. In the late 1960s, however, his playing changed dramatically when he came under the influence of John Coltrane. His tone hardened and his phrasing became more brusque and jagged. His ability and daring are best displayed on his recordings as the leader of small groups including Carl Perkins (1958) and Elmo Hope (1959), and as a sideman with Thelonious Monk.”

We wanted to remember Harold on these pages with the following article by John Tynan who for many years was the West Coast regional editor for Downbeat magazine, because it is one of the earliest features written about Harold for a major Jazz magazine.

Sadly feature articles about Harold in Jazz publications were a rarity.

down beat

June 6, 1960

A VOICE IN THE WESTERN LAND

John Tynan

“Harold  Land, one of the  towering figures on contemporary-jazz tenor saxophone and standard-bearer of the new jazz on the west coast, isn't out to prove a thing to anybody but himself.

Living in Los Angeles since he left the Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet some four years ago, the quiet, serious Land has been content to take his chances with the rest of the jazz branch of Local 47, AFM, and take his gigs where he finds them. Currently leading a quintet at Los Angeles' Masque club, he is decidedly optimistic about the present state of modern jazz in the southern slice of the Golden State.

Since his Roach-Brown days, Land said, the music and the musicians in the L.A. area have taken an upward turn. "It has improved," he commented, "especially in recent months. The few new jazz clubs that have opened have helped a lot; also the jazz concerts we've had recently have done much to re-stimulate interest."

During the last couple of years Los Angeles has become notorious among musicians as a jazz graveyard where night-club work is concerned. Land, however, somehow has managed to work with reasonable consistency in this drought.

"Having a place to play makes a world of difference to the musician — because just playing at home just doesn't make it at all," he commented dryly. "The musicians of Los Angeles have had so few places to play jazz; that's been one the biggest holdbacks. It meant that the few sessions that were going on would be dominated by just the few cats who showed up early and this made the sessions less enjoyable for the rest.

"Also, this situation made it very hard to keep a group together."

Land is frank in admitting his inclination to take things for granted in the development of jazz in Los Angeles. "There have been important changes in the playing of local musicians," he said, "but being so closely involved with my own playing, possibly I've been inclined to take these changes in stride."

In Land's view, Los Angeles musicians generally "seem  more conscientious than they were five years ago." Why? "It's rather hard to say, but for one

thing, there are countless musicians being influenced by what they hear from the east coast."

And is this increasing influence restricted only to the Negro jazzmen?

"No, I can hear this influence in the playing of both white and colored musicians."

In Land's view, Miles Davis and his more recent associates have been the most important influences on jazz musicians generally in recent years, "Miles, 'Trane, Cannonball and the 'Rhythm Section' (Philly Joe Jones, Paul Chambers, and Red Garland) have been the main influence," he said.

Why?

"For one thing, it's in the way they work as a unit. This is outstanding. Then, too, each individual's playing is important. As a matter of fact, the individuals' influence has been the most important factor, in my opinion.

"You could possibly say that these are the most influential men in jazz today, as I see it."

While not exclusively signed with any record company, Land can count albums under his own name on Contemporary Records (Harold in the Land of

Jazz) and High Fidelity Records (The Fox). Moreover, he has played as side-man on more jazz LPs than he can count.

Today he sums up his aim succinctly: "I want to get said as much as I possibly can on the instrument in my own group or in any group where I could be happy. Or to be playing in a group where all the musicians would be completely in accord; to me this is the ultimate in playing."

"Yet," Land added with more than a suggestion of wistfulness, "that's only happened once—with the Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet. That was the happiest musical family I've ever been in. With Max, Clifford, Richie Powell, and George Morrow, every night was more exciting than the one before.

"It can happen again. But it hasn't happened completely as yet with the musicians I've been working with."

Land's search for the perfect empathy may well be as elusive as he contends, but observers have noted a remarkable musical rapport between the tenorist and the drummer with whom he apparently prefers to work, Frank Butler. Still, Land refuses to commit himself on this point for fear of offending other musicians.

Since his days with Roach and Brown, Land now feels that he has matured. "I have more to offer," he said. "I've learned a bit more since then."

For all his love of big-band sounds, he is happiest, he said, playing with small groups because of the blowing freedom this affords. But "a serious big band is beautiful," he remarked, "and I guess Gil Evans, Ernie Wilkins, and Quincy Jones are among my favorite arrangers. And don't leave out Gil Fuller and John Lewis and their charts for Dizzy Gillespie's big band years ago. This has been a long time ago, but age doesn't make any difference. They were good then, and they're still good."

Land is a typically west coast jazz son. Born in Houston, Texas, 31 years ago, he was reared and schooled in San Diego, Calif., which he left for Los Angeles eight years ago to seek his fortune. While pecuniary fortune may have eluded him thus far, he ranks today among the highest artistic earners in the top tenor bracket.”

On the following video, Harold is joined by Rolf Ericsson, trumpet, Carl Perkins, piano, Leroy Vinnegar, bass and Frank Butler, drums performing his original composition Smack Up.

Victor's Vibes [From the Archives]

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

For many years, the late Milt Jackson, affectionately known as “Bags,” was heralded as the undisputed king of the vibraphone and most vibists accorded him their highest esteem and pointed to him as a major influence.

I, too, love his playing, especially in the context of the Modern Jazz Quartet.

But I’ve always had trouble with the notion of ranking Jazz musicians, voting for them in polls and comparing them as artists. I think it’s an absolute waste of time; a meaningless exercise.

Jazz artists work very hard to establish their own approach to the music and I would imagine that, as is the case with actors, writers and painters, they have a tendency to gravitate toward those artists whose work “speaks” to them.

What, then, are the standards that one has to meet to be rated as “better” than another artist?

As Aristotle once said: “Each of us is different with regard to those things we have in common.”

And so it is with Jazz musicians in general and, for the purpose of this feature, Jazz vibraphonists in particular. Everyone imitates and emulates while trying to establish their own voice on an instrument.

Vibes are particularly challenging to play uniquely because of the limitations inherent in how the sound is produced on them.

Bags’ influence was pervasive when it came to Jazz vibes. I’ve played the instrument a bit and I recognize the truth in this assertion because I, too, found myself playing Milt’s “licks” and “phrases.” They lay so easily on the axe. You drop you hands [mallets] on the bars and out they come.

Another reason why so many vibist sound like Bags may be because he played a lot of the same “licks” [musical expressions] or phrases over and over again.

A lot of Jazz musicians do this [some call them “resting points”], but one has to be careful with repetitive phrases because employing the same licks too often can become an excuse for not thinking [in other words, not being inventive].

The expression that is sometimes used when this happens is that the musician “mailed in” the solo.

Bags was one of the “Founding Fathers” of Bebop, he toured all over the United States and Europe with the MJQ and he made a slew of recordings with the group, with other artists as well as under his own name.

As a result, his style of vibes had a lot of exposure.

This exposure helped make Milt Jackson instantly recognizable as a major exponent of the bebop, blues-inflected style of playing Jazz vibes.

But for my money, no one has ever played the instrument more musically than Victor Feldman.

Bags’ influence is there in Victor’s style, but Victor is his own man and takes the instrument in a completely different direction than Milt.

There isn’t the repetitiveness nor for that matter the constant bebop and blues phrases, but rather, a more pianistic and imaginative approach, one that emphasizes longer inventions and a constant flow of new melodies superimposed over the chord changes.

Victor also emphasizes rhythm differently than the dotted eighth note spacing favored by Bags. As a result, Victor, begins and ends his phrases in a more angular fashion which creates more surprises in where he is going in his solos.

The starting points and pick-ups for Victors solos vary greatly because he is not just looking for places in the music to put tried-and-tested licks, he’s actually attempting to create musical ideas that he hasn’t expressed before.

Is what Victor is doing “better” than Bags? Of course not.  Is it different? Is it ever.

Fresh and adventurous. And exhilarating, too.

Jazz improvisation is the ultimate creative experience.

One doesn’t need any awards. You just can’t wait for the next time you solo so you can try soaring again.

To help give you the “flavor” of Victor Feldman’s marvelous creative powers as a Jazz vibist, we’ve put together a video montage of classic concept cars with a track that I think features him at his imaginative best.

This track has him performing his original composition Too Blue with Rick Laird on bass and Ronnie Stephenson on drums from his triumphant 1965 return to Ronnie Scott’s Club in his hometown of London [Jazz Archives JACD-053].

It runs a little over 8 minutes. You can hear the statement of the 12-bar blues theme from 0.00-0.22 minutes and again from 0.23-0.45 minutes. Each 12-bar theme closes with a bass “tag.”

Victor and Rick hook-up for a call-and-response interlude between 0:46-1:10 minutes before Victor launches into his first improvised chorus at 1:11 minutes.

He improvises seven choruses from 1:11-4:14 minutes before bassist Rick Laird takes four choruses from 4:14-5:46 minutes.

None of Victor’s choruses contains a repeated phrase or a recognizable Milt Jackson lick [phrase].

When Victor comes-back-in [resumes playing] at 5:46 minutes following Rick’s bass solo, if you listen carefully you can hear him using two mallets in his left hand to play 4-beats-to-the-bar intervals while soloing against this with the two mallets held in his right-hand.

He even throws in the equivalent of a big band-like “shout” chorus while trading fills with drummer Ronnie Stephenson beginning at 6:56 minutes.

The closing statement of the theme can be heard at 7:19 minutes ending with an “Amen” at 8:06 minutes.

When listening to Victor Feldman play Jazz on the vibraphone, one is hearing a true innovator at work. For him, making the next improvised chorus as original and as musically satisfying as possible was always the ultimate goal.  

It’s a shame that Jazz fans are not more familiar with his work on vibes. Having heard it on a regular basis for over twenty-five years, I can attest to the fact that it was something special. The only thing that Victor Feldman ever mailed in was a letter.

4

Remembering Don Elliott [1926-1984]

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

“Don Elliott spread his talent across so many endeavors that he never received his due as an inventive Jazz artist. Elliott played trumpet, mellophone, and vibes, sang and acted.  He did all of that well-enough to work with George Shearing, Buddy Rich, Benny Goodman, Billy Taylor, and Teddy Wilson; record with Paul Desmond [and pianist Bill Evans]; appear in a Broadway musical; and collaborate in hit novelty recordings.”

- Orrin Keepnews

Looking back, there was a time when being able to play a pretty ballad was expected of every Jazz musician [drummers were coached to sit patiently through them while listening attentively and accompanying the proceedings with some quiet brushwork].

Some musicians took “pretty” to another level and made it downright beautiful.

Two such Jazz musicians were alto saxophonist Paul Desmond and multi-instrumentalist Don Elliott.

Each was a lyrical, sensitive and very expressive player and in combination they were exquisite. Both crafted solos that were witty, thoughtful and brimming with harmonic intelligence.

It was an inspired pairing, albeit a short-lived one.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to remember Don on these pages with another of our early-in-their-career features which references the recording with Paul Desmond as something which hadn’t as yet occurred.

“'I Don't Want To Be Typed Says Versatile Don Elliott” - By Dom Cerulli

[January 1956 Down Beat]

“DON ELLIOTT, who plays any musical instrument that hasn't got reeds or strings, is afraid of being typed.

"I'm worried about this thing becoming a gimmick," he said between sets at Jazzarama in Boston. "Actually, I enjoy playing each instrument." During his stay, he played only the mellophone, vibes, and bongos.

Turn him loose on a big bandstand, and Elliott can hold his own on valve trombone, tuba, trumpet, piano, baritone horn, accordion, and if they're all spoken for ... he will probably sing.

The 29-year-old jazzman started musically on the accordion at the age of 7. At Somerville, N. J., high school he played mellophone and baritone horn. Later, in a dance band, he found that there were enough trumpet players, so he stuck with the mellophone.

A difficult enough instrument to play straight, the mellophone is a diaphragm-stretcher to swing. But Elliott bounces along with it and its tone, which lies somewhere between that of a trombone and a French horn.

"YOU WON'T believe this," he said, "but I got onto vibes because I had two trumpets. When I got out of the army in 1946, I had this pair of trumpets and a buddy of mine had two sets of vibes. So we swapped."

Following the swap, Don gigged around until landing a spot with a quartet—but as a singer. In '48 and '49, he was with Hi, Lo, Jack, and the Dame. He became a singer again for a recent Bethlehem record date, and plans to explore that field a bit more.

Eventually, Don would like to front a big band with what he terms "a sound of beautiful simplicity, if there's such a term."

Elliott had a band in 1953, but despite some agency interest, he was told he came along about 10 years too late. "But things seem to be picking up a bit as far as big bands go, and maybe someday I'll be able to put together a commercial but very interesting sounding dance band."

He has three favorite big bands, "Basie for jump, Thornhill for ballads, and Les Brown, in the middle."

RIGHT NOW, Don indicated that given his choice he would prefer to play concerts with his group. "I think any jazz musician prefers concerts. You start with the knowledge that the audience is there specifically to hear jazz. In some clubs, it's difficult to get across to the audience."

Elliott's immediate plans include cutting some fugues with altoist Paul Desmond and doing some woodshedding with his trumpet. ;

"That's my favorite horn," he said. "I've got to pick it up again one of these days."

Scooter Pirtle published an extremely thorough profile on Don’s career in The Middle Horn Reader. Here’s an excerpt after which you’ll find a video montage with Don performing Everything Happens to Me with Paul Desmond.

Don Elliott: He Was a Gentlemen, too

by Scooter Pirtle

Originally published in 1994 in “The Middle Horn Reader”

During his illustrious career, Don Elliott performed jazz as a vocal musician, vibraphonist, trombonist, trumpeter, flugelhornist and percussionist. He pioneered the art of multi-track recording, composed countless prize-winning advertising jingles, wrote music for hit Broadway shows, prepared music scores for motion pictures, and built a thriving production company. Incidentally, he was also the greatest mellophonist who ever lived.

The Early Years

Don Elliott was born Don "Helfman" in Somerville, New Jersey on October 21,1926.1 The son of a silent film theater organist and vaudevillian pianist, Don became a music student of his father at the age of four. Don's father, Albert, was somewhat of a sensation in Somerville. A gifted organist, he took pride in his ability to improvise musical backgrounds for silent films at the local movie palaces.

Don's first instrument was the piano accordion, a gift from his father. Albert realized the potential of his son and frequently informed Don's mother, Nettie, that Don would be famous someday. Tragically, Dan's father died of a heart attack in 1933 at the age of 36.

Don continued to use his natural music abilities throughout his early childhood by performing for various clubs and charity groups. By age 11, Don was a seasoned performer. Within a year he accepted his first professional "gig" playing trumpet at a New Year's Eve party.

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"Nat Hentoff [1925- 2017] - A Link to Jazz's Founding Fathers"

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

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to say “Goodbye” one more time on these pages to Nat Hentoff, a Jazz author and critic who has enlightened and inspired us many times over the years, this time in the form of the following piece by Terry Teachout that appeared in The Wall Street Journal on January 10, 2017.

“When Nat Hentoff died on Saturday at age 91, one of his sons broke the news on Twitter. That might well have amused Mr. Hentoff, a technological Luddite* [see below] who never abandoned the typewriter and never established a social-media beachhead.

He might also have been amused — if grimly so — by the fact that many of his obituaries devoted more space to his latter-day career as a civil libertarian than to the writings about jazz with which he made his journalistic name. Sad to say, that makes perfect sense. Not only had the music that Mr. Hentoff loved best (he died listening to the records of Billie Holiday) ceased to be central to the American cultural conversation by the time of his death, but he was a First Amendment absolutist who lived to see free speech under siege in his native land, which explains why his impassioned writings about it should now loom so large in memory. Still, few who know his work at all well are in doubt that he will be remembered longest as one of the foremost jazz commentators of the 20th century.

To be sure, the word “commentator” doesn’t quite convey the nature and range of Mr. Hentoff’s jazz-related activities. Though he wrote his share of concert and record reviews in his youth, he wasn’t exactly a jazz critic, nor was he a scholar or a musician. Instead, he was something equally important—an intelligent enthusiast with good taste and a receptive ear. The National Endowment for the Arts summed him up well when, in 2004, it honored Mr. Hentoff with one of its Jazz Master awards, describing him as a “jazz advocate.” In that capacity he was nonpareil: No writer did more for jazz.

Mr. Hentoff himself believed that “if anything I’ve written about this music lasts, it will be the interviews I’ve done with the musicians for more than 50 years….My hope is that some of them become part of jazz histories.” That was just what happened. One of the last living links to the founding fathers of jazz, he knew and interviewed most of the great musicians whose paths he crossed through the years, and a considerable number of the familiar quotes and anecdotes that long ago passed into the common stock of jazz reference can be can be traced back to his pieces. It was Mr. Hentoff, for example, to whom Miles Davis praised Louis Armstrong in these famous words: “You know you can’t play anything on a horn that Louis hasn’t played — not even modern.”

In addition to his interviews, Hentoff wrote the liner notes for countless classic jazz albums, including Davis’s “Sketches of Spain,” “Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk,” John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” Duke Ellington’s “In a Mellotone,” Bill Evans’s “New Jazz Conceptions,” Herbie Hancock’s “Speak Like a Child” and Charles Mingus’s “Pithecanthropus Erectus.” These, too, are crammed full of oft-quoted remarks that were originally made to Mr. Hentoff by the musicians who recorded them. Nor did he limit himself to merely writing notes: Mr. Hentoff also produced noteworthy albums by such celebrated jazzmen as Coleman Hawkins and Pee Wee Russell.

Jazz was not Mr. Hentoff’s only musical enthusiasm. He wrote about many other kinds of artists, among them Ray Charles,Bob Dylan and Bob Wills, for the Journal and virtually every other newspaper and magazine of consequence. But it was jazz that spoke most strongly to him, and it may well be that his signal achievement as an advocate was to help choose the roster of musicians who performed on “The Sound of Jazz,” the legendary 1957 TV special on which the illustrious likes of Hawkins, Holiday, Monk, Russell, Count Basie,Roy Eldridge,Gerry Mulligan,Ben Webster and Lester Young were seen playing in a casual jam-session setting. “For me, it was a jazz fan’s fantasy come true,” Mr. Hentoff recalled 50 years after the show first aired on CBS. It was also a priceless gift to posterity: To this day “The Sound of Jazz,” which can be viewed on YouTube, continues to be widely regarded as the finest jazz program ever telecast.

Mr. Hentoff himself came to feel that “The Sound of Jazz” was “the most important thing” he ever did. Maybe so, but he did too many things too well to rank them, and though he couldn’t play a note, there was nothing inappropriate about his being dubbed a “jazz master” by the NEA. He served jazz selflessly, and all those who love it as he did are the poorer for his passing.”

*[Luddite = a member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed was threatening their jobs (1811–16); a person resisting technological progress.]