Dave McKenna [1930-2008] - The Ted Panken Interview

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

“Dave McKenna was simply one of the legends of the jazz piano. He, of course, would probably have disagreed. "I don't know if I qualify as a bona-fide jazz guy," he said. "I play saloon piano. I like to stay close to the melody." His humility and laid-back personal style seemed a contrast to the vibrant vitality of his masterful piano style. His range is truly extraordinary. One minute he is caressing a lovely ballad, the next he is thundering and rumbling through a high-powered rendition of I Found a New Baby.”

-http://www.aahome.com/dave/

“The best I can describe it, Dave McKenna plays like he has three hands.  Where most pianists tend to devote their left hand entirely to chords or bass lines, using the right exclusively for melodies, McKenna seems to split each hand in half.  The bottom two fingers of his left hand dance through bass lines Ray Brown would be happy to conceive, the top two fingers on the right hand explore variations on the theme of the tune, both thumbs and second fingers play chords in between, and the middle fingers jump in wherever they’re most needed.”

- Robert Doerschuk, distinguished piano critic

A Jazz buddy recently sent me the following message:

“McKenna. … Before he is forgotten, a small piece on a true individualist would honor his legacy. Nobody mentions Dave McKenna anymore. Ya, I know you have a long list, but he should be on it. …”

So I dug around. I played a hunch hoping to find an interview with him in Len Lyons’ wonderful The Great Jazz Pianists, but no such luck.

And the more I dug, the more I got the feeling that it was going to be pretty difficult to locate an interview with a man who doesn’t like to talk about himself, doesn’t consider himself to be anything special in the way of a Jazz pianist and hates compliments.

But then I remembered the series of recordings that Dave made for Concord Records in the 1980/90s and trenching back through the insert notes for these I somehow managed to find the following interview that Dave gave to Ted Panken in 1999.

Miracles do happen!

© -Ted Panken, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Dave McKenna was one the great originals.

McKenna, a basically self-taught pianist out of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, went on the road at 17 and never looked back.

In 1999, I had an opportunity to interview McKenna for the publicity bio for a trio recording on Concord with clarinet legend Buddy DeFranco and guitarist Joe Cohn called Do Nothing Til You Hear From Us, following a duo from three years before entitled It Might As Well Be Swing. Throughout both dates, the masters played with unfettered effervescence, impeccable craft and a fiery edge that would be the envy of musicians young enough to be their grandchildren.

Their felicitous chemistry wouldn’t make sense if you looked at their careers superficially.  DeFranco is supposed to be a cold, cerebral player locked into the tropes of jazz modernism, while McKenna was the contemporary embodiment of old-style, two-handed pianism — the ultimate “saloon piano player.”  But they shared a profound common denominator.  Both came up in the top-shelf dance bands that incubated so many personal improvisers during the decade spanning World War Two and the Korean War when bebop entered common jazz parlance.

McKenna emerged from a strong regional New England jazz culture that produced such generational contemporaries as—among others—Phil Woods, Sal Salvador, and Joe Morello, Horace Silver, Gigi Gryce and Paul Motian. As he stated below, Nat Cole was his pianistic model, and he developed a rollicking-yet-subtle orchestral approach that he applied to every tune. The distinguished piano critic Robert Doerschuk described his unique style as follows in the liner notes to another of McKenna’s numerous Concord recitals, entitled Easy Street. “The best I can describe it, Dave McKenna plays like he has three hands.  Where most pianists tend to devote their left hand entirely to chords or bass lines, using the right exclusively for melodies, McKenna seems to split each hand in half.  The bottom two fingers of his left hand dance through bass lines Ray Brown would be happy to conceive, the top two fingers on the right hand explore variations on the theme of the tune, both thumbs and second fingers play chords in between, and the middle fingers jump in wherever they’re most needed.”

McKenna was tremendously consistent; almost any of his more than three dozen recordings are worth looking for.

Dave McKenna (Ted Panken) – (1-27-99):

TP: It said in the 1960 Encyclopedia of Jazz that both your parents were musicians.  Is that right?

McKENNA:  Yes.  Well, my father was just a part-time musician.  He played the snare drum in military type concert bands, like small towns used to have.  He played very well, and he was a good snare drummer.  He played a little dance music.  That’s where he met my mother.  And my mother was a good classical violinist and a good piano player.

TP: Did she give you your first musical education?

McKENNA:  No, she didn’t.  She didn’t think she was a good enough teacher.  But I used to hear her play.  She played classical; she didn’t play jazz on the violin.  But at home I heard her  play the standards of the late 1930s and 1940s, like “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” “Stormy Weather,” and she played them very good, all the nice changes, nothing elaborate.  Plus I heard radio jingles, the early jingles, and I went to the piano and picked out tunes.  My mother sent me to the nuns at parochial school.  They were nice old ladies, but I hated the study of music.  I really did.

TP: You liked playing and not studying.

McKENNA:  Yeah, right.  Later I took a few lessons from a guy in Boston, Sandy Sandiford.  But he more or less left me alone.  He gave me a few assignments that I played, to work out some variations on this or that.  He wanted me to play scales, too, but I didn’t.  He saw that right away and he laughed, and he said, “Well, you’re not going to do it,” which was obvious.  But he said, “You’re playing very nicely and continue to do what you do.”  The lessons were kind of casual.  I’d stop them if I felt bad or I had a cold or something.  But I’d go up there, take a train to Boston.

TP: Did your technique and piano conception develop organically?

McKENNA:  Yeah, I think so.  Just playing at home.  My early gigs were three-piece bands, piano, saxophone and drums.  I think I did my first one at 12 or 13.   It’s a French-Canadian town, and there were a lot of wedding jobs.  The first few were non-union.  They even had bands for pre-wedding showers.  French-Canadians were very big for that.

So I worked that way, and then I joined the union.  When I joined the union I had to play with a band that played Polish polkas half the night.  I didn’t stay very long with it.  So I worked around home, and then Boots Mussulli came back from Stan Kenton’s band around 1947.

TP: I assume you were listening to jazz pianists and digging them.

McKENNA:  No, not so much.  First of all, I liked songs, and I think I had a very brief time with liking the cowboy singers, Gene Autry and people like that.  Then I heard a Bing Crosby record.  I liked him okay, but he did a couple of things with a Dixieland band, either Bob Crosby or John Scott Trotter, and I liked that. Around that time, I got interested in Harry James’ band, and then Benny Goodman’s band — and I was hooked from then on.  I used to try to play like Benny rather than Teddy, although I had the utmost respect for Teddy.  (Nat Cole has been my favorite piano player for years; I loved his trio when I heard it. ) But most of that time I listened more to horn players.  Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw.  Also  Count Basie’s band, but I didn’t even know who those guys were at first, like Lester and Count himself. I love Basie.  Duke Ellington was an early favorite, too.  And later on, Bobby Hackett was one of my favorites.  By that time I was listening to Bird and Diz, too.  So I always listened to horn players more than piano players.

TP: You mentioned in another one of these liner notes that you were inspired by trumpet players, like Dizzy Gillespie  — that you played a little trumpet as well.

McKENNA:  Yeah, although not particularly with Diz.  Some of the swing trumpet players.  I loved Cootie and Rex Stewart, I loved Billy Butterfield and I loved Bobby Hackett.  Buck Clayton, oh, he knocked me out.  And then Dizzy, too.  Dizzy and Bird and Miles, early Miles — I liked all that.  But even when I was listening to Bird, I loved Johnny Hodges; he was one of my favorites.  I loved Duke’s band.  I loved even Duke’s piano playing.

TP: Why do you say “even Duke’s piano playing”?

McKENNA:  Because most people give him short shrift on that.  They  don’t pay enough attention to him.  I love Count Basie’s piano playing, too.  But as far as all the other piano players, I respect them very much and I like them a lot, but they weren’t the ones that inspired me the most.  It was horn players most of the time.

TP: It sounds like  in developing your style, you just were playing music by your mind’s ear.

McKENNA:   Right, absolutely.

TP: Were you very involved in bebop?

McKENNA:  When I was 19 or so, I went with Charlie Ventura.  I loved those guys.  I loved Bird and I loved Diz, but  I also loved the players who were on that band. Boots was a fine player, to — he went back on the road with Charlie and played baritone, whereas he was an alto player with Stan Kenton.  But Conte Candoli was on the band; I loved his playing.  Bennie Green, the trombone player.  He was wonderful.

TP: You recorded one of his pieces on an Epic date, called “Expense Account.”

McKENNA:  Yeah, that was Bennie’s tune.

TP: Let’s  get  back to your chronology, though.

McKENNA:  I worked with Boots, and he went back and got me with Charlie Ventura.  That was the small band.  It was the one originally that Roy Kral and Jackie Cain were with.  Boots asked me if I wanted to come on that, but maybe I was too scared or something — I was  18 or 19.  So another piano player went out for a while, then I went out. I named those guys already.  Charlie was the leader, Conte Candoli, Bennie Green, Boots Mussulli. Betty Bennett was the singer.  She later married Andre Previn.  Fine singer.  But no guy singer.  Red Mitchell was the bass player, and Ed Shaughnessy played drums.  Red left, Kenny O’Brien came back on.  Red left to join Woody.  Woody broke up that Second Herd and took a small band to Cuba with Milt Jackson, Bill Harris and Red Mitchell.

Then Charlie broke up that band.  I went home for a couple of months.  Then Red Mitchell called me.  He said, “Woody’s reorganizing a big band.  You want to come on?”  So I did.  Then I stayed in Woody’s band until I was drafted in the Korean War.  I spent almost two years as a cook mostly in the Army, and never got in a band.  I got out in something like September, and Boots was back home.  I worked a little with Boots Mussulli again around Worcester and Milford, where he was from. Then Charlie called again, and I went back to that quartet with Charlie, with Sonny Igoe and Bob Carter on bass and me on piano, then later we added Mary Ann McCall.  Then we did a few interesting gigs.  We were on a Stan Kenton Festival of Jazz which predated all those Newport jazz things.  It was in 1955 or so, and it had Stan’s band and the Shorty Rogers-Shelly Manne All Stars with Jimmy Giuffre and Pete Jolly and Curtis Counce, the Art Tatum was on it.  We rode the buses.  And Johnny Smith, who had a big hit, “Moonlight In Vermont,” on all the jazz stations…

TP: So you got to meet Tatum.

McKENNA:  Oh yeah.  I rode the bus with him. He was a beautiful guy.

TP: Say a few words about him.

McKENNA:  Well, he was just astounding. But his orientation, it was like hearing Franz Liszt or Rachmaninoff play.   I mean, he could swing like a son of a gun.  If you hear about eight bars of that “Elegy,” he played stride better than Fats maybe.  But he got impatient with that, and he was back to those tremendous classical runs and arpeggios.  It was beautiful.  But he made you sweat when you listened to him.  And he had a nice trio, although he was probably fettered by a trio.  He had Slam Stewart, a marvelous bass player, and Everett Barksdale on guitar.  So I think I only heard him play one solo.

TP: You’ve said that you also feel fettered by a trio.

McKENNA:  Yeah, but not because I have any technique.  I like to play rubato, change tempos, change keys, and I’d have to rehearse with a bass and drums to get that going.  So I don’t like the piano format, no.  But I love working with a band, a little band either four pieces, or five.  I love a full rhythm section, too.  I love a guitar.  Then I can just plink-plank-pluck, you know.

TP: Would you say your style was pretty fully formed by the time you went in the Army?

McKENNA:  Well, yeah, but I got more pianistic later.  When I played alone then, I played just a single line in the right hand and a single line in the left, and a few chords here and there.  Not when I played a ballad, but…

TP: You play like an orchestra now.

McKENNA:  I didn’t consciously become a solo piano player using a bass line.  I just used it to fill up what I heard on records.  That’s the way I played at home.

TP: Well, you were very distinctive among pianists who came up when you did because of the way you used the left hand.

McKENNA:  I don’t know about that.  And I’m sick of doing that, to tell you the truth — I mean, the bass line.  I’m very sloppy with stride; I came to it later in life. My favorite way to play solo is sort of rolling the chords, like four to the beat, sort of strumming them like a guitar.  Can’t do it too fast, though.  So I much prefer that to the single-note line.  You have to use a little more exertion for that.

TP: So you were influenced by rhythm guitar players also?

McKENNA:  Yeah.  I think I was.  I loved Count Basie and Freddie Green’s rhythm.  Then later on,  I got to do a couple of record dates in New York with Barry Galbraith, who was the number-one studio rhythm guitar player.  He was in that famous Claude Thornhill rhythm section which they called “the sophisticated Count Basie.”  They swung in a gentler manner, but they swung, though.  It was Billy Exiner on drums, Claude, Joe Shulman on bass and Barry on guitar.  Those guys are all long gone now, of course.

After Korea, Charlie called again with that quartet.  I was with Charlie about three or four different times.  After that, Gene Krupa called, and I worked with his quartet for a while, and I went back with Gene at different times.  I had a short time with Stan Getz, very enjoyable.  But I got a little sick, had to go home for a while, and then I worked with  Zoot Sims and Al Cohn.  Then Gene Krupa again and Charlie again.

But in 1958 I joined Bobby Hackett, and I had a long association with Bobby.   I would leave and go back.  It was on and off until Bobby died around 1978 or ’77, whatever.  Then I worked in Eddie Condon’s in New York City for a while.

TP: You lived in New York for a while.

McKENNA:  Yes, I did, from 1960 to about ’66, something like that.  I worked at Eddie Condon’s first with Peanuts Hucko’s band, then it was Yank Lawson’s band.  The first band didn’t have a bass.  It was Peanuts, Cutty Cutshall, and Buck Clayton.  Oh, I loved Buck!  Then Buck left, and Nick Travis came on for a bit, and then Yank Lawson came on.  When Peanuts left, Yank became the leader.  Cutty was there all the time.  I worked with different drummers, but we had a bass player.  It was a tough job, but those guys were good players.  And I started to retrogress.  I started to get more interested in the older traditional jazz.  I still played basically the way I did, but I changed my outlook.  Even with Hackett, I started to play… I started using the minor 7th in front all the time.  I started to become a little more old-fashioned, and I think a little too much so that way. [LAUGHS] I’m sort of a mainstream player.  A guy like Bill Evans, who I admire tremendously, was my age, but he went on to pioneer a new piano style.  Maybe in the very early ’50s we played more or less alike… Maybe.  I’m not sure of that.  Maybe I was always a little bit more old-fashioned.

TP: At least from that trio record, it sounds like your time is more in the older piano players, and Bill Evans has more of a Bud Powell type of left hand.

McKENNA:  I suppose so.

TP: There’s a quote I read where he said he didn’t get records by piano players except the records he collected of you.

McKENNA:  I think I did see that.  There’s a another quote a long time ago in DownBeat that I’m kind of proud of.  It was a thing about Andre Previn, and toward the end of the interview he said, “What young piano players do you like?”  He said, “Well, I’m not certain how young they are, but I love Bill Evans and Dave McKenna,” something like that.

Then of course, in those days, with Zoot and Al… I had to take a gig with Gene Krupa, went back with Gene for a couple of weeks because it paid more money.  DownBeat  had a “Caught In The Act” which said it was Zoot Sims and Al Cohn, with maybe Knobby Totah on bass, Ray Mosca on drums, “and Bill Evans, subbing for Dave McKenna.” [LAUGHS] I said, “Whoa, man, I wish I could clip that out.”  Bill Evans subbing for Dave McKenna.

TP: You must know 10,000 tunes.

McKENNA:  Oh, no, man!  Nobody does. In fact, there are guys that know more.  Hank Jones, Jimmy Rowles when he was living, Tommy Flanagan, they know many more tunes than I do.  They know the Bebop tunes, too, and I stopped learning them.  The Bebop tunes I knew go back to “Scrapple From the Apple” and “Yardbird Suite” and “Groovin’ High,” Dizzy’s early things, “Dizzy Atmosphere,” and then maybe up to “The Preacher,” Horace Silver and all that — then I stopped listening to it.  I didn’t stop liking it.  I just got into tunes and all that shit.

TP: Are you a vocals man?  Do you know the lyrics to all the tunes?

McKENNA:  No.  I mean, I know a few verses and I like them, but Jimmy Rowles had me beat a mile. Well, there are piano players around, more like cocktail piano players; they know more tunes and more verses than I do.  I play them if I know them.

TP: And when you’re improvising on them, are you thinking about lyrics?

McKENNA:  I never used to.  And you know, for a long while I didn’t even know who wrote what tune.  I mean, I knew the obvious, like Hoagy Carmichael wrote “Stardust” and I knew Cole Porter wrote “Night and Day,” and I knew George Gershwin wrote “I Got Rhythm” and “Embraceable You.”  But later on a friend of mine who was a brilliant musician, an arranger who gave it up for… He said, “Do you realize how many tunes Harry Warren wrote?” and he told me what he wrote — and he got to be my favorite songwriter for a while.  He’s in that class of Rodgers & Hart and Gershwin and Porter, great Pop tunes.  He wrote some rinky-tinky tunes; I even like them.  But “The More I See You,” “I Wish I Knew”…

TP: Talk about playing a duo and playing a trio and playing a solo, and the different ways you approach them.

McKENNA:  I have no analytical approach.  I just go in and do the best I can.  But  it’s tough  playing solo, and  even tougher playing with a duo.  You’re playing every minute.  At least the horn player gets to rest while you play a solo.

TP: Duos and trios have been part of your working life for 40-50 years?

McKENNA:  Well, no, not the duos and things.  I did a couple of trio records with Scott Hamilton and Jake Hanna, and I did a few duo records with my old pal Dick Johnson, including one for Concord…

TP: Well, when did you start being primarily a solo or duo pianist?

McKENNA:  I made my first solo album in 1955, when I was 25, but I didn’t do much solo work in New York at all. I took solo gigs on the Cape during the summers in the early ’60s, and then when I moved back to the Cape after Condon’s I started playing solo extensively. I had done solo gigs and  solo records, but that’s when I started to make a living at it more or less.  I got into it in the ’70s, and it became most of my living — and still is, I guess.  But I’d like to change that. I’m having a little trouble with my hands now and I’d like to play in a little band, but can I make a living?  But I don’t think I’ll be able to make much of a living playing solo either, because my technique isn’t that good, and I’m slowing up and having trouble.  But my hands are feeling a little better in the last couple of weeks, so we’ll see.  I’m starting to play a little more at home on the piano and stuff.

TP: One aspect of your technique, from what I read in one of these liner notes, the writer said you break up your hands into two parts, like you use the outer two fingers…

McKENNA:  That’s all technical.  I don’t even know what I’m doing.

TP: So it’s all intuitive for you.  It’s the way you learned.

McKENNA:  Yes.  I am a by-ear piano player — no question.  I had a little classical training. As I said, I had one other teacher, Sandy Sandiford, who was a black guy in Boston who was  a very nice jazz piano player, but he also wrote for singers up there.  I heard about him through another lady piano player in Woonsocket and I went there.  He said, “listen to this and listen that.”  He tried to make me play scales, but I wouldn’t do it.  Then I had a classical teacher very briefly in Woonsocket, a guy who just died lately, who was a classical piano player who got into church music or something.  He tried to give me Chopin.  But he said, “Dave, what’s the use?  You don’t practice.”  I said, “Yeah, you’re right.”  He said, “Just continue what you’re doing.”

I read music to a certain extent, but not well.  So when I was in New York I couldn’t have made a good living as a studio piano player, because I wasn’t a good reader.  So that answers that question.

In the ’80s I was almost exclusively a solo piano player.  I had one long gig during that time at the Copley Plaza in Boston, for most of the decade; I worked there about nine months of the year.

TP: Did you spend a lot of time in Boston when you were a kid?

McKENNA:  No.  That’s the funny part of it.  My mother is from Boston, and I grew up less than 40 miles away.  But when it came time to leave, I spend much more time in New York.  It wasn’t until later years I got to Boston.

TP: So talking to you about the Boston scene in the ’40s and ’50s is kind of pointless.

McKENNA:  Yes, it is.  I was aware of it.  I used to go when I was between gigs.  When I’d leave Charlie or Gene, I’d go up and hear the guys.  They had that Jazz Workshop at the Stables and all; I’d go up and I met Herb Pomeroy, Charlie Mariano, and all the guys. But in those days I spent much more time on the road and in New York City.

TP: But it seems you always knew you were going to be a musician.

McKENNA:  Well, the thing is, I drifted.  I thought maybe I’d go to college.  But there was no money to send me, and my marks weren’t that good in high school.  So rather than a job in a factory in Woonsocket, which was a mill town, and right after World War II most of them went south… What else was there for me?  I should have gone into the Post Office like my father; I would have had a pension now.  I’m not kidding either.  But I just drifted into it.  That’s the way it was.  And I figured you don’t have to get up early in the morning, which was the way it used to be, more or less.

TP: Well, you’d go to bed early in the morning.

McKENNA:  Yeah, right.  No more of that.  And sometimes you do have to get up ridiculously early in the morning when you’re on the road — to catch a plane.  But I never intended to be a professional musician.  I never did.

TP: It just happened.

McKENNA:  Yes, I just drifted into it.”

Lambert Hendricks Ross – Everybody’s LHR

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

It never ceased to amaze me then - and it continues to amaze me now - how many people, who know very little, if nothing, about Jazz are familiar with the vocal group -  Lambert Hendricks Ross.

Either they or their college roommate had one of LHR’s albums, or their parents had all of the albums or they just memorized some of the vocalese lyrics that Jon Hendricks wrote for the group so that they could sound hip and cool to their friends.

The latter skill is particularly remarkable when you consider that Jon wrote these hip lyrics to accompany the actual Jazz solos that were played on certain classic Jazz recordings and did not base them on the melodies of these songs.

In essence, people who couldn’t put two notes together were able to sing some of the hippest Jazz solos ever recorded thanks to their admiration for Jon’s skills with vocalese, which considering the level of humor, wit and sage philosophy that he brought to the form, he practically re-invented.

The group was only together for a few years and recorded relatively few albums, but when you consider the vocal talent on display and the brilliant lyrics which were applied to some of the most memorable solos ever recorded, there is nothing else like LHR in the history of Jazz.

And while I was familiar with Dave Lambert and Annie Ross as individual vocalists I knew virtually nothing about Jon Hendricks or how LHR came into existence, that is, until the September 1959 edition of Down beat magazine arrived in my mailbox and I found this article by Gene Lees.

It features Jon’s history of the LHR using the too-hip-for-the-room style that he employs in his rhyming vocalese lyrics.

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

“EDITORS NOTE – In the wee small hours of a morning at Newport this year [1959], I told Jon Hendricks that DownBeat would like to do a story on the LHR group. "Why not let me write it?" Jon said. I hedged and hesitated for a moment (perhaps Jon will remember it) and then began running some of his remarkable LHR lyrics over in my mind. "OK," I said.

We kicked the idea around a bit, notably backstage at Chicago's Regal The­ater, and I learned that Jon was thinking of doing the article in rhyme, no less. I shook my head a bit, reassured myself that his tremendous taste and talent would not fail, even in the unfamiliar task of writing an article, swallowed hard and said: "Wild."

Jon telephoned from time to time as he worked on the article. I began to get nerv­ous. Deadline was approaching, and I had already scheduled the cover photo to go with the article. "You have to promise me you won't change a thing," Jon said. That made me more nervous.

When the piece at last arrived—right on deadline—I scanned it, still nervously at first, then less nervously, and finally, jubi­lantly. It was—and is—one of the strangest articles I've ever read. As promised, it rhymed. Not unexpectedly, it sounded like an LHR lyric without the music. It also had in places the delightful flavor of an Ogden Nash poem. And finally, I guessed that some astute reader would look at its last line and think of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.

Jon didn't say this in the article, but he has done a lot of thinking about the possi­bilities of true jazz opera. The article tends to validate his theory that it can—and should—be done.

Lambert, Hendricks and Ross is one of the most remarkable groups in jazz today. With their vocals on famous instru­mental numbers, they have broken up audiences at every jazz festival they have played this summer—and they have played most of them, with more yet to come, including Monterey. Where their jazz-vocals experiment will lead is something no one, including Jon, pretends to be able to predict with certainty. All that anyone knows for sure is that their popularity is huge and growing, that they deserve it and that the end is not in sight.

In the meantime, here is Jon Hen­dricks' story on LHR. As Dave Lambert said to me, explaining why when he worked on construction he liked to use jackhammers, "I dug it." I hope you will, too. —Ed.”

© -  Jon Hendricks, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“As to dates, times, names and places,

My accuracy ain't apt to be too outstand­ing. Data's too demanding. I haven't the faintest idea on what date Dave Lambert's birthday occurs, and experience with women and the subject of age gives me bet­ter sense than to ask Annie Ross hers, so, on biographical data I won't be too factual. However, on matters of the heart and soul I hope to be very actual, 'cause if you're gonna know how Dave Lambert, Annie Ross and I have such a collective ball while singing our individual parts, you'll have to know that it comes from what we fondly recall, and what is in our hearts.

Some people say our name is a clumsy name for a singing group to be stuck with. They compare it to Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith, an overstatement, by far. Actually we call ourselves Lambert, Hendricks and Ross for no other reason than that's who we are! And so that your understanding of our name will gain even more clearance, if you dig what I mean, our name describes the order of our appearance on the scene.

Dave Lambert, ex-everything under the sun and musical truth-seeker, came home from high school in New England one day, heard a Count Basie record on an out­side downtown radio-shop-loudspeaker on the way, and the amazement that there could be such a feelin' never left him after that. When I engaged Dave to do the vocal adaptation of Jimmy Giuffre's "Four Broth­ers" arrangement, he bent my ear about doing a lyricised Basie album in nothin' flat! While we were rehearsing "Four Brothers," or listening to what each other was sayin', Dave made sure some Basie records were playin'. He'd play the old things most, the "good ol' ones" we both grew up listening to, and again we heard the marvel of them all. In this era of "conservatories," we heard the old Basie band full of natural musicians from their heart play more jazz than any­body we've ever heard, no matter how smart. And nary one of 'em knew what the inside of a music school looked like. They just played and had a ball.

Finally I got Dave's subtle message (as subtle as a ton of coal on the head) and stopped listening casually and got t' writ­ing lyrics instead. I soon had words to "Down for the Count" and "Blues Back­stage" and Dave adapted Frank Foster's arrangements for voices, then we started making choices of recording company A&R men. (Means "artist and repertory" and they're to blame if the recording out­put sounds a bit gory. Their judgment of a “hit” often depends on how much a new tune sounds like the last “hit.” They often are unable to see any future in a tune because of a single-minded preoccupation with a past hit!)

Creed Taylor of ABC-Paramount is a rarity among his kind. He has his own taste and uses his own mind. I’m happy to state.

During the time we were working on Sing A Song of Basie for Creed, I lived and wrote in Greenwich Village, which I had always thought of in an artistic way, but which I found retaining only an artistic façade, masking pseudo-intellectual morbidness ‘midst moral decay.  It may be a good place to stay up late in, but its new, thrill-seeking Freud-spouting population has rendered it no longer a desirable place to create in. (Don’t blame DownBeat, this is my personal contention—just a little something I thought I'd mention.)

For our first date, Dave contracted 12 experienced singers he had known and used before as the Dave Lambert Singers, some of whom worked on such programs as The Perry Como Show and Your Hit Parade, and who had reputations some­thing fierce. We also had the Basie rhythm section, Freddy Greene, Sonny Payne and Eddie Jones, with Nat Pierce.

It was during this first date that the spiritual quality that is in all jazz, and prominently so in Basie, made itself mani­fest; that spiritual quality we—and Ray Charles—got in church, and got so West Coast cool we left in the lurch and got back to for 30 pieces of Horace Silver, after a long, cold search.

Those singers had music and lyrics, but that spiritual quality was missing at the very first test, even though they tried their best. Eddie Jones saw and heard and laid his fiddle gently down and walked amongst them and talked to them and spread the word, and Sonny Payne and Nat Pierce did, too. Freddie sat placidly by and regarded it all with an ever-patient eye and didn't move to get his message through, just sat calm, like he usually do. What Eddie Jones told those singers about "layin' back, but not slowin' down" was beautifully true, but when all the gentle urging was done there was no concealing that those well-trained singers still couldn't sing Basie with that spiritual feeling— except one—a silent, beautiful red-haired girl Dave had introduced me to several days before at Bob Bach's house in Wash­ington Mews, a name I remembered from then-current theatrical news as starring in an imported-from-London Broadway review called Cranks. But I remembered more; five years or so earlier than then—a Prestige record given me by Teacho Wilt­shire, who recorded "Four Brothers" vocal­ly first, a record of a vocal version of Wardell Gray's "Twisted," excellent lyric by Annie Ross—better than good—boss!

Yes, Annie Ross has that feeling, that feeling you can't learn in no school, that feel­ing that the men in the old Basie band had from birth and got together in nightclubs and tent shows. And don't get the idea schools, to them, are unknown, 'cause those men started a few schools of their own! Pick a tenor player at random and, no matter what he says, chances are, at one time or another he studied under Pres. And make no bones about it—Jo Jones invented the sock cymbal, and don't ever doubt about it.

Philly Joe know.

And every trumpet player ever plays through a "bucket" mute oughta know that Buck Clayton's real nickname ain't Buck—it's "Bucket!" (Ain't that cute.)

At any rate, the first Sing a Song of Basie was scrapped and, thanks to Creed Taylor, we got another chance—but what to do? Dave Lambert knew. Dave has a tal­ent for putting very large possibilities into a very few words. "Annie feels it," he said. "Let's you, me 'n Annie do it." Coming from anyone else I'd have thought such an idea was for the birds, because of the hard work entailed, but I soon saw the beauty of Dave's suggestion, especially if we all three really wailed.

From the time we started out, Annie knew what she was about. She did every­thing with ease and a naturalness found only in great artists, I guess. Annie Ross is more than just a singer, to say the least. She is an artiste. Every night, on "Avenue C," she stands up there between Dave and me and hits that last note, F above high C, as though it were any note—and it might as well be! I remember when Dave asked her if she could make that note and she said, "No, never," so Dave said he'd change it, winked at me and left it like it was, and Annie sings it like she's been singing it forever.

So we did Sing a Song of Basie alone, Dave, Annie, the Basie rhythm section with Nat Pierce, and me, and the rest is known. When people would congratulate us on our artistic success, it got to be an un­funny joke, cause Dave and I stayed broke. Annie was straight. She was singing on the Patrice Munsel Show, which is like a per­manent record date. Then, one day at Dave's house, I saw the strangest sight I've ever seen: Sing a Song of Basie showed up in DownBeat as number thirteen! So Dave and I decided to see if we could get some gigs—just local. We envisioned nothing on a grand scale for an act so unusually vocal. Annie was in Europe then, sendin' mes­sages that everything was dandy, so 'til Annie got back we worked with Flo Handy, wife of George Handy and singer of great skill, and the Great South Bay Jazz Festival put us on last year's bill.

Later, the MJQ's manager, Monte Kay, set us up an audition with Willard Alexan­der one day. Willard got so excited he made us wonder what we had! We weren't all that sure it was good, but when you knock somebody out like Willard Alexander, you know it ain't all bad. Annie came back from Europe and joined Dave and me, and Willard signed us immediately.

As to how Basie feels about us, that'll be easy to understand, 'cause he invited us to do an album with his band, yet! (Sing Along with Basie, on Roulette.) Our cur­rent album, to be specific, is The Swingers on Dick Bock's World Pacific, with Zoot Sims, Russ Freeman and Basie's steady three men, Eddie Jones, Sonny Payne and Freddie Greene, the finest rhythm section anybody's ever seen.

We've just been honored by being asked to sign with Columbia Records, under the aegis of Mr. Irving Townsend. "Moanin'," by the pianist with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Bobby Timmons, and "Cloudburst," a Sam-the-Man Taylor saxophone solo, are about ready for single release, and there's an album of Ellingtonia in the works, so who knows where it will cease?

My brother, Jim Hendricks, manages to manage us—an unmanageable task, and as for how we feel about what's happened to us—need you ask? How far Lambert, Hendricks and Ross will go is something I don't pretend to know, but, since I write a lot of the words we sing, I can tell you what message I'll bring: that opera houses dedi­cated to European musical culture are not the American norm. Jazz is America's cul­tural art form. To say that our opera hous­es are the Chicago, the San Francisco and the Metropolitan just doesn't follow. Amer­ica's real opera houses—as one day, pray, the American people may realize—are the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C., the Regal Theater in Chicago and Harlem's Apollo. And our divas are not singers of the kind of music Europe has, but Billie, and Ella, and Sarah, and they sing jazz!

We are honored anew every time a jazz musician compliments us, because we know they know what it's all about, but to have three great jazz musicians accompany us is something about which to shout. We have the Ike Isaacs Trio—Gildo Mahones, piano; Kahlil Madi, drums; and Ike on bass—and we hope to take them with us every place.

As for me—I'm the ninth child and the seventh son of Rev. and Mrs. A.B. Hen­dricks. I have eleven brothers and three sis­ters, all reared in the African Episcopal Church around Toledo, Ohio. All other data can be found in my bio. My musical educa­tion consisted of singing Negro spirituals and hymns with my mother in church, singing in bars and grills for whatever people threw me, which, praise be, was never out, singing in nightclubs at thirteen (they used to bill me as "The Sepia Bobby Breen!"), accompanied for one magical spell by a local pianist whose family were our neighbors, whom we knew well—Art Tatum, who started on the violin, but sat down to the piano and never got up again. I was fortunate enough to have learned to lis­ten to him early and I'm glad I paid heed, 'cause I never did learn how to read.

When Bird came through Toledo one night with Max, Tommy Potter (now with "Sweets"), Kenny Dorham and Al Haig to play a dance, I got a long-awaited, unex­pected chance to scat a few choruses, after which, while Kenny Dorham blew, I start­ed to split, but Bird motioned me to Kenny's chair next to him and said, with that warm smile, "Sit awhile." I ended up scatting the whole set, and before they left, Bird said, "Look me up when you get to New York. Don't forget."

It was two years later when I got to New York. Bird was playing at the Apollo Bar uptown, and I got up there fast as any­one can. And when I walked past the band­stand, Bird waved at me and spoke my name and thrilled me to kingdom come when he said, "Wanna' sing some?" and two years passed away as though it had been only one day! Roy Haynes was playing drums and I was a drummer (who had just put his drums in pawn), but when I heard Roy with Bird I said to myself, "That's it for my drumming. Them days is gone!"

I knew nothing about the New York scene except what I'd seen or heard, so I decided to judge everybody by "who stood up with Bird," or, if they didn't ever share the same bandstand, how did they stand with the man. Dave Lambert did "Old Folks" and "In the Still of the Night" with Bird, vocal arrangements by Dave, musical arrangements by Gil Evans, among the more beautiful things I've ever heard. Annie Ross sang with Bird a few times. The fact I'm trying not to keep it hid is that, at one time or another, all three of us did. It's a coincidence with a spiritual qual­ity I can't name, but Dave Lambert, Annie Ross and I came together naturally, just at the time when jazz began to receive wide public acclaim.

As a writer of words, this gives me a great responsibility, especially to American youth: Tell the truth! Interpret the compo­sitions and jazz composers, writing today, not three hundred years passed away. And the composers are numerous, most everybody playing, and all I have to do is tell the people what they’re saying.”

If your not familiar with Lambert Hendricks Ross, you’ll find the music on the following video tribute to them to be a real treat. If you already a fan, then you may enjoy reacquainting yourself with some old friends. The music of LHR is one of Jazz’s great gifts to the world. 

Buddy DeFranco and Dave McKenna: Two for the Recording Studio

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

Along with the trumpet, the clarinet was the preeminent instrument of the Swing Era when some of the era's most popular bands were led by the likes of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Woody Herman.

While the trumpet persisted as a featured instrument in the smaller combos that brought Bebop and Modern Jazz to the forefront in the years following the end of the Second World War, the clarinet seemed to recede into Jazz History.

The exceptional playing of Buddy DeFranco brought the devilishly-difficult-to-play clarinet into the world of Bebop and beyond with a degree of skill rarely rivaled by other modern, Jazz instrumentalists.

Each and every time I return to Buddy DeFranco's music, I shake my head in amazement at his superb technique and consistently innovative improvisation. 

Although rarely recognized as such, Buddy's achievements rival those of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, the two principal originators of Bebop. His skill and ideas never fail to impress me, whatever the setting.

“Nobody has seriously challenged DeFranco's status as the greatest post-swing clarinetist, although the instrument's desertion by reed players has tended to disenfranchise its few exponents (and Tony Scott might have a say in the argument too). DeFranco's incredibly smooth phrasing and seemingly effortless command are unfailingly impressive on all his records. But the challenge of translating this virtuosity into a relevant post-bop environment hasn't been easy, and he has relatively few records to account for literally decades of fine work….”

“Dave McKenna hulks over the keyboard…. He is one of the most dominant mainstream players on the scene, with an immense reach and an extraordinary two-handed style which distributes theme statements across the width of the piano.

McKenna is that rare phenomenon, a pianist who actually sounds better on his own. Though he is sensitive and responsive in group playing … he has quite enough to say on his own account not to need anyone else to hold his jacket.”

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

In the 100+ years that Jazz has been in existence, it has been expressed in any number of instrumental combinations: combos, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets, octets, tentets and big bands.

It almost seems that as the popularity, and with it, the fortunes of the music, waned, the smaller the groupings became.

The big bands of the Swing Era were replaced by combos after WW II and these would soon be reduced to piano-bass-drum trios. Sometimes locally-based trios served as pick-up rhythm sections for horn players who traveled the Jazz club circuit of major cities as guest soloists. It was cheaper for them to get booked into local clubs this way.  Star alto/tenor saxophonist Sonny Stitt made his living this way for many years.

Throughout its history, Jazz has had a long association with night clubs many of whose owners were looking to pedal booze with the music serving as a convenient backdrop.

Jazz nightspots like The Lighthouse and Shelly’s Manne Hole in southern California, The Blackhawk in San Francisco, the Jazz Showcase in Chicago and Birdland and The Village Vanguard, all of which featured the music as well as sold libations, have become few and far between since their heyday from 1945-65.

Not that these smoke-filled rooms were ever the best environment for the music let alone the musicians, but at least they gave Jazz fans venues in which to hear the music performed on a regular basis.

Duos have always been around the Jazz scene, but they were generally formed by a pianist or a guitarist backed by a bass player, in other words, an instrument to carry the melody while the other played rhythm to keep the swinging sense of metronomic time which is a key feature of Jazz.

This low-key approach was generally favored by some of the smaller rooms that offered Jazz and was usually easy on the wallet of the club’s owner. Adding horns and drums to such an environment would overpower the patrons.

Not surprisingly, with the passing of time and the diminishing of its fans base, Jazz solo piano gigs also became ensconced in some clubs. Occasionally, a guitarist, or a trumpet player with a mute or even a saxophonist who could keep the volume down might drop by to sit-in with these solo pianists.

For many years, one of the best pianists in Jazz was a frequent performer as a solo pianist in clubs in the greater Boston area with occasional swings down to Newport, R.I. and to Florida for “the season.”

His name was Dave McKenna [1930-2008] and he always maintained that, “[ … because of his fondness for staying close to the melody], I’m not really a bona fide jazz guy”. Instead, he claimed, “I’m just a saloon piano player.” Regulars at the Boston’s Copley Plaza Bar (now the Oak Room), where Dave often performed, rebuffed this modest remark by telling McKenna that he was ‘just a saloon player’ like Billie Holiday was ‘just a saloon singer.’” 

Thanks to the late Carl Jefferson’s patronage, many lesser known, but not necessarily less-skillful, solo pianists would have their work showcased on his Concord Records Maybeck Recital Hall [Berkeley, CA] series which was issued in the 1980s and 1990s.

Concord also put out recordings with some of these pianists represented on the Maybeck series paired with woodwind and reed players such as Alan Broadbent and Gary Foster, Kenny Werner and Chris Potter, and my favorite, Dave McKenna and Buddy DeFranco.

Richard Cook and Brian Morton of The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6^th Ed. had this to say about the DeFranco-McKenna collaboration:

“Concord threw a line to players of DeFranco's sensibilities. The one to get … is the magisterial encounter with Dave McKenna, still as fiercely full-blooded as ever at the keyboard, and musician enough to have DeFranco working at his top level. 'Poor Butterfly', 'The Song Is You' and 'Invitation' are worth the admission price, and there are seven others.”

Here’s what Dr. Herb Wong had to say about the DeFranco-McKenna Jazz alliance in his insert notes to Dave McKenna and Buddy deFranco: You Must Believe in Swing [Concord CCD-4756-2].

© -Dr. Herb Wong, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Though rare up until some 25 years ago, duos now occupy a pivotal niche in jazz. Their interest stretches beyond mere curiosity; two-instrument bands face the challenge of creating musical moments germane to their special environment which neither solo musicians nor conventional small combos can furnish.

Most duos highlight the beauty of musicians of similar styles and schools of thought playing with a preferred consonant sound. On the surface, therefore, the pairing of Dave McKenna and Buddy DeFranco might seem unlikely. "At first thought, Dave and Buddy may not be a perfect fit, since they come from somewhat different directions," recalls Dr. Dave Seiler, Director of the University of New Hampshire Jazz Band. "But we watched them rehearse - the way they communicated was incredible!"

The background trail leading to this unusual pairing is of interest. Born in the vision of one Joe Stellmach, a devout fan and good friend of both McKenna and DeFranco, this recording was inspired by the spectacular match-ups of DeFranco with super piano icons Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson back in the 1950s. The prospect of DeFranco's thorough mastery of the instrument (with his modern harmonic vocabulary and improvisational skills) brought together with the extraordinary pianism of McKenna (one of the most triumphant post-Tatum pianists) was Stellmach's dream.

"I was inspired to bring Dave and Buddy together - specifically Dave as the third prodigious jazz pianist to be coupled with Buddy," said Stellmach, who was the catalyst in gaining the enthusiasm of Concord Jazz to make this recording. Less than a week after the teaming was agreed to, a debut concert was organized by local piano great Tom Gallant and the aformentioned Dr. Seiler for October 9, 1996 at Portsmouth, New Hampshire as part of the Harry W. Jones, Jr. Jazz Concert. Prior to this venue, McKenna and DeFranco hadn't really played together other than brief jams at parties. A week later, they were in New York recording this CD.

DeFranco's esteem for McKenna is markedly illustrated by this anecdote: "Two summer ago in New England, a friend of Dave's asked me if I'd like to go hear him play solo in a hotel by the coast. I had a plane to catch later on, so I decided to catch one set and then fly home. I wound up listening to the entire three sets."

McKenna is an anomaly in the world of jazz pianists; his two-handed style is so rhythmically powerful that he's essentially self-sufficient. Ace trombonist Carl Fontana, who has played with McKenna many times, simply said, "Dave is a band. You don't really need one when he's around!" Pianist Dick Hyman agrees, "He's his own rhythm section. The left hand plays a 4/4 bass line, the right hand plays the melody, and there's that occasional 'strum' in between - like three hands." Check his right hand off-beat single notes, and unpredictable spaces promoting accents that create ear-tugging reactions. Reminiscent of Tatum, McKenna's arpeggios at times seem like they're 50 feet long.

"Dave plays a different way - an orchestral way," DeFranco elaborates. "Of course, Errol Garner and Oscar Peterson had it too, but Dave has a bass line going on all the time. He has the orchestral melodic part, and those exciting chord progressions, but somewhere he sneaks in what might be 'brass figures,' and it's fascinating to wonder how he gets them in. He inserts these figures while everything else is going on."

McKenna explains it quite simply: "I like to play a long line - like a horn player's single notes, which also equate to single notes on a bass. Well, sometimes I'll pause - take a breather in that line, and on occasion just throw in a chord or two." His predilection for single note lines suggests that he has listened a great deal more to horn players than he has to pianists.

Buddy DeFranco is the titan of the modern jazz clarinet who had taken his instrument to the peak of mastery decades ago and has maintained this preeminence internationally since the forties. He has pushed his digital precision to its technical boundaries, and early on merged his blazing, flawless execution with the vital force of Charlie Parker's harmonic approach. With his devastating speed and gorgeous, fluid tone, he improvises with emotional candor and blows nuclear ideas that explode with surprising hues and shapes.

An accomplished clarinetist himself, Seiler says simply "Buddy is a clarinet player's clarinet player." …

Speaking about DeFranco, McKenna said firmly, "It was a real pleasure working with him. Man, he's got it all! In a duo you have to be busy all the time. It's one of the hardest things to do, but with a great horn player like Buddy - that's something else! I really enjoy his musicality."

In a duo, each musician is truly half of what happens. It's a matter of the freedom to express and letting things happen with complete confidence — a process which shows the music is worthy of risk. There's an enchanting aura about the numeral "two". This duo reflects that mystifying magnificence. There is something pristine about combining a piano note and a clarinet note. Dave McKenna and Buddy DeFranco share in tandem a striking set of properties of integrity and musical character only mature creative players experience. Their sophisticated knowledge and simpatico are self-evident.

DeFranco said it well: "If it doesn't swing, it isn't happening!"

You can savor the duo delight that is Dave McKenna and Buddy DeFranco in the following video tribute which features their performance of Tadd Dameron’s If You Could See Me Now.