Jack Montrose: “Over Before It Began”

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

 “During the fifties, when the jazz media spotlight shone brightly on Los Ange­les, Jack Montrose's writing and playing were very important ingredients in what became known as West Coast Jazz.”

- Gordon Jack

“For a time in the mid-fifties, Jack Montrose's reputation as an arranger threatened to eclipse even that of his former instructor Shorty Rogers. As 'staff arranger' for Pacific Jazz in 1953 and 1954, he had gained favored attention for his writing on the Chet Baker and Clifford Brown ensemble albums, as well as the initial ten-inch LP of his favorite playing companion, baritonist Bob Gordon. In 1955 Montrose was offered his own album by Dick Bock, and the resulting LP was entitled The Jack Montrose Sextet. Joining the tenor saxophonist were Gordon, Conte Candoli and the rhythm section of pianist Paul Moer, bassist Ralph Pena and Shelly Manne.

Shortly following the Pacific Jazz session, Montrose was again recorded - this time by Atlantic. The line-up for this date was a quintet with Bob Gordon, Paul Moer, Shelly Manne and bassist Red Mitchell. The quintet format must have felt more congenial to Montrose, for this Atlantic session produced his finest work. Again every tune on the album was either composed or arranged by the leader.

With these two albums Jack Montrose seemed about to be recognized as a major jazz writer, but tragedy struck before either album was even released. On the way to an out-of-town concert with Pete Rugolo, Bob Gordon was killed in a car accident. Montrose and Gordon had been close friends offstage as well as in performance, and the loss seems to have hurt Montrose creatively as well as personally. Whatever the reason, Jack Montrose never again produced any recorded work comparable to the Pacific Jazz or especially the Atlantic album.”

- Bob Gordon

« J'aime ecrire dans le style "musique de chambre" a cause de son intimite. Rien n'y est superflu ni ne peut l'etre [...]. En ecrivant en vue de cet album, aucun instrument n'a ete neglige. Mon but est d'utiliser chacun dans son registre propre. » Comme par ailleurs Montrose proclamait hautement que le blues etait la forme musicale la plus fantastique qui puisse etre et qu'un bon interprete du blues ne pouvait etre qu'un bon jazzman, on voit a quel confluent se situe sa musique.

“I enjoy composing in a ‘chamber music’ style because of its intimacy. Nothing is superfluous nor can it be […]. While writing for this album, I tried not to neglect any of the instruments and to blend them with one another. My goal was to use each one in its proper tonal range ” In addition, Montrose proclaimed his high regard for the Blues as a musical form and that it was difficult to be a good Jazzman if one was not a good interpreter of the Blues. One hears such a confluence in Montrose’s music.

- Alain Tercinet

“Born December 30, 1928, in Detroit, Montrose had attended high school in Tennessee before journeying west to study music at Los Angeles State. In addition to being a leading saxophonist on the Southern California scene, Montrose also distinguished himself as a composer and arranger with a flair for the indigenous contrapuntal sound so popular in California jazz in the 19505. His writing credits grace record dates for, among others, Clif­ford Brown, Chet Baker, and Bob Gordon. For a brief period Montrose seemed on the verge of establishing himself as a major force in West Coast jazz, but instead his career went into a tailspin after the mid-1950s. Rele­gated to playing the LA strip club circuit and odd studio gigs, Montrose decided to resettle in Nevada. There he has kept himself busy in the finan­cially secure surroundings of the casino entertainment world.”

- Ted Gioia

Prior to his passing in 2006, I had a brief conversation with Jack Montrose at one of the Los Angeles Jazz Institute’s semi-annual, four-day events.

We had met years before in Las Vegas when both of us worked a gig for singer-dance Juliet Prowse. Jack played tenor saxophone in the pit band and also took over the nominal leadership of the group when her regular arranger couldn’t make it out of Hollywood.

After the usual, conversational asides and hair loss references, I asked Jack, whom I had lost track of when I moved to another career, how he had managed to stay involved with music “all these years.”

Jack said: “Well, as far as my work in Jazz was concerned, it was over before it began, wasn’t it?”

He then went on to essentially provide me with the highlights of his career as detailed in the following interview with Gordon Jack which can be found in Fifities Jazz Talk: An Oral Retrospective [Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2004].

“One thing is for certain,” he said: “It may have been short, but I had a ball while it lasted.”

I always considered Jack one of the most talented cats I’d ever met and his loss to the Jazz world as a tragedy. But then, the loss of Jazz itself from its halcyon days was no less so.

© -Gordon Jack, copyright protected; all rights reserved. Used with the author's permission.

“I was born in Detroit on December 30, 1928, which of course was during the Depression, and although we were very poor, I was never unhappy. I thought that everybody was like us and all kids had one pair of pants per se­mester. To escape the poverty, we moved to Chattanooga when I was about five years old, where we lived in a black ghetto called Onion Bottom. Thanks to a relative who financed my Dad in a grocery store which had a jukebox, I heard my first records by people like Lionel Hampton, Johnny Hodges, Benny Goodman, and Duke Ellington, and I was thrilled by it all.

Nobody in my family was musical, but I acquired a metal clarinet when I was about twelve, and a couple of years later, I worked a whole summer in a pawnshop to buy a C melody sax for $20.1 was completely self-taught be­cause we couldn't afford a teacher, and by the time I was fourteen, I had joined the union and played my first professional job on alto. Although I didn't really know what I was doing, I had also begun writing arrangements by ear—and right away discovered the bottom line: whatever sounds right is the truth. I switched to tenor when I heard Don Byas and Joe Thomas, and for the next couple of years I played with bands down South. By 1946 I moved with my family to Los Angeles and started doing one-nighters around town with people like Lennie Niehaus, Jack Sheldon, and Russ Freeman. Russ always knew more tunes than anyone else and was very generous with his harmonic knowledge. He helped us all and influenced my progress to a great degree, and I have always loved him for that. He lives in Las Vegas now, and it never ends, because he still knows tunes that I don't.1 The only other person who may know as many tunes as Russ is Herb Geller.

It was around 1948 that I first met Bob Gordon. He was with Alvino Rey's band, and we used to play together whenever he was in town. I never knew him to play anything except the baritone, which was the perfect instrument for him because he played it so well, with an absolutely beautiful sound. I have heard some guys play very effectively, but nobody sounded like Bob; he was unique. He and Gerry Mulligan both played Conn’s, because they made the best bari­tones, and although Gerry had a great sound, Bob's was even better. He had a natural mind-to-hand coordination that gave him fast fingers, which was un­usual on the baritone at that time.

Incidentally, Paul Desmond was also in Rey's band, and I enjoyed his playing very much, even though it was a little one-dimensional. He was very poetic and melodic, but his intensity never seemed to change. He actually sounded better on recordings than in person, because he didn't have a big sound, so he was hard to hear in clubs. The only time I ever worked with him was when we played with Jack Fina for about a month. Jack had been Freddy Martin's pianist, and he had a band at the Coconut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel with three tenors: me, Paul, and Herb Geller.

For a lot of us growing up in the late forties in Los Angeles, Herbie Harper's jam sessions at the Showtime on West Ventura Boulevard were an important part of our musical education. They were like a postgraduate study in jazz for guys like Bill Perkins, Shorty Rogers, Chet Baker, Art Pepper, and myself. Art of course was always one of my heroes, and I was unashamedly influenced by him and Chet Baker. One of the first things I notice about a player is his sound, and I think that Art had the loveliest sound on alto, out­side of Johnny Hodges. He admired Zoot Sims very much, and he even sounded like Zoot to me. I adored his playing, and still do, but I think he lost it for a while when he became too influenced by John Coltrane towards the end of his life. He lost what was valuable, because a great artist should search within himself without copying, and Art fell into that hole. As Lennie Niehaus told you, Art lost his honesty and played in a style that didn't suit him; he was just not playing "Art" anymore.

Chet was always an outstanding player. He immediately grabbed your at­tention, and just like a comet blazing through the sky, he wouldn't be denied. Gerry Mulligan in his wisdom really nailed it when he said that Chet knew everything about chords except their names, because he had the best ears of anyone I have ever encountered. The other myth about Chet not reading mu­sic is quite untrue. He played my charts, which were far from easy, as well as anyone.

In 1949 I played in Tom Talbert's Jazz Orchestra, which included Art Pep­per and Claude Williamson. I loved that band and, funnily enough, four or five years ago Sea Breeze reissued one of our albums and Tom sent me a check for $41.25, which was scale for a record session at that time. There were a lot of very talented players in the band who were never heard of again, like Steve White, who was a marvelous tenor player. He was one of the great­est white Prez-influenced players I have ever heard and could have been one of the "Four Brothers" without any trouble. His ears were so good that he could play anything, and he had all the makings of becoming a legend.2

I also did a lot of playing with Shorty Rogers, and around 1952 Bob Gor­don and I worked in John Kirby's last group at the 5-4 Ballroom, on 54th and Broadway. It was a sextet that played for dancers, and that is where I first met Gerry Mulligan. His girlfriend, Gail Madden, was a photographer at the ball­room, and he used to sit in with us every night when he came to pick her up. I had already become aware of him from the "Birth of the Cool" sessions, which was the only jazz writing that influenced me at that time. Those charts were wonderful, and the arrangers seemed to be affected by something that was quite unearthly. Gerry was a genius, and when he and Chet were at the Haig, I used to visit two or three nights a week. It was an unbelievably stim­ulating experience, hearing them play together, and the rest is history, because that is one of the best jazz groups ever. This was around the time I had a seven-piece rehearsal band, which included at different times Bob Gordon, Bill Perkins, Stu Williamson, and Dave Madden, and for a while we worked the off-nights opposite Gerry's group. Dave isn't too well known, but he was a very talented tenor player and one of my best friends.3  When Chet left Gerry, Dick Bock wanted to do something different with him, so he recorded him with my band on an album called The Chet Baker Ensemble in Decem­ber 1953.4 "

By this time I was studying for my degree in music and composition at L.A. State College, and one day between classes, I went down to CBS on Sunset Boulevard to audition for Jerry Gray's band. I got the gig, which was the jazz tenor chair, and I stayed with Jerry off and on for about five years. We were resident on the Bob Crosby radio show, and we played at the Am­bassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard. Bob Gordon also had a steady gig, working around town with George Redman, who was the drummer with the Harry Zimmerman orchestra on the Dinah Shore T.V. show. George had a great following, and it was a very hip little group, usually one horn and rhythm, so there was a lot of jazz. Whenever I was free, I used to sit in with them at places like the Bombay club, and later on, Bud Shank and Maynard Ferguson were with the band. One way to keep busy when things were slow in the music business was to work in one of the many strip joints around L.A., so I started playing at the Body Shop on Sunset Boulevard. Herb Geller was the first real jazz player I knew to work those clubs, and it kept his head above water when times were hard. I used to sub for him there if he had other work.

In May 19541 arranged and played on Bob Gordon's only date as a leader, and we used his friend Billy Schneider from St. Louis on drums.5 We had been working in clubs like the Purple Onion, Peacock Lane, and Peacock Al­ley, and at the time of the recording, one of my original ballads was untitled. Bob asked if I would dedicate it to his wife, which I was happy to do, and I think "For Sue" came out very nicely. Another title, "Onion Bottom," was a reference to the area that my family had lived in when we first moved to Chat­tanooga.

I was also playing a lot with Art Pepper at the Angel Room on South Crenshaw Boulevard and Esther's on Hermosa Beach, and that summer our quin­tet appeared opposite Max Roach and Clifford Brown at the Tiffany club. Dick Bock wanted to record them with some West Coast musicians, and I was booked to write the arrangements, but I didn't play, despite what Ira Gitler has written, although I would have loved to.6 Dick decided the instrumentation and personnel, and it was his choice to do "Blueberry Hill" and "Gone with the Wind," not Brownie's. Clifford had an old studio upright at his motel in the West Adams district, and I used to visit him every day to work on the mu­sic, which was written with Max in mind, because he was supposed to be on the session. Unfortunately he got into a money hassle with Dick and bowed out at the last minute, so Shelly Manne was called, and he played just beau­tifully, bless his heart. I spent about two months writing the charts, and we re­hearsed the band three or four times over at my place. As you can hear on the record, everyone jelled immediately and it was a very friendly date.7

I have already said that Chet Baker was an unsurpassed "ear" player with no theoretical knowledge. Clifford Brown on the other hand had Chet's ears, but he was also a thoroughly schooled musician who would have practiced all day if he could. He was an absolute giant, very advanced in theory and totally immersed in music. He was also a sweet person, without a drink or drug prob­lem, living a perfectly clean lifestyle. Along with Stu Williamson and Bob Gordon, Zoot Sims was the other horn on the Brownie date, and for a while he caused me the same problem that Pepper had with Coltrane. I loved his playing so much that I couldn't imagine it any other way, and I had a rough time until I discovered myself again. Zoot was a marvel, and still is. He may no longer be with us, but as John O'Hara said about Gershwin's death, "I don't have to believe it if I don't want to."

While I was working with Clifford, Art Pepper and I recorded an album with our own group which we used to refer to as Art's "Spice Suite."8 This was because it featured a number of his originals like "Nutmeg," "Cinnamon," "Thyme Time," and "Art's Oregano." I don't know the significance of the other titles, but nutmeg was something inmates in confinement used to get high on. After the record release we planned to go East with our quintet, but as so often happened, Art got busted and disappeared off the scene. Being a junky, he was not the most reliable person in the world, but he loved playing so much that I can only remember him missing a couple of nights at the Tiffany club. When it came time to play, nothing else existed for him. He was one of my very best friends, easy to get along with, and marvelous to make music with.

In 1954 I spent six months with Stan Kenton, but truthfully I didn't like the band, although I adored the man. We were on different musical paths; that is not to say he was wrong, but his muse was not my muse. He actually hired me to write for him, and I was going to submit some of my originals like "Credo," "Pretty," "Speakeasy," and "Listen, Hear." I sketched them out on the long Kenton bus rides, but I changed my mind because the band was just too loud for my material. "Credo" was very ephemeral and delicate, but they would have destroyed it, totally losing the inner voices. "Listen, Hear" was a double fugue, and I couldn't imagine Stan playing it the way I wanted. Until you play in one, you have no idea how damned loud a big band can be, and Stan's could be pretty overwhelming.9

I rearranged all those numbers for my 1955 sextet album with Conte Candoli and Bob Gordon.10 Paul Moer was the pianist, and Bob and I liked his playing so much that he did three albums with us. I have never found anyone else who could play those sextet charts as well as he could. He came from Florida, and I first met him at the Cottage Italia, where they used to have mar­velous jam sessions.

Shelly Manne was on the date, and he was a prince of drummers, but Bob Gordon didn't like his playing at all. Bob preferred the New York school, like Philly Joe Jones and Art Mardigan, because he was an aggressive player and he liked aggressive drummers. We had both played with Philly Joe when he had come out to the Coast, and Bob especially liked the way he used his hi-hat on two and four, something Shelly didn't always do, which occasionally led to arguments on record dates. It's strange how some people don't get along. Bob and Art Pepper didn't like each other, and as far as I know, they never worked together. As Herb Geller told you, Joe Maini and Art actually hated each other, and I was there the night they nearly came to blows.

A few weeks after we recorded the last titles for the sextet album, Bob was killed in a car accident. I met his parents at the funeral, which is when I dis­covered that his real name was Bob Resnick, and I don't know why he changed it. His wife, Sue, wanted some of us to play at the service, so Jack Sheldon, Bob Enevoldsen, Joe Maini, and I played my arrangement of "Goodbye," which under the circumstances was very difficult to perform. If he hadn't died, things would have been a lot different in my life, because we were only just beginning. We had great plans for the future and would have certainly carried on playing together; I actually had another album already written for us. We were a partnership, and I have never missed anyone as much as I missed Bob Gordon.11 Sue eventually went to live on Staten Island, and she died a few years ago.

In 1956 Art Pepper and I were supposed to make an L.P. called "Blues and Vanilla."12 We rehearsed it, but I think he got busted again, so I called Joe Maini, and he was bebop incarnate, doing it so well and so naturally. I played a lot with Joe, and he was great fun and a wonderful player who didn't get recorded enough. We did studio sessions together when Marty Paich hired us for some Mel Torme recordings, but Joe was on lead alto, so he didn't get any solos. Mel Torme of course had the best phrasing, the best ears, and the best breath control; he was just superb, and I think Marty's writing for him and that little band was excellent. Marty had a way of understanding singers very well, and although it was not my kind of writing (I would have done it dif­ferently), those records still sound very good. I know that Corky Hale told you that Mel was hard to get along with, but I never saw it. I was on many dates with him and found him to be pleasant, and everything was as efficient and musical as could be.

All through the fifties I did a lot of writing for Dick Bock at Pacific Jazz, and he had a considerable input regarding players and repertoire, but he could not have been easier to get along with. He was a marvelous man in the right place at the right time to be part of the regeneration of jazz on the West Coast. However by 1960 something happened, because suddenly all the recording stopped and jazz seemed to be out of favor. I was still working in jazz clubs and strip joints where the girls were all jazz fans, so it was great practice. I also did some rock 'n' roll dates, but I don't want to talk about them at all—they were painful. That music started edging us out, although some of the jazz guys had a lot to do with turning off their audiences with their terrible arrogance. They started turning their backs on the customers, for instance, and I don't just mean Miles; a lot of lesser players were doing it. Also the avant-garde move­ment was too inaccessible and tough to take, and probably still is. Tastes were changing, but not being a social scientist, I could do nothing except suffer the results. I tried the Hollywood scene, but I couldn't make the deadlines; they just debilitated me. An agent would call and want three arrangements for the next day, and that isn't how I like to work. I'm not suited to turning out mate­rial without regard to its quality, so I was ready to quit by that time.

I decided to move to Las Vegas in 1971 because, if I had to do commercial work, Vegas provided a more relaxed atmosphere. I started playing in the shows, which were first class at the time, and acts like Sinatra, Steve and Eydie, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, and Tony Bennett were certainly as good as the music could get in show business. I didn't rail against it, and I didn't mind going to work every night. This is when I met my wife, Zena, who was a vi­olinist in house bands, and we still work together sometimes. Although I was embroiled in making a living in show business, I didn't stop playing jazz. The union had a rehearsal hall with a bar that stayed open all night, and after the second show, everyone would go down there to play. That carried on until about 1985, when we lost the musicians' building during a strike. There is not much work left in the casinos now, because most of the acts we used to ac­company are no longer there.

Don Byas was the man who made me want to play the tenor, but Charlie Parker has to be my all-time favorite instrumentalist. He was absolute per­fection as a creator, and any player who grew up during that time would have to admit there was no denying Bird. His solos were actually compositions on a level far advanced from anyone else, and some guys became so taken with him that they became cripples; they couldn't play anymore. They missed the message, which is to be yourself and not be a copy. Funnily enough, the first time I heard him, I wasn't really impressed with his sound, but I soon real­ized that his ideas required that particular sound. When I understood that, Bird became a fixture in my consciousness, as did John Coltrane later on. John had a sound without historical evolution—totally unique, and it went with what he played. The ideas couldn't have been produced with any other sound, which is true of every great player.

There are some marvelous writers in jazz, but nobody has influenced me as much as Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. I would also have given any­thing to have played in Duke's band, and if it exists in another lifetime, I want to be in it!

NOTES

1.  Russ Freeman died two years after this interview took place, on June 27, 2002.

2.  Steve White's album on Nocturne OJCCD-1889-2, where he is accompanied by the incomparable Jimmy Rowles, confirms Jack's enthusiasm.

3.  In 1945 Dave Madden recorded with Stan Kenton's band, where he sat next to the eighteen-year-old Stan Getz. He also worked with Tom Talbert, Woody Herman, Jerry Gray, Si Zentner, Dave Pell, Frank Capp, and Harry James. He and Gail Madden were what the gossip columnists refer to as an "item," although they never married. Gail later had a similar relationship with both Bob Graettinger and Gerry Mulligan.

4.  Chet Baker Ensemble. Fresh Sound FSR CD 0175.

5.  Bob Gordon, Memorial. Fresh Sound FSRCD180.

6.  Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler, eds. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz (Oxford University Press).

7.  Clifford Brown, Jazz Immortal. Pacific Jazz CDP 7468502.

8.  Art Pepper, The Complete Discovery-Savoy Master Takes. Definitive Records DRCD 11218.

9.  Jack left the Kenton band in October 1954. He was replaced by the obscure Varty Haritounian, whose only commercial recording was with Serge Chaloff and Dick Twardzik in Boston a month previously, titled "The Fable of Mabel" (The Com­plete Serge Chaloff Sessions. Mosaic MD4-147).

10.  Jack Montrose Sextet. Pacific Jazz 7243 4 93161 2 6.

11.  In Gerard J. Hoogeveen's discography of the great Bob Gordon, Jack Montrose had this to say about his friend and colleague: "Bob Gordon was an inspiration to every jazz musician or aspirant who ever heard him play, or was perhaps fortunate enough to share the bandstand with him. Fortunate enough to partake of the fire that roared, the sparks that flew and the proclamations of the Gods that sounded, when he put his big horn to his lips and made the world abound with life, zest, and unbounded love. For the world was a better place to live in when he played and perhaps this sin­gular ability to make it so, was in itself his greatest gift. . . . His feeling was conta­gious, his sound indomitable, his time impeccable, the beauty and logic of his thought inexplicable. I learned to write through playing and it was largely through Bob's in­fluence that I learned how to play." Jack Montrose did not exaggerate, for Bob Gor­don was, indeed, a giant.

12.  Jack Montrose, Blues and Vanilla. Fresh Sound NL45844.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles with the help of the crackerjack graphics team at CerraJazz LTD and StudioCerra Productions developed the following video tribute to Jack on which he performs his original composition "Some Good Fun Blues" with Conte Candoli [trumpet], Bob Gordon [baritone saxophone], Paul Moer [piano], Ralph Pena [bass] and drummer Shelly Manne.

Nat King Cole and Billy May: An Odd Couple

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

You ever get one of those tunes going in your mind? The one that you keep hearing over and over again? Maybe it goes away for a day or two, but then its back again, with a vengeance.

Lately, that’s been the case with me and the song Walkin’ My Baby Back Home.

Not just the song itself, but Nat King Cole’s version of it set to Billy May’s arrangement is the one that's been haunting “my little grey cells” [Sorry, Hercule.].

So I set out to make the video that closes this piece using Nat and Billy’s version of Walkin’ as its soundtrack and to do some research about the - to my mind - unusual pairing of the silky song stylings of Nat King Cole [whom one usually thinks of with Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins or Ralph Burns] and the pow, bang, crash arrangements of Billy May.

You would think that the distinctive trademark sounds of Nat King Cole and Billy May would sound perfect together. Cole moved the world with his soft, romantic love songs, May got millions of fans jumping to his explosively punch orchestrations. But of course, Cole had his roots in Jazz, and at the same time May, had a sentimental streak a mile wide. And both were artists whose supreme, multi-faceted musicianship was not confined to stylistic boundaries.

Their most widely heard collaboration, Just One Of Those Things (1957), appropriately draws on both sets of strengths: a happy sad album, colored with a swinging yet melancholy feeling. It's a set of ballads without strings and of uptempos with brooding underpinnings.

The rest of their work together, including one further full-length project Let's Face The Music And Dance in 1961, as well as 16 singles and assorted rarities, covers an equally wide stylistic purview: from straight ballads to two-beat dance numbers, from rhythm and blues to the eloquently cerebral film noir feeling of "Angel Eyes."

Nat Cole and Billy May just missed each other in 1939: May first arrived on Cole's turf as a trumpeter-arranger in Charlie Barnet's band, when that great unit came to Los Angeles to play the Palomar that October. Instead, the ballroom burned down. That left most of the band with nothing to do but check out the local music scene, whose most prominent group was the rapidly rising King Cole Trio. Unfortunately, May was sequestered, trying to rewrite Barnet's decimated library. They finally met two years later when May returned to Hollywood as a member of Glenn Miller's orchestra to film the first of that band's two cinematic epics, Sun Valley Serenade. Cole was working, May recalls, at the Swannee Inn on La Brea Blvd. in Hollywood, CA (later known as the Pirate's Den), the self-same historic spot where the King Cole Trio had first come together four years earlier. May was immediately impressed with Cole's prodigious skill as a pianist in the Earl Hines mode and enjoyed the group's jive-style unison vocalizing.

Cole and May became friendly and would encounter each other occasional!}' throughout the '40s, especially after May settled in California. Both men entered into long-term relationships with Capitol Records and, at one point, even wrote a song together, "Ooh, Kickarooney." The King Cole Trio recorded this typical and typically excellent novelty in 1947.

They finally got together on records thanks to the intervention of two other men: Carlos Gastel and Lee Gillette. Gastel had been Cole's manager since about 1942. A and R [artists and repertoire] man Gillette was producing both artists for Capitol. By 1951, Cole and May were each enjoying careers they had never counted on - Cole as a chart-topping vocalist, May who had been a nearly anonymous sideman and uncredited orchestrator for so many years was a recording star in His own right.

Unrelated events conspired to produce the first Cole-May hit, "Walkin’ My Baby Back Home." The year before, Gastel had teamed Cole with his other star attraction, Stan Kenton's orchestra and the resultant single, "Orange Colored Sky," had proved a resounding cashbox success. Then, around 1950 or '51, Gastel and Kenton parted company. Finding himself without a major band to book, he realized that May was enjoying considerable Billboard chart activity with a series of dance records on Capitol. Gastel persuaded the arranger that he could be the next top-billed leader if he would only put together a regular working band and take it on the road.

"Carlos was a promoter," May says. "You know, he was always looking out to make a buck." That may sound like a criticism, since May and Gastel were only professionally involved for about a year. However, the two were actually quite close for three decades, up until the time of Gastel's death. (The two eventually wound up marrying each other's ex-wives.) "He was a lot of fun," May continues, “but he never took care of himself. You know, he kept drinking and-kept smoking. He went in to have an exam, and the doctor told him that his heart was four times as large as it should be. I said, 'Why don't you stop smoking?' And he said, 'If I just think about it, I have to have a drink.'"

As far as Gastel was concerned, May stepped in to fill Kenton's oversized shoes. The crafty, much-loved manager conceived of a Cole-May pairing as a sequel to "Orange Colored Sky." The initial Cole-May session included four songs, all sporting May's newly-minted slurping saxophone sound. Of these four, three constituted new novelties and likely hits: "What Does It Take," "Walkin'," and "I'm Hurtin'." The least-known item from the session, Johnny Burke's "What Does It Take," amounts to a sequel to Cole's "I Wish I Were Somebody Else."

Still, with all these new songs, the stunning hit from the date turned out to be the 21-year-old "Walkin' My Baby Back Home," which had already been in the top ten a few months earlier by Johnnie Ray. "Walkin' My Baby" helped to solidify Cole's new role as a star singer and May's as a name bandleader. It was only natural for Gastel to send them out on the road together in a package tour, as he had done with Cole's trio and Kenton in seasons past.

Unfortunately, shortly before the high point of that 1953 tour  - a performance at Carnegie Hall on Easter Sunday - Cole came down with an attack of ulcers that put him out of commission for the rest of the run. (Dick Nash, then in May’s trombone section, swears that Sarah Vaughan, who was also part of the package, filled in for Nat by doing his numbers at the piano with his trio.) For May's part, the stress of the tour helped him realize that he would do better to stick to studio work.

Fortunately, Gillette re-teamed Cole and May for two additional dates of time-tested old tunes and interesting new ones - immediately before and after the tour. (The Cole-May-Dean Martin session, from September 1954, is sampled on the four-CD retrospective Nat King Cole, Capitol 99777.) The five tunes from these 1953 and 1954 dates -"Angel Eyes," "Lover Come Back To Me," "Can't I?", "Papa Loves Mambo" and "Teach Me Tonight" - all rank as exemplary examples of pop music at its zenith.

Just prior to that tour, Cole and May cut three more tunes. "Angel Eyes," from the 1953 film Jennifer, amounts to the most significant love theme from a film noir since Laura. Cole's singing is oblique and full of mystery; May's chart is at once brash and steamy.

"Can't I?", written by Leroy Lovett, pianist and blues-oriented author of "After The Lights Go Down Low," brings our two protagonists into the land of the sultry and seductive. Originally, Cole cut this tune with a Dave Cavanaugh arrangement. Several months later, Gillette and Cole ultimately decided the tune really needed Billy May's patented reed section sound, and it was May's version that was released at the time.

The operatic ballad "Lover Come Back to Me" becomes a real swinger in the hands of Cole and May, with bongo drums, a hot alto solo by Willie Smith and the driving bass of Ralph Pena. Even the chorus - entering on the word "no!" near the end - swings heavily. May's boppish ensemble variations on the chord changes exemplify the ideal of a band playing lines that could have had their origins as a great improvised solo.

In September of 1954, Billy May arranged two tunes for the odd pairing of Nat Cole and Dean Martin. But the next real Cole session came a month later. May takes advantage of Cole's rhythmic virtuosity in his brilliant arrangement of "Papa Loves Mambo," by far the best of many; recordings [others include Perry Como and Johnnie Ray] of that 1954 hit tune. A few years earlier, in the dawning of the mambo craze, Capitol had released a series of hot Latin dance discs by a group identified only as the "Rico Mambo Orchestra"; ultimately, Mr. "Rico Mambo" turned out to be none other than Mr. Billy May.

Nat Cole was a lifetime favorite of the late Sammy Cahn, who was crazy about his record of Cahn's "Teach Me Tonight," perhaps the most sensual reading ever of a tune that Dinah Washington brought into the blues songbook. Anchoring the whole thing with Chuck Gentry's booming baritone sax, May divides up the bridge in the instrumental interlude between piercing brass and slurping saxes, as if to insinuate that the two sections are slow-dancing together.           

In 1956, Cole recorded his first 12-inch vocal albums, After Midnight and Love Is The Thing (the latter, coincidentally, also his first session with Gordon Jenkins and his first stereo outing). A resounding, chart-topping success, Love Is The Thing reconfigured Cole's recording pattern for several seasons. While his main business continued to be making pop singles with Nelson Riddle, his usual musical director, Cole would next record Just One Of Those Things with the orchestrations of Billy May as his next original album.

However, a few months before recording began on Just One Of Those Things, Cole, May and Gillette participated in a highly, unusual session. Starting with the 1954 recording of "If I May" (humorously rnis-credited on several LPs and CDs to Billy May), Cole had released a well-received series of quasi-doowop singles. May stresses that Gillette continually pushed Cole to keep recording anything that sold; the double impetus for the date seems to be Cole's desire to record two rock-oriented tunes that came at him from two different directions. "With You On My Mind" had been one of several songs; Cole co-wrote with,his wife's Sister, Charlotte Hawkins; song plugger and old friend Marvin Cane brought "Send For Me" to Cole's attention. When his children liked it, Cole decided to cut the tune.

Cole and Gillette added to Cole's regular rhythm section (guitarist John Collins, bassist Charlie Harris) drummer Lee Young) ubiquitous studio musicians Al Hendrickson, here playing rock-heavy electric guitar, Paul Smith, thumping out repetitious "Great Pretender"- style piano parts and reigning R&B instrumental virtuoso Plas Johnson, who served as the West Coast's equivalent of Atlantic's King Curtis on tenor sax. Gillette also hired Herman McCoy, another studio freelancer who would also appear on Cole's TV show, to contract a doo-woppy vocal group.

For some reason no one can remember, they picked Billy May to write the charts and conduct the date. It was the only time Cole ever employed  May strictly as a utility arranger, making him work to pre-determined specifications without asking him to bring anything of his own personality to the job. They could have easily employed any of a number of slightly lesser talents and gotten the same results. Perhaps Cole wanted someone who he trusted and respected while moving into relatively uncharted territory. Though there wasn't much for May to do, the finished tracks were at least musically proficient and danceable.

Thanks partially to constant plugging on Cole's TV show, the only two tunes released from the date both did well. "With You On My Mind," in fact, charted at the number 30 level in Billboard. "Send For Me" did considerably better. When Capitol tacked it with "My Personal Possession" (the sequel to "If I May" with the same cast, namely Nelson Riddle and the Four Knights), the single made it to number six on the mainstream pop charts and number one on the R & B listings. When Cole performed "Send For Me" in his nightclub act, he sometimes added the comment, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" A reviewer observed that at one swanky joint, "Send For Me" elicited "a stomping reception by mink clad and otherwise expensively clothed patrons."

Still, all concerned decided against releasing the other three selections, two obscurities, "Don't Try" and "Let's Make More Love," and one standard. Cole and May's sh'boom yerson of "Blue Moon" resembles the charts being ground out by old friend Pete Rugolo for the Platters, In the rock scheme of things, Cole's version comes between Elvis Presley's rather tame '56 recording and the Marcels' hyper-agitated 1961 novelty version.

Cole and Gillette encouraged May to create the bright and expressive orchestral textures that he did best. May remembers that when Gillette originally called him to start work on an album for Cole, he told him what some of the tunes would be even though the producer and the singer hadn't finalized the list of selections.

"They'd just give me three or four to start, and they'd still be picking  them," May recalls. "It took maybe two or three days to write them. Then, I’d do a date with Nat and we'd record them, and then at the end of the week, I'd go back to doing a television show or something. Then I'd have to do something else the next week, and then maybe some more songs would come in from Nat, and so on. So I never sat down and figured out the whole thing for the package. All I did was take down the tunes, the keys, and figure out the tempos — and away we  went."

Billy May is not one of your more maudlin chaps. It's hard to imagine him getting teary-eyed even when he talks about people that meant a great deal to Him. His memories of Nat King Cole are about as sentimental as I've ever heard him get.

"Nat was just a wonderful guy," May says. "He was also a talented and a very capable musician. He had a very open mind about music ... and everything. Nat was always a good musician and he never caused anybody any harm. He was a      wonderful man."

Nat King Cole The Bill May Sessions are available as a double CD set on Capitol Records [Capitol Jazz CDP 0777 7 89545 2 1]

-Sources Will Friedwald Jazz Singing (Collier Books), Barry Kernfeld, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Daniel Mark Epstein, Nat King Cole [Farrar Strauss and Giroux], and Leslie Gourse Unforgettable: The Life and Mystique of Nat King Cole [St. Martins Press].

Wes Montgomery - In Paris: The Definitive ORTF Recording on Resonance Records

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

“In some ways, I think of Resonance as the house that Wes Montgomery and Bill Evans built, so we are deeply indebted to protecting those artist's legacies and we do whatever we can to ensure that any newly discovered music from them be presented in the best possible light, and of course, legally with all parties being compensated appropriately."

- Zev Feldman, Producer, Resonance records

Given the amount of self-production that goes on these days, I’ve heard some Jazz musicians wonder aloud about the value of the role of producers who represent commercial record labels.

Or to put it another way, are such producers even necessary? Are they little more than obstacles to the struggling artists who are trying to get their music to the listening public?

The older I get the more I try to see some merit in all arguments or, if you will, argumentative positions, but this record producer as a barrier, one who is trying to interpose themselves between the artist’s music and the buying public is one that I don’t give much credence to.

And neither would you if you had to entertain the amount of self-produced c**p posing as “artistic expression” [aka “music”] that comes into our offices everyday.

So many of these self produced recordings lack discipline, direction and design that one is tempted to discard them to the Goodwill bin when they are retrieved from the mailbox.

Even the best of them could be improved to some extent had there been an objective critic [not in the negative sense of the term] overseeing the project; someone with recording experience who could administer a modicum of taste, balance and objectivity to the proceedings.

Milt Gabler at Commodore, George Avakian and Teo Macero at Columbia, Dick Bock at Pacific Jazz, Lester Koenig at Contemporary, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff at Blue Note, Bob Weinstock at Prestige, Lee Gillette at Capitol, David and Jack Kapp with Decca, RCA and Kapp, Orrin Keepnews at Riverside, Landmark and Milestone, Michael Cuscuna at Blue Note and Mosaic Records, Creed Taylor at Bethlehem, ABC Paramount CTI and Impulse, Norman Granz at Verve … the list is endless and deservedly so because these producers provided sound quality oversight, artist and repertoire matching, take selection, track sequencing et al, with some degree of objective criticism as a counter-balance to the artist’s involvement in making their recording.

The finished product becomes a collaborative effort between the artist who creates the music and the producer who is responsible for the financial and managerial aspects of making a recording. The latter includes the hiring of a project designer to oversee the proper packaging of the recording, the use of graphics and imagery, and the selection of writers who can create textual annotations of the musician and the music.

And then there are the more practical problems of marketing and distribution, promotional services and media releases; after all, now that The Act of Creation has occurred, how do you sell the recording?

Added to this is the role of producer as savior in the literal sense of a person who saves the Jazz artist from danger, or abuse, or from being taken advantage of or “ripped off.”

If you have ever wonder how all of this behind-the-scenes activity works in real time, enter George Klabin, Executive Producer, Zev Feldman, Producer and their talented team of “rainmakers” at Resonance Records as described and detailed in the following press release for -

Wes Montgomery In Paris: The Definitive ORTF Recording

“First official release of Wes Montgomery's one and only concert in Paris, France

on March 27, 1965 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées

Second Resonance release in partnership with France's National Audio-visual Institute (INA) with remastered high-resolution audio transferred directly from the original tapes Deluxe 2CD & Digital Edition available January 26, 2018

Los Angeles, CA [November 2017] - Resonance Records is proud to announce the first official release of Wes Montgomery - In Paris: The Definitive ORTF Recording which captures the jazz guitar legend in concert during his only tour of Europe on the night of March 27, 1965 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, France. Considered perhaps the greatest live Wes Montgomery performance ever, In Paris is being released in partnership with the Institut national de l'audiovisuel (INA) with remastered high-resolution audio transferred directly from the original tapes, and will mark the first time the Montgomery Estate will be paid for this recording, which has been available as various bootlegs since the 1970s. This is also Resonance's second album released in partnership with INA in a series of ORTF recordings, following 2016's critically acclaimed Larry Young - In Paris:

The ORTF Recordings.

In Paris: The Definitive ORTF Recording will be released as a limited-edition, hand-numbered (of 3,000) 180-gram 2LP gatefold set exclusively for Record Store Day Black Friday Event on November 24, 2017. Mastered by LP mastering icon Bernie Grundman and pressed by Record Technology Inc. (RTI). The album features an all-star band with venerable post-bop pianist Harold Mabern, bassist Arthur Harper and bebop drummer Jimmy Lovelace, along with special guest tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin (who played on another classic live Wes recording from 1962, Full House).

The beautifully designed CD package by longtime Resonance designer Burton Yount includes an extensive 32-page booklet with stunning archival photos from the actual concert by famed French music photographer Jean-Pierre Leloir; essays from Wes Montgomery scholar and director of jazz studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Vincent Pelote, the Chargé de Mission Pascal Rozat from INA, and Resonance producer Zev Feldman; plus interviews with pianist Harold Mabern and contemporary jazz guitar icon Russell Malone. The deluxe LP edition also includes a collector set of 6 Jean-Pierre Leloir postcards.

THE BACKSTORY:

European audiences had eagerly wanted to see Wes Montgomery perform live, but his severe fear of flying had kept him in the states, where he played in mostly local clubs in and around Indianapolis. This 1965 European tour was the only overseas trip he would ever make, just after his forty-second birthday, and three years before his untimely death. According to Harold Mabern, this rhythm section was a relatively new group, having only played a handful of gigs prior to their European tour, but they were very tight and had a great time. "Most of the stuff was spur of the moment; that's what made it fresh then, and it's still fresh now. That's why it sounds happy - because we were happy, and it was all about the music."

Feldman returned to France in 2012 to explore the Office of French Radio and Television (ORTF) archives, which  are overseen by the French National Audiovisual Institute (INA), and learned of countless recordings in their vaults documenting some of the greatest American jazz musicians who lived in - or visited - Paris in the 1960s, including Larry Young, Wes Montgomery and many others. "When we assessed what the ORTF archives had to offer, it was clear to us that the first never-before-released Larry Young material in nearly 40 years was a top priority. Then there was the legendary Wes Montgomery in Paris concert recording, which I knew had been only available as bootlegs for decades. In some ways, I think of Resonance as the house that Wes Montgomery and Bill Evans built, so we are deeply indebted to protecting those artist's legacies and we do whatever we can to ensure that any newly discovered music from them be presented in the best possible light, and of course, legally with all parties being compensated appropriately."

THE MUSIC:

This 10-track recording, captured a mere three months before the classic Smokin' at the Half Note (Verve 1965), starts off with Wes Montgomery's original composition "Four on Six." In the album notes, Vincent Pelote describes Wes' playing as shining with a "fiery solo that establishes the routine that Montgomery follows throughout this concert: single notes, followed by octaves, then those amazing block chords." Standing by him on the piano, Harold Mabern adds "crashing chords and Phineas Newborn-like runs up and down the keyboard."

The set consists of many familiar tunes Wes had recorded before on his iconic Riverside studio sessions including "Jingles" and "'Round Midnight" from The Wes Montgomery Trio in 1959, and "Twisted Blues"from So Much Guitar! in 1961, but at the 1,900 seat Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, we hear Wes stretch out like never before in front of a ravenous audience. Russell Malone commented in his liner note interview, "I thought I knew Wes, because I had listened to a lot of the stuff that he had done on Riverside, and some of the commercial outings. But when I heard him stretching out like that, I'm like, 'this man is on some other stuff here!' That Paris recording is so powerful…"

Harold Mabern's original composition "To Wane," a tribute to the great saxophonist Wayne Shorter, will knock your socks off with the lightening speed soloing. Mabern noted that he lifted the melody from Shorter's solo on "Alamode" from the 1961 Impulse! album, Art Blakey!!!!! Jazz Messengers!!!!!: "he started out with a very melodic, lyrical way of playing, and I took part of that and turned it into my song, and I called it 'To Wane,' meaning to wane like the moon."

Throughout this concert bassist Arthur Harper anchors the solidly swinging rhythm section and the re-mastering of the original tapes on this first-time, legally issued release, allows the contribution of the bass to be properly heard for the very first time. Jimmy Lovelace, a longtime fixture at Smalls jazz club in New York City, tastefully propels the band from the drum chair.

BOOTLEG RECORDINGS:

As mentioned previously, bootleg issues of this concert have been available since the 1970s, and in all these years the Montgomery family has never received any payments whatsoever. In Paris: The Definitive ORTF Recording is the only official and definitive release of this recording and marks the first time the Montgomery Estate and other musicians on the recording or their estates will be compensated. Resonance is on a mission to combat this serious bootlegging problem by reclaiming and releasing official versions of important jazz recordings where all rights are cleared and all parties are compensated accordingly. Resonance EVP/GM and producer Zev Feldman says, "We are honored to have had the trust and support of the Montgomery Estate for the past seven years and it's so gratifying to know that the family is finally being compensated for this recording after so many years of illegal copies on the market." Previous bootleg issues of this concert have not only had inferior audio quality and packaging, but have also mislabeled several song titles including "The Girl Next Door," "Jingles," "To Wane," and "Twisted Blues" (incorrectly titled "To Django," "Mister Walker," "To When" and "Wes' Rhythm" respectively).

"For five decades, one of my father's greatest live recordings has been available only by way of various bootleg releases from which my family has not received one dime. This is a tragedy. I'm so thankful that a record label like Resonance Records is around to stand up for what's right and protect the intellectual property and legacy of musicians like my father and many others." - Robert Montgomery (Son of Wes Montgomery and Representative of the Montgomery Estate)

"The Recording Academy is a fierce advocate for protecting creators and their intellectual property. The decades-long exploitation of recordings such as the live Wes Montgomery recording from Paris via bootleg releases is nothing short of a tragedy. We applaud organizations such as Resonance Records that seek to right the wrongs of the past and set a shining example of how to do justice to an artist's legacy." - The Recording Academy

"The Recording Industry Association of America® (RIAA) is a tireless proponent of protecting the rights of artists and their valuable intellectual property. The problem of illegal bootlegging - the distribution of unauthorized recording of live performances - has been a scourge on performers for decades, affecting artists of past and present - including icons such as Wes Montgomery and countless others. These unauthorized recordings rob performers of their ability to control their art, while the sale and distribution of those illegal recordings profits only the thieves - with nothing going to the creators. Today's vast legitimate music marketplace gives consumers a superior alternative to the black market of bootlegging.

We encourage fans to get their favorite tunes in ways that support and respect all music creators." - Brad Buckles, EVP, Anti-Piracy, RIAA

It's incredible to think that Wes only started playing guitar at the age of nineteen, and he had too short a window in his life to share his immense talent with the world. Guitarist Russell Malone eloquently said it's like he was "selected to come here and just mess up everybody's head. To shake up the world, and then once they were through, whatever or whoever is controlling, they say 'well done, that's enough, let's go.' He was a special person."

Personnel:

Wes Montgomery - guitar

Harold Mabern - piano

Arthur Harper - bass

Jimmy Lovelace - drums

*Special Guest Johnny Griffin - tenor saxophone (*"Full House", "'Round Midnight" and "Blue 'N Boogie/West Coast Blues")

Track Listing:

Disc One: Four on Six (6:35) Impressions (10:03) The Girl Next Door (6:44) Here's That Rainy Day (8:31) Jingles (12:34) Disc Two: To Wane (11:09) Full House (10:48) 'Round Midnight (9:26) Blue 'N Boogie/West Coast Blues (13:14) Twisted Blues (13:43)