Terry Gibbs Dream Band - The Jack Tracy Notes

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Terry Gibbs and I recently became friends on Facebook, and to celebrate that occasion, I put recordings by his big band in my CD changer which led, in turn, to a reunion of sorts with the writings about Terry’s band by Jack Tracy which you’ll find after this introduction. 

Whether it’s the arrangements, the ensemble playing, the solos or the rhythm section, one would be hard-pressed to find a better big band in the history of Jazz than the Terry Gibbs Big Band.

Although it existed for only 3 years [1959 - 1962], performed in relative obscurity because it never toured [I gather that it did play a two week engagement at the Dunes in Las Vegas] and didn’t have most of its recorded output released until a quarter of a century after it folded, those who experienced it in person during its brief existence have come to refer to it by another name –The Terry Gibbs Dream Band.

The band had an incredible book of arrangements courtesy of Bill Holman, Manny Albam, Sy Johnson, Bobby Brookmeyer, Shorty Rogers, Al Cohn, Lennie Niehaus, Marty Paich, Wes Hensel and Med Flory.

On any given evening, the trumpet section would made up of four monster players selected from the following list: Al Porcino, Ray Triscari, Stu Williamson, Conte Candoli, Johnny Audino, Frank Huggins, and Lee Katzman.

The trombone section was usually comprised of Frank Rosolino, Vern Friley, Bob Edmonson, Bobby Burgess, Bill Smiley and Joe Cadena.

The saxes was anchored by Charlie Kennedy [lead alto] and Joe Maini [solo alto], Bill Holman, Med Flory, Bill Perkins or Richie Kamuca on tenor and Jack Nimitz or Jack Schwartz on baritone saxophone.

The rhythm section was made up of Pete Jolly, Lou Levy or Pat Moran on piano, Buddy Clark or Max Bennett on bass and the always cookin’ Mel Lewis on drums who was quoted as saying to Ted Gioia in his West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-60: [p. 164]: “I don’t think there was ever a better band than this one, including my own.”

Of Lewis, Gioia had this to say: “Lewis possessed the rare skill of being able to propel a big band without overplaying – a talent of vital importance during his [earlier] tenure with the Kenton band, whose heavy textures had been known to overpower more than one drummer.” [p. 166].

The band played on the “off” nights at Hollywood clubs such as Seville, the Sundown or the Summit and the mood at these clubs was very relaxed; it appeared that the musicians were glad to be out from under the rigors of playing in the movie and TV studios or dealing with the tedious nature of making the music for TV commercials and radio jingles. 

The fact that the musicians were enjoying themselves was certainly evident as they hooted and hollered to urge on the soloists [Terry’s in particular drew all sorts of ‘comments’ from Joe Maini along the lines of “Hammer, baby, hammer!].  You can hear this revelry and camaraderie in the background of the band’s in-performance recordings.

According to Gioia: “The Gibbs band is like a turbocharged roadster…the band’s pizzazz also stems from Gibbs penchant for dramatic flourishes and high-energy music. … Gibbs, ..., also apparently had a flair for bringing the best out of his musicians.” [p. 165]

Although most of the music recorded by the band remained unreleased in Terry’s possession until the late 1980’s when he finalized a deal with Fantasy for their production and distribution, there were some LPs issued on Verve and Mercury during the band’s existence.  The Mercury albums were originally produced by Jack Tracy, who also worked with Terry as co-producer on the reissue of Terry Gibbs and his Exciting Big Band/Explosion [Mercury 20704] when it was converted to digital as Terry Gibbs Dream Band: The Big Cat – Volume 5 [Contemporary CCD 7657-2].

Jack had a long association with my family, although I didn’t find out about this until we became friends during the last years of his life [he died in 2010 at the age of 84].

It seems that when Mercury Records moved Jack to the Left Coast from Chicago in the early 1960s to handle its California productions, Jack was a frequent visitor to a restaurant where my father worked as a waiter and later as a bartender. 

So here’s me digging Terry’s big band at various clubs on Sunset Blvd., which Jack is producing for sessions on Mercury Records after which he would go to a restaurant [just off of Hollywood Blvd.] where my dad served him dinner. Talk about six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon!!

When I first started the blog in 2008, Jack was a constant supporter always encouraging me with small messages like “... what you are doing is important,” “... you played the music so share your knowledge and experience,” “... you should do more pieces on Pops [Louis Armstrong] and Duke”....

Pretty heady stuff to a novice writer from a former editor of down beat magazine and a major Jazz record producer!!

With Jack’s permission here are the insert notes that he wrote for the CD issue of Terry Gibbs Dream Band: The Big Cat – Volume 5 [Contemporary CCD 7657-2].

After reading these notes, one can easily understand why Jack served as the editor of down beat magazine for many years. Any writer would be well-served by and proud to have such an editor. It’s an honor to share his writing with you on the JazzProfiles website.

Oh, and one more thing, Jack’s writing is funny; he has a way with humor that will have you giggling, chortling and sniggering and wanting to go back and read it all again.

© -Jack Tracy, copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with the author’s permission.

“One day some 30 years ago I sat there listening to this excited voice in my ear on the telephone. No surprise; Terry Gibbs sounds excited even if he's only asking you what time it is.

Dick.'" he yelled. (For some reason he always felt that my surname entitles him to call me Dick.) "Dick, you've got to come out to California and record the band ... we're breaking it up every night at the Summit. Let's get Wally Heider and do a live date."

Perhaps I should fill you in. At the time I was Jazz director for Mercury Records, based in Chicago, and Gibbs was one of the top artists on the roster. He was a poll winner, worked regularly, enjoyed a strong following, and had a compellingly infectious personality. Matter of fact, he still does. He talks approximately as fast as he plays the vibes, and if hypers ever need a poster child, they should pick him. Wally Heider (God rest him) was, hands down, the best sound engineer who ever did a remote. No one since has been able to record a big band on location like Wally. It was in his blood.

To get me out there didn't take a lot of convincing on Gubenko's part. (I call him Gubenko. His surname entities me.)  I'd heard the band before and I knew how good it was. Listening to it was much like riding a roller-coaster there was excitement, yelling, speed, giddiness. breathsucking, stomach tightening elation and just plain awe. Perhaps as good an ensemble band as ever was;  certainly none have been perceptibly better. They came roaring out of the chute on every set, clean and highflying and with great pride in performance. Swing, dynamics, shading, crispness, and confidence were all there all the time and the phrase "joyous abandon" comes readily to mind when describing their playing. They could set a house on fire.

So I said yes, let's do it.

Besides, who in his right mind would pass up an expense covered trip to a Hollywood that was still lush and green, graffiti less and smog free and full of long legged, healthy blonde ladies with golden tans?

So for three nights we recorded every set, and the fitting climax to this tale would of course be that the record was a smash hit and the Dream Band would become one of the biggies of the Sixties.

Wrong.

Because by the end of the 1950s big bands were desperately trying to stay alive. (Big jazz bands, anyway. You take Lawrence Welk ... Please.) Travel costs were up, jazz was on a down cycle, airplay was next to impossible to get, forget about TV, the Beatles came over from England and screwed up everything.

The days of the big bands were over, save for an occasional dinosaur like Basie, Ellington, Herman, or Kenton found hanging on for dear life, and the world of music had changed. Even the second coming of Christ wouldn't have drawn a crowd if he had returned leading a band.

So although we didn't know it then, this was to be the last recorded gasp of the Terry Gibbs big band. For nearly 30 years, anyway, until a perceptive record company recognized that great is great no matter the date and has rereleased every album recorded by the Dream Band.

This one is the finale [actually, there is a 6th - Terry Gibbs Dream Band One More Time], and if you'll accept admittedly prejudiced opinion, it is even better than the preceding four. These are flawless performances of some beautifully written charts. I have listened to them many a time, first when they were initially released and more recently when preparing this essay, and I can't hear a single thing that should be changed, corrected, or improved upon. The band never played better.

Most of the credit for that should go to the leader.  Yes, I know that a chain is never stronger than its weakest link, but Gubenko knows how to select personnel so that there are no sore thumbs or red asses among them, knows how to draw the best effort from every player, knows when to be boss and when to be one of the guys, knows how to pick tempos and pace a set according to the mood of an audience, can play the hell out of his instrument and not just stand up front waving his arms, and sets everyone an example by giving 125 percent at all times. In short, he is one helluva bandleader, and had he been born ten years earlier would have been one of the biggest names of the swing era, when bands were bands and you'd better believe it.

I was always struck by the closeness of this band. One well remembers the Ellington orchestra, for example, where on any given day half the guys might not be talking to the other half, or even to each other. Or Basie's outfits, where there were generally a couple of fiefdoms to be reckoned with. In other instances it might be the case of a starstruck leader communicating with the troops only through an underling.

But this conglomeration of personalities somehow managed to act like a high school cheer team. There was the irrepressible alto saxist, Joe Maini, another of the God-rest-hims, leading the sax section, contributing those startling, angular solos, and cutting up something awful. The brass section was, to be truthful. plain raucous, with Al Porcino, Conte Candoli, and Frank Rosolino the chief truants. (When you hear the guys in Doc Severinsen's band on the Carson show yelling "Yoo," you know where it all started, don't you? On the Gibbs band.)  And if there were any jealousies about anyone getting fewer solos than the next guy, or not being properly recognized, they were well hidden. This was a team that hit the bandstand ready to blow you out of the room.

And if you have never experienced the electrifying shock of hearing a great jazz band up close in a nightclub, you are to be pitied. Concert halls are fine, jazz festivals are OK, but unless you've had your head in the lion's mouth at a Blue Note or Birdland or Summit and actually smelled his breath, you don't know what it was really like to physically feel the energy being generated and to be absorbed into it.

You may have heard me say this before. but on some nights a band would come at you in waves, and you couldn't do much but sit there helplessly. You knew you were being had, and you knew you were being stripped of all propriety and decency, but you just didn't care. There was a joy unmatched, and somehow you had shared something deep and unspoken with those men on the bandstand that you'd never forget. It was thrilling, and if it has never happened to you I am truly sorry.

Gubenko's guys could do it to you. The rhythm section was tight, with Pat Moran on piano (in case you don't remember Pat, a Ms. goes in front of her name) and Buddy Clark (no, not the singer) on bass, with the marvelous Mel Lewis playing drums. Mel (damn, but it hurts to keep saying God rest him) looked sort of funny and all hunched up back there, peering near-sightedly over the ride cymbal, but he was so good. Every nuance of every chart, every little hole that needed filling, every breath that lead trumpeter Porcino took, every shading and inflection, there was Mel, right on top of ft.

Gibbs used to call him "Mel the Tailor" because “I had this old Jewish tailor in Brooklyn who had bunions and he walked funny. Mel walked just like him, so I called him The Tailor and it stuck." In later years Mel was to tell people that he got his nickname because he played “tailor-made drums," but many of us knew better.

As I was saying, Porcino played lead trumpet and he was about as good as they get, right in the same ballpark with Conrad Gozzo, Snooky Young, Johnny Audino, that bunch. Al talks verry slowwwly, and it has been said that a person could spend the better part of an afternoon listening to Porcino and Shorty Rogers say hello.

Most of the trumpet solos came from Candoli and Stu Williamson. Conte blew with great verve, fire, and dash he came up listening to Dizzy. Stu’s solos were pretty, more ruminative. He was never in a hurry.

Rosolino (from now on I'm just abbreviating God rest him" to G.R.H., OK?) simply leaped out of the trombone section on his solos. Blindingly facile. and full of musical humor, he would draw “who was that?" looks from the uninitiated after one of his rapidfire, take-no-prisoners sorties during which he took no prisoners.

Both tenor saxes in the section, Bill Perkins and Richie Kamuca, were also featured as soloists. Kamuca (G. R. H) always used to say he didn't like to play in big bands; he liked the looseness of small groups. But he was proud to play in this one, and often made that known to Gubenko. I loved Kamuca's playing: his solos were such a deep reflection of his quiet, thoughtful, and sensitive personality.

This band was a delightful crew, one that worked chiefly for the fun and fulfilling ness of it, certainly not the money. "We got paid scale at, the Summit," remembers Gubenko, "which at that time was $15 a night. I got double. $30, but gave half to the band manager. My bar bill was usually about $20, because I'd pick up a tab or two, so it cost me at least five bucks a night to work there. But I never had more fun or musical satisfaction in all my life."

Neither did a lot of other people. And, please do me a favor. Put this disc on your machine. kick up the volume, to hell with the neighbors and stick your head in the lion's mouth.

You'll smell his breath.”

Jack Tracy

Santa Barbara, CA

February 1991

“Jack Tracy was the editor of down beat in the 1950s and has been a jazz record producer and freelance writer ever since. He no longer drinks or smokes.”

Leloir - Lensman: Jean-Pierre and Jazz

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“As I look back to the photo that Jean-Pierre captured of Sassy [Sarah Vaughan] and me sitting on the floor at my home in Paris while listening to songs on my record player, I am reminded of all the people, stories, and even the songs we were listening to at that moment. For a picture to have the ability to clearly bring back such memories and emotions is a powerful tool.”

- Quincy Jones

“In my days as a young student, I noticed a photographer under the light of his flash, coming and going around the jazz players, shooting during concerts at the jazz clubs. I didn't know, however, that his name was Jean-Pierre Leioir, and that some time later he would also focus his attention on me. Eventually, I gained some recognition as a jazz player, and with the passing of the years, friendship arose between us under the light of his camera thanks to the quality of his portraits, which always bloomed with life, action and music.”

- Michel Legrand

“I first met Jean-Pierre Leloir at Club Saint Germain des Pres in the '50s. He went there often because, at that time, I think he was primarily interested in jazz musicians. At least that's what it looked like to me. Saint-Germain was at the peak of its popularity then. It was always full of peculiar characters, and Leloir was in the neighborhood almost every night. During that period, Leloir was one of the very few photographers interested in the musicians, and he was certainly the only one who knew us by name. His manners and behavior always seemed very professional, highly precise and meticulous, and it was apparent that he loved what he was doing and admired his chosen models.”

- Martial Solal

 “His photographs of jazz legends in particular bristle with a sense of mutual respect. When they knew the camera was there, one can tell they also had a sense of the man who was behind it. When the photographs were shot candidly, Leloir framed the musicians in a manner that honored and celebrated their stature.”

- Ashley Kahn

I’ve commented many times before on this page about the affinity between Jazz in performance and photography.

Each time I purchase a book of Jazz photographs this natural liking of one for the other is brought home to me once again.

What is also reinforced by the process of viewing a folio of a Jazz photographer’s work is the powerful truth contained in this axiom by Aristotle:

“We are all different with regard to those things we have in common.”

Put another way, while all Jazz photographers have the camera in common, the manner in which they go about employing it is different, at times, startlingly so.

A case in point are the photographs in Marion Leloir Jazz Images by Jean-Pierre Leloir, with assistance from Gerardo Cañellas and Jordi Soley [Elemental Music 2016].

Because he lived and worked in Paris, Jean-Pierre had to wait for Jazz to come to him, initially when American musicians arrived as guests to perform in concerts and clubs and then later when many of them came to Paris to live as expatriots.

But when he did encounter the music and its makers, Jean-Pierre was ready and made the most of it, perhaps, because as Michel Legrand explains “Jean-Pierre himself was a musician, but his choice of instrument was a camera, which he never put away.”

The following excerpt from the Quincy Jones Introduction to  Jazz Images by Jean-Pierre Leloir provides a glimpse into the quality that made Jean-Pierre unique as a Jazz Lensman:

“We do not take pictures for the sake of having the image last, but we take them to retain the stories that are paired with them -and that is exactly what I find so captivating about Jean Pierre Leloir's work. He was not just a photographer; instead, he was a preserver of history. As a result, this book holds hundreds of stories that shine a light onto the lives of those who live in these pages. 

Leloir had a unique ability to preserve an entire atmosphere and its surrounding emotions between the four corners of a picture, but beyond his talent as a photographer, he presented himself not as paparazzi, but a friend. He and my other brother Herman Leonard were two of a kind; they had the same passion for photography and an endless supply of vision.”

For my taste, what I find so striking about Leloir’s work are the expanded close-ups that fill the entire page with a face, a face that’s beautifully texture by the use of light the reveals all of its contours giving the portrait a three-dimensional quality. These portraits look as though the essence of the person is diffused into the photograph. 

As his daughter Marion comments in her Foreword:

“… [His] photos tell stories about jazz, almost allowing us to hear the music. The portraits of the artists with their audience invite us into the intimacy of that moment, reflecting the alchemy between music and light my father embodied.”

Perhaps a fuller expression of Leloir’s accomplishments as a Jazz photographer is contained in the following 

PREFACE by Ashley Kahn

“Jean-Pierre Leloir appears in the 2001 documentary The Miles Davis Story -sharp tie, round glasses, and distinctive, thick moustache: a professor of some sort. He's onscreen only briefly, speaking English with a musical Parisian accent, describing how the European experience for black American musicians was one of uncommon freedom, especially in France.

It's a funny moment: the interviewer tries to guide him into using the word "respect" but Leloir is already focused on the idea of "freedom" - the freedom to be and do as one pleases, musically or recreationally, without fear. "Yes, freedom, respect," he says, waving his hand, clearly preferring to say it in his own way. "They were accepted as musicians but they were free."

Both men are correct of course -American jazzmen of color did and still do flock to Europe for all these reasons, to create music that is appreciated, and to engage with life free from the restrictions and the racial shadows back home. But I love how in those few seconds Leloir's inner nature cannot help but reveal itself: he was strong-willed and stubbornly independent. He was fiercely dedicated to an ideal of creative and individual expression. He saw the world as right and wrong, and marked the line between the two with clarity and an upright chin.

There's no doubt that artists, cultural leaders and politicians recognized this in Leloir. His photographs of jazz legends in particular bristle with a sense of mutual respect. When they knew the camera was there, one can tell they also had a sense of the man who was behind it. When the photographs were shot candidly, Leloir framed the musicians in a manner that honored and celebrated their stature.

I met and communicated with Leloir a number of times to see how I might include his photographs in books or documentaries. When I could, I traveled to Paris to meet and negotiate with him face to face. "I cannot see this project happening without your images," I said the first time we met. I was sincere but he didn't want to hear that. He did not trust accolades. We would first nail down the terms of the agreement, then he would allow me a look at his contact sheets - amazing photographs that held so much history, and the promise of maybe a backstory.

I remember standing with Leloir in his office near La Bourse, looking over photos taken in concert at L'Olympia in 1960 - rare images of John Coltrane on his last tour with Miles Davis. I asked him what he remembered of the music, of the crowd's reaction. He looked at one photo and thought. "I remember I had trouble getting the angle right," he said. "I needed to get around some other photographers who were crowding that part of the stage. But see, I got it..."

To Leloir, in the end, his craft was his priority, and his intentions are here for the eye to see and the heart to feel. To him, words were all too often superfluous. Did he respect, revere these giants of jazz? Do we even need to ask? The photographs Leloir took have helped canonize (no pun intended) his subjects, but of course he never saw it that way. To him they were all giants already.”

Some Other Time from 'The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album'

The 90th anniversary of Bill Evans' birth is coming up on August 16th.

Thought I'd get an early start on the celebration by listening to the recordings he made with Tony Bennett.

“The greatest music lesson I ever got,” said Tony Bennett, “The most powerful thing he taught me was to search only for truth and beauty.”

Chick Corea - The Chameleon by Mike Zwerin

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Chick Corea is one of the most prodigious performers and prolific composers of our time. The recipient of 15 Grammy Awards and nominated a total of 51 times, Chick Corea is best known for his work with Return to Forever, Origin, the Elektric Band, his duo with Gary Burton and his numerous super trios and quartets. Corea has been a transformative force in music for over 50 years and has worked in many styles and genres, with musicians from the jazz, classical and pop music worlds.

The late Paris-based jazz musician and International Herald Tribune writer Mike Zwerin posted a 41-week series entitled Sons of Miles to Culturekiosque Jazznet. In this series, Zwerin looks back at Miles Davis and the leading jazz musicians he influenced in a series of interviews and personal reminiscences. Here is the Chick Corea piece in that series. It was published on May 14, 1998 so add 20 years to any math in the article. 

“Chick Corea likes to meet his targets. Controlling his own destiny is essential to him. He's sort of like a corporation that way. He is a corporation. A hip one, but still...

If he decides in advance to start a piano solo with a certain kind of feeling, but then for some reason, right or wrong, objective or subjective, finds something else at the last minute, he feels he let himself down somehow. Like he didn't have the nerve or the energy or the smarts to see it through. Weird? This may sound over-disciplined for a jazz musician, but he is in fact anything but predictable. 

Since the early '70s, when he recorded "In A Silent Way" with Miles Davis's first rock-oriented band, and right after that his own jazz-rock fusion group Return to Forever (RTF) launched him into the big time, he has grown into one of the most eclectic, influential and respected figures on the scene.

There are, it should be noted, people who do not approve of his being a Scientologist, and working for their cause. But he tends to keep his beliefs to himself. It would be difficult, in any case to preach to jazz musicians, who can make a religion out of Devout Skepticism. His flutist and reed player the late Joe Farrell once told him: "Hey, man. Don't lay that Scientology shit on me." 

As a leader and soloist, Corea has switched between electric and acoustic bands, acoustic and electric keyboards, solo improvisational concerts, and post-bop, Latin, electro-pop and funk styles. He also writes and records children's songs and records and presents recitals of classical music. 

Discipline even extends to breaking discipline. Moving contrary to ecological currents, Corea started to smoke cigarettes in June, 1993, after years of abstinence. Not that he considered them good for his health; he just remembered how much he used to enjoy smoking. He intended to stop the following June and you better believe he did it. He has been called "The Chameleon." 

"People have their own taste and the basic freedom to change it at any given moment," the Chameleon said. "I do not consider someone who likes one color one day and another the next fickle. That's the challenge when you are presenting people with your ideas. It takes guts and intelligence to change your mind in public. 

"Here's what I have to offer today and here's how I put it across. I don't like to be forced into one bag or another. Music is a process rather than one song or an album. One offering is only a part of a stream of offerings."

John Patitucci, electric bass, and David Weckl, drums, built strong reputations as fusion players with Corea's "Elektric Band." But then they became the battery of his "Akoustic Band," Patitucci having switched to the string bass. Old bags were continually being traded in around Corea.

He likes life "crisp, crystal clear and to the point." Down Beat magazine called him "jazz's most protean and unpredictable character," going on to quote him: "I base everything I do - my whole art of music - on the communication that emanates from me and my group straight to the listener....So whatever [instrument] I'm playing is of very secondary consideration." His friend and colleague the vibraphonist Gary Burton called him "the most prolific and versatile of any modern jazz musician."

Sitting in the lobby of a fancy Parisian hotel, one that is more often host to rich rock musicians, Corea puffed an American Spirit cigarette ("organically grown tobacco, no additives in the paper"). Looking clean, fit and bright he takes enough time to carefully consider what he talks about. 

(For parenthetical example, about John Coltrane: "The reason any of us go into an art form is to find the freedom to create something we like. It was inspiring to hear Trane follow through his creation so consistently and thoroughly on such a high level of finesse and development.")

Corea created Stretch Records - a subsidiary of GRP, a subsidiary of MCA, a subsidiary of Universal (so it goes in the multinational world) - as a showcase for his own bands and also the people who worked with him. It made sense, he had already built a state-of-the-art recording studio. 

He was only a consultant, he had no ambitions to produce. He did not want to change his basic life as a performing musician. Most of all it was about karma: "Every musician of value has in mind where he wants to go with his own creation. If that instinct is ignored within a group, and the members are only allowed to play what is required in the group context, the leader's context, the group becomes stilted very quickly." 

So he always tried to help the guys in his bands with their own projects. His management team was very active dealing with their recordings and tours as well as his own. His self-assurance was impressive - competition was not a threat. All the more so for his utter lack of pomposity. He seemed to be plugged into good sense like a computer with its printer. 

The mechanical implications of that simile may seem a bit simplistic. But machines have been very important in Corea's career. For example, the expression "plugged-in" assumes a literal as well as a figurative connotation in his case.

The image of Corea that somehow stays in the mind of someone who has known him for awhile is in a studio with Keith Jarrett, Joe Zawinul and Herbie Hancock recording on electronic keyboards with Miles. They are producing a veritable cascade of highly reverbed wah-wah spinoffs. Visually, it appears as though the three of them are being sucked into a spaghetti-like tangle of wires connecting a cornucopia of fancy and state-of-the-art hardware. And they are loud. 

They also became popular and expensive. Some people accused them of being, so to speak, expensive hookers - doing what they were doing for money not love. That was partially jealousy of course. Everybody wanted that heavy bread. Those guys left Miles's band with a graduate degree in Pricing. 

In the late '70s, on the basis of RTF's fusion sales record, he was given what Corea called a "big-time advance" by Warner Brothers. But while the company was expecting a sort of RTF2, he was by then interested in making acoustic chamber jazz. The first two records under the deal did not sell well. 

The balance between the money and the product was "way out of whack," he said. "When a record doesn't make its money back, if that goes on for awhile, then a musician is going to feel like his product is no good. The financial reality tends to invalidate the musical value. Eventually it puts the musician in a frame of mind where he uses his energy trying to make music that isn't really his." 

Even though Warners was committed to four more albums - Corea had engaged a "big-time lawyer" to draw up the contract - he offered them a graceful way out. "Look," he said. "Let's just drop it. That way you don't have to pay me and I don't have to deliver something I don't want to do right now." The president wrote him a letter saying what a nice guy he was.

Of course it's easy to be a nice guy when you're giving other people money, which is what it amounted to. But then you must be confident that you have the talent, courage and commercial instinct to make more of your own on your own terms. 

After the interview, on his way out of the hotel lobby, The Chameleon mentioned that he was painting now. It was only a hobby but obviously important to him. Although he didn't seem to realize it, his explanation of what painting meant to him explained his relationship to music as well: 

"I find myself always looking at light and color and shading,. I am always looking for a way to frame the environment, to put it into perspective."

Nueva Manteca - CRIME

"The Theme from The Godfather" as arranged by pianist Jan Laurens Hartong for the group Nueva Manteca featuring Ilja Reijngoud, trombone,Ben van den Dungen, sax, Ed Verhoeff, guitar, Jeroen Vierdag, bass, Nils Fischer, and Lucas van Merwijk conga and drums, respectively.