Many multi-instrumentalists had fun with over-dubbing and or multi-tracking when the long-playing record and audio tape first became a part of the Jazz scene in the 1950’s. I mean, why not try to coordinate recording all the instruments you can play even if what’s fun for you was an audio nightmare for the engineers in the pre-digital age?
Pianist like Lennie Tristano and Bill Evans were early experimenters with multi-tracking as was pianist Victor Feldman.
And then, of course, there was Rahsaan Roland Kirk who played three reed instruments at the same time thereby obviating the need for multi-tracking entirely!
Because of Victor Feldman’s proficiency on vibes, drums and a host of other percussion instruments, it was only a matter of time before Victor took multi-tracking to another level by “playing everything in sight.”
More details about Victor’s career and his multi-tracking project can be found in Arnold Shaw’s liner notes to Victor Feldman Plays Everything In Sight [Pacific Jazz - PJ-10121].
Victor Feldman without a musical instrument is like an elephant without tusks, a lion without a roar, a fish without fins. Master of so many instruments it is difficult to keep track, he undertakes the more difficult feat in this debut LP on World Pacific by playing many of them simultaneously. Marvel at the musicianship of this one-man band, but savor with delight the feast of swinging and ear-tingling sounds he produces.
Born in London in April 1934, Feldman played drums on the concert stage at the age of six — they called him Kid Krupa — performed at London's Rhythm Club at seven, guested with Glenn Miller's AEF band at nine, and became Britain's #1 vibe man while he was still in his teens. For five successive years, he won Musical Express' top award. Migrating to the United States in 1955, he worked with Woody Herman for a year, was a member of the Lighthouse All Stars from '57 to '59, gigged with Cannonball Adderley's Quintet for a year and accompanied Peggy Lee on her first European tour. When Benny Goodman brought jazz to Russia at the request of the State Department, Feldman was invited along a.s featured player both with the sextet as well as the King of Swing's big band. Just before he embarked off the one-man musical journey incorporated in this LP, Feldman wrote and recorded an album with Miles Davis, Seven Steps to Heaven.
In Hollywood, where he settled shortly after his marriage to the former Marilyn McGrath —they live in Woodland Hills with their three sons and two rabbits named Peter add Bartok—Feldman functions as one of the busiest of studio musicians. He records regularly with such artists as Frank Sinatra, Hank Mancini, Bobby Darin — you name them — playing timpani, celeste, marimba and xylophone. Albums bearing his own signature are to be heard on many labels and include a jazz version of the score of the Broadway hit Stop the World, I Want to Get Off and a recent LP, The World's First Album of Soviet Jazz Themes.
Although this is not Feldman's first recording as a one-man band — he made an LP for Esquire while he was still a British musician — it is his first release in the genre here. In response to questions regarding the mechanics of playing all the instruments himself, he explained: "I start out by recording either the piano or drum track first. I work from a sketch arrangement, adding other instruments as I go along. Once the melodic and harmonic designs are clearly established, I bring in the Fender bass piano, which is so important to the rhythm. I introduce my third major instrument toward the end. (I started out playing drums as a kid, studied piano, and vibes came third.) Afterward, I put in the decorative touches — like a punctuating triangle in Have a Heart. It takes a minimum of four demanding hours in the studio to complete a tune. The toughest , part is getting back into the swing of a number each time around, not merely the problem of timekeeping - but the more vita! matters of pulse and beat. And don't overlook the engineering problems involved. Dick Bock, who produced this LP, as well as his engineers, did a masterful job of balancing the various instruments and keeping.the sound fresh and vibrant through the. various"stages of recording."
In the course of the ten songs comprising this LP, Feldman plays virtually every percussive and rhythm instrument available, and plays them all with a virtuosity and vigor that are overwhelming. His mastery of both keyboard instruments (piano and electric piano) is evident in Do the Jake, a gospel spellbinder, and in By Myself, which combines impressive multi-fingered chording and attractive one-finger jazz styling. Vibe improvisation peaks in Sure As You're Born [Johnny Mandel theme for the movie Harper which starred Paul Newman]. His superb handling of Fender bass piano contributes mightily to the jazz waltz Have A Heart and the swinging hit of the Glenn Miller years, In the Mood. His drumming throughout is of such a high order as to make this, a solid dance album. Considering his finger dexterity in playing various keyboard instruments, it is startling that he handles the bongos and conga drums, which tend to toughen one's hands, with such force—listen to Geronimo. What counts in any album, a part from an artist's display of virtuosity, is the musical content. To put it simply, regardless of the number of instruments Feldman plays, this is an instrumental LP for repeat listening.”
The following video features Victor’s piano and vibes playing at its swinging best on By Myself as set to images and drawing of the Angels Flight funicular in Los Angeles, CA.
An Interview with Johnny Mandel, Concerning his Compositions and Arrangements for Hollywood Films, Television and Recordings
“It takes a long time to get good … I am very grateful for everything that has happened to me as a result of being in the music business. I was lucky and I enjoyed every minute of it.”
- Johnny Mandel
This interview was presented at the annual conference of the IAJE in Long Beach, CA in January of 2002. It was first published in lAJE's Jazz Research Proceedings Yearbook - Larry Fisher, Editor.
The amazing musical career of Johnny Mandel can be divided generally into two major sections. The first part was spent as a performer on trombone and bass trumpet and/or as an arranger for some of the finest groups of the big band era. These bands included those of Buddy Rich, Georgie Auld, Alvino Rey, Woody Herman, Terry Gibbs, Elliot Lawrence, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and others. The second part began as the popularity of the big bands declined. After World War II, Johnny did some arranging for the last of the major network radio programs. He then transferred those skills to television in 1950 and wrote arrangements for musical segments on "Your Show of Shows" staring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, which also featured Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks. He wrote arrangements for Las Vegas casino shows, which included the top vocalists of that era and eventually arranged and composed music for Hollywood Films. Johnny won several Grammy awards for his popular songs written for movies and arrangements he did for recordings with Shirley Horn, Natalie Cole, Toots Theilemans, and Quincy Jones plus one for the music for the movie, "I Want to Live!" His songs, "A Time for Love" and the "Theme from M*A*S*H" received Academy Award nominations and he won an Oscar for "The Shadow of Your Smile."
This oral history is an edited transcription of the last part of our more than two-hour telephone conversation on September 23, 1996. I sincerely thank Mr. Mandel for sharing his time and his recollections with me.
Johnny Mandel: I moved to California intending to stay there at the beginning of 1954 and played for six weeks with Duke and Jimmy Rowles. After that, I knew I wasn't going to play anymore. I haven't picked up the horn since.
Larry Fisher: Is this the time that you began writing film scores?
JM: I didn't do a movie for about four years. I really did everything else first. I wrote arrangements for many singers including Peggy Lee, Andy Williams and Frank Sinatra. I also wrote for many acts that went to Las Vegas. I even worked there for a while and basically did everything musically that it took to write for the movies. I really wasn't interested in doing movies until I reluctantly took on the challenge. I soon discovered that my previous experience with casino shows was just like working with the visual effect of dancers in Broadway shows. In New York at WMGM I wrote for radio dramas and had to make the music fit time intervals that were predetermined down to the second. When I got into the movies all of the individual skills I developed had to be used together and it felt totally natural. The first movie I was involved in was in 1958. It was "I Want to Live!"
LF: What a great movie and a great way to start.
JM: It was good, and I said, "Hey, I like this kind of work."
LF: How did the jazz music fit into the whole scheme of the movie? How was it put together?
JM: Actually, it was an interesting thing in the sense that we had a story that would work with a jazz score, one of the few I've ever seen. The female lead played by Susan Hayward was a jazz fan and loved Gerry Mulligan. Record producer Jack Lewis was with United Artists at the time. He got hold of this deal and called me to work on the movie. His plan for me was in two parts. The first was to write the music for the film using a small group that included Gerry Mulligan, Art Farmer, Bud Shank, Red Mitchell, Pete Jolly, Frank Rosolino and Shelly Mann. I wrote all the tunes and arrangements. Later we wanted to record another version of the movie score using a much bigger group. There were no strings and it was like a large wind ensemble.
I knew that I could write this score using only jazz material and I did it using traditional movie technique with the music all timed down to a 10th of a second. Bending jazz music into the dramatic situations felt right because the concept of the story was sound. I'll say that it was the first all jazz movie score, probably the only one, and it worked because the material was right for it. I had people who wanted me to write jazz scores for other movies since then but I have always declined. The scripts didn't seem to be completely compatible with jazz and I didn't want it to sound like a shotgun wedding.
LF: What other movies were you involved in after "I Want To Live!"
JM: Next was "The Americanization of Emily" in, I believe 1963, and "The Sandpiper" in 1964.
LF: What can you tell me that was new or special about these experiences?
JM: I really didn't become a songwriter until this time. I had written lots of instrumental music and never thought of myself as a songwriter, but I got forced into writing a song which turned out to be "Emily." They like the theme music I wrote for "The Americanization of Emily" and I was asked to make a song out of it. I said, "I don't write lyrics, we need a lyricist." They said, "OK, who do you want." I said, "let's start at the top, get Johnny Mercer." They did and he wrote the words. "Emily" become a big hit largely because this was back at a time when publishers were really earning their money with aggressive promotion. As I said before, I never started off wanting to become a songwriter, but I really enjoyed doing it. It wasn't because of the money, but more for the satisfaction and being able to work with some new great people.
The soundtrack music for "The SandPiper" was my next project. The song "The Shadow of Your Smile" had works written by Paul Webster, a wonderful lyricist who also collaborated with me on "A Time for Love" from the movie "An American Dream." Both were nominated for Academy Awards, but I received my Oscar for "The Shadow of Your Smile." It also won a Grammy and was voted "Song of the Year."
LF: In what other movies did you become involved?
JM: There were many but not as significant at the box office as the ones we just talked about. There was "Being There," "The Verdict," "Death Trap," "Point Blank," "The Russians are Conning," to name only a few. Then, of course, there was "M*A*S*H." The "Theme from M*A*S*H" is my biggest song, but it certainly wasn't my best effort.
LF: Would you consider "The Shadow of Your Smile" you best song writing effort?
JM: I don't know if it's my favorite song. "A Time for Love" might be a better song or "Close Enough for Love" might be even better. Who am I to say, every composer has favorite songs that nobody has ever heard of.
LF: There are very few people that have never heard the "Theme from M*A*S*H" due to the amazing popularity of the television series. Please shed some light on your involvement.
JM: I did a movie with Robert Altman in 1968 or 1969 titled "That Cold Day in the Park." It was a nice little movie out in Vancouver and Bob and I had gotten along very well. He was starting to work on the movie, "M*A*S*H" and it was decided that I would write the music. It was a very funny screenplay and it looked like it was going to be a great movie and a whole lot of fun. We had no idea at that time that it was going to be a big hit movie or that a television show would be a spin off. There was a section of the movie referred to as "the last supper scene" where the dentist, "the painless Pole," was going to commit suicide because he was unable to perform sexually with a W.A.C. the night before. He figured his life was over and had no alternative than to do away with himself because of this humiliation. This scene was one of the first sequences we were going to film. It's nice when you can be on a picture from the beginning. Bob and I were sitting around having a few drinks several days before they started shooting when he said, "in this last super scene there's a part when they're all filing around the coffin dropping things in like a bottle of Scotch, a Playboy magazine and other items to help see this guy to the next world." "It's kind of dead and we should have a song." "It should be the stupidest damn song you ever heard." I said, "Ok, I can do stupid." We sat in silence for a few minutes then Bob said, "Suicide is Painless... that would be a nice title for this." I agreed. He said, "I used to write lyrics and I'm going to take it home and see what I can do with this." He came back a few days later and said,
"Look, I tried fooling around with that song but there's too much up in this 45-year-old computer, my brain, for me to write anything as stupid as I really need." 1 indicated that it was a shame and that I thought it was a good idea. He said, however, that all was not lost. "I have a 14-year-old kid with a guitar who is a total idiot and he'll be able to run through this in 5 minutes." Bob's son, Michael Altman wrote the words to the entire song and dummied it to a Leonard Cohen melody in a 6/8 meter. After I listened to the tape repeatedly it was hard for me to get away from this melody, but I used his lyrics and eventually wrote the familiar melody which for the movie became "Suicide is Painless." Later for the television series the words were not used and it simply became known as the "Theme From M*A*S*H." We pre-recorded the song, which was common practice for a movie and the next day did the filming with the actors mouthing the words. They liked the tune so much that they also stuck it up front of the movie and under the helicopters. I fought them on that and told them that it didn't fit. They said they liked it there and it would stay. I'm really glad I lost that fight. This introduction carried over to the television series and became the biggest hit I had.
LF: M*A*S*H reruns continue to be aired in the U.S. on many stations just about every day and the same is probably true all over the world. Your music has reached millions and millions of people.
JM: It's just like the old adage, "Don't throw anything away, it may become a hit." Many songs have fallen under this category. For instance, the song, "Mona Lisa" was written for a terrible "C" movie titled "Captain Cary U.S.A.." It was never thought to have potential or meant to be a hit song, but they didn't consider the artistry of Nat King Cole. His recording is a classic.
LF: You did arrangements for Natalie Cole's album, "Unforgettable." How was her live singing combined with Nat's recordings?
JM: We brought him back from the dead and produced the duets. We called these techniques "necrophilia tricks." Seriously, the concept originated with Natalie. She did her act in nightclubs and included a segment of her father's songs. She got a film clip of Nat singing "Unforgettable" so they devised a way to project the clip of Nat singing on a screen in the back of the stage and Natalie sang along as a duet. This always got a real response from the audience and it became the genesis for the recording and the video.
LF: Tell me about how the recording was put together.
JM: We used a three track 4 inch tape recorder that was originally designed to record all those terrible singers in the 1950s. They were amateurs for the most part taken right off of parking lots and the companies got records out of them. The musicians in the bands backing them up loved these singers because they were running up fantastic overtime until the singers were able to record an acceptable product. The record companies started screaming for new 3 track technology by which they could record the band in right and left stereo and send them home. The middle track was reserved for these schmucks and they would work with them until they got it right. That's how 3 track recording originated. Anyway, back to Natalie and Nat. I thought it would be best to use a 3 track recorder instead of 2 track stereo which would have been tougher to deal with Nat's singing and the band accompaniment.
Basically, we wanted to fish out his voice and use it with Natalie and a new accompaniment. In the days when Nat was recording they didn't use recording booths. He was separated from the band by screens or flats since there was no ceiling. As we put the new recording together we were able to get enough volume on Nat's voice so we could use it, but the accompaniment would leak through. I then had to write something that wouldn't conflict with what was going on with the orchestra and the parts he was singing. When Natalie was singing by herself, I could write whatever accompaniment I wanted because we muted Nat's track. When she sang to him, duet style, we would open his track and combine her live voice with his recorded voice and my instrumental arrangements.
LF: That's fascinating!
JM: It was, and quite eerie while we were doing it. We couldn't see into the booth and it was like he was in there with her. His voice would come over and we were playing live. It was very moving when we were doing it. Natalie's mom was there in the studio and she was falling apart, in total tears. I didn't expect it, but it was a very emotional experience the first time we did it.
LF: Do you have any other inside stories you would be willing to talk about?
JM: Dave Grusin and I did a lot of writing for Andy Williams when he had his real good television show. Andy had great ears and I used to try to challenge him and play games with the music, but it was all in fun. I'd write impossible-to-hear modulations and stuff like that, but never once was I able to throw him. I was sure I got him on several occasions, but he essentially said, "No you don't" by always hitting it right on the nose. He could hear anything and he's a very talented guy.
LF: I was always impressed with his big sound and the clarity of his voice.
JM: He was a protege of Kay Thompson, a singer and theater type. She used to do an act and had the Williams Brothers backing her when they were little kids. Andy had the kind of training where he had to sing all those hard-to-hear parts. That stayed with him throughout his career which is why I was never able to throw him.
LF: Can you relate some advice to students who may be interested in a career of writing music for TV or the movies?
JM: I wish I could say something positive. If I had a kid who wanted to go into the business he would have to want to do it an awful lot because he's going to have to put up with an awful lot of crap. When I went into the business, I was willing to put up with anything. It was very different then and there were a lot more opportunities of course.
LF: Has the synthesizer, low budgets, and maybe greed changed things for good?
JM: Yeah, but it's also the executives and the people who are running the business. If you look at the quality of the movies coming out it just really stinks. It's done by amateurs for the most part, not only the music, but the movies themselves. There isn't any know-how by someone who has been doing it for 30 or 40 years like there used to be. It takes a long time to get good.
LF: Are you saying that nothing beats paying your dues?
JM: Yeah, that's how you learn, how you get good. It's not by finding winning formulas that will gross a lot of box office for a limited period of time until the next fad comes along. That's not what getting good is all about at all. Getting good means falling on your ass and learning what to do, what not to do, what works, what doesn't work and why it doesn't. It takes this process to become a really well rounded talent. It's not something you usually have from the start unless you are going to be a "one trick pony" or something who hits it once or twice and then is finished.
LF: When you were hired to do a film score were you in charge of what was actually good?
JM: No film composer is totally in charge of anything.
LF: Then you have to put up with the editing of others?
JM: Oh, they try to make unwise changes and that is the main reason I don't want to do films anymore. There are too many amateurs cutting and pasting.
LF: So, if someone came to you with a proposal to do another film would you consider it at all or just turn it down?
JM: It would have to be a very special situation.
LF: How about television?
JM: No, absolutely not.
LF: If you could do some things over again, what would they be?
JM: I wouldn't know where to begin, but I'd get to know a lot of people much better than I did. When you're young you think everything is going to be here forever. I thought big bands would be forever, what did I know?
LF: Big band music is forever in the minds of people who love this music and appreciate the talent and the culture of those who created it. Mozart is also forever, but it's up to the music educators to show the value of all kinds of quality music to new generations. It doesn't seem to get any easier for us to accomplish this. We are competing with overwhelming marketing that is successfully selling trash to connoisseurs of the inconsequential.
JM: I am very grateful for everything that has happened to me as a result of being in the music business. I was lucky and I enjoyed every minute of it.
LF: Your career evolved into a beautiful upward spiral that took you from one challenge to the next, You built on past experience, paid your dues, and wound up enjoying each new level of the demands made on your talent for composing and arranging. Your success is highly commendable. What are you working on now and what are your future plans?
JM: I like songwriting a whole lot and it's very hard for me to write songs that are not connected to something. The type of songs I like to write are not bought by the movies anymore so it's mostly my own stuff right now. I just want to make some records of my own songs. I'd really like to do big band arrangements again and some large, nice, lush orchestra scores.
LF: Do you foresee a market for this?
JM: No, I'm just going to do it and then worry about selling it later. If I worry about selling it first, I don't know that I'll like what I've done later. I've gotten to the point that I'll just do it and maybe somebody sooner or later will want it. If they don't, I'll have enjoyed doing it. I might as well do the things I enjoy. If I don't do it now, when am I going to do it?
Jazz history is full of
enfant terribles, mythical characters, maudits, legendary figures who seem to
have been born in order to become protagonists in hardboiled stories of the
darkest nature. Outsiders destined to a mala vita, which can only be avoided
thanks to an inborn talent that transforms them into all-time romantic symbols
of the artist and his struggle. Tony Fruscella was one of these characters.
As a musician, Tony Fruscella
led an intermediate path between Bop (Dizzy Gillespie) and Cool (Miles Davis),
a style later made popular by Chet Baker (whom Tony regarded as
"Chatty" Baker, by the way). His dense, muted, velvety sound
expressed a sense of poetry full of "literary" references, in the low
and medium registers, of a rich variety of tonalities that made his solos
sensual, deep and somewhat melancholy.
- J.G.Calvados. Translated by A. Padilla
“Tony is no Bix, and for that
matter, no Miles Davis, …, but it’s the rich, full whisper of his middle and
especially his low register that sets him apart immediately.”
- Claude Nobs
“In the right setting, Tony’s
lyrical creativity was unsurpassed.”
- John Williams, Jazz pianist
“All works of art are not
produced by a handful of major poets, painters, musicians, or whatever, and at
any time there are always hundreds of others active and often creating
worthwhile, but overlooked, contributions to their chosen area of activity. It
ought to be the duty of a critic to recognize those contributions, though too
many take the easy way out and concentrate on a few famous names. This is
certainly true of jazz writing, with the result that numerous musicians are
virtually forgotten.”
– John Dunton
John Dunton is a
past, regular contributor to the Penniless Press which is edited by Alan Dent.
I have populated
the piece with photos that are not a part of the original essay. The video tribute to Tony
“The name Tony
Fruscella may not mean much unless you have a specific interest in the modem
jazz of the l940s and 1950s but the facts of his life and his few appearances
on records, say a great deal about the period and the musicians he worked with.
A fascinating jazz "underground" comes to life when his activities
are examined, and it offers, as well, a comment on the society in which
Fruscella and his contemporaries sought to function.
Fruscella was born
in Greenwich
Village in 1927,
though his family belonged to the Italian-American working class of that area
rather than to the bohemian element. His childhood years are largely
undocumented, but he was brought up in an orphanage from an early age and seems
to have had little exposure to music other than as it related to the church.
However, he left the orphanage when he was about fourteen or fifteen, started
studying the trumpet, and came into contact with both classical music and jazz.
He appears to have been quick to develop his skills and was soon playing in
public. When he was eighteen he went into the army and gained more experience
by playing in an army band. It was around this time that Fruscella also
encountered the new modern sounds of the day, and the post-war years saw him
mixing with the many young, white New York jazzmen who were devoted to bebop and cool
jazz. They had an almost-fanatical belief in the music and had little time for
anything else.
William Carraro
recalled: "We'd jam at lofts, or flats in old tenement houses on Eighth Avenue, around 47th or 48th Street. The empty rooms were rented for a few
hours, and the musicians and the 'cats' that came by just to listen would chip
in whatever they could afford at the moment to help pay the rent. Brew Moore,
Chuck Wayne and many other names-to-be came by."
One of the
musicians who participated in these sessions was an alto-player by the name of
Chick Maures, and in 1948 he and Fruscella recorded for a small label called
Century, though the records never appeared commercially until thirty years
later. They are fascinating documents in terms of what they say about jazz
developments. Of course, by 1946 bebop was well-established, and the music
shows the influence of the famous Charlie Parker quintet of those days. But the
tricky themes played in unison by the alto and trumpet also suggest an
awareness of the kind of approach favored by pianist Lennie Tristano and his
disciples Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh, who were cooler and more careful in their
improvising. And Fruscella's trumpet playing, though superficially akin to that
of Miles Davis, had its own subtlety and warmth. [In my opinion,] Fruscella was
more melodic than Davis.
But what happened
after the heady days and nights of the late1940s'? Fruscella and the others no
doubt continued to play when and where they could, and a few even got to work
professionally. But paying jobs, especially those involving jazz, were often
hard to come by. Bob Reisner, a writer around Greenwich Village in the early1950s, recalled that Fruscella
never seemed to have a permanent address:
"Short
marriages, short stays in hospitals and jails, and he invented the crash pad.
He walked the streets, an orphan of the world, but with incredible dignity. He
never accepted anything for free. He would cook and clean and play music if you
put him up."
The chaotic nature
of Fruscella's life wasn't improved by his use of alcohol and drugs. He wasn't
alone in this. Chick Maures, his companion on the 1948 record date, died from a
drugs overdose in 1954, and Don Joseph, a trumpeter who was not unlike
Fruscella in his playing and was close to him as a person, had a career that
was marred by drug addiction. Both were wayward to the point of
self-destruction. Bob Reisner once got them an engagement at the famous summer
festival at Music Inn in the Berkshires, but Fruscella, when asked by a polite
listener what he would play next, replied "We Want Whiskey Blues," and
refused to carry on until a bottle was provided. And Joseph somehow managed to
insult the son of the owner of the place. Bassist Bill Crow, who was around New York at the time and
later wrote a fine book, From Birdland to Broadway, about his experiences,
remembered Fruscella almost losing them a rare job in a club with his response
to a customer's invitation to have a drink: "Well, I'm already stoned, and
the bread is pretty light on this gig, so would you mind just giving me the
cash?" Crow said that he "loved the way Tony played in a small
group,” but noted that he didn't fit into a big-band format. His low-key style
needed a small group and an intimate club setting to allow it to
flourish.
It's perhaps
indicative of Fruscella's lifestyle, and his liking for a Bohemian environment
that Beat writer Jack Kerouac knew him in the 1950s. In his "New York
Scenes," a short prose piece included in Lonesome Traveler, Kerouac
writes:
"What about
that guy Tony Fruscella who sits cross-legged on the rug and plays Bach on his
trumpet, by ear, and later on at night there he is blowing with the guys at a
session, modern jazz." Kerouac also mentioned Don Joseph in the same
piece: "He stands at the jukebox in the bar and plays with the music for a
beer."
There were a few
moments of near-glory in Fruscella's career. In 1951 he was hired to play in
Lester Young's group, though the job lasted only a couple of weeks and no
recorded evidence of it exists. It would seem that Fruscella was ousted from
the band due to some sort of rivalry which may have involved a form of reverse
racism.
Pianist Bill
Triglia, who worked with Fruscella over the years, tells the story:
'Fruscella was a
white fellow and very friendly with Miles Davis and used to jam with him. He
played with myself and Red Mitchell a lot. He had a beautiful sound. He didn't
play high, he didn't play flashy, but he played beautiful low register, very
modem. When Kenny Drew left and some jobs came up, John
Lewis was playing with Lester. According to what I heard, and Tony Fruscella
was a good friend of mine, Tony used to get drunk with Lester. Lester loved
him. He didn't play the same style as Lester, but it fit nicely, it was a
beautiful contrast, but John Lewis didn't like Tony. Tony said he didn't like
him because he was properly white, I don't know, but John Lewis tried to get
somebody else on. The next job they had Lester's manager didn't call Tony
Fruscella and he was so hurt, because he loved Lester, you know. He wanted to
stay with him, he was a young fellow and very tender."
It was just after
this experience that Fruscella again recorded some tracks which, like those
from 1948. didn't appear until many years later. In February, 1952, he joined
forces with altoist Herb Geller, tenorman Phil Urso, pianist Bill Triglia, and
a couple of others, to produce some music which ought to have been heard at the
time and drawn some attention to Fruscella. Instead, it simply disappeared into
the vaults, and Fruscella and his companions carried on struggling to play
their music and earn a living. Critic Mark Gardner noted that, although the
1950s were, for many, years of affluence, the good times did not necessarily
arrive for musicians, "especially those who had rejected the commercial
sop dispensed over the airways and via the jukeboxes." Gardner added:" Jazzmen adapted, as they
always have, and found places to play the way they wanted - in basements and
cellars, seedy bars, strip clubs and coffee houses.
Surroundings were
uncongenial but unimportant. The main thing was that in those varied
environments were the patrons were either alcoholic/moronic or
intellectual/revolutionary, nobody told you how to play or what to
play. If you were looking to dig what was happening you went to the
open door in Greenwich Village or wangled an invitation to pianist Gene
DiNovi's basement or to where Jimmy Knepper and Joe Maini lived The
people who passed through these underground pads and dives were the jazz
underground The life of prosperous, middle-class America was far
removed from those basement jam sessions, those rehearsals and gigs in
down-at-heel corner bars. Musicians, natural skeptics, turned their backs on
McCarthyism and the rest."
A little steady
work did come along now and then, and in 1953 Fruscella was hired to play with
Stan Getz's group. Some poorly-recorded excerpts from a broadcast from Birdland
do exist, and on "Dear Old Stockholm" Fruscella demonstrates all that
was best in his playing as he shapes a solo that is relaxed, warm, melodically
coherent, and in which the use of spaces between the notes is as important as
the notes themselves. Some listeners might think there is a resemblance to Chet
Baker in Fruscella's sound. He did play with Gerry Mulligan's group briefly in
1954, but it is only slight, and Fruscella very much had his own way of
constructing a solo. There are interesting comparisons to be made between
Baker's 1953 recording of "Imagination" and Fruscella's version from
the same year. Admittedly, Baker's was a studio recording, with the disciplined
format that implies, whereas Fruscella 's was from a live session at the Open
Door and has a relative looseness, but even so, there is greater depth in
Fruscella's playing. As Dan Morgenstern said of it: "It is music very much of its time - a
time of scuffling, an inward looking time, a blue time."
The recordings
from the Open Door - and, yet again, they came to light only years later - are
valuable not only for the way in which they allow us to hear Fruscella soloing
at length, but also for the window they provide into the modern jazz world of
New York. The Open Door was a bar and restaurant frequented by jazz musicians
and which they soon began to use as a place for jam sessions. Dan Morgenstern remembered it as a "haven for jazz
people with no money. It was a weird place. When you walked in off the street,
you entered a room with a long bar that had a Bowery feeling to it. At one end
of this bar stood an ancient upright piano, manned most evenings by Broadway
Rose, a fading but spry ex-vaudevillian, her hair dyed an improbable shade of
red. She knew a thousand old songs and cheerfully honored requests. From the
bar, right next to Rose, a creaky door led to the huge, gloomy back room,
sporting a long bandstand, a dance floor which was never used, and rickety
tables and chairs."
Bob Reisner, a
freelance writer who some years later produced a couple of short but lively
memoirs of the 1950s, and also wrote a funny book about graffiti, hired the
room for Sunday afternoon concerts at which Charlie Parker sometimes
appeared. Others spontaneous sessions
appeared and drummer Al Levitt recalls musicians like Herb Geller, Gene Quill,
Jon Eardley, Milt Gold, and Ronnie Singer, dropping in to play. Geller did go
on to make a name for himself on the West Coast in the late 1950s and is still
around, having lived in Germany for many years. Most of the others made
only occasional appearances on record and those mostly in the 1950s. And the
casualty rate amongst them was high. Quill was badly injured in a road accident
and spent the rest of his life virtually immobilized, Singer committed suicide
and Eardley had an up-and-down career due to drug addiction.
The music produced
by Fruscella at the Open Door, mostly with tenorman Brew Moore and pianist Bill
Triglia, sounds relaxed almost to the point of casualness, and it is played
without any concessions to non-jazz tastes. Using a few standard tunes from the
jazz and popular music repertoire (the popular music of the pre-rock period,
that is), the emphasis is on improvisation, and Fruscella shows how inventive
he could be in such a setting. He never repeats ideas and always sounds poised,
no matter the tempo. He was fond of the ballad, "Lover Man," using it
at the open Door sessions and also at an engagement at RidgewoodHigh School in New Jersey which must have taken place around the
same period (1953). "A Night in Tunisia," the classic tune from the hop era,
also crops up at both places. There are moments on the ballad performances when
Fruscella can sound pensive, almost hesitant, but he skillfully uses that mood
to shape his solos and his emotional sound complements it.
It needs to be
noted that the RidgewoodHigh
School recordings, presumably made by one of the musicians or an
interested fan, were some more that only went into general circulation twenty
or so years later. Bill Triglia appears to have been the man who organized the
group's appearance. Interestingly, some other live recordings from the same
period and with Triglia again in the group feature Don Joseph and a good
alto-saxophonist, Davey Schildkraut, who was in Stan Kenton's band in the 1950s, recorded with
Miles Davis, but then drifted from sight. Memoirs of the New York scene prior to 1959 or so place him in the
center of a lot of the activity at the Open Door and elsewhere.
1955 was probably
the peak year in Fruscella' s short career, and he was featured on a couple of
recordings by Stan Getz and was also invited to make an LP under his own name
for the Atlantic label, a well-established company. Fruscella chose Bill
Triglia to accompany him on piano and he added tenor-saxophonist Allen Eager, a
musician who had been highly thought of in the 1940s, when he was amongst the
leading hop players, but who was by 1955 slipping into a shadowy world of
occasional public appearances and even fewer recording dates. With Phil Sunkel,
another little-known trumpeter, acting as composer-arranger, Fruscella came up
with some of his finest work, especially on "I'll Be Seeing You" and
the attractive "His Master's Voice," on which he uses some of his
classical background to fashion an engaging Bach-like series of variations.
Fruscella and those who admired him no doubt imagined that this album would
help him widen his reputation, but it soon slid from sight and was remembered by
only a few enthusiasts. The mid-1950s were reasonable years for some jazzmen
provided they could be identified with bright West Coast sounds or the hard hop
forcefulness associated with black New York. Fruscella's music, like so much good,
white New
York
jazz of the 1950s, didn't fit into either category.
What happened to
Tony Fruscella after 1955? Very little, it seems, if the reference books are
anything to go by. He probably still played at jam sessions and perhaps even
did some club work in obscure places, but the "dogged will to fail"
that Bob Reisner saw in him, and his drug and alcohol problems, must have held
him back. And the 1906s were lean years for a lot of jazzmen, as pop music took
over in clubs, dance halls, and on the radio. His kind of music, quiet,
reflective, and requiring sympathy and understanding from the listener was
hardly likely to appeal to many people. It never had, it's only fair to say,
but things got even worse in the 1960s. After years of obscurity, Fruscella
died in August, 1969, his body finally giving up the struggle against
barbiturates and booze. Bob Reisner, in a touching elegy written for a jazz
magazine just after Fruscella died, said: "If I were an artist, I would
paint Fruscella in the Renaissance manner. A side portrait of him bent in
concentration over the horn which produced the flowing and delicate music. The
usual background landscape would be strewn with a couple of wives, countless
chicks, barbiturate containers, and empty bottles. His artistic life, however,
was in sharp contrast. He was completely austere and disciplined. There was not
a commercial chromosome in his body."
This short survey
of Fruscella's life is scattered with the names of the forgotten. What did
happen to Don Joseph and Davey Schildkraut? Allen Eager is dead. And a whole world of New York jazz of the 1950s comes to mind when one
listens to a few of the records by Fruscella and others. Where are Jerry'
Lloyd, George Syran, and Phil Raphael and Phil Leshin? Jerry Lloyd was around
in the 1940s and 1950s and recorded with Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims, and George
Wallington, though he never became well-known and worked as a cab driver even
when he was featured on many records. George Syran was on an album with Jon
Eardley which also featured trombonist Milt Gold, and the two Phils worked with
Red Rodney in 1951, but what else? That fine tenor-saxophonist Phil Urso, who
soloed on Woody Herman records in the early-1950s, was with Chet Baker's group
a few years later, and then seems to have faded into obscurity around 1960 died
in 2008. There were so many who had only a brief moment or two in the
spotlight. Not all of them were necessarily as ill-fated as Fruscella. Bill
Triglia. who figures so prominently in the Fruscella story, seems to have still
been alive in the 1980s, though hardly in the forefront of jazz.
Nor would it be
true to say that all the musicians mentioned were victims of an unjust or
uncaring society. When there were casualties, they often came about through
personal waywardness and self-indulgence rather than from any form of
oppression. Some jazzmen may well have felt that their music was misunderstood
and neglected, but that's hardly an excuse for taking drugs or drinking
heavily. Dan
Morgenstern
may have got nearer the truth when he
said it was an 'inward-looking time." Were drugs a part of that inwardness
or simply just a social fashion?
But a lot of
musicians probably just gave up playing jazz, or even playing any kind of
music, and some possibly turned to commercial sounds in order to earn a living.
Compromises are
often necessary if one wants to eat. The point is, though, that all those I've
named, and more whose names are mentioned when people reminisce, deserve to be
remembered for their contributions to jazz, even if those contributions were
small ones. We do the artists and ourselves a disservice when we neglect the
past. A form of "organized amnesia' takes over, as is so often evident
when one listens to those radio stations which purport to cater for a jazz audience
but which mostly present a non-stop procession of bland sounds. There is little
or no historical sense in what they do, and certainly no place for a fine,
forgotten musician like Tony Fruscella."
