The 1965 Stan Getz Quartet Tokyo Concert

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

Highly regarded as a vibraphonist and percussionist, the years 1963 - 1965 were particularly busy ones for Larry Bunker as a drummer.

Although Larry’s years as a notable Jazz drummer dated back to 1953 when he took over for Chico Hamilton in the original Gerry Mulligan, as Larry explained it: “Work for Jazz drummers in Los Angeles usually went to Shelly Manne, Stan Levey and Mel Lewis. I got the rest.”

He made that remark on more than one occasion and at times I wasn’t sure if it was made in frustration or was just a reflection of the sarcastic side of his personality which did show itself from time-to-time.

Not one to sit on his hands [pun intended], during the decade of the 1950s, Larry was well on his way to becoming a vibraphonist of considerable talent and a versatile percussionist who would ultimately develop into a world class tympanist. He was also a capable pianist.

In my long association with his work as a Jazz drummer, first as a student, and later as a fan, what was especially evident was how fluid, powerful and controlled his drumming had become during the three years from 1963-65.

There are a number of examples of these qualities in his playing, but none better in my opinion than the solo he played on All God’s Children Got Rhythm as a member of the Stan Getz Quartet along with Gary Burton on vibes and Steve Swallow on bass at a concert that took place on July 18, 1965 at Kosei Nenkin Kaikan, in the Shinjuku District of Tokyo, Japan.

The music from this concert was recorded but never released commercially. A Jazz buddy in New Zealand sent me the music and when I played it for Larry a couple of years before his passing in 2005, he commented: “I really had it together in those days.”

When I asked him “Why?” he said: “You gotta remember, I was playing a lot of drums, back then - almost exclusively. I was on the road with Bill [Evans] for almost two years, then Gary [Burton] and I formed our own quartet and then I went out with Gary and Getz through the summer of 1965.”

For those Jazz fans who may not be aware of Larry’s talents as a Jazz drummer, I have included a Soundcloud audio file at the end of this posting along with a video of Stan Getz’s performing Con Alma, both from the unreleased music from the July 18, 1965 Tokyo concert at Kosei Nenkin Kaikan.”

Here’s more background information on this version of the Getz quartet and the music from the concert.

“When guitarist Jimmy Raney decided to leave the Stan Getz band in late 1963, Stan had difficulty finding a pianist to go with the Quartet on a three week tour of Canada in January 1964. He was persuaded by Lou Levy, the pianist, who was not available, to audition young vibraphonist Gary Burton-who he then hired. It was some time before the new quartet found its musical feet, although Verve did record the new quartet in April and May 1964. The April performances were never issued, but the six May tracks, with Astrud Gilberto’s vocal later dubbed in, and were issued on Verve V6-8600. "Getz Au Go Go".

In October 1964 a concert at Carnegie Hall, again with Astrud Gilberto was issued on Verve V6-8623, "Getz/Gilberto #2" but no further recordings by the Getz/Burton group were issued by Verve until 1994 when the company released "Nobody Else but Me" - Verve CD 5621 660-2. This was the group's studio session from 4 March 1964, recorded a few scant weeks after Burton became a member of the Getz quartet.

The group was also recorded in concert in Paris, France on 13 November 1966, with Roy Haynes on drums in place of Larry Bunker. French Polydor/Verve issued eight tracks spread over three Lp's. In 2002 six of those tracks were issued on French Gitanes Jazz CD 517 049-2 "Stan Getz In Paris", together with a previously unissued Stan's Blues.  But these albums have (so far) been the only commercial albums released of the Getz/Burton quartet. Gary Burton left the group to form his own quartet shortly after the 1966 European tour.

A number of unauthorized recordings have been made at various concerts of the group - but this recording is significant for several reasons. Firstly, the performance come from the mid-period in the life of the group, when it had really settled as a working band. Secondly, it is the first time (according to discographer Arne Astrup) that Getz performed both Sweet Rain and Con Alma and especially with this rendition of Con Alma the seeds of the magnificent performances of the two songs on Verve V6 8693 - Verve CD 815-054-2, "Sweet Rain" of March 1967, can be heard. And thirdly, for the most part the recording quality is very good.

Astrup notes that "parts of this very excellent concert was scheduled for release on Verve, but the album was never issued." One track, Waltz For A Lovely Wife, was issued on Italian Philology W 40.2 "Sweetie Pie" - an anthology of twelve 'pirate' Getz performances, but the Philology track is in less than ideal sound.

-W T Choy June 2002”

Lou Levy: A Most Musical Pianist [From The Archives]

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

For many years, George Ziskind, a friend who resided in New York City, was one of the biggest fans of these pages. He was constantly sending me supportive messages and these "at-a-boy's," "way to go's,"  and "well done's" meant a lot to me, especially during the early going when the blog was on less surer ground.

George wasn't one to let an error go by and his encyclopedic knowledge of Jazz and its makers often rescued my miscues and mistakes, but he always did so in a kind and gentle way. What made this soft approach to correction so remarkable was that George could be a pretty gruff guy who didn't suffer fools - gladly or otherwise.

"What you're doing is important," he would say. "You're a musician, too, and you know how hard it is to play this stuff," he often remarked. "People need to learn to appreciate that. You can't just pour it our of a can. Don't they know how many people died for this music?" 

He never let up. One of his fondest expressions was "America is about three things: [1] The US Constitution, [2] Baseball and [3] Jazz. Ken Burns [documentary film maker for the Public Broadcasting Services] got the first two right, but he messed up on Jazz." 

He especially like my features on Jazz piano players, I suspect, in part, because George was one [and a darn fine one at that.]

George died in 2014 at the age of eighty-six years old. The JazzTimes carried an obituary about him which you can locate by going here.

He was very close friends with Lou Levy and I thought it might make a sort of tribute to George's memory to reprise this piece about his old friend.

I miss my old friend.

“For all of his modesty – and it is real, not affected – Lou, in an instrumental setting, is a fleet, inventive and brilliant soloist.”

- Gene Lees

“Lou Levy is quite a musician. Long an established and a highly respected pianist among his fellow musicians, he has been woefully neglected by the public and even by jazz fans. In his approach to the piano, there is always a great sense of assurance, of playing on a larger scale; there is intensity, reflection, humor and showmanship.”

- Andre’ Previn

“Lou Levy is two things that seem incom­patible: the archetype of the bebop pianist and the most sympathetic possible accom­panist for singers.”

- Gene Lees

Like so many other teenagers growing up in the 1940s, Lou Levy was captivated by the language of Bebop.

Unlike many of those teenagers, however, Lou Levy developed the facility, skills and melodic inventiveness to play piano with the best of the Beboppers.

Lou’s Dad played piano by ear and, as a result of his father’s encouragement, he began studying piano at the age of ten in his hometown of Chicago, IL.  Lou’s early idols were Bud Powell and Art Tatum.

In 1945, at the age of seventeen, Lou took his first professional gig with Georgie Auld’s band. Thereafter he performed with artists like Sarah Vaughan, Chubby Jackson and Flip Phillips and bands like the Boyd Raeburn Orchestra and Woody Herman's Second Herd, the bop band that featured saxophonists Zoot Sims, Stan Getz and Al Cohn.

He joined Tommy Dorsey’s band in 1950. Tommy fired him after telling him: “Kid, you play good. But not for my band.”

In recounting this story to Gene Lees, Lou went on to say: “And he was right, I didn’t like it and he didn’t like it.”

Lou never got fired again.

In the early 1950's Lou dropped out of jazz for two years to live in Minneapolis and work in the medical-journal publishing business.

However, it has never been possible to keep a natural and accomplished a musician as Lou away from his chosen instrument for too long a time, and in 1954 he capitulated to numerous requests to return to music and opened at Frank Holzfeind's Blue Note in Chicago, playing solo intermission piano.

Woody's band was booked into the club, and suddenly the sidemen were paying Lou one of the great musi­cians' compliments: they were using their intermissions to sit around the stand, listening closely and passing the word around that Lou was back and in great form. On the last Sunday of their engagement, Al Porcino, the wonderful trumpet player, lugged in his tape recorder and took down some fifteen or twenty of Lou's solo efforts.

These tapes soon achieved almost a legendary status. Musicians all over the country heard them, some had them copied, others remembered them in detail, and "Hey, did you hear those Blue Note Lou Levy tapes?" became the opening gambit of many a jazz discussion.

In 1955, Lou moved out to Los Angeles and began gigging around: with Conte Candoli, Stan Getz and Shorty Rogers, on record dates and one-nighters.

He also began an 18-year association (including some breaks to take other jobs) with the singer Peggy Lee. From then on he became known as a particularly sympathetic accompanist for singers. Like Lester Young, one of his idols, he believed that a musician should know the lyrics of a song he was interpreting and said that a bandleader -- even if not a singer -- should be considered a voice.

As Gene Lees has observed: “Lou Levy is two things that seem incom­patible: the archetype of the bebop pianist and the most sympathetic possible accom­panist for singers, including three of the best: Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, and Peggy Lee. Peggy calls him ‘my good gray fox,' both for the color of his hair and the clever yet sympathetic nature of his accompaniment.”

After settling in California, Lou became a staple of the studios.   

And he worked with a number of other singers: June Christy, Anita O'Day, Lena Home, Nancy Wilson, Tony Bennett, and Frank Sinatra.

He played with the big bands of Terry Gibbs and Benny Goodman, and with Med Flory’s group, Supersax, which specialized in the solos of Charlie Parker orchestrated for five saxophones.

When Gene Lees asked him about those jazz pianists who are reluctant to accompany singers, Lou simply said, "They're crazy.”

Gene observed: “Lou has a love for the words of songs. It is manifest in the way he plays. He has had a long personal rela­tionship with Pinky Winters, a subtle and sensitive singer little heard outside Cali­fornia.”

Over the years, Lou had a very close and long working relationship with composer, arranger and trumpeter, Shorty Rogers. Along with Pete Jolly, Lou was Shorty’s pianist-of-choice for his own quintet as was drummer Larry Bunker.

In the 1950s, Shorty was hired by RCA to become the head of its Jazz artists & repertoire department and, not surprisingly, Shorty signed Lou to a recording contract with the label.

Thank goodness that Shorty stepped up with the RCA offer as the limited discography of recordings under Lou’s own name would have been significantly smaller.

In addition to a solo piano recording and a trio LP, Lou put together a quartet album for RCA with Stan Levey on drums, whom Lou had worked with dating back to their days together with the Boyd Raeburn Orchestra in 1947, bassist Leroy Vinnegar, everyone’s favorite bassist on the West Coast Jazz scene in the 1950s and Larry Bunker, who in addition to being an excellent drummer, was also an outstanding vibraphonist.

Lou’s quartet album for RCA was entitled Jazz in Four Colors: The Lou Levy Quartet [reissued on CD as Fresh Sound ND-74401].

Here’s what Shorty had to say about the evolution of the album:

“In planning this album, Lou and I spent much time try­ing to figure out a "different" instrumentation. This was no small problem in face of the fact that so many albums are being made today. While trying to figure out an instrumentation, Lou went to work on a job that enabled him to renew one of his favorite musical acquaint­ances: Larry Bunker on vibes. Lou and Larry enjoyed playing together and made a wonderful nucleus for a quartet. This also presented the possibility of forming a group that could record and appear in public.

This album could be called "the birth of the Lou Levy Quartet," and I must say that it was a privilege and a great thrill to be a witness to the birth of this swingin', tasty, musical baby.”

The following video has all audio tracks from Jazz in Four Colors: The Lou Levy Quartet [Fresh Sound CD; ND-74401] as performed by Lou Levy on piano, Larry Bunker on vibes, Leroy Vinnegar on bass and Stan Levey on drums. 

“Music: A Subversive History” by Ted Gioia

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

—This essay is adapted from Mr. Gioia’s new book, Music: A Subversive History, published by Basic Books.and was printed in The Wall Street Journal.

By Ted Gioia

Oct. 19, 2019 

“Popular songs are big business nowadays, the driving force behind a $10 billion industry. But it all started in the humblest way possible. The first documented song in the English language came from the mouth of an illiterate cow herder. More than 1,300 years ago the Venerable Bede, a medieval scholar known as the “father of English history,” wrote down the words sung by Caedmon, who tended animals at a Benedictine monastery in North Yorkshire. Bede marveled over the miracle that allowed an untutored servant to create such a remarkable hymn.

Caedmon’s song might have seemed like a miracle, but in the long history of music this kind of surprise is actually the rule, not the exception. Innovative songs almost always come from outsiders—the poor, the unruly and the marginalized.

The scholars Milman Parry and Albert Lord confirmed this fact in the 1930s, when they set out to trace the origins of ancient epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey. Their research took them to Bosnia, where they met Avdo Mededović, an illiterate peasant farmer they dubbed the “Yugoslav Homer.” Accompanying himself on a one-string instrument, Mededović performed a single story-song that took seven days to complete and went on for 12,311 lines—roughly the same length as the Odyssey. He performed entirely from memory, aided by patterned improvisations of the kind used by jazz musicians.

Parry and Lord later declared that every one of the great singers of tales they encountered during their field research was illiterate. The ability to sing an epic poem was not only a skill that couldn’t be taught in college, but a formal education would almost certainly destroy it.

Other researchers have found similar performers, almost always among the poor and outcast. Song collector John Lomax was so impressed with James “Iron Head” Baker, discovered during a 1933 visit to record prisoners at Huntsville Penitentiary in Texas, that he later described him as a “black Homer.” Or consider the case of the Russian epic singer Vasily Shchegolenok, who amazed Leo Tolstoy in the 1870s with his storytelling and influenced the famous novelist’s own writing style; or the herder Beatrice Bernardi, who astonished the famous art critic John Ruskin in Tuscany in the 1880s with her ability to sing lengthy tales by memory.

History books sometimes acknowledge the “low” origins of our more popular genres of music. The association of musical innovation with enslaved people, for instance, is well known in the Americas, where the descendants of slaves shaped the provocative sounds of jazz, blues, samba, salsa, reggae, soul music and numerous other genres. But in many other instances, such origins are obscured or ignored. Most music students are taught, for instance, the Lydian and Phrygian modes, invented by the ancient Greeks, without ever realizing that these terms came from the ethnicities of the enslaved performers who created these sounds.

Likewise, the love-song tradition associated with the troubadours of southern France actually originated with female slave singers in the Islamic world. These songs entered Europe via the Iberian peninsula, and their distinctive poetic themes were adopted by the nobility, who often sang about being enslaved to love. The idea that a feudal lord could be a slave seems incongruous, until you realize that actual slaves originated this style of singing.

As these examples suggest, such visionary outsiders are eventually imitated and assimilated by cultural elites. Sometimes, if they live long enough, they become elites themselves. In the 1960s, many parents were shocked by their first encounters with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones—but those bad boys eventually were knighted and turned into Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Mick Jagger. Bob Dylan was a leader of the counterculture in 1966 but honored as the Nobel laureate in literature in 2016. The album “Straight Outta Compton,” by hip-hoppers N.W.A., was banned by many retailers and radio stations in 1988 and was even denounced by the FBI. But in 2017, the album was chosen by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for its cultural merit.

These humble origins can be traced in almost all song genres. In the early days of the U.S. music industry, record labels had to undertake field trips to the most impoverished areas of the South whether they were seeking out blues musicians for black audiences or country stars for white audiences. And the same linkage can be seen in other parts of the world, in the history of Jamaican reggae, Brazilian samba, Argentine tango, Greek rebetiko and a host of other world-changing song styles.

Alas, the very process of legitimization involves distortion—obscuring the origins of music and repurposing it to meet the needs of the powerful. Today, the most popular songs still come from outsiders—just look at hip-hop or rock or R&B or outlaw country music and see how the same pattern plays out in different contexts. Whether we are dealing with the troubadours, the Beatles or Snoop Dogg, an officially cleansed public image is promulgated while the disreputable past is shuffled offstage and out of view.

The institutions that sanction and preserve musical culture will never be able to guide us, however, to music that is new or different. The purified musical heritage that they preserve may be highly respectable, but it leaves out too much.

Outsiders are especially well positioned to disrupt old traditions and create new ones, for the simple reason they have the least allegiance to the prevailing manners and attitudes of the societies in which they live. In music, we crave this disruption and the excitement it brings. Again and again, we turn to bohemians, rebels and others who operate on the margins of society to provide us with songs we can’t find elsewhere.

For the same reason, we ought to celebrate diversity—not because it’s fashionable or politically expedient but because it brings creative outsiders into the musical ecosystem. We often fear strangers arriving in our midst, but they serve as catalysts that spur new forms of artistic expression. Just look at the port cities and multicultural communities, from Lesbos to Liverpool, that have played a key role in the history of song.

In a sense, the internet has turned all of our neighborhoods into virtual port cities, giving us immediate access to a world of sound outside the purview of powerful interests. We shouldn’t take that for granted: It’s almost certainly where the next musical revolution will begin.”

Here's a link to Basic Books should you wish to purchase a copy of Ted's new book.

Scott LaFaro and the LA Bassists [From the Archives with Additions]

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

The late Scott LaFaro’s claim to fame as a bassist centers on his two year association with pianist Bill Evans and the handful of recordings he made for Riverside Records before his tragic death July 6, 1961 at the age of 25.

While in New York, Scotty also worked with Stan Getz, Ornette Coleman and pianist Don Friedman, but what isn’t generally known or acknowledged is his earlier involvement with musicians in California, particularly his associations with other bassists, principally in Los Angeles.

This was a defining time in LaFaro’s career and is as important as his New York years because it was the germination period in his stylistic development.

This backstory is eloquently told in Scotty’s sister, Helene LaFaro - Fernandez’s biography: Jade Visions: The Life and Music of Scott LaFaro [University of North Texas Press].

The comments of the other bassists who knew Scotty during his stay in Los Angeles from 1955-1959 contain insights in helping us understand how Scotty’s approach to playing Jazz evolved, what it entailed and the nature of the impact it had on Jazz bass playing.

“Scotty was living in the spare bedroom of a house owned by Herb and Lorraine Geller. Scotty had met alto saxophonist Herb Geller through Lorraine, who was the house pianist at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, where Scotty occasionally sat in. Herb and Lorraine had recently bought a house nestled in the Hollywood Hills. They invited Scotty to move into their spare bedroom, solving his housing problem until I arrived in early October. 

He loved the solitude of the place and being surrounded by the scrub, natural state of the vegetation. He sent home photos with comments and started setting out the advantages of the family's impending move. In the pictures he looked happy.

Herb had a great record collection of jazz recordings. Scotty said he heard a lot of people for the first time listening to Herb's records. And he practiced, practiced, practiced. Scotty, in an interview with Nat Hentoff for liner notes for the 1958 The Arrival of Victor Feldman album, said about this period," I couldn't find enough work and besides, I definitely needed the practice." In Los Angeles it took six months to get a union card. Until you had it, you couldn't take studio work or a steady job. Pretty much all you could do was casuals and sit in whenever possible.

Not only was the house in a peaceful and beautiful location, but there were jam sessions at the Gellers' as well. Jack Sheldon, Don Friedman, Terry Trotter, Clare Fischer, and Joe Maini were some of those who would drop in. Scotty would make the rounds with Herb, Don, and other friends to the many clubs that were featuring jazz. He did some fill-in work with the band for singer Marigold Hill at the Stardust Room in Long Beach. Another casual gig Scotty had was a garden wedding with Joanne Grauer, jazz pianist and teacher, who was then just seventeen. She told me she was thrilled to play with such an outstanding player. She had also been working with Gary Peacock and, looking back, she remarks she felt really blessed. She said she believed then that all bass players played that well, but soon thereafter had a rude awakening.

Drummer Freddie Gruber also met Scotty and played with him on casuals — first in a couple of clubs in the El Monte area then later at the Hillcrest with Paul Bley and Dave Pike. Although Scotty worked in Paul Bley's group for just a limited period of time, Paul remembers that when he hired Scotty, he put him in the front. When asked why he was putting the bass player blocking the view of the vibraphone player Paul replied, "because he was the best player in the band. He was a star; he ‘paid the rent' because he was a virtuoso player. The only other person who played across all areas like that was Charlie Mingus. Scotty took bass playing to another level. He went to the top of the heap career wise. Nobody could move their fingers around the bass as fast as he could."

Charles Lloyd, composer and saxophonist, has had an incredible personal journey as well as an accomplished career spanning many years in jazz with excursions into many other genres of music. There is a depth to his voice over the phone that is a reflection of the richness of his soul. I was fortunate to be able to talk to Charles about his close friendship with Scotty.

Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, Charles had come to Los Angeles in 1956 to attend the University of Southern California. Scotty met Charles at some jam sessions with Don Cherry late that year and they made an immediate, deep connection. Now that Scotty had returned to Los Angeles, they began to play together, gigging around town with Don, Harold Land, Billy Higgins, Elmo Hope, and Terry Trotter. Charles said he was "still high from those days ... we just got together and played. We just loved to play. It was like the holy grail with us. We had our mission. We were just growing, learning. There was such a rich group of people."

Their youthful exuberance — to share the joy they found in their music — brought to mind one particular gig:" We played this wedding in Glendale (a Los Angeles suburb) . It was like a community center or something. The bandstand was behind a white picket fence. There was Billy Higgins, Don Cherry and Scott La-Faro. The pianist was Terry Trotter. Imagine Higgins alone ... and Scotty playing together, and Terry ... punching out those Bud Powell, Tommy Flanigan chords and stuff. We were so excited to play. We were just making this music ... it was very un-picket fence. We were sound Brahmans, we had gone beyond the Concord and the space barriers. We knew we were going to send this couple into infinity with the richness of this indigenous art form ... off in bliss in hope—the whole thing. That was our impetus. We didn't get that far. The father ran up, waving his hands.' Please, please stop. Stop ... Please, no more ... please just leave. I'll pay you now, just leave.' That union would have been cemented by that music. I'm convinced of it to this day."

Scotty and Charles became very close friends, best friends— sharing stories, dreams and aspirations as well as food and fun. As for music, Charles said, "Scotty had it ... he had the magic. He had wonderful integrity, an excellent musician. He had this awesome, adventurous technique. An innovator. He and Ornette were like astronauts. Scotty liked freshness, he was always pushing himself. He was and is enormously important to music." ...

Scotty made other lasting friends during this time. Pianist Don Friedman recalls: "I first heard Scott when he was playing with Buddy Morrow at the Palladium late in '56. Then I was on the road with Buddy DeFranco from November, '56 till July of '57. Buddy asked me to drive a new car he had bought in St. Louis back to LA while he flew, which I did, taking Vic Feldman along. Not long after that I met Scott up at Herb s place and we became good friends. A little later Scotty and I worked a gig with Chet Baker at Peacock Lane on the corner of Hollywood and Western. The gig was for a week. Larance Marable was the drummer and Richie Kamuca the saxophonist. As I recall, Chet didn't finish the week. The cops were looking for him and he literally escaped from the club and never came back. I don't remember if we finished the week without him."

Scotty also met pianist, composer, and arranger Clare Fischer. Clare relates, "Scotty and I became good friends. We had an immediate musical rapport that was sensational. We did a lot of listening and talking. Besides technique, he had governing, control. I think he was the first bass player who was fleet footed in the musical sense." Clare remembers he was in San Jose traveling with Cal Tjader when he heard about Scotty s accident. "What a trauma, it struck me right down—that someone I was developing such a relationship with would suddenly not be there."

Besides jamming at the Gellers', pianist Terry Trotter recalls he and Scotty played pool, went to the movies, and smoked a bit of weed together. "Scotty and I connected in music and as people. He was humorous, funny. With his  work he could be difficult and temperamental. He had a wonderful musical gift."

This was the time when a lot of talented musicians were in Los Angeles and would become part of what was known as the West Coast Jazz scene. It was in Los Angeles that Scotty first heard Ray Brown. The swing and perfection in his style really impressed Scotty. Cecelia Brown, Ray’s widow, recently recalled that when Ray was teaching clinics he said that Scotty was one of the top five bassists and innovators, putting him in the company of Jimmy Blanton, Oscar Pettiford, Milt Hinton, and Paul Chambers. Scott would love knowing that!

Scotty became friends with other bass players who were in Los Angeles during this time as well. Don Payne, who grew up in nearby Santa Ana, and had just returned from a stint in the U.S. Army. Don was renting a furnished guest house on Glen Green just off Beachwood Drive in the Hollywood Hills. Johnny Mandel lived next door in an identical pad. Scotty would take his bass up and the two of them would practice for hours. Don said that he had been getting help from Percy Heath and wanted to share that with Scott. He added that "Scott was working on the high register—16th note scale partials that became part of his soloing later with Bill Evans. I really like the way he played on recordings with Hampton Hawes and Victor Feldman made there in LA." Neighbors on the same street were Red Mitchell and Leroy Vinnegar. The older two bass players took Don, twenty-five, and Scotty, twenty-two, under their wing, as it were. Scotty came to consider Red Mitchell one of his mentors.

Hal Gaylor, a Canadian who has since worked with performers as disparate as Tony Bennett and Ornette Coleman, was another bass player who was in Los Angeles at the time. He recalls that he and Scotty talked of the coincidence that they both played the clarinet before starting on the bass and that both of their fathers were violinists. They would rehearse together, spend a couple of hours playing, exchanging stuff. Hal said, "No matter what you had, someone else had something else. We'd play for each other. The music was just so exciting, there was just so much going on then. Scotty was a bit isolated, but if you knew him, he had a warm side. He had drive, not a lot of patience. Often he'd be a little cool, but when he got inspired, he got very excited and it showed. Scotty was one of the greatest exponents of jazz of that era. He is important like Jimmy Blanton, Oscar Pettiford and Charlie Mingus." Later in 1958, Don Payne and Hal would drive across the country to New York and when Scotty later returned to New York, he would renew these friendships. Scotty and Don remained friends throughout the rest of Scott's life.

Gary Peacock, who later also played bass with Bill Evans, first met Scotty and heard him play at the Lighthouse. He said:

“I think it was with Stan Levey, Vic Feldman and Richie Kamuca. It was scary. I mean he - whew. I was listening to him and I thought JC, he was something. A wonderful thing that he gave me at that time, without giving me anything, was that he showed me what was possible; there was the potential; there was potential technically and potential musically that hadn't even been tapped yet. In that sense he was so far ahead of everybody else at that time. It was just scary. But also encouraging and enlightening. Inspirational, like - Wow! And he had only been playing for a year and a half or two years! That was the other part that was scary. In two years he did this? What did he do? Play twenty-four hours a day? But apparently before that he had some training with the clarinet or something. Scotty kicked everybody's ass.

Also when we met, we talked briefly about always striving, moving forward constantly ... we kinda put the kibosh on that. Brings you more in the moment. What we were doing ... had a tendency to be crowded with all this thinking that's going on, kinda has a tendency to stop to think of what the possibilities are of the moment. But in spite of all that, there was very little of that in his playing.”

There was a lot happening in jazz in Los Angeles. Many clubs booked groups a week or a month at a time. Miles Davis and John Coltrane played at Jazz City in Hollywood. Charlie Haden was playing regularly with Paul Bley at the Hillcrest on Washington Boulevard. The IT Club was down the street. The Haig on Wilshire booked Gerry Mulligan. The Slate Brothers on La Cienega. The Renaissance, Crescendo, and Interlude all along Sunset. Cosmo's Alley on Yucca. The guys who weren't working would drop by and sit in during the sets and after hours. The strip clubs, The Pink Pussycat and Largo Strip Club on Sunset Boulevard, booked some cool talent like Herb Geller as well. Duffy's Gaiety at Cahuenga and Franklin, a club run for a time by Sally Marr, Lenny Bruce's mother, booked Joe Maini and Don Payne when Lenny was also on the bill.

Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach was ground zero. There was jazz nightly and, on Sunday, twelve-hour jam sessions. Shorty Rogers, Victor Feldman, Lorraine Geller, Herb Geller, Maynard Ferguson, Bud Shank, Hampton Hawes, Marty Paich, Shelly Manne, Stan Levey, as well as bigger luminaries of the time — Miles Davis and Chet Baker — all played there.

When I spoke with Howard Rumsey in the fall of 2005, be said that "few show progress like Scotty did. I was amazed at the progress I saw in his playing. I saw him for at least four years total. I was so happy every time he came to the Lighthouse because I knew the musicians wanted to play with him and I wanted to hear him. What was evident about Scotty ... he had his life organized ... he always knew what he was going to do next. He was just outstanding. He had a falsetto sound that was unique and a walking sound that was big, different. I think that coming from a string family he knew what a string bass should sound like. What he accomplished in seven years no other bass player has done. 

Scotty was very intelligent. In my mind the history of the development of bass playing went from Blanton to Scotty. He and Blanton were bright stars — shooting stars that fell from the skies. His work with Bill was an even greater achievement than that as a soloist. No bass player with Bill has the same empathy as he and Scott had. With all the musicians I've met few have made the impact that Scotty did on me. He had an unlimited capacity."

Summer brought Scotty an opportunity to work with Pat Moran in Lake Tahoe. She recalls: "When we were working. Gene Gammage (the drummer) and I would get frustrated with Scotty—he didn't want to come out and have some fun. It was so beautiful in Tahoe in those days, but he would stay in the cabin and practice two or three hours every day with a metronome, playing exercises from a clarinet exercise book, then go to work and play all night." ….

Too Blue

Pub Crawling with Jimmy Deuchar and The Lads

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

“[Jimmy Deuchar] …the great Scot, whose sound sometimes seemed like a hybrid of Bunny Berigan and Fats Navarro, and who is usually recognizable within a few bars - taut, hot, but capable of bursts of great lyricism.”

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

"If the Union problem didn't exist, I'd take Jimmy Deuchar back to California with me tomorrow. He's one of the finest trumpeters I've ever heard; and his all-round musicianship is fantastic." That's what American pianist-arranger-composer Marty Paich told me during a Deuchar disc date when Marty was in London in 1956.

- Tony Hall, insert notes, Jimmy Deuchar: Opus de Funk [Jasmine JASCD 621]

“[Starting with his recordings in the early 1950’s with Victor Feldman’s All-Stars, Arnold Ross’ Sextet and Johnny Dankworth’s Septet], … the bright burnished sound of Jimmy Deuchar was already showing its individuality within the parameters of modern Jazz trumpet.”

- Brian Davis, insert notes, Bop in Britain [Jasmine JASCD 637-38]

Although it took me a while to grasp how far-flung its influence was, culturally, one of the USA’s greatest gifts to the world is Jazz in all its manifestations.

In retrospect, I became aware that through Willis Conover’s Voice-of-America and a variety of European-based radio broadcasts, exported US records and vibrant domestic recording labels in a host of European countries and the efforts of visiting or expatriate Jazz musicians, Jazz thrived in far-flung places like Great Britain, France, Sweden, The Netherlands, Italy, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Japan.

And where it wasn’t allow to flourish openly, a serious Jazz underground following developed in central Europe and The Soviet Union.

Thanks to many generous urbane and cosmopolitan friends, then and now, my awareness of Jazz on the international scene has grown over the years much to my satisfaction and enjoyment.

My first exposure to Jazz abroad were a series of Jazz in Britain recordings that Lester Koenig released on Contemporary Records, a Hollywood, California based label whose “corporate offices” and “recording studios” were conveniently located about 10 miles from where I went to high school.

Lester’s “corporate offices” consisted of a small storefront near Paramount Movie Studios on Melrose Avenue and his “recording studio” was sometimes set up in the back room where he packed and shipped his LP’s.

Lester’s “British Jazz” LP’s were actually re-issues of recordings that had originally been produced for London-based labels such as Tempo and Jasmine. [Essentially, Lester was reversing the process and “importing” Jazz back into the United States!]

One of these was the late drummer-vibraphonist-pianist Victor Feldman’s Suite Sixteen [Contemporary C-3541;OJCCD-1768-2].  Issued in 1958, this LP was comprised of quartet, septet and big band recordings that Victor had made in England in 1955 before taking up residence in the USA the following year.

This album was my first introduction to Brits or, if you will, the “Lads,” in modern-day parlance, such as trumpeter Dizzy Reece, trombonist and bass trumpeter, Ken Wray alto saxophonist Derek Humble, tenor saxophonists Ronnie Scott and Tubby Hayes, bassist Lennie Bush and drummers Tony Crombie and Phil Seaman.

Although he only solos on three of the albums nine tracks, the player who impressed me the most on Victor’s Suite Sixteen was trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar [pronounced “dew-car”].

Imagine my delight then when Lester Koenig did it again, this time with six tracks by “the young Scotsman,” entitled Pub Crawling with Jimmy Deuchar [Contemporary C-3529].  I gather that the idea for the album’s title comes from the fact that each of its six tracks is named after one of the best known British brands of beer.

The album was also released in the USA in 1958 and if I heard a glimmer of something earlier in Jimmy’s playing, the work of “this exceptional young, Scottish trumpeter-arranger-composer” comes bursting through on these sides.

In addition to his brilliant solo stylings, Pub Crawling with Jimmy Deuchar also introduces Jimmy as an extremely talented composer-arranger who writes in a style that is very reminiscent of the late Tadd Dameron.

Fortunately, I was later able to cobble together more of Jimmy’s recordings when they were issued on CD including Showcase [Jasmine JASCD 616], Opus de Funk [Jasmine JASCD 621] and Pal Jimmy [Jasmine JASCD 624].

On hand on these discs is lots more of the fine playing of Wray, Humble, Hayes, Scott, Bush, Seaman and Crombie along with some players on the British Jazz scene who were unfamiliar to me at the time including pianists Terry Shannon, Stan Tracey, Eddie Harvey and Harry South, bassist Sammy Stokes and drummer Alan Ganley.

Of these recording by Jimmy Deuchar and his mates … err, “Lads,” Richard Cook and Brian Morton have written in The Penguin Guide to jazz on CD, 6^th Ed.:

“These are welcome reminders of the great Scot, whose sound sometimes seemed like a hybrid of Bunny Berigan and Fats Navarro, and who is usually recognizable within a few bars - taut, hot, but capable of bursts of great lyricism.

Some of his best work is with Tubby Hayes, who himself pops up in various of these dates; but these precious survivals of the British scene of the '508 - which exist solely through the dedication and enthusiasm of Tony Hall, who oversaw all the sessions - are fine too. The first two discs are bothered by the boxy and inadequate sound (and the re-mastering, which may not be from the original tapes, is less than first class), but the playing is of a standard which may sur­prise those unfamiliar with this period of British jazz.

There are excellent contributions from Humble, Hayes, the very neglected Shannon and the redoubtable Seamen; but Deuchar, as is proper, takes the ear most readily: punchily conversational, sometimes overly clipped, but then throwing in a long, graceful line when you don't expect it, he was a distinctive stylist.

These sets are made up from EPs and ten-inch LPs, but the third reissues all of the splendid Pal Jimmy! plus a stray track from a compilation. The trumpeter's solo on the title-track blues is a classic statement. Again, less than ideal re-mastering, but with original vinyl copies of these extremely rare records costing a king's ransom, they're very welcome indeed.”

At the time of their initial release, the highly regarded Edgar Jackson had this to say in the October, 1955 British publication, The Melody Maker:

“One of the tracks on this record is probably not only the best example of British jazz in the modem manner ever to find its way on to a record but not so far short of one of the best from any­where.

The track is IPA Special (named, as are all the others, after a brand of beer.)

It shows that Jimmy Deuchar (who composed and arranged all of the tunes) is second to none in this country in the matter of thinking up and scoring out first-rate modern jazz material.

It shows also: (a) that Jimmy has become a better trumpet man than ever now that he is playing with a warmer feeling and tone, (b) that while Derek Humble may not yet be the world’s greatest baritone saxophonist, he is certainly a grand, driving altoist, (c) that Ken Wray is one of our most original and advanced trombonists, and (d) that British rhythm sections are not always as gauche and stodgy as they are often said to be.

The record as a whole, with Jimmy never failing to convince as a skillful and captivating writer, and Victor Feldman playing tasteful and delightful piano, is a relieving and refreshing indication that our best modern jazzmen can compete with the best anywhere else—when given a fair chance.

The recording itself is excellent.   But I would hardly have expected any­thing else, for the session engineer was Decca's brilliant Arthur Lilley.”

Jimmy’s solos shimmer in their vibrancy. Fats Navarro. Clifford Brown, Carmel Jones and a host of the trumpet soloists who display a fat, full, fiery sound in their phrasing come to mind, but Jimmy is his own man.

The construction of his improvised lines is marked by coherence and continuity, but most of all, by originality. You just don’t hear other trumpeters playing Jimmy’s stuff.

I was especially pleased to rediscover Jimmy’s powerhouse trumpet playing on many of the Clarke Boland Big Band [CBBB] recordings from the 1960s.

According to tenor saxophonist Ronnie Scott [who would later join the CBBB]: “Derek Humble was the navigator-in-chief on the band and one of his first recommendations to Kenny Clarke and Francy Boland was to bring Jimmy Deuchar on the band to play the Jazz trumpet chair.”

As Mike Hennessey noted in his chapter on the CBBB from his biography of drummer Kenny Clarke: “Seven of the thirteen musicians in the band were European and their ability to hold their own with their [expatriate] American colleagues did no damage at all to the cause of winning a just measure of appreciation and recognition for some of the excellent European Jazz musicians who were emerging.” [pp. 165-166]

If you have not had the pleasure of having heard Jimmy Deuchar, his playing and that of the Lads – Ken Wray [bass trumpet], Derek Humble [as], Tubby Hayes [ts], Victor Feldman [p], Lennie Bush [b] and Phil Seamen [d] - is on display on the following tribute. The tune is Jimmy’s Treble Gold, which is named after an ale that I understand it is no longer made by the Friary Meux Brewery in Guildford.

Victor Feldman Trio - 1965