John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman - A Improbable Duo

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

Shortly after John Coltrane formed his classic quartet with McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums, they played a gig at The Renaissance Club which located on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, CA.

I missed the gig but a close friend of mine took it in. When I asked him how it was he started shaking his head. “That good?,” I said. “No,” he replied. “Then why are you shaking your head?,” I asked. “Because I am still trying to get the ringing sound out of my ears,” he said. “I’ve never, ever heard such a loud group in my life and there were only four of them! Each tune they played went on forever!!”

Many Jazz fans who had known and enjoyed John Coltrane’s tenor sax work with the Miles Davis Quintet and Sextet had reactions similar to my buddy’s when they heard John’s new quartet in performance.

Fast forward to about a year later when this same friend comes over to my place with an LP tucked under his arm. “You are never going to believe this,” he said. “Do you know who Coltrane just made an album with?,” he asked [with a look of incredulity in his eyes]. He pulls the album cover he was carrying out from under his arm, holds it up to my face and exclaims: “Johnny Hartman! Can you believe that? And its great. Go figure,” he said.

Recorded in May, 1963 on Impulse Records, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman [Impulse! AS-40 LP; CD 051157-2] surprised a lot of people.

The pairing of Coltrane and Hartman struck many people as improbable because as Richard Cook and Brian Morton point out in The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.:  “Hartman's rich, lustrous baritone was really suited to only one tempo, slow enough for every syllable to be enunciated with loving attention. Oddly, having worked with Earl Hines, Errol Garner and Dizzy Gillespie, he is nowadays best remembered for a somewhat unlikely Impulse! pairing with the giant of modernism, John Coltrane.

Messrs. Cook and Morton go one to say: “America in 1962 was no place to be black and angry. LeRoi Jones's play Dutchman is susceptible of a good many readings, but among other things it is about white America's ambivalent willingness to let black anger discharge itself, in order to destroy and negate it.

In John Coltrane, there was a constant war between rage and beauty. Compounded by personal pain and not yet redeemed by the great spiritual awakening celebrated on A Love Supreme, it often saw him zig-zag between celebration and an almost nihilistic ferocity. In the second half of 1962 Coltrane had been experiencing further dental problems and was having difficulty with his articulation. Partly to work around that limitation, partly no doubt to generate some market-friendly product, Bob Thiele suggested the Ballads project, and also the session with singer Johnny Hartman; he had also managed to arrange the historic encounter with Duke Ellington. Coltrane had always been an exquisite ballad-player and the material he chose for [all of these] …  date[s] was guaranteed to please ….”

Also edifying in explaining why the pairing of Coltrane and Hartman, while unusual, was nonetheless successful are A.B. Spellman’s liner notes to the original Impulse! LP which was produced for CD by Michael Cuscuna, who has given JazzProfiles permission to reprint them below.

© -  Impulse!/Michael Cuscuna; used with permission, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“This record serves a double purpose: it brings back into the public ear one of the most neglected singers of the middle bop era and it proves in a novel — for them — way that John C. and his Thrilling Three are eloquent balladiers and very, very sensitive accompanists. I say novel for them because, to my knowledge, no singer has ever performed or recorded with the John Coltrane quartet. The quartet has been, till now, concerned with other things, with the development of a kinetic vernacular which facilitated the release of a kind of group energy that was deeper in content and fuller in emotional color than any music I have ever experienced, anywhere.

How translate this energy-formed vernacular to the more articulate but more restrictive form of the song? For one thing, Trane's been recording little else lately. His latest two releases were Ballads (Impulse A-32) and Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (Impulse A-3O), which were about 2/3 ballads. In these two dates, particularly the latter, Trane showed a lyric sophistication that surprised nobody who'd ever sat through more than one of his sets in the clubs. His ballad style is increasingly becoming as subtle as his uptempo blues playing is dynamic, as witness Autumn Serenade.  The vernacular translates quite well; is, in fact, the same language.

Johnny Hartman was Coltrane's unequivocal choice for the singer he'd like most to be caught with in front of a mike. Hartman is one of the very best of a strong lot of big-voiced crooners who were the sine qua non of the big bebop band. He conjures up images of Earl Coleman with the big voice, the even bigger collar, and the skinny, drooping boptie; of Lee Richardson, a good one, whom Hartman replaced with Dizzy's Band; of Herb Jeffries, the Brownskinned Buckaroo; of Herb Lance and Arthur Prysock; and of course, of the Great Mister B, Billy Eckstine.

Where are they now? That jazz singing, especially among male singers, has declined since the fadeout of the bebop band is one of the least controversial topics in jazz. Replacing the masculinity of the crooner with the effeteness of the lark is only another kind of the premature destruction of artists by factors which have nothing to do with their art, which destruction we are the passive witnesses of in these times.

So we are fortunate to have Johnny Hartman back in the life, and in a better than "favorable" setting, too.

You are immediately struck by Hartman's dark satin lyricism in They Say That Falling In Love Is Wonderful.

His voice, always a perfectly tuned instrument, is unobtrusive and relaxing, heavy in quality but almost without tremolo, which makes Hartman unique among the big-voiced boppers. His enunciation is impeccable (you'll hear every word on this record), which makes him unique among all male singers. He respects the word, adapts his vocal embellishments to the value (in meaning and sound) of the word: which makes him unique among everybody.

Coltrane's bridge is intended to fit into the totality of the song. He doesn't, as you might expect of such a hard-blowing tenor man, try to overpower the singer or the song. He rather re-interprets it along the same lines as Hartman.

Dedicated To You is rendered with all the intimacy the name suggests. Hartman sings the first verse and leaves off right in the middle of Coltrane's horn. This time it's Trane who makes the initial interpretation with one of the sweetest, most straightforward choruses he's ever recorded. You get the feeling Trane's thinking the words while he blows the melody. Then when Hartman sings the last verses you hardly notice the change from horn to vocal.

Coltrane introduces My One and Only Love, one of "Tin Pan Alley's" most lyric moments. It's a tender and rather complete statement from Trane. Garrison makes a strong bridge to Hartman, who breathes these lyrics like a horn. Garrison is a beautiful bass accompanist. He plays the lines under Hartman like the bass in a vocal quartet.  I don't mean to slight McCoy Tyner, whose skills as an accompanist were a known quantity by the time My Favorite Things became popular; or Elvin's sensitive restraint on drums. It's just that performing with a singer necessarily tones this group down and the bass lines get through better.

Lush Life, which Trane's recorded before, is often performed but never this well. Hartman's vocal control lets him handle the songspiel of the first stanza in a way that seems like pure communication. From there he glides through the difficult changes of a very wordy song with an ease of expression that pulls every nuance from it with no ostentation whatever. And Hartman, like Coltrane, uses Tyner's comping, both as an extension of his own expression and as a musical ancillary to a conversational song. Coltrane's solos—well, another insight into what the song is about.  A double-timed commentary on what Hartman's just said.

You Are Too Beautiful For One Man Alone is one of my favorite songs. Again, Hartman impresses by his ability to approach every song in terms of what it is about. The essence of his style is relaxed communication.  He and McCoy Tyner are perfectly in tune. Every phrase in this set is impeccably stated. By everyone. Trane lays out on this tune.

Autumn Serenade is a light-headed rumba. Hartman makes his voice a little heavier to get that effect across. Again he takes an instrumental stance in the group. Coltrane plays his longest and most powerful solo. For the only time on this set he concentrates more on the harmonic and rhythmic implications of the changes than on the melodic line. Thus he makes those perfectly placed embellishments in all parts of the horn that we know him by. Heretofore Trane's played a relatively self-effacing set. Now he stretches out, in a languid sort of way, and plays a solo that is at once relaxing, poignant, strong, romantic, danceable, complex and beautiful. The man is a master, easily the most identifiable tenor player since Lester Young. A man who found his own voice and refined it to a point where he constantly finds new and more subtle areas of expression in it. Like Johnny Hartman.

A.B. Spellman

(Original liner notes from John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman AS-40)”

ADDENDUM

All of John Coltrane's Impulse sessions at Rudy Van Gelder's studio were done directly to two-track stereo tape. After completing this collaboration with Johnny Hartman, a master tape was assembled from the original session tapes.

At a later date, Coltrane decided to overdub some additional obbligato saxophone phrases behind Hartman’s vocals on My One and Only Love, Lush Life and You Are Too Beautiful. A new master was made by Rudy Van Gelder, who added some additional echo to the three tracks. Although the first release of the album used the original master without Coltrane's additional obbligatos, it was later substituted with the new master. This gave rise to the rumor that alternate takes of My One and Only Love, Lush Life and You Are Too Beautiful existed and were issued on some pressings. No alternate takes exist or have been issued.

For this reissue, we have used the original master tape for They Say It's Wonderful, Dedicated To You and Autumn Serenade and the remastered versions of the three tunes mentioned.

A version of "Afro Blue" was recorded at this session, but it was never issued and no tape of this performance exists. Presumably Hartman sang Oscar Brown, Jr.'s lyrics to this Mongo Santamaria composition. A few months later, this would be a staple in the quartet's book as an instrumental.”

MICHAEL CUSCUNA, 1995

While it is almost impossible to chose from the six tracks on John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, I went with My One and Only Love on the following video from to the album.

Stan Kenton by George T. Simon

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

“Few leaders have been accorded as much love and respect as Kenton achieved, not only because of his dedication and his talent, but also because of the consideration he accorded his musicians.”

- George T. Simon

There was a time when if you were a big band and George T. Simon wasn’t writing about you in his regular features in Metronome or in one of his books on the subject, notably The Big Bands [which went through four editions], then you were for all intents and purposes relegated to the Jazz equivalent of the baseball minor leagues.

Amazingly, for all his influence, George usually rendered very balanced accounts of the big bands he observed and was very fair in stressing what was good about them and what was, in today’s parlance, not so good.

Fair-minded accounts of Stan Kenton and His Orchestra weren’t often the case; most were usually polarized with reviews that spewed forth hyperbolic adjectives about the “power and majesty” of the band or those that thought it to be noisy and pontifical.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles has been hard at work developing a variety of postings on Stan Kenton so as to insure that many points-of-view on this key figure in the development of modern orchestral Jazz are well-represented in the blog’s archives.

The following assessment of Stan Kenton and His Orchestra can be found in George T. Simon, The Big Bands, 4th Ed. It is of particular significance because George was in attendance during the band’s early years of existence and as such is a primary source.

“TALK to a baseball fan about Stan the Man and he'll know you're referring to Stan Musial. But mention Stan the Man to any jazz buff or big band enthusiast outside St. Louis and he'll know you're talking about Stan Kenton.

Stan happened to be quite a man, too—six and a half feet of him. Six and a half feet of nervous, exhausting energy that once produced some of the most thrilling, some of the most aggravating, some of the most impressive, some of the most depressive, some of the most exciting, some of the most boring and certainly some of the most controversial sounds, music and/or noise ever to emanate from any big band.

A friend of mine, an arranger named Ralph Yaw, had tipped me off on the Kenton band when it was still an unknown infant. In March of 1941 he had written in a letter from Los Angeles:

“Been meaning to write ever since getting here, but you know how it is.

The reason is in connection with a band I'm working with. This band is something quite special and different. Stanley Kenton is the leader and I am working with him. We do the arranging and I think we have cooked up something new in style.

However, I will not take time to try to describe it, but only say that a swell new treatment of saxes and a couple of other style tricks do it. The saxes are treated to my mind in the right way for the first time. It really scares me.”

The band debuted a few months later — Memorial Day— in Balboa Beach, where seven years before young Stanley Kenton had been playing piano in Everett Hoagland's then swinging band. When I arrived in L. A. in the summer of 1941, one of the first things I did was to look up the Kenton band. I found it in the KHJ radio studio, where it was doing a live broadcast, which the announcer kept telling his listeners was actually emanating from Balboa Beach! Several nights later I drove out to Balboa to spend the first of several evenings listening to the band and to gather material for its first major review, a well-reserved rave—for the most part.

"Within the Stan Kenton band," the review noted, "nestles one of the greatest combinations of rhythm, harmony and melody that's ever been assembled by one leader." Then, after crediting Kenton for most of the band's good points, including his arrangements, while also extolling several of the young musicians, especially bassist Howard Rumsey, lead trumpeter Frank Beach and also saxist Jack Ordean, I faulted the band for "continual blasting. It's great to screech with complete abandon," the review said, "but you've got to screech at the right time." It also suggested that Stan "curb his gesticulative enthusiasm" and in general recommended "greater restraint."

One thing I found out immediately: there's nothing more vociferous than a Kenton fan. The mail started coming in at once, faulting me for faulting the band. Stan himself, I understood later, also objected to my criticism, and

I our relationship became tenuous, with only slight variations ever after. I must admit once and for all that I have never become a complete Kenton band convert, for no matter how great his bands have been musically, their emotional impact has for me too often been blunted by an air of self-consciousness, sometimes combined with pompousness, and too often an inability to swing freely. Never, though, have I failed to admire Kenton for his courage, his tenacity, his sincerity, his thoughtfulness and his complete belief that what he is doing was right.

Kenton's unbending approach always made him quite susceptible to some rather caustic criticism. Thus in 1941, in his first radio review of the band, Barry Ulanov admitted that it had "that combination of heavy voicings and staccato phrasings down pat. But there's no reason why so formidable an organization must always sound like a moving-man grunting under the weight of a concert grand."

The Kenton style was indeed heavy and ponderous, especially on ballads. Some people, including some critics, insisted that Kenton's projected the swinging approach of the Jimmie Lunceford band. Both, they pointed out, played heavily accented music. I think this evaluation misses the one basic difference: the Lunceford band always played and sounded relaxed, rolling along easily with the beat instead of fighting and trying to push it ahead, as Kenton's did. One band moved like a fleet halfback, the other like a muscle-bound lineman.

In his Treasury of Jazz Eddie Condon wrote that "every Kenton record sounds to me as though Stan signed on three hundred men for the date and they were all on time. Music of his school, in my opinion, ought only to be played close to elephants and listened to only by clowns." But, Condon admitted, "It's a real accomplishment to take that many men and make them sound ruly."

Kenton's musicians have sounded "ruly" because they not only believed in his music, but also believed in him as a leader. Consequently, they worked especially hard for him. Few leaders have been accorded as much love and respect as Kenton achieved, not only because of his dedication and his talent, but also because of the consideration he accorded his musicians.

Shelly Manne, who for several years handled probably the most difficult assignment of all musicians in the Kenton band, that of trying to swing it from the drums, emoted words of high praise several years after he had departed the group, words that undoubtedly express the feelings of many other men who played for Kenton. Said Shelly: "He was so personal, always one of the fellows and yet nobody ever lost any respect for him. If the guys needed money, Stan would lend it to them. Everybody really wanted to work for what he was working. And the spirit of the band was wonderful. It was such a clean atmosphere. You always felt that you were working for something that mattered instead of just jamming 'Tea for Two' or Perdido.'

"The way Stan encouraged everybody was so wonderful, too. He was always encouraging young arrangers. If a guy joined the band, he'd never judge him on first appearances, the way most leaders do. He'd let him play for a while until he settled down. Then Stan would make up his mind.

"And he was so wonderful with the public, too. He never fluffed anybody off."

But Stan wasn't without faults. During his early days especially he showed great stubbornness, often refusing to face certain harsh realities and insisting upon doing only what he, in his idealistic way, believed he should do, regardless of what anybody else thought or felt.

This attitude, of course, tied in directly with a certain obstinacy that he admitted to as a youth when his mother wanted him to learn piano and he insisted on playing ball instead. It took a lengthy visit from two cousins who played jazz at his house to convince him that music was after all what he really wanted to do.

Like any good man, Kenton was quite willing to admit his mistakes. In 1947, after he had reorganized, he told me, during a lengthy interview what he thought had been wrong with his last band. "It was much too stiff," he said. "Some people with lots of nervous energy could feel what we were doing, but nobody else could. Our music seemed out of tune with the people; we just had no common pulse. I guess I just had the wrong goddam feel for music."

Kenton, who once threatened to quit the music business to become a psychiatrist, may have been unduly hard on himself, for his band had made a fantastic number of converts, many of them through his popular recordings, which began in late 1941 with "Adios," and "Taboo" and "Gambler's Blues," the last a rehash of "St. James Infirmary" on which Stan "sang." Even more popular were his 1943 recordings of his theme, "Artistry in Rhythm," and "Eager Beaver," one of his most swinging sides. New, more experienced, not completely Kenton-indoctrinated personnel had dispelled much of the band's stiffness by then; only three men remained from the unit that had been formed just a little over two years earlier.

But the band's swingingest sides were still to come. In the spring of 1944, Anita O'Day joined Kenton and during the same period Dave Matthews and Stan Getz came in on tenor saxes, with Dave also writing some of the arrangements. In May, with Anita singing, the band recorded one of its most famous and infectious-sounding sides, "And Her Tears Flowed like Wine," and a swinging "Are You Livin', Old Man?"

Anita stayed with the band for less than a year. She was followed by a cute blonde whose singing resembled Anita's, though it lacked both Anita's sparkle and intonation. This was June Christy, bright, friendly and very well-liked by her compatriots, who recorded such commercial sides as "Tampico" and "Willow Weep for Me." A young tenor saxist, Bob Cooper, also joined Kenton around this time; later he and June were married.

As the war ended and more musicians became available, the Kenton music improved even more. So did its popularity. It scored a big hit at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago, the first really great reception it had received in a major room outside Los Angeles. In September the band returned to New York and registered just as impressively at the Paramount Theater and at the Pennsylvania Hotel, where Barry Ulanov reviewed it. "Stan had been wandering musically," he noted, "playing more and more ballads, going in for more and more production numbers, and, consequently, playing less and less of the kind of galvanic jazz which was first associated with his name. The wandering years are over. Stan is back to the kind of jazz he knows, feels and is best able to play . . . and his band swings more subtly now and, as a result, connects."

Eddie Safranski had joined the band by then on bass, and his playing made a big difference. Vido Musso and his tenor sax were also there, and they played important roles on one of the band's biggest hits, "Artistry Jumps." And soon came more stellar musicians, like trombonist Kai Winding, drummer Shelly Manne and arranger Pete Rugolo, pushing the Kenton band toward musical heights it had never been able to attain previously.

Rugolo, serious, bespectacled and highly imaginative, made the biggest difference. Not only did he write distinctive arrangements, giving the band an ever clearer identity, but he also took a good deal of the load off Stan, with whom he became very friendly, establishing a relationship similar to that of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.

In January, 1946, Kenton was declared Band of the Year by the editors of Look magazine. Twelve months later, Metronome's editors, who had never been complete Kenton converts, accorded the band the same honor.

In the same issue they ran an article headed "Bands Busting Up Big" and listed eight top dance orchestras (Stan's not included) that had decided to disband during the preceding months.

But Stan wasn't discouraged. Perhaps the era of the big bands that played for dancing and strictly for the public may have ended, but Stan's wasn't one of those bands. He continued to have faith in his more specialized, modern approach. "Soon there'll be no more 'in the middle' bands," he predicted at the time, "no more of those that try to play something new for a few minutes and then settle back into the old way because it's commercial. The pace is much too fast for that sort of thing. . . . Quite frankly, I think that if the commercial bands try to compete with the more modern bands, they'll wind up making asses of themselves."

Stan often came on strong like that. He was thoroughly convinced that what he and his men were doing was the right and perhaps the only thing, and he spoke out all over the country for what he believed in. Spoke out and spoke on and on and on. I can't recall any bandleader who ever did a greater selling job for his music than Stan Kenton did. He was a press agent's delight, a constant joy to his equally voluble, omnipresent PR man, Milton Karle. He was forever visiting disc jockeys, dropping in at record shops and granting interviews anywhere, anytime with anyone who would listen to his impassioned diatribes. His highly contagious and often overpowering enthusiasm frequently carried him away too, as he rambled on about his music, his philosophy and various other subjects. Many of his interviews turned into monologues as the sentences poured out, seemingly without any punctuation except exclamation points, which he'd drop in all over the place.

He knew he had a selling job to do, and he relished it. "If you ask any ten people on the street," he pointed out, "if they have ever heard of Stan Kenton, only a couple of them will say 'yes.' We have to try to get the other eight. And the only way I can see to do it is to make myself a personality and take my band along."

The big bands as a group may have started to fade away in 1947. But not Stan Kenton's. He kept building bigger and more complex units, which played bigger and more complex works. He veered more and more from the dance band field and began concentrating almost exclusively on concerts, bringing greater satisfaction not only to himself but to those who came to listen but seldom to dance.

There were times when he was successful; there were times when he failed. But always he kept up that indomitable spirit. Perhaps his enthusiasm was not as intense and as pervasive as before. Perhaps he listened more as the monologues ebbed and the dialogues flowed.

In the sixties, he and I participated in a dialogue. Looking back at his music, especially his ballads, he said, "There was just too much tension, but I'm rid of that now. ... At my age [he was then nearing fifty] I've finally found out what is and what isn't important. I used to try to prove every point. Now I'm concentrating on those that really mean something to me.”

Concentrate Stan did, as hard as he possibly could, for almost two decades more. His spirit never flagged, as he kept trying to prove all the musical and philosophical points that mattered to him. The pace was literally killing. In 1977, after an engagement, he fell in a parking lot and suffered a severe skull fracture that required a lengthy hospitalization. Upon his release, he was warned to slow down. He never heeded that warning, and on August 17, 1979, he suffered a terrible stroke. He lingered for just eight days more, and one of the big bands' greatest innovators was gone."

April in Paris

Wayne Shorter Devils Island

Woody Herman, "Road Father" - Three Appreciations

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

There is an old admonition that states: “If you can’t say or write something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.”

When that someone is Woody Herman, saying something nice is never a problem.

Woody was one of the most beloved musicians in the history of Jazz. He was good to everyone and nearly everyone who entered his beneficent realm did their utmost to be good to him.

Over the half a century that he led his big bands and small groups, Woody became known to a host of young musicians whom he helped begin their careers in the Jazz World as the “Road Father.”

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to remember the Road Father on these pages with appreciations by three distinguished writers that more-or-less cover the beginnings, middle years and closing years of Woody’s career.

George T. Simon

Woody Herman

The Big Bands, 4th Ed.

New York: Schirmer Books, 1981

"HE'S a clean-cut-looking lad with a nice smile that should attract the dancers; he sings very nicely and plays good clarinet, both attributes that command musical respect, and he's very much of a gentleman and real all-around nice guy whom you'd like to know even better off the stand."

That's what I wrote about Woody Herman in January, 1937. It was a part of the very favorable review I'd accorded his brand new band at New York's Roseland Ballroom. As the years went by, I realized my wish. I got to know Woody "even better off the stand," very much better, in fact, and discovered, as so many others have during the past thirty years, that this is one of the real pros, both as a performer and as a mature human being. His warmth, his enthusiasm, his intelligence and his integrity—in addition, of course, to his musical taste, talent and perception—have made him one of the most thoroughly successful and popular leaders of all time.

He's always had good bands, and one major reason has been that musicians invariably like to work for him. Nat Pierce, who served as his pianist, arranger and general aide for many years, recently put it this way: "We never feel we're actually working for the man. It's more like working with him. He appreciates what we're doing and he lets us know it. And the guys appreciate him and respect him. So they work all the harder."

Jake Hanna, the superb drummer who, after having played for other leaders, finally blossomed in Woody's band, has this explanation: "Woody's flexible. He goes along with the way the band feels instead of sticking strictly to the book. That makes it always interesting and exciting for us. If a man's really blowing, Woody doesn't stop him after eight bars because the arrangement says so. He lets him keep on wailing."

"Flexible" is the key word here. Woody has managed through the years to adjust himself to the wants, talents and even the personalities of his musicians; yet he has retained their respect so completely that he has rarely had to assert himself as their leader. He has succeeded, too, in adjusting his music to the times, so that during its thirty-year history his band has never sounded old-fashioned even while staying within the bounds of general public acceptance. "I think," he once told writer Gene Lees in Down Beat, "I'm a good organizer and a good editor."

Leonard Feather once wrote: "No name bandleader has ever been better liked by the men who worked for him as well as those for whom he works." That comment reminds me of what happened during the band's initial Roseland date. Woody had both a loud band and high musical ideals. The ballroom manager, a man named Joe Belford, who looked like a Green Bay lineman, used to bellow to the band to play waltzes, rumbas, tangos and sambas, none of which it had in its books and none of which it would have played on principle anyway. Woody handled Joe beautifully. He'd just bust out in a grin, bellow back kiddingly at Belford, tell him to get lost and quit bothering him. And he'd continue playing what he wanted to. So good-natured was Woody's approach, and yet so firm and so positive, that Belford not only took it but became one of the band's biggest fans.”

Doug Ramsey -

Woody Herman 1963: The Swingin’est Band Ever [Verve Records ‎– 314 589 490-2, Philips ‎– PHS 600-065]

Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of Its Makers

Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1989. You can locate more information on this book and how to purchase it by going here.

“Some jazz soloists travel around the country appearing with pickup local rhythm sections. If Woody Herman decided to strike out as a single, in many cities he could put together seventeen-piece bands

composed entirely of his alumni. Legions of musicians have passed through the Herman herds since "The Band That Plays the Blues" was formed in 1936. In New York and Los Angeles Woody could depopulate the studios by recalling the herdsmen.

There are so many Herman graduates in the lounges, pits, clubs, and sound stages of Los Angeles and Las Vegas that in his madder moments Woody dreams a scene DeMilleian in scope. Along the desert highway between the movie capital and the gambling mecca runs a line of horn players interrupted every few miles by a rhythm section, a straight lineup band like the one Herman used to perch on the back bar at the Metropole in New York, but infinite. Woody patrols in a jeep, keeping the time straight and shouting out the number of the next tune.

The Who's Who quality of that imaginary lineup is staggering. Among the trumpeters are Conte and Pete Candoli, Sonny Berman, Bill Chase, Don Ellis, Nat Adderley, Shorty Rogers, Red Rodney, Ernie Royal, Cappy Lewis, Al Porcino; trombonists Bill Harris, Carl Fontana, Bill Watrous, Urbie Green; bassists Oscar Pettiford, Chubby Jackson, Red Mitchell, Red Kelly; pianists Jimmy Rowles, Vince Guaraldi, Lou Levy, Nat Pierce, Dave McKenna; vibraharp-ists Milt Jackson, Terry Gibbs, Red Norvo, Margie Hyams; drummers Dave Tough, Cliff Leeman, Don Lamond, Shelly Manne, Jake Hanna, Chuck Flores; guitarists Chuck Wayne and Billy Bauer; and of course the pantheon of saxophonists, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Herbie Steward, Gene Ammons, Flip Phillips, Al Cohn, Serge Chaloff, Al Belletto, Bill Perkins, Richie Kamuca, Don Lanphere, Sal Nistico, Joe Romano, Frank Tiberi, Leonard Garment. Leonard Garment?...

Herman says he lost track of the number of Third Herds somewhere along the way. I can't recall whether the band still carried that subtitle when the music in this collection was recorded in late 1962. This was a newly formed band, one of the most exciting Woody fronted in the sixties. It had in abundance the qualities Woody is able to impart to seventeen men; vitality, joy, humor, a time feeling that seems to spring from a single pulse and that mysterious artful something that sets Herman apart as a leader.

It had marvelous soloists in Sal Nistico, one of the most exciting of those Italian-American tenor men who keep popping onto the jazz scene from upstate New York; trumpeter Bill Chase and trombonist Phil Wilson, high note specialists who were not only magnificent lead players but trenchant improvisers; and Nat Pierce, a pianist who also has provided some of Herman's most serviceable arrangements over the past two decades. The ensemble sound of this band was unfailingly bright and full. The superb rhythm section was sparked by drummer Jake Hanna, as perfect for this band as was Dave Tough for the First Herd.”

Gary Giddins

Rhythm-a-ning: Jazz Tradition and Innovation in the 80’s

New York: Da Capo Press, 1985

“Woody Herman must be one of the least disliked persons on earth. It isn't just sentimentality. Herman's name is a quality brand, representing craftsmanship, integrity, and receptiveness to new ideas. So when it was announced that Herman—who has been a traveling performer since the age of eight and a bandleader since 1936—was coming off the road to settle in a room of his own (opening night: December 27, 1981), there was considerable hoopla. It was widely assumed that Herman would be delighted to plant his feet on one patch of earth. But Herman is of another school, almost another world.

In the '30s and '40s, musicians roamed the land in herds. Crisscrossing a grid of interstate highways and back roads, corralled in buses, billeted according to celebrity status and race, and developing a collective, arcane wit to complement the music and to fight fatigue, they moved from town to town, ballroom to ballroom, glad for the occasional two-week stay but always ready to pack up after the gig for another long trip. Swing bands, fifteen to twenty strong on the average, were one of the Depression's more unlikely phenomena. Although many were sickly sweet or bland and derivative, more than a few were hot, impetuous, energetic, inventive, and inspired. These were the bands that combined strong leaders, brilliant soloists, adventurous writers, and the best songs of a golden age of song writing. Individual in their style of presentation as well as in their music, they coexisted in an atmosphere of friendly, if sometimes tension-ridden, competition. The stubbornest road musicians probably got to know America better than any of its other citizens, certainly than any of its other artists. But few were either stubborn or strong enough to survive the social and economic changes that followed World War II. And only two—Count Basie and Woody Herman—were also both gifted and lucky enough to survive into the '80s. They are as obsolete as buffalo, and just as grand. …

Herman occupies a unique place among the handful of great bandleaders who survived the era that gave them life. Ellington is beyond time, and Ellingtonia is a language unto itself; Basie employs a variety of writers (including a few Herman alumni) but invariably stamps them with the Basie signature. Herman's Herds, however, have served in the role of a Greek chorus, commenting on, interpreting, and reworking the changes in jazz. Herman keeps up with fashions yet refuses to succumb to their excesses. His bands have been as distinct from one another as they have been from other outfits, but they've all been governed by Herman's sense of taste, proportion, and adventure. He disdains fusion and is appalled when gifted musicians leave his band to play sound tracks and jingles or compromise their individuality to play trash. He didn't stay on the road 46 years to compromise.”

Bob Crosby, His Orchestra and The Bobcats

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

The big band era largely blossomed during the decade of the 1930’s bringing the Swing Era into existence.

The circumstances of the World War II [1939-1945], including the recruitment into the armed forces of many of the musicians who played in them, essentially ended the era of big bands. The economics of the postwar era also had a great deal to do with their demise.

But those who experienced the heyday of the big bands, never forgot the pleasure they derived from listening and dancing to them.

Everyone had their favorites: Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Harry James. Some fans were such avid followers that they even knew the names of who held down the 3^rd trumpet chair in their favorite band.

Every so often, a big band would come along that wasn’t a huge commercial success, but one that nevertheless developed a close following for the quality of its music.

Such was the case with Bob Crosby’s Orchestra and the small band embedded in it which he called – The Bobcats.

My Dad was one such Bob Crosby fan and when I discovered his stash of Decca 78 rpm’s of the band and asked him about them, he simply said: “You’ll like listening to them; they were The-Best-of-The-Best!”

Richard Sudhalter offers some reflections on why the Bob Crosby aggregations were thought of so highly in the following excerpts from his seminal Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contributions to Jazz, 1915-1945 [New York: Oxford, 2000, pp. 382-384, excerpted].

“Above all," [bassist] Bob Haggart recalled, "we were like a family. We worked together, socialized together. Thought musically together. Most other bands—well, to tell the truth, we didn't pay much attention to what everybody else was doing. To us most of the time, they just sounded as if they were trying to steal from one another."

Meet that wonder of the musical 1930s, the Bob Crosby Orchestra. In the whole colorful decade there wasn't another band like it, and in certain ways there may not have been another nearly so good.

For chronicler George T. Simon, they were an ensemble "with tremendous spirit, one filled with men who believed thoroughly in the kind of music they were playing and, what's more, who respected and admired one another as mu­sicians and as people."

Few bands, however brilliant, approached that degree of unanimity with any consistency. It extends beyond mere skill, beyond originality—even beyond a leader or arranger's inspired vision. Neither Benny Goodman's virtuosity nor the faultless precision of his orchestras ever quite transformed their efforts into the expression of a single collective will. Artie Shaw came closer, his various bands driven by the strength and singularity of his vision: but Shaw's musicians re­mained his employees. Much the same could be said even for Red Norvo's ex­traordinary 1937 band, breathing, whispering, exulting as extensions of both its leader's xylophone sound and Eddie Sauter's ensemble concept.

The Crosby orchestra had an extra dimension. It lives in such words as "en­semble," when describing tightly knit group acting, or "team," in the finest athletic sense; the idea of a collective entity, each component interacting con­stantly and creatively with the others to shape, to determine the whole. Gestalt, a single consciousness compounded of many.

In that rarified context only the Duke Ellington Orchestra comes to mind as in any way comparable. But an Ellington orchestra, any Ellington orchestra, as­sumed its finished shape through the leader's (and often Billy Strayhorn's) cod­ification of an ongoing fusion and fission among its individual members. The Crosby orchestra, by contrast, began with unanimous, shared dedication to a single stylistic ideal. Its name, most often popularly (and imperfectly) identified, I was "dixieland." But the word fails to describe either a stylistic predisposition or a rhythmic foundation, not to mention a wide palette of orchestral color and texture.

Better by far, and more accurate, to remember that the band led by Bing Crosby's younger brother was built around a core of New Orleans musicians, whose shared background and affinity determined its musical direction.

Historically, New Orleans jazzmen away from home shared a bond, a ca­maraderie, that seemed to transcend class, education, politics, even race. Meeting in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, they were often simply homeboys together, carrying their environment with them in a way that seemed to render differences among them irrelevant, or at least secondary. It may be that way with musicians from St. Louis, Boston, or San Antonio, but not to that degree; and on the evidence it's anything but that with New Yorkers. …

Whatever it was, and by whatever name its music was known, the band had sparkle, spontaneity, and lift and left a legacy of distinctive records, which have easily withstood the shifting winds of musical fashion.”