Lee Konitz Nonet by Gordon Jack

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

Lee Konitz died on April 15, 2020 at the age of 92.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it would be appropriate to re-post this piece as a tribute to his many contributions to Jazz.

Gordon Jack is a frequent contributor to the Jazz Journal and a very generous friend to these pages in allowing us to post of his excellent writings to the blog. He is the author of Fifties Jazz Talk An Oral Retrospective and he developed the Gerry Mulligan discography in Raymond Horrick’s book Gerry Mulligan’s Ark.

The following article was first published in Jazz Journal June 2015..

For more information and subscriptions please visit www.jazzjournal.co.uk

                                          

© -  Gordon Jack/JazzJournal; copyright protected, all rights reserved., used with permission.

“Throughout a prolific career spanning seven decades Lee Konitz has usually chosen to showcase his talents within the confines of a small ensemble – often a very small ensemble. There are numerous duo recordings with Sal Mosca, Red Mitchell, Hal Galper, Jimmy Rowles and Gil Evans etc. Trios too have frequently been his modus operandi with Sonny Dallas - Nick Stabulas, Dick Katz - Wilbur Little, Harold Danko - Jay Leonhart and Don Friedman - Attila Zoller. All of which made his decision to organise a nine-piece group in the mid-seventies somewhat surprising.

Because of its similar size, the Konitz nonet has sometimes been compared to what became known as the Birth of the Cool ensemble.  Miles’ group with its fragile, almost ethereal textures was essentially a scaled-down version of Claude Thornhill’s orchestra complete with french horn and tuba.  Lee’s nonet with its wide-ranging repertoire was a far more extrovert affair. The instrumentation which was actually suggested by David Berger was also quite different – two trumpets, two trombones (one doubling bass trombone), alto doubling soprano, baritone, piano, bass and drums.

Returning to New York in May 1976 from a short European tour with Warne Marsh, Konitz recorded with Buck Clayton and then Chris Connor before getting together with Jimmy Knepper and David Berger to discuss plans for his nonet. He was living on West 86th Street at the time and Stryker’s which had opened in 1972 was his local club. The nonet started playing there and for the next 18 months or so they appeared quite regularly once or twice a week. The club did not have a piano so Ben Aronov had to bring in an electric instrument. They also performed at the Tin Palace, a little known club in the Bowery. Apparently nobody was paid very much (usually just cab fare) but Lee managed to keep the same core of players throughout the residency. In an interview for Jazz Journal (December 1996) he told me that he could not afford to pay for arrangements but Sy Johnson, Jimmy Knepper, David and Kenny Berger and Sam Burtis were all happy to write for the band without a fee. Kenny Berger recently told me that musicians at the time were willing to donate their services for a worthwhile project because there was still enough decent paying work available elsewhere. Today it would probably be different.

Their first recording (Roulette SR 5006) took place in October 1976. It features totally fresh looks at If Dreams Come True, Tea For Two, Without a Song and A Pretty Girl is like a Melody from the twenties and thirties as well as some more up to date originals by Chick Corea - Matrix and Times Lie. There is also an outstanding ensemble reading of Wayne Shorter’s classic Nefertiti which is virtually a through-composed chart arranged by Kenny Berger with brief solos from Konitz, Berger and Ben Aronov.

Their next visit to the recording studio a year later was even more impressive (Chiaroscuro CRD 186). A particular feature of the date is the way famous solos have been orchestrated into many of the selections: - Louis Armstrong‘s 1927 Struttin’ With Some Barbecue; Charlie Parker’s 1953 Chi Chi; Lester Young and Slam Stewart’s 1943 Sometimes I’m Happy and John Coltrane’s 1959 Giant Steps  have all been seamlessly woven into the charts. The leader once said, “A great solo doesn’t care who plays it” - a philosophy probably inspired by his friend and mentor Lennie Tristano who used the study of classic instrumental solos as a teaching aid.  A highlight here is Konitz and Ronnie Cuber performing Coltrane’s choruses in unison on Giant Steps, the harmonic minefield originally inspired by Have You Met Miss Jones?  By now the hugely talented Cuber had replaced Kenny Berger on baritone and after the leader he was the most heavily featured soloist.  His ballad feature If You Could See Me Now is alone worth the price of the CD. Drummer Kenny Washington from Staten Island was recommended by Jimmy Knepper who apparently raved about him. Just nineteen at the time and making his recording debut, Konitz said he read all the music and was “really great” if a little loud sometimes. He told him to check out Mel Lewis which Kenny subsequently did.

The band performed at the Half Note early in 1977 with some interesting additions to the repertoire and tapes of their performance have circulated for years. They opened with 317 East 32nd. Street which Konitz and Warne Marsh had introduced with the composer Lennie Tristano back in 1952. An Out of Nowhere contrafact and a favourite Konitz sequence the title refers to Tristano’s studio address in Manhattan where he did his teaching. Gil Evans’ chart on Moon Dreams from the Birth of the Cool is heard together with an unusual Konitz original Kary’s Trance which was dedicated to his daughter. It was first heard on a 1956 album with Billy Bauer and is based on Play, Fiddle Play. This is surely the only time Emery Deutsch’s 1933 hit has been the inspiration for a jazz original.

In Andy Hamilton’s excellent book on Lee Konitz he points out that Kary’s Trance has been analysed in George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization. He quotes Russell saying, “Lee is one of the important figures in jazz – he endured and did it his way”. Unfortunately Lee’s most well-known composition Subconscious-Lee based on What Is This Thing Called Love? never seems to have been performed by the nonet.  Another regular source of inspiration to him over the years – All The Things You Are - is also conspicuously missing from the group’s repertoire.

Their last studio recording was the humorously titled – Yes, Yes Nonet – for the Steeplechase label in April 1979 (SCCD-31119).  It opens with Jimmy Knepper’s fanfare-like Dearth of a Nation which has some fine Clark Terry-inspired trumpet from John Eckert who also has an impressive ballad outing on My Buddy. Knepper’s accurately titled Languid has the leader front and centre on an original that would have been a perfect vehicle for Johnny Hodges. One of Lee’s students (Bill Kirchner) arranged Wayne Shorter’s Footprints which had been introduced by the composer in 1966 and was regularly performed by Miles Davis. It is notable for some intriguing duets – Sam Burtis with Jmmy Knepper – Lee Konitz with Ronnie Cuber and John Eckert with Tom Harrell.

Four months later the nonet was invited to perform in Holland at the Laren Jazz Festival with an interesting addition to the line-up – trumpeter Red Rodney (Soul Note 121069-2). Red had a habit of turning up unexpectedly because a year later he performed with Gerry Mulligan’s big band in Sweden when one of Mulligan’s trumpeters was indisposed. He is featured at length on April which is a Tristano original based as the name implies on the well-known Gene de Paul standard. The nonet achieves an outstanding ensemble reading both here and especially on Chick Corea’s difficult Matrix which includes a long extract from the composer’s 1968 solo recording. The leader’s arrangement of Without A Song is especially memorable. It was transposed to B natural as a writing exercise and only Konitz or Warne Marsh would choose such a challenging key. It features two extended soli passages for the ensemble (one unaccompanied) completely changing and even improving Vincent Youman’s standard. With so much re-writing he could have claimed composer royalties for an ‘original’ – Warne Marsh probably would have.

The following night they appeared at Middleheim performing their standard repertoire plus one of Lee’s favourites – You Stepped Out Of A Dream which they had not recorded before. Konitz once told me that he considered Ronnie Cuber to be “pretty special” but he went a little further at this concert when he introduced him to the audience as, “Sensational, inimitable and unbelievable” prior to his feature on Giant Steps. One of the last nonet appearances took place in Washington D.C. at the Smithsonian Institute on the 31st. January 1981 when they were asked to perform material from the Birth of the Cool album. The band already had Boplicity, Israel and Moon Dreams in the pad but Lee also wanted to include Godchild, Rocker and Jeru at the concert. He asked Miles Davis if he still had the arrangements but he was not interested in helping so Lee attempted to transcribe the charts from the records. There were ensemble passages he could not decipher which required a visit to Gerry Mulligan at his home in Darien, Connecticut who rewrote the arrangements in four hours – “It was great to see him work” Lee told me later.

It was not easy finding regular work for such a large group and Lee often found himself, “Talking to eight answering machines” whenever there was a booking or a rehearsal. More importantly his own opportunities to play were severely limited within the confines of a nine-piece ensemble which is why he eventually decided to disband. The original nonet recorded on four occasions but high quality tapes exist from the Half Note (1977), a radio broadcast (1978), Middleheim (1979), Washington D.C. (1981) and the Village Vanguard (1981). Hopefully some enterprising label might eventually release them commercially as a welcome addition to the recorded legacy of the Lee Konitz nonet.

There was one final occasion in Copenhagen when Konitz revisited the nonet format. In 1992 he received the Third Annual Jazzpar Award and he celebrated the event by recording with the Jazzpar All Star Nonet for Storyville (STCD 4181).

The following video features the nonet on Giant Steps with Lee and Ronnie playing Coltrane’s solo in unison beginning at 3:06 minutes into the track.

Lee Konitz [1927-2020] In Memoriam - The Gordon Jack Interview

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

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to feature something about Lee Konitz’s association with the epic Birth of the Cool recordings and his early years in Jazz on these pages as part of a remembrance following Lee's passing on April 15, 2020.

Gordon Jack had previously given his permission to post his chapter on Lee from his superb book - Fifties Jazz Talk: An Oral Retrospective [2004] - so I am re-posting it to these pages today in Lee's memory.

Gordon’s book is published by The Scarecrow Press and you can find order information about it by going here.

[The footnotes to Gordon’s essay are listed at the end of this piece.]

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

“Lee Konitz, who was born on October i3, 1927, in Chicago, was one of the very few alto saxophone players of his generation not lo fall under the spell of Charlie Parker. Throughout a long career, his unique sound and approach to improvisation have shown him to be one of the great individualists of the music. This interview took place in May 1996, when he was visiting London to play at Ronnie Scott's club.

It was thanks to Milt Bernhart that I got my first job with Teddy Powell's band in 1945 when I replaced Charlie Ventura, which meant I had all the hot solos on tenor. Unfortunately, the chords were written in concert, which was difficult for me, as I was just beginning to understand how all that worked. When I stood up to play on my first gig, I was told that Teddy walked off the stage and started banging his head against a wall. He wasn't an instrumentalist, but he had a fine jazz/dance band, with good musicians like Boots Mussulli, who was very encouraging but mystified by my lack of knowledge. Boots was a lovely guy, and he wasn't only a very fine saxophone player but he was also the best poker player in the band; he never lost. A month after I joined. Teddy Powell had to disband because of tax problems with the IRS. A little later, I went with Jerry Wald for a while, and he could certainly play the high notes on the clarinet, but he didn't let me play any solos.

In 1947 I joined Claude Thornhill, who had a lovely "ballad" band, as you know, and I did my first recording with him. He had excellent arrangements by Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan, and Gerry of course was mainly a writer then. His charts were great, and I also played his music with Stan Kenton.and those pieces were some of my favorites, because he really knew how to write for saxophones.

Moving on to the Miles Davis "Birth of the Cool" group, Miles was the titular leader because he had more of a name, and I suppose he could get the gigs; big deal, so he got one week at the Royal Roost. It has been said that we did two weeks there, but the way I remember it, the band did the first week, and for some reason Miles and I did the second week as a quintet with John Lewis, Al McKibbon, and Max Roach, I appreciated that Miles asked me, but we were basically playing bebop and I was not all that comfortable. The nonet was an arranger's band, because they rehearsed the music. Miles made some suggestions, but very few that I recall; I thought of it as Gerry's band really. What really concerns me is the way the band has been called 'The Birth of the Cool," which I think is a little off. The nonet was a chamber ensemble where the solos were incidental to the writing, which was the most important aspect. The real "Birth of the Cool" for me was Lennie Tristano's music. [1]

I wrote "Subconscious-Lee" for my first recording session as a leader in 1949, [2] but the title is not mine; I would never call a tune "Subconscious-Lee." I think it was my colleague Arnold Fishkin who came up with that name, and all the other "Lee" titles over the years have been suggested by other people as well. Tony Fruscella was supposed to be on the date, but when he came to my room to rehearse, I apparently offended him in some way with a couple of suggestions, so he pulled out. He was a sad guy, and 1 didn't play with him again. I had real trouble relating to him because that whole junky mentality was always a big turnoff for me. I could never identify with it and hated that aspect of my environment.

During the late forties I rehearsed with a band Benny Goodman was forming with Wardell Gray, Gerry Mulligan, Doug Mettome, and Buddy Greco. I was playing lead alto, and I remember Benny sitting in a chair right in front of me as we ran down one of Eddie Sauter's arrangements, I was able to read alright, but I had no lead alto experience to speak of. and Benny said, "O.K., Pops, can you do something with it?" In other words, he wanted some "Hymie Schertzer’-like vibrato. He asked me to go on the road with the band, but I turned him down, as I was studying with Lennie Tristano. I remember him saying, "You're studying with Tristano? Why don't you study with Paul Hindemith?" Looking back, I wish that I had gone on the road with him, because I am sure I would have enjoyed the experience. Something else I remember from those rehearsals is that Benny and Gerry didn't get along at all.

Lennie Tristano played very little in public, because the club pianos were so bad. It was also difficult for him to get around, and he didn't like depending on others for that. We didn't work much, except at the Half Note once in awhile, and I could probably count the gigs there on a couple of hands and maybe a foot. Audience reaction to him, though, was always great. Leonard Bernstein was very interested in Lennie's ideas and music, and they were very good friends. He once brought Aaron Copland to Lennie's studio to find out what Lennie was doing currently, and they both liked "Intuition," our free improvisation piece. [3] They wanted to know if there was a score to look at, but Lennie pointed out that it was fully improvised. Bernstein was always curious about jazz.

Neither Tristano nor Warne Marsh, who was one of the great improvisers of this music, have been fully acknowledged, and I think they were both resentful about that. Two other Tristano students. Sal Mosca and Don Ferrara, have since retired from the active scene. Sal has followed in Lennie's footsteps and become a teacher, and Don, who was a very capable player, seemed to drop out just as he was becoming known for his work with Mulligan's CJB in the sixties. Apparently he started to change his embouchure, and the next I heard was that he was teaching but not playing, in California. Willie Dennis was another of Lennie's students, who unfortunately died in the mid sixties. He was a wonderful trombonist and a lovely guy, but I didn't know him that well because he used to drink and hang out at places like Jim 'n' Andy's. Being a family man, I didn't hang out there, and as a result I didn't work that much. Things have changed—I still don't hang out, but I work a lot now.

In 1952 Stan Kenton was trying to get more of a jazz band with charts by Bill Russo, Bill Holman, and Gerry Mulligan, so I joined playing the jazz alto chair, with Vinnie Dean on lead. Stan was a heavy drinker and I wasn't, which meant that I didn't hang out with the guys in the back of the bus, but a certain reputation had preceded me, and I just quietly tried to do my job. I appreciated him very much because he was great to everyone in the band, although he used to tell them not to smoke pot on the road, so there wouldn't be any legal problems. Some time after Vinnie left, Davey Schildkraut joined, and he was a very musical guy. He played really well, and I remember when Warne Marsh heard his recording of "Solar" with Miles, he thought it was Bird playing.

Charlie Parker of course was the major influence on alto, but it wasn't difficult for me to avoid, since temperamentally that music didn't really get to me. It was more intense than I was able to identify with at the time, but eventually I decided that was all ego and I was missing the greatest alto player who had ever lived. I started to learn his music without adopting his whole vocabulary, because it is such a temptation to play all those nice melodies like everyone else did, but I had other stimuli.

When the Kenton band was at the Palladium in Los Angeles, Gerry asked me to come and sit in with his quartet at the Haig on our nights off. I loved the pianoless concept, and I have worked in many similar groups over the years. I had heard stories about Chet not reading, but I was never in a situation to check that out. I had also heard that he didn't know chord changes, but I remember seeing him at a piano, playing changes to tunes, so that wasn't true. On my recordings with the quartet, I actually rejected "Too Marvelous for Words" because it didn't seem to fit into Gerry's context. [4] Later on, in 1957, I played on another Mulligan album called The Sax Section, with Al Cohn,Zoot Sims, and Allen Eager, and that was a fun date. What impressed me most was how nice Zoot sounded on alto—Allen Eager, too. [5] Looking back, Gerry and I didn't play that much together, but he was very encouraging to me in the early days, and I always felt he was an ally. We even got high together for the first time because we had that kind of close relationship.

A few years later, in 1959, I came to England with a group called "Jazz from Carnegie Hall," with Zoot Sims, J. J. Johnson, Kai Winding, Phineas Newborn, Oscar Pettiford, and Kenny Clarke, but I don't have happy memories of that tour. Oscar, rest his soul, was a beautiful musician but a terrible drinker. He became very hostile when he drank, and I got some bad vibrations from him. Before the tour, he had asked me to play with a little band in New York, so we already had a relationship. In Europe, though, he became really mean, which intimidated me, and if I get uncomfortable I can't play. Every night he and Kenny Clarke would be arguing back and forth, accusing each other of rushing the tempo, but eventually they would hug and kiss. Kenny of course was a lovely guy and a great drummer, and I used to sit behind the curtain, playing time with some sticks when he was on with Jay and Kai. Zoot didn't have trouble with anyone, as he was pretty stoned most of the time anyway.

Another time when I was uncomfortable in a playing situation was fairly recently at Carnegie Hall, just before Red Rodney died in 1994. We were both with Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, Paul West, and Roy Haynes, and I just didn't feel that I was fitting in, but I never heard Red play so brilliantly — wow! When I play, I try to improvise from the first note, and if the acoustics are right I can do it. If they are wrong I'm messed up, because I don't have all that ready vocabulary, like a real professional should, I guess. All those cliches and hot licks carry you through sometimes.

I moved to California in 1962 because my wife and I felt there was a need to separate from Lennie Tristano, who was a very strong father-figure to me. We had been living at his house, but she encouraged me to move away to see what was happening elsewhere, and we stayed on the West Coast for a couple of years. I wasn't working much, but Warne and I used to play at Kim Novak's house in Big Sur on Sundays. Kim was not only a lovely woman but she was really nice, and she was quite a jazz fan. I wasn't soliciting for work, and it was nice forgetting about all that for a while, but I remember around 1963 going to see Miles with Frank Strozier at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco. He asked me to sit in, which I didn't want to do, because that is the type of situation I am uncomfortable with, especially when another sax player is there. It was almost as though Miles was checking out a replacement, and I could never do that. I did sit in with Miles at the Village Vanguard when Herbie Hancock was with him, but again,! wasn't happy just jumping into an organized band and trying to find a voice.

During the seventies I did some work with my own nine-piece group. Dave Berger, who is a very fine writer, suggested the instrumentation, which was two trumpets, two trombones, alto, baritone, with three rhythm, and although I couldn't afford to pay for arrangements, there were a lot of people who were eager to write for it without a fee. Kenny Berger was with us for a time, and he is a fine baritone player, but he had to take a night off. Someone suggested Ronnie Cuber, who I didn't know, but he turned out to be very impressive. Kenny had been taking long solos with the band, and even though I wanted to give everyone a chance to play, I had suggested to him that we shorten the solos a little. For instance, I would start off with a couple of choruses, then the next guy would play four, someone else would take six, and suddenly you say, "Hey, wait a minute!" Not being a leader as such, I found I was sitting there listening to all the guys blow, which is fine up to a point, but eventually 1 decided that I wanted to do the playing myself. Getting back to the baritone chair, because Ronnie was so good, I hired him, and Kenny didn't forgive me for a long time, but sometimes these decisions have to be made.

In 1980 the band was booked to play some concerts in Washington, D.C., and we were asked to recreate some of the "Birth of the Cool" arrangements. I called Miles to see if he still had the charts, but he wasn't interested in helping, so I started transcribing from the records. In the end, I had to call Gerry Mulligan, because there were ensemble passages that I couldn't decipher. I went to his house in Connecticut, and he rewrote "Godchild," "Jeu," and "Rocker" in four hours. It was great to see him work. [6]

In 1992 Gerry asked me to join the "Rebirth of the Cool" band, and I stayed with him until the end of the European tour, when Jerry Dodgion took my place for some concerts in South America. After the initial novelty of playing those arrangements again, it became a little much for me. It was Gerry's show, and he did it very well, God rest his soul, but I was just sitting there interpreting the parts, and I felt I wasn't playing enough. The very last time we worked together was in Marciac, France, when Bob Brookmeyer and I were guests with his quartet in 1993. At Gerry's memorial concert I played "Alone Together," which had been my feature on the "Rebirth" tour, and I asked everyone to hum a D concert, which is common to all the chords of the tune. I often do that so audiences and I are doing something together. While I played, there was a beautiful photo image on the wall of Gerry.

I travel six or seven months of the year, and I often do workshops for students. I sometimes ask myself what I can tell these young people, who probably play three times faster than I do and know every pentatonic scale created by man. In Austria last year I did a workshop with a difference, because 1 wanted to focus very directly on the music, so I just used hand signals and didn't say a word. Communicating these concepts in English can be difficult, but a translator creates even more problems. I got through two of the allotted three hours in that way in total silence, and humming was the main point. They warmed up their musical instrument with a hum and placed that hum in different parts of the body. I then played an interval and a chord and the students had to hum them both, and it really worked. They all seemed pleased to be doing something and not just listening to a bunch of concepts, but then I started to talk and spoilt everything!

Leonard Feather [Jazz critic], who got a lot of things wrong, once claimed that I had turned down the chance of playing with some of the "name" bands, but that wasn't true. I would have loved to play with Duke Ellington or a real jazz band like Woody Herman, but they never asked me. I keep busy, though, by recording, and since December 1995 I have appeared on about twelve CDs. I'm just making them left and right, and I think these little boxes will be the only things left after it is all over!”

NOTES

1.  In Ira Gitler's Jazz Masters of the '40s (Da Capo), Gerry Mulligan is quoted agreeing with Lee: "As far as the 'Birth of the Cool' is concerned. I think Lennie is much more responsible than the Miles dates. It's hard to say unemotional because it's not exactly that, but there was a coolness about his whole approach in terms of the dynamic level. Lennie always had his own thing going. He never came out in the big world."

2.  Lee Konitz Quintet. PRLP 7004.

3.  Lennie Tristano Sextet. EAP 1-491.

4.  Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Lee Konitz. Mosaic MR5-102. We must be thankful thai Konitz did not get his way in rejecting "Too Marvelous for Words," because the title sums up his playing both on this track and on an inspired "Loverman." Mulligan and Baker, however, were not at their best, and for this reason Gerry initially felt that the material should not be released. He changed his mind because of the brilliance of Lee's playing.

5.  Gerry Mulligan and "The Sax Section." Pacific Jazz 7243 8 3357520.

6.  Whitney Balliett reports in American Musicians: 56 Portraits in Jazz (Oxford) that after Miles Davis had refused to help and Mulligan had transcribed some of the charts, Konitz called Davis again, telling the trumpeter that the arrangements had now been rewritten, and Miles apparently replied, "Man, you should have asked me. They're all in my basement." Konitz told Gil Evans about the conversation, who said, "Miles wouldn't have told you he had everything in the basement if you hadn't first told him you'd gone to the trouble to transcribe the records." Lee told Balliett that "Miles is a bona-fide eccentric."

The Thad Jones – Mel Lewis Orchestra: A Big Band Is Born

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

Who would have thought that a big band born twenty years [20] after their heyday would still be going strong almost fifty [55] years later?

Such is the case with The Thad Jones – Mel Lewis Orchestra which came into existence in February, 1966 at The Village Vanguard in New York City and still holds forth every Monday night in the same location as The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra.

Obviously, its personnel has gone through changes over the years, but the high quality of the band’s music hasn’t.

Of course, this is my interpretation of the band’s historical, shall we say, line of continuity.  Following this introduction, Bill Kirchner offers a much more accurate demarcation between the original Thad Jones – Mel Lewis Orchestra and the ones that came after it.

At its inception, the signature aspect of the band’s sound was the writing of Thad Jones, although Bob Brookmeyer, Tom McIntosh and Garnet Brown [all trombonists!] contributed charts to the band’s initial play book.

The band’s founders, trumpeter, composer and arranger, Thad Jones, and drummer, Mel Lewis, traveled widely divergent paths in coming together to form the band.

For years, Mel had been a first-call drummer with The Stan Kenton Orchestra, the Bill Holman Big Band, what has come to be known as the Terry Gibbs Dream Band, the Gerald Wilson Orchestra and Gerry Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band.

Few big band drummers in the history of Jazz have ever been more successful than Mel who would cap his career with almost a decade-and-a-half of performing with the big band he co-led with Thad.

On the other hand, during this same time frame, Thad Jones had enjoyed an almost exclusive association with Count Basie’s big band [1954-1963] as a trumpet player and composer-arranger, although many of the charts that gave birth to the distinctive sound of the orchestra that he co-led with Mel were largely rejected during his tenure with Basie for the reasons noted below by Bill.

“Gave birth” may be a suitable metaphor for many aspects of the music of The Thad Jones – Mel Lewis Orchestra as one of Thad’s earliest and, by now, most famous compositions is entitled A Child Is Born.

Music has a way of sometimes capturing – The Ineffable – that which is beyond words and so it is with A Child Is Born. The miracle of human birth is beautifully captured in the melodic refrains of the song in a way that supersedes and transcends verbal expression.

Thad and Mel once said that the music of A Child Is Born should be played when every child is born.

In 1994, Michael Cuscuna and his team at Mosaic Records gathered together the band’s first, half-dozen LP's and issued them as The Complete Solid State Recordings of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra [Mosaic MD-5-151].

Michael asked Bill Kirchner, the eminent Jazz musician, author and editor, to write the insert notes to the collection.

Michael and Bill were kind enough to grant us permission to reprint a portion of Bill’s insightful writings about The Thad Jones – Mel Lewis Orchestra’s origins and subsequent history.

© -Bill Kirchner/Mosaic Records; used with the permission of the author; copyright protected, all rights reserved.

"On February 12, 1966, The New York Times ran a review by John S. Wilson entitled "2 New Big Bands Here Appeal To More Than Old Memories." Wilson first men­tioned the reorganized Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and its new director Urbie Green, as well as such sidemen as Howard McGhee, Budd Johnson, Dave McKenna, Mousey Alexander, and Arnie Lawrence. "Most of these sidemen are successful freelance New York musicians," wrote Wilson. "And that makes the band's future questionable. When the band ends its run at the River Boat, will these men be willing to go on the road, or will Mr. Green have to fill in with less experienced musicians?"

The review continued:

“One band that is not likely to leave New York is The Jazz Band, an 18-piece group jointly led by Thad Jones, a former Count Basie trumpeter, and Mel Lewis, a drummer who has served with Woody Herman, Stan and Ben Goodman. Organized last Thanksgiving as a rehearsal band that met once a week, The Jazz Band gave its first public performance Monday night at the Village Vanguard in an enthusiastic atmosphere reminiscent of the great jazz days on 52nd Street. This all-star band — it includes Bob Brookmeyer, Hank Jones, Richard Davis, Snooky Young, and Jerome Richardson, among others — ripped through Thad Jones's provocative, down-to-earth arrange­ments with the surging joy that one remembers in the early Basie band or Woody Herman's First Herd. Those were young bands whose skills sometimes could not keep up with their desires. But these are old pros, having a wonderful time and rising to each other's challenges, even to such adventures as three-part improvisation. Because these musicians have regular jobs, they can only get together once a week. That will be on Mondays at the Vanguard for the next few weeks at least.”

What was obvious to everyone present at the Vanguard on the night of February 7, 1966 was that an exceptional ensemble had been born. What no one could have predicted was that the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra would become one of the most acclaimed and innovative big bands in jazz history, that it would tour extensively throughout three continents, and that its offspring, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, would still be in residence on Monday nights twenty-eight years later.

Two events gave impetus to the formation of the Jones/Lewis band. One was the breakup of the Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band (of which Jones, Lewis and Bob Brookmeyer were members) in 1964. The second was Count Basie's commissioning of Jones to write an album's worth of arrangements for the Basie band in 1965.

In his nine years as a Basie sideman (1954-63), Jones had contributed significantly to the Basie library (as is evi­denced in Mosaic's boxed sets of Basie's live and studio Roulette recordings), but this new commission resulted in his most ambitious writing for Basie. As far as we know, Jones wrote seven originals: The Second Race, The Little Pixie, A-That's Freedom, Low Down, Backbone, All My Yesterdays, and Big Dipper. Basie tried all of them and ultimately rejected all of them; apparently they were too difficult for the band, as well as too atypical of the band's style.

He did, however, allow Jones to keep the scores and copied parts. At that point (the fall of 1965), Jones and Lewis decided to make their move and called a rehearsal.

Most of the musicians they contacted were, like them­selves, active in the New York television and recording scenes. It was a period when all three television networks, plus the syndicated shows, had large orchestras with musi­cians on staff. Many of these players, and many others as well, also did record dates and jingles; it was quite com­mon for a busy recording musician to do two, three, or four dates a day, every day.

(Much of this work has disappeared, in New York and elsewhere. Most of the network staff jobs have been abol­ished, and record and jingle dates have considerably diminished in number, to a point where most recording musicians now consider studio work a secondary activity in their careers. As one musician, formerly very active in the studios, half-facetiously put it, "If you want to be success­ful in the studios nowadays, start a synthesizer cartage firm.")

A number of musicians on the early Jones/Lewis band were, as was Jones, on staff at CBS: Jimmy Nottingham, Jack Rains, Cliff Heather, and Hank Jones. Snooky Young and Jimmy Maxwell were at NBC, and Bob Brookmeyer, Bill Berry and Danny Stiles did the syndicated Merv Griffin show. Others, such as Jerome Richardson, Jerry Dodgion, Pepper Adams, Richard Davis, and Lewis were active in recording. And there were some talented up-and-comers: Eddie Daniels, Jimmy Owens, Garnett Brown and Joe Farrell. (Brown and Farrell had worked alongside Jones with George Russell the previous year.)

The rehearsals began in December, 1965 and although memories differ as to how frequently they occurred, the consensus is that they were held more-or-less weekly, usu­ally on Mondays, beginning at midnight and lasting until three or four in the morning. (Considering the busy sched­ules of these players, the late hours come as no surprise.) For the most part, the rehearsals took place at A & R Studios, 112 West 48th Street near Sixth Avenue (and next door to the famous musicians' bar Jim and Andy's). Occasionally, the location shifted to the second A & R stu­dio at 799 Seventh Avenue between 51st and 52nd Streets, or to Soundmixers at 1619 Broadway at 49th.

In exchange for free studio time, Thad and Mel allowed engineer Phil Ramone to use the rehearsals as practice sessions for his student engineers. One such engineer was Don Hahn, who in later years was to record several Jones/Lewis albums, including two in this collection. The rehearsals were recorded on 7 1/2 inch mono tapes; unfor­tunately, the tapes were placed in storage and were probably destroyed.

Though the rehearsals were private, there were a num­ber of invited guests. One was Manny Albam, one of the busiest composer-arrangers in New York during the fifties and sixties. Albam also served as "musical director" for the Solid State label and worked in the engineer's booth during most of the sessions heard here. Another guest was Dan Morgenstern, then New York editor of Down Beat. He recalls that even at the very beginning of its existence, this band was different, not only because of Thad's writing, but also for his use of the rhythm section. For contrast, Jones would at various times cue rhythm players in and out behind soloists. Occasionally, the entire rhythm section was pulled out, and a saxophone or trombone player would be left entirely on his own.

These practices became a source of pride to the band members. As Jerry Dodgion remarked with a chuckle, "It was supposed to be different."

Another invited guest was WABC-FM disc jockey Alan Grant, who, among other activities, was broadcasting live from the Half Note (at Spring and Hudson in the West Village) on Friday nights. One of those broadcasts had fea­tured the Thad Jones-Pepper Adams Quintet with Mel Lewis. After attending a rehearsal of the orchestra, Grant went to Max Gordon, owner of the Village Vanguard, and urged Gordon to book the band for some Monday nights.

New York's jazz clubs at that time were in economic doldrums. Birdland had recently closed for good, and some clubs were reverting to a weekends-only policy. The Vanguard was running Monday night jam sessions that sometimes were hosted by Roland Kirk (pre-Rahsaan). Probably the highlight of those sessions was the night when a 20-year-old Keith Jarrett sat in and dazzled everyone in the audience — including Art Blakey, who hired him.

Grant persuaded Gordon to book the Jones/Lewis band for two Mondays in February. To make the band financially affordable for the club, the musicians agreed to work for very little money. Each sideman's salary was $17; admis­sion at the door was $2.50. As much as can be pieced together, the probable personnel of the band that night was: Thad Jones, conductor, cornet or flugelhorn (he alternated between the two instruments during his years with the band); Snooky Young, Bill Berry, Jimmy Nottingham, Jimmy Owens, trumpets; Bob Brookmeyer, Garnett Brown, Jack Rains, Cliff Heather, trombones; Jerome Richardson, Jerry Dodgion, Joe Farrell, Eddie Daniels, Marvin Holladay, reeds; Hank Jones, piano; Sam Herman, guitar; Richard Davis, bass; Mel Lewis, drums.

The club was packed, the acclaim was instantaneous, and The Jazz Band (as it was then billed) was off and run­ning. Max Gordon extended the band's run indefinitely, and the sidemen's salaries were increased to $18. In March, the band played a concert at Hunter College in New York City, and in May, it began its recording career.

What was its impact? Of the big bands that emerged in the early-to-mid-sixties (the others being those of Quincy Jones, Terry Gibbs, Maynard Ferguson, Gerry Mulligan, Gerald Wilson, Buddy Rich, Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland, and Don Ellis), the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis band was, in this writer's view, the most influential. The Quincy Jones and Mulligan ensembles, though in more conservative ways prophetic of the Jones-Lewis approach, were relatively short-lived. Wilson's and Gibbs's groups were rarely heard outside of California except on records, and the same was true of Clarke-Boland in Europe. Rich, Ferguson and Ellis pose a different consideration: though they all led consis­tently well-drilled bands that were capable of fine performances, their groups were built around their leaders' flamboyant personalities more than on enduring music.

Thad Jones and Mel Lewis were, first of all, two of the most esteemed "musician's musicians" of their time. Neither was a "star," but both were unique instrumentalists whose skills were valued by leaders ranging from Basie, Kenton and Goodman to Gillespie, Monk and Mingus. They therefore had no trouble in assembling a band full of New York's finest jazz-oriented players, all of whom were first-rate ensemble performers and most, in addition, good to exceptional soloists.

As a composer-arranger, Jones perhaps more than any­one else in the sixties revitalized conventional big band writing; this is with due respect given to such contempo­raries as Oliver Nelson and Gerald Wilson. ("Conventional," by the way, refers to the standard trumpets, trombones, saxophones, and rhythm section instrumentation, thereby removing the work of Gil Evans from this discussion. Evans's methods and instrumentations were considerably less orthodox — for one thing, he eliminated the saxo­phone section from his writing.) Jones certainly drew from his long experience with Basie, but he had an affinity for the dense cluster harmonies of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn as well. Combining these influences with the rhythmic and harmonic innovations of bebop, a profound melodic gift, and a subtle sense of humor, Jones rose in a few years from relative obscurity to a position as a preeminent jazz writer.

Above all, what made this band unique among big bands was its rhythm section. Richard Davis and Mel Lewis were highly in demand in New York recording cir­cles for all kinds of projects. Arranger-conductor Peter Matz, for example, used them on several Barbra Streisand albums and on numerous pre-recorded segments for televi­sion shows such as THE KRAFT MUSIC HALL and HULLABALOO. ("We were a team," Davis recalled emphatically.) Obviously, the empathy between these two was enormous, and com­bined with such pianistic wizards as Hank Jones and his successor Roland Hanna (and occasional "subs" such as Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Albert Dailey), the section coupled the precision of the best big band rhythm foundations with the inventiveness and flexibility of the best small groups. What Davis in particular did could be highly unorthodox ("Richard Davis would have been fired from any other big band for playing like that," a prominent jazz bassist once remarked admiringly). Yet everything he played worked, and even Jones's more conventional pieces took on a unique flavor.

In the beginning, of course, the rhythm section included a Freddie Green-style guitarist, Sam Herman, who was also the band's music copyist. As the band developed and the rhythm section became more daring, Herman played less guitar and more shaker (which, by the way, ain't easy). Eventually, the guitar was phased out, though Barry Galbraith, Sam Brown and David Spinozza were later brought in for studio sessions.

The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra lasted thirteen years, becoming for many listeners the most admired big band of its time. It never became a full-time entity in the sense of the Ellington, Basie, Herman and Kenton ensem­bles, but the band nonetheless did a substantial amount of touring, including numerous trips to Europe and Japan and a triumphant tour of the Soviet Union in 1972. By that year, most of the early members had departed, though Roland Hanna, Pepper Adams and Jerry Dodgion remained until 1974, '77 and '78, respectively. The replacements included veterans of the caliber of Quentin "Butter" Jackson, Frank Foster and Walter Morris, as well as such outstanding young players as Jon Faddis, George Mraz, Gregory Herbert, Harold Danko, and Dick Oatts.

By the time the orchestra parted ways with Solid State (which was then being phased into the Blue Note fold) in 1970, they'd done the three studio albums and two live Village Vanguard sessions included in this set. They also backed up Joe Williams and Ruth Brown for the label and participated in a European all-star tour that yielded a double album for Blue Note called ja/z wave ltd.

The band recorded sporadically in the seventies for Philadelphia International (POTPOURRI), Nippon Columbia (Live in Tokyo and for A & M (SUITE FOR POPS, NEW LIFE and LIVE IN MUNICH). On a for-hire basis, they also recorded Thad Jones-arranged albums by Jimmy Smith (Portuguese Soul), organist Rhoda Scott and vocalist Monica Zutterland.

Thad and Mel also led the Finnish UMO Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Jazz Group on several recordings. They also worked frequently as a quartet, making one album for Artists House, later reissued on A & M.

In January 1979, Thad Jones, by all accounts without warning or explanation, left the band and moved to Copenhagen to lead the Danish Radio Orchestra. Mel Lewis, more than a little embittered, assumed sole leadership and proceeded to build a new library with contributions from alumni Bob Brookmeyer, Jerry Dodgion and Bob Mintzer, members such as Jim McNeely, Kenny Werner, Ed Neumeister, Earl Mclntyre, and Ted Nash, and other contributors (Bill Holman, Bill Finegan, Mike Abene, Rich DeRosa, Mike Crotty). Mel continued to play Thad's music; he even acquired the new charts that Thad was sending back to the U.S. to be published.

After a few years, Jones and Lewis achieved a grudging kind of reconciliation. One incidence of this occurred in 1985, when Jones returned to the States for a short time to lead the Count Basic Orchestra. In New York on a Monday night, Thad paid a visit to the Vanguard to see his former band. He went up to Mel and gave him a big bear hug; Mel's arms remained at his sides.

Thad Jones returned to Copenhagen, where he died of cancer on August 19, 1986 at age 63. On September 2, a memorial service was held at St. Peter's Church in New York City. Mel was asked to speak and gave a moving impromptu talk about his former partner. He couldn't resist quipping: "Thad left without saying goodbye — that's twice.”

Mel Lewis died in New York on February 2, 1990 at age 60 after a long battle with melanoma. Fittingly, his last gig was with his orchestra only three weeks before he died.

The band, now a cooperative called the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, continues the Monday night tradition estab­lished a generation ago. It's a tradition unlike any in the entire history of jazz. But then, it was supposed to be different.”

The band traveled to Rotterdam in September, 1969 and was filmed on Dutch NPS television performing Jerome Richardson’s arrangement of his composition – Groove Merchant.

Herb Pomeroy - Woodyn' You