Paul Desmond - The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings- Mosaic Records

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

“Beauty is an undefinable thing. Not everyone even hears it but for those that do, it's probably the main reason they really love the music they love. Paul's playing was never about how he could play the saxophone. He had lots of chops but his playing was always about the feeling and the beauty of the music and I believe that this is what makes him one of the greatest players of all time.”

- Don Thompson, double bass, piano, and vibes

“Paul's longtime associate Jim Hall was his guitarist at the Half Note, but Hall was unable to go to Toronto when Desmond accepted a gig there at the club called Bourbon Street. Hall recommended Ed Bickert (1932-2019), often mentioned with Lennie Breau and Sonny Greenwich as among Canada's finest guitarists. Don Thompson was the bass player in Desmond's quartet at Bourbon Street. A pianist, composer and superb bassist, Thompson is also a gifted recording engineer. Every night at Bourbon Street, he taped the Desmond group. He has worked with Breau and Greenwich and says, "I played with all of those great guitarists, but for Paul and his music, Ed Bickert was the perfect fit. It was a match made in heaven." The heavenly match led to Bickert's being the guitarist on the 1974 CTI album PURE DESMOND, produced by John Snyder and recorded in New York in the fall of 1974 with bassist Ron Carter and drummer Connie Kay. Thus, despite the personnel differences, PURE DESMOND was the prototype of what became Desmond's Canadian quartet.

Thompson had an assignment to capture Desmond's quartet lor the A&M Horizon label. A&M issued the resulting album on vinyl, and later on CD, as THE PAUL DESMOND QUARTET LIVE. He recorded Desmond in March of 1975 and again in October and November of that year. Expanding on Bickerl's compatibility with Desmond and on the guitarist's abilities in general, Thompson said, "Ed was famous for knowing all the tunes in all the keys. We had no music and never rehearsed. There were a couple of endings we discussed before going on, and Paul had a funny little cue that he'd play to let us know the next chorus would be stop-lime. Other than that, we'd go on stage, he'd call a tune and the key, and we'd just play. These are possibly the best recordings there are of Ed Bickert.”

- Doug Ramsey, author, Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond

These excerpts from Doug Ramsey’s booklet notes provide the background for the evolution of Mosaic Records’ latest boxed set - Paul Desmond - The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings [MD7-269] about which you can locate order information by going here.

Don Thompson, the bassist on these dates who recorded them in performance [Chad Irschich is the Mosaic recording engineer], also provided an overview of these sessions in the booklet that accompanies the set. We wrote to Don and to Michael Cuscuna who produced them along with Don and Chad and requested their permission to reprint Don’s notes on these pages and they graciously gave their approval.

These recordings capture many brilliant performances by Paul less than two years before his passing on May 30, 1977. They are an everlasting testimony to his uniqueness as a musical artist.

“Thompson is now the last survivor of the Paul Desmond Canadian Quartet. In preparation for this Mosaic release, he has restored and remixed his original tapes so they can be heard by Desmond's longtime fans as well as a new generation of listeners. These recordings offer further proof thai the legacies of jazz musicians extend far beyond their mortal lives. They remain with us as long as their music can be heard.”

— Thomas Cunniffe August 2019, Mosaic Set Postscript

 © -Don Thompson/Mosaic Records, copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with the author’s permission.

“Back in the 1970s there was a club in Toronto that would regularly bring in major artists to play a couple of weeks with a local Toronto rhythm section. I was the bass player (sometimes piano player) in one of the two house rhythm sections and I played there many times with such people as Jim Hall, Art Farmer, Milt Jackson, Clark Terry, James Moody and many others. In 1974 I got a call to play there with Paul Desmond.

Paul had always been a favorite of mine. When I was about 15, still in high school, I had a band (alto sax, piano and drums) and we played a lot of the Brubeck hits of the day including BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE A DIME?, A FINE ROMANCE and PENNIES FROM HEAVEN. I wrote out Paul's solos for my alto player who was not an improviser but was a good reader with a pretty sound.

The first jazz concert I ever went to was in 1957 (I was 17) and there were five groups on the program. Stan Getz, Shorty Rogers, George Shearing, Billie Holiday and Dave Brubeck. It was pretty silly having five groups playing about 20 minutes each and the only things I remembered after the concert were Paul's playing and a bongo solo by Armando Peraza who was playing with George Shearing. Paul got to me then as he always has just by playing so pretty and without any show biz jive.

As I understand it, when I got the call in 1974 the Brubeck Band had sort of disbanded a couple of years earlier and Paul had not been playing very much, so he really wasn't that keen on coming to Toronto and working with guys he didn't know. He'd recently done a week in New York with a quartet with Jim Hall and he'd asked Jim if he would come to Toronto for the gig but Jim declined, suggesting he try to get Ed Bickert to play guitar along with me on bass and Terry Clarke on drums. Ed was one of the greatest guitarists in Canada along with Sonny Greenwich and Lenny Breau. All three of them lived in Toronto in the early 1970s and I played with all of them but for Paul and his music Ed Bickert was the perfect fit.

Paul came back to Toronto in March 1975 and this time he asked me to record the gig for a live recording on A&M Horizon. We recorded that gig and another week in October and these CDs are the result of those two weeks. We had no music and never rehearsed but there were a couple of endings we discussed before going on to play. He also had a funny little cue that he'd play to let us know the next chorus would be stop-time. Other than that, we'd just go on stage and he'd call the tunes and the key they'd be in and we'd just play.

Ed was famous for basically knowing all the tunes in all the keys. It was impossible to think of a tune he didn't know and I'd been playing with him for four years so I really knew his harmony. These are possibly the best recordings there are of Ed Bickert. He made quite a few recordings but most of them were either as a sideman or under his own name but with music arranged by someone else, so he was usually reading someone else's chords. Ed had an amazing knowledge and understanding of harmony and with no music to read he was free to play whatever harmonies that came into his mind and all those beautiful chords he played were things that he'd figured out and had been playing since the early 1960s.

The tracks with Rob McConnell came about as a result of Ed's father passing away and Ed having to leave town for a couple of nights to deal with things. Rob had been into the club a couple of times to sit in and he and Paul had become friends so rather than trying to get another guitar player we asked Rob to fill in for Ed for the two nights. Paul and Rob played beautifully together and it often sounds like they'd had a rehearsal but it was the same as it was with Ed. Paul would ask Rob what he felt like playing and Rob would suggest, for example MY FUNNY VALENTINE, then they would play it so beautifully it sounded like they had a worked-out arrangement. All they did, in fact, was listen to and watch one another. Just a glance from Paul and Rob would take over the melody for four or eight bars. Then he'd look over to Paul and Paul would take over the melody and they both knew exactly what to play when the other was playing a solo.

Jerry Fuller was so understated and inconspicuous he was often overlooked, but the fact is his playing was a big part of the success of the whole gig. Jerry was a very schooled musician having studied piano and arranging when he was a student at Westlake in Los Angeles. He was also a very good bass player and he knew all the tunes, too. He had a reputation for shouting the chord changes to a bass player who didn't know a tune they were playing and he was always right. I remember sitting with him on a break one night and a young student drummer came over and asked him what it was like playing with Paul. Jerry thought about it and replied "I try to play everything Paul wants me to play and every now and then I play something I'd like to play." Jerry was known for being a power bebop drummer who's playing came right out of Philly Joe Jones but he'd put all that aside when he was playing with Paul. He always played exactly what the music needed.

For me the gig was a most beautiful experience. The music was all very familiar to me and all I had to do was just listen and try to do what the music asked me to do. Paul gave me a solo on every tune whether I wanted it or not and there were many times I was just playing and hoping I didn't mess up what had been up to then, another perfect take.

Working on this project with recording engineer Chad Irschick was another amazing experience. We'd worked together on the mastering of the JIM HALL LIVE CDs that came out on Artists Share and the GEORGE SHEARING AT HOME CD as well as many of my own projects. He is the best engineer I've ever worked with and he cares about the music as much as any musician I know. He hears every note as though he'd played it himself and uses his knowledge as a musician and all the technology he has to make the music come alive. There were a couple of tapes that were unplayable because of a buzz on the bass track but one of the young tech geniuses in the studio spent quite a few hours on it and got rid of every buzzing bass note giving us some of the best tracks we have.

I do think that Paul was one of the real giants of jazz and this is a chance to hear him playing live, having fun with musicians he really enjoyed playing with. For me, the thing that makes someone a really great musician is not technique. It's not hip-ness (tricky patterns on D minor, playing in odd meters, all the stuff that kids learn in college). It has nothing to do with those kinds of things. Everyone knows Charlie Parker and John Coltrane had chops to burn but that's not what made them great. For me it's the feeling and the beauty in their playing that sets them apart from the rest. It's how I feel when I listen to Bird play OLD FOLKS or when I hear Trane play I WANT TO TALK ABOUT YOU. Beauty is an undefinable thing. Not everyone even hears it but for those that do, it's probably the main reason they really love the music they love. Paul's playing was never about how he could play the saxophone. He had lots of chops but his playing was always about the feeling and the beauty of the music and I believe that this is what makes him one of the greatest players of all time.

I can't think of very many musicians in the history of jazz that would have this kind of continuing popularity 42 years after their passing. He was an honest, pure artist who did it all without any kind of ego or show. I don't think he was ever actually trying to do anything. He just did it the only way he could and I'm truly honored to have been a part of his music.”

— Don Thompson July 2019

Portrait of Tracy

Portrait of Tracy" is a composition by bassist Jaco Pastorius. It appears on his landmark self-titled debut album, and is widely recorded as a tribute by bassists such as Joe Ferry, Marcus Miller, Victor Wooten, Brian Bromberg, and others. It is considered by many a bass guitar standard, and is often used as a benchmark for a bassist's abilities. The song is played almost exclusively with natural harmonics, giving it a dreamy, unfamiliar tone for the bass, which is common in Pastorious' Style. The song has been sampled as well, most notably, SWV's "Rain", Cannibal Ox's "Pigeon", Amon Tobin's "Daytrip", Chingy and Tyrese's "Pulling Me Back", Wagon Christ's Mr. Mukatsuku, Steve Spacek's "Hey There"and Hotstylz Faucet.

Lennie Niehaus - 58 Masterpieces

If you want to know what Lennie Niehaus was all about listen to his playing and writing on these tracks on which he appears with the usual west coast jazz suspects.

It's such a shame that too, few Jazz fans know about this stuff.

"Masterpieces" is an understatement as far as I'm concerned.

Lennie Niehaus - A Consummate Pro [1929-2020] R.I.P.

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

Lennie Niehaus died on May 28, 2020. He would have been 91 years of age on June 1st. The editorial staff at JazzProfiles is re-posting this feature as a tribute to his memory.

For different reasons, the author Max Harrison and the alto saxophonist, composer and arranger, Lennie Niehaus have been people I have admired over the years, so what better way to celebrate them on JazzProfiles than to feature a Marx Harrison article on Lennie Niehaus that was originally published in the March, 1958 edition of Jazz Monthly?

Somewhat ironically, as Ted Gioia points out in his seminal West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 [p. 163]:

“Despite the striking virtues of his playing, Niehaus never achieved more than passing notice from the critics. One notable exception, however, was Max Harrison,…, whose insightful essay on Niehaus captures the essential virtues of the altoist’s work ….”

Both Lennie’s plaintive wail on many of the Stan Kenton’s mid-1950s albums such as Back to Balboa, Cuban Fire and The Stage Door Swings, to my ears the quintessential sound of West Coast Jazz, and Max Harrison’s acerbic wit and unconventional views had a powerful impact on my appreciation of Jazz at a very early [impressionable?] age.

I do disagree with Mr. Harrison on one aspect of Lennie’s career as I happen to very much enjoy Stan Kenton and Lennie‘s playing during his stints with the Kenton Orchestra. However, not to belabor the point, Max and I do agree on the four wonderful recordings that Lennie made for Contemporary records in the 1950s that are the subject of his essay.

I have taken the liberty of augmenting Max’s essay with the addition of Volume 4: The Quintets and Strings [Contemporary C-3510; OJCCD 1858-2] which was not referenced in Max’s essay, as well as, with the inclusion of excerpts from the original Contemporary LP liner notes by John S. Wilson, Arnold Shaw, Lester Koenig, and Barry Ulanov, respectively. Lennie was also very gracious in granting me time to answer a few interview questions about these albums at recent events sponsored by the Los Angeles Jazz Institute at which he appeared.

Individual Voice: Lennie Niehaus - Max Harrison

“It was unfortunate Niehaus first became widely known as a result of the tours he undertook in the mid-1950s with Stan Kenton’s band, for the records he was then producing under his own name made it obvious that he had nothing in common with that master of the unintentionally comic bombast.

The second thing to be learnt from them was that Niehaus had little to learn about playing the alto saxophone. His ease and fluency conveyed a feeling of relaxation and security that is always rare, and his attack and swing were almost equally striking.

But the most notable feature of the twenty-six performances considered here is the consistency of his inventive power in improvisation. He never seems to be at a loss for a good melodic idea, and even though his phrasing is concise and pre-eminently logical, an element of the unexpected is never absent.

Lester Koenig noted: “He is a remarkable alto soloist, with a sense of flowing melodic line, lovely cool tone, and a strong feeling for rhythm. He is a thoughtful and serious musician, who composes in his own style, with definite ideas of where he is going and what he wants to achieve.”

In some ways, Niehaus first LP – Lennie Niehaus Vol. 1 ‘The Quintets’  [Contemporary C-3518; OJCCD- 1933-2] – with a quintet instrumentation remains the most informative of his abilities as a soloist.

The scored passages are generally brief, and, apart from a few meandering contributions from Jack Montrose and Bob Gordon on tenor and baritone saxophones respectively, the leader fills all the available solo space with notable effect.

His consistency makes it hard to single out an performance as exceptional, though the quick-fire Whose Blues? Is a reminder that real spontaneity is less a matter of technical command than of a steady flow of ideas. Almost impressive in this respect are Prime Rib, with its double-time phrases, and the breaks of You Stepped Out of a Dream.

Niehaus wrote the arrangements for all the recordings dealt with here, and these show a nicely understated skill, nearly always being shorn of unnecessary gesture. As his was a musical family, he began his studies early and thus had a better chance of acquiring sound theoretical knowledge than many jazzmen. This places an agreeable variety of writing techniques at his disposal, but he is aware of the dangers of over-elaboration in the modest circumstances of small combo jazz.

[The Original Jazz Classic CD tray plate notes offer this overview of the recording.


“Lennie Niehaus’s first album is his most intimate. The music is rich in the colorful, complex writing that he would pursue on larger canvasses as his career progressed, while the compact sound of the quintet focuses attention on Niehaus, the fluent, Parker-inspired yet quite personal alto saxophonist. What emerges are well-balanced performances from two distinct ensembles.

Eight tracks recorded in 1954 … feature an inspired three-saxophone front line with Jack Montrose and Bob Gordon, plus the great Monty Budwig/Shelly Manne rhythm section. Four additional titles by a 1956 unit with Manne, Stu Williamson, Hampton Hawes, and red Mitchell were added for a 12-inch release, and represent Niehaus, a paragon of West Coast Jazz, in his most East Coast mood.”

On the sleeve of his second LP [Zounds! The Lennie Niehaus Octet! – Contemporary C-3540; OJCCD- 1892-2] Lennie writes: 

“With the more intellectual and academic approach there is a tendency for … work to become contrived and esoteric. It must be remembered that most modern jazz compositions written during the past few years are no more ‘modern’ than things Bartok, Berg, Schoenberg and others wrote twenty of thirty years ago.”]

[Max continues] Such a viewpoint is healthy, first because it is historically and technically realistic, and second because it is a corrective to the attitude of many jazzmen who in the past have imagined themselves to be daring iconoclasts while purveying what actually was simple and conservative music.

On the octet performances on his second LP Niehaus still occupies most of the solo space and is fully able to justify this. His arrangements are similar in general style to many others being written on the West Coast at that time, and what individual character they possess is due more to certain technical details than to an overall new approach. Such features most often arise from his concern with unity, and he is fond of deriving introductions, bridge passages and codas from the theme, or part of it, whenever possible. Instances are Night Life, Have You Met Miss Jones? and Circling the Blues; also typical of Niehaus is the way the introduction to The Night We Called It A Day recurs in sequential form to effect a modulation.

The first batch of octet scores have a pleasingly full texture, with the themes announced mainly in block chords. By the jazz standards of his time, Niehaus had a quite extensive, though in no way personal, harmonic vocabulary, so these parallel chords often are interesting, and are effectively distributed over the ensemble.


The result, however, could easily have been a rather too consistent harmonic richness, so he occasionally scores a passage for the horns without the rhythm section, as in How About You?, or has the drums only supply interjections, as on Figure Eight. He has many similar procedures to ensure variety, such as the bridge to Night Life, first played in block chords then scored contrapuntally on its return.

Another example is the first section of the code on The Way You Look Tonight, where each horn plays a separate line based on a different part of the theme; the result is of considerable harmonic and contrapuntal interest, and one regrets this passage only being four bars long. Even drum solos are made to further the development of the piece, as in The Way You Look Tonight, where, the piano and bass silent, the percussionist for a while alternates bars with the front line. There is a similar episode on Seaside.


Such devices, though, are very far from exhausting the scope of an ensemble … [featuring Lennie - alto sax, Jack Montrose - tenor sax and Bill Perkins - baritone sax, Stu Williamson - trumpet, Bob Enevoldsen - value trombone, Lou Levy – piano, Monty Budwig – bass and Shelly Manne – drums], and Niehaus appears to have been conscious of the almost unrelieved homophony of the above scores.

[Since Max doesn’t discuss the four compositions featuring Octet No. 2, made up of Lennie – alto sax, Bill Perkins moving to tenor sax, Pepper Adams – baritone sax, Vince De Rosa – French Horn, Frank Rosolino – trombone, James McAlister – tuba, Red Mitchell – bass, and Mel Lewis – drums, that also appear on Zounds!, I thought perhaps the following comments from the original LP liner notes by Arnold Shaw might prove descriptive in this regard:

“ The fact is that the four new arrangements are less linear. The various horns do not have completely free, independent lines, and the drive is toward a coordinated swinging beat. ‘I still don’t go for blowing arrangements,’ Lennie said recently. ‘I like to write backgrounds and interludes, and my goal is a swinging line’ Whether the octet is taking an ensemble chorus or Lennie weaving, at break-neck speed around the ensemble, the Niehaus combo jumps and rocks and swings.”]

[Max continues] In his third LP [Lennie Niehaus The Octet #2, Vol. 3 Contemporary C-3503; OJCCD 1767-2] there is a certain amount of section differentiation though not enough.

Alto saxophone and trombone contrast tellingly with the full band on Cooling It, as do alto and tenor in Bunko, yet such antiphony is infrequent, and counterpoint mainly conspicuous by its absence.

[Since Max gives rather short shrift to this album in his essay, the following comments about the recording’s personnel and Lennie’s playing from John S. Wilson’s liner notes to the album might prove germane.

“The present bath of octet selections is played by a slightly different group than the preceding set. Newcomers to this octet, but familiar figures on the West Coast jazz scene, are Jimmy Giuffre on baritone saxophone, Bill Holman on tenor and Pete Jolly on piano. Along with the holdovers – Stu Williamson on trumpet, Bob Enevoldsen on valve trombone, Monty Budwig on bass, Shelly Manne on drums and, of course, Niehaus himself – they make up a select group of top-ranking Coast jazzmen.

Niehaus’ playing has an ease, an unharried continuity which can only be accomplished by a musician who is beyond being consciously concerned with technique, whose feeling in performance is instinctively a swinging one and who can, consequently, devote himself completely to the creative requirements of his performance. There can be no doubt that these creative requirements are exceedingly demanding. ….

[Niehaus’] tone is almost unique among modern alto saxophonists. It is rich, rounded and warmly full-blooded and yet light enough not to clog up the quickly moving line of his style. It gives a vitality to his playing which is missing in some of the more wraith-like attacks adopted by current alto men.

A rich tone and a riding sense of swing would be of little use to Niehaus, of course, if his ideas were routine. Fortunately, his concepts are fresh and provocative not only in his individual solo performances but in his writing, too.”

As previously noted, not included in Max’s article was any reference to Lennie Niehaus, Vol. 4: The Quintets and Strings [Contemporary C 3510; OJCCD 1858-2] that tracks with strings and Lennie on alto, strings augmented by Lennie on alto, Bill Perkins on tenor and Bob Gordon on baritone and four cuts with a quintet fronted by Lennie on alto and Stu Williamson on trumpet with a rhythm section of Hawes, Budwig and Manne.

[In his liner notes, Barry Ulanov offered the following reflections on Lennie’s playing:

“The alto is to the present jazz era what the tenor saxophone was to the one just before it; a great many musicians play it, and some of them inordinately well. As a result, the instrument currently enjoys much favor with the jazz public …. But if it has reached high jazz rank, it has also suffered: there is a terrible sameness about the work of all too many of these stars, a monotony based on the brilliant examples of a Parker, a Konitz or the like ….

All of which explains why I enjoy the playing of Lennie Niehaus as much as I do ….
One can say that it is his sound, a quite modern one, that makes him so welcome betwixt and alongside his colleagues; but others offer a not dissimilar sound. Perhaps, then, it is his beat; but that too, though not as familiar among present-day altoists, can be heard and felt on his horn. If not the sound and the beat, then the length of his lines. This, maybe, but not all by itself, for the long line is very much with us these days on alto, and good to have, but not any guarantee of identity.

No, not one of these things, but all of them in copious abundance, and held together, as he holds everything else in the proceedings in balance and bearing, by a widely resourceful musicianship. Thus diversity, thus originality; thus ripeness and no monotony and, for what it is worth, my very high esteem for Lennie Niehaus."]


[Max continues] On his fifth record [Lennie Niehaus Vol. 5: The Sextet, Contemporary C-3524; OJCCD 1944-2] for sextet, however, Niehaus included well-paced duets between alto and tenor saxophones and trumpet and baritone saxophone in Thou Swell, and Three of a Kind has an adroit fugal introduction and coda.

There are effective dialogues between soloist and ensemble here, also, particularly on Belle of the Ball and As Long As I Live, some imaginative scored background to solos ….

[The Original Jazz Classic CD tray plate notes offer this overview of the recording.

“In the mid-1950’s, Lennie Niehaus avoided cliché, incorporated audacious harmonic ideas, and distilled the essentials of big band writing into arrangements for small groups. His recordings are still notable in the 21st century for their freshness and daring.

In this fifth of his series of albums for the Contemporary label, Niehaus sets himself the chamber music challenge of achieving proportion among four horns, bass and drums, without piano to cushion the sound, delineate the harmonies, and unify the ensemble.

The result was a collection of pieces performed with gem-like clarity by players who executed his writing perfectly and brought to their solos the creativity that made them star improvisers.

Niehaus’ alto saxophone was matched by Bill Perkins, Jimmy Giuffre, Stu Williamson, Shelly Manne, and the brilliant, underappreciated bassist Buddy Clark.”]

[Max concludes] In solo Niehaus is as good as before, although the only other improvisations of real merit on these recordings are by pianist Lou Levy in the first octet disc and by Stu Williamson on both trumpet and valve trombone in the sextet LP. Indeed, the assurance and conviction of the latter’s work on the former instrument in Thou Swell, I Wished on the Moon, Knee Deep and As Long As I Live mark it as being among his best on record. Bill Perkins, on tenor saxophone, is also heard to pleasing, if rather nonchalant, effect in Three of a Kind and As Long As I Live. The gulf (in terms of invention) between the leader and several of his other bandsmen, however, is rather clearly shown by the chase passages of Whose Blues? and Rick’s Tricks, and even more by the long series of twelve- and – twenty-four bar solos in Circling the Blues.

The point is confirmed in a different way by Niehaus’ success with slow ballads, particularly The Night We Called It a Day and Our Love is Here To Stay on the octet records. Best, however, is the quintet Day by Day, which begins and ends with some exceptionally subtle harmonic writing that creates a feeling of remoteness which is quite contrary to the original melody’s banality and exactly appropriate to Niehaus’ very sensitive improvisation.

This can stand beside Jimmy Giuffre’s beautiful Lotus Bud recorded with Shorty Rogers or Art Pepper’s Jazz Chorale recorded with John Graas. The same side of Niehaus’ musical personality is also reflected in two compositions, Night Life and Debbie, slow lyrical pieces of some melodic distinction. Also attractive are Take It from Me, which has a forty bar chorus instead of the usual thirty-two, and Elbow Room, a blues with a bridge.

Writing and playing like this did show perfectly explicit promise for Niehaus’ further growth. Despite a few excellent later recordings [I Swing for You, Mercury MG 36118; Lone Hill Jazz CD 10241], such as his striking version of Perkins’s Little Girl Blues and Benny Golson’s Four Eleven West, that promise was not really fulfilled, eventually he stopped making LPs, and, finally, dropped out of sight. Presumably Niehaus must be regarded as another casualty of the hostile circumstances in which jazz has always found itself.



The “hostile environment” for Jazz that Max refers to was to become even more hostile as the years rolled along, and Lennie was to survive it by taking his orchestrating skills into the Hollywood studies and to become a prolific writer for films. But we’ll save that part of Lennie’s story for another time.
The editors of JazzProfiles certainly agree with Ted Gioia’s following assessment of Lennie Niehaus:

“His powerful technical command of the saxophone, his intuitive linear approach to improvisation, and his sweet tone made Niehaus a likely candidate as the next alto star on the coast.” West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 [p. 163].


And while a Niehaus' star did ascend, it would take on a different form.

The Stage Door Swings

All of the arrangements are by Lennie Niehaus.

J.J. Inc.

While we are on the subject of J.J. Johnson bands, here's a playlist for one of the last groups he led which featured Freddie Hubbard,on trumpet, Clifford Jordan, on tenor saxophone, Cedar Walton, on piano, Arthur Harper on bass and Tootie Heath on drums.

With the exception of "Blue 'n Boogie," all the tunes are J.J. originals and they are exceptional compositions that incorporate a little of everything that was going on in the music at that time:
modes, unusual time signatures, funk & soul beats, et al.

Following this recording, Freddie and Cedar went on Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and "Johnson Johnson Johnson" headed west to write and orchestrate for TV and the movies.

J.J. Johnson Quintet featuring Bobby Jaspar

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

Bobby Jaspar's playing on these recordings is a revelation. Hardly anyone seems to know about these sides. Everyone is familiar with the quintet that J.J. and Kai Winding formed and the sextet that J.J. had with Freddie Hubbard, Clifford Jordan, and Cedar Walton, but these LPs seem to have dropped from sight J.J.'s arranging skills are on full display and Jaspar gets a rich tone on the flute in addition to displaying a Zoot-like facility on tenor sax. Hank Jones and Tommy Flanagan are their light and lyrical selves and Elvin Jones' playing displays variety and a driving beat instead of the never ending triplets he played behind 'Trane. Wilbur Little’s strong bass lines hold it all together and provide a driving pulse for the band.

JJ. Johnson's great 1956-1957 quintet played modem jazz with authority, imagination, taste and feeling. Its leader was the trombonist of the era, much emulated and admired by his peers. The Belgian-born Jaspar, who had recently won the International Jazz Critics' New Star Award on tenor, proved an ideal foil and a capable modern-mainstream tenor sax and flutist, contributing impressively on both instruments. Flanagan, a superbly swinging pianist, also made an indelible mark on the group, which was graced initially with another bop piano great, Hank Jones, while Little and Elvin Jones' support throughout is admirable. It was an exhilarating band that fully displayed Johnson's well-rounded musicianship.

Fortunately, all of these LPs have been collected on a double CD set and issued as The Complete Recordings of the J.J. Johnson Quintet Featuring Bobby Jaspar. [Fresh Sound FSR CD-538].

JAY JAY JOHNSON QUINTET: JJ. Johnson, trombone; Bobby Jaspar, tenor sax & flute; Hank Jones [on CD 1 #1-7] or Tommy Flanagan [on CD 1 #8-15 & CD 2], piano; Percy Heath [on CD 1 # 1-3] or Wilbur Little [on CD 1 #4-15 & CD 21, bass; Elvin Jones, drums.

Recorded (CD1) in New York, July 24 (#1-3), July 25 (#4-7), July 27 (#8-10), 1956 and January 29 (#11-15), 1957.

Recorded (CD2) in New York, January 31 (#1-4), May 14 (#5- 7), and Live "Cafe Bohemia" New York, February, 1957. 

More details about this exceptional band and these recordings are available in the following original liner notes.

Origina! liner notes from Columbia CL935 - J Is For Jazz

“J. J. Johnson, considered by many to be the originator and leading exponent of the modern jazz trombone style, has until recently been the co-leader, with the extraordinary Kai Winding, of a quintet featuring two trombones with rhythm section. Their work together on Columbia, with their quintet (CL T42) and with a trombone octet (CL 892), is one of the highlights of the Columbia jazz catalog, but is also of a kind which has proven popular with the public at large. The same bids fair to be true with the groups they have just formed independently of one another.

The J. J. Johnson Quintet makes one change in instrumentation, but it is an important one. In Kai's old spot, one finds Bobby Jaspar, tenor saxophonist and flutist extraordinary. Bobby, while new to the American scene, is well known in Europe. As Belgium's leading jazzman, Bobby won critics' awards and public acclaim all over the continent for his fine contemporary-style playing. Now a permanent resident of the United States, this is his debut before the American public. His appearance in this album is by special arrangement with the company for which he records exclusively - Pathe-Marconi, subsidiary of Electrical and Mechanical Industries, Ltd. [EMI or the forerunner of the company that would come to own the iconic Blue Note Records label.]

As these recordings were made on the eve of J J's launching of his new Quintet, it was impossible to line up the same rhythm section for each session. The changes of personnel are as follows: for Angel Eyes, Overdrive, and Undecided, Hank Jones played piano and Percy Heath played bass. On Tumbleweeds, Solar, Never Let Me Go, and Cube Steak, Wilbur Little replaced Heath. The remaining tunes were made with Tommy Flanagan in place of Hank Jones. The drummer throughout was Elvin Jones, Hank's brother.

All the arrangements in this set are by J. J, himself. As usual, he has chosen a repertoire which is anything but overdone, and he has also written three originals. Naptown U.S.A. commemorates his home town of Indianapolis; astute ferreting by the musically minded will also turn up another reason for this association. J. J. can't explain why Indianapolis is known locally as "Naptown," but this Johnson original is anything but sleepy. It Might as Well Be Spring and Never Let Me Go are lovely ballads which gave Bobby Jaspar an opportunity to blend his rich flute tone with J. J.'s trombone; obviously this combination gives the Quintet a distinctive "second round."

Tumbling Tumbleweed is an unexpected vehicle for a jazz group; J. J. explains that the idea occurred to him when he heard a trio in Chicago give it a swinging treatment once, and he has finally had an opportunity to try it out himself, with the fine results which can be heard here, Matt Dennis' Angel Eyes makes a fine dead-slow ballad for the group, and equally tailor-made in a different vein are two bouncy originals from the bop school. Miles Davis' Solar and Charlie Parker's Chasin’ the Bird. Overdrive and Cube Steak are two up-tempo compositions by J. J. which are written especially for this group."                                                    —George Avakian

Original liner notes from Columbia CL1684 Dial JJ5

“Underlying all of J. J. Johnson's musical efforts and reaching a new maturity in the work of his Quintet, is a considerable erudition in jazz forms. But he carries his learning lightly and does not bore us with an archeological study of the dry bones of technique. By the time he puts the show on the road, the ankle bone is connected to the shin bone and the shin bone to the knee bone — and in the aliveness of the music, sometimes jaunty, sometimes serious, you can, if you wish, forget anatomy lessons. Nevertheless, let's review them briefly, for the record.

As Jay's talent matures, and that of the Quintet with it, the parallel of devices used to those employed by small orchestral groups generally, becomes apparent and we see how he has gradually enlarged the area of his musical interests and, in the process, improved upon his superlative craftsmanship, Like the playing of the Modern Jazz Quartet, that of the Quintet recalls a period in concert music, some three centuries ago, when improvisation was commonplace.

All of this began, for Jay, in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he was born on January 22,1924, the oldest of three children (given name, James Louis Johnson). Beginning at about the age of nine, he studied piano for two years with a private teacher, the organist of the church the family attended. His two sisters also studied piano and they often practiced trios and duets together. An interest in jazz was stimulated by teen-age friends, his "buddies" at Crispus Attucks High School in 1937.

"Every Saturday night," said J. J., "my friends and I went to the local dance hall to watch and hear the big bands — Lunceford, Basie, Ellington, Hampton — these were our favorites and we worshipped them. It was then I realized that this would be my life's work." Following that momentous decision, he joined the high school band for beginners. He wanted to play saxophone but the only one available for practice was a baritone, which was not his first choice. Although he studied saxophone, he soon became attracted to trombone and, as he explains it, "My interest and curiosity about the trombone began to increase to the point that I gave up my saxophone studies (1938)."

His father got him a trombone from a pawn-shop and Jay learned to play it in the high school band and orchestra. On Sundays he rehearsed with the YMCA band, playing marches and light concert music. Eventually, his friends at Crispus Attucks — who had formed a small dance orchestra —- invited him to sit in at rehearsals and soon after this he became a regular member of the band, playing for school dances and neighborhood social events. By that time, he recalled, "I had also become interested in arranging and composing, and began to learn both."

When Jay graduated from Crispus Attucks High School in 1941 his parents, understandably, wanted him to go to college. Jay understandably, wanted to join a big band and travel. Well, you can guess the outcome — Jay won them over and joined the ''territory" band led by "Snookum" Russell.

Cool, in its most popular meaning, refers to a tendency towards understatement that one often finds in modern jazz and, in some instances to an extension of bop harmonic innovation in search of bland and cool sounds. Like any other kind of jazz, it can be good or God- awful. (Those in search of further enlightenment might bone up on the role of the trombone in Feather's "The Book of Jazz," a Horizon Press book of this year.) Both periods are now history, the styles having been to some extent assimilated. 

The use of linear rhythmic patterns has perhaps helped to encourage a return to blues intonation (including the use of rich sonorities) though with less use of vibrato, and with various shades of timbre such as funky and hard bop. (The latter refers also to structure.)

As space allows, I'll indicate some of the interesting sounds provided in this album: Teapot In this tempest in a teapot, Jay's terse broken-off phrasing becomes a sort of abrupt angularity that contrasts to his sinuous legato line or, as later in the piece, to the burgeoning of tone when he is blowing and swinging that is the very birth of jazz sound. In Bobby's clipped chorus (on tenor) he demonstrates how to hold a tiger. Tommy Flanagan, who can approach the keyboard with the full power of both hands (as on So Sorry Please) concentrates on treble to make room for the bass of Wilbur Little, moving with such dexterity that, with the drums of Elvin Jones, it seems to cushion the music, This thoroughly satisfying composition concludes with the two horns playing in a dark, almost somber tonality.

Barbados There is an amusingly disciplined use of Latin-American rhythms, followed by rich sonorities as the horns state the theme of this Charlie Parker composition, Jay's chorus has an easy, deftly athletic quality. On this, in contrast to the previous cut, Bobby's tone, though not rough, has more English on it; it is at once lyrical and strong in definition. Tommy, a cool cat, gets off the ground.

In A Little Provincial Town. This quiet mood piece has an almost classical loveliness, especially in the flute chorus, with its delicately interwoven harmonies (and what sounds like deliberate over-blowing, not a casual accomplishment) — and in the subdued, muted trombone.

Cette Chose. Opens with clipped, cool ensemble Jay, playing superbly, sets the scene for Bobby, parts of whose tenor chorus, were it not for the inspiration driving it, would fall into the category of expertising. Melodically it is understatement, conveyed with a controlled intensity of rhythm. In this chorus Bobby — who has considerable versatility of approach — seems to throw lines away. He is like a veteran actor laying booby traps for the ears and, like the veteran actor, he always knows the complete statement. On the chorus that climaxes the time, his tenor jumps like a pneumatic drill on a hot dig.

Blue Haze. This lovely melody by Miles Davis has an unusual and appropriate rhythm introduction. A thoughtful, beautifully-phrased statement by string bass is climaxed by a shattering drum roll, followed by a cymbal rhythm to which the piano adds its voice. Once the introduction is over, the featured instrument (which I described in my notes for "J and K") makes its entry. In his playing of it [valve trombone] Jay, in the quality of his intonation, combines the dignity of concert brass with the guttiness of honky-tonk horn. His fantastic technique on this valve instrument, which enables him to raise it to the dignity of a respected member of the brass family, never is allowed to overshadow his strong sense of music and of melody. Bobby's phrasing on tenor, always assured, is especially enjoyable, and Tommy's piano has a restrained jump.

Love Is Here To Stay. Few jazzmen can touch J. J. in the imaginative lyricism of his swinging: balladry. An old master at this form of the jazz maker's art, he demonstrates it with a long, luxurious chorus, in a warm intonation, that displays the scope of his improvisational talent.

So Sorry Please. Naturally, there are other things to hear, but let's single out the piano for mention. Tommy opens with a full-bodied, two-fisted solo and then, as he assigns the heavy work to the right hand, is paced by Wilbur's articulate bass (in a walking mood) — then there is a return to full piano style in this, a most welcome and generous introduction to the work of Tommy Flanagan.

It Could Happen To You. The introductory flute passages are classic, delicately wrought, as Bobby opens in concert style, then gets off on a winsome jazz frolic. Perhaps indicative of the authority of contemporary jazz technique, there is no hiatus between the two.

Bird Song. This tune is by Thad, one of the Jones boys from Pontiac and Elvin's brother, From the rich sonorities that open it, to the closing bars, there is structural strength and compositional directness. Like Tea Pot, it is a first-rate jazz piece. Toward the close of the exuberant performance Jay plays a quietly explosive chorus, conveyed in an easy, gently deceptive swing. On first listening it sounds like a walk in the park, on second, like a romp and, finally, like a controlled rumpus!

Old Devil Moon. Introductory bars are played in a modified Latin rhythm and in its jingle-jangle (that recalls old fashioned jazz hokum) cymbal comes off its high-hat, so to speak. There follow one of J. J's warm, utterly convincing solos in balladry and a tenor chorus by Bobby that displays a richness of timbre that seems just right for this piece,

This album is another milestone for J. J,, revealing his seriousness, his emotional warmth and his subtle wit and restrained exuberance. He knows the trombone backwards, forwards and inside out and the more one listens to the unobtrusive manner in which he employs a formidable craftsmanship to delineate an improvisation or a variation on theme, the more it grows on one, especially as it is reinforced with an extraordinary beauty of tone and, when occasion calls for it, a quietly sly sense of humor.”                                  -—Charles Edward Smith

Produced for CD release by Jordi Pujol this compilation © & © 2009 by 

Fresh Sound Records.