Johnny Mandel on the West Coast: Part 1 - The Smithsonian Interview

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

The following is excerpted from the JOHNNY MANDEL [1925-2020] NEA Jazz Master (2011) interview that was conducted by Bill Kirchner on April 20-21, 1995 in New York City. The 179 page transcript is in the Archives Center, National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian which can be reached at www.archivescenter@si.edu.

This portion of the interview deals with a period in Johnny’s life when he had recently moved to California from New York in 1953. 

In the conversation with Bill, Johnny talks about individual musicians he worked with in California and his views of the West Coast style of Jazz which was in vogue in California from 1945-1965.

Kirchner: Alright so we get to the point where you got off Basie's band and moved to California.

Mandel: Yeah it's a whole other beginning of a whole other phase really, so... 

Kirchner: Which is the end of '53 right? 

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: Now, if I'm not mistaken one of the first things you did when you got there was you did some string charts for Chet Baker.

Mandel:  Yeah, I did. Kirchner: I just...

Mandel: I did some stuff for the Dave Pell Octet, that was good and I did some string charts, yeah that's right Chet Baker and strings. I still knew very little about string writing.

Kirchner: It was also a very small string section.

Mandel: Yeah

Kirchner: It was about eight fiddle players.

Mandel: And the guys weren't all that great, and then later on I think a year or so later we did some stuff with just four cellos with Chet. And I don't like writing for small string sections, they just don't sound good.

Kirchner: You can only do one or two or three way voicing or else it's too thin to amount to anything.

Mandel: Yeah, so I started writing them thinner so I could get more lines, more voices and that wouldn't sound good at all.

Kirchner: Now, how did you meet Chet in the first place?

Mandel: I think Dick Bock [owner of Pacific Jazz Records] set that up. I had met Dick during the time I was getting my card, when I came back to town he and Woody Woodward [handle the administration for the label]  grabbed me to do a lot of work. Those guys sort of, you know, getting started in California, especially in those days was very tough. I came in with sort of a New York reputation but no work and no connections at all and I'm not very good at that sort of thing.

Kirchner: What was your plan, did you consciously want to get into film writing or was that an afterthought?

Mandel: Well I had thought I had a way of getting into Warner Brothers, it turned out I didn't at all and then I was really kicking myself for having left Basie. I should never have done it, but you know I do those kinds of things for 5 minutes and then go on to something else and forget about it. And you know I was writing more and more and playing less and I'd keep getting worse and I really started thinking that with Basie, as much as I was enjoying myself that... somebody else really should be sitting there, that could really play and I'd just come to that point where you get the fork in the road and you really have to make a choice; one or the other and I was always pulled away from my playing by my writing.  And I was just about 29 when I quit that and realized, that you know, they are both full-time jobs and everybody eventually has to do that. Billy Byers had to do it and he was good. He kept his trombone and writing up and did them both very well; but almost everyone stops playing.

Kirchner: Bob Brookmeyer is one of the few notable exceptions.

Mandel: He's another one too.  Bobby Brookmeyer is just miraculous, there's another great trombone stylist I completely neglected to mention earlier. There's only one of them too and as a writer as well.

Kirchner: Yeah, he's one of the few, well I guess Al Cohn didn't play much for years.

Mandel: He didn't play much for years and he didn't really start playing his best until he became a full-time saxophone player, is when he finally gave up writing, which I really hated to see. I used to beg him to keep writing but he had spent so many years trying to raise a family and writing music he didn't like and his eye, he only had one eye after 1949 or ‘50 and as a matter-of-fact he was out of the business for a while working for his father, who I think was - Dave Cohn was in the garment business at the time. And when he came with Elliot [Lawrence’s big band in the early 1950s] that was his first foray back into music, he had been out of music for a while, after his eye operation. And so he made it on one eye since then, and he used to do shows for Ralph Burns and you know he was just doing a whole lot of music he didn't like and…

Kirchner: A lot of Broadway shows.

Mandel: When he finally got free of his marriage and a whole lot of other things and the kids were grown up enough, he decided he wasn't gonna write anymore music and his one eye was just killing him. He became a full-time saxophone player and that's what he ended up spending his life and when he started doing that and put all his energy in the saxophone, whoo man!

Kirchner: Yeah, really.

Mandel: He was always good before that but became more than good after that.

Kirchner: I think it's one of the small ironies of the jazz business that he ended up marrying [arranger] George Handy's ex-wife.

Mandel: Yeah, Flo.

Kirchner: Yeah, Flo, who is also a talented composer. 

Mandel: Very, yeah and you know who's sister she was? 

Kirchner: Ella Mae Morse [led her own big band] during the Swing Era].

Mandel: Ella Mae Morse's kids sister, yeah. I knew her from the time she was 16 years old, a wonderful girl.

Kirchner: And a very talented composer.

Mandel: Very talented composer and a wonderful singer.

Kirchner: I'd heard that yeah.

Mandel: I loved the way she sang. Yeah.

Kirchner: So you're in LA, you did the four string charts for Chet Baker, "You Don't Know What Love Is," “I Love You," "The Wind," which was Russ Freeman's tune and, "Love."

Mandel: Yeah, I actually wrote the bridge to that, or finished the bridge for him.

Kirchner: Oh yeah?

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: It was interesting you used an alto flute on that.

Mandel: I guess I did, yeah.

Kirchner: With Bud Shank, that's about the first time I can remember hearing an alto flute on a jazz record.

Mandel: I guess I just needed something that went lower than the regular flute. 

Kirchner: But that was pretty unusual for that time right?

Mandel: It never occurred to me then I don't think, and I always liked the way Bud played it. 

Kirchner: Oh yeah, I love his flute playing.

Mandel: I do too, I was...

Kirchner: It's too bad that he stopped.

Mandel: I was very distressed 'cause I wasn't able to use him anymore, he just wouldn't take flute calls and he was my favorite player.

Kirchner: Yeah, he was a terrific flute player.  So also Chet recorded one of your tunes, "Tommyhawk."

Mandel: That's true, he recorded a couple different of my tunes, yeah, "Tommyhawk," that's right. You know more about me than I do, so read on.

Kirchner: [laughs] And I guess what a couple years later you did some charts for that record that Chet Baker and Art Pepper did together, The Playboys of Jazz, it was a three horn...

Mandel: It was?

Kirchner: Thing with Chet and Art Pepper and Richie Kamuca.

Mandel: What'd I write?

Kirchner: I forget.

Mandel: Oh, you don't have it here?

Kirchner: No, I don't

Mandel: Okay

Kirchner: That's one thing I didn't find in the discography.

Mandel: Well if you can't help me, I sure can't.

[They both laugh]

Kirchner:   But you did a fair amount, I guess all that was set up through Dick Bock then?

Mandel: Well some of it, and then one person tells another you know, and so forth.

Kirchner: Did you get to know Chet, very much?

Mandel: Yeah, yeah, he was still a kid when I knew him, he was a nice kid, I liked Chet and what a musician.

Kirchner: Yeah

Mandel: And a wonderful singer, he was just a natural.

Kirchner: Yeah, absolutely.

Mandel: He was wonderful you know, Gerry really came up with something when he came up with Chet, then after that when Chet left town, I graduated to Jack Sheldon and Jack Sheldon was quite something in those days, in the 50s still and the 60s. He did a great deal, we did a lot of work together and had an awful lot of laughs.

Kirchner: There is one story that I heard, that we might as well bring up now that when you did the score to, "The Sandpiper," and you had him as a solo trumpet...

Mandel: Yep

Kirchner: And I'm told you just wrote Miles on the top of his part.

Mandel:  I might have.  I was going after that thing there's no doubt about it, that's what I wanted because I heard it in conjunction with all the scenery in that movie, it just seemed like the perfect way to go, but I didn't copy Gil [Evans].

Kirchner: No, not at all. Jack is a very underrated trumpet player.

Mandel: Yeah he is, well he plays a lot more trumpet now but he plays a lot of notes. He's gotten into, he's learned how to read, he's really gone and studied the trumpet and he's got total mastery of it but he's still great, there's only one Jack Sheldon.

Kirchner: Yeah, it's funny the way his career went, for a while he was doing a lot of TV acting, the only jazz musician ever to be the lead on a TV sitcom.

Mandel: I know, what a funny guy, he and Joe Maini [alto sax]used to work together and they were hysterical.  I don't know, I'm gonna tell a story on tape here. Joe Mondragon was my bass player for a long time, I just loved the way Joe Mondragon played.  He and Jack Sheldon used to work a lot together and [laughs] I don't know if this story belongs on this tape or not but it's -they were playing a dance somewhere and Jack, you know Jack cannot stop with one-liners and there was this girl who was more than fine at the dance and she was with her fiance and Jack just kept zinging those one - he couldn't take his eyes off the girl, he couldn't stop, he just couldn't leave her alone and the guy finally really started getting hot and he goes over to Jack and says, "Look this is my fiance, this is the girl I'm going to marry, I'd really appreciate it," he was very nice, "if you'd please stop, layoff." And Jack couldn't lay off, the night wore on, everybody got into their cups pretty well, finally Jack just went overboard and said something the guy hauls off and hits him square in the mouth and knocks him out. [laughs] And Dragon sees that and he runs, and this is the days before guns, he runs to his bass case and pulls out a gun, now I never saw Dragon with a gun before and in those days people didn't have guns, you know it wasn't like that. You saw a gun that was very unusual and he goes up to the mic and starts waving it, and he says, "Alright you guys, everybody it's all over, the dance is finished everybody get out, everybody, get out stop the music the dance is finished,' and he turns to that guy, he says, "do you know what you did, you hit a trumpet player in the mouth, that is a mortal sin."

[They both laugh]

Mandel: He says, "All right everybody out," I mean, you know he said, "I'd like to kill you, but you just don't realize what a terrible thing you did." He said, "Everybody gets out, go on out of here," and Jack is starting to come-to, and he opens one eye and he points, and he says, "She can stay."

[They both laugh]

Mandel: Okay, you can edit that out because it doesn't really belong on the tape.

Kirchner: It's a great story.

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: Well Joe Mondragon is part Indian right?

Mandel: Yeah, not part, all.

Kirchner: All?

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: Well I...

Mandel: Apache.

Kirchner: And part Mexican too right?

Mandel: Well the Apaches are that far south...

Kirchner: Yeah, yeah.

Mandel: That I think that's Mexican Indian really.

Kirchner: Don't mess with him.

Mandel: No, what a wonderful man he was and what a great bass player.

Kirchner: Yeah, apparently he hipped Miles to the, "Concierto de Aranjuez," you know the...

Mandel: Yeah wouldn't surprise me at all.

Kirchner: First, "Sketches of Spain," he played Miles the original guitar recording and Miles loved it and played it for Gil, and that's where they got the idea to do it in, the "Sketches of Spain."

Mandel: I'm sorry I didn't know Miles a lot better. 

Kirchner: How well did you know him?

Mandel: Not really well we were never in the same place at the same time. He was always on the East Coast and I was always on the West. I don't know, as years went by I moved away, in 1970 from Los Angeles in general and lived up north of Malibu ever since. And I just don't get in much and don't hang, and I miss it, that's why I hit the jazz festivals and cruises and things 'cause I gotta be with the guys. You know it's, I like to feel like I used to feel, I mean I'm very happy living the way I am now but once you're a road rat man, it gets in you and old musicians are like prizefighters, we'll get to all that later on.  You know you like to get with your - or old baseball players you like to hang and rap, not necessarily live the old days, it's just there's a kind of bonding that goes on that, until you don't have it anymore you don't realize what you had.

Kirchner: Yeah, well it's one of the big tragedies of New York that there are no more Jim and Andy's or any places like that.

Mandel: Yeah, yeah, it was just one of the wonderful things about being part of the music fraternity and jazz musicians truly, really, love one another.  You go see, "A Great Day in Harlem."

Kirchner: Yeah I did Mandel: It's all very true man. 

Kirchner: Yeah.

Mandel: These are all like your brothers you know, there's a kinship, jazz musicians share something that no one else shares with them.

Kirchner: And there are very few real schmucks. 

Mandel: That's right, really, very few. 

Kirchner: The ones that are, stand out.

Mandel: And usually they weren't schmucks, they'd just get difficult once in a while like Mingus and people like that, but they weren't really schmucks.

Kirchner: Yeah, but it's kind of a whole era that's gone.

Mandel: Yeah, like I don't know, it's not something I like to really dwell on much, you know you wonder how people like Benny Carter deal with it who is you know eighty-six, eighty-seven, eighty-eight, whatever Benny is, all his contemporaries are dead.

Kirchner: I think Woody Herman said something very wise, he said that, "You make younger friends because if you don't, you find out one day that you don't have any friends left."

Mandel: Absolutely true and that's what Benny does too, I wanted to - one day when I really got morose I wanted to call him up and ask him how he dealt with and I realized what the answer would be before I ever called him, I says, if I asked him how you deal with it, he says, "I don't, why should you, you know, where is that gonna take you?" You just keep making younger friends, that's it exactly.

Kirchner: I mean, I've gotten a couple phone calls from him just to call and say, "Hi how are you?" And it's like gee, Benny Carter's calling me, you know is God next?

Mandel:  Right, yeah, because I still have that awe of him.

Kirchner: Sure. Let's see, just before you stopped playing, apparently you played with Zoot Sims at The Haig.

Mandel:  Yeah, that was really the last work I did. 

Kirchner: Playing bass trumpet?

Mandel: Yeah, I played with Zoot and Jimmy Rowles and I can't remember who played drums, we worked at The Haig, that place where Gerry [Mulligan] used to work. And we were there for a couple months and it was real nice but it was at that time I really, as wonderful as it was with Zoot, I just didn't want to play anymore, it was getting harder and harder to play and write and I knew I was having to become a full-time writer.

Kirchner: And...

Mandel:  So, I just put the horn down and haven't missed it since, really haven't, when I hear a big band play I miss it, I want to become part of that, I want, you know - and when Basie would come around, I'd always, you never forget your part you know, on arrangements you used to play. And I'd see Benny Powell and he'd say, "that's right, you never forget your part," you know. We'd sing right along with them, with our old parts 'cause you know you memorize everything, you don't read it. But that's the only time I'd miss it, being part of the section sound, being a soloist like I used to enjoy doing, was really just too frustrating because I couldn't play what I envisioned and what I heard. So when it got like that and I knew I would never be able to practice again like that, in order to do it, I said the hell with it, it was that time.

Kirchner: So was it after that, that Chico Hamilton made you an offer that you turned down, he wanted you to join his group.

Mandel: Don't even remember that.

Kirchner: It's in Ted Gioia's book called, "West Coast Jazz," apparently when he was putting together that group with Buddy Collette...

Mandel: Yeah, I gotta be honest with you I never was a convert to West Coast jazz, I always thought it was a very kind of weak cousin to East Coast jazz; in fact I just never identified it as something in itself really. I always liked the way the east coasters played but I like living on the West Coast.  I always thought there was something a little effeminate about the way they played, not that that's bad, it's just not something - you know you come out of Basie and some of the most hard swinging kind of things and everything else sounds so pallid next to it.

Kirchner: Yeah, I guess... 

Mandel: You get spoiled...

Kirchner: Sure.

Mandel: When you've had it that good.

Kirchner: Yeah, I guess it depends, like somebody like Shelly Manne for example, sounded...

Mandel: A wonderful drummer, but not a great big band drummer.

Kirchner: You don't think huh?

Mandel: No, I don't think, but I thought he was probably the tastiest drummer I've ever known and one who had the best sense of sound. You'd never have to write a part for Shelly, he would listen and always knew exactly what to play and what a guy to have, man, there was nobody like Shelly, he was funny, he was just one the most marvelous men I've ever known.

Kirchner: But he sounded...

Mandel: And a hell of a drummer he just wasn't the big band drummer that...

Kirchner: Mel Lewis was.

Mandel: Mel Lewis or Tiny Kahn or Shadow Wilson in his day or, Papa Jo Jones, you know the great Gus Johnson the great big-band drummers, Sid Catlett, Cliff Leeman in his day, Buddy Rich, those were the big band drummers. Shelly was not that, he had so many other things.

Kirchner: Yeah he sounded very different in all those different settings like sometimes he would sound like, like you were talking about, quintessential quote, "West Coast jazz."

Mandel: Yeah, l just didn't like West Coast jazz.

Kirchner: Yeah.

Mandel:  But I never thought it really had much merit, it was watered down East Coast jazz.

Kirchner: But then he would have some of his own groups, you know and he would have people like Victor Feldman and Joe Gordon and...

Mandel: Oh he had some, he was a wonderful small band drummer... 

Kirchner: Yeah.

Mandel: I didn't mean that he wasn't a wonderful, he was a wonderful drummer.

Kirchner: Sure.

Mandel: I loved him in the small band settings.

Kirchner: I think his own taste tended to be more aggressive than some of the people he worked for.

Mandel: Un hm, but I never thought he was aggressive enough in a big band, he wasn't a rock type of drummer you could drive a truck over and he wouldn't budge like Mel Lewis was.

Kirchner: Yeah

Mandel: And his sense of sound I don't think made it for a big-band as well as it did for a small band. Whereas Tiny Kahn was never as great a small band drummer even though he did a lot of small band work as he was a big band drummer.

Kirchner: Well he and Mel Lewis were very close.

Mandel: Well that was Mel's original inspiration, Tiny, that's who Mel wanted to be like and he was right.

Kirchner: Yeah, they're not interchangeable, I mean...

Mandel: No.

Kirchner: You can tell one from the other...

Mandel: Oh sure, they're not alike at all.

Kirchner: I don't know, I hear a certain - there's an affinity of approach there between...

Mandel: It was the time sense that Mel had.

Kirchner: Yeah.

Mandel: That he loved about Tiny.  Tiny was a musician with not much technique, just all feel...

Kirchner: The same with Mel.

Mandel: He wasn't a great technical drummer, he wasn't a great technical arranger but everything he did was perfect.

Kirchner: Yeah, it's like...

Mandel: You know, 'cause taste is above all the arbiter of greatness I think. Count Basie was -nobody really realized how good a piano player Count Basie was in his early days, he was a terror if you listen to the Bennie Moten things from 1932 on.  He played more damn piano than Fats on those records, which is really saying something and never did with his own band that much piano. But the man had such great taste that those few ideas he used to throw around, that if anybody else did you'd be sick of him within a few days, lasted all his life because he had taste like no one did and he had the best time. And Tiny was like that, Sweets is like that.

Kirchner: Yeah, Mel was like that too.

Mandel: Yeah, Mel had a lot more variety though in his playing.

Kirchner: Yeah.

Mandel: He could do a lot of things, especially when he got with his own band.

Kirchner: Yeah, the best drum solos I ever heard Mel play were in small groups where -I heard him one night play a brush solo on, "Body and Soul," done at ballad tempo that was just superb.

Mandel: Oh, that's the kind of thing Shelly did so well, that kind of thing, shading, and subtleties of playing. He might've been the best drummer when it came to dynamics.

Kirchner: And he had wonderful time.

Mandel: Yeah.

Kirchner: Let's see at this point...

Mandel: I don't remember the Chico Hamilton thing at all...

Kirchner: I'll have to, I'll make a...

Mandel: But thank you Chico, if you made the offer.

Kirchner: [laughs] And you did a little bit of writing for - we talked earlier about that Bill Perkins octet record.

Mandel: Oh yeah, um-hm.

Kirchner: Did you write, "Just a child," specifically for that date or you had written that tune...

Mandel: I guess I did, yeah, that was when the tune happened and then Stan Getz recorded it later, something I never realized until I heard a documentary that they did on Stan after he died, I never realized he recorded that song and it was perfect for him.

Kirchner: Absolutely and then Bill did it again.

Mandel: Bill did it again?

Kirchner: Yeah, do you know that album he did that's a totally Johnny Mandel album.

Mandel: Oh, that one, yeah.

Kirchner: With Victor Feldman and John Pisano.

Mandel: Oh that's right, yeah.

Kirchner: Around 1970.

Mandel: I guess so, yeah.

Kirchner: So at that point you did that, Hal McKusick did a recording of, "Tommyhawk," on that Jazz workshop record.

Mandel: I guess he did, yeah, these are all, this is like seeing - this must be what dying's like. 

Kirchner: I hope not.  [laughs] 

Mandel:  I hope so, I'm enjoying this.

Kirchner: I mean the janitor's gone, if we have a corpse here [laughs] it's gonna be awfully awkward.

Mandel: Yeah, but I mean your whole life flashes before your eyes.

To be continued in Part 2.

A Tierney Sutton Trilogy [From the Archives Redux]

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

As the title of this feature alludes, it was originally reposted on 12/23/2014. But since that time, enhanced copyright scrutiny has stripped out the "home-made" videos that were included to provide a sampling of the music on each of these recordings.

Fast-forward seven years and the owners of these copyrights have now made available, via YouTube, the exact examples of the ones that were deleted!

This plus the fact that 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of Joni Mitchell's BLUE which Tierney commemorated as "After Blue"[see the last part of this feature] convinced me that it was time to insert the approved videos and bring the whole thing up once again on this page.

Tierney's discography includes many more recordings than the few that are covered in this piece. If you are a fan of first-rate vocal Jazz, you would do well to check them out on YouTube or your favorite streaming service. Of course, if you really want to help out the artists, buy the actual recordings.

“Sutton doesn’t grandstand. She climbs inside a melody and explores new territory. The pleasure of hearing standards involves the internal dialogue that occurs in the listener’s mind, where a previously known arrangement often is mingling with the new rendition.”

- Bobby Reed, Downbeat

“Tierney Sutton is among a group of artists who may have come to epitomize what many think of as true jazz singers during the previous decades because of their brilliance in interpreting the classics.”

- John Murphy, Downbeat

“In our cruel, crass world where the word ‘artist’ is used to describe even the most imbecilic pseudo-musician, Tierney Sutton is the real thing.

Stunning in appearance, with silky, waist length blonde hair framing a model’s high cheek boned face, Tierney has a voice that can range from a smoldering intimacy in such ballads as ‘In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning’ to a cool, hip light-heartedness in tunes like ‘If I Were A Bell.’

Her superb musicianship guarantees that every note will be on target – what a relief from all the tone-dead screamers who pollute our ears these days.

Tierney respects a lyric in a manner to melt the heart of any songwriter.

And lucky is he or she whose songs this beautiful lady chooses to sing.”

- Tupp Turner, Former Executive, Capitol/Angel Records

I have been a fan of vocalist Tierney Sutton dating back to a period in her career when she and what is now referred to as “The Tierney Sutton Band” were just putting things together.

A few years earlier, I had first chanced to hear her sing with trumpeter Buddy Childers Big Band and she utterly knocked me out.

“Tierney Sutton” became a name to remember.

The esteemed writer Ray Bradbury once said: “You make yourself as you go” and that’s exactly what Tierney has done over the past dozen years or so.

She has made herself into one of the premier vocalists in Jazz and now plays some of the biggest rooms and concerts halls in the country with “the guys in the band” as she lovingly and admiringly refers to pianist Christian Jacobs, bassists Trey Henry and/or Kevin Axt and drummer Ray Brinker [aka “The Tierney Sutton Band”].

Fortunately for me, when Tierney was still in the early stages of her career, she occasionally worked at a local club in Orange County, CA not too far from my home. The fact that a close friend’s wife worked for the owner of that club practically guaranteed me a ringside seat from which to watch her progress during those fledgling years.

She chose her songs carefully, worked with her trio to craft them into interesting arrangements and also gave Christian, Trey and Ray lots of solo space as well. And she listened to them when they played their solos and dug them, too.

Tierney knew what she was listening to and her appreciation of good musicianship was one of the ways in which she turned herself into a sparkling and refreshing Jazz singer. She became a professional musician herself, in every sense of the word, and set the bar very high for the standards she expected to meet during every performance.

She may have been relatively new at pacing a set in a Jazz club, but she knew what she was doing, but more importantly, she knew what she wanted to do.

I worked with Anita O’Day at Ye Little Club in Beverly Hills when the regular drummer in her trio took ill. For two weeks, I had the perfect vantage point to observe one of the great Jazz vocalists of all time “work a room.”

Night-after-night, Anita sequenced one set after another of perfectly paced and rendered tunes that completely shaped the mood of the audience. She quipped with the musicians, told the audience little stories, made passing references to other Jazz musician’s versions of what she was singing. Anita never made you feel apart from the point of the whole thing which was to enjoy the music, have a good time and be entertained.

That’s what Tierney did, too, in these early gigs in which she was “making herself” into a major song stylist.

She made the audience feel that they were in the presence of something special and then she made sure it was – something special.

Tierney crafted her performance by giving a great deal of thought to the overall aesthetic in which the music was portrayed. She creates a Jazz aura and draws the audience into it. You don’t just listen to Tierney’s music, you live it.

Tierney likes to work thematically and she bases her recorded CD’s around a central musical idea, for example: Unsung Heroes which is an homage to her instrumental influences; those not usually associated with singers [i.e., Joe Henderson, Clifford Brown, Wayne Shorter]; Blue in Green is a tribute to the music of pianist Bill Evans; Dancing in the Dark is made up of songs “inspired by the music of Frank Sinatra.”

As Dr. Herb Wong comments in his insert notes to Unsung Heroes [Telarc CD-83477]:

“The number of the great jazz divas is fading rapidly. There is a forceful message that motivation has cranked up dramatically for women jazz singers to pursue a coveted spotlight. The growing crowd of aspirants and voluminous flow of new vocal recordings are meaningful indices. Amidst this high density of vocal talent, a few have surfaced as top-of-the-cream standouts. That Tierney Sutton is among them, and is an extraordinary vocalist-musician, is manifest here.

Her incisive "musicianly" attributes are noticed promptly as they merge impressively with the fine musicians assembled for this CD. Tierney is a soprano but her voice descends into the alto range too. Then there's her very personal sound and style. Add her melodic imagination, amazing true intonation, lyricism and attractive choice of notes in shaping her solos—you wind up with an aptly successful balancing act of unfailing brilliant surprises and piquant expectations. …”

Bob Blumenthal, two-time Grammy award winner for Best Insert Notes, made these observations about Tierney’s retrospective of the music of Bill Evans in Blue in Green [Telarc CD-83522].

“The word has been out since the release of Unsung Heroes: Tierney Sutton is one great jazz singer-or, more accurately, one great jazz musician. Her intonation and rhythmic skills are superb; she can improvise, with and without lyrics, in a manner both inspired and intelligent; she selects great material and immerses herself in both its verbal and musical meanings, always staying within an ensemble concept; and she is not afraid to take risks. All bases are covered when Sutton sings, from technical dazzle to unadorned emotion.

Sutton has achieved her status through a clear-headed desire to learn and grow. It has led her to make choices others might not consider, like her move to California after more than a decade during which she launched her career in the Boston area. She explains, ‘I got to the point where I didn't get enough work. It was either New York or LA. For several years I spent a lot of my there time checking out the New York scene, and I just couldn't get a chance to sing. If you can't work, and no one hears you, it's hard to grow.’

‘I had met some people from LA who became my friends, and one of them invited me there when he was putting together a vocal group. That was a nice experience, but even better was hearing Jack Sheldon's Big Band. They sounded great and Ray [Brinker], Trey [Henry], and Christian [Jacob] were the rhythm section.’

The rest is history still in the making. Sheldon asked Sutton to sit in, people heard what she could do, work started coming her way. Jacob, Henry, and Brinker landed them­selves a new gig, as part of the Tierney Sutton Quartet.

Sutton agrees that her ensemble is far more than a singer-plus-trio. ‘That's what we have that you rarely hear, she explains. ‘There are some lovely singers, but I don't know many as linked up with their bands as I am. Sustained intensity is what we do best.’”

My favorite tune on Unsung Heroes is Recordame [Remember Me] by tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson. The following video features Tierney’s version of it with lyrics written by Kelley Johnson. The arrangement was prepared by bassist Trey Henry.

What brought on this look back at the career of Tierney Sutton was the arrival at the editorial office of JazzProfiles of two, recent CD’s by Tierney on the BFM label: The Tierney Sutton Band: American Road [BFM 302062408-2] and Tierney Sutton: After Blue [302062419-2].

I thought it would be fun to combine a retrospective about Tierney’s earlier recordings with some thoughts about her two more recent efforts, hence the title of this piece – “A Tierney [Sutton] Trilogy.”

This tripartite approach would also be well-served by three different videos which you will find placed throughout this feature so that you can sample the distinctiveness of Tierney’s song-styling from each of these perspectives.

On September 11, 2011 C. Michael Bailey writing in allaboutjazz.com had these thoughts and comments about The Tierney Sutton Band: American Road [BFM 302062408-2].

“Solidly innovative and a forward-thinker in jazz vocals arena over the past 15 years, Tierney Sutton has constantly looked backwards while forging a future path that has influenced the likes of Laurie Antonioli and Gretchen Parlato, among many other noted contemporary jazz vocalists. A master of vocal pyrotechnics like Sarah Vaughan, Sutton sings on a high-wire, taking stylistic chances that, more often than not, pay off handsomely. Sutton and her band have been perfecting their unique updating of the great American songbook on such well-received recordings as Desire (Telarc, 2009), On The Other Side (Telarc, 2007) and I'm With The Band (Telarc, 2005). And she provides a tour-de-force in American Road.

An important part of the band's unique sound derives from divining the organic earthiness from the standards it selects to perform. Where Cassandra Wilson spent the better part of the 1990s stripping down standards and redressing them with more rustic instrumentation such as acoustic slide guitars, mandolins, violins and other artifacts of rural blues, effecting a more seminal, fecund sound, Sutton accomplishes the same with carefully conceived arrangements, created by the entire band as opposed to a single person. Additionally, she does this with her traditional jazz piano trio of 18 years. These arrangements are spare and wide open. Often jarring and dissonant, the clever settings reveal the pieces as dramatically different from traditional performances, revealing their anxious and unsettling elements.American Road follows a year after Laurie Antonioli's America-focused recording, American Dreams (Intrinsic, 2010). Antonioli's organic approach lies between that of Cassandra Wilson's and Sutton's, focusing on using more rustic instrumentation with more original compositions and some truly inspired takes on musical Americana. Antonioli and Sutton intersect with inspired covers of "America The Beautiful," both spare and light, giving the singers plenty of time and room to display their considerable individual vocal wares. There is no edge here, both interpretations equally bring home the American goods.

Sutton's choice of repertoire mines deep the American song, drawing from traditional folk sources, spirituals, show tunes and popular music. The disc opens with the Public Domain "Wayfaring Stranger" and "Oh Shenandoah/The Water Is Wide." As on previous recordings, drummer Ray Brinker plays an important role both using novel percussive approaches and keeping time as if by telepathy. The drums become an extension of pianist Christian Jacobs' equally percussive and ornate playing. "Wayfaring Stranger" is performed as if in a home parlor (albeit a "green" one) on a Sunday afternoon, after church and lunch.

"Oh Shenandoah/The Water Is Wide" begins with nine muffled microphone strikes buoyed by bassists Kevin Axt and Trey Henry strumming chords, achieving an unsettled environment over which Sutton jazz-vocalizes the lilting melody of "Oh Shenandoah." This segues into Jacobs' clean as spring comping and solo on "The Water Is Wide." Sutton sings the "Oh Shenandoah" melody behind Jacobs' solo, solidifying the continuity of the song pairing. The effect is fresh and vibrant, like the first color Polaroid of Summer.

Sutton and company strip all of the glamour from Lieber and Stoller's "On Broadway," leaving a nervous and excited performance where the arrangement leads the way. Bassists Axt and Henry shine, producing poly-rhythms with Jacob and Brinker. Sutton sings at her most sinewy and muscular here. To be sure, this is not your parent's George Benson version. This is a juggernaut. The group turns out a graceful and flowing "Amazing Grace," with Jacob providing an orchestral backdrop supported by Brinker's pistol-shot snare and shimmering cymbals. 

The disc programming establishes two mini-recitals of American monoliths: the Gershwin brothers and Stephen Sondheim/Leonard Bernstein. The Gershwin selections exist as a musical triptych of "It Ain't Necessarily So," "Summertime" and "My Man's Gone Now." "It Ain't Necessarily So" is bold, jarring, dangerous with hard and assertive playing by Jacob and corrosively sardonic deliver by Sutton. The rhythm and time is jack-hammer tight, ensuring a version of this chestnut not likely to be topped. This is likewise true for "My Man's Gone Now," where another hard rhythmic figure dominates the song even in its quieter moments. These songs are no longer the quaint ballads of cabaret singers. Sutton and her band transform them militantly into feral expressions of more base instincts. Gone is nicety and politeness: enter naked realism that is both seductive and refreshing.

Between these two songs is the old standby, "Summertime." Musical treatment here is gentler but no less provocative than Sutton's approach with the other Gershwin offerings. Bass and drums set up a three-note figure transfigured through the harmonic prism of the song. Jacob adds light filigree while Sutton sings with authority and melodic refinement. Jacobs' solo is a study of the skeleton of the piece, distilled to some bare essence. These very familiar tunes have been turned on their head to show a different angle. Sutton digs deep, revealing the novel and unseen in these compositions: dramatic and horizon expanding.

After the Gershwins, Sutton turns her attention to Sondheim/Bernstein and West Side Story(1961). "Somewhere" and "Something's Coming/Cool" are given more traditionally dramatic arrangements, with an emphases on the dramatic. "Somewhere" is some of the best ballad singing of Sutton's career. The band's arrangement is straightforward and Sutton perfectly balanced and placed. The coupling of "Something's Coming/Cool" returns to the edge of the experimental, where boundaries and perimeters are extended. Over a brooding, ascending piano/bass figure Sutton injects impressive drama, accentuated by the clever arrangement. The transition between the songs is seamless and inventive, again give the arrangement. Not since Gil Evans worked his magic for the first Miles Davis quintet has arranging had such a potent and important effect in small-combo jazz. This is top-notch, full-throttle, jazz vocals.

Tracks: Wayfaring Stranger; Oh Shenandoah/The Water is Wide; On Broadway; Amazing Grace; It Ain't Necessarily So; Summertime; My Man's Gone Now; Tenderly; The Eagle and Me; Somewhere; Something's Coming/Cool; America the Beautiful.

Personnel: Tierney Sutton: vocals; Christian Jacob: piano; Kevin Axt: electric and acoustic bass; Trey Henry: electric and acoustic bass; Ray Brinker: drums.”

Tierney’s most recent recording is entitled After Blue [BFM 302062419-2] and it is another thematic tour-de-force, in no small measure due to the care and consideration with which Tierney treat all of its music and the respect and admiration she has for the musicians with whom she is working.

She wrote these insert notes explaining how and why she chose Joni’s music as the idea for her latest venture.

THE JONI MITCHELL PROJECT

Shortly after Y2K fizzled into nothing, a friend said to me in hushed tones, "Have you heard it yet?" "It" was Joni Mitchell's 2000 tour-de-force album, Both Sides Now with orchestral arrangements by Vince Mendoza. It is composed of mostly standards and it is the vocal album that I have listened to more than any other in the years since its release. I consider it to be alongside Sinatra's Wee Small Hours and Billie Holliday's Lady in Satin. For the twenty years before, all my closest friends, my producer and my manager, had been telling me I needed to listen to Joni Mitchell. As a singer focused on The Great American Songbook, I'd finally found my doorway into Joni-land.

From there I began to spend time with Mitchell's earlier work including Court and Spark, Mingus, Hejira, For The Roses and of course, her early masterwork, Blue. I knew that Mitchell's music was not something I could glance at and then perform. I had to live with it for years. Like her fans who had absorbed the music in their youth, I wanted to "marinate" in Joni Mitchell. And over the past ten years that's what I've done. From time to time I'd perform something, Big Yellow Taxi which I'd known for years or A Case of You which was requested for a private event. I didn't feel ready to address Mitchell's compositions with integrity, so I let the matter rest, but I was listening to Joni's albums more than those of any other artist during these years.

In 2011, I was approached about a collaboration with The Turtle Island Quartet. When cellist Mark Summer asked "What do you think about doing some Joni Mitchell?" my answer was, "Yes." We played through All I Want and Little Green and I knew that I was finally ready to start. Joni Mitchell's music, at least some of it, was inside me.

The Turtles and I debuted the project at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara in September of 2012. By luck, Elaine Martone, the producer of eight of my previous albums, who had been one of the loudest voices asking me to record Mitchell's work, was at the show with my good friend Steve Cloud who manages Keith Jarrett. After hearing the four Mitchell compositions in the program, Elaine and Steve basically cornered me and said, "You have to do this," and I agreed. It was finally time.

Meanwhile, my longtime bandmates Christian Jacob and Ray Brinker were committed to their own projects and family obligations so I knew I was meant to look elsewhere for collaborators this time around. Shortly after I conceived of the project, Peter Erskine, who had become a good friend, told me he'd like to play on the CD. He also suggested Larry Goldings on [Hammond] B3 [Organ]. As the drummer on both Mingus AND Both Sides Now, I knew Peter was ... the perfect choice. As for Larry, I was an even bigger fan of his acoustic piano playing than I was of his famed B3 work, and I knew after one afternoon of playing together that he was right for this project too.

At the same time the Joni project was emerging, TSB [Tierney Sutton Band] bassist Kevin Axt and I recorded an intimate standards project with Paris-based guitarist, Serge Merlaud. I knew from the start that I wanted to include one or two standards on the Joni project - songs I had learned from Joni's exquisite renditions on Both Sides Now. I chose Don't Go To Strangers and my favorite, Answer Me, My Love. Something felt right about this instrumentation - classic Jazz, no frills. For me, these songs are every bit as much "Joni Mitchell" as her own compositions.

The last piece, and one that only came together at Sam the night before the session, was to join one of Joni's compositions with a standard. I knew that Joni had been influenced greatly by Jazz standards and as a Jazz singer, I wanted to show that there isn't a separation between the genres. Great music is great music. Larry and I had discussed this idea and he suggested that if there was some uniting concept, then it would make sense to a have a standard with a Joni tune even if Joni had never recorded the standard. "How about Paris?" he suggested. A leadsheet for April In Paris sat quite literally next to my Joni Mitchell songbook. It wasn't until waking with insomnia the night before the session that I sat down and figured out how the two songs went together and how the lyrics told a single story.

After Blue means many things to me. It comes after my thirty years of concentrating on the Blue In Green tones of Miles and Bill Evans and Coltrane and Sinatra. After spending time with the many hues of Joni's own repertoire, I hope this record represents a coming together of those hues - those colors of music. Thank you Joni Mitchell for your inspiration, your excellence. All I can hope for here is to scratch the surface of your deep legacy - to paint a little multi-colored portrait inspired by you.”

Over the past dozen years or so, no body of work in the Jazz world is more interpretively excellent than the vocal stylings of Tierney Sutton.

If you are not familiar with it, perhaps this retrospective may help serve as a guide.

Ella, Sassy, Billie, Bessie, Anita, Jackie Cain, Irene Krall, Blossom, Carmen and a whole host of other Jazz Divas gotta be smiling because of Tierney’s appearance on the scene.

The traditions of vocal Jazz are in good hands.

Order information is available at www.bfmjazz.com or the usual online retailers.

Tiare

Telepathy [between] Denny Zeitlin and George Marsh

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

Telepathy = the communication of thoughts or ideas by means other than the known senses.

The late, great bassist, bandleader and composer Charles Mingus [1922-1979] once declared: “We have to improvise on something!”

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer who lost both her sight and her ability to hear in infancy is quoted as having said: “Life is a daring adventure or it is nothing.”

In his The Order of Time [2019], the Italian Theoretical Physicist Carlo Rovelli [b. 1965 -] invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike.

For most readers this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it remains. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where at the most fundamental level time disappears. He explains how the theory of quantum gravity attempts to understand and give meaning to the resulting extreme landscape of this timeless world. Weaving together ideas from philosophy, science and literature, he suggests that our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective, better understood starting from the structure of our brain and emotions than from the physical universe.

Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to "flow"? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us? 

If you link together the three italicized phrases from the above: “We have to improvise on something!” - “Life is a daring adventure or it is nothing.” - our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective, better understood starting from the structure of our brain and emotions than from the physical universe - they will provide you with a basis for understanding and appreciating pianist Denny Zeitlin and percussionist George Marsh’s Telepathy: Duo Electro-Acoustic Improvisations which was released on June 25, 2021 by Sunnyside Records [SSC 1620]. 

In a nutshell, the daring adventure that Denny and George undertake in their new recording is to improvise on each other in a continuum of 14 original compositions in which their perception of the flow of time depends more on their brain and emotions than from the physical universe [chord progressions, scales, tunes, songs, musical notations, et al.]. 

The exact process “of doing” this music or of “making it happen” is described and discussed in the insert notes to the recording by Denny Zeitlin and I’ve included those below as it’s always a treat when musicians describe their music in their own words.

Comparing this music to the arcane axioms associated with theoretical physics and quantum mechanics may seem like I’m sounding some sort of death knell for the music on Telepathy but I don’t think so, because like the latter, the music only makes sense if you experience it on your own terms.

The listener has to abandon conventional ways of formulating musical awareness; the music that Denny and George create only tells us what we hear. Its musical expression as a totality; it washes over you and becomes a part of you.

Approaching the music on Telepathy in this manner allows you to have fun with it - “Music becomes a daring adventure!” The late drummer and bandleader Shelly Manne [1920-1984] once said of the music performed by his quintet: “We never played the same thing once.” And that phrase in essence captures the spirit of what Denny and George are about in these performances.

There’s no way to objectively evaluate what’s happening here: it doesn’t work; it doesn’t succeed; it’s not better than or similar to; it’s not reminiscent of - you can't compare it or analogize to anything.

“Free association,” “free expression,” “free Jazz” - none of these terms apply. 

Reactive, relational, responsive, interactive, improvisatory, interpretative - perhaps these are more suitable forms of describing what’s on offer here.

But with the art music that Denny and George have created on Telepathy what you have is the ultimate failure of words to describe music.

You have no choice but to listen to it and, in so doing, you become a third-party to the process of making it.

No, two listeners will experience Telepathy the same way, It’s what Heisenberg meant when he said that what we examine we change.

Just as Denny and George communicate telepathically to create this music, you will have to go on an auditory journey of exploration to encounter it.

Denny and George see physical reality as a lyrical narrative written in some hidden musical code that the human mind can decipher. In that sense, they are musical poets with a special intensity given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm.

I had a ball listening to this recording because I allowed myself the freedom to explore it just as the musicians allowed themselves the freedom to make it.

Why not give yourself a daring adventure, too, by telepathically connecting with Denny and George. I guarantee you’ve never experienced anything like it.

A NOTE FROM DENNY ZEITLIN...

“GEORGE MARSH AND I BEGAN OUR SUNNYSIDE DUO ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC RECORDINGS WITH "RIDING THE MOMENT" IN 2015. "EXPEDITION" FOLLOWED IN 2017, CHRONICLING AN EXCITING AND ENRICHING EVOLUTION. AND NOW "TELEPATHY," CONSISTING PRIMARILY OF PIECES RECORDED SINCE THEN, FINDS US EXPLORING BROADER AND DEEPER DIMENSIONS OF SPONTANEOUS COMPOSITION AS OUR ATTUNEMENT AND MUSICAL VISION CONTINUE TO EXPAND.

FOR LISTENERS HAVING A FIRST CONTACT WITH OUR DUO, I'LL REPEAT MY REMARKS FROM OUR PREVIOUS ALBUMS, SINCE THE SET AND SETTING REMAIN THE SAME. THIS ALBUM, LIKE "RIDING THE MOMENT," AND "EXPEDITION." HAS ROOTS GOING BACK TO THE LATE SIXTIES, WHEN I BEGAN A DECADE OF EXPLORING THE ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC INTEGRATION OF JAZZ, CLASSICAL, FUNK. ROCK, AND FREE-FORM MUSIC. MY TRIO INCLUDED MEL GRAVES OR RATZO HARRIS ON BASS, AND THROUGHOUT, THE INCREDIBLE DRUMMER/PERCUSSIONIST GEORGE MARSH. WE RECORDED AND TOURED THE WEST COAST, CONCLUDING THIS PERIOD WITH MY ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC-SYMPHONIC SCORE FOR THE 1978 REMAKE OF "INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS."

I THEN RETURNED TO A FOCUS ON ACOUSTIC SOLO, DUO, AND TRIO MUSIC FOR A COUPLE DECADES, AND GEORGE WENT ON TO NUMEROUS OTHER PROJECTS. WITH THE PASSAGE OF THE MILLENNIUM, SYNTHESIZER AND RECORDING TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES LURED ME BACK INTO A MAJOR AND ONGOING STUDIO UPGRADE. "BOTH/AND”- (SUNNYSIDE 2011) WAS DEVOTED TO THE ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC DOMAIN AS A SOLOIST. AND SINCE 2013, GEORGE AND I HAVE MUSICALLY RE-UNITED, AND HAVE BEEN EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL OF DUO ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC FREE IMPROVISATIONS - THE CO-CREATION OF WHAT WE OFTEN REFER TO AS "SOUND PAINTINGS."

OUR GOAL HAS BEEN TO APPROACH THE MUSIC WITHOUT A SCORE OR ANY PRECONCEPTION; TO BE AS FULLY PRESENT AS POSSIBLE, "RIDING THE MOMENT," AND ALLOWING THE MUSIC TO GO WHERE IT WANTS - WITHOUT ANY CONSTRAINT OF GENRE. OR FIXED HARMONIC, RHYTHMIC, OR MELODIC STRUCTURE. WE HOPE OUR "TELEPATHY" ALLOWS THE EMERGENCE OF SPONTANEOUS COMPOSITIONS THAT HAVE FRESHNESS, BEAUTY, EXCITEMENT, INTERNAL LOGIC, NEW SOUNDS, AND A SENSE OF JOURNEY-AN "EXPEDITION." OVER 91% OF THIS MUSIC WAS RECORDED IN "REAL TIME" WITH ONE PASS. ON THOSE OCCASIONS WHERE I DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH HANDS TO PLAY WHAT I WAS HEARING, I OVER-DUBBED SOME ORCHESTRATION OR A SOLO VOICE. AND IN THOSE INSTANCES, I TYPICALLY WENT WITH THE FIRST TAKE, TO PRESERVE THE SPONTANEITY OF THE PROJECT.

GEORGE IS A FULL PARTNER IN THE CO-CREATION OF THIS ALBUM. TO PRESERVE ACOUSTIC SEPARATION DURING RECORDING WE WERE UNABLE TO SEE EACH OTHER; WE WERE CARRIED BY OUR SHARED MUSICAL VISION, TRUST, AND AN EXTRAORDINARY RAPPORT. WE OFTEN FEEL LIKE WE ARE SOME KIND OF GALACTIC ORCHESTRA.

GEORGE'S ACTIVITIES AS A JAZZ DRUMMER. COMPOSER, AND EDUCATOR ARE BASED IN THE SAN FRANCISCO AREA. HIS RECORDINGS ILLUSTRATE THE RANGE AND DEPTH OF HIS INTERESTS. ALONG WITH OUR PAST WORK TOGETHER, GEORGE HAS RECORDED WITH JOHN ABERCROMBIE, TERRY RILEY, ALLAUDIN MATHIEU, DAVID GRISMAN, JERRY GARCIA, PAULINE OLIVEROS, NOAM LEMISH. MARIA MULDAUR, JERRY HAHN, AND MANY OTHERS. HE HAS TAUGHT DRUMMING AND RHYTHM THEORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT SANTA CRUZ AND SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1982. HIS INNOVATIVE AND ACCLAIMED BOOK, "INNER DRUMMING," EVOLVED FROM THESE YEARS OF EXPERIENCE AS A PERFORMER AND TEACHER. GEORGE MAINTAINS A PRIVATE STUDIO IN SANTA ROSA, CALIFORNIA, WHERE HE TEACHES IN-PERSON AND INTERNATIONALLY VIA VIDEO CONFERENCING. HIS WEBSITE is: WWW.GEORGEMARSH.COM.”

The Peripatetic Mel Lewis [From the Archives]

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

Drummers make or break big bands.

Along with the lead trumpet and first alto sax, drummers help guide the band through its arrangements.

The drummer also drives the band; provides it with the power, the force and the pulse that keeps the music flowing.

No big band drummer ever did the job better than Mel Lewis.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles has featured Mel on these pages on a number of occasions and you can search out these pieces in the blog archives.

The following article by John Tynan, who, at the time he wrote it was the West Coast editor of Downbeat magazine, captures Mel at mid-career as he was making the transition from being based in Los Angeles where he performed with the big bands led by Stan Kenton Marty Paich, Terry Gibbs, Bill Holman, Shorty Rogers and Gerald Wilson before taking up residence in New York where he was to become a featured member of Gerry Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band and then embarking on co-leading an orchestra with Thad Jones and ultimately leading his own big band.

I can think of no other drummer who has had such a rich and varied experience in a big band setting.

By JOHN TYNAN

“MEL (THE TAILOR) LEWIS has logged so many air miles since the end of 1960 he recently acquired a second sobriquet, Sky King.

The drummer's travels—all on business—have taken him virtually all over Western Europe and across the United States so many times he is thinking of publishing his own Atlas for Drummers.

In November, 1960, he made his second trip to Europe with the Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band (his first was with Stan Kenton in March, 1956), and last November he flew the Atlantic a third time with the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet.

Between transoceanic jaunts, he commutes steadily to New York City from his Van Nuys, Calif., home for recording dates with a variety of bands. Touring the country on one-nighters is no novelty to him; his most recent tour was with the now inactive Mulligan band.

The Tailor, a nickname bestowed on Lewis by Terry Gibbs because, the whimsical vibist noted, "he walks like my tailor," has lived in southern California since shortly after he joined the Kenton Band in 1954.

He spent most of the ensuing 2l/2 years on the road with Kenton. By early 1957 he had decided to settle down in the San Fernando Valley, where he established his wife and two daughters. In spring of 1960 Lewis, who will be 33 in May, resigned a staff job with the American Broadcasting Co. Hollywood studio orchestra to join the Mulligan band.

In Hollywood recently, Lewis sat still long enough for a personal commentary on, among other subjects, including himself, the varied and changing styles of European jazz drummers since his first trip with Kenton six years ago, a tour that included England, France, West Germany, Italy, Denmark, Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and Sweden.

"That first 'time," Lewis recalled, "those drummers I heard included Allan Ganley, Tony Kinsey, Phil Seamen, Jack Parnell, and Kenny Clare. They all sounded to me like a combination of Buddy Rich and Don Lamond — and all wrapped up in technique. Technique for its own sake. Their playing was all tight, loud, and stiff. Very sad. Seamen was the only one who seemed to have any swing in his playing."

"But," he cautioned, "these are all good musicians capable of playing all kinds of jobs — big bands, small groups, shows, the whole thing.

"On the Continent I didn't hear anything of interest. The playing was all sloppy and stiff. And that includes Sweden."

Back on the Continent 4 1/2 years later for three weeks with the Mulligan band (England was not on this itinerary but he revisited the other countries), Lewis eagerly listened for improvements or new U.S. influences on European drummers. He found only disappointment.

"Things hadn't changed too much," he said. "They still sounded the same as before. I didn't hear one good rhythm section. In fact, the rhythm section accompanying Bud Powell in Paris was quite sad.

"The best thing I heard on that trip was a little drummer who played with George Gruntz' band in Switzerland." [Probably referring to Daniel Humair.]

The tour last November with Gillespie in a package also featuring the John Coltrane Quintet afforded Lewis an opportunity to hear British drummers in person once more. He discerned a marked improvement, he said.

"In England I was able to hear several drummers, mostly in the London area," he related. "This was in Ronnie Scott's club, which is a nice room with good atmosphere.

"I noticed immediately that things have loosened up considerably. Just as here in the U.S., the Philly Joe Jones influence has taken over, except for a few exceptions."

THE GILLESPIE - COLTRANE tour brought along a bonus for drum-conscious European listeners. In Lewis and in Coltrane's drummer, Elvin Jones, they could appreciate representatives of widely varying styles. Lewis with his emphasis on more orthodox rhythmic conception and concentration on laying down the time; Jones with his independent, individualistic innovations and rhythmic experimentation.

"Now that they've all had a chance to hear Elvin," Lewis mused, "I wonder what the British drummers  are doing since. Elvin is so fantastic, he  must have turned  them  all  around. There could — should — be only one of him!"

Turning his attention to this country, Lewis said, "Over here, you hardly hear anybody with a style of his own anymore. That's bad for the future. The one thing I'm extremely sorry about is, what has happened to the big-band drummer? There aren't any.

"Of course, there are really no big bands to serve as training grounds. But there's a great need for the big-band drummer — for recording purposes, for example—and he's become a rare commodity. Today, there are only five or six in the whole country." Reverting to his resignation from the ABC staff orchestra to join the Mulligan band, Lewis noted philosophically, "The security of it didn't mean that much on the job if I couldn't get to play. Then, along came Bob Brookmeyer who got me to come with Gerry's band. The decision really wasn't as difficult as you may think. I'd been working semi-regularly with Terry Gibbs' big band, but that was only maybe one night a week."

Between tours with Mulligan, Lewis played a lot with Gibbs. "This was very good experience for me," he declared. "The variety of music in both bands necessitated that I take a different approach with each one. And this has made a better drummer of me.

"Actually, the past year has been one of the most musically rewarding I've ever spent."

Capping 1961 for him came the four weeks with Dizzy Gillespie when the trumpeter's previous drummer, Chuck Lampkin, was recalled into the Army. Gillespie needed a new drummer in a hurry, a musician who could learn the quintet's not uncomplex book quickly. He called Lewis. "Fortunately, I was able to get the book down without too much trouble," Lewis said.

"Those four weeks," he said gratefully, "were worth a year in training. I learned so much from Diz."

Lewis returned from Europe to another steady job on a staff orchestra — at the National Broadcasting Co. Hollywood television studios.

"This gives me more time," he commented, "to put to good use all I've learned during the past few months." "That    is," he added cautiously, "whenever and wherever possible."

Will not steady studio work affect his jazz prowess adversely? Lewis denies this vigorously.

"Why should it?' he asked. "It seems to me that too many young drummers seem to believe this. I'll just say this to them  — and to anyone else who believes studio work hurts a jazz musician: "Studio work will hurt a man's jazz playing only if he lets it. Just look at Clark Terry!""                                

Source

Down Beat magazine

May 10 1962