Mel Lewis, Terry Gibbs and The Dream Band

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

Due to his huge presence on the New York Jazz scene beginning around 1960 with Gerry Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band and following with his long association with the big band he co-led with trumpeter and arranger Thad Jones which then culminated as the leader of his own big band until his death in 1990, many Jazz fans are less familiar with Mel Lewis’ development as a big band drummer from 1948 - 1958.

These formative years found Mel evolving his own style of big band drumming while occupying the drum chair for bands led by Boyd Raeburn, Ray Anthony, Tex Beneke, Stan Kenton and Bill Holman.

But perhaps the most important stint where it all came together for Mel behind the big band kit were the three years he spent in Hollywood driving what has come to be known as The Dream Band led by vibraphonist Terry Gibbs.

With each chair in the band occupied by a member of the Los Angeles studio elite and arrangements by a Who’s Who of orchestrators including Bill Holman, Al Cohn, Marty Paich, Bob Brookmeyer, Manny Albam, Shorty Rogers, Sy Johnson, Med Flory and Lennie Niehaus, Mel was surrounded by a bevy of swingas and cookers and he made sure that “all the pots were on” by booting things along from the Dream Band’s drum chair. [BTW - during its existence from circa 1958-1962, Terry’s orchestra was not referred to as “The Dream Band.” This appellation was given to it in retrospect.]

Because of the studio commitments of the band’s personnel, the band met in Hollywood locations on the “off night” [usually Mondays and/or Tuesdays] and because owners and waitresses who were tolerant of aspiring, young Jazz musicians like myself [I never knew I could nurse one Coca Cola for so long!] this allowed me to take a ringside seat and watch and listen to the clinic in big band Jazz that Terry and the boys in the band conducted on each tune they played.

Tune after tune, the band’s driving performances left you breathless and exhilarated. Mel’s hands moved almost invisibly across the drums, dropping bombs, crashing cymbals and putting in fills and kicks, all of which served to drive the band forward irresistibly and irrepressibly. 

The man was the personification of swing.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but Mel was being scouted by Bob Brookmeyer and Gerry Mulligan as the latter was in the conceptual stages of what would become his Concert Jazz Band [CJB].

Gerry went to The Left Coast in the late 1950s appearing in some movies and Brookmeyer, when not arranging for the Dream Band, also had other musical and personal reasons to be out among the southern California palm trees. And they both caught Terry’s Dream Band and focused on Mel’s distinctive big band drumming.

When the CJB first got going, Larry Bunker would dep for Mel in the drum chair while he was in New York and when Mel would fly back to The Left Coast, not only was he playing once again with Terry’s big band but he also became the drummer in Gerald Wilson’s fledgling big band as can be heard on that band’s initial recordings for the Pacific Jazz label.

Every big band wanted Mel behind the drum kit.

Chad Smith describes Mel's association with Terry and what would come to be known as The Dream Band in his The View from the Back of the Band: The Life and Music of Mel Lewis  biography on Mel.

“Terry Gibbs and The Tailor"

“Mel first met vibraphonist Terry Gibbs in 1948 while both men were living in New York City. Gibbs remembered his initial encounters with Mel:

‘Mel was with Tex Beneke, and he used to try to find me all the time because he loved Tiny Kahn's drumming. He knew that I grew up with Tiny, and had all of these things I could tell him about Tiny. So he would find me and we'd talk a little bit, but we never really got to know each other until I moved out to the West Coast.

When I moved out to the West Coast and wanted to start a band, that's when we got really tight. Mel was looking for a band to play with, and even though he had Bill Holman's rehearsal band and Med Flory's band, all they did was rehearse and my band ended up as a working band almost immediately.’

The two men first recorded together in September of 1957 on an album titled Jazz Band Ball—Second Set (Mode).2 It was during that session that Gibbs famously gave Mel his nickname, "The Tailor." Gibbs recalled the exact reason:

‘I named him "The Tailor!" He was funny because he would tell people that I named him the tailor because I said he was tailor-made for the drums, but that wasn't the case at all. I named him "The Tailor" because there was a little Jewish tailor in my Brooklyn neighborhood, who had bunions on his feet, and never lifted his feet when he walked. Well, Mel shuffled his feet when he walked too. So I nicknamed him "The Tailor," and it stuck with him.’

Gibbs and Mel recorded together again in November of 1958, resulting in the album Terry Gibbs: More Vibes on Velvet (EmArcy). While their first album together featured a small group, More Vibes on Velvet featured Gibbs accompanied by a rhythm section and full saxophone section. The arrangements by Pete Rugolo allowed Mel to showcase his small group playing behind the soloing of Gibbs, and also his ability to support the saxophone section throughout the written arrangements.

It was also during that fall that Gibbs decided to form a big band on the West Coast. Traditionally, Gibbs had recorded an annual big band album while living on the East Coast, and to continue the tradition he formed a new band in Los Angeles. In January of 1959 the Terry Gibbs Big Band rehearsed for the first time and prepared material for their upcoming recording in February. In addition to Mel on drums, Gibbs hired many of the best jazz players in Los Angeles including Conte Candoli, Frank Rosolino, Pete Jolly, and Joe Maini. It was through his new band that Gibbs accidently fell into the most successful era of his career. In a 1962 Down Beat article, Gibbs recalled the making of his West Coast big band:

‘A movie columnist friend of mine, named Eve Starr, called me one day in 1959. She told me about this club in Hollywood, a place called the Seville. She said the place was dying and the owner wanted to change the policy. He didn't really know whether he wanted jazz; he wanted anything that would bring customers into the joint. Eve suggested I go talk to him. His name was Harry Schiller.

Initially Gibbs signed a contract with Schiller to play the Seville with his quartet. Gibbs's quartet had always been his most commercially successful group and was the main source of his income. It was only because of his love of big band music that Gibbs recorded his yearly big band album. Journalist John Tynan explained the situation in a 1962 Down Beat article titled "Vamp Till Ready—Terry Gibbs' Big Band":

‘It was a nice musical arrangement for Gibbs; he could record and work nightclubs with his quartet, commanding top money, and then, for kicks, he could cut loose and indulge his real love for big band jazz.’

Shortly after he signed his quartet contract with the Seville, Gibbs ran into a major hurdle with his upcoming big band recording. The Los Angeles Musicians Union rules prohibited any unpaid rehearsals for a recording, but permitted a band to rehearse unpaid for a nightclub job. This meant that Gibbs couldn't rehearse for the recording, unless they were also rehearsing for an upcoming gig. Gibbs would have loved to pay the musicians for the

rehearsals, but that was not financially possible. This left him with only one option; get the big band a gig:

‘I made Schiller a proposition, I asked him if he'd let me take the big band into the club on Tuesday night only for the same amount of money as the quartet was getting. Schiller said it was okay with him if the quartet did business. If the quartet brought in some customers, he said, he didn't care if I brought in a band of apes on Tuesday. So we were set.’

With the Tuesday night confirmed, Gibbs began preparing for the big band's opening night. He made a guest appearance on the Steve Allen Show to promote his new big band and their upcoming Seville performance. In addition to the publicity from Steve Allen, word of mouth quickly spread that the band's show on Tuesday night was going to be one of the best jazz events of the year. By 1959, big bands, especially in Los Angeles, were not popular entertainment and did not even gain much attention from the music community. The Los Angeles big bands of Bill Holman and Med Flory were the most popular amongst musicians, but both were mainly rehearsal bands that released studio albums every year but did not perform live on a consistent basis. Mel played drums in both Holman's and Flory's bands during 1958 and 1959, but according to Gibbs, Mel really missed having the opportunity to play a steady live gig with a big band.

While excitement for the band's debut was mounting, no one knew if the band would attract much of a crowd. But to Gibbs and the other members, it didn't really matter. They hoped to draw a crowd, but in reality they were still just rehearsing for their upcoming studio recording. They didn't have their sights set on being a steady working big band, but after opening night at the Seville their plans quickly changed.

Opening night was a huge success and bigger than Gibbs or anyone could have ever imagined. In the packed club sat not only lovers of big band music, but also a remarkable mix of musicians and celebrities. By the end of the evening, Gibbs and Schiller decided that the group would perform again at the club the next Tuesday. The turnout for the band's second week was just as successful as the first, and Gibbs found himself, and his band, the hottest event in Los Angeles:

‘The gigs were like a party. It was like a freak thing, and all of a sudden that band became the stars of Hollywood. You couldn't get in the club; there would be three hundred people packed inside, with a line full of movie stars waiting to get in. We were making fifteen dollars a night, the band was, and I was making nineteen dollars. Well, actually I made eleven dollars after I paid the band boy. See, we were making no money at all; we were just having fun. Everybody was so happy in that band because the music was so good. It didn't have anything to do with money, we just wanted to play that music together. We played twice a week most of the time, and sometimes we'd even play five days a week. The band was ecstatic because all the lead players in the band were the greatest lead players, but didn't have a place to play except in studios.’

As the band's popularity grew, composers and band members submitted their arrangements to Gibbs for use with the band. Bill Holman was playing tenor in the band and contributed several arrangements that he had previously recorded with his own group. As Holman noted, it was a great opportunity to have his arrangements played on a weekly basis to a large and enthusiastic audience:

‘I didn't have a band; the records I made I had gotten a band together specifically for that. So I didn't have a band of my own that I was trying to promote, so having my music performed by a band that was working was beneficial for me. It was no sacrifice on my part.’

On February 17 and 18, several weeks after their first engagement at the Seville, the band went into the studio to record their first album. Terry Gibbs and His Orchestra: Launching a New Sound in Music (Mercury) featured the arrangements of Bill Holman ("Stardust" and "Begin the Beguine"), Marty Paich ("Opus #l" and "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You"), Al Cohn ("Cotton Tail" and "Prelude to a Kiss"), Manny Albam ("Moten Swing" and "Jumpin' at the Woodside"), Bob Brookmeyer ("Let's Dance" and "Don't Be That Way"), and Med Flory ("Midnight Sun" and "Flying Home"). While the recording was well received by fans and critics, it was not a complete representation of the excitement that the band produced during their live performances.

The packed crowds followed the Terry Gibbs Big Band for a total of nine weeks at the Seville and three weeks after that at the Cloister Club. The band then found a steady home at the Sundown Club on Sunset Boulevard. The band performed every Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday there for eighteen months. During that time the venue was sold to a new owner and renamed the Summit. The band's incredible live run from 1959 through 1961 was one of the most successful and longest-running steady gigs of any big band after the swing era. More importantly, the gigs allowed Mel to play continually in a contemporary big band setting. When many other jazz drummers no longer played regularly with a big band, or performed the same material night after night, Mel had the opportunity to learn and perform new arrangements on a weekly basis, rapidly developing his concept of drumming within a big band.

It was the live performances of Terry Gibbs's Band in 1959, 1960, and 1961 that resulted in many of Mel's most well-known recordings. Gibbs knew that the band was at its peak during their live performances and that only a live recording would do his band justice. As a result, weeks after their debut at the Seville, Gibbs contacted Wally Heider about recording the band live.

In 1959, Heider was a mildly successful lawyer in Eugene, Oregon, who was more interested in his hobby of recording music than his law profession. (You may recall that Heider also recorded Mel with Kenton's Orchestra in November of 1956.) After speaking with Gibbs, Heider drove his customized U-Haul trailer of recording equipment to Los Angeles and began recording the band at the Seville for much of 1959. In 1960, the excitement of recording led Heider to quit his job as a lawyer and move to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a fulltime recording engineer.

Heider became one of the most famous recording engineers of all time. In addition to his long career recording jazz music, he eventually relocated to San Francisco and recorded legendary pop and rock musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Santana. He is responsible for what was known as the "San Francisco Sound."

Throughout 1959, 1960 and 1961, Heider continued to record the Gibbs Big Band during their weekly gigs. At the Sundown/Summit Club, he improvised a control booth in a small back room where he operated all of the recording equipment without being able to see the band. His two-track, direct-to-tape masters had no EQ or post editing, but sounded absolutely incredible. The Exciting Terry Gibbs Big Band (Verve) and Explosion: Terry Gibbs and His Exciting Big Band (Mercury) were released in 1961 and evidence of Heider's ability to record the band hitting on all cylinders. Most importantly, the albums finally gave listeners throughout the country a chance to hear the band in a live setting.

In addition to the material on those albums, hours upon hours of Heider's recordings were not commercially released. Through the years these unreleased recordings became something of a legend in the jazz community. For twenty-six years, only the truly lucky heard them as they stayed in Gibbs's personal possession. It wasn't until 1986 that Gibbs finally began releasing the recordings on the Contemporary label. Contemporary released all six volumes on digital compact disc under the name "Terry Gibbs Dream Band." This was the first time that Gibbs's band was called anything except the "Terry Gibbs Big Band" or "Terry Gibbs and His Orchestra." Terry Gibbs Dream Band: Volume 1, Terry Gibbs Dream Band: Volume 2—The Sundown Sessions, Terry Gibbs Dream Band: Volume 3—Flying Home, and Terry Gibbs Dream Band: Volume 6—One More Time featured previously unreleased Heider recordings, many from the band's 1959 run at the Seville. By 1986 the LP versions of The Exciting Terry Gibbs Big Band and Explosion: Terry Gibbs and His Exciting Big Band had been out of print for nearly a quarter century and were reissued as Terry Gibbs Dream Band: Volume 4—Main Stem and Terry Gibbs Dream Band: Volume 5—The Big Cat.

The "Dream Band" recordings are a testament to the greatness of that band and feature some of Mel's finest drumming. In 1986, when asked about the release of Terry Gibbs Dream Band: Volume 1 Mel responded,

‘This recording brings back a memory of probably the best big band of its time. I was so proud to be a part of it. Everybody was a real jazz professional, and Terry evoked so much spirit. I think it was some of my best playing in my entire career also. I don't think there was ever a better band than this one, including my own. Different, but not better.’

Similar to Mel's recordings with Kenton, the "Dream Band" recordings display his ability to subtly take control of a band and make it his own. In a completely unselfish manner he was the greatest musical influence on Gibbs's band. Mel realized his influence:

‘I am a unique drummer. I have a style that nobody else has. I make music happen. I make bands do things that no other band can do. Any time I've played, any band I've played in, that band has become mine. Now, I didn't do it on purpose... it just happened.’

The Little Giant: The Story of Johnny Griffin by Mike Hennessey

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

“Griffin, one of the fastest saxophonists in jazz, would hurtle through solos like a snooker player intent on clearing the table in one break, scattering his improvisations with wry quotes, skimming runs and raucous hoots and honks. He would regularly accelerate the most tender of ballads to a sprint, and deliver a blues with an earthy relish that drew on the raw rhythm and blues traditions of his native Chicago.

Griffin was also one of the few saxophone players who could negotiate the harmonic mantraps set by performing alongside Thelonious Monk - John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins were also among this select group - and, although he never acquired the iconic status of artists such as Rollins, he was unfailingly good-humoured, professional, and wore his virtuosity lightly.

Griffin did not change jazz, but he delivered its established practices with devastating aplomb, played with some of its most creative stars, and perfected a full-on, sweepingly virtuosic bop-based style that for many defined exactly what straight ahead swinging sax-playing should sound like. He became more restrained as the years passed, and more inclined to play with a handful of favourite cards - including the bumpy descent to a bone-shaking low note, an interrogatory mid-register warble reminiscent of Dexter Gordon, and a softly billowing vibrato on romantic ballads - but he was reliably inventive well into his 70s. He remained a popular performer and personality on the international circuit.

Griffin always sounded as if he thought jazz should be an uncomplicated, straight-from-the-shoulder business - but his methods of achieving that involved leaping some of the most daunting technical hurdles in sax-playing, and making it seem like something anyone should be able to do. That open-handed, unambiguous and vastly entertaining devotion to spontaneous music-making lasted until his death.”

- John Fordham, Obituary in The Guardian July 25, 2008

“London-born jazz writer, critic, producer, broadcaster and pianist Mike Hennessey [1928-2017] moved to Germany's Schwarzwald in the autumn of 1989. He was the author of a well-received biography of drummer Kenny Clarke, Klook, a book about the British music business, Tin Pan Alley, and Some of My Best Friends Are Blues, a history of Ronnie Scott's Club. As well as covering the international music scene for Billboard magazine for 27 years, he has written more than 500 album notes and hundreds of articles, reviews and biographical features for jazz magazines in North America and Europe.

For 25 years Hennessey was a member of the British jazz group, the Chastet, becoming its leader in 1986. He has played sessions with numerous well-known European and American musicians.

In addition to his work as a journalist and musician, Hennessey produced concerts, television programmes, and albums by many artists and bands including the Paris Reunion Band and Roots - both of which he created. His compositions include Gaby and the lyrics to the Johnny Griffin composition When We Were One.

In 2008, he published The Little Giant: The Story of Johnny Griffin [Northway].

Originally from the South Side of Chicago, Johnny Griffin was recognized internationally as a major jazz star with a readily identifiable style, an immense improvisational flair and an unfailing capacity to swing. As jazz writer Brian Priestley has observed: 'Griffin is one of the fastest and most accurate ever on his instrument.'

As well as expressing himself with great verve and vitality through his tenor saxophone, Griffin is an articulate, witty and entertaining conversationalist with an unending flow of anecdotal reminiscences about his days with Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey, Thelonious Monk, Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis, the Clarke-Boland Big Band and the variety of small groups he has fronted during his 53-year career.

He is an uncompromising believer in straight-ahead, hard-swinging jazz. He says: 'As long as guys swing, jazz will not die.' He is also a perceptive observer of the world at large and an avid reader who takes a keen interest in international affairs. He is a man who lives life to the full and who has been a good friend to the distillers over the years.

Griffin has described his move to Europe 42 years ago as a matter of survival. If I had stayed in America I would be dead by now. I was a stoned zombie when I left.' When asked at the Jazzland club in Paris: 'How can you play so brilliantly when you are stoned?', he replied: 'You see baby, I was stoned when I learned to play!'

The Little Giant is a light-hearted, irreverent and uninhibited look back at the life of one of the most consummate musicians in jazz and one of its most colourful and entertaining characters.

Orrin Keepnews [1923-2015], the famed recorded producer, who was a close friend of Johnny’s wrote the following Foreword for Mike’s Griffin bio.

“I have been involved in producing jazz albums for what seems to be an unbelievably long time - I began in 1954, so at this time of writing it has been going for more than a half-century. Some of the most important personal friendships in my life have developed from the working relations involved in planning and recording that music. Certainly one of the oldest and strongest of these is the bond between Johnny Griffin and myself. It has survived not only the passage of time and countless working hours in a great many recording studios under a wide variety of circumstances, but also a vast amount of geography, as I relocated from New York to San Francisco and he far outdid me by moving from New York and Chicago to the south of France.

The first time I ever heard of Johnny Griffin probably should have indicated that I was likely to keep on hearing about him for quite some time although I certainly could be forgiven for not realizing at the time that I would continue knowing and working with him just about forever. Because the man who first mentioned Griffin to me was, at the time, certainly the most distinguished jazz musician I knew. Even now, more than two decades after his death, Thelonious Monk remains the most important artist I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

But, at that time, he had not yet succeeded in fighting his way through to broad recognition. Also, having run up against some of the arbitrary regulations that governed New York nightlife at the time, he was not licensed to work with any regularity in that city and, on this occasion, he had accepted an engagement to travel to Chicago by himself and appear with some local musicians he did not know. But the situation developed much better than it might have. The bassist on the job was Wilbur Ware, who would soon move to New York and work frequently with Monk over the next few years. And the group also included a young local tenor saxophone player named Johnny Griffin.

Monk, at the time, had begun what was to be an almost six-year association with Riverside Records, a very young independent jazz record label of which I was co-founder, co-owner and sole record producer. Like several of my colleagues in the jazz business, I really did not know what I was doing. I did, however, know enough to appreciate what it meant when Monk, recounting his adventures in Chicago, paid Griffin the considerable compliment of quietly declaring: 'He can play.'

But, as I soon discovered, this knowledge did me very little immediate good. Alfred Lion, founder of Blue Note Records, (who had been the first to record Monk), had already become aware of Griff and had signed him up to an exclusive contract. So I had to start by judiciously using Johnny as a sideman on other people's dates. I clearly recall the very first such occasion: it was our first album featuring the great Ellington trumpet player, Clark Terry - whom I had also met through Monk. I began to use the tenor player as often as possible on other people's dates and, sooner than I expected, he became fully available.

Perhaps because he continued to live in Chicago, possibly because (like a great many of the players whose importance has eventually become a recognized part of jazz history) his own records didn't particularly sell when they were new, and at least in part because he had made it clear to Blue Note that he would rather be with us, they made no real effort to extend his contract, and, in late February of 1958, he came to New York for what was to be the first of a great number of occasions we would work together in a recording studio. And, because transporting a musician from the Midwest was no small burden for our little label, I planned to make double use of Johnny's few days in New York - both as part of a Monk sextet date and leading a quartet on his own Riverside debut as a leader.

As it turned out, however, our scheduled first studio evening turned into a major confusion of missed signals and lack of communication, so that the two key cast members of the Monk project never did appear and I was forced to do a lot of improvising and last-minute phone-calling and finished the week with no Monk LP, but two by Johnny

I originally planned to have Johnny Griffin appear on a Monk album while he was in New York to make his own first Riverside recording. The Monk session, as agreed with Thelonious, was to be a sextet date also involving Sonny Rollins, Donald Byrd, Art Blakey and Wilbur Ware. We arbitrarily divided responsibility for notifying these four men of time and place - I called Byrd and Ware, Thelonious was to contact Sonny and Blakey. (Remember that, at that time, no-rehearsal dates, completely constructed after the personnel were assembled in the studio, were not all that unusual.) Rollins and Blakey did not appear and could not be reached for some time. 

Eventually both men claimed, quite believably, that Monk had never contacted them about the session. So we sought replacements. But after rehearsing and doing one or two takes on a new Monk composition, he decided that, since this wasn't the band he had intended to record with, he didn't want to continue - and he left. I then decided not to stop, since I was going to have to pay the musicians anyway. I reached Kenny Drew at his home - he was scheduled to be the pianist on Johnny's quartet album -and we did record most of a Griffin sextet LP that night.

Quite importantly Monk at this time was in the midst of accomplishing a major breakthrough. Having been legally cleared for regular work in New York clubs by mid-1957, he quickly began his long and legendary stand at the Five Spot with a group that included John Coltrane. And when Trane, rapidly developing into a star in his own right, left after six months, Thelonious soon took advantage of the opportunity to back up his frequently expressed enthusiasm for Griffin by bringing Johnny into that quartet.

It must be admitted that, at this point, Griffin took a bit of a beating - primarily from the critics (fellow musicians and even club-owners who knew better) - simply because he was himself and sounded like himself and not like his predecessor. But Monk knew how to draw the greatest benefits from working with Johnny. Thelonious may have been second only to Duke Ellington in his ability to adapt his band's repertoire and arrangements to fit the strengths and special abilities of valuable sidemen - and quite concrete evidence of that exists on two very exciting Riverside albums that were recorded in performance at the Five Spot one night in August 1958.

I very much enjoyed working with Griff on a variety of projects. He was one of the first jazz musicians from whom I learned that what you hear in their music can be not just art, but real emotion. The warmth, the wit, the joy or sadness that certain players project is a direct expression of the man himself. (Griffin has always been such a direct communicator; Wes Montgomery was another, so that the night on which they were recorded together at a Berkeley, California club for Wes's Full House album on Riverside was a most memorable example of that particular form of soulfulness.) One of our goals was to overcome the stereotype of the slogan that some writers had pinned on Johnny as 'The fastest gun in the west'.

As one step in that direction, I approved the unrealistic expense of a 1959 with-strings and almost-all-ballads LP called White Gardenia, which was undoubtedly one of the first Billie Holiday memorials. The excitement generated by the distinctive two-tenor team of Johnny and Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis impressed a lot of people, but it wasn't exactly an all-out commercial success. (I clearly remember Griffin's exasperation when a booking agent proudly announced the price he had been able to get the quintet for a week's work - it was exactly what Johnny had received for his own quartet the preceding year!)

Eventually, for that and other personal reasons, Griffin began paying attention to the success that comparable (or lesser) jazz musicians were enjoying in Europe - and, eventually, he was gone.

I did not see Johnny again for about a decade and a half, but when he made his first return visit to the United States, to appear at the 1978 Monterey Jazz Festival, I drove him back to San Francisco and, a day later, he was in a studio at Fantasy Records, where I was then running the jazz programme, as a featured guest on a Nat Adderley album that happened to duplicate the 1958 circumstances of Nat's first Riverside album - a quintet date with Griff as the other horn.

Over the years, that sort of thing has continued - every now and then we make a record together. Whenever we are in the same part of the world, we make a real effort to hang out together, to eat or drink or listen to music. My wife died in late 1989; one of my fondest mementos remains a picture of the two of us at a table in a Bay Area jazz club. Our friend Johnny is there with us, though not visible in the photo, and we are both laughing heartily at some now unremembered punchline he has just delivered.

Johnny Griffin is both a talented musician and a valuable human being. Mike Hennessey, who has known him for a long time, has done an admirable job of setting down for his readers both sets of qualities.”

Mike wrote the following Preface to his Griff bio.

“Not least among the achievements of Johnny Griffin, the Little Giant from the South Side of Chicago, is that he has remained at the top of his game despite having spent the last thirty-five years of his sixty-two-year playing career as a resident of Europe.

It has happened all too often in jazz that when an American star takes up residence in Europe, he gradually becomes absorbed into the European scene and his star status slowly but surely ebbs away. Not so with Griffin. He is still recognised internationally as a legendary jazz icon with a readily identifiable style, unblemished integrity, an immense improvisational flair and an unfailing capacity to swing. As British writer Brian Priestley has observed in his Jazz: The Rough Guide:

‘Although Griffin is fully conversant with the tenor tradition of Hawkins, Byas, Webster and Young, it has often been remarked how close in spirit Griffin's playing is to that of Charlie Parker. The headlong rush of ideas and the rhythmic variety and freedom that go with them, all point in this direction. In addition, his tone combines a vocalised sound with a slightly hysterical edge that, at his best, can evoke almost uncontrollable exhilaration - except, perhaps, for other tenor players, since Griffin is one of the fastest and most accurate ever on his instrument.'

Reviewing a Johnny Griffin performance in Down Beat in 1958, Ralph J. Gleason wrote: 'Unquestionably, Johnny Griffin can play the tenor saxophone faster, literally, than anyone else alive. At least, he can claim this until it's demonstrated otherwise. And in the course of playing with this incredible speed, he also manages to blow longer without refuelling than you would ordinarily consider possible. With this equipment, he is able to play almost all there could possibly be played in any given chorus.'

Commenting on Gleason's statement in his note for the March 1967 Black Lion album, The Man I Love, Alun Morgan observed:

As far as it goes, Gleason's words are probably correct, (In the absence of a jazz section to the Guinness Book of Records, we must assume Griffin's leading position in the field of runners in the Semi-Quaver Race.) But it would be wrong to assume that John Arnold Griffin III was nothing more than a note-producing machine. He is an amazingly consistent soloist, a man who is never off form by all accounts; undeniably he likes fast tempos but is a complete, rounded jazz musician, capable of tackling any material. Since he came to Europe in 1962, at the age of thirty-four, he has been giving free lessons on the gentle arts of relaxation, saxophone technique, deep-seated emotional intensity and a host of other important elements to thousands of listeners in Paris, London, Copenhagen and any other centers where jazz is appreciated.'

Johnny Griffin is not particularly disturbed by being called, 'the fastest gun in the west'. He says, 'I like to play fast. I get excited, and I have to sort of control myself, restrain myself. But when the rhythm section gets cooking, I want to explode.' He told Israeli journalist Ben Shalev in December 2005: 'I don't care at all if they describe me like that. It's definitely not insulting, and if it's good publicity, why not? After all, it's just a label. It's like there was a period when they called me 'the little giant'. There's no need to take those descriptions too seriously. As far as I'm concerned, they can call me 'the big midget'.'

Whatever fanciful appellation is used to describe him, there is absolutely no doubt that Johnny Griffin is one of the supreme masters of the tenor saxophone - an uncompromising swinger whose energy and creative vitality are unsurpassed.

One of the salient characteristics of Griffin's improvisational style is his predilection for decorating his solos with phrases borrowed from well-known, and predominantly unlikely, compositions. On a live recording made with Sal Nistico and Roman Schwaller m Munich in 1985 (Three Generations of Tenor Saxophone, JHM Records), the Little Giant managed to include in his solos extracts from 'The Yellow Rose of Texas', a Chopin 'Polonaise', Charlie Parker's 'Cool Blues', 'The Surrey with the Fringe on Top', Mendelssohn's 'Wedding March', 'The Foggy, Foggy Dew', 'The Kerry Dancers', Thelonious Monk's 'Rhythm-a-ning', 'Mairzy Doats', 'Turkey in the Straw' and 'Rhapsody in Blue' !

Johnny is celebrated for his sterling work with Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk, for his 'blow-torch' duets with Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis, for his inspired and electrifying work with the Clarke-Boland Big Band in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and for a diverse flock of admirable albums recorded for an assortment of labels with small groups, which he has always favoured. He says he prefers to work with a quartet because it gives him the maximum possible freedom: 'I can change heads when I feel like it - but with another horn in the group there has to be a little more control, and so less space for creativity With just a rhythm section, I can do what I want. The musicians I idolised as a youth were Lester Young and Ben Webster - they worked with just rhythm sections - and that's the format that I like.'

When he's on the stand, holding forth at high speed with a sensitive and supportive rhythm section, Johnny Griffin is in his element. An uncompromising believer in straight-ahead, hard-swinging jazz, he says: ‘As long as guys swing, jazz will not die.’ Jazz music is Griffin's religion. And he has some very firm opinions about some of the musicians who operate on the free side of the jazz spectrum.

As he said to me in a 1979 interview for Jazz Journal International:

'You get all this talk about avant-garde music, but who plays it apart from guys in a few lofts in New York and one or two guys in Europe? I can't imagine them going into Harlem and playing that stuff. They'd get lynched.

'I have given this a great deal of thought ever since I heard Archie Shepp for the first time, every night for a month at Le Chat Qui Peche in Paris. That band sounded as sad at the end of the month as it did at the beginning - but I understood even less.

And how can people take Ornette Coleman's trumpet and violin playing seriously? Come on, that's just ridiculous.'

Griffin is one of the most articulate of musicians - both verbally and instrumentally. Whether he is having a conversation or holding forth on the tenor saxophone, he tells it like it is. Johnny Griffin speaks his mind. He is a genial cynic and a down-to-earth realist with a quick-fire wit and a great sense of humour. He says of himself: 'I'm a Taurus - like Duke Ellington and Joe Henderson - we eat too much, drink too much and love too much. Very stubborn.'

Johnny has long been a popular favourite at major festivals around the globe. He still commands a substantial and enthusiastic international following and is in constant demand for festival, concert and club dates. He has an immutable musical philosophy, which he outlines as follows: ‘I’m happy with what I do because I feel good doing it - and that's the most important thing. I'm not following anybody - I'm just playing the music I want to play If people dig it, that makes me doubly happy'

Johnny Griffin's move to Europe forty-four years ago was a matter of survival. He often said, unequivocally, that had he not moved to Europe for good in 1963, he would not have survived for more than a year or so. As he put it, in a mid-1960s interview: 'If I had stayed in America I would be dead by now I was a stoned zombie when I left.'

As well as expressing himself with great verve and vitality through his tenor saxophone, Johnny Griffin is a witty and entertaining conversationalist with an unending flow of anecdotal reminiscences about his days with Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey, Thelonious Monk, Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis, the Clarke-Boland Big Band and the variety of small groups he has fronted over the years. He is a natural optimist and, at the same time, a thoroughgoing realist, with a healthy skepticism when it comes to promoters, politicians and jazz pundits.

He is a compassionate man, completely lacking in arrogance, and is also a perceptive observer of the world at large and an avid reader who takes a keen interest in international affairs. He is a man who Jives life to the full and who has been a good friend to the distillers over the years.

He once told me, back in September 1965:

'You know, I was drinking a bottle of gin a day at one time. Now I've got it down to five double whiskies a night -but it is still too much. Alcohol gives you a lift, deadens the nerves, gets rid of inhibitions. Whisky can make a poor man feel like a millionaire. That's why they sell so much of the stuff!'

Apropos the lubricating oil, an encounter I had with Johnny at the Jazz Land club in Paris in September 1965 produced a characteristic Griffinism, which should not go unrecorded:

'How,' I asked, 'can you play so ridiculously well when you are stoned?'

'You see, baby Johnny replied, 'I was stoned when I learnt to play!'

And in a June 2005 interview, when I asked him what he considered to be the real high points of his career, he replied, 'I think it would be all the bars I was introduced to over the years. I lost count ... or perhaps I should say I lost consciousness.'

We got onto the subject of playing, and Johnny said that he tries to play what he feels rather than what he thinks. 'I'm always doing things I've never heard of or played before. Of course, there are always times when you are not creating, when the clichés come out. Sometimes I can see myself going into a familiar phrase, but it starts so fast I can't stop it - so I'll try to vary it a little. But I don't like getting too 'mental' about this because it makes the music too contrived. When it gets good is when something takes over my mind. Sometimes it feels as though my mind leaves my body and I seem to have nothing to do with the music that's coming out. It's as though somebody else has taken over.'

Johnny Walker?' I asked. And he roared.

'Or Glen Grant [single malt scotch]. But if I'm really hot, I can play just about everything I feel. I just like to let the music flow out.'

The story of Johnny Griffin is a light-hearted, irreverent and uninhibited look back at the jazz life of one of the music's most consummate musicians and one of its most colourful and entertaining characters. And it is the story of a man who is totally committed to his craft.”

Mike Hennessey

Durchhausen, Germany,

January, 2008

More Impulse! - The Artistry of Freddie Hubbard

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

“If someone were to ask you how rising young jazzmen in New York were playing on a good get-together in 1962, this album would provide a succinct answer.”

- Dan Morgenstern

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles has been working its way through the early issues by Impulse Records, a label that was in existence from 1961 - 1969 and owes a great deal of its success to producers Creed Taylor and Bob Thiele along with a marvelous production, marketing and administrative staff.

Of course, as Ashley Kahn states in the title of his book on the label - The House That Trane Built -  Impulse came to prominence largely due to the recordings of iconic tenor saxophonist John Coltrane.

But other artists were also responsible for Impulse’s commercial success, among them trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. 

Given his initial and ultimately long term association with Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff’s at Blue Note, the 1963 release of The Artistry of Freddie Hubbard came as a bit of surprise.

But it was always wonderful to have more of Freddie’s music whatever the label for as Richard Cook and Brian Morton assets in their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.:

“Freddie Hubbard was one of the liveliest of the young hard-bop lions of the late 1950s and early '60s. As a Jazz Messenger, and with his own early albums for Blue Note, he set down so many great solos that trumpeters have made studies of him to this day, the burnished tone, bravura phrasing and rhythmical subtleties still enduringly modern. He never quite had the quickfire genius of Lee Morgan, but he had a greater all-round strength, and he is an essential player in the theatre of hard bop.”

And here’s Ashley Kahn’s annotations about The Artistry of Freddie Hubbard from his book about Impulse Records.

Freddie Hubbard / The Artistry of Freddie Hubbard

Impulse A(S) 27

DATE RECORDED: July 2, 1962 

DATE RELEASED: March 1963

PRODUCER: Bob Thiele

PERSONNEL:

Freddie Hubbard, trumpet

Curtis Fuller, trombone

John Gilmore, tenor sax

Tommy Flanagan, piano

Art Davis, bass

Louis Hayes, drums.

For trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, his Impulse debut still marks a personal breakthrough: his first fully composed and arranged album, an accomplishment that earned it its title.

[Bob Thiele] called it The Artistry because of the writing, I would say that that was a pivotal time in my career because I was writing and a lot of times you write music but it sounds like someone else's work. I had done some arrangements on my Blue Note [albums]— Ready for Freddie, Hub-Tones. I had help from [tenor saxophonist] Tina Brooks on the Blue Note stuff, but on The Artistry I felt as though these arrangements really sounded like me."

Of his originals, Hubbard recalls that one track might seem to have referred to the album's producer but didn't—"Bob [of 'Bob's Place'] was a boy I knew in Brooklyn" — while another carried a personal resonance." 'The 7th Day' is very meaningful — a holy day for me. I did a lot of research on that: I keep it holy. It's a rhythmic thing with the congas, and I wrote some pretty heavy arrangements for that small-group style."

The other memorable aspect of the album for Hubbard was his complete choice of sidemen, combining the familiar and the unexpected. "I felt as though I had the guys that I finally wanted. I had [drummer] Louis Hayes, who's my man; I had [pianist] Tommy Flanagan, and I had [tenor saxophonist] John Gilmore.

"Louis and I were living together in Brooklyn for about eleven years. He did some of his best playing on [The Artistry]. Tommy Flanagan? Whew. Man, he's got the touch at piano. I was happy. [Bassist] Art Davis surprised me too, man. He's got a good sound on records and made some good records with Max [Roach]."

If one choice is a sore thumb standout, it would be Gilmore, who is featured throughout the album. Better known as an avant-gardist than a hard-bopper like the others on the session, he had come to prominence playing with the bandleader and avant-garde pioneer Sun Ra. Hubbard explains that his inclination to use Gilmore was confirmed by another saxophonist's taste.

"Coltrane loved him. I used to go from Indianapolis to Chicago every Sunday, [where] I heard John Gilmore and Sun Ra. Have you ever met Sun Ra? I used to go over to his house. He had a harem of guys — like a commune, more or less. He took care of them. I don't know if he made any money, but he taught them a lot of music. A lot of people wanted John Gilmore, you know, but he would not leave. His sound and his notes made him fit the part with [Sun Ra].

"On this session? Well he didn't play like Wayne Shorter or Joe Henderson, but he played the type of sound that I heard for the album. When he played that solo on 'Caravan,' I said, 'Man, what is this?' [Chuckles.]... It was kind of a Coltrane sound, and I liked that because he didn't play like anybody else. When I wrote those arrangements, I didn't really know what they were going to sound like. But I had an idea that by getting Art and Louis and Tommy and John that they would, some kind of way, gel. See, if you get certain combinations of guys, they can get a sound."

Though The Artistry of Freddie Hubbard will always be associated with a painful memory for the trumpeter ("I was going through some changes then, man. I was getting ready to break up with my wife. I had a son that I had to leave"), he admits to a measure of satisfaction with it. "I've listened to that one a lot over the years," he says, "I did some of my best playing on that."

Last, but not least, are these original liner notes from The Artistry of Freddie Hubbard [Impulse! A (S) 27] by Dan Morgenstern:

“In a recent interview in Playboy, Miles Davis was asked about trumpet players. Among the dozen names Miles mentioned (having- set up his criteria as "does the man project, and does he have ideas") were such as Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, Clark Terry, Bobby Hackett, Kenny Dorham and 24-year-old Freddie Hubbard. Miles made a point of slating that, unlike jazz critics and pollsters, he wasn't rating or comparing artists but talking about men with individual ideas and styles. Freddie Hubbard, though his musical ancestors clearly include Miles himself and the late Clifford Brown, is a young player with a mind, and a style of his own.

Indianapolis-born, Hubbard had behind him work with the groups of Slide Hampton, Max Roach and J .J. Johnson prior to embarking upon his association with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. His bright, bold and unashamedly brassy trumpet sound has done much to make the current edition of that durable ensemble one of the best. Hubbard can get around on his horn, but he has not sacrificed range for speed or sound for ingenuity. His ability to produce a good tone in all registers is one of the things that make him stand out from the flock, as is his way with long notes. In an era of jazz dominated by saxophonists, Hubbard's command of his horn is almost a throwback to the trumpet reigned '3Os.

But only in terms of instrumental approach could this be said about Freddie Hubbard. His musical ideas are definitively of today. He is admittedly drawn to the "Coltrane conception" (hear him on The Seventh Day), he has a gift for conceiving harmonically challenging original lines, and he is fond of the "freedom from 4/4" which the "new thing" seems to strive for. His sound, execution and control enhances these pursuits — no matter how "advanced" a style of playing may become, it never moves to the stage where instrumental proficiency becomes a disadvantage.

On this, his first album for Impulse under his own name, Freddie Hubbard has surrounded himself with first-rate young talent. The only man present who is not already well-established on the recording scene is tenorist John Gilmore, who here emerges as a solid supporter of the post-be bop approach to time and space. With a full, dark tone which suits his ideas, he will surely be heard from again.”