© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
“When he talks and when he plays, Terry Gibbs tells us stories, and in these pages he’s told his best one yet: his own. It is a fascinating tale that covers many of Jazz’s greatest years and features a multitude of its greatest players, and it unfolds like a great Gibbs solo, with never a dull moment.”
- Dan Morgenstern, esteemed Jazz author and educator
“When I got back to California, my career took a completely different direction. I went from being a small bandleader to a big bandleader.”
- Terry Gibbs
Over the years, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has featured a number of postings about what came to be known as The Terry Gibbs “Dream Band.”
You can locate these in the blog archives via these links:
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2018/08/terry-gibbs-big-band-vamp-till-ready-by.html
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-terry-gibbs-dream-band-fantastic.html
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-terry-gibbs-dream-band.html
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2018/08/terry-gibbs-dream-band-one-more-time.html
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2019/08/terry-gibbs-dream-band-jack-tracy-notes.html
After finally procuring a copy of Terry Gibbs Good Vibes - A Life in Jazz thanks to the generosity of a Jazz buddy [2003], I thought it might be interesting to hear about the band and its evolution from the man who brought it into existence.
Terry really sets the record straight about some misconceptions about the band and its musicians, some of which may have inadvertently appeared in these earlier pieces.
“The Dream Band was the biggest fluke of my life. I never wanted to form a working band; I just wanted to record an album with a big band. I recorded one in New York, which I didn't like at all. It was actually my fault because I wanted to use the rhythm section with the quartet that I was traveling with. The big drag was that my drummer, Jerry Siegel, didn't have the experience of playing with a big band. I was so disgusted and bugged because that was my first big shot at recording a big band album. I had a great contract with Mercury Records. Bobby Shad loved my playing and would let me record anytime I came up with a good idea for an album.
When I first moved out to California, I heard Med Flory and Bill Holman rehearsing what was called a "kicks" band at the musicians union. Playing for kicks meant just playing for fun. Med and Bill were both great big band arrangers and wanted to hear their arrangements played by a big band.
Mel Lewis was the drummer with both bands and his drumming reminded me of the way Tiny Kahn played. I first met Mel in New York when he was working with Tex Beneke's band and all he wanted to talk about was Tiny Kahn. I never really got a chance to hear Mel play with a big band but I did hear him play with small groups in the local clubs. His style wasn't what I wanted for my quartet; it was too laid back and I wanted that little edge in the time. Bill and Med's bands were great and Mel played the heck out of the arrangements. He was, without a doubt, a giant big band drummer. His playing reminded me so much of Tiny, but I think that he even took that style of drumming to another level and it became a Mel Lewis style of drumming.
In listening to both groups, I got that feeling of wanting to record a big band again, but I had to come up with an idea, and finally, I did. I called Bobby Shad in New York and told him what I wanted to do and he liked my idea. Once again Bobby came through for me. He got Pete Rugolo. who was the West Coast recording director for Mercury Records, to sit in the booth and supervise the date.
The premise of the album was to take six different bandleaders: Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Tommy Dorsey. Then I would take two tunes that they each made famous, take sixteen bars from each of those tunes, and put them into the new arrangements that I was going to have written. We used sixteen bars of Artie Shaw's chorus from "Star Dust" sixteen bars of Ben Webster's chorus from "Cotton Tail" by Duke, sixteen bars of Illinois Jacquet's chorus from "Flying Home" by Lionel, and so on.
I hired six different arrangers for the album. Al Cohn for the Ellington charts, Med Flory for the Hampton charts. Marty Paich for the Dorsey charts. Bill Holman for the Shaw charts, Bobby Brookmeyer for the Goodman charts, and Manny Albam for the Basie charts. Any of the arrangers could have written any of the arrangements for any of the songs, and they would have sounded great. I just guessed who to give the assignments to and they all did a great job for me.
After getting all the arrangements copied, I wanted to rehearse the band before we recorded, but I found out that the union fined a very famous musician a thousand dollars one time for rehearsing for a record date. The union had good intentions and wanted you to rehearse in the studio so that if it went into overtime, you would get paid extra money for rehearsing. I was bugged because I had all this music written and couldn't rehearse the band.
At the same time this was happening, I was still playing little clubs around town. A movie columnist called Eve Starr heard me play and liked what I did. We became friendly and every once in a while she'd mention my name in her column. She told me about these friends of hers, Harry and Alice Schiller, who owned the Seville nightclub on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. The club was doing badly and was about to close. They tried Latin music and country-western, but nothing worked. Eve told Harry Schiller about me and suggested that they put some jazz in the club, so I agreed to play there with a quintet on a Tuesday night, and if it went good, we would do it again the next Tuesday.
The quintet I put together had Conte Candoli on trumpet, Russ Freeman on piano, Charlie Haden on bass, and Stan Levey on drums. We played that one Tuesday night and it went well. We drew enough people for the club to make some money, so we did it again the next Tuesday.
In the meantime, I found out that although you couldn't rehearse for a record date, you could rehearse for a nightclub job, which made no sense to me at all. I still had all this big band music, so I went to Harry Schiller and said. "Harry, how would you like to have a big band for the same amount of money you're paying me for five musicians?" I was getting way over scale, which at that time was fifteen dollars a man so I could afford to pay everybody union scale. The band would have played for nothing because they wanted to record this album as much as I did. Harry said, "I don't care how many musicians you have, as long as it doesn't cost me any more money."
Big bands were not "in." It wasn't feasible to form a big band, because musicians like Dave Brubeck made as much money for a quartet as Count Basie made for his whole band. In the old days, a guy would leave a band to start his own band, but in 1959, because of the money situation, there was no reason to start a big band.
We had to sign a new contract with Harry Schiller for sixteen musicians instead of five. This was my big shot to not only record the band, but to play in the club with the band. I used Jack Schwartz, my baritone player, as my contractor, and Berrel [Saunders] as my band boy and road manager. Larry Finley was a good friend of the Schillers and was going to publicize the show, so he met Jack, Berrel, Harry, and me at the club.
We were sitting at the bar having a few drinks and talking about where we were going to put the bandstand and other things, when all of a sudden. Jack Schwartz fell over backwards off the barstool. BANG! His head hit the floor. The most selfish things went through my head when that happened. "My God, Jack Schwartz just dropped dead! He just had a heart attack. That asshole just dropped dead and I haven't even signed the contracts yet. I won't even get to open up at the club!"
As Jack was lying on the floor, Berrel bent down to see how he was. He looked up at me and said, "He's snoring." Jack had one too many drinks, passed out, and was on the floor, sleeping. We got him up and now I wanted to sign my name on the contract as fast as possible. I didn't even get to my last name, Gibbs, before Jack fell back off the barstool again. We just let him lay on the floor until I signed the contract.
I told Steve Allen that I was putting a big band together to play at a club for one night. He gave me a plug on his show on NBC and we told a bunch of musicians around town about it. We didn't expect to draw more than twenty or thirty people in the club.
The personnel of the band that did the record date had Al Porcino, Ray Triscari, Conte Candoli, and Stu Williamson on trumpets, Vern Friley, Frank Rosolino, and Bob Enevoldsen on trombones, Joe Maini, Charlie Kennedy, Med Flory, Bill Holman, and Jack Schwartz on saxophones, Pete Jolly on piano, Max Bennett on bass, and Mel Lewis on drums.
We were very fortunate in that band. We hardly had any subs. Even though Pete Jolly recorded the first album, Russ Freeman played the first job with the big band. Pete had other commitments on the first Tuesday we played at the Seville. He did come back the next week for a few Tuesdays. When Pete started to get real busy, Lou Levy joined the band. The rest of the band stayed practically the same.
We rehearsed at the club on Monday, the day before we were to open with the big band. Then on Tuesday, we went into the studio and recorded all day. We got to the club at nine-thirty that night to get ready to play at ten. When we got there, sure enough, there were only about twenty or thirty people there. That's all we expected. I only had thirteen pieces of music and we were going to have to do three or four shows. They were all short tunes, because those days, you recorded three or four-minute songs so that you could get airplay on the radio.
I figured I had about forty-eight minutes of music to play for four sets, so we went into the back room and I said to the guys, "Conte, at letter A, you've got a thousand choruses. At letter B, Frank Rosolino, you've got two million choruses." I needed to stretch each tune out to be about ten or twelve minutes long and had to make an arrangement on top of an arrangement so we could open it up in order to kill time.
When we came out of the band room to play, the place was packed. There were three hundred people in the club. Sitting there were Louella Parsons, Fred MacMurray and June Haver, Johnny Mercer, Steve Allen, Jerry Lewis, Steve McQueen, Soupy Sales, all these famous actors plus every musician in town. When I saw this, I said, "Okay, guys, back to the band room!" We got back there and I said, "Gentlemen, we're starting a band tonight. The first rule is there's no drinking off the bandstand. If you want to drink, you've got to drink on stage. It's a party. So hurry up and relax."
After the first tune, "Just Plain Meyer," we got a standing ovation. That first song was our good luck charm. It was an arrangement that Bobby Brookmeyer wrote for the album I did in New York. We played that first and tore up the place. That one we didn't open up; we played it as a three-minute arrangement and hit them in the head with it.
I was about ready to tap off the second song when Med Flory stood up and said, "I need a beer, Terry! WAITRESS! A BEER!" Al Porcino then stood up. "I DON'T HAVE ONE EITHER!" The five waitresses at the club were now on the bandstand serving the band, not the people in the audience. Everybody was screaming for a drink, but the band knew the rule: no drinking off the bandstand. Everybody made fifteen dollars for playing the job but their bar tabs were twenty-three dollars. You've got to either love music that much or be a complete idiot to go to work and lose eight dollars every time you played.
That night was such a success that the Schillers and I agreed to do it again the next week. By that time. Bill Holman and Med Flory each lent me three or four of their arrangements. We rehearsed at the union and got a chance to open up the arrangements so that more guys could blow some jazz.
On the next Tuesday, when we got to the club at nine-thirty, once again, twenty or thirty people were there. We figured it was one of those flukes. It was nice for that one day and we had a ball. We went into the band room to talk things over about what we were going to do. When we walked back out, once again there were 300 people packed in the club. You couldn't get any more people in the place if you tried. In fact, there was a line of people outside waiting to get in.
We did this for five or six Tuesdays in a row and then Harry Schiller said, "Why don't we do this five days a week?" We figured, okay, why not? We'll give it a shot. When we signed the contract to do the five days a week, we didn't realize that Count Basie was opening up at the Crescendo, which was about five blocks away, the same day that we were going to start doing the five days. Not only did we out-draw Count Basie's band, but between sets, Basie's band was at OUR club listening to OUR band. They didn't believe how great the band was. Nobody believed it.
One reason why that band was so great is that we all felt the same way about how the music should be played. If you talked to all the guys individually and asked them, "Who are your favorite musicians?" they'd all say Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. We were all bebop freaks and articulated the music the same way. There was something I was looking for in the playing of the music. I like over-exaggeration. If it's supposed to be played loud, play it louder, and if the music says soft, play it softer. When I used to conduct television shows, I would tell the guys, "Everybody follow me and even if I'm wrong, you still follow me, because if we're all wrong together, we will sound right."
After that first rehearsal, they knew exactly what I was looking for. When we got some new arrangements and rehearsed them, I never had to do anything except say, "One, two, three, four." Everybody knew exactly how I wanted the music played. No matter what tempo we played, the band knew the difference between an eighth note and a quarter note. It was like one person playing all the parts. If you talk to four trumpet players today and ask them who their favorite trumpet player is, they might say Miles Davis or Freddie Hubbard or Wynton Marsalis or Art Farmer. You'll hear four different styles of playing. Even though they came from the same school, you'll hear four different ways of articulating the same piece of music.
A very important plus is that we all loved each other. The camaraderie in the band was something else. We used to break each other up on stage. Guys in the band would applaud for each other. Conte would play a solo and the guys in the band would applaud for him before the audience would. We didn't believe how good the band was. When we played Tuesday night, on Wednesday morning, we'd call each other: "Do you believe that band?" Mel Lewis would call me every time; "I can't believe the band!" If somebody was going to write a Hollywood style story about how a band hit it big overnight, that's what happened with us. Three hundred people every night, with a line waiting around the block to get in. That, in itself, is a Hollywood style story.
When critics around the country started to write about the band, they said that it was a “kicks band" and that most of the guys did studio work. Not true. Because of the fluke, we started out as a working band and had lots of kicks, but none of the guys except for Ray Triscari did any studio work. The contractors didn't know about the Frank Rosolinos, the Conte Candolis, and the Joe Mainis. In fact, the contractors would come into the club, look at the band and say to each other, "Look! Conte Candoli can read music! Frank Rosolino! He's reading music!" They didn't know the level of musicianship in the band.
Before we opened up at the Seville, I went to see Gene Norman, who owned the Crescendo and the Interlude clubs. I worked for Gene at the Empire Room when I was with Woody Herman's band in 1948 and by now, I was an established jazz name, so Gene knew who I was. I went to Gene and said, "I'd like to play your club with my quartet." Gene, who is a good friend of mine now, looked at me, and instead of saying something diplomatic like. "I don't have any openings right now," said, "Terry, who are you going to draw?" That really bugged me. That was like a slap in the face. He actually insulted me by saying that.
George Shearing was working for Gene Norman at the Crescendo at the same time we were working at the Seville. George heard about the band and had his valet bring him in between his sets on Tuesday nights. Sometimes he came in two or three times during the night. When we started playing five nights a week, his valet couldn't bring George in for this one set, so Gene brought him to the club. The club was packed and we had a line of people waiting to get in for the next show. Berrel came to me and said that George Shearing and Gene Norman were standing in line waiting to get in the club, so I said to Berrel, "You go out there and bring George in and then ask Gene Norman who he thinks I would draw." He brought George into the club and left Gene standing in line.
I always asked George if he would sit in with us but I actually think he was afraid to because the band was so powerful. Finally, one night, he got up enough nerve to sit in. George has a warped sense of humor, which I love. When he got up on the bandstand, the first thing he said was, "Terry, don't play anything too hard, I don't read music too well." Those were the wrong guys to tell that to because in the middle of the first song, somebody came over to him and said, "We're at letter B, George." There were all kinds of sick lines thrown at him, like, "Let's go hear a movie tonight, George." But he started it and he had the right guys to do it with.
The band sounded so good that I wanted to record it live. I heard about this recording engineer named Wally Heider, who used to go around the country taping big bands. Wally's father was a big attorney and Wally studied to be one also, but Wally stuttered very badly, and I don't think he would have made it as an attorney. I heard that he had good ears for recording live, so I wanted to hear what Wally could do. I asked him if he would sort of audition for me. I didn't know that he had been in the club a few times and had already heard the band. He was thrilled when I asked him if he would like to do a live recording.
The next Tuesday, Wally brought all his equipment in and recorded the band. I went back to the studio with Wally right after we got done working at about two o'clock in the morning and listened to what he had recorded. It was about 95 percent what I was looking for. I said, "Wally, that's great. But let me tell you what I want to hear. Number one. Do you hear how great the lead trumpet player sounds?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Now, what I want to hear is the fourth trumpet player just as loud as the first trumpet player. In fact, I want to hear all four trumpet players on the same level. I want to hear a chord. I don't want anybody sticking out.
"Secondly, tomorrow I'm going to bring you a record called 'Jack the Bear' by Duke Ellington. Those days it was very hard to record a bass, especially with a big band. You'd hear boom, boom, boom. I want to hear notes. I want to hear bing, bang, boung, bong.
"Third thing: the drums. I don't want to feel them; I want to hear them. And I don't want them to sound 'distancy.' I want them to sound up front." I wanted the band to sound like you'd hear it in the club. If you listen to the CDs that Wally engineered, it sounds like you were right there in the club. The band sounds like it's jumping right out at you.
The next night, after he heard "Jack the Bear," he came back and recorded the band again. The first Dream Band albums that came out were the audition tapes that I had in my house for twenty-seven years. If it weren't for Wally, the Dream Band CDs would have sounded like they were recorded in 1959. Instead, they sound like they were recorded yesterday.
Shelly Hasten, Joe Mikolas. and Skip Krask, who were from Chicago and were friends of Hugh Hefner, bought a club called the Mocambo, which was right next to the Crescendo. It was once the elite club of old Hollywood where all the famous movie stars used to frequent. It was completely mirrored and was once considered to be the classiest club in town. They renamed it the Cloister after another club they owned in Chicago.
They were a bunch of hip guys who loved our big band and they asked us to open up their new club along with [vocalist] Andy Williams and [comedian] Frank Gorshin. Because of how Andy's music was written, we had to add sixteen strings to the band. Being that the walls were mirrored, when the band played, the sound bounced off all of the walls and made it sound louder than it really was.
Arlene Dahl, the movie actress, came to the club on opening night. She was sitting right in front of the band and every time the band played, she cupped her ears. That was very unclassy for such a pretty lady to do and it really bugged the hell out of me.
The band never got anything but positive reviews. We were the heroes of the town. The first negative review the band ever got was by Army Archerd from Variety. The Cloister was right next door to the Crescendo, so Army wrote: "Last night, the Terry Gibbs Big Band played dance music at the Cloister and six couples got up to dance at the Crescendo." That didn't get to me at all because it made it sound like we were playing too loud. I went to the three guys who owned the Cloister and I said, "Listen, if you want us to leave after the first week, we will." They said, "What happened?" I showed them the review and they said, "You know what? Play louder! Screw them all." They loved the band.
We stayed there two or three weeks, but I wasn't having fun. We were making more money, but we had lost that whole loose feeling of having fun playing music, drinking on stage, and carrying on. We had become a show band.
In the meantime, Jimmy Maddin, who owned the Sundown, asked me if I'd like to bring the band into his club. I went to see what the Sundown looked like and it was just what I was looking for. It was laid out just right for the big band. We could put the bandstand in the corner of the room because I wanted the band to play for dancing so that we could have more fun playing without everybody staring at us. We also agreed that there would be no cover charge. We wanted to make it a hangout. I went to the guys at the Cloister and gave them my notice. They were great guys; they understood what I wanted to do with the band. They did make me a great offer, though.
Being that the band was only going to play at the Sundown one or two nights a week, they asked me if I would consider playing at the Cloister with a quintet the other five nights. I think they just liked hanging out with me. In fact, Shelly Kasten, one of the owners, and I became good friends. The guys would always invite me to their so-called Hollywood parties. There were always a lot of pretty girls and great food at these parties.
We played there for about four weeks and I used the same rhythm section that was in the big band at that time: Mel Lewis, Buddy Clark, and Benny Aronov. I had Joe Maini and Conte Candoli split the job as the fifth member of the quintet.
When we opened the Sundown, once again it was packed with movie stars. Johnny Mercer was there every night that we played. It was a one-of-a-kind band. It was so good and so much fun that I didn't want to leave town. After that little experience of working at the Cloister, where I was making some money but not having fun, I went back to just having fun. We were having the time of our lives just playing music. I also think that the people who came in to see us were having more fun because with the band swinging so hard, they could now get up and dance and get something out of their system.
While we were at the Sundown, the band changed a little bit. We started with the same trumpets, Al Porcino, Ray Triscari. Stu Williamson, and Conte Candoli. After a few weeks, John Audino replaced Al Porcino. who went with Harry James. Then Bob Edmondson came in to replace Bob Enevoldsen on trombone. Vern Friley was still there and so was Frank Rosolino. We had a few replacements every once in a while for Frank because he would go out on the road, and then either Carl Fontana or Bobby Burgess would play in the band. There was always a heavyweight there to take Frank's place.
The original saxophone section had Joe Maini, Charlie Kennedy. Med Flory, Bill Holman, and Jack Schwartz. Bill Holman left after a few weeks because he got very busy arranging for Stan Kenton, so Bill Perkins took his place. Jack Schwartz got very busy with real estate so Jack Nimitz came in and stayed. Then Med left and Richie Kamuca came in. Mel Lewis was the drummer, Lou Levy was the piano player, and Buddy Clark played bass. That band stayed together for about a year. It was such a winner that even though I only made eleven dollars a night after I paid everybody in the band, it was worth it. …
To be continued in Part 2
