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Legendary jazz composer, arranger and saxophonist Bill Holman discusses his life, career and views on music with Bill Dobbins, professor of jazz studies at the Eastman School of Music.
Holman speaks about his personal discovery of jazz, his approach to composing and arranging, and his collaborations with creative musicians around the world.
Honest, humble, insightful and witty, Holman's remarks and recollections and Dobbins' observations and embellishments combine for an entertaining and educational read for musicians, listeners and all who have an interest in the American musical art form known as jazz.
In the Preface to his Conversations with Bill Holman: Thoughts and Recollections of a Jazz Master [Advance Music 2017 and available through a variety of online book sellers], Bill Dobbins makes the following observations about tenor saxophonist, composer, arranger and bandleader Bill Holman with which I wholeheartedly agree:
“I consider [Willis] Bill Holman to be one of the most important jazz arrangers and composers after Duke Ellington's generation. My main criteria include the ability to thoroughly absorb any influences to the point that they invariably manifest in a personal manner, the ability to allow one's musical vocabulary and concept to evolve organically without regard to popular trends or commercial considerations, the ability to convincingly integrate improvisation with composed material, the ability to consistently tell a story in each piece that develops in a believable and compelling manner from beginning to end, without diverting into moments that seem either unrelated or contrived, and the ability to retain an unmistakable connection with swing, the lyrical and melodic feeling of jazz and the blues. Just as important, of course, is the ability to emotionally move a listener within a wide range of feelings from high drama to subtle humor (or subtle drama to thigh-slapping humor). Bill Holman succeeds marvelously in all these areas. Throughout his career, his personal evolution has always maintained a connection to the music that first took root in him, that of Count Basie, Lester Young, Duke Ellington, Mel Lewis, Zoot Sims and other jazz giants who have made an indelible imprint on the music. Willis has certainly made his own imprint as well. His music continues to evolve, while always embodying the essence of jazz. It was a high honor and a great pleasure to have enjoyed these conversions with him, and it is just as high an honor and just as great a pleasure to be able to share them with you, the reader.”
While searching the Dobbins interviews with Willis for some references to drummer Stan Levey during their time on the Stan Kenton Band together in the early 1950s, I came across Holman’s recollections about many of my favorite musicians on the band and their subsequent involvement in Jazz.
Recollections of Fellow Musicians From the Early Years
B. D. Just to wrap up that period of involvement with the Kenton band and your early I years, could you share any recollections of or thoughts about the following musicians? This could also include experiences from later in your career, or thoughts on their overall contribution to the music. Let's start with Stan Kenton.
B.H. Well, I didn't agree with Stan's method of leading a band. Everybody knows that he wanted to be a psychiatrist. In fact, he quit the [music] business in 1948. He was going to go to Stanford and become a psychiatrist. He never did, but he practiced on the band. In fact [Bill] Russo used to say, "We're all his patients." Both (Laugh.)
B.H. He would try to build everybody's ego up to the point where he had a band of eighteen individuals, instead of one big band.
B. D. Yeah.
B. H. So, the fourth trumpet player has his eyes on the first trumpet player, wondering why he's not there, and it was just the wrong way to lead a band. I spoke about Charlie Barnet before.
B.D. Uhhuh.
B. H. Well, if you did your job and you did it well, everything was cool. And when the band sounded great, you could tell by his expression that he was diggin' it. And when it didn't, he would gripe to somebody. But with Stan, it was like the self-esteem problem we have today. Kids are so worried about self-esteem that we can't criticize them; we can't mold them. We can't tell them anything that's going to make them think less of themselves. Like, "You did this wrong", for example.
And so the Kenton band just floundered around like that. It rushed in the same places every night and dragged in the same places. In fact, I tried to dance to that band down in Balboa one night, and I couldn't do it.
Both (Laugh.)
B. H. And I wondered why. Then I got in the band and I found out why. It didn't keep good time. I know Stan wasn't afraid of the guys. He was just following his psychiatric instinct.
B. D. Yeah. A friend of mine and I were talking about this self-esteem thing one time. And he pointed out to me that, although most people don't stop to think about it, the very idea of self-esteem is that it's something that comes from myself, not from what other people tell me about me. It's as though we make a big deal about giving something to someone that can't really be given by someone else.
B.H. Yeah.
B. D. What about Lee Konitz?
B.H. Well, he's done a marvelous thing with his playing. He's gone through several generations of bebop crazed jazz players. I don't know, there's a tinge of the success driven thought, "How are you going to play a presentable solo if you don't know the chords, or if you're not thinking about chords." Because, if you're playing a fast tempo you have to use this lick to get through this chord change. That's OK. But Lee has had nerve enough to stand his ground all these years, and there were some very lean years in between, and just go by his ear alone. And it's amazing he was able to do it; it's amazing he stuck with it. And here he is in his eighties and he's still preaching the same thing: listen! (Laughs.)
B. D. Yep! I remember that one of my favorite jazz records when I was in college was George Russell's New York, New York, And at the end of Jon Hendricks' first narration, just before the start of the arrangement of Manhattan, he says, "I wrote the shortest jazz poem ever heard. Nothin' 'bout huggin', kissin'. One word: listen!" Both (Laugh.)
B. D. That's really what it's all about, I guess.
B. H. Yeah. But it's a hard thing to remember.
B. D. Yeah.
B. H. I mean, you get up there to play, and you need every aid you can call on. And here it is laid out in front of you and you think, "Oh, I can do that." And right away, it takes your attention from your ears to your eyes. That's another one of my things, that's learning music by ear rather than by eye. We have to do it by eye because it's efficient; it's practical.
But I heard a story about [Thelonious] Monk. He was doing a record date, and he'd bring this music case in every day and set it over in the corner. Then he'd call his players in one by one, and teach them the chart at the piano. "You do this, and you do that," and so on. And the guys were all thinkin', "He doesn't have any charts in that case." So, the date's all over and it's a success, and they ask, "Monk, do you really have the charts?" He opened the case, and there they were. All the charts were copied, ready to go. But he just chose to teach the music by ear rather than by eye.
And I think that's a big problem we have in making music with other people. Because, when you have a big group, you can't teach them all their parts by ear. You've got to read it. But if you get up to play, you've got to be able to forget that.
B. D. Yeah. As soon as I found out about Indian music when I was in college in the mid-'60s, I learned that it was a tradition of improvisation that's much older than jazz. And the thing that really impressed me about it, and influenced the way I try to work with students, is that in India all the education in terms of their traditional music is done pretty much exclusively on a one-to-one basis: one master and one student.
B.H. Uhhuh.
B. D. And everybody starts with the same stuff. You learn to sing all the ragas and you learn to recite and tap all the rhythms. I understand it's been going on like this for more than a thousand years. I guess they figure that, once you have the music inside you, if you pick up another instrument it's just a question of acquiring the technique to get that same stuff out on that instrument.
One of the things that I've done at Eastman is geared to the ritual of starting and ending the school year with a joint concert featuring the first two big bands. Well, I know that a lot of the early Basie pieces developed as "head charts", where a piece would develop over time as the players added new licks, backgrounds, and so on. Sometimes Duke did things like that too.
So I started doing one piece a year with my band, where I would just teach it to them aurally, without anything written down. Then we would add things and change things over the course of the school year. Well, they seemed to like it so much that now, at the end of the year, we do our whole half of the concert, five or six tunes that add up to about forty minutes of music, without anything written down.
B.H. Wow!
B. D. (Laughs.) Yeah. The rest of the year we read through a lot of repertoire and work on the other aspect. And because of that, the level of sight-reading is also very good. But it's a nice balance, during the last five or six weeks of the school year, to just turn in all the folders and really learn some music.
B.H. Yeah, that's great. I've thought of doing that with my band, but I don't have enough nerve.
B.D. Yeah.
B.H. Because I know that it would require a lot of talking about the advisability of even doing it, much less what they're going to play. I'd just get that look so many times. Both (Laugh.)
B. D. Well, my advantage is that I get them at an age and in a circumstance where they're ready to obey orders. Both (Laugh.)
B. D. But the great thing about it is that, after the first couple of rehearsals, even the players that are doing it for the first time really love it. So I'm glad that they're able to have that kind of experience and realize that there's another musical road you can take. Getting back to your early musical cohorts, would you like to say anything about Charlie Mariano?
B. H. Charlie was a melody man.
B. D. Yeah. B.H.
He always inspires me. He's studied quite a bit. I guess he spent a lot of time at Berklee. [The Berklee School of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, was the first musical institution in America to focus almost exclusively on American music, primarily jazz.]
Some of his ideas about form in his solos, like playing a series of phrases that all end on the same note, imply to me that he's thinking about it. But the soaring melodies and the spirit he puts into them always knocked me out. I just love the way he plays.
B. D. Did you know Charlie at all before you were on Kenton's band?
B. H. No. I met him when he joined the band. I wasn't on the band at the same time, but that's where I met him. Then later, after we both had left the band, we did some of those jazz camps in the summer.
B.D. Yeah.
B. H. I did one with him and Toshiko [Akiyoshi]. They got me to play free jazz for the first time. I learned about listening. (Laughs.)
B. D, Yeah! Well, one of the fortunate things about being in Cologne for eight years, because Charlie had been living in Cologne for many years, was having him involved in some of the projects I did with the WDR Big Band.
B. H. Yeah.
B. D. I had a couple of opportunities to play with him, and many opportunities to go out and hear him play in different situations. I was talking earlier about Indian music. Well, he was heavily into that. In fact, one of his groups included a couple of Indian musicians and no jazz rhythm section, and he could improvise really convincingly in that idiom as well.
B.H. Uhhuh.
B. D, He was a great guy and an amazing musician.
B. H. Yeah, I loved him, I really did. He did one of my projects with the band over there.
B. D. Yeah, I remember that one; it was called Bean Town Boogie.
B. H. I saw him a few other times, and it was always good just to hang out with him.
B. D. What about Lennie Niehaus?
B. H. Well, I remember the night Lennie had to leave Stan's band because he got drafted. The night before he left, he and I went walking at Niagara Falls, next to the falls. And he was moaning about having to leave the band and go into the army. And I said, "Well, it'll only be a couple of years and then you'll be out. You won't be that old and you can take up where you left off. It ain't the end of the world", and so on. Well, Lennie left and joined the army, and he met Clint Eastwood. (Laughs.)
B. D. Wow! Is that where he met Clint Eastwood?
B. H. Yeah, they were both up there at Fort Ord in San Francisco.
B. D. And the rest is history.
B.H. Yeah. He got what should have been a good gig, but Clint screwed him, you know.
B.D. Really?
B.H. Well, Clint never let his music come out, and then Clint started putting his name down as composer. He'd just write one little lick and then Lennie would make a score out of it, but he'd call himself the composer. Now he's got his son writing music too. One of our tenor players plays with his son, Kyle Eastwood, and he got involved in one of the last pictures. Lennie does the actual work, and then the other guys get the glory. Of course, he's making a good living, but it was not what he thought it was going to be. In my experience with him, Lennie has always gone a little too much by the book. They teach you right away when you're studying the form of a chart that you can write an intro, and then use the same material as an interlude and the same thing again as an ending, and he still seems to be doing that.
B.D. Yeah.
B.H, It's so cut and dried that it seems programmed.
B.D. Well, I think it's different if you take the material somewhere else or add something to it when it comes back.
B.H. And his playing, as good as it might be on some level, just never got the spirit for me.
B.D. What about Richie Kamuca?
B.H. Richie had the right idea. It's just that, for a long time, he was content to just go along at the same level and play his favorite licks. He had a gorgeous sound. I always envied his sound, and I never could understand how he could get it. I played his mouthpiece and everything, and nothing worked for me.
Both (Laugh.)
B. H. I didn't hear him reach his full potential until Shelly Manne's group performed at that club in San Francisco.
B.D. The Blackhawk?
B. H. Yeah. They made a whole series of recordings, and Richie sounded like a different person by then. He sounded totally possessed on those things, and I was so happy to hear that. That's what I had been hoping for all those years, for him to wake up and get it done.
B. D. Yeah, I love those records. Bill Goodwin turned me on to them in the late '70s or early'80s.
B. H. Was that Joe Gordon on trumpet?
B.D. Yeah, one of many unsung heroes.
B.H. What a band!
B.D. Yeah!
Both (Laugh.)
B. D. What about Bill Perkins?
B. H. Oh, lovely, a close personal friend. He was probably the first person I knew who became a professional musician. When T met him we were both going to college. I was going to UCLA and. he was going to UC Santa Barbara. Some of my friends heard about a big jam session they were going to have up there, and they decided they were going to take me up and pit me against the best that they had to offer and see who won. So I met Perk there, but the session never came off. He moved down here and went to
Westlake, and that's when I got to know him.
B. D. That's great.
B. H. His obsession with the sound of the saxophone was really the notable thing about him. He worked so hard on that sound and got such beautiful results. I listen to that [Kenton Band]recording of Yesterdays, you know.
B. D. Yeah.
B. H. I wrote that especially for him, knowing the way he sounded and what he liked to do. And he fit into that arrangement like he was poured into it.
B. D. That's for sure.
B. H. Then he got bitten by the Wayne Shorter bug and started playing differently. And all this abuse came down on him. You know, people took it as a personal insult that he wasn't playing like he had been in 1955-
B. D. That's unfortunate.
B. H. But he kept into it. I don't really think it was his thing, but that was the way he wanted to hear it and that's what he did.
B.D. Yeah.
B. H. Although, a company out here hired him a few years ago to make a Lester Young album, and he reverted to that old style and played those things. But he played them not like he was fulfilling an assignment, but like he was really feeling them.
B. D. That's really something.
B. H. Then, as soon as that was over he was back to the newer thing.
B.D. Interesting.
B.H. Yeah, I can't understand how he could do that, but he sure did. Anyway, he was totally dedicated and he was a bright guy, too. He had a couple of engineering degrees, and he was working on a saxophone synthesizer. In fact, he had it done. He had all these relays hooked up to the different keys, you know. It would work through a computer, I guess, and he could synthesize sound. And he was also working on one for the trumpet.
I don't know the details of that, but there was a rumor going around that Miles [Davis] was interested in it. Don't believe it.
Both (Laugh.)
B.H. Although, after Miles got his electric band, he may have wanted to be able to participate some way. Anyway, that's Perk.
B. D. What about Al Porcino?
B. H. Al was a beautiful player. To do his thing, there was nobody better, and that was to play lead trumpet with a big band. But he was fixated on the past, I think, probably on the '50s. And that ruined his personality and it ruined a lot of relationships, because he was so insistent that those were the glory days and that was what we should go back to. People just got tired of hearing it.
It warped his personality. The last time I saw him it was with one of Ken Poston's programs.[ Beginning in the mid-1980s Poston, who relocated to Los Angeles in 1987, became one of the important producers of jazz events on the west coast.]
Herb Wong was the moderator, and he was no help. It was Al and me and one other guy, I can't remember who it was right now. But we were supposed to relate some of our experiences playing with Stan and Woody. So, I said a few things and this other person said something, and then it got to Al. Al pulls out his press kit, and proceeds to give his history as a player from the late '40s up to the present. And not one of us said another word during the whole panel. That, to me, is bordering on insanity.
B.D. Absolutely.
B. H. How can you do that? I mean, I know he respects me. How can you just write me off like that? And on that same series of programs he got on a panel with Med Flory, Terry Gibbs and some other guys, and he made the statement that Terry Gibbs had stolen his band from Med Flory and from me. And they almost came to fisticuffs, because Terry is a battler. He used to box. In fact, he and Miles used to box together.
B.D. Really?
B.H. Yeah.
B.D. Wow!
B.H. Anyhow, that was the last time I saw Al, and I don't especially care to see him anymore.
B. D. Do you have something to say about Maynard Ferguson?
B. H. Well, the more I hear about him, the greater guy he seems to be. He's so congenial and approachable. And his playing, you know, he just has a freakish ability. He was never much of a jazz player. But, being a bandleader, he was forced into playing a lot. I think he finally came to the conclusion that he should just have a good time, get a band that he liked to hear and that he had fun playing with. After he died, we had a memorial service, and all the people who had played in his band said that he was just a gem to work with. He was so considerate and so warm.
So I just knew him during that brief time that we were both on Stan's band. At that time he was married to Kay Brown, who was the singer with the band. He was so wrapped up in her that he didn't hang with the guys much. So I really didn't get to be close to him. But he was great.
B. D. What about Conte Candoli?
B. H. He was the best feeling trumpet player that I ever knew. He was not original, but he had that thing "Sweets" Edison had, where he could play the same lick year after year and make it sound fresh every time. B.D. Yeah.
B. H. Count was amazing [Conte’s nickname came from the feeling of elegance in his playing]]. He had all the Kenny Dorham licks, and all the Dizzy Gillespie licks, and Miles Davis licks, and he could pull them up bar after bar and make them sound like they were his own. (Laughs). And he was a great guy to be with, too.
B. D, How about Jack Sheldon?
B. H. Jack's mother ran a swimming school here in Hollywood. And my first recollection of Jack was a picture in the L. A. Times of her baby boy, who she had taught to swim at the age of six months or something.
B.D. (Laughs.)
B.H. It was a picture of Jack swimming underwater, (Laughs). I later realized who it was. I didn't know anything about this kid at that time, but after I met him I found out that his mother ran this swimming school, and he used to swim in her pool all the time when he was a baby. That had to be the guy.
Jack's another total ear player. He doesn't know changes, but he has a great ear and a great individual melodic style. He doesn't sound like anybody else. He has a nice warm tone. But he was tough. Mel [Lewis] and I had a quintet in 1958 and he was our first trumpet player. He was uncontrollable. (Laughs.)
B. D. What do you mean?
B. H. Well, at the end of the intermission we would have to go out in the alley, where he was hanging out with some of the neighborhood kids, and bring him back into the club to play. He was the original "free spirit".
B.D. (Laughs.)
B. H. But he kept it together through all the years and all the people he played with. He did studio gigs and all kinds of different work, and he could get through on his ear alone. Of course, the thing that made him famous was [Johnny] Mandel's score for The Sandpiper.
B.D. Right.
B. H. But he didn't have to do much jazz playing for that. But he had that good sound and conception of how to play a melody. [The predominant melody in The Sandpiper became The Shadow of Your Smile, one of Mandel’s many popular hit songs.]
B. D. Stu Williamson?
B. H. An unsung hero. He could have been a great one. Drugs were his downfall.
B. D, That's really sad.
B.H. He played valve trombone on my first big band record [The Fabulous Bill Holman] on that walkin' blues (Evil Eyes), and played an amazing solo. But to him, he was just getting by. But he could have been great.
B. D. Carl Fontana?
B.H. The fire-eater.
B. D. That's for sure.
B, H. I don't know what to say about him, except that he's one of the greatest trombone players. He could have had a great career out here if he had wanted to put up with the studio bullshit. He figured the whole town was like that, so he never attempted to come to L.A. He just stayed in Las Vegas. He could go fishing when he wanted to. If he needed money, he could go out with Paul Anka or one of those guys and make some heavy bread. When he was home he could work the hotel gigs and make a nice living, playing when he wanted to. In terms of his life, maybe he did the right thing.
B. D. Sure. What about Frank Rosolino?
B. H. He was another free spirit, part of the time. He had his down side, too. The first time I met him was with Charlie Barnet, when we played the Apollo Theatre. He was up in the dressing room between shows when I first met him. He was using drugs then, too, and he was really a sour person. I thought, "Ooo, I hope I never see that guy again." And when he joined Stan's band, he had finished up with everything and he was really friendly and warm. You know, he could play anything at the drop of a hat. He was always happy on the outside, but occasionally you could tell that not everything was all right inside. He would make a joke and get over it. But I guess the other side is what did him in.
B. D. Yeah, unfortunately.
B. H. But he and Carl Fontana together were something else. I had them in that band that recorded the album In a Jazz Orbit. They didn't get to play at each other, but they were there.
B. D. Did Frank do any work with you after the late 1950s?
B. H. Well, the last album I made during that period was in I960. He played on that [Bill Homan’s Great Big Band]. After that I didn't make another record with my own band for twenty-nine years. (Laughs.)
B. D. Really? I had no idea there was such a long hiatus before your next band. We'll certainly get back to this topic later. Could you say something about Stan Levey?
B. H. A wonderful guy. He was a strong player, and the only left-handed drummer I've ever known. He was there from the very start of the whole bebop thing. He played with some very important people and made some important music. With a big band he didn't have the finesse that Mel [Lewis] had, the way he could set the band up. Stan just relied on swinging to do it, and that was a pretty good substitute. In fact, he alerted me to the band's concert in Berlin, when we went to Europe. I listened to the recording, and the band does sound like it's cooking. Zoot and all the guys were there, and you wouldn't recognize it as a Stan Kenton band.
B.D. (Laughs.)
B. H. I think he was proud of the way he helped the band along.
B. D, When did you first meet Stan?
B.H. I met him on the band. He was just out of the can [jail] at the time, so he was just starting to feel his way back into society. It's a wonder he didn't kill some of us.
B.D. (Laughs.)
B. H. Because we were all these raw kids from L. A., that didn't know what was happening, but here he had all of this stuff behind him.
B. D. Wow, talk about some heavy contrast.
B.H. He got along OK with everybody. But then, when he came to L.A., he thought he would get into the studios. Then he found out what the studio scene was like, and he didn't like the way the musician was treated in the studios, as a laborer. So he eventually just quit the whole thing and became a photographer, and made a success of that.
B. D. I had no idea about that.
B. H. Yeah, he had a nice house out in the valley with his wife Angela and had a nice clientele. He was getting into TV, doing promotional TV for people. He was really doing great, and he was still a great guy. I really appreciated knowing him.
B. D. That's great, an interesting story. When I first got to know Roland Paolucci, back in the early '60s, there was a really thriving jazz scene in the Akron and Cleveland areas in Ohio. Then later, when things gradually dried up, he also went into photography and ended up working for one of the local TV stations. Eventually he ended up starting a jazz workshop band with some of the more talented high school and college age kids from the Akron area. Then later, when the University of Akron hired a president who was a jazz fan, the university started a jazz program and, largely on the success of his workshop band, they hired Roland as head of the jazz program. He did a fantastic job in developing young talent in the area and in bringing attention to jazz in the community.
B.H. Uhhuh.
B. D. Would you talk a little about Mel Lewis?
B.H. Well, I've never gotten over Mel. Every time I think of a band playing, it always has Mel playing in it. That's the feeling I hear in my head.
B. D. That's the ultimate compliment.
B.H. But he's very underrated. Nobody talks about him, although he's influenced a couple of generations of drummers.
He had some of the Buddy Rich thing. They said Buddy could hear a tune once through and he knew it by heart. Mel had a lot of that. We would do these programs in Germany, and I would have an hour and a quarter of new music that I'd never heard played before. And Mel had certainly never heard it.
B. D. Yeah.
B. H. Well, we'd run a thing through once or twice and Mel had the form all down, and he's already contributing to the form.
B. D. Amazing.
B.H. What a big help he was, doing those things. I never had to worry about him. Of course, the feeling itself was too lazy for some guys, but not for me. I remember one night with Terry's band; we heard this pounding on the bandstand (pounds the coffee table with his hand). We turned around, and it was Porcino with his heel on the floor, and he says, "Let's go, Mel!" Both (Laugh.)
B. H. Mel maybe was thinking about something, and was dragging a little bit. Both (Laugh.)
B.H. But those times were very few and far between.
The first time I met him was with that short concert tour I did with Stan in '54. He came on from Ray Anthony's band, and I had a chart that was for the opener of our concert. It was called The Opening, and it had a 5/4 intro. Well, Mel had never played in 5/4 in his life.
B.D. (Laughs.)
B. H. And he could not get that intro. (Laughs.) Plus, Max Bennett [the band's bassist] had corralled him before the rehearsal and turned him on.
Both (Laugh.)
B. H. It was pretty funny, doing everything else perfect; but that intro, he couldn't play. And the piece also had a four-bar break for tenor, which I played. And every night after the concert, he'd come up to me and say, "Was it OK?" Because, when we first started out playing it he was rushing that thing, and I guess I wasn't helping. Anyhow, he finally got the intro and that break was OK. I think that was the last time I saw any sign of humility from him.
Both (Laugh.)
B. D. Now that you've talked about a lot of the players and some of the bandleaders you worked with during the early part of your career, I'd like for you to comment on some of the other writers who were getting some attention. Let's start with Bob Graettinger.
B. H. Well, I think what he was doing then would be a lot more interesting to me now than it was then. At the time, I thought, "Well, this is obviously phony. He's trying to do something just for effect," or something like that, just as a young bebopper would say. Although there were a couple of charts in the book, one was called Thermopylae, which I really liked. I enjoyed playing them and I liked to listen to them. I don't know why they never made more waves.
Then he'd come out on the road occasionally. He was working on a piece for the saxophone section, and he'd rehearse us in the afternoon once in a while. He had a graphic score that showed, in red, when everybody was playing and, with a space, when they were not playing. Somebody asked him why he had that score, and he said, "It helps me to rehearse the guys, because I know where the entrances are. He never tried to tell us how to play the things, except to play them as melodies, rather than try to fit them into section schemes. Then he'd disappear again for a few months, and come back and resume work on the same piece, City of Glass. I never really got into. I heard some excerpts that I liked, but I never really got into the whole piece. I mentioned him before as being at the apex of the Kenton pyramid.
B.D. Yeah.
B. H. He was Stan's artistic reason for being. Stan felt that it was his artistic duty to see to it that Graettinger survived. The rest of us were his day-to-day interests, but overriding us was Graettinger. Perk told me that he had a conversation with Graettinger one time. He said Graettinger's favorite composer was Brahms. You'd expect Stravinsky or Webern, or someone like that.
B. D. Right. That's interesting. Earlier you talked a bit about Gene Roland. Is there anything else you'd like to say about Gene as a writer?
B.H. Well, Gene was another free spirit. They say that the reason Kenton's band has ten brass is that Gene used to travel with the band as an arranger; and he'd start sitting in with the trumpet section and making up parts for himself or doubling the lead. Stan liked it, so he ended up adding him permanently. Then the same thing happened with the trombone section. Gene would sit in with them, and Stan liked that too. I don't know if that's an urban myth or not, but it's what I've heard.
B. D. So he played both trumpet and trombone?
B.H. Yeah.
B. D. I didn't know that.
B. H. Yeah. And he also played a little bit of tenor. I really liked him. He was opinionated, and not very polite, but he had that spirit. He'd think nothing, if he moved to a new town, of writing a new book for a new band. Well, first he had to find a woman who would be his sponsor. Both (Laugh.)
B. H. Then he could write for the new band.
B. D. That's an important detail.
B. H. But he had a lot of hits for Stan. You know, Jump for Joe was a monster, and one of the vocals for June Christy was pretty big. But, left to his own devices it was just that tight four-part harmony, doubled an octave lower (Laughs).
B. D. What about Johnny Richards?
B.H. Oh, one time on Stan's band we were playing one of his potboilers and, granted, I was a little hung over, but I just had to stop, put my head down, put my horn in my lap and quit playing. I couldn't play anymore.
He wrote so much music. He was a great writer and he knew so much music, but he'd put it all in one piece, just bar after bar of this cacophony.
B.D. (Laughs.)
B. H. But he was a very funny guy, and I liked him a lot. He wrote movie scores, until his personality or his music alienated him from the studios. So that's why he got back into working with Stan.
B. D. So was that when the records like Kenton’s West Side Story and Adventures in Time came out in the mid-'60s?
B.H. I'm not sure about West Side Story, but Cuban Fire was all his, and that was a monster record, for Stan.
B.D. So he had already left the studios by the mid-'50s?
B. H, Yeah. That was after I had left Stan's band. I don't know how much he was involved with Stan during all those years, but occasionally something would come out by him. Didn't Stan do some kind of a Wagner project too?
B.D. Yeah, he sure did. What are your thoughts about Pete Rugolo?
B. H, I don't know Pete too well. I think when Stan broke up his band in 1950 that was Pete's last outing with the band. After that it wouldn't have been practical for the band to play his music. But Pete set the style of the band in the '40s. He was also a very nice person.
B. D. Another writer associated with Stan's band during the '50s was Bill Russo.
B. H. Well, Bill wrote what Stan wanted when I was on the band. He had some knowledge of jazz, and also that modal thing that he was proud of, which he used to use to excess, I thought. But then I started writing swing charts for the band and he kind of got the bug. And he did Fascinatin Rhythm, which a lot of people ask me if I wrote. It's a nice chart, and he made use of rhythm, finally. But he wrote some nice things. The thing he wrote for Conte Candoli was nice.[Portrait of a Count]
We didn't converse much for a long time, and then I had a chance to work a couple of times in Chicago. We got together personally a little bit during that time. Before that I always thought he was a little too pompous and he probably thought I was a hillbilly, so we didn't have a whole lot to say to one another. But I remember, on his twenty-second birthday, we were in a convenience store buying something and he said, "My God! I just realized I'm not a child prodigy anymore." That's kind of a human thing to say.
Both (Laugh.)
B. H. His father was a lawyer, so I guess that's where he picked up that persona. And another thing I remember is that he carried a record player with him on the road. He had all the Basie records and all the Bartok string quartets, and we used to spend a lot of time listening to his records. I guess that was where I got familiar with Bartok. I was listening to the quartets on Russo's record player.
B.D. Great.
B.H. There's one place on... (hums a swing riff). What's the name of that? The Basie small group recorded that.
B. D. Oh, yeah, Dickie's Dream.
B. H. Yeah, and Dickie Wells plays a major third in the minor key.
B.D. Right.
B. H. And Konitz hated him for that.
Both (Laugh.)
B. H. And to me it sounded real natural. You know, he's just playing the phrase (sings the phrase from Wells' solo). And it just had to come out like that.
Both (Laugh.)
B. H. But it was nice to be able to hear all that stuff.
B. D. It seems to me that in the '20s and '30s there weren't that many pieces in minor keys. Minor was almost an exotic kind of mood in jazz at that time. And, in fact, in some of the versions of Ellington's piece from the late '20s, The Mooche, the first theme in C minor is followed by some blues choruses in Eb [flat]. But in some of the recorded versions the solo choruses alternate between Eb and Eb minor. And on one of these versions Johnny Hodges plays a major third in a minor blues chorus.
B.H. I've heard a lot of guys play the major third in the key of a regular blues on the IV chord. [An example of this would be to play the note D on the IV chord of a blues in Bb, where the seventh of the IV chord, normally Eb7, would be Db].
B. D. Yeah, I've heard that too, even with some later musicians, like Sonny Clark.
B. H. But if you try to do it on purpose, it hurts.
Both (Laugh.)
