Rob McConnell and The Boss Brass

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

At one time or another many, if not most, Jazz musicians want to try their hand at playing in a big band.

When you are in one that clicks, there’s nothing in the world like it.

The surge of energy and rhythmic propulsion generated by a powerful big band leaves you giddy with excitement.

Navigating your way through a big band arrangement with fifteen or so companion musicians creates a sense of deep satisfaction that comes from successfully meeting a difficult challenge.

The art of individualism, which is so much a part of Jazz, gets put aside and is replaced by the teamwork and shared cooperation of playing in an ensemble setting.

When it all comes together you feel like you’re in love; overwhelmed by something bigger than you that you don’t understand.

You gotta pay attention; you gotta concentrate and you gotta do your best, otherwise it’s a train wreck.

So much goes into it:

- great charts [arrangements]

- great section leaders

- great soloists

- a great rhythm section

- and most of all, a great leader who melds it all together.

Enter Rob McConnell, who for over thirty years led a band based in Toronto, Canada which he called from its inception “The Boss Brass” [“boss” being slang for “incredible,” “awesome,” and “very cool”].

Rob passed away on May 1, 2010. The following memorial post and podcast was broadcast on Jazz.fm in Toronto, Canada. It was produced by Geoff Siskend with Jessica Humphries and Ross Porter as executive producers. Ross Porter also hosted the program for which financial support was provided by The Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canadian Culture Online Program.

You can also hear the documentary Rob McConnell: The Boss of the Boss Brass online at the Canadian Jazz Archive:

© -George Siskend, Jessica Humphries, Ross Porter, Jazz FM 91 and The Canadian Jazz Archives, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Rob McConnell: The Boss of the Boss Brass

“For close to 30 years Rob McConnell’s ‘Boss Brass’ reigned over the Big Band scene with its driving power, clever arrangements and the raw talent of its roster of A-list players. In recognition of his accomplishments, McConnell has received more Grammy awards than Bryan Adams, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen put together. Crusty, comical, and opinionated, McConnell is tough on musicians and, as the boss, doesn’t settle for anything less than perfection.

Transcript of the audio documentary

Ross Porter: To me, Rob McConnell is one of the larger than life figures in Canadian Jazz. He is crusty, comical, and a musical triple treat. Because not only is he a gifted valve trombonist, he is also an incredibly talented composer and arranger. His band, The Boss Brass, received great international acclaim during its near 30-year reign. His arrangements have set the bar for big band music around the world. He has won more Grammy Awards than Bryan Adams, Neil Young, and Leonard Cowen combined. He has a reputation for excellence and an absolute demand for perfection.

I’m Ross Porter and welcome to the documentary, ‘Rob McConnell: The Boss of the Boss Brass.’

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Rob McConnell in a studio in Toronto to talk about his life, his work, and his music.

Ross Porter: The music that you hear in your head, does it sound the same way after the musicians have played it?

Rob McConnell: Well, it’s usually better than I had hoped for because of the sparkling and eager and talented musicians I’ve had in any of my bands. I find that the musicians bring so much eagerness and talent to the floor that in under any circumstance they lift me up.

Ross Porter: A list of the players who’ve worked with Rob McConnell reads like a who’s who of the Canadian Jazz scene. Players such as Ed Bickert, Mo Kaufman, Don Thompson, Guido Basso, Terry Clarke, Rick Wilkins, and Ian McDougall. Rob may be admired throughout the jazz world for his playing ability and composing, but it’s his gift as a big band arranger that has really set him apart.

Jack Batten (former jazz critic for the Globe and Mail): The whole world should know about Rob McConnell, but not even all of Canada knows Rob McConnell, but that’s the nature of jazz, I guess. I mean, anybody, anywhere in the world who knows about big band music, in any country, knows about Rob McConnell.

Alex Dean (Boss Brass saxophonist): I think Rob is an individual voice, a true artistic individual voice in the world of jazz music. And I mean, in the world. I don’t think he’s doing anything that’s like, “Oh man, this is all brand new!” “This is the new thing.” In fact Rob would probably happy if you said, “Oh this is the old thing.” You know. His writing is incredible and his influence. I mean, he has influenced all other writing. The way he voices. The way he harmonizes. The way he puts unisons together. I guess the thing now is that people lift Rob’s stuff and use it. And they don’t even know.

Ian McDougall (lead trombone player for The Boss Brass): You know when went to an LA for the first time Rob was honored by the LA people and all the big people there. They just said, “Rob, you’ve actually done something that’s changed the way we think about rearranging for the big band.” It was the best damn band in the world.

Ross Porter: This giant of jazz was born in London, Ontario on Valentine’s day 1935. The son of a traveling salesman, Rob’s family was uprooted to Toronto to follow his father’s career when Rob was just 11 years old. And it was in Toronto that Rob was first introduced to the instrument that would become his musical forte and define his style as a composer, the trombone.

Rob McConnell: I started out singing, you know, as a soprano in church, stuff like that, but I was soon singing tenors so I was singing harmony parts. And then when I started to play in grade 9 at Northern Vocational School here, I really wanted to play the trumpet because my brother played the trumpet. But when they got to McConnell MCC, they didn’t have any trumpets left. So he said, “All we have is a trombone. And I said, well, it’s down an octave, but I’ll give it a try.”

Ross Porter: So in the 50s, what kinds of bands were you playing with?

Rob McConnell: Well, you know, I started in high school and I quit high school in grade 10, my second year of grade 10, I’m ashamed to say, and I went west. Go west young man, you know, whatever that is, and worked on an oil rig for about seven months, way up north of everything. And then I came back to Edmonton and I had cash money. So I went in the most famous music store in Edmonton and I bought a brand new trombone and put the cash on the counter in sight of those in the store, $250 or so. And so then I started practicing and I started playing around Edmonton, you know, like club dates and, oh you know, the odd Bar Mitzvah or whatever, you know, just kind of crappy jobs.

Ross Porter: Deciding that it was time for him to come home to Toronto and to get serious about his career. Rob piled into an old beat up car with no muffler and headed east. Joining him on the journey were brothers Don and Lloyd Thompson and Winnipeg piano player Bob Erlendson.

Rob McConnell: We were completely flat, busted broke by the time we got around Winnipeg. At that time we were siphoning gas so we could make a day’s drive.

Ross Porter: Siphoning gas from other people’s cars?

Rob McConnell: Yes, yeah. Usually used car lots or, you know. It would be at night, you know, in the dark. We got here and that was kind of, okay, now I’m home, now I‘m going to start trying to get some work here.

Ross Porter: It was the 1950s and the Toronto music scene was very much alive. Seedy rock and roll clubs littered the Young Street strip popping out the hits of the day to a well liquored crowd. Rob found himself stringing together a living by finding work playing in many of these clubs including one of the rowdiest, the Zanzibar Tavern.

Rob McConnell: Women take their clothes off there, now.  I think I haven’t been in there in a while – I don’t really want to see it again. I sang and played the piano and the trombone and we sang songs of the day, you know, mostly early rock and roll.

Ross Porter: And what was that like?

Rob McConnell: Well it’s long hours, low pay, and I was studying with Gordon Delmont then and I had to get my lessons done and stuff like that. I wasn’t a very good student.

Ross Porter: What was the clientele like back then?

Rob McConnell: Oh, a bunch of drunks, you know. A lot of them were kind of gangsters. One night, I knew all their names and they’d buy me a beer, you know, they were all friendly. They’d have this kind of crap game that was based in going into the washroom of places all. You know bars; and it was a set up.

Ross Porter: In the early 60s Rob left Canada briefly for New York where he spent time playing and touring with Maynard Ferguson. He returned to Toronto a short time later when he joint Phil Nimmons in his big band Nimmons ‘n Nine plus Six.

Phil Nimmons: What happened with the band, it was originally like, Nimmons ‘n Nine and we added six brass and of course, Rob was one of the trombone players that was added to the band that time. Rob was always a very vital individual and you could sense the sort of leadership qualities at that time and a tremendous sense of conviction about what he wanted to see happen. You know, and so, it was a great asset, both musically and more than that, we’ve been very close friends ever since then.

Ross Porter: He was still part of the Nimmons group when the idea struck him to form a big band of his own, a band that would define him for years to come. It was the beginning of The Boss Brass.

[Music]

Ross Porter: Did The Boss Brass come together by design? Or out of evolution?

Rob McConnell: Well, it was designed, Pat Williams did a gig. Pat Williams, the arranger, who lived in New York, he did an album of pop tunes with a New York studio band and it was very good. I forget what it was called, but I went with that idea to Lyman Potts at the Canadian Talent Library was just part of CFRB at the time.

Ross Porter: Formed in 1962, the Canadian Talent Library was conceived by Lyman Potts as a way of producing commercially viable music for air play on Canadian Radio Stations. A concept for which Rob’s initial idea for The Boss Brass fit perfectly.

[Music]

Guido Basso (founding member of The Boss Brass): Rob came up with this idea that he wanted to form a band without saxes and just have brass instruments, French horns, and trumpets and trombones, and percussion and rhythm section, which he did. And recorded some cover songs from the Hit Parade and like ‘Mrs. Robinson’ and ‘God Didn’t Make The Little Green Apples’, you know, and it became a big hit and people loved it. So then he got the band a gig at a place called The Savarin here in Toronto, which was a huge lounge, very, very large and with a nice stage on it. So we’d play there regularly and one night, Jerry Toff, Mo Kaufman, and Phil Nimmons, they led a whole bunch of saxophone players into the club with placards saying, unfair to saxophone players, you know. Boss Brass should have saxes and they came in during a ballad. We were playing something very, I think it was a guitar solo with Ed Bickert. It’s very quiet and all of a sudden these guys come in making all these rackets with their placards and the press was there of course, they took shots of that because they were told that they were going to do this. It was in the paper the next day and Rob decided right there and then. “Okay, enough of this, let’s have a real jazz band.”

Rob McConnell: I went from four horns to two. Fired one of the guitar players. No fender base. Add five saxophones, who all play woodwinds. The very first chart I did was Body and Soul, which was about 10 minutes long and then continued on, you know. I think that record, which was for a Toronto company.

Ross Porter: The Attic.

Rob McConnell: Yeah. People didn’t like the fact that the one, on Attic was called, “The Jazz Album.” Like they thought, well, you think you’ve heard jazz, well this is the jazz album. Well it wasn’t meant like that it was a poor title choice for me and because it wasn’t meant like that. It was just, finally we’re able to do a jazz album.

Ross Porter: From the 1976 Boss Brass released, The Jazz Album. Here’s ‘Body and Soul’.

[Music]

Jack Batten (former Globe and Mail jazz critic): The first time I heard the band. It was a thrill to hear them. The amazing thing is that Rob built it into something huge and wonderful. It was just a great band.

Rick Wilkins (tenor saxophonist and arranger): Rob was very into the music and he must’ve spent his countless hours writing all this music to get it right because when you show up and you rehearse it, you don’t want anything to be wrong. And he definitely knew kind of what he wanted in music and rehearsed the band that way. And he didn’t tolerate any kind of lack in musicianship; he always wanted your best efforts in trying to get it right. If you weren’t in your best effort, you’d get cussed out pretty badly and if you did it more than a few times, there’d be a new guy in the chair there. That’s how it went, you know.

Alex Dean (Boss Brass saxophonist): Well I just think that, you know, he’s gregarious. He enjoys a drink every now and then. He gets angry when things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be, when the music and himself and more likely the band and us are treated a certain way that he feels is not right, he is more than willing to raise his voice about it and let you know and also if you don’t give him exactly what he wants, he is more than willing to tell you in a loud and clear voice.

Ross Porter: The honor of playing with Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass attracted the best and most experienced musicians in the business and topping off this elite group of players was one of the most successful jazz musicians this country has ever produced, Mo Kaufman.

Mo Kaufman: There’s nothing like sitting, playing lead alto with some of the best musicians in the country and some of the best arrangements ever written. There’s a few of us guys of the same age ilk, we call ourselves the older boys, but because a lot of the younger guys in that band, when I say younger, I’m talking guys that are like in their 30s and 40s and guys like Rob, Guido Basso and myself and Rick Wilkins are sort of the older part of that band and we know each other as friends as well as musicians. And when you say the wit that Rob has, we can like crack each other up at any given time. He is a consummate musician. I respect him very much.

Arnie Chycoski (lead trumpet player): Mo is, I always consider him like a senior person. Mo was maybe 10 years older than him and yet he would rip into Mo. Mo, what are you doing? You know, like that. Treating him like little kids then. So, once you could realize that, that was part of the bear, you know, he was great. Just don’t argue with him.

[Music]

Ross Porter: The process of finding musicians to play your music. Walk me through that.

Rob McConnell: Well, you know when I was younger. I will probably be considered kind of a tough band leader. You know, come on boys, you know. I mean I was impatient and kind of strict, I think. I mean I always liked having laughs and good breaks and, let’s all go for a drink and, you know, things like that. I never treated anyone badly.

Ian McDougall (lead trombonist for the Boss Brass): You know, if you’re talking about an art, artist and art, you’re doing it because you want it to be the best it can be. And it became the best it could be and they said it was the best thing in the world. Best thing of its kind in the world at that time. So, is that worth it? Sure it’s worth it. You know, he was striving for perfection and we’re doing it and once in a while we’re not. You know, when you’re tired or something and he would lose it and we would lose it and in particular Guido would lose it and then these guys would come screaming at each other and then they kiss and make up afterwards, you know. Not literally kiss and make up, you know what I mean.

Guido Basso (flugelhorn and trumpet): The only time that I’ve had a problem is if he insulted somebody in the audience, that would embarrass me. There were times when I had to do my big feature number, ‘Portrait of Jenny’ and the introduction starts very quietly with woodwinds and flutes. So, it starts and one table would be acting up. So he stops, cuts the band off and tells the people to keep quiet. “Shut up!” and then he brings the band in again from the top and again, people are not responding. So, two or three false starts like that and then the people would get quiet. He’d tell them to shut up or get out! So they would. They would eventually just remain silent and on with his work. Those were difficult moments. Yeah! They were.

Ross Porter: Here’s The Boss Brass featuring Guido Basso on flugelhorn with Portrait of Jenny.

[Music]

I’m Ross Porter. You’re listening to a documentary: ‘Rob McConnell: The boss of The Boss Brass.’

Ross Porter: The 1970s were glory days for Rob McConnell and the A list of players who made up the Boss Brass. In Toronto work for musicians was both plentiful and profitable. At night the clubs were hoping with the sound of jazz echoing out onto the streets and during the daylight hours there were plenty of studio gigs to choose from. Everything from session work on albums to performing jingles for commercials to providing music scores for television and radio.

Rob McConnell: If you go, go back and get my book in 1972 and just show it to you, there is not a day when there isn’t three, four jobs on it.

Ross Porter: You’re talking about the Bob McLean show and.

Rob McConnell: That, which was 5 shows a week. At the same time we were doing Juliet Show, which was 5 a week, too. At the same time we’re doing a radio show from The Colonnade, which was five a week. Wayne and Schuster, I did Wayne and Schuster for 35 years. You know, I mean and then jingles and records and the Boss Brass. All of that went on at the same time.

Ross Porter: And was that good work? Was it satisfying to do?

Rob McConnell: No, we’d be bitching all the time about it. I mean I would be. It was trash generally.

Ian McDougall: Well sometimes Rob and I got, we were catalysts actually. We would spur each other on to do bad, be bad boys. It’s usually because we’ve been, you know, loaded with a couple of extra drinks or something like that, but you know, we have a good time together Rob and I. We would do the Bobby Benton Show and pre-record it and we got there to do the miming for the show, first of all we didn’t mime it. Rob and I had a case between us and we would be playing cribbage as the show was going on and they would give us shit for it, and certainly the leader wasn’t too thrilled with it, but Rob and I didn’t seem to give a shit so we did it anyway.

Guido Basso: He’s a guy who has taught bartenders all over the world how to make a Martini properly. You know, he goes to the bar and he says, I want a Martini, but I want to make it. I will come in there, let me get over this bar. Where’s the door? You know, he goes and helps himself to all the ingredients and shows the bartender how to make a proper Martini. I think it’s hell of a lot of gin and very little Vermouth and an olive and a twist, but it’s never the right combination, when other people make it. So, he has to make his own Martini and if he doesn’t like it then he’s the only one to blame.

Ross Porter: As the number of albums that The Boss Brass put out grew, so did the band’s stature and reputation. Each new release introduced new listeners to The Boss Brass and gained them an increasingly large fan based stemming from countries all around the world.

Ian McDougall: By popular demand we wound up going to Vegas. We did the Monterey Jazz Festival. We did the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl and we played in a few clubs in California, jazz clubs. And it’s amazing what a compliment to Rob for, when you look at the people sitting in the club and you’ve got Nelson Riddle, Hank Mancini sitting there, all the guys from the Tonight Show Band. Doc Severinson of that band. Composers. Woody Herman also. You know, we did two shows, you do the first show and go outside because the club was smoky and it’s not a very large club. So you go outside for a breath of fresh air and you see these big-named band leaders and musicians lined up for the second show because they’d throw everybody out at the end of the show and then if you want to catch the second one you have to pay another cover charge, you know. So, I would say that, that was probably one of the only, as far as I know, the only jazz band that became a name band all over the world. It’s quite an accomplishment. Yeah, it is. It looks good on Rob.

Ross Porter: And the awards piled up including Grammy’s and Juno’s.

Rob McConnell: I’ve given them all away.

Ross Porter: Have you?

Rob McConnell: Yeah.

Ross Porter: Where did they go?

Rob McConnell: Don’t tell Juno. Well, grandchildren. I have seven grandchildren. So I gave them all away and then all except the youngest, I guess. Then I had a couple of kids that lived across the street from me in Peterborough that helped me with various things, the pool and all the garden, cleaning up leaves and stuff like that. So I gave them each one and I put a new label on it. So I said, “To the world’s best neighbors,” and gave them both one.

Ross Porter: And how many Grammy’s?

Rob McConnell: Three.

Ross Porter: And where are they?

Rob McConnell: I have one. I don’t know where the other two went. Probably with my two daughters. I was nominated for 17 Grammys and I won three in three different categories.

Ross Porter: For your work with the Boss Brass?

Rob McConnell: Yep.

Ross Porter: So, world-class band. That kind of recognition from the industry.

Rob McConnell: Yeah, I don’t think anybody can top 17 nominations and three wins in three different categories. Best Band. Best arrangement. Best arrangement accompanying a vocal.

Alex Dean: That’s pretty amazing. When you think about it, three Grammys. I don’t think anybody in Canada knows that Rob has got three Grammys. I’d be surprised. You know. I don’t know if the awards mean that much to Rob. Maybe they mean more now that he is older and he’s starting to slow down. Maybe mean a little bit more, but at the time he would get the award, but, you know, I think at one point, it was Toshiko Akiyoshi got an award for a Grammy or something and then she went and made the speech and she said, “This is very nice, but what I really need is a job.”

Well, I think that’s sort of a way Rob looked at the awards, you know. It’s very nice to get these awards and stuff, but what I really need is a gig. I really need to be touring and working with this band and I need to do it. It doesn’t have to be easy. I just need to do that and, people always give you these awards and that’s great, but really we’re musicians. We just want to play. I mean, that’s what we want to do, we want to play. We want to hang out. We want a couple of pops. We want to play some hard music and make it sound good. Sit in the bus. That’s what we want to do. It’s fun, you know, and I think that’s what Rob is about to a certain degree.

And I think, to a certain degree he is an anti kind of guy in a way because on the one hand he doesn’t necessarily get a lot of the respect that he deserves possibly because he’s a cantankerous individual and on the other hand, complains a little bit that, you know, it would be nice if he got paid a little bit or got the respect that he deserve, you know, it’s kind of like six to one that have this to the other. I think he would be happy if, you know, if his big band records and his quintet records and his trio records had sold billions and billions and everybody was happy and he was touring all the time, but he never got an award. I think he’d be happier with that.

Ross Porter: One of Rob’s Grammy awards recognized a very special collaboration in his career. It was an award for one of the two studio albums that the Boss Brass recorded with a man they called, the Velvet Fog, Mel Torme’.

Rob McConnell: He was damn musical. He had a great ear. He very seldom made a mistake. There was a couple of charts that I can’t sing and I wrote them.

Ross Porter: By the time of their first collaboration Mel was a seasoned veteran with a reputation for sharing many of the same traits as Rob, both were seen as opinionated and wouldn’t settle for anything short of perfection. For the guys in The Boss Brass. The bets were in. They were all curious to see how two of the most temperamental musicians in the music business were going to get along when challenged with working together in the high pressure environment of a recording studio.

Rob McConnell: We had a really funny chart. I was quite sure it would be okay, but I was worried that Mel might not like it. He liked the tune. And we had a certain amount of trouble with people high up in the company that, there are three guys on the record company and an engineer, none of them from Toronto and none of them had been at any other dates I’ve done. We worked on it quite hard. We did I think two takes and we’re going for take three the suit people in the booth are asking about, is that note right and I had to go in give them a little talk into and I said, “Now, here’s the situation you guys.” I said, “I‘m the band leader and I’m the arranger. It’s Mel Torme’s record and he’s the engineer. I don’t want anybody else to have any opinion or open his mouth about the music. That’s all been decided a long time ago and has taken a long time. And getting a take on this Goddamn thing is taking a long time too and I’m not pleased about that, but I’m certainly not pleased when you’re giving advice. So, button up.”

So that was our little meeting and then I came back and the band all heard me and so then, Mel was standing right near me. He said, “You know, what is bothering me about this chart and the band?” You know, so like this and I‘m saying, so I’m standing there and the booth is listening too and they’re hoping that he doesn’t like it and he says, I said, “No what is it Mel?” And he says, “I’m starting to like it.”

Ross Porter: From the 1995 album, ‘Velvet and Brass’. Here is Mel Torme singing the Grammy Award winning Rob McConnell arrangement, ‘I Get A Kick Out Of You.’

[Music]

I’m Ross Porter and you’re listening to Canada’s premier jazz station Jazz FM 91. You’re listening to a documentary: ‘Rob McConnell: The boss of The Boss Brass.’

Ross Porter: For 32 years the Boss Brass towered over the big band scene. They recorded dozens of albums, which earned them both critical praise and countless awards and throughout this amazing run it was Rob McConnell who stood at the center of it all and kept The Boss Brass moving.

So, 32 years. What kept you doing it?

Rob McConnell: Well I had work most of the time and my late wife Margaret said in 2000, you know, she said, Rob you got to start addressing this problem here. If you have a band that only works three times in a year, you don’t have a band do you? You have three gigs for a big band.

Ross Porter: How long had you kicked it around before you announced that it was over.

Rob McConnell: Not long Ross. Our last gig is in 2000. I had already started writing in 1998 for the 10-piece band. So, my wife’s and my discussions about, do you have a band if you only work three times in one year, which was the year 2000 and I said no and the first thing I have to do is write for a band that’s half that size because I can’t make any money myself and I can’t pay the guys in the band. You know, it’s just what bands are left now that are playing around? Not much. Like it’s a big enough insult to pay Guido Basso and Mel Kaufman and Ed Bicker and Terry Clark and Don Thompson and all these all stars of Canadian music, $250 for a concert and I’ll take the same. I’ll take $250 too. It’s just not enough. You can’t do it for that. You know what I’m saying. And it’s too much money. It’s almost $5,000, you know, by the time you – and nobody will pay you $5,000. So, I’ll do it with 10 people. I still want $5,000.

Guido Basso: Rob formed a tentet and I was in the tentet with the other boys and that was fun for a while and I think at the moment the tentet is dormant. Rob is getting himself together again because he has not been well and I certainly hope that the sun shines on him again.

Rob McConnell: I had some trouble with my balance and stuff this summer, well this year.

And then I had a fall down at the Rex one night and so I missed the second night. I fell down and was taken to the hospital and musician humor is that one by one every guy in the band wanted to call me and say how good it sounded without me. So, okay, they played my book and he said, boy it was really good the second night without you, you know. It’s too bad you couldn’t have heard it.

Ross Porter: What have you learned about yourself over the last few months?

Rob McConnell: Well, nothing much I haven’t changed anything. I take a lot more drugs and I’ve seen, I’m on doctor number 13 I think now. So, I’m hopeful. I have got McConnell heart disease, grandfather’s, father, elder brother, me, my younger brother. My younger brother has five stents. So it’s just, you know, welcome to the club.

Ross Porter: How has all of this changed your outlook? Or has it changed your outlook on life?

Rob McConnell: Well it has a little bit. I haven’t been playing. It got so, well I don’t want to talk about it anymore, but I only have three arteries left, like two are closed, but they are not important, but it can’t get down to just one.

Ross Porter: Rob’s trombone has been sitting quiet since his heart troubles began, but the illness hasn’t dampened Rob’s spirit or his love for the music, even as just a listener and fan.

Rob McConnell: I have an iPod now and it has really revitalized my listening to music. Two years ago my first wife died, Margaret, and Jean Purling of the Singers Unlimited and Helen came to our, we didn’t have a real funeral. We had a reception in my son’s house and I had listened to the iPod on his veranda the last visit I had at his place in Marin County.

Well, he brought the iPod that I had listened to at his house because he bought a better one and he’s programmed everything so I‘ve got an iPod, a 25 gigabyte iPod with 4,000 tunes on it of everything you can imagine. Some classical music a lot of piano players, some Singers Unlimited, some Hi Lo’s, some Rob McConnell, Ian McDougall. And if you just put them on random play you don’t even remember the last time you heard it, you know, because they just go back like, while they are unplugged. They go back to random.

Yeah, I could never find anything I wanted if I had it with me now I’d want you to hear something and of course it would take me about nine hours to find it, but it’s just so little trouble. There’s always beautiful music, Bob McFerrin and oh gosh they are just swooning some things. It exhausts me actually. And the girl I live with. She can tell when I’ve been listening. You know, if she’s in another room or comes home from work or whatever, she says “Did you have a nice afternoon with the iPod?” Because I sing.

Ross Porter: Rob’s influence as a big band arranger will live on for many years. His international acclaim and stature has earned him a proud place in the history of jazz. His strong sense of determination helped push himself as well as the musicians around him to extraordinary heights through his desire for excellence and his stubbornness to settle for nothing less. He was able to achieve something that was and will continue to be truly magnificent.

One last thing before we wrap it up. It’s a quote, ‘When I’m [Rob McConnell] asked ‘What do you really want to do?’ Well, I really want to be in charge.’

Rob McConnell: I remember saying that. I forget where, but that’s why being the band leader is best for me. I’m not really a good side man because I’m trying to change things for somebody else because I think they’re not doing the right thing. You know, I think I was a pain for several band leaders that I played for. I think

Guido Basso once said that he played lead trumpet from the fifth chair: “I’m playing fifth trumpet, but I’m telling all the other trumpets how to play”. So that’s what I do in a band of my own. So the best idea is to get your band and you can tell them what do.

And you have to be a writer really, you can’t have a band and just ask people to write for you. You have to pay them. The only reason I did it because I didn’t have to pay me, you know. I used all my money, I have no money. I used all the money I made from studio work in those busy times. I used it running my band and at a loss, you know, it’s expensive, but I had a lot of fun.

[Music]

You’ve been listening to ‘Rob McConnell: The boss of the Boss Brass,’ an original documentary on Jazz FM 91.”

Here’s a video tribute to Rob and The Boss Brass that uses as its audio track one of Rob’s arrangement in which he combines Horace Silver’s Peace into a medley with trumpeter Blue Mitchell’s Blue Silver.

As Rob explained: “Blue’s original choruses are hard enough to play when you can practice them, let alone create them instantly on a record date, as Blue did … whew!”

Terry Clarke, the first drummer with The Boss Brass, said to me recently: “Rob McConnell was some kind of big band arranger; they don’t come any better.”

I’m sure going to miss Rob McConnell.

He was a boss arranger.

Mike Abene's arrangement of Horace Silver's "Cookin' at the Continental" - GRP All Star Big Band

Celebrating Mike Abene's birthday with his brilliant arrangement of Horace Silver's "Cookin' at the Continental" for the GRP All-Star big band. Mike orchestrates a section of Horace's piano solo from the original Blue Note quintet recording to form a shout chorus that begins at 3:22 minutes. Mike has been one of the very best Jazz big band arrangers for a long, long time. A true national treasure.

Strike Up The Band - Buddy DeFranco and Oscar Peterson.

After I finished listening to this masterpiece, I realized that I had just held my breath for two minutes and thirty seconds! Arrangement by Hank Garcia. Another gift to the Jazz World from Norman Granz.

The Improbability of the Clarke Boland Big Band [From the Archives with Revisions]

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

As has been the case recently with many of the earlier postings that have appeared  on the blog in multiple or sequential formats, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has taken the opportunity to combine these into single feature to make them more accessible in the blog archives.

I have also standardized the fonts and enhanced the accompanying graphics and images.

Lastly, I have added a video to give the reader a sampling of the actual music under discussion.

The Improbability of the Clarke Boland Big Band – Part 1

For a variety of reasons, I missed the Clarke Boland Big Band [CBBB] during most of its existence on the 1960s Jazz scene . Although I recall that many of my friends raved about the band, and I remember seeing their initial Atlantic LP – Jazz is Universal – on display in record stores, I never actually heard the band’s music until over 20 years after it had ceased to exist in 1972.

Thanks to the glorious era of re-issuance that followed the development of the compact disc, I now know what all the fuss was about.  What a band! One of the all-time great bands in the history of Jazz.

Yet, judging by the opening paragraph from the chapter on the band in Mike Hennessey’s, Klook: The Story of Kenny Clarke [London: Quartet Books, 1990, pp. 160-177], it would appear that there were many reasons why this band should have been absented from that history in the first place.

And given Mr. Hennessey’s description of how the band came together and what it took to maintain it during the 12 or so years of existence, the fantasy world implication of the Disney art that adorns its More Jazz Japanese release may be more fitting than comical.

Of course, as a former drummer, how can you not love a big band that has two? But that’s another part of the improbable story as told by Mike Hennessey.

© - Mr. Hennessey , copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Almost everything about the Clarke‑Boland Big Band was improbable. It was invented, nurtured, nourished, fussed over, financed, promoted and absolutely adored by a German-­born Italian socialist whose qualifications for band management were that he was a trained architect and owner of a flourishing coffee bar in Cologne's Hohestrasse. Its leader were two musicians who competed with each other in the art of staying in the background and maintaining a low profile. It roster of members over the years embraced more than a dozen nationalities, half a dozen religions and a daunting assortment of egos, most of them on the large side. To bring the band together for rehearsal, record dates and concerts involved formidable complexity of travel arrangements and much intricate juggling with the musicians' individual work schedules.  Despite all of this, plus the inevitable, multiple frustration financial Everests, outbreaks of pique, petulance and pig-headedness, and that well‑known capacity of airlines to deliver a bass player to Cologne and his bass to Caracas, the band not only survived for eleven years but developed into a unit surpassing excellence, becoming an important ‑ and genuinely significant ‑ part of jazz history. It was by far the finest jazz orchestra ever assembled outside the United States.

And Pier‑Luigi 'Gigi' Campi, the man who made it happen, is quite emphatic that the band simply could not have existed without Kenny Clarke. 'We needed his magic touch he told me.”

As a teenager in Italy during the Second World War, Campi used to listen under the blankets in a Jesuit college to jazz broadcasts from the American Forces Network. He listened to Louis Armstrong, Jimmie Lunceford, Roy Eldridge and Duke Ellington and among his circle of friends, jazz records were more highly prized than black‑market coffee.

But it was when Campi heard a Charlie Parker record in 1948 that he started to become a real jazz devotee. In 1949 he attended an international meeting of young socialists from all over Europe and, as he alighted from the train in Zurich, he saw a poster announcing a concert that evening by Django Reinhardt. A record by the Quintette du Hot Club de France was among those he had heard clandestinely in college and he couldn't resist the opportunity to see and hear Django in person. So he decided to skip the scheduled briefing for the

political meeting that evening and attend the concert instead. Gigi recalls:

There was another group mentioned on the poster but the names meant nothing to me. Django played the first half and I was really excited by the music. But in the second half, this group of black musicians played ‑ and the music sounded strange, but wonderful. I remember coming out of that concert feeling absolutely exhilarated. I was telling myself, 'Django was fine ‑ but those black musicians, they were really fantastic.' Three years later, James Moody and his group were touring Germany. My wife and I were passing through Munich on the way to a ski resort and we discovered that Moody's group was playing in town that evening. We went to the concert and as soon as the band took the stage, I said to my wife, 'I've seen that drummer before.'

The drummer, of course, was Kenny Clarke, who'd been a member of the band that

had played the second half of the Django concert in 1949. And Gigi discovered that the men with Kenny at that time had been Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Tommy Potter and Tadd Dameron, fresh from the historic first Jazz Festival.

‘I went backstage after the concert/ Gigi says, 'and had my first close‑up of what you

later called "the thousand‑candle‑power-grin". Kenny impressed me enormously, not only as a drummer but as a person.'

The success of his coffee bar enabled Gigi Campi to indulge his love of jazz by

organizing concert tours and producing jazz records. He set up a tour for the Chet Baker Quartet and recorded Lars Gullin, Lee Konitz and Hans Koller for his Mod label. His enthusiasm, however, outstripped his entre­preneurial flair as a jazz promoter. He lost $10,000 on a 1956 Lee Konitz tour.

But I learned something from being on the road with Lee. My friends and I were big fans of cool jazz at that time, but Lee would always be singing Lester Young solos on the train. I think that tuned me in again to the swing‑band era. He also said that the next time he came on tour, I should make a point of hiring Kenny Clarke to play drums. But, after this tour had flopped, I decided to cut my losses and quit the jazz business. However, I remembered Kenny Clarke, of course, and I resolved that if I decided to get involved with jazz production and promotion again, the first thing I would make sure of was that I had a good rhythm section.

At the time that Campi was beating a retreat from jazz promotion, Francois 'Francy' Boland, a twenty‑ six‑year‑ old pianist, composer and arranger from Namur, Belgium, was in the United States writing arrangements for Benny Goodman and Count Basie, having been recommended by Mary Lou Williams. Boland, a largely self‑taught musician, had studied music for a few years at the local conservatory and had taken piano and harmony courses at the Liege Royal Conservatory. A great admirer of the swing bands, particularly those of Les Brown, Basie and Artie Shaw, he wrote his first big‑band arrangements in 1942 when he was thirteen years old.

Francy had also written arrangements for the German orchestras of Kurt Edelhagen and Werner Muller and it was through Edelhagen that Gigi Campi first became aware of his arranging skills. Kurt Edelhagen was the leader of one of Germany's most successful big jazz bands, a multi‑nation outfit which he assembled in 1957 and which, though a touch bombastic and lacking in subtlety, was one of the most impressive large jazz ensembles of its time in Europe and boasted some fine soloists ‑ including, at various times, Dusk Gojkovic, Jiggs Whigham, Carl Drevo, Peter Trunk, Jimmy Deuchar, Shake Keane, Ronnie Stephenson, Wilton Gaynair, Ferdinand Povel, Benny Bailey, Peter Herbolzheimer, Derek Humble and Ken Wray.

Edelhagen had a contract with the West Deutsche Rundfunk in Cologne, whose studios were opposite the office of Gigi Campi, and musicians from the band were always in the coffee shop. Campi used to go across the street to listen to the band rehearse, and on one of these occasions he heard a most arresting version of the Rodgers and Hart standard 'Johnny One Note'. He asked who'd done the arrangement and Chris Kellens, a Belgian who played trombone in the Edelhagen band said, 'That's one by the maestro, Francy Boland.' Campi toId Edelhagen that if he really wanted to develop the style and character of his band, he should give more arranging commis­sions to Boland.

Said Campi,

Francy was sending all the arrangements he was writing for Basie to Edelhagen as well, including 'Major's Groove', which later became 'Griff's Groove', a feature for Johnny Griffin. I had met Francy in 1955 when he was working with Chet Baker after the death of Chet's pianist, Dick Twardzik, and I remember enjoying his piano playing. Now, having listened to some of his arrangements, an idea was forming in my mind.

Later Francy, who had returned from the States after some disagreement over payment for the Basie arrangements, came to Cologne to look up some of his friends in the Edelhagen band, and Gigi told him that he was planning to put together a big band to play Boland's arrangements. They then spent an hour or so discussing the personnel for the band. At this time Gigi had returned to working as a jazz promoter, at least to the extent of featuring live jazz in his coffee house, so he had some musicians in mind. Campi made a point, in particular, of putting on jazz at the time of the annual fasching, the German mardi gras carnival, as a kind of antidote to what he called the 'traditional junk carnival music'. At carnival time in February 1960, Campi booked tenor saxophonist Don Byas and assem­bled in support Francy Boland, Kenny Clarke and a group of musicians from the Edelhagen band: Chris Kellens (trom­bone), Eddie Busnello (alto), Fats Sadi (vibes) and Jean War­land (bass). Recordings by this group were later issued by the German Electrola Company as Don Wails with Kenny.

The first real Clarke‑Boland recording, however, was made in Cologne a year later, in May 1961. It featured Kenny and Francy with Raymond Droz on alto horn, Chris Kellens on baritone horn, Britain's Derek Humble on alto, Austria's Carl Drevo on tenor and Jimmy Woode on bass. That was the firs manifestation of what was to become the regular rhythm section of the Clarke‑Boland band. Campi sent the tape to Alfred Lion of Blue Note who hailed it as 'fantastic' and released it under the title The Golden Eight.

Both the Electrola and the Blue Note albums had been recorded by a brilliant engineer, Wolfgang Hirschmann, who was to become the engineer of the CBBB over the next decade. Campi, Boland and Clarke all had the highest regard for Hirschmann. Kenny once said that the three sound engineers he really respected were Hirschmann, Rudy van Gelder and a German technician at the old Paris Barclay studios called Gerhard Lehner, because they all used just one mike above the drums to capture his sound. 'Sometimes they would use extra mikes for the hi‑hat and snare drum, but I preferred just one,' Kenny said ‑ which is another illustration of his belief in the efficacy of simplicity.

It was seven months later, in December 1961, that the Clarke‑Boland Big Band came into being in the Electrola Studios in Cologne ‑ and its recording debut was fortuitous. The session had originally been a date for Billie Poole, who was playing at the Storyville Club in Cologne at the time with Klook, Jimmy Gourley and Lou Bennett. Campi was arranging to record Billie for Riverside and had decided, with Kenny and Francy, to assemble 'a little big band' for the date. Francy wrote the arrangements and the line‑up was Benny Bailey, Roger Guerin, Jimmy Deuchar and Ahmed Muvaffak Falay (trumpets); Nat Peck, Ake Persson (trombones); Carl Drevo, Zoot Sims (tenors), Derek Humble (alto), Sahib Shihab (bari­tone), Francy Boland (piano), Jimmy Woode (bass) and Kenny Clarke (drums).

France's Roger Guerin had worked often with Klook since 1956. Shihab had come to Europe in 1959 with the Quincy Jones band and had stayed over, settling in Stockholm. Zoot was on tour, and Persson, another former Quincy Jones sideman, was now based in Berlin and freelancing. Falay ha come to Europe from Turkey, and although some people thought he had acquired his middle name after mortally offending a none‑too‑literate fellow musician, it seems that it really was genuine. Benny Bailey, yet another former Quincy Jones alumnus, was living in Berlin and working in the Sender Freies Berlin radio orchestra, and Nat Peck, a Paris‑based American, had chalked up a great deal of big‑band experience with Glenn Miller, Don Redman, Duke Ellington and ‑ need­less to add ‑ Quincy Jones.

All was set for the record date, when, one week before the musicians were due to assemble in Cologne, Billie Poole had to return to the States because of a bereavement in the family. Rather than cancel the date, Campi had Francy Boland write seven new arrangements at breakneck speed and the session became the first date for the Clarke‑Boland Big Band. It was released by Atlantic, and aptly titled Jazz is Universal.

Campi told me,

The opening track on that album, 'Box 703, Washington DC', was like an explosion. I remember Ake Persson coming into the control room to hear the playback and saying, 'Gigi, put this band on the road for six weeks and we'll scare the shit out of everybody!' The spirit among the musicians was tremendous ‑ everyone knew that we had a sensational band together. The feeling was electric. I remember Ake came into the office after we'd finished recording late one night and I told him I had some extra money to give him. He shook his head and said, 'No, we don't have to speak about money.'

I said, 'You mean you're not happy with the fee? You want more?

'No. I mean that I should be paying you for the privilege of playing in a motherfucking band like this after all these years.'

And that was the kind of spirit that developed ‑ the music and the feeling became more important than the money ‑ a really remarkable thing when you consider how hard musicians sometimes have to fight to get paid, or to get paid adequately.

What was especially important about Jazz is Universal was that it proved beyond a doubt that jazz was no longer the exclusive preserve of American musicians. 'The thoroughly integrated sound that emerged from this band,' wrote 'Voice of America' producer and presenter Willis Conover in the liner note for the album, 'is convincing evidence that international boundaries have no meaning at all to the practicing jazz musician.'

Seven of the thirteen musicians in the band were European and their ability to hold their own with their American colleagues did no damage at all to the cause of winning a just measure of appreciation and recognition for some of the excellent European jazz musicians who were emerging. An indication of how the band's enthusiasm for the music was as abundant as its musicianship is the fact that the album was recorded in just four hours!

It was always Campi's goal, with the CBBB, to create a band which had an immediately recognizable identity ‑ which was why he wanted Francy Boland to write all the band's arrange­ments. Boland's very special concept of arranging helped to achieve this aim, and the brilliant solo and section work of a band whose members loved to play together and who de­veloped such a great personal and musical rapport, did the rest.

The key elements, according to Campi, were first of all the rhythm section: 'I knew when I heard Kenny, Francy and Jimmy play together for the first time that I simply had to build a big band around them.' A second crucial element was the magnificent lead trumpet and solo work of Benny Bailey ‑ a musician for whom both Dizzy Gillespie and Thad Jones expressed admiration tinged with awe. The third was the immaculate lead alto saxophone and brilliant, serpentine solo work of Derek Humble. And a fourth was the massive loyalty and surging enthusiasm of the big Swede, Ake Persson, who was an indefatigable champion of the band. Ake was also a formidable trombonist. Nat Peck once said, 'Every time I sit down with him it's like I'm hearing him for the first time Thrilling! I've never worked with anyone who has stimulated me so much.'

Encouraged by the success of the Universal album, Gigi Campi decided to assemble an even bigger band for the next record date on 25, 26 and 27 January 1963. Two albums resulted from this session made with a twenty‑one‑piece orchestra ‑ six trumpets, five trombones, five saxophones and an augmented rhythm section with Joe Harris on percussion ‑ Now Hear Our ­Meanin' released on CBS, and Handle with Care, released on the Atlantic label. Britain's Ronnie Scott came into the band for the first time, as did Idrees Sulieman and Austrian trombonist Erich Kleinschuster. And, in the absence of Zoot Sims, Campi flew in Billy Mitchell from the United States as principal tenor‑saxophone soloist. Also in the line‑up ‑ through a misunderstanding more worthy of fiction than fact ‑ was trombonist Keg Johnson, direct from New York.

The band needed a bass trombonist ‑ and nobody seemed to be able to come up with a suitable candidate. Then Ake Persson came to see Nat Peck, clutching an album. 'I've got him,’ he said. 'Listen to this.' And he played a track from the Gil Evans album, Out of the Cool. Nat was impressed. Persson pointed out the name on the sleeve and they called Campi in Cologne. 'You must get Keg for this date,' they said. Campi, always responsive to enthusiasm, agreed to bring Johnson in from New York.

During the session Keg did a pretty good job, but somehow, Peck and Persson thought, he wasn't quite matching his playing on the Evans album. After the first day's recording was over, Persson and Peck had drinks with Johnson. They told him how they'd heard him on the Gil Evans album. 'Some of the best bass‑trombone playing I ever heard in my life,' said Nat Peck. 'Absolutely fantastic,' confirmed Persson.

'Well, thanks,' said Keg. 'But actually, that wasn't me. I didn't play bass trombone on that album. As a matter of fact, I'm not really a bass‑trombone player at all. I had to borrow the instrument for this date.'

The bass‑trombone player was actually Tony Studd. But Ake and Nat took a year to break the news to Campi.

Talking to me about the album in November 1966 when I was preparing an article on the band for Down Beat, Kenny Clarke said it was one of the most satisfying dates of his career. He said:

The record is proof positive that there are as good musicians in Europe as there are in the States. I have never felt that the standard in Europe was much lower than in America. In Germany, it is just as high, even higher.

I've worked around the studios in the States and I really think that music here in Europe is on a higher plane.

When I asked Klook how the Clarke‑Boland compared with big band of Dizzy Gillespie he smiled the inimitable Klook smile and said, 'There is no comparison. That was the greatest band I ever played with in my life. I have never played in a band that was so inspirational and dynamic. It will never happen again in my lifetime. But we can come pretty close.'

It was not until May 1966 that the Clarke‑Boland Band played its first live concert ‑ in Mainz, West Germany ‑ which was broadcast in the regular jazz program of Jazz producer and critic Joachim Ernst Berendt for the Sudwestfunk, Baden­-Baden. Reviewing the concert, the critic of the Mainzer Zeitung wrote:

The Clarke‑Boland Band showed that musically and technically they are masters of their craft. The compositions and arrangements were excellent and the solos displayed a combination of vitality, a beautiful smoothness and command of musical range ... What strikes one after close listening is the classic harmony of the brilliant soli and tutti passages, played with elegance and confidence and distinguishing the band from all other big jazz ensembles.

Boland's arranging style did indeed make excellent use of the soli [a section of the band playing in harmony] and tutti [literally, “all together; the entire band or a section in unison] devices, and they became something of a CBBB hallmark. He used them in 'Get Out of Town' on the Handle with Care album, and they were dramatically in evi­dence on the Clarke‑Boland Band's third album, recorded in Cologne on 18 June 1967 for the Saba (later MPS) label of Hans Georg Brunner‑Schwer. For this album, which featured Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis as guest soloist, Boland wrote an arrangement based on 'Chinatown' and called 'Sax no End'. It was a masterpiece of saxophone scoring ‑ and it needed a saxophone team of the calibre of Derek Humble, Carl Drevo, Johnny Griffin, Ronnie Scott and Sahib Shihab to do it justice. After Eddie Davis solos over four choruses with just the rhythm section and Fats Sadi's bongos, the saxophone section, master­fully piloted by Humble, plays three complex and intricate soli choruses with fine precision, co‑ordination and compatibility. Two roaring tutti choruses follow. Saxophonist Kenny Graham, reviewing the Sax no End album in Crescendo in Mav 1968, said:

One particular bit did my old ears a power of good ‑ a saxophone chorus brilliantly led by Derek Humble. I just love hearing saxophones having a chance to play a well‑written chorus instead of riffs, figures and the boosting‑up‑the‑brass chores that they usually find themselves doing Maybe that's what Francy Boland is really all about. Nobody does saxophone choruses these days ‑ they're not on. F.B., oblivious of trends etc., bungs' em in. This and similar notions of his come off a treat because he believes in them.

Sax no End was a major landmark in the band's progress towards its ultimate corporate identity and it was followed by a number of other arrangements featuring saxophone soli, such as 'All the Things You Are', 'When Your Lover Has Gone', 'You Stepped out of a Dream', and many more. Ronnie Scott remembers those soli passages only too well. He says of 'Sax no End', characteristically self‑critical,

They  were very difficult to play ‑ in fact, I never really got ‘Sax no End’ down. But they were beautifully written and sounded marvellous. Derek was the navigator in chief ‑ and, of course, Shihab was a great anchor man. After about the first four times, he never had to look at the part.

Certainly the arrangement made a big impression and was always a favourite at live performances. Oscar Peterson was so taken with the chart that he actually recorded a trio version for his MPS album Travellin' On. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Sax no End album was that all seven titles were recorded in seven hours.

'It was almost always a first‑take affair when the band recorded’ Gigi Campi says. 'We hardly ever played anything more than three times ‑ and then we usually found that the first take was the best.'

In between the big‑band dates Clarke and Boland made a number of sessions with smaller groups featuring different members of the band ‑ Johnny Griffin, Fats Sadi, Sahib Shihab ‑ and an octet album with singer Mark Murphy. The band also began to make more live appearances, playing festivals and concerts in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Holland, Belgium, France, Hungary, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Britain.

Campi worked tirelessly to project and promote the band and, recognizing early on the importance of getting airplay for the CBBB's music, he concluded an agreement in 1967 to sell a monthly half‑hour programme by the band to radio stations in Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hilversum, Brussels, Vienna, Zurich, Baden-Baden, Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Saarbrucken, Hamburg, Berlin and Cologne.”

The Improbability of the Clarke Boland Big Band – Part 2

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

Between 1967 and 1969 the CBBB recorded a series of fine albums, including Faces, Latin Kaleidoscope (with Phil Woods) Fellini 7112 and Off Limits for the MPS label which were excellent showcases for the arranging and compositional talents of Francy Boland and for the band's exceptional 'togetherness'.

The vintage year of the Clarke‑Boland Band was 1969 and by common consent the peak performances of the band's career were heard ‑ and, happily, recorded ‑ during an unforgettable two‑week engagement at Ronnie Scott's Club in London from 17 February to 1 March. As I wrote at the time, if there has to be one set of recordings, from all of the band's repertoire on disc selected to stand as a monument to the finest jazz ensemble to come out of Europe, then it has to be the thirteen tracks and two albums from that 1969 Ronnie Scott’s Club date.

The band broke attendance records at the club and, says Campi, only then did the musicians really feel the full extent of the power of which they were capable. To have the opportunity of playing together night after night for two weeks made it possible to achieve a rapport and a mutuality of feeling that even this intuitively integrated band had not equaled hitherto.

By this time the CBBB had an additional drummer. Recruiting a second drummer for a band that has Kenny Clarke in its rhythm section would seem to be setting a new standard in futility. But it worked. British drummer Kenny Clare, a noted session musician, with excellent technique and good reading ability, had first come into the band as a sub when Klook had other commitments. He handled the job so well that he was taken on the 'permanent staff.’  There are various explanations as to why this happened and, in all probability ‑ as is usually the case ‑ there is an element of truth in most of them.

Whenever it was suggested to Klook there was one drummer too many in the band, he vigorously disagreed. Two drum-heads, he argued, are better than one. He told Max Jones in a Melody Maker interview published on 15 March 1968:

It came about because of my teaching. From my experience with students

I thought that maybe drummers can play together without being noisy or confusing. So I tried it out at the Selmer school in Paris and found it worked well.

Between the two of us, I think that Kenny and I can play anything in the world ... He is someone who thinks exactly the same way I do about drumming. He's one of the most intelligent drummers I've ever met ... We're two soul brothers.

I would suggest that this may be another example of Kenny's tendency to retrospective rationalization. Ronnie Scott's recol­lection is that Kenny Clare's presence in the band was in­tended to take some of the pressure off Klook, 'who wasn't the greatest reader in the world. The arrangement allowed Kenny Clarke to coast from time to time ‑ and it worked because they were so compatible. It would have been disastrous otherwise.' And in best Ronnie Scott style he instanced the massive all‑star band organized by Charlie Watts in 1987 which had not two drummers but three. 'Someone asked the vibraphone player what he thought of the tempo of a piece the band was rehearsing. "Fine," he said, "I liked all three of them."'

Kenny Clare recalled his first gig with the band when he talked to Crescendo's Tony Brown in May 1968. He had made a good impression and was asked by Gigi Campi to play alongside Klook on the next date.

They gave me a couple of notes on vibraphone which I invariably played wrongly ‑ well, they figured that I'd always be available to do anything that Klock wouldn't be free to do. I could do sundry percussion. Then one number was a Turkish march thing and I played snare drum. When it was played back it sounded very much together, like one drummer. They talked it over. Next time I came, would I bring my drums as well? See if we could make it with both of us playing. It worked ‑ and it's been like that ever since.

There is no doubt that driving the CBBB took a lot of energy and endurance and the addition of Clare not only added to the rhythmic foundation but also spread the heavy percussion load.

Playing along with the greatest drummer in the world was a pretty intimidating experience for Clare. He once told me of the first gig with Klook in Ostend in 1967 when the dual drumming exercise became a nightmare. 'Try as I would at rehearsal, I just couldn't get it together. The drums were fighting each other.'

He left the theatre after the rehearsal full of gloom and depression and decided that the best thing to do for the sake of the band would be to slip silently away. He went to book a flight back to London ‑ but there wasn't one. He shrugged resignedly, walked around the town for a couple of hours, then finally made his way back to the theatre for the concert.

'I started the first number full of apprehension ‑ but from the very first beat, it all came together miraculously. I just couldn't believe it!'

And that was the beginning of a beautiful percussion friendship. From then on, Clare became an integral part of the rhythm section and missed only one gig with the band. Strangely enough, Clare said he was never able to play the same away from the band. 'There are many drummers who would love to get the same springy kind of beat that Klook gets. I'm one of them. When I'm with him, I can play that way without even thinking about it. As soon as I'm away from him, I can't do it any more.'

True to character, Klook gave every encouragement to Kenny Clare and undoubtedly one of the important reasons why they worked so well together was that they had such a warm relationship off the stage, as well as on.

British drummer Frank King, reviewing the two Polydor albums that resulted from the Scott engagement, wrote in Crescendo: 'The perception and telepathy between Kenny Clarke and Kenny Clare is magnificent. They have such a fantastic togetherness that in places it is miraculous.'

With Jimmy Woode unavailable, Ronnie Scott's bassist, Ron Mathewson, was brought in for the club engagement and with Clare, Scott, Tony Coe (on tenor and clarinet), Humble and Tony Fisher (trumpet, depping for Jimmy Deuchar), the British contingent in the band was as big as the American. Yugosla­via's Dusko Gojkovic was recruited into the trumpet section.

Gigi Campi had to miss the first week of the engagement, but when he walked into the club on the Monday of the second week, Johnny Griffin told him, 'Gigi, you're gonna hear some shit tonight!' Campi sat at a table with writer Bob Houston, my wife and myself and beamed as his 'family' took the stage. ('Italians/ he'd explained to me once, 'always try to wrap everything up in a sense of family ‑ and that's how I regard the band.') Campi had heard practically every note the band had played since its debut. But when it hit, with a high‑voltage version of 'Box 703', Campi turned to us wide‑eyed and said, 'Wow!' Later he told me: 'I couldn't believe how good the band sounded. When they played the tutti in "Now Hear My Meanin' " I got goose pimples all over.'

For Ronnie Scott those two weeks were undoubtedly one of the major highlights in the history of the club, as well as being musically inspirational. 'It was marvellous. People used to applaud in the middle of the arrangements ‑ showing their appreciation of some of the tutti or soli passages. It was really one of the greatest musical experiences of my life.'

The year 1969 was certainly a banner one for the Clarke­ Boland Big Band. It played the Pori Festival in Finland that summer and Lars Lystedt, Down Beat's Scandinavian corres­pondent, described the condition of the audience as 'spell­bound'. In September the band shared the bill at Rotterdam's De Doelen concert hall with the mighty Thad Jones‑Mel Lewis Orchestra, and reporting for Britain's Melody Maker, Jan van Setten told of 1,780 people 'exploding into thunderous acclaim after the four‑and‑a‑half‑hour marathon concert'. It was a real battle of the bands, he said. 'Who won? Music.'

At the Prague Jazz Festival in October, the CBBB 'totally eclipsed' the Duke Ellington band, according to Melody Mak­er's Jack Hutton: 'This year's Prague Festival proved one thing conclusively to me ‑ the Kenny Clarke‑Francy Boland Big Band is the finest big band in existence.’

And after a Paris concert in that same month, Jacques B. Hess of Le Monde wrote:

The CBBB is a triumph, at the highest level of talent and professionalism.

The warmth, the commitment and the enthusiasm of the musicians is refreshing and a marked change from the lackluster and blasé perform­ances of the Ellington and Basie bands which we have become used to over the last few years.

In October 1970 the CBBB was back in Britain for a three‑week engagement at Ronnie Scott's and at this time Carmen McRae came to London to record with the band in the Lansdowne Studios. With a minimum of rehearsal time, the superbly professional ex‑Mrs. Clarke managed astonishingly well with some difficult scores, especially considering that six of the eight tunes recorded were new to her. The whole session was completed in eight hours. It was named after a Boland-­Jimmy Woode song on the album, 'November Girl'.

There followed a three‑week European tour which had Dizzy Gillespie as special guest and which culminated in an appearance at the Berlin jazz Festival. But the tour was not a great success musically because the band had to submerge its own personality to play a programme that was more closely associated with Dizzy.

In fact there were now signs that the band was beginning to run out of steam and, no doubt, one of the factors which undermined its momentum was Campi's failure to conclude an agreement to take the band to the United States. It was a great disappointment for Kenny Clarke ‑ and for all concerned with the CBBB. But, for a variety of reasons ‑ predominantly financial ‑ plans to have the band appear at the Village Gate in New York, followed by concerts in Boston and Chicago, an appearance at the 1970 Newport Jazz Festival and a tour of Canada, did not come to fruition.

'I'd really love to take the band on the road in the States/ Kenny Clarke told me in 1967, 'just to prove the point about the high standard of European musicians.' But it was not to be.

What finally caused Kenny Clarke to acknowledge that the days of the CBBB were numbered, however, was the untimely death of Derek Humble on 2 February 1971 at the age of thirty‑nine. 'The band was never the same without Derek/ Kenny said, voicing a sentiment that was shared by the whole CBBB family.

In June 1971 the band made its last recording, Change of Scenes, with Stan Getz as guest soloist and, in March 1972 in Nuremberg, played its last concert date when, according to Gigi Campi, 'it was a sorry shadow of its former self'. He went on:

Johnny Griffin came to me after the concert, and virtually read the funeral service. The following morning I had a long discussion with Francy and Klook to see if we could keep the band going. I still thought there might be a possibility of pulling off an extensive tour of the USA which could have regenerated the spirit of the band. So some days later I went on a round trip of Europe to try to put the band together again. I called on Idrees, Nat Peck, Tony Coe and Johnny Griffin and finished up in Montreuil with Francy, Mook and Benny Bailey. And finally I realized that it wasn't going to happen ...

And that's when even Campi's apparently unquenchable enthusiasm gave out. It was April 1972 and the Clarke‑Boland Big Band had breathed its last.

But, as Bob Houston, who was closely associated with the band through most of its lifetime, wrote afterwards, though the demise was a matter for regret, that the band had existed at all was a matter for celebration ‑ 'as with all phenomena which survive on excellence against the tides of current fads and fashions ... The CBBB was one of the most enjoyable mani­festations of the last decade in jazz. Be grateful that it happened at all, and that we have it on record to enjoy.'

And Kenny Clarke said, 'It was a fantastic, unique experi­ence from which I learned a lot. It was not only a great band, it was a community, a congregation of friends ‑ and one of the happiest bands I've ever worked with.'

The Clarke‑Boland Big Band left a rich legacy of its reper­toire on record. In the eleven years of its existence it recorded thirty‑nine albums.

Kenny Clarke's role in the CBBB was not only the obvious one of being the rhythmic dynamo; he was important as a co‑leader in his own reserved and unobtrusive way. He led by example; he had the total respect of all the musicians who ever played in the band, and that respect, coupled with respect for one another, was what kept the band so tight and its musical standards so high.

Says Johnny Griffin,

The CBBB couldn't have lasted with a Benny Goodman or a Buddy Rich leading it ‑ because there were too many bandleaders in the band. It wouldn't have worked if the leaders had been dictators. I mean, the vibrations from the egos! My God, imagine ‑ three trumpet players all Leos: Idrees Sulieman, Benny Bailey and Art Farmer. It was like an armed truce. It was amazing with all those different characters and the strength in each one. And it would mesh! There was no one on the band that you could pick on! It was really like a zoo, with tigers, lions and gorillas in it!

'I never met anyone who stayed so calm/ Kenny Clare said of Klook in an interview with Crescendo's Tony Brown. 'You should come along to a recording session. All pandemonium let loose, everybody talking or blowing like a bunch of madmen. Kenny never raises his voice or gets excited. He is a wonder.'

Ronnie Scott confesses that he was always a little bit in awe of Kenny Clarke. 'But he was always so amiable and pleasant. He didn't come on like your typical extrovert bandleader. He just sat there, and played ‑ and that was enough.'

Gigi Campi remembers times when Kenny would arrive late for rehearsal or recording due to plane or train delays. 'We would all be waiting in the studio ‑ and as soon as Kenny walked in you were aware that there was suddenly more power in the room. His presence ‑ quiet, dignified and calm ‑was such a positive force.'

Jimmy Woode says that it was simply not Klook's way to get out in front of the band and pep‑talk the musicians. 'He might speak quietly. to you individually ‑ but his leadership was implicit in his solid integrity. Francy and Klook were not exactly charismatic leaders like Duke.'

Ron Mathewson remembers Klook as a man who comman­ded respect from all the members of the band without any attempt to pull rank: 'He was really helpful to me when I came into the band for the gig at Ronnie's. He said, to me, very nicely, "Keep a straight four. Let the guys feel you, because you're new. They want to trust the rhythm section. Just play it cool and let it happen."'

Francy Boland's co‑leadership consisted entirely of creating the band's inimitable book, writing not for the instruments but for the musicians, and providing support and solos from the keyboard that were consistently streets ahead of his own evaluation of them. Boland carries self‑effacement almost to the point of self‑erasure. He told me, 'Kenny didn't really have a lot to do with the music. And I wanted it that way because I was the arranger.'

And without any apparent awareness of the sublime irony of a Boland being struck by someone else's inclination to maintain a low profile, he added, 'Kenny was a very reserved person and he kept his thoughts to himself. He never express­ed enthusiasm when I came in with a new arrangement; though he might give me a compliment ‑ a small compliment ‑from time to time.'

Clarke and Boland, during their association together, were never in any danger of engulfing one another in explicit mutual admiration. But had it not been there in some abund­ance, the band simply would not have flourished. Whatever Boland may feel about the measure of respect and appreciation he received from Kenny, Gigi Campi remembers an incident which speaks eloquently of Klook's high regard for his partner.

The band was rehearsing and swinging like a demon ‑ without a drummer. Kenny was standing out in front, rolling a joint. Suddenly he looked up in mock disbelief and genuine joy, and said, 'This band doesn't need a drummer. That Belgian motherfucker swings it just with his writing, goddam it!

'For Kenny,' Campi adds, 'there were two great arrangers in Tadd Dameron and Francy Boland.'