Sunday, October 12, 2025
Friday, October 10, 2025
Jazz Saxophone A Reader Volume 2 by Steven A. Cerra - Now Available
The second volume of my Jazz Saxophone anthology series is now available through Kindle Direct Publishing as a paperback and an eBook exclusively through Amazon. Just type my name in the search box while on the Amazon site. Priced at $24.99 for the paperback and $9.99 for the eBook, you can check out the details of what's included in its 46 chapters and 386 pages by reviewing the Table of Contents located in the sidebar of this blog [right hand column]. You can also review the contents of all my books by scrolling down the sidebar.
Once the initial costs of publication are met, 50% of all royalties are being donated to the local school districts to help provide musical instruments for individual students. We've also donated a full drum kit to the local community college district and $500 has been contributed to the Gerry and Franca Mulligan Foundation.
The holiday gift-giving season is coming up so you might want to keep these Readers in mind as they would make wonderful presents for the Jazz fans among your family and friends.
My thanks to all of you who have already purchased copies of my books and a special "Thank You" to the paid subscribers on my cerra.substack.com/ blog as your funds make possible the research, time and expenses involved in creating these compilations.
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
Remembering the Buddy Collette Quintet - Tasty Dish
Part 2 -The Terry Gibbs Dream Band from "Terry Gibbs Good Vibes - A Life in Jazz"
© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
I don’t know if Terry would agree with me, but I always thought that the roots for what eventually became the Monday Night Band at the Village Vanguard lay in Terry’s Dream Band [circa 1959-1962] by way of Gerry Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band [circa 1960-1963] and, obviously, the Thad Jones - Mel Lewis Big Band [circa 1964 and continuing until Mel’s death in 1990].
Of course, the obvious point of continuity is through Mel, who played in the Dream Band, the CJB, and his own orchestra with Thad, but another connection is through Bob Brookmeyer who wrote arrangements for Terry’s Band, was a frequent visitor at the Dream Band’s performances during its first year and would go on to play a major role in both the Concert Jazz Band and ultimately with the Monday Night Village Vanguard Orchestra [again, through Mel’s involvement].
And as you’ll read in the following excerpt from Terry’s bio, Gerry Mulligan actually led Terry’s aggregation as guest conductor. Gerry was also in Hollywood appearing in films during the formative years of the Dream Band, including one with his then girlfriend, Judy Holiday and both Gerry and Judy heard the Dream Band band on many occasions at the Seville, Summit and Sundown clubs in and around the Sunset Strip.
Stylistically, all three were ensemble bands with a loose, open, fluid phrasing and beat and each shared a common coterie of arrangers including Bill Holman, Al Cohn, Brookmeyer/Mulligan, with Thad’s, of course, the exception as he was the predominant arranger.
Obviously, analogies can only be pushed so far but I think there’s some merit in the influence comparison of Terry’s Dream Band with Jeru’s Concert Jazz Band, the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big band and the Monday Night Village Vanguard Orchestra.
Here’s Terry with more about The Dream Band from his auto bio - Good Vibes: A Life in Jazz [2003].
“I lured Sid Garris and George Greif to become managers of the band. Besides owning the Gaiety Delicatessen, Sid was also a disc jockey. They used to call him Symphony Sid, just like Symphony Sid Torin in New York. George was a full-time manager. He and Sid also handled people like Jose Feliciano and bought the name the Christy Minstrels and were very successful. They both were very good businessmen.
Major Riddle, who owned the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas, came into the club, heard the band, and flipped out. At the intermission, he came over to me and said, "I have an opening at the Dunes Hotel next week. I'd like to have your band play there." I told him he'd have to talk to my managers. They got together with Major Riddle, worked out all the details, and the next week we opened at the Dunes.
I called Joe Maini, who was working with Ray Anthony in Las Vegas making five hundred dollars a week, which was a gang of money back then. This must have been around 1962. Joe used to fly back to Los Angeles and work with our band on his night off. He just told Ray he was leaving tomorrow to go to another hotel. He didn't even give Ray any notice.
After paying out commissions, all I had left was enough to pay everybody 200 dollars each, and after I paid Berrel, I made about $11 dollars for myself. The hotel had a big publicity campaign for the opening where they crowned me the "New King of Swing." It was very embarrassing but fun.
I also hired Jimmy Witherspoon to sing with us. The only other singer that ever sang with the band was Irene Kral. Spoon was great, probably one of the best blues singers of all time. He had no arrangements, so what we used to do was, when he sang the blues, I'd have Joe Maini play behind him and the band would make up blues backgrounds, which were probably better than most arrangements anybody could write. Good jazz players can make up a background on the spot and it would sound like it was a written arrangement. One trumpet player makes up a riff, and then the other three guys in the trumpet section would jump in and find harmony parts. Conte would make up most of the riffs in the trumpet section and Frank Rosolino would make them up for the trombone section. When we got to the end of the song, everybody would find a harmony note and I'd cue them in for the last chord.
Mel Lewis really had it hard. He was on staff at ABC and had to fly to Hollywood every day to do a five o'clock show and then fly back to Las Vegas to play with the band. After making the trip every day for four days, I got a call from Mel telling me that they were going into overtime and didn't know whether he could get the next plane and come back in time for the first show. We never had another drummer ever play with the band. I didn't know what to do because not only was he the most important guy in my band, I didn't know any drummers in Las Vegas. Louie Bellson was working with his wife, Pearl Bailey at the Flamingo Hotel so I called him and said, "Louie, I'm in trouble. I'm stuck. Mel Lewis is not going to be here. He may make it for the second show but I don't have a drummer for the first show. Can you recommend somebody?" Louie heard the band many times and loved it. Being one of the nicest people I have ever known, plus a real good friend, Louie cut his part of the show short, had the house drummer play Pearl's act, and then came down and played with my band.
Louie could sight-read anything and as the saying goes, "He could sight-read fly shit." I don't know what his style of drumming would have felt like on the fourth night, because he had a completely different feel than Mel had. But for a one-shot deal, he came in and did a remarkable job. He played the heck out of the ensembles, made all the figures, and saved me from having a nervous breakdown. Everybody in the band stood up and applauded him after we finished the show.
We were breaking it up every night. All the hippest people in town were coming in to hear the band. Our third show was always packed with all the entertainers and showgirls who came there after they did their last show and we tore them up. We finished the two weeks and went back to Los Angeles, a big winner.
Sid and George were trying to book the band on the road and make me a big time bandleader, which I really didn't want. I didn't want to go out with the band and travel, and also, some of the guys wouldn't be able to tour anyhow. They told me, "If you can't get Conte to play, get somebody else," but I said no, I wanted Conte, I wanted Mel Lewis, I wanted all the original guys there. Mel was on staff at ABC and couldn't go out anyhow, and I didn't want to go out without him. But they did book the band at the Avalon Ballroom on Catalina Island. We took most of the guys that went to Las Vegas, including Jimmy Witherspoon. After the second day in Catalina, one of the guys in the band came over to me and said, "Terry, we just tried to draw some money from your manager and he said that we could only draw money on a Friday." I went to George and Sid and said, "Listen, the guys need some money." They said, "Terry, we're running an organization now and the rule is you can only draw on Friday." I said, "I don't run a band that tight and I don't want to lose that loose feeling that we have for each other. You guys are separating me from my band." They said, "That's how it's got to be. Just like all big bands do. It's a business." I said, "You do your business with another band. You're fired and I quit. We're going home after this week." They said, "Wait a minute. What do you mean?" I said, "I told you, I don't run my band like this." We left after the first week and went back to playing the Sundown.
Jimmy Maddin was real happy to see the band back at the Sundown because while we were gone, business had been terrible. Because we were playing for dancing at the Sundown and it was such a big success, I wanted to do a record album that people could dance to. It would still be high powered, but the people who bought the album could not only have fun listening to it, but just like they did in the club, they could also dance to it at home if they felt like it.
I was now dealing with Irv Green, who was the president of Mercury Records. I spoke with him in Chicago and he gave me the okay to get the arrangements written. After I got all the arrangements written and copied, I rehearsed the band and we were ready to record. I called Irv and he told me that he wanted me to record a small band album instead. I said, "But I've gotten all these arrangements written for a big band," but he didn't seem to care. I got bugged. I tried to reason with him but it seemed like I wasn't getting anywhere. So I thought about getting out of my contract with Mercury. I had been with Mercury for ten years and never had any problems before, so I went to the musicians union and told them my story. I asked them if they could help me get out of my contract and they said yes. I just wanted to make sure that the arrangements were paid for. So they wrote Irv Green a letter and told him that Mercury was out of line for what they did and that they had to pay for the arrangements.
In the meantime, I went to Norman Granz, who loved my band, and asked him if he would like to record us. He said yes and I said, "I may have something for you." I called Irv Green and said that since he didn't live up to his word, I wanted out of my contract. He already knew that he'd have to pay for the arrangements so he said, "Well, if I have to pay for them, either send me the scores or send me the music." I sent him the music and kept the scores so that if I ever lost any parts to the music, I could always go back to the score and get copies made. I had the arrangements copied and then called Norman who said, "When do you want to record?" I said, "Tomorrow." I had the arrangements copied, and the next day, we went into a studio and in two days, we finished recording. Irv Green was a partner with Ralph Marterie. When he got my arrangements, he went into a studio and recorded Ralph playing the arrangements that were written for my band. He didn't realize that I had already recorded the arrangements with my band for Norman Granz's Verve label. Our album came out first and Mercury never released Ralph's records. If they had released them, there would have been no comparison in the bands anyhow. The album was called It Might as Well Be Swing, Volume Two of the Dream Band albums has the same songs on it except that it was live and is called "The Sundown Sessions."
With big bands, you always have personnel changes. Benny Goodman had a lot of changes in his band, but the band that he had with Gene Krupa, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Ziggy Elman, and Teddy Wilson was considered to be one of the greatest bands of all time. That's what I call a "one timer," because you're lucky that once in your life, you will have a band that's considered to be one of the greatest bands of all time. All of his other bands were good, but that band was a one timer.
Artie Shaw had one when he had Buddy Rich and Tommy Dorsey also had one when he had Buddy. Duke Ellington's bands always stayed the same. Count Basie had two; one when he had Papa Jo Jones playing drums and Lester Young and Herschel Evans playing tenor, and then later on with Joe Williams. Woody Herman also had two: the first and second Herds. I was very honored that the Dream Band was considered to be in that same class as one of the greatest bands of all time.
There was a big contractor in town called Ben Barrett who came to me and said, "Terry, if you let me contract your record dates, I'll get you a lot of studio work." I wasn't interested in studio work. The contracting was done by my baritone player. Jack Schwartz, who was one of my friends. I said, "I have my own contractor." I don't think Ben liked that because once he called my whole trumpet section to do a record date that he was contracting, which would have been on a Tuesday night when the band worked. The guys were making fifteen dollars to play with the band and a record date might have paid them 150 or 200 dollars apiece, which was a lot more money. One of the trumpet players told me that he got a call from Ben Barrett to do a record date on Tuesday night and didn't know what to do because we were playing that night. Then Conte said, "Hey, I got a call also." Then all of them said that they got a call from Ben Barrett. Finally, Al Porcino said, "Listen, it's not my band, but let's make a rule. If anybody takes the night off, whoever takes your place is permanently in the band." Nobody ever took off because nobody wanted to leave.
When we started playing at the Sundown, I had Wally come in again to check out the sound. It wasn't an audition anymore; I just wanted to hear how he'd pick up the band at another club. He came in and recorded the band at the Sundown and gave me the reel-to-reel tapes, which I also kept in my house for twenty-seven years. Those tapes eventually became all of Volume Two and part of Volume Three of the Dream Band records. The other half of Volume Three came from the Seville tapes.
We did a few concerts with Miles Davis when Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane were in his sextet. Every time I worked with the big band, because of my yelling out little signals to the guys, at the end of the night, my voice would be hoarse and I sounded like Miles. After one of the concerts, Miles and I got to talking about when we first met. It was in 1949 and Miles had come into some club I was working at in New York and told me that he had heard Nat Cole's record of the song I wrote called "Peaches." He said he liked the song very much. Then out of left field, he said to me with his weird-sounding voice, "Terry, how come you got no niggers in your band?" I knew he was putting me on, so in my hoarse voice, which almost sounded like him, I said, "Miles, how come you got no JEWS in YOUR band?" Then we laughed and that was the end of that.
The first concert we played was at the Shrine Auditorium. On the end of my solo on "Prelude to a Kiss," I play a little obbligato and Joe Maini was supposed to just turn around, give the band a downbeat and then sit down. Then I would finish my obbligato and cut the band off. Before Joe turned around to face the band, he took his lob out and put it up on the outside of his shirt going up towards his chest with his jacket closed. Joe was very well endowed. When he turned around to give the band the downbeat, he unbuttoned his jacket and half of the band saw what he did. The guys that saw it tried to blow their horns but nothing came out but a "PHHFT" sound and they broke up laughing. The guys that didn't see it played their notes and didn't have the slightest idea why the other guys didn't play their notes and were laughing. Joe sat down as if nothing ever happened.
The next concert was in Tucson. Arizona, and Stu Williamson could not make the job, so I hired Jack Sheldon. This was the first time Jack played with the band. He was really nervous because every guy in that trumpet section was like a god to him, especially Conte Candoli. The concert we played opposite Miles was outdoors in a ballpark. They built a bandstand on the pitcher's mound. It was nighttime and very windy and Jack was sitting at the end of the bandstand. We were in the middle of a song when the wind blew his music off the bandstand. He jumped down and kept playing his part, which was now on the ground. The wind kept blowing the music and Jack kept following it while continuing to play. By the time the band played the last chord, he was out in center field. That's when I found out that Jack marched to his own trumpet player.
Gerry Mulligan used to come into the Sundown practically every week with Judy Holliday to hear the band. After a while, he'd come in with his saxophone around his neck, wanting to play. He didn't want to play any solos: he just wanted to sit next to Jack Nimitz and play the baritone parts with him because he loved the band and the arrangements so much.
After playing at the Sundown for a few months, I got a call from Norman Granz, who asked me if I'd put a big band together and conduct for Ella Fitzgerald at the Apollo Theatre in New York. Ella was one of our frequent visitors to the club and flipped out every time she heard the band. I didn't want to stop the band from working on Tuesday, so I asked Gerry Mulligan if he'd like to front the band on the one Tuesday that I would miss when I went to New York. He was honored that I asked him and immediately accepted.
I called my friend Epstein to contract the band for me and took Mel Lewis with me to play drums. Epstein hired all the musicians I asked for. We had people like Kenny Dorham on trumpet, J.R. Montrose on tenor sax, and some other really good players. We were there for a whole week. Besides Ella, who was the headliner, there was the Oscar Peterson Trio with Ray Brown on bass and Ed Thigpen on drums. Sonny Stitt and Roy Eldridge were also on the show besides my big band. The quartet that played on a few songs for Ella wasn't too shabby either: Ray Bryant on piano, Gus Johnson on drums. Wilfred Middlebrooks on bass, and Herb Ellis on guitar.
It was really a lot of fun conducting for Ella and hanging out with her. She was such a great singer. We had some lengthy discussions about our private lives. She told me about the time she was in Europe with Jazz at the Philharmonic and had strong feelings for Jimmy Gannon, the bass player on the tour. Ella said that when they were in Europe, they got very close, but once they got back to the United States, he fluffed her off and she never saw him again. Then she said something that really made me feel bad for her.
She said, "You know, Terry? I would give up my voice and all the God-given talent that I have just to be a person who is not famous, so that if some guy wants to take me out, he's taking me out because of who I am and not because I'm Ella Fitzgerald the famous singer." I could tell that she was very hurt about the scene that happened between her and Jimmy Gannon. I think that she probably had that feeling all her life about never being sure if she was being asked out on a date because of who she was rather than what she had to offer as a person.
When the week was over, I got a call from Norman Granz. He said, "Terry, I just got a bill from your contractor for nine dollars and eighty-seven cents." I asked him what it was for and he read the bill to me. "It says here, that on your first show, you went five seconds overtime and he charged me seven cents for the band. On the second show, you were nine seconds over which was eleven cents. Ten seconds, eleven seconds, seven seconds." He broke it down for every show. I broke up and I said to Norman, "That's funny." Norman said, "That's not funny." I said, "Where's your sense of humor, Norman? Epstein's putting you on. Who would charge twenty-two cents for sixteen guys playing five seconds overtime?" He didn't think it was funny. Norman didn't have a good sense of humor. Epstein scored again.
Jack Sheldon started to get comfortable in the band and would do and say funny things. He knew that so long as he didn't get dirty, that he had the freedom to say anything he wanted. When the guys would start to get up on the bandstand. Jack would go to the mike and introduce them as they sat down. He'd always have something to say that was out and funny and I liked it so I let him do it any time he felt like it.
When I got back from New York and got to the club on Tuesday, I saw a strange face sitting in the trumpet section where Jack normally sat. I asked Berrel where Jack was and he said, "I forgot to tell you. Gerry Mulligan fired Jack." I said, "What do you mean, he fired Jack? Gerry was just subbing for me. It's not his band!"
If anybody knows anything about Jack Sheldon, you know that it's hard to keep him from talking dirty, except with me, because he knows he'd be fired right on the spot if he did. It so happened that when Gerry fronted the band on the Tuesday that I was gone, Jack said something that offended Judy Holliday and she told Gerry to fire him, which he did. I called Jack immediately and he came back that night. I explained the whole thing to the other trumpet player and paid him for the night.
Years later, when Jack became a TV star and even had his own band, he still played in the Dream Band. Jack has his own following, and those people expect Jack to get dirty, but never while he worked in the Dream Band.
Jack and I had a routine going. We were working at Disneyland in the Carnation Ballroom and I always gave Jack a featured spot in my show where I'd have him sing and play three songs. Every time I introduced him, a gang of people would come to the front of the bandstand because they were Jack's fans. Jack would come down from the trumpet section to the front of the stage, and he'd always start his spot by saying, "Ohhhh, it's so nice to be here in Disneyland with Mickey and Minnie Mouse!" While he was saying "Minnie Mouse," I would count off the tempo to the first song so what you'd hear was "Minnie Mouse" and then the band coming in with the introduction to his first song. His regulars always thought I did that to stop Jack from saying something dirty about Mickey and Minnie Mouse. But that wasn't the case. We worked it out that way. I can just imagine what would have happened if I let Jack say what he wanted to say at Disneyland. Fired immediately. Not only Jack, but the whole Dream Band.
I was losing so much money with the band that I was thinking about going back on the road. I really hadn't worked anything but local jobs. In fact, the most money I ever made on one of these jobs was forty dollars as a leader.
Frank Strazzeri worked for me a lot in my little band but he never had any money because he didn't do television or jingles; he just played jazz piano. Frank was one of the truest jazz piano players I ever had in any of my bands. He was also one of the most melodic piano players I ever worked with. I tried to use him a lot on my jazz jobs because he was fun to be around.
Musicians in my band always wore dark suits and I loved putting Frank on. I'd say. "Frank, how long have you had that suit? It's starting to walk by itself; it looks terrible." After about two months of working for me, I got a call from Frank. "Terry, I bought a new dark suit." That made me feel bad because he had no money and here I was putting him on about this whole thing. When he showed up at the job, I made it worse. I said, "Well, why aren't you wearing the new suit tonight?" He said. "I AM wearing it!" I said, "You are? Well, you know what? It's not the suit, it's your body! The suit's good, your body's just weird."
I was getting into debt, so I called Joe Glaser and asked him to get me some work back east. Within a few weeks, he had booked a sixteen-week tour for me to go on the road. I asked Frank Strazzeri to go with me and Frank recommended a drummer called John Terrabaso and a bass player called Don Prell. I had two cars, so on September 9, 1960, we drove from California to Milwaukee where our first job was. ….
After Chicago, we went to Minneapolis; then to Kansas City, Cleveland, Baker's Keyboard in Detroit, and to New York City, where we played Birdland and the Jazz Gallery. Those were all two-week jobs. Those days, you played two weeks at a time in a club. Then we came back to California and went into the Summit.
By that time. Bob Gefaell had bought the Sundown from Jimmy Maddin and renamed it the Summit. We played three or four nights a week with the little group, and two nights a week with the big band. That was the first time that Pat [Moran; whom Terry had hired in Chicago to replace Frank Strazzeri] ever played in the rhythm section of a big band.
Mel Lewis was really bugged with how she comped [accompanied the soloists]. He was used to hearing Lou Levy playing in the rhythm section. Jack Tracy, who was the producer on the album, brought a whole bunch of people connected with Mercury Records in to hear the band, which included Patrice Munsell, a very famous singer.
We played our first set, and I was talking with Jack and Patrice, and Jack was also introducing me to all these other people at Mercury who I had never met before. Mel Lewis ran over to me at the table and said real loud, "IF SHE PLAYS ON THE NEXT SET, I'M NOT PLAYING!" That embarrassed the heck out of me. I pulled him off to the side and said to him, "You know what? You're right. You're NOT playing! GET OUT OF THE CLUB!" He said, "Get out? Who's going to play drums?" I said, "GET OUT! I'M going to play the next set on drums," and actually, physically, pushed him out of the club. I threw him out. Like a little boy, he came back, begging Berrel to tell me to let him come back into the club. He knew he was wrong and apologized. Mel wasn't the classiest guy you ever met, but I think that he and Buddy Rich, who played completely different styles of drums, were the two greatest big band drummers I ever heard.
We finally recorded two live albums from there using the same exact band for both records. Both albums were recorded early in 1961, about six months apart. The first was originally released by Verve Records as The Exciting Terry Gibbs Big Band Recorded Live at the Summit in Hollywood and the second was released by Mercury Records and called Explosion. They were both out of print for about twenty years until Fantasy leased them from Polygram, who owned all the masters, and renamed them "Main Stem" and "The Big Cat." Those eventually became volumes 4 and 5 of the Dream Band albums. As I said before, volumes 1, 2, and 3 came from the audition tapes that Wally recorded at the Seville and the Sundown.
I was never going to put them out. They were just going to be for me and my friends to listen to. Buddy Rich and Shorty Rogers used to come over to my house and listen to the tapes, and indirectly, they were responsible for me putting out the Dream Band CDs because they kept saying, "Let the world hear that band! It's the greatest band in the world!"
To be continued and concluded in Part 3.
Tuesday, October 7, 2025
Karel Boehlee Trio Last Tango In Paris
Monday, October 6, 2025
Part 1 -The Terry Gibbs Dream Band from "Terry Gibbs Good Vibes - A Life in Jazz"
© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
“When he talks and when he plays, Terry Gibbs tells us stories, and in these pages he’s told his best one yet: his own. It is a fascinating tale that covers many of Jazz’s greatest years and features a multitude of its greatest players, and it unfolds like a great Gibbs solo, with never a dull moment.”
- Dan Morgenstern, esteemed Jazz author and educator
“When I got back to California, my career took a completely different direction. I went from being a small bandleader to a big bandleader.”
- Terry Gibbs
Over the years, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has featured a number of postings about what came to be known as The Terry Gibbs “Dream Band.”
You can locate these in the blog archives via these links:
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2018/08/terry-gibbs-big-band-vamp-till-ready-by.html
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-terry-gibbs-dream-band-fantastic.html
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-terry-gibbs-dream-band.html
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2018/08/terry-gibbs-dream-band-one-more-time.html
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2019/08/terry-gibbs-dream-band-jack-tracy-notes.html
After finally procuring a copy of Terry Gibbs Good Vibes - A Life in Jazz thanks to the generosity of a Jazz buddy [2003], I thought it might be interesting to hear about the band and its evolution from the man who brought it into existence.
Terry really sets the record straight about some misconceptions about the band and its musicians, some of which may have inadvertently appeared in these earlier pieces.
“The Dream Band was the biggest fluke of my life. I never wanted to form a working band; I just wanted to record an album with a big band. I recorded one in New York, which I didn't like at all. It was actually my fault because I wanted to use the rhythm section with the quartet that I was traveling with. The big drag was that my drummer, Jerry Siegel, didn't have the experience of playing with a big band. I was so disgusted and bugged because that was my first big shot at recording a big band album. I had a great contract with Mercury Records. Bobby Shad loved my playing and would let me record anytime I came up with a good idea for an album.
When I first moved out to California, I heard Med Flory and Bill Holman rehearsing what was called a "kicks" band at the musicians union. Playing for kicks meant just playing for fun. Med and Bill were both great big band arrangers and wanted to hear their arrangements played by a big band.
Mel Lewis was the drummer with both bands and his drumming reminded me of the way Tiny Kahn played. I first met Mel in New York when he was working with Tex Beneke's band and all he wanted to talk about was Tiny Kahn. I never really got a chance to hear Mel play with a big band but I did hear him play with small groups in the local clubs. His style wasn't what I wanted for my quartet; it was too laid back and I wanted that little edge in the time. Bill and Med's bands were great and Mel played the heck out of the arrangements. He was, without a doubt, a giant big band drummer. His playing reminded me so much of Tiny, but I think that he even took that style of drumming to another level and it became a Mel Lewis style of drumming.
In listening to both groups, I got that feeling of wanting to record a big band again, but I had to come up with an idea, and finally, I did. I called Bobby Shad in New York and told him what I wanted to do and he liked my idea. Once again Bobby came through for me. He got Pete Rugolo. who was the West Coast recording director for Mercury Records, to sit in the booth and supervise the date.
The premise of the album was to take six different bandleaders: Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Tommy Dorsey. Then I would take two tunes that they each made famous, take sixteen bars from each of those tunes, and put them into the new arrangements that I was going to have written. We used sixteen bars of Artie Shaw's chorus from "Star Dust" sixteen bars of Ben Webster's chorus from "Cotton Tail" by Duke, sixteen bars of Illinois Jacquet's chorus from "Flying Home" by Lionel, and so on.
I hired six different arrangers for the album. Al Cohn for the Ellington charts, Med Flory for the Hampton charts. Marty Paich for the Dorsey charts. Bill Holman for the Shaw charts, Bobby Brookmeyer for the Goodman charts, and Manny Albam for the Basie charts. Any of the arrangers could have written any of the arrangements for any of the songs, and they would have sounded great. I just guessed who to give the assignments to and they all did a great job for me.
After getting all the arrangements copied, I wanted to rehearse the band before we recorded, but I found out that the union fined a very famous musician a thousand dollars one time for rehearsing for a record date. The union had good intentions and wanted you to rehearse in the studio so that if it went into overtime, you would get paid extra money for rehearsing. I was bugged because I had all this music written and couldn't rehearse the band.
At the same time this was happening, I was still playing little clubs around town. A movie columnist called Eve Starr heard me play and liked what I did. We became friendly and every once in a while she'd mention my name in her column. She told me about these friends of hers, Harry and Alice Schiller, who owned the Seville nightclub on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. The club was doing badly and was about to close. They tried Latin music and country-western, but nothing worked. Eve told Harry Schiller about me and suggested that they put some jazz in the club, so I agreed to play there with a quintet on a Tuesday night, and if it went good, we would do it again the next Tuesday.
The quintet I put together had Conte Candoli on trumpet, Russ Freeman on piano, Charlie Haden on bass, and Stan Levey on drums. We played that one Tuesday night and it went well. We drew enough people for the club to make some money, so we did it again the next Tuesday.
In the meantime, I found out that although you couldn't rehearse for a record date, you could rehearse for a nightclub job, which made no sense to me at all. I still had all this big band music, so I went to Harry Schiller and said. "Harry, how would you like to have a big band for the same amount of money you're paying me for five musicians?" I was getting way over scale, which at that time was fifteen dollars a man so I could afford to pay everybody union scale. The band would have played for nothing because they wanted to record this album as much as I did. Harry said, "I don't care how many musicians you have, as long as it doesn't cost me any more money."
Big bands were not "in." It wasn't feasible to form a big band, because musicians like Dave Brubeck made as much money for a quartet as Count Basie made for his whole band. In the old days, a guy would leave a band to start his own band, but in 1959, because of the money situation, there was no reason to start a big band.
We had to sign a new contract with Harry Schiller for sixteen musicians instead of five. This was my big shot to not only record the band, but to play in the club with the band. I used Jack Schwartz, my baritone player, as my contractor, and Berrel [Saunders] as my band boy and road manager. Larry Finley was a good friend of the Schillers and was going to publicize the show, so he met Jack, Berrel, Harry, and me at the club.
We were sitting at the bar having a few drinks and talking about where we were going to put the bandstand and other things, when all of a sudden. Jack Schwartz fell over backwards off the barstool. BANG! His head hit the floor. The most selfish things went through my head when that happened. "My God, Jack Schwartz just dropped dead! He just had a heart attack. That asshole just dropped dead and I haven't even signed the contracts yet. I won't even get to open up at the club!"
As Jack was lying on the floor, Berrel bent down to see how he was. He looked up at me and said, "He's snoring." Jack had one too many drinks, passed out, and was on the floor, sleeping. We got him up and now I wanted to sign my name on the contract as fast as possible. I didn't even get to my last name, Gibbs, before Jack fell back off the barstool again. We just let him lay on the floor until I signed the contract.
I told Steve Allen that I was putting a big band together to play at a club for one night. He gave me a plug on his show on NBC and we told a bunch of musicians around town about it. We didn't expect to draw more than twenty or thirty people in the club.
The personnel of the band that did the record date had Al Porcino, Ray Triscari, Conte Candoli, and Stu Williamson on trumpets, Vern Friley, Frank Rosolino, and Bob Enevoldsen on trombones, Joe Maini, Charlie Kennedy, Med Flory, Bill Holman, and Jack Schwartz on saxophones, Pete Jolly on piano, Max Bennett on bass, and Mel Lewis on drums.
We were very fortunate in that band. We hardly had any subs. Even though Pete Jolly recorded the first album, Russ Freeman played the first job with the big band. Pete had other commitments on the first Tuesday we played at the Seville. He did come back the next week for a few Tuesdays. When Pete started to get real busy, Lou Levy joined the band. The rest of the band stayed practically the same.
We rehearsed at the club on Monday, the day before we were to open with the big band. Then on Tuesday, we went into the studio and recorded all day. We got to the club at nine-thirty that night to get ready to play at ten. When we got there, sure enough, there were only about twenty or thirty people there. That's all we expected. I only had thirteen pieces of music and we were going to have to do three or four shows. They were all short tunes, because those days, you recorded three or four-minute songs so that you could get airplay on the radio.
I figured I had about forty-eight minutes of music to play for four sets, so we went into the back room and I said to the guys, "Conte, at letter A, you've got a thousand choruses. At letter B, Frank Rosolino, you've got two million choruses." I needed to stretch each tune out to be about ten or twelve minutes long and had to make an arrangement on top of an arrangement so we could open it up in order to kill time.
When we came out of the band room to play, the place was packed. There were three hundred people in the club. Sitting there were Louella Parsons, Fred MacMurray and June Haver, Johnny Mercer, Steve Allen, Jerry Lewis, Steve McQueen, Soupy Sales, all these famous actors plus every musician in town. When I saw this, I said, "Okay, guys, back to the band room!" We got back there and I said, "Gentlemen, we're starting a band tonight. The first rule is there's no drinking off the bandstand. If you want to drink, you've got to drink on stage. It's a party. So hurry up and relax."
After the first tune, "Just Plain Meyer," we got a standing ovation. That first song was our good luck charm. It was an arrangement that Bobby Brookmeyer wrote for the album I did in New York. We played that first and tore up the place. That one we didn't open up; we played it as a three-minute arrangement and hit them in the head with it.
I was about ready to tap off the second song when Med Flory stood up and said, "I need a beer, Terry! WAITRESS! A BEER!" Al Porcino then stood up. "I DON'T HAVE ONE EITHER!" The five waitresses at the club were now on the bandstand serving the band, not the people in the audience. Everybody was screaming for a drink, but the band knew the rule: no drinking off the bandstand. Everybody made fifteen dollars for playing the job but their bar tabs were twenty-three dollars. You've got to either love music that much or be a complete idiot to go to work and lose eight dollars every time you played.
That night was such a success that the Schillers and I agreed to do it again the next week. By that time. Bill Holman and Med Flory each lent me three or four of their arrangements. We rehearsed at the union and got a chance to open up the arrangements so that more guys could blow some jazz.
On the next Tuesday, when we got to the club at nine-thirty, once again, twenty or thirty people were there. We figured it was one of those flukes. It was nice for that one day and we had a ball. We went into the band room to talk things over about what we were going to do. When we walked back out, once again there were 300 people packed in the club. You couldn't get any more people in the place if you tried. In fact, there was a line of people outside waiting to get in.
We did this for five or six Tuesdays in a row and then Harry Schiller said, "Why don't we do this five days a week?" We figured, okay, why not? We'll give it a shot. When we signed the contract to do the five days a week, we didn't realize that Count Basie was opening up at the Crescendo, which was about five blocks away, the same day that we were going to start doing the five days. Not only did we out-draw Count Basie's band, but between sets, Basie's band was at OUR club listening to OUR band. They didn't believe how great the band was. Nobody believed it.
One reason why that band was so great is that we all felt the same way about how the music should be played. If you talked to all the guys individually and asked them, "Who are your favorite musicians?" they'd all say Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. We were all bebop freaks and articulated the music the same way. There was something I was looking for in the playing of the music. I like over-exaggeration. If it's supposed to be played loud, play it louder, and if the music says soft, play it softer. When I used to conduct television shows, I would tell the guys, "Everybody follow me and even if I'm wrong, you still follow me, because if we're all wrong together, we will sound right."
After that first rehearsal, they knew exactly what I was looking for. When we got some new arrangements and rehearsed them, I never had to do anything except say, "One, two, three, four." Everybody knew exactly how I wanted the music played. No matter what tempo we played, the band knew the difference between an eighth note and a quarter note. It was like one person playing all the parts. If you talk to four trumpet players today and ask them who their favorite trumpet player is, they might say Miles Davis or Freddie Hubbard or Wynton Marsalis or Art Farmer. You'll hear four different styles of playing. Even though they came from the same school, you'll hear four different ways of articulating the same piece of music.
A very important plus is that we all loved each other. The camaraderie in the band was something else. We used to break each other up on stage. Guys in the band would applaud for each other. Conte would play a solo and the guys in the band would applaud for him before the audience would. We didn't believe how good the band was. When we played Tuesday night, on Wednesday morning, we'd call each other: "Do you believe that band?" Mel Lewis would call me every time; "I can't believe the band!" If somebody was going to write a Hollywood style story about how a band hit it big overnight, that's what happened with us. Three hundred people every night, with a line waiting around the block to get in. That, in itself, is a Hollywood style story.
When critics around the country started to write about the band, they said that it was a “kicks band" and that most of the guys did studio work. Not true. Because of the fluke, we started out as a working band and had lots of kicks, but none of the guys except for Ray Triscari did any studio work. The contractors didn't know about the Frank Rosolinos, the Conte Candolis, and the Joe Mainis. In fact, the contractors would come into the club, look at the band and say to each other, "Look! Conte Candoli can read music! Frank Rosolino! He's reading music!" They didn't know the level of musicianship in the band.
Before we opened up at the Seville, I went to see Gene Norman, who owned the Crescendo and the Interlude clubs. I worked for Gene at the Empire Room when I was with Woody Herman's band in 1948 and by now, I was an established jazz name, so Gene knew who I was. I went to Gene and said, "I'd like to play your club with my quartet." Gene, who is a good friend of mine now, looked at me, and instead of saying something diplomatic like. "I don't have any openings right now," said, "Terry, who are you going to draw?" That really bugged me. That was like a slap in the face. He actually insulted me by saying that.
George Shearing was working for Gene Norman at the Crescendo at the same time we were working at the Seville. George heard about the band and had his valet bring him in between his sets on Tuesday nights. Sometimes he came in two or three times during the night. When we started playing five nights a week, his valet couldn't bring George in for this one set, so Gene brought him to the club. The club was packed and we had a line of people waiting to get in for the next show. Berrel came to me and said that George Shearing and Gene Norman were standing in line waiting to get in the club, so I said to Berrel, "You go out there and bring George in and then ask Gene Norman who he thinks I would draw." He brought George into the club and left Gene standing in line.
I always asked George if he would sit in with us but I actually think he was afraid to because the band was so powerful. Finally, one night, he got up enough nerve to sit in. George has a warped sense of humor, which I love. When he got up on the bandstand, the first thing he said was, "Terry, don't play anything too hard, I don't read music too well." Those were the wrong guys to tell that to because in the middle of the first song, somebody came over to him and said, "We're at letter B, George." There were all kinds of sick lines thrown at him, like, "Let's go hear a movie tonight, George." But he started it and he had the right guys to do it with.
The band sounded so good that I wanted to record it live. I heard about this recording engineer named Wally Heider, who used to go around the country taping big bands. Wally's father was a big attorney and Wally studied to be one also, but Wally stuttered very badly, and I don't think he would have made it as an attorney. I heard that he had good ears for recording live, so I wanted to hear what Wally could do. I asked him if he would sort of audition for me. I didn't know that he had been in the club a few times and had already heard the band. He was thrilled when I asked him if he would like to do a live recording.
The next Tuesday, Wally brought all his equipment in and recorded the band. I went back to the studio with Wally right after we got done working at about two o'clock in the morning and listened to what he had recorded. It was about 95 percent what I was looking for. I said, "Wally, that's great. But let me tell you what I want to hear. Number one. Do you hear how great the lead trumpet player sounds?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Now, what I want to hear is the fourth trumpet player just as loud as the first trumpet player. In fact, I want to hear all four trumpet players on the same level. I want to hear a chord. I don't want anybody sticking out.
"Secondly, tomorrow I'm going to bring you a record called 'Jack the Bear' by Duke Ellington. Those days it was very hard to record a bass, especially with a big band. You'd hear boom, boom, boom. I want to hear notes. I want to hear bing, bang, boung, bong.
"Third thing: the drums. I don't want to feel them; I want to hear them. And I don't want them to sound 'distancy.' I want them to sound up front." I wanted the band to sound like you'd hear it in the club. If you listen to the CDs that Wally engineered, it sounds like you were right there in the club. The band sounds like it's jumping right out at you.
The next night, after he heard "Jack the Bear," he came back and recorded the band again. The first Dream Band albums that came out were the audition tapes that I had in my house for twenty-seven years. If it weren't for Wally, the Dream Band CDs would have sounded like they were recorded in 1959. Instead, they sound like they were recorded yesterday.
Shelly Hasten, Joe Mikolas. and Skip Krask, who were from Chicago and were friends of Hugh Hefner, bought a club called the Mocambo, which was right next to the Crescendo. It was once the elite club of old Hollywood where all the famous movie stars used to frequent. It was completely mirrored and was once considered to be the classiest club in town. They renamed it the Cloister after another club they owned in Chicago.
They were a bunch of hip guys who loved our big band and they asked us to open up their new club along with [vocalist] Andy Williams and [comedian] Frank Gorshin. Because of how Andy's music was written, we had to add sixteen strings to the band. Being that the walls were mirrored, when the band played, the sound bounced off all of the walls and made it sound louder than it really was.
Arlene Dahl, the movie actress, came to the club on opening night. She was sitting right in front of the band and every time the band played, she cupped her ears. That was very unclassy for such a pretty lady to do and it really bugged the hell out of me.
The band never got anything but positive reviews. We were the heroes of the town. The first negative review the band ever got was by Army Archerd from Variety. The Cloister was right next door to the Crescendo, so Army wrote: "Last night, the Terry Gibbs Big Band played dance music at the Cloister and six couples got up to dance at the Crescendo." That didn't get to me at all because it made it sound like we were playing too loud. I went to the three guys who owned the Cloister and I said, "Listen, if you want us to leave after the first week, we will." They said, "What happened?" I showed them the review and they said, "You know what? Play louder! Screw them all." They loved the band.
We stayed there two or three weeks, but I wasn't having fun. We were making more money, but we had lost that whole loose feeling of having fun playing music, drinking on stage, and carrying on. We had become a show band.
In the meantime, Jimmy Maddin, who owned the Sundown, asked me if I'd like to bring the band into his club. I went to see what the Sundown looked like and it was just what I was looking for. It was laid out just right for the big band. We could put the bandstand in the corner of the room because I wanted the band to play for dancing so that we could have more fun playing without everybody staring at us. We also agreed that there would be no cover charge. We wanted to make it a hangout. I went to the guys at the Cloister and gave them my notice. They were great guys; they understood what I wanted to do with the band. They did make me a great offer, though.
Being that the band was only going to play at the Sundown one or two nights a week, they asked me if I would consider playing at the Cloister with a quintet the other five nights. I think they just liked hanging out with me. In fact, Shelly Kasten, one of the owners, and I became good friends. The guys would always invite me to their so-called Hollywood parties. There were always a lot of pretty girls and great food at these parties.
We played there for about four weeks and I used the same rhythm section that was in the big band at that time: Mel Lewis, Buddy Clark, and Benny Aronov. I had Joe Maini and Conte Candoli split the job as the fifth member of the quintet.
When we opened the Sundown, once again it was packed with movie stars. Johnny Mercer was there every night that we played. It was a one-of-a-kind band. It was so good and so much fun that I didn't want to leave town. After that little experience of working at the Cloister, where I was making some money but not having fun, I went back to just having fun. We were having the time of our lives just playing music. I also think that the people who came in to see us were having more fun because with the band swinging so hard, they could now get up and dance and get something out of their system.
While we were at the Sundown, the band changed a little bit. We started with the same trumpets, Al Porcino, Ray Triscari. Stu Williamson, and Conte Candoli. After a few weeks, John Audino replaced Al Porcino. who went with Harry James. Then Bob Edmondson came in to replace Bob Enevoldsen on trombone. Vern Friley was still there and so was Frank Rosolino. We had a few replacements every once in a while for Frank because he would go out on the road, and then either Carl Fontana or Bobby Burgess would play in the band. There was always a heavyweight there to take Frank's place.
The original saxophone section had Joe Maini, Charlie Kennedy. Med Flory, Bill Holman, and Jack Schwartz. Bill Holman left after a few weeks because he got very busy arranging for Stan Kenton, so Bill Perkins took his place. Jack Schwartz got very busy with real estate so Jack Nimitz came in and stayed. Then Med left and Richie Kamuca came in. Mel Lewis was the drummer, Lou Levy was the piano player, and Buddy Clark played bass. That band stayed together for about a year. It was such a winner that even though I only made eleven dollars a night after I paid everybody in the band, it was worth it. …
To be continued in Part 2
Friday, October 3, 2025
Charlie Rouse - A Creative Force on Tenor Saxophone
