JazzWax

Interview: Bill Holman (Part 3)

Once Bill Holman began composing and arranging in earnest for Stan Kenton's orchestra in late 1952, he quickly grew comfortable taking risks with his music. The band was made up of enormously skilled technicians and fiery soloists, allowing Bill to experiment with different sections of the orchestra, develop conversational harmonies, and retain the tap-dancey swing he favored since childhood. [Pictured, Conte Candoli and Bill Holman. Photo: Ray Avery Collection]

By the time Bill's music was featured on a 10-inch Capitol album called Kenton Showcase: The Music of Bill Holman (1954), much of his style was in place. A signature Bill Holman arrangement often opened with a simple clarion theme, quickly followed by the band crowding in and swaggering on the theme toward a series of towel-snap crescendos. Bill's work on Stan Kenton: Contemporary Concepts, recorded in July 1955, reflects the high point of this period with the Kenton band.

In Part 3 of my four-part conversation on Bill's 1950s career, the legendary composer, arranger and tenor saxophonist talks about his fondness for trumpeter Conte Candoli's sound, using the Kenton band bus to think through arrangements, the characteristics of the Bill Holman sound, and his favorite Kenton chart:

JazzWax: Bags on the Kenton Showcase album, is a fabulous piece of writing.
Bill Holman: I wrote that for bassist Don Bagley. It was a feature for him. That was the first composition I wrote and arranged after I my writing style began to evolve. I was very happy with Bags, and the band liked playing it. They liked pretty much everything I did. It was a very good period. I still had innocence about my writing, you know?

JW: What do you mean?
BH: The writing on Bags and other songs from that period, I’ll never be able to recapture that feel. In the early 1950s, I didn’t have the technique yet to be a showoff. All that music came straight from the heart. As you get older, you get wiser and along the way you lose your innocence. When you're young, you don’t have the smarts to get cute. You're just being inspirational. Also, back then, I was playing every night. I think being a steady jazz player had a big influence on my writing. It made me give the music an improvised feel, unless I was writing a dramatic piece, which is obviously not improvised.

JW: Without the technique, as you put it, how did you view such a monster band when writing?
BH: I used to think of it as a large quintet. I wanted the horns to sound like they were playing together, as if reading written music. But I also wanted them at times to sound like they were improvising over the rhythm section. That’s what I did with the band all the time. Being a player is immensely helpful in understanding that feel and how to write so it actually happens.

JW: Were you a fast writer?
BH: I wrote the Kenton arrangements fairly quickly. I remember when we were on the road, I would sit on the bus and, you know, if there was no conversation that involved me and no one was playing any music or anything, I’d think about charts and make notes. When I’d get to the hotel, I’d write them out. When we'd get to a gig, I’d check them out on the piano. There wasn't too much agonizing going on there.

JW: So you were pretty quick.
BH: Yeah, at times. Once the score was done, I would send everything back to L.A., where Stan had a copyist who transcribed what I wrote for the individual musicians' parts. Then he'd send the parts back to the band, wherever we were.

JW: Who was your favorite in the trumpet section?
BH: For jazz, Conte Candoli. His overall approach to jazz from early on was very mature. He wasn’t the most original player, but he could get the right feeling in practically any situation. [Pictured: Conte Candoli and guitarist Sal Salvador in the early 1950s]

JW: What about Maynard Ferguson?
BH: I didn’t really think of him as a jazz player, in the purest sense. Jazz is about ideas, and Maynard at times was more technical in his approach. He did a lot of improvising with his various bands, but he rarely played warm solos the way Conte did. He had a different style. He was a fabulous player and a great guy.

JW: Did your confidence grow as a writer in 1952 and 1953? Did you feel like you had a magic pen?
BH: No I never did feel that way, thank god. That’s a very dangerous way to feel. Writing music and arranging never gets easy. I’ve had students ask me, "How long does it take before it gets easy?" I tell them, "Never." As soon as you get to one point in your development, you’re looking at the next level.

JW: Your arrangements for Stan Kenton Presents: Frank Rosolino in 1954 and 1955 are some of the most fabulous small-group charts.
BH: [Laughs] Those were fun. That was a great group to write for. Frank was a terrific trombonist.

JW: Which of your Kenton arrangements are you most happy with?
BH: For a long time it was What's New?, off the Contemporary Concepts album. I’m not so sure about that now. I like Stella by Starlight, with Charlie Mariano [pictured, on alto sax]. There was another one I liked a lot, from the Kenton Showcase album...

JW: Solo for Buddy?
BH: No, I hated that one. [Bill hums a few bars of the song he has in mind.]

JW: Kingfish?
BH: Yes, that's the one. I was very happy with how the blues line came out on there.

JW: Did your workload for the Kenton band increase in the mid-1950s?
BH: A bit. I was the chief arranger for the band by 1955 and part of 1956, so I was writing a lot then.

JW: How did you wind up leaving the band?
BH: Almost overnight Stan [pictured] had some kind of weird shift in his outlook, and he fired trumpeter Al Porcino and me. I don’t know why. He possibly felt the music was getting away from him. Al was a die-hard fan of swinging music, as was I. I think Stan thought that his conception for the band was going out the window. That's just my idea of what happened.

JW: When he let you go, were you anxious about suddenly being out on your own?
BH: Not really. By that time I started doing a lot of writing for different bands.

JW: Right around this time you arranged Around the Horn with Maynard Ferguson, an album with a glorious swinging feel.
BH: When we made that record, it was kind of a studio band made up of a lot of Maynard's friends. It wasn’t until Maynard went to New York that he came up with that young, energetic band he used steadily. My things for Around the Horn were kind of laid back, in the Basie groove.

JW: If there's a Bill Holman sound around this period, what is it?
BH: The lines, I think, would be the big tipoff. But there are some melodic things that are distinctive. Same with my overall style. I didn’t realize that my music was recognizable until probably the 1960s, when enough people told me they could recognize pieces of mine. That’s when I started paying attention and realized maybe there are some things that sound like me.

JW: To me, you're always building toward a punch.
BH: That's true. I became very aware early on of the form that an arrangement needed to take to be exciting. I also learned what to leave out. Russ Garcia [pictured] was the first hint I got of that. I took an arrangement to him one time and he looked it over and said, "You have enough music here for 10 charts. You have to learn how to be more economical and reuse your material."

JW: What did he mean?
BH: I used to think that writing a jazz arrangement was like stream of consciousness, the same as a jazz solo. You just started playing and built on what you just played. Then you go on to the next thing and never repeat yourself. This was before I realized that jazz solos actually had form, too. After a few years it finally dawned on me that the ear wants to hear something it recognizes, so I started concentrating on the shape of an entire piece, the form, and how it builds to a climax. As a writer, you also want to avoid getting to the climax too soon. If you do, you’ll kill yourself trying to top it in the arrangement. And the result is monotony. So what you just said about building to a punch is a conscious effort on my part.

JW: It’s almost as if you're shifting gears in a car.
BH: [Laughs] Well, I’ve always been aware of the audience, in that respect. I think that doing a lot of commercial writing since the late 1950s may have made me too overly conscious of the audience.

JW: What do you mean?
BH: As a composer and arranger, there’s always a natural tendency to make things attractive, and music doesn’t always need to be attractive. You have to pull yourself back.

Tomorrow, in the final part of my interview series, Bill talks about playing on Johnny Richards' Something Else, his compositions for The Gerry Mulligan Songbook, his big band album In a Jazz Orbit, writing for Anita O'Day, his crush on Peggy Lee, and the upcoming Tony Bennett Christmas album.

JazzWax tracks: In 1954, Stan Kenton gave Bill Holman an opportunity to record an album devoted entirely to his compositions and arrangements. The album was called Kenton Showcase: The Music of Bill Holman. Today, the album has been coupled on CD with Kenton Showcase: The Music of Bill Russo, another Kenton arranger. The Holman material is fabulous and can be downloaded at iTunes or Amazon. The Holman tracks are Nos. 9 through 12.

Kenton's Contemporary Concepts, is available at Amazon as a download. Bill's arrangements are Stella by Starlight, Yesterdays, Cherokee, I've Got You Under My Skin, What's New?, Stompin' at the Savoy, Black Coffee and The Thrill Is Gone. To hear how magnificent and advanced Bill's arranging was at this point, listen to Stompin' at the Savoy carefully and dig how it keeps building, with Mel Lewis delivering a powerhouse beat and crescendo solo. What a bounce! And catch the counterpoint and harmonies. It's a perfect chart.

Bill's arrangements for Frank Rosolino's small groups in 1954 and 1955 were released originally on 10-inch albums and then on 12-inch LPs as Kenton Presents: Frank Rosolino and Kenton Presents: Frankly Speaking. If you don't own these, do yourself a favor and grab one of the six out-of-print Mosaic CD boxes of the entire Presents series being sold by independent sellers for about $50 here.

Around the Horn With Maynard Ferguson also is a favorite of mine. I own two copies of the EmArcy LP. One day soon, hopefully, Verve will re-issue the recording. Until then, you can download a handful of the Bill Holman tracks—Dreamboat, Pork Pie, Never You Mind, Dancing Nightly and Wildman—at iTunes off Maynard Ferguson: Verve Jazz Masters 52.

Interview: Bill Holman (Part 2)

When Stan Kenton assembled his 39-piece Innovations in Modern Music Orchestra in 1950, the band was heavy on stars and light on music. Listeners found compositions like Halls of Brass and House of Strings ponderous and pretentious. By the end of 1951, instrumentalists such as Shorty Rogers, Bob Cooper, Bud Shank and Art Pepper had had enough and began leaving to form their own groups. So Kenton scrapped his Wagnerian-jazz experiment and formed a new, swinging band in January 1952. Among this orchestra's most exciting arrangers was Bill Holman, who joined the band in March.

This new band of Kenton's recorded its first studio album, New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm, in September 1952. The album's opener was Prologue (This Is an Orchestra!), an odd, 10-minute track narrated by Kenton showcasing the musical personalities of the different band members. When it was Bill's turn, he blew a few bars on the tenor sax and Kenton thundered: "That announced the tenor saxophone of Bill Holman, playing now. He represents a talent that is discontent with the music of the present. He's anxious over the future. He writes. He orchestrates, too." When I asked Bill yesterday whether he had been truly anxious about the future, he laughed. "No. They just wrote a bunch of stuff for Stan [pictured] that would sound good. We all laughed later over the lines, like the one he said about Richie [Kamuca]: 'Willing to be happy and swing at the drop of a hat.' "

In Part 2 of my four-part conversation with the arranger who changed the direction of big band jazz, Bill recalls his passion for writing and scoring, how he came to the attention of Stan Kenton, the importance of Gerry Mulligan, and how he feels about his Invention for Guitar and Trumpet:

JazzWax: When you were at L.A.'s Westlake College of Music in the late 1940s, you also played in local bands, yes?
Bill Holman: Oh, sure. My first break was with pianist Ike Carpenter in 1948. Carpenter's orchestra had started out as a jazz band and had some Ellington-style charts written by a guy named Paul Villepigue, a wonderful arranger, teacher and a sweet man. But shortly before I arrived, Carpenter bought the complete book of arrangements from of a hotel band that played sweet dance music. That’s the stuff we played. I was with Carpenter for about a year and a half.

JW: During this time you were learning the basics of arranging in college?
BH: Yes. I had all this material stored up in my head, from when I was a kid listening to the radio. As soon as I learned a few technical things about writing and orchestrating, I was writing arrangements right away.

JW: Just like that?
BH: Pretty much. After a couple of weeks of school I was writing charts. I had a passion for it. I had been interested in arranging in high school. But growing up in Santa Ana, there were no arrangers, and no one I could ask what to do in certain situations.

JW: But why arranging? Because you had ideas in your head that you wanted to hear played by a band?
BH: You make it sound more exciting than it was. [laughs] I just liked the idea of doing it and wondered whether I could. So when I was at Westlake, I met saxophonists Bill Perkins [pictured] and Dave Madden and other guys who were making a living writing, arranging and playing music. That encouraged me enormously.

JW: Which band had the most influence on you?
BW: When I was listening to the radio all those years growing up? I loved Count Basie’s band, with Lester Young and Jo Jones. That swing rhythm got to me, more so than Duke's band. Duke was so different from everyone else that I didn’t think what he was doing applied to me or that I could ever do what he did. Duke had some magic going that I could never touch. But Basie's rhythm was different.

JW: What was your big breakthrough in college?
BH: Reading Russ Garcia’s book, which he eventually published in 1954 as Professional Arranger and Composer. It's still available today. Russ taught at the school, and his workbook for class had practically everything you needed to be a commercial arranger. I studied arranging with him for about a year at Westlake and liked him so much I studied with him privately. We went over the same stuff that was in his book, but in a little more depth.

JW: You graduated from Westlake in 1950. Then what?
BH: I joined Charlie Barnet's band. During my time with Ike Carpenter and Barnet, I also played in local rehearsal bands and associated with a lot of arrangers, including Gene Roland [pictured], who played and arranged for Kenton. We became good friends. Gene always had a rehearsal band wherever he’d go. He had four trumpets and four tenors, and I got to sit in with a couple of those bands. That rehearsal orchestra known as the Band That Never Was [in 1950] was his. Gene's writing was very simple. He'd write everything in four-part block harmony. By having tenors and trumpets, he'd only have to write four parts for the trumpets and the same four parts would do for the tenors, except they'd be an octave lower. This gave him an automatic ensemble.

JW: What was Gene Roland like?
BH: He was a talented guy. Very energetic. But his talent got spread out in a lot of areas, and never really got it together in a single area. He was a substantial contributor to the Kenton band and had a couple of big hits, like Tampico and Easy Street in 1945 and Jump for Joe in 1951. He had a meat-and-potatoes writing style using four-part harmony. He was an inspiration to me, and he showed me what could be done using a limited palette of harmony. He epitomized what it meant to be a jazz arranger. He was friendly and never tried to hide anything. He could be funny and serious, and his emotions always showed.

JW: Did he like your work?
BH: Yes. One night in 1951, Gene was at my house, and I played him a recording I had made when I was still going to Westlake. It was a 12-tone blues piece for a rehearsal band. Gene got very excited when he heard it and said, “I think this is what Stan is looking for.” Apparently, Stan had been talking to Gene about working a more linear approach into the band's music instead of that vertical harmonic thing he was doing with the Innovations orchestra. Stan was thinking about lines, and this 12-tone tune I played for Gene was full of lines. I don’t remember the name of it.

JW: What exactly is a 12-tone tune?
BH: It’s a technique devised by Arnold Scheonberg where you use all 12 tones of the chromatic scale in a preconceived order, and you use them all before you repeat them. It’s also called "serial writing." When students are first exposed to that concept, they're apt to write a 12-tone blues. It was the thing to do in avant-garde classical music back then. Since then it has lost favor.

JW: Did Kenton hear your 12-tone tune?
BH: Yes. After playing the recording for Gene, I went out on the road with Barnet [pictured]. Gene took the recording to Stan in the fall of 1951. When I came back off the road, I met with Stan, and he told me he was very interested in my writing. He told me about his idea for a new band that would have a more linear approach and that my writing style would be perfect. He asked me to write a couple of things for the band, which I did in late 1951. Meanwhile, Stan was re-forming the band and was looking for a tenor saxophonist. My friend Dick Meldonian, who played alto sax in the band, recommended me. I replaced Bob Cooper, who had left.

JW: Were the compositions you wrote good?
BH: They were awful. [laughs] I was trying too hard. I didn’t have the intellectual equipment to do what I was trying to do. So we rehearsed them once, and they were never heard of again.

JW: How were things left with Kenton?
BH: It was decided in March 1952 that I'd join Kenton strictly as a tenor player. After my two arranging failures, we didn’t talk any more about writing. So I was the tenor player. Eventually, he said I should write something. But I didn’t know what to write because I didn’t know how to write the kind of progressive jazz he favored. I also knew he didn't want Count Basie-type arrangements. So I just kind of cooled it and played the book.

JW: What was the turning point?
BH: Gerry Mulligan [pictured] wrote 8 or 10 charts for the band at around the time I joined. So we played those, and I got to listen to them every night. As I'd play them, I'd listen to the harmony and the form to see how a big-time writer goes about crafting a chart. It kind of helped me get my own conception going. By late 1952 I started writing again. Stan liked what I was doing. I liked what I was doing, too. So I figured I had found a direction in which to go with my composing and arranging.

JW: In September 1952, the Kenton band recorded This Is an Orchestra! How was that done?
BH: We just did it live in the studio. We did what’s on the record. There was no editing or retakes. That’s the way we made all our records back then. We played them all the way through and hoped no one goofed. [Pictured: Kenton and Capitol engineer Bill Putnam, center]

JW: Perhaps the strongest and most cutting-edge track recorded during the September Capitol session was your Invention for Guitar and Trumpet.
BH: That was an assignment. Stan asked me to do that featuring Maynard [Ferguson] and Sal [Salvador, pictured]. An invention is a song with lots of counterpoint between two instruments. I knew how to write an invention from my studies. I just jumped in and did it.

JW: What do you think of it?
BH: It’s not one of my favorite pieces.

JW: You've got to be kidding. Why?
BH: It’s disjointed. Nothing ever gets said. It’s a hodge-podge of different things. But it filled the bill, and I think it was re-released more than any other chart I wrote for him.

JW: Were you surprised to hear it pop up in the movie, The Blackboard Jungle in 1955?
BH: I was surprised when I got paid for it. [laughs] I hadn't seen the picture, so I didn’t know. I only knew about it when I saw the royalty statement. So I went to see the film. The composition is OK. It's not my favorite piece.

Tomorrow, Bill talks about his favorite trumpet player in the band, the writing and arranging of Bags and his other Kenton Showcase pieces, writing for trombonist Frank Rosolino, rising to become Kenton's chief arranger in 1955, and the reason he left the band in 1956.

JazzWax tracks: You can sample Kenton's 1950-1951 Innovations Orchestra at iTunes on Carnegie Hall: October '51. Or you'll find much of the band's recorded works on CD here. The band's European-influenced, string-heavy arrangements were exercises in tedium for Kenton fans and many of the band's Young Turks, who were itching to break out on their own by the end of 1951.

New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm, the first album showcasing Kenton's new brassy sound, can be downloaded at iTunes and Amazon. Prologue (This Is an Orchestra!) remains a fascinating mood-setter for me and an interesting audio document. The narrated track comes off almost as a Kenton apology for the brooding Innovations material. It has always struck me as a slate-cleaning announcement that a new, hot-blooded orchestra with charts to match was in place. As you click around on the album's other tracks, you'll notice that many are pretty mundane works—until you hit Bill's only composition and arrangement for the session, Invention for Guitar and Trumpet.

Even on the sample snippet, you hear instantly that this song is different. It virtually explodes with risk-taking and biting energy, signaling an entire new era in big-band writing and arranging. Despite Bill's misgivings about the song's quality, it is the start of the West Coast's modern big-band sound and marks a significant shift away from the formulaic arranging styles that had preceded it.

Interestingly, four years later, in the film The Blackboard Jungle, the record was not used as an example of hot new music but a symbol of square, adult jazz—a relic being edged out by rock 'n' roll favored by the film's rude and angry teens.

Interview: Bill Holman (Part 1)

Captivated by Count Basie's swing and Gerry Mulligan's cool orchestral intensity, Bill Holman began arranging in the early 1950s and quickly became one of the most exciting and significant big band arrangers of the decade. Deciding on music as a profession relatively late (at age 20), Bill's charts for Kenton were highly influential, combining a Pacific Coast sunset feel with a brassy urgency that other arrangers and West Coast movie and television studios rapidly adapted. Bill's numerous arrangements for Kenton's band (including Bags, Kingfish, Stella by Starlight and Invention for Guitar and Trumpet) to this day retain their electrifying punch and rakish simplicity. Each is a work that rises incrementally and excites at each landing. In the decades that followed, Bill's orchestral technique would continue to develop, and he remains in high demand today. His bold 1997 album, Brilliant Corners: The Music of Thelonious Monk won a Grammy, and he just finished scoring a Christmas album for Tony Bennett to be released later this year.

When you speak with Bill for a while, what you notice is his mischievous wit. Bill isn't a joke teller, and much of his humor comes at his own expense. But what makes Bill so funny is his timing. He doesn't wind up. He just slips the funny stuff in, matter-of-factly. When I asked if he was a good saxophonist in high school, he paused and said, "No." When I said that was hard to believe, he replied, "It happens [beat], and it has happened a few times since." The more we spoke, the more I came to realize that Bill's humor and writing have a lot in common. Both are crafted unconsciously for impact, leaving dramatic space before and after crescendos, which in turn results in maximum delight for the listener.

In Part 1 of my four-part conversation with the legendary composer, arranger and tenor saxophonist, Bill talks about growing up in a California home without records, his close call with engineering, and the turning point that led to his enrollment at a Los Angeles music school:

JazzWax: Where were you born?
Bill Holman: In Olive, California. But we moved very early on to Orange, near Anaheim. When I was in the third grade, we moved again to Santa Ana, near the orange groves, where we remained. I had a typical kid life growing up. There was no supervision. And I could do whatever I felt like doing.

JW: What did your dad do?
BH: He owned a bunch of failing businesses. He tried produce departments in grocery stores, gas stations, and a bunch of other things. Then he took a course in accounting, and it turned out he was a whiz. He got a job right away in the Navy as an accountant, and later became an auditor. He kind of finished up with a bang and got great gigs out of that. I didn’t get to reap any of the benefit though [laughing].

JW: Brothers or sisters?
BH: I have one sister who is eight years older than me. Eight years is quite a big gap. She was into her stuff, and I was into mine. When she had to take care of me, the term "babysitter" hadn't been invented yet [laughs]. I think she resented having to look out for me, and we didn’t get along too well. My mom was supportive, but she could have done more to build my confidence. Then again, I suppose all children have complaints about their parents.

JW: Did you grow up in a musical household?
BH: No. My family didn't care much for music. We didn't own a record player, and there were no records. I only heard music on the radio. I listened to big bands day after day, hour after hour, and absorbed all the music. Back then, listening to the bands was just part of everyday life. It’s comparable today to people listening to iPods all day. It becomes so common you lose track of the magic of the thing and it becomes part of your unconscious mind. That’s kind of the way it was listening to the radio. It was there and you absorbed it. I thought radio and big bands were magical. There were some bands I liked much more than others. So music coming over the radio probably had much more of an effect on me as a composer and arranger than I realize.

JW: How did you wind up choosing the tenor saxophone?
BH: When I went into junior high school, all students had to take a musical aptitude test. I did well. A few weeks later the school's bandleader came around and asked if I wanted to play the clarinet. So I started on clarinet and that led right into the saxophone a few years later.

JW: Were you good?
BH: No [pause]. I thought I was. [laughs] Santa Ana then was a small town [pictured]. There were no professional musicians that I knew of. The only person I had to rely on was the teacher I was going to, who actually was a trumpet player and taught everything. I think he gave me a couple of bum steers on the saxophone. [laughs] I had no one in music to associate with, to listen to, or to talk to. So I bumbled along and dealt with things as they came up. I played what I thought was jazz, running down the harmonies on stock arrangements.

JW: Did you practice a lot?
BH: No. I never did.

JW: What happened after high school?
BH: I went straight into the Navy in July 1944. I was stationed in Boulder, Colorado. The war started winding down that year. I was in this training program studying engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder for a year and a half. Meantime the war had ended. Somehow my friends and I got the impression that if we finished our courses and got our commissions, we’d have to stay on active duty for four more years. So we all stopped going to classes and washed out of school. In January 1946 they shipped us off to boot camp in Great Lakes, Illinois, just north of Chicago. It was cold there for a native Californian. After boot camp, I was assigned to a ship and served out my time until July 1946.

JW: When you were discharged from the Navy, did you go home?
BH: Yes. I tried to get into the music program at Los Angeles City College [pictured]. My mother had seen an article in the paper that there was a program there. So I registered and finally got to interview with the head of the jazz program. At that time there quite a few players from name bands that were working out their union cards by going to school on the GI Bill. Musicians who had just arrived in California had to show the union they lived there for six months before being allowed to take studio jobs. So the college band was perfect for them. Unfortunately for me it was bulging with all these pros.

JW: What happened?
BH: The guy wouldn’t let me in the program. So I went back home and enrolled in UCLA to finish my engineering studies. But after one semester there, I realized that engineering wasn’t for me. This was the fall of 1947.

JW: You must have felt despondent.
BH: I did. I felt adrift. Back when I was 11 or 12 years old, my parents used to ask me what I was going to do when I grew up. At that time I didn’t think about being a musician. To get peace and quiet, I told them I wanted to be an engineer. They loved that and got off my back. So engineering was always in the back of my head, but it was a construct of my own imagination, not reality. In the fall of 1947, I was unsettled about what I was going to do, but I knew it wasn't going to be engineering.

JW: Music wasn't your clear choice?
BH: I was thinking about music, but I knew that becoming a pro would be difficult and that I would be taking a big chance going in that direction. While I was being disillusioned in UCLA's engineering program, I was going down to Central Avenue, where all the jazz clubs were. I caught the tail end of the scene there and met some great players. At this point in early 1948, I still didn’t know any musicians in Los Angeles personally. To get jobs, I befriended some of the guys I met at these sessions.

JW: What was the big turning point for you?
BH: One night I told a guy I was looking for a music school. He said to talk to trombonist Britt Woodman [pictured]. The guy said Britt was going to a school where they teach you how to read music. When I asked Britt, he told me about the Westlake College of Music in L.A. He said the school had several bands and courses in harmony and arranging. Westlake was like a vocational school, no humanities or history or anything. Strictly commercial music courses. Once I made up my mind to study music, that was it. There was no looking back.

Tomorrow, Bill talks about his first job with Ike Carpenter, the arrangement that caught Stan Kenton's attention, the band that had the most influence on his writing, and the story behind Invention for Guitar and Trumpet.

JazzWax tracks: Bill's Grammy-winning album, Brilliant Corners: The Music of Thelonious Monk, can be sampled here. Unfortunately, it's not available as a download at iTunes or Amazon. But you can purchase the CD remastered at the previous link or here.

If you want to hear what Bill heard and trombonist Britt Woodman was playing on Los Angeles' Central Avenue in November 1947, go here and download tracks No. 14 through 20 off Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra: 1946-47.

Johnny Griffin (1928-2008)

Johnny Griffin, a swaggering tenor saxophonist with eel-like agility whose deep r&b roots remained with him during his bebop years in the late 1940s and hard bop period in the 1950s and beyond, died on Friday in France. He was 80.

From his earliest recordings, Griffin was a triple threat. In addition to being a lightning-quick sight-reader, Griffin added a big, strong sound to every sax section he was in. And his muscular solos could always be counted on to amaze and entertain.

Griffin first recorded at age 17 with Lionel Hampton's band in 1945. But when trumpeter Joe Morris left Hampton in 1946 to start his own r&b band, Griffin followed. For the next three years, Griffin built a reputation as Morris' tough-tenor soloist. Known as "The Little Giant," Griffin stood five-foot, five-inches tall, but his slight height only made him more assertive as a player.

Like many bands of the period, Joe Morris chose to fuse swing and blues rather than play straight-up bebop. As bop grew more complex in the late 1940s, arrangers who could score the new jazz for big bands dwindled, forcing many bands into r&b. With jazz focused on instrumental prowess and new musical concepts, the simplicity of jump boogie grew in popularity as a younger audience sought music they could dance to. 

In 1956, with the advent of the 12-inch LP, Griffin, 28, recorded Introducing Johnny Griffin for Blue Note, his first pure jazz album. It showcased a range of styles, from blues and ballads to cookers like Cherokee, which demonstrated Griffin's ability to play blazingly fast and produce a steady stream of original ideas. Recording dates with Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Hank Mobley and many others followed.

In 1958, Griffin joined Thelonious Monk [pictured] for an extended stay at New York's Five Spot club and recorded two Riverside albums. These albums remain Griffin's most significant and penetrating recordings. The tenor saxophonist's blues attack and musical intellect were perfectly suited to Monk's percussive style, with Griffin adding just enough velvety yin to Monk's dissonant yang.

Between 1960 and 1962, Griffin recorded for Riverside Records, where he was paired with tenor titan Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis [pictured]. But where Davis' style tended to dwell on a taut blowing technique and ferocious speed, Griffin could match both but also develop nuanced ideas that went beyond the tricks of 1940s tenor cutting sessions.

Griffin moved to Europe in 1963 and recorded extensively with the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band as well as with a range of European musicians and American expatriates, returning to the U.S. periodically over the years to visit family and perform.

JazzWax tracks: Here are my favorite Griffin tracks and albums. All are available as downloads at iTunes or Amazon, unless otherwise noted:

Slide, Hamp, Slide—Lionel Hampton (1945). This baseball-themed swing number was Griffin's very first recording. The personnel included Joe Morris, Wendell Culley, Dave Page, Jimmy Nottingham and Lammar Wright, Jr. (trumpets), Jimmy Wormick, Mitchell "Booty" Wood, Andrew Penn and Al Hayse (trombones), Bobby Plater and Ben Kynard (alto saxes), Arnett Cobb and Griffin (tenor saxes), Charlie Fowlkes (baritone sax), Milt Buckner (piano), Billy Mackel (guitar), Charlie Harris and Ted Sinclair (bass), George Jenkins (drums) and Hampton (vibes). 

Pinetop's Boogie Woogie—Lionel Hampton (1946). Yes, Griffin recorded with Bing Crosby. This track and Sunny Side of the Street featured Der Bingle on vocals. This single finds Crosby offering "soulful" instructions to an imaginary Jitterbug line dance. To my ear, the track's concept was likely the inspiration for Madison Time, recorded by Ray Bryant in 1960. Both tracks are at iTunes.

Wilma's Idea—Joe Morris (1947). Likely written by band pianist Wilmus Reeves, this is a pure bop arrangement. Griffin's playing and ideas are strong and forceful, with shades of Sonny Stitt. Unfortunately, the track isn't available as a download. It can be found on the CD pictured, which is available at Amazon.

Blu-Binksy—A.K. Salim (1957). This track is on arranger A.K. Salim's fabulous Pretty for the People album. Not only is Salim's writing here beautiful, but the musicians on this little-known date say it all: Kenny Dorham (trumpet), Buster Cooper (trombone), Griffin (tenor sax), Pepper Adams (baritone sax), Wynton Kelly (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), Max Roach (drums), Chino Pozo (Chano's cousin, conga) and A.K. Salim (conductor, arranger and composer).

The Congregation—Johnny Griffin (1957). This entire Blue Note recording is terrific and features Griffin with Sonny Clark (piano), Paul Chambers (bass) and Kenny Dennis (drums). In particular, Latin Quarter is a clever Latinized version of Tangerine with a bop spin, showing off Griffin's medium-tempo chops. And dig that rundown at the end! The same goes for I'm Glad There Is You. If you don't own this album, download the whole thing. You won't be disappointed. It's Griffin at his best.

Thelonious in Action and Misterioso—Thelonious Monk (1958). Both of these Riverside albums recorded at the Five Spot are a must. In addition to Griffin and Monk, Ahmed Abdul-Malik is on bass and Roy Haynes is on drums. This was Monk's greatest quartet, in my estimation, and Griffin's brightest moments as a sideman. His tone and idea choices are on par with Monk's, which makes for some exciting listening.

Save Your Love for Me—Griffin and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis (1960). This track is off their Tough Tenors album for Riverside, and it swings the whole way through. The entire album is strong, with smoky rich ballads and all-out blowing duets.

The Magic Touch—Tadd Dameron (1962). There's no way to pick a favorite track off this beauty. The entire album is a classic, and it features Griffin throughout. The personnel is Joe Wilder, Clark Terry and Ernie Royal (trumpets), Jimmy Cleveland and Britt Woodman (trombones), Julius Watkins (French horn), Leo Wright and Jerry Dodgion (alto saxes and flutes), Jerome Richardson (tenor sax and flute), Griffin (tenor sax), Tate Houston (baritone sax), Bill Evans (piano), George Duvivier (bass), Philly Joe Jones (drums) and Tadd Dameron (arranger and leader).

Saxology—Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band (1968). This track is off an album called More: Plays Famous Themes From Great Motion Pictures. The tune appears to be modeled after Four Brothers, and the swinger tears out of the gate and doesn't stop. Griff's solo is the second one. And dig the drumming by Kenny Clarke and Kenny Clare (the band used two drummers).

JazzWax video clip: Griffin and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis were among the toughest tenor duos—not just for their powerful sound but also their endless stream of brilliant blues ideas. In the 1980s they were captured live on For Ge-Ge. Part 1 is here. and Part 2 is here. Want speed? Here's Griff blowing on a blues. Want a big band? Here's Griff with the sax section of the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band. And here's Part 1 of a European documentary on the band (there are five parts). By the way, that's Griff coming through the airport doors at 2:20 into Part 1 [pictured]. Dig that walk!

Sunday Wax Bits

Joe Valino. My post early last week on Learnin' the Blues sparked a raging web debate among Sinatrafiles. Comments ranged from questions about the date of Valino's demo v. Frank Sinatra's recording of the song in 1955 to the veracity of Valino's story and whether even Dolores Vicki Silvers was a real person or a pseudonym for one or more people. Fear not, I still have my reporter's hat on and I will have more on this unfolding mystery as soon as I have more to share.

Elliot Lawrence. After viewing all of those Elliot Lawrence home movies last week, I found myself again listening extensively to Elliot Lawrence Plays Gerry Mulligan Arrangements. I can't quite put my finger on why I love this band so much. Perhaps because it's the musical missing link between the Claude Thornhill band and Stan Kenton's orchestra. Drew Techner, whose dad, Joe, played in the Lawrence band from 1948 to 1951 and collected and posted all those home movies on YouTube, sent along more links. For Drew's video interview series with Lawrence, go here. For Drew's interview series with Lawrence drummer Howie Mann, go here.

Barbara Dennerlein. Following my post of Barbara's splendid organ duel with Rhoda Scott (here it is again for those who missed it), I received a lovely email from Barbara, who's touring in Europe. I have been a fan of Barbara's since hearing her Take Off CD in 1995. She brings funk and grace to the instrument, often working both into the same track. She also knows how to build a groove without ever becoming dull or riff-obsessed (I love Scott's gospel-tinged attack, too). In her e-mail, Barbara alerted me to a video clip from a July 10 concert here at New York's Trinity Church. Unfortunately I missed the concert, but Barbara promised to alert me next time she's in New York so I can come hear her and report back to readers. For more about Barbara, go here.

City Island. If you want to see how a movie is made—or rather, you want to be in on City Island's unfolding, I urge you to visit Raymond De Felitta's blog here. The director of 'Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris is currently shooting City Island, an urban comedy, in New York. And he's keeping an online diary of his movie-making travails and posting mini rushes of scenes. It's really quite fascinating. Having read Raymond's brilliant screenplay, here's my best shot at the film's logline without giving anything away: "The dynamics of a dysfunctional Bronx family change dramatically when dad brings home a convict." Check it out.

McCoy Tyner. Bret Primack's latest effort for Concord Records is a video podcast interview with producer Orrin Keepnews on the making of McCoy Tyner's Fly With the Wind here. As you may recall, I wrote about the album back in June here. Bret also produced a video podcast of trombonist Clifton Anderson here.

Bill Evans. Jan Stevens of the Bill Evans Web Pages sent an email informing me of the latest installment in his monthly series of appreciations of Bill Evans albums. This time around, contributor John Varrallo writes about Moonbeams (1962) here.

Tomorrow: An in-depth appreciation of the late Johnny Griffin (1928-2008), who died on Friday.

Interview: George Wein (Part 3)

When George Wein's Storyville opened in Boston in 1950, it attracted mostly professors from local colleges. In the fall of 1953, one of those professors brought socialite Elaine Lorillard into the jazz club and introduced her to George. Over drinks, Lorillard told George that months earlier she and her husband had attracted the New York Philharmonic to Newport, Rhode Island, for a concert series. But the symphony drew too few listeners, and the benefactors lost much of their $30,000.

Wondering aloud, Lorillard asked George whether Newport could do something with live jazz the following summer. George said he thought so and asked for a little time to put a few ideas together. A short time later, George traveled to Newport to visit with Elaine and her husband, Louis. Basing his concept on the nearby Tanglewood Music Festival, George outlined his vision for a series of jazz concerts. Intrigued, the Lorillards loved his idea and agreed to finance it. Now it was up to George to put together the acts, schedule and logistics. [Pictured, from left, Louis and Elaine Lorillard with George]

In Part 3 of my conversation with George, the legendary club owner and concert promoter reflects on the festival, his week playing piano behind a skeptical Lester Young at Storyville, and the only career decision he would have done differently:

JazzWax: When you launched the Newport Jazz Festival in 1954, did it do what you wanted it to do instantly?
George Wein: Immediately. Because I knew two things: I knew what artists would sell tickets based on how they did at Storyville, and I knew going in what I wanted to do with the festival. I saw it as an opportunity to promote jazz on a large scale and expose people of all ages to this great music. For the first time, people who didn't go to clubs or couldn't get in because they were too young now could see and hear the music and musicians live, outside, in a relaxed, laid-back setting.

JW: What was the secret ingredient to the festival's success?
GW: The most important thing about the first Newport Jazz Festival and probably one of my greatest contributions, was not sticking with one kind of jazz. I had Eddie Condon there and Lennie Tristano in between Billie Holiday and Lester Young on the same program. Whether it was traditional jazz with Bobby Hackett and Wild Bill Davison, or swing with Lester and Billie and Teddy Wilson, or bebop with Dizzy Gillespie, or modern jazz with Tristano and Lee Konitz—everyone's taste was covered. And you could see whether jazz you had not heard before or didn't care too much for appealed to you, too. We put musicians together who played very different types of jazz. This had never been done before. [Photo: Billie Holiday at the 1957 festival]

JW: Would you say the height of the festival was in 1958?
GW: The highpoint? Who knows? Miles Davis in 1955 was remarkable, Duke in 1956—I mean there are so many high points as you go along.

JW: One would think that as a musician with a heart, you might have been too sympathetic to succeed as a businessman and festival promoter.
GW: Well, first of all, I don’t think I am a good businessman. I had a feeling in those days for the public. I still have a slight feeling for the public but it’s a little different now. The music I love no longer sells tickets. What sells tickets now is contemporary rock and things like that. Today, jazz festivals have to feature crossover music. If you feature just pure jazz, you’ll only have a few people in the seats. Economics has to come first today. Back then, love could play a role.

JW: You sound like a pretty good businessman to me.
GW: When I said I could only add and subtract, I was talking at a level where I could have success as an individual and the reputation that goes with it. But I never knew how to take business to another level. The next level is using other people’s money and getting investors and coming up with ideas that might have made me a very rich man.

JW: How so?
GW: I stayed in business for as long as I did because I knew that if I spent $10, I had to take in $11. But that’s not how you get rich in business. If you spend $10, you may take in only $8. But if you get people thinking that next year there's a good chance you'll take in $20, then you’ll get them to invest with you. When they do, you wind up building a bigger company. I never could think like that. I thought purely on what I was doing. I still think like that.

JW: What do you think when you see the film, Jazz on a Summer's Day, which was filmed during the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival?
GW: I think it was a rather great festival. I always get a little upset when my name isn’t mentioned in the film as the festival's creator. But that's life. You learn your lessons. If you want your name protected, you had better protect it yourself. No one’s going to protect it for you.

JW: Of all the artists you’ve known, who did you bond with most?
GW: I got very close with Duke [Ellington]. I think Duke realized two things: That I was a businessman to a degree and could help his career, and that I really loved his music and loved him. He respected both of those qualities. There were a lot of people who loved Duke who weren’t contributing to his career so much. But I was giving Duke as much work as I could. [Pictured: Duke and Elaine Lorillard]

JW: Did he appreciate what you did?
GW: Yes, and he appreciated the success he had at Newport. Whenever he introduced me afterward to musicians and friends, he'd say, “My career began at Newport in 1956.” Then he’d introduce me and give me the biggest plug. That felt so good, coming from Duke. He felt I was a major part of his success during that period in the 1950s and beyond. The festival gave many musicians a huge popular platform they never had before. Even when jazz artists were popular on the radio and on records, and even with Jazz at the Philharmonic, it was still considered nighttime music. Newport changed all that. Newport brought jazz into the daylight, made it family music, and put it on par with classical music. After Duke's performances there, whenever I’d call him, he'd get me whatever I needed for concerts and events. There was never any hesitation or a problem on his part.

JW: What was it about Duke you admired so much?
GW: His generous spirit. And that he was very protective of his music. He wanted to make sure his acknowledgments were there. When we did his Sacred Concerts, he wanted to make sure everything was the way he wanted it. And we did that for him. Whatever Duke asked us for, we saw that it was done.

JW: What about on a personal level?
GW: I could hang out with Duke, have ice cream with him, for example, while he was writing with Billy Strayhorn on the phone. [Pictured: Duke and Billy Strayhorn]

JW: What were they writing?
GW: Some of their larger works. He would say, “Billy, I have the first movement, you get the second movement and we’ll discuss that third movement later.” Stuff like that.

JW: Lester Young played at Newport, but did he ever play Storyville?
GW: Yes. Back in 1953, he played a swing date with a local rhythm section I put together. On the first night, before the first set, Pres asked me who would be playing with him that week. I told him Buck Clayton was coming up from New York and that I had a great local bass player and drummer. He asked who was playing piano. I told him I was. He gave me that look, but I told him I knew all his songs.

JW: What did he say?
GW: He said, "OK, if you say so, Pres." Lester called the person in charge "Pres," and at the club, that was me. He also let me call the first tune—Pennies from Heaven. So when it was time for us to start, he told me to go up and take the first chorus. So I went up with the bass player and drummer. But after the first chorus, Pres still hadn't come up on stage. When I looked at him, he waved me on to take another. And another. Not until the end of the fourth chorus did he come up to play.

JW: Was he happy with you?
GW: Just before he put his horn in his mouth, he said, "You and me are going to be all right, Pres." That felt great. We had a ball the whole week. Lester was so happy playing swing. I think he was tired of playing bebop. When I put Buck Clayton with him, that sort of brought him back to his greatest days.

JW: When you look back on your career, are you satisfied?
GW: Oh, I wouldn’t change a thing. It has been a great adventure. I'm only sorry that my wife, Joyce, died too young in 2005 at age 76. [Pictured: Joyce Wein]

JW: Anything you’d do differently?
GW: My only regret is not making more records. I should have scraped together more money on my tours and recorded my sidemen. You could record very cheaply in those days. I recorded the Giants of Jazz in Switzerland and live concerts in London. But that was toward the very end. All the years before that I could have made 100 albums. That was the only thing I would have done differently.

JW: What about with the festival?
GW: I wouldn't change a thing. Look, I could have been the biggest rock producer in New England. In 1969, I had all the rock groups at Newport. At the time there was no Don Law, the big rock concert promoter up there now. All the agents were selling me their rock groups. After the festival, I said to myself, "This isn't the life I want." I was too proud of my jazz festivals. And I had no control over the rock concerts. I couldn’t program them. I couldn’t use my own creative talents, whatever they were. [Pictured: Anita O'Day at Newport in 1958]

JW: Why not?
GW: With rock, you had no control. Your taste and mix meant little. You put a group on, and they owned the festival. No one else could be playing someplace else. A rock group's popularity was so great that the audience resisted any deviation. See, I liked to put on different groups on different stages at the same time. That was the beauty of the festival. Rock audiences were different. They were uni-dimensional and uni-directional. Young people didn't want anything other than the main attraction. I didn’t want that. I wanted a range of groups that someone age 16 and 60 could go to see and enjoy.

JW: Looking back, were the 1950s as romantic a time as they seem?
GW: Oh yeah. It was that good. I mean there were problems, always. Some clubs did more business, some jazz groups were more popular than others. Even the good ones faced constant challenges from rivals. Then a Dave Brubeck would come along, for example, and completely change the scene. But even when someone had a hot album, it helped all of jazz.

JazzWax video clips: This clip of Dinah Washington singing All of Me remains my favorite clip from Jazz on a Summer's Day. You hear Dinah in all her glory, but you also get to see the effect her voice and her swing had on the young fans who were there in 1958.

Interview: George Wein (Part 2)

Returning to Boston after World War II, George Wein was torn. Enrolled at Boston University on the GI Bill, his growing passion for jazz was overtaking his pre-med and history studies. The more gigs George played around town, the more the pianist realized his heart wasn't in medicine or the past. By the late 1940s, George not only was playing jazz but also organizing dates for his groups and ensuring that bandmembers were paid. [Pictured: George with Sarah Vaughan in 1987]

So after graduation in 1950, George scraped together enough cash and charm to open a jazz club in the centrally located Copley Square Hotel [pictured]. Naming the club Storyville, George began booking his favorite musicians, many of whom he already knew from professional encounters at other Boston clubs.

In Part 2 of my series of conversations with George, the legendary club owner and founder of the Newport Jazz Festival talks about starting Storyville and the many jazz greats who played there:

JazzWax: Where was Storyville exactly?
George Wein: Storyville, in its heyday, from 1953 to 1959, was on the street level of the Copley Square Hotel, on the corner of Exeter St. and Huntington Ave.

JW: How much did it cost to open the club in 1950?
GW: When I opened Storyville, I had $5,000. I bought 40 to 50 tables at $10 a table and 200 chairs at $3 a chair. I bought a sound system for $600 that consisted of a little amplifier with two speakers that I hung next to the bandstand. I bought a cash register for $300, spent $700 to have the club painted, and hired a kid to put a mural on the wall. And I was in business. You can’t do that now. You can’t walk across the street for $5,000.

JW: Did you get pressure from mobsters on which acts to book?
GW: No never. I never had that. The pressure I faced was having to get a different attraction every week. That