JazzWax

Sunday Wax Bits

JazzWax with Marc Myers. Tonight at 10 pm (EDT), join me for the radio version of this blog. I will be playing my favorite tracks on radio station Jazz.FM91 out of Toronto. There will be lots of rare jazz from the 1950s and beyond. I'll also be sharing personal stories that jazz legends have shared with me over the past two years. Best of all, you can listen live on your computer. All you have to do is return here to JazzWax and click on the big square button to the right. Dig you tonight!

Michel Legrand. On Friday night, I jumped on the subway and headed down to Birdland to catch Michel Legrand's first set. The show, produced by Pat Philips and Ettore Stratta, was sensational—even better than his appearance at the club last March.

For one, the legendary composer, arranger and pianist performed just the right number and mix of compositions. No one in the audience checked their watches, and we were all left wanting more. For another, in addition to featuring the sensitive Lewis Nash on drums and powerful David Finck on bass, Legrand was joined by a string quartet and harpist. The strings gave his timeless melodies an even richer veneer, creating a movie recording-session mood.

Legrand is a treasure. There's really no one around today at the level of this 77-year-old jazz-pop composer-pianist, except perhaps for Burt Bacharach. In addition to working with nearly every major jazz artist from the late 1950s and beyond, Legrand has written some of the most enduring melodies of the past 50 years. The charming three-time Oscar winner knows how to tug at your heart and seduce in the most sophisticated way. His songs are timeless and have become as closely identified with specific jazz performances as they have with the movies for which they were originally written.

Legrand opened the first set singing and playing Watch What Happens from the 1964 film, Umbrellas of Cherbourg, slyly adding a reference to Miles Davis' Solar. Once Upon a Summertime, a song written with Johnny Mercer, followed. Then Legrand launched into his rollicking Ray's Blues, which he dedicated to Ray Charles.

Legrand sang again on What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life, from the 1969 film The Happy Ending. A jazz-classical piece called Family Fugue was next, and unlike many such fusion efforts by other artists, this contrapuntal piece never lost its jazz feel. On The Summer Knows, from The Summer of '42, Legrand exhibited superb control and confidence as he sang and played, conducting the strings from the piano bench while reading a full score.

But the evening's high point was the Yentl medley, featuring harpist Catherine Michel [pictured] on lead with Legrand as accompanist. The 10-minute harp-driven piece left jaws slack throughout, bringing the audience to its feet at the close for the longest and loudest applause of the set. Afterward, at the bar, Catherine Michel told me that she and Legrand had just recorded a duet album, which includes a beautiful West Side Story medley arranged by Legrand. Can't wait. [Photo: Dan Porges]

Ron Carter. In Ron Carter: Finding the Right Notes, the newly published biography of the famed bassist by Dan Ouellette, Ron talks about many of his 1,000-plus jazz recording sessions. The narrative by Ouellette is a marvelous blending of new conversations with Ron and existing interviews (including Ron's chats with JazzWax). Best of all, the book is easy to read, letting you jump from place to place depending on the session or artist you want to read about. Here's an example:

"Some of Ron's favorite dates [on the CTI label] were with tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine. He did five dates with Stanley, including 1970's Sugar.

" 'Anytime I could play with Stanley, I was there,' said Ron. 'Stanley came up at the same time as Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, Trane and Wayne and was just as major a saxophonist as them. That's a heck of feat. Stanley had his own sound, his own approach to playing chords. I wanted to hear how that worked but I never figured it out. I'd say, Stanley, how do you do that? And he'd say, I don't know Ron, I just do it. So that stopped me asking that question again.'

"Ron recalls the song Sugar, a minor blues that Stanley wrote that wasn't coming to a satisfactory resolution in the studio. Ron said to Stanley, 'Can we do something other than a C-minor at the end, like an A-flat or something? When we get back to the top, I keep feeling like that C-minor is banging on my head.'

"Stanley paused, then blurted out with a big smile, 'I've got an idea. How about if we end this on an A-flat.'

" 'You scallywag,' said Ron jokingly.

"Stanley laughed and said, 'Ron Carter owns the last two bars of this song.' "

Ron Carter: Finding the Right Notes by Dan Ouellette is available here.

Chicago and All That Jazz. Bret Primack, the Jazz Video Guy, tipped me off to a fabulous YouTube clip. It's The Dupont Show of the Week from 1961, with Garry Moore hosting a look at Chicago and All that Jazz. I don't want to spoil this for you by saying anything more. Just click and catch the musicians featured! And do your best to remain in your seat...

David Brent Johnson. The WFIU-FM host of Night Lights has completed a terrific radio show on Cafe Society, the first integrated nightclub in New York where Billie Holiday first sang Strange Fruit. Go here to listen to the podcast free.

CD discovery of the week. By now it's no secret that I'm a huge fan of Grant Stewart's. The tenor saxophonist has a big, granite sound that features shades of his own reed heroes, including Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt and Stan Getz. So it was a pleasant surprise to hear Grant featured prominently on Dan Adler's new CD, All Things Familiar.

Adler [pictured] is an Israeli guitarist who has played on the New York  scene for the past 20 years, including dates with saxophonist Bob Berg and Steve Grossman and pianist Tardo Hammer. On All Things Familiar, Adler's first CD that he also produced, the song choices are both smart and familiar. In addition to six engaging originals, Adler and Stewart have fine workouts on four standards.

The album's standouts for me include Adler's Sivan's Samba and Bird's Idea as well as a warm Star Eyes and an extra-tender version of Johnny Mandel's Emily. The interactions between Adler's guitar and Grant's tenor sax throughout are close and well defined. The pair weave in and out of each other's lines perfectly while teasing out the melodies that make these songs evergreen vehicles for jazz expression. The two musicians sound great together.

Also notable here are Richard Samuels on piano, Dmitri Kolesnik on bass and Grant's brother Philip Stewart on drums. [Photo of Grant Stewart by Esther Cidoncha]

What I like most about All Things Familiar is the sensitivity of the playing and respect for the standards chosen. Adler has an old-school ear and touch that harkens back to Chuck Wayne and Mundell Lowe. He's more concerned with note choices and lyrical lines than exhibiting speed or riffs, which is a rare and welcome relief these days. You simply must hear Adler and Grant's version of Emily. Johnny Mandel would love it.

All Things Familiar is available at iTunes or here as a CD and download.

Ornette Coleman and Bix Beiderbecke. This coming week, New York's WKCR presents two annual birthday broadcasts. On Monday (March 9), Ornette Coleman's discography will be featured for 24 hours, followed by Bix Beiderbecke's on Tuesday (March 10). You can listen anywhere in the world by going here and clicking "live broadcast."

Loopy album cover of the week. During my extensive Internet travels and research, I come across many album covers from the 1940s and 1950s. Some are artistic standouts. Others are, well, hoots. This week I'm beginning a new Sunday feature showcasing an album cover that either will raise your eyebrows or stir you to laughter (preferably one followed by the other). This one by the renowned crooning clown was issued on Capitol in the late 1940s.

Hal McKusick on George Handy

Few big band arrangers were as nervy or as eccentric as George Handy. This was as true of Handy's music as it was of his personality. In the 1940s and 1950s, Handy's big-band writing fearlessly blended classical motifs and modal concepts with swing and 52nd Street bebop. More than 50 years later, the results remain as fresh and as exciting as when they were first penned and recorded. But Handy [pictured] had a wild streak, which saxophonist and bandmate Hal McKusick remembers fondly. More with Hal in a moment.

To the average ear, Handy's arrangements sound impossible to play. Even more miraculous is how hard they swing. Stravinsky, Bartok and Hindemith were major influences of Handy's, but so were Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie. Despite being Juilliard trained and studying with Aaron Copland, Handy never lost track of the music's ultimate purpose—to hook listeners' ears and keep their feet moving.

From 1944 to 1946, Handy was with the Boyd Raeburn Orchestra as its pianist, primary composer and arranger, and musical director. There was a six-month break after he quit the band with Hal to relocate to Hollywood and write for Artie Shaw and the movie studios. When Hal rejoined Raeburn [pictured] briefly on the West Coast, he convinced the bandleader to take Handy back, and Raeburn did. While a member of the revolutionary Raeburn band, Handy arranged much of the band's major works, including Tonsilectomy, Forgetful and Out of This World.

In early 1946, Handy played piano on a famed Dial Records date with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Lucky Thompson. In October of that year he composed arranged The Bloos for Norman Granz's The Jazz Scene, an album of singles featuring cutting-edge jazz recordings. In 1949 he arranged If Love Is Trouble for Dizzy Gillespie's big band, featuring the vocal of a young Johnny Hartman.

But Handy's two greatest recordings would come five years later: Handyland USA and By George, Handy of Course! in 1954 and 1955, respectively. Both were recorded for RCA, and both are astonishing works if you are a connoisseur of great arranging.

Handy also scored several other great albums in the 1950s: Zoot!, on which Zoot Sims played tenor and alto sax, and Zoot Plays 4 Altos, which featured Zoot Sims overdubbing four harmonized alto sax parts—an enormously complex endeavor that only musicians of Sims' and Handy's caliber could pull off. He also arranged La Rue and The Last Day of Fall for Hal McKusick's Cross Section Saxes in 1958.

Here's Hal's recollections of George Handy:

"George and I left Boyd Raeburn's band in Boston in late 1944. Boyd kept giving Al Cohn’s solos to Johnny Bothwell, and we were fed up. So we left and flew to New York. On our way to George’s parents’ house in Brooklyn by cab, George kept raving about Southern California. He had been out in L.A. a year earlier. Betty Hutton had landed him a contract with Paramount Studios.

"When I said I had never been there, he told the cab driver to take us back to LaGuardia Airport. When we got there, we bought tickets, and a few hours later we were flying to L.A. We both wanted a change of scene and good work. [Pictured above: Hal McKusick]

"This was the way George worked. He was a wild guy in every way, including excesses. When we arrived out there, we shared living space for a short while until work began. We rented Ann Sheridan's house in Coldwater Canyon. It overlooked Harold Arlen’s house and was down the street from Ginger Rogers's place. It was a beautiful location.

"One day a young alto player came to visit and overstayed his welcome. He promised to get a job and contribute to our expenses. But after six weeks, our guest still didn’t offer any financial help. So George purchased a gigantic firecracker, which we placed under the boarder's bed. He slept late each day, so we set it off at 7 A.M. He left soon after and we never saw him again.

"Once George and I got work, we went our separate ways in Hollywood. Yet we still maintained our friendship and wrote some tunes together that were later recorded with the Raeburn Orchestra.

"It was a hectic time, and we were struggling to make a living. Yet the thought of leaving the music business never entered our minds. George and the pianist who was Igor Stravinsky’s assistant would play the two pianos in the living room a couple of nights each week. They improvised for hours. Sadly we didn't think of recording those sessions. We didn't have the means to purchase the right equipment of the day. We just listened and enjoyed.

"When I was asked to rejoin Raeburn in San Francisco in mid-1945, Boyd needed a pianist. I suggested Handy. But Boyd felt he was unreliable. When I explained that George was writing amazing music, inspired by Stravinsky and others, Boyd, with more prompting, asked me to talk to George and offer him the piano chair and to share orchestration assignments with Johnny Mandel. So George came up to San Francisco and started a whole new approach to writing for a dance-jazz orchestra. [Pictured from bottom: Ralph Burns, Neal Hefti, Johnny Richards, George Handy, Ed Finckel and Eddie Sauter; Photo by William P. Gottlieb, 1947]

"When we were in San Francisco, the Palace Hotel didn't like the fact that we had a broadcast there each night at around dinnertime. We played straight out for the radio audience, which rattled the staff and guests. To up the ante, Mandel and Handy dyed their hair green, which scared the staff and patrons. But the two of them didn't care. The band’s vocalist David Allyn practiced singing in an abandoned tomb in the graveyard. He liked the sound there.

"When we followed Basie into the Oakland Ballroom across the bay, George had a nervous breakdown while we were playing and was sent by his father, a doctor, to a rehab clinic in Connecticut.

"Later, in L.A., Handy wrote an incomplete arrangement on Over the Rainbow for a record session, promising to bring in the remainder during the date. He showed up at the studio, and when he was asked where the completed score was, he pointed to his head. A film studio arranger was rushed to the spot and finalized the orchestration. But you could hear the difference.

"George had a strong, unstoppable personality. He influenced many people in good and bad ways. In general, he was very generous. He was a super bright guy and wanted to have fun at any cost.

"George’s arrangements were the first I had heard or played that had heavy modern classical influences and were created to swing, too. His pieces were a challenge and beautiful when played correctly. There were many flowing lines against lines and interesting harmonies and good voicing.

"George's emphasis was on sound, not leaning toward any particular section of the orchestra. His music had a heavy modern classical influence, and he always challenged himself to move ahead in music. He was a terrific classical pianist and could play for hours, creating his own interesting sounds. George also loved Count Basie yet never wrote that kind of chart.

"In spite of his unique classical-jazz direction, he eventually moved to swinging compositions. Speaking of Zoot [pictured], Zoot once told me, "If I had sat one seat to the left in an early L.A. band, my name would have been Voot." In our teenage bands, we had names placed on the front of our music stands. If you were lucky, it showed your real name.

"George was innovative in every way, and he could have been one of the most important composers. He had enormous lyric ability, he was a great poet, he could paint he was a terrific athlete—and sadly he was enormously self-destructive.

"George also was a great prankster. One night in San  Francisco, unbeknownst to Boyd, he had the band stand up and sing Orphan Annie in the middle of a dance number. Then we sat down and went on as of nothing had taken place. On another occasion, he alerted everyone to take the downbeat from his nose, at the piano, instead of from Boyd. So we came in together an instant after Boyd’s downbeat. That was George."

JazzWax tracks: You'll find many of George Handy's tracks for the Boyd Raeburn Orchestra on Boyd Raeburn: Jewells and Boyd Meets Stravinsky. The CDs are here and here. Or you'll find them as downloads at iTunes.

Handy's piano can be heard on Diggin' Diz, from Charlie Parker: The Dial Masters at iTunes. Handy's arrangement of If Love Is Trouble for Dizzy Gillespie's big band can be found on Dizzy Gillespie: The Complete RCA Victor Recordings. It's also at iTunes.

Handy's greatest recordings, Handyland USA and By George, Handy of Course! are available for about $22 each. Handyland USA is here, and By George, Handy of Course! is on a CD called George Handy: Pensive here.

JazzWax Radio: This Sunday at 10 pm (EST), you can catch me on the radio through your computer anywhere in the world for two hours. JazzWax with Marc Myers will air on JAZZ.FM91 in Toronto, Canada. I'll be spinning rare tracks from my collection and sharing intimate and personal stories from the jazz legends I've interviewed.

What to do: On Sunday at 10 pm, just go to www.Jazz.fm and click on "listen live." Or just come back here to JazzWax and click on the big "JazzWax Radio" button that now appears atop the right-hand margin for instant access.

Dig you then!

Oscar Peterson & Nelson Riddle

Easy Listening as a genre has been unfairly maligned for  years. Since the advent of rock in the late 1960s, the entire category has been disparaged as "elevator," "background" or "mall" music, depending on the decade. The assault has been so pronounced that the very term "Easy Listening" now is code for "artless music." But like all types of music, there's good Easy Listening and bad. The newly released Oscar Peterson & Nelson Riddle recorded for Verve in November 1963 is a perfect example of a great Easy Listening album that perfectly merged jazz piano of the highest order with the textured sound of one of America's most gifted arrangers.

Easy Listening—the fusing of jazz-pop sensibilities with classical's anti-anxiety powers—first emerged in 1945. At first the music was marketed to relax returning veterans and a war-weary public. With the rise of the laid-back suburbs in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Easy Listening records became the audio equivalent of a cocktail, positioned as music that could de-stress and alter moods.

The earliest Easy Listening albums were arranged and recorded by Paul Weston, and included Music for  Dreaming, Music for Memories and Music for the Fireside. But certainly many of Claude Thornhill's chilled instrumental recordings of the 1940s also fit into this category.

Throughout the 1950s, demand for the peaceful genre picked up. Home record-changer consoles improved, the 12-inch LP became the standard format, and marketplace tastes shifted as aging listeners who didn't care for pure jazz, classical or early rock sought easy-going music that wasn't challenging or stressful.

Every so often an Easy Listening album would emerge that married tranquility with the brilliance of jazz arranging and playing. Fine examples in the 1950s included the Capitol releases of Bobby Hackett and Nat King Cole, and many of the unintentionally mainstream recordings by the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra.

In 1963, Oscar Peterson and Nelson Riddle also accomplished this feat. Though the pair didn't set out to create an Easy Listening LP, Oscar Peterson & Nelson Riddle certainly qualifies, and the result is magnificent. Mind you, this recording shouldn't be misjudged as an "Oscar with strings" date. It's a joining of two musical giants on a single, easy-going concept that gives each artist room to shine. No matter how many times I listen to the CD, I hear something different, especially with regard to the tender interactions between Peterson's piano and Riddle's supportive orchestrations.

Let me quote from Peter Levinson's September in the Rain: The Life of Nelson Riddle:

"The idea for Oscar Peterson & Nelson Riddle was conceived when Nelson came in one night to see the [Oscar Peterson] Trio perform at the London House [in Chicago] while he was on a Reprise Records promotion tour. He and Peterson discussed how their admiration for one another's work could result in the kind of album which would coordinate both of their musical concepts. Nelson believed that Peterson's pianistics could be presented in a setting not too far afield from the old Claude Thornhill band."

For the album, Nelson gave half the song's tracks a symphonic setting of 10 celli, 5 French horns, 5 flutes, a percussionist and a harpist. The balance of the album featured a swinging band with strings.

Writes Riddle in Arranged by Nelson Riddle:

"I used both the horns and flutes, and the horns and celli in my own instrumental albums... These combinations were very effective as a cushion for [Oscar's] remarkable piano sound, and we were both quite pleased with the results."

Rosemary Acerra, Riddle's daughter, recalls her father working on the album and talking about it during their drives along California's Pacific Coast Highway in 1963:

"I've always loved this album, and I know Dad truly enjoyed working directly with Oscar. We lived in Malibu at the time, and he used to drive me to high school on Sunset Blvd. on his way to the studio. I knew this album was something more intriguing to him than just feverishly pushing arrangements for vocalists or throwing together TV music. This album punctuated a very feverish time for him, and Dad truly respected Oscar as a wonderful musician."

The recording plays like a concept album in that you will find yourself listening to it from start to finish rather than jumping in on individual songs. 'Round Midnight is probably my favorite track. Given the vast number of dramatic interpretations of this Thelonious Monk classic over the years, hearing Peterson's keyboard runs with Riddle's yearning arrangement as a backdrop is gripping. And the inclusion of Gordon Jenkins' Goodbye on the album also made me realize for the first time that there are stark similarities between the song and 'Round Midnight.

Someday My Prince Will Come also offers a fine juxtaposition between Peterson's galloping keyboard style and Riddle's ever-shifting chart.

In Arranged by Nelson Riddle, Riddle says his own favorite was My Ship:

"[It] was played more slowly than most people would consider tasteful, but to my way of thinking, permitted Oscar to weave a spell the likes of which I've seldom heard even from him!"

In some respects, the recording has the musical personality of a Frank Sinatra ballad album thanks in large measure to Riddle's signature style. But instead of Sinatra's voice in front of Riddle, we hear Peterson on piano, performing instrumentally like a vocalist.

JazzWax tracks: Oscar Peterson & Nelson Riddle has long been out of print. It was re-mastered and re-issued by Verve in January as part of the label's Originals series. You'll find it as a download and CD at Amazon here, or at iTunes.

JazzWax clip: For an intimate look at Nelson Riddle, here's Part 1 of a comprehensive radio interview Jonathan Schwartz conducted with the famed arranger in 1982...

Interview: Chico Hamilton (Part 3)

Chico Hamilton remains one of the greatest living drummers of our time. In the 1950s, Chico developed a sound on the instrument that was radically different from the bop-heavy style favored by his more explosive contemporaries. Chico's technique was whispery and tenacious, turning the snare, bass drum, cymbals and high-hat into coaxing co-conspirators. Understated and knowing, Chico's layered style was more about cool seduction and surf-like persistence than brawn.

In the years after leaving the pioneering Gerry Mulligan Quartet in 1952, Chico led his own groundbreaking trio, backed leading singers, formed a piano-less quintet that became a national sensation, appeared in and wrote the music for Sweet Smell of Success, discovered Eric Dolphy, and was early in the free-jazz and jazz-fusion movements. From the late 1960s onward, Chico has released upward of 25 albums, each different yet related in their search for a new sound and experimental syncopation. His new album, Twelve Tones, will be released on April 14.

In Part 3 of my interview with Chico, the legendary drummer talks about the East Coast-West Coast jazz rivalry, the formation of his famed trio and quintet, filming Sweet Smell of Success, what he learned from Count Basie, and his big life lesson:

JazzWax: After you left the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, you re-joined Lena Horne?
Chico Hamilton: Well, I never really left her. She went to Europe, and I didn't want to go. Working with Lena was one of the best experiences in my whole life. Before I went with Lena, I had never heard of her. I was a so-called street dude then. Working with Lena in the late 1940s and again in 1952 turned me completely around and got me into show business.

JW: Show business?
CH: There’s a big difference between show biz and the so-called music business. With show biz you put on a show and entertain. I’m not an entertainer by nature. I’m a musician. But through Lena, being exposed to Sweet Pea [Billy Strayhorn], Luther Henderson, Duke Ellington and Lennie Hayton, I learned all about entertaining and how to bring the two together.

JW: Was there a rivalry between you and Max Roach during this period? 
CH: Nah, it wasn't like that. Max was beautiful. We were friends. Matter of fact, Max [pictured] was the first musician I met in New York when I came there with Lena Horne in the late 40s. Charlie Drayton, who was a childhood friend and played bass with Lena, we both went to the Capitol Theater. I can't recall what we saw. But Max came to see Charlie. That's how Max and I met. 

JW: So the musicians themselves didn't view the music as East Coast or West Coast?
CH: [Laughs] No, no. It was all mixed. I played with Bird [Charlie Parker] quite a bit out on the West Coast. I was the house drummer at Billy Berg's and before that the Club Capri. Musicians were all developing their own thing, their own sounds back then. Nat King Cole was a good friend of mine, too. He played at my wedding in the late 1940s. My wife and I were married for 67 years. She just passed away last April.

JW: How did the so-called West Coast Jazz name stick?
CH: The first time I took my trio to New York, in 1953, we played Basin Street East opposite Max Roach and Clifford Brown. I think Down Beat wanted to get a campaign going, so they called it East Coast v. West Coast. That’s how that whole West Coast Jazz thing started. It was like a publicity stunt.

JW: Your first trio was exceptional. How did it come together?
CH: Dick Bock [co-founder of Pacific Jazz Records] had promised me a record date when I recorded with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet. When I left the quartet in 1953, Dick asked if I wanted to record with a trio. I was going to put together a piano trio but all the piano players had their own things going. Gerald Wiggins, Hampton Hawes, and so on.

JW: Were you close with Hawes?
CH: We were married to cousins. We used to call each other "Cuz" [laughs]. In fact, Hamp was in one of the hippest groups I ever had: Me, Hamp on piano, Curtis Counce on bass and Wardell Gray on tenor sax.

JW: The 1953 trio was unusual, wasn't it?
CH: Yes. It was the first time a trio—guitar, bass and drums—were featured on a record as solo instruments as opposed to a rhythm section. I got George Duvivier on bass because he had been with me with Lena Horne. Then I got Howard Roberts.

JW: After your trio date, you recorded with Billie Holiday in 1954.
CH: I did a lot of time with Lady, including the "Lady Sings the Blues" concert at Carnegie Hall concert in '56. Working with Billie always depended on what kind of bag she was in. If she was cool, she was cool. If she was high, look out. She could get angry, but she never gave me a bad time. I had an attitude too.

JW: How did your attitude help you?
CH: It kept a lot of people from picking on me. I’d fight in a minute and people knew it. You have to draw the line. Otherwise people take advantage of you.

JW: In 1955, after a series of albums with singers that year, you formed your first famous quintet.
CH: Yeah, we had Buddy Collette on reeds, Fred Katz on cello, Jim Hall on guitar, Carson Smith on bass and me on drums. Originally the cello was supposed to be a French horn. But the guy I wanted, John Graas, wasn't available. About a week later, I was doing a thing with Fred Katz. We had played together with Lena. I told him about my plight. He said why not a cello? I said sure, OK, bring it over. Why not? [laughs]. [Photo of the Chico Hamilton Quintet in 1956 by Gordon Parks for Life]

JW: You left out the piano.
CH: Every now and then Fred would play some piano with us. But it didn’t work. Piano got in the way, as far as I'm concerned.

JW: The popularity of your quintet was something
CH: It was ridiculous. We were supposed to play a week at The Strollers in Long Beach [California]. We wound up staying three months. The club brought in a disc jockey named Sleepy Stein. He started broadcasting us live, and people came from all over. Long Beach was a rough place. It was a hooker’s town because it belonged to the Navy. Even the sawdust was funky.

JW: A tough gig?
CH: Can you imagine? Two black dudes and three white dudes going into a place like that with a cello [laughs]. I tell you man. And sailors. Half the time we had to fight our way out of there. But the whole world dug our sound.

JW: Did you know how that group was going to sound before you brought everyone together?
CH: Absolutely. I could hear it in my head. At that time, we just wanted to play in tune. That was the beginning of the rock era, when the musicians and kids were shouting and carrying on. We were hip. We just wanted to play in tune.

JW: The quintet's sound was delicate and aggressive, thanks to your brushwork.
CH: That's how I played, man. It wasn't a mood thing. It was pure drive, you dig? My brush stroke is strong. It grooves. I get into the pocket. By doing that, I play at the right tempo. That's what I learned from Count Basie. You have to find a groove, a pocket, and then work it.

JW: In 1957 you wrote the incidental music for Sweet Smell of Success.
CH: I tell you, man, that was great. The actor Martin Milner, who played the quintet's bandleader in the movie, he didn't know how to play guitar. So what happened was Milner put his left hand behind him and John Pisano, my guitar player, put his hand on the strings. It looked like Milner was playing the guitar, the way Jimmy Wong [Howe] shot it [laughs].

JW: Was it exciting to write the music and appear with the quintet in the film?
CH: Sure. You know what happened? Before they offered me the gig, they watched me for six months all over the country to make sure that I wasn't into dope. I wasn't, but they wanted to be sure. They didn't want that bouncing back.

JW: You discovered Eric Dolphy.
CH: Yeah, Eric went to school with my brother Bernie. Bernie turned me on to Eric. Eric was born in Los Angeles. His folks lived in my neighborhood. Man, he could play.

JW: Did you enjoy scoring Roman Polanski’s Repulsion in 1965?
CH: That was the hippest movie I’ve ever done. Roman never forgot why he hired me. I had about 25 music cues in there. He only had a  discussion about one of them. Roman let me be. Unfortunately, most producers and directors forget why they hired you. They think the music is theirs, and they get in your way.

JW: Why do other drummers seem to get a greater share of attention than Chico Hamilton?
CH: I don’t know. Maybe because I've always seen the drums as a melodic instrument, not a percussive one. I developed a touch. It may not have been as loud but it's mine. Look, it’s impossible for any two drummers to sound alike. If you’re tall, you sit away from the drums. If you’re short, you sit close. I play down on my instrument. I found early on that it’s easier to hold arms down than up. I sit so I’m playing down on them. And that's my sound.

JW: You have a new album coming, Twelve Tones.
CH. Yes, it’s a good album. It's very listenable. I think you're going to dig it. I wrote just about everything on there. It’s all my music, which is cool.

JW: What's your big life lesson?
CH: You can’t please everyone. I’m blessed because I can make music, and I make music for music’s sake. Music demands to be played and executed extremely well. I believe music is God’s will.

JazzWax tracks: The Chico Hamilton Trio of 1953 with bassist George Duvivier and guitarist Howard Roberts (replaced in 1956 with Jim Hall) can be found here. Chico's Billie Holiday session from 1954 can be found on Recital by Billie Holiday here. The 1956 Carnegie Hall concert can be found on Lady Sings the Blues here.

The early Chico Hamilton Quintet sessions are spread over three different CDs: The Chico Hamilton Quintet: Live at Strollers here, the Original Chico Hamilton Quintet here and The Chico Hamilton Quintet: Complete Studio Sessions, 1956-57 here.

Chico's compositions and his quintet's playing on Sweet Smell of Success can be found on Jazz and Orchestral Themes Recorded for the Soundtrack of the Sweet Smell of Success here.

Eric Dolphy as a member of the Chico Hamilton Quintet can be found on The Original Ellington Suite here and With Strings Attached here. Gongs East and The Three Faces of Chico are on a single CD here.

Two offbeat albums you may want to sample that I dig very much are The Dealer (1968) and Nomad (1980). The Dealer, a funky album, can be heard at the Verve site here. Nomad, a fascinating quasi-World recording, is available as a download at iTunes.

JazzWax clip: To hear the Chico Hamilton Quintet in Sweet Smell of Success, and to see John Pisano's left hand up under Milner's arm, dig the clip below (move the bar to 7:16 into the clip)...

Interview: Chico Hamilton (Part 2)

Pianist Jimmy Rowles didn't show up. So on June 10, 1952,  Gerry Mulligan went ahead and recorded three tracks with just Red Mitchell on bass and Chico Hamilton on drums. That's when Mulligan realized that the sound of his baritone sax could carry a session and that maybe a small group didn't need a piano after all. Small was big in Los Angeles in the early 1950s. Unlike the clubs in New York, Southern California jazz spots were shoebox tight, and their stages could support maybe three or four musicians, tops. The Haig on Wilshire Boulevard, for example, could seat just 85 people.

A short time later, when Gerry Mulligan met Chet Baker during one of the Haig's famed Monday night jam sessions, the pair decided to form a piano-less quartet with Chico and bassist Bob Whitlock. The Haig's piano had already been removed when the Red Norvo Trio preceded the quartet at the club. Short a piano, the group had to focus on counterpoint to fill the gaps—functioning in effect like the very instrument it did without. Chico went so far as to replace his bass drum with a smaller, 16-inch model.

In Part 2 of my three-part series with Chico, the legendary drummer talks about playing with Lena Horne for the first time in Europe, meeting Gerry Mulligan in Los Angeles, the formation of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, recording at Phil Turetsky's house in August 1952, and the similarities between Chet Baker and Miles Davis:

JazzWax: When were you with Lena Horne?
Chico Hamilton: I joined Lena in late 1949 and traveled to Europe. I tell you, going to Europe during that time was difficult for me. The Paris newspapers had mistakenly said Lena was using a French drummer. Everywhere we’d go I had to virtually wear my passport on the outside. In France, they thought I was from Martinique, and the French hated people from Martinique. When we went to England, people thought I was Indian, and they hated Indians there then. No matter where we went in Europe, I looked like all them people they hated.

JW: So you experienced European racism because you didn't look African-American enough?
CH: That's right! Also at that time, right after the war, it was unusual to see black people in Europe not in uniform. I couldn’t escape racism over there. I always looked like someone somebody didn’t like.

JW: You returned with Horne to the States and California in 1950?
CH: Yes.

JW: Was the dope thing ever your scene?
CH: I got into it very early and out very quickly, at around this time. I ended up in the hospital and then cooled it. I promised God that if he brought me through, I would never even take as much as an aspirin ever again.

JW: How did you turn things around?
CH: I was cool with what I had to go through. What wakes you up is when you realize that God is giving you moments of reality to make you aware of your choices. When I was laying in the hospital bed, I looked up and saw my wife and Lena, Lena's husband Lennie Hayton [both pictured], and other friends looking down on me. That's when I decided, maybe this ain't for me.

JW: What did you do when you got out?
CH: Charlie Barnet hired me when he was on the West Coast. While we played for an extended period at a club in L.A., Gerry Mulligan used to hang out in the joint. He had just come to the West Coast, and he was on his ass, man. He didn’t have nothing. He used to hang out at the bar.

JW: How did you meet?
CH: I guess on a break. We became friends, and I took him home a few times and my wife made him dinner. The next thing I knew, he called me and said he wanted to start a quartet. It's funny, I don't remember that first trio date you mentioned. Maybe it wasn't me on drums.

JW: Then you decided not to return to Europe with Horne?
CH: I wanted to stay in California with my family.

JW: What happened next?
CH: Gerry and the group got together to rehearse in my living room. It was Chesney [Chet Baker], Bob Whitlock, Jeru [Gerry Mulligan] and myself.

JW: How did you meet the rest of the guys?
CH: Through Gerry, at our rehearsal. I thought right away that these guys were great players. We just happened to be four guys in the right place at the right time. Hell if I know how this stuff happens.

JW: Why did you record at Phil Turetsky's house?
CH: Turetsky [pictured] was an engineer and had all his equipment at his place in Laurel Canyon. Dick Bock, who was the Haig's publicist at the time, wanted to start a record company. The first record the label recorded was Bernie’s Tune [sings four bars]. That was the first record, man. After that Dick, [Roy Harte] and Phil Turetsky started Pacific Jazz Records. The Gerry Mulligan Quartet was the label's first record.

JW: When Mulligan told you there would be no piano, was that a problem for you?
CH: No, not at all. But Gerry didn’t want me to use my bass drum. And that’s when we went to war [laughs]. I finally went out and got myself a tom-tom instead, a small bass drum, and converted it into a bass drum. Gerry didn't want any bass drum at all. But I told him I needed something there for my right foot, to keep my rhythm. My timing depended on it. I’m still using a smaller bass drum today.

JW: Why didn’t Gerry like the regular bass drum?
CH: You know Gerry. He didn’t like a lot of things [laughs]. Gerry didn’t like the way other guys played it. But he got hooked behind mine. 

JW: What did Gerry want, a lighter sound?
CH: The smaller drum was cooler for Gerry. But more important, it fit.

JW: Fit in with the group's sound?
CH: No, it fit on the bandstand [laughs]. At the Haig, we played on a bandstand that could hardly fit the four of us. 

JW: How was Chet Baker as a player?
CH: Chet was unbelievable. There were just two guys like that: Chet Baker and Miles Davis. One was black and one was white. They were both dynamite-looking dudes, they had small chops and both could play their asses off. When I saw Chet [pictured] in Europe years later, he looked like a 1,000-year-old man. Because of the drugs. It was painful. Bob Whitlock, the bass player, was a beautiful dude, too. He eventually got a little fed up with music and went back home and did something else.

JW: Did you know Bernie’s Tune before you recorded it?
CH: No. I think it was an East Coast tune.

JW: Your playing with the quartet was firm and light and set a new drumming style and standard.
CH: That’s the name of the game, man. Gerry loved my playing. Gerry was more than happy with the sound. We got along, although we went to war every now and then.

JW: Over what?
CH: We never battled about music. Mostly stuff about our different outlooks.

JW: Did Gerry and Chet get along?
CH: At times they didn’t. Imagine a little bandstand, with the drums in the middle and Chet on one end and Gerry on the other. We were on top of each other at that place, and at times they’d be at it, playing almost back to back.

JW: As an African-American, was there any friction playing with them?
CH: None at all. I played with a whole lot of white groups before Gerry. I did a lot of Country & Western stuff.

JW: Is the Gerry Mulligan Quartet vivid in your memory as a standout career experience?
CH: It was just another gig, man. I left the group first and went back with Lena [Horne] because I had to make some dough. The quartet wasn't making hardly anything. When Lena came back from Europe, I went with her because I had a wife and two kids to support.

JW: Did your drums add something special to the quartet?
CH: When I left the quartet, the sound went with me. Gerry never had that sound on drums again. The group didn’t have the same sound after that.

Tomorrow, Chico talks about playing with Billie Holiday and his groundbreaking trio and quintet, which changed the sound of modern jazz.

JazzWax tracks: The Gerry Mulligan Quartet's Pacific Jazz recordings can be found on a two-disc set here or as a download at iTunes.

You also can hear the quartet's sound leveraged to a tentet in 1953 here or at iTunes on Gerry Mulligan: Tentet and Quartet. The tentet was comprised of Chet Baker and Pete Candoli (trumpets), Bob Enevoldsen (valve trombone), John Graas (French horn), Ray Siegel (tuba), Bud Shank (alto sax), Don Davidson and Gerry Mulligan (baritone saxophones), Joe Mondragon (bass) and Chico Hamilton (drums). The tracks are Westwood Walk, A Ballad, Walkin' Shoes and Rocker.

JazzWax clip: Even if you've heard Bernie's Tune 100 times, listen once again—but this time focus solely on what Chico is doing on the drums. Listen to the dramatic tension he creates with brushes and his light percussive thuds on the smaller bass drum...

Interview: Chico Hamilton (Part 1)

Drummer Chico Hamilton's contribution to West Coast jazz and quintet jazz in general is largely overlooked today. Partially eclipsed by the more explosive drummers of the late 1950s and 1960s, Hamilton's high-energy brushwork and wasp-wings time-keeping technique set new standards that were widely imitated for years on both coasts.

Chico is perhaps best known for being a member of the original groundbreaking Gerry Mulligan Quartet. He also led one of the country's most exciting quintets in the mid-to-late 1950s, creating a hip, cool fast-paced energy that quickly became the signature jazz sound of the period. The quintet's delicate, dramatic feel was so infectious that it was adapted by many musicians, including Dave Brubeck and Sonny Rollins. Chico also is widely known for his incidental music for and appearance in Sweet Smell of Success, the 1957 film noir classic.

In Part I of my three-part interview series with Chico, the legendary 87-year-old drummer talks about growing up in Depression-era Los Angeles, the two drummers who were most influential in shaping his early approach, and what he learned playing with Lester Young in 1946:

JazzWax: What was growing up in Los Angeles like in the 1930s?
Chico Hamilton: It was kind of difficult at that time. If you wanted to be a jazz musician or even play jazz, you were considered a sinner among all the church-going people. My family was Protestant, and we went to a Methodist church. The people there considered me a sinner.

JW: What were your parents like?
CH: They were beautiful people. They let me and my brother pursue our passions. My younger brother Bernie was into poetry and acting. I was into jazz. Our parents were very encouraging to both of us, despite the church. You know Starsky and Hutch, the TV show from the 1970s? You know the character Capt. Harold Dobey? That was my brother, Bernie Hamilton [pictured].

JW: Did your parents take a lot of heat about you and your brother at church?
CH: Oh yeah. Not only from the church but from their friends. All they would see is me fooling around playing with the drums and my brother Bernie reading poetry whenever they came over to our house [laughs]. My parents were dynamite people, man. I loved both of them. They were unbelievable.

JW: It was just you and your brother?
CH: Oh, no. There were five boys and one girl.

JW: That's a big family. Must have been tough coming up during the Depression.
CH: Yeah it was. My father used to leave two dimes on my mother’s dresser before he went to work. My mother took those two dimes and with the vegetables in our backyard, she fed us. We had good meals, always good meals. We were fed basically from our garden.

JW: What did your parents do for a living?
CH: My mother was a dietitian for the Los Angeles Board of Education and my father worked for the University Club  of Southern California. It was a very political club. A lot of powerful people were members. I met Chief Justice Earl Warren there when I was a little kid. Actually he was governor of California at the time. During the holidays they had a party for the people who worked there and their families. That's how I met him.

JW: What did your father do at the club?
CH: He was like a maitre d'. He oversaw a room that seated 16 or 17 people who ate there regularly. These powerful people would come in and say, “Jesse, what do I want to eat?,” and then he’d tell them [laughs]. My dad was a good man. He took care of all us kids with that job.

JW: How did you get the name Chico?
CH: It’s easier than Foreststorn, my real name, right? [laughs]. Somewhere along the line it happened. I guess when I was in my teens. Someone started calling me that. I was always a small dude. I didn’t mind, you know.

JW: When did you take up the drums?
CH: It just happened. My older brother Tommy was playing drums in the grade school orchestra. At the time I had been playing the clarinet because my best friend, Jack Kelso, also played it. You know, we've been friends since we were 8 years old, and we've never had a cross word. When my brother graduated from grade school, I said I might as well try for the drums. I gave it a try and never gave it up. Then I shined shoes to buy my first drum set.

JW: Who were you listening to on drums as a kid?
CH: Back then? Lionel Hampton. He was a big name out there. He’d play on the floor and the walls and all those places. I used to imitate him, and by doing so built my name up.

JW: You didn't have too many role models on drums in Los Angeles at the time, did you? 
CH: I didn't know much about New York at the time. But there were many great jazz musicians on the West Coast. Most of us listened a lot to the radio and to records. Jo Jones was my favorite drummer by then. At the beginning, I liked Jimmy Crawford, who played drums in Jimmie Lunceford's band. But when Count Basie came to California in the 1940s, that was it. That band and Jo Jones turned me completely around.

JW: Did you form a jazz band in high school?
CH: Yes. We used to rehearse over at my wife's house. She wasn't my wife then, of course. Her brother James Henry played trombone in our band. The band consisted of Dexter [Gordon], myself, [Charles] Mingus, Jack Kelso, Buddy Collette [pictured], Ernie Royal, Illinois Jacquet, who moved to Los Angeles when he was a kid, and people like that. His brother Russell Jacquet was there, too. We all came out of the same high school band.

JW: You played drums as an actor in the movie You'll Never Get Rich in 1941 with Fred Astaire when you were just 20 years old, and you play on the soundtrack to Bob Hope's Road to Bali.
CH: Right, right. I can't even remember how I got those jobs. I'm sure it was just being out there in Hollywood and meeting the right people.

JW: When did you first hear bebop?
CH: When I came out of the Army in 1946. I had gone into the service in 1942. After the war I was in Oakland, California, playing with Floyd Ray's band. We were playing a big show up  there. As a matter of fact, the Will Mastin Trio was there with Sammy Davis Jr. [pictured]. Anyway, our band was accompanying a little kid who was supposed to be a midget who played boogie-woogie on the piano. We got word that Billy Eckstine's band was coming to town.

JW: What did you do?
CH: Everyone in the band went over to the dance hall  where the band was playing. That was the first time I had heard Art Blakey. That’s the band that had Dexter [Gordon] and Jug [Gene Ammons] and all those guys. Hearing Blakey turned me completely around, man. I ain't never heard anyone play like that, you know?

JW: Blakey's style was a big early influence?
CH: Oh, yeah. As a matter of fact, the next day, on the early show with Floyd Ray, I was playing for the Will Mastin Trio and decided I was going to drop a bomb on the bass drum, like Blakey. I hit my bass drum so hard that Old Man Mastin [pictured] looked up and said, “What the heck are you doing?” [laughs] After the set, Mastin asked me to come to his dressing room. When I arrived, Mastin said, "Young man, you don’t want to play like that.” [laughs] But it was too late. Art Blakey had turned me completely around.

JW: You played and recorded with Lester Young in 1946.
CH: Playing with Prez was beautiful. One thing for sure, I could always brush very good. I played for singers for 18 or 19 years afterward because I could always get that pocket going for them with my brushes. That’s how I managed to keep a job playing for singers. I played for [singer] Lena Horne for eight years. It all started with Prez. He loved the brushes. He liked the way I played.

JW: What was Lester Young like?
CH: Prez was beautiful. He had a language all his own. He never swore. He never said a foul word. Instead of saying a curse, he'd say “Tommy Tucker” [laughs]. Things like that. The stuff he said would come right off the top of his head. He was a beautiful dude. Very amenable person, too.

JW: Did he ever not like something you were playing?
CH: I never heard him complain. Prez always did what he had to do. I studied with his brother Lee [pictured], and Lee taught me how to play for dancers and singers. So I used to sub for Lee at the Club Alabam in Los Angeles, which was the equivalent of the Cotton Club in New York.

JW: In 1950, you played in pianist Gerald Wiggins' trio and went to Paris briefly on tour.
CH: Wig [pictured] and I met when he first came to California. We stayed hooked up for 1,000 years. I got him a gig playing piano with Lena Horne in the mid-1950s. We did a lot of stuff together. Touring in Paris was great but it could be isolating. Fortunately I learned a long time ago when I was a young dude I’m happy with myself. I’m content. I can be alone. I don’t mind. I like to read. I like to study. I’m cool with it.

Tomorrow, Chico talks about how he became a member of the original Gerry Mulligan Quartet, Chet Baker, Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, touring Europe and facing a different kind of racial prejudice, and how his scenes from Sweet Smell of Success were filmed.

JazzWax tracks: Chico's first recording was with novelty-bop guitarist Slim Gaillard in 1941. You can find the song B-19 on Ice Cream on Toast at iTunes or here and African Jive on The Legendary McVouty at iTunes or here.

Chico's recording of Be Baba Leba with Helen Humes in 1946 can be found on Helen Humes: Today I Sing the Blues at iTunes or here.

Chico with Lester Young in 1946 can be found on The Complete Aladdin Sessions. His tracks are You're Driving Me Crazy, New Lester Leaps In, Lester's Be-Bop Boogie and She's Funny That Way. They're all at iTunes or here.

In 1947, Chico's bop recordings with Buddy Tate and His Orchestra can be found on Jumpin' on the West Coast at iTunes. Chico's tracks are Vine Street Breakdown, The Things You Done for Me Baby and Tate's a Jumpin'.

Chico's post-Lester Young recordings with the Gerald Wiggins Trio are key to understanding the drummer's advanced brush technique. All of his recordings with the pianist can all be found on Gerald Wiggins: 1950, on the French Classics label here.

JazzWax clip: It took some research and a big of digging at YouTube, but I found the clip from You'll Never Get Rich that features Chico. He plays a member of the Delta Rhythm Boys. That's him on the drums. Whether or not Chico is actually playing here or whether the drums were overdubbed later is unclear...

Sunday Wax Bits

JazzWax Radio. Next Sunday (March 8th), JazzWax with Marc Myers will air on JAZZ.FM91 from 10 pm to midnight. The nonprofit jazz-only station is based in Toronto, Canada, but you can hear my show anywhere in the world. I will post a large button and link near the top of my right-hand column next week. All you'll have to do is return here Sunday night and click to listen live.

My second and third shows will air on successive Sundays—on March 15th and March 22nd—at the same time. JAZZ.FM91 generously gave me two hours per night to do exactly as I please. Each show is packed with rare tracks and anecdotes about the jazz legends I know and have interviewed.

Billy Joel. In the wake of my two-part surprise interview with Billy Joel last week,  I received dozens of e-mails from readers commenting on his remarks and his music. Nearly all readers were favorably impressed with Billy's taste in jazz, his openness and his honesty about his own feelings and the dynamics between jazz and rock.

On reflection, I think what sticks out most in my mind are Billy's remarks about rock's magical ability to influence mass audiences. I'm forever mulling in my head the factors that caused jazz to lose its grip on large numbers of Americans' hearts in the 1950s and 1960s. Billy's comments were particularly insightful:

"Rockers are kind of magicians and wizards. We take sounds and play with them, you know, and then we put it out there and do magic to people with it, and it gets this big response. [pause] And chicks dig it. [laughs] It’s this great power."

The ability to excite large numbers of people, especially women, is an often-overlooked factor in jazz's declining popularity with the masses and its gradual shift to an intellectual art. It was interesting to get the perspective from a rock star's view.

Michel Legrand. The storied composer and jazz pianist will be appearing next week at New York's Birdland, from March 3d through March 8th. Joining the tender pianist will be Lewis Nash on drums, David Finck on bass, Catherine Michel on harp and a string quartet. Produced by Pat Philips and Ettore Stratta, the event will certainly feature Michel Legrand playing his own standards, which includes Windmills of Your Mind, The Summer Knows, What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life and You Must Believe in Spring. My review of Michel's performance last March at Birdland is here.

Billie Holiday. On Friday afternoon, I picked up a box of ginger-molasses cookies and headed over to the apartment of Janet and David Soyer.

For careful readers of liner notes, you may know Janet Soyer better as Janet Putnam. She played harp on many of the major jazz recording sessions of the 1950s that called for strings. These dates included Frank Sinatra's Songs for Swingin' Lovers, The Oscar Pettiford Orchestra in Hi-Fi (Vol. 1), Julius Watkins: Les Jazz Modes, Jackie Paris, Coleman Hawkins: The Hawk in Paris and countless others. David Soyer, Janet's husband, is a superior cellist who teaches at Juilliard and was a long-standing member of the famed Guarneri Quartet. He, too, recorded with Sinatra during the singer's golden Columbia period in the late 1940s, and David appeared on many jazz dates in the 1950s as well, including several with Dinah Washington.

When I arrived at the Soyers' apartment, we all sat down in their cozy living room and the three of us listened to the entire recording of Billie Holiday's classic Lady in Satin (1958). Janet and David played on the session, and listening to the album with them was a rare treat. The couple had not heard the recording in years, and certainly not on a remastered CD (that's David accompanying Billie on cello on I'm a Fool to Want You). Both David and Janet were deeply engrossed and moved during its play. Hearing Billie and the Ray Ellis arrangements also jogged memories. Said David:

"Urbie Green was amazing. Listen to him, there are no breaks between notes. And Mel Davis was spectacular on trumpet. I recall the date was done late at night, and Ray Ellis was easygoing as a leader. He wasn't overly expressive as a conductor, but he was fussy about the orchestra being in tune. So were all the musicians there. I remember we tuned up for some time. Listen to the recording and you can hear that the string section was remarkably in tune. The choir, as I recall, was positioned off to the side. I think Lil Oliver, Sy Oliver's wife, was one of the singers in that choir."

[Photo of Billie Holiday and Ray Ellis by Arnold Newman]

Bret Primack. This week, the Jazz Video Guy talks to members of the Blue Note 7, the newly formed band of superstars that pays tribute to Blue Note Records' lengthy history of great jazz recordings. Members speak briefly on-camera about their favorite Blue Note recordings, and then play Thelonious Monk's Criss Cross, with each member taking a solo. They also reflect on the meaning of jazz.

Johnny Mathis. A number of readers who responded to my  post on singer Marcy Lutes pointed out that Gil Evans arranged a session for vocalist Johnny Mathis earlier in 1956. Yes, indeed he did. In March, in fact. One reader asked where the Mathis-Evans tracks could be found. [Photo: Don Hunstein]

I'll tell you—but first a little history: Johnny Mathis' first recordings were for Columbia and were jazz-based pop affairs with leading arrangers. The sessions were held on March 14, 15, 19, 21 and 23, and April 6, 1956. Gil Evans scored four tracks for the March 21st date, but only three were mastered. Spring is Everywhere was rejected, for some reason, and never issued.

Today, all of these recordings are hard to come by. In truth, they're more notable for the players than the high-polish, over-the-top jazz singing efforts by Mathis. Because readers and harpist Janet Putnam asked if I knew whether they were still available (she plays on Mathis' April 6th date), I did a little online sleuthing.

You'll be happy to know that all of the early Mathis dates mentioned above are available on a download from a South African music site here. The download was $10. Featured on the various dates were Phil Woods, Art Farmer, Bernie Glow, Hal McKusick, Buck Clayton, J.J. Johnson, Teo Macero, Gunther Schuller, Tony Scott, John Lewis, Ray Brown and many other studio headliners of the period.

Yesterday I asked Hal McKusick if he remembered the Mathis recording session:

"I don't have a clue about those dates. Just another day in the New York freelance studio scene at the time. I do remember playing a concert in Forest Hills with Johnny Mathis and a high-end group of musicians. Johnny, in the middle of a song, stepped into darkness at the front of the stage (probably around 5,000 in the audience), and landed in the orchestra pit on top of the other alto player and me. We hoisted him back up to the stage, and the show went on. No one was hurt."

Bobby Sanabria. Famed Latin percussionist, bandleader and educator Bobby Sanabria tells me that the CD version of Kenya Revisited Live!! will be available on May 12. Bobby teaches at the Manhattan School of Music and leads and arranges for the school's magnificent Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra. Last April, Bobby led the orchestra in several tributes to Machito's  groundbreaking Kenya album. I posted about the 1957 recording here. My interview with Bobby in advance of the concert is here and my concert review is here. Bobby also sent along a clip from last year's concert...

West Side Story. If you dig jazz interpretations of the Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim musical from 1957, dig Ed Leimbacher's 12 favorite tracks at Jazz.com. All are spot-on, and Ed managed to find iconic versions for all of the show's major tunes. Bravo!

Paul Desmond. Doug Ramsey's Take Five is the definitive book on alto saxophonist Paul Desmond. If you dig Desmond and don't own it, grab the coffee-table-sized hardcover. This past week Doug had a series of superb posts on the alto saxophonist. Go here and scroll down to find them. But first be sure to dig the humorous list Doug assembled of car names operating under the influence of jazz.

CD discovery of the week. I was never a big Django Reinhardt fan. There's no disputing the guitarist's proficiency and nuance. But ultimately the sound for me is always a tad thick and drippy with nostalgia. Which can sound inauthentic and overly mannered. But recently I found an exception to my own rule: It's the Hot Club of San Francisco's Bohemian Maestro: Django Reinhardt and the Impressionists.

The Hot Club has been around for about 20 years, and Bohemian Maestro marks their 10th CD. What I like about the recording is that the group doesn't hew to  Django recreations. They add a great deal of their own flavor, which is largely in the jazz tradition. They also avoid sticking here to the Gypsy guitarist's repertoire. At times, pieces sound almost Mancini-esque as they keep stepping up in key; at other times, French classical is mixed in with the jazz. The result is a fascinating and reflective mash.

Keep in mind, many of the great American jazz arrangers, from Bill Finegan to Quincy Jones, studied with Nadia Boulanger and other French classical composers and harmony specialists in Paris to gain an edge. So the music here isn't that foreign, especially with the swing intact. The Hot Club of San Francisco is comprised of Paul Mehling on solo guitar and banjo, Evan Price on violins and theremin, Clint Baker on bass, and Jason Vanderford and Jeff Magidson on rhythm guitars.

The main reason like this Django derivation is the touch that Paul's banjo adds to the mix. The Mississippi riverboat sound acts as an American instrumental chaperone on many of the pieces. And let's not forget the Aeros Quintet (Amy Tori on flute, Tessa Gross on oboe, Heather Thon on clarinet, Laura Vincent on bassoon, and Michelle Haim on horn). All a lovely jazz feel reminiscent of Gil Evans. Classical conductor and pianist Jeffrey Kahane joins on piano.

Bohemian Maestro: Django Reinhardt and the Impressionists is available as a download or as a CD here.