JazzWax

Interview: Big Jay McNeely (Part 2)

Talking to Big Jay McNeely on Wednesday gave me tremendous insight into a period of jazz that has always puzzled me: Namely, the years between bebop and hard bop. I've always wondered how r&b split off from jazz at the end of 1948, why teens loved the music so much in the early 1950s, and what role, if any, r&b and subsequently rock 'n' roll played in stealing jazz's popular thunder. Much has been made of jazz's abandonment of the dance floor during the late 1940s, and to some extent that certainly compromised the music's mass appeal into the next decade. But there's more to the story, and Big Jay was at the eye of the storm.

Talking to Big Jay was pure joy. Here you have one of the inventors of early rock 'n' roll (years before Bill Haley, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard or Fats Domino). And yet Big Jay has been overlooked by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for induction. Interestingly, Big Jay always considered himself a jazz player—a different kind of jazz player to be sure, but a jazz player just the same. Big Jay's voice is rich and warm, with a double thick roadhouse tone. It drips with hip jazz and country slang, and the way he speaks is simple, heart-felt and honest.

In Part 2 of my interview with Big Jay, the legendary saxophonist talks about the start of his theatrical stage act, getting arrested in San Diego for leading a club audience out onto the street while continuing to play, how his biggest hit There's Something on Your Mind broke in, and why r&b and early rock 'n' roll caught on:

JazzWax: When did the theatrical part of your act begin?
Big Jay McNeely: In about 1950, in Clarksville, Tenn. It was a real small town, so small you didn’t need an address on an envelope, just the name of the person living there. When we played Clarksville for the first time, the audience didn’t respond. They just sat there. I couldn't understand that. The music usually got people going. So on the next set I did something different. I got down on my knees to play. Then I laid down on the stage and played from there.

JW: What happened?
BJM: People went crazy. After the concert, I said to myself, “I’m going to try this again." So I did it in Texas. And again, everyone went crazy. Back in L.A., I did it, too. The kids went nuts. They loved that I was on my back blowing like that, and my energy fired up theirs.

JW: Most of the kids already knew your hit Deacon's Hop. Who helped you break in that song?
BJM: Hunter Hancock [pictured], the Los Angeles r&b DJ. He broke it in. He was the only DJ in town who played black music. The kids who listened to the station were mostly white and Spanish kids. Those were the ones who dug me the most. They were the ones I was playing for mostly.

JW: You really knew how to work up a crowd.
BJM: My manager was Chuck Landers. He lived in Hollywood and was the business partner of [concert promoter] Gene Norman. He knew that gig [performing] cold. He got me with the talent agency, G.A.C. He said I had to be more stage. Before Chuck, I used to throw my suit coat on the stage to play and then picked it up after. He said that was no good, that I had to have someone else do that. I had to look and sound like the boss, like my name. Chuck then went out and got a guy in Hollywood for me who specialized in staging.

JW: What did the guy do?
BJM: He was used to staging other kinds of acts. So he came and watched me for a whole week. He taught me how to segue from one number to another—whether I had to play five minutes or an hour. He taught me how to keep the energy going from the stage, how to present myself to get the most excitement going and to program people.

JW: What does that mean?
BJM: Reading the crowd and playing accordingly. When I’d open, I used to come down the aisle while playing.  That tore the place up because if you were in the audience you didn't expect it. It also told people that I was one of them. But you have to watch people close when you do this. There are some people on the aisle wearing expensive suits, and you have to play one way when you get near them. Or if you see kids, you have to let go of other types of notes. I'd stop and play differently for different people I'd see along aisle. That’s how I got audience participation. And that’s the greatest thing. [Pictured: Big Jay working the audience at New York's Birdland in 1952]

JW: Alto saxophonist Earl Bostic came up around the same time, but he came out of the big bands. What did you think of him?
BJM: Earl was great. He could take any song and make a hit out of it. But he wasn’t a performer. My thing was more visual. One time Earl followed me into Minneapolis. But after I cleared out, everyone was waiting for Earl to be like me, theatric and all. But he wasn’t [laughs].

JW: What did it feel like to have that kind of power over teens in the early 1950s?
BJM: It felt incredible. One time it got out of control, and I got locked up.

JW: Where?
BJM: In San Diego. I didn’t have a wireless microphone  for my sax. So I walked up the aisle playing but then kept going straight out the door onto the sidewalk with everyone following me. I was outside the club blowing my horn the way I was inside. A cop saw this and called the station house. More cops came and arrested me. They had some law that said you couldn’t play outside like that.

JW: Was your exit something new?
BJM: Nah. I had done that at Birdland in Seattle and the Band Box. But it wasn’t allowed in San Diego. The funny thing was the band inside on the stage was waiting for me to come back into the club. But I was in jail. So someone in the band came running down and bailed me out so I could finish the set [laughs]. The kids went nuts.

JW: When you were playing, you thought of yourself as a jazz musician. But it wasn't like jazz, was it?
BJM: I played jazz, but I was an entertainer. Even when we played what was called r&b, the music was sophisticated. We changed keys and did things that were very progressive. It was all very soulful stuff.

JW:  Give me an example. 
BJM: Every time I'd go to the bridge, I'd get a lift out of the audience. So I’d use the guitar player like an organ. I’d have certain voices and a sound when I’d go to the subdominant chord or the tonic. The voicing had to be just right. Same with the voicing by the piano player. I always thought progressive.

JW: What did the jazz guys dig most about you?
BJM: The soulful thing. One time I worked with Sonny Stitt on the same bill. He loved my energy and sound. Other jazz guys respected me because they knew I was a real musician. I wasn't just honking on the horn, like some critics said. And these guys loved power. They all wanted to blow. But what made me different that these cats could hear was the soulful thing. It was from my heart. The younger jazz guys coming up at the time who didn’t know better said I was just playing one note. Hey, it’s an art to play one note [laughs]. Especially if you can get an audience going with it.

JW: You had your biggest hit with There’s Something on Your Mind, with Little Sonny Warner on vocal in 1959.
BJM: We first recorded There's Something on Your Mind in Seattle, in 1957, in a guy’s basement. I didn’t have enough money to get it out. A year later I bought the record and took it to Hollywood. Still nothing. Then I put it out in San Francisco in '59. A DJ there named Rockin' Lucky played it on his midnight show on KSAN. He’s the only one who had the single. After that, everything went nuts.

JW: Looking back, do you think r&b and rock ‘n’ roll hurt jazz?
BJM: I don’t think so. Everyone’s got their own thing that they like. R&b and rock captured a lot of people at a time in the early 1950s when jazz wasn’t that dominant. The truth is black musicians weren’t making money playing jazz.

JW: What do you mean?
BJM: It wasn’t until white musicians started to play with Jazz at the Philharmonic and other things like it that money started to roll in. The kids loved what I did. They’d follow me up to my house. But I don’t think what I was doing messed up jazz. Jazz had its thing. It’s just that its audience was smaller. The kids liked r&b and rock more.

JW: Why?
BJM: To play jazz, you had to have gone to school to learn to play it with all those chord changes. Cultured people liked that. Then along comes a working person who doesn’t know nothing about that. He just wants to hear music that makes him feel good. He wants what he likes to be basic and exciting. People who like jazz are hip and want to see how fast musicians can play and dig their technique. Other people didn’t want to think that much. They just wanted excitement. [Pictured: Big Jay's band in 1958]

JW: But plenty of kids liked jazz.
BJM: Oh sure. And jazz was creative. You couldn't believe what you were hearing when guys like Bird or Wardell [Gray] played it. But it didn’t have the impact on lots of people. You could dance to r&b and relate to it on a simple level. People in the audiences felt they were a part of you and what you were doing. With jazz you have to analyze what the guys are playing.

JW: Did the growing car culture play a role?
BJM: What do you mean?

JW: As more kids started to drive and could afford used cars in the early 50s, there seemed to be an emphasis on speed, excitement and a break from parents.
BJM: Oh sure. And what I played sounded great coming through a car radio [laughs].

JW: You really were one of the originators of rock ‘n’ roll, weren’t you?
BJM: [Pause] Yes. I was the first to be called a “honker and screamer.” But with a good sound. Some play stuff like I did but their sound was terrible. If I hadn’t had a chance to study with a teacher who stressed volume and power, I never would have had that sound. And if that audience in Clarksville had reacted a bit more the first time, I probably never would have had to go down on the floor of the stage to get them going [laughs].

JW: Yet you haven’t been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Why not?
BJM: I don't know. I guess the people who make those decisions don't realize I'm still around.

JazzWax tracks: If you want to hear one of the first recordings of There's Something on Your Mind from a Seattle performance in 1957, you'll find it on Big Jay McNeely: Live a Birdland, 1957 at Amazon here. Birdland, in this case, was a Seattle club. Another fine Big Jay album recorded in the late 1980s is AZ Bootin', which you can find as a download at iTunes.

Attention Rock & Roll Hall of Fame voters: You may have overlooked Big Jay's mighty 60-year contribution. He's still around, living in California. But hurry—let's get him on next year's ballot!

JazzWax clips: Here's a clip of Big Jay at 81 years old performing Everywhere I Go in Australia last year...

And here's another one with Big Jay working a club audience back in the 1980s (be sure to dig his tag from Holiday for Strings)...

Interview: Big Jay McNeely (Part 1)

Last Sunday I wrote that Big Jay McNeely viewed himself in the late 1940s as a new breed of jazz musician. A reader posted a comment in response, chiding me for saying so. After scouring books on Big Jay, the reader wrote, he couldn't find any reference to the r&b musician's jazz roots or how he viewed his place in jazz history. The writer added that I had jumped to conclusions and took a parting shot at Big Jay. Now, I love books as much as anyone. But as a working journalist, I also love the phone. So yesterday I gave Big Jay a call to bring closure to the matter.

For those who may be unfamiliar with Big Jay McNeely, the saxophonist today is considered one of the earliest r&b stage stars and a forefather of 1950's rock 'n' roll. Known back then as king of the "honkers and screamers," McNeely typically entered concerts walking down the aisle while playing a blues riff. When he arrived on stage, McNeely could whip young integrated audiences into a frenzy by playing only a handful of notes. These powerful riffs eventually wound up played while laying trance-like on stage, much to the crowd's hysterical delight. Today, we look back at Big Jay and see an r&b pioneer. But at the time, Big Jay told me yesterday, he viewed himself as "a jazz musician who played for people who wanted to dance."

In Part 1 of my two-part interview with Big Jay, 82, the legendary saxophonist talks about growing up in California, listening to jazz artists, playing with jazz artists, what jazz artists thought of him, and why he branched into dance music instead of sticking with performance jazz:

JazzWax: Was it tough growing up in Watts, CA, during the Depression?
Big Jay McNeely: No, no. We had plenty of food. My family grew our own vegetables. We had turkeys and chickens running around in the yard. My mother cooked for me, my brother Bob, and my father on a wood-burning stove. Each week, the iceman would come with a six-pound block of ice. It was like country living. [Pictured: Watts Tower]

JW: When did you decide to play the saxophone?
BJM: When I was 16 years old, which was around 1943. My brother played the instrument and was an excellent musician. He could have gone with Cab [Calloway] or any of the big bands, but he was too young. When he was drafted during World War II, he left his saxophone home. I was working at the Firestone Rubber Co. at the time. I decided music would be a better bet for me.

JW: What did you do?
BJM: I rode my bike each day to Mrs. Hightower’s house and took lessons for 25 cents. [Saxophonist and singer] Vi Redd was her daughter. [Saxophonist] Sonny Criss and I took lessons from Mrs. Hightower at the same time. Then I took lessons with a gentleman who played first saxophone chair with the RKO Studio Orchestra. He was a great teacher and taught me all about full vibrato, so I could play with a big sound. He was a tremendous musician and could even play Dixieland. I studied harmony, ear training, composition—everything—with him.

JW: What happened when your brother came home from the war?
BJM: We both studied voice with a guy who would eventually teach the Hi-Lo’s and the McGuire Sisters. My brother and I figured eventually we’d have to sing and that studying singing would help us with our blowing. Singing was the same principal as playing. You sing from the diaphragm with compact air pressure and the “e” sound.

JW: What’s the “e” sound?
BJM: That's the sound you get like an opera singer. If you hum through a comb, you get an “e” sound. That’s what makes the sound so big. The principal is you have to have the proper approach. You have to use your whole body as a soundboard. My sax began to sound as smooth as a cello when I studied with him. Eventually my brother and I formed a band. My brother played baritone saxophone. Our band had Hampton Hawes and Sonny Criss, until Howard McGhee stole them both away in early 1947 [laughs]. [Photo of Hampton Hawes: (c)Ray Avery / CTSIMAGES.COM]

JW: How did you sound as a jazz musician at that point?
BJM: I didn’t play with a real legit jazz sound. For that sound you’d use very little lip, what they called a nonpressure embouchure. . Just enough pressure on the reed to make it vibrate. I took the same principles I learned in vocal lessons and applied it for a good, big soulful sound on the saxophone. That’s why when I play people recognize it's me. People have criticized me for playing one note but they never criticized my sound [laughs].

JW: Did you listen to jazz musicians in the mid-1940s?
BJM: Oh yes, of course. Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Lucky Thompson, Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons, Illinois Jacquet, Don Byas—all of them. When Charlie Parker came out to L.A. in the mid-1940s, my mother washed his clothes. We ran [hung out] with him.

JW: Why didn’t you become a jazz musician?
BJM: I started out playing jazz but I didn’t have a perfect ear, like Sonny Criss did. Guys like Sonny could pick up their horn and play anything. They heard things once and they could go off on it. Also, back then, there were so many players you had to be different on your horn to stand out. Eventually it was a money issue. Many of these jazz guys looked sharp. They were earning. I was wearing hand-me-downs. That made me realize early on that I had to do something different to make money. [Pictured: Big Jay, left, and his brother Bob in 1955 or 1956]

JW: What did you do?
BJM: In 1947, I began playing at the Barrelhouse Club owned by drummer Johnny Otis. It was right down the street from my home. There was a lot of blues energy there. I was thinking of going to New York, to The Apollo theater. But a guy I knew spelled out how things would go for me. He said I’d be a big hit for sure and would earn solid money. But he also warned me that there would be all kinds of guys who would pad me [advance loans] and steal my money. He said I’d wind up owing the government all kinds of money but I wouldn’t have it because all the guys who took a cut wouldn’t leave me with enough. That made sense, so I decided to stay in L.A.

JW: How did you come to record?
BJM: At the end of 1948 [right after the second AFM strike], Ralph Bass, an a&r guy at Savoy asked me if I wanted to do a record. I said yeah. He told me to put a tune together. A kid I knew in Watts had a record shop. He gave me a record by Glenn Miller that opened with a drummer playing the sock cymbal. I can't remember the name of the song. But I built a blues off of it called Deacon’s Hop, which became a big hit [Deacon's Hop hit #1 on the R&B chart in early 1949].

JW: Your real name is Cecil. How did you wind up with your nickname?
BJM: Ralph, the a&r guy from Savoy records, came up with it. I was getting ready to record Deacon’s Hop. We were taking a cab out to my house and were talking. He said "Cecil" was kind of a square name and that I needed a stronger one if I wanted to be big. He asked me what my friends called me. I told him, “James.” He said great, “Let’s call you Big Jay.” So it stuck.

JW: While you were playing r&b during the late 1940s, did you consider yourself a jazz musician?
BJM: I always thought of myself as a jazz musician who was playing for people who wanted to dance. Before I even recorded Deacon’s Hop I worked on Central Avenue in Los Angeles at all the jazz clubs. I knew Teddy Edwards, Wardell Gray, Miles Davis, Eddie Heywood, Ben Webster, Lucky Thompson—all those cats. I wanted to become a jazz musician, but when I recorded Deacon’s Hop in 1948, it became so big they wouldn’t let me record anything else but more of it. That’s around the time I started playing a more soulful thing.

JW: So jazz was always on your mind?
BJM: Sure. I was trying to play jazz before Deacon's Hop but I just didn’t have the ear. You can train yourself to have an ear. But unless it comes natural when you’re young, it’s much harder as you get older. If you had studied, you could imitate and pick up on whatever you heard. Bird [Charlie Parker] could play the chord changes to everything. But by me not having a perfect ear, I had to work harder to develop what I played. When I started developing my own sound and adding power, it was a whole different thing. It was the complete opposite from what I had been doing.

JW: Did jazz artists dig you?
BJM: Hamp [Hawes], Bird, Miles, Sonny [Criss]—they all loved what I did. Dizzy, too. I played Birdland in New York in the early 1950s and opened for jazz artists. They’d put me on first, before Milt Jackson, Ben Webster, Erroll Garner, all of them. I was always the opener. I guess to get the people who were there excited.

Tomorrow, Big Jay talks about how the theatrical component to his act started, who was responsible for making Deacon's Hop popular with kids in Los Angeles, why he was arrested in San Diego, his strategy for playing to the crowd, and thoughts on whether rock 'n' roll destroyed jazz.

JazzWax shocker: For whatever reason, Big Jay has not yet been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I'll talk to him about this tomorrow—and I'll surely give the Hall a call.

JazzWax tracks: A fine retrospective of Big Jay's work can be found on Nervous, which includes Deacon's Hop, 3-D, Nervous Man Nervous and There Is Something on Your Mind, his biggest hit. It's available at iTunes and Amazon as a download. To hear what Big Jay sounds like today, dig Big Jay McNeely & Dana Gillespie: Cherry Pie, released in March. It's also available as a download or on CD, and the album is fabulous.

JazzWax clip: Go here to see what Big Jay was like in 1983, complete with his dramatic and signature aisle entry.

Interview: Med Flory (Part 2)

Throughout the 1950s, saxophonist Med Flory was known in jazz circles for his aw-shucks demeanor and aggressive ambition. After moving to Los Angeles in 1956 with his wife and singer Joan Fry, Med began landing a steady stream of work in the TV and movie studios of Burbank and Hollywood. He also continued to play in Ray Anthony's big band, freelance in small groups, and lead his own orchestras on record dates. When you talk to Med, you start to notice this gentle merging of Midwestern calm and Coastal charm. He's as relaxed as some of the Old West characters he has played on TV, but he excites easily when the subject turns to music. There's also a distinct hip lilt in his voice, as if all those years deep in the West Coast jazz scene has somehow marinated his vocal chords. And as you discuss music with Med, you come to realize that this guy isn't satisfied unless the band he's playing with knocks listeners out of their seats. He loves it that much. [Photo of Med Flory, left, by Rich Voorhees]

Med's big obsession has always been the sound of reeds playing in unison. Saxes packed together playing a soli has been an intoxicating device used by big bands since the 1940s. After years spent tinkering with transcriptions of Charlie Parker solos, Med along with bassist Buddy Clark decided in the early 1970s to form a band that would turn their passion for lock-step saxes into a mission. Crack reed players were assembled, and the result was Supersax. The group's first album in 1973 seemed at first like a West-meets-East novelty concept. But the energy level and emotional lift made the group a huge success and reawakened an interest in Charlie Parker. The album, Supersax Plays Bird, won a Grammy.

In Part 2 of my interview with Med, the legendary saxophonist and arranger muses about Art Pepper, his own accidental acting career, Charlie Parker, and the formation of Supersax:

JazzWax: In 1959, you played on Art Pepper Plus Eleven, which was arranged by Marty Paich and sort of had a pre-Supersax sound.
Med Flory: Nah, not really. I don't hear that. The date was OK. I wasn't crazy about Art [Pepper]. He was a bit of a jerk. I remember we were playing up in Oakland [CA] with Maynard Ferguson. Art Pepper was on the gig. When the gig was over, we were going to go back to Los Angeles the next day. But we got an urgent call from a woman Art was with. She said, “Art’s not moving. He’s not breathing.” So a bunch of the guys rushed up there. Turned out Art was fine. It was Art’s idea of a joke. He was always doing stuff like that or saying he could play better than Bird. That simply wasn’t the case.

JW: Starting in 1960, you started a new career as an actor.
MF: Yeah, for the next 30 years I worked on TV and in the movies. A lot of Westerns. The first thing I landed was a part on TV’s Lawman. One day I was sitting on the porch of one of those fronts in Warner’s back lot looking at my lines. James Coburn was passing by. He said, “Hey, don’t you play tenor sax in Terry Gibbs’ band?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “What are you doing here?” I said, “I have this part.” Coburn asked if I had done much acting. I told him I hadn’t. He said, “On the wide shots, make big gestures. On the medium shots, make little ones. And on close-ups, don’t do anything. And always hit your marks [on the ground] when you're supposed to.” That’s about as much acting advice I ever got [laughs]. I did Bonanza, the Saga of Whizzer McGee, Daniel Boone and a ton of other shows. I also did Lassie. I seemed to be naturally good at it, and acting was another way to make a few bucks. [Pictured: Med Flory]

JW: How did you come up with the idea for Supersax?
MF: What inspired me initially was Ralph Burns’ 1948 arrangement of the chorus to I’ve Got News for You. That was for Woody Herman’s  [pictured] band. It was a Shorty Rogers chart but Ralph wrote the chorus. It was a reworking of Dark Shadows, the song Charlie Parker had recorded a year earlier with Earl Coleman. Ralph had written out Parker's solo for the five saxes.

JW: When did the idea to transcribe Parker's solos first hit you?
MF: Around October 1956. [Saxophonists] Joe Maini, Charlie Kennedy, Richie Kamuca and Bill Hood came by my house. Joe Maini had a record player and a bunch of Parker records. I gave him $50 for the player and the discs. Then I started transcribing a few things of Bird’s that were in the stack, like Star Eyes, Chasin’ the Bird and Just Friends. I wrote out those three charts from the records. Then later we played them down. We were just screwing around. One night in 1957 we were playing the Crescendo with the Dave Pell Octet. Buddy Clark was playing bass. Afterward, we all went over to my pad. Buddy said, “Play that thing with the saxes—Just Friends.” When we were done, Dave said, “Boy wouldn’t it be great to have a whole book of those things.” Buddy said he’d take a shot. The trick was to keep everything within an octave. The line is everything. What Bird played is the thing. You don’t have to dress it up with voicings or anything.

JW: Were they hard to play?
MF: Bet your ass. You have a line that has to flow. All of the parts have to flow like the line. You can’t have trick things like jump lines. You have to find a way to keep everyone flowing tight and the right way. You have a bunch of choices to make on each chord. It’s like doing the New York Times crossword puzzle—except when you’re done you have something more than yesterday’s newspaper. You also want to keep what’s known in the music business as “a rub”—a half step in every chord. So, you want a B up against a C. It busts up the chord and keeps the line from becoming complacent. You have to have the rub between the second alto and first tenor or two tenors. Not the two altos.

JW: In the early 1970s, you and Buddy finally had the time to take the concept to the next level.
MF: Yeah. At first it was me and Perk [Bill Perkins] on alto saxophone, Pete Christlieb on tenor and Bill Hood on baritone. We started rehearsing. Hood left because he was entering his old folks stage and didn’t want to get involved in work. Christlieb burned a hole in his eardrum working on cars with high-pitched tools. So we got Joe Lopes on alto, Jay Migliori and Warne Marsh [pictured] on tenors, and Jack Nimitz on baritone. We rehearsed for about a year at my place and at Buddy’s house. Joanie, my wife, got tired of us rehearsing all the time and called up the guy who owned Donte’s and pushed him to book us.

JW: What happened?
MF: We went into Donte's on a Monday night. We played Parker’s Mood, and after the first chorus, everyone in the place jumped up and went nuts. Mauri Lathauwer from Capitol Records happened to be there and was in heaven. He signed us right away for three albums.

JW: What did you learn about Charlie Parker during this experience?
MF: Bird knew what he was doing. You can’t memorize that stuff and play it. Just when you think he’s going one way, he goes another. He was all about surprise. Not big ones. Little ones. Like the rub. I’d always try to play like him and never could. When you listen to him, you gotta know he’s from somewhere else.

JW: Did you listen to Parker as a kid?
MF: First time I heard him I was a senior in high school. I didn’t know it was him. I just heard some guy playing The Jumpin’ Blues with Jay McShann’s band. Then when I was in the army, I heard Bird’s first records as a leader. I said, “He’s OK but he’s not as good as that guy in McShann’s band” [laughs].

JW: Did you ever meet McShann?
MF: Yes. When we were in Japan with Supersax. Me and [singer] Joe Williams got to talking with Jay. He was a great old cat. He told me how Bird got his name. He said they were on the road traveling in cars and one hit a chicken. Charlie said, “Stop the car, I want to get that yardbird.” They took the bird to the boarding house where they were staying, and the woman cooked it up for dinner that night.

JW: What’s next for Med Flory?
MF: I'm just finishing up a Supersax CD that's a killer. It was recorded at Charlie-O's. I'm writing a new chart that I may call Bebop 101. There are going to be a lot of hidden lines in there, like those pictures where you have to find the teacup in the tree. I'm also going to be at the AT&T San Jose Jazz Fest on Saturday, August 8th, with Dave [Pell] and [singer] Bonnie Bowden. It's going to be fun.

JW: You always sound like you're having fun. Has the jazz life been fun?
MF: A gas.

JazzWax tracks: Supersax recorded upward of nine albums. The first, Supersax Plays Bird, was issued on CD but it's out of print and selling for around $40. Supersax's second album, Salt Peanuts, is fabulous but only available on LP. The same goes for the third album, Supersax Plays Bird With Strings. The others are available on CD, but not all are in print.

More recently, Med recorded Live at Capozzoli's in Las Vegas (1998) along with his quintet and Conte Candoli. He also recorded Sunday Afternoons at the Lighthouse Cafe (2004), a quintet date. Both are superb albums recorded for Woofy Records. You can find them here and here.

JazzWax clip: Here's Supersax in the early 1980s on A Night in Tunisia. Med's in the middle of the reed section and Conte Candoli is on trumpet...

Interview: Med Flory (Part 1)

Med Flory is perhaps best known as the co-founder of Supersax, the commercially successful reed ensemble started in 1972 that plays transcriptions of Charlie Parker's solos. But before Supersax, Med was one of the most dynamic alto saxophonists, arrangers and bandleaders on the New York and Los Angeles scenes in the 1950s. If you listen to his leadership recordings from the mid- and late-1950s or his work with Terry Gibbs and Dave Pell, you'll be taken aback. I certainly was. Med's charts and the charts he motivated others to write for him are like pure rocket fuel. They take off and don't stop. Part of Med's gift was a knack for assembling just the right swingers. Like a kid who keeps tinkering with hot rods to get them to go faster, louder and cooler, Med routinely assembled groups that out-did the last ones. Musicians impressed into duty (often in the same band) included Al Cohn, Johnny Bello, Doug Mettome, Hal McKusick, Billy Byers, Urbie Green and so many others. Med's leadership dates bring new meaning to "dream band."

Today, Med lives in California and continues to play and record. He has a supercharged positive spirit and a snappy West Coast sense of humor. He slips words like "wig," "dig," "cool" and "hip" into the conversation so naturally you'd think he invented them. Med is among a fast-disappearing generation of highly aggressive West Coast jazz musicians who knew only one way—swinging hard until the arrow said "empty."

In Part 1 of my two-part conversation with Med, 82, the legendary alto saxophonist and arranger talks about Claude Thornhill, Al Cohn, Ray Anthony, and his late wife Joan Fry:

JazzWax: Is Med your real name?
Med Flory: No. It’s Meredith. But I hated it. When I was a kid, no one could pronounce it, so they called me “Mary.” I’d get the heck kicked out of me. One day my junior high school coach said, “Hey Med, come over here.” So I grabbed that nickname.

JW: Where were you born?
MF: Logansport, Indiana. I started out on clarinet when I was 9 years old. When I was 12, in 7th grade, Bill Marocco, the band teacher, put me in the high school band. I played for five years in the first clarinet chair.

JW: How did you come to music?
MF: My mom was a real musician. She could sight-read three manual organ parts with pedals and everything. She had played for the silent movies when she was in high school. She never studied music but could memorize everything. She also could improvise. She was twice the musician I’d ever be.

JW: Did you study music in college?
MF: No. I only had a semester of music in college in the fall of 1944. Then I enlisted in the Army Air Corps. When I got out in 1946, I went to Indiana University in Bloomington. I was there for 3 ½  years and graduated in May 1950. I didn’t have anything to do with the music school there. I had a band at the time and was writing charts and didn’t think I needed them. Instead I majored in philosophy and minored in sociology and French. I didn’t want to take anything in college that would hold me back from being a complete idiot [laughs].

JW: You wound up in Claude Thornhill’s band on graduation day, yes?
MF: That’s right. A fraternity brother of mine, Tom Patton, a trumpet player, recommended me. [Tenor saxophonist] Dick Hafer was leaving the band, and Claude needed a replacement. I was with Claude for two years. The band was based in New York about half the time. I lived at the President Hotel on 48th Street, just west of Broadway. The other half we toured. We hit every state twice.

JW: What was Thornhill like?
MF: Claude was deep. A good guy, nice and everything. But there was a part of him you never got to know. He was a hell of musician, though. He had been Paul Whiteman’s piano player.

JW: After Thornhill, you decided to stay in New York?
MF: Yes. In January 1952, I put my union card in New York. I was in New York freelancing from January 1952 to Christmas of 1955.

JW: Did you listen to other bands?
MF: Sure. One of my favorites was Elliot Lawrence. I caught the band at the Pennsylvania Hotel many times between 1952 and 1955. I didn’t play on the band. I just danced to it or went to hear it. That was a great band. He had the best writers and arrangers, like Tiny Kahn, Al Cohn and Johnny Mandel. They wrote the Lawrence band book. Johnny Mandel was the best out-chorus arranger of them all. An out-chorus is the part at the end of a swinging arrangement where everything is jumping. Tiny Kahn was great like that, too. [Drummer] Sid Catlett was instrumental in helping Tiny Kahn develop his thing. Tiny’s credo was “Play in four, but think in two.”

JW: Who was your favorite tenor saxophonist at the time?
MF: Al Cohn.

JW: Not Zoot Sims?
MF: No, He wasn’t in the same category as Al. Zoot was a good swing-time player. But Al was otherworldly. And he had a wicked sense of humor. Later, when Al was over in Europe, up in Denmark, they asked him, “How do you like our Elephant beer?” Al said, “I drink to forget” [laughs]. That was all. Fast. And funny. Those lines came out of the blue. He had a very fast mind. Al’s writing and playing was above most everyone else.

JW: Your first recording as a leader was in 1953. That was some session.
MF: [Laughs] You dig that? New York had a lot of great players then. You just hung around Charlie’s Tavern and got to know everyone. Al Cohn wrote two of those charts. Al and I had worked the Rustic Cabin together in New Jersey with Art Mooney’s band. Duke Niles at Capitol Records heard me and took an interest. He got me a deal with Bobby Shad, the main man at EmArcy. We did the four tunes on one date in late 1953. [Pictured: Al Cohn, left, and Med Flory in the mid-1950s]

JW: Your other leadership dates in 1956, and 1957 were even more stunning.
MF: [Laughs] I recorded those for Albert Marx at Jubilee Records. They were great.

JW: Backing up a bit, you joined trumpeter Ray Anthony’s band in New York in 1955.
MF: Yes, Ray [pictured] came to New York in the fall of 1955. His brother, Leo, was contracting the band. By then I was married to Joanie [Fry]. She was a singer, and we were working together at the time. Leo hired both of us.

JW: Where did you meet your wife?
MF: We met on a New York City bus in late 1952. A friend and I were out in front of the Dixie Hotel on 43d Street and Eighth Avenue waiting for a bus. It was cold. We got on the bus and headed to the back. Joanie was sitting there with a friend. We just started talking. Later Joanie told me she told her friend, “I’m going to marry that guy.” When we went out the next day, she fell in the snow and I picked her up. It was love at first sight really. We were married for just over 48 years. She died in January 2001 of Parkinson’s. [Pictured: Med, wife Joan, Henry Fonda and Joe Maini]

JW: You and your wife moved to California in 1956.
MF: Yes, we went into the Hollywood Palladium with Ray Anthony in January 1956. We loved it out there. It was a pretty nice place to live. The climate was perfect and it had a cosmopolitan atmosphere. So I got a few bucks from my folks, and we bought a home. With the Cold War heating up and everything, New York seemed like a bit of a trap. There were only a couple of bridges and tunnels out of the city.

JW: In 1956 you were in The Girl Can’t Help It with Jayne Mansfield.
MF: We were in one scene, in prison outfits. The music was already recorded. We played as though we were playing. 

JW: Then you did TV work.
MF: Yes, I did the Ray Anthony Show for 30 weeks. The gig got me going in Los Angeles. The contractor on the band started using me on baritone saxophone on studio dates. There was so much work in L.A. back then.

JW: Your 1959 band was similar to Terry Gibbs’ Dream Band [pictured].
MF: Terry came to town, heard my group and thought we could make it bigger. So all those charts I had went over to Terry. Now I don’t lend out charts any more. I don’t blame Terry. He had landed the gig. But he heard my band and that's what got him going with that. Around this time I also met [tenor saxophonist] Dave Pell. I started writing charts for him and playing baritone in his octet for about three years. I also was working a lot of strip joints in the late 1950s. The Largo was the big one on Sunset Strip. This is just before I started acting on TV and in the movies.

Tomorrow, Med talks about actor James Coburn, Art Pepper, Charlie Parker and the birth of Supersax.

JazzWax tracks: I can honestly say that one of my best buys this year has been Go West Young Med!, (Fresh Sound), a compilation of Med and his orchestras from 1954-1959. Every single track is a blockbuster, and the quality of the arrangements and musicianship is nothing short of stunning. Charts are by Med, Al Cohn, Bob Brookmeyer, Bill Holman, Lennie Niehaus, Bob Enevoldsen and others. There's simply not enough room to get into all the players here. But rest assured the ensembles raise hairs. It's as good as Maynard Ferguson's late 1950s Roulette Records period. You can find it here.

Med with Claude Thornhill can be found on
Claude Thornhill and His Orchestra: The 1949-1953 Performances (Hep). He's on tracks starting with Mambo Nothing. The album is available as a download at iTunes and at other online retailers. Med's also on Ray Anthony's Capitol recordings throughout the 1950s.

Med's also in the sax section on Manny Albam's The Jazz Greats of Our Time (1957), which included Conte Candoli, and  Jack Sheldon (trumpets), Stu Williamson (valve-trombone), Herb Geller (alto sax), Richie Kamuca and Med Flory (tenor sax), Charlie Mariano (alto, tenor and baritone saxes), Lou Levy (piano), Red Mitchell (bass) and Shelly Manne (drums). You'll find this superb album here.

Med is in the sax section of Terry Gibbs' Dream Band albums starting in 1959.

Art Pepper: Art History

Art Pepper is one of only a handful of jazz artists whose life story is perhaps as well known as his recordings. Thanks largely to the publication of Straight Life in 1979, a searing autobiography written by Pepper with his literary wife Laurie, Pepper's music has much greater meaning and dimension today now that the back-story is known. One of the earliest no-holds-barred, tell-all jazz books, Straight Life detailed Pepper's passion for jazz, his plunge down the rabbit hole of addiction, and his struggles to resurrect himself after years squandered on narcotics and in jail.

When Straight Life came out, I had known little of Pepper's life story. But after reading the book in one sitting, I understood immediately what Pepper was trying to say with his music and where all that energy, pain and beauty came from. I immediately bought Surf Ride, The Early Show, The Late Show, The Return of Art Pepper, Picture of Heath and Modern Art. Along with a friend who read Pepper's book at the same time, we listened to hours of the saxophonist's recordings. But I still felt I lacked a complete understanding of Pepper's thinking. So in the summer of 1982, prior to a trip west to visit a college friend just south of Los Angeles, I recorded a bunch of Pepper on cassettes and packed a Walkman. After spending days listening to Pepper on the beaches of Southern California, I came to realize that there's a lot of Pacific Coast sunlight and rolling surf in everything he plays.

Which is why comparisons to Charlie Parker always seem forced. Both Pepper and Parker played from honesty and pain. But Pepper had a more sun-splashed sound to his attack in the 1950s. Like Parker, Pepper happily ran red lights with his risk-taking improvisation. But he always seemed to be cruising through the intersections rather than tearing by. In addition, Pepper's West Coast roots made him keenly aware of space. His sound relied heavily on a hot-sand wail rather than a deep blues tradition.

In the years since Pepper's death in 1982, his wife Laurie has been issuing previously unreleased material on her Widow's Taste label. Her fourth and most recent effort is a three-CD compilation called Art Pepper: The Art History Project. As Laurie told me yesterday, this set's purpose is more about placing one Pepper track up against another chronologically to contrast and appreciate Pepper's development than reaching into the rarity vaults. Nevertheless, a third of the set contains never-before issued tracks, including unknown recordings made just after Pepper's release from San Quentin State Prison in 1964.

The three-CD set smartly covers Pepper's life in three phases—early, middle and late. The result is a welcome reminder of how special Pepper was and how provocative his playing became in the later years. The unreleased material includes six tracks on Disc 2 (tracks 1-6), and three tracks on Disc 3 (tracks 2, 3, 6 and 7). What's more, there are limited release tracks here that have appeared in the past only on Danish and Japanese releases (on Disc 3, tracks 1, 2, 4 and 5).

Pepper was a product of the big bands. He did two tours of duty with Stan Kenton's orchestra in 1943 and again starting  in 1947. As a result, Pepper had impeccable time and swing, and thick chops developed while trying to be heard in a Mack truck band. When Pepper left Kenton at the tail end of 1951, he became immersed in the West Coast bop scene, leading and playing with groups that included Shorty Rogers, Sonny Clark, Shelly Manne, Hampton Hawes, Harry Babasin, Joe Mondragon and many others. A gifted sight reader and strong jazz soloist, Pepper added a special ingredient to a sax section and helped pioneer a new West Coast alto saxophone sound that was at once soulfully restless and laid back. [Photo of Pepper with Stan Kenton's orchestra in 1950 by Bob Willoughby]

Disc #1 (Pure Art: 1951-1960) features Pepper with Stan  Kenton and assorted small group combos. Pepper's playing is bouncy and edgy—like an amusement park ride that has snapped free of its operator's controls. Pepper swings in and out, darting here and there but always delivering a warm, electrified sound. Pepper's attacks are searing and thrusting, especially on Art's Oregano and Diane. 

Disc #2 (Hard Art: 1960-1968) displays the influence of free jazz on Pepper. The first six tracks were recorded in May 1964, Pepper's first recordings following his prison release. Dig the 11-minute So In Love featuring free jazz breaks with John Coltrane-like arpeggio showers. But this motif isn't a lift. Pepper breaks in places, allowing his former lyricism to emerge. On That Crazy Blues, there are shades of Ornette Coleman as Pepper spins and spins while developing ideas.

The disc ends with Phil Wilson's arrangement of Chelsea Bridge, from Buddy Rich's Mercy, Mercy album recorded live in 1968 at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. I might have chosen Alfie from the same album instead, on which Pepper has a searing solo. But the more I listened to Chelsea Bridge, the more I understand where Laurie was coming from when she chose it, especially given Pepper's Coltrane touches. What's remarkable on this track not only is Pepper's all-out playing but that he had a ruptured spleen at the time. Said Buddy Rich trombonist Rick Stepton in the Mercy, Mercy CD liner notes:

"Art had been playing tenor with a Latin band in the barrio section of Los Angeles and didn't own an alto when he got the call to join the band. Don Menza offered to lend him his horn until he could get one of his own, and that's Don's alto Art was playing at Caesar's."

Disc #3 (Consummate Art: 1972-1982). By the early 1970s, Pepper was bit more anchored to his own sound, though he continued to integrate Coltrane's purposeful runs into his solos. Perhaps the most interesting track on this disc is Angel Wings. According to Laurie's liner notes, a Japanese label in 1980 asked Pepper to record some West Coast Jazz for export. So Pepper got together with trumpeter Jack Sheldon, pianist Russ Freeman and other musicians and revisited his 1950s roots. What's interesting is how he blends free jazz touches into his neo-West Coast scene.

A three-disc compilation that calls itself The Art History Project almost taunts you to choose the period you like best. For me, Disc #1 remains most memorable and fun to hear. Pepper in the 1950s had an energy, joy and innocence that transcended the times. He was ahead of the pack and breaking new ground without looking to see who might be on his creative tail. Pepper's playing changed after his devastating years in prison, and not always for the better.

By the time of his prison release in 1964, Pepper had emerged in a creative moonscape. The music he had known had changed, replaced by an art form that was less cohesive. After losing four critical years of artistic development, Pepper seemed hell-bent trying to catch up to the music of Coltrane, Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman and demonstrating that he, too, could play it. The results often feel detached, uncertain and lost. Which makes these tracks fascinating if you know the back-story. These are the blues, but not the blues of hard luck, poverty or racism. They're the kind you play when you've come to realize finally how foolish you've been and how much time you've wasted succumbing to personal weakness.

JazzWax tracks: Art Pepper: The Art History Project is available as a download from iTunes as three stand-alone albums. Or you can buy the set from CDBaby here. The remastering by Wayne Peet is superb. If you're a fan of Pepper in the 1950s, you should know that two-thirds of the set is devoted to post-prison Pepper, which is a different trip. And even if you already own some of the set's tracks on Individual albums, it's a delight to have Laurie Pepper's choices here. Just knowing that she finds these tracks meaningful and in this order make them special.

JazzWax clip: Shortly after Pepper's release from San Quentin, he appeared on Ralph Gleason's Jazz Casual TV show in San Francisco in May 1964. The two tracks here are D Section and Groupin'. The band is Pepper on alto sax, Frank Strazzeri on piano, Hersh Hamel on bass and Bill Goodwin on drums...

Sunday Wax Bits

Waxing & musings. A few weeks ago, in response to my post on Bob Willoughby's 1951 photos of tenor saxophonist Big Jay McNeely, reader and writer Alan Kurtz posted a comment claiming that McNeely was not a jazz musician but an R&B tenorman, adding that "R&B was not jazz, and to blur that distinction does a disservice to both genres."

A tad harsh. Though the term "rhythm & blues" dates back to 1948, the genre is hard to categorize and distinguish from jazz in the late 1940s and early 1950s. At the time, there was enormous crossover between jazz, jump-boogie, dirty boogie and R&B. Ultimately, the big difference was dance-ability. But if Big Jay McNeely should not be viewed as jazz, as Alan sternly suggests, the same might be said of Lionel Hampton, Tiny Grimes, Louis Prima, Earl Bostic, Benny Golson, Paul Williams, Illinois Jacquet and many others at this point in time.

If we zoom in on 1951, we learn that the year was a pretty sketchy one. Jazz was feeling its way along on both coasts, and to make ends meet, many musicians shifted between jazz and r&b as well as Latin. Part of the reason for the blurring was the record industry itself, which had confused the marketplace with the introduction of two new record speeds—45-rpm and 33 1/3-rpm. Add to the mix the rise of independent radio stations and BMI's growing influence as a rival to ASCAP, and it's rather hard to definitively categorize anyone with a saxophone as a pure practitioner of one genre or another.

Writer Robert Palmer described early r&b as "urbane, rocking, jazz-based music with a heavy, insistent beat." Sounds about right to me. While Big Jay McNeely certainly plays like an early rock 'n' roller to our ears now, he surely viewed himself at the time as part of jazz's avant-garde—albeit a member of the more theatrical and flamboyant wing.

Kendra Shank. After my post on Bill Evans: Six Vocal Versions, I received sweet e-mails from singers Tessa Souter and Kendra Shank [pictured]. Writes Kendra:

"Thank you for including my version of "Time Remembered" in your recent blog on vocal versions of Bill Evans.  It was a deep moment for us in the studio, and I'm so pleased that it touched you. I also enjoyed reading about the other vocal versions you featured. Meredith [d'Ambrosio] is one of my favorite vocalists and a dear friend. Thanks again for sharing the music with your readers, and for doing it so eloquently."

Tab Smith on the air. Today, DJ Jim Wardrop will feature the music of Tab Smith commemorating the r&b alto saxophonist's 100th birthday. Smith in the late 1930's and early 1940's played with Lucky Millinder and Count Basie. Between 1951 and 1957 he recorded more than 90 sides aimed at the r&b market under his own name. Go here to listen today between 5:30 and 7 p.m. (EDT).

Burton Lane on the air. Today, DJ Sid Gribetz presents a five-hour special radio broadcast on WKCR in New York featuring jazz versions of the songs of composer Burton Lane. Lane was a Gershwin protege and one of the legendary masters of American popular song, most famous for his scores for the Broadway musicals Finian's Rainbow and On A Clear Day You Can See Forever. The show on WKCR will air from 2 to 7 p.m. (EDT). Go here to listen live.

Charles McPherson. David Brent Johnson, host of WFIU's Night Lights jazz program, recently recorded a one-hour show on alto saxophonist Charles McPherson. Go here to listen to his podcast. And next Saturday (August 1st), at 11:05 p.m. (EDT) David will host a program on recordings captured at New York's Cafe Bohemia. Go here to listen live. Mark your calendar: On August 8th, David's show is Claude Thornhill: Godfather of Cool, and on August 15th, it's Very Early: Bill Evans.

Herb Snitzer's archive. Photographer Herb Snitzer is looking for a museum, private collector or institution interested in acquiring his complete jazz photography archive that begins in 1958. For contact information, go here.

Ira Gitler on Art Tatum. Recently Bret Primack spoke to legendary jazz writer Ira Gitler about Art Tatum. Interesting insights...

New York's Hotel Astor. Reader Kurt Kolstad sent along a link to photos and historical information on New York's Hotel Astor, where many big bands were captured live on the roof garden via radio remotes. Go here to view.

Bob Keller. Tenor saxophonist Bob Keller sent along a link to a videoclip recorded in Saratoga, N.Y., on July 19, just a few days ago. The clip features Bob (he's on the left) and Lew Del Gatto playing Red Door, the Zoot Sims and Gerry Mulligan composition on which Dave Frishberg's Zoot Walks In is based...

CD discovery of the week. Charlie Mariano, the Boston alto saxophonist who died in June, recorded two 10-inch LPs for Prestige—one at the tail end of 1951 and the other at the top of 1953. The albums were called Charlie Mariano's Boston All-Stars. The first eight tracks from 1951 featured Joe Gordon (trumpet), Sonny Truitt (trombone), Jim Clark (tenor sax), George Myers (baritone sax), Roy Frazee (piano), Jack Lawlor (bass) and Gene Glennon (drums). The second eight paired Mariano with another team: Herb Pomeroy (trumpet), Dick Twardzik (piano), Bernie Griggs (bass), Jimmy Weiner (drums) and producer Ira Gitler on bells on Barsac. I own both LPs, but I see now that they're available on a single album download at iTunes.

Oddball album cover of the week. Here's another one of  those album covers from the 1950s that portray female singers as love toys. Singer Patty McGovern recorded Wednesday's Child in 1956 for Atlantic with quite a big band, featuring Joe Wilder, Jimmy Buffington, Danny Bank, Arnold Fishkind and Osie Johnson. But for some reason, the art director decided to cast her as an urban temptress or streetwalker. I'm hoping the fellow in the alley with her is the album's talented West Coast arranger Tommy Talbert. Otherwise, this cover is really out there. If you want the album on CD, it's here for about $50 used.

Billy Taylor Said It

Today is Billy Taylor's 88th birthday. Happy birthday, Billy! In 1982, the pianist who was mentored by Art Tatum, wrote a book called Billy Taylor: Jazz Piano in Jazz History. When I saw him several months ago, he graciously gave me a copy. Beautifully written, it's an authoritative historical analysis of the jazz piano from the perspective of a practitioner, insider and educator. Or, you might say, a working historian. What's more, Billy is one of the few jazz pianists who actually has mastered each style he writes about so eloquently.

Here's a paragraph from the book's introduction:

"As educators, musicians, students and the general public engage in the study of jazz, they will recognize that jazz is a unique American phenomenon. It has been ridiculed, distorted, fragmented, diluted and deemed unworthy of serious study and performance by music educators, musicologists, historians and others who were not really qualified to evaluate the music. Yet it has continued to be the music which most consistently has expressed American moods, thoughts and feelings as it has evolved into its present state. Jazz, America's classical music, needs to be better understood by Americans."

Amen. For more on Billy, see my five-part interview series here.

JazzWax clip: Here's a clip of Billy Taylor appearing on the 1958 TV show The Subject Is Jazz. The band joining Billy included Tony Scott on clarinet, Doc Severinsen on trumpet, Mundell Lowe on guitar, Jimmy Cleveland on trombone, Earl May, bass and Ed Thigpen on drums. The tune is Billy's composition, Early Bird...

Hefti, Quincy and Vocalese

With the enormous success of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross' Sing a Song of Basie in 1958, copycat groups were quickly formed to duplicate the swinging vocalese and rake in some of the dough. Though none could compare with the magical vocal harmonies and lyric treatments of Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross, two attempts you may not know about are worth hearing. [Pictured: Les Doubles Six in 1962]

The first is an album by Neal Hefti and the Neal Hefti Singers called Pardon My Doo-Wah. Recorded in 1958 for Epic, the date featured mostly Count Basie fare. Hefti surely signed onto this project after hearing Sing a Song of Basie and saying to himself, "Hey, those Lambert, Hendricks & Ross things were great but most of those are my arrangements for the Basie band!" Some of Hefti's efforts on this album are a little sticky-sweet, but the tracks that work succeed in a big way.

The monster band arranged and conducted by Hefti included Ernie Royal, Mel Davis and Joe Wilder (trumpets), Frank Rehak, Sonny Russo and Billy Byers (trombones), Phil Woods [pictured], Jerome Richardson (alto saxes), Seldon Powell and Al Cohn (tenor saxes), Lou Stein (piano), Barry Galbraith (guitar) Milt Hinton and George Duvivier (bass), and Charlie Persip and Sol Gubin (drums).

The tightly arranged vocals were handled by the Neal Hefti Singers, a largely pop ensemble that leaned more toward a jingle sound than hip bop. There was little or no soloing by the vocalists. Instead, the group functioned as an ensemble. The standouts are Two for the Blues, L'il Darlin', Ready Rudy and Splanky. The chart for Two for the Blues, in particular, shows off Hefti's writing brilliance.

The second vocalese album hoping to capitalize on Lambert, Hendricks & Ross' success was The Double Six of Paris by a group of the same name. The LP was recorded in 1959 and released in the U.S. by Capitol Records. The charming vocal arrangements sung in French were based on recordings by Count Basie's "New Testament" band and Quincy Jones' "Birth of a Big Band" orchestra. Jones worked with the group on its follow-up album while he was in Paris in 1960.

Les Doubles Six was founded by singer Mimi Perrin—Annie Ross' hip Parisian counterpart. The group was made up of six jazz singers who overdubbed their parts. Hence the group's name. But Les Double Six didn't come out of thin air. Earlier in the 1950s, Perrin had recorded in Paris with Blossom Dearie and a range of French jazz musicians. In 1954, Perrin and Christiana Legrand (Michel Legrand's sister, pictured) both were members of Les Blue Stars, an early French jazz vocalese group. Les Doubles Six also included Perrin and Legrand, as well as Ward Swingle, an American-born singer who had moved to France. After Les Doubles Six broke up, Swingle and several members of Les Double Six would form The Swingle Singers. The Swingle Singers was a group that specialized in a cappella treatments of Bach. Hey it was the folksy 1960s. You had to be there.

Les Doubles Six recorded four albums released in the States—The Double Six of Paris (Capitol), The Double Six of Paris: Swingin' Singin' (Philips), Dizzy Gillespie and the Double Six of Paris (Philips) and The Double Six of Paris Sing Ray Charles (Philips). The last one was nominated for a Grammy in 1965 in the Best Vocal Group Performance category. The French group lost out to the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night.

While the Neal Hefti Singers and Les Doubles Six were strong vocalese entries, both groups lacked the soul and cleverness of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. What's more, listening to these albums, you come to realize how critical Jon Hendricks' lyrics and each member's solo voice was to making the group special. In essence, the trio was easy to imitate but impossible to copy—or exceed. Nevertheless, these albums are mighty fun to hear if you like group vocalese.

JazzWax tracks: Neal Hefti's Pardon My Doo-Wah is available on CD here. To get a taste, sample Two for the Blues (what a wonderful trombone-trumpet line Hefti wrote!) and L'il Darlin'. What makes this album particularly special are Phil Woods' solos throughout. The two-fer CD also features a terrific Hefti instrumental album from 1954 called Hot 'n' Hearty, also with Woods.

If you like jazz vocals sung in French (I do), you'll dig Les Double Six. The album to get is Les Double Six, which can be  downloaded at Amazon here. In addition to the initial Capitol material, you'll find fabulous versions of Early Autumn, Boplicity and Westwood Walk recorded on the group's next LP. Sample Early Autumn and hear for yourself.

JazzWax clip: Here's a taste of Les Double Six singing Quincy Jones' Rat Race in French...

Interview: Dick Katz

It's hard to peg Dick Katz. The pianist was on the New York  jazz scene starting in the early 1950s. He has played with virtually all of the greats, including Oscar Pettiford, Coleman Hawkins, J.J. Johnson and others. He has recorded on quite a few significant albums, including Benny Carter's masterpiece Further Definitions. He has arranged sessions. He's been an entrepreneur—co-founding Milestone Records in the mid-1960s. And he has produced many sterling sessions, including Alone Together with Jim Hall and Ron Carter. [Photo by Nancy Miller Elliott]

In essence, Dick Katz has been involved with virtually every aspect of the jazz business—from the creation of sweeping music to the shaping of significant jazz sessions and launching of a major jazz label.

In my interview with Dick, 85, the legendary pianist talked about his experiences with Teddy Wilson, Tony Scott, Kenny Dorham, Calvin Newborn, Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Jo Jones, Helen Merrill, Orrin Keepnews and John Lewis:

JazzWax: Where did you grow up?
Dick Katz: In Baltimore. I grew up during the Depression, but my family was very fortunate. My father was a big deal in the advertising business, so we did OK financially. He had started his own ad agency and was holding his own. He had started out as a poor kid who worked his way up. There were three kids in my family. My sister was nine years older than me. She died in 1984. I also had an older brother. He died in 1997.

JW: Who first exposed you to jazz?
DK: My brother. He had all these records. They were 35 cents each then. Swing era stuff. One day I saw a stack of new records on the player. The 78-rpm that was playing was by Count Basie and His Orchestra. That record turned my life around.

JW: Do you remember the song?
DK: Yes, It was Roseland Shuffle.

JW: Why did you choose the piano?
DK: Fats Waller. I loved his records. But I quickly realized that I didn’t have the physical equipment to play stride piano like that. Stride is a specialty. It’s a physical thing, almost athletic. In order to play stride, you have to have a certain power and accuracy. When you hit a bass note followed by a chord. That takes constant practice.

JW: Who were your favorite pianists besides Waller?
DK: I was smitten with Teddy Wilson and Jess Stacy.

JW: Did you meet Wilson?
DK: Yes. I took lessons with him. After I graduated from  the Manhattan School of Music, I went to Juilliard to study with Teddy during the summer of 1950. The main thing he had, in addition to technique, was enormous taste. He’d coach me using melodic logic. One note leads to the next, in a logical way. He was a very dignified, educated man.

JW: In 1953, you recorded with clarinetist Tony Scott.
DK: He was a mercurial egomaniac. Extremely talented but headstrong. He was like a salesman who oversold himself. He was multitalented. But he’d get an audience in palm of his hand and he’d keep on going and lose them. It was his personality. He mellowed over the years though. He was one of the major players back then. He taught me a great deal, mostly nuts and bolts stuff. This chord goes to that chord.

JW: You became the house pianist at New York’s Café Bohemia, a hot place to be in the mid-1950s.
DK: Yes, I was working with [trombonists] J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding. One night I sat in with [bassist] Oscar Pettiford and [drummer] Kenny Clarke, and we started played together as a trio there and behind other groups.

JW: In 1956, you joined Kenny Dorham’s Jazz Prophets.
DK: I went on the road with that group. Kenny was a sweetheart. He was a lovely man. We traveled the circuit for a while. That’s the first time I heard [pianist] Phineas Newborn. An amazing player. We were at the Cotton Club in Cleveland. He was there with his brother Calvin. Calvin played all the instruments—vibes, trombone, guitar, you name it. He’s still active today.

JW: How was recording Benny Carter’s Further Definitions in 1961?
DK: We did that in two sessions. Benny had heard me play, and Jo Jones called me for the job. Jo and I were working together at the Embers in New York. I was playing with [trombonist] Tyree Glenn, Jo and [bassist] Tommy Potter at the time. Benny’s music plays itself. But it can be tricky. Papa Jo was having some difficulty with the charts on the session. He was a very proud man. If he couldn’t figure out something, he’d get defensive. Benny had a certain mastery when dealing with people. He cooled Jo out like a psychiatrist. He told him to settle down. Everyone had such respect for Benny.

JW: How did Benny do it?
DK: One of his techniques was correcting without insulting. If a musician messed up while playing down a chart, he’d stop him and say so in a way that didn’t set you on edge. Actually he did it with me once.

JW: What happened?
DK: I had referenced a standard while improvising on one of Benny’s songs. Benny said, “We’re happy to have you on board here. But I don’t like people injecting other people’s songs into my music. Please don’t do that.” Then he turned to everyone in the band and said, “That goes for everyone.” It was never personal.

JW: You play beautifully on Further Definitions, especially on Body and Soul.
DK: Thank you. Teddy Wilson had showed me some chord changes for the second bridge to Body and Soul. I passed them on to Hawk at the session and he used them in his solo. It’s an altered-chord sequence.

JW: Did you write them out for Hawkins?
DK: For Hawk? No way. Hawk had super ears. He just looked over my shoulder and gobbled them up. That session was the high point of my career. There was a lot of great playing there as well as warm joking around and nice feelings.

JW: What was the record business like in 1966?
DK: Things were very rough. The jazz business was in the tank. Record distributors had a thing going that they wouldn’t distribute your lesser-known artists unless you also had a star.

JW: Right in the middle of this, you started Milestone Records with Orrin Keepnews.
DK: Yes. Orrin’s label, Riverside, had gone belly-up. The label had overproduced, winding up with much more inventory than they could get rid of. At Milestone, we agreed that Orrin would handle the business end and I would do the producing. I produced Alone Together with Jim Hall and Ron Carter, Lee Konitz’s Duets and others.

JW: How did you and Orrin come together?
DK: Through our kids. I didn’t know Orrin that well at the time. I knew that he was out of a job because of Riverside’s hard luck. Aside from playing, I wasn’t doing too much either and had always had a hankering for producing. Our children went to the same private school in New York—the Fieldston School. At some school event, Orrin and I got to talking. He was itching to start a new company.

JW: Why didn’t he take a job with a major record label after Riverside collapsed?
DK: He couldn’t. All the big companies he applied to said he was overqualified. So he was having a hard time.

JW: Where did you get the seed money?
DK: I borrowed $10,000 from my brother-in-law, and we started Milestone.

JW: How did you come up with the name?
DK: When you name anything, you have to go through the copyright office. What you find is that virtually everything you can think of is taken. When we tried Milestone, it was available. Orrin had a few albums in the can that were left over from Riverside, so we issued those. I had produced an album with Helen Merrill in 1965, with George Avakian in the booth. We issued that on Milestone, too, as The Feeling Is Mutual. George is great. He’s one of my heroes. He’s a giant. There would be no jazz without him.

JW: How was working with Orrin?
DK: Orrin is alright. He’s a little crotchety, but he’s true blue. He knows what he’s doing

JW: Who was the most exciting musician you’ve worked with?
DK: Probably Roy Eldridge. I consider him to be as big a giant as any you can name, including Louis [Armstrong]. Roy was an amazing artist. The other was Oscar Pettiford. And then Benny Carter.

JW: Which recording session was the toughest?
DK: Probably Jimmy Raney and Bob Brookmeyer in 1956. It was tough because of the way Jimmy wrote. He wrote very complex harmonies, and he had two chord changes for every beat. This required a lot of rehearsal, and we didn’t have any. I had to sight read and it was very rough. I played on the first four tracks. Hank Jones replaced me for the next four recorded a couple of weeks later. Hank played much better with them than I did.

JW: What group are you most proud of?
DK: Probably my years in the mid-1980s with the American Jazz Orchestra. [Pianist] John Lewis was the musical director. I got to play the greatest music ever. John was my mentor for many years. John was a renaissance man. He was extremely well rounded. He was originally going to be an anthropologist. When Duke [Ellington] came through Albuquerque, New Mexico, where John was raised, that moment changed his life. He had a resolve and ambition like no one I ever knew. Nothing stood in his way. 

JW: Was jazz fun?
DK: Fun? Nothing is always fun. A lot of it was fun. A lot of it was stressful. A lot was wonderful.

JazzWax tracks: Dick Katz's earliest recording sessions with Tony Scott appeared on two different 10-inch LPs: Music After Midnight and Jazz for GIs. It's available as a download at iTunes on Tony Scott in Hi-Fi.

Kenny Dorham and the Jazz Prophets is available used for about $20 at Amazon here.

Helen Merrill and Dick Katz collaborated on The Feeling Is Mutual (1965), A Shade of Difference (1968) and Chasin' the Bird (1979). The first two are available from Mosaic Records on The Helen Merrill-Dick Katz Sessions here.

Jim Hall and Ron Carter's duet album, Alone Together, that Dick produced, is available as a download at iTunes or at Amazon here. The Lee Konitz Duets, on which Konitz plays alto and baritone saxes, is available here.

Benny Carter's Further Definitions is one of the greatest jazz albums ever recorded. It would certainly be in my Ultimate Top 25, if I were to create one. The lineup? Benny Carter (alto sax and arranger), Phil Woods (alto sax), Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Rouse (tenor saxes), Dick Katz (piano), John Collins (guitar), Jimmy Garrison (bass) and Jo Jones (drums). You can download it, but I'd recommend buying it. You'll find it here.

Reader Don Brown notes that Dick's Piano & Pen (1958) is a wonderful album that features guitarists Chuck Wayne and Jimmy Raney on different tracks, as well as Joe Benjamin and Connie Kay. It's available as a download at iTunes or at Amazon here.

Bill Evans: Six Vocal Versions

I don't generally go for vocal versions of Bill Evans' compositions. Too many attempts feel trite or lack the sensitivity and depth of Evans' piano originals. In other cases, the vocalist doesn't have enough technique, a problem instantly exposed when attempting an Evans piece. But there are exceptions. Here are my favorite vocal interpretations of Evans' songs, in no particular order. My criteria? An evident understanding of Evans' melodic primacy, tender timbre and gentle swing:

Gene Lees, Waltz for Debby. Gene was a close friend of Evans and wrote the lyrics to this one. Back in 1997, Gene told me he had his daughter Vicky in mind when he wrote the words. Gene isn't a singer, but to hear the song's wordsmith passionately belt out the tune in 1992 is about as touching as hearing Evans himself play it. As Johnny Mandel once said about Gene, "Most people write of this music and musicians like they are fish in an aquarium. Gene is always in there swimming with them."

Kendra Shank, Time Remembered. This is from Shank's new Mosaic album (which includes a smart interpretation of Carole King's So Far Away). On Time Remembered, Shank shows off her enormous range and delivers her interpretation with a warmth and love that leaps right out.

Meredith d'Ambrosio, Blue and Green. Blue in Green originally was credited to Miles Davis, but years after Kind of Blue was recorded, Evans disclosed that he was the composition's author. D'Ambrosio tweaked the title, wrote lyrics and recorded it on Echo of a Kiss (1998). She also included a fine version of Time Remembered. If you're unfamiliar with d'Ambrosio, she's a marvelous singer with a cozy, hip sound. John Coltrane liked her voice so much he asked her to tour with him in 1966, but d'Ambrosio declined.

Tessa Souter, Love Theme from Spartacus. While this song was written by Alex North for the 1960 movie Spartacus, Evans recorded it many times in the 1960s—including three album versions in 1963 alone: Solo Sessions, Plays the Theme from the V.I.P.s and Conversations with Myself. Souter's version appears on her new album Obsession, and she delivers the song with a wide open vocal that makes good use of space and technique.

L'Tanya Mari, Very Early. This Evans' waltz appears on Mari's new album, A Teardrop of Sun. Evans wrote the song while he was still in college at Southeastern Louisiana University in the late 1940s. Says Mari in the CD's liner notes: "There's something about Bill Evans that always stood out for me. When you look at his picture he seems like this very quiet shy type of person. And his music just moves me."

Meredith d'Ambrosio, Turn Out the Stars. Evans introduced this song in 1966 as a solo work shortly after his father's death. D'Ambrosio chose if for her 1988 album, The Cove. I like her version because it's both casual and passionate, a tough combination. It certainly doesn't hurt that d'Ambrosio is accompanying herself on piano and that she sounds eerily like Bill Evans himself as she sings Gene Lees' lyrics to the song.