JazzWax

Don Sleet: All Members

There are a number of highly talented jazz musicians from the late 1950s who can't really be called great because they recorded too few albums. In some cases these musicians never had an opportunity to record extensively. Or they came up too late and were trampled by the rock era in the mid-1960s. Or they succumbed to drug addiction and couldn't hold it together long enough to win the trust of record producers. One such jazz artist who fell into all of these categories was hard-bop trumpeter Don Sleet.

Yesterday I spoke to Howard Rumsey, Jimmy Heath and Ira Gitler about Sleet. I'll share their recollections with you in a moment.

Little is known about Sleet, and sadly he recorded only one album as a leader called All Members. On that superb 1961 date, Sleet was accompanied by Jimmy Heath, Wynton Kelly, Ron Carter and Jimmy Cobb. His only other albums were as a sideman. He first appeared on record in 1959 on vocalist Gloria Smyth's Like Soul! (World Pacific Jazz), Lenny McBrowne and the Four Souls (Riverside) and Eastern Lights. In 1964, he was in the trumpet section on Shelly Manne's My Fair Lady With The Un-original Cast (Capitol).

Sleet doesn't appear in the Encyclopedia of Jazz or the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. From what I could piece together from research and from his brother David, Don Sleet was born in Fort Wayne, Ind, on Nov. 27, 1938. After his family moved to San Diego, he took piano lessons from his father,  who was director of music for the La Mesa Spring Valley School District. Soon Don began playing the trumpet, and by age 18 he was playing in the San Diego Symphony. He also played in vibraphonist Terry Gibbs' group and the San Diego State University Jazz Ensemble.

This collegiate group consisted of Don Sleet (trumpet), Mike Wofford (piano), Gary Lefebre (tenor sax), John Guerin (drums) and Bob Sarabia (bass). They were invited by Howard Runsey to play at The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, CA., on Sundays. The group would go on to win first place at Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse Jazz Festival and was written up in Down Beat in 1956.

In 1961, with Chet Baker in prison in Lucca, Italy, for drug smuggling and forgery, producer Orrin Keepnews recorded the hungry and vulnerable-looking Sleet on Jazzland Records. Orrin had been recording Baker on Jazzland before the trumpeter's internment. After recording All Members, Sleet returned to the West Coast for an extended stay at Shelly's Manne Hole. Narcotic addition led to several stints in halfway houses and
Synanon. Don Sleet died in Los Angeles in December 1986 of lymphoma, at age 47.

All Members is one of those gems that has slipped through the cracks and is all but forgotten by most jazz listeners. Its success rests on Sleet's cool, angular sound pressed up against  Jimmy Heath's powerful, sandpapery texture. The song selections also were superb: In addition to Jimmy's All Members, the group recorded two Clifford Jordan tunes (Brooklyn Bridge and The Hearing), three standards (Secret Love, Softly As in a Morning Sunrise and But Beautiful) and an original blues by Sleet called Fast Company.

To gain insight into Sleet, I called Howard Rumsey, Jimmy Heath and Ira Gitler, who wrote All Members' original liner notes.

Howard Rumsey [pictured]:

"Don was in a college group in San Diego that played the Lighthouse every Easter. During that holiday week, I'd turn the club over to about 20 local college groups. Sleet was a darn nice trumpet player, and within the group he played in at The Lighthouse, he was perfect. He played like Shorty Rogers. We called them the San Diego Lighthouse All Stars. Don wasn't outspoken, but when he did talk, he was pleasant and enthusiastic. He would have gone a lot further but he got ahead of himself with drugs and wound up hastening his death. I wish he had recorded more. He could have been up there with many of the big-name West Coast players."

Jimmy Heath [pictured]:

"I wrote All Members on there. It was a quick relationship. I didn't know Don for a long time. He wanted me with him on the date, so I did it. I suspect Orrin got everyone together for that one. Don could play. Sure he could play. I remember he wasn't exceptional but he was a good player. There were a lot of good players then and he was one of them."

Ira Gitler [pictured]:

"Don played with top musicians when I met him in New   York. I remember him being a nice guy, kind of quiet and shy. I had said nice things about him in my liner notes, and he was appreciative. Don had that something. He was authentic."

JazzWax tracks: Don Sleet's All Members with Jimmy Heath, Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Cobb and Ron Carter has only just been discontinued by Concord Records but it is available on CD here from independent sellers. For a free listen to the album and two tracks from Lenny McBrowne and the Four Souls, go here to a podcast of Off the Beaten Tracks, a Dutch radio show. Just click on the little speaker icon.

Sleet's appearance on Shelly Manne's 1964 recording, My Fair Lady With The Un-original Cast (not to be confused with Shelly Manne and His Friends: Modern Jazz Performances of Songs From My Fair Lady recorded in 1956) can be found here as an import from Japan. Note that the song samples at Amazon are not from this album but mistakenly from the 1956 recording.

JazzWax thanks to Harry Sandick for reminding me of Don Sleet and All Members.

Sunday Wax Bits

Dick Katz (1924-2009), a low-key, high-impact jazz pianist with a Teddy Wilson touch who recorded with Tony Scott, J.J. Johnson, Kai Winding, Al Cohn, Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins and many other gunslinger improvisers, died November 10th of lung cancer in Manhattan. He was 85.

Over his six-decade career, Dick wound up recording on some of the most breathtaking jazz albums of the 1950s and 1960s. Jazz giants favored Dick as an accompanist because his keyboard style was both a throwback to the pre-bop era of strict time-keeping and a modern practitioner of provocative chord voicings. Notoriously blunt, Dick's salty side was thin, and it didn't take long for his edge to give way to a tender, caring personality.

In 1966, he and Orrin Keepnews co-founded Milestone Records, with Orrin handling the marketing and Dick taking on the producing. When I interviewed Dick back in July, we spoke about his career, his recordings and his collaboration with Orrin. When I asked how the two met, here's what Dick said:

"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."

In re-listening to my interview with Dick, what stands out was the warmth of his voice, the pragmatism of his thinking and eagerness to instruct. Dick had a light Southern accent that he picked up as a youth in Baltimore, and he didn't work hard to finesse the things he wanted to say. In my re-listen, it was almost as if there were two thinkers inside Dick's head operating at once. As ideas formed, you could almost hear one ask, "How should I put this?" and the other one answering, "Just say it—we don't have time for this." Fortunately the latter thinker always won out. [Pictured, from left, Ron Carter, Jim Hall, Dick Katz, Helen Merrill and Thad Jones in 1966]

Here are a handful of must-own Dick Katz tracks chosen because you can hear his taste and touch distinctly:

This Will Make You Laugh—Carmen McRae: By Special Request (1955), with Dick Katz (piano), Mundell Lowe (guitar), Wendell Marshall (bass) and Kenny Clarke (drums). This Decca recording is at iTunes.

Exactly Like You—Al Cohn: I'm Still Swinging (1955) with Joe Newman (trumpet), Urbie Green (trombone), Gene Quill (alto sax),  Al Cohn (tenor sax), Dick Katz (piano), Freddie Green (guitar), Eddie Jones (bass) and Shadow Wilson (drums). This is part of the Mosaic Select series.

Aw! C'mon—Oscar Pettiford Orchestra in Hi-Fi, Vol. 2 (1957). This magnificent big band featured Ray Copeland and Art  Farmer (trumpets), Al Grey (trombone), Julius Watkins and David Amram (French horns), Gigi Gryce (alto sax), Benny Golson and Jerome Richardson (tenor saxes), Sahib Shihab (baritone sax), Dick Katz (piano), Betty Glamann (harp) Oscar Pettiford (bass and cello) and Gus Johnson (drums). It's on CD as the Complete 1959 & 1963 United Artists Complete Big Band Studio Recordings and available on CD at Amazon and other e-retailers.

Afternoon in Paris—Dick Katz Quartet: Piano & Pen (1959) with  Dick Katz (piano), Chuck Wayne (guitar), Joe Benjamin (bass) and Connie Kay (drums). This is at iTunes and e-retailers.

Blue Star—Benny Carter: Further Definitions (1961) features Benny Carter and Phil Woods (alto saxes), Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Rouse (tenor saxes), Dick Katz (piano), John Collins (guitar), Jimmy Garrison (bass) and Jo Jones (drums). This is at iTunes and at e-retailers.

For more, catch Doug Ramsey's tribute here, which includes a fine video clip.

Stacy Rowles (1955-2009), daughter of pianist Jimmy Rowles who was both a jazz instrumentalist and vocalist, died on October 27 in Burbank, CA, following injuries sustained in an auto accident about a week earlier. She was 54.

Stacy is perhaps best known on disc for her haunting and definitive vocal of her father's composition Looking Back. After I wrote about the song's history here in June, Stacy's sister Stephanie sent along the following e-mail:

"This is one of my favorite songs of my Dad's. I love the lyrics because they describe the home where I grew up perfectly. I always tear up when I hear this song, especially when Stace sings it. I used to request it when I went to their Thursday night gig at Linda's on Melrose. A friend of mine directed me to your post, and I am grateful to have read it."

Doug Ramsey had a touching tribute here.

Wolfgang's Vault. Much media fuss was made last week about free audio at Wolfgang's Vault of jazz concerts by Count Basie, Dakota Staton and Art Blakey. Much of it seemed pretty dull to me. Nice to know it's there, but I'd never reach for the recordings, free or otherwise. But upon combing through the hundreds of other free concerts listed, I did find some gems—in the rock and soul categories. Dig Tower of Power, Tavares, David Bowie, Roberta Flack and Paul McCartney. All of these concerts are rather rushed and uneven (amazing how sloppy all artists get in concert), but at least these had a certain cutting-edge energy.

Johnny Mercer. Today (Sunday), disc jockey Symphony Sid Gribetz will host a five-hour radio retrospective of the singer-songwriter from 2 to 7 p.m. (EST). Go here anywhere in the world to listen.

Jazz Loft scene on the radio. Sara Fishko will host a 10-episode series on New York's WNYC-FM starting tomorrow (Monday). Sara and partners at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University created the series from the tapes of loft life discovered in photographer W. Eugene Smith’s vast archive. For more information, go here. The show's airing is in conjunction with the release of the book The Jazz Loft Project (Knopf) by Sam Stephenson. It will be published on Nov. 24.

Mystery song solved! Wall Street Journal jazz writer Will Friedwald has been trying for decades to identify a particular song. It turns up on Nat King Cole's 1943 recording of Embraceable You and behind Peggy Lee on her 1963 recording of Mack The Knife. To hear the song in question (the clip features both the Cole and Lee songs), go here.

Now the mystery has been solved by David Lennick. Go here for the riddle's solution.

CD discoveries of the week. Two rather interesting jazz CDs this week, both by Filipino jazz singers:

The first is by Mon David (pronounced MOAN da-VEED), whose vocal approach sounds remarkably like Mark Murphy's. On his album, Coming True, David takes on Wayne Shorter's Footprints, Invitation, Some Other Time, No More Blues, Never Let Me Go and a deep version of Abbey Lincoln's Throw It Away, among others. David brings a warmth and fluent knowledge of the songs he has chosen. David is joined by pianist Tateng Katindig, whose father Eddie is one of the Philippines' leading jazz saxophonists. And dig Only Once, an original co-written by David on which he and singer Charmaine Clamor scat in Filipino. Sample it at iTunes or here at Amazon.

The second is My Harana: A Filipino Serenade by Charmaine Clamor. It's a collection of Filipino love songs. But is not one of those tasteless albums of faux passion and synthesized strings, which are all too common in countries outside the U.S. Instead, there's a warm, Brazilian ballad feel to Clamor's vocal passion and interpretation. Her voice is genuine, and her timbre shimmers with fragrant beauty. I do not speak Filipino, so the lyrics are lost on me. But you sense instantly what Clamor is singing about, and you realize she is a gorgeous singer. She's that good. Clamor is backed by Richard Ickard on acoustic guitar and a range of stringed instruments. Sample it at iTunes or at Amazon here.

Oddball album cover of the week. Trumpeter and flugelhornist Shorty Rogers made a lot of great albums. He also made some clunkers. I've never heard this one, but the cover gives us a good indication of its contents. I'm not quite sure who convinced Shorty that jazz fans wanted him to meet Tarzan let alone wind up in his arms. I guess both could swing—one in Hollywood and the other on vine. The album was recorded in 1959 for MGM. Clearly a shameless tie-in to MGM's Tarzan, the Ape Man of the same year.

Interview: Lennie Niehaus (Part 5)

Lennie Niehaus has been writing music for major motion pictures since the early 1960s. And since 1984 he has worked on virtually every movie Clint Eastwood has appeared in and directed. These include Bird, Absolute Power, Space Cowboys, Bridges of Madison County, The Unforgiven and The Rookie and many others. In each case, Lennie was given free rein to create impressionistic and inventive orchestrations. The results are without fail exceptional. What you hear are poetic themes that feed perfectly into the movies' storylines. You also hear a strong undertow of modern jazz sensibilities that originated in the 1950s. [Photo of Clint Eastwood and Lennie Niehaus in 2003 by Hank O'Neal]

In Part 5 of my series of conversations with Lennie Niehaus, the alto saxophonist, arranger and composer talks about meeting Eastwood, how he began composing for film, what he had to ask Forest Whitaker not to do in Bird, and his favorite composed cue for an Eastwood film:

JazzWax: You’ve had a long association with actor-director Clint Eastwood. How did you two meet?
Lennie Niehaus: In 1952 I was inducted into the army and did my basic training at Fort Ord in California. Part of basic training included jumping off a high diving board into a pool and swimming across. Clint was sitting there making sure no one panicked and drowned. He had already completed basic training. So I went off the board, hit the water, swam the length of the pool and climbed out. After, I hit the showers, I was walking too fast and slipped. When I fell, I split the skin between my big toe and the one next to it. There was blood all over the place.

JW: What happened?
LN: A sergeant started yelling at me to get up and get going. Clint appeared and said to the guy, “Can’t you see  this soldier has a gash and is bleeding?” The sergeant realized what had happened and cooled down. Clint helped me up and got me over to the medics. I limped over, and once I was lying on a table, a medic came in and, without a shot, sewed up the gash. Clint stayed there the whole time while I got stitched up. That was it. We went our separate ways.

JW: Just like in one of the Westerns he'd soon be in.
LN: [Laughs] Yes.

JW: Did Clint hear you play the saxophone back then?
LN: Yes, but later. When I was still in the army in 1953, I had a quartet and we played several non-commissioned officer clubs. They sold low-alcohol beer, and Clint was the bartender. He used to listen to me play as he was serving. On Sunday afternoons, I’d also play a club in nearby Santa Cruz. Clint would come in, order a beer and put his legs up and listen. He was still in the army then.

JW: After the army and after your years with Stan Kenton, you began writing for TV and the movies in 1960. How did you break into the business?
LN: When I left Stan in 1959, there was an enormous amount of work in television in Hollywood. Every TV show needed music, particularly the celebrity specials. There also was lots of work orchestrating for the movies.

JW: For those who don't know, what’s the difference between arranging and orchestrating?
LN: When you arrange, you take a song and write your own intro and select the instrumental mix to go with the song’s chords and melody. When you orchestrate for the movies, you take a composer’s rough sketch of a theme and score it for the different instrumental parts. In some cases the composer knows what he wants done with the movie's theme and tells you. In other cases the theme's composer gives you the freedom to do as you wish. In effect, you’re taking what the composer has written down and putting it to score paper. In architecture, it would be like taking a designer's sketch and creating detailed blueprints. In the process, as an orchestrator, you're often filling in the blanks with your vision.

JW: How did you start orchestrating for the movies?
LN: I started by working with Jerry Fielding. He had been blacklisted by Hollywood in the early 1950s, and in the late 1950s he was at the Royal Las Vegas Hotel as musical director of their floor shows. When he'd come to L.A., he'd ask me over to his home to orchestrate songs for entertainers. It was mostly cue writing. Jerry would tell me what he wanted, and I’d write the cue music.

JW: Why didn’t Fielding handle the orchestrations himself?
LN: Jerry was a great composer but he couldn’t get started writing. He used to agonize quite a bit. I’d tell him, “Just write down whatever you’re thinking. Whatever you have in your head.”

JW: What did Fielding say?
LN: He'd said, “But I need the song to be structured this way or that way." I’d tell him, “Fine. But write down what you think it should be, and you can change it later."

JW: Are you a fast writer?
LN: Yes. I sit and think and write down little ideas and stitch them together. I never agonize, “Is this good or bad?” I just write down what I'm thinking, and it all comes together.

JW: How did Fielding hear about you?
LN: In the late 1950s, Jerry [pictured] called and said, “I understand you can orchestrate.” In L.A., they put you in a box. You’re either a jazz composer or an arranger or a conductor or this or that. I had studied orchestration in college and played with a concert band in the army. So I knew every range of every instrument in the orchestra. Word got around town, and that's how Jerry and I teamed up. Orchestrating for Jerry gave me enormous experience writing for the clock, meaning synchronizing the music against things that were happening on the screen.

JW: When did Fielding return to composing for the movies?
LN: In 1962 Otto Preminger asked him to compose for Advise and Consent. It was a big break for him. Then more movie work rolled in and his plate filled up. During this period and in the 1970s, I orchestrated for his movie projects and arranged for TV, including shows with the King Sisters, Dean Martin, Carol Burnett and many others.

JW: What was the first movie score you composed—meaning all of the music was yours?
LN: Clint Eastwood’s Tightrope in 1984. Clint called me and said, “I have this little movie. I think you’re the perfect guy for the job.”

JW: Did Eastwood remember watching you get stitched up in the army?
LN: [Laughs] No. Even when I reminded him of it he didn’t recall. But he knew me more from the clubs in the early 1950s and knew that I had been with Stan and that I had orchestrated for Jerry.

JW: How did you approach Tightrope?
LN: Clint asked me to meet him at his office. When I arrived, he said, “I want you to take you to Bourbon Street in New Orleans. It’s like a cacophony of sound there.” I had been to Bourbon Street before when I played there with Stan Kenton, so I knew what he was talking about. But I still needed to get a feel for what he wanted exactly.

JW: When did you two leave?
LN: [Laughs] About an hour or so after he told me. Clint told me to have my wife Pat put together a small bag for the weekend. Then we flew out on Warner Brothers’ private jet. When we arrived, we walked along Bourbon Street. Clint said to me, “Listen, hear those snippets of music on the left and right sides of the street?” As we strolled along, you could hear Dixieland, then country, then strip music across the street, then jazz and so on.

JW: What did Eastwood say?
LN: Clint said, “Can you get that effect in the score?” I said, “Sure, but I’ll have to write complete tunes for each. We won’t know how much music from each club we’ll need until you walk along Bourbon Street.”

JW: Did Eastwood green-light your idea?
LN: Yes. He said, “Great. Write eight different tunes and styles, and we’ll do the dubbing at the studio.”

JW: So how did that work in real time?
LN: First I composed the eight different pieces. Then I arranged the tunes and brought in different musicians to record each of them. Then when I had film, I watched as Clint walked along Bourbon Street. Then I'd fade out one track of music and bring up another and repeat this as he walked along to create the effect Clint and I had heard in New Orleans. [Photo of Lennie Niehaus conducting in 2003 by Hank O'Neal]

JW: What are your favorite Lennie Niehaus scores for Eastwood films?
LN: Probably Absolute Power [1997] and Space Cowboys [2000]. On Absolute Power, I used interesting cues that were sort of atonal. On Space Cowboys, I was able to use an Aaron Copland-esque approach, an Americana feel to express the patriotism and idealism of the movie's theme. There’s a cue I especially like when the astronauts are walking down a walkway to the rocket.  

JW: For The Unforgiven (1992), who wrote Claudia’s Theme?
LN: Clint did. It’s a lovely, haunting melody. Then I incorporated the theme into the orchestration throughout the film.

JW: How long does it take you to compose a movie score?
LN: About four to five weeks.

JW: On Bird (1988), I heard that a complete replica of 52nd Street was built on the set. That must have seemed both exciting and surreal.
LN: I had never been to 52nd Street during its heyday but the set still gave me the chills. Every detail was precise and in place.

JW: Were Charlie Parker’s recordings used in the movie’s soundtrack?
LN: Yes, but just Parker playing without piano, bass or drums. We dubbed those in with musicians to give Bird's solos a current sound.

JW: Why bother to do that?
LN: Otherwise, Bird's music would have sounded like old recordings rather than fresh music you were seeing being created in the movie’s storyline.

JW: How did you do this?
LN: I had to find recordings of Bird and remove the piano, bass and drums, which took a long time. Back then you didn’t have the digital technology you have today. In 1987, when we worked on the film, this meant a box that some guy hooked up. He turned knobs until all the other instruments were faded down as much as possible.

JW: Which recordings of Bird's worked best?
LN: Ones where there wasn't too much going on around him. There was one of Bird playing All of Me with Lennie Tristano on piano and Kenny Clarke playing brushes on a telephone book or something. Lennie and Clarke were far off from the mic, so we could isolate Bird. It was too difficult to isolate Bird on recordings with Max Roach, for example, who dropped those terrific bombs on the drums.

JW: You also used alto saxophonist Charles McPherson in places with trumpeter Jon Faddis.
LN: I used Charles for cues and incidental music, like after Bird in the movie swallows iodine in a suicide attempt and he’s looking in the mirror. Charles McPherson plays a single line there on the alto.

JW: How did you decide to use McPherson?
LN: Clint called me in to look at Last of the Blue Devils, a documentary on Kansas City jazz. Many names of saxophonists were thrown around, some of them who were dead. Then I saw Charles [pictured] in the documentary and he played beautifully. After the meeting, I asked fiends about him, and they said Charles could play and sound like Bird. So I brought him in.

JW: Why didn’t you play alto in the places where you needed it?
LN: [Laughs] Because I don’t sound like Bird. I have a touch of Lee Konitz in my sound.

JW: How was Forest Whitaker's impersonation of Charlie Parker?
LN: Terrific. I had to teach him how to hold the alto and finger the notes in place. But he was a quick study.

JW: What needed work?
LN: Forest [pictured] had a tendency to roll his shoulders while playing. Bird never did that. Bird played as though his shoes were nailed to the floor. So I put my hands on Forest's shoulders to hold them still, so he'd understand. But it was still hard for him and a bit of that comes through in the film. There also were times during rehearsals where he was taking breaths when Bird was blowing. I told Forest that in places where he didn’t know the solo cold, he should just breathe through his nose to stay in sync and avoid an on-camera problem. Everything had to be rehearsed and worked out in advance. Clint likes one or two takes, max.

JW: Did you re-arrange the strings for the "Bird with Strings" scene?
LN: Yes. Bird performed live with just four strings, a harp and an oboe along with a rhythm section. It was a financial matter, but he had always wanted to appear live with a far larger orchestra. In the movie, we used 20 strings for a big full sound plus an oboe. I had to show Forest the fingering on several held notes. Otherwise, when the movie came out, my phone would have rung off the hook from people saying he had fingered the wrong ones [laughs].

JW: What’s one of your favorite Lennie Niehaus cues?
LN: I like the music I composed for The Bridges of Madison County [1995]. There’s a scene where Clint is standing in the rain and Meryl Streep is deciding whether or not to get out of her husband's pickup truck and go with him.

JW: Which part exactly do you like?
LN: The music for the whole scene but in particular where Meryl has her hand on the truck's interior doorknob. Her husband's truck winds up behind Clint's and she can’t decide if she should get out of the truck and get into Clint's. I was writing music for a build-up to her hand on the doorknob. The scene starts with a piano playing. It's soon joined by strings. Then there’s a crescendo at the doorknob moment to emphasize the pathos of the dilemma and her indecision.

JW: You really remember every detail about this scene.
LN: Even though I wrote the music, I'm still moved every time I hear it back.

JazzWax tracks: You can download or buy the soundtracks of Clint Eastwood's films individually. Or there's a CD compilation that features many of Lennie's compositions and orchestrations for Eastwood called Music for the Movies of Clint Eastwood. It includes a 10-part suite Lennie Niehaus wrote for Eastwood called Clint Eastwood: An American Filmmaker Suite. You can hear samples here.

JazzWax clip: Here's the scene Lennie was referring to in The Bridges of Madison County. Dig the piano intro, the strings and the crescendo he scored...

Interview: Lennie Niehaus (Part 4)

Lennie Niehaus' arrangements for Stan Kenton's band in the  late 1950s and early 1960s are superb. So are his too-brief solos with the band. But if you really want to hear Lennie's musical genius at work, you have to dig his small-group recordings of the mid-1950s. Kenton, like many bandleaders in the LP era, was smart enough to know that the best way to hold onto star soloists was to let them record on their own during the band's downtime. Lennie took advantage of Stan's policy by recording five fabulous albums for Contemporary Records as a leader.

On these quintet and octet albums, you hear Lennie's search for a new linear sound. The infectious piano-less quartet that Gerry Mulligan had formed in 1952 quickly became an economical model for West Coast jazz musicians in the 1950s eager to record cost-efficiently for fledgling record labels. Yet Lennie's approach was a bit different than most. He arranged for small groups using techniques that made them sound much larger, and the musicians he used were chosen not only for their sterling sight-reading skills but also their artistic intellects and instrumental sounds.

In Part 4 of my five-part interview series with Lennie, the alto saxophonist, arranger and composer talks about his small-group sessions and sideman dates during the 1950s:

JazzWax: You recorded five albums for Contemporary and one for EmArcy as a small-group leader in the 1950s.
Lennie Niehaus: When I got out of the army, I had offers from three labels—Pacific Jazz, Contemporary and Stan Kenton Presents. I was stuck and wasn't sure which way to go. So I said to Shelly Manne [pictured], “I don’t know what to do. Dick Bock at Pacific Jazz has a good stable. And Stan uses the guys from his band on his label but I’m not sure how well it will go. And then there's Les Koenig at Contemporary.”

JW: What was Manne's advice?
LN: Shelly told me to go with Contemporary. He said, “Les Koenig will let you do anything you want. He’ll just record you.” At the time, I wanted to record a new sound. I loved the concept of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, with its contrapuntal exchanges. But I wanted a richer, more textured result in my small groups.

JW: Your first Contemporary album, in 1954, was a quintet session.
LN: On that album, I found a way to voice the three saxes—me, Jack Montrose on tenor and Bob Gordon [pictured] on baritone—so that we sounded like six saxes.

JW: How did you do that?
LN: I wrote a voicing that resulted in a special sound. First I’d find the notes in a chord that I wanted to use. Then I’d voice those notes so they produced overtones.

JW: How so?
LN: It's similar to what happens when you hit a note on the piano and hold it down with the sustaining pedal. You first hear the initial note. Then as the note rings, you start to hear the overtone, or other notes that color it. The notes I wrote for the saxes resonated like that.

JW: What does the average ear hear?
LN: By picking the right notes, I wound up with a fuller sound. The overtones create the sensation that there are three more saxes on the date. In other words, by spreading out the three saxes just right, your ear thinks it hears notes that aren't there. As a result, you think additional saxes are playing—without the density that would occur if six saxes were playing.

JW: What did this voicing and use of space do for the soloist?
LN: Instead of voicing closely, I did close voicing. Which just means a little less close [laughs]. I spread the chord open. This open feeling gave the person improvising more freedom. In the past, small groups had everyone play a line and then each of the musicians took turns soloing. To me, that was a boring formula. Instead, I wanted a light line leading up to a solo, then the solo followed by an interlude with all saxes playing before the next soloist started. This created a more swinging feel. [Pictured: Jack Montrose]

JW: Did you have Gerry Mulligan or Dave Pell’s octet of 1953 in mind?
LN: No. I was developing my thing separately. I loved Gerry’s group, and Dave’s octet was interesting. But I wasn’t thinking about anyone else except what I wanted to do. You have to understand that the linear sound in small groups was prevalent back then. I wanted to find a way to make what I was doing different.

JW: Was there a method to your choice of sidemen? You used different horn players on each session.
LN: I tried to get the best players I could for what I wanted to do. I always used Shelly Manne on drums and Monty Budwig [pictured] on bass. The unifying factor was that the sidemen had to be great sight-readers and have a special sound with the ensemble and while soloing.

JW: On your first octet album in 1954, you used Lou Levy on piano.
LN: Lou was a great player. At one point in 1951 he decided to leave the music business and go into real estate back home in Minnesota. When we toured the state with Stan in 1954, Lou [pictured] would hang out with the band. A year later he came out to Los Angeles to see about playing opportunities. I liked what he was playing around town so I asked him if he wanted to record. The first album he did when he returned to L.A. was my first octet recording in 1954.

JW: In 1955, you began to use tenor saxophonist Bill Perkins in your small-group sessions.
LN: Perk [pictured] had the perfect sound for what I wanted to do. He, too, was interested in finding a new sound, and he liked playing forgotten tunes, like Rockin' Chair and things like that. He had a beautiful sound. Many tenor saxophonists on the West Coast back then had a soft, Lester Young sound. Perk had a soft, velvety sound, but he could play that sound hard. 

JW: Yet Perkins didn't maintain that sound throughout his career.
LN: Over time Perk played more in line with what Wayne Shorter was doing. Even in the 1990s, people would ask him to play Yesterdays like he did back in 1955 with Stan Kenton on Contemporary Concepts. That would irk him. He’d ask me, “Why do they want me to sound like I did 40 years ago?” But when he played with me on dates in the 1990s, he’d unconsciously revert to playing like he did back then. You can hear him do that on Live at Capozzoli’s, which we recorded in Las Vegas in 1999 for Bob Lorenz. I didn’t tell Perk how I wanted him to play on that date. He just followed me. I think he felt it was right for the situation.

JW: Some of your sideman dates in the 1950s were out there, like Duane Tatro’s Jazz for Moderns in 1954.
LN: [Laughs] Duane was a friend of producer Les Koenig’s. He went into engineering but quickly grew tired of that and realized he wanted to be a musician. So Les hired him. When we recorded that album in 1954, the music seemed off the wall. But as time went by, it sounded more and more like classical music. It still sounds pretty modern.

JW: Did that type of modal music come easily to you?
LN: Yes. In music school I studied 12-tone music with Ernst Krenek. It was a relatively small class, and Krenek taught me to be more creative harmonically and to get a 12-tone row without implying a chord. That was always the challenge with 12-tone rows—to create three-note interval lines without making it sound like a chord. I had always loved Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, so 12-tone music seemed natural to me. 

JW: You also wrote for the Hollywood Saxophone Quartet in 1955.
LN: This was built on my contrapuntal sax soli concept [saxes playing harmonies in unison]. But the group wasn't comfortable without a rhythm section. So we added a bass and drums. I didn’t want a piano because it was just going to get in the way of all the moving parts. I wrote one whole album plus four tunes for another album.

JW: In March and April 1955, you recorded what I feel was your finest Contemporary small-group LP, The Quintets & Strings (Vol.4). 
LN: When I started recording for Les, he said, “Do anything you want—just keep recording albums.” So it was my choice. I had always wanted to incorporate strings into the linear format. But not the way strings had been customarily used, as accompanists. I wanted them running lines, the way a saxophone would. I had attended music school with violinist Christopher Kuzell. I called him and said I wanted three violas and a cellist for the date. Chris played one of the viola parts and brought in the other three string players.

JW: But the strings had to have a jazz feel since they were an integral part of your small-group sound.
LN: That's right. I arranged the strings as though they were part of a sax section with me on top on alto. It was the first time I had written for strings since music school. To get the sound right, we rehearsed at my home. For a jazz feel, I told the string players not to read the eighth notes like eighth notes. Otherwise they would have played them too stiffly.

JW: What did you tell them?
LN: I told them to play two eighth notes as though they were a quarter note and an eight note, with a No. 3 over it, more like a triplet. I wrote in parenthesis: “two eighth notes = a quarter note and an eighth note." Then I added a "3" over the top to indicate that the notes were to be played like triplets. All of this is technical stuff. The result was a hipper, swinging feel.

JW: Did the string players get it right away?
LN: After we rehearsed, yes. Then I asked Monty Budwig to come and rehearse with us so the strings had the feel of playing against the time-keeping of the bass. Shelly Manne just came to the date and recorded his part perfectly.

JW: The instrumentation on your second octet album in 1956 came close to the Miles Davis’ nonet.
LN: I wasn’t out to copy Miles Davis’ group. But I liked that feel for my octet. However, I dropped the piano and trumpet, which Miles had, and added a tenor sax, which wasn’t in his nonet. French hornist Vince DeRosa [pictured] couldn’t play jazz but he could play with a feeling that I liked and wanted.

JW: Why did you record just four tracks on this octet date?
LN: When the 12-inch LP arrived in 1956, Contemporary began reissuing its earlier 10-inch LPs on the new larger format. But the 12-inch LP had more room. So Les Koenig asked me for four more tracks to add to the new 12-inch release, to stretch it out. At first, instead of longer tracks to fill an album, producers just wanted more tracks. Each had to be three to four minutes long.

JW: Why?
LN: Radio airplay was still a big consideration then. Which was fine by me [laughs].

Tomorrow, in the final part of this interview series, Lennie talks about how he met Clint Eastwood in the army, his first break writing for the movies with Jerry Fielding, and his scores for many Eastwood films.

JazzWax tracks: Unfortunately, none of Lennie Niehaus' small-group recordings are available as downloads. On CD, you'll find Zounds! The Lennie Niehaus Octet! (Vol. 2) here and Quintets and Strings (Vol. 4) here from Concord Records. Or you can buy Lennie Niehaus: Complete Fifties Recordings (LoneHill), volumes 1-4 starting here. I hear that all are available through eMusic.com.

Lennie recorded two small-group sessions for Woofy Records. Live at Capozzoli's (1999), a quintet date with tenor saxophonist Bill Perkins, is available on CD here. The Lennie Niehaus Octet: Sunday Afternoon at the Lighthouse Cafe (2004) with Tom Peterson (tenor sax), Jack Nimitz (baritone sax), Bob McChesney (trombone), Ron Stout (trumpet), Bob Florence (piano), Trey Henry (bass) and Dick Weller (drums) is available on CD here.

Interview: Lennie Niehaus (Part 3)

Up until now, I've focused this interview series on Lennie Niehaus' biography. Today, I want to turn to the alto saxophonist's work with Stan Kenton's band between 1954 and 1961. Lennie's contribution to Kenton's uptempo and ballad output during this period both as a player and writer cannot be overestimated. In Lennie's hands, you hear the birth of a new orchestral sound that combined swing with sectional coloration and spirited risk-taking. Like automotive design in the late 1950s, Lennie's arrangements for Kenton had power, daring and flair.

Lennie arranged three must-own albums for Kenton: The Stage Door Swings (1958), Sophisticated Approach (1961) and Adventures in Standards (1961). He also was featured on alto sax between 1954 and 1959, turning in one of the most dynamic Kenton solos on his own arrangement of End of a Love Affair from Stan Kenton at the Tropicana (1959).

In Part 3 of my interview series with Lennie, the alto saxophonist, arranger and composer talks about West Coast jazz, fellow arranger and saxophonist Bill Holman, life on the road with the Kenton band, two big turning points in the orchestra's development, and how he arranged three Kenton albums:

JazzWax: In 1954, when you were discharged from the army, did you reconnect with Stan Kenton?
Lennie Niehaus: As soon as I got out Stan called me and said, “You’re just in time. Lee Konitz [pictured] just left the band.” So I rejoined Stan's band and recorded as leader of small groups. Soon after I rejoined Stan, we went out on tour with Art Tatum, Slam Stewart, Shorty Rogers and His Giants, guitarist Johnny Smith and Charlie Ventura with Mary Ann McCall.

JW: What do you remember about the West Coast scene back then?
LN: I remember the argument over which was better, West Coast or East Coast jazz. It was all ridiculous, since you had West Coast guys like Zoot Sims living back East and Shorty Rogers, an Easterner, on the West Coast. But hey, record companies were recording West Coast musicians, so who was to argue [laughs].

JW: Was there truly a difference in sound?
LN: Not much. West Coast music was perhaps a little more cerebral. I don’t say that in a judgmental way. It's just that many of the guys who played it came out of music school. For me, the sound came naturally after studying counterpoint in college. Similarly, many of the guys on the West Coast were studying counterpoint with Wesley LaViolette [pictured] and other classical theorists. All of us were experimenting with different types of linear writing.

JW: Yet the sound was unified.
LN: We would let a guy blow in an arrangement, but we’d always supply a linear background for it. We’d add interludes, but the backgrounds and endings had to make sense. We’d always tie it up at the end. That’s the way it came out.

JW: Did you enjoy recording Kenton's Contemporary Concepts in 1955?
LN: It was great. On our tour, Stan had left Bill Holman in New York to arrange the whole thing. It took Bill about three weeks to complete the six charts, and the result was fantastic. Bill had a way of taking a tune and making it his own. The band loved Bill's Stompin' at the Savoy. We would aways eagerly wait for Stan to call that one.

JW: On that album, different members of the band were featured soloists on different songs.
LN: Yes, that was the concept. Bill wrote each song with a different soloist in mind. For example, alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano was the soloist on Stella by Starlight. He played it beautifully. Tenor saxophonist Bill Perkins had Yesterdays. Bill wrote Cherokee for me. There are versions of that song that I recorded at different places during our tour that year. Each time we played the song, it got faster and faster [laughs]. I was playing it every night. Bill's arrangement sent chills down my spine.

JW: Was traveling with Kenton rough?
LN: The pace was grueling. We would travel, play a one-nighter and travel again for weeks at a time. The  dances we played usually lasted from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. If we played a concert, it would last from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m. Then when a concert or dance was over, we'd get on the bus and travel up to 400 miles to our next gig. Many times there was no time to check into a hotel when we arrived because we had traveled so far. I don't think the gigs were particularly well planned [laughs]. [Pictured: Stan Kenton at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City in 1952]

JW: What do you mean?
LN: I doubt whoever was back at the booking office was thinking out the best route for the band or taking into account the distances we had to travel. The guys used to joke that someone must have been throwing darts at a map. Sometimes we'd pass through towns that we had raced through two days earlier.

JW: What was life like on the bus?
LN: We'd eat and sleep there, wake up in the morning and stop for breakfast. For lunch, we’d go into a store for bread and peanut butter, and make sandwiches. We'd arrive at a job with just enough time to change into our uniforms and get on the bandstand. We were always tired. But as soon as the band began to play, that old feeling would come back and you were energized. [Pictured: Stan Kenton and bandmembers on the road]

JW: Was Stan a tough boss?
LN: Things were said about Stan, that he was stiff or a taskmaster. But he was really a sincere guy. He always encouraged the players and gave everone solo spots. He urged arrangers in the band to write, and he played their charts. Charts he didn't like he'd leave in the band's book and just didn't call them. Stan never created a mean-spirited climate of competition among his players or arrangers.

JW: The Kenton band's sound changed a couple of times while you were there.
LN: Yes. The first turning point was probably in 1952 when he commissioned Gerry Mulligan [pictured] to write arrangements. Stan didn't know what Gerry would do, but he was confident it would be interesting. When I joined the band in 1952, Gerry came in with 10 arrangements, including Walkin' Shoes, Limelight, Young Blood, Swing House and some ballads.

JW: What impact did Mulligan's arrangements have on the band?
LN: They lightened up the sound. Gerry wrote unison, contrapuntal lines, and he didn't have the band play triple forte all the time. Those charts had a big influence on me. They taught me that when someone's playing a solo, the background needs to be supportive and engaging, not deafening. After Gerry, the key was not to mow down the soloist but echo and support the sound.  [Photo of Lennie Niehaus, left, and Lee Elliott with Stan Kenton in 1952 courtesy of David Levy]

JW: Did you ever tell Mulligan how much he influenced you?
LN: No. Gerry sort of came and went. He was aloof. But he still left his mark. As the years went by, Stan remained attached to Gerry's sensibility. The second big turning point came in 1954 when Bill Holman [pictured] and I began writing charts that took Gerry's sound to a new level. Stan always favored highs and lows in the band—the trumpets on top and the bass trombone and baritone saxophone on the bottom. But after Gerry's arrangements, Stan liked a lot more interchange with the band's different sections.

JW: Your arrangements for The Stage Door Swings in 1958 placed a new emphasis on the reed section.
LN: Stan wanted an album based on Broadway show tunes. He locked me in a room in a Chicago hotel. With my work ethic, if I had an idea at 3 a.m., I’d get up and start writing. They brought an electric piano into my room, and I had headphones so I wouldn’t disturb other guests. After 2 1/2 weeks, I had produced 12 songs, about one a day. I was on a mission. I get like that still. Even if it’s 2 a.m., I have to finish.

JW: Did Kenton give you any instructions before locking you away?
LN: He asked me to base the different tunes on riffs—you know, musical patterns that repeat. So with Lullaby of Broadway, I thought, hey, I’ll base it on Intermission Riff. So I changed the standard's chords, and that became the hook.

JW: And Baubles, Bangles and Beads opens like Johnny Richards' arrangement of I Concentrate on You from the Back to Balboa album recorded earlier that year.
LN: That's right. I didn't consciously decide, "I'm going to pick up Johnny's thing." I think it was more of me using it as a way to tell Johnny, "You know that great line you had? I'm going to use it as a springboard." The listener who knew the earlier album thinks it's going to be I Concentrate on You but instead it becomes Baubles, Bangles and Beads. So there's recognition by the listener and then surprise and finally delight when the song becomes something else.

JW: What did Kenton think of your charts?
LN: Stan loved the album. Producer Lee Gillette said it was one of the best albums the band had released. Those were the days when stereo was coming in and guys in the engineer's booth were thinking about which instruments should come out of the left and right speakers. Lee said, “You did a great job putting it in stereo.” I wasn’t thinking along those lines, but it came out that way [laughs].

JW: Your arrangement of and solo on End of a Love Affair from Stan Kenton at the Tropicana remain stunning 50 years later.
LN: Of everything I recorded with Stan, that’s my favorite ballad solo. I don’t know why it turned out so well. I arranged it so it would start with just bassist Red Kelly and me playing. Along the way I added brass and reeds and built the instrumentation softly. I wanted that Gerry Mulligan sound with the band. No Kenton arrangement had ever opened like that—with just bass and alto saxophone.

JW: You wrote the ending so it would have a regretful feel, almost a sigh, to play off the song's title.
LN: I wrote the ending so it would close on dissonant notes. That was my training. While it's not a pure 12-tone row, I wanted that atonal feel. That's what I heard in my head when I was writing the chart. Also, there are chords in my arrangement that weren't in the original tune. I had to write them out so that if I left the band, someone else could play the alto solo [laughs].

JW: In mid-1961, Kenton recorded Sophisticated Approach, which also was arranged completely by you.
LN: Yes. By then I had left Stan, but he hired me to arrange a band he had assembled with four mellophoniums. Stan had used French horns in the past but the instrument's bell turned away from the audience, and collectively they weren't a strong enough sound. Stan loved the trombone sound and was one of the first to use five in a section. So Stan went to the folks at C.G. Conn and asked them to make a French horn but with traditional valves and a straight bell. Once he had what he wanted in the mellophonium, he needed arrangements that complemented them.  [Pictured: Kenton's mellophoniums]

JW: What did Kenton suggest you do for Sophisticated Approach?
LN: Stan wanted to remove one of the alto saxes, and he wondered what we should put under the one that remained. I said two tenor saxes and two baritone saxes, because one of the baritones could drop out and one of the bass trombones could come in and fill that gap. I told him we could still do all the familiar standards.

JW: How many arrangements did Kenton want?
LN: There was no number. All he said to me was, "Keep writing." I said, "Write what?" He said, "Anything you want." So I went to work. I loved writing for Stan's dance band. After I left, I must have written 100 arrangements for him. And they were all for his dance band, which I loved. Remember, when I had first joined Stan's band in 1952, they had difficulty playing a dance.

JW: Why?
LN: Because it was too much of a jazz band. The arrangements were too fast, the arrangements never settled into a groove, and people couldn't dance to what the band was playing.

JW: You also arranged the album, Adventures in Standards, which only had limited distribution on Kenton's Creative World label.
LN: These were arrangements written at about the same time as the Sophisticated Approach charts. Except I arranged Broadway tunes for the mellophonium band. All had that inhale-exhale, ballad feel.

JW: So when you look back over the three Kenton albums you arranged, which one is your favorite?
LN: I liked what I did on Sophisticated Approach. But I'd have to say that The Stage Door Swings is my favorite. It's more dynamic and rushes at the listener.

Tomorrow, Lennie talks about his prolific small-group leadership recordings for Contemporary Records during the 1950s, which featured originals and standards arranged for quartets, quintets, sextets and octets. If you aren't aware of these sessions, you're in for a treat.

JazzWax tracks: All three albums that Lennie Niehaus arranged for Stan Kenton are available as remastered CDs. The Stage Door Swings is a terrific album that doesn't stop punching from the first track onward. Adventures in Standards has been added to the CD release of Sophisticated Approach. Lennie's towering solo on End of a Love Affair is on Stan Kenton at the Tropicana. All are available at iTunes or Amazon.

Lennie can be heard in Kenton's 1952 band on the CD Easy Go. His post-1954 work with the band is on the must-own CD Contemporary Concepts (Bill Holman arranged six of the tracks). Lennie also is featured on Kenton's Sketches on Standards (1956). One Lennie's finest Kenton sideman dates is Kenton in Hi-Fi (1956), which featured arrangements by Kenton and Pete Rugolo that updated earlier Kenton hits. His solos on Concerto to End All Concertos and Unison Riff from the album are classics. Cuban Fire (1956), arranged by Johnny Richards, is another gem that includes superb solos by Lennie. These tracks include Recuerdos, Quien Sabe, El Panzon and, my favorite, Wagon.

Interview: Lennie Niehaus (Part 2)

Growing up in Los Angeles in the mid-1940s, alto saxophonist Lennie Niehaus found himself rubbing elbows with other hungry young talented jazz musicians. In college in Los Angeles, Lennie studied composition with the West Coast's brightest and most advanced classical teachers and theorists. Everything was falling into place. When Stan Kenton called in late 1951 and asked him to audition, Lennie couldn't believe his good fortune. He had worked hard practicing, studying diligently and arranging in anticipation of just such an opportunity. Then just a few short months after joining Kenton's band, Lennie's draft notice arrived.

In Part 2 of my interview series with Lennie, the alto saxophonist, composer and arranger talks about attending music school, replacing Art Pepper in Stan Kenton's band, being inducted into the army, meeting Clint Eastwood in basic training, and the jukebox song he heard on furlough that knocked him out:

JazzWax: In high school, did you arrange for any other bands besides Phil Carreon's?
Lennie Niehaus: No. I was still a kid. But I did have ambition. One day I took my arrangement of Lover Man down to Billy Berg’s where Dizzy Gillespie's band was rehearsing. I had planned to go up to him and tell him about my arrangement but I chickened out. I was afraid I would put the parts down on the stands and the musicians would say, “What are all these 16th notes?” We played the arrangement with Phil’s band, though, and it sounded great.

JW: When did you graduate high school?
LN: I skipped a grade in high school and graduated in 1946. I had just turned 17 years old and started college right after graduation. World War II had just ended, and a lot of the vets were studying on the G.I. Bill. In classes, they’d give me looks like, “What’s this kid doing in college?” [laughs] The classes were made up mostly of 25-year-old guys. It was good for me. I grew up fast.

JW: Where did you go to college?
LN: First I went to Los Angeles City College and then Los Angeles State College music school. I majored in composition. I had very good teachers, including Leonard Stein, who was an authority on Arnold Schoenberg and became director of the Schoenberg Institute at USC. I was studying classical and playing jazz in a band off-campus. That band had some great players: [pianist] Dodo Marmarosa, [guitarist] Tony Rizzi and others. 

JW: How did you wind up joining Stan Kenton's band in 1951?
LN: When I was 22, Stan [Kenton] called me and said, “Art Pepper is leaving the band. We’ve tried several guys but we haven’t found someone with the right sound.” Stan said he was looking for a jazz alto player. That's the second alto, the chair that takes the solos. He said he was auditioning at the Florentine Gardens in L.A. and asked me to come down. The date we set also happened to be the same day I had to go take my physical for the army. Up until that point, my years in college had kept me out of the draft. [Photo of Art Pepper with Stan Kenton's band by Bob Willoughby]

JW: How did you do?
LN: I went down to the Florentine Gardens [pictured] at 11 a.m. The first tune Stan called was Gerry Mulligan’s Limelight. I was in the second alto chair, reading the jazz chart. Here comes the end of the chorus and the first solo is me. So I play it, and Stan liked my sound. We tried a couple of other things, like Deep Purple. Stan asked me to read the first alto part to see how I'd do on that. After we finished, Stan and I sat down, and he said, “Lennie, I like the way you play. Want you to play in my band?”

JW: What was going through your mind?
LN: I was thrilled. I looked at Stan and remember saying to myself,  “Jesus, this guy is old.” He was 39 at the time [laughs]. Which was exciting and intimidating for someone who's just starting out. To Stan's credit, he didn’t want to sound like Woody Herman or Count Basie or anyone else. Which is why he'd constantly change the band's sound. When I joined the band, Stan had begun to shift away from the jazz-classical approach he was exploring with his Innovations Orchestra and going with the kind of swinging music that a lot of the guys in the band wanted to play.

JW: What did Stan tell you?
LN: He said the band was going on the road. He asked me to play second alto. Bud Shank was playing first alto. Soon after I got the job, Bud left and Dick Meldonian was hired to play first alto. In April 1952, several months after I began with Stan, we were playing in Boston when I got my draft notice. I told Stan, and he said, “That’s a shame, you were just getting started.” I said to myself, "This is the end of my career."  [Photo: Lennie Niehaus soloing at the Club Oasis in Los Angeles with Stan Kenton's band in February 1952]

JW: What happened in the army?
LN:  I did my basic training on the West Coast and met Clint Eastwood [pictured] there. He was in the same training camp. Basic was supposed to last 16 weeks—8 weeks of training and, if you made it through, you spent another 8 weeks learning how to shoot a gun.

JW: This was in the middle of the Korean War.
LN: Yes. After the first eight weeks, I realized I knew several guys in the army band. I went over to say hi. I wanted to get into the band. A friend said the band needed an oboe player. Oboe players were very difficult to find. So I auditioned and got the position. We played parades in San Jose and Monterey. I rehearsed with the band in the morning and practiced in the afternoon.

JW: Did you play anything other than parades?
LN: Yes, we played transcriptions of classical pieces and recorded them once a week for airing on the radio on Saturday mornings. We also played and marched around the field on Saturday mornings, and the general would come forward and give out medals for different reasons. We even were in a competition of marching bands.

JW: How did you do?
LN: The bandleader asked me to write a marching band composition. So I did. We didn’t win first prize but I won second prize. It was called the Infantry Blue. It was like a John Philip Sousa march.

JW: Were you looking forward to returning to Kenton's band?
LN: Yes, very much so, if there was a spot open. The first arrangement I wrote for Stan before I went into the army was Pennies From Heaven. I also wrote a couple for Stan's singer at the time, Jerri Winters [pictured, left, with Kenton], including  What a Difference a Day Makes. One day in 1953 I was on a furlough and came down to Los Angeles. I was sitting in a restaurant in Malibu with my wife, who wasn’t my wife yet, having a hamburger. The place had an old jukebox. All of sudden I heard my arrangement of Pennies From Heaven. Sure enough, Stan had put it out as a single. The first arrangement I wrote for Stan, and the band had recorded it. I was floored.

Tomorrow, Lennie talks about rejoining Stan Kenton's band in 1954, why contrapuntal jazz flourished on the West Coast, life on the road with Kenton's band, and arranging The Stage Door Swings for Kenton.

JazzWax tracks: Lennie's arrangement of Pennies From Heaven was recorded by Stan Kenton in January 28, 1953, while Lennie was in the army. The track can be found as a download at iTunes or Amazon on Kenton's Sketches on Standards album. What's fabulous about this chart is how Lennie has the trombone section playing off the saxophones. He treats both as self-contained units, using tight voicings so each section sounds like a single instrument.

JazzWax clip: Here's a taste of Lennie's score for Clint Eastwood's The Rookie (1980). Lennie told me he used three baritone saxes, a bass saxophone, a bass trombone, an electric bass and gitarone to get a funky foundation while Latin percussion and a trombone work the top end. And dig the crazy sax soli about halfway in...

Interview: Lennie Niehaus (Part 1)

Lennie Niehaus is one of the giants of the West Coast linear jazz sound. Along with Bill Holman, Shorty Rogers, Gerry Mulligan and Pete Rugolo, Lennie arranged prolifically for West Coast small groups and big bands in the 1950s, introducing a new dynamic, swinging approach. A highly trained classical musician, Lennie by 1954 was fast becoming known for his orchestral punch and harmonic reed writing. Rather than arrange for vocalists with the advent of the 12-inch LP in 1956, Lennie preferred to score charts for Stan Kenton's band in the mid-1950s and very early 1960s. Like Bill Holman, Quincy Jones, Johnny Mandel and Lalo Schifrin, Lennie spent the decades that followed in the Hollywood studios, giving movie soundtracks and television shows a sophisticated and authentic jazz flavor.

Lennie approached contrapuntal jazz from the perspective of an alto saxophonist, which meant a greater sensitivity to the higher end of the reed section when creating voicings. And his sound on the alto sax bears the influences of Charlie Parker and Lee Konitz. Retrospectively, Lennie is known primarily for three major areas of work: his Stan Kenton arrangements and solos, his small-group leadership dates for Contemporary Records, and his many movie and TV scores, including a long association with actor and director Clint Eastwood. [Pictured: Lennie Niehaus and Bill Trujillo in the mid-1950s]

In Part 1 of my four-part interview series with Lennie, 80, the alto saxophonist and arranger talks about growing up in the Midwest; playing the violin, saxophone, oboe and bassoon; how he became interested in bebop, and the saxophonists who were in the reed section of his first band job:

JazzWax: You were born in St. Louis. How did you wind up in Los Angeles?
Lennie Niehaus: My father was a violinist. He played in a 60-piece orchestra that accompanied silent movies in  large theaters in the 1920s. He was the concertmaster. When someone on the screen said “I love you,” you'd see it written out on the screen, and the orchestra would play Tchaikovsky or Brahms. I still remember when I was five years old seeing a movie and watching my father playing. It was like a dream. 

JW: What happened when talkies began in the late 1920s?
LN: Sound movies didn’t start all at once across the country. Talkies were something of a novelty early on. Smaller movie theaters continued to play the older silent movies with live music behind them. The big theaters got the new movies with the sound. But as the years went on and talkies took hold, the live orchestras were cut down to smaller groups, and then to just a violin and piano and drums for local theaters. Finally, the work just dried up.

JW: What did your father do?
LN: As soon as talkies began to take hold, the Hollywood studios started to set up their own orchestras. My dad heard about opportunities in the studio orchestras out there, so he packed up our family and moved us to Los Angeles.

JW: What was your first instrument?
LN: The violin. My dad was my teacher. He was born in Russia and had attended the St. Petersburg Conservatory [pictured] with Jascha Heifetz. It was a strict place. If a kid played a wrong note, they would hit him over the knuckles with a ruler.

JW: Was your dad a good teacher?
LN: My dad was a great violinist but had no patience for kids who didn’t get it immediately. With the violin, you hold your thumb arching backward so your fingers can reach all the strings and you can play fast. My thumb would creep over the instrument’s neck. My father kept telling me to keep my thumb down. One day he hit my thumb and the violin fell and cracked. That was it for violin lessons [laughs].

JW: In school, what did you play?
LN: In grade school, my music teacher urged me to play the oboe because the orchestra needed one. It was still the Depression. I told my teacher that I didn’t think my family could afford one. So the teacher gave me an oboe that belonged to the school. I started to play the instrument little by little. I was a ferocious practicer. Violin lessons had taught me about playing and helped me learn other instruments quickly.

JW: How did you become interested in jazz?
LN: By listening to the big bands. I liked Harry James, and when I heard tenor saxophonist Corky Corcoran [pictured] play The Mole in 1942, I wanted to play the tenor saxophone. My father was in shock. He said, “The saxophone! You play either the piano or violin, not the saxophone. You’ll wind up playing in a house of prostitution” [laughs] Actually he was right. I did play in small funky clubs later.

JW: Did you buy a tenor?
LN: I tried. I worked in a restaurant at a local Grant's, which was like Woolworth's. I'd collect the dishes and put them on a dumbwaiter that I raised to get the dishes washed. I made a few bucks that way. When I thought I had saved enough, I went to the music store and asked about a tenor sax. The man said it was $125. So I asked the price of the Martin alto saxophone that was there, too. He said $75. So I bought it and became an alto player.

JW: Did you take to jazz?
LN: It consumed me. I’d go home and practice the oboe and alto saxophone all afternoon and evening. When I was in high school, they needed a bassoon player so I volunteered. I quickly learned how to play it, and by the end of high school could play all three instruments plus the violin pretty well.

JW: When did you first hear bebop?
LN: I became interested in Bird [Charlie Parker] and bebop in late 1945 when Bird came to the West Coast. I went to see him at Billy Berg’s, even though I was underage. The music blew me away. I couldn’t play as fast as Bird then, but hearing him didn’t discourage me. I wanted to play like him. I also became interested in Lee Konitz in the late 1940s. My playing back then evolved into Bird’s bebop with a Lee Konitz edge. Lee had studied with Lennie Tristano, and they were doing interesting things with modal scales.

JW: Did you have a band in high school?
LN: Yes. I was starting to arrange then, too. In high schooI I met Phil Carreon, who wanted to start a band that sounded like Count Basie's. He bought stock arrangements of the band’s charts, and I started writing for the band. Phil liked what I was doing.

JW: How big a band?
LN: Big. He had five saxes, three trumpets and three trombones plus a rhythm section. I was writing a lot of charts for him. One day I was playing a dance in my high school and Phil walked in. A lot of the guys in the band recognized him and started nudging each other, saying, “Hey, there’s Phil Carreon, the bandleader.” Phil came right over to me and said, “How would you like to play for my band?” The other guys were amazed. So in high school, in my spare time, I became a lead alto player in Phil's band and was writing charts.

JW: What did you arrange for Carreon?
JN: Original bebop charts and tunes with tightly written sax solis. One arrangement that stands out was a chart of Lover Man. I used to listen to Sarah Vaughan’s version a lot, where she’d sing the melody and Dizzy Gillespie played a solo on the bridge. I made her vocal line a trumpet solo for the band. Then I transcribed Dizzy’s solo and harmonized it for the sax section, the way Supersax was voiced years later.

JW: How was the Carreon band?
LN: Great. The sax section at different times featured Herb Geller, Herbie Steward, Teddy Edwards and Warne Marsh. Billy Byers was in the band, too.

JW: Wow talk about a reed section.
LN: The whole Four Brothers sound was actually started by Gene Roland [pictured] in a rehearsal band he had out in L.A. in 1946 that included Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Jimmy Giuffre and Herbie Steward. It was before Jimmy Giuffre wrote Four Brothers for Woody Herman in 1947. My unison reed section writing also was early comparatively. Whenever I'd arrange, I'd always add a sax soli.

Tomorrow, Lennie talks about getting cold feet when seeing Dizzy Gillespie at Billy Berg's, graduating high school a year early and attending music school in L.A., how he came to join Stan Kenton's band in early 1952, his first arrangement for the band, being drafted in 1952 and spending his army years playing oboe in a marching band.

JazzWax clips: Here's the recording that convinced Lennie to become a saxophonist. It's Harry James with tenor saxophonist Corky Corcoran in 1942 on The Mole...

And here's a taste of Lennie's movie writing for Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers (2006)...

Sunday Wax Bits

Art D'Lugoff (1924-2009), a jazz promoter whose tireless efforts on behalf of musicians, civil rights and cultural diversity led to the opening of New York's Village Gate in 1958 and made the Greenwich Village venue one of the most eclectic jazz, folk, Salsa and rock clubs of the 1960s and 1970s, died on November 4th following shortness of breath. He was 84. [Photo of Art D'Lugoff by Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times]

On Friday, a resident who lives in Art's Riverdale, N.Y., apartment building told me that Art was in the process of moving from one side of the complex to another and insisted on handling much of the packing and moving himself, despite pleas by neighbors.

Art came from a generation of club owners and music promoters that was deeply moved by artistic talent and outraged by social injustice. Taking a political stand during these early years came with high personal and commercial risks. But future considerations never factored much in Art's decision-making process. If Art felt that a musician was genuinely talented and emotionally committed, he threw everything he had behind the person without consideration for his bottom line or what people thought.

In the early 1960s, Art was instrumental in providing singer Nina Simone with a platform for her emerging brand of political soul at the Village Gate. "Nina was amazing," Art told me in October 2008 during a two-part interview. "When Nina played the Gate, it was electrifying. Every show was an improvisation. As much as you may like Ella or Sarah, Nina was one of a kind. She played at the Gate for many, many years."

Interestingly, Art's outrage wasn't driven by a marketing agenda. Instead, his fight for art and creative talent came from bafflement—an inability to comprehend why enormously gifted musicians weren't better recognized and why race and ethnicity played any role in their full appreciation. 

"I introduced Nina to Lorraine Hansberry [pictured], author of Raisin in the Sun and a dear friend of mine," Art told me. "Lorraine had a big influence on Nina politically. I also introduced Nina to Langston Hughes. You have to understand, back then I was friends with a large eclectic group of artists who were passionate about music, art, literature and civil rights. It was a different time. Nina had enormous courage and she knew she was free to do as she pleased creatively at the Gate."

Art also was famous for smashing together artists like atoms in search of an enormous bang. Naively convinced that all great artists would bond if given a chance, Art's efforts could backfire with audiences. In most cases, different crowds had come together to hear the performers and were much less tolerant of the other artist than the musicians. Pairing John Coltrane and folk singer Odetta [pictured], for example, left Village Gate patrons grumbling.

"Those two together wasn’t an exciting match for the person who came to hear one or the other," said Art during our conversation. "I sensed right away it was wrong. Coltrane and Odetta got along personally. But the audience was clearly uncomfortable."

The last time I saw Art was in the late fall of 2008. He decided to stage a series of Salsa Meets Jazz revival concerts in the same space once occupied by the Village Gate. In the 1970s, Art's Salsa Meets Jazz series was legendary for demonstrating the energy, excitement and crossover appeal of Latin music. At the concert last year, Art traveled slowly from table to table in a cream suit and fedora greeting those who attended. When I asked Art how it felt to be in the same space where so much had taken place so many years ago, he looked at me and said, "Like only a weekend has passed."

Rare Hal McKusick. Sally Block, a flutist and student of reed legend Hal McKusick's, came across rare tracks of Hal's that aren't even listed in his discography. Here's Sally's e-mail to me:

"Just before heading to my weekly lesson with Hal McKusick today, I ran into a drummer friend at a local coffee shop. He told me an odd story about listening to an mp3 of Edgard Varese [pictured] from the 1950's with an all-star band including Charles Mingus and Hal.

"So naturally I asked Hal about it as soon as I was in the door. He said that Varese gave each musician a sheet of graph paper, not regular sheet music with notes on it. The graph indicated how to play the part that Varese wanted. Then Varese would point to each musician when he wanted that person to play. 

"Hal said he had never heard any of the music recorded played back. He said he knew that back in Paris, Varese fiddled with the recordings and did something with it. At any rate, here's the link to the Varese tracks."

Hal confirmed all of this during my quick chat with him on Friday. For more information on Varese, go here to A Blog Supreme/NPR Jazz.

Artie Shaw. Following my two-day post on the Artie Shaw box from Mosaic Records, I received the following from reader Martin Milgrim:

"Wonderful column about my favorite clarinetist, indeed the musician who opened up for me the world of jazz. I was 13 years old when my father brought home the RCA Moonglow LP that consisted of the hits of the 1938 and 1940 bands.

"One slight correction: there were two studio string orchestras from the period of 1940-41. One featured Billy Butterfield and Nick Fatool, and recorded Star Dust, Temptation. The other lasted from mid-1941 until early 1942 and featured Hot Lips Page and Dave Tough, and recorded Solid Sam and Carnival. The personnel for these two bands differ markedly."

Marian McPartland. Jazz musician and educator Bill Kirchner sent along an e-mail following my interview series with Marian McPartland last week:

"Marian is a treasure. In 2004 I appeared as a guest on Piano Jazz playing soprano saxophone. We had a great time. For me, the highlight was a free improvisation that we did together. She's absolutely fearless.

"A little more on Dick Cary, who played the alto horn on Jimmy and Marian McPartland Play TV Themes (1960). Cary also played piano and trumpet and arranged. He was an intriguing arranger who defied stylistic pigeonholes. He arranged for Bobby Hackett's unique mid-1950s band at the Henry Hudson Hotel. He also did a rare album with Johnny Plonsky called Dixieland Goes Progressive (Golden Crest), arranging Dixieland warhorses in a Birth of the Cool style. Cary also was part of the jazz loft scene at 821 Sixth Ave. in the 1950s, often rehearsing his bands there."

John Coltrane. With the release of Side Steps, a five-CD box set featuring John Coltrane's sideman dates for Prestige, jazz video documentarian Bret Primack has posted a clip featuring author Ashley Kahn and others on Coltrane's supportive role...

Henry Mancini. Last week I stumbled across this clip and couldn't resist sharing it with you. That's Mancini on piano, Plas Johnson blowing the fabulous extended tenor solo, and an all-star Terry Gibbs band featuring trumpeters Pete and Conte Candoli, trombonist Carl Fontana and others...

CD discovery of the week. In the 1950s and 1960s, singer Tito Rodriguez led one of the mightiest Latin dance bands in New York. Along with Machito and Tito Puente, Rodriguez played up to five nights a week at the Palladium ballroom, where the mambo and cha-cha-cha were the rage. While Machito's band had a strong Cuban big-band sound and Puente's featured the rhythm section in front of the band, Rodriguez's orchestra had a dramatic component that supported his vocals. Rodriguez personally modeled himself after Frank Sinatra, singing gorgeous boleros and exciting son.

Now, a superb two-CD remastered set has been released by Fania Records: Tito Rodriguez: El Inolvidable ("Unforgettable"). The set was produced by Harry Sepulveda [pictured], who also co-wrote the liner notes. Harry runs Record Mart, the city's premier Latin-jazz record store in the Times Square subway station. The 30 tracks cover Rodriguez's 1960-1968 sides for the United Artists and Musicor labels that were recorded in New York and Puerto Rico.

The set includes cha-cha-chas like Colando, Siempre Colando, barnstormers like Alma Llanera and one of Rodriguez's greatest mambo hits from 1962, Cara De Payaso, which typifies Rodriguez's charismatic singing style and passion. On all of the tracks, Rodriguez delivers intimate, sensual vocals.

Tito Rodriguez: El Inolvidable is available here as a download and CD, or at Harry's Record Mart store. Say hi for me.

Oddball album cover of the week. It's hard to figure out what "old feeling" they were referring to here on the album cover. Unless, of course, back in the mid-1950s it was customary for women to give their dates massages by digging their manicured thumbnails into their foreheads. Whatever she's up to, he seems to be enjoying it. This Al Cohn album was released on RCA in 1955.

Interview: Marian McPartland (Part 2)

Pianist Marian McPartland never assumed a hipster or cool mystique like many of her male jazz peers. Throughout her 70-year career, there was no brooding, no puzzling behavior, and no legendary binges or tantrums. Just a good-girl smile as wide as Piccadilly Circus and knowing eyes that bore a steely determination to stand out with graceful technique and an encyclopedic knowledge of jazz. Like Billy Taylor, Marian is both a brilliantly talented pianist and an open, friendly person, something of a misnomer in jazz. [Photo of Marian McPartland in 1959 by Al Fenn for Life]

Marian knows more songs than most jazz musicians. She also knows more jazz musicians than most jazz musicians. So in 1979, she leveraged her congeniality and curiosity to start Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz. For the past 30 years, the show Marian has hosted has become a cultural icon and a rite of passage for jazz musicians. Rather than treat the show as a self-promoting marketing opportunity or hammy radio version of The Tonight Show, Marian invented a humble journalistic format that was part salon and saloon. And like any good journalist hunting for the truth, Marian continues to get her guests to open up about sensitive topics and give up a few keyboard tricks.

In Part 2 of my interview with Marian, the pianist-educator and radio host talks about discovering bebop, her divorce from Jimmy McPartland, the Piano Jazz guest that sent her to the ladies room for an aspirin, Bill Evans' drug use, and the contest she yearns to have with pianist Dick Hyman:

JazzWax: Where did you learn to play bebop?
Marian McPartland: In Chicago. One night in the late 1940s I went to hear Jackie and Roy with Charlie Ventura after Jimmy and I worked the Brass Rail. To hear Jackie [Cain] and Roy [Kral], and Charlie, was something. Roy played wonderful bebop piano. His playing was different, from a harmonic perspective. The feel and attitude of bebop in the early days was about exciting chords and voicings. As time has passed, bebop has become something else. Jazz just keeps changing. When I heard Roy with Jackie, I was swept away, so I gave bebop a try. It seemed to come to me naturally. Luckily I knew I could fall back on Dixieland and traditional jazz—Jimmy [McPartland]’s form of music—if I had to or needed other types of gigs. [Photo of Jackie Cain and Charlie Ventura in 1948, courtesy of Jeff Austin]

JW: What did Jimmy McPartland think of you playing bebop?
MM: Jimmy was very tolerant of it. He always said to me, “I love the way you play but I can’t change my way of playing. It will always be the same.” When we put together a band, I played his way. When I went out with my own trio, I played bebop.

JW: In 1952, you began playing as the house pianist at the Hickory House on 52nd Street.
MM: It was so very exciting. In between sets we would run across to hear whoever was playing at Birdland—Duke, Bud Powell, Billy Taylor. No matter who was there, I would head off to go hear them.

JW: Did hearing those types of pianists ever discourage you?
MM: Hearing others never discouraged me. I felt I was part of the scene. I was in it for good. But it took determination to play music that people identified with men. Yet I always seemed to do well.

JW: Did you meet Duke Ellington?
MM: I became friendly with Duke at the Hickory House. He spent a lot of time there. His press agent was also the Hickory House’s press agent, so Duke often had his dinners there. The only comment Duke ever made about my playing he said in the nicest possible way, “Oh, you play so many notes” [laughs]. Eventually it dawned on me that maybe I was playing too many notes [laughs].

JW: What was Ellington like?
MM: Duke was such a charmer. He would never criticize me. In fact, he was a great friend. Every time I would go to see him at Birdland, he would announce me and ask me to play with the band. [Photo of Duke Ellington in 1957 by Thomas Macavoy for Life]

JW: Did you?
MM: Yes. I knew all of the band’s repertoire. But Duke would usually pick a blues for me and the band to play, and I would play the tune. And I loved doing it.

JW: Did the band love you playing with them?
MM: [Laughs] I don’t know. There wasn’t much they could do about it. I always found people to be very friendly to me. I don’t think I had any enemies. Being at the Hickory House for so many years [until 1962] probably had something to do with it. Even when we’d go out on the road, we’d come back there. Everyone dropped in.

JW: Which musician was most helpful to you?
MM: Jimmy [McPartland]. But nobody had to be that helpful. I was doing all right without any help.

JW: Did you know George Shearing?
MM: Yes, I played with George. I liked him a lot. In fact, later on we played two pianos when I had my radio show, which I still have.

JW: Did Charlie Parker hear you play?
MM: He never came to hear me, as far as I know. I went to hear him, but by then he was getting to be in bad shape. I remember going to see him at a club, and it was very dark and gloomy and there weren't many people there. He was already in trouble. I think it wasn't long after that he died, although I did listen to him on records a lot. A fantastic player.

JW: As a woman, did you ever feel like an outsider knocking on the clubhouse door trying to get in?
MM: No. I never ever felt that way. Jimmy was always there and wanted me to have my own trio. He was never envious. He was an amazing guy. He was always proud of me even when there was no reason to be. He was so good to me.

JW: Yet you two divorced in 1970.
MM: I think the divorce was more painful for him than me. I was the one who wanted it. God knows why. When we got the divorce, we became very friendly. Jimmy said, “It seems we had to get a divorce to learn to treat each other nicely.” Even though we were divorced, we still worked together. He never found anyone else to marry. Maybe if he did I might have jumped in because I was jealous. We remarried, of course, just before his death in 1991. [Photo of Jimmy and Marian McPartland at Charlie's Tavern, courtesy of Bill Crow]

JW: On your NPR show Piano Jazz, which pianist surprised you the most?
MM: I can't say. We've had so many surprises.

JW: But if you think back, is there anyone you thought about one way and afterward thought completely differently about him or her?
MM: Probably Denny Zeitlin [pictured]. He’s a psychiatrist, too, you know. I knew he was a fabulous player. But when he came to do the show the first time, he was more fabulous than I could possibly have imagined. I didn't know how I was going to deal with him. I had to go off to the ladies room and take an aspirin. I didn't think I was going to be able to keep up with him, but I did. It turned out to be a very good show.

JW: One of your best-known radio conversations was with Bill Evans in November 1978.
MM: I loved doing it. One of my favorite interviews. We were good friends.

JW: Were you worried that his solemn style would clash with your more playful feel?
MM: No concerns at all. I knew how he played, and I know how I play. I knew I could keep up with him, and I did. He liked it a lot. I did feel bad that he was on drugs that day we did the show. I never would have known he was on drugs. He seemed so normal. It's hard to believe that he had gone out and scored somewhere before the show. It just broke my heart that he had to go and die [in 1980].

JW: You got him to talk about Blue in Green and to admit that the song was written by him, not Miles Davis, who had long taken credit for it.
MM: I guess Miles figured he'd take it for himself.

JW: Did you ever play a Bill Evans piano transcription?
MM: [Laughs] No. I never could play them. Or Art Tatum transcriptions. I couldn't play a note.

JW: Come on.
MM: No, seriously. I was a terrible reader. I didn't even try playing a Bill Evans transcription. I was just content to listen to him. I probably have copied him over the years. Not intentionally, but I know I have taken a lot of his ideas and harmonies unconsciously. It was enough that we had him on the show.

JW: Did you ever try to get Miles on the show?
MM: Everyone on the show kept saying, “You can’t have Miles on. He swears too much.” I said, "That’s no problem. We’ll beep out the cursing." While we were arguing back and forth about having him on, Miles died. It was so silly about him swearing too much. We could have covered that easily.

JW: You're rumored to know more songs than any other jazz pianist.
MM: Oh, I don't know. Maybe Dick Hyman [pictured] may know more. I want to have a competition with him. I don't know how we'd settle that, but one day we have to do it [laughs]. Maybe people would keep asking for tunes, and the minute someone comes up with one he or I don't know, the other one would win [laughs].

JW: I was re-listening to your Hickory House recordings earlier. They are so full of enthusiasm, optimism and mischief.
MM: That's true [pause]. I'll go along with that [pause]. Absolutely. That just about describes me very well.

JazzWax tracks: Marian McPartland's most recent release is Twilight World, which features a splendid mix of originals, standards and obscure gems. The title track, for example, is an exquisite composition by Marian. Her steady take on Alfie also is beautiful. And her lyrical Afternoon in Paris is a stylistic return to her Hickory House days. You can hear Bill Evans' influence on Blue in Green. The album is available as a download at iTunes and Amazon. Or on CD here.

Many of Marian's Piano Jazz interviews/duets are available as downloads and on CD. My favorite remains her conversation with Bill Evans. There's a quiet tension there as well as many creative revelations. Other great Piano Jazz summits feature Dizzy Gillespie (allowing you to hear the trumpeter's famous approach to piano voicings), Henry Mancini (whose touch is unrivaled), and Lionel Hampton (whose sparkling personality and legendary approach to the piano and vibes was a perfect fit for Marian).

JazzWax tip: For more information about Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on NPR, upcoming shows and podcasts, go here.

JazzWax tracks: Here's Part 1 of Marian's rewarding Bill Evans interview on Piano Jazz from 1978. What a shame they didn't spend the entire afternoon together. And dig Evans' distinct New Jersey accent emerge as he relaxes...

Interview: Marian McPartland (Part 1)

Marian McPartland is probably best known today as a  pioneering jazz radio host (NPR's Piano Jazz) and the grande dame of the jazz piano. But starting back in the 1950s, Marian was one of bebop's most graceful and nimble messengers. Equally well versed in Dixieland, stride and other forms of early jazz that she grew up with in pre-war England, McPartland had one of the tenderest touches of the period and the deepest knowledge of songs. In fact, today her ability to play the melodies of thousands of well-known and obscure songs is legendary.

When you chat with Marian, you quickly realize that she talks the way she plays. Despite years in the United States, her speaking voice retains a lilting, proper London accent while her thought process is metronome firm and measured. But Marian also is surprisingly curious, making time at the end of our conversation to ask numerous questions with follow-up questions. And her queries weren't reflexively polite. She was genuinely interested to learn and understand. [Pictured: The Marian McPartland Trio at New York's Hickory House in 1956]

In Part 1 of my two-part interview series with Marian, 91, the pianist talks about growing up in England, how she became interested in jazz, her first professional gig playing in a four-piano band, and meeting cornetist and her future husband Jimmy McPartland in war-torn Belgium:

JazzWax: You grew up in the 1930s, just outside London.
Marian McPartland: Yes, I was born in Slough, near Windsor. My father was working at a place call the Woolwich Arsenal [a train station]. Soon we moved to Bromley, a suburban town in southeast London.

JW: You took to the piano pretty quickly, yes?
MM: I guess I did pick up music quickly. Just hearing my mother play made me interested, and I learned to play almost everything I heard. At age 3, I started to play a Chopin piece that I had heard my mother play.

JW: Who introduced you to jazz?
MM: I heard it every day on the radio in the 1930s. My younger sister was friends with this guy who tried to interest her in jazz.

JW: How did he do?
MM: Not very well. She wasn’t very interested. I just loved jazz. So he switched from her to me [laughs] because I was fascinated with the music. When I started to play jazz on the piano, my parents would simply say, “Very nice, dear.” So I decided to follow my heart and become a professional musician. Now when audiences applaud, I suppose they're also saying, “Very nice, dear” [laughs].

JW: What type of jazz were you listening to in England?
MM: All of the jazz that came before bebop—Benny Goodman, Fats Waller and Duke Ellington, who I adored.

JW: Were you romantically involved with your sister’s friend?
MM: Oh no. He was just somebody to play records with. I loved hearing the music, which helped my playing. I played piano throughout secondary school, what you call high school. Playing piano was my claim to fame, my saving grace. I wasn’t very good scholastically. To play piano and have all the girls crowd around was wonderful. I was a big ham. I loved it.

JW: Did you go to music school?
MM: When I was in my teens, I went to the Guildhall School of Music [pictured]. I tried to play classical music but it wasn’t working out. I stayed at Guildhall for three years, but I was already heavily into jazz. I had come to the school thinking I would become a concert pianist. But I really wasn’t that great. Jazz was the most important thing in my life.

JW: When did you start playing jazz professionally?
MM: In 1938. A guy named Billy Mayerl, a famous English pop pianist, heard me playing locally and invited me to join his group. He was taking a band on the road—a novelty group that featured four pianos. He called his group Billy Mayerl and His Claviers. Of course, I wanted to be part of this thing.

JW: What did your parents think?
MM: They were horrified that I would want to do such a thing, that I would want to go on the road with a bunch of people they didn’t think were high-class.

JW: You went anyway?
MM: Of course I went. I was determined. This was just before World War II, and I learned a lot on that tour. When the tour ended, I started working at odd jobs playing two pianos with another girl in a theater. I did a lot of things like that.

JW: The blitz in 1940 and 1941 must have been horrible.
MM: It was. The bombs were terrible. When the war came, I was given the choice of being an entertainer or joining the women’s army, which of course I didn’t want to do. So I joined the English Entertainments National Service Association.

JW: What did the association do?
MM: You entertained troops all over the country. So I did that. Then after America entered the war, I joined USO camp shows and went to France with the first group after D-Day in 1944. We worked our way through Belgium playing different places. If there was no place to play, we'd play on the back of a flatbed truck or in various coffee houses. We played anyplace that was big enough. We finally got to a place called Leuven in Belgium. We stayed in a hotel instead of army facilities.

JW: What was special about that town?
MM: It’s where I met [cornetist] Jimmy [McPartland]. He was a foot soldier when I met him.

JW: How did you wind up touring together in the USO?
MM: His commanding officer heard him playing the cornet and said, “This man should be playing his horn. He shouldn’t be manning a gun.” So he put Jimmy with the USO group. On the tour, I played whatever Jimmy played. Only much later did I learn that there was something called Chicago jazz and that Jimmy was one of its originators. To me, jazz was jazz.

JW: How did you get along with McPartland?
MM: Great. We quickly fell in love and got married in Belgium, courtesy of the army. They gave us permission to wed. We played with the USO band until the war ended. Then we came to the States, to New York. We spent a few days in New York, staying at Gene Krupa’s house. Jimmy took me to Eddie Condon’s to hear Gene play. I was amazed.

JW: Did you stay in New York?
MM: No, we left for Chicago, and I played with him there for quite a while.

JW: Tough being a female jazz piano player back then?
MM: Nothing was said about me being a woman because I was with Jimmy. Back in New York several years later, he helped me start my own trio. That’s when I found out there weren’t that many women piano players. But I was still one of the lucky ones. Being married to Jimmy, when I wanted to hire someone, no one ever turned me down. I’m sure a lot of female players who weren’t married to well-known musicians were turned down all the time by great male sidemen. [Pictured: Mary Lou Williams and Marian McPartland in the 1950s]

JW: Was jazz easy for women back then?
MM: It took a long time for women to become equal to men in jazz. Jazz was considered male music, and women didn’t play it nearly as well as men did. When I opened at the Hickory House in 1952, Leonard Feather [pictured] wrote in a review that said, “Marian McPartland will never make it. She’s English, white and a woman” [laughs].

JW: Did that bother you?
MM: Not at all. It was good publicity. Leonard always said he meant it as a joke. But I don’t think he knew that when he wrote it.

Tomorrow, Marian talks about Jimmy McPartland, playing at the Hickory House on 52nd St. in the 1950s, playing for Duke Ellington, her most intriguing guest on NPR's Piano Jazz, how Bill Evans broke her heart and her biggest wish.

JazzWax tracks: Do yourself a big favor. Download Marian McPartland and Her Hickory House Trio on 52d Street at iTunes for $11.99. Don't even think twice about it. These 17 tracks were recorded live in 1953 and feature Marian, drummer Joe Morello and bassists (on different dates) Bill Crow and Bob Carter. They are among the most precious piano recordings of the period. Dig the grace, impeccable timing and delight in the melody. Listen carefully where Marian's lines take her on well-known standards. It's a shame all of Marian's early trio dates aren't available in one remastered set.

Marian's first recordings in London with Vic Lewis in 1946 are on Vic Lewis: The Golden Years. Her tracks with Lewis are I've Found a New Baby, The World Is Waiting for the Sunshine, Sweet Lorraine, Rose Room, Blues and I Got Rhythm. You can down load the tracks here.

One of my favorite albums of Marian's with Jimmy McPartland is Thanks for Dropping By (1960). Originally known as Jimmy and Marian McPartland Play TV Themes (Design), the album features Jimmy McPartland (cornet), Urbie Green (trombone), Dick Cary (alto horn), Andy Fitzgerald (clarinet), Marian McPartland (piano), Ben Tucker (bass) and Mousie Alexander (drums). It's available on CD here.

JazzWax clip: Here's a taste of Marian at the Hickory House in 1954 with Bill Crow and Joe Morello...