JazzWax

Interview: Gunther Schuller (Part 2)

The more Gunther Schuller explored the New York arts scene in the late 1940s, the more he gravitated toward jazz. As a young, advanced French hornist with the city's Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Gunther related completely to the creative enthusiasm, explosive excitement and brilliance of the bebop musicians he heard in the clubs and in concert. When Gunther toured with the orchestra during this period, he spent much of his spare time listening to jazz musicians at nearby clubs. 

In December 1948, Gunther's encounter with pianist John Lewis in New York quickly blossomed into a friendship. Lewis was studying classical music at the Manhattan School of Music, and the two musicians found they had much in common. In early 1950, Lewis called Gunther and invited him to play French horn on a jazz recording date. Gunther agreed, and the result was part of what would become known as the vital "Birth of the Cool" session. Gunther's direct involvement with the orchestral jazz of Lewis, Gil Evans, Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan and John Carisi started him thinking about the possibilities of a new music form that might emerge with the fusion of classical and jazz.

In Part 2 of my four-part interview series, Gunther talks about meeting John Lewis, recording on the "Birth of the Cool" session, the hardest arrangement the nonet recorded that day, and why Mulligan's Rocker still sounds so fresh:

JazzWax: When were you first exposed to jazz?
Gunther Schuller: I started collecting jazz records when I was 12 years old. I quickly became a jazz fan and read all the books on jazz that existed at that time. Jazz was definitely a part of my life in the mid-1940s, but not yet as a performer. I was an admirer of Dizzy Gillespie, John Lewis, J.J. Johnson and all the other bebop musicians who were breaking new ground. Then one day I decided to make it a point to meet John Lewis.

JW: When did you meet him?
GS: We met in December 1948. I’d go to all these clubs and concerts, but I was too shy to go up to any of these people to talk to them at length. But with John, I was so taken with his playing that I made it a point to meet him. He was so warm and friendly. We hit it off immediately, and John became my entrée to the jazz world. In those days, if a musician in jazz’s inner circle introduced you or said, “This guy is one of us,” you were in.

JW: How did you become “one of us?”
GS: By then, I was at a high level of creativity, playing, writing and composing in my area of music. You see, in the classical world, you audition. You have to prove yourself to win a place in an orchestra. In the jazz world, if Duke Ellington lost a player, word would go out and three or four of his musician buddies would say, “Listen, there’s an incredible bass player in Lincoln, Nebraska. Get him.” This was absolute, and it never failed. None of these people ever recommended anyone who wasn’t good. With me, it was unusual because I was a French horn player. The horn was not a jazz instrument at the time, but it was creeping in. So when Miles needed a French horn, he asked John Lewis for a recommendation, and John said, “Get Gunther.”

JW: Classical was beginning to seep into jazz during this period—not as an aspiration but as a resource to draw from.
GS: That's correct. Classical in the late 1940s was increasingly viewed by jazz musicians as a form from which to adapt. None of these musicians, of course, was striving to become a classical player. But they were intrigued by the music, its harmonies, its tonality and its complexity.

JW: Which only stimulated your thinking about merging classical and jazz.
GS: Yes. One of my obvious rationales for combining jazz and classic was that both musics had a lot to learn from each other. They may not have known that at first, but they discovered it soon enough. Especially the form. The forms of jazz back then were primitive, despite the enormous dexterity and skill of the musicians. In a very short period of time, jazz steadily became much more intricate and developed.

JW: The musicians in the late 1940s also were much more sophisticated than most people realized at the time.
GS: Absolutely. Look, Dizzy Gillespie back then was known as a great trumpet player but also as a kind of a clown. He danced around on stage and did all this scat singing. But I’m telling you, that guy when you were alone with him was the most serious person, the most socially conscious, the most politically aware, the most intellectual and the most spiritual. It was just incredible. Being with him was like attending a university seminar course. All of those guys were voracious readers and enormously curious.

JW: Jazz and classical coming together continued through the 1950s.
GS: When I started the whole thing in 1957 with the Third Stream, which was bringing the two forms of music together—but really bringing them together in compositions, styles and performance—it was extremely controversial. I was vilified on both sides. Classical musicians, composers and critics all thought that classical would be contaminated by this lowly jazz music, this black music. And jazz musicians and critics said, “My god, classical music is going to stultify our great, spontaneous music.” It was all nonsense and ignorance, of course. Eventually the two came together anyway.

JW: Exposure to classical and classical training certainly made jazz musicians better readers and studio musicians.
GS: Yes, to some extent. Classical training was certainly important in this regard. But the greatest jazz musicians would have been great jazz musicians anyway. As for other jazz musicians, classical training, either in school or through lessons, became essential for the reason you mention. Jazz orchestral arrangements were becoming more complex starting in the early 1950s, especially with the rise of the LP and longer recorded pieces. Reading a music part once and perfectly was essential and that required training.

JW: Speaking of orchestral jazz, how did you come to replace Junior Collins and Sandy Siegelstein on French horn on the last "Birth of the Cool" recording session in March 1950?
GS: Both Sandy and Junior had played on the previous two dates. I believe that both went to California afterward and the horn position was open. Miles told John Lewis, his pianist, “I just lost Junior.” Miles and I had already known each other casually. I had met him earlier, in Detroit, when I was on tour with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. I’d see Dizzy, Duke, Miles—anyone and everyone—on the road. After, they performed, we’d hang out. Of course. I didn’t sleep much in those days [laughs].

JW: On the Miles Davis nonet session, did you just come in, sit down and record what was on the stands?
GS: My goodness, no. This was not such easy music that you could walk into the recording session and say, “Take it from the top, here we go.” Miles held something like four or five rehearsals, which wasn’t easy given all of the musicians involved and each one’s schedule. Lee Konitz [pictured], Al McKibbon, Max Roach and all the rest were busy people. At only one rehearsal did we have all nine players there at once.

JW: What was your schedule like at the time?
GS: I was at the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, with eight or nine performances each week. So my schedule was tight.

JW: At the "Birth of the Cool" session, you recorded Deception, Rocker, Moon Dreams and Darn That Dream. Which one was hardest?
GS: Without a doubt, Gil Evans’ [pictured] arrangement of Moon Dreams. That’s the ultimate masterpiece of the session.

JW: Really? The most difficult?
GS: Absolutely. The coda at the end goes into atonality and counterpoint. There are five different layers of contrapuntal lines. No one had ever written anything like that before in jazz.

JW: How did the rehearsals work out?
GS: In all honesty, we couldn't really play Moon Dreams very well, and it shows on the studio recording. I mean we played it well enough that it could be issued by Capitol. The piece works because of the greatness of those musicians and how much feeling was squeezed into that very difficult music. I have performed Moon Dreams many times over the years in what I call repertory jazz concerts, and it's still hard to play in an ensemble. [Photo by Popsie Randolph]

JW: I’m surprised it was so difficult. Moon Dreams sounds so relaxed.
GS: All you have to do is listen to The Complete Birth of the Cool CD that includes the live recordings from the Royal Roost. You can hear that the performances of it are falling apart. The musicians were out of tune, the executions were ragged, Junior Collins on French horn was two measures ahead of everyone else and so on.

JW: Was Deception truly arranged by Davis? It sounds a lot like Mulligan.
GS: Look, Miles immediately learned from Gil and Gerry. In those days, very often, some other person’s name was put on a title for one reason or another. Miles had hired Gil and Gerry for the date because Miles loved what they had been doing with the Claude Thornhill orchestra.

JW: There certainly is a lot of Thornhill in terms of Impressionism.
GS: In all of those arrangements. They purposefully reduced the Thornhill band concept from 16 musicians down to 9. They did that because Capitol didn’t want to hire a big band for the material. That was Pete Rugolo [pictured], who was a great arranger for Stan Kenton and the label's East Coast music director at the time.

JW: How did the musicians on the date interact?
GS: We all loved what we were doing. We kind of knew we were doing something exciting that hadn’t been done before. But that Moon Dreams scared everyone to death. It was strange that Gil Evans and Pete Rugolo weren't at that session.

JW: Rocker still has a modern sound
GS: Gerry [pictured] was one of the leading creative improvisers of the period. The freshness of what you hear comes from the clarity Mulligan had in his writing. Gil’s music is quite dense and rich and full on the inside. With Gerry, there was always this wonderful linearity and clear harmonies. Though they are modern, he keeps them simple. Gerry also had a certain bounce in his rhythms. John Carisi’s Israel is a whole different kind of writing. And John Lewis’ arrangement of Denzil Best's Move is different again. That’s like Mozart.

Tomorrow, Gunther talks about John Lewis, the Modern Jazz Society, Gigi Gryce's exciting arranging style, and the famed Brandeis Concert of 1957, which featured a groundbreaking piano solo by Bill Evans.

JazzWax tracks: Miles Davis formed a nonet in late 1948 while he was still performing and recording with Charlie Parker. The nonet's purpose was to leverage or "jazz up" the cooler, more linear arranging style emerging at the time in Claude Thornhill's band, which tilted toward "easy listening." The idea for the nonet came following Davis' exposure to the modern arranging styles of Gill Evans, Gerry Mulligan and John Lewis.

The nonet's Capitol studio recordings were made over the next year and a half. The results were issued as 78-rpm singles. When the 10-inch LP was introduced in the early 1950s, tracks were gathered as part of Capitol's Classics in Jazz album series. Not until 1957, when the material was united on 12-inch LP, did the words Birth of the Cool wind up on the cover. Pete Rugolo is credited with the title.

The Complete Birth of the Cool is available as a download and here on CD.

JazzWax clip: Here's Joe Lovano speaking about his Birth of the Cool Suite with Gunther Schuller conducting and speaking on camera...

Interview: Gunther Schuller (Part 1)

Gunther Schuller is the eminence grise of the jazz-classical movement. Gunther began playing French horn professionally in 1941 with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at age 16. He then played with the American Ballet Theater and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra before becoming principal horn in New York's Metropolitan Opera Orchestra from 1945 to 1959. In 1950, Gunther was recruited by pianist John Lewis [pictured below] and trumpeter Miles Davis to play on a seminal recording date that would become known as the "Birth of the Cool" session. Throughout the 1950s, Gunther worked to bring jazz and classical together in a new, single form, an effort that often landed him in the cross-hairs of jazz and classical critics. In 1955 Gunther and pianist Lewis founded the Modern Jazz Society, and in 1957, during a lecture at Brandeis University, Gunther described his vision of a jazz-classical hybrid as "Third Stream."

But Gunther was just getting warmed up. Soon after his lecture at Brandeis, he and Lewis founded the Lenox School of Jazz. Between 1967 and 1977, Gunther was president of the New England Conservatory, and over his career he has composed numerous jazz and classical orchestral pieces and has written several important jazz books. In 1980 Gunther started GM Recordings, and his 800-page memoir will be published soon by a university press.

In Part 1 of my interview series with Gunther, 85, the French hornist, composer, arranger, writer and producer talks about attending grade school in Germany just before World War II, the terrible accident that likely saved his life, arriving in New York and playing with Arturo Toscanini at age 16, and the start of his voracious appetite for the arts that began in earnest in the late 1940s:

JazzWax: Where exactly did you grow up?
Gunther Schuller: As a young child, I spent 4½ years in a private school in Germany for foreign children of German parentage. My parents were German, but they had emigrated to America and my father was in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. I was a slightly unruly, rebellious child, so they placed me in a boarding school in Germany. [Pictured: The 1941 New York Philharmonic bass section]

JW: Why did they do that?
GS: My parents had assumed that a German education would be best for me. Besides, both of my parents had relatives there, so on vacations I would stay with them. I attended that school from January 1932 until December 1936. I had an incredible education there. In the second grade I was studying subjects like French, Latin, geography and geology. [Pictured: German countryside]

JW: As you’re studying civilization, Germany is growing rapidly uncivilized.
GS: Yes. We were isolated in the school from what was happening there. By definition, these private schools for foreign children with German parents were sealed off from outside distractions, and Hitler had promised to leave them undisturbed. However, since Hitler never kept any agreement that he had made, he invaded all those private schools in 1936.

JW: What happened to you?
GS: In the last half year of my stay there, I was inducted into the Hitler Youth. There I was in a brown uniform parading uselessly up and down outside, with the commandant beating us severely once a week. I wrote my parents about what was going on there, but they were in disbelief. They were 3,000 miles away in New York. Even in America, people in the 1930s were in disbelief that Hitler was really that bad or evil.

JW: How did you finally leave Germany?
GS: In 1936, when I turned 11, I lost my right eye in a knife accident. It's too gory to get into, but I was in the hospital for a week and underwent a double operation on my eye. You can imagine how my mother felt when she heard the news. I had to leave the school, of course, and my mother had to come to Germany to take me home to New York. In those days there were no airplanes crossing the Atlantic, so it took her seven days to get there. I’ve had an artificial right eye ever since.

JW: Where did your parents live in New York?
GS: In Queens. As soon as I arrived, I was enrolled in another private school—St. Thomas Choir School. I was there for three years. The school was nearly as rigorous as the one in Germany, so I had little time for anything more than my studies. What I am today is largely a result of the education I had in Germany and New York.

JW: Did you find New York exciting?
GS: Well, of course. Though we lived in Queens, we were in Manhattan a lot. When I came to New York, it was discovered that I had musical talent. I didn’t know that and no one else knew that either. So I became a musician very quickly, between age 11 and 16. And a composer afterward.

JW: How was high school after St. Thomas?
GS: I don’t know. I finished three years ahead of everyone else. I had already covered everything that the high school was teaching for graduation in my earlier private schools. That’s how I wound up becoming a professional French horn player at age 16 and playing with Arturo Toscanini in the New York Philharmonic.

JW: Were you aware of how advanced you were?
GS: I knew I was good. My father was the leader of the second violins in the Philharmonic. He was a terrific violinist. My teacher and father had recommended me, and I was hired. Toscanini was inspiring, but he was one of those temperamental tyrants who just behaved ridiculously on the podium.

JW: How so?
GS: Toscanini was the greatest conductor of that era, but he would explode in these outbursts, these scatological fits with Italian curse words. It was frightening to work with him. But he was such a great musician and conductor. We played extremely well with him. But if he landed on you, you were in trouble. [Photo of Arturo Toscanini conducting Metropolitan Opera stars in 1946 by W. Eugene Smith for Life]

JW: Did he ever land on you?
GS: Not in that first performance. Toscanini tended not to conduct contemporary music, and my first performance just happened to be Dmitri Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, which was composed in 1941. Toscanini didn’t know the symphony as well as he knew works by Wagner, Beethoven and Rossini. I came away unscathed [laughs].

JW: Why do you suppose that happened, specifically?
GS: Probably because he hardly knew I was there. The symphony, you see, has eight horns instead of the usual four. I was hired as one of the extra players. But I was scared. I was just 16 years old and I feared he’d look around, see me and say, “What is this little kid doing in this orchestra?” [laughs].

JW: So you were playing in the orchestra with your dad?
GS: Yes, he was about 30 feet away.

JW: Did you feel the added pressure of your father’s presence and judgment?
GS: Yes, always. I played with the New York Philharmonic later as first French horn player, and my father was always sitting by. But I was good. There were a few bad moments. Only once in a great while would he look at me with a sour look. But not in the Shostakovich symphony. I think Toscanini was just glad to have gotten through it.

JW: Did Toscanini give you a hard time later?
GS: Not really. He was a great conductor of Wagner, whose late operas required eight horns. For those performances, Toscanini would hire the four extra horns he needed from the Metropolitan Opera, where by that time I was playing first horn. That’s how I was able to play with him many times, when he conducted the NBC Symphony Orchestra in those Wagner programs. [Photo of Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony in 1947 by Robert Hupka]

JW: How did you avoid distractions in New York?
GS: Well, I didn’t. I became heavily involved with all the arts—film, painting, literature, dance and other forms. This is hard to  explain. My girlfriend, who later became my wife, and I lived the full cultural life of New York, which is now quite gone. New York was, in the late 1930s and 1940s and well into the 50s, the cultural paradise of the world. It was unbelievable in its richness, wit, breadth, depth—and I feasted on that. It was so mesmerizing. It's almost impossible to describe the energy and excitement today. [Pictured: Women with Statue at the Museum of Modern Art in 1948 by Ruth Orkin]

JW: Did you explore it all?
GS: My wife and I hardly ever slept. We existed on three or four hours’ sleep. Whenever we were free, we’d see three or four films showing at the Museum of Modern Art. I was obsessed with the art of film—the great films from Germany and France from the 1920s and 1930s. We went to all the museums and galleries, saw performances of all kinds. We went to jazz clubs. We did everything. We just ate up the entire cultural ambiance of New York at the time.

JW: Was it an obsession?
GS: That’s just the way I am. To this day, I have a voracious appetite for anything cultural and artistic. I just cannot not pursue it. When I was young in Germany, I had a great talent for drawing, painting and design. I still have the whole fascination and involvement with art in me, and it shows up in a lot of my music.

JW: What was it about New York that excited you?
GS: Artists in all of the arts created works at the highest  levels. Enjoying all of the arts came together for me. They didn’t come together for most of my colleagues. But I’m crazy. We were crazy. Just pursuing jazz and classical music day after day was enough. But we would go see and hear anything and everything. We couldn't get enough, and it was all terribly exciting. It’s hard to believe. It’s hard for me to believe in retrospect. Once I hooked up with the jazz world, though, through John Lewis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and others, I was completely captivated. It was just outrageous. [Photo of Dizzy Gillespie by Herman Leonard/CTSImages.com]

Tomorrow, Gunther talks about meeting pianist John Lewis, the origins of jazz-classical fusion, recording four tracks with the Miles Davis nonet, and the most difficult "Birth of the Cool" piece that gave the ensemble so much trouble.

JazzWax clip: Here's Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra in a 1944 performance of Verdi's La Forza Del Destino (The Force of Destiny)...

Sunday Wax Bits

Waxing & musings. Was jazz an unassuming rock enabler? We often think of the two music forms as developing separately and then competing bitterly for consumer dollars in the 1960s, with rock winning out. During this period, jazz tends to be viewed as a victim of changing demographics and shifting popular tastes. But jazz also played an inadvertent role in rock's ascent.

It's no secret that young rock musicians in the U.S. and Britain listened to jazz albums by Miles Davis, John Coltrane and other high-profile jazz artists in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Many instrumentalists, like Ray Manzarek of the Doors, have said they found the recordings inspiring. But what exactly were they inspired by? Apparently, the take-away from those listening sessions wasn't taste or musicianship but permission to play extended guitar and drum solos. Rockers added volume and theatrics.

According a 2007 interview with the Desert Sun in Palm Springs, CA, James Gurley, the late guitarist for Big Brother and the Holding Company, pointed to the music of John Coltrane, as the inspiration for his extended solos. "I heard a lone saxophone raging like a madman," he said. "And that's what developed my style. Play it like crazy."

There's no harm in a long solo—crazy or otherwise. Jazz invented the extended solo in clubs and when artists began recording on 12-inch LPs in the mid-1950s. But it is interesting to hear how rock artists leveraged the form. And I suppose that jazz fans and writers shouldn't grouse too much when the subject of rock arises nor should we continue the myth that jazz somehow was sacked in the 1960s by long-haired barbarians. In truth, jazz in the 1960s left the door open.

Surfboard. It's winter in New York. Which means there's nothing better than a bossa nova clip to warm the spirits. Here's a beaut I found featuring Antonio Carlos Jobim at the piano with a vocal choir...

Teddy Pendergrass (1950-2010), a Philadelphia soul singer whose earthy baritone in the early 1970s could be tremendously uplifting when backed by a hustle beat and cozily seductive when supported by strings, died on January 13th in Bryn Mawr, PA. He was 59.

Pendergrass is probably best known as the lead singer for the soul group Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. His projecting gospel-influenced delivery helped make songs like Bad Luck, The Love I Lost and Wake Up Everybody huge hits for the Philadelphia group at the dawn of the disco era.

Pendergrass left the Blue Notes in 1975 to start a solo career. He issued several albums before and after his paralyzing auto accident in 1982. Perhaps his finest solo album was his first, Teddy Pendergrass (1977), which featured I Don't Love You Anymore and The Whole Town's Laughing at Me. Then again, Close the Door from Life Is a Song Worth Singing (1978) was equally superb. Here's a clip of Pendergrass in 1979 picking up where Marvin Gaye left off...

Sammy Nestico. Following my two-part interview with composer-arranger Sammy Nestico, I received the following from Terry Teachout, author of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong and a jazz bassist:

"[Sammy Nestico's] Basie Straight Ahead is the first big-band chart I ever played. I was a freshman in college. I'd just come up from Missouri to Kansas City, and I'd never played jazz with anyone else—only with records. I was shaking when I walked into the rehearsal. But then I saw that the entire bass chart was written out note for note. (So was the piano chart, including all of Basie's comping.)

"I relaxed, read it straight down, and in the process learned a lot about how to walk on the bass behind a big band. So thanks, Sammy Nestico, for opening the door for a scared kid bass player."

Ed Beach. I received an enormous number of emails following my tribute to the late New York disc jockey Ed Beach. This one came in from Carl Woideck, a music history professor at the University of Oregon:

"To pick up on your story after Ed left New York. I knew Ed pretty well in his latter years, when he lived near Portland and then mostly when he lived in Eugene, OR, where I live now. I first heard Ed in Cleveland when his Just Jazz show was rebroadcast on tape on a local station. He had a lot to do with my becoming a jazz historian and starting my own radio show.

"When Ed lived in and around Portland, he gigged on piano for quite a while. I never heard him there, but in Eugene he often played locally on an electric keyboard and sang popular songs that he liked. His chord changes were always great.  I remember him crooning Dream Dancing, a song that was new to me.

When I went to his apartment, he usually had a listening session planned for me, things that he thought I didn't know, including Western classical music. He liked powerful music, and I remember him pumping his arm during a Coleman Hawkins performance or when a classical piece reached a crescendo.

What many fans may not know is that Ed made extensive notes in his own hand on record jackets [pictured] so he would remember what he wanted to say of note. Having seen these notes, they were fascinating."

Count Basie and John Coltrane. During my interview with Bob Brookmeyer, the valve trombonist spoke about a Town Hall concert in which Count Basie and John Coltrane played on the same bill. Reader J.S. Grogan sent along a link to photos of Basie and Coltrane together posted at the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, courtesy of Getty Images.

Billie Holiday. Reader Peter Sokolowski sent along this clip of Lady Day, with Jimmy Rowles on piano. It looks like a TV broadcast from around 1956...

Charlie Parker interviews. For those who want to hear Charlie Parker's voice in interviews, reader Peter Sokolowski sent along a link to this treasure trove.

CD Discoveries of the Week. Big Jay McNeely, 82, is one of rock 'n' roll's founding fathers. Though he's still not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (shame on you, Hall decision-makers!), Big Jay has just released another album, Party Time, and it's a smoker with a poker. Each track chugs along with a different boogie-woogie beat and lots of barking tenor sax. The heel of my right foot was going up and down on each track.

In 1950, Big Jay invented lying on stage while playing his tenor sax in Clarksville, Tenn., in attempt to enliven a subdued audience. All of that energy from 60 years ago is still alive and kicking on this CD, which was recorded in Amsterdam, Holland. The band is made up of Dutch blues players, including pianist Martijn Schok and reedman Rinus Groeneveld. Their love of American r&b is evident, and everything Big Jay plays has the authenticity of a Memphis barbeque pit.

You'll find Party Time at Big Jay's site here.

Gail Pettis' new CD, Here in the Moment, is a throwback to the 1950s, when singers crawled inside a song and moved it around a bit while delivering a straight-up rendition. To do this requires enormous knowledge and courage. If what you try on the fly doesn't cut it, you have to be skilled enough to craft an instant solution. Sarah Vaughan was famous for hop-scotching out of painted corners.

On this CD, Pettis, who spent nearly 20 years as an orthodontist, takes on standards, including The Very Thought of You, Night and Day, I Thought About You and Who Can I Turn to. In each case Pettis brings a warmth to the familiar, stroking songs in a way that makes them sound like fresh arrivals. Hats off to arrangers Randy Halbertadt, Darin Clendenin and Clipper Anderson.

Gail Pettis' Here in the Moment is at iTunes or at Amazon here.

Oddball Album Cover of the Week. Canadian tenor saxophonist Moe Koffman worked extensively in the studios in the 1960s and beyond. On this 1957 leadership date, the art director chose to feature a model on the cover. If you don't think models mattered, turn away now and tell me the name of Koffman's album. Right. See what I mean? Except unlike most covers that featured a blurry blonde, this one was pictured listening to Moe blow.

Bob Freedman on Maynard Ferguson

Bob Freedman is a composer, arranger, pianist and  reed player. In the early 1950s, he played alto sax with trumpeter Herb Pomeroy's big band in Boston, writing a good chunk of the orchestra's arrangements. Since 1960, Bob has arranged for more than 30 jazz and pop stars, including Ron Carter, Billy Joel, Joe Williams and Sarah Vaughan. He also has written for television and the movies. On the bling side, Bob shares a Grammy Award with Quincy Jones for The Wiz (1978) and has been nominated for three more.

But back in 1957, Bob wrote an arrangement for Maynard Ferguson that to this day knocks out fans of the trumpeter. The song is And We Listened, and it remains a superlative example of late 1950s high-energy big-band writing. What's more, the arrangement was recorded by Ferguson on one of his most celebrated albums of his fabled Roulette Records period—A Message From Newport (1958). Bob's swaggering arrangement sizzles with metallic zest, reverberating with the impact of the horn section's cannon fire and drummer Jake Hanna's shoving beat.

Yesterday I spoke to Bob, 75, about Boston jazz, Chet Baker and his arrangement for Ferguson:

JazzWax: Where did you grow up?
Bob Freedman: We lived in Wollaston, Mass., until I was 12 years old. Then we moved to Cranston, R.I., where we remained. My father and sister played piano, which captured my interest. In the late 1940s, I'd turn on the radio and there were great big band jazz recordings on all day. It was a magical time. The song that excited me most was Dennis Farnon’s 1949 arrangement for Charlie Barnet of All the Things You Are, with Maynard Ferguson on trumpet.

JW: How excited were you?
BF: I flipped. I ran into Providence, which was close by to where we lived, and bought the 78-rpm record. I’m glad I did. Soon after, the estate of Jerome Kern, the song's composer, had it removed from record stores and banned from the radio. They hated the interpretation, so the record soon after I bought it was impossible to find.

JW: You played piano. When did you add the saxophone? 
BF: Actually, it was the clarinet first. When I was 12 years old, I wanted to play the guitar. But my father didn’t approve. Then I wanted to play the trombone. He didn’t care for that idea either. Somehow the clarinet came up, and my dad was willing to buy me one. I played in the high school band. We had a terrific music director.

JW: So you played both instruments?
BF: From an early age, I had talent and intellect and good ears. I had been playing piano and clarinet with the school band, and when I was 13 I bought a book called Glenn Miller's Method for Orchestral Arranging. There were instructions for writing along with two or three scores of songs Miller had recorded. So I’d read the scores and listen to the records. That's how I learned the fundamentals of arranging.

JW: When was your first professional job?
BF: When I was 14, I played with Tommy Reynolds, a minor league Artie Shaw who led a territory band based in Providence, R.I. I got to play the baritone, alto and clarinet chair in that band. We also went out on the road locally. On breaks, I’d write out eight bars or so of music and the guys would play them so I could hear what I was doing right and wrong. That was some education. 

JW: What about after high school?
BF: In 1951, I joined the Army. I was 17 years old. I didn’t care much for high school. My grades weren’t great and I wanted a change. My parents were fine with my decision. After basic training, I was sent to Fort Huachuca at the very bottom of Arizona. The Army band was made up mostly of misfits.

JW: Was the band any good?
BF: It turned out to be a really nice band. Soon after I arrived, Chet Baker was sent there. He was a misfit of sorts, too. He was a beautiful guy. He was a sweet, happy person who wanted to play. He was all about the music. We’d drive around various parts of southern Arizona looking for jam sessions. I got taken along because I was the only jazz piano player in the area. I knew the tunes and was a good comper [filling in with chords behind players].

JW: How did the audiences react?
BF: Chet struck everyone as exceptional. I didn’t understand the reaction at first. People were transfixed. It was his looks and music. It was the whole package.

JW: What made his sound special?
BF: At the time, he didn’t sound like anyone else. The lines he played were so simple and pretty. He’d do manipulations of notes in chords that a whole lot of people weren’t doing in those days.

JW: What was the net result from a musician's standpoint?
BF: The impression he left was that naturalness is a good thing. There was never a sense of imitation. He just let it happen and wasn't out to manufacture a product. When we’d go into clubs, he’d sometimes just stop playing for eight measures or so. He'd have his trumpet to his lips. Then, when he had an idea, he'd play a few notes and develop something great. The lesson was you don't have to play just to fill space. Things came so easily to Chet that he didn’t feel the need to push.

JW: What did you do after the service?
BF: In 1953 I returned to New England and played alto sax with Herb Pomeroy’s groups at The Stable in Boston.  Herb was so beautifully generous. He’d rehearse anything I brought in. I eventually wrote 20% of the band’s book. We played two nights a week, and the place was always packed.  [Pictured: Bob Freedman in the early 1950s]

JW: How did you come to arrange And We Listened for Maynard Ferguson?
BF: In 1957 Maynard Ferguson brought his band to Boston's Storyville, which was across the street from The Stable. Carmen Leggio, a saxophonist in Maynard’s band, had some emergency and couldn’t make the early days of the week-long gig. I got the call and took his chair for a couple of nights. They wanted me to play alto but everything in Carmen’s book was for the tenor sax [laughs]. So I had to transpose his parts as I played them, since the alto and tenor read different notes to produce results in the same key.

JW: How did you do?
BF: Very well. Maynard used to stand on stage just off to the side of Carmen’s stand, so he could hear me loud and clear. In the ensemble pieces, he was a foot away from me. He smiled at me so I knew he was happy with what I was playing. Actually, I knew things were going well when alto saxophonist Jimmy Ford hit me with his signature phrase: “Hey man, got any reeds?” [laughs]

JW: How did arranging come up?
BF: On one of the nights, during a break, I asked Maynard if I could arrange a chart for the band. He said sure. He told me, “I don’t like solos running into each other. I like a solo to be followed by the band before another solo starts. And I like things to build.”

JW: So what did you do?
BF: I wrote And We Listened. It took me about four days. But before I sent it off to Maynard [pictured], I had Herb Pomeroy’s big band run it down during afternoon rehearsals at The Stable. I wanted to hear the chart in case I needed to make changes. But it sounded perfect. Fortunately Herb had trumpeter Lennie Johnson in the band. Lennie could play Maynard’s part and hit the high Gs and more. When I heard Herb run it down, I was excited.

JW: How did you come up with the song's title?
BF: The title came from my fondness for Gerry Mulligan’s writing, in particular his use of the minor-7, flat-5 chord. That's the first chord I used in my arrangement. I was trying to write something that reflected the West Coast thing that was going on then. My original title was And We Listened to Him, referring to Gerry. But in truth, the title was also a tribute to Bill Holman, who is still my idol, Lennie Niehaus, and a few of the other great writers out there.

JW: How did the title get shortened?
BF: It must have been trimmed by the record company so it would fit on the album. Or maybe they didn't get the "to him" part and felt it wasn't necessary. I don't know.

JW: How fast was the original tempo?
BF: Quite a bit faster than the one Maynard used on A Message From Newport. Herb had played it down the way I had written it.

JW: How did it wind up so much slower?
BF: I heard later from Maynard's drummer Jake Hanna that in the Roulette studio, the band needed one more tune to complete the album. There was a 10-minute gap on the record. So Maynard pulled out my chart and said, “Let’s run this down.” They played it once, apparently even faster than the tempo Herb had rehearsed it. Jake, who had been at Herb's rehearsal, shouted out to Maynard, “It’s actually supposed to be slower than that.”

JW: What did Maynard do?
BF: With a 10 minutes hole on the date, he decided to slow the tempo way down. The result is what you hear on the album. I think it’s much more dramatic and powerful the way he recorded it. The build is much stronger. Trumpeter Bill Berry [pictured] told me that the brass section in the band used to hate playing it because they’d be totally beat at the end [laughs].

JW: When did you first hear that Ferguson had recorded your composition and arrangement?
BF: When I saw an ad for the record in a magazine. After I bought the record and played it. I was thrilled to death. That was the first time I had had anything recorded by a name band.

JW: Did you write additional arrangements for the band?
BF: I sent Maynard another chart called Thus Spake Jake, which showcased drummer Jake Hanna. But the band never recorded it. I have no idea why or what happened to the chart. I never made a copy.

JW: Did you feel badly?
BF: Things like that cross your mind and you wonder why things didn't work out. But Maynard was surrounded by great arrangers in that band. There was never a shortage of material [laughs]. That's just the way it goes and you move on.

JW: Does the result on Message sound as perfect to you as it does to most fans?
BF: Yes, absolutely. Actually, there’s a very small flaw in Carmen Leggio’s part right at the beginning. He plays a note that I didn't write. I can hear him start to play the wrong note and slide into the right one. I had written the part for the alto sax and since he played tenor, he had to transpose his part. I guess I had gotten him back for the same problem he left me with when I played his chair at The Stable [laughs].

JW: Why didn’t Pomeroy buy the arrangement?
BF: [Laughs] Herb [pictured] wasn’t buying anything in those days. That band played for love. We never assumed there would be any money for the arrangements we wrote. I was always aware of how fortunate I was playing with those guys. I don’t think anyone thought it was a job. With Herb’s band, Sunday morning rehearsals in the basement of the Schillinger House of Music building were mandatory. If you weren’t there, you were out of the band.

JW: Are you still impressed with the result on A Message From Newport?
BF: Oh sure. But you have to give praise to that band. The track you hear was only the second time they had ever played the piece. You can hear the hunger and energy in the instruments. That’s how it was then. Everyone was working hard and playing hard and hustling.

JW: What did you receive for the arrangement?
BF:  I think I received a check for $75 when A Message From Newport came out. I don't think there were any additional royalty checks [laughs]. It was about the love. Just hearing what I had written played by that band was enough for me.

JazzWax tracks: Bob Freedman's And We Listened is on A Message From Newport. The track has a light strip-time beat that builds to a series of supersonic solos by Maynard Ferguson and driving drum lines by Jake Hanna. The CD is long out of print and is going for about $50 here. The CD and LP turn up at eBay from time to time and may be available as a download at online sites. It also appears on the long out-of-print The Complete Roulette Records of the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra (Mosaic), one of the most highly sought-after and high-priced box CD sets on eBay. Someone out there should re-issue Maynard Ferguson's superior Roulette recordings. Anyone?

JazzWax clip: Here's a clip of a Maynard Ferguson reunion band in 2004 with Lanny Morgan on alto sax playing Bob's arrangement of And We Listened...

Benny Carter: Aspects

In 1943, when alto saxophonist Benny Carter settled in California, he focused on composing, arranging and playing and gave up touring with a big band. The move was a pragmatic one: the work in Hollywood was picking up, and with World War II on, the draft was snapping up many musicians, and gasoline and parts rationing made bus travel difficult and costly. Carter also had grown weary of the road, with its relentless gigs, hard weather and depressing racism. He did assemble a working band two years later in 1945, but that was for the sole purpose of recording in New York in late 1945 and 1946. For the 12 years that followed, Carter was primarily an in-demand West Coast studio arranger and player. [Photo of Benny Carter in 1986 by Hank O'Neal, author of Ghosts of Harlem]

Then in 1958, at the urging of United Artists' a&r executive Hal Schaefer, Carter wrote, arranged and recorded an LP with a handpicked studio big band. By then, high fidelity and stereo had emerged and albums by Nelson Riddle and Billy May at Capitol were sparking a big-band revival. The expanding popularity of television, with its singer-hosted shows, also was fostering fresh interest in a new band sound. Carter's contribution in this category was Aspects (United Artists), a spectacular example of a seasoned pro fusing high-energy swing with the modern studio sound. 

The musicians Carter brought together for the album's two recording sessions consisted of Hollywood's finest. From the outset, there was no intention of having the band tour, a rarity then, allowing Carter to use leading West Coast studio players. What's more, Carter plays and solos in the band he arranged and led, a change of pace for the then studio writer and player. [Photo of Benny Carter by Doc Ed Lawless]

So who was in this dream band?

The orchestra on the first session in September 1958 consisted of Conrad Gozzo, Shorty Sherock, Pete Candoli and Uan Rasey [pictured] (trumpets); Tommy Pederson, George Roberts and Herbie Harper (trombones) Benny Carter (alto sax and trumpet); Buddy Collette, Bill Green, Justin Gordon and Chuck Gentry (saxes); Larry Bunker (vibes and bongo); Arnold Ross (piano); Bobby Gibbons (guitar); Joe Comfort (bass); and Shelly Manne (drums).

The band on the second September date featured Al Porcino, Stu Williamson, Ray Triscari and Joe Gordon (trumpets); Frank Rosolino, Tommy Pederson and Russell Brown (trombones); Benny Carter (alto sax and trumpet); Buddy Collette [pictured], Bill Green, Jewell Grant and Plas Johnson (saxes); Gerald Wiggins (piano); Barney Kessel (guitar); Joe Comfort (bass), and Shelly Manne (drums).

The concept for Aspects, likely conceived by Carter himself since he is listed as the album's producer, was to arrange 12 tunes, each based on a different month of the year. Each of these calendar tributes swings off the wall. Much of the track list consists of month-named standards (June in January, I'll Remember April, etc.). But there are four wonderful originals by Carter (March Wind, August Moon, Something for October and Swingin' in November) and one by pianist-arranger Hal Schaefer (February Fiesta).

Given its top-of-the-year theme, Aspects is perfect listening for January. Individual solos are sterling throughout, and Carter's reed work, particularly on March Wind, soars. Carter's writing is uptempo and tight, with his signature sound on display: reeds laying down a line, muted trumpets chattering on top like shivering teeth before trombones enter for a bouncy burst and the entire band plunges in for a chorus. There are powerhouse swingers like I'll Remember April and June Is Busting Out All Over (dig the unbelievable reed writing!). There also are several cute pieces, like One Morning in May, which Carter arranged with a Shearing-quintet flavor.

For me, there are two musical ingredients that make this album particularly exciting. In addition to Carter's rising alto sound, the trumpet sections pack quite a punch. Knowledgeable fans of the period will recognize the top-flying horns. The other standout flavor is Shelly Manne [pictured], whose drums never stop surging, swishing and hustling. Best of all, he's beautifully miked, so you hear every nuance. [Photo of Shelly Manne by Ray Avery, CTSImages.com]

Some have criticized Aspects for being too gimmicky given its tune-of-the-month club theme. Hogwash, I say. Carter's writing is sensational, and there isn't a commercial note played on the entire recording. And the more you listen to Aspects, the more you realize how deceptively tough these charts were to play brilliantly with minimum rehearsals. Hence, the need for a Murderer's Row of studio musicians. [Photo of Benny Carter by Herb Snitzer]

After Aspects, Carter would be back to more pop fare (Benny Carter Plays Cole Porter's Can-Can & Anything Goes,) and playing in The Five Pennies film orchestra. But in September 1958, Carter once again flexed his leadership muscles, recording a swinging masterpiece.

JazzWax tracks: Aspects on CD (Blue Note) is out of print. But copies are being sold by independent sellers for as little as $6.50 here. The album also may be available from music download sites.

Shellac Flacks' Double Dip

Upon leafing through old Down Beats from the 1940s the other day, I came across an editorial in the April 9, 1947 issue chastising disc jockeys for engaging in shady practices. Long before the infamous payola scandals of the late 1950s, when on-air announcers accepted cash from record pluggers to repeatedly play specific singles and turn them into hits, the issue of graft had already surfaced. As jazz deejays gained more power and influence after World War II, they were easy targets for cash-rich record companies eager for ears.

Here's what Down Beat's editorial writer had to say, under the headline, Should Disc Jockeys Take It on the Side?:

"There is a large group of disc jockeys who almost without thinking about it are mixed up with practices which not only can wind up harming their profession but also nix any claim they may have to being considered legitimate critics... [Pictured: Town Hall concert in 1947]

"The practice of giving concerts is one that has taken hold on both coasts in the last year. At least eight jockeys to the Beat's knowledge have been given percentages ranging up to one-fourth of the total proceeds to plug the programs...

"The average listener depends on an air show for guidance in selecting the show on which he should spend his two bucks. No man can give an impartial appraisal of a program when he stands to make four or five hundred dollars from it if it is a commercial success...

"There is another gimmick running around these days—the stock deal. There is one New York City spinner who has been given a large block of stock in a new record company. He therefore jams his programs with their discs...

"If jockeys are to be as useful as they could be in helping American jazz, they must remember two prime rules with reference to critical writing:

1. No decent critic ever made a million.
2. No decent critic gets his checks from more than one source."

So what's the lesson here? As the web continues to emerge as a serious jazz media outlet, it is critical that blogs, e-writers and magazines staunchly guard their editorial independence and reaffirm their commitment to readers. Ad revenue is not a sin. It is vital to any serious editorial venture. But with revenue comes greater responsibility.

To remain credible, jazz sites should inform advertisers in writing that dollars do not buy influence, only space. There can be no quid pro quo in jazz writing on the web (or in print), only passion from the heart. The reader demands it. And the reader (like those radio listeners of yore) is the first to smell a rat.

Interview: Sammy Nestico (Part 2)

The first thing you notice about Sammy Nestico when you speak with him is his jolly nature. There's a distinct twinkle in his personality, like that of a storybook toymaker. It's a trait that goes beyond charisma. Sammy's generosity and positive spirit are embracing and motivating Yet neither quality has distracted him from his work or purpose: churning out swinging arrangements for big bands. Clearly, laughter and kindness are secrets to a long life and rewarding career.

Over Sammy's seven-decade career, he has written more than 600 arrangements for musicians and singers at all levels, from auditorium students to studio big shots. Between 1968 and 1983, Sammy composed and arranged 10 albums for Count Basie's band, four of which won Grammy Awards. During this period Sammy also orchestrated for television, movies, pop singers and managed to write 63 albums' worth of material for Capitol Records. Today, Sammy is still hard at work composing and arranging. He also is author of two books—The Complete Arranger, a doorstop of a manual for writing swinging big-band charts, and The Gift of Music, a memoir.

In Part 2 of my two-part interview with Sammy, the composer-arranger talks about working with Basie, the shortcomings of Pablo producer Norman Granz, what it was like to conduct the Basie band, and what he hears in his head and how he captures his ideas:

JazzWax: Picking up on what we were talking about, what did you do when you heard about tenor saxophonist Sal Nistico?
Sammy Nestico: I knew I had been born Sammy Nestico. But when I had looked at my dad’s navy bible, I saw that his last name was spelled "Nistico." Through my relatives, I found out that Sal and I were related. We’re cousins. So I called him up. He was playing with Count Basie at the time.

JW: What did you say?
SN: I said, “The next time you and the band come to Washington, D.C., come by and see me." I was leading the U.S. Marine Band there at the time. Not long after our conversation, the Basie band came to town, and Sal called and came over. When he saw what I had been writing, he said, “You ought to write for Basie.” I laughed and said, “I’m not good enough for him.” Sal said, “Yes you are. Why don’t you come out to the job and meet Basie.”

JW: Did you go?
SN: Of course. But instead of Sal introducing me to the Chief, he had trombonist Grover Mitchell do it. Grover was from Pittsburgh, my home town. When I met Basie, he asked me to write a couple of arrangements. I had already written The Queen Bee and Quincy and the Count. The second one wasn’t fully formed yet, but The Queen Bee was real nice. I gave that to him and a couple of others. After about three months, Grover called me after the job they had played someplace and said, “The Chief likes your charts. Write some more.” So I wrote more and more, and we finally had enough for an album.

JW: What was your first album with Count Basie?
SN: Basie: Straight Ahead. Between my meeting with Basie and the call to do the album, I had finally decided to move out to California. I figured if I didn't do it, I'd always regret it. Two months after I arrived, I was conducting Basie's band at the recording session on Vine Street in Los Angeles. I couldn't believe it.

JW: How did you come to play piano on That Warm Feeling on the album?
SN: There was an organ in the studio. Basie plays organ. Fats Waller had taught him. On the session, he saw it and said to me, “I’ll play the organ, you play the piano.”

JW: Were you nervous?
SN: Oh yeah. I’m a terrible pianist and trying to play like Basie was like paving the Grand Canyon with asphalt [laughs]. I don’t think I impressed anyone playing that piano because for the next nine albums, nobody ever asked me to play piano again [roars with laughter]. I was scared to death. I was nervous.

JW: How did the next series of Basie albums work?
SN: Many of the albums we did after Straight Ahead for Pablo Records were never as good. It wasn’t the music. It was that Norman Granz [pictured] was producing Basie at the time and never cared how the music went. The early ones we did for other labels were set up well. But when Norman [Granz] got a hold of him, the high standards Norman had in the past just weren’t there.

JW: Why is that?
SN: I think Norman just disliked big bands. He kept telling Basie to start a combo and to hell with the band. Basie wouldn’t hear of it. Norman also would keep first takes on almost everything, even if there were mistakes. A song would end and from the engineer’s booth he’d call for the next tune. As for how he set up the band in the studio, he’d have the chairs arranged like it was a job, with different sections facing the same direction on risers. Today, when we record an album, each section is circled around different microphones. Norman just didn’t seem to care.

JW: How did you like working with Basie?
SN: I always felt that my entire career was pointed toward arranging for him. It was the greatest thrill of my life. Knowing him and knowing the band and being with the band was sensational. [Pictured: Count Basie and Sammy Nestico]

JW: Did you get the Basie sound right off that bat?
SN: Almost. At first, my voicings were a little off. Pianist and arranger Nat Pierce, who had Basie's sound down cold, came to me and said, “On this or that tune, you need Basie chords. You have to try to get closer.” Nat was a great writer and a nice friend. I kept thinking about what Nat had said as I wrote for the band. The other quote that hit me was when Grover Mitchell came to me and said that Basie had said to him, “You know, too many guys are trying to write like Basie. They should write it like them and we’ll swing it like Basie” [laughs]. So I did.

JW: Did your personality come through?
SN: I think so. I remember my brother saying, “It’s Count Basie, but I can hear you in there, Sammy.” That’s the whole idea. That’s what you were shooting for with the Chief. To make the listener happy and to make the musicians happy but not lose your identity.

JW: Your arrangements have a particular attitude, a special swagger.
SN: I always like to make an ensemble sound bigger by prepping it with a piano solo. I like to have a sparse piano in there to set up the big band.

JW: You love building to a crescendo, don’t you?
SN: You bet. And dynamics—soft, loud, lots of contrasts.

JW: What was it like to conduct the Basie band?
SN: At first I was intimidated. On that first recording, Basie Straight Ahead, Marshal Royal, "Lockjaw" Davis, Bobby Plater and other giants were there. But after we started, it was just a matter of communication and everything eased up. There’s no band in the world that played like that. [Photo: Sammy conducting the Count Basie band]

JW: Like how?
SN: The dynamics. The band played too soft and too loud. Which is just the way I like it [laughs]. That's what made the band sound conversational and exciting. I'd mention to the band what I'd want to do with dynamics in one place or another in the arrangement, and they'd mark up their parts. Then Basie would sing the feeling for them so they'd get it. The beauty of Basie is he'd let me do my thing, and he was always supportive. When we started Straight Ahead, I tried to do too much with the conducting. After the first run-down on the first song, I realized that all I had to do is give a downbeat and come in every once in a while. The band was a quick study, and I never imposed myself.

JW: Did Basie ever talk to you?
SN: Not really. But he told a couple of people that he liked me. He wasn’t the kind of guy who ever built anyone up. But he was the sweetest man on the whole planet. He was a big teddy bear. He must have liked what I did. We did 10 albums together and we won four Grammys.

JW: Yet you’re not fully recognized for that accomplishment.
SN: Can I tell you something? I composed the songs, I arranged them and I conducted the band on those sessions. No one even said, “Thanks, Sammy” [laughs]. But it makes no difference. The guys were just great. All gentlemen. Wonderful people. And I was thrilled to be a part of that band.

JW: In some ways, you were Son of Hefti.
SN: [Laughs] Basie identified with that sound. Neal Hefti was my idol. I wanted to do what he did, come up with great tunes and arrange them simply for power, melody and swing.

JW: While you were in California, you were arranging and orchestrating for everyone. You orchestrated songs on two Sinatra albums.
SN: Yes, I did a lot with Don Costa in those days. He’d write a small sketch, two lines or so. Then I’d voice it for 18 musicians. I orchestrated Mrs. Robinson on My Way and five tunes on L.A. Is My Lady.

JW: How did you deal with the famous pressure out there with that kind of workload?
SN: The first year I was out here it was hard. You get more and more jobs, and you don’t have time to complete them all. They don’t give you time. They want everything tomorrow morning. So you stay up late and have the copyist pick up the work at 2 a.m. You don’t sit there and look at the moon or think of some girl laying over the piano. You write your first idea and you go with it. It’s usually your best idea anyway.

JW: That can be hard week after week.
SN: As an arranger in L.A., you’re either feeling boredom or panic. You never get used to it but you can work within that framework. I just sit down and work. I work with a piano. I’ve always worked with a piano.

JW: Who paid you the greatest compliment?
SN: Let me think [pause]. There were two. The first was from the British arranger Robert Farnon. Everyone considered him the greatest. He arranged two albums for Pia Zadora in the mid-1980s, and she recorded them in London. Then they asked him to do another with her. Robert said, “Gee, my schedule is too busy. But I’ll tell you, when you go back to the States, there’s a guy named Sammy Nestico. You should hire him.” When I heard that, I felt so good. I didn’t even think he ever heard of me. That was the greatest compliment.

JW: Who gave you the other big compliment?
SN: Jerry Gray, Glenn Miller’s arranger. He called to tell me that my published chart of String of Pearls was his favorite arrangement of the song. And he was the one who wrote the original. It was only published, never recorded.

JW: Where do you do much of your composing and arranging today?
SN: I write melodies in my car or in the shower off the top of my head.

JW: How do you remember them?
SN: I sing the melodies and remember the intervals. When I reach a piano, I write them down. After I put the original motif down, I’ll dress it up or edit the result and work with it. I keep tuning it up until I get what I want [pause]. Then I say I got lucky [laughs]. [Pictured: Sammy Nestico and Johnny Mandel]

JW: With so much music to write, does Sammy walk around all day snapping and swinging?
 SN: [Roars with laughter] I don’t know about that. I sing to myself quite a bit. It has been a great life. Hey, I’m still going strong.

JazzWax tracks: Here are Sammy's 10 albums for Count Basie (asterisks denote a Grammy Award)...

Straight Ahead (Dot/1968)

Standing Ovation (Dot/1969)

Have a Nice Day (Daybreak/1971)

Bing 'n Basie (Daybreak/1972)

Basie Big Band (Pablo/1975)

Fun Time (Pablo/1975)

Prime Time (Pablo/1977)*

On the Road (Pablo/1979)*

Warm Breeze (Pablo/1981)*

88 Basie Street (Pablo/1983)*

Sammy's latest release is Sammy Nestico and the SWR Big Band: Fun Time. The album is sensational. No matter how many times I listen to it, the arrangements roar off with enormous energy. The SWR Band is a German orchestra made up of the country's finest musicians. You'll find Fun Time at iTunes and at Amazon here.

JazzWax notes: Sammy's memoir, The Gift of Music, is available here or at Amazon here. Sammy told me yesterday he personally signs each and every copy sent out. For musicians, Sammy's The Complete Arranger is available here. And for more on Sammy, visit his website here.

JazzWax clip: For the past seven years, filmmaker Diane Estelle Vicari has been documenting Sammy's life. The result, Shadow Man, is expected to be completed soon. Here's the trailer...

Interview: Sammy Nestico (Part 1)

Count Basie's finest album of the 1960s is easily Straight Ahead. Recorded in 1968 for the Dot label, the album's tracks were composed and arranged from top to bottom by Sammy Nestico. He even conducted the band. What's remarkable about this album is how naturally Sammy's charts swing within the Basie idiom. Sammy's up-tempo numbers build repeatedly to satisfying crescendos, leaving plenty of room for Basie's punctual piano, while Sammy's ballad compositions are rich showcases for Basie soloists. This year, Sammy was nominated for a Grammy for his new album [pictured], Sammy Nestico and the SWR Big Band: Fun Time, which swings relentlessly. Sammy arranged 10 Basie albums, four of which won Grammy Awards.

I first fell in love with Sammy's writing in the early 1970s. Back then my high school dance band played a few of his charts. Before Sammy went Hollywood, he was an educator-entrepreneur who had created packages of more than 600 band charts. Included in each was a floppy black vinyl record so you could hear what the finished arrangements should sound like. As soon as you heard things like Warm Breeze on that record, you ached to play them.

In Part 1 of my two-part interview with Sammy, 85, the West Coast arranger, who has worked on more than 200 albums and has arranged and orchestrated for virtually everyone in the music business, talks about growing up in Pennsylvania, playing and recording with Charlie Barnet, and the one life decision he still regrets:

JazzWax: How was it growing up in Pittsburgh in the 1930s?
Sammy Nestico: It was hard. But everyone on our street wound up like us, so we never felt we were poor. During the Depression, my dad worked for the railroad in the yards moving switches back and forth and repairing locomotives. There was money coming in, but he and my mom didn’t get along. They separated several times, but each time they’d get back together they had to split up again. The third time he left, we moved next to my grandma, and my whole life was happier.

JW: Why?
SN: There was no more strife. When we moved, peace came. I was 10 years old and became the man of the house. I was the oldest, with a younger brother and sister. When I was a kid, I wanted to be in a big band. After listening to the radio day and night, I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. The great swing bands of 1938 and 1939 were just coming in, and I was listening to shows being broadcast from Frank Dailey’s Meadowbrook [pictured] in New Jersey and other unbelievable places. It was just wonderful. Trombonist Tommy Dorsey was my favorite because I was a trombonist in school. I can still name all the musicians in his band then.

JW: Did you listen to records?
SN: Yes. I had a $5 record player that I had received second hand. I wanted to buy records but we didn’t have any money. My mom was giving me 10 cents a day for food, which meant that after two five-day weeks, I’d have a dollar. I saved my dollar by not eating for two weeks. I was hungry but doing without was worth it.

JW: How many records could you buy for $1?
SN: [Laughs] I would go to this little store that sold used jukebox records and buy seven of them for $1. They were all scratchy but I didn’t care. I played them on that little record player. I still remember Charlie Barnet’s Night and Day and Tommy Dorsey’s Song of India with Marie on the flip side. When I finally played with Tommy later in the 1940s, I told him that he had given me lessons [laughs]. I had studied his records to learn what positions he used on the trombone to make his different notes sound so clean.

JW: How could you afford a trombone in school?
SN: I started playing a school instrument in the 8th grade. By the 10th grade I was working in local nightclubs. I came to it naturally and loved playing so much. I bought a trombone on one of those store lay-away plans with a $24 down-payment from my two weeks on the job. I told my mom she wouldn’t have to worry about making the payments, that I would handle them. But I didn’t keep at it, with school and everything, so she paid the rest, little by little.

JW: When did you start working professionally full time?
SN: In 1941, at age 17, I was in the orchestra employed by WCAE, the ABC radio affiliate in Pittsburgh. People would come in to plug their songs. If the band’s leader liked the tune, he’d give me the piano sheet to arrange. I wasn’t the main arranger, but little by little I was writing things for him. It was a simple little band at the time.

JW: How did you learn to arrange?
SN: I just had listened and analyzed every record I bought. There was no book then telling you how to write pop records. I learned from my hits and my misses. I wrote some awful things and told myself, “I won’t do that again.” I had no formal training at all.

JW: Did you always enjoy swing?
SN: Yes, from the start. I learned a lot about swing by listening hard to those Sy Oliver  [pictured] arrangements for Tommy Dorsey. 

JW: Hold on. You’re making it all sound a little too easy.
SN: It wasn’t easy [laughs]. In my first arrangement for the radio band, I wrote all of the parts in the bass clef [laughs]. Even the drummer knew something was wrong. So I took the arrangement back home. The next week when I returned, my arrangement sounded better—but something was still wrong. I had forgotten to transpose the saxophone parts. So I had to work on it again. Little by little, I got things right. I would listen to my favorite records and try to imitate my heroes. The radio station was a great lab for me.

JW: When you put a record on, what were you hearing?
SN: I’d tune in to the background. Back in those days, arrangers painted a picture. There would always be something in there that was fascinating, and I’d try to imitate it. I didn’t even have score paper nor did I know how to write for different parts. I’d just fill papers with notes. I taught myself the piano, learned the staves and started voicing. Little by little you listen, you learn, you imitate and eventually the result becomes you. Eventually I became Sammy. [Pictured: Sammy in 1940]

JW: Your first big-band experience was playing with Charlie Barnet in 1946.
SN: Yes, what a great band. Six trumpets and four trombones and six reeds including Barnet. It was an integrated band, too. There were three black musicians in the band and two writing for the band, in addition to Billy May. Trombonist Porky Cohen was my roommate, and I was thrilled, like I was in heaven. Charlie Barnet was terrific. He was a playboy and a millionaire who just played music for the joy of it. He was easygoing. If there was anything that had to be done that wasn’t easy, he’d give it to the band manager to do.  [Pictured: Sammy Nestico]

JW: What did you do after playing on Barnet’s band?
SN: I returned to WCAE in Pittsburgh. But that was a mistake. I should have gone with Barnet to California in the fall of 1946. But my mother kept saying, “You should be a teacher.” So I listened to her and enrolled at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and earned a music education degree. My girlfriend at the time had said, “Let’s go to California.” But I didn’t listen, and I always regretted that decision.

JW: Why?
SN: If I had gone, I would have been writing for dozens of bands throughout the 1950s. Many of the guys left the Barnet band when it arrived in Hollywood and got an early start out there. But I never held my decision against my mom. She pushed me to stay in education, out of love. But it was a bad decision, career-wise.

JW: So you became an educator?
SN: Yes. In 1950, I taught high school for a year but I didn’t like it. I loved the kids, but the administrators drove me nuts. They were a drag. I hated academia because of the administrators.

JW: Then what did you do?
SN: By then, the swing era was all but finished and the rock era was starting with Bill Haley. I re-enlisted and became staff arranger for the Air Force Band in Washington, D.C. for 15 years. During this time I became the leader of the Airmen of Note, the top Air Force jazz outfit. When my period of service was through with the Air Force, I enlisted with the U.S. Marine Band and led that orchestra.

JW: You seem to have enjoyed leading these bands.
SN: Oh very much so. But it was tricky. Most of the musicians were great but occasionally you had guys who didn't swing immediately or didn't have the passion. One time I said to the band, "When the trumpet is playing a beautiful solo, can we have a little more support from the trombones?” One of the guys in the band cracked, “If you wanted more support, you should have written it in.” I said, “If I’d written in all the things you’re supposed to do in that bar, there’d be no room for notes.” I grabbed my ears and said, “You see these? These are what you’re supposed to be using. Your two ears—that’s called musicianship.”

JW: Were you a good educator?
SN: I think so. I was always about the feel and the execution. When I taught at the University of Georgia, I’d always tell my students, “Don’t go on to the next page after you play something. Go back and analyze the music until you understand how it works.” I never had lessons in my classes. We'd rehearse tirelessly until they got it.

JW: How did you finally wind up in California arranging?
SN: In late 1960s, I had heard about this tenor sax player with Woody Herman named Sal Nistico. But that's a whole other story.

Tomorrow, Sammy talks about his connection to Sal Nistico, how he wound up writing arrangements for Basie, and how his successful charts led to a major West Coast career that began at age 44.

JazzWax tracks: Sammy Nestico and the SWR Big Band: Fun Time is an album that just won't quit. The SWR Band is a German orchestra made up of the country's finest musicians. You'll find Fun Time at iTunes and at Amazon here.

JazzWax notes: Sammy has just self-published his autobiography, The Gift of Music. It's available here or at Amazon here.

JazzWax clip: Here's Count Basie in 1968 playing Sammy's composition and arrangement of Magic Flea, from the Straight Ahead album...

Here's the SWR Big Band playing Blue Samuel, the opening track on Sammy's new Fun Time CD...

Sunday Wax Bits

Ed Beach (1924-2009), one of New York's most beloved jazz disc jockeys whose radio shows on WRVR-FM in the 1970s are so legendary and revered today that digital copies continue to be swapped on the Internet like rare baseball cards, died on December 25th in Eugene, OR. He was 85.

Though Ed was born in Oregon, he wound up in New York in the late 1950s, appearing in the theater. But his honey-rich voice soon landed him on the radio where he steadily built a large following for his true passion: jazz. Ed's on-air delivery was halting and hip, as if delivered from a hammock. Much of the magic stemmed from Ed's ability to hold the sound of words at the end of sentences just briefly, which added a certain warm cadence to his banter.

Even a careful New York listener couldn't quite grasp the origin of Ed's accent. Its cool, arch sound seemed native, but there was an out-of-town inflection as well, like someone who moved to town and absorbed the street lingo. That's probably because Ed's on-air style was a virtual collage of New York's great disc jockeys. When Ed spoke, you could hear the spirit of "Symphony Sid" Torin, Fred Robbins [pictured], Mort Fega and other broadcasting greats who years earlier had helped create a nocturnal mystique for jazz clubs and jazz musicians. [Photo of drummer Big Sid Catlett flexing for platter spinner Fred Robbins, by William P. Gottlieb]

And like those earlier graceful disc jockeys, Ed always kept the focus on the music, not himself, relying on little-known details about artists to inform and entertain. Ed's show Just Jazz always focused on a single artist's work, frequently covering a specific period, complete with bio bits. Back in the LP era of the 1970s, virtually everything he played was rare since very little of the older stuff was on vinyl.

His show opened with Wes Montgomery's So Do It! But Ed also used Montgomery as his background music, with the guitarist running octaves softly while Ed relayed information about an artist or track. From time to time, Ed would pause momentarily just to let Montgomery's D-Natural Blues from The Incredible Guitar of Wes Montgomery seep through. Or to buy a second to grab information. Either way, it was cool.

It was impossible not to be swept away by the sound of Ed's voice, and like many jazz fans in New York who grew up listening to him, I never understood why Ed left to return to Oregon after WRVR changed hands in the late 1970s. There were stories about a farm and Ed's love for unplowed fields. Others said he had had enough big city living for one lifetime.

Way back in May 1973, when I was 17 years old, I wrote Ed a letter, probably to ramble on about how much his shows and the music meant to me. Ed, ever the jazz crusader, promptly wrote back:

"Dear Marc,

"Very good to hear from a jazz enthusiast as young as yourself. I wish this marvelous music would capture the ears of several million more people in your age group. Good luck and convert some of your friends."

Hopefully today I'm doing Ed's work.

Jazz.FM91, Canada's largest jazz radio station in Toronto and a syndicator of JazzWax, just released an iPhone app (short for application). The app provides the station's live and web radio streams, jazz news, podcasts and more. You also can search for the music you hear at iTunes or browse the station's website while listening. For more information, go here.

Max Roach. My boy "Symphony Sid" Gribetz, the disc whisker with the Rolls Royce voice, tells me that WKCR today is featuring 24 hours of recordings by drummer Max Roach. You can tune in and dig Max's wax from anywhere in the world here.  

Billy Byers. In response to my post last Sunday on Quincy Jones Explores the Music of Henry Mancini, I received the following email from reader John Pickworth:

"I've owned the Quincy Jones album since it was released around 1964 or so. It's strange that it took so long for the album to be released digitally. The original vinyl mentions that all arrangements were done by Jones. But if you look carefully at the music score for Moon River on the cover, you'll notice that Billy Byers arranged that chart and, I suspect, a few of the others."

Jazz's fizzling pizzazz. In response to my editorial last week on jazz's lack of stage excitement compared to today's pop acts, Peter Hum, jazz writer for the Ottawa Citizen in Canada, had a different take while taking me to task. Go here to read Peter's fine post.

Tune Danish. Reader Marla Kleman passed along this fabulous clip of Ben Webster and Charlie Shavers at Cafe Montmartre in Copenhagen in 1971...

South African jazz. Photographer Paul Slaughter sent along this fascinating must-watch clip, featuring a mini-documentary on 1950s South African singer Dolly Rathebe (pronounced RAT-tab-ay) and the African Ink Spots. I can't stop viewing it. Jazz's reach and interpretations never cease to amaze.

Harry "Sweets" Edison. After the appearance of photographer Paul Slaughter's recollections in PhotoStory13, Grange Rutan, pianist Al Haig's widow and author of Death of a Bebop Wife, sent along the following e-mail:

"Back in 1990, I went to Trumpets in Montclair, N.J., to hear singer Billy Eckstine [pictured] and to interview him for my book. I arrived early with a friend to sit up front. We were seated at a table next to three black women in fancy church attire. There was an empty seat that their pocketbooks occupied. They even had furs draped over their shoulders. I think I even saw a muff.

"And there was Mr. B, long and tall in all his wonder, dressed in elegant gray with hankie, tie and shirt to match. He left me breathless. He took the battery microphone, closed his eyes and began to sing. By the first stanza, these elderly churchwomen were saying 'yes' as they began to fall apart and adore Billy. But just then, a man quietly lifted up their purses and sat down.

"All eyes for a heartbeat left the crooner and pounced on handsome 'Sweets' [pictured]. Billy opened his eyes, stopped the music and went over to hug him too. It was a moment to witness."

Jazz-pop connection. Tonight, jazz musician and writer Bill Kirchner will host a radio show on New York's WBGO featuring jazz musicians who have recorded jazz interpretations of pop and rock. The show will showcase recordings of pianists Herbie Hancock and Robert Glasper, [pictured] and the Bad Plus playing the music of the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds, Kurt Cobain, the Bee Gees, Pink Floyd and others. Tune in here, from 11 p.m. to midnight (EDT).

City Island. Director and JazzWax reader Raymond De Felitta  (The Search for Jackie Paris) is writing a book—online at his blog, Movies 'til Dawn. The book's subject? The inside story behind the making of his latest movie, City Island, which will be released March 19. Raymond's posts feature on-the-set insights, behind-the-camera reflections as well as stills and clips of the cast, including Andy Garcia, Julianna Margulies and Alan Arkin.

Left Bank Bearcats. Drew Techner has posted several videoclips at YouTube about the Left Bank Bearcats, a Philadelphia Dixieland ensemble that recorded three albums in the late 1950s. Drew's father, trumpeter Joe Techner, played in the group. You'll find a clip of the Bearcats' recording of When the Saints Go Marching In here with information researched and written by Drew. Here's an interview Drew conducted with Bearcats' trombonist Al Leopold... 

CD Discovery of the Week. Alto saxophonist Oscar Feldman is from Argentina, and it shows. Feldman brings enormous edge, passion and a cosmopolitan sensibility to his new album, Oscar e Familia. His approach has a 1970's feel, but the result isn't rehashed fusion or re-heated Gato Barbieri. Instead, there's a seductive intensity to Feldman's intonation that grabs you from the opening track. In addition, all of his original compositions are well thought out and beautifully executed. Tracks like Mrs. Tangoholic and The Improvisers push with determination while his New Tango is deeply moving, especially with strings arranged by Carlos Franzetti. Everything about his album is sensational, particularly the musicians accompanying Feldman on the date. In particular, Manuel Valera lifts every track with his delicate Latin touch.

If you want to sample tracks, try New Tango and Astor Piazzolla's Triunfal. Dig the fire, the intensity and the celebration.

Oscar Feldman's Oscar e Familia is available at iTunes and CDBaby.com here.

Oddball Album Cover of the Week. Trumpeter Bill Berry recorded with Herb Pomeroy, Woody Herman and many other jazz musicians. But sometime in the early 1960s, he made this album for Parade Records. I have not heard the album, and I'm unfamiliar with the label. But clearly Parade lacked a design department. In the days before digital retouching, they seemed to have colorized his horn with India ink and then rephotographed the result, washing out poor Bill's head in the process. The result? Martian With a Horn.

PhotoStory13: Harry Edison

This 1997 image of Harry "Sweets" Edison by photographer Paul Slaughter is a study in contrasts. The creases in Edison's eyes are piercing yet seductive. His smile is broad but also slightly pained. What we see here is a swinging legend late in life, relentlessly devoted to his music and the joy it brought fans. Edison was a durable member of Count Basie's band starting in 1938. When Basie folded the orchestra in 1950, Edison became house trumpeter for Norman Granz's Clef label (later Verve) in Los Angeles. Throughout his West Coast career, Edison appeared as soloist on leading jazz and pop vocal records, standing out with his tugging, sighing muted-trumpet lines.

Paul picks up the story, late in Edison's lengthy career:

“From 1991 to 1998, the Hive just north of Santa Fe featured Sunday afternoon jazz performances. The 100-seat concert space was attached to the home of Bob and B.J. Weil, who hosted the events. Bob founded the Santa Fe Jazz Foundation (SFJF) in 1990, and the funds raised at the Hive concerts were used to assist jazz musicians in financial need.  [Pictured: Bob Weil with Harry Edison]

“An afternoon at the Hive was more than a run-of-the-mill gig. Everyone brought great food to share, and the camaraderie among the audience and performers was wonderful. I began going to Hive performances in 1996. During concert intermissions, I took informal portraits of the jazz musicians who played there. These musicians included James Moody, Herbie Mann, Roger Kellaway, Dick Hyman, Howard Alden, Eddie Daniels, Holly Hoffmann, Cedar Walton, Frank Vignola and Dmitri Matheny.

“In June 1997, Harry “Sweets” Edison performed at the Hive with pianist Gerry Wiggins and bassist Andy Simpkins [all pictured]. Harry was 82 years old at the time and full of energy. He had always been a favorite of mine, with his spare yet bluesy approach, especially on the recordings of Sinatra, Ella and Sarah.

“On this particular afternoon, during intermission, I asked Harry if I could photograph him outside in the natural light. He was happy to do so, and we stepped into a small alcove just outside the concert hall. Harry was quite relaxed, warm and friendly. While I snapped away, we talked about his days playing in the Count Basie Orchestra and in the Hollywood studios.

“To capture this image, I used my Nikon F4 camera and Tri-X film. I slightly overexposed the print, and after scanning it tweaked the digital image a little in Adobe Photoshop to accent Harry, not the alcove’s walls.

“Bob always kept in close contact with the musicians who played at the Hive and let them know that the SFJF was there if they needed help. When Harry became ill soon afterward, the SFJF paid for his care when he moved to Columbus, Ohio, to be with his daughter, Helena. He died there in 1999." [Pictured: Paul Slaughter and Bob Weil]

—Paul Slaughter

All photos by Paul Slaughter. ©Paul Slaughter—all rights reserved. All photos used here with the artist's permission.

JazzWax note: Though the Hive closed in 1998, Bob Weil continues to operate the Sante Fe Jazz Foundation and produce jazz concerts in Santa Fe and Albuquerque with Tom Guralnick of the Outpost Performance Space. Weil, Guralnick and Bob Martin (of the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe) also produce the New Mexico Jazz Festival. Go here for more information.