JazzWax

Danny Bank's Bands, 1944-1950

After writing about baritone saxophonist Cecil Payne on Tuesday, I started thinking about Danny Bank, who played baritone in quite a few bands in the 1940s and beyond.

So I gave Danny a call yesterday afternoon. We talked a little about Payne—“He had such a great sound. Dizzy’s band had hard music to play. Cecil was terrific, and so nice whenever we'd run into each other on the road.”

Then the conversation turned to the big bands of the 1940s. I asked Danny to rate the bands he played in between 1944 and 1950. There were plenty to choose from during that six-year period—Charlie Barnet, Freddie Slack, Benny Goodman, Mel Powell, Jimmy Dorsey, Claude Thornhill, Ray McKinley, Tommy Dorsey and Artie Shaw.

Here’s Danny’s list of top six bands, in order, and what made each band leader a hero or heel:

Charlie Barnet: "I was with Charlie off and on for many years starting in '44. He was the son of millionaires. His grandfather was a big executive in the New York Central Railroad. Whenever we came into New York, the Park Central Hotel on 7th Ave. near Carnegie Hall gave him the roof job, which was a big deal. They’d also empty out the two floors below the roof for us to stay in. We’d go into that hotel for a month at a time.

I was never really a jazz player—someone who stands up and solos. I was more comfortable as a session guy who read charts and delivered a big sound. I had polio as a kid and wore a full brace on my left leg, which made standing to solo very difficult, especially with a baritone and other large instruments.

My leg would become a problem only when Charlie's entire reed section had to stand up and play together— especially when we'd play his theme, Cherokee. Standing in unison was an effect audiences loved. In most cases, standing wasn't too much of a problem for me. But it became much more hazardous when we'd ride a stage up out of the orchestra pit. We'd do this in large theaters that had these elevated stages.

The reeds would stand down below in the orchestra pit and then start playing full force as the stage rose up and the band emerged. Audiences would go nuts. I'd have to support myself on one leg, with the stage shaking from the hydraulic machinery jacking us up. Meanwhile, we had Chubby Jackson on bass for a period, and he'd be swinging away, shaking that rising stage like Jell-O.

I started to realize that standing was going to be too risky for me and would either be embarrassing if I fell or catastrophic if I landed on my head. Soon enough I didn’t ask permission to sit. I just stayed down. Charlie was a great guy and didn’t mind."

Benny Goodman: "I was with Benny several times over the years, starting in 1945. Benny always ran his band. There were no first trumpets or first saxophones to take over the band when he wasn’t there. Benny was the conductor, and everyone took orders from him. Sometimes on theater dates he’d have me play the clarinet on his closing theme—Goodbye—so he could race to the train station or airport. Benny's band was always on the money.

The first year I was there, Benny went through 45 saxophonists. That's no exaggeration. I made a list. The turnover actually helped my business because so many guys who left the band knew me. But every time Benny would try a new one I’d have to rehearse the section.

The first time I gave Benny two weeks' notice was in 1946. He came over to me and said, 'You have to change your way of playing.' I said, 'I like the way I’m playing. I play the same for everyone. The only difference is if I play for Barnet I play louder.’

But the more I thought about what Benny said, the more I decided it was time to leave the band. Shortly after he said what he did, we were rehearsing on the Carnegie Hall stage at 7 am. Benny used to rent the stage there at the crack of dawn because he liked how it sounded.

After rehearsal, I held up two fingers—two weeks' notice. Benny's wife, Alice, called me later and tried to talk me out of it. She was very sweet but I told her I needed to move on. Her maiden name was Hammond, and her brother was John Hammond, the record producer and talent scout who discovered Benny. I wasn’t going to change my style of playing—which was big and full. Benny liked things softer. She understood, and I think Benny grew to like my style over the years because I was back with his band quite a few times."

Artie Shaw: "Artie had a great band in late 1949 to early 1950. To give you an idea, just the  reed section had Herbie Steward and Frank Sokolow on alto saxes, Al Cohn and Zoot Sims on tenors, and me on baritone.

I remember we were playing up near London, Ontario, in Canada. I was sitting at the end of the reed section and Al Cohn was sitting next to me. The band had great charts and could really blow, which often mesmerized girls, guys and couples who'd stand in front of the stage watching rather than dancing. Since the reeds were down front, we'd be just a few feet away.

During a break between sets up in Canada, Artie came over and said to me and Al, ‘You two guys are fired,’ right out of the blue. Then he walked away. I said to Al, ‘What do you think?’ Al says, 'Ah forget about it. If he fires us, he owes us two weeks' pay and our fare home.’

So another set goes by, and Artie comes over and says, ‘Listen fellas, forget the firing.’ When I heard that, I just lost it. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you? First we’re fired and now we’re hired?’ Artie said he saw that Al and me were flirting with the women at front of the stage.

‘You don’t pick up women in front of the bandstand while we're working, do you understand me?’ Artie said. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because I pick them up,’ he said. Artie was like that, especially with women, but he ran one heck of a band—especially that one."

Claude Thornhill: "Claude came up with great orchestrations, and he prepared the band thoroughly for jobs— big or small. He also was a terrific piano player.

I replaced Gerry Mulligan in Claude's band in 1948. I was in the band for a short period, after leaving Jimmy Dorsey and before re-joining Barnet.

Actually, I first met Gerry in early 1945. I had two weeks off from Benny Goodman's band and was working in Philadelphia with Teddy Powell's band. Benny called me and said we were going to start rehearsing early and that I needed to come back to New York as soon as possible.

I told Powell about Benny’s call, and he said that if I could get him a bari player, I could take off. So I looked around Philadelphia at the clubs where guys were blowing to see if a bari player was available. I hit one place, and Joe Wilder was the trumpet player there. He said he knew a young guy who played bari but that his horn was in the pawn shop.

Joe said that if I could get the kid’s bari out, I probably could get him to play the job. So I tracked down the guy, put up the $20 to get his horn out, and the kid—Gerry Mulligan—finished the date with Powell.

Three or four months later I ran into Gerry in New York. He had moved up from Philadelphia and had gotten an apartment in the 60s on the West Side. The rest is history.

In Claude's band we'd play concerts outdoors at parks. Even if it rained, you had to go out and blow. On one date in New York, after a heavy rain and just before we started playing, Claude was looking at the piano's keyboard and hitting individual notes hard. Each time he hit a note, water splashed up.

I asked Claude how he was going to play. Claude said he had no choice. I asked if he found any good notes. He said, ‘Just six,’ I asked him what he was going to do. Claude said those were the notes he was going to play. And he did. That's how good Claude was."

Jimmy Dorsey: "Jimmy was a real nice guy. I was with him from late 1946 to late 1947. Jimmy Giuffre and Al Haig were in that band.

Jimmy Dorsey eventually fired me because I played his theme, Contrasts, right behind him on the radio. I guess I must have had a few drinks. So when he started to play, I figured I’d play an octave lower on the bari. I didn’t realize we were on the air.

When we finished the broadcast, he came over to me and said I was fired. We were in California, so according to union rules, he owed me two weeks' pay and my fare home to New York. A little while later he came back to me and told me I was re-hired. He said, ‘I know you want to get home to New York. You stay with the band until we get two weeks out of New York. Then I’ll give you two weeks’ notice.'

When I left Jimmy’s band, I checked into a hotel in New York a block from the Paramount Theater. Within days I was playing with Ray McKinley at the Paramount. That's how it was back then. There was always plenty of work."

Tommy Dorsey: "I played with Tommy's band in 1950. He never spoke to his sidemen. To him, sidemen were like wallpaper. He’d walk along the band and listen to each player separately. 'Push in, pull out, you’re flat, you’re sharp,’ he'd tell different guys.

Charlie Shavers was in the band. Dorsey loved him. Charlie was fantastic. But he had narcolepsy and would often nod off without control. I think Tommy thought he was using, but it was an uncontrollable disorder no one really knew about then.

Once when we worked the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, I decided to hit Tommy up for a raise. I figured he wouldn't give it to me, which would allow me to get out of his band without feeling guilty. And I was right. At the time, I was living with my mom, and she was getting on in her years. When I told Tommy about my family and that I needed a bump, he ‘No, sorry, not at all.’ So I gave him two weeks' notice.

Tommy never got used to being rich. The anger of being poor never left him."

JazzWax tracks: Danny Bank with Charlie Barnet in 1944 can be heard here on Charlie Barnet: Those Swinging Years. Bank's recordings with Barnet in the late 1950s can be heard on Charlie Barnet: The Everest Years here—or at iTunes.

Six tracks featuring Bank with Benny Goodman in 1945 can be found here on Teenage Stan, Vol. 1: 1943-1946.

Bank with Artie Shaw appears here on The Artistry of Artie Shaw and His Bop Band 1949.

Bank with Tommy Dorsey in 1950 can be found here on Tommy Dorsey: The Complete Standard Transcriptions.

Interview: David Amram (Part 5)

Jazz pianist and French hornist David Amram wrote the scores for three major films—Splendor in the Grass, The Young Savages and The Manchurian Candidate. All shrewdly combine jazz and classical motifs, and each pack an enormous creative punch. To David's credit, these forward-thinking movie scores were able to take significant musical risks without abandoning the genre's essential ingredients—an unforgettable main theme and pieces that foreshadow storyline anxieties and looming threats.

Up until now, my interviews with David focused on his jazz work  from 1951-1959—including musical encounters and performances with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Bobby Jaspar, Charles Mingus, Oscar Pettiford, Kenny Dorham, Cannonball Adderley and many others.

To read my previous installments, check the JazzWax archives in the right-hand column under these dates:

Part 1: October 15, 2007
Part 2: October 16, 2007
Part 3: November 8, 2007
Part 4: November 19, 2007

In the fifth and final installment below, David talks about the events leading up to each of the three films, why he avoided writing full time for Hollywood, and his surprising encounter with Frank Sinatra in 1963:

"My very first movie score was for Echo of an Era, a 1956 documentary on the dismantling of New York's Third Avenue elevated subway line. In 1957 I started writing for Joseph Papp’s Shakespeare in the Park series, which led to my writing for off-Broadway theatrical productions.

Then in 1958, director Elia Kazan asked me to compose the music for J.B., a play by Archibald MacLeish about a banker whose life becomes ruined as his faith in God is tested. It was written completely in verse and was based on the Bible’s Book of Job.

Kazan said he had asked every other classical composer in New York to sign on but they were all busy. So I was hired. He wanted me to compose incidental music—which is used for overtures and underneath speeches given by the characters on stage.

I used a wide range of music styles—from jazz to classical—and Kazan liked what I did. I even added scat music and had to teach Christopher Plummer how to sing it. The play was a success and won the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Splendor in the Grass
Fresh on the heels of J.B., Kazan in 1959 asked me to score a film he was due to direct called Splendor in the Grass. It was written by William Inge and explored sexual restrictions in the 1920s and what it was like to come of age at that time. Kazan said the job was mine but first I had to meet Jack Warner, the head of Warner Brothers, in New York.

Apparently, Warner didn’t want me on the picture. I was an unknown with zero Hollywood credentials. But Kazan insisted—pointing out that he had gotten Alex North and Leonard Bernstein to write their first film scores. North composed the music for A Streetcar Named Desire and Bernstein scored On the Waterfront. Both composers had become huge afterward, so Jack Warner agreed to meet me.

When I met Warner, he was like a Catskill comic who couldn’t get a job as a comic. He was always telling jokes that weren’t very funny—though all the people around him laughed at virtually everything he said. Warner said to me, 'Well, you’re nobody, but Kazan wants you, and Leonard Bernstein was nobody until he wrote the score for On the Waterfront. He turned out to be pretty good. And who’s greater than Leonard Bernstein?'

'Beethoven,' I said.

Warner looked at me with a blank stare. Not only did he think what I said wasn't funny, I’m not even sure he knew who Beethoven was. I thought for sure I was finished on the film. Kazan must have smoothed over Warner after I left because I got the job.

Before I started working on Splendor in the Grass, Kazan told me he didn’t want a hack score. He just wanted my best ideas. The story took place in the 1920s, so it needed jazz. Kazan was big on authenticity and had me write and record jazz music so when the actors rehearsed they could hear it playing and feel the mood.

Kazan also told me to get real musicians to appear in the on-camera bands. So I got Scott LaFaro, Wilbur Hogan, Buster Bailey and others, and I played as well. Most of the jazz band scenes were shot at an armory in Harlem.

Splendor in the Grass was Warren Beatty’s first film. Warren was a good piano player, and Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood’s husband, was a big jazz fan. Beatty’s father had played in the Arlington Symphony, an amateur orchestra in Washington, D.C. I had played in that orchestra as a kid, and Warren’s father had remembered that I had played with them.

Warren was fun. I used to take him to clubs where I was playing jazz. He had never been in a movie before, so he could just hang out without being swarmed by fans.

For Splendor in the Grass, I was given a huge budget for a full orchestra and jazz ensemble. Kazan told me to get the best classical and jazz players I could find. So I filled the orchestra with classical musicians who played chamber music and in string quartets. Most of them had never been on a recording date before.

For the jazz ensembles, I used George Barrow on sax, Eddie Wilcox on piano, Buster Baily on clarinet, Arthur Phipps on bass and Al Harewood on drums. I played French horn. It was a wonderful opportunity to combine orchestral music with jazz.

Back then, my cost of living amounted to around $65 a month, and what Warner Brothers agreed to pay me seemed at the time like a fortune. Of course, anyone in Hollywood then would have said I made a colossal mistake. And I probably could have earned millions in film work if I had had paid someone else write scores for me, which was standard practice back then. But that just wasn't me.

When the music publisher on Splendor in the Grass  saw my score, he was furious. He said it had too many chord changes and would never produce a hit song. He also said it was too weird. When the music publisher told Kazan what he thought, Kazan reamed him out. Kazan told him to let me do what I wanted. He stuck up for me creatively, all the way.

Though the theme I wrote for the film has been recorded by Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Percy Faith and others, a soundtrack was never recorded or released, probably because of that music publisher. I really don’t care. For my compositions for the film to have been recorded, I would have had to have written a different score, which would have meant compromising and wrecking the movie.

Kazan loved my score. It was the best music I could write and play at the time, and I’m proud of every note. I put as much care and love into it as anything I’ve ever done. In 1962, Inge won the Oscar for Best Writing/Story and Screenplay—Written Directly for the Screen, and Natalie Wood was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

The Young Savages
While I was writing Splendor in the Grass, John Frankenheimer asked me to write a score for a film he was about to direct called The Young Savages. The film was written by Evan Hunter and was a drama about Puerto Rican and Italian youth gangs in New York. Burt Lancaster and Dina Merrill were in it. Frankenheimer wanted me because I was able to compose in many different music genres of the time, including Latin and jazz.

The Young Savages was different than West Side Story, though both films were released in 1961. The Young Savages was a gritty New York City story based on a true story, and it didn’t glamorize gangs.

During the recording of my music, I got into a fight with the film's producer, Harold Hecht. I had chosen my own concert master— Stanley Plummer—who had played with Yasha Heifetz. A concert master is an orchestra's first violinist and he or she plays all the score's solos.

Stanley had never played on a Hollywood studio date, and Hecht insisted that the orchestra wouldn't play well if he was in that chair. I insisted and told Hecht that Stanley would be great. So Stanley sat up in the front of the orchestra and everyone gave him the hate rays. He sat there quietly and played beautifully.

At the time, the wife of trumpeter Manny Klein was a prominent musical contractor. She came to the session just to hear my score. She heard Stanley and liked him very much, which kicked off a whole new career for him playing in film-studio orchestras.

Hecht also didn't want me to use saxophonist Harold Land—even though Land had played with Max Roach, Clifford Brown and so many other great jazz artists. Hecht told me Land was an unknown and too big a risk. I told Hecht that not only was Land great, he had to get a double pay scale. Hecht refused, so I paid Land out of my own pocket. Everyone was blown away that I had done that.

After Land played and Hecht heard him, Hecht asked me where Land was from. I told him 10 blocks from the studio. Land lived in L.A. Columbia recorded The Young Savages soundtrack, but it's still sitting unreleased in the Sony  vaults.

After Splendor in the Grass and The Young Savages, I was offered some really horrible films and passed on them. Hollywood arrangers I knew at the time told me that if I could avoid going out to Hollywood to work on films full time, I’d save my life. They said that there was a terrible cycle out there: If you got hot, you'd make tons of money but they'd ask you to write as many as eight film scores a year. If what you wrote was accepted, you would have no choice but to hire ghostwriters to write the scores for you just to keep up.

I felt that putting my name on scores I didn't actually write would take away the gift we are given to be composers. That type of work, no matter how financially rewarding, sucks the creative life right out of you.

The Manchurian Candidate
In 1961, Frankenheimer told me he was going to direct a film called The Manchurian Candidate. He said that Frank Sinatra was signed on and that he and Frank wanted a composer who wasn’t a Hollywood hack. There were great composers and arrangers out in Hollywood at the time—Alex North, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Hermann and others. But most of them didn’t have the 1950s jazz touch, and those who had the touch didn’t have the classical background.

Frankenheimer wanted someone outside the loop who was  a real composer. 'This film is so different than anything that’s been done before,' he said. 'I want you to do it, and Frank [Sinatra] likes your music, too.'

So I read the script. It was great. I had never seen anything like it. I agreed to write the score. I flew out to Hollywood and holed up at a hotel during the filming. They gave me a small piano and a Moviola used by film editors. I'd turn the Moviola's crank to see parts of the film that were already in the can. Then I’d sit at my  piano and work out ideas.

For a month they’d bring in different chunks of the film. I'd see bits of scenes with other parts missing and replaced with notes that said, 'To be filled in later.' I asked Frankenheimer what the film was about based on these fragmented scenes. He'd only say, 'It’s not a Chinese war movie. Do the best you can do. Do jazz. Do whatever you want.'

I remember watching one scene where there was a slow pan of the camera showing soldiers on a stage having a tea party. Suddenly all the Southern ladies on the stage turned into interrogators. Remember, I had not seen the whole film yet—no one had—only bits and pieces. That scene blew my mind.

Based on the scene I saw, I figured they must have messed up. I watched the scene a few more times and thought I was going nuts. When I called Frankenheimer, I told him I felt like I was having a nervous breakdown watching the scene. 'That's the idea,' he said. 'That’s how prisoners feel when they’ve been given drugs and have been brainwashed.' I decided to write a minor-key waltz with a harpsichord and piccolos to capture the feeling of going insane at a tea party.

In another scene, I used jazz for the scene at the servicemen's club. I created a long jazz piece and told Frankenheimer to use excerpts. This way, when actors walked into the bar, the band would be well underway, which is how music is truly heard when you enter a club.

I wrote the film's main theme—played by Manny Klein's bold, almost patriotic trumpet in the overture—to create a specific impression of Laurence Harvey's character. This was a film about a noble guy who was doomed by forces beyond his control, like in a Greek tragedy. The theme needed to convey the sound of a good guy struggling futilely against the fates.

On trumpet, Manny Klein was incredible. He captured that feeling perfectly. Manny had the same ability to get to the core of great European classical playing and the core of the jazz experience, and he respected and loved them both.

On The Manchurian Candidate Theme (Jazz Version), I had trombonist Lou Blackburn open with theme, followed by Harold Land on tenor. After Land’s solo, the whole orchestra comes in, then a wind and brass ensemble echoes what the orchestra had just played. Baritone saxophonist Jack Nimitz and flutist Paul Horn are on the date as well.

During the recording sessions, I borrowed Vince DeRosa's French horn to play in a spot on the middle of Cantina Latina, Korea 1952. I also played piano on tracks and conducted throughout.

I didn't meet Frank Sinatra until a year after the movie came out. During the time I was in Hollywood, everyone was so petrified of him they were too afraid to introduce me.

So one night in early 1963, when I was playing at the Village Gate, actor Martin Gable came up to me and said,  'Frank is downstairs and wants to meet you.' I said, 'Frank who?' 'Frank Sinatra,' he said.

When I went down, Frank was sitting at a table with friends. He invited me to sit down next to him and said he loved my music for The Manchurian Candidate. 'You wrote a perfect score,' he said. ‘But how come you never came to see me when you were out there?’ I just said, ‘You were really busy at the time.’

We talked about music and Italian opera and his time with Tommy Dorsey and the jazz greats he knew. I asked Frank about whether Tommy Dorsey had a big impact on his singing. He said Tommy influenced his breathing but the passion and timing came from jazz musicians and the traditional Italian bel canto school of singing. He said he loved Italian opera, classical music and jazz—which is why he could understand completely where I was coming from in the movie’s score.

After about a half hour, I had to go back upstairs and play. Sinatra said, 'You know, I don’t’ know why they never put a record out of the music.' I shrugged. I didn't know either. The answer is probably the same as the one for Splendor in the Grass—they couldn’t figure out what it was or how to market it.

After The Manchurian Candidate was finished, all of the music just disappeared. In those days, they’d throw out all the old scores. Years later, I wrote the Library of Congress about another piece I had written. The Library found it for me—along with a copy of the original score for The Manchurian Candidate. Apparently it was sent there by the music publisher. So I got the score back.

When the remake of The Manchurian Candidate was made in 2003, Rachel Portman was hired to composed contemporary music for the film. But they also wanted to include my music from the original film. But no soundtrack had been made.

Then Tina Sinatra produced a three-track recording of the original recording from her safe. Fortunately Frank must have had it recorded at the time or had acquired it. When I met Frank Sinatra Jr. in recent years, he told me that Frank and the whole family used to watch the film and loved the score.

As a result, the first 32 minutes of the new movie soundtrack is my music from the original film, remastered.

The lesson I learned during my early film-writing years is that you must remain creative and true to yourself at all costs—and never let yourself become part of some hack, factory scene. You always want to work in your artistry. Then you'll never have to worry about selling out. Even though you may not get the big money or top credit, you will have done a good day's work, which is good for your health.

To this day, no matter what type of music I create, I’m always trying to find the right notes that reverberate feelings that are beyond me."

JazzWax tracks: David Amram's score for The Manchurian Candidate is sensational. Its theme is haunting and catchy, and you'll have trouble shaking it from your head once you've heard it.

David's score can be found on two different CDs. There are 32 minutes of remastered music from the original film here. Or you can pay $40 for an out-of-print copy of a bootleg version of the full score (the CD sounds great).

The Young Savages' soundtrack on Columbia isn't available on CD, but an LP-to-CD conversion of something is here for $130. I don't know much more about it, so I suggest you try to contact the seller to find out what's being sold before you buy.

While there is no soundtrack recording available for Splendor in the Grass, you can download David playing the theme on piano at iTunes. It's on David Amram: At Home/Around the World. And believe it or not, Percy Faith recorded a terrific version here on Percy Faith: Hollywood's Greatest Themes.

JazzWax videoclips: Go here for an interesting conversation about the making of The Manchurian Candidate with Frank Sinatra, John Frankenheimer and George Axelrod, who wrote the screenplay.

To hear David Amram's theme from the movie, go here. Forget about the clip, since it's not actually from the film. Instead, listen for David's penetrating theme when The Manchurian Candidate logo appears on the TV screen in the video.

You can hear David's music and theme for Splendor in the Grass by going here to view the movie's trailer.

Unfortunately, I there are no clips up on the web from The Young Savages.

Interview: David Amram (Part 4)

In Part 4 of my interview with jazz and classical composer and musicians David Amram, he talks about bassist Oscar Pettiford and Pettiford's all-star orchestra in the mid-1950s as well as his work for off-Broadway shows...

JazzWax: When did you meet Oscar Pettiford?
David Amram: I met Oscar at the Café Bohemia in the fall of 1955. Café Bohemia was where everything was happening at the time. We struck up an acquaintance and started playing together. In the spring of 1956, he said he wanted to form a big band and use me and Julius Watkins on French horns. Oscar knew everyone in New York and had played on almost everyone’s recording session, so it wasn’t hard for him to form that band.

JW: Pettiford was at the center of everything, wasn’t he?
DA: Absolutely. Oscar was the guy at the Onyx Club who brought Dizzy [Gillespie] and Bird [Charlie Parker] to 52nd St. so they’d have a paid engagement, not just jam and sit in. Ever since he replaced Jimmy Blanton in Duke Ellington’s band, Oscar was a big figure in jazz. There was a real strong, jazz community and a mutual respect among musicians then. It was an exciting time to be in New York. Musicians still went to jam sessions to play. It was how we networked, as you say today.

JW: When was the first performance with the big band?
DA: Around Easter of 1956. Monk played with us. His apartment had caught fire and he was staying at his brother’s place in the Bronx. He was playing with Sahib Shihab and Ray Copeland. Clifford Brown had just died in an auto accident, and Benny Golson played us his song, I Remember Clifford, on an old piano backstage. Arranger Tadd Dameron was there. All of us gathered around. Then Monk played a phenomenal set. Monk hadn’t made his comeback yet. He was a mysterious figure.

JW: What do you remember about the Oscar Pettiford Big Band's first recording session on June 11, 1956?
DA: I remember Lucky Thompson and Oscar got into an argument because Lucky wanted to rehearse a song he had arranged. Oscar was excitable, fun and passionate. He said the song sounded fine. Lucky insisted it didn’t sound fine. Oscar said it did, and Lucky cursed. Oscar yelled back. Ultimately, we didn’t record the song. We recorded Lucky's Deep Passion instead.

JW: Lucky Thompson had a rough career.
DA: Despite Lucky’s nickname, he was always outspoken and just said what was on his mind. He was a musician’s musician and one of the nicest people I had ever met. And one of the best players. You knew it was Lucky playing within four notes. Despite his outspokenness, he got along with everyone. [Producer] Creed Taylor put that date together for ABC-Paramount.

JW: Did Oscar rehearse the band?
DA: Not extensively. Everyone in the band was busy and there wasn’t time. But Oscar wanted everything to be right, and he had a sharp set of ears. If we missed a note during a recording session, Oscar could hear it. Julius Watkins and I were playing impossible French horn parts. I remember Oscar said one time, “I hear you guys. I don’t care how hard French horn is. If you and Dave make any more mistakes, I’m going to hire two mellophone players.”

JW: Why the mellophone?
DA: The way the mellophone is constructed, the sound of the notes aren’t as close together, thanks to the instrument’s valves, which are easier to hit and leave less room for error. Oscar could hear everything. When something wasn’t right you’d get a look at his face and he was in anguish.

JW: How was Pettiford as a musician?
DA: During the time we played together, even if he just got off the bus after eight-hour drive, none of us ever heard Oscar play out of tune or play a solo that wasn’t stunning. He was a perfect musician. He had such a strong character and innate musicianship that was so strong-willed, he couldn’t’ do anything wrong.

JW: What about his personality?
DA: I saw Art Farmer at a memorial service for Gerry Mulligan in the late ‘90s. We both had played in Oscar’s big band. Art said, “You know, Oscar was only four years old than us but he was like a father to me.” I felt the same way. When Oscar spoke, he was like a great orator. He had this tremendous majesty about him when performing and when speaking. In the mid-‘50s, I used to go up to Oscar’s apartment on West 18th St. and we’d talk about it. When we’d head out, everyone on his block knew him and said hello or waved. That was the kind of personality he had.

JW: How did the band go over with audiences?
DA: Audiences were amazed. Everyone in that band had led his own group and had played with Oscar at one point or another. That band wasn’t about the money because there wasn’t any. If there was money from the door where we played, the guys with families got the most and young single guys like me would get the least. No one ever complained.

JW: What about Gigi Gryce, who arranged and played in the band?
DA: Gigi would sit on the bus and talk the whole way about different harmonies and chords, and then scat sing them. The bus rides were like music camp. It didn’t matter who was in the audience that night. I remember we traveled up to an armory in Springfield, Mass., and Dinah Washington was on the bill. I think about 38 people showed up. We played the whole show anyway, and they loved it.

JW: The band sounds a little breathless with the music.
DA: I don’t think most of the guys in the band were up to the writing. We just didn’t have much rehearsal time. The guys who knew the charts cold pulled everyone else along.

JW: The addition of the harp was an interesting coloration, giving the music an angelic feel.
DA: Betty Glamann, the harpist, was very well mannered. She had blonde hair and was very conservative looking. But she loved jazz. And what a musician! Somehow she was able to figure out how to play different harmonies without making a sound on those pedals. We couldn’t figure out how she did it. The few classical musicians who came to Birdland to hear us couldn’t figure out how she made those silent pedal changes either.

JW: What did the guys in the band think of her?
DA: Everyone really admired her. You see, the instrument has open strings. To get from one chord to another, you have to step on pedals to sustain the sound. It’s enormously difficult. Betty was able to do it without everyone hearing the pedals clunking as she prepared for her next series of chord changes. Swooping arpeggios would have sounded corny.

JW: What was so special about Pettiford’s playing?
DA: He could make you sound five times better. When he soloed, his playing was simple and musical. One time I heard him play on a record with Monk and later told Oscar he was amazing. His face changed. He said, “Man, I was scared.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said in a whisper, as if he were afraid: “I never knew what he was going to do next.” Yes, on the recording, Oscar was perfect.

JW: Did anyone ever sit in the with the big band?
DA: I remember Erroll Garner sat in during a rehearsal. Some of that music was so difficult. Even after you got the arrangements down you’d have to go home and practice them just to get it right the next time. The day Erroll sat in, he just sat down at the piano. We weren’t sure how he was going to play the chart. Erroll could play in all 12 keys equally well but he didn’t read music. We ran through the first number and Erroll just sat there. We figured maybe he was going to lay out. The second time we came through the song, he started playing some chords quietly. The third time he filled them out. Oscar gave him a solo and he played up a storm as if he’d been playing with us for months. We couldn’t figure out how that was possible. Oscar had people sit in all the time with that band. Occasionally we’d just stop playing the arrangements and jam and play the blues.

JW: In May 1957, the band was at Birdland and Ed London was on French horn, not Julius Watkins. Why?
DA: Everyone was so busy in that band. Members changed often when we performed. That night, in May, Julius had to play a Broadway show, so I got Ed London to play French horn with us. Ed was a college roommate of mine at Oberlin College. He was the only other person I knew who could play what was written and improvise. French hornist Jimmy Buffington could do that too, but he didn’t play much jazz. Ed London was a classical player. When he played with the symphony, he played bald. When he played on TV, he wore a toupe. When he played at Birdland, he wore a toupe.

JW: Your Two French Fries sounds extremely difficult to play. Was it?
DA: The tempo was up there but not too tough. I remember when we played it at Birdland, there was this paper mache thing over our heads. When Ed took his solo, he stood up and the paper mache thing knocked off his toupe. But Ed kept wailing. Ed was a classical composer but also an accomplished jazz player who could play Bird and Dizzy’s stuff in all 12 keys.

JW: And yet the band eventually fizzled out and everyone went their separate ways.
DA: There was too much playing and recording work out there then. You didn’t want to turn anything down Unlike many of the guys in the bad, Oscar had a family and ended up having to pay for the band out of his own pocket. The band eventually had a tough time surviving. There weren’t enough venues willing to hire us to keep the music alive, and Oscar didn’t have a manager to help out. The band just slowed down.

JW: What did you wind up doing after?
DA: By the summer of 1957, I had already started writing for producer-director Joseph Papp and his "Shakespeare in the Park"  in New York's Central Park. Oscar really dug that I was writing for it. He used to say, “My French horn player, Dave Amram, wrote Shakespeare in the Park. Let’s go dig David Amram’s Shakespeare in the Park." I kept telling him I just wrote the music. He kept saying that I wrote Shakespeare in the Park. Oscar and the other guys came up to Central Park and dug it. And in turn, a lot of actors would come downtown to hear us play.

JW: Pettiford loved anything that was exceptional, didn’t’ he?
DA: Yes, in all the arts. His girlfriend was this great society lady who loved jazz and loved chamber music. She had chamber music performances at her house. That’s where I met Frank Corsaro, who is now the head of Juilliard’s American Opera Center [Mr. Corsaro died in November 2017]. When I wrote for Shakespeare’s Richard III in the fall of 1957, Frank came and sang some of the offstage music. He also sang at the home of Janet Rhinelander Stewart, whom Oscar was seeing, and she’d come down to hear us. There was this connection between all of the music and the Shakespearean actors. It was a great time.

JW: Later that year, you spent time with the Beat poets and writers, yes?
DA: Yes, In October ‘57, Jack Kerouac and I did the first jazz poetry reading in Greenwich Village, which further linked jazz and the other arts. That was the thing about jazz. It reached across all levels of society, from the street to high society. 

JW: What were you doing in 1958?
DA: I was still working for "Shakespeare in Park." During the summer of ‘58, Jack and I did our last public poetry readings in Greenwich Village. My album, Jazz Studio Six (Decca), came out that year. I was writing music for off-Broadway plays, including Sign of Winter. That fall, I started working downtown at New York’s Phoenix Theater. But I was struggling.

JW: Why were you struggling?
DA: The work I was doing didn't pay top dollar, but I loved it. I was barely surviving doing odd labor jobs sand playing different jazz gigs. In my spare time, I’d play with George Barrow and our quartet. I also sat in and played with all types of musicians. In the summer of ’59, I wrote music for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. That fall, Stewart Vaughan became the artistic director of the Phoenix and asked me to become the composer. I had a job where I was the composer for a good off-Broadway way theater and music director. I also finished my trio for saxophone, horn and bassoon—one of my first classical pieces that I didn’t throw in the wastebasket. Joe Papp got a job as the stage manger for a play on Broadway called Comes a Day. George C. Scott was in it. The play ran only a few performances.

JW: In January 1959, you recorded on trumpeter Kenny Dorham’s Blue Spring. What do you recall about that session?
DA: On that date was Cannonball Adderley, Cecil Payne, Cedar Walton, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb. I first met Kenny in Washington, D.C., back in 1952, when he and Charlie Parker came to my apartment for a jam session. I had run into him countless times and jammed with him, too. I also had played with Cannonball’s brother, Nat, down at a place in Washington’s Chinatown where there were strippers. Jazz was featured during the breaks.

JW: What was Cannonball Adderley like?
DA: Cannonball had been a school teacher. He was the wmost lovable and brilliant guy. He was a joy to be around. What made him special were his warmth and maturity. He had a real understanding of the social significance of jazz and realized that somehow, as musicians, we had to be educators. When he spoke to you, he was so friendly. He was like an educator or an ambassador.

JW: On Blue Spring, Jimmy Cobb replaced Philly Joe Jones on drums. Why?
DA: We recorded two songs with Philly Joe. But for the second date, he didn’t show up. So someone went to call Jimmy Cobb. While we waited for Jimmy, instead of getting everyone freaked out, Kenny just had us read down our parts. Then he sat down and wrote out another arrangement. He also fixed up some of the charts he had already written. [Riverside producer] Orin Keepnews, to his credit, was really calm and very supportive. Kenny wasn’t pissed off. That was the thing about him. He had the personality of a Buddha. He just sat at the piano and wrote another arrangement and then gave out the parts. There were no temper tantrums.

JW: Was Kenny happy with your playing?
DA: After, Kenny said to me, “Well, David, how’s it feel to play with the heavyweights.” “Great,” I said. Kenny said, “Terrific, now you’re a heavyweight.” That was a beautiful thing to say. He had remembered meeting me when he was with Charlie Parker back in ‘52. Anyone who knew Parker had a certain bond. But it was never an exclusive thing. There was an amazing quality that these musicians had. Even when they were celebrated, they weren’t snobbish or egomaniacs. It’s about the music’s spirit. Life, music, art and people are the same with these musicians.

JW: How did Dorham and Cannonball Adderley get along?
DA: They loved each other. In ’59, Cannonball was more widely known than Kenny. He had come in as a leader himself and got terrific press and attention. Kenny was already a master since the late 1940s, when he went to Paris with Bird. Now we can see Kenny’s importance historically. Back then, Kenny wound up working in a music store. The players of his generation never became prominent during their lifetimes except among musicians and in Europe. Kenny never expressed any bitterness about that. He loved to play.

JW: Are things different today?
DA: The whole philosophy back then can be summed up by the titles of two songs—Now’s the Time and Straight, No Chaser. The first meant, “Don’t hesitate, just jump right in.” The second meant, “Whatever setbacks and obstacles exist, keep going straight ahead.” There was zero whine-ology and blame-ology and greed-ology among these guys. It was a beautiful time.

JW: Where did that lead?
DA: Because of that, and the fact that I had been doing off-Broadway, I got a phone call from director Elia Kazan. At first I thought it was joke. It was his office. Then they put him on. He said, “I heard about you from different directors and people who work in the theater. Lucinda Ballard, a Broadway costume designer, said you’d be perfect for this play. Send me some of your music.

JW: What music did you send?
DA: The only music I had on vinyl was my jazz record for Decca and my albums with Lionel Hampton and Bobby Jaspar. And a score I had written for a documentary on the Third Avenue El. I sent that.

JW: What happened?
DA: The next day Kazan calls and I hear my music playing over the phone. He says, “I love jazz. I used to spend all my time as a kid going up to Harlem to listen to it. I love Chopin, too. I hear from your music that you’re home in classical and jazz. You can do this.” Then he told me all the classical composers who turned him down because they were too busy. I was 11th on his list.

JW: What did you do?
DA: I went up and met Kazan. He said, “Even though no one has ever heard of you, I’m just trusting my gut instinct,” which is how he did everything. There I was with a chance to write incidental music for JB, a play directed by Elia Kazan. George Barrow played sax on some of it. There’s a recording somewhere of the entire play with the score of jazz and classical music. The play won the Pulitzer Prize and ran for a year.

JW: What then?
DA: All these theater groups wanted me to write music for their plays. In 1959 I wrote music for The Rivalry, The Beaux Stratagem, Kataki, The Great God Brown and Lysistrata. My scores for the movies The Young Savages (1961), Splendor in the Grass (1961) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962) would come next.

Interview: Yolande Bavan (Part 3)

After winning a radio singing contest in 1956, Yolande Bavan left Sri Lanka for the first time at age 16 to tour with jazz pianist Graeme Bell. Then in 1957 the vocalist left Sri Lanka for good—this time on board a ship bound for England.

Over the next five years, Yolande sang in London and Paris clubs, where she befriended touring American jazz musicians. In November 1958, Billie Holiday virtually adopted Yolande during her stay in Paris, and the two spent time again during Billie's final trip to London in February 1959 for a TV appearance.

By 1960, Yolande was receiving more stage and TV acting roles than club engagements. But a fateful meeting at a friend's party in early spring 1962 would force Yolande to put her acting career on hold. Within a month's time, she would go from struggling London actress to a member of one of the world's most popular jazz vocalese groups.

In Part 3 of my interview with Yolande Bavan below, she talks about how she filled Annie Ross' shoes in a London revue and then replaced Ross two years later in Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks' hot vocal group:

"After Billie Holiday left London in February 1959, I started to take on more acting roles. I was still singing, but acting parts were coming at me faster than club dates. Sometimes I was called upon to do both.

Throughout 1959, David Lee, the South African jazz pianist and composer, saw me sing at all these little London clubs with my pigtails. Toward the end of 1959, he gave me an address and told me to meet him there. So I went, and when I knocked on the door, an older gentleman opened it. I told the man I was there to meet David Lee.

We walked down to the basement and there was Julie Andrews, Tony Walton—a costume designer who would soon be her husband—David and John Cranko, the choreographer. It was Cranko's home.

David introduced me to everyone. Then he sat down at a piano and asked me to sing. I did a little improv number. I can't recall what it was. When I finished, John Cranko said it was nice to meet me, everyone said goodbye, and he showed me out.

The next day I asked David what was going on at the house. He said they were casting a revue called New Cranks. He was scoring the musical arrangements and John Cranko was doing the lyrics and choreography. Then David told me that I got the part if I wanted it and that I'd be appearing with Carole Shelly, Gillian Lynne, Bernie Cribbins, Billy Wilson and John Wade. These were all big names at the time.

New Cranks was a scatological revue updating a popular 1955 show called Cranks that had been successful in London and New York. It was John Cranko's idea—hence the name "Cranks." The original Cranks starred Anthony Newley, Gordon Heath and Annie Ross—believe it or not. By the time of my audition, Annie, of course, was singing with Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks.

New Cranks was kind of wacky. They wrote this hip stuff, and I had to act, sing and learn to dance. The show opened at the Lyric Hammersmith Theater in April 1960 and ran for about three or four months. I learned so much during that show. And I don’t think I ever said “hip,” “dig” and “flipped” more often in my life.

After New Cranks, my theater career really started to take off. In 1961 I was cast as Cleopatra in Caesar and Cleopatra and I did several BBC TV dramas—one with Sammy Davis, Jr. called Day of the Fox, in which I played his Indian wife. I was doing so much theater then that I pretty much gave up club singing.

Now, much has been written about me learning all of the Lambert, Hendricks & Ross songs and then cornering Dave Lambert and showing him I could sing their lyrics backward and forward. That's a great story—but it's all nonsense.

Here's how I came to join the group:

I had always been a big fan of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. And I had followed Annie Ross in New Cranks, in the role she had created, so I was more than familiar with her.

At this time, I was very close to Max Jones, the Melody Maker jazz writer,  and his wife—whose sister Sandra and her husband Donnie threw lavish jazz parties at their home.

Naturally, they were very close friends with Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. One day, early in 1962, they took me to hear Count Basie and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross in London. Afterward, we went backstage and I finally got to meet Annie Ross for the first time. I said, 'Oh you’re Annie Ross. You did Cranks. I'm so thrilled to me you!' And Annie said, 'You’re Yolande and you did New Cranks. So thrilled to meet you!' After that we chit-chatted and then parted.

Two nights later, Sandra and Donnie threw a party. Many jazz musicians were there, including the entire Basie band. I remember there was a Dizzy Gillespie album on the record player—as background music. I was helping Sandra clear ash trays and serve drinks. Dizzy hit a high note at the end of one of the songs and, without thinking, I hit the same note.

A man whipped around and said, 'Who did that?'

I said, 'I did.'

He asked, 'Are you a singer?'

I said, 'No I’m an actress.'

'Can you really hit those high notes?' he asked.

'Yes,' I said.

He said, 'Are you sure you’re not a singer?'

I said, 'I sing a little but mostly act.'

The man was Dave Lambert. We spoke for a little, the party went on and everyone went their separate ways. A few days later I heard from Sandra and Donnie that Annie wasn’t going to travel back to America with Lambert and Hendricks. She was going to stay in London.

I thought nothing of it. A few weeks later, my phone rang at 3 am. The voice at the other end said, 'This is Jon Hendricks.' I kept saying, 'Who? Who?' He said, 'I’m calling from New York. We want you to come to New York.'

I said, 'To New York? To do what?'

'To sing. Annie Ross has left the group and we want you to come over,' he said.

'I can’t do that,' I told him.

He told me there was a plane ticket and working visa waiting for me at the American embassy. 'You leave on Wednesday,' he said.

I said, 'I can‘t come. I can‘t sing like that.'

'Joe Williams and Sarah Vaughan recommended you. And so did Dave Brubeck,' he said.

'They’re all crazy,' I said. 'I can’t come on Wednesday.' After a pause, I said what the heck. 'OK, I’ll come—on Saturday.'

Jon told me to get a hold of the group's albums and memorize their songs.

So they changed my  plane ticket, and I left for New York with one suitcase. I said to myself, 'I'll rehearse, they'll realize they've made a big mistake. I’ll see the Statue of Liberty and return home.'

Max Jones gave me their records and I started listening to them. I thought, how am I going to learn this? The albums were multitracked—meaning each of the singers had overdubbed different sets of vocals three times to create the sound of a big band. I tried to listen, to figure out how I was going to sing Annie's part. It was hard. I listened to the records for hours at a time and sang along with them.

My plane touched down in New York very early on the morning of May 5, 1962. When I got off the plane, Dave Lambert was there to meet me. He had been the one who had floated my name to Jon as a possible replacement for Annie after meeting me at that party. I suddenly realized they were hiring me based on a single high note.

Dave said we had to hurry to catch another plane. 'Oh, are we going to where the skyscrapers are?' I asked. 'No we’re going to upstate New York,' he said. 'There’s Manhattan, where the skyscrapers are, and there's upstate New York.'

So we got on a little plane and flew to Schenectady, New York. When we arrived, a car was waiting and took us to Union College. A concert was already in progress. Tom Paxton, the folk singer and guitarist, had already played in the first half and there was an intermission. I'd say there were about 2,000 to 3,000 students in the audience. When Dave and I got out of the car, we went backstage and met Jon.

I still had my PanAm bag over my shoulder and a plaid sari on. I wore saris because they were comfortable and were part of my culture. They also distinguished me, setting me apart, and attracted quite a bit of attention.

I asked Jon when we were going to rehearse. Jon said, 'Oh, the concert is already on.' Wonderful, I thought, I would sit in the audience and listen to them sing. Then the announcer said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.

The audience cheered, and I heard the band start to play the intro to One O'Clock Jump. Jon and Dave rushed me on stage, and suddenly, there I was. So I started to sing with them. Dave kept nudging me to sing an octave higher, like a trumpet. I couldn't do it. I was too tired. But at the end I hit the high note, and everyone was very excited.

In addition to One O'Clock Jump, I think we sang Little Pony, Four and It's Sand Man. Then we went to a hotel. The next day we played Rhode Island and then went into Manhattan. We still hadn't rehearsed.

In New York, they had booked me a hotel with a tiny kitchen on 47th St., off Broadway. It was small and dark and depressing. Not long afterward we did a midnight jazz concert at Carnegie Hall. It was a benefit for a drug rehabilitation program named after Billie Holiday. All I could think was If Billie were alive and could see me there, she would have flipped.

Many of the jazz musicians I had met in Paris and London were backstage—the Basie band, Art Blakey, Bobby Timmons and others. They said, 'What are you doing here? You're singing with Dave and Jon. Wow! We went on at about 1 am, and we were a big hit.

By then I had a record player and was listening to the records over and over again in my hotel room. Jon wrote all the new songs. He would take a popular jazz instrumental and write lyrics to them. Then he'd give me the words and the album of the original work. I'd have to listen to the instrumental and work in the words Jon wrote. He was a genius matching words to songs. Absolutely amazing.

Sometimes we wouldn’t have time to rehearse the songs. Jon would write the words, we'd run through them quickly, and then out on stage we'd go. I remember once in Chicago, Jon had just written the lyrics to Horace Silver's Come on Home. We had to sing the song at a  club that night without rehearsal.

I must have done a decent job because when we got off, Sarah Vaughan was there. She said to me, 'Little did I know when I saw you in Paris.' I said, 'Sarah, I heard you referred me to Dave and Jon. Why? You hadn't heard me sing that often.' Sarah said, 'You hung around us so much. And to hit those high notes the way you did, ahhh.' Sarah was so encouraging.

Then the group went to California, first to the Monterey Jazz Festival, where we performed a scaled back version of the The Real Ambassadors, a musical about race relations written by Dave Brubeck and his wife, Iola. The show never made it to the stage but was recorded by Louis Armstrong and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross in 1961.

The only time The Real Ambassadors was performed publicly was when we did it in 1962. When Dave Brubeck and I walked into the band room at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco to rehearse, there was Louis Armstrong sitting on a chair with his wife, Lucille. Dave looked at me and said, 'Did we know about this?' 'No way,' I said.

When Louis saw me, he smiled and turned to Lucille and said, 'Hey Mama, I know that face.' I said, 'Louis, I met you in Australia when I was 17 years old, with Graeme Bell.' Louis said, 'Ahhh, Graeme Bell.' Louis and Trummy Young had played with Graeme's Dixieland group when they were touring Australia back in the mid-1950s. We rehearsed The Real Ambassadors with Louis, for a few hours. He knew the score cold.

After the performance at Monterey, we went back to New York and into Basin Street East three different times. At different points, Joe Williams, Stan Getz and Ahmad Jamal were on the bill. I remember Ahmad and Stan didn't get along.

Joe Williams was always great to me. In fact, everybody was extremely respectful of me. I think it was my sari. Even Charlie Mingus used to say in his gravely voice, 'No swearing around Bavan.' I think Dave and Jon put a warning out that anyone associated with drugs were not to speak to me or contact me. I think everyone felt protective of me, and it worked.

By early 1965, I decided I had had enough. The constant touring was wearing me down. I was also amazed that jazz just wasn't as respected in America as it was in other parts of the world. I would have to wrap my sari in the kitchen of clubs with bacon fat sizzling. It was awful some of the places we played. I couldn't believe jazz musicians were treated like second-class citizens. Besides, I missed my acting.

So I gave notice. After I left the group, I stayed in New York and started auditioning for roles and spent the years that followed focusing on my TV and stage career.

Jazz has always been great to me. I adored the jazz musicians I met in London and Paris, but the person I probably respected most was Dave Lambert. He was kind, and he wasn't malicious—verbally or otherwise. He didn't have that kind of energy.

I was so devastated when he died in October 1966. Dave had gone up to a Connecticut theater to pick up his girlfriend, who was an actress. He was returning to New York on the Connecticut turnpike at 1 am when he saw this guy on the side of the road with a white handkerchief trying to flag down help. Dave pulled over and had his girlfriend use the handkerchief to warn off traffic. But a truck sideswiped Dave and the guy as they were changing his tire, killing them both.

Dave was always helping people, and jazz musicians loved him. Even Miles Davis was crazy about Dave. I remember when we were in Philadelphia in 1963. Miles was playing around the corner. I begged Dave to take me to see him. The moment Miles saw Dave, his face lit up and he put his arms around him and sent us a bottle of champagne.

My career with Lambert and Hendricks was brief—just over three years. Those were exciting times for me, even though rock and bossa nova were starting to change popular music, pushing jazz to the side. But during those years, in the very early 1960s, before everything changed and jazz was still important, I like to think that I made a contribution.

Indeed she did. Not only did Yolande enable Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks to fulfill their dates and financial obligations when Annie Ross dropped out suddenly in 1962, she also let listeners know that jazz had worldwide appeal.

Through her saris, exotic looks and graceful demeanor, Yolande showed listeners that jazz was special outside the U.S., that other cultures understood its message of creative freedom and individualism, and that the women who sang it did not have to dress like showgirls.

Ultimately, Yolande was the real jazz ambassador.

JazzWax note: When I spoke with Yolande on Tuesday, I confessed that I did not own two of the group's three albums. Since they were out of print and hard to find, I said, I was only familiar with them when played for me by friends.

Yolande then insisted I come by her apartment and burn copies and borrow a DVD of the group from 1963.

So yesterday I stopped by for a dark cup of Sri Lankan tea. Yolande is as graceful and as charming today as she looked and sounded on records back in the early 1960s. And her voice remains lyrical and soothing.

While my laptop burned the Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan discs, we listened to a range of vocalists via iTunes—from Billie and Carmen to Frank and Jo. I watched Yolande as the music swept over her, and from time to time she sang along in places. It was a special visit.

JazzWax tracks: In addition to recording with Lambert and Hendricks, Yolande recorded a fascinating rock/fusion album with Peter Ivers in 1969. Her voice on this album was at its peak as she navigated very difficult and cutting-edge vocal parts. The psychedelic album, Knight of the Blue Communion, was just re-mastered and re-issued, and it can be found here. Unfortunately it's not at iTunes, but you can sample it at Amazon.

JazzWax video clips: Once again, to see Yolande Bavan singing in 1963 with Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks, click here.

Interview: Yolande Bavan (Part 2)

Yolande Bavan joined Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks in May 1962 after "illness" forced Annie Ross to quit the high-energy singing group during a European tour. The reason for Ross' departure was never made clear and varies depending on the book you read. [Yolande Bavan, left, with Billie Holiday]

Regardless, Ross had been an essential member of the swinging group. Her silky voice was savvy and shrewd, and her image was flirty and high-fashion, all of which played well at clubs and on album covers.

When Ross was sidelined, Lambert and Hendricks were cast adrift—with enormous financial obligations to satisfy a long list of live engagements. They had to find a suitable replacement for Ross, someone who not only could sing the complex vocal parts but also would be visually special.

Ultimately, Lambert and Hendricks chose Yolande Bavan, and the group—as Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan—toured extensively between May 1962 and early 1965, recording three live albums for RCA.

How did Yolande Bavan become so well known so quickly among American jazz musicians and how did she become a fixture on the London jazz scene in so short a period of time?

In Part 1 of my interview with Yolande, she spoke about her early years in her native Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon); her interest in jazz; her first singing break; her tour of Australia, Japan and Korea at age 16; and her decision to sail for London at age 19 in 1957 to take her career to the next level.

In Part 2 below, she talks about her good fortune in London, her eight days in late 1958 with Billie Holiday in Paris, and how she limited Billie's drinking during a London TV appearance in early 1959:

"Before I left Sri Lanka for London in 1957, pianist Graeme Bell wrote to Humphrey Lyttelton, the Dixieland trumpeter, recommending me. When I arrived in London, I called Humphrey. We met, and he introduced me to Lyn Dutton, his agent and manager. Dutton got me singing dates in the London clubs, including at Humphrey’s own club.

At the time I loved Bud Powell and was mad about Miles Davis, so I was always hanging around at the more progressive jazz clubs, where I saw Art Blakey, Count Basie, Dave Brubeck, and so many others.

On weekends, I'd travel to Paris to visit my closest friend, Marpessa Dawn. Marpessa was a wonderful actress. She had just finished filming Black Orpheus, which, when it came out in 1959, introduced Bossa Nova music to the world. Marpessa wasn’t really from Brazil. She was part Filipino, part African-American and part Native-American—and she was from Pittsburgh. She was absolutely gorgeous.

On one of those trips to Paris in November 1958, Marpessa said we should go eat at Gaby and Haynes, a soul food restaurant where all the American jazz musicians ate. So we went. That night, at the table across the way, was Billie Holiday, her pianist Mal Waldron, and clarinetist Mezz Mezzrow. They were appearing at the Mars Club.

Billie was looking at me for a long time—I was wearing a sari—and finally sent Mal over to our table. 'Miss Holiday would like you to come over and join her.' I was in awe and so shy then. I told him, 'No, no, I can’t, I can’t, I really can’t.'

Mal laughed and went back to Billie’s table. He must have told her I was painfully shy. Because as Billie was leaving, she passed my table and said to me, 'If I had a daughter, I’d like her to be just like you.'

The next night I was singing at the Blue Note Cafe with a trio led by the guitarist Jimmy Gourley. When I looked across the room, there was Billie sitting at the bar. She knew everyone there, and everyone knew her. When I came off the stage, she waved for me to come over. In that voice of hers, she said, 'Hi. You’d better start really singing. Be here tomorrow at the club at 2 pm. I’m going to teach you a few songs.'

So the next day I was at the club. It was just me, Billie and Mal. Billie taught me Solitude and Don’t Explain. She would have me sing and then she would correct me. She urged me to make my singing more resonant. 'Always tell the truth,' she said. Since I was just 19 at the time, I reached for the pain of my parents’ divorce to get at the emotion I needed.

Billie and I just goofed around that day—compared to what would follow. While she was in Paris, Billie wanted me to spend the days with her. So I did.

I enjoyed being with her so much. She was like a mother to me. She’d tell me to come by her hotel—The Crystal—and we’d just sit around and relax. She’d read Superman comic books, we’d talk, she’d sleep.

Billie was strict with me and practically adopted me during that period. 'You’re going to come to America some day,' she said, 'and I’ll buy you 28 flavors of ice cream. We have a place called Howard Johnson's.' I was young and had never heard of 28 flavors of ice cream or Howard Johnson's. It sounded so exciting.

Billie also was very protective. 'If I ever hear that you’ve smoked pot or anything like that, I’ll come and slap you upside your head,' she said. I had no idea why people took drugs. I was so naïve—not because I was naïve. Drugs just wasn’t in my realm or experience.

Also, Billie's stories of her hard life affected me and made me realize that drugs could easily lead to similar hard experiences that I didn’t want. Billie told me terrible stories of abuse at the hands of her husband at the time—Louis McKay. She also told me things she did to him that weren't very nice either.

When she said he had kicked her chihuahua into an empty fireplace, that was the last straw. I just said to her, 'My god, this man is a monster.' She said, 'Yes he is, babe, yes he is.'

During those days in November, Billie was paranoid—and for good reason. People had been trying to plant things on her to arrest her for drug use. She’d tell me, 'If you see a stranger coming in the direction of my room, just walk away as if you don’t know me.' Billie also would go into the bathroom for long periods. At the time, I had no idea why she was in there for so long.

Toward the end of Billie's stay, she made me my first American Thanksgiving dinner with turkey and everything. I don’t know how she got a turkey in Paris but she did. One thing she made that I didn’t like much was sweat potatoes with marshmallows. Billie loved it.

When Billie left for the States, I returned to London. BBC executives who had seen me sing on a variety show asked me to audition for a play. The play was set in Morocco, and I played a girl dressed as a boy who came to France to kill everyone. I think it was called Dr. Kabul.

That Christmas I heard from Billie. She called to talk and said she had no money. She sounded like she was in bad shape. So I tucked 10 quid—about $20—into a holiday card and sent it to her apartment on West 84th St. in New York. Years later someone had found the card in her apartment and showed it to me. I nearly broke down in tears.

In February 1959, Billie came to London to do a BBC TV show called Chelsea at 9. By then I was close friends with a lot of the London jazz community. I was singing in a much more modern, hip style and hanging out with Ronnie Scott and Tubby Hayes. I also knew Max Jones, the jazz writer for Melody Maker and a good friend of Billie’s.

When Billie arrived in London, she called me from the airport and said, 'Where the hell are you?' I knew she was coming to London but I didn’t’ know she was going to call me from the airport or that she expected me to be there.

The next day Billie was doing the TV show. So Max picked me up at 7 am. and then we picked up Billie. We were at the BBC TV studio from 9 in the morning to 9 at night for rehearsals and the airing. I was with her backstage the entire time. It was a bit difficult. She had been having a hard time in America. There was no work because she didn’t have a cabaret license and she had no money.

And she wasn’t well. She was getting thinner, more drawn and sadder. I spent the day with Billie in the dressing room, just watching over her. She couldn’t do any drugs. That would have been difficult. But she was drinking vodka and orange juice. I knew I had to stop her from going too far.

I knew Billie wouldn’t drink unless there was ice. So while she rehearsed, I melted the ice under the hot water tap. When she returned, I told her there was no more ice. She’d get cross with me. 

She was very paranoid at the time, and she would become terribly fearful if I left the dressing room for a second. If I wanted to leave to get a coffee or something, she’d  say 'Can’t they bring it here.' I just wanted to get out of there for a little bit to breathe. Whenever I would go to the bathroom Billie would follow and stand there.

I think she was aware of how scared she was becoming and felt I was the only one she could trust. If Max Jones had stayed with her backstage all day, she would have done the same thing with him.

When the TV show was over, we went to Humphrey Lyttelton’s club. There were photographers all over the place, and they took this picture of us together that became famous. Billie was wearing a gorgeous dress and looking at me with such love and admiration. When I look at that photo today, it breaks my heart. It was February 1959. Billie would die a short time later—in July.

Looking back at all of those events now, I see Billie as a mother figure. But in many ways I was really the mother. I had to take care of her and follow her around. At the time I didn’t fully appreciate who she was. Now of course, it’s all clear to me. Whatever Billie was, she was always loving and kind."

In Part 3 of my interview tomorrow, Yolande talks for the first time about the events leading up to her joining Lambert and Hendricks. Most of what's already been written is wrong, she says. She also talks about the trio's grueling tour schedule, and how she managed to memorize so many of the group's tricky songs so quickly.

JazzWax video clips To see Billie Holiday perform on TV in London in February 1959 during the BBC's Chelsea at 9 show (Yolande Bavan was in her dressing room—melting ice), go here.

If you missed the clip I posted yesterday of Yolande Bavan singing in 1963 with Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks, click here to see it. Pay particular attention to Yolande's hands as she sings her solo on Horace Silver's Come On Home.

JazzWax pix: To see the picture of Yolande and Billie together taken right after the Chelsea at 9 TV show, click here. Notice that Billie is wearing the same dress she wore earlier on TV.

JazzWax note: If you want to hear one of Mal Waldron's last albums before his death in 2002, go here to Michael McCaw's blog. Waldron was Billie's pianist during the last two years of her life. Scroll down until you reach the MediaMaster tool that lets you listen to the album for free.

Interview: Yolande Bavan (Part 1)

Sorting through my records the other day, I came across an LP that I had forgotten about but have always adored Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan: Recorded Live at Basin St. East (RCA). It was recorded at the New York club on September 6, 1962,

Staring at the cover—which features Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks flanking an exotic and elegant Yolande Bavan—I wondered whether Bavan was still on the scene. I also grew curious about how she came to replace Annie Ross in the hottest jazz vocalese group of its day and why the group recorded only 3 albums in 12 months before disintegrating.

A few phone calls later, there she was—as graceful and as charming as she appears on album covers and in video clips.  Yesterday, we had a chance to chat about her big break, her mother-daughter relationship with Billie Holiday, and her fortuitous encounter with Dave Lambert in London.

Back in 1962, when the vocal group Lambert, Hendricks and Ross was on tour at the height of its popularity, Annie Ross took ill and needed to drop out of the trio. Ross' departure left the group in a bind.

Record producer George Avakian recalls what happened next in the liner notes from Basin Street East:

"[Dave and Jon] met Yolande while she was in London and found that she was a fan of the group's and had learned several of their intricate arrangements just for fun. When a serious illness incapacitated Annie Ross a week or two later toward the end of their European tour, Dave and Jon returned to the States without her. After starting their U.S. engagement, they decided they had to take a chance on Yolande. She arrived just in time for a concert at Union College in Schenectady, New York."

To me, what made Yolande Bavan's voice so precious during her brief time in the group was her Sri Lankan-tinged English and her rich range—from husky, knowing alto to door-squeak soprano. She eagerly took risks with her voice, and those vocal acrobatics always seemed to pay off. Often clad in a sari, her very presence added an exotic maturity to the fast-singing jazz group—not to take anything away from the sublime Annie Ross.

In Part 1 of my multipart interview with Yolande, she talks about her start, her big break in Sri Lanka, and the day she set sail for England:

"I was born in Colombo, on the West Coast of Sri Lanka. My mother was a concert pianist and my father owned a foreign car dealership. My parents divorced when I was nine years old, and my mother re-married a tea planter soon afterward. I spent my early years growing up on a tea plantation, which actually was very nice.

When my parents were together, I was studying to be a concert pianist. After they divorced, I stopped playing. Divorce wasn't as accepted in Sri Lanka as it was in the West, and their split was very hard on me, emotionally.

I began listening to jazz when I was about 14 years old. There was no jazz in Sri Lanka, and what I learned I learned through records. Actually the first time I heard jazz was while listening to the radio with my father. I visited him frequently after he and my mother split up. I used to have to listen to the radio for school—which is how Sri Lankan students heard many of their lectures on Aldous Huxley and other great writers and well-know figures.

So on the night of one of my school assignments, my father was twiddling the radio knob trying to find the station when he came across a jazz program. My father stopped to listen, but I told him to change the station because I needed to do my homework. I learned later that it was airing on Radio Tangier, and the announcer was Willis Conover broadcasting to American soldiers stationed abroad.

Each night, after his first encounter with jazz on the radio, my father would try to find that jazz station. When he finally did, he and I would listen, and he'd make the most astute observations. For example, he'd hear Sarah Vaughan sing and say, 'That sounds like a choir of angels in her voice.' Or when he'd hear Charlie Parker, he'd say, 'That man is in pain.' My father gave me a feeling for the music.

My father's passion for jazz grew quickly. He was friends with three other men who loved jazz, too. One was a drummer, the other was an Australian radio announcer and the third was a jazz writer—who today lives in New Jersey.

Back then, whenever a big ship came into Colombo from America, my father's three friends would stand by the docks and become friendly with the African-Americans working on the boats. Then whenever the ships returned, the workers would bring records and sell them to my father's friends. They'd bring them back to my father's house and the four of them would drink beer shandies and listen to Sarah Vaughan, George Shearing, Miles Davis and so many others.

Though I had given up the piano, I continued to sing in the school choir. One day a few of my classmates urged me to enter an amateur-hour radio show that the Australian Broadcasting Company had set up. My friends taught me a Doris Day song, I May Be Wrong (But I Think You're Wonderful). I went to the contest, sang the song and won the competition. The prize was a little bimonthly radio show called Swing Time, and I sang with a piano, bass, drums and guitar.

After a few shows, one of the guys in the band insisted that I travel outside Sri Lanka to gain exposure. So he sponsored me to go to Australia. I was 16 years old at the time. I wasn't scared traveling on my own. When you're young, you're not scared of anything. I wish I had that much courage now.

When I arrived in Melbourne, Australia, in 1956, I stayed with Sri Lancan friends. A short time later one of my friends took me to a gathering at the home of Graeme Bell, the leading jazz pianist in Australia at the time. He was playing with a quintet at the party, and my friend urged me to sing something. Graeme was eager to hear me, too. At the time I thought I could sing better than anyone else in the world, even though I was probably dreadful. So I sang St. Louis Blues.

Graeme felt there was something in me and asked me to join his group as the vocalist. I was staggered—Graeme was so well known. We then played around Australia and traveled to Japan and Korea. I saw my first snow there. Graeme's group played Dixieland jazz and then backed me on jazz standards like Stormy Weather and St. Louis Blues.

In my head, I was already moving on musically, listening to modern jazz and getting more be-boppy. When Graeme and I ended our tour in Japan, he decided to stay an extra six weeks and got me on all the big TV shows there with him. In Japan, I met and played with  pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi and saxophonist Sadao Watanabe. They had a quartet, and I would sing with them.

Graeme and I returned to Australia after Japan. Four month later I returned to Sri Lanka. I had been away for about a year and a half and was happy to be home. I missed my family, but I had changed. I wanted to perform in Sri Lanka but there was no jazz platform there. No one understood what I was singing. They were all into pop music.

So at age 18, I decided I wanted to travel to London. My mother arranged with an aunt of mine for me to stay with her friend there. In 1957, I sailed by myself on a ship that crossed through the Suez Canal and up through the Mediterranean, arriving in England about two weeks later. That's where everything began for me."

Tomorrow, in Part 2, Yolande Bavan talks about her close relationship with Billie Holiday in 1958 and 1959, what Billie taught her about singing, Billie's Thanksgiving meal, and the trick Yolande used to keep Billie from drinking during a BBC broadcast in February 1959.

In Part 3, I will cover Yolande's big break with Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks and the group's year in the limelight. There may even be a Part 4 on Yolande's encounters with Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae and many other jazz greats.

Wax tracks: Lambert Hendricks & Bavan: Recorded Live at Basin Street East is a smart album. I often listen to it several times in one sitting, and I always wish the album ran longer.

Of the three albums the group recorded, I find this one to be its best outing, primarily because the material selected suited the group perfectly and the vocal arrangements were swinging and breezy without trying too hard to be hip.

Unfortunately, the CD from the 1990s is out of print. A mint copy of the RCA LP is currently going for $50 on eBay, but it can be purchased for much less at used-vinyl sites. Just type the album's name into Google.

The group's other two albums for RCA—Havin' a Ball at the Village Gate and At Newport '63—also are out of print but can be found on CD from used sellers here.

A CD featuring the audio tracks from a TV show in the 1960s hosted by San Francisco jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason can be found here. If you want a DVD of the TV show, it's here.

But if you own a turntable, I recommend buying a reasonably priced copy of the Basin Street East LP. From start to finish, it's what neat music sounded like just before Bob Dylan and the British Invasion yanked the plug on hip jazz vocalese.

That night in September 1962, a special excitement was captured along with Yolande Bavan's ambitious vocals and confident flair. Sadly, that excitement would last only through to the beginning of 1965.

Interview: David Amram (Part 3)

Don't start scrolling frantically for Parts 1 and 2 of my interview with David Amram. The first two parts appeared back on October 15 and 16 (click on the October 2007 archive link in the right-hand column below to catch up).

Because David is constantly on the road performing, my conversations with him about his early years and his jazz work in the 1950s have had to take place on the go, sandwiched between his hyperactive touring and composing schedule.

David is a hip hybrid. He plays jazz piano, French horn, penny whistle, assorted drums and virtually every other instrument that fits in your mouth or hands.

At age 76 (he turns 77 on November 17), David is accomplished and renown in three musical genres—jazz, world and classical. His musical contributions have been significant, winning the respect and admiration of top players and composers all three fields.

And David has done it all without ever selling out, which is  remarkable. He's a free, creative spirit (there aren't many of those left), and his outlook on life is driven by kindness and caring rather than cool and posturing, which is rare for someone of his stature.

David's jazz career alone seems impossible—lessons from Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in his basement apartment in Washington, DC, a chance encounter with Lionel Hampton in Paris that led to a key recording session, gigs with Charles Mingus at the Cafe Bohemia in 1955, and recordings with Oscar Pettiford's big band in 1957 and Kenny Dorham in 1959.

David was a boy-wonder, writing his first movie score at age 26 and penning the soundtrack to Splendor in the Grass (1961) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962). As a close friend of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Frank, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers and William S. Buroughs in the late 1950s, David probably was the only member of the beat pack to be praised by Frank Sinatra.

Which only takes us up to 1962. Detailing David's career between 1963 and 2007 would take too long—and much of it has been delightfully covered in his book, Vibrations, which was first published in 1968 and re-issued in 2001.

Instead, I chose to focus on his jazz years up through the Manchurian Candidate, which to me remains one of the most interesting jazz soundtracks ever composed.

In Part 3 of my interview below, David talks about his induction into the Army, why he lived in Paris for a year, how Dizzy Gillespie influenced his decision to return to New York, why Charles Mingus shoved an elbow into his ribs, and the testy standoff with a record company art director who wanted his group to wear white powdered wigs for an album cover:

"In August 1952 I was inducted into the Army and spent two years stationed in Germany. When I was discharged in August 1954, I decided to live in Frankfurt. I had been playing jazz French horn in the service, and  the critic Leonard Feather had mentioned me in one of his jazz columns. I was already known there.

In Frankfurt, I went full tilt—composing symphonic and chamber music, trying to write a book and playing jazz French horn, which at the time was considered to be impossible. After four months, there was zero interest in anything I was composing. So I decided to move to Paris.

From the moment I arrived in Paris, I was blown away. Even in 1955, the city was still celebrating the end of World War II. Parisians were crazy about American painters and jazz musicians. I think their love for jazz comes from a deep appreciation for  sophistication, creativity and spontaneity. The French also love their language, which is poetic, philosophic, complex and musical—just like jazz.

I found plenty of work immediately playing with French jazz musicians in the clubs. In March 1955, I was playing at a club when vibraphonist Lionel Hampton came in to listen. He soon wound up on stage jamming with us.  Afterward, he asked me if I wanted to record with him, Nat Adderley, Benny Bailey and a bunch of terrific French musicians that included pianist Rene Urtreger. I said I’d be honored.

The session was held on March 19 for the Barclay label, and it was thrilling. It was my first recording session, and all of the tunes that day were done in one or two takes. There was no music. We just went in and played.

After that date, I recorded throughout the spring with many different French jazz musicians. The Belgian saxophonist Bobby Jaspar was on most of those dates with me and was starting to attract attention. In May Bobby and I recorded with the Christian Chevalier Orchestra for Columbia. By June, Bobby and I started a quintet with Maurice Vander on piano, Eddie de Haas on bass and Jacques David on drums. We recorded an album in July for the Swing label, the first under my name and Bobby's.

I loved every minute of my time in Paris. The city and its culture were liberating for me—and for all artists. The only thing that mattered there was creativity and individuality. But when Dizzy Gillespie came over for a concert that summer, I started thinking about returning to New York.

I hadn’t seen Dizzy since 1951—when he stayed at my basement apartment in Washington, D.C. It was so nice to see him. We talked, we ate, we joked—and Parisians recognized him wherever we went. They loved Dizzy so much in Paris that they named a street after him—Rue Gillespie. 

Dizzy told me how much he loved Paris and how great it was that jazz and individualists were respected. He loved how the French questioned everything and appreciated life and people based on what each individual had to offer. It wasn’t about race, money, good looks, politics or fame. It was just about spirit.

Despite our shared love for Paris, Dizzy said, I still should consider returning to New York. He told me about all of the terrific things that were happening in jazz there. He said that if I returned I’d be in the middle of this tremendous energy and sea of creativity. The writers Terry Southern and George Plimpton, both of whom lived in Paris, also had been urging me to return given my musical direction.

So in September 1955, I decided to head home. Fortunately I had the good fortune to run into some students who said that if I played in a band on their ship, I probably could sail for free. So I signed on to play and hitched a ride to New York.

As soon as the ship docked, I went straight to a friend’s apartment and walked around Greenwich Village. I also went down to Cafe Bohemia and saw George Wallington and Jackie McLean.

When I was in the Army, Leonard Feather had seen me play in Germany and said in a column that there was a kid in the service who was doing great things on the French horn. At the time, he had urged me to give him a call when I returned to New York.

So I did. When I called, Leonard said he was having a party at his apartment on the Upper West Side and that I should come up. When I walked into his place, Osie Johnson, Billie Holiday, Dick Hyman and so many other incredible jazz artists were there. Man, I was in heaven. Leonard said he was going to go downtown to hear Bud Powell and Charles Mingus and asked if I want to go with him. So off we went.

After the gig, Mingus came over to Leonard’s table to say hi. Leonard introduced me and told Mingus I played French horn and that I was someone he should know. Mingus gave me that long, hard stare. Then he asked if I would go out on the road with him and his group for $125 a week.

I was staggered. I suppose if I had said yes, Mingus probably would have withdrawn the offer. But I said no, that I couldn't do it because I was in New York on the GI Bill studying music composition. Mingus grunted that I could learn more with him than I could in school. He told me to come to his apartment early the following week.

When I showed up, I played with him and saxophonist George Barrow. Afterward, Mingus asked me to play with them at the Cafe Bohemia the following week. When I joined them, I fit right in. Mingus loved experimental stuff.

During the period I played with him, George Barrow left and Jackie McLean came in. I couldn't believe I was playing with the same guy I had seen play just a few weeks earlier after returning from Europe. Mal Waldron was on piano, and Mingus used a series of drummers. He would fire two to three drummers a night—and they’d all be in the audience the next day listening to what Mingus and the new drummer would be doing.

I don’t know why Mingus had it in for drummers. He heard things his way. When you look at the scores he wrote, he had a whole symphonic vision of how everybody should play. He would sing your part in rehearsals, and that was it. But instead of hearing a 12-bar blues or 32-bar tune, you'd hear compositions he imagined. When you came to play, you not only were supposed to remember what he sang but also make stuff up on the spot. If things didn't sound right, the drummer was usually the first victim.

Mingus and I got along great during these Cafe Bohemia dates—with one exception. On a date during the second week, I got carried away and soloed for a third chorus. Suddenly I felt a hard elbow crunch into my ribs and a growling voice: “Only two choruses with me.” That elbow hurt but it was a valuable lesson—figure out what you want to say and do it in tight period of time.

Mingus and I remained friends over the years. I loved playing with him. One of the problems in our society is that we consider people who are spiritual and have psychic powers to be nuts or not very serious. Mingus had these qualities, as do most great jazz musicians. As a result, I don't think he or his music have ever been fully understood or appreciated.

When I finished playing with Mingus in early 1956, I was living on the Lower East Side and playing in jam sessions at loft parties. People would rent raw space for a party, and jazz musicians would show up and play there.

In the summer of 1956, I wrote my first movie score for a documentary by Hal Freeman called Echo of an Era. It was about New York's Third Avenue elevated subway, which was demolished that year. I was going to play the eight-bar piano solo I had written but there was this young pianist I met who had never made a record who was terrific. I thought it would be great to have him play what I wrote. His name was Cecil Taylor. It was his first time in a recording studio. We'd laugh about that date every time we'd meet over the years.

During this time I was playing piano in small clubs with a bass player and drums. One night a guy named Mel Rose came up to me and said he had never heard anyone play piano like that before. I said, "That’s because I’m not a piano player. Actually, I'm a French horn player."

Rose was with some small label and said he wanted to record me. Like with Mingus, I think if I had said sure right off the bat, he probably would have walked away. But I said no, not to play games but because I had too many other commitments.

But Rose kept calling me. I told him I had a group with a wonderful sax player and that he should come hear us. The guy said he didn’t really like the saxophone, that there were so many saxophonists around and that the French horn wasn’t really a jazz instrument.

Finally Rose came down to my Lower East Side apartment and hiked up the six flights to hear our quartet play. He liked what he heard but realized it wasn't for him. He said he had a friend, Harold Webman, who was an A&R guy at Decca Records and might want to record us.

I called Hal and we clicked right away. Decca was recording a lot of new music on the East and West coasts as part of a series called Jazz Studio. The date's leader was free to write and record whatever he wanted without interference from a producer.

I played French horn and piano, George Barrow was on tenor sax, Arthur Phipps was on bass and Al Harewood was on drums. We recorded the album in January 1957. I think the album was played regularly on a radio station in Harlem, and over the years it has become an underground hit.

If you look carefully at the original record cover, you’ll see what looks like four white rags hanging on the gear. In fact, they were white powered wigs that the art director wanted us to wear. At the time, a lot of records had half-nude women on the cover and other stuff to make the jazz musicians look like clowns.

We refused to put them on. I told the art director that we all respected Mozart and all of the other classical musicians who were servants in the European court system and only wore them because they had to. I told the guy that we were servants of a higher power—music. If Mozart were here, I said, he wouldn’t put on the wig either.

I was only 26 years old, so I still had a lot of moxie. The art director said fine, we didn't have to wear them. So the wigs remained on the side, next to the dopey candles he had there, too. The wigs and the candles turned up on the cover, but no one quite understood what they were or why they were there.

Today, I still want to record music that will stay around and be a reflection of the best of what I am able to do, not what I’m told I’m supposed to do by people who don’t have a clue about what is art and what is truthfulness."

Amen. Part 4 of my interview with David will appear next week, when we talk about Oscar Pettiford's radical big band of 1957, Kenny Dorham's Blue Spring of 1959, the 1961 date with Harold Land, and how David came to compose Splendor in the Grass and The Manchurian Candidate.

Wax tracks: David Amram's dates with Lionel Hampton in Paris are on Jazz in Paris: Lionel Hampton & His French New Sound. Volumes 1 and 2 can be found here and here.

David and Bobby Jaspar's Paris dates together can be found on Bobby Jaspar, Featuring David Amram, an import on the French BMG/Vogue label. You can find it here.

David's Jazz Studio album can be found in two different versions. You can buy Jazz Studio Vols. 5 and 6 (Vol. 5 is a compelling Ralph Burns date) on one CD here.

Or you can buy the CD with the original Decca LP cover here (to see the unworn white wigs, click on the photo). The CD features the original date plus other recordings the group made together.

A Visit With Hal McKusick

This past Sunday morning, my wife and I stopped by to visit saxophonist Hal McKusick and his wife, Jan. Hal had invited us over to his house some weeks back, and my wife and I were staying nearby on Saturday so we drove over.

Upon entering Hal and Jan's historic, shingled home, which dates from 1796, the first thing you notice is how much natural wood there is—Shaker tables, chairs, bowls, beams, floorboards and cabinets. In his spare time, Hal is a first-class woodworker and has a deep appreciation for wood's beauty—how it can be shaped with the right tools, how it cures, and how it will age. Hal and Jan's home has a warm, authentic feel that's possible only when the owner knows what to restore and what to leave as is.

In the dining room, atop a splendidly finished Shaker table Hal made a year ago, there was a full score for O Tannenbaum. When we arrived, Hal had been copying parts from his arrangement for a holiday jazz concert to be held at the private school where he teaches music. I leaned over to take a look. Hal's musical penmanship is as fine and delicate as his playing.

In the adjacent music room—which is neatly filled with photos, CDs, reel-to-reel tapes, and stereo and recording equipment—Hal showed me his Selmer Super alto and tenor saxophones. He also pulled out a silver curved-neck soprano sax from 1928. Handing me the instrument, Hal said, "Feel it." As I fingered the pads, Hal said that straight-neck sopranos fall out of tune too easily. "The curved neck models are much better and much more accurate," he noted.

Hal then showed me some of the photos he has taken over the years of jazz artists he's played with. Yep, Hal's also a top-notch photographer and has snapped hundreds of portraits, including candids of Zoot Sims (with his dog), Barry Galbraith, Art Farmer, Bobby Brookmeyer, Gerry Mulligan and many others. Like everything Hal puts his hands on, his photography is sensitive and finely crafted.

Hal and I swapped a bunch of CDs—I burned him a wide range of jazz from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and he gave me recordings made locally with his many bands. (I just started playing them yesterday and they're beautiful.) As we listened to Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra: The Post-War Era, Hal told me a bunch of stories from his CBS Studio Orchestra days.

Hal was unfamiliar with the Dorsey CD, though he knew the band well. "Actually, I was asked to be in that band but I didn't want to leave Claude Thornhill's band at the time." Quite a dilemma!

Amazingly, as we listened to the CD, Hal correctly picked out nearly every soloist in the band. At one point, while Bill Finegan's arrangement of The Continental played, Hal stopped mid-sentence to listen to the reed arrangement and then shook his head in admiration. "Man, that band was clean."

Hal then took us all out to his wood shop where he builds furniture by hand. There on his worktable was a sizable cherrywood kitchen cabinet nearing completion. Hal's wife, Jan, had requested it. When I asked how he learned to work so proficiently with wood, his answer was classic Hal: "Gee," he said, pausing, "I don't know."

In truth, nearly 30 years ago a friend had asked him to copy a Shaker table. So Hal spent weeks looking at how the original was made and pored over books on furniture. Then he set to work teaching himself how to make the piece. Today, his hand-made wood furniture and bowls are similar to his tone on the saxophone—pure and perfect.

Our wives left the woodworking studio first, and Hal mentioned that he and Jan were trying to figure out which style handles would work best on the cabinet—a narrow one or a wider one. Both had the grace and finish of chess pieces. The decision remains a work in progress.

And that was it. As the four of us said our goodbyes, Hal and Jan's dog Scooter (a fetching mix of long-haired chihuahua and terrier) came out to send us off. Another day in the life of Hal McKusick— composing, copying, woodworking, photography, teaching and listening. It's a good life.

Interview: Teddy Charles (Part 3)

By the mid-1950s, Teddy Charles was known as one of the most experimental vibraphonists on the East Coast and West Coast jazz scenes. His compositions, arrangements and strong lower-register playing were becoming emblematic of the new "cool" jazz sound. And among rapidly expanding record labels such as  Prestige and Atlantic, he was fast becoming known as an all-business talent who could assemble top jazz artists and produce distinctively different recording sessions.

What's more, Teddy Charles' ability to hear an arrangement once and know exactly what was needed on vibes led to a growing number of R&B sessions with artists ranging from LaVern Baker to King Curtis.

I spoke to Teddy last week about how he got his start and his breakthrough recordings of the early 1950s . In Part 3, Teddy recounts his work from 1955 on:

"In July 1955, Charles Mingus wanted to record Miles Davis for his Debut label. Mingus and I had been out on the road for several months and we often played together down at the Half Note in New York. There was no jealousy between us over who would be the leader. We just played.

I already knew Miles—he had come up to my apartment in the late 1940s and had worked out chords on my piano for Budo, one of the Capitol singles that became part of the  Birth of the Cool album. Everyone used to come up to use my piano—it was cheaper than renting a rehearsal room.

The album Mingus wanted to record was called Blue Moods. It would feature four standards. He asked me to write arrangements for three of them—Nature Boy, There’s No You and Easy Living. Mingus wrote the chart for Alone Together. He decided to use Britt Woodman on trombone and Elvin Jones on drums, who had played with us on the road. We didn't need a piano since I was covering that role on the vibes.

The date should have been a lot better than it turned out to be. We recorded Nature Boy first without a hitch. Alone Together was next. It was going along great until we hit a bump. Even though Mingus had brought Elvin on, the two of them didn’t get along. When a copying mistake cropped up that no one had caught, Mingus took it out on Elvin.

The problem was that one of our parts for Alone Together had been copied incorrectly. As we were playing along, someone was playing the wrong notes. Mingus thought it was the drums. So we all came together to compare our parts, going over them measure by measure. Then we found the problem. The copyist had added four extra bars in the middle of my part.

The mistake was on Mingus, since his copyist had handled his arrangement. The copyist is the guy who writes up the parts for the musicians based on the score written by the arranger. But Mingus took it out on Elvin. I thought they were going to come to blows. After things quieted down, there still was enormous tension in the studio. The groove was gone and it never returned.

Miles fell out over the Nature Boy chart. He just loved the harmony I used on there. And Mingus’ bass playing way at the bottom was great. With my style of writing, everything always depended on what the bass player would do down below.

Mingus really was the greatest bass player ever—he played the bottom solid. Paul Chambers was super but he swung mostly on the top of his instrument. Mingus instinctively knew what had to be played in an ensemble. Teddy Kotick was great, too. So was Oscar Pettiford. But Mingus had an extraordinary sound, from a player's standpoint.

By late 1955, I was writing even more adventurous music, which led to the formation of my Tentet. It featured me on vibes, Art Farmer on trumpet, Don Butterfield on tuba, Gigi Gryce on alto, J.R. Monterose on tenor, George Barrow on baritone, Mal Waldron on piano, Jimmy Raney on guitar, Teddy Kotick on bass and Joe Harris on drums.

Nesuhi Ertegun, who produced jazz at Atlantic, suggested I do the Tentet album. I don’t recall how we got together. I think I made the proposal. At that time, to record anything with a high budget—10 guys on a date—you had to have a meeting. I had sketched out three or four arrangements and got the go-ahead.

The charts for the January 1956 recording session were written by me and top arrangers such as Gil Evans and George Russell, who weren't getting much work at the time. I also asked Jimmy Giuffre for a chart. He said he'd mail it to me from California. I said, "If you mail it, how can we be sure we'll get what you want just right? This is delicate stuff." He said when it arrives, just play it down. So we played it, and the chart was perfect the first time. Jimmy was amazing. I also remember Don Butterfield brought three different tubas to the date for different tonalities.

From 1956 on, there were so many R&B and jazz dates, it's hard to remember all the details. I recorded with the Metronome All Stars in June 1956, I recorded Word from Bird in October, Coolin’ in April 1957, the Brandeis concert that was recreated in the studio in June 1957, and many record dates in between.

In October 1957, I wrote charts for and produced the Amazing Mr. Sam Most. Most played flute and clarinet, Hall Overton was on piano, Jimmy Raney on guitar, Addison Farmer on bass, and Roy Haynes on drums . There also was a string section. I wrote all those string charts. I took a few months of violin lessons just so I could write for them, learning all five positions on the instrument. Most arrangers write a few lines and leave it to the string players to work out what should be played. I wanted to do the charts and put everything into it. It was nerve-wracking because it was very difficult to write for them correctly. 

In 1958 I recorded with Benny Carter and with Little Jimmy Scott. In February 1959 I recorded Salute to Hamp. The album was my attempt to give listeners an album that as more accessible after I'd done all those far out records. I figured this material would be music anyone could relate to. Art Farmer, Bob Brookmeyer, Zoot Sims, Addison Farmer and Ed Thigpen were on that date. In 1959, I recorded with Mingus on Mingus Dynasty, which was tremendously exciting.

There were so many recording sessions with so many great musicians during this period—I just can’t remember them all.

By the late 1960s, I decided I had said what I wanted to say musically. Sometime back in the 1950s, while working with Mingus, I had begun scuba diving and fell in love with the ocean. So in the late 1960s I bought a sailboat—a 72-footer called the Golden Eagle—and sailed the Caribbean for 13 years. The boat was docked in the Virgin Islands and I’d sail it back to New York in the spring with a crew of five. Then I settled where I am now, playing occasionally but mostly focusing on sailing and taking clients out for sailing trips. I recently sold my old schooner built in 1906. Now have just a small boat—a 45-footer called The Pilgrim.

If I were summing up my career, I'd say that I didn't play the vibes like a vibes player. I think I played in a style that was much more compositional. My approach wasn’t percussive like Lionel Hampton’s or like Milt Jackson’s unique style. I think what made my style different is that I played the vibes like a pianist."

Wax tracks: Miles Davis' Blue Moods is worth hearing but  most of Teddy Charles' other recordings are much more inventive. As Teddy points out, the mood and the music on this album didn't quite gel the day the tracks were recorded. I recommend sampling before you download.

Word from Bird is a strong, up-tempo vibes album that features band and small group ensembles. It can be found here.

Coolin' is an extraordinary album. The combination of Teddy Charles on vibes, Idrees Sulieman on trumpet and John Jenkins on alto is perfect. Unfortunately it's out of print but can be purchased used through independent sellers here.

The Teddy Charles Tentet album is a collection of interesting "third stream" compositions and arrangements by Teddy. It also features playing by some of the best jazz musicians of the day. It can be found here.

Salute to Hamp features straight up jazz in its tribute to Lionel Hampton—with a modal overtones, which makes the album particularly fascinating. Stompin' at the Savoy is a perfect example of how Teddy could take his cool style and adapt it to a standard. The album can be found here.

Interview: Teddy Charles (Part 2)

By 1950, jazz was being pushed—and pulled—in several new directions. Bop's frantic formula was nearly exhausted, and a new musical sophistication or "cool" was being adapted by an ever-widening roster of musicians—from Miles Davis and Gerry Mulligan to Max Roach, Lenny Tristano, Sonny Rollins and Lee Konitz.

As jazz tastes changed, the vibes' role evolved from novelty percussion stand-in to an instrument with enormous potential. By 1950, producers at the growing number of independent record labels recognized that in the right hands, the instrument could be as dynamic in small groups as the piano—perhaps more so.

Dominating the experimental vibes scene in the early 1950s was Teddy Charles. Of course, Milt Jackson played a significant role in the elevation of the instrument with the Modern Jazz Quartet. But Charles' playing was more adventurous and free-wheeling at the time, and the MJQ was focused initially on giving standards the chamber treatment.

Quick footnote: Both Teddy Charles and Milt Jackson were signed by Prestige Records in 1952. In fact, Teddy Charles' breakthrough recording, New Directions Vol. 1, and the Modern Jazz Quartet's first recording, MJQ, were both recorded for the label—a day apart in December 1952.

Yesterday, in Part 1 of my interview with Teddy, we covered how the striptease drummer and Juilliard percussionist and pianist got his start on the vibes.

Today, Teddy talks about the early half of the 1950s, when he made the first of his revolutionary recordings:

"Once I left Oscar Pettiford at the end of 1950, I was ready to lead my own group. My training at Juilliard and work with Chubby Jackson and Pettiford gave me all the confidence I needed to starting playing and recording the adventurous music I had been writing.

But another change was needed. Up through the end of 1951, I had still been recording and leading groups as Teddy Cohen. Then my manager said he was having a tough time booking a band whose leader had a Jewish name. So I began using my middle name—Charles—as my last name.

In 1952, I was leading a quartet—with Jimmy Raney on guitar, Dick Nivison on bass and Ed Shaughnessy on drums. We recorded New Directions—four sides for Prestige. This was a big date. I was starting to move into serious experimental writing, shifting away from pure entertainment music to much more adventurous charts.

In early 1953, I started to A&R for Prestige Records. Bob Weinstock, the label’s founder, asked me to move to the West Coast and put dates together. As an A&R guy, you picked the artists, you decided what music to play, and you often arranged the songs.

When I got to California, Red Norvo helped me a lot. In Los Angeles, musicians were supposed to sweat out their union card—meaning you couldn’t take a steady gig in a club for six months. This rule was in place so you didn’t come in and take away another musician’s job. Red kept me busy during this period by having me play with a mambo orchestra. Then I started playing casually at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach.

Red was great. He showed me how to use the four-mallet technique without having to change my grip. Four mallets are ideal for a big background sound since you're playing chords instead of notes. I adapted easily to the technique given my experience as a pianist.

During this period I was leading Teddy Charles and the Westcoasters with Frank Morgan, Wardell Gray, Sonny Clark, Dick Nivison and Larance Marable. We recorded a bunch of sides for Prestige. Sonny was a young kid then, and Wardell and I were buddies from Benny Goodman’s band. Wardell was a great tenor player and a good guy. In Benny’s band, we used to go upstairs at New York's Paramount Theater where they had a basketball court for employees and jam. Benny sat in on a couple of those.

By mid 1953, I recoded a date at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach. Stan Getz sat in. Bob Cooper was there, Jimmy Giuffre, Russ Freeman, Howard Rumsey, of course, and Shelly Manne. Giuffre was very creative. He always came up with new stuff. The Lighthouse was a hopping place. Lots of chicks.

In August 1953 I recorded in Los Angeles with Shorty Rogers on trumpet, Curtis Counce on bass and Shelly Manne on drums. By this time, I was writing even more complex music. I remember I was rehearsing this group I was going to record for Prestige. The group included Chet Baker, Stan Getz and Al Haig. But the only one who was into the music was Al Haig. Chet had a good ear and Stan could play anything, but Chet couldn't read music and Stan wasn't into it. He wanted to play that kind of laid-back music all the Lighthouse guys were into then. New music wasn't his bag.

Around that time Chet asked my advice on whether he should go to New York. I said no, that he wasn’t ready. He was so naïve then. Chet was convinced he was in Miles’ league and went anyway. There was something about him that drove musicians nuts. He made it all look too easy. So musicians would go out of their way to make him look bad, like getting him hooked on junk.

Of course, individuals choose to take drugs. But someone put pressure on him just to throw him off his game. When he got to New York he played Birdland and soon afterward the country boy was all screwed up. What a shame.

In 1954, I decided to return to New York. Prestige didn’t have anything else for me to do on the West Coast, and I didn't really enjoy the West Coast anyway. There was a big difference between East Coast and West Coast musicians. East Coast guys played with more attack and emotional drive.

In January 1954 I recorded The Teddy Charles Quartet, Featuring Bob Brookmeyer. I was on vibes, Bob on valve trombone, Teddy Kotick on bass, Ed Shaughnessy on drums and Nancy Overton on vocals. We really had something going there. Occasionally Bob would play piano. I also recorded with guitarist Mundell Lowe that year. We had known each other for years.

In January 1955, I formed a quintet that featured J.R. Monterose on tenor, Charles Mingus on bass and Jerry Segal on drums. We recorded Evolution that month. Man, J.R. had a great big sound.

I had known Mingus for some time. We had played a lot together—at The Embers, a trendy club on New York's Upper East Side. We went to the beach together, hung out. We were into music 100%, from the time we got up to the time we went to bed. No teaching, nothing. Just playing. But we’d take breaks, too, as friends.

In May, I recorded with Ralph Sharon on piano, J.R. Monterose on tenor, Joe Puma on guitar, Mingus on bass and Kenny Clarke on drums. I can't remember who wrote the charts, but they were supposed to mimic the George Shearing sound. They were a kick.

Right around this time I started to get called to do a lot of R&B work with Bubber Johnson, Henry Glover and Mickey Baker. Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records got me these sessions, many of them for King Records. These dates continued off and on throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s. I got these dates because I was the only guy on the New York scene who could play that stuff. I didn’t need anyone to write me parts. I’d hear it and know what to do right away.

Most of the guys who played the vibes at the time were limited. I had a good listening background, and because I could play with four mallets, I could fill in the background with sustained chords. The producers didn’t want any empty space. The purpose of the vibes on those dates was to fill in the sound when there was no singing or blowing. But I’d go beyond that. My piano experience let me put together chords with just four notes and voicings that were partial to the lower register. Those were good, fast paydays."

Teddy Charles pushed the vibes into new territory in the first five years of the 1950s. Like the music written by Gerry Mulligan, Gil Evans and George Russell, Teddy's compositions were experimental—and different than anything else that had been heard before on the vibes.

Part 3 of my interview with Teddy Charles will appear on Monday (go here)

Wax tracks: Teddy Charles' work with Buddy De Franco in 1949 and 1950 (mentioned in Part 1) can be found here. The album is called Buddy De Franco: 1949-1952 Studio Performances. Although Teddy is listed on the dates in discographies, his name appears to be missing from the CD, which may owe something to the fact that he hadn't yet changed his name from Cohen to Charles.

Teddy's stunning four sides for Prestige in December 1952 (originally issued as New Directions Vol. 1) are available on a Japanese re-issue of a 1964 LP that combined Ezz-thetic (Lee Konitz and Miles Davis) with New Directions (Teddy Charles and Jimmy Raney). You can find it here. I purchased this CD  recently, and the sound is wonderful. What's more, Teddy's ideas remain exciting and way ahead of their time today.

Teddy's four sides recorded with Wardell Gray in February 1953 can be found here on Wardell Gray Memorial, Vol. 1. Or you can get them combined with the August 1953 dates with Shorty Rogers here on Adventures in California.

Teddy's West Coast Lighthouse sessions of May 1953 with Stan Getz is on a CD called Stan Getz and the Lighthouse All Stars. It can be found here.

The four adventurous sides Teddy Charles recorded with Bob Brookmeyer in January 1954 is on a CD called The Dual Role of Bob Brookmeyer and can purchased used from sellers here. Like New Directions, these recordings are delightfully out there.

The Teddy Charles-J.R. Monterose sessions from May 1955 —including the charts that adapted the Shearing sound—can all be found here on a CD called Jaywalkin'. They are outstanding, and the Shearing-esque tracks (including Manhattan, Have You Met Miss Jones and There's a Small Hotel) are gems.

Wax videoclips: I couldn't find a clip of Teddy Charles from this period. But I did find this trailer of a documentary on the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, where Teddy played in 1953. Go here to see it.