JazzWax

Charlie Parker and Voices, Part 2

Charlie Parker was fond of vocalist Dave Lambert. And who wasn't? In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Lambert was adored by bop musicians for his hip, modern singing style and relentlessly energetic personality. So when he was asked in the spring of 1953 to write vocal arrangements for an upcoming Parker recording date, Lambert barely could contain himself. Norman Granz would be producing and Gil Evans would be writing the musical arrangements and conducting. The session was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and the ambitious, experimental singer rolled up his sleeves and set to work.

But when tape started to roll on May 25, 1953, it became clear to everyone in the studio that Lambert's vocal charts were too ambitious. Instead of writing for a small group of singers, Lambert scored for 12. Perhaps he wanted to impress cool school titan Gil Evans. Or maybe he wanted to match or top the famed Parker With Strings date recorded in 1949. Whatever the reason, Lambert's vocal writing certainly was interesting but ultimately over the top. The singers on the date struggled, and upward of nine takes were needed on each track.

Hal McKusick is one of the last surviving musicians from that date. Hal played played clarinet in Gil Evans' ensemble of four woodwinds and French horn. Yesterday, in Part 1 of my essay on this unusual Parker session, Hal offered a theory on why the date fell short of  expectations. Today, in Part 2, Hal shares additional details and reflects on why a fourth song wasn't recorded that day:

JazzWax: What was it like playing with Charlie Parker on this session?
Hal McKusick: Fantastic. It was one of the most precious moments in my career, being close to the musician I admired most. Bird could play with anyone—strings, vocalists, it didn’t matter. You could put just a tuba in the room, and Bird would play beautifully with him.

But there were only so many takes of a song Bird or anyone could record before becoming frustrated, especially when the problem had nothing to do with him or the musicians. Bird was always a gentleman, and he liked Dave, which is why you hear him calling for additional takes. He could hear the problems, knew the session was having trouble and wanted Norman [Granz] to have solid master tracks.

JW: So Bird must have sensed the session wasn't coming together.
HM: Oh that was clear from the start. To keep Bird focused and relaxed, Gil put a bottle of vodka behind the heavy curtains that lined the walls and told Bird about it. At one point, during a break, Bird went searching for the jug. He went behind the heavy curtains, and you could see his round form feeling his way along. Then you saw his form behind the curtain pause when he discovered the bottle. He was there for about a minute.

When Bird was done, instead of going back the way he came in, he kept moving around the room, inside the curtains, hunting for an opening, which took a while. The guys in the woodwind section remained respectful but we were hysterical inside. Finally, Bird burst out through an opening, and the session continued.

JW: Gil Evans' writing for the woodwinds on the intro to If I Love Again is blistering. Did the ensemble rehearse that?
HM: Rehearse? No. You never rehearsed for a record date back then. You were hired because you could sight-read charts cold and play them perfectly the first time. If you look at the personnel, you had the best session musicians on that date. These guys didn’t make mistakes. Plus a rhythm section of Mingus, Tony Aless on piano, and Max [Roach], whose  brush work was great and remains overlooked on there.

Back in the 1950s, top record producers didn’t have time for musicians to rehearse. They didn't want to go into overtime because overtime meant money they didn't want to spend. Besides, most of the musicians on these dates had to leave by a specific time to make other recording sessions. You came in, the parts were on the music stands, you sat down and went to work. I never rehearsed for a single record date, except for some of the tracks on my Jazz Workshop album for RCA.

JW: Was Bird distracted by the Dave Lambert Singers' vocalese style of singing?
HM: No way. Bird blew through everything. Every take was a beaut. The vocalists were trying to get it together, and Dave was struggling. He'd rehearse them the best he could in between takes to get them on track. Simplicity would have been better for Dave—a unison line with fewer singers rather than so many harmonies. It was too ambitious. The vocals wound up stepping all over Gil’s instrumental charts—but not Bird’s solos.

I think Dave knew the charts were a mistake. But there was nothing he could do about it once we started. They could have removed the vocals completely, of course. Actually, I’m surprised Norman and Gil didn’t at least try a take or two without them. We must have been running out of time, and without the vocals in place, Norman wouldn't have had the commercial effect he wanted. But just the instrumentals with Bird on top probably would have made for better listening today.

JW: On the alternate takes, when Norman announces the numbers, he says the word “speed.” What did that mean?
HM: Back then, when a producer said “speed,” that was the engineer’s cue to hit the button on the tape recorder to start recording. By the time the musicians began playing a few seconds later, the tape-recorder reels would be up to speed.

JW: Rumor has it that there was supposed to be a fourth tune recorded that day. True?
HM: I don’t know. But a fourth tune would have made sense. Four tracks were the norm during recording sessions to cover both sides of two 78 rpm records. Three tracks is odd. But those three took so long to record that day—false starts, alternate takes and breaks. The session was probably over on the clock before we could record the fourth song. When you ran over the three hours of time customarily used to record, the producer had to spend more money. Norman must have decided against this.

JW: Did you see a fourth arrangement?
HM: As I think back, I don’t recall seeing a fourth chart on the music stands that day. Maybe Gil and Dave hadn’t finished it. Or maybe it was supposed to be recorded on another day with more arrangements.  Since Norman wasn’t exactly thrilled about the first day’s work, I suppose there was little incentive to bring us back in to record.

And that's what Hal saw back in 1953. In the final analysis, these three odd tracks are always better than I expect but never as good as they should have been. Yet there's something about imperfection that's human and appealing.

Clearly, these tunes were quirky, sappy and shamelessly commercial. Nevertheless, you still hear Parker blowing line after beautiful line trying to help save Lambert's noble but misguided effort. And for that alone, this session is more than just another record date. What you have here is evidence of Parker's ability to overcome even the thinnest musical setting—and his character as he stands up for a dear friend in creative trouble.

JazzWax tracks: If you download Charlie Parker: Big Band or copy the CD's songs onto your computer, try doing what I did: Once you import all the alternate takes, false starts and masters, take a minute to arrange the songs so they appear in order—just as the session occurred that day. (The song titles at iTunes indicate the takes, and they're listed on the CD.)

Doing so lets you hear the date's full dramatic story, in chronological order. It's like gathering the loose pages of a short story and stapling them together. Listen chronologically and you'll hear Max's accelerated brush work, Bird's "one more, right now, right quick" push for additional takes, and a gaggle of too many hip singers struggling to swing in tune.

Charlie Parker and Voices, Part 1

Charlie Parker's first pop record was an accident. In late December 1947, the great alto saxophonist wandered into the studio at Carnegie Hall where arranger Neal Hefti was rehearsing his orchestra in preparation for a recording on The Jazz Scene, producer Norman Granz's ambitious album of 78 rpms.

Parker loved what he heard and asked Neal if he could play a solo on the harmonically inventive tune. Hefti was overjoyed, but he had no time to rewrite the arrangement around Parker. So Hefti simply had the orchestra play the song twice—once unaccompanied and again with Parker soloing—clocking the entire song at under the three-minute 78 rpm recording maximum. The result was Repetition, which is how the early "cool" standard got its name.

Over the next year and a half, producer Granz couldn't shake the sound of Parker's bluesy alto soaring in and out of Hefti's strings. In November 1949, he brought Parker into the studio to record a full album of standards with strings. Just as Granz had suspected, the result was a whopping success. Just Friends, one of the sides, became a juke box hit, and Parker appeared in concert with strings frequently between 1950 and 1954.

By the spring of 1953, Parker and Granz decided to take another pop shot at mainstream success. This time, instead of strings, they would use voices as a backdrop. Billie Holiday had already recorded successfully for Decca in 1948 with a choral group called the Stardusters. But using a formal choir in 1953 was out of the question. Traditional background vocal groups were no longer in vogue, having been shoved aside by hipper, more free-wheeling vocalese ensembles with bop sensibilities.

The idea of Parker backed by swinging voices may have sounded great over drinks, but the match up in the studio proved to be problematic from the start. Ultimately, only three out of four vocalese tracks were recorded on May 25, 1953, and Granz's patience was stretched thin. Parker played beautifully on the date, and the woodwinds and French horn arrangements by Gil Evans (above) were inventive and "cool" sounding. But the vocal arrangements by Dave Lambert (pictured with Annie Ross and Jon Hendricks) were another matter. Lambert had overreached, and the result was a bit of a mess.

How could such a nifty idea wind up so strained? One of the last remaining musicians from the Charlie Parker session is Hal McKusick, who played clarinet on the date and had a bird's-eye view of the session. In Part 1 of my chat with Hal about this recording session, he reflects on the dynamics between Parker, Granz, Lambert and Evans and offers a theory about its conception:

JazzWax: Where was this recording session held?
Hal McKusick: At Fulton Recording Studios, at 80 W. 40th St. in New York, on the fourth floor. The building is across from Bryant Park. It looked like a mansion inside. William Randolph Hearst had had a bachelor apartment there. The room where we recorded had huge ceilings—about 30 feet high—with thick curtains along the walls running from the ceiling to the floor to keep outside sound out and the music in. The engineer’s booth had a large glass window and was up high. You had to climb a small staircase to get to the booth’s door.

JW: How were the musicians set up in the space?
HM: The room was gigantic. The Dave Lambert Singers—10 or 12 of them—were on one end and the woodwinds and French horn were on the other. Both groups faced the rhythm section in the middle—drummer Max Roach, bassist Charles Mingus and pianist Tony Aless, who had played with Woody Herman for years.

Bird played in front of the rhythm section. Twenty feet separated each group to keep the rhythm section from bleeding acoustically into the voices, and the voices from bleeding into the woodwinds.

JW: Who wrote the instrumental charts?
HM: Gil Evans wrote the arrangements for the woodwinds, French horn and whatever was needed for the incredible rhythm section. Dave Lambert was responsible for the vocal charts. We recorded three tracks that day—In the Still of the Night, Old Folks and If I Love Again.

JW: What was the big problem on that date?
HM: The voice parts were way too complicated. Gil’s charts were beautiful and complex, as always. His arrangements always could push your buttons, musically. But Dave’s vocal charts were heavy, and by the time everyone realized this, it was too late. The recording session was already underway.

JW: Was Dave aware of that?
HM: I'm sure he was. But in all fairness to Dave, he was in over his head. First, there were too many singers.  Dave could have accomplished the same goal with better results if he had used four. All of us in the woodwind section knew it at the time. Second, Dave wasn’t skilled enough as an arranger to write for so many singers. What's more, the singers weren’t polished enough as a group to pull off what Dave had in mind and had written.

JW: But Dave led a group of singers.
HM: Dave was terrific when singing take-offs on jazz instrumentals and writing for small-group things. But to write structured charts for so many singers behind arrangements by a guy like Gil Evans requires enormous skill. When you're writing for 10 or 12 singers, you have no choice but to double up voicings. This means two or more vocalists need to sing the same notes. It’s the only way a vocal group can be heard clearly.

But doubling up parts means greater room for intonation error, since you’re more likely to hear somebody wavering off the written notes. When a voice wavers, it throws everyone else off, or the producer catches it and calls for another take. It’s like two people walking a tightrope out of synch. Someone’s more likely to fall. That happened quite a bit that day. The vocal charts were too hard to sing. The result was false starts and re-takes.

JW: Why did Dave get the job to write for voices in the first place?
HM: You know, I don’t know. I never understood why Gil didn’t’ write the vocal charts himself. I know he would have written for four singers and kept the lines simple—accompanying Bird rather than competing and running all around his solos. Or he would have scrapped the vocals entirely. Gil’s woodwind writing alone was good enough to have sustained the date.

My best guess is that Dave pitched Bird on writing for a vocal ensemble. Bird had already recorded with strings, of course, and the voice approach was probably for contrast. Bird in turn must have spoken to Norman [Granz] on Dave's behalf, insisting that Dave be allowed to do the vocal writing. That’s the only way that could have happened. Gil and Norman’s hands had to have been tied to some extent. It was a risk, but an experiment that fell short.

JW: Bird and Dave were close, weren't they?
HM: Yes. As you know, Dave and Bird had a good working relationship since the late 1940s, when the  Dave Lambert Singers appeared with Bird at the Royal Roost. Besides, the Dave Lambert Singers were extremely popular in the early 1950s as vocalese became popular with jazz listeners. 

For Norman [Granz], adding vocalese was probably a commercial decision. I just don’t think he realized how hard and costly it was going to be to pull it off musically. He probably just thought he had to worry about Bird  on the date. That day, Bird was the least of his troubles. Bird played beautifully, as he always did.

JW: What happened on In the Still of the Night? It starts out almost chaotic.
HM: In the Still of the Night was the first tune we recorded that day. On the first take, Bird counted off the tempo. But Max pushed it way up. I’m guessing it was a competitive thing between Max and Bird. Or Max may have been frustrated by the commercial sound of the date. He also could have been unhappy about his role as just a timekeeper and wanted to test or challenge the singers.

JW: So Bird just ramped up following the tempo?
HM: Bird being Bird, he responded to Max with majesty—and wasn’t going to be outdone. So he took the first take fast, too. But the poor singers, they could barely get the words out. We had several incomplete takes. At the session it was very funny! It broke up the musicians.

Little by little, the later takes slowed. Norman was losing money and patience. By the seventh or eighth take, the pace was perfect for the singers, who had become more comfortable—or as comfortable as they were going to be.

JW: Was Gil actually there?
HM: Oh yes, he was conducting. Dave was standing with his singers. Gil was always very calm and concerned at record dates. When he wrote for Claude Thornhill’s band in the late 1940s, we’d rehearsed at Nola Studios on Broadway. He’d conduct and take us through the phrasing and dynamics. Then he’d go to the back of the studio and lie on the floor and listen to us play with his eyes closed. To shut everything out. But he didn’t do that on record dates. It was too expensive. Time was money.

Tomorrow, in Part 2 of my interview with Hal on Charlie Parker and the ill-conceived voices session, he talks about what Parker did on the date to relax and the likely reason why there wasn't a fourth side recorded that day.

JazzWax tracks: The three tracks vocalese recorded on May 25, 1953 can be found on many different Charlie Parker CDs and collections. If you're interested in hearing the masters and alternate takes for In the Still of the Night, Old  Folks and If I Love Again, download Charlie Parker: Big Band at iTunes or here.

I've always been fond of these Charlie Parker recordings. I see them less as a disaster and more as a quaint failure. There's something innocent and sweet about them—and very early 1950s in their commercial context.

To hear the genius of Gil Evans' writing, you merely have to listen to the intro on If I Love Again, with its swirling bucolic spiral of woodwinds setting up Parker and the Dave Lambert Singers. The fact that the musicians on the date—clarinet, flute, oboe, bassoon and French horn—didn't rehearse and played the intro cold is somewhat amazing given how tricky Evans' arrangement sounds.

Was this Parker's best outting? Of course not. But it's hardly without merit. Think of it as a snapshot in time—when jazz artists were experimenting with pop and pop singers were experimenting with jazz.

Doug Ramsey: Paul Desmond Part 2

Paul Desmond recorded five albums with Jim Hall in a quartet setting. The first was made in September 1959—two months after Desmond recorded Time Out with the Dave Brubeck Quartet. At the time, Desmond wanted to record as a leader, and he chose a guitar for his quartet (Hall) instead of a piano to honor a promise he had made to  Brubeck years earlier.

One can't help but wonder, of course, whether Desmond and producer George Avakian also had the Hal McKusick Quartet (1955 and 1956) and Lee Konitz Quartet (1957) in mind when the guitar decision was made. Alto saxophonists McKusick and Konitz both had similarly seductive horn sounds and used identical configurations in their earlier groups—Barry Galbraith on guitar with McKusick, and Billy Bauer on guitar with Konitz. Interesting to ponder.

But back to the subject at hand. In Part 2 of my interview with Doug Ramsey, the esteemed jazz critic, blogger, novelist and Paul Desmond biographer reflects on the group's five albums [that's Doug and his wife with Desmond in 1973]. Doug  also talks about why so many bass players were used on the dates, the prank Desmond pulled on producer George Avakian, and his five favorite quartet tracks:

JazzWax: What was going on in Paul’s life when he recorded his first album with Jim?
Doug Ramsey: Between the time Take Five was recorded with Dave in July 1959 and the first Quartet album with Jim in September, Paul had a busy life. He had just moved to New York and was enjoying the city a great deal. He had a terrific apartment at 55th and 6th. It was a short walk from the best museums and restaurants and all the things Manhattan had to offer.

He also was doing quite a bit of dating. In pictures, Paul may look nerdy to some, but he was an incredible charmer. Part of his success with some of the most attractive women of the day was that he treated them as equals. He listened to them. He was curious about them. And he was unfailingly polite and considerate. That was a magic formula that many men during that period hadn’t yet discovered. Come to think of it, many men today still haven’t discovered it.

JW: Why do so many people dismiss the Desmond Quartet sessions as too light?
DR: I think it’s obvious that the playing on their five albums sounds relaxed and laid back. But what’s often overlooked is the high level of musicianship taking place on those so-called laid-back sessions. Many people tend to think of the recordings as “easy listening” albums compared to what else was being played and recorded between 1959 and 1964.

But jazz musicians and careful listeners view them differently. They hear the high level of skill and knowledge on those tracks—and the gifts required to pull off that kind of playing. Listen carefully to the blues pieces Paul and Jim play, like Eugene Wright’s Rude Old Man on the Easy Living album. You hear two master blues players.

In truth, Paul was a genius player of the blues. Just listen to his solo on Audrey from Brubeck Time. No one has ever played a blues solo remotely like that. Maybe Bix Beiderbecke, but not on a record that I’ve heard. It’s just brilliantly inventive and individual blues playing.

JW: Do you have a favorite Paul Desmond Quartet album?
DR: While I favor First Place Again, I think of the albums recorded by the group as a consistent body of work rather than five separate albums. It was four guys getting together and having a good time and playing tunes. It just happened that these guys were playing at the highest possible musical level. They certainly weren’t concept albums, although RCA tried to package them as if they were. But that can be forgiven because they used such gorgeous women on some of the covers. Desmond made it a project to get to know those models. And he did.

JW: There were quite a few bass player switches on the different albums—Percy Heath, Eugene Wright, Gene Cherico, George Duvivier and Milt Hinton. Why?
DR: That’s life in the big city in the music business. Players had commitments and conflicts. It wasn’t as if Paul had to settle. All of those bass players were top flight. Bassist Gene Wright told me how pleased he was that Paul had asked him to be on the Take Ten date. Gene [pictured on the right] said, "I didn’t feel I was in the direction he and Jim Hall were going, but we did it, and it was a ball.” I asked Percy Heath about those quartet dates. He said they were “all fun. Paul was a beautiful player.”

JW: On all five albums, it’s clear that Desmond and Hall were very much in synch.   
DR: They were. The interaction between them was very subtle, funny and unique. I can’t think of two other players who tossed it back and forth the way they did on those albums. Listen for the muscle and swing and power of their playing. Listen for the lyricism and inventiveness. These two guys were powerhouse players—not in the Gene Ammons-Sonny Stitt, tough-tenor sense. Rather, they had a solid swing feeling in every tune they played, except for the slowest ballads, of course.

Paul and Jim are overlooked in that regard. Also, remember that many of these tracks were captured on the first take. In some cases, there were several takes of tunes. But I’ve heard most of those alternate takes on the studio tapes and, except for a couple of tracks, it’s really not clear which was the better take, the released one or the alternates.

JW: On each of these albums, Paul sounds very deeply involved with melody and counterpoint.
DR: Very much so, and he disliked distractions. Or more accurately, he didn’t want the other people involved to be distracted. On one of the sessions, Paul was bugged because when he looked up occasionally into the control room while he was playing, he saw producer George Avakian on the phone. So during a playback, Paul told the other guys to go into the booth and wait. He went out into the hall to a pay phone, called the booth and said, “George, it’s me, Desmond. How was that last take?”

When I was researching the biography, George gave me a perfectly plausible explanation for having been on the telephone. But it was too late; Paul dined out on that story for years.

JW: What are your favorite tracks from these five albums?
DR: Wow, that’s a tough one. Each tune has its own personality. But if I were recalling pieces off the top of my head, I’d say...

• For All We Know, from First Place Again (1959).
• The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else, from Take Ten (1963). There’s something endearing about that one.
• Rude Old Man, from Easy Living (1963).
• All Across The City, from Glad to Be Unhappy (1963)
• The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, the first take, from Bossa Antigua (1964).

Ask me again tomorrow and I’ll probably name five others altogether.

JW: Were Paul and Jim happy to reunite on Concierto?
DR: Jim and Jane Hall were among Paul’s most intimate friends. They spent a lot of time together throughout his two decades or so in New York. So, even though Paul and Jim hadn’t recorded a quartet album for years, my guess is that Paul and Jim were always glad to play together and thought of that occasion as a continuation more than a reunion. Everybody played beautifully on that date—Paul, Jim and Chet Baker. And what a rhythm section: Roland Hanna, Ron Carter and Steve Gadd.

JazzWax tracks: As Doug Ramsey pointed out at Rifftides yesterday, it's getting harder and harder to find the box set of these albums. You can still buy the albums separately. If you want an introduction, download The Best of the Complete RCA Recordings at iTunes. Or just download Bossa Antigua, which for me is their best work together.

You may also find it a kick to to compare two other alto-guitar-bass-drums quartets that preceded Desmond's. Listen to Hal McKusick's East Coast Jazz (1955), Jazz Workshop (1956) and Jazz at the Academy (1956), and Lee Konitz's Tranquility (1957). The sound and sensitivity were already in place. 

JazzWax video clip: To hear what all the fuss was about over Paul Desmond, dig this clip of These Foolish Things. It features the Dave Brubeck Quartet performing at the University of Rome in October 1959—just a month after Desmond's first recording with Jim Hall and three months after Time Out. Listen to Paul powder this standard—with beautiful line after beutiful line. It's so pretty it's heart-breaking.

And listen as pianist Dave Brubeck tries to out-delicate Paul, perfectly illustrating Doug's points today and yesterday about their musical conversations. Fabulous!

For fast future listening/viewing, simply go to the "Videos" section in the right-hand margin and click on Paul Desmond's name.

Doug Ramsey: Paul Desmond, Part 1

Few jazz albums are as delicate and as clever as those recorded by the Paul Desmond Quartet featuring guitarist Jim Hall. Unfairly belittled and often maligned as "dinner music," the five albums Desmond and Hall made between 1959 and 1964 are deceptively ingenious. For those in the know, they remain flawless jazz recordings. Every tune these musicians touched became perfect executions laced with soul-touching ideas and playful interchanges.

To probe the backstory of these sessions, I called Doug Ramsey. In addition to writing Rifftides, the web's most authoritative and popular jazz blog, Doug is a fabulous jazz critic and novelist (Poodie James is his most recent work). Doug also is author of the most definitive Paul Desmond biography: Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. This coffee-table size book is as beautiful to thumb through as it is to read. Every jazz artist should be so lucky to have such a literary and photographic tribute. (By the way, Doug's photo above was taken by the great William Claxton.)

In Part 1 of my interview with Doug on the Desmond-Hall collaboration, he talks about their first album, why Paul used a guitarist and not a pianist, why Dave Brubeck's Time Out recorded months earlier was not released for almost two years, and the differences between Paul's playing with Brubeck and Jim Hall:

JazzWax: Who came up with the idea to pair Paul Desmond and Jim Hall?
Doug Ramsey: My guess is that it was Paul's idea, though it could have been George Avakian's. George had produced the Dave Brubeck Quartet's albums at Columbia and left to join Warner Bros. to develop the pop album side. When Paul told him in 1959 that he wanted to record on his own again, George helped him put a session together. Paul brought in Jim Hall, who was a significant guitarist on the jazz scene in New York.

The first album, First Place Again, was such a hit that George produced the Quartet's next four albums between 1961 and 1964 after he moved to RCA.
Paul had not recorded with Jim or bassist Percy Heath or drummer Connie Kay prior to First Place Again—a title Paul hated, by the way. Jim was more familiar with Percy and Connie, having recorded with them and the rest of the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1957. But Paul knew Jim's playing well and admired it a great deal. He also was very fond of Percy and Connie.

Jim, of course, had been familiar with Paul's work for a long time. He was in the audience when the Dave Brubeck Quartet played the famous concert at Oberlin College in 1953. He drove there from Cleveland, where he was studying at the Institute of Music. That was two years before he went to Los Angeles and eventually joined Chico Hamilton. In some ways, I think First Place Again was the best of the group's five albums. There's a real sense of discovery of one another's playing. 

JW: Paul Desmond had a lot going on in his life when First Place Again was recorded in 1959, didn't he?
DR: When the album was recorded in September 1959, Paul had made Time Out with Brubeck a few months earlier in July. That album, of course, went on to become one of the most popular jazz records ever recorded.

But Time Out—with Take Five, Strange Meadowlark and Blue Rondo a la Turk—hadn't been released yet and wouldn't be until early 1961. That was because the executives at Columbia hated the idea of an album of originals with strange time signatures. They were convinced it wouldn't sell and wanted another collection of standards. So they held up the release. When the album finally came out, Take Five quickly became the first million-selling jazz single.

So Paul was at the top of his game in September 1959—even though what would become his best-known album wasn't out yet. Keep in mind, by the fall of 1959, the Brubeck Quartet had already achieved huge success and was touring almost nonstop. Paul was enormously busy on the road. First Place Again was something he squeezed in on the side.

JW: Why did Desmond want to record separately from the Dave Brubeck Quartet? Was he dissatisfied?
DR: Recording as a leader was not new to Paul. From the beginning of the Brubeck Quartet in 1951, he established a reputation as a soloist and began winning polls. It wasn't a matter of dissatisfaction with the Brubeck group. It was supply and demand. There was a demand for him. Fantasy Records answered it first by recording him under his own name in 1954. He had an agreement with Brubeck that, to avoid consumer confusion with the Brubeck quartet, he wouldn't use pianists on his own records. Guitar was a logical substitute.

JW: Was Desmond's playing with Jim Hall different from his work with Dave Brubeck?
DR: As both of them often pointed out, from the beginning, Dave and Paul had uncanny empathy. They expressed it, in part, through their unique approaches to counterpoint. The differences between Brubeck and Hall lie in their musical personalities. Dave has a lot of thrust, a lot of emotion, in his soloing. And yet, in his accompaniments and in counterpoint, he could lean back and lighten up for an intimate kind of interchange. By contrast, there were certain differences in Paul's playing with Jim Hall, naturally, because Jim's approach was consistently lighter and lacier, although he could swing hard.

The combination resulted in a more delicate sort of interaction. Some of that difference lies in the natures of the guitar and the piano, some in the individual personalities. By the way, I agree with what [Desmond's childhood friend] Hal Strack told me for the Desmond biography—that Paul's sound was hugely influenced by Lester Young and Artie Shaw. There'™s a soulfulness and purity to Paul's playing that was unlike anyone else's approach to the alto saxophone. 

JW: Desmond's exchanges with Hall sound just as intense as with Brubeck—but different. True?
DR: Paul and Jim were close friends, and Paul often talked about how much he enjoyed playing with Jim and the rapport they achieved together. He also mentioned how different that musical relationship was from playing with Dave, who was, in a profound sense, Paul's best friend for decades.

Paul conducted different types of musical conversations with Dave and Jim. I don't buy the notion that Dave simply provided a dense platform on which Paul was able to play. For years there was an orthodoxy of belief among jazz musicians that without Paul, the Dave Brubeck Quartet would have been just another group. I've never bought that. There was a close musical and personal relationship between Paul and Dave. One wouldn't have made it big without the other.

Dave and Paul's musical conversations were simply different from those with Jim. Let me see if I can express it this way: With Dave, the conversations went like this: "Oh, you can do that? Well, try this, then we can do it together." With Jim, the dialogue was more, "Oh I see what you're saying. Interesting. Let me add this and see what you can come back with."

Tomorrow, Doug and I chat about the Paul Desmond Quartet's five albums, why so many bass players were used on the different sessions, the prank Paul pulled on producer George Avakian, and Doug's five favorite tracks.

JazzWax video clip: While I could not find a video clip on the Paul Desmond Quartet featuring Jim Hall, here's Desmond playing Take Five with the Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1961.

Hal McKusick's Pen Pals

Hal McKusick was there. Since the early 1940s, he has played with every jazz great you can think of, and the sheer number of top recording sessions he's on is staggering. That's a lot of tricky sight reading and perfection the first time through. [Photo on right courtesy of G. H. Strauss, 1993]

Starting in 1943, Hal has recorded with bands led by Les Brown, Boyd Raeburn, Alvino Rey, Ralph Burns, George Handy, Buddy Rich, Claude Thornhill, Terry Gibbs, Neal Hefti, Bill Harris, Charlie Parker, Gil Evans, Don Elliott, Elliot Lawrence, Billy Byers, Quincy Jones, Ernie Wilkins, George Williams, Coleman Hawkins, Gene Krupa, Andy Kirk, George Russell, Nat Pierce, Urbie Green and Erroll Garner. And I'm only up to 1956.

And the number of great arrangers Hal has known personally and recorded with over the years is easily double or triple the list above. So when I asked Hal earlier this week for a list of his favorite penmen, he thought for a few minutes and then said in that soothing voice: "Yeah, let's give it a shot, but I'm sure I'm going to overlook other notables. We'll just add to the list."

Here are Hal's top nine arrangers, in no particular order:

Al Cohn—"Al was fabulous. I loved everything he wrote. Listen to what he did on Lady Chatterley's Mother for Gerry Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band. His sax soli on that track is amazing. I also love Theme, the ballad with cellos he wrote for my album, In a Twentieth-Century Drawing Room."

Tiny Kahn—"Anything Tiny wrote could swing with great taste. Tiny's arrangement of T.N.T. that we played in Elliot Lawrence's band is a terrific example of Tiny’s writing style. Had Tiny lived—he died of a heart attack in 1953—he would have been one of our most prodigious composers and orchestrators.”

George Handy—"His early pieces for Boyd Raeburn, like the Stravinsky-influenced Dalvatore Sally, were fantastic. Or The Bloos, written for his own orchestra in 1946, is wonderful. And, of course, his charts for Zoot Sims' album, Zoot Plays Four Altos were outstanding and good forever!”

Johnny Carisi—"Most people forget Johnny wrote Israel, which was recorded by Miles Davis' "Birth of the Cool" band and became a standard. His arrangements for Urbie Green in the mid-1950s were sensational. Stella by Starlight, for one, has a unique voicing and voice leading. He could write for any size group. He also wrote for a four-sax band I led in the mid-1950s that toured but unfortunately didn’t record. The saxes were Dave Schildkraut, me, Sol Schlinger and Al Cohn, with Bill Evans and Eddie Costa on piano. Those were great charts. Some of this sax material I recorded on Cross-Section Saxes with me, Frank Socolow on alto, Dick Hafer on tenor, Jay Cameron on baritone and Bill [Evans], Paul [Chambers] and Connie [Kay].”

Manny Albam—"Manny is another nearly forgotten hero. I love all of the pieces he wrote for my quartet on East Coast Jazz, which featured me, Barry Galbraith, Milt Hinton and Osie Johnson. His charts for cello on my album, In a Twentieth-Century Drawing Room, also were so sensitive. Manny could write beautifully for any size group, but I preferred his arrangements for three, four or five players. He was a master at putting lines against lines, contrapuntally, in the jazz idiom.”

Johnny Mandel—"The orchestrations Johnny wrote for Boyd Raeburn with vocalist David Allyn, and his charts later for Tony Bennett, are remarkable. Also, his writing for Buddy Rich's big band in the late 1940s, The Eagle Flies for Boyd, his charts for Elliot Lawrence in 1956, and Plymouth Rock for Basie remain great. He also wrote amazing charts for my Jazz Workshop album. Of course, Johnny was a terrific songwriter as well. Emily and Shadow of Your Smile were beautiful. He had it covered from every standpoint. He could write a lush string arrangement or a cooking chart for a swinging big band or for quartets.”

Gerry Mulligan—"I love the charts he wrote and played with Chet Baker, as well as the ones for his Concert Band. The same is true for his Claude Thornhill work and “Birth of the Cool” band. I played in his Concert Band in 1957, but I was too busy with other studio and recording work back then to travel with the band and get more involved in it.”

Neal Hefti—"Neal was and is one of the greatest arrangers. He had outstanding bands when we recorded in 1951, 1952, 1954 and 1955. Stan Getz and Kai Winding were in those groups, along with Tal Farlow, Bobby Hackett, Phil Woods and Don Lamond. They were fabulous bands. Hefti’s charts were clean and refreshing, and his rehearsals always were a lot of fun.”

Ralph Burns—"Ralph and I went to high school together in the early 1940s in Newton, Mass. I recorded with him on his album, Free Forms, in 1946 and with trombonist Bill Harris in 1952. I also recorded on Ralph’s Perpetual Motion album. That band was something else and included Roy Eldridge, Jimmy Hamilton, Al Cohn, Flip Phillips, Danny Bank, Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown and Louie Bellson. Ralph’s arrangements were completely comfortable to play. They were always rich with woven textures, depth and warmth. He wrote with passion and was deeply influenced by Ellington and Strayhorn.

JazzWax tracks: Here are links to the tunes and albums Hal mentions above...

Al Cohn's Lady Chatterley's Mother can be found on Gerry Mulligan and the Concert Jazz Band at the Village Vanguard (1960) here—or you can download it at iTunes.

Al Cohn's Theme is on Hal's In a Twentieth-Century Drawing Room (1955), which is out of print. But much of the album is available on Hal McKusick Quartet here. This two-CD set from LoneHill Jazz combines four albums by Hal and is a must own. Joining Hal on these dates were Barry Galbraith, Milt Hinton and Osie Johnson, with arrangements by Gil Evans, George Russell, Manny Albam, Jimmy Giuffre and Al Cohn.

Tiny Kahn's T.N.T. is on the CD, Elliot Lawrence Big Band: Swings Cohn and Kahn (1956). It's a fabulous album and can be purchased here.

Dalvatore Sally (1945) is on a Boyd Raeburn compilation called Jewells. You can download the track at iTunes.

The Bloos is on The Jazz Scene (1946) and can be found here along with the other tracks recorded by Norman Granz for an album  of 78 rpm's released in 1948.

Zoot Sims Plays Tenor & Four Altos (1957) combines two albums—Zoot! and Zoot Sims Plays Four Altos. George Handy wrote the swinging charts on both albums, and the CD features Zoot all the way. It can be found here.

Stella by Starlight arranged by Johnny Carisi is on All About Urbie Green (1956) and can be purchased here. Hal's Cross-Section Saxes (1958) is a joy on the ears from beginning to end. You can find the album on a Japanese CD. Or most of the ablum's tracks are available for much less on a terrific Hal McKusick compilation called Now's the Time here.

Hal's East Coast Jazz (1955) is out of print and hard to come by. But much of the album is on the Hal McKusick Quartet double-CD mentioned above. Hal's Jazz Workshop (1956) is still in print and can be purchased here. This CD includes his quartet, octet with Art Farmer, and septet with Jimmy Cleveland and Sol Schlinger. Like all of Hal's albums, this one feature the very best arrangements and showcases his smooth and lyrical alto sound.

Ralph Burns' Free Forms (1946) and Perpetual Motion (1955) can be found here and here respectively.

Hal McKusick on Urbie Green

Last week, saxophone legend Hal McKusick and I were talking about Boyd Raeburn's band from the mid-1940s and the staggering number of visionary arrangers Boyd had on board. Raeburn's penmen included Ed Finckel, George Williams, Johnny Richards, Johnny Mandel, Tadd Dameron, Ralph Flanagan, Dizzy Gillespie, Juan Tizol, George Handy and others.

One listen to Flanagan's chart for Hep Boyd's or Finckel's Little Boyd Blue from the mid-1940s and you'll know instantly why Raeburn's band was not only years ahead of its time but also the birthplace of 1950s orchestration. Hal played in Raeburn's bands of 1944 and 1945—and in virtually every other remarkable orchestra of the 1940s and 1950s.

"Hey, if you like the charts written for Boyd, get your hands on the Urbie Green albums with arrangements by Al Cohn and Johnny Carisi," Hal said. "They are something else."

"Wait, I think I just bought an Urbie Green set," I said, rummaging through a small stack of unopened CDs on my desk. "Here it is, I've got it. Let me have a listen and I'll call you back."

As usual, Hal was right. The two-CD set is Urbie Green Big Band: Complete 1956-1959 Recordings (LoneHill Jazz). Hal adores Urbie's playing, and I can't recall the last time I've been this excited about a CD set. Urbie is one of the finest trombonists of the 1950s with the purest and glossiest sound. If you dig big band music from this period with aces-up arrangements, your ship has arrived.

The two CDs combine four Urbie Green LPs—All About Urbie Green and His Big Band (1956), Let's Face the Music and Dance (1957), Jimmy McHugh in Hi-Fi (1958) and The Message (1959).  The arrangements are by Johnny Carisi, Al Cohn, Irwin Kostal and Urbie himself. A quick scan of the personnel tells you instantly why the writing sounds so good. The best session guys of the 1950s were on the dates—including Hal McKusick, Al Cohn, Sol Schlinger, Boomie Richman, Gene Quill, Johnny Carisi, Bernie Glow, Hank Jones, Osie Johnson, Barry Galbraith, and on and on.

Which got me thinking. Hal is probably the only jazz giant around today who not only knew all of the best arrangers of the 1940s and 1950s personally but also played their cutting-edge charts on record dates. So I asked Hal for a list of his favorites pen men and the charts that stand out.

Tomorrow, Hal will share that list along with remarks on what made each writer special. For now, see if you can get your hands on that Urbie Green set. It's going fast.

JazzWax tracks: Urbie Green Big Band: Complete 1956-1959 Recordings is becoming increasingly hard to find but may still be available here and here. The beauty of these dates is that Hal's horn is featured on most of the tracks above the reed section, which is no wonder since all of these arrangers adored his cool sound and phrasing.

If you want to hear what Boyd Raeburn's band sounded like in the mid-1940s, spend $2 and download Hep Boyd's and Little Boyd Blue at iTunes. You'll find them under Boyd's name on an album called Jewells.

JazzWax video clips: Urbie Green had—and still has—one of the most beautiful trombone sounds. Go here and here to see Urbie in the early 1970s with Bobby Hackett. And go here for a huge swinger with Urbie, Georgie Auld, Roy Eldridge, Buster Bailey, Johnny Guarnieri, Stuff Smith and other heavy-hitters in 1958.

Mundell Lowe, Part 4

In the late 1950s, jazz guitarist Mundell Lowe was playing, arranging and contracting dates for jazz recordings, TV shows and commercials. Known for his impeccable chord changes and round, confident solo style, Mundell was on top of his game by 1960. But the music industry was changing, and Mundell grew increasingly frustrated by rock's growing influence.

In the final installment of my four-part interview, Mundell talks about the 1950s guitar scene, the making of Satan in High Heels, Carmen McRae and why he relocated to California. He also talks about Bill Evans' Waltz for Debby and resolves the question over who it was written for:

JazzWax: Was there cutthroat competition among jazz guitarists back in the 1950s?
Mundell Lowe: Goodness, there were so many great players. You had Tal Farlow, Chuck Wayne, Barry Galbraith, Billy Bauer, Sal Salvador, Kenny Burrell, Barney Kessel, Jim Hall and on and on. But we were all friendly. There was plenty of work to go around.

JW: Even for gigs?
ML: If you walked into a club where another guitarist was playing, he'd motion you to come up and play. And you did. It wasn’t like it was later, when the opportunities dried up and jazz musicians were cutting each other’s throats for work. At that point, musicians suspected you were showing up just to take their gig away. It's hard to believe today, but everyone got along. It was a tight club, and we helped each other.

JW: Your score for Satan in High Heels remains one of the great movie soundtracks. How did your involvement come about?
ML: That was the first film I ever scored. The producer, Leonard Burton, called me up in 1962 and said he had made this skin flick, which by today’s standards I guess is pretty tame. He said he heard some music I wrote for the NBC Orchestra and that this film might be my cup of tea.

So I had a meeting in New York and ironed out the business end. Then we set up the dates. The film editor started putting film together and called me to spot the film and reels—which means to figure out where the music is going to go.

JW: What did you think when you saw the film?
ML: To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what to think. It was pretty trashy. But I wanted to write for film and this one was as good as any to try out new things, musically. As I started to live with the film, the music I wanted to write came into focus. I decided I would do a jazz score, and the arrangements I created turned out to fit the film perfectly.

JW: You brought in some amazing talent for the date.
ML: I got the best guys I could find—Joe Newman, Doc Severinsen, Clark Terry, Urbie Green, Al Cohn [pictured] and others. It was an all-star group. Hey, they had to pay rent, too!

JW: What's it like to score a film?
ML: It's tricky business. It took me about three weeks to spot the film and write the score. Then the guys came in, we put the parts up on the stands and had to record so each song lasted a specific amount of time—not a second over or under.

But hitting the clock just right takes time, even for pros. You need to work out the tempos and then finish each piece of music at exactly the right moment in the film. There's no room for error.

JW: What was your biggest obstacle?
ML: Musician fatigue. By the time I scored the film, I knew from writing for commercials that trying to complete pieces of music according to a time sheet saps the concentration of musicians pretty quickly—no matter who the artist is. Too many takes to finish on the dot causes musicians to start screwing up.

So I decided to create breaks in extended pieces of music by overlapping the cues. A cue is a fancy movie term for the music you’re recording for a scene. So if I had a cue that ran 4 ½ minutes, I’d break it into three segments and write an overlap between the second and third segments.

JW: Explain a little.
ML: OK, if I had three separate segments that made up a 4 ½ -minute piece of music, I'd write an easy-going chord, like a C-7, at the end of each segment.

JW: Why?
ML: At the end of the first cue, a sax, say, would run down the C-7 chord. Then we'd take a break. When we returned, the sax would then start the next segment by running down the same chord. This would allow the segments to be spliced together later seamlessly—without the music sounding chopped up or low-energy.

JW: Very cool. How did you figure that out?
ML: It's a trick I read in a great book on scoring for film by arranger Russ Garcia. The book is called The Professional Arranger Composer. I read it a couple of times and understood all the techniques I needed to score a film.

JW: You first recorded with Carmen McRae in 1954. She loved your pretty sound.
ML: We recorded and played together for years. After we recorded Bittersweet in May 1964, she said she was going to use me on guitar for all her dates. She had originally hired another big-name guitarist to play on Bittersweet. But he didn’t understand what Carmen was up to, so I got called in to replace him.

JW: Is being an accompanist tough?
ML: Not if you remember one rule. My philosophy has always been that when you’re playing with a singer or a sax, they are the feature. Period. You are supporting them. The minute you try to override them, you lose.

JW: You played behind so many singers. Which one had the quickest temper?
ML: Carmen. She was a very talented lady but she had bad management. Back in those days, agents had a lot of control. Carmen didn’t have enough strength and pull to take care of herself. When things got away from her, as they often did, she could become pretty tough.

JW: You left New York for good in 1965. Why?
ML: I began to see the handwriting on the wall. The business was going down. I had been at NBC for 13 years as a staff musician and they were getting antsy about retaining staff. Rock was coming in strong, and all the money was being diverted to promote it.

In early December 1965, my family went out to Los Angeles to spend the holiday season with Ed Shaughnessy’s family. When I flew out to join them, I ran into Jackie “Skippy” Cooper—you know, the child actor. By then he had become a big TV director for Screen Gems. Jackie said he had heard some music I had written and asked me to move out to Hollywood and score for television.

I asked my wife at the time what she thought. She said let’s do it. So we went back to New York, I packed up everything, put my family on a plane, and a week after Christmas 1965 we were living in California. I also went to work for Columbia Pictures and wrote for the movies.

JW: Was rock a factor in your decision?
ML: Rock was just something that producers dreamed up to make money. It had nothing to do with art. I’m glad I made the move out to California and avoided the whole rock scene. Rather than sell out, I was able to do what I wanted to do—and sleep at night.

JW: Bill Evans' Waltz for Debby—who was it written for?
ML: It was written for two Debbys—my daughter and Bill's niece. Both were named Debby. My Debby was 3 years old when Bill played in my trio with Red Mitchell in the early 1950s. He liked her very much. The tune was a melody Bill had been fooling around with since college. It was a foregone conclusion that he wrote the song with both of Debbys in mind.

Attention, Ohio: Mundell will be playing in Cleveland with guitarist Mike Magnelli, bassist Dave Morgan and drummer Val Kent on January 23d and 24th at Nighttown ...and in Dayton at Gilly's on January 26th.

JazzWax tracks: Satan in High Heels is one of the great sleeper jazz soundtracks and a must-own. The movie is camp and seedy, but Mundell's incidental music is dynamic and swinging from start to finish. Best of all, it's available as a download at iTunes. Search under Mundell's name.

Dig the personnel on the Satan in High Heels soundtrack: Joe Newman, Doc Severinsen, Clark Terry [pictured] (trumpets), Urbie Green and Buster Cooper (trombones), Jimmy Buffington (French horn), Ray Beckenstein (alto sax and flute), Walt Levinsky (alto sax and clarinet) Al Cohn, Al Klink (tenor saxes), Sol Schlinger (baritone sax), Eddie Costa (piano and vibes) Mundell Lowe (guitar), George Duvivier (bass) and Ed Shaughnessy (drums).

At iTunes, sample Coffee Coffee and the cha-cha, From Mundy On. Enough said.

Mundell's 1964 album with Carmen McRae, Bittersweet, also is available at iTunes, as is his latest album, Haunted Heart, with singer Jim Ferguson.

JazzWax video clip: In this clip from a 1987 TV show, Mundell plays Waltz for Debby with guitarist Louis Stewart. It's my favorite clip of Mundell's, and I was saving it as a treat for today. I think it sums up Mundell's playing beautifully. Enjoy!

Interview: Mundell Lowe (Part 3)

Mundell Lowe got his start with bandleader and drummer Ray McKinley in 1946 and rapidly built a name for himself in the late 1940s. Between 1947 and 1952, Mundell played and recorded with a long list of top jazz artists, including Billie Holiday, Mary Lou Williams and Charlie Parker.

By 1953, Mundell was one of the most sought-after session guitarists in the business. During the 1950s, he recorded with the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, Georgie Auld, Dick Hyman, Joe Wilder, Ruby Braff, Tony Scott, Ben Webster, Cannonball Adderley and Donald Byrd along with many others. He also began recording as a leader for Riverside Records and became the go-to guitarist of singers such as Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, Lee Wiley, Chris Connor, Blossom Dearie and Sammy Davis, Jr. 

In Part 3 of my four-part interview with Mundell, he talks about Bill Evans and Ben Webster:

JazzWax: You are often credited with discovering Bill Evans. How did that happen?
Mundell Lowe: I first met Bill when I got out of the army after World War II. I was in New Orleans and he was at Southeastern Louisiana University. My brother-in-law took me over to hear him. I loved Bill’s sound right away. When we met, I told him that when he graduated, he had to come to New York and that we’d gig.

JW: Did he take you up on your offer?
ML: Sure enough, as soon as he graduated in 1950 he called. I put together a trio—me, Bill and Red Mitchell on bass. We never recorded, though. Producers at the time weren’t interested. Can you imagine? I did record something Bill played for me on my  little Webcore machine, which recorded onto a wire.

Our trio played a couple of gigs in New York and then went on the road to Illinois. We sounded great, but our management agency kept booking us into beer joints and places like that.

JW: It's hard to imagine Bill, his head over the keyboard, in a dive in the middle of nowhere.
ML: I know. What's worse, the people who were in those places couldn’t have cared less about what we were playing. For them, we were just there for background music while they got loaded and geared up for fights. One bar even had chicken wire around the stage and up to the ceiling so we wouldn’t get hit by flying beer bottles. It was like playing in a chicken coop. That was definitely weird.

JW: Why didn't the trio work out?
ML: When we returned to New York we couldn’t get work. We had to disband. Red joined Woody Herman. Bill went down to his mother’s place in Florida. And I picked up gigs and session work with Billy Taylor, Benny Goodman and Louis Prima.

JW: You were the one who told Riverside Records' producer Orrin Keepnews about Bill?
ML: By the mid-1950s, I signed with Riverside Records, and Orrin was a friend. I told him, “You need to hear this guy, Bill Evans. He plays wonderfully.” I knew that Orrin was trying to build a catalog for the label. He said, “OK, OK, send him over and I’ll listen to him.”

The rest, as they say, is history. Bill’s first album as a leader, New Jazz Conceptions, came out in late 1956. Up until that point, Bill had been a sideman and wasn't thought of as a leader by producers yet.

JW: You recorded with Ben Webster in the late 1950s. Big temper?
ML: Not with me. I recorded with Ben on his date, The Soul of Ben Webster for Verve, and he recorded with me on my date, Porgy & Bess: Mundell Lowe and His Orchestra for Camden. Both were done in July 1958.

Ben was fantastic. People said he had trouble getting along with others, but we liked each other very much. We used to hang out all the time, and Ben would play the most amazing stride piano for me.

JW: But he could be plenty tough, yes?
ML: Oh sure. One night Ben, Billy Taylor and me were talking in front of Birdland on 52d St. and Broadway. Out of the dark a junky came up to us, scratching his face and asked for money so he could get fixed. Ben told him to take a walk.

The guy continued as if he didn’t hear Ben or didn’t care what he had said. Ben told the guy again to split or he’d force him to. The guy was high and kept saying, “I have to get my soul together, you dig?”

Ben used to carry this big walking stick with a silver lion’s head on top. Eventually the guy got a little too close. Ben lifted the stick up and cracked the guy with the lion’s head. The guy went down like a sack. Then Ben turned to us and politely said, “Let’s go and get some coffee.”

JW: Yet he was such a tender player.
ML: Sure—and as a person, deep down. When Ben moved to Copenhagen in 1964, he used to call me every few months at four or five in the morning. He didn’t understand the time-difference thing. He’d be juiced and crying. He'd tell me how much he wanted to come home and how much he missed it here.

I told him to come on home. There was plenty of work. But he'd say no, that he couldn’t leave. That he was plenty busy. But so lonesome for home. It was so sad. Those calls would break my heart. He just had a better life over there and knew it. But he still had such nostalgia for his life here.

Tomorrow: In the final part of my four-part interview, Mundell  talks about his swinging score for Satan in High Heels, Carmen McRae, and why he packed up his family in 1965 and moved to California.

JazzWax tracks: Mundell recorded frequently in the 1950s as a leader, as a session player and as a singer's accompanist.

Mundell's early 1950s Sauter-Finegan dates can be found on a number of CDs, inclduing Inside Sauter-Finegan. Mundell's first album as a leader, for RCA in 1954, is available only on a 10-inch LP—The Mundell Lowe Septet.

Mundell's recordings as a leader for Riverside Records include The Mundell Lowe Quartet (1955), Guitar Moods (1956), New Music of Alec Wilder (1956) and A Grand Night for Swinging (1957).

Mundell's duet album with Sammy Davis Jr., Mood to Be Wooed (1957), is available only as an out-of-print Japanese CD.

Interestingly, most of Mundell's Porgy & Bess (Camden) was recorded on July 16 and 17—five days before Miles Davis began recording Porgy & Bess with the Gil Evans Orchestra (Columbia). Mundell's session featured Art Farmer on trumpet, Don Elliott on mellophone and vibes, Tony Scott on clarinet and baritone saxophone, Ben Webster on tenor sax, George Duvivier on bass and Osie Johnson on drums. Unfortunately, the CD is out of print, but a used copy is going for around $70.

Mundell's two TV Action Jazz albums from 1959 and 1960 featuring Clark Terry, Donald Byrd, Eddie Costa, Jimmy Cleveland, Urbie Green, Herbie Mann and Tony Scott have been combined on one CD that's available here.

JazzWax video clips: Here's Mundell with the Billy Taylor All Stars in May 1958 playing Flying Home. That's Ben Webster on tenor, Buck Clayton on trumpet, Benny Morton on trombone, Billy Taylor on piano, Mundell on guitar, Eddie Safranski on bass and Ed Thigpen on drums. How'd you like to follow Big Ben, Buck and Benny with a solo? Yikes! And how about Billy Taylor!

I've added this clip to my "Video" listings in the right-hand column under Mundell Lowe's name so you can access it any time.

Interview: Mundell Lowe (Part 2)

Mundell Lowe ran away from his Mississippi home at age 16 to play jazz guitar but was drafted into the army two years later, in 1942. Before shipping out, Mundell met producer John Hammond. After Mundell was discharged in 1945, Hammond introduced him to bandleader Ray McKinley, and Mundell played with McKinley exclusively in 1946.

Between 1947 and 1948, Mundell recorded in groups with Helen Humes, Buck Clayton, Jo Jones, Peanuts Hucko, Davie Tough, Billy Taylor, Cootie Williams, Dinah Washington, Benny Goodman, Fats Navarro, Zoot Sims, Wardell Gray and Charlie Parker.

Today, in Part 2 of my four-part series on Mundell between 1946 and 1964, he talks about Billie Holiday, Mary Lou Williams, Johnnie Ray and Charlie Parker:

JazzWax: What was it like playing behind Billie Holiday?
Mundell Lowe: I first recorded with Billie when I was part of pianist Bobby Tucker’s quartet in 1948. I also  recorded with Billie in 1949, with Buster Harding’s Orchestra, which included Lester Young. I first met her in 1948 when I was playing at Café Society in Greenwich Village with George Duvivier on bass and Bill Clark on drums. Billie came in wearing a big mink coat, and as we were talking a little head pushed out of her coat pocket and looked up at me. It was her Chihuahua. She took that dog everywhere.

The biggest kick I had with Billie was playing behind her for about 10 days in April 1948 during Holiday on Broadway. This was a small, little-known revue at the Mansfield Theater in New York. Billie would sing about a dozen songs and then showcase a bunch of groups, including the Bobby Tucker Quintet, which featured Bobby on piano, me on guitar, Tony Scott on clarinet, John Levy on bass and Denzil Best on drums. The show had a short run—about 10 days, I think—because the theater reviewers came in and couldn’t figure out what we were doing.

Playing with Billie was like playing behind God. She had such innate talent and knew how to control it. There’s an art to that. For most artists at her level, that gift dates back to earlier days, when they had a terrible time and learned how to communicate with their audiences through their voice or horn.

JW: In 1949 you gigged and recorded with pianist Mary Lou Williams. Was she tough?
ML: Not at all. Mary Lou was a bop pianist but liked her music clear, clean and melodic. She was a wonderful lady. When I started  playing with her, the trio was Mary Lou on piano, me on guitar and Beverly Peer on bass, who would eventually play with Bobby Short in the 1960s and 1970s.

One night in 1949 we were working at the Village Vanguard when a tall lanky kid came in with a sax in a grocery bag. He went over to Max Gordon who was napping on one of the seats during our set. The kid asked Max if he could sit in with us. Max told him it’s Mary Lou’s group and that he’d have to ask her.

So at intermission the kid asked Mary Lou if he could play with us. She said sure, that the trio would play a few tunes first and then she’d call him up to the bandstand. When we started again, after a few numbers, she called him up, and we started to play a standard. The kid starts playing 1,000 notes for every beat.

Mary Lou stopped playing in the middle of the song and closed the piano. "That's it," she said. "The set is over." She wasn’t into running scales. She liked ideas and the music to be straightforward. That saxophonist, of course, was John Coltrane. He had just arrived in New York. I think he recovered just fine from that night!

JW: You're the guitarist on Johnnie Ray's Cry, a #1 pop hit in late 1951. A big change from the jazz greats you were playing with at the time?
ML: Just another gig. It's funny, I recorded quite a bit in the early 1950s with Johnnie Ray but I can’t remember specifically what happened on that Cry session. Probably not much. Pop recordings lasted about three hours—two or three takes max per song. I was called to play on so many pop dates.

Johnnie Ray’s singing style is mocked today as being overly emotional, and Cry certainly sounds heavy by today's standards. But it was a huge hit at the time. Also, many people aren't aware of the jazz musicians who were on some of those Johnnie Ray dates. Musicians included me, Lucky Thompson on tenor, Ed Safranski on bass, Ed Shaughnessy on drums and Stan Freeman on piano.

There were no arrangements. We just had a bunch of chord changes written out and made everything else up as we went along.

The last recording I made with Johnnie Ray was around 1953, at New York's Great Northern Hotel on 59th St. They cleared out a lot of stuff in one of the ballrooms and made a recording studio out of it. But halfway through the session, Ray fell down and started convulsing. Not many people knew he had epilepsy. Shortly after that incident his agent moved him out to California to work in the movies.

JW: The following year you were playing with Charlie Parker. A big change, yes?
ML: Oh my, yes. My phone rang on a Tuesday—I remember it was a Tuesday. When I picked up the receiver,  the voice at the other end said, "Mundy? This is Bird. I’m looking for a guitar player. Are you available on Friday?" I was shocked. Bird went on, saying he was playing a concert up at the Rockland Palace Dance Hall in Harlem.

I told him I’d make the date, he said great, and we hung up. The next three days were the longest in my life. I got the sweats. I had played with Bird in 1950, at Café Society with Tony Scott and others. But this was going to be a long concert with a large audience and major sidemen.

When I arrived at the dance hall that Friday, Bird had strings and an oboe behind him. But he had only eight or nine orchestral arrangements. He needed a small group to fill out the concert time on other numbers. That group was Walter Bishop, Jr. on piano, Teddy Kotick on bass, Max Roach on drums and me on guitar.

I must confess I was scared to death. I knew I had to show Bird the best I could play. The first song we played—Ornithology or Don't Blame Me, I can't recall—Bird ran through a couple of choruses and motioned for me to step forward and play one. After I played, I started backing up. But Bird waved me to go on, and I played four or five more choruses.

Bird wanted to see what I could do. When I was done, he smiled wide, exposing that gold tooth. When you saw that tooth, you knew Bird was real happy.

After the concert, Bird and I remained good friends. I lived with clarinetist Tony Scott at the time above the Café Society in Sheridan Square. Bird used to come down and hang out with Tony and me. We never talked about music. He always wanted to talk about books or chemistry or something else he was curious about. He was a great guy.

Tomorrow: In Part 3 of my four-part interview, Mundell talks about discovering Bill Evans, why they had to gig behind chicken wire, an incident between Ben Webster and a junkie on Broadway, and playing with Carmen McRae.

JazzWax tracks: Mundell Lowe's recordings with Cootie Williams in 1947 can be found here on Cootie Williams: 1946-1949. Mundell's 1948-1949 recordings with Billie Holiday are here on a terrific two-CD set, Billie Holiday: The Complete Original American Decca Recordings. Mundell's 1949-1950 recordings with pianist Mary Lou Williams are here on Mary Lou Williams: 1949-1951. His sessions with Billy Taylor, Jo Jones and Zoot Sims are on Billy Taylor: 1950-1952 here. Johnnie Ray's recordings of Cry and The Little White Cloud That Cried (Mundell was also on that hit-producing session)  can be dowloaded from iTunes.

A little perspective: Pop music was dominated in the very early 1950s by a new style of singing that featured enormous vocal tension and faux sensitivity. Passion singers of the period included Frankie Laine, Johnnie Ray, Kay Starr, Eddie Fisher, Patti Page  and even Tony Bennett—all of whom dominated the charts in late 1951 and 1952. Johnnie Ray was at the forefront of this bluesy "crying" genre, and his Cry remains the best example of this short-lived trend. To hear Johnnie Ray and Mundell's guitar on Cry, go here. 

Charlie Parker's Rockland Palace Concert is available here on a double-CD set, The Complete Legendary Rockland Palace Concert.

JazzWax video clips: To see Mundell Lowe play on a May 1957 TV show called The Subject Is Jazz, go here. The clip of Billie's Bounce features Mundell, Vic Dickenson on trombone, Buck Clayton on trumpet, Paul Quinichette on tenor saxophone, Billy Taylor on piano, Ed Safranski on bass and Ed Thigpen on drums.

Interview: Mundell Lowe (Part 1)

When it comes to the jazz guitar, few musicians around today have played with as many greats as Mundell Lowe. Now 85 years old, the guitar legend has performed and recorded with virtually everyone—including Charlie  Parker, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Carmen McRae, Mary Lou Williams and Ben Webster. He’s also credited with discovering Bill Evans in 1949 and bringing him to the attention of Riverside producer Orrin Keepnews in the mid-1950s.

“Mundy,” as he’s known among friends and insiders, has one of the smoothest sounds in jazz. In addition to being one of the most sought-after session guitarists from the 1950s onward, Mundell is a fabulous arranger. You merely have to listen to his writing on the soundtrack Satan in High Heels or the album The Greatness of Joe Mooney. Mundell could write swinging scores for bands and pretty, tight charts for ensembles.

In recent years, Mundell has been traveling worldwide playing in clubs and recording for TV commercials, TV shows and the movies. I spoke with Mundell last week about his early years in New York, before his move to California in 1964. Here's Part 1 of my four-part series:

JazzWax: You grew up a country boy?
Mundell Lowe: Yes, I was born in 1922, in Laurel, Mississippi, which is about a two-hour drive north of New Orleans. I loved music and jazz from the time I could pick up a guitar. Farming wasn’t for me, so I dropped out of high school and ran away from home at age 16. I wanted to play music, and my dad wanted me to go to school.

When I left home I headed up to Nashville, which was about six hours north of us. My dad came to get me, but I ran away again, to New Orleans, which was about two hours to the south. Parents back then—like parents today, I suppose—have no idea what their kids really want to do in life.

In Laurel, running away from home was a shocking thing. There was no precedent for it. In our town, you grew up and went to work on a farm as soon as you could. No one left, let alone ran away.

JW: In 1942, when you joined the army, you had a career-changing encounter, didn’t you?
ML: Before I shipped out to the Pacific, I was stationed in Camp Plauche, up the Mississippi River in a Louisiana town called Harahan. That’s where I met producer John Hammond, who also was stationed there. John threw jam sessions in the enlisted men’s club and liked my playing so much that he wrote articles about me. He said I should look him up when I got out of the service. So after I got out in 1945, I sent John a brief telegram: 'Just discharged. Merry Christmas.'

The next thing I knew, John found out where I was and had me meet Ray McKinley, the drummer who had his own big band. I joined Mack in early 1946 and made my first record with him in March of that year.

JW: What did Ray McKinley teach you?
ML: Ray taught me a simple lesson: Always believe in yourself. During World War II, I had been in the South Pacific and the experience was miserable, as you can imagine. When I came back, I hadn’t played in some time and was musically insecure. Mack saw potential in my playing and became a father figure to me. Back then, I sure needed some fathering.

One night in 1946, Mack came over during an intermission, put his arm around my shoulder and said, 'Play what you want to play, not what you think you should play.' That was great advice. After that I started choosing chords and notes based on what I felt in my gut, without worrying about convention. I was with Mack off and on through the 1950s.

JW: Who taught you the most about music?
ML: Eddie Sauter, the arranger [pictured at top, left]. He was writing for Ray McKinley’s band when I joined. Eddie could hear things no one else could. Once, when I played down one of Eddie’s guitar parts, I told him it sounded like there were some wrong notes. Eddie said not to worry and to wait until I heard the recording back. So I learned the part, recorded it, and when the track was played back he was right. It sounded beautiful.

Later on, in 1951, I was in the Sauter-Finegan band. Hanging around with both Eddie and Bill Finegan was amazing. As arrangers, those guys were in their own league. Both of them had done a lot of studying. Bill had gone over to Paris when he was writing for Tommy Dorsey in the late 1940s and studied with Nadia Boulanger, the French composer and teacher.

I learned about arranging by listened to Sauter-Finegan orchestrations and by borrowing the scores and reading them down in my hotel room. They were tough to read at first, because both arrangers transposed all the parts on the score. It was like reading a book where each sentence is in a different foreign language.

For example, an alto sax is an E-flat instrument. When you’re writing for an alto sax, you have to transpose notes up a major sixth so that what the alto saxophonist sees and plays will come out in the key everyone else is playing. Different transpositions have to be made for different instruments.

When you see notes and keys all over the place, a score is tough to read and hear in your mind. I worked hard to read their charts until I could see a transposed note and hear in my head exactly what the instrument would play.

On the whole, I learned from Eddie how to write for brass, and Bill taught me how to write for woodwinds and reeds. I had both areas covered with those guys."

Tomorrow: In Part 2 of my four-part series, Mundell talks about his encounters with Mary Lou Williams, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae—as well as the Johnnie Ray Cry and Little White Cloud That Cried sessions of 1951 that surprisingly featured several jazz greats.

JazzWax tracks: Mundell Lowe's earliest 1946 recordings with Ray McKinley and arranger Eddie Sauter can be found on two out-of-print CDs—Jiminy Crickets here and a Savoy release called Borderline here. The McKinley band is notable not only for the inclusion of Sauter but also clarinetist Peanuts Hucko and pianist Lou Stein.

JazzWax video clips: While I could not find clips of Mundell with the Ray McKinley's band, I did come across a wonderful 1954 clip of Mundell playing with Lee Konitz, Don Elliot, Warne Marsh, Billy Taylor and Ed Thigpen. You'll find it here.

Dig Mundell's thick, strong open chords behind the group—and then his bop solo with cool modern lines, leaving plenty of room for space in just the right places. Sweet.