JazzWax

Interview: Bob Brookmeyer (Part 5)

Over the past 25 years, Bob Brookmeyer has worked tirelessly to develop as a composer, teacher and conductor. While his recent recorded works can be classified as modern classical, they retain a rich jazz orchestral feel and flow. What's particularly fascinating about Bob's recent works is their massive scope and honesty. The more expansive Bob's canvas, the more you actually learn about his moods, feelings and personality.

Bob's most recent recording, Music for String Quartet and Orchestra, is a fine example. The recording with the Metropole Orchestra and Gustav Klimt String Quartet is at once a classical and jazz work. But unlike many jazz-classical attempts that stumble into movie soundtrack territory, Bob steers clear of the cinematic trap, using the compositions to express his emotions, without growing cute or coy. Bob's jazz instincts and flair for dramatic expression are unmistakable, as each of the four pieces on this album shift restlessly between a reflective simmer and hallelujah exultation.

In Part 5 of my interview series with Bob, the legendary valve-trombonist and composer talks about his learning curve as a classical composer, his development as a teacher and his passion and excitement for conducting:

JazzWax: Your compositions always manage to combine drama with fun.
Bob Brookmeyer: I wouldn’t put composing and fun in the same sentence necessarily [laughs]. Sometimes drama happens, but it’s not planned.

JW: How did you become interested in 20th century classical music?
BB: Around 1979 or 1980 I was buying classical scores and going to concerts and buying LPs of [Luciano] Berio, [Karlheinz] Stockhausen and others. I also was beginning to tire of the same type of writing and started to integrate classical motifs into my work for Mel Lewis and the Jazz Orchestra [after Thad had left]. But they weren’t quite suitable. I finally told Mel [pictured], “I think I’ve written myself out of the band. I think I have to go work for classical people.” So I left the band and went to Europe, to the radio stations in Cologne [Germany] and Stockholm [Sweden], and worked with their orchestras and producers. I even began writing electronic things and a double concerto.

JW: Were you comfortable writing in that idiom?
BB: Yes. But I remember calling J.J. [Johnson] around this time and telling him I wanted to shift to classical composing. He said, “You can’t quit playing jazz. You’re a monster player.” But I had no choice. It was a calling of sorts.

JW: In 1993, you recorded Airport Song, on your Paris Suite album. It’s so beautiful.
BB: Thank you. I wrote that while at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris waiting for a plane. I had music paper and my flight didn’t leave for an hour.

JW: I also love Monster Rally from Get Well Soon in 2002.
BB: I like that too. That’s one of our happiest pieces. I worked hard on that one. I usually don’t go back and edit because I’m often late in terms of deadlines. I also don’t tend to work on two and three pieces at once.

JW: Do you still practice very day?
BB: No.

JW: Do you write every day?
BB: I should. I teach that way. Talk is cheap, though [laughs]. I’m very slow and a terrible procrastinator.

JW: Do you love teaching?
BB: I’m a great teacher. I’m one of the best ones I know.

JW: What makes you so good?
BB: I think I explain things in a way that allows people to pick things up. After I bought my first house, I needed money. So I started teaching at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. Then in 1988 I was asked by Burt Korall to direct the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop with Manny Albam [pictured]. I stayed there for three years, and that experience really kicked up my love for teaching. So when I moved to Holland in 1991, I started a school there. I also had a workshop in Cologne [Germany] and in Copenhagen. 

JW: Do you ever listen to your earlier recordings?
BB: No, not the earlier ones. I like the Jim Hall duo sessions. If Jan and I move to Berlin next year, I’d like to get a new quartet together. But I'm constantly moving forward in my thinking.

JW: Do you like to live with what you write for a bit or complete compositions as soon as possible?
BB: I usually work on one piece, and prefer to get it done. As I tell my wife, “I want to get this sucker out of the house.” Many composers and arrangers feel that way. If you have the piece around too long, you start obsessing about a section and worry about it for days. Then when you sit down to work, problems pop up like, “What should I write after this part?” and all that. For me, it’s not such a joyous procedure.

JW: No joy in composing?
BB: Sometimes there are joyous moments when I discover something I didn’t know, like with the recent Metropole recording and the string quartet. There are a couple of places there where I don’t know what happened. The whole second movement, for instance. I still love to listen to it, but I’m amazed. I don’t know who wrote it [laughs].

JW: Is composing that difficult?
BB: Yeah. It’s the hardest thing I don’t know how to do [laughs]. Frankly, I usually just want to get the damn thing done because there’s something else to write after that. It’s satisfying to finish a piece of music. I was having dinner with Donald Barthelme [pictured], the writer, years ago. A young guy was asking him if writing was hard. Donald said it was. Then the guy said, “But you’ve been at this for some time. It must get easier as you get older, no?” Don said, “No, it gets harder.”

JW: Why do you think that's the case?
BB: I think it’s a combination of striving for something new, perfectionism, and the fact that coming up with new ideas is hard. When you’re younger, you probably haven’t gotten your voice together yet. When you’re younger, you’re just trying to get known. Then you plateau as you become known. When you get older, you’re more likely to be writing more than playing, and you have to prove that you’re not too old, that you still have it. If you think too much about those things, the writing phase can make you nervous later in life.

JW: Which composition sounds most like your life?
BB: Probably On the Way to the Sky, which will be out on a CD soon. It was the first piece I finished after marrying Jan.

JW: Is it Jan’s favorite, too?
BB: Actually, my wife likes Ceremony, from Dreams, with the Stockholm Jazz Orchestra. For Ceremony, I sat down to write a love letter to Jan, but it came out as a Catholic liturgy. She loves it nonetheless.

JW: Who was most helpful to you when you began arranging and composing?
BB: Probably Manny Albam. He was responsible for me getting my early writing jobs and playing dates. He was a model of what a best friend should be. Playing jobs had slowed for me then. So he had a party one night in the 1950s and invited a bunch of record producers. I had been recording with Manny a lot. He had overdubbed me playing lead, second and third trombone chairs.

JW: What did he do with the recording?
BB: He sat the producers down, poured them drinks and asked them to pick out the valve-trombone on the recording. None of them could do it. When they found out it was me, I wound up with a lot more work once they realized that the valve-trombone can blend right in. Manny was a very loyal friend. A wonderful man.

JW: As a composer, did you also want to conduct?
BB: I was always fascinated by what made a superb conductor great. I saw Igor Stravinsky [pictured] conduct twice. Once in the mid-1940s, Woody Herman’s band came through Kansas City and performed Ebony Concerto. Stravinsky was the guest conductor. I remember when I saw that band, Ralph Burns was sitting on the side with a wooden board over his lap furiously writing arrangements. I saw Stravinsky conduct again years later in New York.

JW: Did you study conducting?
BB: I wanted to for years but had been scared to death. Then in the late 1970s, I decided to give it a try. So I began auditioning conductors and found Joel Thome, an acclaimed conductor. He had wonderful economical motions.

JW: Why conducting?
BB: I was a lousy conductor and had to conduct orchestras and bands playing my work in Europe.

JW: Is conducting hard? It looks easy.
BB: [Laughs] You couldn’t be more wrong. The subtlety, energy and enthusiasm required is what it’s all about. I was a conductor destroyer until I started studying the nuances and technique.

JW: Is a conductor really that important?
BB: A conductor is everything. You know as soon as a conductor walks in front of a band or orchestra whether or not that person is going to be good. I always wanted to be a good conductor. At the time I didn’t want to study composition. I just needed a conductor who could just give me the feel and technique. Joel recommended Earle Brown. So I called Earle, and he became my mentor.

JW: What did Brown teach you?
BB: As far as the mechanics went, he’d have good advice. He also gave me a first-hand account of classical music's development in the 1950s and 1960s, when [American composers] John Cage and David Tudor shook up the European scene. Working with Earle gave me confidence. Earle was incredibly supportive, as was Joel Thome.

JW: What did Brown and Thome teach you?
BB: To trust my hands.

JW: How so?
BB: Earle [pictured] would stand in front of me, and if I didn’t cue him properly with my hands, he wouldn’t make a sound. If I did it right, he’d say, “Beep.” We didn’t do anything with recorded music, just me conducting my pieces in front of him. That's the best way to learn and get your hands to move correctly. It took me three or four years before I got comfortable. 

JW: What was your goal?
BB: My ambition wasn’t to conduct a symphony orchestra. That’s like playing slide trombone. There are too many great symphony conductors. I simply wanted to conduct my compositions and arrangements in front of orchestras and get the most out of the musicians and my work. When I conduct now, I’ll always ask my students, “Is that clear?” That’s all I have to say.

JW: What are the right hand and left hand doing differently?
BB: Your right hand is making the tempo and beats clear. The left hand is for shading, cuing and extra emphasis in places.

JW: Is conducting fun?
BB: Oh yeah. It’s great. That’s the way I want to go. Having a heart attack while conducting: 1, 2, 3, out. [laughs].

JW: What are the musicians looking for when you conduct?
BB: How well you know the music and express yourself and explain yourself. And how well you teach the orchestra what you want to play. That all determines how well they will play in concert or during a recording. How you handle yourself with the musicians counts, too. You don’t throw fits. You don’t yell at the band.

JW: Do you watch other conductors?
BB: Oh, sure. I have a large collection of conductor DVDs. I study how they do it.

JW: Do you ever conduct to music that’s on the stereo?
BB: [Laughs] Right now I’m moving my right hand just talking to you about conducting. It’s a natural part of me now. I’ll be 80 in December. I’m a survivor I guess. A producer in Copenhagen said recently, "What will you do when all your friends are dead?” I said, “Make young friends” [laughs].

JW: So will you be moving to Berlin next year for sure?
BB: Could be. Jan is booking a trip. Then we’ll come back and talk about it. If everything works out, she gave me two years over there. Then if it works out, we’ll stay. If it doesn’t, we’ll come back.

JW: When you think of Bob Brookmeyer, what do you think?
BB: Well, I think I’m an interesting trombone player, as far as language, soul and time goes. I swing well, I think, because it’s in me to do so. As for the writing—I've written some terrible stuff and I’ve written some good stuff. Writing is so hard. Johnny Mandel said recently in an interview that I was incredible. That surprised me. I work hard on my sound. I like my sound.

JW: How do you know that?
BB: I listen to myself.

JW: And that's how you developed your sound?
BB: When I’m teaching, the main thing I want to do is get the student to listen. If you listen and you don't sound good, you have to work harder to play better.

JW: Can a student do anything about a sound?
BB: I think so. Back in the 1990s I was riding back from Europe on a plane. There was a journalist there from Paris who had interviewed Harry "Sweets" Edison [pictured]. Sweets had told him, “When I was coming up, we didn’t worry too much about the notes and all that stuff. We were just trying to get our sound.”

JW: Did you push yourself to take risks when you were playing and developing your sound?
BB: Yes. I still like to get myself in trouble and then see how I'm going to get out of it.

JW: If you could go back and re-do parts of your life, would you?
BB: No. I couldn’t be me now if I wasn’t who I was then.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find Bob's Music for String Quartet and Orchestra at Amazon as a download here or as a CD here. Bob's Get Well Soon with Monster Rally is available as a download at iTunes or at Amazon here.

Interview: Bob Brookmeyer (Part 4)

The rise of the studios in the late 1950s and early 1960s created enormous opportunities for jazz musicians. With the proliferation of visual media such as movies and television along with TV advertising, more instrumentalists were needed who could sight-read music perfectly the first time. But while live and recorded studio work provided jazz musicians with a steady paycheck, most had to strike Faustian bargains. Individualism and creativity had to be tabled, replaced by dull, rote performing. For artists like Bob Brookmeyer, the wooden work was hard to bear.

To make matters more complicated, Bob was slowly being consumed by alcohol. Whether Bob's dependence was hard-wired into his system at birth or the result of performance strain and the emotional pain of his youth, his condition and attitude in the 1960s was deteriorating. You'd never know that Bob faced such personal demons from his jazz recordings and performances of this period. But they were there, and growing more destructive by the year.

In Part 4 of my interview series with Bob, the legendary valve-trombonist talks about his battle with alcoholism, working in the East and West coast studios, writing for and playing with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, overcoming his dependency, touring with Stan Getz in Europe, and meeting his current wife Janet:

JazzWax: When did you start playing in the TV and movie studios?
Bob Brookmeyer: In 1958, when I was working with Jimmy Giuffre and Jim Hall. Trombonist Chauncey Welsch hired me to play lead trombone for about a month with the Andy Williams Show in New York when Chauncey went on vacation. 

JW: You were doing a lot of TV in the 1960s, weren’t you?
BB: Yes. I also was in the Merv Griffin Show band, which was the worst thing I ever did in my life.

JW: Why?
BB: It was terrible. The band was good but had nothing to do. We had a bad bandleader. Once again I used my cleverness and hatred to cause trouble. My name was well known among most musicians at this point. But I disliked the lack of adventurous creative thinking on the band. So I did things to cause trouble. For instance, I’d make believe I couldn’t read the charts. I’d put on my glasses and look studiously at the part, telling them, “I’ll get it, I’ll get it.” I made quite a reputation for being an asshole. That’s the way I survived.

JW: Why were you doing this?
BB: At that point in my life, I was drinking heavily. I wasn’t me—the me I am now.

JW: What do you mean?
BB: I divide my life into two parts—the drinking part and the sober part. Actually, sober is a terrible word to use since I’m loonier now than I ever was [laughs].

JW: Do you remember the first half—or is it just a blur?
BB: No, I have a great memory. I clearly remember being a drunk [laughs]. I had an amazing capacity for alcohol, and I was great at appearing sober. I used to drink a couple of fifths of scotch a day along with wine and drinks with dinner. After a while I couldn’t depend on alcohol. It wouldn’t work. So I needed other things.

JW: You left New York in the late 1960s.
BB: In 1968 I had a chance to move to California to stay with a lovely woman who took care of me. I took on studio work out there.

JW: Did you continue drinking?
BB: Absolutely. I was an alcoholic. I had been drinking hard since the 1950s. I was eating and sleeping enough to keep drinking, which kept away the emotional pain. In California, I became busy in the studios as a valve-trombone player. I worked with Lloyd Ulyate, Dick Nash [pictured], Charlie Loper and other heavy-hitting studio trombonists.

JW: Why didn’t you try to stop drinking?
BB: I had friends who drank as much as I did and just decided to quit. But it was hard for me. The woman who was taking care of me finally got me to go into a hospital for treatment. I stayed there for about three weeks in the mid-1970s. When I came out, I foolishly didn’t do any of the things that they recommended to ensure I’d remain well. I didn’t go to group therapy. I didn’t volunteer to help others. I thought it was all unnecessary.

JW: What happened?
BB: Three months later, on a Sunday afternoon in 1976, I went down to the corner and got some vodka. I went home and drank for days. A week later the woman I was with had to call the hospital to have them come get me. I was angry at first and wouldn’t go. Finally, I went. The day before I was to be released, something magical happened. I finally realized that I was the one who drank, that it was my choice to stop. So when I got out, I went to therapy, I volunteered, and guess what—I stopped drinking and haven’t had a drink since.

JW: How did you play so well during this period while drunk?
BB: Well, it’s not drunk the way you think of a drunk on TV. I had alcohol in me, but I had a great tolerance for it. So the effects were less visible. And taking Dexedrine soaks up the nuttiness of alcohol. I also used to smoke dope and consume scotch and pills.

JW: But how did doing all of that not affect your music?
BB: I don’t know. In New York I'd have a briefcase that I’d take with me. I’d go down to the Half Note and get a bottle of scotch. I’d have hashish or dope and pills in the case as well. I'd go up to my office. I’d arrive there around 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. and stay there maybe a day consuming all of it. I was accustomed to doing that and then playing perfectly. 

JW: Did you ever face a problem?
BB: Occasionally. Normally I got through everything OK. I’m still amazed at how I survived in California given the pace and how the studios were structured. Everybody knew who I was, but I didn’t know anybody. In California, the contractor was the king. He could banish you to Las Vegas if he wanted to, and you’d never be seen again. In New York, the contractor wouldn’t dare come into the studio. Musicians ran everything. So I was working at all of these studios in Hollywood. They just assumed I was funny and had a bad mouth. Contractors kept hiring me, and for the life of me I don’t know why. I wasn’t writing. I was just playing. I was a valve-trombone player.

JW: Did you play on a lot of movie soundtracks?
BB: Quite a few. I was on Lovers and Other Strangers [1970] and was featured on there playing the main theme. I also was on Paper Lion [1968] that [pianist] Roger Kellaway wrote. 

JW: When were you finally clean?
BB: In 1977. That was my first totally sober year. I was going to be a counselor at an alcoholism clinic. I went to school to learn to be a volunteer and was all set to give up music. I played with Bill Holman a little, but I wasn’t happy with my playing.

JW: What changed?
BB: Roger [Kellaway] called and gave me a Movie of the Week date to record with Sarah Vaughan singing the vocal track. Well, I couldn’t turn that down. So I went to a guy who played trumpet in the L.A. Philharmonic and took two or three lessons. I practiced my head off for two or three weeks and got through the session OK. Stan Getz was around then in California.

JW: What did he say to you?
BB: He wanted me to play with his band and go to Europe. This was around the spring of 1978. I was nervous about that. I was a scared human being. But Stanley kept on, so I agreed to go. And it turned out to be the best thing for me. We were in Europe traveling for five or six weeks, and I was able to stay sober, play well and save some money.

JW: How did it feel to have some savings?
BB: Great. I came back with $4,000 or $5,000. I was dear friends with John Snyder, who produced many of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra albums. I had been with the band for two years before I left. When I returned from Europe, John sent me a check for $1,000. I said to Mel [Lewis], “What’s this for?” Mel said, “You probably can use it.” He was right. I opened a checking account. It was one of the most renewing days of my life. I was 47 years old and finally had some stability. Up until then I had been living by my wits.

JW: What was your plan?
BB: My idea was to move back to New York from California and rent a room in Nyack, N.Y., just north of New York City, and write things for Thad Jones’ band. I had small ambitions then. I just wanted to get by.

 

JW: Was the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra different 10 years later?
BB: Yes, somewhat. That earlier band was a lot like Duke Ellington’s. I was doing quite a bit of writing before I left. My arrangement for Willow Weep for Me originally was written for Gerry Mulligan’s Concert Band. But Gerry didn’t like it. Then he came down to the Vanguard and heard Thad’s band play it. He said, “Wow, that’s a nice arrangement.” I told him it was the same one he rejected [laughs]. Writing and arranging for Thad’s band had forced me into a new kind of language. In that band, you were tacitly invited to be more than you could be, to try new things. And I did.

JW: Specifically, what did you do differently in the mid-1960s?
BB: I used more chord clusters. For example, on Willow Weep for Me, I changed the form. The arrangement didn’t have a last eight bars. I had used the first eight bars of the next section in their place. That kind of thing. I was fooling with form. I also used a G minor chord with C sharp below it. I had never dared do that before, either. The harmonic things I added also were things I had never done before. I was getting more courage to try new things.

JW: When you returned to the band in the late 1970s, you had overcome your alcohol addiction.
BB: Yes—but I wasn’t writing much. Before I rejoined, Jim Hall and I played nothing but duo for a year. I had a bedroom fixed up as a studio. Jim would come over and run his hand over the score paper and there would be an inch of dust on it [laughs]. I finally got Skylark out in1980. It was the first arrangement I had written in about 10 years. Then I continued arranging for the band and conducting.

JW: How did that go?
BB: The band wasn’t keen on having me. They wanted Thad. I didn’t know how to conduct nor did I have presence in front of the band. They wondered who is this guy. They made it rough for me. When I went on tour with the band to Europe for the first time, it was successful. When I came back, I had more confidence.

JW: What changed in your writing?
BB: I didn't have to lean on the band for whatever support they could supply. Dick Oatts, John Mosca, Mel and Jim McNeely were great to me. Some of the others guys, not so much. When I became musical director, I had to fire some people. I was a founding father. I had been with the band when it started, and no one had fired anybody. I fired a trumpet player and got Tom Harrell [pictured]. I fired a trombone player and got Ed Neumeister. I fired  the tenor player and got Joe Lovano. It was shocking to them.

JW: How did you meet Janet, your current wife?
BB: We met in 1985, in Kansas City.

JW: Was it love at first sight?
BB: Close. I was dating a daughter of a great trumpet player. She told me about her sister-in-law, Jan, and how terrific she was. So one day the three of us had lunch. From the moment I saw Jan, I felt that I was with the wrong woman. Jan and I had a great conversation that day, and after I left Kansas City, I kept in touch with her. When I returned a short time later, we had dinner. One thing led to another, and here we are.

JW: Is she your life partner?
BB: Oh, absolutely. Jan loves what I do and has a great ear for music. She’s the one I try out compositions on [laughs].

JW: Were you both apprehensive about the relationship?
BB: Not too much. When I met Jan, she had a big job with an oil company that was planning to move from Kansas City to Houston. Big money was involved. But we decided that a long distance relationship was out of the question, since it wasn't likely to have worked.

JW: What did you do?
BB: Jan agreed to move to New York. Two of her sons from a previous marriage thought I was OK, but the other two weren’t sure. Now, of course, we all love each other [laughs].

JW: She was taking a big risk.
BB: I told her that if it didn’t work out, I’d give her everything I had—the house and everything because she had given up everything to come here. We lived in Goshen, N.Y., and it was nice and quiet. Manhattan had gotten way too noisy to think by then.

JW: It seems your life turned around when you met Janet.
BB: That’s true. When Jan moved East, my house finally became a home. I fell in love for the first time. We had both been to “school” with divorces and bad times. I had been married three times before Jan. We’ve only had love and happiness since being together. I guess the lesson here is, “Don’t get married until you turn 58 [years old]” [laughs].

Tomorrow, Bob talks about learning the art of conducting, his albums Paris Suite (1993) and Get Well Soon (2002), the composition that sounds most like the story of his life, his most recent album Music for String Quartet and Orchestra (2006) with the Metropole Orchestra, and his likely to move to Germany next year.

Interview: Bob Brookmeyer (Part 3)

By the late 1950s, Bob Brookmeyer was one of  the most dynamic forces in jazz. His reputation for playing the valve-trombone with enormous force and passion was established, and his writing was equally smart and engaging. But Bob also was emerging as one of the most sought-after orchestral arrangers in the business. Known for his inventive touch, Bob's charts took risks and consistently featured structured drama, linear tension and potent swing.

Bob's arranging skills had become so polished and advanced by this point that he was being called upon regularly to ghost many orchestral recording sessions. Bob had always had a singular, robust harmonic fingerprint—but he also was deft at emulating the unique sounds of top-brand arrangers like Ralph Burns and Bill Finegan.

In Part 3 of my interview series with Bob, the legendary valve-trombonist and arranger talks about his uncredited work on two signature Ray Charles albums, how The Ivory Hunters with pianist Bill Evans came to be, what made The Gerry Mulligan Concert Band so special, ghost-arranging for Bill Finegan, and a critique of Mulligan's piano playing:

JazzWax: When did you first meet Ray Charles?
Bob Brookmeyer: When Jimmy Giuffre, Jim Hall and I were doing the trio in early 1958. Nesuhi Ertegun [pictured] invited us up to the studio to hear Ray record Yes Indeed. I said, “Man, this is really good.” Giuffre was so excited that he went in and played tambourine with them on the record [laughs]. Giuffre could get carried away.

JW: You played valve-trombone on The Genius of Ray Charles in 1959.
BB: Actually, I did a little more on there. Ralph Burns, the credited arranger, wrote one chart for the album and got so drunk for some reason he couldn’t finish the job. It was a string date. So copyist Emile Charlap’s office called Manny Albam, Al Cohn and me to finish the album. We were all there working through the night to get the charts done and copied in time for the date, which was the next day. That was the first time I had arranged for strings.

JW: Which tracks did you arrange?
BB: I arranged Just for a Thrill and You Won’t Let Me Go. They turned out well. Later, Ray even had someone write my arrangement of Just for a Thrill for his big band, complete with my introduction. On Just for a Thrill, I had a choice—to score from the sheet music or Ray’s version  with his chords. So I called Ralph Burns before starting that night, and he said to use the sheet music for the chords. But when I told Ray, he said no, that he wanted it arranged with his chords. Ray sat me down and took me through the chords he wanted to use. No one was supposed to know. Ralph typically worked off the sheet music for his arranging sound, but Ray’s chords—the voicings that produced his feel—were essential to his sound. When you’re hired to ghost for someone, you want to write in their style. No one is supposed to hear that the arranger was anyone but the person who’s credited. That was great fun working with Ray, who unfortunately was having trouble with heroin then. But the session came off well.

JW: Ray’s next album was Genius Hits the Road, in 1960. Ralph Burns is also credited with that one. Did you play a role?
BB: Yes. Ralph wrote Am I Blue and then called Al Cohn and me to finish the album. Ralph liked Ray's music so much that he’d listen to it and think too much and freeze up. I think the music was too powerful for him, too emotional. Ray was coming from the center of the earth with those songs. I think they hit Ralph hard, which made arranging them harder and slower. He also probably had too much arranging work on his plate. So Al and I took a tape recorder in to capture Ray’s chords.

JW: So which ones did Al Cohn arrange and which ones were yours?
BB: Al arranged Georgia on My Mind and a bunch of others.

JW: Wait a second. Al Cohn arranged Georgia, one of Ray's most signature hits, not Ralph Burns?
BB: Yes.

JW: Which tracks were yours?
BB: I arranged Moonlight in Vermont, Basin Street Blues, Mississippi Mud, Chattanooga Choo Choo, Deep in the Heart of Texas, Alabamy Bound and New York’s My Home. We had a couple of weeks to finish the arrangements this time.

JW: But you arranged virtually the entire album.
BB: I guess I did [laughs].

JW: How was Ray to work with?
BB: He was there rain or shine in the recording booth with a few other guys, friends of his. He was breaking himself up. It was very nice. I was worried whether everything would sound OK.

JW: How did The Ivory Hunters come about in March 1959?
BB: It was Jack Lewis’ idea. Jack was an eccentric producer at United Artists who had interesting ideas. It was supposed to be a quartet date, or at least I thought it was. I showed up at the studio with my horn. But when I walked into the studio, I saw two pianos pushing together, facing each other. Jack had heard Bill and me do a four-hand thing at an earlier United Artists record date and wanted to try it out for the record. 

JW: What went through your mind when you saw the pianos?
BB: I knew Bill well. We had spent a lot of time together socially, so we were close. Bill had invited my wife then and I for Thanksgiving one year and played for us. So for Bill and me, it was just two friends who got dumped into a crazy idea. We looked at each other when Jack told us what he had in mind, and we said, “Hey, why not?”

JW: How did it work?
BB: We sat down and played I Got Rhythm, and it sounded pretty good so we kept going. There was no advanced planning, no playlist. We just walked in that day, and [drummer] Connie Kay and [bassist] Percy Heath were waiting for us.

JW: What did Bill think?
BB: Toward the end of his life, Bill told me it was one of the greatest things he had done. At the session, I just tried to hang on. We both had a good time doing it, and I did my best to make up for my lack of technique compared to Bill’s [laughs]. I played behind him most of the way, and he played a bit behind me.

JW: Did you exchange words during the session?
BB: Not really. You’re absorbed in the process as professional musicians. You wouldn't say, “Gosh, that was a wonderful phrase there, Bill. Yes, you, too, Bobby” [laughs]. I didn’t really feel too much anxiety. I had been playing piano for some time, and I wasn’t afraid to play. Though at the time of the recording, I hadn’t played in a little while.

JW: When people listen to this recording now, what do you want them to think?
BB: I hope they can hear how much fun we had. We wouldn’t have done it otherwise.

JW: The Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band that lasted from 1960 to 1963, what was the mission?
BB: We used the quartet as the basis and built up from there. We wanted to produce masses of sound and intensity through performance and writing rather than just power. It was supposed to be a light extension of our quartet of the mid-1950s.

JW: You arranged most of the book.
BB: I was the house arranger and straw boss. Writing for that band was fairly easy as I recall. What I enjoyed at the time was that I could have a band without standing in front of it. I hired all the musicians, and the musicians were looking at me and playing for me because I was the person doing the hiring and firing.

JW: Was it difficult to fire musicians?
BB: A lot of people had trouble firing musicians but I didn’t. I didn’t like to do it, but it had to be done. If you’re going to be a leader, you have to deal with that stuff to maintain the quality of the end result. A band's sound is important to me. The Concert Band was just great. It was one of the loves of my life. I didn't have to write new compositions, just arrange.

JW: Was writing and arranging hard back then?
BB: Yes, of course. It still is. If you’re the kind of person who takes creative risks and likes to push yourself into new things, it’s tough stuff. The only person I knew who didn’t think about writing and arranging was Bill Finegan [pictured]. We talked every day, and he was writing almost until the day he died [in June 2008] without worrying about a thing. He had so much music in him. Yet he told me that he never thought he was good enough. Bill Finegan? Can you imagine?

JW: Was Bill’s writing style an inspiration for you?
BB: Oh my goodness, yes. In fact, I ghost-arranged for Bill around this time [1961] for the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra. I arranged That Old Black Magic and You Can Depend on Me [both appear on Sauter-Finegan Orchestra Revisited]. Bill and I never talked about music—not until I came back from Europe many years later. Then we discussed music in almost painterly terms.

JW: If you didn’t discuss music, how did you learn so much from him?
BB: By osmosis. I don’t know how else to describe it. His musicality was so strong and his personality was so ordered and giving that both soaked through my body just by being around him.

JW: In late 1961 you wrote and arranged Gloomy Sunday and Other Bright Moments. How do you feel about this album?
BB: I consider it my pride and joy. I took  many creative risks here, most based on the heels of working with Bill [Finegan]. I used woodwinds, double reeds and other instrument configurations I hadn't used before. My attitude toward the orchestration was really a big step forward in my development. Working with Bill gave that to me. Bill was magic stuff.

JW: When ghosting for Finegan, did you ever fear you’d lose your own identity and sound?
BB: Oh, if I had lost Bob Brookmeyer to Bill Finegan I would have said goodbye to Bob Brookmeyer [laughs]. Bill was an absolute hero to me, and for good reason.

JW: Did you enjoy recording Gerry Mulligan’s Night Lights in 1963?
BB: Not really. That Chopin prelude he kept playing over and over again got on my nerves. I finally just left. As I was heading out, Gerry said, “Where are you going?” I said, “I’ve had enough Chopin for tonight.”

JW: Was it the Chopin or Mulligan’s piano playing?
BB: [Laughs] Both. When Gerry sat down at the piano, my toes would curl in a bad way. He had a touch like a rocket-propelled grenade. He wasn’t a piano player. His hands weren’t made for it. He was an arranger’s piano player, someone who used the piano to write, not play. I studied piano for three years and had a sense of how it’s supposed to go.

JW: Did Mulligan like to play piano in public?
BB: One time we were working opposite Art Tatum in New Jersey. We were there for a weekend. I had never been around Art Tatum before, so I’m sitting in the back, and the crowd is watching and listening intently. When Tatum finished the first set. I said to myself, “Gerry will never play piano with Art Tatum here.” Well, as soon as Tatum got up, Gerry went over to the piano and sat down. That took some nerve.

JW: Did you play, too?
BB: Yes, but not because I wanted to. On the next set, Gerry said, “Go on, go play the piano.” So I went over and sat down. I was amazed. The piano worked so beautifully right after Tatum had played it. He was such a strong player that he had warmed up the keys and action. The piano played beautifully. Just the power of Tatum’s artistry and humanity and whatever else he laid on it was beautiful. I sounded great. Heck, even Gerry sounded good on that instrument.

Tomorrow, Bob talks openly about his terrible struggle with alcoholism, his move to the West Coast in the late 1960s, playing in the Hollywood studios, overcoming his alcohol addiction, and the joy he experienced meeting his wife Janet.

JazzWax tracks: Bob's album with Bill Evans, The Ivory Hunters (United Artists) is a highly unusual recording for both artists. Once you get beyond the fact that this isn't a traditional Bill Evans album and realize that both pianists are winging it, the results become more fascinating. It's available here.

The Mosaic Records box The Complete Verve Gerry Mulligan Concert Band sadly is out of print. But you can find it for about $150 at Amazon. Or for a taste, you'll find individual CDs of the band's recordings at iTunes and Amazon.

Gloomy Sunday and Other Bright Moments, Bob's orchestral breakthrough leadership album, has been teamed with Gary McFarland's How to Succeed in Business, the Jazz Version, on one CD here.

The Ray Charles albums that feature Bob's arrangements can be found at iTunes and at Amazon. The songs also can be found on many Ray Charles compilations.

Interview: Bob Brookmeyer (Part 2)

Bob Brookmeyer's early childhood was bleak—until he  discovered music and jazz. Then he threw himself into learning the clarinet and trombone, quickly becoming a whiz sight-reader. By age 14, Bob was already a professional arranger and musician, rushing off after high school to play on local recording sessions. Not a fan of the slide trombone, Bob began playing valve-trombone, mastering the instrument and the enormous energy needed to make it swing. After two years at the Kansas City Conservatory of Music, he also had mastered the piano. By 1952, Bob was a valve-trombonist waiting for a big break. It came when Stan Getz formed a new quintet.

The Stan Getz Quintet of late 1952 was in many ways the East Coast answer to the newly minted Gerry Mulligan Quartet, which had became a hit in Los Angeles. Both groups offered a drier, cooler sound, and both relied heavily on linear harmonies rather than pure bop configurations. When you hear Bob in the Getz quintet, his firm, yearning sound is already established. As I noted to Bob during our series of conversations, his approach sounds like someone reaching for something and grabbing it flawlessly. It's that suspense, tension and determination that most engages the ear.

In Part 2 of my interview with Bob, the legendary valve-trombonist talks about why Getz and he were fired from the Tiffany Lounge in Los Angeles, why he quit the Gerry Mulligan Quartet in Paris, why Jimmy Giuffre and Jim Hall squabbled, and why Bill Harris was his favorite trombonist:

JazzWax: Soon after you left Claude Thornhill, you joined the newly formed Stan Getz Quintet.
Bob Brookmeyer: Stanley was glad to have me. Drummer Frank Isola called me at the last minute and told me what Stan wanted to do. Soon after I started in the quintet, in mid-1953, we were at Zardi's in Los Angeles. Stanley said something to me on the bandstand that sounded like the word “ape.” I gruffly called him off the bandstand, and we went in the back. I was angry. I asked him what he had called me. He said, “I called you bubbala.” I was hot and asked him what that word meant. He said, “Calm down, calm down. It’s OK. It’s a Jewish word. It’s friendly.”

JW: What was Getz’s reaction?
BB: Stanley was sort of surprised and amused that his kid trombone player wanted to beat him up. He asked the piano player, “Does Brookmeyer’s parents have money? To behave like that, I can’t imagine he needs this job.”

JW: How did you and Getz get along after that?
BB: Stanley liked me a lot. He thought I was intelligent, musical, funny. So we never had a problem again. When Stanley and I were playing in Los Angeles in 1953, we used to go across the park from the Tiffany Lounge to hear Gerry [Mulligan] and Chet [Baker] at the Haig. That was one of the greatest bands I had ever heard. The records give you only a small hint of what was going on there. When you heard that band live, in person, it was a whole different perspective. The sound was so fresh.

JW: Must have been some trip to get to the Haig and back to the Tiffany Lounge.
BB: Actually, we were over there listening to Gerry and Chet so much that the manager of the Tiffany Lounge finally said, “If you like it so much over there, why don’t you stay there.” And he fired us. So in early ’53 I went back to Kansas City and began reading Emerson and Thoreau [pictured]. I was going to give up music. I took a job at hotels to save enough money to move to a rural part of the Ozark Mountains and live alone by a lake and develop as a person.

JW: But you didn’t.
BB: Stanley, [drummer] Frank Isola and [pianist] John Williams wouldn’t stop calling me to play. So I finally went back out to Los Angeles and joined them. Stan and I also began playing after work with Gerry and Chet. Just the four of us. Both Gerry and Stanley said it was the best band they had ever played in. But nothing came of it.

JW: Why?
BB: Because they couldn’t decide who would be the leader. Then I decided to join Gerry’s quartet as the solo horn and arranger after Chet left. Stanley got pretty depressed over that.

JW: Did you go with Mulligan?
BB: No. Gerry wound up getting busted for drugs in September of ’53 and was held until December. So I went  back to New York. Right after the first of the year [in 1954], Gerry called me up and told me to bring a rhythm section out to L.A. to start rehearsing. So I brought [drummer] Frank Isola and [bassist] Bill Anthony. But Bill didn’t work out, so we got Red Mitchell halfway through the tour.

JW: You went to Paris with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet.
BB: That’s right. But Gerry liked to fight. So did his wife at the time. I couldn’t stand that. It was wasted energy. So I quit the group in Paris right after the Salle Pleyel concerts in June and returned to New York. Gerry also was still having drug problems, which added extra stress.

JW: That concert at the Salle Pleyel is a classic recording.
BB: It wasn’t supposed to be recorded. The French concert producer swore it wasn’t being taped. But a year and a half later we got the tapes.

JW: What did Gerry say when he returned from Europe?
BB: He came by my apartment in New York. Gerry asked me if I really wanted to quit. I said yes. All the drama and temper was too much for me. His wife told me he was really upset during the whole trip after I quit. As a piano player, I knew I could always make a living, whether it’s a club gig or a Greek wedding. And I played a few of those in Astoria, Queens [laughs]. I told myself, “It may not be the New York Philharmonic but I’ll eat."

JW: What was your next move?
BB: I relocated to California in late 1954. There was more work out there.

JW: What did other West Coast trombone players think of you as a valve-trombonist? What did Maynard Ferguson, a valve-trombonist, think of you?
BB: I don’t know. We never talked. I wrote an arrangement for him but he never said, “You sound good.” I think the valve-trombonists who were closest to my style were Bob Enevoldsen and Rob McConnell.

JW: Did slide players feel you were cheating?
BB: Slide trombonists make notes with a straight air column. If you’re a valve-trombonist, you have to go to Madagascar to get a tone out of it. So it’s actually much harder. My only predecessors were Juan Tizol [pictured] with Duke Ellington and Brad Gowans with Paul Whiteman and other bands in the 1930s and 1940s. I was the third one.

JW: You played with Zoot Sims in 1956. What made Zoot swing?
BB: God only knows. We were both playing in Gerry Mulligan’s sextet for about a month. We were getting really good. Zoot would be stoned at 5 am. His head would be on the floor with just room for the saxophone, just playing away. I don’t know where the feel came from but it was tremendous.

JW: What’s your favorite Zoot story?
BB: Zoot was playing on tenor in a San Francisco jazz festival in the mid-1950s. Zoot [pictured] had been hanging out with his buddies and was pretty tied. When he was blowing, he suddenly fell backward and continued playing from the floor, without ever missing a note. The next day he was mortified. So Zoot showed up sober for the next concert loaded with orange juice and coffee. When he played, they booed because he didn’t fall over and play on the floor. The audience thought that what they heard happened the night before was part of the act [laughs].

JW: In 1958 you were part of the Jimmy Giuffre 3 with Jim Hall.
BB: Wow, those two personalities didn’t get along at all. I always had to play the intermediary. I called myself the Ralph Bunche of jazz [laughs]. I’d be having a martini and Jim would come up and complain about Jimmy. Then Jimmy would come up to me and complain about Jim. Jim’s big complaint was having to play too much rhythm guitar behind us rather than solos. I was always so busy de-fanging the situation I didn’t have time to evaluate who was right or wrong.

JW: Who was your biggest trombone inspiration?
BB: Bill Harris. I loved his large sound, his over-emotional thing, and his humor and facility with the instrument. Bill was so opposite of me. Brash and aggressive. He thrilled me.

JW: Come on! Are you saying you were timid?
BB: I couldn’t do what Bill did.

JW: But you were so musically confident at such an early age. What was so impossible about Bill’s playing?
BB: He played slide trombone with enormous punctuation. I loved him, and Earl Swope. Both had enormous technique and a special sound. The first job I had at Birdland was playing piano on Monday nights behind Bill Harris. That was a thrill. Later, when I was with Mulligan in Las Vegas for a quartet concert in 1963, we went on at 1 am. Bill was working with Charlie Teagarden somewhere in town, so when I'd finished, I went over and hung with Bill for an hour. When he went onto the stand to play, the first sounds he made sent a shiver up my back. Nothing had changed. He still had that hold on me, from 1945. He hadn't lost any of his power.

JW: When you were developing your sound, did you have Bill Harris in mind?
BB: Maybe. Early on, I’d go up to Chicago from Kansas City to play. I was at the Blue Note jamming one night. Woody Herman was in there. As I was walking out, I passed Woody, who said, “Hey Butch, you like Bill?” I said, “Yes.” Funny, Woody could hear Bill Harris in my playing on the stand.

Tomorrow: Bob talks about ghost-arranging parts of Ray Charles Genius and Genius Hits the Road for Ralph Burns, putting together Gerry Mulligan's Concert Band, why he walked out during Mulligan's Night Lights session, and the joy of playing a piano that Art Tatum had just finished performing on.

JazzWax tracks: Bob Brookmeyer's recordings with the Stan Getz Quartet can be found on a number of different CDs. One is Bob Brookmeyer: The Complete 1953-54 Quintet Recordings with Stan Getz here. Bob's work with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet is on The Gerry Mulligan Quartet: The Complete Studio Recordings here. One of the group's finest live dates was at George Wein's Storyville in Boston, which is on The Gerry Mulligan Quartet at Storyville, here. One of Bob's finest early leadership quartet recordings is on The Modernity of Bob Brookmeyer here.

A must-own collection of Bob's 1950s leadership sessions is Mosaic Select: Bob Brookmeyer here. Included in the box set is one of my favorite albums by Bob from this period called The Street Swingers. On this set, you'll hear just how frighteningly brilliant Bob was in the 1950s as a writer, arranger and valve-trombonist.

Interview: Bob Brookmeyer (Part 1)

Before I interviewed Bob Brookmeyer several weeks ago, I was warned. "If you don't have it together, he'll take your head off," said one journalist friend. Another wagged a finger, saying "Bob can be very, very gruff." Well, I'm here to report that Bob Brookmeyer is one of the nicest guys in the world. We had three long conversations, and if I lived near his house, my wife would probably have to drag me home each day.

Bob is easily the greatest living jazz valve-trombonist. His powdery, punctuating style and swinging feel on the hybrid instrument is unrivaled. A child prodigy, Bob has played on dozens of significant recordings, including as a member of the Stan Getz Quintet, the Gerry Mulligan Quartet and Sextet, the Chet Baker Sextet, the Gerry Mulligan Concert Band and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. Bob also has recorded with virtually every major jazz artist, including Oscar Pettiford, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Ray Charles, Maynard Ferguson and Terry Gibbs. Bob's own numerous leadership dates are remarkable for their unmistakable confidence and heat. When I hear Bob on an album—any album—his instrument always sounds like a kid jumping for joy.

In Part 1 of my five-part interview with Bob, 79, the legendary valve-trombonist talks about his difficult years growing up in Kansas City, his embrace of jazz at an early age, how he came to play the valve-trombone, and his time on the road with the Claude Thornhill Orchestra:

JazzWax: Did you have a rough time growing up in Kansas City?
Bob Brookmeyer: Yes, I’d say so. I wasn’t a delighted child, that’s for sure. Grade school was a nightmare for me. There were bad teachers and bad kids. I was an only child and rather antisocial, so I was bullied quite a bit. My folks were loving, but it was hard to get over the nightmare I’d face at school each day. You couldn’t escape it. I’d walk into the gym and someone standing there would hit me in the stomach as hard as he could. Or some giant of a kid would come up to me while I was eating lunch and tell me to meet him after school to fight. It was awful.

JW: Why do you think you were you bullied?
BB: I think because I was a bit of a loner. There was something in me that made me somewhat aloof. My kindergarten teacher noticed this and asked my mother in a note whether I played with other children at all. So there was something wrong with me in the way I didn’t relate to other kids. I wasn’t aware of it at the time.

JW: Was your family well off?
BB: No. When I was very young, we were pretty poor. We were so poor we lived with other people. Eventually we   moved to a better area, and I went to a better school. From then on my life improved. We rented our first house. It was furnished. I remember when we moved in, I went down to the basement and found a doctor’s bag. When I opened it, I saw all these pills. My parents came down just as I was looking at them and brought the hammer down fast. But I clearly had an early fascination with drugs. They were really pretty [laughs].

JW: Did you hear Count Basie in Kansas City in the 1930s?
BB: I first heard him on the radio growing up. The music was so exciting. My father often took me to hear local bands. I was intrigued by live music. I went to the Tower Theatre where Basie came to play two or three times a year. The theater featured a Western movie six times a day and a stage show five times. I’d get there really early and sit way up in the balcony. When I went to see Basie, the band was behind a screen as they started to play their theme, One O’clock Jump. Man, when I heard that, I was a puddle. I was completely wiped out. I said to myself, “My god, if I ever get to do anything like that, I’d be so happy.” Harry “Sweets” Edison was there. He’d jump off the bandstand and rush to play a solo into the standing microphone. He was so excited to get there and express himself. 

JW: What was it about Basie’s band that touched you so deeply?
BB: It was the depth. Years later, in 1959, I played with Basie in a small band at New York’s Town Hall. The group included Art Taylor, George Duvivier, Pepper Adams, Basie, John Coltrane and me. Before the concert, Basie and I sat around for about an hour having a drink and talking. That was great enough. Then we went in and played. I soloed last. Standing on the same stage with Basie, you felt like what he was doing was coming up through the center of the earth up through your shoes and up through your body. It didn’t hit you in the chest or head. It came from the ground up, through the crust, up through the stage and up through your feet. It was like you were rising up.

JW: You started on the clarinet?
BB: Yes. My father had a ukulele. He loved music. One day he brought me home a metal clarinet that turned to the right. I played that for a while. About two to three years later he bought me a wooden one. We lived across the street from a guy who taught clarinet. I’d go over there each day and sightread the Klose Exercise Book, the official clarient training book. Then I'd come home and play Benny Goodman’s Hot Licks. The teacher was stoned quite a bit. The drugstore would often deliver during my lessons [laughs]. He’d have a couple of knocks, lean there and turn the pages. Over a very short period of time I became a whiz sight-reader.

JW: When did you stop playing the clarinet?
BB: My teeth changed when I was 11 or 12, so I had to quit. My dream was to play drums. So over that summer I worked like a maniac as a day laborer, an usher and a stock clerk—just to save enough for a drum set I had picked out. The bass drum had a Polynesian island scene on it.

JW: Did you buy the drum set?
BB: No. When I returned home after spending the summer working, the school band director needed a trombone player. So I was sold down the river to be a trombonist [laughs].

JW: Why, didn’t you want to play the trombone?
BB: I wanted to play drums. But I didn’t really resist the switch. I had to take trombone lessons with an old German teacher who spit in my face teaching me to tongue the mouthpiece. He wrote music in a lovely hand—almost like calligraphy. I had never seen that before. He also had beautiful stacks of blank music paper. I still get a Jones when I see blank music paper. I see it and have an immediate urge to fill it up. Music paper is so pretty.

JW: Were you a tough kid?
BB: Not really. I wasn’t much of a fighter. Later on, if someone wanted to fight me, I wouldn’t do it because I was afraid I’d hurt my lip or break my teeth. So I decided that if I were ever pushed, I’d have to kill the person if they tried to hurt me. Fortunately incidents never got to that point. But thinking that way certainly was reassuring.

JW: How old were you when you started earning money as a musician?
BB: I was 14. That’s when I became a commercial arranger and copyist.

JW: How did you pick it up so fast?
BB: I was already playing with dance bands, and I sort of knew how harmony went. So at age 14, I was writing for a professional dance band. The first chart I brought in was Do You Ever Think of Me? And it worked out OK. From that point on I had a contact in Omaha who would order the arrangements.

JW: How busy were you?
BB: I’d write a chart a week, copy it and send it off and get paid $15 bucks. I don’t know how I pulled that off. I was arranging for three tenors, three trumpets and a rhythm section. The band was too poor for a violin [laughs], which was popular then. That was my steady gig for a while. Eventually the volume they needed got so large that it required someone else to copy the parts from my charts.

JW: How was high school?
BB: Much better than grade school. I became a member of clubs and was well known as a kid musician. I was  playing professionally by that point. The high school bandleader, to his dying day, would shudder at the sound of my name. I was more advanced than most professionals then. He’d call for a band rehearsal, and I’d have to tell him that I couldn’t make it because I had a recording date.

JW: You sound as though you were pretty driven?
BB: I was. I was unhappy as a younger kid. Grade school wasn’t happening, friends weren’t happening, sports wasn’t it. Music was the first thing in my life that made sense and gave me self-worth. It filled the hole, and I jumped at music with enormous passion and focus.

JW: How did you come to play the valve-trombone?
BB: The stories about me starting to play it cold with Claude Thornhill’s band are wrong [laughs]. Yeah, right, I  just walked into Thornhill’s band, picked up the valve-trombone and started to play it. The truth is I started playing the instrument when I was 13. I didn’t want to play slide trombone, so I found some old baritone horn in the band room and learned to play the valves. Then friends gave me an old Czechoslovakian valve-trombone. I learned to play the instrument by watching trumpet players.

JW: Why didn’t you like the slide trombone?
BB: Who likes the slide trombone? Sax players got all the girls because they were seated in the front row. Trumpeters got all the money because they were driving the band from the back row. Trombones sit in the middle and develop an interior life [laughs]. Trombonists didn’t get the money or the girls.

JW: How did you wind up with a real valve-trombone?
BB: In 1948, the first-chair trombonist in the Kansas City Symphony ordered a valve trombone. But he discovered that he didn’t want it. He knew me and gave me a call. I raced right down and took it. It was a great, professional-level instrument that I used until 1958. By 1948, I had already learned to play the piano after attending the Kansas City Conservatory of Music, where I won the Carl Busch Prize for Choral Composition.

JW: Which was your first big name band?
BB: I started on piano with Tex Beneke, then played piano with Ray McKinley’s [pictured] band, with the Eddie Sauter book of arrangements. Those charts were like sight-reading Bartok. Oh, man [laughs]. 

JW: When did you switch to valve-trombone?
BB: With Claude Thornhill’s band in the early 1950s. The other trombonist, Ace Lane, had a Conn 78H ‘bone that was too large for him. So I sold him my smaller King and used my other instrument, the valve-trombone.

JW: Did you enjoy playing with Thornhill?
BB: It was alright, especially when we played college dates. The last two hours would always be one long dance medley. You’d play that session, smoke a little dope, and it was dark, so everything was comfortable. I think Gil Evans wrote some things for the band that were pretty complex. Claude [pictured] was very proud of the band. I remember him sitting with some people at a hotel. He asked me to play Snowfall, the band's theme. Then he’d tell his friends, “How about that. I got two for the price of one. He plays my theme and writes some arrangements.” When we were on the road, if Claude wanted to leave early, I’d also play the piano.

JW: Was it an easy gig?
BB: Playing wasn’t bad, but the road was grueling. Claude’s band in the early ‘50s was a hard drinking band. You had to drink, given the pace. There were times on the road when we didn’t check into a hotel for six days. You just rode the bus from gig to gig to gig. Buses didn’t have toilets then, and the food on the road was terrible. When we traveled, there were two groups on the bus—one would sleep while the other was up semi-loaded and talking. Then the guys who were sleeping would get up, and the others would go to sleep. It was pretty rough.

JW: Did touring like that finally get to you?
BB: At one point the group that was awake agreed that we couldn’t go on doing that. We agreed we wouldn’t play the matinee in Blacksburg, West Virginia. Instead, we'd rest. So when we finally got to our hotel there, we checked in. I was rooming with [alto saxophonist Gene] Quill at the time. Soon after we put our bags down in the room, the band’s road manager bashed on the door and said it was nearing time to play the matinee. Quill said he was going down to play. I said I’m not going. I said, “I thought we all agreed not to play the matinee? I’ll play the evening, but not the matinee.”

JW: What happened?
BB: Everyone played the matinee but me. It was ridiculous what Claude was doing to us. The whole band agreed not to do it, but they did it anyway. I needed the rest. So I got fired. I barely saw Claude at that point anyway. Even on the bandstand, you’d just see his hand over the piano cutting us off when a song ended [laughs].

JW: What did you do?
BB: Well, this was probably the spring of 1952. I went to New York. I met a guy there named Bob Maltz who ran  the Stuyvesant Casino on Second Avenue. He took a liking to me. He often had great musicians playing there, like Buck Clayton and Harry Edison. I remember playing valve trombone there one night with a rhythm section that included Zutty Singleton, Pops Foster and George Wallington. You want a rhythm section? [laughs]. [Pictured, from left: Ray McKinley, Lou McGarity, Lee Castle, Pee Wee Russell at the Stuyvesant Casino]

Tomorrow, Bob talks about Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, why he left the Gerry Mulligan Quartet in Paris, playing with Zoot Sims in the mid-1950s, playing mediator between Jimmy Giuffre and Jim Hall, and the trombonist who most influenced Bob's singular sound.

 

JazzWax tracks: To hear what Bob heard growing up in Kansas City in the 1930s, take a listen to The Real Kansas City of the 20s, 30s and 40s. It's available as a download at iTunes and Amazon.

Interview: Dave Pell (Part 3)

Dave Pell is perhaps best known for his octet, which he has led with an ever-changing roster of top musicians since 1953. The idea was to match a front line of horns consisting of trumpet, trombone, tenor sax and baritone sax with a rhythm section of piano, guitar, bass and drums. On paper, what Dave wanted to do with the octet seemed odd: Record little-known songs of popular Tin Pan Alley composers. Naysayers in the early 1950s wondered why anyone would want to hear square tunes played by jazz musicians who should know better. Then the doubters heard the concept in action: Hip, swinging charts scored by Hollywood's leading arrangers and played by leading band and studio musicians.

This seemingly simple American Songbook concept predated  Verve producer Norman Granz's own "jazz plays Tin Pan Alley" albums by about a year. Dave's songbook formula also became popular with many other West Coast jazz recording artists throughout the 1950s. Then as Dave began playing campus proms, the "swinging standards" trend soon led to college dancing albums.

In Part 3 of my three-part conversation with Dave, the tenor saxophonist talks about the formation of his famed octet in the early 1950s, his Prez Conference band formed in the late 1970s that continues to play Lester Young's solos, and what it's like to own and play Lester Young's Dolnet tenor saxophone:

JazzWax: How did the idea for your octet come about?
Dave Pell: I was playing in Les Brown's orchestra in the early 1950s. I just put together eight musicians from the big band. We originally had Don Fagerquist [pictured] on trumpet; Ray Sims, Zoot's brother, on trombone; I was on tenor; Ronnie Lang was on baritone, Geoffrey Clarkson was on piano; Tony Rizzi was on guitar; Rollie Bundock was on bass, and Jack Sperling was on drums.

JW: How about the tight arrangements?
DP: That was Shorty Rogers’ idea to borrow ideas from Les’ big band arrangements written by Frank Comstock and Skippy Martin. Actually, we didn’t steal anything or anyone. This is why Les was so beloved by so many musicians. I went to Les and told him what I wanted to do. He was all for it. When Albert Marx started Trend Records, he came to one of the octet's rehearsals and flipped when he heard us. We began recording for Trend soon afterward. [Photo: Dave Pell, standing, and Ronnie Lang in 1954]

JW: What did Shorty do?
DP: When we were just getting together, Shorty was very excited. He said he’d write charts with the guitar on the bottom and Don Fagerquist on top, with the rest of us voiced in between. He said, “We’ll do hipper stuff than the big band.” Two weeks later, Shorty finished the charts. The big idea was to take the new West Coast linear jazz sound and apply it in a more commercial format.

JW: How so?
DP: We kept the formula tight. We'd played a song's intro and then each horn would take a short solo. I didn't want 17 choruses. Just one solo each. It was very different for the time.

JW: In the beginning the albums had a theme.
DP: That's right. I had a premise to take seldom-heard songs by major composers and give them the West Coast treatment. They had to be good songs, of course. So you'd have songs like Irving Berlin's Better Luck Next Time voiced for the octet and they'd swing. The first albums we did starting in 1953 were Dave Pell Octet Plays Irving Berlin, Plays Burke and Van Heusen and Plays Rodgers and Hart. The personnel in our group changed a bit as guys came and went. Marty Paich was writing for me a lot then, too. I'd do all kinds of research and find the songs. Then Marty and Shorty would swing them.

JW:  Was there a risk of being corny?
DP: Oh sure. People said the concept sounded nuts. It  was elevator music, but hipper. The critics loved it. Some called the albums “mortgage-paying jazz” [laughs]. The octet got so hot that we wound up playing every prom in the country. Just when big bands were starting to die off, I had an eight-piece band that played everywhere.

JW: Why did you do so much commercial work?
DP: Because it paid well? [laughs]. Seriously, though, when Les Brown's band was on the skids, I convinced many of the guys who were playing with me to leave the band permanently. I said, "Come on, we'll split the money evenly." They came aboard, so I had to keep them employed. They had families. I'd take anything that paid to keep the income flow going.

JW: Who else wrote for the octet?
DP: Marty [pictured] wrote about 75% of my book. I also had John Williams and Jerry Fielding. Bill Holman wrote some charts, too. Every week we’d finish an album. Two weeks later we’d do another one. And the albums sold well. Everyone digs harmony. And everyone knew the songs. It was a winning formula.

JW: You also became known for another group—Prez Conference, in the late 1970s.
DP: Back in the early 1970s, [saxophonist] Med Flory and [bassist] Buddy Clark came to me with the idea for a sax section that played orchestrated transcriptions of Charlie Parker's solos. I was producing records at the time. It sounded interesting. Then they told they wanted to get paid to write the charts [laughs]. That lost me right away. The charts were so long and required many, many pages of copying. It didn't sound like it was going to be commercially profitable.

JW: What happened?
DP: I told them I could help them get a record deal but I couldn’t afford to put it on my label. So Med and Buddy copied all the parts themselves. They wound up at Capitol and had a huge success in the mid-1970s with Supersax.

JW: What did you think of Supersax?
DP: They sounded great. So great that I went to my old friend Gene Norman of GNP Crescendo Records. I told him that I had an idea. I said, "Given Supersax’s success, how about me having Bill Holman write up Lester Young’s solos for a Four Brothers-like band?" I told him I’d also get [Harry] “Sweets” [Edison] to break up the sax charts with those muted trumpet solos. There would be no tenor solos. The saxes would collectively sound like Lester Young.

JW: What did Norman say?
DP: Gene dug it. So I got my hands on every tune Prez [Lester Young] had ever played. I even had two versions of songs he recorded for different record companies. Then Bill wrote arrangements based on two or more Prez's solos.

JW: What was the plan?
DP: We were going to follow in Supersax’s steps and create this big Lester Young sound, which meant it would be more melodic than Supersax. The first album in '78, In Celebration of Lester Young, did very well. People who had bought the Supersax albums bought ours. When "Sweets" Edison heard the sound coming off the sax section in the studio, he cried. We all did. Sweets had been there when Lester played those solos.

DP: You recorded a second album in early 1979.
JW: Yes. Right after the first one came out, I ran into singer Joe Williams [pictured] and asked if he wanted to sing with the group. He loved the idea. So we got together with Bill Holman. The big difficulty we had was keeping the songs in specific keys so they’d be in the right range for the horns. The section had to sound like Prez, so they had to be in his keys. But those keys weren’t always ideal for Joe. But it didn't matter. Joe knocked them out anyway. He was great. That second album was Prez and Joe.

JW: Did Prez Conference play concerts and clubs?
DP: Yes, absolutely. I booked all the festivals. We still tour. Back then, Joe tore it up. He’d even come out early just to sing on top of us. Every now and then Joe and I would play golf. Every time he’d come to L.A. to record or play a club, he’d call me. Whenever he’d perform with Prez Conference at clubs, we'd be up all night and then play golf the next morning. Joe was a hell of a golfer. He was the king of Chicago. We’d play every golf course in that town when we were there. They loved him there.

JW: Speaking of Prez, you own Lester Young’s Dolnet saxophone. How did you get it?
DP: From Lee Young [pictured], Lester’s brother. Lee and I used to play golf a lot. Lee was with some dumb record company that went broke. I was running Liberty Records at the time with eight different sub-labels. I said to Lee, “Come work with me, and I’ll give you a gig running Sunset Records." He did, and we became close. We played golf every other day. We’d work and then play golf. Lee became my best friend.

JW: Did Lee Young hear Prez Conference?
DP: Oh yes. He used to come and listen to my octet. Then when I started Prez Conference, he came to listen and loved it. When Lee heard the band, he realized how much I loved Lester. One day he said, “I have Lester’s Dolnet horn, and you should have it when I die.” I was blown away. Lee’s kids wanted the horn but he was afraid to let them have it. He said, “I don’t want them to sell it or put it in a museum." Lee said he’d will it to me so the gift would be legit. Then he said, "When you die, give the kids the horn by willing it to them.” I said sure.

JW: What else did Lee ask you to do?
DP: He said he just wanted the horn to be played every day, so people would hear the music of his brother.

JW: What happened when Lee died in July 2008?
DP: Lee's son called and told me that the horn was mine, that Lee had indeed left it to me in his will.

JW: How was the horn to play?
DP: Tough at first. It has a Brilhart mouthpiece, which is great. But when I got it, the instrument played hard. The buttons were hard.

JW: How so?
DP: By the end of a night of playing Lester's horn, my hands would be killing me, even after I had the horn restored the first time. It had been rusting after all those years in Lee's basement. The problem was the pads wouldn't cover the holes completely. Playing the bottom of the horn, I had to use a ton of pressure with my hands. The horn just wouldn’t make friends. Then one day I fell on the horn and bent it.

JW: What did you do?
DP: I took it to a pro named Steve Smith. He's a repair guy at United Band Instrument in L.A. He looked at it and said I'd have to part with it for a few months. He redid all the holes and pads. I just got the horn back a few months ago. I just recorded with it for a CD still in the works.

JW: How do you feel when you play Lester Young's saxophone?
DP: I’m scared to death. It’s such a thrill. I cry. People come over and touch it. Recently I played an event. Afterward, I took out the horn and left it in front of me on the table. I think about 200 people took pictures with it. All the musicians come by and finger it. Lester would have loved that.

JW: Do you feel Lester's presence when you play it?
DP: I always feel Lester is looking over me. All I do is try to sound like Prez when I play it. There’s an aura about the horn. It has such a big sound. It's scary. It’s off center the way they built it, but it plays a little bit better when I hold it sideways like Prez did [laughs].

JW: Why did Lester play the sax off to the side?
DP: Bassist Al McKibbon once asked Prez that quesiton. Al said Prez said he plays like that so he can be closer to the horn's bell, so he can get closer to it and hear it better.

JW: What's your favorite Lester Young story?
DP: Someone once asked him why he gives everyone a nickname, like "Lady Day" and "Sweets." Prez said, "First of all I never remember their real names. If I put a made-up name on them, I remember that and feel closer to them." Prez was a comic.

JW: A comic?
DP: Oh sure. Prez told really funny stories. In fact, half the reason he played so well was his comedic background. There's a lot of whimsy in there. Someone once asked him how he could play so well since it looked as though he were drunk all the time. He said, "I am drunk all the time." The person asked, "How do you sound sober?" Prez said, "I don’t know, I’ve never been sober. This is my normal thing. I drink and I feel right." Poor Prez.

JW: What's the big lesson you learned from Prez?
DP: Lester would say you have to learn the lyric to play a song instrumentally. You can’t just play a song. The lyrics let you know the song's story, so you understand it.

JW: Where do you keep Lester Young's saxophone?
DP: Right next to my bed. It never leaves my side.

JazzWax tracks: One of the best collections of The Dave Pell Octet  is The Dave Pell Octet: Jazz for Dancing and Listening. Arrangements are by Marty Paich, Shorty Rogers, Jack Montrose, Johnny Mandel, Bill Holman, Andre Previn, Jimmy Giuffre and Wes Hensel. Quite a lineup. The two-CD set is available here.

The two Prez Conference LPs for GNP Crescendo are available on a single album. The CD is available here or you can download it here.

JazzWax note No. 1: For more on Dave Pell and Lester Young's Dolnet, read Doug Ramsey's wonderful essay here. As always with Doug, lots of great detail and fabulous prose.

JazzWax note No. 2: A special thanks to James Harrod, the highly knowledgeable West Coast jazz historian who provided images of the Dolnet ads. For more on James, go here to Jazz Research.

Interview: Dave Pell (Part 2)

After relocating to Los Angeles in the mid-1940s, Dave Pell  joined Les Brown's band in 1947. In the early 1950s, when Dave wasn't playing in the band, he was developing a more linear West Coast sound in jam sessions with other jazz musicians. To earn a few extra bucks, Dave also began photographing his musician friends at record dates and in clubs. The musicians trusted him, and Dave had complete access.

One of Dave's most famous photographs was for the cover of Pacific Jazz Records' first release: The Gerry Mulligan Quartet. The photo is often mistakenly credited to William Claxton, who would become the photographer most responsible for documenting the West Coast jazz scene and advancing its hungry, sand-polished mystique.

In Part 2 of my three-part interview series with Dave, the tenor saxophonist talks about Gerry Mulligan's arrival in Los Angeles, his influence, photographing rising West Coast jazz stars, how the cover of Mulligan's album was shot, and why Los Angeles became a hotbed of jazz activity in the early 1950s:

JazzWax: You played with Gerry Mulligan at the Haig in May 1952, just three months before he recorded with his piano-less quartet.
Dave Pell: When I met Gerry just after he arrived in L.A., I was playing with [trombonist] Herbie Harper. We were doing jam sessions seven nights a week. Gerry came to one of those sessions and brought this little kid from high school with bad teeth. It was Chet Baker [pictured]. They just tore it up.

JW: Were you involved in helping to shape the Gerry Mulligan Quartet?
DP: We brought different guys together for Gerry’s demo date at Phil Turetsky’s house in June.

JW: Who’s “we?”
DP: Roy Harte and me. Roy was my cousin. When Roy started Pacific Jazz Records with Dick Bock in the summer of '52, Phil Turetsky was their engineer. They didn't have a studio yet so they made the demos at Phil's house.

JW: Harte was pretty active out there then as a drummer and entrepreneur, wasn’t he?
DP: Yes. Roy owned a popular drum store called Drum  City on Santa Monica Blvd. Then he started Pacific Jazz Records. When I told him about Gerry and Chet at the jam sessions, Roy got them and Chico Hamilton and Bob Whitlock booked into the Haig. [Pictured: Actor Sal Mineo and Roy Harte at Drum City]

JW: What made Mulligan special?
DP: His knowledge of music and his chords and all those tunes. He played so differently than anyone else. One thing Zoot Sims always told me: “Make your own style. So when you play eight bars, everyone knows it’s you.” Mulligan was like that.

JW: So how did you and Mulligan wind up being recorded together at the Haig several months before he formed his quartet?
DP: That was one of those jam sessions Gerry attended. We didn’t know we were being recorded [laughs]. When Mulligan was playing at the Haig, there were two or three other nights when other guys would come in and have a jam session there. Unknown to everyone, there would be a tape machine rolling in the back room. The same was true at several clubs back then. Actually, I think we all kind of knew that was happening. That’s how the things I did with [tenor saxophonist] Wardell Gray and [pianist] Paul Smith got recorded.

JW: How did you come to take the photo for the Gerry Mulligan Quartet album?
DP: My cousin Roy asked me to take it.

JW: So many people think it was taken by Bill Claxton.
DP: I know. Nobody knew Clax at the time. He wasn’t photographing things like this yet. I had learned to use the camera several years earlier and had gotten to the point where I was a good amateur but a bad professional. I was using a Rolleiflex. I started shooting at sessions all over town. I’d find out what was going on from the union. I’d photograph without a flash by taking the shot with the speed pushed way up. I used a 3x5 lens, which was small. There was some light in the clubs but not much. The trade-off during the developing process was that the pictures would be grainier. Everyone thought it was very creative on my part. Bull. I just didn’t want to get in everyone’s way so I didn’t use a flash [laughs].

JW: So between the music and photography and developing pictures, you were pretty busy.
DP: [Laughs] I always had a full day. Back then, music was everything, and everything meant music—whether it was playing, recording or photography. With the camera, I was trying to do something different. When Clax started coming up, he and I used to shoot many of the recording sessions. Then he got really good and passed me by a country mile.

JW: Hey, you weren't bad.
DP: I had an aesthetic sensibility, which helped me push for interesting shots. When I played with Les Brown's band, I would take photos from my perspective on the bandstand, especially when celebrities were with us. I always had the camera by my side. Then I’d go home and develop the negatives. I loved using the enlarger because I could crop just what I wanted.

JW: How did you decide how to set up that Mulligan cover?
DP: Roy called me up. He said he needed a photo for his  first LP. He said, “Go down to the Haig with Gerry's group and shoot something.” I said, “I can’t. The Haig is too dark. I won’t be able to get all four of them lit properly in the image.” Roy said I could use a spare room he had at Drum City. So I had the guys meet me there in the afternoon, when the room got good late-day light.

JW: What did you tell them to do when they got there?
DP: I knew what I wanted to do by then. I told them to lay on the floor with their heads together. They said, “What kind of cornball thing is this?” I said, “The photo has to be different. And hip.” I couldn’t shoot something anyone with a camera would take. I couldn't just line them up and shoot. That would be way too dull. You have to understand, the energy level out here then was high. Everyone was trying something new. I wanted to capture that feeling but with something out of left field. So I had them lie down on the floor with their heads together. I told them I was going to shoot down on them from a ladder. The guys were saying stuff like, "Man, this is a hip album. Why are we doing this corny thing for?"

JW: What did you do?
DP: I climbed up on the ladder and shot down. Just before I squeezed the shutter, Mulligan was yelling, “Come on, Dave! For Christ's sake. We can’t spend all day here.” For years Gerry would push me away playfully whenever I'd show up and say, "Get that camera away from me." Later, he told me of all the things he did, the wildest was lying on the floor with his horn in his lap looking up at me take a picture of them from the ladder [laughing]. The photo was pure luck.

JW: Were there outtakes?
DP: No. Just the one picture.

JW: Are you kidding? What would you have done if the image didn't come out perfectly?
DP: I would have had to have gone down to the club to shoot them.

JW: What do you think of the photo today?
DP: You and others see a great cover shot. I see four cranky guys who wanted to get out of there [laughs]. That’s why Bill Claxton [pictured] shot so many covers and got such great results. Clax had the patience to sit through a whole recording session and not get in the way. He waited and waited, and everything he shot was so creative.

JW: During this period, what was going on in California that created the conditions for the West Coast sound?
DP: Recording wise, you had the "Birth of the Cool" singles coming out of New York with Miles and Gerry. But the things we played several years later were a little different from what was going on in New York. New York was playing one kind of jazz. We were playing more cool, kind of nice and melodic jazz. That's not a knock. It's just what it was.

JW: Who were the ringleaders in the early 1950s?
DP: Shorty [Rogers], Mulligan and Chet. The Lighthouse [pictured] was also a hot spot, especially with Bob Cooper and Bud Shank. We all played there on Sundays. That's where musicians' different thoughts on music and the new sound came together. The music was about harmony, technique and playing pretty. I must have played there 100 times. The fact that Stan Kenton’s band was from out here also provided the clubs with a steady stream of sidemen eager to jam. We always had the clubs filled.

JW: What do you think the big turning point was that made L.A. so attractive to jazz musicians?
DP: The weather was great, and many guys in big bands were looking to settle down with families after 10 years on the road. So when the bands they were with came out here, many decided to stay. Besides, the studio work was plentiful and became even more so. If you got on the good side of Andre Previn, for example, you did all of MGM’s movies. If you got on the good side of Johnny Green, you worked on all the musicals.

JW: How did you and others maximize your studio opportunities?
DP: Bob Cooper, Bud Shank [pictured], me and others sensed something was changing here in the early 1950s. Movie and TV work was picking up. So we learned the flute, oboe and other reed and woodwind instruments. If you could double or triple on instruments, you'd get four to five studio calls a week, and you’d be killing. Then at night you’d play clubs. It was a great set up for a jazz musician.

JW: What caused the shift to smaller jazz groups? New labels?
DP: I think that was part of it. Smaller groups meant fewer odds of re-takes on sessions, and a lot of arrangers wrote swell stuff for six to eight guys. But overall, smaller groups just sounded great and everyone got to solo. A lot of us, including [bassist] Harry Babasin [pictured], hung around Drum City. All were great players. We were learning a whole new way of playing from each other. On the arranging side, Shorty Rogers and Bill Holman led the way. So much was recorded out there in the early 1950s, both in the studio and at clubs when tape became popular. I think Roy [Harte], before he died [in 2003], started to realize he had a ton of stuff still in the can. A lot of it has still not been released.

Tomorrow, Dave talks about his famed octet of the early 1950s, his Lester Young tribute band of the 1970s and how he wound up with Lester Young's tenor saxophone.

JazzWax tracks: One of my favorite recent Dave Pell albums is The Dave Pell Octet at the Lighthouse Cafe, recorded in 2005. It features Dave (tenor sax), Bob Efford (baritone sax), Carl Saunders (trumpet), Bill Reichenbach (trombone), Grant Geissman (guitar), Bob Florence (piano), Jim Hughart (bass), and Peter Donald (drums). The harmonies are rich, and it swings like mad all the way through. You'll find it here from Woofy Productions, a terrific label that specializes in West Coast jazz.

Interview: Dave Pell (Part 1)

Dave Pell is one of the founding fathers of West Coast jazz. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1944, Pell played on Bob Crosby's radio show and freelanced, joining Les Brown's band in 1947. In the years that followed Dave became one of California's most prolific studio musicians and ensemble leaders, forming a popular octet from the ranks of Brown's orchestra. Dave was a virtuoso player at an early age, able to mimic the sound and tone of virtually any popular tenor saxophonist.

In the early 1950s, Dave was instrumental in developing West Coast jazz's sound and mystique. An early developer of linear, "storytelling" jazz solos, he also earned extra cash as a photographer at the start of the 1950s. With a Rolleiflex, Dave documented the emerging West Coast jazz scene. He took dozens of cover photos, including the famous Gerry Mulligan Quartet 10-inch LP, Pacific Jazz's first release. Today Dave owns one of Lester Young's tenor saxophones and plays it regularly in concert, much to the delight of audiences. Young's only other known horn is at Rutgers University's Institute of Jazz Studies.

In Part 1 of my three-part conversation with Dave, 84, the legendary tenor saxophonist talks about his early days in New York, moving to Los Angeles in the mid-1940s, what he learned from Zoot Sims, and his years with the Les Brown band:

JazzWax: Where did you grow up?
Dave Pell: I’m originally from Brooklyn, N.Y. In the 1930s, my family lived in Brighton Beach before moving to Manhattan Beach there. By the time I was 14 years old, I was playing the clarinet. I had a terrific music teacher. He became thrilled with me and gave me a different exercise book every day. When I went to Abraham Lincoln High School, Sol Yaged was there. The bandmaster liked me so much he insisted I play solo chair. So he moved Sol over to the second chair. I didn’t want to cause trouble, but the teacher insisted, saying he had never heard anyone like me before. I was very advanced at that age. [Photo of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1936 by Berenice Abbott]

JW: How did you become so skilled so quickly?
DP: My brother would take lessons, and I’d sit on the floor. When his lessons were over, I’d take his horn, replace his mouthpiece with mine and play the lesson he had just taken. I had remembered the entire thing. I was something of a prodigy, I guess, or virtuoso. I used to say to myself, “Wow, this is fun” when playing and practicing, not “This is work or a pain.”

JW: Did you listen to jazz records as a kid?
DP: No. We couldn’t afford them. Instead, I'd come home from school and listen to the radio all afternoon. When you’re a mimic like I was, you can hear something and play and sound like it instantly. And you don't know why it happens that way. When Artie Shaw's Concerto for Clarinet came out in 1940, I heard it on the radio and played it note for note. Later, when I was at Capitol Records in the 1950s, I’d put together small bands and mimic all the great soloists, note for note. It's a skill I've always had.

JW: How did you wind up in Bobby Sherwood's band, your first professional gig?
DP: I was hanging around Nola Studios in New York in 1943, where all the rehearsing went on. I was 18 years old at the time and could play and read flawlessly. I was already getting a reputation for sounding like any of the big name soloists. If you wanted me to sound like Coleman Hawkins on Body and Soul, I could play Hawk’s solo, note for note. Sometimes I’d memorize the transcribed solos they printed in Down Beat magazine at the time. Someone told me Bobby [pictured] was auditioning tenor players. So I went and got the job.

JW: When was your first trip to California?
DP: With Tony Pastor’s band in 1945. I fell in love with the place as soon as we got there. I was young and having a lot of fun. Pastor's band was a terrific experience. I knew every solo that was coming up in a chart. When the solo neared, I'd race up front and beat him to the microphone [laughs]. I was hungry. And I loved it.

JW: Pastor wasn't angry?
DP: No, not at all. Pastor didn’t mind. He didn’t like playing. He preferred being a bandleader. The day we arrived in California, I told him I was going to leave the band. He flipped and said, "You can’t leave. Who am I going to get out in this part of the country to fill your part?” [laughs]. That sounds like a strange thing to say but it was still early in the evolution out here, before L.A. became a magnet for band talent. Pastor begged me to stay, so I stayed for a few months. When the Pastor band left California for the East Coast, I stayed.

JW: Why do you love it so much?
DP: L.A. looked so great in the 1940s. First of all, the weather was fantastic all year round, which meant I could play golf every day. I also knew Zoot Sims well. He was from out here, from Inglewood. We played in Bobby Sherwood's band together in 1943. When I joined Sherwood, Zoot was playing tenor but wanted to play lead alto. So Bobby moved him into the alto chair and gave me all the Zoot features [solos]. Zoot was a year older than me and was by far the best tenor saxophonist I knew then—or ever. [Photo of Zoot Sims by Chuck Stewart]

JW: How did Zoot compare to Stan Getz in the late 1940s?
DP: Getz was good but nothing like Zoot. Zoot could swing and play better notes. He was a musician from the day he was born. All of his family members were musicians. Ray Sims, the trombonist, was his brother. Zoot knew how to swing. It was in his blood. He showed all of us that you didn’t have to play so many notes to sound great. Even more important, he taught me how to make up little stories on the tenor when soloing. We were the first of the storyteller players out there.

JW: How did the storytelling work?
DP: Guys who can compose little stories on the spot while they solo make listeners smile. If you were a storyteller player, you did this by being comedic without being corny. We’d take little riffs or bits from songs we were playing and use them in a solo.

JW: How did Zoot do this?
DP: He’d start with a little story, repeat it and then put an ending on it. So all of us would try to do the same thing. We’d play around with the melodies. The next generation of great players like Coltrane wouldn’t need this storytelling device. But Zoot and Al [pictured] and those of us who played like Lester [Young] used the story method. That’s what Jimmy Giuffre's Four Brothers was about in '47. Each guy soloing was telling a story on the tenor. The better the story, the easier it was to sing in your head. This was Zoot's approach, which ultimately had a big impact on guys who played out here.

JW: After leaving Tony Pastor, you played with a lot of bands during the 1940s.
DP: Every time a band came into the Hollywood Palladium, the band's leader would need three or four guys to fill in for regulars who were out sick or needed a break. So I’d wind up playing in 15 different bands, including Frankie Carle, Freddy Martin and so many others. Only a half dozen guys could do that and grab the band’s sound right off the bat.

JW: You also played with many small groups.
DP: Yes, there were all kinds of bands, including a Latin band led by Don Swan, who had done a lot of arranging for Xavier Cugat in the early 1940s. I also played in groups with Stan Getz in the mid-40s when he was with Stan Kenton. He’d play beautifully in the dressing room. You couldn't believe what you heard back there. But he was a total dressing room player. When Stan got on stage, he’d get scared. His comfort level would change. You had to be flexible back then. You had to be able to play every style to get the freelance gigs in L.A. At this point, I could transpose a lead alto part on the spot and read it down on the tenor.

JW: You joined Les Brown in 1947 and stayed with him off and on through 1955.
DP: Around 1946, I started my own group and we played in Alhambra, a town close to L.A. One afternoon I got a call. It was Les Brown. He wanted to know if I could make his show. One of his saxophonists had gotten busted for drugs. I told him I had a gig but that I'd get a sub for me.

JW: You must have enjoyed playing with Brown given how long you remained with the band.
DP: Les [pictured] gave me and a couple of guys in the orchestra a chance to make the band into something it hadn't been. He had Don Fagerquist and Wes Hensel on trumpets, and fantastic arrangers like Hensel, Van Alexander, Skip Martin and Frank Comstock. The band started to get busy in the studios and accompanied Bob Hope on the radio. Then we were on TV shows with Hope, but TV shows needed more arrangements. Guys in the band started getting name value because there was so much work on a weekly basis.I gave up playing steadily with Les Brown in 1953, right around the time the small-group craze began in Los Angeles.

Tomorrow, Dave talks about playing with Gerry Mulligan at the Haig in May 1952, how the famous photo for the cover of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet LP was taken, and the reasons behind the rise of the West Coast studios in the early 1950s.

JazzWax tracks: There are two CDs that demonstrate beautifully the smooth, bop snap of Les Brown's band with Dave Pell in the late 1940s and the early 1950s. The first is Les Brown: S'Wonderful, 1949-50 Recordings. You'll find it here. Dig the arrangement of Where's Prez? Wow. The second CD is Palladium 1953, a spectacular concert recording with super hip arrangements of Caravan, Strange, Midnight Sun and Speak Low. You can download the album at iTunes or at Amazon. Or it's available on CD here.

Interview: Hank O'Neal (Part 2)

Hank O'Neal is a jazz entrepreneur and bohemian—a rare combination. Over the years, Hank has been a jazz record producer and concert promoter, and he continues to serve on the boards of several major organizations. To satisfy his soul, he has devoted much of his life to the arts. Hank is a prolific photographer, writer and book author. [Photo of Hank O'Neal by Ian Clifford]

For most people who listen to jazz, Hank's name probably won't ring a bell. That's because he prefers to keep a low profile. But among jazz industry powers and jazz legends, Hank is well known and highly regarded for his enormous kindness, modesty, generosity, talent, cool and smarts. He also has one massive network of friends in the arts and finance. With the publication of The Ghosts of Harlem, a handsome 492-page book of interviews and photographs of 42 jazz legends, Hank agreed to chat about his life and his passion for jazz.

In Part 2 of my interview series with Hank (whose birthday is today), the legendary photographer and author talks about his friendship with mentor photographer Berenice Abbott, the Artie Shaw record that first stirred his interest in jazz, and the effect vanishing jazz legends has had on him:

JazzWax: You knew photographer Berenice Abbott well.
Hank O’Neal: When I first met Berenice, she was 74 years old, and she lived to be 93. Because she was so old when I met her, she never seemed to age. At least not to me. She was always a serious artist with a salty edge. Actually, I met her quite by accident. [Photo of Berenice Abbott in 1978 by Hank O'Neal]

JW: How?
HO’N: Back in the early 1970s I was working with [guitarist] Eddie Condon on Eddie Condon’s Scrapbook of Jazz. It was my first book, and sadly his last. Ed wasn’t a book guy, so I worked with him on it. At one point Ed said we should talk to a friend of his, Genevieve Naylor, who had a lot of great photos. Genevieve was a magazine fashion photographer with a great eye for images and page layouts.

JW: What did Naylor say?
HO’N: Genevieve looked at Ed's material and said, “You have a lot of good stuff here but you don’t have a clue as to what you’re doing" [laughs]. She agreed to offer advice for laying out the book when Ed and I were ready. She said she was going to Maine for the summer with her photography teacher and left me the phone number there.

JW: What happened next?
HO’N: A couple of months later I was given a book of Berenice Abbott photos as a present. It was a terrific book and only the second one on photography that I had owned. The first was a Walker Evans book the Museum of Modern Art had sent me for being a member. In the back of the Berenice Abbott book, her bio said she taught in the 1960s and had since retired to Maine. I was very taken with her book. So I picked up the phone and called Genevieve. She answered, and we talked a bit about the Eddie Condon book. She had some fine suggestions. Before I hung up, I asked if she was staying with Berenice Abbott. She said she was. I told her I wanted to buy a couple of prints. [Photo of Hank O'Neal in 1976 by Liza Stelle, Eddie Condon's daughter]

JW: Did Abbott make them for you?
HO’N: Absolutely. I ordered two prints, and two months later Berenice and I met at the Holiday Inn on 57th St. She charged me $300 for them, and we had lunch and talked. After, she said if I was ever up in Maine, I should drop by.

JW: Did you go?
HO’N: You bet I did. The first time I was up there in the early 1970s, I asked if I could take her picture. She asked what kind of camera I had. I told her a Polaroid XS-70. “That’s not a camera, that’s a goddamn toy,” she snapped. I insisted it wasn’t a toy, that Walker Evans had just used one on a new project. [Photo of Berenice Abbott on Lake Hebron, Maine, in 1977 by Hank O'Neal]

JW: What did Abbott say?
HO’N: Berenice shrugged and let me take her picture. As fate would have it, I had a bad film pack. The image that slid out of the Polaroid had white spots all over it. Which gave her a chance to call the camera a "goddamn toy" again. I changed film packs, and the image finally came out right. And Berenice liked it. As I was getting ready to leave for New York, she said that I should call Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid, and ask for good film. "Tell him I told you to call," she said in that gruff tone. Berenice also said that if I ever purchased a "real camera," I should come up and she’d show me how to use it.

JW: Did you call Land? And did you take Abbott up on her offer?
HO’N: Yes, I called Land and told him what Berenice had said. He sent me film [laughs]. And yes, I did take her up on her offer. Starting in the summer of 1974, I would go up and spend a few days. This went on until 1990. It was usually around her birthday in July. In her last years, there were fewer and fewer people who made the trip up.

JW: What was the "real" camera you brought up?
HO'N: I bought a new Deardorff 8x10 field camera, a lens and a tripod. The gear cost me about $4,000 in mid-1970s dollars. That's what Berenice considered a "real" camera. [Photo by David Munson]

JW: What did Abbott teach you about photography?
HO’N: The love of craft and that every picture you take has to be part of a project. She said never take pictures willy-nilly. Only take them when you have a project in mind, which is a fascinating, pragmatic concept when you think about it. She believed that art should always have purpose.

JW: Did she teach you anything technical?
HO’N: Not really. When I arrived up in Maine, Berenice sat me down on the back porch, took out yellow pad and drew a picture of lens. She said, “Light comes in here and the image winds up upside down there. That’s enough of that. Let’s take pictures” [laughs]. At one point she put me in a room, tilted a wooden door with a knocker and told me to line up the Deardorff for a picture. On that camera, you have to work the swing and tile movements in the front and rear, which I did for about a half hour.

JW: How did you do?
HO’N: When Berenice got under the focusing cloth to have a look, she said, “You had better do a damn sight better than that, buster” [laughs]. Eventually I got it right.

JW: Abbott had quite an edge, didn't she?
HO'N: I remember she'd say, “You amateurs are all the same. You always want to take pictures of things you can’t take pictures of, like the snow at night.” So that night I went out and took a picture of a small building across the street with a Polaroid. I showed it to her next day. She looked at it and said, “Hmmm, pretty good. Can I have this?” [laughs]. [Photo of Berenice Abbott in 1991 by Hank O'Neal]

JW: What was the big take-away from your time with Abbott?
HO’N: Patience. As a photographer, you have to wait for what you want. She told me that for Changing New York, 1935-1938, she had planned the photographs for weeks just to be in the right position at the right time of day with the right light. Photography, she taught me, is about long periods of waiting and moments of action.

JW: Did your time with Abbott help you with your new book, The Ghosts of Harlem?
HO'N: The truth is the photographs I looked at most for inspiration for the book weren’t by Berenice. They were by Walker Evans. As someone who came from a rural background rather than a city, I identified with Evans’ portraits taken in the rural South more. Abbott was much more cool and detached than Evans. Bernice told me that she had tried to take photos in the South before the Farm Security Administration photography project began in 1935. She said, “I didn’t have the heart to put my camera in the faces of those people.” [Photo of a Hale County, Alabama, woman in 1936 by Walker Evans]

JW: What first drew you to jazz?
HO’N: One record. Growing up in Texas, my father had a lot of classical records, and my mom had operatic records. Sometime in the late 1930s, my mom went to a movie starring Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddie. She loved Indian Love Call that was featured in the movie so much that on her way home she stopped off at a record store. But the salesman sold her Artie Shaw’s version, which was hardly Jeanette and Nelson. So after she played it at home, my mother left the record on the side. In the early 1950s, I was allowed to play it, and when I did, I was struck.

JW: As a photographer, what were you waiting for when you photographed each of the jazz legends for your book?
HO’N: The right expression. I wanted to capture each musician in as relaxed a setting as possible. So I’d haul my equipment to Clark Terry's house or Dizzy Gillespie's basement. I also thought the images would be more historically important if they showed them in these settings than against a blank wall. [Photo of Dizzy Gillespie in 1990 by Hank O'Neal, from The Ghosts of Harlem]

JW: You managed to capture a generation of musicians just at the tail end of their lives. What united them?
HO’N: Almost without exception, they all were extraordinarily professional and dignified in what they did, provided they could do it without interference. For the most part, all lived satisfying lives. Some of these guys were up in their years and sort of slow. But they all seemed to have the information in there somewhere. You just had to draw it out.

JW: What did you learn about Harlem through these artists? 
HO’N: That back then Harlem was a place where you stayed, where you made a home. There was no need for these guys to go downtown. Everything was right there uptown. It was a place unto itself. [Photo of Chick Webb's band at the Savoy Ballroom in 1929 by Berenice Abbott, courtesy of Hank O'Neal]

JW: Do you think your interview subjects overly romanticized Harlem?
HO'N: No, not at all. It was as good as they said it was. Eventually they left Harlem because much changed there over time. But when they and other African-American artists moved to other neighborhoods in the 1940s and 1950s, there was a creative drain. At the time of my book in the mid-1980s, only three of the 42 jazz musicians I interviewed still lived in Harlem. Everyone else lived elsewhere.

JW: What did you learn from this project about yourself?
HO’N: That if you stick to something long enough, it will happen. My book originally was for a U.S. publisher that pulled the plug on the project. So a French publisher picked it up, but published the book in French. So all of the interviews and photos have been frozen in time, kept from American jazz fans because of the language barrier. Now, 22 years later, the book has finally been published in English thanks to Vanderbilt University Press. So you see, any book project, you have to keep pushing ahead, even those published in French [laughs].

JW: What did you learn as an artist?
HO’N: I don’t know that I learned anything as a writer or a photographer. The book was just something that I wanted to do, so I worked hard and accomplished it. I went in trying to find out where Harlem went, why it disappeared and when that happened. I think I came out with fascinating answers. [Photo of Hank O'Neal in 1990 by Berenice Abbott]

JW: Do you miss the legends you interviewed who have since died?
HO’N: Oh, of course. They were all terrific people. It was fun to be able to call Dizzy on any given day and talk about a wide range of things. The second album I owned by an individual artist rather than a band was Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Goes to College. The fact that I can pick up the phone now and call Dave to talk is a wonderful thing.

JazzWax note: For more portraits of Berenice Abbott and other artists and celebrities, visit Hank O'Neal's site here. 

Interview: Hank O'Neal (Part 1)

If you know Hank O'Neal, you're lucky. Hank is among the most powerful and prudent behind-the-scenes forces in jazz today, and certainly one of the most creative and prolific. A photographer and author of more than a half dozen books on jazz and photography, Hank also has produced more than 100 jazz festivals and is founder of Hammond Music Enterprises and Chiaroscuro Records, where during the 1970s and 1980s he produced hundreds of jazz albums. Hank's first jazz book in 1973 was Eddie Condon's Scrapbook of Jazz, co-authored with the guitar legend himself. Hank also befriended and studied with photographer Berenice Abbott in the 1970s. And poet Allen Ginsberg took his wedding photos in 1985. Now Hank's book, The Ghosts of Harlem, has just been published in English by Vanderbilt University Press after languishing for years in French. [Photo of Hank O'Neal in 2006 by Ian Clifford]

The Ghosts of Harlem is nothing short of remarkable. For the book, Hank interviewed and photographed 42 jazz legends of the twenties, thirties and forties who lived and performed in Harlem during its renaissance years. Reading this book is like opening a time capsule. Legends here interviewed by Hank in the 1980s include Jonah Jones, Andy Kirk, Sy Oliver, Panama Francis, Cab Calloway and many others. Hank's accompanying photo portraits also tell a wordless story. As an interview hunter myself, I was left speechless by Hank's monumental "gets."

In Part 1 of my two-part interview with Hank, 68, the legendary photographer and author talks about a trip up to Harlem in the 1980s with producer John Hammond, why Harlem changed after the mid-1940s, the friction between swing musicians and beboppers, and his years working for the CIA:

JazzWax: Why is your book called The Ghosts of Harlem?
Hank O’Neal: I came up with the title after an evening with producer John Hammond in 1985. That night, John, my future wife Shelley Shier, and I drove up to Harlem in my car to hear jazz at Small's Paradise, just before the club closed for good. The trip turned out to be John’s last trip uptown to hear music, and my first time to Small’s Paradise.

JW: That must have been like old times for Hammond?
HO'N: It was. As we drove through Harlem, John pointed out little-known places of historic note, like Fats Waller's apartment and the location of Connie's Inn. When we arrived at Small's, we went down into the basement and enjoyed the first set. Everyone in Al Cobb's C&J Orchestra knew John and lit up when they saw him. Afterward, back at my car, I noticed John was just standing and looking at an old building on 134th St. When I asked what he saw, John said, “That’s the club where I first heard Billie Holiday." The rusting sign on the building said Bar Hot-Cha Grill.

JW: That image must have haunted Hammond.
HO'N: I think so. As I looked around at the boarded up buildings in the area, I started to feel what he was feeling. The golden era of jazz John was referring to was gone—along with the musicians who had lived and played there. All had vanished, like ghosts.

JW: For those who don't know—what made Harlem special in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s?
HO’N: I wasn’t around back then, of course [laughs]. But after interviewing the 42 jazz musicians for my book, there were a number of aspects of Harlem that stood out for these  guys. By the late twenties, there was a special sizzle there that set the neighborhood apart. It was naughty, exciting, emotional and a place unlike any other in the country. During this period, artistic people of all races mingled. Duke Ellington probably summed it up best when he said that Harlem back then was like something out of The Arabian Nights.

JW: What happened to cause a shift?
HO’N: By the end of World War II, changes began to   occur. First and foremost, music tastes shifted, from swing to bebop. The shift hurt many of the establishments that had originally made Harlem special. With the rise of bop, dancing slowed, and places like the Savoy Ballroom, Renaissance Ballroom [pictured] and Small's Paradise suffered. That’s not to say that beboppers weren’t playing for dancers. They did. But by and large, the idea of dancing as a pastime began to decline.

JW: Why did that happen?
HO'N: The music was no longer preoccupied with creating a dance beat. There were complex technical aspects to the music, a secret language if you will, that separated those who could play bebop and those who couldn’t. When I interviewed drummer Panama Francis for my book, he disparaged the beboppers, saying they couldn’t play the bass drum or keep a steady beat because their legs weren't strong enough [laughs]. Panama told me the story of a Thelonious Monk audition for Lucky Millinder’s band in the mid-1940s and said he saw for the first time someone fall asleep at an audition.

JW: Who fell asleep?
HO'N: Monk [laughs]. On the piano.

JW: What else caused Harlem to change?
HO'N: The makeup of the community. When I interviewed Buddy Tate [pictured], he talked about how after World War II African-Americans who migrated from the South to Harlem for opportunities in New York weren't familiar with Harlem's established customs and pretty much disregarded them. So the demographics there shifted. The rise of drug use also had a big impact on the neighborhood's cohesion and safety for those who lived there and for those who came uptown to enjoy the music. [Photo of Buddy Tate in 1986 by Hank O'Neal]

JW: You’re accomplished in so many areas. How do you describe yourself?
HO'N: Busy [laughs]. I don’t put these interests in order. There isn't anything at the top of the list. At different points in my life, some of my interests have been more predominant than others. In truth, I've never had a profession. I prefer to be doing a lot of different things. When I was in college and afterward, I never sat down and said, "I’m going to be this or that."

JW: What did you do?
HO'N: I've always said to myself, “I’m not going to be this or that," and then did a fairly good job of staying away from things I had no talent for. I knew I was going to be a rotten engineer, so I stopped studying it at college. I also stopped playing baseball, since I wasn’t getting anywhere with that either.

JW: Seems like a dangerous way to approach life and a career.
HO'N: Art and music are always a struggle. Let’s face it, except for a tiny percentage of people, 99 percent of those who take photographs don’t make a living from it. The same is true for those who put on concerts. And certainly for those who write books. The amount of time it takes to produce a high-quality book compared with the remuneration isn’t in sync. So, you need many irons in the fire—and hopefully a lot of different fires [laughs]. [Photo of Hank O'Neal in his darkroom in 2003 by Ian Clifford]

JW: What drew you to photography growing up in Texas?
HO’N: My father carried a camera with him in the army throughout World War II. When he returned home, he continued taking photographs, making prints in a little darkroom in our home in Forth Worth. He somehow managed to buy a Speed Graphic camera and small wooden tripod, and took pictures. I have all the images he took—probably less than 250. Most are family type pictures and relatives.

JW: What about the ones from the war?
HO'N: The ones I’ve seen are interesting, mostly of celebrities who visited his Pacific bases. Many of his negatives are still rolled up tight in little containers. I tried to undo one years ago but it broke apart, having been rolled up for so long. Fortunately he made prints of many of them.

JW: When did you get your first camera?
HO'N: In the 7th grade I won a Hawkeye camera and kit in a grocery-store raffle. I remember hearing that I had won while in costume as the cabin boy in Billy Budd. I was about to run down to the grocery store to claim my prize, but my mother wouldn’t let me go until I took off the costume. So I did, and then raced down there. When I brought the camera back to the house, my father showed me how to use it. I immediately started taking pictures and developing them myself with the box and light kit that came with the camera. One of my earliest shots is of an 8th grade playmate dressed as a spaceman [pictured].

JW: While attending Syracuse University as an undergraduate, you were recruited by the CIA. Is that how you developed your famous photographic memory?
HO'N: Gosh, my memory is hardly photographic. I remember things pretty well, I guess, but I forget a lot, too. Back then I did have a capacity for remembering details. I attended college in the late 1950s as part of the ROTC program [pictured]. My dad being a career army officer thought it would be a good idea. I was recruited for the CIA in my sophomore year in 1959 at the suggestion of a professor. After graduation, I enrolled in Syracuse's graduate program in African studies. But just months from graduation, I couldn't write my thesis.

JW: Why not?
HO'N: Because I had already started working for the CIA in its Africa affairs division and writing my thesis would have meant divulging confidential information. So today I'm just a few credits short of a masters degree [laughs].

JW: What did you do in the CIA?
HO'N: I had three-stage career there. After I was recruited, I trained in clandestine services, where you learned how to follow someone through the streets and sneak across a border. But about halfway through training, I was sent to Washington, D.C. in 1963, to work temporarily in a position they were trying to fill. It was in the Africa affairs division of the CIA's Bureau of National Estimates.

JW: Why there?
HO'N: I had taken African studies in college, and one of my professors was leading the revolution in Mozambique. My move to Washington ended my career in clandestine services since I was exposed. I served seven or eight months in that group.

JW: What did you do in Washington?
HO'N: I spent my days writing estimates of what would happen in different parts of Africa if different scenarios took place. My reports were based on a foot-and-a-half of cable traffic each day, and my daily reports would eventually make their way to the National Security Agency and the president. I knew full well there was no career in that division for me. The position I was temporarily filling was for a 45-year-old PhD with 15 years of experience.

JW: What was your next job there?
HO'N: When they finally found a replacement for the person who had originally left, I was re-assigned to a domestic unit in New York in the CIA's Office of Operations. Back then, each major city in the country had one of these small offices where the people who worked there interacted with high-level businesspeople, professors, intellectuals, economists and other specialists.

JW: What was the purpose?
HO'N: To collect opinions about what was going on in the world or talk to them about their travels. In some cases I wrote down what these people told me. In other instances I had to walk around the city with them while they talked and then remember all of the key parts, which I'd write up after returning to the office. Over time, you develop skills for committing details to memory.

JW: Was it tedious work?
HO'N: To some extent. What was interesting is that I had to become a strong generalist. In the morning, I might be talking to a man about the economics of Western Europe and in the afternoon debriefing a nuclear physicist. To carry on a conversation and deduce the importance of what the other person was saying, you had to be knowledgeable about many topics. The job made me very curious about many different subjects.

JW: How did you come to write a book with Eddie Condon?
HO'N: I had first met Eddie in 1965. In the early 1970s, he lived around the corner from me in Greenwich Village. Jazz had always been a love of my mine but it didn't pay a living.

JW: Why did you leave the CIA?
HO'N: I had gone as far as I could go. So I just resigned in 1976. By then I had already built a recording studio but had other people running it for me. By 1976, I wanted to run it myself.

JW: So you can resign from the CIA just like that?
HO'N: Oh sure. I just wrote them a funny letter and that was it.

Tomorrow, Hank talks about what he learned from photographer Berenice Abbott, why each jazz legend in his new book (The Ghosts of Harlem) is photographed in familiar surroundings, what he learned from the musicians he interviewed, and what he learned about himself during the project.

 

JazzWax pages: Hank O'Neal's The Ghosts of Harlem is available here as a pre-order. The 496-page, coffee-table-size book will be released on June 15th.

 

JazzWax list: Here's a list of Hank O'Neal's jazz and photography books:

• Eddie Condon's Scrapbook of Jazz (1973)
• A Vision Shared: A Classic Portrait and Its People, 1935-1943 (1976)
• Berenice Abbott: American Photographer (1982)
• Life Is Painful, Nasty & Short: Informal memoir of  Djuna Barnes (1990)
• Charlie Parker (French, 1995)
• The Ghosts of Harlem (French, 1997)
• Hank O'Neal: Portraits, 1977-2000 (2000)
• Gay Day: The Golden Age of the Christopher Street Parade. (2006)
• Berenice Abbott, Vols. I and II (2008)
• The Ghosts of Harlem (English, 2009)