JazzWax

Interview: Big Jay McNeely (Part 2)

Talking to Big Jay McNeely on Wednesday gave me tremendous insight into a period of jazz that has always puzzled me: Namely, the years between bebop and hard bop. I've always wondered how r&b split off from jazz at the end of 1948, why teens loved the music so much in the early 1950s, and what role, if any, r&b and subsequently rock 'n' roll played in stealing jazz's popular thunder. Much has been made of jazz's abandonment of the dance floor during the late 1940s, and to some extent that certainly compromised the music's mass appeal into the next decade. But there's more to the story, and Big Jay was at the eye of the storm.

Talking to Big Jay was pure joy. Here you have one of the inventors of early rock 'n' roll (years before Bill Haley, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard or Fats Domino). And yet Big Jay has been overlooked by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for induction. Interestingly, Big Jay always considered himself a jazz player—a different kind of jazz player to be sure, but a jazz player just the same. Big Jay's voice is rich and warm, with a double thick roadhouse tone. It drips with hip jazz and country slang, and the way he speaks is simple, heart-felt and honest.

In Part 2 of my interview with Big Jay, the legendary saxophonist talks about the start of his theatrical stage act, getting arrested in San Diego for leading a club audience out onto the street while continuing to play, how his biggest hit There's Something on Your Mind broke in, and why r&b and early rock 'n' roll caught on:

JazzWax: When did the theatrical part of your act begin?
Big Jay McNeely: In about 1950, in Clarksville, Tenn. It was a real small town, so small you didn’t need an address on an envelope, just the name of the person living there. When we played Clarksville for the first time, the audience didn’t respond. They just sat there. I couldn't understand that. The music usually got people going. So on the next set I did something different. I got down on my knees to play. Then I laid down on the stage and played from there.

JW: What happened?
BJM: People went crazy. After the concert, I said to myself, “I’m going to try this again." So I did it in Texas. And again, everyone went crazy. Back in L.A., I did it, too. The kids went nuts. They loved that I was on my back blowing like that, and my energy fired up theirs.

JW: Most of the kids already knew your hit Deacon's Hop. Who helped you break in that song?
BJM: Hunter Hancock [pictured], the Los Angeles r&b DJ. He broke it in. He was the only DJ in town who played black music. The kids who listened to the station were mostly white and Spanish kids. Those were the ones who dug me the most. They were the ones I was playing for mostly.

JW: You really knew how to work up a crowd.
BJM: My manager was Chuck Landers. He lived in Hollywood and was the business partner of [concert promoter] Gene Norman. He knew that gig [performing] cold. He got me with the talent agency, G.A.C. He said I had to be more stage. Before Chuck, I used to throw my suit coat on the stage to play and then picked it up after. He said that was no good, that I had to have someone else do that. I had to look and sound like the boss, like my name. Chuck then went out and got a guy in Hollywood for me who specialized in staging.

JW: What did the guy do?
BJM: He was used to staging other kinds of acts. So he came and watched me for a whole week. He taught me how to segue from one number to another—whether I had to play five minutes or an hour. He taught me how to keep the energy going from the stage, how to present myself to get the most excitement going and to program people.

JW: What does that mean?
BJM: Reading the crowd and playing accordingly. When I’d open, I used to come down the aisle while playing.  That tore the place up because if you were in the audience you didn't expect it. It also told people that I was one of them. But you have to watch people close when you do this. There are some people on the aisle wearing expensive suits, and you have to play one way when you get near them. Or if you see kids, you have to let go of other types of notes. I'd stop and play differently for different people I'd see along aisle. That’s how I got audience participation. And that’s the greatest thing. [Pictured: Big Jay working the audience at New York's Birdland in 1952]

JW: Alto saxophonist Earl Bostic came up around the same time, but he came out of the big bands. What did you think of him?
BJM: Earl was great. He could take any song and make a hit out of it. But he wasn’t a performer. My thing was more visual. One time Earl followed me into Minneapolis. But after I cleared out, everyone was waiting for Earl to be like me, theatric and all. But he wasn’t [laughs].

JW: What did it feel like to have that kind of power over teens in the early 1950s?
BJM: It felt incredible. One time it got out of control, and I got locked up.

JW: Where?
BJM: In San Diego. I didn’t have a wireless microphone  for my sax. So I walked up the aisle playing but then kept going straight out the door onto the sidewalk with everyone following me. I was outside the club blowing my horn the way I was inside. A cop saw this and called the station house. More cops came and arrested me. They had some law that said you couldn’t play outside like that.

JW: Was your exit something new?
BJM: Nah. I had done that at Birdland in Seattle and the Band Box. But it wasn’t allowed in San Diego. The funny thing was the band inside on the stage was waiting for me to come back into the club. But I was in jail. So someone in the band came running down and bailed me out so I could finish the set [laughs]. The kids went nuts.

JW: When you were playing, you thought of yourself as a jazz musician. But it wasn't like jazz, was it?
BJM: I played jazz, but I was an entertainer. Even when we played what was called r&b, the music was sophisticated. We changed keys and did things that were very progressive. It was all very soulful stuff.

JW:  Give me an example. 
BJM: Every time I'd go to the bridge, I'd get a lift out of the audience. So I’d use the guitar player like an organ. I’d have certain voices and a sound when I’d go to the subdominant chord or the tonic. The voicing had to be just right. Same with the voicing by the piano player. I always thought progressive.

JW: What did the jazz guys dig most about you?
BJM: The soulful thing. One time I worked with Sonny Stitt on the same bill. He loved my energy and sound. Other jazz guys respected me because they knew I was a real musician. I wasn't just honking on the horn, like some critics said. And these guys loved power. They all wanted to blow. But what made me different that these cats could hear was the soulful thing. It was from my heart. The younger jazz guys coming up at the time who didn’t know better said I was just playing one note. Hey, it’s an art to play one note [laughs]. Especially if you can get an audience going with it.

JW: You had your biggest hit with There’s Something on Your Mind, with Little Sonny Warner on vocal in 1959.
BJM: We first recorded There's Something on Your Mind in Seattle, in 1957, in a guy’s basement. I didn’t have enough money to get it out. A year later I bought the record and took it to Hollywood. Still nothing. Then I put it out in San Francisco in '59. A DJ there named Rockin' Lucky played it on his midnight show on KSAN. He’s the only one who had the single. After that, everything went nuts.

JW: Looking back, do you think r&b and rock ‘n’ roll hurt jazz?
BJM: I don’t think so. Everyone’s got their own thing that they like. R&b and rock captured a lot of people at a time in the early 1950s when jazz wasn’t that dominant. The truth is black musicians weren’t making money playing jazz.

JW: What do you mean?
BJM: It wasn’t until white musicians started to play with Jazz at the Philharmonic and other things like it that money started to roll in. The kids loved what I did. They’d follow me up to my house. But I don’t think what I was doing messed up jazz. Jazz had its thing. It’s just that its audience was smaller. The kids liked r&b and rock more.

JW: Why?
BJM: To play jazz, you had to have gone to school to learn to play it with all those chord changes. Cultured people liked that. Then along comes a working person who doesn’t know nothing about that. He just wants to hear music that makes him feel good. He wants what he likes to be basic and exciting. People who like jazz are hip and want to see how fast musicians can play and dig their technique. Other people didn’t want to think that much. They just wanted excitement. [Pictured: Big Jay's band in 1958]

JW: But plenty of kids liked jazz.
BJM: Oh sure. And jazz was creative. You couldn't believe what you were hearing when guys like Bird or Wardell [Gray] played it. But it didn’t have the impact on lots of people. You could dance to r&b and relate to it on a simple level. People in the audiences felt they were a part of you and what you were doing. With jazz you have to analyze what the guys are playing.

JW: Did the growing car culture play a role?
BJM: What do you mean?

JW: As more kids started to drive and could afford used cars in the early 50s, there seemed to be an emphasis on speed, excitement and a break from parents.
BJM: Oh sure. And what I played sounded great coming through a car radio [laughs].

JW: You really were one of the originators of rock ‘n’ roll, weren’t you?
BJM: [Pause] Yes. I was the first to be called a “honker and screamer.” But with a good sound. Some play stuff like I did but their sound was terrible. If I hadn’t had a chance to study with a teacher who stressed volume and power, I never would have had that sound. And if that audience in Clarksville had reacted a bit more the first time, I probably never would have had to go down on the floor of the stage to get them going [laughs].

JW: Yet you haven’t been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Why not?
BJM: I don't know. I guess the people who make those decisions don't realize I'm still around.

JazzWax tracks: If you want to hear one of the first recordings of There's Something on Your Mind from a Seattle performance in 1957, you'll find it on Big Jay McNeely: Live a Birdland, 1957 at Amazon here. Birdland, in this case, was a Seattle club. Another fine Big Jay album recorded in the late 1980s is AZ Bootin', which you can find as a download at iTunes.

Attention Rock & Roll Hall of Fame voters: You may have overlooked Big Jay's mighty 60-year contribution. He's still around, living in California. But hurry—let's get him on next year's ballot!

JazzWax clips: Here's a clip of Big Jay at 81 years old performing Everywhere I Go in Australia last year...

And here's another one with Big Jay working a club audience back in the 1980s (be sure to dig his tag from Holiday for Strings)...

Interview: Big Jay McNeely (Part 1)

Last Sunday I wrote that Big Jay McNeely viewed himself in the late 1940s as a new breed of jazz musician. A reader posted a comment in response, chiding me for saying so. After scouring books on Big Jay, the reader wrote, he couldn't find any reference to the r&b musician's jazz roots or how he viewed his place in jazz history. The writer added that I had jumped to conclusions and took a parting shot at Big Jay. Now, I love books as much as anyone. But as a working journalist, I also love the phone. So yesterday I gave Big Jay a call to bring closure to the matter.

For those who may be unfamiliar with Big Jay McNeely, the saxophonist today is considered one of the earliest r&b stage stars and a forefather of 1950's rock 'n' roll. Known back then as king of the "honkers and screamers," McNeely typically entered concerts walking down the aisle while playing a blues riff. When he arrived on stage, McNeely could whip young integrated audiences into a frenzy by playing only a handful of notes. These powerful riffs eventually wound up played while laying trance-like on stage, much to the crowd's hysterical delight. Today, we look back at Big Jay and see an r&b pioneer. But at the time, Big Jay told me yesterday, he viewed himself as "a jazz musician who played for people who wanted to dance."

In Part 1 of my two-part interview with Big Jay, 82, the legendary saxophonist talks about growing up in California, listening to jazz artists, playing with jazz artists, what jazz artists thought of him, and why he branched into dance music instead of sticking with performance jazz:

JazzWax: Was it tough growing up in Watts, CA, during the Depression?
Big Jay McNeely: No, no. We had plenty of food. My family grew our own vegetables. We had turkeys and chickens running around in the yard. My mother cooked for me, my brother Bob, and my father on a wood-burning stove. Each week, the iceman would come with a six-pound block of ice. It was like country living. [Pictured: Watts Tower]

JW: When did you decide to play the saxophone?
BJM: When I was 16 years old, which was around 1943. My brother played the instrument and was an excellent musician. He could have gone with Cab [Calloway] or any of the big bands, but he was too young. When he was drafted during World War II, he left his saxophone home. I was working at the Firestone Rubber Co. at the time. I decided music would be a better bet for me.

JW: What did you do?
BJM: I rode my bike each day to Alma Hightower’s house and took lessons for 25 cents. [Saxophonist and singer] Vi Redd was her great-neice. [Saxophonist] Sonny Criss and I took lessons from Mrs. Hightower at the same time. Then I took lessons with a gentleman who played first saxophone chair with the RKO Studio Orchestra. He was a great teacher and taught me all about full vibrato, so I could play with a big sound. He was a tremendous musician and could even play Dixieland. I studied harmony, ear training, composition—everything—with him.

JW: What happened when your brother came home from the war?
BJM: We both studied voice with a guy who would eventually teach the Hi-Lo’s and the McGuire Sisters. My brother and I figured eventually we’d have to sing and that studying singing would help us with our blowing. Singing was the same principal as playing. You sing from the diaphragm with compact air pressure and the “e” sound.

JW: What’s the “e” sound?
BJM: That's the sound you get like an opera singer. If you hum through a comb, you get an “e” sound. That’s what makes the sound so big. The principal is you have to have the proper approach. You have to use your whole body as a soundboard. My sax began to sound as smooth as a cello when I studied with him. Eventually my brother and I formed a band. My brother played baritone saxophone. Our band had Hampton Hawes and Sonny Criss, until Howard McGhee stole them both away in early 1947 [laughs]. [Photo of Hampton Hawes: (c)Ray Avery / CTSIMAGES.COM]

JW: How did you sound as a jazz musician at that point?
BJM: I didn’t play with a real legit jazz sound. For that sound you’d use very little lip, what they called a nonpressure embouchure. . Just enough pressure on the reed to make it vibrate. I took the same principles I learned in vocal lessons and applied it for a good, big soulful sound on the saxophone. That’s why when I play people recognize it's me. People have criticized me for playing one note but they never criticized my sound [laughs].

JW: Did you listen to jazz musicians in the mid-1940s?
BJM: Oh yes, of course. Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Lucky Thompson, Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons, Illinois Jacquet, Don Byas—all of them. When Charlie Parker came out to L.A. in the mid-1940s, my mother washed his clothes. We ran [hung out] with him.

JW: Why didn’t you become a jazz musician?
BJM: I started out playing jazz but I didn’t have a perfect ear, like Sonny Criss did. Guys like Sonny could pick up their horn and play anything. They heard things once and they could go off on it. Also, back then, there were so many players you had to be different on your horn to stand out. Eventually it was a money issue. Many of these jazz guys looked sharp. They were earning. I was wearing hand-me-downs. That made me realize early on that I had to do something different to make money. [Pictured: Big Jay, left, and his brother Bob in 1955 or 1956]

JW: What did you do?
BJM: In 1947, I began playing at the Barrelhouse Club owned by drummer Johnny Otis. It was right down the street from my home. There was a lot of blues energy there. I was thinking of going to New York, to The Apollo theater. But a guy I knew spelled out how things would go for me. He said I’d be a big hit for sure and would earn solid money. But he also warned me that there would be all kinds of guys who would pad me [advance loans] and steal my money. He said I’d wind up owing the government all kinds of money but I wouldn’t have it because all the guys who took a cut wouldn’t leave me with enough. That made sense, so I decided to stay in L.A.

JW: How did you come to record?
BJM: At the end of 1948 [right after the second AFM strike], Ralph Bass, an a&r guy at Savoy asked me if I wanted to do a record. I said yeah. He told me to put a tune together. A kid I knew in Watts had a record shop. He gave me a record by Glenn Miller that opened with a drummer playing the sock cymbal. I can't remember the name of the song. But I built a blues off of it called Deacon’s Hop, which became a big hit [Deacon's Hop hit #1 on the R&B chart in early 1949].

JW: Your real name is Cecil. How did you wind up with your nickname?
BJM: Ralph, the a&r guy from Savoy records, came up with it. I was getting ready to record Deacon’s Hop. We were taking a cab out to my house and were talking. He said "Cecil" was kind of a square name and that I needed a stronger one if I wanted to be big. He asked me what my friends called me. I told him, “James.” He said great, “Let’s call you Big Jay.” So it stuck.

JW: While you were playing r&b during the late 1940s, did you consider yourself a jazz musician?
BJM: I always thought of myself as a jazz musician who was playing for people who wanted to dance. Before I even recorded Deacon’s Hop I worked on Central Avenue in Los Angeles at all the jazz clubs. I knew Teddy Edwards, Wardell Gray, Miles Davis, Eddie Heywood, Ben Webster, Lucky Thompson—all those cats. I wanted to become a jazz musician, but when I recorded Deacon’s Hop in 1948, it became so big they wouldn’t let me record anything else but more of it. That’s around the time I started playing a more soulful thing.

JW: So jazz was always on your mind?
BJM: Sure. I was trying to play jazz before Deacon's Hop but I just didn’t have the ear. You can train yourself to have an ear. But unless it comes natural when you’re young, it’s much harder as you get older. If you had studied, you could imitate and pick up on whatever you heard. Bird [Charlie Parker] could play the chord changes to everything. But by me not having a perfect ear, I had to work harder to develop what I played. When I started developing my own sound and adding power, it was a whole different thing. It was the complete opposite from what I had been doing.

JW: Did jazz artists dig you?
BJM: Hamp [Hawes], Bird, Miles, Sonny [Criss]—they all loved what I did. Dizzy, too. I played Birdland in New York in the early 1950s and opened for jazz artists. They’d put me on first, before Milt Jackson, Ben Webster, Erroll Garner, all of them. I was always the opener. I guess to get the people who were there excited.

Tomorrow, Big Jay talks about how the theatrical component to his act started, who was responsible for making Deacon's Hop popular with kids in Los Angeles, why he was arrested in San Diego, his strategy for playing to the crowd, and thoughts on whether rock 'n' roll destroyed jazz.

JazzWax shocker: For whatever reason, Big Jay has not yet been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I'll talk to him about this tomorrow—and I'll surely give the Hall a call.

JazzWax tracks: A fine retrospective of Big Jay's work can be found on Nervous, which includes Deacon's Hop, 3-D, Nervous Man Nervous and There Is Something on Your Mind, his biggest hit. It's available at iTunes and Amazon as a download. To hear what Big Jay sounds like today, dig Big Jay McNeely & Dana Gillespie: Cherry Pie, released in March. It's also available as a download or on CD, and the album is fabulous.

JazzWax clip: Go here to see what Big Jay was like in 1983, complete with his dramatic and signature aisle entry.

Interview: Med Flory (Part 2)

Throughout the 1950s, saxophonist Med Flory was known in jazz circles for his aw-shucks demeanor and aggressive ambition. After moving to Los Angeles in 1956 with his wife and singer Joan Fry, Med began landing a steady stream of work in the TV and movie studios of Burbank and Hollywood. He also continued to play in Ray Anthony's big band, freelance in small groups, and lead his own orchestras on record dates. When you talk to Med, you start to notice this gentle merging of Midwestern calm and Coastal charm. He's as relaxed as some of the Old West characters he has played on TV, but he excites easily when the subject turns to music. There's also a distinct hip lilt in his voice, as if all those years deep in the West Coast jazz scene has somehow marinated his vocal chords. And as you discuss music with Med, you come to realize that this guy isn't satisfied unless the band he's playing with knocks listeners out of their seats. He loves it that much. [Photo of Med Flory, left, by Rich Voorhees]

Med's big obsession has always been the sound of reeds playing in unison. Saxes packed together playing a soli has been an intoxicating device used by big bands since the 1940s. After years spent tinkering with transcriptions of Charlie Parker solos, Med along with bassist Buddy Clark decided in the early 1970s to form a band that would turn their passion for lock-step saxes into a mission. Crack reed players were assembled, and the result was Supersax. The group's first album in 1973 seemed at first like a West-meets-East novelty concept. But the energy level and emotional lift made the group a huge success and reawakened an interest in Charlie Parker. The album, Supersax Plays Bird, won a Grammy.

In Part 2 of my interview with Med, the legendary saxophonist and arranger muses about Art Pepper, his own accidental acting career, Charlie Parker, and the formation of Supersax:

JazzWax: In 1959, you played on Art Pepper Plus Eleven, which was arranged by Marty Paich and sort of had a pre-Supersax sound.
Med Flory: Nah, not really. I don't hear that. The date was OK. I wasn't crazy about Art [Pepper]. He was a bit of a jerk. I remember we were playing up in Oakland [CA] with Maynard Ferguson. Art Pepper was on the gig. When the gig was over, we were going to go back to Los Angeles the next day. But we got an urgent call from a woman Art was with. She said, “Art’s not moving. He’s not breathing.” So a bunch of the guys rushed up there. Turned out Art was fine. It was Art’s idea of a joke. He was always doing stuff like that or saying he could play better than Bird. That simply wasn’t the case.

JW: Starting in 1960, you started a new career as an actor.
MF: Yeah, for the next 30 years I worked on TV and in the movies. A lot of Westerns. The first thing I landed was a part on TV’s Lawman. One day I was sitting on the porch of one of those fronts in Warner’s back lot looking at my lines. James Coburn was passing by. He said, “Hey, don’t you play tenor sax in Terry Gibbs’ band?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “What are you doing here?” I said, “I have this part.” Coburn asked if I had done much acting. I told him I hadn’t. He said, “On the wide shots, make big gestures. On the medium shots, make little ones. And on close-ups, don’t do anything. And always hit your marks [on the ground] when you're supposed to.” That’s about as much acting advice I ever got [laughs]. I did Bonanza, the Saga of Whizzer McGee, Daniel Boone and a ton of other shows. I also did Lassie. I seemed to be naturally good at it, and acting was another way to make a few bucks. [Pictured: Med Flory]

JW: How did you come up with the idea for Supersax?
MF: What inspired me initially was Ralph Burns’ 1948 arrangement of the chorus to I’ve Got News for You. That was for Woody Herman’s  [pictured] band. It was a Shorty Rogers chart but Ralph wrote the chorus. It was a reworking of Dark Shadows, the song Charlie Parker had recorded a year earlier with Earl Coleman. Ralph had written out Parker's solo for the five saxes.

JW: When did the idea to transcribe Parker's solos first hit you?
MF: Around October 1956. [Saxophonists] Joe Maini, Charlie Kennedy, Richie Kamuca and Bill Hood came by my house. Joe Maini had a record player and a bunch of Parker records. I gave him $50 for the player and the discs. Then I started transcribing a few things of Bird’s that were in the stack, like Star Eyes, Chasin’ the Bird and Just Friends. I wrote out those three charts from the records. Then later we played them down. We were just screwing around. One night in 1957 we were playing the Crescendo with the Dave Pell Octet. Buddy Clark was playing bass. Afterward, we all went over to my pad. Buddy said, “Play that thing with the saxes—Just Friends.” When we were done, Dave said, “Boy wouldn’t it be great to have a whole book of those things.” Buddy said he’d take a shot. The trick was to keep everything within an octave. The line is everything. What Bird played is the thing. You don’t have to dress it up with voicings or anything.

JW: Were they hard to play?
MF: Bet your ass. You have a line that has to flow. All of the parts have to flow like the line. You can’t have trick things like jump lines. You have to find a way to keep everyone flowing tight and the right way. You have a bunch of choices to make on each chord. It’s like doing the New York Times crossword puzzle—except when you’re done you have something more than yesterday’s newspaper. You also want to keep what’s known in the music business as “a rub”—a half step in every chord. So, you want a B up against a C. It busts up the chord and keeps the line from becoming complacent. You have to have the rub between the second alto and first tenor or two tenors. Not the two altos.

JW: In the early 1970s, you and Buddy finally had the time to take the concept to the next level.
MF: Yeah. At first it was me and Perk [Bill Perkins] on alto saxophone, Pete Christlieb on tenor and Bill Hood on baritone. We started rehearsing. Hood left because he was entering his old folks stage and didn’t want to get involved in work. Christlieb burned a hole in his eardrum working on cars with high-pitched tools. So we got Joe Lopes on alto, Jay Migliori and Warne Marsh [pictured] on tenors, and Jack Nimitz on baritone. We rehearsed for about a year at my place and at Buddy’s house. Joanie, my wife, got tired of us rehearsing all the time and called up the guy who owned Donte’s and pushed him to book us.

JW: What happened?
MF: We went into Donte's on a Monday night. We played Parker’s Mood, and after the first chorus, everyone in the place jumped up and went nuts. Mauri Lathauwer from Capitol Records happened to be there and was in heaven. He signed us right away for three albums.

JW: What did you learn about Charlie Parker during this experience?
MF: Bird knew what he was doing. You can’t memorize that stuff and play it. Just when you think he’s going one way, he goes another. He was all about surprise. Not big ones. Little ones. Like the rub. I’d always try to play like him and never could. When you listen to him, you gotta know he’s from somewhere else.

JW: Did you listen to Parker as a kid?
MF: First time I heard him I was a senior in high school. I didn’t know it was him. I just heard some guy playing The Jumpin’ Blues with Jay McShann’s band. Then when I was in the army, I heard Bird’s first records as a leader. I said, “He’s OK but he’s not as good as that guy in McShann’s band” [laughs].

 

JW: Did you ever meet McShann?
MF: Yes. When we were in Japan with Supersax. Me and [singer] Joe Williams got to talking with Jay. He was a great old cat. He told me how Bird got his name. He said they were on the road traveling in cars and one hit a chicken. Charlie said, “Stop the car, I want to get that yardbird.” They took the bird to the boarding house where they were staying, and the woman cooked it up for dinner that night.

JW: What’s next for Med Flory?
MF: I'm just finishing up a Supersax CD that's a killer. It was recorded at Charlie-O's. I'm writing a new chart that I may call Bebop 101. There are going to be a lot of hidden lines in there, like those pictures where you have to find the teacup in the tree. I'm also going to be at the AT&T San Jose Jazz Fest on Saturday, August 8th, with Dave [Pell] and [singer] Bonnie Bowden. It's going to be fun.

JW: You always sound like you're having fun. Has the jazz life been fun?
MF: A gas.

JazzWax tracks: Supersax recorded upward of nine albums. The first, Supersax Plays Bird, was issued on CD but it's out of print and selling for around $40. Supersax's second album, Salt Peanuts, is fabulous but only available on LP. The same goes for the third album, Supersax Plays Bird With Strings. The others are available on CD, but not all are in print.

More recently, Med recorded Live at Capozzoli's in Las Vegas (1998) along with his quintet and Conte Candoli. He also recorded Sunday Afternoons at the Lighthouse Cafe (2004), a quintet date. Both are superb albums recorded for Woofy Records. You can find them here and here.

JazzWax clip: Here's Supersax in the early 1980s on A Night in Tunisia. Med's in the middle of the reed section and Conte Candoli is on trumpet...

Interview: Med Flory (Part 1)

Med Flory is perhaps best known as the co-founder of Supersax, the commercially successful reed ensemble started in 1972 that plays transcriptions of Charlie Parker's solos. But before Supersax, Med was one of the most dynamic alto saxophonists, arrangers and bandleaders on the New York and Los Angeles scenes in the 1950s. If you listen to his leadership recordings from the mid- and late-1950s or his work with Terry Gibbs and Dave Pell, you'll be taken aback. I certainly was. Med's charts and the charts he motivated others to write for him are like pure rocket fuel. They take off and don't stop. Part of Med's gift was a knack for assembling just the right swingers. Like a kid who keeps tinkering with hot rods to get them to go faster, louder and cooler, Med routinely assembled groups that out-did the last ones. Musicians impressed into duty (often in the same band) included Al Cohn, Johnny Bello, Doug Mettome, Hal McKusick, Billy Byers, Urbie Green and so many others. Med's leadership dates bring new meaning to "dream band."

Today, Med lives in California and continues to play and record. He has a supercharged positive spirit and a snappy West Coast sense of humor. He slips words like "wig," "dig," "cool" and "hip" into the conversation so naturally you'd think he invented them. Med is among a fast-disappearing generation of highly aggressive West Coast jazz musicians who knew only one way—swinging hard until the arrow said "empty."

In Part 1 of my two-part conversation with Med, 82, the legendary alto saxophonist and arranger talks about Claude Thornhill, Al Cohn, Ray Anthony, and his late wife Joan Fry:

JazzWax: Is Med your real name?
Med Flory: No. It’s Meredith. But I hated it. When I was a kid, no one could pronounce it, so they called me “Mary.” I’d get the heck kicked out of me. One day my junior high school coach said, “Hey Med, come over here.” So I grabbed that nickname.

JW: Where were you born?
MF: Logansport, Indiana. I started out on clarinet when I was 9 years old. When I was 12, in 7th grade, Bill Marocco, the band teacher, put me in the high school band. I played for five years in the first clarinet chair.

JW: How did you come to music?
MF: My mom was a real musician. She could sight-read three manual organ parts with pedals and everything. She had played for the silent movies when she was in high school. She never studied music but could memorize everything. She also could improvise. She was twice the musician I’d ever be.

JW: Did you study music in college?
MF: No. I only had a semester of music in college in the fall of 1944. Then I enlisted in the Army Air Corps. When I got out in 1946, I went to Indiana University in Bloomington. I was there for 3 ½  years and graduated in May 1950. I didn’t have anything to do with the music school there. I had a band at the time and was writing charts and didn’t think I needed them. Instead I majored in philosophy and minored in sociology and French. I didn’t want to take anything in college that would hold me back from being a complete idiot [laughs].

JW: You wound up in Claude Thornhill’s band on graduation day, yes?
MF: That’s right. A fraternity brother of mine, Tom Patton, a trumpet player, recommended me. [Tenor saxophonist] Dick Hafer was leaving the band, and Claude needed a replacement. I was with Claude for two years. The band was based in New York about half the time. I lived at the President Hotel on 48th Street, just west of Broadway. The other half we toured. We hit every state twice.

JW: What was Thornhill like?
MF: Claude was deep. A good guy, nice and everything. But there was a part of him you never got to know. He was a hell of musician, though. He had been Paul Whiteman’s piano player.

JW: After Thornhill, you decided to stay in New York?
MF: Yes. In January 1952, I put my union card in New York. I was in New York freelancing from January 1952 to Christmas of 1955.

JW: Did you listen to other bands?
MF: Sure. One of my favorites was Elliot Lawrence. I caught the band at the Pennsylvania Hotel many times between 1952 and 1955. I didn’t play on the band. I just danced to it or went to hear it. That was a great band. He had the best writers and arrangers, like Tiny Kahn, Al Cohn and Johnny Mandel. They wrote the Lawrence band book. Johnny Mandel was the best out-chorus arranger of them all. An out-chorus is the part at the end of a swinging arrangement where everything is jumping. Tiny Kahn was great like that, too. [Drummer] Sid Catlett was instrumental in helping Tiny Kahn develop his thing. Tiny’s credo was “Play in four, but think in two.”

JW: Who was your favorite tenor saxophonist at the time?
MF: Al Cohn.

JW: Not Zoot Sims?
MF: No, He wasn’t in the same category as Al. Zoot was a good swing-time player. But Al was otherworldly. And he had a wicked sense of humor. Later, when Al was over in Europe, up in Denmark, they asked him, “How do you like our Elephant beer?” Al said, “I drink to forget” [laughs]. That was all. Fast. And funny. Those lines came out of the blue. He had a very fast mind. Al’s writing and playing was above most everyone else.

JW: Your first recording as a leader was in 1953. That was some session.
MF: [Laughs] You dig that? New York had a lot of great players then. You just hung around Charlie’s Tavern and got to know everyone. Al Cohn wrote two of those charts. Al and I had worked the Rustic Cabin together in New Jersey with Art Mooney’s band. Duke Niles at Capitol Records heard me and took an interest. He got me a deal with Bobby Shad, the main man at EmArcy. We did the four tunes on one date in late 1953. [Pictured: Al Cohn, left, and Med Flory in the mid-1950s]

JW: Your other leadership dates in 1956, and 1957 were even more stunning.
MF: [Laughs] I recorded those for Albert Marx at Jubilee Records. They were great.

JW: Backing up a bit, you joined trumpeter Ray Anthony’s band in New York in 1955.
MF: Yes, Ray [pictured] came to New York in the fall of 1955. His brother, Leo, was contracting the band. By then I was married to Joanie [Fry]. She was a singer, and we were working together at the time. Leo hired both of us.

JW: Where did you meet your wife?
MF: We met on a New York City bus in late 1952. A friend and I were out in front of the Dixie Hotel on 43d Street and Eighth Avenue waiting for a bus. It was cold. We got on the bus and headed to the back. Joanie was sitting there with a friend. We just started talking. Later Joanie told me she told her friend, “I’m going to marry that guy.” When we went out the next day, she fell in the snow and I picked her up. It was love at first sight really. We were married for just over 48 years. She died in January 2001 of Parkinson’s. [Pictured: Med, wife Joan, Henry Fonda and Joe Maini]

JW: You and your wife moved to California in 1956.
MF: Yes, we went into the Hollywood Palladium with Ray Anthony in January 1956. We loved it out there. It was a pretty nice place to live. The climate was perfect and it had a cosmopolitan atmosphere. So I got a few bucks from my folks, and we bought a home. With the Cold War heating up and everything, New York seemed like a bit of a trap. There were only a couple of bridges and tunnels out of the city.

JW: In 1956 you were in The Girl Can’t Help It with Jayne Mansfield.
MF: We were in one scene, in prison outfits. The music was already recorded. We played as though we were playing. 

JW: Then you did TV work.
MF: Yes, I did the Ray Anthony Show for 30 weeks. The gig got me going in Los Angeles. The contractor on the band started using me on baritone saxophone on studio dates. There was so much work in L.A. back then.

JW: Your 1959 band was similar to Terry Gibbs’ Dream Band [pictured].
MF: Terry came to town, heard my group and thought we could make it bigger. So all those charts I had went over to Terry. Now I don’t lend out charts any more. I don’t blame Terry. He had landed the gig. But he heard my band and that's what got him going with that. Around this time I also met [tenor saxophonist] Dave Pell. I started writing charts for him and playing baritone in his octet for about three years. I also was working a lot of strip joints in the late 1950s. The Largo was the big one on Sunset Strip. This is just before I started acting on TV and in the movies.

Tomorrow, Med talks about actor James Coburn, Art Pepper, Charlie Parker and the birth of Supersax.

JazzWax tracks: I can honestly say that one of my best buys this year has been Go West Young Med!, (Fresh Sound), a compilation of Med and his orchestras from 1954-1959. Every single track is a blockbuster, and the quality of the arrangements and musicianship is nothing short of stunning. Charts are by Med, Al Cohn, Bob Brookmeyer, Bill Holman, Lennie Niehaus, Bob Enevoldsen and others. There's simply not enough room to get into all the players here. But rest assured the ensembles raise hairs. It's as good as Maynard Ferguson's late 1950s Roulette Records period. You can find it here.

Med with Claude Thornhill can be found on
Claude Thornhill and His Orchestra: The 1949-1953 Performances (Hep). He's on tracks starting with Mambo Nothing. The album is available as a download at iTunes and at other online retailers. Med's also on Ray Anthony's Capitol recordings throughout the 1950s.

Med's also in the sax section on Manny Albam's The Jazz Greats of Our Time (1957), which included Conte Candoli, and  Jack Sheldon (trumpets), Stu Williamson (valve-trombone), Herb Geller (alto sax), Richie Kamuca and Med Flory (tenor sax), Charlie Mariano (alto, tenor and baritone saxes), Lou Levy (piano), Red Mitchell (bass) and Shelly Manne (drums). You'll find this superb album here.

Med is in the sax section of Terry Gibbs' Dream Band albums starting in 1959.

Art Pepper: Art History

Art Pepper is one of only a handful of jazz artists whose life story is perhaps as well known as his recordings. Thanks largely to the publication of Straight Life in 1979, a searing autobiography written by Pepper with his literary wife Laurie, Pepper's music has much greater meaning and dimension today now that the back-story is known. One of the earliest no-holds-barred, tell-all jazz books, Straight Life detailed Pepper's passion for jazz, his plunge down the rabbit hole of addiction, and his struggles to resurrect himself after years squandered on narcotics and in jail.

When Straight Life came out, I had known little of Pepper's life story. But after reading the book in one sitting, I understood immediately what Pepper was trying to say with his music and where all that energy, pain and beauty came from. I immediately bought Surf Ride, The Early Show, The Late Show, The Return of Art Pepper, Picture of Heath and Modern Art. Along with a friend who read Pepper's book at the same time, we listened to hours of the saxophonist's recordings. But I still felt I lacked a complete understanding of Pepper's thinking. So in the summer of 1982, prior to a trip west to visit a college friend just south of Los Angeles, I recorded a bunch of Pepper on cassettes and packed a Walkman. After spending days listening to Pepper on the beaches of Southern California, I came to realize that there's a lot of Pacific Coast sunlight and rolling surf in everything he plays.

Which is why comparisons to Charlie Parker always seem forced. Both Pepper and Parker played from honesty and pain. But Pepper had a more sun-splashed sound to his attack in the 1950s. Like Parker, Pepper happily ran red lights with his risk-taking improvisation. But he always seemed to be cruising through the intersections rather than tearing by. In addition, Pepper's West Coast roots made him keenly aware of space. His sound relied heavily on a hot-sand wail rather than a deep blues tradition.

In the years since Pepper's death in 1982, his wife Laurie has been issuing previously unreleased material on her Widow's Taste label. Her fourth and most recent effort is a three-CD compilation called Art Pepper: The Art History Project. As Laurie told me yesterday, this set's purpose is more about placing one Pepper track up against another chronologically to contrast and appreciate Pepper's development than reaching into the rarity vaults. Nevertheless, a third of the set contains never-before issued tracks, including unknown recordings made just after Pepper's release from San Quentin State Prison in 1964.

The three-CD set smartly covers Pepper's life in three phases—early, middle and late. The result is a welcome reminder of how special Pepper was and how provocative his playing became in the later years. The unreleased material includes six tracks on Disc 2 (tracks 1-6), and three tracks on Disc 3 (tracks 2, 3, 6 and 7). What's more, there are limited release tracks here that have appeared in the past only on Danish and Japanese releases (on Disc 3, tracks 1, 2, 4 and 5).

Pepper was a product of the big bands. He did two tours of duty with Stan Kenton's orchestra in 1943 and again starting  in 1947. As a result, Pepper had impeccable time and swing, and thick chops developed while trying to be heard in a Mack truck band. When Pepper left Kenton at the tail end of 1951, he became immersed in the West Coast bop scene, leading and playing with groups that included Shorty Rogers, Sonny Clark, Shelly Manne, Hampton Hawes, Harry Babasin, Joe Mondragon and many others. A gifted sight reader and strong jazz soloist, Pepper added a special ingredient to a sax section and helped pioneer a new West Coast alto saxophone sound that was at once soulfully restless and laid back. [Photo of Pepper with Stan Kenton's orchestra in 1950 by Bob Willoughby]

Disc #1 (Pure Art: 1951-1960) features Pepper with Stan  Kenton and assorted small group combos. Pepper's playing is bouncy and edgy—like an amusement park ride that has snapped free of its operator's controls. Pepper swings in and out, darting here and there but always delivering a warm, electrified sound. Pepper's attacks are searing and thrusting, especially on Art's Oregano and Diane. 

Disc #2 (Hard Art: 1960-1968) displays the influence of free jazz on Pepper. The first six tracks were recorded in May 1964, Pepper's first recordings following his prison release. Dig the 11-minute So In Love featuring free jazz breaks with John Coltrane-like arpeggio showers. But this motif isn't a lift. Pepper breaks in places, allowing his former lyricism to emerge. On That Crazy Blues, there are shades of Ornette Coleman as Pepper spins and spins while developing ideas.

The disc ends with Phil Wilson's arrangement of Chelsea Bridge, from Buddy Rich's Mercy, Mercy album recorded live in 1968 at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. I might have chosen Alfie from the same album instead, on which Pepper has a searing solo. But the more I listened to Chelsea Bridge, the more I understand where Laurie was coming from when she chose it, especially given Pepper's Coltrane touches. What's remarkable on this track not only is Pepper's all-out playing but that he had a ruptured spleen at the time. Said Buddy Rich trombonist Rick Stepton in the Mercy, Mercy CD liner notes:

"Art had been playing tenor with a Latin band in the barrio section of Los Angeles and didn't own an alto when he got the call to join the band. Don Menza offered to lend him his horn until he could get one of his own, and that's Don's alto Art was playing at Caesar's."

Disc #3 (Consummate Art: 1972-1982). By the early 1970s, Pepper was bit more anchored to his own sound, though he continued to integrate Coltrane's purposeful runs into his solos. Perhaps the most interesting track on this disc is Angel Wings. According to Laurie's liner notes, a Japanese label in 1980 asked Pepper to record some West Coast Jazz for export. So Pepper got together with trumpeter Jack Sheldon, pianist Russ Freeman and other musicians and revisited his 1950s roots. What's interesting is how he blends free jazz touches into his neo-West Coast scene.

A three-disc compilation that calls itself The Art History Project almost taunts you to choose the period you like best. For me, Disc #1 remains most memorable and fun to hear. Pepper in the 1950s had an energy, joy and innocence that transcended the times. He was ahead of the pack and breaking new ground without looking to see who might be on his creative tail. Pepper's playing changed after his devastating years in prison, and not always for the better.

By the time of his prison release in 1964, Pepper had emerged in a creative moonscape. The music he had known had changed, replaced by an art form that was less cohesive. After losing four critical years of artistic development, Pepper seemed hell-bent trying to catch up to the music of Coltrane, Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman and demonstrating that he, too, could play it. The results often feel detached, uncertain and lost. Which makes these tracks fascinating if you know the back-story. These are the blues, but not the blues of hard luck, poverty or racism. They're the kind you play when you've come to realize finally how foolish you've been and how much time you've wasted succumbing to personal weakness.

JazzWax tracks: Art Pepper: The Art History Project is available as a download from iTunes as three stand-alone albums. Or you can buy the set from CDBaby here. The remastering by Wayne Peet is superb. If you're a fan of Pepper in the 1950s, you should know that two-thirds of the set is devoted to post-prison Pepper, which is a different trip. And even if you already own some of the set's tracks on Individual albums, it's a delight to have Laurie Pepper's choices here. Just knowing that she finds these tracks meaningful and in this order make them special.

JazzWax clip: Shortly after Pepper's release from San Quentin, he appeared on Ralph Gleason's Jazz Casual TV show in San Francisco in May 1964. The two tracks here are D Section and Groupin'. The band is Pepper on alto sax, Frank Strazzeri on piano, Hersh Hamel on bass and Bill Goodwin on drums...

Interview: Dick Katz

It's hard to peg Dick Katz. The pianist was on the New York  jazz scene starting in the early 1950s. He has played with virtually all of the greats, including Oscar Pettiford, Coleman Hawkins, J.J. Johnson and others. He has recorded on quite a few significant albums, including Benny Carter's masterpiece Further Definitions. He has arranged sessions. He's been an entrepreneur—co-founding Milestone Records in the mid-1960s. And he has produced many sterling sessions, including Alone Together with Jim Hall and Ron Carter. [Photo by Nancy Miller Elliott]

In essence, Dick Katz has been involved with virtually every aspect of the jazz business—from the creation of sweeping music to the shaping of significant jazz sessions and launching of a major jazz label.

In my interview with Dick, 85, the legendary pianist talked about his experiences with Teddy Wilson, Tony Scott, Kenny Dorham, Calvin Newborn, Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Jo Jones, Helen Merrill, Orrin Keepnews and John Lewis:

JazzWax: Where did you grow up?
Dick Katz: In Baltimore. I grew up during the Depression, but my family was very fortunate. My father was a big deal in the advertising business, so we did OK financially. He had started his own ad agency and was holding his own. He had started out as a poor kid who worked his way up. There were three kids in my family. My sister was nine years older than me. She died in 1984. I also had an older brother. He died in 1997.

JW: Who first exposed you to jazz?
DK: My brother. He had all these records. They were 35 cents each then. Swing era stuff. One day I saw a stack of new records on the player. The 78-rpm that was playing was by Count Basie and His Orchestra. That record turned my life around.

JW: Do you remember the song?
DK: Yes, It was Roseland Shuffle.

JW: Why did you choose the piano?
DK: Fats Waller. I loved his records. But I quickly realized that I didn’t have the physical equipment to play stride piano like that. Stride is a specialty. It’s a physical thing, almost athletic. In order to play stride, you have to have a certain power and accuracy. When you hit a bass note followed by a chord. That takes constant practice.

JW: Who were your favorite pianists besides Waller?
DK: I was smitten with Teddy Wilson and Jess Stacy.

JW: Did you meet Wilson?
DK: Yes. I took lessons with him. After I graduated from  the Manhattan School of Music, I went to Juilliard to study with Teddy during the summer of 1950. The main thing he had, in addition to technique, was enormous taste. He’d coach me using melodic logic. One note leads to the next, in a logical way. He was a very dignified, educated man.

JW: In 1953, you recorded with clarinetist Tony Scott.
DK: He was a mercurial egomaniac. Extremely talented but headstrong. He was like a salesman who oversold himself. He was multitalented. But he’d get an audience in palm of his hand and he’d keep on going and lose them. It was his personality. He mellowed over the years though. He was one of the major players back then. He taught me a great deal, mostly nuts and bolts stuff. This chord goes to that chord.

JW: You became the house pianist at New York’s Café Bohemia, a hot place to be in the mid-1950s.
DK: Yes, I was working with [trombonists] J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding. One night I sat in with [bassist] Oscar Pettiford and [drummer] Kenny Clarke, and we started played together as a trio there and behind other groups.

JW: In 1956, you joined Kenny Dorham’s Jazz Prophets.
DK: I went on the road with that group. Kenny was a sweetheart. He was a lovely man. We traveled the circuit for a while. That’s the first time I heard [pianist] Phineas Newborn. An amazing player. We were at the Cotton Club in Cleveland. He was there with his brother Calvin. Calvin played all the instruments—vibes, trombone, guitar, you name it. He’s still active today.

JW: How was recording Benny Carter’s Further Definitions in 1961?
DK: We did that in two sessions. Benny had heard me play, and Jo Jones called me for the job. Jo and I were working together at the Embers in New York. I was playing with [trombonist] Tyree Glenn, Jo and [bassist] Tommy Potter at the time. Benny’s music plays itself. But it can be tricky. Papa Jo was having some difficulty with the charts on the session. He was a very proud man. If he couldn’t figure out something, he’d get defensive. Benny had a certain mastery when dealing with people. He cooled Jo out like a psychiatrist. He told him to settle down. Everyone had such respect for Benny.

JW: How did Benny do it?
DK: One of his techniques was correcting without insulting. If a musician messed up while playing down a chart, he’d stop him and say so in a way that didn’t set you on edge. Actually he did it with me once.

JW: What happened?
DK: I had referenced a standard while improvising on one of Benny’s songs. Benny said, “We’re happy to have you on board here. But I don’t like people injecting other people’s songs into my music. Please don’t do that.” Then he turned to everyone in the band and said, “That goes for everyone.” It was never personal.

JW: You play beautifully on Further Definitions, especially on Body and Soul.
DK: Thank you. Teddy Wilson had showed me some chord changes for the second bridge to Body and Soul. I passed them on to Hawk at the session and he used them in his solo. It’s an altered-chord sequence.

JW: Did you write them out for Hawkins?
DK: For Hawk? No way. Hawk had super ears. He just looked over my shoulder and gobbled them up. That session was the high point of my career. There was a lot of great playing there as well as warm joking around and nice feelings.

JW: What was the record business like in 1966?
DK: Things were very rough. The jazz business was in the tank. Record distributors had a thing going that they wouldn’t distribute your lesser-known artists unless you also had a star.

JW: Right in the middle of this, you started Milestone Records with Orrin Keepnews.
DK: Yes. Orrin’s label, Riverside, had gone belly-up. The label had overproduced, winding up with much more inventory than they could get rid of. At Milestone, we agreed that Orrin would handle the business end and I would do the producing. I produced Alone Together with Jim Hall and Ron Carter, Lee Konitz’s Duets and others.

JW: How did you and Orrin come together?
DK: Through our kids. I didn’t know Orrin that well at the time. I knew that he was out of a job because of Riverside’s hard luck. Aside from playing, I wasn’t doing too much either and had always had a hankering for producing. Our children went to the same private school in New York—the Fieldston School. At some school event, Orrin and I got to talking. He was itching to start a new company.

JW: Why didn’t he take a job with a major record label after Riverside collapsed?
DK: He couldn’t. All the big companies he applied to said he was overqualified. So he was having a hard time.

JW: Where did you get the seed money?
DK: I borrowed $10,000 from my brother-in-law, and we started Milestone.

JW: How did you come up with the name?
DK: When you name anything, you have to go through the copyright office. What you find is that virtually everything you can think of is taken. When we tried Milestone, it was available. Orrin had a few albums in the can that were left over from Riverside, so we issued those. I had produced an album with Helen Merrill in 1965, with George Avakian in the booth. We issued that on Milestone, too, as The Feeling Is Mutual. George is great. He’s one of my heroes. He’s a giant. There would be no jazz without him.

JW: How was working with Orrin?
DK: Orrin is alright. He’s a little crotchety, but he’s true blue. He knows what he’s doing

JW: Who was the most exciting musician you’ve worked with?
DK: Probably Roy Eldridge. I consider him to be as big a giant as any you can name, including Louis [Armstrong]. Roy was an amazing artist. The other was Oscar Pettiford. And then Benny Carter.

JW: Which recording session was the toughest?
DK: Probably Jimmy Raney and Bob Brookmeyer in 1956. It was tough because of the way Jimmy wrote. He wrote very complex harmonies, and he had two chord changes for every beat. This required a lot of rehearsal, and we didn’t have any. I had to sight read and it was very rough. I played on the first four tracks. Hank Jones replaced me for the next four recorded a couple of weeks later. Hank played much better with them than I did.

JW: What group are you most proud of?
DK: Probably my years in the mid-1980s with the American Jazz Orchestra. [Pianist] John Lewis was the musical director. I got to play the greatest music ever. John was my mentor for many years. John was a renaissance man. He was extremely well rounded. He was originally going to be an anthropologist. When Duke [Ellington] came through Albuquerque, New Mexico, where John was raised, that moment changed his life. He had a resolve and ambition like no one I ever knew. Nothing stood in his way. 

JW: Was jazz fun?
DK: Fun? Nothing is always fun. A lot of it was fun. A lot of it was stressful. A lot was wonderful.

JazzWax tracks: Dick Katz's earliest recording sessions with Tony Scott appeared on two different 10-inch LPs: Music After Midnight and Jazz for GIs. It's available as a download at iTunes on Tony Scott in Hi-Fi.

Kenny Dorham and the Jazz Prophets is available used for about $20 at Amazon here.

Helen Merrill and Dick Katz collaborated on The Feeling Is Mutual (1965), A Shade of Difference (1968) and Chasin' the Bird (1979). The first two are available from Mosaic Records on The Helen Merrill-Dick Katz Sessions here.

Jim Hall and Ron Carter's duet album, Alone Together, that Dick produced, is available as a download at iTunes or at Amazon here. The Lee Konitz Duets, on which Konitz plays alto and baritone saxes, is available here.

Benny Carter's Further Definitions is one of the greatest jazz albums ever recorded. It would certainly be in my Ultimate Top 25, if I were to create one. The lineup? Benny Carter (alto sax and arranger), Phil Woods (alto sax), Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Rouse (tenor saxes), Dick Katz (piano), John Collins (guitar), Jimmy Garrison (bass) and Jo Jones (drums). You can download it, but I'd recommend buying it. You'll find it here.

Reader Don Brown notes that Dick's Piano & Pen (1958) is a wonderful album that features guitarists Chuck Wayne and Jimmy Raney on different tracks, as well as Joe Benjamin and Connie Kay. It's available as a download at iTunes or at Amazon here.

Bill Evans: Six Vocal Versions

I don't generally go for vocal versions of Bill Evans' compositions. Too many attempts feel trite or lack the sensitivity and depth of Evans' piano originals. In other cases, the vocalist doesn't have enough technique, a problem instantly exposed when attempting an Evans piece. But there are exceptions. Here are my favorite vocal interpretations of Evans' songs, in no particular order. My criteria? An evident understanding of Evans' melodic primacy, tender timbre and gentle swing:

Gene Lees, Waltz for Debby. Gene was a close friend of Evans and wrote the lyrics to this one. Back in 1997, Gene told me he had his daughter Vicky in mind when he wrote the words. Gene isn't a singer, but to hear the song's wordsmith passionately belt out the tune in 1992 is about as touching as hearing Evans himself play it. As Johnny Mandel once said about Gene, "Most people write of this music and musicians like they are fish in an aquarium. Gene is always in there swimming with them."

Kendra Shank, Time Remembered. This is from Shank's new Mosaic album (which includes a smart interpretation of Carole King's So Far Away). On Time Remembered, Shank shows off her enormous range and delivers her interpretation with a warmth and love that leaps right out.

Meredith d'Ambrosio, Blue and Green. Blue in Green originally was credited to Miles Davis, but years after Kind of Blue was recorded, Evans disclosed that he was the composition's author. D'Ambrosio tweaked the title, wrote lyrics and recorded it on Echo of a Kiss (1998). She also included a fine version of Time Remembered. If you're unfamiliar with d'Ambrosio, she's a marvelous singer with a cozy, hip sound. John Coltrane liked her voice so much he asked her to tour with him in 1966, but d'Ambrosio declined.

Tessa Souter, Love Theme from Spartacus. While this song was written by Alex North for the 1960 movie Spartacus, Evans recorded it many times in the 1960s—including three album versions in 1963 alone: Solo Sessions, Plays the Theme from the V.I.P.s and Conversations with Myself. Souter's version appears on her new album Obsession, and she delivers the song with a wide open vocal that makes good use of space and technique.

L'Tanya Mari, Very Early. This Evans' waltz appears on Mari's new album, A Teardrop of Sun. Evans wrote the song while he was still in college at Southeastern Louisiana University in the late 1940s. Says Mari in the CD's liner notes: "There's something about Bill Evans that always stood out for me. When you look at his picture he seems like this very quiet shy type of person. And his music just moves me."

Meredith d'Ambrosio, Turn Out the Stars. Evans introduced this song in 1966 as a solo work shortly after his father's death. D'Ambrosio chose if for her 1988 album, The Cove. I like her version because it's both casual and passionate, a tough combination. It certainly doesn't hurt that d'Ambrosio is accompanying herself on piano and that she sounds eerily like Bill Evans himself as she sings Gene Lees' lyrics to the song.

Chantale Gagne: Silent Strength

I came upon Chantale Gagne's Silent Strength completely by accident. The French-Canadian jazz pianist recorded this album in 2007, but I only discovered it last weekend while searching to see who had recorded Bill Evans' Peri's Scope. After sampling the Evans track and then others, I had to get hold of the CD. And ask Chantale a few questions.

Chantale Gagne (pronounced SHAN-tahl Gan-yay) was born in 1980 and began her jazz career on the organ. At age 15, after hearing a Bill Evans recording, she switched to piano. After studies in Quebec in the late 1990s, Chantale studied briefly with pianist Kenny Barron, a meeting that redoubled her commitment to the jazz piano. Recently, she has been touring with bassist Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash, both of whom appear on Silent Strength. 

Chantale's originals on this album have depth and maturity that transcend her years. Second Wave is a rousing, lyrical tune and Tranquilite bristles with sensitivity and Bill Evans-like tenderness. In My Mind has a Bobby Timmons/Art Blakey funkiness, with Nash hammering out the 2/4 feel.

Chantale uses a soft bossa nova on Silent Strength, and follows it with a lilting waltz called New York Nights. Reves has the same, introspective impression. Her rendition of Thelonious Monk's I Mean You captures the bop pianist's disjointed feel but brings a softer feel to it. The album's high point for me is Evans' Peri's Scope, which Chantale takes at a brisk pace, finishing with her own chord flourish. But Beautiful receives an equally sensitive treatment. Closing out the CD is Subway Rag, a playful ode to the New York's transit system.

To learn more about Chantale and her art, I reached out to her in Quebec, and we had the following exchange by e-mail:

JazzWax: Was Bill Evans a big influence?
Chantale Gagne: Indeed, Bill Evans has been a very important influence. Portrait in Jazz is the first jazz album I listened to, and that's how I decided to play jazz. Bill Evans' playing is always beautiful and always means something to me. He's extremely melodic and emotional, and he plays with his heart. Everything he plays comes from somewhere, and everything he plays takes us somewhere! Bill Evans has a sound that nobody else has. It's very particular.

JW: Is there a female approach to the jazz piano that male players miss? Or is jazz gender-free?
CG: I think it's nice sometimes to have a female touch but overall I don't believe you absolutely need it. Jazz is gender-free. I think whoever you are—female or male—if you communicate your feelings and play with your heart, that's the most important thing. When you play or compose, communicating your feelings and provoking feelings is the essence of jazz.

JW: Many male jazz artists have male jazz heroes. Is there a female jazz artist who has inspired you?
CG: Not really. My jazz heroes are mostly men. But when I think of Marian McPartland [pictured] who, back in the 1940s and 1950s made her place among this guys' world and has been respected throughout her life by guys, I find it's pretty amazing. But again, I really and truly see jazz as gender-free. I believe that as long as you create beautiful music and your music arouses emotions, images and
feelings in the listener, it doesn't matter whether you are a man or a woman. When I sit down to play, I'm not thinking of anyone or anything in particular. Just to play as beautifully as possible.

JW: Has there been pain or sorrow in your life from which your art emanates?
CG: Not really pain or trauma. I would say it's a matter of the environment where I find myself, physically or spiritually. When I compose I think it appears more, and you can hear the difference. I have to admit, of course, that my life experience is quite short so far, of course, and will continue to be integrated into my music.

JW: You're French-Canadian. Do you think that made you more sensitive?
CG: I'm not sure yet if being Quebecoise helps what I do. But I can say for sure that I received a warm welcome from New Yorkers whenever I play there. I find that New Yorkers are very open. People want to know me and know where I come from. They ask why I started playing, how come I've had the will to try it and how come I am so gutsy. Because it's true, I don't know lots of people in my city who have done this. New York is a difficult world but so interesting and full of surprises.

JW: Will you be recording again soon?
CG: Hopefully in 2010. I'm working now on new material. I will likely change the ambiance a bit. I think it's important for me to do so now. It's too early to describe the theme, but I can say that I very much like music with a folk influence and that Lewis [Nash, pictured] and Peter [Washington] sound wonderful playing this music!! I can already hear Lewis' drums.

JazzWax tracks: Chantale Gagne's Silent Strength was self-produced and can be found as a download at iTunes or Amazon, or on CD here. For more on Chantale and to hear samples of tracks, visit her site here.

Interview: Jon Hendricks (Part 2)

Jon Hendricks thinks like a saxophonist curled up in a bass drum. His sense of timing has always been rooted in his early skills on the snare and cymbals. His gift for wordplay comes from curiosity and a deep passion for literature. And his swing? Well, that's a New York thing—an early 1950s marinade of uncertain ingredients that includes interactions with showboats, corner hipsters, bop braggarts and nocturnal nihilists.

When I saw Jon at the ASCAP Wall of Fame Awards in June, he took the Rose Hall stage with Annie Ross and sang four songs flawlessly, the words pouring out with enormous joy and nostalgia. If you want to hear what the year 1958 sounded like, catch Jon and Annie if you can. They are perfect together, and sound so much like they did 50 years ago. It's infectiously optimistic and amazing music.

In Part 2 of my two-part interview with Jon, the legendary singer talks about singing with Charlie Parker in New York, how Parker's Ko-Ko got its name, recording with King Pleasure in 1954, and the mistake that nearly ruined Sing a Song of Basie—Lambert Hendricks & Ross' first album in 1957 that put the vocalese trio on the map and went on to win multiple Grammy Awards:

JazzWax: What did you do when you arrived in New York after leaving Toledo, Ohio?
Jon Hendricks: Right away I called Joe Carroll, Dizzy Gillespie's singer. I knew Joe because he was with Dizzy when Dizzy offered me a job years earlier, when I was still in school. That's when Dizzy came to Detroit. I sang with him there. I knew what they were playing at the time because it was what Art Tatum had taught me.

JW: What did Carroll say?
JH: He said to stay at a hotel up at 116th and Broadway near Columbia University that charged $18 a week.

JW: Did you ask Carroll for a job?
JH: No. All I asked Joe was, “Where’s Bird?” Joe said “At 125th and 7th Ave., at the Apollo Bar.” So I went uptown to see Bird. When I arrived at the bar, I put my hand on the doorknob but pulled it back. I started to feel silly. I thought, “This cat was doing one-nighters all over the Midwest. He’s not going to remember me." So I started to walk away from the bar, toward my hotel. But soon I stopped. I said to myself, “The only guy who knows what I do is in that place. I have to go in there.”

JW: Did you go back?
JH: Yes. I went back, gritted my teeth and walked in. Roy Haynes was on drums, Curly Russell was on bass, Bud Powell on piano, and Bird and Gerry Mulligan were playing. You had to walk right past the bandstand in that place to get to the tables.

JW: What happened?
JH: Bird stopped playing when he saw me walk by the stand. He shouted out, “Hey Jon, want to come up here and sing something?” It was two years and four months since I had seen him last during that one-nighter in Toledo. And he had remembered me.

JW: Parker had some memory, didn't he?
JH: Oh, man. Amazing. The guy had a great mind. Back in 1945, the British publisher of Cherokee wouldn’t let Bird record the song because they thought it would be a desecration of the copyright. So Parker played the same chord changes but made up a different melody. Parker told Teddy Reig, the [Savoy Records] producer of the session to call it Ko-Ko. Years later, Teddy asked Bird what Ko-Ko meant. Bird said it was the name of the Lord High Executioner in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado [laughs]. Charlie Parker not only knew the work but the irony of the name and its use for the song. He was an intellectual. Later Bird kept a tape in his luggage of Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps. He liked the part where the woman screams [laughs].

JW: Did you go up and sing with Parker and the group?
JH: First I sat down at a table. When they got off the set, the musicians went off in different directions to buy their stuff. Roy didn’t use. He sat with his girl at the bar. Then they all came back. It was the last set.

JW: What did Bird say to you?
JH: He said, “We’ll play a few tunes first and then call you up.” On the third tune, Bird announced, “In Toledo, Ohio, an amazing young cat jumped up on stage and scatted. He happens to be here tonight. Come up, Jon.”

JW: Sounds like a confidence-building introduction.
JH: It was—until Roy Haynes [pictured] said real loud, “No, no, we don’t want no singers, Bird.” Parker said, “Roy, cool it and sit down and play the drums.” I got up with them and sang three numbers, and the house went wild. I’ve always thought of myself as a horn, so that’s what I did. I scatted as though I were another horn in the group. They loved it.

JW: In December 1954, you recorded a track with vocalese pioneer King Pleasure.
JH: King Pleasure [pictured] brought me onto the record date. I had met him uptown at the Turf Bar a week or so earlier. He gave me a sheet of paper with his words to Stan Getz’s solo on Don't Get Scared, which Stan had recorded in '51 with his Swedish All-Stars. I said, “I see your words, but where are my words?” King Pleasure said, “You’re a writer. Write your own words.” So I did. That’s why when you listen to the recording, his words sound like a father talking to his son and I'm responding. I came up with that concept after leaving the bar. Quincy [Jones] arranged that session.

JW: You’ve always been a fast thinker and lyric writer.
JH: I write on demand like that. That’s how I wrote the words to Four Brothers around that time. I lived in New York and was on the streets for years before I got famous. I worked first in a newsprint factory. On my lunch break I’d hang out on Broadway in the 50s, where the songwriters were. They’d surround me and say, “Jon, what are you working on?”

JW: What would you tell them?
JH: I’d sing a ditty using my way of putting words together. Soon I'd hear what I sang on the radio a few weeks later. They were stealing my stuff.

JW: You had quite a fast mind.
JH: I did. I took pre-law at the University of Toledo because of my mind. When I was 9 years old I got all A’s in English. I loved books and always was adept at the language. My father always chose me to help him with the text for his Sunday sermons. He’d ask me to copy out text from the bible each week. This made me curious about everything and eager to research whatever I didn’t know. If I’m onto something, I don’t stop until I get to the truth. I do the same thing with my lyrics. I’ve always had a love of words and word combinations. After spending time on the streets and in the clubs of New York in the early 1950s, it all came together.

JW: How did Sing a Song of Basie come about—Lambert, Hendricks & Ross’ first album.
JH: Dave Lambert and I were like brothers. But when we first went in to record that album, Dave brought too many Dave Lambert Singers. They didn't swing. They were like a commercial choir, without that hip feeling. After a while, it wasn’t working. I told Dave, “We have to get some more African-Americans in here" [laughs]. Dave said, "Well, I guess so." Creed said, “No, no, no more singing. No more mass. I don't have any more money. Whatever we do, you three have to do it.”

JW: What did you say?
JH: Dave said, "We'll multitrack." Annie, me and Creed looked at each other and said, "What's that?" Dave said, "Well, we'll put three voices on a roll of tape. We'll do it four times and we'll have the 12 pieces of the Basie band and that will be it." We already had the rhythm section track recorded.

JW: You guys had never multitracked before, had you?
JH: Nobody had [to that extent with vocals]. And nobody had ever put the lyrics on the back of an album before. I invented that. I said this will let the listeners follow along. It will be better than some disc jockey writing about how great or not great the album is.

JW: So Creed saw the genius of that right away?
JH: Yeah.

JW: So did you write all your parts?
JH: I can't write music. I can't read music. I just sing music. Dave did all the writing.

JW: How did you sing all the parts without reading music?
JH: Dave gave me the tapes of the Basie parts and I learned them. I learn very fast.

JW: So in the tape, you could hear what each saxophone was playing through the band?
JH: Well, Dave isolated all the different parts on one tape. He'd just take off the different parts he needed right from the recording. Instead of the whole band, you'd hear just one saxophone—the first alto and the second alto, the first tenor and the baritone, one after the next. Annie had the same thing but with the trumpets, and Dave had the trombones.

JW: So you'd learn the four parts. You'd put down the lead track first and then come back and sing the other harmonizing saxes until all four parts were recorded. What an amazing invention.
JH: It was. I don't even know the right word to describe it. It was god at work.

JW: If any one of you couldn't pull that off, you would have been in trouble.
JH: Well, Annie had already recorded the way we sang.  Twisted was out already. She was singing vocalese before Dave and I did.

JW: But not the multitracking.
JH: No. But that's not a creative process. That's just a creative use of electricity [laughs].

JW: But it was still tricky to pull off.
JH: Well, I guess so. But for us it was so easy, it's hard to see the difficulty in that now.

JW: What happened next?
JH: We recorded the tracks over the next month and a half. But when Dave put all the tracks together and we came in to hear it, the master was a mess. [Jon imitates the sound of the distorted voices on the tape]. When assembling all the parts onto one master tape, we had put the least-heard voices—the alto, the second trombone and the baritone parts—on top. And the others next. So it was inaudible. There was no blended order to the parts. We should have recorded each section separately and then brought them together by modulating the sections by the dials.

JW: Did you three flip out?
JH: We were a little stunned. Creed [pictured] started moaning, “Oh god, I’m going to lose my job.” He was in tears. Creed was such a sweet cat. We all loved him. So Dave said, “Give us another month and a half. What time do you close?" Creed said, "At 8 [p.m.]. Dave said, "We’ll be in here at 8:15 p.m. What time do you open?" Creed said, "At 7 [a.m.]." Dave says, "We'll leave at 6:45. Just give us the time." Creed said, "I won't be able to come up with any more money." Dave waved him off, saying, "We don't need the money. Just give us the time and we'll come in and do this right.”

JW: What did you three do?
JH: We came in and re-recorded everything at night, the way it should have been done in the first place. And when we heard the master the next time around, all four of us sat down and cried like babies. You could hear instantly how good it was. And to this minute, till right now, I can truthfully say that it’s the best vocal album I have ever heard in my entire life.

JW: It can't be duplicated, that's for sure.
JH: Nope. Annie and I will be brother and sister for the rest of our lives. Dave, too, bless his heart.

JW: So you worked through the night, every day for a month and a half?
JH: That's right [pause]. What else did we have to do? [roaring laughter]. Those were good days.

JazzWax tracks: Jon's recording, Don't Get Scared, can be found on King Pleasure Sings/Annie Ross Sings. The entire album is terrific, including a little-known instrumental called Funk Junction featuring J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding. You'll find the recording as a download at iTunes and Amazon. Stan Getz's original solo on Don't Get Scared is on The Smoothest Operator: 1951 Stockholm/New York/Boston at iTunes. Or you can download it here off Stan Getz: 1951 (Classics).

A few words about Sing a Song of Basie. This is an  astonishing album by any definition. While Lambert's decision to multitrack the parts was a stroke of genius, the singing and swing itself are exciting and pure. It's impossible to listen to the album without moving your feet. And if you've heard it a few times, you'll likely find yourself trying to sing along with the group. Jon's lyrics are hip, and how Dave Lambert, Jon and Annie Ross managed to overtrack their horn parts to sound like Basie's band remains a marvel to this day. You'll find the album at iTunes, Amazon and other e-music retailers. Or you'll find the CD here. The re-issue features three bonus tracks (Four Brothers, Cloudburst and Standin' on the Corner) from a recording date in 1955 featuring Jon Hendricks and the Dave Lambert Singers.

JazzWax clip: Need a smile on your face? Dig this clip of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross with O.C. Smith and the Count Basie Orchestra singing Everyday. It was recorded in1961, and that looks like Budd Johnson on tenor sax in the section. If your right foot isn't counting off the beats, call the doctor...

 

Interview: Jon Hendricks (Part 1)

Jon Hendricks' pure sense of swing, poetic word-play and conversational vocalese remain unmatched. Truth be told, Jon' s splendid contribution to jazz has never been fully acknowledged or appreciated. Jon not only has written the words to dozens of songs based on famous jazz solos, he also has perfectly captured their infectious intent by singing every nuance of the original instrumentals. Which requires enormous skill, sensitivity and depth. If you wave off Jon's gifts as nothing more than a vocal magic trick, try this exercise: Grab the lyrics to Cloudburst or Everyday and sing along with the record. Not so simple. Jon can swing, he's bop hip, and since the early 1950s has been jazz's impersonator-in-chief, getting saxophone, trombone and trumpet solos up on their hind legs and walking.

Jon's recording career began in earnest in 1954 on a King Pleasure session that featured vocalese singer Eddie Jefferson and the Three Riffs. In 1955, Jon and the Dave Lambert Singers recorded three tracks. But his big break came in 1957, when a failed recording session led to the formation of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. The group's first album, Sing a Song of Basie, won a Grammy Award and ignited a fresh vocal concept that was both fun and sophisticated.

In Part 1 of my two-part interview with Jon, 87, the legendary singer and lyricist talks about growing up in Ohio, singing on the radio with neighbor Art Tatum, singing with Charlie Parker on a whim, encountering racism on the brink of law school, and traveling to New York at the urging of Parker:

JazzWax: Where did you grow up?
Jon Hendricks: I was born in 1921, in a railroad switch town called Newark, Ohio. It was just a hamlet with a dirt road running through it. My father was pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which served the area. No one was famous there. If you were alive back then in the Depression, you were a celebrity [laughs]. There were 17 of us—14 boys and 3 girls. There was no TV then, so getting along with each other was necessary and easy. You had no choice.

JW: That’s a lot of brothers and sisters.
JH: In number only. There was a lot of love in my family. There also were strict rules of living. In the morning, we had a crowd of children who needed to use the bathroom. So we lined up according to height and age, with the smallest in the front of the line. And it worked. Order always works. You can have a mob, but if they’re ordered, they can break down the strongest wall. Like everyone else in our neighborhood, we had a vegetable garden that helped put food on the table.

JW: Did your family remain in Newark, Ohio?
JH: No. My father could preach better than Peter, so the church moved my father to many different parishes to energize congregations. I went to 13 different schools. The church paid for our relocation, and there was always a parsonage that went with the church, so we always had a house. We had to sleep three to a bed, of course, but we were used to that. That’s good for a family. It forces closeness. [Bishop Richard Allen, founder of the A.M.E. Church]

JW: What did your father do to keep all of you in line?
JH: Nothing. We were just exhorted to love one another. We had no problem with that. The problem came when my father would get all 17 of us downstairs on our knees to pray. We didn’t stand up or sit in a chair or anything like that. We got down on our knees to supplicate to a power that was bigger than us. Every morning he prayed for good and for the safety of all the world. And he exhorted us every morning to know, not to believe, to know that we were alive by the grace of god. He told us that there's nothing living that we can dislike.

JW: What was the problem?
JH: My father told us that every living thing is our brother and sister. He warned us that outside our front door, nobody believed that. So he said our task was to take that knowledge with us when we went outside, so that we behaved that way whenever we met someone. The problem was the real world didn’t always work that way or respond in turn to kindness and love.

JW: But your father's message helped you.
JH: Oh yes. My father taught me to fight for the right things, not the wrong ones. My father’s way of looking at life gave all of us a strong humane-ness. Everybody to this day likes my brothers and sisters.

JW: What was your first instrument?
JH: When I was a teen I took up the drums.

JW: What did your father think?
JH: I never knew what he thought. He never imposed anything on us. He told us how he expected us to behave but never said we could only do one thing and not another. He just urged us to be kind. If we were, he said, most men and women would like us and respect us. The problem is he never taught us how to go about doing that, except simply to treat everyone as a brother and sister.

JW: Eventually your family settled in Toledo, Ohio.
JH: Yes. And Art Tatum lived five houses from ours. He was from Toledo, too. When I started to sing as a kid, he accompanied me on the radio. Soon he began calling me for gigs. Can you imagine? Art Tatum calling me to sing with him? When I was 9 years old, I was known as Little Johnny Hendricks and sang at the Rivoli Theater in Toledo. Art was 21 years old.

JW: What was it like to sing with Tatum?
JH: Like singing with the Minneapolis Symphony. I once asked Tatum how had learned to play like that. He said his mother had bought him a piano roll featuring two pianists. Tatum, being blind, didn’t know that. He just listened and learned the piece being played on the roll. It turned out to be two guys playing at once. He had learned to play four hands anyway and didn’t think anything of it [laughs].

JW: When did you first hear bebop?
JH: On the boat coming home from Europe after World War II. I had just won $300 playing craps and was in my bunk reading when I heard someone playing Charlie Parker’s records. His music made complete sense to me because I was already familiar with Art Tatum. When Dizzy [Gillespie] and Bird [Charlie Parker] came on the scene, they were just following Art Tatum. Most people don't realize that Tatum was the father of bebop.

JW: How so?
JH: In later years, when I asked Bird where he had learned all the things he was playing, he said he had worked as a dishwasher at the Onyx Club on 52nd St. in the early 1940s just to hear Art Tatum play. Then, he said, he went back to Kansas City and learned to play with all the creativity and wisdom and speed of Tatum. And that’s what he did.

JW: What did you do after the transport ship docked in New York?
JH: When I got back in 1946, I moved back home and enrolled at the University of Toledo on the G.I. Bill. I majored in English and minored in history and was studying pre-law. I got all A's in English—including the only A awarded in creative writing in seven years. My English professor was Milton Marks, who had written a book on creative writing used in all the universities.

JW: Eventually you decided to move to New York. Why?
JH: Racism. I had married an Irish girl in Ohio, and we had a son. I had a 3.5 average at the university and was on track for law school. Because of my high academic average, I was to going to be appointed Juvenile State Probation Officer. That would have given me the privilege of socializing with police court and juvenile court judges. They didn't want that because my wife and I were an interracial couple. But they couldn’t just dismiss me. I had earned the grades I got and the position I was to receive. So they got the guy with next highest grades, a black guy. They told him that if he didn’t convince me to move out of town, they were going to fire him.

JW: What happened?
JH: The guy came over to my house and laid out the situation for me. He said he had a wife and two kids and that they told him to come over to my house and threaten me or he'd lose his job. The guy said to me, “I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to say that if you prevail and stay on your job, they're going to fire me. I have two kids. But I’m just going leave it with you.” So I decided to leave. Didn't make much sense staying after that.

JW: Why New York?
JH: Because of Bird. I had sung with him first in Toledo. He came through on a tour in 1949. I scatted with him. Miles had just left the quintet and Kenny Dorham [pictured] replaced him on trumpet. Al Haig took Duke Jordan’s place. I had Bird’s records and had researched everybody in the group. So when I went up to sing with him, I took about eight choruses. Then I started to exit the stage. But I felt this hand on my coattail. Kenny was up taking his solo so his chair was empty. I looked back and saw my coattail was in Bird’s hand. Bird motioned for me to sit in Kenny’s chair.

JW: What happened after the set?
JH: Bird asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I wanted to be a lawyer. Bird said, “You ain’t no lawyer. You’re a jazz singer.” I said, “What can I do with that?” Bird said, “You have to come to New York.” I said, “I don’t know anybody there.” Bird said, “You know me.” I said, “Where will I find you?” Bird said, “Just ask anyone” [laughs].  I left thinking, “This guy’s crazy.”

JW: So you never forgot that invitation.
JH: Right. So two years later, when that guy came to my house and told me to quit and get out of town, I decided I would first go with my wife and son to Canada to live. Racism didn’t seem to exist up there. I had $350 in my pocket. But when we arrived at the border, they wouldn’t let us into the country to emigrate unless we had at least $1,000.

JW: What did you do?
JH: My wife, child and I drove to Buffalo, N.Y. But our car broke down. We went to the bus station and, remembering what Bird had said, bought tickets and took the bus to New York City. When I arrived, I had only my wife and son, and a set of drums.

Tomorrow, Jon talks about searching for Charlie Parker in New York, discovering his talent for lyric writing, teaming with Dave Lambert, and the story behind the famed Sing a Song of Basie album.

JazzWax tracks: To hear the Art Tatum Jon knew in Toledo, Ohio, download Art Tatum: 1932-1934 (Classics), his earliest recordings, for $5.99 here. To hear Charlie Parker with Kenny Dorham in 1949, try The Complete Live Performances on Savoy, which you can download at iTunes. Dorham joined Charlie Parker in Late December 1948. Dorham's period on this box set starts with track No. 12 (Half Nelson).

JazzWax appreciation: To appreciate Jon's way with words, dig his opening lyrics to Cloudburst. They're as precious as they are shrewd and economical:

I was blue and I was always wearing a frown
Because my gal had turned me down
Then we met and you can bet I knew from the first,
You were my love cause that's when the old gray cloud burst!
My heart really flew the day you caught my eye
I hope that we two will never say goodbye
Clouds of gray have silver linings when they're reversed
I found your love, and that's when the old gray cloud burst!