JazzWax

Buddy De Franco + Sonny Clark, Pt 2

By 1954, the clarinet was all but finished as a solo instrument. Benny Goodman was largely a nostalgia act. Artie Shaw was completing his final recordings with his Gramercy Five. And other leading jazz musicians who played the "stick" did so out of necessity for studio work or as a secondary instrument. One of the only full-time practitioners exploring new ground was Buddy De Franco. But Buddy was fully aware of the clarinet's image problem. Its happy, pleading sound was dated and too closely linked to pre-war jazz styles such as Dixieland, Chicago jazz and swing. So Buddy set out to reinvent the clarinet and its image by playing bebop. He was determined to find a way to make the clarinet relevant at a time when more hard-charging jazz styles were emerging and the trumpet was again becoming the dominant solo instrument of young jazz stars. [Photo of Buddy De Franco by Ray Avery/CTSImages.com]

In Part 2 of my interview with Buddy on his Sonny Clark recordings between 1954 and 1956, the legendary clarinetist talks about Clark's style, the group's breakup and the musician he and Clark worshiped most:

JazzWax: What was Clark like as a bandmember?
Buddy De Franco: Sonny was a great person. He not only was a great jazz player but he also was easy to work with. Some players you get in your group have an air of hostility or they present problems. Sonny was different. He was upbeat most of the time and had a great sense of humor.

JW: What made his playing style different?
BDF: He emulated Bud Powell and idolized Art Tatum [pictured]. At the time, Sonny was listening to all the good players. He loved Oscar Peterson, for instance. But his idolization of Tatum was essential to who he was. Many people forget that Tatum was the first truly modern jazz player—on any instrument.

JW: Is the appeal of Clark's sound in his chord voicings?
BDF: It wasn’t that the chords were different. It was how he employed them. It was the pulse and happy feeling he got on the keyboard. Some players I’ve had over time were excellent but had a more morose feeling to what they were doing. The bond between a soloist and pianist in a small group is strong. What one plays is often reflected in the other. That's what you hear on those recordings with Sonny.

JW: Do you have a favorite quartet or quintet recording with Clark?
BDF: I don't listen to them that way. The problem is that after I record and the tape is in the can, it’s very difficult for me to comfortably listen to the result. Even though there are plenty of good and exciting things on there, I’ll hear a number of areas I wish I had done differently.

JW: Why did the group break up?
BDF: In part because of the growing number of recordings that I was doing for [Verve producer] Norman Granz  [pictured] as the 12-inch LP era started in 1956. Remember, I was in Los Angeles during that period recording, which is where Norman was based, so the work picked up considerably. But mostly, there comes a time in any group's lifetime when you realize you did what you wanted to do and that’s it.

JW: So there was no single turning point or event?
BDF: No, there was nothing specific. There just comes a time and place where you say, “Well, let’s try something else.” You realize that you've contributed what you wanted to. I kept in touch with Sonny over the years until he died in 1963.

JW: Were these your most cutting-edge recordings?
BF: [Laughs] No. That would probably have to go to the albums I made in the early 1960s with accordionist Tommy Gumina. We were dealing with polytonal expression. It was the most technically advanced group I had worked with. So advanced that we could empty a room in 10 minutes [laughs]. Toward the latter months of that group's existence, Tommy had to go to the bank just to make payroll. The group was a refreshing experience for me.

JW: Where do your recordings with Sonny Clark stand in your list of accomplishments?
BDF: Definitely high up the list. Along with my recordings with Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Terry Gibbs and Rob Pronk with the Metropole Orchestra in Holland.

JW: Just curious—what did you and Sonny talk about during your down time?
BDF: We spent a lot of time talking about music. We’d meet for breakfast and spend the day doing different things and talking about the group and our musical preferences. For us, Charlie Parker was always in the picture. He influenced all of us and taught everyone who listened carefully that phrasing and the intuitive feeling of jazz have to come from you. [Photo of Charlie Parker by Esther Bubley]

JW: So what are we hearing in Parker’s playing that makes everyone stop and take notice?
BDF: You’re hearing the depth of his soul and being.

JazzWax tracks: The Buddy De Franco quartet recordings for Verve with Art Blakey, Kenny Drew and Milt Hinton can be found on Mr. Clarinet here or The Complete Mr. Clarinet Session here, which includes two additional tracks. Unfortunately, the MGM sessions (from June and July 1952) are available only on a Japanese CD. The Metropole Orchestra album (1981), Nobody Else But Me, with arrangements by Rob Pronk, is available here.

JazzWax clip: Here's a fascinating clip from Mr. Clarinet in April 1953. It's swing meets bop meets hard bop all in one track. The song is But Not For Me. Buddy is on clarinet, Kenny Drew on piano, Milt Hinton on bass and Art Blakey on drums. Pay particular attention to Buddy and Blakey playing off each other and the percussive chords used by Drew...

Buddy De Franco + Sonny Clark, Pt 1

Clarinetist Buddy De Franco has had a series of astonishing careers. He has been a leading swing era musician, a big band leader, a bebop headliner, an early participant in merging small-group jazz with the American Songbook, a polytonal experimenter, and champion of all forms of the music. Buddy's first 10 years alone are remarkable. In 1943 he recorded with Gene Krupa, then joined Tommy Dorsey and Charlie Barnet's bands in the mid-1940s, played with George Shearing in the late 1940s, led his own orchestra from 1949-52, recorded in Count Basie's small group in 1950 and teamed up with Oscar Peterson starting in 1953. But in 1954, Buddy hired pianist Sonny Clark and for 2 1/2 years, the two musicians made a series of recordings that remain a gorgeous fusion of swing, bebop and hard bop.

In Part 1 of my two-part interview with Buddy, 86, the legendary clarinetist talks about forming a small bebop group and hiring pianist Sonny Clark:

JazzWax: Your bebop quartet actually started in 1952 and featured pianist Kenny Drew, bassist Curly Russell and drummer Art Blakey.
Buddy De Franco: Yes. Milt Hinton replaced Curly. That was an exciting group. Then in early 1954, Art  [pictured] wanted to form his own group, The Jazz Messengers. That group became so successful that people would come up to me in later years and say that they remembered when I was in Art’s group [laughs].

JW: How did Sonny Clark replace Drew?
BDF: In 1954, Kenny Drew [pictured] gave notice and told me he had his replacement lined up. He said once we got to San Francisco, he’d have the pianist sit in so I could hear him. When we arrived at the Blackhawk [in San Francisco], Kenny brought Sonny Clark in. I loved him right away. He was interesting and intelligent, and played with a happy, skippy feel. When I heard Sonny, I knew instantly we were musically compatible in terms of what we were trying to do with modern jazz. Drummer Bobby White and bassist Gene Wright joined around this time, too.

JW: What was special about Clark from a musician's perspective?
BDF: It’s the give and take. I might be improvising a line and Sonny [pictured] would come through with an idea. And in a split second he’d embellish it. Everything happened fast, but in harmony. It was so exciting.

JW: Who wrote the arrangements for the group?
BDF: Everybody wrote. We’d start playing a song, and as we played, ideas would come and they’d become part of the song.

JW: Did your period with Clark change you as a musician?
BDF: I wouldn’t say the experience changed me. It’s not a question of someone simply pointing you in another direction. Our playing went along with my constant development. As a musician, you have to progress. And as you progress, whoever is playing with you either will hinder or help you. Kenny Drew and Sonny Clark [pictured] both were supportive. They helped and fueled my idea of what I was playing and where I wanted to go.

JW: What direction were you heading in?
BDF: I was aiming for a different harmonic approach, which finally became my signature sound on the clarinet. I had been listening a great deal to the classical composers—Ravel, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Stravinsky, of course. All those classical writers influenced jazz players. They influenced my harmonic concept.

JW: How so?
BDF: I wanted to create a continuum, a free-thinking form. Even though the music in our quartet was structured, I played along those upper structured triads. Without getting too technical, they're the additional notes that belong to a basic, three-note chord.

JW: That's a lot to think about on the job.
BDF: [Laughs] You have to think about it when you’re practicing, not while you’re playing. The idea is to play fluently among three separate upper structure triads. And create and invent ideas while doing so. Sonny was doing the same thing. He was feeding me the basic chord structures and alternates at the same time. He would know in a split second which alternates I was working on at the time. You don’t do this stuff deliberately. It comes naturally. I used to practice six hours a day to ensure that it did.

JW: What was Clark's personality like?
BDF: Sonny was a lot of fun. He was lighthearted and happy, which is why we connected. I remember we were in Hawaii on tour. We had a job for four weeks in some club near Waikiki Beach [pictured in the 1950s]. During the day, we’d all go swimming. Sonny had a lady friend with him so he liked to spend time lounging on the sand. Bobby White, my drummer, was teaching me to snorkel. One day I was in the water by myself snorkeling, as an amateur. Sonny was on the beach. All of a sudden I panicked and started flailing around like an idiot. In my panic I lost the snorkel and thought I was going to drown.

JW: What happened?
BDF: In the middle of this turmoil, I remembered what Bobby had told me: "If you get in trouble, cool your brain, lie on your back and get your wits." So I did that. I relaxed on my back and I came around. Reason returned, and I swam back to the beach.

JW: What did Clark say?
BDF: When I came out of the water, Sonny said, “What were you doing out there?” I said, “Collecting my wits.” Sonny said, “It looked like you were collecting the blank out of your wits” [laughs]. That was Sonny. He always had that subtle little twist.

Tomorrow, Buddy talks about what made Clark special as a pianist, the musician who Clark and Buddy most admired, and why the group broke up.

JazzWax tracks: The Complete Verve Recordings of the Buddy De Franco Quartet/Quintet with Sonny Clark box set from Mosaic is out of print. But the Sonny Clark and Buddy De Franco Quartet Complete Sessions, a two-CD set (Definitive) is available here. And the quintet recordings (with guitarist Tal Farlow added) are on Cookin' the Blues and Sweet and Lovely (LoneHill) here. Buddy's playing on all of the Sonny Clark sessions swings with inspired determination. You can actually hear the musical conversation unfold. As for Clark, the pianist's melodic and harmonic ideas build and swell, making him a creative partner on these sessions rather than just a spirited sideman.

JazzWax note: For my complete series of interviews with Buddy De Franco, go to the right-hand column under "JazzWax Interviews."

JaxWax clip: Here's a clip of Buddy with Kenny Drew, Milt Hinton and Art Blakey in 1953 from the Mr. Clarinet sessions for Verve. It was recorded a little less than a year before Sonny Clark, Bobby White and Gene Wright came aboard. Dig how slippery Buddy's clarinet is on this uptempo bop execution with early hard-bop sidemen...

Chuck Wayne: String Fever

Had Charlie Christian not died of tuberculosis at age 25 in 1942, he certainly would have been the first guitarist to record bebop. His single-string attack on Up on Teddy's Hill with Dizzy Gillespie, captured live at Minton's in 1941, was clearly ahead of its time. But the solo was more blues than bop, a jazz form that hadn't been fully formed yet. The first bebop guitar solo recorded in a studio would come three years later, on February 9, 1945 when Dizzy Gillespie led a sextet on two tracks for Guild Records. The guitarist on the date was Chuck Wayne, who today is more closely associated with the George Shearing Quintet and Tony Bennett's early records. During the 1950s, Wayne appeared extensively as a sideman on other artists' recordings, making only three albums as a leader during the decade. Among the finest was String Fever in 1957.

Wayne was born in New York and began his career as a mandolinist in a Russian balalaika band. When his mandolin began to warp, he reportedly tossed it into the furnace and bought a guitar. To earn a living, Wayne worked as an elevator operator and began to play guitar professionally in 1941, quickly becoming a regular in the clubs on New York's 52nd Street.

Wayne first recorded with Gillespie on New Year's Eve of 1944, when they backed singer Sarah Vaughan, with saxophonist Georgie Auld, pianist Leonard Feather and others for the Continental label. Wayne and Gillespie recorded together again with clarinetist Joe Marsala in January 1945. By early February, Gillespie was ready to record two sides as a leader for Guild: Groovin' High and Blue 'n' Boogie. Gillespie used Dexter Gordon on tenor sax, Frank Paparelli on piano (who transcribed the music parts), Wayne on guitar, Murray Shipinski on bass and Shelly Manne on drums.

This is the first Groovin' High, which preceded by several weeks the more popularly known version with Charlie Parker. Wayne clearly understands the new music, and his solo lines are confident and distinctly bop. Throughout 1945 and into 1946, Wayne freelanced extensively, recording with a range of different leaders. In mid-1946, Wayne joined Woody Herman's band, remaining until mid-1947.

Later in 1947 Wayne recorded with Coleman Hawkins, and in late 1948 with Lester Young. In early 1949, Wayne joined the George Shearing Quintet [pictured] and was a key ingredient in the group's sound through 1951. Wayne's first leadership recording came in 1953 for Savoy with tenor saxophonists Brew Moore and Zoot Sims. In 1954, Tony Bennett used him on Cloud 7, arguably the singer's best pure jazz recording, and kept him on as his musical director until 1957. Wayne's next leadership date was for tracks included on Four Most Guitars in 1956.

Then came String Fever in 1957, Wayne's most ambitious LP session. He arranged and conducted the date, which featured Tommy Allison, Don Joseph and Alvin Golbert (trumpets); Sonny Truitt (trombone), Sam Marowitz (alto sax); Caesar DiMauro, Eddie Wasserman and Sol Schlinger (tenor saxes), Wayne (guitar), Eddie Costa (piano and vibes), Clyde Lombardi (bass) and Sonny Igoe (drums).

What's sublime about String Fever is how Wayne swings on top as the album's primary soloist. On the album's tracks, Wayne shows off enormous sensitivity for space while letting single notes ring. On the uptempo Lullaby in Rhythm, Wayne runs his signature staccato picking technique. On the ballad Embraceable You, Wayne envelops the song with a range of approaches, all with enormous taste. My favorite track is Along with Me, which Mel Torme recorded with Artie Shaw in 1946. Here, Wayne voiced the saxes almost like an accordion, providing a breathy backdrop to his bee-in-a-bonnet lines. Or dig Body and Soul, with Wayne's delicate single-note choices and full chords. [Pictured above, from left: Al Cohn, Brew Moore, Dave Lambert, Gus Grant, Ray Turner and Chuck Wayne in the early 1950s]

Wayne worked extensively in the television studios of CBS between 1959 and 1971, and continued to record into the mid-1990s. He died of emphysema in 1997 at age 74.

JazzWax tracks: Chuck Wayne's String Fever is available at Amazon here. The album was originally released on RCA's Vik label. It's now on Sundazed with alternate and unreleased tracks. Tony Bennett's Cloud 7, featuring Wayne on guitar, is available at iTunes and here.

JazzWax clip: Here's the George Shearing Quintet in 1950 playing Conception, with Shearing on piano, Chuck Wayne on guitar, John Levy on bass, Don Elliott on vibes and Denzil Best on drums...

Gil Melle: Blue Note and Prestige

In the 1950s, there were jazz musicians who lived so far into the future intellectually that other musicians from the period called them "far out." Gil Melle was one of those "out of sight" artists. But to merely refer to Melle (pronounced Mell-AY) as a jazz baritone saxophonist doesn't fully explain this creative dynamo who today is largely forgotten. In addition to recording fascinating albums of atonal and linear jazz for Blue Note and Prestige between 1952 and 1957, Melle created artwork for the covers of LPs by Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins and others. During the 1960s and beyond Melle composed steadily for TV and the movies, and his inventions of electronic instruments and recordings also broke new ground. 

I spoke with saxophonist and Melle bandmate Hal McKusick and film director Raymond De Felitta, who as a teen often wandered over to Melle's house in Los Angeles. More with both gentlemen in a moment.

What perhaps is most remarkable about Melle is that he never had a formal music lesson. Much of his ability, he said in his writings, was learned through associations with jazz musicians and their music. As Melle developed, he had little patience for standards and tended to focus instead on composing original jazz-classical works that were highly imaginative and invigorating both to jazz musicians and advanced listeners.

Melle was a quick study, often able to absorb the complexities of jazz and classical with a single listen. In Melle's favor was his complete lack of fear and concern about what others thought, which freed him to create and drew powerful risk-takers near. He had no trouble doing his own futurist thing and had a gift for convincing those around him to join him on his journey.

Born in New York in 1931, Melle was abandoned by his parents at age 2 and was raised by a family friend. He began composing and painting as a child, won awards, and began gigging in Greenwich Village on saxophone at age 15. At age 16, Melle lied about his age to enlist in the Marines and spent some of his service time in California. Upon his discharge and return to New Jersey two years later, Melle played jazz nightly in New York, often with organist Freddie Roach and pianist Joe Manning.

In 1952, Melle met Blue Note founder Alfred Lion [pictured, with Rudy Van Gelder, left], who signed him to a one-year contract that was extended repeatedly for five years. Melle referred to himself as a "jazz chemist" who routinely tried new approaches to the music, never hesitating to rush after possibilities. As a result, he was first to perform electronic music at the 1968 Monterey Jazz Festival, first to compose an electronic film score for the Andromeda Strain (1971), first to compose an electronic TV score for Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1970-71) and was one of the first to record an all-electronic jazz album, TOME VI, for Verve (1968).

Stylistically, Melle's 1950s playing on the baritone sax shares stylistic similarities with Gerry Mulligan's swinging, linear sound. But Melle tended to loiter in the instrument's middle register and was more at home on melody-less original compositions than jazz standards. Melle's works had a West Coast feel but with a more introspective and restless East Coast finish. In some cases, his pieces sounded like Capitol's "Birth of the Cool" singles played backward.

Melle's jazz recordings from the 1950s can be divided neatly into two distinct periods: 1952-56 for Blue Note and 1956-57 for Prestige.

On the Blue Note sessions, you hear Melle's development from early space-age modernist on tracks such as Four Moon, Venus and The Gears on New Faces, New Sounds to more straight-up linear jazz like Timepiece and The Nearness of You on Quintet, Vol. 2. His Blue Note recordings featured trombonist Eddie Bert, drummer Max Roach, bassist Oscar Pettiford, guitarist Tal Farlow and trombonist Urbie Green. Among my favorites are the albums he made with little-known guitarist Lou Mecca—for The Gil Melle Quartet Featuring Lou Mecca and Five Impressions of Color. 

Starting in 1956, Melle recorded three 10-inch LPs for Prestige as well as three tracks for a12-inch Prestige LP that was never completed. On these sessions, Melle explored new atonal approaches that attracted top jazz artists of the day, including trumpeters Art Farmer and Kenny Dorham, saxophonist Hal McKusick, vibraphonist Teddy Charles and others. Particularly fascinating was the album Gil's Guests, which included Block Island and Genghis.

After his Prestige sessions, Melle moved to Los Angeles and in the 1960s composed extensively for television and the movies, settling in Malibu. Melle recorded from time to time but focused intensively on his hobbies—cars, planes and microscopes. Melle died in 2004 of a heart attack.

Yesterday I spoke to Hal McKusick [pictured], who played on Melle's recordings for Prestige:

"I only knew Gil on those dates and had great respect for his choice of musicians. He knew what he wanted and the sound he preferred. The chord changes were not easy to maneuver through smoothly, although we all managed to tell our stories on our instruments anyway.

"Gil had his own unique way of orchestrating, and, later I could see why he was successful writing for films with space-age, far out themes. I know little of his background or influences, although I'm sure he was aware of Pres [Lester Young], Basie, Duke, Bird, Monk, Dizzy and, most likely some modern classical composers. His sidekick was Joe Cinderella, a quiet, mild-mannered guitarist with good capabilities.

"A lot of the credit for those sides should go to Rudy Van Gelder and his living room studio out in New Jersey where we recorded for Prestige in the early days. Rudy was one of the best sound people I ever worked with. Of course, the musicians were into doing their best as well. It was hard to beat the combo.  [Photo of Rudy Van Gelder by Hank O'Neal]

"Gil was nice to work with, highly respectful and sure of what he wanted, including each player's input and where you were on your own. To his credit, he brought in the musicians for the dates, some of the best in the field, who he knew could do the most with his slant on music."

During a five-hour dinner last week with director Raymond De Felitta (City Island) [pictured], we talked quite a bit about Melle. Raymond grew up near Melle's Malibu home and often spent time chatting with his eccentric and creative neighbor:

"When I was about 13 years old, I said to Gil [pictured], 'How do you manage to be into so many different cool things?' Gil loved and collected airplanes, music, sports cars, synthesizers, art, microscopes and other neat things. Gil said: 'When I was younger I used to hear older people talking about all the things they wished they'd done with their lives. I decided that would never be me.' "

JazzWax trivia. Gil Melle introduced Rudy Van Gelder to Alfred Lion, and Melle's first album (Blue Note 5020) [pictured], marked the start of Van Gelder's relationship with the label. The dramatic photo at the top of this post for the 10-inch LP Gil Melle Quartet Featuring Lou Mecca was taken by Bill Hughes during a Christmas concert at Town Hall in 1954.

 

Interview: Gunther Schuller (Part 4)

Gunther Schuller has composed more than 160 original  classical and jazz-classical works. In 1994, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Of Reminiscences and Recollections, a memorial composition for his wife, Marjorie Black. Gunther also is the winner of many other awards, including Columbia University's William Schuman Award for lifetime achievement in American music composition. And then there are the two Grammy Awards—one for best classical liner notes (Footlifters, 1976) and best chamber music performance (Joplin: The Red Back Book, 1974).  [Photo at top by Hiroyki Ito]

When you speak with Gunther, you immediately feel the heat of his curiosity, his passion for life and his inexhaustible excitement. What's especially fascinating are the similarities between Gunther's personality and the jazz-classical music he adores. There's a formal European charm about Gunther, but within that structure exists an improvisational mischief-maker. Gunther understands that excellence comes from discipline but that art comes from the surfacing of emotions and the willingness to take intellectual risks. [Photo: Gunther Schuller with Roy Haynes]

In Part 4 of my four-part interview series with Gunther, the composer-arranger and jazz-classical pioneer talks about Leonard Bernstein, Miles Davis, and the Third Stream:

JazzWax: I hear elements of Cool from West Side Story in your Brandeis Jazz Festival composition Transformations. Yours came first. Did Leonard Bernstein hear your work?
Gunther Schuller: He probably did. We were very good friends at various times and worked closely together. He was a great admirer of my music. Lenny never said, “Oh, Gunther, you don’t know how much you influenced me.” But the feeling was there.

JW: Do you think Bernstein came to a finer recognition of jazz as a result of your work in the mid-1950s?
GS: Lenny wasn’t influenced only by me. He learned from a great many jazz-classical artists. He was a quick study when it came to jazz. But in terms of the musical language, Lenny would never go into jazz-classical styles beyond tonality. Rhythmically, he learned a lot from Count Basie and Stan Kenton. Basically, Lenny’s jazz sensibility was from the 1920s. He was real cornball. When he used to play piano at parties, I had to close my ears because he was so corny. He thought he was as good as Art Tatum [laughs].

JW: You played French horn on Miles Davis’ Porgy and Bess. How did your involvement come about?
GS: The idea for that 1958 session was actually producer George Avakian’s, before he left Columbia. George was a great admirer of the recordings that Miles and Gil had done between 1948 and 1950 [later known as "Birth of the Cool"]. He couldn’t understand why they weren’t more popular. And they weren’t until they were brought together on an LP in 1957 and the album was named Birth of the Cool. Even before Capitol decided to bring them together on an LP, George had decided to unite Gil and Miles for a broader interpretation of that concept on music that was widely known. That was his conception.

JW: What was your role?
GS: I say this with all modesty: George went to Miles and said, “Listen, I think there are only two people here who can turn Gershwin into modern jazz orchestral works—Gunther Schuller and Gil Evans." Miles went with Gil, and I played French horn.

JW: Would you have done something different with it?
GS: No, probably not. I was as enamored of Gil’s style as I was of my own. I knew what Gil was doing with the orchestration and why. Since the music had to be, at its core, Gershwin, it couldn’t be mine. If I had arranged it, the session would have come out something like that. I might have had some different orchestral ideas now and then. But I was thrilled to play horn on that recording.

JW: Is there anything that most people aren’t aware of about that session?
GS: Probably how difficult it was to play. Porgy and Bess is not a perfect recording. There’s a lot of sloppiness in there if you listen closely. We had to add three more sessions to capture what was needed in good enough shape to be issued. Cal Lampley, the album's producer, had to do an enormous amount of editing with the tape. We couldn’t play any of those pieces perfectly all the way through.

JW: Was it that the music was hard or that the musicians on the date weren’t well trained enough?
GS: Both. That was a pretty big orchestra, with 19 instrumentalists including Miles. Some of those musicians were unfamiliar with Gil’s great music and the harmonies were a mystery to them. You have to remember, there was no other jazz like that at the time to refer to. No band was playing anything like that with the sounds that Gil produced—not Benny Goodman or Dizzy Gillespie. And Gil did that with horns and flutes and muting of other instruments. That was all unfamiliar. As a result, it’s pretty ragged at times.

JW: As you listen to Miles Davis during the recording, what were you hearing?
GS: I know how he struggled. At one session, his lip started to bleed. The endurance, all that slow playing. It’s very hard on a trumpet player. But he came through beautifully. Again, a lot of editing by Cal Lampley took place. He first had to take care of Miles, which in some cases meant choosing great trumpet takes even if the orchestra behind him was uneven. There are probably 800 splices in that thing.

JW: What was it like recording John Lewis’ score in 1959 for the film Odds Against Tomorrow?
GS: Remarkable. John was stretching out on there. There’s a lot of intense, almost harsh, nasty chords when some of the bad things happen in the film. It was years since we had first met, and by then he had learned so much. He was trying to get out of traditional tonality more and more.

JW: How did you come up with the term "Third Stream?" What was the thought process?
GS: It was very simple. Back in 1957, there were two main streams of music—jazz and classical music. Today, of course, you can argue that there are many more streams—rock and roll, hip-hop, ethnic music and so on. In 1957, I called one the First Stream and the other the Second Stream. The two streams got married and they begat a child, like in the Bible says [laughs], and a Third Stream was born. But a Third Stream meant that that the other streams would have to amalgamate or fuse in a thorough, deep way—not in some superficial construction by laying a few clichés on top of each other.

JW: So the two would have to give up something?
GS: No, why? You just combine the best of both musics.

JW: But if they’re fusing, by definition they’re becoming something else entirely, yes?
GS: Yes, that’s the true definition of a fusion. But that didn’t mean these music forms had to give up anything in Third Stream. Both retained their characteristics as they formed something new.

JW: What did the critics say?
GS: The critics said you can’t mix oil and water. They pounced on me. I was crucified. But their reaction was as dumb as racial prejudice. Their notion that jazz and classical should not be polluted by each other’s sensibilities was dumb. Both jazz and classical critics said basically the same thing.

JW: Was the Third Stream a successful adventure?
GS: Oh, yes, totally. The new music form spread to other great ethnic musics in the world. By 1975, Third Stream had influenced Turkish music and Greek music and Indian music. That’s apparent now. The record companies don’t call the result Third Stream. They call it fusion or crossover. You now can have three or four different forms of music together as long as it’s done creatively. And honestly.

JazzWax tracks: Many of Gunther Schuller's major classical works have a large, dramatic, atonal feel. His Reminiscences and Reflections
recorded by Radio-Philharmonie Hannover des Norddeutscher Rundfunk can be sampled and downloaded here.

Another Gunther delight is Turn of the Century Cornet Favorites, recorded by the Columbia Chamber Ensemble, conducted by Gunther and Gerard Schwarz, music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. The album can be sampled and downloaded here.

A fascinating jazz-classical work by Gunther is Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee, (GM Recordings), in particular Little Blue Devil, named after one of Klee's paintings. It's available at iTunes along with a wealth of other recordings by Gunther.

For other classical and jazz recordings on Gunther's GM Recordings label, go here. 

JazzWax pages: Two invaluable jazz books by Gunther  Schuller are Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development and The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz 1930-1945. They can be found here and here, respectively.

JazzWax clip: Here's Gunther and other musicians talking about Charles Mingus' Epitaph, a 4,000-measure opus that was discovered after the bassist's death and conducted by Gunther Schuller in 1989, 10 years after Mingus' death...

Interview: Gunther Schuller (Part 3)

Between 1955 and 1957, Gunther Schuller participated in three fascinating jazz recordings: the Modern Jazz Society (Verve) with John Lewis, Gigi Gryce's Nica's Tempo (Signal) and Birth of the Third Stream (Columbia), which featured music recorded at the 1957 Brandeis Jazz Festival. Each explored jazz-classical concepts, though Nica's Tempo owed more to the linear sound of Gil Evans and Tadd Dameron than pure classical motifs.

In Part 3 of my four-part interview series with Gunther, the composer, arranger, French hornist and agent provocateur for Third Stream music, talks about all three albums:

JazzWax: What made pianist John Lewis special?
Gunther Schuller: He was the gentlest soul. Kind, quiet, intelligent and an intellectual who was well versed in all of the arts. And just a beautiful person. He could be stern and tough in rehearsals when producing his music. But he was very good at getting the music right. And he could make anybody get it right. But deep down he was a sweetheart. All of the jazz musicians I knew were—and are. They are all beautiful people.

JW: Was Lewis instrumental in helping to merge classical and jazz?
GS: Oh yes, early on. Then the influence spread to people like Ralph Burns, Bob Brookmeyer and many other great musicians who came into the jazz-classical field. That was how exciting the post-war period was.

JW: What was the Modern Jazz Society?
GS: John and I founded the ensemble in 1955 because we felt we  had to put teeth into what we were saying about jazz-classical fusion. We soon renamed it the Jazz and Classical Music Society.

JW: Looking back, do you view the group as a success?
GS: Yes, absolutely. That doesn’t mean the group and our attempts were all perfection. But the group was a success in terms of helping the new music break through. All the things that happened after we put those jazz-classical ideas together happened because of what John and I did. I won’t say we were the only ones. Pete Rugolo and Stan Kenton [pictured] and others had been doing things with jazz and classical. But they were doing it in a slightly different way.

JW: Was your timing right?
GS: I think so. The concept was in the air at the time. John and I advanced the cause in New York and for the first time used the word "classical" in what we were doing. Stan Kenton didn’t do that with his Innovations Orchestra in 1950, much of which is uneven and awful. Pianist Lennie Tristano did not use the word classical, either. Many musicians felt they would wind up in trouble with the critics if they did. And they were right. John and I did use it, and that of course made it controversial.

JW: Classical gradually became more accepted by jazz musicians and listeners.
GS: Yes, eventually the jazz-classical language changed to the extent of breaking into atonality. That happened later, though, with Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus and so many others. Everything went forward tremendously through the 1960s and then settled down into a sort of standardization. There was little experimentation after that.

JW: In 1955, you were in another exciting jazz ensemble led by Gigi Gryce. What made Gryce so special?
GS: His personality. He’s such an underrated player. Sadly, he's nearly forgotten today. These guys were such talents and maybe geniuses. Whatever they put their hands on would emerge with their special personality attached. That’s the greatness of jazz—the individualism, the distinctiveness of each of these great players. Unfortunately, we don’t have that today. Instead, we have 10,000 John Coltrane clones.

JW: What are we hearing with Gryce that sounds so fascinating?
GS: His sound was different. He arranged the reeds for a thinner feel, and he had in his ear a different conception. The result was a very light, flowing sound. And that’s also how his harmonizations worked. He was another one of these quiet guys who had studied classical music of all kinds. On a personal level, he was very witty. It’s amazing how interesting they all were and yet how different.

JW: In 1957, you and George Russell arranged and conducted the Brandeis Jazz Festival concerts in New York. That was pretty incredible music.
GS: I don’t know what you mean by incredible. It was damn hard [laughs].

JW: Why?
GS: Milton Babbitt’s All Set? Can you imagine? That piece was 150 years ahead of its time. I can’t even begin to describe what I had to go through to get that recording made. No one had ever played anything like it. All Set is just on the periphery of jazz. We couldn’t really play it as jazz, so the initial recording was pretty stiff. 

JW: Tough stuff?
GS: We never were able to play All Set live. This was especially true during the first Brandeis Jazz Festival concert in June 1957. The next morning, at the second concert, we repeated the program from the night before. We had lost our jitters by then and played it much better. But we still didn’t perform the piece like it was supposed to be played. I wound up spending about 35 hours editing that piece together on tape for the record. Wow, that was some piece. I mean, come on. That could have been written by Arnold Schoenberg or Anton Webern.

JW: This was a very different form of classical music, wasn't it?
GS: Absolutely. When we talk about jazz musicians studying classical music, we’re mostly talking about musicians exploring Ravel, Debussy, maybe Brahms, and English classical music. Most didn’t study Schoenberg or any of the 12-tone composers. My god, All Set was a hard-core 12-tone piece.

JW: Did you ever perform the piece to your satisfaction?
GS: I have performed it at least a dozen times over the years since 1957. I will say, though, that there was only one time in Cleveland [pictured] that I felt we had finally performed that piece correctly. And it happened by sheer luck. It was a coincidence that I had all the right players in place. And this is only several years ago. Between 1957 and then I had the best musicians on sessions, but it was still like walking on the moon. Forty years later, we had just the right musicians for whom that atonal material had finally become familiar.

JW: Has the Cleveland rendition been released?
GS: No. We recorded it, of course, but we haven't released it. Every style, no matter how difficult or unfamiliar at first, eventually becomes assimilated. Even atonal pieces. Now I can put together a performance of All Set and know that it would be damn good. All of those Brandeis pieces were hard initially because the feel and approach was completely new to the musicians.

JW: How about your Brandeis composition, Transformation?
GS: It, too, was hard, for the same reasons. Transformation is an atonal piece, and the language was new. Jazz musicians who had classical training were familiar with the language of Ravel [pictured], Debussy, 11th chords, 9th chords, flatted fifths and all that stuff. Atonality was completely different. But I put enough swinging stuff in there so at least the musicians could feel it rhythmically [laughs].

JW: What about Bill Evans’ solo on All About Rosie?
GS: Bill was unbelievable. That was an epiphanal experience. Bill was the one guy… [pause]. He had studied so much classical music that he was able to sight read all of this stuff. He could even sight read Milton Babbitt's All Set perfectly. I didn't have to coach him on that.

JW: What was so remarkable about his playing during that concert series?
GS: We were astonished that all of the material was so easy for him. He not only could deal with it straightaway, he also could improvise on it. Then Bill played one of the greatest piano solos of all time on All Abut Rosie. I become speechless when I think back on Bill and that solo. We were all staggered. We were all looking at each other while his solo was taking place.

JW: How was that possible?
GS: We weren’t playing. We were playing stop-time chords. We’d play one chord at the beginning of each chorus and stop. As Bill improvised, we all looked at each other in amazement at what we were hearing.

JW: What was so exciting about it?
GS: I just didn’t know that someone could create such an incredible full-speed jazz-classical solo and have it turn out to be so perfect.

JW: When All About Rosie was finished, what happened?
GS: I don’t recall exactly but I think it was like at the end of World Series game, when the winning players all leap on the guy who made the last out. I’m sure we all jumped on Bill.

Tomorrow, Gunther talks about Leonard Bernstein, Miles Davis' Porgy and Bess, John Lewis' score for the film Odds Against Tomorrow, and how he came up with the term "Third Stream."

JazzWax tracks: John Lewis and Gunther Schuller's Modern Jazz Society was recorded for Verve in 1955. The musicians on the date were Gunther Schuller (French horn and arranger), J.J. Johnson (trombone), Jim Politis (flute), Manny Ziegler (bassoon), Tony Scott (clarinet), Stan Getz (tenor sax), John Lewis (piano and arranger), Janet Putnam (harp), Billy Bauer (guitar), Percy Heath (bass) and Connie Kay (drums). The album is part of a John Lewis set that has to be among iTunes' greatest hidden deals: All four albums in the set are available for $7.99. 

In 1955, Gunther played French horn on four tracks that were featured on one of Gigi Gryce's finest albums, Nica's Tempo (Signal). The tracks are Smoke Signal, In a Meditating Mood, Speculation and Kerry Dance. The band on those tracks featured Art Farmer (trumpet), Jimmy Cleveland (trombone), Gunther Schuller (French horn), Bill Barber (tuba), Gigi Gryce (alto sax), Danny Bank (baritone sax), Horace Silver (piano), Oscar Pettiford (bass) and Kenny Clarke (drums). Gryce's nonet leveraged the "Birth of the Cool" sound, adding a bit more elan and assertiveness. Nica's Tempo is available as a download at iTunes and Amazon here.

For its 1957 Festival of the Arts, Brandeis University commissioned jazz pieces along with classical compositions. This was a first for the festival. Jazz artists who were asked to create works were  Charles Mingus (Revelations), Gunther Schuller (Transformation), George Russell (All About Rosie), Milton Babbitt (All Set), Jimmy Giuffre (Suspensions) and Harold Shapiro (On Green Mountain). The pieces were recorded at the Brandeis Jazz Festival in New York on June 10th, 18th and 20th. All of the recordings are available here.

JazzWax clip: Here's Jimmy Giuffre's Suspensions from the Brandeis Jazz Festival in 1957...

Interview: Gunther Schuller (Part 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interview: Gunther Schuller (Part 1)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bob Freedman on Maynard Ferguson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interview: Sammy Nestico (Part 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Straight Ahead (Dot/1968)

Standing Ovation (Dot/1969)

Have a Nice Day (Daybreak/1971)

Bing 'n Basie (Daybreak/1972)

Basie Big Band (Pablo/1975)

Fun Time (Pablo/1975)

Prime Time (Pablo/1977)*

On the Road (Pablo/1979)*

Warm Breeze (Pablo/1981)*

88 Basie Street (Pablo/1983)*

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

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

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