JazzWax

Interview: Mike Stoller (Part 3)

Epic songs are always in the air. Unless you're keenly aware of those songs, you probably aren't even aware of how many times you hear them. For example, Stand By Me—written by Ben E. King, Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber—is the third most-played BMI song on the radio and TV since the organization's founding in 1940. After writing my profile of Mike for the Wall Street Journal (go here), I, of course, became more keenly aware of the song. [Pictured clockwise above, Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller and Ben E. King]

A few weeks ago, the song was playing on the jukebox when I walked into Pizzeria Regina on Thatcher St. in Boston. Then last week, I was taking the subway downtown in New York. As I walked from the Times Square Shuttle at Grand Central to the Lexington Ave. line, there was a woman with a karaoke box and a mike soulfully singing Stand By Me. When I told her I'd tell the song's composer about her version, she nearly passed out.

In Part 3 of my transcribed conversation with Mike Stoller for the Wall Street Journal, the fabled R&B-rock songwriter talks about the making of Stand By Me and what makes the song so irresistible:

Marc Myers: Are you and Ben E. King excited about the Songwriters Hall of Fame’s "Towering Song Award" for Stand By Me?
Mike Stoller: Yes. It’s funny, I just got off the phone with Ben E. King. He had called me last week, and I called him back this morning. We talked about how cool it was that we were getting the awards. We speak a few times a year. Sometimes I call him if there’s a request for the use of the song and want to get his OK.


MM: You, Jerry Leiber and Ben E. King are credited with writing Stand By Me—yet the label on the 45-rpm says “King-Glick.” Who was Glick?
MS: [Laughs] Jerry thought that three names would be too long on the label, so we created a joint pseudonym: “Elmo Glick.” Elmo was for blues slide-guitarist Elmore James and Glick was for Sammy Glick from Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? I helped Jerry make up the name. We thought it was funny.

MM: How did the co-writing work?
MS: Ben E. had the beginings of a song—both words and music. He worked on the lyrics together with Jerry, and I added elements to the music, particularly the bass line. To some degree, it’s based on a gospel song called Lord Stand By Me. I have a feeling that Jerry and Ben E. were inspired by it. Ben, of course, had a strong background in church music. He’s a 50% writer on the song, and Jerry and I are 25% each.

MM: Where was your office in the summer of 1960?
MS: For three years—between 1957 and 1960—when we moved back to New York from California, our office was wherever we were. It could be Jerry’s place, my place, Hill & Range’s offices, Atlantic Records’ offices and so on. When our publishing deal expired with Hill & Range in 1960, we started a publishing company of our own. So we took a place at 40 W. 57th St., which is now a tall office tower. At that time it was a five-story building with a corset shop on the ground floor.

MM: What floor were you on?
MS: The top floor—the fifth. It had a skylight.


MM: What happened when you arrived late that day?
MS: When I walked in, Jerry and Ben E. were working on the lyrics to a song. They were at an old oak desk we had in the office. Jerry was sitting behind it, and Benny was sitting on the top. They looked up and said they were writing a song. I said, “Let me hear it.”

MM: How did they audition it for you?
MS: Ben began to sing the song a cappella. I went over to the upright piano and found the chord changes behind the melody he was singing. It was in the key of A. Then I created a bass line. Jerry said, “Man that’s it!” We used my bass pattern for a starting point and, later, we used it as the basis for the string arrangement created by Stanley Applebaum.


MM: How long did it take for Stand By Me to come together?
MS: Not very long. I don’t know how long Jerry and Ben E. had been working on it before I arrived, but we had the music and words in place that day. I suspect it was a couple of hours. I also suspect Ben E. may have had some ideas about it when he came in and met with Jerry. The bass line just grew out of running down the song.

MM: When did you add the guiro—the percussion instrument that sounds like a match striking?
MS: When Stanley Applebaum and I began to write an orchestration for the song. The vision for the orchestration was mine, but the full arrangement was his. It was all based on my bass pattern. Jerry and I were into the Latin stuff, particularly the baion beat. We had the guiro play on every second beat and a triangle on every fourth. It just seemed to work beautifully, particularly with the strings.


MM: Supporting the strings is that bass line.
MS: We enhanced it by having an electric guitar play what the bass was playing—but an octave higher—to accentuate the pattern and give it a brighter feel, particularly behind the strings.

MM: You and Leiber had first used strings on There Goes My Baby with the Drifters a year earlier in 1959.
MS: Yes, I was playing this line that sounded like a Russian take on Middle Eastern music. I described it then as sounding “a little Caucasian” [laughs]. With that in mind, on Stand By Me, I told Stanley Applebaum to write some Borodin or Rimsky-Korsakov. Stanley wound up writing a beautiful invention in two parts for the song.


MM: The strings keep rising, hymn-like.
MS: That’s largely the string parts that Stanley arranged. When they first come in on the first refrain, they’re low. On the second refrain they’re higher, and they rise higher and higher along the way. But they’re playing the bass pattern, in effect.

MM: Why is King’s vocal so special?
MS: Among all the kids singing back then, Ben was the most mature-sounding young man. His delivery and the timbre of his voice was advanced beyond his years. Most of the young kids singing back then sounded like, well, kids. Ben had a style that was akin to Arthur Prysock or Billy Eckstine. His sound was settled. It wasn’t in a hurry. That was a wonderful characteristic about Ben.


MM: Why is the bass pattern so powerful?
MS: That’s for writers and historians like you to say. Musically, I think it’s because the line adds to Ben’s sincerity. It’s also insistent, I suppose. Even though there are chords all the way through, Ben is really singing against that bass pattern. It’s the same chord progression for the verse and the chorus.

MM: What else is going on in there that most people don’t realize?
MS: There’s a male choir very low on the second verse. We also had an electric guitar playing the blangs—the chords that ring we called "the blangs." In fact, we had lots of guitars at our sessions, maybe three or four.


MM: What about on Stand By Me?
MS: On there, we had five. On the session, we used our usual four and, to keep Phil Spector in pocket change, we used him as the fifth. We had hired him in 1960 and put him on the session. 

Tomorrow, Mike talks about his and Jerry Leiber's production style in the recording studio that most influenced Phil Spector and his "Wall of Sound" in the early 1960s.

JazzWax clips: Here's Ben E. King singing Stand By Me...

 

And here's Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber on What's My Line in 1957. They were so obscure and so thoroughly unknown that no blindfolds were needed. And dig Dorothy Kilgallen's snide cracks about rock 'n' roll when their identities are revealed...

 

Interview: Mike Stoller (Part 2)

If you close your eyes, songwriter Mike Stoller sounds a little like comedian Larry David. The tone is distinctly New York—insistent and street smart. But unlike David, Mike's voice has tones that are more nasal and much gentler, the result of an upbringing in Queens, a borough of New York that's halfway to the suburbs of Long Island.

Mike likes things simple, and leaves the angst and analysis to others. One senses that he likes to keep things light, relying on humor to deflect negative thinking and reflecting on life's ironies from the perspective of a spectator rather than a participant or victim. [Photo of Mike Stoller and wife Corky Hale in March 2012 by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images North America]

In Part 2 of my conversation with Mike for the Wall Street Journal (go here to read my profile), the R&B songwriter reflects on co-composing Jailhouse Rock, his role in helping R&B cross over to white markets in 1957, and his writing partner Jerry Leiber:

Marc Myers: Jailhouse Rock in 1957 was something of a turning point for R&B and rock, wasn't it?
Mike Stoller: In what way?

MM: Elvis had his 1956 run and becomes larger than life, the civil rights movement shifts gears, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis add a wild streak, the Coasters, Drifters and Platters cross over, images of racial strife appear on TV and in print, and there are several major political events of the year. In this context, Jailhouse Rock sounds like something of a generational bond-cutter.
MS: Interesting. But it’s not that different thematically from Riot in Cell Block #9 though, don’t you think?


MM: I don't know. To me, there’s a different edge—a towel-snap feel to the words and music that’s less about a whimsical prison uprising and more about flaunting authority, rebelling against your captors—teachers, parents and so on. It's a clarion call, and I think that’s why it crossed over and resonated.
MS: Good point. And yet there’s playfulness to it, too. The song doesn’t feel unsafe. [Pictured: Elvis Presley on the set of Jailhouse Rock in 1957]

MM: Exactly, which is so true of many of your songs. Humor crosses all barriers. The movie version of Jailhouse Rock and the record have different instrumental approaches, yes?
MS: Yes. I had nothing to do with the movie’s orchestration. The record was made first and became the template for the movie. The movie folks wound up doing an expanded orchestral version because of the visual choreography.


MM: What do you think of the movie version?
MS: I like it. It was funny. The record also was visual, but in one’s imagination. I thought that Elvis’ dancing performance in the movie was wonderful.

MM: How did you come to write that blues? It has a Freddie Slack feel.
MS: [Laughs]. Freddie Slack! I haven’t heard that name in ages. The melody just came. It’s based on the kind of blues breaks that had been part of the blues literature, so to speak. I just tried to find a way to make it a little different. Jerry and I wanted to create a style that we felt would be easy for Elvis to relate to and sing.


MM: The lyrics are a little homeoerotic in places, no?
MS: You mean, “Number 47 said to Number. 3, you’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see?” Nah. It’s whatever you think it means. There’s an edge but none of that was intended.

MM: Despite the whimsy, there's a dark edge to that song. What inspired it?
MS: We were given a script. In the script, there was a note in brackets that simply said, “There’s a talent contest in prison” [laughs].


MM: [Laughing] That's rich. That was it?
MS: That’s all. But you know, we didn’t read the whole script when we first got it. In fact, we just thumbed it. We got the script in New York. [Photo: Mike Stoller at the piano]

MM: Why were you in New York?
MS: After I returned from Europe in 1956 and Jerry told me about Hound Dog becoming a big hit for Elvis, I checked into the Algonquin Hotel, where Jerry was staying. That night we went to dinner at the Russian Tea Room. That’s when I first met the guys at Atlantic—Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson [the label's co-founders] and Jerry Wexler, who by then was co-producing with Ertegun. Abramson at that point was running Atco, an Atlantic subsidiary, that was set up for him when he returned from the Army. Ahmet and his brother Nesuhi Ertegun, who ran the jazz side, took us to dinner. Then we went to the old Basin Street to hear the Modern Jazz Quartet.

MM: So you remained in New York?
MS: We began writing for the Coasters, who had signed with Atco. We had been writing for them and producing their records when they were known as the Robins. Jerry and I took an apartment on East 71st St. It was a six-month sublet. After the lease was up, we went home to L.A. Then in March 1957, we returned to N.Y. to hang out with Ahmet and Jerry Wexler. By then, we had had some successes with Elvis, and Colonel Parker, Presley’s manager, wanted us to write the music to his next movie, Jailhouse Rock. So we went up to Hill & Range, the music publishing company that controlled Elvis’ music, to pick up the script.

MM: What did you do with the script?
MS: When Jerry and I got back to our hotel suite on West 55th St., we tossed it on the corner table, on top of a bunch of hotel magazines. Then we set out to enjoy New York.


MM: What did you do?
MS: We spent the next few weeks going to jazz clubs and cabarets and the theater. I remember we went to see Cy Coleman and his trio. Ray Mosca was on drums. I had gone to high school in Queens with Ray before my family moved to L.A. in 1949.

MM: What motivated you and Leiber to finally pick up the script?
MS: Weeks later, Jean Aberbach, a co-owner of Hill & Range, showed up at our hotel unannounced. It was a Saturday, and Jerry and I were having breakfast. Jean said, “Fellows, where are my songs?” Jerry said, “Don’t worry Jean, you’ll have your songs.” We both glanced over at our script in the corner.


MM: What did Aberbach say?
MS: He said, “I know I’ll have my songs, boys, because I’m not leaving here until I do.”

MM: What did he do?
MS: Jean got up and pushed a big overstuffed chair against the door. He said, “I’m going to take a nap, and I’m not leaving until I have them.”

MM: How long did his nap last?
MS: About four hours. When he woke up, four songs were done.


MM: Which ones?
MS: Jailhouse Rock, Treat Me Nice, (You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care and I Want to Be Free. All sort of related to being cooped up in that suite [laughs].

MM: What was going on inside the music business regarding civil rights in 1957?
MS: I can only tell you what we experienced, as I experienced it. In terms of integration, it wasn’t an issue. Jerry and I had been writing, creating and recording in an integrated community from 1950. Only later, in the 60s, were there schisms in the music industry in response to the black power movement, when some of our relationships grew uncomfortable.


MM: Were you conscious of the civil rights movement?
MS: We were conscious of it to a degree. We were aware that what we had experienced in our lives, in our early lives with our interracial relationships, was starting to happen nationwide.

MM: Was the movement a conscious part of your music?
MS: No. It was just the music Jerry and I loved. The music had always been integrated for us. We were simply creating songs that were extensions of our own interracial experiences.


MM: Was there pushback by white record executives asking you to write in a certain way—to avoid trouble in the South, for example?
MS: Never. Not at all. Our songs actually sold well in the South, particularly in black communities. We’d see our songs in Cash Box on the R&B charts that covered 16 different markets. There was a chart for Harlem, Chicago South Side, Shreveport, Kansas City and so on. Each chart had different songs rising and falling as opposed to the pop chart, which was a national thing.

MM: Did you feel that what you and Leiber were doing was maverick from a civil rights perspective?
MS: We weren’t really political. We didn’t think of it that way. We weren’t devoid of any sense of what was going on. Nor were we were devoid of racial politics, and right and wrong. But there was no black and white for us. We were writing what appealed to us, which happened to be mostly music performed and recorded by black artists. We were entertaining ourselves when we wrote. Our backgrounds had erased all of that.

MM: How so?
MS: I had gone to an interracial summer camp from age 7 to 15, and Jerry had lived a different experience—though similar in terms of his exposure to black families. His mother ran a little store in Baltimore, and Jerry delivered soft coal and kerosene to the black community on the edge of where he lived. He had relations with black kids and dated black girls. We both did. Jerry was welcome there because he was literally delivering the light.


MM: How did you two meet?
MS: When we were still in our late teens in 1950, Jerry called me out of the blue and said he was a songwriter. He said he had heard about me from a drummer he knew and asked if I wanted to write songs with him. I said I wasn't interested in writing pop songs. Less than an hour later, Jerry showed up at my front door with pages of lyrics. When I saw they were in the form of 12-bar blues, I agreed to write with him. I loved the blues.

MM: Was Leiber a nice guy?
MS: Yes. Sometimes he was tormented. Sometimes he was extremely generous. He was complex.

MM: Do you miss him?
MS: Yeah. I miss… [pauses]. I miss the kid I met in 1950. The ambitious, aggressive, dynamic and exciting kid. Jerry used to say to me when we drove around in my ‘37 Plymouth, “We’re going to be rich and famous." I thought he was deluding himself.

MM: Your pragmatism was offset by his dreaming?
MS: I guess so. Jerry used to say he had no brakes and I had no motor.

MM: What did he mean?
MS: That he might go off in a direction at any given moment. Without me to hold him back, he might have gone off the edge of the world. But without that streak, I wouldn’t have been motivated. Which was the no-motor part.

MM: You guys were pretty prolific for you to have been unmotivated.
MS: Oh, I was plenty motivated to write but not to promote myself. I was very shy. But together it worked.

MM: Are you still shy?
MS: No, I don’t think so.

MM: Was that a result of Leiber?
MS: Maybe. But at a certain point in our relationship… It’s weird. Early on, in interviews, Jerry did all the talking. And then at a certain point in our relationship, that shifted. He acknowledged that. I can’t pinpoint the date. It just changed.

JazzWax clips: Here's Jailhouse Rock, the record...

  

And here's Jailhouse Rock, the movie version...

 

Interview: Mike Stoller (Part 1)

A couple of weeks ago I traveled to Los Angeles for the Wall Street Journal to interview Mike Stoller at his home high in the Hollywood Hills. My conversation with rock 'n' roll's first successful songwriter—with hits dating back to 1951—appears in today's paper (or go here). [Photo of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller by David Attie for Vogue's "People Are Talking" in July 1959]

On June 14, the Songwriter's Hall of Fame will honor Ben E. King, Mike and his late writing partner Jerry Leiber after naming Stand By Me (1961) the 2012 "Towering Song of the Year." Mike co-wrote many of R&B's and early rock's biggest hits, including Hound Dog, Jailhouse Rock, Kansas City, Love Potion #9, Poison Ivy, Smokey Joe's Café, Yakety Yak, On Broadway, Young Blood, Fools Fall in Love and There Goes My Baby. Leiber and Stoller also wrote Peggy Lee's hit versions of "I'm a Woman" and "Is That All There Is?" The list goes on and on. [Pictured above: Ben E. King and Mike Stoller]

In Part 1 of my conversation with Mike, the 79-year-old R&B and pop-rock songwriter talks about early piano lessons with a jazz legend in the '40s, his close call on the high seas in 1956, and the crossover of R&B to rock 'n' roll in 1957:

Marc Myers: Nine is a lucky number for you, isn’t it?
Mike Stoller: [Laughs]. Always. Love Potion #9, Riot in Cell Block #9 and others. We always knew the word “nine” sounded great. Strangely, when I go for my annual physical, my doctor puts his stethoscope on my back and asks me to say "nine." The number vibrates.

MM: Can you still play a mean boogie-woogie?
MS: I doubt it. I haven’t played a boogie-woogie in ages. I use the piano in my office here to write, and I’m still sort of uncertain and very private when I write. Even at home, when I’m working alone, I like to wear headphones that cover my ears. I find my place when all is blocked out.


MM: How many lessons did you take with James P. Johnson?
MS: Oh, six or seven in 1943 or 1944.

MM: Would your life have been different if those lessons didn’t take place?
MS: Probably. I may have picked up some of the information I learned about the blues from listening. But getting it directly from James P. was much more powerful and first-hand. Things like the structure of blues and boogie-woogie. Before taking those lessons, I would play a 1 chord until I got tired and then move to a four chord until I got tired of that one—without the knowledge of the 12-bar structure.

MM: James P. Johnson should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
MS: [Laughs] I suppose so.


MM: What was Johnson like?
MS: He was very gentle, considering I was a little kid who wanted to play boogie-woogie. That’s all I wanted to play. Of course, he could have taught me so many other things and so much more if I had been interested. He was a wonderful composer and stride pianist.

MM: In pictures, his face looks so kind and nurturing.
MS: Yeah, that’s what I felt when I was with him. He made me feel comfortable. He did keep a bottle of Southern Comfort on the piano. He never drank from it, though. When I told Jerry about the bottle after Jerry and I met in 1950, he said James P. kept it there for when I came over [laughs].

MM: Did your lessons improve as the bottle level declined? 
MS: [Laughs] I didn’t draw any correlation.

MM: When Johnson said to you, “Understanding structure is the key to confidence,” what did he mean?
MS: Just that. That I had to know certain rules first—not in the sense of rules that couldn’t be broken. All rules are meant to be broken here, there or everywhere. What he meant was that if you have the knowledge of structure, you will feel safe and in control, enabling you to try new things.


MM: You were on the S.S. Andrea Doria when it was struck in July 1956.
MS: Yes, I was on board with my first wife [today, Mike is married to jazz pianist and harpist Corky Hale]. It was a traumatic event. When the ship was listing, I said to myself, “This is it.” But when I got off the ship, I blocked most of it out.

MM: But you recall what happened?
MS: Yes, it's still there. In 1981, 25 years after the event, I was living in New York and was asked to go up to Boston for a radio show about the ship’s sinking. I hadn’t really thought much about it and never dwelled on it. Occasionally it was a subject that came up during dinner conversation. That kind of thing. At any rate, in Boston, they asked me whether I remembered Linda Morgan, the little girl who had survived by being thrown randomly from the ship to the Stockholm as it hit us. When I thought back, I started to cry without being able to prevent it. I had pushed those memories out of my mind, and they came back with the question.

MM: How did you change creatively after the collision and rescue?
MS: I can’t tell you that. It’s impossible for me to know.

MM: Most people hear a song’s words and assume that’s the song. How do you explain what you do?
MS: Jerry wrote words and I wrote the music—the melody and harmony. But I would make suggestions for lyrics and Jerry would contribute to the music. I’d suggest using “and” instead of “but” and he’d say, "Make the note go up rather than down.” In the beginning, it was all back-and-forth, the two of us shouting phrases—words and notes. Jerry couldn’t write music but he could sing a line. Even with that said, Jerry really wrote the words and I really wrote the music.


MM: But beyond the music?
MS: With small groups, I often wrote the arrangements and played the piano on almost all the Coasters records and some of the other things we recorded. When we started to use larger orchestras after There Goes My Baby, I didn’t feel confident enough, so I liked to work with very talented orchestrators and arrangers like Stanley Applebaum.

MM: How did that work?
MS: I’d work with the orchestrator at the piano, and he would sketch what I wanted. I felt that if he put his pencil on the score, it was going to sound more professional and safe than if I did. But I contributed to the orchestration on almost all the records we produced. 

MM: In 1957, was the crossover of your songs from R&B to mainstream rock ‘n’ roll intentional?
MS: How so?

MM: Were you and Leiber looking for a way to widen the audience for your music—or did it just happen?
MS: It just happened. We had always written primarily for black audiences. We had started out writing blues for Jimmy Witherspoon, Charles Brown, Little Esther, Big Mama Thornton and others. Before 1957, there were rare moments when we were hired to write for white R&B groups. The rare exception was Black Denim Trousers for the Cheers in 1955. It was an urban take on the Western sagas that Frankie Laine was singing at the time. It also was a take on the motorcycle movies like The Wild One. Edith Piaf wound up recording it in French.

MM: The turning point appears to be when Elvis Presley recorded your song Hound Dog in 1956. After, you and Leiber wrote a string of hits for him.
MS: That’s correct. It's a funny story of how that came about. After a freighter picked up me and my first wife from a lifeboat after the Andrea Doria went down, we were taken to New York. When I arrived, Jerry met me at the pier. The first thing he said was, 'Mike, we have a smash hit—'Hound Dog.' Confused, I asked, 'With Big Mama Thornton?' I just assumed our earlier R&B hit was back for some reason. He said, 'No, some white kid named Elvis Presley'" [laughs].

MM: From then on, starting with Jailhouse Rock, your brand of R&B became rock ‘n’ roll.
MS: Yes, but it was accidental. When Jerry and I first started writing, recordings of our songs were played on the extreme ends of the radio dial on stations that had black listening audiences. These stations beamed to those neighborhoods in big cities. After 1956, we found that white kids were tuning into those stations because the music was more exciting than artists like Perry Como.

MM: And Pat Boone?
MS: Actually, Pat Boone was an imitation of R&B. He was singing covers of Little Richard, while Georgia Gibbs was covering LaVern Baker. That was in response to white teens who were tuning into those end-of-the-dial stations. Once the major labels found out about the R&B trend, they had white artists cover the songs, artists they felt who wouldn’t offend their advertisers.


MM: Weren't the humorous lyrics of your songs, particularly with the Coasters, also a big part of your music’s crossover appeal?
MS: Yes, that’s true. There certainly were elements of Yiddish humor in our songs, and black audiences related to it. Yiddish humor is gallows humor, poking fun at misfortune. Many people don’t realize that Jerry’s first language was Yiddish. He spoke Yiddish until he was 5 years old.


MM: And yet songs like Yakety Yak, One Kiss Led to Another and Wait a Minute had a sophisticated silliness about them—serving up R&B without losing the black delivery and feel.
MS: Yiddish humor and black humor aren’t that different. “If it wasn’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have no luck at all.” If you use an Eastern European accent, the song could have been written there in the late 1800s.

JazzWax note: For more on Mike Stoller and Jerry Leiber, I recommend Hound Dog: The Leiber & Stoller Autobiography, as told to David Ritz.

JazzWax tracks: There are multiple sets of Leiber and Stoller recordings. The Leiber and Stoller Story is a three-volume set of CDs from the UK that runs about $20 each. Or you can do what I did: Opt for the Spark Records Story, a label Leiber and Stoller started in the early 1950s. There are 30 tracks on a single disc featuring a wide range of songs they wrote and/or produced for various artists.

Then I went for a used copy of The Coasters on Atco: There's a Riot Goin' On, a four disc set that sells for around $45, which is sensational.

The Drifters aren't offered on anything as complete, but you have a couple of solid choices: The Drifters: The Definitive Soul Collection and a knock-out 40-track download—The Drifters: The Singles Collection 1953-1960. It's $11.99 at the Apple Store in the U.S.

JazzWax clips: Here's Big Mama Thornton and Buddy Guy in 1965 reprising her 1952 hit with Leiber and Stoller's Hound Dog...

 

Here are the Drifters with Clyde McPhatter singing Leiber and Stoller's Fools Fall in Love (1957)...

 

And here are the Coasters singing a rare outtake of Leiber and Stoller's Yakety Yak (1958)...

 

Corky Hale: The Swinging Harp

Around the time that Corky Hale became a first-call studio harpist in Hollywood in the mid-1950s, she recorded two superb small-group jazz albums: Herbie Harper and Corky Hale Plays George Gershwin and Vernon Duke. On both 1955 albums, Corky was featured playing the harp almost like a guitar—displaying a swinging technique, gorgeous chord phrasing and smart line improvisation.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back in January, when I posted about jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby, I included a capsule section on the history of the jazz harp. Foolishly, I overlooked Corky, at which point the West Coast emails began pouring in. So I emailed Corky to apologize. In short order, I received the following from her...

"Although I was originally known as the 'jazz harpist,' I was also Billie Holiday's piano player for a time in the late 1950s, and I played piano in Clark Terry's band.
 
"A camera crew came over from London several months ago to film me for a documentary on Chet Baker. I'm playing harp on several of Chet's albums in the early '60s. When I lived in Rome I was the alternating piano player on the Tempo di Jazz TV show with Romano Mussolini. Chet was once booked on that show, and it was a pretty funny happening. He walked in, was intruduced to Romano and said, 'What a drag about your old man.' Classic Chet."  

Corky is way too modest. In fact, she played harp on nearly every major West Coast jazz-pop date that called for one, including albums in Ella Fitzgerald's Songbook series, Chet Baker Sings and Plays (1955), Anita (1955) with Anita O'Day backed by Buddy Bregman's orchestra, June Christy's Misty Miss Christy (1956) and sessions by Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. And this is just the tip of her jazz and pop discography.

Corky was and is a fearless entertainer. Now she is hard at work on her autobiography, so she couldn't give me much. But here's her Billie Holiday story...

"In 1957, when I was singing with Freddy Martin at the Coconut Grove in L.A., Jerry Gray heard me singing on our nightly radio remotes. He called and asked me to play piano and sing with his orchestra at the Dunes in Las Vegas. So I went.

"While we were out there, we were rehearsing and Jerry told the band that there had been a last-minute change and that a guest artist was going to be on the bill. Well, in walks Billie Holiday. As she comes in, she gave me a long look, like, "This is the piano player? You're kidding, right?" It was like an old movie. Billie was accustomed to seeing someone she knew on piano, and here was this petite, peroxide blonde. [Photo above of Billie Holiday and Corky Hale at Jazz City in 1957 by Ray Avery/CTSImages]

"We ran through a few songs and, long-story short, she loved me. She said, 'You’re my little girl.' After the first night, Billie said to me, 'When we finish here, we’re going to do Jazz City in L.A.' And we did. We went into Jazz City for a couple of weeks. The drummer was Bob Neel, but I can't recall the bassist. Red Mitchell’s wife Doe did Billie's hair each night. They were close friends. And I remember that José Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney were in the audience for our entire run. [Photo above by Ray Avery/CTSImages]

"How did I manage to hit it off with Billie so fast? As a singer, I've always listened carefully to vocalists when I accompanied them on piano, providing a comfortable cushion. I never played through their vocals and always provided tasteful support. Billie liked that and my voicings. [Pictured above: Frank Sinatra and Corky Hale]

"So much so that after our Jazz City run, she wanted me to accompany her on her tour of the Philippines. But I turned her down. At the time, she was married to her fourth husband, Louis McKay, who was a pretty rough character. I didn't want that kind of trouble so far from home."

Now, about those two sessions I mentioned on top: The first, Herbie Harper, featured Harper (tb), Paul Sarmento (tu), Charlie Mariano (as), Jimmy Giuffre (ts,bar), Jimmy Rowles (p), Harry Babasin (b), Irv Cottler (d) and Corky on harp.

Her leadership date, Plays George Gershwin and Vernon Duke, included Corky on harp, piano and flute on different tracks along with Buddy Collette (fl, ts), Larry Bunker (vib), Howard Roberts (g), Red Mitchell (b) and Chico Hamilton (d).

Both albums swing with rich beauty and taste. After all, you didn't get to play with those cats unless you had what it takes—and some. Even more remarkable—Corky was only 19 years old at the time.

JazzWax tracks: Both Herbie Harper and Plays George Gershwin and Vernon Duke are out of print and hard to find. But I trust someone will post a comment alerting readers where they can be found. 

Among my favorite contemporary recordings by Corky are Corky (1998) and Corky and Friends: I'm Glad There Is You (2009). You've got to hear what Corky does with the harp on Yesterdays (from Corky), backed by strings and a rhythm section. Her vocal tracks are equally warm and cozy.

JazzWax clips: Here's Corky on Vernon Duke's There's an Island in the West Indies from 1955. That's Buddy Collette on flute. Dig Corky's swinging solo!

 

And here's Corky on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in the late '60s, backing Tony Bennett on For Once in My Life, teaching Carson a thing or two, and then singing This Is the Life. Pure talent, charm and grace under enormous pressure...

 

Hal Blaine on Karen Carpenter

Maybe it's because I came of age in the early '70s. Or because my parents had a "burnt orange" car. Or that I had an apple-green Schwinn Stingray. Or that our home was painted redwood. Whatever the reason, the Carpenters always take me back to a time when everything was changing, and not always for the better. But through it all—the striped bell-bottoms, the tough kids in the suburbs and the gloomy news—Karen Carpenter's voice made everything seem just right.

If you also have a soft spot for the Carpenters, you should know that the drummer on just about all of their hits was the Wrecking Crew's Hal Blaine. What makes Hal's playing behind Richard and Karen Carpenter so special is his subtlety and the percussive textures he added in just the right places. There's the suspenseful delay of the drums on Close to You toward the end, just before Karen's overdubbed vocal chorus comes in. Or his tom-toms on Rainy Days and Mondays.  

I called Hal a short time ago to chat Carpenters because I had just discovered a series of YouTubes where someone isolated Karen's voice on hit tracks, so it sounds like she's singing a cappella. More on these clips at the bottom.

Here's Hal Blaine, on the Carpenters...

JazzWax: When did you first meet Karen Carpenter?
Hal Blaine: I first met Karen when Fender bassist Joe Osborn [pictured] brought her and Richard over to Sound Recorders in Los Angeles. Joe and I were doing a Neil Diamond recording session. On a break, Joe said he wanted me to meet a couple of people. When we stepped outside the studio, Karen and Richard were there, wearing matching Western jackets with fringed leather. They seemed like nice kids, in their teens.

JW: What did Osborn say?
HB: He said, “This is Richard. He plays organ, and this is Karen, she plays the drums.” There was a little chitchat but the meeting was cut short when Joe and I were called back into the studio. Neil was ready to roll again.

JW: Why did Osborn want you to meet them?
HB: Joe said they had been recording in his garage and needed a producer. He wanted me to consider producing. I said, “Joe, based on what you’ve told me, they don’t seem to fit any specific genre. Besides, we don’t have time to go to the bathroom, let alone produce.” Joe shrugged and agreed.

JW: What happened next?
HB: I saw Ticket to Ride, their first album on A&M, when it came out and was happy for them. But nothing much came of it. [The album reached only No. 150 on the Billboard chart in the U.S.] About a year later I got a call from Herb Alpert of A&M Records. I had been the drummer on all of his Tijuana Brass hits. A&M was about to drop the Carpenters, and Herb wanted me to come in to play drums on a song Paul Williams had written with Roger Nichols.

JW: Did you go in?
HB: Yes. When I arrived, the Carpenters’ parents were there. You could tell right away they ruled the roost. We started to run through the song, We’ve Only Just Begun. But Karen was singing way too high. I stopped the session and took Karen aside.


JW: What did you say?
HB: I said, “Look, Karen, I don’t want to bug you with this, but you’re singing way up high. You speak mid-range, which is much better for your singing voice. Why don’t you try it?”

JW: Did she agree?
HB: At first her parents cut in and insisted that up high was the way she sang. I said to her, “Try taking it down three keys.” So she did, and the rest is history [laughs].


JW: Her parents must have been quite domineering.
HB: Her mother hated that I was there. Karen played the drums, and her mother didn’t like that I was playing on the session and not her. Her mother said, “I’ve seen many drummers on TV, and Karen can play just as good as they can.”

JW: What did you say?
HB: I said, “Of course she can. But she doesn’t have the studio experience. Playing in the studio is completely different.”

JW: How so?
HB: As a drummer, you’re sitting in a room at your kit in a tight space, and the mikes are highly sensitive. Most drummers are used to knocking the hell out of their set. But in the studio, at least back then, before the digital recording age, you didn’t do that. With all those mikes, you can’t be wailing away or you’ll hit one of the stands. You also have to develop a technique of playing in your own little zone of space. You have to play gentle. If a song calls for something a little heavier, you turn the sticks around so you’re using the thicker end. It’s like the difference between driving a little car and a semi-truck. There are different rules for maneuvering.

JW: So what did you tell her mother?
HB: I said, “Karen is a fine drummer, but there’s some things you have to know about playing in a studio, and you can only learn those things by spending years there and listening back to hear what’s right and what’s not working.”


JW: Did Karen ever play on those recording sessions?
HB: No. I played on all those dates. Karen liked to hang around a lot at A&M because I was always there recording for Herb. She loved the drums, which helped her a great deal as a singer in terms of her time and tempo.

JW: Why were her parents so insistent on her playing the drums?
HB: Probably because I kept insisting she was the natural voice for the group, not the drummer. Karen had an extraordinary voice, the kind you wanted to hear over and over again. To me, that translated into hits.


JW: Why did her parents oppose that?
HB: I don’t know. Her mother kept saying, “But Richard is the star, Karen is just the drummer.” I think part of that stuff pushed Karen over the edge eventually. The poor thing was playing her buns off on the drums, trying to do the right thing, and her parents were letting her have it.

JW: Did Karen respect you?
HB: Yes, especially as their records became hits. She understood.

JW: Richard Carpenter is quite a player-arranger, yes?
HB: Definitely. He was and still is. But he understood.


JW: Whose idea was the intro to Close to You?
HB: Richard came up with the intro, but at first it started too slow and ran too fast. He was rushing it, and I told him. Sometimes even the greatest solo pianists will start at one tempo and wind up at another. This is fine in a club, but on a record, the listener notices little things like that.

JW: Why is that?
HB: Because in a club, the audience listens with their eyes, distracting the ear. But when it comes to a recording, even an average listener can hear the slightest imperfections. It’s like what happens when you watch a home video. Even if you know nothing about film, the average eye has been so well trained by watching TV that you become frustrated when a home movie isn’t smooth and there aren’t edits and cuts. The ear is the same way with recorded music.


JW: What did you do to help Richard Carpenter?
HB: I suggested he use a click track. This is an electronic click in a headset. You hear the band on one side and the click track on the other. Jack Daugherty was producing and agreed.

JW: What about the drums you used on the sessions?
HB: Back in 1963, I had been experimenting with a larger drum set and used it on Frankie Laine’s recording of Don’t Make My Baby Blue. Then I had a full kit made, which gave me a rack of eight concert tom-toms suspended above the bass drum. It was a monster set. After I appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show playing them, every drum company in the world jumped on it. I gave the idea to Ludwig, thinking they would name it after me. Instead, they called it the Octaplus. I used this kit on all of the Carpenters’ sessions.

JW: Tell me about the drums.
HB: My long-time drum tech, Rick Faucher, worked with a guy named Hal Blaemar, who made the fiberglass shells. I introduced the set on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. I played a drum solo with Nancy Sinatra singing Drummer Man.
The fellow who made my drums made two sets for me; one for Ringo [Starr]; one for himself, and one for Karen, who wanted them when they toured.

JW: Who engineered the Carpenters dates?
HB: Larry Levine. He set up the mikes so they had an intimate, warm feel. Behind Richard and Karen was Joe Osborn on electric bass and me. 

JW: Your subtlety on Close to You is amazing.
HB: That’s what I was known for. I always wanted to hear a song before I played it. My role was to keep time but also add just the right subtle flavor in the right places. A lot of that is because of my schooling. I studied arranging and harmony when I was young and could hear the way I should sound in my head, before the recording started.

JW: Your drums always seem to be Karen’s heartbeat.
HB: That’s the way I wanted it. My drumsticks are my paintbrushes. I was painting a picture. Certain colors coming in and going out. That’s why I loved my Zildjian cymbals. There are nuances I wanted that only those cymbals could produce.

JW: Did Karen overdub her lead vocals?
HB: No. She overdubbed herself to fill out the choral parts, but she always sang the lead line live with us in the studio. 


JW: Who wrote your drum parts?
HB: I did. There were no major charts. My goal was to accompany her in the gentlest way. I’ve always been an accompanist. 

JW: Did you do a lot of takes?
HB: Yes. Joe and I always were in the pocket, and Richard knew he could do whatever he wanted to. Herb took the trumpet solos. But everyone there was a perfectionist, and we wanted it to be just right.


JW: As the years went on, could the studio musicians tell that Karen Carpenter had an eating disorder and was having health issues?
HB: Not at first. Everyone who came to Hollywood back then and became a star thinned down. It was the style out here and probably still is in many ways. The rule of thumb, sadly, was if you’re going to be on film or TV, you had to be 15 pounds underweight to look normal. It’s crazy, I know, but that’s how it was.

JW: No one could tell there was an issue?
HB: There were times when I’d give her a hug at the studio and I could feel her rib cage. She was like a little bird that had fallen out of a tree. For me, the saddest thing of all came in the later years. Karen had finally met a guy she liked, and he just took her money. He broke her heart completely. It was so damn sad. Her face was so hollow.

JW: When you think back, what do you think of Karen?
HB: How sad her life was. Years after she died in 1983, Richard called me to update some of the older tracks, for remastering. We were in the studio for about six hours, and I cried all the way listening back and playing over the parts. What a shame.

JazzWax tracks: If you're looking for a high-end collection of Carpenters hits, Singles 1969-1971 is coming in June from Universal Japan in SHM-CD.

JazzWax note: For more on Hal Blaine, read my JazzWax interview here and my profile in the Wall Street Journal here.

JazzWax clips: Here's Hal Blaine and Joe Osborn with Karen Carpenter, isolated on Close to You. Dig what's Hal's doing on the hi-hat and the Octaplus tom-toms. And catch that telegraphing of cymbal and sock drum toward the end before the vocal chorus comes in...

 

And here's Rainy Day and Mondays, done the same way. By the way if you want more, just type in "Karen Carpenter + a cappella." There are a bunch...

 

Interview: Van Alexander (Part 2)

As noted yesterday, Van Alexander, 97, arranged Ella Fitzgerald's A-Tisket A-Tasket, recorded by Fitzgerald with Chick Webb's orchestra on May 2, 1938. Though the song may seem a bit of a novelty number now, the single was a runaway hit in late June 1938. By then, the country was growing increasingly worried: Germany had invaded Austria on March 12 and Japan had invaded China on June 17.

Fitzgerald's song hit No. 1 on June 25 and remained there for 10 weeks. It was the singer's first No. 1 hit—she would have only two other No. 1 singles in the pre-rock era: I'm Making Believe and Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall, both in 1944. The song first turned up on the screen in 1938 in The Cowboy and the Lady, when it was performed as an a capella song-and-dance number by Harry Davenport. A-Tisket A-Tasket was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1986. [Pictured above, Ella Fitzgerald and Van Alexander]

In Part 2 of my two-part interview with Van Alexander, the pianist, arranger-composer and bandleader talks about the song—and more...

JazzWax: How did A-Tisket A-Tasket come about?
Van Alexander: In February 1938, Chick and the band went into the Flamingo Room, which was on the second floor of Lavaggi’s Restaurant, in North Reading, Mass., 20 minutes outside of Boston. The band was broadcasting on the radio up there three or four days a week. Each week, I’d go up to Boston by train with three new arrangements. This went on for about six weeks.

JW: So you were pretty busy.
VA: Very. One day Ella Fitzgerald said to me, “Gee, I have a great idea for a song. What if you did something with the nursery rhyme A-Tisket A-Tasket? I took in what Ella had said and went back to New York. But Chick kept giving me assignments and advances to get more work done. I was up to my neck finishing songs that he wanted to place with publishers so they could get them on the air.


JW: Did Fitzgerald ask you about the song again?
VA: It was definitely top of mind. The following week when I came up to Boston, Ella cornered me: “Al, did you think about the song?” I told her that I hadn’t had the time yet but that I would turn to it soon.  When I came back to Boston the following week, she asked me again. When I told her that I hadn’t done it yet, Ella said, “Listen, Al, if you’re not interested, tell me and I’ll ask [arranger] Edgar Sampson to do it.”

JW: What did you say?
VA: I told her, “Hold the phone, Ella. Give me one more week.” I went home to New York and burned the midnight oil. You have to understand, A-Tisket A-Tasket had been in the public domain since the late 1800s, so anyone could pick it up. There also wasn’t much of a song to begin with.


JW: What did you do with it?
VA: I put the children’s tune into a 32-bar song, adding a release and bridge. I also wrote novelty lyrics, including the exchanges between Ella and the band. You know, the stuff where they ask, “Was it red? Was it blue?” and Ella’s responding, “No, no, no, no.”

JW: What did Fitzgerald think?
VA: We rehearsed the song when I came up, and Ella loved it. And she gave it her own flavor. Originally, I had written lyrics in the middle part that were pretty straight—that she was “walkin’ on down the avenue.” Ella changed it to “truckin’ down the avenue”—to make the song more hip. She also changed something else, and we shared credit on the lyrics. A few weeks later, Chick Webb’s band and Ella recorded it—on May 2, 1938, my 23d birthday.


JW: Did you sense that it was going to be big?
VA: No way. No one knew what we had at the time. It was just another novelty song, and picking a hit is next to impossible. It just happens. We recorded it for Decca at World Transcription’s studio. Dave Kapp was in charge. The song came out in early summer, and by the end of the summer the song was No. 1 on the Lucky Strike Hit Parade. It remained at No. 1 for nine weeks.

JW: Did Webb love it?
VA: Oh did he ever. The song
 jump-started my career and Ella’s and Chick’s. Up until that point, Chick and Ella were certainly well-known, but not on a national level and not as crossover artists.


JW: Was the song radical at the time?
VA: It was in terms of its jump and naturalness. You have to remember that when Chick recorded A-Tisket A-Tasket, it was long before stereo and echo chambers. Today the recording may sound dated, but back then it wasn’t. It was alive and fresh. And that band had a certain spark and energy, and both came through on that song. Sadly, Chick didn’t live much longer. He died in June 1939 when he was just 34 years old.

JW: What were your impressions of Ella back then?
VA: She was a sweet, shy little girl, and she was that way all her life to the end. Strangely, she never fully really realized how great she was. But she was a thoughtful person. She also had terrible jitters about performing and recording, and she was always perspiring. But once she got out there in front of a mike, she was fine. Until that happened, she was a mess.


JW: How do you think she stacks up in relation to other vocalists of the period?
VA: Writers always compared her to Billie [Holiday] and Sarah [Vaughan], who I thought were vocal stylists. As great as they were, I don’t think they had the warmth, diction, intonation or projection that Ella did.

JW: Did you know Fitzgerald when she relocated to California?
VA: Oh sure. In the ‘50s I had a chance to write arrangements for her nightclub act.  But Norman Granz, her manager at the time, didn’t dig me too much and didn’t ask me to do one of her songbook albums. I could have gone to Ella, but I was so busy at the time with film and television work. I guess you know that Granz wasn’t the sweetest man in the world.


JW: What was Webb like?
VA: Chick was a pussycat. Not a strict bandleader. Some of those guys were monsters to their musicians. Chick wasn’t. He was sort of mild-mannered. The guys in the band were very protective of him because of his stature and ill health. He was a superb drummer. One of the great innovators. [Photo above, Chick Webb and Ella Fitzgerald]


JW: Especially at the Savoy?
VA: Absolutely. I remember a Battle of the Bands at the Savoy in 1937 between Chick and Benny Goodman. People started to line up at 4 in the afternoon. By the time the ballroom opened at 8, the line was around the block. The Savoy was up on the second floor, and when the place was filled with 3,000 people jumping up and down, as it was that night, you could feel the floor bending.

JW: How did the battle turn out?
VA: That night was so exciting. Benny opened up with King Porter Stomp and played for 15 minutes. Then Chick opened with his arrangement of King Porter Stomp. Of course, Chick had the reinforcement of Ella. When Ella sang, the place belonged to her and Chick.


JW: Who won?
VA: At the end, the consensus was that Chick had won. Even Gene Krupa said so. No one could have beaten Chick that night. Buddy Rich also said Chick had won. [Photo of Ella Fitzgerald by Carl Van Vechten, 1940]

JW: How much longer did you write for the band?
VA: Until he died the following year. During that time, most of the songs I arranged for Chick were pop tunes for Ella and many of them novelty numbers. I wasn’t doing too many band instrumentals at that point.


JW: Did you take a lot of heat for the novelty tunes?
VA: That’s what Chick wanted. He was as smart as a fox. He knew Ella was going to sell records for him. Chick and Ella loved each other, and Ella loved what Chick did for her. Chick’s wife took Ella in hand and taught her how to dress and put on makeup.

JW: What did you do after Webb?
VA: Eli Oberstein, the head of RCA Victor Records, approached me. He wanted to start a stable of bandleaders who arranged. So he signed me, Larry Clinton and Les Brown. My contract was for $100 a week. It was a great opportunity for me to start and lead my own band, which I did from 1939 to 1944.

JW: How did you like it?
VA: Being a bandleader was exciting. It got me into show business and I got to meet a lot of people and accompany a lot of singers. I never really competed with the top bands of the day. I played piano, and I was never very prolific at it. I played an arranger's piano—chords and things. I didn’t play clarinet or trombone, the big instruments then. So it was hard to compete. Consequently I never made it super big.


JW: But you had a great run.
VA: Absolutely. We played all the great theaters. Rising on the stage out of the pit at the Paramount Theater was a thrill. I wanted to use Alexander’s Ragtime Band as my theme, but when I did, I received a telegram from Irving Berlin telling me to cease and desist. He said he didn’t want anyone else to be associated with that song [laughs].

JW: How did your band end?
VA: During World War II, the draft pulled a lot of guys out. I was classified 1-A, but three days before I was to report, the enlistment was rescinded. At the time I was the father of two little girls so I got a defense job instead and worked the band at night.


JW: How were the work opportunities?
VA: In New York they were great. But toward the end of the war, the Capitol Theater in New York scrapped its stageband policy and began showing just movies. Then the theater reactivated its band policy, and the first act it booked was singer Bob Crosby [pictured], Bing’s brother. My manager was Joe Glaser, Louis Armstrong’s manager. He cooked up a deal so it would be Bob Crosby with the Van Alexander Orchestra. We went into the Capitol and had five wonderful weeks.

JW: How was Crosby?
VA: Great. Bob and I hit it off. He said to me, “Ever think of moving to California?” I told him, “Many times.” He said, “When I get back to California I want to put a band together. If you want to come out and be my contractor and arranger, let’s see if we can work something out.” I spoke to my wife Beth. We both saw the handwriting on the wall in New York. The band scene was deteriorating and so was the work. So we moved out there in 1945.


JW: What did you do?
VA: Worked with Bob Crosby and then with Les Brown for many years into the ‘50s. I also began arranging for television, which was in its infancy. I got in early and worked on Kukla, Fran and Ollie, which was on the air for about 10 years. I also had a few friends out there who knew me from New York, so I was pretty well plugged in.

JW: You also worked with Mickey Rooney.
VA: Yes, I wrote and arranged original music for his first TV series. That was my first taste of scoring for television. I was fast in those days. Mickey and I hit it off, and I did five or six pictures with him. 


JW: Who else do you remember from your film days?
VA: I did two films with Joan Crawford, B-pictures—Straight-Jacket (1964) and I Saw What You Did (1965). I have a picture taken with Joan, kissing her at the end of the picture at a party [pictured]. My wife Beth later jokingly said, “Did you have to kiss her on the mouth.”

JW: Was she a good kisser?
VA: I guess she was.


JW: So what’s the secret of your longevity?
VA: I never touched a cigarette or a drink in my life. I also never touched a woman until I was 11 years old [laughs]—my future wife. My late wife Beth was the love of my life. We had two daughters and now have four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. I guess the key to a long life is to work hard, keep cool and laugh as often as possible.

JazzWax tracks: Van Alexander, as a leader and arranger, recorded two super albums in the late 1950s—Home of Happy Feet, a tribute to his days at New York's Savoy Ballroom, and Swing Staged for Sound. On the former album is a delightful instrumental arrangement of A-Tisket A-Tasket. You'll find both on one CD here.

Two more notable albums that Van directed and/or arranged:

• Jack Teagarden—This Is Teagarden! (1956/Capitol)
• Dakota Staton—The Late, Late Show (1957/Capitol)

JazzWax notes: Van Alexander's autobiography, From Harlem to Hollywood: My Life in Music, written with Stephen Fratallone, can be found here. For more on Van Alexander, visit his site here.

Also, more on Ella Fitzgerald at the official site here and the Ella Fitzgerald Foundation here.

JazzWax clip: Here's a 1942 version of Ella Fitzgerald singing A-Tisket A-Tasket from Ride 'Em Cowboy with Abbott and Costello...

        

And here's Van Alexander's arrangement of Stealin' Apples, from his 1959 album, Swing Staged for Sound, with trumpeters Joe Graves and Shorty Sherock...

 

Interview: Van Alexander (Part 1)

Van Alexander is best known for arranging Ella Fitzgerald's career-launching hit A-Tisket A-Tasket, which she recorded on this date—May 2, 1938—with Chick Webb's band. Van arranged the children's song at Fitzgerald's suggestion and wrote the words along with her interchange with the band. Ella then tweaked the lyrics to make them hep. Van is the last surviving member of the Chick Webb organization and a direct link to the big band era before World War II. Today also happens to be Van's birthday—he's 97. Happy birthday, Van!

Back in the early '40s, after leaving Webb's band, Van was Johnny Mandel's [pictured] first orchestration teacher. Johnny was still attending the New York Military Academy in Tarrytown, N.Y., and Johnny told me he would travel down to the city by train, with his mother's permission, to take arranging lessons with Van. Johnny had found his name in a Down Beat ad.

In Part 1 of my two-part conversation with Van, the pianist, arranger and bandleader talks about growing up in New York and bluffing Chick Webb at the Savoy Ballroom in 1936...

JazzWax: Where did you grow up?
Van Alexander: I was born in New York, on 129th St. and Convent Ave., at the St. Agnes Apartments. These were six-story buildings that took up an entire block [they still stand today]. I was born in 1915, at home. I don’t remember too much about my early childhood except that I had loving parents and a loving brother, David Van Vliet, whom we lost a few months ago at age 100. David designed the present-day flag of the United Nations when he went to work there as a graphic designer after World War II.

JW: Van Vliet?
VA: [Laughs] I was born Alexander Van Vliet Feldman and was known until 1939 as Al Feldman. Van Vliet was my mother’s name and Feldman was my father’s name. I was named for my grandfather on my mother’s side—Alexander Van Vliet. My mother’s side was Dutch.

JW: How did you become Van Alexander?
VA: In 1939, after Chick [Webb] died, Eli Oberstein [pictured], the head of RCA Victor Records and my mentor, wanted me to lead a band. He asked me to change my name so it would be more dramatic. Mr. Oberstein asked me my middle name. I told him. He said I should use it as my first name and Alexander as my last. So I did.

JW: What did your parents do?
VA: My father was a pharmacist. He owned a Rexall drug store on 131st St. and Amsterdam Ave. in Manhattan, just down Convent Ave. from what was then Knickerbocker Hospital. Apartments stand there now. My father did well. Soon after I was born my parents bought land in the West Bronx and built a home.


JW: Sounds pretty nice.
VA: Almost. What started out sounding idyllic became very difficult for my father. The subway trip to his drug store was too hectic. So he sold the house and moved us to an apartment on 150th St. and Broadway. The building was across the East River from Yankee Stadium. Years later, in 1939, I was at the Stadium the day an ailing Lou Gehrig gave his “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth" speech before retiring. I was sitting in the bleachers with Butch Stone, a reed player who joined Les Brown’s band in 1941.

JW: Were you always interested in music?
VA: Yes. My mother was a classical pianist, and when I turned 6 years old, she gave me piano lessons. I wasn’t keen on playing scales and arpeggios and practicing. But eventually, I saw the value in it. When I attended George Washington High School, on Audubon Avenue and 192nd St., I played in the marching band. But since I couldn’t walk around with a piano, I played drums and cymbals. Soon I was promoted to drum major. I also met my future wife, Beth, at George Washington. I met her at The Point, an ice-cream parlor just down from the high school where all the kids hung out. We were married for 72 years. She recently passed.

JW: How did you become interested in jazz?
VA: I used to listen to records in the early ‘30s and remotes of bands playing live. I was always fascinated by the mechanics of the music, how it was made. In high school I started to experiment by writing arrangements for six or seven pieces. My band was known as Al Feldman and His Orchestra. I also took music classes at Columbia University and studied music orchestration and theory with Otto Cesana, who later became a mood music orchestrator. It was mostly classical instruction, and I studied with him for a year and a half. But I was more interested in swing. All of us were as teenagers. We loved to dance. We were early jitterbugs, dancing the shag and the lindy.


JW: Where did you go to dance?
VA: The Savoy Ballroom in Harlem on 141st St. and Lenox Ave. That’s where all the great bands played in the 1930s. I was fascinated by the arrangements that the great black bands of that era were playing. I always wanted to look at the sheet music they were playing. After going to the Savoy as much as we did, I struck up a nodding acquaintance with bandleader and drummer Chick Webb. He was there more than anyone else. He’d always say to me, “Oh, you’re here again?”


JW: How did you eventually speak with him at length?
VA: One night in February 1936, I got up the nerve and said to him, “I have a couple of arrangements that might fit your orchestra.” He said, “Sure, bring them next Friday.” 

JW: You had arrangements for the band?
VA: No, of course not. I was bluffing [laughs]. But because I had committed myself, I had to write them. I went home with fear and trepidation. Over the next four or five days I knocked out two charts: Keeping Out of Mischief Now and a Dixieland classic That’s a-Plenty.


JW: What happened?
VA: Friday came, and I went up to the Savoy at 8:30 p.m. with my arrangements. But it turned out that the band’s rehearsals were held when the band finished the job. At 1 a.m., the musicians took a muscatel wine break. At about 2 a.m., the band finally got down to its rehearsal.

JW: How did your arrangements sound?
VA: I had to wait longer. Before me came two other arrangers—Edgar Sampson, who had arranged Stompin’ at the Savoy and Don’t Be That Way [both in 1934]. And guitarist Charlie Dixon, who also had arranged a few songs. By the time the band got around to my charts, it was 4:30 a.m. By then, my mother had called the police.

JW: Why?
VA: She had no idea what had happened to me.


JW: What did Webb think of your arrangements?
VA: Chick liked what I did with the songs. He paid me $10 for each one, and I went home on Cloud 90. I had sold my first arrangement, and I was 19 years old.


JW: Did Webb hire you?
VA: Pretty much. I began writing steadily for Chick, and Moe Gale, his manager and co-owner of the  Savoy, put me on a salary of $75 a week for three arrangements, including copying all the parts. From then on, I wrote steadily for Chick. Ella Fitzgerald had joined the band in 1935, and one of the first songs I arranged for her was Cryin’ My Heart Out for You in 1936. 

Tomorrow, the story behind A-Tisket A-Tasket—and more.

JazzWax tracks: Among my favorite Van Alexander-arranged albums are two by Kay Starr—Jazz Singer and Movin!

JazzWax notes: Van Alexander's autobiography, From Harlem to Hollywood: My Life in Music, written with Stephen Fratallone, can be found here. For more on Van Alexander, visit his site here.

Coming this fall from Mosaic Records, The Complete Chick Webb and Ella Fitzgerald Decca Recordings 1929-1941. The box will include all of the Decca recordings that Webb made as a bandleader, both with and without Fitzgerald, before his death in 1939, and all of the recordings that Fitzgerald made with Decca after she took over leadership of the Webb band, including small-group dates done with Webb sidemen through the end of 1941.

JazzWax clip: Here's Van Alexander's Cryin' My Heart Out for You—his first arrangement for Ella Fitzgerald in 1936 with Chick Webb's band...

 

Sacha Distel: Guitarist-Singer

French and Belgian jazz musicians from the 1950s aren't given nearly as much credit in the U.S. as they deserve. The same is true for British jazz musicians. Ask most Americans to name their favorite European jazz artists from the period and they'll likely run dry after a handful—usually Toots Thielemans, Tubby Hayes, Bobby Jaspar, Martial Solal and maybe René Urtreger. There were plenty more greats, of course, including guitarist Sacha Distel.

Like Nat King Cole, Distel today is best known as a charming, mink-smooth vocalist who was a huge pop star in France in the 1960s and 1970s. But back in the early- and mid-'50s, before his singing career began, he recorded on guitar with European jazz artists for the Vogue, Barclay, Swing and Philips labels. He also played and recorded with touring American jazz artists, including Lionel Hampton, Billy Byers, John Lewis and Slide Hampton. [Pictured above: Sacha Distel, right, with Brigitte Bardot in 1958]

Though Distel wasn't as spry on the instrument as René Thomas, he was richly melodic, clever with harmony and swung gently and ambitiously. [Pictured above, from left: Marcel Romano (standing) and guitarists Jimmy Gourley, Rene Thomas, Sacha Distel and Jimmy Raney in June 1954. Romano was manager of the Club St. Germain in the Rue St. Benoit in Paris]

As a teen, Distel started on the piano. But in 1947, he was tasked with transporting guitarist-singer Henri Salvador [pictured] to a movie studio where his uncle—pianist and bandleader Ray Ventura—was producing a film. During those scooter rides with Salvador, Distel was enchanted by a singing Salvador who wore his guitar slung over his shoulder. Distel soon decided to give up the piano for the guitar and began taking lessons from his uncle, who had led a Dixieland band in the '20s and '30s.

Distel's first exposure to modern jazz came in 1948, when he heard Dizzy Gillespie perform—presumably at Paris' Salle Pleyel with his big band in February of that year. The bop concert left a deep impression on Distel, causing him to abandon Dixieland and "Roaring Twenties" gigs in favor of bop performances.

Before long, Distel was taking modern guitar lessons with Salvador, and in 1951 Distel won first place in a national competition. He visited New York in 1952 but returned to Paris a short time later accompanied by trombonist J.J. Johnson. Distel also befriended Billy Byers, and the two shared a Paris apartment for a time.

His first recording session was in 1953, with the Raymond Le Senechal Sextet, for Vogue. Throughout the '50s, Distel recorded as a sideman with European artists and touring American jazz musicians. He also recorded as a leader.

In 1957, Distel began a singing career after Henri Salvador played him an album of Frank Sinatra's. In 1961, Distel was asked by Roger Vadim to write a melody for a film. Distel penned a melody called Marina, and it was then given to an American publisher. In the U.S., songwriter Jack Reardon wrote English lyrics, and the song became The Good Life, a megahit recorded by Tony Bennett and just about everyone else with a record deal.

In 1968, Distel recorded a big band album with Slide Hampton. Throughout the years that followed, Distel made dozens of albums as a pop vocalist—many featuring American songs sung in French. Distel's suave voice and easygoing smile won the hearts of French television audiences, giving familiar songs new meaning with his seductive, masculine delivery.

Distel was romantically linked with Brigitte Bardot in the late 1950s and rejected her marriage proposal, fearing that his career would always be in her shadow. He was married in 1963 to Francine Bréaud. For more on Distel, go here.

Distel died in 2004 after a long illness. Throughout his career, he was all class and had impeccable taste, transporting what he had learned on the jazz guitar to his singing voice. And like Nat King Cole, few could resist Distel's seductive smile.

JazzWax tracks: On the jazz side, Distel recorded several important albums, including Afternoon in Paris with John Lewis, Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke with Barney Wilen on tenor sax  in December 1956. Bassist Pierre Michelot replaced Heath on one of the sessions. You'll find this one here.

Many of Distel's French sessions in the '50s are available on Sacha Distel: Jazz Guitarist (EmArcy). This two-CD set is part of the Jazz in Paris series and includes Distel's live single with Hubert Fol at the Apollo Theater in Paris (Half Nelson and I'll Remember April). Also included in the set are Distel's leadership dates in 1956, including sessions with Gene Di Novi (p) George Duvivier (b) and Charles Saudrais (d). This CD can be found here.

The Bobby Jaspar sessions in 1957 are on the above album, as is the exceedingly rare Slide Hampton session in 1968, Back to Jazz With Slide Hampton, originally released on Pathe-Marconi.

For the pop singing side of Distel, type his name into Amazon or iTunes and sample tracks. If you love Paris, you're in for a treat. Distel's voice was always modern, smooth and tremendously inviting.

A special JazzWax thanks to David Langner.

JazzWax clips: Here's Sacha Distel and John Lewis...

 

 Here's Distel with Johanna Shimkus singing Something Stupid (talk about chemistry!)...

 

Here's Distel singing The Good Life—his melody and Jack Reardon's lyrics...

 

And here's Distel with Louis Armstrong in 1968...