Let's stick with 1976. Yesterday I posted about Dolo Coker's California Hard, a superb album recorded by the pianist for Xanadu in December of that year. Today, let's dig a newly released album by a working band formed by drummer Louis Hayes in '76 to tour Europe. The live album, Woody Shaw and Louis Hayes: The Tour, Volume One (High Note), was recorded in Stuttgart, Germany, on March 22, 1976.
Recorded at the height of the jazz-rock fusion movement—when mysticism, psychedelia and electronic instruments overwhelmed the beauty of jazz's original intent—drummer Hayes and tenor saxophonist Junior Cook pushed back, forming a quintet. Along with trumpeter Woody Shaw, they were determined to prove that acoustic jazz was alive and significant in Brooklyn, where many top jazz musicians lived and networked. As this album makes clear, acoustic jazz remained vibrant and meaningful well into the 1970s.
The idea for the band came when pianist Cedar Walton returned from a tour of Europe that year and told Hayes that a producer there wanted him to bring a band over. According to Hayes in the liner notes written by Woody Shaw III, the trumpeter's son and the album's producer, he brought together tenor Cook (above) and they enlisted pianist Ronnie Mathews and bassist Stafford James. Shaw was only too happy to join. As Woody Shaw III writes, "Both men [Hayes and Shaw] shared common paths through the music and were devoted to ensuring the preservation of its highest standards by way of the collective mettle of their accumulated efforts, their sense of persistence and total devotion to craft."
The album is dazzling and absorbing. It opens with Shaw's The Moontrane, which somehow sounds and feels more urgent than on any other recording of the song that I've heard. Larry Young's hypnotic Obsequious is next, with fiery solos by Cook and Shaw (above) that never run out of ideas or off the rails. Walter Booker and Cedar Walton's Book's Bossa is a Horace Silver-like Latin cooker that pulsates with energy.
Ronnie Mathews (above) tears up the keyboard on his modal composition Ichi-Ban, reaffirming how great a physical pianist he was. Peggy Stern's funky Sun Bath is as close to a ballad as any tune on this album is going to get. It was first recorded by Shaw a year earlier on his album Love Dance. The last song on the album is the standard Invitation. Shaw and Cook quickly dispense of the song's melody and proceed to turn up the heat and take the tune apart.
Interestingly, this album is the first to shed light on the quintet that Hayes assembled and took to Europe in early 1976. To my knowledge, there are no other known live recordings of the band abroad. I'm not sure how this tape surfaced. My guess is the concert was recorded by the band but foolishly wasn't picked up by leading labels when the musicians returned to the States. I'm just glad Woody Shaw III released it with the help of Joe Fields of High Note Records. The music is enormously exciting and important.
Through this album, we now know what the Europeans heard when the band arrived. The music is breathtaking and among Shaw's finest outings, not to mention the efforts of a perfectly chosen group. As this quintet proved in 1976, acoustic jazz as a creative force wasn't dead. The record labels at the time were another matter.
The good news is this is volume one. Woody Shaw III tells me more is on the way. What joy.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Woody Shaw and Louis Hayes: The Tour, Volume One (High Note) here or here.
Dolo Coker was an insider's jazz pianist. He'd pop up on albums here and there and was better known by his peers. Coker spent much of his career playing and recording as a sideman and didn't record his first leadership date until 1976, when he was 50. One of his most interesting leadership albums was California Hard (Xanadu), featuring Blue Mitchell on trumpet and flugelhorn and Art Pepper on alto and tenor saxophones. The album recently was digitally remastered from tapes by reissue producer Zev Feldman in cooperation with Don Schlitten of Xanadu.
The album is unique in that it's performing three services at once. On California Hard, we hear Blue Mitchell on flugelhorn (Gone With the Wind and Tale of Two Cities), which is a joy. We also hear Pepper on tenor sax (Jumping Jacks and Roots 4FB), an instrument he rarely played when recording. And we hear Coker, not as a sideman but with ample solo time, providing a sense of how good he was. The rest of the rhythm section features Leroy Vinnegar on bass and Frank Butler on drums.
Born in Hartford, Ct., Coker was raised in South Carolina and studied in Philadelphia, working there as a jazz pianist from 1944 to 1954. In the 1950s, he worked with Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons, Lou Donaldson and Philly Joe Jones. While on tour with Jones in 1959 at San Francisco's Jazz Workshop, Coker traveled to Los Angeles and relocated there. He began playing with Dexter Gordon at the Zebra Lounge, and for a year and a half in 1959 and '60 they worked seven days a week at the club, with a jam session on Sunday mornings.
Gordon and Coker were in the West Coast version of The Connection, the 1960 stage drama about jazz and narcotics. (Freddie Redd composed the music for the East Coast version.) Coker worked in the trio format at L.A.'s Memory Lane and the Casbah. At the latter club, Coker met Harry "Sweets" Edison (above), who played with the group as a feature attraction.
For whatever reason, Coker was more comfortable in clubs than in recording studios. He recorded for the first time with Stitt in 1956 but didn't record Showcase with Philly Joe Jones until 1959. There also was a big recording gap between 1962 and '69. When Muse producer Don Schlitten (above) found Coker in 1974, he began recording him regularly as a sideman. Then on Dec. 27, 1976, he began recording Coker as a leader. The first album was Dolo!, for Schlitten's Xanadu label. It featured Blue Mitchell (tp, flhrn), Harold Land (ts), Dolo Coker (p) Leroy Vinnegar (b) and Frank Butler (d).
The next day, Schlitten recorded Coker on California Hard, with Art Pepper (above) subbing for Land. The album features Coker on a range of songs, from his hard bop original Jumping Jacks to a Red Garland-influenced Gone Again, written by Lionel Hampton and Wini Brown. Two tracks give us a chance to hear Coker up close—Gone Again, in a trio setting, and unaccompanied on 'Round Midnight. Clearly, Coker was a confident, gentle player who could play tough and pretty. Fortunately we have this and a handful of other Coker leadership albums.
Dolo Coker died in 1983.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find the reissue of Dolo Coker's California Hardhere.
JazzWax clip:Here's Blue Mitchell, Art Pepper, Dolo Coker, Leroy Vinnegar and Frank Butler playing Gone with the Wind from California Hard...
Claude Williamson, a prolific West Coast jazz pianist who was deeply influenced by the bebop piano of Bud Powell and was the last surviving member of the Lighthouse All-Stars, died July 16. He was 89.
His son, Marc, said last night that his father never fully recovered from a bad fall in February 2015 and had been in hospice care for about a year.
Williamson was known for his daring, centipede-like speed on the keyboard along with sinewy improvisational lines. Like many jazz musicians associated with the West Coast jazz movement of the early 1950s, Williamson was from the East Coast. Born in Brattleboro, Vt., he played piano in the territory band led by his drummer father. It toured the southern part of the state between 1940 and 1944. In 1945, at 19, Williamson studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Williamson's younger brother, Stu, was a trumpeter who would become prominent in several major big bands, including orchestras led by Stan Kenton and Woody Herman, and in small groups in the 1950s; he died in 1991. [Photo above, from left, Don Prell on bass, Claude Williamson, Chuck Flores on drums, taken on Jan. 25, 1956]
Claude Williamson's teacher at the New England Conservatory was Sam Saxe, who convinced him in 1947 to move to Los Angeles, which was then emerging as a significant recording center. To earn money over the six-month period before receiving his Los Angeles musician's union card, Williamson played gigs where he met other key musicians who would become instrumental in his career in the 1950s. [Photo above of Hollywood's Sunset and Vine in 1947]
In 1948 and '49, Williamson played piano in Charlie Barnet's band, notable for its bebop recording sessions for Capitol in 1949. While with Barnet, arranger Manny Albam wrote a piece for Williamson entitled Claude Reigns that showcased Williamson's bop chops.
In 1950 and '51, Williamson was June Christy's accompanist, appearing on her recording of A Mile Down the Highway in 1950 and on the Snader Telescriptions that same year with the Ernie Felice Quartet. These telescriptions can be seen on YouTube.
From 1951 to 1953, Williamson served in the Army in the Pacific. When he returned, he took over Russ Freeman's chair as the house pianist at Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach. While employed at the Lighthouse, Williamson played with virtually all of the major musicians who would come to dominate the West Coast jazz scene.
In 1955, Williamson left to join the Bud Shank Quartet, which toured overseas. In addition to his work at the Lighthouse, Williamson was an in-demand jazz studio player, recording with Dave Pell, Chet Baker, Pete Rugolo, the Lighthouse All-Stars and many other headliners. Throughout the '50s, Williamson recorded steadily, at times reaching four studio sessions a month. In the late 1950s and early '60s, he was featured on several leadership albums.
His recording activity slowed in the 1960s and early '70s as his television work in Los Angeles picked up. He worked on a range of TV variety shows as a conductor, composer and arranger, notably on the Andy Williams Show and the Sonny and Cher, and Donny and Marie shows. His studio recording pace slowed even further in the 1980s and '90s, with his last known album, 52nd St. Revisited, being recorded in February 1996. With the death of Howard Rumsey in 2015, Williamson's passing marks the end of an era.
Overall, Williamson, along with Hampton Hawes, infused West Coast jazz with a pure bebop feel. But Williamson also could stretch out on songs with a breathtaking, graceful technique that was all his own. As a sideman, musicians such as Bud Shank favored Williamson's driving piano while singers such as Christy favored Williamson's classy swinging feel and hip chord voicings. Williamson was perhaps the last link to Hollywood's jazz scene at the dawn of the LP.
Claude Williamson is survived by his wife, Deanne, and sons Marc and Shawn.
JazzWax tracks: Here are my favorite Claude Williamson recordings:
Here's Manny Albam's Claude Reigns for the Charlie Barnet band in 1949, with Williamson on piano...
Here's June Christy in 1950 singing Taking a Chance on Love, with the Ernie Felice Quartet and Claude Williamson on piano...
Here's Williamson with June Christy in 1950 singing A Mile Down the Highway, with Shorty Rogers and His Giants—John Graas (fhr), Gene Englund (tu), Art Pepper (as), Bob Cooper and Bud Shank (ts), Bob Gioga (bar), Claude Williamson (p), Don Bagley (b) and Shelly Manne (d)....
Here's Williamson playing Stompin' at the Savoy in 1956 from his album 'Round Midnight, with Red Mitchell on bass and Mel Lewis on drums...
Here's Westwood Walk from my favorite Williamson album: Claude Williamson Mulls the Mulligan Scene (1958), with Williamson playing two pianos by overdubbing, with Howard Roberts (g), Red Mitchell (b) and Stan Levey (d)...
Late Friday afternoon, I grabbed coffee with Carl Woideck, the author of Charlie Parker: His Music and Life (University of Michigan Press) and an instructor of jazz, rock and music histories at the University of Oregon. Carl is also a long-time JazzWax reader. As we chatted about music, Carl mentioned that he had just returned from the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey and asked if I was aware that there were string arrangements written for Charlie Parker beyond the ones he recorded in the studio for Clef. Yes, I said, I knew about the ones that Parker had performed only live in the early 1950s once his strings studio recordings had caught on.
"Yes those," Carl said, "but there were other arrangements written for him with strings that he never recorded." At which point he pulled out a spread sheet he had organized based on his visit. There on the grid was a list of 38 songs. The list included the famed Clef studio sessions that Parker recorded for Norman Granz in Nov. 1949, July 1950 and January 1952. The first studio session was arranged by Jimmy Carroll while the latter two were orchestrated by Joe Lipman. Carl's list also included string arrangements of songs Parker had only performed live at venues such as the Rockland Palace Dance Hall and the Apollo Theater.
But the most intriguing songs on the list were 14 that Parker never recorded or performed at all. These included Ezz-Thetic, Gone with the Wind, I Cover the Waterfront, I Should Care, I've Got You Under My Skin, Love Walked In, Moon Mist, My Funny Valentine, Scootin', They Didn't Believe Me, When I Dream of You, Yardbird Suite, Yesterdays (with a vocal group) and You Go to My Head.
According to Carl and ejazzlines, arrangers for some of these were Ezz-Thetic (George Russell), I've Got You Under My Skin (Johnny Carisi), Moon Mist (Mercer Ellington), Scootin' (John Lewis), They Didn't Believe Me (Jimmy Carroll), Yardbird Suite (Gerry Mulligan), Yesterdays (John Bartee) and You Go to My Head (Ed Herzog).
My right eyebrow went up. Wouldn't it be great, I said, if a repertory group took these unheard string arrangements and added a superb alto saxophonist soloing. Carl said such an album had already been recorded last year—The Clark Gibson Orchestra: The Lost Arrangements of Bird With Strings.
Clark Gibson (above) is the director of jazz studios and an assistant professor of saxophone at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Okla. He plays the role of Parker on the album, and the results are superb. As Clark mentioned to me in an email after I reached out over the weekend, "Ejazzlines had the arrangements in their archives but had yet to release them to the public. They agreed to get them to us last year before they were officially released. I believe they are now all available to the public through ejazzlines."
As for his album, Clark says "all of the arrangements were recorded live in the studio. There was no overdubbing or editing of parts. Track 11 was from a live performance at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign."
Hats off to Carl Woideck for superb research and for hipping me to the unheard Bird with strings. And a big high-five to Clark for recording such a glorious album, which should have won a Grammy last year.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find The Clark Gibson Orchestra: The Lost Arrangements of Bird With Strings (BluJazz) here.
JazzWax note: For those who plan to buy the CD or download the album, here's the personnel courtesy of Clark...
Pete Carney (conductor)
Solos: Clark Gibson (alto sax); Chip McNeil (tenor sax, track 2); and Evan Tammen (oboe and English horn).
Daniel Colbert, Eliana Park and Johnny Lusardi (violins); Andreas Ruiz (viola); Ben Hayek (cello); Claire Happel (harp); and Chip Stephens (piano), Samuel Peters (bass); Matthew Charles Endres (drums).
Track 9: Barkey Barksdale and Dan Wendelken (trumpet); Euan Edmonds (trombone); Jonathan Beckett (alto sax); Maddie Vogler and Pete Carney (tenor sax); Chip McNeil (baritone sax).
Track 11: Daniel Colbert, Chukyung Park, Eliana Park and Sara Sasaki (violins); Andreas Ruiz and Lauren Pellant (violas); Haeju Song (cello); Whitney Ash (piano).
Producer: Clark Gibson; assistant producers: Pete Carney and Chip McNeil
Recorded and mixed by Kevin Bourassa; mastering by Scott Steinan-Studio Media; and art and design by Pete Carney.
JazzWax clips: From Clark Gibson's album, here's They Didn't Believe Me...
You have to give Penn Jillette and Teller credit. The two magicians/entertainers don't really need music during their shows. But the pair can't help it. They love jazz and improvisation, which they worship and view as musical sleight of hand. They also really love pianist Mike Jones, who for the past 10 years has been their music director and performs duets with Jillette on bass on stage during their Las Vegas show at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. It's also not lost on Penn and Teller that audiences adore Mike's playing.
When Mike isn't providing bop, stride and modern jazz piano during shows for the illusionists, he's recording and releasing jazz albums. His latest is Roaring (Capri), with Katie Thiroux on bass and Matt Witek on drums. The album is a collection of songbook standards that are perfectly suited for Mike's powerful keyboard approach. What sets Mike apart is his perfect sense of swing, his ability to listen and enjoy what he hears, and his rock-solid technique. There's enormous confidence in his playing. His engaging chord voicings and Waller-esque excitement sweep you up. And yet, Mike is as gentle as a lamb in his attack. I had Roaring on repeat-play for so long yesterday that I had to remind myself whose excellent CD was on. Mike's playing is so joyous and engaging that the album never wears out its welcome. Quite a trick.
Pianists who come to mind when I listen to Mike are Erroll Garner, Oscar Peterson, George Shearing, Hod O'Brien, Eddie Higgins and John Bunch. Guys who mix a sterling cocktail of beautiful notes, lovely melody lines and impeccable timing. I love this album, particularly Yes Sir, That's My Baby, If I Had You, I Can't Believe You're in Love With Me—and all the rest. Mike has a way of pulling you close and you're only too happy to be engaged.
If you can't get to Las Vegas to hear Mike, dig Roaring. There's a lot of magic in those hands.
JazzWax tracks:You'll find Mike Jones's Roaring (Capri) here.
JazzWax clips: Here's If I Had You, which says it all about Mike's playing...
What is one to make of the newly released Unheard Bird: The Unissued Takes? The two-CD set features previously unreleased alternate takes and false starts of Parker's recordings for Verve between 1949 and 1952. The 69 tracks feature masters and multiple takes of Parker in a range of studio settings, including quartets, quintets, soloing with Machito and His Afro-Cubans, with strings and fronting big bands. All of the sessions were produced by Norman Granz for his Clef and Norgran labels, which eventually were absorbed by his Verve label in 1956 at the start of the 12-inch LP era.
It's probably fair to say that this set is meant for Parker enthusiasts—those who have spent years listening to Parker's Verve master takes and will appreciate the misfires and variations in the new material. By contrast, listeners new to Parker and those with short attention spans will likely be left mystified by the new material. For the uninitiated, listening to Parker attempt songs over and over again will be akin to asking diners to repeatedly try failed dishes. There comes a point early on where appetites expire.
Long-time students of Parker (myself included) will find much of this material fascinating. From the time I was 15, I spent years listening to Parker's Verve recordings on The Genius of Charlie Parker LPs, so it's somewhat gratifying to hear how Parker arrives at master takes. Even when struggling to develop what he was trying to achieve, Parker sounded tireless, ruthlessly innovative and always in command.
Parker is particularly interesting on Passport, which in the studio on May 5, 1949 and into May 6 was still known as Tune Y and Tune Z. The quintet on this session featured Kenny Dorham (tp), Charlie Parker (as), Al Haig (p), Tommy Potter (b) and Max Roach (d). During the song's evolution, we hear how gingerly the musicians felt their way along until they grew accustomed to the melody's intricacies. You also realize how impossibly difficult Parker's original melody line was—even before he solos.
The Mohawk takes also are engaging. Here, we listen as Dizzy Gillespie struggles to get comfortable with the Parker melody, and Gillespie's errors are the reason for most of the false starts. The Okiedoke takes with Machito and His Afro-Cubans were ahead of their time and remain glorious at the dawn of the mambo craze. As for Visa and Segment, I was never a fan, so these repeated takes tend to grate.
I do love the false starts of If I Should Lose You, from Parker's November 1949 session with strings. The same goes for his Star Eyes session of March and April 1950 with Hank Jones (p), Ray Brown (b) and Buddy Rich (d). Rich's brushwork was masterful, especially matching Parker's figures on the now-famous zig-zagging introduction. Blues (Fast) from the same session is perhaps the best example of Parker trying to figure out what he wanted to do in real studio time, though it, too, becomes annoying quickly.
Among my favorites on the new release are the takes for Almost Like Being in Love. I've always loved this song's roaring arrangement by Joe Lippman. Hearing it again in development reminded me of the days just after starting JazzWax, when I'd listen to music and then track down musicians on the sessions for a post the next day. Back in August 2007, after listening to Almost Like Being in Love, I called baritone saxophonist Danny Bank and interviewed him on this big band session and what Parker was like on the date (go here). The Night and Day tracks from the same big band session also are knockouts, with Parker soloing magnificently on top. Amazing to hear the false starts and how sharp the musicians in the band were reading down the arrangement.
Listening to the Unheard Bird tracks, I came to several conclusions. First, Parker was even more gifted than we realize in terms of conceptualizing an idea and working doggedly to realize it. Second, Norman Granz (above) was a taskmaster and had no problem making everyone crazy in his quest for his concept of perfection. He certainly nudged Parker to new levels. And third, even the best jazz players struggled initially to grasp Parker's complex songs, but eventually they figured them out, which only burnishes their flexibility and genius.
The question is whether even the seasoned listener really needs to hear this material more than once. The novelty does run thin, and what remains is a reference for audio research. On the other hand, you do learn quite a bit about the music and Parker by studying his failed visionary efforts. As we discover from this new set, in the case of Parker, even the trash glistened.
Kudos to Harry Weinger at Universal for surfacing these recordings and to Parker historian and archeologist Phil Schapp (above) for his research into this new material. As Phil writes in his liner notes, the recordings were likely made from Granz's 10-inch full-track reel-to-reel tape dubs of 16-inch acetates when Granz was consolidating his labels in the mid-1950s.
In 1956, jazz and pop record labels began to issue 12-inch albums. The format was an upgrade from the 10-inch LP and would remain a staple until the saturation of the marketplace by CDs 40 years later. The new 12-inch LP meant up to 25 minutes of music on each side, allowing for six songs per side at three minutes and change each. To fill the sides, A&R executives at labels turned to crack arrangers and top sight-reading musicians who could get the job quickly with minimal re-takes. [Photo above of Oscar Pettiford]
One of the jazz labels issuing 12-inch LPs was Coral, which had been around since 1949. The subsidiary of Decca specialized in jazz and jazzy pop, and much of its catalog is still compelling and well-crafted. In the spring of 1956, Coral asked arranger Manny Albam (above) to write tight arrangements for a small ensemble. Albam, in turn, asked Oscar Pettiford to pull together the best musicians in town to cut the record.
On June 7, 1956, seven of New York's most proficient studio jazz players assembled: Urbie Green (tb), Hal McKusick (as), Herbie Mann (fl,ts), Eddie Costa (p,vib), Barry Galbraith (g), Oscar Pettiford (b) and Osie Johnson (d). For the session, they were known as the Manhattan Jazz Septette,
Six of the 12 songs recorded were Albam originals—Like Listen, Since When, Rapid Transit, Flute Cocktail, At Bat for K.C. and Thou Svelt. The rest were Jelly Roll Morton's King Porter Stomp, Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Jule Styne's Never Never Land, Johnny Mercer and Artie Shaw's Love of My Life, Lou Alter and Eddie DeLange's Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans and Mack Gordon and Harry Warren's There Will Never Be Another You. [Photo above of Hal McKusick]
In today's parlance, this band was a supergroup made up of stellar players who were already established giants. All were prolific sidemen and spent a better part of their days shuttling from studio to studio in New York recording as leaders and sidemen. What's more, all had exquisite taste and most doubled and tripled on other instruments. [Photo above of Urbie Green]
If you want to hear how the East Coast was responding to the West Coast jazz scene in the mid-1950s, dig Oscar Pettiford's Manhattan Jazz Septette. This is an exceptional album that allows you to hear leading jazz craftsmen of their day up close. [Photo above of Herbie Mann]
JazzWax tracks: You'll find the Manhattan Jazz Septette here. The so-called bonus tracks aren't bonus tracks at all but a separate album called Guitar and the Wind, which was guitarist Barry Galbraith's only leadership album.
JazzWax clip:Here'sDo You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans...
Don Friedman, a jazz pianist with enormous sensitivity and avant-garde curiosity who shared an introspective style similar to Bill Evans but tended to be more experimental and jagged with shades of Bud Powell, died June 30. He was 81.
Don grew up in San Francisco and studied formally starting at age 4. He moved to Los Angeles with his family when he was 15, fully expecting to become a classical pianist. But the following year, after being exposed to big bands at the Hollywood Palladium in 1951, he fell in love with jazz. His earliest gigs in Hollywood were with West Coast jazz musicians including Chet Baker and Shorty Rogers. His sensitive touch developed as a sideman on recordings by trumpeters Jack Millman and Hank DeMano. Clarinetist Buddy DeFranco hired Don for a tour in 1956 that included extended stays at clubs in New York. Two years later, Don relocated to the city, where he teamed up with bassist Scott LaFaro. His earliest leadership albums were for Riverside. As jazz opportunities dried up in the 1960s, Don began teaching at New York University and gigged routinely in the city as recently as last year.
In 2009, I interviewed Don and posted in two installments. Here's that interview combined:
JazzWax: You were born in San Francisco. Did you grow up there? Don Friedman: I was born there, but when I was 15, my family moved to Southern California. Around 1950, my father decided to go into business with his brother-in-law. They opened a grocery in Hollywood. What I loved most about the move down there was the weather [laughs].
JW: Did you continue taking piano lessons in Los Angeles? DF: Actually, I stopped taking lessons. In San Francisco, I began playing at age 4 and had one teacher for the next 10 years. She was special. When we moved, she recommended someone, but I didn’t like that teacher.
JW: How did you become fond of jazz? DF: Both of my parents adored classical music, so that's all I had listened to and played. But in Los Angeles, I met a guy who wanted to be a bass player, and he turned me on to this teenage big band. I became the band's piano player. The band featured a brother and sister whose father was a drummer and wrote note-for-note arrangements of famous big band charts.
JW: What did the girl and boy play? DF: The girl played the clarinet and the boy played trumpet. One tune was Artie Shaw’s Frenesi, and she’d play Shaw’s solo exactly as it was on the record. In Van Nuys, there was a place called The Dry Nightclub. It was a club that showcased teenage bands. We’d play there on the weekends. That was my first exposure to jazz.
JW: This would be the early 1950s. Did you listen to West Coast jazz then? DF: Yes. I also started to go to the Hollywood Palladium where I heard all the great bands. The one that impressed me most was Stan Kenton’s orchestra, with Conte Candoli, Shorty Rogers and Frank Rosolino. In fact, I first saw bassist Scott LaFaro when he came through the Palladium with Buddy Morrow’s band. [Photo above of Stan Kenton in 1953]
JW: When did you first actually meet LaFaro? DF: We met up at [alto saxophonist] Herb Geller’s house. Herb was a mainstay on the jazz scene in L.A. then and had a nice home with his wife Lorraine in the Hollywood Hills. Guys were always going up there to play, like Scott, alto saxophonist Joe Maini, trumpeter Jack Sheldon and others. Around this time, I started going to Los Angeles City College to study music, but I got disgusted and quit. [Photo above of Herb Geller]
JW: Your parents didn’t mind? DF: My parents left me alone when I was 16 or 17 years old. I was an only child, and they were plenty controlling up until then [laughs].
JW: Did you know what you wanted to do, career-wise, by then? DF: Yes, I was going to be a jazz pianist. I began taking lessons from Sam Sacks, who had taught Hampton Hawes. He taught me chord changes. I also began learning a great deal from records. I had a good ear.
JW: Meaning you could hear something once and play it? DF: Pretty much. I had studied piano for 10 years and was fairly talented as a classical player. I could always improvise but I couldn’t do it in the jazz sense. When I learned the basics, jazz improvisation came easy to me. Considering I had never even heard jazz or knew anything about pop music until I was 16 or 17, I was a quick study. By the time I was 21 in 1956, I was touring with clarinetist Buddy DeFranco (above).
JW: What was the West Coast jazz scene like when you were playing with artists like Chet Baker, Buddy Collette and others? DF: The scene was one of the reasons I moved to New York in 1958 [laughs]. [Early photo above of Don Friedman, courtesy of Fresh Sound]
JW: Why? DF: The scene was too laid back. There was no intensity. In New York there were always guys getting together and going to lofts to play. In Los Angeles, guys would say, “I can’t make the rehearsal or gig today. I’m going to the beach or the pool.” Even now, when I go out there, you sense it’s more laid back. I think it was partly the car culture. Everyone was spread out, so they drove everywhere. Everything took time. In New York, there was a greater sense of urgency and immediacy.
JW: When did you move to New York? DF: I first came to New York in 1956 with Buddy DeFranco. We were in New York for quite a few months. Then I went back to California in 1957. But later that year I realized I had to move to New York. I had already met a lot of musicians when I had played Basin Street and Café Bohemia with Buddy. When I arrived in New York, I worked with bassist Teddy Kotick, who had a steady gig on Staten Island. My big break came a few years later, when I was signed to Riverside Records in 1961.
JW: After you arrived in New York in 1957, you shared an apartment with Scott LaFaro? DF: Yes. Actually, it was my apartment. The guys I had roomed with had moved out. It was on 80th St. and York Ave. Rent was only $18 a month then [laughs]. Scotty was there only for a few months. He soon moved down to the Lower East Side with Gloria, his girlfriend. They never married. Gloria was a lovely girl and a dancer. She and Scotty remained together until his fatal car accident in early July 1961.
JW: LaFaro’s Gloria’s Step was named for her, yes? DF: Yes, but the song's name originated because he knew the sound of Gloria's footsteps when she came up the stairs to their apartment, not because she was a dancer. [Photo above of Scott LaFaro]
JW: Is LaFaro justifiably praised as a revolutionary bass player? DF: In my opinion, Scotty never received as much credit as he should have been given. He developed his own way of playing. He practiced 12 hours a day. I never saw anyone work as hard. He didn’t go to a music conservatory to learn correct fingering.
JW: Did he take lessons? DF: He took some lessons in bowing while growing up in Geneva, N.Y., and studied the clarinet and sax. When he practiced the bass, he used a clarinet book. He developed incredible chops. He was the fastest player I had ever heard. With Bill [Evans] and Paul Motian, he was a solo instrument. They were really the first working trio that got into this with a bass player. [Photo above, from left, Scott LaFaro, Bill Evans and Paul Motian, on a break at the Village Vanguard in June 1961]
JW: You recorded just five tracks with Scott in 1961. Do you recall the session? DF: I don’t. I remember that the three of us—me, Scott and Pete LaRoca—were in a recording studio. I don’t know why. Maybe rehearsing. At any rate, the engineer who was there was the engineer who was at Riverside Records at the time. He liked what we were playing and said, “Why don’t you guys play and I’ll record you.” So we did.
JW: You recorded with LaFaro at the same time as Bill Evans. DF: Scotty and I used to play together even when he was playing with Bill. He’d sit down at my piano in my apartment and try to write something. When he and Gloria lived on the Lower East Side, we’d hang out. We also worked together with singer Dick Haymes at a club called The Living Room on the East Side. Then we went out on the road with Haymes.
JW: Did you and Evans ever meet? DF: I used to go to the Village Vanguard to hear Bill, Scotty and Paul [Motian]. Bill was a nice guy, very quiet. We didn’t have a lot to say, though. One night I subbed for him. His trio was playing at the Jazz Gallery in the East Village. Scott called me to come in and sub because Bill had gotten sick a couple of nights.
JW: What did you think of Evans? DF: I admired his playing. He had a great harmonic sense and his voicings were beautiful. But his right-hand lines weren’t that interesting to me.
JW: How is your right hand different? DF: I stretch the notes. Bill played more within the chords. I find he’s more conservative and I take more chances. But I always loved his chordal stuff. I tried to copy what he was doing there and include it in some of my playing. In fact, I changed some of my playing in my left hand when I first heard him.
JW: How so? DF: When I started playing, I listened to Bud Powell (above). He had a root-oriented left hand, using a lot of inversions when voicing chords. Bill was doing things that were completely different, building drama rather than just keeping time.
JW: As someone who has worked with many bassists, what’s your take on LaFaro? DF: Scotty was able to relate to what I was doing. Many bass players did not listen as carefully as he did. Jazz is ear music—more than any other form. You have to hear what the other players are doing. In most cases you don’t have written notes to play. You just have sounds. If you’re a classical musician, you’re playing notes that were written for you. Of course, you have to listen. But with jazz, you have to hear what you and what other guys are doing. Your ears have to be wide open. I felt that Scott had those kinds of ears, more so than most other bassists.
JW: Do you know anything about LaFaro’s auto accident in upstate New York on July 6, 1961? DF: Nothing more than what has been written. But having driven many times with Scotty, I know that he liked to put the pedal to the metal. He was young and liked speed, and there were no seat belts back in those days. He had gone to a party up in Geneva, N.Y., and lost control of the car and crashed, killing himself and a friend who was in the car with him. So sad. [Photo above of Scott LaFaro's car following his fatal accident]
JW: What was Evans’s bond with LaFaro? DF: Bill was tremendously impressed with Scotty. Bill tended to have a depressed personality. Scotty was the total opposite. He was so full of joie de vivre. He lived life to the hilt. He was Mr. Positive about everything. Scott also knew how to take control of a situation. Since he was a positive person, he had a strong personality. I think Bill felt emotionally dependent on him.
JW: Was LaFaro blunt with Evans? DF: Scotty had no fear or hesitation to tell Bill that he was a jerk for getting hooked on drugs. They had a lot of fights about that.
JW: Do you miss LaFaro? DF: When I think about Scotty disappearing so early, it’s a terrible tragedy. It’s all so long ago. What I wish is that Scott were around today so we could play together now. I feel I’ve come a long way in 50 years. Or I’d like to think so [laughs].
JW: How did your first Riverside album, A Day in the City, come about? DF: I was studying composition around that time. I wanted to learn to compose. One of the class assignments was to write a theme and variations on a folk song. So I did. I composed a piece for piano. Around the same time, I was friends with bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Joe Hunt. We used to get together at my apartment to jam. Joe was recording with George Russell at the time and knew producer Orrin Keepnews at Riverside. Joe told Orrin about me. Orrin was looking for a pianist with original material.
JW: How was Orrin to work with? DF: Orrin knew his stuff, but I never felt completely comfortable around him. He wasn’t very encouraging and never really made me feel qualified to be there. But in all fairness, it was probably my own insecurity. Back then, if I didn’t get complete confirmation of my abilities, I felt uncomfortable. He also was a brusque guy, which could be tough. We did make four albums together, and all received high praise from Down Beat. My relationship with Riverside fizzled when the label started to go under in the mid-1960s.
JW: You recorded free jazz with guitarist Attila Zoller starting in 1964, yes? DF: Zoller was a close friend of mine. We had first met in 1959. We started playing together with Herbie Mann. We started experimenting with free jazz and soon recorded Dreams and Explorations in 1964 for Riverside.
JW: Where did your interest in free jazz come from? DF: I was very interested in free playing when I studied composition in contemporary classical music. I loved the atonal sounds that I had heard. In free jazz, you can emulate those sounds. You can’t do that when playing chord changes. With free jazz, you don’t have to worry about the key or a steady beat. That’s what drew me to it.
JW: But from the listener’s standpoint, that can sound a little self-centered. DF: That’s probably true [laughs]. But so is jazz in general for people who don’t know anything about the music. Some free jazz is fascinating, but I’ve heard plenty that’s total garbage.
JW: How would one tell the difference? DF: [Laughs] Very funny. That’s a good question. If you hear jazz musicians who have a background in traditional jazz play free jazz, you’ll hear that they approach it in a different way. You can hear the difference, just as you can see the difference between someone just throwing paint at a canvas and Jackson Pollock, for example. Someone who has studied can’t help but deliver form, content and composition, even in free jazz. Today, I find much of free jazz to be solely percussive.
JW: Looking back, how do you view free jazz now? DF: It still has a lot of value. The problem for me now is that I don’t have someone I can work with in the free-jazz space. I could get into it again if I had the right person. Attila was really into that. The way we performed the music was free, but we wrote pieces and improvised off of them. We played off of each other.
JW: What’s your favorite Don Friedman album? DF: Probably Waltz for Marilyn. I love how it came together.
JW: Looking back on your career, anything you’d do different? DF: I don’t know. I’ve been tremendously fortunate. I’ve had great experiences and met all kinds of people. I’ve always done something that I love to do, which is play piano and jazz. At this point in my life, in the last several years, I think I’ve been the best I’ve ever been.
JazzWax tracks: My favorite Don Friedman albums are A Day in the City, Circle Waltz, Flashback, Days of Wine and Roses and Waltz for Marilyn. The first three are musts. If you want to hear Don with Scott LaFaro, you'll find LaFaro's Pieces of Jade (Resonance) here. The five tracks they recorded together with drummer Pete LaRoca are I Hear a Rhapsody, Don's Sacre Bleu (take 1), Green Dolphin Street,Sacre Bleu (take 2) and Woody 'n' You. These tracks are absolutely superb, with Green Dolphin Street a complete knockout.
Yesterday, I posted about Frank Sinatra's single, Strangers in the Night, which went to No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart this week in 1966. I also included a link to my Wall Street Journal essay on the song and album (go here). Included in yesterday's post was my complete interview with Jimmy Bowen, who produced the single and shed some light on why Sinatra wasn't crazy about the song and why he avoided it in future concerts.
Today, I want to talk about the album. When the single was released at the end of April '66, it shot up Billboard's easy listening chart before crossing over to the Hot 100. Reprise, which was owned by Sinatra at the time, was heartened by the single's success and decided an album built around the single would generate strong sales. The task of getting the album completed fast fell to producer Sonny Burke, who turned to Nelson Riddle for the nine additional arrangements needed (the single would open the album). Two sessions were set—on May 11 and May 16.
For me, the album is Sinatra's best in the 1960s and may well be the last perfect album of his career. Earlier albums in the 1960s tended to be brassy extensions of the 1950s, while later albums were marred by poor song choices, a losing battle to remain relevant in the rock era and less inventive arrangements. There were bright spots, to be sure, but no album fired on all cylinders. Sadly, someone put the idea in Sinatra's head after the completion of the Strangers in the Night album that Nelson Riddle was old school and the sound of yesterday. As a result, Strangers would mark the last studio album the pair recorded together. It was a move that all but condemned Sinatra to serial retirements and misfires. Whether he knew it or not, Riddle was the sound of Sinatra's complex soul—the risk-taking, the humor, the sexiness and the sass.
So why do I believe that Strangers in the Night was Sinatra's finest album of the 1960s and beyond? Because of Riddle and Artie Kane (above, with Henry Mancini), who would become a top TV and film composer and orchestrator. Riddle's swinging arrangements throughout are deceptively fabulous and loaded with sophisticated punch and instrumental texture, liking the songs into a conept. As I noted in my WSJ essay:
The “Strangers in the Night” album remains an inventive, sly swinger. It opens with the title song, followed by the breezy “Summer Wind,” a snarling “All or Nothing at All,” a slinky “Call Me,” the punchy “You’re Driving Me Crazy,” a loping “On a Clear Day,” a funky “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” a coy “Downtown,” a finger-snapping “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby,” and “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” taken at a break-neck tempo.
In other words, the album has a lustrous elegance and a quirky pop sensibility that Sinatra never seemed to duplicate again. It has the feel of an expensive sports car that was perfectly designed for his stage in life. Older, in touch with the scene but not old and croaky. I never cared much for Sinatra's albums that followed as complete artistic packages. I can listen to Strangers all the way through over and over again without skipping a single song. It's one artistic expression. The same really can't be said for his future albums. Each is marred by poor choices, out-of-character approaches and a gloomy sorrow. In this regard, Strangers was his Songs for Swingin' Lovers! of the sixties.
When I set out to write about the album, I knew from the start I wanted to interview the organist if he was still around. The album's alter ego rests in the organists hands—in the orchestrated parts and the ad libs. I've always loved how the sporty Hammond's drawbars were set to give the instrument a hard-tack attitude, a casual finger wag of sorts. Consider My Baby Just Cares for Me or The Most Beautiful Girl in the World. The organ brilliantly mirrors Sinatra's middle-age sass without feeling out of character. Sinatra spent a lot of time on albums trying to be someone else. On Strangers, he was Frank.
The problem for me was that John Ridgway's comprehensive Sinatrafile discography doesn't list anyone on the session and several books disagreed about who the organist was. Artie Kane's name did pop up in online discussions at Sinatra forums, but no one seemed to be positive. So I tracked him down. When I did, Artie said, "Yep, that was me. And that was me in the TV special, A Man and His Music Part II." [Photo above of Artie Kane by Robert Balcomb]
Here's Artie's story:
"Nelson and I had worked together about a year earlier on a film he was scoring called Red Line 7000, a car-race movie. I was a studio pianist, but Nelson wanted me to play a pop-rock organ in places. When trombonist Tommy Shepherd, who contracted the Strangers in the Night session, called me, he said Nelson wanted me. When I called Nelson, he said, 'Remember the film we did? Red Line 7000? That's the sound I'm looking for.'
"I barely remembered the film. As a studio musician, I worked six days a week back then, so all the sessions sort of blended together. I also rarely played the organ, so remembering that session was a stretch.
"I didn't do any planning in advance of the Strangers album session. Even in motion picture scoring, you rarely know what you'll be playing until you show up and look at the music. It's funny, I almost canceled out of the Strangers session, but musicians on the date convinced me to do it so I did. I didn't play the Hammond organ, but how many times do you get to record with Sinatra?
"When I arrived at the studio, I flipped. The organ was on a platform in Frank’s line of sight, which meant I’d be featured. It was too late to back out. I just took a Valium, put on dark glasses and went to work. Ultimately, the art took over and I was fine.
"During the rundown on the songs, I found that many of the organ parts were written out, like on TheSummer Wind. But in other places, I was asked to fill. I set the drawbars so I'd stand out, which is what Nelson wanted. I have no idea what I did in terms of the settings. I just keep fooling around with them until Nelson liked what he heard. What you hear in those organ settings and fills was my edginess. Nelson's arrangements were inspiring, so I quickly settled down and felt what was needed.
"When Sinatra arrived, he went into a booth to hear the run-downs and to talk to Nelson about any scoring changes. We were all so impressed. It was Sinatra. I was nervous. Sinatra had a reputation for getting rid of things and people he didn’t like right on the spot. Nelson had never featured the organ this way before, and Sinatra didn't know me so things could have gone a bunch of different ways. Fortunately it all worked out.
"At the end of the session, I was just happy to leave. To me it was nerve-racking because of who Sinatra was and what might happen and being so exposed on an instrument I didn't normally play. Sinatra was larger than life. Studio musicians who did recordings with Sinatra were always on the edge of their chair. Your job was to nail your part as quickly as possible. Of course, eight months later in December, Frank and Nelson wanted me for the TV special, Frank Sinatra: A Man and his Music, Part II. You can see me on stage in a camel sports jacket—and dark glasses."
JazzWax clips:Here's my favorite Nelson Riddle arrangement on the Strangers in the Night album—Yes Sir, That's My Baby. Dig the instrumental sandwiches that Riddle fixes with Artie Kane's organ as the mustard. The organ's drawbar settings change a few times and make the instrument's notes sound like a hip harpsichord...
Here's the alternate take, which is an alternate take only because Artie's organ wasn't quite snarky enough and a little ambivalent coming out of the instrumental break...
Here's video of Sinatra singing The Most Beautiful Girl in the World taken at a tempo Artie Kane said wasn't even on the metronome. Dig how fast the musicians had to turn the pages of their music. Nelson Riddle is conducting and Artie is on organ. You can see him in dark glasses at 0:45 and 1:45 in the background on the right. Now that's a studio orchestra!...
Here's Artie playing More on one of his two leadership sessions produced by Henry Mancini in the early 1970s with hip vocal backing, which likely featured Hank's wife Ginny. Ray Brown was on bass and Shelly Manne on drums...
So who was Artie Kane really and where was he most comfortable? Here's Artie in 2008 backing Elizabeth Pitcairn on violin...
About
Marc Myers writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal and is author of "Anatomy of 55 More Songs," "Anatomy of a Song," "Rock Concert: An Oral History" and "Why Jazz Happened." Founded in 2007, JazzWax has won three Jazz Journalists Association awards.