Johnny Richards's big band arrangements always remind me of summers in Los Angeles at day's end. His albums are hot and humid affairs, but his French horns offer a balmy sea breeze while his trombones add calm and stir up images of an endless Pacific horizon. His piccolos are the caws of gulls.
I first came to Richards through his arrangements on Stan Kenton's Cuban Fire. Then I dug into Kenton's Back to Balboa and West Side Story. Before long, I came to realize that Richards had his own section in the record store leading his own orchestras. As I dug in, I discovered that each album was better than the last one I had purchased.
My first love was Something Else (1956), with Waltz Anyone?, Turn About and Long Ago and Far Away. Then I fell madly for Wide Range (1957), with Nina Never Knew, The Nearness of You and Young at Heart. All sterling arrangements.
Experiments in Sound (1958) and Walk Softly/Run Wild (1959) were next, and they, too, satisfied beyond my expectations, but for different reasons. Experiments explodes with energy while Walk Softly offers dreamy inhale-exhale pacing and harmony-rich horn voicings.
Now, though, my favorite Richards album is Aqui Se Habla Espanol (Spanish Spoken Here), his last before his death in 1968. Recorded for Roulette in December 1966, the album offers a pepper pot of Latin rhythms and meters. It also serves up extraordinary orchestral sensuality and grace. In Richards's hands, band sections intermix with a taut choreography and a colorful coolness, like banners snapping in the wind at the beach.
Born in Mexico, Richards migrated to the U.S. in 1919 with his mother, three musician brothers and a sister. Richards's father had already arrived in Texas. United, the family moved to Los Angeles and then to San Fernando. Richards began arranging at 14 and started working professionally in the late 1930s. His best-known composition is Young at Heart (1953). Though he moved to New York in the early 1950s, his music always retained its West Coast perfume. [Photo above of Johnny Richards in the late 1940s by William P. Gottlieb]
On Spanish Spoken Here, the band features Nat Pavone, Marvin Stamm, Ray Copeland, Burt Collins and Jerry Kail (tp); Bill Watrous, Garnett Brown and Wayne Andre (tb); or Mickey Gravine (tb); Ray Starling (mellophonium); Don Butterfield (tu); Arnie Lawrence (as); Clifford Jordan (ts); Joel Kaye (bar,pic); John Campo (bassax); Johnny Knapp (p); Chet Amsterdam (b); Ronnie Bedford (d); Steve Little and Chino Pozo (perc); and Johnny Richards (arr,cond).
Like all of Richards' albums, this one must be consumed from the first track through the last. Each song feels inextricably attached to the one after and before it. Listening to this album again yesterday, I still can feel the Malibu air, the sound of the slow rolling surf and the smell of Coppertone. Hopefully, today's crisis will pass and once again I'll be able to walk a beach in L.A. and listen to Johnny Richards on headphones, the perfect late-day summer soundtrack.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Aqui Se Habla Espanol (Spanish Spoken Here) on this three-CD Mosaic set here.
JazzWax clips: Here's Imprevu...
Here's El Sombrero De Metal...
And here's Me Voy...
JazzWax note: Johnny Richards' Imprevu (Unexpected) was written for Liza Minnelli, who recorded it in 1965 with an arrangement by Peter Matz. Bob Crewe added lyrics. As saxophonist Bill Kirchner points out, the song was later used by Coty for its perfume of the same name.
Here's Liza in 1965...
And here's the Imprevu TV ad Bill sent along...
