Back in February, I posted on Larry Coryell's and Ralph Towner's first videos on YouTube from the early 1960s. Before they became huge jazz stars, they were in a Seattle jazzy folk-pop group called the Individuals that played fancy restaurants in the city and appeared on local TV. What caught my attention and the attention of many readers who viewed the videos was Tammy Burdett, the group's charismatic bass player and singer. Dozens of JazzWax readers wrote in wanting to know more about her and her music. [Photo above of Tammy Burdett, courtesy of Tammy Burdett]
So a few weeks ago I tracked down Tammy, we exchanged emails about the YouTube videos, became friends and she kindly agreed to an email interview. What's fascinating about Tammy is her musicianship and that she bridges multiple periods in pop music. In the videos from the pre-Beatles era, Tammy was 23 and a bassist who sang and composed and was trying to make ends meet as a professional musician. Her story is singular because she came up at a time when the country's cities were still insular universes of professional musicians, and a female bassist-singer was rare. Tammy's story is about her devotion to jazz, her fabulous original songs and weathering good times and bad as she raised a son on her own while playing gigs, holding down multiple jobs and recording two superb albums.
Here's my interview with Tammy:
JazzWax: Tammy, where did you grow up?
Tammy Burdett: I was born and raised in Seattle. My father played tuba in the Seattle Symphony for decades. My mother played piano. Both were self-taught. My dad also played string bass. During World War II, my parents played in a club downtown that was frequented by soldiers on leave. In addition, my dad played most of the big events that came through town, from the 1930s through the ‘60s. These events included the Ice Follies and all musicals and circuses. When I was little, he’d take me with him, and I’d sit by his chair in the bandstand. That’s where my roots are, in show music. He also made sure I had years of training on both bass and piano. [Photo above of Tammy Burdett, courtesy of Tammy Burdett]
JW: Did you start playing upright bass in school? Why the bass?
TB: I wanted to play piano in my junior high orchestra, but too many others did, too. I was offered two alternatives from the school’s music locker—either the oboe or the string bass. I chose the latter to my dad’s dismay. He really wanted me to be a concert pianist. Eventually he gave in. When I was 14, he let me sit in with the Esquires, a band he played in two nights a week at the Washington Athletic Club. Soon, I was working steadily with them on bass. Then my dad moved on and let me take over. He had so much work with the symphony and other events. [Photo above of Tammy Burdett in the Ken Cloud Orchestra in 1957, courtesy of Tammy Burdett]
JW: Did you play along with records growing up?
TB: I did. I loved Shorty Rogers’s music. As a teenager, I used to practice bass with records to develop my ear. One of them was Leith Stevens’ All Stars: Jazz Themes From ‘The Wild One' (1953), on which Shorty was credited as Roger Short. I knew it was Shorty, who was probably protecting himself from union or contract restrictions. The string bass you see in my YouTube videos was purchased by my father when I was a teen. He waited years to buy it from a violin maker who was reluctant to sell. It was made back in the late 1700s. The lion’s head with ruby eyes was added later.
JW: Did you take lessons?
TB: I studied with bassist Leslie "Tiny" Martin, the Seattle Symphony’s first bass chair. He was known for his solo on Flight of the Bumblebee. He was quite a musician, performer and teacher. My father made sure I understood that transporting the bass to and from a job was my responsibility. No one would take me seriously if I didn’t. This was back in the 1950s, when the only girls playing bass were primarily in symphonies, not dance or jazz groups. During the ‘60s, it was easy to have a steady gig that might last for months or even longer, so I could leave the bass there. [Photo above of Leslie "Tiny" Martin]
JW: The Individuals seemed to be a popular club act in Seattle in the early 1960s. How did you wind up joining them?
TB: I met drummer and leader Chuck Mahaffay on a casual gig. Soon after, he called me and asked if I wanted to work steadily with the group. I jumped at the opportunity, since by then I was a newly divorced mom with a young child to raise. I had been working as a secretary at Boeing and hated it. Chuck was a good, intuitive leader. He knew that people not only listened with their ears but also with their eyes. He demanded we all wear proper stage attire, show up on time, know the material and always play the music with our hearts. [Photo above, from left, Bill Franklin, Larry Coryell, Tammy Burdett and Chuck Mahaffay, courtesy of Tammy Burdett]
JW: And singing?
TB: Yes, he also told me to learn a few vocals, since I would be singing with the group. At the time, I was a bass player and didn’t sing. But he said that if I wanted to work steadily in clubs, I’d have to learn to sing. It was a bit scary at first, but it didn’t take long to realize that I enjoyed the attention and was able to express myself better by doing both. [Photo above of Tammy Burdett, about to leave for work in 1963, courtesy of Tammy Burdett]
JW: Your dad was good at paving the way for you, wasn’t he?
TB: Early on, yes. He played tuba in the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair marching band and also in the fair’s daring Gracie Hansen Show, which featured Las Vegas-style burlesque girls. After a few months, my dad asked me to take over the Hansen gig. He was so busy with other work. I loved that gig, which ended in October or November of 1962. About a year later, I met Chuck. So that was probably in late 1963. [Photo above of Gracie Hansen and Worlds Fair performers]
JW: Was it hard or intimidating to be out front?
TB: I was quite comfortable playing the bass by the time I met Chuck. I can remember my knees shaking the first few times I sang. I think those of us who played an instrument before singing found that having the instrument under our control is actually supportive and gave us some control over our accompaniment. My performing experience came in a series of stages: First came piano recitals, then playing bass with other kids, then with adults, then adding singing. The more one does these things, the less intimidating they are.
JW: What inspired your song, Table Talk, which was the Individuals’ theme?
TB: I loved to sit at the piano and fool around, which is how this song came about. I played the song for Chuck, who loved it. He suggested we call it Table Talk. He thought the title and theme would be good promotion for the club. I started out scatting along with the melody, but I’ve since written a lyric for the song but have not recorded it. CDs are costly to self-produce.
JW: When guitarist Larry Coryell left the Individuals in 1965 to move to New York, was the group in turmoil? Or was it easy to find guitarist-pianist Ralph Towner?
TB: Actually, when Larry departed, we used a piano player named Danny Lowell, who had left a very steady gig at Canlis, Seattle’s most prominent and expensive dinner club that's still around today. We worked various gigs—four and five nights a week, from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. Then we had an after-hours gig, six nights a week, at a place called The New Chinatown, which lasted from 2 to 5 a.m. [Photo above of Larry Coryell and Tammy Burdett in the early 1960s, courtesy of Tammy Burdett]
JW: Was that hard as a mom?
TB: It was challenging. I was raising a small child at the time and managed to get only 1 to 3 hours of sleep a night. Good thing I was young! After a year or so, Danny Lowell was drafted into the military and Ralph came in. First, we played at the Casa Villa and then moved to the Captain’s Table, owned by Ivar Haglund. He also owned Ivar’s Acres of Clams and other restaurants. This gig turned out to be bad news, especially for Chuck. [Photo above of Ivar Haglund, courtesy of the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society]
JW: How so?
TB: We had been working with a contract that said Chuck or the club could terminate with two weeks’ notice. Ivar had opened this dinner club with hopes that the more formal dining area upstairs would really take off. When it didn’t, he decided to bring in music.
JW: What happened?
TB: Ivar insisted we sign a three-month contract, which Chuck was not comfortable doing but agreed to anyway. Ivar was quite successful with his food ventures, but I think he secretly always wanted to be a guitar player, and Ralph Towner certainly was that and more. The first week or two was a bit bare, but soon the upstairs restaurant was booming with customers. One Saturday night, when the room was full, Chuck leaned over to me and said Ivar was sitting at the bar and things did not look good. [Photo above of Tammy Burdett playing at the Seattle's Gaslamp in 1963, courtesy of Tammy Burdett]
JW: What did Ivar do?
TB: He came stomping over to the bandstand and fired us. That was that. Except we had a three-month contract, and Chuck went to the union. We got paid but we couldn’t find work. Ivar had clout with the Seattle restaurant business. He bad-mouthed Chuck at places that turned us down. I had to join other groups and finally, in 1969, I took my son, Todd, and went to Los Angeles to find work. It seems Ivar couldn’t tolerate that his name wasn’t the main draw and that we were. [Photo above of Tammy Burdett and her son, Todd, in 1967, courtesy of Tammy Burdett]
JW: How did you make ends meet in L.A.?
TB: By playing gigs. I purchased a house in the Wilshire district but was soon falling behind in mortgage payments. I had met bassist Ray Brown in Seattle at a jazz club where he and Oscar Peterson and Ed Thigpen performed each year on tour. I took a few lessons from Ray each time the Oscar Peterson Trio came through. We became friends. So when I moved to L.A., I contacted Ray. I managed to get my own gigs, but he was quite helpful in exposing me to the recording industry, especially the TV and movie recording scene. I met people like Lalo Schifrin, Michel Legrand, Quincy Jones, Henry Mancini, Johnny Mandel, and others. It was quite fascinating to see how music was put to film. [Photo above of Tammy Burdett, courtesy of Tammy Burdett]
JW: You were still playing upright bass at the time?
TB: I needed to cover my mortgage payments, so I had to sell my bass, as much as I hated to do so. Ray knew a young symphony player in the San Francisco area who wanted to buy it. I was told he’d take good care of my beautiful instrument. I sold it to him and the bass wound up with a good home. By then, I wasn’t getting gigs where I could use it anyway. Instead, I found an electric bass in the back room of a guitar shop. It was an old Fender Precision. I started using it on gigs. Most working musicians in L.A. were playing electric bass. I stuck with the Fender and used my string bass approach.
JW: Where did you work in L.A. in the early 1970s?
TB: First, I fronted an all-female trio, Feline Limited, at Sherry’s on Sunset Boulevard for about a year. Jackie Sands was our piano player. I can’t remember the name of the drummer. Jackie had been married to saxophonist-composer Gil Mellé. Sherry’s had a history that was a bit shady, but most of their clientele in the early ‘70s consisted of locals or people visiting the Strip. [Photo above of Sherry's on Sunset Boulevard in the late 1940s]
JW: You must have great stories from that gig.
TB: One night, an older gentleman with a lovely young lady on each arm came in. He soon came up to us and asked if we could play On Green Dolphin Street. I said sure! He said thanks and added that he was Bronisław Kaper, the Polish film composer who wrote the song’s music. On another night, Jackie, who wasn’t always the most stable person, turned to me on the bandstand and said she recognized a guy at the bar who was there to kill her. She suddenly ran out the door and into the street. We went after her, brought her back in and confronted the poor guy at the bar, who knew nothing about any of it. Then we went back to work.
JW: Jackie must have been a handful.
TB: One night a customer asked for the song Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars. I leaned over to Jackie and asked if she knew it. She just kept on playing. I asked again. The third time I strongly asked, “Do you know Quiet Nights?” She said: “Do you think it will rain?” I guess that was how she dealt with a request she didn’t know.
JW: What about after Feline Limited?
TB: I remained at Sherry’s working for a few months with Howlett “Smitty” Smith, a pianist, whistler and singer. Smitty was helpful in encouraging me to write more, since he was a full-time composer. Then pianist Billy Mitchell, drummer Joe Brown and I worked there for a year or so. At that point, management decided to bring in singers, each for a two-week engagement. We backed some good L.A. vocalists and some who were touring. [Photo above, from left, Billy Mitchell, Tammy Burdett and Joe Brown, courtesy of Tammy Burdett]
JW: Such as?
TB: Johnny Hartman came in with very good charts. Billy could really swing. His idol was Gene Harris of the Three Sounds. But Billy wasn’t the best sight reader. After the rehearsal, Johnny quietly came up to me and said “I’m depending on you to carry me through until these guys get the idea,” which I made sure I did.
JW: Any pop artists come in?
TB: One night, a young guy sat at the bar and really listened to us. He finally came up to the bandstand and said his name was Lonnie. He said he loved our music and would be back. He returned a couple of nights later with a few other guys. We sat down with them on our break. He turned out to be Lonnie Jordan, co-leader of War, and the other guys were members of the group. They had just released their album, The World is a Ghetto, which topped the charts. Here we were making $100 a week and these guys, who seemed to wish they were us, were making thousands. Lonnie later paid for a session with our trio, which resulted in four songs—three of which were mine and one by Billy. I never knew what happened to that tape.
JW: What did you do after Sherry’s?
TB: Our group broke up soon after recording with Lonnie. I joined Smitty at Bob Burns Restaurant in Santa Monica. Joe joined Smoky Robinson’s touring group. While in L.A., I attended Los Angeles City College for a year and took a class in music notation. The class was very helpful, since I wrote all my own lead sheets. Ray Brown also helped me find work as a secretary/administrative assistant to Lester Koenig, who owned Contemporary Records and Good Time Jazz Records. I worked there from 1976 to 1984. Then I worked as a secretary for Albert Marx, who owned Discovery Records. Ray Brown helped me land that job as well.
JW: When did you leave L.A.?
TB: I returned to Seattle in 1988 to buy a home. I found a three-night-a-week gig in Seattle at Caesars. I also worked with Stan Keen in a society band and played many gigs with Bob Hill. I also became a data manager at Big Brothers Big Sisters, a youth organization in Seattle, from 1988 to 2008. [Photo above of Tammy Burdett and Bob Hill, courtesy of Tammy Burdett]
JW: Was it hard being a female bassist and musician then?
TB: Once I made it clear I was a serious musician, I never had any trouble with the other musicians. Many were very helpful in my earlier years. At one point I took a few lessons from bassist Carol Kaye. Ray Brown had been very supportive of her as well. On my first self-produced album, Don’t Say You’re Hot When You’re Not, which I recorded in July 2007, the melody for Soft Shoe was written by Ray. After Quincy Jones and Harry “Sweets” Edison had recorded it, Ray asked me to put a lyric to it and I did. Vocalists Cleo Lane and Ernestine Anderson both recorded it.
JW: And now?
TB: Today, I live three blocks north of the northern border of Seattle. My son is in the food business. He loves music, but like my late brother, he doesn’t play an instrument. My brother was a huge big-band fan and had a large collection of records. He was a great older brother and he was a police officer for many years. After retiring, he was diagnosed with cancer and died in 1982. I never remarried but came close a couple of times. Most men who weren’t in the music business didn’t really like the idea of a wife out every night until the wee hours. Most of the musicians I worked with were already married, which really cut down the playing field. After I returned home in 1988, I joined the choir in my local church and started writing works for the choir. I also recorded my second album, Fancy Free, in the fall of 2011. I recorded these two CDs to get my music out to other singers. Being a working singer was never my goal, but I knew how I wanted songs to sound and I didn’t have to pay myself to produce the recordings. And yes, I still have to record my lyric of Table Talk. [Photo above of Tammy Burdett, courtesy of Tammy Burdett]
JazzWax clips: Here are the Individuals in 1964, with Larry Coryell on guitar, opening with Tammy's Bossa Nada...
Here are the Individuals with Ralph Towner on piano in the mid-1960s, with Tammy scatting Table Talk at 4:45. The song could easily have been a film's opening theme back then...
Here's Tammy singing and playing bass on her seriously hip composition, I Love to Say I Love You, from her 2011 album Don't Say You're Hot When You're Not...
Here's Tammy singing her lyrics to Ray Brown's composition Soft Shoe from the same album...
Here's Tammy singing her song Bright Lights from her 2007 album Fancy Free...
And here's Tammy singing her song You Bring Out the Lover in Me from the same album...
