In the mid-1940s, Frankie Laine was an up-and-coming club singer with a jazz feel. His first recordings were in Los Angeles in 1944 and '45, but by the summer of 1946 he was signed to the newly formed Mercury Records, where Mitch Miller was head of A&R. So began a string of jazz-flavored pop hits that included That's My Desire, By the River Sainte Marie, Black and Blue and others. No one up until that point could bring the vocal drama like Laine.
Then in 1950, Laine succumbed to a Faustian bargain offered by Miller, who had moved to Columbia and became head of pop. In common parlance, the deal went like this: "Record Western crap, we'll dress you like a cowboy on the cover and you'll be a household name and wealthy." For Laine, the offer was too good to turn down and he wound up with the most lucrative contract in the record business until RCA scooped up Elvis Presley. [Photo above of Frankie Laine and Mitch Miller at Mercury in the late 1940s, by William P. Gottlieb]
Locked in at Columbia, Laine recorded bales of junk like Mule Train, Jalousie, Moonlight Gambler, Your Cheatin' Heart and other Western-themed pop songs and albums. He did indeed become a star and he also became filthy rich, but like all devil-struck deals, the records quickly became vinyl landfill and he's all but forgotten today. The devil always has the last laugh.
Interestingly, Laine always knew that the deal compromised his heart. He was a swinger, close friends with jazz musicians like Buck Clayton and Sir Charles Thompson, and he loved jazz, having arrived in L.A. from Chicago just as bebop took hold. Once Laine's Western-themed songs became golden eggs for Columbia, Laine had enough leverage to convince Miller to let him record a jazzier record each time he delivered a chunk of cowboy hits. Miller cut him some slack. Jazz Spectacular was one of those reward records. Rockin' a year later was another.
Jazz Spectacular was recorded on October 24, 1955, after Laine's first set at New York's Latin Quarter in Times Square. Columbia's studio was loaded with top-notch jazz musicians, and recording the album was knocked back like a shot, since Laine had a second Latin Quarter set to do. There was no time for second takes. At the end of the 10 tracks, the singer grabbed his coat. According to the liner notes, as Laine headed toward the studio door, he turned to the band and said, "What can I say? I had a ball!"
The tracks are S'posin, Stars Fell on Alabama, Until the Real Thing Comes Along, My Old Flame, You Can Depend on Me, That Old Feeling, Taking a Chance on Love, If You Were Mine, Baby Baby All the Time and Roses of Picardy.
The band featured Buck Clayton and Ray Copeland (tp), Urbie Green (tb), Hilton Jefferson (as), Budd Johnson and Nick Nicholas (ts), Dave McRae (bs), Sir Charles Thompson (p), Clifton Best (g), Milt Hinton (b) and Jo Jones (d).
On Taking a Chance on Love, Bobby Donaldson replaced Jo Jones on drums, and J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding were featured on trombone.
On If You Were Mine, Dickie Wells was featured on trombone.
And on Roses of Picardy, Johnson and Winding are back on trombones, and Lawrence Brown replaces Green.
The irony is, of course, that Jazz Spectacular (and Rockin') remain Laine's finest Columbia releases. I bought a mint copy of the original vinyl in the 1980s and it cost me a fortune. But I still love every minute of it. I just bought a first pressing of Rockin'. Love it.
Here's the complete Jazz Spectacular without the interruption of ads. Listen carefully on That Old Feeling, as Laine says off-mike to Thompson a few measures into the pianist's solo: "Mmm, just like Billy Berg's, Charlie" (a reference to the integrated L.A. jazz club) and then adds at the end, "Remember?" In your mind, you'll see Thompson nodding while playing with a broad smile...
Arriving in New York from Puerto Rico in May 1963, just short of his 17th birthday, Héctor Martinez already had a sterling singing voice. He had grown up in a musical family in Ponce and attended music school, where he played the saxophone. There, a teacher insisted on perfect vocal diction and poise on stage with hopes of grooming him for a career as a bolero singer. In his mid-teens, Martinez began singing at clubs, backing friends, and soon left school to join a 10-piece band. In New York, he stayed with his sister, who was already in the city, and went to Latin clubs. In 1965, he joined Russell Cohen and the New Yorkers as the sextet's lead vocalist. Other Latin groups followed. [Photo above of Héctor Lavoe, courtesy of Spotify]
To set Martinez apart, his then manager insisted he change his last name to Lavoe, a twist on singer Felipe Rodríguez's nickname, La Voz (The Voice). Two years later, in 1967, Lavoe met salsa musician and bandleader Willie Colón. Johnny Pacheco of Fania Records suggested that Colón use Lavoe on one of the songs on his first album for the label, El Malo. It was a perfect match. Lavoe recorded the rest of the LP's vocal tracks and they went on to tour together and record 14 albums. Lavoe became a solo act in 1973, and toured and recorded with the Fania All Stars. In 1975, he recorded his first solo album for Fania, aptly titled La Voz.
In 2019, Concord Records established Craft Recordings Latino following its purchase of Fania Records and 2016 acquisition of Musart Music Group. Now, the the division has just re-issued La Voz, remastered from analog tapes on 180-gram vinyl and digital files. The new re-issue sounds fantastic. I don't understand or speak Spanish, but I do know great music and powerful singing. In Lavoe's case, it doesn't matter whether you understand the lyrics or not. The music is sensational and wonderfully arranged and rhythmic. Lavoe's voice is so piercing and strong that his voice is a solo instrument. As instrumental pieces, the album's arrangements are sophisticated, tight, hair-raising and immediately uplifting. With Lavoe's confident, boyish vocals on top, you get a sense of what the words mean anyway.
La Voz included uptempo hits such as Rompe Saragüey and El Todopoderoso as well as deeply passionate love songs such as Emborrachame de Amor and Tus Ojos. As a result, La Voz album sales were solid after its release, and Lavoe became a star and a heart-throb, appealing to both male and female Latin music fans. He also became the youthful face and voice of salsa, which had begun at the start of the 1970s as a break from freestyle Latin-soul boogaloo and a return to the son and montuno shout style of singing as well as touch dancing. Nine more spectacular albums followed. [Photo above of Héctor Lavoe]
We are lucky that Concord and Craft Latino have taken such a pronounced interest in Latin music. The history of the artists, music styles and albums is thinly documented and needs more attention, analysis and robust research and scholarship. The music is magnificent, and its storyline shares many similarities with jazz in terms of musicianship and a quest for individualism. In the case of Latin music from the Caribbean, its evolution has been shaped by immigration and the dreams families brought with them to New York. Latin singers, arrangers, bands, soloists and dances all have fascinating stories. I just wish I studied the language in high school. Not learning Spanish is a personal regret.
For those of you who are vinyl heads, La Voz features AAA remastering, with lacquers cut from the original master tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl. An Apple Red colored disc is available exclusively at Fania.com. The album also has been released in hi-res digital for the first time, including the 192/24 format.
Hector Lavoe died in 1993 at age 46. The cause was AIDS. He had suffered for years from depression and drug addiction.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Craft Latin's remastered releases of Héctor Lavoe's La Vozhere.
If the name John Cameron doesn't ring a bell, you haven't been looking hard enough at the credits of films and TV shows and movies; musicals such as Les Misérables, which he orchestrated; and even 1960s pop and jazz and 1970s dance music. There's even a Seinfeld episode. John is one of Britain's most prolific composers, arrangers, conductors and musicians who always seemed to have been at the right place at the right time during his career, which began in the 1960s. [Photo above of John Cameron courtesy of John Cameron]
I first met John back in 2017, when I interviewed him for my WSJ "Anatomy of a Song" column on Donovan's Sunshine Superman (1966). John co-arranged the track and many of Donovan's recordings moving forward in the 1960s. Since then, we've remained email pals, and John has long been a JazzWax fan. And I'm a huge John Cameron fan. [Photo above of John Cameron and Donovan, courtesy of John Cameron]
Recently, Ace Records in the U.K. released Folk, Funk & Beyond: The Arrangements of John Cameron, a compilation of his 1960s and early '70s pop work (go here or here). I hope one day soon a label releases his many soundtrack albums for British and American films. When the Ace release crossed my desk, it was time to interview John for JazzWax:
JazzWax: Where did you grow up, and what did your parents do for a living? John Cameron: I was born in the Woodford section of East London in March 1944, during an air raid by German bombers. We evacuated our home and later moved all over East Anglia and London, finally settling in Maida Vale, a residential district in Paddington in West London. My mum, Doris, and my dad, Norm, were pretty involved in the local music scene, especially at Portchester Hall event spaces in Paddington. Mum had played piano in the Canadian Club of London during the war. Dad was a semi-pro musician before the war and spent most of those years organizing concerts and creating morale posters. He was an advertising executive by day.
JW: So music was all around you as a kid? JC: It was. Every time we had a party, Dad would get on the fiddle and Mum would play piano. He played everything from Mozart to Joe Venuti-style jazz, with the odd tango thrown in. Mum was a Fats Waller fan and played a mean stride piano. She knew all his songs. My father had bought a Knight upright just before World War II, in early 1939. That piano remained with us ever since. Now my sister-in-law has it in her house.
JW: When did you start on the piano? JC: At age 6. I also sang in St. Saviours Church choir, mustering a solo on Good King Wenceslas. But for the first few years, my focus was mostly on Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and cricket. I passed the iconic Lord’s Cricket Ground every day on my way to school. Then in 1953, we moved out to Wallington in Surrey opposite a park, which was heaven. As soon as we moved in, my younger brother, Peter, and I left our parents to unpack and shot over to the park with our cricket bat in hand. Within 10 minutes we had a full-blown game going with local kids. Our house was a 1930s semi-detached with mock-Tudor bits on the front.
JW: What was the big turning point for you in music as a kid? JC: At age 11, I was in a music store with my mum when I asked for the sheet music for Beethoven’s Pathetique Opus 13 in C minor. My mum chimed in, “Oh, and do you have the music for I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus? I shot her a dirty look, but when I got home I started thinking about their parties and how everyone enjoyed their playing. I thought "I’m missing out here." At the time, Tommy Steele and Guy Mitchell had a hit with Singing the Blues, which my family had on a 78 record. I listened to it and realized I could pick out the chords and melody. Quite soon after, I had a repertoire of rock ’n’ roll tunes I had picked out off of recordings, including Great Balls of Fire, Bebopalula, and Neil Sedaka’s I Go Ape, which I would perform at talent shows with great success. Quite a leap to go from Beethoven to Blue Suede Shoes.
JW: Were you exposed to pop standards? JC: My dad was a good fiddle player, but he also played the piano. He wasn’t the finest player in the world but he knew a huge repertoire of tunes from the 1920s, '30s and '40s. I learned them all, but often in the wrong key. For example, it wasn’t until several years later that I discovered that Body and Soul was in D-flat, which made perfect sense given the harmonic progression in the middle eight measures.
JW: When are you exposed to jazz? JC: Around this time, when my mum was listening to Errol Garner, I began to realize I could improvise in a freer, more jazzy way. At that time, at age 14, I began a weekly weekend residency at the Duke’s Head Croydon where, with a drummer and a guitarist, I played everything from tunes by the Shadows and other rock ‘n’ roll hits to the odd show tune and a bit of jazz and blues. But I never stopped playing classical music, largely because of my wonderful teacher, Frances Knowles.
JW: Did you enjoy school growing up? JC: I enjoyed school so much that I received a scholarship to Corpus Christi College at the University of Cambridge. But there was little there, musically, for me. In fact, to gain the scholarship, I had to major in history. At college, I played a lot of rugby and cricket, I ran the 400-meter in track but no music. At Cambridge, I studied history for two years before being allowed to switch to music. It was heaven—a year of studying composing. My non-academic time was split between writing songs and playing jazz.
JW: Who did you compose with? JC: I often wrote with Eric Idle, for cabarets and revues. Eric, of course, would go on to become a comedian in the Monty Python troup. At one point, we merged Handel's Hallelujah Chorus with the Beatles and came up with I Wanna Hold Your Handel. It was performed on Broadway in the show Cambridge Circus in 1964—our first taste of royalties.
JW: Were you playing jazz locally? JC: Yes. I played jazz gigs at the Red Lion in Cambridge. I used a local rhythm section of Colin Edwards, an electrician with the gas board, and Mike Payne, a photographer with Fisons. The official Cambridge jazz club was a bit of a closed shop with Lionel Grigson on piano, John Hart on bass and Johnny Lynn on drums as the house band. Excellent musicians, but a bit too cerebral for me. By then, I was listening to Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Art Blakey. We had artists such as Ronnie Ross, Art Theman, Danny Moss, Kathy Stobart, Dick Heckstall-Smith and Don Weller. I sometimes think that playing with them was my real education. I also think that the main thing I got from the Cambridge Footlights, a student sketch comedy troupe with people like Germaine Greer and Clive James in the room watching, was the chutzpah to go out into the world and say "I’m a composer, arranger and music director."
JW: How did you learn to arrange? JC: Before going up to Cambridge, I already worked as a professional musician—first with the Don Darby Band on U.S. military bases in Verdun, France. I still recall an overnight dash by the three of us to Paris, some four hours each way. We went down on Saturday and on Sunday night, we sat in at Les Pinguins bar and then went to see Kenny Clarke, Lou Bennett and Jimmy Gourley perform at the Blue Note. Afterward, we got in the car and drove back in time for the gig Monday night. I also played two seasons with Ronnie Rand’s Blue Rockets in Jersey and and Colin Hulme’s Orchestra in Birmingham. There is where I started to arrange—mainly current pop tunes—by figuring out what worked and what didn’t.
Here's Kenny Clarke, Lou Bennett and Jimmy Gourley in Paris in 1962...
JW: How did you do in Cambridge's music program? JC: I had an excellent music supervisor, Peter Tranchell, who would look at a piece of chamber music I’d written—which sounded somewhere between Hindemith and Mingus—and say, "If you took that middle voicing there and made it the bass line, wouldn’t it be more interesting?" That’s where I learned to deconstruct and reconstruct. And probably a reason that I used more linear contrapuntal textures as an adult than block chording in my scoring, whether it be jazz writing for the Collective Consciousness Society or orchestrating Les Misérables.
JW: What did you do after graduating from Cambridge? JC: I landed a gig doing solo cabaret, singing fond satires on jazz classics, songs from Frank Sinatra albums and so on at a club called the Take One in London. The house band there was Ronnie Ross on alto and baritone saxophones, Art Eleffson on tenor saxophone, Bill Le Sage on piano and vibes, Spike Heatley on bass and Tony Carr on drums. With them, I made my Cover Lover album in 1966. Then one night, Spike came in and said "I just heard that Donovan split with his old management team and is looking for a new arranger. Do you fancy having a crack?"
JW: What did you say? JC: I thought for a moment. It wasn’t really my type of music, but I said "Why not?" And I’m so glad I did. Spike and I wrote the arrangement for his Sunshine Superman album together. The single became a huge hit in the U.S., but couldn’t come out in the U.K. immediately due to a contractual dispute. So I got zero kudos for it here and I had to go and arrange and conduct pantomimes at the Watford Palace Theatre in Hertfordshire. Then the dispute was resolved, and the record was a smash hit here, too. I went on to write a whole load more for Don. The great thing is he was always open to ideas—a string quartet, a woodwind trio, a harpsichord or a jazz solo The line-up on his song Jennifer Juniper, on his The Hurdy Gurdy Man album in 1968, was Donovan on guitar backed by bass, harp, oboe, bassoon and shaker.
Here's John's arrangement of Donovan's Sunshine Superman, with a guitar solo by Jimmy Page, who was a studio musician then...
JW: Sounds like you were catapulted into Swinging London. JC: Yes, the 1960s in London was a blast. Wall-to-wall studio sessions, gigs at the BBC, all kinds of music that was cross-fertilizing. Later in the decade, when I was arranging for shows hosted by Julie Felix and Bobbie Gentry as well as Stanley Dorfmann’s In Concert series, I would end up arranging for guests such as Leonard Cohen, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, the Hollies, Fleetwood Mac, Joe South and the Four Tops. It definitely was pretty cool!
JW: What was Bobbie Gentry like? She hasn’t given a media interview since the early ‘70s. JC: She was musically talented, business-wise and absolutely sure of herself. A nifty guitar player on that little three-quarter Martin she played and great to work with. I learned a lot from the Jimmie Haskell charts she brought over from the States, and also made a lifelong friend of Perry Botkin, who came over with her to work on a studio album while we recorded Series 2 at the BBC. It was Perry who, at the Sunset Tower in Los Angeles, gave me the musicians I used on my score for the film I Will, I Will…For Now (1976).
Here's the U.K.'s Bobbie Gentry Show in 1968, with John's musical direction and arranging...
JW: Why did you need musicians? JC: I’d not been overly impressed by a line-up I’d used on an earlier project. Perry suggested a few names. When I got to the studio to record, there was Lee Ritenour, Reinie Press, Clare Fischer, Harvey Mason, Tommy Tedesco, Victor Feldman and Bud Shank, among others. I thought I’d kicked and gone to heaven.
JW: Tell me about flutist Harold McNair. JC: I met Harold through Stanley Myers, the prolific film composer in the 1960s. Harold shared an apartment with bassist Freddie Logan in Maida Vale, just around the corner from where I’d once lived. Harold quickly became a fixture on all my recordings. I generally used British jazz musicians on recordings because they were more flexible than regular session players and could often give me an unusual take on things. So Harold, with his muscular, funky flute was ideal. I remember hearing him play at the Bull’s Head in Barnes, where he took several solo choruses alone on flute that were as driving and powerful as any rhythm section could have been.
Here'sTroublemaker by the John Cameron Quartet in 1969...
JW: And with Donovan? JC: He was a fixture with us on Donovan’s tours playing flute and sax, and wrote the arrangement for Once There Was A Mountain for Donovan in the U.S. By then, I was back home looking after Julie Felix at the BBC. He also played the growling flute lead on the Collective Consciousness Society’s Whole Lotta Love cover and, most memorably, he played beautiful alto flute on my score for the film Kes (1969), not to mention his great tenor sax and flute playing on our Off Centre (1969) album—the only time I got to record a jazz album as a leader.
Here's flutist Harold McNair playing his composition The Hipster...
JW: Did you tour together? JC: We did. I have an incredible memory of Harold while we were on tour, flying from Stockholm, Sweden, to Copenhagen, Denmark. Nobody had had much sleep and we’d been bumped up to first class with Donovan and his manager. The champagne flowed, and Harold took out his alto sax and started playing the most heavenly solo licks at 10,000 feet. Not long before he died in 1971, we played a memorable benefit for him at Ronnie Scott’s in London, where the double rhythm section, brass and electronics of the Collective Consciousness Society blew the fuses. He had so much more to offer. Without a doubt, my favorite jazz flutist ever.
JW: You wrote the hit song If I Thought You’d Ever Change Your Mind. How did that come about? JC: I was about 22. I was in love but didn't have a chance. Around that time, I signed as a songwriter with Jimmy Phillips at KPM Music. I was fresh out of Cambridge. So I wrote a song—words and music—about the lady in question, who is still a good friend. I’d been producing the group Piccadilly Line that morphed into Edwards Hand. They signed with George Martin and recorded the song. Then George thought the song would suit Cilla Black. He got Mike Vickers to arrange it. Vickers was an excellent arranger who had worked with Manfred Mann. My favorite version of the song is by Agnetha Faltskog’s. My favorite version of Sweet Inspiration, a Northern Soul hit I had with Johnny Johnson and the Bandwagon, was by Dusty Springfield.
Here's Cilla Black singing John's beautiful If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind in 1969...
JW: What’s your favorite movie or TV score? JC: I love the scary vibe we created on Jack the Ripper (1988), the TV miniseries. And I have a fondness for the American made-for-TV Witness for the Prosecution (1982). I also was really happy with To End All Wars (2001), where I conducted the London Symphony Orchestra. Mind you, my score for A Touch of Class (1973) had resulted in an Oscar nomination, and my score for The Path to 9/11, a 2006 American miniseries, landed me an Emmy nomination. Philip Marlowe: Private Eye (1983) for HBO was among the most fun, since all the players were jazz musicians and we tried to record every cue on the first take, as if in a 1940s jazz club. But overall, I think Kes is my favorite. There was something so simple and real about it.
JW: How did you get started in film scoring? JC: I always wanted to score for the movies. I loved Quincy Jones’ score for In the Heat of the Night (1967) and Charles Mingus’s score for John Cassavetes’ Shadows (1959). While I was working with Donovan, he was booked to write songs for the movie drama Poor Cow (1968), directed by Ken Loach. As we recorded a song he wrote set to Christopher Logue’s poem Be Not Too Hard, the executive producer Teddy Joseph asked Don who was going to write the actual film score. Don pointed to me and said, “He is.” Teddy turned to me and said, “Can you get it recorded by a week from tomorrow, when we dub?” I said, “Yes.”
JW: What did you do? JC: I rushed home and called the doyenne of the Hammer House of Horror Films, Elisabeth Lutyens. She had paid her bills by composing film scores for Hammer Film Productions’ horror movies. I’d met her once, since her aunt, Beatrice, had taught my dad violin. I got her on the phone and said, “Elisabeth, how do you write a film score?” Absolutely cheeky, but 10 minutes of invaluable advice later, I was ready. We spotted the film Thursday and Don played me the tunes he’d prepared and got timings on Friday. At school, I played rugby on Saturday, so I wrote the whole score on Sunday and Monday, and the parts were copied, recorded straight to mono on Tuesday, delivered to the dub on Wednesday. Phew! Then Ken Loach asked me to score Kes. I did a small project with him after that for the BBC but was whisked off to the U.S. soon after for film scoring. Ken assumed I’d be gone forever and brought in George Fenton. But at least I did Kes.
Here's the opening credits to Poor Cow, with Donovan's music and John's score...
JW: How did the Collective Consciousness Society come about in 1970? JC: I read quite a lot of Jung up at Cambridge and loved the idea that all musicians collected this huge universal pool of knowledge. The inspiration for the band was seeing the Don Ellis Band at Ronnie Scott’s, with a double rhythm section, huge brass and saxes, wild time signatures and all kinds of influences. I thought, "Why not add funk-rock-crossover to the mix?" So we took on Whole Lotta Love. I don’t know what Jimmy Page thought of it, but I’m sure he was happy for the royalty payments. I made a comment to him about it after we did the Donovan Live at Royal Albert Hall Concert in 2011. Jimmy guested on Sunshine Superman, as he had on the original recording. He threw me a bit of a dirty look. A couple of years back, I played alongside Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, who was on mandolin at Julie Felix’s 80th Birthday concert. Really nice guy.
Here's John's arrangement for CCS's jazz-rock cover of Whole Lotta Love...
JW: How did Hot Chocolate come about? JC: Hot Chocolate had a few hits, but after CCS had run its course in 1973, I was well into my movie career. I’d composed the music for the movie Scalawag (1971), directed by Kirk Douglas. On that project, I met another lifelong friend, music editor Ken Johnson, an absolute genius. He became my music editor on everything I did in the U.S. and quite a few here in the U.K. Of course, by 1973, I’d scored A Touch of Class. But I had also signed a song-writing deal with RAK, Mickie Most’s company. Mickie decided to bring me in to write a string chart for the Hot Chocolate song, Emma. That was the start of a slew of hits, from Emma to Mindless Boogie, including You Sexy Thing,Everyone’s a Winner, Disco Queen, So You Win Again, Put You Together Again and a load of album tracks including Cicero Park. Errol was a lovely guy to work with.
Here's John's arrangement for Hot Chocolate's You Sexy Thing...
JW: What was the appeal of Hot Chocolate? JC: I got to write what I felt, and Mickie would be the editor. He’d often want to take something I’d written for an early chorus and use it somewhere else in the song, prompting a cry from the string players. During the recording of You Sexy Thing, he asked the strings to play with a smile on their faces. Astonished looks—string players smile? But they did, and It worked. Mind you, we had a great string crew. The leader was always Pat Halling, who had been on the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love New Year’s Eve TV show, recorded in June 1967. Also there were several of Bill Le Sage’s favorite cellists. Pat’s violin section solved the problem of London traffic by riding motorbikes.
JW: You arranged Heatwave’s hits? Groove Line is so you. JC: That was totally different. Rod Temperton not only wrote most of the songs but he also knew exactly what he wanted in the strings and brass. So for me, it was much more a question of interpretation, how do I achieve what Rod wants? No wonder Quincy Jones poached him for Thriller. But it was very exciting working with him and producer Barry Blue. I wrote scores for Heatwave’s first two albums—Too Hot to Handle (1976) and Central Heating (1977)—as well as their hits Boogie Nights, Always and Forever, Star of the Story, Mind Blowin’ Decisions and, of course, Groove Line. Yes, that is me on the piano solo halfway in. Then I shared Candles (1980), their fourth album with Jerry Hey and his amazing Seawind Brass section out in Los Angeles. Included was my chart of Gangsters of the Groove.
Here's John's arrangement for Heatwave's Groove Line...
JW: What was Liquid Sunshine? JC: That was a KPM library-music track recorded in 1973. I had avoided arranging and recording library music while I was signed to KPM Music as a songwriter. Library music is a repository of songs leased by film projects for incidental music. But when I left to sign with RAK, Jimmy Phillips persuaded me to go and talk to his son, Robin, who ran the KPM library operation. At about that time, CCS was riding high and it occurred to me that instead of someone else copying our sound, we should do it ourselves. Hence KPM’s Jazzrock album in 1972. Subsequent KPM library albums included Liquid Sunshine and Half-Forgotten Day-Dreams, both of which have been extensively sampled. It’s quite a handy extra royalty stream. Hip-hop artists seem to like anonymous library music to carve loops and hooks out of. A track of ours is now being used by Busta Rhymes and Kendrick Lamar. After a burst of Michael Jackson, they use a track of mine called Sympathy for most of the rest of the song.
JW: Where do you live today and what are you working on? JC: We’ve got kids and grandchildren all over the world, so we’ve got a neat lock-up-and-go townhouse in Hertfordshire. As for projects, I recently delivered a 25-minute orchestral piece to a leading artist in China for him to play during global exhibitions of his paintings. We also have a couple of movie projects, one a noir musical set in London in the 1950s and the other based on the story Victor Hugo wrote after Les Misérables. I’m also writing music for U.N. Peace Day on September 21 in Cape Town, South Africa, and Ark 2030, a virtual climate change and crisis conference in November. [Photo above of John and his wife, Barbara, at the National Gallery in London, courtesy of John Cameron]
JW: Tell me about the new release from the U.K.'s Ace Records—John Cameron: Folk, Funk & Beyond. JW: It’s a wonderfully random erratic canter through a very exciting period in my personal development. It's a bizarre collection of musical bric-a-brac recorded along the way. Curated by Bob Stanley, a DJ, musician and archivist, there are parts of the compilation that I remember vividly while others I had forgotten about but was delighted to revisit. The tracks are mainly from projects where I arranged, although there are a couple of my own songs on there as well as the opening theme to Kes, which I composed. This was a period of youth, experimentation and the heady days of the 1960s & ‘70s. It's a cross-section of the music scene that was London back then.
Here's John's West Side Blues used in The Switch episode of Seinfeld. John says this was from one of his KPM Library projects. Seinfeld producers must have used it to create a generic, clock-ticking, noir feel. "I had no idea until now. We only find out about these from PRS/ASCAP returns!"...
The 1990 Dizzy Gillespie documentary, To Bop or Not to Be: A Jazz Life, by Norwegian director Jan Horne, left out something that makes it spectacular: narration. Instead, of talking heads providing analysis and biographical information about Gillespie, it simply lets musicians, concert performances and archival footage tell the story. The result is a surprisingly coherent film that showcased the exceptionalism of the trumpeter—both as a musician and a humorous humanist. [Photo above of Dizzy Gillespie by William P. Gottlieb]
June 23rd was George Russell's centenary. He was a composer and arranger and one of jazz's most important figures of the post-war years of the 20th century. He is credited as being the first jazz musician to create a theory of harmony based on jazz rather than European music, which became the roadmap to modal jazz. All of this was published in his book Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization (1953). He's also one of the most overlooked and fascinating figures in jazz.
Russell was born in 1923 to a black mother and a white father. At a time when interracial marriage was illegal in many parts of the country, Russell's mother and father likely agreed not to disclose that their "illegitimate" child was the product of an interracial relationship. Unable to manage his care alone, his mother put him up for adoption two days after his birth. He was taken in by Joseph and Bessie Russell, a black married couple. Joseph was a chef on the B & O Railroad and Bessie was a nurse. At 16, Russell learned that his father was a music professor at Oberlin College.
After starting out as a drummer in the Boy Scouts, Russell was given a scholarship to Wilberforce University. In college, he joined the Collegians, a band that had nurtured jazz musicians such as Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Frank Foster, and Benny Carter. Plagued by tuberculosis in his 20s, Russell gave up the drums and wrote his book, which would become critical to the rise of the modal music of Miles Davis and John Coltrane on Kind of Blue. [Photo above of George Russell in front of the Guggenheim Museum in New York just after it opened in 1959]
From the late 1940s on, Russell's arrangements and compositions emerged on recordings by major jazz artists. His first was Cubano Be, Cubano Bop (1947) for Dizzy Gillespie's big band. He also helped the band fuse bebop and Cuban jazz. Russell then began playing piano and his input was critical to a long list of important albums under his name and for musicians such as Hal McKusick, Miles Davis and Art Farmer.
He moved to Scandinavia in 1964 and returned to the U.S. in 1969, when Gunther Schuller became the New England Conservatory of Music's president. He appointed Russell to teach his Lydian Concept in the newly created jazz studies department. Russell remained there for many years.
For a superb biography of Russell, check out Stratusphunk: George Russell, His Life and Music (2020), by Duncan Heining here.
George Russell died in 2009 at 86.
Here are 10 of my favorite works by Russell:
Here's Dizzy Gillespie's recording of George Russell's arrangement of his composition Cubano Be, Cubano Bop in 1947...
Here's Russell's arrangement for his composition of A Bird in Igor's Yard by Buddy DeFranco and His Orchestra in 1949...
Here's the Lee Konitz Sextet with Miles Davis (tp), Lee Konitz (as), Sal Mosca (p), Billy Bauer (g) Arnold Fishkin (b) and Max Roach (d) playing Russell's Ezz-thetic in 1951...
Here's Russell's Lydian Lullaby by Hal McKusick in 1956...
Here's George Russell's Round Johnny Rondo in 1956 with Art Farmer (tp), Hal McKusick (as), Bill Evans (p), Barry Galbraith (g), Milt Hinton (b), Paul Motian (d) and George Russell (arr,cond)...
Here's Russell's Give 'Em Hal in 1956 with Hal McKusick (as), Barry Galbraith (g), Milt Hinton (b), Osie Johnson (d) and George Russell (arr)...
Here's Russell's All About Rosie from the album Brandeis Jazz Festival - Modern Jazz Concert in 1957, with the Gunther Schuller Orchestra. Bill Evans's piano solo was the acclaimed high point of this piece and raised his profile in the jazz world...
Here's Russell's Stratusphunk from Hal McKusick's album Cross Section-Saxes, in 1958, with Art Farmer (tp), Hal McKusick (cl,as), Bill Evans (p), Barry Galbraith (g), Milt Hinton (b), Charlie Persip (d) and George Russell (arr)...
Here'sEast Side Medley of Autumn in New York and How About You with Bill Evans on piano, from George Russell's New York, N.Y., album, in 1959, with Art Farmer, Joe Wilder and Joe Ferrante (tp); Bob Brookmeyer, Frank Rehak and Tom Mitchell (tb); Phil Woods and Hal McKusick (as,fl,cl); Benny Golson (ts); Sol Schlinger (bs); Bill Evans (p); Barry Galbraith (g); Milt Hinton (b); Charlie Persip (d); Jon Hendricks (narrator) and George Russell (arr,dir)...
Here's Russell's arrangement of Moment's Notice from his album At the Five Spot in 1960, with Al Kiger (tp), David Baker (tb), David Young (ts), George Russell (p,arr), Chuck Israels (b) and Joe Hunt (d)...
Bonus:Here's George Russell's beautiful arrangement of Nardis for the George Russell Sextet, in 1961, with Don Ellis (tp), David Baker (tb), Eric Dolphy (b-cl), George Russell (p,arr), Steve Swallow (b) and Joe Hunt (d)...
And here's a half hour of George Russell leading the Big Band of 1967 in Stockholm, Sweden...
Last week in The Wall Street Journal, I interviewed Walton Goggins for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). Walton is a superb actor probably best known for his role in the first season of the FX series Justified. [Photo above of Walton Goggins by Prashant Gupta, courtesy of FX]
Here's Walton in Justified. Walton plays a white supremacist and Timothy Olyphant is a Federal Marshal. They know each other from working in a Kentucky mine when they were kids...
Here's Walton with Olyphant in a dramatic scene from Justified. How they play off of each other during the series is remarkable...
Here's Walton and Timothy Olyphant in conversation about Justified...
And here's Walton in his first film, The Accountant (2001), which won the Oscar for best short film...
JazzWax note: FX's new Justified: City Primeval, starring Timothy Olyphant, starts on July 18.
More Chet Baker From Circle Records. Following my post on Chet Baker and Jon Eardley's live recording in Cologne, Germany, in 1981, I spoke with Frieder Mollat of Circle Records in Germany. Frieder informed me that there's another album to hear from Circle: Conception: Chet Baker Live in Paris. Recorded June 27, 1980, the Chet Baker Quartet consisted of Baker (tp,vcl), Nicola Stilo (fl), Karl Ratzer (g) and Riccardo Del Fra (b). The tracks are the gorgeous Beautiful Black Eyes (attributed variously to Wayne Shorter or Lou McConnell), The Touch of Your Lips and Conception. The first runs 20 minutes and the other two run about 15 minutes each. You'll find it on streaming platforms, including Spotify here. Enjoy!
Jo Stafford remains one of my favorite vocalists. The clip of her on her Jo Stafford Show in London in 1961 with England's Dots vocal group is back up at YouTube. Watch Jo's right hand. [Photo above of Jo Stafford by William P. Gottlieb in the late 1940s] Go here...
Frank Sinatra. In December 1959, Frank Sinatra and the Hi-Lo's teamed up to sing I'll Never Smile Again. The clip was part of the vocal group's appearance on An Afternoon With Frank Sinatra, the second of Sinatra's four Timex TV specials. As I recall, the group comes out, Sinatra asks if he can join them on a song and the Hi-Lo's begrudgingly make room for him, playfully asking if he has vocal group experience. Then they're off to the races. Frank still had his vocal group chops, and you can see emotionally he has returned to the early 1940s. Go here...
Here's Sinatra with Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in the 1941 film Las Vegas Nights singing I'll Never Smile Again...
And here's Jo Stafford singing It Started All Over Again with the Pied Pipers in late 1942 or '43 after Frank Sinatra left to become a solo artist...
Unheralded heroes of film are sound-effects specialists known as "foley artists" who overdub much of the incidental audio color we hear in drama and comedy. Here's a precious clip on the foley team at Walt Disney in the 1940s...
Carmen McRae radio. On Sunday, from 2 to 7 p.m. (ET), Sid Gribetz of WKCR-FM in New York will host a five-hour broadcast on jazz singer and pianist Carmen McRae (above). To listen from anywhere in the world, go here.
Here's McRae with Sammy Davis Jr. on the Hollywood Palace...
Reggie Workman radio. On Monday, WKCR will feature a 24-hour special tribute to bassist Reggie Workman. The music begins at 11:59 p.m. (ET) Sunday night and continues all day and night on Monday. To listen from anywhere in the world, go here. [Photo above of Reggie Workman]
Here's Workman with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers recording This Is for Albert in 1962, with Art Blakey (d), Freddie Hubbard (tp), Curtis Fuller (tb), Wayne Shorter (ts), Cedar Walton (p) and Reggie Workman (b)...
In New York or New Jersey on Saturday? Check out the 47th Annual Jazz Record Collectors' Bash on Saturday at the Hilton Garden Inn, 50 Raritan Center Pkwy, Edison, N.J. 08837. For more information, go here.
And finally,here's Blue Magic's What's Come Over Me from their first album in 1974...
One of jazz's finest flute albums is Buddy Collette's Swinging Shepherds (and the followup release, At the Cinema). Recorded in Los Angeles in March 1958, their first album for EmArcy was arranged mostly by Pete Rugolo and featured Buddy Collette and Paul Horn (fl,af,piccolo); Harry Klee (fl,af,bf); Bud Shank (piccolo,fl); Bill Miller (p); Joe Comfort (b) and Bill Richmond (d,cga).
All compositions are by Buddy Collette (above), except as indicated:
Pony Tale (Paul Horn)
Machito (Pete Rugolo)
Short Story
Flute Diet
Improvisation (With Conga) (Rugolo, Bud Shank, Collette, Horn, Harry Klee)
Louis Prima could only have come from New Orleans. From the 1920s through the 1940s, the city was a glorious mix of ethnic and racial groups united by food, music and an insatiable passion for good times. Prima, a trumpeter from an Italian family, got his start as a band leader in the early 1930s and headed to New York with his New Orleans Gang.
Radio followed along with his hit song, Sing, Sing, Sing, which Benny Goodman covered and made famous in 1936. That year he was in Los Angeles trying to get a big band off the ground without much success. In New York in 1937, he became a sensation with a smaller group that toured extensively on the East Coast.
During World War II, he became something of a novelty act, having huge success singing and recording jazzed-up Italian songs with comedic lyrics. By the late 1940s, he was giving many of his songs a hip, swinging twist. Burning through his vast income, Prima found his musical format flagging, and the bills piled up. With an ingenious knack for re-invention, Prima looked for a female vocalist to play off of on stage. He found Keely Smith in Virginia Beach in 1948 and she joined Prima on the road. The pair married in 1953.
Keenly aware of Bill Haley's success with white R&B and teens, and savvy enough to know that Frank Sinatra's re-emergence on Capitol had ushered in a looser, swinging sound, Prima repeatedly called Bill Miller at the Sahara in Las Vegas in 1954 until Miller gave him and Smith two weeks that November. Prima brought in tenor saxophonist Sam Butera and his new singing/comedy act with horns and a big beat became a smash hit.
On stage, Prima and Smith seemed like polar opposites but had plenty of nervous chemistry and charm together. The act wouldn't have worked as well without the two of them. Prima's swinging, incorrigible buffoon on stage dovetailed neatly with Smith's reserved metabolism, deadpan expression and feigned revulsion. Their popular act set the tone for TV's The Honeymooners, which began airing in October 1955.
Prima and Smith's act connected instantly with the growing number of working-class white couples vacationing in Las Vegas who saw themselves in Prima and Smith, just as they would in Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows on TV. The boasting husband with the bright ideas being reeled in by the prudent, kill-joy wife. wife. With that formula nailed, Prima and Smith would become the biggest act in Las Vegas throughout the 1950s, known for their uplifting, high-octane singing and mugging.
As for Prima's musicial importance, he began by uniting jazz and ethnic Italian music and then jazz and R&B, laying the groundwork for rock 'n' roll in 1956. While Elvis Presley admitted borrowing Dean Martin's cool look and laid back singing style, he also clearly slipped comfortably into Prima's hip-swiveling physicality on stage. Prima died in 1978.
One of Britain's finest jazz musicians, arrangers and composers was Johnny Dankworth. The alto saxophonist and big band leader was best known here as the husband of singer Cleo Laine. The pair married in 1958 and made the rounds of TV variety shows for years. But Dankworth was a giant in his own right and one of the U.K.'s most inventive arranger-composers. His recording career in London began in 1944 and by the late 1940s he was recording bebop. Once the 12-inch LP era began in Britain in the late 1950s, Dankworth recorded often as the leader of a big band and wrote scores for TV and the movies. Among them was the BBC television series The Avengers, which aired in the U.S. as well during the James Bond craze. [Photo above of Johnny Dankworth]
In 1963, he signed with Fontana, a Philips subsidary. Asked to compose and arrange a series of concept albums for the label, Dankworth chose as his first a thematic tribute to British novelist Charles Dickens. "Dickens is the only author I've ever really read," said Dankworth in the album's liner notes. The idea was to create songs to different Dickens characters and moments in his storied books. The name of the album was What the Dickens!, which today is one of Dankworth's finest and an album that deserves to be digitized in the U.S. for streaming and released on CD. Currently, it's only available on used LPs.
The tracks for Side 1:
Prologue
Weller Never Did (from The Pickwick Papers)
Little Nell (The Old Curiosity Shop)
The Infant Phenomenon (Nicholas Nickleby)
Demndest Little Fascinator (Nicholas Nickleby)
Dotheboys Hall (Oliver Twist)
Ghosts (Christmas Carol)
The tracks for Side 2:
David and the Bloaters (David Copperfield)
I Want Some More (Oliver Twist)
The Artful Dodger (Oliver Twist)
Waiting for Something to Turn Up (David Copperfield)
Dodson and Fogg (The Pickwick Papers)
The Pickwick Club (The Pickwick Papers)
Serjeant Buzfuz (The Pickwick Papers)
Finale
The Johnny Dankworth Orchestra: Leon Calvert (tp,flhrn); Dickie Hawdon and Kenny Wheeler (tp,tenor horns); and Gus Galbraith (tp); Tony Russell and Eddie Harvey (tb); Ron Snyder (tuba); Johnny Dankworth (as,cl); Roy East (as, cl, flute); Art Ellefson (ts,b-cl); Vic Ash (ts,cl); Alan Branscombe (p,vib,xyl); Kenny Napper or Spike Heatley (b); Johnny Butts (d). [Photo above of Johnny Dankworth]
Even more impressive were the soloists and special guests: Jimmy Deuchar (trumpet), Tubby Hayes, Ronnie Scott, Peter King, Bobby Wellins and Dick Morrissey (ts) Tony Coe (ts,cl); Ronnie Ross (bar); Ronnie Stephenson (d), Roy Webster (perc) and David Snell (harp).
The album was recorded in London on July 29 and 31, August 7 and October 4, 1963. It swings and sways and is as catchy and instrumentally textured as it is bold and hip. Johnny Dankworth died in 2010. [Photo above of Johnny Dankworth and Cleo Laine]
JazzWax tracks: In the U.S., you'll find Johnny Dankworth's What the Dickens! (Fontana) on used LPs only. The album is long out of print.
Fortunately, the album has been uploaded to YouTube in tracks.
JazzWax clips: Here's Side 1 (you'll find Side 2's tracks on YouTube):
The Netherlands had one of the most strategic locations in Europe for touring American jazz musicians. Artists often started Continental road trips in Paris and then worked their way north by train, stopping in Brussels, Belgium, before continuing on to Rotterdam and Amsterdam and the regional clubs and radio stations in Holland. From there, they made their way east to Hamburg, Germany, and then north to Copenhagen and into Scandinavia before returning to the U.S. Sometimes this route was reversed.
Also fundamental to the Netherlands' exposure to American jazz were several major Dutch record labels, most notably Philips. The label was founded in 1950 after its parent technology company acquired Decca's Dutch record-pressing operations in Amsterdam in 1946. Most important, Philips distributed American Columbia's records in the U.K. Fontana was a Philips subsidiary and also pressed Columbia records. Dutch jazz musicians not only could easily access many American jazz records but also played as sidemen with touring jazz musicians. In other words, they were well seasoned, early.
For a taste of how good jazz in the Netherlands was between 1950 and 1970, the Dutch N.E.W.S. label has just issued Hip Holland Hip: Modern Jazz in the Netherlands (1950-1970). The 17-track release sounds terrific and grooves from start to finish. Artists featured include Tony Vos, the Jacobs Brothers, vocalist Rita Reys with Oliver Nelson, the Herman Schoonderwalt Septet, Les Halles, the Diamond Five, Kwartet Leo Meyer, Herbie Mann with the Wessel Ilcken Combo and Boy’s Big Band.
Once again, the album serves as a reminder of how much worthy jazz there is still to be heard from abroad.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Hip Holland Hip: Modern Jazz in the Netherlands (1950-1970) here.
JazzWax tracks:Here's Herbie Mann with the Wessel Ilcken Combo playing Mann's Afro Blues...
Here's Boy's Big Band playing John Coltrane's Blues Minor...
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.