In July 1963, drummer Louis Bellson was in the Las Vegas area performing a summer residency with an eight-piece band at the Thunderbird hotel and casino on the Strip.
The Thunderbird was in Winchester, about 12 minutes southwest of Las Vegas. The hotel began operating in 1948 and was only the fourth resort on the strip at the time. It had 79 rooms, a casino, a lounge and a bar. In the 1950s, there were rumors of the mob owning stakes in the hotel. The resort struggled in the 1960s as ownership changed, and by 1977 it was gone.
As Louis told jazz writer Stanley Dance about this octet's stay at the Thunderbird, "We had the graveyard shift from midnight till six in the morning. All the show people used to come in and listen, and we liked that."
Before the group disbanded, they went into a studio in Las Vegas and, at their own expense, recorded eight tracks. While working with Duke Ellington two years later, Louis was in New York when he let Bob Thiele at Impulse Records have a listen to the tape. Thiele put out the album in 1966.
The musicians in Louis's Thunderbird ensemble consisted of Harry "Sweets" Edison (tp), Carl Fontana (tb), Sam Most (as), Ed Scarazzo (ts), Jim Mulidore (bar), Arnold Teich (p), Jim Cook (b) and Louis Bellson (d), with arrangements by Jay Hill, Lalo Schifrin and Marty Paich.
The tracks were Thunderbird, (Bellson, F. Thompson), The Little Pixie (Thad Jones), Nails (Bill Perkins), Serenade in Blues (Jay Hill), Back on the Scene (Kenny Sampson), No More Blues (Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinícius de Moraes), Cotton Tail (Duke Ellington) and Softly With Feeling (Neil Hefti).
The album has a nifty pocket-sized Count Basie feel, driven by Bellson's double bass drums and enhanced by solos all around. Best of all, it has the sound of old Las Vegas, without a live audience.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Louis Bellson's Thunderbird here.
JazzWax note: My multipart interview with Louis Bellson starts here. It was my first for JazzWax in September 2007.
JazzWax clips: Here's The Little Pixie...
And here's Serenade in Blues...
A special thanks to Héctor Balbis.
