Last week in The Wall Street Journal, I interviewed EGOT-winner Jennifer Hudson and star of the film Breathe for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). Jennifer talked about growing up in her grandmother's lap in church and not singing secular music until she was a contestant on TV's American Idol. [Photo above of Jennifer Hudson courtesy of Variance Films]
Here's JHUD on her daytime Jennifer Hudson Show singing gospel...
What I'm watching.
Last week...
Let the Canary Sing (2003)—Superb documentary on Cyndi Lauper coming June 4 (Paramount+)
Call Me Kate (2023)—Very good documentary on actress Katherine Hepburn. Covers a lot of ground on the surface but fails in places to dive deep when needed. Still worthwhile. Fabulous footage, interviews and clips. (Netflix)
Killing Eve (2018-2022)—Dark, comedic British spy thriller starring Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer. I don't know how I missed this during the pandemic, but I did. Spectacular series. (Netflix)
The Commuter (2018)—Liam Neeson is a retired cop who gets fired from his insurance job and winds up in the middle of a commuter-train thriller on his way home to the suburbs of New York. Brilliantly written, skillfully directed and non-stop suspense. (Netflix)
Blackout (2022)—A solid boy-trash action film. Undercover DEA agent wakes up with amnesia in a Mexican hospital. Actor Josh Duhamel must regain his memory before the drug cartel that wants him dead can finish him off. (Netflix)
The Veil (2024)—Waiting on episode 5. Spectacular spy thriller miniseries starring Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men, The Handmaid's Tale) about a deadly game of truth, lies and a looming terrorist threat. (Hulu/FX)
The Beach Boys (2024)—A perfect way to kick off summer. The documentary starts May 24. Well worth watching. (Disney+)
Three viewed in advance: The Instigators, a thriller-comedy film starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck due out in August; Mother, Couch, a drama fantasy starring Ewan McGregor, Ellen Burstyn, Lara Flynn Boyle, F. Murray Abraham and Lake Bell, due in July; and Murder Company, set during World War II, starring William Mosely, Kelsey Grammer and Joe Anderson, coming in July.
Previously watched and recommended...
TV series
TheAffair—(2014-2019/Hulu)
Alaska Daily—(2022/Prime)
The Americans—(2013-2018)/Prime)
Anatomy of a Scandal—(2022/Netflix)
Apples Never Fall—2024/Peacock)
Band of Brothers—(2001/Netflix)
The Bay (2019-current/BritBox)
Belgravia—(2020/Prime Video)
Blue Lights—(2023/BritBox)
Bosch—(2014-2021/Prime)
Bosch: Legacy—(2022-current/Prime)
The Crown—(2016-2023/Netflix)
Cherif—(2013-2019/Prime)
Dark Winds—(2022/AMC)
The Diplomat—(2023/Netflix)
Downton Abbey—(2020-2015/Prime)
Feud (S1): Bette and Joan—(2017/Hulu)
Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans—(2024/FX, with streaming on Hulu)
Fisk—(2021/Netflix)
The Gentlemen—(2024/Netflix)
Godless—(2017/Netflix)
Goliath—(2016-2021/Prime)
The Gilded Age—(current/Max)
High Water—(2022/Netflix)
Homeland—(2011-2020/Showtime)
Jane Eyre—(2006/Britbox)
Justified—(2010-2015/Hulu)
Life & Beth—(Seasons 1& 2, 2022-present/Hulu)
Lincoln Lawyer—(2022-present/Netflix)
Loudermilk—(2017-2020/Netflix)
MI-5, the Series—(2002-2011/BritBox)
Monsieur Spade—(2024/AMC)
Murdaugh Murders: The Movie, Parts 1 and 2—(2023/Lifetime)
1923—(2022-present/Paramount+)
1883—(2021-2022/Prime)
Outlander—(2014-present/Netflix)
Pieces of Her—(2022/Netflix)
Poldark—(2015-2019/Prime)
Reacher—(2016-present/Netflix)
Ripley—(2024/Netflix)
Scott & Bailey (2011-2016/Prime)
Turn: Washington's Spies—(2014-2017/Prime)
Unbelievable—(2019/Netflix)
Veronica Mars—(2004 to 2019/Hulu)
The Watcher—(2022/Netflix)
The Way Home—(2023-current/Peacock)
Who Is Erin Carter—(2023/Netflix)
The Woman in the Wall—(2024/Showtime)
WPC 56—(2013-2015/Britbox)
Yellowstone—(2018-present/Paramount Network)
Films
The Accountant—(2016/Hulu)
American Gangster—(2007/Max).
Armageddon Time—(2022/Prime)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs—(2018/Netflix)
The Ballad of Lefty Brown—(2017/Netflix)
The Bricklayer—(2024/Netflix)
The Dig—(2021/Netflix)
Eiffel—(2021/Prime)
Enola Holmes 1 and 2—(2022/Netflix)
The Equalizer 1, 2 and 3—(2014-2024/Prime)
Fury—(2014/Netflix)
God's Country—(2022/Hulu)
Guy Ritchie's The Covenant—(2023/Prime)
Jack Reacher (the movie)—(2012/Paramount+)
Kill Chain—(2019/Max)
Knight and Day—(2010/Roku)
Last Night in Soho—(2021/Prime)
Last Seen Alive—(2020/Netflix)
The Little Things—(2021/Netflix)
Man on Fire—(2004/Max)
MI-5—(2015/Max)
The Mule—(2018/Netflix)
The Night Agent—(2023/Netflix)
Nobody—(2021/Prime)
Ordinary Angels—(2024)
Purple Hearts—(2022/Netflix)
The Queen's Gambit—(2020/Netflix)
Queenpins—(2021/Pluto TV)
Reptile—(2023/Netflix)
The Secret: Dare to Dream—(2020/Netflix)
Self Reliance—(2023/Hulu)
Seraphim Falls—(2006/Netflix)
Somewhere in Queens—(2022/Hulu)
The Spy—(2019/Netflix)
Spy(les)—(2009/Prime)
The Stranger—(2022/Netflix)
Toscana—(2022/Netflix)
The Two Popes—(2019/Netflix)
Wonder Wheel—(2017/Prime)
Documentaries
Aftershock: Everest and the Nepal Earthquake—(2022/Netflix)
Carole King: Live in Central Park—(2023/PBS)
The Comeback—(2005 and 2014/Max)
Cunk on Earth—(2022/Netflix)
Facing Nolan—(2022/Netflix)
Five Came Back—(2017/Netflix)
The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari—(2022/Netflix)
'Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris—(2007/go here
Paul Horn. Last week, following my post on Paul Horn, I heard from Bill Evans Trio drummer Joe LaBarbera...
Hi Marc. This one really took me back! We saw the "Story of a Jazz Musician" documentary when it originally aired in the early 1960s and could not believe we were seeing jazz on TV growing up in western New York state. Thanks for the memory. I got to work with Paul in the late 1990s when he lived in Arizona. I remember telling him how much he influenced all of us LaBarbera brothers and also that I was using his arrangement of "Count Your Change," copied out of Down Beat, with my ensemble at CalArts. Paul was flattered and asked for a copy, since he no longer had the chart. Great musician and a warm human being.
David Sanborn (1945-2024), an alto saxophonist whose high-strung sound and edgy delivery turned the instrument into the reed equivalent of a rock guitar, died on May 12. He was 78. Three of my favorite tracks that included David's horn...
Here'sDavid on Stevie Wonder's Tuesday Heartbreak...
Here's David on Suffragette City from David Bowie's David Live...
And here's David on Steely Dan's Time Out of Mind...
RIP Christian Escoudé (1947-2024). Jean-Luc Gautier informed me that Christian Escoudé (above), the French Romani guitarist, died on May 13. He was 76. Christian played with Eddy Louiss, Martial Solal, Michel Graillier, John McLaughlin, Jimmy Gourley, Hank Jones and so many others. Here are four clips:
Vi Redd. Peter Vacher wrote last week to remind me that Vi Redd (1928-2022), the marvelous alto saxophonist and singer, is virtually unknown today by many jazz fans. And he's right. Here she is on Bird Call, my favorite Vi Redd album...
Dreamsville. There are dozens and dozens of instrumental versions of this Henry Mancini love theme for TV's Peter Gunn. But the version John Herr reminded me of last week beats nearly all of them. Here's the Don Menza Quartet playing a nice, fat 12-minute-plus rendition [photo above of Don Menza]...
Ray Obiedo—Twist (Rhythmus). Billed as Herbie Hancock's guitarist, Ray Obiedo has just released a juicy, jazzy album. The recording is loaded with Latin and jazz touches and the mood of Hancock's Thrust in places. Best of all, Ray's guitar sounds wonderful with all of the percussion percolating behind him. There's a terrific 1970s instrumental vibe here that's so perfect for night driving. He's joined by enormous talent: Peter Horvath and David K. Matthews on keyboards; Marc van Wageningen on electric bass; Dan Feiszli on acoustic bass; Phil Hawkins, David Garibaldi and Peter Michael Escovedo on drums; Escovedo, Michael Spiro and Joe Bendich on percussion; Karl Perazzo on timbales; Jeff Narell on steel pans; Norbert Stachel on flute and saxophone; Joel Behrman on trumpet; Mike Olmos on flugelhorn; Behrman and Jeff Cressman on trombone; and Bob Mintzer on saxophone, with Michelle Hawkins, Lilian Kane, Chloe Jean, Leah Tysse, Sandy Cressman and Sheila E. on vocals. You'll find this album here.
Marta Karassawa—Tempo Bom com Marta Karassawa Quintet (Tratore). Brazilian pianist Marta Karassawa is exceptional. Her new album is airy and lushly organic, with samba rhythms and soaring jazz. Her quintet includes her husband, bassist Frank Herzberg, who elegantly insisted by email that I give a listen. I did and fell in love with the album immediately. Marta and Frank are joined by Teco Cardoso on flute and tenor saxophone, Sidmar Vieira on trumpet and flugelhorn and Zé Eduardo Nazário on drums, with special guests Jacques Schwarz-Bart (ts), Chico Macedo (b-sax), Cindy Borgani and Stephanie Borgani (voc). It arrived just in time for an upcoming week of sun and warm temperatures in New York. How perfect! You'll find this album by going here. It's also at most major streaming platforms.
John Coltrane radio. WKCR-FM's Sid Gribetz—winner of this year's Jazz Journalists Association's Marian McPartland-Willis Conover Award for Career Excellence in Broadcasting—will host a five-hour radio show on Sunday focusing on John Coltrane's Prestige recordings on Jazz Profiles, from 2 to 7 p.m. (ET).
When I was collecting Sonny Stitt albums as a kid in the early 1970s, my purchases divided into three categories: not bad, meh and perfection. Back then, there was no internet. Instead, I listened religiously to jazz FM radio stations and entered favorites in a small notebook that fit in my back pocket. Everyone I knew had one. Then you hunted for the ones on your list and took chances on others that either came highly recommended or looked good. Those were always a crap shoot, since once you split the LP's tight plastic seal, you owned it.
The not-bad and meh Stitt albums tended to have too many blues loaded with stock Stitt phrases, flat standards, or one or two boring, long-winded originals. Which also tended to be blues. By contrast, the perfect Stitt album was a flawless mix, with Stitt surfing along on alto or tenor saxophone on sterling song choices and sidemen delivering hair-raising contributions.
One of these perfect Stitt LPs was Night Crawler. Recorded for Prestige in September 1965, the album featured Stitt on alto saxophone throughout, with Don Patterson on organ and Billy James on drums. As you'll soon hear, this album was solid and in the pocket.
The tracks:
All God's Chillun Got Rhythm
Answering Service (Stitt)
Tangerine
Night Crawler (Stitt)
Who Can I Turn To
Star Eyes
Here's the full album without the interruption of ads...
Yesterday, in my tribute to guitarist John Pisano, I featured clips of John as a sideman on a number of albums led by Paul Horn. Sadly, Horn is all but forgotten today. A multi-instrumentalist who played mostly flute, clarinet and alto saxophone, Horn led a quintet that recorded for Columbia and RCA Victor up until 1966. Then he began exploring world music.
In 1962, Horn was the subject of a 30-minute TV documentary produced by David Wolper and directed by Ed Spiegel called Portrait of a Jazz Musician. The show was a forerunner of sorts to CBS's 60 Minutes. It featured Paul Horn, Emil Richards (vib), Paul Moer (p), Victor Gaskin (b) and Milt Turner (d)...
John Pisano, a Los Angeles studio guitarist who began recording in the mid-1950s and was so proficient that he appeared on some of jazz's finest chamber jazz recordings and pop's flashiest hits, died May 2. He was 93. [Photo above of John Pisano]
Pisano, like dozens of other excellent jazz guitarists of the era who came from working-class Italian families, found that his home-encouraged passion for music, mastery of the inexpensive instrument and an ability to sight-read could lead to lucrative studio work as the recording industry shifted from single records to 12-inch albums and the electric guitar emerged. As a result, Pisano wound up in L.A., replacing a departing Jim Hall in the Chico Hamilton Quintet, whose music was featured in the 1957 film The Sweet Smell of Success.
When I interviewed Chico Hamilton for JazzWax in 2009, I asked him about Pisano's role in the film:
JazzWax: In 1957 you wrote the incidental music for The Sweet Smell of Success. Chico Hamilton: I tell you, man, that was great. The actor Martin Milner, who was cast as the quintet's bandleader in the movie, he didn't know how to play guitar. So what happened was Milner put his left hand behind his back and John Pisano, my guitar player, put his hand on the strings. It looked like Milner was playing the guitar, the way [cinematographer] Jimmy Wong [Howe] shot it [laughs].
Pisano then left Chico's group and played in a trio with trombonist Frank Rosolino before recording as a sideman on numerous chamber-jazz albums by former Chico Hamilton cellist Fred Katz. He also recorded albums with guitarists Billy Bean and Joe Pass, Paul Horn and leading vocalists such as Peggy Lee.
In the 1960s, Pisano became a member of the Tijuana Brass, a touring pop ensemble led by Herb Alpert. With studio work drying up in the rock era, Pisano taught, played regularly at L.A. restaurants and clubs, and continued to record. His last album was in 2012.
Let's listen to 10 of my favorite clips featuring John Pisano...
Here's the Chico Hamilton Quintet playing Chanel #5, with Paul Horn (fl,cl,ts,pic), Fred Katz (cello), John Pisano (g), Carson Smith (b) and Chico Hamilton (d), in 1956...
Here'sSidney's Theme, by the Chico Hamilton Quintet in 1956 for the soundtrack of The Sweet Smell of Success...
Here's Pisano playing rhythm guitar in 1957 on I'm Glad There Is You, from Fred Katz's Soul-o-cello, with Paul Horn (fl,cl) Ann Mason Stockton (harp) Fred Katz (cello) Calvin Jackson (p) John Pisano (g) Hal Gaylor (b) Chico Hamilton (d)...
Here's Circus in 1957 on The Fred Katz Ochestra, with Paul Horn and Buddy Collette (as), Harry Klee and Bill Green (fl), Fred Katz (cello), Calvin Jackson (p), John Pisano (g), Hal Gaylor (b) and Chico Hamilton (d)...
Here'sLike Someone in Love in 1958 by the 4-5-6 Trio, featuring Fred Katz (cello), John Pisano (g) and Hal Gaylor (b), in 1958...
Here's Pisano with Billy Bean on Indian Summer in 1958, with Gene Estes (vib), John Pisano and Billy Bean (g), Hal Gaylor (b) and Larry Bunker (d). I believe Pisano has the second guitar solo...
Here's Pisano playing Feeling the Blues in 1958, on Fred Katz and His Jammers, with Don Fagerquist (tp), Gene Estes (vib), Fred Katz (p,cello), John Pisano (g), Leroy Vinnegar (b) and Lennie McBrowne (d)...
Here'sPottsville, U.S.A. from Pisano's Take Your Pick, in 1958, with Paul Horn and William Green (ts,fl), Chuck Gentry (bar), Jules Jacobs (oboe), George Smith and Abe Most (cl), Justin Gordon (b-cl), Calvin Jackson (p), Lou Singer (vib), John Pisano and Billy Bean (g), Hal Gaylor (b) and Larry Bunker (d)...
Here'sSunday in New York in 1964 with Pisano playing rhythm guitar, on Joe Pass's Great Motion Picture Themes, with Joe Pass (12 string-g), John Pisano (rhythm-g), Charlie Haden (b) and Larry Bunker (d)...
And here's Pisano in 1964 playing rhythm guitar behind Joe Pass on Pass' album For Django, with Joe Pass (g), John Pisano (rhythm-g), Jim Hughart (b) and Colin Bailey (d)...
Bonus:Here'sthe clip with Pisano's hand moving on the strings of actor Martin Milner's guitar in The Sweet Smell of Success...
JazzWax notes:John Kissell's super Los Angeles Times obit of John Pisano is here.
To read my 2009 three-part JazzWax interview with Chico Hamilton, go here for Part 1 (links to subsequent parts can be found above the red date at the top of each page).
On January 29, 1977, tenor saxophonist Stan Getz was in Copenhagen, Denmark, performing at the city's famed Jazzhus Montmartre club. He was joined by Joanne Brackeen (p,el-p), Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (b) and Billy Hart (d). The next day, the quartet went into a studio in Copenhagen and recorded an album for SteepleChase Records. The club material from the 29th was released as Live At Montmartre, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2: Stan Getz Quartet. The studio session tapes from the 30th went up on a shelf and gathered dust for 47 years.
Now, Nils Winther, who founded SteepleChase in 1972, has released the studio album with a couple of previously unissued live tracks thrown in. I suppose Stan Getz: Copenhagen Unissued Session 1977 was held back because the record was considered more of the same at the time, and the label didn't want it getting underfoot of the double live album being promoted.
Getz here sails along beautifully in his instrument's high register, but what makes this album special is Brackeen, a superb pianist with enormous technique and daring. She was with Getz from 1975 to 1977 before leaving to form her own trio and quartet. Her solos here on both acoustic piano and the Fender Rhodes electric piano are robust and superb.
Getz would celebrate his 50th birthday on February 2, 1977, and the Jazzhus Montmartre engagement was something of a three-day fête. On the new, previously unreleased album, he delivers several strong solos, especially on the ballads Blue Serge, Lady Sings the Blues and I Remember Clifford. On all three, he's matched by Brackeen. On two of the faster-paced Latin-flavored tracks—Milton Nascimento's Cançao Do Sol and Chick Corea's Litha—Getz is on fire, backed by a masterful Brackeen on the Rhodes. Kenny Wheeler's mid-tempo Quiso also showcases Brackeen, back on piano, with Getz conversing with her instrumentally throughout.
A most engaging album for Getz fans and for those who love Brackeen, with a chance to hear Pedersen's strong, crafty bass and Hart's dashing drums. I'm so glad Nils decided to release this one. To read my JazzWax interview with him, go here.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Stan Getz: Copenhagen Unissued Session 1977 (SteepleChase) here. It's also available on 180-gram vinyl.
It's also available on most major streaming platforms.
In the late 1950s, millions of Americans were undergoing a midlife crisis. From the adult perspective, rock 'n' roll had turned their kids into teenage adversaries who took all of their hard work during World War II and the post-war years for granted. As baby boomers aged and the culture began shifting to a younger demographic, many middle-aged men trapped in jobs yearned for their youth and freedom, while many women grew weary of their many thankless tasks in suburban homes. A good number of records and TV shows in 1958 reflected this shift. [Photo above of author Jon Burlingame by Christian Amonson]
Fueling this new zeitgeist was the popularity of a music genre known as exotica. The category was marketed mostly to suburban women fantasizing about passion and a stimulating adventure in warm, far-away places in Polynesia and South America. Instrumental exotica albums by Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman, Les Baxter and others transported them there. As for men, they watched shows like Peter Gunn, a TV detective series unlike any other. Instead of the detective being cast as a thick-necked, rule-breaking lug who always wore a rumpled suit, a loosened tie and a fedora, Gunn, played by Craig Stevens, was hatless, virtuous, natty, suave and a serious jazz fan. What's more, the series was as much about his romantic relationship with his girlfriend, a jazz singer, as it was about solving crimes. The music was radically new and matched the character. Instead of a Euro-classical soundtrack heavy on the strings that simply telegraphed suspense, Gunn's music by Henry Mancini was daring and sleek, and influenced by West Coast jazz. The show's finger-snapping score was relaxing and returned weary men to their former selves.
Now Jon Burlingame has written a delicious new book on the Peter Gunn TV series (1958-1961) and Mancini's music—Dreamsville: Henry Mancini, Peter Gunn, and Music for TV Noir (go here). The book looks at Mancini's rise in Hollywood and his vision for the series and how it changed TV and movie music moving forward. Jon's earlier book was equally terrific: The Music of James Bond (go here).
I recently caught up with Jon for an email interview on his latest book:
JazzWax: Hi Jon. Regarding the TV detective genre of the 1950s and ‘60s, the cool, jazzy thematic architecture really begins with Henry Mancini. Why did you decide to look into his work for the Peter Gunn series now? Jon Burlingame: It's pretty simple, really. I knew the Mancini Centennial was coming up on April 16 and there were already two fine Mancini books out—his autobiography (Did They Mention the Music?) and John Caps' excellent analysis of his entire career (Henry Mancini: Reinventing Film Music). What had never been explored in depth, however, was that three-year period between 1958 and 1961 when he was composing and arranging theme and incidental music for TV’s Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky. During this period, he built a relationship with filmmaker Blake Edwards that would become a cornerstone of his entire musical career.
JW: What made Mancini's revolutionary approach to TV detectives music possible and why did it transform how such shows were scored moving forward? JB: A combination of two things, really: massive changes in the musicians union environment coupled with the sensational success of Mancini’s Peter Gunn music. Throughout the 1950s, the American Federation of Musicians had imposed hefty surcharges on any TV show that regularly used original music vs. music libraries. But a power shift at the top of the AFM, spurred by a revolt of Hollywood studio musicians over the issue, led to more favorable deals for original scores. This, coupled with the genius of Mancini and Edwards to use an original jazz score in Gunn, resulted in best-selling soundtrack albums. Virtually every producer of cop and detective shows that followed demanded jazz scores for their heroes. As for the clean-cut, sophisticated look of Craig Stevens as private eye Peter Gunn, that was Edwards' idea. I talk about this quite a lot in the book.
JW: What were the big wows that stood out in your research on Mancini when it came to how he envisioned the music for Peter Gunn during the show's run? JB: I think today we take for granted Mancini's gift for melody and his comfort level with the West Coast jazz sound of that era. But his Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky soundtrack albums were the public’s first exposure to this. The fact that he wrote most of these timeless gems in a matter of weeks is astonishing. Dreamsville, which came to be known as the Gunn love theme, wasn't even written for a specific show but rather for the first Gunn album, The Music From Peter Gunn, released in January 1959. The ballad was then incorporated into the series later. It's also important to recognize that this was the first time a popular TV show resulted in a soundtrack album that was so immensely popular. That wouldn't happen again on this level until Miami Vice in the 1980s.
JW: Was TV’s Richard Diamond, Private Detective from 1957 to 1960, with music and arranging by Frank DeVol, Pete Rugolo and then Richard Shores, a big influence on Mancini? JB: No. Frank DeVol wrote a fairly traditional orchestral theme for the first batch of Richard Diamond episodes in 1957 and '58—prior to the start of Peter Gunn. Pete Rugolo became the show's composer in 1959, notably in the aftermath of Mancini's success with Gunn. Rugolo's Richard Diamond scores in 1959 and '60 generated a great jazz album, but his music was subsequently replaced by a more conventional Richard Shores score, drawn from the music library of Diamond actor Dick Powell's Four Star Television production company, in 1960.
JW: What role did Gunn creator Blake Edwards play in Mancini’s scores? JB: Shockingly, almost none. Blake liked and trusted Mancini and gave him carte blanche to do whatever he wished and whatever Mancini thought would work, dramatically. This process started with Gunn and continued throughout their film careers together. During my interviews with Edwards, he said they rarely even talked about what might be needed, musically. He knew Mancini would always provide the right accompaniment. And after the success of Mancini movie themes such as Moon River,The Days of Wine and Roses and the The Pink Panther, all for Edwards' projects, it wasn't even an issue. [Photo above of Henry Mancini, left, and Blake Edwards, courtesy of the Mancini estate]
JW: Did Mancini have multiple ideas for the Gunn theme and, if so, how did he decide on the one we know? JB: I don't think so. All of his scores are now at the Library of Congress, and there's no hint that he wrote anything but the famed theme. I suppose it's possible he sketched out a few different ideas, but he talked a lot about Gunn through the years, often quite candidly, but never mentioned anything about struggling with the concept of a theme. I just think he was so tuned-in to what the show needed—the hippest possible approach—that he happened fairly quickly on that brilliant ostinato and, as he once put it, the "shouting brass."
JW: The Gunn series resulted in a range of cool Mancini incidental tunes as well, yes? JB: For sure. Dreamsville remains my favorite track on that first album, although the excitement of Fallout!, the opening music for nearly every episode, still gets my pulse racing. Session at Pete's Pad from the first album became the song Straight to Baby, which actress Lola Albright (as Edie Hart, Pete's girlfriend, the band singer at his hangout, Mother's) performed on the show and also on her Columbia LP, arranged by Mancini and which I consider an unofficial Gunn album.
JW: How about the second album, More Music From Peter Gunn, released later in 1959? JB: I'm especially partial to the haunting Joanna, which led directly to Mancini's long collaboration with lyricist Johnny Mercer, which I detail in the book. I also love the lighthearted march Timothy, written for, of all things, a seal that figures prominently in a first-season episode. A Profound Gass is heard for the first time in a beatnik joint ("It's a profound gas, Mr. Gunn," says proprietor Wilbur). Many of the tunes on the Gunn albums were written for the combo that played at Mother's. Hearing the songs in context while watching the shows is such fun.
JW: Did Mancini’s score influence John Barry’s score for the James Bond films that would follow, starting in 1961 and '62? And how so? JB: Yes, Barry was influenced by Mancini, although in a general way. Barry had a rock 'n' roll background and considerable experience with commercial recording in London, so he was well aware of the impact of Peter Gunn. His John Barry Seven jazz-rock band often played the Peter Gunn theme live. When James Bond came along in 1962, Barry's arrangement of the Bond Theme incorporated elements of jazz and also a decidedly dramatic sensibility, especially in that now iconic bass line. The early Bond scores were a unique blend of pop, jazz and traditional orchestral sounds, and the similarly tongue-in-cheek approach to the material. Meaning neither Gunn the detective nor Bond the spy took the proceedings all that seriously. That was reflected in the scores.
JW: How did Blake Edwards’ Mr. Lucky and Henry Mancini’s score for that TV detective series come about in 1959 and '60 and why did it emerge at the same time Gunn was airing? JB:Peter Gunn was so popular at the time that Edwards was able to sell CBS on his next show without even shooting a pilot. And Mancini's music would, as with Gunn—on NBC and then ABC—become an integral element. Mr. Lucky centered on a gambling ship moored just offshore, and required a more elegant and glamorous sound, including strings, for its theme. But the show also featured lots of great jazz as background.
JW: Why did Mr. Lucky last only one season? JB: The untold story of Mr. Lucky involves Edwards' battles with the series sponsor and CBS, a disagreement that led the network to cancel the series despite its strong ratings. Nevertheless, Mancini managed to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of two Mr. Lucky albums—Music From Mr. Lucky and Mr. Lucky Goes Latin—during that 1959-'60 period, all while scoring episodes for both Gunn and Mr. Lucky every week.
JW: What was the issue with the sponsor? JB: It's one of my favorite stories in the book. Back in 1959, a single company's product ads often paid the way for an entire series. Hence, program sponsors were very powerful, sometimes more powerful than the networks themselves. Lever Brothers, the maker of Lifebuoy soap and Rinso detergent, decided halfway through the season of Mr. Lucky that they didn't like the show's gambling milieu and demanded that the producers drop it. It was an outrageous request, as the gambling ship was the show's centerpiece. CBS sided with the sponsor, and Blake took his name off the show. There's more, but I'll save the rest for readers of the book.
JW: How did the two scores establish the Mancini sound, and which crime shows were influenced moving forward? JB: The cool-jazz sound and all those memorable melodies from Gunn and Mr. Lucky introduced us to the composer's sound, and their popular success enabled him to sign with RCA Victor for the next 20 years. Partly because of his relationship with Edwards and because he was a hot young composer, Mancini was able to score a lot of great movies in the years that followed, showcasing his versatility in multiple genres. But regarding TV detective shows, almost every one rolling forward demanded a jazz theme: Elmer Bernstein's Johnny Staccato score, Count Basie's M Squad, Duke Ellington's Asphalt Jungle, John Williams' Checkmate and, still later, Quincy Jones' Ironside and Lalo Schifrin's Mannix were just some of the notable shows with jazz themes.
JW: So who played the electric guitar on the opening of the Peter Gunn theme? Many people think it was Duane Eddy. JB: The guitarist on the Gunn theme was the legendary Bob Bain, who had once played for Tommy Dorsey and Bob Crosby and would go on to become the guitarist on other TV themes that would become almost as culturally ubiquitous: Bonanza, The Munsters and Batman. Bain played on the TV scores and on the Gunn albums. Duane Eddy would later have a hit record with the Gunn theme, but he wasn’t a recording-session musician in Los Angeles. As for Bain’s guitar, he used a 1953 Fender Telecaster. [Photo above of Bob Bain]
JazzWax clips:Here's Mancini's Peter Gunn theme...
Here's Lola Albright and Craig Stevens in Peter Gunn...
Here's Henry Mancini's theme for TV's Mr. Lucky...
Here's vocalist Sue Raney backed by the Henry Mancini Orchestra delivering one of the finest vocal versions of Dreamsville with an alto saxophone solo by Ronnie Lang...
Here's one of my favorites by Mancini for Gunn, The Brothers Go to Mother's. As Bill Kirchner notes, the "brothers" reference relates to trombonist Dick Nash and alto saxophonist Ted Nash, who are featured...
Here's guitarist Bob Bain on Mancini and Peter Gunn. The "Tommy" he refers to toward the end is studio guitarist Tommy Tedesco...
Here's John Barry's 1962 James Bond Theme from Dr. No...
And here again is the complete Fresh Sound release of The Music From Peter Gunn, which you can buy here... as well as The Music From Mr. Luckyhere...
JazzWax notes: To read my 2018 Wall Street Journal piece on Peter Gunn,go here.
To read my 2014 JazzWax interview with Ginny Mancini, go here.
To read my 2014 WSJ essay on Henry Mancini, go here.
In The Wall Street Journal this past week, I interviewed actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). Jamie, who played Meadow Soprano in HBO's The Sopranos, talked about her health struggles during the series' six seasons. She was 16 when cast and was in her early 20s when the series wrapped. Currently, she co-hosts Messy, a podcast, with actress Christina Applegate, about their friendship and multiple sclerosis. [Photo above of Jamie-Lynn Sigler courtesy of Getty Images]
Here's Jamie as Meadow. It's astonishing how brilliantly she played this role over time, from a spoiled teen to questioning adulthood, all with serious health issues...
What I'm watching.
Last week...
The Veil—(2024). I'm still watching Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men, The Handmaid's Tale) in this thriller miniseries about a deadly game of truth and lies as two women travel from Istanbul to Paris and London, with one of them possessing a secret that the other needs to expose. (Hulu/FX) [Photo above of Elisabeth Moss in The Veil, courtesy of FX]
The Beach Boys—(Disney+). I rewatched the upcoming documentary on the group that won over America's youth before the Beatles invaded, turned the beach into a teen destination and cast California as the birthplace of fun. Lots of unseen footage, smart historical analysis and a feel for how the group came together, the collective contribution of all the band's members and how the group ran aground competing with the Fab Four and trying to remain relevant. Available for streaming at Disney+ starting May 24.
I also watched three films coming in the next few months: The Instigators, a thriller-comedy film starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck that's due out in August; Mother, Couch, a drama fantasy starring Ewan McGregor, Ellen Burstyn, Lara Flynn Boyle, F. Murray Abraham and Lake Bell, due out in July; and Murder Company, set in World War II, starring William Mosely, Kelsey Grammer and Joe Anderson, coming in July.
Previously watched and recommended...
TV series
TheAffair—(2014-2019/Hulu)
Alaska Daily—(2022/Prime)
The Americans—(2013-2018)/Prime)
Anatomy of a Scandal—(2022/Netflix)
Apples Never Fall—2024/Peacock)
Band of Brothers—(2001/Netflix)
The Bay (2019-current/BritBox)
Belgravia—(2020/Prime Video)
Blue Lights—(2023/BritBox)
Bosch—(2014-2021/Prime)
Bosch: Legacy—(2022-current/Prime)
The Crown—(2016-2023/Netflix)
Cherif—(2013-2019/Prime)
Dark Winds—(2022/AMC)
The Diplomat—(2023/Netflix)
Downton Abbey—(2020-2015/Prime)
Feud (S1): Bette and Joan—(2017/Hulu)
Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans—(2024/FX, with streaming on Hulu)
Fisk—(2021/Netflix)
The Gentlemen—(2024/Netflix)
Godless—(2017/Netflix)
Goliath—(2016-2021/Prime)
The Gilded Age—(current/Max)
High Water—(2022/Netflix)
Homeland—(2011-2020/Showtime)
Jane Eyre—(2006/Britbox)
Justified—(2010-2015/Hulu)
Life & Beth—(Seasons 1& 2, 2022-present/Hulu)
Lincoln Lawyer—(2022-present/Netflix)
Loudermilk—(2017-2020/Netflix)
MI-5, the Series—(2002-2011/BritBox)
Monsieur Spade—(2024/AMC)
Murdaugh Murders: The Movie, Parts 1 and 2—(2023/Lifetime)
1923—(2022-present/Paramount+)
1883—(2021-2022/Prime)
Outlander—(2014-present/Netflix)
Pieces of Her—(2022/Netflix)
Poldark—(2015-2019/Prime)
Reacher—(2016-present/Netflix)
Ripley—(2024/Netflix)
Scott & Bailey (2011-2016/Prime)
Turn: Washington's Spies—(2014-2017/Prime)
Unbelievable—(2019/Netflix)
Veronica Mars—(2004 to 2019/Hulu)
The Watcher—(2022/Netflix)
The Way Home—(2023-current/Peacock)
Who Is Erin Carter—(2023/Netflix)
The Woman in the Wall—(2024/Showtime)
WPC 56—(2013-2015/Britbox)
Yellowstone—(2018-present/Paramount Network)
Films
The Accountant—(2016/Hulu)
American Gangster—(2007/Max).
Armageddon Time—(2022/Prime)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs—(2018/Netflix)
The Ballad of Lefty Brown—(2017/Netflix)
The Bricklayer—(2024/Netflix)
The Dig—(2021/Netflix)
Eiffel—(2021/Prime)
Enola Holmes 1 and 2—(2022/Netflix)
The Equalizer 1, 2 and 3—(2014-2024/Prime)
Fury—(2014/Netflix)
God's Country—(2022/Hulu)
Guy Ritchie's The Covenant—(2023/Prime)
Jack Reacher (the movie)—(2012/Paramount+)
Kill Chain—(2019/Max)
Knight and Day—(2010/Roku)
Last Night in Soho—(2021/Prime)
Last Seen Alive—(2020/Netflix)
The Little Things—(2021/Netflix)
Man on Fire—(2004/Max)
MI-5—(2015/Max)
The Mule—(2018/Netflix)
The Night Agent—(2023/Netflix)
Nobody—(2021/Prime)
Ordinary Angels—(2024)
Purple Hearts—(2022/Netflix)
The Queen's Gambit—(2020/Netflix)
Queenpins—(2021/Pluto TV)
Reptile—(2023/Netflix)
The Secret: Dare to Dream—(2020/Netflix)
Self Reliance—(2023/Hulu)
Seraphim Falls—(2006/Netflix)
Somewhere in Queens—(2022/Hulu)
The Spy—(2019/Netflix)
Spy(les)—(2009/Prime)
The Stranger—(2022/Netflix)
Toscana—(2022/Netflix)
The Two Popes—(2019/Netflix)
Wonder Wheel—(2017/Prime)
Documentaries
Aftershock: Everest and the Nepal Earthquake—(2022/Netflix)
Carole King: Live in Central Park—(2023/PBS)
The Comeback—(2005 and 2014/Max)
Cunk on Earth—(2022/Netflix)
Facing Nolan—(2022/Netflix)
Five Came Back—(2017/Netflix)
The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari—(2022/Netflix)
'Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris—(2007/go h
Bill Holman. A big thanks to Matt Schudel of The Washington Post for quoting my JazzWax interview in his Bill Holman obituary. To read Matt's piece, go here. [Photo above of Bill Holman in 2021 by Lorenz Rychner]
And thanks to Clay Risen at The New York Times for including JazzWax as well in his Bill Holman obit (go here).
More Bill Holman clips. From director and jazz pianist Raymond De Felitta, here's an email he sent along with a favorite audio clip:
Hi Marc. When I joined the North Hollywood High School Jazz band in 1981, they were playing a lot of low-grade high school arrangements. A friend of mine and I urged the head of the music program to get the Sammy Nestico book (great charts and not difficult for intermediate players). Around that time I heard Holman’s "Quick Step." I was so gassed by it that I found Holman in the phone book, called him and asked where we could get a chart. He pointed me to some obscure music arrangement publisher who had the whole score and parts.
What a killer tune—a barn burner to open or close competitions with. In spite of its sophistication, it’s so cleverly and cleanly written that its not hard for musicians of our level at the time to play with sufficient practice. We won quite a few competitions, and I always thought a big part of it was "Quick Step’s" groove and sophistication. It’s the kind of chart that makes a mediocre band sound like a budding Buddy Rich or Rob McConnell band at its peak. Just listened to it again; a flood of memories washed over me.
Here's Bill's Quick Step for his album Great Big Band in 1960...
From Todd Selbert, here's Bill's arrangement of I've Got You Under My Skin, from Stan Kenton's Contemporary Concepts in 1955...
From Larry Daniels, here's Bill's arrangement of Shake Down the Stars for David Allyn's album Let's Face The Music And Dance, in 1958...
Charles Mingus. Following my post on the origins of Peggy's Blue Skylight, I heard from famed jazz writer, pianist and arranger Brian Priestly in London:
Hi Marc. I’m an admirer and wish to add a bit of minutiae to your "Peggy’s Blue Skylight" post.
Not only was the Mingus tune recorded for the movie "All Night Long" but a tiny bit is included in the soundtrack. Thanks to your inclusion of the entire movie, you can spotlight its appearance at 56:18, with Mingus and Harry Beckett on screen (briefly!). When it’s reduced to the background, the beginning of an alto solo (Harold McNair) is pretty clearly improvising on "Peggy's Blue Skylight." It’s even in the same key as the other examples that you included.
This was one of the few original discoveries when researching my Mingus book (45 years ago!!), when the late film archivist David Meeker screened the movie for me and it was confirmed by Harry Beckett. Also, Mingus’s theme (still as background) comes at 57:46.
Last week's Backgrounder. My Backgrounder last week mistakenly included a second album claiming to be the Joe Wilder Quartet. It clearly wasn't. Why someone uploaded the wrong album to YouTube is beyond me. Thanks to Bill Kirchner for spotting my error. I've removed it as the bonus in my post.
Judy Garland.Here'sHow About You With Mickey Rooney in 1941...
Here's the house Garland bought in 1938, the year The Wizard of Oz was released. She was 17. It's now on the market...
Lantower Records has restored three great jazz albums for streaming at Spotify. That means free listening! They are...
John Coltrane Quartet + Stan Getz + Oscar Peterson Live in Dusseldorf ,1960. Go here.
Duke Ellington Live at the House of Culture in Helsinki, 1963. Go here.
And finally,here's Sacha Distel (g), René Urtreger (p), Paul Rovère (b) and Jean-Louis Viale (d) playing Blues for Marianne on French TV in 1958 [photo above of René Urtreger] ...
One could argue that Henry Mancini picked up where Bill Holman left off. As noted earlier this week, Bill's arrangements for recordings captured the sound of 1950s Los Angeles' jazzy cool, with his charts clutch-shifting like brand-new cars cruising the region's many freeways. Mancini's music, by contrast, was for TV and the movies, and captured the city's jazzy, sleek elegance of the 1960s as well as the cool of stardom and newfound wealth. In effect, Mancini widened out Holman's sound of catchy melodies using finger-snapping orchestral twists and turns, and instrumental quirks and collages. [Photo above of Henry Mancini with Peter Gunn stars Lola Albright and Craig Stevens]
For this week's Backgrounder, I'm featuring The Jazz Sound From Peter Gunn, a Fresh Sound release of Mancini's music for the TV detective series, which ran from 1958-1961. The album was first issued by Fresh Sound in 1994.
You can still buy the Fresh Sound release, which has terrific liner notes, here.
The reason I'm featuring Gunn this week is because on Monday, you're in for a real treat. I'll be featuring my Q&A interview with Jon Burlingame, the author of the newly published book Dreamsville: Henry Mancini, Peter Gunn, and Music for TV Noir. You won't want to miss it.
To warm you up, here'sThe Jazz Sound From Peter Gunn without ad interruptions...
As an arranger, the late Bill Holman knew how to set 'em up and knock 'em down. His arrangements often began with a relatively simple melodic idea, which he then whipped up into a wind storm without losing the original concept. He loved to put the reeds in play, setting them off with call-and-response harmony exchange from the horns. What mattered most was the build—the steady march toward a crescendo. [Photo above of Bill Holman, center, in the 1950s, with Zoot Sims, left, and an unknown trombonist, by William Claxton]
To pay tribute to Bill, I've chosen 17 of my favorite arrangements from the 1950s. Bill, of course, would continue to arrange into the 2000s and win Grammys for his work along the way. But for me, Bill's spirit and Los Angeles' post-war innocence and modernism were baked into his 1950s charts:
Here'sRagamuffin for the Frank Rosolino Sextet, with Sam Noto (tp), Frank Rosolino (tb), Charlie Mariano (as), Pete Jolly (p), Max Bennett (b) and Mel Lewis (d), in 1954 ...
Here'sSomebody Wants Me Down There for Maynard Ferguson's Dream Band in 1956...
Here'sLittle Joe for Frank Socolow in 1956, with Eddie Bert (tb), Frank Socolow (as,ts), Eddie Costa (p), Sal Salvador (g), Bill Takas (b) and Jimmy Campbell (d), in 1956....
Here'sBright Eyes for The Bill Holman Band in 1957, with Conte Candoli, Al Porcino and Ray Linn (tp); Stu Williamson (tp,v-tb); Harry Betts, Ray Sims and Bob Fitzpatrick (tb); Herb Geller and Charlie Mariano (as); Bill Holman, Richie Kamuca and Charlie Kennedy (ts); Steve Perlow (bar); Lou Levy (p); Max Bennett (b) and Mel Lewis (d)...
Here'sIt's a Lovely Day Today for Jackie and Roy, with Jackie Cain and Roy Kral (vcl); Al Porcino (tp); Stu Williamson (tp,v-tb); Frank Rosolino and Ray Sims (tb); Charlie Mariano (as); Herbie Mann (ts,fl); Richie Kamuca (ts); Dave Pell (bar); Russ Freeman (p); Max Bennett (b); Shelly Manne (d) and Bill Holman (arr,cond), in 1957...
Here'sEasy to Love for Maynard Ferguson on Boy With Lots of Brass in 1957, with Maynard Ferguson, John Bello, Joe Burnett and Tom Slaney (tp); Bob Burgess and Jimmy Cleveland (tb); Anthony Ortega (as); Jimmy Ford (as,ts); Willie Maiden (ts,arr); Tate Houston (bar); Bobby Timmons (p); Richard Evans (b) and Larry Bunker (d)...
Here'sVenus de Milo for The Gerry Mulligan Songbook in 1957, with Lee Konitz (as), Allen Eager and Zoot Sims (as,ts), Al Cohn (bar,ts), Gerry Mulligan (bar), Freddie Green (g), Henry Grimes (b) and Dave Bailey (d)...
Here'sTheme and Variations for the Bill Holman Big Band in 1958, with Conte Candoli, Ed Leddy, Al Porcino and Jack Sheldon (tp); Carl Fontana, Frank Rosolino, Ray Sims (tb) Herb Geller, Charlie Mariano (as) Bill Holman (ts,arr) Richie Kamuca, Charlie Kennedy (ts) Bill Hood (bar) Victor Feldman (p) Buddy Clark (b) Mel Lewis (d). What's fascinating here is you get to hear how Bill built an arrangement, starting with a simple idea and then embellishing with call-and-response motifs...
And here'sExactly Like You for Ralph Marterie in 1959, with Ralph Marterie, Pete Candoli, Conrad Gozzo and Don Fagerquist (tp); Frank Rosolino and Vern Friley (tb); Buddy De Franco and Bud Shank (cl,as); Gus Bivona and Bob Cooper (ts); Babe Russin (bar); Jimmy Rowles (p); Al Hendrickson (g); Red Mitchell (b) and Jack Sperling (d)...
Bonus:Here's the Stan Kenton Orchestra in Germany in 1953, with Bill Holman on the far right of the saxophone section, playing Gerry Mulligan's Swing House...
Willis "Bill" Holman, a three-time Grammy-winning arranger, composer and saxophonist and one of the last-surviving artists who shaped West Coast jazz in the early 1950s, died May 6 in his sleep of natural causes. He was 96.
Influenced most by Gerry Mulligan's arranging and the sound of Count Basie's band, Bill began writing for Stan Kenton just as the popular brassy orchestra was facing musician defections over his drift into a jazz-classical realm. Bill's composition and arrangement of Invention for Guitar and Trumpet, included on Kenton's New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm album, recorded in 1952, was a rebel yell, marking the start of a new aggressive, contrapuntal West Coast sound. On the song, trumpeter Maynard Ferguson and guitarist Sal Salvador weave through a forest of brass at breakneck speed, building toward a crescendo.
Then came Bill's Kenton Showcase, a 10-inch album released in 1954, on which Bill wrote originals and arranged them. The album is a West Coast jazz masterpiece. The music's sassy cool modernism arrived just as Los Angeles was becoming the model of suburbia—with fluid highways, strip malls, vast beaches lining the Pacific Ocean and temperate weather year-round. Whenever I'm in L.A. and driving from the Valley into the city on the 405, I play this album. It's a must.
Even more important was Kenton's Contemporary Concepts, recorded in 1955. On the album, Bill arranged the first six songs. A Mulligan chart on Limelight was the only non-Holman track. Of particular note on the album are Bill's Stompin' at the Savoy, Stella by Starlight and What's New? Each had a refreshing, coherent approach complete with a relaxed, daring swagger. Bill would continue to bring a fresh, strong approach to his recording sessions rolling forward into the 2000s.
I had an opportunity to interview Bill multiple times over the years. You'll find links to my conversations with him in the right-hand column under "JazzWax Interviews." [Photo above is one of Bill's favorite photos, from left, Zoot Sims, Joe Maini and Bill in the early 1960s, before Maini's death]
Here is my career-spanning 2008 interview with Bill with all four parts combined. Miss you, Bill:
JazzWax: Where were you born? Bill Holman: In Olive, Ca., but we moved very early on to Orange, near Anaheim. When I was in the third grade, we moved again to Santa Ana, near the orange groves, where we remained. I had a typical kid life growing up. There was no supervision, and I could do whatever I felt like doing.
JW: What did your dad do? BH: He owned a bunch of failing businesses that tried to create produce departments in grocery stores and gas stations, and a bunch of other things. Then he took a course in accounting, and it turned out he was a whiz. He got a job right away in the Navy as an accountant, and later became an auditor. He kind of finished up with a bang and got great gigs out of that. I didn’t get to reap any of the benefit though [laughing]. I was already out of the house.
JW: Brothers or sisters? BH: I have one sister who is eight years older than me. Eight years is quite a big gap. She was into her stuff, and I was into mine. When she had to take care of me, the term "babysitter" hadn't been invented yet [laughs]. I think she resented having to look out for me, and we didn’t get along too well. My mom was supportive, but she could have done more to build my confidence. Then again, I suppose all children have complaints about their parents.
JW: Did you grow up in a musical household? BH: No. My family didn't care much for music. We didn't own a record player, and there were no records. I only heard music on the radio. I listened to big bands day after day, hour after hour, and absorbed all the music. Back then, listening to the bands was just part of everyday life. It’s comparable today to people listening to iPods all day. It becomes so common you lose track of the magic of the thing and it becomes part of your unconscious mind. That’s kind of the way it was listening to the radio. It was there and you absorbed it. I thought radio and big bands were magical. There were some bands I liked much more than others. So music coming over the radio probably had much more of an effect on me as a composer and arranger than I realize.
JW: How did you wind up choosing the tenor saxophone? BH: When I went into junior high school, all students had to take a musical aptitude test. I did well. A few weeks later the school's bandleader came around and asked if I wanted to play the clarinet. So I started on clarinet and that led right into the saxophone a few years later.
JW: Were you good? BH: No [pause]. I thought I was. [laughs] Santa Ana then was a small town. There were no professional musicians that I knew of. The only person I had to rely on was the teacher I was going to, who actually was a trumpet player and taught everything. I think he gave me a couple of bum steers on the saxophone [laughs]. I had no one in music to associate with, to listen to, or to talk to. So I bumbled along and dealt with things as they came up. I played what I thought was jazz, running down the harmonies on stock arrangements.
JW: Did you practice a lot? BH: No. I never did.
JW: What happened after high school? BH: I went straight into the Navy in July 1944. I was stationed in Boulder, Colorado. The war started winding down that year. I was in this training program studying engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder for a year and a half. Meantime the war had ended. Somehow my friends and I got the impression that if we finished our courses and got our commissions, we’d have to stay on active duty for four more years. So we all stopped going to classes and washed out of school. In January 1946 they shipped us off to boot camp in Great Lakes, Illinois, just north of Chicago. It was cold there for a native Californian. After boot camp, I was assigned to a ship and served out my time until July 1946.
JW: When you were discharged from the Navy, did you go home? BH: Yes. I tried to get into the music program at Los Angeles City College. My mother had seen an article in the paper that there was a program there. So I registered and finally got to interview with the head of the jazz program. At that time there quite a few players from name bands that were working out their union cards by going to school on the G.I. Bill. Musicians who had just arrived in California had to prove they had lived there for six months before the union let them take studio jobs. So the college band was perfect for them. Unfortunately for me it was bulging with all these pros.
JW: What happened? BH: The guy wouldn’t let me in the program. So I went back home and enrolled at UCLA to finish my engineering studies. But after one semester, I realized that engineering wasn’t for me. This was the fall of 1947.
JW: You must have felt despondent. BH: I did. I felt adrift. Back when I was 11 or 12, my parents used to ask me what I was going to do when I grew up. At that time I didn’t think about being a musician. To get peace and quiet, I told them I wanted to be an engineer. They loved that and got off my back. So engineering was always in the back of my head, but it was a construct of my own imagination, not reality. In the fall of 1947, I was unsettled about what I was going to do, but I knew it wasn't going to be engineering.
JW: Music wasn't your clear choice? BH: I was thinking about music, but I knew that becoming a pro would be difficult and that I would be taking a big chance going in that direction. While I was being disillusioned by UCLA's engineering program, I was going down to Central Avenue, where all the jazz clubs were. I caught the tail end of the scene there and met some great players. At this point in early 1948, I still didn’t know any musicians in Los Angeles personally. To get jobs, I befriended some of the guys I met at these sessions.
JW: What was the big turning point for you? BH: One night I told a guy I was looking for a music school. He said to talk to trombonist Britt Woodman. The guy said Britt was going to a school where they teach you how to read music. When I asked Britt, he told me about the Westlake College of Music in L.A. He said the school had several bands and courses in harmony and arranging. Westlake was like a vocational school, no humanities or history or anything. Strictly commercial music courses. Once I made up my mind to study music, that was it. There was no looking back.
JW: When you were at L.A.'s Westlake College of Music in the late 1940s, you also played in local bands, yes? BH: Oh, sure. My first break was with pianist Ike Carpenter in 1948. Carpenter's orchestra had started out as a jazz band and had some Ellington-style charts written by a guy named Paul Villepigue, a wonderful arranger, teacher and a sweet man. But shortly before I arrived, Carpenter bought the complete book of arrangements from a hotel band that played sweet dance music. That’s the stuff we played. I was with Carpenter for about a year and a half.
JW: During this time you were learning the basics of arranging in college? BH: Yes. I had all this material stored up in my head, from when I was a kid listening to the radio. As soon as I learned a few technical things about writing and orchestrating, I was writing arrangements right away.
JW: Just like that? BH: Pretty much. After a couple of weeks of school I was writing charts. I had a passion for it. I had been interested in arranging in high school. But growing up in Santa Ana, there were no arrangers, and no one I could ask what to do in certain situations.
JW: But why arranging? Because you had ideas in your head that you wanted to hear played by a band? BH: You make it sound more exciting than it was [laughs]. I just liked the idea of doing it and wondered whether I could. So when I was at Westlake, I met saxophonists Bill Perkins and Dave Madden and other guys who were making a living writing, arranging and playing music. That encouraged me enormously.
JW: Which band had the most influence on you? BW: When I was listening to the radio all those years growing up? I loved Count Basie’s band, with tenor saxophonist Lester Young and drummer Jo Jones. That swing rhythm got to me, more so than Duke's band. Duke was so different from everyone else that I didn’t think what he was doing applied to me or that I could ever do what he did. Duke had some magic going that I could never touch. But Basie's rhythm was different.
JW: What was your big breakthrough in college? BH: Reading Russ Garcia’s book on arranging, which he eventually published in 1954 as Professional Arranger and Composer. It's still available today. Russ taught at the school, and his workbook for class had practically everything you needed to be a commercial arranger. I studied arranging with him for about a year at Westlake and liked him so much I studied with him privately. We went over the same stuff that was in his book, but in a little more depth.
JW: You graduated from Westlake in 1950. Then what? BH: I joined Charlie Barnet's band. During my time with Ike Carpenter and Barnet, I also played in local rehearsal bands and associated with a lot of arrangers, including Gene Roland, who played and arranged for Stan Kenton. We became good friends. Gene always had a rehearsal band wherever he’d go. He had four trumpets and four tenors, and I got to sit in with a couple of those bands. That rehearsal orchestra known as the Band That Never Was [in 1950] was his. Gene's writing was very simple. He'd write everything in four-part block harmony. By having tenors and trumpets, he'd only have to write four parts for the trumpets and the same four parts would do for the tenors, except they'd be an octave lower. This gave him an automatic ensemble.
JW: What was Gene Roland like? BH: He was a talented guy. Very energetic. But his talent got spread out in a lot of areas, and never really got it together in a single area. He was a substantial contributor to the Kenton band and had a couple of big hits, like Tampico and Easy Street in 1945 and Jump for Joe in 1951. He had a meat-and-potatoes writing style, using four-part harmony. He was an inspiration for me, and he showed me what could be done using a limited palette of harmony. He epitomized what it meant to be a jazz arranger. He was friendly and never tried to hide anything. He could be funny and serious, and his emotions always showed.
JW: Did he like your work? BH: Yes. One night in 1951, Gene was at my house, and I played him a recording I had made when I was still going to Westlake. It was a 12-tone blues piece for a rehearsal band. Gene got very excited when he heard it and said, “I think this is what Stan is looking for.” Apparently, Stan had been talking to Gene about working a more linear approach into the band's music instead of that vertical harmonic thing he was doing with the Innovations Orchestra. Stan was thinking about lines, and this 12-tone tune I played for Gene was full of lines. I don’t remember the name of it.
JW: What exactly is a 12-tone tune? BH: It’s a technique devised by Arnold Scheonberg where you use all 12 tones of the chromatic scale in a preconceived order, and you use them all before you repeat them. It’s also called "serial writing." When students are first exposed to that concept, they're apt to write a 12-tone blues. It was the thing to do in avant-garde classical music back then. Since then it has lost favor.
JW: Did Kenton hear your 12-tone tune? BH: Yes. After playing my early recording of the song for Gene, I went out on the road with Barnet. Gene took the recording to Stan in the fall of 1951. When I came back off the road, I met with Stan, and he told me he was very interested in my writing. He told me about his idea for a new band that would have a more linear approach and that my writing style would be perfect. He asked me to write a couple of things for the band, which I did in late 1951. Meanwhile, Stan was re-forming the band and was looking for a tenor saxophonist. My friend Dick Meldonian, who played alto sax in the band, recommended me. I replaced Bob Cooper, who had left.
JW: Were the compositions you wrote good? BH: They were awful [laughs]. I was trying too hard. I didn’t have the intellectual equipment to do what I was trying to do. So we rehearsed them once, and they were never heard of again.
JW: How were things left with Kenton? BH: It was decided in March 1952 that I'd join Kenton strictly as a tenor player. After my two arranging failures, we didn’t talk any more about writing. So I was the tenor player. Eventually, he said I should write something. But I didn’t know what to write because I didn’t know how to write the kind of progressive jazz he favored. I also knew he didn't want Count Basie-type arrangements. So I just kind of cooled it and played the book.
JW: What was the turning point? BH: Gerry Mulligan wrote 8 or 10 charts for the band at around the time I joined. So we played those, and I got to listen to them every night. As I'd play them, I'd listen to the harmony and the form to see how a big-time writer goes about crafting a chart. It kind of helped me get my own conception going. By late 1952 I started writing again. Stan liked what I was doing. I liked what I was doing, too. So I figured I had found a direction in which to go with my composing and arranging.
JW: In September 1952, the Kenton band recorded This Is an Orchestra! How was that done? BH: We just did it live in the studio. We did what’s on the record. There was no editing or retakes. That’s the way we made all our records back then. We played them all the way through and hoped no one goofed.
JW: Perhaps the strongest and most cutting-edge track recorded during the September Capitol session was your Invention for Guitar and Trumpet. BH: That was an assignment. Stan asked me to do that, featuring Maynard [Ferguson] and Sal [Salvador]. An invention is a song with lots of counterpoint between two instruments. I knew how to write an invention from my studies. I just jumped in and did it.
JW: What do you think of it? BH: It’s not one of my favorite pieces.
JW: You've got to be kidding. Why? BH: It’s disjointed. Nothing ever gets said. It’s a hodge-podge of different things. But it filled the bill, and I think it was re-released more than any other chart I wrote for him.
JW: Were you surprised to hear it pop up in the movie, The Blackboard Jungle in 1955? BH: I was surprised when I got paid for it [laughs]. I hadn't seen the picture, so I didn’t know. I only knew about it when I saw the royalty statement. So I went to see the film. The composition is OK. It's not my favorite piece.
Music break: You can hear Invention for Guitar and Trumpet playing in The Blackboard Jungle as Glenn Ford enters the bar. Here's the scene, but start at 32:38...
JW: Bags on the Kenton Showcase album, is a fabulous piece of writing. BH: I wrote that for bassist Don Bagley. It was a feature for him. That was the first composition I wrote and arranged after I my writing style began to evolve. I was very happy with Bags, and the band liked playing it. They liked pretty much everything I did. It was a very good period. I still had innocence about my writing, you know?
JW: What do you mean? BH: The writing on Bags and other songs from that period, I’ll never be able to recapture that feel. In the early 1950s, I didn’t have the technique yet to be a showoff. All that music came straight from the heart. As you get older, you get wiser and along the way you lose your innocence. When you're young, you don’t have the smarts to get cute. You're just being inspirational. Also, back then, I was playing every night. I think being a steady jazz player had a big influence on my writing. It made me give the music an improvised feel, unless I was writing a dramatic piece, which is obviously not improvised.
JW: Without the technique, as you put it, how did you view such a monster band when writing? BH: I used to think of it as a large quintet. I wanted the horns to sound like they were playing together, as if reading written music. But I also wanted them at times to sound like they were improvising over the rhythm section. That’s what I did with the band all the time. Being a player is immensely helpful in understanding that feel and how to write so it actually happens.
JW: Were you a fast writer? BH: I wrote the Kenton arrangements fairly quickly. I remember when we were on the road, I would sit on the bus and, you know, if there was no conversation that involved me and no one was playing any music or anything, I’d think about charts and make notes. When I’d get to the hotel, I’d write them out. When we'd get to a gig, I’d check them out on the piano. There wasn't too much agonizing going on there.
JW: So you were pretty quick. BH: Yeah, at times. Once the score was done, I would send everything back to L.A., where Stan had a copyist who transcribed what I wrote for the individual musicians' parts. Then he'd send the parts back to the band, wherever we were.
JW: Who was your favorite in the trumpet section? BH: For jazz, Conte Candoli. His overall approach to jazz from early on was very mature. He wasn’t the most original player, but he could get the right feeling in practically any situation.
JW: What about Maynard Ferguson? BH: I didn’t really think of him as a jazz player, in the purest sense. Jazz is about ideas, and Maynard at times was more technical in his approach. He did a lot of improvising with his various bands, but he rarely played warm solos the way Conte did. He had a different style. He was a fabulous player and a great guy.
JW: Did your confidence grow as a writer in 1952 and 1953? Did you feel like you had a magic pen? BH: No I never did feel that way, thank god. That’s a very dangerous way to feel. Writing music and arranging never gets easy. I’ve had students ask me, "How long does it take before it gets easy?" I tell them, "Never." As soon as you get to one point in your development, you’re looking at the next level.
JW: Your arrangements for Stan Kenton Presents: Frank Rosolino in 1954 and 1955 are some of the most fabulous small-group charts. BH: [Laughs] Those were fun. That was a great group to write for. Frank was a terrific trombonist.
JW: Which of your Kenton arrangements are you most happy with? BH: For a long time it was What's New?, off the Contemporary Concepts album. I’m not so sure about that now. I like Stella by Starlight, with Charlie Mariano. There was another one I liked a lot, from the Kenton Showcase album...
JW: Solo for Buddy? BH: No, I hated that one. [Bill hums a few bars of the song he has in mind.]
JW: Kingfish? BH: Yes, that's the one. I was very happy with how the blues line came out on there.
JW: Did your workload for the Kenton band increase in the mid-1950s? BH: A bit. I was the chief arranger for the band by 1955 and part of 1956, so I was writing a lot then.
JW: How did you wind up leaving the band? BH: Almost overnight, Stan had some kind of weird shift in his outlook, and he fired trumpeter Al Porcino and me. I don’t know why. He possibly felt the music was getting away from him. Al was a die-hard fan of swinging music, as was I. I think Stan thought that his conception for the band was going out the window. That's just my idea of what happened.
JW: When he let you go, were you anxious about suddenly being out on your own? BH: Not really. By that time I started doing a lot of writing for different bands.
JW: Right around this time you arranged Around the Horn with Maynard Ferguson, an album with a glorious swinging feel. BH: When we made that record, it was kind of a studio band made up of a lot of Maynard's friends. It wasn’t until Maynard went to New York that he came up with that young, energetic band he used steadily. My things for Around the Horn were kind of laid back, in the Basie groove.
JW: If there's a Bill Holman sound around this period, what is it? BH: The lines, I think, would be the big tipoff. But there are some melodic things that are distinctive. Same with my overall style. I didn’t realize that my music was recognizable until probably the 1960s, when enough people told me they could recognize pieces of mine. That’s when I started paying attention and realized maybe there are some things that sound like me.
JW: To me, you're always building toward a punch. BH: That's true. I became very aware early on of the form that an arrangement needed to take to be exciting. I also learned what to leave out. Russ Garcia was the first hint I got of that. I took an arrangement to him one time and he looked it over and said, "You have enough music here for 10 charts. You have to learn how to be more economical and reuse your material."
JW: What did he mean? BH: I used to think that writing a jazz arrangement was like stream of consciousness, the same as a jazz solo. You just started playing and built on what you just played. Then you go on to the next thing and never repeat yourself. This was before I realized that jazz solos actually had form, too. After a few years it finally dawned on me that the ear wants to hear something it recognizes, so I started concentrating on the shape of an entire piece, the form, and how it builds to a climax. As a writer, you also want to avoid getting to the climax too soon. If you do, you’ll kill yourself trying to top it in the arrangement. And the result is monotony. So what you just said about building to a punch is a conscious effort on my part.
JW: It’s almost as if you're shifting gears in a car. BH: [Laughs] Well, I’ve always been aware of the audience, in that respect. I think that doing a lot of commercial writing since the late 1950s may have made me too overly conscious of the audience.
JW: What do you mean? BH: As a composer and arranger, there’s always a natural tendency to make things attractive, and music doesn’t always need to be attractive. You have to pull yourself back.
JW: Were there arrangements you had written for Stan Kenton that didn't get into the band's book? BH: I had pretty good luck. Everything seemed to go pretty well. You'd think I would have gotten too confident after a few years of everything going so well. But I didn't. I always had that trepidation when I took on new charts, which kept me pretty humble.
JW: Why do you suppose you retained your trepidation? BH: I’m not a good piano player, so I couldn’t write charts using the instrument. If you learn how to write and arrange on the piano, you usually have enough confidence to take in quickly what you want to do, play it and write it. But with that ability there's always the risk of becoming overconfident. Not being able to use the piano that way kept success in perspective for me.
JW: So when you wrote a chart, did you start by writing for the saxes, building everything else around them? BH: No. Just because I’m sax player and enjoy writing for saxes doesn’t mean I write them first.
JW: Do you start by writing for a soloist and build everything around that artist's personality? BH: That happens. If it’s a singer, I’ll work with that singer's style and approach.
JW: So if you’re not blocking out arrangements on the piano, where does Bill Holman start? BH: I look for an idea. If it’s an original piece, maybe I’ll fool around on the piano doing nonsense things. If I hear something that I like, I’ll make note of it and fiddle around with it for a while to see what I can develop. Or sometimes I’ll just start writing foolishness, and somehow the connection between my hand and my head kicks in and I start thinking of things. Maybe just one interval I’ve written down will suggest another note that will go with the interval or extend it. I’ll put that down and pretty soon I’ll have an idea that I can work with. I don’t start of thinking of the band or a section. If I’m writing a solo piece, I start out thinking of the soloist in mind. If it’s going to be an original, I have to go through the same process.
JW: You played bass sax on Johnny Richards' famed Something Else album in 1956. Were Johnny's arrangements difficult to play? BH: I don’t remember a whole lot from that date. I do remember being in the studio with that bass sax. I wasn’t a bass-sax player. I had to work pretty hard to make it perform.
JW: Why did Richards choose you to play bass sax? BH: He probably chose me because he knew me from Stan Kenton's band and thought I was a good player. I was just glad to get the gig. I only remember walking into the studio with that huge sax.
JW: In late 1957, you wrote all of the arrangements for The Gerry Mulligan Songbook Vol. 1. Those are breathtaking by any measure. BH: Originally, that album was supposed to be recorded in 1956, with the usual West Coast guys—probably Bob Cooper, Bob Gordon, me, Herb Geller and Art Pepper—but we never got that far. Something happened with Gerry's scheduling, and he couldn't make it out to California. So he put the session aside for a year. Which turned out great considering the players he got to record with him in New York—Lee Konitz, Allen Eager, Zoot Sims and Al Cohn.
JW: Did you enjoy writing those arrangements? BH: Very much so. I felt a kinship with Gerry and that I would be giving him a tribute if I did the tunes my way.
JW: Were you at the session? BH: No. They recorded it in New York. I was never in the studio.
JW: Were you happy with the result? BH: Oh, sure. My only complaint was that they added Freddie Green on guitar. I love Freddie but the feeling I wanted when I wrote the arrangements was not a guitar thing. A guitar playing a steady four-four rhythm nails down the rhythm section a little bit too tightly. The sound worked well for Basie for years, but I had a different feel in my writing. It's really a sax soli album, and the guitar makes the rhythm section behind the saxes sound too rigid instead of the looser feel I wanted.
JW: In 1958 you recorded In a Jazz Orbit, your compositions and arrangements with a monster band you assembled. BH: That was a great band. The personnel was really inspiring from a writer's standpoint. I liked the music, so we had fun recording it.
JW: You also liked—and still like—writing for singers, don’t you? BH: Yeah. For one thing, I like doing arrangements of well-known tunes. As an arranger, you can practically annihilate them, and the melodies will always come through, and people will recognize them. You have a lot more freedom without the danger of losing the listener. For another, it’s nice to hear a singer and imagine writing music to complement their phrasing and what they do vocally. It helps if the person is a good singer [laughs].
JW: Who did you particularly enjoy writing for? BH: Writing for Peggy Lee was enjoyable. She was a lot of fun. I had a crush on her from when I was in high school, so I managed to work through that to write her music [laughs].
JW: Did you ever tell her that? BH: Nah. Actually, I was thinking about that the other day. The last time I saw her wasn't long before she died. I thought I should have told her then, but I chickened out.
JW: Who are your other favorite singers? BH: I loved Sarah Vaughan. Carmen McRae's sound put me off for a few years. She had a...I don’t know. There was something in her style that wasn’t as soft and cushiony as Peggy's or as grandiose as Sarah's. It took a little maturing on my part to get her. Chris Connor also made some great records in the 1950s.
JW: Did you ever meet Basie? BH: Yes. I wrote an album for him in 1976 called, I Told You So. That’s when I met Basie and got to work with him.
JW: Did you tell him how much he meant to you? BH: No. I hoped that my music would show him that. But it was a bad time for that band. They had just come back from Christmas vacation and the band had three new trumpet players. The band never could sight read, and they didn't have enough time with my arrangements. They should have had those charts for three months rehearsing before Count recording them. Those days, in January 1976, were the first time they saw the charts. So the record is pretty sloppy to my ear. But it got done, and there are some good moments in it. I ran into Basie a couple of months later, and he was all hot to do another record. He was going to talk to Norman Granz about it, but he got sick and died before anything more could be done.
JW: Your writing and arranging has so much bounce. I always imagine that you wrote them while jumping up and down on a trampoline. BH: [Laughs] Well, that goes back to my fascination with rhythm, I think. Rhythm has always been a very important part of writing for me, which is probably why I don’t write more ballads.
JW: In 1960, you and your orchestra backed Anita O’Day on Incomparable. How was she to work with? BH: She was very difficult. She was afraid that we wouldn't be able to do what she wanted. She had definite ideas on how to do each song. Some of her vocal ideas were radical and some were easy to understand. I think she had had a bad experience with a previous arranger who didn’t get what she had wanted. [Editor's note: Billy May]. She was defensively offensive. I had just had a tragedy at my house a few months earlier. A neighborhood child had drowned in my pool. It was a terribly stressful time. But after we all got settled, the recording actually turned out OK.
JW: What exactly was the problem with Anita? BH: It was the planning and sketching down of her arrangements. This was before the days of digital recordings where the singer could take home a CD of the music to hear the charts. Back then, you worked together. She had a particular way of phrasing things that worked against the frame of my arrangements.
JW: For example? BH: Did you ever see the film, Jazz on a Summer's Day? Remember Anita scats through Tea for Two? If someone told you that's what they wanted to do on an album, as an arranger you'd have a hard time figuring out what to write behind them. So what she wanted and what I wanted was at odds. But we finally found a place.
JW: Tell me about the upcoming Tony Bennett holiday album due this Christmas. You wrote all the arrangements. BH: Tony used the Basie band plus Harold Jones, his full-time drummer, and Monty Alexander on piano. There were 11 charts. They're all very smooth. I also just finished arrangements for a new Natalie Cole album.
JW: So it's 2008, and here you are, writing for the Basie orchestra, the band in spirit you loved most as a kid. BH: I know. Everything in life comes full circle.
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.
