A few little known facts about the Village Vanguard, New York’s oldest jazz club [photo above of Deborah Gordon, current owner of the club, daughter of the original owners, Max and Lorraine Gordon]:

• The Vanguard wasn’t Max Gordon’s first club in the city. The Village Fair Coffee House on Sullivan Street opened in 1932 as a place to read poems. It closed a year later.

• Next came space at 1 Charles Street. It nearly was called the Village Underground.

• The name that all agreed on—the Village Vanguard—was suggested by Harry Simon, an electrician and jack-of-all-trades.

• This version of the club opened on Feb. 26, 1934 and featured Village poets.

• The original seats were small barrels, with large barrels used for tables.

• Running afoul of city ordinances, Gordon had to run a gauntlet of issues before deciding to move the club to a new location.

• Gordon reflected on that decision: “I knew if I was going to get anywhere in the nightclub business, I’d have to find another place with two johns, two exits, 200 feet away from a church or synagogue or school, and with the rent under $100 a month.”

• He found basement space at 178 Seventh Ave. South, a former speakeasy shaped like an isoceles triangle.

• Gordon originally wanted it to be a “quiet, gentle place.” The bohemian club first featured poetry readings, then comedians.

• Jazz wasn’t regularly featured at the club until 1957.

• On November 3, 1957, Sonny Rollins was recorded by Blue Note for the landmark live album A Night at the Village Vanguard. It was the club’s first live commercial recording.

These are just samplings of the many fascinating facts you’ll discover about the club’s evolution and staying-power in the new book Last of the Jazz Joints; An Incomplete History of the Village Vanguard. The lavish and handsome new coffee-table entry by Deborah Gordon, daughter of Max and Lorraine, who ran the club after Max’s death in 1989 until her own passing in 2018, is a treasure. Deborah today operates the storied club.

The 348-page book is co-authored by Jed Eisenman and Eric Allen and features a red cover that can only be called Vanguard cherry-burgundy. It’s highly organized, beautifully written and loaded with photos and memorabilia.

My three favorite personal Vanguard experiences:

1. Staying for all three sets of the Red Garland Trio in the winter of 1978, speaking with Red after and telling him my favorite recording of his was You Better Go Now from his Rojo album for Prestige in 1958. He then said, “Wow, right. I totally forgot about that one.” His next album, Feelin’ Red, recorded in May of that year, included a new rendition of the song.

2. Staying for all sets of the Bill Evans Trio in June 1980, seated at the last table on the left closest to the bandstand, which placed me right behind Evans at the piano.

3. Interviewing Tony Bennett at the club about 10 years ago while sitting opposite each other in directors’ chairs for a Dutch documentary. I’m still not sure if that film was ever released.

The new book is ideal for reading in front of the fireplace while you listen to live albums recorded at the Vanguard. This one should be on everyone’s list for the holidays. To buy, go here.

Here are 10 great tracks recorded at the Vanguard:

Here’s Sonny playing I’ve Got You Under My Skin from A Night at the Village Vanguard in November 1957…

Here’s the Kenny Burrell Trio in September 1959 on A Night at the Vanguard playing Will You Still Be Mine…

Here’s Gerry Mulligan & the Concert Band at the Vanguard in December 1960 playing Johnny Mandel’s Black Nightgown…

Here’s the Junior Mance Trio from the Junior Mance Trio at the Village Vanguard, recorded in February 1961…

Here’s the Bill Evans Trio playing Detour Ahead in June 1961…

Here’s John Coltrane playing Chasin’ the Trane from At the Village Vanguard in November 1961…

Here’s the Dizzy Gillespie Sextet at the Vanguard playing Tour de Force in October 1967…

Here’s the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra playing Bob Brookmeyer’s Samba Con Getchu, recorded in 1967…

Here’s Woody Shaw playing Escape Velocity from Stepping Stones: Live at the Village Vanguard in August 1978…

And here’s the Bill Evans Trio playing Emily from the box set Turn Out the Stars recorded in June 1980, three months before Evans’s death…

Following Ray Charles’s success in 1962 with Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music and Charley Pride’s first top 10-hit by a black country star in 1966, a greater number of black R&B singers took a shot at covering the Nashville sound. Among them was O.C. Smith. [Photo above of O.C. Smith]

After country composer Bobby Russell wrote Little Green Apples in 1968 for Roger (“King of the Road”) Miller, three artists took a shot at the song that year: Miller, pop vocalist Patti Page and Smith, whose version was released by Columbia that September. His soulful version reached No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and R&B charts and sold a half-million copies by November 1968.

Here’s the single…

Born Ocie Lee Smith in Louisiana in 1932, Smith moved with his parents to Little Rock, Ark. After his parents’ divorce, he moved to Los Angeles with his mother. Smith graduated with a psychology degree from Southern University and then joined the Air Force, where he began entering talent contests.

After his discharge, he wound up on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, a CBS radio and TV show. His appearance led to a contract with Cadence Records in 1955. But his attempts to become a star went flat after his singles for the label and MGM failed to chart.

The poor showing wasn’t due to a lack of talent. Smith not only had movie-star looks but he also had a warm, deep velvet voice perfect for jukebox singles. Much of the material he was given to record was shot-in-the-dark junk.

Count Basie saw Smith’s promise and hired him to tour with the band starting in 1961, replacing Joe Williams who had left in January of that year.

Last week, I featured three video clips of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross on Britain’s ITV in 1962 singing three Basie songs from their album Sing a Song of Basie, released in 1958 (go here).

Last week, Peter Coppock found another ITV clip featuring Lambert, Hendricks & Ross singing the Basie band arrangement of Everyday I Have the Blues, featuring O.C. Smith as lead vocalist.

Here it is (and I’ve added it to the original post)…

Smith remained with Basie until 1965, and recorded for other labels but without breakthrough hits. Just as Columbia was getting ready to release him from their contract in 1968, Smith recorded Little Green Apples as a hail-Mary attempt to land a hit. The song not only was a massive triumph for Smith, it also earned composer Bobby Russell the 1969 Grammy for Song of the Year.

Smith then recorded songs that had middling success on the Billboard adult contemporary, R&B and pop charts but nothing matched Little Green Apples.

But fame did not elude Smith. In the 1980s, a little-known regional dance movement called Carolina beach music (or the Carolina shag) was revived.

The Carolina shag is believed to have originated along the Atlantic coast in Cherry Grove Beach, S.C. during the 1940s. It then received its name at Carolina Beach. The dance was an off-shoot of the Carolina Jitterbug and its predecessor, the Little Apple—the white version of the Big Apple, which had originated in Columbia, S.C., in 1937.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, Carolina beach music became popular again at coastal clubs and boardwalks as uptempo Motown and other soul records were released.

Here’s a collection of 1960s Carolina beach music…

Back then, the Carolina shag was a partner dance done to an uptempo beat and a merger of the stroll and swing. The shag became the official state dance of South Carolina in 1984 and the official popular dance of North Carolina in 2005. Shag contests began in the early 1980s.

Here’s what the Carolina shag looks like…

O.C. Smith had many Carolina beach hits. The biggest was Brenda. Here he is performing the song at the Third Annual Beach Music Awards, on Nov. 19, 1988, at Reynolds Coliseum on the campus of North Carolina State University…

Smith’s 1986 album Whacha Gonna Do is worth a listen. It was a huge success on the charts and featured Carolina beach hits: Brenda, You’re the First, My Last, My Everything and Spark of Love. Other shag classics by Smith include The Best Out of Me, After All Is Said and Done, Doin’ the Shag, I’m in Love and Save the Last Dance for Me, which topped the local Rhythm n’ Beach Top 40 chart.

You can listen to Smith’s iconic catalog on his Beach Music Greatest Hits album on Spotify.

O.C. Smith died on Nov. 23, 2001, of a heart attack at age 69. Shortly after his death, South Carolina governor Jim Hodges proclaimed June 21, 2002, “O.C. Smith Day.” Smith was posthumously elected to the Carolina Beach Music Hall of Fame in November 2002.

Bonus: Here’s O.C. Smith’s complete Together (1977) album…

Here’s Smith on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1971…

And here’s a collection of Smith’s beach music, one track at a time (this album is killer; to listen on Prime or buy via digital download, go here)…

For much more on O.C. Smith, go here.

Three children’s TV shows stand out for their strong commitment to jazz: Sesame Street, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and the Charlie Brown holiday specials, of which there were 13 classic ones out of 53 created over the decades.

Vince Guaraldi scored or composed original music for five of the Peanuts specials during his lifetime (he died in 1976). The one that stands out, of course, is A Charlie Brown Christmas Special (1965). Often overlooked and certainly on par with the latter is It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966).

As Ted Nesi pointed out last week in an email…

“Ever since the lost soundtrack for It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was released in 2022, the music is everywhere on social media this time of year. Even my wife pointed out that every other Halloween-themed Instagram post seems to use music from the album.

“Everyone associates the songs with Vince Guaraldi, but the soundtrack was orchestrated by John Scott Trotter. He was Bing Crosby’s arranger for years, including on the 1942 and 1947 Decca recordings of White Christmas, the preeminent Christmas song. [Photo above of John Scott Trotter]

“When he took on the Halloween project, Trotter probably never imagined he’d wind up the orchestrator of music that would rival White Christmas in popularity.

“By the way, that’s a great jazz sextet on the Great Pumpkin soundtrack—Guaraldi on piano with Monty Budwig on bass, Colin Bailey on drums, John Gray on guitar, Ronny Lang on woodwinds and Mannie Klein on trumpet.” [Photo above of Vince Guaraldi]

So, in celebration of Halloween two days early and the 60th anniversary of this album, here’s the entire jazz soundtrack with incidental music for It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown…

By the time Frank Sinatra joined the Tommy Dorsey Band in January of 1940, Dorsey had been leading a swing orchestra since 1935 and had been performing professionally since 1919 in eastern Pennsylvania. [Photo above of Dick Jones]

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Peggy King, a jazz-pop singer who worked with the Charlie Spivak, Ralph Flanagan and Ray Anthony big bands before making an early leap to television, where her charm and fashion-model looks transformed her into a singing sensation at the dawn of the 1950s, died yesterday, on Oct. 25, at age 96.

Her name may not be familiar to most jazz fans, but in television’s infancy, most shows were hosted by name singers and comedians. The TV and movie industries were competitive rivals then, jockeying for Americans’ spare time. As a result, film actors weren’t given TV host slots. Singers and comedians were better suited for long stretches of live TV and they were far more entertaining than the actors might have been, drawing larger audiences.

In the case of male comedians, they couldn’t do the show alone. Gags and bits ran only so far. Besides, married couples at home tended to be more loyal to shows that featured couples. King was among the most popular of these female co-stars, a girl-next-door type who was enormously talented as a singer and actor, and who became known mid-decade as “pretty, perky Peggy King.”

She appeared opposite Mel Torme on his first show in 1952 and George Gobel from 1954 to ‘57. Then she was a frequent guest on virtually every other host’s show before she married in 1961. But King wasn’t just a pretty face. She often sang a solo on each show as well as a duet with the host or a famous guest, ranging from Frank Sinatra to Tony Bennett.

Here’s my complete 2015 interview with King (a special thanks to drummer Bruce Klauber for alerting me to King’s passing):

JazzWax: Where did you grow up?
Peggy King: In Greensburg, Penn. My parents told me I was “kiddie singing” the minute I could talk. I was an only child and my real name was Peggy King. Many people thought I had changed it. When I was in my teens, I found out I was adopted. I never thought of tracking down my real parents, since my adopted parents were such good people. My birth mother did try to make some contact with me, but I wasn’t interested. It was really too late by the time I found out.

JW: Who was your birth mother?
PK: My adoptive mother had three sisters. One was much younger and could sing. By the time I was in my mid-teens, I figured it out based on her voice. My Aunt Gladys was my mother. My parents—Margaret and Floyd—were married only four months when they adopted me. During the Depression, a lot of adoptions took place as families helped care for children of relatives who couldn’t play that role emotionally or financially. It was a matter of survival, and those who had the means to raise a child to keep it within the family often stepped forward.

JW: What did you tell your Aunt Gladys?
PK: In my teens, I had to sit my birth mother down and tell her that we weren’t going to be reunited. I told her, “You’ve always been my favorite aunt. You can’t be my mother.” She understood. What I got from her was her singing voice.

JW: Did you sing in school?
PK: Yes, I was in all the school plays. Singing to me came naturally, like waking up. I only had had two lessons—that was it. When I was 12 in 1942, we moved to Ravenna, Ohio. My father had been offered a good-paying job during the war at the Ravenna Arsenal. He was in charge of handling the ammunition. There wasn’t a day growing up that I didn’t worry about him. After we moved, I sang in a choir at Kent State, which was a four-mile bus ride away from our house. It’s a wonder I didn’t end up a classical singer, but we didn’t have any money for lessons.

JW: What did you do after you graduated high school?
PK: I graduated at age 16, and when I was 18, I went to Cleveland to sing on the radio during the day and at the Cleveland Hotel nightclub at night. The best part about the gig is that I was given a free room at the hotel. Without that room, I wouldn’t have had enough money to send home to help my parents. Then one night in 1950, Charlie Spivak came into the club and offered me a job.

JW: Was it tough working in that band?
PK: The work was nonstop. The only problem with Spivak was that he was getting a divorce and he hated women. Tommy Leonetti was the band’s male vocalist, and I learned phrasing from him. I always had this ability to learn lyrics and songs instantly. I had total recall when it came to lyrics, which was a great help later in live television. A year later in ‘51, I joined Ralph Flanagan’s orchestra. Someone on the Spivak band had come from Flanagan’s orchestra and told me there was an opening. Frankly I was tiring of Charlie. All of the work with Flanagan was on the road, which was relentless. Flanagan was an odd guy, though. He had his own plane—he didn’t ride with us. When we played Atlantic City, he’d go up in his plane and throw promotional leaflets out to let people know about the gigs.

JW: How long were you with Flanagan?
PK: A year. While I was with Flanagan, we were playing the Paramount Theater in New York when I heard that Mel Torme was holding auditions at a nearby studio for a TV show. He needed a girl singer. When the Flanagan band took a break during the feature movie, I went up to the studio to audition. They had already dismissed the tall girls, since they didn’t want a singer who towered over Mel. When it was my turn, I came into the studio and Mel and another guy were in the control booth. I sang The Boy Next Door backed by the group Mel had planned to use on the show—the Red Norvo Trio. When I finished, this guy came out of the booth, picked me up and kissed and hugged me. He said, “I’m Hugh Martin and I co-wrote that song. Besides Judy [Garland], I’ve never heard anyone else sing it like that.”

JW: You got the job?
PK: I did. The Mel Torme Show went on the air in 1952. All I had to do is pick up the rest of my clothes back home in Ohio. At the time, I was dating Knobby Lee, one of Flanagan’s trumpet players. When Knobby and I returned to New York, we got married. For me, I wasn’t madly in love but I needed someone around me for safety. I couldn’t be in New York alone. I was very young—19. But the marriage was a mistake. We married in ’51 and stayed together for two years.

JW: You were on TV early.
PK: It was the dawn of television, and there was no model for what we were doing. The first Mel Torme Show was on NBC. It was live, often on the fly and pretty scary. They didn’t’ know what they were doing. The cameramen were all staring at each other. But it all came together pretty fast. Mel (above) was a control freak, which helped a lot. He showed me what to do, and within a week I was comfortable.

JW: How were you able to ease into TV so quickly?
PK: Without the two previous years of steady big-band experience, I doubt I could have handled the fast-paced pace of that TV show. Red Norvo liked my singing and helped me a great deal. Mel had been my hero in the late ‘40s. He was young, but he had this sophisticated, relaxed jazz sound. We got along great. Mel and I sang a duet on each show and I sang one alone. I’d often learn which songs we were going to sing the morning of the show.

JW: How did you wind up at MGM?
PK: In 1952, I went into New York’s Blue Angel for a run. One night, Arthur Freed, the head of MGM, came backstage and offered me a contract. I knew it was a big shot for me, so I told Knobby and he came out to L.A. with me. There was a gap between the date of the offer and the start date, so I went out on the road with the Ray Anthony Orchestra. Being alone out on the road was tough.

JW: What did they teach you at MGM?
PK: I had the best vocal coach there—Bobby Tucker. My voice always had a young sound, and Bobby said, “Let’s stick with what you’ve got since others don’t have it.” Everyone was wonderful to me at Metro. Tucker was very supportive and said, “I can’t teach you anything you don’t already know,” so he focused on teaching me every major standard in the American Songbook. I also worked with speech coach Gertrude Fogler to get rid of my Pittsburgh accent.

JW: Who were your friends at MGM?
PK: I met Debbie Reynolds almost immediately. I was having a tap lesson and she was, too. But when I opened the box with my shoes, I saw that my dog had chewed up the laces. Debbie offered me a pair, since we were the same size—5½. We became good friends. She asked me where I was staying. I told her at a hotel. She invited me to stay at her house for a couple of weeks. I was there for two months until I found a small room in Beverly Hills. MGM was in Culver City, and I couldn’t drive. Fortunately, Robert Burton, an extra who lived in my building, gave me a lift each day.

JW: You were constantly being compared to Judy Garland, weren’t you?
PK: I was. Everyone thought I looked and sounded like her. I guess I did a little, but it wasn’t intentional. That was just me. I actually met Judy just after I signed my contract. I was in the MGM commissary getting lunch and sat down at the same long table where she was eating. She turned to me and said, “Are you the one who looks like me?” I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Yes, I guess so.” She said, “You don’t look like me—you’re really pretty.” I felt terrible for her. I paused, sort of taken aback, and then said, “I think you’re pretty.” She reached over and squeezed my hand. The poor woman had no self-esteem. The studio had destroyed her to control her.

JW: What did you do at MGM?
PK: I was an extra, but I was constantly the last girl cut from a film. Then in 1953, when my contract was up, I heard about a new local NBC TV show where the girl had to be able to sing and interact with the audience—sort of like a singing Vanna White. It was a two-hour live show, and I got to sing. I had my own dressing room and everyone in town was watching me on TV. I was thrilled.

JW: What was your big break?
PK: One day I got a call from someone I knew who was rehearsing The Bing Crosby Show. The girl singer had become ill, so I ran over to fill in. When I rushed into the lobby, I asked the first person I saw where the show was. I said, “I’m looking for Mr. Crosby.” The guy said, “Well, you’ve found him.” He didn’t have his hairpiece on and I thought he was the janitor. On the set, John Scott Trotter was the orchestra leader. He said, “What do you want to sing?” I said let’s do two Rodgers and Hart songs. When I was finished, Bing said, “Wow, you’re as good as Uncle John said you were.” I felt so good about that.

JW: What happened after the rehearsal?
PK: When I returned home, I received a call from John. He said he wanted me to audition for George Gobel, who was starting a Saturday night network TV show. I flipped. I said, “I’m not experienced enough to do that.” John said, “Don’t worry, I’m the orchestra leader. You’ll be fine. I want to see you at the studio.” So I went. George played guitar, sang country songs and made jokes. He was a natural for TV. The writers wrote wonderful stuff for him. He was loose and I was just the right height—5 feet, 1½ inches. I got the job. On the show, George wore lifts, so I was slightly shorter. I was always afraid he was going to fall but he never did.

JW: Were you nervous as the co-star of The George Gobel Show? Even though TV was in its infancy, it was a live network show reaching millions of people.
PK: By the time I got there in ‘54, I was at home in front of a TV camera. For the next 2½ years while the show was on the air, I performed with every major actor and singer, from Jimmy Stewart to Frank Sinatra. It was a major network show and the ratings were huge. One of the show’s writers came up with “Pretty Perky Peggy King” and it stuck. I didn’t mind. My aim was to save enough to buy my folks a house—and in 1954 I did.

JW: They must have been overjoyed.
PK: They were. My father wasn’t from a fancy family. He worked his whole life. Mother’s parents had died and she was raised in an orphanage. When I became famous, people followed them down the street. My fame scared them and I felt bad.

JW: You must have known Dinah Shore while at NBC.
PK: I did. My dressing room was right next to hers. She was so lovely and very much a lady. She could not have been kinder to me. If she passed my dressing room while I was rehearsing, she’d always pop in with a kind word. She’d say, “I love how you did this or that.” It’s kind of mind-boggling that Dinah would say that to me.

JW: In the early days of television, you must have been something of a celebrity in Los Angeles, as the suburbs and TV viewership grew.
PK: It’s funny, I actually was. Debbie Reynolds and I remained friends after I left MGM. One night, while I was still on George Gobel’s show, Debbie, Jane Powell and I went to the movies. As we walked down Hollywood Boulevard to the theater, people on the street recognized only me. Back then, people lived for TV. It was new and convenient and more intimate than the movies. The three of us laughed our heads off. Debbie and Jane were happy not to be recognized.

JW: You also recorded singles and albums for Columbia. How did that happen?
PK: After three months on the George Gobel Show, Mitch Miller called to sign me to Columbia. I recorded my first album in Hollywood with Jerry Vale—Girl Meets Boy (1955), with the Percy Faith Orchestra. At that point, I had been on TV and in plays as well as in films. I had done it all and was very comfortable in the recording studio. When we sang songs from the album on TV, Jerry was a little nervous. He had never been on TV before. We did our duets holding hands.

JW: You’ve always had a young-sounding voice.
PK: Yes, there was always a teenage quality to my voice. People told me that all the time. It’s probably because I never smoked. I like that people thought I sounded like the girl next door. That’s the way I was portrayed on George’s show. I might add, George was the dearest man in show business. He wasn’t in love with himself. The first month we were on, when people in the press were calling me and my picture was in one of those Hollywood magazines, George said, “You’re really getting famous.” He never felt angry or envious. He knew that the more popular I became, the more popular his show would become.

JW: You also worked with your share of top comedians. Was that tricky—making sure you didn’t laugh too soon?
PK: Jack Benny was my favorite. The strange thing is he was anything but tight with his money. He was a very generous guy. I did a five-week tour with him. He thought I was a good straight-man. It was hard not to laugh at Jack.

JW: How did you avoid doing that and blowing his jokes?
PK: It has to do with being an actress. You develop a sense of timing. I learned my timing from Jack and Bob Hope. The trick is to listen very carefully to what’s being said, even though you’ve rehearsed it. When Jack or Bob delivered the line, I had a way of counting to myself, “One, two—then I’d make a little face,” which would compound audience laughter. You have to put the punch line out of your mind and imagine you haven’t heard it before. Otherwise, you’d instinctively telegraph it. Working with Jack was a little harder than most because he made those great faces on his own. So I had to avoid laughing and wait until he finished completely before making my face. I also did this with TV, in general. I just thought of it as radio with everybody staring at you. I got to the point where I didn’t think about the lens much. I just thought about what I was doing.

JW: I’m curious about early television. How would a typical week on the Gobel show go?
PK: We’d come in on Tuesday afternoon and just read through the script. Then we’d take the script home and work on it at home. I’d fall into it and read my lines out loud to remember them. Once I saw a script and went through it, I knew it cold. My brain just worked that way. On Wednesday, we’d start blocking—marking off where each of us would stand, who’s going to talk when and what’s going to happen next. Everyone had a different color tape. Mine was red and George’s was blue. On Thursday we’d work with John Scott Trotter and just the band’s rhythm section. Friday was a full dress rehearsal, which left me with very little time to get a dress fitted. Eventually I had a model with my proportions stand in for the fittings. Saturday was the show, when we often had a guest.

JW: Did you ever sing a duet with a famous guest and the other person forgot a line?
PK: Plenty of times. I can remember staring into famous faces and suddenly saw nothing there. Singing a duet is like performing in a live play. You don’t have a chance to take anything back. In radio at least you have a script in hand. On TV, I’d see panic crawling across the other person’s face. That’s when I’d try to throw them a line. Or I would sing the line right in their face or I’d sing their line. I was so used to looking out for trouble and thinking on my feet.

JW: You started appearing on Steve Allen’s shows in the late 1950s. What was he like?
PK: Steve was a wonderful, generous man. My favorite clip was Steve introducing me on my birthday in 1958. Steve was more of an actor than George [Gobel]. I always felt like Steve’s little sister. He was so natural. Maybe I learned that from him. I’d try to imitate the way he behaved. I also learned timing from Steve—how long to hang onto something and how long to stare at someone before moving on. Steve was so cool and natural it was almost like he was going off to sleep. Bing was like that. It’s the look in their eyes. Zero panic, full control.

JW: You were in Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy (1955). How did you meet them?
PK: I used to open for Bud and Lou when they did their act. They had tracked me down after they saw me at MGM. They asked me to go on the road with them. Nobody was better at getting audience to commiserate with him than Lou. That wasn’t easy, and I had to watch that with George. Linger too long with that audience glance and it looks like you’re making fun of the other person. What I finally ended up doing is making myself seem younger than George. This made me George’s little sister rather than his love interest. I did it without being sexy and avoided flirting with him.

JW: Did you ever want to host your own show?
PK: No, I never gave it much thought. Dinah was unhappy doing her show. In fact, I never knew anyone who was happy headlining a TV show. They never could relax because everything was on their shoulders. On the George Gobel Show, it wasn’t my show—it was George’s. So I could be more relaxed. At one point NBC talked to me about a show. I told them I just liked being the girl on the show. When I saw what George had to go through, I realized that you didn’t have a life at all. Many ended up drinking. My father was an alcoholic and I wanted to stay away from that.

JW: Your recordings for Columbia were straight-up pop, yet you could swing.
PK: It was my big band experience. I wanted to record jazz, and you can see that I could do it when I was on Bobby Troup’s Stars of Jazz in ‘58, when I was engaged to Andre Previn. I always had that touch of jazz. The problem is Mitch Miller wanted me to stay a little girl. Mitch would give me these awful songs and tell me no one else could sing them. I learned later that they were actually the songs nobody else wanted to sing.

JW: So you were trapped.
PK: For whatever reason, Mitch didn’t think of me as a woman but as a child. Mitch wanted a commercial sound from me and that was it. He had arrangements written that confined me to the next Judy or a 14-year-old. Jo Stafford once told me that Mitch was tough to handle on a record date. You simply didn’t have any say. When I recorded for him, I’d do four songs in three hours and there were no second takes. It had nothing to do with me. There was Mitch and there was the rest of the world. Once you signed a contract, it was hard to get out of it. Not until I was able to get away from Columbia and record on my own was I able to sing jazzier material.

JW: How did you meet your husband, Sam Rudofker?
PK: One day in 1960, when I was performing at Mr. Kelly’s in Chicago, columnist Irv Kupcinet brought him in. Irv said later it was like watching someone fall off a roof. He told me Sam (above) said, “She’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” I think Irv did that deliberately, to fix us up. I knew within a week that I was going to quit the business and marry him. In 1961 we married.

JW: Were you happy to give up show business?
PK: Frankly, I had had it up to here with the business. I wanted a family. After I met Sam, I knew he was the one. He had this thing about me. I just knew I’d be safe and happy with him, that he’d give me the freedom to be me and that he’d be nice to my parents. Sam owned After Six, the Philadelphia formal-wear company. In his hands, I knew I’d be in good care. He had two boys when I met him. I knew I wanted to have children with him. I was 30. Sam was so charming. The best man I ever knew. Nothing icky about him. He had quite a vocabulary and was witty. We had two children—a son, Jonathan, and a daughter, Suzy. I lost Jonathan about 10 years ago. He was a brilliant violinist. My daughter is wonderful and beautiful.

JW: How would you prefer to be remembered?
PK: As an actress who sings. I’d like to think someone would read that.

Here’s Peggy King on the Steve Allen Show in 1958 (the sound is a little rubbery)...

Here’s Peggy King in 1955 on What’s My Line? (at 19:15)...

Here’s King on The Stars of Jazz in 1958…

Here’s a career-spanning video...

And here’s Let’s Fall in Love on the 2015 album Songs a la King (Fresh Sound), with producer, arranger and pianist Andy Kahn, bassist Bruce Kaminsky and drummer Bruce Klauber…

Yesterday, I posted on Dave Lambert & Co.’s demo recording session in 1964 that was filmed by documentarian D.A. Pennebaker and two of his associates. One of the songs recorded but not captured on film was Old Folks…

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Ernie Wilkins was a grand-slam arranger who wrote for all of the major bands in the 1950s, from Count Basie to Harry James. These orchestras were in their prime then, still playing swing but delivering it with a massive kick. They could handle Wilkins’s charts because their musicians were seasoned and top-notch. [Photo above of Ernie Wilkins]

Among Wilk…

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Following my interview with vocalist Jo Harrop on Monday, I received quite a few emails from readers asking for a definition of northern soul. I had mentioned it in my post several times. [Photo above of northern soul dancers at the Wigan Casino in Wigan, England, in the mid-1970s]

In short, northern soul was a working-class music and competitive dance t…

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Once the second American Federation of Musicians’ recording ban ended in the fall of 1948, big bands returned to the studios. While musicians had refused to record in an effort to pressure record companies to make payments into a union retirement fund, bebop became a national sensation. [Photo above of Chubby Jackson in 1947 at New York’s Onyx Club by W…

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John Coltrane nearly poisoned me on jazz. Back in 1972, friends in high school recommended his album Kulu Sé Mama, but I couldn’t make much sense of the music. I said to myself, “Gosh, if this is jazz, I’m out.” Then I decided I was going to listen to it over and over until I understood it. That took about a dozen listens, none of them particularly enjoyable. [Photo above of John Coltrane by Esmond Edwards for the cover of Coltrane]

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Gene Bertoncini, a finger-style jazz guitarist who recorded extensively in the 1960s with flugelhornist Clark Terry, flutist Herbie Mann and multiple big bands but didn’t start recording as a leader of small groups until the late 1970s, when he teamed with bassist Michael Moore, died on August 29. He was 89. [Photo above of Gene Bertoncini by Michael G. Stewart for Acoustic Guitar magazine]

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Four Brothers is one of the most thrilling big-band pieces in jazz. According to Tom Lord’s Jazz Discography, it has appeared on shellac and vinyl nearly 250 times, and that doesn’t include many unrecorded performances. The song’s name is apt, since it was originally written and arranged for four tenor saxophones, all playing the melody in harmony and soloing separately, with each “brother” taking a turn. [Photo above, from the left, of Stan Getz, Al Cohn, Sam Marowitz, Zoot Sims and Serge Chaloff courtesy of Louise Sims]

The piece was composed and arranged by Jimmy Giuffre, whom I posted about last week. Giuffre used the chord changes to Jeepers Creepers. The catchy jazz-pop song was written by Harry Warren (with Johnny Mercer’s lyrics) for the 1938 movie musical Going Places and introduced by Louis Armstrong in the film…

Four Brothers first became a hit when Woody Herman’s Second Herd recorded it for Columbia in December 1947, just before the 1948 start of the American Federation of Musicians’ second recording ban.

But how did the song evolve?

According to an interview that Giuffre gave to radio hosts David Garland and John Zorn in October 1988 on New York radio station WNYC-FM, the idea for an ensemble led by a close-harmony saxophone section originated with a rehearsal band piloted by composer-arranger Gene Roland. This band was formed to try out new arrangements and keep musicians in shape after the breakup of Woody Herman’s First Herd in 1946. The Roland band rehearsed in Manhattan at Vincent Nola’s studio space above Lindy's Restaurant on 49th St. and Broadway.

Here’s the Giuffre interview…

The essence of Four Brothers can be heard in Gene Roland’s Oh, Them Saxophones, along with three other tracks. According to Jim Czak (here), a recording engineer and producer at Nola Recording Studios atop the old Steinway Building on 57th St., these songs were likely captured by Vincent’s son, Tommy, who “had a radio board and would record the rehearsals.”

Billed as Gene Roland’s Boppers, the band featured Gene Roland (tp,v-tb,p); Danny Blue, Dan Baxter, Jerry Lloyd Hurwitz and Dale Pierce (tp); Al Cohn, Stan Getz and Zoot Sims (ts); Gerry Mulligan (bar); Gene DiNovi (p); Red Kelly (b) and Tiny Kahn (d).

The songs’ recording date has long been attributed as May 17, 1949, which I believe is incorrect. My guess is it was recorded in May 1947, before Herman’s Second Herd was formed. The “7” in 1947 on the tape box must have looked like a “9,” so decades later, when the tape surfaced, it was incorrectly copied over as 1949.

Here’s Oh Them Saxophones…

As Giuffre relates in his interview, when Getz, Sims and Cohn were hired by Herman for the new band, they told him about the sound that Giuffre had developed. Herman then asked Giuffre to write and arrange a song driven by saxes for his band.

This from Tyler King’s post on Giuffre in 2025…

“In Joseph Kastner’s 1973 book The Swing Era – Into the 50s, Jimmy Giuffre summarized his experience with Herman when that tune was composed. He made sure to first give credit to composer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist Gene Roland for his role in experimenting with various tenor saxophone combinations. Roland played piano and wrote for Woody Herman’s Second Herd, a group in 1946 that included the Four Brothers: Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Serge Chaloff, and Herbie Steward. Giuffre recalled:

“Gene was in New York in the late 1940s, and would hang out at a place called Nola Studios, where all the bands rehearsed and musicians met. For some reason, there were a lot of good tenor players around, there must have been a hundred of them. The usual sax section at the time was two altos, two tenors, and a bari. Gene decided to write a four tenor sax piece. He liked the sound very much and everybody did. When he came out to Los Angeles, we got together a band with four tenors.

“Woody said to me: “Why don’t you write a piece featuring the four-sax sound?” I did, and called it Four Mothers. Woody changed that to Four Brothers. It took months before the band could play it right. Though it’s a four-tenor sound, Herman didn’t use four tenors [in that band], so it was played by three tenors and a baritone. He later used the Four Brothers sound all through his Third Herd repertory.”

The original four brothers were Herbie Steward, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims (ts) and Serge Chaloff (bs). Sam Marowitz played first alto saxophone on the track as part of the broader orchestra, but he wasn’t part of the Four Brothers.

The Second Herd personnel on Four Brothers featured Shorty Rogers, Stan Fishelson, Bernie Glow, Marky Markowitz and Ernie Royal (tp); Earl Swope and Ollie Wilson (tb); Bob Swift (b-tb); Woody Herman and Sam Marowitz (as); Herbie Steward (as,ts); Stan Getz and Zoot Sims (ts); Serge Chaloff (bar); Fred Otis (p); Gene Sargent (g); Walter Yoder (b); Don Lamond (d) and Jimmy Giuffre (arr).

Here’s the Herman hit…

A month later, in January 1948, Harry Babasin and His Potential Philharmonics were recorded by the Air Forces Radio Service performing Four Brothers live, with Giuffre, at McCormack Hospital in Pasadena, Calif. The septet: Dale Pierce (tp); Herbie Harper (tb); Hal McKusick (as); Jimmy Giuffre (ts,arr); unknown (p); Harry Babasin (b); and Blinky Garner (d).

For years, this recording by Babasin never turned up when I typed his name into YouTube along with the song title. After doing some digging into Giuffre’s discography, I discovered that Four Brothers had been added in 1983 to Jimmy Giuffre Trios 1957-’58 (Raretone, a UK label). It’s probably the purest version of the song, with McKusick and Giuffre.

Here’s the track…

And finally, what might be the best version of all, here’s Four Rich Brothers by the Buddy Rich Band (with Giuffre and Hal) recorded in October 1948. The band: Dale Pierce, Charlie Walp and Tommy Allison (tp); Mario Daone, Rob Swope and Bob Ascher (tb); Hal McKusick (as); Jimmy Giuffre, Ben Lary and Warne Marsh (ts); Harvey Lavine (bar); Jerry Schwartz (p); Teddy Kotick (b) and Buddy Rich (d). My guess is that it was the barn-burner that Giuffre had long envisioned…

Bonus: Here’s Marian McPartland with Vinnie Burke (b) and Joe Morello (d) in 1953….

Here’s a rare single on Avalon recorded in 1955 by the Dave Lambert Singers with Jon Hendricks singing his lyrics to Giuffre’s Four Brothers. Part 1 is followed by Part 2 (a slow start on both; stick with it)…

Here are three of the original four brothers (with Al Cohn in for Stan Getz) reprising the song in 1957…

Here’s Art Pepper on his Plus Eleven album in 1959, with Al Porcino and Jack Sheldon (tp), Dick Nash (tb), Vince DeRosa (fhr), Art Pepper and Charlie Kennedy (as), Bob Enevoldsen and Richie Kamuca (ts), Med Flory (bar), Vince DeRosa (fhr), Russ Freeman (p), Joe Mondragon (b), Mel Lewis (d) and Marty Paich (cond)…

Here’s Anita O’Day in a Tokyo studio in 1963 scatting through Four Brothers…

And here’s Stan Getz, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims and Gerry Mulligan at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1966.

One of West Coast jazz’s forgotten heroes was composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Jimmy Giuffre. He played tenor and baritone saxophones and clarinet, and became famous after composing and arranging Four Brothers, a huge hit for Woody Herman’s Second Herd in 1948. We have alto saxophonist and clarinetist Hal McKusick to thank for Giuffre’s rise and recordings in the 1950s and beyond. As Hal told me in 2007 [photo above of Jimmy Giuffre]…

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Cassandra Wilson, a husky-voiced, meditative jazz singer and songwriter who took on music from many different genres, processing them through a soulful, studied approach, died on Sept. 1 at age 70. The cause of death was not disclosed. [Photo above of Cassandra Wilson courtesy of the National Endowment for the Arts and photo by Mark Seliger]

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If you’re reading this post, you belong to a special club. People who love jazz share more than camaraderie and a fondness for individual albums or musicians. Jazz fans absorb and process the music in ways most people don’t understand or find difficult to do.

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Ask 100 jazz fans who Calvin Massey was and most will draw a blank. Massey began as a jazz trumpeter and arranger, recording just one leadership album, Blues to Coltrane, for Candid, in 1961. Among his early compositions was Fiesta, recorded by Charlie Parker in 1951. Others were recorded in the 1950s, but the bulk came in the 1960s. His songs have been recorded by a wide range of artists, from John Coltrane and Lee Morgan to McCoy Tyner and Archie Shepp. [Photo above of Cal Massey]

Born in Philadelphia in 1928, Massey played trumpet and studied with trumpeter Freddie Webster, an early influence on Miles Davis. Massey played in bands led by Jay McShann and Jimmy Heath, and behind Billie Holiday. In the 1950s, he gigged mostly in Brooklyn and recorded on George Shearing’s Satin Brass in 1959, a Capitol LP arranged by George Shearing, Hal Rood and Jimmy Jones.

His compositions have been recorded by musicians on Prestige and Blue Note as well as by Philly Joe Jones, Horace Tapscott and Archie Shepp, among others. He toured with Shepp from 1969 until 1972, when he died of heart attack at age 44.

Massey’s songs were highly melodic and often modal, becoming ferocious vehicles for hard-bop musicians. When you hear one, the melody is often so catchy you likely wonder who wrote it. And when you find out, you probably have wondered what else he composed.

I put together 18 of Massey’s songs:

Here’s Charlie Parker playing Massey’s Fiesta, recorded in 1951 and released in 1957 on a Verve album of the same name…

Here’s John Coltrane playing Bakai from Coltrane, his first leadership album, for Prestige, in 1957…

Here’s Herbie Mann playing Trinidad from Just Wailin’ in 1958…

Here’s Nakatini Serenade by John Coltrane from The Believer on Prestige in 1958…

Here’s Lee Morgan playing These Are Soulful Days on his Lee-Way album for Blue Note in 1960…

Here’s Coltrane playing The Damned Don’t Cry, arranged by Romulus Franceschini for Coltrane’s Africa/Brass sessions in 1961 and released on Trane’s Modes in 1979…

Here’s Father and Son for Freddie Hubbard’s Here to Stay on Blue Note in 1962…

Here’s Lee Morgan playing A Pilgrim’s Funny Farm for his The Rajah (Blue Note) in 1966…

Here’s Lee Morgan playing A Baby’s Smile from his Caramba! album in 1968…

Here’s Lee Morgan playing Taru, What’s Wrong With You? from his album Taru in 1968…

Here’s Cedar Walton playing Quiet Dawn from his Soul Cycle album in 1970…

Here’s Cedar Walton playing Lady Charlotte from his Spectrum album in 1968…

Here’s Houston Person playing Funky London from his Blue Odyssey album in 1968…

Here’s Jackie McLean playing Toyland from his Demon’s Dance album in 1970

Here’s McLean on the same album playing Message From Trane…

Here’s McCoy Tyner playing I Thought I’d Let You Know from his Expansions album in 1970…

Here’s Archie Shepp playing The Cry of My People from his album of the same name in 1973…

Bonus: Here’s Cal Massey’s sole leadership album in 1961 (left unreleased until 1987)…

As far back as medieval times, well-known songs were routinely recycled as new compositions with slight modifications. Then came copyright law in 1710 to protect composers and a pivotal case in 1946 that allowed bebop to flourish in the 1940s. [Photo above of Dizzy Gillespie on Manhattan’s 52nd Street in 1947 by William P. Gottlieb]

The first landmark legal case over music copyright was Britain’s Bach v. Longman. Johann Christian Bach—the youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach—and composer Karl Friedrich Abel took London music publishers James Longman and Charles Lukey to court in 1777. At issue was whether printed music was protected under the copyright regulations outlined in Britain’s Statute of Anne, enacted in 1710.

The court ruled in Bach’s favor, stating that printed sheet music did qualify as “writing” by its composer and was protected. America’s Copyright Act of 1790 was modeled after the Statute of Anne and protected original works, such as books and maps. Music was added to the Act in 1831.

Britain’s D’Almaine v. Boosey (1835) was the first case of a music publisher being successfully sued for plagiarism. The court established that turning copyrighted musical themes into dance arrangements did indeed constitute copyright infringement.

In the years ahead, the focus of music copyright law centered on song melodies. Cases brought to court by composers who claimed new songs used their original song’s chord progressions were routinely thrown out. Courts viewed chords as unprotected under copyright law, since they were akin to words vs. original ideas articulated in paragraphs. By contrast, melodies were considered creative thoughts and therefore protected.

Then came Arnstein v. Porter (1946), which ironed out the nettlesome issue of what constituted similarity between two songs and set standards for proving song theft.

Ira Arnstein was a professional songwriter who claimed that Cole Porter had sent spies to steal his songs, notably The Lord is My Shepherd and A Mother’s Prayer. The specific Porter hits at issue were Don’t Fence Me In, Begin the Beguine, I Love You, You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To and My Heart Belongs to Daddy.

The trial court ruled on behalf of Porter, who claimed he had never heard Arnstein’s songs and that there was no substantial similarity between the melodies. Arnstein appealed and lost, but the case led the appellate court to establish two elements for copyright infringement:

First, there had to be evidence that the defendant being sued had to be aware of the work (through widely circulated sheet music and recordings).

Second, there had to be evidence that the songs were substantially similar. In other words, chords by themselves were not grounds for copyright infringement, only original melodies of published compositions.

This case allowed the emerging bebop movement in 1946 to flourish. Bebop songs that featured original melodies using the chord progressions of standards were immune from royalty payments or litigation. While this trend had started among early bebop musicians in 1945 with Parker’s Ko-Ko (Cherokee) and Dizzy Gillespie’s Groovin’ High (Whispering), Parker and Gillespie were on thin ice, which is probably why they masked the chord progressions with fast, complex melodies.

Arnstein V. Porter in 1946 clarified what was problematic and what wasn’t. Not only could original bebop melodies be published without fear of royalty payments and litigation but they also could be parlayed on recordings, sheet music and in concert.

And those new bebop melodies were now protected. So rather than relying solely on the blues as a rights-free foundation for melodies, more bebop musicians began using chord progressions of popular songs to create newly improvised melodies.

It’s doubtful bebop musicians knew that this case had opened the door for them. More likely, music publishing companies with attorneys informed them or a record label that handled their publishing filled them in on what was fair game.

In the wake of the case, dozens of bebop songs began surfacing in the 1940s that were based on the chord progressions of standards, giving rise to what we now call contrafacts.

These contrafacts included Charlie Parker and Benny Harris’s Ornithology, (which was based on the chord changes to How High the Moon); Miles Davis’s Donna Lee (Back Home in Indiana); Parker’s Scrapple From the Apple (Honeysuckle Rose); Parker and Dizzy Gillespie’s Anthropology (I Got Rhythm); and Miles Davis’s Dig, Clifford Brown’s Sweet Clifford and Thelonious Monk’s Bright Mississippi (Sweet Georgia Brown).

To show you how ingenious bebop musicians were using the chord progressions of standards to create new melodies, let’s listen to a few pairings:

Here’s Benny Goodman’s How High the Moon in 1940, the first recording of the song…

And here’s Charlie Parker and Benny Harris’s Ornithology in 1946…

Here’s the first recording of Back Home in Indiana by the Sterling Trio in 1917…

And here’s Charlie Parker and Miles Davis in 1947 playing Davis’s Donna Lee, which uses the same chord progressions…

Here’s the first recording of Sweet Georgia Brown, by Ben Bernie, in 1925…

And here’s Miles Davis’s Dig, in 1951…

Many people who have never heard a single album by tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins know he spent two years on New York’s Williamsburg Bridge practicing. It’s one of jazz’s most romantic stories—a frustrated artist taking a commercial break to be out in the open getting to know himself better and advance his art form. But were those two years a fruitful use of Sonny’s time? [Photo above of the Williamsburg Bridge walkway by Alexandra Charian]

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René Urtreger, a French jazz pianist who, as an adolescent, was hidden from the Nazis during the German occupation of Paris and went on to become one of the country’s most accomplished players, died on July 16 at age 92. [Photo above of René Urtreger]

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Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Tony Bennett’s birth, on Aug. 3, 1926. The pop-jazz singer died on July 21, 2023, following a seven-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease. [Photo of Tony Bennett in Central Park]

I interviewed Tony five times for the Wall Street Journal, four times in his art studio on Central Park South and once by phone. Tony, of course, was a huge admirer of jazz, viewing it as America’s most pure form of music.

About 10 years ago, Tony asked me to give a talk at Frank Sinatra High School, which he founded in Astoria, Queens in 2001. I gladly obliged and had a fun time.

Tony also could be very funny, adding a touch of street if he had to. When I told him some years ago that in 2010 I had sung I Left My Heart in San Francisco in the Venetian Room of San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel, where he had first sung the song in 1961, he was momentarily puzzled.

I told him the space was about to be renovated, the lights were off and no one was in there when I slipped in and got up on the purple-lit stage and sang the introduction (“The loveliness of Paris…”). Tony flashed that smile and said, “How’d that go for you?” I told him I got a “sanding ovation,” that there was a sander among the construction equipment in the back. He had a good laugh.

A couple of years before the pandemic, he asked me to interview him at the Village Vanguard one winter afternoon for a Dutch documentary; I was off-camera facing him on a director’s chair. I don’t know whatever happened to that project, but when Tony tried to pay me, I waved him off. He sent me a signed print of his painting of the Golden Gate Bridge as a thanks.

What made Tony special was his powerful street-singer voice, his enthusiasm for performing, his ability to reduce a massive concert hall to a club, his admiration of jazz and improvisation at the highest levels and his signature endings on ballads that built to a crescendo. And his kindness.

So today, in celebration of Tony’s 100th, I’ve selected 11 of my favorite performances that are sure to move you:

Here’s Tony at 25, singing Because of You on the Ed Sullivan Show in September 1951…

Here’s Tony in June 1958 on the Steve Allen Show singing Pennies From Heaven (move the time bar to 1:47) in a rare outdoor shoot….

Here’s Tony in 1963 recording So Long, Big Time in the studio, with Harold Arlen, the composer, conducting…

Here’s Tony at his absolute peak singing If I Ruled the World on the Ed Sullivan Show in March 1965, with the Woody Herman Orchestra featuring Bobby Hackett on cornet…

From the same show, here’s Who Can I Turn To…

Here’s Tony singing The Shadow of Your Smile on TV’s 38th Academy Awards presentation in 1966 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles, honoring songs released in 1965. It won an Oscar for best original song…

Here’s For Once in My Life on the Ed Sullivan Show in November 1967...

Here’s Yesterday I Heard the Rain, with music by Armando Manzanero and English lyrics by Gene Lees, from the album of the same name arranged by Torrie Zito in 1968…

Here’s Tony in London singing The End of a Love Affair, arranged by Robert Farnon for the album The Good Things in Life, in 1972, with John Bunch on piano…

Here’s Tony in the studio in 1986, with Henry Mancini conducting Life in a Looking Glass from the 1987 film That’s Life!, with the great Chuck Findley on flugelhorn…

And finally, here’s Tony singing The Way You Look Tonight, accompanied by the magnificent Bill Charlap on piano, in 2015…