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…

Marion Evans, one of the finest post-war, big-band arrangers based in New York whose work always aimed to astonish the listener without overwhelming the orchestra or the singer, died July 22. He was 100. [Photo above of Marion Evans in 2015 by Jack Firneno]

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Oliver Jones, a beloved Canadian arranger, organist, educator and jazz pianist with a pronounced, fleet keyboard style akin to Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson and Hank Jones, died on July 22 He was 91. [Photo above of Oliver Jones, courtesy of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame]

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Plas Johnson, a tenor saxophonist who was a jump-blues specialist in the late 1940s, an R&B sideman in the 1950s and a studio session player in the years ahead, often called upon to add a smooth, earthy touch on recordings such as Henry Mancini’s Pink Panther Theme, died on July 15. He was 94. [Photo above of Plas Johnson in the 1960s]

Johnson was largely self-taught by ear and picked up his early phrasing by mirroring the tone of his father, a professional saxophonist. In the early 1950s, he attended the Westlake School of Music in Los Angeles after serving in the Army starting in 1951.

The school was established in 1945 to capitalize on the GI Bill, which subsidized the tuitions of veterans. At Westlake, musicians skipped much of the classical training required by other more established music conservatories and was among the first to focus on teaching musicians how to be commercial arrangers, composers and players.

Johnson didn’t complete his schooling there due to his mounting recording schedule in Hollywood, thanks to the growing use of magnetic tape and recorders in studios and the 10-inch 33 1/3 LP, which was replaced by the 12-inch by 1955 and ‘56.

Early on in his career, Johnson played on R&B sessions with Art Farmer and other jazz players moonlighting on blues dates, pianist and arranger Ernie Freeman, and a virtual who’s who of players in soul, pop and jazz throughout his career. In the 1960s and ‘70s, he recorded extensively on boxes arranged by Billy May that re-recorded the books of swing-era big bands.

Johnson appeared on an extraordinary number of albums over the course of his career. Going through his discography, you find many jazz, R&B and jazz-pop albums that were huge sellers and many that are still little-known. One is Ray Anthony Plays Steve Allen, featured in full below.

I’ve pulled together 19 favorite tracks featuring Plas Johnson over the course of his lengthy career:

Here’s Johnson’s first recording session, backing singer Erline Harris on Jump & Shout. His brother Ray was on piano and the rest are unknown. It was recorded in New Orleans in 1949…

Here’s Johnson with vocalist Ike Lloyd singing The One I Love. He’s backed by Johnson along with Art Farmer and George Orendorff (tp), Earl Brown (as), Lloyd Glenn (p), Pee Wee Crayton (g), Billy Hadnott (b) and Bob Harvey (d) in 1951…

Here’s vocalist “Woo Woo” Moore singing Something’s Wrong, backed by Johnson, and Art Farmer (tp), Jewell Grant (as), Raymond Johnson (p), Roy Hayes (g), Eddie Williams (b) and Jesse Sailes (d) in 1953…

Here’s drummer George Jenkins playing Drum Tattoo, backed by Plas and Ray Johnson and Duke Harris (b) in 1955 (my apologies for the awful Drum Stuff cover along the way)…

Here’s Plas and Ray Johnson with an unknown baritone saxophonist, Duke Harris (b) and George Jenkins (d) playing Plas’s Blue Jean Shuffle in 1956…

Here’s the full rare album Scooby Doo, with Johnson soloing, backed by John Anderson (tp), John “Streamline” Ewing (tb), Dave Pell (bs), Raymond Martinez (reeds), Irving Ashby (g) Ad Alshbrod (b) Jewel Grant (d) and Jerry Leiber (dir) in 1956…

Here’s organist Earl Grant playing The Second Time Around with Johnson, backed by Al Hendrickson and Bobby Gibbons (g), Morty Corb (b) and Jack Sperling (d); the date is unknown…

Here are the Strollers playing Jumpin’ With Symphony Sid, featuring Plas Johnson (fl), Al Viola (g), Wilfred Middlebrooks (b) and Earl Palmer (d) in 1958…

Here’s the entire album Ray Anthony Plays Steve Allen, a killer, featuring Ray Anthony, Pete Candoli, Conrad Gozzo and Gene Duermeyer (tp); Frank Lane, Lewis McGreery and Tommy Pederson (tb); Skeets Herfurt and Ronnie Lang (cl,as); Bob Hardaway and Plas Johnson (ts); Med Flory (bs); John Bannister (p); Bobby Gibbons (g); Don Simpson (b,arr); Alvin Stoller (d) and the Skyliners (vcl) in 1958…

Here’s Johnson soloing on Spook!, from Henry Mancini’s More Music From Peter Gunn, in 1959. The band: Conrad Gozzo, Pete Candoli, Graham Young and Frank Beach (tp); Dick Nash, Jimmy Priddy, Hoyt Bohannon and Karl DeKarske (tb); Paul Horn (fl,as); Ted Nash (fl,pc,ts); Plas Johnson (ts); Gene Cipriano (saxes); Ronnie Lang (bs); John T. Williams (p); Victor Feldman (vib); Bob Bain (g); Rollie Bundock (b) and Shelly Manne (d)…

Here’s Plas and Ray Johnson on One Mint Julep in 1960, backed by Ernie Freeman (org), Rene Hall (g), Bill Pitman (g), Red Callender (b), Earl Palmer (d), strings and Gerald Wilson (arr)…

Here’s another little-known gem—Johnson playing on Pete Rugolo’s 10 Saxophones and 2 Basses. The track is a medley of Four Brothers and Early Autumn. The band: Skeets Herfurt, Bud Shank and Gus Bivona (as); Russ Cheever (sop); Bob Cooper, Plas Johnson and Gene Cipriano (ts); Bill Perkins (ts,bar); Chuck Gentry and Bill Hood (bassoon,bass sax); Jimmy Rowles (p); Howard Roberts (g); Red Mitchell and Joe Mondragon (b); Shelly Manne (d) and Pete Rugolo (arr,cond) in 1961…

In 1963, Johnson used a pseudonym—Johnny Beecher—and recorded a couple of albums for the Charter label, one of which was Sax 5th Avenue. Here he’s playing the title track backed by Emil Richards (vib), Bert Kendricks (org), Jimmy Bond (b) and Earl Palmer or Wayne Robinson (d)…

Here’s Johnson playing the title track from his 1964 album called Blue Martini, with an unknown orchestra conducted by John Neel…

Here’s Johnson soloing on Brunette in Yellow from Mancini’s soundtrack for the film The Party, in 1968…

Here’s Johnson playing Our Day Will Will Come from his 1975 album The Blues, with Mike Melvoin (p,el-p), Herb Ellis (g), Ray Brown (b), Jake Hanna (d) and Bobbye Hall (cga)…

Here’s Johnson playing That’s All from Wild Bill Davis’s 1990 album of the same name. The Super Trio featured Johnson (ts), Wild Bill Davis (org) and Butch Miles (d)…

Here’s Johnson on The Next Time You See Me, from Rhoda Scott’s From C to Shining C in 2006, with Scott (org), Carl Lockett (g) and Lucien Dobat (d)…

And finally, here’s Johnson in 1983 on the cable-TV variety show Steve Allen's Music Room reprising his 1963 solo on Mancini’s The Pink Panther Theme. I see Pete and Conte Candoli in the trumpet section and Med Flory in the reed section. See the comments below for the full personnel from Bill Kirchner…

A special thanks to reader James D. C. Barrall, a senior fellow in residence at the UCLA School of Law, for the heads-up last week.

For years, American bossa nova fans have come to believe that Astrud Gilberto was nudged into A&R Studio to sing two songs during the famed Getz/Gilberto recording session on March 18 and 19, 1963. It has long been assumed that her tentative, girlish singing voice on the album’s The Girl From Ipanema and Corcovado (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars) was tapped simply because she could sing Brazilian songs in English. [Photo above of João and Astrud Gilberto in 1959]

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After Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz is probably the best-known, household-name jazz star to emerge in the post-war years. I’d put him after Gillespie and just above Dave Brubeck and Chet Baker in terms of name recognition by the mass market. Which is interesting, since of the musicians I’ve just cited, he’s the only one who adapted another artist’s playing style—Lester Young’s. [Publicity still above of Stan Getz]

Getz began his recording career in 1943 with Jack Teagarden’s big band, followed by stints in the bands of Stan Kenton and Benny Goodman in the mid-1940s. He recorded as the leader of a small bebop group in 1946 before joining Woody Herman’s “Four Brothers” band, where he became a star. Prestige recorded him in 1949, billing him as Stan Getz Tenor Sax Stars and as the Stan Getz Quartet.

Throughout this period and beyond, he was probably among the best-known disciples of Young’s revolutionary laid-back style, which was heard during Young’s years with Count Basie and on his own after World War II. Getz idolized Young, adding a slickness to his sound over the years. Getz and Young never recorded or performed together, but they met on the road in 1959.

Their encounter occurred in Paris in February 1959—a day before Young was due to begin his eight-week engagement at Le Blue Note where Getz was wrapping up. Young reportedly said: “Nice eyes, Lady Getz, nice eyes,” a line Getz reportedly cherished. For lay jazz fans, I’ll translate: “Beautiful interpretation of my sound, pretty Stan.” Young would die on March 15.

Today, a batch of rare videos and recordings by Getz in the 1940s, ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s:

Here’s Stan Getz in February 1954 playing Out of Nowhere with the Gerald Wilson Big Band at the San Francisco War Memorial Building (now the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center). Tenor saxophonists Wardell Gray and Zoot Sims were also part of the concert…

Here’s Getz at Zardi’s Jazzland in Los Angeles in 1956, with Lou Levy (p), Max Bennett (b) and Gary Frommer (d)…

Here’s Getz with tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Don Byas, Barney Wilen and Guy Lafitte with Martial Solal (p), Arvell Shaw (b) and J. C. Heard (d) live in Cannes, France, on July 13, 1958…

Here’s Getz with Jan Johansson (p), Ray Brown (b) and Ed Thigpen (dr) in Dusseldorf, Germany in 1960 playing Out of Nowhere…

Here’s Getz at the London School of Economics on Nov. 14, 1966, with Gary Burton (vib), Steve Swallow (b) and Roy Haynes (d), colorized…

Here’s Getz with Brazilian vocalist Flora Purim in Paris in 1969, with Stanley Cowell (p), Miroslav Vitous (b) and Jack Dejohnette (d)…

Here’s Getz in 1970 playing Desafinado at the Jazzhouse Montmartre in Copenhagen, with Mike Pyne (p), Ron Mathewson (b) and Spike Wells (d)…

Here’s Getz on Side 1 of a test pressing for Concord Jazz, recorded at Coast Recorders in San Francisco on Jan. 29, 1982 with Jim McNeely (p), Marc Johnson (b), Victor Lewis (d) and Billy Hart (d)…

And here’s Side 2…

Bonus: Here’s the solo on Ralph Burns’s arrangement of Early Autumn in 1948 that made Getz famous. The first solo is by Woody Herman on alto saxophone, followed by Terry Gibbs on vibes and then Getz…

Cool is a funny thing. You can’t really define it, and the word has no real synonym. Yet you know cool when you see and feel it. If I were taking a stab at a definition, I’d say a jazz artist who made excellence look easy, was understated, wasn’t a follower (or advanced whatever he or she was following), didn’t work hard at hipness, had enormous charisma, and established his or her own artistic vision. [Photo above of Lester Young and Miles Davis]

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Abdullah Ibrahim, a South African jazz pianist also known as Dollar Brand who brought a distinct and gentle spiritualism to his compositions and improvisation, died on June 15. He was 91. [Photo above of Abdullah Ibrahim, courtesy of the Kurland Agency]

In 2011, I interviewed Abdullah for JazzWax. In tribute to his passing, I’m reprising my interview with him here, along with clips down below:

***

The name Abdullah Ibrahim (also known as Dollar Brand) may or may not be familiar to you. The South African pianist comes to jazz from creative pressures that are different from most American jazz artists.

Ibrahim grew up in the 1940s and ‘50s under the African country’s brutal segregationist system of apartheid, which was in place from 1948 to 1993. His music celebrates American jazz but echoes his own cultural background and hardships in Africa.

As is evident on his latest album, Sotho Blue, Abdullah works from a rich and gentle spiritual tablet.

I was so moved by Abdullah’s album Sotho Blue with his band, Ekaya, that I wanted to reach out to tell him so. From South Africa, Abdullah generously took time out to answer my e-mailed questions.

JazzWax: You started playing professionally in South Africa in 1949 and began recording with the Tuxedo Slickers Orchestra in 1954, yes?
Abdullah Ibrahim: Yes. The Tuxedo Slickers was a big-band based in Cape Town’s District Six—one of the communities that the government later in the 1970s declared for whites only. Sixty-thousand life-long black residents were forcibly removed to townships. Back then, we played concerts and dance shows, with opening acts, vocal groups that were inspired by the Delta Rhythm Boys, and traditional choral music.

JW: What type of music did you play with the Tuxedo Slickers?
AI: We used Tuxedo Junction as our signature tune. We also played Tommy Dorsey’s Song of India, Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade and songs by Joe Liggins, Count Basie and Erskine Hawkins, who co-wrote Tuxedo Junction. Years later, I visited Hawkins’ home in Birmingham, Alabama, to pay my respects. We also played Xhosa and Zulu traditional music, and a keyboard style called Marabi that combined jazz, blues and ragtime with our music. I still play this form today. When the New York members of my band, Ekaya, visit, they call it South African r&b chord changes. Back in the early ‘50s, the Tuxedo Slickers’ arranger Caleb Ndimande wrote original African charts. He also wrote arrangements of jazz songs. I recall a very complex chart of pianist George Wallington’s Lemon Drop. We had heard Dizzy Gillespie’s recording.

JW: Given South Africa’s horrible apartheid policy back in the ‘50s, how did you perform there and record? Did the government try to prevent this?
AI: The apartheid regime was ruthless in controlling our daily movement. You’d need permits to travel anywhere and you always faced imminent arrest. We sneaked out of safe houses to jam with other musicians. We also organized our own community concerts. Then the white-owned recording companies would rip off naive and uninformed musicians and record their music without acknowledgment or compensation.

JW: How did you become familiar with American jazz in South Africa in the 1950s?
AI: We listened to Voice of America jazz programs hosted by Willis Conover. We also listened to local weekly jazz programs on the radio as well as LPs.

JW: Where was one of the most unusual places you heard American jazz in South Africa?
AI: The local ice-cream van blared Louis Jordan and his Tympani Five.

JW: How did you develop your style?
AI: Our local jazz hero, alto saxophonist Kippie Moketsi, was classically trained and played elaborate pieces such as Mozart’s clarinet concerto. On LP, I heard pianists Jimmy Yancey, Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis. They inspired me to woodshed boogie-woogie, developing left-hand independence and synchronizing it with traditional rhythms, leaving my right hand free to fly anywhere.

JW: What is the origin of the name “Dollar Brand?”
AI: My original last name was Brand. I was given my nickname while hanging out in Cape Town Harbor as a teen. I’d befriend African-American sailors, who were manning merchant vessels. They gave me a few dollars and the name stuck. I changed my name in the mid-70s when I converted to Islam.

JW: When you moved to Europe in 1962, did you find audiences there more receptive to your style of jazz? How did you escape South Africa?
AI: In the aftermath of the Sharpville Massacre of March 1960, the regime became even more oppressive. We joined the wave of people, young and old, leaving the country in 1962. European audiences and musicians were very receptive to what I was playing. Some were hostile, especially when I became identified as an avant-garde musician. But it was the feeling of total creative liberation. It was a wonderful feeling to finally present music written in South Africa, without worrying about restrictions, the market and political and social pressures.

JW: Whose music did you relate to most?
AI: Duke Ellington’s. Duke, for us, was always the wise old man of the village. Our link with the African-American community started with our local African Methodist Episcopal church in South Africa, of which my grandmother was a founding member. Missionaries and bishops from Mother Bethel in Philadelphia had been sent there as missionaries. Duke’s music embodied for us our common struggle and experience.

JW: Ellington must have been viewed as more than a great musician, as a cultural hero.
AI: He was. Similarly, we also had celebrated Joe Louis’ victories. I recall listening over and over to King Joe, also known as the Joe Louis Blues, recorded by the Count Basie Orchestra in 1941, with Langston Hughes’ lyrics and Paul Robeson on vocals.

JW: Your new album [in 2011], Sotho Blue, has a beautiful, soulful feel. Where did you compose many of the songs?
AI: We try to be as sincere as possible in our daily lives and in our music. Compositions have no fixed location or time limits.

JW: Do you view the music you create as jazz or as a different form born in South Africa with South African traditions?
AI: In the words of our illustrious poet Rumi, “There is only one sound, everything else is echo.”

Here’s Abdullah Ibrahim playing Blue Bolero, Signal on the Hill and Once Upon a Midnight in 2022 as part of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series…

Here’s the complete Abdullah Ibrahim With Carlos Ward - Live At Sweet Basil Vol. 1. in 1983…

Here’s Abdullah and Max Roach on the full Streams of Consciousness album in 1977…

Here’s African Space in 1974…

Here’s Is Where It’s Happening from Abdullah’s Mannenberg album in 1974…

If you’re old enough to know the name Herbie Mann, you probably think first of the beatnik flutist at New York’s Village Gate in 1961. Or his 1962 and ‘63 bossa nova albums. Or his 1969 funk-fusion album Memphis Underground. Or the groovy shirtless guy on the cover of his 1971 album Push. Or his 1975 disco hit Hi-Jack.

Before all of that, way back in the…

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If asked to make a list of leading jazz photographers, most aficionados would probably miss including Steve Schapiro.

Best known for his photojournalism during the civil rights movement, his movie-star portraits and his on-set film stills for classics such as The Godfather, Chinatown and Taxi Driver, Schapiro also worked extensively for magazines. He took the famous cover portrait of Mia Farrow on the first issue of People in March 1974.

Schapiro admired Henri Cartier-Bresson, who pioneered street photography, and W. Eugene Smith taught him the technical side of photography, including film development and printing. Smith also helped him develop his own perspective. [Photo of Steve Schapiro in the 1960s]

Lesser known are the photographs Schapiro took of jazz legends at two New York performance venues—the Apollo Theater and the Village Vanguard—and in the studio during recording sessions for Riverside Records. Now, a stunning new book of his never-before-seen images has just been published by ACC Art Books with text by Richard Scheinin: Steve Schapiro: Jazz, Best of the Apollo, Village Vanguard and Riverside Sessions.

Schapiro took the images in 1961 and ‘62, just before his career took off. The ones in the book have never been seen before because there either wasn’t a market for them or because only one from the contact sheet was sold and the others remained in Schapiro’s archives. He apparently had to leaf through about 20,000 images to make selections for the book before he died in 2022.

Jazz’s golden years have been documented mostly through black-and-white images and occasional black-and-white shorts or films. Photos of musicians wound up on album covers and in jazz magazines, so we’ve been stuck with the same limited number of pictures of these artists over the decades.

What this means is we don’t really know these musicians beyond the iconic images with which we’re most familiar. Most fascinating about the new book is we get to see our favorite jazz artists in human situations—waiting, reading, napping, lifting weights and more. As Sonny Rollins says in the book’s introduction, “It’s hard for me to look through these pictures with anything but great feeling.” [Photo of Sonny Rollins by Steve Schapiro courtesy of ACC Art Books]

I felt the same way, and I know what he meant. In addition to the nostalgia Sonny must have felt, he was seeing a different side of artists he knew well and worked with. In this regard, he was meeting them for the first time through the photographs.

Why should we care? Because these artists were exceptional, and the images give us a finer sense of their personalities, who they were off stage and at rest. Every single image in this 315-page hardcover, coffee-table book offers a fresh perspective of artists we thought we knew well from photos on album covers.

In particular, I loved the series of Bill Evans images, which include alternate takes of his first trio in 1961 backstage at the Village Vanguard. Also captivating are Sonny Stitt playing the tenor with a leg bent and raised, and the one of him kissing his wife, Pamela; and a series of Billy Strayhorn images. [Photo of Sonny Stitt kissing his wife, Pamela, by Steve Schapiro, courtesy of ACC Art Books]

There are photos of Sonny Rollins lifting weights backstage at the Apollo in a T-shirt; candids of Count Basie; one of Riverside producer Orrin Keepnews pretending to throw a left jab at Red Garland, whose head has playfully snapped back; a rare photo of Frank Strozier and one of a young Ray Barretto; and a delightful image of Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis grinning broadly with his tenor in his lap. [Photo of Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis by Steve Schapiro, courtesy of ACC Art Books]

Leafing through the book was like looking at the images beamed back to earth by the astronauts who recently circled the moon. We know the moon is round and pocked with asteroid craters. But seeing the back side for the first time gave me chills. It didn’t look much different than the moon’s face we see all the time, but it was the moon without makeup on, the one napping in the back. As with the other side of the moon, this book shows us a new, unseen side of famed jazz musicians, and all provide us with a greater sense of their humanity.

The images also show us the love these musicians had for each other and the joy they felt playing this music. In many ways, Steve Schapiro was William Claxton East. All of the musicians he photographed were cool. His images make them even cooler. [Photo of Elvin Jones by Steve Schapiro courtesy of ACC Art Books]

Steve Schapiro died from pancreatic cancer at his home in Chicago, on January 15, 2022, at the age of 87.

You can buy the book here. If you’re remotely curious, spring for it. Just don’t wait until it’s out of print and selling for $1,000 on Ebay.