The Story Behind ‘Four Brothers’

The catchy sax-driven jazz standard had an intriguing two-year evolution

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.