Hi Marc! This is one of the greatest posts I ever read. Looking forward to listen again to those musical treasures and share the post with my jazz friends. Félicitations pour ce magnifique travail de recherche !
You tell a wonderful story Mister Marc, you really do.
An embarrassment of riches....Buddy Rich with the Four Rich Brothers: burn(s) the barn all right!
Miss Marian: easy on the eyes, on the ears! Anita O'Day: Oh! Wow!
Dave Lambert & the Singers with Jon and TICO (Teacho) Wiltshire. Haven't heard that name since the early sixties when he was working with/for Atlantic Records...far from least, Mister Pepper.
Big surprise: The Four Brothers on the VIK label? I believe that VIK was originally set up by RCA in the mid-fifties as a budget label for pop music releases, at least in the US. So I suspect that VIK LK 1096 was probably a European release.
If it does get any better than this, I'd like to know where to get it. Thanks Marc.
Chaloff is the one I follow out of that sax section. The baritone chair in Four Brothers is mostly a color, and eight years later on Blue Serge he is carrying a whole record by himself. Short career, but the distance between those two dates is something.
This is an absolutely fascinating post. I knew the Gene Rowland angle, but hadn’t heard that recording which is a total antecedent. It’s like the Dead Sea Scrolls. A real treat to hear. As is the Giuffre interview. I didn’t know he attended North Texas State in Denton. Ironic that so much jazz history has been curated there since. Having lived there for a couple of years, I detected his accent immediately. And with all due respect to Don Lamond, I agree Buddy Rich accents “Four Brothers” to new heights. The only other version I would add is from the 1959 album “Saxes, Inc” on Warner Brothers. Hal McKusick does an amazing job spelling a trumpet lead on soprano saxophone. If you listen to the Newport set of Woody from 1966, you can hear Stan Getz say at the end of the tune, “I can’t see a f’ing thing without my glasses.” Which I find ironic, because Stan had a photographic memory. Zoot Sims famously said Stan closed the book after his first week on the Second Herd. He had memorized it.
Morning Peter. I've added to the post but I thought I'd let you and others posting comments know. I included the Buddy Rich personnel (killer band and just 14 chairs that sound like 50):
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).
This is a fascinating post, Marc, with some wonderful history & music (the tempo on Marian’s version - never realized she had those chops! 😵💫🤩 ), & your excellent personal touch. Thank you. Did you maybe have an analogous post on another Herman classic:
This is another very special post from which I’ve learned a lot - especially thanks to the 1989 interview Jimmy Giuffre gave on WNYC. I’ve also just watched and listened to all your clips. 👍
Here is a version of "Four Brothers" that features the trombones rather than the saxophones - a recording by the German big band Peter Herbolzheimer Rhythm Combination & Brass in 1982.
Here’s another album inspired by “Four Brothers, with the addition of another tenor, the great Brew Moore - whose recorded work I have precious little of. The Brothers portion on Side A (1949) features compositions by Mulligan & Cohn. And all this unison sax stuff ultimately gave us Med Flory’s remarkable SuperSax recordings!
Hi Marc! This is one of the greatest posts I ever read. Looking forward to listen again to those musical treasures and share the post with my jazz friends. Félicitations pour ce magnifique travail de recherche !
My pleasure, Dan. So glad you enjoyed, and thanks for the kind words.
You tell a wonderful story Mister Marc, you really do.
An embarrassment of riches....Buddy Rich with the Four Rich Brothers: burn(s) the barn all right!
Miss Marian: easy on the eyes, on the ears! Anita O'Day: Oh! Wow!
Dave Lambert & the Singers with Jon and TICO (Teacho) Wiltshire. Haven't heard that name since the early sixties when he was working with/for Atlantic Records...far from least, Mister Pepper.
Big surprise: The Four Brothers on the VIK label? I believe that VIK was originally set up by RCA in the mid-fifties as a budget label for pop music releases, at least in the US. So I suspect that VIK LK 1096 was probably a European release.
If it does get any better than this, I'd like to know where to get it. Thanks Marc.
Chaloff is the one I follow out of that sax section. The baritone chair in Four Brothers is mostly a color, and eight years later on Blue Serge he is carrying a whole record by himself. Short career, but the distance between those two dates is something.
This is an absolutely fascinating post. I knew the Gene Rowland angle, but hadn’t heard that recording which is a total antecedent. It’s like the Dead Sea Scrolls. A real treat to hear. As is the Giuffre interview. I didn’t know he attended North Texas State in Denton. Ironic that so much jazz history has been curated there since. Having lived there for a couple of years, I detected his accent immediately. And with all due respect to Don Lamond, I agree Buddy Rich accents “Four Brothers” to new heights. The only other version I would add is from the 1959 album “Saxes, Inc” on Warner Brothers. Hal McKusick does an amazing job spelling a trumpet lead on soprano saxophone. If you listen to the Newport set of Woody from 1966, you can hear Stan Getz say at the end of the tune, “I can’t see a f’ing thing without my glasses.” Which I find ironic, because Stan had a photographic memory. Zoot Sims famously said Stan closed the book after his first week on the Second Herd. He had memorized it.
Morning Peter. I've added to the post but I thought I'd let you and others posting comments know. I included the Buddy Rich personnel (killer band and just 14 chairs that sound like 50):
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).
This is a fascinating post, Marc, with some wonderful history & music (the tempo on Marian’s version - never realized she had those chops! 😵💫🤩 ), & your excellent personal touch. Thank you. Did you maybe have an analogous post on another Herman classic:
“Early Autumn?”
Glad you enjoyed Lee. Here's "Early Autumn"...
https://www.jazzwax.com/p/history-of-early-autumn
This is another very special post from which I’ve learned a lot - especially thanks to the 1989 interview Jimmy Giuffre gave on WNYC. I’ve also just watched and listened to all your clips. 👍
Here is a version of "Four Brothers" that features the trombones rather than the saxophones - a recording by the German big band Peter Herbolzheimer Rhythm Combination & Brass in 1982.
https://youtu.be/2b5Lp6whWCw?is=z_EUXhZ_yJyV_eXI
Here’s another album inspired by “Four Brothers, with the addition of another tenor, the great Brew Moore - whose recorded work I have precious little of. The Brothers portion on Side A (1949) features compositions by Mulligan & Cohn. And all this unison sax stuff ultimately gave us Med Flory’s remarkable SuperSax recordings!