Woody Herman: 1964

 

A Tast Of Honey

Woody Herman: 1964

Produced by Jack Tracy

Recorded November 20, 22 and 23, 1963 at A&R Studios, New York City

Engineer: Phil Ramone

Philips Records PHM 200-118

Clarinet and Alto Sax: Woody Herman

Trumpet: Bill Chase, Billy Hunt, Paul Fontaine, Gerald Lamy, Danny Nolan

Trombone: Phil Wilson, Henry Southall, Kenny Wenzel

Saxophone: Sal Nistico, Carmen Leggio, John Stevens (tenors) Nick Brignola (baritone)

Rhythm: Nat Pierce (piano), Chuck Anders (bass), Jake Hanna (drums)

Sal Nistico appears through the courtesy of Riverside Records

From the back cover: There are only two kinds of bandleader. One is a businessman, who plays "what the public wants to hear" and is interchangeable with his accountant. The other is an artist, who plays (or coaxes his sidemen to play) what he wants to hear, and hopes he can find a manager to market the results. To the businessman, a night on the bandstand is a day at the office. To the artist, the money is important but secondary; he is never really happy except when his band is playing.

Because  artistry isn't how well one plays but how honestly, the artist's band has to sound like the kind of person its leader is. Stan Kenton has got to be tall, wide-armed, sonorous and tense; his music is. Count Basie is twinkling, graceful, flexibly firm, and undisturbed by thunder. Duke Ellington's music is Duke; suave, theatrical, complex, ironic, melancholy, angry, unpredictable, grand.

Woody Herman? Well, let's see.

Woody is anti-sentiment/. He is so opposed to personal involvement that his emotionalism sometimes shows.

He is blunt and direct. Whereas most bandleaders imply it's all for the audience's own good, Woody's attitude is openly, if pleasantly, go-to-hell. The brass section is his firing squad.

He's a liberal disciplinarian, as long as the band shows up, blows its best. and stays legal. It has to be like this if the band is going to be as free as it is and yet stay within limits. Any band is a bushel of soundable egos. Freudians all, they can hate the leader simply because he's Daddy, and from the tables down Junior's to the place where Charlie dwells ex-Hermanites who now only stand at bars once tried to bar Woody from stands. But when his band is blowing it can go as far as it wants, because Woody isn't part of the herd, he's got the reins in his hand, and you can hear this in the way his clarinet enters after everyone else has fought, saying "Now, now, children, remember Daddy has muscles too." This became even more effective after he shaved his beard off.

Apart from the temporary insanity of the beard, Woody is totally unaffected and natural. Showmanship happens, yes, when it belongs; he drops it in like a four-bar break. If he is adaptable, he is also a tasteful adapter: a good cook can always get part of a meal out of cans, and Woody often adds his unique spices to high-quality staples labeled Ellington, Basie, or Lunceford.

Put this all together, along with agility, perception, musicianship, drive, stubbornness, endurance, far-out humor and eminent sanity, and you don't get a Boy Scout – he is simply not to  one trusted alone with your lead trumpeter – but you do get Woody Herman, or his music. which, in return to the point, is about the same thing. 

Also from the back cover: Hallelujah Time, arranged by Nat Pierce, opens as a fast wirebrush stomp, becomes a church meetin' singalong, and ends in a Zoot-and-Al tenor chase by Carmen Leggio and Sal Nistico, in that order. The changes occasionally hint at Vincent Youmans's 1927 Hallelujah, but the spirit is more like what that one was supposed to be about.

Deep Purple is a best-brands sampler. Nat Pierce's arrangement swings the sax section from rubber bands, Lunceford style. Woody enters playing alto a la Johnny Hodges (Duke Ellington, listening to a Herman record with me once, asked "Are you sure that isn't Johnny?"). Carmen Leggio solos 16 on tenor, Sal Nistico another 16. The brasses and Pierce's piano go Basie, Woody puts on Vincent Lopez, and in a typically kooky Herman coda the num- ber screams and drops.

Jazz Hoot is Bill Holman's answer to ABC-TV. Drummer Jake Hanna clog- dances throughout, Billy Hunt (trumpet), Phil Wilson (trombone), and Sal Nistico (tenor) skipping over Hanna's flailing heels before Father Herman's clarinet signals meditation.

Lead trumpeter Bill Chase gives us a good new arrangement of Taste of Honey to play. Woody on alto; Carmen Leggio, tenor; Bill Chase, stratosphere. Satin Doll (or, Is That Handsome Creature in the Metropole Mirror Really ME?) is a Nat Pierce orchestration; Nat at the piano; Bill Chase, trumpet; Chuck Andrus, bass.

After You've Gone (or, The Curse of Drink) is another Bill Holman orches- tration, as nutty as a brandied fruitcake. The celeste introduction prepares you for Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers, Woody's subtone clarinet recapitulates the theme even before it's played, then it's a furious Roy Eldridge tempo di cracked record all the way. Solos by Woody, clarinet; Paul Fontaine, trumpet; Sal Nistico, tenor. A full stop, then back to ad lib celeste, subtone clarinet, and out. Father, dear father, come home with me now.

The Strut (or, Who Killed Burlesque ?) is scored by Bob Hammer for an Ellingtonian trumpet-with-plunger intro, with Paul Fontaine on trumpet, Phil Wilson playing Tricky Sam trombone; and a tease coda. My Wish, from Meredith Willson's musical "Here's Love," extends the new Herman ballad library by one more. Woody (alto), Phil Wilson, and Billy Hunt solo over Jake Hanna's merciless two-beat. As with Deep Purple, the Nat Pierce treatment of My Wish recalls his memorable Days of Wine and Roses chart.

Johnny Coppola's Cousins, beginning as if it wants to be boogie woogie, spots Phil Wilson, Billy Hunt (muted), and Woody's clarinet riding over a section spat. Cousins was previously recorded by Woody in 1956 as Blues Groove. The new ending subtitles the piece Oh For God's Sake Drop the Other Shoe!

– WILLIS CONOVER Conductor of the Voice of America's worldwide jazz program "Music USA."