George Russell Sextet In K. C.

Lunacy

George Russell Sextet In K. C.

Original Swinging Instrumentals

Decca Records DL 74183

1961

Don Ellis - Trumpet

Dave Baker - Trombone

Dave Young - Tenor Sax

George Russell - Piano

Chuck Israel's - Bass

Joe Hunt - Drums

From the back cover: During 1961 much was written about a so-called new wave of jazz that was said to be effecting radical changes in the face and body of this music. An inspection of works composed and performed by the artists allegedly responsible for this new wave revealed that it took several widely varied forms. In some instances modern-classical orchestration had been redesigned to incorporate jazz influences, or jazz writing has been expanded to assume many of the characteristics perviously associated with classical forms. In either case the result was mislabeled "third stream music" – as if the interweaving of diamonds and rubies on the same necklace had produced a third precious stone.

The less formalized aspects of the new wane shoed jazz improvisation in new forms, sometimes retaining tonality but reaching as far a possible into uncharted regions of harmonic melodic and rhythmic complexity. One much-publicized soloist went stale further, rejecting virtually every established election of jazz, from tonality to correct intonation, to establish an anarchistic music that seemed dedicated more to chaos than to progress.

George Russell, as the recored clearly shows, anticipated the most valid aspects of the new mood in jazz by many years and is the musical best designed to fashion and interpret whatever new essential jazz qualities may now be in the process of incorporation into the mainstream of 20th century music. His work is about as far from anarchy as possible. Ten years of his life were devoted to evolution of his own compositional technique. His "Lydian Concept of Tonal Organization" was commuted as far back as 1953 – eight years before the "new wave" talk began! – ands brilliantly reflected in the orchestral album Jazz In The Space Age (Decca DL 79219).

A couple of years ago Russell, who had made few public appearances except for occasional concerts at which he conducted his own works, decided to organize a jazz combo as an outlet of expression, not only for himself vvur for promising young musicians with whom he felt a musical sympathy, and who in some instances had studied composition with him. A previous album, George Russel Sestet At The Five Spot, gave a clear picture of the group's personality on Decca DL 79220.

George Russell Sextet in K. C. like the previous LP, reflects the less formal side of George's music, though in the course of these two sides you will gain a clear picture of the impact his ideas have had on the players and writer around him.

The album features some of the compositions that the sextet was asked to play in the course of a two-week engagement as a club called the Blue Room in Kansas City. "The musicians in K.C. Really come out to dig you," say George, "Fellows like Fats Dennis, John Jackson – the alto player who was with Charlie Parker in the sax section of the old Billy Echstine band – and Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson were in the audience every night. Our recording Tune Up, one of Eddie's great compositions, is dedicated to him.

The opening track, War Gerwessen, was composed by Dave Baker, the gifted 30-year-old trombonist for Indianapolis who established an immediate report with George when they were both at the School of Jazz in Lenox, Mass. in 1959. Baker had played briefly with Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson and had led his own band off and  on, later attending the Berkeley School of Music in Boston under a Down Beat scholarship. The title has nothing to do with war. anyone who has ever conjugated the verb to be in German can enlighten you further.

"This composition," says George, "features a 16-bar section written and improvised in the C Auxiliary Diminished blues scale, followed by a traditional 12-bar blues in F. The Auxiliary Diminishe blues scale is one of the scales from the Lydian concept. Its tones are C, C#, D#, E, F# G, A, A#." As you will notice, particularly in the trombone solum this scale gives an overall feed akin to a C7 chord.

Rhymes was written by Carla Bley who like Baker is a student of George's and a composer of obvious promise. A reflective piano introduction leads to the mainly-unison exposition of the theme, later branching into contractual tenor and trumpet statement that segue to a trombone solo. The valving and doubling of the tempo accents the intensity without changing the mood as the three horns are heard in sequence. The timing and spacing in a beef solo by Don Ellis offers a reminder of the deeply perceptive nature of this young musician's work. Ellis, the only new member off the Russel group since the Five Spot album, is a 27-year-old Los Angeles-born trumpet player and composer whose many years of academic trains have included, in addition to attendance at the School Of Jazz, private studies with several brass teachers and further work at Boston University, where he obtained his bachelor of Music degree.

Lunacy, also composed by Carla Bley, is far more ingeniously planned and executed than its disarming title should seem to imply. Using a phrase from Frére Jacques as a point of departure, it departs pointedly. There is a strong element of humor in the staccato interpretation of the them and Joe Hunt's underlining in this passage complements the horns admirably. Note George's sensitive feeding of the soloist, especially his charming during Ellis' solo.

Sandy, the longest and most informal track in the album, was composed by the late Clifford Brown, who recorded it in 1955 as co-leader of a quintet with Max Roach. Everybody has a chance to stretch-out here, and you know from the very first bar of Don Ellis' initial blowing chorus that nobody is going to resort to the easy, under-the-fingers, obvious notes. Each soloist has a couple of choruses on the regular 12-bar pattern before a four=bar break, followed buy further ad libbing in the third chorus. Dave Baker's break is just this side of incredible. The walking into and the later solo by Chuck Israels offers new evidence of the fast-maturing talent of the 25-year-old soloist, whom I first heard playing with Bud Powell in Paris in 1959. He's a New Yorker and has worked with Max Roach, Don Elliott and many other combos. Also notable on this tack is the impassioned, dynamically variegated work of Dave Young, who like Dave Baker was a member of the University of Indiana Jazz Orchestra. George Russell's own solo, first in single note lines and then in superlatively articulated chirping, is a string illustration of the recently-developed pianistic virtuosity of the former Benny Carter band drummer, as well as an example of the improvisational placation of his musical principles. "We found that the people if K.C. still love the blues," says George, "so Amanda was right in their groove."

Tune Up, in contrast to the funky blues mood of Sandy, is a spectacular yet never theatrical demonstration of the individual blowing talent in the group as a breakneck temp. Highlights are Ellis' muted contribution and Georg's coming; there's also a drum solo followed by some frenetic trading of fours by the horns.

The closing theme leads from trombone pedal points tiny some contrapuntal ensemble follows by a hard-swinging Dave Young solo. No Lydian concept was needed or used here; in effect it's Every Man For Himself in F Minor.

These sides reflect a lighter, more casual view of George Russell. But here as well as in him more ambitions undertakings the striking contrast between his work and that of many of the supposed new-wavers is immediately apparent. The musi is aggressive but not hostile, neoteric but not neurotic, ultra-jazz yet never anti-jazz. I wish that anybody, everybody, who wants to do something new in modern jazz could study with George Allan Russell. – Leonard Feather

From Billboard - January 20, 1961: More highly listenable wax for the avant-garde clique of modern jazz. Russell's group is in top form with the leader at the piano and a front line of Don Ellis, trumpet; Dave Baker, trombone; and Dave Young, tenor sax. The music is full of interesting contrasts of rhythm and harmony and it has a consistent swing, too. Russell's only writing chore on the LP of the six tracks is "Theme" but there are fine arrangements of tunes by Miles Davis, Dave Baker and Clifford Brown.

War Gewessen

Rhymes

Lunacy

Sandu

Tune Up

Theme

I Swing For You - Lennie Hiehaus

 

Four Eleven West

I Swing For You

Featuring Lennie Niehaus

EmArcy MG 36118

1957

From the back cover: The jazz spotlight has gleamed brightly at one time or another on gib bands, small groups and soloists of varied creative score and authenticity. But, rather unaccountably, very little attention has been paid to what should be one of the most flexible and reward types of jazz ensemble – the middling-size group which can work with the easy intimacy of a small combo when it wants to juice itself up to big band proportions when that seems desirable. John Kirby's sextet had some suggestions of this quality in the 1930s although with only six men (and just one brass instrument in the lot) a valid big band sound was out of its reach. Count Basie came closer with the brilliant octet he led in the early Fifties, a group that could trip along as lightly as a greased marble or come charging in like an overstimulated troop of marines.

The neglect that this area has suffered can only be attributed to blindness, to a rather appalling lack of aware imagination for, as Lennie Niehaus clearly shows in this album, there are an abundance of fascinating possibility open to a flexibly two-faced middle-sized band.

The nine men brought together by Lennie for this session were all playin in Stan Kenton's band at this time. Some of then were old, established hands in the world of jazz – Bill Perkins, who is heard on both flute and tenor saxophone, pianist Lou Levy, bassist Red Kelly and, of course, Lennie himself. The name of trouper Ed Leddy is beginning to mean something to jazz followers but baritone saxophonist Steve Perlow, bass trumpet Ken Shroyer and drummer Jerry McKenzie are just standing on the threshold of their jazz careers.

In this mixture there is a possible clue to success for a groups which would like to have the merits of both the combo and the big band. The protocol that requires the allotment of equal solo space to a spot of stars dose not come up a situation such as this. The major solo space is assigned to leader Niehaus and to featured performer Perkins. There are grief solo spots for the others but there is no showboating. Their solos are all a logical part of a larger shoe, accents in an overall pattern which flows compellingly from easy, relaxed intimacy to the potent force of a cleverly mass ensemble.

Writing for this nonet, Niehaus, who prepared the charts on six selections, and Perkins, who did the remaining two (Soon and his own Little Girl Blues), have shown a striking talent for blending combo fluidity with the shifting color patterns open to a large ensemble. Even the opening selection, Niehaus' bright P & L (Perk and Lennie, of course), which rides furiously along on their two saxophones in swinging small group fashion mist of the way, gains added impetus in the last chorus when they are able to unleash the hard-charging big band sound of the full group to lift an already high-flying piece to a dazzling climax.

Essentially, this kind of writing has Ellingtonian roots for the Duke's subtle sense of color balance has always b=give his band a flexibility denied to the big bands, bands which were simply "big", period. The Ellinton tie is especially apparent in Lennie's arrangement of Benny Golson' blue-tinged Four Eleven West. This arrangement is the very casual by-product of a couple of night when Lennie played with Dizzy Gillespie's band in 1956, filling in for the regular alto man. Golson, who has been on of the solid rocks of the Gillepsio reed section, gave Lennie a package of his tunes then, Lennie stashed them away and didn't have occasion to bring them out again until long after when, impressed by the Gillepsoiie band's playing of other Golson compositions – I Remember Clifford and Stablemates in particular – he dug out the Golson portfolio, leafed through it and came upon Four Eleven West. Like Golson's recollection o Clifford Brown, this piece has a haunting, melodic quality that is underlined by Niehaus' exchanges between brass and reeds in the ensembles and by the prodding passaged behind the solos.

The third original in this set, Perkins' Little Girl Blues, is a relaxed and informal swinging assault which starts out as though it might skip the formality of an ensemble chorus only to draw the ensemble out from behind Perkins' solo saxophone. Lou Levy has some moments of his own on this one.

The standard tunes that Niehaus has chosen select the range of his interests. His Me And Kill Me, for example, is, like his unearthing of the Golson piece, the result of his fondness for digging out things that other people have overlooked. The sis an old pop tune that Lennie found when he was going through a song book. It proved to be so obscure that when he brought it in to the recording session, he found that no one in the studio our in the control booth had ever heard of it. Chances are, you haven't either. 

Similar, He Ain't Got Rhythm is a tune Irving Berlin wrote for a 1937 film, On The Avenue. It suffered the consequences of being in the same core with I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm and, to a lesser degree, You're Laughing At Me and This Year's Kisses. In less competitive circumstances this bouncing melody might have guilt more of a reputation.

The remains selections are not exactly offbeat – Duke Ellington's Don't You Known I Care is just emerging from that category after a decade of neglect – but this and the Gershwins' Soon and the Schwartz-Dietz I See Your Face Before Me do credit to Lennie's avoidance of the obvious.

The Neihaus alto that is heard in this album may come as a surprise to those who recall the strongly Parker-touched tone of his playing on earlier disks. That has all been assimilated now and hie is stretching out in more direct, less involved lines that bristle with basic jazz quality. It is a significant step in his development as a strongly individual jazz voice. There is significance, too, in the kind of arranging he offer here for this, say Lennie, is the side of his talent on which he intends to concentrate in the immediate future. If he has his way, he'll stay put in Hollywood, spending most of his time writing, possible playing weekends as he does now with Kenton, but not getting  involved in taking out a group of his own. For the time being at least, why you hear on this record is the closest thing there will be to a Niehaus band.

P & L 

I See Your Face Before Me

Four Eleven West

Soon

He Ain't Got Rhythm 

Kiss Me And Kill Me

Little Girl Blues

Don't You Known I Care

Very Cool - Lee Konitz

 

Kary's Trance

Very Cool

Lee Konitz

Cover Photo: William Clayton

Art Direction: Sheldon Marks

Verve Cleff Series MGV-8209

1957

From the back cover: Lee Konitz, born October 13, 1927, is one of the exceedingly few individualists of his generation on his instrument, the alto saxophone, shichen the enveloping arrival and posthumous continued command of Charlie Parker. Konitz has an immediately identifiable style and sound, a conception marked by absorbing and frequently daring logic, and an increasing story-telling emotional depth. He has also indicated recently that he is capable of developing a significant voice on the tenor saxophone as well.

For this session, Lee chose Don Ferrata, trumpet; Sal Mosca, piano; Peter And, bass; and Shadow Wilson, drums. Ferrara, who has recored with Gerry Mulligan, is laos a historian of the jazz trumpet and wrote two illuminating articles on the jazz odyssey of the instrument in the Wine and July, 1956, Metronome. Don has played with Woody Herman, Georgie Auld, Jerry Wald, and Lennie Tristano with whom he studied for a number of years. He also is a teacher himself.

"Don," declares Konitz, "is a real improviser when he's playing as well as he's able to. He's a very complete player – sound, ideas, time – and possesses very cohesive intuition."

Sal Mosca, who studied with Tristano for some eight years and now teaches, is described by Konitz as "one of the most spontaneous piano players I know. I really didn't think of the piano as that kind of an instrument. It's hard enough for a horn player to improvise, but pianists usually are even more set in their ways. But Sal is an improviser. He's also a real pacer – he's not afraid to sit back and let some time go by. He's not hung up in the compulsive, forging-ahead kind of way in which many piano players are involved.

Bassist Peter Ind has worked and studied with Tristano, and has also played with Lee Konitz, Jutta Hipp and others. "For me," Konitz emphasizes, "he has become one of the great bass players. He has great time and sound and can play extraordinary solos. He has improved a lot, and seems to have submerged some of the ego problems and become album to  be part of a group. He projects a marvelous driving mode. Peter has the same essence that everybody seem to gather from Lennie – the ability to be spontaneous and individual."

Shadow Wilson, 38, not a Lennie Tristano student, has played with scores of groups. Among then have been Lucky Millinder, Benny Carter, Lionel Hampton, Earl Hines, Count Basie, Woody Herman, Illinois Jacquet and Ella Fitzgerald. "Shadow," Lee feels, "is in the straight line of group players. He's a real functional rhythm section player in the Dave Tough tradition. He's a sensitive drummer, and is sensitive to the sound he gets on his set. And he never oversteps. He's a group drummer."

Don Ferrara wrote Sunflower and Movin' Around, Kary's Trance by Lee, is a play on The Kerry Dance, brought to mind by Lee's youngest child (the youngest of five), Karen, not yet a year old at the time of the composition. Lee chose the two standards for the uncomplicated reason that he lies playing them. On Billie's Bounce, Lee and Don Play Bird's choruses together and go for themselves on their solos. "Playing his chorus," Lee added, "was, I felt, a vlid way of expressing my appreciation to Bird."

In talking of this album, Lee also was drawn into a discussion of changes in his own playing in recent years. "Most of all, I've tried to get in closer contact with my feelings. I'm aware more of the time of what I'm really doing and of how it feels to me. Now, that may sound cryptic, but years ago, I remember playing with Lennie Tristano in a club. We went off and at the end of a set, arm-in-arm, and Lennie said: 'How do you feel?' 'So-So,' I answered. 'Gee,' Lennie exclaimed, "You sounded crazy that set." I was disturbed that there could be that distance between how I felt and how I had sounded to him. These days, it's much closer – how I feel and how I sound.

"The most important thing. I've discovered, that I can do is to enjoy myself when I'm playing. I'm not as concerned any more with setting the world on fire with original music. If it comes, it comes; the main thing is to enjoy playing. I don't care if I'm playing straight melody; I can get satisfaction out of that. I've heard some of the young kids go through their paces, and when they land on one note or two notes of a melody, they give it away with the corniest vibrato and sound like a studio man. Playing a melody well isn' as easy as they think.

"I'm really concerned with playing one good note," Konitz underlined. "In a number of the young jazzmen, I hear all of the proper ingredients, but I don't hear one note having the player's personal feeling. I think, on the other hand, that I'm using my own feeling when I play."

"Getting back to playing a melody," Konitz continued, "all of the great players can do that. One of my students brought my a record of Louis Armstrong playing Sleepy Time Down South. Louis gets so deep into every single note. Every note is an expression feeling. That's really playing; it's like pressing the note of the piano into the keyboard.

Lee went on the subject of repertoire. "I have in mind how a tune should sound to me. If the tune has the ingredients with  regard to good melody or good changes, it well be a good enough challenge. If I got to the point where I could play perfectly the tunes I known a number of times, I suppose I'd figure I'd achieved the point and would look for something harder to do. So far, however, I've been playing a handful of tunes a number of years and I guess I don't know them as well as I fee I could. It's very easy to flit around, but now I'm more concerned with something becoming a part of me and that takes a long time – 10, 15, 20 years. Take Crazy She Calls Me. I've just started to learn it, and figure I have 15 or 20 years to go on that tune. – Nat Hentoff

Sunflower

Stairway To The Stars

Movin' Around

Kary's Trance

Crazy She Calls Me

Billie's Bounce

I Want To Live! - Gerry Mulligan - The Jazz Combo

 

Theme from I Want To Live 

The Jazz Combo From

I Want To Live!

Starring Susan Hayward

Gerry Mulligan, Shelly Manne & Art Farmer

Supervised by Jack Lewis

Cover Design by Paul Bacon

Shelly Manne appears by arrangement with Contemporary Records

United Artist Records UAL-4006

1959

From the back cover: The film is I Want To Live. It is about a girl sliding furiously downhill in the big city jungles of the West Coast, a girl who is, according to a psychologist, "totally amoral, a compulsive liar with no regard for law or order or the conventions of society." She falls, sometimes willingly, sometimes unwillingly, into almost everything on the wrong side of the law except murder. But it's on a murder rap that the law finally takes her.

The girl, Barbara Graham, moves through an atmosphere in San Francisco and San Diego where jazz hovers constantly in the background. One of the few stabilizing things in her life is her interest in jazz and, particularly, in the music of Gerry Mulligan.

Building on this foundation, the entire score of I Want To Live has been written by Johnny Mandel on a jazz basis. The bulk of his score displayed by a big band mad up of top West Coast jazzmen (their exciting sound track recordings met up Johnny Mandel's great jazz score from I Want To Live! Until Artist UAL-5005. But, to fill out the characterization of Barbara Graham, Mandel also wrote some small group charts to pinpoint her specific interest in Gerry Mulligan Played by Mulligan and a brilliantly compatible group of sidemen, this arrangements crop up all through the picture, emerging in a very natural way when a radio is turned on or a record drops on a phonograph, or subtly rising over the subdued murmur in a bar.

What results is a new dimension in the use of jazz in films. We are accustomed to isolated jazz sequences, to the exploitation of jazz devices in otherwise non-jazz scores. There has even been an entire score written by a jazz musician, John Lewis, and played by a jazz group, the Modern Jazz Quartet. But the film in which it was used, "No Sun In Venice," had no essential relationship to jazz. I Want To Live does have that relationship and because it does, it provides Johnny Mandel with an unprecedented opportunity for writing a jazz score.

However, the use that Mandel and producer Walter Wanger have made of the Mulligan small group goes far beyond the normal concept of film scoring. Here, for the first time, is a highly purposeful integration of jazzing a film. It saves as the evocative musical background that is expected of any good score – the customary, passive role that seasons and accents but does not distract attention from the visual part of the film. But at the same time jazz also plays an active role in this case as it takes an acute grasp of the viewer's awareness in the character delineation of Barbara Graham and, through the musical presence of Mulligan, becomes an explicit part of the story development. (In a meaningful scene, Barbara Graham, listening to a radio in her cell in the death house, remarks, "That's Gerry Mulligan." "How do you know?" an attendant asked. "I have all his records," say Barbara).

For both Mandel and Mulligan the situation posed a provocative challenge. Mandel had to write in terms of the needs of the picture and at the same time in a manner that would be thoroughly in the Mulligan mode (which is, fortunately, a broad one). Moreover, Mandel had to write for a musical who usually writes most of his own stuff and whose reputation as a composer and arranger is just as great as his reputation as a performer.

For his part, Mulligan was in the position of being cited by inference in the picture as one of the jazz greats and, through his playing in the film, of making that estimate valid even for people with only a vague knowledge of jazz. There was the inescapable knowledge that both the high citation and his performance were permanently locked together on the same strip of film, a huge potential target for the kickers' darts, and that the very validity and dramatic effectiveness of the entire film could be shattered if his performances were the merest whit below his highest capability.

How well both Mandel and Mulligan have succeeded is evident in this album (and how much their success adds to the portrait of Barbara Graham is equally evident in I Want To Live). The root of their success i that understanding interplay which is so crucial to jazz creativity. It starts, in this case, with the empathy that has long existed between Mandel and Mulligan. an empathy which guided Mandel in his writing and which gave Mulligan advance assurance that he was moving into a fully sympathetic situation. Actually, Mulligan discovered that it was far, far more than that once he had seen what Mandel had written and had had the exhilarating experience of playing it. He found the entire musical concept of the film so stimulating and became so anxious to have a part in creating the entire score that he offered to with with the big band (he had been singed only to play with the small group) – and he would have if the geography of prior commitments had not made in physical impossible.

In the playing, this basic empathy between Mandel and Mulligan was doubled and redoubled and multiplied innumerable times in the cross currents of inspiring reaction that flowed among the musicians Mandel group around Mulligan – Art Farmer, the vital alternate born in Mulligan's current Quartet; Bud Shank, eerily counterpoising his flute behind Mulligan's baritone sax on Barbara's Theme and during out a surging flow of alto lines on the other pieces, the volatile, exuberant trombone of Frank Rosolino; and a rhythm section top of Pete Jolly's fleet piano, the superbly firm bass of Red Mitchell and that ne plus ultra of the drums, Shelly Manne.

The music they play goes the whole route from a loose, easy framework for individual blowing on Frisco Club to a carefully developed mood setting in the I Want To Live Theme which is almost entirely an ensemble piece aside from a glowing muted solo by Farmer and some equally muted drumming by Manne.

This is one of the rare instances in which a firmly established creative artist deliberately sets out to top himself – and succeeds. If Gerry Mulligan had not already gained the musical reputation he wears in the script if I Want To Live, His playing in these selections from the sound track of that film would earn it for him. – William Johns

Black Mountain 

Theme From I Want To Live

Night Watch

Frisco Club

Barbara's Theme 

Life's A Funny Thing

The Big Small Bands - Dave Pell

Boplicity

The Big Small Bands

A Musical Re-Creation 

Dave Pell

Produced by Bill Miller

Capitol Records T1309

1960

From the back cover: Amish a maze of the spectacularly sensitive recording equipment available today, stood three young men digging the sounds on a bunch of scratchy old 78 rpm records. The men were Dave Pell, Jimmy Priddy, and Bob Enevoldsen, none of whom you'd call ordinary. And neither was the music ordinary. It was the great music of such pioneers as Lester Young, Artie Shaw and Raymond Scott.

That was how their idea for this project came into being. Their formula included the sounds of the great combos, the finest recording equipment to be found, a lot of skill, and an awful lot of heard work. The results is this most unusual album.

Herein, Dave Pell and company re-created the sounds of "The Big Small Bands" which, until now, we have been able to hear only in the low fidelity of those old 78's. These are not just ordinary re-creations where the general sound and overall arrangement are being duplicated. But, through the proficiency of Priddy and Enevolden, who transcribed every last note from the old records, and through the rest of the Dave Pell organization, these re-creations are as close as humanly possible to the originals.

It's one feat to capture, on a piece of paper, the notes from an intricate ad lib solo, but quite another to play them with the same intonation and expression as did the original artist. To accomplish the latter in a couple if instances, Dave had what he called a "Lester Young reed" and a "Charlie Ventura mouthpiece" which he used appropriately on his tenor sax... to say nothing of his ability as a musician.

These sessions required a great deal more than just a quick run-through before recording – a common practice this days. Each soloist took the parts home and studied them diligently for weeks until he felt he was doing justice to the artist he was trying to sound like. Two excellent example where this is notably accomplices are dave's work as Charlie Ventura in Dark Eyes and Jack Sheldon's masquerade as Miles Davis in Boplcity.

The tunes are present pretty much in chronological order. The sequence is varied a little to provide a more interesting programming lineup. But they start with the earlier sounds and styles, brining us up through more recent developments to the final 1955 re-creation. – Jack Warner  Jack Warner is currently producing "The Sound OF Stereo" on KBIQ-FM and KBIG-AM in Los Angeles, in addition to his regular position as Program Director of KBIQ. Along with his radio activities, he is frequently called upon to MC jazz concerts and was moderator for the first jazz symposium ever held in the world-famous Hollywood Bowl.

Personnel on each selection is indicated by numbers referring to the following musicians: 

Sax and clarinet: (1) Dave Pell, (2) Abe Most

Saxes: (3) Martin Berman, (4) Ronnie Long, (5) Art Pepper

Trumpets: (6) Frank Beach, (7) Don Fagerquist, (8) Cappy Lewis, (9) Jack Sheldon

Trombones: (10) Hoyt Bohannon, (11) Bob Enevoldsen

French Horn: (12) Arthur Maebe

Tuba: (13) Phil Stephens

Piano: (14) Marty Paich, (15) Art Flickreiter, (16) John Williams - also Harpsichord

Bass: (17) Buddy Clark, (18) Red Michell

Drums: (19) Frank Capp, (20) Mel Lewis, (21) Keats Ennam

Guitar: (22) Joe Gibbons, (23) Toni Rizzie

Art Pepper appears through arrangement with Contemporary Records, Inc.

Then I'll Be Happy - John Kirby, 1939 (1, 2, 8, 16, 18, 19)

A Smo-o-o-oth One - Benny Goodman Septet, 1941 (1, 2, 8, 16, 18, 19, 23)

In An 18th Century Drawing Room - Raymond Scott Quintet, 1938 (1, 2, 7, 16, 17, 19)

Summit Ridge Drive - Artie Shaw and his Gramercy Five, 1941 (1, 8, 16, 18, 19)

At The Codfish Ball - Tommy Dorsey and the Clambake Seven, 1936 (1, 2, 8, 10, 16, 18, 19, 23)

Jumpin' With Symphony Sid - Lester Young, 1946 (1, 15, 18, 21, 22)

Popo - Shorty Rogers, 1951 (1, 5, 9, 12, 13, 14, 17, 20)

Boplcity - Miles Davis, 1949  (1, 5, 9, 12, 13, 14, 17, 20)

Dark Eyes - Gene Krupa Trio, 1945 (1, 15, 19)

Viva Zapata - The Lighthouse All Stars, 1952 (1, 9, 11, 15, 18, 19, 21)

Walking Shoes - Gerry Mulligan, 1953 (1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 20)

Mountain Greenery - Dave Pell, 1955 (1, 4, 7, 11, 16, 17, 19, 23)

Oscar Pettiford Orchestra In Hi-Fi

 

Little Niles

Oscar Pettiford Orchestra In Hi-Fi

The Oscar Pettiford Orchestra

Produced by Creed Taylor

Cover Deign by Fran Scott

Cover Photography by Myron Miller, Howell Coman's Studio

ABC-Paramount ABCS-227

1958

From the back cover: Ten years ago – this winter – I rode back from Stockton, California after a one nigher with Dizzy Gillette.

An auto ride then, or now, with The Man is an experience – and this particular one was at 5 A.M. on a cold night. There was a radio in the car and as we switched from station to station Dizzy gave an impromptu commentary on music. "Funny thing about that Hawaiian music, those people never got anywhere," he said as se caught a few bars of a steel guitar.  "They don't get our sound," he commented as we picked up on a late night jazz show on which a big band version of one of the Gillespie featured numbers was being played.

Then we caught a Duke Ellington record with Oscar Pettiford on it.

"Listen to him," said Dizzy. "There's a lot of good bass players all over the country, but there's only two real geniuses of the bass – Charlie Mingus and Oscar Pettiford."

There's no reason to alter that statement today, even if Paul Chambers is knocking on the door. As of now, Mingus and Pettiford represent the greatest maturity the bass has, both as solo instrument and as a rhythm instrument. Both men are voices with an unmistakable individuality. Both are capable of playing entrancing solos while still anchoring the rhythm section.

Perriford has been more successful, perhaps, than any bass soloist since Jimmy Blanton. He has the dominating personality that such an instrument demands if it is to be heard with the background of a big band. With a small group there is, by the very nature of things, more of a chance for a bassist to be heard. But with a big band it's something else again.

However, it is interesting to remember that although Pettiford has been – and successfully – a big band bassist and  a soloist in such a context, it was with little group and with an entirely different instrument altogether that he made his first impact as a jazz voice. Oscar's small group records with the cello electrified the jazz world. Nobody has done anything past them, yet, nor seems likely to, on that instrument. The cello with its lighter and sharper tone cuts through as a solo instrument much better than even the amplified bass does, and that may be the reason that Oscar's cello records were so successful. As a result of them – whether they know it or not – dozens of bass players were able to obtain an audience for their solos. People had finally dug that there was more than rhythm to two be had from the large stringed instruments.

Now, Oscar has returned to the big band scene. This is in perfect keeping with the pattern of pace setters and experimenters in all the arts. Today the big band is at its lowest ebb in a decade. The board offers very little encouragement; the cost of living is such that big bands are a case of diminishing returns, a very uneconomical proposition. The ballrooms don't draw, there are no theaters to play any longer and there are fewer and fewer jazz clubs big enough to book a 17-piece band.

Any yet – and yet. In almost every major city there's a big rehearsal band and in some cities there are more than one. (In San Francisco, for instance, three are two: Rudy Salvini and Buddy Hyles.) This means that the musicians themselves feel the need. the drive, to play big band jazz. They are driven to it. The sound is not complete without it.And because of this attitude (and it's a growing one), there's the suspicion that something new is about to happen, some new group will find the right formula and create enough interest to start the whole thing going again.

This may  be Oscar Pettiford.

This LP, for instance, brings out for show the tenor saxophone solo abilities of Jerome Richardson, a former resident of the San Francisco – Oakland area and a converted alto saxophonist. Tenor now seems to have been the instrument Richardson really should concentrate on and his solos here are, I think, a pretty good indication off that. Again, inline with the continuing Pettiford policy of giving space to younger voices, there's a remarkable trombone solo in the specially flood style of Al Grey, Formerly with Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie and now with Basie. There's also the beautifully formed and carefully etched solo work of Art Farmer, one of the most consistently interesting of the young trouper, and the kinetic excitement of GiGi-Gryce's alto.

The seven tracks in this LP are consistently good big band jazz. There is a deepened variety of coloration, as in a finely patterned Madder print; there is interesting tonal contrast between he sections – the brasses and the reeds. And in particular )the quality of the soloists is accepted as superior), there is a beautifully functional rhythm section which is just like the turbine of a steamer that goes smoothly on, no matter what. I was particularly struck on repeated hiring of this LOP by the arresting and surprising use of the back beat by Gus Johnson on the opening and closing selections. I don't know what he did, actually, to make the sound – it used to be done by hitting the stand of the high hat or the side of the snare with the left stick – but is is most effective and I am delighted to see its return as an effect to be used by drummers.

There's one other thing which should d be mentioned. I Remember Clifford," which is Benny Golden's tune written by him early in 1957 when he was with Dizzy Gillepsie's band, is a most remarkable tribute to the memory of the late Clifford Brown, a most remarkable trumpeter. Golden says it was the most difficult thing he ever wrote (and he is the young man who has written the classic "Stablemates"). To me it is one of the most effective jazz compositions of all time and a tune that I am sure is going to  be a standard part of the repertory of jazz groups large and small from now on.

So, there you have it – the second volume of the Oscar Pettiford big band. This is the finest big band LP you will hear. And listening to it ou will know how very far modern big band jazz is going. – Ralph J. Gleason - Editor, Jam Session (Putnam's) "The Rhythm Section," San Francisco Chronicle 

Now See How You Are

Laura

Aw! Come On

I Remember Clifford

Somewhere

Seabreeze

Little Niles

The Story Of True Stereophonic Sound By Granco

 

The True Story Of Stereophonic Sound By Granco

The Story Of True Stereophonic Sound By Granco

Granco Products, Inc.

The Fabulous Jimmy Dorsey

 

Mambo En Sax

The Fabulous Jimmy Dorsey

Fraternity Records - Cincinnati, Ohio

1008

1957

Trumpets - Lee Castle, John Frost, Art Tancredi, Bill Spano

Trombones - Vinnie Forrest, Earl Swope, Jack Rains, Will Bradley

Saxes - Skippy Galluccio, Danny Trimboli (altos); Buzz Brauner, Frank Maynes, (tenors); George Perry, (baritone)

Rhythm - Joe Massamino (piano); Steve Jordan (guitar); Tommy Widdicomb, (drums); Bill Cronk (bass)

So Rare, Sophisticated Swing, Mambo EnSax and It's The Dreamer In Me were recorded at Capitol Studios in New York with Jimmy Dorsey November 11, 1956. The eight sides made after jimmy's death were recorded at Webster Hall in New York June 17.

The band was under the direction of Lee Castle. Dick Stabile is featured on Jone Night, Now One Ever Lost More, Contrasts and Just Swinging'. The Arthur Melvin singers were used on six sides. Tommy Mercer does the vocal on Marie Elena. Tommy Mercer and Dottie Reid do the oral on Amapola (Dottie records for Roulette Records).

From the back cover: Jimmy Dorsey was... and I'm leveling... "So Rare."

He was the quiet, the meek, the non-shouting, the supposedly "colorless," Dorsey.

Jimmy and "T.D." quarreled their whole lives through.

Still, even when Jimmy had made his last recording, just before Tommy died, he respected, and was a little fearful of, the opinion of "The Brother," as he always called him, in the Irish way.

"I guess The Brother won't like it," he said.

And Tommy, younger by a couple of years, but always more the personality, ever did lose his head over "So Rare."

But the nation did.

So it was that Jimmy died knowing he had accomplished a rather unbelievable comeback in the recording field.

"It's the first band hit in 15 years," his friends informed him, even in the hospital room where he passed away.

"That record will bring back the band business!" prophesied Guy Lombardo, at the funeral in St. Patrick's as the honorary pall-bearers stood huddle around.

With his characteristic meekness, Jimmy hadn't wanted to cut the record. He was underselling himself.

"I just don't want you to get hurt," he told Harry Carlson of Fraternity Records. "Why fool around with a has-been?"

Thus a whole new generation became smitten with "the has-been."

The big, powerful tone of his sax became familiar to sons and daughters of the Jimmy Dorsey fans of another era – those who remembered him with Red Nichols, Gene Glodkette, Paul Whiteman and "The Original Memphis Five."

And Jimmy'd had a monumental band of his own, which had brought along Helen O'Connell, Ray McKinley and Bob Eberle.

Jimmy was always doing things for the people in his band.

"Like carrying bags for Helen O'Connell," somebidy said, (Well, I don't suppose that was too hard to take).

Jimmy liked to remember that he and Benny Goodman were once roommates – and rivals.

They were playing the studios then and it was a living.

"We used to sleep together and whoever answered the phone got the job clarinetist that day," Jimmy said.

And so he went through life, unhurried and as relaxed as a maestro who plays both the sax and clarinet can be.

He would be a quiet, unostentatious customer in the bright spot after a job was played.

"My Jimmy," is what "Mom" Dorsey called him. And she never hesitated to confess that "My Jimmy" and "My Tommy" were happiest when battling – through she's add, "My Jimmy and My Tommy never fought about anything but music."

"My Jimmy is so poorly," she told me not long before his death.

"My Jimmy never got over my Tommy," she said.

And eventually came the time when Jimmy died at the peak of his new fame.

"Proving," said somebody, "that the Bible is right – the meek shall inherit the royalties."

Jimmy wouldn't have been offended by that. He had a quiet sense of humor which some people never discovered.

On a one-nighter tour in Texas, he was stopped by some state officers in uniform who were trying to stamp out Japanese beetles.

"You got any bugs in the car?" one officer asked Jimmy.

"Yeah, I guess we got a couple," said Jimmy.

"A couple!" exclaimed the investigator. "What kind of bugs have  you got?"

"Jitterbugs," confessed Jimmy.

Getting back to this album it has in it not only "So Rare" and "Sophisticated Swing." but tow other songs recorded the same day last November when Jimmy was doing a session that he felt would prove positively that he was a has-been.

So there are four sides of pure Jimmy Dorsey being featured.

The other eight sides were cut the Monday after Jimmy's funeral, which was on a Saturday.

Dick Stabile told me at the funeral that he was going to play the sax for the session.

Jimmy had grasped the truth in his last days. He had known that there would be another recording session – and that he wouldn't be there.

"Get Dick Stabile," he'd said.

And Dick Stabile flew in. After the funeral, and on Saturday night when I happened to  be with him, Stabile spoke a little but the honor of being tapped by Jimmy to play the asx parts he couldn't play because he couldn't wait.

Webster Hall, that day, felt Jimmy's presence.

Jimmy's lovely daughter, Julie, "was on the date," as the musicians pu it, just listening and giving support. And a story goes with Julie... we must back up a moth or two.

A married lady now, she'd known the facts of life – her father was going to die.

She had flown in from Hollywood to be with ice throughout the last days.

But, of course, she didn't want him to know she knew.

"I'm doing a part here in a movie," she told him. You yourself have seen her in several so it wasn't hard for time to believe.

Wanting to see him every day, she was afraid that might tip it off. She therefore went only town or three times a week.

"We were shooting yesterday," she' yawn.

Her physical presence at the waxing session perhaps inspired the musicians somewhat – I"m told, though, that this day, everybody played with the feeling that not only Jimmy but Tommy was there.

"This is the greatest  recording date of MY lifetime," Dick Stabile said – and it's wondered if a finer, truer sax was ever played  by anyone.

Of course, Lee Castle played and directed the eight sides.

Even when he had a little time left, Jimmy would take to Lee Castle about the tremendous enthusiasm for the record... the phone calls from all over... about the request for "So Rare" at the Statler... and Jimmy would even all from the hospital to discuss with Lee whether he had the tempo just right.

There've been a lot of tributes to Jimmy and there'll be many more but "Mom" Dorsey gave an eloquent one once when they were all talking about a so-called competitor.

The question came up: did this so-called competitor have the lip, the wind, th blow a sax"

"Him!" snapped "Mom" – "why he hasn't got the wind to dust a fiddle!"

Goodness! I notice I've written several pages here about Jimmy Dorsey. I must have liked him. – Earl Wilson

Contrasts

Jay-Dee's Boogie Woogie

Mambo En Sax

Maria Elena

Speak Low

It's The Dreamer In Me

June Night

Amapola

Just Swingin'

Sophisticated Swing

No One Ever Lost Mre

So Rare

Contrasts

Rock N Roll Party - Joe Houston And The Rockets

 

Off Beat

Rock N Roll Party

Joe Houston And The Rockets

Recorded In Hollywood

Craftsmen C 8033

A Division of P.R.I.

Rock N Roll Party

Joe Houston And The Rockets

Recorded In Hollywood

Gold Award Records (gold-colored sticker fixed to upper left corner, front cover to cover the Craftsman logo) C 8033 

Rock That Boogie

No Name Rock

Movin' & Groovin'

Off Beat

Tall Gal Blues

All Night Long

Goofin'

Joe's Rock

Corn Bread And Cabbage Greens

Teenage Boogie

Command Records - 10 Record Boxed Set

 

Heat Wave - Enoch Light & His Orchestra At Carnegie Hall

Pick A Bale Of Cotton - The Folk Album - The Robert DeCormier Singers

Theme from "Black Orpheus - Lee Evans - The New And Exciting Piano Talent Plays "The Best In 'Pops'"

In A Little Spanish Town - Fever - Doc Severinsen & His Orchestra

One Of Those Songs - The Ray Charles Singers

Roman Guitar - Tony Mottola & His Orchestra

Stompin' At The Savoy - Electrodynamics - Dick Hyman at The Lowrey Organ

Waltzing Matilda - Far Away Places - Enoch Light & His Orchestra

Begin The Beguine - A New Concept Of Great Cole Porter Songs - Enoch Light & The Light Brigade

September Song - Stereo 35/MM - Enoch Light And His Orchestra

Command Records Presents The Wonderful World Of Stereophonic Sound

10 Record Box Set

Enoch Light & His Orchestra At Carnegie Hall - RS 826-S.D.

The Folk Album - The Robert DeCormier Singers - RS 897-S.D.

Lee Evans - The New And Exciting Piano Talent Plays "The Best In 'Pops'" - RS 878-S.D.

Fever - Doc Severinsen & His Orchestra - RS 893-S.D.

One Of Those Songs - The Ray Charles Singers - RS 898-S.D.

Roman Guitar - Tony Mottola & His Orchestra - RS 816-S.D

Electrodynamics - Dick Hyman at The Lowrey Organ - RS 856-S.D.

Far Away Places - Enoch Light & His Orchestra RS 822-S.D.

New Concepts Of Great Cole Porter Songs - Enoch Light & The Light Brigade

Stereo 35/MM - Enoch Light & His Orchestra - RS 831-S.D.

Way Out Wardell - Wardell Gray & Erroll Garner

 

Just You, Just Me

Way Out Wardell

The Late Great Wardell Gray

The Effervescent Erroll Garner

Photography: William P. Claxton

Art Direction & Production: Florette Bihari

Crown Records CLP 5004

1957

Tenor Sax - Wardell Gray and Vido Musso

Piano - Erroll Garner and Arnold Ross

Bass - Red Callender and Harry Babison

Guitar - Irving Ashby and Barney Kessel

Trombone - Vic Dickenson

Drums - Jackie Mills and Don Lamond

Trumpets - Howard McGhee and Ernie Royal

From the back cover: Here is more music from Modern's on-the-spot coverage of a memorable concert in downtown Los Angeles in 1948. A finer group of musicians could bot have been assembled than were there that night, and this music retains all its original excitement.

Of course, jazz of that period was lusty and exciting anyway, and had an ebullient character that lent itself to concertizing. In fact, that's largely the way the West Coast got into the modern jazz picture: they were the organizers of the big jazz concert idea and many of modern jazz's finest artist gravitated to the coast.

A Los Angeles concert organizer has put together some of the finest nights of great jazz entertainment that have ever come about on either coast, and this was one of his early and most successful efforts.

It would be most difficult to assemble a crew like this these days; conditions and contracts have changed the picture somewhat. The interesting thing is that as important as these musicians were at the time, they have grown into the real giants of their styles today. Thus, this is not only a genuine collector's item, but a concert of good jazz as pleasant to hear today as the day it was recorded.

Wardell Gray flashed across the jazz horizon like a falling star, and all too soon his bright flame was ixtengusihed. He had more than a nodding acquaintance with the social evils of this modern age and he met violent death in Las Vegas in May of '55. His credits included stints with the Basie and Goodman bands. Like Getz he tried his lineage back to the definitive Lester Young, but unlike the Brothers school, his approach maintained close touch with the tap-roots of hot jazz. Although he employed a tubular sound, he combined it with the sort of funky drive that marks the true jazzman in any period. He was undoubtedly one of modernity's major tenormen.

Erroll Garner, a 35-year-old elf with an equally elfish piano style, was born in Pittsburgh, and buddied around as a boy with Dodo Marmarosa and Billy Strayhorn. Although he is self-taught and still reads little music, he is one of a handful of pianists who has really created a piano style all his own. His delated-action approach to melody lines and his lush handling of ballads )as on Tenderly, here) are well known, but he is also a skilled ensemble pianist, as shown by his recoding with Charlie Parker and his good contribution to these groups.

Among the others, there is the Sicilian-born tenorman Vido Musso, of Kenton fame; his rich, punchy style offers a sharp contrast to the work of Wardell. Howard McGhee came to prominence with the original New York bopsters – Parker et al – and '56 finds his star once again on the rise. Barney Kissel, the Oklahoma-born guitarist, is an emulator of the late Charlie Christian, and a major voice on his instrument.

Benny Carter, the great bandleader and arranger, is master of of many instruments; his bright appearances on alto saxophone here show hey he dominated the polls for years in that category. The earth, bumptious trombone of the ageless.

Vic Dickenson offers a refreshing balance to the modernists he augments here. Don Lamond, who sparked the best of the Herman Herds, is a man who remade big band drumming; his explosive, assertive style is shown to fine effect here. Ernie Royal is another graduate of the Herman band; his high-riding, clean-line trumpet is probably the less appreciate of the top trumpet-players.

Blue Lou

Sweet Georgia Brown

Tenderly

Just You, Just Me

One O'Clock Jump