Jazz Rolls Royce - Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars Plus Ten

 

The Clown's Dance

Jazz Rolls Royce

Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars Plus Ten

Concert At Royce Hall - Bruin Homecoming

Compositions & Arrangements by Bob Cooper

Produced by Dave Hubert

Engineer: John Hall

Product Design: Leon McFadden

Cover Photo: Stan Levey

Omega Stereophonic Disk OSL - 5

1959

Trumpet - Pete Candolli, Al Porcino, Ed Leddy, George Worth

Tombone - Milt Bernhart, Harry Betz, Holy Bohannon

Bass Tombone - Marshall Cram

Tuba - Red Callender

Tympani & Vibes - Larry Bunker

From the back cover: Josiah Royce Hall, located on the Los Angeles campus of the University of California where last summer Stravinsky conducted his 75th birthday concert, provided the necessary incentive and atmosphere for this album. The occasion for the recording was the 1957 UCLA homecoming Show, October 28, when the Lighthouse All-Stars and ten added men headlined the evening's entertainment. The express purpose of the Show is to present the Homecoming Queen and her court in all the tradition due her. However, tradition saw innovation this year with the first professional Show in UCLA's annals to enhance "Her Majesty's" announcement. As the initial event of the week-long Homecoming, the Show set a fast pace for the activities which followed with the theme "Under The Bruin Big Top."

The concert portion of the Show, heard in its entirety on this album, is the result of more than a year's preparation. It began in May, 1957, when Skip Keizer's, the Homecoming Chairman, asked me to produce a professional Homecoming show. With Howard Rumsey in mind I suggested a Jazz Concert. Skip agreed to the idea and so we began formulating what was to be the most spectacular aggregation of jazz talent on the West Coast.

Our idea was to add ten men to the Lighthouse group, forming a sixteen-piece band. We knew the first song should be the traditional "Strike Up The Band," the song that George Gershwin wrote specially as a "fight" song for UCLA. First of all the students that accepted the responsibility of the 1957 Homecoming and particularly the producer of the Homecoming Show, John Brown, knew they wanted all new music written just for this occasion. The material should embellish the show, the traditional purpose being of course the selection of the Homecoming Queen and it should fit with the theme "Under The Bruin Big Top."

As we wanted to feature "new" jazz music we got in touch with Bob Cooper. "Coop" is the senior member of the Lighthouse All-Stars and watching his development as a soloist and a composer-arranger certainly has been a pleasure. As a musician he has every qualification: playing Tenor Saxophone, Oboe, English Horn or Clarinet he has traveled extensively as a member of Stan Kenton's Band and Kenton Innovations Orchestra; since becoming one of the best known members of the West Coast movement and joining forces with the Lighthouse he has made two European tours with Bud Shank. "Coop" is constantly studying and developing: at the moment he is studying composition with Mario Tedesco, one of the nation's best known classical composers; his oboe teacher, Henri de Busscher, has long been regarded as one of the professions leading players of a most exotic and difficult instrument.

After deciding together on the program numbers, all written by Bob Cooper specially for the Show, we began the selection of the added men, players with much recording experience yet men with strong roots in jazz. More important, it was to be a big modern band, one that pointed ahead. Furthermore, we wanted a permanent record of it.

This was a labor of love and all the players responded in a grand manner: after rehearsals they were on their own. No one conducted the performance or the recording.

If it hadn't been for my good friend and business adviser, Mr. John Levine, owner of the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, this album might never have been released. John was present the night of the show and heard something he had been waiting a long time to hear. He heard the well-known Lighthouse All-Stars playing in front of a sparkling new background. This was the culmination of ten years of jazz progress: here is an extension of the Goodman Quartet and Shaw's Gramercy Five, the difference being a modern group, the Lighthouse All-Stars superimposed over a swinging modern background of ten added men. And so the inevitable continues. Jazz, the audible expression of all our inexpressible emotions, a subject bigger than al the individuals involved, continues to march forward just as surely as time itself.  – Howard Rumsey

The jazz record buyer is listening more and more to the soloist, as opposed to ensemble writing. This is evident in the decline of the big band and increasing popularity of soloists and small groups. This may be the result of over-arranging and lack of honest emotion except during an improvised solo. It is here the real communication between the listener and performer takes place.

I have felt that the best points of the big band should be retained, especially since a big band can be a great source of inspiration to the soloists.

With these things in mind we decided on the instrumentalist used here. The idea being to preserve the sound of the small group (Lighthouse All-Starts) and inject the excitement and color of a big band with freedom and ample space for improvised solos.

We learned a great deal in recording and playing this music. I hope that the idea will be carried out and developed by others. I know we are all excited by its challenge. – Bob Cooper

From Billboard - February 23, 1959: The Lighthouse All-Stars were augmented for this scene by a flock of good brass and reed men plus Red Callendar on Tuba and Larry Bunker on vibes. The result is a big, exciting band sound with much color from the ensemble trumpet passages. Disk is the living record of a concert performed at UCLA late in 1957. There are six numbers but each, tho on the long side, retain interest thruout with a considerable number of instrumental voicings to sustain the drive. A real live album which retains the best of combo and big band ideas in a single set.

Strike Up The Band

Prelude To The Queen

The Clown's Dance

Coop Salutes The "Co-Op"

Bruinville, My Bruinville

Mambo del Quado