Adventure With Charlie - Charlie Ventura

 

This Can't Be Love

Adventure With Charlie

Charlie Ventura

Photo: Charles Stewart

King Records 543

1957

From the back cover: Charlie Ventura is a musician on the move. His present All-Star Group would make most maestros mighty envious. No pick-up group, Charlie's men boast service with the likes of Benny Goodman, Slim Gaillard, Don Shirley, Raymond Scott, Sauter-Finnegan, Tommy Dorsey, Johnny Smith and George Shearing. This, as anyone would agree, is a good group, but Charlie isn't standing still. Ever striving for new sounds, Charlie presents here his new swinging group that has his fans flipping. Charlie, in his own words describes his musical philosophy.

What kind of music does he play? "I am for new sounds, for a swinging group... for a feeling of time and beat. You could call it modern music. It's no so-called progressive. Let's just say it's down home style.

What is Charlie trying to say musically? "Music isn't just a job, it's an art. And, I feel that I'm supposed to make people laugh, make them cry, make them day dream and give them some excitement... Music, that is jazz music, is reaching an ever increasing number of people. Modern jazz is no longer a dirty word. Jazz is maturing and maturity carries responsibilities. The public is entitled to consideration and to good music. I feel that a musician isn't just up there on the bandstand playing for himself.

This feeling, critics observe, is one of the big reasons for Charlie's popularity. When Charlie plays, he plays for everyone – for listeners who are in the know, for those just listening for pleasure, for those who come to dance. Charlie divides his time, his energies and suits his style to please each group. Perhaps the number one favorite of swank college proms, Charlie can jam with the best back alley boys or have the jazz addicts eating out of his hands in such meccas as New York's Birdland or Chicago's Blue Note.

What makes him tick? "Music isn't a haphazard, catch-as-catch-can type of thing. It's a serious business and an important one. It's something like building a house. You get blueprints, start with a foundation and then build up and around it. With music it's the same way. I feel I should tell a story or paint a picture with instruments."

How has success affected Charlie? "Success is just like everything else – you take it in stride and, if you have any sense, keep trying to do your best. For me, I like complete harmony, backing and support. I'm not there to 'cut' or outshine the other guy... Really, I'm glad that I'm fortunate enough to be here."

Modest and self effacing, Charlie will talk to you for hours about people, about music, about good books (he likes history and biography), about his interests and friends in such sports as baseball and boxing. Mention Joe Louis or Ezzard Charles and Charlie will almost compose a sonnet. He likes astrology, likes to jest about a "sixth sense" which, he feels, enables him to look into the future. But don't get him wrong. His feet are planted firmly on the ground and he has a mind of his own.

Precision is Charlie's middle name. He likes his musicians arranged precisely, to achieve the maximum effect. He demands a group that is on time, neat and turned up in advance. Charlie, who once lived in Woodside, Long Island, now calls Collingswood in South Jersey his home. Here, during his off days, he listens carefully to a vast collection of tapes and interviews. Why? So that he can improve his playing, his talking, everything about himself.

Charlie Ventura has a consuming desire to learn. With him, there is no end to music, no such thing as perfection. He plays as he feels. He strives each time for a fresh approach. As he puts it, "playing is fun and in order to play good you must feel good." This was Charlie Ventura's approach when at fifteen he sat in on his first "gigs" with greats of the tenor sax and it's his musical philosophy today. Here's how it all began...

A native of Philadelphia, Charlie was born in 1920 and it wasn't too long afterwards that he was bitten by the musical bug. On a picnic, as a tot, he discovered the ukulele and soon also grasped the fundamentals of the guitar. But just a few notes from the horn of the late, great Chu Berry convinced him that the sax was to be his instrument.

Charlie's father had a different career in mind for his son, one of the thirteen children. Hat making, pop decided, was a trade which paid regularly weekly dividends. So, Charlie worked as an apprentice with the Stetson Hat Company and did fairly well. He was also busy in his free time, busy with his first love.

Morning, noon and night, Charlie practiced fingering technique, the mastery of tone and style on an old sax he had bought at a second hand shop. Now and then he would skip practice to check his progress. How? By staying close to the door and listening to his idols, the saxophone 'greats' who jammed at Philadelphia's night clubs in the early 1930's. Charlie was too young to get in, but he could still hear Chu Berry, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young from outside.

Charlie graduated from South Philadelphia High School in 1935 and thereafter this fifteen year old sat in whenever possible with jazz men performing at local clubs. On one such night, Roy Eldridge dropped by and, liking what he heard, recommended Charlie to Gene Krupa.

Ventura joined "Little Jazz" and the other established stars in Krupa's band and soon was made a featured soloist. When Krupa's band disbanded, he moved on to Teddy Powell in 1943. A year later, he rejoined Krupa and stayed with him until he was encouraged to form his own band in 1946.

Charlie happened to launch out with a big (17 piece) band at a time when even the Goodman's and Dorsey's found it necessary to drop their's. Wisely, Charlie switched back to his now-famous group with included vocalist Jackie Cain and pianist-singer Roy Karl. This was the group that bounced the King Cole Trio out of first place, capturing almost everybody's honors as the "best small band." At the same time, Charlie was taking tenor sax honors from such giants of the musical world as Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins and Flip Phillips.

In the spring of 1950, Charlie took another try at the big band and it was a good one, too. Downbeat picked it as a likely candidate for big band honors of the year. Meanwhile, however, Charlie has acquired another interest. He had bought his own night club in Lindenwold, New Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia. The big band as dissolved.

In the years that followed, Charlie attempted to keep abreast of the new sounds and keep tabs on his night club at the same time. The experience was both rewarding and taxing.

First came "The Big Four Of Jazz" (Buddy Rich, Chubby Jackson, Marty Napoleon and Charlie), a group which broke records in the East and Midwest. When it disbanded, about twelve weeks later, Charlie rejoined the Gene Krupa trio (with pianist Teddy Napoleon) a combo which had headlined as part of the Krupa big band of the '40's.

Now and then between road trips – as far afield as Hawaii and Tokyo – the Trio would whip up new arrangements and thrill the crowds at Charlie's club.

Still later, Charlie formed his own Quintet (with Sonny Igor, Bob Carter, Dave McKenna and Mary Ann McCall) at the Lindenwold Club. Some said that Charlie's touch and dynamics, made it inevitable that each of his groups would be better than the one before. Now Charlie has left the night club business and is devoting full time to music makeup. It's a cinch that his present group which includes Johnny Coates on piano, Bill Bean, guitar; Angie Nemeth, bass; Tony DeNicola, drums and Charlie on sax will have everyone gazing in amazement and wondering "Just how does he do it?"

Of interest to the hi fi fans this session was recorded in Hackensack, New Jersey, at the famed Van Gelder studios using Telefunken microphones. It was mastered on the Scully lathe with the Grampion cutting head using the RIAA curve. Frequency response 30 to 20,000 cycles.

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