Mandel On Kahn

And now, a visit from the lovely and popular Mea Culpa.

Please disregard the arranger credits contained in this posting of two days ago. Johnny Mandel did not arrange “TNT,” “Blue Room,” “Who Fard That Shot?,” “My Heart Stood Still” and “Jeepers Creepers.” After faithful reader Russell Chase cast doubt on my assertion that the charts were Mandel's, I asked Fantasy's Terri Hinte for a copy of the reissue CD. When it arrived, I found that in the original liner notes, George T. Simon wrote that the arrangements were by Tiny Kahn. In a telephone conversation, Mandel confirmed it. He and Kahn were friends from the time they were both fifteen years old, growing up in New York City. Mandel went on at length about his admiration for Kahn, who was a rarity, one of the few drummers in jazz who was also a gifted composer and arranger.

"In fact, I don't know of any others at the time, except for Louis Bellson," he said. "I loved Tiny Kahn."

Kahn, who was not tiny, died of a massive heart attack in 1953, when he was twenty-nine years old. He had worked in the big bands of Herbie Fields, Georgie Auld, Boyd Raeburn, Woody Herman, Chubby Jackson and Charlie Barnet and was the drummer in a brilliant Stan Getz quintet that also featured guitarist Jimmy Raney and pianist Al Haig. His discography is enormous for a man who died so young.

When arrangers gather, they discuss Kahn as a peer of and influence on Mandel, Al Cohn and Gerry Mulligan. "He was a truly great musician and a very funny man," Mandel told me. "I think he would have been the best of us all, if he had lived, and if he wasn't working as a standup comic."

There are three verified Mandel arrangements in the the Elliott Lawrence CD in question. They are "Tenderly," "Moten Swing" and his adaptation of the Noro Morales arrangement of "Ponce."