Archives for October 2005

The final session at the L.A. Jazz Institute’s Jazz West Coast 3 festival was an event so rare that musicians and attendees were buzzing about it from the moment they arrived. It was the appearance of Johnny Mandel leading a big band in a concert of his compositions and arrangements. Mandel has been a hero of musicians since the late forties, more than fifteen years before “The Shadow of Your Smile,” “Emily” and other pieces made him one of the few writers of quality songs to become a popular success in the second half of the twentieth century.
Although he was being honored as a legend of the west, Mandel’s fame is worldwide. His jazz charts for Artie Shaw, Count Basie, Woody Herman, Maynard Ferguson, Chet Baker, Hoagy Carmichael, Buddy Rich and Gerry Mulligan are imperishable goods, gems of the repertoire. With Mulligan, Bill Holman, Thad Jones, Neal Hefti, Gerald Wilson, Bob Brookmeyer and Al Cohn, he is one of the icons of jazz writing in the fifties, perhaps the last golden age of that demanding craft. His scoring for films and his arranging for singers (Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee, Shirley Horn, Anita O’Day, Mel Torme, Andy Williams, Natalie Cole, Diana Krall) constitute a gold standard for the field. His oldest works are as fresh as this morning.
Leading a band of seventeen hand-picked musicians, Mandel gave the audience “Keester Parade,” “Low Life,” three pieces from his score for the motion picture “I Want To Live, his famous arrangement of Tiny Kahn’s “TNT,” “Not Really the Blues,” the theme from M*A*S*H* and Kim Richmond’s kaleidoscopic treatment of Mandel’s “Seascape.” There were also performances of “Emily” and “The Shadow of Your Smile” and guest appearances by Pinky Winters and Bob Efford. Ms. Winters sang Dave Frishberg’s lyrics to Mandel’s “You Are There,” accompanied by only the composer at the piano. Together, without embellishment, they created magic, something at which this masterly singer has excelled for many years to recognition that comes nowhere near her level of artistry. Efford, best known as a baritone saxophonist, played the clarinet roles of Artie Shaw and Woody Herman in Mandel arrangements.
It was obvious that each member of the band was thrilled and flattered to be asked to play for Mandel. Collectively and as soloists, they performed at a fine edge of inspiration. Under his minimal but firm conducting, the horn sections were perfection in their reproduction of the unity, dynamics and rhythmic jazz essences of the writing. As for soloists, singling out a few would be to ignore the rest without justification. The players are listed below.
At seventy-nine, Mandel is a slight man with a low voice and a calm manner. He speaks quietly and regards a conversation partner with frank interest. Directing the band, he sometimes turns and watches the audience with the same intense curiosity. One of the most successful and admired musicians of his time, he exhibits no smidgen of ego. “The thing about John,” one of his friends said, “Is that he doesn’t know he’s Johnny Mandel. He thinks he’s just one of the guys.” The guys may think that, too, but they revere Mandel. They play for him with love, enthusiasm and no reservations of the kind that sidemen often have about leaders. He has that in common with Holman. I have never heard a player utter a disrespectful remark about either.
Mandel found the Jazz West Coast 3 experience rewarding enough that he is thinking of getting a book of arrangements together, organizing a band and playing a few gigs. That would be something to look forward to.
The band playing the compositions and arrangements of Johnny Mandel, October 2, 2005:

Reeds: Kim Richmond, Lanny Morgan, Tom Peterson, Doug Webb, Bob Carr

Trombones: Dave Ryan, Andy Martin, Scott Whitfield, Bryant Byers

Trumpets: Roger Ingram, Bobby Shew, Carl Saunders, Ron Stout

Piano: Bill Mays

Bass: Chris Conner

Guitar: John Pisano

Drums: Kevin Kanner

Guests: Bob Efford, clarinet; Pinky Winters, vocal

Eleven years after the first of impresario Ken Poston’s Jazz West Coast extravaganzas, I spent the weekend at the Los Angeles Jazz Institute’s Jazz West Coast 3, subtitled Legends Of The West. The attendees were fewer and grayer than eleven years ago. The music to which they remain devoted was consistently good and, at its best, splendid and undated. I spent part of the time preparing for a reading, panel and book signing and was unable to hear all of the four days of music, but took in as much as possible.
I arrived Friday evening in time for an all-star tribute to Bud Shank, an alto saxophone mainstay of west coast jazz in its heyday of the 1950s who survives as a fiery grand old man of the instrument. Following the tribute, Shank took command of a hard-driving rhythm section of pianist Bill Mays, bassist Chris Conner and drummer Joe LaBarbera. In the decade or more since he gave up the flute to concentrate on alto, Shank has become increasingly expressive, even rambunctious. He stayed true to his latterday form in several apperances during the weekend. His stylistic flute successor, Holly Hoffman, approximates Shank’s admired tonal qualities, swings hard and improvises lovely melodies, as she did to great effect in the tribute.
Herb Geller, Shank’s alto sax contemporary, traveled from his home in Germany for the event. He played a set of his compositions that included pieces from his unproduced musicals, Playing Jazz and another based on the life of the 1920s entertainer Josephine Baker. Geller’s songs for the theater have dramatic content appropriate to the idiom and translate beautifully for improvisation. He and Mays played for and off one another with elan, hard swing and humor. Mays was, hands down, winner of the event’s iron man competition, playing piano in five bands, wowing the audience with his energy, creativity and—not at all incidentally—sight-reading in situations in which he was a last-minute recruit.
Two recreated bands that looked on paper as if they might be exercises in nostalgia had surprising vitality. I thought when I heard it decades ago that the recorded music of the French horn player John Graas was stodgy and pretentious, but an octet headed by a Graas successor, Richard Todd, performed a delightful hour of Graas’s compositions and arrangements. Maybe I was missing something the first time around or—as I suspect—Todd and his colleagues booted the arrangements into rhythmic life.
In the fifties, Allyn Ferguson’s Chamber Jazz Sextet created a following for its ingenious incorporation into a jazz ensemble of classical forms and techniques . At JWC 3, the 2005 version of the band—reinforced to an octet—gave a program in which harmonic depth and textures buoyed arrangements that had swing and humor. I was particularly taken with Ferguson’s fifty-year-old variations on 250-year-old dance movements from J.S. Bach’s secular chamber works.
The eighty-four-year-old drummer Chico Hamilton looks and carries himself like a man twenty years younger. In a panel discussion, he spoke expressively about his fifties quintet, noted for combining delicately balanced instrumentation and tonal qualities with blues feeling and exploratory improvisation. Later, he performed with his current quintet, eschewing his celebrated brushwork dynamics in favor of sticks, drumming with nearly military precision. His band’s performance verged on rhythm and blues and often entered it entirely.
The saxophonist, actor and wry humorist Med Flory presented a big band session of the kind he has led since the early fifties. The genius of Flory’s self-deprecatory leadership lies in creating the impression of flying by the seat of his pants, barely holding the band together, but almost invariably getting it to swing amiably. He provided plenty of solo space for his sidemen, which gave trombonists Andy Martin and Scott Whitfield, trumpeters Bob Summers and Ron Sout, saxophonists Lanny Morgan, Doug Webb and Jerry Pinter and pianist John Campbell opportunities to shine. Like all Flory perfomances, this one melded entertainment with serious music, to the enhancement of both.
I’ve been up too late too many nights in a row, listening and hanging out, a satisfying facet of these gatherings. It’s time to catch up on missed bedtime hours, lulled to sleep by the Malibu surf rolling onto the beach outside the gracious house in which I am fortunate to be a guest. I’ll have a final Jazz West Coast 3 report tomorrow. It concerns a legend of the west, east, midwest, south and north.

The energetic, and possibly sleepless, Washington, DC trombonist, singer and bandleader Eric Felten writes:

I read the Fud Livingston post with interest, because in my endless searches for vintage big band music I have acquired a number of Fud Livingston charts. But I can’t remember ever actually trying any of them out. In part, that’s because they are “stocks” (which I’m happy to collect, but wouldn’t go out of my way to perform). And as much as I hate to admit it, I think I have reflexively dismissed the charts because of the man’s rather goofy name. Shallow of me, but human. And not without some grounding in reason — one learns not to expect hot music from the Ish Kabibbles of the world. But now I’ll go check my library to see if there is something from Fud worth putting in front of the band.

I also enjoyed the trolley item, in no small part because I live one house away from what used to be the trolley car tracks in my Washington neighborhood. It was the line that ran up along the Potomac, ending in Glen Echo Maryland, where there is an historic amusement park built long ago by the trolley company. The business model worked like this: Build an amusement park at the end of the trolley line, and you could take the trolley system’s largely unused weekend electricity and use it to power the rides. Getting to the park also gave people a reason to ride the trolley on the weekends. Sadly, the trolley was killed off about 1980. But the amusement park is going strong. The only ride left is a gorgeous 1920s Denzel carousel to which my kids (and I ) are devoted. The bumper car pavillion has been turned into an open-air dance space. Other buildings have been turned into art studios, a puppet theater and a children’s theater.

But the most extraordinary thing at the park is the Spanish Ballroom. Built in the 1930s it has been beautifully restored and it continues to host a remarkably vibrant dance scene. Saturday nights are for the swing dance crowd, but other nights of the week host tango, contra, waltz etc. I was there with my big band in August, and we played for about 600 very sweaty dancers. (For authenticity’s sake, air-conditioning was never installed in the ballroom.) It’s great fun playing for dancers — the rhythm takes on a whole new meaning. And when we play for dances, part of the fun is the feeling that we’re keeping a neglected part of the jazz tradition alive.

It is good to know that this splendid remnant of the American past exists. Most such dance pavilions faded away with the passing of two other great American institutions, the swing era and urban rail transporation.

Old friend Bob Godfrey, retired drummer and retail record entrepeneur, was prompted by Freddie Schreiber’s silly names to observe:

You may have opened up a can of worms.

Then, he proves it.

Todd L. Entown

Wynn Abaygo

Rick O’Shay

Dick Tatorial

Unretired vibraharpist and concert entrepeneur Charlie Shoemake offers:

Otto Nowhere

Hey, I don’t write these things; I just pass ’em along.
QUOTE

Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek—Milton