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Woody Herman: "Leader of the Thundering Herds"
By John Twomey
Copyright 2012 by John Twomey. All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this article or parts thereof in any form.
Woody Herman with his wife Charlotte and daughter Ingrid.
Woody Herman's contributions to jazz are more difficult to quantify than many other musicians because of the breadth and scope of his long career. Being progressive by nature, this took him on a lot of twists and turns that he couldn't see coming, and are not always easy to fully understand in a short sketch of his life. His main influence was Duke Ellington, who fired his imagination. His main goal from a very young age, seemed to be to keep moving forward.
Woody loved and lived life to the fullest, in times and places and with other people who were not always as happy or carefree, or saw the fun in life that he did. His relationship with his wife Charlotte was a love story, and she was just as responsible for his success as he was.
Mostly by means of a large dance band, and then a jazz concert orchestra, he discovered and developed an entire world of musical talent which we very likely would never have heard.
One idea I want to impress was how helpful his own parents and one teacher were to his career, and how this later benefited so many others who he encouraged.
Woody was the definitive entertainer: Present for others- on the stand, and with the audience equally. When you decide to lead, you decide to inspire. Woody inspired love from the public for his music and singing, as well as from his own band members. That is unusual. Just as effectively, Woody gave his customers a break from their problems, if only for an evening in a small tank-town, or at the Waldorf. For those of you new to big band history, I hope you enjoy the story.
J.T.
Woodrow Charles Thomas Hermann was born on May 16, 1913 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was named after President Woodrow Wilson. His Polish mother, Myrtle Bartoszewicz, was born in Germany on September 5th 1888, and came to Milwaukee, Wisconsin the same year. Woodrow’s father, Otto Hermann, always known as “Otsie” was born in Milwaukee, November 25th 1886. They married in 1910. Myrtle was Catholic and Otto converted.
Otsie worked for the United Shoe Machine Company. He went to factory floors and taught the workers how to use the shoe making machinery his company manufactured. Otsie’s closest friends were from the Sherman (changed from Stachowski) family. The Sherman’s had known the Hermann’s since before Myrtle and Otsie’s marriage. Woody was an only child, and so John and Julia Sherman’s children were treated as his brothers and sister. “Aunt Julia” Sherman, as Woodrow always called her, had three sons and one daughter: Erv, Ray, Dan and Joyce. The Hermann’s never owned their house, always renting. Myrtle always longed to be closer to Lake Michigan. She loved to swim, and went to a pool twice a week. Woodrow was also a good swimmer. His childhood in Milwaukee was nothing extraordinary. He skated, rode horses at a farm out in Wales, WI., jumped in haystacks, and joined in tomato fights at the farm.
His father changed jobs and joined the Nunn-Bush Shoe Company, where he remained for forty years, becoming an executive. Ray Sherman recalls that “For six months or something like that, Woody’s dad had an Indian Motorcycle with a sidecar. We used to go for rides in that thing. Uncle Otto would put on a helmet and the goggles and away we’d go." (1)
Otsie loved to sing, and did, in church choirs and as a member of such barber shop quartets as the “Cream City Four”, but as Ray Sherman remembers, “Never really got too far, because they would become disengaged, going to the engagement. They’d stop at a few taverns, roadhouses, on the way to the State Fair that they were supposed to be working.”(2)
“My father Otto was a terrible ham. He saw in me the possible fulfillment of his love for show business, and he worked with me, teaching me songs, from the time I first remember seeing him. It wasn’t long after I learned to walk that he was also coaching me to dance. He would have loved working on the stage, instead of as a shoemaker at the Nunn-Bush factory…We had a great collection of recordings at home, and he sang along with them. He even bought a player piano and supplied it with all the available piano rolls.” (3) “I was their only child. They were kind and beautiful. They let me try to do anything I wanted, and if it didn’t work out, they were sympathetic.”(4)
Through his father’s encouragement, Woodrow auditioned and won a role in a Children’s Review. A newspaper reported that “A Milwaukee boy is traveling over the state playing as Wesley Barry in a prologue to “School Days” at motion picture theaters in many Wisconsin cities. He is Woodrow Hermann, 9, son of Mr. and Mrs. Otto Hermann, 1460 Humboldt Ave. He is said to be the youngest juvenile actor in the state. He will tour the state for eight weeks and then return to Milwaukee to appear at the Strand, where he has been seen on previous occasions in the prologue to “Penrod”. He has also appeared on club programs and at other entertainments.” (5)
The travel never took Woodrow more than 100 miles from home, and he earned $40.00 a week, a portion of which he saved to buy his first saxophone. Woody studied piano with four different teachers as a child, and was also given a violin. Neither of these instruments appealed to him, especially the violin. It is notable that among the piano teachers was a priest named Tony Mack, who the adult Woody later called “An excellent jazz pianist.” (6) Mack enjoyed the piano work of Earl Hines and the trumpeter Louis Armstrong. No doubt this knowledge of true jazz artists accorded such acclaim by a jazz playing priest opened the door to the world of jazz for Woodrow. In 1922, he bought his first E-Flat Alto silver sax with his traveling show savings.
He began a series of grueling saxophone and clarinet lessons “From an old German fellow (Art Buech) who would take nothing but hard work. This was the answer to everything. Practice until you turn blue and your lip is numb and your teeth hurt and you may accomplish something. But he was very good and I was fortunate in starting with someone like that.”(7)
Woodrow also sat down for a few hours with the popular saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft in Milwaukee, where Wiedoeft was touring. He was continuing dancing lessons at this time also, including tap. He was now a natural performer before audiences.
In fifth grade, Woodrow was tired of the Milwaukee School Board interfering with his being allowed to be in show business. They were always tracking his day, night, and out of town travels with an eye to putting him back in his school chair full time. So at age 10, he took it upon himself to get a transfer out of the public schools and into a Catholic school called St. John’s Cathedral Grade School in downtown Milwaukee, “Where I had heard the administration and teachers were more interested in individuals.” (8) At the same age, he decided to have his own name legally changed to Herman; dropping the second “n”, on one of his court petitions to perform.
Woody remembers: “By that time, my musicianship, coupled with my singing and dancing, had made me a bookable act. The kiddie-revue days were over. I was able to play theaters as a single on a year-round basis, performing locally on school nights and sometimes traveling to other towns on weekends, often with my mother along. Eventually, I even played in some vaudeville houses in Chicago; billed as “The Boy Wonder”…being a show business act gave me some kind of glow. I tried not to be too self-impressed, but it was a gas to walk by a theater and see my name in lights, and to collect as much as fifty dollars a week- a powerful income in the early Twenties. My parents held the salary for me in a bank account, and saw that I had spending money.”(9)
Woody bought and listened to Duke Ellington and Red Nichols on records. The rest of his life he credited Ellington as his musical inspiration. He also collected Music Corporation of America brochures, full of pictures of bands with all their instruments, "And this was very impressive to me, and I think right then and there- I had to be still in grade school- [ I knew] that was what I wanted to do, that was bigger than being a ball player or anything else.”(10)
When he told his parents that he wanted a career in Jazz he reported that, “They almost went into a dead faint, then, as always, they encouraged me to try it." (11)
He was then playing a steady night gig with a group of older guys who picked him up from home and drove him back at 4am, even on school nights. At this time he also learned a lot more about jazz by listening to records performed by the Mound City Blue Blowers. Red McKenzie, “…who sang and blew through a tissue paper and pocket comb in trumpet-imitation style”, (12) led a group which consisted of Coleman Hawkins, Jack Teagarden, Eddie Condon, Gene Krupa, Muggsy Spanier, Jimmy Dorsey, Pee Wee Russell, and Glenn Miller.
Woody listened to the Hawkins solos almost endlessly, and memorized them. He also listened to trombonist Jack Teagarden, and later remarked of his playing, “…I never could get over it. It just gave me the feeling that this man had never made a mistake in his whole life and didn’t plan on making any…I realized that what a great feeling of relaxation and assurance it gives your audience if you’re that kind of player…"(13)
In high school, Tony Mack’s brother Al and Woody started a little band that played each day after classes were dismissed on radio station WTMJ in Milwaukee.
During his schooling, of all the Dominican Sisters who taught at St. John’s Cathedral Grade School, one would have more impact on his life than many of the more famous instructors he would meet. Her name was Sister Fabian Riley. She taught Woodrow science and math. Even though the night gigs caused him to fall asleep in class, she believed a musician “was a good thing to be”. (14) When he was sent to the Principal’s Office, she would get him off the hook, like when he didn’t show up for school at all. She insisted that Woodrow “Just stick to your music. It’s the best thing for you”. (15)
Although Woody did not graduate from high school on time, Sister Fabian arranged for lessons to allow him to graduate late. “She knew I was only interested in music. Without her defending me all the time and encouraging me in my music, who knows what would have become of me?”(16)
Woody was hired by band leader Joie (pronounced ‘joy’) Lichter who played the Milwaukee territory, and made short trips to places like Oshkosh, WI. on weekends. “I had some major weaknesses, like, my reading was very poor…I would practice and play the exercises and the chords and scales, and I would play and I would perform, so I had never really gotten around to having to read.”(17).
One summer the Lichter band was playing a gig in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Woody discovered that marijuana was smoked among the musicians and high school students in that town. Though Woody didn’t smoke grass, one of the trumpeters Lichter hired in Kansas City did- a lot. He was 15 years older than Woody and they roomed together at the Alvin Hotel in Tulsa.
It was so hot that Woody drank bottle after bottle of Dr. Pepper and Coca-Cola, and lined the empties up on the room’s window sill. His roommate smoked marijuana. “He kept pretty numb day and night,” Woody laughed remembering. (18) Unfortunately for Woody, the pot created panic attacks of paranoia in his roommate. “He used to hit panic attacks when he would go to sleep. All of a sudden he’d leap up, straight up, and this was very unnerving, especially when I had just fallen asleep. And this one morning was unbearable. I had just fallen asleep and probably an hour had passed, and he leaped up and started screaming “Fire!”, because these bottles were lined up on the window and there was a red neon sign across the street reflecting in them. And he was getting everyone up in the building, and calling on the phone…it was miserable”. (19)
Trying to keep up musically with the band was a challenge for Woody for the first few months, but some of the older guys in the band, “particularly the saxophone players, were kind enough to work with me and help me”. (20) Lichter himself would smack him with his violin bow, sing over him, and kick him because of his poor reading. But Lichter did show patience by not firing him. Woody heard and met a lot of influential bands while touring with the Lichter band. Lichter’s band was the 'house band' at the Eagle’s Ballroom in Milwaukee five nights a week. “It was for dancing and they had two big bands, the house band and all the hit bands, people like Coon-Sanders and Austin Wiley, would come in…I got to hear a lot of players that I ordinarily would not have heard…I got to meet a lot of these people whom I had been hearing only on records and on the radio…These were important times for me, very important.”(21)
The Lichter band toured as far and wide as Lexington, Kentucky, Kansas City, Mo., and, of course, Tulsa.
While back in Milwaukee with Lichter, Woody was asked by bandleader Tom Gerun to join his band at the best hotel in Milwaukee, the Hotel Schroeder. Gerun had to ask permission from Woody’s parents, and promised to treat Woody like a son. Woody was 18.
The band’s first gig was in Chicago, then on to Pittsburgh. Gerun was known in San Francisco, and Woody was sitting in a saxophone section that included a musician named Al Morris, who later became the singer Tony Martin.
Woody met his future wife at the Bal Taberin Club in San Fransisco. She was part of a cast party celebrating their new musical, “Nine O’clock Review”. She was a dancer, who also had a career as a radio actress. Woody was immediately attracted to her. Her name was Charlotte Neste. They married in 1936.
The band stayed around San Francisco for about a year, then headed back to Chicago. Tony Martin remembers, “That was a thrill to me, to go east. I had a favorite uncle in Oakland. He promised me that if I ever got to go east, he’d lend me the money to buy a car. I bought a Chevrolet, a wonderful little car. Woody and I put our saxophones in the back and set off for Chicago. We drove to Reno, Nevada, and decided that instead of stopping overnight, we were going to make it all the way to Salt Lake City and save money. We’d been given expenses, and we were going to keep the expenses. We got to Utah. We were just outside of Salt Lake City. It was a new highway, with soft shoulders- they hadn’t completed the highway on the side, we made a turn in the dusk, and the wheel of my car caught. I was driving, and when I felt us going over, I held Woody by the head so that he wouldn’t go into the glass. We turned over four times, broke the window, and did a total on the car. I was bleeding and so was Woody. I’d fractured my hand. Woody jumped out of the car and opened the back and took his saxophone out to see if it worked. Then he checked our liquor supply. Then he fainted. After a few days we arrived in Chicago in another car. We performed at the 1932 Chicago World’s Fair. I was 20, Woody was 19." (22)
Woody recalls, “After work one night in Chicago’s Granada Café [a couple of us in the band and floorshow] went out to hear Earl Hine’s Orchestra…We arrived about 4 or 5 in the morning, still dressed in our band tuxedos. I was even wearing my Homburg. I liked being dressed properly…We were in a semi-hilarious mood and Fuzzy [Knight- a comic in the floorshow] was waving his hand, a finger of which was decorated with a big diamond ring. That combination, plus the roll of more than a thousand dollars that Fuzzy flashed, didn’t go unnoticed. The trouble began while we were driving back to our hotel in my Pontiac Roadster…We stopped for a red light, and a big black sedan pulled up next to us. Three guys jumped out and started opening our doors and banging on the car. They couldn’t seem to do much with us because we were well-oiled and not responding too well. We scuffled with them from our seats and one guy decided the noise we were making might attract attention, so he slugged me on the head with his fist. But the Homburg saved me. The hood got frustrated, pulled a pistol, and fired a bullet toward the floorboard of the car to scare us. My right leg unfortunately was in the way, and the bullet went straight through my calf and dropped to the floor.
I got out of the car, dragging my leg behind me, located a policeman a couple of blocks away, told him I had just been shot in the leg and that the hoods might still be back at the car with my buddies. The cop took one whiff of my breath and said, “Boy, you’ve been drinking. You better go home.”(23) After returning to the car, Woody found his friends still there- alone. They found a doctor and put him in a Southside Hospital overnight.
After three years, Woody left Gerun’s band for Harry Sosnick’s, whose band had many radio jobs that paid well. MCA (Music Corporation of America) advised him to join Gus Arnheim’s band, and on a cross country tour, with Arnheim, Woody crossed paths in Pittsburgh with the Isham Jones Orchestra.
Isham Jones led one of the premier bands of the period from 1919-1936. He was one of the innovators of structuring the instrumentation of what was known as a “Big Band”(along with Ferde Grofe & Bill Challis). Jones studied the piano growing up in Saginaw, Michigan. He was the son of a coal mine boss, and spent several years as a boy working in a mine, driving a mule that pulled coal cars out of the mine.
After serving in WWI, he studied saxophone and joined a band that played at the Sherman House in Chicago. He was put out in front of the band by the hotel management because of the strange looking horn he played, the saxophone still being unfamiliar. That is how he became a bandleader. His remarkable talent for composing came later, to list only a few of his compositions: “On The Alamo”, “It Had To Be You”, “I’ll See You In My Dreams”, “The One I Love Belongs To Somebody Else”, “Spain”, and “It’s Funny to Everyone But Me”.
Jones was also a remarkable realist when it came to music, and actually demanded that his band go to Chicago’s Southside and listen to Joe Oliver’s band. Author James T. Maher elaborates, “In Isham Jones’ mind, Joe Oliver had as good a dance band as there was. Isham always understood what was happening in jazz, but never pretended to be doing it himself, despite the wonderful blues recordings he made.”(24)
Woody was brought to the attention of Jones by a Bass player he met in Lexington, Kentucky named Walt Yoder, who although still in high school, had already played in the bands of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey and Isham Jones. Woody met Jones in a theater where the Jones band was playing, and, according to Woody, “When I went over to meet Isham at the theater, the only conversation we had was, ‘Yoder says that you sing, dance, and play saxophone. Is that right?’ I says, ‘yeah’. He says,’ok.’”(25)
Woody was to meet up with the band in Denver to begin. When he got to the gig, Jones had forgotten he had hired him. So Jones paid off the man Woody was replacing, and paid Woody $125.00 a week.
Woody was used to Tom Gerun’s idea of how a band should look and act, neat and polite, especially the bandleader. But with Jones it was a different story. Woody recalled,”…with Isham it didn’t matter if you had the wrong suit, or brown shoes with a black suit, as long as you showed up in your right mind and, after you got there, didn’t ever miss a note. Even an eighth note. Because this was death. He stood in front of the band with a complete score of every tune. We played those tunes night after night, seven days a week, and he still had the score out there. And if a customer annoyed him by pulling his coat to say, ‘Mr. Jones, would you play “Stardust” or something, he’d say, ‘Get the hell out of here.’ Warm personality on the stand…”(26)
Jones featured Woody on a lot of novelty vocals, and let Woody record with a smaller group within the band. He insisted that Woody sing “I’m In The Mood For Love” and when Woody said he couldn’t sing that kind of song, Jones said, “Sing it”, and Woody began singing ballads. (27)
Through Jones’ band within a band, Woody recorded on the Decca label, and began to meet people there. This would come in handy for him in the coming months.
In 1936 Jones decided to retire. Woody recalled how it happened, “It was in Knoxville, TN., that he called us all into his room... He was very simple and direct about it. ‘I’ve got a ranch near Denver,’ he said. ‘I’m going there to write music and take it easy. We’ve had a good outfit, and it was nice while it lasted, but I’m retiring. We’re breaking up.’” He paid us off, rather nicely too, shook us all by the hand and wished us luck. And we were in Knoxville without jobs…It takes a long time for musicians to “work into” each other, and it seemed a crime to break up our now excellent outfit.”(28)
Some of the musicians held a few meetings and decided to create a “cooperative” band, with members holding shares. Woody took it upon himself to arrange a contract with Decca for the band. But who would lead it? Woody recalls "We argued about it all the way from Knoxville to New York, and by the time we hit the big town, we were “Woody Herman and The Band That Plays The Blues”. (29) Woody had been elected because of his long show business background. He was 22. One of the first things he did was call Charlotte in California and ask her to marry him, which they did on September 27th, 1936. They rented an apartment on Bleeker Street in Greenwich Village- a fifth floor walk-up, and spent their honeymoon visiting all of the clubs on 52nd Street.
The band found a place to practice for free at the Capitol Hotel. Woody said “We didn’t know what we were rehearsing for, but we were rehearsing.”(30)
They finally got a gig at the Brooklyn Roseland Ballroom on Monday, Nov. 2nd, 1936. Woody got $75.00 as leader per week, the others $50.00. (31) They went over well. Three weeks later they were moved to the other Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan. They signed a booking contract with General Artists Corporation.
Meanwhile, Isham Jones' poultry ranch failed, due to a disastrous storm, and he opened a general store and hamburger stand on a winding road outside of Denver. He was a multimillionaire from composer royalties and shrewd savings. Jones stood there all day making hamburgers. Woody reported that people familiar with Jones passing through the area would recognize him and be amazed to see him. He stayed there 3 years until moving to California, where he opened and sold (at a profit) two music stores. He moved to Florida after that, where he died in October of 1956 at age 62.
In July of 1937 Woody’s band was hired to perform by Guy Hunt, who owned the Ocean Pier in Wildwood, N.J. After two weeks, with the end of the job looming, Hunt asked Woody if he’d like to play another week. Woody enthusiastically agreed, having garnered a popular young following from the Philadelphia area that spent its weekends at the N.J. shore. Hunt even hired a plane to trail a banner over the beach that read “Woody Herman---Held Over By Popular Demand”, and built a plywood bandstand on the beach so that on Sunday the band could play all afternoon. Hunt made sure a Philadelphia radio station was getting all of this by wire remote. Hunt was a good businessman- he promoted his park through the band.
One of the teens, named Jack Siefert, approached Woody and told him that Woody’s Aunt Pauline lived next to him in Philadelphia. Aunt Pauline wasn’t actually a relative, but had been a great neighbor of the Hermann’s in Milwaukee before moving to Philadelphia. Woody offered to buy him a milkshake and played baseball on the beach with Jack’s friends. They struck up a life-long friendship. As the years rolled by, one room in Jack’s suburban Philadelphia home would become a museum of Woody’s life. Jack collected everything about Woody. And whenever Woody was playing in the Philadelphia region, he would stay with Jack and his family in a special room decorated with awards, posters and records- all of the collectibles Woody had no interest in, or time to think about.
Around 1937, Woody began working with Jack Kapp at Decca Records. Jack would pretty much tell Woody what to record, thus depriving the band of a recognizable style, or sound. Red Norvo said, "I never went to hear The Band That Play the Blues. I didn’t really like the band. I liked a lot of the guys in the band. When I’d see them in bars, like the White Rose around 52nd Street where everybody drank, they’d say ‘Well, you know, it’s an idea. Maybe we can make a buck.” (32)
But Woody wasn’t having much success. In New York, he’d go to the General Amusement Corporation offices to see if they had any bookings, but he’d end up sitting in the waiting room with Glenn Miller.
“I was 24 years old and optimistic; Glenn was a little older, 33, and sour. He had already blown a ton of money with three bands and he was full of sad stories. GAC apparently didn’t think much of either of us at that point.”(33)
In 1938 Woody’s band became involved with Cy and Charlie Schribman. The two brothers, who had excellent ethics and honor in the sometimes questionable popular music business, gave Glenn Miller the momentum he needed, by investing not only money in his band, but by their own legwork and phone calls. They owned several dance venues in the New England area.
The Schribman technique was to get “rising” bands gigs in hotels or dance halls in their territory, places which may not have had enough customers to pay the band a living wage, but they would make sure that there was a radio wire present, hooked into some network, giving the band priceless air time to become recognized in other parts of the country. The Schribman’s would pay for all of this themselves, as investors in the band. Woody remembered: “Without the Schribman’s, I don’t think the whole Era could have happened…after a few weeks, that air time would make the audience aware of you and, when you got on the road, you started to earn some money on percentages, getting X amount of dollars as a guarantee and then maybe 50 or 60 percent of the gross…The Schribman brothers started way back with some of the earliest bands. In their stable sat one time or another were people like Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller. They helped Tommy Dorsey in the beginning, they helped us, and any new band that had any potential at all. They also helped Duke Ellington." (34)
1939 was an interesting year for the band. Woody hired 19 year old Mary Ann McCall as a singer, after Cy Schribman advised him to “Get a blonde broad. It doesn’t matter what she does. If she’s got big t_ts, she’ll make it." (35) Mary Ann was a very talented singer, and Woody wouldn’t have hired her for any other reason, but at 19, she lasted with this edition of the band only 7 months.
In April of 1939 the Herman band recorded four tunes for Decca. One of them was a head arrangement, just a series of riffs based on a blues theme that soloists could work with. The band had played it frequently at the Roseland Ballroom.
The series of riffs had no name, so when the group was asked what they wanted to call it, the band’s bass player Walt Yoder spoke up. He had recently attended a Sportsman show in the Boston Garden, and there had been a wood chopping contest. It was agreed to call it TheWoodchopper’s Ball. Although the initial release garnered good reviews- Marshall Stearns of Tempo Magazine went so far as to say in his column, “This band doesn’t need any plugs from the column. Man, they’re on their way!”, (36) Decca realized looking at the numbers that it was not an immediate hit, so they shelved it, then released it a total of 3 times over the next several years, eventually making it a huge hit and selling over 5 million copies.
Woody followed Glenn Miller's Band into the Glen Island Casino, in New Rochelle, N.Y., during the late summer of 1939. After the Miller starburst, Woody claimed it was like "Following the World War to follow Glenn". (37) The Casino was deserted the night Woody opened.
Then fortune struck when George Simon, editor of Metronome Magazine used the words "The Herman Herd" to describe the band in a review, and it stuck. The band was received at well known nightspots after the Glen Island disappointment with the new name, including the very large Meadowbrook Ballroom in Pompton Lakes, N.J., which also had a radio wire to the networks.
The band's next important boost was playing at the Famous Door on 52nd St. in Manhattan. The Famous Door (which also had a radio wire) was where everybody hip in music hung out, and a gig there was coveted. Woody figured they had it made; they had shown they were top drawer stuff, but nothing big came out of the engagement. Although a bit better well known, a period of slogging through the country playing one-nighters for a year and a half followed.
Charlotte gave birth to their one and only child, Ingrid, on September 3, 1941, in Los Angeles. That same month, the band recorded Arlen and Mercer's "Blues In The Night". Woody sang it, and it became another big hit. "Blues In The Night" was the "B" side to the very popular hit the band was trying to cover, "This Time The Dream's On Me", which got all the attention in the studio, and was supposed to make some money. It featured the entire band singing backgrounds behind the vocal, "And we worked for hours on it.", added Woody.(38)
The band appeared in several motion pictures on the eve of WWII. One was "Blues In The Night", playing on the success of that record, and another was "Winter Time". It played the Strand Theater on Broadway, and then moved on to the Paramount Theater in Time's Square for six more weeks backing Bob Hope's stage show, accompanying an early one of the serial "Road" pictures that Hope made with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. Because of Woody's chemistry with Bob Hope and the manager of the Paramount, Woody's band became a fixture. Whenever a "Road" picture played there, Woody and the band would be called back and stay with the film for up to 12 weeks, playing between showings.(39)
Woody was working seven shows a day, seven days a week, from 9 a.m. until after midnight at the Paramount. He wasn't eating, and became malnourished. This, and severe anxiety, created a situation that received psychiatric attention. "The psychiatrist suggested that my anxiety was being caused, in part, by my arrival an hour or so before the show time. 'Stop hanging around the theater", he said. "Instead, just walk in at the last minute and jump in'...It worked. But the Paramount Management almost had heart failure the first few times I stepped into the theater and on to the stage, just as it was rising out of the orchestra pit". (40) Between the city theaters and the ballroom gigs in the East, the band toured the country. "We were headed in all directions, using cars and a converted milk van." (41) With America now fighting, and rationing in effect, bands had trouble traveling. Tires and gas were rationed. The draft, of course, had to call up all the able-bodied who could fight. The bands were primarily composed of young men between the ages of 18 to their mid-20's. Woody himself was 4-F because of two hernias. One of his Army examining physicians told him he'd be of far more value entertaining the troops to keep morale up than getting shot anyhow. Woody and the band spent the war entertaining troops on Army, Navy and Marine bases. They were heard over the Armed Forces Radio Network to troops too distant to be reached in person.
Until 1944, Woody's band was a versatile group, musically speaking. They could play blues, as well as romantic tunes, exceptionally well. They could play as a swinging dance band, and then turn to novelty numbers and even Dixieland Jazz. All of this kept the band working through very hard times during the war. It's interesting to note that President Richard Nixon's lawyer Leonard Garment, and Federal Reserve Chief Alan Greenspan, both played in Woody's band as teenagers to replace draftees who had been called up. Herman and his band followed the credo of Isham Jones, and played every kind of musical material to the highest level, and always treated each piece of music with respect.
But by casting a wide net, and providing something for everyone, they failed as a group to create a "sound", as Basie, Goodman, Miller, Ellington, and Shaw had done. Woody's ear seemed more general, and thus the band's individuality was watered down. A few Jazz scholars have argued that, as far back as 1941, with the titles "Woodsheddin' With Woody'; "Ten Day Furlough"; and "Hot Chestnuts", the band had provided the great power and style it would project from 1944 onwards, with the series of "Herds". These early numbers could be compared in spirit and quality with any of the music the more popular Swing bands were selling at that time. In 1943 Herman was hiring Ellington's musicians, such as Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges, and Ray Nance to play on record dates. He also recorded three of Dizzy Gillespie's first big band compositions in 1942: "Down Under", "Swing Shift", and "Woody 'N You". Dizzy played with the band at the Apollo Theater in Harlem for a week.
Behind all of the frantic change in wartime musical taste, the American Federation of Musicians, led by Caesar Petrillo, voted to strike for more royalty payments for juke box and radio play. One argument said it was costing jobs and therefore royalties should rise. A study conducted by Bob Selvin, a record producer who was a busy studio band leader and consulted Petrillo, stated that the jukes were creating "live" jobs, and thus raising demand for more recordings. This halted all instrumental recording, except vocalists accompanied by other voices for harmony. The recording ban lasted from July 13, 1942, until November 11, 1944.
In 1943-4 drummer Dave Tough, trombonist Bill Harris, tenor saxophonist Flip Phillips, and two arrangers: Ralph Burns and Neal Hefti, joined Herman's Band, and it became arguably the first popular white band to go from Swing into uncharted BeBop territory. Bassist Chubby Jackson, known as a so-so bassist, but as having a great eye for talent, joined the band and became a kind of defacto co-director with Woody. Chubby did have a unique feature on his bass, and that was an added fifth string, pitched at high C, which was a fourth above the average normal upper G string bass. This provided him with room to wander into new sounds in walking lines and solos. Chubby was always calling Woody at all hours shrieking "You gotta hear this guy!" from some club or ballroom. "Chubby knew Woody better than anybody," said Red Rodney. "They were personal friends and musical buddies from the same era, the same idiom. Chubby had been part of Woody's greatest triumphs, and Woody was much more comfortable with that more traditional "Apple Honey" big band sound than he was with the more modern "Four Brothers" band." (42)
BeBop had slid under the radar and into the public consciousness during the recording strike. New ideas born at the time were rarely captured in recording studios, with one exception, "Victory Discs", or V-Discs. These were large acetate discs that could hold many more songs per side- almost a precursor of the Long Play Record. They were recorded for one purpose only; and that was for troop morale. Shipped out in protective cans to fighting fronts and broadcast on shortwave frequencies over the Armed Forces Radio Network, they provided the sound of home. Woody made a lot of V-Discs to send out while playing military bases and radio shows.
Soldiers were the first to hear BeBop unmasked on a large scale. Their initial reaction to what Louis Armstrong called at the time, "that Chinese music", we may not know, but by the time fighting ended, another two things were clear in Pop music. Vocalists were in their ascendancy, and the big swing bands were running out of steam trying to keep up economically and culturally. BeBop claimed the middle ground. With the burgeoning vocalist's own styles playing endlessly on the radio and jukes, 400 mile full-band bus trips on rationed fuel and bald tires wern't making much sense for a public that craved a more personal vocal to a loud bombastic Swing band. The teens who had danced to Benny Goodman in 1937 were now grown up and tempered by war, their energy spent working and having families. Many female postwar vocalists followed the full-throated styling of Anita O'Day. Jazz writer George Simon said she sang as if she had peanut butter stuck to the roof her mouth. She created the sound with Gene Krupa's band, and was the first female vocalist to insist on wearing a band jacket like everyone else on the stand. Singers such as Chris Connor and June Christy sounded very similar to O'Day, and Woody hired Mary Ann McCall again in December of 1947. Mary Ann also belted songs exactly like Anita O'Day, only Mary Ann sang in key.
The drama of Sinatra's solo records backed by Axel Stordahl and strings lent a pleasant, intimate atmosphere to an evening at home, or live, in a club. Anita O'Day and Frank Sinatra both credited Billie Holiday with creating their emotional musical delivery. There were plenty of other popular singers waiting in the wings to take off soloing. Sinatra professionally feared Jimmy Dorsey's former vocalist Bob Eberly the most. He was afraid that once Bob Eberly broke through, he'd leave Sinatra in the dust. There was also Nat Cole, Dick Haymes, Billy Eckstein, Perry Como, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Shore, Margaret Whiting, Sarah Vaughn, and Jo Stafford, perfect voices for a post-war cooling off period. These were only the vanguard of the vocal dominated decades that followed, founded globally by Elvis Presley. They didn't sing for the band- the band stayed out of the way and played for them.
Chubby Jackson remembers joining Woody in 1943, at the height of the war: "...It was still the "Band That Plays The Blues", an adequate dance band but nothing terribly impressive. Little by little, he started leaning more toward a more modern jazz concept. Woody was absolutely the man who gave me the full range of all my little eccentricities. And we had a devotion to him that could easily be called love. He was a great coordinator of musicians, because of his personality. He understood not to tell a new guy how to play. "Let him play," he'd say, "and then adjust it." [Trumpeter Sonny Berman, for instance, liked to play three choruses in a row. But we discovered that Sonny was best at the little shouts, the eight-bar fill, or a little chorus.]"
Chubby continued: "The band looked like everything we did was ad-lib. That was our reputation- 'Oh, look at that, right on the spur of the moment.' But each move was well planned. I was the first one to wear the beard, the different uniform. I got the blame for it as years went by. I was the eccentric- "He's out of it." Nobody really knew that Woody had suggested, "Let's do this, let's do that." The numbers we did together, when he called me out front, turned into bizarre vaudeville. For example, one of the numbers he had me doing was to put the bass across my knees while sitting down. Woody and I had a dialogue before we went into the music. My bit was always screaming, "WOODY HERMAN", and "YOWWW", from my bass on the stand. I knew when to yell. Woody always said that I won the Downbeat Poll one year for just yelling. I just knew when to yell, and the band would respond. We were all geared up to beat the Chicago Bears every night. "We used to be in utter amazement of [Trombonist] Bill Harris. We'd wait for his chorus to come and wonder, "What is he gonna play tonight?"(44)
On Woody's temperament, Jackson had an amusing memory: "I only saw Woody get really uptight once. It was in the Metropole in New York. They had hired me to be the relief band. I played the first set, and then I saw Woody down at the other end of the bar. I put down my bass, and yelled, "Hey, Wood," and we hugged. The boss of the Metropole was an unbelievable man. The bartenders and everyone were afraid of him. Woody and I talked while he was putting a reed in his clarinet. And the boss comes over and says, "Hey, c'mon man, let's go to work, what are you doin' here? Nobody talked to Woody that way. "Excuse me?" Woody said glaring at him. And the guy said, "Yeah, you're Woody Herman aren't you? Well I own this joint, so let's get on the bandstand. Talk to the guy later."
So Woody said, "I'll tell you, sir, you talk to my Business Manager Abe Turchen from now on if you want to say anything to me. If you say the same thing again in the same tone, two things are going to occur. I'm going to turn around and tell my band to go home, and, number two, I'm gonna take this clarinet and break it over your f__ing head. "I looked at Woody and, in all the years that I'd known him, I said, "Hey, is that You?" (45)
Chubby also helped get pianist Ralph Burns, a genius of a writer (Early Autumn) in 1944. Burns recalls: "I worked exclusively for Woody for about five years, and continued to write for the band for another ten, while writing for singers and other bands at the same time...I have no idea how many pieces I did all together, but it was at least two or three a week during the first few years. I wrote "Bijou" in 1945, the same year I did "Summer Sequence", [of which "Early Autumn" is a section], while spending the summer at Chubby Jackson's house in Freeport, on Long Island.
"Woody taught me so much about writing. His big thing was that it wouldn't swing if there were too many notes. A lot of stuff is over written when you're young and eager. Sometimes he would edit the arrangements during rehearsals or on the bandstand...When I got a little complicated on a chart, he always tried to simplify it. Sometimes I didn't feel good about the changes, but he knew what he was doing, and that's the way you learn. It was never offensive; he would maybe take out the brass here, or something like that, so it would swing. The band was very headstrong, but Woody kept us under control. He was a master at pulling everything together. We were like a big football team...He would let us get a little crazy because he knew the music would come out. But when things got out of hand, he'd say, "Cool it." He always knew his limitations as a musician. It was never "I'm the King." It was more like "I'm the father." He was a master psychologist. He knew how to manipulate people; and he manipulated us into giving our all. It was a fantasy world for us, because people thought differently about bands then, probably the way they think about rock groups now. It took me years to recover from it. If you were a jazz musician playing with Woody Herman, you were almost a movie star. You'd get into a town and people would be lined up waiting for your autograph." (46)
Influence of Drummer Dave Tough
When drummer Cliff Leeman left the band, Woody hired the legendary Dave Tough. "Chubby flipped out when I told him", Woody recalled, "He and some other guys in the band remembered him as the drummer with Tommy Dorsey a few years earlier, and they felt that Davey wasn't a modern enough player." Also, they were all in their twenties and Tough was older. Although Tough read no music, Woody told them "This Tough guy is very special."
Gene Lee's describes vividly parts of what made Dave Tough who he was: "Born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1907, Tough was the youngest of four children of parents born in Aberdeen, Scotland...In his adolescence he became a member of the 'Austin High Gang'...Even then, drinking was his curse. He introduced the reading members of the Austin High Gang to the intellectuals of the time like H.L. Mencken, and later wrote a column for "Down Beat"...An omnivorous reader...he took language and literature courses and did some drawing and painting...By the age of 20 he was living in Paris...returned to the U.S. in 1929, and played with Red Nichols...then returned to Chicago and became a derelict for 5 years.." (47)
He was also a wit. While working with Benny Goodman one night, Benny said to Tough, "Hey Davey, I want you to send me", and Tough replied, "Where do you want to be sent?" He was a brilliant little guy, and I often wondered if he wasn't torn between being a writer and being a drummer." (48) So Tough played through the Big Band Era, in the bands of Tommy Dorsey, Bunny Berigan, Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden. He even played a brief stint in Woody's "Band That Play The Blues" early on. He'd get fired for missing gigs- not the first time, like anyone else- but the second or third time. Benny Goodman looked out for him, as did Tommy Dorsey, but they'd have to part ways eventually.
During intense fighting in the Pacific, Tough joined Artie Shaw's Navy Band. Shaw remembers: "...We played under difficult conditions in forward areas on South Pacific islands." (49) They were often under sniper fire and played one show under ponchos in torrential rain for G.I's also under ponchos. At times they were bombed almost nightly by Japanese aircraft. During one of these attacks, Shaw permanently lost the hearing of one ear. The band went home sick and exhausted, Shaw told Lees,"Davey Tough was just a ghost." (50)
In spite of all that, when Tough arrived on the Herman bandstand for the Old Gold Cigarette radio program, he was in top form, Chubby Jackson said. "I had made the biggest mistake in the world, because I became acquainted with one of the better generals of rhythm thinking. Dave Tough was totally brilliant...He didn't believe in metronomical time; he thought we should move. Flip [Phillips] was right down the middle, so we stayed with him. Sonny Berman used to play behind the beat, so we'd go with him. But when it was ensemble it was Davey and myself. He insisted that I stand right next to him so I could watch his foot pedal and movement of his hands. I learned an awful lot from Dave."(51) "I can't tell you how long it was from the time I objected to Dave Tough coming into the band.", added Jackson. "We were all twenty-one, twenty-three, and here comes this guy who's been around all these years? He's coming into this band?...Dave made that band, (The First Herd) and he insisted I play on the same level with him...Dave tuned his drums to C, E, and G. He had a cymbal for when the tenor sax played. The ensemble cymbal was one of those rivet cymbals, but he had taken out all the rivets but two, and then he had sliced a v-cut into it. It looked like something that should have been thrown out. But instead, it had a sound that blended, a take-over sound. It had a human warmth to it. All of a sudden the band started to get that fury.'
"The trick is to get the time going, and be in the right slot as to where the orchestra is, and if you do that, then you own the band...the coordination he had, and the love he had of music, and of us youngsters. He made all of us soloists. So sure of ourselves. I started to find something I felt was my own sound, and it was due to Davey." (52) What nobody knew at this time, was that Dave was epileptic. He was always scared of having a seizure. Fear made him drink.
By September of 1945 Dave was drinking heavily again and quit the Herman band. Gene Lee's quotes critic Whitney Balliet: "He was deteriorating physically, and he was worried by BeBop, whose rhythmic intricacies he was certain (wrongly) he could never absorb. He was losing his saturnine good looks. He had a long, wandering, bony face, a high, domed forehead, and black hair with a widow's peak- it was a face perched on tiny shoulders, of a bigger man." (53)
Dave Tough finally ended up in the Veteran's Administration Hospital in New Jersey. He got drunk on the afternoon of December 8, 1948, while heading to an apartment he shared with Chan, his wife, in Newark. He fell and hit his head on the street curb. He had no I.D. on him. He died the next morning in the hospital at age 41. The city took him to the morgue as an unidentified body. Chan located him at the morgue after three days of searching and waiting. Tough's death, and so many others, reminded me of Dizzy Gillespie's answer to a jazz critic who questioned how "serious" jazz was as a musical entity: "Men have died for this music. You can't get more serious than that".
The rhythm section of Tough, Jackson, Guitarist Billy Bauer and pianist Ralph Burns and later Jimmy Rowles and Red Norvo drove the first herd. Others in the vanguard spotlight of the first herd's combustible sound were trumpets Sonny Berman, Neal Hefti, Shorty Rogers, and Pete Candoli. Trombonist Bill Harris, Tenor Flip Philips, and Woody's own wildly free spirited style propelled the band. Phil Wilson was once quoted as saying "Nobody does what Woody does as well as Woody does, (pause) If we could only figure out what it is he does." (54) Musicians loved working with Woody and his sense of humor spread throughout the band and created a sense of collective ownership. The high-life on the stand was imitated off the stand as well.
The band's hits, "Apple Honey" and "Northwest Passage" were alternated with romantic versions of standards such as "Laura", or "Happiness Is A Thing Called Joe". "Caldonia" and "Goosey Gander" and "Your Father's Moustache." Ralph Burns beautiful "Summer Sequence" competed with the great Igor Stravinsky's "Ebony Concerto" (written exclusively for the band). "Woody, with his characteristic honesty and modesty, stated on numerous occasions that the Herman band was not ready for performing this assignment. "We had no more right to play it than the Man in the Moon". (55) Neal Hefti's "The Good Earth" complimented Phil Harris' "Sidewalks of Cuba", and Ralph Burn's unedited original "Bijou", which Woody described much later as Stone Age Bossa Nova. The First Herd was Woody Herman's best known and economically successful band. In 1946, the year the band disbanded, it earned over one million dollars, and won the Down Beat, Metronome, Billboard, and Esquire polls; Esquire in two categories.
Charlotte, alone in their new terraced Hollywood home purchased from the Bogarts, was turning to pills and alcohol to beat her loneliness. Trumpeters Berman, Condoli and Rogers, quit for different reasons, (some were health related), and the band was exhausted from the road tour one-nighters. Woody went home to get Charlotte straightened out.
As Woody described Charlotte's problem to Gene Lees, he came up with the unforgettable noir line: "You start mixing Nembutals with booze, and you're on your way home." (56)
Woody had been on the road 40 weeks of the year. Charlotte was running with a fast Hollywood crowd alone. Woody sought psychiatric help for her, and she underwent electro-shock treatments, which were more common at the time. Little Ingrid was well taken care of by a live-in babysitter.
Woody also took Charlotte to AA meetings "And the first time we arrived at one, I met a lot of my ex-band members and many friends. I remember seeing Billy May greeting me with open arms, and I told him, "I'm cool, you know. I'm just here with Charlotte. I enjoyed the meetings. It was nice to hear people bare their souls". (57)
To keep busy, Woody sang on a Peggy Lee radio show once a week, and even opened a pool side "Booking" office himself at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. "Anyone who wanted to reach my office was usually connected to the bar at pool side. It was a classy operation."(58) Woody had hired, among other bookers, a fellow named Abe Turchen, who had been the band boy for the first Herd. Between the drinks at Woody's 'office', his outfit found gigs for bands. One such tour was a series of one-nighters for Spade Cooley, a Western Swing band known locally in California. Woody warned Cooley to go no further than the Rockies. No one would know him after that territory. But his band kept going as far as Iowa, with its side acts of horses, dancers, and singers. Nobody had ever heard of Spade Cooley in Iowa, and Woody recalled he (Cooley) would call "At four in the morning...making soulful, moaning sounds such as, "Like Man, I'm ruined." It was a terrible fiasco. I think he had to walk half way back to the coast." (59) Woody closed the office eventually. He didn't need the money. He had a home over looking Los Angeles and the ocean to gaze at. He wanted to recharge.
Restless, Woody and some friends went out one quiet night to hear pianist/arranger Phil Moore in a club located at Hollywood and Vine. The band consisted of Moore, trumpeter Ernie Royal, and his brother saxophonist Marshall Royal. Woody remembered: "When I heard Ernie play so fluently at the top of the horn, it gave me the hots for music again. Trying to make something different happen was always at the the back of my mind. You hear a great player or two and the idea is replanted, as long as I could do it without having to return to what I already did." (60)
On October 16, 1947, what became known as the 'Second Herd' opened in San Bernardino, CA. at the large Municipal Auditorium. "I felt I had to do something productive again." (61) He started by building the saxophone section, finding several of them laying out at the beach, out of work. He hired Zoot Sims, Stan Getz, and Serge Chaloff to join some of the First Herd players who returned. Jimmy Giuffre helped out, writing the hit "Four Brothers", which featured, in order of performance on the original recording, tenor Zoot Sims, baritone Serge Chaloff, and tenors Herbie Steward and Stan Getz. (62)
Al Cohn replaced Steward a few months later, ending the original Four Brothers quartet. Mary Ann McCall came back to give it another shot with the band in 1948, and sang with real power and enthusiasm. The Second Herd was Bop-oriented out of the starting blocks. Woody also had writers Ralph Burns, Al Cohn and Shorty Rogers writing fresh charts to help with the push to get the band rolling again.
Burn's fourth movement to his "Summer Sequence" piece, entitled "Early Autumn", was re-recorded, featuring Terry Gibbs on vibes and a solo by Getz that made him a sensation all over again. Drummer Don Lamond was quoted as saying: "The Four Brothers Band (Second Herd) was the best band. Maybe it wasn't quite as fiery as the First Herd...but it was the best."(63) Things looked different from Woody's perspective. He was playing all new music, not standards that people recognized. He knew this was risky. He switched over to the hot Capitol label from Columbia to be listed with the new stars who were establishing new audiences with that label's ferocious publicity department and talented, young management. But nothing bumped up the number of engagements for the band.
According to Woody, "The band's downfall was caused by a combination of things. But changing the sound was certainly a big factor. It was something I felt I had to do. The audience that could understand "Apple Honey", however, couldn't relate to "Lemon Drop" or "Four Brothers". Musically, the bebop route was magnificent. But business-wise, it was the dumbest thing I ever did. Those pieces didn't really succeed, except with a small percentage of our listeners, until the mid-1950's. If we had just continued playing "Apple Honey" and "Caldonia" we'd probably have had a fighting chance."(64)
"Giuffre's "Four Brothers"...and other works like Roger's "Keen and Peachy" (Heard on the Welcome Page of this site, was an updated re-working of an earlier Herman recording "Fine and Dandy"), Chubby Jackson's and George Wallington's "Lemon Drop", Roger's "Keeper of The Flame"...rekindled the flame of orchestral jazz at a time when the big band was otherwise a virtually extinct institution." (65)
"The basic concept of the "Four Brothers" sound was simple enough: its foundation was tight ensemble writing for the three tenor saxophones and a baritone sax. But the key to this section work lay in the distinctive approach of the saxophones in question. Adopting a light, airy tone reminiscent of Lester Young, and combining it with the melodic pyrotechnics of modern jazz, these horns mastered a novel formula, merging the excitement and intricacy of bop with a sweet-toned lyricism. In time, this mixture of modernism and melodicism would become known as cool jazz."(66)
Serge Chaloff, whose mother was a noted piano teacher in Boston, was the most deeply bop influenced saxophonist in the section. He moved many of Charlie Parker's unique approaches into his work, and was perhaps the greatest baritone of his time. Unfortunately, Chaloff was addicted to heroin, and had other health issues. He was sickly most of his brief career, and he kept Woody on edge by hanging a curtain in the back of the bus and handing out heroin to the other addicts in the band.
One night in a packed Washington, D.C. bar, where Woody was drinking and trying to forget how poorly and far-out Chaloff had been on the stand that night, affecting the whole band's performance, Serge came up to Woody saying in effect, 'Hey Wood, Man! Why do you talk to me like that? I'm clean man! I'm clean!' Woody had been pissing on one of Chaloff's pant legs through all the B..S., and when Chaloff felt it, he panicked and went screaming into a telephone booth where he barricaded himself. Woody was asked to leave.
Jazz violinist Joe Venuti, famous for this trick, heard Woody had pulled it and admonished him to never act like that in public, saying he could get away with it, but not Woody Herman. (67)
"In early 1947 the band played a long engagement at the Hollywood Palladium...then the Capitol Theater in New York City. In October, the band began a one month engagement at the Royal Roost, with most of the personnel of the Stan Kenton and Dizzy Gillespie bands in the audience. (68) Nonetheless, during its first year the band lost $175,000. Woody would form sextets on the the side to make money. (69)
One problem that is often overlooked as a major contributing factor to the end of the big bands was the absence of "remotes", or radio broadcasts from night spots. Radio was much more corporate and music was already being pigeon-holed into niche's. The bands could not reach as wide an audience so easily.
Another factor in ending the huge attendance that the bands once drew was the demolition of inter-urban trolley rail service. In Los Angeles County alone, more than 1,000 miles of track had been laid in previous decades to reach all parts of the growing city. It was all ripped up, encouraged by the daily drumbeat of Harry Chandler, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, who was obsessed with private cars being the primary source of transport in the city. He was joined in this crusade by General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Manufacturing.(70) Chandler held huge real estate holdings in Los Angeles, and these tracts made installing highways much easier to accomplish at that time. The previously named companies bought up all of the electric street car railways and turned them into bus routes, under the company name of National City Lines. The result was that people without cars who could zip from Hollywood to Santa Monica and other coastal points on street cars to dance and see the bands, were now left standing on corners waiting endlessly for a bus. Attendance dropped accordingly for live entertainment in out of the way places.
In 1947, the government convicted the cartel of company owners who were in on the railway destruction deal in an anti-trust suit, and they were fined $1.00. (71)
Reason three for the decline was just as basic: In 1946 Willard Alexander, head of MCA, told Downbeat "Musicians are getting over twice the money in salaries they did before the war, and transportation and arranging costs are way up. But the hotels and spots which must be the home base for any new outfit have only gone up 40% in their band bids. They literally can't afford any more." (72)
The August 12th issue of Downbeat carried an interview with Charlie Barnet, who noted that the Goodman band had played an engagement in Pennsylvania with a guarantee of $2,500 and they had drawn only 750 people. Barnet said, "As far as the band business is concerned, the party is over." (73)
To make matters worse, "Exactly half of the Woody Herman band at one time was on heroin, eight of its sixteen players: the entire saxophone section, Stan Getz, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, and Serge Chaloff; Bernie Glow in the trumpet section, Earl Swope and Bob Swift in the trombones, and Lou Levy on piano...The straights were Ernie Royal, Stan Fishelson, Shorty Rogers, Chubby Jackson, Don Lamond, Sam Marowitz, Bill Harris and Ollie Wilson. (74)
Ralph Burns adds: "I used to visit them, because I was writing for them. It was pretty scary. I got a little bit into it at that time. You thought you had to to take a little junk, otherwise they wouldn't play your music. It was sad. You'd go see the band and the front line would be completely cacked out. On the stand! I don't know how Woody put up with it, and what he got out of them in spite of it all." (75)
"I was so naive,", Woody once said with his chuckle, "that I couldn't figure out why the guys were falling asleep on the bandstand...that's the band where everybody was on practically everything but roller skates."(76) The band made cracks about Woody's playing constantly, which they considered old fashioned. "Sam Marowitz recounted that when Woody started to play at a rehearsal, Stan Getz said, "You play the worst." Woody said, "Of course I do, you schmuck. That's why I'm paying you to play. So keep your mouth shut." (77)
Terry Gibbs remembered when Woody's band played baseball against the Harry James band. Harry's team had uniforms, cleats, the whole bit. The Herman band decided to stay 'clean' for the game. They won the first game, lost the next two. Serge was the only one unable to be 'clean' for the games. "Stan Getz was the pitcher. Stan was hard to hit, because he'd lob it in so easy, and the guys would try to kill it, and half the time they would strike out. He threw so easy it was hard to hit...Serge was the catcher, down in the catcher's crouch. Stan threw the first lob, to warm up, and as it hit the glove, Serge fell over backwards...But we won that game." (78)
Woody recalled many years later that "A lot of the guys who wanted to play in the top echelon thought there was a connection with drugs. "It was never proven. The guys who could play great could do it whether or not they were stoned, and many of them, including Charlie Parker, admitted that their playing was often inferior when they were high.'
"I think they also were drawn into the bag because the salesman were out there greeting them, like it was the natural thing to do. I saw a lot of it, the connections. I was well aware of it. I saw the guys out there trying to score. But I remained the biggest square in life.'
"Some of the players used the difficulty of the road life as an excuse for drugs. But I don't think the road had anything to do with it. They just wanted to get high, and the contacts were everywhere and still are. If a guy wants anything, he can get it anywhere, anytime of the day or night.'
"Mental strain has nothing to do with it either. The worst strain is when a guy decides to become a family person. And those guys rarely got into drugs." (79)
Jazz Critic Gene Lees, who Woody asked to write his story, had access and the comfort zone to ask assorted musicians how they quit using drugs.
Lou Levey: "I was not serious about it, not like some of the guys who aren't here any more. I got out. It took me a while. I finally just got disgusted with myself and gave it up."
Gerry Mulligan: Found a doctor who was willing to risk his career to get Gerry medical morphine. He simply destroyed the dark glamor of it, seeing to it that Gerry had good morphine and good needles. One night on a job in Detroit, Gerry felt overwhelmed with disgust, called his booking agency, cancelled jobs, and put himself in a hospital to undergo withdrawal.
Zoot Sims: "Did it with the help of a girl he was going with at the time. He said they got into a car in New York and set off for Los Angeles, checking into motels at night. The girl did the driving, while Zoot endured the ordeal of pain, nausea, tremors, and sweats that go with withdrawal. One day it was over, he said, and he looked out the car window at the trees and green grass and the glorious blue sky, and at last reached California, his home."
Al Cohn: "I got an infection from a dirty needle. It settled in my eye, and [the eye] had to be removed. That's enough to make you quit." (80)
Sonny Berman and Serge Chaloff didn't make it.
In debt, with no real big band business in the offing, Woody disbanded the Second Herd in 1949. Gunther Schuller makes the observation in his book. "The Swing Era", that "Some four decades later we tend to forget how new all of this was. As a result of the constant recycling since the late 1940's of that genre of big band style by dozens of orchestras, we tend to take it for granted today. We should not forget, however, that there has been very little substantively new in big-band styling since Woody's First Herd..the Herman band was not only an early innovator in the new bop of bop-tinged orchestral style, but it committed itself to it with a perseverance and consistent quality not equaled by any other white band at that time. This was due in large measure to Ralph Burn's arrangements and compositions, and the fortuitous coming together of a young, dynamic, exceptionally talented group of players...All the other white bands of the 1940's...adopted the new modern jazz language well after the Herman band made the change over...Their conversion and commitment to the idiom was not as deep as Herman's and his Herd." (81)
Three weeks after disbanding the Second Herd, a band that had featured among all of the other big names, Gene Ammons, Oscar Pettiford, and Shelley Manne, Herman set about assembling the Third Herd, which lasted from 1950 until 1956.
At one time an ex-Oboe player ran Columbia Records named Mitch Miller. "If he had kept playing Oboe, we all would have been better off", commented Woody. (82) What Miller proposed musically sold with a lot of Americans, and the ubiquitous Sing Along with Mitch period took hold. He picked all of the unfortunate songs for the best Columbia artists of the period, and forced them to sing them. Rock and roll was the perfect antidote to this tyranny, and when the Beatle's came along, Mitch kind of....faded away like any old oboe player.
Woody found a new record label, even owning it for a while, called Mars.
The 1950's was a fallow period, even for the 'Rushmores' of bands, like Count Basie's, which also disbanded and played smaller group jazz for a while. Woody also had several small groups during emergency financial calamities with his big band payroll. These groups included Nat Adderly and Charlie Byrd. He often referred to this as his 'side door' method of picking up pretty good money to throw back into the big band.
Milt Jackson had been playing with Woody towards the end of the Second Herd and left the new band. He remembered: "We stayed in Cuba for four weeks, through Christmas and New Year’s. On Christmas it rained and wiped us out in the outdoor nightclub. The owner went to the hospital with a heart attack. On New Year's Eve, the same thing happened. The biggest night of the year. I think it sent him back to the hospital.'
"The audiences hadn't heard of Woody's records very much in Cuba. He wasn't that well known there. Things like "Don't Cry for Joe", and "Happiness Is A Thing Called Joe", both of which were hits in the states, got little applause there. People reacted very casually to him. Woody got sort of frustrated. So one night I called him to the side and said "Woody, I think I ought to make you aware of something. I think that they don't know these tunes down here." (83)
With that visit complete and back in the states, Woody commented, "We had more “buyers“ (in the states) because we were more dependable for them: Our music wasn't as flagrantly out of the mainstream as the Four Brothers Band. We got television shots, including the Ed Sullivan Show. We had one or more great players in every formation of every band. I tried always to get the best players with the money we had to offer, and at one moment or another in the 1950's we attracted Al Porcini, Bill Berry and Don Fagerquist on trumpets; Wayne Andre on trombone, drummers Sonny Igoe and Chuck Flores, and bassist Red Kelly, among others." (84)
Woody's band really scuffled money wise in the 1950's, playing the old amusement parks, hotels, any place they could find. There were times when it got bad enough to call Abe Turchen, as Woody recalled, because he couldn't meet the payroll, and "Abe would call some bookie in New York and ask, "Who's playing tonight?" It could be basketball or baseball, it didn't matter what sport. He would bet on these games, and somehow, by the time the night was over, he had all the money in his hands." (85)
Although Woody toured Europe with the band in 1953 for 6 months, and then again in 1956, the most memorable tour of the 1950's was when Woody went on a three month State Department tour of South America in 1958. The planes were sometimes just barely airworthy. Major Holley played bass on the tour and had vivid memories: "Charlotte [Woody's wife] was along on a lot of the tour and she liked to sit next to me. When we were on Panagra Airlines, which is no longer in existence, we went all through the Andes in Chile, and I mean through those mountains, to Peru and Ecuador. Panagra supplied good planes.'
"When we got to warmer climes, flying on the aircraft that belonged to various other airlines, you could actually see the ground through holes in the bottom of the planes, where seats had been removed, and the holes hadn't been filled. We were flying over hostile Indians and desert and jungle in some of those aircraft. One time we loaded up and the plane was too heavy. The pilot tried three times to take off. It was a regularly scheduled airline. I didn't realize it at the time, but we couldn't get enough altitude and we came back and tried again. It still didn't work. We almost crashed on that one. Charlotte hadn't realized we would be flying through the mountains, and she was paralyzed by it. This was before high-flying jets. When people think about Rio and all those wonderful places we went to, they forgot how we got there. In Bolivia, they have the highest airport in the world, and we couldn't breathe up there. They had oxygen on the stage for us. (86) That tour traveled 30,000 miles, playing 19 countries and lasted from July to October.
Red Kelly remembers the scuffling between the foreign tours. "In 1953, the rhythm section was Art Madigan on drums, Nat Pierce and me. We played a show with a comedian whose name I can't remember. One of the performers was a high school girl who did ballet. They gave us this music to Nat Pierce, and Art Madigan, and myself. Between the three of us, we could almost make out the title. Reading the notes, we gave it our best shot. I'm self-taught, so reading didn't come fast at all. Nat was a terrific reader, but he was better than Art and myself.’ "Well, the kid's mother went over to Woody, and said, ' Do you realize not one of those three people can read? " "Woody said, "Lady, I don't hire my rhythm to read. I hire them to swing.'"(87)
In 1962, Abe Turchen, who you recall was the original band boy with Woody's first band back in the 1930's, was now managing the band, using money he would win betting on cards or any sport to meet the payroll too often. "One night one of the club bosses took Woody aside and said, 'Who is this fatso who's hanging around the band?" Woody said, 'My manager', and the guy said, "Well tell him to lay off the games, because this is not for pros; this is for tourists." (88)
"Abe Turchen had remarkable powers of persuasion and booked the band with ingenuity. At the same time, he was an indefatigable pessimist; his prognosis for almost everything was: "It'll never happen. It'll never happen...'Abe would sit there every day in his office, [which looked north over 57th street] playing solitaire and watching sports on television, quietly placing bets on the telephone, shuffling the incredible clutter of papers on his big old wooden desk, in search for some phone number or other, and from time to time on sudden impulse or inspiration picking up the phone to place a bet, or book the band into some improbable gig like the opening of a shopping mall." (89) Outside of Abe's office, the suite, Woody noted, "Was often loaded with bookmakers, money lenders, and others he was doing business with."(90)
Abe got Woody jobs, and Woody was happy to have them, but at times it was really scraping the bottom for a leader who had once been at the top of the music business. Woody recalled a gig in a jazz club in a shabby Philadelphia hotel called the Powelton Inn. He said, "We were in for two nights, and they had the lowest piano in the world. It was just impossible. Nat Pierce was fighting it, hitting a note here and there. "The business was fantastic. People were waiting in line. So I told the boss, 'As long as we are going to be here tomorrow night, why don't you rent a piano? This thing is not even fit to try to play on.' And he said, 'Oh man, that's a good piano. Erroll Garner used it last week.' "Erroll probably tried to commit suicide the first night if I know him.'
"So along about midnight or one o'clock and we were getting going pretty good, and the place was jam packed, all of a sudden a deluge came down through the ceiling over the back part of the stand, where the piano was. A few guys were scurrying and leaving, trumpet players moving forward. It seemed that some broad upstairs had fallen asleep in a bathtub and it overflowed. It didn't stop until the cops got there and they sent a plumber, and we blew right through the whole mess.' "So now comes the end of the gig, and the two bosses are standing there, new at this business, and they are the happiest. They said, 'Oh, What business!' 'So I said, 'Now look fellows, you're going to have to do something about this piano. Tonight. Now get it cleaned up, get some towels, get in there and wipe it up. Get a guy in there and try to repair it and if it can't be repaired, go borrow or rent. Do something.'
"Next night we came to work, and here is the piano, full of water. Some more had leaked during the day. It was turning green with mold. It's the only time I've seen Nat Pierce get shook up. It finally reached his sensitivity. I sent him to a movie. I said, 'Catch a double feature and come back a little later on.' And that's the way we wound up." (91)
Woody would often play at New York's "Basin Street". Charlie Parker would drop by and sit in, and Woody loved it. Parker also sat in with the band in Kansas City, which was recorded poorly, but according to those who have heard it, the playing that night was perhaps the greatest sound the band ever produced live. Johnny Hodges was always Woody's favorite alto player until Parker came along. Woody thought "that the brilliance of Parker's mind and technique surpassed that of any other alto player, and perhaps musician, he had ever heard. (92)
"When Coltrane was in New York, I decided I would listen to what he was doing..." said Woody. "I had heard some of his recordings, and I was aware of what he was into, and I also knew something about his background. We had done a couple of tours together. I knew that this man was stating a very important, beautiful case, and I wanted to become more aware of what he was doing. We were at the Metropole, and I went around the corner to Birdland, in the last era of Birdland. Coltrane did his performance of My Favorite Things. And he did his usual fifteen minute version. He was one of the few people who could hold an audience for that length of time and just state his thoughts.'
"I became terribly impressed, impressed enough to remember that as a boy I had once tried to play the soprano saxophone..I was willing, after witnessing his performance, to try it again...John and I had some very meaningful talks on occasion that never lasted long. But he could never understand why I did what I did and I guess I stated the same case as far as he was concerned...I knew I could never play it like John..."(93)
"Woody quickly became skillful on the instrument. He had a distinct personality on soprano. He played clarinet, alto, and soprano in three different manners, and some of his most beautiful playing was on that soprano." (94) Later on, in 1968, Woody received a Grammy for an album he made at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1967. On that album Woody played the Bill Holman chart "The Horn of the Fish" on soprano saxophone. Woody's inspiration was John Coltrane.
Back in 1959, Woody formed "Herman's New Thundering Herd". In the 1960's, his band turned out to be quite successful. He recorded a disc for Phillips in 1962, called "Woody Herman: 1963", featuring Bill Chase prominently, as well as trombonist Phil Wilson, Nat Pierce, and Sal Nestico. This was a great band. Listen to "Sister Sadie" or "Camel Walk". Bookings were coming in fast. He was releasing an album a year in the 1960's.
And then the rug was pulled out from underneath Woody Herman for the rest of his life.
"The first time I learned of how much trouble I was in was when the I.R.S. sent me a letter ordering me to appear in person. Until then, the I.R.S. had been corresponding with my office, and Abe Turchen never gave me a clue about it."
"I arrived at the tax office with Abe and learned that, not only had my personal income taxes been unpaid for 1964 through 1966; so had the withholding taxes on the musicians' salaries. The punishment was a tax bill of $750,000, with interest and penalties over the years bringing the figure to 1.6 million.'
'I sat stunned.'
"I never believed their figures. All the years in which we had big grosses- not big profits- we paid taxes to the hilt. Here I was down and out in the Sixties and the I.R.S. was basing its estimate of my debt on years when our revenues had been high".
"Charlotte was appalled at how stupid we had been in our judgment of Abe. But I felt as responsible as Abe was for the mess... I never went into a state of shock over it. I was depressed for a moment or two, but I knew that I had to get back to the business of music in order to take care of it as best I could. We worked out an arrangement to pay the government $1,000 a week through whoever was booking us. But we couldn't always afford it; we had to renegotiate.'
"My lawyers worked hard to help get me off the hook somehow...But I never considered imprisonment as a threat. I always figured the I.R.S. would have less to gain with me behind bars. (95)
In 1966 the band toured Algeria, Morocco, the Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, Yugoslavia and Romania for the U.S. State Department. (96) Bill Byrne remembered: "Beginning in 1966, we also started making European tours, mostly to England, for about 10 straight years...In 1970 we went to Japan for George Wein. We also hit Hong Kong, Singapore, and Bangkok...Then to Africa...we used to have a [European] booker...and he took us to Poland for about 5 years in a row during the mid and late 1970's. Woody was treated like royalty because his mother was born there. We also played Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and East Germany." (97)
Always open-minded to new formats, Woody Herman's band gradually became more rock-oriented, as he utilized his young musicians arrangements...starting in 1968 with an album titled Light My Fire. Not all of the albums from this period worked. As one of the few band leaders left touring the world with a big band, he kept warming to newer talents, recording with Chick Corea and Joe Beck.
The band began to pick up steam again for the Giant Steps album on the Fantasy label, which earned a Grammy. The same album contained a great arrangement of "La Fiesta" by Tony Klatka. Another Grammy Award album followed in 1974 for "Thundering Herd" on Fantasy.
Woody was now using electronic instrumentation and rock mixed with jazz in his big band charts. "We were getting good receptions, particularly at colleges where we had begun to do combination concerts-clinics." (98) Woody was honored by the University of Houston, with the founding of TheWoody Herman Music Archives in its School of Music.
Jack Siefert recalls, "I took off the entire summer of 1974 to put together TheWoody Herman Music Archives. I did it in chronological order-- every single tune, every version, cross-indexed. My wife, Mary did the typing, and my kids did all the indexing."
"I took thirty-three reels of tape to Houston, and I made a bound volume of the Index. There was a big ceremony at the University of Houston--Woody was so proud. I felt so good. He hadn't expected it to be that amount of work. But I said, "Woody, this is your life'.
"He was the kind of friend for whom there was nothing I wouldn't do. When he would go to Europe, say for six weeks, he would park his Corvette at our house near Philadelphia, rent a car for the drive to the New York airport, and dump it. Meanwhile, we’d have his car serviced. When he would return, and he had a day or two off, he used to go to the school to pick up our kids. The kids just loved him. They'd get in his Corvette, sometimes with their friend who was crazy about the car, and he would drive them home. That's the real Woody Herman." (99)
Mary Siefert went on; "And Woody was probably the Duncan Hines of the music business. He could tell you the best restaurant in any big city or small town, and invariably, he was right. He remembered where they were and exactly what he ate in every one of them." (100)
Jack Siefert would ask Woody where to eat when he was traveling for his company. "I used to say to Woody," Hey, I'm going to Cincinnati."
"Three places," he'd reply. "This one's the best." Same thing if I was going to Chicago or Denver. He knew every restaurant. Sometimes I would be amazed to see someone come up to him at an engagement and ask for a Glenn Miller tune. Woody never did that even when he was recording cover tunes. If he was in the right mood, he'd lean over and say, "I'll tell you what, next time I see Glenn Miller I'll tell him you requested that." (101)
Woody enjoyed driving his car to every gig. He would drive to little tank towns and into big cities and back to tank towns..."[It] gave me the feeling of independence I had enjoyed since I first left Milwaukee in my Whippet to join Tom Gerun's band in Chicago." (102)
In March of 1977 Woody fell asleep at the wheel. He crashed head-on into another car. "No one was seriously hurt in the other car, thank God. But the wreck practically demolished my leg." He remained in St. Mary's Hospital in Manhattan, Kansas for four weeks. He had steel pins implanted in his leg. (103)
Then he went home.
"On May 14th, 1977, just a couple of days before my 64th Birthday, I was still in a wheelchair when I took a flight to The Berklee School of Music in Boston to receive an Honorary Degree as Doctor of Music." (104)
In the early 1970's, Charlotte developed breast cancer, which by 1977 had spread through her body. She took chemotherapy and Woody had the best doctors in the country consulting her. "I knew, of course, how bad it was. I had talked to her doctor and to all of my own." (105)
At the same time Woody was preparing to celebrate his 40th Anniversary as a bandleader.
"We were trying for a date at Avery Fisher Hall in Manhattan, when a cancellation at Carnegie Hall, for November 20th, fit right into our plans. We managed to attract an all-star package of alumni. Flip Phillips, Chubby Jackson, Sam Marowitz and Don Lamond came up from Florida. Nat Pierce and Jimmy Rowles shared piano duties with Ralph Burns...For "Four Brothers", we had Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn and Jimmy Giuffre." (106)
The next big project was opening a club as part of the New Orleans Hyatt-Regency just for the band to play in. "Woody Herman's" opened in late 1981 with little promotion, no fanfare, and an incomplete lounge interior. It was a bust.
By the spring of 1982, Charlotte's condition was failing rapidly. She stopped the chemotherapy. As Woody was flying out of New Orleans to go home to Charlotte in L.A., a reporter approached him and asked, "Mr. Herman, I understand the club has gone dark and that you're going home. What's the greatest record you ever made?"
Woody replied, "I've been married and in love with the same woman for forty six years. Can you match that record?" (107)
Charlotte died shortly after Woody had moved home to be with her. When she had seen him sobbing at her bedside, she gave him a poke in the shoulder and said, "Straighten' up Wood. We've been through tougher times than this." (108)
Woody had to get back to work as a therapy for his loss. The band hit the road again, but Woody was slowing down rapidly.
"It was 1986," Woody recalled, "My fiftieth year in front of a band. We hadn't merely survived the collapse of the big band era, the crush of rock and roll, and a twenty year income tax battle which kept me on the brink of poverty. We had also managed to keep the music adventurous and ensured the requisite energy by keeping the ranks filled with energetic and talented young men." (109)
The band's 50th Anniversary Concert was held on July 16, 1987 at the Hollywood Bowl before 12,000 people.
"Between the rigors of the program, I was preoccupied constantly with thoughts of my parents, of Charlotte, and of Sister Fabian...All those who had been as incremental in feeding my musical fire as Duke Ellington." (110) In the aftermath of the concert, Woody found traveling much more demanding.
After collapsing during a gig outside of New York City, he was taken to Bellevue Hospital. His friend Stuart Troup visited his bedside in the noisy hospital ward.
"You know," Woody said, "Igor Stravinsky was right. He said that growing old is just a series of humiliations." (111)
He pulled himself together somehow, after a few weeks recuperating at the Siefert’s house.
"I rejoined the band after a few weeks, but my energy was minimal. I don't know how I put together the strength to record early in March, 1987 when we made the "Woody's Gold Star" album for Concord.” (112)
He also appeared as the band for the Kennedy Center Awards that year.
On New Year's Eve, 1986, he was fronting the band on the Queen Mary, in Long Beach, California.
The last gig of Woody's life was at Grand Meadow High School in Minnesota on March 23, 1987. According to Gene Lees, "If Woody played that first engagement at the Roseland Ballroom the evening before the election of 1936, his career as a bandleader had lasted fifty years, four months and 21 days. He had seven months to live. (113)
He returned to California and died in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Thursday, October 29, 1987 of cardiopulmonary arrest. He was 74.
"In early 1979, Woody said, "The highest compliment of my entire life was from a night club operator in Buffalo, N.Y. A real dese and dem and dose guy. And he still tended bar in his own club, so you know he was a down-home cat. And I came off of the bandstand and the place had a tin roof and it sounded terrible. And he was in a trance, and he said, 'Wood, that's the best band I ever heard in my life. Man, that's too much.' He said, 'You da Vince Lombardi of de bands.' "And that to me was the epitome of everything that anyone could say." (114)
References: (1) P. 10, Gene Lees; "Leader of the Band", 1995, Oxford University Press, New York, N.Y.; Oxford, U.K. (2) P. 10; Lees (3) P. 6, Woody Herman with Stuart Troup; "The Woodchopper's Ball- The Autobiography of Woody Herman", 1990. Limelight Editions. New York, N.Y. (4) P. 6. Herman (5)"The Illustrated History of Wisconsin Music", compiled by Michael G. Corenthal, MGC Publication, Milwaukee, WI. 1990 (6) P. 12, Lees (7) P. 12, Lees (8) P. 14, Lees (9) P.9, Herman (10) P. 18, Lees (11) P. 10, Herman (12) P. 11, Herman (13) P. 19, Lees (14) P. 19, Lees (15) P. 19, Lees (16) P. 19, Lees (17) P. 20, Lees (18) P. 22, Lees (19) P. 22, Lees (20) P.21, Lees (21) P. 21, Lees (22) PP. 32-33, Lees (23) PP. 15-16 Lees (24) P. 41, Lees (25) P. 47, Lees (26) P. 47, Lees (27) P. 48 Lees (28) P. 56, Lees (29) PP. 56-57, Lees (30) P. 60, Lees (31) P.61, Lees (32) P. 32, Lees (33) P.71, Lees (34) P. 72, Lees (35) P. 74, Lees (36) P. 75, Lees (37) P. 76, Lees (38) P. 34, Lees (39) P. 35, Herman (40) PP. 35-36, Herman (41) P. 36, Herman (42) P. 78, Herman (43) PP. 51-52, Herman (44) PP. 52-53, Herman (45) PP. 52-53 (46)PP. 44-45, Herman (47) PP. 103-104, Lees (48) P. 104, Lees (49) P. 105, Lees (50) P. 105, Lees (51) P. 48, Herman (52) P. 107, Lees (53)P. 111, Lees (54) P.262, Ted Gioia, "The History of Jazz, 1998. Oxford University Press. New York-Oxford (55) P. 740 Gunter Schuller; "The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945", 1989. OxfordUniversity Press. (56) P. 60, Herman (57) PP. 69-70, Herman (58) P. 70, Herman(59) P. 71, Herman (60) P. 72, Herman (61) P. 72 Herman (62) P.74, Herman (63) P. 63, Herman (64) P. 75, Herman (65) P. 744, Schuller (66)P. 264 Gioia (67) P. 81, Herman (68) P. 155, Lees(69) P. 155 Lees (70) P. 156, Lees (71) PP. 156-157, Lees (72) P. 157, Lees (73) P. 157, Lees (74)P. 171, Lees (75) PP.171-172, Lees (76) PP. 171-172, Lees (77) P. 174, Lees (78) P. 175, Lees (79) PP. 177-178, Lees (80) PP. 178-179, Lees (81) PP. 736-737, Schuller (82) P. 99, Herman (83)P. 94, Herman (84) PP. 99-100, Herman (85) P. 101, Herman (86) PP. 102-103, Herman (87) P. 204, Lees (88) P.206, Lees (89) PP. 236-237, Lees (90) P. 237, Lees (91) PP. 206-207, Lees (92) P. 215, Lees (93) PP. 274-275, Lees (94) P. 275, Lees (95) PP. 114-115, Herman (96) P.116, Herman (97) P.117, Herman (98) P. 123, Herman (99) PP. 123-124, Herman (100) P. 125, Herman (101) P. 125, Herman (102) P. 127, Herman (103) P. 128, Herman (104) P, 128, Herman(105) PP. 128-129, Herman (106) P. 130, Herman (107) P. 133, Herman (108) P. 134, Herman(109) P. 146, Herman (110) P. 147, Herman (111) P. 148, Herman (112) P. 149, Herman (113) P. 357, Lees (114) P. 379, Lees
Jazzsight Profile: Harry James 'The Man With The Horn'
By John Twomey
Copyright 2007 by John Twomey. All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this article or any parts thereof in any form.
Frank Sinatra (L) sings with trumpeter Harry James (R) 1939.
For insight into the life of big band trumpeter Harry James, it helps to understand how a personality develops amid the constant travel of a circus. His youngest years were spent moving, sometimes daily, between out of town farm fields on the pre-interstate highway days of roads that were often unpaved. After the big circus parade into town the tentswould be set up in a field on the outskirts. Unlike many children who spend their youth in a steady home and the order of the classroom, Harry had no permanent address until his father settled in Beaumont, Texas when he was a teenager. He had a natural feel for music, and a demanding trumpet coach of a father. He was given the responsibility, and respect, to lead a musical unit of the circus band when he was only 12. His mind was free of the normal constraints of childhood. He already had an audience for his work each day. Harry grew up caught in the thunderstorms which blew in across the flat plains ripping tents and scattering circus crowds, and in Spring mud which forced the circus crew to trudge a mile into town to find breakfast. He played to crowds beneath blue skies of high summer and nights lit with incandescent lights on the white way. This was the backdrop of life that formed Harry's personality. Harry James was born on March 15, 1916 in Albany Georgia at the St. Nicholas Hotel. Both of his parents worked in a popular touring circus, "The Mighty Hagg Shows". Harry's father, Everette Robert James (1884-1955) was born in New Orleans and was a cornetist, trumpeter, and leader of the circus' 15-piece band. Harry's mother, Maybelle Stewart Clark James (1891-1941) was a trapeze artist and aerialist noted for her ability to "lift 500 pounds with her teeth" while performing her "iron jaw" trick suspended above the ring. Both parents toured with the circus for twenty years. (1) Harry was 11 days old when his parents carried him on stage. Like child vaudeville drummer Buddy Rich a few years later, Harry started in show business by banging out march-time on a drum bigger than him, at age one. He began playing on a set of drums at three, and was featured with the band and took over the drummer's chair entirely at age four, when the drummer became sick. He was able to play two, hour-and-forty-minute shows each day. His mother taught him the many tricks of the circus trade, including contortion movements from her own act, and he became known in the show as the �Human Eel". Harry began playing the cornet at eight years old. Skinny Goe, a trumpeter in the Christy Bros. Circus taught Harry the rudiments of the horn. His father, Everette, recognized his ability. By 11, he was playing fourth chair in the circus band, and shortly afterward he became First Cornetist. By 12 Harry was given leadership of the show's Second Unit Band, and his name first appeared in Billboard Magazine as the �youngest circus bandleader in the world.� Harry�s dad used W.C. Handy�s compositions in the circus music repertoire, and Harry's ability to play the blues began to develop. �Memphis Blues�, �St. Louis Blues� as well as standards of the day like �Tiger Rag, �Milenberg Joys� and �Wolverine Blues� were also played daily. (2) Harry even copied his father�s stance on the bandstand, which stayed with him all of his life. As a pre-teen, he would practice the Arban Trumpet exercise book between 2 and 6 hours a day under his father's tutelage. When the family quit the circus and settled in Beaumont Texas, Harry was already 13. As a seventh grader in 1929, he was asked to join the Beaumont High School Band. He had already found his way to the only jazz club in Beaumont, and was playing there with Vic Isirillo�s band. His Dad kept his son's passion for playing baseball second to trumpet practice. He was only allowed to go outside and play when he had mastered each day's music exercise. This was a great motivational method, he later admitted, for it got him outside faster than if he had had a set practice time period. If he could do it right, he could go out. �Whatever success I may have had was due to my father sitting me down and really making me practice and practice and practice.� (3) The business depression of the 1930�s shut down a lot of small travelling shows, and Everette James decided to stay in Beaumont because the Spindle Top Oil Company was still solvent, and employing locals. The company also had a 24-piece band, and it asked Everette to lead it. Harry, of course, was a featured player. At this time, Harry also started to play baseball on the Island Park American Legion Team. A sharp-eyed scout for the Detroit Tigers noticed his fielding talent and hitting skills, and he nearly joined the Tiger�s Beaumont Farm Team. But then something happened that changed his life. In 1931 Harry entered the Texas Band Teacher�s Association Annual Eastern Division Contest. He won first place performing Herbert Clark�s �Neptune�s Court�. One of the high school musicians present, Bill Abel, remembered: �It was so outstanding. To hear a kid that young play so excellently, so perfectly, was just earthshaking. There were a lot of good trumpet players in High School, but none of them like that- so completely above every other musician in the whole state contest. He astounded the judges so much that they wanted to give him 100%, but they said they had never been able to do that, so they gave him a 98%. I knew Harry was headed for big things�. (4) Harry decided to pursue music as a living. His education ended with his graduation from Jr. High School. He started to play in local dance bands. His father made it clear he did not want him becoming a jazz musician. A trumpet student of Everette�s, Tom Jenkins, recalled �The older guys would sneak Harry out at night to play jobs that the old man didn�t like.� (5) Another musician from Beaumont, Jack McGee, a bassist, said �Harry was such a talent he didn�t stay long around here... he could sight-read a trumpet part from 100 feet.� (6) Everette James was not making the money he was used to making in his circus days. Knowing this, Harry asked to go out on his own, play trumpet, and help the family financially. He first attempted to sit-in with the band of Anson Weeks in Port Arthur, Texas, but wasn�t allowed. Next came a nervous audition with Lawrence Welk at the Baker Hotel in Dallas. According to James, �Welk asked me what else I could play and I told him the drums. But that wasn�t enough. He wanted guys who could play at least 4 or 5 instruments, so I didn�t get the job." (7) Harry then auditioned for violinist Joe Gill and his �Phillips Flyers�, who were based in St. Louis, but were playing a date in Beaumont. Harry easily played the band's "St. Louis Blues" chart, which was the most difficult arrangement in the book. He was familiar with the song from playing it regularly in his circus days, and Gill was impressed with his technical skill and musical intuition. He was hired. In a few days he joined up with the Gill Band in Galveston, Texas. He was paid $60.00 a week until the band ran out of gigs and he then returned to Beaumont and joined some other local working bands playing Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana spots. Next, he found employment with Art Hick's Orchestra. Hicks featured a vocalist named Louise Tobin during the band's 3-month stay at the Sylvan Club in Arlington, Texas. Harry and Louise began to date. Art Hick's band was featured as "America's Newest Dance Sensation" and both Harry and Louise were prominent on the band's posters. They were married a few months later, May 25, 1936, by a Justice of the Peace in Millerton, N.Y. When the Hicks band's bookings began to slow, Harry was asked to take a pay cut, and he quit the band. He joined the Herman Waldron band, which specialized in quiet, dinner music. He began to lose his strong embouchure, playing 3rd trumpet with this band, while being paid $55.00 a week. Well known jazz drummer Ben Pollack heard about Harry's talent and hired him for $75.00 a week. Pollack encouraged him by letting him play the jazz trumpet chair. Pollack himself was recognized as one of the first popular jazz drummers to play four beats each measure on the bass drum.
During the previous decade Pollack's band had been the first stop in the big leagues of music for Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller. In 1928 it was known by other musicians as the "only white big band playing real jazz." (8)
By 1934, Pollack's fianc�e, Doris Robbins, became the center of things in the band. Pollack wanted to make her a singing star, and the rest of the band took a back seat. Eventually, they all quit and left to form another group under the direction of Bob Crosby, Bing's younger brother. Harry stayed with Ben, playing and driving the band bus. With Pollack, James began a recording career, starting with "Song of the Islands" and "Jimtown Blues", recorded on September 15th and 16th, 1936. Metronome Magazine's George Simon met Harry the same month. Simon wrote: "I found him to be a very enthusiastic guy with a great deal of understanding of life in general as... young as he was...He was quite mature because of his circus upbringing...travelling around the country so much and never settling down. He had learned to fend for himself." (9)
Tommy Dorsey, attempting one of his regular raids on another band's talents, tried to get James away from Pollack to join his band, but his offer was refused. Benny Goodman's brother, Irving, a trumpeter in Benny's band, wanted to leave the group for another job. He suggested Harry as a replacement. When Benny heard James on the radio, he immediately called and hired him for $150.00 per week. Benny told him to come to New York City and begin playing with the band at the Hotel Pennsylvania. Harry left Pollack on good terms, and never forgot what Pollack had done for him. He remained supportive of Ben in his future varied careers as musician, restaurant owner, and later, small-time producer. After the three-day train ride from Los Angeles to New York, Harry said, �I was so nervous I was shaking. I was so excited to go with Goodman.� (10) Benny was playing a benefit with pianist Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa when Harry first showed up on the bandstand at the Pennsylvania. The band was playing �A Fine Romance� with Lionel Hampton leading from the drums. Harry�s turn at taking a chorus of the song came up, and Harry remembered later: �Lionel called out, ��Pop�s�, play another!� Then he called out �Play another!� again, and the next thing you know I�m playing 6 choruses in a row. At the dinner set, Benny finally came in, and after the set I was standing in back, but I could hear Lionel saying excitedly to Benny, �Hey, Hey, Hey! Pops! This guy can play!� (11) A few nights later, an irritated Goodman asked brother Irving, (who admitted he had heard James a year earlier) �Why didn�t you tell me he was so great!" James' first recordings with Benny Goodman were �Never Should Have Told You�, �You Can Tell She Comes From Dixie�, �This Year�s Kisses� and �He Ain�t Got Rhythm�, on December 30, 1936. The recording sessions often took place at 9:00AM, after the band had just finished a long, late-night gig at the hotel. Lionel Hampton said of Harry�s joining the band: �Having a trumpet player from Texas gave us �juice. Harry had something of his own to contribute and he sure could hit those high �C�s� and �F�s�. He had a black sound, and it was obvious he had been raised musically around black musicians. He was completely different from any other white trumpet player of his day. When Harry came he enthused the section and gave it some real style. He played �gut bucket�. The band didn�t have that fire or expression till he came along.� (12) In analyzing his own style, James explained, �Personally I like and play a rolling style in the two-or-four-bar phrases. To play this rolling style, or lots of notes style, you must have a basic knowledge of chords and progression and perfect control of your instrument�when you make a good, clean entrance and a �planted� exit, your playing has acquired polish. It�s only natural that a good beginning will enable you to create ideas more freely.� (13)
James' alter ego in Goodman's trumpet section was Harry Finkelman, known as Ziggy Elman. Ziggy had also played baritone sax, piano, trombone and vibraphone in the Alex Bartha Band that made its home on the Steel Pier in Atlantic City.Arthur Rollini�s wife, Eva, heard him there, and recommended him to Benny Goodman. As a section, the trumpets with Goodman played a tad sharp in order to add brightness to the overall section sound. Goodman trumpeter Jim Maxwell, said "Sometimes I think that after Bunny (Berigan) left Goodman's band the brass section lost the really beautiful tone quality it had had. The guys who followed, Harry James, Ziggy Elman, and the rest, they used Selmer trumpets and shallow mouthpieces and got that very bright, brittle sound. It was exciting, yes, but for me something had been lost." (14) Goodman trumpeter Chris Griffin noted, �Harry once said to me, �I�ve never heard anything in my head that I couldn�t play on the trumpet.� (15) Griffin couldn�t imagine being able to do that. Benny Goodman�s band played a famous engagement at the Paramount Theater in March of 1937. The band opened each show with the furious �Bugle Call Rag� featuring Harry�s full-blast, high-speed trumpet lead off chorus of �Reveille�, and the teenagers, who had cut school and sat through the stodgy movie �Maid of Salem� starring Claudette Colbert and Frederick March, went berserk. That day, in fact there were 21,000 admissions to the theater. For the first time, black teenagers came down to the Paramount in huge numbers to see the band, which featured Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson. (16) The work schedule for the Goodman band was one only the young could survive. At the Paramount, they performed 5 shows a day- one after each screening of the movie, seven days a week. At the same time they were playing at the Hotel Pennsylvania between the hours of 7pm and 1:30am each night except Sunday. The Pennsylvania job also called for 3 radio broadcasts each night. The band also had its own radio show, the Camel (cigarette) Caravan each Tuesday night, and this required rehearsing on Thursday nights until 4AM, after finishing the all-day-and-night Paramount and Pennsylvania jobs. Leaving New York after this hectic period, the band went west and appeared in its second film entitled "Hollywood Hotel". (It's first film appearance being in "The Big Broadcast of 1937"). This band was captured at its best on the Columbia CD "Benny Goodman On The Air 1937-38" One of the important musical collaborations that James had in the B.G. band was with Teddy Wilson. A Wilson recording date provided what some claim to be James� best jazz record. The titles were "Just a Mood I & II (Blue Mood)". Jazz critic James Collier Lincoln observed of the piece, "His phrasing; his tone, are flawless- masterful trumpeting..." (17) Besides Wilson and James, the group consisted of Red Norvo on xylophone and John Simmons on bass. On December 1, 1937 James recorded his first sides as a leader (while still under contract with B.G.). Producer John Hammond organized the record dates, and asked Ziggy Elman, Dave Tough, Harry Carney, Buck Clayton, Jo Jones, Jess Stacy and vocalist Helen Humes to join them. Out of these first sessions came James' first hit records, the instrumental "One O'clock Jump", and "It's The Dreamer In Me", with Humes doing the vocal. These two numbers reached Billboard's Top 10 for 8 weeks. Harry won the 1937 Down Beat poll as the "trumpeter of the year". He also won the Metronome Magazine poll. Reading the results, he asked quizzically, "How can they possibly vote for me when Louis is in the same contest?" (18) The next major event in James' career was his performance at Benny Goodman's famous Carnegie Hall Concert on January 16, 1938. Just before walking on stage, Harry turned to the other musicians and said "I feel like a whore in church." (19) Enough has already been written about that night, and Harry's part in the performance of "Sing, Sing, Sing". It was remarkable. The Carnegie Hall event was the summit of Benny Goodman's career as a bandleader. Shortly afterwards Krupa quit by walking off the stage in Philadelphia, and the band was never the same. James continued on with Goodman, now being paid $200.00 a week. He and Louise Tobin lived simply in inexpensive New York apartments. An interesting and direct explanation of James' leaving B.G. was once told by Harry himself: "I was going through a real mental thing, and it was all built up around "Sing, Sing, Sing" I'd been sick and they gave me some experimental pills- sulphur pills- only they weren't very refined yet. Well, they wigged me out, and it happened the first time just as I was supposed to get up and play my chorus on "Sing, Sing, Sing". I just couldn't make it. I fell back in my chair. Ziggy said to me, "Get up!", but I couldn't. So when he saw what was happening, he got up and played my solo. I was completely out of my mind. It had happened another time too, and so every time the band played "Sing, Sing, Sing", I'd get bugged and scared it would all start over again. You know- that Stravinsky-type thing that the trombones and then the trumpets play just before the chorus? Well, that would really set me off. I tried to explain it to Benny, and I'd even ask him to play "Sing, Sing, Sing" early in the evening, so I could relax the rest of the night, but of course, that was his big number, and I couldn't blame him...Finally, I just left the band. I couldn't trust myself anymore." (20) Benny was loath to lose Harry. The Krupa loss had been a disaster, and he now had become reliant on Harry not only as his star trumpeter, but also needed him to count off tempos for the band on radio shows. Benny had trouble reading scripted lines and counting off tempos simultaneously, and the radio audience would have to listen to silence for a few moments between the song's intro and the performance. Benny also began using James as a fill-in bandleader when he left the bandstand. He also asked Harry to drum when Lionel Hampton was at the vibes. When Harry told Benny he wanted to start his own band, Benny at first agreed- then reneged and said Harry would have to fulfill the rest of his current contract- 6 more months. This didn't sit well with James, but as he only had $400.00 in the bank, he was not in a position go out on his own.
Benny Goodman saw Harry James for what he was- a talented artist with a future. He could not let an opportunity pass him by. Sensing Harry's impatience to start his own group, he urged him to sign a contract with MCA. Unknown to James, Benny had arranged to receive 5% of all the commissions MCA would earn on Harry as his reward for getting James to sign. Short of money to start his own band, James also signed a start-up contract with Goodman, which allowed him access to $7,000 from Benny during his band's first year. The loan was to be paid back in full within 2 years. Benny, in turn, was entitled to 1/3 of Harry's net earnings over the next 10 years. In only 90 days, Benny could start taking his allotted share of Harry's earnings. A relaxed Harry told Metronome Magazine editor George Simon the formula that he used to guide his band: �We�re emphasizing middle tempos. They can swing as much and they�re certainly more danceable.� (21) James credits a switch to the Parduba #28 mouthpiece to revolutionizing his playing control when he was Goodman. He used it for the rest of his career. The Parduba #28 is a difficult mouthpiece for many players. It is a shallow piece, but inside there are two cups. Too much pressure creates nothing but air out of the bell, and too little pressure gets the same result. A player cannot get his lips inside the shallow piece, to create sound pressure that way, and so it requires a strong embouchure, with all muscle control against the piece, and no lip inside. Harry always believed in breathing as the whole game in trumpet work. No one ever saw any red circle on his lip, because they were so taut against the Parduba #28."If you breathe correctly, you can blow correctly", Harry always said.(22) He never required any warm up with this combination of mouthpiece and breathing. To demonstrate his diaphragm control, he would let a person punch him in the stomach hard, and his abdomen was like a wall. As the new band began to operate, first in the Philadelphia and New York areas, Harry sent his own earnings home to his Dad to deposit for him. Music critic George Simon hailed the new band's strong beat, but even at Roseland in Manhattan, the management asked Harry to mix up the jump tunes with some rumba's and waltzes.
When the band left New York and headed west, it was scheduled to play the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, which burned down while they were en route. As a substitute venue, the upscale Beverly Hills restaurant Victor Hugo was selected, but the manager found the band too loud and he "ordered the brass section to muffle its sound with handkerchiefs, mutes and felt hats and had a canopy built around the bandstand." (23) The band�s first record date was held on February 20, 1939 for Brunswick in New York. They recorded �Two O'clock Jump�. In short order he auditioned Marie Antoinette JaMais, a vocalist from Florida, and hired her, renaming her Connie Haines. Knowing Harry was searching for a male singer, his wife Louise woke Harry up one night to hear a late remote broadcast from the Rustic Cabin, a roadhouse on Rt. 9W just north of the George Washington Bridge. The fellow singing that evening was working with the band of Harold Arden. The next night Harry drove out to have a look at the singer and meet him. The two hit it off well, and Harry asked him to change his name to Frankie Satin and join his band. The singer refused the name change, and after arguing about it for two days, James relented and let Frank Sinatra use his own name and join the band for $75.00 wk. At the time, Harry told Downbeat Magazine of his new singer: �He (Sinatra) considers himself the greatest vocalist in the business. Get that! No one ever heard of him. He�s never had a hit record. He looks like a wet rag, but he says he�s the greatest!� (24) Frank�s first hit with James was �All Or Nothing At All�. Recorded in the summer of 1939 and not released for a year, it then sold 8,000 copies. Three years later it was re-released during a recording ban and it sold 100,000 copies. By then everyone knew Sinatra. The most unusual thing about this early Sinatra record is the amount of time he spends actually singing. In a period when vocalists were given a chorus or two and then the band took the rest of the song, Sinatra was given time to tell a whole story. More than any other record with Harry James, this one created Sinatra�s image as a great performer. Harry later observed of Frank: �When Frank joined the band he was always thinking of the lyrics, the melody was secondary. If it was a delicate or pretty word, he would try to phrase it with a prettier, softer type of voice. He still does that. The feeling he has for the words is just beautiful. He could sing the wrong melody, and it would still be pretty�. (25) With all of this going on, John Hammond heard Louise Tobin singing at a New York club. He told Benny Goodman how great she was and Benny offered her a job right after auditioning her, not having a clue she was married to Harry James. Louise sang the blues with great skill, and Benny featured her often. By 1940 Tommy Dorsey had heard enough Sinatra records and radio shows with the James band to know he wanted to hire him. At the same time, the popular Jack Leonard, who had sung with Dorsey for years, was quitting the band to begin his own singing career. Dorsey had his manager slip Sinatra a note on a torn-off corner of a shopping bag, asking him to meet TD at the Palmer House the next day. Dorsey offered Sinatra 125.00/wk. He was being paid $75.00/wk by James. He took the job. When he told James later that day, James told him to take it, adding that if things didn't pick up soon with his own band, he might be looking for a job with TD too. January 26th, 1940 was Sinatra's last day with the James band in Buffalo, New York. Sinatra later remembered that after the show, "The bus pulled out with the rest of the guys after midnight. I'd said goodbye to them all and it was snowing. I remember there was nobody around, and I stood there with my suitcase in the snow and watched the taillights of the bus disappear. Then the tears started, and I tried to run after the bus. There was such spirit and enthusiasm in that band. I hated leaving it." (26) That same week Harry hired Dick Haymes as a new vocalist. Haymes, the son of a Scottish Argentine cattle rancher, had actually been auditioning some of his original songs and singing them while he accompanied himself on piano, but Harry instantly recognized a fine, trained voice. Because of poor record sales, the James band was dropped by Columbia in the winter of 1940. It was transferred to the Varsity label, a much smaller company. In the autumn of 1940, Mannie Sachs, a Columbia executive, was promoted, and since he was a believer in Harry's band, and in its future revenue potential, he re-signed the band to Columbia. Dick Haymes then had a Top Ten hit with "Lament For Love" in August of 1940. He also recorded "I'll Get By" that year, which became a #1 hit when it was re-released in June of 1944. Haymes left James for Benny Goodman's band in December of 1941. He then joined Tommy Dorsey, again replacing the departing Sinatra in September of 1942. After Haymes left Dorsey, he began his own career as a recording artist, starring in motion pictures and appearing regularly on radio. But that was the future, and life continued to be rough on the road for the 1940 James band. While paying his musicians $75.00/wk, Harry was losing up to $1,500 /wk. Long distances on a bus to play at ballrooms with broken microphones and out-of-tune pianos was taking morale down. The Greyhound Bus Company was aggressively pursuing James on overdue bus rental bills, and would usually be waiting for the band on the outskirts of a town to repossess the vehicle. Harry would have his manager negotiate to stave off doom, and the band would continue on to the next city. Only a few record royalties kept the band going financially.
James had been kicking around the idea of adding a string quartet to the orchestra- 3 violins and a viola. On March 20, 1941 the band with strings recorded "You Made Me Love You", which Al Jolson had made famous in 1914, and Judy Garland had reprised in 1938. This sentimentally performed ballad transformed James' reputation from Swing star to ballad master. Jazz critics jumped on him for selling out and playing what was labeled as "Schmaltz", a German word defined as meaning "sentimental or florid music or art". (27) In fact, James continued to be a stratospheric jazz trumpeter the rest of his life. (In July of 1974 he was asked to play the Newport in New York Jazz Festival, where he performed at Carnegie Hall. He was followed that night on the program by the quartet of Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson, Milt Hinton, and Buddy Rich). (28) He hadn't played there since 1964, when he performed with Buddy Rich and Ruth Price.
But in 1941, some of his fans did not understand the business decisions which were made to survive in the unpredictable pop music market. What James had done was play a song the way he felt it should be played, and it was popular because it was a love song played very emotionally. Whatever the critics thought, James was now a star. The sheet music sales alone of the song passed 1 million copies. Mort Sahl, who grew up closely watching and working with the West Coast Stan Kenton band as an emcee, observed of Harry James, "Harry realized that strings are neutral, and they will amplify anything you want people to feel. He made commercial use of them to convey romanticism. The band looked good on stage and played well. Let's face it, the way Harry played ballads- he was the home office. Look how good the music was. It had a logic; it was so simple and yet it was stretched out. These renditions were like what Frank Sinatra did; they both made them into a mini-drama. Standing up there playing with the trumpet section and then coming out in front to play his solos gave his performance both drama and power. Sure, he was playing commercial music, but he had chops, and he was committed when he was playing a ballad. He wasn't a businessman waving a wand."(29) In the autumn of 1941, Pee Wee Monte, who had been working for Goodman's band, took over management of Harry's band. James was $43,000 in debt at the time. Monte cut out the 500-mile overnight jumps between gigs. He recorded each monetary transaction, imposed a budget, and in the first 9 gigs after he took over, the band became slightly profitable. Helen Forrest joined the band at that time for $85.00/wk. She had previously sung with the bands of Goodman and Artie Shaw. A 16-year-old saxophone player named Corky Corcoran also joined the band that season, and James adopted him and became his legal guardian. Corcoran called James "Pop" and stayed with the band on and off until his death in 1979. At the end of that autumn, James played the Brooklyn Paramount. There was a long line outside the theater waiting when the bus pulled up. Harry approached someone in line and asked "What's wrong?", the answer was "We're waiting to see Harry James." James responded, "You're kidding!" (30) As soon as the band's financial situation stabilized, Pee Wee loaned Harry the money to buy back Goodman's investment contract. James paid Goodman almost $20,000 to get out of the deal they had made. Harry had only used $4,500 of the $7,000 loan in three years. Goodman's timing was off, because James was about to make a fast fortune. In 1942 James was playing at the Hollywood Canteen for members of the military service on leave in Los Angeles. Film star Betty Grable was also working there. They struck up a friendship, and then a romance.
On January 16, 1943, the song "I've Heard That Song Before", with Helen Forrest singing, reached #1 for 13 weeks. It was Columbia's best-selling record in history. Due to war supply restrictions, Columbia ran out of shellac and had to stop manufacturing the disc. In the first six months of 1943, the band made $3,500,000 in record sales. (31) The same year James made $750,000 from movie appearances, records and dance halls. In 1943, the band had 27 musicians, including 4 violins, 2 violas, a cello, a bass, and 2 French horns. Trombonist Bill Abel, who had known Harry since 1931 and joined the band in 1942, summed up Harry's leadership style at this point, "Harry was probably the best leader as far as treatment of the band that I'd ever worked with. Anytime he ever corrected you or corrected the section, he did it with precise instructions, and he'd say, "That's the way I want it played.' That's all you'd hear; he wouldn't rant and rave." (32)
On April 21, 1943 the James band opened at the Paramount in Manhattan. 7,500 fans were in line to see the band at 9AM. A plate glass window was smashed by the crowd and a policeman seriously injured. During that first week, attendance was 163,000 and gross receipts were $105,000. The Paramount contained 3,664 seats and added another show each day. (33) James became ill during the gig, and one of the band's trumpeters, Jimmy Campbell, took over the solos he usually played. Frank Sinatra came back temporarily to take over direction of the band. James returned as soon as he could. Harry wasn't drafted because of his 3-A status. He was still married to Louise Tobin and was the sole support of a family. After he proposed marriage to Betty Grable in the summer of 1943 and Louise Tobin granted him a divorce, James was immediately reclassified 1-A for the draft. The movie studio where he was working requested a draft deferment to the Beaumont, Texas draft board until he finished shooting a movie. The Beaumont draft board obliged, writing him to report for an induction exam when the film was complete. It was noted at exam time that a mastoid condition, which had affected him from childhood, had caused a punctured eardrum. He was now classified as 4-F, or unfit for duty. (34)
Harry and Betty's married social life consisted mainly of going out to baseball games, golfing, bowling, and riding horses. Eventually horse racing took most their time. They began to buy, breed and race horses. At one point they owned 28 horses and 2 ranches. As an indicator of how far James had come financially, note that he had paid only $25.00 in federal income taxes in 1941, but paid $620,000 in 1943. By 1946, Harry and Betty James would be the wealthiest couple in the entertainment business. Staying commercially viable in the music business wasn't an easy act during WWII. Musicians were drafted, and a recording ban, called by the Musicians Union on August 1, 1942, didn't end until November 11, 1944. The strike was called in order to negotiate higher royalties for musicians on jukebox record play. For those years, no recording was allowed, other than vocalists backed by other vocalists. Some bands hurriedly recorded what they could before the shut down took effect to have songs to release during the ban. Record companies re-released songs, such as the James/Sinatra cut of "All or Nothing At All".
It was a near fatal blow to the big bands, both commercially and artistically. The only recorded music that survived from this period was recorded on V-Discs, which were records to be distributed to the troops and broadcast for morale. The period coincided with the changeover to Bebop and vocalists as the new musical vanguard. Helen Forrest left the band in December of 1943 for a solo career. She could record on her own without the band and sidestep the ban. She had made two gold records ("I Had The Craziest Dream" & "I've Heard That Song Before") with James and had a total of 8 hits with him. Because of her work with Shaw, Goodman and James, she's remembered as one of the most memorable vocalists of that era.
James hired Kitty Kallen in November of 1944, when the ban expired. The Philadelphia native had already sung in Jack Teagarden's band. Jack had given her good, simple advice when he told her the priorities of a vocalist: "Sing the melody, read the lyric, and tell the story." (35) She put this to good use with Harry's band, recording with him for two years. On her first session, November 21, 1944 she sang an extremely fine version of Ellington's instrumental, "I'm Beginning To See The Light". Harry James and Don George wrote the lyrics to the Ellington piece. Kitty's other big hit was "It's Been A Long, Long Time". Both hit #1 on the charts. Trombonist Juan Tizol and altoist Willie Smith were in the band at this time. Willie contributed outstanding solos on "Cherry", "Long, Long Time" and "The Man With The Horn". (36) During the summer of 1946 Willie's record of "Who Sorry Now?" with the band went to #2 over an 18-week period. When a ballroom owner told James that Willie could not go on stage with the rest of the band, Harry would offer to give back the money and leave town. Usually the band got its way and stayed to play the gig. Juan Tizol, the composer of the jazz standard "Perdido" among others, played with the band from 1944-1951. Harry used Juan's fine directing skill and let him lead the band when he couldn't be present himself. Tizol would return regularly to the band on and off for years. Ray Coniff wrote arrangements for Harry after leaving the service. He had previously written for Artie Shaw. Comparing the two leaders approach to music, Coniff said: "Harry was a little bit different than Artie in that he wanted the arrangements to be really musician-type arrangements. He also wanted them to be a little more complicated than Artie did. Artie was more interested in commercialism, and selling records; Harry was interested in having a ball with the music, and for the boys in the band to love the chart. He didn't care if the people out front really understood that much, but amazingly, he was very successful by doing it that way." (37) James appeared in 15 major studio movies. His post-war film career continued with appearances in "Do You Love Me?" and "If I'm Lucky". Neither was a critical success. 20th Century Fox did not renew his contract. This, combined with the severe drop-off in the band business as vocalists took center stage, caused the disbanding of many bands in December of 1946. They included, besides James, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Les Brown, Woody Herman and Jack Teagarden. (38) Starting on February 13, 1948, Harry appeared for 26 weeks on the popular radio show "Call For Music", and took note of the popular Bebop big bands of Herman and Kenton. To Harry the new music was truly a natural progression. When Harry started a Bebop-based big band with Neil Hefti arrangements, he was comfortable playing the new sound. His affinity for Bop is obvious in his band's recordings from that period. Of James' Bop strength as a player, Louise Barringer, a trumpeter in a much later James band remarked, "He's playing high "G's" or "F's,...which in the late '40's was unheard of. When Maynard Ferguson started doing that everyone thought it was incredible. And they're big notes- he's not squeaking it out, he's playing up there. You hear him playing jazz and it's easy for him. And the end of a solo he blows a high "G" as big as a house. He could have capitalized on that- his chops and his technical ability- but the public wanted him to play "You Made Me Love You...I guess when you become a personality sometimes it detracts from your art."" (39) Bebop drummer Kenny Washington adds�"Most of the swing era trumpet players stayed there except for Roy Eldridge and a few others. But Harry was very open to it rhythmically and harmonically. He was able to adapt to Bebop and handling those changes. He wasn't just playing half notes and whole notes, he's playing lines." (40)
The Harry James band was still packing them in at the Steel Pier in the spring of 1949. On Easter Sunday, 27,000 people visited the pier and Marine Ballroom, which was located "Half a Mile At Sea". Drummer Louis Bellson remembers playing with Harry for 3,000 people at a time at the Hollywood Palladium around the same time. The band would also often perform for 14,000 to 15,000 service personnel at each concert at Navy and Air Force bases in the U.S. (41) A memorable gig at the Band Box club in New York during the Flu season of 1953 was going so well that when three band members came down with the flu, Harry called in a doctor to have the entire band inoculated. Someone had left a side door open to the back stage and the audience sat and watched each member of the James band take off his red band jacket, roll up his sleeve, receive an injection, then roll down their sleeve, put back on their band jacket, and casually walk out another door on to the stage. (42) At this time, Harry was listening closely to Miles Davis, who had been featured with the Charlie Parker band at Birdland. Davis had admired James' records while he grew up, once commenting, "I just loved the way he played. I almost broke my teeth trying to get that big vibrato sound that Harry had." (43)
Also at the Bandbox that year, Harry hooked up again with drummer Buddy Rich, and signed him to a $35,000 /yr contract with featured billing. They became close friends and Harry served as best man at Buddy's wedding later that year. In July of 1953 Betty Grable finished her contract with Fox. To boost their income, Harry and Betty went on a theater tour together, making $45,000 in the first two shows. An idea of the draw they both still commanded was clarified by their joint appearances on two early Chrysler television programs, for which they were paid $80,000. Harry began recording in High Fidelity and reprised many of the hits which had earned him 70 Billboard pop chart hits over the previous 15 years. (44) Harry took 1956 off, and bought a horse trainers license. He noticed the success that the Count Basie band was having with a fresh modern big band sound. He hired Ernie Wilkins, who was writing for Basie, and told him to write as much as he could for a new Harry James band. In 1958 Harry started playing Vegas' Driftwood Lounge. He moved his family to Las Vegas in 1960. The 5 nightly sets would begin at 9:45PM. He loved his life in Vegas. He could perform, gamble all he wanted, and play golf all day. He was 42 years old. Other clubs, including the ones in Reno, signed the band up for shows too. He led the new band on successful concert tours of Europe and Japan. Drummer Jack Perciful remembered that in Japan "They treated him and Buddy Rich like deities...the fans would clap short and fast so as not to interfere with the listening..."(45)
In October of 1965, Grable and James divorced after 22 years. Betty decided to take a version of "Hello Dolly" on the road, and it played very well. Buddy Rich left the James band in 1966 to begin his own successful big band. With the music scene changing rapidly, the last Las Vegas club he played regularly let Harry's contract lapse in 1970.
Betty Grable died of cancer on July 2, 1973, at age 57. In his last years, James played colleges, country clubs, high schools, and cruise ships. He still had the stamina to play 49 one-nighters in a row one late season. He played at the White House twice, and went on tours of Argentina, Brazil and the U.K. In July of 1978 he brought his band to the Newport Jazz Festival at Saratoga New York, and was followed that night by the big bands of Buddy Rich, Count Basie, Maynard Ferguson, and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis band. "It was more big band music in one dose than anyone could remember," said festival producer George Wein. (46) With a long distinguished career behind him and very sick with lymphatic cancer, he told bassist Red Kelly that he wasn't afraid of death. "I figure I've lived five lifetimes already."(47)
He was still performing on stage with the band only 9 days before he died on July 5, 1983 at age 67.His old friend Frank Sinatra delivered the eulogy.
References (1) P.4 Peter J. Levinson; "Trumpet Blues, The Life of Harry James", 1999. Oxford University Press. New York. (2) ibid. P.9 (3) P.11 (4) P.13 (5) P. 14 (6) P.14 (7) P.15 (8) P.23 (9) P.28 (10) P.35 (11) P.36 (12) P.39 (13) P.39 (14) P.500 Richard M. Sudhalter; "Lost Chords", 1999. Oxford University Press. New York. (15) Levinson; P.40 (16) ibid. P.42 (17) ibid. P.48 (18) ibid. P.50 (19) ibid. P.51 (20) ibid. PP.55-56 (21) ibid.P.63 (22) ibid. P.144 (23) PP.234-235 Ross Firestone; "Swing, Swing, Swing, The Life and Times of Benny Goodman", 1993. W.W. Norton. New York. (24) Levinson; P. 71 (25) ibid. P.70 (26) ibid. P.79 (27) ibid. P.94 (28) P.402 George Wein, "Myself Among Others, A Life in Music" with Nate Chinen. 2003. Da Capo Press. Cambridge, Mass. (29) Levinson; P.97 (30) ibid. P.103 (31) ibid.P.130 (32) ibid. P.127 (33)ibid. P. 129 (34) ibid. P.133 (35) ibid. P.150 (36) ibid. P.155 (37) ibid. P.159 (38) ibid. P.162 (39) ibid. P.171 (40) ibid. P.172 (41) ibid. P.173 (42) ibid. P.183 (43) ibid. P.183 (44) ibid. P.188 (45) ibid. P.227 (46) Wein; P.423 (47) Levinson; P. 281 Selected Discography & Filmography of Harry James James' Top Ten Hits 1941-46 1941 "Music Makers" "Lament For Love"Vocal, Dick Haymes "You Made Me Love You" 1942 "I Don't Want To Walk Without You" Vocal, Helen Forrest "Sleepy Lagoon" "One Dozen Roses" Vocal, Jimmy Saunders "Strictly Instrumental" "He's My Guy" Vocal, Helen Forrest "Mister Five By Five" Vocal, Helen Forrest "Manhattan Serenade" Vocal, Helen Forrest 1943 "I Had The Craziest Dream" Vocal, Helen Forrest,#1, February "I've Heard That Song Before" Vocal, Helen Forrest, #1, March "Velvet Moon" "All Or Nothing At All"(1939) Re-released Spring, 1943. Vocal, Frank Sinatra "I Heard You Cried Last Night" Vocal, Helen Forrest 1944 "Cherry" Recorded 1942 Top 5 "I'll Get By" Recorded 1940. Vocal, Dick Haymes#1 June 1945 "I'm Beginning To See The Light" Vocal, Kitty Kallen #1 "I Don't Care Who Knows It" Vocal, Kitty Kallen "If I Loved You" Vocal, Buddy DeVito "11:60 PM" Vocal, Kitty Kallen "I'll Buy That Dream" Vocal, Kitty Kallen "It's Been A Long, Long Time" Vocal, Kitty Kallen "Waitin' For The Train To Come In" Vocal, Kitty Kallen 1946 "I Can't Begin To Tell You" Vocal, Betty Grable "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" Vocal, Buddy DeVito "This Is Always" Vocal, Buddy Devito Harry James Filmography "Syncopation" May 1942 "Private Buckaroo" June 1942 "Springtime In The Rockies" Nov. 1942 "Best Foot Forward" June 1943 "Two Girls & A Sailor" June 1944 "Bathing Beauty" June 1944 "Do You Love Me?" May 1946 "If I'm Lucky" Sept. 1946 "Carnegie Hall" May 1947 "A Miracle Can Happen" Feb. 1948 "Young Man With A Horn" (Soundtrack) 1950 "The Benny Goodman Story" 1955 "The Opposite Sex" Nov. 1956 "The Big Beat" June 1958 "The Ladies Man" July 1961
Duke Ellington with Billy Strayhorn
"He would sit down and write music like he was writing a letter."
Billy Strayhorn:"Portrait of a Silk Thread"
By John Twomey
Copyright 2004 by John Twomey. All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this article or parts thereof in any form.
The Hudson River flows beside the red leaves of late October as it passes the embankment of Riverside Park. At 107th Street, where Billy Strayhorn lived in a building called 'The Masters' facing the park, the tree-line drops down from Manhattan brick and asphalt into a sparkling red and gold canopy of fall foliage. As the Earth's seasonal axis drops the sunset far south and west with the fanfare of golden cloud ray reflections that shoot upward into the dimming blue sky, it seems the right atmosphere to mull over Strayhorn's life. He always felt that the best part of the day was 'halfway to dawn'.
He moved into 'The Masters' fairly late in his short life, and although he had lived in the building's vicinity for decades, the sturdy walls that purposefully dampened the noise of other practicing artists offered the sanctuary he needed to live out the days and nights of his life- much as he had described them in his 1936 composition, "Lush Life". If a person ever dispensed a psychological blueprint of his life early on, Strayhorn did. Nothing, it seemed, could separate him from the destiny he deftly described back in Pittsburgh, before he had ever met DukeEllington:
I used to visit all the very gay places,Those come what may placesWhere one relaxes on the axisOf the wheel of lifeTo get the feel of lifeFrom jazz and cocktails.The girls I knew had sad and sullen gray facesWith distingue tracesThat used to be there, you could see whereThey'd been washed awayBy too many through the dayTwelve o'clock tales.Then you came along with your siren songTo tempt me to madness.I thought for a while that your poignant smileWas tinged with the sadness of a great love for me.Ah, yes, I was wrong,Again I was wrong.Life is lonely againAnd only last yearEverything seemed so sure.Now life is awful again,A trough full of heartCould only be a bore.A week in Paris will ease the bite of it.All I care is to smile in spite of it.I'll forget you, I willWhile yet you are still Burning inside my brain. Romance is mushStifling those who strive.I'll live a lush life in some small diveAnd there I'll be while I rot with the restOf those whose lives are lonely, too.
Thirty years later, he would be stretched out reading a book on the backseat of an open black Impala convertible, as his friends Dr. Martin and Marian Logan drove the sunny roads through the Catskills, stopping at country stores and vegetable stands along the way. Most of the time, Billy would be oblivious to the passing scenery, engrossed in a book and a gin cocktail below the window level of the seat. "Arthur would be looking at the countryside and say, 'Strays, there's a beautiful farmhouse,' or whatever. Strays would say, "Wonderful, Arturo, wonderful! Please describe it to me, won't you?" and he'd keep reading and sipping on his cocktail." (1)
Billy Strayhorn was born on November 29, 1915, in Dayton, Ohio. He was the fourth child of Lillian and James Strayhorn. An older sister, Sadie had been born prematurely, and hadn't survived. A second child, James Jr. was doing fine. A second son, Leslie, died of convulsions after falling while learning to walk. After Billy was born, a sister, Georgia, was born, and then another boy, John, in 1924. Theodore in 1926, then premature twins in 1928, Samuel and Harry, both of who died shortly after birth.
Billy's parents, Lillian and James, had both been raised in comfortable, working-family environments. Lillian, from North Carolina, graduated from Shaw University. She was soft-spoken and used elegant wording as she spoke.
James was a descendant of the family that founded the first whiskey distillery down south after the Civil War. He was brought up comfortably. His mother had played the piano, and appreciated music and fine art.
After moving his family around to a string of unsuccessful jobs that led nowhere, Billy's father "became a bitter person and a drinker", said his daughter Lillian. "My father shouldn't have been born when he was born- that was his first mistake…He was bright and had a lot of personality, and he probably would have done very well years later. But back then, who needed a bright black man with personality? That goes against the grain when you have to put your head down and have a family to raise. So, being blessed with a sharp tongue and a temper- he became a bitter person- a bitter person with a lot of frustration." (2)
When he drank, he beat the children, said family friend Robert Conaway. (3) Billy's mother looked out for him as best she could, and they remained close throughout their lives.
The family settled in Pittsburgh, taking vacations in Hillsborough, N.C., where Billy would visit the Victorian house that his grandparents lived in. He "found himself" there, getting some attention and affection. He was encouraged to play the piano by his grandmother, picking out songs he remembered from church.
In Pittsburgh, Billy remembered, "During grade school I had no music, except what one ordinarily gets in grade school…group singing and that's about all. One thing I wanted was to play the piano. You can't learn to play the piano if you haven't got one."(4)
He started selling papers to earn money. The corner he chose to sell was occupied by the Pennfield Drug Store, in the upper middle class Jewish district. The druggist hired him to work behind the soda fountain counter, and as a delivery boy after school.
"I finally bought myself a piano and started to play it. I started to study, and the more I learned, the more I wanted to learn…It wasn't all that easy, but I guess if you want something hard enough it just gets done…I got that piano." (5) He also earned money to pay for sheet music and lessons taught by Charlotte Catlin, a black woman who worked in a popular music store in Pittsburgh.
At age eleven, Billy made a friend by the name of Harry Herforth, an eleven-year old white boy from a different street in the neighborhood. Both of them were more interested in music than sports. Both were readers, and compared the books they read. They treated the local library almost reverently. Billy also liked Frick Park, which covered 340 acres in Pittsburgh, on which grew 135 varieties of trees. He and Harry would walk the trails and "talked about composers, authors, playwrights…" (6)
When Harry visited Billy's home, the only conversation was a "Hello" to Billy's mother, and one in return. Billy's father would ignore them. They both went on to attend Westinghouse High School, which had an enrollment of 400. On the music faculty was Carl McVicker, who encouraged all the students to play musical instruments.
"Mr. McVicker instilled self respect in those of us who were his students, because he respected us regardless of our background", said Fritz Jones, one of his students better known as Ahmad Jamal. (7)
McVicker said of Billy, "I never heard a student play that way before or after", referring to a Strayhorn performance of Grieg's "Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 16." (8)
McVicker said Strayhorn was "earnest, hardworking…an intellectual. He had a broad base of knowledge of academics, although he learned everything we could teach him about music…He didn't play in the swing band. He wasn't interested. He was a serious pianist and concentrated strictly on the concert repertoire." (9)
By June of 1934, however, Billy had already heard Duke Ellington's Orchestra at a one- night stopover in Pittsburgh. What struck Billy the most during the entire performance was one chord. "…That's what really got me. He had a chord, which I have never discovered. I haven't heard it since. I couldn't figure this chord out. I went home after going to see this show at the Penn Theater in Pittsburgh, and I couldn't figure out what was in that chord, it was just wonderful." (10)
Another music teacher named Jane Patton Alexander taught him both piano and harmony instruction. Around this time in High School, Harry Herforth joined with Strayhorn to form a trumpet and piano duet for school meetings and functions.
Westinghouse High School also featured an "Orchestra Club" of 25 players, picked from the larger high school orchestra, which played classical music. Strayhorn was the only black member. This band played some of Pittsburgh's downtown hotels.
At his high school graduation in the winter of 1934, Strayhorn publicly premiered his first extended composition, "Concerto For Piano And Percussion". The percussionist on the piece, Mickey Scrima, later went on to become a well-known swing drummer with trumpeter Harry James. "The audience loved it", said Scrima. "It was a lot of fun…I don't know how much they understood it, mind you- if they realized how sophisticated this piece was, and how extraordinary it was that this kid in their school had written it". (11)
Classmate Dorothy Ford Gardin remembered, "Well, Strayhorn, he was…a genius. He was very much to himself. Some might have called him a little oddball or something, because he didn't socialize much. But he was too busy with his work…" (12)
Billy studied French and dressed well. He became president of the Westinghouse High School Pen Club, and had a subscription to The New Yorker. He used fine diction when he spoke, using an extensive vocabulary. Scrima recalled that "All he did day and night was concentrate on the only thing he cared about, the only thing he wanted- to go on doing what he did on the day of our graduation: be a classical concert pianist." (13)
Lacking financial aid to attend college, he continued working at Pennfield Drugs behind the counter, mixing sodas and making deliveries. He wanted to have enough money to pay his own tuition when he found a school that he liked.
Harry Herforth, who received a scholarship to attend The New England Conservatory of Music, recalled that Billy had shown interest in several colleges "But was discouraged because of his race and could not get the necessary financial aid. The very idea of a black concert pianist was considered unthinkable." (14) Harry himself later played first assistant chair with the Boston Symphony.
A year after graduating, Billy agreed to write the words and music for the Westinghouse High School Class of 1935's Annual Revue, which that year was entitled "Fantastic Rhythm". The show premiered on May 23.
Mixing bits of Gershwin-style composition with his own style as exhibited in "Concerto for Piano and Percussion", the musical was a hit with the locals. In fact everyone in town who saw it was talking about how great it was. Technically, it was as good as most things produced professionally on Broadway at that time.
The main organizing force behind the show from the start was a Westinghouse band mate of Billy's, Boggy (pronounced Bogie) Fowler. A natural showman, Fowler knew a good show when he saw one, and after witnessing the enthusiasm of the high school crowd, he decided to take the show public. Fowler organized the cast, handling the publicity and getting two investors to put up $500.00. Strayhorn handled the production, and recalled:
"…In those early days, what I was doing was arranging, composing, and lyric writing, but I thought nothing of it- I was just doing it to try and make the show a success." (15) Fred Staton, who worked on the show, recalled the genius with which Strayhorn was writing. "…he would sit down and write music like he was writing a letter…whole scores!" (16) There is hardly any surviving music from the show.
But in his in-depth study of Strayhorn, "Something to Live for", Walter van de Leur technically describes the piece "Ugly Ducklin'", which Billy wrote for a dance orchestra in this same time frame. (It is) "…a surprisingly hip and harmonically advanced piece, with a haunting, chromatic circling melody. To underscore the tune, Strayhorn turned to a harmonic concept that had been present in the verses of virtually all of his pre-1939 songs (including Lush Life): a two-chord ostinato in lieu of the expected traditional chord sequence. The ostinato consists of a tonic chord and its altered dominant over a two-bar bass line. Most striking is the anticipation of the dominant, which comes a beat and a half "too early": pure bebop language…Strayhorn gives the bass the flatted fifth of the altered dominant, which causes the chord to sound as its tritone-related dominant. The ostinato stops only to yield to one-bar interjections at the end of each ten-bar phrase and finally to give way to a more regular bridge built on a rhythmically placed chord sequence." (17)
In the publicity for "Fantastic Rhythm", Strayhorn added an "e" to the end of "horn", so that it would more closely resemble the spelling of one of Pittsburgh's most prominent black families, the Horne's, from which Lena came.
The show was well received, and moved out from Pittsburgh to other theaters in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh's Billy Eckstine joined the evolving cast in 1937. Strayhorn dropped out of sight after the first few performances, replaced by the young Errol Garner, another local Pittsburgh pianist.
After six years at the drug store, he had put away enough money to attend the Pittsburgh Musical Institute. He began studying with a music theory class in 1936. His teacher, Charles N. Boyd, was an impressive musician, and a friend of Albert Schweitzer. When Strayhorn was in his second term at the school, Boyd died of a heart attack while playing the organ in his home. Boyd had, in his short time with Strayhorn, been a tremendous influence. His sophistication as a mentor was everything that Billy had missed with his own father. "He was so wonderful that I didn't think there was anyone else there who could teach me. So I didn't stay," said Billy. (18)
Billy stayed away from his home as much as he could. His father's drinking had turned the Strayhorn house into a chaotic terror zone, but Billy did stay close to his mother.
At this time he began hanging out with drummer Mickey Scrima and another young man named Bill Esch. Scrima said of Esch,"…If you wanted to know about any band in the country…he knew about every band that ever played a note of music." (19)
Esch and Scrima bought Billy an Art Tatum solo on a 78 record, which soon had to be replaced because Billy wore it out listening to it so often. Scrima remembers, "What he realized…was that everything he loved about classical music was there, in one form or another, in jazz- and here was a place he could apply himself." (20)
Billy, now 23, soon formed a jazz trio with clarinetist Jerry Eisner and drummer Calvin Dort. "They were a fine, professional little band, no amateur act." Remembered Pittsburgh trumpeter Billy May. (21) Early in 1938 the group became a quintet, adding bassist Bob Yagella and vibes player "Buzzy" Mayer. In March of 1938 the trio made three demo sides. That summer they were the featured entertainment at Rakuen Lakes, a summer resort nearby. The next gig that autumn, over the state line in West Virginia, was a disaster. The band was well received until a patron made a racist remark about Billy loud enough for drummer Calvin Dort to hear. Dort was so enraged that he kicked his entire drum set at the person who made the remark, and chaos resulted. The band escaped in a truck back to Pennsylvania.
Billy took a gig at a bar playing piano in the East Liberty part of town. The club was where both black and white musicians hung out. Through clarinetist Eisner, Billy hooked up with drummer Bill Ludwig (no relation to the drum maker) to provide arrangements for Ludwigs's12-piece band.
His reputation as a great arranger had spread among the musicians of Pittsburgh, and he was writing more scores for a variety of Swing bands. He still worked at the drug store, and was often asked to play piano at the delivery destinations for an extra tip.
David Pearlman, a young pharmacy student who met Billy at the Pennfield Drug store, was aware of Billy's extraordinary talent. Pearlman was studying at the University of Pittsburgh's College of Pharmacy. In class, Pearlman sat next to George Greenlee, who was the Pharmacy school's first black student.
Greenlee's uncle, a wealthy man, who it was said had made his fortune hijacking beer trucks and running numbers rackets, owned Pittsburgh's Negro League baseball team, "The Crawfords". He also owned the ballpark, Greenlee Field, as well as two of Pittsburgh's best and busiest nightclubs, the Crawford Grill One and Crawford Grill Two.
Pearlman asked Greenlee if he would ask his uncle to introduce Billy to some big name musicians. Greenlee remembers"…I had never met this fellow Billy or heard him play. So I said, 'David, are you sure this guy is that good?' He said, 'Believe me'…it turned out that my uncle was having a big party that night for the band that was opening in town the following evening. I could set everything up at the party for this guy to meet the incoming bandleader, Duke Ellington. Otherwise, I'd have to wait a week and introduce him to the next bandleader, Basie." (22)
As soon as George Greenlee was introduced to Ellington, he alluded to Strayhorn; "Duke, a good friend of mine has written some songs, and we would like for you to hear them…(23)
Duke told him to come backstage with his friend after the first show the following day.
Ellington and Strayhorn
George and Billy met at the theater the next day and went up to Ellington's large dressing room, which included a piano. Duke was reclining in a chair, while someone styled his hair. As the pair approached and introduced themselves, Duke never opened his eyes. He asked Billy to sit down at the piano and play.
Strayhorn sat down and announced in a calm voice that he would play a piece that Ellington had just performed in the show. He duped it perfectly, note for note.
When he finished, he said just as calmly, "Now this is how I would play it." When he was finished, Ellington was standing behind him staring over his shoulder at the keyboard. Ellington asked his valet to go get Harry Carney, Johnny Hodges and Ivie Anderson. As the trio of Ellington veterans stood behind Billy at the keyboard, Duke asked him questions about his education and background.
Not quite sure what to do with him, Ellington "...had an idea for a lyric. He said: You go home and write a lyric for this,' and I did." (24) According to van de Leur in his book "Something to Live For, The Music of Billy Strayhorn", "The lyric he referred to may be the one Strayhorn set to an earlier instrumental work credited to Ellington, T.T. on Toast,… recorded by the orchestra December 19, 1938, twelve days after the two composers first met." (25)
In his own account of the day, Leonard Feather reported that Strayhorn "ran over a few original tunes at the piano [at his first meeting with Ellington]. He couldn't leave them with Duke as they had never been written down. Duke was sufficiently impressed to invite Strayhorn to arrange one of them for the band." (26)
Billy returned the following night with the completed work. He then penned arrangements of "Lonely Again" and later, wrote arrangements for his own tunes, "Lush Life" and "Something to Live For". His writing style is noticeably different from Ellington's, but he wrote with the personalities of the band in mind, writing the names of the band's soloists on the manuscripts. His Pittsburgh writing for such local bands as the "Moonlight Harbor Band" and Rex Edward's Orchestra had provided him with enough knowledge to seamlessly infuse his ideas into Ellington Orchestra arrangements. He wrote with the familiar Ellington concepts in mind, yet the music was his: unique, distinct, and appearing 'out of the blue' to the seasoned Ellington band. Billy also penned an arrangement of the standard "Two Sleepy People", for which he was given twenty dollars. When he later brought it to the theatre, Ellington looked it over and then walked it right out on to the stage where it was performed. The enthusiastic response from the audience was another step in convincing Duke that he should hire Strayhorn.
Duke wrote down his address in New York City and gave it to Billy. Then the Ellington band left on a road tour. Billy went back to Pittsburgh, and the drug store counter. A month passed. Billy wrote Duke but received no reply.
Bill Esch had to make a trip to New York, and suggested Billy come along with him. Before leaving Pittsburgh, Billy looked at Duke's directions to his home in Harlem, and composed the song "Take the "A" Train" based on Dukes written instructions. He intended the song to be a greeting gift for Duke.
As they were preparing to leave for New York, Billy received a note form one of Duke's staff. He told Billy to meet up with the band in Philadelphia. He missed the band there, but caught up with it on its next stop in Newark, N.J. Billy went in through the stage door. He was taken to Duke, who was about to walk on stage for the next show. Ellington was standing in the wings.
"…He had about five or seven minutes before he went on, so we talked. Actually, he didn't say too much, and I didn't say too much. We were just kind of looking at each other. I was scared to death, and he wasn't, of course…Finally he said, "Well, it's really something that you arrived at this moment. Yes, because I just sent Jack Boyd (his manager) upstairs to look for your address and send for you.'"
"You don't have to, here I am." Strayhorn replied.
"I don't have any position for you", said Ellington, "You'll do whatever you feel like doing." (27)
Ellington called on his son Mercer to arrange for Billy to stay at the local YMCA. Duke would pay his $5.00 a day tab.
Billy went back to Pittsburgh to say goodbye to his friends and family, telling them about his new employer. He told his friend Ralph Koger that he was going to work for Duke, "I played that tune "'A' Train" for him, and he liked it." (28)
Soon he was back in New York, but after only one night at the YMCA, Billy called Mercer and asked if he could come over to the seven-room Ellington apartment about a half mile away to learn more about Duke. Duke was out on tour at the time.
Ellington lived at 409 Edgecomb Ave. in the Sugar Hill district of Harlem. The building was atop a seven-story bluff overlooking the rest of the neighborhood and the Harlem River below. Duke lived with his sister Ruth, a biology student at Columbia, his lover Mildred Dixon, and son Mercer. Billy left the "Y" and walked over to the Ellington's
After dinner they sat around comfortably talking and playing records. When it was time to go to sleep, everyone went to their rooms except Billy, who said he would just sleep on the couch. After that, Billy went back to the YMCA only to change clothes, and he finally just moved into Duke's apartment.
Mercer Ellington said, "My father didn't take me under his wing the way he did Strayhorn." (29)
Billy's first orders came on the night of February 26, 1939. Duke called him up and told him to arrange two songs for the next morning and have them ready by 10:00 am. Billy stayed up all night writing. Duke looked the manuscripts over, and changed nothing. He was very pleased with the work. After that initial hurdle, Billy did the arranging for all the small groups Duke recorded from within the orchestra. That May, Ellington let Strayhorn begin to play the piano during the last sets of his shows.
Living in New York City for a year before he moved out of Ellington's apartment and into his own, Billy became accustomed to the sophisticated life of his Manhattan orbit. One of his friends, Haywood Williams, recalled "I'd pick up the phone and Billy would say, 'Allez-y!" That would be the signal, and we'd be off." (30) Billy would hire a limo and have a tray of martini's ready for his friends in the backseat as they rode around Central Park.
Charlie Barnet's arranger Ralph Burns remembers parties at Billy's own apartment: "Billy loved to play host and make sure everybody was eating. That's the kind of party he liked to have. It would be great, because a lot of us had so much in common- a lot of us were in the music business, and we were gay, of course- not that we would stand there and talk about being gay. That wasn't it. It was just really good to be in each other's company. Billy would put these parties together, and they were just a great, easy natural good time." (31)
Herb Jeffries, the Ellington band's vocalist recalled: "We both spoke French, so we loved to go to the very Chicest French restaurants around New York. There was a tremendous amount of discrimination, and you could show a certain amount of sophistication by the mere fact that you could speak a language that the next white person couldn't." (32)
Dizzy Gillespie remembered seeing Strayhorn showing up at Minton's, the birthplace of Bebop,"Strayhorn was on the scene, and he played with the best of them. He never made a big deal out of it or looked for any attention. One night he and Bud Powell decided to cut, and man, I'm telling you, he turned that piano inside out." (33)
Bill Paterson, married and a psychology student at NYU, was part of Billy's inner circle too. "Billy wasn't delicate or soft at all. He had an extraordinary presence. You got the distinct feeling that he was functioning from a place that's different from where the rest of us come from, and from that place within himself, he seemed to be able to see people in a different way than a lot of people get seen or most of us see people. He listened. He actually listened to you. He was always present. (34)
Billy's work for Duke was part of their easygoing relationship. Duke would casually say, "I want you to finish this thing for me." (35) In quick order, Strayhorn's own works, "Your Love Has Faded", "Day Dream", and "Something To Live For" had been rehearsed and recorded by the band, even though Ellington is credited as being a co-composer.
One of the bizarre music industry interruptions that became quite common in the 1940's began in December of 1940. Radio stations refused to play ASCAP songs because of a hike in per-play prices. Broadcast Music Inc. was formed by the radio stations to compete with ASCAP. Ellington's entire "book" was ASCAP, so in order to be heard on radio, he needed to write a whole new "book".
Strayhorn and Mercer Ellington were asked to accomplish this task quickly. With a bottle of blackberry wine between them, and a couple of cartons of cigarettes, they began writing furiously. Mercer wrote "Jumpin' Pumpkins", and Billy wrote "After All", "Clementine", "Chelsea Bridge", "Johnny Come Lately", "Rain Check", "A Flower is a Lovesome Thing", and "Passion Flower". During this writing marathon, Mercer noticed a crumpled manuscript in the garbage can. It was Billy's arrangement of "Take The "A" Train". He had thrown it away thinking it sounded too much like Fletcher Henderson's formula. Mercer rescued it, and it was recorded in February of 1941 in Hollywood. It stayed on the charts for 7 weeks during that summer.
Strayhorn's arrangement of the beautiful but forgotten Ted Grouya song "Flamingo" began what Ellington described as "The renaissance of vocal orchestration…before then, an orchestration for a singer was usually something pretty tepid, and it was just background- that's about all. But now, this had real ornamentation, fittingly done, supporting the singer and also embellishing the entire performance of both the singer and the band." (36) Again, Ralph Burns: "Billy took Big Band music and moved it up a couple of steps musically. He was really writing classical music for the Duke Ellington Orchestra." (37)
Claude Thornhill's young arranger, Gil Evans, remembers hearing "Chelsea Bridge" in the early 1940's, and later said, "From the moment I first heard 'Chelsea Bridge', I set out to try to do that. That's all I did- that's all I ever did- try to do what Billy Strayhorn did." (38)
One of Glenn Miller's arrangers, Bill Finnegan thought, "It didn't take a thing away from Duke to recognize that Strayhorn, like Duke, was an original. There was so much all-around musical knowledge in those things he did, and always something original, the element of surprise." (39)
Some of Strayhorn's music reflects the experiences of his troubled life as a youth, Mickey Scrima recalled:
"The guy went through a lot of s--- in his life, from his father right on through school. The kids calling him a sissy…He kept it all in and put on a big front that everything was fine, nothing bothered him, then he sat down and wrote all that music with all that emotion. All his feelings came out in music. That's what made his stuff so incredible and different from Duke's." (40)
Billy was joined in the orchestra by Ben Webster on tenor saxophone. Webster was Ellington's first full-time tenor saxophone player, and he played with a strength and precision that brought the Ellington band up to the level of Basie's aggregation, which featured Lester Young on tenor saxophone.
A Strayhorn discovery, Jimmy Blanton, joined the band on bass. Blanton exploited the potential that the string bass held as no other bassist before him. Until Blanton, the instrument had been seen primarily as a "stringed tuba".
With all of the talent to support him, Ellington began to write with a renewed zest, penning "Cottontail", "Main Stem", "Ko-Ko" and "Harlem Air Shaft".
Strayhorn, Blanton and Webster stuck together off the stand, too. They saw themselves as the "new guys" in the band. Piano player Jimmy Rowles, who in 1941 was studying at Spokane's Gonzaga University, remembers going to a small club in Seattle one night that spring, and seeing the trio of Blanton, Strayhorn and Webster play together after their Ellington band gig had ended someplace else in town. "I came into town to hear Ellington and went out that night, and in walked the three of them. It was amazing- the most beautiful trio I'd ever heard in my life. They had perfect taste. Every note was just right. And they could swing. I mean, they really swung." (41)
While writing and working on the Ellington musical show "Jump for Joy", which was inspired one evening at the Hollywood home of writer Sid Kuller, Billy met Lena Horne. Duke had actually assigned Billy to chaperon her, because he knew that Billy was "safe". They met at a theater to see the show, and spent the next several weeks together, doing the restaurant and nightclub scene together.
"I had always been a lonely person until I met Billy. We went to museums; we went out at night to hear the blues. He was the one I wanted to be with all the time…I never met another man like him. He liked to stop and look at a tree…He was brilliant but gentle and loving. He never made you feel dumb. He was very sure of himself and decisive in his thinking…If I could have had him, I would have taken him. He was the only man I ever loved." (42)
Billy and Lena were having drinks at her apartment when the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor was announced on the radio. "Billy turned to me, and he said, 'It's all over.' We thought that was the end of the world." (43)
Billy worked through the war with the Ellington band. He was classified 4-F for his myopic eyesight. Ellington wasn't drafted because he was already 42 years old. The band played its regular tunes and recorded often. It added free army base shows to its road tour.
Strayhorn worked on Ellington's first Broadway musical effort, an adaptation of "The Three Penny Opera", entitled "Beggar's Holiday". Although he almost single-handedly wrote the music, it was credited to Duke. The show only had a 16-week run at the Broadway Theater on West 53rd St. It closed in the last week of March 1947.
Although Ellington occasionally referred to Strayhorn on stage as "Our writing and arranging companion", copyright issues concerning Strayhorn's work had become confused.
Billy met with writer Leonard Feather for some background instruction on how the music business operated. When Feather saw him a few weeks later he asked Billy if the primer had been useful, Billy replied: "Oh yes. Thank you very much. I've found the skeletons. They give their regards". (44)
The fact was that Ellington had been supporting Billy since his arrival in New York. Duke had paid for his "rent and living expenses, his vast wardrobe, the finest food and drink, travel…" (45) No one could have asked for more. But Billy wanted his artistic freedom. He was so tied to Ellington he felt trapped.
He confronted Duke about the many Strayhorn compositions that Duke had been receiving the royalties for. Duke's publishing company, Tempo Music, set up during the ASCAP music ban, was the most delicate intertwining of their work. Clearly, Duke had taken the credit for composing "'C' Jam Blues", "The Mood to be Wooed", "Tonight I Shall Sleep", and the "Sugar Hill Penthouse" part of Duke's masterwork, "Black, Brown, and Beige". There were other compositions that blurred or crossed the true composer's ID.
Duke knew first hand what it felt like, and didn't let it trouble him too much. It was widely known in the music business that Ellington himself had been ripped off by Irving Mills, the music publisher, on some of his most famous works, including, "In a Sentimental Mood", "Prelude to a Kiss", "Solitude", "Mood Indigo", and "Sophisticated Lady".
But nobody ever thought that Irving Mills was an actual composer- even though he took the credit. All of this unexpectedly bothered Strayhorn, however, for he was a composer.
On His Own
On the opening night of "Beggar's Holiday", Billy Strayhorn attended the cast party. From a distance, he watched as Ellington soaked up the applause and attention for writing the score. Luther Henderson, a life-long friend of Duke's asked: "What credit could be given? Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn? Uh-uh. This was supposed to be a Duke Ellington show. 'Billy Strayhorn'- who was he?…You couldn't sell it." (46)
Billy watched the adoration of Duke, then turned to the production's set designer, Oliver Smith, and said, "Let's get out of here." Smith replied "But the party's just starting."
"Not for me it isn't", said Strayhorn walking out into the night. (47)
For the first time, Billy became somewhat estranged from Ellington, and spent a lot of time with Lena Horne and her music-arranging husband Lennie Hayton on the West Coast.
Ellington called him in the Spring of 1950 to write the music for an Orson Welles musical of "Faust" in Paris. Welles lived up to his billing as one of the most difficult people to work with. He wrote lyrics to only one of several Strayhorn pieces, and they were awful. "It was terrible," said cast member Eartha Kitt. "The music might have been good. But nobody could tell. The whole show was a disaster. Incoherent." (48)
In 1953 Strayhorn worked completely independent of Duke on a new stage production of "Cabin In The Sky". While working with Herbert Machiz, who had also worked in Paris on the Welles fiasco, they began to discuss new directions for the theater in New York. Herbert wanted to "start a new kind of theater, bring together theater people and fine artists." (49) That same year, Machiz founded the Artists Theater. It turned out to be the forerunner of Off Broadway.
Strayhorn worked on a production called "Don Perlimplin", which was a smash by the standards of Non-Broadway Theater of that time. Set designer Alfred Leslie:
"I'm not exaggerating, it was like he knew exactly what they needed to bring out the character and the scene. You know how you can't really sing, but one day, one day you sing in a certain time and place and all of a sudden you sound great? Just that one time in your life you sound fantastic? That's what Strayhorn did. He made everybody better." (50)
In the summer of 1954, Strayhorn teamed up with his formally trained friend Luther Henderson, and the two collaborated on a production that was to be entitled "Rose Colored Glasses".
The two had fun working on the surreal plot that involved a character names Brother Big Eyes, a lense grinder in the "Land of "Ool-ya-coo". Brother roamed the land grinding glasses for people. A huge set of horn-rimmed glasses comprised the set.
One night Henderson and Strayhorn went out to hear Ram Ramirez, the pianist who composed "Lover Man". They were both drinking "Zombies", which contained over 6 ounces of alcohol per drink. After consuming five Zombies each, "We were feeling pretty fantastic," said Henderson. "One of us said to Ram, 'Hey Ram, Man, how about letting us do a number?" And he said, 'Sure'. You know, we were Billy Strayhorn and Luther Henderson…We sat down at the piano bench…we were inspired. We were way out- avant-garde- countermelodies, relative keys, two different tempos at the same time. It was genius…we finished the number with great flourish, and we stood up, and everybody in the place was just staring at us…the next morning Ram called me and he said "Man, don't you ever do that to me again! You guys almost got my ass fired! What the f--- did you think you were playing?" (51)
When he wasn't working on his own, Billy still wrote arrangements for Ellington, and collected royalties on re-issues of his Ellington records. His basic expenses were still covered by Ellington's organization. Duke Ellington also survived the decline of the big band era on money he made as a composer.
Strayhorn and Henderson planned on starting a partnership, which, they thought, could possibly bring in between $300,000-500,000 a year (in early 1950's dollars). Billy told Duke about their plan. Duke called Henderson and told him he didn't need Strayhorn to make that kind of money. Henderson fell for it. No partnership ensued, and Duke kept Strayhorn. "We left all that undone," said Henderson." It was the biggest mistake of my life." (52)
In the summer of 1954, George Wein produced the first Newport Jazz Festival. He didn't ask Ellington to perform, thinking the band was past its prime, but he did give Duke a slot at the third festival, planned for 1956.
At the same time, George Avakian, Columbia records new A&R account executive, began encouraging Duke to perform something special at the Newport Festival- something they could record capturing the excitement of the band at a live performance. Columbia paid the festival $25,000 to record Ellington in 1956.
Avakian asked Duke to write something like "The Newport Jazz Festival Suite" that could be used as a tie-in product. Duke agreed to put "Strays" to work on it. The final result failed to create much excitement at the festival. But after midnight, when Duke called for his piece "Diminuendo & Crescendo in Blue", a two-part number separated by what turned out to be a wild, extended saxophone solo by Paul Gonsalves, the orchestra bit into the music hard. While Gonsalves blew, Duke shouted encouragement and waved his arms, pushing him along.
Later, Ellington recalled "Jo Jones was the driving force behind our big success at Newport in 1956…Out of sight of the audience, in the pit in front of the grandstand, slapping a backbeat with a newspaper, talking to us, he prodded us into a "Go, Baby!" drive that developed into the rhythmic groove of the century." (53)
Leonard Feather wrote that "…The whole of Freebody Park was transformed as if struck by a thunderbolt. Photographers rushed madly to the scene of each gathering knot of onlookers while Gonsalves, Duke and the whole band, inspired by the reaction they had started, put their all into the work…Hundreds of spectators climbed up on their chairs to see the action…"(54)
Gonsalve's solo provided excitement that created a moment of transformation for both the festival and the band- and it was all caught on tape by Columbia's engineers. The record sold extremely well. Duke was put on the cover of Time Magazine.
In 1956, Ellington and Strayhorn had collaborated on a CBS television special entitled "A Drum is a Woman", designed to introduce the public to the new CBS color television system. Ellington had been chosen by Theater Guild attorney Lawrence Langer for the assignment. Duke chose to write "An allegorical history of jazz- a trip from Africa and the Caribbean through New Orleans to the Rocket Age". (55)
Strayhorn recalled: "I suppose the largest hunk of collaboration was "Drum is a Women" in which we just kind of did everything. He wrote lyrics, I wrote lyrics. He wrote music, and I wrote music. He arranged, and I arranged." (56)
At this time, Billy was also President of the gay black show business organization, "The Copasetics". Each year Billy would write a music program for the group to perform, and it provided him with "fraternal support"…a creative outlet removed from Ellington." (57)
Said Copasetic member Honi Coles: "Billy had a good time when he wrote for us. He was often quite inebriated." (58)
From the mid to late 1950's Billy also worked extensively with saxophonist Johnny Hodges. Hodges, although a drummer, pianist, and finally virtuoso soprano saxophonist, had little formal education and could barely sign his own name. "Everybody said Johnny was gruff. They thought he was cold. He was just afraid." said his wife Cue Hodges. (59)
Strayhorn and Hodges were worlds apart educationally, but much the same emotionally on the stand. They both emerged from their respective shells while playing and created entertaining records.
Ellington, meanwhile, was writing a condensed version of "Black, Brown and Beige" for recording, which would feature Mahalia Jackson. Duke would call Billy at the last possible moment to write him an arrangement and ship it airmail to Los Angeles from Florida.
"I was in Florida…working with Johnny Hodges. We were working at a hotel, so, of course, we were off at 2:00 in the morning…Ellington was recording (in California) at 2:00 in the afternoon…so I would go home and stay up until he was up and we would confer over the phone about what was to be recorded that day. I was writing things [such as a new arrangement of "Come Sunday"], and I had a cab driver down there who would take the score to the airport and mail it off…It ended up, of course, that I didn't hear anything that was recorded, even things I had written…I didn't hear them until a year later." (60) Billy was given no credit on the Jackson/Ellington record, released in 1958.
Strayhorn had always enjoyed his cocktails, but by the late 1950's his drinking was out of control. His society friend Marian Logan: "You had to see him…Half the time he would be so out of it that he literally couldn't speak. You had to put your ear right up to his mouth to hear what he was saying…He drank just constantly, in every imaginable situation. He wasn't looking for a reason to drink. It was beyond reasons. He just drank. (61)
The well-fed gourmet of previous years now called a friend and asked him to come by for breakfast. Billy said he had some bacon. He made a big deal out of the fact that he had bacon. More out of curiosity than hunger, the friend soon appeared at Strayhorn's apartment door. When he opened up Billy's refrigerator, there it was- a lone package of bacon on one shelf, and a bottle of gin on another. Nothing else.
In 1960 Irving Townsend of Columbia Records made plans with Duke and Billy about doing an Ellington take of Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker Suite". Billy had come up with the idea, and Duke approved. Billy set to work arranging a jazz version of the piece. As usual, there was a huge amount of bi-coastal telephony between Duke and Strays. "It was a struggle. It's always a struggle, you know, to present someone of the stature of Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky and adapting it to our flavor without distorting him. It entailed a lot of conversation. Long Distance calls back and forth between New York and California, and records, listening to the way that the originals were actually played…Tchaikovsky wasn't available. Actually it sort of felt like we were talking to him, because we didn't want him turning over any more than he already was."(62)
In 1960, Strayhorn and Ellington teamed up on their second film score, "Paris Blues". Their first had been Otto Preminger's "Anatomy of a Murder" in 1959. American trombonist Billy Byers, who was living in Paris at the time, was hired as a translator for Ellington. But Duke didn't need one because everybody happily spoke in English for him.
Byers ended up spending most of his time with Strayhorn. "Duke worked all the time. He was a very organized man. Every day he got up and wrote for about four hours, no matter how late he had been up…Billy's role was this; he did what he could when he could. But he was always out getting drunk in the Mars Club…After working and living with him like that, so closely, my perception of Ellington and Strayhorn completely reversed. It turned upside down…I had always understood that Duke was a free, creative spirit and a bon vivant, and I had always pictured him with a bottle of champagne in one arm and a blonde in the other, gliding through the club car and saying to Stray, "I just got an inspiration: DA DA DA-DA, DA DA [The opening melody of the lyric "missed the Saturday dance"]! Go and do something with it.' Nothing could have been further from the truth. It turned out that Strays was the indulgent artist and Ellington was the professional; Ellington worked like a dog, and Strayhorn was the playboy. He was drunk and hanging out all the time…Duke kept Strayhorn around knowing the output might be small and getting smaller, but wanting it all." (63)
Even though the first number heard in "Paris Blues" is "Take The "A" Train", Strayhorn is not mentioned in the films credits.
American record producer Alan Douglas asked Billy if he would be interested in a recording project of his own. Billy agreed casually, as if he had never thought about doing anything like it before. He chose to record songs that he had written in his first decade as a composer, using a bass accompaniment, (Michel Gaudry) a few abstract vocalists harmonizing, and a string quartet on some numbers. The result was a release entitled "The Peaceful Side of Billy Strayhorn".
In 1961, Creed Taylor brought Hodges and Strayhorn together for another session at Van Gelder studios for Verve. The band was primarily Ellington players. Several more recordings with Duke followed. One memorable 1963 session with South African singer Bea Benjamin was later recalled by violinist Svend Asmussen:
"Duke rarely bothered to go into the booth and listen to a take. After a number, he'd say, "Wonderful! Next number- What do we have? Bea darling, what do you want to sing?'
"In my Solitude,' she said. 'Marvelous,' he said. 'What key?' 'B-Natural,' she said. And then Duke said 'Uh-mmm…Mis-ter Stray-horn…that's where you take over." He would have no business playing in B-Natural. Billy would laugh and sit down and play anything in the world in any key, perfectly. One take. And Duke would say, 'Marvelous! Wonderful! What should we do next?" (64)
One cold morning in 1964, Billy's close friend and neighbor Dr. Arthur Logan (who was also Ellington's physician) noticed Strayhorn sitting on a chair at the top of the Logan's West 80's Brownstone steps. He was out of breath from climbing the stairs. Logan sent him in for a check up and it was determined that Billy had advanced esophageal cancer.
Undergoing treatment immediately, Billy attempted to keep up his usual work output. During the spring of 1964 much of this work was recorded that later became "Ellington '65" and "Ellington '66". Then, he stopped writing for a year, though he continued to arrange charts for Duke. During this period, the earlier co-written "Far East Suite" was recorded, based on the impressions of both Ellington and Strayhorn during their 1963 State Dept. tour through the Near and Middle East.
"The Intimacy of the Blues", and "Blood Count" were both written in early 1967. They would be his last contributions to the Ellington book. "Blood Count", written in D minor, is a troubling, lonely sounding composition, and "the trombones and trumpets alternately play a line of desolate descending major triads that keep falling back to a D Minor chord, suggesting there is no escape." (65)
Ellington and the orchestra left for Europe at the beginning of 1967, but Strayhorn was too sick to go along. Billy began writing his final piece of music, entitled "North by Southwest Suite". It was intended for the duo of Willie Ruff (French horn and Bass) and Dwike Mitchell (Piano). Strayhorn invited the duo over to his apartment, to make sure that his writing was correct for their respective playing styles and abilities.
Willie Ruff recalled their meeting and how Strayhorn interacted clearly: "What I've written here,"[Strayhorn] said to Mitchell, "is quite complete in the compositional sense. But I want this first meeting to feel to you like a fitting, as in 'fit' a custom-made suit. The compositional elements should fit your hands, which are so much larger and powerful than mine…You know how to make sections like these on this page as big and as rich in sonority as you can. But here in this interlude, let the horn ring through…Let Willie's sound kind of hover over it all right there. And pause here, but only slightly…Over in this middle part, your line and the horn line are of equal importance. Balance is the key word; but that's the kind of thing you two do naturally anyway. I have left you space and, at the same time, given indications of essential details…" By now Mitchell was alive with excitement. His large fingers trembled as he carefully shaped them to fit the powerful, two-fisted chords Stray had written to underscore the horn theme. And wham! Stray was up off the piano bench at the huge sound Mitchell made. He stomped the floor and beamed at Mitchell. "Hell yes!" he hollered. "That's what I had in mind; I just don't have the hands and strength to make it sound that way." (66)
On May 31, 1967, Billy Strayhorn died of cancer at age 51. Bill Grove, his companion, was at his side. The New York Times obituary, written by music critic John Wilson, referred to Strayhorn as "a small, stately man', who observed the world with 'benign amusement' through dark-rimmed glasses." (67)
A week after a memorial service at St. Peter's Church, Rev. John Gensel led a small group in prayer beside the Hudson River and then "turned and emptied Strayhorn's ashes into the air over the water, and a breeze lifted them away." (68)
Duke Ellington was devastated by the loss of his friend. His son Mercer once said, "He couldn't accept any kind of misfortune- that was one of the secrets of his success. He couldn't accept Strayhorn really wasn't there anymore." (69)
Ellington lived seven more years. His writing increased after Strayhorn's death. He composed a tribute to Strayhorn entitled "And His Mother Called Him Bill", and two more "Sacred Concerts". He also wrote the operatic "Queenie Pie", as well as the "Degas Suite", the "Afro-Eurasian Eclipse", and the "Goutelas Suite".
Duke Ellington died on May 24, 1974. In his autobiography, Ellington had written, "Billy Strayhorn was always the most unselfish, the most patient, and the most imperturbable, no matter how dark the day. I am indebted to him for so much of my courage since 1939. He was my listener, my most dependable appraiser, and as a critic he would be the most clinical, but his background--both classical and modern--was an accessory to his own good taste and understanding, so what came back to me was in perfect balance." (70) References
(1) P.195 David Hajdu; "Lush Life, A Biography of Billy Strayhorn", 1996. Farrar Straus Giroux. New York. (2) ibid. PP.8-9 (3) P.9 (4) P.11 (5) PP.11-12 (6) P.12 (7) P.14 (8) P.15 (9) P.14 (10) P.19 Walter van de Leur; "Something to Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn, 2002. Oxford University Press, New York. (11) Hadju; P.17 (12) ibid. P.17 (13) P.18 (14) P.19 (15) P.24 (16) P.25 (17) van de Leur; P.19 (18) Hadju; P.30 (19) ibid. P.31 (20) P.33 (21) P.40 (22) PP.48-49 (23) P.49 (24) (Strayhorn, 1962); van de Leur P.23 (25) ibid.P.23 (26) ibid. P.23 (27) Hadju; P.57 (28) ibid. P.57 (29) ibid. P.59 (30) ibid. P.71 (31) ibid.P.73 (32) ibid. P.73 (33) ibid. P.74 (34) ibid.P.78 (35) ibid. P.52 (36) ibid. P.86 (37) ibid. P.87 (38) ibid. P.87 (39) ibid. P.87 (40) ibid. P.88 (41) ibid. P.90 (42) ibid. P.95 (43) ibid. P.99 (44) ibid. P.120 (45) ibid. P.122 (46) P.104 (47) P.105 (48) P.113 (49) P.125 (50) P.127 (51) PP.128-129 (52) P.142 (53) P.241 Duke Ellington; "Music is My Mistress", Da Capo Edition; Perseus Book Group. Reprint of 1973 Doubleday Ed. Garden City, N.Y. (54) P.263 James Lincoln Collier; "Duke Ellington", 1987. Oxford University Press. New York, Oxford. (55) Hadju; P.157 (56) ibid. P.158 (57) P.175 (58) P.176 (59) P.178 (60) PP.179-180 (61) P.197 (62) P.204 (63) P.210 (64) P.220 (65) van de Leur; P.171 (66) ibid. P.173 {Ruff 1991.1} (67) Hadju; P.255 (68) ibid. P.258 (69) P.259 (70) Ellington; P.156
The Troubled Genius of Stan Getz
By John Twomey
Copyright, 2004 by John Twomey. All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this article or parts thereof in any form.
Stan Getz was born at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Philadelphia, Pa. on Feb. 2, 1927. He had one brother, Robert, who was born on October 30, 1932. His parents had come from the Kiev area in the Ukraine in 1903, tired and fearful of the Pogroms. The Getz family had first settled in West Philadelphia, but moved to New York City after Stan’s fraternal uncle told them there were better jobs in New York. They lived first on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and then moved up to the East Bronx.
Stan’s father had many jobs, but wasn’t aggressive by nature and was often unemployed. Stan’s mother was a more demanding person, and pushed her first son hard to study. She believed he would become a doctor or a professor, and took extra care of him, setting straight “A” standards for his schoolwork. Stan worked hard in school, but couldn’t, or wouldn’t always measure up to her level of expectation. When the family had meat, which wasn’t often, it was given to Stan only. During hot Bronx summers, Stan developed a love for swimming at Crotona Park. At this same park, he sold sunflower seeds in two-cent packets that he had purchased in bulk. Stan had his Bar Mitzvah in 1940. Neither Stan nor Robert had much spiritual grounding. Between them, they would have four wives and seven children, none of whom were raised Jewish.
Stan finished 6th grade near the top of his class and was accepted into a high I.Q. Advancement program, where he would combine 7th and 8th grades in one year.
He was attracted to musical instruments, and he pestered people until he could try whatever instrument came within his view. He was playing the harmonica by age 12, and bass in Jr. High School. Early indications off his innate talent became apparent with his ability to play new tunes he would hear- picking them out on the piano or his harmonica. He conducted a fantasy opera orchestra in front of the radio. He would hum all of the famous Benny Goodman clarinet solos from memory. As he studied music, he was instantly good at sight-reading, and seemed to have a photographic memory, as well as an instinctive sense of pitch and rhythm.
On February 16, 1940, his Dad bought him a $35.00 alto saxophone. Stan was 13. He moved on quickly to play all of the saxophones, as well as the clarinet, but he really loved the sound of the tenor saxophone. “In my neighborhood my choice was: be a bum or escape. So I became a music kid, practicing eight hours a day. I was a withdrawn, hypersensitive kid. I would practice the saxophone in the bathroom, and the tenements were so close together that someone from across the alleyway would yell, “Shut that kid up,” and my mother would say, “Play louder, Stanley, play louder.” (1) He mooched quarters off of his Mom so that he could take saxophone lessons every week from an excellent local teacher named Bill Sheiner. He even took up playing bassoon in the school band.
Although Stan was economically poor compared to most of the other kids at school, his mother dressed him smartly to cover for him as best she could. He became a clotheshorse for life at a young age. In a business built on image, this didn’t hurt him at all. At 14, he worked the summer in the Catskills as a busboy, musician and shy emcee for shows. He hated talking before an audience.
In September of 1941 he was accepted into the All City High School Orchestra of New York City. Entrance into this select group gave him access to a private, free tutor from the New York Philharmonic, Simon Kovar- a bassoon player. He also began to play local gigs at this time: Fraternity parties, Bar Mitzvahs, Saturday night dances. They paid about three bucks a night. At 14 he had saved enough to buy a tenor sax.
Four months into gigging, he met trumpeter Shorty Rogers on the same bandstand one night. Stan knocked him out by playing famous jazz solos by Lester Young and Tex Beneke perfectly, and reading charts flawlessly and fast. He started going to jam sessions after gigs ended. Getz later explained his gift: “It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn the sentences, which are the chords, and then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically, I love to talk off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.”(2)
Encouraged by older musicians in local bands who recognized his talent, Stan is hired by house bandleader Dick Rogers to play at Roseland for thirty-five dollars a week in December of 1942. His grades begin to drop as he works more. The family decided he should pursue the music salary, and he drops out of high school. The school system’s truancy officers serve bandleader Rogers with papers. Stan is sent back to the classroom, but by now it seems pointless. He already knows what he wants to do, and how to make a living. On January 14, 1943, he joins Musician’s Local 802 in New York. He tells other musicians he’s available to play now. A friend recommends famous trombone player Jack Teagarden’s band. Stan hangs out at the rehearsal hall and auditions for the band. The war draft is draining a lot of bands, and Teagarden knows Stan’s not draft age yet. Stan sits in, reads perfectly, and is offered $70.00 a week. He is told to pack his things and be ready to leave with the band for Boston the next morning.
He returned home to the Bronx tenement expecting an argument about going on the road, but his mother was out and his Dad surprises him. “Go!” He says emphatically. “Christ! Stan, seventy bucks a week! I can’t make that in two weeks. And I haven’t had a job in a month anyway.” (3)
Stan begins touring with the Teagarden band, but in St. Louis truant officers again catch up with him. Jack is told that if the kid is going to continue to work with him in the band, “T” must become his guardian in order to see that Stan does his schoolwork once a week. Stan’s parents agree with the arrangement. “He (Teagarden) taught me a lot about bending my right elbow”, was how Getz put it to a reporter later on. (4)
“In my early years, working with Jack Teagarden had the most effect on me. That was a very good introduction to professional music to me. Teagarden was a great musician. His playing is timeless- and it’s logical.” (5) Working in the Teagarden band was tough. The one-nighters never ended.
By nature, Getz possessed an extremely addictive personality type. At 15 he took up smoking cigarettes at the rate of a pack a day for the rest of his life. He also discovered that alcohol helped lower his anxiety, so each night he was getting drunk. His male role models at this stage of his life were a father who had deferred to Stan’s musical money making options, and a famous guardian with a non-stop drinking habit. Stan appreciated the happiness soloing on his saxophone brought him. Soloing was like getting high, and he wanted to repeat the feeling each night on the stand.
Stan’s days with the Teagarden band ended in 1944 when he was seventeen. The band was in California, and Stan wanted to stay there. The local union told him he could not work in a steady paying gig for 90 days. He took the only job of his life outside of music, selling men’s clothes in a store. He played one-nighters to supplement this. He sent for his parents and brother to come out and join him, and they lived in one room.
Thirty-three year old bandleader Stan Kenton hired Getz for $125.00 a week. Kenton worked with Bob Hope on his popular radio show, which reached 20 million listeners each Tuesday night. The Kenton band followed Hope around California playing at wartime troop bases. Kenton also had a steady gig at the Palladium Ballroom in Hollywood. On July 20, 1944, Stan plays his first recording date with the band, and the first song they record becomes a big hit “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine”, sung by Anita O’Day. It sold 400,000 copies and reached #4 on the charts. (6)
There were several musicians in the Kenton band addicted to heroin. Taking note of how much Getz drank each night, one of them turned him on to heroin, snorting it in the back of the band bus. Within a few weeks Stan was addicted.
Working in Kenton’s band, Getz carefully studied the work of his idol, Lester Young. He learned his solos note for note, and began incorporating them into his Kenton work. It was over a disagreement about Young’s relevance that Getz left Kenton in April of 1945, the same month President Roosevelt died, and four months before the end of WWII.
After a short stint with the easygoing Jimmy Dorsey, eighteen-year old Getz joined Benny Goodman’s band in October of 1945. Between October and December of that year, Benny’s band was based in a Newark, N.J. nightspot. Stan regularly went into New York and hung out at the Spotlite Club on 52nd Street to hear Charlie Parker perform. At this time he also met Beverly Byrne, a vocalist with Gene Krupa’s band, and a sister of the then famous vocalist Buddy Stewart. While playing with Goodman, Stan ran out of heroin after a year and a half of addiction. He missed four Goodman shows in a row while he looked for a connection on the street, and Benny fired him. He scuffled for work in New York, until someone at Savoy Records noticed and signed him to lead a recording session. For his first gig as a leader, he formed a “Swing Bop Quartet” and recorded four tunes with pianist Hank Jones, bassist Curly Russell, and drummer Max Roach. The titles were: “Opus De Bop” “Running Water”, “Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me”, and “And The Angels Swing”.
Stan and Beverly were married on November 7, 1946 in Los Angeles. Benny Goodman was good enough to let him make some money by playing in his studio bands in Los Angeles. Stan hangs with a certain group of saxophone players in L.A., all influenced strongly by Lester Young. They’re playing in the rehearsal band of trumpeter Tommy DeCarlo. They are: Herb Steward, Zoot Sims and Jimmy Giuffre. The band often plays an East L.A. Mexican ballroom playing mainly Mexican stock arrangements. Sometimes they would mix in their own jazz and no one seemed to mind.
Ralph Burns came down to the joint to hear his friends play one night and was blown away by the cohesion of the saxophone team. Burns at that time was the staff arranger building Woody Herman’s new Bop-based band, and Woody hired all four of the saxophone players on Burn’s advice. The organization was to be known as Herman’s Second Herd. His first band had been more swing and blues oriented. “From the very beginning that band was something special,” said Stan many years later, “I remember our first rehearsal at a place on Santa Monica Blvd. Ralph Burns came in with a brand new, pretty difficult chart…and that band read it down and swung it without a moment’s hesitation.” (7)
Between December 22-31,1946, this band recorded fourteen songs, releasing eleven of them. Five of these eleven became hit singles: “I’ve Got News For You”, “Keen and Peachy”, “The Goof and I”, “Four Brothers” (named after the saxophone players of Stan Getz, Serge Chaloff, Zoot Sims and Herb Steward) and “Summer Sequence”.
All of Stan’s influences are at play in his work by now: Notably Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and Dexter Gordon.
“I never consciously tried to conceive of what my sound should be…I believe it was because of the bands I played with from the ages of 15 to 22. The first one was Jack Teagarden, who we all know played trombone, but his sound was so great…so legitimate, and effortless. I never tried to imitate anybody, but when you love somebody’s music, you’re influenced. Then I was with Benny Goodman when I was 18, and I believe his sound had an influence on me; such a good sound that he had in those days, you know? And in-between I heard Lester Young, of course, and it was a special kind of trip to hear someone like Lester, who sounded so good and almost classical in a warm way. He took so much ‘reed’ out of the sound. I really don’t know how I developed my sound, but it comes from a combination of my musical conception and no doubt the basic shape of the oral cavity. I did always try to get as much of the reed out of the sound as I could…I always wanted to take as much reediness out of the sound as I could and hear more of the breath. I came from an era when we didn’t use electronic instruments. The bass wasn’t even amplified. The sound was the sound that you got, and I discovered that my dark sound could be heard across a room clearer than somebody with a reedy sound…I have to work hard to get my sound because I use a harder reed (med-hard Van Doren). People think that I play effortlessly. I remember doing a record date with Bill Evans and afterwards he said to me, you make it sound so easy but when I get right up next to you you’re working hard and making it sound easy!”(8)
Heroin use was out of control in the Herman band. Stan: “I remember playing one time with Woody’s band at this afternoon concert. Nine acts of vaudeville and a trained bear. The bear came on, and I mean, this bear had to be nine feet tall. And the band came out, and the two on each side of Sam Marowitz-the lead alto player who was very strait-laced; no drugs, no drinking-were Serge Chaloff, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn and me. All stoned. The bear was doing this thing with the trainer, and at one point the bear came around and his arm went over the saxophone section. He could have killed the five of us- but only Sam Marowitz ducked. The rest of us were too stoned to even know the bear was near us.” (9)
The vocalists were top draws after the war, not bands. Record companies didn’t understand and appreciate the significance of Bebop. Television, cars and suburban living were spreading the nightclub and dance hall customers further away from the centrally located club venues.
Woody Herman pointed out another division: “The audience that could understand “Apple Honey” couldn’t relate to “Lemon Drop”, or “Four Brothers”. Musically, the Bebop route was magnificent, but business-wise, it was the dumbest thing I ever did.” (10)
Between several damaging “recording bans” instituted during the 1940’s by the American Federation of Musicians for union bargaining, bands squeezed in as many recording dates as they could. On one of these rushed sessions, Herman recorded “Early Autumn”, featuring a brief, beautifully stated solo by Getz. The record became a hit when it was released a few months later. Although Getz was never interested in listening to his own records, he once said “Early Autumn I’ve heard, because it’s played on the radio enough for me to hear it. And it’s okay. It’s a nice solo. But I don’t get it. I don’t understand why it was such an earth-shaking thing. It’s just another ballad solo for me…my music is something that’s done and forgotten about.” (11)
Stan quit the Herman band in March 1950 after a tragic accident on a train outside Chicago. Stan and several other musicians had been driving to a gig in winter conditions when their car broke down. The Herman band manager had arranged to flag down a train in an out-of-the way town to pick them to continue their trip. When the train slowed unexpectedly, an old conductor- a month from retirement- got down onto the tracks to investigate. He slipped under the wheels of the train on some snow and was killed. As the happy musicians boarded one of the warm cars, other passengers, who had already heard what had happened to the conductor, greeted them with icy, angry stares. Stan never forgot the tragedy- it bothered him so much he quit the band. He began to freelance, cutting a few records, and led a big band for the only time in his life at Harlem’s Apollo Theater for one week in August of 1950.
The previous month (July, 1950) Woody Herman’s record of “Early Autumn” had been released, and the more airplay it got, the bigger the Getz name became. Stan was now officially a star, based on one solo, and everyone wanted him to play.
Beverly and Stan suddenly have enough money to buy a modest house in Levittown, New York, and by Dec.15, 1950 Stan Getz is recognized enough to be asked to open “Birdland” with Charlie Parker and Lester Young. He is 22. On Christmas day, 1950 he joins an all-star concert at Carnegie Hall featuring Miles Davis, Serge Chaloff, Sonny Stitt, Max Roach, Bud Powell, Parker, Sarah Vaughan, and Lenny Tristano. He tops the Metronome Magazine Poll as Tenor saxophonist, and shares the Metronome Musician of the Year Award with Lee Konitz. He comes in second in the Downbeat Poll.
While playing a gig in Hartford, Connecticut, Stan hires a local kid named Horace Silver to join his group on piano, and then he’s off to perform in Sweden, where he receives a hero’s welcome. Everything is fine until he discovers there is no heroin to be found anywhere. He suffers through withdrawal and plays as much as he can with young Swedish players his own age, who know little about the prevalence of narcotics on the American jazz scene. Being exposed for the first time in his life to very talented, enthusiastic musicians who weren’t high on drugs causes a rather short, first epiphany for Stan. He wants to be clean like them. He hopes he can quit using soon.
Back in Boston in October of 1951, he records “Live at Storyville Vol. 1 and 2” at George Wein’s Boston club. The gig, recorded on October 28th, is an amazing performance by Getz, Stan Levy on piano, Jimmy Raney on guitar and Tiny Kahn on drums. They speed through thirteen tunes in sixty-seven minutes, including the spectacular tribute “Parker 51”.
On March 11, 1952 Stan records “Moonlight in Vermont” and his audience grows. He is making $1,000 a week, and spending almost all of it on heroin. Wife Beverly is also addicted, and they make frequent six hour round trips between Long Island and Philly to score cheap junk. He’s keeping his career going in spite of his habit, and some great sides keep his audience growing: “These Foolish Things Remind Me Of You”, “Stella by Starlight” and “Thanks For The Memory”, performed with the vintage Jimmy Raney edition of Stan’s Quintet, seem timeless. Bassist Bill Crow remembers working with the last Getz/Raney unit:
“He (Stan) always had five or six girls. I remember on my first job with him in Boston, I couldn’t believe the skill with which he manipulated all of these women. He had girls that he knew in Boston, there was a girl who had flown up from New York to be with him, and then Beverly came up in the middle of the week. He had them all in different rooms in the same hotel, and one night they were even all sitting at the table in front of the bandstand while he played. And each of them thought that she was with him. I don’t know how he managed this.” (12)
Stan signed with Norman Granz’s Clef Records label in 1952, and Granz turns on the P.R. machine to sell Stan. He combines several 78 singles into an LP album entitled “Stan Getz Plays”, packaged with a "family man" cover shot of Stan leaning forward with his saxophone to receive a kiss from his little son David in the recording studio. Granz puts him on tour with a Jazz At The Philharmonic company, and things are great until he gets busted in a Los Angeles narcotics sweep. He is arraigned, but the judge lets him finish his pre-arranged eight-day tour with west coast D.J./ Producer Gene Norman and pianist George Shearing. Stan fronts a sax unit on the trip featuring Zoot Sims and Wardell Gray.
He has been on heroin for nine years, and wants to get off of it before he goes to prison. While on this tour he swallows barbiturates and drinks liberally to lessen the inevitable withdrawal symptoms. He is strung out the entire tour, and tries to pick fights with other musicians on the bus. By the time they arrive in Seattle, he is in misery with muscle cramps.
Gaunt and sickly, he walks into a drug store across the street from his hotel, pretends he has a gun under his coat, and stages a stick-up. A woman named Mary Brewster is behind the counter that morning, and when Stan approaches he tells her to “Give me a capsule of Morphine. Don’t scream. If you do, I’ll blow your brains out”. (13) She calmly assists two other customers, and whispers “Stick up” to one of them who leaves quietly and calls the police.
Turning back to Stan, she says, “Let me see your gun.”
At this unexpected challenge, Stan turns and runs out of the store and back to his hotel room across the street as the other customers watch. He then calls to apologize to Mary Brewster. A cop is already there and listens in on another phone. Stan says, “I’m sorry for the crazy thing I did. I’ve never done anything like that before. I’m not a stick-up man. I’m from a good family. I’m going to commit myself on Wednesday.”
Brewster asks “Why don’t you commit yourself today?”
“I can’t. If I don’t get drugs, I’ll kill”. (14)
The cop on the phone speaks up, pretending to be a doctor, and asks if he can help. Stan blurts out his life’s story. The “doctor” says he’ll come right over to help. Locked in his room, despairing and ashamed, Stan tries to kill himself by swallowing a fistful of barbiturates. The police knock on his door minutes later, and run him in for booking. A photograph of Stan in the back seat of a patrol car, looking sick and scared, is flashed over the news wire services. The overdose of barbiturates takes effect minutes after he is locked up and he collapses. He is rushed to a hospital where doctors perform an emergency Tracheotomy to save his life.
All of the national attention brings reporters to his bedside the next day. He explains that he began getting hooked on heroin “About a year ago.” (15) He tells them about his family life with Beverly and the kids, and how there’s another baby on the way. He talks about how he sends his parents money to live on back in New York. He paints a picture of a loving family man who has made some terrible mistakes. He doesn’t mention that his wife is also a heroin addict. He is released from the hospital for sentencing in the previous Los Angeles narcotics case.
The sentencing judge isn’t buying Stan’s own damage control story. He gets right to the point:
“You have talent, family and a good background, but despite an income of a thousand dollars a week, you are not only broke, but your family is living under deplorable conditions. They are sleeping on the floor while you travel in luxury spending money on yourself- and doing what comes naturally.
You’re a poor excuse for a man. If you can’t behave yourself, someone else is going to have to look after you…It’s time you grew up.”(16) He gets six months in jail and three years probation. He is lucky to be sent to the jail ward of the Los Angeles General Hospital where he begins detox. At the same time he is admitted, his addicted wife is downstairs giving birth to their daughter, Pamela. Norman Granz supports Beverly and the kids while Stan serves his time.
On February 16, 1954 Stan is transferred to the Los Angeles City Jail, which is a much tougher place. After a few weeks he is transferred again, this time to the Jail Farm, where he works on his tan outside in the fields with other prisoners. He is released exactly six months to the day later on August 16. For the first time in his adult life he is drug and alcohol free. He is 27. Almost immediately after being freed, the extent to which the heroin has covered his underlying depression and other emotional issues is apparent. He becomes clinically depressed. In order to survive the crushing despair he feels inside, he begins to drink heavily and use heroin again, this time snorting it so that there are no needle marks for the probation officer to find.
He arrives home to find his wife strung out and waiting to shoot up, while his children sit in front of the TV in dirty clothes eating junk food.
Within thirty-six hours of his release, he’s in the best and worst place he could possibly be- performing on stage with Chet Baker in Los Angeles. Only three days later he is playing an All-Star concert before another California crowd of 6,000, and receives a thunderous ovation when he arrives onstage. Norman Granz puts him on tour with the band of Duke Ellington. Dave Brubeck and Gerry Mulligan fill out the bill. In December of 1955 he is the featured guest soloist with the Count Basie Band. To round out the year, he wins the Downbeat Poll for the fifth straight time.
While playing a Washington, D.C. club date he meets a 19-year-old Swedish aristocrat named Monica Silfverskiold backstage. She is studying at Georgetown and is attending the gig with friends. Although Stan suggests they spend the night together, she declines and heads back to the YWCA to sleep.
Back out west alone with the kids, Beverly is nearly strangled to death by an escaped mental patient while she walks with her two small boys near her home one morning in Laurel Canyon. The two boy’s screams for help were heard by nearby police as they ran down the trail in panic, and the cops captured the patient.
Stan decides to move the family back east, and he arranges for Beverly and the kids to drive back as far as Kansas City with one of her reputed connections named Tom Killough. They were to meet Stan in K.C., and he was to drive the rest of the way to New York. Near Tulsa, Okalahoma, Killough falls asleep at the wheel and the car is split in two by the steel I-beam of a turnpike overpass. Killough dies. Beverly and the children are in very serious condition.
Stan arrives and tells reporters “He was sure that God was punishing him for his weakness and sins…for enslaving himself and Beverly to heroin and booze, for letting his three kids grow up virtually uncared for in a drug-dominated chaos, for the mangled bodies of his wife and son. If God took (his son) David, Stan would understand, he deserved it.” (17)
During the very slow recovery of all, Stan becomes more and more obsessed with Monica. He visits her when she falls ill in Georgetown Hospital, and tells her his life story. To Monica, Stan looked young and innocent. She was shocked by his stories of drug and alcohol dependence. Having grown up in castles on vast estates in Sweden, she had never met a person like Stan before. Stan introduces Monica to his mother. Then he goes to the hospital where Beverly is still immobile in a body cast and tells her that he wants a divorce. She is devastated. He offers her a decent financial settlement, tells her he’ll see her in September, and then leaves for California.
After a golden summer, Stan flies unannounced to Sweden in the autumn. Once again he goes through heroin withdrawal, this time ending up in a strait jacket in the hospital. He comes down with pneumonia and nearly dies. Monica feels that God has given her a perfect life so far, and has sent Stan so that she can help him. Love will conquer all, she hopes, and she makes it her mission in life to take care of him.
Her wealthy family sends them off to Africa so that he can recuperate without drugs interfering. In the idyllic African tourist paradise they inhabit, he finds pills and booze and flies into rages, once battering Monica’s face as she poured his gin down the toilet. He smashes his favorite horn against a tree. To cover up what he has done, they concoct a story about a car accident.
They return to Sweden where they’re engaged to be married, and then return to the U.S. where Monica begins the rebuilding of Stan’s life. Once Beverly is out of the hospital, Monica visits her and insists on paying to have her teeth and skin repaired from the accident and years of drug use. Monica tries to help Beverly out by finding her singing gigs. She locates a nice apartment for Stan’s parents in Forest Hills, New York. Beverly and the kid’s move into the apartment where Stan’s parents had lived on Union Turnpike in a less prosperous area of Queens. The kid’s lives are a mess. They do not have enough to eat, are not sent to school, and spend all of their days sitting in front of the TV on the floor.
Stan takes off for a JATP tour and gets a Mexican divorce. Stan and Monica move to Great Neck, Long Island. Beverly settles for a lump sum cash payment.
The film actress Donna Reed, who Stan had met on the set of the “Benny Goodman Story”, plays a large role in helping Stan and Monica, finding them a lawyer when Stan declares bankruptcy on March 7, 1957. (18) He owed the I.R.S. $21,000.
He continues to work steadily for Norman Granz throughout all of this, recording “Stan Getz with Oscar Peterson”, “Mulligan Meets Getz, and “Stan Meets Chet”. He wins the Downbeat and Metronome Polls for the 8th and 9th time (19), and is a featured performer at the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958. After some legal maneuvers, Monica gets custody of Stan and Beverly’s kids, and then flies home to Sweden to give birth to their first child. Tired of the I.R.S. hounding him, Stan decides to move to Denmark. He pays off the I.R.S. by mail. Denmark is relaxing. They rent a villa and settle in with the new baby and the other children. The villa is in a small town outside of Copenhagen called Kungens Lyngby, and faces a swan-filled pond.
Stan joins Anders Dyrup in starting the Club Montmarte in Copenhagen. There is no sign on the street outside the place- just a large photograph of Count Basie over the door. Bassist Oscar Pettiford plays in the house band. He had come to Denmark because race wasn’t a big issue there. Pettiford was part Choctaw, Cherokee and African-American. He had married a white woman. Getz and Pettiford get along well, and many other fine musicians stop by the new club to play. Stan moves around Europe with ease, playing all the jazz venues, treated like a star.
His depression is never far from the surface. It might have been a condition caused by the relationship he had had with his mother Goldie, who was a depressive and who had seemed to count on him to relieve her depression throughout his childhood. Occasionally he would become violent to break free from this untreated underlying cycle of illness.
“One night after dinner with Monica, the kids, Monica’s mother, and his (visiting) parents, Stan felt overwhelmed by the mixture of sadness and rage which seemed to be bursting through his skull. He tried to dull the rage with generous drafts of Scotch, but it kept building in him until he went outside, found a pile of bricks, and threw them one by one through every window in the house. Then he came inside and grabbed a poker from the fireplace and smashed all the plates in a collection of renowned Royal Copenhagen china owned by the landlord.” (20)
While Stan is living in Europe, another musical revolution had occurred in the U.S. The rise of Modal Jazz, as played by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman is dominating the progressive jazz scene. Modal jazz has no chords to worry about, it’s the inspiration of the musician to move, or not move the music along. It’s a challenge for musicians trained to follow more structured chord-based melodics. Stan felt like he was being quickly left behind, but he stuck to chordal music. It didn’t elude him that while he was helping Swedish musicians play Swing and Bebop, the Americans were building a new musical venture- and selling records. John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” became a hit, and after eleven years, Getz lost both the Metronome and Downbeat polls to Coltrane. The final blow was when his good friend Oscar Pettiford died suddenly of Meningitis at age 37. Stan played a benefit concert for his wife and family, raising $4,600.
Stan returns to New York and its jazz scene to much critical acclaim to those who come hear him, but his audience has dwindled. As his dates are cancelled, he realizes how much the public can forget in two years. Although he put together a great band, it fails to ignite any interest.
At this time he turned to arranger and composer Eddie Sauter to begin work on the project that he claimed was the most important recording of his life- the “Focus” album. In the middle of these sessions, Stan’s 54-year-old mother dies of a stroke at his daughter’s third birthday party. Stan goes out on a drug and drinking binge for two weeks.
Because he missed the first sessions of the Focus album when the orchestra was present, he had to wear headphones in the studio and follow the recorded score, improvising over it, but not being able to hear himself clearly because of the headgear. He had informed Creed Taylor that he never recorded sober, so he asked that bottles of Alka-Seltzer and scotch be available. He drank through the entire session. Stan always said, “The record I’m most proud of is “Focus”. That was one hell of an effort, to match up with those strings with no music written, but just a score transposed into my key. I listen to that record and feel proud.” (21)
Stan met guitarist Charlie Byrd while playing a club in Washington, D.C. After the show, Byrd takes him to his home and plays him some tapes he has brought back with him from a State Department tour he made of Latin America between March and June of 1961. He collected the music from Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Argentina. Byrd was impressed with the sound of the jazz/samba hybrid that was called ‘Bossa Nova’ in Brazil, and tells Stan that he can’t find anyone interested in recording it in America. Stan immediately sees the potential in the sound and asks Creed Taylor to set up a recording session, at which he and Byrd will record some Bossa Nova tracks for an album. Byrd tells Taylor about the fine acoustics inside All Soul’s Unitarian Church in Washington, D.C. On February 13, 1962, Stan and Taylor fly down from New York for the “Jazz Samba” session, and then fly back on the shuttle in time for dinner in Manhattan. No big deal.
Stan is surprised that “Jazz Samba” begins selling well in August of 1962, while ‘Focus’ is all but ignored. “Jazz Samba” even makes the single Pop charts on September 15, 1962, and “Desafinado” follows two weeks later. (22) In the last weeks of 1962, there is a national Bossa Nova craze. Stan finds himself on top of the Downbeat Poll for the year.
On March 18, 1963, Stan goes into the studio to record “Getz/Gilberto”. Joao Gilberto was almost pathologically shy, and refuses to leave his hotel room to go to the studio. Monica goes to his hotel and pleads with Gilberto to go. The only Brazilian fluent in English present at the session was Gilberto’s wife, Astrud. Stan asks her to sing “Corcodavo” and “The Girl From Impanema”. She has no training or experience, but Stan likes her voice. “Gilberto and Jobim didn’t want Astrud on it. Astrud wasn’t a professional singer; she was a housewife. But when I wanted translations of what was going on, and she sang “Ipanema” and “Corcodavo”, “I thought the words in English were very nice…and Astrud sounded good enough to put on the record.” (23)
On May 15, 1963, Stan wins his first Grammy for Best Jazz Solo performance on “Desafinado” on the “Jazz Samba” album. (24) The next day the Getz’s fly down to Puerto Rico with the kids for a three-day gig at the Coronado Hotel. On the last night in the hotel, daughter Beverly wakes to hear her mother screaming for help as Getz pummels her in a drunken rage. She hears her mother scream, “He’s killing me! Get help!” (25) Stan blocks his daughter in the hallway, glaring at her. He tells her to go back to bed. Later, she enters her mother’s empty room and sees that her mother is bleeding from one ear. Monica has brought along one of the Verve test pressings of “Getz/Gilberto”, and plays it on the turn table, saying to her young daughter, “Listen to this; it’s going to make Daddy a huge star. Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t he a genius?” Young Beverly begs her mother to leave the hotel before he comes back. (26)
The next morning, all seems forgotten. Her parents act as if nothing unusual happened the night before. They all depart, Monica and the kids to Denmark, and Stan to Chicago to play two concerts with the Chicago Symphony.
In March of 1964,Verve releases “Getz/Gilberto. Monica actually went into the record office and spent weeks calling radio stations all over the country making sure they had a copy, and encouraging them to give it airplay. Her work paid off, and the album began to chart on June 6, 1964. (27)
"The Girl From Ipanema” is a big hit single, and makes the unknown Astrud Gilberto a star. She had separated from her husband Joao, and she and Stan began having an affair as they go on tour. In July of 1964, “The Girl From Ipanema” reaches # 5 on the Pop charts, and the album “Getz/Gilberto” reaches #2, edged out only by the Beatle’s “A Hard Day’s Night”. (28) Getz/Gilberto wins Album of the Year honors at the 1965 Grammy’s, with ‘Ipanema’ winning as best single for the year. Two more Grammy’s were bestowed on the album for Best Engineered Album, and one to Stan for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance.
A few nights after the Grammy Awards, Stan goes on another notable rampage in his home. He grabs Monica by the hair, yelling obscenities, and starts throwing and smashing things. The family barricades themselves upstairs in a room while Stan keeps screaming and smashing things for thirty minutes downstairs. Then it is silent. Monica tells her oldest son Steve, 16, to go down and check on his Dad. He found him in the kitchen, unconscious, kneeling with his head in the open oven. For a second he froze, not knowing if it would be better for everyone to just let him die. But then he turned off the gas, pulled Stan out of the oven, laid him on the floor, and searched for a pulse. He opened the windows and ran upstairs where Monica called the family doctor. The doctor said that Stan would survive, and helped put him to bed for the night.
In 1966, Stan and Monica pool his earnings and her inheritance and buy an estate in Irvington, New York named “Shadowbrook”. The twenty-three room, nine-acre estate overlooked the Hudson River.
Getz had also become a favorite performer at the Johnson White House. The first White House event was to honor the Top College Graduates of 1965. He then plays for the Chiefs of the Diplomatic Corps along with the Marine Dance Orchestra. Next he is performing in honor of the 1966 Presidential Scholars. Then he is asked to travel to Bangkok, Thailand, and play for the King and Queen during Johnson’s State Visit to that nation. The King is a jazz fan, and Johnson delivers one of the best.
Stan has a fight with Monica and prematurely flies back to New York before the State Dinner during which he is to play for the King and President. On the flight home guilt and remorse set in at the thought of “letting down the President”, and he boards the next plane back to Bangkok in New York and makes the dinner performance with only an hour to spare. He then tours Vietnam and Thai Army bases playing for troops.
In the spring of 1967 Stan is present for a White House jazz concert, again in honor of the King and Queen of Thailand, which features Duke Ellington and the North Texas State College Big Band. This is the only time that Stan Getz will play with Duke Ellington.
On July 17, 1967, John Coltrane dies of liver cancer at the age of 40. Stan sends flowers and sympathy. In an unrelated move, Monica begins secretly adding Antabuse to Stan’s diet. Antabuse makes a person sick when any alcohol is ingested. She had heard about it as far back as 1959, after consulting a psychiatrist when Stan went on a rampage in Denmark. She had put off using it until now, but a recent attempt by Stan to strangle her at Shadowbrook- he stopped only when discovered by their young daughter- had convinced her she had a lot to lose. The first time she tried it was in a cup of hot bouillon, and Stan spit it out because it tasted so bad. She learned that it could only be added to cold beverages- hot ones made it taste bitter.
Stan also agrees to try the Hazelton Center in Minnesota in order to stop drinking. Monica is now educated enough to be aware that Stan is in serious danger as an addict and alcoholic, and she explains the disease to him. He goes, but becomes so wild and out of control that the staff actually breaks the rules for the first time and they take him into town to buy him a drink at a bar. One isn’t enough, of course, and he splits for another bar. He had lasted four weeks. Monica stays for the whole nine weeks, and then returns home.
1968 was the first year since 1943 that Getz makes no recordings. In 1969 his playing on stage was getting uneven, bizarre and at times hard to explain. Even critics who searched for the genius that they knew was there began to put down their pencils and pick up their bar tabs. Stan was in and out of rehab several times that year, causing disturbing violence against Monica and other visitors at his home again. Monica reached the end of her patience and has him arrested on March 22, 1969, and he is taken to the Westchester County Jail. After appearing in court a few days later, he left for England, where he remained incommunicado, although he would return to the U.S. for gigs without telling his family.
In London, he plays for a living, and hangs out with a fast crowd, including Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan. One night while drinking in his suite at the Dorchester with these two, he talks about his swimming prowess, and they bet him he couldn’t swim across the Thames that night. Getz takes them up on the bet and soon the three of them are walking through the hotel’s lobby, with Stan in swimming trunks under a terry cloth robe. Up to the last moment, the bets are getting higher, and after accepting the challenge of the highest bid, Stan jumps into the dark river water. As they hear the splash in disbelief, Milligan panics and runs to a cop to report that Stan Getz has jumped into the river on a bet to swim across, and he must come find him. The police tell him to go home and sleep it off. Stan completes the swim, and pulls himself up the embankment on the opposite side. Sellers and Milligan jump in a cab and race over the nearest bridge to look for him. They find him calmly sitting on a bench, dripping wet, asking, “What took you guys so long?” (29)
Stan leaves the London nightlife and goes to Spain alone. He calls Monica in despair to come help him. He is sick from months of abuse. She has been told again by a doctor to crush Antabuse and sprinkle it onto his food. Shortly after this secret dose of Antabuse, Stan drinks and gets sick. He wonders why. Monica does not tell him what she is doing.
Sometimes he gets alcohol before Monica can dose his food. Chasing Monica during a fight after drinking, Stan falls down a staircase and breaks a bone in his foot. He talks the doctor into prescribing morphine for the pain, and overdoses. Monica finds him in time and calls the doctor who revives him. Monica continues to dose his food with Antabuse, and brings other friends and family members in on the secret of Stan’s sobriety. By now it is the early 1970’s and Stan is no longer drinking, convinced that he had grown allergic to alcohol. For the first time, Monica and Stan are happy together. Stan is prescribed both Lithium and Elavil for depression.
He travels to Johannesburg, South Africa to play, and is appalled to see the strength of Apartheid. He organizes a concert at the Bantu Men’s Social Club (30) and insists on playing for only racially mixed audiences. Stan began to play tennis during a visit to France in 1970. His son Nicky was also taught lessons, and went on to become a professional player.
His daughter Beverly visits him one day in London. She calls him up from the street to say she’s downstairs. He tells her he’ll throw the keys down to her. But he never does. She calls the police and they enter the apartment to find him slumped over the kitchen table with a needle in his arm. The incident is unreported by the police, who take pity on Beverly, believing her father is just a lonely addict. They tell her they will be checking in on him from time to time. At this news, Stan returns to Shadowbrook.
Back in the U.S. Stan gathers Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Airto Moreira and Tony Williams into a new group. They open at the Rainbow Grill in January of 1972, sharing the bill with Joao Gilberto. This musical venture breaks all attendance records at the Grill. The group records the intense“Captain Marvel” album, which isn’t released for three more years because of a recording contract dispute. Stan soon signs with the Columbia label. By the time “Marvel” is released, Corea, Clarke and Moreira have left to start their own band, “Return To Forever”, adding Joe Farrell on sax and Flora Purim on vocals.
Stan’s first wife Beverly dies in California of a stroke at the age of 45. She has been clean and married to a chiropractor for many years. Stan does not hear about her death for a year. He finds out that she had conquered drugs in the early 1960’s, and met her husband while singing in a jazz club. She had quit show business and quietly managed his office for years. But she always kept a picture of Stan, Monica and the Getz children, cut from an album cover, on her fireplace mantle. “She never stopped loving Stan and never talked bad about him,” said her husband, Dr. Bednar. (31)
Back at Shadowbrook, Monica is still secretly administering Antabuse, and Stan is often becoming sick when he tries to drink. He records his first Columbia album, “The Best of Both Worlds”, in May of 1975 with Joao Gilberto. He leaves for Europe in the summer of 1976, with Monica instructing that Antabuse be secretly administered to him. As soon as gets to Europe, he asks for and receives a legal prescription for heroin in London. He overdoses and misses his opening at Ronnie Scott’s club for the first week of his gig. Then he travels to South America with son Steve, who plays the drums in the band. Steve stops the Antabuse dosing while he’s on this trip.
On November 20, 1976, Stan is back at Carnegie Hall for Woody Herman’s 40th Anniversary Concert as a bandleader. Stan’s drinking is out of control again, and there are several more very unpleasant scenes at Shadowbrook. At the end of January, 1977 he records “Stan Getz Gold” back at the Montmarte Club in Copenhagen and then celebrates his 50th birthday at The Monastery, Copenhagen’s finest club. Twenty jazz saxophonists from all over Denmark arrive at the club to play “Happy Birthday” for Stan. In April Getz tours the nation of Cuba with a group, and then travels to Israel for the summer, where he films “Stan Getz in Israel: A Musical Odyssey”.
On June 17, 1978, President Jimmy Carter invites Stan to the White House for a performance to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival. Carter is a big Getz fan. Later that summer while Stan is appearing at Keystone Korner in San Francisco, he passes out on stage in the middle of a solo from an overdose. He blames the event on sleeping pills. That October, while playing in Washington, D.C., he meets Jane Walsh, and they become romantically involved.
On January 12, 1980 Stan is recording an album at his Shadowbrook studio with Albert Daily. A friend who was invited to the session sees Monica sprinkle Antabuse on Stan’s sandwich in the kitchen. She become disturbed at the seeming weirdness of the action, and asks to be taken to the train station. Stan confronts Monica, finding out she has been doing it for eleven years. During that time Stan had been made very ill by the Antabuse 200 times, and now he calls her on it and questions the validity of their marriage. She admits what she has done and tells him she was trying to save his life and keep the family together and safe from his violence when drinking. (32) A family attempt at intervention fails as Stan goes berserk and everyone flees in terror, except Monica’s aged mother, who seems to have either no idea of what kind of danger she was in, or didn’t care. Stan and her eat ice cream together for a few days, alone in the vast house.
Stan leaves for a tour of India and Australia, where he is an undisputed star in the press. In 1980, he grossed $220,000. When he returns, there is more drinking, and Monica ends up in the hospital injured. Stan is sent back to Hazleton for the fifth time. While there, he gets a call from President Carter again, this time to play a Tall Ships Festival in Boston on May 29. He quits the Hazleton program again. On May 12, 1981, Stan records “The Dolphin” in San Francisco. He likes the city and decides to move there. He also decides to sue Monica for divorce for the years of secret Antabuse dosing. After being served with papers for the lawsuit, Monica tries to save the marriage once more by going into marriage therapy, but the marriage itself is not the issue; it is the drugs and drinking.
He leaves on a tour of Europe with Jane, and then records “Pure Getz”. Gary Giddens wrote of that album’s Strayhorn composition: “With ‘Blood Count,’ Getz joins the relatively small group of jazz stylists who can lay personal claim to material by sole virtue of their interpretive integrity” (33)
Stan celebrates his 55th birthday at Fat Tuesday’s in New York. Later on in May of 1982, Stan again overdoses on stage at Keystone Korner in San Francisco, and again blames a mix up of prescribed medicines. Through social acquaintances with friends of faculty at Stanford University, the school takes an interest in Stan as a possible Artist In Residence in the Music Department. Stan can’t believe that they treat him as their social equal. He soon realizes that he can leave the road and stay and teach if he plays his cards right. He says to an AP reporter “It’s nice to see how normal people live”, and to Jane, “This is my chance to stay sober”. (34) For the first time in his life, Stan voluntarily checks himself into “The Ark”, another rehab clinic, in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
After playing at the White House again in December of 1982, Stan heads out on a tour with Chet Baker. He immediately starts drinking and drugging again. Baker missed half of the dates, and tries to get back to France quickly via Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, carrying heroin. Stan is traveling with him and is fairly freaked out by the risk involved. To keep a low profile, he changes his ID from Jewish to Protestant as they pass through the kingdom. Stan heads back to California and tours the wine country, living at Stanford. The Music Department at the University continued to encourage Stan to join them. He made many new friends on the faculty and in the community. One friend, an artist named Nate Oliveira, remembered “…When you asked him about his feelings when he played, he would get pissed off and say, “What are you talking about. Getting sentimental. I don’t think about those things.” But he really did. When he played, you could almost see him make marks like a drawing, a big painting- an abstract expressionist like Bill de Kooning. Wow. You could really see it. I said, “ Stan, you know what we do, we color this world. If we weren’t around, people like us, the world would be all gray.”
And he said, “God”. And he never forgot that; he kept bringing it up to me all the time. “You know that is really the most important thing, Nate. We really do color this world.” (35)
Monica, meanwhile, is back living in Sweden, heading up a movement there to combat addictions, trying to gain the support of the Swedish government.
Stan is asked to speak and begin to teach at Stanford, and Dizzy Gillespie arrives to kick off the season with a joint concert for the President of the University and other academic dignitaries on August 5, 1984. A reception and buffet is planned following the concert, where the President will make a speech. Stan attends a lecture by Dizzy on August 2nd, and becomes anxious when he sees how well Dizzy communicates with the students. He knows he can’t talk that easily, and becomes anxious and scared.
He broods for a couple of days, and then visits his friend George Mraz, who is renting a house near the school. Stan gets drunk and trashes the place. He finds a gun and threatens Mraz with it. Mraz escapes with the help of Nate Oliveira’s son out through a window. Getz heads for the local Holiday Inn and continues his binge. He blows off the party and dinner; leaving all of the new friends he had made standing around consoling Jane at the decorated buffet tables. She calls his son Steve in New York and he flies out to help her look for him. They find him ten days later in a San Francisco hotel very sick and ranting.
She takes him to his AA sponsor, who reminds him he has to play the 30th Anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival in two days. They put him on a plane the next day, very sick, and he plays the festival. When he returns, Jane tells him to get with AA or she’s out of his life. There are a few more slips, but Stan is beginning to understand sobriety.
He starts taking AA seriously. In 1985 on a tour of Israel, Stan’s son Steve travels with him as the band’s drummer, and calls it “The happiest time he ever spent with his father”. (36) On arriving back in New York City, Getz is staying at his lawyer’s house, Elliot Hoffman, who had traveled to Israel with him. Jane Walsh flew back to the west coast, but Stan was scheduled to record in New York with a quartet.
After two numbers in the studios he feels uninspired and depressed. He calls it off and goes to Bradley’s, a jazz club in Greenwich Village, and gets drunk for the first time in nine months. The following day he returned to the Hoffmann’s house, sad and embarrassed. And that was the end of drinking and drugging for the rest of his life. Perhaps, as the AA expression goes, “He was sick and tired and of being sick and tired”.
Getz returns to Stanford, where he becomes the artist in residence on January 1, 1986. His schedule requires him to teach six hours a week, give four concerts a year, and conduct student workshops. The school pays him $40,000 a year. He is now making $300,000 a year playing. (37) He discussed his teaching with a local reporter, and adds: “When I got this saxophone, it became a religion. There wasn’t TV, there wasn’t much money, and there was just a real dedication…I never thought of it as an art. It was just work that I loved. Not just work, but work that I loved. I loved it so much, I would play it if nobody listened to it. Any jazz musician, if there’s nobody around to listen, would play just for the sheer joy of improvising music.” (38)
Larry Grenadier, one of Stan’s college students at this time said later that “He would make certain comments after he heard you play, just take you aside and say something- how to play with the drummer, what he looked for in a bass player, how to make it more comfortable for a horn player, stuff like that. Just listening to him helped a lot. His sound is so unique; it’s so rare for people to have that individual sound and make that strong a statement just with their sound. It was so striking; it just hit you over the head. And his timing and rhythm were so strong; he was a master of space and silence.” (39)
In 1986, coming up on the anniversary of his first year of sobriety, Mel Miller interviews Getz in “The Saxophone Journal”, and Stan expounds on many areas of his playing: “I practiced saxophone eight hours a day for the first two years I played. But I never practiced after that because I was always out on the road working. The only time I take out the horn, other than work, is to find a new reed…I’ve always regretted the fact that I’ve never formally studied and learned the mechanics of writing music…It’s a pain in the neck to have to depend on others to write things, or if I have something in mind and am barely able to tell someone what to play behind me. Most musicians seem to be able to follow me because I’ve learned enough chords to be able to play them without even knowing their names….Life is too full of distractions nowadays. When I was a kid we had a little Emerson radio and that was it. We were more dedicated. We didn’t have a choice and we didn’t have big allowances. I got out of the Bronx by taking that saxophone in a room eight hours a day and playing it! Now there’s more distractions, like movies, video, and sports. Early on we made records to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records. I still feel that way. I put out a record because I think it’s beautiful, but not necessarily commercial…Commercial can be a good word too. It means getting to a larger number of people. Records used to be documents but now record companies want ‘product’. They want to sell a lot more records and guys want to get famous. I never thought about being famous or having a band. I just wanted to play music.” When Getz was asked what he would like to say to all saxophone players reading the interview, he said: “Switch to piano! No. Really, if you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it’s like the human voice. Of course, it would be best if you could actually sing with your own voice. The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. Therefore, the challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument or ‘voice’ that is outside of your body. I love that challenge and have for over forty-five years. As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.” (40)
In the spring of 1987 Stan broke up with Jane Walsh, and on May 1, 1987 he was told he had a tumor behind his heart the size of a grapefruit. Billy Hoogstraten captured his reaction: “I remember him calling me, telling me they discovered the tumor. And he felt like somebody was really mistreating him because he didn’t deserve that. He said, “Why now? If it had been three years ago, I can understand, because I was misbehaving all the time, taking all that bad stuff, and I needed some punishment. But for the last two years I’ve been trying to make up with myself and the people close to me. I’ve been going the right way. Now I’m punished with this.” (41)
On May 29 he is granted a divorce from Monica on the grounds of what he claimed was “Cruel and inhuman treatment and adultery”. Stan plays the JVC Jazz Festival on June 21, 1987, and Jane accompanies him on a European tour where Stan meets his son Peter Torgner in Stockholm –a publicly unacknowledged son who had been born in 1958 to Inga Torgner after she and Stan had a romance in New York during the summer of 1957. She had returned to Sweden at the end of that summer. Stan had met Peter before, as an infant in 1958, in 1974, and in the late 1970’s after Peter had become a singing performer in his own right in Sweden. They got along fine, and looked quite similar. While in Copenhagen, Stan plays at his old club, the Montmarte, and described how he felt at the time: “I thought that those concerts in Copenhagen could be my last ones, and that gave me the feeling of “Now I have to really try my best.” I felt strong, although my life was in danger. I made quite a drama out of it. You know how people can overact in those situations. In my fantasy, I was singing my musical swan song. You know how things are going when everybody is ready to start playing the violin.” (42)
Around this time, his son Steve asked his Dad what he thought about when he played. Stan replied:“ It’s not forced concentration. Sure, I’m thinking about what I’m playing, but what I’m trying to do is to psyche myself into relaxing so the notes come out of the horn in a natural way.” (43)
Getz returns to the U.S. and teaches at Stanford. On September 18, 1987 he undergoes the operation to remove the tumor in his chest. He is quickly addicted to the pain medication administered post-op. He begins acting out and throwing trays around the hospital room. His AA sponsor comes to visit him at the hospital and this helps keep him steady enough to get off of the pain drugs in only six weeks.
On October 29, 1987 Woody Herman dies in Los Angeles, at 74. Stan cries when he hears the news. He is living alone near the beach in California while he recovers from the surgery. He meets young Samantha Cesena at a health food store where she works, and they begin seeing each other. Stan finds playing the sax painful and tiring, but he embarks on a month-long European tour in spite of it. Too sick after one week, he cancels the rest of the tour and heads home.
A new trial pitting him against Monica is beginning in White Plains, New York. This time it’s to divide the estate between them. Monica says she is depressed and has suicidal urges. The trial is postponed and Stan pays for her treatment and examination.
On July 1, 1988 Stan performs at a memorial concert for Buddy Rich at Carnegie Hall. Soon after returning west he buys a house in Atherton, California, complete with a white picket fence around it. There he enjoys life with Samantha, eating a macrobiotic diet and playing with their new puppy. But July is darkened when Stan is informed that he has liver cancer, and also Cirrhosis, caused by years of abuse. The Lymphoma had apparently not been stopped by the tumor operation 10 months earlier. He is told he could live for four to six months, or maybe a year, with an operation, radiation and chemotherapy. He decides to fight with a strict diet utilizing specific herbs. Although he hadn’t had alcohol since September of 1985, he had continued smoking cigarettes.
Due to a lack of enough financial support, The Stanford Music Project at the University is failing. In November of 1988 Stan meets with Herb Alpert for two hours. Alpert is interested in signing and recording Stan when he hears that he has no recording contract. Stan is interested at the financial prospect of working with Alpert, who started the A&M record label in his garage in 1962. He holds off signing anything because of the upcoming court date in New York. He doesn’t want to look too rich, and this is going to be a big contract with Alpert.
On November 21, Stan gets the results of MRI liver scans. They show a miraculous shrinkage of the tumor by 10%. Doctors on the case are astonished. The herbs and diet have been working. But the very next day, Stan suffers a mild heart attack caused by a blocked artery and undergoes Angioplasty. The doctors give Stan Morphine for pain- no one bothered to tell them that Stan was addicted to it- and send him home. Samantha finds him passed out from an overdose five day later at their home, and he goes back to the hospital for four days of detox.
On February 9, 1989 the judge in Stan’s equitable distribution case with Monica hands down his decision: Monica is given a half interest in the Shadowbrook Estate, a half interest in the land they own in Spain and half of all future royalties on records made by Stan between the date of her marriage to him, November 3, 1956 and January 31, 1981, the date he left Shadowbrook. This is the settlement that Stan had sought. After the decision and settlement, Stan signs with Alpert.
In June of 1989, Stan toured Europe with a group, including pianist Kenny Barron. They record “Just Friends” with singer Helen Merrill, and he strikes a $240,000 deal with Polygram for the rights to the recorded material. The same month he is inducted into France’s Order of Letters along with Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Hank Jones, Phil Woods, Milt Jackson, Percy Heath and Jackie McLean. This group records the “Paris All-Stars Tribute to Charlie Parker” album on June 16. Stan stars in a documentary portrait of himself entitled “People Time”, and gets great news on August 12, 1989- doctors report that the latest MRI scan shows that the liver tumor has shrunk 70%. He records his first album for Alpert, "Apasionado".
Samantha, who has only just turned 25, decides she wants out of the relationship. Stan is devastated and returns to the lonely life he thought was over. His depression lifts somewhat as he looks forward to opening the 1989 World Series by playing the “Star Spangled Banner” for 26 million people on TV- the biggest audience of his career. As he strapped on his saxophone and prepared to walk onto the field, a huge earthquake hit San Francisco, and for fifteen seconds the full stadium swayed and creaked. Stan was taken away to an office within the stadium where he chain-smoked for an hour before leaving for the night.
On June 17, 1990, Stan gets the latest MRI scans, and the best news yet. His liver tumor is barely visible. Jane Walsh accompanies him on tours that take him to New York and Europe. On his return, he calls Samantha and asks if she wants to get back together. After some discussions with her family, they become engaged. Stan played the Monterey Jazz Festival with a band featuring Kenny Barron, Victor Lewis, and Alex Blake. The audience roared when Dizzy Gillespie joined Stan on stage.
Monica was still appealing her cases in the court system, not letting up on how she felt the system was stacked in favor of “breadwinning” husbands who had the money to hire the best lawyers and fight longer. She felt that divorce cases should be shifted to the family court system, which was much less expensive and more family oriented. Stan and Monica continued to spar in the press indirectly. By the time her litigation was complete- twelve years after it began- she had spent $1 million on lawyers, and gained nothing more than the original equitable distribution settlement. She had gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for justice, and been rebuffed.
In December of 1990, Stan got bad news himself. A blood test showed that his liver cancer was not in remission any longer, and that the tumor was again growing. He started getting serious stomach pain.
He flew to Boston and played at the Charles Hotel with Kenny Barron, in preparation for a short trip to Europe in March, and a longer tour there in July and August of 1991. Stan made a side-trip to New York on February 25, and recorded an album with singer Abbey Lincoln entitled “You Gotta Pay The Band”. Hank Jones plays piano at the session. Jones had played piano on Stan’s first record date 45 years earlier.
Stan flew to Copenhagen in February. Although he is ill, he records “People Time”. The Getz/Barron duet performances are superb. Then they move on to Paris to play, but by now Stan’s playing is showing the strain of his sickness. On March 10, 1991 he returns to Malibu, and then leaves for a vacation in Hawaii. On his return from this trip, his health deteriorated rapidly, and he was homebound. Friends visited: Shorty Rogers, Charlie Haden, Lou Levy, Johnny Mandel and Herb Alpert.
Samantha recalled one moment at this time: “We were in the room, and he said, “Why is this happening to me?” And I said, “Well, I guess because it needs to happen to you.” He said, “ It’s not fair, I have everything I ever wanted, and now I have to go away.” (44)
At 3 A.M. on the morning of Thursday, June 6, 1991, Stan asked to be helped in his wheelchair to the window next to his bed, so that he could gaze out at the ocean. The early morning mists made it invisible to him. He tried to see past the fog for a few seconds, and then, staring straight ahead, said to his nurse, “What’s the f---- point?”
He was helped back into his bed where he slept away at 5 P.M. that night. He was 64.
On Sunday, June 9, Stan’s ashes were poured out of his saxophone case six miles off the coast by his Grandson, Chris. Most of Stan’s family were present, even Peter. Monica had asked to attend, but was told it would not be appropriate. The sky was clear and the water was still. The song coming out of the CD player was Strayhorn’s “Blood Count”. The yacht they stood on belonged to trumpeter Shorty Rogers, Stan’s friend from the Bronx.
(1) P.18. Donald L. Maggin; “Stan Getz- A Life In Jazz”, 1996. William Morrow, New York. (2) P. 21; Interview with Donald L. Maggin in “Stan Getz-A Life In Jazz” 1996.William Morrow, New York. (3) Maggin; P.23 (4) Ibid. P.24 (5) P.27 (6) P.36 (7) P.82 (8) Mel Miller Interview With Stan Getz; The Saxophone Journal 10/4 Winter 1986. (9) Maggin; P.86-87 (10) Ibid. PP. 94-95 (11) P.95 (12) P.115 (13) P.132 (14) P.132 (15) P.134 (16) P.135 (17) P.147 (18) P.173 (19) P.178 (20) P.187 (21) P.203 (22) P.211 (23) P.215 (24) P.216 (25) P.217 (26) P.217 (27) P.221 (28) P.222 (29) P.248 (30) P.259 (31) P.267 (32) P.286 (33) P.304 (34) A.P. reporter & Jane Walsh P.307 (35) P.319 (36) P.328 (37) P.331 (38) P.333 (39) P.333 (40) Mel Miller Interview with Stan Getz; The Saxophone Journal 10/4 Winter 1986 (41) Maggin; P.345 (42) Ibid. P.348 (43) P.349 (44) P.384
Gene Krupa. "...the shock of the entire thing straightened me up."
Gene Krupa: Let Me Off Uptown
By John Twomey
Copyright, 2003 by John Twomey. All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this article or parts thereof in any form.
Although Gene Krupa has been gone now for 40 years, in August of 2003 the Gene Krupa Orchestra hit the road again under the direction of Michael Berkowitz, a drummer known widely in the music business for his longstanding collaboration with the late Nelson Riddle. In jazz, Gene Krupa blazed the trail for band drummers, raising their profile. Krupa was the first superstar white drummer, and he was, naturally enough, highly scrutinized on account of this distinction.
He possessed a remarkable personality, being a sincere gentleman in a tumultuous business. He was always ready to give credit where it was due, helping to popularize some of the first true jazz drumming pioneers like Baby Dodds and Zutty Singleton.
Gene was the youngest in a family of nine children, two girls and seven boys. His father was a Chicago Alderman, and his mother was a milliner who owned her own store. His father died when Gene was still young. His mother encouraged him to become a priest. An older brother, Pete, had a job working in a local music store called Brown’s. He got the 11-year-old Gene a part time job at Brown’s as a chore boy. Gene saved up $16.00 and bought an inexpensive drum set. He didn’t have a percussive epiphany- just a desire to play an instrument, and the drums were the least expensive.
He joined the musicians union while still a schoolboy, and started playing gigs around his neighborhood. The effects of late night playing made him fall asleep in class. The nuns who taught him reported this to his mother.
To please her, he attended a prep seminary, St. Joseph’s College, in Rensselaer, Indiana. He was 14. “I gave it a good try. But the desire for music was too strong”. (1) While studying, he met Fr. Ildefonse Rapp, a professor of music on the faculty and a serious classical trumpeter. Later in life, Gene said, “Father Rapp taught me the appreciation of all music. He was a wonderful trumpet player but strictly legit. But he was marvelously relaxed and cool about all music including jazz”. (2)
Returning to Chicago, Krupa met another drummer by the name of Al Silverman, who introduced him to some very important musicians then on the Chicago scene: Drummers Baby Dodds, George Wettling, Dave Tough and Coronetist Bix Beiderbecke. Gene and Dave started hanging around together, and Gene’s name became known among what was then the Austin High School Gang. The gang was to become the Chicago "School" of jazz, led by such lights as Bud Freeman, Jimmy McPartland Eddie Condon and Frank Teschmaker. When Tough decided to go to Europe and write, Bud Freeman recommended Gene take his place. Said Gene, “It was great, like dessert, exchanging ideas with Tesch, Condon, Bud and the rest after so many nights with commercial bands.”(3)
After these connections were made, more interesting work followed. An exciting gig over the state line in Indiana featuring a chorus of showgirls seemed like a tremendous opportunity for the teenage drummer. The only problem was that it wasn't paying anything.
Krupa explained the situation at this point in his life: “I was being pressured at home to get a normal job, to do better at school…One day I got this call from Leo Shukin…He said he was putting a band together, including guys like Teschmaker, Mezzrow, trombonist Floyd O’Brien and pianist Joe Sullivan for "The Rendezvous", a club in downtown Chicago.”(4)
Shukin hired him after an afternoon audition. Krupa returned to his current no-pay Indiana club job that night and “told the bosses about what happened. They all but dismissed it. “You don’t want that job,” they said, snickering more than a little about my great opportunity. I was broken hearted. I called Leo and told him these guys wouldn’t let me out. He quietly asked for the top man’s name. The next night…the boss handed me three weeks back pay and patted me on the back, benevolently, and said, “Gene, God bless you son. We’ll see you. We know you’re going to be an enormous success.” Shukin had called his uncle Johnny Fogerty, a big man around Chicago who knew how to throw his weight around. Johnny got on the phone with the Indiana boss man and made it clear that if his request concerning my release was not granted, people would be hurt. Simple as that.”(5)
Gene’s first jazz recordings came next. Remarkably, these sides caused a sensation among drummers as far away as New York. Krupa brought his entire drum set to the studio. This had never been done before. Tommy Rockwell, the session producer for the Okeh label on the date, wondered if the noise from the bass drum would “knock the needle off the record” while recording. Rugs were placed around the set to dampen the sound.
Krupa’s technique was very different from the established styles of some of the big-name drummers in New York. “The top white players in town like Vic Berton, Chauncey Morehouse, and George Beebe played mostly on the cymbals, doing little tricks underneath them and things like that. We (Chicagoans) moved the beat along the drums- snare, tom-toms, bass drum.”(6)
After recording with such notables as Fats Waller and Red Nichols during the next few years, Gene moved to New York and played in the pit bands of two Broadway hits, “Strike Up the Band”, and “Girl Crazy”. It was around this time that Gene heard his biggest drumming influence: Chick Webb, which forever changed Gene's approach to playing drums. In “Girl Crazy”, one of his band mates was Glenn Miller. Gene began to realize at this time that further musical study would be in his interest. Gene told Metronome Magazine in 1938 that “I couldn’t tell a quarter note from an eighth note and Glenn knew it. So every time we got a new thing to do, I’d pass my part to Glenn who’d hum it for me a few times until I got it in my head. The conductor of the orchestra never caught on.” (7) In order to learn to read music, Gene began serious druming study with New York drum teacher Sanford A. Moeller (for some reason known among friends as "Gus"). Gene's use of the Moeller system of drumming (which used arms, instead of just wrists and fingers) was extremely important to Gene's style of drumming, and also to Gene's showmanship. During the worst years of the business depression of the early 1930's, Gene performed with commercial outfits such as Irving Aaronson’s Commanders, and then the 1932 band Benny Goodman formed for singer Russ Colombo. When that band broke up, Gene played with the Mal Hallet and Buddy Rogers bands.
In 1934 producer John Hammond asked Gene to join a new band Benny Goodman was forming, but he balked at the offer. He had worked with Goodman in the Colombo band, and knew him to be difficult. Hammond convinced him to take the offer by telling him he would only have to work with Goodman on Saturdays. The rest of the week was his, and the pay was good. Krupa heard the Goodman band on the radio, with the stiff, metronomic Stan King on drums and decided to go for it.
Gene became an icon of the Swing Era as Goodman's drummer.
Three years into Gene’s employment with Goodman, the band’s historic concert at Carnegie Hall took place. One carbon ribbon microphone suspended above the stage- a last minute thought- relayed the entire performance to a transcription studio in another Manhattan location. Krupa’s wild floor-tomming performance on “Sing, Sing, Sing”, an extended interpolation of the band’s earlier 1936 hit “Christopher Columbus”, caused a sensation, and within weeks he left Goodman to start his own band.
The Krupa band was an immediate hit with the public. In 1941 he hired both trumpet star Roy Eldridge and ultra-hip vocalist Anita O’Day. The two caused a stir with their work on the band’s hit record “Let Me Off Uptown”. Record sales were good, and the band played the choicest ballrooms and clubs, from Maine to California.
Then, just as suddenly, it was over.
Gene’s valet, who was being drafted, indiscreetly bought Gene some marijuana (something for the man who has everything, said the valet) as a parting gift. Someone heard the valet talking about the buy, and tipped off the cops.
Before he had left for the army, the valet had shoved the pot into one of Gene’s coat pockets in a closet, and Krupa, who preferred drinking anyway, had forgotten about it. When the police came looking for him at the theater where he was working, he called his new valet, who was still a minor, and told him to flush the cigarettes he would find in a certain coat pocket. The orders were not followed, and the cops busted the teenager walking out of the hotel with the pot in one of his own pockets.
Needless to say, in 1943 this made headlines. Most people didn’t know what marijuana was, except some kind of “dope” used by “fiends”. It also didn’t help that the attorney he hired to defend him against the possession charge was feuding with the San Francisco D.A. Gene flew back to California from Rhode Island to pay the fine for pleading guilty, but found himself jailed for ninety days. Benny Goodman was the only friend to visit him in prison, and told the papers that Gene could have his job back with him any time he wanted it.
Gene's orchestra disbanded, and his money dwindled. His first wife, Ethel McGuire, offered to give Gene back her $100,000 divorce settlement if he needed it. Then another trial was brought on two counts, the second one “contributing to the delinquency of a minor”. Krupa explained, “My new valet was a minor. We lost the felony case and made a motion for appeal. This meant I had to remain incarcerated until the appeal came up, or until the judge saw fit to let me go. After 84 days, I got out. I already had served the sentence for the misdemeanor. Out on bail, still convicted of the felony, waiting on the appeal, I went back to New York and stayed around home in Yonkers.” (8)
He took Goodman up on the offer to join his band, which was playing at the Terrace Room of the Hotel New Yorker on 34th St. Two months later, he switched to Tommy Dorsey's band, replacing Buddy Rich, who was serving in the Marines. When the Dorsey band rose on the platform stage of the old Paramount Theater at 44th and Broadway with Gene seated at the drums, "I got the greatest ovation of my life. It lasted several minutes and I have to admit I broke down." (9)
The final ruling in the long drawn-out legal battle which began with the marijuana bust and led to the later "morals" charges was handed down on May 31, 1943, releasing him from further prosecution. The judge found that Krupa had been placed in double jeopardy in the overlapping legal work.
"I booked the Capitol Theater in New York for a new band I intended to put together. I gave Tommy notice and expressed my appreciation to him for all he had done. But in no way was I the same guy as the Gene Krupa of 1942. The whole experience- the arrest, the court trials, jail, disappointments with people, the terrible waiting- had changed me. I didn't feel guilty. But the shock of the entire thing straightened me up. I returned to religion and many other things that were important to me before I became a so-called big shot. Certainly I wanted no connection with drugs of any sort. (10)
After an economically unsuccessful year leading a new band known as "Gene Krupa and The Band That Swings With Strings", he junked it in favor of a Be Bop oriented outfit.
He hired both Gerry Mulligan and Neil Hefti to write and arrange the music. Anita O'Day returned for a stay, and sang two more hit records with the band, "Boogie Blues", and "Opus One".
Looking back over his career, Gene later said, “Until about 1949, I enjoyed myself. I turned George Williams on to some of the colorful classical composers- Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakof, Ravel, Stravinsky, among others-and suggested he develop some scores for the band on their themes. Out of this came Sibelius’s “Valse Triste”, “Firebird Suite”, and Kabalevsky’s “The Galloping Comedians” and “Daphne and Chloe.”(11)
Unfortunately he always had to contend with the shadow of the 1943 marijuana bust. If a dealer got arrested in another state, he would tell police “Gene Krupa gave it to me”, and Gene would get drawn into yet another investigation until he could extricate himself from the lies. When he noted that a few of his own musicians were using drugs, he got out of the big band business.
Between 1951-57 he was invited to tour with Norman Granz’s Jazz At The Philharmonic road company. Traveling the world with other stars like Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Lester Young, Flip Philips, Illinois Jacquet, Roy Eldridge, Willie Smith, Hank Jones, Bill Harris, Jo Jones, and Buddy Rich was a low pressure, relaxing interlude in his life. “I certainly didn’t miss the band”, he said, “It was as if a weight had been lifted from me.”(12)
He remained active through the 1960’s, raising his kids in Yonkers, N.Y., and coaching their Little League team. He assembled large and small recording groups in New York studios, and released the occasional album. He spoke out against drug abuse in schools and did charity benefits. His small group's appearance at New York's Metropole was one of that club's most successful acts of the 1960's. Together with Cozy Cole, he formed the Krupa-Cole Drum School in Manhattan.
In spite of a major heart attack in 1960, emphysema, and a painful back condition, Gene continued to play. He recorded one last time at the New School in April of 1972. As if completing a circle, he performed on the stage of Carnegie Hall with the Benny Goodman Quartet during the summer of 1972.
Gene died of Leukemia in October of 1973. He was 64.
References
All quotes are from Krupa interviews with Burt Korall unless otherwise noted.
Glenn Miller (L) with his trombone section and lead clarinet/sax player Willie Schwartz
Who was Glenn Miller? By John Twomey
Copyright, 2003 by John Twomey. All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this article or parts thereof in any form.
Glenn Miller's jazz background is often ignored. Although he is remembered for many great things- bandleader, businessman, and soldier- being a jazz musician is not among them.
In studying his accomplishments, Glenn himself is an obstacle. He was insecure about his playing. He was in awe of the trombone skill of Tommy Dorsey, Will Bradley, and Jack Teagarden. However, his talent and skill as an arranger are indicative of a fine swing musician.
Discussed in this article are two historic 1929 sides he recorded with an integrated band. It is revealing that he felt these sides were his best recorded work. Without the acute sense of time, syncopation and harmony developed while working with some of the best black and white jazz players early in his career, he would not have been able to write and arrange for, let alone inspire such a great organization later on.
For many people, the name Glenn Miller evokes two distinct memories: His theme "Moonlight Serenade", which is still found on your average diner jukebox; and his mysterious death in a plane over the English Channel during WWII. Although many people have a passing acquaintance with the Miller name, few are aware of who he was.
When I worked at 2 Penn Plaza on 7th Avenue across from the Hotel Pennsylvania in the late 1990's, I often visited an undistinguished retail store that leased that hotel's ground floor ballroom. My lunchtime visits were not as a consumer, but as a witness to the room's departed greatness, now filled with cheap, cut-rate goods. The actual wood of the dance floor could be seen in places where the overlaid tiles had been worn through. This busy store was a piece of musical history. From it Miller had broadcast radio shows to a national audience.
Around the same time in 1998, on a Sunday winter walk along Long Island Sound in New Rochelle, New York, I came across the deserted, windswept Glen Island Casino. It was undergoing one of its periodic renovations as a catering hall. This was the place where Miller was launched into the limelight during the summer of 1939. The windows of the casino look out on an unobstructed vista of the Sound. Miller's new band, with the unique reed-over-brass music phrasing he had developed, had caused a sensation here.
Up the coast a few miles in Rye, New York, is another Miller time-line notch: The Playland Casino. Planned by Robert Moses in 1928, this dance hall also sits facing the Sound next to Rye Beach. The entire park has been designated a national landmark of 1920's Art Deco design. It was here in the summer of 1938 that an earlier Miller band played for dancers, according to the surviving contract, between the hours of 8:00 pm and 3:00 am for the sum of $200.00
Only 10 miles and one year separate the first failed band at Rye from the one that made him famous in New Rochelle, but these two places in the life of Glenn Miller, although crucial in his eventual success, are not as interesting as where he had already been in his life.
Glenn Miller's father, Lewis Elmer, changed towns as frequently as he changed jobs. Miller was born in Clarinda, Iowa on March 1, 1904. By the time he was five years old, Glenn lived in a sod hut in Nebraska, where his father had decided on "homesteading" for a living. A homesteader was one who claimed land and had to stay on it to stake the claim. His mother made sure that her four children- Glenn had an older brother and a younger sister and brother- were schooled in this prairie wilderness. She organized and taught the school herself for a year. Mattie Lou Miller also played the organ in their sod home. Her kids would sing songs as their wagon rolled across the fields.
Glenn's first instrument was a mandolin his father purchased for him. His older brother Deane was given a cornet. Later, Glenn traded the mandolin for a used trombone. According to his mother, during days working in the fields, Glenn would take his horn and walk down to the railroad tracks- away from the others- and play the horn alone.
As time went by the family moved to Missouri. His older brother Deane graduated from high school and played the trumpet in their town band. Young Glenn went along to the shows, and showed such desire to be a part of the band that its leader gave him a new horn to be paid for in shoe-shines.
The Miller's moved on to Fort Morgan, Colorado, where they lived in a series of rented homes. Glenn attended high school, playing on the football team and in the band. He was an outstanding athlete, named "Best Left End" in the state, but achieved no distinction as a musician. He worked a factory job at a sugar plant, and did other odd jobs before and after school. He graduated from High School in 1921.
Before starting college at the University of Colorado, Glenn lit out for Wyoming for a band gig that never happened, and in the following 20 months ended up playing with the band of Boyd Senter. Back at the University, he played in the band of Holly Moyer, a fellow student. During his college years, he completed only 3 of 16 semesters. He flunked a first year harmony course. He continued playing the trombone with the Moyers band on a tour through Wyoming, where he met Smith Ballew, a singer with the Jimmy Joy band of Texas fame. Ballew arranged for Glenn to audition for the Joy band, but Glenn didn't pass the audition. He returned to college at Boulder but dropped out after failing three out of five classes in 1923. He still played in the Moyer band, but then left town and went out on tour with a group led by Tom Watkins. This group went down to Mexico, and back up to Los Angeles. Glenn had always worked at becoming an excellent sight-reader, and was hired by house bandleader Max Fisher at the Forum Theater in Los Angeles, California, to play stage shows.
At about this time, a Chicago drummer named Ben Pollack was leading an excellent jazz-oriented band out at the Venice Pier near Los Angeles. Pollack's brother had died back home, and his family was asking that he return to the family fur business. He scouted for some talent to begin a new band in Chicago. While in Chicago with Pollack for the funeral, the band's lead sax player Gil Rodin found young Benny Goodman to replace another saxophone player in the band, Ted Mack. Mack's roommate at the time was another Coloradoan- Glenn Miller. Since the Pollack band was destined for the Midwest, it's current trombone player, Ross Dugat, who refused to leave California, needed replacing. Pollack went over to hear Miller play with Fisher's band at the Forum, and asked him if he'd like to go to Chicago. All Glenn said was "I don't care where I play".
Miller showed more interest in arranging for Pollack than playing. He had never had such an opportunity to work with first-rate musicians. His first attempts were pretty basic. He would listen to records by bands such as the Wolverine's, copy a few of their riffs, and place them into the context of his "new" arrangement.
The completely new Pollack band- formed of players found both in Los Angeles and Chicago- all returned to Chicago in 1924. Glenn and Benny Goodman roomed together. They took their respective double dates to the nightclubs. Glenn had bouts with alcohol from time to time. He could get into fights easily when he drank. But he also had an easy-going sociable side. He was an avid competitor by day, who played tennis and golf, always to win.
The Pollack band made a big splash at the Southmoor Ballroom in Chicago when it opened. Even Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer drove in from Indiana to hear them some nights. The band soon recorded for Victor records, using one of Glenn's arrangements. Being in Chicago in the 1920's, the band often worked for the Mob, which controlled the clubs during the alcohol prohibition years. Pollack's band traveled out to Los Angeles and back to Chicago on its first tour, and then opened at the swank Hotel Blackhawk. On their next Victor records, the band added trumpeter Jimmy McPartland and tenor saxophonist Bud Freeman to the lineup of Goodman, Miller and Pollack.
The band moved on to New York, but after a smart, but abbreviated, opening at The Little Club on W. 44th St., the big names from Chicago found themselves scuffling in Manhattan. Goodman and Miller shared an apartment on West 45th St. at The Whitby, and Benny later wrote "We used to 'borrow' empty milk bottles from in front of other apartments and turn them in so we could get enough money to buy some hotdogs for lunch". (1)
Glenn worked very hard at his dream of one day becoming a famous jazz trombonist, practicing and studying in his spare time. But once again Gil Rodin, discoverer of young Goodman, made another find for Pollack. This time it was trombonist Jack Teagarden. Rodin told Pollack about the extremely talented Texan, and Teagarden was hired. Rodin first heard "T" playing his slip horn without the bell attached- he was just playing the blues through his straight horn into an empty glass, but he made it sound sweet. Glenn knew his days were numbered when he heard "T". He gracefully left the Pollack band and took a position arranging for the staid, less than thrilling orchestra of Paul Ash.
Not long after leaving Pollack, Glenn married Helen Burger, of Boulder, Colorado. The two had parted ways when Glenn left college, but had left things open about marriage in the future. She had waited long enough, and was engaged to be married to another man in Boulder. As soon as Glenn heard about the engagement, he sent her a telegram asking her to come to New York and marry him. She did that, and they were married on Oct. 6th, 1928.
The scriptwriters of "The Glenn Miller Story" built a good part of the story around Helen and Glenn's relationship, but unlike most Hollywood treatments that throw in romance only to leaven the mix, this marriage really was what enabled Glenn to realize many of his aspirations. Glenn's friend George Simon put it succinctly:
"(Helen) would remain discreetly in the background, and yet, whenever Glenn had an important decision to make, he would turn to her, and she would help him...she was a master of tact and diplomacy, and especially good at explaining Glenn and his actions to others- without ever demeaning her husband...Whereas Glenn was cold and unemotional, Helen was warm and extremely considerate of other people's feelings." (2)
In 1929, Miller recorded 12 sides with a band led by both Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. It featured the hip young vocalist/scat singer Bing Crosby. That same year Glenn recorded with Red Nichols and his Five Pennies, which was one of the best white jazz groups. Although Jack Teagarden also played on those sessions, Glenn held his own, and did some notable solo work and fills.
In November of 1929, less than a month after the market crash, an original vocalist named Red McKenzie hired Glenn to play on two records that are now considered to be jazz classics: "Hello Nola" and "One Hour". The session is also historic for its integration of both black and white musicians in the studio. Besides Glenn were clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, guitarist Eddie Condon, drummer Gene Krupa and Coleman Hawkins on tenor saxophone. Glenn always felt that these two sides with "The Mound City Blue Blowers" represented his best-recorded trombone work.
In 1930, Glenn worked for Red Nichols in the pit band of George Gershwin's Broadway show "Girl Crazy". Gershwin gave Glenn credit for writing the brilliant ride-outs on the show's numbers, such as "I Got Rhythm", and "Embraceable You". Glenn worked with both Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa in that band. He also recorded more sides with the Nichols group, which included Adrian Rollini on several sides. Nichols requested 51 arrangements from Glenn in 1930, allowing the Millers to live comfortably in their apartment in Astoria, Queens. Glenn earned over $6,000 in 1930. (3)
Glenn cut 18 sides with Benny Goodman pick-up bands in 1931, and Goodman gave and playing work to Glenn whenever he could. Old chum and vocalist Smith Ballew re-entered the picture at this point, as he was organizing a new band, and called on Glenn to help him out with this task. Bunny Berigan was also hired for this band, as well as drummer Ray McKinley. The band worked stretches at hotels, and then would endure a lay-off until the next job. This was the bottom of the depression. McKinley recalled one of that band's gigs on New Years Eve, 1933 at a hotel in Kansas City. He related the story to writer George Simon:
"All kinds of things had been happening. (Pianist) Chummy (McGregor) had been in the lock-up with D.T.'s and Glenn got juiced- it was the only time I saw him like that. He could be a bad drunk, too. Nobody knows exactly how it started, but I understand Glenn had leaned over and grabbed J.D. Wade's legs (Wade was the lead trumpeter)...Anyway, they got into a real fight, right on the bandstand, and they were rolling on the floor and Frank Simeone, the little sax player, was trying to separate them and he was taking more blows than anyone." (4)
As 1934 began, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey were thinking about starting a band. Glenn had recorded a few sides with them backing Mildred Bailey during lay-offs in 1933. Glenn pushed them and helped bring in the talent. He would spend evenings in New York introducing the imported musicians to the nightspots. He also introduced them to some of his friends- like the still unknown clarinetist, Artie Shaw.
In 1934, the Dorsey band recorded 58 sides for Decca Records. Glenn oversaw much of the direction of these Dorsey sessions. He also got fed up pretty fast with the constant fighting between the brothers, and gave them his notice when he heard about another opportunity organizing an American band for English bandleader Ray Noble. Among his choices were trumpeters Charlie Spivak and Peewee Erwin, trombonist Will Bradley, reedmen Bud Freeman and Johnny Mince, pianist Claude Thornhill and guitarist George Van Eps. The band opened successfully at the new Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center.
On April 25, 1935 Miller went into a recording studio with a small band he put together for the date that included trumpeter Bunny Berigan, Eddie Miller on sax, and Johnny Mince on clarinet. It also featured a string quartet. These sides were the first released under Glenn Miller's own name. He never opened his trombone case on the date. At this crucial point, he chose to remain silent and lead. His future became clearer. He appreciated and recognized the talents of Goodman and Ellington, and admired the Jimmie Lunceford band. He knew he was no match. His jazz career as a striving soloist was over.
Although Glenn had already composed and recorded two forgettable original songs, his third attempt appears to have caught him off guard. One night at the Hotel New Yorker on 34th St. he announced to some musician friends on the stand in the Bob Crosby band that he had written a song and made an arrangement of it. The band played it, but its complex voicing of reeds and flutes threw them, and he was told that it really wasn't in that band's style, which was mostly Dixieland. Crosby band member Gil Rodin asked him to rearrange it for the band, and then they could play it easier. Glenn told Rodin that he wanted to get it published first. He waited four years, and then published and recorded "Moonlight Serenade" with his own band.
Back at the Rainbow Room, Ray Noble's novelty was wearing out. A tour of theaters didn't pay off and the band was asked to take a pay cut. Miller quit and led a walkout that included the band's finest musicians. To pay the rent, Glenn played radio dates with other groups, and recorded with Ben Pollack's band, which at the time was featuring a young Texas trumpeter named Harry James. Miller was making a comfortable living again, but as he surveyed the music scene he had to note that his friends Goodman, Shaw and the Dorsey's were all heading up orchestras of their own.
In his years as a sideman, he had noted how things got accomplished in the music business of the 30's. The bands were large, and the pay was low for those starting their own bands. Commercial success, it seemed, was a combination of talent, fresh ideas, showmanship and a hard-nosed attitude in all business dealings. He was ready to try out his perceptions. He started scouting talent for his own band. Right away musicians picked up on his authority in rehearsals. He knew how to ask a player exactly what he wanted from him musically, and he expected a serious answer. If there was any misunderstanding, he gave all he could to help make it clearer. Some of the men he had hired were young and comparatively green to the caliber of players he was used to. However, they were what he could afford, and he was determined to make them succeed. If there was a problem within a section of how to phrase the notes, he would stand in the middle of the men and play the phrase out on his horn.
Glenn signed with the Rockwell-O'Keefe Agency to book the band, and in March of 1937 the band recorded 6 sides in 3 hours for Decca Records. On May 7th the new Miller orchestra opened at the Terrace Room of the Hotel New Yorker as a substitute for another band. This first appearance paid $397.50. Of that amount Glenn got $48.00. (5)
They were then off to the Raymoor Ballroom in Boston for a 2 week stretch, and some one-nighters on the way back to the aforementioned $200.00 gig at Playland Casino in Rye, N.Y. Next the band went down to New Orleans to play a successful gig at the Roosevelt Hotel. George Simon, in his book "Glenn Miller and His Orchestra" describes the situation Glenn faced at this point:
"The band opened at the Roosevelt in New Orleans on June 17. The hours were rough: 6:30 pm to 2:00 am on weekdays and to 3:00 am on Saturdays, plus afternoon sessions from 2:30 to 5:30 on Saturdays and Sundays. The men received scale of $73.30 a week, which wasn't bad for those days. But after deducting their salaries, commissions, and union and social security payments from the total of $1,250 he was receiving weekly for the band, Glenn wound up with a grand total of $5.75 per week for himself. Out of this came his living expenses and money for arrangements and various other incidentals." (6)
And this was to be the first Miller band's commercial height. After New Orleans it was all downhill. The drinking behavior of the band, led by some key members, was affecting performance quality. There were also related morale problems for the first time. At one extended gig in Minnesota, a killer schedule of daily performances starting at 12:30 pm and ending at 1:30 am, still left Miller in the red by almost $20.00 a week. The drummer spot was the biggest musical challenge. A series of players just couldn't move the band along the way Glenn wanted.
The band's champion drinker and lead clarinetist posed another problem. Although he knew how to play clarinet very well and was a valued asset, he found his doubled instrument parts on the saxophone hard to master. Often times, he would sit in the section playing nothing while the four other saxophones played the song. Glenn decided to end this problem by giving him the tenor sax lead to play on his clarinet. The sound he achieved with this single clarinet playing higher over the rest of the saxophones became the "Miller Sound".
By December of 1937, the economics of running the band were no longer making sense. Indicative of how bad things were within the group was a dismal five hour recording session at Decca that produced only two songs. Most bands at this time could record four sides in three hours. Things got worse. The drinking was out of control. A drunken band member totaled one of the band's two cars. Men were fired or quit the band constantly. Glenn asked one trusted band member, who happened to be a fourth year medical school student on leave to make some money- to keep an eye on two hell-raising musicians and make sure they were sober for the next gig. The three of them rode together in an unheated car in New England and almost froze- until they started drinking. The trusted "keeper" was so drunk he passed out when he arrived at the overheated dance hall.
Helen Miller became seriously ill and barely survived major surgery. Near the end of its existence, the first Glenn Miller Orchestra found itself sliding over icy roads up to Brunswick, Maine to play a fraternity dance at Bowdoin College for just $125.00. On New Year's Eve, 1937-'38, the band was given its notice by Glenn. Its last performance was two days later at the Ritz Ballroom in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He had lost over $18,000 on the first band.
Glenn went back to New York broke. He took a part time job with Tommy Dorsey's outfit playing a weekly commercial for Raleigh cigarettes to pay the rent, and he and Helen lived quietly in Astoria, Queens. He had nights at home, and a normal schedule.
In the spring of 1938 things must have looked different. Many of the disbanded musicians wanted Glenn to organize a new group. Glenn was in no big rush. He was doing fine without all that. Then, one night that spring in a small Cromwell, Connecticut diner, sax player Hal McIntire, a "discovery" of Glenn's who had played in the first group- and who had stored all of the Miller band's equipment at his family's farm in Cromwell- talked Glenn into it. Why there and then who can say. But that's where the second, and very famous Glenn Miller Orchestra was born.
An indicator of how much trust was placed in Glenn at this second starting-point of his career was the fact that Helen's parents back in Boulder, Colorado. actually took out a second mortgage on their home to lend money to their son-in-law.
The new group Miller assembled lost "The Prima Donna" types in favor of younger, eager musicians that he could develop. Glenn was all business this time. He took a shortcut to distinction musically when he decided to feature the clarinet over reed sound, easily identifiable to the radio listener. Glenn hired a young clarinet player named Willie Schwartz to play the key leading role of the new band's sound. Schwartz later told George Simon his approach to playing the Miller clarinet parts:
"It's different from both the legitimate and the jazz techniques. It's louder and stronger, and it requires an entirely different way of thinking about playing the horn. You have to think of it more like a lead saxophone, and it took me a long time to develop that approach.... I realized that I was playing entirely differently than I had been taught. It turned out to be a different instrument for me." (7)
Glenn also took the advice of Gene Krupa and hired tenor sax player Tex Beneke, who he groomed as a soloist and singing star. "Glenn was strict. Everybody knows that. He was tough on musicians, all right. He used to insist on proper haircuts, proper shines, both feet on the floor, and the same amount of white showing in every man's breast-pocket handkerchief… and he also used to insist upon proper enunciation. We had to sing 'Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree,' not 'Don't Sit Under the Yapple Tree." (8)
Vocalist Ray Eberle, brother of already established singer Bob Eberle, was hired in the most interesting way- he simply walked past Glenn's table at the Hotel New Yorker looking so much like his brother that Glenn called him over to his table and after a few questions, hired him on the spot. Ray had never sung with a band before.
Glenn took the new band back to open at Boston's Raymoor Ballroom. The night before they opened Glenn read the whole crew the riot act, which in shorthand was this: Anyone who gets out of line, complains about not getting solos, or drinks on the job is out- immediately. He told them he knew he had a reputation for giving leaders he had worked for a hard time, but nobody was going to give him a hard time from now on.
In the autumn of 1938 the Miller band signed with RCA's Bluebird label. Sales were slow. Glenn was ready to walk away from the idea of ever having a band. Tommy Dorsey was lending Glenn a lot of money to keep things going. He believed the loans entitled him to a piece of the band if it met success. Then Cy Shribman, a shrewd ballroom operator from Boston who had followed Glenn's ups and downs with interest got wind of Dorsey's unusual interest in the new band, and decided to underwrite the Miller group. In March 1939, with record sales picking up, the band went into Frank Daily's Meadowbrook, a ballroom in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. The Meadowbrook had a national radio wire- so a large audience was hearing the band regularly from a well-known nightspot.
That spring, the band got the summer contract to play at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York. Another popular venue, another national radio hook up. By the end of the summer of 1939, the band's version of "In The Mood" was a top-selling record and the band was the hottest new name in the music business. Miller scored 17 Top Ten hits that year, including his theme song "Moonlight Serenade.
That autumn, Glenn signed a contract with the Chesterfield cigarette brand for a radio program to air three times a week from the Hotel Pennsylvania. The string of hit records, personal appearances and eventually two movies, "Sun Valley Serenade" and "Orchestra Wives" kept the money rolling in. In 1940, the band scored another 31 Top Ten hits, including "Tuxedo Junction" and "In The Mood". This was more than three times as many hits as the second most successful recording artist of the year, Tommy Dorsey. Glenn was presented with the record industry's first Gold Record in 1941 for his hit "Chattanooga Choo Choo". He also charted another 11 Top Ten hits in 1941. Within a very brief amount of time, he was a millionaire, and not shy about telling people so.
Tommy Dorsey was furious at the Shribman intervention that had made it all possible without him. He put together a band headed by Bob Chester and supplied him with arrangements exactly like Miller's to get even. Bob Chester never became a #1 band, but it made Tommy feel better.
When WWII began, the band added army camps to their regular tours. The band recorded another 11 Top Ten hits, including "String of Pearls". In 1942, Glenn walked away from his $20,000 a week salary and enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was made a captain. It took him two years to convince the brass to let him take a band overseas to play near the action for troops. In the meantime he was stationed in New Haven, Connecticut, and was featured on a CBS radio show out of New York for eleven months called "I Sustain The Wings", which featured music and drama to encourage listeners to join the Army Air Force.
The band got to England in the summer of 1944. They were stationed in London at first, and lived through the nightly bombing of the city. Glenn wanted the band moved out to the country so it could survive long enough to get to play in the forward front lines closer to the fighting. They were spending most nights in the BBC basement bomb shelter. The day after the band left London, a bomb scored a direct hit on the hotel they had been living in.
Stationed out in the country at an airbase, the band moved around England playing other airfields, hospitals and troop bases to great, appreciative service crowds. In less than a year, they had played over 800 performances, 500 of these were radio broadcasts heard by millions- many on global short wave signals heard back in the U.S. The band made more than 300 personal appearances at concerts and dances, with a gross attendance of over 600,000. (9)
On December 15, Miller, 40 years old, boarded a small Norseman plane in bad weather to fly to Paris, which had been liberated ten weeks earlier. He was going ahead of the band to make arrangements to play for troops on leave from the recent heavy fighting and in hospitals.
As Glenn's plane flew over the Channel, it was spotted by two crew members flying high above aboard an R.A.F. Lancaster bomber, returning from an aborted mission on Dec. 15, 1944. The bomber had just jettisoned its bombs into the designated area of water below, preparing for a landing in England. "The bombardier, who would have had the best view, asked the navigator whether he could see the bombs exploding. The navigator got up and looked out of the little dome and spotted this aircraft, a Norseman...The rear gunner, who was looking around all the time, saw it tip up and go into the sea...he then asked on the intercom, "Did you see that kite go in?" A kite is slang for a small plane. When asked why it had taken him nearly 40 years to come forward, the bomber's pilot claimed to have forgotten the incident until more recent investigations put the pieces together for him.
"When we got back from that raid," he explained, "it was an aborted raid, so we didn't go in for our normal debriefing. Don't think me unsympathetic or callous, but when I heard of the plane going down, I would have said that he shouldn't have been there--forget him. My own concern was getting my own airplane home safely. We were fighting a war, and we lost thousands of planes. We had some pretty grim raids after that, and they didn't announce Miller's death until later. It had gone completely from my mind." (10)
On December 23, 1944, Helen Miller received a telegram from the War Dept. at her Tenafly, New Jersey home reporting Glenn's lost flight. She had been enjoying the holiday season with their two adopted children, one of whom Glenn hadn't yet seen. The story was announced in the press the following morning.
On Christmas Day, 1944, Helen wrote to Don Haynes, the band's business manager, who had been awaiting Glenn's flight in Paris:
"Dear Don-
Polly (Don's wife) has been here with me since day before yesterday when I got my terrible wire from the War Dept. It was such a horrible shock to me but after I thought it all over it will take more than a "Missing in Flight" message to get me down. Believe Glenn will turn up sometime--maybe not for months, maybe real soon--but if you hear from him first tell him I'm fine and just waiting for him." (11)
References
(1) Simon, George. Glenn Miller & His Orchestra. Da Capo Press Edition. New York, NY, 1974. P.45 (2) ibid, P.49 (3) P.56 (4) P.62 (5) P. 88(6) P.90 (7) P.122 (8) PP.125-26 (9) Statistics from Glenn Miller Orchestra website (10) Thomas, Jo.12/31/85 R.A.F. Bombs May Have Downed Glenn Miller Plane. The New York Times. (11) Simon; ibid P.416
"Somewhere in England, 1944...", Glenn Miller conducts an open air concert
Click on these images for full size. Stan Getz
Miller Band featured at San Diego theater
Captain Glenn Miller
Gene Krupa
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