It was the worst of times – war and cold war – yet it was the best of times in the music business.
The Big Band Days, says author and former musician Jack Behrens about his new memoir and source book of the same name, were a wonderful chunk of Americana that continues to live today in different formats.
The swing era, Behrens and others believe, was simply too short.
"Jack recognizes . . . that music cannot survive as a museum piece and his nostalgic documentation of big band leaders, movies and ballrooms segue into a detailed listing on current jazz festivals, swing organizations, web sites and educational resources . . . As fond as I am of rock’n’roll, I wish the garage bands I played in had been struggling to play stock arrangements on ‘In the Mood’ or ‘Take the A Train’ instead of the top ten of 1965. I fantasize at times about growing up when my father did, when swing was the thing," says Monk Rowe, composer/arranger/bandleader and director of the popular Hamilton College (NY) Jazz Archive.
"Jack writes from a double perspective, as a fan and as a swing musician himself. He weaves stories and anecdotes from his extensive interview that illuminate the role of the well known and the hardly known. His own experiences as a young drummer were shared by countless sidemen whose names never made it to the back of the album cover."
Big Band Days gives you an up-close-and-personal look at the musicians of another day and their lives on the road but it also offers you an interactive way to connect with the music because it really didn’t go away. The book includes a complete listing of monthly jazz and swing festivals throughout the country and how to contact them, where to turn your radio dial to hear swing and big band sounds, where to study big bad, jazz and swing, internet sources about people instruments and events and a myriad of other information about the era.
And, says Monk Rowe, you just have to take the fifty-question big band trivia test at the end of the book. "It’s a hoot."
Woody Herman told jazz critic and radio host Ralph J. Gleason on the "Jazz Casuals" broadcasts of the 1960s that his band didn’t change arrangements when they played the usual dance gigs. They usually set aside about a half hour to 45 minutes of the four hour performance for concerts when they were on the road, he said.
Such "concerts" would have been unheard of for a touring band in the 1930s and even the ‘40s when danceland owners wanted soft dance music . . . nothing else. Major big bands on the road in the 1950s, by contrast, were already experimenting with a mixture of dance music and other entertainment. The reason?
Lots of them. It allowed the band to feature better paid soloists and vocal groups and resolve the ego problems some bandleaders and sidemen faced from night to night. Listen to Ralph Burns, pianist, composer and arranger for the Herman band as he reminisced in 1993 about the very popular instrumental "Early Autumn" he scored.
"When Stan Getz (tenor saxophonist) joined Herman there were no numbers written for him . . . and he played tunes written for others and became ‘remorseful’. . . he kept after Woody to get him some numbers and so I when I had to write an end to the ‘Summer Sequence" score---a larger piece to record---Woody said: ‘Ralph, will you please, please give him something to play on this?’ That’s how Early Autumn came about. I wrote every change in the book on it and the first time Stan played it was just like magic. . . Here’s to Stan and Woody up there."
Big band musician Bud Shank remembers how Stan Kenton helped him develop his own creative abilities. "Stan tried to bring out your best," he once told a radio interviewer. "I was hired to be lead alto saxophone player and I got paid to do that in the section. Art Pepper was the soloist but Stan knew that I wanted a chance to solo too and he found ways to give me chances even though it wasn’t what I was hired to do. He did the same for guys in the trumpet and trombone sections too. He was like a father figure to many of us."
The ‘50s performances gave bands the chance to feature singles and albums in the record stores (later in the 1970s and 1980s, bands took their tapes, T-shirts and other memorabilia along to sell). Band personnel could show off their talent, too. Butch Stone, the baritone saxophonist with Les Brown, was a comic singer, for example. Trumpeter ClarkTerry developed scat singing or "mumbling" to a fine art and performed it everywhere from the "Tonight" show band to a Whitesboro High School, NY Jazz Festival. Leaders even got into the act; Dick Jurgens could always be counted on for a few laughs, Harry James loved to pick up the bongos on Latin numbers and Stan Kenton, who told radio interviewers of his early shyness and stage fright in front of a microphone, could burst into a monologue to fill time or amuse himself. One of his best occurred when he was changing personnel and musical direction. He called it "This is an Orchestra!" but studio producers at Capitol took this Bill Russo orchestration and called it "Prologue."
Sometimes, band warm ups before engagements were like board room brain sessions where new ideas emerged. Shorty Rogers, the talented trumpeter/composer and arranger, remembered how such "head" numbers emerged with the Herman organization. "One of the most frequently played jazz numbers was an old standard called ‘Fine and Dandy’ and the guys in Woody’s band would get together back stage and just have fun doing it in jam sessions," Shorty told a Woody Herman Band Reunion crowd in Newport Beach, CA in 1993. "Woody came to me and asked if I would write a piece of music and use the chord changes of ‘Fine and Dandy.’ He said ‘we’ll call it ‘Keen and Peachy.’ I wrote the first chorus and I think Woody talked to Ralph Burns and he wrote part of it, too. While the crowd roared, Burns protested he didn’t remember a thing Shorty was talking about.
Yet, some bands, in their attempt to create and change, ran into stubborn opposition.
Kenton led the list. Trying to explain his very progressive style of the late 1940s and early 1950s, Kenton told a Palladium audience that the band’s "long works" of the "Innovations in Modern Music Group" which featured 40 strings and modernistic arrangements like Bob Graettinger’s ‘City of Glass’ concepts, might separate his loyal fans. "The fellow there has been so much heated controversy over in the music business is Bob Graettinger. Some people say it’s not music. . . some people say it’s great music. . . some people say I can’t find a melody. . . and some people say there is no melody, listen for sound."
What a way to introduce a program to those who came out to dance! Kenton refused to change his innovative trend. He lost money on several big orchestral enterprises but he never gave up his dream. He recognized his need to please fans that came to dance but his heart was certainly going in another direction. A poor kid from Kansas by way of California, he made money and, said Ed Gabel, a road manager in the early days, he spent most of his wealth on his 12 bands.
While the big band business was experiencing a noticeable economic slump in 1951. . . My aspirations for becoming a road musician soared. Late the year before, I had started work with Dick Trimble’s territorial band and, at the same time, acquired "wheels" (my mother’s bright red Dodge convertible which became mine to use since my mother didn’t drive) and I was making the awesome sum of $20 a gig. The band had a regular Friday night YMCA dance at the armory in Lancaster, OH and we would pick up another gig on Saturdays at special Elks Club events. Dick’s impeccable reputation for good dance music gave us high school proms as well as plush country club outings each year during the six I played.
Like many others, I reluctantly left for college (Bowling Green State University) in the fall, 1951, but it would take me time to hatch a plan to get my drums to campus. Returning World War II veterans crammed every land grant college in the country and, consequently, living space in a dorm was down to three drawers in one chest in a temporary barracks hastily constructed under the concrete stadium bleachers. You had to vacate Saturday afternoons in the fall or live through what sounded like explosions on the roof especially when either team scored. My bunkmates and I had the added attraction of a drain pipe beside our beds so we knew when the quarters ended, too. By the end of the semester, however, I had met a few other musicians and gotten involved with fraternity life. When I came back for my second term I had a room off campus that permitted me to return with my big Slingerland set. But I had to put a covert operation in place to make it work. I transported the set piece by piece in unmarked bags and boxes past a wary landlord. The bass drum was stored at the fraternity house.
I played with so many "no name" groups, trios and big bands that, looking back, the only memories are of guys like Vinny, Blue Flame, Jim, Fran and others who have since faded with the years. Each group was an experience. There was the noon I was called at the fraternity by a friend in one of the big bands in Toledo who said I could play with their 16 piece group that night. The regular drummer, a schooled professional, had gone south for National Guard duty. Could I read? I said "yes" but I should have been honest and said "no."
When I got to the gig I discovered that one of the numbers for the upcoming holidays was a special arrangement of the "Nutcracker Suite" which called for kettles, not tom toms. I had never played kettles except to fool around on them while in high school. I gave myself a crash course and when we finished the quick rehearsal I sensed the leader was as troubled as I was. Too late to get someone else. Thanks to a good memory which stored the score in some part of my brain after I heard the number once . . . I brought it off. I was good enough, the leader said, to work for him again. The pay? We ended up with $7.50 each for four hours. Three dollars for gas and I think I made $4.50 an hour that night!
The Toledo leader’s experience was typical of the national dilemma among big bands to find and keep good players in a rapidly declining segment of the music industry. Alto saxophonist Shank, a Dayton, OH native, told the Wayne State University radio station WDET in the late 1950s how he had arrived in Los Angeles in 1946 and connected with Charley Barnet before joining the Stan Kenton band in December, 1949. He said the Selective Service System had already contacted him and Kenton’s staff had been able to put it off while the band was touring. In 1952, however, selective service tried to draft him again when he was 25 and "they found out I was 4-F and so they let me go. What a bunch of nonsense!" he told the interviewer. His biggest thrill? "That first Kenton Concert . . . the Innovations Concert in January, 1950. It’s what I joined the band to do and it was a thrill I’ll never forget."
The United States was at war again; this time, Korea, 1950, and the draft was reaching deep into a depleted manpower pool. Meanwhile, colleges and universities were still very reluctant to recognize swing or jazz. There were no minor leagues for big bands to recruit from really. Jazz historian Monk Rowe’s interviews with a number of players from the period left vivid impressions about the decline of such music.
"Lots of the fellows I interviewed got their start in their teens because more experienced musicians had been drafted," he told a Central New York radio audience. But other factors influenced changing tastes, too. "Youth is always looking for something new. It’s the same today. Teenagers in the early to mid 1950s listening to what was their parents’ music simply said let’s find our own. Must be something in their genes. One of my interviewees told me with a half smile and scowl ‘If I could I’d ring Elvis Presley’s neck!’"
Discordant notes that masked melody were replacing the danceable music with a familiar beat. "Yet dance music was still popular among college age young people. Sandi and Bruce Haning of Lancaster, OH, were among the millions who couldn’t wait to get on the dance floors whether the music was a dreamy slow one or a good swing number. The music took away the worries of a Cold War, a struggle to start housekeeping and to make a living.
I have this wonderful memory of a trip from Bowling Green to Finney Chapel, Oberlin College, outside Cleveland on a wintry night, March 2, 1953, to hear the new sounds of a West Coast ranch hand who became a polished new age piano player. Listen carefully to the album. . . you can hear me clapping strenuously from my 2nd row seat! Pianist Dave Brubeck and his quartet featuring Paul Desmond, Ron Crotty and Lloyd Davis were worth a year of fraternity parties and giving up beer money for a month to pay for the gas for the trip. Later, I read of the internal squabble on campus about bringing such innovative music to a conservatory best known for the classics and classical training. The two-hour program was a terrific success and resulted in the Oberlin College Jazz Club planning three more concerts the next year.
Brubeck’s strength? His commitment to his own music was more important than commercial successful. For example, he had to battle record company execs to put Take Five, a number often considered a Brubeck signature piece and most creative, in his albums. They wanted to feature more conventional numbers with titles people knew. Later he went against those who argued he could make more money on tour, and wrote a Broadway musical about cultural exchange that was never commercially pursued. Brubeck told a PBS audience in December, 2001, that his dream was far different than that of musicians of the big band era who sought to get on the road with traveling groups. "What I really wanted to do? Play area spots at union scale and be close to home and family," he smiled. His Connecticut home satisfies his needs to day. It has not one but seven pianos!
Was there a significant difference in players and playing as rock’n’roll bands became prevalent?
"Players I talked to of the early days placed great importance on the individual sound. Fellows like Sweets Edison (trumpet) believe that after a few notes you should really know whose playing. I think older guys don’t hear that today. They believe today’s players are more schooled, better readers and have a better variety of skills. I don’t think that today’s musicians are more talented. Guys like Lester Young, who supposedly didn’t know chords at all, could play marvelously. His talent was innate. Those are really the differences generation to generation, I suppose," Rowe believes.
Few seem to remember the dawn of the 1950s. While American factories had downsized in 1946, they had to be mobilized again much like the beginning of the war to transform tanks built in the same plants into autos and weapons to washing machines. Furthermore while our social lives continued without blackouts and we returned to standard time zones, we kept Summer Daylight Savings Time. It was also the beginning of America’s so-called "Silent Generation," teenagers who were expected to be seen. . . not heard.
An older, wiser generation that had fought the "war to end all wars" was in command. Youngsters could dream, of course. Many did. There was a preoccupation with Sloan Wilson’s novel "Man With the Gray Flannel Suit." The story was about how the war had created a new kind of social economic fabric that veterans had to adjust to in post-war America. Author George Orwell, whose book "1984" predicted a future ruled by telescreens and automation and was required reading in my college literature classes, was dead at 46, days after the book was published. We never had the chance to discover the true meaning until years later.
