Marty Paich - Arranging for Vocalists

© Introduction Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The following article appeared in the September 8, 1958 edition of Downbeat. I am bringing it up on Substack as a companion piece to a revision of a much larger feature on Marty and his music which I posted to my JazzProfiles blog and which you can locate by going here.

The above photo was taken in 1955 at the Tradewinds, one of the many, small here-today-gone-tomorrow clubs in Los Angeles that featured Jazz combos in a “Tiki Room” setting [checkout the bamboo blinds backdrop] along with barely edible “Chinese” food and watered down “Polynesian” libations [think Singapore Sling].

For whatever reasons, the Tiki heads and wooden torches at the entrance coupled with poorly lit, bamboo-laced interiors were supposed to appeal to the many service men and women who had served in the South Pacific during the Second World War.

In the snap, Marty Paich is seated at the piano, along with bassist Harry Babasin [holding the cello], and two of the major movers and shapers of what came to be known as West Coast Jazz: trumpeter Shorty Rogers and drummer Shelly Manne.

And while credit is certainly due to Shorty and Shelly for the enormous footprint they left on Jazz on the West Coast, Marty also deserves recognition as a founder of sorts for his contributions as an arranger and composer of the “West Coast Sound.”

Marty’s arrangements for Stan Kenton, Mel Tormé, Art Pepper, the Four Freshmen, the Dave Pell Octet, along with those for his own big band recordings opened up a whole new world of sonorities for the music on “The Left Coast” in the 1950s.

Sometimes referred to as the Fourth Element or Atom after melody, harmony and rhythm, sonorities or textures refer to the way the music collectively sounds to the ear.

“Texture” is the word that is used to refer to the actual sound of the music. This encompasses the instruments with which it is played; its tonal colors; its dynamics; its sparseness or its complexity.

Texture involves anything to do with the sound experience and it is the word that is used to describe the overall impression that a piece of music creates in our emotional imagination.

Often our first and most lasting impression of a composition is based on that work’s texture, even though we are not aware of it. Generally, we receive strong musical impressions from the physical sound of any music and these then determine our emotional reaction to the work.

When it comes to Marty Paich’s arrangements, the texture is immediately identifiable.

This early-in-his-career article is a treat and helps introduce us to a major orchestrator whose work would go on to grace the albums of such major vocalists as Ray Charles, Sammy Davis, Jr., Aretha Franklin, Barbara Streisand, and Michael Jackson in the years ahead.

It’s also instructive in that Marty understood very early in his career that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach to vocal arranging.

“He is a lucky piano player who can consider himself retired at 33. If Marty Paich takes that view of his career as a professional jazz pianist, it is only because he has firmly consolidated his activities in the more diverse and demanding field of arranging.

Paich does not restrict himself to jazz arranging and like other young writers versatile enough to do so, he turns out charts that range from backgrounds for singers Jeri Southern or Mel Tormé to motion picture scores for a variety of vocalists. In view then, of his present predominant activity, Paich must be considered one of the most accomplished arrangers in the profession when it comes to writing for vocalists.

In the last few years he has been busier in that field than in the jazz arena and finds such activity as satisfying, in its way, as straight jazz arranging.

A native of Oakland, Calif., Paich has been a Hollywood resident for the last 10 years, since he was discharged from the army. He regards his profession with an unleavened seriousness, probably founded on honest consciousness of his worth as a musician. One is struck, moreover, with his mature understanding of his own musical methods and his approach to arranging in general.

Speaking of his primary activity as a vocalists’ arranger, his round, bearded face impassive, Marty reveals some bluntly expressed opinions.

“This type of writing has a technique all its own,” he explained. “Personally. I feel that it's been done rather sloppily over the last 10 years. Too many big, shouting bands overpowering singers is my chief complaint. My own type of writing requires a sensitive singer. That's why I prefer writing for jazz-style singers.” On the basis of the half-dozen LP albums they’ve already collaborated on, Tormé and Paich would appear to bring out the best in each other. Since the original Dek-tette album for Bethlehem, Marty has scored further Tormé records for that label; there's a new album due out on Tops [Prelude to a Kiss Tops LP L1615] and yet another now in preparation for Verve [Swings Shubert Alley– MG VS-2132].

“Mel swings so nicely,’ the arranger said enthusiastically. “I feel I can write anything for him. With many other singers I get the feeling I have to hold back. With Mel I feel pretty much at ease.”

Paich said he feels strongly that . . there’s too much emphasis on writing that permits bands to clutter up a number and get in a singer's way.”

“I like to take an arrangement and go over it with the singer so he or she feels what I'm trying to do,” he explained. "You see, an arranger must understand the singer and vice versa — if you’re to get the best possible result. From the arranger’s standpoint, he must actually make a study of the singer he’s working with — how he or she thinks, the personality, the quality of the voice. All this you must fully understand before you sit down and write.

“Before I even begin to plan charts for a singer, I sit down for a week and listen carefully to what the singer’s previously done. I go to hear a vocalist in person whenever possible. This is really the best way to capture a personality in music.”

An important consideration in Paich's work, he said, is that “certain singers are in jazz, too, and someone’s got to write for them. I certainly don’t mean this to sound patronizing or anything. Fact is, though, in the last couple of years I’ve grown to feel that I can really help singers.”

Basic to Marty’s psychological approach to this work is his desire “to really believe in a singer before I even begin to think of writing for one. I love to feel that a vocalist I’m going to work with has something of value to say. It makes it so much easier.”

Before he became immersed in the flood of writing chores that is now his bread and butter, his last piano playing job was as accompanist to actress Dorothy Dandridge on her tour of Havana, London, and Paris in 1956. On this globe-trotting assignment he also functioned as conductor-arranger for Miss Dandridge's club and theater appearances.

“That,” said Paich, “was my last trip out of town — period.”

A forthcoming album, felt by Paich to be of particular interest, is due for release soon on Cadence [Marty Paich Big Band CLP-3010 reissued on CD as Marty Paich: The Picasso of Big Band, Candid CCD-79031]. It will be an all-instrumental record, and he did all the arranging, plus the composition of one original for the date.

But what he feels to be the interesting thing about the album is that the scoring, instead of being for conventional brass and saxes, is for three trumpets and two trombones, with a small group in front consisting of rhythm section, trumpet, tenor, baritone, alto, and valve trombone.

“I found this setup most flexible,” he said, “and it gave me an opportunity to experiment with what amounts to a new jazz orchestral idea. It came off very satisfactorily, too.”

In addition to Marty’s many arrangements in the book of the Dave Pell octet (featured by the Pell group on about five albums for various labels), he has arrangements being played by Stan Kenton, Les Brown, and Count Basie. (“Basie has two originals of mine, and I don’t even know their titles!”)

Last year, when he was appointed music director of Mode Records— a west coast concern rather quiescent of late — he supervised and played on a conglomeration of dates. These albums are expected to appear on supermarket racks before long.

Harking back to his years of study in the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music under Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, whence he emerged with baccalaureate and masters degrees in composition, Paich today has but one recommendation to the young musician: “Keep playing and studying always. This is the only way to progress. Whether in jazz or classical, study. There’s no other way.””