Part 3 - Shelly Manne: The Lighthouse and Shorty Rogers Giants Years
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Over in the Hollywood film studios, the music contractors were starting to realize that they just might have struck upon something in using jazz musicians who were versatile and could read well. Laurindo Almeida was already doing film work, and this year he was asked if he could play the guitar for a film called The Rube. He could and he did. Shorty was contacted and contracted for another film called Private Hell 36. This was another Leith Stevens project, but this time the music would play a less important role in the film and very little of it is audible. Nevertheless, it was another notch in the jazz player's belt. They were trying to gel into the very lucrative studio scene. Making money playing jazz had never been easy. Bobby Heifer was the music contractor at Universal International Studios and knew Shelly and decided to take a chance. Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window had been completed and was ready for the music. It was a fairly difficult session, in that there were quite a few complex drum parts. Most of the music was "source music," i.e., from "a radio across the courtyard," but there were some challenging percussion parts. Shelly did the session, won the confidence of Heifer, and, as usual, the friendship of many of the studio players. From that point on. Shelly was Heifer's drummer and it was the beginning of a long studio career for the jazz drummer.
Shelly had won the Down Beat poll five years in a row, the Metronome poll three years in a row, and Shorty and the Giants were playing Zardi's, The Haig, the Crescendo and a number of other L.A. area clubs. The transplanted East Coast drummer had made some movie soundtracks and it looked like there would be a lot more. He was able to make a good living in one place and still play the jazz he loved. The fans loved him and so did the press. He was constantly featured in the area papers, Down Beat regularly interviewed him; what more could a guy want? In the back of his mind, Shelly kept the idea for a jazz club, a place where musicians could play their own music unencumbered by worry about rude patrons, owners griping about what they wanted to hear and bad pianos. But that would have to wait. Shelly Manne was about to begin a period in his life when he couldn't possibly take all the playing opportunities offered him.
Rear Window and Private Hell 36 were released in early 1954. In January, the 33-year-old drummer recorded with the Russ Garcia Orchestra featuring a singer with a name that sounded like a 1950s TV show, Johnny Holiday.
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