The West Coast Jazz Scene - Downbeat Special Report

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

Jazz West

What is West Coast Jazz?

Is there an identifiable "west coast school"? Or is the situation pretty much as George Crater recently hinted when he asked. "If an east coast jazz musician is playing jazz on the west coast, is he an east coast jazz musician playing east coast jazz on the west coast or is he an east coast jazz musician playing west coast jazz on the west coast or is he a west coast jazz musician playing east coast jazz …?

If there ever was such a thing as a west coast school, it seems largely to be dissipated. And so, at this time, with attention focused on America's western shores by the Monterey and Hollywood Bowl jazz festivals, Down Beat presents a survey of Jazz in the west.

I think both the timing and the subject of this Down Beat Special Report falls under the heading of Mark Twain’s “the news of my death had been greatly exaggerated.”

But if it was somewhat premature, it did identify a larger issue for Jazz, not only on the West Coast, but Jazz nationally because the fact was that during the 1960s Jazz lost its national audience.

Developments within the music itself as well as the advent of Rock ‘n Roll, Folk Music, popular gospel and rhythm and blues singers such as Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles turned the public’s attention away from Jazz which was becoming more and more “artistic” but, in the process, more and more arcane.

In fairness, the special report does touch on a number of factors negatively influencing the behavior of Jazz fans in Los Angeles and those which aided and abetted the viability of Jazz in The Bay area.

However, I think it goes a bit too far in minimizing the quality of Jazz in Los Angeles due to the heavy involvement of those musicians in studio work.

I mean, I think Ralph J. Gleason gets somewhat carried away with -

“One wonders this, too: At what point in their struggle with the little black book and the promise of security it holds does the spark of true creativity begin to wane?

Does this mean an artist must starve to fulfill himself in his art? The idea is absurd. A square meal never hurts the urge to create. Nor even a swimming pool, for that matter. The tragedy is simply that pressure changes people and tears the truth from souls until only rationalization remains.” [Seriously?]

Having lived in Los Angeles since the late 1950s, I can personally attest to the fact that the Jazz was still very vibrant and although it was dispersed throughout its suburbs, there were still plenty of clubs and concert venues in the San Fernando Valley, Watts and along the coast in Santa Monica, Long Beach and San Diego in which it was performed with intensity and excitement.

If anything, the studio work provided a way to pay the bills which subsidized the meager wages of Jazz gigs, thus freeing musicians from the stressors of the Jazz Life with its constant travel, uncomfortable accommodations, bad food and dicey club owners.

Published in the November 12, 1959 issue of the magazine it’s also important to keep in mind that the scope of the piece goes well beyond Los Angeles and San Francisco and considers the state of “Jazz in Films” [notwithstanding Gleason’s disparaging remarks about the genre] and “A Look at Jazz in Las Vegas.”

© -Down Beat, copyright protected; all rights reserved, the author claims no right of copyright usage.

The story of jazz on the west coast today could well be summarized in a short tale of two cities—Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Indeed, two succinct phrases, recurring more frequently of late, seem to suffice for some: "San Francisco is swinging;" "Los Angeles is dying."

Like all generalizations, there is surface accuracy in each of these statements. Indubitably, there is a great deal of jazz club activity in the Bay Area. Conversely, it is a sad fact that the fingers of one hand are more than enough to number the L.A. spots.

Ironically, in "swinging San Francisco" there is virtually total absence of jazz recording, whereas "dying L.A " is almost on par with New York as the nation's center of such activity. The multiple reasons for this anomaly - geographical, economic and cultural —are such that the limitation of space here bars thorough analysis.

So far as San Francisco is concerned, the city's current jumping condition has roots in many years of steady buildup of jazz interest. Some 15 years ago, a disc jockey named Jimmy Lyons was broadcasting the message over the local NBC radio station, and in more recent years Pat Henry boosted the popularity of his jazz show on KROW to the point that he is now co-owner of the all-jazz FM station KJAZ.

Today, the Bay Area boasts weekly columns on jazz in three metropolitan newspapers, the Chronicle (Ralph J, Gleason, four times a week), the Examiner (C. H. "Brick" Garrigues. once a week) and the Oakland Tribune (Russ Wilson, once a week). It is significant, too, that the first nationally syndicated newspaper column devoted to jazz comes from the typewriter of Berkeley-based Gleason.

Basic to the thriving condition of San Francisco's jazz club business is the simple geographical fact that all the niteries are located within a radius of a square (if the reader will pardon the expression) mile, so that it is possible to catch complete sets in no fewer than five clubs in the course of one evening. Ralph J. Gleason did just that, he said, in one frantic night.

Los Angeles, in stark contrast, is a vast metropolis, spread eagled over hundreds of square miles of suburbs, industrial areas and downtown business-entertainment sectors that are drawing less and less evening business as the suburbs become more self-contained.

Living habits are very different in L.A. from those in San Francisco. The Angeleno stays home more, is less prone to go out regularly for a night-on-the-town. Jazz fans are no exception to this trend as attendance at the few remaining clubs proves.

Discounting the expensive Sunset Strip rooms, at this time there is but one jazz dub in the Hollywood area, a no-whisky Bohemian-type room called the Renaissance located on the Strip.

But in San Francisco's North Beach section alone there are no fewer than

three jazz clubs on Broadway.....the Jazz Workshop. Burp Hollow and the Kewpie Doll. Located in downtown San Francisco, within five city blocks of each other, are the Hangover, Packs and the Black Hawk.

As writer Gleason puts it. "A club goes into business here and it stays in business." He contends the city's long tradition and reputation for being an "open town" and convention center helps account for an atmosphere in which club-going has always been logical and habitual.

"San Francisco is just a balling town, that's all." Gleason adds.

In attempting to evaluate the jazz musicians’ sad lot in Los Angeles it is obviously ridiculous to cite the comfortable, swimming-pool-ringed existence of those musicians most active in phonograph recording, television and motion pictures. They are relatively few in number and tenaciously retentive of that imperative gold-plated connection with the music contractors who control all studio work. Theirs is a date-book psychology and the rat-race to keep that little black book filled with calls for work is by far more exhausting for many than the physical function of playing their horns. When a well-known drummer reputed to have "the best job in town" on a network studio orchestra fell dead of a heart attack some time ago, heads were sadly shaken in the studios and more than one face blanched in conscious self-identification. Then the rat-race continued.

Many of these studio musicians grew up playing jazz and not a few, in fact, made solid professional reputations as jazzmen before succumbing to the lure of the reasonably guaranteed good livelihood that is certainly not to be found in playing only jazz for a living.

It is understandable, therefore, that most of these ex-jazz players shrink from facing the hard fact that the tooth-and-claw fight for money and security forced on them is inconsistent with the urge for artistic expression that must be the compelling drive in every jazzman worth his salt. Hence, they continue to kid themselves that they have not lost their jazz touch. They troop regularly into studios sometimes not knowing — and in many cases not really caring — what kind of music is to be recorded. If it is a jazz date, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, for some television crime series or soundtrack album, they never doubt for a moment if the music they produce cuts the mustard as real jazz.

In recent years many of the younger jazzmen have begun to crack the contractor's barrier, to gain favor in "the clique" and begin to earn decent wages. These are the musicians who still play jazz club jobs whenever available, still place high on the jazz popularity polls and today are becoming increasingly in demand for the jazz albums that pour out of Hollywood recording studios, Call it what you will, "west coast jazz" was their baby and one is prompted to wonder if that style's alleged characteristics of restraint and "coolness" is now carrying over into their studio work.

One wonders this, too: At what point in their struggle with the little black book and the promise of security it holds does the spark of true creativity begin to wane?

Does this mean an artist must starve to fulfill himself in his art? The idea is absurd. A square meal never hurts the urge to create. Nor even a swimming pool, for that matter. The tragedy is simply that pressure changes people and tears the truth from souls until only rationalization remains.

It is not in the least surprising in view of the foregoing that what Jazz there is left in Los Angeles comes from the youngsters. Comers such as drummer Billy Higgins. tenorist Walter Benton, altoist Lanny Morgan and other, more established musicians, older perhaps and more experienced in their music but still on fire to play jazz — men such as tenorist Harold Land or pianist Walter Norris, for example — are keeping jazz alive in southern California. They have to scuffle to do so and many are forced to take day gigs but they keep on playing whenever and wherever they can.

These are the real "west coast" jazzmen and, for the most part, they bow to no school or clique beyond natural and understandable influence by giants they admire. To use Kenneth Hume's term, they are the "underground people" who seldom break to the surface on your record store counter. But they continue to build a new jazz tradition in the onetime stronghold of "west coast jazz."

The genuine Los Angeles jazzman may be blowing in the underground, but there's plenty shaking down there.

JAZZ IN FILMS

Jazz used as background music for motion pictures is not an entirely new concept.

It was decided as long ago as 1947 that a jazz band could emphasize certain moods better than a conventional studio orchestra. The picture was Crossfire, a film that dealt with bigotry and intolerance, and the mood music was provided by Kid Ory's Creole Jazz band.

Today, there are two outstanding pictures on the same subject using jazz scores One, Sapphire, an import from England, has a soundtrack, recorded by the Johnny Dankworth orchestra. The other is the first production by Harry Belafonte's new company, Har-Bel, Odds Against Tomorrow, featuring Belafonte, Robert Ryan and Shelley Winters, which has a complete jazz score composed by John Lewis, the leader-composer-pianist of the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Lewis has said. "Jazz hasn't been used yet! to fill all of the needs of the motion picture. You haven'! heard jazz used with love scenes or certain dramatic situations. The answer is improvisation that can be as tender or as dramatic as the scene demands,"

Last year musician-arranger Johnny Mandel, who cleffed the all-jazz score for the United Artists picture I Want to Live, made the statement:

"Heretofore, jazz has been a 'device' and not a complete framework. This is the first lime jazz (in I Want to Live) has been used as a complete working base for a picture without resorting to a symphony underscore, as was done in Man with a Golden Arm and Sweet Smell of Success. They gave me carte blanche. It was the first time we didn't have to water down jazz for a film."

In forthcoming films using a jazz score, On the Beach will have an all-star jazz combo made up of Bob Bain, guitar, Gus Bivona, clarinet, Pete Candoli. trumpet, Benny Carter, alto, Shelly Manne, drums, Red Mitchell, bass, and Johnny Williams, piano.

They will record major portions of the soundtrack score for Stanley Kramer's movie of the nuclear age. The remainder of the score will be recorded by a 7S-piece symphony orchestra being formed in Hollywood,

In the East, multi-instrumentalist Don Elliott is writing and recording the music score for the motion picture Pretty Boy Floyd, which is being made at the Gold Medal studios in the Bronx. Pianist Calvin Jackson has been working on a score for the forthcoming film Blond and Steel.

Composer-arranger-leader Johnny Richards has done the score for the film Kiss Her Goodbye. Richards has had considerable experience in moviemaking. having spent seven years as an assistant to the late Victor Young on the Paramount lot,

Teo Macero, the jazz composer and staff producer at Columbia Records, wrote the music for 666, which garnered two prizes in Venice, one from the Venice Film festival, first prize for documentaries and shorts, and another from the Venice Chamber of Commerce, called the Golden Mercury award.

The movie Sapphire is a murder thriller with a social theme based on the racial problem in Britain. It follows the investigation by a Scotland Yard police inspector of a murder of a young woman in present-day London. It is soon disclosed that the murdered young woman was a light-skinned Negro passing for white. Before the murderer is unmasked in a surprise ending, the audience is given a vivid picture of life among London's Negro residents.

Dankworth wrote arrangements from a score composed by Phil Green. The jazz score, in a moody vein, skips through the picture intermittently but reaches a jazz crescendo in a scene taking place in Tulip's club, a hangout for eerie characters. Here, of course, the producers make use of jazz as an impelling force.

John Lewis' music background for Belafonte's first production as an independent producer. Odds Against Tomorrow, is designed to contribute to the mood of a melodrama dealing with the planning and execution of a bank robbery by three men.

According to Gunther Schuller, who organized the 22-piece orchestra that accompanied the Modern Jazz Quartet in recording the sound track, “the score utilizes jazz music as a purely dramatic music to underscore the variety of situations not specifically related to jazz. Unlike most film music, it can lead a double life. It can serve its purpose in the film, but it can also stand as absolute music apart from the original dramatic situation."

The method by which Lewis performed his task for Odds Against Tomorrow differs somewhat from the tack used in his previous film No Sun in Venice, in that the latter consisted of a number of isolated pieces, but the former is intentionally designed to integrate dramatically with the action of the picture and help sustain the suspenseful mood

Lewis was given early proofs, 16-millimeter samples, while shooting was taking place in New York City and upstate. Lewis then studied the proofs in his apartment. This technique had a serious disadvantage: These early clips were not final, and many changes were made before the final film was approved. Lewis found that he had to make changes in his score accordingly,

The composing and scoring was done in segments, there being 21 cues or segments in all, and the recording of the soundtrack also was done in sections over a four-day period.

There are many tense moments in the dramatic line of the film, which are enhanced by the music. Jazz was brought in strongly in the cabaret scenes, during which there are songs by Belafonte and Mae Barnes. One of the best compositions in the score is the music played while the screen credits are being shown.

The rather unusual instrumentation resulting from a combination of the symphony orchestra with the MJQ presented some worthwhile effects: The French horns and the harp and the brilliant horn figures added excitement during the closing scene as the racial issue is brought to a head with a chase and an explosion.

United Artists Records will release the original soundtrack and in addition is recording a special presentation of the score by the Modern Jazz Quartet.

A LOOK AT LAS VEGAS

Glittering with the icy brilliance of diamonds draping the neck of a high-priced call-girl, the Strip in Las Vegas, Nev., is the insomniac center of music there.

Stretching serpent-like from downtown to the airport, the Strip is a neon vertebra of flashy hotels, motels, and gas stations along which, it would appear, no human being ever has walked; if you move at all on the Strip, you move on wheels,

The big hotels that dominate the Strip — emporiums such as the Flamingo, the Dunes, the Sahara, the Stardust and the Sands — stay in business because of only one thing; human greed. Gambling put them in business, and it is by gambling and gaming alone that they thrive. And gambling keeps thousands of entertainers and musicians employed the year around at salaries ranging from scale to the fantastic sums paid to Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Nat Cole, Vic Damone. and many other headliners,

A cab driver put it this way: "The only industry here is gambling. Without the craps, blackjack, cards, and roulette, this town would simply go out of business."

In this setting, then, it is understandable that 90 per cent of the musical entertainment there is commercial to the nth degree. Despite a few rare exceptions, working jazz groups have no place in Las Vegas,

But this is not to imply that jazz is dead in the town. In a community harboring a substantial cadre of jazzmen masquerading as pit musicians, there is bound to be some action.

The sessions in the La Vitta club on Paradise St. manage to keep the flame burning bright every Tuesday night.

The leader is trombonist Carl Fontana who employs as his cohorts Frank Strazzeri, piano. Moe Scrazzo, bass, and Lou Marino, drums. Apart from any

private sessions — constantly going on but kept in the family — the scene at La Vista is just about it.

In 1957, Bill Miller, operator of the Dunes, decided there was little reason for going along with the chronic squareness that pervades the average Strip hotel lounge.

He hired the Count Basie band, and for a while it looked as if a big-hand fad might find favor among the wheelers and dealers. True. Basie had to play for dancing, too, but that seemed a reasonable concession to Baal. A few other big bands followed but to lessening reception, apparently, for very soon there were to be heard there no bands speaking the jazz tongue.

Last year Al Parvin, operator of the Flamingo, took a fling at reviving Miller's gambit. He hired the Louie Bellson crew in a package with singer Pearl Bailey and followed up by bringing into the Flamingo lounge Harry lames, who had been revamping-till-ready for such a solid berth.

James clicked and still remains there to tickle the big-band fancies of the customers every night! except Tuesday,

One of the more pleasant surprises for a visiting reporter occurred between 4:30 and 5:30 a.m. in the Flamingo lounge after a group billed as the Belasco IV Plus I followed James' final set on a Tuesday morning.

After the customary clowning around with funny hats and tired rock and

Vocal routines that have come to plague the hopeful lounge-listener, three members of the Belascos took new positions at piano, bass, and drum — and there stood jazz tenorist Phil Urso, wailing happily for the handful of musicians and fans who happened to be partaking of that last drink of the night or that first meal of the new day. Urso blew with assurance and indebtedness to the late Lester Young while his rhythm section tendered noble support.

Closest of the big hotels to the downtown area here is Stan Irwin's Sahara, where the Johnny (Scat) Davis band was playing its closing evening on visiting night and Mel Torme had just begun a six-week stand.

A hale-and-hearty Davis demonstrated that his trumpet chops were as sure as ever as he led an entertaining group comprising Jimmy Nuzio, tenor and clarinet; Frank Miller, baritone; Harry Stover, trombone; Dick Baldridge, piano; Roger Wernert, bass; Tony Papa, drums; and Cindy Layne and Bob Hall, vocals.

Davis could prove a worthy successor to a team-and-band known as Louis and Keely His presentation is solidly musical yet combines sufficient zany

humor to please even the most distracted refugee from the crap tables.

Baritonist Miller, who shines in a take-off on the rock-'n'-roller, Charlie Brown, is an enviable combination of fine musician and naturally gifted comedian.

Torme. who has a long-term contract with the Sahara, fronts an act, which, to use his own description, might be called. How to Sing Jazz and Have a Ball.

He and Japanese-Hawaiian vocalist Ethel Azama do, indeed, have a ball on such chestnuts as Makin' Whoopee, Autumn Leaves or a duet medley involving Tiptoe Through the Tulips, The Story of Love, Mean so Me, and others.

The between-tunes dialog of Torme and Miss Azama tends to reach too far for effect (at times resulting in plain corn) but is compensated for by top-fight, professional presentation. Mel, who opens the act with his solo vocals and follow up piano-vocal routines, never has sounded better. On the night of review, he carried a tough show in yeoman fashion, a show as unpredictably humorous as it was unqualifiedly musical in such solo numbers as The Lady Is a Tramp, Angel Eyes, It's All Right With Me, and Mountain Greenery,

Providing some surprisingly (for this town) swinging backing was a group comprising trumpeter Jack Sheldon, tenorist Bob Hardaway, and drummer Jack Davenport. To follow Torme at the Sahara was Vido Musso's hard-socking small band with trombonist Tommy Turk and drummer Vic Craig.

Sooner or later the Las Vegas visitor goes to the Sands hotel where musical-entertainment quality has long been a byword. Here, at time of review, Sammy Davis Jr. held down the stage in the dining room while the indomitable Jonah Jones quartet swung with the slot machines in the gambling lounge.

Davis, whose show runs from an apparently sincere tribute to his dad and uncle, to expert impressions of Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nat Cole, Tony Bennett, Billy Eckstine, Frankie Laine, and Louis Armstrong, is a dynamic performer.

Ably supported by the clarinet and music direction of leader Morty Stevens, Davis delivers in song and dance about the best entertainment and most musical offerings available here. Not that there isn't some reaching for the gallery, though. Witness his take-off on Jerry Lewis, which is done to the hilt but is of no value musically.

After a buildup to his Porgy and Bess forte, that took a champion chunk out of audience patience, Davis delivered a version of There's a Boat That's Leavin' Soon for New York that had the customers panting at its effectiveness and artistry.

The windup of the Davis act consists of what may be loosely termed a "jam session." with vibes rolled onstage for the star and mucho working over a fast, boppish blues reminiscent of Oo-Bop-Sha-Bam. Davis demonstrated more than adequate technique in covering the instrument but showed little understanding of the vibraphone's inherent subtle tonal qualities.

This is but a surface-scratching of the Las Vegas cultural patina. Glowing with the deceptive luster of the muted green of the crap tables, it is designed to provide a momentary escape from greed.

For the nongamblers who come up from Los Angeles, down from San Francisco or from other points north, south, east or west, it is a bonanza of largely free entertainment that sometimes can become memorable.

Always, however, Las Vegas is the round-the-clock city of mirage — where neuroses bloom as readily as plans for the Big Kill.”