‘Stan, I’d love to write a piece for you, but you really don’t know me very well or the kind of thing I do, and I think your whole approach is wrong’
‘You were saying you didn’t dig Stan Kenton – well I can’t go along with you there, all the way. I remember once at Capitol Records, there were a heap of arrangers to meet Kenton, and he went around to each guy in the room, and he asked them what they thought? What was to be the new sound of the future? What do you think? And You? And You? And I said to him, Stan, I’d love to write a piece for you, but you really don’t know me very well or the kind of thing I do, and I think your whole approach is wrong. I don’t think you should use these blocks of sound you play with, the sound is unbalanced. You should use them orchestrally, because in the first place the writing is terribly wrong. You don’t write for ten brass, with five of the saxophones playing; nor do you write for the five saxophones and sort of overlay the trombones and the trumpets. If you do, the saxophones just haven’t a chance! So when you go and hear a Kenton concert the first thing that is washed out are the saxophones – except when they play by themselves.
‘I told Stan that I studied composition and orchestration and everything else, but the thing which has really impressed me is the fact that studying at Julliard, you learn to take two saxophones to equal one trumpet, in terms of intensity. One trombone equals one trumpet, or two saxophones. If you use a mute, then one trumpet becomes one saxophone. Then it all balances itself out, and you can write the dynamics into the parts, so that when you go to a concert hall the saxophone section will be heard properly. But if you write with two to a part, two to a part and a baritone, the only thing you’ll hear is the baritone and the brass. You never get to hear the middle parts, because acoustically it washes out everything in the middle – and you might as well send those guys home, and save yourself some money.
‘I wrote one piece for Kenton, which I rehearsed with him and his band, and he probably thought I was a real jerk, because I tried to do what I had preached to him. This was at the Red Mill in New Jersey, and I took him this piece of mine, which had things dropping on the piano, and all kinds of weird sounds here and there. It was a very short piece, about a two and a half minute piece, but I had tried to write it so that if he performed it in a concert, every part of the band would have been heard. But the way all his writers write now are these blocks of sound. Recording-wise it may be fine, but if you go to a concert, to me it loses its value. I hear all those brass, I hear that wall of sound, but he doesn’t really use the colours. He doesn’t use all his players, like Duke Ellington does.
‘Kenton is the complete opposite of Duke. Duke never loses sight of the fact that he must use all his men’
‘In fact, Kenton is the complete opposite of Duke. Duke never loses sight of the fact that he must use all his men – but then Duke never loses sight of anything, period! You’ll notice that when Duke’s brass are playing, the saxophones are usually tacit. Or when the saxophone section are playing, you’ll hear one trumpet or one trombone – it all balances so perfectly. I am sure with Duke Ellington it is a completely intuitive thing, and as natural a thing as him sitting down to a plate of ice cream. He never has to think about it, it just comes natural to him. With a lot of composers and arrangers today, they just say well, we can do it in the studio, but when you are in there, sitting in there, you find you can’t do it. So many times I have to tell them that it is just physically and acoustically impossible to balance up a session this way. And they just look down at me and say “Oh, all you guys, you A & R fellows, you guys in the studio, you’re all alike – all you think about is balance, and you don’t know one when you hear it.” And I tell them if they write it properly, before they come to the studio, there is!
‘I never any problem inside the studio. There can’t possibly be a problem. A case in point is the new Woody Herman record. He had the brass and I saxes playing in unison, five of them and you I can hear every part – the sound we got was marvellous. It was all carefully prepared beforehand. Woody has a new writer – one of his tenor players, Raoul Romero – who is an exceptional writer. Then he has Bill Holman who does a few things, Bill Chase and of course Nat Pierce. I think we are going to do an album of standards with Woody. It may not be the right thing for jazz followers, but for the public it will be exactly the right thing – and absolutely the right thing for Woody. Bands should do more standards, by which the public can judge them.
‘When Duke was with CBS, we tried hard to get him to do some standards, but all he’d ever say was he’d try. Maybe it was the wrong time, but he didn’t do any – more’s the pity. He did do All American of course, and I think that is one of the best things he ever did – a most charming album. We were searching then, because we felt we had to reach a mass market, for his own sake, for the company’s and everybody’s sake – we had to do something other than his own original compositions. So we did the Peer Gynt Suite, The Nutcracker – wonderful things! I know a lot of people didn’t like them, but I think it was a step in the right direction. He also did a thing called Paris At Midnight, and that was funny. We had picked all the compositions we should use, but when we came out of the session and started running down the tunes, we didn’t know any of the songs. So I asked Duke “What happened to all those compositions?” The idea had been to record a bunch of tunes we had chosen which went with the title of the album, but Duke had recorded all his own tunes. He had done the album with Irving Townsend out on the West Coast, and I was furious for it had destroyed the whole project. And that was the first time Duke and I ever had an argument in the studio. He laughed, I don’t remember his exact words, but he was so provoked at me. I would do anything for that man, for I have the greatest respect for him, but really I was only trying to help out. Anyway, he just looked at me and said “You stay there and I’ll stay here and we’ll get the album done.” And with that he left the studio – the first time he had ever left the studio without saying goodnight. He left – I was very upset and I finally said to someone there how badly I felt about the whole thing. This was not right, for here was the great man of American music arguing with me, a little schmo who had merely tried to organise something. Anyway, the studio manager listened to me and said “Well, why not go and see Duke, he’s over in the office.” So I went over and told him how badly I felt about the whole thing, and we’ve been great friends ever since.
‘I never read liner notes back home, mostly they make me furious – they’re usually so misinformed and talk about everything except the music’
‘What’s this, liner notes in Italian? I never read liner notes back home, mostly they make me furious – they’re usually so misinformed and talk about everything except the music. Let’s listen to the music for a moment. Quartette Creolo by four musicians, I see, from the Milan Philharmonic. I thought it was going to be like some of that music done in New York by Lucas Foss. He has a lot of little cards, and they pull one out and that is what they’ll play, then they pull out another and it says B flat or F or something, so that’s the key they play in. It’s a very strange thing, but they really do this. They have these cards and they shuffle them all up and pick out what they’ll play and the sort of mood and everything. It’s a kind of Free Form. I’m a believer in it up to a certain point, but when it’s all haphazard I really can’t believe in it. Anyway, this isn’t like that at all, it’s all very diatonic, the sort of thing we have been doing in jazz for the past thirty years. To me it’s like a Creole or New Orleans type of jazz, it doesn’t have any of the accents or multi-rhythms that a jazz quartet would normally have. Each member of the group is playing precisely what the other members are playing. It lacks any freedom of expression; hardly sounds like a jazz group at all. Very straight-laced. Not nearly enough beat and as I said, lacks that essential freedom of expression that jazz must have. As an Englishman would say, not my cup of tea.
‘I met Johnny Dankworth the other night, but this is the first time I have ever heard his wife Cleo. Cleo Sings Elizabethan – rather too drawing room for me. I don’t know if this is the way that jazz, should go, almost like listening to society music. I don’t like that, you know. It is like a parallel between the two kinds of music, doesn’t have enough of that earthy quality. The voice of course is very good, lovely, but I am sure if she had a different type of background, the whole thing would have made a hell of a lot more sense. Like those Swingle Singers I heard in New York. It is very interesting, but after three minutes you have heard the whole show. No dynamics, no broad scope. Jazz should, no must, have ups and downs, it must build to something. This doesn’t build to anything, it just starts and stays right there. She should have used a different background to give her that feeling of movement in terms of dynamics. I would suggest that Johnny Dankworth, who is after all a very good musician and who knows what this girl can do (who better in fact), he should A & R her dates, and then the results should be much better than this.
‘This earthy business is important for dancing. I suggested to Johnny Dankworth that to get the people dancing at the Cool Elephant, he should try a bass guitar to get that kind of lusty background’
‘As a matter of fact, I talked to Johnny about this earthy business the other night, when we were talking about why don’t people dance to jazz groups. Now I heard a guy over at Annie’s Room the other night, Alan Haven. Now someone said he created excitement because of the loudness factor. That’s wrong – it was the intensity of his playing, the feeling and emotion that both he and his drummer Tony Crombie put into their work that made me want to dance. But just as soon as the jazz group, led by Tony Kinsey, came back I had to get off the floor. It was so wishy-washy, and nobody seemed to know what they were doing. This earthy business is important for dancing. I suggested to Johnny Dankworth that to get the people dancing at the Cool Elephant, he should try a bass guitar to get that kind of lusty background, which is so associated with customary music. If he tries that someone might get up and dance. At the Ad Lib Club the other night, the place was jammed packed – some group were playing and they also used some of that discotheque music. The feeling and emotion was terrific and everybody danced their feet off. This kind of rock ’n’ roll teenage music, when well done, makes one want to be a part of it. There must be something to it, for it always makes me want to get up and dance. And normally I am a very quiet and subdued individual who just sits back and listens.
‘However, when music has that intensity it does something to you. Even when Brubeck plays with that sort of bombastic feeling and emotion, I start dancing in the studio. Being objective I think Dave is a truly creative musician – he is also talented and very emotional. Some of the things he does I don’t always dig – and I tell him. I mince no words, just tell him. But then some of his albums I really enjoy. Time Out, which sold very well (it might even go to a million!), I don’t think it a great album. I remember making it with him in the studio and a couple of the tracks I thought were exceptionally well performed – they had feeling and emotion. The album which followed Time, Further Out, I thought a much better album, but of course it didn’t do anything near as well. His Brandenburg Gate I didn’t really enjoy as a work of art, but his latest, Jazz Impressions Of Japan I think, and I told him so, is the greatest album he has ever made. It may not sell five copies, but emotionally it has a lot to it.
‘Dave, I think, is a very talented artist, a sweet man and a real hard worker. To my mind he has given the jazz scene, as far as America is concerned anyway, a whole new approach. With his new time things he opened up a new era for other artists, so much so that 3/4 and even 5/4 doesn’t sound strange anymore. Mind you, I don’t always agree with Dave in the matter of his textures, or the way-out avant-garde music, but that is Dave, and he has a philosophy which he sticks to. He doesn’t want to go too far out, but when he does, I tell him composition must have shape and form and everything else. So just to do something and make it only harmonically interesting is not enough for me. Dave has done some things for Columbia, and which haven’t been issued, which really swing. So much so that when I went out in the studio during the playback, I started to dance – even danced with Dave. They say that “Wild Dave” Brubeck can’t swing, but you should hear some of these things he often does just with brass and drums, before the other musicians arrive. He plays with a real stride approach and swings his fanny off – I’m telling you he can be great. He plays real earthy stuff, with those complex rhythms on top, and some lovely harmonies. Don’t forget that Dave is like no one else. It’s a new and different type of piano playing, quite unique. To watch him you can see him building with everything he does. It is almost physical – so much so that I can get an almost visual as well as an aural sound, when I hear him in the studio. And never forget that Dave is a real working musician who, every time he is in a studio, tries his best to come up with something good.
