Clad in an orange jumpsuit and holding his trademark electric bass, Red Kelly perched on a barstool, resembling an overgrown barn owl.* That evening in 1978 at Red’s Tumwater Conservatory jazz club in the shadow of the state capitol building in Olympia Washington, I had enjoyed the music of Red’s fine little band. I had also watched as Red utterly destroyed a heckler armed with no more than a sheath of one-liners. It had been a remarkable display of the power of words. As the heckler, defeated and demoralised, ducked out the front door, even Red appeared to be a little contrite. “Well, you shouldn’t get into a verbal fight if you don’t have the ammunition,” he said (or words to that effect).
One time I heard him introduce a musician who, he said, also happened to be a lawyer. ‘He’s a good lawyer, too,’ said Kelly. ‘He once got a charge of sodomy reduced to following too close.’
Red Kelly possessed a mordant wit. As Seattle singer Ernestine Anderson told me in a 2009 interview, “He was funny!” Between tunes, the jokes came non-stop. Occasionally one of his more obscure efforts would fly over the heads of the audience, and Red would pause and say “I’m getting that trout look again,” then drop his lower jaw, miming a dead fish. Often the jokes were of a type not fit for a church social. One time I heard him introduce a musician who, he said, also happened to be a lawyer. “He’s a good lawyer, too,” said Kelly. “He once got a charge of sodomy reduced to following too close.” Bill Crow told me Red used to phone him from some far-flung place on the road just to tell him a joke or two.
Red considered politics as another form of humour. In 1976 – uninspired by the mainline candidates that year – he launched a tongue-in-cheek bid for the governorship of Washington state. The slogan for his OWL Party was “Out with logic; on with lunacy,” and his platform, duly included in the voter’s pamphlet, was equally nonsensical. Though winning was not the point, Red ended up with an unexpected 8% of the vote. Later, after he had moved to a new jazz club 30 miles north in Tacoma, he initiated a similarly farcical campaign for mayor of that city. Red attracted a lot of attention by his political shenanigans.
Underneath the levity, however, beat the the heart of a man passionately devoted to what he considered America’s only true art form: jazz music. A sure way to invoke Red’s Irish ire was to mention the relative lack of acceptance for jazz in its country of birth. “It’s a shame. When I was in Paris this guy came up to me – a French piano player – and said, ‘I was in New York last year, and you guys are crazy; there’s no statue to Charlie Parker in Central Park.’ And he’s right. He’s absolutely right.” So despite Red’s reputation as a prankster and a comic, he was dead serious when it came time to play. “If I have a religion, that’s it,” he used to say about the high he derived from being part of an exciting organisation such as the Woody Herman or Chubby Jackson bands.
A sign on the wall spelled out the club policy, stating ‘Go someplace else, get discovered, then come here and ask to sit in’
From his many years as a big-band bassist, Red knew everybody in the jazz business. The night Red humiliated the heckler, former Erroll Garner bassist Wyatt Ruther came by, as did ex-Basie trumpeter, Bobby Mitchell, a resident of Yakima at that time. As with Ruther and Mitchell, musicians who sat in at Red’s had earned it and didn’t need to ask. Amateurs were not encouraged to sit in. A sign on the wall spelled out the club policy, stating “Go someplace else, get discovered, then come here and ask to sit in.”
Guests at the Conservatory, and his later night spot, Kelly’s, in Tacoma, included Red Mitchell, an old friend, Clark Terry, Carl Fontana, Mel Lewis, Diane Schuur, and many other well known musicians. Tacoma saxophonist Bill Ramsay told me that often when musicians in New York or other far away places discovered he was from the Northwest, they’d want to know how far he was from Red Kelly’s. Though distant from the main centres of jazz, Red’s was a happening joint known to musicians throughout the country.
Born in 1927 in Shelby, Montana, and raised in Seattle, Kelly knew he wanted to be a jazz musician from the first time he heard Jimmie Lunceford’s band at the Trianon Ballroom. At age 15 – having taught himself the rudiments of string bass – he left Queen Anne High School to accept a job with pianist Johnny Wittwer. A quick study and a natural musician, he learned to read music by watching the little finger of the pianist’s left hand.
At 16, Red knew enough to join Tiny Hill’s band out of Chicago. As he tells it, “I’m 16 years old, out of school, and going to big cities all over the country, and I get a chance to pick everybody’s brains. So I had the best teachers in the world.” His “teachers” included Art Tatum and Oscar Pettiford – and Bill Harris and Dave Tough from Woody Herman’s band. Hearing Woody’s First Herd was an epiphany for the youngster: “I realised that if you’re gonna play, you might as well play with the big kids; and if you’re gonna play with the big kids, you better be a big kid yourself because they’re gonna find out fast.”
In the ensuing years, Red’s playing companions included the best in jazz: Billie Holiday, Red Norvo, Tal Farlow, Jim Hall, even Charlie Parker with whom he jammed in New York City. “Bird came over and planted a big kiss on my cheek,” he proudly told me. In his early 20s, he held the bass chair in Chubby Jackson’s notorious big band. For antics, the Jackson outfit had few equals. “It was insane,” recalls Red. “Before every show you were asked ‘Now is there anything anyone needs?’ That meant anything. Period.” He hastened to add the party atmosphere did not compromise the band’s mission, insisting “Our main objective was to get out there and swing some music.”
Subsequent tours included stints with Charlie Barnet, Red Norvo’s trio and Claude Thornhill. From early 1952 to mid 1955 his solid bass anchored Woody Herman’s legendary big band, and for two years beginning in 1957, Stan Kenton’s orchestra. Both tenures are documented on records. On the CD version of Kenton’s Capitol LP, Live At The Las Vegas Tropicana, Red gets a bass feature on Don’t Get Around Much Anymore. He also gives a hilarious deadpan delivery on a novelty tune called You And I And George, the best example on record of Red’s comedic sense.
Around this time, Red was featured on a rare trio date on Pacific Jazz called Good Friday Blues. Waxed in 1959 and filed under the group name the Modest Jazz Trio, this was a collective effort with Kelly, Red Mitchell and the great guitarist, Jim Hall. Mitchell and Kelly, two bass players? Yes, except on this date, Mitchell played piano exclusively. Red Kelly maintains a strong pulse throughout, and solos competently. Hall is brilliant as ever. Modest jazz it may be, but this was a fine, swinging record well worth searching out. (Reissues include the Blue Note Tone Poet LP series and a CD under Hall’s name.)
After a brief stay with Les Brown in 1960, Red began a 14-year stay with Harry James, his longest with any band. Red befriended Harry’s pianist of 17 years, Idaho-bred Jack T. Perciful, who had been one of the James band’s key soloists and who also wrote arrangements. Also on the band was tenor star Corky Corcoran from Tacoma, who enjoyed his reputation as Harry’s main soloist for many years. (A trumpeter who led the James band after Harry’s death, Fred Radke, told me James referred to Corky, Jack and Red as his Northwest Mafia.)
Around 1964 Buddy Rich came on board. The fiery drummer’s reputation had preceded him, and Perciful’s reaction to his joining the band sums up how he and Red felt about it. “I was scared to death,” said Jack. After his arrival, Red and Jack played it cool, ignoring Buddy’s presence. Finally, someone broke the ice, prompting smiles from Rich, who exclaimed “I thought you guys were never going to talk to me.” The three got along famously, and soon jelled into a stellar rhythm section.
The mid-60s James band was a terrific outfit. Having abandoned the nostalgia circuit, James had patterned the band after his idol, Count Basie. The band had great arrangements and some classy soloists: Perciful, Corcoran, Zoot’s brother, trombonist Ray Sims, and the leader himself, whose solos were spirited and incisive, demonstrating he had an ear tuned to stylistic changes in jazz trumpet. Harry James and his men enjoyed long residencies at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas where all the diversions of Sin City beckoned. According to James biographer Peter J. Levinson, the extracurricular antics of the James band could fill volumes. Setting the example was the leader himself, whose professional commitments never seemed to interfere with his serial womanising, compulsive gambling and non-stop drinking. Levinson notes that the Flamingo management offered James $3,000 a week under the table to satisfy his gambling addiction, knowing they would likely recoup the loot, and then some.
With all his band experience, Red had no end of stories and loved recounting them. One of his favourites explained how he became the first bassist in the fabled Red Norvo Trio of the early 50s featuring Tal Farlow on guitar. Here’s how Red told me the story in a 1988 interview:
“When I was with Chubby [Jackson], Red Mitchell and I had an apartment together. And his name was Keith, and he wasn’t crazy about that; and my name was Thomas, and I hated that. So the phone was down a flight of stairs. In our apartment we didn’t have a phone because we couldn’t afford to get a phone… and whenever the phone would ring, we’d decided to call ourselves Red. Whoever was there would take the call.
“Red [Norvo] called and I answered. Norvo says ‘Is this Red?’ ‘Yeah, this is Red.’ And he thought I was Red Mitchell. He said ‘We’re forming a trio,’ and I said ‘OK.’ And he said ‘Meet me at the hotel.’ So I went to the hotel in New York, this big hotel near Central Park. Tal Farlow was there.
“Now [prior to leaving] I had a party going with [Charlie] Barnet’s band, and I didn’t get out of Harlem for two weeks. I stayed at the Theresa Hotel and just stayed out of it. Anyway, Norvo and I were going to go to Wisconsin, and Tal was going to meet us out there, so I was riding with Norvo. Now the party had been going on all this time, and I get in the car, and I’m out, I sleep all the way until we get to Chicago. We stop once and get a motel. I get out of the car, go into the motel, and fall asleep. And then we get up and go back [into the car] and I fall asleep again. I’m making up for about six months of no sleep, you know.
“We get to Chicago, and Norvo parks the car, and says ‘OK, come on Mitchell, we’re going to get some food.’ And I said ‘Mitchell? Jesus Christ, I’m Kelly! Mitchell’s back in New York.’ Norvo just loved that.”
Eventually the fun had to end, and in 1974, Red left the James band and settled in Washington state to open his Tumwater Conservatory. It didn’t take long for him to assemble a first-rate band. Jack Perciful, having retired to Olympia around the same time as Red, naturally sat at the piano, becoming Kelly’s right-hand man. Red’s friend and ex-Thornhill drummer Don Manning used to drive up from Portland, Oregon to play traps and Billy Hobart came from Tacoma to play cornet and valve trombone. From about 1978 until his passing in 1994 the legendary reeds master Freddie Greenwell showed why he was one of the most highly regarded musicians ever from the Northwest. (Greenwell is profiled here.)
The singer was Jan Stentz, surely one of the finest jazz singers to ever emerge from the Northwest. I remember asking Red why she wasn’t better known. “I don’t know,” said Red. “She’s an awfully good singer.” (Red Kelly, having worked with most of the great jazz singers at one time or another, was in a position to know.) The main reason for Jan’s lack of recognition probably had to do with her pausing her professional career to raise her children. (Her husband was the fine tenor sax man, Chuck Stentz.) When she finally did stage a comeback with Red in the 70s, she had only a few good years before being stricken with leukemia. Jan died in May 1998 at age 65.
Jan was, first and foremost, a musician, equal to the other members of the band. Influenced by Anita O’day and Ella Fitzgerald, she had a gorgeous alto voice, could scat with the best, swung like mad with Tormé-like vocal control, and was absolutely devastating on ballads. Though untutored and not knowing one chord from another, she used to astound Perciful and Barney McClure – a pianist she worked a lot with – when she’d sit at the piano and pick out harmonies.
Another singer whose career had stalled launched a successful comeback thanks to Red Kelly and the Tumwater band. Ernestine Anderson had achieved international fame in the 50s, but had subsequently gotten out of the limelight. Thanks to gentle prodding by Red and his wife Donna, Ernestine sang at the conservatory for about a year before being noticed by Ray Brown. That led to a recording contract with Concord Records along with a busy touring schedule that continued until shortly before she died in 2016, aged 87.
Red moved his base of operations from Olympia to Tacoma in 1980 to open Kelly’s, his jazz club and restaurant. Perciful continued on piano until poor eyesight made it too dangerous for him to drive. Red continued to entertain with jazz and jokes until shortly before he took ill and died in June 2004.
A few years after Red’s passing, I sat talking to saxophonist Bill Ramsay in a Tacoma restaurant. Bill was telling me about the bassist’s last few hours. Stricken with cancer and too weak to talk much, he lay in a hospital bed, sinking fast. Bill held his hand and offered what comfort he could. Red squeezed Bill’s hand from time to time to acknowledge he was following him. Then a nurse came into the room to give him a morphine injection for the pain. Says Bill, “And as she was leaving the room, Red summoned his last bit of strength and said: ‘And don’t run out!’” Thomas Red Kelly died in the wee hours of the following morning, his sense of humour intact – he wasn’t about to allow the Grim Reaper the last laugh.
*I don’t know when Red first used electric bass, though during most, if not all, of his big band career, he’d played an acoustic upright instrument.
