Modern Jazz Gallery

Modern Jazz Gallery

A Notable Exhibition By West Coast Jazz Artists

Away back, when jazz was young and almost always gay, you could pretty well spot the home territory of a jazzman or a group by the way they played. Up until the Nineteen Thirties, the few centers where jazz musicians congregated each had their own individual hallmarks. The Kansas City bands played with a heavy, inexorable four-four beat. Chicago groups exuded a lusty, supercharged quality. A Harlem pianist walked in the ragtime shadow of James P. Johnson, the New Orleans clarinetists held to the mellow Creole tradition of Lorenzo Tio and the New Orleans bands scarcely budged from the polyphonic interweaving of cornet, clarinet and trombone.

But as jazz spread, it became faceless. The New Orleans musicians moved to Chicago, the resultant Chicago-New Orleans amalgam trudged on to New York and from New York they fanned out to any spot where there was work to be had. Styles became personal rather than territorial. A trombonist sounded like Jack Teagarden or a clarinetist was in the Benny Goodman vein —they weren’t considered to be playing Texas style, in the first case, or Chicago, in the latter. 

Jazz became pigeon-holed and subdivided by types rather than origins. There was traditional jazz, there was swing and there was bop (which, as an instance of the growing inconsequence of origins, was prodded into existence by musicians from South Carolina, Missouri, Pennsylvania and New York).

But then something went into reverse. A switch was thrown and suddenly, during the past decade, a territorial type of jazz appeared once more. Or, at least, it seemed to appear. It was called West Coast jazz and it was readily accepted as a regional phenomenon until some East Coasters, in a fit of petulance, charged that there was no such thing as West Coast jazz, that jazz was just jazz on any coast. Whereupon they set out to prove their point by trying to whoop up some interest in East Coast jazz.

To a degree, the petulant East Coasters were right. It was almost impossible to encompass all the jazz played on the West Coast within a workable definition since it ranged from the traditionalist revival, which burned particularly bright in San Francisco, to efforts in the more southerly areas of California to effect a liaison between modern jazz and modern serious music. As the East Coasters said, it was just jazz.

But still and all, West Coast jazz —particularly as played by small modern groups— did have an identifiable quality. Recognition of it was achieved not so much through a regional style as through the presence of a resident colony of jazz musicians, each with a relatively personal style, who kept turning up over and over again on the recordings made on the West Coast. It was the repeated sound of these individuals, rather than an underlying group sound, which gave West Coast jazz the semblance of a territorial style. It is true that younger musicians who have developed on the West Coast since the colony-in-residence was established have, quite naturally, tended to follow the lead of the musicians to whom they had the most ready access but this is not apt to blossom into the kind of pure, undeviating school that New Orleans, for instance, once produced. Today a jazz musician is able to hear all of the far flung facets of jazz (which didn’t even exist in the New Orleans heyday) and some of these are inevitably absorbed in whatever sort of finished product the young musician becomes.

So, although this album is an exhibition of modern jazz by West Coast artists, we will find that the music draws on that played in other sections of the country and that it is West Coast jazz primarily in the sense that it is played by musicians who have acquired the characteristics common to the culture of the southern part of California (and musicians who have been resident for some time on both coasts will tell you that this has a distinct effect on how they play and what they play).

The six groups which are heard here —three big bands and three combos— give representation to most of the leading members of the West Coast jazz colony as of summer and fall, 1956.

It will take slightly more than an hour and a quarter to examine this gallery of modern jazz by West Coast musicians. Once it has been heard through, see if you detect a uniformity of style that might be pinpointed as regional. Or do you hear a varied group of musicians expressing themselves in their own personal jazz terms? In other words, is there really West Coast jazz or are there simply West Coast jazzmen? This album provides a sound basis for reaching your own conclusions.

*John S. Wilson (liner notes)*

*LP 1*

Side 1

1 - Music City

(Russell Garcia)

2 - Ben Blew

(Ben Tucker)

3 - Joanies Jump

(Med Flory)

4 - Caribe

(John Towner)

5 - There Will Never Be Another You

(Mack Gordon, Harry Warren)

6 - Times Square

(Marty Paich)

Side 2

7 - Plain Jane Snavely

(Bob Brookmeyer)

8 - Spring Is Here

(Richard Rodgers, Laurenz Hart)

9 - Coldwater Canyon Blues

(Marty Paich)

10 - Time's Up

(Ronnie Ball)

11 - Fish Tail

(Russell Garcia)

12 - Angel

(Shorty Rogers, Sid Robbins)

*LP 2*

Side 3

1 - Four Blow Four's

(Marty Paich)

2 - Earful

(Ronnie Ball)

3 - Wonderful You

(Al Cohn)

4 - Anything Goes

(Cole Porter)

5 - Blooz

(Paul Moer)

6 - Smoggy Day

(Russell Garcia)

Side 4

7 - In From Somewhere

(Wes Hensel)

8 - Lonely Time

(Marty Paich)

9 - Aunt Orsavella

(John Towner)

10 - I Love You, That's All

(Med Flory)

11 - Black Jack

(Warne Marsh)

12 - Los Angeles River

(Russell Garcia)

Med Flory and His Orchestra

#3, #7 (LP 1);  #3, #10 (LP 2)

Med Flory (alto sax [#15], tenor sax [#3, #7 {LP 1}; #3 {LP 2}], vocals [#3 {LP 2}]); Joe Burnett, Ed Leddy, Jack Holman, Ray Triscari (trumpets); Bob Burgess, Dave Wells, (trombones);  Bill Perkins, Bill Masinghill, Arno Marsh (tenor saxes); Leo Anthony (baritone sax); John Banister (piano); Tom Kelly (bass); Mel Lewis (drums).

Recorded at Radio Recorders, Hollywood, California, March 12, 1956.

Billy Usselton Sextet

#5, #12 (LP 1); #5, #7 (LP 2)

Billy Usselton (tenor sax), Bob Burgess (trombone), Abe Aaron (bass clarinet), Paul Moer (piano), Buddy Clark (bass), Mel Lewis (drums).

Recorded at Radio Recorders, Hollywood, California, October 17, 1956. 

Marty Paich Orchestra

#6, #9 (LP 1); #1, #8 (LP 2)

Conte Candoli, Don Fagerquist, Ed Leddy (trumpets); Francis Fitzpatrick, Bobby Burgess (trombones); Herb Geller (alto sax); Richie Kamuca, Bill Perkins (tenor saxes); Marty Berman (baritone sax); Marty Paich (piano); Joe Mondragon (bass); Mel Lewis (drums).

Recorded at Radio Recorders, Hollywood, California, October 23, 1956.

Warne Marsh Quintet

#2, #10 (LP 1); #2, #11 (LP 2)

Warne Marsh, Ted Brown (tenor saxes), Ronnie Ball (piano), Ben Tucker (bass), Jeff Morton (drums).

Recorded at Radio Recorders, Hollywood, California, October 24, 1956.

Russell Garcia and His Orchestra

#1, #11 (LP 1); #6, #12 (LP 2)

Maynard Ferguson, Don Fagerquist, Buddy Childers, Ray Linn (trumpets); Milt Bernhart, Frank Rosolino, Lloyd Ulyate, Tommy Pederson (trombones); Art Pepper, Bud Shank (alto saxes); Ted Nash (tenor sax); Chuck Gentry (baritone sax); Gerald Wiggins (piano); Howard Roberts (guitar); Max Bennett (bass); Alvin Stoller (drums).

Recorded at Radio Recorders, Hollywood, California, November 2, 1956.

John Towner Quartet

#4, #8 (LP 1); #4, #9 (LP 2)

John Towner [a.k.a. John T. Williams] (piano); Howard Roberts (guitar), Curtis Counce (bass); Jerry Williams (drums).

Recorded at Radio Recorders, Hollywood, California, November 2, 1956.