Five-Star Collection... Herb Pomeroy

Herb Pomeroy

Jazz In A Stable

This was the Boston school of jazz in more ways than one. The Stable was a Jazz Workshop where most of the important developments in New England's mid-50s jazz scene were made. The men who played regularly there invited Bostons serious young jazzmen to sit in; there were no cutting sessions; newcomers were not given a rough time in a sink or swim situation. These men were performing a service to jazz and made Boston an important center for developing jazz talent. Its epitomised by the key band of Herb Pomeroy and His Stablemates.

A well-integrated ensemble packed with quality musicians, the quintet served up a fine brand of bop-derived contemporary swing, hard blowing, fast thinking, to a full house in the small room, and always with the essential emotional elements that all good jazz must comunícate. *Jordi Pujol*

A brief history of The Stable:

Established in April of 1954, The Stable was a basement bar-turned-jazz club at 20 Huntington Avenue in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston. The Stable was also once the site of the Jazz Workshop, where locally famous Jazz musicians Ray Santisi and Varty Haroutunian once taught. While The Stable was not as big a name as some of the other area clubs, it was a staple of the local Boston jazz community, and many touring musicians frequently visited The Stable and performed for their warm audience. The club's friendly rivalry with the neighboring Storyville Jazz Club drew over the latter's performers during their performance breaks. Although the club itself did not attract many big-name performers, many of its house musicians would go on to perform with top acts, including major stars like Tony Bennett and Frank D'Rone.

Over time The Stable's local audience grew from jazz-savvy locals in the neighborhood expanding to students at local colleges like Harvard and Boston University and beyond to Boston's other neighborhoods and the surrounding cities, including Roxbury, Roslindale, and Newton. The Stable's local focus kept prices financially accessible for working-class patrons and attracted young musicians looking to gain new audiences. The interior of the space was described as "a pine-paneled room (ninety-seat capacity) filled with small, sturdy tables, red-padded kitchen-type chairs, a rumpus room-sized bar with some half-dozen stools, and a tiny bandstand".

Members of the club's most notable band, The Stablemates (who would eventually tour the country as the Herb Pomeroy Orchestra), would go on to become influential faculty at the world-acclaimed Berklee School of Music. As Berklee is known for jazz, the members had a significant impact on the education of the next jazz generation. In many ways, The Stable was the "unsung hero" of refining, mixing, and modernizing jazz's sound in the 1950s.

Despite this influence, the club dwindled in popularity as local jazz musicians migrated to new competing cities like New York and local music tastes evolved towards folk, rock, and rhythm and blues. While the house band The Stablemates were able to able to gain ownership of the club after the owner Harold Buchhalter left for a new club on Boylston Street in 1959, the club would eventually close in 1962, and later be demolished in 1963 for the building of an onramp for the Massachusetts Turnpike, ironically leading drivers to New York. Today, the on-ramp sits between The Westin Copley Place and Trinity Place Condominiums.

*(All quotations in quotation marks are taken from the book The Boston Jazz Chronicles: Faces, Places and Nightlife by Richard Vacca)*

A brief profile of Herb Pomeroy:

In 1951 Herb was playing occasionally with a group that included Dean Haskins on tenor, Larry Eanet, piano; Joe McGovern, drums; and Jack Lawlor on bass. Eanet and Haskins graduated from Harvard and went into med school and the Navy respectively, but Herb left the Harvard music department (which is about as fundamentalist as a hardshell Baptist Church so far as musical experimenting is concerned) and found new outlets for his improvisational and compositional talents.

Herb sounded much like Miles Davis and even played a lot of Miles tunes along with the compositions of Lennie Tristano. However, the evolution of his distinctive trumpet style had already begun so that the only Milesian elements now remaining in Pomeroys' playing are his cool, vibratoless intonation and sharply punctuated phrasing. Constant application to the study of his horn have given Herb control and technical security that few modern trumpeters can match. A long stint in Lionel Hamptons band gave his extemporizations drive and depth and maturity by placing him in a quasi-traditional jazz environment where the ability to swing hard is requisite to success on the bandstand. There in the midst of Hamp's wailers a new vigorous, virile Pomeroy sound was born. With Stan Kenton Herb probably increased his reading skill and gained much notoriety while sharing the solo spotlight with Stu Williamson. It is a shame indeed that Pomeroy's own Boston Band was never commercially recorded. That group was a wonderful showcase for the arranging and composing talents of the young man from Gloucester. *Tom Wilson (from the liner notes)*

This is the first LP issued by the new and valuable Transition label of Cambridge, Mass., and is also the first in its Boston Panorama project. Other series will include sets of jazz from Detroit, Tennessee, and Alabama. The Stable in the title is a night club which has been the welcome home of Boston's Jazz Workshop for the last couple of years.

The album was recorded in the regular course of an evening at the club, and there were no retakes. The musicians are Herb Pomeroy, trumpet; Varty Haroutunian, tenor; Jimmy Zitano, drums; John Neves, bass, and Ray Santisi (spelled Santici here), piano. Good biographical notes by Tom Wilson. Arranging credits, however, would have been helpful. First original, Honey Bunny is by the talented Boston pianist, Jackie Byard, and Pomeroy did Porta Desks.

The musicianship is of a very high level. Pomeroy indicates again that he is one of the best young trumpeters in the country. Haroutunian blows with a full sound, flowing ideas, and guts.

Santisi has never sounded as consistently and richly inventive before on records. While Neves has a big sound, his solos here lack imaginative range and flexibility. Zitano lays down a steady beat.

Collectively, the unit swings and has good ensemble integration. Above all, this is warm music. These men are thinking musicians, but they haven't forgotten the essential emotional elements that all good jazz must communicate. The set is thoroughly recommended.

*Nat Hentoff (Down Beat, December 28, 1955 [5 stars])*

Side 1

1 - It Might As Well Be Spring

(Rodgers, Hart)

2 - Honey Bunny

(Jackie Byard)

3 - Moten Swing

(Moten, Moten)

4 - Porta Desks And Tuxedos

(Herb Pomeroy)

5 - One Bass Hit

(Brown, Fuller, Gillespie)

Side 2

6 - Off Minor

(Thelonious Monk)

7 - Sweet And Lovely

(Arnheim, Tobias, Lemare)

8 - Ray's Idea

(Brown, Fuller)

9 - Dear Old Stockholm

(Swedish Traditional)

Herb Pomeroy (trumpet), Varty Haroutunian (tenor sax),

Ray Santisi [as Ray Santici] (piano), John Neves (bass), Jimmy Zitano (drums).

Recorded live at the Stable, Boston, Massachusetts, March 13, 1955