Interview with Stan Lunetta

UPDATE (March 2016)

I was very sad to learn today of Stan's passing on March 3rd. In my interactions with him he was jovial and courteous, and his presence will be missed by many. The text below is my original post in 2014.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Stan Lunetta in July 2012 while I was researching the New Music Ensemble. Lunetta, who retired in 2008, had been an active performer, composer and teacher since the 1950's. He played percussion with Larry Austin in the New Music Ensemble in the 1960's, assisted in the publication of SOURCE magazine, experimented with homemade synthesizers in a distinctive style which is still imitated today, and was the principal tympanist for the Sacramento Opera for nearly thirty years.

In our conversation, we talk about his work with Larry Austin, his studies with John Cage, his performance at ICES 1972, his love of Thelonious Monk, and many other topics.

Stan Lunetta; image from Wikimedia.

Lunetta has granted permission for only this publication of the interview: share this blog post as a link, but please do not share the text without asking permission first.

Can you tell me about the Concert Jazz Quintet?

My participation in things like that started in the Concert Jazz Quintet and went on into the New Music Ensemble, and then went on into Amra/Arma: three different kinds of improvisation. The CJQ was myself (I played drums), Richard Maloof (who later went on to be Lawrence Welk's bass player), Robert Schilling (who has unfortunately passed on) played piano; he was a wonderful pianist. And the horn players were Wayne Johnson, who still lives here in Sacramento, and Brian Bredberg, who we've lost contact with; whether he's still alive or not, nobody knows.

The Black Hawk. Photo: SF BayView

At the time, in Sacramento, there was a lot of jazz playing. There were jazz clubs, actually: after-hours jazz places. Everybody in the group wrote songs that the group did. We gave concerts at a small theater here in town, and we'd do all these pieces, and the newspaper would come and review it; that sort of thing. We went through quite a lot of different things using some free improv, some very structured, some pieces that were just plain... old blues-type things. There was a lot of freedom. In those days you could go to San Francisco and go to the Blackhawk or the Jazz Workshop or various clubs like that, and see all of the major jazz players that existed. Somedays you could go to San Francisco and see Thelonious Monk at one club, Miles Davis at another club, and Charlie Mingus at another, all on the same night. Those days are gone. So that's sort of what that group did.

When was the group founded?

I'd say... late 50's. Because we were all working musicians, doing casuals, dances, shows, this and that. And the group didn't last a real long time. I've still got copies of the charts that we wrote.

The newspaper clippings on your website date mainly from 1962. Is that when things were taking off?

Yeah. I think we started in the late 50's and kept working at stuff until we got something happening. It never morphed into anything famous and wonderful.

Are there any recordings of the CJQ?

Yeah. I've got some on reel-to-reel that I'm afraid to touch. I don't have a reel-to-reel player either, but I'm afraid that the minute you tried to play them that the tape would disintegrate. Wayne Johnson, the saxophone player, may have some, because he was also a recording engineer.

What brought the CJQ together?

I guess, just on casuals. Someone would call you to play a gig, and you'd meet people, and find that you have things in common. At least Wayne and I, and Bob and Richard were attending the State college, so we knew each other from there too. We also grew up in the same neighborhood, sort of.

When did that group end?

Around the time that the New Music Ensemble thing started [summer of 1963]. From the time that the CJQ faded into nothing, we did various things that were involved with the people at UC Davis. Larry Austin and myself, Art Woodbury and his wife had a little jazz group. Art's wife is a really good jazz singer. Then Wayne would be in and out of that. Then when the NME began, those same people (Austin, myself, Art Woodbury, Wayne Johnson, Pat Woodbury [Billie Alexander]) and a couple other people from the University who came and went, like Jon Gibson. I'm sure Larry told you lots about what the New Music Ensemble did, but it was the next step up in improvisation, in that the group practiced improvising.

Stockhausen. Photo: The Guardian

One year at UC Davis, we had Stockhausen for a semester, and John Cage for a semester. During Stockhausen's semester, he couldn't believe that we were just improvising stuff. He said, “No, you must know what you're doing. You must have planned this out.” So we're doing this one concert, and either myself or Larry said “Okay Karlheinz. You pick who goes up next, and we'll go up and do a piece.” And so [Stockhausen] says, “Okay: you, you, you and you.” Those four people started to walk out on stage to do the piece, and he said “Wait, you come back... and you go up!” He did everything he could think of to make sure that we didn't know what we were gonna do. And then the group went up and did the piece. We came back down and Stockhausen said, “You're still lying to me.” He didn't believe that we were improvising. So the New Music Ensemble was really good at that. We would give concerts where we would just go there and say, “First piece; second piece; third piece; fourth piece, etc” and then whoever wanted to go up and play would do that. By then, we had such a group mind that we could do that without any problem.

Then after that group, the group Amra/Arma was yet another type of improv, because I played nothing but electronics in that group. I played electronic instruments that I designed and built. We had three drummers and a bass player, and we did these ritual pieces. And that group went to London in 1972 for the ICES festival. Our concerts were all-improvised, but it was improvised according to a ritual, sort of based on Robert E. Howard, the fantasy/science fiction writer, on things that he said in his books. So we would do this Hyborean ritual, so to speak.

It all had to do with the drummers interpreting what was coming out of the electronic things. We would always start the ritual with me going out on stage in this wizard costume, and slowly patch together the synths, so that they were playing something. We would set up four channels of sound so that it would surround the audience. Then the drummers would join in when they felt it was time to play. So when you go from the Concert Jazz Quintet at one end, which was doing jazz songs, and then you get to the New Music Ensemble in the middle, which was doing free improvisation with kind of a group mind, and you get the Amra/Arma group on the other end, which was doing these rituals based on all of these factors which, once set in motion, the piece is sort of self-determining... it's an interesting journey!

Can you talk about how you met Larry Austin?

Larry and I go back a long, long ways. I graduated from State college, then I thought I was going to be a school teacher, and I realized, “No I don't like that.” So I went back to playing bars and things like that. When the Concert Jazz Quintet was active, I was starting to write music. So I decided to study composition at UC Davis, where Larry taught. And that's where we met.

What did you learn from him?

Larry Austin.  Photo: Issue Project Room

Oh, a lot. Our families were very close together; we got fellowships at SUNY Buffalo, and Larry and his family and our family went there. We lived in Buffalo, and Larry's family lived on the other side of the river in Canada. All we had to do in the fellowship was write music and get it performed. So we worked together a lot. We would discover things together about composition and such. Like that piece of mine, Spider Song: I was into comic books at the time, hence the Spiderman aspect... the idea was, since Larry and I worked together so much, our communication was really good. So the idea of the piece was that on stage, we would write this piece, multi-track record it, and give a performance. That was the whole piece. Before we ever did it, I explained the piece to Jeff Karl, who was one of the Amra/Arma drummers, and he illustrated how it was supposed to work. So the part that's in SOURCE was actually the first realization of the piece: it was realized first as a comic book.

We did it at one of the small concert halls of Carnegie Hall, and Larry and I wrote a piece called Carnegie Hall, with real corny lyrics like “Carnegie Hall, we're havin' a ball,” and all that sort of stuff. While the piece was being written on stage, we had slide and movie projections of Larry and I writing the piece as well. So it was like a time-travel thing, because you saw us in various guises: we were really there, and were slides and movies of us doing the piece. And then we had Jan Williams, who was one of the fine percussionists in the Buffalo Philharmonic, and also taught at the school... he went out into the audience and get a row of ten people, bring them up on stage, and say “Okay, Stan's going to try to do the drum part, and Larry's going to do the bass part...” and he'd take everyone back and bring another row up and explain to them what was going on. So it took place in and out of time.

Larry was gone on sabbatical for a year. Did Stockhausen and Cage replace him?

No, he was there when Cage and Stockhausen were there. Larry went to Italy on a fellowship for a year. There are two records that the NME made; the second record was made at the time that Larry was in Italy. The NME at that point didn't have much of the craziness that it had when Larry was there. Then when Larry came back, it got crazy again.

What kind of musical influence was he to the group?

Well, Larry was the one who would try anything. He wasn't held back by convention. Not that anybody else was; but a lot of times you are and you don't realize it, and it takes someone like Larry to point it out. He was the one who would break the barrier. Whereas other people would be a little more careful.

What do you remember about Billie Alexander?

Well that's Art's wife: Pat Woodbury. She was a good jazz singer. Larry and I, Art and Pat had a band where I would play drums or vibes, Larry would play bass, Art would play piano, and Pat would sing.

Richard Swift. Photo: SF Gate

Can you talk about studying with Richard Swift?

Richard Swift was much more academic, but a really marvelous person. There was this group of performers who made up the New Music Ensemble who were all composers in one sense or another. Dick played piano, I played percussion, Larry played bass and trumpet, Art Woodbury and Wayne Johnson played various woodwinds, and Pat Woodbury sang, and Robert Bloch played violin. That was the basic group. Jon Gibson was in it for a time, as was John Mizelle. Both of them are pretty well-known as new music people. Dick was always the more academic person, but he was a wonderful improviser. He didn't play jazz, but he was a good improviser.

One time we went to San Francisco to go see Miles Davis' group. Cannonball Adderly was in it at the time. My wife and I, with Dick, we went into the club; Cannonball sees Dick, and we didn't know this, but he and Dick had been in the Army together. Cannonball is not, what you would call a quiet person, and he's a big dude. He puts his saxophone down, runs off the stage, picks Dick up and swings him around in circles. I guess he hadn't seen him in a long time! It was a completely different side of Dick than you would see in the University where he was “Professor Swift”.

Like I said, the New Music Ensemble was a real family.

How did the NME transition from an improvising group to a group that played new compositions?

Well, Larry and I and Pat were doing dance and combo gigs, and I'm not sure when the NME became what it was. John Mizelle and myself were both studying composition. We were the composition master's degree guys. So Jon and I got composition lessons from Larry, from Dick Swift, from Jerome Rosen, from Stockhausen, from John Cage. But I was also part-time faculty at the time. So we were working together at all sorts of things. We would get together practice improvising, like “Let's do a 30-second piece.” And we'd go back and listen to it and say “My god, it was a minute-and-a-half!” Or, “Let's do an avoidance piece” where you try to play when no one else was playing. Or, “Let's try and do a piece where we all play together at the same time, and then there's silences.” We had all sorts of exercises like that that we were doing. We all learned all sorts of things like that.

Could you talk about your studies with John Cage?

Well that year at UC Davis when we had Stockhausen for a semester and Cage for a semester, we had David Tudor for both semesters. I had a lot of time with David because he's such a marvelous person. Wonderful piano player. We did pieces by Stockhausen and pieces by Cage. When Karlheinz was teaching the composition classes, it was almost like a charicature of what people think Germans are like! Everything was really complicated, and he nailed down everything about everything, detailed notes, this and that... Cage's classes were just the opposite. We talked about a lot of things. He has this one piece called Water Music which is for piano. It's not hard to do the piano part. The art department (which was next to the music department) was going to flood this one room in the building and then have it be a water art display. So when John found out about this, he said “Ooh, Stan! Do you want to go do the Water Music piece? We can take one of the old uprights in the music building...” and I said “Yeah, let's do it!” And the music department said, “No no no, we don't want to damage the piano.” So we didn't get to do it.

A few days later, they were going to have a concert in Cage's honor at the music department. A noon concert, not a big deal. Before the concert, John and I were having a cup of coffee next to the creek, and I said, “Hey, shouldn't we be getting over to the concert in your honor?” Cage said, “They wouldn't let us do the piano piece, so I'm not going to go to their concert.” And then he laughed. He was a wonderful teacher; he had all sorts of ways of looking at things that other people didn't think of.

At that same time, we were doing SOURCE magazine, and we published the silence piece [4'33'']. I was in charge of that portion of the magazine, so I talked to him a lot about the silence piece. People don't really understand the silence piece; people always do versions of it that are really not what the piece was meant to be.

Performance instructions (left) and page 1 (right) of Cage's 4'33'' (the Kremen manuscript, 1953).
Full score available at Hyperallergic.

To you, what is the silence piece about?

Well, he points out that in a Rachmaninoff concerto, near the end of the piece, when the pianist has this big ol' honking cadenza, and then when the cadenza finishes and he lifts his hands up in the air to bring the orchestra back in... there's this moment of silence there that's really tense, and it's part of the music. Then the orchestra comes back in and “bango!” The silence is essential to the music. What John wanted to do in the silence piece is to articulate silence, but not with sound. Everyplace else in music, sound articulates the silence. If there's silence in a piece of music, it's articulated by sound on either end. So the silence piece is 4'33'' of silence, and there are three specific-length silences in that four minutes and thirty-three seconds. They are separated by unmeasured lengths of silence. So between the first two silences, there's a silence that's unmeasured. So how do you articulate the end of the first silence, the beginning of the second, and the one in between? I think what John liked about things like that is, “Yeah, how do you do that?”

David Tudor used to perform the piece with two stopwatches: one for the total length and one to measure the individual silences. Then he would silently open and shut the keyboard cover of the piano, to articulate the silences. Then people got into hearing what was in the silences... but still, trying to find a way to articulate the silence without sound hasn't yet been solved.

The version of the score in SOURCE seems to be lesser-known.

Right: the one published in SOURCE is the original one. I may be mistaken, but what I've always remembered, he sent it to someone as a birthday greeting. That's exactly what it looked like. The original score was duplicated in SOURCE magazine.

Can you talk about the relationship between improvisation and composed elements in your work?

We all (at least Larry and I) tried to include improvisation into what we wrote. For instance, I wrote an orchestra piece that the Philharmonic here did, and it had all sorts of things in it that were improvisatory in nature, even though the overall piece was more-or-less through composed. But there would be things like, telling the trumpet player “If the flute player is playing something soft, try to drown it out.” Or, “Play a bunch of fast notes, but avoid Eb.” Or things like that, that would give people a task that was improvisatory in nature but would be controlled in certain ways. In Larry's piece for three jazz soloists and symphony orchestra, we had lots of stuff that was written, but also places where we could improvise.

When did you start building electronics?

Probably in the mid-60's. I couldn't afford a Moog or a Buchla, or things like that. Here in Sacramento, there was this nice old guy who had an electronics surplus store. Bud Kocher was his name. His store was in this shack on Franklin Blvd. He had all kinds of stuff: resistors, capacitors, transistors, and chips of all sorts. I don't know where he got them, but a lot of them were unidentifiable. He would sit there behind his counter and [classify them]: “Oh, this is an up-down counter. Oh, this is a ...” Things that he had figured out, you could get for a buck; things that he hadn't figured out, you could get a handful for a buck. So I would get stuff from him.

Lunetta with one of his synthesizers.
Photo: Time-Tested Books

I started out making an oscillator, then a ring modulator, then I got more into the digital stuff. If you Google “Lunetta Synths”, you find all sorts of people who have carried this thing on; now they know more about this stuff than I do. But they're all called “Lunettas”, which is... nice. People make all sorts of versions of the stuff that I did. I've still got all the stuff, although I don't really use it. And some of them, like the cube thing that I built, which was a really good synthesizer, but now I look at it and thing, “Hm, I wonder what that switch does.” Unless you keep up with it, you don't remember. And since nothing is labelled... I took it apart and tried to figure out what everything was, but it was pretty much a failure. But it still works! It still makes noises.

So for the Amra/Arma shows, would you have machines like that playing independently, and the group would improvise based on whatever these machines happened to do?

Sort of. What would happen is that I would have this big wall of boxes which all would make various sets of sounds, including this one obelisk that looks kind of like the Transamerica building in San Francisco (except I made this before that building, so I didn't copy the building.) I would start sounds going, and once certain things got underway, that would set the tone for what would go on after that. We would have segments where there would be fixed things: “Okay, when we get here, we're gonna do this kind of thing. When we get there, we're gonna do this kind of thing.” But not anything really specific. One section would be rhythmic, another arhythmic, things of that sort.

At the start, maybe I would get a little sequence of tones from the back-left speaker, and it would echo to the front-right speaker, then I would make something else come out of the others, until there was enough happening for one of the drummers to decide, “Okay that's enough, I can add to that.”

Who else played with Amra/Arma?

That was myself, Ken Horton, Kurt Bischoff, and his brother Karl. Kurt's son, Jerrich Bischoff, is making a name for himself. Then Jeff Karl, who has passed on; he was the cartoonist. It was a close-knit group. Both Kurt and Ken were students of mine, and Jeff was a student of mine. So it was three of my students, a bass player, and me. But at that point they had all progressed beyond being students, and were colleagues.

Poster for ICES. Thanks to HPSCHD.

Did Amra/Arma make any records?

No. On my website, there's a little recording. It sort of reached its peak when we did that trip to London in 1972 at the ICES festival, which just had its 40^th anniversary. That festival was really crazy because it was put on by Harvey Matuso. Harvey testified before Congress and said “Yeah this guy's a commie, this guy's a commie...” and he called all these people commies back in the McCarthy era. Then after he caused all sorts of trouble, he put out a book that said, “Haha, I was lying all along.” So, not a real reputable character. He was married to Charlotte Moorman, an English composer, who was famous for burning pianos, or pushing pianos off the top of buildings, things like that. So they put on the ICES Festival, International Carnival of Experimental Sound. Just about everybody was at that. Stockhausen was there, Cage was there, all these people had their pieces played. Charlotte Moorman was there, she played a cello made out of ice while she was naked. There was an article in WIRED magazine about the ICES Festival anniversary. That was the last big thing that Amra/Arma did; I think after that, we stopped playing, went on to other things.

For us to play at ICES, I had to bring all of my electronic gear. I couldn't just go there and borrow some synths. Getting them back from England, we got off the plane in Toronto, got the equipment, put it in the car, and drove it to the United States through Detroit. The guy at the border said, “US citizens?” We said “Yeah.” “How long have you been in Canada?” We said, “Eh, a couple hours.” He said, “Okay, go on through.” Inside the car was all this bizarre electronic equipment. Nowadays it wouldn't get past any border!

Did you have contact with the San Francisco composers, like Pauline Oliveros, when you were at UC Davis?

Yeah. Pauline and Mort Subotnick, and Ramon Sender. Yeah, Ramon is famous for figuring out how to get certain music programs to work on the Mac in the early days. And Don Buchla was there; I think the original Buchla synthesizers are still at Mills College.

But yeah, the San Francisco Tape Music Center: we had a definite connection with them. At that time, it was called the Tape Music Center, because all the electronic music people were doing there was on tape: manipulating tape! In one room there were all these tape recorders, so you could go from the first one to the eighth one, and do time delay, looping stuff back on itself, splicing tape in different ways... Their stuff eventually moved on to Mills College.

I think Pauline is still kickin', her website is still up. I did hear something from Subotnick a long time ago. Where Ramon Sender went, I don't know.

Were the recordings of Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry influential to you and the members of the Concert Jazz Quintet?

Yeah, definitely. People like that opened things up, like “Oh! You can do that!” Of all the jazz people that were happening then, the most influential to me was Thelonious Monk. He was so outside of everything else; he was the one that I really admired. Nowadays, if someone is interested in whatever's going on, you don't get to go see it. I used to play at nightclubs here in Sacramento, and we'd take a break and the cook left some food out that the musicians might get, and if you go to the Jazz Workshop, you see Thelonious do the same thing.

One time, Miles' group was playing. It was a slow night, Miles wasn't even playing, he was just sitting at the bar, drinking a glass of champaign. This was before he got into the next stage: he was still wearing a suit and tie, and being very elegant. Philly Joe Jones was playing drums. Miles decided, “Well nobody's gonna be here” so he left. Then Philly Joe said to me, “Okay well, Miles is gone. You wanna sit in?” So I got to sit in with JJ Johnson, and that time Wayne Shorter. When Miles was there, Wayne never got to solo, because he hadn't learned the ropes yet or whatever.

One of my favorite records from the period is Thelonious Monk Live at the Blackhawk, 1960.

Yes!

Were you at that show?

Might have been. We saw him there then, yeah. It was interesting to watch Thelonious play, because there were lots of things that he did that were just so... I don't know whether he was a savant or not ... he sure did some neat things.

I wish I could have seen him play.

Yeah. That's why I say, maybe you could only see these people at a big-deal kind of concert. Although... the English group Gentle Giant... the guitar player and the bass player from that group were doing a van tour, playing up and down the West coast, stopping in various cities. Not necessarily big cities. They stopped in Sacramento, and played at this relatively small club. It cost ten bucks to get in, they did a whole set, they did all sorts of really neat stuff. And that doesn't happen enough anymore.

Lunetta in 2005; photo by Noisebridge

Lunetta's website (now archived) contains a wealth of information about his past projects, including newspaper clippings and rare photographs. Drop by for a visit!

Lennie Tristano - What's Wrong With The Beboppers

In the late 1940's, Lennie Tristano was receiving roughly similar commercial success as the young trumpeter Miles Davis. He was performing on major radio shows, winning awards from magazines, and was recording for Capitol records. For more about Tristano in this period, read my previous article about his innovative Intuition and Digression recordings.

In 1947, Tristano was named “Musician of the Year” by Metronome magazine, and was invited to write two articles for the monthly periodical. These articles were critiques of modern jazz, one describing the pros and one describing the cons of the "bebop" movement. In the first article, "What's Wrong with the Beboppers", Tristano criticizes those who thoughtlessly copycat the style and mannerisms of Dizzy Gillespie and others.

What's Wrong With The Beboppers

a great musician analyzes, defines and questions

by Lennie Tristano

BEBOP is a definite step forward in the art of jazz. As with any art form, this progress has met with multiple and varied opposition. Jazz has not yet found acceptance with the American public; and bebop, an advanced and complex outgrowth of that jazz, exists precariously above the uncomprehending ears of the average person. But it is the musicians themselves, the vendors of jazz, who in many cases make their own lives difficult. The protagonists of Dixieland regard bebop as a war-time fad. However, the supercilious attitude and lack of originality of the young hipsters constitute no less a menace to the existence of bebop.

An approximation of Tristano's pseudo-hip bopper. Source.

These young boppers spend most of their time acquiring pseudo-hip affectations instead of studying and analyzing modern jazz with the aim of contributing something original to it. A typical manifestation peculiar to them is their effort to appear completely relaxed. Sitting implies muscular tension, so they slouch. They don't walk; they amble—with a delayed beat. They gaze indifferently at the uninitiate through drooping lids, muttering, “It's cool, Daddy-o.”

There is an unfortunate belief that to play like the great jazzmen, you must live like them. Close examination might reveal that the productivity of these creative minds has often been stagnated by self-destructive habits.

"Dizzy" Gillespie

Artistically the situation is just as deplorable. These little monkey-men of music steal note for note the phrases of the master of the new idiom, John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie. Their endless repetition of these phrases makes living in their midst like fighting one's way through a nightmare in which bebop pours out of the walls, the heavens, and the coffeepot. Most boppers contribute nothing to the idiom. Whether they play drums, saxophone, piano, trombone, or glockenspiel, it still comes out Gillespie. Dizzy probably thinks he's in a house of mirrors; but, in spite of this barrage of dead echoes, he still sounds great. They manage to steal some of his notes, but his soul stays on the record.

A better approach for boppers would consist of studying, then analyzing the idiom. This would determine its harmonic structure, unique inflections, and phraseology. The next step is the use of these components in improvisation. Since lightness, fleetness, and facility are attributes of modern jazz, they should be integrated with originality and knowledge to form an expression which may be similar in style but different according to individual personalities. Even the phraseology may be utilized if it is done with inventiveness rather than through plagiarism.

Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and others. Source.

A fashion of present-day erudition is the procedure of pigeon-holing. People and things are divided and sub-divided and placed in groups, classes, and categories. Accordingly, this idiom had to be labeled. It was tagged “bebop.” For the purpose of identification and articulate discussion, this labeling is helpful if not accurate. It must be understood that bebop is diametrically opposed to the jazz that preceded it (swing as applied to large groups, and Dixieland as applied to small ones). Swing was hot, heavy, and loud. Bebop is cool, light, and soft. The former bumped and chugged along like a beat locomotive; this was known in some quarters as drive. The latter has a more subtle beat which becomes more pronounced by implication. At this low volume level many interesting and complex accents may be introduced effectively. The phraseology is next in importance because every note is governed by the underlying beat. This was not true of swing; for example, the long arpeggios which were executed with no sense of time, the prolonged tremolos, and the sustained scream notes.

There are many people who refuse to let jazz grow beyond their capacity to hear and understand it. There are others whose response to jazz is so completely emotional that they are unwilling to concede the aesthetic and intellectual progress that is demonstrated in bebop. There is a group of critics whose inability to understand and discuss bebop forces them to cling violently to the old familiar patterns. This is the most difficult group to combat in the battle to educate the public. They prove their vulgar and unintelligent approach by the innocuous patter they inflict on the trade papers. The musicians who refuse to yield to the new are a little less objectionable since a feeling of security forms such an important part of any man's existence. On the other hand, if these same musicians deny the validity and the necessity of progress, then they must be ruthlessly disregarded.

Jazz will eventually become an art form which will be taken seriously by those hitherto unappreciative of it. It will not be held back by the dancing public, profaned by the deified critics, or restricted in its growth by its poor imitators, even when they imitate jazz at its best.

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I'll make another post soon, when I have access to the second article, "What's Right with the Beboppers". To make sure you see the post when it's made, make sure to subscribe to this blog.

Free Improvisation Series: Stuff Smith & Robert Crum (part two)

Part Two: Two Souls Touch - The Robert Crum / Stuff Smith Collaboration

(Read Part One here)

In October 1944 Robert Crum began an innovative collaboration with the violinist Stuff Smith. Smith (Sept. 14, 1909 – Sept. 25, 1967) was a popular jazz musician and would become of the most influential violinists in jazz history. By the 1940's he was well-known and respected, and something of a music industry darling. He played Alphonso Trent's territory band on-and-off from late 1927 until 1931.¹⁶ He played with Jelly Roll Morton for a brief period in 1928. After marrying, he settled for a time in Buffalo, NY. In 1936, he had a hit recording with I'se a Muggin', and worked steadily at the Onyx Club in New York City. Smith played with Fats Waller's band and travelled to Hollywood, CA for several months in 1943. Smith returned to New York in August 1944 for a stint at the Onyx Club.¹⁷
 

Prior to his move to New York, Smith had played a steady gig at Chicago's Garrick Stage Bar. Smith and Crum met during this period, and the two are known to have played together at the Hamilton Hotel's Sunday afternoon jam sessions in the summer of 1943. In a Billboard article, Crum and Smith are given mention in a long list of other participants, including Muggsy Spanier and Baby Dodds.¹⁸ (There is a photograph from the Otto Flückiger collection which shows Smith and Crum sharing the bandstand.¹⁹)

Crum on-stage (left) with Smith (right) at Chicago's Garrick Stage Bar. Photograph from the Otto Flückiger collection; used by permission of Robert Campbell and the Red Saunders Research Foundation.

Smith and Crum made at least three visits to the apartment of Timme Rosenkrantz and Inez Cavanaugh in 1944: one on October 21^st, and one each on December 16^th and 18^th.²⁰ Like the recordings that became Erroll Garner's Overture to Dawn, the music that Smith and Crum played at these visits was experimental and very different from publicly-performed jazz of that period. In the words of Dr. Billy Taylor, it was “exciting, adventurous jazz, but very much ahead of its time.”²¹ Most of the pieces from the October session do not appear to follow any repeating or linear structure at all. They begin with brief melodic or harmonic sketches, then trail off into improvised counterpoint. Crum and Smith's level of invention and empathy is impressive and engaging. Portions of harmonic commonality and beautiful lyricism give way to moments of abstract association, where the musical fabric threatens to unravel completely. But fear is always abated, as the Smith and Crum skillfully connect to another segment of music with taste, inevitability, and often humor.

Harmonica player Pete Pedersen.

Crum had experimented with this type of freely-associative playing before. During his Chicago years, Crum played regularly with Pete Pedersen, who would later become famous as a member of Jerry Murad's Harmonicats, who remembered their collaborations fondly: “We would make up songs together. We were never booked to do this … but we'd say 'Give us a story' and we'd make a song to it … He would play piano, I would play harmonica and we'd just improvise.”²² (Interestingly, Pederson also knew Smith in Chicago, and remembers that “[Smith] would show me licks and things, and that's how I got started. That was the first person I ever heard that really put an influence on me.”)²³

 The Crum/Smith collaboration would have been significant even if these Rosenkrantz apartment sessions were the end of the story. But as it happened, a major effort was undertaken to publicly present their musical innovations. In December 1944, Barry Ulanov organized the first of a series of concerts at New York's Times Hall, which were to present “The New Jazz”. This “First Series” featured headliners Pearl Bailey, Barney Bigard, Erroll Garner and Stuff Smith. Don Byas and Red Norvo were also featured. The concert was organized with assistance from Rosenkrantz, Cavanaugh, and Paul Rosen (about whom I know nothing).²⁴

An advertisement for the December 20th 1944 Times Hall concert.

The concert was arranged under the auspices of View: the Modern Magazine, a quarterly periodical, specializing in modern art, film and literature.²⁵ Ulanov, who was also the editor of Metronome magazine, contributed a column to each issue called “Jazz Of This Quarter”. (Ulanov would be a significant proponent of Lennie Tristano's career a few years later.) The impressive list of concert patrons and sponsors boasted many prominent artists and philanthropists, including millionaires Mary Cushing and Helena Rubenstein, ballet choreographer George de Cuevas, sculptor Alexander Calder, composer Aaron Copland, artist Marcel Duchamp, and many others.²⁶ By all accounts, it was a major undertaking: certainly the highest profile concert to date that Robert Crum had participated in.

In the evening's concert notes, Ulanov provided the following description of the duo pieces to be played by Smith and Crum: “Should [these] improvisations be confined to jazz? In a series of deliberations, first canonic, then less rigorously formal, the violinist with the jazz background, the pianist with a classical, offer a provocative answer, as they extend the resources of the improviser to those of all music.”²⁷ Rather than downplaying Smith and Crum's differing musical backgrounds, Ulanov drew attention to them, implying that “The New Jazz” may very well draw more explicitly from other styles of music.²⁸ A radical departure from traditional jazz, in terms of instrumentation, style, form, and the definitions of composition/improvisation, a performance of this music at this kind of event constituted a major statement about the present (and future) state of American music.
 

Although Ulanov wrote a predictably glowing review of the concert in the March 1945 issue of View,²⁹ most critics expressed skepticism, especially toward Crum. Leonard Feather wrote, that although “Stuff was superb, unpredictable, intensely rhythmic as ever … Crum, a frustrated classical pianist, seemed out of place.”³⁰ Downbeat writer Frank Stacy called the improvisations “plain disconcerting”, mentioning Crum's “disturbing nervous [on stage] mannerisms”. Somewhat in contrast, the Modern Music quarterly wrote a largely negative review, but noted that “The bright spot in the [Smith & Crum] improvisation was a bitonal clash of personalities … Neither would yield, and so the piece ended in a most peculiar way.”³¹ Smith's widow Arlene Smith illuminates Stacy's comments, remembering that Crum was “dressed in formal wear with white tennis shoes which was pretty strange in those days”.³²

The opinions of View magazine's staff and editors is perhaps evident in that for the May issue, Ulanov's column “Jazz of this Quarter” was taken over by Roger Pryor Dodge, another well-respected writer of jazz. The year's remaining two issues feature music articles, written by Lou Harrison (October 1945) and Wilfred Mellers (December 1945), but there is scarcely a mention of jazz in either. (Perhaps it's also worth noting that View printed an advertisement for Ulanov's biography of Duke Ellington in their December 1945 issue.)

Whether Ulanov's departure from View was amicable or not remains a matter of speculation. He is nearly silent about the concert in his future recollections, but years later, he would write that Crum's “curious combination of jazz and the classics never entirely convinced me.”³³ Though his own thoughts on the performance are presently unknown, Crum's discouragement at such negative reviews is palpable. By April 1945 he was back in Chicago working at the Hotel Sherman. Billboard writer John Sippel wrote that Crum, now using three mirrors instead of just one, was playing “symphonic jazz interpretations [that are] too intricate for the average hearer. Crum plays half a chorus straight and then goes into a wild malange [sic] of introductions and arpeggios that don't mean much. Crum has affected weird mannerisms and grimaces to accompany his 88-pounding (and the word is used literally), but the old Crum who played at Elmer's two years ago without these new additions was far more preferable.”³⁴ (The following month, Sippel would write that “Crum seems to have found himself and is doing a nice job of selling from the keyboard.”³⁵) 
 

An advertisement for Soundies. Image from Doctor Macro.

Crum returned to New York in November 1945 to film two Soundies called Adventure in Boogie Woogie and Our Waltz. These were released in April and August the following year.³⁶ But he continued to work in Chicago and around the midwest. In early 1946 he found some work at the Town House in Albany.³⁷ In June 1946 he was working at Chicago's Hotel Continental, where he was reported as going “all out to give his individual impressions of everything, from the classics to boogie-woogie. His playing is average or better, but his salemanship is nil.”³⁸ Later that summer he played for three weeks at the Radisson Hotel in Minneapolis³⁹ and also found work at Circus Snack Bar in St. Louis.⁴⁰ In mid-September 1946 he recorded six duets with the accomplished drummer Barrett Deems, which were released by the Chicago label Gold Seal.⁴¹ Crum appeared on WNEW radio in December 1946 in an organ/piano duo with fellow hotel circuit Bud Taylor (b. 1913, d. 1997)⁴².

In November 1947, Billboard reported that Crum was “in a hospital for observation”.⁴³ No more details are offered, and no further information on Crum's life is known. To the best of current knowledge, Crum seems to have made no further attempts at a public music career, living a private life and passing away in Joliet, IL in May 1981.⁴⁴

 
To date, Crum is scarcely even a footnote in jazz history. But while small, the legacy he has left behind is fascinating, and his influence was perhaps not negligible. In addition to the glowing description of their music as “ahead of its time”, Dr. Billy Taylor places Crum alongside Erroll Garner, Bud Powell, and Al Haig as being a notable pianist from the “Prebop and Bebop” style.⁴⁵ Garner himself was reportedly very impressed by Crum's playing at the Times Hall concert, telling him “You know, I never knew what I wanted to do until I heard you play.”⁴⁶

The recordings which were made of the Crum/Smith collaboration have entered the digital age thanks to Anthony Barnett's efforts, but Crum's Gold Seal recordings and some solo piano recordings from the Rosenkrantz apartment still remain largely inaccessible

Smith's career continued for twenty more years until his death in 1967. Today he is regarded as one of the most influential jazz violinists, working with some of the most progressive jazz musicians of the 40's, 50's and 60's, playing formally and informally with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Don Cherry⁴⁷, and Sun Ra. He was also a great influence on the contemporary improvising violinists Leroy Jenkins and Billy Bang. From 1965 up to his death in 1967, he led a quartet which featured pianist Kenny Drew and bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pederson. A concert in Denmark was held after his death, in which major violinists Stephane Grappelli and Jean-Luc Ponty paid tribute to Smith.⁴⁸ 

The recordings of Smith and Crum's duo improvisations offer glimpses into the private world of jazz, where the creative process was free from the concerns and interests of studios and clubs. The music frolics in and out of tonality, seamlessly transitions from slow and fast sections, and at every moment shows off the masterful creativity of Smith and Crum, as they push their own and each other's technical and musical boundaries.

Footnotes

16 Barnett 1995, 57

17 The Billboard, “Music Grapevine”. July 8^th, 1944, p. 19

18 The Billboard, “Chi Jam Session Backer Hopes For Early Frost; Hot Jazz Finds Heat Tough Competish”. August 7^th, 1943, p. 15

19 Red Saunders Discography. Accessed January 4^th, 2013.

20 For more on Timme Rosenkrantz and his role in 1930's and 40's jazz, see my article about Erroll Garner.

21 Taylor, Billy. “Jazz Piano.” p. 189

22 Rodack, Jaine. “Be Of Good Cheer: Memories of Harmonica Legend Pete Pedersen.” Authorhouse: 2006. p. 56.

23 Ibid.

24 Barnett 1995, 123

25 “View: the Modern Magazine” published between 1940 and 1947. It was managed by Charles Henri Ford (editor) and Parker Tyler (assoc. editor). Each issue featured a different contemporary artist: Georgia O'Keeffe, Marcel Duchamp, and Rene Magritte to name a few.

26 Ford, Charles Henri. “View – Series IV 1944”. Klaus Reprint: New York. 1969. p. 107.

27 Quoted in Barnett 1995, 125-126

28 In doing so, he expresses a view which is prevalent in contemporary discourse of improvised music. For instance, an overview of the International Society for Improvised Music states that “today’s musical world is increasingly characterized by creative expressions that transcend conventional style categories.” Improvisation is, among other things, “spontaneous interaction between musicians from the most disparate backgrounds[.]”

29 “[The New Jazz] sounded rich and full and vital, serene and joyful, beyond my optimum optimism during the weeks of organizing the concert. This was the way they wanted a jazz concert to go, these jazzmen said … The Stuff Smith Trio, and individual artists, Erroll Garner, Pearl Bailey, Don Byas, Robert Crum, were at peak form.” Ulanov, in View, March 1945.

30  Quoted in Barnett 1998, 126

31 Mercure, in Modern Music, vol. 22 no. 2, Jan-Feb 1945, pp. 139-141

32 Barnett 1998, p. 29

33 Barnett 1995, p. 121

34 The Billboard, “Vaudeville Reviews”. April 28^th, 1945, p. 30

35 The Billboard, “Night Club Reviews”. May 19^th, 1945, p. 30

36 Barnett, 1998, p. 58. Soundies were short films of musical pieces, similar to modern music videos. Music and film were recorded separately, enabling choreography and cinematic techniques. They were shown in jukebox-type machines. The first ones were made in 1940. Soundies had seen a decline in popularity since 1941, and the company would cease production in late 1946. See MacGillivray and Okuna, 2007.

37 The Billboard, “Off the Cuff”. February 9^th, 1946, p. 36

38 The Billboard, “Night Club Reviews”. July 6^th, 1946, p. 44

39 The Billboard, “Music – As Written”. July 27^th, 1946, p. 22

40 The Billboard, “In Short”. September 28^th, 1946, p. 38

41 Campbell & Pruter. “Gold Seal” Available at http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber/goldseal.html Accessed on 15 July 2012.

42 The Billboard, “WNEW Has Flock Of New Shows To Start After January”. December 21^st, 1946, p. 8

43 The Billboard, “Music – As Written”. November 8^th, 1947, p. 22

44 Barnett, 2002

45 Taylor, p. 228

46 Rosenkrantz, 178

47 Barnett 1998, 22

48 Barnett 1995, 273-274

Free Improvisation Series: Stuff Smith & Robert Crum (part one)

Well, it's been a while since I've posted an update. I've been hard at work, finishing a master's degree, planning various recording projects, and a whole mess of other business. Here's a two-part attempt at a more complete picture of Robert Crum, a boogie-woogie pianist.

Robert Crum (Nov. 29th, 1915 – May 1981) was born in Pittsburgh, PA. He studied classical piano there, as well as in Paris. In the 1930's lived in Chicago, IL where he took lessons from Meade Lux Lewis¹ and began playing at small clubs, where he made about $35 a week.² By January 1943 he was working as the afternoon pianist at Elmer's Cocktail Lounge, where Dorothy Donegan had also recently worked.³

Advertisement for the Hotel Sherman, ca. 1945

In July of that year he was hired to play at the Sherman Hotel's Panther Room for $300 per week.⁴ The Panther Room, along with the Malaya Room, formed the Hotel's College Inn restaurant, which served extravagant meals served on flaming swords by stereotyped waiters, and featured the day's top entertainment. The College Inn started booking swing music in March 1939; by that same time in 1942 they had booked major acts like Gene Krupa, Benny Goodman, Fats Waller, Harry James, Jimmy Dorsey, and Woody Herman, often for repeat stints.⁵ As a major focal point in the Chicago music scene, the Sherman Hotel's entertainment was watched closely by the entertainment press. Crum was booked as the Panther Room's afternoon entertainment, and was reviewed often by writers for The Billboard magazine. A typical example is a review which appeared in August 1944, which noted that Crum had “fine keyboard work. It is mostly straight pounding, with little visual showmanship. Crum keeps close to the keyboard, seldom lifting his head to see if anyone is paying attention. Goes over, tho.”⁶

His playing went over very well, apparently. In September, Crum was given a pay raise to $400 per week.⁷ In January 1944, the Billboard reported that Crum, perhaps to increase his visual showmanship, was employing a long mirror on several pieces so that members of the audience would be able to see his hands as he played. This prompted Billboard's Carl Cons to comment that although Crum's “finger dexterity is excellent and very commercial … his playing at times leaves music lovers in a fog.” He continued,

“Neither a concert artist nor a good swing pianist, his semi-classical style of presenting numbers is often spoiled by corny tricks such as running his thumb across the keys and playing with the back of his hands. Has talent and could improve his performance by adding taste to his arrangements and eliminating some of the gingerbread that passes for showmanship.”⁸

In November 1943 Crum apparently had plans to move to New York in January 1944, following his stint at the Panther Room,⁹ but he decided to stay in Chicago for a few more months. In February 1944 he appeared in a variety show at the Chicago Theater, with singer Phil Regan as the headliner. Billed as “The Swing Piano Sensation of the Nation”, Crum was given a favorable review by Jack Baker, who wrote that,

“[Crum] shows remarkable skill with his rapid piano keying, and swings out in a fast tempo on the classical and pop tunes. Distinctly different, and draws plenty of mitting with his fine arrangements of Massanet's Elegy, boogie-woogie medleys and Humoresque, which is interspersed with a smart concert arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue.”¹⁰

New York City skyline, ca. 1940

Perhaps encouraged by the positive press and high-profile work, Crum made the move to New York City in April 1944.¹¹ In May he appeared on the Basin Street radio program alongside pianists Francis Carter, Arthur Bowie (who played as the duo Carter & Bowie) and Art Tatum.¹² In June, Paul Ross mentioned Crum in a long list called The Top Names, “prize winners in the jazz joints of 52d Street”, which included Tatum, Mary Lou Williams, Earl Hines, Duke Ellington, the Nat King Cole Trio, Roy Eldridge, Billie Holiday, Oscar Pettiford, and a host of other major names.

The article, entitled “Disks a Must for 52d Street Click” and subtitled “Musicianship Essential But Waxing Required, Too”, reports that 25-50% of club clientele are tourists, and that “by far the largest part of this group of customers comprises young people who read the hip magazines and who, above all, listen to phonograph records. They are disk educated to a high degree.” Ross concludes that “when they hit New York and are entertainment bound, they are always ready to go and hear – in person – the man or woman who turned out this or that big disk.” He continues by mentioning that another 25% of club clientele are musicians themselves. And nobody is more critical of musicians than other musicians.” This significant sector of club clientele, Ross says, helps keep novelty artists, “the trickster [and] the corn-dispenser” from dominating the bandstands.

One would not be amiss to question Ross' figures (did he conduct a survey?), but his overall point is rather plausible. Therefore it's rather puzzling that Crum would be included as a “Top Name”. He had only lived in New York City for two months at the time, had no recordings to his name, and did not have any work as a sideman. And less than a year prior, Crum had been criticized in the same magazine for his “gingerbread” showmanship. Ross adds that “an act without even one big record behind it can work in the jazz bistros and do all right, providing it has musicianship. If the turn gets by the other musicians it can build in anywhere from six months to a year – build to the point where it begins making disks and thus enhances its [box office] value. But the old musicianship must be there or no dice.”¹³

Ross' article appeared shortly before RCA/Victor and Columbia had conceded to the demands of the American Federation of Musicians, which was still on strike.¹⁴ There was also a major shortage of domestic shellac, imposed by the War Production Board, causing a drop in disk production.¹⁵ It was a time of great upheaval and change in the recording business, and breaking into the recording medium was likely to prove difficult for a relative newcomer like Crum.

A typical logo for The Billboard magazine

As a side note, it's worth remembering that the entertainment press's goal (in 1944, but it's not much better today) was not to document the change of musical styles and the artistic growth of its individual practitioners. This is just a historical side-effect. As a trade periodical, the Billboard's goal was to keep booking agents, business owners, and advertisers apprised of the goings-on in the major entertainment centers. The artistic goals of musicians were of far lesser concern to critics than was the musicians' level of business acumen. But we should not make the mistake of thinking that the musicians written about in these magazines were as single-minded as the articles may portray them. We take for granted that Fats Waller, Gene Krupa, Woody Herman and all of the acts booked at the Sherman Hotel were not just major entertainers but also major artists. There is no inherent inconsistency here, but we must avoid the temptation to think that more marginal musicians simply lacked this vision, and are therefore not worthy of study or consideration. The activities that make Crum especially notable today are coming up in part 2 of this blog post.

Footnotes

1 Barnett, 2002, "Complete 1944 Rosenkrantz Apartment Transcription Duets", ABFable CD 004/005.

2 The Billboard, “Shelley Signs Bob Crum, Chi Pianist”. August 21^st, 1943, p. 24

3 The Billboard, “Off the Cuff”. January 30^th, 1943, p. 19

4 The Billboard, “Open Field For Graduates”. July 17^th, 1943, p. 20

5 The Billboard, “Chi's Sherman Room Still Swings It”, March 28^th, 1942, p. 6

6 The Billboard, “Follow-Up Night Club Review”. August 28^th, 1943, p. 21

7 The Billboard, “Ivory Pounders in Chips”. October 2^nd, 1943, p. 24

8 The Billboard, “Night Club Reviews”. January 22^nd, 1944, p. 25

9 The Billboard, “Off the Cuff”. November 6^th, 1943, p. 23

10 The Billboard, “Vaudeville Reviews”. February 26^th, 1944, p. 22

11 The Billboard, “Chicago Air Execs Scouting Lounges for Talent 'Finds'”. April 15^th, 1944, p. 20

12 The Billboard, “Top Radio Stanzas Finding Place for Small-Club Acts”. May 27^th, 1944, p. 28

13 The Billboard, “Disks a Must for 52d Street Click”. June 24^th, 1944, pp. 23 & 27

14 The AFM had been on a no-recording strike since August 1^st, 1942 with the demand that recording labels pay a fee to license recordings for radio and jukebox play. This fee would be added to the AFM's Recording and Transcription Fund (RTF), which the AFM would use to offer work to underemployed musicians. Most smaller labels had capitulated by this time, but RCA/Victor and Columbia, the two largest, would not do so until November 1944.

15 See, for example, “Diskers Eye WPB Action”, (Billboard 6/27/42, p. 70) and “Financial Journal Features News Of Shellac Situation and Prices”, (Billboard, 10/31/42, p. 62)