We are filming today for the Hamilton College Jazz Archive, here in Sarasota, and it's my
great pleasure to have saxophonist and composer and arranger Jerry Jerome.
Welcome.
JJ: Thank you, Monk.
It's good to be here.
MR: It's great to be down here.
JJ: Welcome to Sarasota.
MR: Thank you.
JJ: You picked a nice day.
MR: We did.
And we are hearing some great music at the festival.
And you are a long time resident of this area, I guess we could say long time now.
JJ: Yeah, about twenty-three years.
MR: Originally you are from - JJ: Originally raised in New Jersey, and my
whole married life, professional life, was centered around New York and Long Island.
I lived on Long Island, in Roslyn.
MR: You know I read that the University of Wyoming has some of your music in their archive,
is that right?
JJ: Really?
MR: I think I read something about that.
JJ: Yeah.
MR: If it's true we're jealous, and we want some too.
JJ: Well sure, be happy to.
I don't recall.
When I broke the house down on Long Island I gave a lot of my material to the Museum
of Broadcasting in New York and the New School.
But I think Dick Hyman's wife spoke to me about Wyoming, I might have.
MR: I'll just show you where I read that, maybe it's true.
Did you start out as a clarinetist?
JJ: I started as a drummer.
I was fascinated with drums as a child, you know, in the vaudeville theaters, see the
pit drummer that was standing watching everything that was going on, you know he'd hit a ratchet
and blow a whistle with a dum-bang, and catch all the kicks and everything, and I said wow,
interesting.
And I would moved down to a better seat until I'd end up at the fourth show, you know, looking
over the railing at Louie, the drummer, and oh it fascinated me and that sound was so
crisp.
It was just about a nine piece pit band in Plainfield, New Jersey where I grew up.
But every theater, no matter how big or small, that had vaudeville, had to have a pit band,
and it just fascinated me.
And so I'd go home and assemble all kinds of little things on the table - get two butter
knives and go through what he was doing.
Nine or ten years old.
My mother thought, oooh, he's a strange kid.
And you know we were very poor and lessons, for about three dollars a lesson, my father
delivered bread and when I expressed a strong interest in wanting to be a drummer, he said,
"I'll see."
And he had a customer he delivered bread to, Professor Churchillo, Italian, one of those
three hundred pound guys you know, and my father worked out a deal where he gave him
bread and he gave me lessons on drums.
And the first day I come in there I walk in with a pair of drum sticks that someone had
given me for Christmas and I says, he started talking to me about this book Solfeggio by
Bona.
I says, "I want to play drums."
He says, "I do the talking here."
This is the way he wanted it.
And I went home and told my father what happened.
"You listen to Professor Churchillo."
And what he was trying to tell me was that the old Italian method of teaching musicians
was to teach them solfeggio, the ear training, no music, no musical instruments, no drums,
you just look at the part and you sing it.
[scats] Learn the intervals.
I didn't realize it but it was an enormous help towards the ear training.
And after I got through with that I went to drums and I went very quickly and I played
in his band and marched up and down these little towns in Jersey on Columbus Day and
you know different things.
It was great.
A nice uniform with the green epaulets and you know, Italian style.
Loved it.
At home I'd practice you know.
My mother said, "I wish you'd find something nice like a violin."
She says, "Drums - bang, bang, bang."
I was then in the garage you know.
So I says all right.
Violin didn't interest me at all, Monk, that sound, not my style.
And I'm left handed you know.
So one day I saw an ad in my uncle's grocery store and it showed a guy with two beautiful
chicks on his arms, looking up at him adoringly, and the caption said, "If you want to be the
life of the party, play a C melody Conn saxophone."
I said that's what I want to do, be a saxophone player.
MR: It's interesting that they even said "C melody."
JJ: Oh, yeah, that was it.
I don't think the tenor and alto were - well they weren't publicized.
They were trying to push a new thing because the idea of a C melody saxophone - no transposition,
you read it all.
And it showed guys playing over the piano you know, just reading the piano parts.
So I said well that's it.
So I got this beautiful nickel plated Conn C melody sax with little green buttons and
little red things here and like that, and it came with a little book that said black
means push it down, white means leave it open.
Hey, only ten or twelve looks good to me.
So I pushed it down and I learned how to play.
And you know I actually didn't get a teacher yet at that time, because I felt that that
was enough.
Then I got a teacher and started brushing up on it, and coming from a small town like
Plainfield, New Jersey, I literally was one of the few saxophone players in town.
And when the good one left to get a job in New York, they called me and I was not ready
at all.
You know I had no idea about these things.
I was a terrible reader, I couldn't read beans.
But I had an ear though that was unbelievable.
And I can recall, you know, guys would, the piano player would go to Woolworth's on Saturday
and pick up the latest tune that was published.
It would be like "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue" you know this is the twenties, about 1925,
26 you know, and it was incredible.
I'd just get on the job and I wouldn't - you know I'd listen and play around him, you know
just jazzing, which was kind of a style then [scats] peppy, you know, jazzy.
And I played long enough to earn some money and help my father out.
So in a sense I paid back the saxophone in a short period of time.
MR: That's a great story.
If it hadn't been for music, am I right in saying you might have been Doctor Jerome?
JJ: Yeah.
I finished pre-medicine and went to the University of Alabama Medical School, and finished two
years there and went up to Ann Arbor, Michigan to take a summer course that would have gotten
me into Ann Arbor, the third year program.
And there was a delay because I was from out of state.
So I went back to New York to earn some money I needed to go back to school.
And in the interim I was very interested in the new aspect of music for me which was being
highly professional.
I started with Harry Reiser and his Clicquot Club Eskimos.
MR: Clicquot Club Eskimos.
JJ: Yup.
He was a very famous twenties orchestra in early radio.
And at that time he had assembled a band that was trying to emulate the Goodman style, but
with his own character, namely a banjo and a Hammond organ.
You know everybody tried to work out something in the swing area.
And it was great.
I enjoyed playing with him.
I didn't make much money but I sure saw the United States of America.
We traveled the Midwest during the depression in 1935, '36, and things were very tough but
he managed to work all over the place because as he explained, the poor people would save
up whatever pennies they had and on Saturday night they'd go and fling it out, have a ball,
forget about their troubles.
MR: No matter how hard times are people will still need entertainment.
JJ: Yeah.
Manage to do something like that just to assuage their problems you know.
But I was with Harry until we got to New York and we were playing the Raymour Ballroom.
And George Simon came up with Glenn Miller and introduced me to Glenn.
I didn't know who Glenn was, never heard of him.
You know he was a sideman then, as a matter of fact he was playing with Ray Noble and
doing theater dates or radio commercials or whatever, recordings.
And oh, George Simon had given me an A minus rating in the band, myself, he said George
Seravo and Jerry Jerome would be the outstanding players in the band.
MR: You mean in print he had done this?
JJ: Yeah.
He was the editor of Metronome Magazine.
And he'd given the band a big write-up, a wonderful write-up.
And he told Glenn that there were several players in the band that he might be interested
in for this new band that he was forming.
So Glenn came over and said he liked my playing and would I like to join the band, he'd like
to have me.
I said, "Glenn, what does it pay?"
Because I was still interested in going back to medical school.
He says, "$45 a week."
I said, "That's that I'm getting with Harry Reiser."
And I couldn't see any advancement that way.
He says, "Yeah, we're going to grow.
We're going to be great, we're going to be great, and I'm recording next week."
I says, "Really?"
"Yeah," he says "recording at Decca."
"Oh, that sounds pretty good to me."
Decca.
Recording.
So I made my decision, I left Harry and went with Glenn.
And this is a cute story, Monk.
I went into the studio to record the first thing with Glenn.
And I got to recognize some of the musicians: Manny Klein, Charlie Spivak, Will Bradley.
This is the kind of players.
I says, "Oh my God what am I doing here?"
And Glenn was tagging shorts and says, "Now Jerry in 'I Got Rhythm' would you take 32
bars?"
"Wow.
I'm playing jazz?
Hey, this is it.
It's worth the 45 bucks."
And I played my first record with Glenn with "I Got Rhythm," with Hal MacIntyre.
We were the only two people that had been with the new group that Glenn had gotten up,
and I couldn't figure what I was doing with this band, until I got up to Raymour Ballroom
to rehearse for opening that job, there wasn't any of these guys, just Hal and myself, and
all new players.
I said to Glenn, "What happened to Charlie Spivak and Manny Klein?"
"Oh," he says "they're buddies of mine you know, and I wanted to make a real good record
for my first big band record."
So he said they came in.
MR: He got the ringers.
JJ: I didn't know.
And then we went to work.
And it was work.
MR: He was a task master?
JJ: Oh, unbelievable.
I didn't mind, you know it was all new for me you know.
He was a task master but he wanted perfection.
And he was also struggling for an identity.
You know in those days, band leaders had identity, a hook.
MR: A sound.
JJ: A sound, something.
You know even a guy like Kay Kayser would - his sound was his personality.
Just introducing the band, "Here comes sassy Sully Mason to sing a tune."
But that was how you could identify him.
Or Shep Fields blowing water through a straw, you know a bubbling rhythm.
Whatever pleases.
And Glenn had trouble.
He was not a trombone player like Tommy Dorsey.
In fact he was rather pedestrian I thought.
You know I didn't think his jazz amounted to very much.
And proof is, he never really fronted with his trombone, playing.
He would lead the band up front and go back and play with the section in my band, the
band I was with.
And so he had to use his arranging acumen.
MR: Because he wasn't a really outgoing type personality, right?
So he couldn't push that part of it.
JJ: Oh, not at all.
He used to have his jaws twitch all the time after a question.
You know he had to compose himself to kind of - of course that would change later.
Money in your pocket will change your personality at times I'm told.
MR: I don't know about that either.
JJ: But Glenn was a great experience, a great learning experience.
I learned what playing notes properly is right and how to really play by the mark.
Glenn would say, "Crescendo - diminuendo" and he says, "keep it under - keep it above."
But one thing that comes to mind that's so cute, when I played my solo for "I Got Rhythm"
with Glenn, I listened to it and it's a chorus and you know you can do a thousand of those
on a recording, you never do the same thing, you're improvising, you know.
So we went out on our first one nighter after we did our recording somewhere along the line,
and I got out and played, and played a totally different chorus, which is a soloist's preference
I would think.
Glenn came over to me and he said, "Jerry, when you stand up and play your solo, I wish
you'd play the one that's on the record."
I said, "Why?"
He says, "Well" he says, "I consider that part of the arrangement.
People expect it.
They buy the record and they expect to hear that."
Oh, wow.
The stop went down.
MR: I sometimes wonder, some of those classic trumpet solos in some of the Miller arrangements,
where they improvised first and then someone actually wrote them out.
You know like in "String of Pearls?"
And it's almost like what you're saying, that solo, even though it might have been improvised
first, became a part of the arrangements.
JJ: Without question.
You know and now like there have been a lot of Miller bands that have come along the line
and I notice that most of them that stand up, play the solos that are on the record.
And I think that's again for identity.
It makes it sound more like the Miller band.
So he had a point.
But the Part B of that statement is when I joined Benny Goodman, and I got up and stood
up and played "Undecided" on a one nighter, and I played what I'd played on the record,
and Benny came over to me and he said, "Did you like what you played on the record?"
"Oh," I said, "thank you, Benny."
Yeah.
See that's the difference.
Benny didn't - you know.
MR: Glenn Miller was not jazz band per se, it was more of a dance -
JJ: Yeah.
And the best.
Really he was great.
His tempos were great, and he strove for an audience reaction too.
What do you like?
What can I play for you?
MR: Well you went from one tough leader maybe to another with Benny Goodman.
JJ: Well that's a relative word, Monk, "tough."
Because they weren't tough as far as I'm concerned.
I understood Glenn.
I was a confidante of Glenn's.
Glenn and I were close.
I might tell you this it's an interesting bit of history from my point of view, and
that is I stayed with Glenn until he broke the band up.
I think it was New Year's Eve that we had our last gig.
And as I recall the reason he broke it up was because Moe Purtill had just joined him
on drums and Glenn was happy.
This was a fine drummer and he was really cementing a problem, because he kept firing
drummers either because of their behavior or because they just weren't up to what he
had expected of the band.
The band had a loggy feeling at times.
And when it had good drummers, it had a good feeling.
If you listen to some of the records that we made, they don't sound too much like the
Miller band, but they sure play good, you know they're well recorded.
And they're good players in there.
But Glenn broke the band up on New Year's Eve or the day after that, and he said, "I'll
call you when I reorganize."
He had to get some more money and get his second band started.
He called me three months later in March, and I met him at the Rialto Bar in New York.
I'll never forget that, on 49th Street, which is sort of Musician's Alley at that time.
All the hotels where the musicians stayed and the bars and all of that you know, sort
of a little place.
And Glenn said, "I'm reorganizing and I'd like to have you come back.
But" he says, "I want you to be a third partner with me and Chummy MacGregor" the piano player.
He says, "We'll draw the same salary, put up a car, split gasoline - the third bona
fide partner."
And I had just joined Red Norvo.
And I loved that band.
Just a small band, I think it was nine men, but it had a lot of tenor saxophone playing,
and playing with Glenn was very restrictive, it was reading a lot of music, and an occasional
32 bars, but he'd never let a guy blow.
In other words if he's cooking, forget about it, it was never a situation like that.
There was things to play, and I was the solo tenor man.
In fact I did a novelty with him, like doing a giant.
I talked with Glenn, we did a thing like Tex and Glenn, which neither one of us were really
into this area.
I certainly never sang or that kind of a thing.
But I turned him down.
And he was very crest fallen.
He asked if I would come and rehearse the saxes for him at the studio that night, which
I did.
And in the sax section there was a kid who came out from I think Detroit at that time,
was Tex Benecke.
And he took my place in the section.
And he was the right guy for that band, without question.
He did better by getting Tex.
MR: Because he became a singer also.
JJ: Oh everything.
He was great.
Just what Glenn wanted.
Because he was trying to do that.
See with my talking these things, I wasn't singing, I was talking these novelty things.
A la Ray McKinley, that kind of thing is what Glenn had in his mind.
Personality, western, country, you know, get that style into the band.
So I was very happy with Red.
And I was certainly happy.
First of all I was making 85 bucks a week and playing in New York and not traveling
was just wonderful.
Playing at the Commodore Hotel.
Come in every night and play with this wonderful band, beautiful room, and go on about my way.
And I was still saving up to go back to med school at this point, I sure was.
You know this is not really show business yet for me.
And then after that I got a job at WNEW in New York as a staff musician.
And that for me was a step up too because it paid much more and less playing, and you're
safely ensconced in a pit band, or that kind of a band, you know a ten piece group.
I played all the jazz and we had some unbelievable people working at the station.
Dinah Shore was a staff singer, you know, struggling along with all of us.
And Richard Brooks wrote copy, he became a big producer of films in California.
Writer, producer.
MR: This was for radio broadcasts?
JJ: Only.
Yeah.
This was 1937.
MR: Radio was extremely important.
JJ: Oh, it was so important, Monk, that when you think of a town like New York with WMCA,
WNEW, small stations, local, that covered only a bit of Connecticut, a bit of Jersey
and New York basically, had ten piece orchestras for staff.
And there were 300 men employed at NBC, ABC and CBS.
Every theater had a pit band.
Music was flourishing.
It was it.
It was entertainment.
Oh I loved that job.
You know I got fat and furious.
But again it was, while I played some jazz, it was all marked according to time because
we had a program to do, a half hour show, a fifteen minute show, or accompany somebody,
you know do that kind of thing.
It was nice.
And I loved that show particularly because at night I used to sit in with John Kirby's
six pieces on 52nd Street, which was zooming, you know, boom.
And I played not tenor, but bass clarinet with John Kirby.
Because they had a very set group and I learned their arrangements.
And I enjoyed that very much, and I'd go back to NEW and one day there was a disc jockey
named Martin Block, very famous.
Block had a show called "The Make Believe Ballroom."
It's still around, you know it's still there, not at WNEW anymore but on syndicated shows
they carried "The Make Believe Ballroom" on radio.
And every Friday he had a show called "Jive at Five."
And he got the outstanding players that came into the city with their bands like Tommy
Dorsey or Goodman or Shaw, and they'd be thrilled to come out and do the show for nothing, because
he plugged the records.
And he was the most important disc jockey, not only in New York but probably all over
the country.
Martin Block's "Make Believe Ballroom."
And on this given Friday afternoon, "Jive at Five," he had Benny Goodman, Count Basie,
rhythm section, you know Walter Page and Jo Jones and Freddie Green, and Lester Young
and I think Buck Clayton was supposed to show up on this show.
So there, about ten minutes before, Lester Young hadn't showed up.
And he was out somewhere out there I guess.
He couldn't find Madison Avenue and 52nd Street.
So Martin said, "Well we've got a pretty good tenor man here, Jerry Jerome."
Benny said, "Yeah, yeah, get your horn, sit in."
Reason being, I didn't know, but in retrospect, he and Bud Freeman were not getting along
and I guess he wanted to hear another tenor man.
So I got out my horn, I couldn't wait to play because years before when I was with Reiser
I had sat in with Basie in Kansas City in 1937 when he had the little six, seven piece
band.
Oh, and what a - that's a whole other episode in my life, marked-
MR: We'll come back to that.
JJ: We'll have to.
That Kansas City was something else.
It turned my whole life around.
Because by this time I was playing like Lester.
That's the point.
And I sat in and played with Benny and Benny apparently liked what he heard.
And Basie made a - he says, "There's your-" you know.
And he says, "What are you doing tonight?
You want to come down and play with my band?"
And, "What?- yes!"
Waldorf Astoria, Empire Room.
And this was the fall of '38.
So I put on my tux and came down there.
And when I think about it, Monk, you know there was no rehearsal, I just sat in on the
second tenor chair and started reading.
Because you know I was so crazy about that band I just almost could feel where the parts
lay.
And it was very much, I'd say, ninety percent of the arrangements were Fletcher Henderson's.
So if you knew one Fletcher arrangement, you knew about where you were.
You know it was never like a anti sorted thing, it was totally unpredictable, but you know,
everything laid very smooth.
So Benny says, "Why don't you see me tomorrow morning?"
I came up to his office and he offered me a fabulous job.
And I says well this is the band.
Harry James on trumpet you know, and Ziggy and Chris, and the smaller band, just the
five brass, four saxes and four rhythm.
Fabulous.
So he gave me a wonderful deal.
The only thing I played bass clarinet with him, and I said I didn't have a bass clarinet-
MR: Had you played it before?
JJ: Yeah.
He says - no I hadn't played it before.
MR: You hadn't played it before?
JJ: He says, "You can play mine."
I went out and got a lesson from Joe Allard real fast.
"Hey, how do you put this thing together?"
And when I joined Benny we recorded "Bach Goes to Town."
Got to do it.
You know there's no time to start hedging, you know, [scats].
Came right out like - sweet.
MR: That's a great story.
In that Goodman group, is that the one that had Teddy Wilson?
JJ: Yeah.
Teddy and Lionel.
And later Charlie Christian joined, in the sextet.
Fabulous band.
MR: A great experience.
JJ: It was just wonderful.
Well that turned my life around.
I said if I can make it here with the limited amount of tools that I've developed, never
going to a music school or had planned to get into the scene like this, and I was comfortable,
I could handle whatever Benny put up.
MR: Well I guess you owe somewhat of a debt to that Italian professor.
JJ: Churchillo.
Professor Churchillo and his pasta.
He had pasta going all day long.
It was great.
He knew what he was doing.
It's hard to recommend that to kids today.
How would you tell a kid not to play your instrument, just go "do -- me -- fa -- so"
you know.
MR: Well, take us to Kansas City for a moment if you would.
JJ: Well playing with Harry was very tough, because as I say we did mostly one nighters
throughout the midwest, and not only was it during the depression time but it was one
of the worst droughts in American history.
There were these pictures of these little dry tornadoes that had nothing to even pick
up you know.
And I have a picture in my scrapbook of the North Platte River, and I'm standing on it,
and showing how high it's supposed to be.
Incredible.
So it was not a lot of fun it was tough, but again that was at the very beginning of my
career so I just accepted it as the way music is and when I make enough money I'll get out
of it.
But when we got to Kansas City, we played Fairyland Park Casino, and we were there for
quite a number of weeks, because he was popular.
And I did what most of the musicians do, you prowl.
First of all you look for a place to find some good Bar-B-Q ribs, and a place to get
a drink after hours.
Kansas City under Prendergast was the swinginest, I couldn't believe the city.
Nothing closed.
Everything stayed open.
And I found my way, with my horn in my hand, because I always had that with me, I had my
tenor with me, and I found myself in the colored part of town, you know around 17th Street,
and went into a place called the Lone Star.
And I was absolutely mesmerized by a pianist, Mary Lou Williams was playing piano, a female,
with Bus Moten, who was related to Bennie Moten.
Well the whole idea of a woman playing jazz piano, and not only a woman, but the way she
played, I was absolutely intrigued.
So when she came off the stand I went over and said, "I'd like to buy you a drink" which
I did.
I said, "Is there any policy about sitting in?"
"Oh we love people to come in and sit in."
So I sat in with this little five piece group.
And I was in heaven.
They had a different beat, Monk, it was a very strong four four beat.
And piano players instead of playing up here, concentrated their efforts and made it a rhythm
instrument, not a solo instrument, is the way I would describe it.
They just fed you.
And they used to call them "Bostons."
You know the rhythm is a "Boston" they called it.
MR: A Boston?
JJ: A Boston.
And I don't know why that name comes to my mind.
MR: I haven't heard that before.
JJ: From Boston.
Like a solo.
The way you play behind a solo.
MR: A comping style.
JJ: I think that might be what it might be, but I long forget.
But she finished around three o'clock in the morning, her gig finished.
She said, "You doing anything now?"
I says, "No."
She says, "Come with me."
She took me to the Reno Club.
Now I didn't know Kansas City, I didn't know the Reno Club.
I walked in there, and if there's any way of describing what a ventriloquist's dummy
that's on a rod does when his head goes like that you know, you spin it around?
Well I heard Lester Young and this Basie group just a small group.
I think there were just the two woodwinds, two saxes, baritone and tenor and trombone
and trumpet and four rhythm.
No music on the stand, just playing charts.
MR: Head arrangements.
JJ: Head arrangements.
And I just went crazy listening to that band.
And I went back every night until I got to know Lester and Bas' and I established contact
with Basie because when I heard he was from Red Bank, New Jersey I said, "I'm from Plainfield,
New Jersey."
"Hey man!"
And he had an ashtray you know that had little roaches on it, you know that are well spent
marijuana.
Just that little bit.
They'd save them and grind them up and do them again.
But drinking was open.
And they started a little bit earlier, but they went all night.
And Lips Page was the Master of Ceremonies.
And he would introduce the stars that would come in.
Not just players, but dancers, singers, whatever would come in, do your turn, you know do your
thing.
And he had a balcony where all the rich, white people would sit with these beautiful hats,
and they'd sip Pernod, and just get out of their heads you know listening to this good
music.
It was just a sort of a orgiastic sort of a thing.
And the music turned everybody on you know.
MR: Was the atmosphere, was it semi-segregated?
JJ: It was totally segregated.
MR: It was totally segregated.
How did you fit into that?
JJ: Well.
You are talking about the place?
MR: Yeah.
JJ: No, no the place was not segregated at all.
But the feeling in Kansas City was.
Blacks were blacks and whites were whites.
That's the way it was.
MR: But you were accepted because you were a player?
JJ: Yeah.
And no one bothered me.
When I went to the University of Alabama and I went to hear Earl Hines, they kicked me
out.
They says you ain't got no business being here, get out.
Cops.
MR: This was what year?
JJ: Uh, '33 - '34.
And this wasn't that much different in Kansas City I don't think, but I never saw any blacks
in any good jobs or anything like that.
I think they were segregated at that point.
But I went anyway.
And if they gave me a bad time I'd get out.
I never would fight cops or do anything like that, but I liked to go where I liked to go.
And so I sat in with Basie a few times, and it was just fabulous.
I was just absorbing him, and what I was hearing out of Lester Young, he was just incredible.
And a very quiet man too.
He was to himself.
But I of course took up with the Basie band when they came to New York when I heard the
big band.
But that turned my thing around.
I said this is the way to play a horn.
Because you know coming out of the twenties you heard Paul Whiteman, Bert Lown, and even
Casaloma - it was a good band but it was not a jazz band, the players was not -
MR: Sweet?
They called them sweet bands?
JJ: Yeah, yeah.
More dance bands that were trying to play jazz rather than jazz.
Of course there was Coleman Hawkins records and Louis Armstrong records and those kind
of things, but to hear someone live that could do this thing - and to this day I sit and
listen to Lester Young in the car when I'm driving and I grin from ear to ear because
I can just see him.
And he didn't care whether he made mistakes or not, he'd play these unbelievable strange
idioms, but they came out.
MR: Somehow he made it work.
JJ: Yeah.
MR: That's a great story.
You got into producing?
JJ: Well I went with Artie Shaw.
Benny brought the band up in Catalina Island in 1940, to have his back operated on.
He says I don't know when I'm coming back, it may be in the fall or something like that.
This was summertime.
And he said, "I'll call you."
But meanwhile, all six of us joined Artie Shaw, the day after we left Catalina he was
waiting for us.
He was organizing his new band.
He had a band that he was out on record, with strings, the twelve strings, but they were
studio musicians, they were all studio-type guys.
And he wanted to have a band to go with, to travel with.
And so we went with him.
Vernon Brown, myself, Nick Fatool, Les Robinson.
And it was a fine band, a very good musical band and good for dancing.
And but again, I'm back - when do I play a tenor solo?
You know it was not a jazz band, not a swing band, let's put it that way, not a swing band.
It was playing swing with strings.
But to me that was sort of a heavy feel for an improviser.
You know you wanted to play against a Kansas City four-four.
MR: You wanted to get some Boston in there.
JJ: Yeah, get some Boston in there.
So actually I stayed with Artie until he came to New York.
I did a lot of recording with him and did some of his fine things, like "Stardust" I'm
on there, "Concerto for Clarinet."
We made the picture "The Second Chorus," it was a lot of fun.
How could it not be fun looking at Paulette Goddard?
Short skirts.
My goodness, it was great.
MR: How long did that film take?
Was it a matter of a couple of weeks in the filming of that movie?
JJ: Yeah for us, because we were in segments, we weren't throughout the whole thing, but
there was one great episode in that movie if you see it.
You know the story, Fred Astaire and Burgess Meredith are trying to get with Artie's band.
They are trumpet players.
And so they both, you know Paulette arranges an audition.
She's an agent for some outfit for Artie she's selling these two guys.
So they, Fred Astaire, uh, Burgess Meredith auditions first.
So while he wasn't looking, Burgess took his music, you know Artie's music, and changed
the notes and everything like that.
So Burgess gets up and he plays and he's reading along and all of a sudden he reads these strange
notes and he's playing bad notes.
Shaw looks at him, what the heck's this guy doing?
"Out, get out, get off, get off."
Burgess says, "That son-of-a-gun, that sucker did it."
So Astaire, very cocky, gets up there to play his parts and you know how Astaire does these
parts.
And he starts playing.
The camera pans to a shot behind the bandstand, and they're up behind, the brass is about
three feet up, and of course when they do the shot, what happened is that Burgess waits
at some point and grabs the chair and pulls it.
And of course the camera stops and they go to another shot, uh not another shot but in
reality, they had a gym mat and oh about that much of a fall.
So the producer, Boris Moore, said, look we'll have a stunt man do the pratfall.
Meredith was drinking at the time and said, "Naaa, I'll do it."
And he did.
That was him.
He went over, but he only went over about this far, but that's not very comfortable
either you know.
But in the shot it looks like he had dumped him.
So both of them didn't get the job.
That was the fun part.
MR: It's interesting how big a part the music was of the whole industry, of the entertainment
industry at that time.
JJ: Oh yeah.
Until television came around.
And I was in that in the very, very beginning.
I think I said that I left Shaw and went through a year of penance in New York City because
you can't take good work until you get your 802 card, that's the union.
And it's tough, but you can play club dates, you can play these casual engagements with
like Meyer Davis or Lester Lanin or whatever bands are around.
And I have a cute story about that.
So I was just doing these single dates and what would happen is that someone would recommend
you to the leader.
And if the leader didn't know you he'd ask a lot of questions.
What do you look like?
And how does he look on the job?
Does he play?
Does he know?
For a fourteen dollar job they'd go through all this bit you know.
So I was recommended to a guy named Eli Dantzig who was the band leader at the St. George
Hotel in Brooklyn, and one of these old time guys played terrible fiddle, but he fronted
the band with a fiddle, you know that made him look good you know.
So typically there'd be some good players in the band, and when a new guy comes off
the road like from Goodman's band or Shaw's band or whoever, they'd recommend me and I
got this job.
So they said to the band leader, "Eli, let him play, let him play," meaning let him get
up and blow a little bit.
And he'd be reluctant because that was not dance music for the public out there.
So this one time he walked over to me and he said, he had a bit of an accent, he said,
"You know 'Stardust?'"
I says, "Yeah."
"Play 'Stardust.'"
So I got up and I closed my eyes and I get into swinging, all improvised you know.
And when I finished the guys says, "Yeah."
Dantzig walks over to me and he says, "Vhat you play?"
I says, "I played 'Stardust.'"
"You played, 'Stardust?'"
He took his fiddle and stood in front of me, went through the whole chorus, straight melody
with his fiddle.
He says, "That's 'Stardust.'"
And I learned - you're going to be in a club date, play the melody.
MR: Play the melody.
JJ: Can't go wrong.
MR: There's a company in Chicago that puts out bumper stickers that says "play the melody."
JJ: Really?
MR: Yeah, because I don't know they're into the old -
JJ: Dave Capp had a big sign, with an Indian like this, playing to heaven.
And the sign says "play the melody."
In the Decca studios.
So that was the money part of playing it.
So I hung in with this for a long time, and went into conducting at NBC and studying arranging
and composing, and formed my own company to write jingles for 25 years.
I didn't do much playing horn at that time except when we'd have a session and the guys
would come in, I'd do that.
And then I came down here to Sarasota to retire, and
picked up the horn again, and I've been playing concerts, and going back to blowing the horn
again.
MR: You'd get a contract to do like a jingle for some company -
JJ: Oh, yeah.
I wrote a jingle for Miller High Life beer back I guess in the '60s and they wanted a
different kind of a male singer.
So I got Joe Williams.
And they loved it.
And Joe did a fantastic job.
It swings.
I got like a small swing band behind him a la Basie, brought it up a little bit in the
style, made it a little more modern.
But they loved him.
And I used Al Hirt as a soloist on one of those things, I used one of my favorite singers
was Whitney Houston's mother.
Yeah.
She did an awful lot of jingles with me, she did Salem, did Winston, did Open Pit Barbecue
Sauce, Maxwell House Coffee.
MR: Yeah?
JJ: Yeah.
Cissy.
Cissy Houston.
She was some great singer.
You know she had honesty.
She wasn't copying anything, she just sounded like a good vocalist.
MR: How did that jingle with Joe go?
JJ: I'm not much of a - [sings] "Enjoy life with the bright clear taste of beer - Miller
High Life, the champagne of bottled beer."
He went down, he could do that you know.
"Miller High Life, the Champagne of bottled beer.
Sparkling [scats]."
MR: We've got to find a copy of that.
JJ: Oh, I've got these, I've got them all, But I really told Joe about it, he got a kick
out of it.
But he was a very fine gentleman to work with.
Worked very hard, and if he hadn't gone into being such a big singer, he probably would
have done very well in the jingle field, he could have, because he had a lot of resonance,
good sound.
And then I did jingles for television.
You know a lot of them were on television.
I got into the Spanish field, did Tito Puente, used him an awful lot.
But Joe was an outstanding player.
Now he's going to get the - MR: The Satchmo Award.
JJ: The Satchmo Award tonight.
Is it tonight?
MR: I think it might be Saturday night.
JJ: Saturday night, yeah.
MR: Well you've had a really fascinating career.
JJ: I'd do it all over again.
MR: That's good.
Those moments in your life when you were next to Lester Young and those kinds of things
are really priceless.
JJ: You don't realize it at the time that you're sitting next to history.
You know you don't know that.
You just know that this is something else.
I wouldn't think about that.
I wish I'd taken more pictures, or written more documentation.
But you know an amazing thing, Monk, I get letters from people all over the country,
all over the world, that send me material about where I was and when I was.
You know it's incredible.
Peter Broadbent from England is doing a thing on Charlie Christian, the guitar player, and
so Charlie was with the band, I know a lot of things about Charlie, and in return the
guy sent me literally a diary of the time that I was with Benny, when Charlie was with
the band.
And it's incredible.
I'm looking and, oh yeah, I remember that.
MR: Yeah, I'm glad those kind of people are around, that take such an interest.
JJ: There are many, believe me.
I bump into them all the time.
I'm going to Germany to do twenty concerts in the fall, and the guy tells me, "Bring
plenty of CDs and a fountain pen."
He says, "These people will tell you things about you, or they'll want to know things
about you."
These are very ardent fans.
And God bless them.
I think that's what's keeping jazz alive.
MR: Yeah.
I think American can be pleased to say the least with the fact that we've spread this
music to other parts of the world.
And sometimes it's more popular in other parts than it is here.
What's your, just to wrap up, what do you listen to these days?
JJ: Well in the past, since I retired I've had the time, I like classical music, I enjoy
that.
I go to all the concerts here, I enjoy it very much.
I'd rather listen to classical music in a car for example, than listen to jazz in the
car, because it's relaxing, and I get too involved with jazz sometimes and I don't concentrate
as well.
But I like, I'm just, I'm not into modern jazz, fusion or even bebop truthfully.
I mean I appreciate it but I'm a traditionalist.
I like middle of the road jazz, mainstream if you want to call it- but that's - and the
singers that go along with that kind of stuff.
I like it.
MR: You recommended some pretty good people along the way, didn't you?
Warren Vache?
And kind of helped them land some - JJ: Derek Smith in the beginning.
Derek worked with me a lot.
Benny would call me from time and time and say, "Who's good?"
Benny and I maintained a relationship for a long time.
We'd have lunch together at his club, or some fish house on the east side of New York, he
used to love to go there, the Manhattan House I think, or he stayed at the Manhattan House.
MR: I heard Benny Goodman would never pick up the tab for lunch, is that true?
JJ: He did with me, but one time I said to Benny, "Hey I'm going to have to take you
out next time."
He says, "You keep threatening."
No I got back at him.
Oh we were playing the Fox Theater in Detroit, and he says, "Hey there's a great restaurant
down the street, it's only about half a block down."
The Russian Bear, outside of the back stage of the Fox Theater in Detroit.
So he says "Come on, Sneeze."
He called Arty Rollini "Sneeze" - big nose - and he says to Hymie Schertzer and myself,
come on, we'll go eat.
So we says hey, Benny's popping, great.
Boy it turned him on, they had wonderful service, they had a fiddle come and serenade us, and
just before the dessert Benny says, "Oh my God I didn't change the reed uhhh, I'll get
you later."
Typical.
MR: He was gone.
JJ: And if he wanted a cigarette, instead of saying, "Anybody got a cigarette," he'd
go like this, and sure enough, somebody would come running.
Benny.
I loved him.
I loved him.
He was great.
He was nice to me.
He treated me well, except when my mother came to Washington to the Earl Theater to
bring me a chocolate cake which I'd requested, and she walked in just at the time that Benny
had just come down, and he says, "Oh, so you're Jerry's mother?
Oh thank you."
He took the cake.
Just like that.
MR: That's low.
But I guess he gave us enough good music- JJ: He gave me plenty.
I didn't know I was so unsophisticated when I joined this band as to Benny.
We were on another one nighter, a theater engagement.
I found myself in some joint somewhere, with a great group playing.
And I called him on the phone and woke him.
I said, "You've got to come down, there's some great players here, you'll love it."
The guys said, "Don't ever do that, that's two weeks notice."
Benny came down.
He came down.
So I'd have to say I think, you know, we got along well.
MR: Did Lester Young have any peculiarities that you noticed at the time?
JJ: Well it was a cute thing.
When the Basie band came up to New York, this was the finished band, this was not like the
band that was in Kansas City, this was a full band, they had full brass, full saxes.
And Lester and Herschel Evans were playing in this band.
And Lester had a cute thing.
He had a string tied between his stand and the next, the third alto stand, and in the
middle of it was a little bell, like a tinkerbell.
If anybody in the band goofed, he'd ring it.
And it was the funniest thing.
Somebody'd be playing and with his ear he'd hear something.
And the crowd didn't get it but everybody who knew would get hysterical you know.
MR: That's great.
And he would be holding his horn at that strange- JJ: Oh yes, and sometimes wearing a hat, most
times wearing a hat. That pork pie.
MR: They made quite a splash at the what was it, something Door?
JJ: The Famous Door.
MR: The Famous Door.
JJ: That was where that happened, that specifically.
I had taken Dinah Shore there for dinner, for a date, we had a date there at that time.
We were both single at the time.
And she thought the food was the best thing.
Dinah was a little heavy at the time, but she was coming along.
MR: You had one other story about Benny Goodman I wanted to ask you about.
JJ: It relates to Basie too, Goodman and Basie as a matter of fact.
I was playing the Hartford Theater with Benny, in Connecticut.
The Hartford Theater in Hartford, Connecticut.
And Benny said, "Let's go hear Basie, he's at the Crystal Cave" or Crystal Ballroom - I
guess it was the Crystal Ballroom in Hartford, which was a black night club at the time.
And Herschel was a very good friend of mine, Herschel Evans, the tenor saxophone player
with Basie.
And they all knew I had come out of med school, and at various times I would do things for
the guys that helped them along, you know, medically, either suggesting or even helping
them.
But we went over to hear Herschel, uh, hear Basie, and Herschel came over to me and he
said, "Jerry, I'm having trouble breathing."
I says, "Really?
How long has that been going on?"
He says, "Well just, you know, it's been bad the last week."
He says, "Look."
His pants were unbuttoned, you know he had suspenders but he couldn't' even button the
top buttons.
And he said he had changed his mouthpiece from an Otto Link I guess about a seven opening
to about a four.
Wow.
That sounded pretty serious to me.
I said, "Have you seen any doctors lately?"
He says, "Well I saw some guy up in Harlem," but he said, "he thought I had asthma."
I said, "Asthma?"
So during the break, during the rehearsal, during the playing break, I took him back
in the dressing room and I stretched him out on a bench, and I put my ear down, you know
because he was so swollen.
His shoelaces were untied.
He had something going on here.
And I listened to his belly as I rolled him over like that, and I could hear a splashing.
I couldn't believe I was listening to it because to me it was a thing called peritoneal ascites.
It's fluid, body fluid, that had backed up from the heart that was not pumping well enough
to do it.
And I'm limited, I'm not a doctor, you know this is just purely clinical stuff.
So I said to Basie, "Basie" I says, "where are you going after this?"
He said, "We're going to back to New York."
I said, "Get him to a hospital, right away.
This man is seriously ill."
I didn't know what, but I knew this had to do something with failure of a heart, failure
of a kidney, failure of something.
You know he was all swollen, and loaded with edema.
So Basie says yeah they would do that, they were going right back to the city, which is
not too far.
So we went back in the taxicab, Benny, myself and Harry and whoever was there in the band,
the manager.
And I turned around sort of musing and I said to Benny, "You know, I think Herschel is in
cardiac failure, I think he's dying."
He says, "What are you talking about, man you're such a quack you know everything,"
yack yack yack.
And at the next recording session which was either the next day or the day after, Benny
got a call from John Hammond and said Herschel Evans had died.
You know, and the Metronome printed, that particular thing I was talking about, it was
in the Metro magazine.
But it just tore me apart, you know it was one of those funny kind of things.
You don't want to wish anybody, even a bad thought.
But I had dinner, I met his family in California.
I think his brother-in-law worked for the postal department.
And we got talking about Herschel, this sweet guy.
And I have his mouthpiece.
The family gave me his mouthpiece.
MR: Well that is quite an inside story, yeah.
JJ: Yeah.
But don't ask me for a diagnosis.
MR: I'm feeling okay today.
All right.
Okay.
Well it's been fascinating.
JJ: Well thank you, Monk.
I enjoyed talking about these times.
They just keep coming back, but I have trouble remembering names.
MR: You remembered mine, I appreciate it.
JJ: Yeah, I have to make a point of it.
I looked at your card, I looked at it again, I looked at it again, then I make a mental
picture.
Like you said to be up here at 10:30 and the room is 1031, and I says hey it follows the
time.
I need a little hook.
But I enjoyed it.
MR: Just like music, we need the hook.
Well on behalf of Hamilton College, I'd like to thank you very much and I hope the rest
of the weekend here is good for you.
JJ: Thank you, and I'll tell you, if any of my grandchildren try to get into Hamilton
College, will you help me?
MR: I'll put in a good word.
JJ: You turned down one of my sons already.
MR: I'm glad we got that on tape.
Is it too late for him to come back?
We'll keep it in mind.
JJ: Thank you.
MR: Thanks so much
For more infomation >> Fox News Suspends Anchor Amid Lewd Texting Scandal - Duration: 0:24. 
For more infomation >> 300 years of the Mongol yoke. Есть славянские и монгольские гены перемешались - Duration: 10:01. 
For more infomation >> Zombies Vs Kinetic Sand Mack Truck Trailer Learn Colors for Kids Children Toddlers and Cars Toys - Duration: 10:47. 
For more infomation >> دورايمون || حلقات دورايمون الكيوت || جديد سبيس تون 2017 - Duration: 53:29. 
For more infomation >> Pewdiepie中文cc字幕 - 真點EX究極冰火爆發認真模式改!! - Duration: 17:26. 
For more infomation >> Nightmares/Pesadillas - Duration: 2:19. 
For more infomation >> How I edit YouTube videos in Sony Vegas 13 - Duration: 7:13. 
For more infomation >> Need Pop Beats?
For more infomation >> How To Butterfly Twist (B-Twist) | Tricking & Freerunning Tutorial - Duration: 5:06. 
For more infomation >> BookTube A Thon + July Wrap Up! - Duration: 8:12. 
For more infomation >> RAKSHABANDHAN SPECIAL COVER | Anushree Srivastava - Duration: 2:16. 
For more infomation >> Clash Royale Battles 3CrownUrAssBruh $100 Raffle in YouTube description - Duration: 2:49:20. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét