ALL THAT JAZZ AND GRAETTINGER

Presented at Rendezvous 2000, Egham, England, April 2000

Welcome, and thanks for coming, because I know I’ve not chosen to speak about one of Stan’s easiest arrangers. Murray wasn’t exactly over the moon about the subject, and even close friends were surprised, because I’ve never been known as a Graettinger devotee myself. One even suggested I should call it, "Why I Hate Bob Graettinger!"

Which isn’t strictly true, because I think Bob’s writing divides into two quite separate categories: the jazz and the classical. And I love the jazz, which is what this program is all about.

There is a sort of mystique about Graettinger, both because of his non-conformist lifestyle, and the obscure nature of much of his music. But let’s start with something I think we can all agree on. We’re here today because we are Stan Kenton fans. And Stan went out of his way to support Bob Graettinger, both musically and personally. I hope this afternoon we can discover why this was, and perhaps take a fresh look at Bob’s music, which did not begin and end with City of Glass.

I know Stan loved the music of jazz, and the writing of Gene Roland, Bill Holman, Lennie Niehaus. But that wasn’t enough to satisfy him. He looked beyond that, to the deeper music, with more substance to the composition than a dance tune or a swing riff.

Kenton will forever be associated primarily with music which, for want of a better term, we call Progressive Jazz. And nobody came more progressive than Bob Graettinger.

It hadn’t always been that way. Bob’s earliest arrangements were perfectly competent, but nothing especially out of the ordinary. I’d like to play you a swing chart he wrote around 1944, to feature the trumpet of Benny Carter. In this recent recording, the trumpet player is a Kenton musician, John Eckert, who played jazz trumpet in the mellophonium orchestra of 1963. Graettinger titled this early composition "Iguana."

(Selection: Iguana)

It’s clear Bob paid his dues in the dance band world in the usual way. He was a native Californian, born in 1923 into a middle-class family with one older brother, and from all accounts enjoyed a "normal" childhood, with a keen interest in football and other sports.

At high school, Bob both played in and arranged for the school dance band, and as he approached adolescence, his main interest turned towards a career in popular music. He played alto saxophone, and began his professional career when he was 18 years old in 1942 with the Ken Baker orchestra.

Like most big band musicians, Bob moved around, and during the Forties he played alto and wrote for bands that included Johnny Richards, Alvino Rey, Bobby Sherwood and Vido Musso, as well as Benny Carter.

During this learning process, for reasons unknown to me, Bob appears to have undergone something of a personality change, that remained for the rest of his life. He became excessively introverted, and uncommunicative, very melancholy and morose, and a heavy drinker. Probably all reasons why he was quickly discharged from Army service.

By 1947, Bob seems to have realized he was never going to be a great alto player, but he had a lot to say through his writing. And the one band which might give him a platform to be heard was Stan Kenton, who was doing great things with Pete Rugolo’s deeper pieces, like "Impressionism" and "Monotony."

Graettinger and Ray Wetzel had played together in Bobby Sherwood’s band, so now Bob persuaded Wetzel to introduce him to Stan. Graettinger, of course, brought along his music, and oh boy, it certainly was different from the stuff he’d written for Carter.

As Milt Bernhart put it: "Ray told Stan that Bob had some original ideas, he’s different, and that was all Stan needed to hear. Different was the important word!"

So here’s Bob’s audition piece that so captivated Stan’s attention in 1947 - the dashing, strident, clamorous, "Thermopylae."

(Selection: Thermopylae)

Thermopylae is the name of a mountain pass in Greece, but the title wasn’t set in stone, because Capitol’s recording sheets list it, mis-spelt, and followed by the proviso "tentative," so there must have been some thought in 1947 of changing the name.

Stan didn’t just like "Thermopylae," his actual words to me were: "I fell in love with it," which is pretty strong stuff. He put Graettinger on the payroll, joining Pete Rugolo as staff arranger, where Bob stayed for the whole of 1948.

There’s a common misconception that Bob was a slow writer, but that certainly wasn’t true in ’48, when I estimate that he contributed at least two dozen charts into the book. That’s a sizable body of work by anyone’s standards, and in my opinion, this was one of Bob’s most productive periods, in terms of quality as well as quantity.

So why aren’t we more familiar with it? Well, every good story needs a villain, and in 1948 that man was James C. Petrillo, president of the powerful musicians’ union. Petrillo imposed a recording ban for virtually the whole of ’48, meaning no new commercial recordings could be made at all.

It’s hard to realize today, but during the Forties, the big bands were the equivalent in popularity of today’s Spice Girls or Boy Zone, or whatever the latest fad is. And just like today’s pop stars, the bands lived and died by their recordings. People attending dances and concerts expected to hear music they were familiar with from records. Or, after hearing the music live, they wanted to go out and buy the hit recordings. Record sales meant everything.

So, to a large extent, Stan felt constrained to go on playing the music already recorded in 1947. New pieces by Rugolo and Graettinger were slipped in, but not featured to anything like the extent they would have been, if they could have been recorded.

With broadcasts and transcriptions from 1948 thin on the ground, we are missing a great chunk out of Stanley’s past - and by one of his most important and impressive bands to boot.

We can fortunately gain an impression of Graettinger’s 1948 work for Kenton, from the more recent endeavours of people like Mark Masters in America, and especially Werner Herbers in Holland, who have concentrated on researching Bob’s unrecorded charts.

In my opinion, Graettinger was at his best when he had a melody to work around, and in 1948 most of his writing was arrangements of standard songs. "I’m In The Mood For Love" was first played by Kenton in January of ’48, at the famous Paramount Theatre in New York.

The advancement in writing, even since "Thermopylae," is quite amazing. Even the introduction is a mini-composition in itself, and at the end, the trombones rise out of the crescendo in a really lovely choral voicing.

I’d suggest you follow the melody line played by the alto saxophone, to really appreciate the genius behind this arrangement.

(selection: I’m In The Mood For Love)

Bob has so much going on, it’s very difficult to take it all in on one hearing. Repeated listenings reveal new insights, always I think, the hallmark of a fine arrangement.

Milt Bernhart led the trombones in the Progressive Jazz band, and remembers the circumstances well. I don’t think I can do better than quote Milt directly:

"We got Bob’s first arrangements of some standard songs. One was "Autumn in New York," and another was "You Go to My Head." Stan, and everybody in the band, felt very highly about them. They were very enthusiastic. Bob’s scores certainly were different. We hadn’t anything in the book that resembled these arrangements. Bob took those songs, and he created a new slant on the melodies.

"We were playing them at dances, but I don’t know what the dancers thought. They could hear the melody, I suppose, but Graettinger’s way with a melody was very advanced, and the arrangements took strange turns, and were full of surprises. But not nonsense - it was new and original, but it all seemed to hang together and made sense."

I don’t know if you noticed during "I’m In the Mood For Love," but one of Bob’s techniques was to have a soloist play the melody very straight, almost dead-pan, while the orchestra runs riot around him. Bob Burgess is the soloist on "You Go To My Head," but it’s the band which creates the real excitement.

That Kenton "wall of sound" comes crashing down, and in 1948 Graettinger made great use of tension and release. The relief when the initial dissonance suddenly stops is almost tangible, yet without it the arrangement would lose much of its distinction and originality.

Stan first played "You Go to My Head" at Carnegie Hall in February, 1948. It takes some getting used to, but once again, I think you’ll find it helpful to follow the words of the song in your mind, because it enables the listener to realize what a fantastic variation on the melody Graettinger has created. I know Stan was very proud of "You Go To My Head."

(Selection: You Go To My Head)

You can probably guess why Kenton, with his love of bravura and boldness, found Graettinger such an attractive arranger. Bob’s writing was complex, energetic and loud - all the "masculine" attributes that Kenton most admired.

At the same time, it takes a lot of effort from the musicians to play such music, and it isn’t easy for the audience, because it doesn’t swing. It’s abstract music that requires real concentration. You can’t just let it flow over you and let your mind wander.

There was one soloist Bob wrote for who couldn’t be pushed into second place, as a sort of foil for the orchestra to dance around, and that was June Christy. June was never a confident singer, in the way Anita O’Day had been. Criticism hurt Christy, yet for both Rugolo and Graettinger, she tackled some of the most difficult charts ever written for a jazz singer, and performed them with flair and style.

Kenton and Christy were made for each other. They were a class act. June welcomed the challenge of Graettinger’s writing, and he even did a real swinging arrangement for her of "Fine And Dandy," which I cannot play because no Christy recording exists.

All we do have is an arrangement for a scaled-down orchestra of "Everything Happens To Me." This orchestration, with a small string section, features all the characteristics of Bob’s best work, with the unique tonal colors and instrumental voicings that so attracted Kenton to his writing.

Here’s June Christy with Bob Cooper.

(Selection: Everything Happens To Me)

Jazz history books, and people like me - old enough to remember - tell of several outstanding arrangers from the Forties, who enriched our music with progressive versions of standards for the jazz orchestra. The records are there to bear witness. Pete Rugolo, of course, for Stan Kenton. George Handy for Boyd Raeburn. Gil Evans and Claude Thornhill.

Each man’s style was different from the others, and Bob Graettinger was different from any of them. In point of fact, his writing was probably the most advanced of them all.

But Bob will never take his rightful place in the history books, alongside Rugolo and Evans and Handy, for the simple reason the contemporary recordings weren’t there, to build his reputation. Bob had the misfortune to thrive during the one year of that wretched recording ban, and his sounds died on the ballroom walls that absorbed his music.

"April In Paris" is different from the previous charts I’ve played, in that there are no solos, and the tune is carried throughout by the orchestra. It isn’t meant to "swing," but the drums do maintain a regular pulsation, and, the way Graettinger uses fragments of the melody to recompose the song is the work of a master arranger. I do hope you’ll enjoy "April In Paris."

(Selection: April In Paris)

As Milt Bernhart tells it, the band was happily playing these standards, when out of the blue came the 1948 version of "City of Glass." The band rehearsed the work in sections for several weeks, and premiered in April at the Civic Opera House in Chicago. Milt remembers the audience as being "very polite."

To quote Milt directly: "My opinion of that music was, it didn’t belong in a band that was supposed to be a jazz band, because it didn’t resemble jazz in any manner, shape or form."

In other words, with "City of Glass," Graettinger had crossed the sometimes thin dividing line that separated progressive jazz from modern classical music. I’m sure that Kenton was well aware of this, but welcomed it just the same. To him, "City of Glass" was a genuine original, the best example yet of the new, American concert music he had set his heart on creating.

But was it new? Not according to Bernhart, and I quote" "City of Glass was writing for a symphony orchestra, and as such had to compete with classical composers who wrote in a similar style. Men like Samuel Barber and Alban Berg had been writing atonal music since the Twenties, so ‘City of Glass’ wasn’t really that new. But I don’t think Stan had ever really listened to those guys, because as far as he was concerned, Graettinger was the first."

I can’t say whether "City of Glass" is successful of its kind or not, because as a jazz fan, classical music is outside my scope. My own view is that Graettinger is the one Kenton arranger who over-stepped the mark. I love progressive music, especially Innovations, so long as I can hear a jazz feeling in the melody, the solos or the rhythm.

But I can find none of these things in the discordant "City of Glass." In my experience, Kenton devotees who do enjoy Bob’s "City," are those who also enjoy similar music by the modern classical composers.

Art Pepper remembered that Chicago concert in his autobiography "Straight Life," and I think Art’s vivid description is well worth quoting:

"It was a miracle we got through City of Glass, an incredibly hard musical experience. Bob conducted it, a tall, thin guy about 6 foot 4.

"He looked like a living skeleton conducting, like a dead man with sunken eyes, a musical zombie. He took us through it, and he finished, and he turned around to the people, and he nodded, and the people didn’t do nothin’. The place was packed, we’d played the shit out of this thing, and now there wasn’t a sound. The audience didn’t know what to do.

"And Stan leaped out into the middle of the stage, gestured at us to rise, swung his body around again to the audience, spread his arms and bam! They started clapping. And Stan did it all himself. He did it with this little maneuver."

Art Pepper and Graettinger were close. They spent a lot of time together, maybe because both were basically loners. Their music, however, was poles apart, so as a change of pace for non-Graettinger fans, here’s something written and played by Art Pepper with Stan Kenton.

(Selection: Dynaflow)

Stan never did play "City of Glass" complete in concert again, not even with Innovations. It wasn’t music for a jazz audience, and no classical conductors ever picked up Graettinger’s music for a symphony orchestra.

Stan was certainly a brave man to record "City of Glass" as he did, but in later years even he had his doubts. Joel Kaye told me he once asked Kenton about Graettinger’s "City" and Stan was more open with a colleague than he might have been with a member of the public. I hope the ladies present will excuse the language, but to quote Joel:

"Stan looked at me quizzically, and said ‘Well, I’ll tell ya, it was either the greatest music ever written, or the biggest pile of shit we ever played, and I still don’t know which!’"

When Bob rejoined Kenton in 1950, he was through with arrangements of other people’s songs. Now he would write only original compositions, but not all of Bob’s Innovations music was as esoteric as "City of Glass." "An Incident in Sound" was much more accessible, and for Graettinger, it’s quite a jaunty piece, certainly rhythmic, if not actually swinging, with quite a prominent part for Stan’s piano. The title was changed, probably at Capitol’s request, to the more user friendly "Incident in Jazz."

(Selection: Incident in Jazz)

I’m sure Stan admired Graettinger for his total dedication to his music. Bob’s refusal to compromise, and his lack of interest in material possessions, really amounted to an eccentricity which grew apace during the Fifties. He seems to have existed on a small retainer Stan paid him, and refused to take more money than that required for a bare subsistence.

Milt Bernhart recalls visiting Bob at his apartment, so this isn’t some third-hand exaggeration, but straight from a musician’s mouth. According to Milt, the place was furnished with orange crates, and little else. You sat on orange boxes. There was a makeshift table, and a pad on the floor where Bob slept, and that was about it. Certainly no piano - Bob wrote without a piano.

At times, Kenton was afraid Graettinger might lose touch with reality, and more or less forced Bob to come out on the road with them. Even then, the word Milt used to describe Bob was "unreachable."

Milt relates that Bob would sit at the front of the bus, sometimes with his girlfriend Gail Madden, and they’d both sit there for hours on end, just staring straight head, not even talking to each other.

In Milt’s words: "Bob had a look on his face which announced the fact that he was thinking on a different level. He had this look - it was never serene. He wasn’t on the same broadcast-band as myself."

Graettinger’s music is most closely associated with Innovations, but when you actually look into it, almost half of Bob’s recordings by Kenton weren’t with the strings at all, but by this band.

(Selection: Prologue edited - start to 0:28 "personal differences" 9:00 "Me, I’m Stan Kenton" to end)

An orchestra it certainly was, and with the exception of "A Horn," all the music for Bob’s second major album "This Modern World," was written during the New Concepts period of 1952-53. While there is more variety than in "City of Glass," to my ears most of the music in "This Modern World" is played straight, with very little jazz feeling.

You could argue, that by choosing to record this music, Stan positively encouraged Graettinger to follow the classical route, and thus to neglect his jazz heritage. Because Bob did submit jazz originals, but there is no evidence that many were ever performed.

Which I think did Graettinger few favours in the long term, because by 1953 when economics forced Kenton to abandon such far-out music altogether, it was too late for Bob to re-enter mainstream jazz, even had he wanted to. Stan could return to dance music, but Bob’s reputation left him truly out on a limb. Which, in all honesty, is perhaps where he most liked to be.

By this time, not only was Bob declining to talk about his music, but even to title his compositions. This piece from 1952, towards the end of Bob’s active career, has no name because Kenton never picked it up. I think you’ll find it a thrilling example of progressive jazz, with an easy theme and a regular beat.

The great blocks of sound Bob builds are especially exciting. Written to include a solo for Conte Condoli, let’s call it "Dance For Jazz Trumpet And Orchestra"

(Selection: For Conte)

Bob spent the last years of his life as a recluse, immersed in a classical work for "String Trio and Wind Quartet" The decline in his health and capacity, is illustrated by the fact that in five years he completed only three of the intended four movements, about 17 minutes of music.

Whether Stan continued to subsidize Graettinger throughout these years I honestly don’t know for sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I certainly think the only thing that kept Bob going so long, was the belief that Kenton would play his music on completion - not a very realistic option, given the declining state of the band business.

Bob was just 33 years old when he succumbed to lung cancer in 1957. It was reported that Stan Kenton and Pete Rugolo were the only musicians who attended his funeral.

Ultimately, one might say that Bob Graettinger was a multi-talented, non-conformist, who owed his musical success in life entirely to the dedication of Stan Kenton. I hope you’ve enjoyed at least some of the music I’ve played, and that a few listeners may even be re-evaluating Bob’s work in a new light.

Let’s end on a joyful note. "A Trumpet" features the ever-exciting Maynard Ferguson, and this is just the concluding swing section that climaxes the composition. Thank you for listening this afternoon, and for your time and interest. Thank you!

(Selection: A Trumpet; start at 2:47 after 3 solo high notes - to end)

© 2000 - Michael Sparke