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 THE STAN KENTON ODYSSEY Reflections of a Fan Special to JAM by William H. Alburty
There were a series of beautiful vocalists named June Christy, Chris Connor, Anita O'Day and Ann Richards. He called his music Progressive Jazz, and it was indeed very much ahead of its time -- creative jazz in new arrangements not heard before. The band members were young, energetic and talented, and each were excited by where their leader/crusader Stan Kenton was taking them. The new sounds this band made stirred rapt attention in the music world and ignited a rapid rise to the top of the big band heap. The instruments were conventional saxophones, trumpets, trombones and drums, but the innovative compositions, unconventional new arrangements of existing songs, and the attention-getting chords from the piano player caused the 10-cents-per-admission ballroom dancers and summertime college kids to stop dancing and crowd around the stage to just listen with wide eyes and smiles. Stan, of course, was the one at the piano pounding out those fantastic and unique chords. His first group was put together in 1941 as the new house band at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, a little peninsula town down the beach from Los Angeles. This year, Stanley Newcomb Kenton, who died in 1979, would have observed the 86th anniversary of his birth in Wichita, Kansas, on February 19, 1912 (although many reliable references list his date of birth as December 15, 1911). Though born in Kansas, he grew up in south Los Angeles. His mother was a classical piano teacher and he began playing the piano at age 10. But he had no real interest in it until, at 14, he first heard jazz being played. At 19, a chance meeting with French composer Maurice Ravel would influence his composing, and he went on to study classical piano in 1937 to add to his musical base. By 1943 the Stan Kenton band was playing weekly on the Bob Hope radio show. In 1946 Look magazine nominated it "Band of the Year," and in 1948, Variety headlined it as "the hottest box office attraction in the country." Even though he was having tremendous success in music, Stan toyed with the idea of pursuing his other major interest, psychiatry. Probably because of his age, he decided to stay with music, but the thoughts of an amateur psychiatrist were often woven into his many interviews. Kenton's slim 6'5'' frame did not easily conform to the sitting position at a piano, so he would spread his knees from one leg of the piano to the other and hunch his shoulders to get comfortable at the keyboard. Toward the end of a composition, he would stand erect and extend his long arms upward into a "V" to direct the trumpet and trombone sections, urging them to rise and blow a screaming ending consisting of high register notes supported by dazzling chord changes below. The volume of the Kenton band could peel the paint off the walls. It is, of course, difficult to describe music to anyone; it is an emotional non-substance you can't always put your finger on. But you can measure its characteristics by how listeners react. At one performance, which Stan began by thundering through some spine-tingling chord changes, he said to the audience, "You can rule the world with these chords." The audience agreed with wild applause.
It was a grueling pace which seldom allowed time for the young band members to catch up on laundry or needed rest. Occasionally, the band would be booked for one to two weeks in places like the Apollo or Paramount Theaters in New York, but such gigs sometimes required six performances a day, so there was never any real chance to relax. Fan attendance was always high, however, so that in itself was enough to keep the musicians going. The traveling bus was home for the band, and each member had two adjoining seats to himself. It was where he napped, read, wrote, listened to tape-recorded music, and stored his possessions. The nights were spent in hotels, but arrivals were often late, and after a long ride on the bus. Musicians of mere average ability were not able to meet the high musical requirements that Stan Kenton held. All the band members, though young, (trumpeter Buddy Childers may have been the youngest, having joined the band straight off the farm at 16) were excellent musicians in their own right, and new applicants were not accepted unless highly recommended, usually by band members. Sometimes, Stan, whose seats were the first two behind the driver, would play poker with the guys as they rolled along (there was always a game going on). He was a revered father-figure to these talented young musicians, and if they needed pay in advance, he insisted that no record be made of money owed because he thought they deserved more respect than that. He was stern, but fair. And when a band member became so tired from the grueling pace of one-night stands that he wanted to quit and take a less strenuous job, he was paid the cost of transportation to return to the point where he had joined the band. There was always a replacement waiting for such an opening. The group did have fun on the road. There was usually some kind of novelty song for ballroom or nightclub performances, and on rare occasions Stan would actually sing ("I'd rather drink muddy water, sleep in a hollow log..."). The bus driver always knew where the band was headed geographically, but musically, the constant creativity was taking them to unknown heights. The destination sign above the windshield on the bus said "No Where," which perhaps was a shorthand way of saying they didn't actually know where the innovative music would take them. But, if anything, they all knew it would be "straight ahead." By attrition, the composition of the band changed frequently. Only a handful of musicians stayed on more than two or three years. As a result, many musicians from around the country were able to put on their résumés that they had once traveled with Kenton. And many started their own bands. Maynard Ferguson, Shelly Manne, Art Pepper, Shorty Rogers, Stan Getz, Bud Shank, Gerry Mulligan, Jack Sheldon, Dick Shearer, Howard Rumsey, Bill Perkins, Lee Konitz, Zoot Sims, Peter Erskine... Kansas City alto saxophonist Kim Park, trumpeter Jay Sollenberger, and Missouri residents, bass trombonist Bill Hartman and bassist Jim Widner, also played in the Kenton Band. Widner "loved the traveling band bus" and now sometimes charters a slightly larger bus for his own band based in Jefferson City. Kim's father, the late John Park, was considered by many to be one of the greatest alto saxophonists to have played with the band. His solo on "Street of Dreams" on the Birthday in Britain album will always be remembered. Jay Sollenberger, who recorded five albums with Kenton, and Kim Park, who recorded two, both fondly remember their years with Kenton as a family experience. And both confirm he was "a father figure" to them. "He had a country voice, like the cross-section of America," says Kim. "His music was Wagnerian -- fortissimo, with chills. He was also very much the chief and could be a reproving taskmaster." Yet, Stan was not too proud to help load instruments onto the bus, or help fix a flat tire. Bill Hartman, a Southwest Missouri State College music professor, describes his year and a half with Kenton as the high point of his musical life. "There was nothing that thrilled like that sound," he now says. Hartman admired Stan for "his intense dedication" and "his determination to do musically what he wanted to and do it his way." The Kenton Band played melodic inventions which were never performed exactly the same way twice. He insisted that each instrumental solo be different each time the piece was played. He wanted to challenge the soloists and make them discover that they could do more than they thought they could. The chord structures were thick from top to bottom, with variations of augmentation and diminishment. He favored Latin percussion and rhythmic accompaniments provided by guitar and often bongo and conga drums. He did not allow grace notes, those short unwritten notes some musicians like to play to slide into the initial note or phrase of a composition. This amazing man, who had made recordings with Nat "King" Cole, Frank Sinatra and Benny Goodman, became oft-quoted on his derogation of country and western music, though for fun, he recorded an album with Tex Ritter in 1962. He thought both Ritter and Johnny Cash were sincere artists and he considered some of their music to be jazz-related. Satirist Mort Sahl was popular during the Kenton era and used to fondly include a story in his act ribbing Stan. He told audiences, "When Stan Kenton spills his cup of coffee, he doesn't say, 'Somebody help me clean this up,' he says, 'Look! I have created a mess.'" Kenton disliked nostalgia or repeating the past, even if it was successful. New musical invention was important to him, and he formed and re-formed several big orchestras. In 1950 it was the 43-piece "Innovations in Modern Music Orchestra" with full string section, oboes, flutes and bassoons. In 1952 it was the "New Concepts in Artistry and Rhythm Orchestra." In 1961 it was the "New Era in Modern Music Orchestra." And in 1965 it was the "Neophonic Orchestra." In 1954 the band's live remotes were featured on NBC's "Monitor" radio program as "Concerts in Miniature." Occasionally there were forays into Afro-Cuban styles, and at the other end of the musical spectrum, Stan recorded his arrangements of several themes by Richard Wagner. The 1950s and '60s brought the Kenton band away from ballrooms, vocalists and swing, and firmly into the concert format. The later Kenton bands did not often "swing," and this was a complaint heard from some critics. But Stan left that to Woody Herman, Count Basie and the others. He kept moving forward even when his Artistry In Rhythm era was so successful. He later said that he could have been a millionaire many times over had he been willing to stay in one particular popular vein. "The band was especially important for arrangers," says Sollenberger, and there were many to extend Stan's ideas, including Pete Rugolo, Bob Graettinger, Lennie Niehaus, Marty Paich, Dee Barton, Hank Levy, Gene Rowland, Ken Hanna, Bill Holman and Johnny Richards. The Kenton obsession was to keep pushing the envelope. Stan's speaking voice was low but resonant, and he could rhapsodize, in his halting speech pattern, about musical creativity and innovation in a very erudite manner. He always referred to the band as the "orchestra" and to a song as a "composition" or a "theme," never a "tune." Considerably charming, he introduced the band members individually and told where they were from, with special emphasis on those from the local area. Jack Sheldon, in his humorous drawl, described him as a tall guy with wavy white hair, a good conductor and gentleman, very suave, very chic, and a great dresser. Drummer Shelly Manne once said, "Kenton could enter a room and you would know he was there without looking." Stan Kenton wrote and arranged many compositions, often while on the road. One humorous story he sometimes told was about his working on an arrangement late one night in the corner of a hotel lobby on a piano he found there. As he was playing and writing, a door opened across the room and a man said, "We got a guy dying in here. Would you stop playing that piano?" Stan obliged by not playing, but kept on writing. About 30 minutes later the man opened the door again and said, "He died. You can go on playing the piano now." An unconventional instrument was introduced via the Kenton Band. The mellophonium, keyed in F, was invented at Stan's request. It had a trumpet-like shape, but was larger and made a beautiful tone somewhere between a trumpet and a trombone. His orchestra sometimes also used bass saxophones. Because of this strong individuality and identity, Kenton's bands won eight consecutive Playboy Jazz Poll awards, and numerous Downbeat, Metronome, and Variety magazine jazz popularity polls. With such talent at his disposal, Stan Kenton still believed in nurturing new players. He gave hundreds of concerts at colleges and universities, conducted jazz clinics at most of them, and was the first name bandleader to do so. He loved being around young people and his presence alone was an inspirational kick for them. He believed that education in jazz should be made compulsory. His reasoning was that no other subject simultaneously contributes as much to the well-rounded human mind. Always full of energy, Stan Kenton maintained a full schedule until the end. The band recorded at least 70 albums of some 2500 scores on both Capitol Records and his own Creative World Records label, and it was usually on the road 51 weeks a year. From his Los Angeles office, he published a quarterly newsletter called Creative World with the band's itinerary, and he sold albums and sheet music by mail because he knew jazz recordings and charts were hard for jazz lovers to find. (He carried on a running feud with music publishers and distributors for their catering only to the masses.) These same items were distributed in Europe from an Amsterdam office. Why did the musicians in the Kenton band do it? Why did they continue night after night, living from one hotel room to the next? The answer was unanimously and repeatedly expressed by Stan and his band: freedom! Freedom to explore musical ideas; freedom from the restrictive routines of the majority of musical entertainment jobs. In order to play their unique and progressive jazz innovations without having to conform to mundane show business circumstances, they took their show on the road. Stan Kenton died in Los Angeles of a massive stroke on August 25, 1979, two years after a fall in Philadelphia had caused an aneurysm. His last Kansas City appearance had been 16 months earlier at KCK Community College. Before he died, he decreed there would be no "ghost band," such as the still-traveling Glenn Miller, Count Basie and Tommy Dorsey bands. The unique Kenton sound has been imitated by others, and the charts are still available. But the real Stan Kenton Orchestra died with its leader in 1979. Fortunately, via digitally remastered CDs, much of his recorded music lives on. It is still very fresh and well ahead of its time. For additional Kenton-related reading and listening:
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