Three Voices, a Whole Band
Pat Senatore, who played bass for Stan Kenton and the Tijuana Brass and later ran Pasquale's in Malibu and Vibrato in Bel Air, dies at ninety one. Tonight's record is Sing a Song of Basie, and tonight's story is how three singers made it.
LioraPat Senatore played bass for Stan Kenton and the Tijuana Brass, and he has died at ninety one. Later, three singers who turned themselves into a whole band. It's Monday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Monday, October 26th. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: Pat Senatore, the Newark bassist who recorded with Stan Kenton
LioraA bassist who recorded with Stan Kenton, held down the bottom of the Tijuana Brass, and then ran two Los Angeles jazz rooms has died at ninety one.
DownBeat has the account. Pat Senatore died on September 8th at his home in Los Angeles.
He grew up in Newark and was an art major at Arts School there, in the same class as Wayne Shorter. As a teenager he switched to bass and made himself a weekend regular at Birdland on a counterfeit identity card.
He reached Los Angeles in early 1960 and met Herb Alpert at the union hall while he waited on his transfer. "He said he'd keep me in mind," Senatore recalled, "if anything turned up."
LioraWhat turned up was the Tijuana Brass. He switched to electric bass for it, and DownBeat says that band outsold the Beatles in 1965. Senatore in 2007: "We were all jazz musicians, and we tried to play that music like we were playin' jazz."
Then the rooms. He and his wife Barbara opened Pasquale's in Malibu, on the beach. "I wanted a jazz club where you could hear a pin drop," he said. It lasted about five years and lost its fight with the coast. In 2003 he took over the music at Herb Alpert's Bel Air restaurant, Vibrato.
Two. Listen to This: Sing a Song of Basie, by Lambert, Hendricks and Ross
LioraToday's record is the one tonight's story is about.
"Sing a Song of Basie," Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. The Library of Congress holds it five times over. Its fullest record, the 1992 Impulse disc, prints the sessions: New York, August 26th, September 16th and 27th, October 11th, and November 26th, 1957. It prints the band behind the voices too. Freddie Green on guitar, Nat Pierce on piano, Eddie Jones on bass, Sonny Payne on drums.
Ten tracks, about thirty minutes. It opens with "Everyday," at five eighteen.
Here is the tip. Look for the 2001 Verve Master Edition, which carries three more. It says tracks one through ten first came out on ABC-Paramount, and that the last three were cut in 1955.
LioraTwo new ones. Mack Avenue put out Joey DeFrancesco's "Live At Keystone Korner" on October 16th, the organist's first record since he died, twenty seven ninety nine. Blue Note reissues Nat King Cole's "After Midnight: The Complete Sessions" next month, an expanded two LP set.
Now 1957. A hired choir cannot make the Count Basie band swing, so three singers stack their own voices on tape, layer after layer, until they sound like the whole band. Silas has the story.
Three. The Bridge: Three Voices, a Whole Band: in 1957 a hired choir could not make the Count Basie band
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Silas tells it, I ask the questions. Silas, where are we?
Silas1957. A record label, ABC-Paramount, and a producer just starting out named Creed Taylor. Two singers, Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks, want to sing the Count Basie band. Not just the tunes. The band. Hendricks writes words to the horn parts, and to famous Basie solos from the 1930s by Lester Young and Buck Clayton. Lambert writes the vocal arrangements. To sing them, they hire a choir. Thirteen singers, by Hendricks's count.
LioraThirteen singers. That sounds like plenty.
SilasPlenty of voices. Not enough swing. Hendricks said they "didn't understand," that they lacked "the subtleties or the nuances" of the Basie sound. Creed Taylor was blunter. They "did not swing by any stretch of the imagination." Hendricks put it this way in 1968: "We had thirteen singers, but they didn't work out; so we hired Annie and we multitracked." That's Annie Ross. In his words, "There was one girl in the group, Annie Ross. We figured we could use Annie because she was hip enough." Then Lambert proposes the big idea. Forget the choir. The three of them sing every part, stacked on tape. Hendricks said later, "Nobody had ever heard of such a thing at that time."
LioraHow do three people sound like a whole band?
SilasOne layer at a time. A rhythm section of Basie's men lays down a track first. Nat Pierce sits in for Basie on piano, with Freddie Green, Eddie Jones and Sonny Payne. Then the voices go on top. Hendricks sings the saxophones. Lambert sings the trombone lines. Ross sings trumpet, Buck Clayton's part among them. How many layers? Hendricks remembered three voices at a time, "until we had 12 voices." Taylor remembered "something like thirty overdubs on one track," on a quarter-inch Ampex machine. Nobody agrees on the count. They live with the tape hiss. Taylor: "We just built it, and with no regard of any kind to hiss in the audio."
LioraDid it work the first time?
SilasNo. As Hendricks tells it, they sang the leads first and "piled all the secondary voices on" top. Taylor, he said, was distressed. So they reversed it and "put the lesser voices first," to keep the leads out front. Hendricks said that after the redo, "we all sat down on the floor and cried like babies. It was the most beautiful thing we ever heard." That's his memory, and only his, told long after. How long did all this take? Two accounts say about six months. Another says they cut the tracks in one night, midnight to six. The sources don't settle it.
LioraAnd when it comes out?
SilasRecorded in 1957, a hit by 1958. Hendricks remembered opening DownBeat and finding it at No. 13 in the country. He said, "We had no intention of having a regular vocal group; we were just doing that one album." When Hendricks pitched a trio, Lambert answered, "if you can get us a gig, we'll make it." One profile says the trio was soon voted top vocal group in Down Beat and Metronome. Lambert, Hendricks and Ross.
LioraThey hired a whole choir to sound like a band. It took three singers to make it swing. That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Blues Alley records a big band in Washington, and the night runs on through Chicago
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in Washington, and the room is recording.
Blues Alley has the KW Big Band, billed as a live recording on Emerging Artist Mondays. Two seatings, seven and half past nine. Twenty five dollars plus seven in fees, and a fifteen dollar food and drink minimum on top.
Now the sweep.
In Chicago, the Green Mill has Natalie Scharf and Friends from eight to midnight, ten dollars.
In New York, Mezzrow runs three bills. The Alan Broadbent Trio at six and half past seven, then the Pasquale Grasso Trio at nine and half past ten.
Also in New York, Blue Note has Baby Rose at eight and half past ten, rescheduled from September.
In Austin, the Elephant Room has the Austin Jazz Band at seven, free before eight, then Kevin Hrabak's jam at nine for five dollars.
LioraIn Denver, Dazzle gives the night to the Colorado Conservatory for the Jazz Arts. Eight student bands from half past five to a quarter to ten, and it costs nothing.
Five. One More Note: Seventy years ago today the Miles Davis Quintet closed its Prestige run at Rudy Van
LioraOne more date. Seventy years ago today, the Miles Davis Quintet closed its Prestige run at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack.
The French national library prints that date on eight notices, for records including "Steamin'," "Cookin'" and "Workin'." Every one is a span, first session to last, so no single track can be pinned to the day.
One more birthday. Charlie Barnet, who recorded "Cherokee," was born in New York a hundred and thirteen years ago today. His 1966 band at Basin Street East had Nat Pierce in it, the same man the Library of Congress puts at the piano on tonight's record.
Outro
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The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Monday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.