Straight Life (15 page)

Our regular driver was back with our regular bus trying to get it ready, and this driver we'd just hired didn't know what to make of us. He was fascinated. He made an announcement. He was going to radio ahead for help. We said okay and kept on playing, and all of a sudden we just found ourselves marching out the door of the bus. It was freezing cold but we had our coats on and our mufflers, and before we knew it there were twenty guys out there, with horns, marching down the highway. There were farms and stuff, you can imagine, cows and dogs and things. We're going down the highway playing marches.

June Christy was a pom-pom girl strutting down the road. She was a cute little thing with light hair and a little, upturned nose. She had a lot of warmth and she was sexy in that way, no standout shape, but she was nice and everybody liked her, and she had crinkly marks around her eyes from smiling a lot. Her husband was Bob Cooper, who played tenor with the band. He was very tall with blonde hair and the same crinkly thing around his eyes. People used to wonder why she had married him, being June Christy. People thought that she and Stan might get something going, and there were a lot of guys that dug her, but she married Bob, and I understood it. He was one of the warmest, most polite, pleasantest people. He was completely good if you can imagine such a thing, just a sweetheart, and he got embarrassed easily, and he blushed a lot. And he used to drink with June; he would look after her; they were a great pair. And they were marching down the road.

Ray Wetzel was marching, a fat funnyman, always laughing and smiling. He had a lot of jokes and little comic routines he used to do, and he was a wonderful trumpet player with a beautiful sound. Shelly Manne was out there in a big Russian overcoat with a fur collar and a big babushka or whatever you call it on his head. Shelly's like the picture "What Me Worry?", and he's always making jokes, and he doesn't drink, and he doesn't smoke pot: he's naturally high. He's playing the snare drum, playing wild beats and walking like he's crippled. Bart Varsalona joined in playing his bass trombone, another comedian.

Bart was a sex freak, and he had an enormous joint, one of the biggest I've ever seen. Occasionally on the road he'd invite some of the guys down to his room, where he'd have some real tall showgirl-hustler. He'd haul out his joint and slam it on the table top, and then he'd have the chick do a backbend or something and give her head while we smoked pot and drank and watched. A lot of the guys in the band considered themselves real cocksmen, but I'll have to admit that the kings-for pure downright sex and the number of freaks they knew in each town-were Bart and the bass player, Eddie Safranski. And Eddie was there, too, on the highway.

Al Porcino was up in front, a marvelous trumpet player, a nice-looking guy about six feet tall. In his room sometimes he'd take Ray Wetzel's pants and put them on, the pants from his uniform. He'd fill himself up with pillows and dance in front of the mirror. A couple of times he even went out on the stand like that. He always wanted to be a band leader. He had a book full or arrangements, and wherever he went, all his life, he'd get guys together and rehearse them like a big band. So he was out there with June, leading us, twirling his trumpet like a baton, marching backwards and shouting out commands, and we were doing all these movements, and we were all drunk and running into each other.

Bud Shank was marching, playing his flute, playing all those trills like they do, and Milt Bernhart-he had a big moustache at the time-he looked like Jerry Colonna. He was the lead trombone player and nobody could play louder than him. He had the most fantastic chops of anybody I ever heard. He was playing his slide trombone and walking, pointing it up in the air and going "Rrrr rruuuhh uhhh!" And we went into "When the Saints Go Marching In," and we were just shouting. And we really believed that we were marching in the Rose Parade or something. Cars and trucks were coming, and it was so far-out for this to be happening in that spot that they pulled off the road to watch, and they had cameras and kids and dogs, and they had the whole place bottled up, and the highway patrol finally came and made us get back in the bus. We were blocking the road. That was one of the great times. We had some great times.

STAN TURNS MINNEAPOLIS 'INNOVATIONS' INTO MUSIC APPRECIATION SESSION by Leigh Kamman

Minneapolis-Stan Kenton blew into Minneapolis in March with a North Dakota blizzard, and the storm converted his first concert into a music appreciation session. With two concerts planned, at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., and only several hundred spectators there for the first concert, Stan decided to combine the two at 9:30.

In appealing to the audience Kenton said, "Thank you very much for climbing through the storm. We appreciate very much you all being here.

"I wonder if we might ask a favor? So that everyone may enjoy or reject what our music offers, we would like very much to combine the two performances into one.

Meet the Band "Meanwhile, we would like very much to have you meet the band ... get acquainted with violins, cellos, violas, brass, reeds. If you want to know something about drums, see Shelly Manne. If you have questions about vocal music, see June Christy. In fact, we invite you to come on stage. If you can't get up here, we'll come down there."

Forty musicians and several hundred spectators swarmed on stage and through the audience. Shelly Manne demonstrated percussion. Maynard Ferguson spoke for the brass section. June Christy talked to aspiring young singers. And the local musicians checked their ideas against those of the big band musician. The local cats and fans did some genuine worshipping while the Kenton crew did some genuine responding with answers and autographs.

Session In spite of storm and a serious air crash within the city limits, the crowd grew as 9:30 approached. At 9, Art Pepper, Bob Cooper, Buddy Childers, Don Bagley, Bud Shank, and Milton Bernhart played a jam session.

The crowd gathered in front of the stand while the Kenton men honked. By 9:30, some 1,200 persons had plodded through wind and snow to Central high auditorium. And at 9:45, the concert got underway with everyone happy and receptive for "Innovations." down beat, April 21, 1950. Copyright 1950 by down beat. Reprinted by special permission.

(Lee Young) I always liked Stan Kenton. A beautiful person. As a matter of fact, I think he used to be rehearsal pianist at the Florentine Gardens on Hollywood Boulevard. The first time I met Stan, I met him with some disc jockey. Stan's one of the warmest people you would ever meet. He's just an elegant man. I'm talking about years ago; when you meet him now, the man's just the same. The man's the same. So you wonder, they must have thrown the pattern away. When you see what goes on today with people, you wonder how. . . Seems like all the wonderful, compassionate people were born a few years ago. Seems that way.

Bob Cooper and June Christy

(Coop) We were all very young when we got together with Stan, and he was like a father to us. He worried about people's problems and tried to resolve them when he could, so we had a high regard for him. And, of course, Stan had people across the country that worshiped him, idolized him, and that was part of the magnetism of the band, Stan's personal magnetism.

(Christy) I've often said that if Stan wanted to run for president, it would be a landslide because he had that powerful personality, that ability to win people over. No one's perfect, but he was great to his people, and we were his children, and we were all protected. I think you'll find very few people who'll say anything negative about him. I can't really think of anything.

(Coop) We always thought we should make more money.

(Christy) That's true.

(Coop) That's about the only thing.

I joined the band in 1945. The band Art joined-that was probably my favorite of Stan's bands. Art was there and Bud Shank, and I was getting to play more solos than before because the band was getting into a younger trend of music that we enjoyed. Shorty Rogers started writing some arrangements, Gene Roland, the more swinging things. I think all the jazz soloists in the band enjoyed it much more than Stan did. He still liked the flashy type of arrangement. And I never felt that Stan really knew when the band was swinging its best. We would wait for the moment when he got off the stand to go check the box office or something, and then we'd call all the music that we liked to play.

(Christy) The audience reaction to that band was usually great, but it depended upon where we played. If we played for an audience who expected to listen to the band and not dance, they were avid fans, and they wouldn't budge a muscle. They'd just listen with their eyes wide open and their ears wide open, but, as we often did, sometimes we'd be booked into a dance palace, and people looked at us as if we were freaks because there was nothing to dance to and the band was always loud. So, if you weren't a Kenton fan, the band wasn't that popular. For the most part we played for Kenton fans.

Traveling was no joy, but we were so young, and I, for one, was so thrilled at being with the band because that had been my ambition ever since I can remember. I started singing when I was about thirteen in my hometown, and I had to be a girl singer with a band. I would have settled for any band, but Stan, who was at his very hottest at that moment! I was in seventh heaven.

I had promised my mother I would finish high school before going to the big town, Chicago. And I did. I was all packed the night before graduation. Packed! I had two dresses and one pair of shoes.

It was a fluke thing that I got the job with Stan in the first place. I'd heard that Anita [O'Day] had left the band and I figured that this would sure be an opportunity. I'd heard that the band was coming to Chicago. I thought at the time (I was totally wrong) the first place they'll go is the office that books them. Stan hates those offices as much as I do. But in this case I guess he needed a singer, and he needed one fast. The first hit record the band really had was Anita's, "Her Tears Flowed Like Wine." I don't think Stan ever cared for singers really, but at that time he felt he needed one. I was sitting in the reception room. I would have sat there all day long on the assumption he would be there, and he finally came in. I gave him my little test record. He played it and said, "I'll let you know in a couple of days." I never suffered so much as I did during those two days waiting to hear from him. He finally called and said, "Well, we'll try you out for a few weeks and see what happens." Years later-we used to do all those disc jockey shows because they were important in those days-we were coming back from one of those things and I said, "Stan, you never did tell me, am I permanent?" I'd been with the band for about eight years! "Tampico" was my first record and it was, I think, one of the biggest hits the band ever had. I got paid scale for it. I'd been with the band for only a few months when we recorded it. I hated that song.

We used to joke about "The Bus Band in the Sky" because we never seemed to get off the bus. There were a lot of times we didn't have the time to check into a hotel and we'd have to do the gig and then get back to the bus and go to the next job. And particularly for a girl it was not too much fun because I think a woman has a little more to worry about, to look good, to get her hair done.

(Coop) But you were the envy of most of the girl singers around at that time. The band was very popular, and singing jazz . . . To quote the late Irene Kral, she said that when she was in high school she could hardly wait for the band with June to get to town so she could watch June and hear her sing: "That was the hippest shit in town."

(Christy) That was one of the nicest compliments I've ever received.

(Coop) Of course, the itineraries, they just went month after month, sometimes with no days, no nights off. And if we did get a night off, it might be traveling on the bus all night long. After a few years it got very tiring. Especially after we got married. Then it was even more of a chore because we were looking forward to settling down and having a home and so forth. It was tough, no doubt about it.

(Christy) And if we hadn't liked what we did so much, there was no way we could have done it.

(Coop) The particular bus I enjoyed the most was the first Innovations tour. We had two buses.

(Christy) That was when we had the strings and so on. Stan was really out to prove something.

(Coop) Our driver was Lee Bowman, and we had such a good time on his bus, at the end of the tour we bought him a watch for tolerating our drinking and stopping in the middle of the night to go into a bar and get more beer or whatever. It was called "The Balling Bus."

(Christy) And the other bus was called "The Intellectual Bus." And we, as a matter of fact, were quite sure that we were far more intellectual than they, or else why would we be on the right bus?

Whoever booked that particular tour was out of his mind, though, because he should have realized that you can't get that many people into a hotel all at once. We usually arrived all at the same time, and people got very mean and fiendish. We have a picture of some of the guys actually leaping over the registration desk in order to get there first so they could get to their rooms first. I learned a great lesson from that. I used to just sit in a corner because I figured I was a little too short to fight all of them. I did a tour a while after that with the Ted Heath band, and that tour was a rough one also, but when the bus stopped at the hotel the gentlemen of the band stood by and said, "Oh, Miss Christy, you must go first." That's when I first learned that it's awfully nice to be a lady and to be treated like a lady. I don't mean to imply that the guys in the Kenton band were not nice to me, because they certainly were, and by the same token I respected their privacy. If I felt that it was dirty joke time or something like that, I would go and stand by the bus driver and allow them to have whatever privacy you can have on a bus.

To tell you the truth, the band was kinda, like, clannish. That's the best word I can come up with, and I think Art was a little reluctant to join the clans for some reason or other. I think he was a bit withdrawn. Art was-I haven't seen him for so long, that's the reason I'm saying "was"-he was a very attractive young man, and I'm sure everyone else felt the same way. Art was a very good-looking guy, but some of his illness began to show up at certain times. And, as we all know, when you're ill, you don't look quite as good. It didn't show too much in his playing, but it did in his attitude. He became even more withdrawn.