If you’re like most of the people I’ve met in the jazz world, you’ve probably got mixed feelings about Stan Kenton. There are exceptions, of course. Kenton has his fans, the most ardent of whom come off as cultish. And he’s got a few unequivocal detractors too, for instance David Hajdu, who walloped Kenton last week on his New Republic blog.
Kenton is an easy target for those who hear bombast and pretention in his music. The pianist’s claim to fostering “progressive jazz” in the 1940’s, his early 50’s Innovations Orchestra, his mid-60’s take on Wagner, and his grand pronouncements about the importance of his music laid him open to derisive comments and wisecracks. Upon hearing the Innovations band, which numbered 39 members, Eddie Condon reputedly said, “Sounds like Stan called up every musician he knew, and they all showed up!”
The first time I heard Kenton, the odds were stacked against him. I was a young jazz enthusiast, and a Worcester-area man had taken a friend of mine and me under his wing and begun turning us on to his favorites. On the night he first dropped the tone arm on Kenton, and on Kenton trumpeter Maynard Ferguson, he’d already given us our first taste of Clifford Brown and Max Roach, and it was no contest. The warmth of Brownie’s trumpet sound and his lyrical command, even at fierce tempos, made him an immediate hit, and the overall sound of the Brown-Roach Quintet became a model for the kind of relaxed inner dynamics that I learned to listen for in bands of every shape and style. By comparison, Kenton sounded bloated and overbearing, and the band just didn’t swing in the supple manner I’d grown accustomed to in the work of Basie and Ellington and Miles. I should add that for this young, self-styled civil rights crusader, all-white bands were of little appeal regardless of their musical content.
But every now and then I’d give Kenton another try, and I’ve gradually come to appreciate selected areas of his work. Of great assistance in this search has been the collection that Mosaic boxed-up several years ago of the Bill Russo and Bill Holman charts that Kenton recorded in the ‘50’s and early ‘60s. Here I discovered a trove of hard-swinging, jazz-rich material, original works as well as jazz and popular standards that showcased the great soloists on these bands. Among the established and emerging players were alto players Art Pepper, Lee Konitz, Lennie Niehaus, and Charlie Mariano; Zoot Sims on tenor; Buddy Childers, Conte Candoli, and Jack Sheldon on trumpets; Frank Rosolino and Carl Fontana on trombones, and drummers Shelly Manne and Worcester-ite Frank Capp. Chris Connor, who succeeded Anita O’Day and June Christy. was the voice of the band.
Russo and Holman gave them plenty to work with as you’ll hear in tonight’s Jazz à la Mode when we honor the Stan Kenton Centennial.
Here’s a clip of June Christy and Kenton in 1945