16. "Modern" Jazz

It wasn't swing. It wasn't bebop. It really didn't fit any of the other labels writers like to impose on various styles ofjazz in hopes oftrying to clarify and

understand the forms. Anyone who has spent any time at all listening to jazz

knows it is virtually impossible to neatly departmentalize styles; most are amalgams ofmany styles. Like artists in all fields of art, jazz musicians incorporate what they consider the best ofwhat they have assimilated, add their own touches, and attempt to create something new.

In the 1950s, when most discussions were still revolving around the battle for jazz supremacy between swing and bebop, there were several departures into other areas which pre-dated the free jazz of the 1960s. On the West Coast, they were playing what they called "cool jazz." Pianist Dave Brubeck, incorporating many classical references in his music, was playing what many at the time called "cerebral jazz." Big band leader Stan Kenton dubbed his music "progressive jazz."

It is impossible to neatly pigeon-hole every jazz style because there has not been a straight-line evolution of the art form. Duke Ellington's music included almost the full spectrum ofjazz styles. Over the years, creative experiments have ranged far and wide.

The non-swing, non-bebop experiments ofthe 1950s, that some called "modern jazz," were historically significant and had important some links to Northeast Ohio.

Dave Brubeck and jazz at Oberlin For years, Oberlin

College had one ofthe most respected music schools in the country, but it did not recognize jazz. There were no jazz courses in the curriculum and very little support for, or interest in, jazz at Oberlin - until March 2, 1953. A few jazz enthusiasts at Oberlin decided to try to crack the classical music barrier. They organized a jazz concert and booked the very popular Dave Brubeck Quartet to play at Finney Chapel.

The concert had all the ingredients of a major disaster. Brubeck and saxophonist Paul Desmond had just had an argument. Bass player Ron Crotty had just been given his notice. Drummer Lloyd Davis was ill with the flu.

Fantasy Records

Dave Brubeck at Oberlin College in 1953

Finney Chapel at Oberlin College

To make matters worst, Brubeck later recalled the Oberlin Conservatory's concert grand piano was "kept under lock and key." He said, "I was given a small, beat-up, barely playable old grand."

But when the concert began with an explosive version of "These Foolish Things," many of the classically-trained Oberlin Conservatory students began to hear the devices Brubeck had borrowed from Bach, Beethoven and Chopin - atonality, fugues and counterpoint.

The students appreciated the dry humor of the musicians, including such lines as Desmond's comment when he was asked about his reputation of dating qeautiful fashion models. Desmond said the fashion models "will go out for awhile with a cat who' s scuffling, but they always seem to end up marrying a manufacturer"from the Bronx. This is the way the world ends," said Desmond, playing on the words ofpoet T.S. Eliot, "not with a whim, but with a banker."

The musicians did the same sort of thing with their music, playing on the devices of the classical masters.

The concert was a huge success and a recording of it became one of the most popular jazz records of the 1950s. Brubeck called it "a breakthrough album for the Dave Brubeck Quartet." The performance opened the door for both college campus jazz concerts and live recordings ofconcerts. Perhaps even more important, the 1953 Brubeck concert at Oberlin College helped make jazz an accepted part of the established cultural scene.

The Four Freshmen and Stan Kenton Four young men had been singing, playing, and

entertaining at clubs in Cleveland, Springfield and Dayton with little success. They were thinking about giving up show business when in 1950 a tall, thin man with blond hair quietly found a seat in the back of the room where they were singing and playing, the Esquire Lounge in Dayton. The tall man was "progressive jazz" evangelist and bandleader Stan Kenton.

164 Cleveland Jazz History

The original Four Freshmen - Bob Flanigan, his cousins Ross and Don Barbour, and Hal Kratzsch - were students at Butler University's Arthur Jordon Conservatory of Music when they began listening to various vocal groups inel uding Kenton's Pastels. That Kenton group included Howard Hoffman, who later became an announcer and weather forecaster at Cleveland's Channel 8.

By October of 1949, the Freshmen were performing at the Esquire Lounge in Dayton. Five months later, when Kenton stopped in and listened, he told the vocal and instrumental quartet he would try to persuade executives of Capitol Records to sign them to a recording contract. In October of 1950, the Four Freshmen made their first record for Capitol, "Mr. B's Blues."

When all-time jazz trombone giant Jack Teagarden frrst heard Flanigan play trombone in 1950, he gave Flanigan · his personal mouthpiece. Flanigan told me that Teagarden ''thought the mouthpiece would improve my sound. So I played with it. After listening to me play, he said, 'It's yours!' I said, 'Mr. Teagarden, that's the mouthpiece that you're playing.' He said, 'Son, frrstthing, let me tell you my name is "Jack." And number two, it doesn't make any difference what mouthpiece I use, I still get that same funny sound. '"

Flanigan continued to use Teagarden's trombone mouthpiece until 1968. After a rehearsal in Kansas City, somebody stole his trombone including the Teagarden mouthpiece. Bob borrowed another trombone for the gig. He never recovered his instrument or the mouthpiece that Teagarden had given him 18 years earlier, but Flanigan got another mouthpiece exactly like Teagarden's and proudly told me, "I still have it!"

While waiting for their frrst record to be released, the Freshmen spent a lot of time performing in Cleveland. Ross Barbour remembered a strange engagement at Moe's Main Street, a nightclub at East 79th and Euclid. He remembered, "Johnny Ray was closing and we came in for his final four days." According to Barbour, singer Ray's act was not the same as it was after he sang "Cry" on the Ed Sullivan television show and became a nationally famous singer. Barbour said, "Johnny would play the song and he'd bang on the piano, rip off the front, and throw the keyboard cover." The Freshmen worked four nights with Ray. On New Year's Eve (1950), Barbour said, "Johnny Ray and the Four Freshmen sang 'Auld Lang Syne' together for these people in Cleveland."

While they were playing and singing every night at Moe's Main Street, the Four Freshmen were also making videos to be used on video juke boxes. They did it for a company in Shaker Heights. "We went there in the morning," recalled Barbour, "and recorded the music. Then, in the afternoon, we lip-synched for the fIlms."

After their frrst records were released, the Four Freshmen returned to Moe's Main Street in December of 1951.

In January of 1952, the Freshmen played at the Old Mill in Akron and at the Akron Armory.

In July of1952, Barbour, in his book Now You Know, recalled he and the other Freshmen were in a coffee shop in Akron when they frrst heard a record they had made for Capitol 14 months earlier. "It's a Blue World" became a big hit record among both jazz and pop fans and opened the door to concerts around the country, including the Ohio State Student Union in December of 1952.

After that concert and a week at the Palm Garden in Columbus, the Freshmen drove to Cleveland for another engagement at Moe's Main Street and to promote their records. Barbour said, "In those days, Cleveland was

Capitol Records the place where the big hits were made. If Stan Kenton in the you wanted your record to go to the top, you

19505 would put it into the hands ofCleveland disc jockeys."

While they were here, the Freshmen were asked to judge a talent contest at a Cleveland television station. Barbour recalled one of the contestants was an accordionist who played "Lady of Spain" and had forgotten to zip his fly.

By the beginning of 1953, the Freshmen had two records on the hit charts - "Blue World" and "The Day Isn't Long Enough."

When they were appearing with singer June Christy at the Yankee Inn on Route 8, the Four Freshmen were made honorary members of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity at the University ofAkron. Later in 1953, after Ken Errair replaced Hal Kratzsch, they sang and played at the Blue Crystal in Girard, the Spa Athletic Club in Erie, in Columbus for a week, at Ohio Wesleyan, at Bexley High School and Capitol University in Columbus, and Denison University before returning to the Esquire Lounge in Dayton.

The Four Freshmen's first album, Voices in Modern, was released in August of 1954. It demonstrated not only the solo voice ofDon Barbour, but the fact that in addition to being a very popular jazz vocal group, the Freshmen

165 · "Modern" Jazz

were also very talented Jazz attack at Chautauqua in nearby New instrumentalists. York State. He later lived in Las

In May of 1955, when I spent some Vegas and served as the group's time with the Four Freshmen, we used manager. Ross Barbour retired in 1977 to go out almost every night to local after 29 years on the road and settled in jazz clubs. The members of the most Simi Valley, California. His brother, popular vocal group in the country sat in Don Barbour, was killed in an auto instrumentally with localjazz groups. It accident in 1961. Ken Errair was was interesting that most of the killed in a plane crash in California in customers in the jazz clubs in Easton, 1969. Hal Kratzsch died of cancer in Pennsylvania, where I was going to 1970. Lafayette College and working at a local But, other talented young singers radio station, had no idea these guest and instrumentalists continued the Four artists, sitting in with their local Freshmen tradition. Flanigan said the favorites, were members of the then­ new Four Freshmen did not consider nationally famous Four Freshmen. themselves "a ghost group." He said Soon, the word got around to the jazz they were adding new things all the players in the area and there were wild Four Freshmen time. "They approach it," he said, "like jam sessions almost every night. At the The Four Freshmen in the late they wantto be the best Four Freshmen time, the Freshmen were rehearsing for 1950s (clockwise from the top): of all time. That's what they want." their Four Freshmen and Five Bob Flanigan, Ross Barbour, The new Four Freshmen appeared Trombones album, the first they did Ken Albers and Don Barbour with the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra in

with written arrangements. By the time the Four Freshmen began their extended

Road Show with Stan Kenton in 1959, Ken Albers had replaced Ken Errair. They played for five thousand people at Ohio State University in 1963.

In June of 1964, they appeared every day for a week on the nationally syndicated Mike Douglas Show at Channel 3 in Cleveland. -

Barbour said, "That was the strangest week in our lives. We signed on to do the five days with The Mike Douglas Show and to appear every night that week at the Twin Coaches in Pittsburgh. We'd get up in the morning and fly to Cleveland, do The Mike Douglas Show at about one o'clock in the afternoon. We'd get out of there at 3:30 or so, get on an airplane and fly back to Pittsburgh. This was with instruments and all the luggage."

Flanigan remembered, "At the end ofthe week, Mike said, 'I've never seen anybody who looked as tired after doing a week on television." They told him what they had been doing and "He couldn't believe it."

On February 4, 1966, the Freshmen performed two shows at the Cleveland Music Hall with the New Christy Minstrels. It was the first production booked by Jules and Mike Belkin who went on to become Cleveland's most important live entertainment promoters for the next 35 years.

In 1967, the Four Freshmen performed for six thousand at Kent State University and returned to Cleveland in the summer of 1968.

Over the years, there were many personnel changes. Bob Flanigan continued to sing with the group for 44 years - until 1992, three years after he suffered a heart

the springs of 1994, 1995 and 1998 and the Freshmen invited the CJO to back them when they were the first group to be inducted into the Vocal Group Hall ofFame in Sharon, Pennsylvania in July of 1997.

What was arguably the best vocal jazz group in history continued to have strong ties to Cleveland and Northeast Ohio half a century after they first began singing and playing.

There were other Kenton connections with Northeast Ohio. Several area musicians were members of the Kenton Orchestra. Nick Ceroli from Warren, who had played with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, played drums in the Kenton band in the 1960s. Tony Leonardi, who later became Director of Jazz Studies at Youngstown State University, played bass with the Kenton Orchestra. Ted Paskert, a drummer from Cleveland, played and recorded with Kenton. Later, a trombonist from Cleveland astounded Kenton.

Jiggs Whigham When Kenton first heard 21-year-old Cleveland

native Jiggs Whigham play the trombone, he said, "That kid's amazing!" Almost three decades later, Whigham continued to amaze his jazz audiences and students mostly in Europe.

Haydn Whigham was born in Cleveland in 1943. The only child of a trombonist, he was exposed to a lot ofmusical influences at an early age. His mother, in her Richmond Heights home, said he had perfect pitch at the age of five and began playing the trombone at ten. When he was in junior high school, one of his teachers

166 Cleveland Jazz History

told his parents that he should take music lessons. Mrs. Whigham regularly drove him to the old Cleveland Institute ofMusic at East 34th and Euclid for lessons and theory classes. He learned quickly and well.

When he was only 17 and still a student at Brush High School, Whigham got a summer job playing trombone with the Glenn Miller

Jiggs Whigham ghost band led by drummer Ray McKinley.

After the tour with the Miller Orchestra, Whigham returned to Brush High School and graduated before returning to the road with the Miller band for two years as the first trombonist and featured soloist.

He came home again and studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and at Western Reserve University before answering the call of another big band. In 1964, after playing with the Hermit Club Big Band in Cleveland, Whigham became the lead trombonist of Kenton's inventive orchestra. Jiggs was only 21 at the time.

In 1966, Whigham decided to move to Germany where he joined Kurt Edelhagen ' s jazz band in Cologne. The band played for the West German Broadcasting Company. At the same time, he began playing concerts throughout Europe, making many radio and television appearances and sharing bandstands with such artists as Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Dexter Gordon, Freddie Hubbard and Lee Konitz. He also toured Africa with the Edelhagen band.

In the 1970s, Whigham began teaching at the University College of Music in Cologne. By 1979, he had been appointed director of the jazz department in the highly-regarded music school. While living in nearby Bonn, he continued to play a number of concerts in Europe and to make regular trips back to the United States and Cleveland.

During those trips home, he made a number of recordings. In 1980, he joined Kai Winding, Bill Watrous and Albert Mangelsdorffto record a classic of its type called Trombone Summit. He also recorded solo albums and albums with a Canadian group called the Brass Connection, which included five trombones.

In 1987, Whigham took part in the first Stan Kenton Convention in England. Joining such other Kenton alumni as Rolf Ericson, Shorty Rogers and Bud Shank, he played Kenton classics with the Ernie Eye British

band. The convention proved so popular with British Kenton fanatics, Eye and his 20-piece band began playing two concerts a month consisting entirely of Kenton Orchestra arrangements.

Whigham became head ofthe Jazz and Popular Music Department of the Hanns Eisler College of Music in Berlin, guest conductor and soloist with the BBC Big Band in England and, in 1996, the leader of the RIAS Big Band in Berlin, one of the best big bands in Europe. He led the RIAS Big Band in a series of concerts and recordings.

An adventurous modem jazz trombonist, Whigham once expressed his jazz philosophy in these words: "Train your ear to be as quick as your eye, be a poet, avoid cliche licks, and meet your responsibility to your audience."

Whigham, his wife and two daughters maintained a summer home on Cape Cod. They returned from Germany usually once a year. In the late 1980s and the early '90s, he came back to Cleveland several times to play with local combos and to be a guest soloist with the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra.

He was appointed visiting professor for trombone at Indiana University for the 2000-2001 school year.

One of the most respected jazz trombonists in the world, Cleveland native Jiggs Whigham, in the words of his mother in Richmond Heights, "is one ofthose people who is extremely happy with his life as both a teacher and a performer."

Jiggs Whigham Discography

1966 ­ Jazz Wien 1966 1980 ­ Trombone Summit 1984 - Lightnin' 1988 ­ Shades of Kenton (with Lee Konitz) 1989 ­ The Jiggs Up 1991 - The Best of Back to Balboa 1995 ­ 'Round Midnight Concert 1996 - LiWe Magic in a Noisy World 1996 - Jiggs & Gene 1997 ­ Nice 'n' Easy

Dreaming Brazilian Portrait

1998 ­ First Take 1999 ­ Between or Beyond Black Forest 2000 ­ Live at Newport: 1959, 1963, 1971

As leader of the RIAS Big Band of Berlin 1996 - Greetje Kauffeld Meets Jerry van Roojen and

Jiggs Whigham 1997 ­ Destiny 1997 ­ The Music of the Trumpet Kings 1997 - Nostalgie 1997 ­ RIAS Big Band Berlin Presents Helmut Brandt 1997 ­ Allen Famham Meets the RIAS Big Band 1998 ­ Blue Highways (with Claudio Roditi and Paul

Ferguson) 1998 ­ Live in Berlin ­ The BBC Big Band Meets the

RIAS Big Band 1998 - Swingtime (with Max Greger and Benny Bailey) 1998 ­ Tribute to George Gershwin 1999 ­ The Music of Duke Ellington (with Clark Terry)