Los Angeles photographer Don Jim on the set of Hollywood Record Room.
Bobby Troup’s Hollywood Record Room with Al Hirt, Carmen McRae, Pete Jolly, Ralph Peña, and DJ Frank Evans was originally scheduled for broadcast on April 20, 1961. It was pre-empted by a special news program. Al Hirt was performing at the Cloister on Sunset Boulevard earlier in April when Troup heard his group and immediately signed the trumpeter to appear on the program. Hirt had recently signed with RCA Victor and his new album showcased his artistry in a new setting that was a departure from his Dixieland releases on the Audio-Fidelity label.
Bearded Al Hirt’s Trumpet Playing Sets Town Agog
By Dick Williams
“From Dan’s Pier 600, a small New Orleans jazz club, to the Sunset Strip’s Cloister has come a bearded, affable, 300-pound giant named Al Hirt who plays an inspired trumpet such as I haven’t heard since the palmiest days of Bunny Berigan.
He is in the tradition of great, horn men, producing a cascade of exciting, bell-like clarity notes unlike the rasping blasts or the ordinary brass section.
I find I usually am able to get along remarkably well without trumpet music. But when the man with a horn is a Berigan, Beiderbecke, James, Armstrong or Hirt, it’s a different deal.
The word on Hirt has spread swiftly around town and the week night I heard him at the Cloister, found the club filled for the first show and the front pews occupied by such newly converted jazz devotees as Debbie Reynolds and Harry Karl and Dinah Shore and George Montgomery.
Yet only a few months ago the 38-year-old Hirt was unknown outside his home town where he has been playing jazz for 15 years. Last year during a supper club singing engagement in New Orleans, Monique Van Vooren was persuaded to hear Hirt one evening. Enthusiastic and excited afterwards, she persuaded her husband. Gerard W. Purcell, a manager of club acts, to fly in from New York, Purcell was noticeably reluctant and grumbled that he had better things to do than listen to jazz trumpeters.
A Cross Between Burl Ives and Sebastian
But when he heard the bearded expert, who has been accurately described as looking like a cross between Burl Ives and Sebastian Cabot, he quickly changed his mind. Purcell took over Hirt’s management and since then has come the introduction of a major new talent.
He’s made several appearances on Dinah Shore’s TV show (the latest was Sunday night), will be on the Ed Sullivan Show in May and has played nightclub runs in Las Vegas, at Lake Tahoe and in New York and Chicago.
Purcell managed to terminate Hirt’s record contract with Audio-Fidelity, a good but limited circulation label for which he made three LP’s—Swinging Dixie Volumes One, Two and Three, and signed him up with RCA Victor. It has just released a first LP, modestly titled “Al Hirt, the Greatest Horn in the World.”
Hirt performs with Henri Rene and a large orchestra and demonstrates the same wide range of style which he shows at the Cloister. Side one has him working with a big, 20-piece swinging band and the result is some exciting numbers in “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” “Begin the Beguine” and “I’m On My Way.” The second side with 12 strings added makes for a commercial, but less interesting sound.
I prefer him with his own small five-man jazz combo at the Cloister. This hard-working group,of young New Orleans musicians includes a brilliant little clarinetist named Pee Wee Spitelara who is the best I have heard in years.
Hirt Played With Dorsey Bros. Bands
Hirt, who attended the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, was in the service four years. On his return he joined the Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey bands. Ray McKinley (with whom he toured Europe for a year) and Horace Heidt. From the latter, I presume, he aptly absorbed his triple-tongue technique which he uses with solid effect in numbers such as “Carnival in Venice.” What Hirt does to “Carnival” with four complete variations must be heard to be believed.
The elements that impressed me most about Hirt’s playing were his incredible breath control, the total absence of sour notes, his soaring, beautiful, clear tone and the exuberance and great good humor with which he approaches his work.
It should he made clear that Hirt’s playing is not limited to two-beat Dixieland jazz. He is just as ingenious with a ballad like “To Ava” or blues such as “Birth of the Blues.”
Angelenos will have an opportunity to hear Hirt with his group when he performs at the Greek Theater in August before he returns to New Orleans where he makes his home with his wife and eight children (six of them girls). In the future, Hirt tells me, he hopes to spend six months at home out of each year, the rest on tour. This should test his immunity to big money for I predict that he will be cajoled around the calendar to perform elsewhere.”1
Carmen McRae was appearing at the Slate Bros. Club on La Cienega around the same time in April. The Slate Bros. Club opened on July 17, 1957, at 339 North La Cienega on LA’s restaurant Row. Comedian Lenny Bruce was featured along with the Gil Bernal quartet. Bruce’s off color humor brought his engagement to an end within a week and he was replaced by Don Rickles. The Rickles engagement put the Slate Bros. Club on the map and launched Rickles’ insult humor career.
The comedian plus musical combo formula worked well for the club and McRae’s appearance shared the staged with a new East coast comedian, Mickey Manners. McRae’s West Coast stay in 1961 included the Monterey Jazz Festival in the fall and after that an extended engagement at the Club Renaissance opposite the John Coltrane Quintet. The Club Renaissance at 8588 Sunset Boulevard was formerly the Cloister where Al Hirt appeared in April. Carmen McRae’s break-out year was 1954 as chronicled in the following article from Down Beat.
Carmen McRae Looks Back On Her First Big Year
“New York — This is Carmen McRae’s year. The young winner of the new star vocal division in the 1954 Down Beat critic’s poll has already been a musician’s favorite for some time. But judging from the way her career has been climbing since the poll vault, Carmen’s fame is fast widening to include significant sections of the population at large.
Among her recent signs of an approaching harvest has been a Decca contract that calls for a minimum of 16 sides a year. The first two, “If I’m Lucky” and “Ooh” (What’cha Doin’ To Me) were out last month, and Decca is planning a particularly high-powered buildup for Carmen.
Television and radio appearances — including the Steve Allen Show and a shot with Teddy Wilson on CBS’ On A Sunday Afternoon — have also helped illuminate the McRae vocal lines to a growing audience. And in recent months, Carmen has been in continuous demand for club dates.
Recalling the break that led to all this confetti and steaks after several lean professional years, Miss McRae said one recent afternoon, “I was very moved and very surprised, by the way, at winning the poll. I was in my hotel room in Philadelphia about 5 one afternoon, asleep because I was so tired from the road, and the phone rang. I let it ring and ring but finally picked it up. You know, when I heard the news, I felt like a little baby. It was such a crazy thrill.”
Carmen’s interest in music began with piano lessons while she was still a child in New York. Her first professional job, however, consisted of three months as vocalist with Benny Carter in 1940. Not much of musical interest happened in the next few years until Carmen went with Mercer Ellington’s band in 1945. During her 18-month stay she recorded for Musicraft with Mercer (“Pass Me By”), and that was her only record activity until 1953.
After a brief marriage to drummer Kenny Clarke, Carmen returned to show business as a pianist-vocalist in various Chicago clubs, but “those Chicago winters got too tough for me, and besides, I was in the same groove there all the time, not getting anywhere, so I came back home in April, 1952.”
“I joined the union and went to work at the Bandbox in Brooklyn doing piano-vocal intermission work. There I met Mat Mathews. Mat wanted to have some masters made of his group at the time to sell to a record company, and he asked me to do the vocals. The man who ran the studio where we made them decided at that time to form his record company, so we never did sell those masters.
“I remember Paulette, Mat’s wife, had taken the sides over to Brunswick and they were interested in my voice as well as in Mat, but by then I’d already signed with this new company, Stardust. Mat later did record for Brunswick.
“The Stardust records came out toward the end of 1953. On the strength largely of the records I went into Minton’s for a featured stay with Tony Scott’s quartet, and there I got my first review in a national magazine. (Down Beat, Jan. 13, 1954.) The club dates started after that, then came the poll, and now I’m off on the road again, but the riding’s easier.
“As for now, I intend to keep on singing the way I feel. And though I’ll do some pops in appearances and on records, I’ll only sing the current ones if 1 think they’re good.”
“I got a good response, for example, at the Apollo on “The Man That Got Away.”
“My style hasn’t changed with these new bookings because I can’t sing any other way than how I feel. Sure, I sing changes and always have. But I stick pretty close to the melody so that if someone walked into a room halfway through a performance, he’d’ know what the tune was.”
“Certainly you bring your own ideas to a song when you interpret, but it’s only fair to the composer to have his ideas heard, too. After all, the reason you choose to sing a tune is because you think it’s pretty. At least, that should be the reason.”2
Carmen McRae’s career was well established when she appeared on Hollywood Record Room. She enjoyed constant bookings at jazz clubs, festivals, and recording studios. The sampling below notes some of her recent work,
Pete Jolly was still in his twenties when he appeared on Hollywood Record Room. Jolly established an early following when he moved to Los Angeles in the 1950s. The Jolly and Peña “Duo” concept was presented in an early recording for RCA Victor and they toured Australia and New Zealand in the late fifties where they established a fervent fan base down under. Jolly’s rise was noted in the following profile published in Down Beat.
“The sensational young pianist, Pete Jolly, is featured in a new Victor album, Jolly Jumps In. That title describes exactly what Pete has done — “jumped” into a prominent spot in the musical limelight.
The story of Pete’s success should be an inspiration to all young musicians regardless of where they live, for he didn’t make the jump from New York, Hollywood, or Chicago — but from the middle of the desert, Phoenix, Arizona.
Jolly, who was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and is now 22, began his musical training when he was 3. His first instrument was a 12-bass accordion, and his early lessons were under the tutelage of his father, Pete Jolly Sr., a professional accordionist and teacher.
Young Jolly progressed rapidly and when he was 7, made an appearance on the network radio program, Hobby Lobby, from New York City. “It was on the trip to New York that we discovered Pete had absolute pitch,” the elder Jolly relates. “It was his first trip by rail and he was soon identifying the strange new sounds of the moving train in terms of musical letter names.”
When Pete was 9, he began studying piano, and his formal training continued through the next five years. During that time, he became interested in dance music and had started working with dance bands before he moved with his parents to Phoenix. “My early influences were Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson, and Maurice Rocco,” he recalls.
“Later it was the more progressive influence of Woody Herman’s Second Herd and the Charlie Ventura group with Roy Kral and Jackie Cain. After we got to Phoenix, I learned a great deal through association with Howard Roberts and Howard Heitmeyer, and the other fine jazz musicians in the area. And, of course, I kept digging records — Tristano, Powell, Wallington, and the others.”
During the 1952 season, a young Phoenix jazz enthusiast, Chuck Terry, opened the Jazz Mill which used a local rhythm section, with Pete on piano, and imported name musicians from the coast. Among those featured during this season were Chet Baker, Herb Geller, Georgie Auld, Barney Kessel, Jack Teagarden, Wingy Manone, Benny Carter, and Maynard Ferguson, Quite a diverse representation of stylists, yet Pete readily adapted his styling to fit each need.
News of his unusual talent was carried back to the coast, and later when he visited the Hollywood area, he was often asked to sit in with various jazz groups. On one occasion, Shorty Rogers was one of the side-men and later when he and Shelly Manne formed the Giants, Pete was selected as the pianist. He has been with the group since, working all their engagements including the concert tour with Stan Kenton.
Since his arrival In Hollywood, Pete has recorded with Red Norvo (Label'”X”), Frank Rosolino (Capitol ), Jon Eardley (Prestige), Lennie Niehaus (Contemporary), Shorty Rogers (Atlantic), and now he has his own recording contract with Victor. Jack Lewis, director of jazz artists and repertoire for Victor, plans two more albums for Jolly that will be released soon.”3
Pete Jolly and Ralph Peña were recorded during their extended tour “down under” at the Colony Club in Auckland, New Zealand. When the existence of this live recording reached the ears of Peter Jacobson at V.S.O.P. Records arrangements were made to release it on CD. The music captured was typical of the jazz that the duo presented at numerous campus concert appearances in 1961. The duo added drummer Nick Martinis when the trio held a regular gig at The Losers jazz club, Sunset at Crescent Heights.
Pete Jolly was currently recording for the MGM jazz label where recent albums featured the duo, Impossible, and his trio, 5 o’clock shadows.
Frank Evans was the host of Frankly Jazz, a daily broadcast on KRHM-FM radio where he also presented two other shows. He was named as “Announcer of the Year” by the Los Angeles Times in 1959 and 1960. A jazz authority, he taught courses on “America’s True Art Form” at Columbia and UCLA. Evans expanded his media coverage of jazz in 1962 when Frankly Jazz joined the television airwaves.
Special thanks to Michael Owen for assisting with the identification of artists who appeared on the series. Don Jim’s photography from Hollywood Record Room can be licensed for commercial use through CTSIMAGES.
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