Playboy's All-Time All-Star Jazz Band

Every jazz fan has his favorite stars -- the performers he considers the greatest. Playboy has asked me to pick mine -- not just two or three men, but enough for a full, star studded jazz band.

The outstanding musicians of the year are chosen in the annual Down Beat Poll, but I wasn't limited to any one year or even one decade. I've half a century of jazz to choose from.

"Suppose you're building a jazz band," I was told, "for just one, fabulous performance. We want three trumpets, three trombones, saxes, clarinet, piano, guitar, bass, drums: a full band. We want the greatest of the great, in each seat."

Such a list must be arbitrary, of course. To begin with, there have been a dozen different kinds of jazz in the past fifty years, including dixieland, swing, progressive, bop and all the shades in between. Nevertheless, the thought of that one big night, with every instrument in the hands of a giant, was just too good to pass by. I began selecting.

The first choices came easier than I might have expected.

Take the trumpet section. Louïs Armstrong has to be there. Greater than King Oliver or Bix, Louis was the first to influence an entire generation of hornmen. For years there was no one who could touch him. He'd pick up his horn, blow a few bars, and that was it. There was Armstrong, and after that, you started trying to decide who was second best.

Late in the thirties another man began making important sounds. To Louis' brilliant tone and individual approach, he added a tremendous technique and nimble conception. He found a little different and more complex way of getting his message across; his name is Roy Eldridge and he's our pick for the second chair.

Perhaps no better term can be found to describe Eldridge than "The Bridge." He was the transitional trumpeter -- the one who pushed the concepts of jazz to a point where another giant could emerge.

The third man? It has to be Dizzy Gillespie, the Grand Lama of bop, who blew in a whole new kind of modern music. His playing has the drive and personal sound of Armstrong and Eldridge, plus a thorough knowledge of chordal structures, theory and harmony. He was the trumpeter who showed what a master composer a hornman can be, thinking on his feet, ripping off wonderful cascades of notes and fresh musical ideas. Everything Gillespie does, special and intricate as it may be, is correct, and makes musical sense.

That's the trumpet section, then: Louis, the father; Roy, the bridge; Dizzy, the fluent.

Let's stay with brass and add the trombone section.

In early jazz bands, all the trombone was expected to do was dip and slur and slide, providing the bottom notes for the lead trumpet and the wandering clarinet to play against. Since then it has emerged as a true solo instrument, as musicians have developed a facility on it that trombonists twenty years ago didn't generally realize was possible.

The first real stick-out trombone man was Jack Teagarden. Musicians who heard him for the first time when he came upon the New York scene in 1927 were unbelieving. His skill, his warm, distinctive sound, his ability to fit in with any sort of group, set him apart from other tram men of his day. Nor have the years tarnished this hornman's reputation. Other trombonists still treat Big T with respect and he gets our nod as the first man in our slushpump section.

The second chair has to go to Bill Harris. For the last ten years he has dominated the field. His ripping, preaching, inspiring horn has produced hundreds of imitators, but Harris is in a class all by himself. Mild mannered and professorial in appearance, he is a tiger with his horn pressed to his mouth.

Anchor man? We pick the guy who proved that a trombone can be played with almost the speed of a trumpet, while delivering meaningful, rounded solos: J. J. Johnson. His phenomenal skill has showed other tramists that there is still much to be accomplished on the instrument and that a trombonist can hold his own with the formidable technicians that the "modern" school of jazz is producing.

It seems a shame to have to eliminate gifted men like Lawrence Brown and the brilliant young Bob Brookmeyer, but I think we've named the giants.

Move now to the alto saxophones, and we've two automatics: Johnny Hodges and Charlie Parker. Hodges, in his years with Duke Ellington, proved himself a jazz master with his rhapsodic, insinuating tone and singingly lyric ballad style. Parker fostered an entire new school of alto men and blazed broad new trails for all of jazz to follow.

If I had to name the one man who has contributed the most to the mainstream of jazz in the last twenty years, I would unhesitatingly select Parker. He died of a heart attack while this article was being prepared.

Several younger men are beginning to make their talents felt: Lee Konitz, Bud Shank, Paul Desmond and others, but they have yet to prove they belong in an All-Time All-Star group.

There is no doubt here when it comes to naming the tenor saxophones. They have to be Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and Stan Getz.

Hawk dominated the field for years with his big, booming tone that could become soft and tender in a moment. He had no competition at all until Lester Young. Young brought an entirely new kind of tenor sax to jazz, and became to that instrument what Eldridge was to trumpet -- the transition between the "hot" and "cool" schools. With the bell of his horn tilted up at a crazy angle, with his light tone and searching phrasing, he was the antithesis of Hawkins, who typified solid, steady strength.

And because of Young, a whole batch of tenor stars came forth: Stan Getz, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, Herb Steward, and many others. But Getz has become the biggest figure with the greatest influence, and he shows a creative mind that can well rank him as one of the true greats for many years to come.

So these are the tenor three: Hawkins, the orator; Young, the rebel, who made a new style stick; Getz the lyricist, who speaks softly, but carries a big, big stick.

Clarinet? There's only one: Benny Goodman. Others deserve recognition: the late Jimmy Noone and Irving Fazola, Buddy DeFranco, and the upcoming Tony Scott, but there's only one Benny and noone else has ever played clarinet as well.

That gives us trumpets and trombones, our sax section and clarinet. Now we need rhythm. Because men playing rhythm instruments must be both timekeepers and soloists, selections here are more difficult to make. However, let's say Art Tatum on piano, Jimmy Blanton on bass, Charlie Christian on guitar and Jo Jones on drums.

Tatum is the consummate musician who still scares them all after nearly twenty years of eminence. There are many others who might be considered, and Count Basie would head the list if we prepared one, but for this All-Time All-Star Band, we pick Art Tatum for our piano.

Jimmy Blanton's early death cut short a career that could have been fabulous. With a tone that fairly sang, and cut through and lifted any group he was in, with fingers nimble and sensitive, and with a conception that went deep into the roots of jazz, the former Duke Ellington star has never been surpassed. Oscar Pettiford might be a close second, but Blanton's superiority as a section man outweighs Oscar's solo capabilities.

Now take the fine things we've said about Blanton, apply them to Charlie Christian, and you about have it. Though he died in 1942, he left a huge tradition in the short time he was widely heard. It has been carried on well since his death by guitarists like Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow and Jimmy Raney. And we'll have to mention Freddie Greene here, too, who has Basie's ability to weld a band together with his rock-steady, inspiring beat.

I had the most difficult time naming a drummer -- there have been so many greats. Sid Catlett, Davey Tough, Buddy Rich, Chick Webb and Max Roach come to mind immediately. But I have to say Jo Jones, because he proved beyond doubt that he could swing any group with which he worked. He was a major factor in making the Basie band the organization that many consider the greatest big band that has yet come down the pike, and every group he has worked with since has been pushed to peak performances because of his inspiring performance.

These All-Time All-Stars deserve a couple of the best for vocalists and we'd like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald to supply the words at this very special jazz session.

The influence of Sinatra's style and phrasing is obvious in the majority of pop male vocalists today. He's the most copied singer around and he can handle a ballad or an up-tune with equal ease. The band's canary has got to be Ella. There've been a lot of great female jazz vocalists through the years, but Fitzgerald's voice is something very, very special. It's like a musical instrument and the tunes she plays on it are just a little bit better than anyone else has ever been able to do.

And now we need only an arranger to complete our star studded assemblage.

Duke Ellington.

Who else?

And you'd better name him the leader, too.

Harris

Ellington

Armstrong

Goodman

Parker

Tatum

Gillespie

Sinatra

Eldridge