Six Records In Search Of A Penthouse

It's Friday Night, about 7:25. Suppose you live in a 31st-floor penthouse in Gramercy Park, and you're due at Le Pavillon for cocktails and dinner in 20 minutes. You bonk the elevator button but the little red light doesn't come on, nor do you hear the rumble of machinery like you usually do. You step over to the phone, ring up the building manager and ask him what in blazes is up, because it certainly isn't the elevator. He says, good god, didn't my secretary call and tell you it's on the fritz and the repairmen can't possibly get over until Monday morning?

So you're stuck. You make your beg-out phone call and realize that for company, you've nothing save a case of Veuve Cliquot, 1947, a fridge full of Noix de Boeuf a la Gelee, and a half-dozen phonograph records– along with, of course, a $3000 rig to play them on.

Anthroposociodiaphysiogenetically speaking, it's not the ideal setup. But for our purpose, it makes a good hypothetical situation, one that will enable us to examine the musical tastes of several friends on the jazz and pop scene, posing as our reluctant recluses. Which six discs. I wondered, would Gerry Mulligan choose for such a pent-up penthouse weekend? What about Dave Garroway? Or Frank Sinatra? I wasn't looking for the six finest records ever cut, just the offhand reactions of some hip people to

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Six Records

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an unusual musical question. I didn't foresee that some would take "six records" to mean six tunes, while others would interpret it as six LP albums, but that didn't matter a great deal either, because it was the individual responses to the query that would make them interesting.

I went to the Starlight Roof at the Waldorf-Astoria, where Count Basie's Band was coming on like cool thunder, and broached the topic with the One O'Clock Jump man himself.

"Bill," I said (only the squares address him as Count, and I had to make a good impression), "Bill, I know you have a top-floor suite in the hotel while you're here. Now suppose the elevator got all shook up and you had to choose —"

"Easy," said Basic as soon as I'd explained, "I'll take Louis Armstrong's confessin' . . . Tommy Dorsey's I'm Getting Sentimental Over You . . . Fats Waller doing Honeysuckle Rose. . . Ella in the number she sang in Pete Kelly's Blues —"

"Which one– Hard Hearted Hannah?"

"You got it. And Sarah's wildHow High the Moon, and my favorite by the greatest of them all– Duke Ellington'sWarm Valley."

"Fine, Bill." I said, "thanks."

"Goodbye."

"Goodbye," I said, and rose.

"I don't mean goodbye," said Bill. "I mean that's the seventh of my six records– Billy Eckstine'sGoodbye. And for an eighth I'll take Les Brown'sI've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, and —"

"Hold it, hold it," I started to make for the door. "Pen just ran dry. Thanks. Bill."

It was easy to corral my next victim, Dave Garroway, before his television show got on the NBC air at seven A.M. All I had to do was stay at Birdland one night until closing time at four, then run right over to Dave's rehearsal at the RCA Exhibition Hall at 49th St. and Rockefeller Plaza. I went down the inside ramp to the lower level, where the Today staff and crew were having their daily breakfast buffet, and joined right in.

As befits a man who talks to millions every day for a living. Dave was explicit in his answer. He started with Bix Beiderbecke's I'm Coming Virginia, waxed in 1927– "One of the purest, most thoughtful and refreshing choruses in all of jazz– I've heard it hundreds of times and still look forward to every hearing." Next came Woody Herman'sBijou– "the finest side," he added, "by what was in its day the greatest of the jazz bands. The imagination of Ralph Burns, who wrote it, and the pagan sounds from Bill Harris' trombone make this one a must."

His third choice, Ella Fitzgerald's Lady Be Good, is the disc that once saved Dave's career for him. "I had a midnight show in Chicago to which the NBC sales department didn't think anyone was listening. I got a bootlegged acetate of this side two weeks before its release and started to plug it regularly. Mail began to pour in and NBC's switchboard lit up like Univac with happy people who wanted to own the disc. It made me feel pretty good. Even before the record was released, bootleg copies had gone up to 10 dollars. The record is, of course, the greatest thing of its kind ever done."

The nostalgic mood continued as Dave turned to Sarah Vaughan's If You Could See Me Now: "Cut while she was still pretty much a nobody, it has the marvelous freedom and warmth and simplicity that her recent records have generally lacked."

Next, a tribute to the creativeness of pianist Barbara Carroll: "I don't know how she does it. A painter works a few hours a day, finishes at his leisure and puts his work aside. But what a tremendous burden we put on our modern jazz artists! They've got to be always on, dynamic and vigorous enough to keep creating new ideas six days a week, six hours a day. Barbara does this with grace and precision, always fresh, never trite or hackneyed, and manages to keep her sense of humor too. I'll take her recording of You Took Advantage of Me."

And finally Benny Goodman's immortal 1938 Carnegie Hall concert album: "The joyous verve and life poured into this one made it stand out from all the other jazz concerts. None of the musicians ever played better in their lives than on that night. Play the studio recordings they made of those same tunes and you'll be convinced: they sound formal, stiff and stodgy compared with the swinging freedom of this album."

I didn't give my phantom penthouse any further thought until three weeks and three thousand miles later, when the sounds of a Bach partita were being walted via Peggy Lee's hi-fi rig to the sun-drenched patio of her mountain-high Beverly Hills home. Friend and neighbor Frank Sinatra was there. Frank conducted Peggy's recent Capitol album. The Man I Love. We got to talking about musical settings as applied to personal settings: "Bach," said Peggy, "is to me the symbol of a well-organized universe. I see things, when I hear Bach, that are utterly beyond my comprehension, though somehow I seem to understand. How the sky changes. . . how the seasons change. . . you get a feeling of rhythm about the whole universe."

To the background of Bach I elicited from Peggy an alternative LP list (alternative, that is, to boxes of Bach) and this is how it looked: Nat Cole'sLove Is the Thing set, Sinatra's Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Nelson Riddle's Hey! Let Yourself Go, a Jackie Gleason album called Ooooh!, the original-cast album of My Fair Lady ("If you've seen the show you can never tire of this!") and the Count Basie set that includes Joe Williams' wondrous blues The Comeback.

Having been forewarned about the question, Frank said: "I would like to hear why you decided to us choose these records."

I pointed out that a round of sabotage or a spate of technological breakdowns might leave an inordinate number of citizens stuck in penthouses.

"Anyhow," said Sinatra, "I've been thinking about it. Now first, I'd rather concentrate mainly on the human voice, because under those conditions, with nobody to talk to, it would be preferable to instrumentals. So I'd like four albums: one each by Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Nat Cole and Perry Como.

"Then I'd like to have one album specially made up, if possible, of the following: Nelson Riddle, Billy May, Les Brown and Les Elgart. I don't want to get into the jazz field, because once I start there'll be no stopping– I'll wind up with 60 albums.

"The other instrumental is the Vaughan Williams Job. I pick that because it has great variety; it's a sort of potpourri of all kinds of music. There's even syncopation, and suggestions of jazz with an alto sax. It's a most interesting piece of music."

"Of course," Peggy added, "when it comes to artists who are currently performing, my selections might change, as they do something fresher and better."

"Hold it a minute!" said Sinatra. "I got a seventh album. This seventh album I would like made up of Elvis Presley, Johnny Mathis, Johnnie Ray, Lawrence Welk and Sammy Kaye."

I looked up from my note-taking.

"I'll tell you why I'd want that album," grinned Frankie. "I'd play it occasionally, just to remind me how good the other people are."

Back in New York a few days later, I tackled an old friend whose hip inclinations as musician, writer and general human being had convinced me that he would produce a provocative and thoughtfully compiled list: Steve Allen.

"Steve," I began, "suppose you were all pent up in a penthouse and . . ."

Sure enough, Steve deliberated carefully before answering. "I think I'd take The Charlie Parker Story on Savoy," he said, "and I don't believe I need bother to explain the why of this one; it's Bird at his greatest and that's that.

"Then Music for Sleepwalkers by Murray McEachern. This album should have been a best seller. Murray has one of the (concluded on page 71) Six Records(continued from page 46) greatest trombone sounds in this world, and the arrangements are the kind that will never go out of style.

"Next, Ella Fitzgerald Sings Cole Porter. Actually, of course, anything by Ella would do the trick; she's just the best there is, and she never lets her style overpower the song.

"Then an old Columbia LP called The Voice. This is early Sinatra and it includes his recording of She's Funny That Way, which isn't too well known, and which I think for sheer tenderness of approach is unsurpassed.

"After that, I'd like Mark Murphy Sings. On his ballads I think Mark is just another very good singer, but when it comes to a rhythm number he deserves to be recognized as one of the top talents of our day. You catch him doing Exactly Like You or Fascinatin' Rhythm and you'll see what I mean.

"Lastly, any album by Erroll Garner is OK with me: he's the original Charles W. Mood when it comes to playing ballads, and of course he knows how to jump too. Care for a drink?" I did.

My final candidate was a musician I've always admired as one of the most articulate of jazzmen, Gerry Mulligan. But Jeru's immediate reaction was caution. "I'll have to give that some serious thought, Leonard. Mind if I write out my answer and mail it to you?"

The next morning a fat dispatch in the Mulligan handwriting arrived, lengthy and detailed enough to show that he is no less loquacious on paper than in person. Gerry wrote:

"Since being stranded in a penthouse is highly theoretical, my choice of records is assembled in a similarly unrealistic way. I'm making up six 12-inch LPs from tunes that have already been cut by a whole slew of musicians, and putting them together according to my own whims. I commence forthwith."

At this point Gerry proceeded to squeeze every last millimeter of music into the allotted space, using eight tracks per side. The first album, first side, would consist of Red Nichols' Battle Hymn of the Republic ("with Joe Sullivan, Adrian Rollini and others I don't know but like"), Jelly Roll Morton's The Chant, Coleman Hawkins' Body and Soul and Woody'n You ("the latter with Gillespie"), Georgie Auld's Co-Pilot ("also with Diz") and Mo-Mo, the old Billy Eckstine band in Blowin' the Blues Away ("with Dexter Gordon and Gene Ammons on tenors") and Woody Herman's 1941 chestnut Three Ways to Smoke a Pipe. Overleaf Gerry had Shaw's two-part The Blues, the Gene Krupa band in Leave Us Leap, the 1945 Shaw Nuff by Gillespie and Parker, Lester Young's Let's Fall in Love, Parker's Mood by Bird, and Blues for Norman ("a Jazz at the Phil track") with Bird and Lester.

Sprinkled through the next two discs were a half-dozen Ellingtons (Jack the Bear, Do Nothing till You Hear from Me, Moon Mist, Main Stem, Johnny Come Lately, C Jam Blues), three Benny Goodmans (My Old Flame, A String of Pearls, How Deep Is the Ocean), three Basies from the late 1930s (Taxi War Dance, Texas Shuffle, Twelfth Street Rag), two apiece by Harry James, Tommy Dorsey and Claude Thornhill (Flash and Carnival; Not So Quiet Please and Well Git It!; Where or When and Lover Man), and Glenn Miller's American Patrol.

Supplementing these vintage swingera big-band items were the Vaughan and Holiday versions of Lover Man; Buzzy and Donna Lee by Bird; Miles Davis' Godchild and Move, and five items by some of Gerry's own groups: Lover Man ("Yes, again") with Lee Konitz; Carioca, Line for Lyons, Ballad and Walkin' Shoes.

"Then, Leonard, I'd like to include a couple of my favorite vocals, romantic style, such as Sinatra's Wee Small Hours or Jeri Southern's When I Fall in Love ... but I'd better start on my classical selections before I run out of sides."

Gerry thereupon compiled an LP from Hindemith's Kleine Kammermusik, Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto played by the Woody Herman band ("And, what with microgroove technique, there should still be room on this side for, say, Ravel's Pavane pour une Infante Défunte"); and Rachmaninoff's Fourth Piano Concerto ("I'm afraid this might take up the whole other side, but if we could squeeze in Stravinsky's Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra I'd be very happy!")

The fifth album, on Side One, has Hindemith's Mathis der Maler, backed by Richard Strauss' Till Eulenspiegel.

Lastly, reported Gerry, "I'd like Ibert's Ports of Call or Stravinsky's suite from Petrouchka for gayer moments, and something of Alban Berg's, possibly his violin concerto, for more somber moods. Of course, these would more than fill one side of an LP, but I need the other for the remaining jazz things I'd want."

And for that closing side: two Mulligan items cut at concerts in Paris and Los Angeles respectively ("Love Me or Leave Me featuring Bobby Brookmeyer and Red Mitchell, Blues Going Up with Jon Eardley's trumpet"); two Modern Jazz Quartets, two Brubeck Quartets, and Stan Getz with Brookmeyer on Have You Met Miss Jones?

"Now, Leonard," Gerry concluded, "If you're any sort of fellow, you will include in this fantasy an amiable listening companion, about 5'4", 110 lbs., 35-23-35. And thanks for a nice vacation."