The 1962 Playboy All-Stars

In 1961 jazz opened its own New Frontier, a Frontier that was, on occasion, replete with politico-sociological overtones. Leading the way out of the night clubs -- which (except for scattered jazz-oriented oases) are now past their peak as fertile breeding grounds for fresh new sounds -- ambitious young jazzmen showed themselves eager to seek out new horizons for their art. More and more, these expanded boundaries were encompassing foreign tours, LPs and concerts. It was more than ever a jazz year with an international flavor. Soon after England's Victor Feldman quit the quintet of Cannonball Adderley, Joe Zawinul from Vienna sat in his chair. Dizzy Gillespie's major projects for the year included two suites written for him by Lalo Schifrin, his Argentine pianist-composer. Quincy Jones, the perennial cosmopolite of jazz, celebrated the release last fall of Boy in the Tree, the Swedish film in which he made his bow as a movie orchestrator.

Operation Bands-Across-the-Sea started promptly on New Year's Day, when Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers flew to Japan, opening the following night at Sankei Hall in Tokyo. His two-week tour, with singer Bill Henderson, marked an ironic high in musical diplomacy, for Blakey triumphed where statesmen and politicians had feared to tread. ("The greatest experience of our lives ... we cried all the way home on the plane.") This was the first salvo in a year-long fusillade of jazz in Japan. Another highlight (organized, like Blakey's, by the young impresario Monte Kay, a founder of Birdland) was the visit of the Modern Jazz Quartet, which played several classical- cumThe 1962 Playboy All-Stars' All-Stars jazz works in concert with the Tokyo Symphony and was also received with Oriental enthusiasm.

Throw a few dozen darts at a map of the world and you'll probably hit the spots where American jazz was red-carpeted last year. Additional high points: Les McCann's trio, amid tough competition (Basie, Ray Charles and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross), got the only standing ovation and requests for encores at the festival in Antibes, France. Audiences from Tel-Aviv to Amsterdam took Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson to their hearts. Guitarist Charlie Byrd's trio, back from three months in Latin America for the U.S. Information Agency, Criticized Ugly Americans whose official arrogance and unhipness sometimes fouled up the tour. South America also Played host to its first commercially sponsored festival tour (Chris Connor, Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins, Zoot Sims and Al Cohn) with the Voice of America's articulate spokesman Willis Conover as compere.

One American jazz luminary who found foreign shores something less than hospitable was trumpeter Chet Baker. The onetime Jazz Poll winner spent the year languishing in a Lucca, Italy, lockup on a narcotics rap. Chet's incarceration and subsequent inactivity made him ineligible for the voting, although a number of readers cast sympathy ballots for him. Only musicians able to work at the time the polls close are considered in the balloting for either the Playboy All-Star Jazz Band or the All-Stars' All-Stars.

Foreign strands cultivated their own fertile beds of jazz. Warsaw, Poland, held its fourth annual Jazz Jamboree and there was even a jazz festival in Tallinn, Estonia, with local talent. At Karuizawa, a sort of Grossinger's of Japan, the first all-Nipponese jazz festival was staged.

Lend-lease took on a new aspect as the Anglo-American exchange switched from big bands in concert halls to soloists in night clubs. Britain's jazzman of the year, tenor-and-vibes man Tubby Hayes, played several weeks at lower Manhattan's Half Note, in return for which Zoot Sims was allowed to stretch out for a similar stint at the Ronnie Scott Club in London.

Speaking of tenor man Scott's club reminds us that the past year found a slew of American artists doubling as bonifaces. Singer-guitarist Barbara Dane used her Sugar Hill bistro in San Francisco not only as a base for her own talents but for the reintroduction of blues veterans such as Tampa Red and Mama Yancey; pianist Ahmad Jamal enticed Chicagoans with not too far out jazz and not too far East cuisine at his Alhambra restaurant (unhappily defunct at year's end); Shelly's Manne Hole flourished on Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood as did Pete Fountain's French Quarter on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

The night club field in general suffered from a near famine of top jazz names. The MJQ, Garner, Miles and anyone else who could afford it tended to cut club appearances to a minimum. But the less pretentious and better run watering holes -- New York's Five Spot, San Francisco's Jazz Workshop, Chicago's Birdhouse, Hollywood's Renaissance -- retained their hold on an in group of hipper fans, while the bigger spots, such as Basin Street East in Manhattan and the Crescendo on the Sunset Strip, leaned to the pop fringe of the jazz crowd for patronage, offering big bands and commercial-jazz combos.

The Playboy Club circuit, meanwhile, had developed into a meeting ground for established names and fresh talent. David Allen, Johnny Janis, Aretha Franklin, Johnny Hartman, Jimmy Rushing, the Al Belletto combo, Ann Richards, Phyllis Branch, Andy and the Bey Sisters, Irene Kral, Jerri Winters, Bill Henderson, Ernestine Anderson and Lurlean Hunter were some of the hip voices heard in the land of Playboy.

In general, it was a newsworthy year for jazz on celluloid, mainly on the strength (despite a weak story line) of Paris Blues, for which Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn spent several months writing and tracking their score, some of it played by French musicians.

Charlie Mingus and Dave Brubeck trekked to England to take part in All Night Long, furnished with a Johnny Dankworth score. Teo Macero, penning the charts for a flick called Faces and Fortunes, promised "an amalgam of 17th and 18th Century sounds and modern jazz."

Conversely, the swinging-private-eye trend on TV, a rocket in the Peter Gunn heat of 1959, by 1961 was a burned-out firecracker. Asphalt Jungle, seen earlier in the year, had a theme by Duke Ellington and scoring by Calvin Jackson, but was not renewed in the fall. ABC's Straightaway, an auto-racing series with music by Willie Maiden and Maynard Ferguson, played by Maynard's band, was one of the new sparks; meanwhile, Henry Mancini, who fired the Gunn-shot that had started the whole race, defected to the films.

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Live music on TV, after struggling through the summer with the wispy nostalgia of Glenn Miller Time, featuring Ray McKinley's reincarnation of the Miller band, had a welcome fall revival on Steve Allen's show via ABC, with assorted jazz guests performing on Steve's dependably hip level. A Westinghouse late-night series, PM East -- PM West, helped to balance the musical aridity of Jack Paar's stanzas (as witnessed by the complete anonymity of stellar trumpet man Clark Terry in the Jose Melis studio band) by offering intelligent presentations of Basie, Buddy Rich, the MJQ, Mulligan and the like. In Hollywood, glory-roader Mahalia Jackson, backed by a combo including Barney Kessel and Red Mitchell, filmed 78 five-minute programs for TV use. Playboy's Penthouse went along on its broadly syndicated way propagating the type of talent too seldom seen in these days of mass-oriented video: Cal Trader, Kai Winding, Brubeck, Krupa, Diz, Basie, Joe Williams, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.

Late in the year, an NBC special, Chicago and All That Jazz, re-created the Windy City's halcyon days with such two-beat practitioners as Eddie Condon, Bud Freeman, Pee Wee Russell, Johnny St. Cyr, Buster Bailey and Red Allen.

Radio had very little live jazz of consistent content. Far and away the best offerings were those of Dick Hyman's ruggedly nonconformist combo hipping housewives every morning on CBS' Arthur Godfrey show with Monk and Miles-inspired originals. The jocks, by and large, were in statu quo, with the FM boys still ahead of their AM brethren in tasteful programing.

The legit stage, always a rare and grudging host to jazz, held out some bright, if transient hopes, as young singer-composer-playwright Oscar Brown, Jr.'s first stage production, the musically hip Kicks & Co., collapsed in a pre-Broadway Chicago tryout. Bobby Scott's perceptive jazz score for A Taste of Honey was much more of a plus sign.

Our cautious comments last year on the subject of jazz festivals were not premature. Newport, which almost didn't make it at all, finally put on a show, run by a non-Wein group. It wasn't profitable; neither was Randall's Island; neither were Buffalo, Evansville, and most of the other major U.S. festivals.

The major exception to the red-ink rule was Monterey, where the fourth annual convention not only broke financial records by grossing over $100,000 in five shows, but also maintained its admirable standard of esthetic resourcefulness under the shrewd direction of deejay Jimmy Lyons. Detroit, too, had a successful festival on a modest scale.

A good deal less festive was the fact that jazz in 1961 had become a sociopolitical battleground. Negro musicians, militantly proud of their heritage, showed through their music and their words a new awareness of the world scene.

While a dozen newly liberated African nations took their seats at the UN, albums such as Freedom Sound by the Jazz Crusaders, Uhuru (Freedom) Africa by Randy Weston, Africa Brass by John Coltrane, titles such as Charlie Mingus' Prayer for Passive Resistance and Max Roach's Tears for Johannesburg, testified to the musicians' growing involvement.

The Lumumba riots at the UN found the LP team of drummer Max Roach and jazz singer Abbey Lincoln prominent among the demonstrators. Like many Negroes who had suffered through white chauvinism, they had turned the coin over to reveal its reverse side -- Negro nationalism. Roach, co-composer with Oscar Brown, Jr., of the Freedom Now suite, astounded a Carnegie Hall audience when, interrupting Miles Davis in mid-solo, he sprang on stage and raised banners demanding African freedom. At the Monterey festival, Dizzy Gillespie played compositions inspired by African countries.

Diz kept his combo mixed, but in other jazz circles there were signs that integration was bowing to disintegration. There was a conspicuous growth in the reverse prejudice known as Crow Jim, as the antiwhite, often anti-Jewish, Black Muslim movement gained strength among Negro musicians, and fans tended to equate authenticity and soul with dark pigmentation. "Racial lines are now drawn more strongly than ever before in jazz," observed syndicated columnist Ralph Gleason. "Clubs are reluctant to hire any white groups except the top few ... because they will not draw the jazz fans.... Eastern record companies ... have turned down nationally known white musicians because they were the wrong color."

Negroes working in white bands (as well as Cannonball Adderley, Chico Hamilton and others who had hired white sidemen) were subjected to caustic third-degreeing: "Why do you work with these white cats? Get with the movement -- stay with your own!" The promising white trumpet star Don Ellis, after working and living in harmony with Negroes in the U.S. Army in Germany, felt the chill as soon as he came home, estimated that anti-Caucasianism in jazz exceeded anti-Negro feeling tenfold.

Happily, for every brooding manifestation of Crow Jim, there were sunnier developments. The new Negro found his place not only on the bandstand but behind the desk: as A&R man (Quincy Jones at Mercury), production company owner (JulNat Enterprises, founded by the Adderley brothers), big-time restaurateur (Ahmad Jamal's previously mentioned Alhambra in Chicago), personal manager (John Levy, by 1961 the most powerful in all of jazz), record company operator (Ewart Abner of Vee Jay), show promoter (Andrew Mitchell, who presented Ray Charles to the first integrated audience in Memphis' history) and in almost every other major and minor executive capacity in jazzdom.

On records it was a big year for costly and ambitious multi-LP projects, mainly in the form of "Story" albums such as The Count Basie Story, The Birdland Story, The Big Bill Broonzy Story, The Nat "King" Gole Story, The Fletcher Henderson Story. With LPs rolling off the assembly line like 16th notes cascading in an Oscar Peterson out-chorus, the exposure offered to young talents came sooner and more easily than ever. Noteworthy in a long list of important new (or newly heard-from) names were Miles Davis' protégé: flute, alto, and almost any other reed man Paul Horn, leading an attractive modal-mood quintet; trumpeters Carmell Jones, Don Ellis, Richard Williams and Freddie Hubbard; saxophonists Eric Dolphy (alto), Stanley Turrentine (tenor) and Marvin Holliday (baritone); the phenomenal guitarist Grant Green, a St. Louis blue streak; and the 23-year-old vibist Mike Mainieri of Buddy Rich's quintet.

John Coltrane became a leading (and ofttimes controversial) topic of conversation in jazz circles as he made the club circuit with his quartet, recorded for the first time with his own big band, and acquired an auxiliary reputation by switching occasionally from tenor to soprano saxophone. Lydian-mode architect George Russell, peering around the corner to infinity, made headway with his thriving infant sextet. Sonny Rollins, entering his third year of self-imposed retirement, finally debuted, at the 11th hour, a quartet at New York's Jazz Gallery.

The most remarkable combo of the year, and almost any year for that matter, was formed several months ago when Philly Joe Jones joined the Miles Davis Quintet. Philly Joe, with J. J. Johnson and Miles, made a glittering triumvirate of this year's Playboy Jazz Poll winners.

Vocally, it was a shouting, stomping season. Big Miller (Monterey, 1960 and 1961) contributed valuably to Jon Hendricks' unique narrative Evolution of the Blues on a Columbia LP. Nancy Wilson had everything working for her: cool beauty and an individual sound to match, plus LP partnerships with Shearing and Adderley. Ann Richards, who started the year by teaming with Stan Kenton on an LP and ended it by suing for divorce, continued to develop as a jazz singer of power and conviction; Aretha Franklin, a teenaged John Hammond find, stepped right out of the New Jersey churches into the world of gospeljazz, and Carol Sloane, unknown until her surprise capture of the crowd at Newport, joined the top stratum of jazzoriented pop singers. That stratum once again included the irrepressible Judy Garland, who defied the laws of gravity by bouncing back higher than ever with an unbelievably successful concert tour and a best-selling LP, Judy at Carnegie Hall.

While it gained an impressive roster of new names, jazz lost many long-established major contributors. The year's toll was headed by Miff Mole, first real trombone soloist of jazz history, and Nick La Rocca, trumpeter and founder of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Also lost were Louis Armstrong's longtime vocalist Velma Middleton, who died in Africa; and the swing-era arranger Andy Gibson. Four tragically premature deaths were recorded. Vibraphonist and ex-cop Lem Winchester, 32, killed himself while toying too confidently with a gun; the brilliant 25-year-old bassist Scott La Faro perished in an auto accident; trumpeter Booker Little, 23, died suddenly in a New York hospital; Don Barbour, 33, founder of the Four Freshmen, who had quit the group in 1959 to work as a single, perished in a car crash on the Hollywood Freeway.

On the big-band front, the event of the year was the March unveiling of Stan Kenton's well-trained new crew, with its section of elephant horns, more accurately known as mellophoniums. Benny Goodman and Woody Herman fronted part-time big bands; Ellington and Basie, though shaken by personnel upheavals, still clung to the upper echelons in musical achievement and popular esteem. Ocie Smith temporarily filled the Basie vocal spot left vacant in January by Joe Williams. Quincy Jones, fresh out of headache pills, had to give up the regular band-leading bit in midsummer.

The trend toward a jazz-classical merger was impressively manifest in such works as John Graas' Jazz Symphony No. 1, recorded years ago in Europe but given its first U.S. in-person hearing last year in Beverly Hills. John Lewis was responsible for a ballet score, Original Sin. The composer of the year was J. J. Johnson. His Perceptions, long enough to cover an entire LP (and it did, on Verve), was commissioned by Dizzy Gillespie, who premiered it to stunning effect at Monterey.

The teaching of jazz continued its sharp ascent. By late 1961 close to 6000 of America's 30,000 high schools had faculty-supervised dance bands. The Stan Kenton clinics of the National Band Camp project, with many of his bestknown alumni on the faculty, expanded from one to three campuses (Indiana U, Michigan State, SMU). Oscar Peterson's music school in Toronto stretched its course from four to five months, with Peterson, Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen in residence. In New York, pianistteacher John Mehegan enlarged his Juilliard and Columbia U classes.

Record sales, according to our annual check with Billboard files and crosschecks with other dependable sources, indicated that the 10 top-selling instrumental jazz artists of the year all hewed curiously to the top half of the alphabet, as follows: Cannonball Adderley, with African Waltz and others on Riverside; Gene Ammons with Jug and Boss Tenor on Prestige; Dave Brubeck with Time Out on Columbia (from which Paul Desmond's 5/4 composition Take Five became an unexplained hit with the teen set); Ray Charles with a whole five-foot shelf of albums on ABC-Paramount, Impulse and Atlantic; Miles Davis with his two-volume At the Blackhawk on Columbia; Pete Fountain for the LP named after his club, Fountain's French Quarter on Coral; Erroll Garner, whose Dreamstreet on ABC-Paramount was his first new set in three years; Eddie Harris' Exodus on Vee Jay; Al Hirt's Greatest Horn in the World on Victor; and Hank Mancini, with Mr. Lucky Goes Latin on Victor.

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Toward year's end, musicians and aficionados tuned in to Playboy and jazz were asked to tell the former their preferences in the latter, naming their choices in terms of the artists' previous 12 months' activities. As has been an annual custom since 1957, the winners of the Playboy readers' poll, which again showed a record-breaking tally of total votes cast, were assigned a seat of honor behind the mythical music stands of the 1962 Playboy All-Star Jazz Band. The musicians who were themselves winners in the 1961 poll were asked to name their own favorites in each category; their balloting gave us our list of All-Stars' All-Stars. Once again there were similarities and divergences between readers' and musicians' choices; again, both sets of winners will be awarded the much-prized Playboy Jazz Medals.

Jazz artists who won honors in 1961 and were thus eligible to vote in the musicians' own segment of the election were: Cannonball Adderley, Louis Armstrong, Bob Brookmeyer, Ray Brown, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Buddy DeFranco, Paul Desmond, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Coleman Hawkins, Milt Jackson, J. J. Johnson, Jonah Jones, Philly Joe Jones, Stan Kenton, Barney Kessel, Dave Lambert, Shelly Manne, Gerry Mulligan, Oscar Peterson, Frank Sinatra, Jack Teagarden and Kai Winding.

All-Stars' All-Star leader: For the third time in a row, Duke Ellington took the nod over Count Basie; the two

There was a mild flurry of activity in the All-Star Jazz Band's trumpet section. Miles Davis remained securely seated in the lead chair, but Dizzy Gillespie moved up to second, playing musical chairs with Louis Armstrong. Big-band major domo Maynard Ferguson upended Jonah Jones from the fourth chair.

Everything was peaceful in the boneyard as the trombone section status quoed it for another year; dittoed from last year were J. J. Johnson, a shoo-in, Kai Winding, Bob Brookmeyer and Jack Teagarden. Below the favored four, however, the natives were restless. Frank Rosolino edged up from sixth to a distant fifth behind Teagarden.

Cannonball Adderley waltzed into the lead alto chair, deposing Paul Desmond after a five-year reign by the Brubeck nonpareil. Earl Bostic stayed a distant third, while Bud Shank dropped from fourth to fifth, exchanging positions with Johnny Hodges.

The readers gave Stan Getz a royal welcome back to the States by returning him as first tenor sax, but that stormy petrel of the tenor, John Coltrane, displaced Coleman Hawkins in the second chair. Sonny Rollins clung to his fourth-place position despite a year of inertia.

Gerry Mulligan, seemingly unassailable as baritone sine qua non, once more made the opposition appear Lilliputian by comparison and received more votes than any other musician in the poll. The big surprise was in the runner-up slot, where Jimmy Giuffre soared from last year's sixth-place finish.

The end of an era was signified by the voting for 1962 Playboy All-Star clarinet: Benny Goodman, the consummate King of Swing, finally had to doff his regal robes after five years as licorice stick man Number One to make way for Pete Fountain who moved up from his heir-apparent role of last year.

Last year's balloting for the piano chair was a toss-up among Dave Brubeck, Erroll Garner and Ahmad Jamal, the result remaining in doubt until the final tallies were in. This go-round, however, Brubeck had a much easier time of it. And André Previn, whose recordings have been disc-dealers' delights this past year, stepped up smartly from fourth to second place. Garner and Jamal dropped to third and fourth.

The issue was really in doubt on guitar this year. Chet Atkins, a perennial runner-up, got off to an early lead. It wasn't until the balloting had passed the halfway mark that regular All-Star winner Barney Kessel overtook him to garner his sixth consecutive laurel as guitarist of the year. Wes Montgomery, the All-Stars' All-Star selection, rocketed from eighth a year ago to third.

Ray Brown, an immovable object on the Playboy Jazz All-Stars, was as firmly entrenched as ever as the readers' top bass man, making it an easy six in a row. Second and third bass held the same men as last year, with Charlie Mingus and Paul Chambers repeating their positions.

The rhythm triumvirate of Kessel, Brown and Shelly Manne remained unbroken as Shelly piled up a Manne-sized margin of victory for the sixth time.

The miscellaneous instrument category once more proved mallet man Lionel Hampton's private domain as he moved his vibes on the Playboy Jazz Band platform for the sixth consecutive time. The MJQ's vibrant vibes man Milt Jackson again was second.

The male vocal mike on the Playboy All-Stars seems to be Frank Sinatra's for as long as he stays in business, although the fantastic Ray Charles this year did manage to close the gap by several thousand votes to nail down second securely. Charles' surge bumped Johnny Mathis from second to third. Meisterfolksinger Harry Belafonte improved his position slightly, rising from fifth to fourth.

The contest for female vocalist was, as usual, no contest at all with the peerless Ella Fitzgerald easily gathering up the honors. Beneath Playboy's First Lady of Song, Peggy Lee, parlaying a big year in the clubs and on vinyl, came on from fourth to take second-place honors from June Christy, the popular poll's perennial Number Two girl. Sultry songbird Julie London held tightly to third position, while Miss Christy slipped to fourth.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet continued its dominance of the instrumental combo voting with the Modern Jazz Quartet in tight possession of the place position again. Ahmad Jamal's Trio, on the other hand, dropped from third to fifth, changing places with the George Shearing Quintet. The Miles Davis Quintet echoed last year's fourth-place finish.

Making it two years in a row as both the musicians' and the readers' leading vocal group, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross had matters well in hand. Onetime winners, the Four Freshmen were lifted in the ratings from third to second, nudging the Kingston Trio back to third. The Limeliters, unlisted a year ago, made it all the way up the list to fourth.

The following is a tabulation of the hundreds of thousands of votes cast in this biggest of all jazz polls. The names of the jazzmen who won places on the 1962 Playboy All-Star Jazz Band are in boldface. In some categories, there are two or more winners in order to make up a full-scale jazz orchestra. Artists polling less than 100 votes are not listed; in categories where two choices were allowed, those receiving less than 200 votes are not listed; in categories where four votes were allowed, no one with under 400 votes is listed.

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Leader

Trumpet

Trombone

Alto Sax

Tenor Sax

Baritone Sax

Clarinet

Piano

Guitar

Bass

Drums

Miscellaneous Instrument

Male Vocalist

Female Vocalist

Instrumental Combo

Vocal Group