The 1964 Playboy All-Stars

Although there was a profusion of new faces in the 1963 jazz panorama, the pre-eminent figure during the past year was the resplendently resilient Duke Ellington. While maintaining an arduous traveling schedule with his band, Ellington also had an unusually full composing agenda. In addition to writing originals for his orchestra, Ellington composed and staged one of his most ambitious works, My People, a history of the Negro in America during the past hundred years (first performed in Chicago in August). Earlier in the summer, Ellington's score for Timon of Athens had been premiered during a performance of that play at the Stratford (Ontario) Shakespearean Festival. Almost completed by the end of the year was a new Ellington musical, Sugar City, based obliquely on The Blue Angel.

Ellington also recorded prolifically under a new contract with Reprise which gave him complete freedom in choice and direction of material. While in Europe, for example, Duke recorded several of his larger works with the Hamburg Symphony, the Paris Opera Orchestra, the Stockholm Symphony and the La Scala Symphony. In this country, moreover, Ellington proved, during a brief burst of free-lance recording, that he could more than hold his own with the younger jazz innovators as he made one album with John Coltrane and another with Charles Mingus and Max Roach.

Finishing the year in a surge of grueling activity, Ellington led his orchestra in September on a 14-week tour of the Near, Middle and Far East. His was the only jazz unit to participate in a State Department odyssey for the 1963-64 diplomatic season. As was befitting a visitor of Ellington's stature, he had been given an audience with Prime Minister Nehru after conducting an amalgam of the India Symphony Orchestra and his own band.

Ellington was also part of the civil rights ferment which increasingly activated the jazz world during the past year. At the Newport Festival, Ellington introduced and declaimed a new transmutation of Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho. It began: "King fit the battle of Alabam." Among the verses were: "When the dog saw the baby wasn't afraid/He turned to his Uncle Bull and said/'The baby looks like her don't give a damn/You sure we still in Alabam?'" The first (continued on page 90) 1964 Playboy All-Stars (continued from page 63) Negro ever employed in the dancing chorus for a major television series was hired in September for the Jackie Gleason show on CBS. She was 24-year-old Mercedes Ellington, granddaughter of the Duke.

In another small but symbolic breakthrough, the first Negro marching band in a quarter of a century participated in the climactic Mardi-gras parade in New Orleans. Individual Negro jazzmen had marched in the past, but in 1963 the Eureka Brass Band collectively cracked the color line. Throughout the year, jazz musicians – along with other performers such as Dick Gregory, Sammy Davis Jr., and Frank Sinatra – helped raise money for civil rights groups. Twice during the year, the ample lawn of Jackie Robinson's Stamford, Connecticut, home was the site of particularly prestigious jazz sessions for civil rights which included Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Cannonball Adderley, Gerry Mulligan, Quincy Jones, and many more. In Los Angeles, the NAACP used Sunday jam sessions in the spring to help recruit members. Civil rights concerts were held in San Francisco and Los Angeles, among other cities; and in August, jazz musicians were heavily involved in a concert at Harlem's Apollo Theater to support the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Some members of the jazz community became directly involved in breaking down barriers. In April, during the height of the demonstrations in Birmingham, Al Hibbler flew to that city and helped lead a demonstration. In Chicago, Dizzy Gillespie, in alliance with the Human Rights Commission, showed one barbershop the way to equality in public accommodations. For his efforts, Dizzy received an apology – and a haircut. The same John Birks Gillespie appeared during the summer on ABC-TV's Youth Wants to Know, and as a further sign of the jazz times, the student panel asked him about civil rights as well as jazz.

Earlier in the year, Dizzy, beguiled by Mexico, had planned to become an expatriate and to open a school of jazz in that country. By year's end, he had changed his mind. "Not now," he explained, "not after Birmingham. We're on the march now, and before we're through, we might change the color of the White House."

There was even a minor ground swell in 1963 for the candidacy of Mr. Gillespie himself. Dizzy Gillespie sweat shirts and Dizzy Gillespie for President buttons began to appear, and San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ralph J. Gleason led the vanguard of the campaign. Mr. Gleason, who could become press secretary in a Gillespie administration, reluctantly conceded during the year that he wasn't sure how many votes Dizzy could muster; but he added accurately that such a campaign would be wittily illuminating, since Mr. Gillespie is expert at poking serious fun at the world.

Musically as well as politically, 1963 was a spirited year for Gillespie. Now almost universally acknowledged as the most prodigiously resourceful trumpeter in jazz, Dizzy also headed one of the best small units of his career, aided considerably by the renascence of his principal colleague, tenor saxophonist and flutist James Moody.

This was also a brilliantly satisfying 12 months for Woody Herman, who accelerated the formidable pace he had started with his new big band in 1962. By the fall of 1963, the young, charging Herman herd was already booked through September of 1964 and even had 12 weeks set for 1965. Herman, however, had no illusions that his own bigband success indicated a trend. Said the pragmatic Mr. Herman to The New York Times: "This is not something that's happening with the band business. It's just happening with us. This band has a pulse and vibration that are so strong that I see people walk in to hear us in a perfectly normal state and in thirty minutes they're out of their heads." Herman has also emphasized that he has no patience with the "ghost" bands (the wraiths of the Dorsey and Glenn Miller orchestras). "We're not selling nostalgia," Herman informed Ralph Gleason. "We're selling excitement. We're alive now and I don't want to live in the past."

Stan Kenton, never one to live in the past, also fielded a young band in 1963, and the reaction to his music on the road indicated that Kenton still had a charismatic appeal for many listeners. However debatable Kenton's "innovations" had been to critics and musicians, the man himself remained a persistent proselytizing force for jazz as he envisioned it. There has always been a cult of personality in jazz, and Kenton continued to be one of the most irrepressible exemplars of that cult. As for the other titan of big-band jazz, Count Basie rolled through the year like a precision machine. Low on distinctive soloists, the Basie band nonetheless continued to project more concentrated power than any of its rivals.

One of the relatively new names which became more strikingly familiar to the American jazz public in 1963 was that of Martial Solal. The 36-year-old, Algerian-born, French pianist made his American debut in May at New York's Hickory House to a remarkably wide-spread accompaniment of newspaper and magazine publicity. Solal lived up to his laudatory notices at the Newport Festival and in an RCA-Victor album. The Frenchman was one of the most technically proficient and inventive pianists in all of jazz.

One of the unmistakable high points of the Newport Jazz Festival in July was the series of demonstrations of the art of jazz tap dancing. It is a skill which has become increasingly rare, but it is still capable of an improvisatory freshness and subtlety comparable rhythmically with the best of jazz instrumental playing. Among the dancing educators were Honi Coles, Pete Nugent, Charlie Atkins, Chuck Green, Charles Cook and Ernest Brown. The nonpareil Baby Laurence distilled the pleasures and surprises of jazz tap dancing in an evening performance with Duke Ellington's orchestra.

Jazz festivals were fewer in 1963 than the year before. The three major events began with Newport in July. Financially, the Newport tourney was a success, attracting more than 30,000; but significantly, 11,000 more people attended the three-day Newport Folk Festival held at the end of the month. George Wein, who promoted both, then decided to include an afternoon folk concert in another of his projects, August's Ohio Valley Jazz Festival in Cincinnati. The stratagem didn't work that afternoon, partly because of bad weather, but Wein was correct in his basic assumption that in terms of box office, folk music in 1963 was, on the whole, more economically viable than jazz. The second annual Ohio Valley Jazz Festival did well enough (attendance: a little over 20,000) to insure its continuance this year. The final key festival – Monterey, California, in September, broke several attendance records with a total audience for all concerts of 29,600.

The reaction to the three festivals from musicians and critics was mixed. All three were orderly and were professionally staged. Attempts were made to provide somewhat unconventional juxtapositions of performers (as in the case of Pee Wee Russell joining Thelonious Monk at Newport). Yet there was a sizable feeling that at none of the three festivals had the programing been sufficiently venturesome.

Aside from the narrowing jazz-festival circuit, there were many more complaints than hosannas about work opportunities in night clubs during the past year. The established units had no economic problems. Some, in fact – the Modern Jazz Quartet, Dave Brubeck and Erroll Garner – either abandoned the clubs entirely or returned only to a select number very infrequently. Others who remained largely in clubs – Dizzy (continued on page 120) 1964 Playboy All-Stars (continued from page 90) Gillespie, Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, Gerry Mulligan, Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Art Blakey and a few more of the renowned – were able to work about as often as they liked. With the Playboy Clubs a bright exception, it became more difficult for jazzmen on the way up to find night-club employment. For some even well-known jazzmen, layoffs became more frequent than engagements.

One apparent reason for this decline in club work was the preference of many aficionados for spending their money on records and listening to the growing number of jazz radio programs rather than searching out live jazz. Club owners complained, furthermore, that there were not enough sure-fire draws among jazz combos to sustain the clubs through less prosperous weeks when they might have taken a chance on less popular combos. Nor, a number of owners added, could they afford the rising prices of even some of those better known combos who attract appreciable audiences. Accordingly, there were clubs that operated fewer nights or that changed from an all-jazz policy. A few closed. Among those that expired during the year was Nick's, a Dixieland bastion in Greenwich Village for more than 27 years.

With little chance for work in regular jazz rooms, the avant-garde players, particularly in New York, turned to coffee-houses for intermittent employment and also arranged concerts in lofts. A similar development took shape in Hollywood with the growth of "after-hours theater jazz" – early-morning concerts directed and promoted by musicians.

The college concert wheel remained open largely to only the more popular groups. There were, however, small initial indications that there might be some room for jazz concerts in the cultural centers proliferating around the country. New York's Lincoln Center, which may influence the programing of other cultural enclaves, set aside three evenings of jazz in August. Veterans Ben Webster and Budd Johnson shared the first; modern main streamers Benny Golson and Oliver Nelson were heard in the second; and the final event was devoted to the experimental jazz of George Russell and Jimmy Giuffre. Earlier in the year, Gunther Schuller devoted the last of six enthusiastically received concerts of 20th Century Innovations at New York's Carnegie Recital Hall to a program of Recent Developments in Jazz.

During the summer, incidentally, Schuller was associate head of the composition department at Tanglewood in the Berkshires, and he was responsible for the first jazz concert to be held at the Tanglewood Festival. As more of the younger classical musicians with backgrounds and continuing interest in jazz achieved power in the classical world, it was also likely that places would be found for jazz musicians at summer classical music festivals and even among the faculties in the major music schools.

Among the more ambitious intercollegiate jazz festivals during the year were those held at Villanova in February and at the University of Notre Dame in March. At the latter school, the Bob Pozar trio from the University of Michigan defeated 11 other combos to win the award as the outstanding small unit at the festival. The same trio was also judged "The Finest Jazz Group" at the event. And when Pozar's first album was released this year on Mercury (Bold Conceptions), its critical acclaim throughout the country attested to the quality of the talent which is emerging from this heightened jazz activity in the colleges. (Paul Winter, who now records for Columbia and who was an exceptionally effective musical ambassador for the State Department in Latin America in 1962, had won the Georgetown Inter-collegiate Jazz Festival in 1961.)

As jazz became increasingly accepted in schools, its relationship to the church also grew closer. At a convention of the Illinois Synod Lutheran Church in America, Reverend Ralph W. Lowe of Buffalo predicted that a significant percentage of future church music in America could be based on jazz. "We are guilty," he said, "of trying to keep God only in certain particular forms." Interestingly, at the Second Vatican (Ecumenical) Council, an initial consensus among Church Fathers was that contemporary and folk art forms could legitimately be integrated into Roman Catholic ceremonial so long as they were not irreverent, undignified or mediocre. Father Norman O'Connor, director of radio-TV communications for the Paulist Fathers in New York, added that he saw nothing irreligious in commissioning a jazz composer to write a jazz Mass.

During the year, jazz functioned in the church at, among other places, the Yale Divinity School chapel (A Musical Offering to God by composer—divinity student Thomas W. Vaughn) and at the Advent Lutheran Church in New York whose pastor, John Gensel, included jazz night clubs as part of his ministry. In Buffalo, the Reverend Paul Smith, once the drummer with the Three Sounds, explained his use of jazz in the church as an aid in helping him communicate with youngsters. As a whole, however, the middle-class Negro church was reluctant to utilize jazz in its services. Said Reverend Smith, whose congregation was integrated, "The Negro church thinks jazz is something bad. They don't know God is just as much represented in jazz as in the classics."

Back on the secular trail, there were no striking break-throughs in the use of jazz on network television. A few jazzmen made individual guest appearances on variety shows, but there was still no prime-time series concerned entirely with jazz. Jazz Scene U.S.A., however, a half-hour series of taped shows with Oscar Brown, Jr., as master of ceremonies, did achieve some sales success in individual markets through syndication and was also sold to a wide range of foreign outlets – from France to Nigeria to New Zealand. By year's end, Jazz Scene U.S.A., with the approval of the State Department, was being offered for sale in Russia, Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia, thereby becoming the first jazz television series to have been made available within the Soviet hegemony.

Another 30-minute jazz television series, Jazz Casual, continued to set new standards for spontaneity and freedom from television gimmickery. The noncommercial project, produced and hosted by critic Ralph Gleason, started a second round of programs in the fall and was carried by the full National Educational Television Network of some 75 stations in the United States and Puerto Rico. Typical guests were Gerry Mulligan, Earl Hines and Jimmy Rushing. Gleason, in full control of each show, allowed musical autonomy to the guest of the week. Indications were that Gleason would be doing at least eight jazz programs a year for the National Educational Television Network for some time to come.

Slowly, during the year, jazz composers were being considered for stage and film productions which were not concerned with jazz subjects. John Lewis wrote the incidental music for William Inge's Natural Affection, which had a short run on Broadway during the 1962-63 season. Mal Waldron was responsible for the score – featuring Dizzy Gillespie – of the film version of The Cool World. (As an improvising off-screen voice, Gillespie proved to be a major asset to the Academy Award—winning animated short subject, The Hole, produced by John and Faith Hubley.) Erroll Garner created the music for another movie, A New Kind of Love; and toward the end of the year, it was announced that Miles Davis and Gil Evans had collaborated on the score of a new play, The Time of the Barracudas, starring Laurence Harvey.

Overseas, jazz continued to expand. In August, Max Frankel reported from Moscow in The New York Times: "Jazz – good, bad and atrocious – is everywhere now in the Soviet capital and has (continued on page 177) 1964 Playboy All-Stars(continued from page 120) even become bold enough to borrow the themes of staid and venerable Russian folk songs. Music students at the Moscow Conservatory earn extra rubles on weekends by turning up in jazz combos at private clubs. Foreign troupes, like one here now from that citadel of 'revisionism,' Yugoslavia, are expanding the frontiers of jazz music still farther."

At the third Leningrad Jazz Festival, units from Riga, Tallis and Tartu entered the lists as champions of "West Coast style." Russian names began to appear in the Down Beat International Critics Poll; and in a further response to the expansion of jazz in the Soviet Union, Radio Liberty this past summer broadcast to the U.S.S.R. a program by eight American jazzmen (co-led by Phil Woods and Bill Crow) of pieces composed by Russian jazz musicians.

The sixth annual Polish Jazz Jamboree in Warsaw in late October scheduled a jazz opera – an innovation no American jazz festival has yet contemplated. During the Fourth Jazz Festival at Bled, a Yugoslavian spa, the combos included representatives from Sarajevo, Warsaw, Milan, Munich, Prague, Budapest and Ljubljana (one nighters were evidently not completely obsolete yet.)

In the news of jazz abroad this past year were examples of fascinating cultural blendings. American trumpeter Don Ellis, visiting in Warsaw, reported he had heard a Russian who sounded "like a country blues player who studied with Prokofiev." In Japan, one resourceful group evolved a jazz fantasy based on a Japanese religious theme. And in the most unusual cultural exchange in jazz history, the Albert Mangelsdorff Quintet, one of Germany's leading modern jazz units, was hired by the German government to undertake an officially sponsored tour of Asia. Its concerts were to include jazz versions of indigenous Asian forms – gamelang music of Bali and Java, Indian ragas, koto music of Japan, and some jazz compositions by King Phumiphon Adundet of Thailand.

Meanwhile, as American critics continued to argue about the extent of African survivals in early jazz, more outposts of contemporary jazz were established in West Africa. The Jazz Arts Society opened a branch in Nigeria; and under the aegis of the American Society of African Culture, jazz pianist-composer Randy Weston made a second trip to Nigeria where he lectured at schools and sat in with local musicians. Weston claimed that a previous visit to Africa had deeply affected his own conceptions of jazz and he had a Colpix album (Music from the New African Nations) to prove it. Weston proceeded to set up an exchange program of musical information and tapes with Nigerian musicians, predicting that an increasing segment of American jazz would be swayed by African rhythms and melodies.

As the ranks of jazzmen multiplied abroad, the 1963 obituary list in this country was unusually long. In New Orleans, it included blues shouter Lizzie Miles and trumpeter John Casimir, longtime leader of the Young Tuxedo Brass Band. Also from the traditional jazz cadre were Eddie Edwards, once of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, and songwriter J. Russell Robinson, who had been one of the pianists for the same unit. Among the others were: Bob Scobey, Gene Sedric, June Clark, Dan Grissom (former Jimmie Lunceford singer), Ike Quebec, Pete Brown, Sonny Clark, Addison Farmer, Curtis Counce, Herbie Nichols, Joe Gordon and Bobby Jaspar. Also dead were two men once important in big-band jazz – Glen Gray and Nat Towles.

There were two nonmusicians on the list. Both had been long-time supporters of the music. One was Jimmy Ryan, whose jazz club had finally left 52nd Street in 1962 after 21 years on that once swinging thoroughfare. The other was Jack Crystal, a fixture for many years at New York's Commodore Music Shop, and since 1949, the producer of weekend jazz concerts at the Central Plaza in Manhattan. Crystal may have been the most assiduous organizer of benefits for musicians and their families in jazz history; and his weekend sessions, moreover, sustained the morale of many older players who otherwise would have had hardly any contact at all with a jazz audience.

On the jazz record scene, the bossa nova became, as Paul Desmond noted, the "bossa antigua" – prematurely superannuated by overexposure. Nothing took its place in terms of markedly expanding the record-buying public for jazz and allied music. (There was a feverish attempt to manufacture pop gospel, spurred mainly by Columbia Records and the Sweet Chariot night club in New York.) Ray Charles was still by far the most popular recording artist with jazz roots; and for the rest, the men high in the jazz album charts continued to include Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Jimmy Smith and Count Basie.

As for jazzmen on the ascendant, the year's most sudden new arrival was Tony Williams, a 17-year-old drummer, who was graduated from an apprenticeship in Boston to a position with Miles Davis' unit. In big-band drumming, Jake Hanna of Woody Herman's orchestra increased his stature in that challenging specialty during the year. Other jazz musicians on the way up who particularly distinguished themselves were bassists Steve Swallow, Gary Peacock and Ron Carter; pianists Paul Bley, Herbie Hancock and Don Friedman; guitarists Joe Pass and Gabor Szabo; vibists Walt Dickerson and Gary Burton; trumpeter Dupree Bolton; trombonists Phil Wilson and Roswell Rudd; alto saxophonists Jimmy Woods and Sonny Simmons; tenor saxophonists Booker Ervin and Archie Shepp; and flutist Prince Lasha. Two vocalists of unusual expressive capacities began to emerge – Sheila Jordan and Shirley Horn.

Experimentation in jazz continued to increase in intensity and diversity throughout the year. The avant-gardists had yet to reach enough of an audience to guarantee them anything more than very occasional work, but among themselves they moved farther and farther away from conventional bases for jazz improvisation. Many abandoned the usual chord structures and also insisted that a regular, explicit beat was no longer necessary. On an educational television program and in concerts, Don Ellis introduced the "music of chance" into jazz. (On one occasion, the length of each musician's solo was determined by a card he drew from a deck before the performance began.)

Jimmy Giuffre persevered in getting quarter tones out of the clarinet, and multiple instrumentalist Roland Kirk even made the microphone into a musical instrument. As the volume was turned up one evening, there was resultant microphone feedback (a high, piercing sound), and Kirk incorporated the feedback into his solo. He later repeated his feat. "Most people," Kirk pointed out, "don't realize that the microphone does have notes that can be used." "Man," said a devotee in the audience, "I never saw anyone play the microphone before." In that respect, Al Jolson's rallying cry might prove apt for the jazz years ahead: "You ain't heard nothing yet!"

As the Final Chorus of 1963 rolled around, jazz performers and jazz buffs were again polled by playboy to find out their choices of the musicians who they deemed had contributed most to the jazz scene during the prior twelvemonth. As in polls past, the winners of this eighth annual Playboy jazz consensus of our readers become members of the 1964 Playboy All-Star Jazz Band. The 1963 award winners were asked to cast their ballots for their own choices in each category, supplying us with a galaxy of All-Stars' All-Stars. As in years past, readers and musicians had large areas of agreement and several bones of contention. Those musicians who won the famed Playboy Jazz Medals in the 1963 plebiscite, enabling them to vote in their own poll, were: Cannonball Adderley, Louis Armstrong, Chet Atkins, Bob Brookmeyer, Ray Brown, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Buddy DeFranco, Paul Desmond, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Pete Fountain, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Al Hirt, Milt Jackson, J.J. Johnson, Philly Joe Jones, Stan Kenton, Dave Lambert, Wes Montgomery, Joe Morello, Gerry Mulligan, Oscar Peterson, Sonny Rollins, Frank Sinatra, Jack Teagarden and Kai Winding.

All-Stars' All-Star Leader: The big change in the vote for big-band baton man was Herdsman Woody Herman surging into third place. As usual, the Duke remained king, and the Count his heir apparent. 1. Duke Ellington; 2. Count Basie; 3. Woody Herman; 4. Stan Kenton; 5. Maynard Ferguson.

All-Stars' All-Star Trumpet: The first three slots remained unchanged from last year, but the Herculean Al Hirt moved up to take over fourth position. 1. Dizzy Gillespie; 2. Miles Davis; 3. Clark Terry; 4. Al Hirt; 5. Freddie Hubbard.

All-Stars' All-Star Trombone: The bone throne was once again all J.J.'s, with newcomer to the list Urbie Green tying Curtis Fuller for the fourth slot. 1. J. J. Johnson; 2. Bob Brookmeyer; 3. Kai Winding; 4. Curtis Fuller, Urbie Green.

All-Stars' All-Star Alto Sax: The smooth sounds of Brubeck man Desmond sidetracked the Adderley Cannonball this year, with the very busy Phil Woods finishing a surprising fourth. 1.Paul Desmond; 2. Cannonball Adderley; 3. Sonny Stitt; 4. Phil Woods; 5. Johnny Hodges.

All-Stars' All-Star Tenor Sax: The boss of the bossa nova, Stan Getz, was the boss of the All-Star's All-Stars by a comfortable margin with Sonny Rollins, last year's winner, dropping into a tie for third. 1. Stan Getz; 2. John Coltrane; 3. Sonny Rollins, Zoot Sims; 5. Coleman Hawkins.

All-Stars' All-Star Baritone Sax: Gerry Mulligan was again all by himself, with the first four places repeating last year's finish. 1. Gerry Mulligan; 2. Harry Carney; 3. Pepper Adams; 4. Cecil Payne; 5. Charlie Davis.

All-Stars' All-Star Clarinet: An avant-garde instrumentalist, Jimmy Giuffre, took over third place in a race that saw veteran Goodman come on strong for a close second-place finish behind Buddy DeFranco. 1. Buddy DeFranco; 2. Benny Goodman; 3. Jimmy Giuffre; 4. Jimmy Hamilton; 5. Alvin Batiste.

All-Stars' All-Star Piano: The only changes from last year's results were in the lower echelons, with Dave Brubeck taking over third from Thelonious Monk and Erroll Garner moving into fifth. 1. Oscar Peterson; 2. Bill Evans: 3. Dave Brubeck; 4. Thelonious Monk; 5. Erroll Garner.

All-Stars' All-Star Guitar: Again, the first two finishers remained unchanged from last year; Kenny Burrell moved from fourth to third and Barney Kessel put in a reappearance in fourth. 1. Wes Montgomery; 2. Jim Hall; 3. Kenny Burrell; 4. Barney Kessel; 5. Charlie Byrd.

All-Stars' All-Star Bass: The redoubtable Ray Brown piled up more votes from his jazz confreres than any other musician. The rest of the finishers had to be satisfied with crumbs. 1. Ray Brown; 2. Paul Chambers; 3. Red Mitchell; 4. Gene Wright; 5. Sam Jones.

All-Stars' All-Star Drums: For the fourth year in a row, Philly Joe proved a skins winner, with another Jones boy and Joe Morello sharing second place. 1.Philly Joe Jones; 2. Elvin Jones, Joe Morello; 4. Art Blakey; 5. Buddy Rich.

All-Stars' All-Star Miscellaneous Instrument: Last year's order of finish was almost duplicated this go-round with harmonica virtuoso Toots Thielemans breaking into the charts to tie flutist James Moody for fourth slot. 1. Milt Jackson, Vibes; 2. Jimmy Smith, organ; 3. John Coltrane, Soprano Sax; 4. James Moody, flute, Toots Thielemans, harmonica.

All-Stars' All-Star Male Vocalist: Sinatra was an easy winner this year over perennial contender Ray Charles. The only "new" name in '64's first five is Tony Bennett's; the omnipresent Tony tied Mr. B. for fourth. 1. Frank Sinatra; 2. Ray Charles; 3. Joe Williams; 4. Tony Bennett, Billy Eckstine.

All-Stars' All-Star Female Vocalist: Although Miss Fitz was a by-now-familiar breeze for the number-one position, the second spot was wrested away from the Divine Sarah by fast-rising Nancy Wilson. 1. Ella Fitzgerald; 2. Nancy Wilson; 3. Sarah Vaughan; 4. Peggy Lee; 5. Dinah Washington.

All-Stars' All-Star Instrumental Combo: The Dave Brubeck Quartet made it a clean sweep this year, ousting the Oscar Peterson group as the musicians' favorite aggregation. 1. Dave Brubeck Quartet; 2. Oscar Peterson Trio; 3. Cannonball Adderley Sextet; 4. Miles Davis Sextet; 5. Erroll Garner Trio.

All-Stars' All-Star Vocal Group: Last year's third-place finishers, the Four Freshmen, happily changed places with '63 winners Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan. Second and fourth positions remained unchanged. 1. Four Freshmen; 2. Hi-Lo's; 3. Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan; 4. Double Six of Paris; 5. J's & Jamie, King Sisters.

Our readers' choices in the eighth annual Playboy Jazz Poll, a record crop of ballots, indicated once more their predilections for past winners. There are, however, some stunning surprises.

Foremost among them is the dethroning of Stan Kenton as leader of the Playboy All-Star Jazz Band, after seven straight years at the top. Taking his place, and doing it by a handsome margin, was last year's second-place finisher, Henry Mancini. If Henry proved one thing, it was the power of the mass entertainment media – TV, movies and records – to put a musician in the public spotlight. The Duke and The Count remained in third and fourth positions, while Maynard Ferguson's driving aggregation netted him the fifth slot. The Thundering Herd gave a rejuvenated Woody Herman the impetus to move from fifteenth to seventh in the balloting.

Although the trumpet section has the same personnel as last year, positions have changed slightly. The hirsute Al Hirt moved from fourth chair to second behind Miles Davis, with Gillespie and Armstrong each dropping down a notch.

The 1964 trombone section accounted for a new face in the Playboy All-Star Jazz Band. Si Zentner, who placed twelfth in the leader category, took over on third tram, behind perennial first-place finisher J.J. Johnson and runner-up, New York Playboy Club Musical Director Kai Winding. Valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer dropped into fourth position, while veteran Jack Teagarden was narrowly edged off the bandstand entirely.

Alto king Cannonball Adderley and second-chair occupant Paul Desmond repeated last year's placings, with the also-rans strung out behind them in much the same order as in 1963.

Places one through six were dittoed from 1963 in the tenor-sax derby, with Stan Getz again holding down first chair and John Coltrane the secondary seat.

Gerry Mulligan each year turns the baritone-sax balloting into a one-man show, and this year he finished stronger than ever, with over 18,000 votes between Gerry and second-place finisher Jimmy Giuffre. The ubiquitous Bud Shank moved into third, just nudging out Detroit jazzman Pepper Adams.

New Orleans clarinetist Pete Fountain widened last year's margin of victory over Swing King Benny Goodman. Acker Bilk, who came from nowhere to finish fifth last year, jumped to third, finishing ahead of Buddy DeFranco and Jimmy Giuffre.

Dave Brubeck, whose group was busy garnering medals by the bushel, improved on last year's win, as Oscar Peterson displaced André Previn in second place. Popular recording artist Peter Nero leapfrogged from seventh to fourth, moving Erroll Garner one rung lower than last year.

In the closest contest of the year, that master of the unamplified guitar, Charlie Byrd, eked out a 12-vote margin over last year's winner Chet Atkins. Barney Kessel, 1963's second-place finisher, wound up fourth, while Wes Montgomery nudged up a slot to third place.

Ray Brown, for the eighth straight year, led the bass balloting in a list that remained unchanged from last year through the first four places. Red Mitchell dropped from fifth to twelfth, his spot being taken over by Art Davis.

Brubeck man Joe Morello once more wrapped up the drums medal in a finish that echoed last year's Morello-Manne-Krupa-Blakey line-up, with elder statesman Cozy Cole usurping Philly Joe Jones' fifth position.

The Hamp again had things very much his own way as the master vibe-smith widened the gap over the number-two finisher, who this year was flutist Herbie Mann; Herbie moved up smartly from last year's 22nd-place finish. This go-round, mallet man Milt Jackson had to be satisfied with third position.

Although Frank Sinatra had no near peers among the readers for 1964's male vocalist, there was some shuffling about in the lower echelons. While Ray Charles kept a strong hold on second slot, Harry Belafonte plummeted from third to a sixth-place tie with Oscar Brown, Jr., Johnny Mathis moved up a rung to third, Tony Bennett leaped from twelfth to fourth, and Andy Williams jumped from eleventh to fifth.

Just as rock firm on the distaff side of the vocal department was Ella Fitzgerald, with bright young singer Nancy Wilson gaining new voting strength in repeating her second-place finish. Rocketing onto the vocal scene in an amazing display of popular appeal, dynamic songstress Barbra Streisand, unlisted last year, finished a strong third, while Joan Baez in fourth swapped places with Julie London.

The voting for instrumental combo made this a vintage year for the Dave Brubeck Quartet, adding a readers' medal to their All-Stars' All-Stars accolade; what with Desmond doing the same and Brubeck and Morello winning one medal each, as instrumentalists, they seemed to be developing a hardware monopoly. Although making a strong move upward from seventh to second, the Oscar Peterson Trio was still far behind the Brubeck men in the voting, just besting the Cannonball Adderley Sextet, which moved up from last year's fifth-place finish. The MJQ fell off from second to fourth, while Al Hirt and his troops edged up from sixth to fifth.

Last, but by no means least, there are three new faces as 1964's nonpareil vocal group. Peter, Paul & Mary, who came in a highly respectable third last year, garnered new fans via recordings and concert appearances, to dethrone Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan. L, H & B took over the runner-up spot from the Four Freshmen, with 1963's fifth-place finishers, the Kingston Trio, trading positions with '63's fourth-slot occupants, the Lime-liters.

The following is a tabulation of the many thousands of votes cast in this biggest of all jazz polls. The names of the jazzmen who won places on the 1964 Playboy All-Star Jazz Band are in boldface type. 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. (continued on next page)

Leader

Trumpet

Trombone

Alto Sax

Tenor Sax

Baritone Sax

Clarinet

Piano

Guitar

Bass

Drums

Miscellaneous Instrument

Male Vocalist

Female Vocalist

Instrumental Combo

Vocal Group