[Dixielandjazz] Phil Woods

[Steve barbone]

Long but interesting. A look at the life and introspection of Phil Woods, a
Jazz Master, albeit "modern". If you get that far, there are some funny
quotes about Benny Goodman, for whom Woods played on the Russian tour, circa
1962. (See the good news/bad news joke about Benny's death).

As a fellow resident of the Big Apple during that period, I fondly remember
the places and men he speaks about from his NYC days circa 1947 -1962. Yep,
that's part of what it was like.

Cheers,
Steve (wish I could play like him) Barbone

I went to New York in I947 and studied at the Manhattan School of Music for
the summer and in the fall enrolled at Juilliard. I did four years at
Juilliard. I was living on 93rd Street near the Hudson River, sharing the
rent with Sal Salvador and Hal Serra. Our pad was in the same building where
Jimmy Raney and Tal Farlow lived. I remember John Collins, Johnny Smith,
Chuck Wayne, Tal, Sal and Jimmy all jamming together late at night. I heard
some incredible music. I wanted to join in so badly, but was told I wasn't
ready. And I wasn't.

Tal, Sal, Hal and I got on a kick of building model airplanes. We would stay
up all night listening to the weekend live jazz shows on the radio, the main
source of entertainment in Angelica. We would take our flimsy ships to
Central Park at first light and fly them. Sal's which were always the most
sloppily built, flew the best. It was a time when the technological
beast had not yet taken over our lives. We had 78 RPM records, big bands,
52nd Street and Birdland. Giants like Bean, Prez, Pops, Bird, Bud, Fats and
Diz walked the earth.

While I was at Juilliard I also played fourth tenor in Charlie Barnet's band
for a while. The day of my final exam I was playing at the Apollo Theatre
doing seven shows a day. I had to arrange to play my Mozart and my Brahms
between shows. My clarinet was stolen that day, too! The reason I seemed
to come up on the scene so suddenly in the fifties was because there were
more bands and consequently more places to be heard. I got a tot of exposure
playing at Birdland on Monday nights, which fed to the Birdland All Stars
tour and that drew Neat Hefti's attention to me and I joined his band.

That's where Quincy Jones beard me and recognized that I could play a little
bit and he recommended me for the Dizzy Gillespie band. It all came of being
at the right place at the right time. It was very much a golden age for big
bands then, too. One of my first big gigs was when I took Jackie McLean's
place in the George Wallington band. That was an important gig for me as for
as name value was concerned.

Of course, Charlie Parker was around New York at the time and I played with
him at some jam sessions. I was playing at the Nut Club in Greenwich
Village, playing for strippers and wondering about my saxophone and my
mouthpiece - the usual doubts a young man would have. Somebody said 'Bird's
across the street jamming," and I went to Arthur's which is still there, and
Bird was playing on a baritone sax belonging to Harry Rivers, the painter. I
said "Mr. Parker, perhaps you'd like to try my alto?" He said he would, so I
ran back across the road and got my saxophone. When he played I realized
that my horn sounded real good.

There was nothing wrong with it! He said "Now you play it!" So I did my
feeble imitation of him and he said 'It sounds real good son,' So I went
back across the street to work and played the heck out of Harlem Nocturne.

I first beard Gene Quill with Art Mooney's band in the late forties then I
met him at a jam session with Teddy Charles' band. We hit it off right away.
Gene asked me if I wanted to sit in and asked me what I wanted to play.
Whatever suits you, I told him. 'Donna Lee fast!" he said. We hit the
line and the unison was pretty good. We played all day and all night and
then we went to the bar and from then on we were like brothers. We became
the preferred sax section for a lot of the arrangers who worked in New York
then, people like Quincy and Oliver Nelson, Gary McFarland, Bob Brookmeyer
and Ralph Bums. The rest of the preferred section was Al Cohn, Zoot Sims and
Sol Schlinger (who's here at Flip's party) or Danny Bank on baritone. We had
a band that we called Phil And Quill. We never traveled. We worked the
Vanguard and the Half Note and odd gigs.

The Birdland All Stars tour was 1956 and then in '57 I toured with Dizzy's
big band. For the Mid East part we had Joe Gordon as first trumpet soloist,
We played in Abadan, Iran, Beirut, and Damascus - all of the trouble spots.
I've often said they should have sent Dizzy a few more times. It might have
been a much better world. When we did a tour of South America Joe Gordon
left and Lee Morgan joined the band.

The Quincy Jones band was formed specifically for Europe in I959 - it never
appeared in New York. it was put together to play the show "Free And Easy",
Harold Aden's remake of his "St. Louis Woman" show. It was a great band with
Clark Terry, Benny Bailey, Ka Person, Bud Johnson, Porter Dilbert, Jerome
Richardson - the list is long. We were a year in Europe. We opened in
Amsterdam. The band was in costume on stage with the music having been
memorized. It was quite an accomplishment. The show folded in Paris after
about two months. We managed to keep the big band intact with five saxes for
ten months until we went back to the States.

The economic reality of the States was such that we cut down to four reeds.
I think we lasted about a month. It's amazing that we managed ten months in
Europe, but we couldn't make it for more than a couple of weeks in New York
City.

Quincy lost a lot of money on that trip. He did all the booking and
everything. People told him he was crazy and that he couldn't keep a big
band in Europe and that episode more or less forced him into the production
end of the business.

One of my first big projects was "The Rights Of Swing" for Candid Records in
I96I. Nat Hentoff was the producer for Candid and he was given what for
those days was a whole lot of money.

He had a real budget to commission writing and stuff and he said "Do me an
album," and that was the first commission I ever got. I had the money up
front to write the piece (a five part suite that ran for 40 minutes, Candid
90I6). Quincy conducted and I had a good band. We used some of the guys
from Quincy's tour - Benny Bailey, Julius Watkins, Sahib Shihab and Buddy
Catlett along with Curtis Fuller, Willie Dennis and the drummers Osie
Johnson and Granville Roker.

I used the whole of my musical experience when I was writing the piece. For
example there's a direct quote from the first piece I wrote, Back and Blow,
which was for the first date I ever made for a Jimmy Raney album. I used
ideas from Stravinsky's *Rites of Spring' in the final part. I'd studied
that work over the years, taken it apart, analyzed it and enjoyed it. So
when I thought of the title for my album it was really a doff of the hat to
Mr. Stravinsky. I love both sides of the coin, jazz and symphony music.

I loved it when I had the chance to play Manny Albarn's 'Concerto For Alto
with the full orchestra. I was trained as a classical clarinetist, so I'm
fairly comfortable with an orchestra and I can read pretty good, you know.
Gary McFarland and Oliver Jackson used to specifically write clarinet
parts in to their pieces for me, because I was about the only guy in the
section who didn't play flute.

In 1962 I joined Benny Goodman for his tour of Russia. He wasn't the
greatest human being that I've ever met, but what a great artist! That's all
we really care about, the great art. But he was tough on his musicians and
nobody really understands why. He had his set ways. He wanted us to sound
like his 1938 band. It was unusual for a man who did so much to
revolutionize the music to be caught up in the past like that. If any of us
caught the audience too much for him he'd reduce our solo space. It
was very perverse I don't think he had always been like that though, I think
it was something that caught him in later years. That was the only time I
ever worked for him. We'd had quite enough of each other.

The only time I saw him again was years later in 1978. I won a Grammy for
work on Michel Le Grand's Images which won the Best Big Band Album category.
Benny Goodman was presenting the awards. He said "I wondered what had
happened to you, kid!" I said "I've been thinking about you, too, Benny."


When Benny died John Frosk called Jerry Dodgion and he said "I've got some
good news and some bad news. The good news is that Benny died last night.
The bad news is that he died in his sleep."



I spent a lot of time teaching between 1964 and 1967 and then in March 1968
I moved with my family to Paris. The jazz opportunities in Europe were good
at that time. I formed the European Rhythm Machine almost as soon as I
arrived. with George Gruntz on piano, bassist Henri Texier and drummer
Daniel Humair. Later Gordon Beck took over on piano. We stayed together for
four years. It was an experimental group and an innovative part of my life.

'As you say there were some periods of my life when I felt more creative
than others. The ebb and flow of any evolutionary part of living is like
that. You can't always be full out with the Creative thing. You have to have
time sometimes to ponder just where you're at. I hadn't recorded or played
any jazz for years and suddenly I was in Europe and had a band and I was
playing major festivals. I was even invited to play Newport.

I had the first Varitone electric attachment and Beck was using electric
piano and we were early into fusion. I make no bones about liking what Miles
Davis did at that time. Whatever Miles did I copied. I liked his musical
direction. As he would change, I would change, too. He was the pathfinder
for those things and I found him intriguing so that I experimented in
my own way using his techniques.

The Varitone negates your own tone, so I tried a wood-wind amp. But when I
got a wah-wah pedal, well, that really takes your tone away. I also used an
Oberheim ring modulator. You throw a wah-wah and a ring modulator on the
horn boy. and you've got some nasty stuff! I remember Leonard Feather came
to hear the electronic band I put together in California in I972. That was a
more experimental band than the European Rhythm Machine had been. But I was
leaning towards that in the Paris days, and when that ran out and I moved to
California I was still pursuing it and exploring more of the electric
gadgets. In fact we had arranged an audition with Elektra Asylum. They were
trying to find a group to cover for Weather Report, which was hot.

The week of our audition David Gefford took over the company and all
appointments were cancelled. There was a complete change of policy, so we
never got the chance to be beard. I often wonder what would have happened
if a big company had got behind that band.

Lately I've been doing a lot of writing. I like to play melody. I'm a melody
man. I like to play a song and I like form and responsibility. I don't think
I'll be doing too much experimentation. I'm not going to be getting into
twelve tone and I don't think I'll be changing the course of Western music I
sure have fun playing the theme and variation form which I love.

I don't over-value the polls. I've been fortunate enough to win many of them
for many years now, and it has enabled me to keep a quintet going. The
publicity that goes with it makes it an important adjunct. That is, until I
lose! Mosaic has just come out with a 20 year retrospective covering the
quartets and quintets.. All the way back to the band with Harry Leahy
and the first quartet with Mike Melillo, Bill Goodwin and Steve Gilmore.
There's some stuff from Japan with Zoot as our guest, right up to the
present with Brian Lynch and Jim McNeely.