Stan Kenton: This Is an Orchestra!

16. Fuego Cubano! (1956)

133 16. Fuego Cubano! (1956) Bill Perkins for one wasn’t best pleased: “In 1956 Stan brought in a couple of totally inept French horn men. They were both legit players, and they weren’t very good. Julius Watkins—he knew how to play jazz, but these guys just loaded the band down. I was the first tenor, but I had to play the part of the second alto, which meant I had to play high all night. I hated it! Stan had four saxes against twelve brass, and it was just terrible.” Kenton had consulted with Lennie Niehaus before making the changes, but only over the details, not the principle, and Lennie knew the futility of arguing with the boss once his mind was made up—especially if you wanted to keep your job! “I’d have to say I preferred the fiveman sax section,” Lennie told me. “We sure learned to play hard and strong, because to keep up with all that brass was not easy.”1 The concept of French horns in a dance band was certainly not new. Boyd Raeburn had employed them in 1946, and Claude Thornhill as early as 1941. Even Harry James frequently used a horn in place of a fourth trombone. French horns brought a unique subtlety to a band’s sound, and added a richness and depth to the ensembles. But they could not “shout,” and for this reason Kenton would ultimately find them lacking. But for the moment he was enthusiastic, and employed Holman to rescore the older arrangements to include the new instrumentation. What Willis thought of the changes can be imagined, but a job is a job. Even musicians had to eat, and too many fine jazzmen ended up driving a cab, or working in retail outlets. New lead trumpet was Ed Leddy, a fierce, strong, and accurate player, but without Porcino’s maverick tendencies. “Ed had enormous stamina,” commented Don Reed. “He played the lead on every piece, night after night, and never made a mistake. That is really an amazing feat.”2 Also back was Sam Noto, a double threat along with Vinnie Tanno in the jazz solo stakes. Mel Lewis remained on drums, but new on bass was Curtis 134 Stan Kenton: This Is an Orchestra! Counce, one of the few black players prominent in the West Coast Jazz movement (others included drummer Chico Hamilton of Quintet fame, and multi-talented reed player Buddy Collette). The first big project of 1956 saw Stan returning to his roots, with the Capitol album Kenton in Hi-Fi, which rose to No. 13 on Billboard’s pop albums chart. Stereo was still in its infancy, but monaural technology had improved beyond all recognition since the Forties, when the great Kenton/ Rugolo classics had first been made, and the album concept was to rerecord these hits in the best possible mono audio. Stan used the nucleus of his present band, but brought back Vido Musso and Milt Bernhart to recreate the authentic solo sound. Trombonist Don Reed still picked out Carl Fontana’s solo on “Intermission Riff” as one of the all-time great trombone solos ever recorded by the Kenton band—and he’s right!3 As Bill Holman’s influence waned, arrangers Joe Coccia and Johnny Richards filled the void. It is clear from speaking with the musicians that most if not all regarded the changeover as a retrograde step, not least because neither man possessed Willis’ innate sense of swing. They brought a more formal, tighter orientation back to the orchestra, which is exactly what Kenton intended. And both wrote specifically for the new instrumentation, giving the horns their own, distinctive parts. Joe Coccia was Principal of a High School in Cranston, Rhode Island, and had been writing for the orchestra since 1942 without getting much played in public. Kenton believed his arrangers should be wholly committed to music, and family man Coccia was unwilling to surrender the security of his teaching post to travel with the band full-time. Now Stan put aside his reservations, as Joe relates: “It was a challenge, as I had never written for that mixture of instruments before. My assignment was to write for the dance book, mixing horns with the saxes, while the tuba had to be playing a lyrical line like the trombones. This was of course pre-mellophoniums, and I believe the horns may well have served as the catalyst for adding the mellophonium section four years...