[78-L] Artie Shaw

[Jeff Sultanof]

All excellent names, and all people I admire.

So much of this music has disappeared over the years, but quite a bit of it
is available, some in very out-of-the-way places. I found out a few months
ago that many composers regularly sent their work to Duke Ellington for him
to see and consider performing. These scores are all part of the Ellington
Collection at the Smithsonian. Some are the only scores extant of certain
well-known names. Two score from the Johnny Richards 1940-45 orchestra were
found in the John Benson Brooks Collection donated to the Institute of Jazz
Studies, the only scores extant from this orchestra. Brooks copied them and
never returned the scores, luckily for us.

I have edited over 300 big band and concert orchestra scores for myself or
for various projects, mostly because I wanted to study them to become a
better composer/arranger. This has become my main project outside of my
teaching. Unlike records, these scores are one-of-a-kind in the main, and if
one does not preserve the sole copy, it will be lost forever. Some are
written on paper that is deteriorating.

You mention Paich; his own family is trying to locate anything that he
wrote, because so much is missing. Mulligan's library is pretty complete
except the scores he wrote for Krupa; I went through it with Gerry before he
died. Holman's library is at the Smithsonian. These are a few examples.

I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Lyle 'Spud' Murphy, a
tremendously talented composer and a real character who developed his own
system of composition called the Equal Interval System (he joked, "Even I
can understand it."); it is still being taught by his students. Of course
most people know him as a stock arranger or an arranger for Goodman. In
fact, he was the chief arranger for Goodman before Fletcher Henderson was
given that position. Goodman neither promoted him nor gave him the credit he
so deserved for getting the Goodman band off the ground as a swing
orchestra, so he quit and wrote for the Casa Loma Orchestra. He was able to
answer a number of questions concerning the world of stock arranging. He was
92 at the time, and still writing.

Is this getting off-topic?

Jeff

On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 10:11 PM, Geoffrey Wheeler <dialjazz at verizon.net>wrote:

>
> That’s an interesting list you have, Jeff. To that one could add Marty
> Paich, George Williams, Bill Holman, Gerry Mulligan, Bobby Scott, etc.
> One time I was visiting Philly Jo Jones’s house in the Bed-Stuy area of
> Brooklyn. At the time I was taking drum lessons from him. Working at
> his kitchen table was his wife, Gwen, who was copying parts for an
> arrangement. The particular one she was working on was for Basie.
> Nearby was a stack of scores. I looked at them. They were all done by
> Tadd Dameron. Jones told me he was taking care of them while Dameron
> was away on sabbatical. Many of these musicians were amazing people,
> with incredible knowledge and skills. I’ve talked with composer/pianist
> Jack Reilly about his studies with Tristano and his account was
> exciting to listen to. Fletcher Henderson has gotten the lion share of
> the attention and acclaim for the arrangements he did for Goodman.
> Overlooked are Jimmy Mundy who actually contributed heavily to the
> Goodman book; Benny Carter, Mary Lou Williams, and Spud Murphy, who
> provided a lot of excellent arrangements for the first edition of the
> Goodman band. Joe Haymes was also a marvelous arranger.
> Geoffrey Wheeler
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