IN THIS ISSUE: -& An interview with BOB WILBER Reviews of BIG BOOKS AND RECORDS to consider BAND ★ A VOCALIST JUMP QUIZ NEWSLETTER ☆ LETTERS TO THE EDITOR about 78's, BIX BEIDERBECKE, THE INTERNET & OTHERS BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER FIRST-CLASS MAIL U.S. POSTAGE Box 52252 PAID Atlanta, GA Atlanta, GA 30355 Permit No. 2022 \ \ V. \ BIG BAND JIMP NEWSLETTER VOLUME LXXVI BIGBAND JUMP NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2001 BOB WILBER INTERVIEW The Background Bob Wilber’s name is well-known to jazz aficionados through his clarinet and saxophone virtuosity, with perhaps his most visible exposure being his inclusion in the Bob Haggart-Yank Lawson led World’s Great­ est Jazz Band. He has led a Benny Goodman tribute band on several cruises, and most recently recorded some Fletcher Henderson arrangements made for the Goodman Orchestra, but never recorded by Goodman. He talks about that in the interview. By the time Wilber was 19, he was good enough to share the spotlight with Sidney Bechet on a network radio broadcast with top jazz artists such as James P. Johnson ’spiano artistry, the trumpet ofWildBill Davison and Baby Dodds on drums. He’s been featured with top jazz players ever since, working for a time with Bobby Hackett’s sextet, with the WGJB and for six months in the late ’50s he toured with the Benny Bob Wilber today Goodman Orchestra. We began our interview with a frequently asked ques­ BW: I think that I suddenly realized when I was about tion about family influence. 14 or maybe 13 how much I liked music. I wanted to get in the high school band—the main reason The Interview was because you wore beautiful uniforms and you had a chance to play every Friday afternoon in the half of the B B J : Was there any interest in music in your family? football game, and if the team had an away game, then —my gosh—you got out of class early and traveled on BW: When I was a kid my father played piano as a the bus. That sounded great. hobby all his life. He was a good natural musician, he had a ear. And so there was a lot of I went up to the band department and said, “Gee, I ’ d love music.... around the piano singing songs, singing around to play in the band.” The director said, “Well, what you the campfire, Christmas time... a lot of music in the like to play?” I said, “I think I’d like to play trumpet.” So family. My mother sang and my sister played cello. In he said, “Here, I’m gonna give you a trumpet. You take fact, my first real recording I ever made was when I this home over the weekend and try it out and see how was about 14. We all went down to Sherman’s Music it goes.” So I did, but nobody toldme that you had to spit Store in New York City, and they had a recording studio into a trumpet, so I was blowing into the trumpet (makes at the store there. blowing sound)—Fwhoo—Fwhoo—Fwhoo—and of course I got nothing out of it. So I took the trumpet back B B J : When did your personal interest in music begin on Monday and I said, “This just isn’t me—this instru­ to surface? ment. Let me try a clarinet.” So the next weekend he VOLUME LXXVI BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2001 gave me a clarinet to take home. Well, I started playing. playing here—and you’re doing this and that.” And I By Sunday afternoon, I could play ROW, ROW, ROW said, “No, it’s selective retirement.” I’m doing a lot of YOUR BOAT on the clarinet, and I said, “Fantastic, things that appeal to me. And I try to say no nicely to a this is my instrument.” And I never looked back. lot of things that really don’t. But, no, I don’t have any regular orchestra. BBJ: How old were you? BBJ: Tell us the story of the un-recorded Fletcher BW: Thirteen—and I started studying immediately Henderson arrangements. with a teacher at the high school—Willard Briggs at Scarsdale High School outside New York. Of BW: While Benny was still alive he left a bunch ofhis course he taught every instrument like all band directors arrangements to the New York Library music did, but he was a clarinetist himself—and a very good department. By then—I had known Benny since I one—so he got me started with a basic foundation and worked with his band in the fifties, and I got permission all the classical studies and the whole thing. At the to go up and examine these scores—and a lot of them same time I was getting really interested in jazz so I was were Fletcher Henderson’s. But there were maybe attempting to play jazz a little. When I was fourteen I only 80 or 90 arrangements. Then, after he died, I was starting to play jazz on the clarinet, too. understood that he had left the bulk of all his arrange­ ments to Yale Music School. I found out by studying BBJ: One of your bios said you knew of Benny some books that there were over 300 arrangements Goodman before you were aware of Sidney which Benny had commissioned which had never been Bechet. recorded. BW: Oh, yes, very much so. I mean, I was very I said, “Well, man, this is amazing.” I counted out the aware of Benny Goodman in 193 7 when there number of Fletcher Henderson’s—there was more was already excitement about SING, SING, SING and Fletcher than anybody else. I think there was well over I was younger, but the teenage brothers and sisters of a hundred. And then there was a lot by Eddie Sauter that my friends were all excited about it, and it was a twelve hadn’t been recorded. And all the various arrangers inch 78—nobody had seen that before—and of course who had been involved with Benny in the ‘30s and it was such an unusual piece of music, and it was ‘40s—and even on into the ‘50s That’s when I got revolutionary, and the kids who were used to jitterbug- excited about this idea of doing the project—I called it ging to Benny, they just absolutely loved it. THE UNRECORDED BENNY GOODMAN. BBJ: When did you start considering yourself a BB J : How did you assemble a band for the project? professional? BW: I can’t remember the first time I heard about BW: Well, it’s funny, because I think by the time I this band in Toulouse—The Tuxedo Band. And was fifteen I knew exactly what I wanted to I got a letter from the leader—Paul Cheron—who told do. I was bom in 1928, so it was during the war and me that they had a chance to do a concert—a tribute to many of the professional musicians had been drafted Benny Goodman—and they would like me to front the and there was quite a need for musicians for various band. kinds of gigs, so I started. I joined the White Plains union and I started gigging around almost immediately. It gave me the idea of being able to play this music of original, unrecorded arrangements by Fletcher BBJ: Do you have a full-time orchestra now? Henderson. And I figured the great thing was that jazz aficionados and Benny Goodman fans would not be able B W: I don ’ t have a regular orchestra together now, to say, “Well, Wilber is very good, but he’snot as good no. I’m theoretically, at least, retired. I as Benny’s old records, because Benny’s old records announced my retirement three years ago. But people don’t exist. say “You’re not retired, Wilber. I still hear you 2 VOLUME LXXVI BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2001 I have the feeling, I never talked to Benny about it, but maybe he felt that these arrangements by Fletcher were kind of old fashioned for that era. The interesting thing about Fletcher was that he had evolved his basic style of writing with his own band in the ‘20s, and then when he started writing for Benny in 193 5, his style was very polished and very set. And if you listen to the early arrangements from ’35 and then listen to these other arrangements from ’47, there is virtually no change at all. B B J: Tell us about the physical Henderson arrange­ ments. What did they look like? BW: That’s an interesting thing. When I first started seeing Fletcher ’ s original pencil- written scores at the Lincoln Center Library, I was struck with the fact that there seemed to be no erasure marks on the scores. And also he obviously was a very conservative man who watched his pennies. He had score paper that had both sides, and he used both sides of his score paper. It reminded me of the story about Mozart’s scores where there seemed to be no erasure marks whatsoever. In A young Bob Wilber shows his album to B.G. other words, it’s like he thought of the arrangement complete and just wrote it down and never changed BBJ: What do you see for the future of the Big anything. Bands? B B J : In your opinion, who was the all-time greatest B W : The big band was the product of an era when it modem clarinetist? was economically feasible.