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Big Band Jump Newsletter First-Class Mail U.S IN THIS ISSUE: i f An interview with PETE FOUNTAIN BIG i f Reviews of BOOKS AND RECORDS to consider BAWD ★ A BANDLEADER 'JIM P PICTURE QUIZ NEWSLETTER ★ LETTERS TO THE EDITOR about YUBA IN CUBA, BILLY MAY, HARRY JAMES THE DINNING SISTERS & OTHERS BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER FIRST-CLASS MAIL U.S. POSTAGE Box 52252 PAID Atlanta, GA Atlanta, GA 30355 Permit No. 2022 % \ \ s BIG BAND JIJJIP NEWSLETTER VOLUME LXXV BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER JULY-AUGUST 2001 PETE FOUNTAIN INTERVIEW The Background The impetus for this interview was the release of a new Pete Fountain album, wherein he is featured with a Big Band. As you well know, trumpeter A1 Hirt and clarinetist Pete Fountain have, in the last couple of decades, come to represent the musical spirit of New Orleans, both having had clubs in that city. Now, with Al Hirt gone, Pete Fountain remains to carry on the spirit of the traditional New Orleans sound, as well as more modem arrangements given the expressive smoothness of his clarinet. We talked to Pete Fountain at two o’clock in the afternoon, a comfortable time for a musician. He was easy to interview, for he is apparently unaffected by his fame or his talent. He is described by everyone who knows him with phrases such as “a sweet guy.” He is, indeed, a personable and friendly person Pete with clarinet The Interview me the clarinet!” By the time I was fourteen I was playing in a little group here in the outskirts of New BB J : Did you come from a musical family? Orleans for about five dollars a night. That was for the four piece band! PF: Well, my dad played drums in the country in Biloxi, Mississippi. He played a little drums BBJ: You play in your own club now. with a band, you know, just once in a while and then picked up the fiddle and played the fiddle. He was very PF: I been having my own club since 1960. I’ve talented that way. Whatever instrument he picked up been in the saloon business that long. From ’ 60 he played. He played clarinet before I did. He had I had one club on Bourbon Street that was at 800 talent that way and that’s where I came from. Bourbon. When I came back from Lawrence Welk I opened that club, and then I moved up to 231 Bourbon, B B J : How soon did you start playing? and after that I’ve been at the Hilton for the last 27 years. PF: I started playing when I was nine years old, because I had weak lungs; it was the doctor’s BBJ: Are you pulling consistently big audiences? orders to play a wind instrument. I thought by j ust taking up the drums that would help me but the doctor said no, PF: We were. We were for the longest, because I you have to get something to blow on. I used to listen was doing Carson (the Johnny Carson NBC- to Benny Goodman on the radio show and I enjoyed the TVTonight Show) at least four times a year, and getting clarinet, so that’s why I told by dad and mother, “Give a plug there, but we’re pulling pretty good. The club V O LU M E L XXV BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER JULY-AUGUST 2001 holds a little over four hundred, and we get maybe two, two fifty which is pretty good, ‘cause we just do one show a night. We do one show on Tuesday and one show on Friday and Saturday. BBJ: How many times were you on Carson? PF: Fifty-eight times. That really helped my busi­ ness out through the years, you know. So it was like a second time for me, with the Lawrence Welk being the first career, and my second career was with Johnny Carson. BBJ: How would you describe your clarinet style in comparison to Shaw or Goodman, for ex­ ample? PF: Goodman was one of my idols; Goodman and Irving Fazola, who was a clarinet player with the Bob Crosby Bobcats. He was the one who did MARCH OF THE BOBCATS and a lot of the Crosby Orchestra stuff. He also played with Claude Thornhill, Pete Fountain Hirschfeld caricature he did the SNOWFALL. He played with Tommy Dorsey for a while. When he came back home I used arranged for Tonight Show performance. to listen to him a lot. I really like Benny Goodman’s drive and his technique, and I like Fazola’s blues sound, PF: That was Bob Bain, he was the Tonight Show so I really went for that. So between both of them I Band guitarist, and he did a lot of arranging for come up with Fountain and I’m lucky enough to come the Tonight Show. He did all mine for the Tonight Show. up with something. I used to listen to Artie Shaw’s stuff with the Grammercy Five. I enj oyed his playing on that, BBJ: He worked for the Bob Crosby Orchestra, and Benny Goodman with his small Carnegie Hall didn’t he? group. That was a hell of a group. PF: He did some stuff for them, and also played BBJ: You have a clarinet that was owned by Irving guitar for them. He was known for a lot of the Fazola. arrangements he’s done around California for years, and he worked the Tonight Show the whole time with PF: His mother gave it to me when he died. Johnny, and then when I went out there to do it, I had a couple of my little head arrangements, he said maybe we BBJ: You open your latest CD with AVALON.... could do some stuff together, and that’s what started it. one associated with Goodman. All the arrangements I played on the Tonight Show after that was Bob Bain. PF: That one and SHINE. Those two were the songs I used to listen to Benny play; well, a lot BBJ: Those arrangements are expanded on the al­ of Benny’s stuff, but I recorded those.... Bob Bain.... bum, aren’t they? he said, “Maybe we could do something in the swing stuff, like Goodman.” PF: Yeah, yeah. Usually when you do the things on Carson they want no more than two and a half or BBJ: Most of the cuts in your new album were three minutes. Some of those we just stretched out a little. 2 VOLUMELXXV BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER JULY-AUGUST 2001 B BJ: JUST A CLOSER WALK WITH THEE was BBJ: What’s the future of Big Bands? an important part of your career. PF: Oh, I don’t know. It’sjustsohardtotakeaBig PF: That was my hit. I got a gold single for that. Band on the road. You need a ton of money. I That was the only single that went gold for me, know when I go on the road with six pieces and myself the rest were four gold albums. That was Coral, and my manager.... you’re talking about eight pieces. Brunswick and then it went into MCA. Now, you’re talking about maybe 21 pieces with all the equipment, you ’re talking about a lot of money, so that ’ s BBJ: Do you ever play outside the solo opening in the why you don’t see Big Bands going around the country. arrangement, over the band? B B J: How many years are you going to keep playing? PF: Oh, sure. All the time. If I find a hole or someplace where somebody’s breathing, PF: I’m 71 now, and I have a little over 90 albums I’m gonna’ put a couple of notes in. I’ve made; I think there’s about 14 CDs still out there on the market. BBJ: That’s all spontaneous, isn’t it? Pete Fountain never did directly answer the ques­ PF: Oh, yeah, that’s all head stuff. He didn’t write tion about how long he expected to keep working, for me, he just wrote for the orchestra. He but if he’s like most people in the entertainment field, wrote the leads, but I never did follow it. I just looked he ’ll probably be working until he absolutely can’t at it to find out where I was with the band, but otherwise do it anymore. The album mentioned in the interview I didn’tpay any attention to it. I usually listened.... my is reviewed elsewhere in this issue. A BBJ program of ears were my greatest thing. Pete Fountain is scheduled for the weekend o f July 14-15. BBJ: How much of your personality or emotion comes through your clarinet? Does your play­ Another reed player will be interviewed in the ing reflect how you feel? September-October, 2001 issue of this newslet­ ter. He is Bob Wilber, whose name may not be PF: Sure. My teacher used to always say you familiar to you, but whose work with the World’s could feel what you ate that day, because that Greatest Jazz Band, with Benny Goodman tribute feeling is going to come out through the hom. And then bands, plus composing, writing and performing you gotta’ find a good reed. The reed makes the whole for jazz groups and Big Bands has been a vital thing. part of music for a half century. B B J: There are classic stories about Benny Goodman LETTERS TO THE EDITOR never finding the right reed. Letters to BIG BAND JUMP or the BBJ NEWS­ PF: I heard a story about Artie Shaw, the reason he LETTER may be sent to the address below, or e- really quit.
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