JOHNNY MANDEL NEA Jazz Master (2011)
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Funding for the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program NEA Jazz Master interview was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. JOHNNY MANDEL NEA Jazz Master (2011) Interviewee: Johnny Mandel (November 23, 1925 – June 29, 2020) Interviewer: Bill Kirchner Date: April 20-21, 1995 Repository: Archives Center, National Museum of American History Description: Transcript, 158 pp. Kirchner: Alright so this is April 20th, 1995, in New York City, on the 38th floor of a New York midtown office building and this is Bill Kirchner with tape one of our interview with Johnny Mandel. I guess the easiest thing to do is start at the very beginning, according to all the records you were born on November 23rd, 1925 is that correct? Mandel: I’m afraid that’s the awful truth, I sure was. [They both laugh] Kirchner: Where? Mandel: Seems like only yesterday. Kirchner: [laughs] Where? In New York? Mandel: Right in New York on 85th and West End. Kirchner: Wow. Mandel: Um hm. For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] 1 Kirchner: So you lived on the upper west side then? Mandel: Yeah. Kirchner: For your entire childhood? Mandel: No, for my first seven years. Kirchner: Let’s talk about your parents a bit. Mandel: Okay. Kirchner: What were their names? Mandel: Well, my mother’s name was Hannah, my dad’s name was Al. Al Mandel and Hannah Mandel. Kirchner: What did your father do for a living? Mandel: He was a cloak-and-suiter. He had a business downtown, Mandel and Shaft… And the depression and the new deal combined to force him out kind of. The NRA [National Recovery Administration] in specifically, although he remained a Roosevelt Democrat right up till his death in 1937. And he finally just said, well, he was a pretty successful cloak-and-suiter but he just couldn’t, he just didn’t want to do it anymore after. He was forced to hire a lot of people he couldn’t afford to hire so he said, “What the hell, I’m gonna pack it in,” and that’s what he did. And when he did that, he took my sister, my mother, and myself to California and that’s where I lived until after he died and I was twelve. Kirchner: So he died in ‘37? Mandel: Yes, he took us in ‘34. Kirchner: Uh-huh. Where did you live in California? Mandel: Lived right in L.A. sort of in the mid-Wilshire district around John Burroughs High School [It’s a Junior High] in that area. Kirchner: So you said, you had a sister. Mandel: I did. In fact I did until last, the year before last. For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] 2 Kirchner: Oh, I’m sorry. What was her name? Mandel: Audrey. Kirchner: Was she younger than you? Mandel: No, she was six years older in fact. Kirchner: Was your family musical? Mandel: My mother was very musical. She was an opera singer, a frustrated opera singer, ‘cause she wanted to go for it and in the early part of the century, you know, girl from a nice middle class Jewish family just didn’t do that. And her parents were very Victorian, they says, “You know the girl that does that sort of thing [stumbles over words] and succeeding has got to be sleeping with the producer.” And it just made her gnash her teeth and I think she wrung her hands all her life. But, you know, it was a shame because that’s what she wanted to do. And as a result she was very supportive of me; she never stopped whatever I wanted to do. Which was great. My father was tone deaf as was my sister but was a great lover of music. They all loved jazz; jazz was what I heard around my house, of various sorts. Kirchner: Was this on the radio or records or both? Mandel: Both, both. And there was a piano there, she could play it and had a brother, who was a very, they’re all; my parents were from Chicago, originally. And they… Kirchner: So they were both born in this country? Mandel: Oh yeah sure. Kirchner: Okay. Mandel: Yeah, we’ve been, we were in this country for probably, oh God, six, seven, eight generations. And before that England. And my mother, my uncle, my uncle George was a composer, he was, he wrote shows, reviews and all that sort of thing. Music and lyrics, and he was very talented but never made it in this country. He had success in England in the mid-30s but World War two scared him back here. And when he grew up, he was growing up in Chicago he was part of the Austin High School gang, you know with Bud Freeman; Eddie Condon came in from Indiana, he and Eddie were very close buddies, so he used to have jazz musicians around. I can remember as a kid, Fats Waller coming over to play and people like that. You know it must have been in the 20s cause I wasn’t cognizant of too much until about 1931, ‘32. For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] 3 Kirchner: What are your earliest musical memories? Mandel: Pretty much those and all the records they had, you know, heard a lot of Paul Whiteman records, stuff like that, around the house. And you know there was always the latest songs being played on the piano and that sort of thing. I never got interested in song writing though strangely enough, in fact it sort of wasn’t interested in music until I was about 12 years old, then all of a sudden I knew that’s what I was going to do. Kirchner: Is that when you first started playing? Mandel: Started playing trumpet and writing arrangements. Kirchner: At the age of twelve? Mandel: Yeah, well, I started writing arrangements at thirteen. I didn’t amount to much for about a year. Kirchner: [laughs] You were a late bloomer, you played a whole year. Mandel: A late bloomer, yeah. But I did start writing band arrangements, I mean swing band arrangements, you know Benny Goodman size band arrangements when I was thirteen. Because the very first teacher I went to was Van Alexander. Kirchner: Ah-hah. Mandel: And I saw an ad in, DownBeat, that he was taking students and I really leaned on my mother and she went for it. And he showed me right away in the first lesson how to write a score, how to write, not how to write a score but you know here is what the orchestra looks like, I was hung up in the alchemy of what makes an orchestra sound. I didn’t know what it was; it’s just that I knew from hearing different bands on the radio. And I’d hear one band play, you know in those days, you’d always hear, the radio was just filled with bands and remotes for instance or you know records of bands, although they didn’t play records that much. Everything was pretty much live and you could always hear some band from high atop the hotel so-and-so in beautiful downtown Baltimore. And, I’d hear, I started putting it together when I was around ten years old, I’d hear some band play a song and I’d say, “Jeez I sure don’t like that song whatever it is,” and I’d get the name of the song, then some other band would come in and play that same song, ‘cause in those days everybody played the same songs, unlike what goes on today. The song pluggers, something that doesn’t exist anymore, would get out to all the bands and make sure they all played them, particularly if they were broadcasting, because that was the greatest For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] 4 form of advertising for a song and getting it around. And I said, “Hey I like that song it sounds pretty good, why is that,” and then the next band would play it, and in those days everybody played the song when it was on the hit parade, and agh, no, I don’t like that. Then I started wondering, something’s wrong with this whole picture and I realized that it was the way one band made it sound and the other band made it sound lousy and why does it? And it didn’t take long to figure out that’s the way the instruments were playing the music that was written and from that I sort of discovered there was a guy, a thing, called an arranger, the guy who actually wrote the music the band played. And pretty soon I got tapped into that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to make a band sound like the way I wanted to make it sound, I didn’t know how to do it, but that was when I decided I want to learn how to do that. I was never interested in writing for the piano, it was the first thing that attracted me, I didn’t want to write for solo instruments either; I certainly didn’t want to write for singers. [laughs] Kirchner: Which is ironic. Mandel: Yeah.