IN THIS ISSUE: k An interview with NELSON RIDDLE”S SON, CHRIS k Reviews of BIG TWO NEW RECORDS to consider BAWD ★ A BIG BAND JUMP MOVIE STAR TRIVIA QUIZ NEWSLETTER ★ LETTERS TO THE EDITOR about THE BENNY GOODMAN STORY, BILLIE HOLIDAY, MARTHA TILTON & OTHERS BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER FIRST-CLASS MAIL Box 52252 U.S. POSTAGE Atlanta, GA 30355 PAID Atlanta, GA Permit No. 2022 \ \ YV, Y YY BIG BAND JIMP NEWSLETTER VOLUME LXXX BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER MAY-JUNE 2002 CHRIS RIDDLE INTERVIEW The Background A recent book by author Peter Levinson about the life of arranger Nelson Riddle (SEPTEMBER IN THE RAIN, reviewed in the November-December, 2001 issue of this newsletter) re-kindled interest in this remarkable talent. Nelson Riddle’s accomplishments are many, perhaps the best-known being his long-time involvement with Frank Sinatra, but he also arranged for a long list of stellar singers, including Nat Cole, Kay Starr, Dean Martin and Linda Ronstadt, as well as writing music for movies and television. According to those who knew him, he was a man who displayed very little outward emotion, tending to keep his feelings to himself, but able to express them abundantly through his music. His home life, both as a youngster and as a married adult, was less than idyllic. He buried himself in work, obviously for a couple of reasons: to stay away from home and as an outlet for his emotions. Chris Riddle One of the hundreds of sources for information about Nelson Riddle was his son Chris, also a trombone player CR: The simple truth is we all were made to take and now leading his father’s orchestra. We arranged piano lessons as kids, and the piano and I just for an interview through Mr. Levinson, who set up a didn’t click. I didn’t like the piano, and my hands are time for us to phone him at his home. As you’ll see in such that they’re not nimble. I have the kind of hands the interview, Chris Riddle is probably his dad ’ s biggest more suited for chopping down trees or digging ditches. fan. I found it tedious to just sit there and go over these scales The Scene over and over. I realized I wanted to be with my father, so I had to do something that would enable me to spend Chris Riddle is an easy man to talk to; no trouble getting as much time as possible with my father because I had a fund of information from our conversation with him. a hero worship thing. He was everything to me. My We caught up with him at his home in Massachusetts. mother constantly was telling us when we were kids Our first question dealt indirectly with the fact that his how brilliant your father is and he’s very tired when he dad was seldom home, causing us to wonder how he gets home tonight ifhe gets home tonight, and please you developed his interest in music. children don ’ t bother him with anything. The Interview The trombone he brought with him into the United States Army when he was drafted out of the Tommy Dorsey BB J : Since your mother, who raised you, wasn’t a Orchestra was in the comer, and one day I opened it up musician, how did you wind up playing the and put it together and I thought, “Why don’t I take trombone? trombone lessons?” I was about eleven years old. My VOLUMELXXX BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER MAV-JUNE 2002 father put me with George Roberts, the great bass BB J : Do you think he developed that personality trombone player, and George started teaching me the because of his tough mother who was a put- fundamentals of the trombone, and I graduated from down artist? there to the bass trombone because I realized there’s four trombones in the orchestra but there’s only one CR: Oh yeah. She was a master at it. My father bass trombone, and he gets to play all those neat solos described his mother and father’s relationship that dad writes. very succinctly when he said, “My mother kicks my father around for practice.” I came across some very My father always referred to the fact that he was a fine interesting papers: A couple of them are life insurance trombone player. That was his key to get into the Big policies, and one of them says “The Tommy Dorsey Band Era so that he could do what he really wanted to Orchestra,” an Aetna life insurance policy on Nelson do, and that was write arrangements. That was the key Riddle, Jr. dated 1944. The beneficiary is Marie Albertine. that unlocked the door because he could sit in the Now, she was still married, but she did not choose to use section and play with the best of them. He wasn’t a her married name. I don’t know if my father asked how great soloist or anything; there were occasions when he he should list her or he knew that’s what she wanted, but played Tommy Dorsey’s solos. He played Tommy in fact she ’ s listed as her maiden name, Marie Albertine. Dorsey’s solos a couple of times because Tommy had some problems out in Hollywood.... he had to go to BBJ: How did your dad rise above this constant court but that’s another story. That was his key and criticism from his mother? that was my key, the key to be with my father, and I grew to really love the bass trombone and the way my CR: Emotionallyldon’tthinkheeverdid. Theonly father wrote for it. Nobody wrote for instruments like outlet for him was writing. It’s like a valve on my father; my father I think was the greatest orches- a steam engine. That and sexual activity were my trator of our time. father ’ s pressure valves to let off the intense disappoint­ ment his relationship with his mother produced. Later on BBJ: The word is your dad could write quickly. in his life, my mother, Doreen Moran, whom he married Where did that ability come from? in 1945 and gave him seven children.... he expected to treat him and behave toward him in much the same way CR: My father’s father, Nelson S. Riddle, Sr., was as his mother because that’s all he knew. an amateur musician; he was a very fine graphic artist, but he really wasn’t a great musician. I BBJ: But she didn’t. don’t know where my father got it from, except from God. The fact of the matter is the only thing that slowed CR: No, my mother said many, many times after him down was the mechanical process of writing down they were divorced in 1970, “Your father wanted the notes on a piece of score paper. With computers he me to be his mother, and I couldn’t do it. That’s not my would probably be able to write twice as fast. role.” And then when my father married his secretary, that’s a very dark period in his life, too. It was self- BBJ: Your dad ’ s music was often highly emotional, flagellation. He married one Naomi Tennenholzandmy but his outer personality was fairly stoic. mother upon hearing of this said, “Y our father has finally got his wish. He’s married his mother.” CR: That was a front, it was all a front. He was a very sensitive person as evidenced by his BBJ: The second wife did not want you to have music.... as you would glean from looking at an artist ’ s accesss to the arrangements. work, you can glean the same kind of psychological, emotional characteristics from my father’s workjust by CR: No, she didn’t. I’vegotalotofmusic,andIcan listening to it. Yeah, he demonstrated a rather stem now get anything I want that I didn’t get initially exterior, like, “I’mmade out of steel andyou’llnever get because the University of Arizona Music Department is to me,” but just the opposite was the truth. very kindly disposed toward me. Naturally, shecan’tdo 2 VOLUM ELXXX BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER MAY-JUNE 2002 anything about it because that’s where the bulk of my Laura Brooks out in California who only wanted my father’s music went. I was threatened with lawsuits father. She still pines for my father. She has a little and all the rest of it. It didn’t make my life very happy. house in Malibu and she would have been happy if he We lost a lot of sleep worrying. I’d go and play jobs had come down there with the clothes on his back, even somewhere and I would be looking at the exits wonder­ in a cab.... not even in a car. She would have been ing if someone was going to rush in and grab my music. delighted. She didn’t want anything except she truly loved my father. The only happiness he had in his declining years was the fact that the great Linda Ronstadt had given him an opportunity to resurrect his career. Other than that he was miserable. George Duning, a wonderful man who was a very dear friend of our family, told me years ago he’d met my father in 1984, the year before my father died. A lot of them got together in New York City to celebrate the great Arthur Schwartz with his son Jonathan Schwartz, and George related to me that, “Your father looked absolutely terrible.