By Michael Ullman

This 65-year-old recording features some of the best players in L.A. and it is bright, sharp, and revealing. There’s plenty to marvel at here even if I would have wished for more ballads and fewer Stan Kenton-like brass fanfares. 

Terry Gibbs Dream Band, Vol. 7: The Lost Tapes, 1959 (whaling city sound)

I don’t know anything about Terry Gibbs’ inner life, but few musicians over the years have sounded (musically) as cheerful as the vibraphonist, who has recently turned 100. He may be elderly, but he had the stamina and mental acuity to write the notes for this newly issued offering from his so-called Dream Band, a west coast group with varied personnel who performed in three clubs. (They were featured from Mondays to Tuesdays.) Gibbs was a virtuoso who came along at just the right time. His bright, agitated style fit the new music. He embraced bebop in the middle ’40s, when the principle model for vibraphonists was still Lionel Hampton. (Milt Jackson was in the wings.) Gibbs’ active pre-war career was interrupted when he was drafted. In his autobiography, Gibbs describes what happened once he got back. He had a breakthrough experience when he heard Charlie Parker live. It was what he was looking for. Drummer Tiny Kahn brought him to that club date, and Kahn is the drummer on Gibbs’ first recordings, when both were sideman to bop clarinetist Aaron Sachs. The band was called Aaron’s Sachs’ Manor Re-bops. The June 8, 1946, session, Gibbs’ first, included a number called “Sam beeps and bops”. (I have this session on a Xanadu reissue.) Today, jazz writers like to stress how difficult bop was for its original listeners. But these musicians delighted playing in the new music, and they must not have been worried that calling their band the Re-bops would have meant selling fewer recordings.

Next, on July 15, 1947, Gibbs recorded with tenor saxophonist Allen Eager, who dubbed his Savoy session “Allen Eager with the Be-bop Boys.” The “boys” were the elite in the emerging style: pianist Duke Jordan, bassist Curley Russell, and drummer Max Roach. Their opening tune was appropriately called “All Night, All Frantic”. (Most recently, this set was on Mosaic Records’ Classic Be- Bop Sessions 1945-49.) Later, in the ’40s, Gibbs played with modernist (or close to it) big bands led by Buddy Rich and Woody Herman. He opened the ’50 with his own groups, including a quartet featuring Detroit based pianist Terry Pollard. Much later, in the ’60s, he would hire Alice McLeod. Gibbs has the distinction of having introduced Alice to John Coltrane: she would soon become Alice Coltrane. It seems odd today, but Gibbs also worked in TV when shows were live and their bands adventurous. I swear I first heard of Terry Gibbs when he appeared on The Steve Allen Show. I definitely heard him with Buddy DeFranco.

In 1958, Gibbs moved from New York to California. By then he had made a series of successful records under his own name, such as Vibes on Velvet and Terry Gibbs Plays the Duke. (Surprisingly, the latter features Pete Jolly on accordion.) In the notes to Dream Band, Vol. 7 The Lost Tapes 1959, Gibbs described what happened next. He admits that he wasn’t dreaming of his dream band at all. “The Dream Band was the biggest fluke of my life. I never wanted to form a working band. I just wanted to record an album with a big band.” He had commissioned the charts already, and he had a vision of what he wanted: “I talked with my arrangers, and I wanted to have arrangements that presented the band as an ensemble band.”

It turned into a working band thanks to union rules, which wouldn’t allow him to rehearse a big band for a recording. It was ok if he had a club date. Instead of being irritated by such an eccentric rule, Gibbs came up with a solution. He approached the owner of the Hollywood nightclub, the Seville, and offered to bring in a big band for the price of a quintet. The ensemble ended up working steadily, recording live on Tuesdays and in general having “a party”. Gibbs’ dream band attracted popular attention: he remembers playing for 300 people squished into the Seville, and later the Sundown. Gibbs’ music was being issued on records like Swing is Here (the bold subtitle is Launching a New Sound in Music and the 1962 Explosion, an appropriate title for Gibbs’ extroverted style.

From the start, though, Gibbs wanted to make live albums. He had a friend in the brilliant engineer Wally Heider. They started to record the band live, but most of the music ended up unissued. We may owe the current series of records by the Dream Band partially to the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Gibbs went through a closet in his damaged home and came across reel-to-reel tapes which he played on a machine given to him by Jerry Lewis (!). Nothing happened quickly: Terry Gibbs Band Dream Band -Volume Six was issued in 2002. Then Gibbs’ son Gerry digitized all the discovered music and put it on Terry’s computer. The elder Gibbs noticed a file called “1959 Jazz Party”. He played the file and marvelled at the accurate, up-front sound, which was like “a whack in the face.” That’s not what everyone might prefer, but this 65-year-old recording is bright, sharp, and revealing. We can hear the bass!

The music consists of 18 approximately three minute pieces (they were hoping for radio play) arranged by the well known arrangers Bill Holman, Med Flory, Marty Paich and, in one case each, Bob Brookmeyer and Al Cohn. Given the modernist bent of the band’s advertising, I was surprised to see how much of the repertoire on Terry Gibbs Dream Band, Vol. 7: The Lost Tapes, 1959 is made up of popular swing tunes, including Benny Goodman’s theme song, “Let’s Dance”, and his hit “Don’t Be That Way”, and quartet rabble-rouser, “Flying Home”. Artie Shaw is remembered in “Begin the Beguine” and “Back Bay Shuffle”. Gibbs and his arrangers jazz these pieces up: the tempos are faster than the originals, the brass brassier and more aggressive.

That up and at ’em approach can be exciting: the opening of “Let’s Dance” opposes Gibb’s vibes to the shouts of the band. Gibbs is the first soloist. The band is never at rest behind him. When trombonist Carl Fontana and then trumpeter Conte Candoli solo, we hear Gibbs shouting encouragement. There are a few resting places among the generally upbeat, forte playing. Gibbs introduces the blues “No Heat” with a sweet blues solo over the rhythm section. It’s his best playing here. Holman then gives the reed section a chorus before the trumpets whack us in the face. Like the other soloists’ offerings, Bill Perkins’ tenor solo is free of blues cliches. Alto player Joe Maini takes the most boppish solo.

Gibbs has his own take on jazz standards. There’s nothing wistful about the slam-bang opening number “Begin the Beguine”. Although Gibbs opens on vibes it is, as promised, an ensemble piece, with tight reed passages, punches by the brass, and perky conversations between brass and reeds. To my ears, the band is at its best in arrangements such as the initially restrained, though still jaunty, “Softly As In a Morning Sunrise”. (“Hey, that was nice” someone says after it is over.) “Prelude to a Kiss”, taken at an even andante, is mostly given over to Gibbs as a solo showcase. He proves sensitive to Ellington’s masterpiece. Elsewhere, I was thankful to hear the bass solo on “Moonglow”. The band plays “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You”, but in general there’s nothing sentimental about the arrangements or solos here. The band is composed of some of the best players in L.A. There’s plenty to marvel at here even if I would have wished for more ballads and fewer Kenton-like brass fanfares. The crowd sounds happy.

For over 30 years, Michael Ullman has written a bimonthly jazz column for Fanfare Magazine, for which he also reviews classical music. He has emeritus status at Tufts University, where for 45 years he taught in the English and Music Departments, specializing in modernist writers and nonfiction writing in English, and jazz and blues history in music. He studied classical clarinet. The author or co-author of two books on jazz, he has written on jazz and classical music for the Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, High Fidelity, Stereophile, Boston Phoenix, Boston Globe, and other venues. He plays piano badly.