Woody Herman & His Orchestra

Early life and career Herman was born Woodrow Charles Thomas Herman in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on May 16, 1913. His parents were Otto and Myrtle Herrman. His father had a deep love for show business and this influenced Woody Herman at an early age. As a child he worked as a singer in vaudeville, then became a professional saxophone player at age 15. In 1931, he met Charlotte Neste, an aspiring actress. They later married, September 27, 1936. Woody Herman joined the Tom Gerun band and his first recorded vocals were "Lonesome Me" and "My Heart's At Ease". Herman also performed with the Harry Sosnick orchestra and Gus Arnheim and Isham Jones. Isham Jones wrote many popular songs, including "It Had To Be You" and at some point was tiring of the demands of leading a band. Jones wanted to live off the residuals of his songs. Woody Herman saw the chance to lead Isham Jones' former band. Woody Herman eventually acquired the remains of Jones' orchestra after Isham Jones decided to retire. The Band That Plays The Blues and the First Herd 1936-1946 Woody Herman's first band became known for its orchestrations of the blues and was sometimes billed as "The Band That Plays The Blues". This band recorded for the Decca label. At first the band served as a cover band, doing covers of songs by other Decca artists. The first song recorded was "Wintertime Blues" on November 6, 1936. In January of 1937, George T. Simon closed a review of the band with the words: "This Herman outfit bears watching; not only because it's fun listening to in its present stages, but also because its bound to reach even greater stages." After two and a half years on the label, the band had its first hit, "Woodchopper's Ball" recorded in 1939. Woody Herman remembered that "Woodchopper's Ball" started out slowly at first. "t was really a sleeper. But Decca kept re-releasing it, and over a period of three or four years it became a hit. Eventually it sold more than five million copies--the biggest hit I ever had." Other hits for the band include "The Golden Wedding" and "Blue Prelude". Musicians and arrangers that stand out include Cappy Lewis on trumpet and Dean Kincaide, a noted big band arranger. In jazz, swing was gradually being replaced by bop. Dizzy Gillespie, a celebrated bop trumpeter, wrote three arrangements for Woody Herman, "Woody'n You", "Swing Shift" and "Down Under". These were arranged in 1942. "Woody'n You" was not used at the time. "Down Under" was recorded November 8, 1943. The fact that Herman commissioned Dizzy Gillespie to write arrangements for the band and that Herman hired Ralph Burns as a staff arranger, heralded a change in the style of music the band was playing.] In February of 1945, the band started a contract with Columbia records. Herman liked what drew many artists to Columbia, Liederkrantz Hall. Liederkrantz Hall was a desanctified church in New York City with excellent acoustics. Many recordings of the 1940s and 1950s took place there before it was demolished in the 1960s. The first side it recorded was "Laura", the theme song of the 1944 movie of the same name. Herman's version was so successful that it made Columbia hold from release the arrangement that Harry James recorded days earlier. The Columbia contract coincided with a change in the band's repertoire. The First Herd's music was heavily influenced by Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Its lively, swinging arrangements, combining bop themes with swing rhythm parts, were greatly admired. As of February, 1945 the personnel included Sonny Berman, Pete Candoli, Billy Bauer (later replaced by Chuck Wayne), Ralph Burns, Davey Tough and Flip Phillips. On February 26, 1945 in New York City, the Woody Herman band recorded "Caldonia". Neal Hefti and Ralph Burns collaborated on the arrangement of "Caldonia" that the Herman band used. "Ralph caught Louis Jordan [singing "Caldonia"] in an act and wrote the opening twelve bars and the eight bar tag. But the most amazing thing on the record was a soaring eight bar passage by trumpets near the end." These eight measures have wrongly been attributed to a Dizzy Gillespie solo, but were in fact originally written by Neal Hefti. George Simon compares Neal Hefti with Dizzy Gillespie in a 1944 review for Metronome magazine saying, "Like Dizzy [...] Hefti has an abundance of good ideas, with which he has aided Ralph Burns immensely. In 1946 the band won Downbeat, Metronome, Billboard and Esquire polls for best band, nominated by their peers in the big band business.[26] Along with the high acclaim for their jazz and blues performances, classical composer Igor Stravinsky wrote the Ebony Concerto, one in a series of compositions commissioned by Woody with solo clarinet, for this band. Woody Herman would record this work in the Belock Recording Studio at Bayside New York in 1959, and released in January 1959 as SDBR 3009. The recording has been released on a CD by Everest EVC 9049. Throughout the history of jazz, there have always been musicians who sought to combine it with classical music. Ebony Concerto is one in a long line of music from the twenties to the present day that seeks to do this. Woody Herman said about the Concerto: "[Ebony Concerto is a] very delicate and a very sad piece." Stravinsky felt that the jazz musicians would have a hard time with the various time signatures. Saxophonist Flip Philips said "during the rehearsal [...] there was a passage I had to play there and I was playing it soft, and Stravinsky said 'Play it, here I am!' and I blew it louder and he threw me a kiss!'" In his own original way Stravinsky noticed the massive amount of smoking at the recording session: "the atmosphere looked like Pernod clouded by water." Ebony Concerto was performed live by the Herman band, March 25, 1946 at Carnegie Hall. Despite the Carnegie Hall success and other triumphs, Herman was forced to disband the orchestra in 1946 at the height of its success. This was his only financially successful band; he left it to spend more time with his wife and family. During this time, he and his family had just moved into the former Hollywood home of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. One reason Herman may have disbanded was his wife Charlotte's growing problems with alcoholism and pill addiction. Charlotte Herman joined Alcoholics Anonymous and gave up everything she was addicted to. "Woody said, laughing, 'I went to an AA meeting with Charlotte and my old band was sitting there.'"[31] Many critics cite December of 1946 as the actual date the big band era ended and eight other bands in addition to Herman's, called it quits.] [edit] The Second Herd and Other Bands 1947-1987 In 1947 Herman organized the Second Herd. This band was also known as "The Four Brothers Band". This derives from the song recorded December 27, 1947 for Columbia records, "Four Brothers", written by Jimmy Giuffre. "The 'Four Brothers' chart is based on the chord changes of 'Jeepers Creepers', and features the three-tenor, one-baritone saxophone section[...]." The order of the saxophone solos is Zoot Sims, Serge Chaloff, Herbie Steward, and Stan Getz. Some of the notable musicians of this band were also Al Cohn, Gene Ammons, Lou Levy, Oscar Pettiford, Terry Gibbs, and Shelly Manne. Among this band's hits were "Early Autumn," and "The Goof and I". The band was popular enough that they went to Hollywood in the mid-nineteen forties. Herman and his band appear in the movie New Orleans in 1947 with Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong. Herman's other bands include the Third Herd (1950–1956) and various editions of the New Thundering Herd (1959–1987). In the 1950s, the Third Herd went on a successful European tour. He was known for hiring the best young musicians and using their arrangements. By 1968, the Herman library came to be heavily influenced by rock and roll. He was also known to feature brass and woodwind instruments not traditionally associated with jazz, such as the bassoon, oboe or French horn. From the late 1940s to the end of his life, record labels Herman recorded for include RCA, Capitol, MGM and Verve. In 1974, Woody Herman's "Young Thundering Herd" appeared without their leader for Frank Sinatra's television special The Main Event and subsequent album, The Main Event – Live. Both were recorded mainly on October 13 1974 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. On November 20, 1976, a reconstituted Woody Herman band played at Carnegie Hall in New York City, celebrating Herman's fortieth anniversary as a bandleader. By the 1980s, Herman had returned to straight forward jazz, dropping some of the newer rock and fusion approaches. Woody Herman signed a recording contract with Concord Records around 1980, now called the Concord Music Group. In 1981, John S. Wilson warmly reviewed one of Herman's first Concord recordings "Woody Herman Presents a Concord Jam, Vol. I". Wilson said that the recording presented a band that was less frenetic than his bands from the forties to the seventies. Instead it took the listener back to the relaxed style of Herman's first band of the thirties that recorded for Decca. Last years Herman continued to perform into the 1980s, after the death of his wife and his health declining, chiefly to pay back taxes caused by his business manager's bookkeeping in the 1960s. With the added stress, Herman still kept performing. In a December 5, 1985 review of the band at the Blue Note jazz club for The New York Times, John S. Wilson pointed out: "In a one-hour set, Mr. Herman is able to show off his latest batch of young stars — the baritone saxophonist Mike Brignola, the bassist Bill Moring, the pianist Brad Williams, the trumpeter Ron Stout — and to remind listeners that one of his own basic charms is the dry humor with which he shouts the blues." Wilson also spoke about arrangements by Bill Holman and John Fedchock for special attention. Wilson spoke of the continuing influence of Duke Ellington on the Woody Herman bands from the nineteen forties to the nineteen eighties. Before Woody Herman died in 1987 he delegated most of his duties to leader of the reed section, Frank Tiberi. Tiberi leads the current version of the Woody Herman orchestra. Frank Tiberi said at the time of Herman's death that he would not change the band's repertoire or library. Woody Herman was buried in a Catholic funeral, November 2, 1987 in West Hollywood, California. Concord Music Group's website mentions these awards won by the various Woody Herman orchestras: "Voted best swing band in 1945 Down Beat poll; Silver Award by critics in 1946 and 1947 Esquire polls; won Metronome poll, band division, 1946 and 1953; won NARAS Grammy Award for Encore as best big band jazz album of 1963; won NARAS Grammy Award for Giant Steps as best big band jazz album of 1973." Woody Herman was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987 Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.