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 April 15, 2009 Rendezvous with Kenton Ken Burns’ marathon PBS documentary Jazz contains only a brief reference to Stan Kenton, although Burns noted in an online exchange that the bandleader was a favorite of his. The book that accompanied the TV series also mentioned Kenton, again briefly, and not altogether kindly. Gary Giddins, one of the advisors for the show, wrote about Kenton in his Visions of Jazz: The First Century, an excellent collection of essays. The tone of his profile of Kenton is derisive, the only such portrait in an otherwise generous and affectionate survey of jazz greats. The New York Times obituary for Kenton called his band "the most controversial of all the big jazz bands." Thirty years after his death, Kenton is still either loved or hated, with little middle ground. He also remains very popular. The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings lists more than five pages’ worth of Kenton CDs in print, many of them on Capitol, the label with which he was associated for 25 years. Still more titles are available from smaller European and US labels. Richard Cook and Brian Morton, authors of the Penguin Guide, point out that Kenton was "Often dismissed as pretentious, but his orchestra and their records still have a huge following." Their intelligent and balanced assessment of his work contains some reservations, but also states that "His best music still swung mightily, was brilliantly played, and went to exhilarating extremes of both musicianship and showmanship."
History will ultimately judge Kenton’s music rather than his public statements, and much of his work has worn well. Although he played piano in his bands and wrote arrangements, Kenton’s real talent lay in giving other arrangers encouragement and room to try their ideas. Pete Rugulo, Lennie Niehaus, Shorty Rogers, Gerry Mulligan, Marty Paich, Johnny Richards, Bill Holman, and Bill Russo were among the musicians whose charts the Kenton band played. Rugulo went from Kenton’s group to success with his own band, Lennie Niehaus would later write film scores, and Bill Holman, still active, is among the most highly regarded arrangers in jazz. Kenton also championed and performed the works of Bob Graettinger, whose challenging, sometimes difficult music was influenced by such modernist composers as Ives and Schoenberg.
Kenton signed with Capitol in 1943, and recorded his first sides in November with a band that included alto sax player Art Pepper. In fact, Pepper’s first recorded solo is from that session, and he would remember Kenton fondly in his autobiography, Straight Time. When, six months later, Kenton recorded again, Stan Getz was in the band and the vocalist was Anita O’Day. Female singers often generated sales for Kenton’s records, and it was O’Day’s voice on "And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine" that put him in jukeboxes across the country. June Christy and Chris Connor would later help keep Kenton on the charts. The sharp-tongued O’Day, who had previously been the singer for Gene Krupa’s band, compared the two orchestras: "Gene’s was a drinking band, it swung. . . . Stan had a thinking band. They sent their money home, saved their money, made payments on property."
Around the time Kenton began experimenting with Latin music, a young alto player named Bob Graettinger sent him a copy of a score he’d written specifically for Kenton’s band. "Thermopylae" is unlike any piece of music any other jazz leader was recording at the time -- polyphonic and unsettling, veering occasionally toward jazz but swerving into something closer to the complexities of such European composers as Stravinsky and Webern. Jazz historian and composer Gunther Schuller, in a brief note for City of Glass, a 1995 compilation of Kenton’s recordings of Graettinger’s compositions, asserts that the strongest comparison to be made is to American modernist composer Charles Ives. Schuller goes on to say that Graettinger’s music, with its "multi-layered complexity, textural density and non-tonal language . . . [anticipates] many of the European and American avant-garde experiments of the ’50s and ’60s."
Inevitably, the Innovations Orchestra was panned by some critics for not swinging, not being jazz. More than 50 years later, Kenton’s reputation rests largely on the Innovations recordings and on his work with Graettinger. Wondering if those recordings were jazz is, in a way, like wondering if Soft Machine or King Crimson played rock music. They didn’t, but rock was as convenient a description as any. Kenton created great work with the support and trust he’d built with his jazz following, and it was as jazz, broadly speaking, that he created these key works. But the Innovations Orchestra was expensive to keep on the road and maintain, and in 1950, Kenton was in debt to the IRS to the tune of $125,000. His solution was to take the nucleus of Innovations and record straight jazz. The tracks he recorded with the stripped-down band can be found on Easy Go, a 2001 compilation of 20 tracks from 1950 to 1952. Michael Sparke, a leading Kenton discographer, says in the liner notes that this set is "the perfect CD to play for anyone who says the Kenton band never swings." The arrangements are by Kenton regulars Rugulo, Rogers, Russo, Gene Roland, Johnny Richards, and Kenton himself, and the soloists include Maynard Ferguson, Bud Shank, and Conte Condoli. Kenton would continue to record jazz albums throughout the 1950s, including Contemporary Concepts, an album loved by even his detractors. Gary Giddins calls it "one of the indisputably great orchestra albums of the ’50s . . . but Bill Holman was behind that one and there are stories to the effect that Kenton didn’t much like that it -- swung too hard." Kenton’s discography throughout the ’50s included a number of accessible jazz titles, including New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm, Portraits on Standards, Kenton in Hi-Fi, and Rendezvous with Kenton. Kenton closed out the decade with Live from the Las Vegas Tropicana, an energetic set featuring Jack Sheldon and Richie Kamuca. The idea that Kenton wouldn’t sanction music that swung seems disproved by these and other LPs he released in the ’50s. Many of these, produced by Lee Gillette, sound terrific and are available on vinyl from eBay for reasonable prices. They also turn up frequently at yard sales and Goodwill stores.
While Kenton’s bands were often accused of being brassy and over the top, it was the warmth of the trombone section that was often a defining characteristic of his sound. There’s no denying that Kenton performances often featured roaring brass passages, but the charts he and his band played were often more subtly textured than is often assumed. Some Kenton albums, such as The Ballad Style of Stan Kenton and Sophisticated Approach, emphasize the band’s more sensitive side. Those albums are among his most commercial, but, while enjoyable and well recorded, aren’t typical. Another ballad album, Standards in Silhouette (1959), displays the band’s restraint while giving full measure of its talent and ability. Kenton highlights from the 1960s include Adventures in Blues, Adventures in Bossa Nova, and Stan Kenton Conducts the Los Angeles Neophonic Orchestra. One of his last albums for Capitol, Conducts the Jazz Compositions of Dee Barton (1968), was one of his best later recordings. Barton had played trombone and drums for Kenton, and his compositions and arrangements were rhythmically and harmonically challenging. Barton was the drummer for these sessions, and his dynamic playing is a key to the record’s success. He went on to write film and television scores before settling into a teaching career. Kenton’s recording with Barton would be among his last for Capitol; his affiliation with the label ended in 1968. Kenton founded his own label, Creative World Records, in 1970, which released his new recordings with bands composed of younger players who’d grown up studying and playing his scores in high school and college. The label also reissued older recordings by him and other jazz orchestra leaders, such as Kenton contemporaries Bill Holman, Johnny Richards, and Billy May. Kenton continued to play and tour through the ’70s, and performed for the last time a week before he died, in August 1979. Musicians who played for Stan Kenton remembered him with affection. "He was very respectful of the musicians [in the band] and it transcended just an employment kind of thing," wrote Lee Konitz in a remembrance for Mosaic Records’ The Complete Recordings of the Holman and Russo Charts. Shelly Manne, who had played on the Innovations and Easy Go sessions, among others, wrote a eulogy for Kenton for Ovation, the magazine for Musicians’ Local 47, in Los Angeles. "He was a friend to all musicians," Manne wrote. "He will never be forgotten, and we will miss him." . . . Joseph Taylor
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Kenton didn’t always make the
best case for his own music. He called it "progressive jazz," as if he alone
pursued "innovations in modern music," another tag he attached to himself. Like
many established musicians, Kenton’s ego often led him to make rash statements. In
1956, he embroiled himself in a controversy with Leonard Feather (fueled by the critic,
but the spark was Kenton’s) over race and jazz that would suggest, for some, that in
that area he was not at all progressive. But a look at Kenton’s career and life
reveals little evidence to support Feather’s charge that the bandleader was racially
insensitive, and critics who were often lukewarm about his music, such as Ralph J. Gleason
and Nat Hentoff, came to Kenton’s defense. Though Feather later retracted his
accusation, it stuck.
By the time he organized his first
band, Kenton, like many of his contemporaries (including Mulligan and Stan Getz), had been
playing professionally since his teens. He grew up in California, where his mother played
and taught piano; her son took up the instrument, with Earl Hines as his inspiration. When
Kenton was in his 20s, he joined bands led by Everett Hoagland, Gus Arnheim, and Vido
Musso (who would later be a member of Kenton’s orchestra). In an effort to make
himself available for film-studio work, he also studied music theory and composition. In
1941, he formed his own band, heavily influenced by the Jimmie Lunceford group. Soon
thereafter he recorded for Decca, but, unsatisfied with the results, continued to build a
following through live performances in California. His first success was at the Rendezvous
Ballroom in Balboa Beach, a haunt for high school and college students in southern
California.
It’s odd that Kenton’s
music would seem to be identified as "square" when it could be, on occasion,
somewhat difficult, dissonant, and rhythmically challenging. He was an early fan of Latin
jazz; his 1947 recording of "The Peanut Vendor," a song previously recorded by
Cuban jazz bands, became one of his most popular records. That year, Kenton also recorded
"Machito," a Pete Rugulo composition written in tribute to the great Cuban
bandleader. Kenton was drawn to the complex rhythms of Latin jazz, and the dynamic, brassy
sound of the music must also have appealed to him. He recorded Latin music throughout his
career and devoted two LPs to it, Cuban Fire (1956) and Viva Kenton (1959).
Kenton often hired Latin American musicians, especially percussionists, to record and tour
with him.
Kenton would record 13 Graettinger
compositions or arrangements between 1947 and 1953, and would doubtless have done more had
Graettinger not died in 1957, at the age of 34. Kenton performed the four-part suite City
of Glass first in 1948, but recorded it in 1951 when he was leading the Innovations
Orchestra, a 40-piece ensemble that included 16 strings. Innovations was the culmination
of Kenton’s wish to assemble a jazz group that would resemble a symphony orchestra in
size, scope, and ability. Several Kenton stalwarts, including Rugulo, Russo, and Rogers,
wrote arrangements for the orchestra, and the 30 tracks it recorded in 1950 and 1951 have
been compiled in The Innovations Orchestra. The music Innovations recorded was not
all as unusual or as unsettling as Graettinger’s, but it was hard to pigeonhole, even
as it often successfully integrated classical and big-band elements.