The NOTE

Al Cohn Memorial Jazz Collection at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania • Fall / Winter 2017

SPECIAL ISSUE! BOB DOROUGH INTERVIEW

In This Issue...
The NOTE

contains some content that may be considered offensive.
Authors’ past recollections reflect attitudes of the times and remain uncensored.

3
A Note from the Collection Coordinator:

Jazz News and a Thank You List!


-Dr. Matt Vashlishan

4
From the Bridge:

Hero’s Journey through the Düsseldorf Airport
-Su Terry

6
From the ACMJC Oral History Project:

Interview with Bob Dorough
-JD Walter
26

COTA Festival 2016

28

A Story from Jerry Dodgion

29
Zoot Fest 2016
-T. Storm Heter
34

Reader’s, please take NOTE

The NOTE
Vol. 27 - No. 1 - Issue 67
Fall / Winter 2017

The NOTE is published twice a year by the Al Cohn
Memorial Jazz Collection, East Stroudsburg
University of Pennsylvania, as part of its
educational outreach program.

Editor:

Matt Vashlishan, D.M.A.

Design/Layout:

Charles de Bourbon at BGAstudios.com
ESU Office of University Relations
________________________________

Al Cohn Memorial Jazz Collection
Kemp Library
East Stroudsburg University
200 Prospect St.
East Stroudsburg, PA 18301-2999
alcohncollection@esu.edu
(570) 422-3828
www.esu.edu/alcohncollection

East Stroudsburg University President
Marcia G. Welsh, Ph.D.

From the Collection . . .

The mission of the Al Cohn Memorial Jazz Collection
is to stimulate, enrich, and support research, teaching,
learning, and appreciation of all forms of jazz.

The ACMJC is a distinctive archive built upon a unique
and symbiotic relationship between the
Pocono Mountains jazz community
and East Stroudsburg University.

Cover Photo (front):
Bob Dorough in his NYC apartment in 1956.
Photo by Scott Hyde

With the support of a world-wide network of jazz advocates, the ACMJC seeks to promote the local and global
history of jazz by making its resources available and useful to students, researchers,
educators, musicians, historians, journalists and jazz
enthusiasts of all kinds, and to preserve its holdings for
future generations.
© 2017 Al Cohn Memorial Jazz Collection /
East Stroudsburg University

________________________________

Cover Photo (back):
Bob Dorough at the piano - 1956
Photo by Scott Hyde

East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania is committed to
equal opportunity for its students, employees and applicants. The
university is committed to providing equal educational and employment rights to all persons without regard to race, color, sex,
religion, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender
identity or veteran’s status. Each member of the university community has a right to study and work in an environment free from
any form of racial, ethnic, and sexual discrimination including
sexual harassment, sexual violence and sexual assault. (Further
information, including contact information, can be found on the
university’s website at: esu.edu/titleix/.) In accordance with federal and state laws, the university will not tolerate discrimination.
This policy is placed in this document in accordance with state
and federal laws including Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964, Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, Sections 503 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and the Civil Rights Act of 1991
as well as all applicable federal and state executive orders.

2

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

A Note from the Collection Coordinator

Bob Weidner

Jazz News and a Thank You List!

I

By Dr. Matt Vashlishan
t is a somewhat regular occurrence these days where I sit down
to write this column feeling incredibly excited to share the contents
of the issue with our loyal readers.
This issue is no different! There have
been a lot of things happening on the
ESU campus as well as in the jazz
community. This is an important
time for us here in the Poconos, as we
reshape what was and envision what
will be, not without the help of some
new faces and some rekindled relationships with those who have been
around to see it all.
The first “thank you” I must
give out is to vocalist JD Walter, Bob
Dorough, and photographer Larry
Fink for their work on an incredible
piece for this issue. I am sure you
will find that JD’s interview with
Bob Dorough is unlike any other. As
I was editing through it I could not
bring myself to split it up between
two issues, so you will find it here in
its entirety. As I made my way down
the Word document, I didn’t realize
my mouth hanging open wider and
wider as Bob told story after story of
his experiences and relationships that
(as JD mentions) is a “who’s who” of
jazz and entertainment history. This
interview separates itself from the
usual School House Rock and Miles
Davis topics often covered by Bob.

Due to their relationship with one another, JD is able to dig a little deeper
to elicit responses from Bob that are
much more personal. It is a rare gem
that puts Bob’s importance in jazz
history into an even brighter light,
and Larry’s photos are second to none
and complement the interview as well
as balance Scott Hyde’s photos from
the 1950s!
As you will see by the photos in
this issue, Zoot Fest 2016 was a phenomenal time. The music could not
have been any better, and I send out
my sincerest thanks to: Lew Tabackin; what I call the “Bill Trio” (Bill
Dobbins, Bill Crow, and Bill Goodwin); the members of the newly titled
Water Gap Jazz Orchestra for presenting some truly incredible music. Bill
Holman was gracious enough to send
us the original parts to the Zoot Sims
recording “Hawthorne Nights” that
he arranged back in the mid 1970s.
Saxophonist Scott Silbert did a great
job handling the “Zoot chair” and
made it a very special occasion for
those involved.
You might still be thinking of
the previous paragraph, wondering
to yourself, “Water Gap Jazz Who??”
Many of you know the band as The
COTA Festival Orchestra. We perform on the last Monday of every
month at the Deer Head Inn for Big
Band Night. Those of you who have
been around the area long enough are
familiar with the various incarnations
of the band: The Phil Woods Big
Band, Grandmas Soup, and others I’m
sure. I am happy to announce that in
honor of not only Rick Chamberlain
and Phil Woods, but all of the talented and inspiring musicians that have
come through the Delaware Water
Gap over the years that we are now
known as the Water Gap Jazz Orchestra. It is a pleasure and an honor to

perform with and direct this group
of some of the most loyal, passionate,
and gifted musicians I have met. We
will continue to expose the public
to the most diverse sets of big band
jazz possible. I would like to thank
the Deer Head Inn and everyone who
puts the time in every month to make
these concerts happen.
As is my usual custom for this
column, I must acknowledge a photographer left out of the last issue.
The centerfold photograph was taken
at the Denver Jazz Party and was of
Benny Carter, Phil Woods, and Zoot
Sims. This photo was donated to
the Collection by Jim Eigo, and was
taken by a photographer named Jay
Anderson. It has come to my knowledge that Jay often kept to himself,
and you didn’t really get to know him
unless you had a few mutual friends.
Thanks to our loyal and knowledgeable readership for informing me of
anything I might miss!
Finally, I would like to inform
everyone of esu.edu/jazzatesu. This
is the website dedicated to anything
jazz going on at East Stroudsburg
University. There is information
about the Collection, the University Jazz Ensemble, Zoot Fest, other
concerts, and most recently the Jazz
Lounge Lecture Series. There is a
new space in Kemp Library dedicated
to the Al Cohn Memorial Jazz Collection, and part of this initiative
is to bring musician lectures to the
public free of charge. The first lecture
will feature Su Terry, a saxophonist, clarinetist, author and composer.
The focus will be area professional
musicians and will occur on a somewhat regular basis, right now the
last Wednesday of each month. Stay
tuned to esu.edu/jazzatesu for updates on the day, time, and lecturers
in this series.

U

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

3

From the Bridge
James Richard

Hero’s Journey Through the
Düsseldorf Airport

I

By Su Terry • Suterry.com
’m an American. I admit it. Actually, I don’t even have
to admit it because my attire, my accent, my attitude,
all proclaim my Americanness to anyone with whom I
come into contact.
As an American–of a certain age, I might add–portions of my personal aesthetic were formed by some iconic
American things, one of which being The Wizard of Oz.
The original book was authored by L. Frank Baum, who
unfortunately never lived to see the 1939 MGM adaptation
with its classic score by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg.
Rich in psychological and mythic imagery, amongst the
film’s many archetypal references is Dorothy’s “Hero’s
Journey.” The archetype of the Hero’s Journey (described
at length by scholar Joseph Campbell) is summarized in
the chart below, courtesy of writer Christopher Vogler:

THE HERO’S JOURNEY
12. Return with Elixir

1. Ordinary World
2. Call to Adventure

11. Resurrection

ORDINARY WORLD

4. Meeting
the Mentor
5. Crossing

the Threshold

10. The Road
Back

9. Reward,
Seizing the Sword

3.Refusal of the
Call

SPECIAL WORLD

6. Tests, Allies,
Enemies

7. Approach

8. Ordeal, Death & Rebirth

I mention The Wizard of Oz because in modern times
we get a lot of our myths from various forms of media.
For example, I like to think of myself as a combination of
Nora Charles, Dorothy Parker, Emma Peel, and Tamara
In The Green Bugatti. I try to live my life with mythic
precepts in mind. What the hell, it makes me happy. In

4

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

fact, I believe anyone’s life is immeasurably enriched by
recognizing it as one’s personal Hero’s Journey. Seeing
one’s existence in this way adds a larger-than-life element
that, if nothing else, makes life a bit more bearable, and a
lot more fun.

ORDINARY WORLD

Of course, it’s easy to contemplate your Hero’s Journey when you’re kicking back with a glass of Sauvignon
Blanc on the deck at sunset at the end of a glorious summer’s day. The challenge is contemplating it when you’re
at the Düsseldorf airport at three in the morning trying to
make your way back to good old JFK.
The Priority Pass app indicated there was an Air Berlin lounge I could access right near my gate. Before boarding, it would be nice to get a free cup of coffee, a bottle
of water, snacks, and free Wi-Fi to check my email. I said
to the woman manning the gate, “Where is the lounge,
please?”
“You go through there,” she replied, waving her hand
ambiguously. “It’s one floor up.”
“Thanks,” I say, going toward the direction indicated,
lugging my horn cases and feeling the leg burn of the previous day’s walk around Berlin.

CALL TO ADVENTURE

“Through there,” she had said. Well here’s the thing:
she’s German, and English is not her native language.
Truth be told, even native English speakers have trouble
with prepositions. “Through there” can mean just about
anything! The only thing I saw that seemed to correspond
to “through there” was a glass enclosure with a band of
pretty lights inside. It looked like an elevator, albeit a
rather futuristic one. Leave it to the Germans, I thought.
When it comes to appliances and machinery, they are
all over it like white on rice. Nice touch to have a classy
futuristic entrance to the lounge! Well done!

REFUSAL OF THE CALL

Do I really have time to do this, I wondered. Well,
why not? The lounge is only one floor up! As I approached the elevator, the doors opened automatically.
I stepped in, surrounded by tiny, colorful, translucent
cubes. Then the doors closed, sealing me off from the

boarding area. As my eyes adjusted to the odd lighting, I
saw I was now in a Security Personnel Only area. No exit
without a special key.

horn cases and burning legs notwithstanding–in order to
make my flight.

MEETING THE MENTOR

“How do I get to Passport Control from here?” I
asked. “Through there,” one of them said, waving his
hand ambiguously as he unlocked an unmarked door and
ushered me through. Wandering down a deserted, sterile
hallway, I looked in vain for signs to Passport Control.
In fact, I looked for any signs at all. No signs. Nor were
there any signs of life, human or otherwise. “Help!” I
shouted. “Help!”

I pushed open an emergency exit that opened into
a carpeted foyer, tripping the alarm. I waited. Nobody
came to investigate. I saw a house phone on the wall and
dialed security. “Hello, I walked into the security area by
accident and now I can’t get out.”
“Someone will come to meet you,” was the reply.

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD

After some minutes, a security guard shows up and
wants to know how I ended up there. “I was trying to
get to the Air Berlin lounge,” I say. “The woman at the
gate pointed over here so I went over here.” He tells me I
have to wait for the Airport Police to come. “My flight is
boarding soon,” I say.
“Too bad,” he says. “It was your mistake.”
“No it wasn’t,” I counter. “She said ‘go through there’
and the only thing ‘through there’ was that thing that
looked like an elevator, and the doors opened automatically when I approached it.”
He shook his head.
“Hey,” I said, sounding even to myself like the most
clueless American possible, “if you don’t want people to
go through that entrance, why do the doors open automatically, and why do you have all those groovy lights in
there? And a Do Not Enter sign would be nice, too.”
“You will have to wait for the Airport Police,” he
repeated gruffly, and he split.

TESTS, ALLIES, ENEMIES

I checked the time on my phone. Boarding was
scheduled for a few minutes from now. I could see the
gate, but I couldn’t get to it. Passengers were already lining up. I began to berate myself. What was I thinking,
walking into a weird-looking elevator on purpose just
because I wanted a free cup of coffee. The devil on my
shoulder laughed hysterically.
“There should be a Do Not Enter sign on it, dear,”
said the angel on my other shoulder. “You were just attracted by the shiny lights. ANY girl who grew up in the
60s and plays jazz saxophone and wears her hair in dreadlocks would have done exactly the same thing!”
Sensing the angel’s ironic tone, I was not much consoled. I sat down on my saxophone case to wait for the
Airport Police. They took their sweet time getting there.
When two representatives of the battalion finally arrived,
they seemed rather suspicious of my story. I played the
Clueless American card to the hilt, hoping for mercy.
Alas, there was none.
“You must go through Passport Control again,” one of
them said.
“But that’s all the way back at the beginning of the
airport,” I whined, remembering how long it took to walk
to the gate, and unable to hide the tremor in my voice.
“The gate is right there,” I said, pointing. “Why can’t I
just go to the gate? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
They were adamant. I realized I had to try to get back
to Passport Control and return to the gate in record time–

APPROACH

ORDEAL, DEATH & REBIRTH

My pitiful cries were swallowed by the seemingly
infinite passageway. Just as I thought it was coming to
an end, it turned a corner and kept going. The thought
occurred to me that even if I should find Passport Control,
since my passport had already been stamped they would
likely consider me worthy of detainment. What would
Nora Charles do, I wondered. Well, first of all, she would
be wondering where the next martini would be coming
from. And at the end of the day, if necessary, she would
be rescued by her husband Nick, or else the dog. But I
was traveling solo and had no such backup. Since there
was nothing else to be done, I trudged onward through
the apparent Portal to Nowhere.

REWARD

I eventually found Passport Control. The other people
in line kindly let me go ahead when I said my flight was
boarding. The officials had evidently been tipped off by
their colleagues to expect a Clueless American, and after a
cursory glance through my passport, they let me proceed
back to the gate.

THE ROAD BACK

With as much speed as my awkward burden (I bought
a double horn case as soon as I got back to Pennsylvania)
and aching legs allowed, I hightailed it back to the scene
of the “crime,” where I made it through just as the gate
was closing. My traverse down the aisle of the aircraft
was greeted by the disgruntled stares of passengers
wondering who on earth THIS was, delaying the flight
like that. After stowing my cases in the one remaining
overhead bin that would fit them, I settled into my seat.

RESURRECTION

The plane took off. As we rose higher and higher, I
reflected on my journey through the Düsseldorf Airport.
On the up side, I was now fully awake and did not miss
the un-procured cup of coffee that had been the catalyst
for a dismal but comical chain of events. I did wish, however, for some sort of talisman that would symbolize my
adventure. A magical elixir, perhaps.

RETURN WITH ELIXIR

Synchronistically, no sooner had the thought of a
magical elixir crossed my mind than the beverage cart
appeared. Suffice it to say that I did, indeed, return home
bearing a magical elixir. Better still–since I drank the
whole thing, I did not even have to declare it at Customs.

U

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

5

Larry Fink

From the ACMJC Oral History Project

Bob Dorough and JD Walter

Much of Bob Dorough’s exploits and associations have
been documented in previous interviews in various publications, as well as in a forthcoming documentary. I first met Bob
in 1992 while singing at the Deer Head Inn in the Poconos
(where he resides) after I had moved back to the east coast from
Texas. Shortly thereafter, Bob wrote liner notes for my debut
CD and later produced another CD of mine. The family of the
Delaware Water Gap area had taken me under their wing, and
I was invited to stay at Bob and Sally’s house whenever I had a
gig in the area (which was frequent during the Solliday ownership of that club). Whenever I stayed at his house, I would
always find myself feeling like a kid listening to stories that

6

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

took me on adventures through the history of Jazz. Bob had
played with, toured, and traveled in the circles of the giants of
Jazz including the Black community of artists and personalities
as well as famous actors and comedians of the day. I wanted to
dig a little deeper into his personal relationships, as well as get
his vantage point as to the social climate of the day. For me, one
of the beautiful things about this interview was learning new
names and legends that opened doors and filled in the gaps of
relationships between the different communities of musicians in
this great American art form.
– JD Walter

Interview September 2015
JD Walter: The people you have rubbed elbows with and
performed with reads as a who’s who in the history of American Music and Jazz Artistry, as well as some major figures in
comedy, literature and acting. Many of these associations started
because you were the pianist for Sugar Ray Robinson as a tap
dancer after his retirement as a world champion boxer. Can you
tell me about how that began?
Bob Dorough: I used to hang out at a tap dancing
studio in NYC in the early 50s. Well, I didn’t hang out I’d drop in once in awhile.
JDW: Because?
BD: I got jobs playing classes, so it would be 24
young people doing the same steps, and Henry (the
owner) played piano himself.
JDW: Who is Henry?
BD: Henry LeTang. He was a teacher and he could
play. (Imitates rhythms and sings the song, “Just You,
Just Me.”) He had these arrangements, and I learned
them all, and I’d play for a class and make three dollars
an hour. There were some great talented swingers. One
guy would say at the end of class, “let’s jam one,” and
we’d play a tune. Just him and me, and he could improvise and do stuff faster and off the book kind of.
JDW: Did you ever run into Baby Lawrance (arguably one
of the greatest legendary tap dancers to have lived)?
BD: I met him with Sugar, because all the tap dancers came to our shows to see Sugar Ray tapping. So
he quit the ring - he was a champ. One day I reported
to Henry’s (I had no telephone in those days), and I’d
just make my rounds and play for singers and play
for tap dancers. I dropped off at Henry’s and he said,
“Oh, go down to the big studio. You’re going to make
$5.” I didn’t know what he meant, but I went into his
most deluxe studio, and the door opened and it was
full of Black people. Henry says, “Bob Dorough, meet
Sugar Ray Robinson. Play a tune for Sugar.” So I played
“Green Eyes.” I’ll always remember that. And when it
was over Ray was mopping his brow and said, “You’re
going on the road with us.”
JDW: It was long enough ago that I don’t feel shy about
asking how much you made on the road with him.
BD: (Laughing) I was afraid to ask for too much
money. But I was in dire straits because I had that
other affair of being denied a cabaret card, which
happened while I was rehearsing with Sugar. I think
I made $200 a week when we worked, and when we
didn’t everything was on Ray. We traveled on the
train because he wouldn’t fly because he was superstitious. We went up to Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver,
San Francisco, LA, and Back to Chicago where we had
started as well as the east coast, the Deep South, and
Paris.
JDW: Who was traveling with you?

BD: (Laughs) He had eight or nine people in his
entourage. It was ridiculous. First of all, he had his
partner who was a comedian and became a good friend
of mine: “Scottie.” He was a gasser! Joe Scott: he would
teach me to drink Gin. While on the road I would always say, “Hey Sug, why don’t you let me do a number
on the show?” And Sugar would say, “No, this is the
big time!” (Laughing) But in time, Joe and a couple of
the other guys in the entourage all sort of got to diggin’ me as a singer and entertainer.
I was never on the show. I was the conductor so
sometimes I’d conduct and sometimes I’d play. We’d
hook up with big bands everywhere we went and we’d
have charts; charts by Jimmy Mundy, the great arranger. But during those two years with Sugar, I met some
of the most important people like Earl Hines, Louis
Armstrong, Count Basie and Maya Angelou, to name a
few.
JDW: This show with Sugar would join up with other “acts”
to do variety shows for weeks at a time?
BD: Yes
JDW: I understand that is where you first got to really know
Louis Armstrong - while on a stint with Sugar in Chicago? Did
you get to spend time with Louis?
BD: Well, we were doing a variety show with Sugar
and some other artists, and for two weeks we played
a theater in Chicago on the south side. I’ve forgotten
its name. It was in a black neighborhood theater and
played variety shows and movies between the shows…
five shows a day.
JDW: And Louis Armstrong was in this show?
BD: Yes, he was the headliner in fact. I’d walk by
his dressing room and he’d be sitting there with a silk
stocking on his head. You know, the way they used to
conk, and he had a wooden crate full of tape. Reel to
reels, and a tape recorder, and he’d say, “C’mon in Bob
I’m listening to Lester Young…” or whoever. You know,
he loved to listen to music. We had lots of time off because there was a movie between each show, but every
show he did was pretty much the same because he was
a big time artist. They (the record labels) would say,
“Plug your new thing.” (Starts singing “Give Me a Kiss
To Build a Dream On.”) And I’d stand in the wings and
listen. Trummy was playing bone. Trummy Young that
is. Let’s see, Arvel Shaw was the bass player and Marty
Napoleon played piano.
JDW: You were the Music Director for Sugar?
BD: Mostly I played or conducted for Sugar, but
now and then I’d conduct for guests of the show…
and I remember (this was in Chicago too) when Eydie
Gormé came without her conductor. She came with
her piano player, and she had charts so they asked if
I could conduct for Eydie, so I got that experience. I
never got her to sing one of my songs... (laughing).
JDW: Well, plenty of other people have sung your songs.
Admittedly you were rather unknown for a long time, having

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

7

lived this kind of “Zelig” type of story. And having associations
and relationships with many of the greats.
BD: It seems like it. I was lucky, and I didn’t really
want to be in show business. I wanted to sit and play,
but I did need the gig.
JDW: You hadn’t recorded your own music yet. The stint
with Sugar was from 1952-54, and your first record wasn’t
recorded until 1956. So up until this time you were conducting
and accompanying?
BD: I recorded some with Sam Most before 1956.
JDW: Before we leave this period, were there any other notable stories with Louis or Sugar you want to talk about or that
left an impression on you?
BD: Just that Sugar was a completely friendly guy,
and when we would travel together on the train with
the variety show he would bring his wife and son. He
would carry his trainer, his Valet, chauffer, a big retinue. So all these people are traveling with him.
JDW: What’s interesting also is that you are getting to see
a side of America from a different vantage point than most of
white America. You are spending a lot of time traveling the country with black entertainers, and so you were certainly privy to
seeing a lot of racism and how people of color were being treated
at a time when a lot of whites weren’t allowed “in” these situations. What kind of things were you seeing while on the road
traveling? How were the hotels? Were there problems? What was
that situation like in general?
BD: Well, when we went down south with Count
Basie, I would stay in the black hotels and I’d come
down the stairs into the café or the restaurant in
the morning, and suddenly the room would go silent
(laughing). But I’d announce nervously, “I play piano for
Sugar Ray,” and that loosened it up a little (laughing).
A lot of times I’d say, “Scottie (Joe Scott), lets go to
breakfast.” So I’d be with him and that helped the situation. But yes in Chicago there was a little heat, and we
were on the south side. I met a lot of black people, and
some beautiful ladies… quite an adventure I must say.
JDW: Were there any run-ins with the police or harassment
of any kind?
BD: No, but then Sugar was quite highly respected,
so I think his reputation and his standing kept us from
getting any real heat.
JDW: Certainly traveling in the south and even in the north
you know you’re going to run into that. You stayed in black
hotels, but how about stopping along the road or at restaurants,
etc.?
BD: That was tough. We’d see those signs… “colored or white only.”
JDW: So was there a lot of cooking by yourselves?
BD: A lot of people took us into their homes. He
was a famous guy. I remember that being the case in

8

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

Philadelphia especially, where we “sat down” for a bit
while doing another two weeks before heading down
south, and that’s where I met Coltrane.
JDW: Tell me more about that.
BD: This is before he was known. I had the chart,
“Green Eyes,” and “Just You, Just Me,” and a few big
band charts. Some guy says, “see that fourth tenor
player?” I said, “yeah.” And he said, “you’re gonna hear
from him.” I said, “Oh yeah? Who is that?” And he
says, “That’s John Coltrane and he’s something else!”
So I switched the second tenor music to his “desk” so
he’d have an eight bar solo (laughing), and that gig lasted a week. We’d work three or four times a day, shows
that is, with a movie in between, and pretty much play
the same music. You know, show biz.
JDW: And this was 1952 and 1953?
BD: Yeah.
JDW: So getting back to an earlier question, you had lost
your cabaret card? I think it’s a generally accepted concept that
the idea of the cabaret card and its punishments for violations
were directed at the black community.
BD: Yeah.
JDW: But you got snagged?
BD: You know I was completely honest about having been arrested. I was such an innocent really, and I
could have lied on the application.
JDW: Who required folks to apply for cards?
BD: The Liquor Control Board.
JDW: Ok.
BD: They didn’t want any “undesirables” in bars,
whether they were bartenders, waitresses, or whatever… undesirables (laughing)!
JDW: So you never had a cabaret card to begin with, you
just decided to tell the truth on the application because it was required if you wanted to play in the clubs? And you were denied?
BD: Yeah, Max Gordon gave me a gig at the Vanguard. It was more of a cabaret room in those days, and
I accompanied some girls from the “House of Flowers”
Musical.
JDW: Now this is pre Sugar Ray now right?
BD: Yeah right before the start with Sugar. Max
said, “You got to have a cabaret card,” and so I worked
there about two weeks, and I kept putting him off. I
said, “I’ll work on it,” and I’d postpone it. Finally he
put the hammer down and said, “If you don’t have it
Monday or Tuesday that’s it… I’m sorry but they’re on
my neck.” So I quit, and that was the end of that. So I
knew I didn’t have a card, and of course I confessed to
Sugar soon after.
We opened at the French quarter with Sugar. That

was our very first gig, somewhere on West 46th Street
I think. We had a French Dancing show from Paris and
Sugar was just one of the acts. We had a big band and
after a few weeks Sugar said that everybody had to
have a cabaret card because it was a bar. That’s when I
confessed to him, and he said, “You’ve been busted?”
Actually I was late for rehearsal because I was in jail!
The day I got out, I went straight to the 2 p.m. rehearsal at the French Quarter, and he says, “Where you
been?” (laughing) Sometimes he was very bossy - quite
a heavy ego. So I confessed that I couldn’t get a cabaret
card because I’d been busted before.
JDW: What was his response?
BD: He said he would fix it. So I guess he pulled
some strings. We played three or four weeks in New
York. He paid whoever needed to be paid or talked to
the mayor.
JDW: So it’s all very interesting to me, this cabaret business.
Do you care to go into any detail about those circumstances?
BD: Well we were in Wildwood. We played inside
the bar in this little joint, and it was a pretty good
band. We had rehearsed at my house. I needed the gig.
It wasn’t an ideal band, and I wasn’t really the leader,
but they all dug me and I could sing and play, so we
played tunes. On our day off, they all wanted to go to
New York and get some pot. It was a Monday. I think
that was our day off and we went back for the Tuesday
night opening, and we got busted after the first set.
JDW: How did that transpire?
BD: It was a wonderful drummer who was with
us… the tenor man drove to New York and back. We
had a beautiful jam session at my pad, #333 East 75th
Street, and we got a kilo of grass (laughing). Besides
our band, there were about three or four other bands
playing in Wildwood, and everybody was pitching in to
get a piece of the stuff so we had the capital to score. I
think it was two or three hundred dollars. The drummer, I won’t say his name, was a junkie. The tenor man
was very hip, and had been a junkie in his younger
days. He was driving back, and we were all ready for
our gig, and the drummer finked on us.
JDW: Why would he do that?
BD: To get out of it… you know they put the pressure on junkies - “give us some names” type of thing.
So as we approached the town, the drummer who was
playing with another band in Wildwood but driving
with us said, “I have an early set tonight, can I get my
share?” And the tenor man says, “No man, we are all
late, we’ll do it later.” So back and forth, “No, no man,
I got to get my share,” the drummer says. So the tenor
player gets mad and stops the car on the highway, got
out of the car, goes around to the trunk, reaches in the
bag of pot and gave him a piece and the drummer says,
“Let me off at 3rd Street.” And because we were late,
we threw the stuff in my bureau drawer. I was rooming with the tenor player right above the club, so being
late we went right down and played a set, then I got
involved talking to a chick during intermission, and ah,

suddenly they all came back for the second set, and as
they passed me, the tenor player said, “We’re busted.”
I looked at him, and his face was white, and so as I
go back to the piano, I notice these plain-clothes cats
at the bar dressed very untypical of the beach, and I
thought, “Oh boy,” and I called the tune, “Strike Up
The Band.” I’ll never forget that.
JDW: You didn’t play that Nat King Cole tune, “Call The
Police?”
BD: (laughing) I wish I had known it! I took most
of the heat because I was the only one who lived in
New York. I was the oldest in the band and it was in
my room. In a way I think that if that cabaret card
business hadn’t happened, I would have been a bigger
a part of the N.Y. scene. But I went on the road with
Sugar to Paris and spent almost a year there.
JDW: How was the scene there?
BD: Well I was trapped on the Right Bank, and jazz
was going on in the Left Bank. I worked every night
in the Mars club. That was really my first chance to do
what I wanted to do. Playing any tune I could think
of…writing tunes and playing them. It was all very
good.
JDW: That doesn’t sound so bad, quite a silver lining, getting to write tunes and playing what you wanted.
BD: Definitely. The owner married a French woman, but he was definitely an east side New Yorker, who
loved my singing and my songs.
JDW: So keeping the timeline straight, you played with
Sugar in 1952 and 1953, and you had graduated North Texas
in 1948?
BD: June of 1949.
JDW: And then you made a beeline to New York?
BD: Yeah.
JDW: So according to that timeline you got pretty lucky,
even though you say you were scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Having landed in NYC in the later part of 1949, you then find
yourself playing for Sugar Ray Robinson some two years later. I
know it took me about four to six years before I had steady work
in New York and abroad. It’s a tough road as it has been for
many.
BD: Well, I picked up little gigs here and there.
And you know a piano player can do things that a band
can’t do. We didn’t get many band gigs at all.
JDW: This is a curiosity for me. I know the personnel in
most of your bands. But when you moved to New York, what was
the integration like of white musicians and black musicians? It
seems to me, from what you’ve said, that you were mixing quite
a bit.
BD: We all loved each other and loved to play.
There was a whole panoply of cats that came through
my pad for jam sessions about three times a week from

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

9

Larry Fink

7 p.m. to 10 p.m. We had to quit at 10 p.m. because it
was a regular apartment house. I had a Steinway upright and it was on the 4th floor. No telephone, no elevator, so everyone that wanted to play had to walk up
those stairs and carry their instruments, including the
bass and the drums! All kinds of people, players, black
people who I’ve never heard of, Philly cats… you know
there was a Philadelphia clique and a Detroit clique.
JDW: Were you guys just playing tunes or did you have
charts?

10

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

BD: No, we were just jamming on the bebop tunes
and standards. And of course there were other more
known places that had sessions like at Jimmy Knepper and Joe Maini’s pad. He lived in the William
Henry hotel at Broadway and 136th. We’d go there in
the afternoon and they’d have the Fake Book. Jimmy
Knepper was a very good transcriber, so he would
take down the bebop tunes that he heard Bird and Diz
play (among other people), and later on he even transcribed the improvisations. Anyway, we’d go there in
the afternoon and I’d be on the piano and learn tunes

like “Lady Bird” and “Half Nelson.” It was like a little
school almost. And at night they would have these sessions that lasted till dawn because it was in the basement and they had heavy padding in the ceiling. It was
like a dark tomb!
JDW: So, this is the beginning of the loft scene in New York?
BD: Yeah except it was a cellar! We called it the
William Henry. Buddy Jones made a tape of Bird
(Charlie Parker) playing there because sometimes
Bird would come. Jimmy and Joe were both junkies,
so they’d say, “Bird we’ve got some smack, you wanna
play Thursday night?” Yeah! So now they go in the
backroom and get even higher. So I got to play a tune
or two with Bird. I mean the house was full of cats, you
know? And everyone wanted to play just because he
was there, and we would go on and on and on. Nine to
10 solos on a fast tunes. I don’t know how the guys did
it. The bass and the drums, they just kept going. But
you know, I met a lot of people that way and learned a
lot of tunes that way.
JDW: That’s an exciting time. That whole period has been
romanticized of course, but there IS something very romantic
about it.
BD: We were underground. We felt like nobody
wanted to hear us. But we felt we were on to something.
JDW: One of the reasons why I love NYC is because any
day I can call almost any player to come over and have a session. Even players that I remotely know, if they’ve heard of me
or whatever, I’d invite them to come over and play new music or
just to play tunes. It’s all about meeting and learning about new
people, their writing, hearing things you’ve written, playing new
charts, new tunes, but it sounds like it is not quite the same as
when you were here in that period. There were just nonstop jam
sessions happening all the time.
BD: Yeah.
JDW: But still in NYC there are a handful of sessions.
Smalls, and other various clubs, but it is not quite the same
thing.
BD: No, I guess not.
JDW: And I guess economics have a big role in the sense that
the density of jazz musicians really isn’t in Manhattan as much
as it used to be, because it’s not as affordable for musicians to be
there.
BD: Yeah, Manhattan was full of young bebop students in those days.
JDW: And really aside from North Texas, there weren’t
many schools for Jazz.
BD: It was a new thing, yeah. Mostly they just
learned as best they could from a record or something.
You know I had the GI Bill, and did three semesters at
Columbia. I could scramble for my living, so I didn’t
have it that tough. And you know Pepper Adams? Pep-

per Adams was our friend and contributed highly to
the Loft scene in those days. I have to give credit to
Chuck Lilly who also came from Texas - I met him at
North Texas. He was just hip, outgoing, and he dressed
more like Diz than us white cats. Although he was
white, he was from an affluent family in Colorado and
played the French horn in a high school band. He went
to North Texas and he played in a big band in Fort
Worth and one year they invited Dizzy’s big band to
play the Keyhole Club. Chuck Lilly had a picture of the
keyhole, which was like a round hole in the curtain.
Diz stuck his head through it and Chuck took that
famous picture. He was a friend of Dizzy’s so I got to
know Dizzy mostly because of him.
JDW: When you say you got to know him, what does that
mean?
BD: Well, we’d go to his gigs. I never played with
him but he knew me. I don’t think he ever heard me
play. I tried to sit in once, but anyway I was in that
crowd. Chuck was friends with those cats. He’d go
down to Broadway or the Union everyday in the evening and meet people, and Pepper Adams was our
pipeline. Every time someone would move to New York
from Detroit, Pepper would say, “I know a place where
we can play 7 to 10 (at Bob’s place).” And he’d bring
him over, Kenny Burrell, some of the Jones cats, I never
had Hank but Thad (Jones) was in my pad and Elvin
came once, that was a red-letter day.
JDW: That must have been a loud red-letter day!
BD: (Laughs)
JDW: He was a quite a personality.
BD: There was another wonderful drummer, one of
my favorites from Detroit: Frank Isola. If I could have
done a future singing thing with him I would have. He
just knew what to do according to what was going on.
He wasn’t just a drummer who would go, “dang-danga-dang,” he was really creative. All kinds of cats were
there of course. I also remember the loft on 32nd. We
called it the Clyde Cox loft. It was the first loft I went
to, and then I went to the Painter’s loft. Painter and
alto man Larry Rivers. It was more of a weird scene.
The Clyde Cox loft was more pure love with maybe a
taste of gin and vodka or something and maybe a little
joint of grass. I played a lot with Zoot (Sims) and met
Steve Swallow and I associated my first jam session at
Clyde Cox’s with Steve. But Mose (Alison) used to jam
there too.
JDW: You know I’m always curious about the history of
singers that I was into or that I have discovered. You can have
respect for somebody and not be into what they do.
BD: Oh yeah.
JDW: So Mose, for me, was not somebody that I was particularly drawn to. He had a very bouncy swing feel, and I didn’t
like that. I liked a more smooth swing… a more legato type of
thing. So Mose wasn’t my bag but I have a lot of respect for him.
I dig tunes that he wrote and recorded and I like some of his

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

11

records. So you came in contact with him?
BD: He didn’t know I sang and I didn’t know he
sang. This is 1953 or 1954. We actually thought singing was kind of corny. I would never sing at a session
or anything like that. Now and then the agent would
say, “Anybody in the band sing?” And my pals would
say, “Well yeah the piano player can sing.” And then
I’d sing “Route 66” or “Straighten Up and Fly Right”
or some other song that I learned from Nat King Cole.
But at the Jam sessions we were playing piano.
JDW: Are you aware of the Art Tatum record, and I’m not
sure what year it was recorded (early 1940s), called “God is in
the House?” A Columbia student follows Art Tatum around to
after-hours jam sessions with a giant reel-to-reel tape recorder
and records Art Tatum, and he actually sings some tunes.
BD: Wow.
JDW: Yeah it’s some really interesting interpretations. What
got you singing more? How did that come about?
BD: At home after the 10 o’clock sessions ended at
my pad and everybody left, I used to put the damper
on my piano and play and sing. Sometimes I’d record
myself and listen to it, trying to make it better. And I
wanted to sing, but I’m afraid there was a little bit of
an attitude towards chick singers, you know (laughing). You know musicians sometimes in the old days…
I mean we dug Sarah Vaughan and Ruth Brown.
JDW: Had you guys heard of Betty yet?
BD: No, I don’t think we had. We dug the really
good ones, but the rest you know we just… it was a
joke almost. You would be playing a gig and someone
would come up, “Can I sing one?” And of course we
are modulating at the bridge and things like that. It
was good ear training, that’s all.
JDW: What are the singers you were aware of at that time?
BD: I liked all the horn players that sang. Trummy
Young, of course Louis… he is exemplary. Diz could
sing.
JDW: And Ella of course?
BD: Yeah, well you had to give it to her, such technique.
JDW: And Billy Holiday?
BD: Of course.
JDW: And I think Betty only came in on the scene a little bit
later, even though she was playing with Lionel Hampton in the
late 40s.
ite.

BD: I sort of missed her. I know she is your favor-

JDW: But she had a couple of hits with Ray Charles in the
early 50s.

12

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

BD: Oh, I loved that duet album.
JDW: So you were aware of her. That’s not my favorite recording of her but there are some sentimental things attached to
it. There were other singers of course, like Nat King Cole.
BD: Yeah and Joe Mooney.
JDW: And everyone was aware of the Mills Brothers.
BD: Yeah, and Jack Teagarden. You know, the cats
that would just sing like a band singer.
JDW: And how about Babs Gonzalez?
BD: Oh yeah, I loved him. We were pals.
JDW: How was that?
BD: Well, he was always on the scene. He could
probably tell right away that I was not the ordinary guy
I guess.
JDW: Did everyone call him Babs?
BD: Oh Yeah, we called him Babs and I actually
ordered his LP “Three Bips and a Bop” when I lived in
Texas before I moved to NYC. I thought, “You know
that’s hip, that’s some bebop singing.” So I had all
these bebop tunes in my head when I moved to New
York so I wasn’t concentrating on singing, except in my
quiet hour.
JDW: Tell me more about your friendship with Babs.
BD: He heard my record I think.
JDW: But your record is 1956, so you met Babs later?
BD: Yeah, it was relatively later. He was there one
night in a club and I said, “Well Babs, I got your LP,”
and he was always peddling his book.
JDW: That’s right, “paying them dues.”
BD: And he dressed so fabulously.
JDW: How about Eddie Jefferson or King Pleasure?
BD: I never got to know them. Annie Ross was my
first turn on in a way, because she did “Twisted.”
JDW: But wasn’t that with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross?
BD: Did she not do that before them?
JDW: She may have, not as far as I’m aware of. But the first
recording I heard on was with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross.
(Annie actually recorded it on her debut record in 1952).
BD: I used to go to Broadway plays if I could
scrape the money together. So once I read a review in
the post or something with the review from London
for a musical called “Cranks,” and that it starred a
fabulous singer. She is Ella Logan’s niece (her mother
and father were Scottish vaudevillians), so I paid the

money and went to see “Cranks.”
JDW: Oh, so she is a legacy.
BD: Yeah.
JDW: I didn’t know her aunt was a singer.
BD: Well, her aunt was an actress and a singer,
but that blurb made me say, “I gotta hear this.” It was
kind of a far out thing, kind of a review with some odd
songs. I don’t remember too much about it but I knew
Annie then. And then of course we used to hear jazz
radio and listen to Symphony Sid and all those guys.
Every night we could listen to the radio.
JDW: How about Johnny Hartman? That’s later right?
BD: Yeah, that’s later. I knew him a bit.
JDW: Or Andy Bey.
BD: Yeah.
JDW: How about Andy Bey and the Bey sisters?
BD: Yeah, I did know this record. You know, I
think I wrote an arrangement for the sisters.
JDW: They were something else. Andy Bey, yourself, and
Mark Murphy are three people on the top of my head that just
never got their due. Sometimes you just miss somebody in the
history of things. A great singer friend of mine, Kurt Elling,
invited me to come out and see him at Birdland when he was
singing with a group he organized called “Four Brothers” with
Jon Hendricks, Andy Bey, Mark Murphy, and of course Kurt.
While I’m a fan of all four singers separately, I went to see it and
I was slightly disappointed. One of the things that bothered me
was the crowd becoming ecstatic over seemingly, in my mind and
taste, meaningless scat lines. But the crowd was excited and they
would have cheered about anything. Don’t get me wrong, there
were great musical things happening.
BD: Yeah, I know what you mean.
JDW: But it was the first time that I really heard Andy Bey
live. I did have that Andy Bey and the Bey sisters record, and I
said, “This can’t be the same guy because this is just way too hip
or this guy is old.” And then I’m hanging out at the Zinc Bar one
night and in walks Andy Bey. There are only about 15 people in
the club and the band sees him and says, “You want to sit in?”
He says, “Sure” and they say, “What tune you wanna do?” He
just started singing. He didn’t ask for a pitch, he didn’t ask for
anything, he just started singing and he was a monster! I had to
take a step back. A friend of mine has a studio in Astoria and recently recorded a new album with Andy playing piano and singing and it sounds amazing. Hopefully this might be some sort of
comeback. I was just disappointed because I had those records
and then I saw that show. I want to add though that number
one, it can’t be magic every night. And number two, that show
was more of an entertainment type of show, a lot of vocalese.
BD: Yeah and he was saddled with three other guys
playing their roles.

JDW: There is something else I really admire about you. I
don’t consider myself an entertainer and I have not mastered,
possibly even out of interest, the showy aspect of performance.
From my view, you are also not an entertainer or showman in
the classic sense of the words. But I have seen you perform where
you just own the audience. I mean you own the audience. This
leads to a lot of other questions including the telling of a story,
as well as your writing skills and your intention. I’ve said this to
you before, I feel like you have more intention in your pinky than
I have in my whole being! Where do you think that comes from?
I mean, when one writes original songs it’s easier to mean what
you say because of the personal aspect. But when you are singing
a standard, you have to paint that picture in your mind or somewhere you’ve been in life that might be related to that subject
matter. So to be clear, what is your vantage point on intention
and the relationship with an audience and foundations of your
composing? We know it’s a symbiotic relationship with an audience; we give to them, they give to us. But you somehow grab the
audience. This is apparent even in the last show that I saw you
do a few months ago. I mean, you’re no spring chicken!
BD: (laughs)
JDW: I’m not mincing any words here. By no means do I
mean this as an insult. There have been better days of singing
for you and better days of playing the piano for you, and still
you were killing the audience and me that night. So, that comes
down to something deeper.
BD: Now, what do you mean by the intention in my
little finger?
JDW: It means you have more meaning in your being than I
could ever hope for. That’s what I meant, the depth of intention.
We’ve talked about this before in regards to your songwriting.
You showed me a demo tape of how you practice writing, how
you wrote music to an electric bill using the text on the bill, and
the instructions on a vomit bag from an airplane, writing songs
using the wording from all kinds of sources. How about when
you wrote the song “Love, Webster’s Dictionary.” I’m thinking, “How are you going to make a story out of this, drawing
from a definition in a dictionary?” But then you come to one
of the alternate definitions of the word: “Love in tennis means
no points.” And you add the phrase, “and you have nothing,”
and then you repeat the phrase, “and you have nothing.” And a
hand rips into my chest, and rips my heart out! You were able to
squeeze peaks and valleys of emotion out of a banal dry definition.
BD: Well, that’s songwriting!
JDW: But there is more than songwriting involved in that.
BD: Well maybe I’m a natural.
JDW: I don’t know what that means. Where are you as far
as headspace is concerned when you are composing? Even in
the School House Rock repertoire the subject matter is on the
surface. For example, you are singing about how a bill is created,
multiplication tables, parts of speech, and you are able to draw
depth and emotion through your interpretation. Is there a headspace you go to?
BD: Gee, (laughing) I think a lot about the song and

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

13

Scott Hyde
Bob Dorough - NYC 1956

what it means, and how I can put it over. In the old
days when I was a yeoman in New York, we’d go to the
Union and you’d hear an announcement, “Need a piano
player that sings!” And I’d grab the gig if I could. So I
am in this bar and it’s a very unfriendly audience and
I did my best. I would sing “Hong Kong Blues,” “Lazy
River,” Nat King Cole tunes, Hoagy Carmichael tunes,
maybe I learned a little about it then. My idea is to
make them hear the words like they never heard them
before. There are so many beautiful songs and people
toss them off too fast and too casually.
JDW: And the interpretation can vary from day to day, and
from mood to mood.
BD: Sure. I think I’ve stated this before with others
that my M.O. is trying to have people hear songs in a
way they have never heard them before.
JDW: I’ve always noticed that your enunciation is very
clear, and maybe even over enunciated sometimes to great effect,
but you are telling a story and that’s the bottom line. Throwing
away lyrics, or being flippant has always bothered me, like when
you might hear someone singing “Just Friends,” and it comes
off as a happy go lucky, snapping your fingers, “try the veal it’s
great!” cabaret parody, when in fact that lyrical content could
be interpreted as quite remorseful and filled with pain. But then
the reception of poetry or a story is up to the listener not the performer, so all we can do is add our emotional content and hope it
touches or comes across close to what we intended.

14

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

I’d like to get back to timelines and associations you’ve had.
You opened up for Nina Simone a number of times. How did
this come about and what was it like doing that during the Civil
Rights revolution?
BD: Well it was only because I knew Al Schackman. He and I were buddies and we even troubadoured
together. He was from Brooklyn and played guitar
for Belafonte and Nina. He and I went on a gig to St.
Thomas together and got stranded. We were trying to
have a quartet…you know we did that “Oliver” LP, an
instrumental excursion through “Oliver.” The guy that
made the MMO records (pre Aebersold play alongs), I
worked with him a little, and he was in love with the
show “Oliver” from London. He wanted me to do a jazz
version, so Al and I did the arrangements. So later on
he was rehearsing with Nina in Mt. Vernon and I happened to be up there with him, and he said, “Come on
over to the rehearsal,” and got to know her and she accepted me, although she was a toughie. Then I opened
for her at the Village Gate among other nights. (Laughing) Stewy would say I opened twice for her at the
Gate. She was late, and not in the best of moods at the
time, but she would say that she wanted Bob Dorough
to open for her.
JDW: She was quite outspoken, and we had the Civil Rights
movement happening during this period of the 60s, and she was
looked to by the black community as a spokesperson…

BD: She was kicking ass on the rights thing!
JDW: And then she asks YOU to open up for her? I am assuming the audiences were predominantly black?
BD: Yeah... I died (Laughing)
JDW: How were you received?
BD: Very coldly, because at that particular gig at
the Village Gate she was late. We played a set, just
Bill Takas and me. And we were in my dressing room
and suddenly the manager comes in, and Stuie was
there, Stuart Scharf, and the manager says, “Could you
play another set? She’s late but on her way in a
limousine.” And Stuie says, “No, you don’t open twice.
Here’s the way it works, you open and then the main
act comes on.” And then Al comes in and he’s very
nervous and he says, “I’ll play with you.” So I said
“Ok, let’s do another set.” So now we had a trio, and
she’s still not there. Bleecker Street is full of people
waiting for the second show, and the first show is
disgruntled as hell. And then finally she shows up
with James Baldwin I think. The two of them go up on
stage, and start say-ing I want my money, and these
white people don’t pay me my money. It was
ridiculous.
JDW: What was ridiculous?
BD: That they carried on this harang after being
late for the show. But finally she sang a few songs and
that ended it I guess. That was a terrible night.
JDW: But you had played other gigs opening for her, right?
BD: Yeah.
JDW: And they weren’t all like that?
BD: No.
JDW: Why did she ask you specifically to open for her?
BD: (Laughing) She’d let me sing, and she said,
“That white boy’s OK,” or words to that effect. Most
of our hanging out was at her rehearsals. I don’t know.
For some reason she mentioned my singing “Memphis
in June” was really good, and when we did a tribute for
Nina at Carnegie Hall with four female singers singing
her repertoire. Al was the band leader, and I was the
piano player. Al said that I was going to sing “Memphis
in June” because Nina dug it.
JDW: So you had a personal relationship with her?
BD: Yes, and her husband, Andy.
JDW: I’m sorry for jumping around with the timeline, but
want to clarify some things. You were drafted in the Army during WW2 and decided to get into the Army band?
BD: I was drafted but I didn’t decide to try for the
Army band, it just happened. I went to college for three
semesters at Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas, because it
was close to where my parents lived in Plainview. The
Bandmaster was very good and I was writing a lot of
music and was even writing a varsity show when I got

drafted. So here I am at Camp Hulen in the asshole of
Texas as we called it, doing what you have to do when
you get in the Army. Crawling through mud and all
that, and I’m finishing up the arrangements for the
Varsity show and shipping them back to Lubbock. Suddenly it turned out that the band director from Texas
Tech knew the Warrant officer in this camp. So one day
the loudspeaker said, “Private Dorough, report to HQ
and bring all your gear.” And I thought, “Oh my God,
bring all my gear?” Way down in the bottom of my
duffle bag was my clarinet, which I hadn’t dared show.
The camp was half northerners and half southerners, so there were a lot weird people I was meeting…
hardly any black people in that camp as it was before
the Army was fully desegregated. Anyway, so there
were weird people so I didn’t dare take out the clarinet. I was a timid guy. I went over to Head Quarters
and said, “Private Dorough reporting as ordered.” And
they said, “Get in that Jeep, you’re going to the Band.”
It was like a heaven sent relief. That was the beginning
of my education. Some of the northerners were already
jamming and trying to play like Lester Young.
JDW: You told me before that you’d sit around and listen to
records with these guys.
BD: Yeah, they had record players and hot plates.
They were living the life. We did have to play drills and
later on concerts. So I had almost three years in two
different bands.
JDW: And so the war ends, and you continued college at
Texas Normal School, which eventually turned into the University of North Texas?
BD: Well by then it was called North Texas State
Teachers College, NTSTC.
JDW: We’ve already talked about singers you respected, but
who were some you may have been influenced by if any?
BD: Pretty much the same ones I respected...
Trummy Young, Teagarden, and the ones who also
played instruments. You know, natural musician type
singing. When I made “Devil May Care,” I wanted to
call it, “A Jazzman Sings.” That was my viewpoint. I’d
have to say that during this period my favorite was Joe
Mooney. He had a very hip quartet and made a few recordings. Basically he was an organist who could sing. I
used to read Downbeat Magazine when I was in Texas,
and read an article about Joe who it was said took up
the accordion on a dare. People apparently told him
accordions don’t swing, so he got one. He had clarinet
and bass, guitar and himself on vocals and accordion.
JDW: Many recordings?
BD: Yeah I had two 10-inchers of his. He had creative arrangements.
JDW: How about the pop jazz singers of the time like Frank
Sinatra?
BD: I sort of admired him, I envied his fame.
JDW: He was a pop star.

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

15

BD: Yeah. I didn’t really rate him that high actually.

something very meaningful there. What was your trial of fire for
writing these songs? Or any writing for that matter?

JDW: There are certainly things about him that I respect,
most of it was consistency of sound and a little swing. He never
really did anything that took me anywhere, except the work with
Nelson Riddle and the Basie Band. But who isn’t going to sound
good with Basie or Riddle? I suppose I was never a big fan.

BD: Well I wrote some real dogs in my life (laughing) but I started writing in high school.

BD: That was my viewpoint too. He was a phenomenon.
JDW: One of the nice elements of the pop jazz era was
swing, and he could swing and could dig in every now and again.
I recently saw the documentary they did on him and actually disliked him even more after watching that than I did before. Some
of that was dislike of him as a person with certain facts revealed,
and it showed how he was kind of a pop music brat, but there is
a nostalgia of the songs he sang that has nothing to do with his
musicianship.
BD: He was a lucky guy. They rave about his phrasing, and it’s pretty good I think. He puts the words
together in a way that I would want to do it.
JDW: We’ve had conversations in the past about record
labels putting people out there prematurely, because they are surrounded by immense talent, and receiving an education…
BD: Getting better, yeah.
JDW: I’m sure our learning process was similar, in that
when I was in my teens I was always tagging along with the best
players around, who kinda looked down on me, but would let me
sing, offered encouragement and I was learning. That couldn’t
be stopped. So surrounding myself with people who were very
talented made me who I am.
BD: That’s smart.
JDW: I guess my point is that I was always more interested
in peer acceptance than public acceptance, which could be a
mistake for a career. I also strayed from a classical voice career
as a teen to sing jazz because my parents liked me singing classical music more than jazz. It was a rebellion of sorts, playing in
clubs in my early teens. I say all of this to ask you, what did your
parents think of what you were doing and what type of musical
impact did the people with whom you surrounded yourself have
on you?
BD: I don’t think my parents thought much of it.
As I’ve said, I never put my singing forward. I figured
I’d do it my own way when the time comes. The jam
sessions, the loft scene, and records were my schooling.
JDW: When I look at you as a musician, I see your strong
points as, not necessarily in this order: your interpretation, song
writing, piano playing, and your singing. These things combined
have proved to be a deadly weapon. It’s hard to explain the
influence you’ve had on a number of generations of musicians,
because you are kind of an elusive figure. From Miles to School
House Rock is quite a stretch and yet employ the same fundamental elements, those being serious depth and intention. I mean
School House Rock songs were not “Barney” songs. There is

16

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

JDW: And you were writing from the piano?
BD: No I was just writing in my head while still
learning ear training and playing the clarinet in the
high school band. I’d write in my head and still remember some of those songs. I think I sing one of them for
the impending documentary. (Starts to sing, “Sittin’
On My Doorstep”...) But I was doing this in my head
while doing farm work. I don’t think I wrote any song
worth hearing until I was in the Army band. One of
the other musicians in the band suggested we write a
song, so I said ok.
JDW: Just tunes? Or for a particular instrumentation?
BD: We wrote them for the Army band, and the
bandmaster said, that’s pretty good, have you ever
heard of Rodgers and Hart? I said, “I guess, I don’t
know.” So he actually bought me some sheet music of
their work and said, “This is real songwriting,” and I
made a little study. I didn’t go overboard. I never really
set my mind on being a songwriter. I thought if I was
going to play and sing, I was going to do standards
yeah, but thought later that maybe I need a song that’s
more about me. So I’d say I wrote maybe two or three
pretty good ones.
JDW: Your first record was 1956, but you were writing
some of the originals that appeared before that date, and
everybody knows “Devil May Care.”
BD: Yea, the guy that helped me write “Devil May
Care…”
JDW: What do you mean helped you?
BD: Well we lived in the same building. He wasn’t
a pro, but he studied composition, and he said to me,
“let’s write a song.” He knew I was pretty good at
the piano and arranging and things like that. So he’d
knock on my door every morning and say, “I got an
idea,” and one day I said, “yeah what?” We’re both
drinking coffee. He would come up early. He was on
the second floor and I was on the fourth in that same
building I spoke of. So he says, “Devil May Care,” and
I said, “Aw, I’m sure they wrote that already it’s so
trite.” So he said he would check it out. He goes to the
New York library, and the next day he says that there
are six of them. And I said, “Do they all say ‘you don’t
love me anymore, you’re so devil may care?’” And he
said, “pretty much.” And I said, “OK, we’ll do a different one!” I only had two original tunes on the first
album.
JDW: What was the other one? “You’re the dangerous
type?”
BD: Yeah.
JDW: And on “Just about Everything.”

BD: A generation later (laughing).
JDW: Yeah, 10 years in between your first two recordings.
BD: Yes 1956, 1966, and then 1976.
JDW: Is that right? But you did the School House Rock
music in between the second and third record.
BD: School House Rock was the early 70s.
JDW: So you had some time in between these records where
a lot of the fascinating stories of the associations you’ve had
took place. When the whole Zelig thing of “he’s everywhere with
everyone” happened.
BD: See I just sort of go with the flow.
JDW: It led you to some amazing places. I know you’ve
called yourself a troubadour, which falls in line with your life’s
events and what I would consider a magical story. And again, I
always enjoyed listening to those stories, like a 10-year-old kid,
those nights when I crashed at your place after gigs at the Deer
Head Inn. Listening to stories of the legends of this music, as
well as historical, literary, comic and sports figures of the 20th
century was quite meaningful and well, downright entertaining.
I mean iconic figures like Lenny Bruce…how did that happen?
BD: (Laughing) Let’s see, I went to L.A. to record
for Mode. They made some pretty good LPs out in L.A.
Bethlehem records folded. So Red Clyde said, “Come
on out to L.A., I’m working for a new label called
Mode, and you can make a new album.” I said, “What
about Bethlehem? I’m under contract…” and he says
they’re folding. So I got to L.A. somehow, and one of
the first days while staying with a friend there named
Terry Morel I visited Mode Records. Terry was a singer
from Philly. She’s the one that actually introduced me
to Miles. So I said, “I’m here, when can I make a
record?” Suddenly in comes Lenny... “blah blah blah,
blah blah blah blah.” He had a record deal going with
them. But he was speaking very rapidly, said hi to
Terry for a bit, ignored me, did his business and then
he cut out. I said, “who was that?” She said, “oh that
was a come-dian named Lenny Bruce. He hangs out
with the jazz cats and works at this place where Joe
Maini and Jack Sheldon jam.” So I got to know him a
little bit and he had heard me sing somewhere, and
one night he got me a gig. I went up to the really highclass club where he was opening for a big band. Maybe
Buddy Rich or Woody Herman. Then out in the hall at
intermission he said, “Call this guy, he’s looking for a
piano player that sings. You know, it’s some work for
you.” So I got a six-month gig playing piano and
singing in Holly-wood.
JDW: Lenny got you the gig?
BD: Yeah.
JDW: Were you opening up for him?
BD: No, he just got me the gig in a bar, and the
owner played the drums after he got drunk when his
friends would come in. But he never bothered me otherwise. So there I was practicing my repertoire.

JDW: What year was that?
BD: Those were my L.A. years, maybe 1958, and
before meeting Miles. I was there almost three years.
There were a lot of good friends in that circle.
JDW: Lenny was in that circle of friends?
BD: Oh yeah. He was hanging out, especially with
Jack Sheldon and Joe Maini.
JDW: So you guys would all hang out?
BD: Yeah, and after a while he wanted me to play
his show. I was the pit. The only guy in the pit! He had
a two-week show called, “A sick evening with Lenny
Bruce.” He wrote a ballad that I wish I could remember. I had to learn it by ear and accompany him. It
was a really kind of a heavy ballad. He had a couple
of actors. He had put it together in San Francisco and
brought it to L.A. Then I opened for him at two or
three different jazz clubs with a combo and then again
in San Francisco very near the end. By this time he was
nothing but law in his act.
JDW: Were any of the shows interrupted by the police?
BD: No.
JDW: His arrests for obscenity law violations are of course
something that many remember.
BD: I wasn’t there for that, but he was a junky till
the end. He used to bring his bags to the gig and take
them away after the gig to the hotel, because the “shit”
was in there and he didn’t dare leave it in the dressing
room at the club. So he arrives to the gig with his bags,
does his show and splits.
JDW: What kind of things did you guys talk about?
BD: Well I wasn’t a doper, and I’m sure he let his
hair down more in a situation with other people who
were using, so our conversations were kind of superficial. But he dug me and wanted to help me.
JDW: See if you had only played along and did the “misery”
you could have had much deeper relationships. Then again you
might not be around to tell me about it!
BD: (Laughing)
JDW: How did you avoid getting involved with Heroin?
BD: The first job I had in New York was with a big
band, and on the road I roomed with the bass player.
The first night on the road in Toronto back in the hotel
room after the show, he started moaning and groaning. I turned on the light, and saw he had dumped his
mattress on the floor. I said, “Paul what’s the matter?”
He said, “Aw man I need a fix, I’m sick.” So at about 8
a.m. he said, “I’m going out.” He came back and said,
“Bobby, would you just stand guard at the bathroom in
the hall?” It was a cheap hotel. So I’m standing outside
this bathroom door, and I hear him moaning again. Finally I said, “Paul are you alright?” I opened the door,

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

17

tions and not the timeline, so I’ll just
name some names. Blossom Dearie,
Dave Frishberg, Allen Ginsburg, and
Donald Fagan?
BD: Blossom was an excellent
singer and such a tailored artist and great pianist. Dave came
much later in my life. Donald was
such a great songwriter.
JDW: I am a huge fan of Donald’s
writing. His erudite lyrics and melancholy drenched passion. You had an
association with him as well however
short-lived. You performed with him
right?
BD: Yeah.
JDW: Did you approach him or did
he approach you?

Larry Fink

BD: He came to me. I knew
Libby Titus before she married
him. She must have said something to him about me. So he
asked me to play some room with
the name Texas in the name in
the West Village…

and there he was: blood, a tie and needle hanging and
blood coming down his arm.
JDW: He wasn’t doing it very well!
BD: (Laughs) I said, “Paul, what’s that?” Well I
knew what it was. He said, “Don’t ever do this.”
JDW: And that stayed with you?
BD: Yeah.
JDW: I mean that was the thing. Bird did it and everyone
felt they had to as well if they wanted to get to where Bird was.
BD: I’m sure he regretted it… that he had that
image. I think it has been voiced. I’m not a scholar. I
just loved his recordings. We had lots of tapes of Bird.
Bootleg tapes. Chuck Lilly was one of the guys. We
went to the Diplomat Hotel where Bird played a prom
dance for black prom kids. Chuck just put his Wollensak tape recorder on the stage and turned it on. And
we had the William Henry Hotel tape that was made
by Joe Maini… that basement jam pad. Another tape
that was recorded by Al Porcino recorded at the
Apollo Theater, “Bird with Strings.” We had three
shows, the same tunes with different solos.
JDW: I’m racking my brain to talk about more folks with
whom you’ve been associated, since I only recall your associa-

18

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

JDW: He was writing songs for
people before he did the Steely Dan
thing.

BD: Oh yeah. I caught on to him later. I think it
was Bill Goodwin who asked me if I had heard Gaucho.
JDW: That’s around 1980, about 10 years after Steely Dan
got started.
BD: On the gig I did a tune of my own at the piano.
He played piano as well, and was damn good! He,
Libby and I sang a Lambert, Hendricks and Ross song
called “Come On Home.” He had sent me a tape of it
and we performed it. That’s all there was to it, one
night’s work.
JDW: It’s an interesting combination for me because one of
the things that I get from your music, and what I’m drawn to
when I listen to music in general is a melancholy. This yearning for something or a feeling that I’ve had before, or a time I’d
like to relive. I get that from your writing and performing, and
I get that from Donald’s as well. This is a big common element
between the two of you for me.
BD: We might be kindred souls!
JDW: It comes as no surprise to me that there was some
kind of attraction to each other, except for the genre difference
and generation gap in which you were both ensconced. Anyone
who knows about Donald knows he was a huge jazz fan and
quite knowledgeable of the music with early Steely Dan tunes
like “Parker’s Band,” and “East St. Louis Toodle-oo.” I suppose
the main thing that struck me was your two names tied together,

and the common elements that you both exuded. The melancholy
factor… that longing nostalgia for past days in what you both
do and it’s a sweet pain. Maybe it’s the misery loves company
factor... the blues.
BD: Basically I’m not a blues man.
JDW: Yes. Let’s draw the distinction between blues and
being soulful then? I came relatively late in life to your music.
I was a classically trained singer and had an aversion to the
untrained singer. That being said, I had a teacher who once told
me I needed to listen to more Chet Baker, to which I replied, “I
don’t like his singing because it was a wimpy, droopy, dogish…
an untrained voice.” She told me, “Well that may be true, but
he means what he says and you don’t.” She was right! So that
opened up a whole new world in my early 20s to the search
for intention in singers regardless of the respect I had for their
instrument. The search for emotional connection. Male musicians talk to each other in a complimentary fashion that laymen
or business people do not. Grown men musicians say things like,
“you really moved me, I love what you do,” or numerous common
phrases we use to acknowledge other’s creativity. These are not
generally used in the male working atmosphere. No one says,
“The way you handle that shovel touches my soul!” But in music
you have this.
BD: (Laughing) The camaraderie among musicians
was a savior for me, because I was a little bit ill at ease
in my early childhood days. I wasn’t a good fighter, or a
good ball player, and then suddenly I was a band member and felt this family feeling that musicians have. I
finally felt at ease and that this was where I belonged.
JDW: Yeah, inviting my childhood friends over to
my house as a kid and playing some Benjamin Britton or
Stravinsky just didn’t seem to do it for them.
BD: (laughs)
JDW: One of the things I’ve enjoyed in our relationship were
times when you would come to town and call me up and just
say, “Let’s go see some music.” The music was never mainstream
jazz. It was always cutting edge progressive music whether it
was classical or otherwise. The point being that you wanted to
continually expand.
BD: Yeah. I recall when living in Texas I would order some Monk records and while listening some guys
would say, “What’s that? What do you want to hear
that for?”
JDW: Hearing some of your answers confirms what I already suspected about your vast tastes. Who were some of your
piano influences?
BD: I liked Bud Powell a lot. I liked Horace Silver a little bit. I liked most of the sidemen with Bird,
and even a little Teddy Wilson. I tended to gravitate
towards something new. I was in a jam session and
different cats were playing, and suddenly I heard this
sound. I turned around and there behind me was Ornette Coleman with a plastic alto! I said to the bassist,
“Who’s that?” He whispered, “That’s Ornette… Ornette Coleman.” Wow! This was when I was in L.A. It
was a hot time for this music. Paul Bley and Carla Bley,

their bands, they’d all do the Jam session thing. I think
it was around 1957-1959.
JDW: Can you think of any other people of note with whom
you have worked that I’ve missed?
BD: Well, I produced “Spanky and our Gang,”
which was a result of accompanying Chad Mitchell.
Chad Mitchel was a doing a solo act with Stuart Scharf
on guitar. Walter Raim was his producer. I met Walter
at the Union and he asked me if I wanted a job. “What
kind of job?” I asked. “Playing for Chad Mitch-el. He
wants to sing pop tunes.” So I did that job which led
me to meet Spanky, which led me to meet the Fugs
and then to Ginsburg. Although I don’t know if Ginsburg knew about my jazz and poetry album from L.A.,
but he was looking for an arranger and I had arranged
for the Fugs. So I spent some time learning the songs
he had written. He claimed Blake wrote them. That he
was getting it out of the air. He was a cute little guy.
JDW: Tell me about your work with Art Garfunkel.
BD: I sang on a record of his that went gold. I got a
gold record! (laughing) I think I sang on two songs and
arranged a couple as well. That was in the 70s after
Spanky. I also had the pleasure of working with Maya
Angelou. While I was playing my regular gig at the
Mars Club in Paris, probably in 1954, “Porgy and Bess”
came to town. Truman Capote was accompanying
them, and they were going to Russia after Paris. I never got to meet Truman. The Mars Club was sort of an
English-speaking club for tourists. Well, it was strictly
English speaking, on the Right Bank. People from that
show started dropping in the club. So one day the boss
whose name was Ben says to me that I have to accompany Maya Angelou. I said, “Who’s that?” (laughing)
He said that she was kind of a calypso singer.
JDW: I only know her as a poet and author.
BD: She was in the dance troupe and would come
by the Mars Club along with a few other very talented
people to sit in. She had a two-week engagement at the
club and I accompanied her. I had to learn all of these
tunes because I didn’t really know calypso.
JDW: How was she?
BD: She was good. Excellent. It was very strange,
as she later wrote an account of it in one of her books.
She said something like, “When I heard his voice, my
blood went cold” because of my southern accent. She
had been raped as a child or something to that effect
by a white southerner. But she said that I had an ear
like a crystal, which was a compliment. She eventually
warmed up to me and we hung out. She got over my accent and realized that not all white southerners where
the kind she knew. We became good friends.
JDW: I’m afraid to even ask for more names as I know the
list goes on and on. What year did you move to Pennsylvania?
BD: Around 1966. My daughter Aralee was just
ready for public school. I was living in Long Island
City, the next neighborhood over from where we are

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

19

Scott Hyde

Bob Dorough, Russ Savakus, Sam Herman - October 1955

now, and her mother, Corine, came back from a visit
from the elementary school Aralee was to attend… We
were making a living but we were poor. So she said the
school was terrible and I said, “Let’s just move to the
Poconos.”
JDW: Why the Poconos?
BD: Because I had already worked at the Mt. Airy
Lodge with Bob Newman, my old jamming buddy in
N.Y. before I had left for L.A. Before I worked there I
didn’t even know where the Poconos were… I knew
New Jersey was next after New York City but… (laughing). So I took the gig because I needed the job and dug
the gig because I liked the drummer Jerry Segal. He’s
the one that plays on “Devil May Care.” I wound up
working there a year and a half, and then another year
after Aralee was born. Bob used to book big bands for
special events at the Mt. Airy Lodge, and that’s how a
lot of cats came out from N.Y. to PA and fell in love
with the country. At first I was living at the Mt. Airy
Lodge because I was a bachelor. Then I got mar-ried
and decided to live here. I decided I didn’t want to
work the Lodge anymore, but thought I was still close
enough to New York living here in Mt. Bethel. We
bought a small house in our price range and stayed
here ever since.

20

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

JDW: But you added on to that house right?
BD: Have I? (laughing)
JDW: Yes that’s a practice room to die for, with the cathedral ceilings and glass wall looking out into nature. The first
time I came to your house I was thinking, “This is the great Bob
Dorough, what is he doing living in this small little house?” And
then you walk inside and it expands into a beautiful spacious
yet comfortable home, the expansion being out of sight from the
road.
BD: So in a way, living out there took me off the
scene. I feel like I didn’t really do that much in New
York in my life. Partly because of the cabaret card business, the exile, and then the move to Pennsylvania.
JDW: If you moved to the Poconos in 1966 then it was just a
few years until the School House Rock work came along.
BD: Yeah, I was dabbling in advertising music too
in between those years too with Ben Tucker. He’s one
of my main buddies, as we had played together in L.A.
We both moved back to New York at about the same
time. That’s when I wrote “Comin' Home Baby.” Then
we wrote a couple of others like “Baby You Should
Know It.” Ben was very important in my life, but he
wanted to write advertising music and jingles so we did

a few. We started a business.
JDW: Well it seemed to have caught the ear of somebody.
BD: Yeah. It was he that had met George Newall
of School House Rock. George told Ben that his boss
was looking for someone to put multiplication tables
and such to music. Ben told him, “Bob Dorough, he
can put anything to music.” And he played my “Pop
Art” album, the one you mentioned a while ago, and
another one called, “This is a recording.” Stuart died
and he had the label in California for these recordings
also including “I’m Beginning To See The Light” with
just Takas and me.
JDW: You recorded “Devil May Care” in New York
with Takas, and then he recorded with you on some of these
other recordings. Had he moved out to L.A.?
BD: No. He and I just troubadoured up and down
the west coast: Seattle to L.A. and even down to San
Diego. Stuart said to me that he had a series called
“Concerts by the Sea,” which Errol Garner had made
famous as a club. Irene Kral opened up for me with
Alan Broadbent.
JDW: Was this in San Francisco? Because there’s a great
club that I’ve played there called Half Moon Bay, or the Bach
Dancing and Dynamite Society. Was that it?
BD: No, this was L.A., but I have played that Club.
The BDDS… Pete Douglas the longtime owner just
died.
JDW: I had heard that. He was such an enthusiast.
BD: Such great fans and listeners there. Great audiences.
JDW: I recall the same.
BD: So Takas and I recorded live at the Concerts by
the Sea. Takas never moved out there, he was just
there for our tours and concerts. Takas was good
friends with the actor Howard Hesseman who was on
WKRP in Cincinnati, and he would crash at his house
while in California. We also became friends with Gary
Goodrow the actor/comedian. I had a whole
Hollywood gang that I hung out with.
JDW: You had a part in a movie right?
BD: Yeah. I’ve been in a few.
JDW: Tell me about them.
BD: Well I was in an episode of “Have gun will
travel,” and “Chasers.” James Coburn was a pal of
mine. We all used to have these soirees in L.A., and
he was a music-loving fan. He helped me through that
gig. I went and read the part. It was a weekly series, a
cowboy show. Richard Boone played the hero, Paladin.
James played my big brother, and I got shot by
Paladin.
JDW: Sorry about that…
BD: (Laughing) Some day these and more stories

will come out in the Documentary. Paul Bley was one
of the cats that used to come and play at #333 East
75th Street and was damn good. Then I got stranded
in L.A. for three years. I always say I got stranded
three times: Chicago, L.A. and St. Louis.
JDW: What was the St. Louis situation?
BD: Well let’s see, when I lived in L.A. I met Tommy Wolf. “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,”
that guy. I knew his song and could sing it, and he
talked me into being in his next musical to take place
in St. Louis at the Crystal Palace. I said, “I’m not an
actor, I’m just a cabaret singer.” He said, “But no, you
gotta do this, I want you to play Dove Linkhorn!” So I
got the novel and read it. He talked me into it. I packed
up all my stuff in L.A., put it in a car, drove to Amarillo to visit my parents, and then on to St. Louis to act in
“A Walk On the Wild Side.” They made a movie out of
it, but this was a musical and was closer to the book, a
novel by Nelson Algren. Sometimes I say on stage that
I played the part of an ignorant Texas teenager. Natural casting (laughing)! We ran the show three weeks,
and there wasn’t much money, but I was having a good
time there with a free apartment. Then I took a bar gig
for another couple of months, packed up my stuff and
came back to New York.
JDW: I’m exhausted. Such a colorful and eventful life!
BD: (Laughing) Well you asked for it!
JDW: Many people don’t know you by name until you
explain that you are that quirky white singer on Miles Davis’
Sorcerer album, Blue XMas, or that you are “the School House
Rock guy.” How did you first come to know Miles Davis? How
did he approach you about singing on his records, and what were
your reactions to this invitation?
BD: I used to hear Miles all the time for about 10
years or so in my New York days, but I couldn’t get
close to him. He didn’t seem interested in talking to
his fans, especially white ones maybe, or at least I
thought. I was in L.A. to make that second recording
that I had talked about that never happened on Mode
records, and as I said before, stayed there for three
years. Miles came out to L.A. for a three week engagement - I can’t remember the name of the club right
now, and I wasn’t even going to go because it was a
lot of money and I had heard him before. It turned out
that he would crash at a house in Laurel Canyon owned
by a trumpet player named Kenny Bright. I knew his
wife and his son. Roberta inhabited the house, but I
don’t recall if they were separated or divorced. In her
attic was an apartment rented out to my friend Terry
Morel, that singer from Philly that we’ve talked about.
Terry seemed to know everyone. As a Cabaret singer in
Philly, she always had a lot of money, and every time a
hot band would come to the main club Terry would be
there and knew all the cats, including Miles. So apparently Miles, in a moment of boredom while staying at
the Bright house, went up to talk to Terry about the
Philly days. Terry always kept my LP right on the front
of her record shelf. So there I was with that silly grin,
staring out from the shelf and somehow caught Miles’

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

21

Scott Hyde

Dorough’s apartment jam session - 1954

eye.
JDW: Of course that was your first offering, “Devil May
Care.”
BD: Yes. I had yet to record my second, as it was
about 1958 or 1959 when this all happened. He asked
her, “Who’s that?” And she told him, “That’s my buddy
Bob, he plays piano and sings and writes songs.” She
said Miles asked to hear a little. Then he came back the
next day and apparently asked to put it on again and
listened to the whole thing. Anyway, she said, “Let’s go
to the gig.” I scraped up some money and we went with
Terry. Sure enough, Miles is walking around after playing his chorus. The other guys (Cannonball, Coltrane,
Jimmy Cobb, Paul Chambers, I can’t remember who
was on piano) are playing their solos and he’s walking around the room when Terry got his attention. She
said, “Miles, this is my friend I was telling you about!”
So that was my official introduction to Miles. I thought
he’d say, “I like your LP man,” or something like that,
but instead he whispered in my ear and grabbed me
by the wrist with a firm grip and said, “Bob, go up

22

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

and sing Baltimore Oriole.” I was dumbfounded. He
dragged me up to the bandstand, and I knew all the
cats up there, at least superficially. There was a lull
on the stand, maybe a bass or piano solo going on,
and Miles says, “Take a break, Bob’s gonna sing one.”
(Laughing) So he left me there with drums and bass,
and well, I didn’t know what to do but sing it! I said
to Paul Chambers, “It’s in F minor, just follow me,”
and I launched into my version of “Baltimore Oriole,”
which of course was one ad-libbed chorus - and then a
little rhythm - take it out. Nothin’ to it! Then I didn’t
know what to do. I don’t recall how the applause was
or anything. I was in a trance. But I did it, and Paul,
Jimmy and I walked off the stage and there was an
intermission. Miles didn’t say much. He didn’t come on
too strong, but I started hanging out at the club and he
asked me for a ride a few times. I didn’t sing anymore
but would give him rides after the gig to some place
or another. Probably to meet a girl or something, and
then sometimes home to Roberta’s when he wanted to
crash. Paul Horn was instrumental in cementing our
relationship. Paul had known Miles for many years,
and he threw a party at his house in the Valley. We

were all invited, including Terry Morel and Lee Wilder,
who was another great personality in Hollywood. I
guess she was a DJ and had worked in radio, collected
records, knew everybody, and was married to musicians. It was a nice party. Everybody was out by the
pool. Miles was there, and said to me, “Let’s go inside,
and sing me a song.” So we went into the studio where
it was shady where there was a piano. Naturally I
played the toughest tunes that I knew.
JDW: Like what? “Nothing like you?”
BD: Yeah, I had already written that. And “Spring
Can Really Hang You Up the Most,” and I guess “Devil
may Care.” He’d just prop his elbows on the spinet
piano and lean there and listen. He wouldn’t say a
word, but apparently he dug it.
did.

JDW: Nice. Well if he’s asking you for more he obviously

BD: Yep. So that happened a couple of times where
I had occasions to sing for him. Then he left town, gave
me his number and shortly after that I went back to
New York and would call him and hang out a little bit.
I knew his wife, Frances Taylor. I remember once when
I was up at the house and he said, “We’re listening to
tape.” He was listening to that day’s takes of “Sketches
of Spain,” and man it was so fabulous! I guess he was
picking out his mistakes or takes he liked. He didn’t
tell me about the sessions or maybe I could have gone.
But anyway, I was privy to the advance notices of this
recording as it were.
Our relationship continued. I guess it was about
1962. I was working at Mt. Airy Lodge and my daughter Aralee was one year old. I’m living there in a little
rented house for the summer gig. I hadn’t been there
for a few years. As we spoke of before, I had worked
the gig as a bachelor but now I was married. One day
the phone rings, and it was Miles. I said, “What’s happening Miles?” He said, “Bob, I want you to write me
a Christmas song.” I said, “A Christmas song?!” I was
dumbfounded again! He was really a wild man. He
went right to the nitty gritty I guess you could say. He
said, “Harold Lovett will explain it.” Harold was his
lawyer at that time in the summer of 1962.
JDW: Why would he have his attorney explain to you what
he wanted musically?
BD: Well, Miles might not have had my phone number, and maybe said to Harold, “Where’s that phone
number for Bob?” I don’t know, maybe they hung out a
little and talked about it and Miles just didn’t feel like
explaining it all. So Harold explained that Columbia
Records was making a composite for Christmas, and
he wanted me to write Miles a song because he didn’t
want to play “that Jingle Bell shit.” Miles came back
on the phone on a second line and said, “And you’re
gonna sing it with me!” I said, “Wow, ok, I’ll give it a
try Miles. It’s great hearing from you,” and then he was
gone (laughing). So I went right to work. Wouldn’t you?
JDW: Absolutely. So what is going on in your mind? What
is your approach when you are writing a song specifically for

Miles to record? That’s a heavy request to fill.
BD: That was a fabulous charge. I started thinking
about it right away, and immediately conceived that
this wasn’t going to be a “jolly noel” tune of any kind. I
got the idea of Blue Christmas, and then just to make
it a little more gritty, lets call it “XMas.” So I wrote
Blue XMas. I guess I added the parenthesis later “to
whom it may concern.” So when I started it, I got just
the idea - the first riff, “Blue XMas” (and then sings
the lyr-ics for the first verse). It was a long labor,
which took about two weeks. So then I called Miles, “I
got the song, Miles.” He says, “Ok, come down
Tuesday night and we’ll check it out.” So I head into
New York on Tuesday to his house, went into the
basement where he had a small piano, and there was
Gil Evans. Now I also knew Gil because we had played
opposite each other in the Village. I was working at the
Riviera, and Gil was playing at Nick’s across the street.
He’d come over and dig me, and I’d go over and listen
to the Dixieland band he was with. I was playing with
a bass-less trio: piano, clarinet, and drums with no
singing. He professed to be interested in my playing,
and I knew who he was because I’d heard about him in
the army. So Miles says, “Play it for Gil.” So I’m
singing “Blue XMas” over and over while Gil took notes.
Miles rearranged the format a bit which I discovered
the next day during the record-ing session (which I
had only learned about that night) (laughing). Gil must
have stayed up all night, as I didn’t see him again that
week, but he sent the arrangements in by messenger
service. Miles also asked me to play “Nothing Like
You” for Gil and he also took notes. He basically
transcribed what I played by ear.
So there we were in the Columbia recording
studios, and I’m looking around and in comes Paul
(Chambers) and Jimmy (Cobb), and I’m feeling pretty
good because they were the tightest friends out of all
those guys. Then here comes Wayne Shorter, and he
says, “Oh wow, what are you doing here Bob?” We
knew each other from various sessions. I said, “Well,
I’m gonna sing a song with Miles.” He says, “This is
my first date with Miles.” The music was for trombone, tenor, trumpet, bass, drums and voice. So then
in came Frank Rehak, a valve bone player and we were
ready to go. Apparently Miles had been hoping to get
J.J. Johnson, and then I hear that there is no pianist
and I’m thinking that maybe I’m gonna play. I’m sitting
at the Steinway wondering, so I go to see Miles in the
control room while everyone is looking at the charts
and warming up. Miles is on the phone trying to get a
piano player. This was a real comedy. He actually put
in a call to Bill Evans who couldn’t come because he
was recording his own album at Nola’s. He apparently
tried to call Red Garland who said he was in Philly and
can’t make the session. So I pipe up and say, “Miles, I
can play it!” And he’s still on the phone ignoring me.
So I go back to the piano and am warming up my voice
getting ready. I figured it’s gonna be a tough shoot with
a guy like Miles.
Finally, he comes out and starts the session. He
saw me at the piano and said not to play. We spent
most of the time on “Blue XMas.” I said, “Miles, these
tunes are new and they are tough, I need some piano to
keep me on.” So he says, “Just play the opening chord
then lay out.” I said to myself, “He told Monk to lay

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

23

out, why shouldn’t he tell me?” (Laughing) It was a real
comedy. I guess I was a little uptight, but I suppose my
professionalism that I had developed over the years
was telling me that I have to do this and do this well,
because I may not get another chance.
He took some time working on the chart with
the horns and making sure everybody knew the format,
and then we were off. In my memory I recall one take,
but subsequent visits to the vaults of Columbia records
shows a lot of little short takes. Many people ask me
what kind of producer Miles was, and I say he was
very good because he didn’t waste any time. We’d play
four bars and he’d whistle, “Stop, no, blah blah, blah.”
Whatever it was he was critiquing. We’d do it again
and stop after eight bars and the same thing happened.
So he wasn’t wasting anybody’s time. Finally we took
off and I sang. Wayne Shorter played three choruses of
the B-flat minor blues and we were out of there. Then
he says, “Let’s do “Nothing like you.”

and considered him a friend, but dropped that idea
after this change. By this point I’m a daddy and trying to earn a living and keep my family together, and I
didn’t have a lot of time to hang out with crazy people
(laughs). So I went out and bought the “Sorcerer” and
once again it was the last track on the LP. Again, it was
quite an anomaly, because it was a different band from
the rest of the LP. He had Tony (Williams), Herbie
Hancock, Ron Carter, and Wayne Shorter was the only
connection.
JDW: Why do you think they added this tune to the album?
BD: I don’t know. I guess maybe some producer
said the album was a little short and they just added
that tune for length. Who would second-guess Miles?
Even though it was a different band and a different era
with a weird song and a funny singer (laughs). I was
still friendly enough with Miles to go to some gigs with
him and the new band all knew me. I never did get the
nerve to ask him why he put that tune on “The Sorcerer.”

JDW: “Nothing like you” is a great tune. It’s real shifty in
key areas, yet the melody doesn’t feel strange. I played it out a
few months back and the pianist was like, “Wow, such unexpected changes, but it all works well.” When singing it, it feels fine,
but when you start to investigate the changes you realize it.

JDW: If I had had the opportunity I wouldn’t have cared
where he stuck any one of my tunes on one of his recordings.

BD: It is shifty and I’ve had trouble with it myself
(laughing)! So I played the first chord and away they
went. He wouldn’t let me play on that either. It was a
pretty weird arrangement Gil wrote… you’ve heard it
of course. The voicing of the horns, I never did quite
figure it out. The form was the same - there were no
solos. It runs about a minute and 30 seconds doesn’t it?

JDW: It’s such a great tune. It’s quite a departure from a lot
of your songwriting that is more inside.

JDW: I think its closer to two minutes but yeah, and so “Gil
Evansesque.”
BD: Yeah. It was indeed. I was thinking, “This
doesn’t fit on a Christmas album,” and guessed it was
just kind of an experiment Miles was doing. I forgot
all about it, and of course “Jingle Bell Jazz” came out
in November before Christmas, and that was a gasser.
I think I got my copy from Miles. And there I was, last
track on the album. It had tracks from everybody like
Duke Ellington, Lambert Hendricks and Ross, Carmen
McCrae, Pony Poindexter, and a host of others all doing the standard Christmas songs. The last track was
Miles and me (laughing). What a kicker! So “Sorcerer”
comes out in 1966, and I get a call from Fran Landesman, the lyricist for “Nothing Like You,” and she is
ex-claiming that our song is on Miles’ new album. By
that time Miles was getting a little weird - getting
deep into a habit. He threw Frances out and got a
divorce.
JDW: Frances was the dancer right?
BD: She was. She probably could have had a bigger
career if she hadn’t married him, I don’t know. Frances Taylor is still alive. I’d come around like I always
had and knock on the door. Sometimes he’d be in an
argument with some other girl or something, and then
it got to where I’d knock on the door and someone I
didn’t even know would answer the door and say he
wasn’t there. He changed his number so I couldn’t
call anymore. I had met a few of his family members,

24

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

BD: I wasn’t really gong to complain, I just wondered how it transpired. It did me a lot of good, with
people all over the world having heard “Nothing Like
You.”

BD: Well the form of it was largely driven by her
lyrics, which resulted in a long form.
JDW: I have one last question, and admittedly it’s a little
silly because you know who you are as a man and musician.
You had become yourself. Some of this has been brushed upon
already, but did that experience you had with Miles change or
affect any views you had about music, or give insights into what
made Miles tick, as a musician and as a person?
BD: Yes, well I stuck with Miles. I kept buying his
LPs and CDs even though many people were saying at
this point that Miles had lost it. I’m sure he widened
my horizons a little bit, but of course I did have my
long formed view of music in the way I liked and felt
I was supposed to do it. I guess he didn’t change me
that much. I was always open to new things, but I have
always been proud to do that little bit with him.
JDW: Interestingly enough in Miles’ time line, Dave Liebman joins his band. You and Dave live in the same area in the
Pocono region of PA.
BD: Isn’t that wild? Yeah that was a real connection.
JDW: I guess the first connection I had in the Poconos was
with you, and then later with Lieb, but that of course was all
through the Deer Head Inn. You and I had collaborated on some
shows together and got to hang out on the occasions when I’d be
playing at the Deer Head and New York. Dave and I got to play-

BD: Of course I do.
JDW: You were someone I could bounce tunes off of when
writing during the times I stayed at your place. You were a mentor to me and I appreciate you. I felt that I wanted to share you
with the world. That whole Delaware Water Gap contingency

was like an apprenticeship. You talking about how Miles ran
his rehearsals was reminiscent of how Liebman ran his when we
were preparing for the recording we did together. To the point,
not wasting time, and very focused. Big lessons in my life came
from that scene in PA.
BD: That sounds about right.
JDW: I want to thank you for the interview, the inspiring
stories and lessons in history you’ve spoken about, and all of the
contributions you have made to many people’s lives.
BD: It’s been a pleasure JD.

U

Larry Fink

ing and recording a few years after you and I had met. That area
is quite a hot bed of great talent. I was wholly taken with you as
a person and a musician, and after we met you had written liner
notes for my first CD, and produced another CD of mine. I don’t
know if you remember.

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

25

Bob Dorough sounds better than ever.

Garth Woods

Garth Woods

COTA Festival 2016

Bob Weidner

Bassist Tony Marino

A crowded hillside for the 39th annual COTA Festival.

26

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

Bob Weidner

Tom Hamilton Alan Gaumer and Nelson Hill

Bob Weidner

The Jazz Mass conducted by Mark Kirk.

Bob Weidner

Garth Woods

The Celebration Sax Quartet plays music composed by Phil Woods.

The COTA Festival Orchestra performs Phil Woods compositions.

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

27

Photo courtesy Jerry Dodgion

A Story from Jerry Dodgion
Pat Dorian: We are at
the Deer Head Inn – it is May
26th, 2014 with Jerry Dodgion and a lot of great people.
Jerry is going to tell his famous
story… the punch line you will
hear at the end.

Jerry Dodgion

J

erry Dodgion: This is a true story that happened in the
summer of 1986. It was an international band called
together to play a television show for five weeks in
Naples, Italy. It was truly an international band. There
were three Americans from New York, a bass player from
Paris, a guitar player and drummer from Naples, a tenor
player from Brazil who lived in Paris, one guy from Cuba,
another from Bolivia, and two guys from India. Truly an
international band! Dinner was always wonderful with all
those languages happening and the food was great.
We were rehearsing for this television show and we
probably rehearsed a whole week. The music wasn’t great,
but we did the best we could with it because we knew dinner was coming! The conductor (his name escapes me right
now) was from northern Italy. We were in Naples, which
has a bit of a minor chord on it to people from the north…
you know. So we were rehearsing for the week and the
music was really weird. There were a lot of wrong notes and
basically everything was going wrong. At one point during
the rehearsal about three or four days before the opening
night, the conductor decided to tell the orchestra a story.
This is a story about an Italian guy who dies and goes
to Hell and he is being shown around Hell during his first
day there. He is very nervous. He is walking with his guide
down this long corridor and they approach a door where
they hear all of these tortured sounds coming from the other side. Screaming and moaning and things like that. Just
awful sounds. So the Italian guy says to the guide, “What
is this behind this door??” The guide responds, “This is
the German Hell.” He opens the door and looks inside, and
everyone is being tortured by these metallic instruments
accompanied with even more awful sounds, so the guide
slams the door shut and the Italian responds with desperate
thanks. They keep walking down the hallway and come to
another door. It isn’t as loud behind this door, but there are
more subdued moaning, groaning and murmuring. The Italian wonders, “What the hell is this?” The guide opens the
door and says, “This is the Chinese Hell.” Everybody inside
is being tortured with the Chinese Water Torture - one drop
of water on their forehead every few seconds for months at a

28

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

time or something like that. The guide slams the door
and the Italian exclaims, “Oh my God let’s get out of
here and go someplace else!” They continue walking
and come to the end of the hallway. There is only one
door remaining. The guide says, “Now we’re coming
to the Italian Hell.” By this point of course the Italian
is getting really nervous. They begin to hear sounds
behind this door as well. They hear dishes, silverware,
conversation, men and women laughing and talking… The Italian asks, “What’s this again?” The guide
responds, “This is the Italian Hell.” He then opens
the door and they see everyone sitting around a table
eating and drinking, telling stories and hugging each
other and having a wonderful life. Confused, the Italian says, “I don’t understand, you say this is the Italian
Hell?” The guide says, “Yes this is it.” And the Italian
asks, “Well what is our punishment?” The guide responds, “Well you see, you have to eat a pound of shit
every day and every hour you get hit on the head with
a hammer.” The Italian exclaims, “What?! Oh my…
But, then why isn’t that happening?” The guide explains, “Well it’s because the shit hasn’t been delivered
yet and they can’t find the hammer.”
So we are all listening to this story and at that
point all of the Italian guys in the band start to break
out laughing because they think that’s the end of the
story. They think that was the punch line!
Three or four days later we are doing the opening
television show. This opening wasn’t like any opening
any place else. We had custom made tuxedos, custom
made shoes, basically everything was custom made.
We were all at the sound check, and this was not a
typical sound check where you do one for the light
man and one for the soundman altogether. Here they
were separate.
We had to play this long production number, and
it really wasn’t very good but we played it for the light
man. Then we played it again from beginning to end.
And you know, it was a long number! 10 or 15 minutes! Then we play it again for the soundman. Then
we play it again for the cameraman! Well by this time
the orchestra has really had it.
Now it was time to start the show. The audience is
there, the red light goes on and the director points to
our conductor, and the conductor gives the downbeat.
There’s a tympani roll, a loud boom, and immediately
there’s feedback on the audio! Then the cameraman
falls off of his seat, and the light’s flicker on and off.
It’s a complete disaster! Our conductor puts his hand
on his forehead and he leans forward without saying
a word. He stays this way for about 10 or 15 seconds.
Then he stands up and he says to the orchestra (having known and set us up three days beforehand!), “I
think they finally found the hammer.”

U

Bob Weidner

Zoot Fest 2016

The Hawthorne Nights band performs Bill Holman arrangements

By T. Storm Heter

T. Storm Heter

O

n Sunday, November 13, East Stroudsburg University’s Cecilia S. Cohen Recital Hall came to life
when world-class jazz musicians from near and
far converged for Zoot Fest 2016.
This year Zoot Fest starred two master tenor saxophonists: Lew Tabackin and Scott Silbert. Tabackin led
the small group portion of the concert playing tunes
that he said, “Zoot loved.” Tabackin demonstrated the
hard-driving, tough-toned style that has made him one of
today’s great artists. The Tabackin quartet consisted of
Bill Dobbins (piano), Bill Crow (bass), and Bill Goodwin
(drums). Bill Crow’s good bounce and Bill Dobbins’ fire
paired well with Goodwin’s creative, energetic approach
to the drums.
The music began when Tabackin spontaneously called
“The Red Door,” which he dedicated to Zoot Sims’ widow
Louise, who was seated in the front row. A heavy swing
piece, “The Red Door” was composed by Gerry Mulligan
and Zoot Sims, and appeared on the 1960 recording “You
‘N’ Me” by the Al Cohn-Zoot Sims Quintet. In the spirit
of Zoot, Tabackin focused his playing on impeccable time,
bebop roots, and nods to modernist playing (Tabackin
quoted not only Zoot, but also Coltrane in his solo).
The second part of the afternoon featured a 10-piece
big band performance of music from the record, “Haw-

Original rhythm section part to Holman’s Hawthorne Nights

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

29

Lew Tabackin, Bill Crow, and Bill Goodwin during the quartet set.

thorne Nights” (1976). Scott
Silbert, head arranger for United
States’ Navy Band, was in the
lead tenor seat, performing
charts that had been written by
Bill Holman 40 years earlier for
Zoot Sims.
When Al Cohn Memorial
Jazz Collection Coordinator Matt
Vashlishan wrote to Bill Holman to ask permission to copy
the Hawthorne Nights scores,
Holman did him one better—he
went to his garage, dusted off an
old box that hadn’t seen the light
of day since 1976, and sent the
original scores to Stroudsburg.
Since the concert I have been
able to listen carefully to both
the original “Hawthorne Nights”
recording as well as the Zoot
Fest performance. Both performances are powerful, rhythmic,
and modern. The main difference is tempo. As Bill Dobbins
explained to the audience, he
had made a pre-performance call
Scott Silbert plays the Zoot Sims part during Hawthorne Nights
to Holman in order to ask if he

30

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

Bob Weidner

Bob Weidner

would make any changes if he were to
record the album today. “Take them
a few clicks slower,” Holman said.
Dobbins must have taken this advice
literally, since he could be seen with
metronome in hand before the count
off!
The band’s opening number
which is also the title cut from the
album, “Hawthorne Nights,” is a
percussive, groove-based tune. At
around 250 beats per minute, the
piece cooks but still sounds less
hectic than the original, which is
upwards of 300 bpm. The song’s
rhythmic hook is announced from the
first downbeat. The thumping “bahdah-dot” is the first half of a (threeagainst-two) clave pattern. Measure
two then forms the rhythmic response. Against the tune’s heavy
rhythmic call and response, Silbert’s
playing sounds bright with a light,
slightly behind-the-beat approach.
Compared with Zoot’s driving, topof-the-beat feel, Silbert’s playing is
relaxed and floats with an elegantly
swinging eighth note feeling.
The big band performed all eight
tunes from the 1976 album and one
extra from Vic Lewis’ record “West
Coast All Stars play Bill Holman.”
Bill Dobbins, who is writing a book
on Bill Holman, interspersed com-

tive of jazz in the Poconos—there is a strong connection
between jazz master and emerging players. The youngest members of the band were bassist Evan Gregor and
saxophonist Jay Rattman, both of whom have benefited
from the mentorship of locally-based heavy weights such
as Dave Liebman and Phil Woods.
Zoot Fest 2016 concluded with a jam session and
dinner at the Deer Head Inn in Delaware Water Gap. It
was appropriate to end the night at the oldest continuously running jazz club in the nation. As the evening
wore down it was heart warming to see honored guests
Lew Tabackin and Scott Silbert having a glass of wine and
enjoying the freedom of the stage at the Deer Head, surrounded by fans who wanted nothing more than to hear
another great jazz tune.

U

T. Storm Heter

mentary between pieces. For instance, it turns out that
the last piece of the evening, “Sizzler,” was named after
the restaurant. Apparently that’s where the band took its
lunch break!
The nine quality tunes included: “Main Stem,” a
jaunty Ellington tune, with forward motion; “More Than
You Know,” a vocal piece sung by special guest Bob
Dorough; the Jobim classic, “Girl from Ipanema.” Dobbins kept “Main Stem” at 230 bpm and “Ipanema” at 210
bpm—both of which were recorded about 20 clicks faster
on the record.
The big band had precise time and an expert command over dynamics. With only a brief pre-show rehearsal, the unit sounded like it had been working together for
years.
The age gap between players in the band is reflec-

Left to right - Bill Goodwin, Sam Burtis and Bill Crow

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

31

32

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

33

Readers, please take NOTE

Big Band Night at the Deer Head Inn!

Join the Water Gap Jazz Orchestra under the direction
of Matt Vashlishan the last Monday of every month at
the Deer Head Inn for a great evening of big band jazz.
Each month the ensemble performs original and arranged
music from throughout jazz history, as well as performing
modern compositions by many internationally recognized
composers and arrangers.
7:30-10:30 p.m., admission $10.
For more information visit deerheadinn.com

The Jazz Lounge Lecture Series

Join us in the new ESU Kemp Library Jazz Lounge for lectures presented by professional area musicians. Lectures
are held at 7:30 p.m. on the last Wednesday of the month.
More information and a listing of upcoming presenters is
available at esu.edu/jazzatesu

Pennsylvania Jazz Collective:

Improving the future through arts education.
The Pennsylvania Jazz Collective is a Lehigh Valley Pennsylvania 501 (c) 3 non-profit, non-stock company, organized exclusively for educational and charitable purposes,
more specifically to foster jazz appreciation through a
regular series of educational initiatives, public performances, and special programs.
“PA Jazz focuses on the musical communication that is at
the core of jazz, which is an expression of individuality
and the spontaneous artistic language spoken within the
context of a democratic framework. We are cognizant that
jazz performers and students draw upon multiple educational and social disciplines to simultaneously interact in
a manner that uniquely ties together many educational
disciplines and learning domains.”
www.pajazzcollective.org

Contributors & Acknowledgements
For additional information about contributors to this issue of The NOTE, you can visit their websites:
Su Terry: www.suterry.com
Larry Fink: larryfinkphotography.com
JD Walter: jdwalter.com
Special thanks to;
Marcia Welsh, Ph.D., Brenda Friday, Ph.D., Joanne Bruno, J.D., and Jingfeng Xia, Ph.D. for showing their support
for the Al Cohn Memorial Jazz Collection and giving me the opportunity to continue to bring you this publication; Bob
Weidner and Larry Fink and all of the ACMJC contributors for their spectacular photographs; T. Storm Heter for his
contributions; Charles de Bourbon for the graphic design, and the ESU Staff for making this publication possible.

34

The NOTE • Fall / Winter 2017

Fall / Winter 2017 • The NOTE

35

Bob Dorough at the piano, NYC - 1956
Photo by Scott Hyde