A R C H I V E

C R O S S Y O U R H E A R T | 1949

In a 1996 interview with Mel Tormé, the velvet-voiced jazz singer spoke about recording the work of Paul Villepigue for Capitol Records in the late 1940s:

Paul was a master arranger, and he died way, way too young. But he did several arrangements for me, particularly on Capitol, that were absolutely marvelous.

He inspired me to start learning to arrange for the band—for the instruments—

and I’ll never forget him for it.

(Mel Tormé, quoted in Will Friedwald, liner notes for

The Mel Tormé Collection: 1944–1985, Rhino, 1996)

The singer and the arranger first became friends in Tormé’s hometown of Chicago in 1942, working together on a band that was fronted by Chico Marx but actually directed by Ben Pollack. The Chico Marx Orchestra enjoyed a full four-month-long engagement at Chicago’s celebrated Blackhawk restaurant and jazz club. During this time, more and more musicians were recruited into military bands, including Villepigue in 1943. After the end of World War II, Tormé and Villepigue met again, this time on the West Coast for several recordings on the Capitol label.

In 1950, Villepigue wrote to his mother back home in Kansas, with details of his Capitol numbers and titles so she could find them at the local record store:

I did three scores for a Mel Tormé record date in December (after Calif Suite) and they are all now available at Vaughn’s—I get no mention or credit on the label as the orch was conducted by Hal Mooney, but maybe next time. The record numbers are: (Capitol) #825—THERE’S AN “X” IN THE MIDDLE OF TEXAS (corny) and on the back side THE QUEEN OF HEARTS IS MISSING (pretty) and on number 880—I have just one side CROSS YOUR HEART.

(Paul Villepigue, letter addressed to Martha A. Villepigue,

postmarked Los Angeles, September 5, 1950)

Paul Villepigue’s arrangement of Cross Your Heart was recorded by Mel Tormé on December 19, 1949. By then Capitol Records had acquired the former studios of radio station KHJ on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, so it is most likely that the session took place there. The singer was then 24 years old. As jazz historian Will Friedwald writes,

Blessedly, between 1949 and 1952, the perfection of the label’s top-drawer recording techniques (Capitol was among the first to use audiotape) dovetailed with the maturation of Tormé’s voice, and the results have never sounded better than they do in the CD era. Tormé’s pipes deepened and darkened.

(Will Friedwald, liner notes for The Mel Tormé Collection)

Coming into Capitol’s lineup of recording stars after working with Artie Shaw, the young vocalist decided to make a fresh start with a new style:

I kind of got sick of singing in my earlier, laid-back fashion, and I felt, as Artie

said, that I needed more projection. So when I started recording for Capitol,

that’s precisely what I did. I came forward and it’s very visible on most of the Capitol records that I made.

(Mel Tormé, quoted in Will Friedwald,

liner notes for The Mel Tormé Collection)

Mel Tormé

Capitol Records recording session, Melrose Avenue studio [?], Hollywood, December 19, 1949

Personnel: Uan Rasey, Joe Triscari, Rubin “Zeke” Zarchy (tp) Carl Loeffler, Bill Schaefer, Si Zentner (tb) Gus Bivona, Mort Friedman, Alex Gershunoff, Harry Schuchman (saxes) Milt Raskin (p) George Van Eps (g) John Ryan (b) Alvin Stoller (d) Harold “Hal” Mooney (ldr) Mel Tormé (vcl) Paul Villepigue (arr)

♫ To play a music sampler of Mel Tormé: Jazz and Velvet,

click here.

____________________

D A D D Y | 1951

According to Kenton scholar Michael Sparke, between 1951 and 1953 bandleader Stan Kenton commissioned six arrangements from Paul Villepigue: two vocal charts and four instrumentals. Of those six charts, five were never recorded. Even though all six are noted in the files of Kenton’s chief copyist Clinton Roemer, the original scores and the parts for five of those arrangements have vanished. The sixth chart, however, was Daddy—recorded on September 20, 1951, at Capitol Records in Hollywood, with vocalist June Christy.

The parts for Daddy are housed in the Stan Kenton Collection at the University of North Texas (NT 688). Several of the parts are marked up with handwritten notes by Villepigue, including his instructions to the musicians to “Shout HEY!”

The third trumpet part is marked in bold letters in Villepigue’s hand: “MAYNARD” for his friend Maynard Ferguson—the two men had first met in Charlie Barnet’s bop band of 1949. The lead trumpet at this recording session was John Howell. Yet Howell isn’t heard on Daddy—and according to second trumpet John Coppola, this is the reason why:

We had trouble recording it. June wasn’t comfortable with her singing. I believe she had a sore throat and was trying to sing over it. She was complaining that it was difficult for her to be on pitch. These were the days when you went straight through, no overdubbing. We had gone through it 17 times—or we would get part way through, and June would wave us off. That was brutal on the trumpet players. I was on 2nd trumpet, John Howell on 1st. When we got to take number 18, John Howell didn’t play at all—he just held the trumpet up. There’s no lead trumpet player on the recording! Every one of the trumpet lines, they were all melody so there was no noticeable difference. Stan was happy with that take, June was too. She said, I think that’s the best I can do.

(Interview with John Coppola, June 2008)

As a postscript in his correspondence, Michael Sparke added:

Just a small point in case you are interested. When Capitol issued Daddy on 1823, they edited a 4-second scat phrase by June Christy at the end, doubtless for commerical reasons. It’s very short, but to my mind adds a lot to the piece, and was presumably included by Paul in his arrangement (though I suppose it could have been added by Ms. Christy on the date).

(Michael Sparke, letter to Villepigue’s

daughter Desne, August 31, 2004)

The scat phrase was indeed Ms. Christy’s addition, in triumph over any sore throat troubles on that day.

Stan Kenton and His Orchestra
Capitol Records recording session, Melrose Avenue studio, Hollywood,

September 20, 1951

Personnel: Stan Kenton (ldr,p) Conte Candoli, John Coppola, Maynard Ferguson, John Howell, Stu Williamson (tp) Harry Betts, Bob Fitzpatrick, Dick Kenney, Bill Russo (tb) George Roberts (b-tb) Art Pepper, Bud Shank (as) Bart Caldarell, Bob Cooper (ts) Bob Gioga (bars) Ralph Blaze (g) Don Bagley (b) Shelly Manne (d) June Christy (vcl)

Paul Villepigue (arr)

♫ To play a music sampler of June Christy Sings Something Cool,

click here.

____________________

D A Y D R E A M | 1947

In early 1947, Paul Villepigue followed the postwar migration of musicians from East Coast to West, where the promise of plentiful work in the Hollywood studios beckoned. To augment his arranging income, he took up teaching and joined the faculty of Westlake College in Los Angeles, a newly established school of modern music that attracted a flood of young musicians, many studying on the GI Bill.

Prominent among Westlake’s alumni is master arranger Bill Holman:

In the late forties, I went to school at Westlake College of Music here in L.A.

A lot of people have gone there: Bill Perkins, Dave Madden and Dick Grove to name a few. Paul Villepigue used to teach at Westlake, and one of his theories was if you have a small ensemble and want it to sound big, don’t spread it out, but close it up. If you put everybody close to each other, you get a bigger sound than if you try to make it fat.

(Bill Holman, quoted in Steven D. Harris, The Kenton Kronicles: A Biography

of Modern America's Man of Music, Dynaflow Publications, 2000)

One such small ensemble was that of piano-playing bandleader Ike Carpenter.

As principal arranger for Carpenter, Villepigue scouted among the student ranks at Westlake to bring fresh new talent into the band, such as Holman on tenor sax, Matt Utal on alto, Dave Wells on trombone, and Ray Blagof on trumpet, all of whom launched their professional careers from the Ike Carpenter bandstand.

At the startup of the 1947 ensemble, Carpenter’s lineup of notable horn players included Gerald Wilson, Tommy Pederson, Bud Shank, Corky Corcoran, and Lucky Thompson, all heard on recordings of Villepigue’s arrangements.

By mid-1948, Carpenter’s band had achieved considerable popularity, playing and replaying “every major ballroom and college in the area,” as reported on the front page of Down Beat (read the full article here).

The style of the band was based on Carpenter’s admiration for Duke Ellington’s music. With thoughtful voicing and carefully written arrangements, his ten musicians sounded like a much larger ensemble, and credit is due to arranger/composer Paul Villepigue’s creative writing for this effect.

(Tony Middleton, liner notes for Ike Carpenter and His Orchestra:

Dancers in Love, Jazz Band EBCD 2171-2, 2002)

Success allowed Ike Carpenter to enlarge his band later, but in spring 1947, he recorded for Modern Music with a tight group of just ten sidemen. In writing the charts for these sessions, Paul Villepigue possibly drew inspiration from the small band recordings of Johnny Hodges with Duke Ellington at the turn of the decade. Of particular interest among Villepigue’s work is his version of Billy Strayhorn’s 1939 composition Day Dream.

For the 1947 Carpenter recording, rather than focus on one Hodges-like voice,

the arranger wrote solos for alto and tenor saxophones, trombone, and muted trumpet, as well as the leader's piano. Most important, Villepigue created a new introduction for Day Dream, and the following year he would develop that new introduction into the theme for his original ballad Lonely Street, to be recorded by Charlie Barnet.

Ike Carpenter and His Orchestra
Modern Music recording session, Radio Recorders studio, Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood, April 20, 1947

Personnel: Vito “Mickey” Mangano, Bob Sims (tp) Walter Benson, John Halliburton (tb) George Weidler (as) Herb Moise (as,ts) Corky Corcoran or Lucky Thompson (ts) Joe Koch (bars) Ike Carpenter (ldr,p) Ed Mihelich (b) Bob Hummel (d) Paul Villepigue (arr)

♫ To play a music sampler of Ike Carpenter and His Orchestra: Dancers in Love,

click here.

____________________

E L L I N G T O N M E D L E Y | 1946

In 1936, Duke Ellington created two medleys from four of his compositions and recorded them on solo piano—the paired songs were Mood Indigo/Solitude and

In A Sentimental Mood/Sophisticated Lady. Ten years later, in 1946, a young arranger who deeply admired all things Ellington combined one song from each

of Duke’s medleys and created a new blend of Solitude and Sophisticated Lady, which he titled simply Ellington Medley.

The arranger was Paul Villepigue, and his chart was written for a V-Disc recording session by violinist Paul Nero leading an ensemble of ten musicians, according to Metronome magazine of November 1946:

Paul Nero...has formed a new 10-piece combination. Composed chiefly of

ex-Johnny Bothwell men, with arrangements by [Nero] and Paul Villepigue, the band cut seven sides for V-Discs last month.

Until the discovery of this Metronome squib just a few days ago, the arranging attribution for Villepigue was based only on strong aural evidence and a hopeful hunch, yet no real certainty could be applied to crediting Villepigue with charting the Ellington Medley. Like all V-Discs, the label on this record does not include an arranging credit; scholarly V-Discographies are likewise lacking. And this is what continues to be the greatest challenge in reconstructing Paul Villepigue’s life and music—the difficulty of verifying attribution.

Jazz research can be an exhilarating, frustrating, and all-consuming endeavor, combining hours of poring over paper pages and webpages and microfilm, listening with open ears and open mind, proceeding cautiously with educated guesswork or making wild leaps of faith—and oftentimes it's just a matter of plain dumb luck. For this investigator, the brightest moments are those shared with other researchers along the way, when even a casual exchange of an idea or a resource can shed new light on the trail.

In the case of this V-Disc, the arranger credit came into question during an exchange of information with Anthony Barnett, research specialist in jazz violin. In the fall of 1946, Villepigue was at loose ends in New York, having spent much of the year writing the book for the newly launched Johnny Bothwell Orchestra, now on tour. By January 1947, the arranger would relocate to the West Coast, where another new band led by Ike Carpenter would record Villepigue’s charts over the next two years. For both bands, Villepigue exercised his considerable talents in interpreting his passion for Ellingtonia.

Between the writing stints with these two bands, Villepigue began a collaboration with Paul Nero that would grow into lasting friendship and many further musical ventures together on both coasts for the next seven years. In late 1946, the two Pauls formed Nero Music Inc., recording at least five sides and launching an ambitious music publishing program. Prior to this, the Ellington Medley recording session came together in October 1946, by which time the V-Disc program was beginning to taper off. Again, Metronome of November 1946 explains, beneath a photo depicting the destruction of V-Disc masters:

Finis for many V-Discs...recently at the Columbia Record Corporation pressing plant in Bridgeport, Conn....Object was to destroy masters of V-Disc recordings in an apparent effort to show good faith with American Federation of Musicians, who permitted its artists to make all these records free of charge, provided the discs were used exclusively for G.I. consumption. V-Discs, however, are still being made by the Army and sent overseas regularly to members of the occupation forces. Recent dates were waxed by...Paul Nero’s new orchestra.

The Nero orchestra was short-lived and, judging by this recording, short on rehearsal time as well. Yet the disc is significant in supplying an important missing piece of the Villepigue puzzle—that is, the stepping-stone that got him from Bothwell in New York to Carpenter in Los Angeles.

Except for Nero’s violin, the personnel of this ten-piece band is unidentified. The trombone soloist could well be Villepigue’s longtime friend Dick Kenney, refugee from the Bothwell band. The pianist sounds like Ike Carpenter, then at loose ends himself in New York and planning to head out soon to the West Coast. When Tony Middleton (compiler of the 2002 Ike Carpenter CD Dancers In Love) was asked for his opinion on the probable pianist, he concurred—“I would say your assumptions are correct. Had a listen and the Nero band certainly sounds like Ike’s. I did some further research around that date and this is from Metronome November 1946...”—and he forwarded the magazine quotes, thus securing the arranging attribution for Villepigue.

Yet to the astute ears of arranger and music historian Jeff Sultanof, there was never any question that it could be anyone other than Villepigue. Two months ago, when the V-Disc had first come under discussion, Jeff had listened and responded:

Within the first several seconds, there was no doubt in my mind that this was Paul’s work. He obviously had an affinity for Ellington’s music based on his work with Carpenter, and Lonely Street is almost an homage to Duke. This track is really a treasure; it almost sounds as if he wrote this with Duke’s musicians in mind: the parts actually sound like they were written for Hodges, Nance, Carney, etc.

As a matter of fact, Villepigue did write for those very musicians—Ray Nance on trumpet and Harry Carney on baritone sax—who recorded with Johnny Bothwell on alto in 1945 on the Signature label. The arranging attribution for those charts has yet to be verified, but that’s a story for another day...

Paul Nero and His Orchestra

V-Disc recording session coordinated by Anthony F. Janak, [probably] RCA Victor studios, New York City, October 1946

Personnel: Paul Nero (ldr,vln), [possibly] Dick Kenney (tb), [probably] Ike Carpenter (p) [other musicians unknown], Paul Villepigue (arr)

____________________

F R O M T H E L A N D O F

T H E S K Y B L U E W A T E R | 1946

In 1939, a young jazz enthusiast named Bob Thiele launched his record-producing career when he founded his first label—Signature—at the age of 17. Toward the end of World War II, the still-fledgling independent label went public as Signature Recording Corporation and set up its own pressing plant.

The smaller labels had a hard time getting good pressings with poor quality shellac in the final year of the war, and Signature was no exception.

(Alastair Robertson, liner notes for Johnny Bothwell and His Orchestra:

Street of Dreams, 1946, Hep Records, 1997)

Thiele persevered and took out a full-page ad in Band Leaders and Record Review, October 1946, promoting Signature’s lineup of promising new stars:

More and more of your favorite artists are now recording exclusively for Signature

all under the expert guidance of Bob Thiele. . . .

JOHNNY BOTHWELL—The nation’s newest bandleader, a Signature discovery, is currently on his initial tour of the country’s best dance spots. Listen to his

latest hit, “From the Land of the Sky Blue Water.”

Three and a half decades after the founding of the short-lived Signature Recording label, Bob Thiele Music Ltd. produced an LP in 1974 asking the title question: Whatever Happened to Johnny Bothwell?

The author of the LP’s liner notes is Dan Morgenstern, 2007 NEA Jazz Master and director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers. In recounting the story of alto saxophonist Johnny Bothwell and his band, Morgenstern writes: “In the spring of ’46, Bothwell signed with General Artists Corp. (GAC) and debuted a big band with a book written by Paul Villepigue—a gifted musician who also wrote for Charlie Barnet.” On the impressive debut of the Bothwell band, Morgenstern continues:

“An important engagement at New York’s 400 Club drew a near-rave review from Down Beat’s not easily impressed Michael Levin (alias Mix).”

When the bookers heard Johnny Bothwell, ex-Boyd Raeburn alto star, had formed his own big band, reaction was “Oh migawd, another mad musician with marvelous music that will make no money.”

The Beat hates to disappoint these sages, but it looks like Bothwell, after

a few alterations, won’t make money, he’ll coin it.

It’s danceable, colorful music with Bothwell’s brilliantly toned reed work leading a sax section with no uncertainty in its phrasings. Arrangements, done competently by Paul Villepigue, have lots of harmonic color, resonance, and

no tired riffs.

(Michael Levin, “Bothwell Leads Boff Well Combo,” Down Beat, July 15, 1946)

Despite this favorable beginning, Johnny Bothwell completely vanished from the music scene in 1950, leaving no trace whatsoever of the band book written by Villepigue. Only the recordings for Signature remain. Jazz historian and editor

Jeff Sultanof has analyzed one of these creative arrangements recorded by the Bothwell band, as presented by Sultanof to the Jazz Research Roundtable forum at the Institute of Jazz Studies. An arranger himself, as well as composer and conductor of jazz and concert music, Sultanof writes:

Paul Villepigue seemingly arrived out of nowhere when Johnny Bothwell's recordings on Signature appeared. Beautifully recorded but pressed on some of the worst ground-up shellac to be found outside of a landfill, the Signature catalogue was an eclectic mix of jazz and pop music. Luckily, Bothwell had already made a name for himself with Boyd Raeburn and even recorded with the Raeburn band under his own name for Signature as early as 1945. When Bothwell decided to form his own band, he took Raeburn’s singer Claire (Shanty) Hogan along.

By the time of Bothwell’s 1946 recordings with his own ensemble, Villepigue was

a finished professional arranger with a decided bent toward the music of Duke Ellington. There are Ellingtonian and Strayhorn influences throughout his work. Although we cannot be sure that he arranged all of Bothwell’s sides, the

saxophone voicings lead me to believe that Villepigue did in fact write these arrangements. They range from the sublime (From the Land of the Sky Blue Water and To a Wild Rose) to the silly (Chiquita Banana) to the out-and-out ridiculous

(I Won’t Promise), the latter two featuring vocals by Claire Hogan (by then, Mrs. Johnny Bothwell). In fact, the later Bothwell recordings feature such bad songs that even the arrangements cannot save them, although there are nice touches on each one. Even Chiquita Banana has some hip bebop figures in the writing, and it sounds like the band enjoyed playing this exciting setting.

From the Land of the Sky Blue Water alerted the arranging world that a major voice had arrived. At that time, the flute was not as frequently heard in a big band as a clarinet, so the flute trill alerts the listener that something different is going to happen. At 1:06, the tempo not only doubles, but the time signature changes to 3/4. It is as if Villepigue wanted to avoid the cliché of the tempo transition, and in doing so, he did something fresh and unique. The transition back to 4/4 via a 2/4 bar at 1:15 is handled with grace and flows beautifully. Although reportedly this sort of device was used by Johnny Richards as early as 1941–42, I cannot think

of a recorded instance of a 4/4 to 3/4 time change before this recording. The tutti at 1:48 is exciting and beautifully scored, and at 2:01 the transition back to the original tempo feels just right and is not jarring to the listener. This is not only

an arrangement, it is a perfect example of re-composition. It is certainly not a recording that could be danced to, and one wonders how often this arrangement was played live (it would have been perfect for theater appearances), so we must applaud Bob Thiele for recording it.

Johnny Bothwell and His Orchestra

Signature Records recording session, New York, spring 1946

Personnel: [probably the Ray Bloch studio orchestra] Billy Butterfield, Yank Lawson (tp) Will Bradley (tb) Johnny Bothwell (ldr,as) Teddy Wilson (p) Gordon “Specs” Powell (d) [other instrumentalists unknown] Paul Villepigue (arr)

♫ To play a music sampler of Johnny Bothwell and His Orchestra: Street of Dreams, 1946,

click here.

____________________

J E E P ’ S B L U E S | 1947

Cowritten by Duke Ellington and alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, Jeep’s Blues was first recorded in 1938 by a small contingent of Ellington’s sidemen led by “Jeep.” According to Bill Crow’s book Jazz Anecdotes, the nickname Jeep was bestowed on Johnny Hodges by his bandmate Otto “Toby” Hardwick, from a character introduced in the Popeye comic strip in 1936—the Jeep was a little creature from the fourth dimension with magical powers. (Also from Popeye, Hardwick gave Billy Strayhorn his nickname Swee’ Pea.)

In 1947, bandleader Ike Carpenter and his ten sidemen recorded a version of Jeep’s Blues by the band's principal arranger Paul Villepigue, one of many Villepigue charts of Ellington tunes in the Carpenter book. “The band was highly influenced by the Ellington band, and Paul was totally instrumental in developing that persona,” writes Matt Utal, lead alto, who got on the Carpenter band in 1948 by way of being one of Villepigue’s students at Westlake College of Music.

Paul was the consummate arranger in that not only did his charts sound good, they were written so that every part was a joy to play. The inner voices (underlying parts) were all written melodically so that they were interesting. So often (with many arrangers), the top and bottom parts are melodic and the inner voices merely fill out the harmonic scheme, with little thought given to writing “musical lines.” This was not the case with Paul. Regardless of the part you were playing, it was interesting and musically rewarding.

(Matt Utal, email to Villepigue’s daughter Desne, July 2007)

The front-page feature article in Down Beat of July 28, 1948, cites the success of Jeep’s Blues among the tunes recorded by the Ike Carpenter band the preceding year, before union boss James Petrillo put a recording ban into effect:

Carpenter has no recording ties at present, but is ready to sign and record at the drop of Petrillo’s spat. He was romanced last September by Victor, but as the ban loomed the plattery nixed the nomination of Ike.

Before the ban, he cut eight sides for Modern. The six released are Jeep Blues [sic], Things Ain’t What They Used to Be, Take the A Train, Keep Both Hands on the Table, Daydreams [sic], and Ike’s Blues. Modern is still holding Yesterdays and Rhapsody in Blue and Ike feels the latter two are the most commercial of the lot. Jeep Blues has been his most popular, selling over, he claims, 100,000 copies.

The recordings were made on the Modern Music label, an independent record company founded in Los Angeles by the four Bihari brothers. The masters from the January 18, 1947, session include a false start of Jeep’s Blues in which an unidentified man stops the take and then speaks in a somewhat testy exchange with Ike Carpenter regarding the lack of “dirty” sound in his blues piano. Trombonist Dave Wells, another of Villepigue’s Westlake students who was on the band in 1948, listened to the false start: “There’s no voices in there that I recognize as being Paul’s. The guy that’s evidently speaking from the booth—it’s probably the A&R man. It definitely is not Paul—Paul wouldn’t come on that way.” Matt Utal also confirms that Villepigue always had a “soft-spoken delivery.” Rather, it’s most likely that the edgy voice directing Carpenter to “sound a little more dirty” belonged to Jules Bihari, who served as Modern’s vice president, A&R man, and frequent session producer.

The Carpenter band recorded Villepigue’s chart of Jeep’s Blues again a few months later, at a transcription recording session. That later version was taken

at a slightly faster tempo, with a slightly “dirtier” blues piano. The previous recording’s personnel list is verified as including George Weidler on alto sax, Lucky Thompson on tenor, and Joe Koch on baritone. However, the second recording’s list of musicians is uncertain—the alto on that date was either Weidler or Bud Shank, tenor was either Thompson or Corky Corcoran, and baritone was either Koch or Bob Lawson, according to the liner notes for the Jazz Band CD

Ike Carpenter and His Orchestra: Dancers in Love.

Another 1947 Modern recording session produced Villepigue’s own takeoff on the Johnny Hodges tune—a new composition written for bandleader Carpenter and titled Ike’s Blues or, as the band members liked to call it, Ickie’s Blues.

Ike Carpenter and His Orchestra

Modern Music recording session, Radio Recorders studio, Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood, January 18, 1947

Personnel: Lou Obergh, Gerald Wilson (tp) Tommy Pedersen, Ollie Wilson (tb) Ted Nash (cl,as,ts) George Weidler (as) Lucky Thompson (ts) Joe Koch (bars) Ike Carpenter (ldr,p) Jim Stutz (b) Roy Harte (d) Paul Villepigue (arr)

Transcription recording session, CBS “Vine” studio, Hollywood, spring 1947

[possibly April 24 or June 18?]

Personnel: John Best or Vito “Mickey” Mangano, Bob Sims (tp) Walter Benson or Lloyd Ulyate, John Halliburton (tb) Herb Moise (cl,as,ts) Bud Shank or George Weidler (as) Corky Corcoran or Lucky Thompson (ts) Joe Koch or Bob Lawson (bars) Ike Carpenter (ldr,p) Ed Mihelich or Jim Stutz (b) Bob Hummel (d) Paul Villepigue (arr)

♫ To play a music sampler of Ike Carpenter and His Orchestra: Dancers in Love,

click here.

____________________

L O N E L Y S T R E E T | 1949

Paul Villepigue’s most well-known composition is the haunting ballad Lonely Street, first recorded by Charlie Barnet in early 1949. Barnet had played the piece at least as early as the summer of 1948, at a gig that was broadcast by MBS from the Edgewater Ballroom in San Francisco, but with different band personnel than the musicians on the 1949 session. Barnet continued to record Lonely Street with later incarnations of his band, until the last recording in 1956 for an album of the same name.

Yet Lonely Street had its origins in another band, that of Ike Carpenter in 1947. Villepigue was the primary arranger for Carpenter’s band, whose sound was based on his admiration for the music of Duke Ellington. When Villepigue wrote a new arrangement of Billy Strayhorn’s Day Dream, he created a new introduction for the tune, which was recorded by Carpenter in the spring of 1947. From this new introduction Villepigue would eventually develop the composition that became Lonely Street for Charlie Barnet.

In late 1948, Barnet assembled a new bop band in New York. At that time, Villepigue was on the West Coast, teaching at the Westlake College of Music in Los Angeles. According to Dave Wells (who was then a student at Westlake and later played bass trumpet and trombone in Barnet’s band), Barnet paid all expenses to bring Villepigue to New York in the fall of 1948 to write charts for the new band. The recording session for both Lonely Street and Eugipelliv took place on January 16, 1949, with Capitol Records using WMGM radio’s recording studio at 711 Fifth Avenue. Soon after, Metronome magazine announced:

The newest Barnet band makes its Capitol debut with a moody, Ellingtonish composition by Paul Villepigue that features Charlie’s soprano and Dick Kenney’s trombone.

Dick Kenney was another Westlake student and a close friend of Villepigue’s, and the arranger helped get Kenney on Barnet's band. The trombonist and Villepigue had first met in the service, playing together in an Army band stateside, then again in New York in 1946, working on the newly formed Johnny Bothwell band. The two friends would later work together on the West Coast at another Capitol session, for Stan Kenton’s 1951 recording of Villepigue’s chart Daddy.

In 2002, the late great trombonist Milt Bernhart, then serving as president of the Big Band Academy of America, presented a sold-out concert celebrating the 60th anniversary of Capitol Records and saluting the recording stars of Capitol’s early years. Charles Daly Barnet Jr. was present to receive the BBAA award in honor of his bandleader father. The feature piece selected by emcee Bernhart in tribute to Charlie Barnet’s work at Capitol was Lonely Street. As he turned to count off the band, Milt Bernhart softly said, “For Paul Villepigue.”

Charlie Barnet and His Orchestra
Capitol Records recording session, WMGM studio, Fifth Avenue, New York,

January 16, 1949

Personnel: Dave Burns, Tony DiNardi, John Howell, Doc Severinsen, Lammar Wright (tp) Dick Kenney, Obie Massingill, Ken Martlock (tb) Charlie Barnet (ldr,ss) Vinnie Dean, Art Raboy (as) Kurt Bloom, Dave Matthews (ts) Danny Bank (bars) Claude Williamson (p) Eddie Safranski (b) Cliff Leeman (d) Paul Villepigue (arr)

♫ To play a music sampler of Charlie Barnet: The Capitol Big Band Sessions,

click here.

____________________

L O V E L O C K E D O U T | 1950

In order to talk about this feature recording, I have to step out from behind my thin facade of would-be objective narrator and introduce myself to you readers

as “Paul Villepigue’s daughter.” With those words I first introduced myself to Maynard Ferguson in 2004, at the Los Angeles Jazz Institute’s festival in tribute to the great trumpet player. To my astonishment, Maynard didn’t pause a beat but immediately replied, “Yes—Paul. He wrote Love Locked Out for me, and he

got me to use French horn and tuba for the first time.”

I say “to my astonishment” for Maynard had, without hesitation, pulled up a memory from some 54 years earlier. The recording date for Paul Villepigue’s arrangement of Love Locked Out was September 13, 1950. The session was Maynard’s debut as bandleader on the Capitol Records label. He was then

22 years old.

Ferguson had planned to launch his own dance orchestra and had already signed an individual contract to record for Capitol early in September. He assembled a

17-piece swinging orchestra that, with the only exception of pianist Joe Rotondi, was recruited largely from Kenton’s band. The arrangers employed on these performances were two regular contributors to the Kenton book, Gene Roland

and Shorty Rogers, plus Paul Villepigue, well known for his brilliant writing for Charlie Barnet’s orchestra.

(Jordi Pujol, liner notes for Maynard Ferguson: His Orchestra and Octet,

1950–1954, Band Ain’t Draggin’, Fresh Sound Records, 2005)

The liner notes above are somewhat misleading in that one might think Maynard had left Kenton’s band in order to strike out on his own. But according to Richard (“Duke”) Anderson, a friend of Villepigue's who attended the recording date:

As I remember, Paul told me that Stan had loaned his band to Maynard and had popped for it all to give Maynard a boost.

(Duke Anderson, email to Villepigue's daughter Desne, May 2009)

The extraordinary talent assembled for this recording session also included Jimmy Giuffre on tenor saxophone, filling the spot of Kenton’s tenor man, Bart Caldarell. And on trombone was Milt Bernhart, who had played his first Villepigue chart as a teenager subbing on Boyd Raeburn’s band in Chicago, back in 1942.

I didn’t actually meet Paul until around 1949 or so out here on the Coast. . . .

In the early 50’s, I played his arrangements in studios—though not often enough. He was possibly my favorite arranger at that time. Maynard knew him from Barnet and used him on the Capitol dates. Love Locked Out was a pleasure.

(Milt Bernhart, post on the Jazz West Coast mailing list, August 31, 2000)

Duke Anderson adds a fascinating bit of trivia about that recording session:

And a fun thing: I was with Paul at Capitol on Melrose when Maynard did his beautiful arrangement of Love Locked Out. The band did another side during that session, called Band Ain’t Draggin’. This was a tune penned by Joe Greene who

had also done Across The Alley From The Alamo and Soothe Me, amongst others. Anyway, the “handclappers” on the side included Paul Villepigue,

Stan Kenton, Joe Greene, and Duke Anderson. Have you ever heard better handclapping?

(Anderson, email to Villepigue's daughter Desne, May 2009)

I spoke to Maynard at greater length a few months after the LA Jazz Institute festival. He was understandably wistful about that recording session—nearly all the musicians had passed on. He was also saddened to see that the Unique Jazz LP I brought to show him had given no credit for the arrangement of Love Locked Out. I asked him if Paul had been at the session. Oh yes, he replied—Paul always came whenever his charts were being recorded. I asked, where was the music now? Maynard didn’t know—perhaps in the Capitol archives. One thing he didn’t tell me about, though—at the time of our talk in early 2005, Maynard was in the process of working with Jordi Pujol to re-release his recordings from the early 1950s on the Fresh Sound label. To my delighted surprise a few months later, an envelope arrived in the mail with the Fresh Sound CD enclosed. Pujol’s liner notes give credit for Love Locked Out as “arranged by the talented Paul Villepigue, one of the most innovative arrangers and composers of that period.”

Later, when I discussed Paul’s writing with Jeff Sultanof, an arranger himself and a music historian, he had these comments:

For me, Villepigue’s masterpiece was an arrangement for Maynard Ferguson of

the Ray Noble song Love Locked Out. Once again, beautiful writing for all of the sections, sensitive orchestration (Villepigue’s writing for tuba is particularly lovely), a mastery of counterpoint, and a subtle, effective modulation are highlighted.

This is one of the high points of Ferguson’s entire recorded output. I consider

this arrangement one of the finest big band settings written by an American.

Maynard Ferguson and His Orchestra

Capitol Records recording session, Melrose Avenue studio, Hollywood, September 13, 1950

Personnel: Maynard Ferguson (ldr,tp) Alfred “Chico” Alvarez, Al Porcino, Shorty Rogers (tp) Milt Bernhart, Harry Betts, Bob Fitzpatrick (tb) John Graas (fhr) Gene Englund (tu) Art Pepper, Bud Shank (as) Bob Cooper, Jimmy Giuffre (ts) Bob Gioga (bars) Joe Rotondi (p) Don Bagley (b) Shelly Manne (d) Paul Villepigue (arr)

♫ To play a music sampler of Band Ain't Draggin: Maynard Ferguson, His Orchestra and Octet, 1950-1954,

click here.

____________________

L U L L A B Y O F B I R D L A N D | 1954

In 1956, RCA Victor issued a concept album titled Lullaby of Birdland (LPM-1146), featuring only the hit tune composed by George Shearing but interpreted by a dozen different arrangers and bands, in celebration of the popular New York jazz club. The LP’s cover announced the record producer's idea:

12 DIFFERENT Interpretations by 12 Modern Arrangers

Played by 12 Exciting Jazz Groups

The twelve groups, in LP playing order, were Dick Collins and His Orchestra, Tony Scott Septet, Pete Jolly Trio, Milt Bernhart and His Orchestra, Billy Byers and His Orchestra, Joe Newman Octet, Charlie Barnet and His Orchestra, Shorty Rogers–André Previn Orchestra, Barbara Carroll Trio, Ernie Wilkins and His Orchestra,

Al Cohn and His Orchestra, and Quincy Jones and His Orchestra. The recording dates ranged from September 14, 1954 (Rogers–Previn), to August 17, 1955 (Byers, Wilkins, and Jones, with all three of those bandleaders using the identical personnel for the recordings of their individual arrangements).

The Charlie Barnet recording of Lullaby of Birdland, made on November 29, 1954, carries a credit of Billy May as the arranger, according to the LP’s back cover. Subsequently, some Barnet discographers have listed May as the arranger, whereas other sources credit the chart to Paul Villepigue. The tune was recorded at the same session as two pieces planned for another concept album, Barnet’s Redskin Romp. Even though Lullaby of Birdland was not intended for inclusion on that album, most (but not all) of the writing was indeed the work of Billy May. Yet in Jack Mirtle’s discography The Music of Billy May, Mirtle writes that in 1997, after May listened again to the music:

he had these comments in a letter dated 15 Oct 97. “I remember the Barnet stuff, after I heard it. I did most of the charts except ‘Waters’ [From the Land of the Sky-Blue Waters] and ‘Minnetonka’ [By the Waters of Minnetonka].”

(Billy May, quoted in Jack Mirtle, The Music of Billy May:

A Discography, Greenwood Press, 1998)

Mirtle continues, citing May’s definitive say-so regarding the arranging credit for the Shearing tune:

“Lullaby of Birdland,” not part of the “Redskin Romp” LP, is credited to May by devout Barnet discographers. May is adamant it is not his, and credits the arr. to Paul Villepigue.

(Jack Mirtle, The Music of Billy May)

In order to place Billy May’s credit to Paul Villepigue within chronological context, the date of composition, time frame for arrangement, and date of recording must be taken in account, along with the surge in performances of the new hit tune. Shearing composed Lullaby of Birdland in 1952 and first recorded it in July of that year, thus spawning a popular craze up to the mid-1950s, which found the tune in nearly every bandleader’s book. Villepigue would have written this arrangement for Charlie Barnet within a period of less than a year, between the release of Shearing’s first recording and June 1953, when Villepigue committed suicide.

The time frame is plausible even though the Barnet recording session didn’t take place until late 1954. If Billy May’s word is to be taken as final, discographers will have to make the adjustment to credit Paul Villepigue for this chart.

Charlie Barnet and His Orchestra
RCA Victor recording session, using Capitol's Melrose Avenue studio, Hollywood

November 29, 1954

Personnel: John Best, Pete Candoli, Buddy Childers, Maynard Ferguson (tp) Milt Bernhart, Herbie Harper, Tommy Pederson, Si Zentner (tb) Charlie Barnet (ldr,sax) Fred Falensby, Willie Smith (as) Georgie Auld, Chuck Gentry (ts) Bob Dawes (bar) Bob Harrington (p) Tony Rizzi (g) Sam Cheifetz (b) Alvin Stoller (d) Paul Villepigue (arr)

____________________

M Y B L U E H E A V E N | 1946

Vocalist Herb Jeffries, who rose to popularity in the Duke Ellington Orchestra of the early 1940s, further developed his career after World War II by establishing himself as a solo act. As a footnote to describing Jeffries’s style during and after the Ellington period, Gunther Schuller comments:

A much more creative and mature Jeffries can be heard, for example, on his 1946 recordings (on the Exclusive label) with Buddy Baker’s Trombone Octet in first-rate modern arrangements by the late Paul Villepigue that are well worth rediscovery and study.

(Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930–1945,

New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)

In 1946, Jeffries joined as junior partner with record producer Leon René and recorded on René’s independent label Exclusive Records in Los Angeles, under the leadership of music director Norman “Buddy” Baker. Meanwhile, Paul Villepigue, still living in New York, made at least one trip out to the West Coast in preparation for relocating there by the end of the year. The promise of work with his old friend Buddy Baker helped ease the transition. The two musicians had last seen each other when they first met in 1938 in Missouri.

I didn’t see Paul again until the mid to late 40s here in Los Angeles. I was

working as music director for a record company and I called on [him] to do

several arrangements for our sessions. . . .Those trombone octet numbers were the ones that Paul had arranged. They were marvelous arrangements. . . . The record company was indeed Exclusive Records located on the corner of Sunset Blvd. and Vine Street in Hollywood.

(Buddy Baker, email to Villepigue’s

daughter Desne, March 2002)

Baker was a former trumpeter who had turned full-time arranger once he got to Hollywood. He worked as a music director in radio in the early 1940s, then moved into scoring for television and film as head of music for Walt Disney Studios from 1954 until his retirement. As music director for Exclusive Records in 1946, he commissioned Villepigue to write several of the charts for the Herb Jeffries recordings, with arranging credit given on the label. The song titles included Baby Won’t You Please Come Home, I Found A Million Dollar Baby, and My Blue Heaven, all arranged with trombone choir backing the singer. In 2002, Buddy Baker still remembered Paul Villepigue’s unusual method of writing:

I used to be amazed at Paul’s approach to orchestration. . . . Most arrangers start orchestrating by doing the woodwinds first, followed by trumpets, trombones, piano, guitar, drums, and string bass. That’s the format of a dance band score sheet. Paul might have written the 3rd trumpet part as the first line on his score page, followed by 2nd alto sax as the next line, and on and on with his less conventional way of scoring. It was always mind-boggling to me as to how he did it. I’d say to him, “Paul, how come you didn’t write the 1st trumpet first?” His answer was, “I hear the 3rd trumpet part first, then the 1st trumpet part, and finally the 2nd trumpet.”

(Buddy Baker, email to Villepigue’s

daughter Desne, March 2002)

____________________

S W E E T J E N N Y L O U | 1950

In the years 1949–50, Paul Villepigue wrote at least three big band arrangements for famed trumpeter Harry James. Possibly Villepigue wrote more than these three charts, but documentation for this period is scarce and clues are elusive.

One 1950 recording session for Columbia Records produced two of the Villepigue charts: Sweet Jenny Lou, which is featured here, and Theme for Cynthia, based on the MGM film Cynthia starring Elizabeth Taylor. The studio recording took place on June 19, although Sweet Jenny Lou had been captured on an aircheck just the week before, on June 10, as part of an Armed Forces Radio Service broadcast from the rooftop gardens of New York’s Astor Hotel.

Villepigue had already worked with two of the musicians on the James band: Jackie Mills had played percussion for a one-night concert in 1948 with pianist André Previn premiering Villepigue’s work. And a year earlier, tenor saxophonist Corky Corcoran had done a stint with the Ike Carpenter band, for which Villepigue wrote most of the arrangements. But for Sweet Jenny Lou, the arranger created an unusual sax feature, not for tenor but for baritone, played by Bob Poland in a back-and-forth dance with the trumpet of bandleader James. The song, originally composed by Jimmy Mundy and Charles Carpenter, was also recorded (but spelled Jennie) as a simple vocal version by Gene Ammons, but there is no other known instrumental version from this period besides Villepigue’s unique chart for Harry James.

The third known Villepigue arrangement commissioned for the Harry James band was The One I Love, written in 1949 for full 18-piece orchestra and 5 vocalists—Gilda Maiken and the Skylarks—and recorded that same year for program 110 of the U.S. Navy transcription series. The chart is built around the Skylarks—two girls and three guys—and Ziggy Elmer’s trombone.

Where are these three Villepigue arrangements today? According to Viola Monte, who has been keeper of the office records for the Harry James band since 1943, most of the band book was placed in the music library archives at the University of Southern California. When asked if the scores or any parts for either Sweet Jenny Lou or Theme for Cynthia were still in the office files, Mrs. Monte replied:

“I have searched and I do not have either of these charts. I did search the college inventory, and it's not listed, so it was probably just given away.”

As for The One I Love, the only document to be found in Viola Monte’s office files is an “Arrangers and Orchestrators” receipt dated March 11, 1949, and itemizing 18 orchestra parts (36 pages at the rate of $4.88 per page) plus 5 vocal parts

(17 pages at $1.44 per page)—a total payment of $200.16 for “services rendered by Paul Villepigue.”

Harry James and His Orchestra

Columbia Records recording session, New York, June 19, 1950

Personnel: Harry James (ldr,tp) Nick Buono, Phil Cook, Stan Fishelson, Everett McDonald (tp) Carl “Ziggy” Elmer, Lee O'Connor, Dave Robbins (tb) Juan Tizol (vtb) Mascagni “Musky” Ruffo, Willie Smith (as) Jimmy Cook, Corky Corcoran (ts) Bob Poland (bars) Bruce McDonald (p) Sam Herman (g) Bob Stone (b) Jackie Mills (d) Paul Villepigue (arr)

♫ To play a music sampler of Harry James: Dance Parade / Your Dance Date,

click here.

____________________

T A K E T H E “A” T R A I N | 1947

In the book Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles, and in the liner notes for its companion CD set, Paul Villepigue is noted for his crossover influence as both teacher and arranger on the West Coast scene of the late 1940s:

During the post–World War II period many jazz musicians enrolled at the Westlake College of Music in Los Angeles and studied harmony and orchestration with teachers such as Paul Villepigue, who had acquired a reputation writing for jazz artists like Lucky Thompson.

(Steven Isoardi, liner notes for Central Avenue Sounds:

Jazz in Los Angeles, 1921-1956, Rhino, 1998)

In 1947, Eli “Lucky” Thompson played tenor saxophone in a small ensemble led by Ike Carpenter, with arrangements written by 28-year-old Paul Villepigue. The Carpenter band book was rich with Ellingtonia, and the piano-playing leader and his ten sidemen twice recorded Villepigue’s chart of Take the “A” Train. One of these recordings, originally made as a demo and later issued in 1949 on the Discovery label, features a solo by Thompson, then 22 years old. Thompson’s tenor playing, even in those early years, garnered high admiration from fellow musicians such as saxophonist Bill Green:

Wardell Gray was on the scene at the time, Dexter Gordon, Teddy Edwards,

Lucky Thompson, who I thought was the greatest of all on tenor sax. He was

smooth, fast, and a beautiful tone. Nothing ever went wrong with his playing.

It was just unbelievable. He said he practiced every day, eight hours a day.

And he did that many, many years. Excellent player. I’d never heard such smoothness.

(William Green, quoted in Central Avenue Sounds,

University of California Press, 1998)

Also on the Carpenter band in 1947, another 22-year-old tenor player took the solo on another Take the “A” Train. Gene Patrick “Corky” Corcoran was featured on the band’s April 20 recording of the tune, for release on the Modern label. Corcoran, who is most well known for his long association with Harry James, did occasional short stints on other bands, including Ike Carpenter’s small group for the recordings of spring 1947. Discographers are in disagreement whether it is Corcoran’s or Thompson’s tenor heard on Villepigue’s arrangement of Day Dream.

Like Thompson, Corcoran came out of the tradition of Coleman Hawkins and

Ben Webster. Yet the sounds of Corcocan and Thompson on these two takes of Take the “A” Train are distinctly different. And, too, the band moves the Corcoran version at a faster tempo. This increase in tempo suggests that the Thompson session may have been an earlier date than the Corcoran recording. Possibly the Thompson demo date was as early as January 1947, when the band first began recording Villepigue’s charts for commercial release.

Ike Carpenter and His Orchestra

Demo recording session, Radio Recorders studio, Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood, early 1947 [?]

Personnel: Lou Oberg, Gerald Wilson (tp) Tommy Pederson, Ollie Wilson (tb) George Weidler (as) Ted Nash (as,ts) Lucky Thompson (ts) Joe Koch (bars) Ike Carpenter (ldr,p) [?] Mathews (b) Bob Hummel (d) Paul Villepigue (arr)

Modern Music recording session, Radio Recorders studio, Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood, April 20, 1947

Personnel: Vito “Mickey” Mangano, Bob Sims (tp) Walter Benson, John Halliburton (tb) George Weidler (as) Herb Moise (as,ts) Corky Corcoran (ts) Joe Koch (bars) Ike Carpenter (ldr,p) Ed Mihelich (b) Bob Hummel (d) Paul Villepigue (arr)

♫ To play a music sampler of Ike Carpenter and His Orchestra: Dancers in Love,

click here.

____________________

T H E M E F O R C Y N T H I A | 1950

According to Eric Townley’s book Tell Your Story: A Dictionary of Jazz and Blues Recordings, Eddie Powell’s composition Theme for Cynthia was “named after the film Cynthia (MGM, 1947) starring Elizabeth Taylor and George Murphy.” The movie posters of the day presented this coming-of-age story as a light and airy confection, with the title name spelled out playfully:

C ome along and meet Cynthia!

Y ou’ll really go for her!

N aughty, maybe, but nice!

   T een-age and terrific!

    H appy-go-lucky and hep!

      I n a word, in-the-groove!

       A girl you’ll love!

The film is now all but forgotten, but Theme for Cynthia endures on recordings by the jazz orchestras of Harry James and of Charlie Barnet. In the same year, 1950, both bandleaders commissioned an arrangement of the song from Paul Villepigue. The writer responded with dance charts of two decidedly different interpretations.

In the Harry James version, the moody introduction soon gives way to the leader’s horn, playing the melody. But in the Charlie Barnet version, the first full minute of melody is predominately orchestrated with strings before Barnet’s soprano sax comes forward. As reported in Down Beat, “Barnet’s new design obviously is to interest dancers.” In this arrangement, Villepigue was following the leader’s new direction for the new band, after the breakup of Barnet’s innovative but short-lived bop band the year before.

I held out against the bop influence until 1949, but had to go along with it then because none of the younger musicians knew how to approach big band playing except in that idiom.

(Charlie Barnet, Those Swinging Years: The Autobiography

of Charlie Barnet, Da Capo Press, 1992)

Barnet formed his bop band in New York and recorded there in January 1949, then went on the road with charts by Manny Albam, Andy Gibson, Pete Rugolo, and Paul Villepigue, in particular Villepigue’s two new originals Lonely Street and Eugipelliv. By midsummer, they were on the West Coast, paired with Woody Herman’s band at Balboa Beach for a battle of the big bands titled Excursions in Modern Music, with guest commentator Stan Kenton.

On Saturday afternoon, July 30, the Rendezvous Ballroom housed an Excursions show starring both Barnet’s and Herman’s eighteen-piece bands. Stan Kenton, inactive since late 1948, helped emcee. . . . Barnet was Herman’s match. Music by his writers—Kahn, Matthews, Pete Rugolo, Dennis Farnon, Manny Albam, Gibson, and Paul Villepigue—featured solos by Safranski on bass, Kahn on drums, trumpeter Maynard Ferguson, pianist Claude Williamson, trombonist Dick Kenney, conga drummer Carlos Vidal, vocalist Trudy Richards, and scat singers Ray Wetzel and Buddy Stewart. This talented band played “Be-Bop Spoken Here,” Ill Wind,” “Claude Reigns,” and a spirited piece known as both “Balboa” and “Bop City.” Both bands blasted a “More Moon” finale.

(Robert C. Kriebel, Blue Flame: Woody Herman’s Life

in Music, Purdue University Press, 1995)

By the time of this gig, however, Barnet regretted the direction his band had taken. He feared that bop was fast losing its appeal with audiences, especially those who wanted to dance, not just stand and listen.

When we did the broadcast in the late afternoon for listeners in the East, no charge was made for admission. The people could come in off the beach just as they were, free. That was when I got the message loud and clear. Scarcely anyone showed up.

Here we were, Kenton, Herman, and Barnet, and we couldn’t get a crowd

to come in even for free! . . . I saw what I had suspected all the time, that the public just wasn’t buying what we were doing. . . . that my only recourse would

be to try to re-form a band more in accordance with my original concepts. That meant destroying a great band and trying to pick up again on the course from which I had strayed.

(Charlie Barnet, Those Swinging Years)

In a dramatic turnaround, Barnet discarded bebop, disbanded, and re-formed a new 20-piece jazz orchestra, with a full complement of 8 violins. The bandleader continued to commission arrangements from Villepigue, who adapted to the new style. At Capitol Records on December 4, 1950, the Barnet orchestra recorded four new Villepigue charts: Spain; I’m a Dreamer, Aren’t We All?; My Crime; and Theme for Cynthia. The review in Down Beat shortly followed, inflating the band by two musicians more than actual size:

Charlie Barnet has now gone the whole gamut. One of the last and most persevering diehards to reluctantly discard bebop, the vet reedman herewith blossoms out again with a big (22) band—including eight strings! It is quite a salaam, commercially, to presentday platter palates, especially for Barnet.

Charlie Barnet and His Orchestra

Capitol Records recording session, Melrose Avenue studio, Hollywood, December 4, 1950
Personnel: John Coppola, Al Del Simone, (tp) Dick Kenney, Ken Martlock, Dave Wells (tb) Charlie Barnet (ldr,ss) Dick Meldonian (as) Bill Holman, Jack Laird (ts) Bob Dawes (bars,as) Donn Trenner (p) Ed Mihelich (b) John Markham (d) Werner Callies, Chuck Clark, Dave Gelfand, Allan Harshman, Paul Nero, Lou Raderman, Bill Spear, Stan Spiegelman (vln) Paul Villepigue (arr)

♫ To play a music sampler of Charlie Barnet: The Capitol Big Band Sessions,

click here.

Harry James and His Orchestra

Columbia Records recording session, New York, June 19, 1950

Personnel: Harry James (ldr,tp) Nick Buono, Phil Cook, Stan Fishelson, Everett McDonald (tp) Carl “Ziggy” Elmer, Lee O’Connor, Dave Robbins (tb) Juan Tizol (vtb) Mascagni “Musky” Ruffo, Willie Smith (as) Jimmy Cook, Corky Corcoran (ts) Bob Poland (bars) Bruce McDonald (p) Sam Herman (g) Bob Stone (b) Jackie Mills (d) Paul Villepigue (arr)

♫ To play a music sampler of Harry James: Trumpet After Midnight,

click here.

____________________

T H E O N E I L O V E | 1949

“Hefti unquestionably cleffed this chart for James,” proclaimed Dave Dexter Jr., author of the liner notes for the Hindsight LP Harry James and His Orchestra, 1947–1949. But Dave Dexter Jr. was wrong—Neal Hefti did not write this chart; Paul Villepigue did.

Proof of Villepigue’s credit for this arrangement is held in the office files of the Harry James Orchestra, maintained by Viola Monte since 1943. Neither score nor parts are to be found, but rather an itemized “Arrangers and Orchestrators” bill showing a total payment of $200.16 for “services rendered by Paul Villepigue.” Specifically, Villepigue was paid at the rate of $4.88 per page for 36 pages of orchestra parts (for the 18-piece band), plus $1.44 per page for 17 pages of vocal parts (for the 5-part group The Skylarks). The bill is dated March 11, 1949, and the song title is The One I Love.

Villepigue’s arrangement was recorded April 1, 1949, as part of Program #110 for the U.S. Navy transcription series and was probably broadcast in the latter half of that year. According to Neal Hefti, who played trumpet on the Harry James band from 1948 midway through 1949, recordings for the U.S. Navy programs often took place while the band was on the road, whenever they stopped in a town

with a good radio station. However, documentation in the Harry James Orchestra files shows that this recording of The One I Love was made in the homebase of Los Angeles at Universal Recorders, to be broadcast at a later date with an announcer’s voice dubbed in. Hefti further adds that each year James disbanded during the summer, putting his musicians on notice for six weeks while his racehorses ran at Del Mar, then rehiring when the racing season was over.

And then the band continued on tour.

The Skylarks, who traveled with the band, consisted of two girls and three boys during this period—Gilda Maiken, Gladys Vesely, Joe Pryor, George Becker, and Chick Gale. The arrangement of The One I Love also featured the trombone of Ziggy Elmer.

Besides this vocal number, only two other charts for Harry James have been positively identified as Paul Villepigue’s work—Sweet Jenny Lou and Theme for Cynthia—both are instrumentals and both were recorded in 1950. Yet Villepigue was writing for the James band as early as 1948, according to Dave Wells, who was then Villepigue’s student at Westlake College of Music and later became an instructor there himself. Wells, who played on the bands of Ike Carpenter, Charlie Barnet, and Harry James, remembers accompanying Villepigue to a late-night rehearsal in Santa Monica at the Casino Gardens, a large dance pavilion co-owned by James and the Dorsey brothers:

In 1948, I had been studying music arranging and composition with Paul. At that time he started talking about an arrangement (the tune name I cannot remember) he had just finished writing for Harry James. It seems he had used a different voicing (placement of instrumental notes) than he or anyone else, to his knowledge, had used before. It was a voicing used in writing for a large string section that he applied to the full ensemble for approximately eight to sixteen bars. The band was rehearsing after their gig at the Casino Gardens and since they would be rehearsing his chart, would I like to accompany him to hear how it sounded. It seemed like Paul was satisfied with it. He was always looking for new sounds to slip into his arrangements and compositions.

(Dave Wells, email to Villepigue’s daughter Desne, September 2007)

Harry James and His Orchestra with The Skylarks

U.S. Navy transcription recording session,

Universal Recorders studio, 6757 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, April 1, 1949

Personnel: Harry James (ldr,tp) Nick Buono, Neal Hefti, Ralph Osborn (tp) Carl “Ziggy” Elmer (tb) Willie Smith (as) Jimmy Cook, Corky Corcoran (ts) Bob Poland (bars) Bruce MacDonald (p) [other instrumentalists unknown but probably Phil Cook or Everett McDonald (tp) Lee O’Conner, Dave Robbins, Juan Tizol (tb) Eddie Rosa (as) Earl Colbert (g) Bob Stone (b) Jackie Mills (d)] The Skylarks: Gilda Maiken, Gladys Vesely, George Becker, Chick Gale, Joe Pryor (vcl) Paul Villepigue (arr)

____________________

T H I N G S A I N ’ T W H A T

T H E Y U S E D T O B E | 1947

In later years, after his band was up and going strong, Ike Carpenter gave the date of April 1947 as the launching point for the ensemble. But in fact the Ike Carpenter Orchestra’s first recordings took place in January of that year, on

two dates—one session produced seven demo recordings at Carpenter’s own expense, and the other session’s tunes came out on the Modern Music label.

For these early studio recordings—with Carpenter on piano plus ten sidemen—

he drew together some of the top talent in Los Angeles. The small ensemble had

a big full sound thanks to the creative writing of arranger Paul Villepigue. The trumpet section included Gerald Wilson, an esteemed bandleader and composer in his own right, but for the Carpenter recordings Wilson’s sole role was on his horn. In 2008, when asked about this brief session work with the band, Wilson said he didn’t remember much about newcomer Ike Carpenter, but

Everybody already knew Paul—he was a fine writer, a great orchestrator. It was

an honor to be playing his music.

(Interview with Gerald Wilson, July 2008)

The lead trumpet player on the session, Lou Obergh, remembers that Villepigue’s arrangements were

tough, brutal—they weren't easy charts to play. You really had to be able to read music to play those charts.

(Interview with Lou Obergh, July 2008)

In building the band’s library of charts, Villepigue and Carpenter focused on their shared admiration for Duke Ellington, including the compositions of Billy Strayhorn and of Duke’s son, Mercer. In particular, two Mercer Ellington works stood out in the Carpenter book. Moon Mist became the band’s theme song, and Things Ain’t What They Used To Be, recorded for Modern in January 1947, showcased three extraordinarily fine soloists: Lou Obergh on lead trumpet, George Weidler on lead alto, and the beautiful sound of Lucky Thompson’s tenor.

Most jazz historians who have studied Lucky Thompson believe that he left the West Coast permanently in 1947. But one of the Carpenter sidemen who joined the band in summer 1948 knows differently. Before getting on the band as trombonist, Dave Wells was one of Villepigue’s young students at Westlake College of Music in spring 1948. He was also a member of the school’s band, which was a very inexperienced ensemble, according to Wells:

Paul and Lucky were good friends at that time. I remember when Paul was teaching at Westlake—Paul had Lucky bring over some of his own arrangements for the Westlake band. But the Westlake band was not capable of really cutting them, playing them. They were hard-driving, swing-type charts most of us weren’t into yet at the time. It was sorta humiliating. Lucky said, “Well, pass ’em in, guys.”

He let it be known that he was disappointed. It was one of those things you never forget because it was very humiliating.

(Interview with Dave Wells, July 2008)

However humbling that experience may have been, Wells showed the right stuff for the Carpenter band when he joined that summer and went on the road, along with fellow Westlake students Matt Utal on alto sax and Bill Holman on tenor. From his days at Westlake, Holman recalled Villepigue’s teaching:

One of his theories was if you have a small ensemble and want it to sound big, don’t spread it out, but close it up. If you put everybody close to each other, you get a bigger sound than if you try to make it fat.

(Bill Holman, quoted in Steven D. Harris, The Kenton Kronicles: A Biography

of Modern America's Man of Music, Dynaflow Publications, 2000)

Reviews of the Ike Carpenter recordings in Variety, Billboard, and Down Beat emphasized the band’s full sound and rich harmonic color in spite of its small size. As one letter-writer to Down Beat put it:

To the Editors: I’d like to put in a plug for a new band that you are going to hear plenty from in the near future. It is fronted by an ex-Raeburn and Sherwood sideman, name of Ike Carpenter, and to my mind is the greatest thing we have heard out here since Kenton. Book contains a lot of Ellington, but all the arrangements are packed with exciting new tone colors and shadings, plus

a fine beat for the dancers. Outstanding feature is that it contains 11 pieces,

but sounds like 18, as their records will testify.

(Down Beat, June 18, 1947)

Although the personnel for Carpenter’s working band was ever changing, the book remained strong in Ellingtonia, and the high performance standards remained set by the early 1947 studio recordings of Villepigue’s arrangements. Some four years later, in mid-1951, Modern re-released these Ellington sides and sent them out for review, which the records hadn’t received on first release. In Down Beat’s “What's on Wax” column, editor Jack Tracy wrote:

As you might guess by the titles, Carpenter has great respect for the Duke. And his 10-piecer executes these Paul Villepigue arrangements well. There’s a clean, pretty Harmon-muted trumpet solo on Jeep’s Blues, along with a properly Hodges-like alto and some rich sax voicings...more excellent trumpeting, open-belled this time, ignites Things.

(Down Beat, August 10, 1951)

Ike Carpenter and His Orchestra

Modern Music recording session, Radio Recorders studio, Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood, January 18, 1947

Personnel: Ike Carpenter (ldr,p) Lou Obergh, Gerald Wilson (tp) Tommy Pedersen, Ollie Wilson (tb) Ted Nash (cl,as,ts) George Weidler (as) Lucky Thompson (ts) Joe Koch (bars) Jim Stutz (b) Roy Harte (d) Paul Villepigue (arr)

♫ To play a music sampler of Ike Carpenter and His Orchestra: Dancers in Love,

click here.

____________________

T O A W I L D R O S E | 1946

“A Paul Villepigue masterpiece,” said Johnny Bothwell in a rare radio interview from 1974. Bothwell was referring to Villepigue’s arrangement of To a Wild Rose, which the alto saxophonist had recorded with his band nearly three decades earlier on the short-lived Signature label of record producer Bob Thiele.

In 2007, the interview tape was unearthed from the interviewer’s basement and transcribed by Villepigue’s daughter. The radio program was “Adventures in Jazz” on Florida’s station WFLA, and Johnny Bothwell was featured as a surprise guest. Program host Rod Weller was perhaps the most surprised of all, to find himself face to face with the former bandleader who had vanished from the jazz scene in 1951 without a trace. Shortly before the 1974 interview, a new album titled Whatever Happened to Johnny Bothwell had been released, with a selection of ten Bothwell recordings remastered from original Signature 78s of the mid-1940s. The new LP was produced by Bob Thiele Music, Ltd.

When the album Whatever Happened to Johnny Bothwell was released, I was Program Director of WFLA in Tampa and played jazz on Saturday night. I played

a couple of cuts and told the audience that Johnny Bothwell had perished in a hotel fire in Hartford several years prior (mistaking him for Hal McIntyre). Well,

he called me on Monday morning, which led to the interview and a friendship.

He was then a commercial photographer in Plant City, Florida. He was a bit bitter about his treatment as a musician (and star) in the 40s and gave up playing in

the early 50s.

(Rod [Weller] Baum, email to Villepigue’s daughter Desne, August 2007)

During the interview, Weller asked, “Johnny, do you ever play the alto anymore?” and Bothwell replied, “No, it’s under the bed and turning green.” Nonetheless, he spoke warmly of his love for the music: “We had such a ball in those days. Music was a peak thing—the big band business at that time, it was big medicine, it was powerful, interesting. And actually I made good money.”

Unfortunately, Bothwell proved to be a poor financial manager for his own orchestra, and he disbanded the first year on the road, leaving his musicians stranded in Saint Louis and forced to pay their own way home. After a few more years leading small groups without much success, he finally walked away from music, started a photography business, and never looked back to the career that had begun with such bright promise. He suffered a stroke in the mid-1980s, spending several weeks in a convalescent facility. He died at home alone in August of 1995.

In the beginning, Bothwell’s star began to rise in the Midwest, particularly with the band of Boyd Raeburn, which the altoist played with on and off, first joining in the late 1930s: “I worked with Boyd in Chicago before he ever left—in the 40s band. I also worked with Max Miller, Jimmy McPartland—quite a few of the boys from that early Chicago period.” Bothwell did a stint with Bob Chester’s band and then went on the road with Woody Herman: “I worked a year with Woody. We worked 43 weeks of solid 7-days-a week theaters—all the major houses.”

With growing acclaim as a soloist, Bothwell rejoined the Raeburn band as featured alto and toured across the country for a year until mid-1945, then he struck out on his own and headed for New York, where he recorded with Gene Krupa. By spring 1946, Down Beat reported that the 16-piece Johnny Bothwell Orchestra was rehearsing for its debut with a book of new arrangements written by Paul Villepigue. The bandleader had known the arranger since before the war, from his charts for the Raeburn and Chester bands in Chicago. Villepigue, a reedman himself, knew how to showcase the leader’s unique sound.

Johnny Bothwell’s moody saxophone playing can be both disturbing and soothing

at the same time. His skillful, quick fingering and expert reeding coax such a wide, colorful variety of notes and quick-changing tempos out of the sax that the effect is almost startling. It requires masterful arranging to achieve these effects. [Pictured:] Johnny and arranger Paul Villepigue.

(Dixon Gayer, photo caption for “Johnny’s Sleepy Alto,”

Band Leaders and Record Review, October 1946)

For one of his arrangements, Villepigue turned to the piano suites of Edward MacDowell for inspiration and rewrote the lyrical 1896 song To a Wild Rose in modern jazz form as a feature for alto saxophone. During the radio interview, Bothwell spoke of his own admiration for the impressionist composers, such

as Ravel and Debussy: “La Mer, of course, even the Shostakovich things, too.” Interviewer Rod Weller continued:

RW: You made a pretty impressionistic thing that, unfortunately, for my sake at least, did not get included on this album when your records were reissued.

JB: The Wild Rose?

RW: Yes. My question was going to be, how come you did that? Why did you reach out to [Edward MacDowell] and grab that old warhorse for the salon orchestra and do something with it?

JB: It was such a different piece of music. It always was, I think it always will be. You know, we had to write to get permission. They had something in his will that he didn’t care who did it or how they played it, but they had to have permission from some trust set up in the estate. So we just had to go and get a letter saying, okay, you can record.

RW: Now that, Johnny, to me, is certainly one of the best that you did, with this band that you had.

JW: To me, I always loved the song. I love this arrangement. A Paul Villepigue masterpiece.

Johnny Bothwell and His Orchestra

Signature Records recording session, New York, 1946

♫ To play a music sampler of Johnny Bothwell and His Orchestra: Street of Dreams, 1946,

click here.

____________________

2 2 S T E P S F R O M T H E C O R N E R | 1946

S T R A N G E F E E L I N G | 1946

In February 1946, Paul Villepigue was honorably discharged from the Army Band Training Unit where he had served as teacher of arranging along with Gil Evans. Like Evans, who had continued to write for Claude Thornhill while in the service,

it is most likely that Villepigue also maintained connections with civilian bands during the war years. Probably one of those bands was that of Boyd Raeburn, for whom Villepigue had written in the early forties in Chicago. He would later work as principal arranger for Raeburn’s former pianist Ike Carpenter in 1947-48 on the West Coast, but first Villepigue spent the year 1946 in New York City, where he wrote most of the book for the newly formed Johnny Bothwell Orchestra.

The bandleader was a gifted alto player who, after gaining recognition playing with the Raeburn band, decided to strike out on his own. Raeburn’s singer Claire Hogan not only joined Bothwell in his band, she also joined him in marriage. The new Mrs. Bothwell was just 19 at the time of these recordings on the Signature label. The sides—22 Steps from the Corner and Strange Feeling—were released in the spring of 1946 to favorable review by Down Beat’s hard-to-impress Michael Levin in his column “Diggin’ the Discs with Mix” for the May 20 issue:

Feeling is a Strayhorn tune paced by the ex-Raeburn Bothwell alto and vocaled by Claire Hogan (Mrs. Bothwell) backed by a vocal group used for a change for more than just noise in the background. Support mood feeling comes from wisp-like figures tossed off by the brass. Backing side is a rhythm tune which has a swell muted trumpet section backed by atonally voiced reeds and pedal tone trombones playing off beat eighth-quarter notes. . . . very, very impressive for a new band.

And in the same issue of Down Beat, the photo caption on page 2 reads:

New York—Lots of this rehearsal stuff has been going on among Johnny Bothwell and crew and there is more to follow as the band will soon cut out on the road for GAC. That’s arranger Paul Villepigue prepping vocalists Claire Hogan and Don Darcy while the pleased Johnny looks on. Bothwell recently recorded more sides for Signature with Claire Hogan, Dave Lambert, and a vocal group featured.

Despite these contemporary reports, documentation is lacking for the recording sessions, personnel, and attribution of the arranging credits. Nonetheless, Bothwell’s longtime friend, Richard Ruark, attests to the primacy of Villepigue’s role in the new Bothwell bandbook:

What impressed Johnny about Paul was his ability to take a vapid pop tune and create an arrangement that showcased it and the performers to the max. . . . To the best of my knowledge, Paul supplied all the arrangements for the band, other than the ones by George Williams, written when John was on Boyd's band.

(Richard Ruark, email to Villepigue’s daughter Desne, June 2003)

Finally, arranger/composer Jeff Sultanof, who has closely studied the work of Villepigue, offers these comments based on aural evidence:

22 Steps from the Corner features not only Claire Hogan but also the Dave Lambert Singers. Lambert wrote the group harmonization, but the ensemble writing under the vocal and particularly the background under the trumpet solo show a unique compositional voice. Commercial yet daring in spots, this record proves that a good setting can offset a minor, forgettable song.

The flip side is Strayhorn’s Strange Feeling from Ellington’s Perfume Suite, a striking and unusual song that is not easy to sing. This is the only other recording of the song during that time besides Ellington’s, and it was probably producer Bob Thiele’s idea to record. Some sources suggest that Ed Finckel is the pianist and the arranger. With all due respect to Finckel—a major talent in his own right—both of these arrangements sound like the work of Paul Villepigue.

Johnny Bothwell and His Orchestra

Signature Records recording session, New York, spring 1946

Paul Villepigue (arr)

♫ To play a music sampler of Johnny Bothwell and His Orchestra: Street of Dreams, 1946,

click here.

____________________

V E L V E T M O O N | 1942

M R . F I V E B Y F I V E | 1942

At the beginning of 1942, the piano-playing Marx brother, Chico, fronted a band managed by Ben Pollack and began touring the country. By October, the Chico Marx Orchestra had arrived in Chicago. Across the nation, road bands were feeling the wartime pinch, as reported by Down Beat on October 15, 1942, in an article whose headline tells it all: “Gas Rationing and a Freeze on Rail Travel Close the Road to Band Travel.”

Chico and his band members settled in town for a four-month engagement at Chicago’s famed restaurant and nightclub, the Blackhawk, at Randolph and Wabash on the Loop. Pollack expanded the band by adding some of the local talent, including reedman Vern Yocum and arranger Paul Villepigue—both of them coming from the Boyd Raeburn band—as well as bass player and violinist Johnny Frigo and 17-year-old vocalist Mel Tormé. The young singer arranged his own numbers, while Villepigue served as the principal arranger for instrumentals and other vocal charts. According to the band’s guitarist Barney Kessel:

The first professional job I ever was with—that was a band that was funded by and its musical director was Ben Pollack, who had the Chico Marx band, with Mel Tormé and Marty Napoleon in it. George Wettling was in that. Marty Marsala. It was a very good band. Excellent arrangements by Paul Villepigue. We had eight brass, six saxophones, and a vocal group, and it was tremendous...We played the Black Hawk restaurant for four months in Chicago, and when [Marx] did his numbers—his stage show—he would lead the band, we’d play with him.

(Barney Kessel, quoted in Ira Gitler, Swing to Bop: An Oral History of

the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s, Oxford University Press, 1985)

Back in Kansas, Villepigue’s mother kept a running list, as best she could, of the song titles arranged by her son for the various bandleaders he wrote for. Her typewritten list of tunes—culled from Villepigue's letters home—includes the ballad Velvet Moon written as a feature for singer Skip Nelson, who came to the Marx band from Glenn Miller’s orchestra. This is the Chico Marx section of her list (verbatim as typed):

CHICO MARX

Velvet moon

920 special

I don’t care what you think of me

Starlight sonata

It’s a long, long way from home

The lady who didn’t believe in love

Taking a chance on love

If I ever get back to Hannah

Starlight Souvenirs

Rose Ann of charing cross

I’d do it again

As time goes by

I had the craziest dream

Though the song Mr. Five by Five is not on the list, it was confirmed as being a Paul Villepigue arrangement by a phone conversation with Barney Kessel (2002). This lively number features the petite vocalist Kim Kimberly, standing a mere five feet tall. Born Armide Whipple, she worked under that name as a teenager in the late 1930s with Bob Crosby’s Bobcats and Jimmie Grier. In 1940, she reinvented herself as blonde Kim Kimberly for the Ben Pollack band, where she met and married trumpet player Bobby Clark. When Pollack’s band morphed into the Chico Marx Orchestra, both Kim and Bobby stayed on board.

Villepigue’s arrangements of these songs—Mr. Five by Five and Velvet Moon—were recorded on the air when the Chico Marx Orchestra was featured on the popular radio program “Fitch Bandwagon” on December 20, 1942.

The 30-minute “Fitch Bandwagon” was a blockbuster on NBC, being heard by millions of fans at 7:30 on Sunday nights. The program, which ran from fall 1938 to spring 1948, was unusual because each broadcast originated from the city where the host band was playing.

(Tom Longden, “Fred. W. Fitch,” profile of the producer

of “Fitch Bandwagon,” DesMoinesRegister.com)

In this case, the hosting city was Chicago, and the program was broadcast over NBC’s Blue Network. As heard on these recordings, emcee Tobe Reed plays foil to Chico’s comedy shtick as they introduce each tune. For her song, Kim Kimberly joins Chico for some flirty banter.

[NOTE: For more on Paul Villepigue and his work with the bands of Chico Marx and Boyd Raeburn, click here.]

Chico Marx and His Orchestra

“Fitch Bandwagon” radio broadcast, Blue Network, Chicago, December 20, 1942

Personnel: Chico Marx (ldr,p) [sidemen probably include] Bobby Clark, Marty Marsala (tp) Paul Villepigue, Vern Yocum (saxes, cl) Marty Napoleon (p) Barney Kessel (g) Johnny Frigo (b) George Wettling (d) Skip Nelson, Kim Kimberly (vcl)

Paul Villepigue (arr)

♫ To play a music sampler of The Big Bands of Hollywood: Desi Arnaz & Chico Marx,

click here.

____________________