Return of the Guitar Man - The New York City Jazz Record

ENCORE
Johnny Smith
by Marcia Hillman
Although guitarist
Johnny Smith has not
recorded for over three
decades or performed
for almost two, he has
achieved legendary
‘60s ‘00s
status. He has worked
with the likes of Stan Kenton, Count Basie, Benny
Goodman, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims and Bing Crosby,
among many others. He has performed all over the
world and been in venues as diverse as Birdland and
the orchestral pit of the New York Philharmonic.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1922, Smith and
his family left the South during the Depression and
finally settled in Portland, Maine when he was seven
years old. Completely self-taught, Smith learned his
trade in pawnshops. He relates, “There were no
teachers when I was young, so I would tune the guitars
for the pawnshop owners and they would let me play
them.” By the time he was 13, he owned his first guitar
and was teaching others to play. “My father could play
the banjo and he wanted me to play the fiddle. But the
guitar was always my first love. It’s a very personal
instrument,” he states. Smith joined a hillbilly band
(Uncle Lem and the Mountain Band, touring around
Maine and performing at dances, fairs and the like) but
by 18 had started to play jazz and formed his own jazz
trio called The Airport Boys. “I’d dream chords in my
sleep and in the morning try them out on my guitar,”
he remembers. “Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian
and Les Paul were my heroes.”
World War II was approaching and in 1942 Smith
enlisted in the US Army Air Corps. He applied for
flight school, but was turned down. “The vision in my
left eye wasn’t perfect. I was given the choice between
going to mechanic’s school and joining the military
band.” Smith opted to join the latter, but “had to learn
the cornet and how to read music in two weeks. So I
practiced in the latrine nonstop for two weeks.” He
spent his Army career playing music on the cornet and
then assembling a jazz combo where he went back to
playing guitar and made Air Corps musical tours in
the Southeast. At the end of the war, Smith returned to
Portland where he became a staff musician at the NBC
radio affiliate there. In addition, he would play guitar
in local nightclubs and trumpet in the band at a local
vaudeville theater. In 1946, two opportunities
presented themselves - an invitation from Eugene
LEST WE FORGET
Attila Zoller (1927-98)
by Clifford Allen
Though it might seem hard to believe, in jazz and
improvised music there are commonly-held adages
that there are two ways to play each instrument in
every ‘school’. In the ‘50s, one played the trumpet
either like Miles Davis or Clifford Brown; in the days
of ‘fire music’ the piano was either played like Cecil
Taylor or Paul Bley and in the ’70s-80s free
improvisation on the guitar could be approached only
with Sonny Sharrock or Derek Bailey in mind. Of
course, the truth is that there are many players in
between or taking a personal neither/nor stance.
Guitarist Attila Zoller was one of those musicians
whose work, while quite vanguard, was subtle enough
to slip notice despite a long and intercontinental career.
Born in Viesegrad, Hungary on Jun. 13th, 1927,
10 October 2011 | THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD
Ormandy to be the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra’s
guitarist and an offer to be staff musician and arranger
for NBC headquarters in New York City.
He chose New York and thus began the most
productive years of his life. He played in the NBC band
on radio (and later television) on as many as 35 shows
a week. “In those days, all of the radio shows had live
music,” he recalls. He also played engagements with
the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia
Orchestra. In great demand, Smith formed his own
group and was a regular at Birdland and on recording
sessions. The money was incredible for this Depressionraised
child and he maintained a workaholic schedule.
“They certainly were the good old days for me,” he
claims. After a time, he cut down his full-time NBC
work to tour with the Stan Kenton band and then with
Count Basie. “That was in the mid ‘50s,” he reminisces.
“We traveled from gig to gig in two buses. There was a
stretch there where we did over 71 one-nighters in a
row.” During this time, he composed a little ditty
called “Walk Don’t Run”, which turned out to be a
most valuable copyright. “I recorded it first, but then
Chet Atkins heard it and covered it in one of his
albums,” says Smith. It was the Atkins recording that a
group called The Ventures heard and redid themselves
in the ‘60s, hitting the top ten charts.
The change for Smith came in 1958, when his
second wife died, leaving him with their four-year-old
daughter, Kim. Family-oriented, he decided it was
more important to bring up his child than perform all
over the world. Part of his family had settled in
Colorado Springs, so Smith packed up and headed
west. At first, he would make trips into New York City
to record and perform at Birdland, but they became
fewer and fewer. “The last show I did was with Bing
Crosby,” says Smith. He also limited his playing in the
local clubs in Denver and Colorado Springs. “I lost the
tip of my playing finger in 1963. By 1995, I had decided
to hang it up. I miss performing for people, but I don’t
miss the business and the traveling.”
Smith’s legacy is firmly established. It includes 18
albums with various groups on the Roost, Roulette,
Columbia, Verve and Prestige labels (Mosaic Records
has released a boxed set of eight of his Roost
recordings). Smith also designed guitars bearing his
name for three manufacturers - Gibson, Guild and
Heritage. These days he hangs out quietly in Colorado,
keeping in touch with some of his guitar buddies -
such as Mundell Lowe - and enjoying his family. In
1998, Smith received the James Smithson Bicentennial
Medal (bestowed annually by the Smithsonian
Institution) “in recognition of his contribution to
American music.” v
Zoller came from a musical family and started playing
the violin when he was young, moving on to the
trumpet at age nine and finally picking up the guitar in
1945 after the end of World War II. Zoller went to
Vienna in 1948 where he began to pick up jazz, playing
traditional material alongside accordionist Vera Auer.
Inspired by the music of Lennie Tristano that he heard
in Vienna, upon visiting Frankfurt in the early ‘50s
Zoller began working with the pianist Jutta Hipp, a
collaboration that solidified his place in modern
adventurous jazz.
After the group (and he and Hipp) came apart,
Zoller moved to the US in 1956 and began playing with
inside-outside musicians like Tony Scott, Bill Evans
and, most importantly, Lee Konitz (whom he’d met in
Germany and who became a lasting associate). He
attended the Lenox School of Jazz in 1959 at the same
time that Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry were there.
Being a guitarist, Zoller’s approach to freedom came
from chords and discovering ambiguous relationships
Recommended Listening:
• Johnny Smith - The Complete Roost Johnny Smith
Small Group Sessions (Roost-Mosaic, 1952-64)
• Johnny Smith - Moonlight in Vermont (feat. Stan Getz)
(Roost/Roulette - EMI, 1952-53)
• Johnny Smith - Walk, Don’t Run! (Roost/Roulette - EMI, 1954)
• Johnny Smith - The Sound of The Johnny Smith Guitar
(Roost/Roulette - EMI, 1960-61)
• Johnny Smith Quartet - Johnny Smith (Verve, 1967)
• Johnny Smith/George Van Eps -
Solo Guitar Performances (Concord, 1976)
between the changes and at the start of the ‘60s he was
working in a cooperative group with pianist Don
Friedman, an acolyte of Bill Evans with Paul Bley-like
tendencies. Zoller visited Europe frequently, touring
and recording with Konitz, tenorman Hans Koller and
trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff.
Around the same time, he was gigging in more
traditional contexts stateside with Red Norvo and
Benny Goodman. An association with flutist Herbie
Mann could have led to more recognition for Zoller’s
work - his 1970 Embryo LP Gypsy Cry was produced by
Mann - but as the decade was especially tough for jazz
players whose art was neither free nor fusion, it was a
challenge for him to find an audience. He eventually
moved to Vermont and in 1975 began the Vermont Jazz
Center in Brattleboro, which has attracted musicians
like Konitz, Fred Hersch, Kenny Barron and many
others to perform and conduct master classes. Zoller
continued to record regularly as a soloist and
bandleader until his death on Jan. 25th, 1998. v