Herb Ellis interview 1982

[Steve Voce]

Charlie Christian, Jack Teagarden, Hot Lips
Page, Jimmy Giuffre, Gene Roland, Lightnin'
Hopkins, Herschel Evans, Gene Ramey, Budd
Johnson, Sam Price, Harold Land, Eddie
Vinson, Leo Wright, Ernie Caceres, Teddy
Wilson, Buddy Tate, Eddie Durham, Teddy
Buckner, Tyree Glenn, Ornette Coleman, Cedar
Walton, Kenny Dorham, Booker Ervin, Arnett
Cobb just a few of the great jazz musicians who
came from Texas.

And Herb Ellis, of course, completing a list
which shows the Lone Star State as one of the
major spawning grounds of jazz talent. Herb
was born in McKinney in I92I.

' I took up the guitar because it was there' he
said. 'My sister bought me a banjo when I was
six. I had a cousin that left a guitar in our old
farmhouse - we were out in the country about
40 miles from Dallas - and I became interested
in it. I had an older brother who was
mechanically inclined and he was interested in it
too. There was a competitive thing between us
and we both wanted to play it. He tuned it, but I
knew he'd tuned it wrong, so I sent for a little
book from a mail order catalogue and it taught
me to tune the thing properly. After that I taught
myself to play it and then taught my brother as
well. I never had any tuition at all. I studied
music for some years later, but not in relation
to the guitar, at North Texas State University.
That's where I met Jimmy Giuffre, Harry
Babasin and Gene Roland, and it was with them
I made my first contact in jazz. I'm not sure
what kind of music I'd played before that -
you'll read some quotes that I played country.
Well, that's all right. Life is one great
misquotation. What I actually played were tunes
that I heard on the radio, and as far as I was
concerned I just played guitar. I didn't separate
the different pieces of music into categories.

'I really wasn't jazz orientated at all before
college. Our nearest neighbour was maybe half
a mile away, so it was a very lonely setting and
I never met other musicians, for instance. I
was totally dependent on the radio for any
influences and the first jazz guitar player I
heard on the radio that I was conscious of was
George Barnes. That was before I heard
Charlie Christian. When I went to college I
heard Charlie and that had the most dramatic
effect on my music and consequently on my life.
At the same time I heard Count Basie with
Lester Young and that had a profound effect on
me, too. I began listening to Lunceford, Hines
and all the name bands. I heard Dizzy at that
time - those were his very early days before the
bop thing began. Those things formulated my
attitude and my likes and dislikes. I've
remained constant to them. I'm not the sort of
player who hears something new and has to go
rushing after it. Over the years I've known a lot
of players like that. Some cat 'll come on the
scene with something new and they have to
have it as well because they're terrified of
getting left behind. That's the way to be sure you
never have an individual and identifiable style
of your own. The guitar, it seems to me, is less
prone to that sort of thing because when you
play the guitar you've got to be honest. You
can't fake

I2

guitar playing. Or you can't fake it to fool the
other guitar players. Guitar playing is
transparent in that you can tell immediately if a
guy has learned his instrument thoroughly. On
some of the horns you can perhaps fool people
with so-called avant garde playing, but if you
don't know your chords or progressions on the
guitar, it's going to show up. In this way the
strength of character of the leading guitar
influences is consistent and it stands out.
Someone like Johnny Smith, for instance, who
is a totally different player from me, or Tal
Farlow, who was probably more responsible
for the development from Charlie Christian's
playing than anyone else, or the great players
like Jim Hall, Barney Kessel and of course Joe
Pass and Kenny Burrell, all have maintained
their individual styles and not deviated from
them over the years.

'Like them, in my early days I formulated
one road, one way to go in jazz that I liked and
could identify with. Once on that road I've
purposely stayed with it. I may like other
avenues in music but they don't influence me,
because I'm a firm believer in sticking with one
thing and trying to make it better. These guys
you see running scared when some new thing
comes along, even if they have a lot of talent
and technique, it never means much. It's never
directed at anything with sincerity.

'The blues element in my playing, which as
you say is strong, certainly came from hearing
Basie and Lester, but mainly of course from
Charlie Christian. He had a very mournful
quality to his playing,

thought. He wasn't known as a blues player
like B. B. King but he had a blues feeling which
was very powerful. Where I was reared had
something to do with it, too. There was a lot of
lonesomeness there. You'd hear freight trains at
night, that sort of thing, and although I didn't
realise it at the time, the environment must have
influenced my music.

'You mention the blues trait in

Giuffre's music and I know what you mean
mean, but I don't know if there's any
connection. I suppose there must have been
common influences for all of us at North
Texas'. (Interestingly, when Leonard Feather
played Kenton's Reuben's Blues to Herb in a
Blindfold Test, Herb suggested that the soprano
sounded like it might have been Giuffre. In fact
it was Gene Roland, another Texan - SV). 'No
matter what kind of music Jimmy's playing at
the moment, and I never know what kind of
thing he's going to be playing from one time to
the next, he's always got the blues thing. He's
never still, and that's sorta good, but I feel
personally that maybe if he'd stayed on one
road he might have had more of an impact than
he's had. That much of a diffused front takes
away any definitiveness. I love him and I love
his music, but for playing I'm more inclined to
go with someone like Dizzy or Clark Terry or
Milt Jackson. If you walk in to hear Milt
Jackson you know what it's going to be maybe
better than the last time, but you know what
you're going to get. You're not going to get him
playing like somebody else, or another type of
music, and that's very important, I think.

'But since college, when I roomed with

Jimmy, we've been close friends. Make
mistake, he's one hell of a musician.

learned a great deal together and I learned
a great deal from him. We listened records
and played together and later because of
that personal exchange musical ideas, he
wrote an album for when I was with
Norman Granz. Herb E Meets Jimmy
Giuffre it was, and it I Bud Shank, Art
Pepper, Richie Kami and Jimmy on reeds. I
had expected him come up with Four
Brothers arrangement but they weren't. As
usual he came up with something else. I like
them. At the time was a little distraught
because it put me in position where I had to
read a bit more than I expected.

'Never liked reading. Hated it! I did

talks to
Steve Voce

for I7 years in the studio, and was not very
good at it, especially at first, but I had get
good enough ... I did every thing that had to
do. I never got sent home, so I gut I did it
all right.

'Incidentally I get mixed up. Jimmy am did
an earlier album with Sweets Edison and
Oscar and Ray Brown for Norman.

'Then we did Nothin' But The Blues for
Norman with Roy Eldridge, Stan Gel Ray
Brown and Stan Levey. I'm proud that one
because all the others played well. I'd like to
re-do some of my sol because I think I could
have done better with them, but Stanley Getz
was at his best on that one and to me Ray
Brown is to best bass player there is. No, I'm
not being modest. With some albums I do
feel I like to have jumped my tracks and do
some things differently. But a lot of people
liked that album. You've got to with tin
quality of players. I was fortunate that could
get them. Stan played beautifully c Tin Roof
Blues, but my favourite track and Ray
Brown's too, was Royal Garden. I liked

The Midnight Roll that we did for Epic. Roy
was on that one too, along with Buddy Tate,
Ray Bryant, Jimmy Rowser alternating with
Israel Crosby and Frank Assunto. We kept the
link with Ray Brown, because that was the first
time his tune Gravy Waltz was recorded. He
had something of a hit with that.

'That was right after I had left Oscar
Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald. I was with Oscar
most of the time, six years, and Ella for two
years, I953 until I959, something like that
and this was made right after that.

'I replaced Barney Kessel with Oscar.
Barney had been there a year when he left. As
you know we did a host of records, and I had
to settle a definitive method for the guitar within
the trio right from the start.

Some of the best examples were not on the
records. We did a lot of so-called 'composer'
albums, tunes by one composer that we
wouldn't necessarily play out in the clubs or
concerts. The best account of that group would
be the Stratford album. Have you heard of
that? (Under Peterson's name on Verve import
2304 223 - SV).

'The role of the guitar in the trio presented
me with the hardest job I've had ever.
Anybody who would have played that
particular role would have found it the same. I
had a lot of things to play which Oscar
arranged and some of them were with him,
playing along with them, but not necessarily
unison. Often they'd be harmony parts.
Sometimes I'd play contrary parts, sometimes
I'd play alone and he'd be playing something
different. We had a lot of arrangements and
Oscar insisted that you had them all at your
finger tips, so it was very, very difficult.
Everybody was very impressed with the speed
and thought that was the hardest thing, but
actually it wasn't for me. I got so I could play
fast and keep

up without trouble. Playing your own Solos
was the easiest part, that was the ice cream.
But playing the backgrounds that Oscar
wanted when he was playing - that could be
anything from rhythm to comping to bongo
effect. He ran the whole gamut and it was a
good experience. He's the greatest piano player
in the world as far as I'm concerned. With the
arrangement he did most of it - you were free to
suggest, but he was so fast at making things up
that by the time you'd got a four bar or eight
bar section you'd thought of, he'd be already
into the next section.

'I recorded one album round about I960
after I'd left Oscar and it's perhaps my
favourite album with Oscar as far as my own
solo playing is concerned. It's entitled Hello
Herbie and it was on MPS (BMP 20723-4). I
flew over to Europe especially to make the
album. Bobby Durham was on drums and
Sam Jones on bass and Oscar played
sensationally.

'After I left he made the statement that he
would never use the guitar integrally in the trio
again, which was quite a compliment for me.
He meant it out of respect for me, but also that
it was so hard and so much rehearsal to get a
trio into shape ... Now he plays with Joe Pass,
sometimes they play together and sometimes
they play with bass and drums. But it's ad lib
jamming. They don't have a lot of hard
arrangements to remember.

'Joe is a brilliant guitarist. I've made three
albums with him, two for Concord and one for
Pablo, and I have nothing but just great things
to say about him. I'd hate to choose just one
guitarist as my favourite, but he's certainly one
of the alltime greats.

'When I left Oscar I'd been married for a
couple of years and we had one child and
another one on the way, so I felt a
responsibility to my family to quit the road and
be home. I stayed at home for almost I7 years,
and did studio work, which was a sacrifice
because I never liked it. I found it very
nervous for me to have to be under the
hammer reading. You never knew if it was
going to be easy or very hard and it was a
painful way to make a living, although I must
say I made a very good living at it. I'd got
married in I958 and we moved to Los Angeles
then, and stayed home until four or five years
ago.

'In the studios you had to be ready for
anything. I was lucky in that in the first week
I'd let it be known I was available I began to
get lots of work. I played backing rock stars,
with big string orchestras, film music,
television commercials, all that sort of thing. I
put in some years with the television shows,
too, like Steve Alien's and Merv Grif fin's.
Before that I did the Danny Kaye and Red
Skelton shows amongst others.

'As far as your life style goes, I suppose the
studio work is comparatively easy because
you're home all the time and your hours are
regulated, but the work is hard and nerve-
wracking king. There's no ifs and and and no
wait a minute. It's now, and whatever it is
you'd better be ready to do it. And you not only
have to read it, you have to play it in the style
for which it is supposed to be written. Also, live
TV is live! It's

hard on the nerves.

'I've been fortunate in that there's enough
demand now for me to be able to concentrate
on jazz playing, and I've been able to tour
Europe, Japan, Australia and so on. I either
play alone or sometimes with Barney Kessel
and Charlie Byrd, maybe I do eight weeks a
year with them and maybe another eight with
Barney.

'I still play a lot at home in LA. But then
throughout the time I was in the studios I
always kept playing jazz there. I played often
with Bill Berry's LA Band and Juggernaut. I
played a lot on Monday nights at Donte's.
Usually I'd have Bill Berry in my group or if he
had the group I'd be in it. We'd use Jake Hanna
and Ross Tompkins and we had a lot of fun.
Bill's a very good writer. He took the way I
played Easter Parade and wrote it up for the
big band to feature me and he really captured
the feel of the way I played it. He's a great
player, too. I just saw him recently when I took
my wife and two daughters to see Sophisticated
Ladies. That's a good show.

'That show typifies the high calibre of the
musicians around LA. Maybe I0 years ago the
studio scene in New York got very thin, and it
was much more fertile in LA. That's when many
of them came out. I don't know how the work is
for them now, since I'm not involved any more,
but I have a feeling it's not as good as it was.

'As far as recording is concerned,
Concord's made a big difference for me. Carl
Jefferson's first two albums had me and Joe
Pass together and I was on five out of his first
six. So far I think I'm on 24 of the Concord
issues.

'Whilst I don't find much time for personal
teaching, I have an interest in the Southwest
Guitar Conservatory in San Antonio, Texas. I
go there about four times a year for a few days
to do some teaching and clinics, so I get to
work with young people there.

'Amongst the youngsters there's a girl called
Emily Remier. She came to me about four years
ago in New Orleans and said she wanted to
take a lesson. I don't usually work like that
and I don't know why, but this time I agreed.
She really didn't need a lesson - I think she just
wanted to play for me. She is a dynamite
player. I introduced her to Carl Jefferson and
suggested he get her out for a concert, which
he did, along with a lot of other guitarists, and
now he's recorded her with Hank Jones, Jake
Hanna and Bob Maize (Concord CJ-I62).
She's a brilliant guitarist. I think she'll open up
the field for other women and let them know
that they can try and emulate her.

'She's a good sign for the future of jazz
guitar playing. But I think it's in a pretty good
state anyway. Tal Farlow, Kenny Burrell, Jim
Hall, Barney, Charlie Byrd, Joe Pass - we're all
enjoying more popularity now than we have in
years.

'A lot of the kids coming out of the schools
are so intent on playing things like the Dorian
modes and their scales and things and they
learn to move all over the guitar but they don't
play any music. They don't make any swing.
I'm afraid they're going to be very sorry later
on. I hope there's more Emily Remlers coming
along to take over from us.

--
Steve Voce