 ill Berry was fuming and making his mustache bristle, pretending he was
sore about having to play a jazz concert in the Douglas Fairbanks
Gardens of the Hollywood Forever C emetery.
"What the hell are we doing there?" the former Woody Herman cornet
soloist growled.
"I have no goddamn idea," said Polly Podewell, the former Herman
singer who was taking part with Berry and some others in an informal
pre-concert wake for the innovative bandleader, who died in 1987.
She was bugged because the producers of the alumni concert on Oct. 19,
2002, had only scheduled her to sing one number. Rebecca Parris was
going to get three songs, Podewell said, though she was never in the
band, which was still thundering along after more than 60 years, then
under the direction of Frank Tiberi.
 t
was going to be a big event, too, with a personal
appearance by Woody's old clarinet rival, Artie Shaw; a video message
from Tony Bennett; and an army of Herman alumni, many them familiar
Hollywood studio names like Alan Broadbent, Pete Candoli, Bill
Perkins, Jack Nimitz, Andy McGee, Joe LaBarbera and Terry Gibbs.
They'd be jamming at the Babylon Court in the Hollywood & Highland
complex from 6 p.m. till midnight on the Friday before the concert.
Saturday afternoon at 1 p.m., Jack Sheldon was to sing songs Herman
sang. USC, Cal State Northridge and Cal State Fullerton were to field
jazz orchestras playing Herman charts at 1 p.m. Sunday.
But that lineup cut no ice with the 71-year-old Berry, who played with
Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie and Lester
Lanin, among many others.
Jake Hanna and Bill Berry tell
how it was.
mean, are we trying to sell plots?" he demanded,
pretending that he didn't know the proceeds would benefit Jazz America,
Buddy Collette's outfit, and the International Association of Jazz
Educators, whose past president, Herb Wong, was slated to speak.
"Cemetery lots! We're trying to sell cemetery lots!" said Podewell,
laughing bitterly. It was she who nursed Herman in 1987 as he lay dying
in the home he had bought from Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall back
when jazz was big.
"Well, I've got a title for this thing," said Jake Hanna, the
redoubtable drummer who Berry got on the Herman band back in the 1960s
when it stopped being the Third Herd and became the Unherd while rock
was contracted. "Dig you now, plant you later!"
"We can't afford to be buried there," said Betty Berry, Bill's wife, who
spent their wedding night in Herman's hotel room with young Sheldon
while the groom played Madison Square Garden with the Herd.
That was one of the Great Band Stories she was trying to tell, if she
could get it in edgewise among the ones being recalled by Hanna — a
raconteur of mighty scale — Berry, Podewell and Jake's wife, Denisa.
ut Jake wanted to talk about Woody's movie career. This involved a half-dozen
films and a George Pal Puppetoon called "The Woodchoppers," in which he
provided the music for a clarinet that had little arms and legs . And
then there was "Wintertime," in which Woody played himself.
"It starred Sonja Henie," Jake said. "Jeesh! And Cuddles! Woody told me
this story. They told Vido Musso, the tenor player, and Mickey Folus or
somebody, 'Cross your hands like this and make a seat,' and Cuddles —
you remember S.Z. Sakall, who weighed 300 or 400 pounds — would sit in
it and they would skate him across the ice.
"Vido says, 'I can't skate,' and they said, 'Don't worry, we'll have a
guy behind and push you, and the camera will be right behind you.' So
Vido gets out there and, oh, jeez, boom!
 He hits the ice and they
flatten Cuddles and almost broke the ice when he hit. Jeesh!"
 ell, wait a minute,"
Berry said after the laughs stopped, "why would Woody Herman be picked,
of all people, to sell cemetery lots?"
"Because that's where Woody is buried," someone said. Berry had to know
that, of course, and he may even have been aware that a new monument to
Herman on the cemetery grounds was being dedicated at 3 p.m. the next
day..
"I dunno," Berry grumbled. "There's a lot of other dead people they
could have picked."
|
