The following was written for the Los Angeles Herald, after a telephone chat  before the double concert at the Hollywood Bowl on July 16, 1986.

 

onight was going to be the night that Woody Herman celebrated his 50th anniversary in the Big Band business with a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, where he would lead not one but two orchestras: the golden anniversary model that he'd had on the road in those days and the "Seldom Heard Herd" with a few of the numerous jazz immortals that got their start under his baton.

Assembled by former Herman pianist Nat Pierce, the band included saxophonists Med Flory, Bob Cooper, Herman Riley, Dick Hafer and Jack Nimitz, trumpeters Pete and Conte Candoli, John Audino, Don Rader and Bill Berry, trombonists Carl Fontana, Dick Hyde and Buster Cooper, pianist Jimmy Rowles, bassit Monty Budwig and drummer Chuck Flores.

Stan Getz, Jimmy Rowles and his daughter Stacy, as well as classical clarinetist Richard Stoltzman and Cuban trumpet virtuoso Arturo Sandoval, had been signed for showcase numbers.

It's not all that pleasant an encounter, to confront one's own past in front of I8,000 people, and Woody, now 73, was not all that charmed with nostalgia.

"A great many people," Herman sighed in a conversation that week, "particularly if they have any miles on 'em at all, are interested in nostalgia, and only nostalgia. So they'll ask me for certain hits of yesteryear that they remember. And some of 'em are so brash as to go further and say 'play something by Glenn Miller.' 

have a stock answer for all of them: I'll play anything that I have been guilty of, but I refuse to play other people's garbage." 

"I learned a lot from vaudevillians when I was a kid working in show business," Herman said. (A native of Milwaukee, he was touring as a singer and hoofer when he was 9 years old.) "They used to discuss all audiences as the `great unwashed.' 

"The point was that you never played down to an audience, you tried to pull them up by their bootstraps and take 'em along with you. If you're gonna win, you'll win. 

"Yeah, I'm still intrigued with it. I think most of the time we come out on top. Our batting average is very good." 

In those days, Herman, who said he'd never added up the millions of miles he'd traveled ("I'd probably commit suicide"), got around by airplane. If the hop was under
200 miles, he took a cab, or so he says. But back in the I940s, he was one of the first show business stars to drive a Mercedes-Benz.

t was a unique car, and they made a very expensive one, the 300SL which I couldn't afford. So I drove the little I90SL and it was an underpowered car. After that I went back to an American car and I started to drive Corvettes and all during the I950s and '60s I had lots of Corvettes. 

"That was my hobby, driving cars, and that made being on the road a little easier because in those days, further on down the line, Bill Chase (the trumpeter) became my co-pilot and we drove against time every day. We had 300 miles, we'd try to do it in 300 minutes. 

"I finally found -- it took me a long time to dig this out -- that it's still one of the great ways to have freedom in music: to stay on the road. If you dig musical independence, you'll be on the road. It renews your faith very quickly and very well. 

"Because when you stay in one area, no matter where it is, you'll soon be playing something that somebody else wants you to play. In other words, to get to the basics, you know you're not gonna be in that same place tomorrow, so you can do what you want to do and they can't complain to you tomorrow. It's kind of a vicious scheme, but it works."  

ne pictures Woody Herman having the key to the city in practically any town on the face of the Earth.  "Well, you get so you know everybody from waiters to bellmen in certain towns, in certain places and you just go there automatically.

"I tell you, at the drop of a hat in many areas of the country, we can have a reunion of the band, because it'll be a place where a few of the guys (veteran Woodchoppers) have wound up in the same town. And they seek you out when you come through because they wanna know what's happening and whether the band still sounds good."

And does it?

"I'm very much impressed with the whole ensemble, really. There's I6 guys and I think everybody takes care of his business. And I'm very proud of our new album ('Woody Herman Big Band 50th Anniversary Tour'). It was recorded live at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.
 

 

"We did mostly material that I had not done before, ageless kind of stuff, everything from 'Central Park West' that was written by Coltrane to a thing by Monk, 'Epistrophy,' and an old vocal standard that we have an instrumental on, 'What's New: And then we do one pop tune that's a gasser for what it is. Frank Tiberi, my lead tenor player, brought it to my attention. He's as crazy as I am; he's been with me I7 ycars, and Bill Byrne, my fifth trumpet player, has been with me 2I years. So I've got a couple of guys I can talk to.

 "But anyway, this piece was up on the charts, by a group called Miami Sound Machine, and we decided that it would be a good groovin' thing to play with a big band. The tune is called 'The Conga.'

he guys I’ve gotten for the band in recent years have been from Eastman (School of Music in Rochester, N.Y.) and they're elegant musicians because they receive a very broad education and a very good one.

 "Everybody that remembers the good old days comes up with a question as to how good the soloists are. There are many good soloists and many bad soloists, and I try to get good ones. You may not like some of them, but I think they can play, otherwise they wouldn't be playing with me. Somebody's gotta be the judge.

 "I'm a happy old man still on the road because I dig what I'm doing. And as long as I have a band that I think plays very well, I'm quite contented and happy. Because I'm doing what I like to do best, and I feel that the Lord's given me a fair shot, he's allowed me to live all this time."