Big Band Jazz

[Mike P]

Snooky Young, Doc's lead trumpeter, played in Basie's band. Many of the musicians in the Tonight Show band were alumni of name big bands before they joined. That band was a veteran group, they stayed together for almost the whole run of the show in LA, and they were tight. Those other bands went through a lot of personnel over the years, and their quality varied. Duke's band was a constant, for many years, but outside of Harry "Sweets" Edison and Cat Anderson, the brass section was nowhere near as good as the line-up of Snooky Young, Conte Condoli, John Audino and Chuck Findley, which was the pinnacle of the Tonight Show's trumpet section. And it got even better on the nights when Clark Terry decided to sit in. The A section of Duke's band was his sax section, with Paul Gonzalves (a native of Pawtucket, BTW) on alto, Johnny Hodges on tenor, and Harry Carney on baritone.

Don't forget that Doc's band played fill-in music for the audience between commercial breaks. You never saw some of their best playing. When they featured the band on the air, it was often to back another performer, and when they played solo, it was always a tune that Carson selected--and Johnny liked the old standards. It was commercial. But you can still play the socks off a commercial arrangement of an old standard, which is what they did. Big band ensemble playing is much more than a 12 bar jazz solo. Or even a 128 bar jazz solo.

Everyone used to laugh at Doc in the 70s. Me included. I had the same idiotic bias you do, that only black dudes can play real jazz. I grew out of it, as did most of the jazz cats then. Most professional musicians nowadays (I used to be one in a former life) give Doc the respect that he deserves. If you think he doesn't have jazz chops, and you think that his band was a bunch of hackers, your musical knowledge isn't what you think it is.