LP-641

Cy Touff - Touff Assignment

Released 1959

Recording and Session Information

Cy Touff, bass trumpet; Sandy Mosse, tenor saxophone; Eddie Higgins, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Marty Clausen, drums
August 28/29, 1958

8988 Soulsville
8989 Cyril's Dream
8990 How Long Has This Been Going On
8991 Keeping Out Of Mischief Now
8992 Kissin' Cousins
8993 I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart
8994 Lamp Is Low
8995 Tough Touff

Track Listing

Soulsville	Al Cohn	August 28/29, 1958
Cyril's Dream	Al Cohn	August 28/29, 1958
How Long Has This Been Going On	George Gershwin	August 28/29, 1958
Kissin' Cousins	Ernie Wilkins	August 28/29, 1958
Keeping Out Of Mischief Now	Fats Waller, Andy Razaf	August 28/29, 1958
I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart	Duke Ellington	August 28/29, 1958
Lamp Is Low	Ravel, Shefter, DeRose	August 28/29, 1958
Tough Touff	Ernie Wilkins	August 28/29, 1958

Liner Notes

For several swinging years in the mid-fifties the Woody Herman trombone section contained a morose looking man, bald as the proverbial, who now and then rose to his feet, raised an overgrown trumpet to his lips and proceeded to blast forth with some very wailing jazz.

The musician was Cyril James Touff of Chicago and the instrument he was playing was a bass trumpet.

There now several bass trumpet players in jazz but Cy Touff was the one who made it into a jazz instrumeat. The horn is so unusual looking that curious fans used to — and still do — walk up to him on the bandstand and ask 'What is it?" At one time, the Herman was considering having cards printed reading "It's NOT a Fish horn!"

Actually, the bass trumpet was originally used in Bavarian and Austrian military bands in the 1880's and was first utilized in classical music by Wagner. Since then, it has been used in works by Stravinsky, Strauss and Schoenberg but even in classical music it is little used, and bass trumpet parts in practice are frequently taken by a valve trombone.

Cy Touff has been at music a long time. He started on piano when he was six "and created a Frankenstein monster" which took years for his parents to become accustomed to. He switched to C-melody sax, then trumpet, then xylophone ("my mother was a fiend for auction sales!") and then settled into the role of trombone player in high school. During his tour of duty in the Army, Cy played in a band with Conte Condoli and Red Mitchell and then on his discharge studied for a while with Lennie Tristano. Prior to joining Herman, he was with such bands as Jimmie Dale, Red Saunders, Shorty Sherock and — here's left field for you! — the New York City Opera Company!

His years with Herman took him all over the U.S. and Europe and made the bass trumpet even more widely accepted in jazz. He played it in the trombone section because the tone is close to that of a trombone, and he was featured soloist with the Herman group throughout his stay with the band. While with Hemnan, Touff recorded with a small group Woody led for a time, as well as with his own group. A musician with broad tastes, he is an avid Count Basie fan, digs Dixieland occasion, and lists his favorite musicians as the late Lester Young, Count Basie, Johnny Mandel and Al Cohn and his favorite record as Basie's "Taxi War Dance.'

Although this is not the first LP under Cy Touff's name, I would venture an educated guess that it's the first one over which he has had direction and it shows in the end product. "There never has been serious musician who is as serious about his music as a serious jazz musician, Duke Ellington wrote in JAZZ, A Quarterly of American Music (Vol. 1, #2) and Cy Touff fits this description perfectly. He has humor, as do all jazz musicians, but he is a serious man given to the reading of Kafka and Sartre and to serious consideration of other arts.

And he was serious about this LP.

For the group, Cy picked the best of Chicago's young jazz men. Sandy Mosse, a veteran of European tours, Woody Herman's big band, the Chicago studios and numerous record sessions, (as well as of his own LP on Argo), plays with a swinging definitiveness that is by no means usual these days. Ed Higgins, the pianist, is another Chicago veteran who has worked extensively in that area with his own trio. Bob Cranshaw, who has played bass with Higgins for some time, joins him here with Marty Clausen, another Chicagoan on drums.

The result is good swinging jazz. Indicative of the stature of Cy in the world of jazz, is the fact that two of the top arrangers in the field each contributed two original charts to this session: Al Cohn's "Soulsville" and "Cyril's Dream," Ernie Wilkins' "Kissin' Cousins," and "Tough Touff". Although Cyril (and Sandy Mosse, too) comes through on a ballad with lyric intensity, my personal kicks come from the swinging charts, the Ernie Wilkins blues and "Cyril's Dream," yet it is a lovely interlude to play "How Long Has This Been Going On".

Two sides then to jazz and to the jazz musician: one for each of your extreme moods and many shadings in between. The exhuberant one of "Tough Touff" and the reflective, introspective one of the ballads. In either, Cyril James Touff fits, which is the true mark of the jazz musician.

RALPH J. GLEASON
Editor of JAZZ and syndicated columnist whose articles on jazz appear in newspapers throughout the country.

LP-640

Marian McPartland At The London House

Released 1958

Recording and Session Information

Marian McPartland, piano; William Britto, bass; Joe Cusatis, drums

September 24 1958

Easy Blues

Play Fiddle Play

Like Someone In Love

Tune For Tex

Signature Blues

Blues Intro

Steeplechase

Give Me The Simple Life

Sweet And Lovely

So Many Things

Track Listing

Easy Blues	Mary Lou Williams	September 24 1958
Play Fiddle Play	Deutsch, Altman, Lawrence	September 24 1958
Like Someone In Love	J. Van Heusen	September 24 1958
Tune For Tex	Billy Taylor	September 24 1958
Signature Blues	Marian McPartland	September 24 1958
Blues Intro	Marian McPartland	September 24 1958
Steeplechase	Charlie Parker	September 24 1958
Give Me The Simple Life	Ruby Bloom	September 24 1958
Sweet And Lovely	Arnheim, Tobias, Lemare	September 24 1958
So Many Things	Marian McPartland	September 24 1958

Liner Notes

Who is Marian McPartIand?
What is the London House?
Have the two anything in common?

These are questions which could easily pop into the mind of anyone contemplating this record. They are relatively simple to answer.

First of all. Marian McPartland is Margaret Marian Turner, Mrs. Jimmy McPartland, and a jazz pianist...not necessarily in that order.

She was Margaret Turner back in England, where she was born and she became Mrs. Jimmy McPartland during World War II after she met the impish American cornetist in a tent in Germany where a jam session was underway. She is a pianist every time she settles onto a piano bench, smoothes her skirts, and taps off the bear with her well-shod foot.

For a time she was Marian Page, but that just makes things unduly complicated.

Although Marian has been in this country since 1946, there is something very reserved, very British (as we here assume the British to be) about her. She is a lady, and conducts herself accordingly. But she is also quick-witted and high-spirited, and surprisingly so to people who do not know her well.

There are many Marian McPartIands. The one I remember with great relish is the handsome young woman swinging away at the grand piano in the Composer, a New York night spot. Attached to her piano, in plain view of everyone in the room, was a water faucet. Before the set ended, the manager or someone else with a sense of outrage, removed the faucet, which was then discovered to be a novelty shop gadget surreptitiously attached to the piano between sets.

Another Marian I love is the one who played the Hickory House, also a New York eat-and-drinkerie. This one rattled off four exchanges with bassist Bill Crow and her drummer Joe Morello while fighting to hold back the laughter bubbling inside her. Almost unnoticed by the audience was the fact that the spotlights, operated by the straight-faced Crow as he played, flicked onto the member of the trio not soloing.

I recall happily the Marian who asked my wife for a request over the composer's PA system one Sunday night when the trio outnumbered the patrons. I facetiously called out "Saints." Marian made a hideous face at me, then stomped off The Royal Garden Blues and it was really much, much more than I deserved. She dug in with her left hand, particularly, in a manner I'd never heard from her before. She can whistle when she gets her back up.

There's the lovely Marian sunning herself on the roof of a mid-Manhattan apartment building, telling me about her life and how she'd like a house in the country where she could putter in the garden. Before that Summer had run its days, she and Jimmy had cottage in somewhat bucolic Merrick, Long Island and Marian was puttering.

And there's the Marian had volunteered to write an article on Duke Ellington for the Boston Globe, "When I saw my own by-line, it thrilled me no end," she laughed. She went on to write more for that journal, and later wrote a fine piece on Mary Lou Williams for Down Beat based on observations and conversations while they shared the bandstand at the Composer during Mary Lou's first job after a long absence from the jazz scene.

These days, the "writing" Marian will contribute articles to hardcover books on jazz, including Sinclair Traill's Just Jazz Volume II. She will also write features for Down Beat on assignment, such as the one she recently did on singer Anita O'Day.

I am very fond of the Marian who writes moody minor ballads such as With You In Mind, and the one in this collection, So Many Things.

There's a restless Marian, too. One who would like to play with a big band because "It's part of my musical education that I missed, I feel like someone who's gone to the third grade, then skipped ahead. I sat in once with Duke, and it was the greatest."

So many Marians...the laughing, tomboyish Marian venturing into Manhattan's traffic on Bill Crow's motor-scooter; a quiet Marian who likes to draw and paint; the Marian who plays behind Jimmy's Dixie cornet, them belts off her own modern jazz...

All in all, a warm and witty girl. And a pianist well worth hearing.

Now, about the London House....

It's a plush, well-lighted place, where steaks and jazz are dispensed in about equal proportions through the course of any evening. As I recall it, the bandstand is about halfway down the rather oblong room, and situated so the musicians are in view of everyone.

Musicians like the room because they feel close to the patrons. Marian says, "Piano and lighting are excellent, and you are made to feel very much at home there. Opening night is quite a gala affair, with Wed Howard or another Chicago DJ being on hand to introduce your first set and welcome you back to the club. This sets the mood for a real pleasant engagement, and it has always been this way.

"Another thing (and note how Marian, once warmed up gets rolling), nobody ever bothers you about what to play or when. This is undoubtedly one of my all-time places to play. The owners, George and Oscar Merienchal are wonderful people to work for, and the whole staff is helpful and kind."

Question three, posed long ago and far back, has by now answered itself. What the London House and Marian have in common is jazz. A representative portion was captured on this in-person set, cut during actual performances at London House Sept. 24, 1958. With Marian were bassist Bill Britto and drummer Joe Cusatis. Also on hand were a substantial number of patrons. You'll hear their crockery clinking, as well as their applause for Marian's sets.

The program is a typical McPartland set, opening with Mary Lou Williams' Easy Blues. "A lot of people ask me about her," Marian notes, "I guess because we together, and I wrote that article about her. To me she is one of the finest musicians I have ever known."

Play Fiddle Play and Like Someone In Love>/i> are pulsing treatments of standards. Billy Taylor's Tune For Tex is a sort of salute to that pianist, opposite whom Marian has often worked and admires.

A bit of the blues opens the second side, giving way to Charlie Parker's Steeplechase, Give Me The Simple Life and Sweet And Lovely, are examples of standards as done by Marian. Her own "So Many Things" came to her last Summer, and as she says, "It's one of several I wrote recently. I seem to have a feeling for composing moody, minor ballads."

That's about all there is...except for the actual playing of the record. No amount of background can describe the music on this LP; that you'll have to hear for yourself.

But at least you've met Marian, and she's well worth knowing. She's one of a tiny group of women who have made it as jazz artists.

And you don't hardly ever get this kind anymore these days.

DOM CERULLI
Associate Editor
Down Beat Magazine