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.