Fast Track - Jack Cortner New York Big Band
by Doug Ramsey
Jack Cortner and Marvin Stamm met at Jim & Andy’s. They’ve been meeting ever since, but Fast Track is their first big band collaboration on CD.
As Gene Lees recalled it in his book Meet Me At Jim & Andy’s, from 1950 to the mid-1970s the bar at 48th Street near Sixth Avenue served as a “home away from home, restaurant, watering hole, telephone answering service, informal savings (and loan) bank, and storage place for musical instruments.” Acquaintances made in Jimmy Koulavaris’s place melded into professional relationships that produced music by, among others, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Clark Terry, Bob Brookmeyer, J.J. Johnson, Gary McFarland, Ben Webster, Gerry Mulligan, Jo Jones, Richard Davis, Bill Crow and Nick Travis. In addition to the functions Gene mentions, Jim & Andy’s was an unofficial contracting hall. If one of the pros there told you someone was good, you hired him.
Among the hangers-out at Jim & Andy’s in the early 1960s were Cortner and his fellow composer-arranger Pat Williams. Like most jazzmen of their generation, they were admirers of Woody Herman and were impressed with Stamm’s solos on the one album he made during his year with Herman, Woody Herman Sings Al Jolson. Stamm left Herman and moved to New York at the end of 1966 to begin a free lance career. His combination of creativity and precision made him a natural not only for gigs with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis band and other jazz groups but also for studio work. After Cortner and Williams met Stamm at Jim & Andy’s, they were quick to draft him for projects. The long friendship and musical partnership of Cortner and Stamm was underway.
Cortner grew up in St. Joseph Missouri and attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio. Following his graduation in 1960, he went to New York as a trumpet player, sitting in studio brass sections for commercials and record dates. On one session, he found himself teamed with Bernie Glow, Ernie Royal, Markie Markowitz and Clark Terry. “The music, a commercial, was forgettable,” he says, “but not the sound of that trumpet section.” After a few years, he found that his skills as a composer and orchestrator put him in demand that moved the trumpet into the background and, eventually, out of his life. Soon, he became one of the busiest writers in New York for musical theater, television and the broadcast commercial music known as jingles.
Cortner’s Broadway credits include orchestration for the Julie Styne musical Prettybelle starring Angela Lansbury and for Dream, the show based on Johnny Mercer’s song lyrics and featuring Margaret Whiting and John Pizzarelli. He wrote the theme music for two of the most popular soap operas on television, The Edge of Night and As the World Turns. He arranged the theme used for years on ABC-TV’s Monday Night Football. He made arrangements for singers including Barry Manilow, Mandy Patinkin and Audra McDonald. He arranged and produced albums for his first wife, the late Kvita Cisyk, a marvelous singer of Ukranian songs who also recorded and acted under the name Kacey. He wrote arrangements for Freddy Cole’s album It’s Crazy, But I’m in Love and for projects as far afield from jazz as a collection of Christmas songs sung in French.
As he was increasing his success as a versatile commercial composer and arranger, Cortner’s love for jazz never waned and his skill at writing jazz charts expanded. In great part, that was because of his close musical and personal relationship with Stamm.
“I lived my first year in New York in a hotel, from the end of ’66 to the end of ’67,” Stamm said. “I was looking for an apartment, and I had been working with Jack. I asked him where he lived and he said, ‘Over on 56th Street off Eighth Avenue, right in the middle of Manhattan.’ I told him I was looking for an apartment,” and he said, ‘Well, it happens that there’s one right under me that’s available.’ So I went over and looked at it and took out a lease and lived underneath Jack, so we were hanging every night for six years.”
By the end of the sixties, demand was growing for Stamm to conduct clinics and workshops. Cortner was using him on most of his studio sessions, and it was natural for Marvin to ask Jack to write arrangements he could use in his teaching and in his concerts. Two of those early arrangements, “Secret Love” and “Lover Man” are on this CD.
“I’ve got nine or ten of his things in my big band book,” Stamm said. “When I started doing things with symphony orchestras, Jack contributed the very first piece, a twenty minute Ellington fantasy for jazz quartet and orchestra. In all, he’s written four things for the symphony book.”
Nearly all of Cortner’s jazz arranging was for Stamm’s projects. He also produced some of Stamm’s albums.
He said, “I hired a big band to record some jazz arrangements and a few themes for TV shows that never got used. I liked some of the arrangements and thought they could be the beginning of an album featuring Marvin. We recorded in April of 2004, 2005 and 2006. This was the best month for the soloists and the rhythm section players who travel in the summer to jazz festivals.
“It also gave me time to write the arrangements for the next year, copy them into the computer, extract the parts and save up enough money for the next session. Whew…”
Stamm is the principal soloist, with major solo contributions by Dave Tofani, Jim Pugh, Bill Mays and John Riley. Tofani’s saxophone work is in continuous demand for studio sessions. He is heard on more than 500 albums and more than 100 motion picture soundtracks. His credits include groups as varied as Steely Dan, Bill Evans, Paul Simon and the New York Philharmonic.
Jim Pugh is one of the most recorded trombonists alive. He began his career with Woody Herman and toured for two years with Chick Corea. After settling into the studios, he has soloed with Andre Previn, James Taylor, David “Fathead” Newman and dozens of other prominent musicians. Pugh is also active as a classical trombonist and composer.
Bill Mays, another man of many musical facets, is Marvin Stamm’s frequent partner in performance and in teaching ventures. Adaptable and focused, he is a major figure in jazz piano. Cortner says, “He always enhances the recording, both in comping and soloing.” For an example of Mays’ ability in both areas, notice how the end of his solo inspires the beginning of Stamm’s on “Limehouse Blues” and the way the two interact in the improvisation that follows.
John Riley’s credits include Woody Herman, Miles Davis, Lalo Schifrin, the Vanguard Orchestra, Bob Mintzer and Red Rodney. Cortner says of him, “Marvin and I think John is the premier big band drummer in New York.”
“When Pat Williams and I first heard Marvin,” Cortner said, “we nicknamed him ‘Marvin the Torch’ because he played so hot. Along with that, Marvin has an incredible lyrical quality. He’s melodic and he’s full of fire; that’s why I’ve liked his playing so much. As a colleague, he’s always been supportive. I think without Marvin I would have taken the easy way out, just checked in and done the commercial arranging. He kept asking for charts, and I enjoyed it. That’s what ultimately launched this CD.”
And this is what Stamm says about the work of his friend of four decades.
“Jack is among the best orchestrators I’ve known over a career of forty-odd years. The music in this CD has a lot of fire. It has the complete spectrum of colors and textures and emotion. At the same time, it never sounds heavy, never ponderous. It always feels light and sleek, and that’s not what I get from most big band writers. What is it Muhammed Ali used to say—float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, always dancing on the balls of the feet. That’s the way Jack’s music feels to me.”
The band of New York first-call session heroes Cortner brought together to play this music interpreted it the way Stamm feels it. Cortner’s story about recording “Lover Man” indicates their level of professionalism. The arrangement is one of Cortner’s oldest charts for Stamm, but it was new to this band.
“We played it at the end of the first session. Our audio engineer, Artie Friedman, had the good sense to record the rundown. The band was sight-reading the arrangement, but the performance of Bill and Marvin was so good, we wanted it on the album just as it was.”
Just as it was. Perfect.Meet Jack Cortner, one of the best big band arrangers you’ve never heard. Until now.
—Doug Ramsey
Doug Ramsey is the author of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond (Parkside Publications). He blogs about jazz and other matters at www.artsjournal.com/rifftides