Woody Herman

Woody Herman0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty four, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

On our Desert Island this week is the American band leader Woody Herman.

Presenter0:34

Woody, you've been traveling most of your life. What's the nearest you've ever been to a desert island?

Presenter0:40

I'm afraid I haven't been near a desert island. I have uh been all over the world at one point or another.

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And I'd spent a lot of time on the desert in places like Las Vegas, but no islands were in sight. Could you adjust yourself to loneliness?

Presenter0:54

Well, I'm a kind of a loner to begin with, so it wouldn't probably be a big uh adjustment.

Presenter1:00

I spend a great deal of time by myself, and I rather enjoy it.

Presenter1:04

You have just eight discs with you. Did you have any kind of plan? Are you choosing the voices of friends or personal memories or what? These particular records, most of them are records I've listened to and listened to more than once over a long period of years, and so I find that

Presenter1:20

If I had to be all by myself with only this music, it would be okay with me.

Speaker 41:25

Right.

Presenter1:25

What's the first one you've chosen? First one is a Duke Ellington piece called Warm Valley. What's special about this one? Well, it features, for instance, Johnny Hodges on Alto Saxophone, and he's been a great

Presenter1:37

source of lovely music as far as I am concerned.

Presenter1:42

Uh when I play the alto saxophone I sort of emulate Johnny, not nearly as well, but that's what I do.

Speaker 42:22

Yeah.

Presenter2:40

Duke Ellington's Warm Valley recorded in nineteen forty.

Presenter2:45

Woodrow Charles Herman, Woody, whereabouts in the United States were you born? I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. How far back do your American roots go? My uh grandfather on my father's side was second generation American, of German extraction.

Presenter3:02

And my mother was born in Poland of Polish parents. Y your parents were vodeville artists?

Presenter3:10

No, my father was a frustrated kind of singing person, and he worked with me from the time I remember seeing him as a baby actually, and he uh encouraged me to sing, and then later on he had me study dancing.

Presenter3:24

Mhm. So I became a song and dance kid and I did my first road tour when I was eight years old. Where did you go? Far afield? I went all over the country, uh traveled with actually a a children's group of performers, professionals in vaudeville. And one of the projects was a thing called School Days. Oh, is that the great Gus Edwards sketch?

Woody Herman3:43

Yeah.

Presenter3:46

Yes, uhhuh, right. And I was one of the kids in that and then later on I went on to my own. Did you play an instrument at that time? No, but after the first year of traveling with this unit I um with whatever I earned I bought a saxophone and then later on a clarinet.

Presenter4:02

When did you change from vaudeville to music? Was that a conscious decision or did did it just happen?

Woody Herman4:07

Yeah.

Presenter4:09

No, it just didn't happen. When I entered high school, I guess, uh, my first

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Year in high school is about thirteen.

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And this is about the time that I started to find a very few records. Records were hard to come by back in those years and uh

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I found some early Red Nichols and some uh Dixieland Five group jazz records. And then I heard a band from Washington, DC and the man's name was Duke Ellington and sometimes it was used on recordings and called the um Jungle Band and other times it was Duke Ellington and his orchestra, which was an eight piece group out of Washington, DC.

Presenter4:50

And I was very much impressed by the originality of the sounds and the different rhythm patterns. And that's when I made up my mind to become a hot jazz musician. And I think when I first announced this to my parents, they went into a state of shock for days because they felt that in the theater you had a fighting chance to be something, but not a jazz musician.

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So I lived with this for a little while, but we were very close little family. As a matter of fact, uh I was an only child.

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And so they gave me a lot of uh rein to let myself do what I wanted to do. Did you have a band in high school?

Presenter5:26

I worked in bands when I was in high school, but we didn't have bands in s high schools at this point in my life. I attended a parochial high school at uh

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We just couldn't afford a band. But I had some very good teachers and advisors. There was one nun who

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helped me tremendously because I was playing

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gigs around the area.

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And playing till two in the morning in my first class was at eight AM and for a teenager that's very difficult. You've got to get a bit fired. And so I used to nod off and start to go to sleep in class and of course I'd be in the principal's office about at least once a day.

Woody Herman5:55

Cut it.

Presenter6:05

Yeah.

Woody Herman6:05

Left over.

Presenter6:06

Let's have your second record. What's that? This is a rather early tune written by Ellington, very early, as a matter of fact. However, this version is not that early.

Presenter6:15

And it's a good one. It's called Rockin' in Rhythm.

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Rocking in Rhythm, Duke Ellington again, this time with Ella Fitzgerald. So you were doing gigs while you were at school.

Presenter7:21

When you left school did you join a band straightaway?

Presenter7:25

Yes, I did eventually um play in a local band while I think it was my second year in high school.

Presenter7:32

and I joined this band and we uh played the local ballroom.

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And um they were young men, but certainly not as young as I was. I think I was fourteen. And some of the players were in their twenties and maybe uh an old guy who might have hit thirty.

Presenter7:48

It was quite a good band, however, and so I learned a lot playing in this group.

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And um in my last year of high school a play in from California, who was then playing in Chicago, which is close to my hometown of Milwaukee.

Presenter8:04

They heard about me and they offered me a chance to join this band and go to California, so I leaped at the chance and left in my last semester of high school and joined this uh band.

Presenter8:17

And we had some interesting people in the band. Tony Martin was in the saxophone section. Tony Martin the singer? Yes. And a girl singer by the name of Jenny Sims who later joined Kay Kaiser. Did you play in and around Chicago at all?

Presenter8:30

Yes, I did. Well, those were the days of Prohibition, uh the twenties. Yes, yes indeed. Well, thirties actually. I got there. I joined the band in nineteen thirty one. Yes. And I was with the band about two weeks when I was held up in a midnight kind of thing uh after I left the club. I used to go over to hear Earl Heinz band.

Woody Herman8:34

Yes.

Presenter8:50

At the Grand Terrace they played all night.

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And um when we left there that morning to go back to the hotel we were held up and I was shot in the leg. Were you? And my mother went into another state of shock. I should think so. The Grand Terrace was one of our Capon's.

Presenter9:05

The place I was playing in was really uh an Al Capone place. It was called the Granada Cafe. Mhm. But not the Grand Terrace. The Grand Terrace was a black club and a very good one. So Capone was taking twenty five percent all round pretty well from all the clubs.

Speaker 49:18

Yeah.

Woody Herman9:19

Yeah.

Presenter9:21

How did you get shot? W were you involved in this or you were just an innocent passerby? We were put upon by um three thugs, I guess you could call them.

Presenter9:30

And we resisted. There was a bass player friend of mine and uh

Presenter9:36

Fuzzy Knight, a comic who was playing on the bill with us at the Granada.

Woody Herman9:38

That's it.

Presenter9:40

So we gave these guys some resistance and the first thing I knew one of them pulled out a gun and let me have it. Mhm. But fortunately it didn't do any great harm. Well, I shouldn't think you were sorry to move off to another band. You played with Gus Arnheim for a while, didn't you? Yes, for a short time. I did mostly theaters with Gus and uh

Presenter9:58

I was an entertainer while I was in his band, along with being a saxophonist. And then? And from that band I went with the last band that I played with was Isham Jones, a great songwriter and very good musician. Yes. And I stayed with him until he retired, and that's when we started our first band. There were the Isham Jones Jr.s. Was that you? Yeah, I was one of them. We made some recordings. a small group out of the Isham Jones band and it was fun to do and it gave us our first opportunity to spread our wings. And then as I say in 1936 Isham retired.

Woody Herman10:21

Right.

Presenter10:36

And that's when we decided to to five of us to form a a big band and do it on our own. Well, that was a watershed in your career. Let's stop at that point and have your third record. What's that to be? Okay, this one I like for several reasons. First of all, I like Hoagie Carmichael's music. This is one of his stardust. And I certainly always enjoyed Artie Shaw.

Presenter10:59

Because I think he's a lovely clarinetist.

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And on this particular recording there's an excellent Rouen Soul by a man who I think was a very inventive and very original guy. His name is Jack Jenny.

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Artisore Stardust.

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Woody, you're a bright young man with your own band. How soon did you change the name of it to Woody Hermann's Band?

Presenter12:15

Well, it started with that name, uh, actually. And our first engagement was at Roseland Ballroom in New York on Broadway. There were two Roselands in those days. Yeah, the first one was in Brooklyn and you had to audition and play the

Woody Herman12:24

And there's

Presenter12:29

Brooklyn one and then if they accepted you, you eventually got to New York. Mhm. And it worked very well in our case. However, we had a recording contract before we had a job, so we had some insurance going in. You were a a house band for Decca Records for a while. Exactly, yes.

Woody Herman12:44

Nice for a while.

Presenter12:45

I suppose that meant filling up corners, filling up holes in the catalogue, playing all sorts of stuff.

Presenter12:51

Yeah, we had uh it was a good experience, I think, but at the time we thought it was a big bore because we were all young and wanting to do our own music. As it was, we used to have to cover hits that were probably done by Bing Crosby or anyone else on the label.

Presenter13:06

And then we'd have to do another version of it. You were billed as a blues band. Yep. And then you called yourself a swing band, which was a big word in the thirties, wasn't it? Oh, yes, yes. Woody Herman and the Herd

Woody Herman13:15

Oh yeah.

Presenter13:18

Who gave the band that nickname? George T. Simon, a jazz music critic of yesteryear, and today has written many successful books on big bands and the nostalgia vein and so on. It was a touch of genius, the thundering herd. Well, he described our music as sounding like a thundering herd, and so consequently we decided that would be very hip-billing in those days. And then World War II, you did a lot of troop shows, naturally, and quite a number of films in Hollywood. Yeah, we did quite a few of those wartime musicals. Which ones do you remember? The first one was What's Cookin'?

Presenter13:56

And that had people in it like Donald O'Connor and uh a whole bunch of very talented young people. The Andrew Sisters were in the picture and our band.

Presenter14:06

And then one of the more memorable ones I did was a Sonia Henney picture, one of a famous ice skater. And we did that at Twentieth Century Fox. And it was quite a spectacle picture. I should think so. And then I did a lot of uh musicals, low budget musicals on every different lot in Cleoning U Universal and uh

Presenter14:27

Republic

Presenter14:28

Where you would be hobnobbing with all the Western actors. Yes, sure. It was interesting.

Woody Herman14:31

Yeah.

Presenter14:33

That must have been fun. You did a hillbilly number occasionally, I've no doubt. Oh, yes, of course. Anything.

Woody Herman14:36

Our

Presenter14:39

Right, we've got to record number four.

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Well, I think I would like to do one that I think is one of the most relaxing sounds in the world.

Presenter14:48

It's a lovely tune, Moonlight in Vermont. And it's Johnny Smith's quintet, and it features the sound of Stan Goetz, who was the young man on the scene at the time. And a member of your band for some time. Oh, yes, yes indeed. He was one of the original Four Brothers.

Presenter16:00

Moonlight in Vermont by the Johnny Smith Quintet featuring Stan Goetz. You said Stan Goetz was one of the four brothers. I I think that needs a bit of explaining. Well, my band in nineteen forty seven, which I reorganized, it was actually the second herd.

Presenter16:17

I decided I would use a unique kind of saxophone section for one thing, three tenors and one baritone. And these were very young men at the time. Stan Goetz was the lead tenor player of that band. And there was Zoot Sims, and there was another tenor player, an alto player from California by the name of Herbie Stewart. And then I imported to the California shores a man from Boston by the name of Serge Shaloff, a baritone player of great talent. And we did a tune with the title Four Brothers, and from then on they were identified as one of the Four Brothers, as I mentioned Stan was.

Presenter17:00

And the band also had a distinctive trumpet sound. It's always been a a good trumpet band. Yes, we've used brass very wisely, I think.

Speaker 417:08

Mm.

Presenter17:08

And I had some great brass players down through the years. And you've used the flugelhorn with great effect. Right from the beginning of our uh first band we used the flugelhorn.

Presenter17:19

So thousands of one night stands, I suppose, during the year, sleeping in the coach.

Presenter17:26

On occasion, but I did a great deal of driving myself. I was a big uh devotee of sports cars. And this was my hobby. And it it took away all the boredom of uh having to travel every day. If I had a car I enjoyed, I could really have a ball. Did the band ever get stranded? Did you ever have to play a gig with only three members turning up or anything of that sort? Well, we were once snowbound on a train on our way from California to Salt Lake City.

Presenter17:57

And coming from the other direction was Dizzy and his big band coming from the east out to Salt Lake City, and he was snowblind.

Presenter18:06

He managed to get a flight some way by himself into Salt Lake and eventually when I arrived in Salt Lake with my band, we got together and we used our band to play as Dizzy's band and he directed and played and I sat in the saxophone section.

Presenter18:23

We pulled a little switch there. Yes, indeed.

Presenter18:27

Record number five. Okay, well this is one where we had the good fortune of uh doing a long lengthy tour with Frank Sinatra and it was our band and Frank, and this is a great old tune called I've Got You Under My Skin.

Speaker 218:40

Now the Woody Herman band is gonna swail at you. Light him up! Light him up!

Presenter19:10

I've Got You Under My Skin, Frank Sinatra, with the Herd.

Presenter19:15

You had an association with Igor Stravinsky that was rather exciting. How did that come about?

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It came about through a mutual friend of mister Stravinsky and mine, a musician.

Presenter19:27

who spent a lot of time socially with Stravinsky, and he would take our records up to mister Stravinsky's house in the hills in Hollywood and subject him to our mu music. And evidently he was impressed because one day

Presenter19:42

While I was in New York, I received a lengthy wire from Mr. Stravinsky saying that he was writing a piece for our band, and it would be called Ebony Concerto, and it would be a three-section piece, and uh he would be in New York in December to rehearse it. And this would be his Christmas gift to the band and to me. Great. How long did the composition play?

Presenter20:08

It's about a nine-minute work. Did he rehearse the band? Yes, he did.

Presenter20:13

Now his sort of music must have been pretty difficult to read.

Presenter20:17

It would have been, but this man is remarkable, and what he did, knowing that we were a jazz group,

Presenter20:23

He a man who usually is a master of tempe, he might have a half a bar of six, eight and a bar of nine, twelve and so on. And he wrote this entire piece in four, knowing that that's the way we usually play it. And it made it much more accessible for us to uh be able to play it. However, it was a very, very difficult piece.

Presenter20:48

But he had the patience of Job. He would count, whistle, clap his hands and count some more and hum it to us, or whistle it if necessary. He conducted it himself. Well, this was the rehearsal period. Did he take the band as he found it, or did he have to augment it? He added two instruments. He added timpanies and horn.

Presenter21:09

And uh I believe a harp. Mm. It was recorded. Did it have a public performance? Yes, we played it, but he was no longer available'cause he was in Europe at the time conducting and doing a concert tour.

Presenter21:23

And so his protege conducted for us at our first Carnegie Hall concert. Do you still play it sometimes?

Presenter21:30

On occasion, not very often anymore, but uh there are now a lot of Stravinsky festivals happening around the world, and we've been invited to several of them. So one of these days we'll have to get back into action. Yes, surely you must.

Woody Herman21:41

Yeah.

Speaker 421:41

Yeah.

Woody Herman21:41

That's

Presenter21:42

You've had some very good singers with the band from time to time, including, of course, yourself. You've always seen definitely a matter of opinion.

Woody Herman21:49

Yeah.

Presenter21:52

But I enjoy it on occasion, and if I find something I enjoy, I do it no matter what.

Presenter21:59

This next tune is a great one, written by Duke Ellington, once again.

Presenter22:03

I've got it bad, and that ain't good, and this young lady

Presenter22:06

A great jazz singer was with me in the late thirties and returned when this record was made in the late 40s, Mary Ann McCall.

Speaker 422:15

When the week is over.

Speaker 422:23

And he pride rolls around.

Speaker 422:29

My man alive.

Speaker 422:32

We praise Howard.

Speaker 422:36

We sin sum, oh yes, we gin sum.

Speaker 422:43

La la pufa

Presenter23:12

The Woody Herman Band and Mary Ann McCall.

Presenter23:16

When did you first come to Europe, Woody?

Presenter23:19

I think my first trip to Europe was in fifty-three. How many times have you you been to Britain?

Presenter23:25

Well, I've been to Britain I guess maybe uh ten times. Have you?

Presenter23:30

I always look forward to visiting England because I enjoy the people, I enjoy the audiences, and I have many friends here and I treasure these friendships.

Presenter23:40

And you've been behind the Iron Curtain? Yes, I've gotten to a lot of the Eastern European countries. I've been to Yugoslavia, Romania, and many times to Poland. What are the economics of touring now? I mean, you can keep the same number of musicians, can you? Yeah, we do manage that, but I have long ceased thinking of having a band as being a business. It's now a hobby at this late date. And I enjoy it immensely, and I love music, and I will continue to go on like this, this mad way.

Woody Herman23:55

Yeah.

Presenter24:11

As long as I have reasonable health.

Presenter24:14

You have some very young musicians with you. Oh, yes. What is the main difference now between the musicians of today and the musicians of forty years ago when you were starting out?

Presenter24:24

Well, they're so far superior and so much better musically educated and so more professional than any of us were back in the olden days.

Presenter24:33

I'm very proud of our musical education system, particularly in the States.

Presenter24:38

I think they're doing a masterful job. We have some of the greatest jazz departments in all our state universities and in private schools.

Presenter24:45

And it starts at the early age of junior high school, eighth and ninth grades.

Presenter24:50

And then goes on to high school and they receive great instruction and great direction. So quite a number of your musicians have musical degrees. Oh, yes, almost everyone in the band has a music degree from one very good music department or another. And several have their masters, so they've done a lot of work before they meet me. Many of your dates when you're touring are college dates, aren't they? Yes, we do, and we work with the music departments too.

Presenter25:14

How do you divide your year? How much of the time do you spend touring?

Presenter25:18

Actually, most of the year is spent touring uh up until this past year, it was eleven out of twelve months, and uh I don't hope to keep up that pace too much longer, quite that heavy.

Presenter25:29

But I unfortunately lost my wife last winter and I was for a year in New Orleans. I had a club there, but I gave all that up because uh

Woody Herman25:35

But I get

Presenter25:37

When my wife became ill it was necessary that I be there. Where is your home? Where do you go? We reside in Southern California, in Hollywood, actually. We I have this old house in the hills above Sunset Strip.

Woody Herman25:42

We reside in

Presenter25:49

And now, my daughter and her husband are living in the house and doing a masterful job with making it look great. Good.

Presenter25:56

Record number seven.

Presenter25:58

Well, I think one of the most underrated singers in the entire world is the man we just lost just recently, and it's a great loss.

Presenter26:07

His name is Johnny Hartman.

Presenter26:09

And I think he's one of the people that should have been a gigantic star in the music world.

Presenter26:14

Here he is to sing You Are Too Beautiful.

Speaker 426:18

You are too beautiful

Speaker 426:22

My dear to be true.

Speaker 426:25

And I am a fool for beauty.

Speaker 426:35

Who by a feeling that because I had found you

Speaker 426:43

I could have bound you too.

Presenter26:49

Johnny Hartman, a lovely old number we don't hear very often, you are too beautiful.

Presenter26:54

Now we've dumped you on this desert island, Woody. It's not too bad. The climate's quite all right.

Presenter27:00

But you've got to look after yourself. Could you build a shelter? Oh, I might. It would be a pretty tumble-down, but it would be some sort of tent, I guess. Ever done any fishing?

Presenter27:11

Very little. Uh I enjoy it when I've had the opportunity, but a traveling musician doesn't have too many hobbies and as I s earlier stated, the band is now my hobby. So the cooking would probably be a bit approximate, would it? Yes.

Presenter27:25

Would you try to escape? Would you try to build a raft?

Presenter27:28

And sail off into the sunset.

Woody Herman27:29

See

Woody Herman27:30

So

Presenter27:34

All right.

Presenter27:36

Now we've come to your last record. What's that to be?

Presenter27:39

Well, it's a record by Benny Goodman, whom I consider to be one of my clarinet teachers. And I think everybody else who's been around for any length of time has listened to Benny and been influenced by his great ability. He's a great classical player and a great jazz player.

Presenter27:55

This is an original tune written for him by his arranger of that period, Eddie Sauter, and it's called Benny Rides Again.

Presenter28:59

The Benny Goodman Band of nineteen forty, Benny Rides Again.

Presenter29:04

Woody, if you could take just one disc of the Hube played us, which would it be?

Presenter29:08

I think I'd uh want to have for solace and uh happiness.

Presenter29:14

Moonlight in Vermont by Johnny Smith and Stan Goetz. Right.

Presenter29:19

And you can take one luxury to the island, one object of no practical use but which would give you comfort to have, something to look at, to touch, to enjoy.

Presenter29:30

Well, even if the island was so small that I couldn't really use it, but to touch and to feel of it.

Presenter29:36

and remember how it would feel to be driving it. I would have a Jaguar X G six and um that would be my luxury. All right, we'll give you that. We'll give you a big sheet of plastic to keep the sand out to.

Woody Herman29:48

Alright, we'll

Presenter29:53

And one book. We've already supplied the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. Well, I think I would like a copy of um the book that Ellington did called Music is My Mistress. Music is My Mistress by Duke Ellington.

Presenter30:09

And thank you, Woody Herman, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc. Thank you, Roy. It's a pleasure. Goodbye, everyone.

Woody Herman30:22

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.