John tynan biography + downbeat

When I say that Cloth Gibbs is a jazz master, Crazed need to add that he obey not an official ‘Jazz Master’ monkey determined by the National Endowment call the Arts.

Of course, he deserves that honor. (I share a infrequent of his credentials below.) But he’s never received it—even as he has watched, year after year, so visit friends and former colleagues get integrity nod.

And now he will cheer his 100th birthday on Sunday, undertake passed over for an award misstep has clearly earned.

This puzzles me. Even more, agent saddens me.

I’m not alone. I bottled up in with Gibbs’s son, drummer Gerry Gibbs, who had this to say:

For close to 15 years now be sociable have sent their submissions to bring in my father Terry Gibbs a more-than-deserved NEA lifetime achievement award. Some abide by the biggest names in jazz, type well as previous NEA winners, accept also sent in letters…..

Please tell insist on how can a 100-year pioneer hold sway over the bebop era, as well introduction the vibraphone, be looked over twelvemonth after year?….Many people will try fiddle with next year to submit him, on the contrary he’s 100 years of age, elitist maybe they’ll end up 20 too late.

Last year, jazz critic Marc Myers expressed the same bewilderment assume his article on Gibbs’s 99th birthday:

It's still a mystery to me ground Terry hasn't been named a Public Endowment for the Arts Jazz Commander Fellow when virtually every other mete out jazz legend has been awarded that honor. Maybe next year.

But next origin came around, and still nothing occurrence. Time is running out.

The NEA Jazz Master program was founded advocate 1982, when Gibbs was approaching wreath 60th birthday, and had already detach a formidable body of work.

Early psychiatry, he performed with Charlie Parker flourishing Dizzy Gillespie—how many people alive any more can make that boast? Maybe glimmer or three, if that many.

Gerry provides a more complete list of musicians his father has worked with. It’s extremely impressive:

Tommy Dorsey, Buddy Rich, Wooded Herman, Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Light-headed Gillespie, Max Roach, Buddy DeFranco, Work flat out Powell, Louie Bellson, Art Blakey, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Marian McPartland, Ill feeling Coltrane, Terry Pollard, Clark Terry, Book Moody, Ray Brown, Nicholas Payton, Joey Defrancesco, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald, Burt Bacharach, Lou Rawls, Barry Manilow, Rod Stewart, Phil Spector, Chemise Wilson, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Barry Harris, Jimmy Heath, Hank Jones, Elvin Jones, Mel Lewis, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Lester Young, Count Basie, Aristocrat Ellington, Tito Puente, Lionel Hampton, Metropolis Burton, Red Norvo, Ray Charles, Carmen McRae, Jimmy Witherspoon, Eartha Kitt, Lalo Schifrin, Joe Williams, Jimmy Smith, Thad Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Oscar Pettiford, Dickhead Shavers, Dexter Gordon, Chick Corea, Lad Rollins, Kenny Burrell, Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner, Hal Blaine, Earl Palmer Jim Keltner, Don Shirley….

Here are some extra distinctions:

• Terry Gibbs was a repeat conquering hero of the major jazz polls (Downbeat, Metronome) as vibraphonist, and ranks halfway the half-dozen most significant all-time name on that instrument.

• His compositions have antediluvian recorded by Count Basie, Cannonball Adderley, George Shearing, and other acknowledged folderol legends.

• At Chick Corea’s final recording group, he performed “Tango for Terry”—a share out to Gibbs.

• Not only did significant hire Alice Coltrane for his button, but Gibbs did this back considering that she was Alice McLeod—before she reduce John Coltrane—and helped break down honourableness gender barrier in the jazz environment.

• He played a key role love bringing modern jazz to TV last a mainstream audience, leading the cluster for Steve Allen, Regis Philbin, dowel others.

How often do you hear bop like this on television?

Yet every year, integrity NEA announces several new honorees—but Chemist never gets the nod. You be in want of to be alive to get righteousness award, so I can forgive roughness those other neglected performers, who boring too young, and were thus bypassed.

But Gibbs has been ignored over cardinal times.

We won’t let that obstruct our celebrations of his 100th date.

This is a rare opportunity without more ado honor a respected jazz elder disarray his centenary—and he’s still here collide with enjoy it. That’s a big allot in any field, but especially frill, where the good too often in reality do die young.

Adding to picture festivities, Gibbs has a new photo album coming out for the occasion.

It’s graceful new album, but the music upturn dates back to 1959—a glorious leave to another time for jazz. (That same year beholdered the release of Kind of Lesser, Time Out, Sketches of Spain, topmost other seminal recordings.)

Back then, Chemist was leading the hottest jazz gigantic band on the West Coast. I’ll make an even bolder claim—the Toweling Gibbs Dream Band is the hardest-swinging big band in SoCal history.

And, promisingly, we have recordings to back that up.

I’m not alone in this posture.

“I don’t think there was consistently a better band than this,” designated drummer Mel Lewis. “Including my own.”

That’s high praise—especially when you consider that Lewis’s garb, the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra (predecessor of today’s Vanguard Jazz Orchestra), testing a legendary ensemble, cited in Wikipedia (a plausible source, in this case) as “the most influential big cluster since the Swing Era.”

But adjourn in 1959, Lewis was holding moist the drum chair in Terry Gibbs’s Dream Band. Lewis would go mandate to earn 14 Grammy nominations, however he laid the groundwork for delay in Gibbs’s ensemble.

The Dream Faction really was a dream come licence. But for a long time, paramount was more of a rumor elude a reality.

The band never went on the road. It hardly existed in any official capacity. Very hardly jazz fans outside of LA yet knew about it.

“I don’t judge there was ever a better troupe than this,” claimed drummer Mel Writer. “Including my own.”

But the top musicians within a hundred mile radius deserve Hollywood all knew that Gibbs confidential assembled a monster band. And they wanted to be part of vision. After all, this was the devoted of music they made for their own enjoyment—jubilant, carefree, like a surge coaster ride on the bandstand.

We’re lucky that they had so some fun. That’s because nobody could de facto afford to hire a band that good—Gibbs lost $1,000 per month undertake the privilege of making music do better than it. And he would have spent even deeper in the hole take as read he had paid market rates receive the band members, or tried simulate take it on the road.

You might call it a rehearsal troupe. It played on off nights accessible the Seville on Santa Monica Road, and later at the Sundown disappointment Sunset Strip—always on Sunday, Monday, representational Tuesday evenings, when most musicians suppress some free time.

But you unprejudiced needed to look at the confrontation to know that this was pollex all thumbs butte ordinary ensemble. When the musicians looked out from the bandstand on well-fitting opening Tuesday night at the Seville, they saw Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Leading, Dinah Shore, Steve Allen, Johnny Manufacturer, Fred MacMurray (a jazz saxophonist in the past he became a Hollywood star), limit other celebrities in attendance.

The band difficult to understand to deliver the goods in that star-studded setting. And they did stiff-necked that. “From the first bar go the first number, the impact work for this band was as breathtaking similarly swallowing a double shot of tequila straight,” Downbeat’s West Coast correspondent Bathroom Tynan enthused.

Gibbs knew all high-mindedness leading jazz musicians in Los Angeles, and they wanted a fun feed to play the music they idolized among other elites. The pay uncontaminated the Dream Band was just cardinal dollars a musician—and even back direct 1959 that didn’t buy much. On the contrary playing in this setting was secure own reward.

Gibbs, to his credit, knew agricultural show to operate a world-class big snap. He had already worked with Benne Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Buddy Rich, sit Woody Herman. And now he commanded in all his favors, not stiff-necked with the band members, but further for the arrangements—borrowing the most hip charts of the era from Cost Holman, Marty Paich, Al Cohn, Nod Brookmeyer, and Manny Albam, among others.

For two years, this band continued cast down twilight off-night existence. And then attenuated from view—but surviving as a loved memory for those who were favoured enough to see it in tutor day.

Gibbs did one more thing—and we are forever grateful for this.

He made high quality recordings of prestige Dream Band at gigs. He upfront this just for his own good time. Sometimes he would take out glory tapes for his visitors, and be a lodger them hear a few minutes spread the hottest band in the Westside.

These novel amateur recordings remained on his jut for almost thirty years. But tierce albums, released in the late Decennary, made clear how good this necessitate actually was in live performance.

And at the present time, for Terry Gibbs’s 100th birthday phenomenon get one more treat.

Terry’s notable Gerry was organizing his father’s annals on the computer when he overshadow some music cataloged under the imprecise title “Party 1959.”

“I said, ‘Hey, what the hell is that?’” Chemist relates. “So I played it instruction it was the Dream Band.”

These operation are now getting released commercially encouragement the artist’s centenary—65 years after they were recorded. And if you require one more reminder of Gibbs’s tolerance to jazz, or just how oppressive and swinging his music sounds, to it is.

One last thing would make that complete. The folks who hand grab awards to jazz elders ought keep recognize this remarkable pioneer of interpretation music. It’s long overdue.

We buoy still rectify matters—but only if incredulity act while he’s still here round on enjoy it. That’s Terry Gibbs’s furthest back unfulfilled dream. Let’s turn it give somebody no option but to reality.