Chapter 6-BOHP_2009-12-09_AllanChasePt2

Description

FB: Well now that we've solved all of the issues between sister schools across Hunington Avenue and Mass. Ave. AC: I've said all I can say about that - all I know. FB: Let's revert to talking about Allen Chase's career and some of the terrific projects and people you've worked with over the years. Tell us about Jimmy Mosher. AC: Jimmy Mosher helped me a lot. He was probably the top straight-ahead jazz alto player in Boston that I knew about. Bob Mover was another impressive player I heard a little bit, briefly when I first moved here. But Jimmy really had this maturity, he was fiery too and very creative a real improviser. He just sounded great and he played with, one of the greatest musicians I've played with, Mick Goodrick regularly. He had a trio gig with Ed Felson on bass, who was an NEC student, the top bass student at NEC at that point, played in the big band. They had this steady gig at the Casa Blanca in Harvard Square, the Middle-Eastern restaurant and bar. I didn't go there a lot, I went there a couple of times. I heard an Emmanuel church concert, and I heard him Berklee with different people, and I heard him on recordings and then I realized, "Oh, yeah my dad had some Buddy Rich records that he was on." I actually grew up hearing his solos,. Probably around the time I was fourteen he was in the Buddy RIch band. I heard quite a bit of that on alto, maybe baritone also. I actually got those records out when I was visiting my dad and listened to them again. I think there is a West Side Story album of Buddy Rich, a few different things. I was like, "Wait a minute. These are all the guys I teach with." The whole trumpet section was in the harmony department with me: Wayne Ross, Lynn Biviano. I think Greg Hopkins was writing for the band. I think Wayne Naus, Paul Fontein, Jeff Stout. Honestly, I can't remember for sure which trumpet players but yeah, there was this amazing crew of trumpet players at the school here and they're still here, all those people. Also there are others who I didn't mention who weren't in that band, Dave Johnson really should be heard more. There is just an amazing number of trumpet players here actually. Not all teaching trumpet, a lot of them teaching harmony and arranging. I liked Jimmy a lot and in 1984, I'd been teaching here three years and I'd played a few faculty concerts and things and I don't think that Jimmy had heard me. December '84 I'd made a cassette album, that used to be the low-budget, affordable way to get your music out there. I was in Arizona and the guy that I replaced, Dan Hurley, he's on all of the Aebersold play along records, the early ones, on piano. He used teach at those clinics. He'd worked in New York for a few years with Chris Connor, Clark Terry Quartet and played a lot with Dave Liebman and other people like that informally. He had taught at Miami in the Pat Metheney student years. He was our jazz teacher, when he left he was replaced after an interim period by a guy named Chuck Marohnic, who made a few albums for Steeple Chase. He was the jazz teacher at Arizona State. I had studied with him, but he was an excellent pianist, just a great player. I was out there for the holidays and I booked a duet session with him. And I made a casette album, I made 100 maybe 200 copies and I gave one to Gary Burton and one Jimmy Mosher and most of my friends and collegues and I sold them at gigs a little bit. It was duets, piano and alto, standards and my originals half and half, about seven tunes. And Jimmy listened to it. He was very encouraging, he didn't talk to me much but he started recommending me for gigs, and he starting sending me as a sub on gigs. Twice he sent me as a sub on important gigs where he didn't tell the leader that I was coming, he just felt like he didn't want to go and he called me and I went. Of course I didn't know. I showed up for one of them with Joe Hunt. It was Suzanne Davis' gig, pianist and singer, it was at the DeCordova Museum, very fancy, maybe a holiday party or something, and it was Teddy Kotick, who I also played with quite a bit at the Flower Garden at Faneuil Hall, I hired him. He played with Charlie Parker, Bill Evans' first album. I will brag and say he liked playing with me to the extent he would phoned me mulitple times and whether we could play together some more. That totally blew my mind. He played with Charlie Parker! He was in his older years, but he was not well, he had heart problems. FB: He really enjoyed playing and he was very soulful and warm. AC: Yeah, it just felt great to play with him. Of course I respected what he had done, he was just a great, perfect bass player. I showed up for that gig and they were like, "Allan." Suzanne didn't even know me. Teddy didn't, probably know me yet. Joe knew me. They were like, "What happened?" I said, "Jimmy told me that I was subbing for him on this gig. He didn't tell you?" I could see Suzanne's face, I was pretty young, I was twenty-eight and she's hiring the best guy in town and here I show up. I did fine, but I am sure she wished Jimmy was there. FB: You were playing standards? AC: Yeah, we were playing standards totally off the cuff. Luckily, as I recall, I knew most of the tunes and I was fine with that. I also used to play at the Wonderland Ballroom for ballroom dancing in an amazing band, a hugely over-qualified band, but it was a great education. Dave Chapman playing first alto, lead player from Herb Pomeroy's who was a bank vice-president by day but a great lead alto player, me on second alto, John LaPorta on tenor, I think another tenor who was often a younger musician, sometimes Jay Branford was on that gig, maybe he played alto and I played tenor. I don't think ever had baritone on this gig, but maybe it was five saxes, I can't remember. I know Jay Brandford and Dave (Fannif) who two people that played that gig with us. But LaPorta and Dave Chapman, I was the voice in between them. And I've always prided myself on playing good second alto and really match the lead player, but to play with somebody of Dave's generation and still have good intonation and sound and articulation and all that. FB: Or like WIlly Smith or something. AC: It was like an education in how to really play. And we were playing these stock swing ballroom dancing charts, Cha-Cha's and most these... FB: Who's band was it? AC: Kevin Shea, was the son of the founder of the band, played drums, and he was the guy who sold paper products to Berklee, like paper towels and toilet paper. That was his business and he ran this band... FB: Was that he regular Saturday night gig? AC: Dave (Modayabus), who was the controller, played electric bass. I can't remember, there was somebody on piano. One trumpet, usually Bud Billings, who was a Nashville arranger. It was like serious, sophisticated ballroom dancers, not rich people, just people who really knew how to dance. It was a set list, you'd had to play a Cha-Cha at 8:29PM. It was 4-hour gig, paid a very moderate amount of money. The stories during the breaks from LaPorta about playing with Ben Webster and Charlie Parker and Mingus, it was unbelievable. Jimmy made it possible for me to meet these people. I never sat next to him in a band. He actually recommended me to Herb Pomeroy to play in his band when Jimmy quit his band. I guess it was right when he was getting sick. It would've been second alto with Dave Chapman and Dave liked me as a second alto player in the section and Herb had heard me. He offered me the gig, but I said, "Herb, I don't play any clarinet." He said, "I rescind the offer." I don't play the clarinet which is ridiculous. My stupidest mistake was not learning the clarinet when I was nineteen or something and practicing it and getting to be a doubler. FB: Nowadays it doesn't make a difference. Nobody plays it. AC: It's much less of an issue now. I am not a show player, but I don't really want to be a show player. I honestly do not want to do that. I have nothing against people...I admire people who do it well. Being a doubler, I just don't have the inspiration for it, to love the other woodwinds and wanna play them enough... FB: You never get in to flute, did ya? AC: I played flute minimally. I have performed on flute, I have even played flute on a movie soundtrack. It is passable but not strong. I played it with Victor Mendoza's band a little bit, I used to be in that band. Victor and I knew each other in Arizona and we moved here at the same time, and Tim Ray also moved here a couple years after us. We all knew each other in Phoenix. FB: OH COOL. AC: Victor went to college in Flagstaff Arizona, which had a good mallet and percussion program, and led a band in Phoenix, and I didn't play in it, Les Arbuckle played in it, who was another Berklee faculty member, whose mother had retired in Phoenix and he was up there taking care of her when she was ill. Victor and I knew each other and I'd played in his band for several years here with Danila Perez at one point, Ed Uribe, Oscar Stagnaro, Roy Lewis on percussion, - (both Roy and Elmer) had been in Passport, the band Passport, were here from (Corasal). FB: Were you on any of Victor's albums? AC: First one, on Tortilla Records, it's an LP, I can't remember if it was called Victor Mendoza Quintet. That was probably the first record I played on possibly. I might have been the sideman on a rock record or two before that. That's just before the sax quartet stuff.