![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2iOYXftJcjoL8UIyFESDKgUyUrZk0vcJkHP1D1cadHEkafgvGXY1OFi02DAq9SXjhlPyb6NRWO8LBOzJ9DgCM80k5rcMb_qH9a9HxuTRPiMUkgQYirzFncExQw6xEDY58LOSPZMOF6Uo/s200/1-3+016.jpg)
Have Paich-ence, please; don't shoot the messenger or declare Martyal law. I'm just reviving a few puns used for mid-Fifties tune titles recorded by composer-arranger Marty Paich--who would soon become better known for his work with the Dek-Tette (his slightly later redo of Gerry Mulligan's Tentet) assembled for several Mel Torme sessions on Bethlehem and Verve and other labels later.
But before Mel there was Marty's West Coast... er, Martyrdom... toiling in the vineyards with, and for, Shorty Rogers and the All-Stars like Art Pepper, Jimmy Giuffre, and Shelly Manne. Of course, other arrangers lacked Marty's perfect Paich. (Okay, okay, no more egregious puns... only gregious ones, like his album titled Revel Without Pause!)
Marc Myers' long interview with saxman Herb Geller (find it here) introduced a couple of Paich LP jackets I had neither seen nor heard before,
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("Who's this Archie?" you may ask. No album credit namechecks any such person for Paich's release. Well, the trick is this: rather than critic Nat Hentoff's short-lived Candid label--which gets logo credit on the CD--the LP was instead originally issued on Archie Bleyer's Cadence Records.)
Meanwhile the fun was just beginning, because two days later I found a used copy of Nat Pierce's "Ballad of Jazz Street" sessions.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFS8MaXrpHSgty4xSXsEgozsUiPJ9eVjW9vz7wePPnLXx3-PWXgDxEKNE2u4Jxx3ZuLjFAP8IAWXPLQUlJHTmV_lAtOSesIe6eIlYihXjq7Anj-DIoDb4FQILJaopMwpwpDwekRme0PJU/s200/1-3+008.jpg)
... Big little bands both, these circa-'60 ensembles, but while Pierce then stuck to his guns for decades--filling in at the piano for Count Basie, composing for Basie, Kenton, Herman, and other bands (he had acquired clout by having arranged landmark TV show The Sound of Jazz), doing his part to keep Mainstream Swing vibrant and alive--Paich gradually drifted into arranging for Pop vocalists like Dinah Shore and Peggy Lee, Ray Charles and even Kenny Loggins, as well as conducting the strings whenever Sarah Vaughan went Classical. Paich got the credits and publicity, and the bread, while Pierce gained the cred and private acclaim, and the scuffling.
But back to the two albums. Was Paich truly a Picasso? For the volume and variety of Pablo wouldn't that be, say, Ellington instead? (Or was Duke more accurately the Impressionist among Jazz composers--Monet maybe?) Marty seems more a master of miniatures, quick and clever and controled, maybe more like Degas.
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I fully expected to find the Paich album superficial and the Pierce one to be more substantial... which should teach me to eschew preconceptions. Because Paich's pieces slink and soar, all but one tune his own originals, while Pierce's program mixes reworkings and his own tunes about equally (and more stolidly). There's a casual lope and lightheartedness to most of Marty, with even the titles straightforwardly simple: "Nice and Easy," "New Soft Shoe," "Tommy's Toon," "Easy Listenin'." He gets the best from his West's best too (Bob Enevoldsen, Pete Candoli, Buddy Childers, Bill Perkins, Herb Geller, Bob Cooper, Jack Sheldon, et al), crack players making for crack sections and solos.
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So you have Marty's West Coast leanings (arrangements with interacting sections, call-and-response counterpoint, solos cushioned by others, a general lightness and openness) vs. Nat's happy Swing, reaching from Boston to Kansas City, featuring fewer players but "heavier" arrangements and a "thicker" sound. Vague terms, these, and possibly irrelevant distinctions, but one can readily hear the overall difference--Pierce's powerful pre-Bop excitement vs. Paich's cheery post-Bop energy, both approaches lifting the listener and generating movement.
With Basie his mentor, Pierce always went for a hip riffing sound, usually reminiscent of the Count's great comeback band of the early/mid Fifties.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXZX4I5bkeeOa0IEjNoumCkj_YysNWaBS86dV_7CWJeOjezUd4ZiWWmMpWves1bpsTvpyu1AVDDq9TvYCmKQHo6pp7p28bn3LasLAA4EP0BYhkw7I1hcESrVur25VE-bUTEMke2_5a_lM/s320/1-3+013.jpg)
For "Jazz Street" Pierce shucks his Basie boat cap and dons a rakish, Dukish fedora. Nat's piano becomes decidedly stride-like here and there, and his melodies meander quizzically, discovering strange venues along that hipster Street. The presence of both Gonsalves and Clark Terry helps lend the Ellington touch, as do Nat's section writing and non-Ducal soloists Dick Meldonian and Eddie Bert.
All holds well for the first two sections, but everything goes to wrack and ruin in Part Three, which sounds like Basie meets Godzilla,
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So Pierce's resurrected rehearsals sadly don't have a Paich on Marty's arty party. (Now I exit hurriedly, no noose being better than the hemp demanded by irate Mainstream fans everywhere.)
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