Pete Rugolo

Much more than a Kenton arranger....

Earlier in my Jazz Journey, I wrote about the Papa Jazz Record Shoppe, a West Coast Jazz used record Mecca I found in Columbia, South Carolina in the late 1980s.

At that time, I was living in Cupertino, California and serving in an Army reserve unit stationed at Fort Ord next to Monterey. Once a year, my unit would go to Fort Jackson in Columbia for our two-week training.

I always assumed the owner, Tim Smith, was Papa Jazz. Here’s a picture of Tim from the early 1980s.

I told Tim I was from California and no one out there had as much classic West Coast stuff as he did. We struck up a deal: he’d send me a box of good West Coast Jazz every so often along with a bill, and I’d send him a check. For a few years, every so often, I’d get a box from Papa Jazz. It was a sweet deal. One of the albums he sent me was this one:

This record was my introduction to Pete Rugolo. He recorded it in the spring of 1959 in Hollywood, with a powerhouse band of mostly Stan Kenton alumnus. I liked it right away - it kind of reminded me of John Barry’s Bond movie soundtracks. Here’s Fancy Meeting Karen (Love Theme from Richard Diamond) with Bud Shank on flute, Milt Bernhart on trombone, and Bob Cooper on tenor sax:

Rugolo composed, arranged, and conducted this album almost 10 years after he had left Stan Kenton’s band.

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Pete Rugolo was born in Sicily and moved with his family to Santa Rosa, California in the 1920s. His father was a shoemaker and opened up a business in Petaluma. After high school Rugolo attended San Francisco State, graduating in 1938 with a music degree. He then applied for a Masters degree at Mills College, where the French-born modernist composer Darius Milhaud was teaching. However, at that time, Mills College was an all girls college. According to Rugolo, “Well, for some reason they accepted me and I became the first boy ever to go to that school. After Stravinsky and Bartok, Milhaud was one of my favorite composers at that time and I was determined to study with him. I was the only boy there for a year and then Dave Brubeck and his brother Howard came along.”

After Mills College, he spent three years in the army and was graded 4F because of bad eyesight, which meant he couldn’t go overseas. He was put in charge of a dance band at a base in San Francisco. The Stan Kenton Orchestra was playing at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco when PFC Rugolo introduced himself and handed Kenton a bundle of arrangements. Rugolo recalls, “I left four or five arrangements and remember asking him to please send them back if he didn’t like them because I’d gone to a lot of work and copied them all myself. I didn’t hear from him for almost three months and then one day I got a call at the barracks.”

On discharge day in late 1945, Rugolo flew to New York and joined the Kenton band and became its chief arranger. During the next five years his influence on the band was considerable. In 1945, with the addition on Pete Rugolo and singer June Christy, the Kenton band’s sound and style was solidified and started to find a home in the Jazz world.

While I do like Rugolo’s compositions and arrangements for the early Kenton band, I much prefer his work after he left the Kenton orchestra in 1949. And that is where our journey will catch up with him…

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After he left the Kenton orchestra, Rugolo became the musical director for Capitol Records in New York, where he championed their interest in modern jazz. In 1954, after persuasion from Rugolo, Capitol released eight Miles Davis tracks on a 10" record titled Classics in Jazz—Miles Davis.

In 1957, these eight tracks plus a few more were released by Capitol as the more widely known Birth of the Cool.

Also in 1954, Capitol released June Christy’s classic Something Cool, arranged by Rugolo and featuring many standout Kenton musicians. On the next two tracks from that album you’ll hear once again both Bud Shank, this time on alto sax, and Bob Cooper, along with Russ Freeman, and Shelly Manne. Here’s the title track, Something Cool:

And another classic, I’ll Take Romance:

In 1957, June Christy recorded her fourth album with Rugolo for Capitol Records, Gone for the Day. For this recording session, Rugolo backed Christy with a 12-piece group of mostly West Coast all-stars and strings. The backup players included Don Fagerquist on trumpet, Frank Rosolino on trombone, Bud Shank on alto sax, and Bob Cooper on tenor. This is a really nice album. It’s kind of heavy, but I have always liked this interpretation of the Kenton staple Interlude, with nice flute by Bud Shank:

Gone For The Day is probably my favorite June Christy albums. So many great tunes and so many great musicians, if you like this kind of old-school lounge singer music.

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Later in the 1950s, Rugolo became West Coast musical director for Mercury Records. He recalls, “I took the Mercury job, which didn’t pay a lot of money, but I was able to write for people like Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughn, and a lot of good jazz people.”

This was also the time when stereophony was emerging as the latest and greatest technology. Rugolo recorded several albums under his own name using unusual combinations of instruments to demonstrate and take full advantage of stereophonic sound.  For example, in 1956, he recorded Music For Hi-Fi Bugs.

Here is the title track from that album, featuring the work of Russ Freeman on piano, Ronnie Lang on alto sax, Howard Robert on tasty guitar solo, and Conti Candoli’s muted trumpet:

Another of Rugolo’s unusual instrumental combinations that I like is Ten Trombones Like Two Pianos, recorded for Mercury Records in LA in 1960.

This is a great album with the usual suspects - West Coast all-stars Russ Freeman, Frank Rosolino, Milt Bernhart, Claude Williamson, Red Mitchell, and Shelly Manne. Along with Russ Freeman, the other piano player on this album is Johnny Williams, who would go on to Star Wars fame and over 50 Academy Award nominations. Here is Moonglow and Theme From “Picnic”:

Finally, one more for the road, the famous Kenton standard Intermission Riff. This is probably one of my favorite Rugolo arrangements. Terrific. Another classic from the equally terrific Ten Trombones Like Two Pianos album. This track features both Russ Freeman and John Williams again on pianos, along with two trombones played by Frank Rosolino and Herbie Harper. I also love Shelly Manne’s playing on this one:

I originally intended to include another great Kenton arranger Bill Holman on this week’s journey, but then I realized there are so many awesome Rugolo tunes that needed to see the light of day….

So next week on that Big River called Jazz we’ll dig our paddles in the waters of Bill Holman. I was thinking of combining the third great Kenton arranger Bill Russo in there too, but like Rugolo, I’m thinking I’ll never get through all the great Holman stuff. So I’ll probably have to save Russo for the following leg of our journey. That would pretty much cover what I think are the three great arrangers who started their careers in the Kenton band and then went on to even greater fame after they left his band….

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Also, find my playlist on Spotify: From Fred Astaire to Sun Ra.

Feel free to contact me at any time to talk shop. I welcome and encourage that.

Until then, keep on walking….