The orchestra stood in tuxedos in 120-degree heat during the three days of
Posted in General on 21. Sep, 2010
The orchestra stood, in tuxedos, in 120-degree heat during the three days of filming. McKibbon made his first recording as a leader with the album Tumbao para los congueros di mi vida when he was 80 Typically it mixed jazz with Cuban music Steve Voce. Robert Craig Wright, lyricist and composer: born Daytona Beach, Florida 25 September 1914; died Miami 27 July 2005. Robert Wright and his collaborator George “Chet” Forrest wrote songs for the musical hits Song of Norway, Kismet (for which they won Tony Awards) and Grand Hotel. In 1992 he travelled to the middle of the Mojave Desert to record with a symphony orchestra playing Beethoven’s Ninth amongst the sand dunes. He switched easily between Latin and jazz groups and spent much of his time working on television and recording jingles. McKibbon settled in Los Angeles and spent most of the Sixties working there in the studios and freelancing.
“I never had to write a bass part for Al on those Latin numbers.” His seven years in the Shearing Quintet were followed by a year in the band of Cal Tjader, another exponent of the genre. “Al was laying down as fine a Latin bass line as anyone ever has,” said Shearing. Shearing too was pushing forward in Afro-Cuban jazz and McKibbon further developed his expertise with Latin rhythms. After the Gillespie band broke up in 1949 McKibbon freelanced and recorded on the famous “Birth of the Cool” sessions with Miles Davis in 1950. He worked briefly for Count Basie, Thelonious Monk, Earl Hines and Johnny Hodges before joining the George Shearing Quintet in 1951. A string of Latin-inspired recordings with Gillespie followed, including the style-setting “Cubano Be”, “Cubano Bop” and ” Guarachi Guaro”.
“Dizzy upset the jazz world with the recording of ‘Manteca’, but I realize that my entire career in Latin music grew from that date,” said McKibbon. “I began to feel that the Cubans were as close as you could come to African culture because they still practised the roots of our music,” he said. He played the famous call to arms that opens Gillespie’s recording of “Manteca” (the exotic title is in fact the Spanish for “lard”). In fact it was the birth of Afro-Cuban jazz, and McKibbon was to stay involved in Latin music for the rest of his career. We had no idea we were creating anything new other than just a union of jazz with Pozo’s Conga drum We were not thinking of it as some new genre being invented. The Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo had just begun working with Gillespie and McKibbon became his room mate on tour: We basically spoke pidgin English to communicate but we understood each other primarily through our music. Gillespie had to fire him and, at a time when Gillespie was making history, McKibbon became Brown’s replacement.
The affluent singer began the affair with the band’s bassist Ray Brown that was to lead to their marriage. “It was, I think, bad for the band for me to show up in a $400 suit and a big Cadillac and the guys are making $67 a week,” Brown told Alyn Shipton. In 1947 Dizzy Gillespie’s band was on tour with Ella Fitzgerald, by then a big star. After a year with Tab Smith’s group, he joined Coleman Hawkins in October 1945. It must have been due to Hawkins that he gained a place on one of two of the first tours by the Jazz at the Philharmonic, unit in 1945 and 1947 that included Buck Clayton, Hawkins and Lester Young. He joined Lucky Millinder’s band when it passed through Detroit in 1943 and travelled with it to New York, where he settled. He made his first recordings with Millinder’s band, which included several embryo jazz stars.