11:04 PM 11/8/2007
Although Ruby Braff and George Barnes knew of each other, they really didn't meet face to face until one night in June, 1973 at Jim & Andy's, a popular local musicians bar in NYC where everyone hung out between gigs. After much prodding from me that they should meet because they both thought about music the same way, they met by chance to discover that they were both booked on the same night but with separate groups to play at Carnegie Hall for the Kool Jazz Festival, each with their own groups back to back for the evening's headliner who was going to be Benny Goodman. Benny was to have the original quartet/quintet behind him and it was a sold-out performance (with some of the audience on the stage) and what would prove to be Gene Krupa's last public performance before he died of Leukemia that same year.
They decided to tell George Wein that their plan would be to play as a quartet using John Guiffreda on bass and myself on rhythm guitar. We began rehearsals at once at Hank O'Neil's recording studio on Christopher street in the West Village in NYC and did so about every other day. We were scheduled to play a 20 minute set on stage at the great hall, so our plans were set around that time frame.
John Guiffreda, a good bassist, had been playing a lot of club dates when he met Ruby, but he didn't know a lot of the jazz type tunes, so I suggested that since he lived not too far from my house, I would come over to his place and we would go over the tunes to learn the chords on the "off" days and the other days would then be better spent with Ruby and George organizing the direction of our performance. After about a month of this kind of rehearsing, we were ready for and played a knockout performance and wiped Benny Goodman off the map! The critics reviews were all about our dazzling group and how we showed up of Benny and his original band and walked off with top honors. Needless to say, a huge and unexpected surprise for all of us.
During those early rehearsals, Lots of people were invited by the co-leaders to come down to watch us develop our act. On one of these, Ruby invited his friend, singer Tony Bennett to come down and listen to us play. Tony made some good suggestions which were put into action and even made a drawing of the group one night, (which ended up on the back cover of our first album!) After a few of these sessions, Tony said he wanted to make a record with us! It has since become a classic and is still on the market and has been put into a number of different Tony Bennett albums... The recording was a bunch of Rogers and Hart tunes in a double LP album at that time for Improv Records owned jointly by Tony and a businessman named Bill Hassett.
After the Carnegie Hall concert we recorded our own and and then Tony's album. We continued rehearsing for other gigs that were beginning to show up, then after a few months together, darkness began to appear on the horizon with the two egos of the leaders vying for the power struggle... John began to see his value in the group dropping somehow and Tony came to his rescue by offering him a job playing for him and contracting as Tony's road manager, which he did until shortly before John passed away.
Enter Michael Moore on bass. His first gig with us was at the New School in Manhattan and his first performance with us and our recordng took place the same night, (which turned out to be a very good album.) So much for Michael Moore's ability to fit in to a group on short notice...!!
After that, we began to prepare for the concerts ahead and the trips to Europe that led to the concert performance and TV show which was in Berlin, Germany. I don't know where the concert took place, since I only had to show up and play. The day of the concert I discovered that I had forgotten to bring a tux shirt with me and had to hustle to a local department store and buy one. My mother and grandmother spoke German around me when I was little, but they never bothered to teach me how, so when I went to the store for the missing shirt the lady didn't speak any English, and I didn't speak German, but we somehow got it done in time for me to get to the concert hall.
The rhythm guitar was usually miked up about 20% louder than George's electric guitar at his direction so we would have a good balance between us, and you could always tell who was doing what on the guitar. I never used an amp at anytime with the group which at times put me at quite a disadvantage behind the rest of the group. Mike Moore used an amp with his bass effectively, because he played rather lightly. He was rarely too loud for me, but at times George would forget how loud he could get which at times drove Ruby a bit nuts. Ruby was easy to drive nuts anyway, and that didn't help anything and probably led to the eventual downfall of the group. Both of these guys were very short and each had an ego a mile-and-a-half wide and would lose a gig rather than lose face. But as you can hear and see, they sure could play...
The video tape was made without any notice that it would be done, because if it had, I don't think Ruby would have allowed it. We never got paid anything for the taping and it's still being played all over Europe ever since the concert in 1974. It was through Bob Erwig's kindness that I managed to get a DVD copy. I had been hearing from lots of people that they had seen it in Europe but I hadn't until it was posted on youtube.com by Bob.
The group only rehearsed long enough to turn corners together so we all knew the layout of the tune we were playing. After that, you were expected to turn your ears up and hang on for dear life, because you never knew what was going to come out of either of them. They were both very responsive to everything going on around them that we would add or play and we had to do the same for them. It worked. --- There were times when we'd jump to another key without notice or break into a new tempo just like that... It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot playing with these guys. Of course, there is so much more and my intent is not to write a book here, but just to give you a bit of my journey for what it meant to me. --- Wayne L. Wright