After my post on pianist Gene DiNovi in March, I included my email with hopes that Gene or his family would reach out so I could interview him. Joe Lang put me in touch with his daughter, who put me in touch with his wife and Gene. We had a lovely Zoom conversation.
Gene is a legend. He started recording in 1944, the same year Dizzy Gillespie pulled him out of the audience at the Spotlite Club on New York's 52nd Street to play piano in Gillespie's new style, which became known as bebop. Gene was 15 and was a quick study.
Gene's recordings from the 1940s on are staggering, both for his commanding swing and bop phrasing on the piano and the caliber of the players in the bands with which he recorded.
Here's my interview with Gene:
JazzWax: Gene, where in Brooklyn did you grow up?
Gene DiNovi: In Bensonhurst, but in three different places.
JW: Why did your family move around so much? And what did your dad do for a living?
GD: I don't know why we moved so often. My dad worked at the American Can Co. taking care of their machines. The job lasted his entire life, which was way too short. He died when he was 58. I was 13.
JW: Was that hard on you?
GD: It was.
JW: Did you have siblings?
GD: There were six of us. I was the last and youngest. My brother, Anthony was fifth and he was 10 years older than me. But to them, I was like a little baby brother. There were three girls and three boys. My sister Tess went to secretarial school and then went looking for a job on Wall Street.
JW: Where did she wind up?
GDN: Tess went to the office of this guy, Mr. Brandt. At first, he said, “I can't hire you because you're a woman and you're Italian." That was his opening line. She was very focused and determined. Tess said, “You know what? Give me a chance for a week and see what you think." About 30 years later, she inherited his business. Aunt Tess bought me my first piano and I’m sitting at it now.
JW: How old were you when she bought you the piano?
GDN: I was 14.
JW: Were your parents musical? Did they sing?
GD: Oh yeah, my father loved opera. I should have paid more attention to opera in those days. I could have learned a lot more. My mother wouldn't admit it, but she liked opera, too. A funny story though: My father used to have friends over on Sunday afternoons. They would all sing arias to each other. One of them was a woman who fancied my father. My mother wasn't crazy about her or them.
JW: Were your siblings musical?
GD: No, but they were all gifted in their own way. I told you about Tess. Maryanne was amazing with a sewing machine and needle and thread. When I was little, she made me jumpsuits from leftover material from drapes.
JW: Were your brothers musical?
GD: No, but my brother Victor was the father of Victor DiNovi, a genius woodworker who lives in Santa Barbara, Calif., today. His furniture is beautiful
JW: How old were you when you started playing piano?
GD: I was 12. My oldest brother, Victor, was a good artist and used to bring these crazy guys home who could play. One of them, Joe Gordioso, could sit down and play any tune you requested. If he didn't know it, he’d say, “Sing it to me." Then he'd play it. I’d watch these guys play with amazement.
JW: Did you take lessons?
GD: No. I learned by watching these two maniac friends of Victor. When Maryanne had her wedding, she asked Joe and Frank Iso, a piano teacher who blocked hats at night, to play. They came and sat down, with Frank on the accordion and Joe at the piano. About eight bars in, they started screaming at each other. They couldn't stand how the other played.
JW: What’s the first song you could play on the piano
GD: Yes, My Darling Daughter.
JW: Were you listening to records and the radio at home?
GD: When Maryanne got married, she got a a giant phonograph and a couple of records as a wedding present. One was She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor (go here). The other one was by the Count Basie rhythm section. I never stopped listening to it. She said, “I'm going to give you the phonograph and the records. “
JW: How many times did you listen to the Basie record?
GD: Hundreds of times.
JW: How did you learn to play bebop so early, given that there weren't any bop records in 1944?
GD: Chuck Wayne knew how to play the music. He was my first teacher, really. He brought me up, musically. He lived on Staten Island in New York. Andy Masters had a band in Brooklyn that Al Cohn wrote arrangements for. I'd go and listen to the band there. I was pretty young, about 14. I just took the subway. I started going to the clubs on 52nd Street when I was 15. Why my mom let me go I’m not sure.
JW: How did you get in?
GD: I don't know, but the clubs were nice to me. They got to know me after I stood there each and every day. It was incredible stand outside those clubs on a summer night. By then, my father had passed away and my mother had her hands full. If my father had been alive, I doubt he would have let me go. But my mother was prosaic. She said, “Eugene, you don't want to go to school?" I said, “No, mom." And she said, “All right, well, get a job. Go to work."
JW: When did you start playing professionally?
GD: I started making money playing when I was about 14.
JW: Where did you play?
GD: I played at clubs in Brooklyn, Long Island and Staten Island—wherever they let me play. I must have looked older than my age. I was smart enough to avoid alcohol and drugs. To answer your question, I learned bop by listening. At the Three Deuces on 52nd Street, I’d go over there and play. It was a few years before he let me play solo in there, but one day I ended up playing solo next to Art Tatum.
JW: What did Tatum say?
GD: If he liked what he heard, he’d play just with his left hand and leave you to carve out the melody. I was so stupid to sit down and play with him, but he was nice to me. I asked him, “Art, do you play classical music?" He said, “Oh no.” I said, “Yeah, but you can outplay those people." He said he played a couple classical things once in a while. He really could play anything he wanted to play.
JW: Were you loner as a kid?
GD: Pretty much. My friends were all adult musicians.
JW: How did you wind up playing with Dizzy Gillespie at the Spotlite on 52nd Street at age 15?
GD: That was a baptism by fire. It was a afternoon session thing. World War II was on then, and on the bandstand were a lot of trumpet players. It was Dizzy, Harry “Sweets" Edison and Buck Clayton. Miles Davis was standing in the corner holding his head saying, “How do you guys play like that?"
JW: What was Miles doing?
GD: Hanging out and listening. At one point, drummer Max Roach's kick-drum foot pedal came loose while we were playing, so Miles got under the drums to fix it for him.
JW: When Gillespie grabbed you out of the audience, what happened?
GD: I was having a soda. Nat Jaffe hadn't arrived yet, and he was the cat's meow. He used to wear beautiful double-breasted suits and was very hip.
JW: How did Gillespie know you could handle it?
GD: Dizzy must have heard me play on an afternoon gig at the Three Deucesby myself. Whenever he saw me after, he’d refer to me as “the bebop baby." That afternoon at the Spotlite, he said, “He ain't a baby no more."
JW: So you're playing there with all these trumpet players and suddenly Charlie Parker comes out playing his alto saxophone?
GD: He just came around the corner while I was playing, yeah.
JW: What were you playing?
GD: Lover Come Back to Me.
JW: You had to have really fast hands.
GD: It was very fast. Dizzy even had me take a solo. I ended up hunched over the piano like Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I played about three or four tunes before Nat arrived.
WJ: Was Dizzy impressed?
GD: He was. I wasn’t even trying to be special. There were only three of four of us who played like that in those days. He treated me like I had been OK.
JW: Any mistakes?
GD: Yeah, on All the Things You Are, which was one of the bop anthems you had to know early on. While playing, I shifted to the outro section when I shoudl have returned to playing the first section. I was ending it, in other words.
JW: How did you know you made a mistake?
GD: Dizzy and I both knew I'd goofed, but he let the chorus end and then I was set straight from then on.
JW: How was the Henry Jerome band with Johnny Mandel and Alan Greenspan in 1944 and ‘45?
GD: That was recorded during one of our performances at an amazing place—Childs Restaurant, in the Paramount Building in Times Square. Everybody in town played there, either by sitting in or working there with a group. The place was gigantic. It’s where all the secretaries and lower-level workers in the area had their lunch. It was downstairs from the Paramount Theater. Normie Faye, a trumpet player, was in the band. So was Manny Fox and Jack Eagle. I saw a lot of good arrangements by Al Cohen and Johnny Mandel. We were all teenagers. The band’s book started getting filled with arrangements by Johnny and Al. That’s when I started with them. Both of those guys were my teachers, too, in a sense. I was learning from them in that band. Bill Vitale was in there and so was Len Garment, who’d go on to be and attorney and President Nixon’s advisor.
JW: And drummer-arranger Tiny Kahn.
GD: That’s right. We were buds. We worked together a lot.
JW: Then in 1945, you were with clarinetist Joe Marsala?
GD: Joe was a beautiful man. A great guy. I mean, he put up with a 17-year-old kid. I don't know how he did it, but he was a very lovable man. I played with him quite a number of times at the Hickory House on 52nd Street. It was a great place, except I was the heaviest I was in my entire life. I used to sit up on the bandstand for the first set and then eat a steak or a chop with a baked potato. I must have gained 30 pounds on that job.
JW: How was working with clarinetist Aaron Sachs in 1946?
GD: Aaron was a very fine player who unfortunately became a bad boy with drugs. His Manor Re-bops was quite a band, with Terry Gibbs on vibes.
JW: There’s a song you recorded on June 8, 1946 called Tiny’s Con that sounds a lot like Donna Lee, except that Donna Lee wasn’t recorded until May 8, 1947.
GD: Charlie Parker stole it from Tiny and re-named it. Miles Davis also claimed authorship.
Here's Tiny's Con...
And here's Donna Lee, a year later...
[Editor's note: Miles Davis, in his autobiography, said: “I wrote a tune for the album called 'Donna Lee', which was the first tune of mine that was ever recorded. But when the record came out, it listed Bird [Charlie Parker] as the composer. It wasn't Bird's fault, though. The record company just made a mistake."]
Miles also stole a Chuck Wayne song and copyrighted it as Solar when he recorded it in April 1954. Chuck had recorded it as a demo in 1946 and called it Sonny.
Here's Chuck Wayne's Sonny...
And here's Miles Davis playing Solar...
JW: Was Tiny ticked about Tiny's Con?
GD: No, he was too nice a guy to do anything about it.
JW: You and Chuck Wayne were close.
GD: Chuck actually was the one who got me with Joe Marsala. George Wallington was out of town and they needed somebody on piano. Andy Masters' house in Brooklyn where they rehearsed. At the time, Chuck was working an elevator in New York. He’d take his guitar with him to work and then go to Andy’s house for rehearsals after. Al Cohn would be there. I think Andy was a saxophonist.
JW: What did Chuck see in you?
GD: He liked this nervy kid who could play fast. And I was very receptive to it and was learning the whole time.
JW: In 1947, you're recording with Lester Young on Aladdin?
GD: Pres, Chuck Wayne, me, Curly Russell on bass and Tiny on drums.
JW: What was Lester Young like to play with in 1947?
GD: Supersonic. At first, he wasn’t thrilled when Tiny, Chuck and I showed up. Producer Leonard Feather had promised him a “good modern rhythm section." Pres said, “Well no, you got to get my kiddies. They’ll know what to play." He called his regular sidemen “my kiddies.” Anyway, by the time we were into the second tune, he was looking at us like, “These guys can play."
JW: You recorded with Brew Moore and His Playboys in 1948, with Moore on tenor saxophone, Jimmy Johnson on bass and Jimmy Dee on drums.
GD: Brew loved Lester Young, as did 9,000 other tenor saxophonists who used to show up where he was playing with their instruments. Lester used to say, “I'm going down to Birdland this week to hear what I'm playing." When we’d play with him, there were 10 tenor saxophone players with their overcoats holding saxophone cases, hoping they could get up there and play. But we didn't let some of them play.
JW: Why not?
GD: 'Cause they didn't know the tunes or they couldn’t keep up. Dizzy would do that all the time, too. He would play a really hard tune that we all used to be able to play that someone sitting in couldn't play.
JW: Tell me about Chubby Jackson's big band in 1949.
GD: I was thinking about that yesterday. I remember there used to be three groups at the Royal Roost at one time then—Tadd Dameron had a band in there, Charlie Parker had a group and Chubby’s big band was there. Gil Evans came in one night. He loved my piano playing. Around this time I used to go up to Nola's rehearsal space where everyone rehearsed. The resident band there was led by drummer Billy Exiner. Barry Galbraith was on guitar, Joe Shulman on bass and Gil on piano. One day, Gil said to me, “Sit in and play something for me." And he fell in love with my playing, which I was just so honored by.
JW: What did he say?
GD: “You played very exciting piano." But he got mad at me a couple of years later. He said, I wasn't playing the same way or something. That made me feel bad. I wasn't with him much because he changed his mind about the approach I had to the piano, which I thought I was playing better than ever by that point.
JW: Tell me about Chubby Jackson. A character, yes?
GD: Chubby loved his entire band. It was a really exciting group of musicians. One of the most remarkable guys was Ray Turner. He played tenor saxophone on the band with Al Epstein. We only had about five or six arrangements. What I remember most is the joy of playing with Tiny.
JW: What was so special about Tiny?
GD: He was a master of shading. In other words, the shading is making cymbals sound good. He knew what to do for every kind of faction of big band playing. He was so full of energy, but when you looked at him, he seemed like he was ready for bed. He was so relaxed. We all felt that Tiny, if he had lived, might have done very well, because he became an arranger after becoming a drummer, or at the same time.
JW: You recorded with Buddy DeFranco in 1949. That band was killer.
GD: It was a pick-up studio band. Everyone on there just happened to be available at the same time. After Buddy, pop singers like Peggy Lee and Carmen McRae took me over for a while, as you know.
JW: Gene Roland?
GD: I'll tell you an interesting thing about Gene. He never used score paper when he composed and arranged. He just wrote out the parts fo the band. The score was in his head. Gene could be a little off the wall. He was hard to get to know. But he was one of those naturally talented guys who didn't want to bother with anybody. He kept to himself.
JW: You knew Artie Shaw.
GD: I didn't go on the road with him. Artie was very nice to me. He was a serious guy and was really interested in bebop. He invited me to his apartment in New York. When I went, he wanted to know all about bebop. He asked what I did with a tune? I'd show him what was current in those days, when guys would make harmonic changes while most of the piano players who had been with him would be pretty straight ahead. He hadn't worked with any of the bop pianists—not me or George Wallington or Bud Powell.
JW: How did you hook up with Shaw?
BD: Remember Charlie's Tavern? That’s where musicians hung out between recording sessions and gigs. Anyway, I was there on rainy night, and for some reason, I was standing in the doorway of the dry cleaners next door. I'm standing in there and Lou Brown, a pianist, and the guy who was going to be Artie Shaw's band boy or manager, came up to me. Lou says to the other guy, “There's your man." I said, “What am I the man for, Lou? What are you talking about?" He says, “Artie Shaw's starting a band, and we want you to come over to rehearsal." That's how I met Artie Shaw.
JW: Where was he rehearsing?
GD: It might have been at Ringles. There was Ringles and Nola, it was one of the other. I went to the rehearsal and he had a terrible bassist there. The guy was playing so badly I left. Which was bad. I should have done it. Instead, he took Hank Jones on the road with him. But to be honest, I don't think I was ready for that at that time, maybe that was it.
JW: What do you remember about tumpeter Tony Fruscella?
GD: He used to come to my house all the time on 76th Street in Brooklyn. Tony, trombonist Chauncey Welsch, baritone saxophonist Danny Bank and bassist Red Mitchell used to come to my place to play my arrangements. Tony was such a natural. He just composed such beautiful lines. His improvisation on I'll Be Seeing You, was uncanny. It's famous now, you've heard it, right? It's a masterpiece...
JW: How was that Cloud 7 date for Columbia with Tony Bennett and Chuck Wayne?
GD: That was out of the blue. Columbia's head of A&R, Mitch Miller, used to give Tony a lot of junk to sing, so Tony made a deal with him. He'd do it if Miller woul let him record an album he would like himself. Cloud 7 was one of them.
JW: how did you come up with Scandinavian Suite in 1958? What was the inspiration?
GD: I fell in love with Sweden. In those days, we went there and played a theater, but stayed like a week or two, which was great. And I had good fun meeting the Swedish musians and all of that. But I fell in love with the country and the culture. I felt I'd been there in another life or something.
JW: What happened to inspire you to compose the suite?
GD: When we came back to New York, Lennie Hayton had a two-album deal with Roulette. Lennie was responsible for delivered two albums a year. Fortunately for me, he was not only talented but also lazy. So you know what he did? He wrote one of the albums. Then he said to me one day, “DiNovi, you fell in love with Sweden, right?" I said, “Yeah." He said, “Well, write something about it, and I'll present it." Gene Orloff played violin on Lennie's album and played an ending that was so beautiful. I fell off the chair. It was so beautiful. So Lennie saw his opportunity. He said, “You love Sweden. You've heard Orloff, write something for Orloff to play and we'll record it." So I did. The album was titled Lennie Hayton Introduces Scandinavian Suite No. 1, Composed by Gene DiNovi. They were all original songs. Roulette put it out, but they didn't know what bin it belonged in at record stores.
JW: How did the tapes become lost?
GD: For 34 years, no one knew what happened to the tapes Then they turned up and we put out the album again in 1995 on CD.
JW: When did you move to Toronto and why?
GD: I became a music director and started to write pretty damn well in Los Angeles. I was musical director for Gene Kelly for six TV specials. Carmen McRae also loved my stuff. I arranged and conducted Portrait of Carmen in 1967. If you like Scandinavian Suite, you will love this one. The orchestra was incredible.
JW: Then what happened?
GD: After doing the six Gene Kelly specials, where I knocked everybody out, I couldn't get a gig. So in 1972, I moved to Canada. After I couldn’t get work, I said to myself, “There's something wrong with this picture." Rock had taken over, after I did my specials, I couldn't get arrested with my kind of music for a while there. Carmen McRae had brought me up to Toronto to play for her for a couple of weeks. I played with a great bassist up there, Michel Donato. A beautiful man and incredible bassist. Toronto just seemed like the place to be.
JW: When you look back on the 1940s and '50s when you accomplished so much at such a young age with extraordinary musicians, what do you think about today?
GD: I think I want to cry. I miss them so much. They were such beautiful people and we all loved music.
JazzWax tracks: Here's You Better Go Now...
Here's Tiny's Blues...
Here's Springsville...
Here's For You, For Me, For Evermore, with Ruby Braff on cornet...
Here's Speak Low...
Here's The Song Is You...
And here's Canadian Sunset...
Gene is a legend. He started recording in 1944, the same year Dizzy Gillespie pulled him out of the audience at the Spotlite Club on New York's 52nd Street to play piano in Gillespie's new style, which became known as bebop. Gene was 15 and was a quick study.
Gene's recordings from the 1940s on are staggering, both for his commanding swing and bop phrasing on the piano and the caliber of the players in the bands with which he recorded.
Here's my interview with Gene:
JazzWax: Gene, where in Brooklyn did you grow up?
Gene DiNovi: In Bensonhurst, but in three different places.
JW: Why did your family move around so much? And what did your dad do for a living?
GD: I don't know why we moved so often. My dad worked at the American Can Co. taking care of their machines. The job lasted his entire life, which was way too short. He died when he was 58. I was 13.
JW: Was that hard on you?
GD: It was.
JW: Did you have siblings?
GD: There were six of us. I was the last and youngest. My brother, Anthony was fifth and he was 10 years older than me. But to them, I was like a little baby brother. There were three girls and three boys. My sister Tess went to secretarial school and then went looking for a job on Wall Street.
JW: Where did she wind up?
GDN: Tess went to the office of this guy, Mr. Brandt. At first, he said, “I can't hire you because you're a woman and you're Italian." That was his opening line. She was very focused and determined. Tess said, “You know what? Give me a chance for a week and see what you think." About 30 years later, she inherited his business. Aunt Tess bought me my first piano and I’m sitting at it now.
JW: How old were you when she bought you the piano?
GDN: I was 14.
JW: Were your parents musical? Did they sing?
GD: Oh yeah, my father loved opera. I should have paid more attention to opera in those days. I could have learned a lot more. My mother wouldn't admit it, but she liked opera, too. A funny story though: My father used to have friends over on Sunday afternoons. They would all sing arias to each other. One of them was a woman who fancied my father. My mother wasn't crazy about her or them.
JW: Were your siblings musical?
GD: No, but they were all gifted in their own way. I told you about Tess. Maryanne was amazing with a sewing machine and needle and thread. When I was little, she made me jumpsuits from leftover material from drapes.
JW: Were your brothers musical?
GD: No, but my brother Victor was the father of Victor DiNovi, a genius woodworker who lives in Santa Barbara, Calif., today. His furniture is beautiful
JW: How old were you when you started playing piano?
GD: I was 12. My oldest brother, Victor, was a good artist and used to bring these crazy guys home who could play. One of them, Joe Gordioso, could sit down and play any tune you requested. If he didn't know it, he’d say, “Sing it to me." Then he'd play it. I’d watch these guys play with amazement.
JW: Did you take lessons?
GD: No. I learned by watching these two maniac friends of Victor. When Maryanne had her wedding, she asked Joe and Frank Iso, a piano teacher who blocked hats at night, to play. They came and sat down, with Frank on the accordion and Joe at the piano. About eight bars in, they started screaming at each other. They couldn't stand how the other played.
JW: What’s the first song you could play on the piano
GD: Yes, My Darling Daughter.
JW: Were you listening to records and the radio at home?
GD: When Maryanne got married, she got a a giant phonograph and a couple of records as a wedding present. One was She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor (go here). The other one was by the Count Basie rhythm section. I never stopped listening to it. She said, “I'm going to give you the phonograph and the records. “
JW: How many times did you listen to the Basie record?
GD: Hundreds of times.
JW: How did you learn to play bebop so early, given that there weren't any bop records in 1944?
GD: Chuck Wayne knew how to play the music. He was my first teacher, really. He brought me up, musically. He lived on Staten Island in New York. Andy Masters had a band in Brooklyn that Al Cohn wrote arrangements for. I'd go and listen to the band there. I was pretty young, about 14. I just took the subway. I started going to the clubs on 52nd Street when I was 15. Why my mom let me go I’m not sure.
JW: How did you get in?
GD: I don't know, but the clubs were nice to me. They got to know me after I stood there each and every day. It was incredible stand outside those clubs on a summer night. By then, my father had passed away and my mother had her hands full. If my father had been alive, I doubt he would have let me go. But my mother was prosaic. She said, “Eugene, you don't want to go to school?" I said, “No, mom." And she said, “All right, well, get a job. Go to work."
JW: When did you start playing professionally?
GD: I started making money playing when I was about 14.
JW: Where did you play?
GD: I played at clubs in Brooklyn, Long Island and Staten Island—wherever they let me play. I must have looked older than my age. I was smart enough to avoid alcohol and drugs. To answer your question, I learned bop by listening. At the Three Deuces on 52nd Street, I’d go over there and play. It was a few years before he let me play solo in there, but one day I ended up playing solo next to Art Tatum.
JW: What did Tatum say?
GD: If he liked what he heard, he’d play just with his left hand and leave you to carve out the melody. I was so stupid to sit down and play with him, but he was nice to me. I asked him, “Art, do you play classical music?" He said, “Oh no.” I said, “Yeah, but you can outplay those people." He said he played a couple classical things once in a while. He really could play anything he wanted to play.
JW: Were you loner as a kid?
GD: Pretty much. My friends were all adult musicians.
JW: How did you wind up playing with Dizzy Gillespie at the Spotlite on 52nd Street at age 15?
GD: That was a baptism by fire. It was a afternoon session thing. World War II was on then, and on the bandstand were a lot of trumpet players. It was Dizzy, Harry “Sweets" Edison and Buck Clayton. Miles Davis was standing in the corner holding his head saying, “How do you guys play like that?"
JW: What was Miles doing?
GD: Hanging out and listening. At one point, drummer Max Roach's kick-drum foot pedal came loose while we were playing, so Miles got under the drums to fix it for him.
JW: When Gillespie grabbed you out of the audience, what happened?
GD: I was having a soda. Nat Jaffe hadn't arrived yet, and he was the cat's meow. He used to wear beautiful double-breasted suits and was very hip.
JW: How did Gillespie know you could handle it?
GD: Dizzy must have heard me play on an afternoon gig at the Three Deucesby myself. Whenever he saw me after, he’d refer to me as “the bebop baby." That afternoon at the Spotlite, he said, “He ain't a baby no more."
JW: So you're playing there with all these trumpet players and suddenly Charlie Parker comes out playing his alto saxophone?
GD: He just came around the corner while I was playing, yeah.
JW: What were you playing?
GD: Lover Come Back to Me.
JW: You had to have really fast hands.
GD: It was very fast. Dizzy even had me take a solo. I ended up hunched over the piano like Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I played about three or four tunes before Nat arrived.
WJ: Was Dizzy impressed?
GD: He was. I wasn’t even trying to be special. There were only three of four of us who played like that in those days. He treated me like I had been OK.
JW: Any mistakes?
GD: Yeah, on All the Things You Are, which was one of the bop anthems you had to know early on. While playing, I shifted to the outro section when I shoudl have returned to playing the first section. I was ending it, in other words.
JW: How did you know you made a mistake?
GD: Dizzy and I both knew I'd goofed, but he let the chorus end and then I was set straight from then on.
JW: How was the Henry Jerome band with Johnny Mandel and Alan Greenspan in 1944 and ‘45?
GD: That was recorded during one of our performances at an amazing place—Childs Restaurant, in the Paramount Building in Times Square. Everybody in town played there, either by sitting in or working there with a group. The place was gigantic. It’s where all the secretaries and lower-level workers in the area had their lunch. It was downstairs from the Paramount Theater. Normie Faye, a trumpet player, was in the band. So was Manny Fox and Jack Eagle. I saw a lot of good arrangements by Al Cohen and Johnny Mandel. We were all teenagers. The band’s book started getting filled with arrangements by Johnny and Al. That’s when I started with them. Both of those guys were my teachers, too, in a sense. I was learning from them in that band. Bill Vitale was in there and so was Len Garment, who’d go on to be and attorney and President Nixon’s advisor.
JW: And drummer-arranger Tiny Kahn.
GD: That’s right. We were buds. We worked together a lot.
JW: Then in 1945, you were with clarinetist Joe Marsala?
GD: Joe was a beautiful man. A great guy. I mean, he put up with a 17-year-old kid. I don't know how he did it, but he was a very lovable man. I played with him quite a number of times at the Hickory House on 52nd Street. It was a great place, except I was the heaviest I was in my entire life. I used to sit up on the bandstand for the first set and then eat a steak or a chop with a baked potato. I must have gained 30 pounds on that job.
JW: How was working with clarinetist Aaron Sachs in 1946?
GD: Aaron was a very fine player who unfortunately became a bad boy with drugs. His Manor Re-bops was quite a band, with Terry Gibbs on vibes.
JW: There’s a song you recorded on June 8, 1946 called Tiny’s Con that sounds a lot like Donna Lee, except that Donna Lee wasn’t recorded until May 8, 1947.
GD: Charlie Parker stole it from Tiny and re-named it. Miles Davis also claimed authorship.
Here's Tiny's Con...
And here's Donna Lee, a year later...
[Editor's note: Miles Davis, in his autobiography, said: “I wrote a tune for the album called 'Donna Lee', which was the first tune of mine that was ever recorded. But when the record came out, it listed Bird [Charlie Parker] as the composer. It wasn't Bird's fault, though. The record company just made a mistake."]
Miles also stole a Chuck Wayne song and copyrighted it as Solar when he recorded it in April 1954. Chuck had recorded it as a demo in 1946 and called it Sonny.
Here's Chuck Wayne's Sonny...
And here's Miles Davis playing Solar...
JW: Was Tiny ticked about Tiny's Con?
GD: No, he was too nice a guy to do anything about it.
JW: You and Chuck Wayne were close.
GD: Chuck actually was the one who got me with Joe Marsala. George Wallington was out of town and they needed somebody on piano. Andy Masters' house in Brooklyn where they rehearsed. At the time, Chuck was working an elevator in New York. He’d take his guitar with him to work and then go to Andy’s house for rehearsals after. Al Cohn would be there. I think Andy was a saxophonist.
JW: What did Chuck see in you?
GD: He liked this nervy kid who could play fast. And I was very receptive to it and was learning the whole time.
JW: In 1947, you're recording with Lester Young on Aladdin?
GD: Pres, Chuck Wayne, me, Curly Russell on bass and Tiny on drums.
JW: What was Lester Young like to play with in 1947?
GD: Supersonic. At first, he wasn’t thrilled when Tiny, Chuck and I showed up. Producer Leonard Feather had promised him a “good modern rhythm section." Pres said, “Well no, you got to get my kiddies. They’ll know what to play." He called his regular sidemen “my kiddies.” Anyway, by the time we were into the second tune, he was looking at us like, “These guys can play."
JW: You recorded with Brew Moore and His Playboys in 1948, with Moore on tenor saxophone, Jimmy Johnson on bass and Jimmy Dee on drums.
GD: Brew loved Lester Young, as did 9,000 other tenor saxophonists who used to show up where he was playing with their instruments. Lester used to say, “I'm going down to Birdland this week to hear what I'm playing." When we’d play with him, there were 10 tenor saxophone players with their overcoats holding saxophone cases, hoping they could get up there and play. But we didn't let some of them play.
JW: Why not?
GD: 'Cause they didn't know the tunes or they couldn’t keep up. Dizzy would do that all the time, too. He would play a really hard tune that we all used to be able to play that someone sitting in couldn't play.
JW: Tell me about Chubby Jackson's big band in 1949.
GD: I was thinking about that yesterday. I remember there used to be three groups at the Royal Roost at one time then—Tadd Dameron had a band in there, Charlie Parker had a group and Chubby’s big band was there. Gil Evans came in one night. He loved my piano playing. Around this time I used to go up to Nola's rehearsal space where everyone rehearsed. The resident band there was led by drummer Billy Exiner. Barry Galbraith was on guitar, Joe Shulman on bass and Gil on piano. One day, Gil said to me, “Sit in and play something for me." And he fell in love with my playing, which I was just so honored by.
JW: What did he say?
GD: “You played very exciting piano." But he got mad at me a couple of years later. He said, I wasn't playing the same way or something. That made me feel bad. I wasn't with him much because he changed his mind about the approach I had to the piano, which I thought I was playing better than ever by that point.
JW: Tell me about Chubby Jackson. A character, yes?
GD: Chubby loved his entire band. It was a really exciting group of musicians. One of the most remarkable guys was Ray Turner. He played tenor saxophone on the band with Al Epstein. We only had about five or six arrangements. What I remember most is the joy of playing with Tiny.
JW: What was so special about Tiny?
GD: He was a master of shading. In other words, the shading is making cymbals sound good. He knew what to do for every kind of faction of big band playing. He was so full of energy, but when you looked at him, he seemed like he was ready for bed. He was so relaxed. We all felt that Tiny, if he had lived, might have done very well, because he became an arranger after becoming a drummer, or at the same time.
JW: You recorded with Buddy DeFranco in 1949. That band was killer.
GD: It was a pick-up studio band. Everyone on there just happened to be available at the same time. After Buddy, pop singers like Peggy Lee and Carmen McRae took me over for a while, as you know.
JW: Gene Roland?
GD: I'll tell you an interesting thing about Gene. He never used score paper when he composed and arranged. He just wrote out the parts fo the band. The score was in his head. Gene could be a little off the wall. He was hard to get to know. But he was one of those naturally talented guys who didn't want to bother with anybody. He kept to himself.
JW: You knew Artie Shaw.
GD: I didn't go on the road with him. Artie was very nice to me. He was a serious guy and was really interested in bebop. He invited me to his apartment in New York. When I went, he wanted to know all about bebop. He asked what I did with a tune? I'd show him what was current in those days, when guys would make harmonic changes while most of the piano players who had been with him would be pretty straight ahead. He hadn't worked with any of the bop pianists—not me or George Wallington or Bud Powell.
JW: How did you hook up with Shaw?
BD: Remember Charlie's Tavern? That’s where musicians hung out between recording sessions and gigs. Anyway, I was there on rainy night, and for some reason, I was standing in the doorway of the dry cleaners next door. I'm standing in there and Lou Brown, a pianist, and the guy who was going to be Artie Shaw's band boy or manager, came up to me. Lou says to the other guy, “There's your man." I said, “What am I the man for, Lou? What are you talking about?" He says, “Artie Shaw's starting a band, and we want you to come over to rehearsal." That's how I met Artie Shaw.
JW: Where was he rehearsing?
GD: It might have been at Ringles. There was Ringles and Nola, it was one of the other. I went to the rehearsal and he had a terrible bassist there. The guy was playing so badly I left. Which was bad. I should have done it. Instead, he took Hank Jones on the road with him. But to be honest, I don't think I was ready for that at that time, maybe that was it.
JW: What do you remember about tumpeter Tony Fruscella?
GD: He used to come to my house all the time on 76th Street in Brooklyn. Tony, trombonist Chauncey Welsch, baritone saxophonist Danny Bank and bassist Red Mitchell used to come to my place to play my arrangements. Tony was such a natural. He just composed such beautiful lines. His improvisation on I'll Be Seeing You, was uncanny. It's famous now, you've heard it, right? It's a masterpiece...
JW: How was that Cloud 7 date for Columbia with Tony Bennett and Chuck Wayne?
GD: That was out of the blue. Columbia's head of A&R, Mitch Miller, used to give Tony a lot of junk to sing, so Tony made a deal with him. He'd do it if Miller woul let him record an album he would like himself. Cloud 7 was one of them.
JW: how did you come up with Scandinavian Suite in 1958? What was the inspiration?
GD: I fell in love with Sweden. In those days, we went there and played a theater, but stayed like a week or two, which was great. And I had good fun meeting the Swedish musians and all of that. But I fell in love with the country and the culture. I felt I'd been there in another life or something.
JW: What happened to inspire you to compose the suite?
GD: When we came back to New York, Lennie Hayton had a two-album deal with Roulette. Lennie was responsible for delivered two albums a year. Fortunately for me, he was not only talented but also lazy. So you know what he did? He wrote one of the albums. Then he said to me one day, “DiNovi, you fell in love with Sweden, right?" I said, “Yeah." He said, “Well, write something about it, and I'll present it." Gene Orloff played violin on Lennie's album and played an ending that was so beautiful. I fell off the chair. It was so beautiful. So Lennie saw his opportunity. He said, “You love Sweden. You've heard Orloff, write something for Orloff to play and we'll record it." So I did. The album was titled Lennie Hayton Introduces Scandinavian Suite No. 1, Composed by Gene DiNovi. They were all original songs. Roulette put it out, but they didn't know what bin it belonged in at record stores.
JW: How did the tapes become lost?
GD: For 34 years, no one knew what happened to the tapes Then they turned up and we put out the album again in 1995 on CD.
JW: When did you move to Toronto and why?
GD: I became a music director and started to write pretty damn well in Los Angeles. I was musical director for Gene Kelly for six TV specials. Carmen McRae also loved my stuff. I arranged and conducted Portrait of Carmen in 1967. If you like Scandinavian Suite, you will love this one. The orchestra was incredible.
JW: Then what happened?
GD: After doing the six Gene Kelly specials, where I knocked everybody out, I couldn't get a gig. So in 1972, I moved to Canada. After I couldn’t get work, I said to myself, “There's something wrong with this picture." Rock had taken over, after I did my specials, I couldn't get arrested with my kind of music for a while there. Carmen McRae had brought me up to Toronto to play for her for a couple of weeks. I played with a great bassist up there, Michel Donato. A beautiful man and incredible bassist. Toronto just seemed like the place to be.
JW: When you look back on the 1940s and '50s when you accomplished so much at such a young age with extraordinary musicians, what do you think about today?
GD: I think I want to cry. I miss them so much. They were such beautiful people and we all loved music.
JazzWax tracks: Here's You Better Go Now...
Here's Tiny's Blues...
Here's Springsville...
Here's For You, For Me, For Evermore, with Ruby Braff on cornet...
Here's Speak Low...
Here's The Song Is You...
And here's Canadian Sunset...
This story appears courtesy of JazzWax by Marc Myers.
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