Geoff Gehman, March 2013
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Larry McKenna’s sax lingers long after he’s left the room or record. The tenor’s suave, seductive sound sticks to the senses whether he’s playing a ballad or a bebop, whether he’s following a singer or leading an orchestra. When he swings, he sings.
This engaging personality has taken McKenna from Woody Herman’s Swingin’ Herd to the Philadelphia Orchestra. For six decades the Philadelphia native has been a mainstay in his hometown’s clubs, restaurants, museums and institutions of higher learning. He’s inspired two generations of students with personal lessons about learning from mistakes and stories of his own education in Philadelphia’s old 11th Street jazz district, a small slice of Manhattan’s 52nd Street jazz capital.
The last decade has been particularly progressive for McKenna, a widower with a singer-songwriter son. He’s gigged with Philork Jazz, an ensemble of Philadelphia Orchestra improvisers. He’s branched into writing songs, collaborating with lyricist Melissa Gilstrap, an attorney who has photographed, drawn and videotaped him on a tour of his old jazz haunts. His latest CD, From All Sides, due out this spring, contains four of their tunes, plus four of McKenna’s instrumentals (including a bossa nova) and his arrangements of four standards (including “That Old Black Magic”).
Last year McKenna hit the awards trifecta. He received a Jazz Master honor from the Media Business Authority, a Lifetime Achievement salute from the University of the Arts and a Making A Difference thank-you from The Jazz Bridge Project, which aids troubled musicians. Each prize polished his reputation as a generous, gracious partner.
McKenna lives in Olney with three cats. In conversation he’s a cool, warm cat. He’s perceptive, witty and curious whether he’s discussing his jukebox brain or his blessedly brief stint as a jazz-playing barber.
What was the first tune you couldn’t forget, that absolutely laid you flat?
I’d say Perdido, which I heard on a Jazz at the Philharmonic record my brother brought home. Flip Phillips and Illinois Jacquet played the tenor saxes and their solos really knocked me out. That made me say: Okay, I want to play the tenor sax. So I more or less took over the record from my brother [laughs].
Another song I really loved was “How High the Moon” by [guitarist] Les Paul. Later on I really got into a version by Charlie Ventura, another tenor saxophone player from Philadelphia, and versions by [Mel] Torme and Ella [Fitzgerald]. I still love that song; I still play it.
I have some kind of weird memory for songs. I probably know a thousand, easily. I try not to play the same tunes every time out. If you play the same tunes all the time, you fall into a pattern of playing the same licks. I think that’s boring for listeners and boring for me. Besides, I’m not one of those guys who can be creative right out of the box. I will go months without playing a certain tune and when I bring it back again, I’ll play it in a different key. That will make it refreshing; that will make it almost new.
I wish I could have been there. Did you pick up any valuable tips?
I was 16, 17 years old when that was going on at the Heritage House. Those sessions lasted maybe one year or less; the building is still there, at the corner of Broad and Master. Roberts played jazz records on his show on WKDN out of Camden; it was one of the first jazz shows you could get on the radio around here. He’d get these big acts like [pianist] Bud Powell and [clarinet player] Buddy DeFranco and [drummer] Max Roach and [trumpeter] Clifford Brown with their quartet. He’d get them to play for us in the afternoon before their evening gigs at clubs like The Showboat, which we weren’t old enough to get into.
The main guys would perform a set and then bring up the kids to play and give us pointers. For some reason one afternoon I didn’t bring my sax. There was a guy who had played and he lent me his sax. What I didn’t know was that it was in poor shape, and that he could play it because he was used to it. Well, my playing was embarrassing: the sax was so leaky; every other note was a squeak. And Harold Land, the [tenor] sax player for Max Roach and Clifford Brown, said to me: “I want to give you some advice. You’re a good player, but don’t ever get up and play unless you know the horn will work right. Otherwise, just sit it out.”
Your new record From All Sides has four songs you wrote with lyricist Melissa Gilstrap, who videotaped you walking around your old Philly jazz hotspots. Tell me what you showed her camera that day.
We were headed to a barbershop convention at the Convention Center. On the way I happened to notice the old Music City store at 11th and Chestnut. I told her that as a kid I went there to jam sessions by Clifford Brown and [tenor saxophonist] Stan Getz. And then I said, oh, by the way, the next block up, at 11th and Market, was the Earle Theatre, where on Fridays I would see a movie and a stage show. One of the first acts I saw there was Nat King Cole, which was unbelievable because he was a big star with hit records like “Mona Lisa.” I also saw [trumpeter] Dizzy Gillespie and [tenor saxophonist] Coleman Hawkins and [alto saxophonist] Earl Bostic, who was one of my favorites. All for a dollar!
And that place over there was The Downbeat Club, which was big in the early to mid ’40s, before my time. I’ve heard a great story about [drummer] Philly Joe Jones, who was a motorman for the trolley car on 11th Street. He would tell the passengers, “I’ll be back in a minute,” and run inside The Downbeat and sit in for a tune in his motorman’s outfit and then run back to the trolley. I don’t know if it actually happened; you like to believe it’s true [laughs].
Do you have any memorable memories from your six months in 1959-1960 in Woody Herman’s Swingin’ Herd?
Woody was a very nice guy; everybody liked him. He appreciated the talent of his musicians. He knew how to pick the right sidemen and the right arrangers. He was always moving ahead. He was not one of those guys who stuck to their one hit from 1939. He came up with the Four Brothers lineup [three tenor saxophonists with a baritone saxophonist]; in the 1960s and ’70s he incorporated rock music. He had enough confidence in his musicians that if someone missed a note he wouldn’t single anyone out. He thought his guys were good enough to correct themselves.
I enjoyed playing “Laura,” which Woody turned into a million-selling record where he sang; he was a pretty good singer. I enjoyed my solo on a piece called “Offshore,” which is on the one record I cut with Woody. It’s kind of an obscure standard. I can’t say I play it anymore because nobody seems to know it [laughs].
Frank Sinatra adapted phrasings from Tommy Dorsey’s trombone. Has your playing been significantly shaped by any of your many singing partners?
I’ve spent a lot of time listening to Frank Sinatra, and not just for his singing. What I really admired about him was that he produced the best possible package. He had the best Hollywood and New York studio musicians. He sang songs by the best composers: Cole Porter, Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn. He had the best arrangers: Nelson Riddle, Don Costa, Johnny Mandel.
From listening to Sinatra I learned that arrangements are extremely important. One of the best compliments I ever got was when I sent a demo of my [2001] CD It Might As Well Be Spring to the owner of a small label. He wouldn’t put it out, but he gave me the nicest comment: “The way you phrase on the sax—it’s like listening to Sinatra.”
When you’re first coming up you try to get all your technical stuff down. It eventually dawned on me that it was important to play these songs—especially the standards—as if I’m singing them, long before I get to the improvised parts. Although you wouldn’t want to hear me sing [laughs].
What was your toughest time in the music trade?
When I came home from the Herman band the whole situation here [greater Philadelphia] was really bleak. The gigs were low paying and there weren’t many opportunities to play jazz. I got really discouraged from playing Top 40 tunes in bars and in 1965 I wound up in barber school. A half dozen of my musician friends were barbers and they told me: “It’s not so hard to learn, and you can still play music.”
So I graduated from barber school, started working in a barber shop, and joined a local big band led by Al Raymond. Most of the gigs were on weekends, so they didn’t get in the way of my barbering. I did that for about a year and a half and then started getting more work with Al. Other people were calling me to play, too. So I quit the barber thing. I wasn’t very good at it and, besides, it wasn’t something I really wanted to do. Looking back, it just seems like some kind of weird dream.
What was your most joyful time in the music trade?
I’ve enjoyed the music more in the last 15 years because I really get to play what I like to play with musicians I like, people like [guitarist] Pete Smyser, [singer] Mary Ellen Desmond and [pianist] Tom Lawton. I’ve tried to stay away from musicians I won’t like—you know, the ones who might have been better off being barbers [laughs].
I’ve really enjoyed expanding my other sides as an arranger and a songwriter. The songwriting began when Melissa [Gilstrap] asked me to write a tune that could be sung. One night I wrote “Perhaps It’s Wintertime.” It took less than an hour and I thought: Wow, this is a pretty good song; maybe I can have another career as this stage of the game. [Melissa] thought it was beautiful. So I asked her: “Why don’t you write lyrics for it?”
“I’ve never done that,” she said.
“Well, I never did this—and you talked me into it.” After two or three weeks she had something down [note: “Perhaps It’s Wintertime” appears on McKenna’s 2009 CD Profile, which has a cover drawing of him by Gilstrap]. Since then we’ve written five more songs together. I feel I’m embarking not so much on another career as another side. That’s why the new record is called From All Sides.
Has working with Philork Jazz changed how you choose tunes and partners?
No, not really. But it has stretched my chops. Last July [Philork Jazz co-founder] Don Liuzzi, the principal timpanist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, worked it out for us to play clubs in Colorado during the orchestra’s visit there. We played standards and some classical excerpts rearranged for jazz by piano player Adam Glazer, who teaches at Juilliard. Some of the classical-jazz pieces were very difficult to play. I never thought they’d swing. But they ended up sounding pretty good. By the end of the week they were swinging.
Can you point to a recent example of why you love teaching? I’m thinking about the satisfaction that comes when a student finally nails a difficult passage or concept.
Just before you called a student came to my house for a lesson. He’s in his late 20s and I met him a couple of years ago when he was playing baritone sax in a band. He told me, “I’m really a classical clarinet player but I want to learn how to play jazz better.” He lives 100 miles away, so I give him a lot to work on and he’ll call me a few weeks later and ask: “Can we get together again?” His progress is very rewarding.
My approach to teaching is I use my memory. I go back and ask: How did I learn this when I was presented with a similar problem? Then I try to make the process a little easier.
I recently wrote about the late Albertus “Bert” Meyers having a bridge in Allentown named after him for conducting the Allentown Band for a half century and for making the group more of a national institution. So, Larry McKenna, if you could have something named for you, what would it be?
Oh my god, maybe a sandwich. You know, like they used to do at a place like Sardi’s, where they invented something like the Humphrey Bogart BLT. Yeah, I’d be happy with a sandwich.
Larry McKenna
The teaching, storytelling tenor saxophonist has been inspiring
his native Philadelphia for six decades.
P.O. Box 120 • New Hope, PA 18938 • Voice 800.354.8776 • Fax 215.862.9845 • www.icondv.com • www.facebook.com/icondv
Geoff Gehman is the author of The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the Long-Lost Hamptons, which will be published in July by SUNY Press. Email: geoffgehman@verizon.net.
Photo by Melissa Gilstrap.