WWII vet Glen Roberts is a noted child psychologist. Now at 90, he fronts his own big band
When the Glen Roberts Big Band fires up for a session of classic swing standards, it’s an invariably glorious earful. Flawless as an ensemble and boasting soloists of remarkable grace and authority, the group’s Thursday night performances at Viva Cantina have become a cherished institution among music fans. And bandleader Roberts, at age 90, is a yet unstoppable force who oversees it all with an irresistibly affable attitude and a sterling musicality.
The path that brought him here has been nothing less than remarkable. Born Aug. 18, 1925, in small town Bradford, Ohio, his two talented older brothers introduced him to music as a child and he was schooled in music, from elementary through high school, as a member of various marching bands and glee clubs.
“In junior high I was playing the baritone euphonium, and in high school I switched to the sousaphone,” Roberts said. “This was just as WWII was beginning and there were no bassists around, so I was encouraged to play the string bass. I loved it, I loved the sound and the feel of the instrument. We moved to a larger city in Ohio, and by the time I was 16, I was in the musicians union, and when Saxie Mansfield, who played tenor with Woody Herman, came to town, I was playing with him in a quartet in the bar at one of the big hotels there.”
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FOR THE RECORD
8:12 p.m.: A previous version of this article included a photograph that had been digitally altered.
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Roberts enlisted in the U.S. Army at 17, as part of a specialized training program aimed at turning out Army engineers — but after one semester of college study the program folded and he found himself in the infantry, where he qualified as a Browning Automatic Rifle expert assigned to Patton’s Third Army. “We missed D-Day, but they sent us over to Europe not long after. We were waiting to go the front when I got a message to report to regimental headquarters,” Roberts said. “There was a fellow I knew there, and he said I was to be made a combat MP. I heard the next day that the BAR team I was supposed to lead had all been killed in action. Then the Bulge broke out, Patton sent us up to Belgium and we went all the way across Europe and through to Germany, where we met up with the Russian troops.
“After we came back, I was playing in a band at the recreation hall on our base. It took quite a while to receive a discharge, so I was always in a band, playing somewhere. When I got out I studied to become a psychologist, got my bachelor’s degree in Ohio, my masters in Kentucky and my doctorate at Purdue,” Roberts said. “I kept playing the whole time, had gigs every night on weekends. In Lexington, Stan Levy, who had played with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, came in on drums. That was really something, and we became friends.
“A few years later I was doing an internship in Wichita, Kan., and saw that Stan Kenton was coming through town. Well, Kenton was my idol so I went to hear them, and who do I see on drums but Stan Levy. And he’s gesturing to me during the show, so I went and spoke to him on the break and he said their bassist wasn’t ‘cutting the book’ and asked ‘could I leave town?’”
“Well, fortunately the fellow who I was interning for was a music fan, and when I told him about it, he just said, ‘Are you kidding? This is the chance of a lifetime. Go!’ So, I went, I got to ride in the car with my idol, and we were on the radio almost every night,” Roberts said. “I even have a transcription recording of us made from the Blue Room in Chicago. But I realized the road was not for me, finished up my doctorate, moved out here to California and I have been happy ever since.”
Professionally, Roberts distinguished himself as a specialist in child psychology. “Tests for children weren’t doing the job, they were outdated, all done back in the 1930s, and I wanted to do that, so I developed my own test. It took years, but I finally got it done, submitted it and it was published, ‘Roberts Apperception Test for Children.’”
It was a groundbreaking work — a simple effective method to evaluate a child’s social understanding via a unique storytelling format — and became the standard in its field all over the United States, and the most recent edition is now being used across Western Europe. But Roberts, who for years ran his Glen Roberts Child Study Center in Glendale, refused to abandon music.
“The busier I got with psychology, the less time I had for music,” Roberts said, “But in the mid-’70s, I heard there was a big band looking for a bassist, so I signed up. We’d rehearse at the gym in my clinic and eventually the man who led the band just got too old, was in poor health and retired, but he gave us the book. We tried it as a leaderless band but after about 45 minutes it was obviously just a disaster. So I thought, ‘Well, I’ll try it,’ which is a bit unusual because the bass player is always stuck way back, right up against the wall. But it worked. And I was able to trade some charts with other bands and eventually we got a pretty good library.”
“Then we lost our rehearsal space at the clinic, there were financial issues, the DiDi Hirsch organization came in and took it over, and it was hard to find a rehearsal space,” Roberts said. “My wife suggested Viva. We live nearby, but it was strictly a country and western place at the time. I talked to [booker] Cody Bryant, and he really wasn’t sure about the idea. So we pretty much just went in one day, set up and started playing.”
That was 10 years ago. Roberts and his 17-piece aggregation have performed there weekly almost nonstop. It’s a reliably intoxicating dose of classic big band jazz that pulls in fans of all ages. Roberts and his players swing sweet hard, taking an elegant straight-ahead tack that’s richly enhanced by plenty of hot improvisation on the solos.
“It really wasn’t planned, but we tried it and it worked,” Roberts said. “I’ll drag around the house all week, but I go down there on Thursdays and there’s an energy in the room, I get it from the other musicians and from the music. The music just helps everything.”
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Who: The Glen Roberts Big Band
Where: Viva Cantina, 900 W. Riverside Drive, Burbank
When: Every Thursday, 7 p.m.
Cost: Free
More info: (818) 845-2425 www.vivacantina.com
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JONNY WHITESIDE is a veteran music journalist based in Burbank and author of “Ramblin’ Rose: the Life & Career of Rose Maddox” and “Cry: the Johnnie Ray Story.”
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