‘40s BAND TO RISE AGAIN

“It’s All Yours!”

For American troops stationed in Europe in the years after World War II, those words signaled a Sunday afternoon of big band jazz from the 314th Army Special Services Band of the European Theater. From 1946 to 1949, the band broadcast 70 programs on Armed Forces Network radio from an opera house in Weisbaden, Germany.

This weekend, 40 years after they first assembled in the tiny German resort town of Bad Schwalbach, the musicians of the 314th are getting together once again. The reunion ends Sunday at 4:30 p.m. with a concert at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.

The 314th band was formed after the Glenn Miller Orchestra had completed its tour of entertaining troops in Europe. Gen. Alexander Bolling, European theater chief of special services, was anxious to form a replacement unit to entertain not only the troops but European audiences as well. Lin Arison, an assistant music officer with the U.S. 3rd Army, was invited to a special brainstorming session.

“We said, ‘Let’s try to show that there are flowers in the American musical garden, not just weeds,’ ” Arison recalled in a phone interview from his home in McLean, Va. At that time, he said, Europe had little regard for music from the States.

Special Services was sold on the idea for a new big band, and musicians were recruited from units across Europe. Arison, named conductor and chief warrant officer, was given just two weeks to put the first broadcast together. “I was in a state of shock to get something like that together in two weeks, but it turned out to be a pretty good show,” Arison recalled.

And with time, the conductor said, the band got even better. “It just kept knocking me out completely. It was incredible, the way things evolved.” In addition to the radio broadcasts, the band performed live concerts throughout Europe.

Another 314th veteran echoed Arison’s assessment of the band. “It wasn’t just another jazz band,” said Jack Elliott, a pianist with the band who went on to fame as a film composer, conductor and arranger. “It really was the best of America at that time. I think the level of musicianship was very high. I think the level of Army musicianship was generally very high at that time.”

Elliott, speaking by telephone from New York, said his time with the 314th cemented his choice of a career in music. “I was vacillating between going to music school and getting a general degree,” he recalled. “After my experience with the orchestra, I came back determined to stay in music.” Elliott said the 314th band’s innovative arrangements and orchestration (the band had a large string section, unusual for big bands at the time) went on to influence him more than 30 years later, when he formed the eclectic New American Orchestra.

Other alumni of the 314th went on to successful careers in music, including Philip Springer, composer for films and Broadway musicals and author of a book on electronic music, “Switched on Synthesizer”; Red Mitchell, bassist and composer; George Masso, trombonist; Herschel Gordon, cellist with the Philadelphia Orchestra; Richard White, English horn soloist with the National Symphony for 36 years, and trumpeter Warren Kime. All will be participating in the reunion.

But it was one of the band’s vocalists, a combat veteran named Anthony Benedetto, who went on to achieve the greatest fame. Benedetto, who later changed his name to Tony Bennett, had been assigned to the 314th band as a librarian. “They had me sing one song a week,” he recalled, and that song was usually “St. James Infirmary Blues.” Conductor Arison became a big supporter of Bennett during his stay with the band. “Lin Arison was just a magnificent guy,” the singer said. “That whole experience kind of pointed me in the direction of music.”

A few years ago, Arison visited Bennett backstage after a concert in Washington, D.C., and together the pair came up with the idea for a reunion of the 314th. But now the singer will not be able to attend because he is touring in support of a new album with Ray Charles.

The task of organizing the event fell largely to Richard Stott, a semi-retired Laguna Beach psychotherapist who played saxophone with the 314th. In 1981, Stott had helped put together a 40-year reunion of the swing band from his alma mater, Riverside Polytechnic High School. “That was a delightful experience, very delightful,” Stott said in an interview. “So I thought, ‘Hell, if it can be done for a high school, why can’t the 314th be put back together?’ ”

So Stott started the time-consuming process of tracking down the band’s alumni. “I would call the musicians union. I would call friends of friends. I’d get a birthplace and call that city.” Often, when his persistence paid off and he finally got through to his former bandmates, he would touch off a flood of memories. “They’d go into this tizzy over the phone while my phone bill kept going up,” Stott said.

“In order to play together, in order to be a good musician, you have to get along well. You have to, in a sense, be in tune with the guys you’re playing with,” Stott said. “So even though we were together only a relatively brief time, this sort of emotional attachment remains.

“I’ve known literally thousands of guys for much longer periods of time, but nothing like that emotional tie exists. Some of the guys just literally cried over the phone.”

Finally, out of the 55 original members, 32 will attend the reunion, and 26 will perform in the concert (the other six have given up their instruments since leaving the band).

Several of the attendees are making special contributions to the three-day reunion, which begins tonight with an informal gathering at Stott’s house and continues Saturday with a rehearsal and a banquet. Jack Elliott arranged for two soloists from the New American Orchestra, Oscar Brashear and Plas Johnson, to perform with the band. Dick Doerschuk, arranger for the 314th and now principal arranger for the BBC radio and television orchestra in London, has contributed five of the 15 arrangements for the concert. Jack Mauck, ex-baritone sax player and now a vice president with Group W cable television, will serve as master of ceremonies for the show.

The Army recently discovered that the 314th is owed six citations, so a colonel is being flown out from Washington for a special presentation during the banquet, and a color guard will also be on hand.

While the structure of the concert will parallel that of the old radio broadcasts, Stott said, it will not be a nostalgia program. “All of this is what you call contemporary straight-ahead jazz,” he said. “This kind of music is complicated. It’s challenging. It’s new. And it’s the next step in the evolution of good big band jazz.”

Isn’t that a tall order, given the band’s 40-year layoff? “Everybody, in the back of their head, wants to sound like they did 40 years ago. But I’m not sure that’s possible with one four-hour rehearsal,” Stott admitted. “But the point is, we want to do it for our own enjoyment.”

Tickets for the concert, scheduled for the 300-seat Fine Arts Theater, will be sold at the door. Proceeds will go to the Coast Jazz Society, which sponsors the annual Orange Coast College Jazz Festival.