DOC’S RECORD-SETTING GIG

It’s amazing--and yet, when you consider the way the recording industry is run, not so unlikely at that. The one orchestra on TV with a nightly audience running to eight digits, with the biggest potential market by far, was never represented on records until last month. At last, “The Tonight Show Band With Doc Severinsen” is not just a vision but an LP fact (specifically, Amherst Records AMH 3311).

In his dressing room at NBC, seated directly below a portrait of Bix Beiderbecke, Doc Severinsen told the story of his long, slow move to the recording studio with his regular band. (A fusion group he leads called Xebron was recorded a couple of years ago.)

“It’s incredible how many record companies turned me down,” he said. “I would sit in one of their offices and say, ‘Wouldn’t you be interested in recording “The Tonight Show” band? We have a tremendous audience, you know.’ And they’d look at me as if I was crazy!

“I remember telling one of these guys, ‘If there were any kind of push on any album by this band, we could sell 250,000 copies.’ And he says, ‘We’re not interested in selling 250,000 albums. We’re looking to break a big record.’ Well, that was the end of that conversation. How do you talk to someone with an attitude like that?”

As it turned out, Severinsen didn’t need the big companies who turned him down. Not long ago he was working with two musicians, Jeff Tyzik and Allen Vizzutti, on a fusion project for a small outfit, Amherst Records. One day the owner, Lenny Silver, mentioned that he would be interested in recording “The Tonight Show” band. By now, Severinsen had been so negatively indoctrinated that he told Silver what others had been telling him--”Are you crazy?”

Silver acknowledged that he was serious: “I think I could do a hell of a job with your band.” Very soon, Severinsen says, “he got us into the best possible studio in Hollywood, with the best possible engineer, Mick Guzauski.

“At first, I was almost casual about choosing the tunes. I was so happy just to be recording the band at all. Everything we wound up using was pulled out of our regular library, with one exception: I felt I needed a trumpet ballad, so I asked Tommy Newsom to make an arrangement of ‘How Long Has This Been Going On’ somewhat in the Harry James vein. I didn’t want to prove what I could do with the tune; in fact, it bothers me when someone takes what I would call a classic period piece and then throws a 1986 style solo into it.”

What Severinsen has in the album primarily is a series of somewhat updated period pieces. “One O’Clock Jump” is a modernized treatment of the Count Basie and Harry James versions, rearranged by Newsom. “Skyliner,” as arranged by Mike Barone, is a variation on the original Charlie Barnet recording. Similarly, “Flying Home” stems from Lionel Hampton and includes a harmonized replication of Illinois Jacquet’s famous tenor sax solo.

“Tippin’ In” is a showcase for Newsom’s Johnny Hodges-like alto sax, with a chart inspired by an old Erskine Hawkins 78 RPM record. Jelly Roll Morton’s “King Porter Stomp,” featuring Snooky Young and Conte Candoli on trumpets and Pete Christlieb and Ernie Watts on tenor saxes, derives from the Fletcher Henderson chart that helped popularize Benny Goodman’s orchestra.

“Johnny Carson deserves a lot of credit for our choice of material,” says Severinsen. “A year ago he said to me, ‘Why don’t you guys play more things from the big band era? People would relate to that.’ And since the album came out we’ve been getting requests to play some of these numbers on the show.”

The album is by no means exclusively a nostalgia trip. There are two original pieces, Mike Barone’s “Shawnee,” with Doc on fluegelhorn in an excursion based on the harmonic changes of “Cherokee,” and John Bambridge’s “Sax Alley,” a thunderbolt chase in which Christlieb and Watts do battle. Bill Holman, a master at making bricks out of sedimented straw, does so with his arrangements of “Begin the Beguine,” with Severinsen displaying his phenomenal upper register, and “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You.”

To satisfy those for whom the album wouldn’t be complete without it, there’s a brief nod to “The Tonight Show” theme, which is credited to Paul Anka and Johnny Carson as composers.

As might have been predicted by anyone but a major record company executive, the response to the album has been tremendous. At press time, 300,000 units had been shipped, and there was every likelihood that the record would enter the jazz charts, followed in the near future by the pop charts.

Severinsen says he’s too busy and too happy to tell anyone “I told you so.” “We’re already working on Volume Two. Tommy Newsom has been preparing an arrangement of ‘Jumpin’ at the Woodside.’ We have a new composition by Pete Christlieb--his first big band chart--called ‘Three Ton Blues,’ which indicates another direction in which we’d like to go.

“In the not too distant future I want to try some old rhythm and blues-type music--you know, like Buddy Johnson’s old Savoy Ballroom band, maybe with a Hammond organ player and a percussionist added, or even Duke Ellington’s ‘Happy Go Lucky Local,’ which had that kind of beat to it.”

Surprisingly, plans to follow up the album’s success with in-person appearances remain somewhat vague. Severinsen has built up a concert identity with Xebron, which, as a small group, presents fewer transportation problems. He does realize, though, that the moment has come for a decision.

“Aside from the Playboy Festival in 1983, and some private functions for NBC, the band hasn’t done much in-person work. We did make a joint appearance with the Phoenix Symphony, which was pretty impressive--’The Tonight Show’ band right smack in the middle of the symphony orchestra. We have some great material available for that kind of concert.

“But I would like to present the band in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, that kind of thing. Yeah, it would be logical to take advantage of the album--but, as we all know, what’s logical in this business doesn’t always happen.”