Pack Man : With His Pals, Bassist Hersh Hamel, zWho Performs Sunday in Seal Beach, Made West Coast Jazz History
For a time in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, they were the rat pack of West Coast jazz.
As bassist Hersh Hamel tells it in the book “Straight Life: The Story of Art Pepper,” the crew, which included saxophonists Art Pepper and Jack Montrose, trumpeters Chet Baker, Jack Sheldon and, occasionally, Shorty Rogers would play together five nights out of seven at such hole-in-the-wall dives as the Samoan Club in East Los Angeles, or the Surf Club at 6th and Western.
“Even when we weren’t working,” Hamel says in the book, “we were, like, together as a group of guys.”
Earlier this week in a phone interview from his home in Van Nuys, Hamel, who plays Sunday at Spaghettini in Seal Beach, elaborated: “We were the start of West Coast jazz. We had a sound of our own, very subtle, very emotional. The rhythm section moved in a different way, in a very supple way, and that was the nucleus of the West Coast sound.”
Few know the history of that sound, or the personalities connected with it, as well as Hamel does. A Los Angeles native, Hamel picked up his instrument of choice while he was a sophomore at Los Angeles High School when the school’s junior orchestra needed a bass player. Soon a friend was dragging him down to Central Avenue and environs to play the Last Word club, the Chicken Shack and the Crystal Tearoom.
“The Tearoom used to have sessions after church on Sunday, and we’d go down there to jam,” he recalled. “(Pianist) Hampton Hawes would play, and there’d be a bunch of tenor players, all copying Dexter Gordon, who was around at the time. They’d play chorus after chorus, doing ‘What Is This Thing Called Love?’ for 45 minutes. That’s how I learned to play--from experience, because they played the songs so long.”
He met Chet Baker shortly out of high school.
“We met at a little bar a couple of doors down from the Lighthouse (in Hermosa Beach), which wasn’t into jazz then. I had already started playing with Art (Pepper). Chet and I played some dig sessions, and then the owner of the Lighthouse--this was before Howard Rumsey was involved--tried us out on a Monday night. We were the first jazz group to play there. This was 1949.”
Hamel and Baker, both barely out of their teens, became close friends. “We went hunting together, ran races and went boating. He was very athletic. He used to have a hopped-up 1931 Model B Ford and would drive that thing all over.
“We went sailboating once, and Chet didn’t even know enough to drop the tiller, and we ended up on the rocks. But he was so determined and competitive that he came out every day for two weeks and rented the boat. Somebody had bet him he couldn’t sail it to Catalina. So he did.”
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But their main activity was music.
“In those days, a lot of places had sessions on Monday nights, and we would go from one to another. Sometimes we’d have Chet, Art and Jack (Montrose) on the stand together. (Trombonist) Herbie Harper, who had people like (saxophonists) Sonny Criss, Teddy Edwards and Hampton Hawes playing the Showtime club with him, would hire us, and we’d be the group of the night. Or we’d play the Paddock on Riverside Drive near Griffith Park with Shelly Manne and Art and Chet.”
Out of all this activity came the West Coast sound: a cool, considered style of music that stood in direct contrast to the New York-inspired, be-bop sound heard up and down Central Avenue.
“Teddy (Edwards), Dexter (Gordon) and Hamp (Hampton Hawes) had their thing, more of a be-bop sound with crashing cymbals and drums so loud you could hardly hear the bass. But we had a different thing. Our sound had an affinity for the beach and the sun and a more laid-back lifestyle. That’s why we’d play together, to get that feel. We were young and thought we had the new sound.”
Hamel credits trumpeter Baker as the movement’s driving force.
“Chet played so melodically, so simply, with the rhythm section moving behind him. When (pianist) Russ Freeman would write out charts, he wouldn’t put the chord changes on Chet’s part. He didn’t need to do that. . . .
“Chet just played the melodies he heard in his head, and everything came out beautifully.”
“A lot of people think that Chet copied Miles (Davis), but Miles wasn’t really playing that style in ’49 and ‘50, even at ‘The Birth of the Cool’ sessions. If anything, we used to listen to Stan Getz. On his early records, Chet plays the licks like Getz.”
Baker’s soft-touch trumpet style and intimate vocals gained him a large, devoted following in the ‘50s.
“When Chet became huge, our relationship went out the window. We were still friends, but all of a sudden he was a star like James Dean. It’s not that he was snobbish, he just didn’t have the time.”
But Hamel never forgot his friend. He appeared in the Baker documentary film “Let’s Get Lost” and today transcribes Baker’s music, to use with his own trio. When he plays Spaghettini on Sunday, with guitarist Bruce Buckingham and drummer Billy Mintz, he’ll play entirely from the late trumpeter’s book.
“I’ve transcribed Chet’s solos and then sing the transcriptions, while Bruce plays and I play the bass. We do ‘An Afternoon at Home,’ ‘Happy Little Sunbeam,’ ‘There Will Never Be Another You,’ ‘Look for the Siver Lining.’ I have a great affinity for the way Chet sang. And his solos were so beautiful and melodic, they’re a joy to do.”
* The Hersh Hamel Trio plays Spaghettini, 3005 Old Ranch Parkway, Seal Beach. Sunday, 6:30 p.m. No cover. (310) 596-2199.