Play Paris

Full performer name: Nat Pierce/Dick Collins/Ralph Burns/The Herdsmen.
PLAY PARIS contains 2 LPs on 1 CD: THE HERDSMEN PLAY PARIS (1954)/THE NAT PIERCE/DICK COLLINS NONET (1954).
Personnel includes: Ralph Burns, Nat Pierce (piano); Dick Collins, John Howell (trumpet); Dick Hafer (alto & tenor saxophone, clarinet); Jerry Coker (tenor saxophone, clarinet); Bill Perkins (tenor saxophone); Jack Nimetz (baritone saxophone); Cy Touff (bass, trumpet); Jimmy Gourley (guitar); Jean-Marie Ingrand, Red Kelly (bass); Gus Gustafson, Chuck Flores, Jean Louis Viale (drums).
Recorded in Paris, France and at the Marines' Memorial Auditorium, San Francisco, California in 1954.
Here's the deal on this set from "the Herdsmen": Dick Collins, Red Kelly, Ralph Burns, and a few other cats went over to Paris from Germany while they were playing with Woody Herman's Third Herd, the first to play Europe in 1954. All the players involved -- Nat Pierce, Cy Touff, Jerry Coker, Bill Perkins, Dick Hafer, Chuck Flores, Jimmy Gourley -- were either currently in the Third Herd or kicking around Europe anyway. Why have you heard of so few of these people? Simply because they are footnotes in jazz history, not major players. This is not to imply that they are not quality musicians, just that they were, most of them, workmen in various bands of the era, from Herman to Shorty Rogers to Kenton to Charlie Ventura, etc. Which is the exact importance of this wonderful, swinging West Coast-style date made in Paris for none other than French author and critic Charles Delauney. Trumpeter Dick Collins is who made it all happen after playing with the Dave Brubeck Octet, and studying in Paris with Darius Milhaud, the French composer who Brubeck and John Lewis studied with when he was in residence at Mills College later in his life. Collins picked up Kelly, Touff (bass trumpet!), Perkins (tenor), Hafer (tenor), pianist Henri Renaud, and drummer John Louis Viale-Coker. Pierce, Gourley, and Flores played on the next session a couple of days later. The program is an amalgam of originals, standards, and tunes literally unknown before or after this session, not credited to anyone. This is a blowing date. The arrangements are loose, the swing value is high, and there is a feeling of relaxation and reckless abandon found on few recordings from this period. This is West Coast jazz with a European elegance courtesy of Renaud -- one of the greatest pianists in any genre France ever produced. Most notable tracks here are the covers: Basie's "The King," Lester Young's "Blue Lester," Shelton Brooks' "Some of These Days," and one by Pierce -- who also did some arranging on "Honey Baby." A hot date, one that is welcome as a reissue on CD. ~ Thom Jurek