Vol. 1 no. 1
Working
I wound up listening so much to Ed that his musical essence sort of took over my personality. It was now about the late 70's and I was starting to work a lot at George's. I was getting a lot of attention; Mark Miller became my champion. For whatever reason, I was the ace. It was my turn; who's young, who's new? They had the new faces series, once in a while they'd throw a bone to some young guy trying to make it. I was working with Jerry Toth, Don Thompson, Butch Watanabe, when there was a whole other group of people working there. I started working at Bourbon Street; I was making a good living playing jazz. Now I play much better and there's no work! They give you a break when you can hardly play, and then when you can play they don't want to know about you.
I played with Butch, Chet Baker, Carl Fontana, Bob Brookmeyer, Pepper Adams, Bud Shank, Jimmy McGriff, Richard 'Groove' Holmes, Georgie Auld, who played the same five tunes every night...
AW: Any bad experiences?
LL: Just one, actually. I was working with Chet, and we were doing this tune, "This Is Always." I didn't know it, and I was reading a chart. There was a full house. It didn't seem like he wanted it to stop, so we kept going. He turns around and he says, "Man, the tune was supposed to end two bars ago!" and he slams his horn down and walks off. I'm there with David Piltch, and we didn't know what to do, so we laughed. I went up to him after and I said, "Sorry, we didn't know you wanted to stop there," and he said, "It's OK, I'm a little tired." He wasn't in great health at that point.
AW: And from that time, any positive experiences?
LL: Oh yeah, I didn't have any other problem with him. He said he really dug my playing. We went and played in Sam Noto's Renaissance Club. They put out a CD which was a transfer of the radio show; the quality is just horrible. They did it because Art Franks was the drummer; he knew Chet pretty well and Chet's wife Carol. And Chet never gave a dime to Carol and the kids, and this was one way to supply her with the proceeds.
So now it's like '79 or '80, and Oscar(Peterson) comes in one night, because he and Butch Watanabe are still close. We play and I meet Oscar, he says, "you sound good," and I say, "thanks." A couple of weeks later I'm at home and the phone rings. I answer, and the voice says, "Hello, this is Oscar Peterson."
"Oh, hi!"
"Are you signed to any record label?"
"Uh, no."
"Hang on a minute, I've got Norman Granz here."
At this point I was like six feet off the ground. He says, "Hi Lorne, it's Norman Granz. Oscar says he really enjoyed your playing and he'd like to produce an album.
We go into Manta downtown and in about six hours we did the album. I was just so nervous and excited I thought we had some good material. Every once in a while somebody will come up to me and say, "I just got a copy of your first album. Boy, you really sounded good back then." I don't want to disagree so I just say thanks. You hear something from fourteen years earlier and you're not going to like it because you've matured.
It was Joe Benza and Kieran Overs. We played at this place for the better part of a year every Sunday, couple years before the record. So we took a bunch of chances and it was loose. The engineer, I don't know how experienced he was recording jazz, the drum set had a rock sound and the guitar was too up in the mix. It got some reviews, and people started to say I was the new Ed Bickert. It was really complimentary; I had so much press back then it was embarrassing. I didn't think it was deserved. I never let it get to my head or anything.
AW: Up until this point, had you played with Ed? Had he heard you?
LL: Oh, yeah. He heard me. Jane Bunnett and Larry Kramer had a jazz series on Sunday nights with people from out of town. Larry asked me if I would be into playing with Ed. I thought, "Oh man, I'm going to play with God!" So I went in with Kieran Overs and Jerry Fuller, I probably had about five shots of scotch before I played. My family came down, it was a big deal.
AW: So you guys didn't really have a chance to get together and you didn't really know him that well?
LL: Not really. Now it's fine, let's play. Back then I was scared. I'd ask him, "What do you want to play?" and he'd say, "Let's play stuff we're comfortable with." I'd say, How about this, how about that, and he'd say, "Oh yeah, sure." He knows (just about) every tune ever written and if he didn't he'd pick it up real fast. He's got the deadliest hearing. In one way I'd like to have those kind of ears, in another not. We live in a very out-of-tune world.
So we played; there was Ed, the original, and there's me doing my imitation. I guess it sounded OK, but I felt like a fish out of water. Eventually we decided for fun to put together a quartet and try to do a week at George's. I was getting all this press, and he was already a legend. I did a record with Johnny Hartman, a sweetheart a true gentleman.
Ed and I did a record for Unisson, and Ted O'Reilly approached me about starting this label. One afternoon, Neil's amp screwed up during the session, so Ed and I did a take of I Remember You and Ill Wind. I was teaching and working a lot. Around this time I was teaching at York at a workshop instructor part time and delivering tires during the summer. I was playing constantly with Mark Eisenmann. Play, play, play.
I recorded with Brass Connection. I started teaching at Mohawk. For awhile I was going through a real bad time; I found it really hard to cope with the fact that here I was, I'd arrived, and this big world had opened up for me. But I didn't realize that the work was going to stop. All of a sudden I wasn't everyone's favorite anymore, and I got real bummed out about it, and I started to not practice. I got really demoralized; I didn't know how to handle it. I'm not talking about being a pop superstar, just about someone who was quite busy and well liked in the music field. Now I know why, because the music business is cyclical, people get different favorites and there are different circumstances. There are different cliques that take over for awhile, not even intentionally, it just happens.