Requisites
With Sweet Smell Of Success drummer Chico Hamilton got his first brush (no pun intended) with Hollywood in 1957. Riding high on the popularity of his adventurous quintet of the time – reed/flutist Paul Horn, bassist Carson Smith, cellist Fred Katz, guitarist John Pisano, he and the band were cast in the film after being watched around the country for six months to insure they were drug free, on the heels of Gerry Mulligan’s recent release from jail on similar charges.
This gritty black-and-white film about a ruthless Walter Winchell-style, New York City tabloid-gossip columnist, J.J. Hunsecker, played by a dour Burt Lancaster, who wields his power like a club from Club 21. The plot of this sharp-edged media satire thickens when J.J.’s younger sister, played by Susan Harrison, begins dating the clean-cut young jazz guitarist in the Chico Hamilton Quintet, Steve Dallas, played by Martin Milner. Tony Curtis turns in a brilliant performance as the unctuous Broadway press agent Sidney Falco, who would sell his own mother to get an item in J.J.’s column. It’s your basic “guitarist finds girl, guitarist loses girl, guitarist loses gig but ends up with girl” story.
The music composed by Elmer Bernstein, Fred Katz and Chico Hamilton and performed by Elmer Bernstein Orchestra and the Chico Hamilton Quintet. The personnel in the group are Chico Hamilton – drums, Paul Horn – tenor saxophone, alto saxophone, flute, clarinet, Fred Katz – cello, John Pisano – guitar and Carson Smith on bass. They appear on the soundtrack on compositions by Hamilton and Katz: Hot Dogs and Juice (Goodbye Baby), Hunsecker Operates (Goodbye Baby), Goodbye Baby Blues and Love Scene (Susan – The Sage).
The group also performed Jazz Themes composed by Hamilton and Katz: Goodbye Baby, Cheek to Chico, Susan (The Sage), Sidney’s Theme, Jam, Night Beat and Concerto of Jazz Themes from the Soundtrack of “Sweet Smell of Success.
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George Godfrey Wettling was born on November 28, 1907 in Topeka, Kansas. He was one of the young Chicagoans who fell in love with jazz after hearing King Oliver’s band with Louis Armstrong on second cornet at Lincoln Gardens in the early 1920s. Oliver’s drummer, Baby Dodds, made a particular and lasting impression on him.
Wettling went on to work with the big bands of Artie Shaw, Bunny Berigan, Red Norvo, Paul Whiteman, and Harpo Marx, but he was at his best with bands led by Eddie Condon, Muggsy Spanier, and himself. In these small settings he demonstrated the arts of dynamics and responding to a particular soloist that he had learned from Dodds.
A member of some of Condon’s bands, George was in the company of Wild Bill Davison, Billy Butterfield, Edmond Hall, Peanuts Hucko, Pee Wee Russell, Cutty Cutshall, Gene Schroeder, Ralph Sutton, and Walter Page. By 1957 he was touring England with a Condon band that included Davison, Cutshall, and Schroeder.
Toward the end of his life, he, like his friend clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, took up painting and was influenced by the American cubist Stuart Davis. Jazz, swing and Dixieland drummer George Wettling, active from the 1920s to the 1950s, passed away on June 6, 1968 in New York City.
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Ernie Farrow was born on November 13, 1928 in Huntington, West Virginia and is the half-brother to Alice Coltrane. It is said that he was responsible for introducing her to jazz. He had his own bands throughout high school and emerged in the professional jazz scene in the first half of the ’50s, working with a series of demanding bandleaders including Terry Gibbs and Stan Getz.
Farrow’s relationship with Yusef Lateef began around 1956, performing alongside Hugh Lawson and drummer Louis Hayes and recording a dozen albums with him from 1957 to 1964. Over the course of his short career he also worked with Barry Harris and John Williams among others.
A few years later he began leading his own group, based out of Detroit and was a strong influence on his younger piano-playing sister. In the ’60s he was featured on bass in a terrific classic jazz piano trio fronted by Red Garland.
Best known as a bassist, he however, started on piano before adding bass and drums. Multi-instrumentalist Ernie Farrow, who played piano, double bass, and drums, passed away on July 14, 1969.
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Bill Elgart or Billy Elgart was born on November 9, 1942 in Chelsea, Massachusetts. A student of Alan Dawson, he studied at the Berklee College of Music. By the 1960s he was playing with Carla Bley, Paul Bley, Marion Brown, Sam Rivers, Lowell Davidson, Mark Levinson, Roswell Rudd, John Tchicai, Jack Walrath and Glenn Ferris. In 1968 he made his recording debut on Mr. Joy, with Paul Bley and Gary Peacock.
Moving to Europe in 1976, Bill settled first in Salzburg, Austria and later in Ulm, Germany. He played with Karl Berger, Dave Holland, Ed Schuller and Wayne Darling over the course of the 1980s and 1990s. He was a member of the group Zollsound 4 with Carlo Mombelli, Lee Konitz, and Thomas Zoller. He played in the Sundial Trio with Peter O’Mara from 1982 to 1990, and in 1991 he worked with Caoma alongside Ed Schuller, Sigi Finkel and Tomasz Stanko. He and Stanko also played with Vlatko Kucan in the 1990s.
Elgart worked on the Annemarie Roelofs Projekt, alongside Berger, Frank Möbus, Vitold Rek, and Ingrid Sertso. He has performed as a sideman on recordings by Leszek Zadlo, Manfred Bründl, Kenny Wheeler, Carlo Mombelli, Charlie Mariano, Arrigo Cappelletti, Franco D’Andrea, Wolfgang Lackerschmid, Claudio Fasoli, Sigi Finkel and Paolino Dalla Porta. He has also worked with Tim Berne, Barre Phillips, Eddie Gómez, Conny Bauer, Sheila Jordan, David Friedman and Matthias Schubert. Drummer Bill Elgart continues to perform and record.
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Raul Pineda was born on November 5, 1971 in Havana, Cuba. As a young boy, he scoured his neighborhood for anything that could be used to create drums. He used metal rods driven into the ground to support used cooking oil cans, and formed drumsticks from the branches of orange trees. He was influenced by the local rumbero street bands, and at the urging of his musician grandfather, Nefer Miguel Milanés, he went on to study classical percussion for several years. He then immersed himself in Afro-Cuban music.
By 19, Raul was performing and recording with some of the leading Cuban ensembles and bandleaders, including Sentisis, and pianist Chucho Valdés. Over the next several years, international tours and Grammy-nominated recordings brought Raul to the music world’s attention as one of Cuba’s most influential young drummers. He blends a drum kit with percussion instruments, such as, the left foot cowbell.
Staying busy playing and recording with several bands and artists, since 2000, he has been playing with the Afro-Cuban-jazz-funk-rock band TIZER and with Latin superstar Juan Gabriel. Between the two bands he will have toured Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Dubai, Barbados, Aruba, Santiago de Chile, South Africa, Russia and South Korea.
Drummer Raul Pineda has garnered three Grammy nominations and a 2000 Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Performance with the Chucho Valdés Quartet album, Live at the Village Vanguard. He continues to perform and record.
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