Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,538

This is the grave of Woody Herman.

Born in 1913 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Herman was brought up in a family that welcomed show business. His father was a big fan and was more than happy when his son started working vaudeville as a child. He started in tap dancing but he had clear musical talent and his parents got him a clarinet and a saxophone and that worked out pretty well. By the mid 30s, he was a rising star in the big band world. He joined Tom Gerum’s band and moved between bands for awhile, which was common enough. He ended up working for Isham Jones. But Jones was getting sick of the road and all that meant which such a large band, which was all those personalities, all those logistics, etc. Plus Jones was a successful songwriter. So he retired from the road and decided to live off the residuals. Herman gathered most of that band back together as leader in 1936.

That was the so-called “band that plays the blues.” It did not take the band long to get attention. By 1937, Herman was getting accolades as the next big thing in jazz. It started hitting the charts in 1939, with “Woodchopper’s Ball,” which he co-wrote and which became one of the great jazz standards. The song was named to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002. He recorded for Decca, and it took awhile for the song to become a hit, but the label believed in it and kept re-releasing it until it got the attention the executives believed the song deserved. In 1942, Herman hit #1 on the charts for the first time with “Blues in the Night.”

Herman began working with Dizzy Gillespie in the early 40s and Diz started writing for Herman’s band. This was a good thing for Herman because the times were changing. The big band era was starting to move out and bop was starting to replace it. A lot of the bandleaders of the 30s were completely lost in this new world and hated the new music. But not Herman. He recognized the changes that were coming and he adjusted his orchestra to bring bop elements into it. Herman was listening to a lot of Ellington and Basie and figuring out how to work up his own orchestras in this way. This became known as the First Herd band. So right as the war was ending, the Herman band had an argument to be the best in America. Certainly they sold a lot of albums. Herman was pretty rich by this time.

However, Herman’s career took a detour. He broke the band up in 1946 to stay at home more. The home, incidentally, he had just bought from Bogart and Bacall. Again, he had money. But his wife was also a raging alcoholic and pill addict too. He stopped to help her recover, which she did as a matter of fact. He later joked about attending an AA meeting with her and half his former band was also in recovery there.

By the time Herman got back on the road, the era really had changed. He started what he called the Second Herd, that included some pretty legendary folks such as Zoot Sims and Stan Getz, in 1947. They had more success. Later that year, Hollywood put out a film called New Orleans, a sort of romance about that city and its music scene that included a plot line of Billie Holiday falling in love with Louis Armstrong, with both of them naturally appearing as themselves. Anyway, the Herman band was also in the film.

By the 50s, with the Big Band era disappearing fast, Herman had more success in Europe. He also tried to change. He incorporated rock and roll into his sets by the late 60s, which sounds, I dunno…..But hey, why not try? At the same time, he brought more directly classical elements into the band too, which included instruments such as bassoon and French horn that never really made the transition to the mainstream in jazz.

Herman was one of those guys who just remained on the road. I’ve read enough about the realities of touring with a big band and the money involved in that too to know that this was not for the faint of heart. These were a lot of personalities and a lot of logistics for not a lot of money. The bands were constantly changing and who knows what kind of substance abuse you were going to be dealing with whenever you hired a new guy. But he just loved the road, or he didn’t know anything different and didn’t want to either. He became known as the Road Father for his time on the road. He was also known as this due to his generosity to the younger musicians, encouraging them to compose and often playing their works with the band.

In 1973, Woody Herman performed at half time of Super Bowl VII. This was the 14-7 Dolphins victory over the Redskins, the game that Garo Yepremian tried to give away by attempting to pass on the botched field goal attempt and thus giving Washington their only points. Sounds more exciting than a Woody Herman Super Bowl halftime show. Oh, Andy Williams also performed at that halftime show. I expect that Usher will probably draw more viewers this year.

He really just kept playing. Eventually, he ran into the nostalgic longing for the big band era, which gave him more commercial success. His original audience was aging and so was he, but they had televisions and wanted to watch their old music and so Herman was a guy who was still around and conducting a good solid band that both could do the old standards and do new things too. So good for him, he managed to make a living playing his music for a whole life.

However, some of his constant playing as he aged is that he needed the money. His bookkeeper had really screwed up his taxes back in the 60s and he kept playing into the 80s in order to pay the IRS. By this time he was old and his health was sketchy and his wife had died, but he just couldn’t retire. Herman died in 1987, having designated Frank Tiberi as the new bandleader of the Woody Herman Orchestra. He kept it going for a little while at least. Herman was 74 years old when he died.

Let’s listen to some Woody Herman.

Woody Herman is buried in Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, California.

If you would like this series to visit some of Herman’s contemporaries in the jazz world, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Billie Holiday is in The Bronx and Count Basie is in East Farmingdale, New York. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.