Serge Chaloff
Serge Chaloff was an American jazz baritone saxophonist. One of bebop's earliest baritone saxophonists, Chaloff has been described as 'the most expressive and openly emotive baritone saxophonist jazz has ever witnessed' with a tone varying 'between a light but almost inaudible whisper to a great sonorous shout with the widest but most incredibly moving of vibratos.'
Musical education
Serge Chaloff was the son of the pianist and composer Julius Chaloff and the leading Boston piano teacher, Margaret Chaloff. He learned the piano from the age of six and also had clarinet lessons with Manuel Valerio of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. At the age of twelve, after hearing Harry Carney, Duke Ellington's baritonist, he taught himself to play the baritone. Chaloff later explained to Leonard Feather in an interview: 'Who could teach me? I couldn't chase Carney around the country.'Although he was inspired by Carney and Jack Washington, Count Basie's baritone player, Chaloff did not imitate them. According to his brother, Richard, 'he could play like a tenor sax. The only time you knew it was a baritone was when he took it down low. He played it high....He had finger dexterity, I used to watch him, you couldn't believe the speed he played. He was precise. He was a perfectionist. He would be up in his bedroom as a teenager. He would be up by the hour to one, two, three in the morning and I'm trying to sleep and he'd go over a phrase or a piece until it was perfect...I used to put the pillow over my head, we had battles.'
From the age of fourteen, Chaloff, was sitting in at Izzy Ort's Bar & Grille a famous live music venue on Essex Street in Boston. Richard Chaloff remembered: 'He didn't have a permit to work but he was pretty tall and he went down to see Izzy Ort...and played for him and Izzy liked the sax...and he hired my brother to work nights....My mother used to pray on Sundays that that he'd make it outa there....My brother sat in with bandsmen that were in their thirties and forties...and here he was fourteen, fifteen years old and he played right along with them, and he did so well that they kept him.'
Big bands
In 1939, aged just sixteen, Chaloff joined the Tommy Reynolds band, playing tenor sax. This was followed by jobs in the bands of Dick Rogers, Shep Fields and Ina Ray Hutton. In July 1944, he joined Boyd Raeburn's short-lived big band, where he played alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Al Cohn, who became a lifelong friend. With Boyd Raeburn, in January 1945, he made his first recordings, including 'Interlude', where his baritone can be heard in the opening section of the song.While with Boyd Raeburn, Chaloff first heard Charlie Parker, who became his major stylistic influence. Stuart Nicholson argues that, rather than imitating Parker, Chaloff was inspired by his example 'grasping more the emotional basis for Parker's playing and using it as a starting point for his own style.' Richard Chaloff said that his brother 'palled' with in New York. Any time he had the chance he would pal with him. He would sit in with him at night....My brother used to say that he was up till 4,5,6, in the morning with the Bird.....All the beboppers found each other out'
Alongside his 1945-1946 work in big bands led by Georgie Auld and Jimmy Dorsey, Chaloff performed and recorded with several small bebop groups, 1946-1947. These included Sonny Berman's' Big Eight, Bill Harris's Big Eight, the Ralph Burns Quintet, Red Rodney's Be-Boppers, and his own Serge Chaloff Sextette, which released two 78 records on the Savoy label. Three of the four tunes recorded were written and arranged by Chaloff while the fourth, 'Gabardine and Serge', was by Tiny Kahn. 'All four tunes are daredevil cute and blisteringly fast,' wrote Marc Myers. 'They showcase tight unison lines and standout solos by four of the six musicians, who are in superb form.... Chaloff shows off his inexhaustible and leonine approach to the baritone sax.'
Serge Chaloff became a household name in 1947, when he joined Woody Herman's Second Herd. This was known as the 'Four Brothers Band', after the reed section, comprising Chaloff, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Herbie Steward, and a little later Al Cohn. He was featured on many Herman recordings, including "Four Brothers", Keen and Peachy", and had solo features in Al Cohn's "The Goof and I". and "Man, Don't Be Ridiculous." On the latter, he demonstrated 'an astonishing technical facility that was quite without precedent on the instrument.'
In 1949, Leonard Feather included Chaloff in his book Inside Be-Bop: 'Great conception and execution, good taste, clean tone and Bird-like style have made him the No.1 bop exponent of the baritone.'
Drug addiction
By 1947, Chaloff, following the example of his hero, Charlie Parker, was a heroin addict. According to Gene Lees, Chaloff was the Woody Herman band's 'chief druggist as well as its number one junkie. Serge would hang a blanket in front of the back seats of the bus and behind it would dispense the stuff to colleagues.' Whitney Balliett wrote that Chaloff had 'a satanic reputation as a drug addict whose proselytizing ways with drugs reportedly damaged more people than just himself.' Many musicians blamed him for the drug-related death of the 21-year-old trumpeter Sonny Berman on January 16, 1947.The trumpeter Rolf Ericson, who joined Herman's band in 1950, described the impact of drugs on the band's performances: 'In the band Woody had started on the coast...late in 1947, which I heard many times, several of the guys were on narcotics and four were alcoholics. When the band started a night's work they sounded wonderful, but after the intermission, during which they used the needle or lushed, the good music was over. It was horrible to see them sitting on the stage like living dead, peering into little paper envelopes when they weren't playing.'
One night in Washington D.C., Woody Herman had a public row on the bandstand with Chaloff. Herman told Gene Lees: 'He was getting farther and farther out there, and the farther out he got the more he was sounding like a fagalah. He kept saying, ‘Hey, Woody, baby, I'm straight, man, I'm clean.' And I shouted, ‘Just play your goddamn part and shut up!'....I was so depressed after that gig. There was this after-hours joint in Washington called the Turf and Grid....I had to fight my way through to get a drink, man. All I wanted was to have a drink and forget it. And finally I get a couple of drinks, and it's hot in there, and I'm sweating, and somebody's got their hands on me, and I hear, ‘Hey, Woody, baby, whadya wanna talk to me like that for? I'm straight, baby, I'm straight.' And it's Mr. Chaloff. And then I remember an old Joe Venuti bit. We were jammed in there, packed in, and...I peed down Serge's leg. You know, man, when you do that to someone, it takes a while before it sinks in what's happened to him. And when Serge realized, he let out a howl like a banshee.'
Chaloff's bandmate, Terry Gibbs, told Ira Gitler stories of his chaotic behaviour: 'He'd fall asleep with a cigarette all the time and always burn a hole in a mattress. Always! In about twelve hotels. When we'd go to check out, the hotel owner – Serge always had his hair slicked down even though he hadn't taken a bath for three years...the manager would say, 'Mr Chaloff, you burned a hole in your mattress and...' 'How dare you. I'm the winner of the down beat and Metronome polls. How dare you?'...the manager would always say, 'I'm sorry Mr Chaloff,'...Except one time when the band got off on an air-pistol kick....Serge put a telephone book against the door and was zonked out of his bird...he got three shots at the telephone book and made the biggest hole in the door you ever saw. So when he went to the check out, the guy said, 'Mr Chaloff, it'll cost you.'...He 'how-dared' him a few times. Couldn't get away with it. He said 'Well listen, if I'm gonna pay for the door I want the door.' It was twenty four dollars. So he paid for the door. I happen to be standing close by. 'Hey Terry,' he said. 'Grab this,' and all of a sudden I found myself checking out....We're walking out of the hotel with a door.'
Al Cohn described Chaloff's driving: 'I don't know how we kept from being killed. Serge would always be drunk. He was quite a drinker. Everything he did, he did too much. So one time we're driving, after work. It's four o'clock in the morning, and he makes a left turn, and we're wondering why the road is so bumpy. Turned out he made a left turn into the railroad tracks, and we're going over the ties.'
Zoot Sims also talked about Chaloff with Gitler: 'When Serge was cleaned up, you know, straight, he could be a delight, really to be around, a lot of fun. He knew how to handle himself. He had that gift. He could get pretty raunchy when he was strung out, but he could also be charming.'
In late 1949, when many big bands were folding for economic reasons, Herman broke up the Second Herd. Fronting a new small band in Chicago in 1950, Herman told Down Beat: 'You can't imagine how good it feels to look at my present group and find them all awake. To play a set and not have someone conk out in the middle of a chorus.'
Count Basie's Octet
For part of 1950, Chaloff played in the All Star Octet of Count Basie who, like Herman, had broken up his big band. The band comprised Basie, Chaloff, Wardell Gray, Buddy DeFranco, Clark Terry, Freddie Green, Jimmy Lewis and Gus Johnson. The group recorded a handful of sides for Victor and Columbia and was also captured on airchecks.Return to Boston
In 1950, Chaloff returned to Boston, where he played in small groups in clubs like the High Hat, Petty Lounge and Red Fox Cafe. A 1950 performance at the Celebrity Club in Providence Rhode Island, was broadcast by WRIV, and has been released on CD as Boston 1950. Playing in small groups gave Chaloff the space to develop a new style of playing. In 1951, he talked about 'getting away from the fireworks that don't mean anything' that had been a part of his style up to that point and 'adding more colour and flexibility to his work.' His friend Al Cohn observed 'It wasn't until he left the big bands that he really started to develop as a soloist.'Chaloff was now a star, winning the Down Beat and Metronome polls every year from 1949-1953. Yet his drug use and heavy drinking made it difficult for him to keep steady work, and he gave up playing completely in 1952-3.
Chaloff's come-back began in late 1953, when the Boston DJ Bob 'The Robin' Martin offered to become his manager. Helped by Martin, Chaloff formed a new group which played at Boston's Jazzorama and Storyville nightclubs. His usual musical partners were Boots Mussulli or Charlie Mariano, Herb Pomeroy, and Dick Twardzik. "He didn't work a lot," said Bob Martin, "because the word was out. You had to talk somebody to give him a chance to play. When you got him a gig in a club or a hotel, he would usually mess it up. But when he did show...and got playing...it was,'Stand back, Baby!
Jay Migliori, who played with Chaloff at Storyville, recalled, 'Serge was a wild character. We were working at Storyville and, if he was feeling good, he used to let his trousers gradually fall down during the cadenza of his feature, 'Body and Soul.' At the end of the cadenza, his trousers would hit the ground.'