INTERVIEW WITH BURKE GARRETT CIRCA 2001
The following interview with Burke Garrett was conducted by Kurt Armbruster,
Author of “Before Seattle Rocked: A City And It’s Music
The rock revolution did not change the old order overnight. “I used to say ‘Rock is a fad’,” recalls Burke Garrett, who unabashedly proclaims his Burke Garrett Orchestra “the workingest band in town” during much of the go-go sixties decade. “We never played rock on my band. It was so rudimentary. I thought Elvis was totally raw and uncool. Not till much later did I gain an appreciation for his great talent. My band’s interpretation of rock was more of an R&B treatment of jazz riffs, blues songs like ‘Watermelon Man’, ‘Jose Outside’, Day Tripper and ‘Summertime.’
We’d throw a heavy backbeat on that stuff and people would do the Boogaloo. We kept ‘em happy and retained our swing-era roots. Lots of commercial bands were treating rock the same way.”
““I was twelve years old when I saw ‘The Glenn Miller Story’,” Garrett reminisces, “and my reaction was: ‘Wow! I’m gonna be a bandleader!’”
As a young man himself in the early sixties (born 1939), Garrett was unfazed by the impending decline in opportunities for dance bands. Instead, he attacked the music business like a military campaign, studying what the established bands were playing, noting audience response; all the while launching a frontal assault on the local scene that quickly had the Garrett Orchestra—from seven to thirteen pieces—slipping in to many of the old-timers’ gigs.
My mother played the piano and everybody in my family sang, so I had music all around me when I was young. In sixth grade I began playing string bass; I don’t remember taking lessons, I just sort of picked it up. When I got into high school I decided I really was going to be a bandleader, so I bought a tenor sax at a hockshop and began studying with Johnnie Jessen, and later with Ronald Phillips (who was the principle clarinetist in the Seattle Symphony at the time).
“At age fifteen I started my own band, and within a couple of years I was getting a lot of gigs. I led two bands in the late fifties: the George Haviland Sextet (‘George Haviland’ was me—and the Burke Garrett Orchestra, the big band. The sextet played a lot of head charts. My slogan was ‘jazz for dancing.’
During the Seattle World’s Fair I was 21 years old and I played fourth tenor sax on Jackie Souders’ band out at Parker’s Ballroom. There was so much work then that guys like Jackie couldn’t find anybody to play. I was an aggressive young competitor. If he realized that I might have been the last guy he would have hired! I soon retained his arranger to write custom charts for our septet.
I was a better leader than a musician. Mostly, I was busy doing my own thing. In those years there were lots of bands, but no one selling them. I liked selling, and I was more into being a bandleader and booking agent than a jazz cat. “My strategy was, one lick at a time. I’d ask myself, ‘What do I need to do to get to where Wyatt Howard and Jackie Souders are? How can I cover the waterfront on every job?’ I was young; I hadn’t been in the business for twenty or more years like the older guys, so everything was scripted. At first I wrote out all my announcements. How else do you learn?
Govern Dan Evans and his wife in front of the band stand, a photo taken by Burke in January 1965.
No Seattle band in the 60’s was busier than the Burke Garrett Orchestra. We played everything from the Governor’s Ball to Boeing parties, auto shows, military bases, the tennis and Yacht Clubs, etc.
Guys like Norm Hoagy teased the heck out of me! The old pros said, ‘He’s just a flash in the pan, he’ll never make it.’ But it wasn’t long before I was hiring those guys. And no band in the sixties was busier than the Burke Garrett Orchestra—nobody. We played the governor’s ball Boeing parties, auto shows, military bases, the Tennis and Yacht Clubs, conventions and most of the high school and college proms in the state of Washington. (Here’s a great list of the largest dances we had played at that time!) Twelve to fifteen casual gigs a month was typical for us in the mid-sixties.
“With my final seven piece instrumentation (four horns and rhythm) our music was unlike anybody else’s. The versatility of our guys resulted in interesting instrumental combinations. I played alto and soprano saxes, clarinet, valve trombone, and sang a little (I didn’t need to sing much with Keith Mirick on my band. Cecil Heick - and Ed Culver for a few years - played tenor sax, clarinet, flute and valve trombone; Don Glenn was lead trombone, a fine soloist who was always playing warm bluesy laid back licks. Keith Mirick played trumpet, valve trombone, helped front the band, and was our featured vocalist. Keith wasn’t well-known locally because he only worked in my band, but he had an MBA in music and was an excellent musician and vocalist. So we could do the tenor band thing, or the big fat trombone ensemble sound, which people dug, see Open Country. We also played Dixieland and commercial ‘Mickey Mouse’ renditions of songs with flute, clarinets and muted brass.
BERNIE AND BURKE
MUSIC FROM THE THIRTIES AND THE SWING ERA
“Playing the ‘two beat’ arrangements was a lot of fun for us. Bernie Press wrote many of our commercial charts. He was Jackie Souders’ arranger and Jackie, in the Fifties and early Sixties, had the most successful commercial dance band in Seattle. So I hired Bernie to write similar arrangements for us. The hipsters would consider that sound corny, but dancers loved it. I’d go through the fake books, sit at the piano and try to figure out which tunes would best fit together then Bernie would write charts that moved through all our different instrumental combinations: trumpet, trombone, saxes, a group vocal, then a vamp into another tune with clarinets and muted brass. Some of those charts were ten pages long. Bernie and I also collaborated on a custom book of fanfares, including musical vignettes, play-ons and chasers for every situation.
“Bernie was a good arranger, but the band would sometimes ‘camp’ the heck out of his charts. I mean, we were young guys (22 – 32), and so occasionally we’d exaggerate the Guy Lombardo vibratos and “two beat” licks. Most of the time we were playing for audiences twenty years older than we were, and they loved it. I was a stickler for playing what the people wanted; but, still, sometimes we’d push the envelope a bit. We also had a number of fine charts by Milt Kleeb, Butch Nordahl, Overton Berry, Cecil Heick and Norm Hoagy. In addition we did ‘head arrangements’ of stuff like ‘Night Train,’ ‘Jose Outside,’ and ‘Day Tripper’ that got us in to a R&B groove. We were able to cover all the bases and satisfy the partying public of that time.
We all had day jobs and very little time to rehearse, so for the big band gigs I pre-programmed most of the music into groups (sets), with six to ten songs per folder. I might call up Set eight, for example; the guys could get the music up in just a few seconds and we’d be good-to-go for thirty or forty minutes of continuous music, which dancers appreciated.
Not that things still didn’t go wrong: At one big company party in the Seattle Exhibition Hall I called up Glenn Miller’s ‘In the Mood,’ a chart the guys could play in their sleep. The - five guys - sax section stood up to play the famous chorus and Bill Ramsey, lead alto, played it a half-step up from everybody else (something like everyone in the audience dragging their fingernails over a black board!) The band completely fell apart, the rhythm section, everybody. It was musical bedlam and absolutely hilarious—but I was furious at the time!
“I was proud to be hired to play for Seattle’s ‘moneyed elite’—me, a kid from Federal Way High School in suburbia. Most of our work was for formal gatherings; proms, tolos, annual balls and conventions. The Seattle Tennis Club loved us! We’d lampoon the old tunes just enough to get some laughs among us, but we did it in a sweet way—not making fun of anybody. People got our vibe and could see that we were having fun, not just standing up there doing a job; and then they’d have fun.
We had custom built sound and lighting systems which few bands had in those days, and we did a black light show with the band in fluorescent costumes that glowed in the lights. In our Dixieland costumes we sometimes marched around the hall playing songs such as “The Saints Go Marching In” and “Tiger Rag”.
I had nothing to do with musician union politics; I kept my nose clean, paid my sidemen over-scale, paid in my union dues on time and got what I wanted, which was lots of work.
“As time went on I got more interested in the booking and promotion business. At that time, the field was wide-open; Joe Daniels was about the only person around who booked live music, and he represented mostly small combos and lounge acts. I saw a big opportunity to book the regional bands.
Late in 1967 Bill Owens and I bought Northwest Releasing Corporation and presented big names like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Lawrence Welk (and many more). At times, though, I really did miss performing with my band—rolling into the ballroom with all our gear and tuxedos, setting up the band, then seeing all the dancers come out onto the floor in response to our music. I loved being a bandleader!”