Serge Chaloff

Serge Chaloff (November 24, 1923 – July 16, 1957) 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 (known professionally as Madame 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 [Harry] 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 (baritone) 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' (Dizzy Gillespie's 'A Night in Tunisia'), 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 (Parker) 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.

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."

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.'

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.' His friend Al Cohn observed 'It wasn't until he left the big bands that he really started to develop as a soloist.'

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.' There were five standards and a Chaloff original, 'Zdot', with an ending 'written by a wonderful pianist and teacher, Margaret Chaloff, Serge's mother.'. The sixth track, Al Killian's 'Lets Jump', was chosen by Chaloff, who said: 'Now that we've proven how advanced we are let's show the people that we can still swing.' After being hospitalized for three and a half months, he was released in February 1955, finally drug free.

The highlights of the album are Chaloff's powerful ballad features, "What's New?", and "Body and Soul". In the 1956 Metronome Yearbook, Bill Coss described the latter as 'an almost frightening example of Serge's form, moaning through a seemingly autobiographical portrayal of (his) Body and Soul', an enormously emotional jazz listening experience.'

In 1956, Chaloff worked his way across the country, usually working in an alto/baritone format. In Chicago, he played alongside Lou Donaldson. In Los Angeles, he played with Sonny Stitt, in a band which also included Leroy Vinnegar, the leading West Coast bassist.

Blue Serge

Chaloff's Los Angeles appearance led to his recording a second Capitol LP there in March 1956. The drummer was Philly Joe Jones, who was in Los Angeles with the Miles Davis Quintet. Sonny Clark played piano, and Leroy Vinnegar was on bass. Chaloff described the making of the record, called Blue Serge, on the jacket blurb: 'My last record, Boston Blow-up! was one of those carefully planned things....But this time I was feeling a little more easy-going, and I decided to make a record just to blow. I picked out what I felt was the best rhythm section around and told them just to show up...no rehearsals...no tunes set...and trust to luck and musicianship....I'd never worked with these guys before except for jamming briefy with Joe Jones eight years ago, but I knew from hearing them what they could do....We were shooting for an impromptu feeling and we got it. It has more freedom and spark than anything I've recorded before. And I don't think there's a better recommendation than that when it comes to honest jazz.'

Vladimir Somosko, Chaloff's biographer, described the results: 'The rapport of the group was as moving as the music, and the net effect was of every note being in place, flawlessly executed, as if even the slightest nuance was carefully chosen for maximum aesthetic impact. This is a level of achievement beyond all but the masters, and from an ensemble that was not even a working group it takes on an aura of the miraculous.'

Stuart Nicholson analysed Chaloff's playing on "A Handful of Stars": 'Paraphrase becomes central to his performance of 'A Handful of Stars' where he scrupulously avoids stating the melody as written. At one point he plumbs the baritone for a bumptious bass note and soars to the top of the instrument's range in one breath, effortlessly concealing the remarkable technical skill required for such seemingly throw-away trifles. This sheer joy at music making seems to give his playing a life-force of its own.'

Richard Cook and Brian Morton in The Penguin Guide to Jazz declared the album 'Chaloff's masterpiece' and described it as 'vigorous and moving... "Thanks for the Memory" is overpoweringly beautiful as Chaloff creates a series of melodic variations which match the improviser's ideal of fashioning an entirely new song. 'Stairway to the Stars' is almost as fine, and the thoughtful 'The Goof and I' and 'Susie's Blues' show that Chaloff still had plenty of ideas about what could be done with a bebopper's basic materials. This important session has retained all its power.'

Spinal cancer Chaloff continued to work on the West Coast, performing at the Starlite Club in Hollywood in May 1956. That month, while playing golf, he was struck down by severe back and abdominal pains, which paralysed his legs. Chaloff flew back to Boston, where an exploratory operation revealed that he was suffering from cancer of the spine. His brother Richard described his final illness: 'We took him down there [Massachusetts General Hospital] and they found he had lesions on his spine.....they operated and took most of the lesions away, and then he went on a series of X-ray treatments. Oh they were terrible. He must have had twenty or twenty-five in a row. And in those days they really gave you heavy doses of it. Then occasionally he got spots on the lungs'

Despite his illness, and the gruelling treatment, Chaloff continued to play live. In New York, on 18 June 1956, a wheelchair-using Chaloff took part in a recording of Charlie Parker's "Billie's Bounce", for the Metronome All Stars album. He played alongside Zoot Sims, Art Blakey, Charles Mingus and Billy Taylor.

Chaloff's final recording, on 11 February 1957, was for The Four Brothers... Together Again! a reunion album of Woody Herman's Four Brothers for Vik, a subsidiary of RCA Victor. The Four Brothers lineup was Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Herbie Steward and Chaloff, accompanied by Elliot Lawrence (piano), Buddy Jones (bass) and Don Lamond (drums). On the later recordings, Charlie O'Kane was brought in to play baritone on the section parts, so Chaloff could preserve his strength for the solos. written as a solo vehicle for Chaloff by Al Cohn.

Richard Chaloff: 'He took a wheelchair down to make that recording, you know. They didn't think he was going to make it. I heard stories from people there. But when he stood up and played, you never knew he was a sick fellow. He played dynamic. If you listen to the record he sounds like the old Serge. He pulled himself together. I don't know how he did it. But he had tremendous drive, tremendous stamina.'

Don Gold reviewed the album in Down Beat: 'This last session before his death represents a fervent expression of a fatally ill man. It is a kind of significant farewell in the language he knew best.'

Chaloff made his last live appearances at The Stable Club on Huntington Avenue in Boston the following May. Interviewed in 1993, Charlie 'the Whale' Johnson recalled Chaloff's final performances: 'I remember pushing Chaloff's wheelchair into The Stable for his last appearances there. He was in bad shape but could still really play, standing leaning on a pillar. However, he didn't have much stamina. He couldn't really finish the gig. I also had to go get pot and booze for him. He was still using these steadily, even in the hospital at the end.'

On 15 July 1957, the dying Chaloff was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital. According to Richard Chaloff, he took his horn and pet monkey with him: 'He still had the kinkajou monkey Mother got him to keep him company. And he had his horn. I was told they wheeled him into a vacant operating theatre so he could practise, and that was his last gig, his last public performance, solo baritone sax alone in an operating theatre. Nurses, doctors and even patients were standing outside and listening. He fought it to the end. Mother would visit him and urge him on, saying, 'You can beat it' and things. But that last day, they brought a priest to visit him, and the priest saw Serge in bed looking so wasted, and the priest thought he was supposed to perform the last rites. Serge woke up in the middle of it and really panicked, sliding away from him and yelling 'No! No! Get out!' But after that he seemed to give up. I think that's when he realized it was all over.'

Serge Chaloff died the next day, at the age of 33.

He is buried in the Forest Hills Cemetery, Jamaica Plain, Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts.

Discography Boston 1950, Uptown Records, 1994 Serge and Boots, Storyville LP 310 1954 The Fable of Mabel, Storyville LP 317 1955 Boston Blow–Up!, Capitol Records 1955 Blue Serge, Capitol Records 1956 Metronome All-Stars 1956, Verve Records 1956 The Four Brothers... Together Again!, Vik Records, 1957

Sideman Sessions with Boyd Raeburn, Jimmy Dorsey, Georgie Auld, Sonny Berman, Woody Herman and Count Basie