Trumpeter Shorty Rogers was regarded as the head and central figure of the West Coast scene.
This scene was not only defined geographically (with a focus on Los Angeles), but also pursued its very own jazz style in the 1950s. In so-called “West Coast jazz”, an offshoot of the dynamically slowed-down New York cool jazz, musicians liked to experiment with contrapuntal, tonal and formal techniques. Such experiments were inspired by contemporary concert music (Stravinsky, Schönberg, Bartók etc.) and the fashionable fascination with Bach and the Baroque. They were also fed by the creativity of Hollywood arrangers and the “progressive jazz” of big band leader Stan Kenton. Shorty Rogers, who actually came from New York, had learned arranging from Kenton and had also entered the film music industry through the composer Leith Stevens. He also gave lessons – half the West Coast scene seemed to be among his students.
Rogers began making his own records in 1951. He preferred octet and nonet formations (modeled on Miles Davis’ Capitol Orchestra) or big bands. He called his formations “Shorty Rogers and his Giants” – the “little” Rogers and his giants. However, as club tours with these large line-ups were almost impossible to realize, he preferred to work live with a quintet that also included Jimmy Giuffre and Shelly Manne. Because these three – Rogers, Giuffre, Manne – were regarded as the “triumvirate” of West Coast jazz, Rogers’ quintet was practically the all-star band of the scene. This was also the perception on the East Coast. The idea of making records with this “working quintet” came from New York – from the Atlantic label.
The Swinging Mr. Rogers was the quintet’s first album and became Rogers’ greatest success. Never before had his music been heard so concise, light and convincing.
The well-rehearsed band makes the eight pieces into something whole, a unified, cool, effortless statement. Their improvisations are fluid, the band swings irresistibly, but everything remains gentle and quiet, and the little experiments (fugato passages, counterpoint, stop times) are interspersed very unobtrusively. The album opens with an arrangement of “Isn’t It Romantic” with canon and echo elements. The end of the album is a contrapuntally composed blues chorus with Bach echoes. Rogers improvises coolly and smoothly on the trumpet throughout, Giuffre alternates between his three instruments (baritone sax, tenor sax, clarinet), Manne is, as always, an artist on the brushes and sticks. And Pete Jolly (piano) and Curtis Counce (bass) provide the cheerful, pulsating swing – almost like Count Basie and Walter Page.
The hit of the album is the opener of the B-side, the eight-minute “Martians Go Home”. It’s a minimalist blues, the theme just an abbreviation, the beat stops again and again. Then Giuffre launches into one of his disembodied, breathy clarinet solos, with the drums only marking out at certain points and the dynamics at the very bottom – an anti-blues, anti-expressive. There is something bizarrely alien about this reduction and terseness, hence the extraterrestrial reference in the title. One critic said at the time that “Martians Go Home” should be named “Song of the Year”. Due to its great success, Rogers followed this up with a whole series of “Martian” pieces on the next records: “Martians Stay Home”, “Martians Come Back”, “March Of The Martians” and “Martians Lullaby”.
Shorty Rogers and his Giants – The Swinging Mr. Rogers on discogs.com