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Gary McFarland: Departure Point

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In the late 1950s and early '60s, a new breed of jazz arranger began to surface. Some were deeply influenced by modern classical orchestral music. Others such as Johnny Mandel, Manny Albam, Johnny Pate and Oliver Nelson were swayed by the drama and subtle incidental melodies of television and the movies.

Among the latter group, the most innovative and musically dashing was Gary McFarland. Born in Oregon in 1933, McFarland was something of a savant, teaching himself to play boogie-woogie piano. In the Army in the early 1950s, he bought a set of vibes out of boredom. After a summer at the Lenox School of Jazz in Lenox, Mass., McFarland dropped out in 1959 to write big band arrangements.

So many of McFarland's albums are standouts and hold up remarkably well. Over the past two days, I found myself listening repeatedly, and with awe, to Point of Departure. Recorded for Impulse in September 1963, the album has a gentle, folk-like quality that was prevalent before the Beatles and the electric guitar arrived.

Remarkably, the group McFarland assembled for the album was just a sextet: Willie Dennis (tb); Richie Kamuca (ts,oboe); Gary McFarland (vib); Jimmy Raney (g); Steve Swallow (b) and Mel Lewis (d). What you notice first about the music is its sophisticated cinematic quality. It's delicate and scene-setting and makes you feel wistful. Producer Creed Taylor, who was the head of Verve in the early 1960s and signed McFarland to the label, noted this when I interviewed him about McFarland for a Wall Street Journal essay:

“There was this sensuality and freshness to Gary’s music that made you instantly admire what you heard,” said Mr. Taylor, who produced McFarland’s Verve albums in the ’60s. “I first met Gary in early ’61 and hired him right away to arrange an album for Anita O’Day [All the Sad Young Men]. Gary could score these beautiful floating phrases that were so hip.”

Lewis's drumming throughout is feathery and provocative while McFarland's vibes are stirring and advanced, which is true of the other four musicians on the date. The sextet operates both as a unit and as a collection of individual sounds and attacks. The album's six originals by McFarland and Mark Lawrence's Love Theme From David and Lisa have the flavor of Sunday morning in New York in the early 1960s. Or a movie that shows a couple out for a walk during this period in an empty Greenwich Village or Chelsea.

McFarland is one of my favorite arrangers of the decade. Not all of his albums are perfect. The maudlin Soft Samba Strings in 1965 and Zoot Sims's dreary Waiting Game in 1966 come to mind. But when McFarland clicked—and he did so often—the results are cooly textured and his approach always varies from album to album. His six albums leading up to Point of Departure are very good—O'Day's All the Sad Young Men, Bob Brookmeyer's Gloomy Sunday, his Essence with pianist John Lewis, Brookmeyer's Trombone Jazz Samba, Stan Getz's Big Band Bossa Nova and The Gary McFarland Orchestra with Bill Evans. But Point of Departure is different and lives up to its name. It's the work of an artist who had been thrashing around trying to find a new way and a new sound, and succeeds in breaking free.

Dig Pecos Pete, Love Theme From David and Lisa (a film directed by Frank Perry that McFarland saw about five times) and Hello to the Season for starters. All are catchy but never slip into commercial quicksand. Toward the end of Amour Tormentoso, we get to hear McFarland sing in that bah-bah style that was all his own. He used his singing style to great effect on Soft Samba at Creed's suggestion.

Eventually, the drug culture of the 1960s and McFarland's good looks and ego caught up with him. As I wrote in The Wall Street Journal (go here) in 2014...

On the afternoon of November 2, 1971, jazz vibraphonist, composer and arranger Gary McFarland left a Manhattan recording studio and headed to the 55 Bar [above] in Greenwich Village. A short time later, the 38-year-old McFarland collapsed in the bar and died almost instantly. The official cause of death was a heart attack, but it soon became apparent that the seizure had been triggered by liquid methadone that was added to his drink and those of two friends who were with him. One of them, jazz drummer Gene Gammage, barely survived but never disclosed the events of that day, while the other, writer David Burnett, went into a coma and died several days later.

Such promise. What a shame. As his albums show, for a decade he was New York's Henry Mancini. Few other arrangers on the East Coast could write and arrange music that so perfectly captured the feel of thinking young adults.

JazzWax clip: Here's the entire album...



Here's the film David and Lisa (1962), a silly psychological drama by today's standards, but the opening music is worth hearing to compare with McFarland's interpretation...

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This story appears courtesy of JazzWax by Marc Myers.
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