Herb Geller - To Benny And Johnny With Love From Herb Geller

Herb Geller's tribute cd to Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter. Herb Geller (soprano saxophone, alto saxophone); Herb Geller; Chuck Berghofer (double bass); Hod O'Brien (piano); Paul Kreibich (drums) To Benny and Johnny with Love from Herb Geller songs. Recording information: Entourage Studios, Hollywood, CA (06/16/2001/06/17/2001).

Herb Geller was born in Los Angeles on 2 November 1928. His first professional job was at an L.A. club called Mike Riley's Mad House in 1945. Thereafter he became part of veteran jazz fiddler Joe Venuti's band before finding himself in New York with the Claude Thornhill Band at a time when there was still an active jazz performing and recording scene. Here he met and married jazz pianist Lorraine Walsh. Then it was back west to be part of the expanding "west coast jazz" school in and around Los Angeles composed of Shorty Rogers, Art Pepper, Chet Baker, and Shelley Manne. Geller also played in an early edition of Maynard Ferguson's Orchestra. He and his wife Lorraine co-led a successful quartet until her tragic early death in 1958. This was a personal watershed and he left for a period of revaluation in Brazil before finally setting sail for Europe.

In 1962 he worked for the Berlin Radio Orchestra before securing a permanent post with the NDR Orchestra in Hamburg where he remained for over twenty five years. Financially this was good but the confines of a radio orchestra do not always allow freedom of expression. He had meantime remarried and settled in Hamburg. In 1990 he made his first jazz combo album since leaving the United States. He retired from the NDR Orchestra in 1993 and was free to undertake tours back in the U.S., Europe and the UK.

In recent times he has recorded with some younger musicians in his adopted city Hamburg (I'll Be Back CD 2074) and also in the U.S. he has recorded for VSOP, Fresh Sound, and "The Al Cohn Songbook" (HEP CD 2066). During a short tour of the U.K. in 1998 he encountered the fabulous Scots pianist Brian Kellock and the following year in London recorded an album with Kellock entitled "The Hollywood Portraits" (HEP CD 2078). This was a suite of original music celebrating some of Hollywood's legends such as Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo.

As always Herb's playing combines the essence of Benny Carter's singing alto style plus the exciting departures originated by Charlie Parker. Herb is truly the last in the great tradition of jazz alto players who can also compose and whose knowledge of the structure of standards is second to none.