Sheldon "Shelly" Manne (June 11, 1920 – September 26, 1984) was an American jazz drummer. Most frequently associated with West Coast jazz, he was known for his versatility and also played in a number of other styles, including Dixieland, swing, bebop, avant-garde jazz, and later fusion. He also contributed to the musical background of hundreds of Hollywood films and television programs.
Family and origins Sheldon "Shelly" Manne was born June 11, 1920, in Manhattan, New York City, New York. Manne's father Max Manne and uncles were drummers. In his youth he admired many of the leading swing drummers of the day, especially Jo Jones and Dave Tough.Tough was his "idol" as well as his mentor on the 52nd Street scene. Brand, p. 94. Billy Gladstone, a colleague of Manne's father and the most admired percussionist on the New York theatrical scene, offered the teenage Shelly tips and encouragement.Brand, p. 5; Feather, p. 320.
From that time, Manne rapidly developed his style in the clubs of 52nd Street in New York in the late 1930s and 1940s.Other major influences he found on "The Street" were drummer legends "Big Sid" Catlett and Kenny Clarke, the father of modern jazz drumming. Brand, p. 12. His first professional job with a known big band was with the Bobby Byrne Orchestra in 1940.See Brand, pp. 5–7. In those years, as he became known, he recorded with jazz stars like Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Shavers, and Don Byas. He also worked with a number of musicians mainly associated with Duke Ellington, like Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Lawrence Brown, and Rex Stewart.According to Eugene Chadbourne he held a job in Van Alexander's orchestra when he was sixteen years old. See [ Van Alexander] at Allmusic. But this is impossible, since Manne didn't even learn to play the drums until late 1938, when he was eighteen. After that he began to sit in on 52nd Street and then played for a few months aboard a cruise ship in early 1939, after he graduated from high school. Following further engagements at resorts in the Catskill Mountains and more sitting in here and there, he got his job with Bobby Byrne in 1940. George T. Simon says that Alexander gave Manne his start in 1938. (Simon, p. 459.) While conceivable that Manne did perform briefly and informally with Alexander in late 1938, this is unlikely, as Manne was just learning the drums and still attending high school at that time. See Brand, pp. 5-7.
In 1942, during World War II, Manne joined the Coast Guard and served until 1945.West Coast Manne: Shelly Manne In The 1950s, Indiana Public Media, David Brent Johnson, June 9, 2020. Retrieved September 10, 2020.
In 1943, Manne married a Rockette named Florence Butterfield (known affectionately to family and friends as "Flip"),Brand, p. 15. See also "Mrs. Shelly 'Flip' Manne", American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers Web site a marriage that would last 41 years, until his death.
When the bebop movement began to change jazz in the 1940s, Manne loved it and adapted to the style rapidly, performing with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.When Gillespie came to 52nd Street, Manne was an eager listener and sat in when he could. He was, notably, the drummer on the first recording of Gillespie's "A Night in Tunisia" in 1945. In the words of Jack Brand, "Shelly...literally slid into the next era....His ears were always open, his mind ready to adjust...."(pp. 17-18). Around this time he also worked with rising stars like Flip Phillips, Charlie Ventura, Lennie Tristano, and Lee Konitz.Brand, pp. 35, 37, 40.
Manne rose to stardom when he became part of the working bands of Woody Herman and, especially, Stan Kenton in the late 1940s and early 1950s, winning awards and developing a following at a time when jazz was the most popular music in the United States.This popularity coincided largely with the growth of the big bands of the swing era. As James Lincoln Collier put it, "the swing band movement....brought jazz into the mainstream of American culture". See Collier, p. 277. Joining the hard-swinging Herman outfit allowed Manne to play the bebop he loved. The controversial Kenton band, on the other hand, with its "progressive jazz", presented obstacles, and many of the complex, overwrought arrangements made it harder to swing.Manne complained that playing with Kenton felt like "chopping wood". Gioia, p. 267. But Manne appreciated the musical freedom that Kenton gave him and saw it as an opportunity to experiment along with what was still a highly innovative band.Arganian, pp. 59-63. He rose to the challenge, finding new colors and rhythms, and developing his ability to provide support in a variety of musical situations.Brand, pp. 36-37.
In California In the early 1950s, Manne left New York and settled permanently on a ranch in an outlying part of Los Angeles, where he and his wife raised horses. From this point on, he played an important role in the West Coast school of jazz, performing on the Los Angeles jazz scene with Shorty Rogers, Hampton Hawes, Red Mitchell, Art Pepper, Russ Freeman, Frank Rosolino, Chet Baker, Leroy Vinnegar, Pete Jolly, Howard McGhee, Bob Gordon, Conte Candoli, Sonny Criss, and numerous others.To Gioia, Manne's drumming "constitutes one of the strongest bodies of work made on the coast during the 1950s"; West Coast Jazz devotes an entire chapter to him. Gioia, p. 265. Many of his recordings around this time were for Lester Koenig's Contemporary Records, where for a period Manne had a contract as an "exclusive" artist (that is, he needed permission to record for other labels).When Manne wanted to record an album with Thelonious Monk for the Riverside Label, for example, Orrin Keepnews of Riverside had to make a special arrangement with Koenig. Brand, p. 113.
Manne led a number of small groups that recorded under his name and leadership. One consisting of Manne on drums, trumpeter Joe Gordon, saxophonist Richie Kamuca, bassist Monty Budwig, and pianist Victor Feldman performed for three days in 1959 at the Black Hawk club in San Francisco. Their music was recorded on the spot, and four LPs were issued. Highly regarded as an innovative example of a "live" jazz recording,Gioia, pp. 280-81. the Black Hawk sessions were reissued on CD in augmented form years later.
West Coast jazz
Manne is often associated with the once frequently criticized West Coast school of jazz.Gioia, pp. 360-69. He has been considered "the quintessential" drummer in what was seen as a West Coast movement, though Manne himself did not care to be so pigeonholed.Gioia, p. 267; Brand, p. 111. In the 1950s, much of what he did could be seen as in the West Coast style: performing in tightly arranged compositions in what was a cool style, as in his 1953 album named The West Coast Sound, for which he commissioned several original compositions. Some West Coast jazz was experimental, avant-garde music several years before the avant-garde playing of Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman became mainstream (Manne also recorded with Coleman in 1959); a good deal of Manne's work with Jimmy Giuffre was of this kind. Critics would condemn much of this music as overly cerebral.Gioia, p. 232. See also Robert Gordon's response to such an attack by the French critic André Hodeir, Gordon, pp. 95-96.
Another side of West Coast jazz that also came under critical fire was music in a lighter style, intended for popular consumption.Gioia, p. 366. Manne made contributions here too. Best known is the series of albums he recorded with pianist André Previn and with members of his groups, based on music from popular Broadway shows, movies, and television programs. (The first and most successful of these was the My Fair Lady album based on songs from the musical, recorded by Previn, Manne, and bassist Leroy Vinnegar in 1956.) The recordings for the Contemporary label, with each album devoted to a single musical, are in a light, immediately appealing style aimed at popular taste. This did not always go over well with aficionados of "serious" jazz, which may be one reason why Manne has been frequently overlooked in accounts of major jazz drummers of the 20th century.Gioia (pp. 360-69) again discusses why so many West Coast players have tended to be written out of jazz history.
Much of the music produced on the West Coast in those years, as Robert Gordon concedes, was in fact imitative and "lacked the fire and intensity associated with the best jazz performances".Gordon, p. 1. But Gordon also points out that there is a level of musical sophistication, as well as an intensity and "swing", in the music recorded by Manne with Previn and Vinnegar (and later Red Mitchell) that is missing in the many lackluster albums of this type produced by others in that period.Gordon, pp. 142-44.
West Coast jazz, however, represented only a small part of Manne's playing. In Los Angeles, and occasionally returning to New York and elsewhere, Manne recorded with musicians of all schools and styles, ranging from those of the swing era through bebop to later developments in modern jazz, including hard bop, usually seen as the antithesis of the cool jazz frequently associated with West Coast playing.By the end of the 1950s, Manne's small group "had emerged as a high-powered blowing band with deep hard-bop roots". Gioia, p. 278.
Collaborations
From the 78-rpm recordings of the 1940s to the LPs of the 1950s and later, to the hundreds of film soundtracks he appeared on, Manne's recorded output was enormous and often hard to pin down.See Bill Korst's comments in Brand, "Foreword". According to the jazz writer Leonard Feather, Manne's drumming had been heard on well "over a thousand LPs"—a statement that Feather made in 1960, when Manne had not reached even the midpoint of his 45-year-long career.Feather, p. 321. This would include numerous uncredited appearances on others' recordings.
An extremely selective list of those with whom Manne performed includes Benny Carter, Earl Hines, Clifford Brown, Zoot Sims, Ben Webster, Maynard Ferguson, Wardell Gray, Lionel Hampton, Junior Mance, Jimmy Giuffre, and Stan Getz. In the 1950s, he recorded two solid albums with Sonny Rollins—Way Out West (Contemporary, 1957) received particular acclaim and helped dispel the notion that West Coast jazz was always different from jazz made on the East CoastBrand, p. 88; Gordon, pp. 144-45.—and, in the 1960s, two with Bill Evans. Around the same time in 1959, Manne recorded with the traditional Benny Goodman and the iconoclastic Ornette Coleman, a striking example of his versatility.
One of Manne's most adventurous 1960s collaborations was with Jack Marshall, the guitarist and arranger celebrated for composing the theme and incidental music for The Munsters TV show in that period. Two duet albums (Sounds Unheard Of!, 1962, and Sounds!, 1966) feature Marshall on guitar, accompanied by Manne playing drums and a wide variety of percussion instruments unusual in jazz, from "Hawaiian slit bamboo sticks", to a Chinese gong, to castanets, to piccolo Boo-Bam.