"Terry Gibbs Dream Band, Vol. 7:

The Lost Tapes, 1959,"

Latest Installment in Gibbs's

Archival "Dream Band" Series,

To Be Released Oct 11 (CD),

Nov 8 (Digital)

On Whaling City Sound

As Gibbs Turns 100

Legendary Vibraphonist/Bandleader

Unearths Incandescent Big Band Performances of Work by All-Star Arrangers,

Live in Hollywood in March & November 1959

September 23, 2024

The gift of Terry Gibbs’s vast tape archive keeps on giving with the October 11 release of Terry Gibbs Dream Band, Vol. 7: The Lost Tapes, 1959 on Whaling City Sound (digital release November 8). The newly discovered tapes find the vibraphonist and first-generation bebopper (still alive and kicking as his 100th birthday approaches on October 13) leading his legendary 16-piece Dream Band at two Hollywood nightclubs in March and November 1959. The 18 tracks feature superb performances by some of the finest arrangers in jazz history, delivered in stunning high fidelity.

Gibbs and his son, drummer/bandleader/co-curator Gerry Gibbs, thought they had exhausted the surviving documentation of Terry’s swing-boppin’ big band with the 2002 release of Vol. 6: One More Time. (Vols. 1-5 came out in fairly quick succession between 1986 and 1991.) Then, earlier this year, the elder Gibbs was going through the archival files on his son’s computer when he stumbled across one labeled “1959 Jazz Party.”

“I said, ‘Hey, what the hell is that?’” he recalls. “So I played it and it was the Dream Band.” Gibbs had booked the ensemble in the winter of 1959 at the Seville in Hollywood as a way of rehearsing them for a recording session without breaking union rules; when they packed the place, they were asked to stay on. After several weeks they moved to the Sundown, a club on the Sunset Strip, where they remained for about a year.

During that time, Gibbs built up a book with charts from an unbelievable list of arrangers, whose talents are on display here: Bob Brookmeyer (“Don’t Be That Way”), Al Cohn (“Cottontail”), Marty Paich (“Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise”), and the band’s tenor players, Med Flory (“Flying Home”) and Bill Holman (“Begin the Beguine”). “I talked with my arrangers,” explains Gibbs in Vol. 7’s liner notes, “and I wanted to have arrangements that presented the band as an ensemble band.”

That full-band focus doesn’t stop the soloists—among the best of the day—from giving crackling, hard-swinging performances. Trumpeter Conte Candoli sounds off brilliant on both the driving “Bright Eyes” and the ballad “Moonglow”; trailblazing trombonist Carl Fontana brings his brawny sound to “Let’s Dance”; and drummer Mel Lewis, soon to be big band royalty in his own right, defies the title of “No Heat” with his simmering fills and brief solo. And then there’s Gibbs himself, whose dusky signature tone on the vibes nevertheless illuminate “The Song Is You,” “Dancing in the Dark,” and “Prelude to a Kiss.”

“It was a labor of love,” says Gibbs of the Dream Band’s superlative work. “I made $11! The band got $15, but they didn’t mind! They were playing for the love of it!” On Dream Band, Vol. 7, that love for the music shines through.

Terry Gibbs was born in Brooklyn, New York on October 13, 1924, as Julius Gubenko. A member of a musical family (his father was a violin teacher and orchestra leader), he found his way to the mallets by playing his older brother Sol’s xylophone. He took lessons with drummer-percussionist Fred Albright at 9, won a radio talent show at 12, and hit the road with singer Judy Kayne’s band at 16.

While serving in the Army during World War II (stationed Stateside), Gibbs—who had taken the name to sound punchier on concert marquees and programs—heard Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie playing the new sounds of bebop, and it changed his life forever. Before long he was playing the music himself, making records with Allen Eager, Tadd Dameron, and Stan Getz in addition to touring and recording in the big bands of Bill De Arango, Buddy Rich, and Woody Herman (of whose “Four Brothers” band Gibbs was a vital member).

In the intervening decades, the list of names on Gibbs’s resume reads like a roll call for the Jazz Hall of Fame, from Benny Goodman to Ray Charles to Alice Coltrane. He has led quartets, quintets, sextets, and big bands, including the house bands for Mel Tormé, Steve Allen, and Jerry Lewis; played on recording sessions for John Lennon and Leonard Cohen; and written an award-winning biography in 2003’s Good Vibes: A Life in Jazz before he retired from performance at the age of 92. Gibbs continues to live an active life, however, appearing weekly on Facebook with his TG Q&A Show.

Photography: Rebekah Gibbs