Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

MUSIC:

Jazz Connection is widow’s link to spouse’s work

Tiffany Brown

Carolyn Freeman poses outside the recording studio where the Las Vegas Jazz Connection practices “My Fair Lady Swings” on the UNLV campus in Las Vegas on Thursday, July 16, 2009.

If You Go

  • What: Las Vegas Jazz Connection performs Shelly Manne’s “My Fair Lady Swings”
  • When: 2 p.m. Sunday
  • Where: UNLV’s Judy Bayley Theatre
  • Tickets: $17, $15 members of Las Vegas Jazz and Guitar societies; 895-2787

"My Fair Lady Swings"

Nathan Tanouye looks at notes while leading the Las Vegas Jazz Connection in a rehearsal for Launch slideshow »

Sun Event Calendar

Memo to Myron Martin of the Smith Center for the Performing Arts:

If you’re looking for a resident orchestra when the center opens in 2012, the Las Vegas Jazz Connection is available.

“We think we’re the perfect entity for the performing arts center,” says Carolyn Freeman, a 74-year-old bundle of energy who created the Las Vegas Jazz Connection. “They’re going to design a small theater in the center like the jazz room (the Allen Room) at Lincoln Center overlooking Central Park. The whole backdrop is glass.

“We can do the same thing here. I spoke to Myron and I told him that sounds like our theater.”

Freeman isn’t a musician. But the former dancer — she still teaches tap — was married to renowned jazz pianist Russ Freeman. Since his death in 2002, her passion has been to keep his music alive, which is why she created the Jazz Connection. The band recorded a CD of his music, “Crossings: The Russ Freeman Project.”

“I think we should be the resident band at the Smith Center,” Freeman says. “We have such a good representation of the young players in this town, and they can play behind anybody.”

Freeman and composer and arranger Nathan Tanouye (he’s also the trombonist for the Bette Midler show) formed the Jazz Connection in 2004. The big band has performed concerts at Red Rock Resort, the Orleans the Judy Bayley Theatre at UNLV, the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles and other venues. They have backed up the Cunninghams, the Inkspots, Tyia Wilson, Lindell Blake and Martin Nievera.

Sunday they will perform “My Fair Lady Swings” at UNLV.

Freeman has lived in Las Vegas off and on since the early ’60s. She was born in Portland, Ore., and raised in Salt Lake City, where she studied dancing.

“I’ve been a dancer all my life,” she says.

She was a swing girl with “Flower Drum Song” on Broadway in the late ’50s. When it went on the road, she became the stage manager as well as a dancer. The show came to Vegas in the early ’60s and was such a hit at the Thunderbird it was held over a year, left for six months, returned for six months, left and eventually returned a third time — without Freeman.

Eventually Freeman formed a Japanese revue and took the show to Hawaii before moving to Los Angeles to teach dance. That’s where she met Russ Freeman in 1978.

Freeman, a Chicago native, began making a name for himself on the West Coast jazz scene in the mid-’40s, playing mostly with bebop groups. He worked with Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker, Shorty Rogers and Wardell Gray, among others. He collaborated with Shelly Manne and Chet Baker. In the early ’60s Freeman devoted more time to other pursuits: supervising recordings, working with film composers such as Johnny Mandel and Manne associate Andre Previn, forming his own publishing company in 1962, and working as a music director for several nightclubs and TV shows.

“I had no idea he was the Russ Freeman until six months after we started dating. All I knew was he was a dance arranger in television,” she says.

They dated for seven years.

“Then, romantically, one day he said, ‘Would you marry me for my Social Security?’ and I said, ‘Well, I guess,’ ” she says. “I value all the time I spent with Russ. He was not only funny, he was very smart, brilliant.”

Though he was a great musician, her husband never listened to music at home, she says.

“He focused so hard when he listened it wasn’t relaxing,” Freeman says. “He couldn’t tune it out. He’d hear the scores in movies. At a particularly dramatic moment he’d say, ‘Carolyn, listen to that string line,’ and it blows the whole movie.”

The Northridge earthquake in 1994, which killed 72 and injured thousands, drove the Freemans out of Los Angeles, and they ended up in Las Vegas. Both were retired by then.

“He didn’t play music anymore,” she says. “I asked him, ‘Why don’t you play? It’s your gift?’ And he said, ‘It’s very painful.’ Russ was a perfectionist. He said, ‘When the music is wonderful, it’s unbelievable, but most of the time it’s not.’ ”

Freeman says Tanouye and the Jazz Connection are about as close to perfection as you can get.

“I’m trusting Nathan to keep his music alive,” she says.

Over the years, her ambition for the group has grown.

“We’re talking about going on and arranging new music by other artists,” she says. “We’ve done Russ now, and I’m pleased with that. My goal was that Russ’ music not die. I’m going to go on now and try to broaden our work, do other people’s music as well.”

Ultimately she envisions the Jazz Connection, composed of some of Tanouye’s closest musical associates, performing at jazz concerts and other settings around the world — in particular the Smith Center for the Performing Arts.

Big names came up with jazzy variation

The 17-piece Las Vegas Jazz Connection will perform “My Fair Lady Swings,” jazzed up songs from the 1956 Broadway musical, at a concert Sunday at UNLV.

“It’s a selection of songs from the show, preserving the story line,” producer Carolyn Freeman says. “It’s only about an hour long, seamless from beginning to end.”

The music is based on the 1964 Shelly Manne recording, “My Fair Lady, the Unoriginal Cast,” which was arranged by a young John Williams, who later wrote the music for “Star Wars.”

“This is a really great arrangement by John Williams,” says Nathan Tanouye, the 34-year-old composer, arranger and trombonist, who will conduct the orchestra. “Not many people know what Williams did before getting into writing film scores. It’s pretty fantastic.”

Manne was one of the most sought-after drummers in Los Angeles during a recording career that spanned the 1940s to the ’80s. Originally a saxophonist, Manne switched to drums when he was 18 and worked with such greats as Les Brown, Stan Kenton and Woody Herman. Manne began recording as a band leader on a regular basis in 1953 when he put together the quintet Shelly Manne and His Men.

He recorded a jazz instrumental version of “My Fair Lady” in 1956. The later recording included vocals by Jack Sheldon as Professor Henry Higgins and Irene Kral as Eliza Doolittle.

Sunday’s concert features local Vegas icon Clint Holmes as Higgins and Cyndi-Lee (former vocalist with “Jubilee!”) as Doolittle.

“They will have a different interpretation,” Freeman says. “They will make it their own.”

Her husband, pianist Russ Freeman, performed with Manne on the second jazzy version of “My Fair Lady.” Russ Freeman also played piano for the film version of the musical.

Manne and Russ Freeman were close friends and played together on several recording projects. Their last collaboration was “One on One” in 1982. Manne died in 1984. Freeman died in Vegas in 2002.

Freeman says Flip Manne — Shelly’s widow and president of the Los Angeles Jazz Society — granted the Jazz Connection permission to perform the work.

“We’re thrilled that she loaned us this music,” Freeman says. “We are very privileged. It has only been performed a few times.”

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