Jazz Connection Magazine

Jazz legend Howard Rumsey, above, as pictured at the Big

Band Academy Of America's annual reunion on March 7, 2004

in Studio City, CA. Rumsey, is synonymous with the West

Coast Jazz movement through his Lighthouse All-Stars.

- Photo by Stephen Fratallone/Jazz Connection Magazine

Although a good enough bassist to play with Stan Kenton's first big band, Howard Rumsey's major contribution to the annals of jazz music came as the organizer of the Lighthouse All-Stars, a loose-knit powerhouse amalgam of players which helped ignite a movement known throughout the1950s and '60s as West Coast Jazz, and as manager of the Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach, CA, an obscure venue which became a mecca for West Coast Jazz enthusiasts. In that aspect, Rumsey considers himself more of a salesman than anything else - selling the various talented musicians that came to play at the Lighthouse.

"I was not trying to make the guys in the All-Star group famous," said Rumsey, 87, via telephone from his home in Newport Beach, CA. "I hired them because in my mind they were already famous. I then 'sold' them to the uninitiated customers of the Lighthouse by presenting them as stars. The main emphasis was on the main individual players. I was selling every guy that was in that band all the time. I wasn't selling myself. I didn't have to. I had already been through that as a featured player with Stan Kenton. I didn't have time to concentrate on my own playing that much."

And what a sales job Rumsey did! During the twelve-year period from 1949 to1961, not only had he literally helped to put Hermosa Beach on the jazz map, but he helped to create something new and fresh in jazz: a special brand of music formed in a specific geographic area by a team of musicians that made some of the most thrilling and action-packed music since the break up of the Big Bands that transcended those geographic boundaries to touch the hearts of people around the world.

Rumsey was born on Nov. 7, 1917, in Brawley, CA, in the heart of the Golden State's Imperial Valley. His musical odyssey first began with the piano, then drums, and finally on bass.

It was Rumsey's participation in a city band as a child that ultimately peaked his life-long interest in music, he said.

"I was fascinated by musical sound as radio was just in its infancy," Rumsey said. "Fortunately, a master musician from England who studied at the music conservatory there came to Brawley to live. He suffered from asthma and the dry desert climate of the Imperial Valley was suppose to help him. He put together a city band. I got to play drums in that band. That's when I found out what a bandstand was all about. I fell in love with music and it's never left me."

After graduating from high school in 1935, Rumsey made the trek north to Los Angeles to attend Los Angeles City College. While there, he made the switch to bass after a musician friend told him there was a shortage of solid players on that instrument.

The following year Rumsey was playing bass in a local dance band, earning $23.50 per week, he said. The group was comprised of very young musicians who hailed from Alhambra, which borders the east side of Pasadena. It was while this band was playing at the Hut Ballroom in Hermosa Beach that the young bassist got his first look at the quaint beach town. It left such a pleasant and indelible impression on him, that he would return there years later to live, and ultimately, make jazz history.

"I fell in love with Hermosa Beach right then," Rumsey recalled. "It was so beautiful. It was a groovy little town. A lot of people from the motion picture industry lived there. The Lighthouse was there at the time. It was built in 1934 but it wasn't known as the Lighthouse then. It was an Italian restaurant called Verpoli's."

During the two intermissions the band got at night, Rumsey would walk the few steps from the Hut Ballroom to Verpoli's to check out the solo pianist whom he enjoyed listening to. Little did Rumsey realize that the place he was sitting in would one day be his "home away from home" for twenty-two years and a focal point in the West Coast Jazz movement.

After gigging around the Los Angeles area for a few years, Rumsey was hired by tenor saxophonist Vido Musso in late1938, his first professional job with a name band.

Rumsey first became aware of Musso three years earlier, when the burly, volatile Sicilian reedman was working for Everett Hoagland, a popular jazz bandleader in Los Angeles. The Hoagland orchestra was based at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa Beach, CA. Also in the band at the time was baritone saxophonist Bob Gioga and a tall, blonde piano player named Stanley Newcombe Kenton.

"That was the first time I heard Stan play," Rumsey said. "The way he sat at the piano and the way he conducted himself, I thought he was the leader anyway! (laughs)"

Soon after, Hoagland retired and moved to Mexico. Kenton became a free-lance musician in the Los Angeles area while Musso started his own band in early 1936, roosting at the Mandarin Ballroom in Redondo Beach, CA.

Musso, who exhibited a muscular tone on the tenor sax, was a fabulous soloist but was often criticized for being less-than-fabulous when it came to sight reading music.

"Vido was a master of solfeggio, an ear training practice where you hear anything and can play it note for note" Rumsey said. "He could fake his way through pretty good. In fact, a musician isn't a musician until he's got that down. That's where you hear with your eyes and see with your ears. That defines a real musician."

When Benny Goodman returned to play at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles on July 1, 1936, for a two-month engagement, Musso often sat in with the "King of Swing's" band when he wasn't leading his own at the Mandarin Ballroom, according to Rumsey.

"I went to the Palomar to hear Benny's band and it just fractured me, it was so great," Rumsey said.

When Goodman returned to New York in September, he took Musso with him as a permanent member of his band. Musso stayed with Goodman until Dec. 8, 1937. He then worked briefly with fellow Goodman band mate Gene Krupa when the flashy drummer started his own outfit in March 1938. Toward the latter part of that year, Musso was ready to front his own group.

"Vido received enough notoriety with Benny in the year that he was with him, that he went out and started his own band," Rumsey said.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Rumsey had met local alto saxophonist Jack Ordean at a jam session in Santa Monica. The two musicians hit it off right away and quickly became friends. Ordean would often take Rumsey around to various jam sessions in the area to meet other fellow musicians.

In late1938, Musso returned to the West Coast to organize his new band. He called his friend Ordean to come to rehearsal, Rumsey said. In turn, Ordean invited Rumsey to come along.

At the rehearsal, both Ordean and Rumsey noticed there were other bass players in attendance. Wanting his friend to be a member of Musso's band, Ordean intervened.

"Jack went up to Vido and asked if he was playing first alto in the band," Rumsey recounted. "Vido said that he was. Jack then told Vido as he pointed to me, 'Well, here's your bass player right here!' Just like that I was in."

Standing by the piano in the rehearsal hall was a tall, blonde man whom Rumsey recognized. He introduced himself to the young bassist by saying, "I'm Stanley Kenton." The pair would work together as sidemen in Musso's band.

"Stan never wrote for the band," Rumsey said. "He just listened to whatever other guys brought in."

During it's tenure, the Musso band cut twenty transcription recordings on the Triline and Galaxy labels.

While the band enjoyed some popularity, it was fleeting, largely due to the times and Musso's over-bearing persona.

"Vido had a tough time working because the war was coming on," Rumsey said. "He was a native of Italy and his last name, Musso, sounded too close to (Italian dictator) Mussolini. Vido also helped to create problems. He was always hitting on someone else's woman. He never called a tune by its right name. For instance, the tune The Girlfriend Of The Whirling Dervish was Whirling Wind."

By mid-1939, trumpeter, scat singer and comedian Johnny "Scat" Davis, probably best known for his acting and singing career, bought Musso's band. Davis retained all the band members, including Musso, while fronting the band himself. The new Davis Band immediately went out on the road doing a string of theater appearances. Kenton declined to go with the band, opting instead, to work in theater production in Los Angeles.

While on the road, Musso's persona once again caused difficulty for his fellow band members. Rumsey recalled one such incident that occurred at Chicago's famed Blackhawk Restaurant:

"Vido was a muscle guy. He got us in a scene that was unbelievable. During intermission Vido circulated among the patrons at the Blackhawk asking them if they liked the band and then telling them that it was actually his band and not Scats. When Scat heard about it, he was furious! He put the whole band on notice."

The incident was then brought to the attention of the iron-fisted musicians' union president, James Caesar Petrillo, for a resolution. Rumsey continues:

"We all met in Petrillo's office in Chicago to find out why Scat was giving the band notice. Petrillo's office was long and narrow and his desk, which took up the whole end of the room, sat on a riser. The chairs at the front of his desk were divided by an aisle-way. We all sat down. Petrillo was on the phone when we all entered. After he he hung up the phone, he asked, 'Who is Vido Musso?' Vido stood up and Petrillo told him to make a speech. Vido said he wanted to take the band to New York to work there. Petrillo said to him, 'Dumkoph!'

"Then Petrillo asked, 'Who is Scat Davis?' Scat stood up and made his speech. He told Petrillo that he had to put his band members on notice because Musso was going around telling people that this was his band. Petrillo then exploded saying, 'There is no argument here. I'm no good where there's no argument. Get out of here!'"

After that meeting with Petrillo, most of the band members left to go with Musso to New York. (Musso went on to play with Harry James in 1940 and returned with Goodman the following year before taking over Bunny Berigan's band after the trumpet giant's death in June 1942, and later became a stalwart in Kenton's 1945-1947 band.) Davis was left with two remaining musicians from the band - the piano player and Rumsey.

"I stayed with Scat because I knew I wasn't going to New York with Vido and panic out," Rumsey said.

After touring with Davis, Rumsey returned to San Diego to visit his parents. During his visit, he found out that Kenton was organizing a band and was in the market for a bass player. After contacting his former band mate, Rumsey became a founding member of Kenton's first band, Rumsey said.

Other founding members include Jack Ordean and Bill Lahey, alto saxophones; Red Dorris and Ted Romersa, tenor saxophones; Bob Gioga, baritone saxophones; Chico Alvarez, Frank Beach, and Earl Collier, trumpets; Lorin Aaron, Dick Cole, and Harry Forbes, trombones; Al Costi, guitar; Marvin George, drums. Arrangements for the band's book were written by Kenton himself and Joe Frizzo

The Royal Palms Hotel in Los Angeles was the site of the Kenton band's first official rehearsals. The band cut some demonstration records and sent them to various booking agencies in the area in hopes of securing work. When no responses came back from the booking agencies, Kenton himself contacted some of the ballroom operators he knew when he worked as a sideman in Hoagland's and Gus Arnheim's orchestras.

The Kenton band debuted on Memorial Day, 1941, at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa. Balboa Beach was a traditional gathering spot for high school and college students on holiday and summer vacation breaks. That weekend the kids made the Stan Kenton band an immediate success.

Aimed at dancers, the band was a good, tight, reasonably swinging aggregation. Most of Kenton's arrangements called for powerful brass section work and offered strong and interesting saxophone voicing. The music sounded modern, different and loud! Later, Kenton's style would be labeled as progressive.

"The only thing that was really definitive about Stan at that time was his piano playing because Earl Hines was his idol," Rumsey said. "He had that driving approach. He had indefinable ability to play the right thing at the right time. We were playing a gig on Central Avenue in Los Angeles. A black guy was on the floor underneath the piano listening to him. We played for dancers only, playing transcribed Jimmie Lunceford charts. The band was grooving and playing so well that I just kept on playing. I went into a vamp. Stan let me play about eight bars and he came in and set up an intro so that the band played the whole chart over again."

Stan Kenton's first band in 1941: L to R: Kenton, piano; Al Costi, guitar; Howard Rumsey, (electric) bass: Saxophones - Jack Ordean, Bill Lahey, Ted Romersa,

Red Dorris, Bob Gioga; Trombones - Dick Cole, Harry Forbes; Trumpets - Chico Alvarez, Frank Beach, Earl Collier; Drums - Marvin George.

"We always 'hit' at least once every night," Rumsey said. "No other band I ever worked with ever did that. That's the kind of intensity it had."

While Kenton's music gained converts on the West Coast where it had originated, other parts of the country initially remained a hard sell.

"That never entered the musicians' minds," Rumsey said. "We were only thinking about pleasing the people standing in front of the band."

The band waxed a handful of transcription recordings for Decca in Hollywood and New York between Sept. 11, 1941, and Feb. 13, 1942, which included El Choclo, Gambler's Blues, Lamento Gitano (Gypsy Lament), Tabu, This Love of Mine, Reed Rapture, Adios, and Concerto For Doghouse (A Setting In Motion).

It was the latter tune that helped Rumsey gain some recognition for himself as a bassist.

"Concerto For Doghouse was really a wonderful thing for me," Rumsey said. "It was in five flats which meant there were no open strings. I had to play some bass to really play it."

What also made Rumsey stand out was the type of bass he used. He didn't play the traditional acoustic stand up bass with its wide body. Rather, he played something new at the time: an electric stand up bass with a very narrow body that used tubes with the amplifier and speaker contained in the same cabinet.

"It was not a fun instrument," Rumsey said. "I played it for a year. The Rickenbacker guitar company built an electric bass and gave one to me and one to Moses Allen who was in Jimmie Lunceford's band."

The electric bass was so new at the time that even Decca Records president Dave Kapp was skeptical.

"When I walked into Decca with it," Rumsey recalled, "Dave Kapp was standing there and said to me, 'Don't you know that we've never recorded one of these things successfully?' I was so scared, I said, 'This will be the first one.' And I just went right on into the studio."

Just as things were going well for Rumsey, he incurred a rapid departure from the Kenton band when he was literally heaved off the bandstand at the Summit Ballroom in Baltimore in 1942 by Kenton himself after an onstage disagreement.

"That was something I needed because I didn't have any extra strings," Rumsey said. "Due to the humidity and the dampness in Baltimore during the summer, two strings broke and I only had two strings left on my bass. I had the G and E strings which made it impossible to play the parts right. I was trying to play them and Stan was horrified. He kicked me off the bandstand. I really needed it because I was dead wrong for not having any extra strings and I goofing around. The funny part of that was after I returned to California, later on we became very good friends. He never gave up on me. He helped me at the Lighthouse and he played at Concerts By The Sea three times. I would have to say that my best playing days were with Stan where we played straight-ahead swing."

And Rumsey, who is the sole surviving member of Kenton's first band, still has great respect and admiration for his former boss, who died on August 25, 1979, after suffering a stroke, at age 67.

"Stan was indefinable," Rumsey said. "He was driven. He had a vision and it never left him. He was incapable of being side tracked. He's the only bandleader that I ever knew who put money back into the business. You can search. Some bandleaders sponsored other bands, but those were money-making deals. Stan lost money on the Innovations In Modern Music and all those big ideas he had. He accepted the losses himself. When he went back to buy the Rendezvous Ballroom (in 1957), he sunk a lot of money to renovate it, and ended up losing the whole deal. It put him back on the road again."

After his embarrassing dismissal from Kenton, Rumsey returned to California and worked with the bands of Freddie Slack, Alvino Rey, Skinnay Ennis and Charlie Barnet. Rumsey helped to record one of Barnet's hit tunes, Skyliner (recorded Aug. 3, 1944, in Los Angeles). Also in the Barnet band at the time were trumpeter Peanuts Holland, pianist Dodo Marmarosa, guitarist Barney Kessel, and saxophonist Bob Poland.

As the draft was taking more and more of the best musicians away from bands, Rumsey thought it would be good for him artistically to start playing with combos, he said.

"After I played with Stan, I never played with another band that had that kind of concentration and intensity," Rumsey said. "I decided that I would never become a bass player if I didn't play in combos."

Rumsey then worked for almost a year in the Los Angeles area with trumpeter Joe "Wingy" Manone's group. Manone, a native of New Orleans, was tagged with the nickname "Wingy" as a child, when he lost his arm in a streetcar accident. Thereafter, he wore a prosthetic arm whenever performing, using it so well that very few people ever noticed his disability.

"I wanted to learn about playing Dixieland as a way of furthering my viewpoints," Rumsey said.

A fine trumpeter, Manone, who also appeared in a number of films, had an abrasive and egocentric personality.

"I was disappointed with Wingy because he always got us fired," Rumsey recalled. "He always had a job, but he could never keep it. He always acted like he had just 'arrived' and thought he was the biggest thing on earth."

After leaving Manone, Rumsey started working as a free-lance musician in Los Angeles. He thought about settling in Hermosa Beach, the little beach town that charmed him back in 1936. To his surprise, Rumsey soon discovered that things had changed there over the years.

On a Sunday afternoon, Rumsey walked to the building that once housed Verpoli's Italian Restaurant. But in 1948, Verpoli's was no longer there. It had now become The Lighthouse Cafe, a dimly lit 30 x 90-foot bar room serving hard liquor. Tending the empty bar was John Levine, who had bought the place a year earlier.

Levine, a Jewish immigrant from Canada, came to the States and settled in Chicago and married into a wealthy Jewish family. Levine moved to Los Angeles prior to the out break of World War II where he and his partner, Nate Scheinbaum, owned a dozen bars throughout the "City of Angels," according to Rumsey.

After the war, Levine and Scheinbaum decided to retire. Scheinbaum took his half of the money and settled in San Francisco. Levine, took his money and moved to Hermosa Beach where he indulged in his favorite past time: gambling, according to Rumsey.

When Rumsey walked into the Lighthouse Cafe, he asked Levine if he would be interested in having live jazz music at his place on Sunday afternoons. Levine shot back by saying that Sunday afternoons were the worst time for the liquor business. Rumsey replied that since Levine didn't have much business anyway, he might want to consider trying it. Since he had nothing to lose, Levine agreed.

The outside of the Lighthouse Cafe as it looked during

the mid-1950s. Note the All-Star line up on the marquis.

As the owner, Levine was to operate matters pertaining to bar and the Lighthouse Cafe, while Rumsey managed the affairs of music.

"I was the contractor," Rumsey said. "I was on salary and then Levine put me on a commission basis. It turned out to be a very good job for me. It was exactly what I had in mind when I went there. It was a steady job, a chance to live at the beach and a chance for me to get married, which I did. That marriage last 46 years. My wife died 6 years ago. The relationship I had with Levine was very unusual because I knew he was an addicted gambler. After I went to work at the Lighthouse, Levine would tell me he was going to Gardenia (a suburb of Los Angeles that had legalized card rooms). I never discussed his love of gambling. He was the type of man who could always cover his losses. He never talked to me about music. He left that up to me entirely. He was the most interesting man I ever knew. I never was the owner of the Lighthouse. Since Levine was Jewish, he needed a front man. He needed me in that context and it worked out fine. In the end, he did as much for Hermosa Beach as anyone who had ever lived there."

Rumsey formed the musical entertainment at the Lighthouse based upon the tradition that came from Sunday afternoon band concerts that were once performed in community parks and small jazz groups that played in clubs, he said.

"When I was with Kenton at Balboa in 1941, a few of the guys in the band and myself would go to the nearby Bamboo Room after our gig was over to hear whatever small band was playing there," Rumsey said. "That was actually the first place where I saw people sitting and listening to a jazz group. I said to myself, 'This is it!' It took me nine years to get back to a spot like that."

At the end of World War II, as the big bands began to dissolve, many musicians who played in those bands migrated from the East Coast to the West Coast in order to find steady and good-paying work in the recording studios. In order to work in the studios, a musician had to join the local musicians' union. However, the musicians' union required a six-month residency before a musician could become a member. During that interim period, many musicians took to playing "casuals" in order to eat.

"The Lighthouse provided a steady job for these musicians while they awaited their time to join the union," Rumsey said. "It was a way for all this talent to get settled in Southern California and to move into the studios, which was their desire and direction, really."

Many of those players who came to the Lighthouse came from the "hipper-sounding" bands of the period: Stan Kenton, Woody Herman, Boyd Raeburn, Claude Thornhill and Charlie Barnet, among others.

Calling his new musical aggregation "The Lighthouse All-Stars," Rumsey assembled the finest of array of talent from these "hipper-sounding" bands. Early All-Star members included trumpeter Shorty Rogers; saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre; trombonist Milt Bernhardt; pianists Hampton Hawes and Frank Patchen; drummer Shelly Manne; and of course, Rumsey on bass. Soon other amazing talent came through the Lighthouse Cafe doors such as saxophonists Bob Cooper, Bill Perkins, Bud Shank, and Art Pepper; trumpeters Conte Candoli, Maynard Ferguson, and Jack Shelton; trombonist Frank Rosolino; pianists Claude Williamson and Sonny Clark; and drummers Max Roach and Stan Levey, among others. Even trumpeters Miles Davis and Chet Baker hung out and recorded with the All-Stars.

The average player stayed as a Lighthouse All-Star for about 18 months, while some stayed longer, according to Rumsey.

"Bob Cooper stayed for nine years," Rumsey said. "Stan Levey stayed for five." (Levey, one of the few surviving members of the All-Stars, passed away on April 22, two months after undergoing cancer surgery. He was 79.)

The Sunday afternoon jam sessions at the Lighthouse Cafe was inaugurated on Jan. 1, 1949, and they took off like wildfire. What started out to be a popular experiment soon turned into a movement. The sessions often displayed the bristling energy associated with hard bop on the opposite coast. "West Coast Jazz" was now the buzzword and the All-Stars personified it. But what exactly was "West Coast Jazz?"

"It was a tag that the record companies put out," Rumsey said. "When I put the All-Stars together, I wasn't thinking about 'West Coast Jazz.' West Coast Jazz is just a label."

At the time, Rumsey explained, the jazz record industry was being operated by independent labels. These recording companies had to get established and they, too, took advantage of all the eastern talent that was moving out to the West Coast. In order to generate commercial interest for their recording artists, the companies differentiated between East Coast and West Coast Jazz.

"The group was always swinging and what we played was not hot or cool. It was in between," Rumsey said. "Since I was in the band, I was not what you'd call a first-line bass player. I was still coming out of the (early) Kenton, Count Basie and Goodman line of thought as far as time was concerned. The basic time underneath still came out of the previous period. It wasn't cool. It wasn't hot. There was no attempt on my part to get into a modern cool approach to modern jazz. I'm glad I did that because that's what gave the group distinction. The bottom line on the All-Stars was the guys in the front line like Jimmy Giuffre and Shorty Rogers and the rest were leading the way."

Because of each musician's depth of talent, it spurred Rumsey on to become a better player, too, he said.

"In the All-Star group very few bass parts were written for me," Rumsey said. "I never wrote a tune in my life, but for all those years, I was allowed to make up my own bass parts. It made a better musician of me and it gave me greater joy."

While the array of talent at the Lighthouse was great, their egos weren't. The musicians were always ready, willing and able to play whatever tune Rumsey suggested.

"The one redeeming thing about the whole Lighthouse scene, was the fact that when I was on the bandstand, I called every single tune that was played," Rumsey said. "Not one of those great players ever said, 'I don't want to play that tune.' I was programming according to the way the room was working."

Once these All-Star sessions took off and the Lighthouse Cafe became a happening place, musicians came knocking at the door. In addition to the marathon Sunday afternoon jazz concerts, which ran from continuously from 2 p.m. until 2 a.m., the All-Stars began performing at the Lighthouse on a nightly basis.

"The fact that guys like Shelley Manne, Shorty Rogers, Jimmy Giuffre, Milt Bernhardt and the others were working there just opened the doors for all the rest of the guys," Rumsey said. "I brought in guest artists to the Lighthouse on Sundays: one in the afternoon, and one in the evening. We had guest artists such as Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker."

Even when some of the bebop musicians lost steam in the 1950s, Rumsey was able to bring them around as part of the Lighthouse fold, he said.

"During World War II, the government put a fifteen percent tax on singing and dancing," Rumsey said. "It was added on to the customers' checks. Instrumental music was not taxed. That was going to make entertainers out of instrumentalists. That is one reason why there became a circuit of clubs throughout the U.S. where a guy coming out of New York could work in five or six cities and go back to New York and make it all happen. Levine loved this tax because he didn't have to pay taxes on the music but he could add money to his drinks as soon as the music started. Nobody complained. That tax stayed on for a long time and was forgotten by everybody. It didn't come off until the 1980s. Over all, it made the Lighthouse a better buy for the general public."

Howard Rumsey, middle, with

drummers Shelly Manne, left,

and Max Roach, right, in 1954.

And the general public clamored for more. Rumsey was bombarded with requests and offers to take the Lighthouse All-Stars on tour, but he wouldn't do it. In the twelve years the All-Stars were in existence, they never strayed any farther than the city limits of Los Angeles.

"The reason why we didn't tour was simply that I was determined that I wasn't going to go on the road," Rumsey said. "I had already done it and so had the musicians."

"I was concentrating on the Lighthouse and I was not looking for a recording contract," Rumsey said. "An associate of Lester Koenig, who owned Contemporary Records, came to the Lighthouse to look for talent for his independent label. We talked and we reached an agreement."

As Rumsey surmised, once recordings were made, the record company wanted Rumsey and the All-Stars to go out and promote their records with concert tours.

"I was concentrating on the Lighthouse and I wasn't concentrating on promoting records," Rumsey said. "I found out right away that as soon as we made some records and they were really selling and got some prominence in the recording field as a unit, then the record company wanted me to go out on the road to sell records. Levine said to me, 'Stay where you are, Howard. They'll come to you.' I had to make a decision. Was I going to concentrate on being a help to Lester Koenig and the record business or to work with John Levine? The latter was what I had originally wanted to do. I made my decision to stay."

But some of the All-Stars didn't stay, because they couldn't. Once All-Star record sessions began taking off, other record companies came looking to sign individual musicians to exclusive recording contracts. This jeopardized the stability and cohesiveness of the group as a whole when it came to making All-Star recordings.

"The Victor label picked up Shorty Rogers and once he signed on with Victor, he couldn't use his name on any one else's records," Rumsey recalled. "I was faced with a dynamic problem. All these minor labels wanted to sign everyone that was working at the Lighthouse. I told Shorty that if I couldn't use his name, I wouldn't be able to keep him at the Lighthouse. I wished him well, which I did. I told the rest of the guys that if they wanted to work here and sign an independent recording contract with a record company, that's fine with me, but they'd have to use their name on my albums or they wouldn't be able to work here. I just saved myself with that. Otherwise, the independent labels would have taken all the talent."

The Contemporary label recorded Rumsey's All-Stars on a regular basis from 1952 to1957, making over twenty albums, including Mexican Passport (1952 with Maynard Ferguson); Sunday Jazz A La Lighthouse, Volume 1 and 2 (1953); Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars (1953), Volume 3 (1953), and Volume 6 (1955); Witch Doctor (1953 with Chet Baker); In The Solo Spotlight (1954); Oboe And Flute (1954); Music For Lighthousekeeping (1956); and Jazz Rolls Royce (1957).

The Lighthouse All-Stars only made one record after 1957, an outing for Philips, Jazz Structures, in 1961, before passing into history.

"I like four albums we made," he said. "In The Solo Spotlight taught me a lesson because my best-selling albums are the ones with the exact personnel with whom I was appearing. I had two basic groups: one with Shorty and Giuffre, and then another with Conte Candoli and Stan Levey. I also like Lighthouse All-Stars, Volume 3 and Volume 6, and the Oboe And Flute album."

In the 1980s, the group was revived for some appearances and further Contemporary recordings; the last version featured Shorty Rogers, Cooper (after Coop's death on Aug. 6, 1993, at age 68, Jack Nimitz took his place), Bud Shank, Bill Perkins, Pete Jolly, Monty Budwig, and Larance Marable.

Thanks to Rumsey's leadership, the All-Stars were not just a group of musicians gathered together just to play gigs, but rather, they were one big family.

"I considered the All-Stars all first-rate players and I was thrilled to think that they would be part of the Lighthouse group," Rumsey said.

As in most families, each sibling tries to find his or her own personal expression of who they are through the latest fads. The All-Stars were no different, as Rumsey humorously recounts:

"When foreign cars came to America, everyone had a foreign car. Coop had an Austin-Healy. Shank had something else. I bought a Sunbeam Talbot. Next came sailing and we all got sail boats. Shank was a racer. That all started when an oil man's son wanted the All-Stars to play on his father's 143-foot yacht. We sailed for a 48-hour exertion. Then everybody got into buying homes. I bought a home just ten minutes from the Lighthouse in nearby Torrance. It was the best investment I ever made in my life."

As a way of promoting jazz education and competition among college students, Rumsey organized an intercollegiate jazz festival at the Lighthouse each year during Easter week. During its twelve-year run, the contest awarded First, Second, and Third Place trophies. The event was also designed to give college students a fun and creative way to spend their holiday.

"In the early days when I was with Kenton, if you weren't in Balboa during 'Bal Week,' you weren't living," Rumsey said. "If you didn't make it to the Rendezvous Ballroom, you weren't alive. Finally the cops put 'Bal Week' out of business. That was a shame. Easter week is a great time, especially for college kids. I thought maybe if I let college bands play at the Lighthouse during Easter week, no one would bother us and it would a worthwhile thing. It turned into a much better thing than I thought. The young musicians bought it and they loved it."

Many of the current great players of today participated in the program including Don Menza, Lanny Morgan, Pete Christlieb, Chuck Berghofer, Bob Florence, Ian Bernard, Les McCann, Mike Wofford, and John Guerin.

The Intercollegiate Jazz Festival was such a success that it evolved into a much bigger event called "Beat The Band," that was held at the Hollywood Bowl for a number of years.

"Bob McDonald, a jazz educator at Los Angeles City College, heard about The Intercollegiate Jazz Festival and came to me and said he would like to have it hosted at the Hollywood Bowl," Rumsey said. "He wanted to call it 'Beat The Band' contest. I said it was good idea. That's where it went and that's what it became. That lasted another ten years and that really made me happy."

By the end of 1961, with most of his prominent players having moved on, Rumsey disbanded the Lighthouse All-Stars.

"The well of talent had run out," Rumsey said. "The musicians had moved into the studios and all had their own recording contracts. The wind wasn't blowing in the same direction any more. I talked to Levine about it. I told him we should starting bringing in other groups. He agreed."

One of the first "outside" groups to play at the Lighthouse was a quintet led by alto saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderly, Rumsey said.

"John and I took Cannonball, his parents and brother to Marineland (in Long Beach) for the day," Rumsey said. "They had never been there. It was fun."

Rumsey continued his stint at the Lighthouse for another ten years, playing a few nights a week with a quartet while contracting upcoming and more established jazz artists.

In 1970, John Levine suddenly died of a heart attack. Rumsey stayed on at the Lighthouse for another year, before leaving to launch the next faze of his career.

"John and I worked together for twenty-two years on a handshake," Rumsey said. "After the last Sunday concert at the Lighthouse was over, I started the next day putting Concerts By The Sea together."

From 1971 to 1985, Rumsey owned and operated Concerts By The Sea in nearby Redondo Beach, CA. It was a distinctive club that provided an ideal tiered, concert-seating venue (seating 200) which offered the finest jazz in the Los Angeles area. Many of the genre's brightest stars performed there during its fifteen-year run.

In 1985, Rumsey closed the doors of Concerts By The Sea for good and went into retirement.

"In the fifteen years that I was there, I had three different land lords," Rumsey said. "The last guy put the rent up to $4,000 a month. Since I didn't have enough seating capacity, I said to him,' How am I going to raise this kind of money?' He answered, 'Raise your prices.' So, in effect, he became the entrepreneur and I became the doorman. I had to start hiring groups that I really didn't like at all, like Kenny G and guys like him. It became a different thing entirely. I had to have Ticket Master otherwise I wouldn't have been able to stay in business.

"I hired (bassist) Stanley Clarke with a trio and he showed up with 4,000 pounds of sound equipment! I had to wear aircraft ear plugs to keep from losing my hearing. I said to myself, 'What am I doing?' I paid all my bills and walked out of there and retired. I just felt that the place was impossible to operate. I was doing two shows a night and forcing people to leave, which is something I never did at the Lighthouse. After 37 straight years in that business, I was also pretty well physically exhausted. Here's the other part that was so devastating: I never got to go out to see what other clubs were doing. I had to be there all the time every night because I couldn't leave something like that to somebody else because they don't have the background in order to understand it. They can't learn it in three years."

Even in retirement, Rumsey continues to be one of jazz music's enthusiastic cheerleaders. Although he doesn't play his bass anymore, he remains active with the Los Angeles Jazz Society, an organization dedicated to supporting jazz in the "City of Angels" and jazz education in the schools.

"All the players that I hear today are guys that I knew as young musicians who were just getting started," Rumsey said. "I feel it's important to go and hear them because I know that they have paid a lot and are being forced to play gigs now that they would not necessarily play. I'm only trying to let them know that someone appreciates them. It pleases me so much to help anyone that's interested in music or any player who has made a success of himself. I would like to acknowledge that somehow. I hope to be able to continue to support these guys in an effort that they can really enjoy the fruit of their great talent. There are so many great players in Los Angeles right now, it's frightening."

Rumsey is also the subject of a biography in process being written by historian Ken Polston.

"Ken has been interviewing Lighthouse players for years for this book," Rumsey said. "It comes from the musicians who were involved in making the music from this period."

There's also a DVD being produced about the Levine-Rumsey association, Rumsey said.

And occasionally, Rumsey also makes the short trek from his Newport Beach home to Hermosa Beach to visit the place that was his former "home-away-from-home" for twenty-two years - the Lighthouse Cafe - still located at 30 Pier Avenue. The Lighthouse today does not hold the splendor that it once had, but still remains a jazz spot on Sundays.

"I'm always disheartened when I go because it's a dingy, dirty place," Rumsey said. "I wish the owners would clean it up."

Since the opening of the New York's Village Vanguard in 1935, the Lighthouse, thanks to Rumsey's vision, has been one of the longest-running jazz venues in America.

When the All-Stars were working there, we were young and played to young people," Rumsey said. "The place is still doing a gang of business catering to young people. The people playing there now are the very same age as we were back in the '50s. This is what mystifies people."

Because of Rumsey's contributions to jazz and to Hermosa Beach, that city's historical society has been meeting with him to discuss the possibility of opening a jazz museum in that small beach town.

"The more we know and uncover about the past will determine what I've done or if I've accomplished anything or what my role was," Rumsey said modestly about his legacy. "Being involved with the Lighthouse and Concerts By The Sea has been a wonderful thing for me. I enjoyed it all."