Jazz Connection Magazine

Eighty-seven-year-old Billy Bauer, pictured above, at his guitar studio in 2003.

Jazz guitarist Billy Bauer, who was a member of Woody Herman's thundering First Herd of 1944-1946, and who later worked with Lennie Tristano, Benny Goodman and Charlie Parker, died on Friday, June 17, 2005, in Melville, NY. He was 89.

Bauer, who lived in Albertson, NY, died of complications from pneumonia, said his daughter, Pamela.

He developed much of his solo technique while playing with Tristano's group, which he joined in 1946. Before that, he had played mostly rhythm guitar.

Bauer recorded both with the band and with individual members, such as saxophonists Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh.

He founded a publishing company, William H. Bauer Inc., to publish compositions by himself, Tristano, Konitz and Marsh.

He was twice named Best Guitar by Metronome's Readers' Poll from 1948-49 and from1949-50. He went on to work with Goodman and Parker, and recorded one album as band leader: Plectrist, from 1956.

As the jazz recording industry began to fade, Bauer switched to teaching, opening the Billy Bauer Guitar School in Albertson, NY, on Long Island, in 1970. He continued teaching lessons until shortly before his death.

Born in the Bronx, Bauer first played banjo and ukulele before changing to guitar in his teens.

The following article on Billy Bauer was originally published in the September 2003 issue of Jazz Connection Magazine.

Guitarist Billy Bauer may have blended very well playing with many jazz musicians, but he was and continues to be a stand out plectrist in jazz music. Known best for his stints in Woody Herman's thundering First Herd and in pianist Lennie Tristano's alternative jazz ensembles, Bauer is one of the few jazz guitarists of his generation to avoid the influences of Charlie Christian and he is considered by many as a major living link in the evolution of the jazz guitar.

"One of the things I did was that I 'comped' with the ensembles and bands," said Bauer, 87, from his second-story guitar studio in Albertson, NY, on Long Island. "Not that what I did was ever done before. It was, but not to that extent. The basic thing is that I was so dumb that I would blend with whomever I played with. I played in Dixieland groups, swing groups, modern jazz groups, even Irish musical groups. I played with every kind of combination you can think of. Before he died, (trumpeter) Charlie Shavers told me he liked the way I backed him up. Even (drummer) Max Roach said the same thing. I blend well. I'm not trying to cut them."

By the end of the 1940s, Bauer was considered the best guitarist in jazz, winning the Metronome All-Stars Readers' Poll several times. His 1959 guitar solo on Greenway, remains a textbook example of his modern approach to harmony and composition that continues to inspire new generations of guitarists.

William H. "Billy" Bauer was born on Nov. 14, 1915, in Bronx, NY. His mother played organ in a church and his father, a German immigrant, was a vaudevillian song and dance man who performed under the name of Harry Nelson.

"My father's introduction was, 'Harry Nelson: He Says He Sings,'" Bauer said with a chuckle. "But he did get to be in a Broadway show called School Days."

Having an actor in the family was something that didn't sit well with the song and dance man's father who believed working hard at a craft was the only way to get ahead in their newly-adopted country.

"My grandfather didn't like my father to be an actor," Bauer said. "When my father went up to Ossining, NY, to open School Days, my grandfather told him don't ever come back home until you are ready to get a real job. Eventually, my father conceded. He came back and went to work in the print factory which my grandfather owned. He became a printer."

Bauer's grandparents also owned a board and livery stable where work horses and buggies were rented out. As a result, young Bauer and his numerous cousins got their first jobs working as stable boys, he said.

"Us kids had to do work," Bauer said. "We had to clean the stables and bring the horses food and water. My grandmother was married with six kids before she met my grandfather. After they were married, they had six more kids! I had a large collection of aunts and uncles."

As a family, the Bauer's always sang, especially during their weekly Sunday afternoon car rides to Almond, NY, 16 miles away, where the family congregated for coffee and doughnuts, Bauer said.

"We'd sing all the way up and all the way home," Bauer recalled. "We had an open-air Ford touring car, the ones that you had to crank up to get it started. We were one of four families on our block that owned an automobile."

"My mother got an old baby carriage and hired this 13-year-old girl to push me around all summer long," Bauer said. "A friend of mine gave me a pair of drum sticks and I started drumming on my plaster cast. My father came home one day with a ukulele and gave it to me to play. At that time, 'Ukulele Ike' was very popular on radio and records. By the end of that summer, I could play some tunes on the ukulele." ("Ukulele Ike," whose real name was Cliff Edwards, went on to greater fame in 1940 as the voice of the Walt Disney character, Jiminy Cricket.")

Shortly thereafter, Bauer's father presented his young son with a tenor banjo. The youngster took banjo lessons from a Mr. Beca, a street-wise man who owned the neighborhood candy store, Bauer said.

By age 12, Bauer became so proficient on the tenor banjo that his father got his young son jobs working in speakeasies, Bauer said.

"My father would see ads in the newspapers like 'Banjo Player Wanted For Saturdays,' or something like that, and he would take me to see the owners," Bauer recalled. "One of the owners, Johnny Lane, was skeptical about hiring me because of my age. My father said, "Why don't you try him? Let him play.' I played for him and he hired me. His wife had to bring me to the club when my father couldn't take me."

Although he entertained in speakeasies, Bauer seemed unafraid to play in an environment frequented by gangsters, he said.

At 16, Bauer played his first out-of-town in residence job in Rockaway, NY, a place owned by noted gangster Waxy Gordon.

"We'd be sitting around for two days and all of a sudden people would come in and the boss would say, 'Get up there and start now,'" Bauer said. "We'd start playing and the whole place would get jammed."

During the summer after his junior year in high school, Bauer played in a band at various resorts in the Catskill Mountains. Upon his return to school on the first day after summer vacation, Bauer was boasting to friends, albeit in jest, about the many "adult" experiences of which he supposedly engaged. A teacher came along after overhearing the teen banjoist's comments and believing the comments to be inappropriate, whacked him over his hands with a yard stick. The incident led to Bauer dropping out of high school.

"I got up and said, 'That's it! I'm through!'" Bauer said. "I walked out and I never went back. My father never went to school either, so he didn't mind."

Bauer then began to hang out with bar room pianist Bob King, "who could play a million tunes," according to Bauer. The association helped the young plectrist to get his ear accustomed to playing just about any kind of song.

"I guess that's why I got work because I was schooled in just playing tunes," he said.

From there, Bauer played in a group at Broad Channel, NY, replacing a black band which never returned to perform at that venue. The group Bauer was in was hired to play for dancing and for musical back up for an all-black girl show.

"After a few nights at this gig, we knew why this black band never returned," Bauer said. "We started around 8:30 p.m. and the boss would put out bottles of gin, rye, and scotch on the bandstand. We couldn't leave the bandstand until everyone went home, and that could be 4 in the morning. Because of all the booze we drank, we had to go to the bathroom in shifts. If I had to go, the piano player and drummer would have to stay on stage and continue playing. If the piano player had to go, the drummer and I would stay, etc. It was like being held hostage."

In 1933, after Prohibition was repealed, Bauer made the switch to guitar as the usage of the stringed instrument was gaining popularity over the banjo in many bands. He continued playing banjo while in Leo Clinton's band, a seven-piece outfit from the Bronx. When Clinton suddenly quit, Bauer was made leader and the instrumental switch was made.

"I bought my first electric guitar when I became a leader, a Rickenbacker," Bauer said. "It was a plastic guitar that looked like a frying pan."

Also in Clinton's band at the time were drummer Russ Williams and a young enthusiastic piano player named Harry Raab, who emerged in 1944 as Harry "The Hipster" Gibson, combining song and jive. Gibson was best-known for tunes such as Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?, I Stay Brown All Year 'Roun', and Get Your Juices At The Deuces. Gibson died in May 1991 at age 75.

Bauer and Gibson worked together for one summer playing for a yacht club in New Jersey, according to Bauer.

"Harry wanted me to go and work with him in a group he called 'The Domino Boys: The White Boys With The Black Rhythm,'" Bauer said.

Bauer gigged with smaller groups around The Big Apple playing downstairs at one night spot while trumpeter Bobby Hackett was playing with his group upstairs at the same venue, Bauer said.

It was during this time that Bauer began listening with an attentive ear to the music of young guitar phenom Charlie Christian, who reached stardom with Benny Goodman's orchestra from 1939 to 1941. Christian died of tuberculosis in March 1942 at age 23.

"All the other guitarists went for Django Reinhardt, but he was a crazy player!" Bauer said.

Bauer then started getting jobs playing in larger bands such as those led by Henry Jerome, Carl Hoff, clarinetist Jerry Wald and Abe Lyman.

In 1943, Bauer joined Lyman, who led a solid and successful commercial outfit many years before the big band boom began. Prior to getting an invitation to join Lyman and his Californians, Bauer was working with a comedy show band at The Metropole, a famed nightclub in New York City.

"Lyman's booker, Al Pollack, told me that Abe was looking for a guitar player and he invited me to come over to the Lincoln Hotel where the band was playing and to play a set," Bauer recalled. "I started The Metropole job at 9 p.m. and Lyman's band started at 7 p.m. So I went over the next night."

When Bauer got on the bandstand, he noticed there wasn't any music for the guitar, he said.

"The band started to play and Abe pointed to me saying, 'You take it,'" Bauer said. "He didn't even ask me if I knew the tune or not. I got through the set and Abe said to me, 'Hey, Kid, when are you going to take it out of the case?' I got up and walked right out of the place."

As Bauer was making his way out of the hotel, Pollack came running after him and asked where he was going.

"Are you kidding?" Pollack replied. "After you started playing, Abe waved to me to get you. Don't be an idiot. You'll make about $8,000 next year. Abe treats the guys very well. Plus, we do nightly broadcasts."

Pollack smoothed things over with Bauer and the booker told Lyman that the guitarist would take the job.

In Lyman's band at the time were such outstanding musicians as Sy Zentner and Ray Heath on trombones; Marty Gold on Violin; Wolffe Tannenbaum on tenor sax; Bill Clifton on piano; and Sid Weiss on bass.

It was his friendship with tenor saxophonist Flip Phillips that eventually led Bauer to join clarinetist/alto saxophonist Woody Herman's orchestra in the spring of 1944.

I first met Flip when he was playing clarinet in (trumpeter) Frankie Newton's band," Bauer said. "We formed a sextet and we'd play after hours. One night Abe came to hear us and he liked it and wanted to put us on the next show to broadcast. We played one of my tunes, Burma Bomber."

Shortly thereafter, Phillips got the nod to join Herman, who was revamping his aggregation from "The Band That Plays The Blues" into an explosive modern jazz unit. Herman's earlier band had a hit in 1939 with Woodchopper's Ball.

"Flip recommended me to Woody," Bauer said. "I joined the band a few days later in Detroit."

Herman's new band, which would later become known as "The First Herd (1944-1946)," reflected spirited, muscle-flexing exuberance in its music. The band during this period boasted new and exciting young talents in Sonny Berman, Pete Candoli and his younger brother, Conte, Carl "Bama" Warwick, Ray Wetzel and Shorty Rogers on trumpets; Bill Harris and Ralph Pfiffner on trombones; Sam Marowitz and John LaPorta on alto saxophones; Phillips, Pete Mondello and Mickey Folus, tenor saxophones; Skippy DeSair and Sam Rubinowitch, baritone saxophone; and an ironclad rhythm section of Chubby Jackson, bass; Ralph Burns, Tony Aless, and later, Jimmy Rowles, piano; Bauer, guitar; Dave Tough and later, Don Lamond, drums; and Margie Hyams and later, Red Norvo, vibraphone. Burns and trumpeter Neil Hefti contributed stunning arrangements, while the band's "girl" singer, Francis Wayne, shared the vocal duties with Herman.

"It was a swinging band, that's for sure," Bauer said. "It had fire. I guess the rhythm section had something to do with it, too. The tight rhythmic sound just came. It seemed natural. Everyone just played the way they played. That was the good part."

Woody Herman's First Herd in late 1944. Guitarist Billy Bauer is seated second from left, front row, behind Herman

Featured soloists included Margie Hyams, vibes, seated on Bauer's right; Flip Phillips, tenor sax, next to Herman; drummer

Dave Tough; Pete Candoli, second trumpet from the left; Bill Harris, middle trombone; and Chubby Jackson, bass.

This band, which lasted until late 1946, recorded some of the most exciting big band jazz ever waxed.

Three things stood out about the First Herd: the cohesiveness and power of the brass sections and the muscular, distinctive solo voices of Phillips on tenor sax and Harris on trombone.

The band was always jamming, creating new tunes built on an idea or riff, thus building the band's library with "head arrangements."

"Whoever came up with some kind of a thing, it would get harmonized, then it became a 'head arrangement,'" Bauer said. "I don't know of too many bands at that time that made 'head arrangements.'"

Under Bauer's watch, the Herman Herd recorded some of the most thrilling big band jazz ever to be waxed. Many of those "head arrangements" turned into hits including Apple Honey and Laura (both recorded on Feb. 19, 1945, with Herman on the vocal on the latter tune); Caldonia and Happiness Is A Thing Called Joe (both on Feb. 26, 1945, vocals by Herman and Wayne, respectively); Goosey Gander and Northwest Passage (both March 1, 1945); The Good Earth (Aug. 10, 1945); Bijou (Aug. 20, 1945); Your Father's Moustache (Sept. 5, 1945); Wildroot (Nov. 16, 1945); and Blowin' Up A Storm (Dec. 10, 1945).

Bauer also recorded will small spin-off groups, including those led by Phillips (The Flip Phillips Fliptet on the Signature label), Harris and Jackson (both on the Mercury label). He also recorded with Herman's "band within a band," The Woodchopper's, on such gems as Igor, a tribute to Igor Stravinsky, Nero's Conception, Fan It and Pam, a formalized arrangement of his own Billy Bauer's Tune (all four recorded on May 20, 1946). Herman waxed Billy Bauer's Tune on V-Disc # 825 on Jan. 24, 1945.

The First Herd packed so much energy into its playing that it caused the hairs on Bauer's arms to stand up. In The Woodchopper's Ball: The Autobiography Of Woody Herman by Woody Herman and Stuart Troup, Bauer is quoted recalling that incident: "Eastwood Gardens in Detroit was an open-air place, and we were playing there once when it started to drizzle. They didn't want to cancel, so they moved the whole band under a shed, and all the people were jammed in there on top of us. The band just wailed that night. When we stopped, nobody said anything. The hair was standing up on my arms. I said to Davey Tough," Look." And he pulled up his sleeve and said the same thing."

By the latter part of 1945, the First Herd was America's favorite swing band, with its own commercially sponsored national radio show, The Woody Herman Show, sponsored by Wildroot Cream Oil for the hair. The thirty-minute show ran from Oct. 13, 1945 to July 5, 1946. It was aired over the ABC network on Saturday evenings, then Friday evenings at 8 p.m. The band's popularity matched its musical excellence; it was breaking theater and ballroom records. It won Down Beat and Metronome polls; Phillips, Harris and Tough also garnered Number One spots on their respective instruments.

"The First Herd was the richest band financially for Woody," Bauer said. "His other bands may have been better musically, but the First Herd made him the most money."

Speaking of money, Bauer related two anecdotes on that subject in Herman's autobiography: "Abe Turchen, who was the road manager, was quite a character. After we played in a fight arena in Birmingham, AL, one time, Abe had a bag over his shoulder when he came on the bus. He looked like Santa Claus. And in the bag was the money that was taken in from the performance."

Bauer would also ask for raises from "The Woodchopper" a number of times and got them. But one time when he asked, Herman told him he'd think about it. "We hit this town and Charlotte (Herman's wife) came to meet us, something she would do every once in a while. Woody said to me, 'Bring your guitar to my dressing room.' I did, and Charlotte was there. Woody took out his clarinet and said, 'All right, come on, let's play.' He started and I followed. We played away for about ten minutes. Then he looked around at Charlotte and said, 'Okay, what do you think?' She didn't say anything. She just shook her head, Yes. I got the raise."

All in all, Herman's band was a happy band and most of the guys were warm to each other, Bauer said.

Even those grueling one-nighters, where the band traveled hundreds of miles to get to its next job, helped to develop a "family-like" atmosphere among band personnel, according to Bauer.

"The one-nighters were an experience," Bauer recalled. "We'd get on the bus in the summer time and hang our wet jackets we wore on the bandstand on hangers at the back of the bus. We'd go to put on our jackets the next night and they'd still be wet! Every once-in-awhile, we'd get to a hotel in between gigs. We'd do our gig, then ride to the next town that night. We'd check into the hotel and wash up, or catch some sleep or get something to eat, and the bus would take us to the job that night and bring us back to the hotel. We'd wake up like 6 a.m. and leave for the next town. Everyone was in the same boat. We were in a club, but in a very tight-knit club. You'd see the good and bad parts in everyone. You just felt like they're family."

Probably the highlight of the First Herd's musical experiences was its debut concert at Carnegie Hall on March 25, 1946.

"Even though I knew the concert to be big, I didn't think of it that way," Bauer said. "It was a little thrilling. It didn't hit me right away that it was Carnegie Hall."

In the program notes for that concert, composer and jazz critic, Leonard Feather, wrote that "Woody Herman's Orchestra is currently embarking on its first series of concerts appearances to illustrate current trends in modern American music. The band's Carnegie Hall debut is, appropriately, the occasion for the premiere of a work written especially for the orchestra by Igor Stravinsky."

Stravinsky, one of the world's modern classical composers, was a big fan of Herman's music and wrote a piece especially for the band called Ebony Concerto. In December 1945, the band was playing seven shows a day at New York's famed Paramount Theater and between performances, Stravinsky would rehearse the band through his piece in the theater's rehearsal hall upstairs.

"The rehearsal was difficult," Herman wrote in his autobiography. "Most of us had never received any classical training. We had to learn from each other. Stravinsky hummed and whistled and tapped his foot while he dragged us through it. He was only interested in whether we got it, not how we got it. It was a big challenge for him as it was for us because he had to write out the concerto in 4/4 time. It was difficult for us to imagine, but a simple signature like 4/4 was giving a master trouble. He told me it was torture for him, but he had to do it if he was going to write for jazz musicians."

Other musicians added for the Concerto included John Barrows, French horn, and Abe Rosen, harp, while the band's baritone saxophonist, Sam Rubinowitch, doubled on bass clarinet.

Stravinsky himself was unable to conduct the premiere of his composition at the Carnegie Hall concert because of prior touring commitments. Walter Hendl was brought in as guest conductor for the Concerto. The piece itself received mixed reviews. However, the Herman Herd performed magnificently that night, blowing the roof off the celebrated concert hall with its power-packed repertoire that included Bijou, Blowin' Up A Storm, The Good Earth, Your Father's Moustache, Wildroot, Panacea, Hallelujah, and Superman With A Horn, which featured the high note artistry of trumpeter Pete Candoli.

The Herman rhythm section - Bauer, guitar; Chubby Jackson, bass; Tony Aless, piano; and Don Lamond, drums - was even featured in the concert on a tension-building piece written by Jackson called Four Men On A Horse.

"Woody would let you play the way you played," Bauer said of his former boss. "He'd let you have freedom so he was cool to play for. He took me all over the country. He taught me about one-nighters. The first time I ever rode in an airplane was with Woody's band."

Bauer left the band a few months before Herman disbanded near the end of 1946. Chuck Wayne replaced Bauer.

Bauer also played in the bands of Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden. He was also with Charlie Ventura's interesting and short-lived big band.

Bauer enjoyed his most creative period between 1946 and 1949 as a member of blind pianist Lennie Tristano's trio and later, sextet, who created a modern jazz alternative to bop during the late 1940s. Tristano and his musicians had practiced improvising collectively without preset melodies, tempo, meter, or chord progression. Tristano and his colleagues recorded collectively improvised "free" jazz, long before Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor made their marks in the idiom.

Although he entered a somewhat different world, Bauer's precise, metallic playing fit well into these surroundings, which proved to be of only limited appeal to fans. He was known particularly for his fleet improvisations and his remarkably precise playing of unison thematic statements.

"I never rehearsed with Lennie, never," Bauer said. "His only instructions to me were that I could start a song but not to play the melody and not to play any rhythm guitar at all."

Bauer's initial recordings with the Lennie Tristano Trio (with Clyde Lombardi on bass) were recorded in New York on Oct. 8, 1946, with I Can't Get Started With You, I Surrender, Dear, Interlude and Out On A Limb, a Tristano original.

The trio recorded sporadically and by May 23, 1947, bassist Bob Leininger replaced Lombardi on two Tristano originals: Atonement and Coolin' Off With Ulanov.

Arnold Fishkin replaced Leininger on bass on four Tristano originals recorded on Dec. 31, 1947: Freedom, Parallel, Abstraction, and Dissonance. On that same session, Bauer's former band mate from the First Herman Herd, reedman John LaPorta, is featured on clarinet on New Sound, another Tristano composition.

By 1949, Tristano began receiving artistic recognition. The critics hailed him as one of the prophets of "cool jazz," a term he rejected as an attempt at commercialization by the recording companies. During that year, Tristano recorded with a quintet and sextet, which in addition to Bauer and Fishkin, included alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh, and drummer Shelly Manne, and later recordings with drummers Harold Granowsky, Denzil Best and Jeff Morton.

Some of the more notable recordings the Tristano Quintet (Tristano, Bauer, Konitz, Fishkin and Manne) waxed during that year include two Konitz originals: Subconscious-Lee and Progression (recorded Jan. 11, 1949).

Important sextet recordings include Crosscurrent (March 4, 1949), a Tristano original with its impeccable unison playing and swift phrases, with Marsh on tenor sax and Granowsky on drums; and two other Tristano works: Intuition and Disgression; and a Bauer original, Marionette (all three recorded on May 16, 1949), with Denzil Best on drums. Despite Tristano's protests, all the aforementioned recordings epitomized the "cool" in jazz.

As critic Martin Schowten observed: "...(Tristano's) musicians developed a low-temperature approach to jazz improvisation... (the Tristano style) was based largely on the construction of flowing melodic lines that swept across the normally accepted breaks in phrasing. In terms of the dynamic level, nothing much was allowed to happen and the rhythm section was only to play a time-keeping role. The drummers had to play brushes on their snare drum, with a completely even attack throughout... The bass player had to follow the same procedure... So the listeners' attention is focused on the melody."

"It wasn't that Lennie's music was so innovative, it was just that the guys made it happen together," Bauer said. "The things I used to do with Lennie, more or less what we did on Intuition, I used to do with Flip. We played tunes, but sometimes we'd just make noise. We played whatever we played in no certain key. You can take a bunch of good musicians together and they sort of blend into each other."

The Metronome All-Stars from 1948-49 included (l-r Front row): Ernie Caceres, baritone sax; Buddy DeFranco, clarinet; Charlie Parker,

alto sax; Charlie Ventura, tenor sax. (Middle row): J. J. Johnson and Kai Winding, trombones; Pete Rugolo, conductor; Eddie Safranski, bass;

Billy Bauer, guitar; Lennie Tristano, piano. (Back row): Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Navarro, trumpets; and Shelly Manne, drums.

As a member of Tristano's ensemble, Bauer was present when the group was one of five bands that helped open Birdland Jazz Club in mid-town Manhattan in December 1949. Also on the opening night's bill were groups led by alto saxophone genius Charlie Parker, who served as the inspiration for the famed jazz spot, tenor sax stylist Lester Young, pianist Art Tatum, and trumpeter Max Kaminsky's Dixieland unit.

"They had all different types of jazz to open the club," Bauer recalled. "Ours was just a little different."

Bauer's success with Tristano was also recognized when he was named Best Guitarist in Metronome's Readers' Poll for 1948-1949 and for 1949-1950. He participated in both traditional Metronome All-Star recording sessions. The 1948-49 All-Stars included Charlie Parker, alto sax; Charlie Ventura, tenor sax; Ernie Caceres, baritone sax; Buddy DeFranco, clarinet; J. J. Johnson and Kai Winding, trombones; Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Fats Navarro, trumpets; Lennie Tristano, piano; Eddie Safransky, bass; Shelly Manne, drums; and composer/arranger Pete Rugolo, conductor. The All-Stars for this recording session waxed for RCA-Victor (20-3361) Victory Ball and Overtime, a Rugolo composition.

"I remember we went over the allotted studio time to do the recordings and we named one of the tunes Overtime," Bauer recalled. "We just did one or two takes on a tune and that was it. In situations like that you get maybe eight bars to solo and if the whole band doesn't play good, you don't play good, then forget about it."

The 1949-50 All-Stars included Stan Getz, tenor sax; Lee Konitz, alto sax; Serge Chaloff, baritone sax; Buddy DeFranco, clarinet; Kai Winding, trombone; Dizzy Gillespie, trumpet; Lennie Tristano, piano; Eddie Safranski, bass; Max Roach, drums; and composer/arranger Pete Rugolo, conductor. The All-Stars on this recording session waxed No Figs, a Tristano original based on the chord progression of Indiana, and Double Date (Jan. 10, 1950).

Bauer continued to work in jazz throughout the 1950s, recording with the J. J. Johnson-Kai Winding band (Jay And Kai on Savoy Jazz, 1954), and with Tristano, Konitz and others, but most of his time was spent in studio work.

"With Lennie Tristano I was going broke," Bauer said. "I had a wife and two kids to support. It was OK working with these guys but we'd work one week, then we'd be out of work for two weeks. Then we'd maybe work three weeks somewhere, then we'd be out of work for a week. It got so that I couldn't even buy a house. I tried to buy a house, but then the banks would ask me where I was working. I'd have to say, 'Well, next week I'll be working at this club, and the week after that over here.' The bottom line was the banks refused me."

Bauer then heard of an opening for a guitar player at NBC. He auditioned for the job and became a studio musician.

"(Guitarist) Johnny Smith was leaving the studios to go into jazz and I was leaving jazz to get into the studios," Bauer said. "Meredith Wilson was the musical director at NBC and he liked my playing. He told the execs that I was the best rhythm guitar player he had ever heard. That sowed up the job for me right there! The following day I went to the same bank that refused my home loan a week earlier. When I told them I was working for NBC, they then approved my loan!"

Bauer worked for NBC for eight years doing The Bob And Ray Show, The Big Show with Tallulah Bankhead, and The Toast Of The Town with Ed Sullivan, among others. He also was hired out by the studio to do commercial "jingles" and to do outside record dates, including some duet work with Lee Konitz from the alto saxophonist's New Sounds album on Prestige Records, he said.

"I got some recognition doing duet recordings with Lee," Bauer said. "Lee has made it big. He's still going! He's made more records than anybody I ever heard. Every time he plays, he gets recorded."

From 1950 to 1953, Bauer also taught at the New York Conservatory of Modern Music and toured with Benny Goodman in Europe in 1958. He's on Goodman's Live At The Brussels' World Fair album.

After his work at NBC ended, Bauer began receiving calls to play in the pit orchestra for Broadway shows, most notably, How Now, Dow Jones, he said.

"I didn't like playing for Broadway very much because you were playing the same thing over and over again," Bauer said. "I didn't know if they liked me either. (laughs) I stuck it out for about three years."

"Then that started to go because the whole music business went downhill," he said.

So, in 1970, Bauer opened an instructional studio for guitar players in Albertson.

"I go back to the ABC's of the guitar," he said. "My students need to know the scales in all twelve keys. If they don't want to do that, I tell them that they shouldn't be here."

Reading music is also a high instructional priority for Bauer's students, he said.

"For guitarist's, they're given a G7 chord and that's it. Put any notation on it and they're lost," Bauer said. "Through that I can get into theory as to why things are the way they are."

Although Bauer may run the guitar school, he doesn't take any credit as a teacher, he said.

"I tell my students from the beginning that I'm not a teacher," Bauer said. "I'm an instructor."

In addition to guitar instruction, Bauer is also a published author. In 1997, he published his autobiography, Sideman, recounting his life as a jazz musician with prolific insights about his passion for music. The book may be purchased on line through Amazon.com at www.amazon.com or from Bauer himself by sending a check for $19.95 plus $3.50 postage to: William H. Bauer, Inc., P.O. Box 270, Albertson, NY 11507-0270.

Bauer continues to perform publicly on occasion. In 1995, he performed for Flip Phillips' 80th birthday party in Florida. Phillips died two years ago at age 86.

More recently, Bauer was part of an all-star Woody Herman alumni band that performed last November in Los Angeles to honor the late bandleader with a statue erected to his memory. Herman died in 1987.

"I just do what I can when I can," Bauer said. "I'm on the way out, but I still have something to give. If I can impart to my students just a little as to what I know, then it's all for the best."