Chuck Flores

The closest thing the West Coast jazz scene must its actual nature will be drummer Chuck Flores, and not simply due to the sound of his surname. He continues to be involved almost solely with the development of innovative music within this area of the USA through several years of stylistic advancements, not only setting up the groove for LA legend Artwork Pepper but offering drum lessons to youthful Chad Wackerman before the last mentioned drummer’s ascension in to the Frank Zappa dynasty. Flores acquired a pretty great instructor of his personal back in the first ’50s: drummer Shelly Manne, who later on opened probably one of the most popular modern jazz locations on the Western Coastline, Shelly’s Manne-Hole. Flores’ first employers had been bandleader Ike Carpenter, with whom he gigged in sunlit Balboa, and trumpeter Maynard Ferguson, who flipped around and flagged Flores for the vacant drum seat in friend Woody Herman’s big music group. This held Flores occupied through the middle-’50s. After that he became a mentioned freelancer, especially suitable for the subtle needs of Western Coastline jazz improvisation. He performed and documented with saxophonist and flutist Bud Shank aswell as with these Pepper; a Mosaic reissue from the former artist’s cooperation with tenor saxophonist Bob Cooper and also a string section offers garnered Flores very much desired essential reappraisal, the consensus becoming that he’s underrated. In 1974 Flores became portion of an organization with bossa nova guitarist Laurindo Almeida plus Shank and the fantastic bassist Ray Dark brown — dubbed the LA Four, this developed into among the important combos from Southern California. Flores documented a set of albums like a bandleader in the ’70s, the pick out of which may be the 1977 Drum Blossom within the Jazz Concord label. As amazing as all that is, the next excerpt from a 1957 Stan Kenton tour journal is a more fascinating way to summarize this biography, referencing two of the very most entertaining pastimes recognized to mankind, sight-reading and sex: “Chuck Flores, who was simply not noted to be an excellent sight-reader, experienced to invest hours privately rehearsing all of the arrangements, before the primary rehearsals. He also dropped his virginity in Melbourne, because of the Australian music artists, who were a lot more than happy to procure a woman for his ‘evening of evenings.'”