The Los Angeles Jazz community has lost another great and sadly underappreciated player: the tenor and baritone saxophonist Mr. Herman Riley.
Here is writer Scott Yanow's brief bio of Riley, courtesy of All Music:
The tough-toned tenor of Herman Riley has long been a valuable asset on a countless number of performances and recordings based in the Los Angeles area. He played locally in New Orleans as a teenager, served in the military (1955-57) and then attended San Diego City College. After moving to Los Angeles in the early 1960's, Riley worked with virtually everyone during the next few decades including Count Basie, Shelly Manne, Benny Carter, Bobby Bryant, Joe Williams, Donald Byrd, Gene Ammons, Blue Mitchell, Quincy Jones, the Capp-Pierce Juggernaut, Lorez Alexandria and many others. The only album that this perennial sideman has thus far made as a leader is a Jam Lp from 1985.
Our friend Brick Wahl also provided a short obit in today's LA Weekly:
My favorite piece of writing I've done in the L.A. Weekly was about saxophonist Herman Riley, who died last weekend. It was the result of an incredible half-hour interview during which Herman spun out his life story, an experience that was hard to boil down to its very essence. But then I thought about how he did just that in his playing, and the words rolled out.
When he read the short article, he told me it was one of the first times he had ever seen anything in print about himself -- just him alone. I couldn't believe that this man, this extraordinary saxophonist, had been ignored by the jazz media. He deserved reams of coverage, but getting 200 words and a picture made him happy.
This town never realized just how extraordinary Herman Riley was. How he could move you. How you could get utterly lost in his ballads. His notes fade away into memory. And when we go, the memories go. I once asked him when he was going to record again. He had only a single album, released sometime in the '80s and impossible to find. He said he was thinking about it, but wanted to wait until he was ready. Now, I can only listen to him in my head, stretching out the notes of a ballad, till nothing remains but air and a room stilled, feelings rising deep in my bones.
And here us Brick's Original Pick on Herman Riley from August 2006:
Lockjaw and Prez made him pick up the saxophone. That was in New Orleans, back when "Iko, Iko" was new. By '63 he was in L.A., playing Marty's every night, with players -- Sonny Rollins, everybody -- dropping by, sitting in. Steady work with Basie and the Juggernaut and Blue Mitchell. Twenty years with Jimmy Smith. A million sessions for Motown and Stax, and first call for a slew of singers -- that's where you refine those ballad skills. Live, he slips into "In a Sentimental Mood," and everything around you dissolves. There's his sound: rich, big, full of history -- a little sad, maybe -- blowing Crescent City air. He gets inside the very essence of that tune, those melancholy, ascending notes, till it fades, pads closing, in a long, drawn-out sigh. You swear it's the most beautiful thing you've ever heard, that song, that sound, and you tell him so. He shrugs. "It's a lifetime of experience," he says, then calls out some Monk and is gone.
For fans posts about Riley, go to JazzCornerTalk.com.
As for Your Humble Blogger, I actually had the chance to see Mr. Riley play live. The kat could blow the sweetest saddest drops out of his horn -- his ballad playing was always tinged with inescapable mists of melancholy -- and then switch to some truly aggressive and intense skronking: it was like listening to the last sixty years of jazz saxophone contained in one horn. Herman was quiet and serious, it seemed to me. When I was writing a story for the LA Weekly on recording sessions in Hollywood for the bassist John Heard's new album The Jazz Composer's Songbook, Riley came in and quietly unpacked his horn and sat wordlessly with it in ready position on its strap, waiting for the session to begin. Between takes he would sit back down and soberly wait for the next one to begin. When it did, he came to life like someone had plugged his foot into a wall socket. The following is from a section of unpublished notes on the session:
Heard has invited two old friends, saxman Herman Riley, who wears a watch bearing the image of Lester Young, and trumpeter Nolan Shaheed to sit in on the sessions. During the takes -- an average of seven or eight for each song -- the musicians heads are bobbing, the horn players wait for their cues while staring down at the sheet music stands with intense, solemn eyes. John call out to the boys: "Just put down your own ideas and then I'll nod at you, right?" The younger guys -- pianist Danny Grissett ans drummer Lorca Hart -- are upbeat but soft-spoken and serious-minded, watching and listening. Between takes, the older guys engage in some true-blue badinage, street-hipster trash talk from another era like "pet that squirrel" or "shake some dew off'ya daisy." They toss and catch tales of jazz past: what happened to Freddie Hubbard's lips, the time Riley accidentally insulted Rashaan Roland Kirk, or the legend of Louis Armstrong giving a suitcase full of reefer to an unwitting Richard M. Nixon.
They razz Riley. Hey, Herman, ya look just like a big ol' frog sittin' there!
You suckas are like vaudeville in here, Riley replies.
If I was to get down and suck Herman''s dick, it'd be like smoking a tiny lil' joint!
Riley snorts. Yeah, you'd get higher than a kite too motherfucker.
Riley was featured in a local live oral history series called World Stage Stories, hosted by two classy friends of mine, Jeffrey Winston and Chet Hanley, and held at the World Stage Performance Gallery in Leimert Park. Here is a link to anyone interested on the Series, with an interview with Jeff Winston. Jeff also wrote an obit for Herman when he noticed the LA Times hadn't bothered.
Funeral Services for Herman Riley will be held on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at 12:00 Noon at The Faith Dome (7901 S. Vermont Ave., @ W. 79th St., LA, CA 90044). Come and show your L-O-V-E.
And Rest in Peace, HR!
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