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Bill Perkins

Bill Perkins was essentially a West Coast jazz musician, but in his varied career worked with music legends like Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Art Pepper, Duke Ellington's band, and with Victor Feldman played on some of Steely Dan's legendary albums. A large part of his career was spent, playing with Doc Severinsen's Tonight Show Band for nearly twenty five years.

Bill Perkins is one of the outstanding members of the legion of technically gifted and musically inspired tenor players who emerged at the beginning of the fifties. He was a hit with Kenton, and it is perhaps no coincidence that all of Kenton's recordings that feature Perkins are good ones and they remain as fresh today as when they were recorded. Similarly his work on some of Woody Herman's recordings from that time have achieved classic status, where his soloing is a showcase of delicacy and form.

Perkins recorded little under his own name, with notable exceptions as in “On Stage"The Bill Perkins Octet” (Vogue) which has him leading Bud Shank, Jack Nimitz, Carl Fontana, Stu Williamson, Russ Freeman, Red Mitchell and Mel Lewis, and “Journey To The East,” recorded 28 years later in 1984 (Contemporary) where the Lester Young influence, which has always affected his playing so strongly, is diverted by a palpable injection of Sonny Rollins. His "Perk Plays Prez," from '95, where he covers the music of Lester Young is a standout.He did release several discs recorded in a live setting.

He however recorded prolifically for other leaders, but was extremely modest about his success. Whilst with Kenton many beautiful settings were written for his tenor saxophone solos by Bill Holman and Bill Russo. "Yesterdays" probably became his best-known recording and was demanded at all Kenton's concerts. Kenton toured Britain for the first time in 1956, and Perkins remained particularly popular there for the rest of his career.

It was at this point that Perkins began making innumerable albums of West Coast jazz that became classics. Whilst with Kenton and Herman he also recorded regularly as a member of Shorty Rogers's Giants, with his solo making the trumpeter's "Blues for Brando" a substantial hit for both of them. Some of Perkins's finest playing of the period was on a 1956 quintet album with John Lewis, pianist in the Modern Jazz Quartet, entitled “Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West.”

He worked in the film studios as well, where his most notable experience was working under Duke Ellington for the soundtrack of “Assault on a Queen” (1966). In the middle Seventies he played baritone sax with the Toshiko Akiyoshi/Lew Tabackin Big Band and returned to Herman for occasional guest solo spots. During the middle Eighties he toured the world with a Shorty Rogers group and in 1986, on one of his visits to Britain, toured with a quintet he co-led with the British tenorist Tommy Whittle. In 1991 Perkins recorded under his own name with a big band designed to recall the spirit of, rather than to copy, the Woody Herman band.

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Album Review

Stan Kenton and His Orchestra: Concert on the Pacific

Read "Concert on the Pacific" reviewed by Jack Bowers


The Stan Kenton Orchestra's Concert on the Pacific is actually a compendium of several concerts recorded between January and March 1958 at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, California—a series that almost emptied Kenton's wallet and caused him to pause and regroup a year or so later. While this was post-Rosolino/Sims/Konitz/Levey, the Kenton Orchestra was never without its share of outstanding soloists, in this case saxophonists Lennie Niehaus, Bill Perkins, Richie Kamuca and Bill Robinson; trumpeters Sam Noto, Billy Catalano and ...

4
Album Review

Stan Kenton and His Orchestra: In a Lighter Vein

Read "In a Lighter Vein" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Stan Kenton was a man of many moods, as was his intrepid and popular orchestra, which endured until his passing in August 1979 and whose renown is kept alive even today by the Stan Kenton Legacy Orchestra. Kenton dons his carefree hat on In a Lighter Vein, an assortment of straight-ahead themes from the orchestra's jazz library, preserved in five concert performances from 1953-55 beneath the umbrella of NBC radio's All Star Parade of Bands. Original compositions ...

4
Album Review

Stan Kenton and His Orchestra: Concert Kenton

Read "Concert Kenton" reviewed by Jack Bowers


There's no question that Stan Kenton led one of the more successful and popular orchestras of the storied Big Band Era, winning various yearly polls while drawing large crowds to his jazz concerts and dance performances from coast to coast. But Kenton always wanted something more: to enlighten as well as entertain. Music, he felt, should be cerebral as well as visceral. And so he formed the Neophonic Orchestra to play the sort of forward-looking jazz he felt many listeners ...

423
Album Review

Bill Perkins/Cy Touff (Pacific Jazz/West Coast Classics: The Bill Perkins Octet: On Stage/Cy Touff: His Octet and Quintet

Read "The Bill Perkins Octet: On Stage/Cy Touff: His Octet and Quintet" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


When I was a Wee Lad. The first jazz recording I bought was Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. I was 13 or 14 years old and was starting to listen to other than the current popular music of the day. That was 1973. I did not listen to another jazz recording until 10 years later. I was having an eye examination and my ophthalmologist, an alto player, and I started a conversation about jazz. He told me if I was ...

132
Album Review

Bill Perkins / Jack Sheldon: On Stage / The Quartet and The Quintet

Read "On Stage / The Quartet and The Quintet" reviewed by John Sharpe


The California jazz scene reached its zenith in the 50's and 60's and Richard Bock's Pacific Jazz label managed to capture most of the music from this “cool school". Artists such as Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan, Art Pepper and Bud Shank all recorded for Pacific Jazz and they emerged as West Coast masters. Bill Perkins (tenor) and Jack Sheldon (trumpet/vocals) were two artists who enjoyed brief, but rewarding stints with the label. Perkins went on to pursue a career in ...

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Video / DVD

Bill Perkins + J.C. Heard

Bill Perkins + J.C. Heard

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

In late 1963, as gigs and recording work slowed in New York for drummer J.C. Heard, he began to listen more intently to his brother-in-law, bassist Al McKibbon. If you want more work, McKibbon said, come out to Los Angeles. A seasoned protege of Papa Jo Jones, Heard since 1939 had played with many of the top big bands and recorded behind virtually every major jazz leader. In the 1940s and '50s, he could play swing, bop, hard bop and ...

205

Video / DVD

Weekend Extra: Bill Perkins

Weekend Extra: Bill Perkins

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey

Bill Perkins (1924-2003) was the archetype of the creative musician incapable of letting his style freeze in place. To borrow the phrase coined by his initial inspiration Lester Young, Perkins refused to be a “repeater pencil." He was with Stan Getz, Gene Ammons, Zoot Sims, Richie Kamuca, Al Cohn, Don Lanphere andmany others in a generation of young tenor saxophonists who developed with Young as their model. His playing under Young's influence graced the bands of Jerry Wald, Woody Herman ...

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Recording

Bill Perkins: On Stage

Bill Perkins: On Stage

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Tenor Saxophonist Bill Perkins' first album as a leader was On Stage for Pacific Jazz Records. In February 1956, “Perk" or “Phineas" assembled an impressive octet and reached out to California's leading arrangers of the day for charts. What makes On Stage special is Perkins' saxophone sound, which is strong, eloquent and smoothly sculptured. As legendary arranger and tenor saxophonist Bill Holman told me yesterday, Perkins was among the finest practitioners of the Lester Young style of playing and had ...

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Concert on the Pacific

Sounds of Yesteryear
2021

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Concert Kenton

Sounds of Yesteryear
2020

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In a Lighter Vein

Sounds of Yesteryear
2020

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Perk Plays Prez

Fresh Sound Records
2004

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Pretty / Groovy

Pacific Jazz Records
2002

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Videos

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