The Hippest Guy in the Room
By Jim Washburn
John McCain is old. Old old old. Older than rope. If he’s elected, just wrap the White
House in Pampers and change it every four years.
That’s what we’re hearing on all the talk shows and comedy stages. It’s like old is the new black. It’s rank ageism, this assumption that old means nothing but Flomax and Lawrence Welk.
So I’d like to talk this week about Med Flory, who’s a solid decade older than McCain, and hipper than the rest of us. The saxman/bandleader/arranger/composer/writer/actor is inching up on his 82nd birthday, and is only too happy to tell you, “If you ain’t 80, you ain’t shit.” He leads a 15-piece big band – they’re at Charlie O’s Monday – with an aggregate age of something like 970 years, and they will blow you, and your preconceptions about age, away.
Flory’s had a wild career arc, veering from Gil Evans to Jerry Lewis, Art Pepper to Lassie; and his career achievements span a Grammy award and getting crotch-grabbed by Chuck Connors. When his first big band played the debut Monterey Jazz Festival in 1958, “tea-sipping” San Francisco critics complained they were “too unbridled,” he still bristles.
They should hear him a half-century later. The Med Flory Big Band sounds as rampaging as any outfit you’ve ever heard – blowing lush, fat chords because Flory likes them that way – while the sax section pelts you with furious Charlie Parker solos, harmonized by five reeds delivering Parker’s improvised leaps in unison.
If that sounds like Supersax’s shtick to you, it’s because Flory founded that Grammy-winning outfit in the early ’70s, still leads it, and the big band’s sax section is Supersax. The sax chairs are crowded with first-call players like Pete Christlieb and Lanni Morgan, while the other slots are filled by folks like drummer Frank Capp – who worked with Franks Sinatra and Zappa among scores of others, and who, despite being wracked with arthritis, still swings like mad – and trumpeter Carl Saunders, a veteran of Stan Kenton, Louis Bellson, Buddy Rich, Sinatra and numerous others bands and singers.
“These guys are monsters,” Flory said. “I’ve heard the other bands around and played in most of them, and they’re good, but they ain’t this good. I’m looking for a young band that thinks it’s tough; I wanna go in and cut them up – nothing physical, but as close as you can get with music.”
That’s if the music doesn’t cut him down first. “We do really tough tunes. I’m getting too fucking old to mess with this stuff. It’s hard to keep up that much energy.” Uh huh. At Charlie O’s they typically pour it on for 90 minutes, take a short oxygen break, then head straight into another 90.
Flory was born in 1926 in Logansport, Indiana, where his mother had been a silent movie pianist. By the seventh grade was playing clarinet in the high school band. He was content with Sousa marches until he was 12, when a 78 of Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing” warped his mind.
He started gigging professionally in high school, played in Army bands during WWII, then in the Indiana University band, though he skipped his graduation for a gig.
“While everyone was flippin’ their tassels, I started off on two years of one-nighters with Claude Thornhill, covering all the states in the 48 at least twice. Claude had a terrific band, with Gil Evans as his head arranger,” Med said.
Back in high school, Flory had become a Charlie Parker fan without knowing it, hearing him as an uncredited player on a Jay McShann record. He was a total Parkerite by the time he was in Thornhill’s band. Curiously, the bebop giant saw Flory play before Flory ever saw him. One day Evans brought a guy along who hung in the background as the band rehearsed a chart that was a particular bitch on clarinet. “After an hour, I finally got it down, looked to the back of the room and there was a big grin on this guy’s face. It turned out it was Parker. I met him, and he was groovy.”
It was less groovy the last time they met, on the streets of New York, when junkie Parker bummed $5 off him. Though Flory idolized Parker and worked with other noted junkies like Art Pepper – “a real prick” in Flory’s estimation – he didn’t get the lure of heroin.
“Some people thought they had to shoot dope to play like Bird. I only did it one time and didn’t dig it. I had to smoke three joints to get anywheres back near normal. I hate that warm, cuddly, womb-like feeling. That’s the last thing in the world I want to feel. I don’t even like to sleep with a lot of covers. Grass was my thing. It alters your depth and time perception just enough to where you get involved in the music a little better, taking chances and not worrying about the light bill while you’re playing.”
After Thornhill’s band, Flory switched to sax – he chiefly plays alto – and did stints with Woody Herman and Ray Anthony’s bands. When the latter got an ABC TV show in 1956, Flory and his wife, singer Joan Durell, moved to L.A. with him.
One day in 1960 Flory was watching some lousy actor on TV and complained to Joannie, “I could do better than that!” Joannie talked her old school chum Lorne Greene into dropping by, they got him liquored up, and next thing Med knew he was getting parts on Bonanza, Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, Gomer Pyle, Lassie and other shows and film work. The latter included three Jerry Lewis efforts, including The Nutty Professor, where he’s the football player who stuffs Lewis onto a shelf. Not Oscar material but it paid better than music, though what doesn’t?
Flory had a fight scene with Chuck Connors in one Rifleman episode where they were grappling, “knocking over stoves and shit when, just to be mean, Connors grabbed my crotch. We went on with the knocking over stoves and shit, when all of a sudden his back went out on him. The rest of the day they were carrying him around like a potted plant, with him in total pain. Now that’s retribution.”
Just for fun around 1970, Flory began transcribing Parker’s solos and adding harmony lines. He and Buddy Clark started Supersax; their first show at Donte’s led to standing ovations and a record deal, which led to three Grammy nominations and one win. Which, for a lack of any more space in this article – Christ, we didn’t even talk about the LA Voices or Joe Maini’s giant dick yet – leads us to his present killer outfit of upstanding old men you would not want to fuck with. See ’em at Charlie O’s, 13725 Victory Blvd., Valley Glen, (818) 994-3058, Monday at 8 p.m. There’s a $20 cover. Try the barbecue chicken.
Published: 06/25/2008
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