Music: Sitting in with Stan Getz and Bowing Papa Haydn

For the record: Hanne writes that Getz’s bassist didn’t show up “after a set.”

Fact is, he didn’t return to the bandstand soon enough after a break (brief time out).

Getz went to the microphone and asked, “Is there a bass player in the house?” My fiancée, Joan Lebrecht, looked at me and whispered, “If you raise your hand, I’ll be mortified!” I raised my hand and was motioned on stage. Stan kicked off the Gershwin tune, “It’s wonderful” at a brisk tempo. I was so nervous, I could keep up. After a few minutes, the sheepish bassist returned and took over the bass. The audience clapped and whistled. A week later I was back on Broadway when a young black guy walking toward me stopped and said, “Man, aren’t you the guy who sat in with Getz last week?” I said yes. “Man, you were gooood!” he said. Made my day.

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Edited version of an article published May 2010 in Jersey Jazz

Photo caption: Fradley Garner, right, with bass section leader Ture Damhus, after a Haydn concert in Copenhagen-Gladsaxe. Photo by Hanne Ingerslev.

Sitting in with Stan Getz

And bowing Papa Haydn

By Hanne Ingerslev

Copenhagen: When Fradley Garner moved to Denmark to become a freelance writer in 1960, he brought along the plywood Kay bass he bought new for $125 in Newark, New Jersey after he came home from Korea and out of the U.S. Army in fall 1946.  The same bass he took to college the next year, and in the late 1950s, sometimes carted on his motor scooter to jam sessions in lower Manhattan lofts.

Fradley’s original plan was to open a jazz venue in Copenhagen where he could sit in, and he came close to taking a share in the then closed Jazzhus Montmartre. But he had only $2,000 in the bank and, newly married, decided to set himself up as a foreign correspondent instead. “That proved to be a wise decision,” says Fradley, adding, “I’m not much of a bassist and certainly no businessman.”

The Montmartre, a mecca for expatriates, became home in the 1960s through the mid-’70s for giants like Ben Webster, Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon and Kenny Drew. Financially strapped by giants’ wages and forced to close for a generation, the club was reopened May 1, at the same inner city location. Niels Lan Doky, 46, a world-class, Danish-Vietnamese pianist and composer, and a brave entrepreneur friend, Rune Bech, plan to run it as a non-profit institution.    

Fradley was at first self-taught and is still an amateur. He had played in the U.S. Army’s 24th Corps swing band in Seoul, Korea with Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman alumni, and in the 27th Special Service Co. in pit bands for visiting USO shows touring Korea.

He likes to tell about sitting in with the renowned tenor saxophonist, Stan Getz, one night when the combo’s bassist didn’t show up for a set at the Royal Roost on Broadway. He finally decided to learn the instrument in Denmark, where he took classical lessons for 25 years with the Norwegian-American bassist and teacher, Tina Austad.

Fradley is international editor of Jersey Jazz, journal of the New Jersey Jazz Society. He has played in several amateur symphonies in Greater Copenhagen, including Amatørsymfonikerne and Lyngby-Tårbæk Symfoniorkester.    

Earlier this season, as nearly every year since 1992, he drove bass, bow and kitchen stool to rehearsals and a concert of three Joseph Haydn chamber works in the Gladsaxe-Haydn Orkester. “Not my original bass, which I sold to the flutist,” says the octogenarian, “but a new one built in 1999 in Romania. It’s putting on weight—every year it gets harder to tote upstairs.”