Horn player P.T. Stanton was a creative, original and mysterious musician who left his signature on the second wave of the Great San Francisco Jazz Revival. Integral to the second-generation traditionalist/revivalist movement, he was perhaps its most individualistic. A broad self-taught intellect, his friends and associates recalled his eccentricity, bizarre verbal antics, prodigious drinking and vast musical skills.
Between 1955 and 1978 Stanton shaped and created two distinctive West Coast revivalist bands, Bob Mielke and the Bearcats and the Stone Age Jazz Band. In his music one can find influences from every direction of the early jazz compass: New Orleans, Harlem, Chicago, Kansas City and San Francisco. At the end of this article are links to fifteen streaming musical examples.
Iconoclastic Horn Style
P.T. Stanton (1923-87) rejected the clarion majesty of the jazz horn for a personal vocabulary of quavering growls, strangled tones and expressive cries. His characteristic cornet sound was neither straightforward nor conventional, alternating between the roar of a wheezy ragamuffin or feral beast. He nearly always had a mute, plunger or hand in or near the bell of his instrument, modifying and “stressing” notes or he blew into the tin derby hat mounted on a stand nearby. According to singer and compatriot Barbara Dane, he made no fundamental distinction between the trumpet and cornet.
Author of Preservation Hall: Music from the Heart (W.W. Norton, 1991), William “Bill” Carter is a superb clarinetist who performed with Stanton. Bill suggests that his “punchy leads” shared strong echoes of second-generation street-smart New Orleans horn players, “in a direct line with the blues-based, cut-down styles of the less publicized New Orleans lead horns of the first and second generations — street-smart pioneers like DeDe Pierce, Kid Thomas, Natty Dominique, Mutt Carey and Elmer Talbert.”
The Stanton-Mielke Alliance
P.T. Stanton and trombonist Bob Mielke partnered with banjo player Dick Oxtot building The Bearcats Jazz Band lasting intermittently, 1954-67.
A division of labor developed whereby Mielke got the gigs, was occasional vocalist and emcee. He wrote some of the ‘arrangements’ — the short the little notepad-sized charts used by such part-playing Dixieland bands. Sadly, no record albums were issued during the life of the band though a great deal of the music can be found streaming online and at the end of this article.
P.T. was music director. He coached, guided and directed the ensemble. “The heart of the Bearcats was P.T. Stanton,” wrote bassist Pete Allen, “whose trumpet more than anything else, gave the band its identity.” According to Mielke, “The musical arbiter became P.T. Stanton. He resolved harmonic confusions and made much-needed decisions on voicings for the horns.”
Jazz musician, writer and broadcaster Richard Hadlock was a friend of both. He proposed a fitting analogy for their partnership:
P.T. did for Bob Mielke much of what trumpeter Mutt Carey did for trombone player Kid Ory. Mutt was the real music director of Ory’s band, shaping the ensemble approach and soloing less often than others in the front line. He drove the band, yet was understated, conservative and eccentric all at the same time.
Taking limited solos, he led via sleight-of-hand, invisibly steering and guiding the band via verbal directions on the fly or with his horn through counterpoint, emphasis and cadence. A significant aspect of his band leadership was riffing, which was typically executed by Stanton in co-ordination with the clarinet or trombone. When he was heard over the ensemble or soloing, he produced growling outbursts or bestial shrieks.
These musicians did NOT play in the San Francisco Traditional Jazz style of their forerunners in the Yerba Buena Jazz Band of Lu Watters. Though inspired and mentored by their predecessors they arrived at an entirely variant solution. The music of Yerba Buena had stressed classic jazz and ragtime tunes published prior to 1930 and strongly favored a banjo-and-tuba 2-beat rhythm.
By comparison, The Bearcats’ freewheeling solo and ensemble virtuosity grew out of Ellington’s Harlem, riding on a 4-beat swing rhythm from Kansas City. The Bearcats had an exceptionally well-organized sound offering clean well-delineated solos, generating tremendous volume for a quintet or sextet.
Both Carter and Hadlock liken P.T. to Mutt Carey for his silent co-leadership and reticent horn manner. In the final analysis, it was P.T. Stanton who shaped and curated The Bearcats sound.
This clip features Mielke’s low-light experimental photography and his arrangement of a tune also known as “Over in the Gloryland.” Mielke collection.
At the Larks Club in Berkeley
Bob Mielke and The Bearcats played several nights of the week building a following during 1955 at the Larks Club in a predominantly black bar in a mostly African American neighborhood. They moved on to Reno’s in Oakland and various venues on both sides of San Francisco Bay, the Tin Angel and Sail’N near the Embarcadero.
One key member frequently absent was medical student and future physician, clarinetist Bunky Colman. His substitutes included Bill Napier, Ellis Horne, Frank “Big Boy” Goudie, Roland Working and others. Keyboard was optional but Bill Erickson or Burt Bales were preferred when available — though rarely and possibly never at Larks Club.
Pete Allen was among the best bassists of San Francisco jazz revival. He and Dick Oxtot comprised an unmatched, rock-solid rhythm team with a throbbing beat and tremendous drive. Pete was lifelong friends with all these musicians dating back to his Berkeley High School days and was bassist for the subsequent Stone Age jazz band.
No Bearcats album was ever issued during the life of the band, despite the failed but now recovered Empirical Records project of Davey Jones. For the rest of his life Mielke was dogged by a recording hex, though he appears frequently as a sideman. Bob never had a record album issued with a band he was leading, and not for lack of trying.
Incidentally, P.T.’s younger brother Jerrold “Jerry” Stanton was a fine jazz pianist. He had worked with most of these musicians and subbed for Wally Rose in the last days of Yerba Buena at Hambone Kelly’s. Brothers Stanton had also composed a tune called “Custom House Up and Down” once memorialized by a Yerba Buena radio aircheck.
The Bearcats Jazz Band was featured a couple times in the Berkeley Daily Gazette during 1956-57. A glowing article appeared written by friend and fan Ed Salzman under the title, “Berkeleyans Score with Dixieland Beat”:
Stanton’s cornet style . . . gives the group a novel sound, [Mielke] believes. He has the distinction of being perhaps the least commercial cornet man in the world. He scorns blowing a strong lead. As a result, his playing is most appreciated by fellow musicians and serious jazz fans.
Stanton takes a few vocals in the tongue-in-cheek Fats Waller tradition. He takes vast liberties with the lyrics, frequently sneaking in references to news events of the day.
Idiosyncratic Demeanor
Peter Thomas Stanton was a strange and wonderful individual. Musician, journalist and friend Richard Hadlock called him “the world’s most eccentric eccentric. Despite his eccentricity, he was sly as a fox.”
All his former acquaintances emphasized Stanton’s cultivated peculiarity, non-conformity and musical insights. A broad intellect, he was strikingly original in thought and speech, fluent in seven languages including Spanish and Portuguese. He could be secretive, unreliable or even devious. The details of his employment, Latin American travels and one-time marriage remain obscure. Among his friends and associates not otherwise mentioned here were jazz keyboard master Ray Skjelbred, Traditional Jazz drummer Hal Smith, New Orleans clarinetist George Lewis and science fiction Grand Master, author Jack Vance.
Multi-instrumentalist Earl Scheelar was affiliated with Stanton for decades, calling him “completely nuts.” Yet Earl was deeply influenced by his spare cornet style and band leadership:
His cornet style was so sparse, so laid back, but he would punctuate and syncopate and do things that made other people respond. P.T. was the most understated back-in-the-background player. But he had the ability to goose people and get the best out of them. And that’s very evident in the Bearcats and in the Stone Age.
P.T. Stanton’s Stone Age Jazz Band, 1973-78
Around the time he turned 50, Stanton made a shift in lifestyle. He stopped drinking for a few years and built Stone Age Jazz Band. Its name denoted an intentionally primitive style specializing in performing familiar tunes in unfamiliar ways. Yet in an interview he modestly dismissed it as “basically a dance band.”
Stone Age was gleefully iconoclastic; at one point all the musicians wore beards. The jauntily antiquarian repertory spanned from pre-Civil War Stephen Foster songs to an original clarinet blues by Scheelar. Shaped by P.T.’s mature outlook, the band fused riffing with New Orleans ensemble polyphony, much like the Bearcats had.
Once again, Stanton’s horn was throttled back, choked-up by his mutes or tin derby hat except for rare solos or leading the ride out choruses. Taking few solos, he receded further into the ensemble, becoming more abstract and elliptical, trading youthful intensity for a dancing, growling counterpoint. Featured soloists were his longtime musical associates Earl Scheelar (clarinet) and Bill Bardin (trombone).
Trombonist Bill Bardin was widely admired for his skill and good taste, unsurpassed at Classic Jazz stomps, Blues and Swing. Bill’s friendship with P.T. dates to the late 1930s, “my first time playing with REAL jazz band” he reminisced. While no wunderkind, Bill had stood-in at age seventeen for Turk Murphy in the wartime Yerba Buena band and was Mielke’s only substitute in The Bearcats. His eloquent part-playing gathered a band together harmonically much like Turk or Bill’s biggest inspiration and longtime pen pal, trombonist Dickie Wells.
Earl Scheelar was the lead instrumental voice in Stone Age, his assertive clarinet line providing a structural armature for the ensemble. P.T. took very few solos. According to Earl, “he felt the solos should really be played by the clarinet and trombone. He wanted the ensemble sound.” Earl supplied a passionate leading melody line on clarinet with a big rich tone and manner redolent of Johnny Dodds. (The talented Scheelar also played cornet, banjo, soprano and alto saxophones very well and sang; he also led local jazz bands from 1966-2016.)
Earl was explicit that this was Stanton’s venture in conception, aesthetics and booking. Nevertheless, it was he who had suggested the unusual rhythm-section format of banjo, guitar and bass with no piano and drums. And he secured excellent recordings of live performances, much of it was released after Stanton’s passing and heard ona set of three compact disc titles produced by yours truly.
String bass player Mike Duffy rehearsed often with Stone Age. In liner notes for the one, eponymous Stomp Off Records album (SOS 1228, 1991) he described P.T.’s onstage role:
Almost all the chatter you will hear in the background on these live recordings is from P.T. Stanton, who was forever giving directions and encouraging his mates (“Keep going, Willie”). And if you notice clattering metal sounds, that will be P.T. too, digging around among his mutes for the right one.
Oddly Brilliant Legacy
Around 1980 he gave up the horn due to health and dental problems, switching to acoustic rhythm guitar, which he had played very well ever since his teens and in a manner reminiscent of Freddie Green with Basie.
P.T. died in 1987 at the age of 64. Testimonials by friends and associates conjured his personal foibles, contrary properties and vast musical intelligence. As singer Barbara Dane put it:
His contemporaries thought of him as a mystery man, a self-made intellectual, an amateur linguist who dominated several languages, especially Spanish and Portuguese. A raconteur who was entertaining enough to keep you supplying him with one beer after another until the sun came up.
P.T. Stanton was a dynamic and original talent who left an indelible imprint on the Berkeley chapter of the Great Frisco Jazz Revival. The Bearcats and Stone Age bands were feats of striking originality. Recalled Mielke:
P.T. was unique. He was a complex man. One of the most complicated human beings I’ve ever known, for sure. He was an intellectual and a romantic.
I learned a hell of a lot about “part playing” from him. The most important thing I learned about jazz from P.T. was that it wasn’t all just razz-a-ma-tazz. That there was a lot of soul and beauty in it. And he taught me that.
Interviews & discussions:
Bardin, Bill 1994
Carter, Bill 2014
Dane, Barbara 2014
Greer, Dave 2013, 2014
Hadlock, Richard 2014
Mielke, Bob 1993, 2013, 2014
Scheelar, Earl 2014
Special thanks to the late Dave Greer for audio, encouragement and insights. Thanks to Hal Smith for music consultation and assistance.
Bibliography:
Bob Mielke: A Life in Jazz, Jim Goggin (Trafford, 2008)
Bob Mielke’s Bearcats 1955, (GHB Records 1228, 2002) liner notes by Mielke
The Odd Brilliance of PT Stanton, Dave Radlauer (San Francisco Cricket, SFTJF, 2014)
Salzman, Ed, “Berkeleyans Score with Dixieland Beat,” Berkeley Daily Gazette, 12.5.56, p. 18
Salzman, Ed, “Berkeley Has One of World’s Largest Jazz Communities: Members Placing Most of Effort on Ensembles,” Berkeley Daily Gazette, 12.26.57, p. 14
Stone Age Jazz Band, Mike Duffy liner notes (Stomp Off Records, 1992)
Audio links:
Bob Mielke & The Bearcats 1955-58:
(sub. Napier; add Erickson, pno)
Darktown Strutters Ball (Stanton, vocal)
Saturday Night Function (Larks Club 1955)
Saturday Night Function (Sail’N 1958; sub. Napier; add Erickson)
Saturday Night Function (Larks Club 1955; sub. Ellis Horne)
PT and Friends vinyl EP, Berkeley, CA 8.72:
P.T. Stanton (tr), Dick Adams (ss), Ray Skjelbred (p), Mike Duffy (b), Brett Runkle (wsh)
Pastel Blue (Adapted from the John Kirby Sextet.)
(The Stone Age Jazz Band sessions below were live recorded performance events; some tracks overlap with Stomp Off LP 1228.)
Stone Age Jazz Band, Earl’s New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA 10.74:
Add Lisa Pollard (ts); sub. Walter Yost (tu)
1919 Rag (Pollard out; add Brett Runkle, wsh)
Stone Age Jazz Band, Old St. Hilary Church, Tiburon, CA 9.78:
You Always Hurt the One You Love
