Are you here? That’s the question we ask you on The Paul Leslie Hour.
Welcome to episode #1,009 We’re welcoming back famed film producer Frank Marshall to talk about the record album he co-produced of Chet Baker & Jack Sheldon, In Perfect Harmony: The Lost Album.
Frank has lots of memories from his upbringing, as the son of the late guitarist and composer Jack Marshall. From an early age he encountered many legends of film and music. Frank Marshall also shares some personal details and his memories of appearing at the Hollywood Bowl’s tribute to his late best friend Jimmy Buffett.
You’re going to love Frank Marshall. We can’t wait to talk to him again.
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The Official Frank Marshall Interview Transcript
Frank Marshall: Hey hey Hey, Paul. Cool.
Paul Leslie: How’s it going?
It’s going well, thanks.
It’s a beautiful day here in Los Angeles, so I can’t complain.
Well, I like to hear that. It’s great to welcome you back.
For all the people out there, Frank Marshall is a film producer, director, musician, and now you can add record producer to that list. I’m going to hold this up for everybody out there.
Oh, you have that. I don’t have one myself. That’s beautiful.
Well, I feel special now, I have to admit. This is Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon “In Perfect Harmony: The Lost Album,” which is coming out on April 20th. The record version, that is.
And it’s a very exciting thing. I’m hoping you can tell us, Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon are unique in a lot of ways. Both trumpet players, both singers, both atypical kind of singers, and it’s an interesting record. So tell us, how did this come to be, as far as you know?
Well, the best of my recollection, Paul, is, well, let’s back up a little.
“My dad was a jazz guitarist and we always had music around the house and people playing”
I grew up in a musical family. My dad was a jazz guitarist and we always had music around the house and people playing, et cetera, et cetera. And Jack Sheldon was one of his best friends. And they just loved to play music together, all these guys in sort of the West Coast jazz era of the 60s and the 70s. And wemoved down to Newport Beach. And I was still in high school at Newport Harbor High School. And in 1964, I believe it was, my senior year, we even had an assembly where we had Johnny Mercer, Jack Sheldon, Howard Roberts, Frank Rosolino, Shelly Manne on drums. That was at my high school assembly. So that’s the kind of music that I had growing up surrounding me all the time.
“Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon were friends.”
And all of these musicians, they just loved to play. They love to play together. They didn’t really care whether they made any money. They didn’t care about albums. They just loved to play. And Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon were friends.
And I believe it was 1966, up in Sausalino, Chet was sort of in the dark side of jazz music. Got in a lot of trouble. There’s a lot of drugs and even though he’s an incredible musician he was in that other sort of I call the other side of jazz and he got in a fight outside of a club where my dad and Jack Sheldon played a lot called The Trident up there and somebody hit him in the mouth and broke his teeth and he didn’t play for a long time. And I guess one of the things that Jack Sheldon did as a friend: the great thing about this time, Paul, was everybody was friends. They supported each other. They got together. They loved to play.
And evidently, Jack Sheldon said, look, you know, you need to come back. And they went and met with another friend, a great friend of my dad’s, a studio trumpet player named Uan Rasey, who they sort of revered. And they talked to Uan about how how Chet Baker might come back. And Uan suggested just having a bigger mouthpiece because he had dentures.
He had to learn how to play again. And both of these guys, Jack and Chet, had unique sounds and played with a uniquesound, which you hear on the album. They also had unique singing styles where Chet Baker was very quiet and soft.
Jack Sheldon was boisterous and loud. And so their collaboration together was pretty amazing on this.
And I think that Jack Sheldon was just trying to coax Chet back into playing and making albums.
And my dad had gone into business with.
A fellow named Hank Quinn who also lived we lived on Lido Isle with Johnny Mercer.
Wow.
No it’s when i think about this it’s all pretty incredible and and the Quinn’s lived down, five or six streets from us and there were no recording studios in Orange County, kind of amazing back in the 70s. And Hank Quinn decided to put one in up in Tustin, which was a sort of new community. And he went to a mini mall, and he built this studio called United Audio. And a lot of people started recording there. And in those days, you went and made demos if you had a folk group or a rock and roll group. And my dad used it a lot.
And he actually, he and Jack Sheldon did an album there called Freaky Friday, which is another not lost tape. It’s out. It’s a CD. It’s pretty crazy. It shows you their sense of humor.
And that’s where they coaxed Chet Baker to come back and start playing again. And according to the Jazz Detective, Zee Feldman, who helped me produce this album. It’s a year or two before the official comeback for Chet Baker.
So it’s really a lost album that I’m so thrilled to be able to now let everybody hear.
So it’s truly a musical artifact unearthed, you know?
Absolutely. Absolutely.
I said in the liner notes that my dad, had planned to take it out and sell it, but unfortunately had a sudden heart attack less than a year after they made the album. It kind of got stuck in a box in our garage on Lido Isle.
And, you know, I kind of unearthed it several years ago. Then a musicologist and great music producer, Jeff Pollack, who’s also a producer on this, he encouraged to you know unearth it and get it out there and I actually didn’t even know who had played on it except for my dad, Jack and Chet and then so we had to do a little digging to find out who the other musicians were, which it turns out were all kind of part of what I call the west coast jazz era and then they all played at our house a lot. Dave Frishberg, Joe Mondragon who all the guys called “The Dragon,” and Nick Ceroli on drums. But they were always around and so it was great now to be able to get this one out so people can hear it.
So the very first time that you heard this tape, in whatever state it was in, what was going through your head?
Friendship was going through my head because I’d say Jack Sheldon was my dad’s best friend and all these musicians back then just wanted to play together, just wanted to hang and create music and laugh and party hard. They lived hard lives, but it wasall about the music and and their friendships. Imean the fact that all these guys would come down and play at my high school for an assembly: that’s friendship. They weren’t getting paid. They wanted to spread jazz. They wanted to listen to music and I think that they were so supportive of each other and that’s what you see here with Jack supporting Chet to get back in to what he loved to do, which was make music and and record albums. So i think that’s when when I heard this I felt the the love between all of these guys. It, you know, it wasn’t a hip thing back then, but they loved each other.
They loved to be together. They loved to play together.
So that’s, when I first heard this album, that’s what I felt shown through.
I’ve always been kind of a digger. And, you know, I’m the kind of person that I read the liner notes.
I look at the little details and looking at these names.
Don’t you miss them? Don’t you miss liner notes?
I absolutely do. Yeah. I mean, to me, it matters who wrote asong,whoplayed on this. Dave Frishberg, one of the more interesting people in music, is on this album. But I’m hoping you can tellus about Jack Marshall, your father. You’ve been talking a little bit about him, but what kind of guy was he?
He was the kindest, most generous dad you could ever have. He loved his kids. He loved music.
And we grew up in a musical household. There was music all the time everywhere. He had an incredible sense of humor, which got him through. I mean, if you ask anybody who knew him or played with him, it was his sense of humor, and it could have been dark humor as well, but he made everybody laugh and he made everybody feel comfortable and he was this kind of savant with being able to transfer what was in his head musically onto music paper.
And i used to watch him at home. He would have a big sheet of yellow music paper, and down the side were violins, bass, trumpets, clarinets, drums, and he would play a chord with his left hand and write each bar. He could hear in his head what the violin sounded like, what the trumpet sounded like, and he would write and do these arrangements across that sheet. It was just miraculous. And so he had a real gift.
“He had a gift of bringing people together.”
And he had a gift of bringing people together. These people would always be at our house. He loved to come up here, he called it up to town, and play at Dante’s. And he created Guitar Night at Dante’s, where the best jazz guitarists in the world would come and play for scale because they loved to play.
And so that was my dad. He started, he grew up in Kansas. He played the banjo in Kansas as a kid and was great. And given a contract with MCA, I like to think Lou Wasserman did this. So but who knows? But to play on the radio, sing and play on the radio when he’s 14. So the entire family moved to Hollywood. It’s why I’m here.
He went to Hollywood High and then he was the youngest member of the Johnny Green Orchestra at MGM. He played the guitar. He’s in the videos that they have of the Jubilee Orchestra. And then he became a session player because he could read music. That was the thing. He learned how to read music.
His lesson to me or his advice to me was if you’re going to play guitar, learn to play classical guitar first. Because then you can read and then you can play chords and you have the dexterity in your hands. Then if you want to go jazz orrock or folk you can do them all. So, then he started arranging and writing and that’s when he was contracted by Capital Records: Dave Cavanaugh, and that’s when he discovered Jack Sheldon. He brought Howard Roberts in. He loved to arrange and pick these songs and produce these albums and then he started writing for TV.
His most famous series was “The Munsters,” which still lasts till today you know. You hear it it’s even sampled by a rap group, the Fallout Boys. His music lives on so I was really proud of him. He went way too early, but he lives on in my heart. It was great because, you know, we got some of the publishing. Good for the family.
So could you possibly pick a favorite track from this record coming out? I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.
I have two. One’s Jack Sheldon’s “Historia de Un Amor.” I think his singing and his solo on that track is incredible. And, for for Chet, it’s, “This Can’t Be Love.” Okay. He does some great stuff in there, but you know, they’re, they’re so unique. These two guys together. It’s kind of amazing. Don’t you think?
Oh, definitely.
Yeah.
There’s a, I don’t know, maybe this is an obvious statement. There’s a difference, but there’s a great commonality between the two of them.
Exactly. Exactly. They somehow, they have distinctive sounds both in their playing and their singing.
Right. But somehow they blend together.
Yeah, somehow. And it’s a magic moment that would possibly be just sitting there in a box, but by a miracle.
“I’m thrilled that this is on vinyl.”
A miracle. Yeah, it’s a miracle. And, again, I think there’s been kind of a renaissance in jazz where people want to hear this stuff. And, you know, we’ve got vinyl back again. I mean, I’m thrilled that this is on vinyl. And, you know, what a way to celebrate Record Store Day, then to have this album come out on vinyl. So it’s pretty fantastic.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’ve been playing this more than a few times into the wee small hours of the morning.
Wait, what’s your favorite?
Okay, well, I pride myself on knowing my Great American Songbook. And so as I was listening, I didn’t look at the song titles, and I thought, “now what is this one?” There’s one song on there that I’m pretty sure most people haven’t heard: “Too Blue.” I think it’s a beautiful song and I had never heard it before.
Yeah, well, that’s the other interesting thing about the choices of these songs.
It really reminds me of my childhood and growing up because there’s a Bossa Nova in there. You know, Bossa Nova was new in the 60s. So, “Once I Love” is in there. “I’m Old Fashioned.” You know, that’s a stint. There are these standards. “You Fascinate Me So,” you know, there’s Johnny Mercer represented in there, you know. It is kind of an American Songbook, but you’re right “Too Blue,” was one that they you know, they picked these songs. So it was one of you know, those are the songs they would play In their sets at these jazz clubs I guess because they loved the way they were constructed.
Right, and Too Blue is a Jack Sheldon composition. And so you always know When something’s a good song when a composer says, Okay, I’m going to be alongside “This Can’t Be Love.” I’m going to be alongside “I’m Old Fashioned.” It’s, you know, but it’s a great song for sure.
Yeah, well, he’s smiling down right now on you for that one.
Well, speaking of smiling down, you had a unique experience recently. You were on stage at the Hollywood Bowl.
I was.
What was that like?
It was an incredible moment. Kind of surreal. A celebration of my best friend Jimmy Buffett.
It was an incredible moment, kind of surreal when I think back on it, celebration of my best friend, Jimmy Buffett. And it was a fitting and wonderful celebration of his life. When you see the eclectic group of people staying on that stage. There’s somewhere online that somebody on their iPhone panned the stage. And when you look who’s up there on “Margaritaville,” which is what I was up there doing. It’s amazing. The different folks that he touched and felt they were his friend.
“How do you get all these people together? Only Jimmy Buffett could have done it.”
These were real friendships. He’s got everybody from Snoop Dogg, to Pit Bull to Paul McCartney to Jackson Browne. To Sheryl Crow. To you know, you just…You see, plus his band, you just see the breadth of musicality and the people he touched in the most unique and best way. He just liked to live and love life. Brandy Carlile, you know, it was amazing night. It was an amazing night.
Yeah. Yeah, I wasn’t there, but I heard the Brandy Carlile version of “Tin Cup Chalice.” Man, that was just beautiful.
What a great song. And that’s the thing that goes a lot of times unrecognized. What a great songwriter he was! What a great storyteller! You know and Zac Brown and Dave Grohl. How do you get all these people together? Only Jimmy Buffett could have done it.
Yeah. And something that I think is interesting, you know a lot of people have him pigeonholed as a folk artist or folk-rock, but I always thought that he did such a phenomenal job, speaking of standards, of things like “Stars Fell on Alabama,” “Slow Boat to China,” “White Christmas.”
Yeah. Yeah, he, you know, and his covers of other people’s, you know, “Southern Cross,” “Brown Eyed Girl,” you know, those were his standards as well. He appreciated other musicians and writers. And yeah, he was one of a kind, literally.
Working our way back to this Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon album that is coming out. What do you hope that somebody gets out of the experience of listening? What do you hope that they keep in mind and in heart, for that matter?
I think that I hope that people understand what friendship is about and that the generosity of these two really superstars trading off with each other and Jack Sheldon encouraging Chet to come back and giving him a way to do it.
It’s in the notes, but I’m sure he said, “hey, Chetty, you only have to play on half this album. I’ll play on the other half.” So there was a real love of all of these musicians that I grew up with in the 50s, 60s, and the 70s, and I think that this is a perfect example of that.
Is there a Frank Marshall theme song? Is there a song that if you had to pick that would describe you, could you pick one? Just of any song in the world.
I don’t know. I don’t know, Paul. That’s a tough one. I’d have to really think about it. I like them all. You know, pick your favorite child.
Tough. Well, I’ll tell you, whenever I see the name Frank Marshall, I’m always going to think about one of my all-time favorite songs and also one of my all-time favorite movies. I’ll always think of “Paper Moon.”
Well, it’s, you know, when they asked me that question, what movie is your favorite? That’s one of the, maybe one of the top two.
That movie, the entire experience, the making of the movie was fantastic. The result, the movie itself was fantastic. And you can’t ask for more than that. And that song, you’re right. That’s one of the greats, that song. And for me, a real, you know, sort of, that’s where I really fell in love. I was in love with movies, but that one, we were just this little band of gypsies going across Kansas into Missouri, making this movie.
And it was so fun, and it was… It was just so rewarding and you know the performance of Tatum and and her dad Ryan, and of course I had Peter Bogdanovich and Polly Platt: my two mentors with me. They weren’t together, but we were working together. So it was just a fantastic experience and you’re right it was based around that song. These standards, you know. “I’m Old-Fashioned,” maybe that’s. Maybe that’s who I am.
Frank, what is your drink of choice?
My drink of choice is Don Julio 1942, which on the rocks with a lime. Which was also Jimmy Buffett’s favorite drink.
Oh, how about that?
Well, everybody out there. Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon “In Perfect Harmony: The Lost Album,” on the Jazz Detective label. You need to pick it up folks. It’s really a beautiful thing. And it’s also going to be coming out on CD On April 26th, so pick it up folks. And Frank Marshall it’s great to spend time with you.
Thanks Paul. Well, I look forward to doing it again. We’ll find another album, right?
That’s right. That’s right. Well, I will tell you, there’s a great, great singer-songwriter [Greg Bridgewater.] He lives in San Clemente, California. And this summer, I’m going to be traveling out. So it’s a small world. Who knows?
Well, let me know. I’m here. I’m only an hour away from San Clemente.
All right. Well, sir, congratulations on unearthing this great, great record.
Thanks so much, Paul. Great to chat with you.
Thank you, sir. Till next time.
