Performer Profile: John Westfall
Written by Johnny Case
Whenever a jazz musician is confined in a commercial dance band, and that is his only outlet for musical expression (or some semblance of such), this defines one of numerous ways a musician pays dues. The years I worked with trombonist John Westfall call to mind a decade of paying dues. He and I worked in Dave Howard's combo from approximately 1973 until circa 1978. John was a wonderful trombone player, definitely a jazz improviser at heart. The sad truth is we never once played a jazz gig. Howard's engagements were always dance band dates, mostly for the elegant and exclusive private club circuit of oil-rich Fort Worth and surrounding areas. Despite a repertoire that included obligatory square hits of the times, maybe fifty percent of the tunes were classic pop, mixed with a few swing and jazz instrumentals. Howard was the drummer/leader who also shared vocal duties with John. Whenever there was an opportunity to liven things up, John and I would interject as much jazz as possible. Fortunately, this met with full approval from Dave Howard, whose true love was the better quality material in his book. He and John had long been friends and had played together many times in different bands. It was no doubt a mutual respect and their friendship that had led Dave Howard to feature trombone as the lead instrument in his four piece band. This instrumentation was unique in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. John Westfall's great musical ability, however, made it seem perfectly normal, and actually became the expected and perhaps favored sound by the dance crowds for whom we played. The jazz bond caused John and I to become good friends, and this made the gigs more interesting, or at least more tolerable. Very few jazz gigs existed at this time, except for the Dallas club called The Recovery Room. There are always more qualified jazz musicians than there are gigs during any era, and certainly the 1970's decade wasn't known as a thriving time for jazz.
John had a tall and towering physique, a big-boned man well suited for playing a big instrument. He stood upright and carried himself as someone quite comfortable in his own skin. He shared with the leader a healthy sense of mischievous fun, and I sometimes felt as though the two of them were overgrown adolescents amusing themselves with escapades of imposture and other harmless pranks. John was a far more serious musician than such behavior would have some people believe. My series of jazz recordings had been an ongoing project throughout the 1970s, a means of feeling a sense of creative accomplishment in a time when no public venue for jazz was available to me. My recognition of John's depth as an improviser came gradually because the brevity of solos we played in the Dave Howard band restricted any kind of idea development in terms of making sustained musical statements. By 1975, however, I was eager to include John on a studio session being planned for May. Jerry Case and I cut four lengthy originals in the fine company of Kerby Stewart, bass; Ted Wasser, drums, Tom Morrell, pedal steel guitar and John Westfall, trombone and bass trombone. All tunes were first and only takes. John did not disappoint. In fact, he contributed strong, rousing solos informed by the logic of a masterful improviser.
As I had become aware on our gigs together, John Westfall played with lots of heart. He also had an open mind regarding the most modern movements taking place in jazz. He was a fan of the avant garde trombonist Roswell Rudd (whose sound and techniques harkened back to the earliest jazz), and the brilliant German virtuoso Albert Mandelsdorff. Of no less interest to John was the great music of the past. John, being older than myself, taught me about the marvelous Bill Harris, known by his fans as "The Professor". Harris was the composer of Everywhere, a trombone feature which Roswell Rudd re-recorded in 1966 as a tribute to Harris. In the liner notes to his album entitled Everywhere, Rudd states: " That's Bill Harris talking" in reference to the hauntingly beautiful title piece. John also never forgot his deep admiration for the legendary Jack Teagarden, another of the pre-bop giants of the trombone.
Speaking of bebop, the vocabulary of that revolutionary music as applied to trombone (J.J. Johnson, Kai Winding, Carl Fontana, Curtis Fuller, etc.) formed a large part of John's musical language. He also knew the merits of lesser-known players who were exceptionally good, such as George Bohanon and Jimmy Knepper. In his observations regarding bebop, John once told me that the great upheaval I had witnessed in the 1960's with the emergence of the avant garde, "new thing" or free jazz, was nothing compared to that of the bebop revolution in the 1940's.
Since our listening tastes ventured toward art with no boundary lines, we felt all the more confined by the reality of our immediate playing situation. Once, when bored near the end of a playing engagement, John & I began to "play free", as in free jazz - only to see a drunken couple get out on the dance floor! We looked at each other and cracked up.
We had lots of fun in those years. Sometimes the "fun" got a bit out of hand. The drinking perhaps went too far, as all four of us were, by most people's standards, shall we say...over-indulging. This ended up ending our welcome at the various venues where we had played during the 1970's. In retrospect, there were only two nights out of myriads which were actually rewarding from a musical standpoint. One was when Kerby Stewart subbed for our regular bassist and the other was in 1976 or 1977 when Dave Howard's band played Fort Worth's Jewel Charity Ball at Ridglea Country Club. For this ultra-important high society event, Dave augmented our band with the stellar jazz guitarist/educator Jack Peterson, who taught at the famed University of North Texas. From the very first tune, which I seem to recall was the instrumental "Relaxin'", this veteran soloed with such self-assurance, alternating linear double-time passages with rich chordal work, he inspired me and probably John also, as I recall we both played our best within the constraints of playing for the Jewel Charity Ball.
During those years of knowing John, I gained much knowledge from him because he was open to sharing. I viewed him as a natural teacher, and he in fact had a number of private students. More than once I heard him comment that he derived more satisfaction from teaching than from playing. John loved to help anyone develop their talent, especially those eager and talented youngsters who would carry forward the knowledge and art of jazz improvisation. My own curiosity about much of what I hadn't yet heard of the jazz legacy spurred John to share those treasured 78 rpm records he'd kept intact all through the years. One day he invited me to his place where we listened to original recordings such as the Bill Harris feature Everywhere by the Woody Herman Orchestra and Gerry Mulligan's bop-influenced Elevation performed by the Elliott Lawrence Orchestra. Being from the midwest, John's familiaity with territory bands often spiked his rememberances of the big band era. I heard him speak of the west coast studio musicians including Frank Rosolino, Carl Fontana, bass trombonist George Roberts and the legendary trumpeter Conrad Gozzo. I'm not sure how many orchestras John had played with, but his reading skills were evidently more than sufficient to handle reading the charts. I sensed that John was perhaps more interested in the greater freedom of playing with small groups which allow for more improvisation. In his young years, he had been with groups of like-minded modernists. A photo given to me by his son Mark Westfall, shows a young John Westfall playing with a quintet consisting of Bob Montgomery, bass; John Nelson, piano; Harvey Haas, drums, and an unidentified saxophonist. The photo is not dated, but is probably from the early 1950's. Junction City, Kansas fostered quite a number of ambitous young players, striving to realize their full musical potential. Johnny Nelson is one with whom John remained in contact. Nelson had gone on to become a busy arranger based in Sacremento, California. One of the original bebop tunes dating back to those early days was entitled Function at the Junction. The title itself never failed to elicit a chuckle from John and bring a grin to his face. His sense of humor is still with me. He had a penchant for corny vaudeville lines: "I'm so broke I can't pay attention" and "We need to find a happy medium, or at least a contented fortune teller". The others I will spare readers from suffering. When he bought a bass trombone and became serious about exploring its potential as a jazz solo instrument, the tenor trombone interested him less and he good-naturedly referred to it as a "pea-shooter", a familiar term to many trombonists. I also learned that the valve trombone is a "bastardized instrument". John would say these things with that familiar grin and a twinkle in his eye. On one occasion as we were preparing to begin our first set at a new venue, he correctly noted "the unisons are out" when I played a chord on the out-of-tune piano. On matters of health, John once acknowledged his somewhat bulging stomach and said he would soon begin a special diet to help get back to his original weight: "six pounds and three ounces" ...oops, I promised not to return to the vaudeville!
How could you not love a guy who kept your mind off how miserable were the gigs we had to endure? After Dave Howard's bookings ended, John and I played some dixieland jobs, and we were grateful for the work. The most memorable one was with drummer Cody Sandifer. His band included a "lyrical lush" trumpeter named Snuffy Klaus and multi-instrumentalist Winston Barney on trumpet and vibes. The biggest problem was that Snuffy quite often failed to show up, which is when Winston didn't play the vibes. Why did Cody keep Snuffy Klaus as a band member? Anyone who'd ever heard the veteran's light and wonderfully melodic soloing and the warmth of his tone...would know the answer. Bandleader Cody Sandifer was the "unruly" one among brothers Sandy and Perry, who were popular musician/band leaders in Fort Worth's society circles. It is fitting that the last gig John and I played together offered no shortage of laughs and good humor.
John Westfall later moved back to his home state of Kansas, but returned to Fort Worth on occasional visits. By the mid-1980's, I had finally settled into that jazz gig which had been non-existent a decade earlier. John was happy for me, and I was thrilled when he sat in to play a few tunes. For once, John and I played real jazz at Sardine's Ristorante Italiano, known as much for its "Live Jazz Nightly" as for its fine Italian cuisine. Unfortunately, by this time John had developed heart problems. His health was visibly deteriorating, and he no longer stood erect. John's immediate goal was to save enough money for the expensive open heart surgery that could save his life. It was a tough go without the health insurance which many musicians do not have.
John Walter Westfall was born March 20, 1930 in Junction City, Kansas. After graduating from high school in 1948, he attended Bethany College at Lindsborg, Kansas, The University of Texas at Arlington, and Kansas State University. In addition to his work as a musician and music teacher in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, he taught music privately for many years in the Junction City and Manhattan (Kansas) area, specializing in brass instruments. Over the decades of his life he performed with various bands including the Harry Ranch Orchestra, the Vaughn Bolton Orchestra and the New Vintage Jazz Band. Before he could accumulate the funds for open heart surgery, John Westfall died of a heart attack on May 11, 1995 at the age of 65.