Art Farmer

Arthur Stewart Farmer (August 21, 1928 – October 4, 1999) was an American jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player. He also played flumpet, a trumpet–flugelhorn combination especially designed for him. He and his identical twin brother, double bassist Addison Farmer, started playing professionally while in high school. Art gained greater attention after the release of a recording of his composition "Farmer's Market" in 1952. He subsequently moved from Los Angeles to New York, where he performed and recorded with musicians such as Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, and Gigi Gryce and became known principally as a bebop player.

As Farmer's reputation grew, he expanded from bebop into more experimental forms through working with composers such as George Russell and Teddy Charles. He went on to join Gerry Mulligan's quartet and, with Benny Golson, to co-found the Jazztet. Continuing to develop his own sound, Farmer switched from trumpet to the warmer flugelhorn in the early 1960s, and he helped to establish the flugelhorn as a soloist's instrument in jazz.Feather, Leonard (March 30, 1990
"Jazz Review: Art Farmer's Fluegelhorn of Plenty"
''Los Angeles Times''. He settled in Europe in 1968 and continued to tour internationally until his death. Farmer recorded more than 50 albums under his own name, a dozen with the Jazztet, and dozens more with other leaders. His playing is known for its individuality – most noticeably, its lyricism, warmth of tone and sensitivity.

Early life

Art Farmer was born an hour before his twin brother, on August 21, 1928, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, reportedly at 2201 Fourth Avenue. Their parents, James Arthur Farmer and Hazel Stewart Farmer, divorced when the boys were four, and their steelworker father was killed in a work accident not long after this. Art moved with his grandfather, grandmother, mother, brother and sister to Phoenix, Arizona when he was still four."Art Farmer: NEA Jazz Master (1999)"
(June 29–30, 1995) Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program NEA Jazz Master interview. He started to play the piano while in elementary school, then moved on to bass tuba and violin before settling on cornet and then trumpet at the age of thirteen.Bryant, Clora (1998) ''Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles''. University of California Press. His family was musical: most of them played as a hobby, and one was a professional trombonist. Art's grandfather was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. This influenced Farmer's first choice of instrument, as his mother played piano for the church choir. The bass tuba was for use in a marching band and was Farmer's instrument for a year, until a cornet became available. Phoenix schools were segregated, and no one at Farmer's school could provide useful music lessons. He taught himself to read music and practiced his new main instrument, the trumpet.

Farmer and his brother moved to Los Angeles in 1945, attending the music-oriented Jefferson High School, where they got music instruction and met other developing musicians such as Sonny Criss, Ernie Andrews, Big Jay McNeely, and Ed Thigpen. The brothers earned money by working in a cold-storage warehouse
and by playing professionally. Art started playing trumpet professionally at the age of 16, performing in the bands of Horace Henderson, Jimmy Mundy, and Floyd Ray, among others.Rosenthal, David (1993) ''Hard Bop: Jazz and Black Music, 1955–1965''. pp. 85–94. Oxford University Press. These opportunities came about through a combination of his ability and the absence of numerous older musicians, who were still in the armed forces following World War II. Around this time in Los Angeles, there were abundant opportunities for musical development, according to Farmer: "During the day you would go to somebody's house and play. At night there were after-hours clubs ..andanybody who wanted to play was free to come up and play".Berliner, Paul F. (2009) ''Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation''. University of Chicago Press. Farmer left high school early but persuaded the principal to give him a diploma, which he did not collect until a visit to the school in 1958.

At this time, as an adolescent in Los Angeles, bebop and the swing era big bands both attracted Farmer's attention. Decades later, he stated that, at that time, "I knew I had to be in jazz. Two things decided me – the sound of a trumpet section in a big band and hearing a jam session". Farmer's trumpet influences in the 1940s were Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Fats Navarro, but, in his own words, "then I heard Freddie Webster, and I loved his sound. I decided to work on sound because it seemed like most of the guys my age were just working on speed".Robinson, Greg (October 1994) "Art Farmer: Playing It Right". ''JazzTimes''. pp. 47–48, 53.

Later life and career

Early career in Los Angeles and New York

Farmer left school to tour with a group led by Johnny Otis, but this job lasted for only four months, as Farmer's lip gave out. Performing for long periods seven days a week for this job put great pressure on his technique, which was insufficiently developed to cope with such physical demands. His lip eventually became lacerated, and he could no longer play. He then received technique training in New York, where he worked for a time as a janitor and played as a freelance musician during 1947 and 1948. An audition for Dizzy Gillespie's big band was unsuccessful, and Farmer returned to the West Coast in 1948 as a member of Jay McShann's band. Club and studio work was hard to get in Los Angeles from the late 1940s and into the 1950s, as it was dominated by white musicians. Farmer played and toured with Benny Carter, Roy Porter and Gerald Wilson, then played with Wardell Gray in 1951–52.Feather, Leonard & Gitler, Ira (2007) ''The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz''. p. 219. Oxford University Press. The hazards of the touring jazz musician's lifestyle were also present: while travelling overnight by car between Phoenix and El Paso, to get to another Roy Porter-led gig, the car that Farmer was in overturned at high speed, leaving him concussed and Porter with broken ribs.

Farmer's first studio recording appears to have been on June 28 or July 2, 1948, in Los Angeles, under the leadership of vocalist Big Joe Turner and pianist Pete Johnson. They recorded "Radar Blues", and at some point in the same or the following year they added a further seven sides; the eight tracks were released as four singles by Swing Time Records. Farmer recorded further singles with Roy Porter and then, on January 21, 1952, as a member of Wardell Gray's sextet. The latter session produced six tracks that were released as singles. These included "Farmer's Market", a piece that was written by Farmer and brought him greater attention.

Career after second move to New York

Farmer worked in Los Angeles for a time as a hotel janitor and a hospital file clerk, before joining Lionel Hampton's orchestra in 1952. He toured Europe with the orchestra from September to December 1953, and shared the organization's trumpet chairs with Clifford Brown, Quincy Jones and Benny Bailey. This aided his musical development considerably, as did his 1953 membership of Teddy Charles' New Directions band – the compositions he encountered in this band allowed him to consider a broader range of expression during improvisation.Fordham, John (October 7, 1999
"Art Farmer"
''The Guardian''.

Farmer relocated to New York and, on July 2, 1953, had his first recording session as leader. This was combined with another recorded 11 months later to form the eight-track Prestige LP, ''The Art Farmer Septet'', featuring arrangements by Quincy Jones and Gigi Gryce. Farmer became "one of the most sought-after trumpeters of the fifties":Ramsey, Douglas K. (1989) ''Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music & Some of Its Makers''. University of Arkansas Press. he continued to work with Gryce (1954–56), and also with Horace Silver (1956–58) and Gerry Mulligan (1958–59), among others. Bogdanov, Vladimir; Woodstra, Chris; Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (eds.) (2002) ''All Music Guide to Jazz: The Definitive Guide to Jazz Music'' (4th ed.). Backbeat Books. One of the others was pianist Thelonious Monk, who led a sextet that included Farmer on its performances on a version of the Steve Allen Show, broadcast on television on June 10, 1955. The following month, Farmer played in the Charles Mingus sextet's performance at the Newport Jazz Festival.

Farmer recorded only twice with Horace Silver's group, as Silver recorded for Blue Note Records, while Farmer was signed to Prestige. Feuds between the label bosses ruled out extensive cross-label collaboration.Harrison, Max; Thacker, Eric; Nicholson, Stuart (2000) ''The Essential Jazz Records: Volume 2: Modernism to Postmodernism''. pp. 96–99. Continuum. The transition from Silver's piano-led quintet to Mulligan's piano-less quartet was not straightforward: "to suddenly find yourself in a pianoless group was like walking down the street naked", commented Farmer.Balliett, Whitney (September 23, 1985) "Profiles: Here and Abroad" ''The New Yorker''. pp. 43–55. As a member of Mulligan's band, Farmer appeared on film twice – in ''I Want to Live!'' (1958) and ''The Subterraneans'' (1960)National Endowment for the Art
"1999 NEA Jazz Master: Art Farmer"
. NEA Jazz Masters Art Farmer biography. Retrieved April 2, 2013. – and again toured Europe, as part of a Jazz at the Philharmonic tour, helping him to develop an international reputation.Duncan, Amy (January 6, 1983
"American Trumpeter Art Farmer's Cool Notes in Vienna"
''The Christian Science Monitor''. In New York, Farmer worked with Lester Young, who told him to "tighten up and tell a 'story' in each solo".Balliett, Whitney (2006) ''American Musicians II: Seventy-One Portraits in Jazz''. University Press of Mississippi. At this time, Farmer also rented his trumpet on a nightly basis to Miles Davis, who had pawned his own due to his drug dependency.

From the middle of the 1950s, Farmer featured in recordings by leading arrangers of the day, including George Russell, Quincy Jones and Oliver Nelson, being in demand because of his reputation for being able to play anything. The wide range of styles these arrangers represented was extended when Farmer took part in a series of experimental sessions with composer Edgard Varèse in 1957. Varèse used approximate notation and wanted the musicians to improvise within its structure; at least some of the seasoned jazz musicians present regarded this process of creation as similar to their own familiar creations of spontaneously produced head arrangements, but their efforts influenced Varèse's composition, Poème électronique. Farmer's playing around this time is summarized by critic Whitney Balliett, commenting on his performance on Hal McKusick's 1957 album ''Hal McKusick Quintet'': "Farmer has become one of the few genuinely individual modern trumpeters. (Nine out of ten modern trumpeters are true copies of Dizzy Gillespie or Miles Davis.)"Balliett, Whitney (2000) ''Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz 1954–2000''. p. 37. Granta Books. Farmer was one of 57 jazz musicians to appear in the 1958 photograph " A Great Day in Harlem" and was later interviewed for the 1994 documentary of the same title.

Farmer formed the Jazztet in 1959, with the composer and tenor saxophonist Benny Golson, after each man independently came to the conclusion that the other should be a member of his new sextet. The Jazztet lasted until 1962, recorded several albums for Argo and Mercury Records, and assisted in the early careers of pianist McCoy Tyner and trombonist Grachan Moncur III. In the early 1960s Farmer established a trio with guitarist Jim Hall and bassist Steve Swallow; his relationship with Hall lasted from 1962 to 1964, and included two tours of Europe, one of which had concerts recorded for the BBC
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