Neal Hefti - Late 1940s

Late 1940s

While playing with the First Herd, Neal married Herman's vocalist, Frances Wayne. Playing with the band was very enjoyable for Hefti, which made it doubly hard for him to leave when he wanted to pursue arranging and composing full-time. Talking about Herman's band, Hefti said,

The band was a lot of fun. I think there was great rapport between the people in it. And none of us wanted to leave. We were always getting sort of offers from other bands for much more money than we were making with Woody, and it was always like if you left, you were a rat. You were really letting down the team.

The Heftis finally left Woody Herman in late 1946, and Neal began freelance arranging. He wrote charts for Buddy Rich's band, and the ill-fated Billy Butterfield band. He wrote a few arrangements and compositions for George Auld's band, including the outstanding composition "Mo Mo." He joined the short-lived Charlie Ventura band as both sideman and arranger (arranging popular songs such as "How High the Moon"). He also arranged for the best of Harry James's bands in the late forties.

One of the serendipitous highlights of his work in the late forties was the recording of his Cuban-influenced song "Repetition" using a big band and string orchestra, for an anthology album called The Jazz Scene intended to showcase the best jazz artists around at that time. What saved this otherwise uncharacteristically bland arrangement was the featuring of Charlie Parker as soloist. Hefti had written the piece with no soloist in mind, but Parker was in the studio while Hefti was recording, heard the arrangement, and asked to be included as soloist. In the liner notes to the album, producer Norman Granz wrote:

Parker actually plays on top of the original arrangement; that it jells as well as it does is a tribute both to the flexible arrangement of Hefti and the inventive genius of Parker to adapt himself to any musical surrounding.