Bandleader Rudy Salvini was another indefatigable Bay Area musician who had begun playing trumpet when he was eight years old and became interested in jazz in 1941 after hearing Stan Kenton’s band at the Oakland Sweet Ballroom. “That was the most exciting band I’ve ever heard,” said Rudy.

Originally from Oakland, where he was born on March 22, 1925, Rudy Salvini attended Clawson Elementary School and Hoover High School. At eighteen, during his senior year at Tech, he put together his first band, a 10-piece orchestra whose members included John Marabuto and Johnny Coppola. They played anywhere they could, including USO dances. “Pretty soon the union got to know who I was and said ‘hey, why don’t you join us?’” recalls Rudy. “So I went down to see the business agent in Oakland and joined.” Like most AFM locals at the time, Local 6 was racially segregated. Local 669, the black local, was a subsidiary of Local 6. It covered the same territory as Local 6 although black musicians were not allowed to play east of Van Ness. The two locals were finally merged by court order in 1960.”

He then went on to San Francisco State University, where he belonged to the same student body as Virgil Gonsalves. In May 1945 he was drafted and stationed at Wiesbaden, Germany with the 761st Army Air Force band. Later, at the recommendation of friends, Rudy joined the 314th Army Forces Band, the top general’s band, which boasted the best musicians from all over Europe. They played at the Wiesbaden Opera house for the Army Air Force Radio Network. It was a big band with a full string section and four singers, including a young Tony Benedetto (later Tony Bennett, of course). Two years later, Rudy returned to San Francisco State University and received his Bachelors in Music and teaching credentials in 1953. After his graduation, Salvini started doing substitute teaching at schools, instructing private pupils, playing casual jobs —and trying to put big band jazz back in the picture in Oakland.

In 1954, Rudy Salvini, the young trumpeter and school-teacher, finally organized his 17-piece rehearsal band, mostly with SF State grads. Each week they gathered on Saturday in a San Francisco hall at 230 Jones Street to play long and arduous but stimulating rehearsals just for the sheer joy of music. “People would bring their music, and we would play it,” said Rudy, “That started me off. During two years of just rehearsals,” Salvini remarked, “there were some dreary moments —though not too many. There also were some changes in personnel, but the nucleus of the band remains the same,” he said in March 1956.

It was preeminently a jazz band, although it devoted a considerable portion of its repertoire to dancing tempo numbers in an attempt to interest whatever group of dancers existed in the Bay Area. The Salvini band was a young, Kenton-Basie derived band which, however, was extremely original in its arrangements, notably by Jerry Coker, Jerry Mulvihill, and Jerry Cournoyer.

On January 14, 1956, Rudy Salvini’s big band made its first public appearance, along with Virgil Gonsalves’ sextet, at the Saturday afternoon dance concert sessions for young people at Oakland Sweet’s Ballroom, organized by Pat Henry, the best jazz disc jockey (at KROW) in the Bay area. They drew 250 patrons for their first date. “I will forever be indebted to Pat,” Salvini said, recalling that Mr. Henry had helped set up his band’s first Bay Area gig. “He really gave us our start. He put himself out on a limb for us.”

Come March, Pat Henry took his show to the Sands, another Oakland dance hall, where he resumed latenight sessions, but this time as “Sunday at the Sands.” Given that big band shows were not having much luck else where in the country, it was encouraging that Henry’s display of Salvini’s great team, along with the Virgil Gonsalves sextet, was being met with great approval.

Meanwhile, the notoriety of the sextet had spread throughout the country with their albums and articles in national publications and also through musicians who had been able to listen to them. Virgil began receiving requests to play outside the Bay Area, and on May 5th he flew his sextet to the University of Colorado for a one niter, and also got a booking for that summer at Lake Tahoe in Nevada.

The famous veteran tenor saxophonist Vido Musso, after years of playing in some of the best big bands (Benny Goodman, Harry James, and Stan Kenton, among others), began his journey as a leader. On May 25, 1956, he opened at San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom with a 10-piece band scheduled for a series of weekend dances. Virgil formed the band for Vido, which included the Gonsalves sextet plus altoist Jerry Dodgion and other local musicians.

Meantime, Rudy Salvini’s Oakland band had come a longway since its debut earlier that year, not only succeeding musically, but drawing nearly 400 people on the night of Sunday,October 14, 1956, during their first appearance that season at the Sands Ballroom. Due to the enthusiastic response of the public, the band was able to stay together. And although it was still playing only casual engagements and its members had to support themselves with other jobs, these casual events were becoming more andmore frequent.

Later, in November ‘56 Salvini’s big band recorded five tunes for the new label San Francisco Jazz Records, led by former disc jockey Alan Levitt. Pat Henry, who produced the recording session, explained: “We rented the Sands Ballroom in Oakland. First, it is a big hall, an old hall. We used the smallest possible space to gain the effect of actually sitting inside the band.Only one Telefunken microphone was used for all the reeds, trumpets and trombones. An Altec M-30 microphone system was used for the bassist and the pianist.” With this recording, Salvini’s big band finally got the opportunity to be heard nation-wide. Along with Jerry Coker’s quartet and vocalist Ree Brunell, the band was featured on “Intro to Jazz,” the first LP issued by the label; itwas released in February 1957. It had also been rumored at the time that the Virgil Gonsalves Sextet would record an LP for San Francisco Jazz Records, but this never happened because Levitt died suddenly, and that was the end of the record label.

On the weekend of November 18, 1956, at the Black Hawk, the Calvin Jackson Quartet was sharing the stand with the new Virgil Gonsalves Sextet which included drummer Bob Fuhlrodt and bassist Jerry Good of Oakland, tenor Lloyd Rice, pianist John Baker, and trumpeter Mike Downs, another Oaklander.

Also in November, Rudy Salvini left his orchestra for a spell and brought a quintet to the Chi-Chi Club on 12th St. Clyde Pound was on piano, usually with Virgil Gonsalves, Pete Dovino on tenor clarinet and vocals, Dean Reilly on bass, and Forrest Elledge on drums. They played four nights a week for two weeks.

At Berkeley’s Little Theater, the night of May 29, a near-capacity audience of more than 500 people, most of them Berkeley High School students, gave an enthusiastic welcome to a 2 1/2 hour concert by Salvini’s big band with Virgil Gonsalves in the sax section. The concert was amazing in several respects. It was the first, at least in many years, in which a high school student body sponsored big band jazz. The audience was notable for the close attention it paid to the music and for the heart felt applause with which it rewarded the various fine soloists as well as the band as a whole.

On Sunday May 26, the first Annual San Francisco Jazz Festival took place at the Civic Auditorium, presented by promoter Irving Granz and headlined by Salvini’s band, along with Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, The Four Freshmen and Anita O’Day. The festival was a one-night affair and drew crowd of over 3,000 people. According to the press, Salvini’s band played well together and showed a good sense of dynamics. The band opened with five hard picks, four of which were originals by San Francisco songwriters, one of them dedicated to disc jockey Pat Henry called “Wail for Patrick,” was composed by Jerry Coker.

On Sunday, October 27, 1957, the Eastbay jazz scene began to take off with Rudy Salvini’s big band making their return of the season at the Sands Ballroom. Although some of the individual members of the band —including tenor Jerry Coker, trumpeter Allen Smith, pianist John Marabuto, Jerry Dodgion, and Virgil Gonsalves— were well-known on their own merits, and, despite the support of newspapers and of nationally acclaimed Oakland disc jockey Pat Henry —they had at least $500 worth of plugs a week on KROW— the band never really got off the ground, except on occasion.

“Rudy Salvini, who had long been a leader in the effort to bring jazz to people of his own generation, believed that hope lay in the schools; As an SF State alumnus, Rudy had seen jazz become the mode of expression at college after college in the Bay Area: San Francisco, San Jose, College of the Pacific and others. He believed that if jazz could be brought to the universities —as Dave Brubeck, among others, had been— the problem of his future would be solved.”

February 16, 1958 was the last weekly appearance of the Salvini band at the Sands. It was no secret that the band did not cover the expenses. The music was wonderful, but the crowd was not and their sponsors no longer wanted to continue their support. It was a sad blow to this association of Bay Area musicians who were so devoted to big band jazz. Several of themearned their living teaching.

Despite this set back, Rudy Salvini’s big band continued to play casual concerts because the quality of the orchestra and the enthusiasm of its members and leader were unbeatable. In March 1958, baritone sax player Curtis Lowe, a veteran of Lionel Hampton’s band, replaced Virgil Gonsalves in Salvini’s big band while he went to play with the group backing Johnny Mathis at the Fairmont Hotel.

Rudy Salvini’s big band continued to be hailed by jazz critics as one of the most exciting on the Pacific Rim. Salvini’s musicianship and training were most evident at the Monterey Jazz Festival, where his team turned in amore exciting performance than the other big bands of Harry James and Med Flory. His band played the Monterey Festival Suite, written by pianist John Marabuto. Virgil showed up again as the sax section’s anchorman in Salvini’s wailing band.

Early in November 1958, the Virgil Gonsalves sextet appeared in the women’s gymnasium at Humboldt Stale college, and on the 18th, they opened a two-week run at the Jazz Workshop with a new rhythm section that consisted of Merrill Hoover (p), Eddie Kahn (b), and Al Randall (d). At the beginning of December, his successful performance was extended for two more weeks during which he accompanied singer Dakota Staton on two dates. As a result of the goodwork of the sextet, Dave Hubert, producer and owner of Omegatape and Omega Records, proposed to record a stereophonic album as soon as possible and Virgil accepted.

In January 1959, Rudy Salvini joined the Laguna Salada elementary school district of Pacifica, as one of the two music instructors for the district and was just starting on his teaching career. Rudy taught elementary music to kids in the 5th through 8th grade. The new teaching job was not going to mean that Salvini would give up his big band jazz work. The group continued its rehearsals once aweek and had a monthly Sunday dance concert at Sands.

The Virgil Gonsalves sextet had become one of the musical references in the world of jazz in Northern California. But Virgil, always restless and enthusiastic, also organized a big band with trumpeter Jerry Cournoyer that was made up of three trumpets and a flugelhorn, two trombones, a tuba, five saxophones and the rhythm section. They met weekly to rehearse the arrangements and compositions that Cournoyer, Dan Patiris and Gonsalves himself had written for the new band with the purpose of performing at the local AFM Dance Band Contest.

On February 15, at Oakland’s Sands Ballroom, the AFM Dance Band Competition was held, featuring the bands of Rudy Castro, Buddy Hiles, Rudy Salvini, Steve Paul, Amando Paolini, Virgil Gonsalves, Jerry Cournoyer, DC Pinkston, EddieWalker and Johnny Ingram. The orchestras conducted by the trumpeters, Eddie Walker and Rudy Salvini, ranked first and second respectively.

in 1966, the Rudy Salvini Big Band had the honor of being the first big band to play at the Stern Grove Festival appearing along with pianist Vince Guaraldi, altoist John Handy, and Turk Murphy.

Virgil Gonsalves and Rudy Salvini were two very importance driving forces of jazz in the Bay Area in the 50’s. With this compilation CD, we want to pay tribute not only to their talent as musicians and band leaders, but also to their perseverance and their little-remembered musical accomplishments, a true labor of love for jazz.

—Jordi Pujol, excerpts from the liner notes of Virgil Gonsalves' "Jazz in the Bay Area 1954-1959" (FSRCD 1114)