WOODY HERMAN, BEBOPS BEST, DEAD AT 74

Woody Herman Dead at 74

The Daily Sentinel, October 30, 1987

Big band leader Woody Herman, who hit the charts in 1939 with “Woodchopper’s Ball” and kept in tune with America for much of the next half-century playing bebop, funk, jazz and rock, is dead at 74.

The clarinetist died Thursday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of cardiac arrest. He had suffered for weeks from heart failure, emphysema and pneumonia, had been confined to a wheelchair and had fallen on hard times, narrowly averting eviction from his home with help from Hollywood’s entertainment community. Herman’s best-known hits included “Apple Honey”, “Northwest Passage” and “Caledonia” but he was never content to stick with his old standbys during a career that took him from smart ballrooms to African villages.

Through a series of young bands, more or less dubbed “The Thundering Herd” for their fierce energy, Herman kept pace with a dizzying variety of styles. In the 1960s, he played with Stan Getz and Neal Hefti, shared the bill with The Who and Dionne Warwick and played arrangements of the Doors’ “Light My Fire”.

Herman lost his Hollywood hills home, which he bought from Humphrey Bogart in 1946, in a 1985 Internal Revenue Service auction to recoup $1.6 million in back taxes, a situation he blamed on a personal manager with a gambling habit. Fans and celebrity friends such as Frank Sinatra and Clint Eastwood raised more than $70,000 toward the tax debt and back rent, organizing an all-star benefit in his honor on October 23rd that drew musicians, singers, comedians, and other celebrities.