Published in the February 20, 1969 edition of Down Beat Magazine

URBAN CLIFFORD GREEN has really lived up to his first name since coming off the road in the early 50s, but there is still quite a bit of the country in the soft-spoken trombonist, who as a young boy aged 4 to 6 lived on a farm in his native Alabama.

After a typical, fully packed five-day week in New York City, Green escapes to his 40-acre farm in Mt. Bethel, Pa., 78 miles away, where his 20 head of pure-white Charolais graze. "They are a French breed and the largest beef cattle in the world," he explains. Occasionally, Green will send a cow to market, but when one is sold it is more often to another breeder. This is his sixth year at a "hobby" in which a friend got him interested.

For 15 years Green has been in the recording, TV and radio studios, backing singers and doing all manner of jingles and commercial work. But that hasn't been all, by any means.

The trombonist's outside activities early in this span included a month with Benny Goodman, an appearance in the film The Benny Goodman Story and, eventually, a three-month tour fronting the Goodman band in 1957. The following year he formed his own big band for college concerts and dances. It played Birdland in 1959 and recorded for ABC-Paramount and RCA Victor.

In the '60s, Green has fronted the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and his own large aggregations for a total of four engagements at the Mark Twain Riverboat. It was during his most recent stay at the huge cellar club in the Empire State Building that I had a chance to chat with him between sets.

This time, Urbie formed a sextet especially for the job. The group has a rather different instrumentation and a varied approach that definitely encompasses the "now" sound. With the trombonist are Marvin Stamm, trumpet; Howie Collins, guitar; Dick Hyman, piano and organ; John Beal, bass, and Gus Johnson, drums. There is plenty of room for blowing, in a format that provides dancing and listening music of yesterday and today. When the beat goes rock, Hyman shifts to the organ and the two brass men make use of their King- Vox amplifying, octave-expanding devices. Although the decibel level can get a bit high at times, Green's general credo is to "create excitement through musical intensity rather than volume.

"I like all kinds of music," he says, "but I like to play all kinds of music if I don't have to basically change my style. The rock rhythms are fun to play, and it's great the way the people are responding to the fellows because they are playing the way they like to play."

Green is very happy to have the experienced support of Hyman and Johnson. He calls the drummer "Father Time"-and not in reference to his age. He is particularly enthusiastic about Stamm, with whom he recently recorded for Verve. He calls the young trumpeter's album, which was scored by Johnny Carisi, "one of the best I've heard for arranged jazz."

His own most recent album is 21 Trombones, Volume Two for the Project III label. It features Green as soloist with 20 (count 'em-20) brothers of the sliphorn fraternity and a rhythm section. Players such as J. J. Johnson, Kai Winding, Lou McGarity, Will Bradley, Jimmy Cleveland and Garnett Brown are among the 20 grands. Green mentions Brown, along with Julian Priester, Wayne Andre and Barry Maur, as some of the younger trombonists he admires.

His own early idols were Jack Jenny, Jack Teagarden, Tommy Dorsey, Trummy Young and Murray McEachern, and he carries the banner of the trombone tradition created by these men with a beautiful sound, marvelous control in all registers and an overall mellifluous style.

Green, who learned piano from his mother, also had two older brothers who played trombone. "They helped me get started on the right track," he says. The eldest, Al, originally a pianist, has gone back to the keyboard as a trio leader in Colorado Springs. Jack, who like Urbie played with Woody Herman, is still active musically in North Carolina.

When Green was in high school in Mobile, Ala., members of the Auburn college band heard him playing in a local club and asked him to join the Knights, as they were known. This meant transferring to a high school in Auburn.

When he made the move, young Urbie didn't realize that it was the beginning of life on the road. By the time he was 16, four years after taking up his instrument, Green was working with the Bob Strong and Tommy Reynolds bands. After tours of duty with
Jan Savitt and Frankie Carle (during a long Savitt engagement in Los Angeles, he finished high school), he joined Gene Krupa for a four-year period ending in October 1950, at which time he went with Woody Herman. While he had attracted the attention of fellow musicians with Krupa, he made himself well known to the jazz audience with Woody.

In 1969, Green will probably do more traveling than he has since the mid-'50s. Many of his trips will involve high school and college dates as a soloist. He will appear with stage band or concert bands, and sometimes with both. He already has played this year at Arlington High School in Indianapolis and was impressed with the level of proficiency in the band. "We did Sunny, Perdido, Stardust and The Green Bee, a rock version of The Flight of the Bumblebee which Tommy Newsom arranged for me. Some of the band directors think that including pop and jazz material makes the kids more interested, and I agree."

On Feb. 20-21, Green will be in San Antonio for the Music Educators' Convention where he will play with the North Texas State Lab Band. In late winter and early spring he is slated to serve both as soloist and clinician in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

He doesn't have any particular method for instructing young musicians. "I just get out and talk to the kids about what has worked for me over the years," says Green, who at 42 still looks boyish enough to be mistaken for one of the students to whom he will be lecturing.

"When some of the kids talk to me I get the feeling that we can become too serious about music. Some of them are so bugged with this 'art' business. Music should be fun. After all, don't musicians have some of the greatest senses of humor?" he says.

Green's main advice is simple: "Try to play your instrument well, so you can express what you want to. The important thing, to me, has always been to express the way I feel."

In April, he will take his current band, including a very fine vocalist, Kathy Preston, to Cleveland's Theatrical Restaurant where he also worked last August. (On that occasion, he was backed by the trio of Intercollegiate Jazz Festival winner Jack Murphy.) There are no fixed charts in Urbie's sextet, and you can tell that he is enjoying the opportunity to improvise away from the limitations of the studio.

When Urbie is at his Pennsylvania farm, he often runs over to the nearby Deer Park Inn to jam with pianist Johnny Coates, or drops in at baritone saxophonist Jay Cameron's music shop, 15 miles away in Stroudsburg. Sometimes he just sits on the porch and wafts melodies into the bucolic atmosphere. One day the cows responded by coming toward him at a rapid gait. "I thought they were stampeding but they stopped at the fence," he recalls.

Although he left Woody Herman in 1952 for a more settled life, at heart Urbie Green is still with the jazz herd.