One-Man Band

To survive in the jungle of jazz, a performer must be different. Not many years ago, a jazzman could accomplish this by simply playing faster or higher or crazier than the rest, or by having a "dirty" style

--"He can't play very good," fans would quip, "but he has a lousy tone." In today's overcrowded jungle, one young musician is beginning to emerge because he is lousy with versatility.

At Manhattan's Basin Street last week, Don Elliott was so versatile that he sometimes seemed like a case of musical split personality. When he played It Might as Well Be Spring, he played the trumpet with a soft, low, fuzzy tone and a stammering swing that was as intimate as if he were whispering into a pretty ear. When he played Moonlight in Vermont, he played the vibraphone with soft-headed sticks, rolling out arpeggios as pretty and cottony as a cumulus cloud. When he played Makin' Whoopee, he played the

DON ELLIOTT Out of the jungle with two vibes.

instrument that is becoming identified with him: the mellophone, also known as the poor man's French horn. It sounded wild and slightly clumsy, as indeed this instrument should, but it did swing after a fashion; it smeared its way up into the attic, noodled around insinuatingly in its middle register, and grunted low down. Then, when it seemed as if Virtuoso Elliott had done everything, he picked up a vibraphone stick in one hand and the mellophone in the other and played the tune on both simultaneously.

For Don Elliott (real surname: Helf-man), 30, such versatility is perfectly natural. The son of a Somerville, N.J. pianist-arranger, he started playing the piano at four. When his father died three years later, Don made up his mind to "sort of carry on what my father had done." At eight he was taking accordion lessons, at 13 he was studying the big baritone horn to play in his high-school band. He picked up the trumpet without help, and the mellophone was no trouble at all after that, since it has the same fingering and a similar embouchure. One day he met a fellow who had two vibraphones and wanted a trumpet; it happened that Don had two trumpets, so that was that. By this time he was aware that he had an extraordinary flair for music, and after a hitch as tail gunner in the Air Corps, he went to school to study theory and harmony.

Jazz came to Don Elliott through Pianist George Shearing, one of his idols. He wangled a chance to try out his vibes with the Shearing combo, remained with the group for 15 months. Followed a period of rough jazz training, during which he engaged in nightly "battles of vibes" with a cool-minded colleague named Terry Gibbs. He played with the Benny Goodman Sextet, eventually formed his own quartet. Elliott has no fewer than seven iT.P.s on the market, with three more coming soon, for he plays with an ingratiating style that appeals to jazz lovers without frightening record executives. Does he think it is time to pick up another instrument? "Well," says Elliott wistfully, "I always wanted to play tenor sax or flute. But"--and his determination seems to harden--"I play enough."

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