John Dumont on HSQ

John Dumont, son of Jack Dumont, the alto-player of the Hollywood Saxophone Quartet, has kindly supplied us with the following information:

I stumbled upon this site looking for other information and felt compelled to make a comment. My dad was Jack Dumont of the HSQ. As a child, I remember all these great guys rehearsing this music in our living room. However, I was really too young to truly appreciate it for what it was. They went into this project as a labor of love and along the way, they created something that become something of a benchmark for aspiring reed players. My father as well as the other members of the group were top session players and involved with many of the top recording sessions of the era. This was one of those he was most proud of. I am happy that there are those who appreciate this music and are willing to take the ball and run with it. As far as re-issues of these recordings, there were some CD's issued, however I am not sure where they are availible for sale, but they do exist….

I can tell you this. Bill Ulyate, Morrie Crawford, and Russell Cheever were staff musicians for the Fox Motion Picture Orchestra. Aside from the HSQ, they have played on hundreds of movie sound scores. My father, Jack Dumont, was a number one Hollywood session musician from post WWII until 1969 when he semi retired from the music business. He played on numerous movie soundtracks as well as records from Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Peggy Lee, etc.

All the HSQ material was recorded when they had the time between numerous sessions (which was not much) to get this rehearsed and recorded. As for as why they stopped, I believe it was partly due to Bill Ulyate's untimely passing in the mid 1960's. I think that they had always intended to record new material, but life problems got in the way of that happening.

Most of the rehearsals were held at Morrie Crawford's home as he had a larger rehearsal studio than we had. However. some were held at our families home as well. There were some live performances but not many. Most were performed at University music departments at UCLA , USC, and Santa Monica City College. As far as I know, they never performed outside the Los Angeles area. The reason why the records have different arrangements is that they tried to mix it up a bit and try different things. Perhaps trying to attract different music listeners. I think that the advent of stereo records became sort of a distraction to what they were doing, because music listeners were listening to a lot of Exotica records being made at the time. Much different from what they were doing. Believe it or not, my father had a rehearsal band after the HSQ with a number of retired former (big band) musicians. I kow that Russell Cheever played in it and possibly Morrie Crawford. They were planning to incorporate some of the HSQ material with different arrangements. However, that stopped once my father started having health issues.

My father’s saxophones are both Selmer's, and the alto is a 1937(not sure what model) and a Soprano made post WWII. Also a Leblanc Clarinet and a Bundy Flute.

You can watch my father play some solo's in the Lawrence Welk Orchestra - “it was a paying gig as he would like to say” - on youtube. Just type in his name and you can watch him.

I discovered among my fathers papers two programs from different concerts the group performed…the picture you get from these items may give more insight into the group…it goes back in time way before they ever started to make records. The group never officially disbanded. It was Bill Ulyates’death in 1970 that actually put an end to it.