Exclusive: Fascinating History of Jan Berry's Scores from the 60's

Phil Miglioratti Interviewed author Mark A. Moore

on the Publication of

Jan Berry’s Authentic Original Music Scores from the 1960s

Phil Miglioratti: Mark, what birthed this idea?

Mark A. Moore: The idea for this project originated in April 2004 when I was in Los Angeles, just after Jan died, and got to look through his music archive for the first time. I knew then that I wanted to transcribe and publish his arrangements, but I had two books to write first.

PM: It seems this is another step in your mission to help people discover the extraordinary talent of Jan Berry and the impact of Jan & Dean.

MM: Jan had a high level of skill and talent as a music arranger and record producer. And his accomplishments in that realm are significant, given that his entire professional music career (prior to the car accident) happened on a part-time basis.

     His first professional success occurred when he was still in high school. After that it was on to college, and then to medical school. And the number of hit records he had during that time—with two successive acts, as a contract songwriter and record producer for Nevins-Kirshner and Screen Gems—was incredible in that context.

     He chose a dual career path from the beginning, but his heart was in the music. He was a student of the craft, and he learned the art of music arrangement and record production from some of the biggest names in the business. Joe Lubin set him up for that in 1958, and Jan took the ball and ran with it.

     He could read and write music notation because he had taken piano and guitar lessons as a kid. He also took music theory electives at UCLA and studied Russell Garcia’s The Professional Arranger-Composer. He learned how to write for horns and strings. So, he had the skill set, and he began receiving label credit as a music arranger in late 1961, at the age of 20 (thanks to his contract with Nevins-Kirshner Associates).

     And with most (but not all) of Jan’s music archive still intact, we have tangible evidence of how he pulled it off in the studio. It’s important to understand what his music scores and charts represent. These are the documents that were put before each Wrecking Crew musician to record the instrumental backing tracks—for Jan’s arrangements for Lou Adler’s productions and for other artists in ’61 and ’62, and for Jan’s productions when he assumed the reins for Jan & Dean in late ‘62.

     Jan didn’t just walk into a recording studio and tell the Wrecking Crew, let’s play a groove in the key of F sharp major and see what happens. That’s not how he operated. He was methodical. He wrote out the entire arrangement in advance, before booking studio time.

     And Jan’s written arrangements were logged with the musicians’ union (AFM Local 47 in Hollywood). Like the AFM contracts used to hire studio musicians, Jan’s arrangements were filed with AFM contracts for Orchestrators & Arrangers. And Jan was paid handsomely for his music arrangements alone.

     Once he had the whole arrangement written out in pencil on a large score pad, he would sometimes serve as his own copyist in generating the individual charts for each musician to read from. And when he did that, the work was again filed through the union, and he got paid for copying services. But he mostly used the best copyists in Hollywood, like Vern Yocum and later Roger Farris. They would read from Jan’s score sheet and generate the individual charts.

     Jan worked in this manner because that’s how he was taught to do it. It came naturally to him. Everything was prepared ahead of time, which made the recording process faster and easier. It made his give-and-take with the musicians a lot smoother. They might cut three or four tracks in one three-hour recording session. Time was money.

     Of course, Jan wasn’t afraid to run up the bill or break the rules. As a college student and later a medical student, his time was short. So, he became an expert at gaming the system. His pay being docked for overtime or keeping odd hours in the studio never fazed him. He would disrupt the studio schedule if he had to, to get what he needed on tape.

     Jan used various studios, but his primary haunts were United Recording and Western Recorders on Sunset Boulevard.

PM: What has been your song selection criteria?

MM: I’m choosing titles that I think represent some of Jan’s best work, and that highlight his arrangements for brass, woodwinds, and strings, etc. I have a preliminary set of 19 titles on deck for publication. Four titles have been released so far: “Dead Man’s Curve,” “Anaheim, Azusa…,” “Batman,” and “Surf City” (the latter with guitar tablature). A fifth title, “It’s As Easy As 1, 2, 3,” is almost finished and ready to publish. More will be determined later, including some of Jan’s work for artists outside of Jan & Dean.

PM: How rare is Jan’s trove of original music scores?

MM: Jan was one of the pioneering self-produced artists of his era in Hollywood. That was a new thing, just starting to come into play. But a self-produced rock ‘n’ roll artist that not only wrote his own music arrangements but also scored all the parts himself was unheard of in Hollywood in the ‘60s.

     In those days, a band or artist that needed music arrangements with written parts hired a professional arranger. But Jan did it all himself—and got paid for doing it. The money that otherwise would have gone to a hired arranger was instead pocketed by Jan. Another of his multiple streams of income.

     So, Jan’s music archive was rare for having existed in the ‘60s, but it’s even more rare for having survived well into the twenty-first century. Sadly, it’s been pilfered over the years, and some important things are missing, but most of it remains. We’re fortunate to still have it.

     And the archive’s association with the Wrecking Crew and some well-known hit records and album cuts is special.

PM: How would you summarize Jan's body of work?

MM: His music arrangements were full, often complex, and interesting. He was influenced in part by Phil Spector, but Jan’s productions were much tighter and cleaner than the reverb-muddy Wall of Sound.

     For the short span of his pre-accident career, Jan’s body of work was surprisingly comprehensive, with the attention he gave to each instrument or instrument group. His body of recorded work was not large compared to other artists from his era that had more longevity. Obviously, the car accident was a major factor, but he was also planning to practice medicine while keeping a hand in the music business. So, his body of work as an artist would likely never have been much larger than it was. The question was: What more would he have done as an arranger and producer for other artists, with his own production company and his own record label, both of which he established before the accident—Berry Enterprises and J&D Records?

     But the hits and commercial success Jan achieved as a part-time musician were impressive. Vocally, he was a skilled bass harmony singer but just an average lead singer. But the work he put into his music arrangements and productions was well above average. His peers respected him, and he stacked up well against them.

     Engineers Bones Howe and Lanky Linstrot liked working with him. Wrecking Crew guitarist Don Peake, who was also an arranger, called Jan “a heavyweight musician.”

PM: How significant is the participation of the Jan Berry Estate?

MM: It was essential. I had to get approval from Jan’s widow to pursue this project.

     Jan’s music arrangements are copyrighted. Hal Leonard handles the licensing, but I’m not publishing my own arrangements of Jan’s music. I’m transcribing Jan’s original arrangements from the ‘60s, from the original source. So, I had to get permission. 

PM: Your primary audience for this project is musicians and music educators, but what would a fan like me, who cannot read music, find interesting?

MM: Well, the original music was arranged and recorded by people who could read music. But that had no bearing on how listeners enjoyed the music. The same is true here. If you heard a modern ensemble play this music, reading from these charts, you would (hopefully) still enjoy the music, and appreciate what went into creating it.

     Another way of hearing what Jan put into the original recordings and performances.

     Plus, through this project—with introductory text, analysis, and illustrations for each song—collectors can gain some insight on how the original music was made. There’s value in that. You don’t have to be able to read music to get something from that. 

PM: Four cover pages are already visible on Jan’s official website; they look like true rock art. Please explain the design process.

MM: I based the cover design on the cover of the original Screen Gems (fake) sheet music for Jan & Dean’s “You Really Know How to Hurt a Guy,” issued in 1965. So, there’s a retro aspect there. The illustrations are stock images and promotional photos. I use Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop to create the covers.

PM: “I Found A Girl,” one of my favorite Jan & Dean songs, was a transition from the surf and drag genre. What were the dynamics that led to this new focus with the single and the Folk 'n Roll album?

MM: Musical trends were changing, and Jan was growing as an artist. He was also closely associated with P. F. Sloan, who wrote “I Found a Girl” with Steve Barri. Jan’s arrangement and production of the song came first in ‘65 before Sloan’s solo version was released in ’66. Phil loved Jan’s arrangement of “I Found a Girl” and Phil sang and played guitar on it. Listen closely for those lead licks on electric 12-string. That’s Phil. A Top 30 hit and one of Jan’s best productions of 1965.

     But that was also a rough time for Jan, personally and professionally. The train accident while filming Jan & Dean’s Easy Come, Easy Go for Paramount Pictures disrupted Jan’s life and career on several fronts. He was severely injured and was consequently late in delivering “I Found a Girl” to Liberty Records. And label boss Alvin Bennett was not happy about the delay. But Jan had a topflight  entertainment lawyer in Gunther Schiff, so he held his own against Screen Gems (his employer) and

Liberty Records.

PM: What does your commentary and analysis in each publication reveal about Jan Berry as a producer?

MM: It details his work for each instrument, and instrument group, and how his tracks came to fruition with the Wrecking Crew. It was a fascinating process. Jan was a driven, detail-oriented person—especially when it came to the instrumental backing tracks on his productions.

PM: Can you share an example of the sessionography and song chronology that appears in each publication?

MM: Here’s an example from the “Anaheim” publication:

July 28, 1964

TRACKING SESSION

Location: United Recording, Studio B, 6050 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood

Time: 8:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m.

Songs: “Anaheim, Azusa, Etc.”; “The Submarine Races”; “Waimea Bay”; “Horace, the Swingin’  School-Bus Driver”; “It’s A Shame to Say Goodbye”

Musicians: Jan Berry (leader); Hal Blaine (drums and contractor); Jimmy Bond (Fender bass); Leon Russell (keyboards); Glen Campbell (guitar); Earl Palmer (drums); Bill Pitman (Danelectro six-string bass guitar); Lyle Ritz (upright bass); Billy Strange (guitar); Tommy Tedesco (guitar)

Producer: Jan Berry

Engineer: Bones Howe

Billed as a live double recording session.

PM: What was it like looking through the materials you used for illustrations? Any

jaw-dropping images?

MM: Well, some of the illustrations in each publication are scans, or partial scans, of an original music chart or score for that song. Other images are from Jan’s larger archive, or from elsewhere. It’s Jan’s music archive itself that’s jaw-dropping.

PM: How did Jan’s written music arrangements translate in the studio, resulting in what we hear on the recordings?

MM: Great question. This is important for readers to understand, and it gets to the heart of how Jan operated. I’ll give you a detailed overview:

Brass — (trumpet, flugelhorn, French horn, trombone, tuba)

Woodwinds — (alto sax, tenor sax, baritone sax, bass sax, English horn, flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon)
Strings — (violin, viola, cello)

Players of brass, woodwind, and string instruments played specific pitch notation exactly as it was written on the page (music chart). The parts Jan wrote for these instruments were a big part of his identity as a music arranger and record producer.

Guitar - Jan’s guitar parts featured chord charts with a combination of three components: (1) slashes, (2) slash notation, and (3) pitch notation (the latter only occasionally). Slashes in a measure indicate the guitarist should play a general rhythmic pattern with the chord or chords shown above the measure on the staff. With slash notation (or rhythmic notation), the slash has a rhythmic value, indicating the guitarist should play a specific rhythmic sequence while strumming the chord, or chords. And pitch notation indicates a specific pitch (note) and its accompanying rhythmic value. Songs with pitch notation for guitar included part of “Batman” and the intro to “A Beginning from An End” (tracked as “Miss You”), to name two examples.

Jan’s sessions typically featured three or four guitarists reading from three guitar charts: Guitar 1-3. And Guitar 3 was usually the Danelectro six-string bass guitar, which was tuned like a standard guitar but sounded an octave lower. The Dano typically doubled the bass line, and sometimes played other notes to accentuate the bass line. Music for the Dano was written strictly in pitch notation because the parts were specific.

The slashes allowed Wrecking Crew guitarists to bring a degree of their own creativity to the song. For example, one player might strum chords in a general rhythmic pattern, and another might play a double-stop eighth-note groove, like a Chuck Berry groove, a standard rock ‘n’ roll groove. And on Jan’s sessions they would often sprinkle that groove with sixteenth-note riffs—even a Dick Dale-style slide here and there.

Jan called it “J & D Shtick.” The players worked so much with Jan they knew what he wanted. And he would sometimes write “J & D Shtick” above the staff in the score. 

When the copyist took Jan’s score and generated the charts for the guitarists, if that instruction was in the score, he also included it on the chart.

Yet another guitarist might strum staccato (short duration) chords on counts 2 and 4 only, in time with the snare drum. And when the guitarists got to a measure that had slash (rhythmic) notation, they would all play the same rhythmic part together, with the chord (or chords) indicated. These are just a few examples of how they achieved the guitar sound Jan wanted while incorporating their own creativity.

Bass

     Jan’s bass parts were written in pitch notation, again because they were specific. There were often two bass players on Jan’s sessions, sometimes a Fender with an upright (acoustic) bass. The two players would double the bass line—an incredible sound. On “Anaheim, Azusa…” they played in unison but did the eighth-note transitions an octave apart, as indicated on the chart, with the Fender taking the higher notes. 

     The bass lines on Jan’s music charts generally match the recordings note-for-note. But occasionally the bassist changed a few notes here and there. For example, the written bass parts for “Surf City” fit the song like a glove. And Ray Pohlman played nearly 100 percent of what was written on the chart, but he tweaked a few notes here and there. Again, an elite musician working his craft in a way that Jan liked. And when that happened, the Dano would follow suit.

Keyboards

     Jan’s keyboard charts featured the same kind of notation as described above for guitars—chords with varying degrees of slashes, slash (rhythmic) notation, and pitch notation. That allowed the piano player to use the chords as written to create an accompaniment that best fit the song. Jan would sometimes write for the left hand (bass clef) in pitch notation to double the bass line. On the recordings, you can’t always hear the piano specifically, but it’s always there, underpinning the rhythm

section.

Drums and Percussion

     Beginning in March 1963 with the sessions for "Surf City," as Jan honed his signature sound as a record producer, there were always two drummers on his sessions—Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer. The best in the business. They played in tandem, in unison, on the studio recordings—an innovative, driving sound that became a hallmark of Jan’s productions. In the early 1980s, Earl Palmer told Modern Drummer magazine that the dual drumming with Hal on Jan’s productions was one of the accomplishments Earl was most proud of in his career.

     The grooves and fills on Jan’s drum charts generally match the recordings. But if part of a fill was labeled “Floor Tom” in the score (for example), it may or may not have been played on the floor tom on the recording. But rhythmically it was the same. The drummers would work it out and decide how best to play the fills, drum to drum.

     Examples of auxiliary percussion Jan used for various songs include timpani, tambourine, triangle, hand claps, suspended cymbal rolls, finger cymbals, gong, wood block, temple blocks, and Hawaiian pu’ili sticks (split bamboo sticks). The clacking eighth-note rhythm you hear on top of the drums in “Honolulu Lulu” was played with pu’ili sticks, which were also used on “Ride the Wild Surf” and “Surfin’ Wild.”

     During his pre-accident career (not every song), Jan also used every type of keyboard (or mallet) percussion—glockenspiel, xylophone, vibraphone, marimba, and chimes (also known as tubular bells). These are pitched instruments, and the parts for them are written in pitch notation.

     Known percussionists on Jan's productions included Emil Richards (whose real last name was Radocchia), Gene Estes, Julius Wechter, and Gary Coleman. And others were involved before Jan became the official producer for Jan & Dean.

Conducting the Musicians

     With every Wrecking Crew musician on the session having one of Jan’s music charts in front of him (or her), they had a solid road map for the instrumental backing track for the song. So, from the very first take, they would nail something close to what the final version would sound like. And Jan of course led them through multiple takes of each song. That’s how they tightened the sound.

     Jan would say something like, “Okay, Hal. Let’s go . . . Take 9. Top!” Hal Blaine was miked and would count them off.

     During a take, if Jan heard something he didn’t like, he would break in over the comm system and whistle everyone to a stop. Typically, he would say, “Hold it, hold it!” He would say, “There was a goof... Somebody goofed there.” And he would start them over again. Sometimes he would start them at a specific point in the score, like from a coda or rehearsal mark. But he mostly liked to start from the top, as many times as possible.

     He could splice things together, but he wanted as many solid, complete takes as he could get. Sometimes the musicians would groan good-naturedly, having to start from the beginning so often. Jan would say something like, “Boy, that was good. That’s a great feel. I just wish we could have kept it up... Top!”

     If a musician had a good idea, Jan would often accept it. But sometimes he’d say, politely but firmly, “No, I have it just like I want it.” Other times, he’d take something out. He wrote a drum fill for the opening sequence of “Batman.” It was on the drum chart and the drummers were playing it. But after hearing it a few times, Jan decided to cut it. He called it a roll. “Hey, don’t play that roll. Leave that out.” And that deleted fill is circled on one of the surviving drums charts, likely marked by Hal Blaine or Earl Palmer.

     I’m paraphrasing Jan on these quotes. I’ve quoted him specifically in my books, but the examples I’m citing here provide the gist of some of his interactions with the musicians.

     And bear in mind that the musicians had no idea what the song would sound like with the vocals added. They didn’t know the melody of the lead vocal, or what the backing vocals would sound like. They were just dialed in on creating the instrumental backing track, based on the charts in front of them, and Jan’s direction.

Alternate Arrangements for Live Performances in the ‘60s

     Jan often penned a single music score with “Big Band” instrumentation that he could adapt for his studio recordings and for live performances (the latter featuring a larger ensemble). “Dead Man’s Curve” is a good example of that approach. Other times, like with “Anaheim, Azusa,” he wrote selected brass and woodwinds parts for the studio version, and then wrote a separate "Big Band" horn  arrangement to be used for live performances.

     For concerts, the rhythm section remained the same (as written), but the brass and woodwinds featured the classic “Big Band” lineup—alto sax, tenor sax, baritone sax, trumpet, and trombone. Jan wrote the alternate arrangements because Jan & Dean didn’t recreate their full studio vocal sound for live performances. Their live vocals were sparse by compassion, so Jan arranged the brass and woodwind parts to carry more of the vocal sound from the studio recordings .

     Some of their live appearances were throwaways, but on the more important dates they used Jan’s alternate arrangements. And his separate arrangements for live performances were another aspect that set Jan apart from his peers in the music industry.

     Whenever possible, I’m including Jan’s alternate brass-and-woodwind arrangements in these publications. So, you get the studio version and the live performance version.

PM: A final comment?

MM: When Jan conceived the idea for Pop Symphony in 1965, he wanted to take it a step further to make his arrangements available to school ensembles and local orchestras. With this project, we’re finally accomplishing that goal.

     I so wish I could have pulled this off before we lost Hal Blaine. Hal was always supportive of my work, and he loved Jan like a younger brother. They often socialized together before Jan’s car accident. I had envisioned sending Hal a transcribed copy of one of the drum charts he and Earl Palmer used to record a track for one of Jan’s productions in the ‘60s. Hal would have tripped on that.

PM: On behalf of all Jan & Dean fans, thank you for illuminating the underrated, multi-skilled creativity of Jan Berry.

MM: Thanks for taking the time to ask about the project. It’ll take a while to publish all the titles I want to highlight, but we’re off to a good start.

Mark’s book Dead Man’s Curve: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Life of Jan Berry is a finalist for a 2022 Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) Award for Excellence, for Best Research in Recorded Rock or Popular Music.

For a description of the project and links for ordering the publications, visit the sheet music page on Jan’s official website: Jan Berry’s Authentic Original Music Scores Published. You can also search for published titles at Sheet Music Direct, Hal Leonard’s premier outlet for digital sheet music.

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