Carmen Mastren
Guitar, Banjo, Composer, Arranger, Conductor
MAN & MUSIC
b. Carmine Nicholas Mastrandrea, October 16, 1913 - Cohoes, New York
d. March 31, 1981 - Valley Stream, Long Island, New York
A first-generation Eddie Lang disciple, Carmen Mastren, as a guitarist, composer, arranger, and conductor, spent nearly fifty years in the company of the world’s leading jazz musicians. He witnessed in those five decades the remarkable journey of the guitar as it continued to come into the hands of creative artists and manufacturers, ultimately becoming the most popular instrument in the world. With all that, he always remained true to his one great musical love, the acoustic arch-top guitar. A generous soul and, in many ways, teacher (my having had the opportunity for two years to be seated next to him, eyes glued to his hands, listening and learning), this page is a resource as much as a tribute to this remarkable man and artist.
So, just how much did Eddie Lang mean to Carmen Mastren?
In the summer of 1981, after Carmen’s wife, Frances “Frankie” Mastren, passed away, only two months after Carmen died, Carmen’s niece asked for help identifying any materials in the Mastren’s home that the family could retain as part of his musical legacy (his guitar, the sunburst, Epiphone Emperor, was already safe and secure with the family in upstate New York). After sorting through the boxes, we were preparing to leave when, for some unexplainable reason, I decided, while still in the room, to close the door and see what, if anything, was behind the door. The answer to “just how much Eddie Lang meant to Carmen Mastren can be found below.
Bravo! Carmen Mastren.
Carmen Mastren’s framed picture of Eddie Lang’s headstone, which he had with him since the mid-1930’s. (4)
The 1960 edition of the NEW Edition Of The Encyclopedia Of Jazz has been selected as a resource as many of the entries result from paper surveys mailed to and filled out by the artists themselves. The brief biography below includes an outstanding commentary by the author.
“The most popular guitarist in jazz at one time.”
Nuff said!
MASTREN, CARMEN NICHOLAS (130), guitar, banjo; b. Cohoes, N.Y., 10/6/13. Violin, banjo first; guitar from ’31 with local groups. Joined Wingy Manone in NYC ’35; T. Dorsey ’36-40, then staff work at NBC. Army ’43-Dec.’’45 incl. Europe w. Glenn Miller AAF band. From early ’46, very active in studios, cond. and writing for Morton Downey on his Coca-Cola series, rarely playing jazz. In 1953 he again joined NBC staff, pl. there with Skitch Henderson et al. The most popular guitarist in jazz at one time, he won Met. Poll ’39 and ’40. DB poll ’37. Own LP: Banjorama (Merc.); LP’s w. Metronome All Stars (Vict.): w. Delta Four in Steve Allen’s The Jazz Story (Coral).
Addr: 19-15 24th Road, L.I., N.Y. (2)
As Carmine Nicholas Mastrandrea (130)
The best and most accurate Mastren biography is in the booklet enclosed in the 1980 Time-Life Records box set: Giants Of Jazz-The Guitarists. A first-class effort, it included an interview with Carmen and notes on his music by Marty Grosz.
Giants Of Jazz-The Guitarists
Carmen Mastren
For a musician of exceptional taste and facility, Carmen Mastren has remained relatively little known except to specialists and fellow musicians, who appreciated his studio work and placed him unhesitatingly in the front rank of jazz guitarists-a remarkable tribute to a man who, in his heyday, played mostly rhythm and rarely got the solos that his talent merited. “I got the reputation as a rhythm guitarist because I was with Tommy Dorsey’s band,” said Mastren (critic John S,. Wilson called Mastren the ”rhythmic foundation of Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra”). “Then I joined Glenn Miller, who never featured the guitar. So I got the stamp. But I’m also a soloist.”
Mike Peters, Carmen Mastren, Long Island, NY, c. 1978. (4)
Certainly Mastren gave his employers full measure as a rhythm player. In this electrified age the acoustic guitar is so rare a feature in the rhythm section of a band that it is easy to forget what it can add. Mastren swung the bands he played in; he made the whole rhythm section, and especially the piano part, sound fuller, richer.
Master’s occasional solos were in the mellow chordal style he admired in the work of George Van Eps, to which he added random single-string runs and arpeggios. Unlike many strummers of this day, he kept practicing, listening to everything from the blues to Debussy, and forging a finely honed guitar style characterized by high musicianship and technical polish.
Carmen Mastren was born in Cohoes in upstate New York in 1913. Like George Van Eps, he came of a musical tribe: His four brothers were all musicians and Carmen played in the family band as a youth, beginning on violin and later switching to banjo and then guitar. Listening to jazz records led Carmen to discover the art of Eddie Lang and changed his life. “Eddie Lang is responsible for my guitar playing; I’d copy what Lang played on the records.”
The young Lang-fancier arrived in Manhattan in 1934 to find that Carl Kress and Dick McDonough had most of the town’s studio work sewed up, but Mastren was happy to get a job playing in a quartet with trumpeter Wingy Manone, clarinetist Joe Marsala and bassist Sid Weiss at Adrian Rollini’s Tap Room in the basement of the President Hotel. There he became friendly with McDonough, who told the youngster, “I’m going to give you some record dates,” and was as good as his word. Mastren cut his first record as accompanist to singer Ruth Etting. The date was the start of what eventually blossomed into a long, successful career for Mastren as a studio musician.
Wingy Manone Quartet: Sid Weiss-bass, Wingy Manone-trumpet, Carmen Mastren-guitar, Joe Marsala-clarinet @ the Famous Door, NYC, c. early 1936. (5)
From the Tap Room, Manone’s quartet moved to the Hickory House, where they replaced gypsy violinists and made such an impression that nothing, but jazz was heard in the club thereafter. In 1936, Mastren joined Tommy Dorsey’s big band, for which Dorsey was vigorously raiding other bands. (He took so many musicians who had played at one time or another with Joe Marsala that Marsala wired him: HOW ABOUT GIVING ME A JOB IN YOUR BAND SO THAT I CAN PLAY WITH MINE.)
Carmen Mastren c. early 1936
The easygoing Mastren spent four years-longer than many sideman lasted with tempestuous Tommy-buried in the rhythm section, then happily returned to small-group jazz with Marsala, at the Hickory House. On Sunday afternoons the music reached a feverish peak at jam sessions that often-included Hot Lips Page and Charlie Christian, who brought a little amplifier. Mastren was among the few guitarists able to hold his own in company that fast.
SQUEEZE ME, H.R.S records, released on a 12-inch disc.
After a year in the Hickory House and a stint with Ernie Holst’s orchestra, Mastren return to studio work for a while, played with Raymond Scott and Bob Chester bands, then joined the largest organization of his career, the U.S. Army, as a member of the service band Glenn Miller was organizing. Having survived four years with Dorsey, Mastren got through World War II without great hardship and on his return to civilian life went back into the studio, playing, conducting and arranging-a skill for which he was much admired among musicians.
Four of the Glenn Miller AAF jazzmen at the Feldman Swing Club, London, England, probably September 3, 1944: Carmen Mastren-guitar, Ray McKinley-drums, Peanuts Hucko-tenor saxophone & clarinet, Mel Powell-piano. (3)
“I was musical director for Morton Downey when he did programs for Coca-Cola” he said, looking back in 1980 over his studio career. “For a long time, Frank Signorelli and I and some others were the house band for Decca, I couldn’t count the dates we made for them. I was NBC staff from about 1953 to 1970. The last thing we did was the Tonight show. I even had my own little NBC morning show for a while-Say When-just guitar alone.”
Morton Downey @ the piano & Carmen Mastren, c. early 1950’s.
Mike Peters, Lew Green Sr., Carmen Mastren, Sunday, November 25, 1979, Darien, Connecticut, @ the home of Lew Green Jr. (courtesy of the Green Family Archives).
Eventually most staff work moved to the West Coast, and many musicians went with it. But Mastren stayed put. Semiretired, he sparked a seven-piece combo at the Manhattan nightclub Red Blazer Too.
“I’ve had a good life in music,” Mastren summed it up. “I worked with all the greatest men in the big-band era. It was a wonderful time, and it was good to be a part of it.” He was a bigger part of it than his modesty would permit him to claim. Fellow artists prized his contribution, and he was voted No. 1 in the 1937 Downbeat and 1939 and 1940 Metronome polls.
NOTE: Albert Harris performing Carmen Mastren’s composition TWO MOODS
Carmen Mastren, NYC, 1978. (4)
CITATIONS
Giants Of Jazz-The Guitarists-Carmen Mastren, biography by Marty Grosz, Time-Life Records, 1980.
The NEW Edition Of The Encyclopedia Of Jazz, Leonard Feather, Bonanza Books, NY, 1960.
Next To A Letter From Home, Major Glenn Miller’s Wartime Band, Geoffrey Butcher, Mainstream Publishing Company, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1986.
venutilang.com archives
Fortune Magazine, March 1936.