100 Years of Bird

 

This morning I visited five internet sites professing to rank the greatest saxophonists of all-time. Four of the five bestowed the honor on Charlie Parker, and the fifth put him at number two behind John Coltrane. This accurately represents Bird’s foremost position in jazz hierarchy.

My first exposure to Bird was not a recording, but an arrangement of the bebop classic “Groovin’ High.” When Bird recorded this uptempo tune with Dizzy Gillespie, his 16-bar solo represented perfect balance of improvisation and composition. The arranger transcribed the solo note for note and cleverly added four supporting saxophone parts. The result was an exquisite blend of melodic and harmonic elements. It was as difficult as any classical etude.

Today marks Charlie Parker’s 100^th birthday, and his influence has not diminished since his death in 1955 at age 34. Bird and a small number of like-minded instrumentalists changed the course of jazz and brought an enthusiastic cadre of young musicians along for the ride.

Charles McPherson offered a typical story of the effect of hearing Bird for the first time, in our 1998 interview:

CM: I grew up in Joplin, Missouri, which is a little town south of St. Louis. I was there up until about nine years of age then I moved to Detroit. But during the time that I was there, I did have occasion to see various bands, coming from Kansas City, territorial bands. This is when I was  maybe six. Every year in the summertime these bands would come to this park in Joplin and play for a week. I was quite impressed with the bands, with the music and with the way the horns look, just the physicalities of the nice, gold, shiny horn.

During the 50s, you didn’t have jazz in the schools. We just played the regular school type things. We played marches and for football games, morning auditorium and all that. It was fun playing and I really liked it, This is what I wanted to do. There were some jazz records around my house, but not a lot. And I did get interested in jazz and a student at school told me about Charlie Parker. I’d never heard of him. And he said, “You should really check this Charlie Parker out.” So I did. I went to a little candy shop in my neighborhood and on the juke box there was a Charlie Parker record, a little 45rpm. I think he was playing “Tico Tico,” which is a Brazilian samba song. And it just blew me away. I knew immediately that this is what I wanted to do. It made perfect sense to me. I didn’t need to be nurtured or taught how to listen to this music. I was about 14, when I heard that, I had no history of hearing a lot of jazz records, I had no concept of what’s considered bebop and modern jazz or any of that. It was like this is the way music should go. This is the way an instrumentalist should approach this. I felt that. I immediately said okay, I’ve got to get these records. Then I was told that this guy was a member of a group of musicians that play a certain genre of jazz, and it’s called bebop. There was like a school of them. So I said oh? That’s what that is. I had no idea that Charlie Parker represented anything but a jazz musician. I knew nothing about schools and styles. Then I just zeroed in on that. He was definitely my main influence.

View Charles’ YouTube video here.

The draw of Parker’s innovations compelled numerous aspiring jazz artists to New York City. Phil Woods offered his own variation on Bird’s magnetism:

PW: I graduated high school at the age of 16 and I wanted to go on with my music education. I went to the Manhattan School of Music for a summer course. I wanted to be in New York, that’s where Charlie Parker was.

MR:         You had to major on the clarinet, didn’t you?

PW:         Yeah. But clarinet, I think it served me well. I could work on my Mozart and with the keyboard stuff work on Bach, and I went to composers workshops. I sort of minored in composition. But at night I would study bebop, Charlie Parker, I’d have the radio on and listen to broadcasts from Birdland.

MR:         When was the first time you saw Charlie Parker play live, and what kind of effect did it have on you?

PW:         The first music I ever played of jazz, my teacher gave me transcribed Benny Carter solos. And then within that month, Ellington came to town and I saw Johnny Hodges. And then I picked up the latest record of this guy called Charlie Parker and it was “KoKo.” And that was it. I mean between Benny Carter, Hodges and Parker all in one dose, I said yeah, man, let me at it, my course was very clear, especially after hearing Bird. The first time I saw Bird would be on 52^nd Street when I was studying with Lenny Tristano, I was still in high school. That’s where I first heard Charlie Parker. I think he was sitting in with Milt Jackson and Howard McGhee.

MR:         What kind of person was he to you?

PW:         Sweet. I remember one day he asked me, “Did you eat today, young man?” I mean he didn’t know me from a hole in the wall, I was just another alto player looking at his heels, and he said, “did you eat today.” The misconception is that Charlie Parker was stealing everybody’s money and using it to buy drugs, but he was very nice to young musicians. That’s often overlooked. This is my only real Charlie Parker story up close — I was working in a place called the Nut Club in the Village, Sheridan Square. Playing for strippers, “Harlem Nocturne” ten times a night. This joint had so much class they would hand you like little wooden hammers as you walked in the door, so you could beat the shit out of the table for your favorite strippers. So somebody said, “Bird’s across the street jamming.” And he was over at Arthur’s Bar, which is still there to this day, it’s a little dinky joint. I walked in and there was Bird and he was playing on the baritone sax. Now let me preface this, at this period I didn’t know if my mouthpiece was right, I didn’t like the reed, I don’t like this horn, it’s not happening, I need new stuff, you know. So I got up my nerve and said, “Mr. Parker, perhaps you’d like to play my alto?” And he said, “That would be very nice, son.” Man I ran across Seventh Avenue and I got my horn, and I’m sitting — Bird was there and I was sitting there and the piano was there, just a drummer — a snare drum and a piano and Bird. And I’m sitting there. I hand him the horn. He played “Long Ago and Far Away,” Jerome Kern. And I’m listening to this guy and it seems there’s nothing wrong with my saxophone. The saxophone sounds pretty darn good, you know what I mean? And he says, “Now you play.” And I says oh Jesus. When kids talk about being awestruck, I know about awestruck. I did my feeble imitation of the master. He said, “Sounds real good, son.” Oh man, this time I flew over Seventh Avenue, and I played the Bejesus out of “Harlem Nocturne” that night. But I mean just those few words were so important.

Here’s a link to the full Phil Woods interview.

The lore of Parker’s talent and life are legion, most prominent among them is the story behind his nickname. Legend has it that a yard bird (chicken) crossing the road fell victim to the band’s car, and Charlie insisted on bringing it to their destination for dinner. Buddy Collette offered an competing tale in his interview in Los Angeles:

BC:  Bird had this meeting with Jimmy Cheatham. He said that all those stories are phony, that’s not what happened. He said when he was 14 years old he used to go out to the park with a couple of his buddies, a drummer or a guitar or bass player. Before school, at 6, 7 in the morning, so they could get a little practice in because at home they couldn’t get it in. They’d get home from school and they’d have to do work, so they’d get this hour or two early to play, just jam and do tunes and things. And he said that the neighbors could hear them. They were about a half a mile from the residential area. The cops would come by and they’d wave to them. They were just friendly neighborhood kids and they’d be jamming. So they said the neighbors called him the Bird. “Oh that’s just the Bird out there practicing in the morning.” So it was a kind of a cute story. They wanted to play so much that they would go out there, but that horn would always be going.

 

Buddy’s YouTube is located here.

In the 90s I recall a Fed Ex television commercial featuring the world’s fastest talker. His supersonic, perfectly articulated verbal delivery came to mind when I recently listened to some classic Charlie Parker recordings. His rapid-fire ideas matched with peerless technique remains a wonder to behold, even 66 years after his death.

Advice for Jazz Graduates

It’s May. Thousands of young people across the country move on from their college education into the real world. Some of them entered college not knowing what their career path might be, and some of them graduate from college still not totally clear on where they are headed. It’s been my experience that music students are among of the most focused of all young people. Music students know exactly why they’re going to college. They may be headed on a performance path or a music teaching career, but there is no doubt of their planned trajectory from day one of their freshman semester. Four, six or eight years later their hoped-for destination may have shifted, particularly in the field of jazz. Jazz is one of the most creative, exciting and challenging career paths a musician can pursue, and equally fraught with competition. In this blog we’d like to offer three opinions about a jazz career and how to prepare for it.

In a most recent interview, I spoke with Denis DiBlasio, saxophonist and educator at Rowan University. His take on careers in jazz is highly relevant for the times.

Denis DiBlasio, in 2019

MR:   So are you able to give [jazz majors] advice on what their possibilities are after they graduate?

DD:   Well the ones that are serious we usually have a talk right around the sophomore, junior year. And it’s different for these — the age that we’re teaching now than it was for us. They can’t do what I did, because what I did doesn’t exist anymore. You know you go out in the big band, maybe get a name. I mean almost everything that happened to me happened because I was on Maynard’s band and I maybe took advantage of it afterwards, doing these clinics and all this business you know. It all came because people saw me with that band and you know then you’re able to keep it going. Most of us that have been on the bands, a lot of them, like when I think about the people I know who are doing things now, they either were with Count’s band or Duke’s or Woody’s or Stan’s or Maynard’s or Buddy’s, you know? And when these guys leave they either go to Chicago, New York or LA for the most part, and there’s pockets of guys, and they’ve all had that kind of experience, so — but now that whole band thing doesn’t exist. And I don’t want to say it shouldn’t, it just doesn’t. But when a student starts talking now about you know what am I going to do when I get out, I get them in my office and we look at YouTube. And I talk to them about how certain people have to — well you have to kind of design your own life. There’s nothing that you’re going to go to and join and that’s going to be your life in jazz. However, you look up — look at some of the people who are creating their own thing, and I’ll pull up you know Leo Pellegrino? Too Many Zooz? He’s a baritone sax player. He’s playing. And so I’ll pull that up. And I said, “Look at what he did.” Now no one would think you’re going to make a living doing this. But he put this up. Social media is a big part of it. You develop your own audience so your audience comes and sees you, where before you would play a gig to sell your CDs. Now you’re giving away CDs to hope they come to your gig kind of, because you have to have, how do you develop your audience? You’ve got to have an online presence. It’s all the stuff that didn’t exist before. Have a website. People start to follow you. People ask you questions, you answer them back, and I have a couple of students that have gone out and been successful but part of the work is this online activity that is very much a part of it all. We have a Music Industry major at our school. And these guys that teach it like they’re all about this thing. And I asked one of the guys, I said, “How do you get a record deal these days?” Because the record deal thing the way it used to work was different. You have a name like Sal Nistico. Played with Woody Herman, great tenor player. Sal gets off the band, Sal’s got recordings, ooh let’s follow Sal. That’s over. How do we do this. And I said, “What would the record companies even do?” He says, if you came to a record company one of the guys told me that the record company is going to look at your social media to see how many followers you have. And if you have enough followers then I’ll just create a real nice slick video for you and we’re just going to post it on the followers that you’ve already made and there’s your audience. So if you have enough followers you’re apt to get a record deal, not that the music isn’t that important but it’s almost not as important as how many followers you have. Nobody’s going to listen to it to say man that’s great tenor playing. They’re going to say who’s going to follow you? Nobody. Well then we’re not interested. So I think wow, that’s a whole change. But they need to know that. And as a teacher teaching something that is like an art form, and the society around it is changing so quickly you can’t look at it like the way it used to work. But it’s do-able and there are some kids doing it. So some of my students they get on it, it’s not that foreign for a lot of them, and they have a big presence. Because now it used to be the club would advertise it and you would go and play and you know you get paid and hopefully somebody would show up. But now they want a guarantee that you’re going to bring your peeps to the gig, right? So you have to guarantee like 35 people before you get — but for some kids it’s not a problem because they’re active on the social media. And that’s a thing that never happened — that didn’t even exist before. And when I had to learn that, I won’t say it was a bitter pill but it was so opposite of how I came up. But we talk about it and we look and Colin Stetson, this guy that plays bass saxophone and he sets up a loop, he does these concerts — it’s great playing. It’s unbelievable playing. I never heard it. I have about five different people that I show my students look at what they’re doing. This is what you have to do if you want to have a future in it. Because what I did is gone. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just what it is.

Denis mostly works with instrumentalists who hope to carve their own niche in the world of jazz.

Ametria Dock is a valued vocal and theatrical coach and has worked with numerous successful artists during her own career. She is adamant that setting goals is essential. In our 2019 interview, she offered advice.

Ametria Dock, in 2019

MR:   If you get a student that comes to you about the age of when you entered the business and they say, “I really want to make it in the music business.” This idea of making it — do you address that?

AD:   Absolutely. So I have a lot of young artists, up-and-coming I call them, artists, creatives. Now I have some that are really successful in movies and television right now that are transitioning over to doing more musical things. And we sit down and we talk about what is your idea of making it. What does that mean for you? What does that look like for you? Who does that look like for you? Who are some of the people that you think made it you know? Because sometimes what you think making it is not necessarily — I mean is it making a lot of money? Is it doing what you love everyday? So we sit down and we have conversations about that. And I have some really, really intelligent kids that are way ahead of their time. So I’m blessed to be able to mentor and sit down and have real conversations about what that looks like. What does the next five years look like for you in terms of working on this music and working toward whatever goals you have. We sit down and we create plans and things like that. I think that’s important — whether they’re kids or college aged, 20, 21 years old and coming up with a plan of action.

MR:   I wonder how the technology and the way music is delivered these days affects their vision?

AD:   Yeah. 100%. I think it does. I think that social media, I mean it has its value, but it also makes the creative, the artist see something so fast. It’s here today and it’s gone tomorrow. And so music that artists that I loved growing up, you know, they had albums upon albums upon albums. And now we have singles. And they’re here for a couple of weeks and then it’s on to the next thing. And it’s scary because you never really get to — I feel like a lot of artists got to really dig deep and develop and evolve and become. Artists today, that opportunity is, I mean you get a window and then you’re gone.

MR:   There used to be an art to creating an album concept, and which song should follow which and the keys and all that kind of thing.

AD:   Yeah. There was a lot of thought put into making an album or creating a body of work, and then introducing it to the world you know. I think now there’s more emphasis on introducing it to the world than the body of work, in my opinion. It’s like you’re pushing to put something out instead of taking the time to really master and create, and so yeah that’s my opinion.

And last, but certainly not least, the late iconic saxophonist Phil Woods suggests that the path to a jazz career has to start before you enter your freshman college dorm. As a successful jazz man who paid many dues, I feel he is qualified to offer the following advice:

Phil Woods, in 1999

MR:   Do you have advice for aspiring jazz musicians that might help them in their careers?

PW:   Advice for young jazz men. No. I figure that if they’re going to do it, no matter what I say they’re going to do it. It’s for those ones in between, those ones that aren’t really sure, those are the ones I worry about. I mean I think jazz is only for those that have no choice. I think if you’re a young man and you’re entertaining thoughts of becoming a brain surgeon or a jazz tenor man, I’d go with the brain surgery, you know what I mean? If you have a choice. If you’ve got two burning desires, don’t pick jazz. I mean keep playing it, I mean sometimes I envy the amateur, like all those dentists and doctors who play for kicks. They don’t have to worry about making bread at it. They really enjoy making music. And that’s really what it’s about. Never forget that joy, that first time you made a note and it made you feel good. Musicians kind of forget that stuff, you know, they’re sitting in the pit and reading The Wall Street Journal and grumpy, grumpy, grumpy. They forgot that feeling, that burn of the belly the first time they sounded decent. And it’s easy to get kind of trapped into just making some bread and trying to exist when the bloom is off the rose. But a young man should consider — you only have one life. When you make a choice, a career decision, it should be well thought out. Not too carefully structured mind you, but I wouldn’t rush into anything. I wouldn’t rush to go to a jazz school or any university. I always recommend take a year off man. Hitchhike around the world. Take your horn and see if you can play for your supper around the world. See what life is about while you can, before you have a family, before you need bread. Get a couple of thou and just do it. Just do it, man. Take a chance. Because you might never have a chance to do it, and that’s when you can really kind of get inside your head. It’s hard to do it when you’re surrounded by your peers or family or the pressures of society that you know — go somewhere where it’s all fresh and pursue your — find out who you are. And then when you decide, you’re going to be a much better player for this experience.

MR:   Well I think you just gave some good advice in spite of yourself.

PW:   Darn. There goes my image as the curmudgeon.

Jazz has evolved at a rapid rate, as have the social and economic conditions in which it lives. Opportunities for musicians that once existed have disappeared, but others have presented themselves. The music graduate must be open to career opportunities they create for themselves, which may not have existed thus far. Making a living in any genre of music has never been easy. People who have the requisite passion must also have parental support and enthusiasm behind them. Conversely, convincing a creative and determined young person that a musical path would be too difficult is unhelpful in the long run. Evaluating with an eagle eye the current musical milieu should be undertaken by all music majors before they arrive at music school.

Inside the Studios, Part III

The countless record dates played by veteran jazz and swing musicians produced a lengthy list of humorous, informative and poignant stories. Musicians who were used to playing within the swing parameters were called upon to make adjustments. Some of them made the adjustment, others not so much. Two west coast keyboardists, Ray Sherman and Paul Smith, both encountered what were called the repetitive “rock & roll triplets.”

Ray Sherman

RS:    Funny, that was the days of, I don’t know if they even called it rock & roll or rhythm & blues, with the triplets in the right hand. I started getting a lot of calls like that, where that’s what they wanted.

MR:    Can you recall some of the records you played on?

RS:    Well I think the only hit I was on “Primrose Lane.” And I think I faked an introduction on that, and they always say whatever I did was good.

MR:    It became a little hook.

RS:    Yeah. Because I did a record date after that, it was funny, a friend of mine, Jack Marshall, the guitar player, it was one of his dates. And he came over to me and he said, “do you think you could play something like the guy played on the ‘Primrose Lane’ intro?”

And from Paul Smith:

Paul Smith

PS:    I did one date where the piano was facing the conductor and this whole thing was eighth triplets. And just as a gag I took off my loafer and put it on my hand so I’m playing with a shoe. And he can’t see. And I’m going ching-ching-ching with a shoe on my hand. I played the entire date that way and he said great, that’s the sound he wants. And I’m playing with a shoe. So I had a faint idea what was coming up. I mean he never knew and I certainly never told him, but I could have sent one of my kids in with a shoe and play duh-duh-duh and that’s it. So I could see what music was coming to at that time.

MR:    I have to ask the obvious question: what key was that piece in if you were playing with your shoe on?

PS:    It doesn’t make any difference. It’s just the sound, ching-ching-ching. I didn’t make any chord changes. The shoe covered part — it was mostly on the black keys, but the lower part was on the white. So you have white and black both. But all he could hear was ching-ching-ching, and that’s the sound he wanted.

MR:    That six-eight feel, was it because it was a good dance feel? Is that why that became a thing?

PS:    I don’t really know. I mean I went up to him after the date and told him not to call me on those kind of dates anymore. I said don’t call me on those triplet dates. You’ve got a musical date I’ll be happy to do it. I mean it cost me a lot of money but I’d rather come home happy than irritated.

As Bob Rosengarden stated in our last blog, studio musicians were so busy running from one session to another that they rarely had the luxury of reflecting on what they had just recorded, whether it had hit potential or whether it would never be heard again. West coast saxophonists Ernie Watts and Plas Johnson spoke of these dates:

Ernie Watts

MR:    When you were doing a particular date did you ever have a sense of this tune is going to last; that it’s going to be something that years from now people are still listening to?

EW:    No. When you’re working you’re just working. It’s just your work, it’s just what you do. I would get up in the morning and I’d go and I’d do a record date. And it could be the Jacksons or it could be Sarah Vaughan or it could be Barbra Streisand. I did pop records, I did jazz records, I’d go and I’d do a record date in the morning and then in the afternoon was “The Tonight Show.” So the record dates usually run three hours so I’d do a date from 10 until 1, take a break, go over to do “The Tonight Show,” “The Tonight Show” would be off at 6:30 and I’d do another record date at 7. So I’d usually do two record dates and “The Tonight Show” just about every day, or I’d do three record dates or a big movie date and I’d send a sub to “The Tonight Show.” Because sometimes you know movie dates are all day long. I did that every day for 20 years. So when you’re doing that, all you’re doing really, all you’re thinking about is keeping your health together and going to work. You have absolutely no idea of the greatness of what’s going on, or how something is going to last or whatever. What’s happening now is all of these R&B records that I played on with The Temptations and Barry White and all of these people, they’re being used for commercials, and I’m getting these big checks. I’m getting these checks for Billy Preston things.

And from Plas Johnson, who gave life to “The Pink Panther”:

Plas Johnson

PJ:    Henry [Mancini] had the talent of matching the player with the tune you know. He would call just the right saxophone player for what he was writing on. Just the right harmonica player. He knew players quite well and he knew music. He had a knack for putting stuff together that matched, and I guess that’s how I came to work on his “Pink Panther.”

MR:    It’s a classic. Certainly had a sound to it. Did you have any idea at the time that it was going to become one of those tunes that everybody can whistle?

PJ:    No. Of course not. But we did have an idea at the time that it was a great piece of music because it was like 8:00 on a cold winter morning and I forget how many, it was a full orchestra with strings and everything, and after the tune was recorded, after the performance of the tune the orchestra applauded.

Guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli has played on thousands of recordings, some of which can kindly be called “novelty records” and others “musical gems.” He shared an amusing anecdote that took years to develop:

Bucky Pizzarelli

MR:    You never quite know what’s going to catch the public’s ear.

BP:    No. You never know. But in those days a hit record was a glorious thing to have, for an artist to find some — Patti Page had a thing called “Doggie in the Window.”

MR:    “How Much is that Doggie in the Window.”

BP:    Yeah, we made it in the last five minutes of a three hour session. So how do you know? I think Doc Severinsen was playing trumpet on it.

MR:    I mean I can just picture you going home and saying hey, guess what we did today.

BP:    Yeah, and “Itzy Bitzy Bikini.”

MR:    “Itzy Bitzy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini.” Oh my God. That was Brian Hyland, wasn’t it?

BP:    Yeah that’s right. And another thing, I made, here’s a funny story. I made Ray Charles’ “Georgia on my Mind.” It was with Ralph Burns, but it was one of those busy weeks where he was farming everything out. And we still don’t know who wrote it, Bobby Brookmeyer or Al Cohn wrote the arrangement. So we do the arrangement. Smash hit. Big, big hit. Thirty years later I’m doing the Dick Cavett Show. And Ray Charles is going to sing this tune. And the conductor comes up to me and I’m with Bobby Rosengarden’s band. And the guy said to me “don’t play the guitar on this, because it was a certain kind of guitar playing on the record.” So he was afraid I didn’t know. So I laid out. Do you believe that?

MR:    I can’t believe that.

BP:    I didn’t tell him.

For the busy studio musicians whose day-to-day work could include every possible scenario, the stories they brought home were rarely about what a wonderful day they had. More often, they were bizarre and unexpected anecdotes. Bass trombonist Alan Raph shared a story of a misunderstanding with a volatile vocalist:

Alan Raph

MR:    Can you remember one of the worst or most ridiculous recording dates that you’ve ever done?

AR:    Yeah. Well ridiculous, not worst.

MR:    Okay.

AR:    I was with Warren Covington on a schlock rock & roll date at a horrible studio back in the 60’s. And there was a black singer, a lady, and the studio was kind of dirty, funky is a better word. And she was singing a song called “The Ghoul in School.” As bad as it can get. It was just rotten, absolutely rotten, wretched. Now she sang this. We played it. Now it’s break time. You have to know Warren Covington. Warren was a wonderful trombone player, had his own band and he was like Mr. Indiana, with the sweater, always looked nice, always had his face washed and hands and nails manicured and the whole thing, he was just as collegiate as he could be. And about 12 years older than me I guess. We were the only two trombones. We’re sitting there. And now the singer comes off, and we actually did it with her on a little stage up front so it was a completely live date. She comes off during the break and walks past Warren, and Warren is spraying his slide. And she walks past Warren and she stops, she says, “don’t you spit at me mother.” Well Warren got so embarrassed. I mean he was dumbfounded. I was dumbfounded. And she stood there. She’s like, “you’ve got no right to spit at me.” And we are looking like my God, you know. So Warren immediately starts going into his school teacher routine. “Oh no, please, I would never, you see we trombone players” and he starts going with this whole thing — “we trombone players use the slide you know.” Well he looks to me for help. And I couldn’t talk I was on the floor. I couldn’t breathe I was laughing so hard. It was just like, you got it. Oh God that was funny. It was just hilarious. Well she wouldn’t let up. She gave him about five minutes of what a rotten person he was and how dare he do this and she’s not using the King’s English, she’s like really lacing into him from Funksville. And Warren was beside himself. He just didn’t know how to stop it. As it went on it just got funnier and funnier. I mean I had trouble breathing. Anyhow, that’s, talk about ridiculous, that was one of the ridiculous ones.

At a Musicians Union rate of $42.50 for a three hour session, the first call studio musicians were making a significant salary playing three to four sessions every day. Some of the top players in the pop field commanded a better fee and had the juice to actually opt for a piece of the recording. Saxophonist Phil Woods talked about his work with Billy Joel and his monetary decision:

Phil Woods

MR:    Can you recall when you did the thing on “Just the Way You Are,” how many takes did you get on that?

PW:    Oh one or two tops. Oh yeah it was just me and Phil Ramone in the booth. And he had the changes written on the back of a matchbook cover or something. But it was like a pop tune — a pop tune in the sense of a Broadway, Tin Pan Alley kind of song. It wasn’t really a rock & roll song. It’s really a pretty nice tune. So it was not a problem. Yeah I did Phoebe Snow’s overdub and Billy Joel in the same day — the same half hour.

MR:    Was he producing both of those?

PW:    Yeah. And I got $700 for both things. $350 apiece.

MR:    I’m glad to hear that. And a Grammy.

PW:    You know in those days, I mean from Mike Brecker on, from that period, when they would use soloists, it was kind of SOP, you’d ask for a quarter of a point. If a tune from the album was taken out and made a single, you’d get a quarter of a cent on every single that they made taken from the album, if you’re the soloist on it. My manager didn’t know anything about this stuff and I sure didn’t know anything about it. But you know we could have got it, all we had to do was ask. You know how much a billion quarter of a pennies are? That’s a lot of money. That record sold over a billion, biggest selling record of all time. But I mean I would have had the money but I wouldn’t have had such a good story.

We’ll do one more blog entry to do justice to our studio tales. Watch this space.

Road Travails

One reality of the music business is that you have to go where the gigs are. Bands eventually have to venture out from their hometown to play in other venues. Traveling has changed dramatically for musicians in the past five decades and nowadays artists are most likely to have complaints about delayed flights, expensive taxis, and problems with airlines and valuable instruments.

During my rock and roll period with Mr. Edd in the 1980’s, my bandmates and I shared more travel nightmares than I can remember. A Ford Econoline van with next to no heat and a finicky carburator played a major part in most of our road stories. It’s a young man’s game and not something I would choose to do again, but my experiences pale in comparison to the stories I heard while gathering interviews for the Fillius Jazz Archive.

During the era of the big bands, the following ordeals were commonplace.

In this short excerpt from trombonist Eddie Bert, we learn about a common practice among road musicians, “ghosting”:

Eddie Bert

EB:    When I went with Benny Goodman, he was going out, but he was going to stay out there [in California] for six months he told us. He stayed for six weeks and then started coming back. So that was kind of a drag.

MR:    What was it like to be on the road at that time? Was it a tough life?

EB:    Yeah. I mean you don’t eat right and all that. Because you’re traveling by bus mostly. And when you stop you stop. You’re liable to stop in some place that don’t have that good food and stuff like that. So it’s kind of a scuffle.

MR:    And a typical day, would the bus leave after you’re done playing?

EB:    It depends how far the trip is. If it’s 300 miles or 500 miles, you’ve got to leave after the gig. And you had to pay for your own hotel in those days. So a lot of guys ghosted. In other words, you had two in a room instead of one. Or three. Whatever you can get away with.

MR:    And what was the [weekly] salary like?

EB:    Yeah. From a bill and a half to two bills [$150 to $200]. But your expenses had to come out of that. So it wasn’t like today. Today they put you up. It’s different.

In our Mr. Edd travels, we did a lot of ghosting. But even with three or four to a room, sleeping in the van was often the better choice.

There were positive things that occurred on the road, but the unpleasant incidents stick with us. Drummer Sonny Igoe related one such memory from the Woody Herman band bus:

Sonny Igoe

SI:    I was always a Boy Scout. I could have more fun with the guys — they were smoking a joint or something like that they’d say “come on, Sonny, you never tried it.” I said “all right I’ll try it.” So I tried it. Nothing happened. I said “I can have more fun on a bottle of beer. I don’t need that.” And so anyway I never got involved with that. And a lot of the fellas got involved with that pretty heavily and then they went into some other things pretty heavily, like heroin, cocaine and stuff like that. And several guys actually, lives ruined completely with that stuff, because they could never kick it. And I won’t mention any names, but some very good friends of mine, guys I admired as players, got screwed up badly with that stuff, really bad — are you ready for another story?

MR:    Sure.

SI:    We were on one nighters with Woody Herman’s band when I joined. In 1950 he was fighting big debts, you know IRS and GMAC, his booking agency, I think he was in to them for about $90,000 or something like that. And he owed over $100,000 to the IRS, that’s from the manager who screwed him up. And he had this guy Abe Turchin as manager, who got him out of debt and then he screwed him up. He died broke because of him. But anyway we were on the bus and this dear friend of mine, marvelous trumpet player — I won’t mention his name — could play anything on the trumpet, played high screeching, beautiful soft ballads, fast bebop, any style, Dixieland, swing, bebop, anything. World class. And he was a junkie. And when they would run out of junk they’d drink whiskey like it was coming out of a water faucet, to try to help get over it. Well we were in an un-air conditioned bus, we were down in Kentucky or South Carolina, someplace, I don’t know, Georgia, in that kind of country. All rural, all hot. And we each had a double seat because there was a lot of seats on the bus and there was 15 guys or whatever. So right across from me is this guy who is a dear friend. And I’m finally falling asleep and I said “go to sleep, go to sleep.” I almost said his name but I don’t want to say his name. So anyway I’m falling asleep [sniffs]. I smell burning flesh, okay? And I look over and here’s this guy, he had a cigarette with his hand — he was unconscious practically. He has a cigarette and it had burned down between his two fingers and was burning his flesh and smoking. It was actually smoking. So I go like this across the aisle, knock it off, naturally wake him up. And he started in on me like — I can’t mention the words he used and how dumb I was and what’s the idea and blah-blah-blah. And I tried to explain to him. The next day he saw it, it didn’t bother him at all. He played like it never happened. But that’s how, unfortunately, some of those guys ruined their lives with that stuff. I was a square. It was good enough for me.

MR:    Yeah. Stick with being a Boy Scout.

Sonny bequeathed his musical genes to his son, Tommy, who now leads the high-powered Birdland Big Band from his drum stool.

Pianist Jay McShann spoke of the relationship between dance halls and traveling bands. His recollections offered a fascinating look into the day-to-day life of a musician in the forties.

Jay McShann

MR:    You had some pretty good records with Walter Brown.

JM:    Yes, yes, yes. We were lucky to have Walter Brown.

MR:    And you toured around the country?

JM:    Sure did.

MR:    What kind of places were you playing at the time. They were dance halls?

JM:    Well we were just playing dances. A lot of parts of states at that time were hungering for dance, hungry for music, hungry for hearing something different, and so quite naturally a lot of bands, road bands, were traveling. And you could get into Texas for two weeks, because you had all those towns and all those dance towns. See what I mean? Start at Dallas, Fort Worth Sunday night, Austin Wednesday, Houston Thursday, Galveston Friday. And just town after town like that. And that’s the way they could book ‘em.

MR:    Were you playing for segregated audiences at that time?

JM:    Yes. In some places we played I mean whites on this side and blacks on that side.

MR:    How did they keep them apart?

JM:    Well they might have a rope coming down.

MR:    No kidding. I bet you played some bad pianos over the years.

JM:    Oh, we’ve had some awful pianos. I know I used to — sometimes we’d get pianos and the pianos would be so bad I’d get drunk. Yeah I’d get in front of that mess you know, and say “well now we ain’t going to have no piano tonight.” I says “Brown, there ain’t going to be no piano tonight, you’ll have to sing with the horns.” And some of the pianos you know you’d have to tune, like we used to tune up with A. Sometimes you might be tuning up with C above A. Or maybe F below A you know. Now that’s how far they were out of tune some of them. And a lot of times if the band was playing in A flat I’d probably be playing in B flat or B natural. That made us have to go get drunk on that night. I had my excuse already made out. I’d get in front of that mess, cut out and go back to the hotel about 11:00.

In their youth, reedmen Lanny Morgan and Kenny Davern had their big band road experience when the call for those ensembles was diminishing from its swing era peak. They learned about long hauls, hotels, and road cuisine.

Lanny Morgan

MR:    What was the travel situation like, the road [with Maynard Ferguson]? Was it a tough grind in those days?

LM:    Yes. Looking back at it you forget all those things. It was a wonderful experience but I wouldn’t want to do it again. Yeah, because we didn’t have a bus, we had station wagons. And starting salary on that band was a $120 a week. I made $135 because I was not only the lead alto player but played a lot of jazz too and because he’d known me. And so $135 a week and he had two station wagons and then he drove himself. I wound up driving one of the station wagons. And well you can imagine, if you have a one-nighter in Chicago, I just found a pay receipt for this the other night, it was for $23.65, a one-nighter in Chicago. Now out of that tax was taken, so you get about $19.00. Out of that you have to pay for your own lodging and for food, so we used to stay at the Croyden Hotel in Chicago, that was like $2.50 a night, another fifty cents if you wanted a black & white T.V. And say another $6 for food maybe. So in other words you’re coming home with $11.00, $11.50. So I took the driving job because we got one cent a mile. Well now Chicago is 960 miles, so I would come home with an extra 18, or a little over 19 dollars, plus my 11, would be 30 bucks I would have see?

MR:    Yeah. Gee that was like an extra night of work.

LM:    That’s right. When I joined that band we rehearsed that day, the day I got back there, and the next day we opened at Birdland. It seems like we played there for three weeks. A good band. And then we had one day off and we went to the Brooklyn Paramount and we played there opposite the Jazztet, the newly formed Jazztet. That was for ten days. And then we had about four gigs on the road — Pennsylvania, around Philly, in that area. And then, and I thought, this is wonderful. What is that, like 135 times 5 almost. I’m rolling. I was paying $155 a week for a place at 85^th and Broadway in Manhattan and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Then we didn’t work for a month and a half see, and nobody was on retainer.  Everything was pro-rated when we did work. So the reality set in there. Because then I really went from wealthy to poor in about five weeks. But the driving was terrible. I’d set out like at 8:00 at night from Junior’s or Charlie’s Tavern at 52^nd and Broadway, to go to Chicago or even Pittsburgh or some place, and it would be snowing so hard you couldn’t see somebody standing as close to me as you are, and have to drive all that way, and usually we’d leave late so we could catch the day sheet, which meant you’d check in about 6 in the morning and you’d grab a few hours’ sleep, and then you’d leave right after the gig and come back to New York to save money.

MR:    The day sheet?

LM:    Well the day sheet begins usually at 6 or 7:00 in the morning. In other words that’s that day.

MR:    Are you talking about a hotel?

LM:    A hotel.

MR:    Okay.

LM:    It’s like this hotel ends, and they don’t want you to leave until 11 or noon maybe. But their sheet for new people checking in begins at probably 7 or 8:00 in the morning, if they have any rooms available then. So we would try and catch that and get a good day’s sleep and then leave after the job and drive all the way back to New York which was difficult.

MR:    You mean you drove to Chicago [from New York] for a one-nighter?

LM:    Oh yeah. Several times.

MR:    Boy, I thought the rock and roll business was something.

LM:    No we did that quite a few times.

MR:    And probably the Thruway system, the roads were a long way from where they are now.

LM:    The thruways and the turnpikes were finished, but the interstates were not. And of course although we got reimbursed for tolls, it took time to stop and go through the toll booths all the time. And when you’re on a roll, you know I couldn’t drink during that period. I had to stay sober. Because driving through a blizzard with these guys — but you just get on a roll and you want to go. It’s kind of hypnotic, and I really shouldn’t have done that. But we would try these new interstates and they were a drag because you’d take an interstate for a hundred miles and you’d think oh this is wonderful, and they were brand new roads and so forth. And then it would say “END” End of interstate. Merge into one lane. So you’d come into one lane and then it would take you probably an hour and a half to get back to a decent road. So that part of it was a drag, and there were some places like Cincinnati that it was almost impossible to get to. There were a lot of two lane highways, back woods gas stations where you were almost afraid to stop. We had a couple of carloads of kids follow us into a gas station in West Virginia once and they had chains. You know they were going to get us good. Fortunately our car was newer and we got out of there fast. But there was a lot of that really. It was not completely safe to be traveling, even with six guys in the car.

On March 16, 2001, Kenny Davern, in his inimitable style, gave us a wonderful picture of his reality check on what was then a young musician’s dream. His brief tenure with the Ralph Flanagan Big Band helped him decide on one thing he wouldn’t do for the rest of his career:

Kenny Davern

KD:    We did 60 one-nighters in 90 days. We made the most amount of money any band had ever made on the road, I think it was — whatever it was, I don’t want to quote any figure I’m not sure of. And all the guys came up to me and said “oooh, wow, you’re the big time.” “Big time my ass” I said. Horrible. It was awful out there. You know, shaving on the bandstand before the gig. I mean it just wasn’t —

MR:    Why it was awful?

KD:    Well first, maybe you’re driving through Keokuk, Iowa, on the way to Ames. Or maybe it was Ames on the way to Keokuk. Anyway, the most you might see was a Stewart Drive Inn, a root beer and hot dogs. You know you’d have that and an ice cream. Back in the car, some more traveling. You get to this place, you’re in your jeans and sort of like a man dressed in hell. Well it was hot. The cars didn’t even have air conditioners in 1953. Some did but ours never did. And you’d get there at maybe 5, 6:00 and you’re right at the gig, at the ballroom. And there’s the ballroom. The ballroom is like on Highway 483 midway between, you know, Chicago and Detroit. And to shave you had to plug in, there was one outlet by the bandstand. You’d plug that in, each guy would take a turn with his electric shaver shaving. Next. And then there was like one sink in back of the bandstand with cold water only and a naked light bulb hanging down, and a cracked piece of a mirror. And that’s where you washed up. And you put on a shirt. Nylon shirts had just come out. Short sleeve nylon shirts. And it was the summertime. Because you needed something you could wash out right away and hang up and dry and cotton shirts just weren’t in then. I mean you could do that but it wasn’t really practical. And so you know these shirts were hot, I’m telling you, you closed up that collar and you put on a black bow tie, which you had to make yourself in those days. And then you put a wool jacket on over you, and your tuxedo pants. You were roasting. And you did four sets, four hour sets, and then you packed up the horn and folded up the book and put it on the pile and packed up your horns and they put them on the truck and you got in the car and you rode, let’s say maybe 350 more miles, and you’d go through the towns at that time, obeying the speed limit because they were all speed traps, and if you’d go one mile over they grabbed you and you had to pay off. So all the drivers were aware of this. And a lot of times you almost got killed speeding on — on a three lane, the middle lane was for passing in either direction going through.

MR:    So it wasn’t like thruways and all that.

KD:    No there were no thruways, um um. So I’ll finish with this road travail. And what the hell, you ever doze and try to fall asleep in the back seat of a 1953 Buick? What do they call it, where the hump is?

MR:    The driveshaft?

KD:    The driveshaft. Well the drive shaft was like two feet up, so you had your knees in your chin. And two guys on each side of you. And two guys up front. Well I mean you’re zooming along and all of a sudden you hear “hold on to your hats,  fellas,” and you look up and you see two 18-wheelers, one on each side of you, one going this way and the other one going that way, and you’re in the center of the two of these guys. Very frightening. And a lot of guys got killed in those kind of precarious road driving things at the end. And then you get into the town where you’re going to go, you know you left at about 11:30, 12 let’s say. Maybe about 6:30, 7:00  in the morning you’ve rolled into the other great town which boasted of a Milner Hotel at $3.75 or $2.75 a night, I forget which, and you couldn’t check in you see. So you’d have to put your luggage, the bell captain would take your luggage. And these were very cheap hotels. And then you’d walk around town. You’d have breakfast in one of those Dew Drop Inn places, maybe visit the local music store to see what kind of instruments they have, because good horns were still relatively easy to find, premium horns. Of course none of us had any money, but if we needed it we would borrow or whatever. And then when you checked in maybe at 11, 12 or 1, you may have gotten a haircut, whatever. Anything to kill some time. And you slept ‘till about 5:00, and that’s when you had your wake-up call, you got dressed, you shaved and showered and you went down to the local buffet, cafeteria style. And you had spaghetti or whatever, depending on what part of the world you’re in. And then you went to the gig and that night you were able to stay over but you left at 9:00 the next day because again, you had 350 miles to go. So you know you do that —

MR:    Day after day.

KD:    Yeah. It was really quite hard. But you know as a kid you don’t care about that. I think I made I think it was $125 a week, and I cleared $117.50. You could save money, believe it or not, in 1953.

MR:    Because the rooms and the meals weren’t that expensive.

KD:    Right. Every other night it was $2.75 or maybe $3.00.

MR:    Well that experience may have put some perspective on things for you.

KD:    I expected much more. From then on I just got very — like I said when I came home I said — oh boy they all said, you know, starry eyed, and thought I’d be stage struck. “How was it?” “It was the f---ing worst” I said. Plain and simple. Ohhhh, they all wanted to do that. And I had done it. So I didn’t see any romance to that whatsoever.

Kenny spent the rest of his career playing with small groups, where he was less likely to be stuck with the driveshaft. Even if the big band era was still healthy and vital, these music/life experiences would not be taught in jazz schools. They are part of learning on the job and paying your dues.

As Phil Woods remarked in our interview concerning the challenges of traveling, “The playing is easy. [The difficulty is] all the nonsense you go through to bring your horn up to the bandstand. That’s the altar. That’s the safe place.” Phil’s traveling story can be read in a previous blog entry here: Gig Reality Check.

The Jazz Glass: Half Full or Half Empty?

Next week I will travel to Atlanta for the annual JazzEd Network conference. This association quickly stepped in when the International Association of Jazz Educators went bankrupt in 2008. If a journalist wanted to write an article about the healthy state of one of America’s original art forms, this would be the event to attend. Educators, performers, students, and entrepreneurs will convene for four days of concerts, clinics and commerce. The jazz glass will be overflowing.

Players and promoters know that this vibrant scene is sadly not mirrored in other areas. Rick Tessel, the publisher of JazzEd Magazine, recently authored “The Paradox of Today’s Jazz Scene.” He pointed out the inequalities, citing statistics and focusing on the fact that high schools, middle schools, and conservatories have students studying jazz more than ever before. At the same time, the jazz audience is shrinking, especially under the age of 45, according to the Jazz Audience Initiative. The record industry is suffering as well, and jazz recordings account for less than 3% of total music sales. Mr. Tessel cites possible reasons, including the proliferation of music on the internet, and the fact that “younger buyers seem to be more actively involved in the full range of music activities, especially downloading and organizing music.” My reading of this statement is that downloading and organizing have replaced purchasing and attending. I don’t think any observers of the jazz scene are surprised by this paradox.

Saxophonist/composer Jane Ira Bloom recognized the situation with recordings back in 1998 when I interviewed her for the Jazz Archive.

MR:    Yesterday I overheard you talking about recording albums and the business of finding labels, and you had mentioned that the business for records these days is not too healthy in the jazz world and that the time you’re getting to make records is getting smaller.

Jane Ira Bloom

JB:    Yeah. Well this is the middle, the jazz trenches, we’re not talking about the major jazz labels, we’re talking about all the independent jazz labels that live and operate in this kind of middle ground, on very small budgets. And the fact is it’s become so easy to make a CD now, everybody can make one, anybody can make a CD and get it out there and reproduce it and get it in the record stores. And I’m not entirely sure what that says about the quality and the content of what’s in those CD’s if they’re so easy to do, how carefully we think about what it is that we record and want to put out there. There is also a lot of other entertainment options for people who buy CD’s now, you know the computer and internet has changed all kinds of things. And entertainment options people have, not just listening to records. People can barely listen to 60 minutes of music, they don’t have that amount of time. An LP used to be 40 minutes. People could handle that. Jazz critics say today that they don’t even have time to listen to an entire CD when they’re evaluating new albums. It takes a lot of time.

MR:    Yeah. You get a stack of CD’s on your desk that you’re supposed to review and each one of them is an hour.

JB:    Yeah. It also brings up the point of, you know, how carefully are you thinking about what you are recording, how special you want to make those musical moments.

Bob Kinkel, a founding members of the TransSiberian Orchestra, and my most recent interviewee, succinctly addressed the easy accessibility of current technology:

Bob Kinkel

BK:    My view of technology and the way it’s gotten so much easier to do it in all forms — like graphic design, art, music recording — it’s really easy to get to high mediocrity. And unfortunately that is where a lot of people stay and it’s very rare that people are popping above that with any kind of design. It’s like I’m happy that a lot of the top architectural schools are making everybody do stuff by hand again before they’ll let them take whatever design they did by hand and put into CAD programs. So it’s more using it as a tool instead of the creative crutch, because it’s so easy to get to get high mediocrity.

It’s hard to imagine that the connection between slumping record sales and concert attendance is not one of the consequences of the astounding leaps in technology. Recently I related to my most accomplished saxophone student the thrill of seeing Cannonball Adderley in live shows in the late 1960’s. His reply was “oh yes, I’ve seen him on YouTube.” My saxophone teacher about that same time would recommend to me different artists to listen to and absorb. My process would be to save up money from my allowance and go to the record store to pore through the offerings, making my most informed choice possible. The prodigious liner notes on the album jackets assisted in my selections. I also listened to my transistor radio late at night where I heard the all-night jazz station in Rochester, New York. All of the above are now just a click away.

Very few young musicians would ever need or want to recreate the effort that Phil Woods talked about in our interview from 1999.

Phil Woods

PW:    Before I graduated, I was still in high school. And we’d come down, we’d take the bus to New York and we’d have to take another subway out to Long Island and then a bus to Lennie’s [Tristano] house, and I forget what it was, it was $15 a lesson or something, which seemed like a lot of bread in those days. I’d take a lesson then go back to Manhattan and go to Romeo’s and get a bowl of spaghetti, and you knew it was fresh because it’d been sitting in the window all day, and then we’d go to Mainstream Records and get the latest Bud and Bird and Diz, whatever we could afford. They were 78’s of course in those days. And if we still have a dollar left over we’d go to 52nd Street. I could get a Coca Cola for a dollar and I could sit there all night man. And that’s where I first heard Charlie Parker. I think he was sitting in with Milt Jackson I believe and Howard McGhee.

If I suggest to my saxophone students today that they would benefit from listening to a certain artist, my expectation used to be that the student would seek them out and purchase select recordings. Suppose I suggest that John Coltrane is the important artist. My Google search yielded the following on the first page offering: A live recording of John playing “Naima,” a live recording of “My Favorite Things,” the full version of “Blue Trane” with moving photo gallery, and a version of “Giant Steps” with an animated solo, the notes appearing one after the other, in real time, complete with chord changes. Most Coltrane fans would agree that these four songs belong on the short list of his notable recordings. Will the average student feel compelled to purchase this music? Why should they?

Let’s look at a current artist. Eric Alexander is an accomplished saxophonist, influenced by John Coltrane amongst others. Eric’s Google search offers a treasure trove of video and audio. One particular link has 32 different videos of Eric performing. What about live concerts? If a student desires to see an actual live performance, he/she can visit Small’s website, and for $5 a month live jazz from the club can be viewed every night. Is the experience the same as actually being in a jazz club? Of course not. However, it’s very close, and costs next to nothing. Let’s face it, the days of going to extraordinary measures for your jazz education are long gone, except for paying extraordinary tuition.

My intention here is not to sound like a “moldy fig,” the term used to describe purists who dismissed any attempts to modernize jazz in the 30’s. The discrepancy between the separate sides of jazz provide a fertile topic for music journalists and the occasional sociology paper. I believe most of the situation can be explained by the adage “what we receive too cheap, we esteem too little.”

There is little doubt that the JazzEd conference at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta will be stimulating and upbeat. If you attend, please consider my presentation on Friday, January 4, 2013, at 10 a.m. in the Learning Center. I will host a screening of the film “Joe Williams: A Portrait in Song.” Hamilton College produced this concert documentary in 1996, featuring Joe with the Count Basie Orchestra. Expect a review on the conference in our next posting.