“Mel showed me at that time, what a drummer is capable of doing as far as being integrated as an inescapable component of the arrangement as a whole. Not just something stuck in there at the last minute. You don't replace Mel Lewis, you just hope to get somebody who's like him — maybe.”
- Don Sebesky, trombonist, composer-arranger
“Well, it boils down to the fact that Mel played music on the drums. He absorbed what everyone in the band was doing and found things to play that complimented it. His time was so relaxed that sometimes he got in trouble for it. I remember one time; while we were playing with Terry Gibbs, hearing Al Porcino pounding his heel on the floor and saying, "Let's go Mel!" Because Mel was so easy that sometimes he would drag a little bit. But, to me it was a perfect solution to big band drumming.”
- Bill Holman, tenor saxophonist, big band leader, composer, arranger
“Mel never stopped speaking up for what he believed in and he always stayed true to his belief that jazz music should be swinging and innovative. Due in part to his unapologetic honesty his career wasn't filled with the fame and fortune that other drummers achieved. Yet Mel stayed true to himself and developed artistically throughout his entire life, in turn leaving the world with a recorded legacy that is priceless.” [p. 105]
- Chris Smith, professional drummer, educator author of Mel Lewis: The View from the Back of the Band
"My whole approach to playing is reaction. I don't listen to myself play. I'm too busy listening to everything going on around me. All my body is doing is reacting to that. I augment, compliment, round out. I can make anybody sound good. I have my own style, but I play uniquely with everyone that I play with ... Sometimes I'm forcing things, making things happen another way, but I'm still reacting to everything I hear. The composition I'm creating as I play in a big band is also because of what I'm hearing ... Everything depends on your ears. If I'm busy listening to me, then I'm not hearing the rest of the band. When the band is playing as an ensemble, I'm part of that ensemble."
— Mel Lewis, clinic in Hilversum, Netherlands 1985
Early in his career, some Jazz critics dismissed Mel Lewis as a drummer with “no chops” [little technique] who played behind the beat. But as Chris Smith points out in his masterfully comprehensive biography of Mel is that - “What makes the critics' under-appreciation of Mel so incorrect is what most every musician and many listeners know: that while a band can play poorly with a great drummer, no band can be great without one.”
When you finish reading Chris’ Mel Lewis: The View from the Back of the Band - The Life and Music of Mel Lewis [Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2014], there will be no doubt in your mind - nor should there be - that Mel Lewis was one of the greatest Jazz drummers who ever lived [1929-1990].
He ranks right up there with Baby Dodds, Zutty Singleton, Gene Krupa, Chick Webb, Buddy Rich, Davy Tough, Sid Catlett, Kenny Clarke, Max Roach, Shelly Manne, Louie Bellson, Joe Morello, Philly Joe Jones, Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette and any other “signature drummer” in the history of the music. [“Signature drummer” was Buddy Rich’s term for a drummer whose style was instantly recognizable and distinctive from other drummers].
As Gerry Mulligan once put it: “There’s still not a drummer who achieved what Mel Lewis did. And I’m not sure how to describe it.”
Maybe one answer is in the following remark that Mel made to Burt Korall the author of Drummin’ Men: The Heartbeat of Jazz - The Bebop Years:
“I found that to really make money you had to give up music. So I gave up money.”
For forty years, Mel Lewis made music in a widely diverse range of settings that included trios, small groups and big bands.
And what a collection of big bands: Tex Beneke, Boyd Raeburn, Alvino Ray, Ray Anthony, Stan Kenton, the Terry Gibbs Dream Band, Gerald Wilson, Gerry Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band, the Thad Jones Mel Lewis Big Band and Mel Lewis and The Jazz Orchestra plus the many performances with various iterations of the WDR big band in Germany during the 1980s.
But Gerry’s point is well-taken, Mel’s footprint on Jazz is so huge - how do you describe it?
Until Chris Smith biography of Mel came along, Mel’s career was almost impossible to recount let alone describe. After reading it one is tempted to ask: Is there anyone that Mel didn’t play during a career that spanned four decades from approximately 1950 to 1990?
Each time I started to prepare and outline for how I wanted to approach reviewing Chris Smith’s engaging biography of Mel Lewis, I’d read a little further in my notes to each chapter which then prompted me to rethink and rewrite the whole feature!
Chris’ book is much more than a mere biography of Mel, it imparts a great deal of knowledge and information about the broader Jazz World in the second half of the 20th century and Mel’s role in creating of lot of it that it could easily have been entitled Drum Wisdom and Jazz Revelations: The Life and Times of Mel Lewis [1929 - 1990].
Perhaps the easiest way to begin is with Mel Lewis’ own description of who he is and what he does: “Hi, my name is Mel Lewis and I play drums and cymbals.”
Or as it it specifically stated in Chris’ biography:
“You can say I am an old man, the kids can say "Oh what does he know he is from the old school." Man, I am not from the old school! I am a musician, and I play drums and cymbals. I use cymbals that are real cymbals. It’s like driving a good car as opposed to a piece of junk, you know. But man, once you really know how to play a drum, meaning you can play it, you know what it sounds like, and you can sit and create music on that drum, then you’ve achieved something. I don't mean play songs where you sit there playing backbeats and play a fill here and you do this there. I mean where you can actually make music on an instrument, then you'll know exactly what I am talking about.” [p. 105]
The significance of this remark is that while many drummers are apologists because of the bad rap they get for not being like other musicians [not being melody and harmony “sensitive”], Mel was proud of his instrument and the way he played it.
Never one to downplay his own abilities, Mel took things a step further when he remarked:
"I am a unique drummer. I have a style that nobody else has. I make music happen. I make bands do things that no other band can do. Any time I've played, any band I've played in, that band has become mine. Now, I didn't do it on purpose... it just happened.” [p. 74]
What becomes apparent as you read through the 23 chapters of Chris’ biography is that Mel Lewis put a lot of thought into his approach to drumming, something you might not assume, because Mel was not a flashy or “technique drummer.
Here are some quotations that reflect how deeply Mel thought about his drumming:
"My whole approach to playing is reaction. I don't listen to myself play. I'm too busy listening to everything going on around me. All my body is doing is reacting to that. I augment, compliment, round out. I can make anybody sound good. I have my own style, but I play uniquely with everyone that I play with. Sometimes I'm forcing things, making things happen another way, but I'm still reacting to everything I hear. The composition I'm creating as I play in a big band is also because of what I'm hearing ... Everything depends on your ears. If I'm busy listening to me, then I'm not hearing the rest of the band. When the band is playing as an ensemble, I'm part of that ensemble." —Mel Lewis, clinic in Hilversum, Netherlands 1985
Strangely, in print interviews Mel often downplayed the influence Tiny had on his drumming. However, in an interview with Will Moyle, Mel clearly stated, "Tiny played so musically, he was a big influence on my playing. That great sound out of his bass drum and his constant motion. He used what we call 'Rub-a-Dub' feel, which I use too. That is what really makes a band move ahead and play inspired, it's that 'Rub-a-Dub'."
[Mel was often credited with bringing a small group style of drumming into a big band setting]. “Now I am with a dance band again [Alvino Ray], but the funny bit is that bebop had completely taken me over by this time; I was really a bop drummer. And the small group thing was really coming into my head now, this way of playing. But I wasn't thinking about it that way, I didn't even realize what I was doing. I wasn't saying, "oh, I'm gonna play small group drums in a big band."
“Good drummers were a rarity and that's all there was to it. There's no ego problem involved, it's just there weren't many good drummers. There still aren't.”
“[During] his time with Kenton, Mel's softer dynamics and bebop-influenced style of big band drumming were a major influence on the band's sound. … After only a handful of times playing the [Kenton band’s] complex arrangements, he was beyond reading the chart and had already interpreted the music in his own style. Even at the young age of twenty-six, Mel had the ability to quickly memorize music and play in a way that uniquely suited each arrangement … .Mel’s light touch, bebop comping, and ability to support the ensemble without overplaying, began setting a new standard of big band drumming.” [Chris Smith]
“It is worth noting that the sound of Mel's drums and cymbals on Art Pepper + Eleven: Modern Jazz Classics [arrangements by Marty Paich] is an excellent representation of his "typical sound" at the time. Mel's "sound" was a combination of many aspects, two of which were his use of calfskin drumheads and tuning his drums medium-low in pitch, even when playing in a small group. His drum sound on Modern Jazz Classics is a prime example of the warm tone he pulled out of the calfskin heads and how the sound of his drums blended into the ensemble, yet were tuned high enough to cut through when needed. Another important aspect of Mel's "sound" heard on the album is his use of low-pitched cymbals and the master touch in which he played them. … Mel was physically relaxed when he played, creating so much intensity while making the whole process look effortless.” [Chris Smith]
“Buddy [Rich] knew the melody so well he would play the melodies along with the band. That is where I disagreed with him. He forced the music to be played like a drummer, where my bit is I play it like the band is playing. That's where him and I are opposites in big band playing. But behind it, we have the same talent for hearing. This is what he liked about me and what I liked about him. In other words, what we liked about each other was the things neither one of us could do, the respect for each other’s signature.”
“His cymbal colors and textures created a continually shifting sonic backdrop, and in typical Mel fashion, when it was time to swing his cymbal beat wrapped a comforting blanket of sound around the whole band. His bass drum and toms were used as both melodic voices and low register textures. Most importantly his drumming demonstrated that orchestration and patience were as powerful musical tools as chops and speed. … Mel often pushed intensity to new heights by moving from his main ride cymbal to his Chinese cymbal. At the point where other drummers may have added volume or overplayed, Mel elevated the music by changing his cymbal sound and intensifying the texture.” [Chris Smith]
"Playing from hand to hand and constantly moving the cymbal pattern, gets the feeling of straight ahead motion without getting into a rigid situation. The only thing that really has to keep going and stay rigid is the hi-hat. But you never think about your hi-hat, it just goes. But you keep moving your hands with different patterns while listening to the soloist and reacting to what they play." —Mel Lewis, clinic in Hilversum, Netherlands, 1985
"I think drummers should create their own fills based on what they are hearing instead of the old standard fill before a dotted quarter... Drummers can create their own fills based on the music itself, based on what will follow or what proceeded.” —Mel Lewis, Modern Drummer, February 1985-
"When playing figures with the ensemble, duplicate its effects: loud or soft, long or short. For short sound, strike the center of the snare drum; snap the hi-hats shut tightly) press the stick into the head of a torn) make a cross-stick shot. For a long sound, strike a cymbal; hit the bass drum) instantly snapping the beater back) snap the hi-hats in an open position and let them ring. Strike a tone and let the note sustain. Strike the off-center area of the snare drum (a semi-long sound). Never, unless it is called for, play a figure with just one sound (every note sounding alike). Each note has a different texture and requires varying treatment... Always sing the figure, either aloud or to yourself. This applies when studying the figure (before playing it) and at the moment of execution. And sing with the feeling and articulation of the horn. Then duplicate this feeling on the drum set. In this way you will get a better blend between the drums and the horns." —Mel Lewis, International Musician, 1961
What also becomes apparent through a close reading of Chris Smith’s Mel Lewis: The View from the Back of the Band is how much other musicians appreciated Mel’s approach to drumming.
“The thing that was so amazing about Mel was that he heard everything that was going on in the band. Mel would give it up for the band. In other words, he felt that he was not only a part of the rhythm section, but that he was a part of each section of the band. And depending on which section had the lead, whether it was a sax soli, a trombone soli, or the trumpets were leading the ensemble through the out chorus, Mel knew every part. Inside of what he did, as far as the overall sound of the drums, he would also accentuate things that other drummers would never hear. He would do it so subtly that you felt it more than you heard it. He was just so unique in his ability to be a total part of the orchestration. He never got in the way, and Mel never made the drums a prominent instrument in the band. His sound was always something that the band sat on top of, and he was the most supportive drummer that I have ever heard. For me, I have never heard anyone be so giving musically, as part of a big band. I don’t think he ever thought of himself as a drummer, I think he probably thought of himself as just a band member. But as it ended up, he was the band!” - Marvin Stamm, trumpet player
“The Concert Jazz Band was my first chance to really get to know Mel and get to play music with him on a steady basis. I thought it was a hot rhythm section! I liked the sounds that he got out of his cymbals and I liked the general steam that he was able to turn on. You know it s funny, one time he told me, ‘I don't like to play what the brass section is playing, they got enough accent in their playing and they can do that on their own. If I play everything that they play they get lazy. We need to get them more up on the time. I like to play what the saxophone players are playing.’ And I thought that was a very interesting insight into his conception of playing.” - Bill Crow, bassist
“When Mel Lewis was with the Terry Gibbs band, he did some of the best drumming I ever heard with that band. I'm not that free with compliments, but the band was so hot. It was the most perfect way of playing drums with that band. Mel's a marvelous drummer and totally individualistic. He doesn't sound like anybody else. That's the best thing you can say about anybody, and I said it.” - Buddy Rich, drummer and band leader
“Through the years I played various gigs with Mel, everything from big band, to piano trio at Jazz clubs, to wedding gigs. He was always so relaxed when he played it looked like he was up there reading the paper! Mel's absolute first priority, no matter what, was the feel of the music. He knew that if it didn't feel good, neither the band nor the audience would like it. It didn't matter what you wanted to do harmonically, melodically, formally or any of that—if the music didn't start from a place of good feel, forget it! Trust your body, trust your instincts and let the music flow—it will be ok.” Peter Malinverni, pianist
“Mel really knew how to hear what was right for the music. Like most good musicians, he had the ability to adapt to a situation and play what was appropriate in a very natural way. He really knew how to orchestrate. What I also loved so much about Mel was his ability to "shade" the time of the music. He knew when to get up on it, and he knew when to get back on it, depending on what was happening with the band. He knew how to "dig in the stirrups," or "pull back the reins," you know. He had an amazing ability to know how and when to do that. A real gift — Adam Nussbaum, drummer
”Mel was capable of contributing many things to an album, and he did it in ways that only he could do. His musical approach to drumming never forced people to play a certain way. He allowed people to play the way they play, and then he made his musical contribution while that was happening. —Jerry Dodgion, alto saxophonist
“He really embodied the idea of being a team player, rather than drawing attention to himself. He tried to keep the small group feeling in the big band, and I think that he proved that great music could be made without making bold technical statements. I also think that he showed that it's really possible to play a wide range of music well over the course of a career. Even though he may have been "pigeon holed" as a certain type of player, he found a way to bring life to all kinds of musical situations.” —John Riley, drummer
“Mel's wasn't an incredibly technical drummer, he kind of rumbled back there, but he could just explode with energy when the music called for it. He was the only drummer that I have ever played with that told me he had a specific cymbal for my sound. That really blew me away! He said, "Yeah I have a cymbal for George, I had a cymbal for Richard, and I have a cymbal for you."
Mel and I once recorded these play-along albums for Ramon Ricker. After recording the whole day it was suggested that since everyone had settled in we go back and rerecord the very first song. The recording engineer said, "Should I playback the tempo of the first take?" And Mel said, "No I got it."
So we recorded the song again and when we finished we listened back. The new version ended up being one second different than the original take! The song was six or seven minutes in length and the two recordings were done at least six hours apart. Everybody that was in the control booth kind of fell silent and looked at each other and said, "Wow that’s incredible!" Mel had a very unique internal clock; that was one of his gifts.” — Rufus Reid, bassist
“Mel played to make everybody else in the band sound as good as possible. He did this by thinking of their phrasing and thinking like a horn player. He was totally unselfish; he always played what the band needed.” — Jeff Hamilton, drummer
“Mel played very musical. All the drummers that have played with my band, after Mel left and the records came out, they sort of played the same licks that Mel played because it was almost like someone had written them out, they fit the music perfect! He was so musical.” - Terry Gibbs, vibraphonist and band leader
“When Mel died, it was one of the biggest losses the music ever had. People all over the world suffered. And they'll never recover. We were sitting in Cologne, a key producer and I. We said, "Mel," and were silent for five minutes because there's no replacement. All of the bands, big and small, amateur and professional, that he made sound good have to feel a terrible, terrible loss. There will never be another like him. Mel was one of the greatest drummers of all. I'd stake my life on that.” - Bob Brookmeyer, valve trombonist, band leader, composer-arranger.
There are two other main themes that Chris Smith stresses over the course of the 23 chapters that make up Mel Lewis: The View from the Back of the Band are Mel’s development as a band leader which dated back to his time on Stan Kenton’s band when he observed: “‘Stan Kenton treated his musicians like gentlemen; and he knew how to draw the best out of you. He never told anybody how to play. And I thought that was very important,’ recalled Mel. The lessons Mel learned from Kenton deeply influenced the way he treated fellow musicians when he became a bandleader.”
The other primary theme that Chris Smith underscores in his biography was Mel’s efforts to help young drummers: “Much like the love he showed for the members of his band, Mel also extended his friendship, advice, and equipment to the young jazz drummers whom he thought showed promise. Drummer Adam Nussbaum recalled his relationship with Mel:
“I really got to know Mel when I was playing with John Scofield and Michael Moore at a club "Paissons" on West 72nd street in New York City; that was not too far from where Mel lived. He showed up to the gig and saw me playing with these cats. He kind of knew about me because I was playing with some of the guys in his band like Dennis Irwin, Dick Oatts, Joe Lovano, Jim McNeely, we were all buddies. At the time I had a set of walnut finish Gretsch drums, was using old K's, and had calfskin heads on my snare and bass drum. I guess he may have seen me as a younger version of himself; I also had red hair and was Jewish. After we said hello to each other, I said, "Hey Mel why don’t you come up and play a little bit." So Mel sat in and played a couple tunes with Scofield.
After the gig was done Mel said to me, "What are you doing tomorrow? I want you to come to my house tomorrow around noon, you free?" So I went over the next day, I ring the bell, and Mel said, "Wait for me in the lobby." So I waited for him in the lobby, and then we went down to the basement, to his storage place. When we got down there he took out a snare drum and floor torn. He said, "Here man, I want you to have these." I said, "What?" He goes, "Yeah man, these match your Gretsch drums | perfectly, they stole the rest from me and I am using Slingerland now, so you should have them." Just real matter of fact, it was just so sweet of him.
Mel didn't have a son, so I think he saw a bunch of us guys in New York—of the younger generation (Kenny Washington, Danny Gottlieb, Joey Baron, Peter Erskine, and others) whom he felt had some talent—kind of like his family. He was very supportive and encouraging to us, like a father. I would have to say that he is one of my musical fathers. We'd go out to eat, we'd go to his apartment and he would sit in his big chair and play recordings that he played on. I'd bring up things that I played on. We'd listen and we'd talk. We spent time just hanging out; not necessarily talking about drums per say just talking about music and life. He watched out for the guys that he cared about. If Mel cared about you and liked you, he really took to you.”
The book concludes with over 50 pages of drum transcriptions and annotated listening guides for examples of Mel on records, a timeline of the drum equipment that Mel played on over the course of his career and a selected discography.
One couldn’t ask for a better retrospective of Mel’s career and assessment of its significance in the history of Jazz than the one that Chris Smith has researched, compiled and written for Mel Lewis: The View from the Back of the Band -The Life and Music of Mel Lewis.
Mel was so deserving of the respect that Chris’ biography puts forth in his definitive study and we are fortunate to have Chris’ outstanding treatment of this singular musician. Along with Helene LaFaro Fernandez’s biography of her brother Scott LaFaro and Michael Sparke’s biography of Stan Kenton, it assumes its honored place in the University of North Texas Lives of Musicians series.
You can locate order information about the book via this link.
“Every Jim Hall solo is a masterpiece of construction, each phrase evolving logically from its predecessor, his rhythmic sense always in perfect balance and his harmonic and melodic concepts always subtle and oblique.”
- Whitney Balliett
“There was a time when it would not have seemed unusual to state of an album by a guitarist that its central quality was unalloyed beauty. In these mid-1970s, however, we find meretricious gimmickry, tonal distortion and high-energy assaults on the eardrums an unavoidable part of our milieu. At such a time, a man of Jim Hall's caliber, representing esthetic values that are all but lost, stands out like a gem surrounded by zircons. Egregious displays of technique or technical bravura are antithetical to Hall's nature.”
- Leonard Feather
“Tal Farlow, Jimmy Raney, Johnny Smith, and Billy Bauer used a softer tone and less pronounced attack to mold the guitar into a cool Jazz voice. This style - with emotionalism present but constrained, and always secondary to more cerebral concerns - enlisted its strongest disciple in Jim Hall ….”
Neil Tesser
Lately, it seems that the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has been giving a lot of thought to developing postings that center around some of its favorite recordings.
Such was the case during a recent listening to guitarist Jim Hall’s Concierto which was produced by Creed Taylor and released on CBS Records[ZK 40807] in 1975.
While reading through the following insert notes to the CD by Leonard Feather, we suddenly realized that Whitney Balliett’s 1975 profile on Jim from The New Yorker magazine would make an excellent blog feature of Jim.
It doesn’t get much better on the subject of Jazz than Jim Hall, Leonard Feather and Whitney Balliett.
“There was a time when it would not have seemed unusual to state of an album by a guitarist that its central quality was unalloyed beauty. In these mid-1970s, however, we find meretricious gimmickry, tonal distortion and high-energy assaults on the eardrums an unavoidable part of our milieu. At such a time, a man of Jim Hall's caliber, representing esthetic values that are all but lost, stands out like a gem surrounded by zircons.
Egregious displays of technique or technical bravura are antithetical to Hall's nature. The men with whom he has worked, with rare exceptions, for the most part reflect the values he himself represents: Chico Hamilton in his original cello quintet days; Jimmy Giuffre, and most notably Art Farmer, for whose gentle fluegelhorn lines Jim's guitar was so perfect a complement.
In March of 1975 Hall was the subject of a Whitney Balliett profile in The New Yorker, an essay as eloquent and as perfectly stated as a Hall solo. Balliett credited Hall with "a grace and inventiveness and lyricism that make him preeminent among contemporary guitarists and put him within touching distance of the two grand masters-Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt."
As Balliett pointed out, every Hall solo is a masterpiece of construction, each phrase evolving logically from its predecessor, his rhythmic sense always in perfect balance and his harmonic and melodic concepts always subtle and oblique.
One aspect of his work that has always impressed me is his ability to reduce the degree to which his instrument sounds like an electric guitar. His amplification cut down to what is barely necessary, he sounds to all intents like an acoustic guitarist, the low frequencies more noticeable than the highs, as can be detected immediately in the opening passages of You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To.
The track serves also as an illustration of the interplay within this splendid group, and the quality of the company Jim kept. Hall himself was surprised at the success of this unprecedented collaboration. He had collaborated before with Paul Desmond (Balliett quoted him: ‘When I play behind Paul, it becomes a question-and-answer thing between us; but all you're trying to do is swing, and swinging is a question of camaraderie’); but working with Chet Baker was a new experience.
‘I had never played with Chet, in fact I had only met him once before. I was a little apprehensive at first, because I didn't even know that Paul and Chet were going to be on some of the tunes together. But we hadn't been in the studio long before I realized that it was all falling into place. Roland Hanna, of course, has a truly eclectic style, and can fit in with any situation. Ron Carter and I were no strangers; we had made a duo album two or three years ago. And Steve Gadd managed to fit right into all the requirements.’
You will find the version of You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To from the Concierto CD as the audio track to the video tribute to Jim right after this masterful essay on him by Whitney.
“Jane Hall, the wife of the guitarist Jim Hall, is a slender, gentle, intelligent woman in her thirties. When she talks about her husband, she reveals a mixture of devotion and objectivity, and when she talks about herself it is as if she were telling a fairy tale. "I was born an only child in New York and grew up in Harrison,” she says. "My father was in textiles, and he was a self-made man, who never graduated from high school. He loved golf and business and piano players like Fats Waller and Erroll Garner, although he came to appreciate the subtler sounds, too. He had a good sense of humor and was sort of a ham, and all my friends always wished he was their father. He was very different from Jim. Dad always wanted him to have more—more records, more fame, more money. But he realized Jim didn't have that kind of push. Just before Dad died, he said he wished Jim would be nicer to himself. It meant a lot to me — his appreciation of Jim's kindness and gentleness. My mother complemented my father. She was from a large family and was more reserved. She designed children's clothes before she married and gave up her career. But my father always relied on her taste. They were a striking couple together, particularly when they were dancing, which they loved.
"I met Jim in 1960. At the time, I was going out with Dick Katz, and one night when we were going to have dinner he brought Jim along. The only Hall I knew of in jazz was Edmond. I didn't see Jim again until the following winter. I was taking a night course at the New School, and I asked Dick if he'd babysit for Debbie, who's my daughter from a previous marriage. He brought Jim along again, and when I got home I discovered that Jim had somehow coaxed Debbie's dog out from under the bed, where she'd barricaded herself all day. We all sat around and talked for hours, and I fell in love. I'd never met anyone who listened like Jim. We started going out, but it was five years before we were married. Jim was very much against marriage. I went back to college in 1967 and graduated, and then I went to social-work school. I'm a psychotherapist at Greenwich House, and I have my own practice, too. Jim has been nothing but supportive and positive through it all. And that extends to my music. I write a couple of songs a year, and I sing. Jim accompanies me, and he's even recorded some of my tunes. He's helped bring out my musicality. He's done the same with Debbie. She plays piano, and Jim works with her. He's been a father to her, which is what she never had.
"One of the things that impress me about jazz musicians is their camaraderie. There's a complete lack of narcissism, of competitive feeling. I don't think the same warmth exists even in sports. Jim has a great kinship for his fellow-musicians. The first time he took me to the old Half Note to hear Zoot Sims and Al Cohn, he said, 'You have to listen. You can't talk while they play.' After the first set, Al told me that not only could he see me listening, he could feel me listening. I've thought a lot about the pressures on jazz musicians, too. Jim was scared to death at his first job after he'd quit drinking. But since then his playing has grown and grown. He surprises me every time I hear him. I used to listen to him with my eyes closed, but now I don't. Just watching him concentrating and so in tune with his instrument and with his listeners is an experience.'
Hall, though, doesn't look capable of creating a stir of any sort. He is slim and of medium height, and a lot of his hair is gone. The features of his long, pale face are chastely proportioned, and are accented by a recently cultivated R.A.F. mustache. He wears old-style gold-rimmed spectacles, and he has three principal expressions: a wide smile, a child's frown, and a calm, pleased playing mask — eyes closed, chin slightly lifted, and mouth ajar. He could easily be the affable son of the stony-faced farmer in "American Gothic." His hands and feet are small, and he doesn't have any hips, so his clothes, which are generally casual, tend to hang on him as if they were still in the closet. When he plays, he sits on a stool, his back an arc, his feet propped on a high rung, and his knees akimbo. He holds his guitar at port arms. For many years, Hall's playing matched his private, nebulous appearance. When he came up, in the mid-fifties, with Chico Hamilton's vaguely avant-garde quintet (it had a cello and no piano), and then appeared on a famous pickup recording, 'Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West’ that was led by John Lewis and involved Bill Perkins, Percy Heath, and Hamilton, he sounded stiff and academic. His solos were pleasantly designed, but they didn't always swing. But as he moved through groups led by Jimmy Giuffre, Ben Webster, Sonny Rollins, and Art Farmer, his deliberateness softened and the right notes began landing in the right places.
Then he married Jane, and his playing developed an inventiveness and lyricism that make him preeminent among contemporary jazz guitarists and put him within touching distance of the two grand masters — Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. Listening to Hall now is like turning onionskin pages: one lapse of your attention and his solo is rent. Each phrase evolves from its predecessor, his rhythms are balanced, and his harmonic and melodic ideas are full of parentheses and asides. His tone is equally demanding. He plays both electric and acoustic guitars. On the former, he sounds like an acoustic guitarist, for he has an angelic touch and he keeps his amplifier down; on the latter, a new instrument specially designed and built for him, he has an even more gossamer sound. Hall is exceptional in another way.
In the thirties and forties, Christian and Reinhardt put forward certain ideals for their instrument — spareness, the use of silence, and the legato approach to swinging — and for a while every jazz guitarist studied them. Then the careering melodic flow of Charlie Parker took hold, and jazz guitarists became arpeggio-ridden. But Hall, sidestepping this aspect of Parker, has gone directly to Christian and Reinhardt, and, plumping out their skills with the harmonic advances that have since been made, has perfected an attack that is fleet but tight, passionate but oblique. And he is singular for still another reason. Guitarists are inclined to be an ingrown society, but Hall listens constantly to other instrumentalists, especially tenor saxophonists (Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Sonny Rollins) and pianists (Count Basie, John Lewis, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett), and he attempts to adapt to the guitar their phrasing and tonal qualities. In his solos he asserts nothing but says a good deal.
He loves Duke Ellington's slow ballads, and he will start one with an ad-lib chorus in which he glides softly over the melody, working just behind the beat, dropping certain notes and adding others, but steadfastly celebrating its melodic beauties. He clicks into tempo at the beginning of the second chorus, and, after pausing for several beats, plays a gentle, ascending six-note figure that ends with a curious, ringing off-note. He pauses again, and, taking the close of the same phrase, he elaborates on it in an ascending-descending double-time run, and then skids into several behind-the-beat chords, which give way to a single-note line that moves up and down and concludes on another off-note. He raises bis volume at the beginning of the bridge and floats through it with softly singing chords; then, slipping into the final eight bars, he fashions a precise, almost declamatory run, pauses a second at its top, and works his way down with two glancing arpeggios. He next sinks to a whisper, and finishes with a bold fragment of melody that dissolves into a flatted chord, upon which the next soloist gratefully builds his opening statement.
When the Halls were married, he moved into her apartment, on West Twelfth Street. It faces south and is at eye level with chimney pots and the tops of ailanthus trees. The off-white walls are hung with a lively assortment of lithographs, oils, and drawings. A tall cabinet, which contains hundreds of L.P.s, is flanked by full bookshelves. A sofa, a hassock, a fat floor pillow, a couple of canvas Japanese chairs, and a coffee table ring the window end of the room. An upright piano sits by the front door, and Hall's electric guitar rests on a stand by the kitchen door. Hall generally gets himself together around noon. He will sit down on the sofa with his back to the window and sip a mug of tea. Like many shy people, he is a born listener and a self-taught talker. He weighs his words as he weighs his notes. He speaks softly and has a mild Midwestern drawl. He had, he said, been pondering improvisation. "Somebody asked me once, 'Why do you improvise, why do you want to take a good song and change it?'— and that stumped me. Maybe jazz musicians are egomaniacs, as Alec Wilder claims. Maybe they feel they're above the songs they play and that they have to improve them. I've always been of the notion — though most of my musician friends disagree with me — that 'Body and Soul' would never have been anything special if Coleman Hawkins hadn't made his record of it. Yet I believe I treat the tunes I play with respect, and I know I always follow the gist of their lyrics. Improvisation is just a form of self-expression, and it's very gratifying to improvise in front of people. I feel I'm including them in what I'm doing, taking them someplace they might like to go and haven't been to before. I like to draw them in, and if you can get an audience on your side, then you can finish a set with something abstract or different and they'll come right along. I like my solos to have a beginning and a middle and an end. I like them to have a quality that Sonny Rollins has — of turning and turning a tune until eventually you show all its possible faces. Sometimes I'll take a motif that I might have stumbled on while I'm practicing, and develop it throughout a solo. It's a compositional approach, and it helps you get control over your playing. But if a solo is going well, is developing, I let it go on its own. Then I've reached that place where I've gotten out of my own way, and it's as if I'm standing back and watching the solo play itself.
"When I do the melody of a tune, I try to make it come out mine. I also try sometimes to get the melody to sound as it would on a wind instrument, as though I've got the airstream of a saxophone or trumpet to hang on to. I think of the way Ben Webster played 'Chelsea Bridge,’ with his fantastic sense of space and the way he'd let a note slide from sound to the breathing just below sound, and I'll go after that effect. I'm like Marian McPartland, I guess, in that I think of the keys in colors. A flat is reddish orange, G major seems green, E flat is yellow. I try never to bring distractions onto the bandstand, but if I do I know I always have a sort of floor to rely on. I know I won't ever really be terrible. Being tired doesn't seem to matter. I've seen guys on the road who were wiped out get up and play sensationally. Being tired seems to cut the fat and allow the musicality to come out.
“I’ve been playing a lot in duos with just bassists, and it involves a terrific amount of listening. I play off of the bass notes and try to make it always sound like a duet and not just guitar solos with accompaniment. All the accompanying I’ve done is a help, because accompanying is hearing the whole texture from top to bottom of the music around you and then fitting yourself in the proper place. When I was with Sonny Rollins, I found out right away he didn't like to be led, so I'd lay back a fraction of a second and let him show me where he was going and hope I could follow. When I was with Art Farmer, it was totally different. He liked the background laid down first, so he could play over it. And the whole timing was different, too. When I play behind Paul Desmond, it becomes a question-and-answer thing between us. But all you're trying to do is swing, and swinging is a question of camaraderie. You could be playing stiffly, but if everybody is playing that way the group will swing. But if one person is out of sync, is dragging, it feels like somebody is hanging on to your coattails."
Hall went into the kitchen to get another mug of tea, and when he came back a big gray-black cat appeared from the bedroom. It gave Hall three thunderous meows, sat down at his feet, and stared intently at him. It meowed three more times. Hall laughed and took a sip of tea. "O.K., Pablo. Cut it out. We didn't get him until he was a year old, and I think he was raised with dogs, because he's more like a dog than a cat. He greets me at the door when I come in and says goodbye when I go out, and he follows me around all day here. I was speaking of Ben Webster. After I finally left the Jimmy Giuffre Trio, in 1959,1 went back to the Coast, and I was in a band Ben had with Jimmy Rowles and Red Mitchell and Frank Butler. We worked for a while in a club on the Strip called the Renaissance, and at first I didn't get paid. Then I think everybody in the band chipped something in. Anyway, Ben and I hung out a lot. He didn't have a car, and he lived with his mother and grandmother way over on the other side of L.A., but he'd never ask me to pick him up. What he'd do is call me whenever we had a gig and say, 'We'll meet at my house first.' I think his mother had been a schoolteacher. One evening when I went to get him, he was stretched out on the sofa snoring—the whole works. He must have been up all night, and we couldn't budge him. He had a reputation of taking a sock at whoever tried to wake him. So his mother and grandmother would lean over him and say, 'Ben, Mr. Hall is here and it's time to goto work,' and then jump back about two feet. I finally suggested that I get a wet towel or something, and they looked at me with their mouths open, and said, 'Oh no, he don't like any surprises.' Ben was very melodramatic, and he talked in that big voice just the way he played. Another time I went to get him he had a washcloth on top of his head and he was shaving. Some Art Tatum records were on and he kept running out of the bathroom and mimicking fantastic Tatum figures. Then he started telling me what Tatum was like—he loved to talk about the great ones he knew who were gone—and the next thing I knew he was crying. I never saw any of the meanness he was famous for, except once he fell asleep in the front seat of my car and when I woke him he cursed me. But the next minute he apologized.
"I had gotten to know John Lewis, and he called me about this time—it was the early sixties—and told me I had to come back to New York, that that's where it was at, and that I could stay in his apartment because he was away on the road so much. Well, I did for two or three months, and John loaned me money and everything. Then I sublet Dick Katz's apartment, and not much was happening. I felt I had a reputation by then, and I was too proud to call people about jobs. I did work in a duo with Lee Konitz opposite Miles Davis at the Village Vanguard when he had Cannonball and Philly Joe Jones and Bill Evans, and the audience would listen to Miles as if they were in church, and then talk all the way through our set, which was about the way everything seemed to be going for me then. Suddenly, I began getting notes from Sonny Rollins. He didn't have a phone and I never answered mine, so he'd stuff them in the mailbox, and I think the first one said, 'Let's talk about music.' He was coming out of a two-year retirement and was putting a group together, and he wanted me, in addition to Walter Perkins and Bob Cranshaw. We rehearsed afternoons at the old Five Spot, and at first it was a little mysterious. Sonny would let me in the front door with one hand and continue playing with the other, and then disappear, still playing, into a back room and stay there maybe a half hour. We opened at the Jazz Gallery, and it was a great success. But I had to put everything into it. I was with him off and on for over a year, and wherever we went he brought the house down. There was something about the way he got himself across to an audience, as if he were right out there playing into its collective ear. It was a great experience, a turning point for me.
Then, in effect, he fired me. There were two reasons. One was musical. He wanted to experiment with Ornette Coleman's trumpet player, Don Cherry, and that was beyond me. The other had to do with a cover of down beat. It was a guitar issue, and they had me in the front of the picture with Rollins set behind, and the talk began. 'Why does he need a white boy in the group?' and the like, and Sonny would tell me in various ways that people were putting pressure on him to get rid of me, and that was it. Then I ran into him one night a while ago at a club, and when he was leaving he leaned over and said, 'Sometimes I lose touch with myself,' and that made amends. I've always felt that the music started out as black but that it's as much mine now as anyone else's. I haven't stolen the music from anybody—I just bring something different to it.
After that, I joined a nice little group Art Farmer had, with Steve Swallow on bass and Pete La Roca on drums. But I was having trouble keeping things together. I had to concentrate on my work and I had to keep my drinking under control, which wasn't working too well. So finally, in 1965, I decided I had to get off the road after ten years and get things squared around. I came back to New York, started going to A.A., and Jane and I got married. I didn't want to go into night clubs again right away because of the atmosphere and the drinking, but I had to work, so I got a job in the band on the Merv Griffin Show. That was a shock. I'd felt, in my way, that I'd been doing something important all those years on the road, but suddenly I was like a stagehand. You're there in the studio but you're not there. It was very rare for any of Griffin's guests to acknowledge anyone in the band, and you'd think some of them would have known Bob Brookmeyer or Jake Hanna. I began to lose my identity. If I don't play what I want to play, improvise and all, I sink down. I forget I've ever done anything good musically at all. All the while, I was thinking about finally being a leader, and when I'd been with Griffin about three and a half years I got my courage up to go into clubs again, and I organized my own group.
Clubs don't bother me too much now, but I only like to work two-week gigs and then regroup myself. I don't know why, but when I work it takes a lot out of me. I play every day here, I write some, and I have some students. With Jane working, we get along fine. Even so, I occasionally get in a panic. I wake up at night and think, What am I doing, what kind of a life is this? I've thought of giving it up and going into something else, but I know that would be crazy the minute I pick my guitar up again. So when I ask myself, Am I going to want to go into saloons and play guitar when I'm fifty or sixty or seventy, the answer is yes."
The telephone buzzed. 'That was Jimmy D'Aquisto, out in Huntington," Hall said when he hung up. "He's a great guitar-maker, and he's made me my acoustic guitar, which is the first new guitar I've had since I was a kid. I got my old Gibson, over by the kitchen door, second-hand from Howard Roberts, on the Coast, in 1955. Jimmy has done some experimenting. The body, or box, of the guitar is a little thinner than usual, and, to compensate, the front and back of the box are arched a little more than usual and the f holes on either side of the tailpiece are bigger. He's strung it with lightweight steel strings, but I'm still experimenting with different weights. And he has kept the bridge low, which makes the strings more responsive. Most important, he hasn't put any electrical stuff on it. I've used it twice in public — at concerts at Yale and the New School. The Yale thing was a kind of shakedown cruise because the acoustics where I played — it was a church — were so strange. But I felt good about it at the New School. In that auditorium the sound creeps along the walls and gets everywhere, and even though I didn't use a mike, I think they heard me in the back. It's such a beautiful instrument. Unlike most guitars, it just doesn't have any bad spots. It's still strange to me. The dimensions are different enough so that it takes me a while to warm into it."
The telephone buzzed again, and Hall went into the kitchen, after he finished talking, to make a drink of one part grape juice and two parts 7-Up. The sun was pell-melling in the window, and he lowered the Venetian blind. "Jack Six just called. He played bass with Dave Brubeck three or four years, but we've been doing duets recently. We've got a gig coming up at Sweet Basil, so I thought it would be a good idea to practice some. He's on his way from Jersey right now.
"My mother gave me my first guitar for Christmas when I was ten. I was living with her and my brother in Cleveland. I was born in 1930, in Buffalo, but we only stayed there a few months and then came to New York for a while and moved out to Geneva, Ohio, where my Uncle Russell had a farm. He was one of my mother's brothers, and he had taught himself electronics. Her other brother, Ed, taught himself guitar and how to make blueprints. He'd play things like 'Wabash Cannon Ball.' I spent a year on Uncle Russ's farm. I was about seven or eight, and I remember the whole time as being dark. There was no electricity in the house, and one of my chores was to take the cinders out. I got some in my eyes once and for two weeks I couldn't see. Then I knocked over a kerosene lamp, which scared the hell out of me, but luckily it snuffed out when it hit the floor. Uncle Russ was married to a strange woman then, and it was the old story of the wife upsetting the husband, who then takes it out on the kids. By this time, my mother and father had split up, and she and I and my brother moved to Cleveland. We lived in rooming houses and my mother supported us. She worked as a secretary at a tool company. It's funny how your perspective changes when you get older. It seems amazing to me now to be in your twenties — which she was then — and to be raising two boys by yourself. I don't remember much about my father, except that he played tennis and managed a grocery store for a time and was a travelling salesman in stainless steel. I never see him, but I think he's alive. My mother lives in Los Angeles. She's active and vivacious, a short, blond lady, kind of sparkly and with a lot of guts. Around 1940, we moved into a brand-new W.P. A. housing project in Cleveland, and we stayed there until I went to music school. It was the first place we'd lived in that no one had lived in before. It had an upstairs and a downstairs, and I think the rent was twenty-four dollars a month.
"It took a year to pay for my guitar, but I lucked up with a good teacher, Jack DuPerow, right away. He had me do scales and guitar arrangements of pop tunes. My favorite was 'Music, Maestro, Please!' The accordion was big in Cleveland. In fact, the first group I worked in had accordion, clarinet, and drums, and we played dances on weekends. The clarinet player was into Benny Goodman, and he played Goodman's recording of 'Solo Flight' for me, with Charlie Christian featured, and I thought, What is that? It was instant addiction. I bought a 78-r.p.m. album of Goodman Sextet numbers even before I had anything to play them on. By this time, I was studying with Fred Sharp. He had played in New York with Adrian Rollini and Red Norvo, and he introduced me to records by Carl Kress and Dick McDonough and Django Reinhardt. Taking Charlie Christian and Django together, I've hardly heard anything better since, if you want to know the truth. But a lot of my listening was not to guitarists but to tenor saxophonists and pianists. I had Coleman Hawkins' 'The Man I Love’ and 'Sweet Lorraine’ with Shelly Manne and Oscar Pettiford, and I had the Art Tatum Trio. I'd listen to them in the morning after my mother had gone to work, because she wasn't too much on jazz then, and I'd think about what I'd heard on the mile walk to school. George Barnes had an octet with a woodwind feeling that broadcast regularly, and all the bands played the Palace Theatre there — Duke Ellington and Artie Shaw, when Shaw had Roy Eldridge and Barney Kessel. I began hanging out with older local musicians when I was fifteen or sixteen — Tony DiNardo, a tenor player who sounded like Lucky Thompson and who got me listening to Lester Young, and Billy DiNasco, a piano player who loved Mel Powell and Teddy Wilson and who worked out a way of his own that was like Lennie Tristano. We had our own group, and we called it the Spectacles, because we all wore glasses. We sang four-part vocals, and they were my first arrangements.
"I did well in high school, and when I graduated I decided to go to the Cleveland Institute of Music. I thought learning more craft would help. I went for four and a half years, and I majored in music theory. I wrote a string quartet for my thesis. I played guitar on weekends, but I wasn't all that involved in jazz. I thought I was going to go into classical composing and teach on the side. Then in the mid-fifties, halfway through my first semester toward my master's, I began thinking two things: I was with people who did nothing but go to school and would probably do nothing else, and I knew I had to try being a guitarist or else it would trouble me the rest of my life. My decision was made for me. Ray Graziano, a good local alto player, was driving a Cadillac — a lavender Cadillac — out to the Coast for somebody, and he asked me if I wanted to go along. I had no money, but I knew Joe Dolny, a Cleveland trumpet player, out on the Coast, and I also knew I could stay with my great-aunt. She was in her nineties, and had lived in Hollywood from the time it was clapboard houses and fields planted with peas. So I quit school, and there we were, driving through all these little towns in that lavender Cadillac, with me in the back seat playing and playing. I moved in with my aunt and got a job in a used-sheet-music store, and I studied classical guitar for a while with Vicente Gomez. Joe Dolny had a rehearsal band at the union hall, and I met a lot of people there like John Graas, the French-horn player. I'd go to his house, out in the Valley, and he recommended me to Chico Hamilton for his first quintet, which had Buddy Collette on reeds, Freddie Katz on cello, Carson Smith on bass, and Chico and me. I got ninety dollars a week, which was a fortune then. I was with Chico for a year and a half, and a lot of good things happened, even though that bass drum of his began getting in my dreams. I met Red Mitchell and Herb Geller and Bill Perkins and John Lewis. When Chico's group went East for gigs at the Newport Festival and in New York, we worked opposite Max Roach's group at Basin Street, where I met Sonny Rollins. That was some experience — being up on the stand and looking out and seeing all your idols staring at you. Then we drove back to the Coast, and it was a weird trip. Chico was the only black man in the car, and he never got out of it. He stayed curled up like an animal in the back seat, and we'd bring him his food. What with one thing and another, but mostly Chico's bass drum, I left and went with Jimmy Giuffre's new trio.
"I was with this group for two different periods, the first starting in 1957. In between came a low point that matched my time with Merv Griffin. I went on the road with Yves Montand. What saved me was that Edmond Hall and Al Hall were both in the tour, too, and I had the chance to listen to them reminisce and to ask Edmond about Charlie Christian, because he had recorded with him. In fact, they were the only records Christian made on acoustic guitar. Before I went back with Giuffre, I toured with Ella Fitzgerald all over South America. I finally jumped ship in Buenos Aires, where I stayed six weeks. The bossa nova was coming up, and one night I went to this big room filled with guitar players. They sat in a circle and passed a guitar around like a peace pipe, and everybody played. I didn't know what to do, so I played a plain old blues. One of the good things about being on the road in other countries is you're not just a tourist, you're something a lot better, something special, and I've made friends all over the world."
The doorbell buzzed, and Jack Six came in, carrying his bass and towing an amplifier on wheels. Six is a big man with a Southern accent, and he and his equipment filled one end of the living room. After Six unpacked, hooked up, and plugged in, Hall whacked one thigh with a tuning fork and rested its handle on the body of his old Gibson. Six tuned up to its silver hum. Hall spread sheet music on the dining-room table, and the two men bent over it in silence. They looked as if they were examining illuminated manuscripts at the Morgan.
"Let's play Janie's tune 'Something Tells Me," Hall suggested. "But we'll do it as she wrote it. She's got a couple of modulations in it which make it difficult to sing, so she sort of leaves them out when she's singing it around the house. Who would you say she sounds like, Jack?" "A cross between Astrud Gilberto and Julie London." Hall laughed, and sat down on a red kitchen stool. He played quiet, open chords as he went into the graceful, succinct melody. Six came in behind with offbeat notes. The music immediately transformed the room, filling it with motion and purpose. Hall improvised a chorus replete with silences, retards, and quick sotto-voce runs. Six soloed, grunting softly, and the two went out with some lilting counterpoint. A "Chelsea Bridge" reverberating with Ben Webster came next, and was followed by a fast, tricky Jim Hall blues, 'Two's Blues." It has a complex, backing-and-filling melodic line, and the first run-through had many bugs.
"Anyway, that's the general idea of it," Hall said, laughing.
"My, those notes certainly go by fast," Six replied. "It's like Jake Hanna said to the new man on the band after he'd messed up at his first rehearsal: 'I didn't know you couldn't read.'"
After three more tries, the blues fell into shape, and they played another Hall blues — a slow one, called "Careful." Hall said he had written it a long time ago as a "Monk thing." It has an ostinato bass, which the two musicians handed easily back and forth. They had just started "Emily" when the front door opened and Jane Hall came in. She was dressed in a blue pants suit, and she was carrying a bag of groceries, which she set down on the music. There was a round of pecks. She asked how everything was going, and Hall said good and that maybe it was time for a breather. He went into the kitchen to make some grape juice-and-7-Ups. He set the drinks on the coffee table, put his arm around Jane's shoulder, and gave it a squeeze. Then he sat down next to Six on the sofa. He smiled up at Jane as she passed the drinks and said, "So, did you save any souls today?"
