Louie Bellson: Blazing, Bombastic and Beautiful [From the Archives with Revisions]

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

In all the years I’ve been around Jazz musicians, I have never met a kinder more nobler soul that Louie Bellson.

- the editorial staff at JazzProfiles

Although his illustrious career is detailed in any number of places including his own website, Louie Bellson’s name is not the subject of a dedicated chapter in any of the major anthologies on Jazz drumming.

Come to think of it, for that matter, neither is Joe Morello, although Joe does get his own chapter in Georges Paczynski’s Une Histoire de la Batterie de Jazz, Tome 2, while Louie has to share one with another former Ellington drummer, Sam Woodyard, in which the focus is on Skin Deep [which Louie composed.] Duke used it as a wowie, zowie drum solo intended as crowd pleaser.

Along with Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich, Louie is often mentioned as part of what Duke referred to as “The Big Three,” but I suspect that this is more to do with Ellington’s habit of hyping things up than with any real recognition of Louie’s skills as a drummer.

Over the years, I got to know Louie a bit and I’ve never been around anyone who visibly enjoyed playing drums more than Louie Bellson.

When he sat down behind the monster, double bass drum kit that he preferred [and perfected], he just exuded energy and enthusiasm.

Louie was a well-schooled drummer with lots of technical skills and an uncanny knack of seeming to ride over a set of drums, almost as though he was barely touching them. He speed was blazingly fast, but unlike Buddy Rich, he rarely generated any power to go along with his lighting-fast stick control. He touched the drums instead of striking them.

When he did produce the sound of power in his solos, it generally came from coordinating the double bass drums with single stroke rolls on the snare drum and tom toms. Once he got those big bass drums going [he used two, 30” diameter bass drums], it sounded like artillery rounds were being fired off as a commemorative salute.

Louie generated his speed from the finger control method of playing drums in which the rebound from the stick is employed along with very relaxed wrists to perpetuate movement on and around the drum heads. The stick is tapped back down instead of being banged or slapped into the drum.

Louie was not a big guy; if anything he was slight and a bit demure, but boy, get him behind a set of drums and he “lit up like a Christmas tree.”

“Who cares about winning polls. I’ve got my own big band and we’re having fun.”

“Who do I like in today’s Jazz drummers? I like ‘em all. I always learn something from every drummer.”

“What type of stick do I use? I use a variety of ‘em: different lengths; different beads; different weights. Keeps your hands more sensitive and responsive.”

All these responses and many more like them came from Louie’s answers to questions at drum clinics. He was usually mobbed afterwards with everyone coming up to give him a hug and to thank him.

“Sure, sure,” he would say: “Hey, does anyone want to try the double bass drums? Don’t be afraid [everyone was because hardly anyone had that kind of coordination]. It’s easy. Just sit down and just do it.”

When one of us would try playing the two bass drum kit, he’d always say - “Beautiful, beautiful” - no matter how badly we messed them up.

Louie Bellson had blazingly fast hands, used his feet to “detonate” bass drums bombs” while all the while wearing a beautiful smile on his face.

He was revered by drummers and just about every musician he ever worked with because he was an excellent drummer but never lorded his talents and abilities over anyone. Jazz cats come in all “shapes and size.” Some have incredible technical skills while others just get by on their instruments with a strong will and deep feelings. Louie didn’t care as long as you loved the music and were honestly yourself while trying to play it.

In all the years I’ve been around Jazz musicians, I have never met a kinder more nobler soul that Louie Bellson.

Len Lyons and Don Perlo put together this brief synopsis about Louie and his career in their Jazz Portraits: The Lives and Music of the Jazz Masters:

Louis Bellson - also “Louie” - Louis Paul Balassoni [1924 - 2009]

[Ed. note. - Luigi Paulino Alfredo Francesco Antonio Balassoni]

‘Bellson, an excellent technician and all-around musician, can power a big band with his driving beat, or tastefully accompany small combos and vocalists. He pioneered the use of twin bass drums during the mid-1940s, sparked the languishing Ellington Orchestra from 1951 to 1953, and during the 1970s led his own big band, for which he composed and arranged. Modest and gregarious, Bellson solos little for a drummer of his virtuosity and easily slips in and out of diverse environments: jazz clubs, TV, educational clinics, and orchestras.

The son of a music-store proprietor, Bellson learned to tap-dance as a boy, which he credits with developing his sense of time and rhythm. He was soon proficient on drums and won several competitions, including one sponsored by an early idol, Gene Krupa. Bellson worked for Benny Goodman in 1943 and again in 1945-46. In 1946, with Ted Fio Rito's commercial band, he inaugurated the use of two bass drums, which increases the drummer's ability to propel a large group. Bellson then replaced Buddy Rich, with whom he is often compared, in the Tommy Dorsey band (1947-49).

The subsequent period with Ellington, however, established him as a major talent. Bellson was a precise yet fiery drummer and a capable composer, adding to the band's book "Hawk Talks," "Ting-a-ling," and "Skin Deep," which showcased an extended drum solo.... In 1953 Bellson left the Ellington band to further the career of his new wife, Pearl Bailey.

Bellson accompanied Bailey, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Tatum and various small combos. He rejoined Ellington (1965—66), served as Bailey's music director, and composed for various bands. During the mid-1970s, Bellson organized a Los Angeles—based group for which he wrote many brassy, extroverted pieces - The Louie Bellson Explosion.  In addition to performing, Bellson has been a popular visiting instructor at college percussion seminars and clinics.”

The distinguished Jazz author, critic and historian Leonard Feather offers a slightly different recap of Louie’s career, as well as, an elaboration of Louie’s Big Band Explosion in these introductory paragraphs that are excerpted from his insert notes to The Louis Bellson Explosion [Pablo/Original Jazz Classics - OJCCD-728-2]:

“Louis Bellson lives in two worlds, enjoying the best of both. By this I do not refer to his dual life as a drummer and composer, or composer and bandleader, but rather to his simultaneous occupancy of past and present. There is no better evidence than this new album of his ability to draw on early experiences while infusing his orchestra with a spirit that is contemporary in the best sense of the word.

Louis, of course, paid lengthy dues as a sideman, with Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Count Basie, and most notably Duke Ellington. But because of his qualifications as an all-around musician, he probably was destined from the start to be a leader.

Historically, it is interesting to note that he undertook this role on records for the first time with a Los Angeles session for Norman Granz's Clef label in 1953.

Throughout the 1950s he continued to record for Granz, in addition to touring with Jazz at the Philharmonic. With his appearance in combos on several recent Pablo albums, and particularly with the return to records of his own orchestra via this flourishing new company, the wheel has come full circle.

Writing some years ago about Louis's juggling of multiple careers, I noted that he had found a successful solution to the problems posed by any attempt in the post-swing era to organize a big band. Instead of keeping an ensemble together on a year-round basis, he draws on a pool of important Los Angeles-based musicians who can be counted on to constitute a firm foundation. A key figure has always been trombonist Nick Di Maio, who has doubled as manager for the bands since the 1950s. Di Maio is one of a half dozen members of the present unit who play regularly in Doc Severinsen's band on the Tonight show, as does Louis himself whenever he has a little spare time in town.

Several of the sidemen have credentials that include long associations with Bellson. Cat Anderson was a colleague back in the Ellington days. Pete Christlieb, the powerhouse tenor player, now 30, was 22 when he began working with Louis. His section-mate, composer Don Menza, moved to Los Angeles in 1969 and started gigging with the band almost immediately. A more recent addition is Richard "Blue" Mitchell, the poised and expressive trumpeter who had put in long stints with Horace Silver, Ray Charles, and John Mayall before undertaking a cross-Canada tour with Louis in 1974. The two keyboard occupants who share duties here, Nat Pierce and Ross Tompkins, have worked separately with Louis for several years off and on.

To fortify the rhythm section, it was decided to enlist the services of Dave Levine and Paulo Magalhaes, whose additional percussion work was scattered through the two sessions.

All these elements, along with the band's characteristic esprit de corps in the brass and reed sections, come into focus from the opening track.”

For the following video montage, I have selected the closing track from The Louis Bellson Explosion [Pablo/Original Jazz Classics - OJCCD-728-2], about which, Leonard provides these insights:

“La Banda Grande, by Jack Hayes [a long-established orchestrator, conductor and composer for films who has been collaborating with Bellson since they met at an Academy Awards broadcast in the 1960s when both were working for Henry Mancini] and Bellson, is characterized by Louis as "a Chick Corea type Latin thing." Along with contributions by [Blue] Mitchell and [Pete] Christlieb, and a brief spot for [guitarist] Mitch Holder, there is a joyous samba groove that brings out the value of that extra percussion as Louis plays off against Dave Levine and Paulo Magalhaes.

"We really got a good feeling in the studio," says Bellson, "with the help of a natural set-up. The band was arranged just the way we would be in a nightclub, which enabled us to relax; and the engineer got a great sound. John Williams was fantastic both on acoustic and on electric bass. In fact, I'm very happy about the way the whole album turned out."

What Bellson could not add, because bombast is not his style, is that no band of first-class musicians, directed by an instrumentalist so gifted and so unanimously respected, is likely to go very far wrong. "Working for Louis was a ball," somebody remarked to me after a recent gig with the band. I can't remember which sideman said it, because over the years some similar phrase has been echoed by just about everyone who has worked for him. If you don't care to take my word for it, the performance itself offers eloquent proof.”

—Leonard Feather

© -Steven Voce, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Louie Bellson [1924-2009]

Writing for The Independent, Steve Voce has kindly allowed JazzProfiles to reprint the obituaries of many of the by-gone stars of Jazz's early years who deserve a remembrance.

“Although he was with Duke for only a couple of years, Louie Bellson must be regarded as the last of the great Ellingtonians, for he had a lasting effect on the band. He replaced Sonny Greer, who had been the drummer in the Ellington band since it began in the Twenties, and he brought in a new and powerful style that brought Ellington’s music out of the almost classic style of the Forties into the new, more aggressive sounds of the Fifties.

Bellson’s long experience in guiding the bands of Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman from the drum chair flowered into maturity with Ellington. His then unique device of using two pedal-operated bass drums gave the band a new power, and yet his playing was always tasteful. He had firm control of the bands and guided them with an amazing technique.

Were it not for the almost supernatural Buddy Rich, Bellson could have been considered to be the very greatest big band drummer. But where Rich was flashy, Bellson was more subtle and complemented the music of the bands in which he played; when Rich played, brilliant though he was, he tended to crowd out the other musicians. In addition, Bellson was perhaps the only man who could play a 15-minute drum solo and sustain the rapt attention of an audience throughout.

The list of the big bands for which Bellson played covered a wide range of the very best in jazz. He changed the character of each of them for the better, and as well as Ellington’s, they included the bands of Benny Goodman – whom he joined when he was 17 – Tommy Dorsey, Harry James and Count Basie, as well as the many fine bands that he later led himself.

As a boy, Bellson spent much of his time in his father’s music store in Moline, Illinois, where over the years he learned to play most of the instruments in stock. But it was the drums that attracted him most, and he was still in school when he developed the technique of using two bass drums at once, one for the left foot and one for the right. He had tap-danced at a local nightclub with the barrelhouse pianist Speckled Red and he thought that this helped him to play the two bass drums with such dexterity.

In 1940, when Bellson was 16, he won a nationwide drumming contest sponsored by Gene Krupa, an idol of swing fans. The Second World War caused a shortage of band musicians and as a result Bellson was swept straight from high school into the Ted Fio Rito band when it passed through Moline. From here, Benny Goodman hired him late in 1942. Three years in the Army interrupted his progress, but he returned to Goodman in 1946. Although not the most famous of his bands, the Goodman band of this time was to have a powerful effect on big band style.

Goodman was a perfectionist. “He taught me how to listen, how to play in a big band, and how to swing. He wanted the sections playing in tempo on their own,” Bellson said. “He needed them to keep time without relying on the rhythm section. We’d have to sit through the entire rehearsal until Benny added the bass, drums and piano.”

When work in the Goodman band dipped, he moved to Tommy Dorsey’s band. Goodman and Dorsey were both, in their separate ways, monsters. Goodman was mindlessly cruel, whereas Dorsey’s sadism was usually calculated. But even amongst such a great band of musicians Bellson’s talent was outstanding and Dorsey valued him highly. Bellson, a slight man, had a huge appetite. Dorsey would show him off to friends by taking him to a restaurant and ordering half a dozen T-bone steaks, which Bellson would swiftly devour.

In 1950, business slowed for Tommy Dorsey and Bellson joined the resurgent Harry James band. He became friends with Juan Tizol, a valve trombonist who had previously been with Duke Ellington.

“We would play before 3,000 at the Hollywood Palladium,” recalled Bellson, “but I remember some of those navy and air force bases where we played to 14 or 15 thousand people.”

Then, in 1951, came what became known as the “Great James Raid”. “The phone rang in Tizol’s flat,” Bellson remembered. “It was Duke and he asked Juan to rejoin the Ellington band and to bring Willie Smith, Harry’s alto-sax star, and me along with him.” This was to tear the heart out of James’s band, but he took it in good part and wished the musicians well.

On the face of it, things didn’t look good for Bellson. He was the only white musician in a black band – then a serious problem – and not only were there no band parts written for a drummer, but most of the music existed mainly because the musicians knew it by heart. Also, the band was about to embark on a tour of the Deep South. “We’re going to make you Haitian,” said Ellington, and that was how Bellson was described to avoid trouble.

Bellson brought an original composition with him that became a permanent part of the Ellington repertoire and took the band’s big band sound into a new dimension. “Skin Deep”, a drum solo set in the band which covered two sides of a 78 record, became a huge hit. Soon after, Bellson wrote another seminal hit, “The Hawk Talks” (Hawk was Harry James’s nickname).

Whilst he had been with James, Tizol and his wife had often told Bellson stories of the singer Pearl Bailey and said that he should meet her. “When we were in Washington DC with the Ellington band this young lady came up and said, ‘Well, I’m Pearl,’ and I said ‘Well, I’m Louie.’ Four days later we got married in London.”

Bellson left Ellington early in 1953 to become Pearl Bailey’s musical director, although he returned to Duke on special occasions over the years. In 1954 he began a long association with Norman Granz, appearing in Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic, sometimes in duet with Buddy Rich. Over the years, Granz teamed Bellson with Oscar Peterson, Lionel Hampton, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and a host of other luminaries.

The drummer joined Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey for a year in 1955 and made a Scandinavian tour with Count Basie’s band in 1962. That year, he also composed a jazz ballet called The Marriage Vows. He rejoined Ellington from 1965 to 1966 and then moved back to Harry James in 1966.

From 1967 he led his own big band based in North Hollywood and this included ex-Ellingtonians and many of the jazz stars from the Los Angeles studios. During the Seventies he also taught at jazz workshops in a variety of universities.

He was shattered when Pearl Bailey died in 1990, but picked himself up, and in 1991 met Francine Wright, a computer engineer, and they were married in September 1992. In 1993, Bellson travelled to New York where he assembled a potent big band of leading musicians to perform and record Duke Ellington’s seminal “Black, Brown and Beige” suite.

“There were ordinary nights when the music was very good,” said Bellson. “But there were others when you had to pinch yourself and ask if it was real. How do you explain that? You don’t. I had moments like that with Duke and Benny and also with Tommy Dorsey and with my dear late wife Pearl.

Steve Voce

Louie Bellson, drummer, bandleader, composer: born Rock Falls, Illinois 6 July 1924; married 1952 Pearl Bailey (deceased) (two daughters), 1992 Francine Wright; died Los Angeles 14 February 2009.

The following video features the Louie Bellson Big Band Explosion of Herbie Hancock’s Chameleon.  

Chameleon is a remarkable illustration of the adaptation for Jazz purposes, through skillful arranging (by Bill Holman), of a work with jazz/rock combo origins. After starting out in a manner not unlike the original Herbie Hancock version, it gradually shifts colors; the horns come in, Blue Mitchell makes a muted statement, and the brass section contributes to a massive and beautifully conceived buildup.