Art Pepper - 1925-1982 And His "Second Career"

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

"The Second Career" by John Lithweiler originally appeared in the January/February 1998 issue of Coda magazine, and can also be found in Todd Selbert’s The Art Pepper Companion: Writings on a Jazz Original [200] in a slightly revised and expanded version. Its publisher, the Cooper Square Press, still makes Todd’s compilation available.

I’m a big fan of collective writing approaches to an artist’s work as it offers the Jazz listener many different perspectives on a Jazz musician’s rather than the one provided by a biographer, per se.

This is in no way meant to minimize the monumental effort and skill involved in researching and writing a professional biography, but rather, as a way of saying a word or two in defense of the multi author compilation of which, in my opinion, there are two few that focus on Jazz and its makers.

Art Pepper’s career is often viewed as a First Career, which took place from about 1945-1960 and, as John notes, a Second Career that occurred from “ ...the mid-'70s to his death in 1982,” the interregnum between them caused by Pepper’s stints in federal prison due to drug abuse and criminal activity related to it.

Todd’s The Art Pepper Companion offers articles that seem to favor one or the other of these two stages, but rarely both, so, in this regard, it is particularly helpful to someone like me who favors Art’s First Career but has a difficult time coming to terms with his music during the Second Career.

John takes on an attempt to explain the distinctions and relative merits between these two phases in Art Pepper's career - especially the second - through a review of the following later-in-Art’s career recordings:

ART PEPPER

With Duke Jordan in Copenhagen 1981 * Galaxy 2GCD-

8201-2(2-CDset)

ART PEPPER-ZOOT SIMS

Art N' Zoot * Pablo 2310-957-2

ART PEPPER

Tokyo Debut * Galaxy 4201-2

“Was Art Pepper a greater artist during his second career (the mid-'70s to his death in 1982) than during his first career as a mature artist (the 1950s to I960)? Gary Giddins and Laurie Pepper certainly seem to think so, in the expanded 1994 Da Capo edition of the book Straight Life, and moreover, Laurie maintains that Art recorded with more major jazz names during his second career — quite an assertion, considering all those 1950s dates with singers and the likes of Chet Baker, Jimmy Giuffre, Warne Marsh, Hampton Hawes, Red Norvo, the Red Garland Trio, and on and on, including the Kenton band and crowds of ex-Kentonites.

There's no question that Pepper was a different artist in his second career. The wonderful Galaxy recordings have been, up to recently, the best available evidence of that. And now during the 1990s Laurie Pepper has begun leasing, to the Fantasy combine, broadcast recordings of Pepper's second career, material that originally appeared on Japanese and European releases according to Todd Selbert's Pepper discography. The prospect of future issues is a real matter of intrigue, for Art Pepper was billed as a sideman on a number of sessions ostensibly led by Sonny Stitt, Lee Konitz, Jack Sheldon, Milcho Leviev, and others. The purported sidemen on those tend to be Pepper's regular quartet, as in Sheldon's Angel Wings LP (Atlas LA27-1001), which includes 3 originals, 2 by Pepper and one Sheldon-Pepper collaboration. As a matter of fact, Sheldon plays fine lyric trumpet throughout the date, but Pepper, in beautiful form, takes the lion's share of solo space, and the cover photo tells the story: A glum Sheldon, on the right, points to Pepper, center, gloating over all his loot.

What happened to Pepper between his first and second careers? Prison and the Synanon cult, of course, and a much-reported period of obsession with Coltrane that you'd hardly have anticipated from the earlier, distinctively original Pepper, a bop era artist with swing era origins. Terry Martin's 1964 Jazz Monthly essays indicated the opposing pulls of black and white jazz on Pepper's early development, the models of Benny Carter and Lee Konitz (Pepper liked to cite the Lester Young tradition as his principal inspiration), the growth of Pepper's mastery of improvised form and linear flow. Joined by Martin, I heard Pepper for the first time in 1974 at a college jazz band conference, Pepper was teaching clinics for Buffet saxophones in those days; prior to his set, chaperoned by an obviously worried Ken Yohe of Buffet, Pepper showed all the symptoms of stark, paralyzing terror. Yet, joined by trombonist Bill Watrous and accompanied by an uncoordinated student rhythm section, he played excellently and at length.

The differences between the first and second Art Pepper, including the influence of Coltrane, became evident later, when he began touring in clubs and concerts. Pepper liked to draw attention to the differences, by performing, along with his new songs, new versions of his early triumphs. As Martin wrote, one of Pepper's early breakthroughs was his lovely 1951 solo feature on Shorty Rogers' "Over the Rainbow." Of course Sun Ra's satiric solo versions point up for all time the song's inherent emotional dishonesty, with the yearning octave leap that begins and the comforting major thirds and soothing cadences that follow. But Pepper, who played it again and again in his second career, seemed to wish the "Rainbow" fantasy would come true.

In his 1970s and 1980s versions, Pepper liked to open "Over the Rainbow" with an unaccompanied alto intro, beginning with a cascading phrase that had no direct reference to the theme. The version in Art N’ Zoot has his intro in something of a pure form, with variations on that opening phrase notable for fourths and flatted intervals that evade the theme or at best dwell on its yearning qualities. He then interpolates minor notes into his theme variations and this opening solo includes a high, harsh, anguished tone to indicate that Harold Arlen's world is in fact far from his. That high note predicts the harshness (sheets of sound) that begins his second solo and the strained, climactic octave leap. He finds no comfort in the concluding cadence, either, for he creates sheets of sound yet again in the rubato coda. His Copenhagen version develops rather similarly, though after the cascading opening phrase his intro is quite diffuse; this version has the advantage of Duke Jordan's solo, for in contrast to the tormented yearning in Pepper's broken phrases, the pianist creates long lines of flowing bop melody.

On the other hand, there's "Winter Moon," a near-masterpiece in the 1956 Hoagy Carmichael recording: Pepper's opening solo is the plaintive, long-tone, minor-key theme with spare decorations, and the sorrow that emerges from his simple 24 bars is unforgettable. The long Galaxy solo (1980), over a string arrangement intended to dramatize the song's starkness, is itself admirable but sounds melodramatic by contrast One of his very best blues solos is "Las Cuevas De Mario" in the 1960 Smack Up, a marvelous trip through strange melodies and dislocated accents in 5/4 meter; Pepper's 1977 Village Vanguard version by contrast struggles to be coherent. There are the fast, biting, brittle, staccato Pepper solo in the 1960 "Rhythm-A-Ning," ending in an ecstatic chorus of pure accents—surely this is rhythmic virtuosity to rival Charlie Parker—and his Copenhagen "Rhythm-A-Ning" solo, slower but with a similar tension of varied phrase shapes and silences, with sheets of sound erupting in the third chorus and recurring thereafter; Pepper may be preferable in the earlier version, but Duke Jordan's 1981 piano solo, in delightful long lines, all the brightness of Bud Powell without the mania, is quite superior to Wynton Kelly in the earlier.

One more comparison: "Besame Mucho," in which Pepper, in a great 1956 Tampa recording, concentrated a lifetime's tragedy into two wrenching choruses. In his second career he played the minor-key piece often, including a comparatively subdued ballad version in that 1979 Tokyo Galaxy disc. There's a 1978 version not to be missed in Art Pepper Live In Japan Vol. I (Storyville 4128). with squalls of Coltrane like fury in the intro and coda vamps. The Copenhagen version has less dramatic dynamic contrasts but does include strained tones and sheets of sound. These later versions are in considerably more broken phrases than the Tampa "Besame Mucho," and these solos' very length determines that they're more diffuse solos. Admirable though these solos are, they're coarser works that deliberately attempt to evoke the tragedy that grew naturally from the lyric tensions in the early version.

What are the differences between early and late Art Pepper? Like his first master, Benny Carter, his alto sound, always beautiful, acquired a firmer quality over time, and it probably never sounded so brilliant as when Rudy Van Gelder recorded him in that 1979 Elvin Jones Quartet session, originally on a Japanese 45 r.p.m. LP (Evidence CD 22053). His vibrato, always so slow that it was more like a little quaver, widened. The later Pepper played longer solos, of course; now that he was a full-time bandleader, he structured performances on a large scale, and he especially liked routines such as the vamps that often opened and closed his pieces. Necessarily, the forms of his solos, ever a crucial concern with Pepper, also changed. While he was recurrently capable of creating beautiful melodic phrases, the more crucial element of his soloing was tension sustained and developed through fine sensitivity to phrase lengths, accenting, and rests. Slightly off-pitch tones, emphatically bent tones, low register passages became more frequent. High, strained tones, or overtones; multiphonics tones; momentary flurries of 16th notes to end phrases, all appeared, adding further stresses to his lines. All these expressive elements added to the tension of his solos, but then his sheets of sound that became climactic developments of vamps recalled an aspect of Coltrane's cyclic forms, too. Interestingly, Pepper's sheets of sound were not rising chromatic scales, like Coltrane often used, but arpeggios — even at his most extreme his harmonic vocabulary was founded on pro-bop practices.

Altogether, the body of his solos offered the early Art Pepper kinds of tension and phrasing, with more elaborate details and settings. The newest formal element was the one-chord intros and codas, which by their absence of mobile harmony demanded a different approach to shaping solos. That these changes did not, to him, devalue his earlier kind of lyricism was shown by his many clarinet solos and many of his last duets with pianist George Cables. As a generalization, joy, tragedy, pure beauty, and the emotions between them arose from Pepper's lines themselves in the 1950s. The later Pepper often consciously sought to evoke these emotions in his late career, especially in his extended routines. But throughout his career, early as well as late, he was an uncommonly self-aware artist, and his fine care for solo creation led to intimate revelations in both periods.

Tokyo Debut comes from his first tour of Japan (4/5/77), upon which he was accompanied by members of Cal Tjader's rhythm section. Unlike Charlie Parker and most other jazz players of his generation, Pepper had a real affinity for Latin phrasing, fitting accents and phrase lengths to mambo and samba patterns. So the Latin specialties, "Manteca” and two standards from Black Orpheus, in which he joins Tjader's full, quite extroverted band, are thoroughly sparkling. As usual, he played "Straight Life" very fast, at a "KoKo'- like tempo, like a diatonic Parker. Considering that Pepper always denied any direct Parker influence, let's say that his great freedom of accenting surely had affinities with Parker's discoveries. There's a medium-up blues, "The Spirit Is Here," that brilliantly shows Pepper's sense of structure, It begins with a little rift' theme that he varies for a few successive choruses; variations of that riff then pop up in every second chorus that he improvises, resulting in an unusually unified solo.

Art N’ Zoot (9/27/81) has a changing cast of characters including Victor Feldman, Ray Brown, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, and Barney Kessel; there's Pepper's solo feature, "Over the Rainbow," and three solo features for Sims plus "Wee" ("I Got Rhythm") and the blues for the saxes together. It's revealing that Sims, with his uplifting swing, meant more to Pepper than Getz, with all his virtuosity, and it's interesting that on this concert Zoot plays a cheerful, rifting "Girl From Ipanema" at a faster tempo than Getz did, with no hint of Getz's melancholy. Alto and tenor open and close the slow blues as duo improvisations, but the remarkable empathy of Pepper, Warne Marsh, and Ted Brown in two 1956 albums is impossible here. Instead, Pepper and Sims provide a more conventional battle-of-the-saxes show; they make interesting contrasts, with the altoist (the bluesier of the pair anyway) interjecting funky phrases and the tenorist swinging with a rude swagger and a sometime broad, dramatic sound that recalls Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster.

None of these three concert albums is with Pepper's standard rhythm section. Despite all his work with forceful bop pianists, for his own sessions he preferred less aggressive, less distinctive accompanists who supported with simple but hip harmonies and who soloed in pretty melodies, on something less that Pepper's own high creative level; think of the likes of Ronnie Ball, Pete Jolly, Marty Paich, Dolo Coker in earlier years, and later the many tours and recordings with the ingenious Cables. All of which makes the two-disc Copenhagen (7/3/81) especially attractive, for Duke Jordan is truly the costar throughout the program, complementing Pepper's complex self-examinations with their emotional opposite: long lines of melodies that flow inevitably, yet with surprise and delight. Moreover, Jordan's intensity is of Pepper's own quality, so the concert is uncommonly well-sustained — was the altoist, at any other time in his career, matched with another pianist this inspired? Too bad there wasn't more rehearsal time, because I for one would have loved to hear Pepper take on the challenge of excellent, and once-familiar, Jordan themes like "Flight to Jordan" and "Jor-du."

The album has a flying start in the terrific "Blues Montmartre"— Pepper was at his best in up-tempo blues — with the theme generating his developments in early choruses, then riff choruses alternating with melodic choruses, new material alternating with developments of earlier ideas, and exultant sheets of sound by the 18th chorus, an ingeniously structured solo followed by particularly witty Jordan playing. The vocalized elements in "What Is This thing Called Love?" rise to the climax of another especially well-formed alto solo. He generates tension in the vamp intro to the fast "Caravan" by alternating bars of brittle sound with bar-long rests, playing broken phrases that become unsnarled with the accompanying rhythm, all confined in a half-octave in the lower middle register. Not until the theme bridge does he break free, but only briefly, for the punchy, low, minor piano chords call him back to brittle, eventually convoluted phrasing throughout his solo on the chords. There is a driving piano solo, and the vamp alto coda is the finishing development of an extended, harrowing performance.

The ultra-last tempo of "Cherokee" segues into the ultra-slow "Radio Blues"; the tempo extremes finally defeat the musicians. After all the complexities of the preceding selections, the relative respite of "Good Bait" is welcome. It's a lyrical clarinet solo, intense but without strained passages, with early low-register choruses over only bass and drums, then by the fourth chorus higher tones that suggest something of the sound of Lester Young's metal clarinet. The final piece, at the same tempo, is "All the Things You Are," with a perfectly appropriate conclusion: Pepper and Jordan alternating eights and fours, playing off and fulfilling each other's lines and finally pointing up the good musical feelings between the pair. As you'd expect, throughout the 11 songs bassist David Williams and drummer Carl Burnett provide very alive accompaniment.

Pepper obviously believed in Lester Young's dictum that a solo should tell a story. Even without the book Straight Life, you can hear themes of his life in his playing — the affinity for darkness in his minor-key pieces; his quest for ecstasy especially in his ultra-fast-tempo pieces; the broken phrasing that suggests a disrupted consciousness; above all else, the great tension that sustains all of his solos. The quest for beauty is in all of his music and the vocalized techniques of his second career are an almost visceral reflection of the pain involved in his quest. You may hear his phrasing now and then in improvisers like Frank Morgan and Bud Shank, but unlike some songs of, say, Jordan, none of his themes became standards, and by and large Pepper had no more direct influence on his fellow saxophonists than Jelly Roll Morton had on other pianists of his era. The music, the beauty, the intensity were Pepper's story and his alone.”