Part 2 - "My Friend, Buddy D." - Terry Gibbs

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

This is from Terry Gibbs’ autobiography - Good Vibes: A Life in Jazz [Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 2003].

Buddy and I were really meant for each other. They say that opposites attract and onstage, we work completely different. Offstage, we were pretty much alike, but onstage. Buddy worked more routinely than I did. He would almost make the same announcement every time, where I never knew what I was going to say. One time when he started to make the same announcement that he had made the night before on the same song, I stopped him and said "This is jazz. You can't say the same thing that you said last night. We may have the same people that we had last night and they want to hear you say something different."

We were great for each other in that Buddy took no prisoners when he played. When you follow his playing, you'd better play good. He kept me honest and I kept him loose. My philosophy has always been that when you're playing music, you've got to be serious. But in between songs, be like you are off the bandstand. Buddy has a great sense of humor and is very funny. So now, when we work together, whether it is a little club or a big festival, we have fun on the bandstand.

Buddy has a lavalier mic that he attaches to his tie so that it picks up the notes on the clarinet evenly. Sometimes if he's playing with a regular mic on a stand in front of him, and he moves to either side, some notes would get lost. That's why he uses that lavalier mic. I was going to make an announcement on a mic that was on a stand close to where Buddy was standing and when I went to talk, the mic wasn't working. So I went to Buddy's mike on his tie, which is near where his belly button would be, and made my announcement from his belly. Buddy just stood there and played straight for me.

I haven't taken my vibes on the road with me for the last twenty-five years. The promoter or club owner supplies a set of vibes for me wherever I play. I usually get to see the vibes and adjust them before I go on stage. I have a run that I make and if that sounds fairly good, then it's straight ahead. I never know what kind of instrument they're getting for me and even though they may all look alike, they're still all different. To start with, different companies make different sounding bars and some sets are taller than others. There's always something that's not to my liking, but at least I get to see the set before we play.

We were on tour in Europe and were playing at the Cork Festival in Cork. Ireland. We got there about a half-hour before we had to play, but the vibes were already on stage, so I couldn't get a chance to adjust them. When we were announced, I went on stage and being that I work very loose, I made my usual run on the vibes to see what adjustments it needed. After I make that dumb run, I usually say, "And now for my second song . . ." This way, they think that I'm trying to be funny. I usually have to adjust the bars so that they're not pressing against the damper bar, which could make them sound dead. I usually have to loosen the damper bar so I can make them sound livelier. When I made my dumb run, every note rang into the next one. You couldn't tell one note from another. There is a metal tube about a foot and a half long that connects the damper bar to the pedal. That's what I would normally adjust. When I went to adjust that, I saw that instead of the metal tube, there was a piece of thread connecting the damper bar to the pedal. I was afraid to fool with that, because if it broke, the whole vibes set was liable to collapse, right on the stage. I played the whole concert like that, with every note ringing into the next one. If anybody is familiar with my playing they know that I play a lot of notes. The weirdest thing was that we got a standing ovation and I was never so embarrassed in all my life.

I don't really play for an audience. I want them to like what I'm playing but if I don't think that I played good, then I go home sick. I have to like what I'm playing first.

Now for the weirdest part of the story. About six months later. Buddy went back to Cork and played the festival with three clarinet players. Some man came over to him and said, "Would you please deliver a message to Mr. Gibbs when you see him? Please tell him that I enjoyed his performance so much when you were here together, I went and bought those vibes that he played on." That guy had to be either a complete idiot or he was in love with me.

Sometimes when Buddy and I were booked in Europe together, we wouldn't see each other until we got to the stage where we were performing. I live in Los Angeles and he lives in Florida so we get to Europe at different times. We met on stage in Germany for the Berlin Jazz Festival. When Buddy walked towards me, he looked strange. We hugged when we saw each other, but his face looked weird. He said, "Is there anything wrong with my face? It feels like I have a bump in my jaw." What bump? It looked like somebody added another face to his face. I didn't want to panic him. because at that time, cancer was starting to get to a lot of people and that's the first thing that came to my mind. I don't know how he played the concert, but he did and sounded very good. When he got home and took all kinds of tests, he found out he was allergic to a lot of different foods, including wheat, and he had to stay away from pasta for a few years. Can you imagine telling an Italian not to eat pasta? That's like telling Buddy not to play the clarinet for a year.

My Dream Band CDs were now out and doing very well and I wanted to record with Buddy because Palo Alto Records had gone out of business. We needed CDs out so we could get some work. I talked with Dick Bock, who helped me produce the Dream Band albums and thought we'd do another live date. We got a booking in Chicago at Joe Segal's Jazz Showcase. We were there for six days. Even though Buddy and I were co-leaders, he let me run the show.

We talked about songs we were going to record and then I wrote little arrangements for them. Buddy is a good arranger but he let me do them anyway. Plus, he liked the original songs that I wrote. I didn't want to just go in and jam, so after writing the melodies out with the little syncopations, I would always write interludes between the choruses. For the first three days we were at the Jazz Showcase, we played the songs that we were going to record. It was sort of a rehearsal, so that when we recorded the next three days, we wouldn't have to have our noses in the music.

Buddy was starting to remind me more and more of Benny Goodman. He was really into the clarinet and practiced every day. The clarinet was his life. Also like Benny, he was getting a little foggy. During those first three days, he kept forgetting the interlude that I wrote on

Horace Silver's song, "Sister Sadie." So I said to him, "After you finish playing your choruses, you have to play the interlude with me, because if I come in alone, it will sound like a mistake. I have an idea. I almost know when you're through with your choruses, so I'll lean over my vibes and to get your attention, I'll wave my right hand, and that will give you the cue for the interlude." He said, "Great. Wave your hand and that will remind me to come in with the interlude."

The next day, we started to record. We were playing "Sister Sadie" and when I figured that Buddy was about to finish playing, I leaned over my vibes and waved my right hand to cue him for the interlude. He saw me waving, stopped playing, got a bewildered look on his face, and said, "What do you want?" That broke up the band. He eventually got it all straightened out and the date came out great.

The band was getting tighter every night. We just finished playing "Fifty-Second Street Theme," the song that Bird and Diz closed their sets with, and we played it real fast. Neil Tesser, who wrote for one of the Chicago papers, was in the club to review us. When I walked by him to go to the dressing room, he stopped me and said, "When Buddy was playing his choruses on 'Fifty-Second Street Theme.' he played so good that when you had to follow him, I felt sorry for you. Then when you got into it, I felt sorry for John Campbell, who had to follow YOU."

I also took care of the business for Buddy and me. for Buddy was, without a doubt, the worst businessman I ever met. The reason I say this is because of a story he told me. He was at home when he got a call from a club owner in Montreal asking him if he was available to play his club on a certain date. Buddy, who can't remember where he is half the time, looked at his schedule and told the club owner that he was available. Then the club owner casually said to Buddy, "I heard that you played in Toronto last week. How did it go?" Buddy, who is the nicest and most honest man I ever met, said, "I bombed. Nobody came into the club to see me." The club owner immediately hung up on him. Never said another word. When Buddy told me this, I said, "Why did you tell him you bombed?" He said, "I DID bomb." I asked, "Didn't the audience like you?" He said, "Yes, they gave me a standing ovation." I said, "Why didn't you tell him that they loved you and gave you a standing ovation instead of telling him that you bombed?" That's Buddy being a little too honest for his own good. If anybody calls him and asks him if he and I are available, he always says, "Call Terry."

A few years later, we played Ronnie Scott's again. On our day off we had to fly to Edinburgh, Scotland, to do a TV show that Ronnie had arranged for us. Our wives were with us at the time. After the TV show, the producers took us to dinner at the Grand Hotel, one of the fanciest places in Edinburgh. A lot of people who saw the show were there and they applauded us when we walked in. I think we had four different waiters serving us. We all ordered food and some wine.

For some reason I always thought it was phony when they brought you a bottle of wine, put some in a glass for you to taste, and then you would give them your opinion. Most people don't know a good wine from a bad wine. I always wanted to do this stupid tiling but never had the nerve to do it. The waiter brought the wine to our table, poured a little in a glass, and handed it to me.

The only wines that I know the taste of are Manischewitz and Rokeach. two kosher wines that you drink on Passover. They're both so sweet that they can make you sick.

I took the glass of wine, shook it around a little (that's because I've seen people who think they're connoisseurs do it), took a sip. and for no reason whatsoever, went "Ecchh." and spit it out like it tasted terrible. Needless to say that even though Buddy and his wife broke up. Rebekah didn't talk to me the rest of the night.

We were called to do a tribute to Benny Goodman in Arvada, Colorado, and for that show, we had Louie Bellson on drums, Tal Farlow on guitar, plus a pianist and bass player from Denver, Colorado. Buddy and I always tried to stay away from doing tributes to Benny because we were starting to be compared to Benny and Lionel and wanted our own identity.

At first we were very negative about the idea, but the money was good and they told us there would be two parts to the show. Besides the Benny Goodman tribute, the second half would be a tribute to Duke Ellington because Louie Bellson played with Duke. We figured that was okay because we played a lot of Ellington songs and there was no other connection there.

It turned out to be so successful that now we were getting calls to do another tribute to Benny. Once again the money was good. All we had to do was play songs that Benny made famous and play bebop choruses on them. We were already playing "Air Mail Special," which was a big hit for Benny. An agent by the name of Bob Davis booked us to do a Benny Goodman tribute at a club in Berkeley, California, called Kimball's. He wanted to make it an all-star band and he added Herb Ellis on guitar. Butch Miles on drums. Milt Hinton on bass, and Larry Novak on piano. He also put together a tour to Japan to go with that job. I got Ralph Kaffel, the president of Fantasy Records, to let me produce a live album while we were at Kimball's. I picked all the songs and did the same routine that we did on our first album. "Chicago Fire." We played for three nights, worked out little head arrangements, and then recorded the next three nights. The people went nuts, because the Benny Goodman sound is a very exciting thing. We even used a lot of the routines that Benny did by jamming for two or three choruses at the end of each song to give it added excitement.

Butch Miles was the perfect drummer for that kind of a groove. Not only did we break up the audience, but we also packed the club every night. I think they set a record for the amount of dinners they served.

We left for Japan the day after we closed at Kimball's. I was going to mix and master the record when I got back. I was sort of the leader of the group and the guys in the band looked to me for leadership. When we recorded, being that I produced the album, I called all the shots. I tried to make each night a different concert so if Herbie played first on "Don't Be That Way" on Thursday, after we played the melody on that same song on Friday, I may have called on Buddy to play first. I called a lot of audibles on stage while we were playing. When you do that, it makes it hard to edit. You can't pick a chorus from a take on Friday and put it into a Saturday performance. To start with, the sound would be different in the club and also, the tempo would be different.

All I could do besides work with the engineer in mixing the album was to pick the best takes. As a producer, you can't pick the take that you played best on, even though there is a tendency to want to do that. You can't think as a performer; you have to put your producer's hat on. So I picked the takes that had the best group feel. After we made that long trip and arrived in Japan, everybody went to sleep except me.

The contract the Tom Cassidy Agency made with the Japanese promoter said that one quarter of the money would be sent to him a few months before the signing of the contract. When I got there, I had to pick up 20,000 dollars. I was really wiped out but I sat down with the promoter who gave me 20,000 dollars in American one-hundred-dollar bills. Even though they were packed in 1.000 dollar wrappers, I had to count it out in front of the man I was dealing with. That wasn't the hardest part of what I had to do. I didn't want to walk around with 20,000 dollars in cash, so I made packages and gave each musician part of their salary for the ten-day tour. Buddy, Herbie, and I made the same amount of money, so I gave most of the money to the three sidemen. I was so tired after counting out everybody's money. I found that I was short a hundred dollars in one of the packages. Luckily, when I started to count each package again, I found out that I had miscounted the first one or I never would have gone to sleep.

I had been in Japan before with Steve Allen but never with a jazz group. The audience kind of scared me at the first concert. After we played the first chorus of "Seven Come Eleven," I came in and played the first bunch of choruses. When I finished and Buddy came in, nobody applauded for me. People usually applaud for the soloists after they play their solos. I thought they didn't like how I played and felt like I just bombed. They didn't applaud for Buddy, Herb, or anybody in the band until the song was over. Then they really applauded. I found out that the Japanese people are so humble and polite that they think they are insulting you by making any noise while the band is playing. When they didn't applaud for Buddy after he finished, I selfishly felt good.

At the end of the concert, the audience demanded two encores. I didn't realize until I checked the contract the next day that it said, "two fifty-minute sets with a twenty-minute intermission and two encores on the end." I think that the Japanese people were used to getting two encores at the end of every show.

At one of the concerts, after our two encores, I was already downstairs in the dressing room and had my tuxedo jacket and shirt off, both of them very wet with sweat. The Japanese people bang their feet on the ground when they want you to play more and they were banging so hard, you could hear it downstairs in the dressing room. The promoter ran down and asked us to please get back on the stage and play another song. I had to put my funky wet shirt and tux jacket on again and we did another encore.

Since the concert was a tribute to Benny Goodman, Buddy, Herb, and I took turns at the mic talking about Benny. I told more stories about him being a foggy idiot than about his great clarinet playing so it seemed like I was putting him down. But I always closed by saying that it was the thrill of my life playing with him.

When Herb spoke, he really put Benny down because Charlie Christian was Herb's idol and he thought that Benny stole all of Charlie's songs by putting his name down on the records as co-writer. Herb really didn't like Benny Goodman. Sometimes he would put Benny down for five minutes but he always ended by saying, "But Benny was one swell guy."

When Buddy spoke, the first thing he said was, "Is this really a tribute to Benny Goodman?" Then he would defend Benny by telling the audience that in the days of the big bands, when the bandleader commissioned you to write an original song for the band, it was protocol for the bandleader to put his name on the song as co-writer. But Herb never bought into that.

Amongst some of Buddy's mishigasses, he liked to buy luggage. I'm not exaggerating when I say that at one time, he had about thirty different pieces of luggage. Another mishigas is that he collected fake copies of famous watches. He once had about five different fake Rolexes that he bought for twenty-five dollars each. A strange thing happened to Buddy after one of the concerts. We played a private party and were in the band room. This Japanese guy was talking to Buddy and couldn't speak English too well. I was standing with Buddy while this guy was telling him, in very broken English, that he liked playing clarinet and that Buddy was his favorite clarinet player. He was so in awe of Buddy and was really nervous just being around him.

All of a sudden he said, "You're so good, I've got to give you something." took his watch off his hand, and gave it to Buddy. Buddy looked embarrassed and tried to give it back to him, but the guy kept insisting that it was a gift from him to Buddy. As he handed it to him. Buddy didn't even look at it. I took it out of Buddy's hand and walked over to Larry Novak and showed it to him. Neither of us could believe what kind of watch it was. Buddy also had a bunch of fake Patek Philippe watches, but this one looked like a real one. When Buddy finished talking with that nice man, I showed Buddy the watch and he actually turned purple. It WAS a real one. The nice gentleman came to another concert the next night and brought the case for that watch to Buddy. We later found out that he was a multi-millionaire ship builder. When we got back to the States, Buddy had the watch appraised and was told that it was worth 10,000 dollars. Buddy hardly ever wears it. He's afraid he'll lose it so he wears the fake one most of the time. We had a very successful engagement in Japan and when we got back to the United States, we all went our separate ways. Japan was a ball.

I went back to Berkeley to mix the tapes from the date. The songs we mixed all seemed to be winners so we did the same thing that we did on the first album that Buddy and I did for Palo Alto. Ralph Kaffel and I couldn't figure out which were the best songs, so Ralph suggested that we put out two CDs and release them six months apart. Then he would pay everybody for two record dates.

The two CDs were called "Memories of You" and "The Kings of Swing." Buddy and I liked the name "The Kings of Swing" so every time we did a tribute to Benny Goodman, that's what we called ourselves. That's the second time that Ralph Kaffel put a name on one of my bands. He also came up with the name "The Dream Band."

Buddy and I continue to try and play together any time we are called. Unfortunately, we don't have an agent, so we haven't been playing together as often as we would like to. I think that besides my Dream Band, the most exciting and fun thing for me is playing with Buddy. We have been playing on and off as co-leaders for better than twenty years and have never come close to having an argument. I don't care who you are, when you get two people together, sometimes one person's ego can get in the way, or one of the wives can say something to her husband that can cause an argument. Our wives get along great and really like each other.

Buddy and I have become like brothers. I've been very fortunate to have worked with two of the greatest clarinet players that ever lived. In the thirties and forties, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw were way ahead of all the other clarinet players. Everyone that played the clarinet either copied Benny or Artie. Then Buddy came along in the fifties and was the inspiration for practically every clarinet player since then, including Eddie Daniels, who came out of the Buddy DeFranco school, and who has now found his own voice. I was lucky to have played with both Benny and Buddy. They both were great instrumentalists and boy, could they swing.”