Stan Levey: From Left to Right - The JazzProfiles Interview

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

A number of Jazz fans have requested that I bring this feature up again.

Bebop was causing the swing drummers fits because of the jabs and stabs required of the left hand and right foot — snare drum and bass drum — against the ride cymbal pattern. The stuff Kenny Clarke had started ten years earlier had developed into a new complex way of playing that meant the "new" drummers had to really develop their ability to play four different patterns all at the same time. The left foot played the hi hats, the right hand the ride pattern — the left hand and right foot played the drums. The bass drum sound needed to punch out the patterns with a kind of "thud" sound, while the snare drum was often tuned loose — kind of funky — with the snares barely against the bottom head.

Although the following interview with drummer Stan Levey took place primarily in 1997 when I called him to ask for his input regarding a feature I was writing on the late pianist and vibraphonist Victor Feldman, it really had been going on for over 40 years

By the mid-1990’s, Stan had been retired from active work as a Jazz drummer and studio percussionist for about 25 years.

Stan was always a very straight-talking man and this composite interview reflects that quality which is why I prize it so much.

During the late 1950s, I got to know Stan quite well. He was performing weekly with Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All-Stars in Hermosa Beach, CA and I was attempting to flunk out of high school while I studied his drumming technique in-person, as often as possible.

He was always kind and generous with his help, fatherly in his advice and I learned from him the greatest lesson for any Jazz drummer - to keep time that you could set a watch to. Some of the questions and answers in the interview date back to this early period.

In those days, Stan “The Man” shared the town [the Los Angeles Jazz scene] with Mel Lewis and Shelly Manne and the three of them - along with Larry Bunker who always claimed that he picked up their left-overs-  provide an aspiring, young Jazz drummer with a terrific laboratory in which to study. 

[Their style of drumming, individually and collectively, may also be one answer to the perennial question about how East and West Coast Jazz differ. But that’s a topic to be addressed in a future JazzProfiles entry.]

As a point in passing, you can see and hear Stan talking about his career on his self-produced DVD - Stan Levey “The Original Original: The Jazz Bop Pioneer Tells His Story. The reference is from Dizzy Gillespie who was fond of calling Stan - “the original, original.” I’ve embedded the YouTube version of this video at the conclusion of this piece.

Posting this interview is a small way of remembering Stan Levey and of saying “Thank you.”

JazzProfiles [JP]: Do you feel that the drummer has other roles besides time-keeping?

Stan Levey [SL]: Sure, absolutely. You have musical statements to make. To enhance whatever is going on in the front line.

JP: What was the equipment like in the early 1940s when you started playing compared to today?

SL: By the ‘40s you had pretty good equipment. The Ludwig Company had good stuff. They had pretty good drums. Actually the wood was very good, too. But the ‘20s and ‘30s stuff was a little weird. It just wasn’t that good. By the middle of the ‘40s everything was worked out.

JP: Being a contemporary of players like Max Roach and Art Blakey, did you notice a lot of competition among yourself and other drummers or was there an effort to try and share the idea? Shelly once said that “42nd Street was like a garden.”

SL: A lot of camaraderie, actually. Max and I were very close. We were all good friends. There wasn’t that much work around, so we all split it up. Everybody kind of helped everybody; like Shelly said.

JP: I wasn’t sure of how that might have played out considering it was such a new style.

SL: Yeah, but there were so few guys who were playing it or could play it. What’s the point of hiding something? You can’t hide anything anyway, wherever you play someone picks up on it.

JP: When you were making a lot of those bebop records in the 1940s, would you have predicted the kind of longevity they’ve had?

SL: Yeah, because it was musically valid. It was good music. The musical content was very good. If you listen to it, it holds up today. Mozart is good, that was 200 years ago. I’m not trying to make it sound like we were as good as Mozart. Good is good, bad is bad. Bad stinks and that’s the end of it. That’s the way I look at it.

JP: Why do you think that drummers are considered to be less worthy as musicians; or not as competent as those that play other instruments?

SL: Mostly because in the early times they had no real musical knowledge. They didn’t know the keyboard and a lot of them couldn’t read. Today that’s not true. They’re all just great.

JP: Did you find your early recording sessions to be difficult, as far as getting a good sound or playing together as a unit?

SL: Well, there was no intercutting. You made a record from the top. They cut the record right there. If you didn’t like it, you would start again. It was a little more stressful. And the micing was a little primitive.

JP: Did you prefer to play live as opposed to make records?

SL: Live playing is always more fun; less confining.

JP: What value do you see in a drum solo?

SL: It depends on how good it is, how it’s constructed. Does it make sense? When you listen to the masters play a drum solo you never stop listening, you’re locked into it. It takes you somewhere. Listen to Buddy Rich or Louie Bellson or Joe Morello - they know how to build things to generate excitement and to keep you interested. It’s not just about technique. Those guys have it to burn and they all put on a show with it but they know how to take you with them.

JP: Were there certain repertories or melodies that you thought of when you soloed?

SL: Yeah, you think musically. Not a melody, but where you’re going with it. You’re going to build and come back. I am not a fan of long drums solos, unless it’s a guy like Buddy or Louie or Joe. That was not my forte anyway.

JP: Do you like trading fours over a solo?

SL: That’s fun, fours and eights. If it makes good musical sense then I think it’s good, but not to do it just for the sake of doing it.

JP: Would you say that drums could be approached melodically?

SL: Oh, absolutely. In fact they should be tuned to a note.  I’ve always done that. Instead of tensioning it, it should be tuned.

JP: Was there a specific pitch you would tune your drums to?

SL: I’m trying to remember, it was so long ago. Probably an “F” on the bass drum and then a “C” on the small tom. You try to make some musical sounds out of them instead of just cranking them up.

JP: Do you ever think colors or use terms like color or texture?

SL: No. Well, texture, yes. Cymbal textures which are at a higher pitch. Not color.

JP: Did you use riveted cymbals; so-called “Chinese” cymbals; crash cymbals?

SL: Yeah, we just punched a hole in them and put a rivet in. We all did that for different sounds or textures, getting back to that. I fooled around with a Chinese for a while in Stan’s [Kenton’s] band and you had to have big cymbals to project power over the band, but I went with 18” cymbals in a small group: one with rivets and one without.

JP: What about brush playing? It almost seems to be becoming a dying art.

SL: I hear guys today that are good brush players. I could play the hell out of brushes. The old masters always argued that almost anything you could play with sticks you should be able to play using brushes.

JP: Were there any specific guys that you preferred to play with?

SL: I played with all of them, [Charlie] Parker, [Dizzy] Gillespie, Miles [Davis], Dexter [Gordon], Ben Webster, Coleman [Hawkins]. I loved them all. These guys were just great. They’re all dead, too. But the new guys are good; there’s a lot of good players out there today.

JP: Did you give lessons to other drummers?

SL: I used to have a few students in the ‘50s, but teaching drums is not my thing. I’m self-taught, both to play and to read, but I was never much into drum rudiment books

JP: Did you ever get stage fright playing with these people who are now referred to as giants?

SL: Yeah. One guy, Ben Webster, scared the hell out of me. He looked like he was about nine feet tall and fifteen feet wide; big shoulders. He was just that kind of guy, but he really was a pussycat. We didn’t get along well at the beginning, but later we became very good friends. We did a lot of records together. He just scared me because of his presence.

JP: Were a lot of your influences from people like Gene Krupa, Chick Webb, and Sid Catlett?

SL: Sid very much so. Sid, Max [Roach], Davey Tough. We all go to the same well.  Nobody invents anything; everybody stands on somebody’s shoulders. So we all took from the best and Sid was one of the best.

JP: Would you consider the bebop style as coming from Max Roach and Kenny Clarke?

SL: It didn’t come from any one person. The same way that Parker didn’t come from just Parker. Parker came from Lester Young. When I started playing with Parker in the early ‘40s, he sounded like Lester on alto. Then he’d take a left-hand turn every once in a while. And you’d say, “Whoa, what was that?” And I think drumming is the same thing. Shadow Wilson had something different. Each one had a little flap, it would open another door. It just developed, and Max would take it, of course. Max was the front runner.

JP: How about guys like Roy Haynes?

SL: Roy was later. I like Roy. He’s a real nice imitator and he did it well.

JP: What do you think separated Max and Art Blakey?

SL: Art was just like a rough, uncut diamond. Where Max was highly polished, very good chops, very good technique. Max was more studied. Art was just rough. He had a great heart. Another guy who was great, Denzil Best. Man, I want to tell you that guy could play. He was a trumpet player first. He worked with Coleman Hawkins. I heard him in New York when he first joined George Shearing’s group. Beautiful brush work.

JP: There’s a lot of talk of how bebop eliminated the bass drum on all four beats. Did you do that?

SL: What really happened … the way Dizzy played, he would do his high notes and then back off for maybe half a bar. He needed something to fill that; it’s called a fill or they’d call it “dropping bombs.” The idea was to fill the little spot and keep the momentum going. That was what it was all about. The drummer felt obligated to do that. The thump-thump-thump-thump four beats to the bar thing on bass drum was still used by some drummers, even later, but it was quieter. We called it feathering. So guys just found it easier to come off that to “drop bombs.” Some guys played the hat on 2 and 4 and the bass drum on 1 and 3.

JP: Did you have a lot of interplay between your two hands in terms of keeping ride patterns with one hand and other patterns or accents in the other?

SL: Sure, but you always had to keep the momentum going to make sure it swung. The left-hand accents are used to emphasize and push the swing.

JP: Did the swing or groove come out of the hi-hat?

SL: If we are talking about small bands then it would be the ride cymbal. In those days you didn’t get real technical about what you were doing. You related what you heard to what was coming out of your drums. You were just supposed to know what goes with what and lay it in.

JP: Was there anything specific that you listened for, or you just got up there and did your thing?

SL: Well, we usually had real good players because one weak link and you were in trouble. First of all, they wouldn’t be there. Usually, it was Parker, Gillespie, Haig, Ray Brown and myself. Each guy was a premier player; they knew what the hell to do. I mean we rehearsed, but it was about the unspoken word. If you had to speak about it, you were in trouble.

JP: Did you go to Minton’s [Playhouse in Harlem] a lot?

SL: Oh yeah, sure.

JP: I’m sure you get this question a lot but for the record are you a lefty player, a “southpaw”?

SL: I’m a right-handed player that plays drums left-handed. Don’t ask me why. There were no drums teachers to ask; it just felt good.

JP: Did you have trouble going to the jam session nights having to switch everything around?

SL: That was always a pain.

JP: Is there anything that you would say that made you’re playing unique?

SL: I had a God-given gift; it was nothing I studied for. I had a very good technique and could play fast as a son of a bitch. I don’t know how it happened, I could just do it all night long. I played through my ears. If you don’t play through your ears, it becomes just mechanical.

JP: All night and almost all day, too, I heard.

SL: We’d finish on 52nd Street at four in the morning, then go uptown and play until ten. We didn’t care about the money, anything; in those days, the music was the thing. The music was new, and we were new. We were young and we just wanted to do it.

JP: Did you find it, at any time, disheartening with a lot of the critics talking down about bebop or rebop-  the new music?

SL: Nah, we knew the music was great.

JP: They say a lot of the swing guys couldn’t make the transition to bop. Davey Tough for instance.

SL: No, he couldn’t. Davey’s from the ‘20s. Well, Davey had other problems, too. Whatever the hell “swing” means, that’s what he played: Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins – that kind of thing. The change came in the early ‘40s; ’44 was really the year and it just went from there. Just the way it went from ragtime to Duke Ellington.  I guess what I played with Benny Goodman in the early 1940s was swing.

JP: Did you feel that you had those big shoes to fill, Krupa’s, for example? 

SL: Yeah, I took Gene’s place, sure, big shoes. But when you are 17 or 18 years old, who gives a shit? You just go out and do it. The worst thing that could happen is the guy don’t like me. That’s being young, that’s the great part about it. Young and stupid, or whatever you want to call it. You just do it because you love it and you know it’s going to be okay.

JP: It seems the scene was very welcoming to new players.

SL: Well, there weren’t many players. There weren’t many good drummers around, maybe eight or ten. Today, for young people who want to be drummers; they have all the information on tape and in books. We had no tapes, no books and not that many records. We used to wait six months for a good drummer to come to town and try to soak up everything he could do.

JP: Did you guys used to go together, you and other drummers, just go and check it out and talk about it?

SL: If there was a good drummer or a good band in town we’d all wind up there. It was just that way; we’d all be there to see what was going on. Today’s everybody’s in their homes with their twenty-four track machines; it’s a different world.

JP: Did you like being on the road touring?

SL: I liked working. If the music was good, I didn’t care where it was playing. Wherever the music took you, that’s where I went.

JP: Did you play for yourself; or the audience; or the group?

SL: Never the audience. Not one minute in all my years. Not for myself, for the group. For the music. That’s purist talk, but that’s the way it was. It couldn’t be any other way.

JP: How did a bad review of one of your performances or records affect you?

SL: Oh, yeah. On one of my first albums, the guy said that I was playing like a street drummer; like a marching drummer.

JP: How did that make you feel?

SL: I quieted down because he was right. I was playing too loud.

JP: Do you like being a leader versus a so-called sideman?

SL: On records, sure, because you can put material together, bring in guys that I think are great.

JP: What would you think if you heard guys copying your licks?

SL: I’d be very happy. In fact, a lot of guys are doing it and have been doing it for years.

JP: Do you ever listen to records that you’ve made?

SL: Once in a while, but very seldom.

JP: You don’t play much anymore?

SL: I haven’t played in over 25 years.

JP: Is there a reason why you gave it up?

SL: The music changed and I became a mallet player. I worked in the studios for about eleven years and then things started to change. The young composers came in and they just wanted their own people, which is the way it should be. I saw what was happening and I always had my own other business [Stan was a very successful commercial photographer]. Then the electronics came in and nobody’s working now!

JP: Did you ever go to Boston to pick out your cymbals at the Zildjian factory? If so, was there a specific thing or tone you would look for?

SL: Sure, many times. Every drummer has a cymbal sound in their ears they know they like. You go in and ask for it.

JP: Do you listen to Jazz now?

SL: If it’s good, straight-ahead Jazz.

JP: What about the stuff in the 60s, the Ornette Coleman type?

SL: That’s crazy. That was just one chord horse shit.

JP: Do you think that they are saying the same thing about you?

SL: I don’t care what they say. I didn’t worry about it. It’s not my business what they say, and it’s not their business what I say.

JP: Was race ever an issue for you as far as getting gigs?

SL: That was never a problem. In fact when I was with Dizzy, a lot of Black drummers would say, ‘Hey Dizzy how come you got a White drummer?’ He’d say: ‘If you could do the job better than him you’d have the job.’ That’s the way he was. Race never entered into anything. I worked with all those guys and it was never a problem. But around 1948 or ’49 things started to change and the Black players got a little weird. They were saying things like: ‘You’re taking or stealing my music.’ They started the race things about White guys working on jobs they felt should be all Black players. That kind of bull shit. So that did happen, but it didn’t affect me. Dizzy made the statement: ‘The guy who can do the job best will have the job.’

JP: Did you find you needed a different approach for different types of instrumentalists or groups?

SL: Each situation requires its own touch, it’s own sound. Being a musician is knowing what to do and when to do it. With Stan Getz it’s one approach with Sonny Rollins it’s another. Each player has a different sound and a different freedom. But if a guy has to tell you what to do, you wouldn’t be there.

JP: What was your first drum set like when you started to play professionally?

SL: In the ‘early days’ when I first started playing, nobody had a drum set. You just played on whatever was at the club. Max didn’t have a set; I didn’t have  a set. Wherever we went, whatever was there we played. I only played on the job and I never practiced. I never had a record player, either. If it was a gig, then you played; no gig, no play.

JP: Is there anything that sticks out that connects players like yourself, Max, Kenny Clarke, Philly Joe [Jones], and all those guys?

SL: Well, they are all different and they are all great. They all went down their own road, but there is a thread through all of us, we never discarded that. The approach to the music, to bop or whatever you want to call it. The thread of the music from Parker and Gillespie was always there but each of these guys decorated it with his own thing. Even Elvin Jones, as far out as he gets, is part of that thread because he feels its momentum. And I think that’s what we all have basically in common, a forward motion feeling that grows with everyone adding to it.

JP: Do you think that there are people who were greatly overlooked?

SL: Sure, there were a lot of guys.

JP: Do you feel that you were overlooked?

SL: I didn’t get as much mention as I should have, but whatever happens, happens.

JP: Does that bother you?

SL: Nope. I played with the best. They know it and I know it. I wasn’t in vaudeville, you know what I’m saying? I wanted to play with the best and I did what I wanted to do.

JP: Do you miss playing?

SL: I miss good stuff, good players. Guys like Victor Feldman and Scott LaFaro; they’re all gone. And there are some very good guys around today. But the business is so awful that I know guys my age that are still trying to play. There’s no work.

JP: Are there any recordings of yours that you can suggest that one should check out?

SL: One is called The Arrival of Victor Feldman [Contemporary S7549; OJCCD 268-2] with Scott LaFaro and myself. A trio album it is one of the best things I’ve made. I have one originally called This Time The Drum’s On Me [Bethlehem BCP-37; Toshiba-EMI TOCJ-62027]. It’s been bought and re-released by different companies. That’s with Dexter Gordon.  I also did some things with Parker on Dial Records.

JP: As far as solos go, did you ever develop a repertoire that you play during solos or as the solos came you just went with it?

SL: Everybody develops patterns, even horn players. I did a record with Stan Getz, Sonny Stitt, Dizzy, Ray Brown and John Lewis called For Musicians Only [Verve 837-435-2]. It’s a great record and Stan stole the whole goddamn thing. Everything was really super fast, and he played one thing that was absolutely incredible. It seemed like he came up with this off the seat of his pants. About five years later, I heard a record that he had made four years before this record and he played the same solo! We all have patterns, but you embellish on them.

An Afternoon with Benjamin Francis Webster

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

“Look at those two heavyweights!.”

The speaker was Jack Marshall a guitarist who was perhaps best known as a composer-arranger in Hollywood recording circles. He composed TV series themes and wrote the arrangement for Peggy Lee’s big hit Fever which featured drummer Shelly Manne, one of Jack’s closest friends.

The “two heavyweights” in question were drummer Stan Levey and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster.

The venue for this two-brute-sighting was The Manne Hole, Shelly’s Hollywood Jazz club, which also happened to serve great soup for lunch. [“Brute was one of Ben’s nicknames.]

Just about every studio musician in the greater Hollywood area - which extended north into the eastern San Fernando Valley to include both Warner Brothers [Burbank] and Universal Studios [North Hollywood] - tried to stop by Shelly’s for lunch during their breaks from recording.

It was our way of “throwing some business his way” as we all knew the kind of stress and sacrifice Shelly went through to keep his club open for 12 years in order to give local Jazz musicians a place to play, including many studio musicians who relished the opportunity to play Jazz whenever it presented itself.

I recorded with Jack as a drummer and/or percussionist on a few occasions and we had just finished a TV commercial that morning when Jack suggested we “go up to Shelly’s for some soup.”

By way of background, I gather that one of Stan Levey’s first gigs as a drummer was working with Ben Webster’s quartet which “Frog” [another of Ben’s nicknames] had formed shortly after leaving Duke Ellington’s Orchestra in the early 1940s. They instantly took a liking to one another and became lifelong friends. Each of them were “big men” and they formed an imposing sight when they stood together.

Now here they were a little over twenty years later talking to Shelly and Rudy Onderwyzer, the manager of The Manne Hole, about Ben’s quartet playing a gig at the club for a long weekend with a local rhythm section to be led by Stan. [If my memory serves me right, not always the case these days, Jimmy Rowles was going to be the pianist.]

Scheduling conflicts at Shelly’s were compounded by the fact that Stan Levey was still traveling often as a member of Peggy Lee’s trio, so the two-big-men-of-Jazz reunion gig never happened and Ben went back to New York and eventually formed the quartet that Stanley Dance described in this essay/interview about Benjamin Francis Webster (March 27, 1909 – September 20, 1973) which appeared in the May 21, 1964 edition of Downbeat magazine.

“Stride piano, the left hand fast and precise, filled the telephone receiver.

"Hello."

"Ben?"

"Yeah. Wait till I turn my waking-up music off."

The sound of James P. Johnson's piano was abruptly diminished.

"You downstairs? Come on up."

One of tenor saxophonist Ben Webster's afternoon musicales was in progress. A tape on which the Lion, the Lamb, James P., Fats Waller and Art Tatum strove mightily together — his waking-up music —  was still on the Wollensak [tape recorder], but an album by Tatum was now placed on the phonograph. A facet of that pianist's genius was about to be demonstrated to Duke Ellington's bassist, Ernie Shepard, and drummer Sam Woodyard — who occupied nearby hotel rooms and had come in to discuss the previous night's activities.

Webster had sat in for a set with the Ellington band at its Basin Street East opening, and he was happy about the experience. Chuck Connors' arrival having been delayed that night, Webster had taken Connors' seat in the trombone section and been duly introduced to the audience by Ellington as an expert on claves in cha-cha-cha. When the saxophonist came down front later, Ellington had suggested he play "Cottontail," Webster's best-known recorded performance during his principal stay with Ellington, 1939-'43. The performance ended with a chase between Webster and Ellington's regular tenor saxophonist, Paul Gonsalves. It had been a kick.

"If Duke likes you," Webster said, "you're home free." There were bottles of beer sitting on the windowsill outside, cold and ready to drink, and ale on the dressing table, but the main business this afternoon was music and reminiscence. A tape of a 1940 Ellington performance at the Crystal Ballroom in Fargo, N.D., was produced.

"It was so cold there that night," Webster remembered, "we played in our overcoats, and some of the guys kept their gloves on!"

The music coming from the tape had an exciting kind of abandon — the abandon, perhaps, of desperation.

"Sometimes," he added, "when you've traveled all day in the bus, and had no sleep and are dead tired — that's when you get the best playing out of a band. It just happens. And sometimes the opposite."

The material was inspiring. After "The Mooche" came "Ko-Ko," "Pussy Willow"...

"I learned a lot from Rab [Johnny Hodges], but you know what his only advice to me was when I came in the band? 'Learn your parts.'"

The tape continued rolling. "Chatterbox," "Harlem Airshaft," "Jack the Bear," "Rumpus in Richmond," "Sidewalks of New York," "The Flaming Sword," "Never No Lament"...

"That's why Duke leaves his mark on you, forever," Webster said.

"Clarinet Lament," "Slap Happy," "Sepia Panorama," "Rockin' in Rhythm," "Cottontail"...

"Sonny Greer, and he's swinging!" Webster exclaimed in admiration of the drummer who worked with Ellington from the '20s to the '50s.

"Conga Brava," "Stardust," "Rose of the Rio Grande" and "Boy Meets Horn" preceded the finale, an uproarious version of "St. Louis Blues," on which trombonist Tricky Sam Nanton took over from Webster and carried through to the coda.

"We were drinking buddies," the saxophonist said, and laughed, "but you heard how he tore right in on me there."

After a few jokes, the conversation came back to piano, steered by the host, and the striding hands of yesterday stretched out again on tape and vinyl. Often they belonged to Fats Waller.

"

All that fun but never a wrong note," Webster remarked. "If only he could have lived until TV!"

Contemporaries were considered and Ralph Sutton commended as "a wonderful cat." Earl Hines, too: "Earl swings his head off."

A memory of the Beetle [stride pianist Stephen Henderson] intervened, the diffident-seeming Beetle who took part in the piano battles uptown and seldom played anything less than an easy, rocking, medium tempo but who triumphed nevertheless. Another memory returned, of the Lamb — Donald Lambert — who came to the battlefield once or twice a year, astounded everyone, and then retired to New Jersey again. From that point, it required little urging to get Webster to tell of his first experience with the Harlem piano school.

"I shall never forget the time when I met Count Basie," he began. "It was while he was in Kansas City with Gonzel White, and he used to stop the show. I always did like Basic, and I always did want to play the piano. He bore with me for a long time, and he told me that in the event I ever got to New York, I was to be sure to find the Lion—Willie Smith. He had already told me that the bosses were James P. Johnson and the Lion, and that then came Duke, Fats and Willie Gant. I don't remember all the names, but there was a gang of great piano players in those days.

"Clyde Hart and I managed to get with Blanche Galloway. Clyde was a friend of mine, a piano player, and Edgar Battle sent for us in Kansas City We played the Pearl Theater in Philly, at 22nd and Ridge, I think it was, and Clyde and I got on the train the first day we had off and came to New York.

"Basie had briefed me. 'Go to the Rhythm Club,' he said, 'and that's where you'll find the Lion. He knows all the piano players and all the good musicians. They hang out there, and the Lion will introduce you right. Naturally, I wanted to hear people like Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges and Coleman Hawkins too. Basie had also told us how to approach the Lion so that he would bear with us. Basie said he liked a little taste every now and then, that he loved cigars, and that maybe he would play a little for us.

"So we walked up to the Rhythm Club on 132nd Street and Seventh Avenue, and we met the Lion. There was a cigar store right on the corner, and in those days they had great big El Productos, three for a half-dollar.

'"Mr. Lion,' we said, 'would you care to have some cigars?'

"The Lion rounded on us and said, 'Say, you are pretty nice kids. Yes, I'll have a cigar or two.'

"

So we walked with him to the corner and asked him how many could he smoke.

"'Oh, maybe two.'

"So we bought him half a dozen, and then he smiled and said,' You kids are really nice kids!'

"Then we asked him, 'Would you care for a little drink, Mr. Lion?'

"'Yeah,'he said.

"Then we told him we would like to hear him play, and at that time there was a place right across from the Rhythm Club, and he took us over there, and he got in the mood with his cigar and a little taste in between.

"It was one of the greatest experiences of my life to hear a man play like this. Though I had heard James P. Johnson around 1925 in Kansas City, that was a little early, and I think I could understand more of what I was listening to when I got to the Lion.

"He played for us for three or four hours, and we kept buying him a little taste, and he kept saying we were nice kids. I had a beautiful day and I never will forget it."

Until about a year ago, Webster had resided for several years in Los Angeles, taking care of his mother and grandmother, but when they both died within a year's time, he had no family reason to stay in California, and he moved to New York City.

He has brought back to the ingrowing New York scene the good humor and expansive generosity of spirit that have been dwindling for some time among its hard-pressed musicians. Webster is big physically — broad-shouldered and

straight-backed — and he is bigger than the rat race. One is soon aware that music occupies his mind far more than money— music as, above all, a means to enjoyment.

Ellington's wasn't the only band he sat in with during the winter. Gerry Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band found it had an impulsive new pianist one night in Bird-land, and at the Metropole on another occasion, Webster took Marty Napoleon's place at the keyboard for a set.

The appearances with his own quartet at the Shalimar, Birdland and the Half Note have proved popular. His material, consisting mostly of the better standards and well-known Ellington numbers, is strong on melodic content. Just as he did 20 years ago, with men like pianists Marlowe Morris and Johnny Guarnieri and drummer Sid Catlett, he likes to open and close a performance with a statement of the theme. Good melody, well phrased, communicates as strongly in the jazz idiom as in any other, and there are distinct advantages from the audience's viewpoint to having the melody established in the mind when following the variations. Webster recognizes this, plus the importance of good tempos.

Stylistically, he illustrates the evolutionary process always at work within the music.

The jazz audience was probably first made aware of him in 1932 on the several explosive records that indicated the musical ferment in Kansas City—those made by Bennie Moten with Basie, trumpeter Oran (Hot Lips) Page, trombonist Eddie Durham and reed man Eddie Barefield, in addition to Webster — "Moten Swing," "Lafayette," etc.

In his subsequent recordings, there was uninterrupted development, but up until the time he joined Ellington, listeners generally recognized the influence of Coleman Hawkins rather than the personality of Ben Webster. Yet, as Hughes Panassie perceptively noted, "The grace of his melodic line makes one think of Benny Carter." In fact, it is Carter whom Webster names first among saxophonists—then Hawkins, then Johnny Hodges ("the most feeling") and then Hilton Jefferson ("the prettiest").

Established stylistically in 1940, Webster himself became an important influence. Prominent among those to acknowledge it was Eddie (Lockjaw) Davis, at one time known as Little Ben.

When Paul Gonsalves took the tenor chair with Ellington, his ability to play solos in Webster's style profoundly surprised the leader, but in the 14 years that have followed, Gonsalves' musical personality has developed on strongly individual lines, a fact evident when he and his early mentor played "Cottontail" at Basin Street East. It was even more evident in a jam session at Count Basie's bar in Harlem, when Webster, Gonsalves and fellow tenor man Harold Ashby were together on the stand. Ashby is a close friend of Webster's who proudly proclaims his friend's influence, but all three were individually and instantly identifiable by tone and phrasing.

"He's improved so much he scares me," Webster said of Ashby's playing, using his most admiring epithet.

Gonsalves, too, he esteems highly. One of the records often played on his phonograph is "I've Just Seen Her," from Ellington's All American album, a Gonsalves performance that never fails to impress saxophone players.

At Webster's musicale, Gonsalves reminisced about the first time he heard Tatum. He had gone to a club with Webster, Basie and trumpeter Harry Edison to hear Tatum, but the master didn't feel like playing that night. So Webster sat down at the piano and played awhile. Then Edison played, and finally Basie. With that, Tatum decided to play—"Get Happy" at a very fast tempo. What astonished him, Webster said, was the way Tatum's left hand took care of business while the right reached for a drink.

Perhaps this anecdote passed through Webster's mind at the jam session at Basie's club. He called "Get Happy" They took off, lightning fast, and Gonsalves went into a furious and fantastically devised solo.

"Paul's getting so hot," Webster exclaimed with mock alarm, "I don't think I should have called this tune!"

Another afternoon visitor was tenorist Budd Johnson, who had first shown Webster the scale on saxophone and how to play "Singin' the Blues." Webster had been taught violin, but had not liked the instrument. There were two pianos in the Webster house, his mother's and his cousin's ("I ruined my cousin's piano playing blues"), and when he should have been practicing violin, he was usually busy on one or the other of them. Pete Johnson, who lived across the street, taught him how to play the blues.

"If you lay the violin down a week, you're in trouble," Webster said, "but you can lay a horn down a year and be OK." So when he switched to piano, it was the end of the violin phase.

He was playing piano in a silent-movie house in Amarillo, Texas, when Gene Coy's band came to town, and he met Budd Johnson and his brother, trombonist Keg. The saxophone fascinated Webster, and in 1929, when he was 20, he heard that the Young family band needed another saxophone player; he went to see Lester's father.

"I can't read," he said.

Mr. Young was amused.

"I haven't got a horn," he added.

Mr. Young was then even more amused, but he provided Webster with an alto saxophone and taught him to read.

"Lester's father mostly played trumpet, but he could play anything, and, what's more, he was a master teacher," Webster recalled.

Lester played tenor, and Webster insists he was playing wonderfully even then. Lee Young and his sister, Irma, were also members of the band and played saxophones at that time, too.

The group went to Albuquerque, N.M., for some months, and it was there that Webster, a strong swimmer, helped save the lives of both Lester and Lee. Lester got into difficulties in the Rio Grande and was carried away, tumbling over and over in the water until Webster and guitarist Ted Brinson rescued him. On another occasion, Lee stepped off the bank into a deep sand hole, and Webster managed to haul him out.

"Lee dived right in again," Webster remembered, "but Lester didn't want to think about swimming for a long time after that."

Some months later, after Budd and Keg Johnson had left it, Webster got a call to join Gene Coy's band ("about nine or 10 pieces") in which Harold Coleman was playing tenor. That was really the beginning of the professional career as a saxophonist that brought him, experienced and mature, into New York City, 1964.

“I think I’m playing better than ever right now,” he said. Then he repeated, “I think.”