The Clark Terry - Bob Brookmeyer Quintet and The Power of Positive Swinging

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

It is true that at the Half Note, the staff refers to Terry and Brookmeyer as "Mumbles and Grumbles." "Mumbles" is the title of a widely popular Terry recording, and "Grumbles" alludes to Brookmeyer's occasionally sardonic view of the world and the foibles of its inhabitants, including his own. Yet I wonder if at base, the two are actually that disparate.

Both are the antithesis of pretentiousness off as well as on the stand. Both have never regarded jazz as so "serious" that it cannot also be unabashed fun. And both are very much themselves. Beneath Terry's gentleness and open good will and beneath Brookmeyer's wry (and sometimes self-deprecating) wit are an insistence on going their own ways. Each has resisted being compressed into any one "bag" and accordingly, the two together are — to use a favorite Duke Ellington commendation — beyond category.

- Nat Hentoff, Distinguished and Esteemed Jazz author and critic

When I acquired my copy of Clark Terry-Bob Brookmeyer Quintet: The Power of Positive Swinging [Mainstream LP 56054] in 1965, I never gave the subtitle much thought.

From the vantage point of the 20 years preceding 1965, Modern Jazz, to use the term collectively and inclusively, had experienced a surge of both stylistic growth and popular approval and it seemed that this would continue to be the case going forward.

Unfortunately, the music and many of its musicians took themselves too seriously, not to mention, taking the music in directions that caused it to lose its future audiences to Rock ‘n Roll.

Looking back on the post 1965 Jazz World many years later, a re-reading of the following insert notes by Nat Hentoff, this time as they appeared in the CD version of Clark Terry-Bob Brookmeyer Quintet: The Power of Positive Swinging [Mainstream JK 57117], helped the subtitle of the recording become more understandable.

Sadly so because in many ways 1965 was a year when Jazz began its descendance as a music with a broad appeal and continued its ascendancy as an "art form," an increasingly obscure one at that.

“EVER since critics and other verbalizers began to involve themselves with jazz, categorizations have grown through the music like weeds. And also like weeds, these stylistic labels are often difficult to cut down so that you can experience the music directly. One index of the singular pleasures to be had from the music of the Clark Terry & Bob Brookmeyer Quintet is that it not so much defies categories but rather ignores them. Their invitation to simply make contact with the music itself is so immediate and infectious that only the most rigidified academic would try to sort this combo and the music it plays into some constrictingly neat niche.

"That," observes Mr. Brookmeyer, himself chronically reluctant to verbalize about music, "is what our music is for - pleasure, not historical diagnosis. We all enjoy each other personally, and perhaps it's that mutual enjoyment that comes out in the music." As of August, 1965, Brookmeyer and Terry will have been together four years. They are not together all the time, of course, because their multiple skills often occupy them in other assignments. But their nights as co-leaders of this unit usually add up to about three months a year, with New York's Half Note their basing point. And in addition, they play other locations and cities from time to time.

Heightening the evident pleasure which Brookmeyer and Terry absorb from this association is their pride in the group. "This," Brookmeyer notes, "is ours. Clark and I have always worked for other people and whatever renown -or notoriety, if you will - we've accumulated has been with other people. After all that time, it's a continuing enjoyment for us to shape our own band."

As you can hear on this set, the relaxed cohesion of the co-leaders is buttressed by a similar collective flow of skills in the rhythm section. Dave Bailey and Bill Crow have been with the group for two and a half years and are also colleagues of Brookmeyer in the Gerry Mulligan Quartet. Pianist Roger Kellaway, the most recent of a series of resourceful pianists with Brookmeyer and Terry, blends into the section with attentive resiliency.

"Roger," notes Brookmeyer in a rare surge of adjectives, "is one of the most impressive, versatile talents I've heard in recent years. He can play any way; and no matter what way it is, it's clear he's not jiving. He really is able to become part of a wide range of contexts."

The initial "Dancing On The Grave" by Brookmeyer has become the combo's theme song. It is a cheerful kind of "walpurgisnacht [usually a night when something nightmarish occurs]," and Brookmeyer considers it unnecessary to be specific about what the title implies. Each listener is left to his own connotations. The "Battle Hymn Of The Republic" is a particular favorite at the Half Note, especially for Frank Canterino, the chef-in-chief of the establishment. "We refer to the song," says Brookmeyer, "as getting Frank out of the kitchen." In this head arrangement, incidentally, the musicians sound as if the battle has already been won and all that's left to do is to celebrate.

"The King," a number written by Count Basic, is a distillation of the verb "to swing" - both in its original manifestation and in this version. "Ode To A Flugelhorn" points up Clark Terry's brisk mastery of this instrument which seems particularly attuned to his qualities of wit, lithe grace and concern for textural values.

Brookmeyer arranged the vintage "Gal In Calico" having been attracted to the song because it allowed the combo to explore yet another nuance of mood. "Green Stamps," by Brookmeyer, is an ebullient event, marked by a series of exchanges between the co-leaders which turns into a circle of wit. "Hawg Jawz" is Clark Terry's and it particularly reflects Clark's antic humor. It also is an illustration - by Terry and Brookmeyer - of the art of breakmanship. Their dialogue of breaks here is consistently fresh, pointed, and relevant.

"Simple Waltz" is by Clark and in this song too, there are quick-witted ripostes by the two leaders as well as solos by them that reveal their easy - and unerring - sense of swing. The final "Just An Old Manuscript," a Don Redman/Andy Razaf collaboration, is a model of how a combo can achieve a wholly relaxed, organic unity.

In recalling the nearly four years of his association with Terry, Brookmeyer observes that "It was a pleasure from the very beginning, from the first rehearsal-talk over in my apartment." "And yet," Brookmeyer adds, "we're very disparate personalities."

It is true that at the Half Note, the staff refers to Terry and Brookmeyer as "Mumbles and Grumbles." "Mumbles" is the title of a widely popular Terry recording, and "Grumbles" alludes to Brookmeyer's occasionally sardonic view of the world and the foibles of its inhabitants, including his own. Yet I wonder if at base, the two are actually that disparate.

Both are the antithesis of pretentiousness off as well as on the stand. Both have never regarded jazz as so "serious" that it cannot also be unabashed fun. And both are very much themselves. Beneath Terry's gentleness and open good will and beneath Brookmeyer's wry (and sometimes self-deprecating) wit are an insistence on going their own ways. Each has resisted being compressed into any one "bag" and accordingly, the two together are — to use a favorite Duke Ellington commendation — beyond category.

What does, then, link their personalities is independence. And it is an independence secure enough in itself to be flexible. They are flexible in terms of music and flexible with regard to their ability to respond fully to each other and to the rest of the musicians in the combo so that this unit is an egalitarian meeting of compatible spirits. It gives pleasure because it takes pleasure in itself.

Clark Terry distills the essence of the Terry/Brookmeyer fusion: "It seemed to me there's too much put-down music, put-on music, hurray-for-me music and the-hell-with-everybody-music. So we thought we'd have some compatible music."

Nat Hentoff Original sleeve notes from 1965

The following video tribute to The Clark Terry-Bob Brookmeyer Quintet features Clark, Bob, Roger, Bill and Dave on Count Basie’s The King.

Brookmeyer, Mulligan and the Concert Jazz Band - Martin Williams

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

This feature is drawn from Jazz Changes [1992], a collection of essays and reviews by Martin Wiiliams about whom Gary Giddins wrote: “One of the most distinguished critics [about anything] this country has ever produced.”

I wanted to include it among the postings to these pages on the topic of the Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz band because it begins at the beginning of what was to become one of the most profoundly influential Jazz big bands in the second half of the 20th century.

And because: “Martin Williams persistently gets at essences, and that is why he has contributed so much to the very small body of authentic Jazz criticism.” [Nat Hentoff]

“Gerry Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band, founded in 1961, has become an intermittent, frequently revived institution in the years since. In the meanwhile, it had been the immediate progenitor of the Thad Jones—Mel Lewis orchestra and its successor, the Mel Lewis Orchestra. Mulligan's "movie work," referred to in the brief encounter recorded below, would include his fine vignette as a shy, inept suitor in the -film version of Bells Are Ringing, an appearance (as himself) in an episode of the Ben Gazzara TV series, "Run for Your Life," etc.

Bob Brookmeyer's puzzlement at the fact that I was interviewing him rather than the leader on the founding of the Concert Jazz Band continued after the piece appeared in Metronome. There were no protests voiced by Gerry Mulligan, however.

When the word first spread that Gerry Mulligan was forming a "concert jazz band," a lot of rumors spread with it. One of the first was that Bob Brookmeyer would be a member, the first soloist and first arranger after Mulligan, and that his enthusiasm was running very high. He was not, I learned, official "musical director," but he was rehearsing the band on occasion and very much wrapped up in its progress. Nevertheless, here was Bob Brookmeyer, after all these years, back in a chair in a brass section, reading a part—a sideman again.

I decided to talk to him rather than to Mulligan in order to get some feelings about the band that might prove to be as interesting as the leader's. Accordingly, I warned Brookmeyer to expect me one evening at the Village Vanguard.

I had to be fast in getting from a front table to the back door to catch Brookmeyer on the way out after the first set — and I thoroughly confused the headwaiter in the maneuver. Anyway, I overtook Brookmeyer in the street and after I reminded him that I had a pencil and intended to take notes, the conversation went something like this:

"Sure, I'll talk about the band. I love to. But I can't say anything official or about policy. Why don't you talk to Gerry?"

"Everybody talks to Gerry. I wanted to ask you. And from what I have heard this band has meant a lot to you."

"It certainly has. And not just me. But you'll have to check this with Gerry."

"I will. But, look, why don't we tell people how a thing like this starts? I mean, for example, it takes money. Where did the money come from?"

"From Gerry's movie work. He didn't want to borrow it, and he didn't want this band to have an angel. The first estimate was that it would take $30,000 to get it started and maintain it until we could see whether it would go. Arrangements, for example; the fellows who have contributed can't afford to write on hope or speculation as they could when they were younger. They have to have commissions."

"That's another thing, I said. When a band like this starts, where do the arrangements come from? You don't begin with old ones for something like this, do you?"

"No. The book had to be new — scored or re-scored just for this band. That was part of the idea. We began with twenty-seven things, from Al Cohn, Phil Sunkel, Johnny Mandel, Gerry, Bill Holman, me . . . We didn't want to borrow or trade with other bands, either, the way some groups do. Except Duke. Gerry asked Duke for some things, but he hasn't sent them yet.

Otherwise, we don't want things other people have played. Young Blood is rescored for us from the way Gerry did it for Kenton. A couple of things are re-scorings of arrangements from Gerry's Tentette album on Capitol. And Johnny Carisi rewrote Israel for us the way you heard it in the last set ... Look, Gerry doesn't need any refractor when he talks. Why don't you ask him?"

"Well, partly because, as I said, I know this band means a lot to you ..."

"To me, yes. But Mel Lewis left his wife and family behind in California, and the security of studio work, to come here and squeeze his way onto the bandstand at the Village Vanguard with us. And Nick Travis left a dependable job on the Jack Paar show, Buddy Clark originally came with Mel, Don Ferrara, and . . . but talk to Gerry. What he says goes."

"What was all of that stuff about there being only one soloist after you and Gerry, or whatever it was?"

"Well, you heard. We have at least seven soloists now — Gene Quill, Jim Reider, Don Ferrara, Nick Travis. We had Conte Candoli — Clark Terry replaced him — Willie Dennis — besides Gerry and me. Zoot Sims was with us for the Monterey festival. And we will have more. There are no duds in the band now, because all of us are enthusiastic, and we all know this is something we have to do. We believe in it. It is the chance we all still have to play jazz.

"We had a five-week lay-off last fall before we went back to the Vanguard In the middle of September. It was during that time that the changes in personnel were made and the enthusiasts joined.

"When we first opened the band at Basin Street East, last year, the band sounded bad in several ways. A lot of people put it down, or said it was loud, or other things. But some others were so glad to find a fresh attitude, a fresh big band sound, and musicians who were also fresh. Those people saw the possibilities in what we were trying to do and were patient; some of those people were musicians who wanted to join and help. Now we know. This band plays two kinds of sets: very good or very bad. Stay and listen. When you hear a good one, you will know what we know.

"I really was beginning to feel that jazz was passing me by. The newest things I have heard in person—I go to listen to Ornette or George Russell's group and I love them. But playing like that is not possible for me. I feel the way I think Buck Clayton may have felt around 1947.

"I put on a Joe Turner record and it gives me a starting point, but the newer things make me feel I am finished, and I'll have to wait out the rest of my life making soft-drink jingles for television. This band puts me in jazz, making jazz music I can love and respect.

"But talk to Gerry. He is the best spokesman for what we're trying to do."

"Are you doing any more writing for the band?"

"I haven't got the time while we are into it and working. I wish I did. Neither does Gerry. But we both did some writing during our winter layoff."

"By the way, this is some sort of precedent, isn't it? A big band with no piano — except for occasional piano things from you and Gerry."

"I suppose so. But you don't need it. What do you hear of a piano in a big band anyway?

"But I can't speak about policy. Gerry and I have even disagreed about a couple of little things. I'm just trying to help. Check all this with him before you print it, will you?"

When I went back into the Vanguard, I was sure I had the headwaiter thoroughly confused. Gerry, on the other hand, said it was all, alright with him.” (1961)

Bob Brookmeyer: An Interview With Bill Coss

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

Jazz author and critic Bill Coss wrote many articles for both Down Beat and Metronome magazines in the 1950s and 1960. He was for a time the editor of Metronome’s annual Yearbook, a compilation of drawings, anecdotes and articles on a variety of subjects including Jazz.

This is Bill Coss’ first visit to these pages and what makes it even more memorable is that he brings with him a delightful interview with valve trombonist, composer and arrangers, Bob Brookmeyer.

Conducted in 1961, in the years following the interview Bob would go on to develop one of the legendary careers in the Jazz world both at home and in Europe. Bob died in 2011.

“Bob Brookmeyer is a deceptively relaxed, tightly poised, carefully cynical young man whose social and musical comments are highly polished examples of opposites—the brooding playboy, the thoughtful imp.

"You say I'm playing better than I ever played before?" He smiles, lights a cigarette, coughs, explains that he hasn't a cold, "just New York bronchitis," to which he has "patiently adjusted" rather than follow doctor's orders to give up smoking. "I'd say," he finally does say, "that I'm playing just as bad as I ever did.

"Maybe there seems to be an improvement because I'm playing with a big band. Your solos are necessarily short in a band of any size. You have to stress consistency. No, it's not a thing you regret. It's a worthwhile sacrifice, a responsibility toward 13 or 14 other people, the other guys in the band. I know Gerry feels that way too.

"Am I being a disappointment? I remember one time when an interview got off to a flying finish as soon as I answered the critic's first two questions. You know, they were the usual ones: what is jazz and where is it going?

"I told him that jazz was a living and that jazz was going down the drain. That was a put-on, of course, but jazz is my living. That's about as far as I want to go on the subject. No definitions, thank you. It's my living and I do the best I can.

"I've stayed away from analyzing it. I stay away from all the tags too, this tabloid thinking that somehow got into jazz. All the words that are used are pretty silly. Jazz is a pretty silly word, for that matter.

"As I say, all I know about jazz is that you do the best you can. You learn that you can't cheat on the music; you can't even sacrifice the music for your home life.

"That's why I'm not especially interested in where jazz may be going. I'm only concerned with writing jazz, much more so than in the playing of it. And I can't get especially involved in the futuristic developments. Those people who do are certainly important enough, if only because you can learn things negatively from them. But the danger of living or working in the future is that you lose so much of present humanity that way. When people complain about some experimentalists, that's really what they are complaining about, or what they should be complaining about — the loss of humanity."

Jazz is a human voice, as one critic has put it. Most of our great instrumentalists would agree with that in one way or another, and with its application to their playing. As Brookmeyer would say it: "What you are producing should be a human sound. The metal instrument is just a thing you use. It shouldn't determine you or what you do. But it does for too many musicians today. That's why so many of the musicians sound alike.

"I grant you that most young trombonists wouldn't want to sound like Bill Harris. (You know he influenced me more than anyone else.) But my point is that they couldn't, even if they wanted to. They play the instrument, not themselves. Bill played himself on the instrument. When it wouldn't do what he wanted to say, he damn well stomped on it until it did. Jazz is a personal expression. A jazzman should be saying what he feels. He's one human being talking to others, telling his story — and that means humor and sadness, joy, all the things that humans have. You tell it freely and honestly, and sometimes you don't make it. It's a matter of percentages; like, telling a joke that no one laughs at. But you tell it, whatever it is, and it's yours. That's you, that's human, that's jazz."

That's the convinced and dedicated Brookmeyer speaking; preaching, if you will, and come naturally by the conviction, dedication and preaching, if your bit is environmentalism, because his early environment was in the jazz bedrock of Kansas City.

Born just five miles from its heart, across the viaduct on the Kansas side, on December 19, 1929, he has written expressively and charmingly about his experience there for a United Artists album cover:

". . . some lovely and lasting talk came out of there — some gentleness (genteelness, if you will), that could only be found around men who so fully knew what they did and wherein they spoke that relaxation was the only way to express it. When you're not sure, it gets very nervous, but that utter confidence in swing is hard to beat. . .

"When I was one of the youngest jazz fans in the country, my dad and I would cheat on the parson a Sunday or two and stay by the radio to wait for the 15 minutes of Basie, 10:45 over KCKN (now a country and western station, bless their souls). Then too, Basie would be through town at the Tower theater, five, six times a year and I got to be a real pro at forging passes from school to catch three shows and two bad Westerns before there would be some salt from the home kitchen. First time I ever heard any really close up was around my 13th year. A kiddy band I toiled with was waiting their turn at old Garrett hall and we came upon Oliver Todd's six-piece band—they would make anybody's jaw slacken up a bit with Little Phil (Edward Phillips, now hopelessly a mental patient, due to our lovely and humane local 'apartheid'), and some of the easiest, longest time I had ever seen. My, that was a sight that I shan't forget. When I was old enough to sneak into the night clubs and dives where the good bands played, it was always the same feeling, to my heart anyway. Smooth, deep, rich, mellow, like a fine cigarette, if you will. But with a 'cleanup' local government, the end of the war, and the advent of the ofay bopper, that pretty well washed up swing music in KC. There are still a lot of my friends about who went to school with Bird, danced to Basie at the old Reno club, loved all that the easy jive stood for, but you can't hold a wake all your life, so—nothin' shakin' back home—Wolfe was right —Home in a pine box. . ."

If you feel a resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald in the movement of this writing, even in Brookmeyer's care for words, accept the thought and file it carefully. Unfortunately, he doesn't feel that he has time for the written word. Fortunately, he feels he has the time for the written note, about which more later in this essay. Fortunately, too, there is every possible resemblance between the Brookmeyer love of the old Kansas City and his musical, personal expression of it today.

What Leonard Feather has described as a style which is bop-influenced, but definitely in the mainstream, "resembling a valve equivalent of Bill Harris," got off to a strange start. Bob began his career as a clarinetist, added trombone and piano, and studied at the Kansas City Conservatory before he went into the Army. After military service, he rejoined Tex Beneke as a pianist. "I still played slide trombone, though, but just now and then. But when I auditioned for Claude Thornhill, I tried the valve. That was in 1952. I found the slide instrument lacked the passion of the valve, and it was easier to say things I wanted to say with trumpet fingering.

"In those days, there was so much prejudice against the valve trombone. It was thought of as a doubling instrument. Several bands had trumpeters who would suddenly change chairs and make the trombone section sound bigger for certain arrangements. It's different now, but I still see conductors look at me weirdly. Still, they pay you, so what's the difference?"

Beneke and Thornhill, and bands led by Ray McKinley, Louis Prima, Terry Gibbs, Jerry Wald, and Woody Herman, brought him to 1953 and a one-year affiliation with Stan Getz, which finally called him to the attention of the jazz world here and abroad. Jimmy Giuffre asked to be quoted, especially for this article, stating that "that band with Getz and Brookmeyer is my favorite of all the jazz groups I've ever heard."

Bob was being quoted widely by that time. To one interviewer he explained: "My style is composed of everything I've heard that I've liked, and even, I'm afraid, some things I haven't liked." Or. "There's something timeless about all the great things in jazz. Something that cuts across years and styles. I've listened to and collected what I could of old Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Sidney Bechet, and Mezz Mezzrow, along with lots of others. There's strength and simplicity in them."

Once, when he was questioned about what seemed to be retrogression, he said: "In the past two or three years, especially . . . now that I've settled down in my playing, all this interest in the past and in the folk influence around me has become reactivated . . . I'm going to start doing more research. I don't mean I'm going to make bathtub gin, but I'm going to listen and find more sheet music . . . I'm not afraid of being called retrogressive. Music can be like love and painting. Just because a song and a spirit have been around a while doesn't mean it's diminished in value."

At the same time he began to be analyzed by jazz writers, the very thing he says he most abhors, although his own words are indicative of a very careful analysis. Ira Gitler remembers that during his visits to Kansas City in the late 1940s, "the musicians around town spoke warmly of him. The one thing that they all had in common was an enthusiasm for the playing of Bob Brookmeyer."

Composer-arranger Bill Holman reflects that "obviously he has a lot of academic knowledge, but he never lets it interfere with his concept of what jazz should be.

He's used his knowledge of techniques to get across his thought, yet without destroying the thought itself." Nat Hentoff writes: "Brookmeyer has opened himself to jazz of all eras. He has absorbed, tested, and selected from the whole reservoir of autobiographies in sound that is the jazz language, those elements he felt relevant to his own experience in living and telling his story in jazz. He has listened and imagined farther back than Jelly Roll Morton and beyond Charlie Parker. He has not limited himself to any one era, school or attitude, preferring to filter all of jazz through his emotions rather than remain a parochial hipster."

The most concise of the reports on Brookmeyer is from critic-drummer Jack Maher: "Brookmeyer pours all he has learned of the past and the present into his playing. Harmonically and rhythmically, its source is a compressed history of the jazz heritage with a heavy emphasis on the wonderful rolling swing that was so much a part of the Basie contribution. Much of what Bob plays has a smooth, punching percussiveness to it. His ideas evolve out of basic phrases that are extended, restructured and re-accented rhythmically. This puts him in a distinct empathy with drummers. All kinds of inventions and improvisations come to the minds, hands, and feelings of the drummer as he listens to Bob. Harmonically, he has that unique ability to blend with other instruments. Besides unison, he can interweave ideas with another horn without yelling the other instrumentalists off the bandstand. He's articulate whether in group therapy or when he's carrying on a bit of self-analysis. His solos exist as entities in themselves. They build simply and slowly, increase in intensity and close out at the instinctive dramatic moment. . ."

The subject of all this (and the great deal more) is amazed at all the words, but pleased in a low-key kind of way. He likes readers to beware of long quotes attributed to him ("My God, the things I've said"). He wants, most positively, to be accepted on his own terms, and he is a positive thinker.

About playing: "Whatever instrument you play, you must have a passion for it, and you must play it passionately. Even if you aren't good and keep making mistakes, you must have the passion."

About a record of his own, he gives a set of directions that stand for almost any Brookmeyer album: "Just grab a nice glass of Dewar's Finest, one big, old and very easy chair, turn the volume up, and listen. Why, by neddies, you can even dance, if it's allowed in your town on Sunday. But above all, you're supposed to have a good time with it, otherwise you missed the whole point, and you can't do that." About adverse criticism: "You can tell Buddy (Rich, that is, who wondered critically in print for another publication) that the reason that we do what we do is because it's fun." "Can you imagine? Some writer in the middle-West said we had Billy May style arrangements.

"Anyway, I've begun to believe that there is one sure way of knowing whether you belong in a club or not. When the waiters treat you impossibly, you know that you've had it.

"I'm convinced that we are too much at the mercy of everyone. Unlike artists in almost any other field, we have no one to protect us. We need some kind of buffer. Martha Glaser is the best example of that; what she does to protect and advance Erroll Garner. She should probably be Secretary of State. She's had the experience."

About his current experience with the Gerry Mulligan Band: "I already said that the feeling of working with so many other people is a good one; everybody working for something believed in. I don't regret not playing in a small group. Arrangers and composers need a big band. There isn't anything quite like it. That's so for all musicians. Ask Mel Lewis. Look at all the things he gave up on the west coast to come with this band, just because he knew that he should play with a big jazz band."

About the future: "The immediate future, that is. The band is good, but we've never had a quiet time. Everything has been pressure and more pressure. That's no way to prepare for the present or the future. Gerry's very wisely about to call a halt to the band for about two months. Not a vacation, mind you; just a time to work, to write in peace and quiet, to relax and create. You know what I said about jazz being a living. Think about it that way. Just after the first of the year, we will shut down to retool. We'll bring out the spring line along about March some time."

January 19, 1961

Bob Brookmeyer: Strength and Simplicity

Down Beat

An Interview at Mid-Career with Bob Brookmeyer - Parts 1 and 2 [From The Archives]

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

One of the earliest features of this blog was the following interview with Bob Brookmeyer. When it originally posted in two parts in July, 2008, Bob was still going strong and writing up a storm for various big bands both in the United States and in Europe.

He died on December 15, 2011 and with his passing went one of the most unconventional "traditionalists" that Jazz ever had.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to remember Bob on these pages by combining both parts of the early posting into one feature for ease of access in the archives and in order to add a video at its conclusion that highlights Bob's considerable gifts as an composer-arranger.

Bob Brookmeyer has always been a man of strongly-held opinions and, after reading this interview from 1980 with Wayne Enstice and Paul Rubin from their Jazz Spoken Here: Conversations with 22 Musicians [New York: Da Capo Press, 1994, pp. 59-75], I’m sure you will agree that not much has changed in this regard.

In addition to explaining how he got started in music, he shares many revealing anecdotes about and the musicians and groups he has worked with, especially those from the 1950’s and 60’s, and discusses the Jazz scene in and around 1980.

Never one to shy away from expressing his views, he also “holds court” on such far-ranging subjects as teaching improvisational skills to the ‘current’ generation of Jazz players, going back to the source as the proper place to begin one’s education in a particular style of the music, and his views about what he personally needs to do in order for Bob Brookmeyer to have a future in Jazz.

Obviously, in the intervening decades since this interview was conducted, Brookmeyer has been doing what needed to be done and has been able to add many more years to an already distinguished career. During the past 20 years, Bob would move to Europe and concentrate on composing and arranging large pieces for some of the state-supported, resident orchestras in The Netherlands [The Metropole Orchestra] and Germany [The WDR Big Band]. He now maintains dual residences in the USA and Europe and is currently the director of the New Arts Orchestra based in Lubeck, Germany.

© -  Wayne Enstice and Paul Rubin, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

"Deep‑toned and incisive, the playing of valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer is one of the most unmistakable sounds in jazz­. The only important jazz musician other than Juan Tizol [played valve trombone in Duke Ellington's orchestra from 1929 to 1944 and again from 1951 to 1953] to concentrate on the valve trombone, Brookmeyer is also an accomplished pianist and composer‑arranger.

Born in 1929, the Kansas City, Kansas, native studied piano and com­position at the Kansas City Conservatory. He began his professional career as a pianist in the early fifties, comping for various bandleaders, including Tex Beneke, Ray McKinley, Louis Prima, Claude Thornhill (with whom he played trombone and second piano), and Woody Herman. Brookmeyer started doubling on valve trombone in 1952, and in 1953 he did a year's stint with the Stan Getz Quartet that included the Paris Jazz Festival. It was not until the spring of 1954 when he replaced Chet Baker in Gerry Mulligan's West Coast‑style piano-less quartet, however, that Brookmeyer achieved national prominence.

Brookmeyer worked steadily with Mulligan's sextet and quartet until 1957, then finished the decade by playing with the Jimmy Giuffre 3 and free‑lancing as a player and a writer in New York for a year. He toured with Gerry Mulligan's Concert Jazz Band in 1960, contributing charts and taking key solos on trombone and occasionally piano. In 1961 he found a kindred spirit in trumpet player Clark Terry, and the two began a five‑year association co‑leading a popular and critically well‑received quintet. The series of recordings they made for the Mainstream label persuasively captured the solid, straight-ahead blowing, the fresh arrange­ments, and the contagious joy that were consistent features of this con­genial unit.

Brookmeyer was a charter member of the famed Thad Jones‑Mel Lewis Orchestra in 1965, dividing his chores between arranging and playing, and he found steady work as a band member on television's Merv Griffin Show. Beset by personal problems, Brookmeyer left New York in 1968 to resettle in southern California. For the next decade he did some studio work but was relatively inactive as a jazz musician.


Bob Brookmeyer came out of jazz retirement in 1978. He returned to New York and in 1979 began a long‑term relationship as composer-arranger and musical director of Mel Lewis' retooled big band. Although Brookmeyer has concentrated on writing over the last thirteen years (the American Jazz Orchestra premiered one of his works in 1986, making him the first composer to be so honored), he continues to tour and is particul­arly popular with European audiences. Since 1979 he has also released some memorable small‑group recordings on the Gryphon and Concord labels, which demonstrate that despite this versatile jazzman's devotion to composition, his gifts as an improviser and his abilities as a technically dazzling stylist have not diminished.WE: We enjoy the humor in your music. Do you hear humor in today's

BB: Well, I think there's been a slight change. To me, there's a broader way to look at it. In the times, say, from the late twenties through the thirties and the early forties, we had a period of great individualists. We had Lester Youngs, Charlie Parkers, Thelonious Monks, Duke Elling­tons, and Count Basies, and I guess the magic of the gift made them very innovative in what they did. I think probably if you're extremely different you become very secure in what you do. So I would think that a sense of humor would be implicit in a way to face and deal with life.

In the sixties we had some very outstanding musicians, but we didn't have quite the individuals that we had before. I've talked this over with some friends of mine who are writers and who are painters, and I think there is a general, if you want to call it, a cultural malaise. I'm not looking down my nose at it‑it's a comment‑that we have very fine musicians now‑great musicians‑but the character of the timber of the land doesn't seem to be suitable right now for producing the great individuals et twenty or thirty or forty years ago. And I'm not one who looks back to the good old days; to me, today is a good old day. I think that maybe that's one of the reasons that the humor might be‑if it is missing - ­might be missing.

PR: One reviewer once said that "of all the dropouts from the ranks of active jazz men in the sixties few left less conspicuously than Bob Brook­meyer or were more missed." How do you respond to that?

BB: Well, when I moved to California I was in the process of dropping out of life. I was fairly ill at the time, and I went to California a sick man. I spent ten years there, and I got my health back. So it wasn't "I'm fed up, I quit." It was a confused "I wonder what's going wrong" or "what's going worse," and everything seemed to go worse. When I got my health back, things began to dramatically improve, and I am glad that they missed me.

PR: What was it like when you returned to New York?

BB: When I went back to New York I hadn’t been active there really for about fifteen years as a functioning jazz musician. So it was a new world to me. There were a whole generation of people around town who were playing and working that I had to get to know again, and they didn't care what I'd done. They wanted to know what I could do.


PR: Could you give us an example?BB: I think the best example was Mel Lewis' band. They were all new to me. And I came down, and I was the old geezer who'd written some of the fifteen‑year‑old arrangements that they were playing. They could look at me and say, "Well, he did that," but that was no wedge for me in the door. I had to spend the first year and a half in New York getting to know them and saying, "Well, now look, here's what I do, what do you think of that?" So it was really reestablishing credentials, because not many people of the younger generation would say, "Gee, that's really great you played with Gerry Mulligan or Stan Getz." They couldn't care less, you know. If I'd played with maybe Herbie Hancock or Chick Corea or John Coltrane‑those were people who were important to them. So it was a different set of heroes and a different set of judgmental values.

WE: Did the response of those young band members strike you as nar­row‑minded?

BB: No. When I first started playing my life was Count Basie and Bill Harris and Woody Herman. I didn't like Duke Ellington. I thought the man was sloppy and out of tune. That's how much I knew when I was m my late teens. And so I had firm opinions. I used what attracted me. I didn't say, "Well, I should like I heard Stravinsky, and I liked that first, then I learned to like Bach, and then I learned to love Bach, and I learned to like Mozart and like Haydn, you know. You can't say to some­body, "This is the right way, read this Bible and you will feel better to­morrow." They have to find for themselves what they want.

WE: What do you think of young players that you meet in clinics?

BB: The general rap that I heard before I began to do any clinic work­ – and I've not done a great deal‑ is great ensemble, no solo. That has been somewhat borne up by my experience. Once again, I'm speaking from a very small frame of reference.

What I think is most needed now are some traveling improvisational teachers who can teach people to begin to play a song on a C‑major scale or make up a melody with four notes and make up another melody on four notes. To learn to instruct your mind to become an improvisational organ. You know, it's a skill. And then, when you start writing songs, you would naturally, I think, go around Lester Young and graduate to Charlie Parker to hear how things get refined and broken up.

WE: Do you think that improvisation has become a lost art?

BB: Well, it isn't a lost art, really. I think people imitate what's before them, that they find attractive, and what is being imitated now is a refine­ment of a basic. I have some friends in New York in their early thirties I advised to stop listening to Cedar Walton and Bill Evans and to Richie Beirach and whoever, and go back and listen to Bud Powell. This person wanted to be a hot piano player, "hot bebop piano player," end quote. I said. "Well, go back to where it began." If you listen to all of these other people they are reflecting what they heard in Bud Powell. It's like listening to Phil Woods to try to find out how Charlie Parker played. Phil Woods is a fantastic saxophone player, but we all listened to Charlie Par­ker to learn that lesson. So go back to the source.

PR: Let's turn to your early years. Since you were born in Kansas City, did the jazz scene there have any influence on you?

BB: I was about eight or ten years old when I first heard Count Basie, so I wasn't gettin' around town too much then. My limit was about four or five blocks away from the house. The radio did [influence me], because we heard a lot of big bands. And I liked all the big bands. That was the closest thing to jazz music we could hear. I liked dixieland on the radio from Chicago.

When I got old enough to get around in the clubs, there was, I think at that time, a Kansas City sound from rhythm sections. It was a very smooth, fluid sound, much like Count Basie had. And I knew a few play­ers that had been, say, with Lionel Hampton that played that way, and they were magical to play with. The younger, white players tried to play like Max Roach or Buddy Rich. But from the black musicians that I was around a lot, I got more of a good feeling about the music.
When Charlie Parker left, the soloists were all gone. Right before I left, I worked a bit with Ben Webster. He had come back to town when I was about twenty. He came back for a few months. But it was pretty quiet by that time, and it's been, I think, fairly quiet since then.

PR: We read that you began on clarinet and played some piano before picking up the trombone.

BB: Well, it's a little out of sequence. I went from clarinet to trombone. I was shanghaied into playing trombone by my parents and the band di­rector that needed a trombone player. I wanted to be a trumpet player or a drummer, for which I'd saved money. So after being sold down the river, I didn't really care that much for playing slide trombone, and I learned quickly how to finger like a trumpet. That was my second choice of instrument, drums being first. I began to play the baritone horn all I could. And as soon as I could, I got a series of exotic valve trombones and finally, when I was eighteen, got an official one from Reynolds. So I wanted to be something else than a trombone player. I still do, but I would like to look like Robert Redford and sound like Walter Cronkite. So I'm a trombone player. That's my voice, I guess.

The piano came by accident, kind of. I wanted to write music also. When I was about thirteen I began to teach myself how to write. And by the time I was fifteen, I was selling arrangements to a territory band company in Omaha, Nebraska. I sent them a copied arrangement every other week for twenty bucks. And I then finally got a piano just before I was sixteen, so I began to learn officially how a piano went. And since valve trombone players didn't work too much in Kansas City, maybe one night a year, I began to learn how to play piano so I could support myself playing piano ‑ which I did. I supported myself in New York for my first year largely by playing piano.

WE: Your trombone playing abounds with vocal references. What's the source for that?

BB: The biggest impact on me as a trombone player was Bill Harris. He was a very emotive vocalese‑type player. That's the way I tried to play on slide trombone, and that has hung over. I would tell anybody that if you want to play something through an instrument that you should be able to sing it with some conviction and authority and pleasant feelings in your heart as you do it before you can play it. I think it's still a melodic singing process. Beating on something and singing are the things that we start with before we approach an instrument or a chord.

PR: Early on, you played with the Claude Thornhill and Tex Beneke bands. In your estimation, were those dance bands or jazz bands?

BB: I would consider Claude Thornhill very close to being a jazz band. Gil Evans had written almost the entire library, and we had Gene Quill and Brew Moore in the band, Teddy Kotick was the bass player, so we had a very good band. Tex Beneke was obviously a Glenn Miller‑type dance band. I was playing piano, Mel Lewis played drums, and Buddy Clark played bass, so we had fun. We had a band within a band. I did a lot of other dance band work. My first road job was playing piano with Orrin Tucker for six months. I got to travel, and I was in Chicago for three months, and I met an awful lot of people there.

PR: How old were you at the time?

BB: Twenty. And in California I met some people, so my philosophy was then to take the first job you can get leaving town, and when you're on the road get out and play all you can. That's what we did.

WE: Let's talk about J. J. Johnson. He is credited in the media as having been the translator of bop for the trombone. Is that true?

BB: I'm a friend and fan of J. J.'s. Yes, he was the man, as probably Dizzy Gillespie was, and Charlie Parker. The transition to playing bebop on trombone was very difficult, and J. J. solved it, I think, probably about as good as you could at that time.

Obviously, you don't have the upper range that is still desirable as you do in trumpet and alto. The timbre of trombone is dark and muddy and gets swallowed up by the overtone series of the drums and the bass. So it’s sometimes a fight for total survival ‑ acoustic survival ‑ down there. But he found really a good way to do it. J. still plays that way, and he plays better every year, so he found a true vein. He was an innovator. He’s the Charlie Parker of his instrument, I think.

PR: You played with Woody Herman.

BB: Briefly, yeah. All these big band stints were brief. In my first year in New York were stints with six or seven bands, I think. I went through a whole bunch of bands in a hurry. I didn’t like any of them. They were all bands past their prime, and I was looking for something, I guess. I'd had a chance to join Woody Herman a little earlier when I was in Kansas City, and that was the kind of band I wanted to be on ‑ the one with Doug Mettome. The bands I was on were not that good, so I quit. I figured I'd find something else. And I did.

WE: In the early fifties, didn't the melodic emphasis in your playing and Stan Getz's run counter to the bebop mainstream?

BB: The group in New York, of which Stanley became known as the leader, I guess ‑ he received the greatest notoriety ‑ would be Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, and Herbie Steward. They were the saxophone players I liked, because my instrument was very close to the tenor, so I heard as a tenor player. So I became, I guess, a Lester Young‑type player. Because that's what I liked. That's the way I liked to speak.

It's what we were attracted to. And I think most of the alto players that I was around liked to play like Charlie Parker. Very few Johnny Hodges alto players or Ben Webster tenor players in those days. We all, as now, we all rode the crest of what was popular. Those were the voices that we heard that we liked and understood. Much more than we'd have heard Chu Berry or Coleman Hawkins and said, "Oh, that really turns me on. That physically excites me." Lester Young physically excited us, and that process of making music was what physically excited us.

I was about ten years old when I first heard Count Basie live at the Tower Theatre in Kansas City. I heard six shows a day and saw a rotten movie five times [laughter]. It was the only time I ever cut school in my ­life: four or five times a year I spent seven days a week there. And in the morning for the first show the band would be behind the screen. And to hear the first note ‑ it was the severest physical thrill I think I've ever had. Drugs and sex and all that stuff ‑ it was just the most powerful thing. ­Playing still gets that way. It's still just viscerally the most thrilling thing that I can do, and most guys, I think, feel that way.

So this is to say that when you pick somebody to play like, it's not a selection process, like you sit down rationally and choose a car, it's what really moves you, and that man's playing really thrills you. And that's all there is to it ‑ it's like falling in love. That's the woman you must have at all costs. So it's the same process.WE: That seems to contradict something Lee Konitz told us. He said that he consciously avoided listening to Charlie Parker because at first the music was too hard and then later because Parker's influence would have been too strong.

BB: I'm speaking for most of us. Lee is an exceptional man. He's a great artist, and there is a big difference. Lee has been aware of the process most of his life, I think. Jim Hall is another one. Jim Hall is aware of what goes into his music, and he treats his musical life much as a classic artist would. He keeps going back, enriching and working on fundamentals.

PR: In the fifties, the term chamber jazz emerged in reference to, for instance, the piano-less groups of Gerry Mulligan and Chico Hamilton. Was that term just a media invention?

BB: Yeah. Bebop is a shorthand; chamber jazz is a meaningless phrase.

PR: We figured as much. We know that you worked with Jimmy Giuffre with no piano and ...

BB: No drums and no bass. Just Jim Hall and Giuffre and I. We liked it. We stuck with that for a long time. The first three months we almost didn't make it. We were really scuffling in New York, and finally the booking got better. What I look back now and find is that we didn't know it then, but we were a truly avant‑garde band. We played everything from folk‑sounding music, which Jimmy was writing then, to ‑ we used to im­provise all the time. We had free improvisations every set.

And sometimes I played piano, and we'd sound like twelve‑tone mu­sicians. Sometimes we sounded like, I guess, a lot of the free music today, ‑ [we'd] bash and clatter about. There were different ways we liked to play. And not different ways we contrived to play so we could sound like some­bodv ‑ these were just ways that we would play if we were let alone to play. So that was it. It was nice. There was no word for it. They just said we were the guys with no bass player and no drummer [laughter]. But the words like chamber jazz don't mean much.

PR: Are there any good recordings from that period?

BB: We made two records‑ one when we first started [The Jimmy Giuffre 3, Trav’lin Light, Atlantic, January 1958] and one just be­fore we broke up [The Jimmy Giuffre 3, Western Suite, Atlantic, December, 1958]. If we'd have had tape recorders then like we do now, we would have had a lot of good tapes. But we don't.

PR: Was that a popular band?

BB: We did pretty well. My fondest memory is when we began to work in New York with the band we did eight straight weeks at the then Café Bohemia. And we started off, I think, against Wynton Kelly's Trio, and Wilbur Ware had a quartet, and somebody else ‑ the dynamite was get­ting hotter. And the last two weeks Miles [Davis] was there with a roar­ing band with John [Coltrane], and Bill Evans had just joined. And we thought, "We're really going to get killed because they're goin' to scream through us," because we at times were very soft, and "They're just gonna love Miles." Max Roach was down one night, and we were talking. He was saying that everybody talks through Miles and listens to you guys and it was the damnedest thing we ever heard.

I guess we were so soft and we were really serious about what we were doing that they'd stay quiet, I think, out of curiosity probably. But yes, I think people liked it, and they liked it not because we told them that we have a new way to play. They liked it because we sat down and played for them, and they appreciated what they heard. They weren't warned in front that it was going to be different. There weren't so many severe labels like they got to be later on. Like "this is really an eclectic experi­ence" and "this is gonna blow your mind." Rock 'n' roll hadn't come into the merchandising yet. So we were still just a jug and country and string band gonna be in your town next week.

WE: About 1960 you joined Gerry Mulligan's Concert jazz Band. How did that come about?

…. To be continued in PART 2

WE: About 1960 you joined Gerry Mulligan's Concert jazz Band. How did that come about?

BB: Gerry came by early in that year and had a week at Basin Street East and wanted to know if I'd write an arrangement for him. We hadn't played together for a couple of years. And I think he was kind of de­pressed that I quit in '57. So we got to be a little tighter, and the one week at Basin Street East turned into a band. I saw the opportunity to be part of a band that I'd wanted since I'd been a kid. The band I couldn't find when I first came to New York. Every band I played in was dumb. I mean, this was not the way it was supposed to go. The bands I played in when I was a kid were OK, but they should have been better, and we always had final points we couldn't go beyond.

This was a chance to work with a supreme musician‑Gerry is a great writer and player and a great leader‑and it was a ready‑made circum­stance. So I really tried to keep his interest up as much as I could, and I got some people for him to listen to. We finally wound up with a great band‑we had Mel Lewis, and Buddy Clark, and Nick Travis‑a really excellent band. And that was an achievement, I think. We stayed together for about four years.

WE: Were you and Mulligan co‑leaders of that band?

BB: I wasn’t a co‑leader. I played first trombone, and I did some of the writing. My investment was emotional. I wanted that band, more some­times probably than Gerry did. That's what I lived for in that year. I wanted to keep that going.

WE: So it was a spiritual co‑leadership.

BB: Yeah, I wasn't going to let it die.
WE: But the band folded in the mid-sixties. What happened?

BB: I think a lack of work and a lack of interest, and Gerry's interest was getting ‑ it's a helluva responsibility to be a big‑band leader. It's a mess. And my interest was getting scattered around. My personal life was cha­otic ‑ up and down. So with both of us kind of in and out emotionally and with the work situation getting hard, I think that we just decided to concentrate on the quartet.

We never talked about it much. Maybe we felt that we had gone far enough with it, I don't know. My feeling was that I wished we had gone further. After 1960 I wanted us just to keep on expanding and get new music from George Russell, get Gil [Evans] to write for us, and do all this stuff, you know. I'm quite childlike and enthusiastic about that, I guess. But realities kept surfacing. So we did four years, and that was our time.

PR: Gary McFarland wrote for the Concert jazz Band. What do you recall about him?

BB: Well, Gary was just different. He was one of those people that just seemed to hear everything and translate everything differently. He called me in early 1961. Gerry's band had just started, and he wanted to know the personnel, and he asked me if it would be OK if he brought something in. I said sure and encouraged him to please do that, and he brought in t first piece, an arrangement of "Weep."

PR: Was he known at the time?

BB: I'd never heard of him. Just a little bit through John Lewis and the [Lenox] School of Jazz, where I taught for a couple of years. He brought it in and it was quite successful and very different. So he did another for us, and people began to hear about him, and Creed [Taylor] heard about him at Verve and took the chance on McFarland's first album.

I think it was How to Succeed in Business. So that was it, and he was off. He was a very nice man; I liked him very much. We miss him now, be­cause in my estimation what we're still looking for the most are good music writers. We have good soloists and good ensemble players, but we're still short on really good writers.

PR: Do you think that McFarland's recordings turned commercial dur­ing the last years of his life?

BB: I wasn't seriously around Gary after about the middle sixties. We shared some office space with a couple of other guys for a long time. He liked to socialize very much. He liked the Cary Grant‑type of life ‑ the cashmere coats and the cocktail hour and all that ‑ as we all did but in varying degrees of assiduously persevering on it. He might have gotten turned, I think, a little bit to being something that would be a hit.

You know, it's a helluva thing. We were talking the other night with somebody about being true to what we do. If somebody were to come to me and say, "Here's a hundred thousand bucks, we'd like you to do this project," my only answer is that I've gotten myself down to such a place that I really wouldn't know what to do with the money. It would be nice to have, but it wouldn't change what I do. I've become, not monkish, but I've become pretty austere in my personal life. But it's a big decision.

If they say, "You wouldn't have to be that much different. Just do some of this, and just like that, just this one shot." And of course, that's a se­ductive drug-like atmosphere ‑ you find all these things are possible. You can go to here and there and wear this and bank this and drive this, you never could before, so just one more. It's the Las Vegas syndrome. I know people in Las Vegas that have been there twenty years that just went for six months to get some money together.

But it's a real‑life situation, and you can't say that somebody denies their art to do it. It's too complex for that. A lot of people remain true to their art because nobody likes what they do [laughter]. But they keep doing what they do, and later on ‑ a hundred years later ‑ somebody finds out, hey, they were really good. They were pure artists. Well, I think that might've been rot. They just couldn't sell anything they wrote. So it's once again a real‑life process, I think.

WE: You were signed with the Verve label in the sixties. There were so many Verve recordings in those days with basically the same roster of musicians. Were you all over-recorded?BB: I think we recorded too much then, probably. The band you heard was what they called the "A band" in New York. They had the best jazz people, that they thought were the best, anyway, that they would get for all the records. One thing we had then that we have a severe shortage of now, we had some very good producers: Creed Taylor first at ABC Para­mount, and later on at Verve, Bob Thiele did some good work. We had Jack Lewis in the early fifties and the middle fifties who did some great things at Victor and later on at United Artists. We had people to start projects for us and who had the funding. We have some people now with good ideas that have trouble getting money because the record business has become so catastrophic and such a really big business venture. But the producers then were really instrumental in giving us ideas. They'd think of a project and say, "What do you think of this?" And we would be off on it, so that was a great help.

WE: Have you done much studio work?.

BB: Yeah, all my life until about two years ago.

WE: Did you find it stifling?

BB: Well, I'll tell you, in the fifties it was fun because they had jazz‑type backgrounds. We had a Bobby Darin date, Al Cohn and Ralph Burns would write the arrangements. And we had a forty‑five‑piece band you could pat your foot to. But by the sixties, when rock & roll really began to hurt ...
As I went to California, I really felt I'd sunk into something because I went everywhere and nobody smiled, nobody joked or laughed, you never drank on a date. You never snuck out and got high or anything, you know. It was really serious business, and you were supposed to really act like you respected what you did. And for me, with my personality, it was just mur­derous, so I couldn't do it; I failed the studio work. A lot of people can do it ‑ work all day with earphones and do rock and roll and come out at night and play for five hours. They have my admiration and gratitude. I couldn't, you know. I just do what I do, that's all.

PR: In the sixties, we'd go to New York's Half Note one night to heat the quintet you co‑led with Clark Terry and return the next night to take in the John Coltrane Quartet. Did you and the members of your band ever exchange views with Coltrane?


BB: Not really, not between John and us. My recent experience tells me that people who are now about thirty‑five have a very reverential attitude towards those days, toward John and his music, because John is their hero, you know. The day after John died they ran a radio interview in New York, and Bill Evans was speaking of Miles's band and Miles's attitude towards Coltrane, which was supportive. Bill said the rest of us used to wonder why Miles hired him, because he wasn't playing too well. But Miles heard the true Coltrane.

So therefore, when I'd hear John, he'd play one tune for forty‑five minutes, and he'd play an awful lot of notes. I'd enjoy it up to a point. So my ears were responding ‑ I didn't feel reverential. He was another man in the same business. I probably should have been more reverential, but there wasn't cross‑pollinating between us because John was much more advanced than either Clark or I were. He was consciously trying to ad­vance as an artist, and Clark and I were doing what we did.


PR: Were there jam sessions in the sixties when younger players could get on the bandstand with you and test their mettle?

BB: No, I don't think so then. There weren’t the chances. When I first came to New York, I was twenty‑two years old, I played piano at a place on the Lower East Side, and it would loosely be called the Dixieland Place. And some nights the four or five horns would be Coleman Haw­kins, Pee Wee Russell, Harry Edison, Buck Clayton, and maybe Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz. One night we had a rhythm section of George Wallington, Baby Dodds, and Pops Foster, and I played trombone. So I got to play with a lot of different people.
My observation on somethin' that was true then that may not be true now, I think, could be interesting. When I was in my early twenties and middle twenties I became friendly with the guys in Duke Ellington's band because we did a couple of tours together. I was with either Mulligan or Getz. They were very warm and supportive, and I established, I guess, what the psychologists would call a "father‑son relationship," not quite that heavy. But they were fully grown up in my eyes: they were men, and they played like men and lived like men. I was very young, and they would come down gratuitously and say, "Now look," and we'd talk about stuff, rarely music. But we'd talk about the way to live your life or "Where you gonna settle in L.A.?' We'd rub each other, and we'd get warm over the process. So it was an older generation warming up a younger one, saying, "It's OK, I approve of you, and I support what you do. Now, go out and do it."

They could have hated the way I played music, but they acknowledged me to be in their business, as John [Coltrane] and I, without saying any­thing, acknowledged [that we were] in each other's business. We didn't have to love each other's playing, but we were in the same area. There was no "He can't play," "He should play this way," or "He can't play at all." We were in the same business, and the guys in Duke's band taught me that, and Count Basie's also.


WE: Do you think that some of the younger so‑called avant‑garde play­ers today, like George Lewis, are extending the jazz trombone tradition?

BB: Well, sure. I just heard a bit a couple of years ago of a solo trombone album. Obviously the man can play. I don't, as much as I used to, say "Gee, he really can't play, I don't like that." I don't care what I don’t like, it's not important. I try to support what I do like, and what I do like are people who are trying to make things better, trying to find ways to ex­pand the language.
In George's case, he is working hard at what he does. People could sit down and say that he doesn't swing. I say, well, OK. There are some jazz musicians who don't swing, and I'm among'em sometimes, but what else does he do? Jazz is a language. It's now a way of thinking and writing. I'm beginning to write music for jazz orchestra that doesn't bear an awful lot of relationship to 4/4 swing, and it's going to get more and more that way. And I'm going to fight to have my music considered music by a jazz composer. 'Cause that's what I am.
If I were a classical ‑ this is varying it a bit, but I think it's explana­tory ‑ if I were a classical composer coming in to write jazz, obviously I would be unsuited. I would say all classical composers are unsuited to write jazz music. That is not their experience. That is not what their feet say. My feet say jazz music, so anything I write I think would come that way because that's what I am.
If somebody comes along in my world and wants to make jazz music better, I say go ahead. I don't have to like it, but I do have to encourage them to keep on doin' it, I think. That's my job, because out of that, you we ‑ I'll maybe explain something that I've come to feel, that all artists kinda work a general field, however big you want to make it in your mind. It's a field of earth. Our job is to go out every morning and work that field all day doing what we do. Once in a while, the musician, whoever it is, comes and drops a seed, and we get a Coltrane or a Charlie Parker or a Jelly Roll Morton or a Louis Armstrong. But the rest of us go out there and plow every day anyway. That's our job.

PR: Is your playing a way for you to find out more about your own identity?

BB: Yeah, well, it is for me, because I need to keep on top of things, you know. I'm a sober alcoholic, and I've been sober for about four years, and my penalty for not living my life in some kind of reasonable and advanc­ing way is probably not living.

So my choices are clear‑cut. I'm fortunate: I either live or die every day. It's not dramatic like that, but everybody's choice is life or death. So far, anyway, I opt to live, and my choices toward music are that way. And I've been, fortunately, given a clear‑cut choice. A lot of people have the pull between "Shall I be rich today and rich and famous tomorrow" and then "Thursday I'm gonna cut out this nonsense and settle down and really work hard for a couple of days." It's not important because I'm almost fifty‑one, and my time has become finite, as everybody's is. When you’re twenty‑one your time is finite, you know.
Yeah, I'm seeing things clearly, more clearly now for many reasons. That's why I explained the other thing ‑ the alcoholism thing. So a lot of things are clear and getting clearer. I'm in a very fortunate position hav­ing been where I have been to get where I am. I think that was worth it. So yes, I try to get more control over me, because that's going to give more control over what I do. Like Lee [Konitz] was talking about. That's why I admire him very much, because he's been an artist and some people are born that way, They just see artistically. It's taken me a long time to even get close to that. Now I'm working probably to where he's been, mentally.

The following video features composer-arranger and valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer's New Art Orchestra performing "Jig," the first movement of Bob's Celebration Suite with baritone saxophonist Scott Robinson as the featured soloist.