"Stan Levey, Jazz Heavyweight: The Authorized Biography"

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

"Stan Levey is without a doubt one of the greatest drummers ever and one of the founding fathers of modern music. Along with Klook, Max, and Art, there was Stan Levey, who learned directly from Dizzy when they were both living in Philadelphia, As a result, Stan contributed to this beautiful art form and played on some pivotal recordings. Jazz Heavyweight is fascinating!"

—Wallace Roney, Grammy Award-winning jazz trumpeter

"I think Jazz Heavyweight is a piece of jazz history that's very important to document. Stan is a link. His life is an amazing story and he was a lovely man. I was totally in awe of meeting him and the legacy that he carries.”

—Charlie Watts,, Rolling Stones drummer

"Stan Levey was the drummer every bebopper wanted in his rhythm section. And with good reason. Jazz Heavyweight illuminates his role as an ultimate insider and important player—musically and otherwise—during one of jazz history's most vital eras.”

—Don Heckman, International Review of Music

"Jazz Heavyweight embraces the life and times of a Renaissance man in a topsy turvy world, rich with personalities and celebrities. Having lived through some of this crazy world with Stan and my Dad, this biography really hit home. A must-read.”

—Frank Marshall, motion picture director and producer

"It has been my privilege to have known and worked with Stan Levey. Stan was one of the greatest drummers of our time. While reading this book I was reminded of the many facets of Stan, and it invoked several memories of our years working together in the early 1960s with Dizzy Gillespie. He truly had a strong sense of musicality and most importantly soul, which was evident in each and every performance.”

—Lalo Schifrin, Grammy Award-winning pianist and composer

"Stan Levey was a superb, yet underrated drummer on both the New York bebop scene and the West Coast milieu. Frank Hayde's engaging biography shines a welcome light on this remarkable percussionist and delivers choice stories, a great many in Levey's own voice, lending a deep credibility to this book.”

—Zan Stewart, ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award recipient

“The Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie era of modern Jazz that Stan is associated with has been referred to as a time ‘when giants walked the earth.’  If so, both physically and creatively, Stan Levey was a Giant among giants.”

It’s not every day that you get to learn more about one of your earliest musical influences and enduring heroes.

Imagine my delight, then, when Jeffrey Goldman sent me a preview copy of Stan Levey, Jazz Heavyweight: The Authorized Biography by Frank R. Hayde and Charlie Watts. The book has an “On-sale-date” of March 15, 2016 and you can locate order information at www.santamonicapress.com. The book is also available through Amazon both in print and digital editions.

As Jeffrey’s media release explains:

“Stan Levey is one of the most influential drummers in the history of modern jazz. During his extraordinary career, the self-taught Levey played alongside a who's who of twentieth century jazz artists: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins, Art Tatum, Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Ella Fitzgerald ... the remarkable list goes on and on, and includes dozens of the most distinguished names in the annals of jazz and popular music.

Jazz Heavyweight follows Levey's prolific and colorful life, from his childhood days in rough-and-tumble North Philadelphia as the son of a boxing promoter and manager with ties to the mob, to his stint as a professional heavyweight boxer, to his first gig as a drummer for Dizzy Gillespie at the tender age of sixteen and his meteoric rise as one of the most sought-after sidemen in the world of bebop, to his membership in the Lighthouse All-Stars and his prominent role in the creation of West Coast Jazz.

Coinciding with his years anchoring the Lighthouse All-Stars, Levey recorded over two thousand tracks while doing session work with such, vocalists as Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, and Barbara Streisand. Levey ended his music career as a prolific player on literally thousands of motion picture and television show soundtracks under the direction of legendary composers Lalo Schifrin, Henry Mancini, Nelson Riddle, and Andre Previn, among many others.

Jazz aficionados will relish Jazz Heavyweight for its new, never-before-published information about such hugely influential musicians as Parker, Gillespie, and Davis, while jazz neophytes will find a fast-paced, colorful encapsulation, of the entire history of modern jazz. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking an up-close-and-personal look at jazz in. the latter half of the twentieth century.”

I thought it might be fun to append an earlier blog feature on Stan as part of the review of the new book about him in order to add some personal dimensions to the story of a drummer, who along with Shelly Manne, Mel Lewis and Larry Bunker, was one of the predominant drummers on the West Coast Jazz Scene during its heyday in the 1950s.

Ironically, Stan’s style of playing drums was shaped by Max Roach who was, along with Kenny Clarke, Art Blakey and Philly Joe Jones, one of the mainstays of the East Coast Jazz scene during the same decade!

The concluding video features Stan with bassist Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All-Stars for which Stan was a mainstay from 1954-1960 The tune is tenor saxophonist Bob Cooper’s Jazz Invention. Joining Stan, Bob and Howard on this track are Conte Candoli, trumpet, Frank Rosolino, trombone, and Victor Feldman on vibes.

While you are reading all these deserving words of praise about Stan and his storied career I can’t emphasize enough the magnitude of his accomplishment. No one taught him how to create music at a consistently high artistic level in a wide variety of settings whether it be in big bands, or in small groups, or in backing vocalists. He did all of this primarily through his own desire to succeed.

The Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie era of modern Jazz that Stan is associated with has been referred to as a time “when giants walked the earth.” If so, both physically and creatively, then Stan Levey was a Giant among giants.

“En fait, Stan a été influence par le jeu de Kenny Clarke sur la cymbal ride en accompagnement et par Max Roach pour les solos.”

- Georges Paczynski, Une Historie De La Batterie De Jazz, Vol. 2

“The art of jazz drumming has come a long way since the days of the bass drum player in the marching bands of ole New Orleans. Today we have come to expect a drummer to be an excellent technician, a well rounded percussionist, capable of improvising as well as any solo instrumentalist in any musical aggregation. It would take a very thick book to discuss the requirements of being a jazz drummer, and even then, it would be necessary to interpret the printed word through skins, sticks, cymbals, and mechanical contrivances in order to express yourself and your feeling for the music.

No doubt about it, drums and drummers are popular subjects; whether you're an avid jazz enthusiast or a bandleader, it is always interesting to hear and compare notes on the way different drummers play.”

-Howard Rumsey, Bassist and Jazz Club Operator

“You could set your watch to his time. It was one less thing for me to think about when I was playing.”

- Victor Feldman, Jazz pianist, vibraphonist and drummer

I initially learned to play Jazz drums by sitting just below where this picture was taken at The Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach, California and observing Stan Levey do it for almost two years.

Driving down to the club through the fog on Pacific Coast Highway, I couldn't wait to get there and here the thrill and excitement of Stan's drumming with bassist Howard Rumsey's [also pictured] Lighthouse All-Stars.

Stan Levey was my hero.

“Mechanical, my foot. You try playing his stuff and see how ‘mechanical’ it is.”

The late drummer, Stan Levey, is the fellow using the strong language [“foot” is substituted here for another part of the anatomy which was actually used by Stan in the quoted remark].

The context for Stan’s reply was his response to a statement that another drummer made about the playing of Max Roach to wit: “Oh, I don’t listen to Max much. He’s too mechanical.”

There is a reason why in his two volume Une Historie De La Batterie De Jazz, which won the 2000 Prix Charles Delauney, author Georges Paczynski follows his chapter on Max Roach with one on Stan Levey.

Stan adored Max.

Indeed, Paczynski subtitles his chapter on Stan :”Stan Levey le virtuose: à l'école de Max Roach.”

Stan was a gruff, no nonsense guy who, at one time, was a prize fighter. He left school at fourteen to make his way in the world, taught himself how to play drums, and did this well enough to be playing with Dizzy Gillespie in his hometown of Philadelphia at the age of sixteen.

Four years later, in 1945, he was working with Diz and Charlie Parker on 52nd Street along with Al Haig on piano and Ray Brown on bass.

Not a bad way to begin a career as a Jazz drummer before even reaching the age of twenty-one [21]!

The early 1940s was also about the time that Max Roach was coming up in the world of bebop and he and Stan were to become lifelong friends. As Howard Rumsey, Jazz bassist, who also was in charge of the music at the Lighthouse Café for many years, explains in his insert notes to Max and Stan’s Drummin’ The Blues:

“Ever since they first met on New York's famous 52nd Street in 1942, Max Roach and Stan Levey have felt intuitively that each was the other's personal preference. Their professional careers are closely paralleled, starting with almost four years on the "Street" with "Diz" and "Bird". In fact, Max was with Diz at the Onyx and Stan was across the street at the Spotlight with Bird when the modern period of jazz was officially born. Since then they have exchanged jobs many times with many great bands.”

Max would eventually recommend that Stan take his place with Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All-Stars at the famous 30 Pier Avenue Club in Hermosa Beach, CA and Stan stayed at the club from about 1955 to 1960.

Stan described his early years in the business this way to Gordon Jack in Fifties Jazz Talk, An Oral Perspective:

“I was completely self-taught because we couldn't afford a teacher, and that's why I play left-handed although I am right-handed; it just felt easier that way. I didn't learn to read really well until I joined Kenton's band in 1952, once again teaching myself. By the time I was doing studio work in the sixties and playing all the mallet instruments, I had become an accomplished reader. My first big influence was Chick Webb, who I saw with Ella when my father took me to the Earle Theater when I was about ten years old.” [p. 129]

And, about his first impressions of Max Roach’s drumming, Stan had this to say:

"The ferocity of the playing was new to me. I had never heard time split up like that. Max's playing had music within it. . . he changed the course of drumming." [p. 130]

I got to know Stan quite well during the last three years of his stint at The Lighthouse and I came to understand that he always had a chip on his shoulder about being self-taught.

Young drummers bugged him; they were always asking him technical questions about the instrument.

And because he couldn’t explain his answers in terminology or “drum speak,” he usually mumbled something and walked toward the back of the club.

What were you going to do, chase after him? The man was huge. He blocked out the sun.

Stan was never menacing or unkind in any way, he was just self-conscious about the fact that he didn’t have a studied background in the instrument.

Even though he was self-taught, Stan took the most difficult path to becoming a Jazz drummer.

By this I mean that he played everything open; he didn’t cheat or fudge. He didn’t press; didn’t finesse; didn’t adopt shortcuts.

Ironically, for someone who had never formally studied drums, he played them in a more “legit” way than most of the other Jazz drummers in the 1940s, 50s and 60s – many of whom were also self-taught.

To comprehend an open or “legit” sound, think of the crackling snare drums that almost sound like gunshots while listening to a Scottish Black Watch fife, bagpipe and drum corps or, most other drum and bugle corps.

Every drum stroke is sounded; nothing is muffled; nothing is pressed into the drums. Everything is struck. Art Blakey’s famous snare drum press roll would be unacceptable in such an environment.

To play in this manner, one’s hands need to be strong and they need to be fast.

Enter Stan Levey.

Enter Max Roach.

Although they came to their respective styles from different directions – Max had taken lessons - both approached drums the same way. Each relied on open strokes.

In Max’s case, because he had a sound grasp of the basic, drum rudiments and learned to cleverly combine them in a syncopated manner that particularly fit the Bebop style of Jazz, his playing could be described as a “mechanical” in the sense of structured or fundamental.

This is especially the case when Max’s solo style is compared to that of other bebop and hard bop drummers such as Roy Haynes, Art Blakey and Philly Joe Jones.

But Stan didn’t hear the looser and freer drumming of Blakey and Philly Joe when he was putting things together, he heard Max [and also Kenny Clarke, Sid Catlett, and Chick Webb].

And even though he didn’t know the technical names for them, he learned to play solos in a manner similar to Max’s “mechanical” or rudimental style.

I knew Stan to be a fiercely loyal person and a very competitive one.

When your hero and your friend is being “put down” or “disrespected,” isn’t it all the more reason to be defensive and perhaps curt with those implying such disapproval?

Stan knew that what Max was playing wasn’t easy to do. But to his everlasting credit, he broke it down and incorporated many elements of Roach’s approach into his own. And, he did it all by ear!

Stan didn’t like to solo. He loved to keep time. He referred to it as: “Doing my job back there.”

And “keep time” he did, with the best of them.

Louie Bellson once said: “Stan’s time is alive. It has a pulse that you can always feel.”

Ray Brown declared him to be – “A rock, and a magnificent one, at that.”

Ella Fitzgerald said: “He never strays and never gets in the way.”

Peggy Lee “loved the intensity [of his time-keeping].”

The other thing that Stan loved to do was keep time FAST!

Few could rival him, and this from a naturally right-handed guy who was playing an open, three stroke cymbal beat with his left hand!!

Some of the best recorded examples of Stan’s time-keeping speed can be found on the Bebop, Wee [Allen’s Alley] and Lover Come Back to Me tracks on Dizzy Gillespie’s For Musicians Only album [Verve 837-435-2].

Paul Horn: A 1961 Interview With John Tynan

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

"... you don't learn jazz in school. You don't learn it; you have to do it. You have to go out and learn jazz by playing. Jazz is a way of life, and you have to learn about it on the street, so to speak. But the training comes in by giving you the tools to work with."

- Paul Horn, alto sax, flute and clarinet

“The Paul Horn album, entitled Something Blue, was obviously influenced by the Miles Davis album, and indeed the Paul Horn group was one of the first fully to explore the new territory opened by Miles.

Paul Horn's 'Dun-Dunnee', for instance, is a forty-bar AABA tune with but one chord or scale for the eight-bar A sections. (It can be thought of as either one long G7 chord or a mixolydian scale; that is, a scale starting on G using the white keys of the piano.)”

- Bob Gordon, Jazz West Coast: The Los Angeles Jazz Scene of the 1950’s

“Though the Paul Horn Quintet has a readily identifiable sound through the blending of the leader's alto saxophone or flute with Richards' vibraphone, it is the writing rather than the instrumentation that lends these performances their most personal quality. Paul and his sidemen alike, instead of relying on horizontal melodic values alone, tend to create compositional structures in which the harmonic setting, and often the metric variations, are striking characteristics that give these works much of their originality of color and mood.”

- Leonard Feather, The Sound of Paul Horn

“One final word: if you are not a musician and can't tell a bar from a saloon, don't let this deter you. As Paul cogently observed: ‘Any layman could listen to this music and tap his foot to it without knowing there is anything so different about our approach to time or meter.’ Then he thought a moment, smiled, and added a postscript: ‘Except, of course, the layman might wonder once in a while why his foot was out of step.’"

- Leonard Feather, Profile of a Jazz Musician

Paul Horn [1930-2014] achieved international stardom as a musician who was recorded playing his flute in exotic and romantic settings such as the Great Pyramid of Egypt or the Taj Mahal in India.

His early years as a musician were spent in southern California where he also appeared in exotic and romantic Jazz settings as a member of the original Chico Hamilton Quintet which featured a cello and a guitar as the other lead instruments, playing flute behind poets and wordsmiths reading verse and lyrics to Jazz and on LP’s with the ethereal title of “Zen.”

He even formed his own quintet which played original music that combined both modes and unusual time signatures as the basis for improvisation [think Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue Meets Dave Brubeck’s Time Out].

One of the most detailed interviews about the Paul Horn Quintet and it inclusive approach to Jazz was written in 1961 by John Tynan who was an Associate Editor for Down Beat magazine at the time.

“In earlier days of jazz it was fashionabe in some allegedly responsible critical circles to over-venerate the hardy worthies who created tradition in their own time and owed little or nothing to formal musical schooling.

At the same time, the musically sophisticated jazz musician was regarded with squint-down-the-nose suspicion. It was an early manifestation of the lamentable tendency to place "sincerity" and "roots" above musicality and technical proficiency, thereby distorting aesthetic values.

As in all the arts, basic craft training for the jazzman is indispensable today. Miles Davis attended Juilliard. So did Phil Woods and many of the newer crop of players. Johnny Mandel is an alumnus of the Manhattan School of Music, one of the many academies for burgeoning musical minds and talents.

In this connection it might even be said that there is a new breed of jazzman emerging today, a jazzman conversant with the classics, rooted in study and legitimate training. Personifying this new breed is 30-year-old Paul Horn, a thoroughly educated musician who can hold down down a woodwind chair in any top symphony orchestra and, with equal aplomb, speak eloquently and authoritatively in a jazz voice considered by many to be one of the more significant developing. His competence cannot better be illustrated than by the fact that Duke Ellington recently chose Horn to fill Johnny Hodges' saxophone chair during the recording of Suite Thursday. Hodges was ill with an ulcer and hospitalized in New York City at the time of the Hollywood session.

A Phi Beta Lambda out of Oberlin Conservatory and an alumnus also of Manhattan School, Horn today finds himself leading an almost schizophrenic musical life. His bread-and-butter money flows from studio work in movies, phonograph recording, and television, but his kicks and really creative work as an improviser lie in his quintet, now disbanded for the time being. With the vibraharpist Emil Richards, pianist Paul Moer, bassist Jimmy Bond, and drummer Larry Bunker, Horn has forged a unified and musically adventurous group that, for an extended period in 1959 and '60, found a home at Hollywood's Renaissance Room.

Horn's ideas about music are reflected not only in the individual and collective playing of all the men but in the writing also. Generally this leans toward what the leader terms "modal jazz," i.e., jazz that attempts to free itself from the stricture of set chordal changes and patterns so that it may draw its substance instead from the linear mode employed in the writing.

Horn explains the direction his group is taking by declaring simply, "Jazz has to have as much variety as modern classical music." Thus, the turn to modal form of writing and improvising.

There is more to it than that, however. "The modal form," said Horn, "gives the player more freedom to improvise because he doesn't have to get involved in the changes. The conception is more melodic than harmonic. We relate everything to a scale rather than to a set of changes; a given tune, for example, might have only three chords."

Of the three modes in western music  — Dorian, Hypodorian, and Phyrgian — Horn and colleagues concern themselves chiefly with the Dorian, although the leader's Mr. Bond, written to feature the bassist, is in Hypodorian.

The modal principle, Horn pointed out, is quite ancient. "The ancient Greeks," he said, "started it, and Ravel used modes a lot in his writing."

Elaborating on the form, Horn explained, "There is a definite chord played but it arises from the mode. But instead of the melodies arising from the harmonies, the reverse is the case. The chord is the result of the mode, you see."

"Of course," he continued, "you don't always have to stick to the mode. For example, Tall Polynesian is partly modal, partly standard changes."

His personal reaction to working in modes, he said, is to "feel freer,because after years of playing with changes you get into a rut. You find yourself playing cliches; your mind falls into set patterns. It's almost like an IBM computer — your mind tells you that such and such a set of changes is coming up, and you respond accordingly.

"Miles and Coltrane are two of the best examples of modal playing. And somebody who's been doing this for a long, long time — 15 years or so — is Dizzy Gillespie. So thinking in scales is not a new idea; it's as old as music itself."

Richards, according to Horn, is responsible for their turn to this musical approach. "He was the first man in the group to discuss it with me," said the leader.

"Jazz today," said Horn emphatically, "is getting involved. For one thing, it demands a much higher technical knowledge of a musician. And people getting into it today don't have any choice — they've got to have the knowledge.

"But jazz doesn't have to get sophisticated—I don't mean that. It's still got to swing. I'm not trying to formalize jazz and take the swing from it. And I think our latest LP (Something Blue, Hifijazz J615) attests to this."

He shrugged and smiled, but his smile held a hint of frustration, and he added, "You know, it's funny to find there are people still around who think if a musician has schooling, it automatically makes him a lesser jazz player."

Then he quickly added, "But you don't learn jazz in school. You don't learn it; you have to do it. You have to go out and learn jazz by playing. Jazz is a way of life, and you have to learn about it on the street, so to speak. But the training comes in by giving you the tools to work with."

Horn stressed that he sees no "total answer" for jazz in a modal approach; in fact he concedes that modal forms can become as limited as other forms.

"We've found," he admitted, "that you can fall in a rut playing modal things all night, too. So, we want to experiment further, to find new avenues of expression. The Oriental scales, for example. I'd like to research those, too. Basically, what we're trying to do is to limit the harmonies, to put a hold on 'em. This gives the improvisation more freedom.

"In San Francisco recently I heard some musicians talking about the modal forms. They were saying that they were beginning to use this approach on their gigs.

"I think this is the direction in which jazz is heading."”                             

Source:

“Focus on Paul Horn”

February 16, 1961    

Down Beat

Barney Kessel: An Interview With Gene Lees

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

"The important things for a musician to be concerned with are (1) whether you are able to play what you sincerely think, and (2) to have what you think be worth the playing."   

- Barney Kessel, Jazz guitarist

Guitarist Barney Kessel, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Shelly Manne helped me to come of age in Jazz.

Initially through the series of “Poll Winner” recordings they made under the auspices of Les Koenig at Contemporary Records and later through professional associations and personal friendships, Barney, Ray and Shelly made endearing and enduring impressions on me and on my life.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it might be fun to look back at Barney Kessel during a critical juncture in his career as described in the following interview he gave to Jazz author, editor and publisher, Gene Lees in 1961.

"If, at some future time, somebody writes a study of the forces that have formed the playing of Barney Kessel, it will be interesting to note whether any mention is made of (a) boxcars and (b) contemporary business management concepts.

For these are in fact two of the major influences in Kessel's playing, boxcars being the earliest and such books as James T. McKay's The Management of Time being the latest.

Kessel, in fact, talks more like a management consultant specialist (or efficiency expert, to resurrect the now-unfashionable synonym) than a musician. He is intensely concerned with the ordering of his music, his life, and, to whatever extent it is possible, his environment.

In case that suggests to you that he is just another of the breed of businessmen jazzmen, check with anyone who heard his quartet during its engagements in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere a few weeks ago. Making his first tour in years, Kessel startled eastern-based musicians and the public alike with his earthy, powerful, and astonishingly skillful playing. It was a far cry from what the majority expected from a "west coast" musician, and above all, one who has shown a distressing lack of disdain for the money to be made from Hollywood studio dates.

Yet once you scratch below the surface, you find there is no contradiction here. There is a consistency of style in everything a man does, schizoid temperaments and rank imitators excepted, and Kessel is nothing if not consistent. His efficiency fixation is reflected in his personal habits (he neither smokes nor drinks and keeps himself in shape by diligent thrice-daily exercising), in his attitude to his future (he has decided to keep up some of his Hollywood studio work for the sake of his bank account while leaving every six months to make eight-week national tours for the sake of his self), and his approach to his instrument (he'd like to learn classical guitar but feels that the time is better spent developing his jazz playing, since that is his chief purpose in life).

One of the views expressed in The Management of Time actually had a great deal to do with Kessel's return to the road as a jazz musician. McKay said the world is changing so fast that many ideas are obsolete before they are off the drawing board. The individual who merely tries to do a good job, but nothing more, is doomed to be left behind. Part of each day, McKay insisted, must be spent in self-development.

Kessel agreed. He decided he was not developing in the Hollywood studios. But instead of moaning about the pity of it all while enjoying the pleasures of his mink-lined trap, he took the kind of direct action that seems typical of him: he formed a quartet, packed up, and went back on the road.

"Working in Los Angeles has every advantage except musical growth," he said. "Once you've arrived at the point where, while you are not wealthy, there is at least no urgency about what you're going to eat and where you're going to sleep, there's time to look around and ask, 'Is what I'm doing what I really want to do?'

"Supposedly you've arrived, when you do this kind of work in Los Angeles. But the question is have you arrived so far as you yourself are concerned? Acclaim means nothing to me unless I feel I'm earning it myself. I have won the Down Beat poll all this time without having played in public in seven years.

"In jazz, the great stress is on individuality. In commercial work, the stress is on subduing it, so that the performance has no individualism.

"I began as a youngster wanting only to play jazz. Later, my goals changed to going to Hollywood and developing the skills necessary to being a competent studio musician, which is, for the reason I mentioned, exactly the opposite of playing jazz.

"I went into commercial work a long time ago. I left it in 1953 to go on the road with the Oscar Peterson Trio. For 10 months, I was completely in jazz. Then, for seven years, I was back in Hollywood and the commercial field. At last I came to the time where I found there was no chance to develop myself in jazz. And so I felt I had to get back into it.

"Now I'm realizing more about what my personal needs are. I want to enjoy as high a standard of living as possible and have permanent roots in a community, but I also want to be in an environment where I can continue to participate in jazz and develop. That's why I want to make two tours a year.

"It was bad to become completely enmeshed in studio work. On the other hand, it isn't in my best interests to stay on the road all the time. The plan now is to keep a group constantly intact and work with it in the Los Angeles area most of the year, plus doing as much studio work as presents itself, plus making the tours. This would keep the group in front of the public and at the same time serve as a stimulant for me so that I could return to the community with the feeling that I'd been able to express myself on the road.

"It's ironic. I started out wanting only to play jazz, then changed my goals, and now I want to play jazz again."

Kessel thinks he may have come full circle in another way, as well.

"I remember when Lennie Tristano and the cool school were the rage, I used to get write-ups saying that my playing was too earthy." His not-handsome face suddenly burst into one of the brightest smiles to be found anywhere in jazz. "Now earthiness seems to be fashionable. It is accepted again."

Kessel's playing can, in fact, be almost startlingly earthy. In the midst of a long and sophisticated flow of intelligently-chosen notes, you'll suddenly hear a nasal twang that comes right out of the blues and is a first cousin to hillbilly playing. This sound is one that has been attributed to the corruptive influence of the rock-and-roll dates Kessel has played in Hollywood. Actually, it predates his Hollywood experience by a good many years.

"I came from a little town of 30,000 in Oklahoma, called Muskogee," Kessel said. "The railway tracks ran right by my house. The first guitar players I ever heard were tramps and hoboes who used to sit in the boxcars playing.

"So this bending of strings, this twang, is something I grew up with. I think that when something is genuinely part of one's previous experience, then that is valid for that person. But sometimes these things can be affected, and the question I would ask about a lot of younger musicians trying to play with a blues flavor is, Tm being me. Who are they being?'

"You know, there's another thing I've heard about my playing. It's been said that I copy Charlie Christian.

"There's no doubt that I was a fan of his. I idolized his playing, and when I was in high school, I waited for his records to come out. And I think I sounded like him in the early years of my playing.

"But we both came from Oklahoma. I grew up only about 150 miles from where he lived. He was only about five or six years older than I, and I played with many musicians he had been playing with before he went with Benny Goodman. They taught me how to play. So I was exposed to the same influences Charlie Christian was.

"But I don't think that my playing today sounds as much like Charlie Christian as Charlie Christian sounded like Al Casey and Eddie Durham. I invite anybody to listen to Eddie Durham on Jimmy Lunceford records and particularly Al Casey on Buck Jumpin'. On Buck Jumpin' you'll hear snatches of material Charlie Christian played with the Benny Goodman Sextet.

"But Charlie Christian completely deserves the position he now holds. It's easier to fly the ship across the Atlantic after Lindbergh did it."

If Kessel resists the imputations of excessive Charlie Christian influence, he confesses fully and gladly to the influence of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. In doing, he provides a most succinct statement of their significance.

"Charlie Parker's chief contribution was liberation from the old melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic concepts," Kessel said. "Up until that time, many die-hards felt that the rhythm section's function was to keep the horns from rushing or dragging with a steady thump-thump 4/4. The rhythm section players were so busy being timekeepers that they couldn't lend the beauty and dimension that percussion lends in classical music.

"Charlie Parker's and Dizzy's influence on the rhythm section was indirect. They didn't tell the section how to play, but their songs were so different that the rhythm section had to adapt itself for it to make sense.

"I felt an enormous sense of release because of Dizzy and Charlie Parker and that little band that they had. Until that time, it seemed to me that the highest point of development in jazz was to be found in the Benny Goodman Sextet and in the Basie band with Lester Young and Harry Edison. And I felt that I was saying all I could say in the context that existed, namely in an environment erected by the big bands of the early 1940s.

"Many musicians had begun to feel confined. There was a movement on the west coast, which I was part of, before we ever heard Parker. We were making up our own songs with more interesting chord changes and melodic lines than most of the songs being played by the big bands. But it was nothing like what Charlie Parker and Dizzy did. It wasn't up to that. But the desire was there.

"They liberated jazz. And now, because of them, I can see that the possibilities in jazz music are infinite. I feel that the future trends will consist in taking one of these elements — rhythm, harmony, melody — and focusing more attention on it than the others.

"It seems to me that, in the broad sense of it, the shifting into what we call fads is simply a turning with intensity to one of these elements.

"The current Miles Davis seems to stress simplicity and harmony, and less frequent chord changes, with more emphasis on melodic invention. In other words, the action comes from the melody, and not from the harmony.

"In Art Blakey, on the other hand, the stress is on the rhythm. John Coltrane has been emphasizing the harmonic aspects of it.

"Art Tatum was harmonic, to me. I don't think I could sing one note of melody from Tatum. And I think that what made Charlie Parker a giant was that he developed all three facets of his music to the marked degree that he did."

If Kessel sees the possibilities in the future of jazz as being "infinite," this doesn't mean he is happy with current trends. In fact, he says that during his recent tour he heard only two things that impressed him to any great extent: Nina Simone and Gil Evans' writing for his new band. He also liked Art Blakey and Horace Silver — the leaders, their arrangements, and the ensemble playing. "The soloists weren't too inspiring," he said.

"The jazz world has lost its Messiah, and they're running around looking for a leader. Have you ever stopped to think why there's a Sonny Rollins, a John Coltrane, an Ornette Coleman?

"Why are so many musicians insisting on going against the grain, when it's so much easier and more logical to go with it?

"I think it's a matter of wanting to belong, wanting to be accepted, and realizing there's only a certain amount of acceptance in being a second-hand Charlie Parker or a second-hand Lester Young — even though the way they played was natural and with the grain.

"It's healthy that some are seeking to be something other than second-hand versions of somebody else, but not too much of the music coming out of it is valid.

"Frankly, I find some of the musicians I've encountered on the road rather ridiculous. They're like children, the way they dress, the way they talk. It seems everything is Something else' these days. Or is it 'out of sight'?

"It seems to me that the standard of musicianship is higher than it used to be — the number of people who are playing well and how well they are playing. But so far as inventiveness is concerned — no. They're all playing follow the leader.

"The thing that disturbs me is that musicians in general are so hungry for acceptance by musicians on their own level that they will allow their own musical individualism to remain dormant, just for a slap on the back from somebody who says, That's great, man, you sound just like Bird, or Miles, or whoever it is.

"Yet as far as the new voices coming out are concerned, only time will tell how valuable they really are. Maybe 300 years from now, the Encyclopedia Brittanica will say: 'Jazz music — a limited musical form in which the work of Art Tatum will serve to illustrate what was possible within the form.'

"It may be that none of us is saying anything that will be valid in the future."

Kessel, in point of fact, feels that even though the possibilities of jazz are "infinite" there is still a very real danger that jazz will kill itself off, "because the people in it do not have the discipline over themselves as people to go on and develop themselves as musicians, or to develop the music to any great extent."

This concern has been voiced by a variety of mature jazz musicians recently. Dizzy Gillespie summed it up a few months ago by saying that young musicians seemed interested only in what the masters did, not in probing into the why. Paul Desmond made a parallel observation, commenting wryly, "Diversitysville—let a hundred flowers bloom." So consistent has this criticism of younger musicians been that Kessel's view on it must be taken seriously.

"To be a success in anything," he said, "there are certain requirements. And I don't think musicians nowadays — this is generally speaking — sit down and analyze the requirements for being successful, both in the musical and business sense.

"You're going to be a musician? You've got to be friendly towards the public, well-groomed and have clean clothes freshly pressed, and you have to remember that as long as anyone is buying a ticket to hear you, you must communicate to them.

"Too many musicians are doing research when a performance is expected. People are coming to hear the result of your experiments, your findings, and it should be palatable. But musicians are often still experimenting on the public's time and money.

"The lack of discipline manifests itself in many other ways, too. They are not punctual. If they were getting an unemployment check and the window closed at 3 o'clock, they'd be there at 3. But if the rehearsal starts at 3, they're there at 3:40.

"Lack of discipline is also seen in the desperate desire to bypass fundamentals in music, not to go through that experience. By fundamentals, I mean such things as practicing scales. In the case of horn players, warming up with long tones, trying to improve their tone and intonation. Many of them have bad intonation and don't even know it.

"They should also be spending time in learning to interpret different idioms of music, all the nuances. And dynamics? All of these bands play at one level — double forte — all night long."

Kessel's doesn't.  It is a group not only with a wide range of dynamics but with an infectious vitality and a general lack of pretension that is altogether refreshing.   This group's purpose seems to be to swing — and to produce melodies. On the whole, it does both.

Kessel has surrounded himself with young musicians (though, at 37, he can hardly be considered old). The drummer is Stan Popper, a loud but tasteful player ("I like a drummer who participates," says Kessel) from Oakland, Calif., who used to work with Pony Poindexter in San Francisco. The pianist is Marvin Jenkins, a Los Angeles musician who doubles flute on those tunes in which the group chooses to explore the delicacy in its potential. The bassist is Jerry Good, a San Franciscan with a big sound who has earned the respect of bassists encountered on the tour.

Evaluation of art is always a personal matter. Beyond certain obvious factors of technique, there are no clear-cut lines, despite the attempts of some to establish an absolute esthetic. So I will, I hope, be forgiven for lapsing into the first person to convey an impression of the group.

Put simply, it knocked me out. Kessel is an astonishing guitarist. Frankly, I had forgotten that jazz guitar of this kind existed, though Wes Montgomery had reminded me of it of late. If Montgomery's octave passages have left musicians and others impressed, what must the impression be when Kessel plays widely separated counter lines — descending figures on the low strings against climbing melodies on top? His chording is sudden, startling, and extremely fast. His tone — like Montgomery's — is distinctly string-y, and far from the "horn" sound that used to be common on amplified guitar. Further, he has begun to adapt one facet of classical playing to his work—the use of the balls of the fingers and thumb to produce a softer sound than the pick or fingernails can give. This is quite effective on ballads. (Kessel does not wish to explore classical guitar, though he plays Bach with a pick in his hotel room; he feels the classical approach would take the bite out of his jazz playing, that the two techniques are, to an extent, mutually antagonistic.)

Above and beyond technique, Kessel is a vital and inventive musician. Finally, he is a swinger — a powerful, hard-driving swinger when he wants to be, though also one of the most lyrical of ballad players when that is his wish. And if funk you want, funk he can and will give you.

His group is presentable — and punctual. Kessel sees to it. Yet its members, such as Popper, seem to have only respect for him. Drummer Popper seems as proud as a kid just graduated from high school to be working with him.

That is Barney Kessel. Do boxcars and business management concepts seem so far apart now?

I think that jazz generally," he summed up, "is subject to the way people will be thinking about it. If the people who are playing it become more disciplined as human beings and stress originality, while learning and analyzing the musicians of former periods and other styles of music, then I think jazz will progress.

"I wish every young musician would read Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address and remember the circumstances of it. Douglas made a long, wordy speech; Lincoln followed him and made a very short speech and said, 'The world will little note nor long remember what we say here.' But his is the speech that is remembered, because he was saying something.

"The essence of it is what you're saying. The instrument is merely a tool, a link, a way of getting out to the public what you are feeling. To me, guitar is only a tool. I'm not partial to hearing guitar players over trumpeters or trombonists or saxophonists.

"The important things for a musician to be concerned with are (1) whether you are able to play what you sincerely think, and (2) to have what you think be worth the playing."                                                                               

Source: January 5, 1961

“Barney Kessel: Why He’s Back on the Road”

Down Beat