"Music is Forever" - Dave Usher and Bert Falbaum

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

"In addition to being the very definition of enlivening swinging, Dizzy Gillespie — whom I knew well — was also an invaluable teacher and humanist. All of Dizzy is here in this book, Music Is Forever, by Dave Usher and Berl Falbaum."

— Nat Hentoff, jazz critic for JAZZed Magazine,

The Wall Street Journal, and author of

At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene

"This book is a major contribution to our knowledge about Dizzy Gillespie, particularly his work in the early 1950s when he had a partnership with Dave Usher in the Dee Gee Record label. Many areas of background are fully fleshed out for the first time, and at the center of the story is the strong bond of friendship between an entrepreneurial Jewish kid and an African-American trumpeter eleven years his senior. Even when Dee Gee failed, due primarily to an error in judgment by Usher — he trusted someone he shouldn't have — the friendship continued, and Usher offers us a very personal view into the life of one of America's best loved entertainers and jazz musicians."

— Alyn Shipton, writer, broadcaster, jazz historian and author of Groovin High, The Life of Dizzy Gillespie

"In the jazz community, it is general knowledge that Dizzy Gillespie and Dave Usher were close. Dave's book discloses the depth of their friendship and the extent of their professional partnership. He tells the story with warmth, humor and detail that further illuminate not only the great trumpeter's genius but also his humanity."

— Doug Ramsey, author of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond and Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers

“We — John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie and I — were the embodiment of the odd couple. Throughout the years, I often wondered how we developed not only a professional relationship, but a very close personal bond, one that lasted just short of 50 years.

I was born in the North in Detroit; Dizzy was born in the South in Cheraw, South Carolina. I was the youngest of five children; he was the youngest of nine. I had limited musical talent; Dizzy taught himself to play the trombone and trumpet at the age of 10. I grew up in a home that listened exclusively to classical music; Dizzy was exposed to blues and jazz almost from birth, given that his father was a bandleader in Cheraw. I was Jewish; he a believer in the Baha'i Faith to which he converted when he was about 50. (Dizzy grew up in a Methodist household.) Oh yes, I was white; he was black, or more accurately, colored or Negro as African-Americans were called at the time.”

- Dave Usher

In his Introduction to Music is Forever, Dizzy Gillespie, the Jazz Legend and Me, Bert Falbaum writes of his co-author: “Dave, I discovered, was a mensch, a Jewish word meaning that the individual has a heart and soul, and he/she is a person of honor and integrity. If anyone ever fit all the nuances of that word, it was Dave.”

Not to engage in one upmanship with Bert, but I already knew that Dave Usher was a mensch because when I was preparing a review of the 3-disc set entitled Dizzy Gillespie in South America which Dave released under the banner of his Red Anchor Productions, I wrote to Dave and asked for his permission to use his interview with composer-arranger Lalo Schifrin [Vol. 2] in a video that I was preparing to accompany the blog posting.

Dave graciously wrote back right away and you can view the results of his approval in one of the video that concludes this piece.

I have also included at conclusion of this review a video on Dizzy that features Dizzy Orchestra’s performing Cool Breeze from that 1956 South American tour.

Music is Forever, Dizzy Gillespie, the Jazz Legend and Me is available in both a paper bound and Kindle edition from Amazon, and as a paperback edition from Barnes & Noble.

Harmonically and rhythmically, Dizzy Gillespie gave us the basis for preserving and moving forward with the phrasing that alto saxophonist Charlie Parker used in developing the melodic aspects of Bebop.

In teaching Bebop to others, Diz used the two-foot rule: any musician within 2-feet of Dizzy who wanted to learn the language of Bop got a lesson.

I was one of those who got a lesson, although in my case, it had to do with the sound of my ride cymbal.

Dizzy’s group was appearing at The Lighthouse Cafe in 1962. Howard Rumsey, the bassist who managed the music at the club was moving away from his set group of Lighthouse All-Stars which had been in place since 1949 to booking name bands into the club.

But in doing so, he kept another tradition that he also instituted in 1949 going: the 2:00 PM to 2:00 AM “All-Day” Sunday Session. He hired groups of young Jazz musicians to perform at the club from 5:30 - 8:30 PM to give the name band musicians a dinner break.

Over the years, Howard had created an enclosed room above the Lighthouse Cafe bandstand that served as a place for musicians to hang out between sets. It also served as his office and housed tape recorders that engineers used for “live” recordings at the club [and whatever else Howard may have wanted to tape].

Needless to say, with Dizzy in residence at the club, there was a constant procession of musicians who wanted to meet the Great Man, including the guys in my band.

During the 3-hour break, Dizzy didn’t leave the club, but had food sent up from one of the local eateries.

After the first set, the melody and harmony guys in my band went up to meet Dizzy and to level a barrage of questions at him, mostly to do with harmonic substitutions.

Not wanting to be left out of the opportunity to meet Diz, I tagged along. After patiently answering what seemed like an endless stream of questions from the horn men, Diz looked at me and said: “And you, ask Chuck Lampkin [Dizzy’s drummer] if you can use his ride cymbal for a set.” When I asked “why” he explained that the overtones from my ride cymbal were “... too jarring and not blending in well.”

The cymbal in question was a 20” K-Zildjan medium-ride cymbal, that had been drilled for stainless steel rivets and was flanged around the outer edges [turned up]. I had to admit that it was fun to play on and produced a much more mellow sound.

I found out later [from drummer Mickey Roker] that Dizzy carried that cymbal with him everywhere and made every drummer in his various groups over the years play that thing behind him when he soloed.

Sometimes referred to as a Turkish Trash Cymbal, or just a Trash Cymbal, it took me awhile to find one back in the day, but once I did, I never went anywhere without my “Dizzy Gillespie cymbal.”

Upon his passing, composer-arranger-pianist Lalo Schifrin, said of Diz:

"People should understand the importance that Dizzy Gillespie had in the history of Jazz but also on music of the 20th century...."

Thanks to Dave and Bert's efforts in compiling and writing Music is Forever, there is now another primary source in print to further an understanding of Dizzy's significance.

Here’s the rest of Bert’s intro to the book which will tell you all you need to know about how it came to be written.

“I first met Dave Usher sometime in 1991, and that meeting resulted from circumstances that occurred about two or three years earlier.

I was vice president of communications for a Detroit-based company and had written a letter to the editor of a business journal, lambasting its irresponsible coverage of my employer. Dave read the letter and when he met the chairman of the company I was working for at a social event, Dave told my boss that he was impressed. He wondered if I would do some work for him. Of course, that was impossible since I had a full-time job.

However, after I resigned from that position and founded my own PR company in 1989,1 included Dave on a list of potential clients that I intended to contact. I wanted to pursue the possibility that he might still be interested in PR work. I asked the chairman if he remembered the name of Dave's company, but he didn't. My research — checking all the phone books in the area searching for a company whose name might begin with "Usher"— proved futile. Regretfully, I ended my search. C'est la vie.

As luck would have it, one day I was reading the business section of a local paper and saw a photo of Dave Usher and a story about his company, Marine Pollution Control (MPC), which he founded.

I wrote Dave a letter, outlining what my former employer had told me, and Dave responded by inviting me to lunch. We ate, we talked — for about two to three hours — and, as they say, the rest is history. I was hired to assist with PR for MFC and the Spill Control Association of America (SCAA) which Dave also founded and was president of for many years.

Our relationship quickly developed into one of total mutual trust and respect, and, in fact, into a close personal friendship. Dave, I discovered, was a mensch, a Jewish word meaning that the individual has a heart and soul, and he/she is a person of honor and integrity. If anyone ever fit all the nuances of that word, it was Dave.

I learned that while demonstrating a tough and rough exterior, frequently coloring his language with profanity, he was actually a softy. He had a big heart and suffered fools too long, both in his professional and personal relationships. He just couldn't seem to cut ties even when warranted and well overdue. And I know he knows, though he may not admit it, he has paid a price for his humanity.

As I carried out my PR responsibilities for MPC, I discovered Dave's history with Dizzy Gillespie and the world of jazz. He told fascinating stories although he told them very matter-of-factly. There was no bragging, but just a recounting of his years in jazz, and his friendship with Dizzy which he valued immensely. It is no exaggeration to indicate he considered Dizzy a brother, as Dave states frequently in this book.

On one occasion, when Dizzy was in Detroit and stayed at Dave's apartment, I met the jazz giant and exchanged a few pleasantries with him. I was tempted to ask him to play a few bars. I was confident Dizzy would have done so, but I didn't ask, believing it would be an imposition.

Listening to Dave's stories, I recognized that he was a part of music history, important history that needed to be documented and saved. Here was a white Jew from the North and a black man from the South who practiced the Baha'i Faith, partnering to develop and promote jazz. And it was not just with Dizzy. Because of his relationship with Dizzy, Dave met, worked with and befriended some of this country's most outstanding jazz musicians: John "Trane" Coltrane, Ahmad Jamal, Baron "Toots" Thielemans, Ramsey Lewis, Kenny Clarke, Charlie "Yardbird" Parker, Annie Ross, The Jones Brothers, Yusef Lateef, and many others. I was in awe and a little jealous.

Moreover, this partnership with Dizzy began in 1944, at a time when race was still an incendiary issue. The South remained segregated; Brown v. Board of Education which would hold that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal, would not be handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court for another 10 years. Even after the Supreme Court ruling, Southern governors continued to defy court orders and the federal government to integrate schools, and lynching in the South was not yet a matter of history.

It is true that black musicians had "relationships" with record companies run by whites and with white agents, but these, as Dave indicates in his story, were, at times, tinged with distrust. Black artists knew that some white executives in the music business were exploiting them. With limited opportunities, if black musicians wanted increased exposure for their music they had no choice but to accept contracts and financial offers that were not always fair.

The Dizzy-Dave relationship piqued my curiosity. How did they meet? How was this Gillespie-Usher partnership born? Did they discuss the racial implications of their friendship? Did they consider that they might not be accepted? Was there resentment from white and/or black musicians? What was it like to work with Dizzy and the other world-class artists? I had so many questions, questions I believed Dave needed to answer not to satisfy my curiosity, but to satisfy history.

So I asked Dave whether he would be interested in working on a book on his Dizzy/jazz experiences. I argued that this history needed to be saved. He had a unique story that deserved and had to be recorded for millions of jazz fans, and future generations. I implied, subtly, that he almost had an obligation to do so. Dave reacted passively. "Yes," he said, "it sounds like a good idea. Maybe you're right. I’ll sleep on it."

After I worked for Dave for about two years, he faced financial pressures at MFC, and told me he could no longer afford PR and ended our professional relationship. It was evident in his voice that it hurt him to do so. He felt bad for me, and he kept apologizing. I told him I understood and respected his decision. We maintained our friendship, and had lunch two, three times a year, as I did with Dave's son, Charlie, who became president of MFC in 2004. Dave and I called each other on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) wishing each other a gut yontiff (good holiday.)

The years passed, but he never raised the subject of the book, although I would revisit the issue with him periodically. The answer was always the same: "I'll think about it, sleep on it." And that he did for some 20 years.

I had given up until after I published a mobster thriller in December 2011. I was quasi-retired and found myself with time on my hands. I decided to call Dave and ask him again. This time his response was a bit more positive. I sensed a different tone in his voice. He listened more closely. I said I didn't need a decision during the phone conversation, but that I would call back in a few days (Dave, at 82 at the time, couldn't wait another 20 years, and I, at 73, couldn't either) and when I did call, it was apparent he had more interest than he'd had years earlier. Actually, he said, "Yes, let's do it."

I set up an appointment at his apartment by the Detroit River just west of downtown Detroit at which I outlined the entire process — the interviews, how much time I would need, my time commitments in writing a draft, reviewing drafts, legal considerations, searching for a publisher, marketing. At the same session, I spent more than two hours delving into his family history.

That was the first of many interviews, all of which I tape-recorded. I interviewed him over a seven-month period. He never tired of the process; he was never impatient no matter how trivial the point I was pursuing. He seemed to enjoy revisiting his past.

I also interviewed musicians who worked with Dizzy and knew Dave well, and I reviewed an archival catalogue covering Dave's 50-year relationship with Dizzy that was compiled by Carol Branston, one of Dave's long-time friends.

As I indicated, Dave is really a softy, his salty language and tough exterior notwithstanding. On numerous occasions, when he discussed particularly poignant remembrances, his eyes would tear up, and sometimes he would cry. I must admit, I fought hard to control my emotions when I saw his tears which were sometimes happy ones, and at other times sad, depending on the respective recollections.

One of the truly bewildering aspects of the interviews was that Dave never referred to any records. He did not make any notes or review papers or documents in anticipation of my questions. He did it all from memory. He could recall dates, spellings, and minor details most people would forget within a few days of their occurrence. Not Dave. He remembered everything.

He remembered street addresses and even apartment numbers in buildings he visited decades earlier. For instance, when he told me that in 1948 the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) enforced a recording ban on artists to protest the financial deals offered by record companies, deals it found unacceptable, he explained that the ban was the work of its president, James C. Petrillo. He recalled the AFM president's name, including the middle initial, and this had happened more than 60 years earlier. Actually, I had noticed this aptitude while working for him.

Throughout my relationship with Dave, I was continually impressed by how he engendered admiration and trust from all those who crossed his path, whether the relationships were professional or personal. The reason, I believe, was that he was committed to an uncompromising standard of honesty and integrity. Some may have disagreed with him on issues, but everyone respected him.

Dave also related fascinating stories on how his father was among the first to launch a recycling business by collecting and refining used motor oil, and how he, Dave, helped pioneer the oil spill and hazardous material cleanup industry. Indeed, Dave became one of the world's leading experts in the business.

When President George Herbert Walker Bush asked the U.S. Coast Guard, after the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, dumped millions of gallons of oil in the Persian Gulf during "Desert Storm" in 1991, who had the best expertise to clean up the oil, he was told "Dave Usher" by U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Joel D. Sipes. The President ordered Dave sent to the Gulf to represent the U.S. as an advisor to the Saudi Arabian government. The assignment almost cost Dave his life when he was caught in quicksand. The headquarters for the operation was located in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, a coastal city on the Arabian Peninsula. During his first assignment, Dave was on foot inspecting an oil-damaged marsh when he suddenly began to sink. The quicksand was already above his waist when two coworkers managed to grab him under the armpits and pull him out. They literally yanked him out of his waders. When Dave described the incident, he told me, "My waders are still there." One of the men who saved Dave was MPC general manager, Jeff Heard, Dave's godson and nephew of the jazz drummer J.C. Heard.

After the U.S. ended its involvement in the cleanup, Dave was asked to continue work on the project for the International Maritime Organization (IMO) under the auspices of the United Nations. In all, "commuting" back and forth from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia, he spent one year on the Persian Gulf cleanup operation. Specifically, while an IMO representative, he worked for the Saudi's Meteorological and Environmental Protection Agency (MEPA.)

A sensitive problem which had to be faced and solved in assigning Dave to the Gulf was the fact that he was Jewish. Saudi Arabia did not welcome Jews on its soil, frequently prohibiting entry, particularly if they were Israelis. It was an open question whether Dave would be admitted if the Saudis learned that he was Jewish; it was a risk that needed to be addressed. The Coast Guard raised the issue with President Bush, who ignored the implications that a Jew might be barred by the Saudis. The President simply told the Coast Guard, "Have him at hanger No. 6 at National Airport at 0600." (Dave was told of the President's comments to send him to the Gulf and how the President handled the "Jewish issue" by his Coast Guard contacts.)

However, after the U.S. ended its involvement in the cleanup, his religion became an entirely different matter. When Dave traveled on U.S. government aircrafts, he did not have to worry because he did not need to go through customs or have his passport cleared. When he started flying commercial, however, which he would have to do on many occasions, Dave realized he could face serious problems if the Saudis discovered that he was Jewish. IMO officials addressed the problem while Dave was sitting in a Jaguar, the IMO secretary general's car, in London. The solution they proposed was: When filling out the papers required by the Saudis, Dave was instructed to write "n/a" (not applicable) in the space asking him to declare his religion. He followed the advice and told me, "I never had any trouble." Incidentally, while in Saudi Arabia, Dave periodically telephoned Dizzy in the U.S., and each time Dizzy would ask him, "So did you find a good delicatessen yet? Because if I come over, I want to be able to eat some good kosher food."

After we finished the interviews, I began writing, and as chapters were completed, Dave reviewed the drafts, corrected errors, and suggested editorial changes he deemed appropriate.

I could not have had a more rewarding writing experience. I learned about Dizzy Gillespie, about some of the hallowed figures in jazz, and the contributions my friend — and I consider it a privilege to be able to call him my friend — made to this soul-searing music and how, in his other career, he helped protect the environment by developing sophisticated processes and techniques to clean up oil spills and hazardous materials.

In addition, our friendship seemed to grow during the process, and many interviews concluded with the exchange of warm hugs and testimonials on how much we valued the friendship of the other.

It took Dave 20 years to say "yes," and I am delighted he did. I believe we saved some important jazz history (along with a little Detroit history), and I had the opportunity to spend many delightful hours with this engaging man as he told me about his historic relationship and regaled me with countless warm and very moving stories.

Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones - The JazzProfiles Review

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

Context is everything so, for the record, Paul Devlin, editor, Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones (As Told To Albert Murray) [Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2011] is best understood if you read Paul Devlin’s Introduction and then Phil Schaap’s Afterword before delving into Papa Jo Jones’ recollections.

Doing so will help you understand why Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones (As Told To Albert Murray) is not an autobiography in the traditional sense of the word.

For example, this opening paragraph from editor’s Devlin's Introduction basically explains why we have the book:

“JO JONES: HIS LIFE AND MUSIC

Jonathan David Samuel Jones—save your breath, "JO"—has more often than not been called the greatest drummer in the history of jazz. Most great jazz drummers have given testimonials to Jones's virtuosity and innovation. This book is his story, derived from interviews with Albert Murray and transcribed, edited, and arranged by me. Jones stood out as larger than life in a world of large personalities. He was a raconteur and tall-tale spinner. His unusual style of narration, combined with his involvement in important moments in musical and cultural history, and along with his observations about other intriguing figures, have resulted in this autobiography. It is not the autobiography but it is an autobiography of Jo Jones.”

And if you then jump to this opening paragraph on page 111 of Phil Schaap’s Afterword, it explains why we almost didn’t have this book:

“Jo Jones wanted his story told in his own words and handled his way. Papa Jo was arrogant enough to think and assert that his memoirs could always be assembled — even after his death and in the absence of any manuscript. "It's in The Archives!" Jo would often exclaim, a parallel to Casey Stengel's frequent summary that "you could look it up." This book has proven Papa Jo right.

That it was in the archives, or his belief that it was, comforted Jo Jones during his later years.”

The key phrase here is that “... Papa Jo jones was arrogant to think that his memoirs could always be assembled ….”

Good luck with that!

When it comes to Jazz, there are very few “archives,” at least not in the formal sense of that word and fewer still that deal with the early years of the music.

Lots of recollections, but very few archives that are “a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.”

If it had not been for the fortuitous persistence of Albert Murray, who recorded these interviews with Papa Jo from 1977-1985, and Murray having the presence of mind to give them to the book’s editor Paul Devlin, one of Murray’s trusted and capable “guys,” much about Papa Jo’s career from a primary source perspective might have been lost forever.

Papa Jo’s rise to prominence as a big band drummer occurred from around 1938 to 1948 which coincides with the height and fall of that era.

Along with Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich [and possibly Davy Tough], Papa Jo was widely regarded as one of the best ever at booting a big band along.  

However, by the time of these interview - 1977-1985 - the “best” years of Papa Jo’s career were far behind him. Without intending to be derisive in implying that Papa Jo was a legend in his own mind, the tone and tenor of his interviews with Albert Murray reflect that attitude.

In developing this book from a series of what more properly might be labeled conversations and monologues rather than interviews, Paul Devlin was charged with complying with Murray’s admonition to cleanup the tapes so that they could be read “but not so much that we lose the rawness of Jo’s style.”

But Paul Devlin also had to be mindful of more of Murray’s authoritative counsel and that was “If it is done properly, the ‘as told to’ autobiography represents how the subject wants his story told. To achieve this end, he enlists a competent and empathetic craftsman to make him sound like he thinks his voice should.”

Here, Papa Jo is in luck as Paul Devlin does an excellent job of taking what in many cases are little more than Papa Jo’s ramblings and making them sound coherent and cogent.

It has been said that if you don’t see a contradiction, then it doesn’t exist. Papa Jo was a definite adherent of this precept because the book contains examples of many of his contradictory statements and behaviors.

Papa Jo was a man of many moods and manifestations of impulsive and compulsive behaviors and what this book uncovers and reveals as his greatest contradiction was the man himself.

For many of Papa Jo’s nearest and dearest friends, his consistenatly contradictory, volatile and irrational behavior drove them to distraction.

These ambivalent feeling toward Papa Jo are on display in these excerpts from the concluding portion of Phil Schaap’s Afterword which he labels “The Difficult Sides to Jo:”

“Tenor saxophonist George Holmes “Buddy” Tate [1912-2001], Jo’s colleague in the Count Basie Orchestra, had been amenable to my piggybacking to his gigs since the early 1960s. Often Jo was on these gigs and the three of us — or more — would ride together in Tate's car. Tate was a very congenial, mellow person, but Jo's insistence on being the only teller of their shared stories, the way Jo gave directions, Jo's rules for the gig, and even the general patter of his chatter in the shotgun seat — I admit it was overbearing—came to bother Tate more and more.

One night, at a party for the musicians at my family home, Tate signaled me that he wished to talk privately. I took him to my room. "Do you have your driver's license yet?" asked Buddy. I replied no, but I would be getting it soon. Without waiting for Tate to mention Jo and driving, I added that I would be driving Jo from then on. "Good!" Buddy said, "because I can't stand him anymore."

Later, when Adolphus Anthony "Doc" Cheatham (1905-1997) returned to jazz gigging and soon thereafter took the trumpet chair from Buck Clayton in the Countsmen, Doc would hitch a ride with me and Jo to the gig. Doc Cheatham, who was as mellow as Buddy Tate and, at that time, was in addition quiet and introverted, told me that Jo Jones was the reason he bought a Volkswagen bug, Doc no longer needed my ride, which included Jo's company, and he had no fear that the drummer would ask him for a ride in the small Volkswagen.

I have used the good natures and warm hearts of the highly talented Buddy Tate and Doc Cheatham to bring up the troubling concerns that Jo could be disliked, was definitely feared, and was avoided, sometimes at great cost, by people who actually loved him.

How could this be? Jo Jones was a great man, a musical genius, who did good works for the many he knew and many more for people he never met. As an accompanist, Jo Jones selflessly brought out the best in his fellow musicians. The audience would presume that the soloist and not the drummer was why the music was swinging so wonderfully. The audience would not notice the drummer listening keenly to the soloist that he was driving, nor the percussive responses to the featured player that elevated the soloist's inventions. Jo Jones was thrilled just to have helped the music and didn't mind who got the acclaim. Jo also ran an informal social services program that any musician he came across could partake of. Those activities went beyond musicians and even jazz. Jo Jones was politically and socially involved in the making of many improvements to our society from the Great Depression forward, and he did this all on his own dime. How could he be shunned and even disliked?

I believe Jo Jones's massive righteousness is the root cause to his rubbing so many the wrong way. He was a great believer in the U.S. Constitution, but in his own dispensing of its doctrines, he was quick to take charge of all three of its branches.

Unilaterally, Jones would make the laws, enforce them, and mete out the punishment. One set of codes was for the bandstand — Jo Jones would police the gig to his rules even though he was rarely the leader. Papa Jo was almost always right, but his system was wrong.

There is so much more to this.”

There is indeed and you can learn more about Jo’s self-centered thoughts and actions in each of the following chapters that make up the core content of Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones (As Told To Albert Murray):

I Have Had a Varied Life   27

Can't Nobody Tell Me One Inch about Show Business   31

The Count Basie Institution   47

They Said the Negro Would Never Be Free   65

My Thirst after Knowledge Will Never Cease   71

People I’ve Rubbed Elbows With    81

I Often Wondered Why I Was Such a Strange Fella   99

The discerning reader can readily identify the egocentric quality in each of these headings. To a certain extent, it is one element that gives the book its charm but they are also an indication of how Papa Jo could be overbearing to the point of being shunned by people who loved him.

If you are looking for a technical explanation of what made Papa Jo Jones such a special drummer, then you can’t do better than the chapter on him in Burt Korall’s definitive Drummin’ Men - The Heartbeat of Jazz: The Swing Years.

But if you are trying to gain an understanding of the human being behind those drums, then Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones (As Told To Albert Murray) is the book for you.

With this book, Paul Devlin [and Albert Murray and Phil Schaap] has done a masterful job of ensuring the veracity and validity of Papa Jo’s prophetic statement - “It’s in the archives.”

Order information for both the cloth bound and paperback edition can be found at The University of Minnesota Press.

Lennie Tristano On Multi-Taping, Competition, Recording Echo, Rhythm Sections and Playing Together

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

Nat Hentoff is right about one thing, when you talk with Lennie Tristano as he did in the following interview which appeared in the May 16, 1956 edition of Downbeat, Lennie certainly stimulates the way you think about and listen to Jazz.

Five areas are of particular concern to Lennie as he talks to Nat about the Jazz scene in mid-20th century New York City: the legitimacy of multi-taping, the onerous presence of competition amongst musicians, the overuse of echo in recordings, rhythm sections that impede the flow of the music and growing inability of musicians to play together.

Given our recent feature on overdubbing and superimposition involving the pianist Bill Evans and the photographer Erwin Blumenfeld, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it might be interesting to pursue some aspects of that thread from the vantage point of Lennie Tristano’s talk with Nat Hentoff.

An implied assumption in Lennie’s chat with Nat is how central Jazz was in the popular culture of the time as Rock ‘n Roll had not as yet become a factor and Country and Western and Folk Music were still regionalized phenomena at best.

At the time of this interview in 1956, Jazz still mattered.

© -  Nat Hentoff/Downbeat, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“After he made coffee, Lennie Tristano sat and talked in his studio late one afternoon. Except for a small lamp that gave a bare minimum of light by which to scrawl notes, the studio was dark. The room was also curiously peaceful as if it were used to long periods of silence as well as music, and relatively unused to loud, hurried anxiety.

Usually after an interview, I piece together a mosaic of quotes into a monologue that has more continuity than any real conversation short of a visiting clergyman's can really have. This time I decided not to splice the talk as much as usual, and to record instead what an actual conversation with Tristano is like.

I've talked with many people in line of assignments and after hours, and I am rarely as stimulated as by a talk with Tristano. Like the writings of Andre Hodeir, the ideas of Tristano awaken the kind of attention that moves a mind to think for itself. Whether one agrees with all of Lennie's points or not, one is always aware that unusually probing points are being made.

Lennie's Atlantic LP [#1224 entitled Tristano] had recently been released, his first recording in some four years. It had immediately detonated controversy, a phenomenon hardly new to Tristano activities. While there was nearly unanimous agreement that the music was absorbing, there were strong objections in some quarters to Lennie's use of multiple taping on several of the tracks, and some suspected that in two of the numbers, the piano tape had also been speeded up. A similar multi-track controversy had been ignited by a Tristano single record a few years before.

"I remember," Lennie said, "that around 1952, when that last record came out—"Juju" and "Pass-Time"—there wasn't one review out of the five or so that the record received that mentioned that those two sides could possibly have been a result of multiple track recording. It was only six months or a year later that somebody got the idea it might be, and then the talk started. I never really told anybody whether it was or not.

"One of the people who got so hung up on the subject," Lennie continued with amused calm, "was Leonard Bernstein. He and Willie Kapell were over here one night, and Bernstein finally decided it was a multiple track recording. He couldn't stand to believe it wasn't. And then Kapell sat down at the piano and started playing Mozart 16 times faster than normal. Lee Konitz tried to save the situation earlier by telling them it was multi-track. But he didn't know for sure, either.

"The reason I mention this background for the present controversy"— Lennie became more animated—"is to illustrate one of the most surprising things prevalent in music today—the element of competition. It's true of the musicians and non-musicians. They can't just listen to the music. They have to compete with it. If it's not in terms of speed—whether they can play as fast as the record—then it's in terms of finding out what the tune is. It's ridiculous. You can't hear music if you're not able to sit back and listen a few times, just listen. Then, if you can do that, maybe the fourth or the 10th time, you can figure out what the tune is if you want to. It doesn't really matter, anyway. The music does.

"Getting back to an example of competition by speed," Lennie said, "there was a night I was playing at Birdland, and I was playing something pretty frantic. A boy was standing at the bar—he was a pianist—and as he watched me, his hand got paralyzed. He dropped the glass he was holding, and his hand was still paralyzed a half hour later. That's kinesthetic competition, and it's a pitiful commentary on this urge to compete. Some people are affected physically another way. I've seen them get sick and have to leave the room. It gets them in the stomach. They get scared and have to cut out. They can't just enjoy the music; they listen to see if they can do it.

"It's not just me that some people react to that way," Tristano emphasized. "Many piano players, when Bud was playing great, couldn't stand to listen. They gave up, some of them, and became like slaves, like worshippers. That's why the worshipper has to elevate the artist he worships to such a height. If they remove this particular artist from any type of human contact, they feel they no longer have to compete with him. You don't have to compare yourself with God. It's not as if they had kept him on earth, which is where he belongs.

"Another aspect of this whole thing," Lennie reflected, "is the reaction of a lot of people who have played with me. They can't stand to have me pause in my line. The longer I pause, the tenser they get. Once at a concert in Toronto, I'd stopped for 16 bars. The time was going on and I could feel the drummer get tenser and tenser. Finally I hit one chord, and it was as if I'd set off an explosion. He hit everything on that drum set he could, all at once. The drums were all over the stage. It's like he was waiting for me to pounce on him.

"My audience sometimes reacts the same way when I pause. They get tense. What's Lennie going to do now? What's Lennie going to hit us with next? Instead of listening, they're worrying."

The conversation returned to the new LP. According to Barry Ulanov's notes on the set, "Lennie has fooled with the tapes of 'East Thirty-Second' and 'Line Up,' adjusting the bass lines Peter Ind (on bass) and Jeff Morton (on drums) prepared for him to the piano lines he has superimposed on them." Barry went on to mention the paired piano lines in "Requiem" and "the three lines played—and recorded—one on top of the other in the 'Turkish Mambo'... one track proceeds from 7/8 to 7/4, another from 5/8 to 5/4, the last from 3/8 to 4/4."

"If I do a multiple-tape," Lennie said slowly with determination, "I don't feel I'm a phony thereby. Take the 'Turkish Mambo.' There is no way I could do it so that I could get the rhythms to go together the way I feel them. And as for playing on top of a tape of a rhythm section, that is only second-best admittedly. I'd rather do it 'live,' but this was the best substitute for what I wanted.

"If people want to think I speeded up the piano on 'East Thirty-Second' and 'Line Up,' I don't care. What I care about is that the result sounded good to me. I can't otherwise get that kind of balance on my piano because the section of the piano I was playing on is too similar to the bass sound. That's especially so on the piano I use because it's a big piano and the bass sound is very heavy. But, again, my point is that it's the music that matters."

One of the objections voiced to these particular tracks was that whatever Lennie did to the tape made his playing very fast. "It's really not that fast, though," Lennie said. "There are lots of recordings out there that are much faster. I understand some people say that making a record like the one I made isn't fair because I couldn't play the numbers that fast in a club. Well, I'll learn the record so I can play it at that tempo 'live.' But even as is, it's not that fast. Some people are being misled by the nature of what it feels and sounds like rather than by the tempo itself. The tempo, in most jazz joints, in fact, is faster than on the record. And the record was a little above A-flat. That may account for a little of the speed, too.

"Actually," Lennie said, "we manipulated other things electronically. Am I to be put down for adding a tape echo on the blues and adding a tremolo on the last chorus of that number? In essence, I feel exactly this. When I sit down to do something, I can hear and feel what I want. Instead of trying to have three or four people on hand so I don't have the 'stigma' of multi-track recording, there are some things I'd rather do myself because there are some things I want to do that others are not capable of doing with me.

"If someone objects," Lennie pointed out, "to, let's say, the sound on 'Line Up,' that's a matter of taste. But why not hear what's happening in the line to see if that's of any value, and why not hear what kind of feeling the performance has? I have absolutely no qualms about multi-tracking. This kind of thing happens all the time in the recording of classical music, for one example. Are we supposed to give up the typewriter because we've had the pencil so long? Or am I not to use the Telefunken mike and rely instead on a dirt old crystal mike? I'm sure other people have done a lot more multi-tracking than I have. There's nothing at all wrong, for another example, in a pianist recording both parts of a two-piano classical work. Why is it wrong when I do it?"

I mentioned at this point that a recorded case in point is the Heifetz recording on both parts of the Bach Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins (Victor LM 1051).

"Anyway," Lennie said, "I will continue to do anything that will produce on a record what I hear and feel."

The conversation then veered to the problem of recording itself. "Right now in jazz," Tristano came on strongly, "everything is being recorded with a lot of echo, with the illusion of a big room. Even if the recording is done close, the full impact doesn't come through. It may be that people don't want that direct an impact, maybe they prefer to have everything softened by the added echo and want to hear their music in a sweet, mushy context like Muzak. I'm not against reverberation as such, but this excess use of echo points to the fact that a lot of people can't really take jazz in its straight, natural form.

"A little echo is all right, but now it's no longer being used as an effect," Lennie went on. "Now it's the whole thing.

"As for the Atlantic LP, except for the tracks made at the Confucius, where you really couldn't get a good balance—the engineers did a good job considering everything—the rest of the LP I made here at the studio without an engineer. And those tracks came out pretty good.

"I used a Telefunken, a great mike, maybe a foot or a foot and a half over the strings. On the blues I added a little tape echo. There was no echo, I think, on the

others here. I was trying to get a kind of cathedral sound, and I think I made it. There's quite a difference, incidentally, between a tape echo and echo chambers or reverberation generators. Tape echo, I feel, is a little more pronounced and more natural. With tape echo you can actually hear the echo coming through the second time instead of a big hollow, open sound as with an echo chamber."

Since various aspects of recording had dominated the talk up to this point, I asked Lennie why he had waiting so long to record again, even though he had received offers from almost every label in the field. "For one thing," Lennie explained, "I wasn't able to find a rhythm section. I don't mean, let me make clear, that there aren't any good rhythm section men. I just couldn't find one for myself, and I still can't."

Asked what he wanted in a rhythm section, Lennie detailed his requirements: "I want time that flows. I want people who don't break the rhythm section with figures that are really out of context. What figures are used should be in the context of what's happening, so as not to break continuity. A lot of drummers interpolate figures that break the line. All of a sudden, the line stops, and he plays a cute figure on a snare drum or a tom-tom. Some bass players do that, too. They break time to play a figure that doesn't fit with what's already happened and is happening. With rhythm sections I've played with, I don't have the feeling of a constantly flowing pulse no matter what happens. As soon as I feel the pulse being interrupted, my flow is interrupted whether I'm playing or resting, because it's all the same thing.

"I also need in a rhythm section people with feeling for simultaneous combinations of time—people who are able to perceive 5/4 and 4/4 at the same time. I'll probably be doing more and more of that. Working with 7/4 and 6/4 and the double times of those—5/8, 6/8, 7/8, and maybe sometimes 9/8. Occasionally, I've played something and tried to figure it out afterward, and have maybe done some 13/8."

Lennie continued his description of the rhythm section he's seeking: "I'd like to have a rhythm section with a feeling for dynamics. One of the faults of most jazz today is that it proceeds at one dynamic level.

"What I'm after is not an up and down kind of thing but something pretty subtle. Parenthetically, I think that drummers today are doing too much. They play the bass drums, sock cymbal, snare drum, top cymbal—four basic instruments right there. Add to that tom-toms, other accessories, and funny noises like tapping on top of the snare, and it's all much more than one man should be doing.

"Then there's the matter of tempo," Lennie said. "Rhythm sections today like to play a real fast tempo—'cooking' as some people call it. A real fast 2/4. As a result, everything is pat and things go by so fast with generally a good feeling that they don't miss the subtleties, subtleties that ought to be there. Another thing is the ridiculous ballad tempo that's prevalent. They try to get it just right so they can play double time on that, too, so they really wind up in the same place. And the in-between tempos are generally very crude.

"I want to play a lot of different tempos and more of the in-between. For example, many of the early Bird records and the early Pres sides with Basic were played at these in-between tempos. A couple of the Pres records—like 'Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie'—were fast, but he made it. Now 'Ko-Ko' was one of Bird's fastest records, and it wasn't as good as the more in-between 'Warming Up a Riff,' also based on 'Cherokee,' which had more creative Bird.

"Another thing I've missed," Lennie said, "is that people don't seem to have a feeling of playing together. That's a general comment, of course. Some people play together better than others. But a lot of people give the impression of everybody manning his particular gun and shooting wherever he wants to. Remember the old Billie records with Teddy Wilson, Roy and sometimes Pres? The rhythm section on those is sort of old-fashioned now, but they really played together. This is probably true of jazz in general right now. You don't hear the kind of togetherness in the groups that are playing. There's either a neat, commercial jazz sound, or they're trying to improvise and it's a little ragged."

Lennie came back to his specific problems with rhythm sections. "I have trouble with bass players and chord progressions. I've pointed out to them that instead of trying to find out where I'm going, they'd do a lot better and get a better sound by playing the foundation chord instead of trying to get to where I am at the moment. If they're on the fundamental chord, they'll get to relate to what I'm doing and eventually get to where I am sometimes.

"To make another general statement," Lennie said, "everybody's a soloist now.

There are no more sidemen in the world. Everybody is a star. I can't imagine anything more monotonous, for example, than a bass playing two or three choruses on a ballad unless it's a good bass player like Oscar Pettiford who can solo."

"What about the charge," I interjected, "concerning the long time you didn't record, the charge that you didn't want to set down your ideas so people could have them that accessible for copying?"

"I don't think anyone would want to copy me to start with," Lennie answered. "And what I do isn't pat or that perfect anyway. Now the way Bird played his ideas, they were perfect the way they were. Changing some of the notes would have spoiled them. What you can do is mix them up or play them in different sequences but the essential idea was perfect. Another thing you can do with Bird's ideas is play them on a different part of the bar. Instead of one, start the idea on two. Or you can stretch a 4/4 idea into 5/4 or 7/4, lengthen the phrase. I feel that if Bird's situation had been conducive to this sort of thing, he would have done that kind of thing himself. I remember doing a concert with him and we were warming up without a rhythm section. I was playing some chords and he was really stretching out.

"Another factor in my not having recorded in so long a time is that I'm not ambitious. If I don't think I have something to record that means something to me, I don't feel the necessity to release it. At least half the records of mine that are out are rejects from my point of view. A couple of the Capitol sides, for instance, and most of the Prestige, a couple on Disc, and the four on Royale. It's really pretty silly because it means part of my audience likes me because of my bad records. That's why I've felt that as soon as I learned how to play I'd lose a big part of my audience, an audience that's not too big to start with.

"I don't think, by the way," Lennie said, "that I'm the next jazz messiah. The way some people have spoken or written of me pro and con may have created the impression I thought that, but that isn't the way I think, and I've never said it Maybe that impression is also due to the antagonism against me in some quarters. If enough people put somebody down, he assumes a large proportion in some eyes.

"What I am doing is trying within the limits of my ability to develop my capacity to improvise so that I'm really improvising as much of the time as I can. I think I've

done a few things that haven't been done, at least to the extent that I'm doing them, but I don't feel there's anything 'great' about them. It took me a long time, for example, to feel 5/4 and 10/4 on top of 4/4. It's something that can't be done intellectually. It's something you have to get the feel. I am not running some kind of weird laboratory and manipulating scientific gadgets. It's been hard learning how to play what I feel on the piano because the piano is a difficult instrument. There are fingering problems we all have. Other instrumentalists, for example, generally can make the same note with the same finger. With the piano, there are spatial problems..."

There was a visitor downstairs, and this next turn in the conversation had to be postponed. As I was leaving, Lennie said, "There is one other thing I'm looking for, and perhaps the magazine's readers can help. We'll have to be leaving this building soon since they're tearing it down. I haven't found a new location yet. Anybody with an idea can write me at the studio, 317 E. 32nd St.

"I also am thinking of starting a club again. As for working in other clubs, I have offers, but I'm not sure yet what I'll be doing in that regard. Jazz musicians are expected to be entertainers. I'm not. Although I feel I can be very entertaining sometimes among friends."

The following video features Lennie's overdubbed version of Turkish Mambo.

Manhattan Five - "Lupin the Third"

Oscar Peterson: 1925-2007 - A Tribute by Benny Green

Let's Do It Again - A Tribute to IRAKERE by Little Johnny Rivero

Modern Jazz Society - "Django"

Paquito D'Rivera