A Jazz Conversation with Doug Ramsey [In Memoriam 1934-2026]

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

In the early days of developing content for my blog, a number of esteemed musicians, writers and critics came to my aid by consenting to be interviewed- among them - Ted Gioia, Gary Giddins, Bill Kirchner.

Doug Ramsey was the very first who volunteered to take the time to answer my questions so that I might prepare them as a formal interview for my readers. Once my blog was up-and-running, he would give me a plug on his own blog - Rifftides - if I was running something on my page that interested him.

When I called to thank him, he couldn't say enough nice things about my efforts. Needless to say, given the source, such encouragement meant the world to me.

Doug died in his sleep on May 19th at the age of 91.

I am reposting this interview in memoriam.

Douglas Arthur Ramsey 1934-2026 - Semper Fi, Marine.

I’ll try to keep this introduction brief so that my mumblings don’t detract too much from what follows.

Peter Keepnews succinctly stated: “Those of us who have tried writing about Jazz know what a daunting challenge it can be to do it well. Expressing an opinion about a given musician or recording is easy; explaining what exactly it is that makes that musician or recording worth caring about is not.”

Doug Ramsey has been brilliantly “explaining” the merits of the work of Jazz musicians and the qualities of Jazz recordings for over fifty years.

Doug’s writings about Jazz are so artfully done that opening an LP or a CD and finding that the descriptive notes have been written by him is the metaphoric equivalent of finding a real diamond at the bottom of a box of Crackerjacks.

Ray Avery once said of his colleague, William Claxton, that “some of us take photographs of Jazz musicians, but Bill is an artist.”

Those of us who write about Jazz feel the same way about Doug.

 How and when did music first come into your life?

I don’t remember it’s not being in my life. The first that I recall making music was as part of a chorus in, I think, the second grade. I took piano lessons, without notable success, from age 10 to 12 or so

 Did you play an instrument?

My next instrument, starting at 13, was the trumpet. To be more precise, it was a 12-dollar cornet that belonged to the junior high school band. Eventually, I saved enough from a paper route to buy a used Olds Special, an excellent horn that I still have but rarely play. Much later, Clark Terry got me a factory deal on a CT model Olds flugelhorn. For several years I’ve had the Bobby Shew Yamaha trumpet and the Shew model Yamaha flugelhorn. Lessons with Bobby during my L.A. years were invaluable. I’ve never stopped playing, despite many requests. The black and white picture shows me sitting in illegally at a club called the Crown Bar in the late 1950s when I was in the Marine Corps, stationed in Iwakuni, Japan.

The tenor player in the striped shirt is Sergeant Paul Elizondo, who went on to lead a big band famous in San Antonio, Texas, and become a popular Bexar County commissioner. The drummer was a corporal named, I think, Sears. The pianist and bassist had the gig at the club. Although the base at Iwakuni was headquarters of the First Marine Air Wing, my commanding officer was an Air Force colonel 450 miles north at Far East Network headquarters in Tokyo, an ideal arrangement. My job was to run the Iwakuni radio station of FEN, staffed by Marine, Army and Air Force enlisted men and a handful of Japanese civilian employees.

The commander of the air wing was Lt. General Carson Abel Roberts.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/caroberts.htm

One night when I was sitting in legally at the officers club on base, General Roberts introduced himself as a fellow player who as a youngster had known Bix Beiderbecke. On that thread, an unlikely friendship developed between the war hero three-star general and the greenish first lieutenant. If I had been under his command, that would have been unlikely. We were on a first-name basis; he called me Doug and I called him General. Sitting-in in town couldn’t have been too serious a violation of regulations; one night, General Roberts showed up at the Crown with his cornet and asked if he could play “Green Eyes,” which he did—a bit shakily but with the right changes.

It is my good fortune that there are outstanding musicians in my current hometown, Yakima, Washington, who allow me to play with them. We actually had a paying gig not long ago. Fifty bucks apiece. The way things are going, I know a few guys in L.A. and New York who would jump at that. World-class players come here frequently to play at The Seasons Performance Hall. A couple of Seasons Fall Festivals ago, Marvin Stamm invited me to play a duet with him. Actually, he informed me that I would play a duet with him. Bill Mays wrote a splendid arrangement of Freddie Hubbard’s “Up Jumped Spring” for trumpet, flugelhorn, violin, two cellos and rhythm section (Mays, Martin Wind and Matt Jorgensen). It was fun. No one in the audience threw anything.    

What are your earliest recollections of jazz?

My parents’ small collection of 78s was a mish-mash that included, among other things, records by Frankie Carle, the Andrews Sisters, Rafael Mendez, Eddy Arnold and Louis Armstrong. They had a record changer hooked up to the big Philco console radio in the living room. I played Mendez’s “La Virgen de la Macarena” a lot and wore Armstrong’s “Mahogany Hall Stomp” practically white. I’m not sure that I knew what Armstrong did was called jazz. I was perhaps 10 years old.

 Many conversations about jazz invariably turn to “impressions” and “favorites.” Why do you think this is the case?

As for favorites, most non-musicians and casual listeners develop them early on and maintain them as their standard for the rest of their lives. Here’s how Woody Herman put it when we talked following a dance job in San Antonio in 1974:

“Most of them stop listening as soon as they leave high school. That’s their last really firm connection with music. In that period of their lives, it’s all-important, and from the time of their first responsibility on, it becomes background to everything else, which is very natural and correct, I guess. But then they still want to tell me how the band isn’t making it now and it was so great then. And that really aggravates me. It’s about the only thing that does.”

One customer had asked that night for “Johnson Rag.” Another said to Woody, “Don’t you have any Russ Morgan pieces?”

“And they get some very terse replies,” Woody said, “like ‘No’ or ‘He quit the business’ or ‘I’ll play that when I get to the big band in the sky.’ It becomes a kind of standup routine. Certainly anyone has a right to ask for anything, but I can’t for the life of me think why I have to do those tunes.”

The quotes are from the Herman chapter in my book Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers.

Okay, so let’s turn to “impressions; who were the jazz musicians who first impressed you and why?”

Armstrong, of course. The next jazz player I’m conscious of admiring was Muggsy Spanier. He led in a curious way to Charlie Parker. When I was 15 or so, I was in a booth at Belmont Radio & Music in my hometown, Wenatchee, Washington, the Apple Capitol of the World and the Buckle of the Power Belt of the Northwest, listening to Spanier’s Commodore recording of “Sugar.” The son of the store’s owner was the tenor saxophonist Don Lanphere, who not long before had recorded “Stop,” “Go” and those other Prestige 78s with Fats Navarro, Al Haig, Tommy Potter and Max Roach. Don was home for a while, getting well and helping his dad. He opened the door, handed me a record with a yellow label and said, “Here, listen to this.” It was Parker on Dial; “Yardbird Suite” on one side, “Moose the Mooche” on the other. That introduction by Don affected my listening habits, expanded my horizons. At about the same time, I worked up the courage to introduce myself to the pianist Jack Brownlow, Wenatchee’s other great jazz musician, who helped Lanphere develop. I had heard him at high school dances and could sense, even in that context, that he was something special. He asked if I was a musician and invited me to his house to play. It was a disaster. I knew nothing about improvising and proved it. Still, he took me on, gave me ear training, played me recordings of all the right people and explained what they were doing. Among other revelations, he made me aware that Nat Cole was a great pianist—and why. Those listening lessons went beyond jazz. At Jack’s house I first heard Stravinsky, Villa Lobos and Shostakovich. One indelible evening at Lanphere’s, Don introduced me to the Boston Symphony/Charles Munch recording of Ravel’s “Daphnis and Chloe.” I could go on and on about what I owe Jack and Don. They developed the musical portion of my brain.

Staying with your impressions for a while, what comes to mind when I mention the following jazz musicians?

Louis Armstrong.

I’ve been listening to him for more than six decades. I’m hearing new things and rediscovering things that astound me. I recently put up on Rifftides his “Summertime” from the Porgy and Bess album with Ella Fitzgerald. His expression of the melody of that song is an apotheosis of pure music. His introduction to “West End Blues,” which I have heard 4,372 times, still devastates me. When Dizzy said, “No him, no me,” he wasn’t kidding. I’ll take it further; no Armstrong, no jazz as we know it.

Du Duke Ellington

A A magician. An alchemist. There’s a story that some of the most gifted Hollywood film composers were asked to listen to several complex pieces of music and analyze the chords. They nailed them, down to the last e-minor half-diminished 13th with a 9th on top (I made that up). There was an exception, the Ellington example. These composers with ears like sonar could not agree on what the harmonies were made of. Duke kept his band together through low-key leadership and management that are studied in business schools, and—no small matter—through the proceeds of his song royalties. With the indispensable help of Billy Strayhorn, he made his orchestra and its members extensions of himself.  They, in turn, helped to shape him. It is not possible to imagine outside the crucible of Ellington’s band, for example, the Johnny Hodges everyone knows, or Ellington without the inspiration and challenge of writing for his great individualists, Hodges, Cootie Williams, Ben Webster, Harry Carney, Rex Stewart, Paul Gonsalves and all the others.

Dizzy Gillespie

Bird called him “the other half of my heartbeat,” but to a large extent Dizzy was also the brain of the bebop movement. For him, teaching was a calling. James Moody, Jimmy Heath, Ray Brown, Mike Longo and countless others have recounted Dizzy’s patiently giving them insights into harmonies and structures central to the music. On the heart side of the equation, he was the embodiment of rhythm in all of its power, simplicity and complexity. He recognized the catalytic importance of Chano Pozo, and Afro-Cuban jazz became a part of the jazz mainstream. Let’s see, there must be something else. Oh, yes, he was the most gifted and influential trumpet soloist of his generation and a few generations since. No him, no Fats Navarro, Kenny Dorham, Conte Candoli, Miles Davis, Art Farmer, Idrees Sulieman, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Brian Lynch, Ryan Kisor. Feel free to complete the list. It may take a while. When you have time, listen to his solo on “Night in Tunisia” (RCA Victor, 1946). All of those guys did.

In 1962, I was working at KYW-TV in Cleveland, before those call letters moved to Philadelphia. Dizzy was the guest host for a week on The Mike Douglas Show, which was produced at KYW. He had the quintet with Moody, the 19-year-old Kenny Barron, Chris White and Rudy Collins. On the show, they played “Chega de Saudade,” the first time I had heard a bossa nova played with that intensity. They were playing that week at the Theatrical Restaurant downtown on Short Mary (I love that street name; had to work it in.) One night after the gig, Dizzy and I got to talking and he invited me to his hotel room to continue the conversation. We shared a bottle of red wine, had a serious discussion about music, acted silly and developed a warm acquaintance that lasted until he died.  

Stan Kenton

He had a great ear for emergent talent among players and arrangers and a dedication to massive sound. The two qualities often conflicted but, as in the Contemporary Concepts period, at their best his bands produced stimulating music of great importance. Kenton was a better pianist than he is generally given credit for, and some of his arrangements from the 1940s and 50s are superb.   

 Shorty Rogers

 He was a brilliant arranger and composer who synthesized the spirit of the big band era and the innovations of the Birth of the Cool band into a highly personal style. Those early 1950s Giants recordings with Art Pepper, Hampton Hawes, Shelly Manne and all hold up as well as anything from the period, regardless of coastal origin. His work on the East Coast-West Coast Scene album he shared with Al Cohn, particularly “Elaine’s Lullaby,” is masterly. Rogers’ trumpet and flugelhorn playing was idiosyncratic, beguiling. His Atlantic and Pacific Jazz quintet albums are classics. “Martians Go Home” should have won a special award for economy and humor in the use of “Rhythm” changes.

Gerry Mulligan

His writing made the Kenton band swing regardless of its leader’s inclination. His charts for his own big band were brilliant, but he stretched himself so thin that he didn’t do enough writing for it. His pianoless quartet had a brief existence but is inspiring musicians more than half a century later. Mulligan was the baritone saxophonist who could sit in—and fit in—with anyone. His sextet with Bob Brookmeyer, Art Farmer, Jim Hall and Bill Crow was a great band, and Night Lights is a masterpiece. He was restless in his curiosity and search for knowledge. He was a stimulating dinner companion. I miss him a great deal.

Horace Silver

I’ll refer to what I wrote not long ago on Rifftides about putting on the Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers album as background music to begin the day.

I chose it because I wanted something that had solos I could sing, hum and whistle along with as I fixed breakfast. Every note of Horace Silver’s second Blue Note album, the first by the Jazz Messengers, has been embedded in my brain since shortly after it was released in 1955. My record collection then consisted of 10 or 12 LPs. This was one of them. I played it so often that Silver’s, Kenny Dorham’s and Hank Mobley’s solos and Art Blakey’s drum choruses became part of my mind’s musical furniture. Silver, Blakey and bassist Doug Watkins comprised a rhythm section that was the standard for what came to be called, for better or for worse, hard bop. Dorham and Mobley, with their deep knowledge of chord-based improvisation, constructed some of their most memorable solos. Silver’s compositions—and one by Mobley—are classics.

Horace’s own bands that followed—with Art Farmer, Clifford Jordan, Blue Mitchell, Junior Cook, Joe Henderson, the Brecker Brothers and Ryan Kisor, among others—comprise an important chapter in the history of the music. I am sorry to hear that he has been ailing.

Miles Davis-Gil Evans collaborations

Recently I contributed an historical essay to Bob Belden’s pending Miles Español project (http://vimeo.com/14698280). Working on it brought home again that the pervasive influence of the Davis-Evans Sketches of Spain has reached virtually all precincts of music, as Belden’s video and CD show. From his arrangements for the Birth of the Cool band through Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain and Quiet Nights, Gil’s understanding of Miles’ temperament, inclinations and leanings made it a perfect partnership. I wish that it had lasted longer, but what they gave us will endure.   

Mel Tormé

 A great singer. He sometimes went overboard in the melisma department, but his intonation, swing, diction and lyric interpretation were flawless. His collaborations with the Marty Paich Dek-tette, particularly Mel Torme Swings Shubert Alley, and his duets with George Shearing belong in the vocal hall of fame. Is there a vocal hall of fame?

Maria Schneider

 She learned—absorbed—from Gil Evans and Bob Brookmeyer and developed a recognizable style. Now, she herself is an influence. Like most category-based criticism, assessments that she has gone beyond or outside jazz are meaningless. Forget labels; she writes wonderful music. If you’ve ever watched her work in front of her big band, you know that she is an inspiring leader. Sky Blue was terrific. I look forward to her next album.

What made you decide to become a jazz writer?

I’m not sure that I decided. It happened. In the eighth grade, a teacher told me that I should be a reporter. I considered law and architecture, but ultimately majored in journalism. The junior year at the University of Washington School of Journalism was total immersion in the newspaper process. We put out a daily paper. Music was one of the beats the editors handed me. I wrote frequently about jazz. I’ve never stopped, although three years in the Marine Corps slowed my output. My career has been in newspapers, broadcast news as an anchor, correspondent and news director; then as an educator of professional journalists. I have had a parallel career or sub-career as a writer about jazz and free press issues and as a novelist; one novel so far.

Is there a form of writing about jazz that you prefer: insert notes, articles, books …?

 No.

If you could write a next book about jazz on any subject, what or who would be the focus of such a book?

 I’m working on a book that will be, essentially, a collection of liner notes, which, done right, is a form of journalism. I’ve written a few hundred sets of notes. Some of them hold up.

You’ve accomplished many wonderful things in your life both personally and professionally. Why is it that jazz has continued to play a role in your life?

 Because it goes to the core of what I value: individuality, freedom of expression, human interaction, beauty.

Switching to the subject of “favorites:”

Why must we have favorites? Why not evaluate every book, film, composition, solo, or painting on its merits, without ranking it? For that matter, why must we have favorite musicians, actors or newscasters? (Gene Lees ‘ unisex term for them was “anchorthings.” Boy, do I miss him). That thought leads to popularity contests or, as the magazines call them, readers polls and critics polls. If publicity about winning poll results in more work, record sales and income for deserving musicians, perhaps polls are worth something, but I don’t trust them much; I get too many e-mail messages from musicians and their publicists pleading for votes. I have voted in many critics polls, but I’ve become increasingly skeptical of them.

I’ve come to dislike the very word “favorite,” but I can’t come up with a suitable synonym.

What are some of your favorites books about jazz?

There you go again. All of Whitney Balliett’s books, all of Martin Williams’, Gene Lees’ and Nat Hentoff’s. Gunther Schuller’s Early Jazz and The Swing Era. I’ve been waiting for years—make that decades—to Schuller’s book on bebop. Both of Louis Armstrong’s autobiographies. Dan Morgenstern, Ira Gitler, Gary Giddins, Andre Hodeir, Ted Gioia, Stanley Dance, Joachim Berendt, Francis Davis, Albert Murray, Larry Kart, Royal Stokes, Stafford Chamberlain, Jeroen de Valk, Ashley Kahn, Bill Crow’s books of anecdotes, Mike Zwerin. Wait a minute, this is a trap, you know. Sure as the devil, I’m leaving out 10 or 15 valuable writers about jazz.   

 What are some of your favorite jazz recordings?

Talk about traps! I’ll name 10, with the understanding that I could name 50 or 100. If you asked me tomorrow, it could be 10 others. Not in rank order:

Bill Evans: Portrait in Jazz

Duke Ellington: And His Mother Called Him Bill

Louis Armstrong: The Hot Fives and Hot Sevens

John Coltrane: Blue Trane

Dave Brubeck Quartet: Jazz at College of the Pacific, Vol. 2

The Sarah Vaughan 1950 Columbia’s with George Treadwell and his All Stars: Miles Davis, Benny Green, Budd Johnson, Tony Scott, Jimmy Jones, Freddie Green (or Mundell Lowe) and Billy Taylor.

The Curtis Counce Quintet albums on Contemporary, with Harold Land, Jack Sheldon, Carl Perkins and Frank Butler

“Flamingo” from Charles Mingus’s Tijuana Moods, with its perfect Clarence Shaw trumpet solo

Chick Corea, Now He Speaks, Now He Sobs

Ravel, Daphnis and Chloe (Munch, Boston Symphony)

You’ll notice that there is nothing recent on that list. Maybe it takes favorites a few years to develop.

Who are your favorite big band arrangers?

 (Not in order) Eddie Sauter, Fletcher Henderson, Bill Holman, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Gil Evans, Mike Abene, Jim Knapp, Frank Foster, Bob Brookmeyer, Darcy James Argue, Don Redman, Duke Pearson, Gerry Mulligan, Maria Schneider, Benny Carter, Ralph Burns, Slide Hampton, Bill Kirchner, Quincy Jones, Johnny Mandel, Sy Oliver, Gerald Wilson, Melba Liston, Neil Hefti, Oliver Nelson. This could go on a while. May I stop now?

Who are your favorite Jazz vocalists?

Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Anita O’Day, Carmen McRae, Jimmy Rushing, Helen Merrill, Nat Cole, Carol Sloane, Bill Henderson, Peggy Lee, Joe Williams, Ray Charles, Jack Teagarden, Teddi King, the young Ethel Waters, Mark Murphy, Meredith d’Ambrosio, Karrin Allyson, Fats Waller, Nancy Marano, Jeri Southern, Jimmy Rowles, Mildred Bailey, Chet Baker, Rebecca Kilgore, Johnny Hartman, Carol Fredette, John Pizzarelli, Nancy King, Daryl Sherman, Mel Tormé, Maxine Sullivan, Ray Nance, Blossom Dearie; Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. That’s the short list.

Who among current jazz musicians do you enjoy listening to?

An incomplete list: Ambrose Akinmusire, Bill Charlap, Steve Wilson, Kirk Knuffke, Bill Mays, Sonny Rollins, Diana Krall, Kenny Barron, Miguel Zenón, Jessica Williams, Wadada Leo Smith, Ed Partyka, Branford Marsalis-Joey Calderazzo duo, Gretchen Parlato, Matthew Shipp, Matt Wilson, J.D. Allen, Alexander String Quartet, Dubravka Tomsic and everybody on Bob Belden’s Miles Español project.  

 Of all your writings about jazz over the years, which ones are you most proud of?

 Recently, the notes for the MJQ Mosaic box and that Miles Español piece, but overall, probably the Desmond biography and the non-jazz novel Poodie James, because so much of my blood, sweat and being went into them.

What are you thoughts about blogs and websites devoted to jazz?

 It is clear that there are no rules for blogging. My conviction is that the standards of accuracy, fairness, thoroughness and reliability that go into any responsible writing must apply to blogging. Opinion should be plainly identified as opinion, if only by context and usage. The medium offers wide possibilities for sound, photographs, video, even a certain degree of interactivity. Many jazz blogs just sit there looking like pages out of an academic journal or a thesis.    

If you could host a fictional “jazz dinner,” who would you invite, and why?

 Good conversationalists. Most jazz musicians are good conversationalists.

If you could put on an imaginary three-day jazz festival in Yakima, WA, how would you structure it and who would you invite to perform?

 Fortunately for Yakima, it has The Seasons Performance Hall, which in addition to its regular schedule has a week-long festival in the fall. The festival has included James Moody, Jessica Williams, Bill Charlap, the Brubeck Brothers Quartet, Tom Harrell, Ernestine Anderson, Tierney Sutton, Marvin Stamm, Karrin Allyson, Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band, Eric Alexander, David Fathead Newman and the Bill Mays Trio with Martin Wind and Matt Wilson. The Seasons Fall Festival also incorporates classical elements. Maintaining quality hasn’t been easy because of the economic morass we’re in, and in recent regular bookings The Seasons has resorted to lesser music in an attempt to pay the bills, a familiar story in the arts these days. As a pro bono adviser to this nonprofit hall, I advise them to hang in there and aim for the standard of quality implied in that list of names. As for structure, The Seasons Fall Festival has always been linear. It does not put artists in competition with one another, a la Montreal, New Orleans and other festivals that have morphed into huge parties. You wonder how much they have to do with music.

If you were asked to host a television show entitled – The Subject is Jazz –  who would you like to interview on the first few episodes?

Sorry, Steve, Gilbert Seldes and WNBC-TV took that title half a century ago. We’ll have to choose another. How about The Steve Cerra Show? I would ask Sonny Rollins, George Wein, Branford Marsalis, Bill Mays, Dave Brubeck, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Miguel Zenón, Benny Golson, Marian McPartland, Cedar Walton, Gerald Clayton, Darcy James Argue and Matthew Shipp. That’s the first 13 weeks. Do you think we’ll be renewed?

 What writing projects about jazz have you recently finished? Are there any that you are currently working on?

I put up a new Rifftides post this morning. I recently wrote the Mosaic MJQ notes just mentioned, and a lengthy historical analysis of the musical connections among Spain, Africa, the Caribbean and New Orleans for the Miles Español project. There is another jazz book in the works, but it has a long way to go. A second novel that I started some time ago keeps calling to me from the depths of the computer, where it has been imprisoned.  

You have done a lot of writing over the years on the subject of jazz. Have you given any thought to “collecting” these and leaving them with a college or university library for future reference?

Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers is a collection. So, more or less, is the next book. That’s one way of making the work available beyond the moment. No university has been pounding on my door but all reasonable offers will be considered.

Something to Brighten Your Day

 A friend made this "Rhythm Stick" for Dizzy Gillespie. It's four feet in length, made out of walnut wood and has modified finger cymbals attached. Back-in-the-day, you could hear Dizzy shaking and kicking it while walking through airports. Imagine doing that today?! It currently resides at the University of Idaho.

Written By Bob Berg

Track 2 From "Rhytmstick" Album

Released In 1989 By CTI Records

And Distributed In Brazil In 1991 By Top Tape Records



Dizzy Gillespie: Trumpet And Rhythmstick

Art Farmer: Trumpet

Randy Brecker: Additional Trumpet

Jon Faddis: Additional Trumpet

Jim Beard: Hammond B3

Phil Woods: Alto Sax

Bob Berg: Tenor Sax

Robben Ford: Guitar

Anthony Jackson: Bass

Bernard Purdie: Drums

Bass Players: Scott LaFaro and Gary Peacock

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

Sometimes I think the acoustic string bass is the least appreciated of all the instruments used in the making of Jazz. One obvious reason for this might be that you have to listen carefully to hear it as it is often overshadowed by the volume coming from the other instruments in a Jazz band, whatever the size.

Perhaps the lack of appreciation that bass players are subjected to is exemplified in the joke in which one member of a couple listening to set at a jazz club turns to the other and says: “It’s OK, we can talk now, it’s only the bass solo!”

Despite the relative obscurity of the instrument for the general listener, there have been a number of pioneering bassists in the history of the music who have significantly enhanced the manner in which Jazz bass is played. Among these, Jimmy Blanton, Oscar Pettiford and Charles Mingus come to mind almost immediately.

In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Scott La Faro and Gary Peacock rose to prominence by also appreciably adding to the technical and stylistic manner in which the instrument is played. 

Frankly, when Scotty and Gary first came up, they were “the talk of the town.” Everyone and anyone who heard them was impressed by what they were doing on the instrument.

Their sound was so strong that when you first heard it, you would have sworn that additional amplification was being used to create the huge tone that came out of their acoustic string instruments.

I was fortunate to hear both Scotty and Gary when they first made the scene with pianist Victor Feldman’s and pianist Claire Fischer’s trios, respectively.  Believe me, no one was talking when they played; everyone’s mouths were agape with astonishment at the stuff these guys were playing on a string bass.

The power and majesty that they generated on an instrument that was often thumped, whapped and plucked during its early years in Jazz combos was awe-inspiring.

Sadly, LaFaro was to die in tragic circumstances in 1961 at the age of 25, but fortunately for the Jazz world, Gary Peacock continued to play wonderfully in a variety of settings, most notably with pianist Keith Jarrett’s trio, until his death in 2020.

In 2009, Scott’s sister, Helene LaFaro-Fernandez authored Jade Visions: The Life and Music of Scott LaFaro which is still in print and available through the University of North Texas Press [Denton, TX].

Here’s what the esteemed Jazz critic Martin Williams had to say about Scott and Gary while both were still early in their careers in his Jazz Changes [New York: Oxford University Press, 1992].

© -Martin Williams, Oxford University Press - copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The 1960s produced several outstanding young bass players. It was as if Charlie Mingus had released the instrument in the 1950s and those who followed found their ways of exploring its new role. ...

Scott LaFaro, by Way of Introduction

It's quite a wonderful thing to work with the Bill Evans trio," said bassist Scott LaFaro.

"We are really just beginning to find our way. You won't hear much of that on our first record together, except a little on Blue in Green where no one was playing time as such. Bill was improvising lines, I was playing musical phrases behind him, and Paul Motian played in free rhythmic drum phrases."

LaFaro is dissatisfied with a great deal of what he hears in Jazz, but what he says about it isn't mere carping. He thinks he knows what to do about it, at least in his own playing. "My ideas are so different from what is generally acceptable nowadays that I sometimes wonder if I am a Jazz musician. I remember that Bill and I used to reassure each other some nights kiddingly that we really were Jazz musicians. I have such respect for so many modern classical composers, and I learn so much from them. Things are so contrived nowadays in Jazz, and harmonically it has been so saccharine since Bird."

Charlie Parker was already dead before Scott LaFaro was aware of him, even on records. In fact Scott LaFaro was not really much aware of jazz at all until 1955.

He was born in 1936 in Newark, New Jersey, but his family moved to Geneva, New York, when he was five. "There was always the countryside. I miss it now. I am not a city man. Maybe that is why Miles Davis touches me so deeply. He grew up near the countryside too, I believe. I hear that in his playing anyway. I've never been through that 'blues' thing either."

LaFaro started on clarinet at fourteen and studied music in high school. He took up bass on a kind of dare. "My father played violin with a small 'society' trio in town. I didn't know what I wanted to do when I had finished school, and my father said - half-joking, I think  -  that if I learned bass, I could play with them. When I did, I knew that I wanted to be a musician. It’s strange: playing clarinet and sax didn't do it, but when I started on bass, I knew it was music." He went to Ithaca Conservatory and then to Syracuse; it was there, through fellow students, that he began to listen to Jazz. He got a job in Syracuse at a place called the Embassy Club. "The leader was a drummer who played sort of like Sidney Catlett and Kenny Clarke. He formed my ideas of what Jazz was about. He, and the juke box in the place - it had Miles Davis records. And I first heard Percy Heath and Paul Chambers on that juke box. They taught me my first jazz bass lessons. There was also a Lee Konitz record with Stan Kenton called Prologue."

In late 1955, LaFaro joined Buddy Morrow's band. "We toured all over the country until I left the band in Los Angeles in September 1956. I didn't hear any Jazz or improve at all during that whole time. " But a few weeks after he left Morrow, he joined a Chet Baker group that included Bobby Timmons and Lawrence Marable. "I found out so much from Lawrence, a lot of it just from playing with him. I have trouble getting with people rhythmically and I learned a lot about it from him. I learned more about rhythm when I played with Monk last fall; a great experience. With Monk, rhythmically, it's just there, always."

LaFaro remembers two other important experiences in California. The first was hearing Ray Brown, whose swing and perfection in his style impressed him. The other came when he lived for almost a year in the mountain-top house of Herb Geller and his late wife, Lorraine. "I practiced and listened to records. I had - I still have  - a feeling that if I don't practice I will never be able to play. And Herb had all the Jazz records; I heard a lot of music, many people for the first time, on his records."

In September 1958 LaFaro played with Sonny Rollins in San Francisco, and later he worked with the same rhythm section behind Harold Land. “I think horn players and pianists have probably influenced me the most, Miles Davis, Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Sonny perhaps deepest of all. Sonny is technically good, harmonically imaginative, and really creative. He uses all he knows to make finished music when he improvises.”

“I found out playing with Bill that I have a deep respect for harmony, melodic patterns, and form. I think a lot more imaginative work could be done within them than most people are doing, but I can't abandon them. That's why I don't think I could play with Ornette Coleman. I used to in California; we would go looking all over town for some place to play. I respect the way he overrides forms. It's all right for him, but I don't think I could do myself.”

“Bill gives the bass harmonic freedom because of the way he voices, and he is practically the only pianist who does. It's because of his classical studies. Many drummers know too little rhythmically, and many pianists know too little harmonically. In the trio we were each contributing something and really improving together, each playing melodic and rhythmic phrases. The harmony would be improvised; we would often begin only with something thematic and not a chord sequence.

'I don't like to look back, because the whole point in Jazz is doing it now. (I don't even like any of my records except maybe the first one I did with Pat Moran on Audio Fidelity.) There are too many things to learn and too many things you can do, to keep doing the same thing over and over. My main problem now is to get that instrument under my fingers so I can play more music.” (1960)

…

Gary Peacock: The Beauties of Intuition 

As recently as a year ago, few persons would have numbered Gary Peacock among the more proficient young bassists in Jazz. Today there are few who would not.

Scott LaFaro's unexpected death was a loss in several senses, not the least of which was regarding his contribution to development of the future role of the bass in Jazz, Peacock's recent spurt of development is a gain for much the same reason. His playing has come far indeed from that heard on a Bud Shank record released about two years ago. He is sure, incidentally, that “although you may have an idea of where you are in your work, a record will show you where you really are - you and anyone else who hears it."

Truly contemporary bass playing probably can be said to begin with Charlie Mingus-and perhaps Wilbur Ware and Red Mitchell. The most provocative young bassists do not play a quarter-note walk, 1-2-3-4/1-2-3-4-they do not play "time" and they do not necessarily play a harmonic part. And the horn players know that they do not need them to keep time or provide changes, harmonic reminders. The newer bassists do not merely “accompany" others and take an occasional solo but participate more directly in the music.

In their various ways, truly contemporary bass players are melodists - percussive melodists, lyric melodists, or in LaFaro’s case and Peacock's, virtuoso melodists. Furthermore, like the young horn men, they explore their instruments even beyond what is supposedly their legitimate range and function.

The Peacock who suddenly burst through on recordings with Clare Fischer and with Don Ellis and Paul Bley is a Peacock who is learning to make his way in the most advanced groups and among the most challenging young players in jazz.

He was born in Burley, Idaho, in 1935 and grew up there and in Washington state and Oregon. He studied piano for about six months when he was thirteen, and in junior high and high school was a drummer in student bands. He heard a great deal of so-called western-swing music, which is very popular in the Northwest.

One of his earliest conscious exposures to jazz came when he is sixteen. "A trumpeter I knew played me some of those early records by Bird and Dizzy - Salt Peanuts and those things," he said. I was really amazed, and I asked him who the second alto player was! I could hardly believe him when he answered there is only one."

Peacock left home at seventeen and spent a year in Los Angeles, studying vibraharp for several months at Westlake College. From 1954 to 1956, he was in the Army, stationed in, Germany. It was then that his interest in music really began to take shape. He found himself the leader of a group in which he played drums or piano, and occasionally vibes. But then his bass player left, and Peacock picked up the instrument.

Suddenly things were different: "My hands went down right almost from the beginning. The instrument seemed to fall under my fingers. I never really tried to learn bass - it was as if I just started playing it."

After the service, he went back to Los Angeles, went on the road with Terry Gibbs, and subsequently worked with (as he puts it). every group in the area except Red Norvo's - Harold Land, Art Pepper, Dexter Gordon, Bud Shank . . ..” In the course of  it, his whole approach to the bass changed from the old one to the new.

'I don't know exactly when it happened," Peacock said. "It must have been gradual. Before I realized it, I was there."

It definitely happened later than one evening he remembers when he chanced to end up on the same bandstand with Ornette Coleman. ("When he started to blow, I just froze; I couldn’t play.") But it happened.

Then he no longer had any trouble with groups that improvised freely and no longer had to work only with players who go through every piece cyclically and harmonically, ever repeating the structure.

"Only for about six months in 1959 did I put in any extra practicing and exploring my instrument. I had begun to try things I couldn't execute properly and had to find a way to play them. The rest of the time I learned on the job, just by playing and listening. I grew quite unsatisfied with just playing time. It became redundant, a strait jacket. Along with several people, I found that if a tempo is simply allowed to exist, you don’t need to play it - it's even redundant to play it.”

"But it is a personal thing. If it's right for a given player time, okay. But if it isn't, it won't feel right to him or sound to his listeners. "

This latter observation reflects an attitude that several young players seem to have: an awareness that what is right for them to play or to search for is not necessarily right for everyone.  Peacock, for instance, talks readily of his great admiration for Al Cohn and Zoot Sims and for the Modern Jazz Quartet. But the MJQ holds still another lesson for him, for theirs is truly a group music, and future Jazz will be truly group music.

"You know the title of that LP of Ornette Coleman’s,” he asked, This Is Our Music? I think that tells the story. I think in the future, we will hear a group music by equal participants.  Each member is going to have to be a leader to some extent.”

"It will have to be that way, In my own experience, we work now with a kind of psychic communication. We just know when a drummer has finished a phrase and when he has finished a solo. We know when a horn player has finished developing his ideas.”

"Perhaps this is only the first stage, and we will have different ideas later on. Perhaps we will have more conscious reasons for what we do, but for now, things are evolving this intuitive way.”

Peacock has thought about the dangers, delusions, an, contradictions in a freer music, however.

"The pitfall in the concept of freedom is that total musical freedom invites chaos," he said. "And I think we should also remember that freedom isn't necessarily valid unless it produces something. Also, so-called self-expression is not necessarily musical or artistic. I think we should keep those things in mind when we play. And most of all, we have to know when to stop. We must know when we have said it all, or when it isn't happening.”

"But for myself at this stage, I know that generally my best playing comes when I don't think too consciously about what I'm doing, and frankly that doesn't bother me too much. You can be specific about logical causes and about emotional causes, but about intuition there are no reasons. You just do what the intuition says. Incidentally, I think Ornette Coleman plays by intuition, too, not just feeling, as some people say. Anyway, I think that now we just have to play out the intuitions and see what happens. After all, if you go so far wrong, you'll eventually get back to what's right. And the only way to find out about some of the things we're working on is just plunge in and do them."

About the attitude that it is up to each player to explore the possibilities of his instrument, Peacock said, "Musicians tend not to regard their instruments as a whole. They take only a section of what can be done. The bass has two worlds. At the bottom, it affects everyone, especially in rhythm. At the top, you are into the piano's range and are more of a horn. There you can't upset the time and rhythm.”

"The thing to do is ask, 'What can I do with texture? Dynamics? Timbre? What can I do with one note? What can I do with the whole range? And can I extend it?' These ideas are reaching a lot of players, and particularly bass players - especially, I should name Steve Swallow in this. They are asking these questions, and asking how the answers affect the group music. But a player should work these things out at practice, not on the job. A job is a place to play, not experiment.”

"Take Ornette Coleman. He takes a note, bends it, twists it, even spits it out. It's beautiful; it gives the instrument a new life. Jimmy Giuffre is doing the same sort of thing with the clarinet."

Peacock has substituted for Steve Swallow in Giuffre's current trio on a couple of occasions and considers the experience among the most musically exciting he has had, "Jimmy and Paul [Bley] don't need anyone keeping time - in fact, it would get in their way. But playing with them is very exacting. They have really broken through recently. Their new Columbia record tells the story."

If Bley is not working with Giuffre, he and Gary Peacock can probably be found together. They worked recently at a Sunday session at New York City's Five Spot, with trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Pete LaRoca, after which Bley moved over to the Take 3 coffee house to take his place with Giuffre and Swallow. Peacock and Bley also have made a television appearance on New York's educational Channel 13, and Peacock recently played a weekend with tenorist Archie Shepp and trumpeter Bill Dixon. But players of their persuasion don't get much of the work yet.

Nevertheless, it is very important to Peacock to be in New York now. "It only took me one day here to know that this is the place,” he said. "In Los Angeles, the first thing you think of doing is relaxing. In New York, we play things and work things out things that need to be worked out. This is the place - the music the quality of the music, and the interest in it." (1963)

This audio track features bassist Gary Peacock’s original composition “Liddledabllduya” [i.e.: ‘a little dab will do you’] on which he is joined by Carmell Jones, trumpet, Bud Shank on alto saxophone, Dennis Budimir on guitar and Mel Lewis on drums.