Don Ferrara - The Gordon Jack Interview

© -Steven Cerra. Copyright protected; all rights reserved.

"Don is a real improviser and a very complete player—sound, ideas, time. He possesses very cohesive intuition." … Don was a powerful player and one of the few trumpeters to have some of Roy Eldridge's heat."

- Lee Konitz, alto saxophone

Where I grew up, everyone’s last name ended in a vowel, or so it seemed for a very long time.

Names like “Ranucci,” “DiStefano,” and “Capaldi” - it was all so mellifluous to listen to the teachers call the attendance roll each day in the classroom.

“DeSantis” was the name above the entrance to the bakery, “DiPippo” owned the store where you went to buy musical instruments and took music lessons and “Ferrara and Ferrara” was really a law firm.

The son of one of the Ferrara attorneys was my best buddy through most of grade school and as a result of this boyhood friendship, I’ve always had a fondness for the last name of “Ferrara.”

And my fondness for that family name didn’t diminish once I heard the brilliant trumpet playing of Don Ferrara on recordings by the Gerry Mulligan Sextet and then later on LPs with alto saxophonist Lee Konitz and Gerry’s Concert Jazz Band.

Don Ferrara’s beautiful sound on trumpet always brought to mind another of my favorite trumpet players who shares the same first name - Don Fagerquist [and the same initials!]. And what I wrote about Don Fagerquist in this excerpt from a previous blog posting also applies equally as well to Don Ferrara.

“One of the musicians on the Left Coast who always knocked me out was trumpeter Don Fagerquist.

He had one of the most beautiful sounds that I ever heard on trumpet; plus, he was one heckuva swinger, which always caught me by surprise. Here’s this lyrical, pretty tone, and the next thing you know the guy is poppin’ one terrific Jazz phrase after another.

The trumpet seemed to find him. His was one of the purest tones you will ever hear on the horn. In Don Fagerquist, the instrument found one of its clearest forms of expression.

Don never seemed to get outside of himself. He found big bands and combos to work in that both complimented and complemented the way he approached playing the trumpet.

His tone was what musicians referred to as “legit” [short for legitimate = the sound of an instrument often associated with its form in Classical music].

No squeezing notes through the horn, no half-valve fingering and no tricks or shortcuts. Even his erect posture in playing the instrument was textbook.

If you had a child who wished to play trumpet, Don would have been the perfect teacher for all facets of playing the instrument.

He was clear, he was clean and he was cool.

His sound had a presence to it that just snapped your head around when you heard it; it made you pay attention to it.

No shuckin’ or jiving’, just the majesty of the trumpeter’s clarion call . When the Angel Gabriel picked trumpet as his axe [Jazz talk for instrument], he must have had Don’s tone in mind.”

- the editorial staff at JazzProfiles

Regrettably, there is not much information about Don Ferrara in the Jazz Literature, a fact that has been somewhat remedied by the following interview that Don Ferrara gave to Gordon Jack and which first appeared in the June, 2000 edition of JazzJournal.  It also forms Chapter 11 is Gordon’s invaluable Fifties Jazz Talk: An Oral Retrospective.

Gordon very graciously gave his consent to allow JazzProfiles to repost his Don Ferrara interview as a blog feature. I have retained the footnote numbering in the body of the text and you can find these sources at the end of Gordon’s interview along with a video that will give you an opportunity to sample Don’s trumpet playing.

[Gordon also advised regarding the photo that appears at the beginning of this feature: “One piece of information regarding the Ferrara, Travis, Candoli picture in my book was that they were all on stage with Mulligan's CJB in Paris at the time -1960.”]

© -Gordon Jack/JazzJournal; used with permission; copyright protected; all rights reserved.

What is really surprising about Don Ferrara, who worked with major figures like Georgie Auld, Woody Herman, Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, and Lennie Tristano, is that he is not mentioned in any of the standard jazz reference books. Tristano once said that Ferrara had ‘absolutely everything,' but in a long career, despite an earlier attempt by Leonard Feather, this is the first interview he has agreed to give. It took place in 1996, when he replied on cassette tape to my list of written questions.

“I was born on March 10, 1928, in Brooklyn, New York. I started playing the trumpet when I was ten years old, and I was the only professional musician in my family. The radio was filled with music every night, broadcasting from clubs and hotels all over the city, and I would listen to Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Lionel Hampton, Glenn Miller, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, Duke, Basie, and Woody. I was hungry to hear as much as I could, and I was knocked out by how well the trumpeters played and how different they all sounded.

Jerry Wald had a good commercial band, and it was the first big band I played with for four months in 1945, but he was more of a businessman than a musician and he didn't make much contact with the guys. I left to join Georgie Auld, and along with Diz and Woody, he had one of the best big bands in the country. Al Porcino, who was a great lead trumpeter, was there along with Al Cohn and Serge Chaloff. Al Cohn wrote most of the book, which was very loose and musical, and Georgie was a friendly guy who would hang out with the band. He was a wonderful musician, not at all competitive, and I stayed with him until May 1946, when I was inducted into the Army. That is where I met Red Mitchell, because we were both in the same Army band, and Howie Mann was there too. Howie was a friend of mine from high school, and he was a good drummer who later worked with Elliot Lawrence.

I first met Warne Marsh at this time, and we spent a lot of time playing together and listening to records, which is when I found out about Lennie Tristano. As soon as I was discharged in April 1947,1 started studying with him, and right from the beginning he got me into chords, because I didn't know how any of that worked. It was thanks to Lennie that I was able to find my own direction, although I wasn't copying anyone's playing, so there wasn't anything to change. This was really when everything started for me, and I carried on studying with him for a total of fourteen years. 1947 was also the year I started teaching.

1950 was a very busy year for me because I was rehearsing with a band that Gene Roland put together for Charlie Parker. It was Al Porcino who recommended me to Gene, who was organizing an unusual big band with the idea of working and recording with Bird. A couple of weeks before rehearsals, Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh, and I went to hear him at a club out in Queens, and we all ended up on the bandstand with Miles and J.J., who were working with him that night. I really enjoyed it. I had never played in a band as big as Gene Roland's—eight trumpets, five trombones, eight saxes, and four rhythm—and it was unbelievable to hear Bird playing in an eight-man sax section. He was so strong and beautiful, playing lead the way he played everything else, and the feeling and looseness were just wonderful. One of the tunes was "Limehouse Blues," and even though he had thirteen brass in cup mutes behind him, his line and sound cut through everything. I did about two weeks' rehearsals, but I couldn't make the recording with Bird because, once again thanks to Al Porcino, I was called for a record date with Chubby Jackson.1 Howard McGhee was in the trumpet section with Al and me, along with J. J. Johnson and Kai Winding in the trombones and a very hip sax section of Charlie Kennedy, Georgie Auld, Zoot Sims, and Gerry Mulligan, with Tony Aless on piano and Don Lamond on drums. There was talk of Chubby taking the band out to a new club in Texas, but I didn't go because Red Mitchell had recommended me to Woody Herman, so I started working with the Third Herd in April 1950.

Our first job was a month at Bop City in New York, and we had some wonderful soloists like Milt Jackson and Bill Harris that I really enjoyed listening to. The trumpet section was very strong, and Bernie Glow played most of the lead, although the way the book was written, some of the tunes had the lead split three ways. Being a "Four Brothers" type band, the saxes had most of the solos, but once in a while the trumpets got a chance. On "Route 66" for instance, Woody asked me to write a chorus for the section to play in unison in harmon mutes, which was followed by a solo for Doug Mettome. I arranged for Jeff Morton to take Sonny Igoe's place on the band for three weeks when Sonny got married, and the rhythm section sounded wonderful. Woody was nice to work for and I stayed with the band for fifty weeks, but eventually I left and went back home to Brooklyn to study with Lennie again, and I think that Don Fagerquist took my place.2

Over the next few years I was teaching and studying as well as playing at lots of jam sessions around town. Then, in 1955, Lee Konitz asked me to join his group with Sal Mosca, Peter Ind, and either Dick Scott, Ed Levisen, or Shadow Wilson on drums. Billy Bauer sometimes worked with us, and the repertoire consisted of originals by Lee and me, pieces by Lennie, together with some of Bird's lines. It was a great band. I loved the way Lee, Peter, and Sal played, and we had a wonderful time for a couple of years, playing at clubs like Birdland, Cafe Bohemia, and the Half Note.

The first time we worked opposite Mulligan and Brookmeyer, Gerry said he was so knocked out with my playing that he called me to record with his sextet. I rehearsed with the group in the afternoon of September 26,1956, and after we took a break and went out for something to eat, we recorded the album later that night.3 That was the only time I played with the sextet, but a few days later Bill Crow called and said that Gerry wanted me to join the band. I didn't because I was still working with Lee, although I really liked the sextet. The writing was very good, the blend and intonation of the four horns was perfect, and everyone could really blow. The following year I recorded again with Gerry, only this time in a big band, and just about everyone had a short solo.4 That same year Lee and I were in the studio for Norman Granz, and on "Billie's Bounce" we played Bird's four choruses from memory, because most of the people studying with Lennie were memorizing solos by Lester, Bird, and Roy Eldridge.5

One of my students was a good friend of Mulligan's, and Gerry told him to get me to call because he wanted me to join the Concert Jazz Band, which he was organizing. After three months of auditions and rehearsals we played our first gig in January 1960 at Basin Street East. The club was filled every night, and I couldn't believe how many musicians were coming to hear us, as well as film and stage people who were friends of Judy Holliday. I had already met her at the rehearsals, and she was there at the band's first night, sitting next to Dora, my wife, and they were having as much fun listening as we were playing. I remember one night later on at the Village Vanguard, someone was whistling loudly after solos and at the end of every tune, generally having one hell of a time. When we came off the stand I asked Dora who was making all the noise, and she said it was Judy!

Nick Travis played all the lead, and he had good chops and excellent time. He was a fine consistent player with a relaxed feeling, but when we were in Europe he had a loose tooth on the top, right under the mouthpiece. He really had a problem for the last part of the tour, but it wasn't apparent to anyone, and as you can hear on the records, he sounds as full and consistent as always. Gerry already had Brookmeyer, but he wanted another strong soloist in the trombone section, so a couple of months before we left for Europe, Willie Dennis joined us, and he was perfect. I had first met Willie when he was with Elliot Lawrence in 1948, and he was a very good friend of mine. When he left Elliot's band, he moved to New York and started studying with Lennie, and his playing was just beautiful. He had very good chops and great time, with a soft texture to his sound, and despite what you may think, he was not slurring all the time but tonguing very lightly. He was very spontaneous, immediately reacting to what was happening. He was also a very good cook, and if you ate at his house, you ate well. Unfortunately Willie was killed in a car accident in Central Park; Dora and I went to his funeral, which had a closed casket. His wife, Morgana King, told us that on the night of the accident, it had been raining, and the road turned but the driver didn't. He hit a tree, sending Willie through the windscreen.

Gene Quill was a great character, and one of his features in the band was "18 Carrots for Rabbit," which was nearly all alto followed by a short solo from Gerry. One night after Gene finished and Gerry took over, the audience exploded because Gene had played so well. He took an extravagant bow, turned round to the band, giving us a real dirty look, and kissed himself on the shoulder. We just broke up and couldn't play anything, missing a whole bunch of phrases to be played behind Gerry's solo. At the end of the piece, Gerry asked us what had happened. We told him what Gene had been doing and Gerry, shaking his head, said, "I don't want to play after him anymore. Who the hell can play after him!" Which is when we all started laughing again. It was great having Zoot Sims on tour with us because he was so musical. He had great time and a sound that projected a wonderful feeling every time he played. On the subject of sounds, Gerry had the best of any baritone player, and he was extremely melodic. Bob Brookmeyer, too, had a superb sound and time, and they both played piano very well.

It was very easy working with Gerry. He was definite and consistent, so you knew exactly how he wanted his things played, and he always listened intently to the soloists, letting them know how much he dug their playing. We were all friends, and it was a happy band, in fact the best big band I ever played with. Gerry also had a good sense of humor. I remember one night he became angry with some of the audience for keeping time with the band by tapping on their glasses. He walked to the mike and told them he didn't like it and it was costing everyone in the room a lot of money to hear us. Those people got up to leave, and Gerry announced that it would be a good time to play "Walkin' Shoes."

I started working with Lennie at the Half Note in November 1962, and it was the best time I ever had playing. For about a year and a half we did three weeks there every two or three months, and Lennie was just unbelievable; his surprises were endless. I had been listening to him for years at lessons and jam sessions, but to be on a gig with him was something else, because he totally followed through on everything he told his students. He had great time and he was the most melodic player I ever heard. His chords and lines were extremely rich and intense, and I couldn't believe what a great sound he got out of those terrible nightclub pianos. Lennie would ask what tune I wanted to play and at what tempo. He would tap off, and we would just start improvising.

In 1964 Dora and I were busy with the first home that we had bought in New Jersey, and for the rest of the sixties I carried on teaching and making sessions. In 1972 we moved to Pasadena, California, which is where Warne Marsh introduced me to Gary Foster. I started teaching at Gary's studio and did some playing with Gary, Alan Broadbent, and Putter Smith, who are all excellent musicians.

Lennie Tristano was very important to me, as well as being one of my best friends, and I kept in touch with him until he died in 1978. Jeff Morton was a great drummer, and we played together as often as we could until his death in 1996. We have now moved to southern California, just north of San Diego, and because I teach by cassette, we can live anywhere in the country and still keep all my students.

No interview with Don Ferrara would be complete without discussing Roy Eldridge, who had an enormous influence on his playing, and his comments in a 1956 series of articles he wrote for Metronome magazine are particularly succinct: "Every note Roy played had meaning and life . . . his feelings pushed the valves down, not his fingers." In a recent telephone conversation Don told me, "Roy was the most important trumpeter for me. His time and sound were great. His line was always melodic, and the feeling was always very intense. He had the best chops of all the trumpeters, sounding loose and strong, and it didn't matter what tempo or in what range he played; it was all meaningful."

I concluded the interview by asking Don to list some of his favorite instrumentalists, singers, arrangers, and bands. His selections are as follows:

Trumpet—Roy Eldridge. Trombone—Bob Brookmeyer, Willie Dennis, and Bill Harris. Alto—Lee Konitz and Charlie Parker. Tenor—Lester Young, Warne Marsh, and Zoot Sims. Baritone—Gerry Mulligan and Lars Gullin. Clarinet—Artie Shaw and Lester Young. Vibes—Milt Jackson. Piano— Lennie Tristano, Sal Mosca, and Bud Powell. Guitar—Charlie Christian, Jim Hall, and Billy Bauer. Bass—Peter Ind and Red Mitchell. Drums—Jeff Morton, Max Roach, and Roy Haynes. Singers—Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra. Arrangers—Ralph Burns, Neal Hefti, Gerry Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer, and Bill Holman. Big Band—Gerry Mulligan and Woody Herman. Small Group—Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz, and Dizzy Gillespie/Charlie Parker.

Don Ferrara's solo abilities are well represented on the albums he made with Mulligan's sextet and the CJB. In 2000 Peter Ind released previously unissued tapes of a 1957 Lee Konitz engagement at the Midway Lounge, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, containing four numbers featuring the trumpeter.6 A particularly good example of Don's work in a small group situation is the LP. he mentions in the interview, where he and Konitz play Parker's famous solo on "Billie's Bounce." The album allows him to stretch out and really develop his highly individual ideas, and it has the additional advantage of including two of his distinctive compositions, "Sunflower" based on "Yesterdays," and "Movin* Around" based on Tristano's "Pennies in Minor" It is a recording that is long overdue for reissue on CD.”

NOTES

1.  Chubby Jackson Big Band. Fantasy OJCCD-711-2.

2.  In Bill Clancy's book on Woody Herman, Chronicles of the Herds (Schirmer Books), a June 1950 photograph shows Don Ferrara playing with the band at the Capitol Theater in New York.

3.  Gerry Mulligan Sextet. Emarcy Jap 826993-2.

4.  Gerry Mulligan, Mullenium Columbia/Legacy CK 65678. In addition to some examples of Gene Krupa and Elliot Lawrence playing Mulligan charts from the late forties, this CD also features six titles recorded by a Mulligan big band in April 1957. It includes a restored Ferrara solo on "Thruway" that had been removed on the original L.P. The CD booklet has some excellent and previously unpublished photographs from the session.

5.  Lee Konitz, Very Cool. MGV 8209. May 1957. Talking about Ferrara on the sleevenote to Nat Hentoff, Konitz says, "Don is a real improviser and a very complete player—sound, ideas, time. He possesses very cohesive intuition." More recently he told me: "Don was a powerful player and one of the few trumpeters to have some of Roy Eldridge's heat."

6.  Peter Ind Presents Lee Konitz in Jazz from the Fifties. Wave CD 39. February 1957.

If you wish to spend a fun evening listening to recorded Jazz sometime, try playing back-to-back records by Bobby Hackett, Don Fagerquist and Don Ferrara see where that takes you.

T

Chet Baker: The Comeback Revisited

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

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles decided that it might be nice to re-post this piece for two reasons: [1] it had been too long since Doug Ramsey's fine writing about Jazz had been featured on the blog and [2] to celebrate the return from copyright restriction of one of the two videos that accompanied the original posting. 

I always thought that for Chet Baker, playing a beautiful, melodic solo was as easy as putting the trumpet to his lips.

It seems, however, that there was a time during his career when placing the trumpet against his lips was more excruciating than musically rewarding.

The cause of this agonizing pain was the dark side of drug addiction which caught up to Chet one night in 1968 when a group of San Francisco San Francisco junkies “… relieved him of his dope money and his teeth and made him decide he’d have to give up heroin or die.”

Doug Ramsey continues the story in his insert notes to the 1974 CD, She Was Too Good To Me [CBS Associated ZK 40804; LP originally by Creed Taylor for CTI Records].

© -Doug Ramsey; used with permission; copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Recorded in 1974, this was “… Chet’s first major recording since the night in San Francisco in ’68 …” when Chet encountered every brass player’s nightmare – losing one’s teeth!

Or as Chet explains to Doug: “Believe me, when a trumpet player has had his teeth pulled, it is a comeback.”

“Baker says that with the lack of self-pity that is as characteristic as the absence of hyperbole when he evaluates his artistry, past and present.

Of those early triumphs in the polls, he says, ‘I never really believed that I deserved it. As far as my playing now, I believe I have progressed conceptually, which is the important thing. At the time I won the polls, my style was very lyrical, a style the average person could listen to and understand without being overwhelmed with technique. I can still play that way, very cool, few notes, lots of empty spaces. I can also play very fly, very hard. I believe I play ten times better now than I did then. And I don't want to lose people, I want them to understand what I play on my horn.’

In this album, you’ll hear Chet play both ways, cool and “very fly." The lyricism is intact. The tone, if anything, is deeper and fuller. The celebrated similarity between Baker's instrumental and vocal phrasing is vividly displayed on those two gorgeous ballads of regret, "She Was Too Good To Me" and "What’ll I Do." The sense of loss expressed by the lyrics has never been more poignantly interpreted. And you’ll surely be able to "understand what I play on my horn" in the 16 bars of trumpet between the vocal sections of "She Was Too Good To Me." It's a classic melodic statement, in a league with Bobby Hackett's 1939 "Embraceable You," Jack Sheldon's bridge on "Then I’ll Be Tired Of You" with the Hi-Los, and Chet’s own "My Funny Valentine."

On the faster pieces, the springiness of phrasing; the floating, easy swing; the intelligent lines; the high personal sound with a touch of added brilliance; all of these elements testify to the continued vitality of an important trumpet artist. …”

With the assistance of the crackerjack graphics team at CerraJazz LTD, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has developed the following video to demonstrate “the lyrical” aspects of Chet’s playing on She Was Too Good To Me.

It features Chet on Hank Mobley’s Funk in Deep Freeze  Assisting Chet on the first performance are Hubert Laws on flute, Bob James on electric piano, Ron Carter on bass and drummer Steve Gadd.  

Artistic perfection is something that every musician strives for.

With Chettie, even with broken teeth, artistic accomplishment seemed to occur as though he was in a continual state of grace and the Jazz Gods had shined a ray through him.

Pepper Adams' Joy Road: An Annotated Discography - Gary Carner

© -Steven Cerra. Copyright protected; all rights reserved.

"On the baritone sax, he was the greatest we've ever had." 

- Phil Woods, alto saxophonist

''He was a rare genius on the horn." 

- Philip Levine, Poet Laureate of the United States 2011-2012

“Throughout jazz's illustrious history, live and studio performances have been frozen in time on recordings, preserving for listeners the musical traditions passed down from generation to generation by jazz's great improvisers. Because of recordings' pivotal role in conveying jazz's oral tradition, it can be argued that recordings are jazz's most basic and enduring artifact. If that's indeed the case, then discography — books that list these recordings — is jazz's most fundamental reference work.”

- Gary Carner, Pepper Adams’ Joy Road: An Annotated Discography

I have had my copy of Gary Carner’s Pepper Adams’ Joy Road: An Annotated Discography for some time now, but I wanted to “test drive it” before writing about it.

This is not a narrative biography of the life of baritone saxophonist, composer and arranger, Pepper Adams.

What it is can be found in the following explanation:

Pepper Adams’ Joy Road: An Annotated Discography is more than a compendium of sessions and gigs done by the greatest baritone saxophone soloist in history. It's a fascinating overview of Adams' life and times, thanks to colorful interview vignettes drawn from the authors unpublished conversations with Adams and other musicians. These candid observations from jazz greats about Adams and his colleagues reveal previously unknown, behind-the-scenes drama around legendary recordings made by David Amram, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Elvin Jones, Thad Jones, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Duke Pearson, and many others.

All types of sound material  —  studio recordings, private tapes and broadcasts, film scores, audience tapes, arid even jingles — are listed, and Adams' oeuvre is pushed back from 1956 to 1947, when Adams was sixteen years old, before he played baritone saxophone. Because of Carner's access to Adams' estate, just prior to its disposition in 1987, much new discographical material is included, now verified by Adams' date books and correspondence.

Since Adams worked in so many of the great bands of his era, Pepper Adams 'Joy Road: An Annotated Discography is a refreshing, sometimes irreverent walk through a large swath of jazz history. This work also functions as a nearly complete band discography of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, the most influential big band of its time: Adams was a founding member and stayed with the band until a year before Jones left to relocate in Denmark. Finally, Carner charts the ascent of Adams as an original, yet still underappreciated, composer, one who wrote forty-three unique works, nearly half of them after August 1977, when he left Jones-Lewis to tour the world as a soloist. Pepper Adams' Joy Road the first book ever published about Pepper Adams, is a companion to the authors forthcoming biography on Adams.”

For those of you who may not be familiar with him, Gary Carner is an independent jazz researcher, is the author of Jazz Performers and The Miles Davis Companion. From 1984 until Adams' death in 1986, Carner collaborated with Pepper Adams on his memoirs. Carner's research on Adams' career, collected at pepperadams.com, spans four decades. Carner has also produced all forty-three of Adams' compositions for Motema Music. For more about Gary, Pepper and the Motema Music project, I urge you to visit Gary’s Pepper Adams website.

I am by no means a Pepper Adams “Completist,” although I do have many of Pepper’s recordings including most of those that he made with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra.

It was a sheer delight to play Pepper’s music while reading Gary’s annotations about what led up to the sessions and what was involved in making the music of a particular recording [including, in some cases, some very revealing personal anecdotes]. Because there are not very many listeners’ guides to the music, it’s hard to remember a time when I had a more satisfying experience listening to recorded Jazz of a particular musician [although Gary’s annotated discography on Pepper brought to mind my posting on Noal Cohen and Michael Fitzgerald fine biography/annotated discography - Rat Race Blues: The Musical Life of Gigi Gryce].

Not only was my listening pleasure enhanced by Gary’s attention to detail and his insights into Pepper’s music, but I also gained a fuller appreciation of what goes into the artistic life of a Jazz musician. Gary helps the reader understand Pepper Adams the person; a person who artistically expresses himself through the medium of Jazz.

Dan Morgenstern, the distinguished Jazz historian and now retired Director of The Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University further amplifies the focus of Gary’s study on Pepper in his Foreword to the book:

“While correct, "Annotated Discography" by no means says all about this fascinating record of a great musician's career and life. For decades, Gary Garner has devoted himself to tracing every musical step by Pepper Adams, from the very first teenaged endeavor, captured by a recording device, professional or amateur, issued or not. And he has enhanced the carefully gathered discographical details with additional information, musical, technical and personal, about the performance circumstances, more often than not obtained from participants and observers, as well as from interviews, published and personal, with the man himself.

Quite a man, too — not only one of the outstanding practitioners of the baritone saxophone, but a brilliant, complicated guy, whom I had the distinct pleasure of knowing. If there is a subtext here, it would be the fact that Pepper was the only white musician in the "Detroit Invasion" that descended upon the New York jazz scene in the late 1950s, accepted as a "primus inter pares" by his black colleagues—and friends. Early on, you will find an amusing anecdote about Alfred Lion's first reaction to Pepper's music: the founder of Blue Note Records refused to believe that the player on the demo tape the young baritonist had submitted was not black, going so far as to calling him a liar. Pepper would of course go on to participate in many a Blue Note session — if Lion ever apologized, we'll never know.

Good discographies are certainly very useful tools, but it is highly uncommon for a discography, even an annotated one, to also qualify as a good read. But Pepper Adams' Joy Road most definitely is. It brings the man as well as his music to life. Read—and listen—well!

—Dan Morgenstern”

Gary provides his own thoughts about his endeavor on behalf of Pepper and his music in these excerpts from the Preface to his book:

“Throughout jazz's illustrious history, live and studio performances have been frozen in time on recordings, preserving for listeners the musical traditions passed down from generation to generation by jazz's great improvisers. Because of recordings' pivotal role in conveying jazz's oral tradition, it can be argued that recordings are jazz's most basic and enduring artifact. If that's indeed the case, then discography — books that list these recordings — is jazz's most fundamental reference work.

A jazz musician's discography is a musical story. It shows the people he played with, the venues he played, the progression of his art over time, the maturation of his repertoire, the compositions he wrote. It functions as a life chronology and a buying guide.

What you have in your hands is Pepper Adams' story, as told by his recordings. [Emphasis, mine] It's the culmination of three decades of research on Adams' recorded work—from the LP and cassette era to VHS, CDs, DVDs, and now YouTube — that began in 1984, when I worked with Adams on his memoirs during the last two years of his life.

After much of our work was done, in 1985 I moved from New York to Boston to study jazz musicology with Lewis Porter. I was already well along on the biographical aspects of Adams' life, but I needed to learn from an expert about discographical research, and to round out my knowledge of jazz history, especially the 1920 and '30s. Apart from all that Lewis Porter taught me (and it was considerable), during that time I adopted an overarching strategy to my Adams research: I would, at the very least, try to interview everyone still alive who recorded with Adams, with the aim of verifying published and anecdotal discographical information. The end result was vastly improved data, plus two things I hadn't anticipated: The first was the discovery of many unknown recordings. The other was learning fascinating new details of well-known sessions, sometimes in glorious detail, that cast entirely new light on the creative process and on the business of jazz.

While busy making sense of this, in 1987 Evrard Deckers, an independent researcher working in Belgium, asked me to review the discography he was compiling on Pepper Adams. After a few years of correspondence, and a trip to Belgium, in 1992 Deckers and I decided to collaborate on a co-authored work. It was a wonderful division of labor, since I'd focus on my archival materials and North American research while Deckers could mine the many resources available in Europe. This was before the internet and Google era, so geography mattered far more than it does now. Evrard Deckers contributed much new information, especially regarding reissues, European radio broadcasts, and audience recordings, before he died in his sleep at home in 1997.

In the fifteen years since his death, however, this book has become an entirely different entity. The biggest change is the addition of transcribed interview material that took me two years to complete. It occurred to me that some of my interview material only pertained to Adams' discography, and was too nuanced to be used in an Adams biography. If not used here, it would never be published.

Also new to the manuscript, I've identified Adams' solos, so that listeners can focus on these recordings, as opposed to those he did as a sideman or studio player. Moreover, much new recorded material, and a new generation of reissues, has been released since 1997, necessitating a great deal of additional research.

The format of the discography, too, has been completely overhauled to better conform to current standards and make it more legible. Annotations and footnotes, for example, have been redesigned, LP titles have been added, and subtle changes have been instituted, such as adding the country of origin and identifying 78s, 45s, LPs, CDs, VHS, and DVDs.

Joy Road is so named not just to riff on one of Adams' great compositions. I chose it to also capture the essence of Adams' life on the road, playing jazz with a cast of thousands, some of whom are quoted in this book. It's also my tribute to Adams' great recorded oeuvre, his 43 magnificent compositions, and the joy he derived from playing the baritone saxophone.

Much about Adams' personality is woven throughout the annotations, especially among younger musicians that witnessed Adams' final illness. In a sense, I've tried, like documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, to infuse my work with a kind of "emotional archeology." Those who are interested in getting a still deeper understanding of Adams' life might enjoy my companion volume, a full-length biography of Adams, tentatively entitled In Love with Night. I'm planning to finish it well before 2030, the centennial of Pepper Adams' birth. In the meantime, please consult www.pepperadams.com, the website I maintain as the historical record of his life and work.

Gary Carner

Braselton, Georgia

Far too few, significant Jazz musicians have discographical guides to their recorded work. Thanks to Gary Carner’s dedication and his abilities at compilation and annotation, Pepper Adams fortunately is not one of them as is attested to in Pepper Adams 'Joy Road: An Annotated Discography.

Pepper is featured on the following video as a member of pianist Don Friedman’s quintet performing Sonny Rollins' Audubon with Jimmy Knepper [tb], Pepper Adams [bs], George Mraz [b] and Bill Hart [d].

Clifford Brown With Strings

© -Steven Cerra. Copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Beautifully repackaged and presented, the January 1955 sessions are, in retrospect, most remarkable for Neal Hefti's delicately nuanced arrangements which always seem to deliver up surprises. The 12 tracks are almost perfectly uniform in length and delivery, and it's all the more remarkable that they remain fresh and inventive. Brown sounds as bright as a new pin in this digitally remastered version, but he isn't artificially foregrounded in front of the strings; they receive their due share as well.”

- Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.

Clifford Brown was twenty-six years old when he was killed in an automobile accident on his way to a gig in Chicago.

Twenty-six!

He didn’t take up the trumpet until he was 15 so figure a couple of years to develop some chops [in his case, SOME chops], and what’s left; 7-8 years of performing and recording?

Thank goodness for the wise and generous people in the Jazz business who put that time to good use. As a result of their perspicacity and financial wherewithal, Clifford left behind a considerable recorded legacy.

Among my favorites is the recording he made in 1955, a year-and-a-half before his death in 1956, entitled Clifford Brown With Strings [Emarcy CD 814 642-2]. The string arrangements were done by Neal Hefti and they are perfectly suited to Clifford’s big, juicy, pellucid tone.

Kiyoshi Koyama prepared the following narrative about this recording, Clifford Brown’s career and the arrangements by Neal Hefti for the Japanese CD version of Clifford Brown With Strings and the editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it would be a fun way to begin a series of retrospective blog postings about some of the highlights of Brownie’s all-too-brief time in the Jazz World.

[Please keep in mind that Mr. Koyama’s remarks have been translated from Japanese into English and that the translator’s “skills” may be a little rusty in this regard.]

CLIFFORD BROWN WITH STRINGS

“This album features a collection of ballads in moving performances by Clifford Brown, the trumpeter of genius whose name will forever remain in the annals of Jazz history, and whose brief life came to an end after only twenty-five years, accompanied by strings.

Clifford Brown, who was always known by the nickname" Brownie" recorded this album between the 18th and 20th of January 1955. Brownie had just turned twenty-four, and six months had passed since, together with the drummer Max Roach, he formed the Clifford Brown & Max Roach Quintet. This was the time at which he was beginning to come into the limelight, and become the focus of attention throughout the world.

During the previous year of 1954, Clifford Brown had been chosen as the top new star in the trumpet section of the international critics poll held annually by Down Beat jazz magazine. With the appearance of Brownie, it was felt that a successor had at last appeared to Fats Navarro, who had died prematurely in 1950, and, together with Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Daves, the greatest hopes were held out for his future development.

In contrast to Fats Navarro, Brownie was the very picture of health, and on account of his constant smile was known from early on as a"Sweet Guy" or "Sweet Brownie. He was looked upon with affection by all who knew him. Everybody was attracted by his warmth and thoughtfulness, and extravagant praise was bestowed upon him.

Brownie held out the promise for a brilliant future, and his work suggested that the possibilities he held in store as a trumpeter were virtually unlimited. Nobody could thus have foreseen that, only eighteen months after this album had been recorded, Brownie would meet with a tragic automobile accident which would put an end to his brief twenty-six years of life.

Given the magnitude of this tragedy, it seems nothing short of the grace of heaven that Brownie should have left us this album before he died.

Although Clifford Brown's career was only very brief, he produced a total of thirteen albums containing many great performances during his period with EmArcy between 1954 and 1956. The present album, in which Brownie took on the supreme challenge of performing ballads all alone to the accompaniment of strings, is a true classic which gives a full display of Brownie's genius as a trumpeter. While Brownie's blistering hot improvisations, as can be heard on "Study in Brown" and "Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street", are here absent here, what is present instead is Brownie's sensitivity and human warmth, in other words Brownie himself, as represented by the features which earned him the affectionate nickname of "Sweet Brownie".

Clifford Brown With Strings , in which the spotlight in constantly upon Brownie, also gives a full display of the trumpeter's consummate technical skill. Brownie thus had to give his all to these performances. He had to take on the challenge of investing his trumpet with the whole scope of his God-given technique and imagination.

On the surface he seems to be performing his melodic lines in a nonchalant fashion, but in actual fact it took eleven takes before he was satisfied with "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes". Not a single piece was completed after only one take. Brownie completed the album after a full three days at the rate of four pieces a day.

The pieces performed are entirely standard ballads of the highest quality, well-known to everybody. The performance of such pieces presented no mean challenge to this young twenty-four year old musician. Generally speaking, the ballad was a form of musical expression only tackled by musicians such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz after attaining their full maturity.

A young and immature musician could scarcely be expected to cope with the highly exacting genre of the slow ballad. However, the total success of Clifford Brown in this genre was precisely due to the fact that his genius had allowed him to attain maturity at a young age. Brownie thus gave his individual, fully committed interpretations, with an astonishing display of technical mastery, of great American pieces, pieces of great beauty in themselves, such as "Stardust", "Yesterday" and "Laura". The warm trumpet sound combines with the impeccable string arrangements of Neal Hefti to move the listener deeply.

Brownie's natural genius as an interpreter of slow ballads is truly concentrated into this album. Listening now to the performances surviving on the original master tapes, one almost has the feeling that Brownie has come back to life. The superb recording breathes life into the superb performance, and one is left feeling grateful that we are still able to hear these performances today. Wynton Marsalis, the brilliant young trumpeter of this decade who has been hailed as the reincarnation of Brownie and for whom the highest hopes are held out for the future , holds this album in the greatest regard, and has set the attainment of the level reached therein as his own goal. This is perhaps one of the reasons why Clifford Brown is referred to as "Immortal".

The Career of Clifford Brown

Clifford Brown was born on 30th December 1930 in Wilmington, Delaware. He was given a trumpet by his father in 1945 when he entered high school and began to take lessons in trumpet, jazz harmony and music theory from a local musician Robert Laurie. After studying mathematics at Delaware State University, in 1949 he was awarded a music scholarship which enabled him to change to the study of music at the Maryland State University. This was the year in which his abilities came to the attention of Fats Navarro and Dizzy Gillespie, and he thus came into public attention. He was seriously injured in an unfortunate automobile accident in June 1950, recovering and leaving hospital in May of the following year.

He performed with Charlie Parker immediately afterwards, and then began his career in earnest with the Chris Powell Rhythm and Blues Band, with whom he worked in 1952 and 1953. He then worked with Tadd Dameron in 1953, with Lionel Hampton between August and December 1953, going on a European tour with this group, and with the Art Blakey Quintet in 1954. He was chosen in top place in the Down Beat "New Star" category of the magazine's 1954 international critics poll, and great hopes were thus held out for his future. In March 1954 he formed the Brown & Roach Quintet with Max Roach, and thus became a figure of even greater importance on the jazz scene.

This quintet, with Harold Land, and subsequently Sonny Rollins, on tenor sax, was one of the top combos active during the heyday of modern jazz in the early fifties, and will remain in history for the series of great recordings it made for EmArcy. However, early in the morning on 26th June 1956, the car in which Clifford was a passenger went into a skid on a Pennsylvania highway, wet from the rain. It smashed against the protective wall and took away the lives of Clifford Brown, the pianist Richard Powell, and the latter's wife, who was driving the car at the time. Having blazed like a meteor, but with infinite possibilities still unrealised, the life of Clifford Brown came to an end after twenty-five years.

After Brownie's death, Quincy Jones remarked sadly that "We have lost a young genius who would have been the main force behind the generation to succeed Parker, Dizzy and Miles" and Sonny Rollins said that "Brownie was the musician I respected most after Parker and Lester Young". Benny Golson, who had been a close friend of Brownie, subsequently wrote the great piece "I Remember Clifford". Brownie's influence extended strongly over trumpeters of both his own and subsequent generations , this influence being clearly present in the work of Donald Byrd, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, as well as in the work of trumpeters who have made their mark in the present decade such as Wynton Marsalis and Terence Blanchard.

The Arrangements of Neal Hefti

The arranger and conductor of the strings on this album was Neal Hefti, who is well-known especially for having provided the Woody Herman and Count Basie Orchestras with many fine arrangements. The string ensemble consisted of six violins, two violas and one cello, and was supplemented by three members of the Brown & Roach Quintet, namely Richie Powell on piano, George Morrow on bass, and Max Roach on drums, together with Barry Galbraith on guitar. Hefti was also a trumpeter, and thus proved to be the ideal arranger for Clifford's string section. The ambitious sound of the strings, together with Brownie's classic performance, results in a recording that has lost none of its sparkle over the years.                                                     

(Kiyoshi Koyama)”

The following video features Clifford performing Neal Hefti’s beautiful arrangement of What’s New from Clifford Brown With Strings.