Friday, June 6, 2025
Thursday, June 5, 2025
Johnny One Note - Tubby Hayes Quintet
Tuesday, June 3, 2025
Billy Higgins - A Lesson in Lovemaking - Valerie Wilmer
© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved
I first met drummer Billy Higgins when he was playing a trio gig in a small club just off Hollywood Blvd. The gig was so memorable that I’ve forgotten both the name of the club and the other musicians who Billy was playing with that night.
I do remember that I was only fifteen and that my father had to accompany me so I could get into the place because it served booze
But what was especially memorable that night was Billy’s playing. It was so light and crisp - the time just flowed in a relaxed manner off his cymbal beat
Ever since that night, I’ve always tried to emulate Billy’s loose, relaxed groove in my own playing.
The room did not have an elevated bandstand and I was able to get a seat close to the drums where I could observe everything at close range. It was obvious that I was staring, so much so that after the first set he came over to our table and said a few encouraging words to me, all the while flashing his trademark smile.
[Unfortunately I never got the hang of that part of Billy’s approach to drums as I usually frown when I play which I attribute to concentration].
Over the years, I met him many times when he was on the Left Coast picking up checks at the Musicians Union or stocking up on gear at the Pro Drum shop across the street and we became “friends” in the informal sense of the word.
Judging from the following interview that Billy gave to the British Jazz writer and photographer Valerie Wilmer about 10 years after our initial meeting, he developed some unique insights into Jazz drumming along the way. [N.B.: Valerie writes using English spelling and I have left this unchanged.]
"You're not supposed to rape the drums, you make love to them as far as I'm concerned ! " The gregarious Billy Higgins, who has played drums for just about everybody out here, was actively criticising the loudness and lack of control that separates the boys from the men in jazz percussion today.
The outburst was rather out of character for the skinny little drummer who moves and grooves in his own sweet way and is inclined to avoid any serious discussion. Billy would rather turn you off with a disarmingly cheeky grin or a drawling line in hip talk than actually get into a conversation, yet he is exceptionally well qualified to assess the work of his contemporaries. It was not until 1968 that he scored a kind of official recognition by placing top of a critics' poll as a talent deserving of wider acclaim, but those who know had been spreading the good word for years. Blue Note Records are protectors of the jazz status quo and that he turns up on three out of four dates for the label proves how often his skills are demanded for playing orthodox jazz, but he is equally at home in the avant garde milieu. The difference between Billy and some of the other free percussionists is that he knows how to keep time first and foremost, and he also knows how to make love. Bearing in mind the classic Ellington observation that " a drum is a woman ", Billy realises that once you've reached a climax, you don't try to sustain the orgasm to the point of angry retaliation.
Born in Texas in 1936 and raised in the notorious Los Angeles ghetto of Watts, Billy Higgins has been playing professionally since the age of twelve. He has spent the best part of his life listening to other drummers, observing their strengths and their weaknesses, absorbing pointers on technique and dynamics, and he could, if he so desired, also claim to be among the very first of the " free " percussionists. In the late 'fifties when no other drummer would even attempt to follow the unorthodox way that Ornette Coleman was wending, both Billy and his New Orleans-born mentor, Edward Blackwell, spent many days and nights just playing with the alto saxophonist and ingesting his revolutionary conception. " It took me a time to get used to him," Billy admitted. " But after a while I figured there ain't nobody here I'm not supposed to play with or make some kind of music with! "
As A. B. Spellman has remarked in his penetrating study of unorthodox jazz makers [*Four Lives in the Bebop Business, 1968] it was Blackwell who taught Higgins the responsibility of the drummer and the importance of technique. " With Blackwell's technique and with his knowledge of the sonics of drums, he was able to play overtones that few drummers were aware of, and this knowledge he imparted to Higgins."* Thus, when Blackwell returned to New Orleans just prior to Coleman's recording debut, his pupil was his obvious replacement. Higgins appeared on three of Coleman's classic 1959 dates, his extreme looseness notably complementing the leader's aggressive spontaneity.
A modest man, Billy prefers to lay the freedom honours at the feet of the indefatigable Roy Haynes. "Cats aren't hip to Roy because he was with Sarah [Vaughan] at the time the role of the drums was developing," he said. " But as far as dexterity is concerned, Roy was playing then what Elvin [Jones] and Tony [Williams] are playing now. He didn't go completely wild; he still kept the taste. He kept everything in context because the drums, after all, are the navigator of the whole thing."
His own approach to the drums affords a lesson both in navigation and in lovemaking for those who really listen. Whether he is working with Coleman — he has briefly revisited his old stomping ground after an absence of some years — or with more conventional units led by such as Jackie McLean, Art Farmer, Lee Morgan or Hank Mobley, Billy exhibits taste at all times and a high degree of thoughtful consideration for the soloist. He cooks continually but knows how to save up his explosions, and in so doing he resembles another of the great originals of percussion. Speaking of Art Blakey, Billy said, " As strong as he plays, he always starts down there with the shading. It's something that comes with age."
He also knows that the drums are the easiest of instruments to overplay and that the key to successful and sensitive percussion lies in being able to hear every instrument on the bandstand at any given time. "Even the real powerful horn players like Sonny Rollins listen to the bass all the time, so you're not supposed to drown it out. Kenny Clarke is the master as far as drums are concerned. He really turned me on for sound. He can play like the wind! "
When Billy was a child, his closest friend, Johnny Kirkwood, was a drummer. His own family was musical, too, and as a result of this environment he soon started to play the drums himself. " I got my feelings out on playing drums more than anything else," was how he explained the attraction the music had for him. His first real jazz engagement took him on the road with the Jazz Messiahs, a band co-led by trumpeter Don Cherry and alto saxophonist George Newman, both early Ornette Coleman associates also. It was, in fact, in Newman's garage that the drummer later met Edward Blackwell, and started rehearsing with Ornette.
Prior to that, his work had been confined to the usual round of funky but musically mundane rhythm-and-blues groups. Billy paid his dues backing such singers as Amos Milburn and Bo Diddley, and it was while working with Jimmy Witherspoon that he first ran into Ornette Coleman. "You'd think it was quite a contrast and it was," he commented. " But then in a way it's not. Ornette has sure got a lot of blues in him, you see, and he's a very soulful cat. He'd swing you into bad health just from the way he plays!"
At the time Billy started his professional career, rhythm-and-blues was the only medium of self-expression available to the creative young musician. “To have a jazz gig then you really had to be into something," he said, comparing the situation to the overnight leadership demanded by some of today's young musicians. " Younger cats nowadays just seem to start playing and the first thing they hop on is jazz. In those days you had to play R&B and shows and things, but it did something for you; it was all music. That was the only way, unless you had a big name, and then the only cats who had their own bands were those who came out of Billy Eckstine's thing and such." He was referring to Miles Davis, Gene Ammons, Dexter Gordon, Art Blakey and the many other " name " musicians who swelled the phenomenal lineup of the singer's fabled 1944-47 big band.
In the late 'forties and early 'fifties, Billy worked at various times with saxophonists James Clay, Teddy Edwards, Walter Benton and Dexter Gordon. He also appeared with groups led by bassist Leroy Vinnegar and the late pianist Carl Perkins, but the real turnaround in his musical thinking came when he met Ornette Coleman. All his other associates were well-respected, hard-hitting beboppers, and Coleman was a definite outsider. Nevertheless, his originality and the spark that illuminated his vital music made an impact that Billy was unable to ignore. " It's a funny thing" the drummer mused, “but it's that spark that does it. It's the thing that really opens up people's feelings."
More than anything, he considered his association with the saxophonist as a kind of challenge because Coleman was constantly being rejected. " Cats wouldn't even dig being around him," laughed the drummer." When he started playing, they figured, 'Well, if that's what's happening, where am I?' But I dug that he loved music so much, and he was so serious that I took to him right away. . . ."
The general acceptance and the acclaim now paid to Ornette Coleman not only by the jazz establishment but by such non-jazz figures as Leonard Bernstein speak volumes for Billy Higgins's degree of perception. He was fortunate indeed to be endowed with such far-sightedness and sensitivity, especially in view of the attitudes of the majority of Los Angeles musicians. He has vivid recollections of those who would gather around Ornette just to sneer at his unconventional disregard of set tempos, keys and chords. " Man, I dig you, but I don't know what the hell he's doing " was one of the least caustic comments hurled at Billy by the local faces. "And Ornette would be playing his heart out! I wasn't looking at it technically, I was just thinking in terms of my feelings," he said simply.
Billy Higgins's perception stems from having a wide-open mind. " A lot of people make this mistake about music," he explained. " If a cat figures he knows music, his mind is closed. He figures it has to be this way or it has to be that way, and so it stops him from really enjoying it. To dig someone like Ornette you've really got to open your mind and your heart and really listen to him. That's the only way you'll get to him. It's a funny thing, but I've seen cats get mad with Ornette, really mad, and they say, 'Oh, man, what is that cat playing? ' And then they'll listen. And then they'd be right back there the next night, sitting in the same place at the bar, listening again! "
A knowing grin mixed up his mobile face and he laughed. " Being able to open your heart to music, I figure you can learn from almost anybody, especially if that person is an individual. There are so few of those in jazz today; you can't have all chiefs and no Indians, you know. But the more individuals you have, the faster jazz progresses."
When Billy first started "woodshedding", or working out ideas, with Ornette, he attempted to concentrate on overall sound effects rather than become too involved with the actual mechanics of the drums. This was a method developed by Edward Blackwell, the young man's close friend and eternal inspiration." I wasn't thinking of the drums as drums as much as of how I could get something out of the music," he said. " That's why the way Ornette was playing helped me out, too" He also cited the bassist Leroy Vinnegar as a tower of strength: "He was one of the first cats I played with who played so even. The way their conception was at the time, I figured that anything I played would be cool. They [Coleman and Vinnegar] were just so strong that whatever I'd play would be no hassle. It would be just like sitting there and letting the drums play themselves."
When Atlantic Records' artists-and-repertoire man Nesuhi Ertegun heard Coleman in Los Angeles and brought him east to record, Billy Higgins with trumpeter Don Cherry and the resilient bassist Charlie Haden made the trip, too. He stayed with the saxophonist for two years which included a year at the Five Spot in New York City, but prior to making the trip east, work had been virtually non-existent for the quartet.
"During that time we had maybe one gig," Billy recalled, but without any bitterness on show." Whatever has happened to Ornette since then he really deserved. He really was ninety per cent saxophone and ten per cent sleep. He opened up my mind because, as far as conventional playing is concerned, everything just comes down to four-, eight-, sixteen- or thirty-two-bar phrases. He started writing things that were eleven bars or six. If you listen to it, it's natural, too, but it kind of made you think another way. And there was no restriction, and since thirty-two bars had me hung up for a long time, I enjoyed that"
On the subject of greater freedom for the percussionist, Billy returned to the most versatile of jazz drummers, Roy Haynes, whose taste has few equals. " When most of the cats were playing that strict 4/4 feeling, Roy was spreading the rhythm out. The steady cymbal beat is kind of restrictive to horn players so that when they get ready to play, you hear nothing but eighth-notes.
"I used to play with Slim Gaillard a long time ago, and he showed me a lot, like hand-claps and so on. As far as the cymbals are concerned, the ride cymbal on the top is very important. That more or less sustains the rhythm, so if you play different rhythms on the top, the horn player is more or less freed to the point where, if he wants to play something on the downbeat or the upbeat, it's no hassle because you can turn the beat around very easily."
To illustrate the reverse, he recalled a night when Arthur Taylor, one of the tastiest workmen from the rhythmically more conventional era, sat in with Ornette. "He plays real hard on the sock cymbal, you see, and the next thing you know, Ornette had played something, the beat had turned around backwards, and Art couldn't get back to where it was originally at! That showed me right there that you have to stretch the beat out to where it's not continual. For me, playing otherwise now would be kind of frustrating."
One of the distinctive aspects of a certain school of contemporary jazz percussion is the setting up of pulsating layers of sound that leave little room for the spaces and pauses inherent in the work of drummers who followed the earlier patterns. Billy maintains, " You've got to know when not to play ", and he pointed to Thelonious Monk's playing as an object lesson in the use of silence. " Monk can really hip a drummer to that, if he listens to him. He is a school within himself, and in the little time I worked with him, I really learned a lot."
He used Monk's magisterial dominance as a comparison with the authoritativeness of his favourite leader. " Ornette plays like Thelonious or Coleman Hawkins, he's that calibre of musician. He makes a lot of demands on you. I've seen cats get mad with him, and I've seen him make them disgusted with themselves. He's an awful strong person." The drummer, who has the ability to play in any style, puts Ornette on a different level to those who, he said, have misunderstood the meaning of " freedom " and translated it into anarchy. " I can dig all kinds of music as long as it's pure, but a lot of cats made freedom an excuse. Ornette really turned a lot of cats around, but some of them turned too much! A lot of them took to playing like that, but you've got to take it in doses. You can't just throw it all out there.
"I've played with Ornette when he's turned around and said, 'Let's play' Sophisticated Lady,’” and he's done just that. But some cats wouldn't believe it if they saw it. Also, he has that thing that Bird had of playing so much rhythm. He's so much brighter, so much livelier than anyone else. I get the feeling of Coleman Hawkins or Sonny Rollins played at 45 rpm, because Ornette can really play with that spark."
Billy cited Tony Williams and Frank Butler as two of his favourite drummers, together with Edward Blackwell, Roy Haynes and Elvin Jones. " And there's an older cat in St Louis called Joe Charles. He can really play. He works on a fish truck most of the time, but he can really play his heart out." He went on to bewail the lack of what he calls individuality in the percussion field today. " It's very seldom that you can hear a drummer today and say, ' That's So-and-so.' I guess it's like it was with the alto saxophone and Charlie Parker. First off, everyone's trying to sound like Philly Joe Jones. Next thing, everyone's trying to sound like Elvin. Most of the cats are trying to get into that bag, but we really need more originality. I see certain possibilities, but not that many. Maybe Lenny McBrowne; he's nice."
The drummer pointed out that there used to be an abundance of good, accomplished percussion men but that now such selfless perennials are at a premium and greatly in demand. One reason for this, he suggested, is that the majority of drummers are so involved in self-expression that they have little or no interest in absorbing the concept of the leader. "You can't always do it the way you want to, you have to play their music, too. Now, everybody wants to be out front, but the drummer's supposed to give a little and take a little and give a little and so on. When you're not a star, there's a lot of pressure off you and you can just be yourself. Sometimes I've seen people who've become stars, and it's all over for them."
Billy is no star in the accepted sense of the word, yet in a world where it's every man for himself, his good-natured adaptability and thoughtful flavouring make him a shining beacon of achievement. An original drummer with a never diminishing love for the music itself, he is one of an apparently diminishing breed of musicians who live for jazz. You don't often see his ideas and opinions in the jazz magazines, for he is not one of the incessantly roaring soapbox orators spawned by the new music and the concurrent social upheaval; his credo is live and let live. The music, too, is his life, and he has scant respect for musicians who attempt to claim any particular mode of expression as their personal property.
He has the old-time musicians' habit of underlining his words as he speaks, but the stress was especially pronounced when he stated, " Music don't belong to nobody. If they could just realise that music doesn't come from you, it comes through you, and if you don't get the right vibrations, you might kill a little bit of it. You can't take music for granted."
He is an emotional player himself and so he holds in the highest esteem those musicians, great or small, who have the ability to move the listener. "What makes jazz jazz is often the people who don't know anything about it," he said. " The kind of people who, if a quarter-note was to walk in the door, would think it was a wine bottle. But they'd make you cry. And if things like that can happen for someone who knows nothing about music at all, then naturally you know there's got to be something happening with this music.
"Wilbur Ware used to make everybody shut up. People would be clinking their glasses and so on, but he would start playing, and you'd hear that magic. You could hear a pin drop in the house. To communicate with people, you have to have it born in you."
Billy has some of that magic, too, and it's something that stems from knowing about love. When I met him in New York he was far from fit and swollen hands were making playing difficult for him. Rumours were flying that he was undependable and yet he continued to show up for even poorly-paid club dates. "It's a funny thing," mused one leader after a successful Sunday matinee. "I really didn't think Billy would make it today, but he did and he played so good it was a gas to have him there. I guess the thing is that he really loves music so much."
And that is the little drummer man's secret. While so many of the young Turks wrestle with their vituperative horns and spend most of their non-playing time talking about "communication", Billy Higgins is out there getting on with the job. He knows, you see, and he communicates without stopping to think about it. It's something born in him.”
Billy is featured on the following track as a member of the Paul Horn Quintet:
Sunday, June 1, 2025
What Is This Thing Called Love - Stan Getz & Gary Burton - "Nobody Else But Me"
Saturday, May 31, 2025
A Bill Evans Reader by Steven A. Cerra
