Jazzletter PO Box 240, Ojai CA 93024-0240
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Gene Lees Ad Lihitum Jazzletter PO Box 240, Ojai CA 93024-0240 October 2001 Vol Z0 No. 70 A Walking Sound Clayton is one of those who thinks, “You don’t find your instrument, the instrument finds you.” Bill Crow, who began On the evening ofMonday, October 15, 2001, more than four on trombone, compiled a list ofbassists and the instruments hundred persons, mostly musicians and their wives, gathered on which they began: in the banquet room of the Sportsman’s Lodge in North Harvie Swartz, Jamil Nasser, Niels Henning Orsted- Hollywood, California, in a tribute to one man. It was two Pedersen, Cameron Brown, Beverly Peer, Walter Yoder; days after the seventy-fifth birthday of Raymond Matthews Dean Johnson, Cameron Brown, piano; Gary Peacock, Bob Brown, bom in Pittsburgh October 13, 1926, one ofthe major Cranshaw, piano and drums; RoL im0‘and figures injazz history, in particular the evolution ofthe bass. accordion; George Duvivier, piano and violin; Andy The event had been organized by John Clayton, one of Ray’s Simpkins, Piano and clarinet; Art Davis, piano and tuba; protégées, Uan Racey, David Abell, and drummer Frank Reggie Workman, piano and euphonium; Buddy Clark, piano Capp. When Frank, acting as master of ceremonies, asked the and trombone; Ralph Pena, baritone hom and tuba; Willie bassists in the room to stand, at least forty men rose. Ruff, French hom; Arvell Shaw, trombone and tuba; Jack The warmth toward, the admiration for, this magnificent Six, Artie Shapiro, John Simmons, Frank Tate, Rufus Reid, and pioneering musician were ahnost palpable. It amounted trumpet; Gene Taylor, sousaphone; Gene Wright, comet; to reverence. And it was not just for his abilities as a musi- Michael Moore, accordion and tuba; Ron Carter, Buell cian, but for his character as a human being as well. Neidlinger, and Pops Foster, cello; George Mraz, violin and And for me, it was one of those where-do-the-years-go? saxophone; Percy Heath, Jack Lesberg, Eddie Jones, Eddie moments. I realized that I met Ray in the first week of May, Safranski, Joe Benjamin; and Chubby Jackson, clarinet; 1951, when he and Oscar Peterson were working as a duo, Vinnie Burke, violin and guitar; Stanley Clarke, accordion, playing a club in Hamilton, Ontario, when I was a neophyte violin and cello; Dennis Irwin, clarinet; Scott LaFaro, clarinet newspaper reporter at flie Hamilton Spectator. I thought, My and saxophone; Milt Hinton, violin; Henry Grimes, violin God, I’ve known Ray fifty years. That first meeting, however, and tuba; Howard Rumsey and Keter Betts, drums; Walter was a brief encounter, and I did not get to know Ray well Booker, saxophone and clarinet; Welhnan Braud, guitar and until 1959, when I was the editor ofDown Beat and the Oscar drums; Gene Ramey, trumpet and sousaphone; Major Holley, Peterson Trio with Ed Thigpen on drums played extended violin and tuba. engagements at the London House, a great restaurant and club Ray is yet another bassist who began on piano. His father at the comer of Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue in wanted Ray to play like Fats Waller, and, later, like Art Chicago. I would spend ahnost every evening with the three Tatum. “That was asking a little too much,” Ray said. “But of them. One bitter-cold winter night we lefi the place and that’s not the reason I gave up piano. I just couldn’t find my Ray said ofhis bass, “I’m getting too old to play it and ahnost way on it. It just didn’t give me what I wanted. too old to carry it.” He was thirty-five. Recently I reminded “Besides, I was in a high school orchestra and there must him ofthis and he chuckled and said, ‘Yeah, well now I really have been fourteen piano players in it. And twelve of them am too old to carry it.” were chicks who could read anything in sight.” But not to play it, which he continues to do magnificently Ray tried trombone, but that didn’t take either. There was and constantly. It is ahnost impossible to find him at home in a bass available at school. He remembered: “I played that Los Angeles. - school bass for two years. I used to take it home weekends. It is interesting to note how many bassists began music on The teacher used to think, ‘That _Ray Brown, he’s really other instruments, for as Chuck Domanico put it, “When serious, the way he practices.’ He didn’t know I was making you’re eleven years old, the bass looks like a tree.” And John gigs on the school’s bass. But then they ran my picture in the - paper, in comiection with some job I had, and the teacher saw Bill Crow said: “Ray started right out with good pitch, a it. They stopped me taking it home, right there. My dad gave big sound, and the technique we call the ‘long sound,’ that is, in and bought me a bass.” making each note ring into the next one, giving the bass line In time Ray went with the Luis Russell band. It was continuity and a singing quality. His early work with Dizzy, playing Miami. Ray recalled. “Three other guys and I began both in small groups and big bands, served as a model for me plotting to get to New York and try our luck. But the night when I was learning the instrument. I didn’t know how to before we were to go, everybody chickened out, leaving me finger a bass, but I knew, from listening to Ray and Oscar with my bags packed. So I said, ‘The hell with it,’ and went. Pettiford and the records ofJimmy Blanton and Israel Crosby, “I got to New York, took my bags to my aunt’s place, and what I wanted my bass to sound like. the very same night had my nephew take me down to show me “When Ray hooked up with Oscar Peterson, he really went where 52nd Street was. That night, I saw Erroll Gamer, Art after the technical difficulties ofthe bass, refusing to allow for Tatmn, Billie Holiday, Billy Daniels, Coleman Hawkins, and the possibility that some things couldn’t be played. He Hank Jones. I’d known Hank before. While we were talking, constantly challenged Ray, and Ray ate up that sort ofthing. he said, ‘Dizzy Gillespie just came in.’ I said, ‘Where? “He developed a lot ofthe skills that became the standards émEUWfit*to meet him!’ of the next generation of virtuoso bassists. Like Blanton, “So Hank introduced us. Hank said to Dizzy, ‘This is Ray Mingus, and Pettiford, Ray developed his technique before the Brown, a friend of mine, and a very good bass player. ’ invention ofamplifiers and metal strings which made it easier “Diuy said, ‘You want a gig?’ I ahnost had a heart attack! for bass players to make themselves heard. He knows how to Dizzy said, ‘Be at my house for rehearsal at seven o’clock project his tone, and he pulls the strings percussively, making tomorrow.’ . the bass line powerfully propel the rhythm section and the “I went up there next night, and got the fright of my life. band. The band consisted of Dizzy, Bud Powell, Max Roach, “He credits Dizzy with starting him in the right direction Charlie Parker — and me! Two weeks later, we picked up harmonically, and has developed a sure ear for a telling bass Milt Jackson, who was my roommate for two years. We were line, selecting sequences that perfectly support the music. inseparable. They called us flie twins. Milt and I did some “I wish he didn’t live so far away, so I could hear him starving to death together at times. Milt introduced me to my more ofien in person.” wife, Cecille. They’d been kids together. Ray’s partnership with Oscar Peterson went through two “After I’d been with Dizzy about a month and figured I famous trios, the first with Herb Ellis on guitar, the second Ed had everything down, I cornered him alter the gig and said, Thigpen on drums. Herb, bassist John Frigo, and pianist Lou ‘Diz, how’m I doin’?’ He said, ‘Oh — fine. Except you’re Carter were three-fourths ofthe rhytlnn section ofthe Jimmy playing the wrong notes.’ Dorsey band when they left to form a group called the Soft “That did it. I started delving into everything we did, the Wmds, so hip and ahead of its time that it failed. They never notes, the chords, everything. And I’d sing the lines as I was found an audience, and when the group was on the verge of playing them.” disbanding, Ray took Oscar to hear them, and Herb joined the Dizzy told me: “Ray Brown’s always been that type of Oscar Peterson Trio, the three of them constituting one ofthe guy, very, very inquisitive. On I ’m through with Love, we get most brilliant trios in jazz history. When Herb lefi, Ray to one place where the words go, for I mean to care . recommended Ed Thigpen. Right there, that word care. “The melody went up to an E-flat, B-natural, and G-flat, Hal Gaylor knew Oscar Peterson early — in Montreal. Hal and that sounds like an A-flat minor seventh chord. Sounds said: “Oscar went to Montreal High School about four years like it. So I told Ray, ‘Now, Ray, you’re making A-flat there. ahead of me. I got to know him better when he had a trio in Your ears are good.