Max Roach: One Original Idea

Posted on May 4, 2014 by Scott K Fish

roach_max_1987

SKF NOTE: I first saw Max Roach live in a Chicago jazz club with his quartet. Cecil Bridgewater (flugelhorn), Odean Pope (sax), and I can’t remember the bassist. Maybe it was Calvin Hill.

I noticed a twentysomething guy sitting in the audience with a trumpet case. Was he a musician I should know? A local talent?

Max invited the unknown trumpet player onstage to play a tune all the musicians knew, but I’ve forgotten! When it was his turn, the twentysomething trumpet player blew a series of choruses. Finally, Max raised his left hand, signaling his band members to end the tune. And they did.

The trumpeter went back to his seat while Max came from behind his drumset to the mic at center stage. And in his professorial way, Max criticized the guest musician for wasting the band’s time and the audience’s time with solos of running scales and arpeggios – while having nothing original to say.

I have been fortunate, Max said, to have played with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and other great musicians. Each of these musicians, Max said, had one original idea. And you heard it in everything they played. And they were able to make themselves heard among people without being oppressive about it.

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Selling My Record Albums, Except One

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Scott K Fish

ImageAs I write, a record dealer I’ve never met is combing through boxes of my lifelong collection of Long Playing (LP) records. About 2000 LP’s total.

This morning I remembered one LP I want to keep. It is Mel Lewis’s Mel Lewis and Friends LP. Mel autographed it for me when I interviewed him for Modern Drummer. Mel was, I believe, my second feature MD interview.

But that day was also a landmark, a radical, monumental shift in my life. Everything, e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g, I believed about becoming a successful professional drummer exploded. Gone without a trace. Dust.

I’ll explain in another blog entry.

Mel was a drum hero, one of the best players, and a great, generous man. Mel was also, I learned much later, born on the same day as my Uncle Bob, the one person in my life who started me on my lifelong love of drums.

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Do Drum Endorsements Sell Drums?

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: For a little while in the early 1980’s I was Northeast District Sales Manager for the Gretsch Musical Instrument Company, which was then based out of Tennessee. Karl Dustman was an executive with Gretsch at the time. Karl and I knew each other from his many years at Ludwig Drum Company and my time as a freelance writer for Modern Drummer. A wonderful guy.

Max Weinberg and I had become friends through Modern Drummer. Not long after I moved to Gretsch from Modern Drummer, Max and I started talking about his endorsing and using Gretsch drums on Bruce Springsteen’s upcoming Born in the USA tour. I don’t remember whether Max first broached the subject or I did. But I thought it was a great idea that had to be a plus for a great American drum company in the process of rebuilding itself.

If memory serves, Max would need three four-piece Gretsch drumsets for the road in exchange for his endorsement. That was, I think, because of the logistics of the equipment trucks. Roadies might be loading one of Max’s kits onto trucks in New York City while roadies were unloading one of Max’s kits from a truck for the next gig in Chicago. Something like that.

I approached Karl Dustman with the idea. He said no. I don’t remember if that was Karl’s unilateral decision. It may have been a decision with which Karl disagreed, and he was merely the messenger. But the reason Gretsch said no to the Max Weinberg endorsement was interesting.

Karl asked me, “Can you guarantee Max Weinberg’s endorsement will sell a certain number of Gretsch drumsets?”

“No,” I answered, adding, “You don’t think Max Weinberg playing Gretsch drums on a worldwide Bruce Springsteen tour will sell more than three drumsets?”

What anyone thought, wasn’t the point. The point was, Gretsch saw no way of quantifying drum sales based on endorsements.

Jonathan Moffett was turned down as a Gretsch endorser for Michael Jackson’s Thriller tour for the same reason. And both Max and Jonathan toured the world endorsing other drum makers.

I still believe Gretsch was wrong, shortsighted. What do you think?

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My First Interviews Were Written on this Typewriter

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Scott K Fish
My First Interviews Were Written on this Typewriter

I bought this typewriter used for $35.00 at a Goodwill store in Huntington, NY. I sold $1,000 worth of freelance articles written on it, including several of my first feature Modern Drummer interviews.

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Square Drumsticks

Posted on April 22, 2014 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: Remembering a Roy Burns drum clinic in Illinois. Probably Moline. I lived and played drums for a couple of years in the Quad-Cities area of Iowa. The Quad-Cities are Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa; Moline and Rock Island in Illinois. The Mississippi River separates the two states and cities.

There is a great deal of jazz history there. Drummer Louis Bellson was born, grew up, and is buried in Moline. Trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke grew up and is buried in Davenport. And, of course, the Mississippi River is legendary to the migration of jazz.

But on this day, in a music shop, Roy Burns is giving a drum clinic. I recall him saying that drummers rarely practice their short rolls (RLRL) and long rolls (RRLLRRLL) – but those two rolls are the root of all drum rudiments. Roy also told of an encounter with a legendary New York City drummer, Sam Ulano. Sam handed Roy a pair of square drumsticks he’d invented. Roy gave the sticks a try and, handing them back to Sam Ulano, said they felt like they’d tear up his hands. Then Roy asked why Sam thought square drumsticks were an improvement over round drumsticks.

“Because,” answered Sam, “when you place them on top of your bass drum they won’t roll off.”

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