SKF NOTE: I still find great value in reading biographies and autobiographies of past jazz masters, including those musicians who were at the beginning of jazz. Danny Barker is such a musician. I bought his book, A Life in Jazz on April 3, 1993 and underscored those parts telling stories of early drummers and shared timeless words of wisdom.
Here’s Danny Barker telling readers a memorable story about his grandfather and early jazz musicians.
[My grandfather] Isidore referred to musicians who played jazz music in the many six-piece jazz bands about the city as “routine” musicians. It was a slur. To him, “routine” meant playing by ear, with no music, in the now “classic” jazz pattern: melody, then variations on a theme. All hot jazz bands were now using this set-up and playing free.
If you couldn’t read well, you could still master this pattern of playing, jazzing a melody: noodling around the theme, doing many things on your instrument with taste and within reason. Once you learned the pattern and played the routine it was OK. The better you mastered the style the greater you became.
This style of playing music had become popular, and so many were now playing it. Who cared if you read music? You were free: free to take liberties, free to express yourself from deep inside. The public was clamoring for it.
Routine? Sure. But everybody could not master this pattern. Many tried but never could get it just right and master jazz so that they could play with other masters of jazz.
SKF NOTE: This is another excerpt from my 1985 Ed Soph interview. The back story is posted here. Ed makes several notable points here about the passing of opportunities for young drummers to study great players in club settings. Of course, the internet has compensated for that, I think. Not in all ways, but in some ways.
Ed Soph: I ran into Papa Jo a long time ago in Frank Ippolito’s old shop on 8th Avenue. And I went up to Papa Jo and figured, well, s**t, a way to introduce myself and to ask him if he could give me a drum lesson.
I said, “Gee, Mr. Jones, I sure would like to get a drum lesson from you.”
He says, If you want a drum lesson from me, come up to such-and-such a club. I’m playing there every night.
And I’m thinking, “You dumb m**r, Soph.” Click! These guys didn’t go to teachers. They went to clubs and watched the cats play. That’s gone now. How many kids can afford to go to that…club in New York that charged $17.00 to get in to hear Chick Corea, Roy Haynes, and Miroslav Vitous — and then there was a $10.00 drink minimum.
Then, if you’ve got to pay parking on top of that? Come one!
Scott K Fish: They pay that kind of money to see rock bands.
ES: But, those kids aren’t there to learn how to play drums. How can they be if they’re in a ten thousand seat auditorium? My God Almighty, you’ll learn more listening to the record.
I’m talking about going to a club, getting up into the Peanut Gallery — like they used to have at Birdland — and just sit there and check somebody out. Or go to the [Village] Vanguard, and get there early, and get to that spot that’s right back there by the drums — and watch Elvin.
That’s the learning opportunity right there. But times have changed. It’s not happening anymore like it was. Can you wonder why people get discouraged?
Twenty-seven dollars is alot of money for anyone? If my wife, Carol, and I had gone down there it would have cost us about $70.00 in expenses. But I hope Miroslav, Roy, and Chick got every penny of it. I know they didn’t. But I hope they got their take. But it would be nice if they’d give a concert in the afternoon. In the old days clubs used to have matinees for kids or for musicians who weren’t working.
Again, you see the strength of clinics, of presenting the music in that sort of environment. You really get bent out of shape thinking about that. But something always comes along to fill the gap. But that gap will never be filled.
I mean, can you imagine going into a club and watching Sid Catlett, or Dave Tough, or Tiny Kahn? Or, for Christ’s sake, just going down and listening to Mel Lewis play. Holy s**t!
And the thing is, Scott, that you or I could take a kid — and I’m not talking about value judgement on the kid, I’m just talking about exposure — we could take a kid who’s into Eric Carr, or who is into Neil Peart, or who’s into Alan White, and you could say to this kid, “Come here. Have you ever seen Elvin Jones play drums?”
“Who?”
“Come here, kid. You’re coming with me tonight.”
You could sit that kid down in that Peanut Gallery at the Vanguard and that kid’s mouth would be on the floor after the first chorus, simply because he’s never had any opportunity to be exposed to it.”
SKF NOTE: Here’s a recent SOS from Katrina Chester and Tony Cruz. They are working on a Gary Chester documentary. In this video they are asking all of us to consider letting Katrina and Tony have access to any Gary Chester memorabilia you have.
I’ve known and worked a bit with these two. Excellent people in the midst of important work. For what it’s worth, please help then if you can.
SKF NOTE: Last year I read and very much enjoyed Ray Davies’s autobiography, Americana: The Kinks, the Riff, the Road: The Story. The book tells the stories of Ray Davies rebuilding his life, musical and personal, post-The Kinks.
In this pull quote from the book, Davies touches on a common musician’s life theme: how a musician, if lucky enough, finds a home in a great band, where the sum is greater than the individual players. And how that same musician will forever miss that band, rough edges and all.
The original Kinks band was never renowned for its great individual players. My brother, Dave, was an innovative and powerful guitar player, while I was a fair-to-middling pianist, guitar player, and singer. Drummer Mick Avory seemed to slot into Pete Quaife, who had a certain flair on the bass, but none of use were what could be considered virtuoso musicians. When we came together though, we were a great band. The players on my new demo songs played professionally, but they seemed too perfect. I was longing for those happy mistakes, those errors that make a band unique.
SKF NOTE: Here’s Neil Peart in 1986 answering my questions about his influence on drummers. Here’s the back story to our interview which appeared, in part, in Modern Drummer’s 10th Anniversary Issue.
Scott K Fish: Ten years ago you’d been with Rush for one year. Did you ever believe or feel that you’d be such a drumming influence today?
Neil Peart: Certainly not. I was just trying to be good, really. I think it’s common to alot of people, probably, that I had a very humble opinion of my own abilities. As far as I was concerned I was just trying to play in the big leagues. I certainly didn’t have that high an opinion of myself, especially then.
The aim for me was to try to get good, and to try to get as good as the people who I admired, and who I learned from.
So it was a process of just learning, really, and, as I said, the only standard I was working towards was a good professional standard. I certainly wasn’t trying to prove myself to be Mister Bigshot in the world or anything.
SKF: Do you remember when you first realized that alot of people were listening to you?
NP: Yeah. It was the first time I was ever mentioned in a Modern Drummer Readers Poll. When I first heard about that it spun me around. I just hadn’t expected that kind of respect of my peers. It came totally unexpectedly and totally out-of-the-blue. It unbalanced me. I think I wrote about it in the magazine in a subsequent letter; that instead of boosting my confidence in myself, it actually undermined it.
We happened to be in England on tour at the time when I heard that I was in the poll. The next gig we did I remember was in Glasgow, and I was onstage the whole night feeling like such a fraud. And every tiny little inaccuracy that I committed, or any small error, suddenly seemed gigantic in my mind.
I felt like I was cheating everyone; that any drummers sitting out there who had voted for me — they would think I was a fraud.
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