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RichRich BuddyBuddy
100th Birthday Celebration, Celebrating The Jazz Drum100th Birthday Celebration, Celebrating The Jazz Drum
Jazz At Lincoln Center, April 8Jazz At Lincoln Center, April 8
Interviews Billy ChildsBilly Childs Jazz Standard Jazz Standard April 13April 13--1616
John LaBarberaJohn LaBarbera
Sheila JordanSheila Jordan
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ComprehensiveComprehensive
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Jazz Inside Magazine
ISSN: 2150-3419 (print) • ISSN 2150-3427 (online)
March-April 2017 – Volume 8, Number 4
Cover Photo (and photo at right taken at
Brandi’s Wharf, Philadelphia, PA) of Buddy Rich
by Eric Nemeyer
Publisher: Eric Nemeyer Editor: John R. Barrett, Jr. Marketing Director: Cheryl Powers Advertising Sales & Marketing: Eric Nemeyer Circulation: Susan Brodsky Photo Editor: Joe Patitucci Layout and Design: Gail Gentry Contributing Artists: Shelly Rhodes Contributing Photographers: Eric Nemeyer, Ken Weiss Contributing Writers: John Alexander, John R. Barrett, Curtis Daven-port; Eric Harabadian; Alex Henderson; Joe Patitucci; Ken Weiss.
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CONTENTSCONTENTS
CLUBS, CONCERTS, EVENTSCLUBS, CONCERTS, EVENTS 13 Calendar of Events, Concerts, Festi-
vals and Club Performances
22 Clubs & Venue Listings
FEATUREFEATURE 4 Buddy Rich - Inside The Buddy Rich
Big Band — As Told By Arranger,
Trumpeter John LaBarbera
INTERVIEWSINTERVIEWS 22 Buddy Rich — Observations by His
Manager Steve Peck & Others
26 Billy Childs
28 Sheila Jordan
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Fea
ture
Buddy RichBuddy Rich
By Eric Nemeyer
JL: Let’s start from square one. I was on the
road…my brothers Pat and Joe, we were all at
Berklee at the same time. Pat had one more semes-
ter to go before graduating. To give you an idea
about Pat, Pat played in a rehearsal band every
Saturday morning. Jimmy Mosher, the alto sax
player who was on Buddy’s band, couldn’t take the
road anymore so he came back to Boston and start-
ed a Saturday morning rehearsal big band. There
would be paying gigs. And the regular tenor player
in the band would always send Pat in as a sub on
Saturday morning rehearsals and then Pat would
never get the paying gig. Everyone told him, “well,
you’re a sucker, you shouldn’t be doing that” but
Pat was playing and when Buddy Rich called Jim-
my asking if he knew any good tenor players, he
didn’t recommend the regular guy, he recommend-
ed Pat. Pat, one semester shy of graduating, just
went out on the road with Buddy. I was on the road
with a society, a show band, a Vegas review band,
and he said, “Buddy’s looking for a trumpet play-
er.” I gave notice and I showed up. The thing
about Buddy was there was no audition. You gave
your notice on the other gig, you showed up on the
bandstand, and if you didn’t play the book that
night, you were fired. So, I flew into Last Vegas.
We were at the Sands, first of January, 1968. We
played a month at the Sands.
JI: The whole big band?
JL: The whole big band. Frankie Randall was our
opening act and my brother, Joe, was Frankie Ran-
dall’s drummer. He was a good singer and Joe was
his drummer. Sinatra even gave Frankie a bunch of
charts. They really liked him a lot. Because Joe
was there, he’d hangout with us at Buddy’s re-
hearsals, and Joe was the first one to play “Channel
One Suite.” Buddy had him rehearse the band
while he listened to it when Bill Reddie brought it
in. It was pretty well documented. Joe was the first
one to play it. Then, Buddy went up to the band-
stand, sat there, and just played it down.
JI: After one shot through, right?
JL: Pretty much one shot. There were some time
change things, but pretty much Buddy had it. Joe
played it all the way through as written but Buddy
put his own stamp on it because certain tempos and
certain things, he had an instinct for what to change
and what not to change.
JI: When you joined the band, you were just sight-
(Continued on page 6)
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reading the charts cold? What chair were you play-
ing in the trumpet section?
JL: I was playing fourth but I had listened to that
band so much, I knew all the tunes but I didn’t
know the book. Lin Biviano was the lead trumpet
player, and as soon as I flew into town, I said, “I’ve
got to see Goodbye Yesterday and West Side Sto-
ry.” I took the book to my room and started shed-
ding some of the parts. I tell my students it was a
very famous story how I learned to change my
embouchure very quickly because I have an under
bite, and I play with the bell down, and the rest of
the trumpets play with their bells up as you should.
Half-way through the first set, I hear this yelling.
“Hold your horn up or you’re fired!” I immediately
held the horn up, I was looking down, trying to
read the book through the edges of my glasses, but
I got through it and I immediately learned to play
the other way. I’ll never forget that as long as I
live! It was scary because no way did I want the
embarrassment of being fired on my first night.
JI: Was it a really awkward physical thing to make
that adjustment to play that way every night?
JL: Every night until I could get some help be-
cause what I was literally doing was arching back
and holding the bell up and having to look down
through the bottoms of my glasses to look at the
part, see? I was still playing the same way with an
under bite, but I had to hold the horn up so, physi-
cally, it was a bitch, but you do what you have to
do, especially in that band. Carl Saunders was on
that band. The band was going through a transition
at that point and they were looking for new players
and that’s why I got a chance to go in.
JI: Who else was in the trumpet section with you?
JL: Let’s see, Carl Saunders, Lin Biviano, I think,
Bobby Shew, for a minute and a half at the tail end.
When we finally left the Sands, we had Russ Iver-
son, and maybe Kenny Faulk, though he may have
joined us in LA.
JI: Those gigs were a lot more palatable than the
one nighters because you could be in one place and
not experience the exhausting travel schedule and
stress.
JL: I really wish that students today could have
that luxury like we had. It was amazing because
you could really get it together. When the band has
that much time in one place, it really gels and con-
geals and turns into something really hip.
JI: And you have time to practice during the day.
JL: You have time to practice and, quite frankly,
during those days, the mob ran Vegas in those
days. You could do pretty much anything you want
except gamble so everything was free for us. Cars
were next to nothing to rent. We could practice in
the motels. There’s nothing to do in Vegas if you
don’t gamble. It really was a boring town back
then, we’re talking about in ‘68.
JI: As the fourth part, were you playing a lot of
doubles of the first or were there a lot of four
part…
JL: That book is like a wind ensemble, one person
per part, just like a real big band. They were inte-
gral and you weren’t doubling the first trombone,
either, they were separate parts, depending on the
arranger, of course. Don Piestrup, who was one of
the principal arrangers for that time, he wrote some
really hard stuff and everything depended really on
everyone pulling their own weight.
JI: John, talk a little bit about how you developed
your confidence during the first few weeks of the
gig with Buddy.
JL: Well, quite frankly, because my brother was
there and Buddy really respected Pat, that’s the
way gigs were given away. Because you’re really
good, your brother must be good, too. I proved
myself. I wasn’t the greatest because I didn’t have
the endurance that it took right away to play that
book. It finally came and we were really tightening
up the section. We were doing this because we
were getting ready to do a record right after that.
The things we were rehearsing were all the new
things like “Channel One Suite.” We slipped them
in that night to try them out. After awhile, it’s like
anything else. You figure, “yeah, I can do this, it’s
getting easier” and every now and then he gives
you a shot and you tighten up a little bit but, by and
large, I got through it pretty easily that first month.
JI: That record that you did, was that Mercy, Mer-
cy, Mercy—the one with Buddy on the cover with
the Nehru jacket?
JL: No, well, it should have been. Here’s what
happened. We left Vegas and we went to Los An-
geles to record. That’s when Don Menza joined the
band. He had not been with us in Vegas, but he was
going to join us in L.A. He wrote “Groovin’ Hard.”
Jay Corre [tenor sax] left. Pat took the second ten-
or, and Menza took first tenor and we had a couple
more trumpet changes then. Anyway, we did basi-
cally that same album with Ernie Watts playing
“Alfie” and “Goodbye Yesterday” and some cuts
of that have been released or reissued on another
thing but that never came out. They decided not to
put it out. They wanted to do it live, in concert,
which is Buddy’s best area for recording anyway.
So, we did the album but, to my disappointment as
a player, it never came out at that time.
JI: I think I have it, I’m not sure, but there was an
album, like a double album on Blue Note, with a
bunch of stuff that wasn’t released. “Mr. Lucky,” I
think, was one of the tracks on there…
JL: That could have been it. I sort of lose track
when they come out on c.d. I can’t keep them all
straight as to what the chronology is there.
JI: That’s what I liked about LPs.
JL: Yup. You could pretty much count on the his-
torical line. That was a great experience for me
because that was my first real, professional record-
ing session…with a major artist, that is.
JI: How long did you stay with Buddy’s band?
JL: I lasted about three to four months and then he
fired me. Well, he fired us all a bunch of times. I
think I was fired at least three times. As a matter of
fact, when I delivered the eulogy at the memorial
service, that got a huge laugh when I said that most
of the people in the room had been fired at least
once by Buddy and that was a red badge of cour-
age.
JI: But when you were fired, was it a traumatic
experience or was it kind of like a laugh at that
point?
JL: Well, it wasn’t a laugh. I have to admit that it
was a little traumatic. We had just finished a tour
of London and he fired me. Then, they couldn’t
find a replacement so I stayed on anyway. Then, in
April, I got off. I forget who took my place. Then, I
was starting to write. I was really enjoying the
writing more than playing, and I think Buddy knew
that.
JI: You mean you were writing while you were
playing with the band?
JL: Yeah, I was writing charts, trying things out.
After he fired me as a trumpet player, I went on the
Glenn Miller Band. Every time I’d see him, he’d
say, “when are you gonna bring me some charts?”
He was serious, he wasn’t just patronizing me. He
had a voracious appetite for new music. He could
not stand to play the same stuff every night and it
was a dream for the musicians because, with the
Glen Miller book, you’d be playing the same tunes
every night.
JI: From 1944.
(Continued from page 4)
(Continued on page 8)
Buddy Rich
“People forget that he wanted to be a jazz player first and then a drummer … That technique was a direct result of wanting to play jazz so badly ... You know, he would support the family when he was growing up—he was the star … he was the
breadwinner until the day he died.”
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JL: Yup, and Buddy Rich, he just wanted new
stuff all the time and, consequently, for a writer,
that was great! I don’t think everyone really realiz-
es this, but he never really had a style. When I
wrote for Basie, I had to write in Basie style. When
I wrote for Woody, I had to compliment Woody’s
style. Buddy didn’t really have a style, per se, ex-
cept it had to be high quality and energetic. So, I
could write any kind of music I wanted. I tried
some rock stuff, I tried all kinds of things, and he
would play it. He may not keep it every night, but
he would try new things all the time. So, I started
supplying the few odds and ends to him. Then, he
had an open call. He got an RCA Victor deal.
There was an open call in Philadelphia for new
material, and all the guys from New York went
down. I took a bus to Philly from Rochester. The
band had a week at Brandi’s Wharf. Since he had a
week before the recording session, Willard
[Alexander], his booking agent, would do that on
purpose to get the band ready for a session. So, I
had “Piece of the Road Suite,” I had “Straight No
Chaser,” I had a whole bunch of stuff. So, I took
the bus down and everybody was there. So, he saw
me there, and of course knew me, and said, “okay,
kid, put your stuff up.” So, I put down Piece of the
Road Suite. It has a ballad opening, a jazz waltz,
it’s pretty diverse. Lin Biviano and I had gone over
some of the trumpet parts. So I started out with
that. I’ll never forget. I started out with that at a
real strong tempo. Then, we went right into the jazz
waltz. Now, realize he’s sitting at the front table,
listening to the band. We got to the jazz waltz and
halfway through the jazz waltz he gets up on the
drums and just starts playing with the chart and
finishes it. No bullshit—as though he’d played it
all his life, and then he says to me, “okay, kid,
we’re recording on Monday, all your stuff.”
JI: Bob James and Manny [Albam] and all the
other guys were there, too?
JL: Their stuff was there. I think Bob was there. I
know all the guys in New York were there because
it was a real short train ride. After he said that, we
ran down “Straight, No Chaser,” the ballad part
with Jimmy Mosher. Basically, Buddy let me take
the rest of the afternoon to rehearse all of the stuff.
I just stayed in town, went to New York the next
week, and there I was in Studio C of RCA/Victor.
JI: Was he playing the stuff at the gig at Brandi’s
that week?
JL: Towards the end of the week, he started put-
ting the stuff in there and he was just tearing the
club up. Every night of the week, I was in heaven.
I’m hearing all of my stuff played back by all of
the best players in the business…
JI: In anticipation of the recording!
JL: Yeah. So, with Buddy, you know, anything
could change. He could change his mind the day of
the session, so you never knew. He was pretty
strong on those charts. I was pretty confident he
was going to record them. Knowing the record
company, you’re not really sure if they’re going to
actually get out. But it all worked out, Different
Drummer came out. Back then, LPs, a good LP,
shipped about 50,000 of the first pressing for big
band and that one shipped over 50,000 in the first
pressing.
JI: That’s a lot of albums for a jazz album.
JL: Well, for today, that’s unheard of. But for
then…well, Buddy had a huge name so that was a
pretty much guaranteed run. From then on, of
course, I became his arranger. That was it. I tell
people who want to listen that you haven’t got it
any better than to have someone call you on the
phone and say, “I’ve got a month in London or two
weeks in London. Fly to London and bring me new
material.”
JI: That’s a dream.
JL: It is a dream and, of course, I wasn’t dumb. I
would pick the times when I knew he had a loca-
tion in London, or Los Angeles, or Disney World,
and I’d call him and tell him I’ve got some new
stuff. He’d say, “Get a plane ticket and come out!”
He knew what I was doing but why not? I wrote so
much stuff, that after awhile, it blurs.
JI: I remember years ago when I was first studying
arranging with Manny, and he told me a story that
he was at Johnny Mandel’s house and he said to
Johnny Mandel, “did you write that or did I?”
JL: You know why? They both studied with the
same teacher when they were kids (Van Alexan-
der). They were very close friends. After awhile,
you start to say, “who did write that?” I miss Man-
ny. I studied with him as well and he was just a
great teacher and a great guy.
JI: What were you doing after you left Buddy’s
band as a player and ultimately in ‘72 when Differ-
ent Drummer came out?
JL: I was playing on the Glenn Miller Band with
Buddy DeFranco, writing charts and doing tran-
scription for the Miller band. They paid me like an
extra 50 bucks to transcribe stuff off of the 78s that
either kind of walked away or got thrown away. I
was making good bread, I was learning my craft, I
was really learning how to write on that band be-
cause it becomes a very practical day to day, this is
how that works. You have to be able to turn out
material very quickly, no mistakes, hand-copied,
copy the things yourself. It was a great training
ground. I think if I had gone right in without that
road training of having the pressure of deadlines, I
probably would have not succeeded as much as I
id. That experience really puts you into the think-
ing that you can never miss the deadline. You’ll
always get it done but there’s no time to waste. So,
you learn the most economical way of doing
things.
JI: How did your career begin to evolve after the
recording of Different Drummer?
JL: I had been off the Glenn Miller Band and writ-
ing, and this literally put me on the map. It con-
nected me in New York very well. I was doing
jingles in commercials like everyone else was.
That’s how you made your living as a writer and
you didn’t have to put your name on them. Really,
it opened up a lot of doors. I was writing for
Woody, and Basie, and bands like that occasional-
ly, too. When the word gets out, band leaders are
like anyone else—they all talk amongst each other
like club owners. It helped immensely. Willard
Alexander, who was Buddy’s booking agent, be-
friended me. He’s the one who put me in touch
with a lot of very important people in the business
to help me get work and things like that. He kind of
took me under his wing and that really helped a lot.
JI: That was a really fortuitous connection.
JL: Oh, without question.
JI: Buddy didn’t have a style, as you mentioned,
but when you wrote for Basie, what were some of
the formulas that you had to follow?
JL: I’ll give you a good example. Willard Alexan-
der introduced me to him at the St. Regis Hotel.
Buddy had a dance gig. Willard convinced Buddy
to play dance music, which Buddy hated, but he’d
be able to stay in New York. His apartment was
(Continued from page 6)
(Continued on page 10)
“In times of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned find
themselves beautifully equipped to succeed in a world that
no longer exists.” — Eric Hoffer, American Philosopher
“So, with Buddy, you know, anything could change. He could change his mind the day of
the session...I was pretty confident he was going to record them … But it all worked out, Different
Drummer came out … and that one shipped over 50,000 in the first pressing.”
Buddy Rich
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right up the street in Lincoln Plaza. I wrote a dance
book for Buddy, a complete dance book. Straight
ahead stuff but, you know, kind of hip and Buddy.
During that engagement, Basie came by to check it
out and Benny Goodman and John Hammond and
all those guys were there, they all came to check
out the band, and I got introduced to Basie. He said
to me, “I want you to write something for my
band.” I was totally knocked out just to meet him,
but then here’s the punch. He says, “I want you to
write this thing that Freddie Martin had a hit on,
you know, “Melody in F.” Rubinstein’s “Melody in
F.” I say, “Holy Christ, the first thing I get to do
for Basie is this dumb old tune!” So, I go home,
write the chart, call and tell them I have the chart
ready. I go into the rehearsal and Basie says to me,
“what key did you write it in?” ‘Melody in F, I
wrote it in F.’ Basie says to me, “oh, no, I don’t
play in F.” So, I had to write a modulation. There
were certain stylistic things…the bucket-muted
trumpets, saxophones or trombones concerted ex-
actly the same note, things like that. He didn’t play
in F normally. I had to make a modulation down to
Eb or maybe I went up to G. He liked G. Things
like that, those stylized kinds of things. He was
really a smart man when it came to programming
and the audiences. He just had years of experience
dealing with people. So, that’s what I meant about
styles. Woody had a style, you know, mainly blues-
oriented and with Bill Chase, he had a lot of good,
strong high parts.
JI: Why don’t you talk about some more experi-
ences you had with Buddy, writing for his band,
the recordings and so forth?
JL: Definitely. The one that was the most fun for
RCA Victor was the Rich in London album that we
did. Marie and I had gone over to London just on
vacation, and I knew that the band was going over
to record but it wasn’t definite. So, after a week we
flew back home because it really wasn’t definite
and then I got a telegram saying “come on back,
we’re going to record the band.” I wasn’t totally
prepared with all the charts. I had “Dancing Men”
and I forget what other ones are on that album. I
flew back to London, started cranking stuff out,
and then Buddy Rich’s daughter along with John
Hendricks’ and Stan Getz’s daughter had this vocal
group so Buddy said, “I want a chart on this tomor-
row night.” It was one of those things where I had
to write a chart, copy the parts in one night, and
have it ready for recording in the morning.
JI: I’m looking at the lineup for that album…there
was “Dancing Men,” “St. Mark’s Square”…
JL: That’s right. I wrote that there because Pat got
married at St. Mark’s Square.
JI: “That’s Enough” for Cathy and her group?
JL: They didn’t have any lead sheets so I had to
make a sketch. I went back to the Whitehouse Ho-
tel, sat in the tub, and started sketching. The owner
of the hotel, who was an ex-RAF pilot, he loved the
guys in the band, he let me go down to his apart-
ment. He and his wife had a piano. He let me check
some things out on it. I always score it first, then
check it. I found lots of mistakes but I got it done,
copied the parts. The guys in the band were all
friends of mine, so they’d fix a lot of the mistakes.
They’d find wrong notes and they wouldn’t bring it
up in front of Buddy, which, today, is unusual.
JI: “Two Bass Hit,” was that yours’ too?
JL: “Two Bass Hit”…I think that was Don’s
(Piestrup). Great chart. Now, you’ve got the single
album—Rich In London. The album was actually
released as a double disc set in England. On that
was “Watson’s Walk,” a great shuffle that I
wrote…
JI: Actually, you know what? I was such a big
Buddy Rich fan back then, I bought the American
album and somehow or another found the English
release and bought it too.
JL: You’re probably one of the few because that’s
hard to find! We recorded a lot that week. What we
did was take over Ronnie Scott’s office. We put the
sixteen-track board in there to get the sixteen
tracks. The waiter was just bringing pint after pint
after pint of beer to the backroom for us as we were
trying to record this stuff. So, we did a week of
recording and there’s tons of tape in the vault from
that week and there are some great moments. When
Buddy Rich was in London or New York or any
city, we had Emerson, Lake and Palmer and other
rock groups coming in like crazy. Any drummer in
the world would come and see Buddy. I mean,
that’s it. He was just this magnet and they would
just shake their heads and walk away. They just
couldn’t believe it. There are certain legends about
him but when you see him live, you know it isn’t
bullshit, it is real. I’ll never forget the time that this
guy came in from Ludwig or wherever it was and
he was promoting this double bass drum pedal.
He’s says, “Buddy, you got to try this thing, man!
You try this thing and you can play bass drum fast-
er than anybody!” Buddy said, ‘Like who?’ He
only needed one foot, not two. That was the end of
that guy’s pitch. To answer your question, that
week in London, that was the highlight. I got to
know him quite well because he was kind of a soli-
tary character and when his wife wasn’t with him,
no one hung out with him. And he read a lot. He
was kind of embarrassed that he never went to
school. I remember I was using a word…I paused
and I said, “that means…” and he said, ‘I know
what it means!’ I felt awkward because I was try-
ing to help him out because a lot of the times, he
felt guilty that he never went to school.
JI: What kind of reading was he doing?
JL: Psychology. I saw him many, many times with
a psychology book in his hand. He’d be propped up
in bed, or I’d be having coffee with him, and he’d
tell me what he wanted. Plus, he was very much
into science fiction and extraterrestrials. We’d go
to see these movies in New York because he need-
ed someone to hang out with.
JI: After the Rich in London album, there was the
Stick it album. What was your experience with that
one?
JL: Well, I wrote half of that on the plane going to
Houston. They had a week at a club in Houston.
“Sassy Strut,” I finished on the plane. “Being
Green” I wrote that in the studio because they
wanted him to sing. That was a quickie. “Space
Shuttle” I wrote because Buddy was really fasci-
nated with space travel. We went to the Houston
space center and I wrote that. Basically, all of the
stuff on that album I wrote that week or on the
plane and then we went to New York and recorded
it. I’m just thinking, going back to the Rich in Lon-
don album, you know that “Dancing Men?” I wrote
it and brought it to Harrisburg, PA. That wrote
itself in about two minutes. I brought it to the gig
not knowing how Buddy would take to it and he
just loved it. He said, “we’re definitely going to
record this in London!” That’s what he thought we
were going to record. He said, “what’s the name of
that?” I said, “‘Dancing Men.’” He said, “what the
hell are you talking about?” I explained to him that
it was a Sherlock Holmes’ title. We were going to
England and I figured there’s got to be a lot of
Sherlock fans. “Watson’s Walk,” another refer-
ence. Matter of Fact, John Hendricks came into the
rehearsal in London and I think he wanted to write
lyrics to it. There were a lot of American musicians
traveling to Europe and there was a lot more cama-
raderie back then. After Stick it, which was around
1973, Buddy, still had a band for another 13 years.
The Roar of ‘74 is on Groove Merchant Records
and shows a picture of him waving from his Lam-
borghini or Porsche or whatever. That was fun. I
wrote this thing called “Backwoods Sideman” for
that. It was a really strong chart. Tony Levin [bass
player] actually got Buddy to play that hoedown,
backbeat feel. Tony got him into it. Then of course
Buddy broke up the band for a couple of years to
do the small group thing at Buddy’s Place. I didn’t
do any writing for him at all. I started doing com-
mercials and after he reformed the band with Mar-
cus and all the guys, if I had something, I’d come
in and he’d play it. Up until the day he died, I was
still bringing him stuff.
(Continued from page 8)
(Continued on page 12)
“this guy came in … promoting this double bass drum pedal. He’s says, ‘Buddy, you got to try this thing, man!
You try this thing and you can play bass drum faster than anybody!’ Buddy said, ‘Like who?’ He only needed one
foot, not two. That was the end of that guy’s pitch.”
Buddy Rich
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JI: Talk about your experiences after he reformed
the band.
JL: You know, I’m going to have to stop and go
through my library to see what we did. When he
was recording, he’d always play “Best Coast” eve-
ry night of the week. A lot of the older stuff he
would include in the live recordings and so proba-
bly those would be the most prominent of what was
represented in the later CDs or albums. I’d have to
go look but I know “The Walk on the Wild Side”
that I did on my CD, I wrote for him. He asked me
to write it for him for that Rich in London album.
He always wanted that score. I did a pretty half-
assed job on in London. He knew it, I knew it, and
we never really addressed it over the years. He kept
asking me, “When are you going to get me “‘Walk
on the Wild Side?’” I put it off. Finally, I found the
original recording of the movie soundtrack at a
yard sale that had all of the other songs except the
main theme, which I heard before. After he got out
of the hospital for that quadruple bypass, I brought
it to New York and he had a ball. He loved that.
It’s on video at certain festivals but he never had a
chance to record it. Of course, since then I recorded
it but that was something that he always wanted,
that and “Mission Impossible.” Luckily, I got him
“Walk on the Wild Side.”
JI: Could you talk about some of the observations
you might have made or discussions with Buddy
that you might have had that made an impact on
your artistic development or understanding of hu-
man nature?
JL: When I played trumpet on the band, we went
to London with Tony Bennett for a month. We
played out of town first, before we landed in Lon-
don. We were in Birmingham I think or Manches-
ter, I can’t remember…you know that drum break
on “Love for Sale”?
JI: That incredible single stroke roll?
JL: That one night in Birmingham or Manchester,
he totally blew it. We were totally shocked because
he never blew anything. He yelled to Pat, “pick it
up before the break.” We picked it up again and
this time he nailed it and the crowd went nuts.
Years, years, years later, maybe four or five years
before he died, we were hanging out at his apart-
ment waiting for takeout and I said, “you know,
Buddy, I always wanted to ask you, that night in
Manchester, did you blow that lick on purpose so
you could get the show business aspect of doing it
again and pulling it off, like falling from the tra-
peze once?” He went ballistic. He said, ‘You never
do tricks like that on purpose. You’ve got to give it
100%. Don’t lay back.” He went on and on and on
and that told me a lot. You may have the option to
shortchange, but you better not do it because that’s
going to track you the rest of your life. With Bud-
dy, half the time, we’d talk about anything but
music unless I’d bring it up. Every now and then
I’d ask him about a certain band leaders or some-
thing like that, but mostly he wanted to know how
the kids were doing. We’d talk about life in gen-
eral, moving around, having a house here, a house
there. He’d run things by me every now and then.
I’m sure Steve Marcus had the same kind of rela-
tionship with him. He’d talk about cars. He could-
n’t even set up his own drum set. He was a klutz,
but he loved racing and he loved fine automobiles,
all that stuff. Mechanical things didn’t like him.
JI: Just to back track for a second, when you wrote
for Woody’s band, did he give you any kinds of
instructions or directions?
JL: No, but he would make cuts here and there.
Buddy, too. I learned from Mancini that you don’t
want to fall in love with everything you’ve written
because that could be the first thing to go. Like on
“Walk on the Wild Side,” I’ll give you a for in-
stance. There’s a Dixieland thing from the movie
as well. He cut the whole section out, much to my
dismay, Instead, he went right to the shout on the
way out. I listened to it, I watched the video of him
playing it, and when I went to record it for my CD,
I realized that he was right. I didn’t put it in. So, he
had an instinct and so did Woody. He knew that
you knew how to write for him and if you didn’t,
well, you probably wouldn’t get a call anymore.
JI: Are there things that you wanted to talk about
that we haven’t covered?
JL: Well, sure. If you want to lose a lot of money,
start a big band. [For me] Buddy’s there all the
time. He’s sitting in the back row somewhere. I use
a lot of his jokes with the band, how to rehearse a
band, all these things. I am a direct result of all the
things that I’ve watched him do over the years.
Also, the reason those CDs are so good is because I
hired the best players that there are. Period. That’s
what Buddy did.
JI: How do you use encouragement or otherwise
motivate players?
JL: I try to be as hands-off as possible. Like with
Buddy, if you treat me like an adult, I’ll treat you
like an adult if you perform. I try to not dictate
because you have to let them try and find their own
stride but I learned from Buddy when to bring the
hammer down. You have to know when to nail
them and when to encourage them. I learned that
from Buddy. Buddy did a lot of things people don’t
know about. Art Pepper was having problems—
and Buddy was paying hospital bills, and a lot of
stuff. Buddy knew when they were having prob-
lems and messing up. He knew when to be encour-
aging and when to be a bad guy.
JI: When you observe Buddy, you might get the
surface impression that he had a huge ego. Behind
the scenes, he was very generous, concerned, pri-
vate, and quiet.
JL: Buddy was very kind and he did a lot of things
that Frank Sinatra did. I think they picked it up
together, helping people out, encouraging musi-
cians, and they knew when they were getting taken
for a ride and wouldn’t put up with it.
JI: It can be tempting for fans or aspiring musi-
cians to observe someone like Buddy Rich and pick
up surface elements of the image he projected on
stage, the wise-guy image, and so on—and to emu-
late that on the premise that one has to be like that
to perform like he did.
JL: Well, I think the balance comes with having
the goods to back it up and that’s what Buddy had.
Unfortunately, a lot of kids coming up today feel
you have to have that attitude and that swagger just
to get ahead without realizing that they have to
have the whole package. They start emulating that
attitude, it doesn’t work, and I think it takes away
from the playing. To be able to play and play well
and to know it, I think, is very healthy.
JI: Now, when you look at Buddy play too, you
see this astonishing technique and, as you men-
tioned, he’d sit in front of the band, listen to it
once, and be able to play it. He would listen to
classical music and be able to hum back or sing
back the entire part. That speaks more to his musi-
cal ability, as opposed to his being merely a phe-
nomenal drummer.
JL: Oh, he had an ear! He was unique. Talking
about extraterrestrial beings, I think he was planted
here by a flying saucer or something. I think I
sound like I’m just spewing. But to have an associ-
ation with someone that great, that doesn’t happen
very often in life and this guy was just unique. He
really is the complete package. He really is the real
thing. People forget that he wanted to be a jazz
player first and then a drummer. The times when he
was forced to go commercial here and commercial
there—he was making money, but he realized it
was dumb. Same with the clubs. That technique
was a direct result of wanting to play jazz so badly.
You know, he would support the family when he
was growing up—he was the star. They were dying
because he would take a jazz gig and not remain
the breadwinner for them [their Vaudeville act] -
although he was the breadwinner until the day he
died.
JI: What is on the short list of the most important
things you learned from Buddy Rich?
JL: As I get older, I start to see that I could short-
change things. I try not short-change the music or
go for a cheap shot, I try to be honest with the mu-
sic, and I think it comes through with the CDs.
That’s what Buddy would expect.
(Continued from page 10)
“It's surprising how many persons go through life without ever recognizing
that their feelings toward other people are largely determined by their feelings toward themselves, and if you're not comfortable
within yourself, you can't be comfortable with others.”
- Sydney J. Harris
Buddy Rich
13 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
Saturday April 1 Peter Bernstein, Village Vanguard
Chano Dominguez Flamenco Quintet, Sonia Fernandez, Ismael Fernandez, Alexis Cuadrado, Jose Moreno, Jazz Standard
DIVA jazz orchestra, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Eliane Elias, Birdland
City Stomp, Shapeshifter
Tuomo Uusitalo - Afternoon Jam Session; Bob DeMeo Quartet;
George Colligan Quintet; Brooklyn Circle, Small’s
Sunday April 2
Peter Bernstein, Village Vanguard
Chano Dominguez Flamenco Quintet, Sonia Fernandez, Ismael
Fernandez, Alexis Cuadrado, Jose Moreno, Jazz Standard
DIVA jazz orchestra, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, Birdland Jon Lundbom and Big V Chord, Shapeshifter
Vocal Masterclass with Marion Cowings; Ai Murakami Trio feat. Sacha
Perry; Microscopic Septet; Alex Norris Quintet; Hillel Salem - After-hours Jam Session, Small’s
Monday April 3
Vanguard Orchestra, Village Vanguard
Mingus Big Band, Jazz Standard Sean Jones, Berklee College of Music Sextet
Danilo Brito Quintet: Choro Meets Jazz, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Sam Dillon Quartet; ELEW and Nature of Next, Small’s
Tuesday April 4 Eric Reed Quartet, Tim Green (saxophone) Eric Reed (piano) Michael-
Gurrola (bass) McClenty Hunter (drums), Village Vanguard
Mobetta Tuesdays, Pass The Peas!, Maurice Brown, Lakecia Benja-min, Chris Rob, Marcus Machado, Doug Wimbish, Louis Cato, Jazz Standard
Stanley Clarke Band, Blue Note Chuck Redd Quartet, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Yellowjackets, Birdland
Frank Lacy Group; Abraham Burton Quartet, Small’s
Wednesday April 5 Eric Reed Quartet, Tim Green (saxophone) Eric Reed (piano) Michael
Gurrola (bass) McClenty Hunter (drums), Village Vanguard Chris Bergson Band, Craig Dreyer, Matt Clohesy, Tony Mason, Ellis
Hooks, Reggie Pittman, David Luther, Jazz Standard
Stanley Clarke Band, Blue Note
Christian McBride Big Band, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Yellowjackets, Birdland
Thursday April 6 Eric Reed Quartet, Tim Green (saxophone) Eric Reed (piano) Michael-
Gurrola (bass) McClenty Hunter (drums), Village Vanguard Randy Weston’s African Rrhythms Quintet, 91st Birthday Celebration,
TK Blue, Alex Blake, Lewis Nash, Neil Clarke, Jazz Standard
Stanley Clarke Band, Blue Note Christian McBride Big Band, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Yellowjackets, Birdland
Pierre Christophe/Joel Frahm/Joe Martin Trio; Roxy Coss Quintet; Sarah Slonim Project - After-hours Jam Session, Small’s
Friday April 7 Eric Reed Quartet, Tim Green (saxophone) Eric Reed (piano) Michael-
Gurrola (bass) McClenty Hunter (drums), Village Vanguard Randy Weston’s African Rrhythms Quintet, 91st Birthday Celebration,
TK Blue, Alex Blake, Lewis Nash, Neil Clarke, Stanley Clarke Band, Blue Note Christian McBride Big Band, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Buddy Rich Centennial: Celebrating The Jazz Drum, Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and music director Ali Jack-son presents new arrangements of hits made famous by Buddy Rich and premiere Jackson’s Living Grooves: A World of Jazz Rhythm, Rose Theater, Jazz At Lincoln Center.
Yellowjackets, Birdland Human Element, Shapeshifter
Tom Dempsey/Tim Ferguson Quartet; Noah Preminger Quartet; After-hours Jam Session with Corey Wallace, Small’s
Saturday April 8 Eric Reed Quartet, Tim Green (saxophone) Eric Reed (piano) Michael-
Gurrola (bass) McClenty Hunter (drums), Village Vanguard Randy Weston’s African Rhythms Quintet, 91st Birthday Celebration,
TK Blue, Alex Blake, Lewis Nash, Neil Clarke, Jazz Standard
Stanley Clarke Band, Blue Note Christian McBride Big Band, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Buddy Rich Centennial: Celebrating The Jazz Drum, Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and music director Ali Jack-son presents new arrangements of hits made famous by Buddy Rich and premiere Jackson’s Living Grooves: A World of Jazz Rhythm, Rose Theater, Jazz At Lincoln Center.
Yellowjackets, Birdland Human Element, Shapeshifter
Robert Edwards - Afternoon Jam Session; Fukushi Tainaka Quintet; Noah Preminger Quartet; Philip Harper Quintet, Small’s
Sunday April 9 Eric Reed Quartet, Tim Green (saxophone) Eric Reed (piano) Michael-
Gurrola (bass) McClenty Hunter (drums), Village Vanguard Randy Weston’s African Rhythms Quintet, 91st Birthday Celebration,
TK Blue, Alex Blake, Lewis Nash, Neil Clarke, Jazz Standard
Stanley Clarke Band, Blue Note
Christian McBride Big Band, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, Birdland Yellowjackets, Birdland Vocal Masterclass with Marion Cowings; Ai Murakami Trio feat. Sacha
Perry; Johnny O'Neal Trio; Ian Hendrickson-Smith Quartet; Jon Beshay - After-hours Jam Session, Small’s
Monday April 10 Vanguard Orchestra, Village Vanguard
Mingus Big Band, Jazz Standard
Deborah Davis - 19th Annual Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Benefit
Concert, Blue Note
Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Arcoiris Sandoval Sonic Asylum Quintet; Jonathan Michel - After-hours Jam Session, Small’s
(Continued on page 14)
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Tuesday April 11 Tom Harrell (trumpet) Ralph Moore (saxophone) David Virelles (piano)
Ugonna Okegwo (bass) Adam Cruz (drums), Village Vanguard
The New Standard, Maurice Brown, James Francies, Ben Eunson, Rashaan Carter, Marcus Gilmore, Christie Dashiell, Jazz Standard
Bobby Deitch Band w/Nigel Hall & Adam Deitch, Blue Note
Christian Mcbride’s New Jawn with Josh Evans, Marcus Strickland, Nasheet Waits, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Kevin Eubanks Quartet with Dave Holland, Nicholas Payton, and Jeff Tain Watts, Birdland
Ehud Asherie Trio; Abraham Burton Quartet, Small’s
Wednesday April 12 Tom Harrell (trumpet) Ralph Moore (saxophone) David Virelles (piano)
Ugonna Okegwo (bass) Adam Cruz (drums), Village Vanguard
Mike Mcginnis / Art Lande / Steve Swallow, Jazz Standard
Christian Mcbride’s New Jawn with Josh Evans, Marcus Strickland,
Nasheet Waits, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Kevin Eubanks Quartet with Dave Holland, Nicholas Payton, and Jeff Tain Watts, Birdland
Tyler Blanton Quartet; Dave Baron Quartet; Aaron Seeber - After-hours Jam Session, Small’s
Thursday April 13 Tom Harrell (trumpet) Ralph Moore (saxophone) David Virelles (piano)
Ugonna Okegwo (bass) Adam Cruz (drums), Village Vanguard
Billy Childs Quartet, Donny McCaslin [4/13], Steve Wilson [4/14-4/16], Hans Glawischnig, Ari Hoeing, Jazz Standard
Kenny Garrett Quintet, Blue Note
Christian Mcbride’s New Jawn with Josh Evans, Marcus Strickland, Nasheet Waits, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Kevin Eubanks Quartet with Dave Holland, Nicholas Payton, and Jeff
Tain Watts, Birdland
Sam Yahel Trio; Brandon Sanders Quintet; Jonathan Thomas - "After-hours" Jam Session, Small’s
Friday April 14 Tom Harrell (trumpet) Ralph Moore (saxophone) David Virelles (piano)
Ugonna Okegwo (bass) Adam Cruz (drums), Village Vanguard
Billy Childs Quartet, Donny McCaslin [4/13], Steve Wilson [4/14-4/16],
Hans Glawischnig, Ari Hoeing, Jazz Standard
Kenny Garrett Quintet, Blue Note
Christian Mcbride’s New Jawn with Josh Evans, Marcus Strickland,
Nasheet Waits, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Kevin Eubanks Quartet with Dave Holland, Nicholas Payton, and Jeff Tain Watts, Birdland
On Ka'a Davis, Shapeshifter
Clemens Grassmann, Alex Madeline (tenor sax), David Milazzo (Alto
Sax), Jernej Bervar (Guitar), Sam Weber (Bass), Clemens Grassmann (Drums) New York based drummer, percussionist and composer, Shapeshifter
Ralph Lalama & "Bop-Juice"; Philip Harper Quintet; After-hours Jam Session with Eric Wyatt, Small’s
Saturday April 15 Tom Harrell (trumpet) Ralph Moore (saxophone) David Virelles (piano)
Ugonna Okegwo (bass) Adam Cruz (drums), Village Vanguard
Billy Childs Quartet, Donny McCaslin [4/13], Steve Wilson [4/14-4/16], Hans Glawischnig, Ari Hoeing, Jazz Standard
Kenny Garrett Quintet, Blue Note
Christian Mcbride’s New Jawn with Josh Evans, Marcus Strickland, Nasheet Waits, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Kevin Eubanks Quartet with Dave Holland, Nicholas Payton, and Jeff Tain Watts, Birdland
Michael Bond - Afternoon Jam Session; Chris Byars Group; Philip
Harper Quintet; Brooklyn Circle, Small’s
Sunday April 16 Tom Harrell (trumpet) Ralph Moore (saxophone) David Virelles (piano)
Ugonna Okegwo (bass) Adam Cruz (drums), Village Vanguard
Billy Childs Quartet, Donny McCaslin [4/13], Steve Wilson [4/14-4/16], Hans Glawischnig, Ari Hoeing, Jazz Standard
Kenny Garrett Quintet, Blue Note
Christian Mcbride’s New Jawn with Josh Evans, Marcus Strickland,
Nasheet Waits, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, Birdland
Vocal Masterclass with Marion Cowings; Michael Pedicin Quintet;
Johnny O'Neal Trio; Grant Stewart Quartet; Hillel Salem - After-hours Jam Session, Small’s
Monday April 17 Vanguard Orchestra, Village Vanguard
Mingus Big Band, Jazz Standard McCoy Tyner, Gary Bartz, Blue Note
MONDAY NIGHTS WITH WBGO, the purchase jazz orchestra with
specia l guest ingrid jensen, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
"Rags to Ragas”, Blaise Siwula clarinet/sax Luciano Trojan piano; Vinnie Sperrazza trio and Moppa Elliott's Advancing on a Wild Pitch: Double bill, Shapeshifter
Mark Sherman Quintet; Ari Hoenig Group; Jonathan Barber - After-hours Jam Session, Small’s
Tuesday April 18 Scott Colley Quartet, Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet, Tue-Fri) Ralph
Alessi (trumpet, Sat-Sun) Jon Cowherd (piano) Scott Colley (bass) Nate Smith (drums), Village Vanguard
Straight, No Chaser, Maurice Brown, Stacy Dillard. Eric Lewis, Nir Felder, Eric Wheeler, Lenny White, Brianna Thomas, Jazz Standard
James Carter, Blue Note
Jaleel Shaw Quartet, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Ann Hampton Callaway, Birdland Vinnie Sperrazza trio: Jacob Sacks - piano Chet Doxas - tenor Vinnie
(Continued on page 16)
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16 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
Sperrazza – drums
Lucas Pino Nonet; Abraham Burton Quartet, Small’s
Wednesday April 19 Scott Colley Quartet, Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet, Tue-Fri) Ralph
Alessi (trumpet, Sat-Sun) Jon Cowherd (piano) Scott Colley (bass) Nate Smith (drums), Village Vanguard
Linda May Han Oh, Jazz Standard
James Carter, Blue Note
Robert Rodriguez’s Noche de Boleros featuring Claudia Acuña and Melissa Aldana, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Ann Hampton Callaway, Birdland
Night of Illusions IV Oddfellows; The Summer Ludlow quintet featuring Luca Chesney & Joao Martins Quartet Double Bill, Shapeshifter
Hailey Niswanger Quartet; Harold Mabern Trio; Jovan Alexandre -
After-hours Jam Session, Small’s
Thursday April 20 Scott Colley Quartet, Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet, Tue-Fri) Ralph
Alessi (trumpet, Sat-Sun) Jon Cowherd (piano) Scott Colley (bass) Nate Smith (drums), Village Vanguard
Joey DeFrancesco (Troy Roberts, Dan Wilson, Michael Ode), Jazz
Standard
Arturo Sandoval, Blue Note
Robert Rodriguez’s Noche de Boleros featuring Claudia Acuña and
Melissa Aldana, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Ann Hampton Callaway, Birdland
The Summer Ludlow quintet featuring Luca Chesney Vocals: Luca Chesney Saxophone: Inhigo Galdeano Piano: Summer Ludlow Bass: Pete Zagare Drums: Nahum Corona, Shapeshifter
Thomas Marriott Quartet; Nick Hempton Band; Sarah Slonim Project -
After-hours Jam Session, Small’s
Friday April 21 Scott Colley Quartet, Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet, Tue-Fri) Ralph
Alessi (trumpet, Sat-Sun) Jon Cowherd (piano) Scott Colley (bass) Nate Smith (drums), Village Vanguard
Joey DeFrancesco (Troy Roberts, Dan Wilson, Michael Ode), Jazz Standard
Arturo Sandoval, Blue Note
Celebrating Slide Hampton’s 85th birthday, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Ann Hampton Callaway, Birdland
"Spin Cycle"; Rob Scheps Core-tet; After-hours Jam Session with Corey Wallace, Small’s
Saturday April 22 Scott Colley Quartet, Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet, Tue-Fri) Ralph
Alessi (trumpet, Sat-Sun) Jon Cowherd (piano) Scott Colley (bass) Nate Smith (drums), Village Vanguard
Joey DeFrancesco (Troy Roberts, Dan Wilson, Michael Ode), Jazz
Standard
Arturo Sandoval, Blue Note
Celebrating Slide Hampton’s 85th birthday, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Ann Hampton Callaway, Birdland
Andrew Forman - Afternoon Jam Session; Behn Gillece Quartet; Rob
Scheps Core-tet; Philip Harper Quintet, Small’s
Sunday April 23 Scott Colley Quartet, Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet, Tue-Fri) Ralph
Alessi (trumpet, Sat-Sun) Jon Cowherd (piano) Scott Colley (bass) Nate Smith (drums), Village Vanguard
Joey DeFrancesco (Troy Roberts, Dan Wilson), Jazz Standard
Arturo Sandoval, Blue Note
Celebrating Slide Hampton’s 85th birthday, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, Birdland
Annie Chen Octet, Shapeshifter Vocal Masterclass with Marion Cowings; Ai Murakami Trio feat. Sacha
Perry; Johnny O'Neal Trio; Mary Quintet; Jon Beshay - After-hours Jam Session, Small’s
Monday April 24 Vanguard Orchestra, Village Vanguard
Mingus Big Band, Jazz Standard Purchase Jazz Orchestra, Blue Note
Alan Broadbent, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Craig Brann Quintet; Ari Hoenig Group; Jam Session, Small’s (Continued on page 17)
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17 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
Tuesday April 25 Bill Stewart Trio, Walter Smith III (tenor sax) Larry Grenadier (bass)
Bill Stewart (drums), Village Vanguard
Soul’d Out (the finale), Maurice Brown, Chelsea Baratz, Chad Selph, Marcus Machado, Antoine Katz, Joe Blaxx, Saunders Sermons, Jazz Standard
Duke Ellington Orchestra Celebrating Duke & Ella’s 100th Birthdays, Blue Note
Lauren Sevian, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Jane Monheit, Birdland Steve Nelson Group; Abraham Burton Quartet, Small’s
Wednesday April 26 Bill Stewart Trio, Walter Smith III (tenor sax) Larry Grenadier (bass)
Bill Stewart (drums), Village Vanguard
Pedro Giraudo Big Band, Jazz Standard
Duke Ellington Orchestra Celebrating Duke & Ella’s 100th Birthdays, Blue Note
Jane Monheit, Birdland Tim Armacost Quartet; Sam Raderman Quintet; Aaron Seeber - After-
hours Jam Session, Small’s
Thursday April 27
Bill Stewart Trio, Walter Smith III (tenor sax) Larry Grenadier (bass)
Bill Stewart (drums), Village Vanguard
Jimmy Greene with Aaron Goldberg, Doug Weiss, Otis Brown iii, Jazz
Standard
Duke Ellington Orchestra Celebrating Duke & Ella’s 100th Birthdays, Blue Note
Christian Sands Quartet, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Celebrating Ella: The First Lady Of Jazz, Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and vocalists Kenny Washington and Roberta Gambarini, Rose Theater, Jazz At Lincoln Center.
Jane Monheit, Birdland
Sanah Kadoura Group; Carlos Abadie Quintet; Jonathan Thomas -
"After-hours" Jam Session, Small’s
Friday April 28
Bill Stewart Trio, Walter Smith III (tenor sax) Larry Grenadier (bass) Bill Stewart (drums), Village Vanguard
Jimmy Greene, Aaron Goldberg, Doug Weiss, Jazz Standard
Duke Ellington Orchestra Celebrating Duke & Ella’s 100th Birthdays, Blue Note
All Sides of Ella with Ulysses Owens, Jr. & Friends, Dizzy’s Club
Coca Cola
Jane Monheit, Birdland
David Bixler Quintet; Anthony Wonsey Quartet; After-hours Jam
Session with Joe Farnsworth, Small’s
Saturday April 29
Bill Stewart Trio, Walter Smith III (tenor sax) Larry Grenadier (bass) Bill Stewart (drums), Village Vanguard
Jimmy Greene & Lovein Action, Mike Moreno, Renee Rosnes, Reu-
ben Rogers, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Rogerio Bocatto, Jazz Standard
Duke Ellington Orchestra Celebrating Duke & Ella’s 100th Birthdays, Blue Note
All Sides of Ella with Ulysses Owens, Jr. & Friends, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Jane Monheit, Birdland
Afternoon Jam Session; Andy Farber Septet; Anthony Wonsey Quar-tet; Brooklyn Circle, Small’s
Sunday April 30 Bill Stewart Trio, Walter Smith III (tenor sax) Larry Grenadier (bass)
Bill Stewart (drums), Village Vanguard
Jimmy Greene & Lovein Action, Mike Moreno, Renee Rosnes, Reu-ben Rogers, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Rogerio Bocatto, Jazz Standard
Duke Ellington Orch, Duke & Ella’s 100th Birthdays, Blue Note
All Sides of Ella with Ulysses Owens, Jr. & Friends, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, Birdland
Vocal Masterclass with Marion Cowings; Ai Murakami Trio feat. Sacha
Perry; Lezlie Harrison Quartet; Joe Magnarelli Quartet; Hillel Salem - After-hours Jam Session, Small’s.
“...among human beings jealousy ranks distinctly as a
weakness; a trademark of small minds; a property of all small minds, yet a property
which even the smallest is ashamed of; and when accused of its possession will
lyingly deny it and resent the accusation as an insult.”
-Mark Twain
“Some people’s idea of free speech is that they are free
to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back that
is an outrage.”
- Winston Churchill
18 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
5 C Cultural Center, 68 Avenue C. 212-477-5993. www.5ccc.com
55 Bar, 55 Christopher St. 212-929-9883, 55bar.com
92nd St Y, 1395 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10128,
212.415.5500, 92ndsty.org
Aaron Davis Hall, City College of NY, Convent Ave., 212-650-
6900, aarondavishall.org
Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, Broadway & 65th St., 212-875-
5050, lincolncenter.org/default.asp
Allen Room, Lincoln Center, Time Warner Center, Broadway and
60th, 5th floor, 212-258-9800, lincolncenter.org
American Museum of Natural History, 81st St. & Central Park
W., 212-769-5100, amnh.org
Antibes Bistro, 112 Suffolk Street. 212-533-6088.
www.antibesbistro.com
Arthur’s Tavern, 57 Grove St., 212-675-6879 or 917-301-8759,
arthurstavernnyc.com
Arts Maplewood, P.O. Box 383, Maplewood, NJ 07040; 973-378-
2133, artsmaplewood.org
Avery Fischer Hall, Lincoln Center, Columbus Ave. & 65th St.,
212-875-5030, lincolncenter.org
BAM Café, 30 Lafayette Av, Brooklyn, 718-636-4100, bam.org
Bar Chord, 1008 Cortelyou Rd., Brooklyn, barchordnyc.com
Bar Lunatico, 486 Halsey St., Brooklyn. 718-513-0339.
222.barlunatico.com
Barbes, 376 9th St. (corner of 6th Ave.), Park Slope, Brooklyn,
718-965-9177, barbesbrooklyn.com
Barge Music, Fulton Ferry Landing, Brooklyn, 718-624-2083,
bargemusic.org
B.B. King’s Blues Bar, 237 W. 42nd St., 212-997-4144,
bbkingblues.com
Beacon Theatre, 74th St. & Broadway, 212-496-7070
Beco Bar, 45 Richardson, Brooklyn. 718-599-1645.
www.becobar.com
Bickford Theatre, on Columbia Turnpike @ Normandy Heights
Road, east of downtown Morristown. 973-744-2600
Birdland, 315 W. 44th St., 212-581-3080
Blue Note, 131 W. 3rd, 212-475-8592, bluenotejazz.com
Bourbon St Bar and Grille, 346 W. 46th St, NY, 10036,
212-245-2030, [email protected]
Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery (at Bleecker), 212-614-0505,
bowerypoetry.com
BRIC House, 647 Fulton St. Brooklyn, NY 11217, 718-683-5600,
http://bricartsmedia.org
Brooklyn Public Library, Grand Army Plaza, 2nd Fl, Brooklyn,
NY, 718-230-2100, brooklynpubliclibrary.org
Café Carlyle, 35 E. 76th St., 212-570-7189, thecarlyle.com
Café Loup, 105 W. 13th St. (West Village) , between Sixth and
Seventh Aves., 212-255-4746
Café St. Bart’s, 109 E. 50th St, 212-888-2664, cafestbarts.com
Cafe Noctambulo, 178 2nd Ave. 212-995-0900. cafenoctam-
bulo.com
Caffe Vivaldi, 32 Jones St, NYC; caffevivaldi.com
Candlelight Lounge, 24 Passaic St, Trenton. 609-695-9612.
Carnegie Hall, 7th Av & 57th, 212-247-7800, carnegiehall.org
Cassandra’s Jazz, 2256 7th Avenue. 917-435-2250. cassan-
drasjazz.com
Chico’s House Of Jazz, In Shoppes at the Arcade, 631 Lake Ave.,
Asbury Park, 732-774-5299
City Winery, 155 Varick St. Bet. Vandam & Spring St., 212-608-
0555. citywinery.com
Cleopatra’s Needle, 2485 Broadway (betw 92nd & 93rd), 212-769-
6969, cleopatrasneedleny.com
Club Bonafide, 212 W. 52nd, 646-918-6189. clubbonafide.com
C’mon Everybody, 325 Franklin Avenue, Brooklyn.
www.cmoneverybody.com
Copeland’s, 547 W. 145th St. (at Bdwy), 212-234-2356
Cornelia St Café, 29 Cornelia, 212-989-9319
Count Basie Theatre, 99 Monmouth St., Red Bank, New Jersey
07701, 732-842-9000, countbasietheatre.org
Crossroads at Garwood, 78 North Ave., Garwood, NJ 07027,
908-232-5666
Cutting Room, 19 W. 24th St, 212-691-1900
Dizzy’s Club, Broadway at 60th St., 5th Floor, 212-258-9595,
jalc.com
DROM, 85 Avenue A, New York, 212-777-1157, dromnyc.com
The Ear Inn, 326 Spring St., NY, 212-226-9060, earinn.com
East Village Social, 126 St. Marks Place. 646-755-8662.
www.evsnyc.com
Edward Hopper House, 82 N. Broadway, Nyack NY. 854-358-
0774.
El Museo Del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Ave (at 104th St.), Tel: 212-831-
7272, Fax: 212-831-7927, elmuseo.org
Esperanto, 145 Avenue C. 212-505-6559. www.esperantony.com
The Falcon, 1348 Rt. 9W, Marlboro, NY., 845) 236-7970,
Fat Cat, 75 Christopher St., 212-675-7369, fatcatjazz.com
Fine and Rare, 9 East 37th Street. www.fineandrare.nyc
Five Spot, 459 Myrtle Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 718-852-0202, fivespot-
soulfood.com
Flushing Town Hall, 137-35 Northern Blvd., Flushing, NY, 718-
463-7700 x222, flushingtownhall.org
For My Sweet, 1103 Fulton St., Brooklyn, NY 718-857-1427
Galapagos, 70 N. 6th St., Brooklyn, NY, 718-782-5188, galapago-
sartspace.com
Garage Restaurant and Café, 99 Seventh Ave. (betw 4th and
Bleecker), 212-645-0600, garagerest.com
Garden Café, 4961 Broadway, by 207th St., New York, 10034,
212-544-9480
Gin Fizz, 308 Lenox Ave, 2nd floor. (212) 289-2220.
www.ginfizzharlem.com
Ginny’s Supper Club, 310 Malcolm X Boulevard Manhattan, NY
10027, 212-792-9001, http://redroosterharlem.com/ginnys/
Glen Rock Inn, 222 Rock Road, Glen Rock, NJ, (201) 445-2362,
glenrockinn.com
GoodRoom, 98 Meserole, Bklyn, 718-349-2373, goodroombk.com.
Green Growler, 368 S, Riverside Ave., Croton-on-Hudson NY.
914-862-0961. www.thegreengrowler.com
Greenwich Village Bistro, 13 Carmine St., 212-206-9777, green-
wichvillagebistro.com
Harlem on 5th, 2150 5th Avenue. 212-234-5600.
www.harlemonfifth.com
Harlem Tea Room, 1793A Madison Ave., 212-348-3471, har-
lemtearoom.com
Hat City Kitchen, 459 Valley St, Orange. 862-252-9147.
hatcitykitchen.com
Havana Central West End, 2911 Broadway/114th St), NYC,
212-662-8830, havanacentral.com
Highline Ballroom, 431 West 16th St (between 9th & 10th Ave.
highlineballroom.com, 212-414-4314.
Hopewell Valley Bistro, 15 East Broad St, Hopewell, NJ 08525,
609-466-9889, hopewellvalleybistro.com
Hudson Room, 27 S. Division St., Peekskill NY. 914-788-FOOD.
hudsonroom.com
Hyatt New Brunswick, 2 Albany St., New Brunswick, NJ
IBeam Music Studio, 168 7th St., Brooklyn, ibeambrooklyn.com
INC American Bar & Kitchen, 302 George St., New Brunswick
NJ. (732) 640-0553. www.increstaurant.com
Iridium, 1650 Broadway, 212-582-2121, iridiumjazzclub.com
Jazz 966, 966 Fulton St., Brooklyn, NY, 718-638-6910
Jazz at Lincoln Center, 33 W. 60th St., 212-258-9800, jalc.org
Frederick P. Rose Hall, Broadway at 60th St., 5th Floor
Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Reservations: 212-258-9595
Rose Theater, Tickets: 212-721-6500, The Allen Room, Tickets:
212-721-6500
Jazz Gallery, 1160 Bdwy, (212) 242-1063, jazzgallery.org
The Jazz Spot, 375 Kosciuszko St. (enter at 179 Marcus Garvey
Blvd.), Brooklyn, NY, 718-453-7825, thejazz.8m.com
Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St., 212-576-2232, jazzstandard.net
Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St & Astor Pl.,
212-539-8778, joespub.com
John Birks Gillespie Auditorium (see Baha’i Center)
Jules Bistro, 65 St. Marks Pl, 212-477-5560, julesbistro.com
Kasser Theater, 1 Normal Av, Montclair State College, Montclair,
973-655-4000, montclair.edu
Key Club, 58 Park Pl, Newark, NJ, 973-799-0306, keyclubnj.com
Kitano Hotel, 66 Park Ave., 212-885-7119. kitano.com
Knickerbocker Bar & Grill, 33 University Pl., 212-228-8490,
knickerbockerbarandgrill.com
Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St, 212-219-3132, knittingfacto-
ry.com
Langham Place — Measure, Fifth Avenue, 400 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10018, 212-613-8738, langhamplacehotels.com
La Lanterna (Bar Next Door at La Lanterna), 129 MacDougal St,
New York, 212-529-5945, lalanternarcaffe.com
Le Cirque Cafe, 151 E. 58th St., lecirque.com
Le Fanfare, 1103 Manhattan Ave., Brooklyn. 347-987-4244.
www.lefanfare.com
Le Madeleine, 403 W. 43rd St. (betw 9th & 10th Ave.), New York,
New York, 212-246-2993, lemadeleine.com
Les Gallery Clemente Soto Velez, 107 Suffolk St, 212-260-4080
Lexington Hotel, 511 Lexington Ave. (212) 755-4400.
www.lexinghotelnyc.com
Live @ The Falcon, 1348 Route 9W, Marlboro, NY 12542,
Living Room, 154 Ludlow St. 212-533-7235, livingroomny.com
The Local 269, 269 E. Houston St. (corner of Suffolk St.), NYC
Makor, 35 W. 67th St., 212-601-1000, makor.org
Lounge Zen, 254 DeGraw Ave, Teaneck, NJ, (201) 692-8585,
lounge-zen.com
Maureen's Jazz Cellar, 2 N. Broadway, Nyack NY. 845-535-3143.
maureensjazzcellar.com
Maxwell’s, 1039 Washington St, Hoboken, NJ, 201-653-1703
McCarter Theater, 91 University Pl., Princeton, 609-258-2787,
mccarter.org
Merkin Concert Hall, Kaufman Center, 129 W. 67th St., 212-501
-3330, ekcc.org/merkin.htm
Metropolitan Room, 34 West 22nd St NY, NY 10012, 212-206-
0440
Mezzrow, 163 West 10th Street, Basement, New York, NY
10014. 646-476-4346. www.mezzrow.com
Minton’s, 206 W 118th St., 212-243-2222, mintonsharlem.com
Mirelle’s, 170 Post Ave., Westbury, NY, 516-338-4933
MIST Harlem, 46 W. 116th St., myimagestudios.com
Mixed Notes Café, 333 Elmont Rd., Elmont, NY (Queens area),
516-328-2233, mixednotescafe.com
Montauk Club, 25 8th Ave., Brooklyn, 718-638-0800,
montaukclub.com
Moscow 57, 168½ Delancey. 212-260-5775. moscow57.com
Muchmore’s, 2 Havemeyer St., Brooklyn. 718-576-3222.
www.muchmoresnyc.com
Mundo, 37-06 36th St., Queens. mundony.com
Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Ave. (between
103rd & 104th St.), 212-534-1672, mcny.org
Musicians’ Local 802, 332 W. 48th, 718-468-7376
National Sawdust, 80 N. 6th St., Brooklyn. 646-779-8455.
www.nationalsawdust.org
Newark Museum, 49 Washington St, Newark, New Jersey 07102-
3176, 973-596-6550, newarkmuseum.org
New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center St., Newark, NJ,
07102, 973-642-8989, njpac.org
New Leaf Restaurant, 1 Margaret Corbin Dr., Ft. Tryon Park. 212-
568-5323. newleafrestaurant.com
New School Performance Space, 55 W. 13th St., 5th Floor (betw
5th & 6th Ave.), 212-229-5896, newschool.edu.
New School University-Tishman Auditorium, 66 W. 12th St., 1st
Floor, Room 106, 212-229-5488, newschool.edu
New York City Baha’i Center, 53 E. 11th St. (betw Broadway &
University), 212-222-5159, bahainyc.org
North Square Lounge, 103 Waverly Pl. (at MacDougal St.),
212-254-1200, northsquarejazz.com
Oak Room at The Algonquin Hotel, 59 W. 44th St. (betw 5th and
6th Ave.), 212-840-6800, thealgonquin.net
Oceana Restaurant, 120 West 49th St, New York, NY 10020
212-759-5941, oceanarestaurant.com
Orchid, 765 Sixth Ave. (betw 25th & 26th St.), 212-206-9928
The Owl, 497 Rogers Ave, Bklyn. 718-774-0042. www.theowl.nyc
Palazzo Restaurant, 11 South Fullerton Avenue, Montclair. 973-
746-6778. palazzonj.com
Priory Jazz Club: 223 W Market, Newark, 07103, 973-639-7885
Proper Café, 217-01 Linden Blvd., Queens, 718-341-2233
Clubs, Venues & Jazz ResourcesClubs, Venues & Jazz Resources
— Anton Chekhov
“A system of morality
which is based on relative
emotional values is a mere
illusion, a thoroughly vulgar
conception which has nothing
sound in it and nothing true.”
— Socrates
19 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
Prospect Park Bandshell, 9th St. & Prospect Park W., Brooklyn,
NY, 718-768-0855
Prospect Wine Bar & Bistro, 16 Prospect St. Westfield, NJ,
908-232-7320, 16prospect.com, cjayrecords.com
Red Eye Grill, 890 7th Av (56th), 212-541-9000, redeyegrill.com
Ridgefield Playhouse, 80 East Ridge, parallel to Main St.,
Ridgefield, CT; ridgefieldplayhouse.org, 203-438-5795
Rockwood Music Hall, 196 Allen St, 212-477-4155
Rose Center (American Museum of Natural History), 81st St.
(Central Park W. & Columbus), 212-769-5100, amnh.org/rose
Rose Hall, 33 W. 60th St., 212-258-9800, jalc.org
Rosendale Café, 434 Main St., PO Box 436, Rosendale, NY 12472,
845-658-9048, rosendalecafe.com
Rubin Museum of Art - “Harlem in the Himalayas”, 150 W. 17th
St. 212-620-5000. rmanyc.org
Rustik, 471 DeKalb Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 347-406-9700,
rustikrestaurant.com
St. Mark’s Church, 131 10th St. (at 2nd Ave.), 212-674-6377
St. Nick’s Pub, 773 St. Nicholas Av (at 149th), 212-283-9728
St. Peter’s Church, 619 Lexington (at 54th), 212-935-2200,
saintpeters.org
Sasa’s Lounge, 924 Columbus Ave, Between 105th & 106th St.
NY, NY 10025, 212-865-5159, sasasloungenyc.yolasite.com
Savoy Grill, 60 Park Place, Newark, NJ 07102, 973-286-1700
Schomburg Center, 515 Malcolm X Blvd., 212-491-2200,
nypl.org/research/sc/sc.html
Shanghai Jazz, 24 Main St., Madison, NJ, 973-822-2899, shang-
haijazz.com
ShapeShifter Lab, 18 Whitwell Pl, Brooklyn, NY 11215
shapeshifterlab.com
Showman’s, 375 W. 125th St., 212-864-8941
Sidewalk Café, 94 Ave. A, 212-473-7373
Sista’s Place, 456 Nostrand, Bklyn, 718-398-1766, sistasplace.org
Skippers Plane St Pub, 304 University Ave. Newark NJ, 973-733-
9300, skippersplaneStpub.com
Smalls Jazz Club, 183 W. 10th St. (at 7th Ave.), 212-929-7565,
SmallsJazzClub.com
Smith’s Bar, 701 8th Ave, New York, 212-246-3268
Sofia’s Restaurant - Club Cache’ [downstairs], Edison Hotel,
221 W. 46th St. (between Broadway & 8th Ave), 212-719-5799
South Gate Restaurant & Bar, 154 Central Park South, 212-484-
5120, 154southgate.com
South Orange Performing Arts Center, One SOPAC
Way, South Orange, NJ 07079, sopacnow.org, 973-313-2787
Spectrum, 2nd floor, 121 Ludlow St.
Spoken Words Café, 266 4th Av, Brooklyn, 718-596-3923
Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse, 165 W. 65th St., 10th Floor,
212-721-6500, lincolncenter.org
The Stone, Ave. C & 2nd St., thestonenyc.com
Strand Bistro, 33 W. 37th St. 212-584-4000
SubCulture, 45 Bleecker St., subculturenewyork.com
Sugar Bar, 254 W. 72nd St, 212-579-0222, sugarbarnyc.com
Swing 46, 349 W. 46th St.(betw 8th & 9th Ave.),
212-262-9554, swing46.com
Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, Tel: 212-864-1414, Fax: 212-
932-3228, symphonyspace.org
Tea Lounge, 837 Union St. (betw 6th & 7th Ave), Park Slope,
Broooklyn, 718-789-2762, tealoungeNY.com
Terra Blues, 149 Bleecker St. (betw Thompson & LaGuardia),
212-777-7776, terrablues.com
Threes Brewing, 333 Douglass St., Brooklyn. 718-522-2110.
www.threesbrewing.com
Tito Puente’s Restaurant and Cabaret, 64 City Island Avenue,
City Island, Bronx, 718-885-3200, titopuentesrestaurant.com
Tomi Jazz, 239 E. 53rd St., 646-497-1254, tomijazz.com
Tonic, 107 Norfolk St. (betw Delancey & Rivington), Tel: 212-358-
7501, Fax: 212-358-1237, tonicnyc.com
Town Hall, 123 W. 43rd St., 212-997-1003
Triad Theater, 158 W. 72nd St. (betw Broadway & Columbus
Ave.), 212-362-2590, triadnyc.com
Tribeca Performing Arts Center, 199 Chambers St, 10007,
[email protected], tribecapac.org
Trumpets, 6 Depot Square, Montclair, NJ, 973-744-2600,
trumpetsjazz.com
Turning Point Cafe, 468 Piermont Ave. Piermont, N.Y. 10968
(845) 359-1089, http://turningpointcafe.com
Urbo, 11 Times Square. 212-542-8950. urbonyc.com
Village Vanguard, 178 7th Ave S., 212-255-4037
Vision Festival, 212-696-6681, [email protected],
Watchung Arts Center, 18 Stirling Rd, Watchung, NJ 07069,
908-753-0190, watchungarts.org
Watercolor Café, 2094 Boston Post Road, Larchmont, NY 10538,
914-834-2213, watercolorcafe.net
Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, 57th & 7th Ave, 212-247-7800
Williamsburg Music Center, 367 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
11211, (718) 384-1654 wmcjazz.org
Zankel Hall, 881 7th Ave, New York, 212-247-7800
Zinc Bar, 82 West 3rd St.
RECORD STORES
Academy Records, 12 W. 18th St., New York, NY 10011, 212-242
-3000, http://academy-records.com
Downtown Music Gallery, 13 Monroe St, New York, NY 10002,
(212) 473-0043, downtownmusicgallery.com
Jazz Record Center, 236 W. 26th St., Room 804,
212-675-4480, jazzrecordcenter.com
MUSIC STORES
Roberto’s Woodwind & Brass, 149 West 46th St. NY, NY 10036,
646-366-0240, robertoswoodwind.com
Sam Ash, 333 W 34th St, New York, NY 10001
Phone: (212) 719-2299 samash.com
Sadowsky Guitars Ltd, 2107 41st Avenue 4th Floor, Long Island
City, NY 11101, 718-433-1990. sadowsky.com
Steve Maxwell Vintage Drums, 723 7th Ave, 3rd Floor, New
York, NY 10019, 212-730-8138, maxwelldrums.com
SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, CONSERVATORIES
92nd St Y, 1395 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10128
212.415.5500; 92ndsty.org
Brooklyn-Queens Conservatory of Music, 42-76 Main St.,
Flushing, NY, Tel: 718-461-8910, Fax: 718-886-2450
Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, 58 Seventh Ave., Brooklyn,
NY, 718-622-3300, brooklynconservatory.com
City College of NY-Jazz Program, 212-650-5411,
Drummers Collective, 541 6th Ave, New York, NY 10011,
212-741-0091, thecoll.com
Five Towns College, 305 N. Service, 516-424-7000, x Hills, NY
Greenwich House Music School, 46 Barrow St., Tel: 212-242-
4770, Fax: 212-366-9621, greenwichhouse.org
Juilliard School of Music, 60 Lincoln Ctr, 212-799-5000
LaGuardia Community College/CUNI, 31-10 Thomson Ave.,
Long Island City, 718-482-5151
Lincoln Center — Jazz At Lincoln Center, 140 W. 65th St.,
10023, 212-258-9816, 212-258-9900
Long Island University — Brooklyn Campus, Dept. of Music,
University Plaza, Brooklyn, 718-488-1051, 718-488-1372
Manhattan School of Music, 120 Claremont Ave., 10027,
212-749-2805, 2802, 212-749-3025
NJ City Univ, 2039 Kennedy Blvd., Jersey City, 888-441-6528
New School, 55 W. 13th St., 212-229-5896, 212-229-8936
NY University, 35 West 4th St. Rm #777, 212-998-5446
NY Jazz Academy, 718-426-0633 NYJazzAcademy.com
Princeton University-Dept. of Music, Woolworth Center Musical
Studies, Princeton, NJ, 609-258-4241, 609-258-6793
Queens College — Copland School of Music, City University of
NY, Flushing, 718-997-3800
Rutgers Univ. at New Brunswick, Jazz Studies, Douglass Cam-
pus, PO Box 270, New Brunswick, NJ, 908-932-9302
Rutgers University Institute of Jazz Studies, 185 University
Avenue, Newark NJ 07102, 973-353-5595
newarkrutgers.edu/IJS/index1.html
SUNY Purchase, 735 Anderson Hill, Purchase, 914-251-6300
Swing University (see Jazz At Lincoln Center, under Venues)
William Paterson University Jazz Studies Program, 300 Pompton
Rd, Wayne, NJ, 973-720-2320
RADIO
WBGO 88.3 FM, 54 Park Pl, Newark, NJ 07102, Tel: 973-624-
8880, Fax: 973-824-8888, wbgo.org
WCWP, LIU/C.W. Post Campus
WFDU, http://alpha.fdu.edu/wfdu/wfdufm/index2.html
WKCR 89.9, Columbia University, 2920 Broadway
Mailcode 2612, NY 10027, 212-854-9920, columbia.edu/cu/wkcr
ADDITIONAL JAZZ RESOURCES Big Apple Jazz, bigapplejazz.com, 718-606-8442, gor-
Louis Armstrong House, 34-56 107th St, Corona, NY 11368,
718-997-3670, satchmo.net
Institute of Jazz Studies, John Cotton Dana Library, Rutgers-
Univ, 185 University Av, Newark, NJ, 07102, 973-353-5595
Jazzmobile, Inc., jazzmobile.org
Jazz Museum in Harlem, 104 E. 126th St., 212-348-8300,
jazzmuseuminharlem.org
Jazz Foundation of America, 322 W. 48th St. 10036,
212-245-3999, jazzfoundation.org
New Jersey Jazz Society, 1-800-303-NJJS, njjs.org
New York Blues & Jazz Society, NYBluesandJazz.org
Rubin Museum, 150 W. 17th St, New York, NY,
212-620-5000 ex 344, rmanyc.org.
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Steve Peck
Road Manager, Buddy Rich Big Band
By Eric Nemeyer
Jazz Inside: As Buddy Rich’s manager, you be-
came an expert at handling highly emotional, sensi-
tive and creative people—would that be accurate?
Steve Peck: That’s not far off. When dealing with
the level that Buddy was at—you’d have to put him
in the genius category someplace—there’s always
some deficit that comes with genius. Entertainers
especially have deficits when it comes to social
behavior. Buddy was probably at the top of that list
in most cases. He was really a very, very shy guy.
He was like a Boy Scout and sometimes a Cub
Scout leader for the band. He was like a travel
agent. Sometimes it was really very good and at
times—which were in the minority—it was very,
very bad, as far as social engagement on the bus…
it would depend on the band and where we were
going. A smaller size town or city compared to
New York or Chicago or LA or San Francisco…
key places on our itineraries had to be right. And if
they weren’t, there was a degree of animosity that
came off the drums toward the band…back to the
genius category. There’s an ego involved with
genius, in the celebrity world, that I was exposed
to. I don’t know about all of these guys, but if it’s
not number one, it’s tough. I remember Buddy, on
a number of occasions, went head-to-head with
some pretty big talent over who got billing…Mel
Tormé comes to mind. He wanted to be number
one and Buddy wanted to be number one, so they
wound up putting them side by side. On certain
occasions it became problematic and quite interest-
ing. It led to some head-butting and some name-
calling. It was eye opening and psychologically
very challenging to be able to read him without
getting canned or yelled at. A lot of my tolerance to
being yelled at, was that I had a built in self-
defense mechanism, to know that he wasn’t yelling
at me personally…he just had to yell. So, if it was a
band or some poor guy that was trying to make a
hamburger for him or the person behind him on the
plane that was juggling his seat, he would yell…
otherwise, he was a very pussy cat kind of guy.
There’s no getting around it that his bark was much
bigger than his bite, during the time
that I knew him. There were some
stories that floated around that he
became physical and he was pun-
ished for it. Over the course of his
career, he came across as a real tough
guy, and hard to handle talent. He
hurt himself. My personal input to
this is that he was as big a talent as
you can get. It wasn’t just playing
drums, as far as a show, it was elec-
trifying. Most of the audience waited
for that last ten minute drum solo,
really the band was supporting Bud-
dy that whole time, till they got what
they wanted.
JI: Did he ever tap dance when you
were with him?
SP: As a matter of fact, he did a little
jig every night. If you want to say on
the stage, no. But he got himself up
by loosening up…it was like a thing for him. There
was one show where we were doing a tour of Eu-
rope with Sammy Davis, and we were in England.
Buddy was the honored guest and Sammy came on
unexpectedly and they did a tap-dance number…or
a sand dance number—they spread some sand on
the stage and they were doing a shuffle kind of
thing and then they got into a tap dance and Sam-
my decided he was going to upstage Buddy, as far
as cameras were concerned, and got in front of
him. Buddy never wanted to be upstaged by any-
body so he kind of really took it up a notch and put
Sammy away. Sammy realized what was going
on—that he had turned Buddy into a monster, so he
backed off. The emcee of the show, whoever it
might have been, kind of realized that it was start-
ing to get a little hot, so he busted it up. He learned
from all of the greats in the tap dance business. He
saw, every night at Vaudeville all the wonderful
dancing that was going on. Because you didn’t
push a button and turn on the TV in those days.
Live entertainment was all that existed. So, his first
nineteen years, before he started playing drums at a
professional level—which is a history story of
where he began. From a very young age, from what
I understand from pictures I’ve seen and people
I’ve spoken to, he was like a learning machine. He
soaked up everything that he saw. Till the last day,
he had this genius memory. He could remember
everything that he had ever played and remember
the lyrics to every song that he had ever heard and
he knew how it was supposed to be. He had a tre-
mendous repertoire. Enormous. As far as musical
ability, he could play just about every instrument
and he knew what was supposed to come out of it;
aside from the fact the he couldn’t read music, he
had the musical genius of not perfect pitch but
perfect memory and he knew what was supposed to
be. He couldn’t tell a player if he was sharp or flat,
he just knew that it wasn’t right. And when it was
wrong, he went after him, the same way anybody at
that moment he’s coming after. To get it right and
to get your students, apprentices up to that night’s
level. Do it the way it’s supposed to be done, which
was what was drilled into him through his whole
career. Every time he played, like with Tommy
Dorsey or with Artie Shaw, all of these guys had
that same “had to have it right” kind of thing. Oth-
erwise you’re out of here.
JI: Why don’t you talk about how you came to be
Buddy’s right hand man. How did that association
develop?
SP: Well, it was an accident…and it’s been an
accident for many, many years. I say that with joy,
because it started out as just a fluke. I was sitting
on the beach in a bathing suit in Fort Lauderdale…
and a guy that worked for Buddy at that time came
down the street with Buddy’s car that had to be
InterviewInterview
“From a very young age...he was like a learning machine. He soaked up everything that he saw. Till the last day, he had this genius memory.”
© E
ric n
emey
er
21 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
taken to New York and be there in like a day and a
half. He asked if anybody knew how to drive this
standard shift sports car. And I unfortunately an-
swered, “Yes,” and he said, “Well take me around
the block.” I did and he said, “Do you want to take
this to New York?” And I said, “Well, if you fly
me home, I’d be happy to.” Because it was a pretty
fancy car and you don’t get a chance to do this
often. So I went, “Yeah!” So, the next morning, I
didn’t know this was going to happen but I was
also going to be in the car with Buddy. In 1,000
miles of being shoulder to shoulder, we started
talking and stuff and he made me an offer that I
should have refused and we started a relationship. I
was like, hanging with him. I guess the word today
is chauffeur, but basically my job was to take care
of Buddy Rich—to make sure that he got from gig
to gig. In the car, you’d better give him plenty of
room, because it was like a hot car and it would go
really fast and do stuff that most cars and most
drivers would be put off by. It was really a gas to
be able to drive a machine like this around the
country, hangin’ with Buddy Rich, going, “Man
look at that!” Because, I grew up playing drums...I
can’t really say play. I wasn’t a player. I could play
a set of drums. High school and college stuff, it
was like okay, but I was not a player. So that was-
n’t my main career, but then I wound up sitting in a
sports car with Buddy. Man! This was one of my
idols. At the beginning, the moon was aligned…
timing, of course is everything. For me to be there
when that went down allowed me to…I was kind
of like in between, like, “What am I going to do
tomorrow?”…I said, “Sure.” Fortunately, with my
background, it turned out that I knew how to plug
in a microphone and not kill myself and because I
could play drums and I was into some kind of mu-
sic…I was always a small group guy and to be in a
big band was like Man, look at this! For the first
year or so, after being fired like three times, I final-
ly understood where he was coming from.
JI: And of course you were fired because of your
own incompetence, right?
SP: Well, or others,’ but I was the first guy in the
line to get it. It’s kick the dog or kick Steve. So, he
would kick Steve or he would kick the lead trumpet
player or whoever happened to be closest at the
time. It would be, “I’m not taking this kind of stuff.
I’ll see you later,” or it would be, “Get off the
bus!” And he’d leave you someplace in the middle
of nowhere. I’d have to find my way back to New
York and go and get my back pay. Then after two
weeks the phone would ring and it would be, “Hey
man, what are you doing? Do you think you might
be able to come out?” And I would say, “You’ve
got to be kidding me…after that?” And he’d say,
“Well, we’ll double your salary” or something like
and I would say, “Well, I’m not doing anything
right now,” and I’d get on a plane or whatever and
meet them wherever they were having trouble and
pick up the pieces. This was the way the first three
or four years went. I started in 1975.
JI: And you were on the beach at Fort Lauder-
dale…probably sometime in the winter?
SP: …of 1975. Well, I was living on the beach in a
house with a couple of guys and a couple of girls
were downstairs and I was upstairs. It was a differ-
ent time for me because I had just wound up with a
separation and a divorce from a marriage and I
decided—I was in my mid-thirties, and I had never
done anything like this and it was like a good time
to see what the lifestyle would be. I had grown up
in a pretty disciplined shall we say Brooklyn, Jew-
ish kind of thing?
JI: Buddy Rich grew up in a Brooklyn, Jewish.
SP: Exactly. A whole bunch of good people came
out of Brooklyn, don’t get me wrong. It was a dif-
ferent lifestyle for me. I had a business, a corporate
life, of designing factories and that kind of went
out of the way and Buddy came along. This was
like late seventies and the Florida economy kind of
tanked. There was an oil crisis. Just to try out
something different, I wound up getting on the bus
and it was like an opportunity that very few people
get to do. I had a background in technical photog-
raphy. I’ve always liked taking pictures, it was a
natural off shoot for me, that I had cameras with
me. I got to some really great places and did some
super stuff that most people don’t get a chance to
do. I had some really frightening moments—near
death experiences. As well as true death. Now that
I talk about it, it wasn’t a good time. Buddy passed
away in ’87, so, it was ’86 that he had a rough time
on the road. He was also having a hard time after
he had major quadruple bypass surgery. He never
really came back after that. He was playing, but it
was like forced. You’d never have known it. When
he was onstage he was as good as he could be,
There was a subtlety about his playing—you have
to understand that I listened to Buddy more times
than probably anybody on this planet. Except for
Steve Marcus, nobody was on the band for more
than like two years. That was it. It was a hard place
to spend a lot of time. I counted something like
over 3,000 gigs and the only reason I could handle
that was because no two were the same. He never
played the same way…he never played the same
charts…it was always a different concert every
night. He excelled. He pushed himself to the point
where he would walk off the stage drenched in
sweat because he was playing in a very high athlet-
ic state. Drummers are athletes. Buddy was gifted
by having some super human thing built into him
that doesn’t exist in most people. You can work as
long as you want and you’ll never get to that level.
I’m not saying that he was the best at what he did,
but I’m saying there were very few people who
could attain that. There was some kind of adrenal
rush behind it…he had extremely fast reflexes.
When he plays you see a level of muscular ability,
fast reflexes, whatever, I’m just talking about his
playing. I’m not talking about the musical part of
the way he wanted to present his music. A lot of
times it was too loud—sometimes it scared people.
We had audiences with their fingers in their ears
because they couldn’t handle it. When that curtain
opened man, it like hit you in the face with a wall
of sound. That was the big band hit. That’s what he
wanted to present. He played trio things and it was
real laid back and it was great, because he was an
amazing player…big band, little band, anything.
And of course, he had a whole singing career after
his first heart attack, which never really got going.
His first heart attack was in 1950-something and
they told him he’d never play drums again. When
he had the other heart attack, it was in the early
eighties. I was right there where he had played a
concert and said, “I’m really tired.” He had a heart
attack. We sent him to the hospital. I had just left
this man and he was fine. It was a massive heart
attack and the only reason he survived was that he
realized and phoned the desk while lying on the
floor of his room. It was a very eye-opening situa-
tion at that time. They said he had like ninety-five
percent blockage on three coronary arteries, and
I’m going, “How could he play like he did last
night? This man is absolutely amazing.” He was
playing on like five percent blood flow, but he got
it across.
JI: You were telling me about that particular one
where you had just left New York City a couple of
days before to go on that tour. Maybe you want to
get into that a little?
SP: Well, the Second Avenue Deli was one of the
stops on the way out of New York. It was like,
you’re going to pack up your stash. You’ve got a
stash going out of New York of chopped liver and
whatever other delicacies you can’t get on the road.
(Continued on page 22)
“He never played the same way…he never played the same charts…it was
always a different concert every night. He excelled. He pushed himself to the point where he would walk off the stage drenched in sweat because he was playing in a very high athletic
state.”
Buddy Rich / Steve Peck
22 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
JI: Was apple pie one of those?
SP: No, we bought apple pie on the road. That was
one thing that didn’t stay in the cooler well. I’m
sorry you asked me that because that opens up a
whole other area of diet on the road. It’s not the
greatest place to be. There’s only one stop you can
make with fifteen guys on the bus and get out of
there in ten minutes. It wasn’t like we were living
the life of celebrity dining. It’s hard to eat on the
road. Buddy had a preference for a particular brand
and that’s the only place we went. It was like How-
ard Johnson’s; you knew what the room was. I’m
not saying it was Howard Johnson’s, but the room
was standard issue, and you’d find the toothbrush
holder in the same place everyplace you woke up.
JI: Coming out of New York, he’d get a couple
pounds of that chopped liver he liked.
SP: ...and in about three days most of it was gone,
because that’s all he ate. There were New York
City hot dogs, too. You had to stop on Broadway
and 72nd street, otherwise it wasn’t New York. So,
he lived in New York and he lived on the bus…and
loved Chicago. London was a great place because
he could eat all the Italian food that he wanted.
There were some favorite eating establishments.
Most of them were steak…and more steak, because
he needed it in order to be able to get along. He
also consumed chocolate milkshakes a lot, which
were made when we were in the hotel. He took
along Fox’s U-Bet by the case. Hershey’s didn’t
make it, but Fox’s U-Bet was a winner, because
that’s what he grew up with. Buddy’s habits—
culinary, dining—he knew how to eat well, but it
was like a very limited diet. That’s like, unfortu-
nately, some of the health problems in America. He
consumed stuff that he shouldn’t have, but he re-
fused, even after the heart attack, to give it up. He
was like, smoke a few cigarettes…but man, you’re
not supposed to be smoking. He said, “I want to
smoke. Don’t tell me what not to do. Go buy me a
pack of cigarettes.” And I said, “You’re going to
have to buy your own cigarettes, man.” Because I
had recently quit and I just couldn’t enable him any
more. And he knew it, so he had other people run
for cigarettes. There were some things that I
wouldn’t do, mostly regarding his health, after
almost losing him. It’s not a pretty sight to see a
man in the hospital with all kinds of tubes sticking
out of him. He wasn’t just my employer, we were
really good friends. To see him in that condition
was not pleasant. After he came back from the
heart attack, he was changed. He was stopping to
smell the flowers. You could actually talk him into
going to the Grand Canyon and looking at some-
thing rather than just going ninety miles an hour
across the country. We’d get to Chicago and there
are some really good steak joints. The place for ribs
was Miller’s in Chicago. I was hanging up there
about a year ago. I went back to Miller’s and found
that same table with the same picture, along with
all the other celebrities that go to Miller’s. So there
were places that he really enjoyed; were home to
him.
JI: What were some of the places that you and he
enjoyed going cross country?
SP: There are a lot of miles between Chicago and
LA. He didn’t particularly like Las Vegas or Den-
ver. The mid-west was good for him. He had great
response. When we got into the south…we didn’t
do too much in the South. Florida, yes, because that
was fairly transplanted Brooklyn-ites. Texas, we
did a few going across, but Texas is a very long
state. It takes you a thousand miles to get across it.
After that is New Mexico, Nevada…
JI: Of course, New Mexico has Roswell, where the
famous UFO sightings occurred in 1947. Wasn’t
Buddy interested in UFOs?
SP: Yes, he was very knowledgeable and he was
associated with a whole bunch of people…Dr.
Allen Hynek…
JI: Who ran the Blue Book Project, which was a
government cover-up project, then turned around
when he realized that this stuff was actually legit.
Buddy knew him?
SP: Yes he did. He visited him in Chicago, when
he had his thing there. Roswell was not a place to
play. We played Los Alamos, which was a strange
place to get to, because its really out in the middle
of the desert and I don’t even know why they did it,
because nobody would know that it was there. It
was built in amongst the canyons, but we played
there. Favorite places? LA, San Francisco was very
good to him. But then it was also the hotels that he
stayed at. When we got to San Francisco, it was the
Paramount. In LA, it was Home. We would use
major cities as a jumping off place. Rather than
stay in smaller towns, we would drive two or three
hundred miles just to get back to a major city.
There aren’t too many places in Montana…east to
west the whole state you’d never see anything—
like eight hundred miles and it takes you two days,
at ninety to drive across the state of Montana.
JI: Back to the recovery from the bypass…
SP: Well, there was no real recovery. We were
supposed to play Ann Arbor. Of course, that was
cancelled and Ed Shaughnessy came out with the
band and played a couple of things. I guess it was
maybe four or five weeks till Buddy got back to
actually sitting behind a set of drums. I think he did
that with Freddie Gruber. He was going to play. He
had this unbelievable drive.
JI: When was this?
SP: 1983. Buddy said this to his doctor—it’s a
quote. The doctor said, “It’s too soon. You can’t go
back. You can’t do what you did for awhile.” He
convinced him enough to say, “Okay I’ll take an-
other two weeks.” So the band flew over after eight
weeks, on a regular plane. Buddy flew on the Con-
cord. I met him at the airport. That night, he
dressed the band in tuxedos. Normally, we played
Ronnie Scott’s in T-shirts, it was really casual. He
said, “Tonight I’m putting on a tux and we’re going
to see if it works.” He was like stitched together
with wires and suture on his chest. After the show
he had his wrists in ice-water because he had swol-
len up. He was taking all kinds of suppressor drugs
to keep his heart rate from busting loose. He played
in spite of that, but he paid a price. Because after
that, he did thirty days touring Great Britain. We
almost lost him because he just didn’t have the
juice in him. We had to cancel one night. Then he
was right back on his regular schedule. The only
exercise that he ever got was playing, so for eight
hours during the day we sat on the bus. We had an
exer-cycle, we had a bicycle. We had all kinds of
stuff, but he didn’t want to know about it. Buddy
was his own man, to get back to that part again. He
knew his own body and wanted to do his own thing
and continue on.
JI: Tell me about Buddy and Frank Sinatra…
SP: A booking agent got word from Mr. Sinatra
that he would like to have Buddy’s band on a tour
with him. Which was, unfortunately, probably the
worst thing that could ever happen to Buddy, be-
cause Buddy as an opening act in the middle of a
twenty thousand seat arena had to look like…ego,
right out of the box, you know. Thirty minutes of
high-powered, arm waving exaggerated playing—
showmanship—in order to get that audience up for
Frank. He hurt himself because it wasn’t happening
every day. He didn’t have the hour and a half warm
-up.
JI: His thing was to do an hour and a half warm up
with the band and the finish with the finale…
SP: With Frank, he had to be “on” all the time.
That whole thirty minutes was like…drum solo. He
wasn’t doing it every night. Like, we would on the
road and Frank would be on one night and be off
four or five days, or the next weekend have another
show. It wasn’t like Buddy’s usual thing. With his
heart situation, and still recovering and not being as
young as he was, it was a hardship, and it showed.
The continuing diet…
JI: He didn’t change his diet after the…
SP: No. Like I said, he was his guy. He wanted
what he wanted. When I got into trouble with him
was when I would say, “no.” If anybody would say,
“no, you can’t have that and you shouldn’t, “ he
would go out of his way to prove that he was going
to have it. And twice as much! So, he put on a gut,
he put on much too much weight, and the wrong
kind of weight for a recovering cardiac patient.
This is like a word to the wise: you just don’t do
this kind of stuff and get away with it. Unfortunate-
ly, he didn’t. If you do the best you can and you’re
going to go, you’re going to go, but he wanted to
go the way he wanted to. He could have changed
his career. He could have played in a small band,
but he wanted that power, he wanted that control.
He wanted to put it out there. That was his thing,
the big band. He could play amazing stuff—small
group, he was just superb and if he played brushes,
nobody could take him. But he didn’t.
JI: What happened after the heart attack?
SP: At that age and at that stage, with the damage
that he incurred, he wasn’t as good internally. I
don’t know how many calories a jazz drummer
burns, but the sweat didn’t come from being nerv-
ous. It came from work. He sweat, that was part of
his thing. If he didn’t work up a sweat, he knew
(Continued from page 21)
Buddy Rich / Steve Peck
23 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
that he didn’t put out as much as he could have. He
really worked hard. At that level of his game, to be
able to do it for as long as he did and he didn’t
want to lose it. He knew that if he lost it, he was
hanging up his sticks, so he played it right out to
the end. Through all the adversity, this was the
show must go on Buddy. This was what he learned
growing up and this is what he had and that’s what
he tried to project to the world, that the show will
go on. And he did. Johnny Carson knew when the
show was over. He knew when to hang up his
sticks, literally, because they played together. Bud-
dy gave Johnny a drum set that Johnny played on.
Johnny was playing with pencils on the stage ever
since then. So it was like, for Buddy not to play at
the level that he played…he went out playing. He
died with his boots on, as they say. He did what he
wanted to do and nobody was going to deter him
from that band. We have to give him a lot of credit;
at the same time we have to understand that he was
driven. He was coming from a place that most of us
can’t understand. Just to be able to perform at that
level, in front of ten million people in his life-
time—not counting TV, live performances—I
might be exaggerating here, but how many people
saw Buddy play? …And walked out of there with
their jaws slack and going, “Oh my God! Look at
what he just did! “And that’s how he ended, just
about every night. People were stunned at his per-
formances. That’s a level that is very hard to keep
on a consistent basis. So, perhaps, all those stories
about the rage…the rage was part of his ability to
be able to keep that level going. It was an adrena-
line rush. Whether he manufactured it from getting
angry over the smallest thing, it just got him up
there. And it allowed him to play at the level that
he expected people to have.
JI: I think one of the first recordings you may have
been around for was Buddy Rich Plays and Plays
and Plays. Barry Keiner was on that. They did one
on a specialty label, you know an audio file kind of
a thing, where they did “Bouncin’ With Bud” and
maybe “Birdland”…
SP: We did some on, I recall, not a major label…I
think in a studio in Tennessee someplace. It wasn’t
a major event. Most of Buddy’s recordings, unfor-
tunately, because of Buddy’s demands in the stu-
dio, never really came off as well as a live perfor-
mance. If he had take two or take three, it just did-
n’t have it. It wasn’t at a level with the first take,
because he was putting it all out there…hardly any
rehearsals. It was like, “Let’s not wear ourselves
out folks. Let’s just give everything we’ve got…
roll the tape…full speed ahead.” Not to be cliché-
ish about it, but the engineers would put baffling
around the drums because the drums got into all the
other mics onstage. Because he didn’t want to be in
an isolation booth, which is the way most record-
ings are made these days, also with a metronome
someplace—he wanted to have a live band playing
all together, the way they played onstage…and it
would drive engineers crazy because they couldn’t
isolate the sound. “Hold it…we just ran out of
tape” or “the cable broke,” or…all of these things
impeded him. So, by the time he got to take three
or four, it wasn’t like where he was at. So, all the
recording dates that I had been on, whether it was
for RCA in a big fancy studio, or in a little place in
Tennessee somewhere, he wasn’t at his best record-
ed. I had made some tapes and there were tapes
being made of live concerts which were much bet-
ter than the entire studio operation came out. The
sound quality wasn’t there, but the feel was there.
The band was together. There was no pressure. The
microphones were one thing, but the guy sitting
behind the big console, the A and R guy, most of
the time was looking for a particular sound, not
what Buddy was playing. The end result never
really came out well. I made a bunch of good tapes.
I recorded the band every night for years and years
with the first line tape recorder. This was not for
anybody else. In the early days we would lay out a
tour two, possibly three months at a time. Willard
Alexander was the big band agent, at the time. He
started out with Benny Goodman. He controlled the
big bands in America. You name the bandleader
and he was connected to Willard, someplace along
the way. I think Willard had a dozen agents work-
ing in the New York office and he had a few in
Chicago, which took us across the country. The
plan was to continue working our way around the
country doing one-nighters most of the time. If we
got into a major city, perhaps, we’d stay for a week
and do one-nighters out of there. On rare occasions,
we’d do a sit-down gig—like a hotel…we were
doing the Paramount chain for a few years. They
were very nice.
JI: More than one night at a time, you’re talking
about…
SP: Yeah, we’d do a week. Sometimes we’d be put
together with Anita O’Day. We’d go around to the
various Paramounts and we’d do a week that way.
Which is kind of not the whole story with Miss
O’Day, because that was another era of course. We
were doing the old stuff with her. She had her rep-
ertoire, which she was known for. Buddy wouldn’t
play anything old, that was one of his things. He
didn’t want to live in the past; he wanted to play
present music. But Anita, of course, was classic in
those days and that’s what people wanted to hear,
so she sang it just like she did back then. All the
phrasing…all the music…
JI: Like she did with Kenton and Maynard Fergu-
son’s band…
SP: So, when we did sit-down gigs for like a week,
we would do them with somebody like Tony Ben-
nett…Frank—excuse me, Mr. Sinatra, or Mr. S. as
everyone called him, including Buddy, in occasion-
ally sarcastic moments, because he was on a first
name basis. The two of them had quite a history
going on, which was in some other book that you
can read, but to hear Buddy’s side of it was quite
something. To hear what the publishers thought
about Mr. Sinatra is something else. Not to belabor
the point…that was one of the things that was en-
joyable about the front of the bus. Buddy had this
amazing sense of humor and was very fast-witted.
He’d turn things upside down and inside out, like
faster than you could blink. I’m not blowing my
own horn, but I understood what he was doing and
I could answer him in some strange way…I was
the straight man for Buddy Rich.
JI: You were Bud Abbott and he was Lou Costello.
SP: Okay, it wasn’t that good, but it kept them
entertained. He played from the front of the bus
with words a lot…I want to get back to the record-
ing of the band. It wasn’t for production, it wasn’t
for outside, it was for the next day, riding down the
road, so Buddy could hear what the band was do-
ing. He would critique himself and the band on that
and it was without yelling and screaming. He
would pass it around in the front of the bus which
was mostly me and Steve Marcus. Marcus also had
the sense of humor to be able to communicate with
Buddy and keep him entertained and entertaining
us. That was an amazing source of the adventure.
To me, this whole thing was an adventure. I did
something, like I said, that not too many people
have an opportunity to do. It was a magic carpet…
and at the same time, it was like, maybe I better
join the Marines because boot camp in the Marines
has got to be easier than what I’m doing today. The
conditions, in some cases, were really horrendous.
We had to do stuff that most other people don’t do,
like ride eight hundred miles on a bus, play two
hours, get back on the bus and then keep on going.
Our destinations were obscure. The hardest part of
this gig was getting between gigs. That drone of the
diesel engine…endless. Most of the traveling we
(Continued on page 24)
“Buddy was gifted by having some super human thing built into him that
doesn’t exist in most people. You can work as long as you want and
you’ll never get to that level. I’m not saying that he was the best at what
he did, but I’m saying there were very few people who could attain that.”
Buddy Rich / Steve Peck
24 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
did was at night. It was easier to drive because you
could go faster, without traffic. You’re driving with
professionals and you’ve got to get there, to the
next town. So, after we’d play someplace, we’d get
on the bus and drive—as an average—three or four
hundred miles. These are the distances once you’re
out past Chicago that you have to drive between
towns. So, we’d drive, get to a place at six o’clock
or seven o’clock in the morning, go to sleep, get
up, play the gig and then travel the next day again.
Buddy didn’t want to stay where he was…the
Howard Johnson’s wouldn’t exist…the steak place
wouldn’t exist…the road, for him, when he first
started out, was really tougher than what we were
doing. You didn’t go five hundred miles a night in
those days. There weren’t interstates, there weren’t
the roads…Two lane highways that were poorly
marked…
JI: Earlier on, I guess, was when the firing and
hiring happened, after he realized how valuable
you were?
SP: I got more valuable as I went along. I started
increasing my worth by doing more and more. It
became, to me, a real challenge. Not to be funny
about it, but it was a twenty four-seven kind of
thing. It was. I was the road manager, the tour man-
ager, the roadie that schlepped the stuff, set up the
drums, set up the sound, did the stage managing
and the calling of all the lighting cues and whatever
and enjoyed the heck out of every night. I was
being treated to one of the great beautiful events of
our time, because there weren’t too many people
doing it. There were a few big bands left and I’ve
got to give them an awful lot of credit because they
don’t make the millions of dollars on tour that the
rock and rollers make, or the pop musicians, or the
light shows with all the costumes and smoke
bombs and all that stuff. Buddy was pure music.
The lights could have been off and they would
have enjoyed themselves. In a lot of cases, we did-
n’t have a whole lot of light. When you played on a
high school stage somewhere in Nebraska, they
barely got by with lights. We didn’t carry our own
stuff. It was a bare bones operation. When I first
joined, we didn’t even have our own sound con-
sole. It became totally unreliable, what was sup-
plied…I mean, it was in the contracts…you need
two microphones and a fifty watt amplifier. By the
time we got done, we had almost like rock and roll
levels on stage monitors and we never even used
house sound because the band was blowing so hard
in most auditoriums that it was acoustic. So the
only thing happening that was on stage was for
Buddy to hear what the band was doing. That was
another amazing part of it was that he could still
hear a pin drop or if somebody opened a potato
chip bag in the back of the bus, and it would annoy
him to the point that he’d really go down on
him…”Don’t do that! No more eating on this bus!
Are you kidding me?” He couldn’t hear onstage…
it was like, “These aren’t on!” And I’d run out
from the side, in the wings and I’m hearing four or
five hundred watts of power coming out on the
drums and I’m going, “You can’t hear that?” I lost
my hearing because of being exposed over ten
years to some really strong sound levels.
JI: Your value evidently increased because Buddy
took a liking to you and you kind of had a camara-
derie and loyalty…
SP: We both came from Brooklyn… I was also
fired more than once. [mutual laughter]
JI: Did you ever say, “You can’t fire me because I
quit?”
SP: Oh yeah. That was a big yell-out one time. I
remember that. It was one time when I actually
almost got physical with him, though he could have
whipped me in a minute. He would have taken my
eyes out and I wouldn’t have known it, or I would
have been minus a larynx, because he knew how to
hurt somebody with his fingers and he was fast
enough that I couldn’t have defended myself—not
that I wanted to. There was a trust that he wasn’t
going to get violent. There were a couple of times
where we got head to head. I can’t tell you how
many times I heard the phrase “two weeks” on the
stage and if somebody would mis-cue an entrance
or blow a wrong note at the wrong time—it hap-
pens—nobody on that stage was perfect, including
Buddy. And he was his own worst enemy. He
would get hung up while he was doing something
with a cross-arm and that kind of routine where
you have no idea, it looks like a press being wound
up…and he would get mad at himself. If he
dropped a stick, it was like the worst offense a
drummer could make…you just blew the whole
scene, now, by dropping a stick or getting it caught
on the side of a drum and not being able to hang on
to it. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, he was
his own worst enemy. He would come back fero-
ciously. If he missed something that he tried to do,
he would go after it onstage. I’m talking about
during a solo, If he missed getting around like three
drums—three drums is more than anybody needs—
this is an aside by the way. Buddy didn’t, shall we
say, appreciate some of the rock guys who had
fourteen drums or more and surrounded themselves
and could do triplets all around the world. His thing
was like if you can’t do it on one snare drum then
you’re not a drummer. The rest of that stuff was all
show and flash, you know and it sold drums to
kids. If you want to be a drummer, do it on one
drum. So, it got pretty deep. Of course there are all
kinds of stories about his temper. But, he came up
playing with the very best players. On his way up,
he was screamed at. He learned this routine from
other great bandleaders who were esteemed in the
industry…nobody ever heard about this stuff until
after they’d passed away. But basically, Buddy
grew up in that environment and that’s the only
way he knew.
JI: You want to share some of the funny stories?
SP: Well, the funny stories, as relating to me…
what’s funny? Buddy had a tremendous sense of
humor and he’d have an entire audience in stitches.
He would sit down at the end of the stage—which
he did—and I don’t think there are that many tapes
of that kind of stuff going around. He would sit
down at the end of the first set and rather than go
on an intermission, he would sit down and talk to
the audience. He would just joke around a bit and
nobody would leave…the band would leave…but I
was there and I was witness to some amazing stand
-up comedy—even though he was sitting on the
stage. He picked and chose his places and depend-
ing on his mood, he could keep you in stitches. It
was a level that was equal to. the comic genius
resided in him along with the musical genius. Not
to make light of that, he was a very funny guy,
where he was not in a “well-known” situation…
like when he was on the Carson show, Johnny
would call him something evil. He would joke with
Johnny at a level that was beyond most of the audi-
ence’s comprehension. A lot of really hip stuff was
going on backstage with the writers and Johnny
and Buddy and I was privy to that. Johnny was
extremely spontaneous…he had to be at that level.
When Buddy was on a one-on-one onstage and the
cameras were on, it was like the Buddy that Johnny
presented to the world. That helped Buddy’s career
a great deal; international exposure. His booking
agents used to take us into the back country—these
people saw him, knew who he was. The guy that
was on the Carson show three or four times a year,
which was unheard of. He was on probably more
frequently than any other guest. He played the
drums on every show.
JI: Do you remember if there were events where
other celebrity jazz musicians or guest artists sat in
with the band?
SP: That’s kind of a discography question, but I
would say Dizzy, on a number of occasions did
that. Not too many guests. He would announce
them in the audience. There’s a famous story about
Buddy and Mel Tormé, which has been written
about any number of times. It’s that Buddy was
playing this club in New York and he knew Mel
was going to be there. So he told the audience
when he introduced Mel, to be silent…not to ap-
plaud, not to give Mel any kind of recognition.
Buddy introduced Mel. Mel stood up and that was
it. [laughter] With the practical jokes of Buddy and
Mel going at each other, it seems Buddy was al-
ways the giver and Mel the taker of jokes. I never
heard of Mel coming back at Buddy. In all of the
years Mel and Buddy were friends. But at one
point—I’m not really sure what the disagreement
was—but they wound up, even though they were
playing together, not speaking. I was kind of like
the intermediary. “He said that” and “No, he said
this.” I was not the interpreter but I was speaking
for each voice because they wouldn’t listen to each
other. This went on even though they were sitting
on the same plane—they wouldn’t talk to each
other. It was really strange. They were carrying on
some kind of thing that was beyond me. There was
a lot of that. But at the same time, they’d be doing
a week at a theatre in Stanford and there were ten
people in the audience. It was like, what are we
doing here? Well, we have to finish the gig because
we won’t get paid. But how can they pay us if
they’re losing money every night? We’re getting
paid but only after we fulfill our contract. How do
you play to ten people? Then one night, Mel came
in and asked how many people were in the audi-
ence and I said, “Three.” He just did not believe
there were only three people that came out to see
Buddy Rich and Mel Tormé in Stanford, Connecti-
cut. I don’t know what the reason was—if nobody
knew we were there or they just didn’t care, but
Stanford’s not too far from New York and we did
really good business in that neighborhood. So, I
can’t answer that, but there are a number of times
(Continued from page 23)
Buddy Rich / Steve Peck
25 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
that we bombed. And it’s not a good feeling—
especially for a marquee name—to bomb. I think
back on some of the Sinatra concerts where he
would be looking out for people backstage before
he went on to make sure the audience was a full
house.
JI: What were some of the highlights of the Sina-
tra/Buddy Rich bookings that you observed?
SP: They were dynamite, you know. You play
Royal Albert Hall for one week in London and sell
the place out. People standing and cheering and
throwing flowers on the stage. No matter where we
went, Frank had that ability. Even when he could-
n’t sing anymore, people would come out and they
just adored the man. It was magic at a level most
people wouldn’t understand. Even past his prime,
so to speak because Frank was starting to lose it,
even though he was continuing to perform. Every-
body knew that he wasn’t happening at a hundred
percent. It wasn’t the same guy that was out there
ten or five or two years before. He had teleprompt-
ers to keep him aware of what was going on with
the lyrics. When we first started, over like two or
three years of doing Frank’s stuff—it wasn’t a
continuous kind of thing.—there were moments
that were just absolutely stunning…playing at
some great locations. He was just an amazing per-
former. He didn’t even have to sing. He could
come out onstage and just stand there and people
were just slack-jawed, just to be in his presence.
One of the problems of touring with Mr. Sinatra
was that he entertained after the show as well as
during the show. If you went to a city someplace,
after the show, most of the time, there was a dinner
for the higher-ups in the band. The attorney gener-
als, the judges…maybe fifteen, twenty people.
There were receiving lines; it was almost like a
royalty situation. Part of Buddy’s obligation with
the show was to be at those receptions after the
show. Mr. Sinatra never sweat a drop, he’d walk
out in a tux and he’d finish in that suit and he’d go
right to the event. On the other hand, Buddy would
be drenched, would have to change his clothes and
by the time he was done playing, to go to one of
these events—and Buddy was not what you would
call a high social animal—as a matter of fact he
kind of abhorred going to these events, but because
it was required, he went and stood in the receiving
line. All of that stuff, so it was very politicized, but
that was part of Frank’s thing. After a while, Bud-
dy started going like, “I really don’t want to do
this.” Eventually he didn’t do it, he didn’t show up.
And it caused great anxiety and angst and ire on the
Sinatra side, because they expected Buddy to be
there. After the second failed attempt, I got some
pretty heavy phone calls from the hierarchy…we
got a call from New York in Atlanta—we were
supposed to do a show in Atlanta—we got the call
that said, “You don’t have to do the show”…”What
do you mean, we don’t have to do the show?” “Mr.
Sinatra requests the lack of your company”…
[mutual laughter]…and he flew in a New York
studio guy to replace Buddy at great cost. The mes-
sage was, “sorry but you let me down.” And that
was, according to Buddy, one of the few times in
his entire life that he was ever fired. That ended the
Frank Sinatra/Buddy Rich association for probably
the last time, because there was some animosity
throughout their careers as to who had top billing.
At one point Buddy wanted equal billing to Frank
at a show in New York and Mr. Sinatra’s people
said, “I don’t think so,” and Buddy said, “Well, I
ain’t gonna do the gig”. So, to answer that, the
story went, Mr. Sinatra took second billing to
Count Basie. The billing came out Count Basie and
his band…featuring Frank Sinatra, which was the
total reverse of the way show biz was, because the
band, at that point, was backing Mr. Sinatra. So,
the attorneys had a field day with Buddy on some
things. I was in between that, along with the Alex-
ander Agency, that got squashed…or became em-
barrassing. Unfortunately, it became embarrassing
enough that Buddy was still doing the one-nighters
in the mid-west instead of the well-paid, easy gigs.
JI: So, there definitely was a dichotomy between
these one-nighters, specifically, and this gig where
you might not have played as much, but when the
gig did happen it was dollar signs; all the right
locations, all the right everything, and things went
smoothly. I guess its hard for a lot of people to
imagine giving that up—many people work dec-
ades to get to that point—to just throw it away…
SP: Like I said, Buddy wanted to be his own guy
there too. Another instance that comes to mind—
this one kind of shows a sadness on Buddy’s part.
We were doing Carnegie Hall and after the first
night or the second night that Buddy played, an
elderly gentleman came back into the dressing
room and thanked Buddy for his performance and
welcomed him to the hall. He turned around and
left and Buddy said, “Who was that?” I said , “That
was Isaac Stern,” and Buddy broke down, started to
tear up and was speechless. Aside from being em-
barrassed about not knowing Mr. Stern; it was like
being welcomed to our home. For a jazz musician
to be playing Carnegie Hall was like the Benny
Goodman concerts back in the late thirties, when
they first brought jazz around to Carnegie Hall. So
he felt very much honored, but at the same time
extremely humbled by the reception that he got
there. So, that was a highlight for me as well. That
was a very, very touching moment, describing two
very high level gentlemen one on one. And Buddy
going, “Oh, I didn’t know.” But after the fact, he
got his thing together and he was cool, but it was
like one of the vulnerabilities that didn’t show of-
ten with Mr. Rich. He was a very, very sensitive
guy—he didn’t want that to be seen. That was not
his image to the world. He was the tough guy; he
came out of the gangster era.
JI: Who were some of the musicians that came
through the band that you developed relationships
with?
SP: Sadly enough, there was a dividing curtain on
the band. There was the front of the bus and there
were the rest of us. It was a strange hierarchy. Ste-
ve Marcus, Barry Keiner—who were roommates of
mine, over the years—we were like the four mus-
keteers. I say this out of sadness and out of respect
for both Marcus and Keiner, who are no longer
with us. Barry passed away many years ago and
Steve not too long ago. It came as a total shock and
surprise. I’m the only guy left out of that musketeer
group so that gives me a real empty feeling that
they’re gone, but at the same time, I associated
with some genius at that part of my life, which I’m
very grateful for. Barry Keiner was the only piano
player that sat down and played one chord and I
lost it. I’m going, like, how can someone play just
one chord and have such a sound to it that affected
me so emotionally—and I am emotionally impact-
ed by music—from the Star Spangled Banner to
whatever. My wife can attest to that—I emote too
much, sometimes. I don’t find that objectionable,
for myself, I don’t understand the motivation for
why I do that but its something that’s part of me.
Not to get funny about it, but I’m not the only one;
otherwise music wouldn’t be listened to, along with
some of the other finer things in life that you appre-
ciate. And I appreciate that at that time I was ex-
posed to the music world. I haven’t been, for quite
a while. After Buddy passed away, I kind of got out
of the music world. All of those folks that I had
associated with…its kind of like, they were then
and this is now and as long as I’m not on that bus
it’s a whole other world. When that door closed on
the bus, it was another place. So, in retrospect, I
really was close to everything that was going on
because of my job—that I had to do—but at the
same time, I really enjoyed what I was doing. I had
a challenge. It was like I said before, I would have
been better off in boot camp, because of the hard-
ships. I wasn’t sloggin’ it in mud, but I was doing a
hard job and so was everybody else. This is not an
easy thing to do. The pleasure of the two hours a
night was what you were working for—to put that
show on as good as you can. That was the reward
to be able to be in a big town, a big arena, or a
small one…and know that, like Buddy said,
“You’ve exposed these people to a whole other
level. And maybe they’ll be better because of it and
appreciate what we do here.” Those were some of
the things that were highlights for me, throughout
all the years. Aside from listening to some really
good players, every night in the jazz world and not
having it sound like a recording or a lip-synched
show that’s run by a computer someplace. This was
like live music—spontaneous jazz was what it was
about. That was the key thing for Buddy, to present
that kind of a show…to be able to say, “This is
what we do and take it for what its worth. If you
don’t like me, tough.” We would play shows some-
times where we would get no response back from
an audience and he’d say, “What am I doing
wrong?” I’d say, “It’s not what you’re doing
wrong, its what are they doing wrong? Because
they don’t know, really, what you do here, so
you’re teaching them at a very high level, and
you’re way over their heads.” In a more sophisti-
cated setting, no problem. To go into the deep
south, you’re doomed. They don’t know what
you’re doing. They’ve never heard of this kind of
stuff, so it was very geographical. We took our
music—Buddy’s music—all over the world. It was
amazing the response that you got back:people
applauding for ten, fifteen minutes at the end of a
show. How many encores can we play? You’d run
out of stuff to do…you can’t top what you just did,
besides your physically not being able to. There’s
blood on the stage…there are trumpet players that
are bleeding because their lips are split, because
they’re blowing their hearts out…and that’s what
he was looking for.
Buddy Rich / Steve Peck
26 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
By Gary Heimbauer
JI: Over the years, you have continued to keep up
quite a prolific pace as a composer and arranger.
How does this process work for you? What inspires
you?
BC: The compositional process that I use depends
on the composition, or rather, the intent of the com-
position. Sometimes I find it necessary to look
inward, in order to express some sort of inner dark-
ness or deeply buried emotion. Sometimes it’s the
external world that inspires me - things in nature.
Trying to recreate a beautiful natural scenario in
music, just as French impressionism does. The
main goal for me is always to make a dramatic
statement with my music, one that will make the
listener feel the drama and have it relate to his/her
own experience. When it comes to melody - a com-
ponent of the music that I feel is of the utmost im-
portance - I wait for it to come to me. A beautiful
melody, like a beautifully constructed sentence, is
something that I cannot manufacture or rush. It has
to come from the soul and, I believe, it makes itself
evident. To me, it is a skill that cannot be taught in
a classroom; it’s definitely the most difficult aspect
of composing. I guess I would say that the older I
get, the more I’m willing to revise my music sever-
al times before finishing.
JI: You grew up on the West Coast. What are
some notable differences you find in the life and
activities of a musician there versus the East?
BC: Well, the differences have more to do with the
basic lifestyle differences between the two coasts.
One specific thing I can say is that I find it easier to
rehearse musicians in Los Angeles, simply because
there is more space. Everyone has a car and can
easily drive over to my house where I’ve converted
my garage into a rehearsal space. In New York, I
have to rent the rehearsal space, and the musicians
have to worry about parking. On another note,
there is a tendency to think of Los Angeles as a
place where music is a trade, mainly because of the
studio scene, whereas New York is a place where
you go to develop your playing and concept. While
there is truth to that presumption, it’s a bit of a
generalization and not always true - there are a lot
of really individual, innovative, and original musi-
cians living in Los Angeles. On the other hand,
there are a lot of New York musicians that punch in
and out of a clock doing Broadway shows. But
generally speaking, I find that more often than not,
it is true.
JI: Could you talk about working with Chris Botti?
I saw your band at Newport and I loved the interac-
tion with the audience.
BC: It has been really great. I guess I have a histo-
ry of working with trumpet players: Freddie Hub-
bard, Nat Adderley, and now Chris Botti. You
mention interaction with the audience. Chris is one
of the most adept speakers I’ve ever encountered.
He really knows how to communicate verbally
with an audience. The band is phenomenal with
Billy Kilson on drums, Robert Hurst or Tim
LeFebrve on bass, Mark Whitfield on guitar, me
and Chris. He works non-stop - somewhere in the
range of 250+ days out of the year.
JI: You’ve worked with Freddie Hubbard, Grover
Washington, J.J Johnson, Nat Adderley, Allan
Holdsworth, Bobby Watson, Tony Williams etc.
What were some notable aspects of these experi-
ences? What wisdom have you gathered through
these experiences and how have these playing ex-
periences affected your musicianship?
BC: My main teacher, without question, would be
Freddie Hubbard. Also, J.J. Johnson figures very
importantly in my development as a jazz musician.
I love Freddie and I miss him terribly. Sometimes
when I hear old recordings of me playing with him,
I understand the incredible patience he must’ve
exercised by simply withstanding the “youthful”
comping decisions I’d make while he was trying to
solo. He taught me how to comp on a very high
level because his soloing was so melodically rich. I
remember he once told me to start my solos in the
middle of the range of a particular melodic phrase,
rather than from the top to the bottom, as though I
were playing a pianistic scale exercise. Alan
Holdsworth is another icon who has had a profound
influence on me. I was intrigued by his harmonic
sense, which is one of the most sophisticated sys-
tems I’ve ever checked out. He has this one tune,
“Looking Glass,” where it is essentially four-part
chorale-type harmony. It’s very simple in its con-
struction, but absolutely brilliant in its economy of
voicing. He’ll have one note move in the middle of
the chord and it will change the entire sound and
direct the progression in an entirely surprising yet
logical place.
JI: Who would be your ultimate dream band
(musicians could be dead or alive) and why?
BC: I already have my dream band: Bob Sheppard,
Carol Robbins, Larry Koonse, Scott Colley, Brian
Blade - or Jimmy Johnson, Antonio Sanchez. I’ve
been really fortunate in that musicians I really re-
spect find my music interesting enough to want to
be involved in it.
JI: What kinds of challenges do you face as an
independent artist, and what advice can you share
about overcoming one or more obstacles?
BC: Today’s music business paradigm is a double-
edged sword. On the one hand, gone are the days
when a record company would sign an artist to a
“record deal”, pay for everything including adver-
tising, tour-support, radio promotion, etc. Of
course, they would own the masters. Also, the days
are gone where people had only one way to hear
music (the radio) and, more importantly, only one
way to buy it. So sales could be really tightly con-
trolled and monitored (and manipulated). There
was more centralized control over the business
aspect. On the other hand, the internet is becoming
(if not already arrived) the main way that music is
consumed, be it iTunes, Amazon, CD baby, etc.
Since technology has made it easier to produce
high quality CDs from your home, everybody and
their mother has a CD out. So it’s easier to put out
a CD, but harder to distinguish yourself with your
music. I would suggest to an independent artist to
have a plan. Know why you’re putting out this
music. Why would anyone want to buy it? What do
you have to offer? Once you figure that out, then I
think that you need to have five basic things to
shoot for. First, the CD that you make has to be the
best that it can possibly be in all regards - the mu-
sic, the packaging, the production, etc. Secondly,
once having done the CD, distribution and fulfill-
ment need to be worked out, whether it’s with an
online label, a licensing thing with a traditional
label, or you do the whole thing yourself. Thirdly, a
publicist is essential - one who focuses on print,
interviews, ads and reviews. Fourth, you need a
radio promoter, someone whose job it is to make
sure your stuff gets played on the radio. Finally,
and by far the most difficult, you need a booking
agent. The previous four are things that are taken
care of by paying money, but the agent has to be-
lieve in your work, because it’s gonna be an invest-
ment of his/her time. But live bookings are essen-
(Continued on page 27)
Billy Childs
“when music takes on a spiritual dimension”
InterviewInterview
“When it comes to melody - a component of the music that I feel is of the utmost importance - I wait
for it to come to me. A beautiful melody, like a beautifully constructed sentence, is something that I cannot manufacture or rush. It has to come from
the soul and, I believe, it makes itself evident.”
27 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
tial for spreading the word about your music.
JI: What were some of the inspiring sounds and
sights and experiences that moved you to pursue
this creative path? What kinds of studies or practice
did you undertake to develop your skills?
BC: I came to the realization at age 14 that I want-
ed to be a musician. I was basically in a situation
where music was the only creative outlet that I had
for a couple of years; I was in a boarding school for
boys called Midland, in a rather rural part of Cali-
fornia. So I’d be at the piano for about eight hours
a day, trying to learn Emerson, Lake, and Palmer
tunes. Later, at age 16, when I returned to Los An-
geles, I took every music lesson my parents would
pay for: theory, harmony, classical piano, jazz pi-
ano, etc. I eventually went to University of South-
ern California (USC) as a composition major.
JI: Who are some of your main influences and
why?
BC: Six influences in chronological order: (1)
Herbie Hancock - (age 13) Mwandishi/The Prison-
er (first music that “spoke” to me); (2) Laura Nyro
- (age 13) first four albums (use of piano with harp,
dramatic and theatrical music - a world unto Laura
Nyro); (3) Emerson, Lake, and Palmer - (age 14)
first four albums (catalyst that got me into piano
playing, classical with rock and jazz, first concept
of composition); (4) D. Paul Hindemith - (age 17)
Mathis Der Maler (intro to classical music, quartal
harmony, counterpoint, formal structure); (5) Chick
Corea - (age 18) The Leprechaun (first idea of a
concept album, unique instrumentation, i.e. drums
with string quartet and synthesizers and vocals,
balance of virtuosic composition and soloing); (6)
Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays - (age 32) The First Cir-
cle, Wiltern Concert (innovative structure of com-
position - one long crescendo, solo sections func-
tioning as part of composition, solidified concept of
jazz as chamber music)
JI: What kinds of activities are you doing, or plan-
ning to do to expand your talents, abilities and
perspectives as an artist?
BC: Work out - generally take better care of my
health. I think that the more physically in-shape
you are, the more clarity of mind you have. I try to
keep myself busy with interesting projects. Fortu-
nately, I’ve been pretty lucky with that. I like read-
ing. Lately, I’ve been into science-fiction and
graphic literature.
JI: What have you discovered about human nature,
from your observations on or off the stage?
BC: I’ve found that music can be a powerful influ-
ence for good and that people have a real desire to
connect with the music.
JI: What do you do to recharge your batteries in
our stress-filled contemporary world?
BC: Compose music
JI: If there is one for you, what is the connection
between music and spirituality?
BC: The connection between music and spirituality
for me is this: Music has provided me with the only
tangible evidence of what I think of as “God”.
When things hook up without having to think about
them, when you can second-guess what everyone
else in the group is doing and is going to do, when
the entire ensemble seems to be of one mind, when
the music makes you experience an inexplicable
state of consciousness - that’s when music takes on
a spiritual dimension.
Visit Billy on the internet at www.BillyChilds.com
“when the entire ensemble seems to be of one mind, when the music makes you experience an inexplicable state of con-sciousness - that’s when music takes
on a spiritual dimension.”
28 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
By Ken Weiss
Sheila Jordan (born November 18, 1928, Detroit,
Michigan) left behind her impoverished begin-
nings, she was raised by her grandparents in the
coal-mining area of Pennsylvania, to “chase”
Charlie Parker to New York City, eventually form-
ing a close relationship with him. A student of Len-
nie Tristano, Jordan was forced to maintain her
secretarial job throughout her early to mid-adult
life in order to raise her daughter as a single mom.
Her first major success came with her striking
version of “You Are My Sunshine” on the 1962
George Russell album The Outer View. Concen-
trating on performing during the second half of her
life, Jordan been able to reach listeners like few
other vocalists have ever done with her engaging
personality and expressive and emotional singing
style. Jordan pioneered a bebop and scat singing
form, started the first vocal workshop in 1978, and
initiated the vocalist-double bass duet. She was
crowned a 2012 NEA Jazz Master and at age 87,
maintains a busy touring schedule. Jordan is ex-
tremely down-to-earth and approachable. This
interview took place on June 7, 2016 at her New
York apartment in Chelsea, where she’s lived for
over 50 years,
Jazz Inside Magazine: You’ve garnered many
top awards and honors over the past 10 years, in-
cluding a 2012 NEA Jazz Master Award. That’s an
astounding feat for someone who basically concen-
trated on their career at age 58. Putting your hum-
bleness aside, how do you explain your late career
success?
Sheila Jordan: I never thought about it as starting
my career at 58-years-old, my career started when I
was born, if you want to call it that. It wasn’t a
career, it was just a need to do music. It never en-
tered my mind as a career, it was just an outlet for
me. Music was an outlet to keep me alive spiritual-
ly as a little kid. I was very unhappy as a kid, I had
a very unhappy childhood, so I sang. I was con-
stantly singing because it made me feel better. The
only reason I started doing more music at the age
of 58 was because I lost my job. The advertising
agency that I was working for decided to merge
with another agency and I could have stayed on or
taken a year’s severance pay and that little voice
said, ‘Why don’t you go out and sing more? You’re
always complaining about it.’ So I went and sang.
Singing is part of me, it’s an extension of my body,
my heart. The music is that close to me and my
feeling. That’s what it’s all about to me, not a ca-
reer.
JI: With all the major acclaim and love that’s been
showered on you lately, has it become harder to
sing the blues?
SJ: No, I always sing the blues, they don’t have to
be unhappy blues. My blues are not unhappy blues,
they weren’t written to be unhappy blues. It’s my
way of letting people know where I come from and
how I grew up because that saves people from
asking me a lot of questions after the concert about
where I come from and when did I start singing,
who influenced me, and so forth. I put it in my
blues so that when the concert is over, I can hear
about them instead of questions about me.
JI: Where do you see yourself fitting into the pan-
theon of jazz singers?
SJ: I don’t think about it, I don’t know. I guess
because I never really tried to imitate any of the
wonderful singers that were popular when I was
growing up. I didn’t have the voice, I was so hung
up on Charlie Parker, I didn’t have time or money
to buy singer’s records, although I did listen to
them on the radio. If I got any money together, it
would always be for Charlie Parker bebop record.
In what terms do you mean fitting in?
JI: You’re an NEA Jazz Master so it’s fair to
place you high up on the list of jazz vocalists.
SJ: I don’t think of it. I just do what I do and I’m
just grateful that at this late age I can still do it. I
never gave up because what was I gonna give up?
Singing? No, I won’t give up singing. I know that I
can always find a place to sing and that’s what I
always tell young singers coming up when I do my
workshops and when I used to teach regularly. I’m
not gonna give up something that I love so much, it
would be like cutting off my arm.
JI: Your performance schedule is packed with
European tours. Why travel and perform so much
at age 87?
SJ: Because I love it, and it’s not because of the
money, because jazz musicians don’t get paid that
much. It’s what keeps me alive. I really do believe
that if it wasn’t for this music, if I couldn’t keep
doing this music, I don’t think I would live very
long.
JI: What adjustments have you had to make to
maintain your voice in your later years?
SJ: I haven’t done any, it’s what it is. [Laughs] I
don’t drink and I don’t smoke anymore. I knew that
drinking and drugs and smoking were detrimental
to my music. It was hard because I was addicted.
You know, I’ve been in AA for over 30 years. Ad-
diction is a cunning, baffling, powerful disease. I
have it and most of my family had it. My mother
died from the disease. I had a spiritual awakening
onetime. I was coming out of a cocaine stupor and
a voice said, “I gave you a gift and if you don’t
take care of it, I’m gonna take it away and give it to
somebody else.” And, whoosh! Talk about a spir-
itual awakening, man, I jumped up and that was the
last time I ever…I had been on a dry drunk for 8
years before I got into AA and NA. I haven’t had
alcohol in my system for over 38 years but the
cocaine is what threw me into the programs. I was-
n’t an everyday user of cocaine but that didn’t
mean I didn’t have a habit. I was very fortunate, I
never took heroin, but a drug is a drug is a drug is a
drug. They all mess you up, cunning, baffling,
powerful.
JI: You have the rare ability to communicate in
the moment with your audience but you have a
relatively small voice. Would you talk about your
voice and what, if any, approach you took to max-
imize it?
SJ: No, I don’t think about it. My music comes
from within, it’s beyond my voice.
JI: One of your extraordinary skills is in being
able to improvise logical lyrics in the moment. Is
that something you actively developed or a natural
talent?
(Continued on page 30)
Sheila Jordan
“The Cunning, Baffling, Powerful Jazz Child”
InterviewInterview
“The only reason I started doing more music at the age of 58 was because I lost my job. The advertis-
ing agency that I was working for decided to merge with another agency and I could have stayed on or taken a year’s severance pay and that little voice
said, ‘Why don’t you go out and sing more? You’re always complaining about it.’ So I went and sang.”
29 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
Sheila Jordan
Photo by Ken Weiss
30 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
SJ: It just came naturally. One thing is, I learn the
tune, exactly the way it’s written, note for note,
then I listen for the chord changes, and then, I don’t
know, it just happens. It’s part of my improvisa-
tion. I don’t think about it, I don’t plan it, it just
happens. It’s born right in me as that old saying
goes.
JI: Is that something you address with your stu-
dents?
SJ: No, I don’t tell them how to do anything. The
only thing I tell them is not to try to copy other
singers on records. They should listen to other
singers to be inspired but not to copy the tune. If
you’re gonna learn the tune, learn it from the origi-
nal music because if you learn it the way another
famous singer has recorded it, you’re only gonna
sing what they sang and you won’t ever sing it the
right way because, usually, if it’s a jazz singer,
that’s not the way the tune’s gonna go completely.
It’s changed and it’s their way, and why would you
want to do their way when you should do your
way?
JI: We see you on stage as so relaxed and com-
fortable. When was the last time you were really
nervous to perform?
SJ: I can’t remember. I just love doing the music
so much, I just don’t think about it. We always
hope that it will be accepted, hope that you won’t
lose your voice. I remember one time I lost my
voice in California. I was singing and I lost it, and
instead of freaking out, I just started improvising
until it came back. I sang, ‘Oh, you went away?
Did you have a good time? I’ve been waiting for
you.’ Something like that, within the chord chang-
es, within the melody. I didn’t plan that, it just
happened. The audience was uptight when that
happened. I could see they were uptight, they got
scared for me, and when I did that, they laughed,
they were relieved. My voice came back and I told
it to give me a 24-hour warning, or something, if it
was going to do that again.
JI: You’re related to Queen Aliquippa, a leader of
the Seneca Indian nation in the 1700’s. Would you
talk about your Indian roots?
SJ: I have Native American on both sides. My
father had Cherokee on his side but I didn’t really
know my father. On my mother’s side, our three
generation grandmother was queen of the Seneca
Nation. I would be royalty today if Columbus had-
n’t taken the nation away from the Native Ameri-
cans. When I was a kid, I used to believe that if
music hadn’t come into my life so early, I would
have either wanted to be an astrologist or I would
want to spend my life working for the Native
Americans. We don’t know that much about Queen
Aliquippa except that she was so popular that they
named a town after her – Aliquippa, Pennsylvania.
When I was a kid, as I said, we had a lot of alco-
holism in my family and they used to call us half
breeds, which was painful. I never went searching
for my Native American past but I recently found
out about the royalty thing, it’s not even in my
book [Jazz Child: A Portrait of Sheila Jordan,
2014, Ellen Johnson]. Sometimes I think that’s
where I get the strength from. Did you know that
Rodgers and Hart wrote a song in 1939 called
“Give it Back to the Indians?”
JI: At times you sing in Native American. Do you
speak and understand it?
SJ: That is an improv, it’s a feeling of emotion
and pain that comes through me through my herit-
age. I just started doing it one night, just making up
lyrics, and boom, it was there. People like it and
ask me to do it so I do it now almost every concert.
I improv on a Native American chant. It’s an offer-
ing of gratitude and thanks for giving me this gift
of music, to be able to sing it and hear it.
JI: Your business cards include your name and
underneath that it just says jazz, not vocalist.
SJ: I don’t know why I did that, I guess I just did-
n’t want to be categorized in a sense. I just do jazz,
whether I sing it or talk it or teach it. I didn’t want
to be categorized as just a vocalist. I don’t know.
Well, I guess that’s kind of unique, no? [Laughs] I
guess I’m unique and I don’t know it.
JI: Hasn’t anyone else ever asked you about that
before?
SJ: No, only you!
JI: You talk of keeping “the message of bebop
alive.” What is the message of bebop?
SJ: Charlie Parker, Charlie Parker’s music. I don’t
want jazz to die because I believe that jazz music is
the only true music that Americans can call their
own. It started with the Afro American slaves in
the cotton fields. It started with the blues. I feel it’s
never gotten a fair shake as being recognized for
the beautiful music it is with all the great, great
musicians who have played it and died for it. They
were willing to struggle with it, not give up, and
keep it alive, and that’s what I want to do. I just
want to keep the music alive because I feel it’s a
stepchild of American music. It’s never been total-
ly accepted in this country. I’m often approached
by people who say, “Well, I don’t really know jazz.
You really have to be an intellect to be able to hear
it.” I’m always really nice when I reply, ‘Do you
know where jazz came from? It came from the
blues so do you think those slaves, out there being
beaten to death picking cotton for hours, with very
little sleep and food, do you think they were edu-
cated? They were singing this music. All I’m trying
to tell you is that it’s a feeling. Once you feel it,
you’ll know what it is and you won’t have to ask
that question.’ I tell them that nicely and I leave it
at that.
JI: You’re able to sing songs from deep inside the
Great American Songbook. Would you venture a
guess on the number of songs you know?
SJ: No, I wouldn’t know but I’ve been listening to
this music ever since I was a little kid. When I
grew up, we had the Hit Parade, and if our bill was
paid, and my grandfather didn’t use it for booze,
then we had a radio which somebody gave us.
Those were the songs of the day. The Cole Por-
ter’s, Rodgers and Hart, those were the songs I
heard. They used to sell songbooks with all the
current songs and their lyrics.
JI: At this point, are you still uncovering gems out
of the Great American Songbook?
SJ: That’s why I have this book right here [a
Rodgers and Hart compilation] because there’s
some tunes in there that I sorta know but I’m not
sure. I’m always looking for new tunes.
JI: What’s the most contemporary song you per-
form or would perform?
SJ: No, I don’t do that. When I hear a song, the
first thing I listen for is the melody. If it’s a great
melody, even if the lyrics are not so good, I’ll get
(Continued from page 28)
Sheila Jordan
“...among human beings jealousy ranks distinctly as a
weakness; a trademark of small minds; a property of all small minds, yet a property
which even the smallest is ashamed of; and when accused of its possession will
lyingly deny it and resent the accusation as an insult.”
-Mark Twain
“I have the only score of George Russell’s. He did not give out any of his scores. He did not leave any of his scores to the New England
Conservatory. He does not want his arrangements given out ... and the only person who got an
arrangement is me. His wife gave it to me because she thought I should have it, after all,
it was about me.”
31 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
the tune because I can always change the lyrics
around. Whereas, if it’s a dull melody, and it goes
nowhere, I don’t want to sing it. I don’t want to
sing a song just because it’s popular and I’ll be
accepted more. I’m not out here for that, I’m just
out here to do what I do and keep the music alive.
JI: Your start in life was harsh to say the least.
Your mother was too young to raise you so you
lived with your grandparents in the Pennsylvania
coal mines with little to eat or wear and no heat in
the house. What effect does that experience still
have on you on a day-to-day basis?
SJ: No, the only thing I feel today is gratitude that
I don’t have to live like that anymore. That, thanks
to my higher power, I’m able to go on and live a
pretty cool life. I don’t have chauffeurs or a man-
sion but I own a little house upstate. It’s too far
away to live there all year round, and in the winter
time the roads get crazy because it’s almost on top
of a mountain, but I’m grateful. I feel like I was
taken care of, that somebody was really looking out
for me, and I don’t want to go on carrying that
burden of what it was like. The only time I talk
about what it used to be like is when I celebrate my
anniversary in my program. I’m sure whatever I
lived in my past comes out in my music, it’s part of
it, but I don’t think about it. Oh, poor me! I’m not
into that.
JI: You’ve noted in your biography that ladies’
mascara brings back harsh memories of coal min-
ers black faces. Does that still effect you?
SJ: Yeah, mascara, and women used to wear a
black liner underneath their eyes. I remember my
uncles, who were more like my brothers, worked in
the mines and that coal dust would be embedded in
them. I mean you had to be out of the mines for
years to get all that out of there. I wear mascara but
only when I’m working.
JI: Growing up in the coal mines you had to eat
whatever your grandfather caught including porcu-
pine. Sorry to ask but what does porcupine taste
like?
SJ: I don’t remember, they just used it for soup. It
was squirrel, groundhog, or anything they could
catch. That was quite common back in the coalmin-
ing area. Anything they could put in a big pot with
water. We never had milk as kids, only evaporated
milk from a can. I drank coffee at a very early age
because that’s what we got in the morning to put
our dry bread in.
JI: Many singers draw from their upbringing in
the black church but you had a very different expe-
rience. You came up through the Catholic Church
at a time when only boys were allowed to sing in
the choir. Did the church have much of an influ-
ence on your singing?
SJ: No, not at all. My grandfather was very anti-
organized religion. My grandmother would make
us sneak out to go to church. And when we did our
Confirmation and our First Communion, he let it
go but he wasn’t happy. I liked to go to the church
because it was warm, so I’d go there and every-
body thought I was so religious but in actuality, I
was just trying to stay warm. I used to take the
priest’s mail to him and he’d sometimes give me
candy and little treats. There was a time when I
was a little kid that I thought I might want to be a
nun. Why? I don’t know, I feel a real contact. I
believe in God. I guess I wanted something to be-
lieve in and, of course, Charlie Parker or bebop
music wasn’t around at that time. I think a lot of it
was wanting to have a place to call home that was
warm and had food and I got taken care of, and in
return I could give my services.
JI: In 1952, at age 24, you moved to New York
City to be closer to Charlie Parker but you had no
interest in becoming a jazz vocalist even though
you had been singing in Detroit’s jazz clubs. Why
didn’t you set out to pursue singing?
SJ: I wasn’t singing in Detroit jazz clubs, I was
only sitting in. I wasn’t getting paid to sing. It was-
n’t that I didn’t have any interest in becoming a
jazz singer, I didn’t have any interest in becoming a
(Continued from page 30)
(Continued on page 32)
“”When a person cannot
deceive himself the chances are against his being able to
deceive other people.”
- Mark Twain
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Sheila Jordan
32 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
famous jazz vocalist. Of course I had all the inter-
est in the world of being a jazz vocalist but I didn’t
care if I became famous or not. Actually, I was
quite stunned when my first recording came out
and it got the reaction it got. I didn’t think it was so
hot. I don’t even listen to myself, even to this day.
Sometimes I don’t even listen to the final product.
I’ll listen to what I think is the best take. Singing
was part of me and I would find a place to do it. I
loved to go to sessions, I loved to sit in. After my
record came out, I got a few good gigs. I originally
worked in a club in the Village called the Page
Three for two or three nights a week for many
years. I made four dollars a night and by time I
paid the babysitter three dollars and took a dollar to
take a taxi home, there was nothing left, but I was-
n’t doing it to pay my rent or keep my daughter
alive, I was doing it to keep my soul alive because I
needed to sing.
JI: You dealt with a lot of racism in Detroit due to
interracial socializing and shortly after moving to
New York City, you married Duke Jordan [Charlie
Parker’s pianist]. Did you underestimate the reper-
cussions of an interracial marriage in 1953 Ameri-
ca?
SJ: I wasn’t thinking along those terms. When I
walk down the street today and see all the interra-
cial couples and biracial children, I say, ‘I knew
this was gonna happen.’ And I feel very, very
strong as one of the pioneers of it. I didn’t do it to
be different. To be around the music and the need
to have this music in my life outweighed the conse-
quences of the hatred of racial prejudice. When I
was growing up in Detroit, I was put down. I was
always taken to the police station for hanging out
with, and I never use the n-word, but that’s what
they’d say. “What are you doing hanging out with
these … To the point that I said, ‘Can’t I be with
my brothers?’ Referring to the two guys that I sang
with who were black. I used to pray that I would
wake up brown just so I could get rid of this har-
assment.
JI: How rare were interracial marriages at that
time? It wasn’t until 1967 that the Supreme Court
deemed all anti-miscegenation laws unconstitution-
al.
SJ: I don’t know. A lot of couples lived together
as common-law marriages. Whether Chan and Bird
were legally married, I’m not sure. I can’t say if I
was one of the first because I’m not sure. I think it
was easier in New York even though New York
had its own prejudice and hatred also.
JI: Shortly after arriving in New York, you be-
came one of the first singers to study under Lennie
Tristano. There’s been a lot of speculation that the
reason you left Tristano was that he advised you to
leave Duke Jordan because of his heroin addiction.
Is that true?
SJ: Yes, that is true. He didn’t advise me to leave
him, he just said that I should think about my situa-
tion, and you know what? I was very angry with
him for doing that because I wasn’t ready. I was
still involved in this sick relationship and he was so
right. And one of the things that I wish is that he
were still alive so that I could go to him and tell
him, ‘You were absolutely right and I’m so sorry
that I didn’t listen to you when you told me that.’ It
took a few years, even the birth of my daughter,
and leaving us. He left us when Tracey was born,
he didn’t even come to the hospital to see her. But
he was sick, I never condemn him. I know it had to
do with his addiction, but he never did anything for
her, not even a birthday card.
JI: As a single mom, you took a full-time job as a
typist and legal secretary but still found time to
sing at the Page Three where your first accompa-
nist was Herbie Nichols. What are your memories
of him?
SJ: Very quiet, very laid back. I remember one
thing he said to me. He said, “You’ll never become
a star until you make a recording with
me.” [Laughs] I’ll never forget that and I said,
‘Well, that’s the most sentences I’ve ever heard
you say!’ He was fun. I communicated with
Herbie through music more than conversations
because he wasn’t a big conversationalist, not with
me anyway. I know that when we played music
together, there was a certain out of body experience
I got singing with him that I’ve not experienced
since. I have out of body experiences every once in
a while, not many, you’re not supposed to have too
many, but I remember the first one I ever had was
while singing with Herbie Nichols and I actually
left my body. I was floating over it. I remember
singing with him, he would play something and I
would hear it and just take off, and I would be with
him. It was amazing. I don’t know if the audience
knew what was going on [Laughs] or understood, it
but it was fantastic and he knew it. That’s why he
said what he said to me. Unfortunately, we never
did record. I’m not one for recording. I don’t go
around and try to find recordings. I don’t like to
record.
JI: Why don’t you like to record?
SJ: I don’t like being in a place and all closed in
and hearing every single breath you take. I think
I’m better at live recordings. If I don’t know I’m
being recorded, I’m okay. I keep putting it off, I
should make another record before I leave the plan-
et. I’m working on songs, I mean I’m not working
too hard on them, but I’m working on songs that I
want to learn that I’d like to record but I don’t have
that [drive] to make a record that a lot of people
have. I’ve never been into that.
JI: What was it about Herbie Nichols that had
such a great effect on you?
SJ: I have no idea. If I knew that, I would know
the answer to a lot of things. All I know is it was a
spiritual communication that I had with Herbie,
like I had with Bird. There was a spiritual commu-
nication, it was almost like I had known him in
another life. There was just something there. Like I
said, we never had long conversations, and I don’t
even know if he knew that much about me. At that
time, I think I had already made my first recording
with Blue Note.
JI: George Russell famously got you to sing an a
cappella version of “You Are My Sunshine” on his
Outer View album. That song served as the unoffi-
cial anthem of hope for the coal miners you grew
up with and it was also the song you sang to your-
self to escape your childhood worries. How fitting
was it that it turned out to be the song that launched
your career?
SJ: I never thought about it that way. The thing
that happened was, I was so used to singing unac-
companied that it was no big shock to me to sing it
like that. It was a song that the miners always sang
so George originally wanted to call it “A Drinking
Song” and dedicate it to the out of work coalmin-
ers. We had gone to visit my grandmother so he
could see where I came from and this whole idea of
“Sunshine” came up. George called me and had me
come to his home on Jane Street at the time in
1961. He played this incredible piano thing and
then he stopped and said, “Sing.” I said, ‘Sing
what?’ He said, “Sing “You Are My Sunshine.”’ I
said, ‘What? Why?’ He said, “Sing it. You used to
sing it alone when you were a kid.” I said, ‘Oh no,
I can’t do that.’ And he said, “Just sing it.” That’s
how it started. It really raised eyebrows in the jazz
community but good. They didn’t put it down, they
thought it was a pretty incredible recording.
JI: Your version of “You Are My Sunshine” is
absolutely arresting. It’s whispery and wistful, yet
very soulful. Was the recorded version similar to
the way you sang it for George Russell that first
time?
SJ: Yes, that’s how I was singing it, it was painful.
I was in pain as a kid, anything I sang was in pain.
I sang on the radio as a kid, they had these amateur
hours. Actually, one time I did “I’ll Never Smile
Again” [sings I’ll never smile again until I smile at
you] on a radio show amateur hour and this guy
sent a letter of proposal. He found out where I lived
and he sent it. Man, I was like 8-9-10-years-old,
and my grandmother wrote him back, “I don’t
think so, she’s only 10!” Anyway, “Sunshine” is
very deep within me and that’s how it all started.
And then George paid for a demo for me to do and
he took it around and the first two places he took it
to, they accepted it. Quincy Jones was the A&R
man at Mercury, he accepted it, but I’d already
signed with Blue Note but only for one recording.
Quincy said, “Well, maybe in the future.” I should
call him now. [Laughs]
JI: How did other singers react to your rendition
of that song? Who reached out to you?
SJ: I don’t know how many singers heard it be-
cause you’d have to be in almost the avant-garde
[scene] to have heard it. I don’t know that many
singers, even to this day, have heard it. They have
no clue that it even exists. I’d like to do it again
one day. I have the score. I have the only score of
George Russell’s. He did not give out any of his
scores. He did not leave any of his scores to the
New England Conservatory. He does not want his
arrangements given out. I don’t know why but that
was his decision, and the only person who got an
arrangement is me. His wife gave it to me because
she thought I should have it, after all, it was about
me.
(Continued from page 31)
(Continued on page 33)
Sheila Jordan
33 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
Joseph Jarman
JI: After you recorded with George Russell, Blue
Note soon released your first solo recording – Por-
trait of Sheila [1962] – which is widely considered
to be one of the most promising debut recordings
by a jazz singer yet you wouldn’t record under
your own name again for 12 years. It’s understand-
able that you had to raise your child by yourself but
at the time you put out “Portrait” you had so much
momentum going it seems odd that things had to
come to a stop.
SJ: Nobody ever got in touch with me to record
and unless they get in touch with me, I’m not a
pusher. I don’t go out there and say, ‘Hey, are you
gonna record me?’ I didn’t call Blue Note. That’s
not my style, unless they get in touch with me, and
even sometimes when they do that, I don’t do it. So
they give up on me. [Laughs]
JI: You need a manager.
SJ: Yeah, I don’t have a manager.
JI: Early in your career, you worked the same club
with comedian Lenny Bruce in Long Island.
What can you say about him—what was your inter-
action with him?
SJ: I didn’t really talk to him very much. He was
very, very funny. He used my name in his book as
Governor Faubus’ daughter getting married to Har-
ry Belafonte. Lenny died a horrible death, from a
heroin overdose, and was found on a bathroom
floor with a needle in his arm.
JI: I believe you saw him get arrested for using
the F word?
SJ: Yes, can you imagine he was the first comedi-
an that ever used that word in his act? Now they
use it all the time, it’s like nothing. Yes, I saw it,
they came in and arrested him for indecent lan-
guage. I was shocked. At that time I wasn’t a user
of the word, and I didn’t like the word so much, but
I knew that it was used widely among the jazz mu-
sicians so I didn’t know what the big deal was.
They were just after him because he was brilliant.
He was amazing, the greatest comedian I ever ever
heard, still to this day. Nobody can touch him. All
of these comedians coming up took so much from
Lenny Bruce but not many of them mention his
name.
JI: It’s ironic that only a few years later, in 1968,
you had to sing the word “fuck” on Carla Bley’s
epic opera – Escalator Over the Hill. Did you have
flashbacks to Lenny Bruce getting arrested?
SJ: No, I didn’t because my music is always sepa-
rate. I was more into hearing the music and concen-
trating on the story of what the lyrics were about as
opposed to thinking of Lenny saying it. Actually,
until now that you brought it up, I guess I was the
first one that ever sang it on record. Yeah. [Laughs]
JI: You had a very close relationship with Charlie
Parker.
SJ: He liked to talk about everything – life. He
was incredible, he was brilliant, genius. Ugh, what
didn’t he talk about? He knew about everything
and it wasn’t about showing off. You could ask
Bird about anything and he would say, “Well, this
is how I feel about it” and he would go into a
whole thing that would make total sense. He was
badly treated, even by the owners of Birdland. You
know the story, I was with him when it happened.
Bird turned me onto Bela Bartok and Stravinsky. I
was pregnant with my daughter and he was so kind
to me. She was born in ‘55 and Bird died March
12, 1955. He always thought of me like a little
sister. I just loved to be around him and it was nev-
er a romantic thing. He never came on to me. Dex-
ter Gordon said, “That’s impossible, Bird came on
to all the chicks.” Not me, never, because he met
me when I was a teenager in Detroit when me and
Skeeter and Mitch, the two guys I sang with, we
ran right up to him and started singing one of his
tunes. He told me I had “million dollar ears.” I
remember one time he came up to my loft and
played a sax solo for about an hour. He didn’t stop,
it was amazing. Why didn’t I have a tape recorder?
Bird taught me so much, he’s the reason I sing. He
showed me a way out of my pain and how to ex-
press myself through the music of bebop jazz. And
Lennie Tristano was the second one because he
encouraged me too. Bird used to do a lot of these
little gigs. These ladies would do these “cocktail
sips,” as they called them. They’d get all dressed
up and hire a band so they could dance. Duke
would be on a lot of these gigs and Bird would
always get me up to sing. Where ever he was play-
ing, he’d usually have me come up and sing a tune.
He believed in me. Bird, even though he wasn’t
that much older than me, he was like the father I
never had. I know he had the cunning, baffling,
powerful disease of heroin addiction, but he never
encouraged me or anyone else to use dope, and
those who say he did are lying. My loft was like his
second home before he met the Baroness. Thank
God he didn’t die in my loft. I even had a little
couch that I called “Bird’s Bed.” One time he came
up to check on me and Duke was there, and Duke
was nodding out. Bird looked at him and said,
“Man, didn’t you learn anything from me?” Bird
didn’t turn people on to heroin. He might have shot
up with them because they were giving him some
free dope, but as far as telling people to try it? First
of all, he wouldn’t give up his dope [Laughs], I’m
sure. I just wish that I had known more about
[drug] programs when Bird was alive. At my house
upstate I have pictures all over of Bird because
Bird bought my house. I bought it through music,
not my office job. I know that I wouldn’t be alive
today if it weren’t for Bird.
JI: Why did Parker crash at your loft? Didn’t he
have a place of his own?
SJ: Yeah, but Chan would get upset with him and
throw him out or they would get in a fight. They
had their problems and I can understand where she
was coming from, being there and having kids. I
remember he came by my house when Bree died,
his daughter. I put my arms around him. Yeah, he
was very special to me. He came by to check up on
me and he also knew he had a place with me if he
needed one. That’s why he started going to the
Baroness’ later, I mean that was a fancy hotel.
Come on, she was a millionaire, [Laughs] but he
still came to see me.
JI: What do you recall of the time Parker drank
rubbing alcohol at your loft?
SJ: I called the ambulance and sent him to the
hospital. I said, ‘What are you doing? Because it
(Continued from page 32)
(Continued on page 34)
“”A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives
which he habitually uses in conversation.”
- Mark Twain
Sheila Jordan
“[Bird] always thought of me like a little sister. He told me I had ‘million dollar ears.’ I remember one time he came up to my loft and played a sax solo for about an hour. He
didn’t stop, it was amazing. Why didn’t I have a tape recorder? Bird taught me so
much, he’s the reason I sing. He showed me a way out of my pain and how to express myself through the music of bebop jazz.”
34 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
was a Sunday and you couldn’t get any alcohol
yet?’ He wanted the alcohol content but I don’t
think it was that dangerous, but I was scared. I
didn’t want Bird dying in my loft, I would never be
able to live that down. That he would die in my
place, on my floor? My idol, I killed with rubbing
alcohol? No, but he was okay. I don’t remember it
that well, I just remember having beautiful conver-
sations about what you believe in. He was very
strong on me taking care of myself. “Don’t mess
yourself up like me,” he’d say. He was like a little
kid sometimes. He used to like to play those arcade
machines on Broadway.
JI: You’ve said that one of the highlights of your
life was singing at Monk’s memorial service in
1982. Would you share a memory of Monk?
SJ: He didn’t talk much. He was a very quiet man,
he could say in three words what it takes somebody
a whole paragraph. He was very brilliant. The thing
that I found out after he passed away was how
many songs that he wrote were based on really
modern tunes like “Well, You Needn’t.” I was
teaching that song to my class at City College one
day and all of a sudden [it hit me that] he wrote that
tune on the chord changes of “Temptation.” He did
a lot of songs like that which means he listened to a
lot of straight ahead pop tunes of the day like
“Temptation.” That was pretty wild.
JI: Nica [jazz baroness Pannonica de Koenigswa-
ter] was inhabiting the same scene as you. Did you
have a relationship with her?
SJ: No, she wasn’t very open to other women. I
remember Duke did a concert at Town Hall and
after it was over, I went backstage to meet Duke
and she came up and said to Duke in front of me,
“After you take your old lady home, why don’t you
come by? I’m having a party.” After you take your
old lady home, that pissed me off.
JI: You were a threat to her?
SJ: I don’t know. Why? She wanted to be queen
of the “cats” and she was queen of the “cats” be-
cause she had a lot of money. She was there at
Monk’s funeral when I sang. Barry Harris asked
me to sing. I said, ‘Are you sure?’ He said,
“Absolutely.”
JI: I’d like to ask you about a few of the musicians
you had relationships with. What about Bill Evans?
SJ: I loved him. He was a quiet man. I met Bill
through George Russell because Bill was on his
New York, N. Y. recording. After that album was
released, George Russell asked me one day if I
wanted to go hear Bill Evans play on Broadway.
During intermission, Bill came over, and I was in
the middle of preparing to do “If You Could See
Me Now,” [for Portrait of Sheila] and I had heard
Bill play it and I just loved his chord changes, so I
told George, and since George got me the record-
ing and was producing it, he had me speak with
Bill when he sat down at our table. I said, “Bill, I
hope this isn’t out of line, man, but I loved your
changes on “If You Could See Me Now.” Man, I
would love to have those,’ so he got a paper napkin
and wrote them out and I treasured that paper nap-
kin. When my house burned down, that’s one of
the things that I lost that I felt the worst about. So
those are his very changes that Barry Galbraith
plays on my Blue Note recording. I always wanted
to sing with him but I never had the chance and I
was too shy to ask, ‘Can I sing a tune with you?’
I’ve never been pushy like that.
JI: How about a memory of Jeanne Lee?
SJ: I loved Jeanne Lee. We worked together a few
times. We recorded with this Italian composer Mar-
cello Melis and also with Jane Bunnett on The
Water is Wide. Jeanne was beautiful, oh, my God, I
loved her. What a voice! Talk about being under-
rated! I never feel unrated when I go back and
think about Jeanne Lee because if anybody was
ever underrated, it was Jeanne Lee. Now that’s a
singer that I really feel had everything going, man.
Great soul, great feeling, incredible voice, incredi-
ble sound. Not forced, just a beautiful, natural
sound. A very sweet person, a lovely lady.
JI: Sonny Rollins
SJ: Aah, my buddy! I still see him. He calls me
and sometimes says, “Miss Jordan, this is Mr. Rol-
lins calling.” [Laughs] Sonny and I go back to
when I first came here up in Harlem. It was Jackie
McLean, Sonny Rollins, Arthur Taylor, they were
all hanging out together. Of course, we were all
Bud Powell freaks. Oh, it was great! I became clos-
er with Sonny recently, especially since Lucille
died. I try to go see Sonny, he’s so sweet. I love
Sonny Rollins. Talk about being humble, oh my
God. He’s like family to me.
JI: Ornette Coleman
SJ: I loved Ornette. Ornette came by to visit me
one time and I wasn’t here and he left a Polaroid
picture of himself in the door. I said, ‘Oh, I know
who this was.’[Laughs] Ornette, George Russell,
and myself went to Max Roach and Abbey Lin-
coln’s wedding in George’s little green
Volkswagen. One year I made a huge Thanksgiv-
ing dinner when Ornette still had his loft on Prince
Street. I made two turkeys and I took everything
over to Ornette’s house for Thanksgiving. He loved
it. He came to the NEA event the year I got the
award and of course, he had on this incredible suit.
He always wore something incredible.
JI: Elvin Jones
SJ: He would always brag that he was my daugh-
ter Tracey’s babysitter. He used to hold her and
he’s so big. When he first came to New York, he
wanted to see if he liked it, years ago, in the early
‘50s, and he stayed at my loft. I said, ‘Yeah, you
can stay here but you have to take care of my
daughter in the morning because I have to go to
work for four hours.’ He said, “Yeah, I can do
that.” He was a sweet man, I loved Elvin.
JI: Max Roach
SJ: The last time I saw Max was at Elvin Jones’
funeral. He was in a wheelchair. I remember one
time, years ago in Detroit, he came through with
Bird and one of the guys went up to Max and said,
“Max, who’s the greatest drummer?” We were all
standing around Max because we loved Max, and
you know what Max replied? “I am!” [Laughs]
And we laughed. Actually, Max got me my job
teaching at UMass at Jazz in July, which I still do
in the summer, because Max was teaching there.
Max and Billy Taylor were the two but it was Max
who recommended me because he remembered me
from teaching at City College, starting the program
there through John Lewis.
JI: Jackie McLean
SJ: Oh, there’s so many memories of Jackie
McLean, we were like family. Jackie was very
funny. He would come to the loft all the time too
and he always wanted to know when Bird was
coming by. My best friend from Detroit started
going out with Jackie when we first moved to New
York from Detroit. We were going up to Harlem to
see all the “cats” up there, and the sessions, and
Minton’s after hours, and, oh, my God, it was in-
credible. She went with Jackie until he met Dolly
and then she was history. I remember he said to
me, “Are you going to be mad at me?” I said, ‘Why
would I be mad at you? That has nothing to do with
me, you’re my buddy.’ I loved him. He was so
funny, always telling jokes, always being some
kind of a character. Toothpick Harry, he called
himself. Once in my loft he asked if I had any
toothpicks. I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, “Can I have
em?” I said, ‘How many do you want,’ and he said,
“As many as you can spare.’ So he sat on the couch
and he started chewing them and throwing them on
the floor and he said, “Do you know who I am?” I
said, ‘No, who are you,’ and he said, “Toothpick
Harry.” I said, ‘What is that supposed to mean?’
He said, “Whatever you want it to.” [Laughs] Cra-
zy man.
JI: Jazz education has played a strong role in your
life. You taught at City College from 1978 to 2005
and introduced the first solo jazz vocal program in
America. You took the job admittedly not knowing
how to teach. What were your thoughts at the start
of that role and how did your teaching expertise
evolve?
SJ: It scared the hell out of me is what it did and I
said that to John Lewis when he asked me to teach
there. He said, “We need you here.” I had done a
little concert for them and when they asked me I
told them, ‘I don’t know how to teach.’ That’s
when John told me something that stayed with me
the rest of my life. John Lewis looked me in my
eyes and said, “Sheila, teach what you know.
That’s it, nothing else.” So I carried that with me
and that’s what I do. I only teach what I know. If a
student asks me a question that I don’t know I tell
them I’m sorry and I refer them to someone else. I
learned to teach through teaching and every time I
teach, I learn something new. I’m still learning. I
love teaching, I know that I’m getting across what
my message is to these young singers coming up
when I get the same feeling I get when I’m con-
(Continued from page 33)
Sheila Jordan
35 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
necting with instrumentalists on a concert. There’s
a feeling that you get when you all become one
sound almost. When you’re connecting, you can
become one sound when this music is really hap-
pening on stage, and when I get that feeling when
I’m teaching, I know that I’m doing okay. And I’ve
had wonderful responses from my kids and a lot of
them are doing so well. I’m very proud of them,
they’re like my kids.
JI: It’s very sweet that you list photos of your
students on your website.
SJ: Yeah, it’s important.
JI: In a 2011 Jazz Inside Magazine interview [by
Nora McCarthy] you said, “One of the things I
found out very early is that you do not break peo-
ple’s spirits.” That being the case, what do you do
with the student who doesn’t really possess much
talent?
SJ: I try to seek out something in that person.
There’s got to be something there, otherwise they
wouldn’t sign up to take the course. They’re not
gonna pay money to do something that they don’t
think they can do, so there’s got to be something
there. What it is? I don’t know, but that’s what I’m
there for. It’s for me to find out what is it? What’s
within this person that gives them the desire to
want to do this music, and I usually find it. Some-
times the reason that they’re not, or we think
they’re not as talented as they should be, is because
they’re scared or they don’t know. So what do you
do in a case like that? Listen to the music. I want
you to learn this bebop head of Charlie Parker’s, I
want you to learn all of these bebop heads by Bird,
Diz, and Miles. I want you to try to sing the solos.
It’s gonna be hard but learn the line first. That gets
them into the phrasing, that’s how I learned. I teach
them how I learned it. I’m not gonna tell someone,
‘Hey, you can’t sing, don’t waste my time.’ I
would never do that because obviously they have a
desire within them that wants them to at least try.
The point is, most of them do try and then find that
they want to do something else, but you know
what? I always get thank you letters from them.
The only thing I have a hard time with, and I say
this in all my classes, is that there’s three ingredi-
ents for this music – it’s what’s attached to your
head, your ears, listening; what beats in your chest,
your heart, emotion; what happens with your foot,
timing, rhythm. You got bad time? That’s the worst
thing that can happen, then you better go and take
some lessons with a good drummer. Timing will
bug me more than singing out of tune.
JI: You were born into hardship and when you
sing, it’s all real. Do you feel anyone can be trained
to sing the blues?
SJ: In everybody’s life they’ve had times were
things haven’t been wonderful. We’re only human
so we’re all gonna have to suffer at some point. I
don’t believe that we’re born with a silver spoon in
our mouths. I don’t think anybody would really get
into this music, which started with the blues, if they
didn’t feel they had something to say because it’s
not gonna pay you anything. The only reward from
it is the feeling you get from doing it, which is an
incredible feeling when it’s happening. As far as
singing the blues, the blues can be in any form.
What I do with my kids, my warmup is singing the
blues, and don’t scat. I don’t want you scatting on
the blues as an exercise, I want you singing about
who you are, how you feel today, and why do you
want to sing jazz. That’s how I open up my work-
shops – have them sing 12-bars straight ahead
blues. If they want to take the time and energy to
learn and feel this music, then they can sing the
blues, of course.
JI: What is Sheila Jordan like off stage?
SJ: The same as I am on stage, [Laughs] there’s
no difference. My guilty pleasures? Chocolate,
milk chocolate, but I’ll take dark if milk isn’t avail-
able. The things I like on TV are the CSI’s and 48
Hours, and I like all the mysteries. I think some-
where in another life I was a detective because I
usually know who did it. [Laughs] As far as listen-
ing to music, every time someone sends me their
recording, I always listen to it, all the way through,
and then I send them a little thank you, a little en-
couragement. All these young people are sending
me their CDs and I don’t want to not listen to them
and just say I did because that would be lying. And
I love classical music, especially if I’m up on a
mountain. Sonny and I talk a lot about not listening
to our own music. I don’t listen back either. I don’t
necessarily want to hear it because I’ll be too criti-
cal.
JI: There’s a photo from the ‘80s in your biog-
raphy Jazz Child of you sleeping under a barbed
wire fence with your head on one of your cows at
your home in Middleburgh, New York. Do those
sort of things go on a lot up there?
SJ: The bebop cows I call them and they’re all
over the world I find. I was in Brazil and found
some cows and I had them stop the car. I started
singing a bebop line and they came running. Then I
said, ‘Now watch this,’ and I sang a ballad and they
split. You sing a ballad, they leave, you sing a be-
bop tune, they wag their tails. I used to walk a mile
down from my house and this guy had all these
cows and I remember the first time I found out
about this. I was improvising on chord changes and
all of a sudden these cows came stampeding up to
the barbed wire fence. I said, ‘Oh, you guys like
bebop, you want to hear a ballad?’ And they left.
That picture in the book was actually taken in the
Azores because that’s a brown cow. I had a concert
there and stayed a couple extra days to see the
country and I found these cows and sang to them.
This cow was the only one that stayed after I sang.
She laid down and I said, ‘Oh, my God, I’m ex-
hausted. I’m gonna lay down with her,’ and I be-
lieve that’s when that picture was taken.
JI: What are you memories of living through
9/11?
SJ: I saw it. I saw Sonny on TV leaving his resi-
dence there. I was at my daughter’s because she
had been ill and I went down to take care of her the
night before. When I would stay there, I’d stay near
the window and you could see the World Trade
Center and I used to say, ‘Good morning twins,’ as
I called them. I went down to get some food that
morning and this woman came in screaming,
“Hurry up, hurry up, buy all the food you can!
They’re bombing the World Trade Center, they’re
bombing the city!” And I thought, ‘Oh, some nut.’
Just as I got upstairs, the second tower went down.
I pinched myself, I thought I was dreaming. I could
not believe it. I saw the second one go down. I saw
low flying planes which were the Airforce planes.
It was awful, and that smoke? I had two friends
who lived there that stayed with me here for a few
months afterwards. They couldn’t go back there, all
that dust was coming in their windows. I’ll never
forget that, to see a building actually crumble, dis-
appear like that, and all the smoke. There was
smoke in the area for days and you also had to
prove that you lived beyond 14th Street or they
would not let you down. The two things I’ll never
forget is that and when Kennedy was assassinated.
What is wrong with this world I kept thinking?
(Continued from page 34)
(Continued on page 36)
“[jazz baroness Pannonica de Koenigswater]... wasn’t very open to other women. I remember Duke [Jordan] did a concert at Town Hall and
after it was over, I went backstage to meet Duke and she came up and said to Duke in front of me, ‘After you take your old lady
home, why don’t you come by? I’m having a party.’ ‘After you take your old lady home,’
that pissed me off.”
Sheila Jordan
36 To Advertise CALL: 215-887-8880 March-April 2017 Jazz Inside Magazine www.JazzInsideMagazine.com
JI: The final questions have been given to me to
ask you from other musicians:
Bob Dorough (vocals, piano) asked – “I heard
Duke Jordan play with Bird a time or two. As he
was a real bebopper and instrumentalist, what was
Duke’s attitude to your desire to sing?”
SJ: He wasn’t pro or con but if I wanted to sing
something, he played for me. He never put me
down. He thought I could sing but he didn’t en-
courage me to the point, like Bird. Bird encour-
aged me – “Come on up here and sing.” Duke was-
n’t like that but I knew when I sang with Bird, I’d
always have the right key because Duke would be
playing, so he’d know what key to transpose in. I
think that in the end, he was very proud of the fact
that I became as popular in jazz as I did. I think he
was surprised that I kept the Jordan name alive.
Steve Swallow (bass) asked – “Sheila, you were so
very kind to me when I was a rookie and new to the
big, bad city. Would you talk about your experi-
ence at the old Page Three?”
SJ: That’s where I met Steve Swallow, he was the
bass player on Monday night, which was jam ses-
sion night. They had three or four singers nightly
and every other set you would sing, so everybody
got to sing two sets. Monday nights were my nights
to take off, man, I didn’t care. They used to call me
“a new note in jazz,” that’s how they announced
me. Swallow was playing acoustic bass and the
piano player was John Knapp who used to get a
little upset because I’d say, ‘Can I try to do this
tune with just the bass?’ I had tried bass and voice
at Lennie’s [Tristano] with Peter Ind, I’ve wanted
to do that for some time. I was the originator of the
bass and voice, I don’t know if you know that. I’m
not bragging, I had enough belief in that and it’s
wonderful that there are other singers that are start-
ing to do it today. But Swallow was the first bass
player. Actually, I wanted to record just me and
Swallow on Blue Note when George got me the
date but Al Lion said, “I don’t think we’re ready
for that.” [Laughs] But Swallow was very receptive
and we had a hell of a good time. There were such
characters hanging out at the Page Three, singers
that Swallow would have to play for. This one used
to be a stripper and she’d take all her clothes off.
She looked like a young boy, and by the time she
stripped down, it turned out she was a woman.
Swallow would get hysterical. [Laughs] We had a
lot of good times there. That was my introduction
to working on bass and voice.
JI: I asked earlier about Herbie Nichols at Page
Three but you also played with a young Cecil Tay-
lor as an accompanist there. What was it like to
accompany a young Cecil Taylor?
SJ: Oh, brother. I was the only one that could sing
with him, okay? He was sent in as a substitute by
Dave Frishberg. I don’t know why Frishberg did
that, I think he had to be kidding. He knew that
Cecil was ‘out,’ which was great, I’m not putting
Cecil down, but the point is, we’re talking about
strippers and joke tellers and a guy who had his
face all made up with huge makeup and singing
Broadway. Cecil was only there one time, I think. I
enjoyed it but, boy, the other people, they were
freakin’ out! “Who the fuck is this guy?” I always
stuck up for people like that. I told the people com-
plaining that he was expressing himself and that
they didn’t understand the music. When they said it
sounded like ‘static,’ I said, ‘It just depends on
what kind of static you like.’
Harvie S (bass) would like to share a memory in
place of a question – “We were in San Francisco on
a tour and this young girl came up to us and con-
gratulated us. We looked at her and said, ‘Thank
you so much.’ Then we went a step further and
asked what she was congratulating us for. She said,
“I heard you two are getting married.” Sheila an-
swered in an unexpected way. I of course expected
her to explain that we were not romantically in-
volved but we were just musically a team and good
friends. Instead she turned, pointed to me and said
in a question like manner, “To him?” I looked over
and said jokingly, ‘Am I really that bad?’ She said
to the girl, “He’s young enough to be my son!”
Then we all started laughing. You can’t be a musi-
cian and not have a sense of humor!”
SJ: Yeah, that’s a true story.
Steve Kuhn (piano) also wanted to share an anec-
dote rather than a question – “I really admire her,
she’s the last of the pure jazz singers. She’s like my
big sister. Back in the ‘70s, when I had the quartet
that she was in, along with Harvie S and Bob Mo-
ses, we’d been working a fair amount. We were in
Washington, DC and after the gig, we both stayed
at my cousin’s townhouse there. It was separate
rooms but on this particular night I hit on her.
[Laughs] Just like that, and her reply was, which
we joke about now, but she said, “Kuhn, I love you
but you’re just not my type.” And that was as far as
that part of our relationship ever got.”
SJ: That’s right, [Laughs] I remember that.
JI: Being a female in jazz, a vastly male dominat-
ed field, how often have you had to confront sexual
advances from other musicians?
SJ: Not that often. When I was younger, more so.
Today, nobody would hit on me. I wish they would
[Laughs] just so I could say no! People might ask
me what I was doing after the gig and if I wanted to
hang and I’d say, ‘Thank you, but no.’
Cameron Brown (bass) asked – “What attracted
you to the bass and describe what is so unique
about the bass and voice experience? You’ve spo-
ken eloquently about that in the past and the bass
and voice has been your own very special contribu-
tion to jazz!”
SJ: I love the bass and voice because I love the
freedom that it gives me and I love the space. I love
the sound of the bass and I always felt somewhere
in a previous life that I must have been a frustrated
bass player because I have always been attracted to
the looks and sound of the bass. I love the sound of
voice and stringed instrument ever since I did it
with Mingus in a club in Toledo. I was in town and
I found out he was playing there. I knew him from
Lennie’s and he invited me up to duet with him. I
told him no because there was no guitar or piano to
play with but he said, “Why, that doesn’t bother
you when you’re at Lennie’s. I want you to come
up and sing.” And that was the first time I ever
performed just with bass and that to me was thrill-
ing. I had an out of body experience with Harvey
years ago, and I think I had one not too long ago
with Cameron. My out of body experiences, the
few that I’ve had, usually have been with bass and
voice. There’s just something about the space, and
I love the sound of the instrument. It’s so much
easier to work out ideas.
Annie Ross (vocalist) asked – “I’ve heard rave
reviews of your turkey. How do you do it?”
SJ: She heard about that from Mark Murphy.
Mark would come to my house every Thanksgiving
because he thought I made the greatest turkeys in
the world. I was very close with Mark, he was like
my younger brother and we spent a lot of time
together because we did a couple of jazz operas for
George Gruntz. We had so much fun together. I’ve
known him since he first came into the Page Three
and sang “Willow Weep for Me.” I said, ‘Who is
this handsome guy?’ He was so good-looking and,
man, could he sing. It always surprised me that he
didn’t get the NEA Jazz Masters award but Tony
Bennett would. But then I was surprised that I got
it, so who knows? Any young male singer out there
should always be inspired by the late, great Mark
Murphy. He was wonderful and so funny. One time
I sent him on a gig that I couldn’t do, a teaching
gig in Greece. He went a week early and wore
bedroom slippers and he was walking around, did-
n’t know where to go because he was a week too
early! There he was, walking around Greece in
bedroom slippers! He was ‘out’ but in a funny way.
I went to visit him often when he got sick and I saw
him right before he passed. He couldn’t move at all
and usually had on a hospital gown, but on this
day, he was all dressed up with a hat. I said, ‘What
are you doing up?’ I should have known. He was
getting ready to leave but it didn’t hit me until I
was in Europe and I heard he had passed.
(Continued from page 35)
Sheila Jordan
“Never be in a hurry. Do everything quietly and
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