Straight Life (16 page)

I think Art is one of the greatest jazz musicians alive today. I say that because I believe it. I haven't heard him play for a long time. I haven't seen him. But with the Kenton band ... My experiences listening to him ... I honestly feel that way about him. Art didn't have a chance to be exposed with the band as much as he might have been, which is a tendency of Stan's. He likes the full, big-band sound, and he's reluctant, really, to let anyone be the star, so to speak. The musicians appreciated Art's abilities, but he wasn't featured with the band that much. Maynard was, and of course Vida Musso. I've never been able to figure that out. It's perhaps because I'm married to one of the finest saxes that there is and I always felt that Coop should be featured as much or more than Vido.

(Coop) I always felt that Art's major influence was Lester Young; that came out more clearly when I heard him play tenor a few times. Maybe not so much now as in his early days. And to transfer that beautiful sound to the alto! He was really the only one doing that at the time, and I think his sound was by far the best alto sound at the time. Since then there have been other marvelous alto players, but I think that perhaps Art was a major influence in their sound. I always enjoyed his solos; naturally, one of the highlights of the band was Art's solos. And I still think that the solo piece Shorty Rogers wrote for Art is one of Stan's best records. It's a lovely record. It'll probably last for all time.

(Sammy Curtis) The Innovations band was great. It was one of Stan's bold moves in music. It was a very aggressive thing he did. He added a big string section and French horns, and the band had a physical structure kind of like a symphony orchestra. At that time no one was thinking in those terms. The band was playing great music, and there was a very brotherly feeling among the musicians. We felt we were participating in something very important. There were a lot of string players who weren't, you know, "us" jazz guys, and they loved it. They felt it was important to them to be part of it, too.

Stan was a very devoted musician. The orchestra, it was so big, a lot bigger than other bands; they had to build special risers to set the band up on and carry all this equipment on the road. I could be wrong, but I've been told by a lot of people that would have to know that Stan was financing the thing out of his own pocket, which, the final line in that story is, he lost a lot of money. But that's the kind of guy he was. He believed in it so much, he put himself into it physically, spiritually, just to the hilt, and that's where he was coming from. He was beautiful.

Art was ... His music was number one to him. That's all he talked about. We were very close. We'd go and hang out after work, go blow in clubs. Art had a lot of solos in the band; he was featured on a lot of things, and if he'd had a really good night playing, he felt great, but some nights he felt he could have done better, and he'd just get depressed. What he did in his music kind of dominated the way he looked at the whole world.

Art was and is a great player. I'm not going to say the greatest in the world because I don't feel any one guy is. But at the top of the gang is a select group of five or ten, just a few guys. When you get up that high on the ladder, you can't pick one as better than the other. That's where I place Art. He's one of those special guys. As to what made his playing so special, that's a hard question, and the only way I can answer it, to be honest with you, I think it's a gift of God. I think it's not something that Art did. God loved him and gave him this gift.

If you were Art's friend, he loved you. He would, I feel, have done anything I asked. Not that I asked anything special, but I felt that kind of brotherly thing. And he respected my work in music, and that was a part of it. You know, I may sound like I'm trying to make something special out of myself because I was not that nice a ., .. I wasn't walking with the Lord then and I was a different kind of guy.

There were a lot of Monday night sessions around town in L.A., and guys'd just drive around in cars and go to clubs and sit in. Art would call me up and say, "Hey, you want to meet me, and we'll go sit in at this club, and then, if there's time, we'll go to another one?" It was just fun to hang out. Chet Baker would come and Jack Montrose, at that time; Jack Sheldon was one of the guys; Shorty Rogers, Hersh Hamel. We'd fill the whole car up and drive to a club.

Something that sticks in my mind-it shows a part of Art's personality, how very sensitive he is. On Kenton's band, we were playing at a place in Dallas, Texas. It was a funny kind of setup. It was an outdoors nightclub, all tables, but in Texas there was some kind of law that you couldn't sell liquor over the bar, so everyone came with bottles and bottles of booze and instead of buying liquor they'd buy soft drinks for mixing. I don't know why, but the bus brought us there early by mistake, and all the people got there early also, and they just loved the musicians and it turned into a thing, like, "Hey, you don't have to work yet. Sit down and have a drink." Well, before the job started, I mean, including yours truly, just about the whole band was juiced out. Stan got there, and we started playing, and everything's fine, under control, but by the last set, I mean the whole band was just wasted, and Stan was counting the band off, and some of the guys would interrupt him counting off. It turned into one of those things. It was kinda humorous, but Stan was kinda stern and resentful of all this. He could have gotten angry at me or at anyone on the band, but for some reason he picked on Al Porcino and Art and told 'em to get off the bandstand. He kicked them off the stand. I was rooming with Art; that's how I remember. We had the next two or three days off, and Art didn't show up at the hotel for two days. I got worried about him. Al Porcino, the next day, he didn't remember anything that had gone on. But when Art finally showed up and I got talking to him, he said that when Stan did that, kicked him off the bandstand, it really hurt his feelings and he just kinda wanted to be by himself and had drifted around town there. But it's always stuck in my mind. He was just having fun, and then this incident occurred that hurt him very badly, and when he did show up the poor guy was totally depressed. It happened a few days ago! The other guy doesn't even remember it; it went in one ear and out the other. Art just hung on to it.

(Shelly Manne) I think it's important to find Art's position as a jazz alto player in the history of the saxophone. I think he has a very important part to play because of his distinctive way of playing. He's very individual. You can hear it. You know it. Art was a very lyrical player. Especially at a time when most of the alto players were in a Charlie Parker bag, Art had a distinct style of his own, very melodic.

Art was a big influence on a lot of people. He had quite an influence on Bud Shank because Bud was very young when he joined the Kenton band and, of course, Art was third alto, the jazz alto chair. In fact, when I settled down out here, finally left Stan and made the first album for Contemporary Records, West Coast jazz, something like that, I was going to use Art; he was supposed to do the date but for some reason he couldn't make it, so I used Bud. And that was the first jazz record with a small group on a prominent jazz label that Bud had done; it helped establish his career-a tune called "Afrodesia" that Shorty Rogers wrote with Art in mind.

Art was always a quiet, introverted, sort of one-on-one person. He was never strongly outgoing, but he was always loose with the guys, fun to be around. He'd join in with the groups, with the guys, and he'd go anyplace to play. He wanted to play constantly. So even though we weren't close socially, we were close musically. I know that. And that kind of business that happens between musicians, musically, is a very strong tie.

We were all happy when Art joined the band because he was really a true, dyed-in-the-wool jazz player, and Stan needed that kind of thing in the band. We had plenty of strong ensemble players, and Art gave it another dimension as far as giving a jazz feeling to the band.

Stan Kenton was great. He was a father confessor to the guys. You could always go to Stan. And Stan's answer was the word of God, the final word, and you were confident that he'd steer you right. He took a personal interest in everybody in the band, and everybody that worked for him was devoted to him whether they agreed with him in his social life, his political thinking. I always felt Stan was to the right politically, and I was on the liberal end, and we always argued about things politically, but it never interfered with our friendship.

There are a lot of leaders if they get too close to the band they lose the respect of the musicians. Leaders will travel in a different car, stay in another hotel, and just see the band when they get on the bandstand. Stan usually had to go ahead and do interviews or set up; he had his own car on the road but he was with us most of the time. And you never felt aloofness from him. You could say anything you wanted to Stan. And it showed in the music. I think one of the main reasons Stan's band was such a great success, as was Duke Ellington's band-which was, of course, the greatest jazz band of all-was that, like Duke, Stan wrote for the individuals in the band instead of writing charts just with an anonymous band in mind and having the musicians play it. He knew our creative abilities; he knew what we could add to the band; and he knew we didn't want to just take it off the paper and play it. We gave something of ourselves to the music. In Art's case, Stan used Art, his individual talent, when he'd write charts with him in mind. The band had a very individually creative sound.

It's always hard doing one-nighters. You look back now, there are some good memories. For some it's good memories. Everybody has a different kind of constitution, a different ability to take a beating on the road. You travel three hundred miles a night every night on a bus, and in those days you'd have to make a 9:30 in the morning show, something like that, so it was difficult at best. You'd get into town and the rooms wouldn't be made up, so you spent four hours sleeping in the lobby waiting for checkout. It's hard, but I think there's a frame of mind that makes that all part of growing up and maturing and part of enjoying life.

Those are the experiences that later on, difficult as they were, you look back on with a lot of joy because, you know, you try new restaurants, see new places, meet new people, play for new people all the time, which is, in itself, an inspiration. But some guys, now-I'm not sure, I'm just taking a wild guess here-some guys weren't made up physically for that kind of life and I think Art maybe was one of those guys. I think Art had great difficulty coping with all the temptations of the road.

PROFILING THE PLAYERS

ART PEPPER, alto sax: He's 25, says his ambition is to be the best jazzman in America. Art joined Kenton prior to going into service in 1942. Has played with Vido Musso, Benny Carter, etc., and considers Al Cohn his favorite musician. Dislikes the road and the fact that "real great musicians can't make it unless they smile prettily and talk with gusto." down beat, April 20, 1951. Copyright 1951 by down beat. Reprinted by special permission.

THERE's a thing about empathy between musicians. The great bands were the ones in which the majority of the people were good people, morally good people; I call them real people-in jail they call them regulars. Bands that are made up of more good people than bad, those are the great bands. Those are the bands like Basie's was at one time and Kenton's and Woody Herman's and Duke Ellington's were at a couple of different times.

There's so many facets to playing music. In the beginning you learn the fundamentals of whatever instrument you might play: you learn the scales and how to get a tone. But once you become proficient mechanically, so you can be a jazz musician, then a lot of other things enter into it. Then it becomes a way of life, and how you relate musically is really involved.

The selfish or shallow person might be a great musician technically, but he'll be so involved with himself that his playing will lack warmth, intensity, beauty and won't be deeply felt by the listener. He'll arbitrarily play the first solo every time. If he's backing a singer he'll play anything he wants or he'll be practicing scales. A person that lets the other guy take the first solo, and when he plays behind a soloist plays only to enhance him, that's the guy that will care about his wife and children and will be courteous in his everyday contact with people.