Straight Life (17 page)

Miles Davis is basically a good person and that's why his playing is so beautiful and pure. This is my own thinking and the older I get the more I believe I'm correct in my views. Miles is a master of the understatement and he's got an uncanny knack for finding the right note or the right phrase. He's tried to give an appearance of being something he's not. I've heard he's broken a television set when he didn't like something that was said on TV, that he's burnt connections, been really a bastard with women, and come on as a racist. The connections prob ably deserved to be burnt; they were assholes, animals, guys, that would burn you: give you bad stuff and charge you too much, people that would turn you in to the cops if they got busted. Most of the women that hang around jazz musicians are phonies. And as for his prejudice, not wanting white people in his bands, that's what he feels he should be like. He's caught up in the way the country is, the way the people are, and he figures that's the easiest way to go. One time he did hire Bill Evans for his band, but people ranked him so badly and it was such a hassle that I think he became bitter and assumed this posture of racism and hatred. But I feel he's a good person or he couldn't play as well as he plays.

Billy Wilson plays like he is. When I knew him, when he was young, he was a real warm, sweet, loving person. And he plays just that way. But if you listen to his tone, it never was very strong; it's pretty and kind of cracking. It's weak. And when he was faced with prison-because he got busted for using drugs-he couldn't stand it. He couldn't go because he was afraid, and when they offered him an out by turning over on somebody he couldn't help but do it. He's a weak person. That's the way he plays. That's the way he sounds.

Stan Getz is a great technician, but he plays cold to me. I hear him as he is and he's rarely moved me. He never knocked me out like Lester Young, Zoot Sims, Coltrane.

John Coltrane was a great person, warm with no prejudice. He was a dedicated musician but he got caught up in the same thing I did. He was playing at the time when using heroin was fashionable, when the big blowers like Bird were using, and so, working in Dizzy Gillespie's band, playing lead alto, he became a junkie. But he was serious about his playing so he finally stopped using heroin and devoted all his time to practicing. He became a fanatic and he reached a point where he was technically great, but he was also a good person so he played warm and real. I've talked to him, talked to him for hours, and he told me, "Why don't you straighten up? You have so much to offer. Why don't you give the world what you can?" That's what he did. But success trapped him. He got so successful that everyone was expecting him to be always in the forefront. It's the same thing that's happening to Miles right now. Miles is panicked. He's stopped. He's got panicked trying to be different, trying to continually change and be modern and to do the avant-garde thing. Coltrane did that until there was no place else to go. What he finally had, what he really had and wanted and had developed, he could no longer play because that wasn't new anymore. He got on that treadmill and ran himself ragged trying to be new and to change. It destroyed him. It was too wearing, too draining. And he became frustrated and worried. Then he started hurting, getting pains, and he got scared. He got these pains in his back, and he got terrified. He was afraid of doctors, afraid of hospitals, afraid of audiences, afraid of bandstands. He lost his teeth. He was afraid that his sound wasn't strong enough, afraid that the new, young black kids wouldn't think he was the greatest thing that ever lived anymore. And the pains got worse and worse: they got so bad he couldn't stand the pain. So they carried him to a hospital but he was too far gone. He had cirrhosis, and he died that night. Fear killed him. His life killed him. That thing killed him.

So being a musician and being great is the same as living and being a real person, an honest person, a caring person. You have to be happy with what you have and what you give and not have to be totally different and wreak havoc, not have to have everything be completely new at all times. You just have to be a part of something and have the capacity to love and to play with love. Harry Sweets Edison has done that; Zoot Sims has done that, has finally done that. Dizzy Gillespie has done that to a very strong degree. Dizzy is a very open, contented, loving person; he lives and plays the same way; he does the best he can. A lot of the old players were like that-Jack Teagarden, Freddie Webster-people that just played and were good people.

Jealousy has hurt jazz. Instead of trying to help each other and enjoy each other, musicians have become petty and jealous. A guy will be afraid somebody's going to play better than him and steal his job. And the black power-a lot of the blacks want jazz to be their music and won't have anything to do with the whites. Jazz is an art form. How can art form belong to one race of people? I had a group for a while-Lawrence Marable was playing drums, Curtis Counce was playing bass-and one night I got off the stand, we were at jazz City, and a couple of friends of mine who were there said, "Hey, man, did you realize what was happening? Those cats were ranking you while you were playing, laughing and really ranking you." I said, "You're kidding, man!" I started asking people and I started, every now and then, turning around real quick when I'd be playing. And there they were, sneering at me. Finally I just wigged out at Lawrence Marable. We went out in front of the club and I said, "Man, what's happening with you?" And he said, "Oh, fuck you! You know what I think of you, you white motherfucker?" And he spit in the dirt and stepped in it. He said, "You can't play. None of you white punks can play!" I said, "You lousy, stinking, black motherfucker! Why the fuck do you work for me if you feel like that?" And he said, "Oh, we're just taking advantage of you white punk motherfuckers." And that was it. That's what they think of me. If that's what they think of me, what am I going to think of them? I was really hurt, you know; I wanted to cry, you know; I just couldn't believe it-guys I'd given jobs to, and I find out they're talking behind my back and, not only that, laughing behind my back when I'm playing in a -club-!

There's people like Ray Brown that I worked with, Sonny Stitt, who I blew with, black cats that played marvelous and really were beautiful to me, so I couldn't believe it when these things started happening. But you're going to start wondering, you're going to be leery, naturally, and when you see people that you know ... I'd go to the union and run into Benny Carter or Gerald Wilson and find myself shying away from them because I'd be wondering, "Do they think, 'Oh, there's that white asshole, that Art Pepper; that white punk can't play; we can only play; us black folks is the only people that can play!'?" That's how I started thinking and it destroyed everything. How can you have any harmony together or any beauty when that's going on? So that's what happened to jazz. That's why so many people just stopped. Buddy DeFranco, probably the greatest clarinet player who ever lived, people like that, they just got so sick of it; they just got sick to death of it; and they had to get out because it was so heartbreaking.

But all that happened later on. In 1951, musically at least, I had the world by the tail. That was the year I placed second, on alto saxophone, in the down beat jazz poll. Charlie Parker got fourteen votes more than me and came in first.

At the end of 1951 I quit Kenton's band. It was too hard being on the road, being away from Patti, and I grew tired of the band. I knew all the arrangements by memory and it was really boring. I didn't get a chance to stretch out and play the solos I wanted to play or the tunes. I kept thinking how nice it would be to play with just a rhythm section in a jazz club where I could be the whole thing and do all the creating myself. As far as the money went, the money never changed. I was one of the highest paid guys in the band, especially among the saxophone players; Stan didn't think that sax players were the same caliber as brass players or rhythm, and we had to play exceptionally loud and work real hard because we had ten brass blowing over our heads. Also the traveling got to be unbearable. At first I enjoyed it, but after a while, being nine months out of the year on the road, one-nighters every night ... Sometimes we'd finish a job, change clothes, get on the bus, travel all night long, get to the next town in the daytime, check in and try to get some sleep, and then go and play the job. Sometimes the trip was so long we'd leave at night after the job and be traveling up until the time to go to the next one. We'd have to change clothes on the bus and go right in and play.

Also I became more and more hooked and I went through some unbelievable scenes-running out of stuff on the road, not being able to score, having to play, sick, sitting on the stand spitting up bile into a big rag I kept under the music stand. I guess I looked sort of messed up. People started talking. Kenton became more and more suspicious. I imagined he knew I was doing more than drinking and smoking pot. So it seemed best that I leave the band and try to do something on my own, and I gave my notice. A lot of us quit at the same time. Shelly Manne quit. Shorty Rogers quit.

At first I was apprehensive. I had a lot of bills and I had a habit, so right away I did some recording with Shorty. One was Shorty Rogers and His Giants, and on one of the sides, "Over the Rainbow," I was featured all the way through and got great reviews. It became one of the most popular things I've done. Then I formed a group of my own. I got Joe Mondragon and on drums Larry Bunker, who also played vibes. We worked out some things which we could do without the drums while he played vibes, or if he did a ballad I'd sit in on the drums and play a slow beat with the brushes. I got Hampton Hawes, an exceptional pianist. It was just a quartet, but it was very versatile.

Because I had my own group, I wanted to do my own material, tunes that would express my personality, not just standards. I had fooled around writing little things out when I was with Kenton. Now I tried writing seriously and found I had a talent for it. I wrote a ballad for my daughter, Patricia, probably the prettiest thing I've written to this day, and I wrote a real flag-waver, a double-fast bebop tune, very difficult, and I named it "Straight Life."

We worked at the Surf Club and got a great review in down beat. In that same issue, announcing my starting a group of my own, I was written up in another article with another new leader who was going to throw his hat in the jazz band ring and see if he could make it, and that person was Dave Brubeck. We all know now, anyone that follows jazz, that Brubeck became, and still is, one of the outstanding leaders of a jazz group, but at that time, if you read the articles, I was the one they felt was more talented and the one that would make it bigger and make more money and be more popular. I was more of a jazz player. I swung more.

Everything was perfect. I bought a tract house on my GI bill. I had finally gotten to know my daughter and was just mad about her, really loved her. We had a little white poodle named Suzy, and I had a car. I had everything. I was making good money and I didn't use any of that money on my habit-I was dealing a little bit of stuff to musicians, friends of mine, to support my habit. And I felt that I wasn't doing anything wrong because I wasn't taking food out of my child's and my wife's mouths by using. But I was really strung out.

I realized I had to get away from the stuff. In the latter part of '51 there began to be newspaper stories about dope. It was beginning to hit the limelight. I realized that things weren't going to be the same, things were going to tighten up. And that meant either I had to kick or I had to go to jail. That would really ruin my career. I was thinking how nice it would be to just stop, be cool, and not pay any of the real heavy dues that you usually have to pay. So that's what my thinking was when my dad came out to the house I'd bought in Panorama City and asked me if I'd like to come and have a drink.

My mother had gone to my dad, who was living in Long Beach, and she told him I was using. I had asked her not to say anything to him because he hated junkies; he'd always told me don't ever do that. But he found out and came to me and said, "Let's go out and have a drink." He used to come with Thelma, but this time he came alone and he said he wanted to talk to me.

We went and had a drink, and then he looked at me, and he put his hand on my arm. We were in a bar in Van Nuys, a bar I later worked in with a western band. He said, "When did you start on that stuff?" He put his arm around me and got tears in his eyes. And the way he put it to me I knew that he knew. I think at first I tried a feeble "What do you mean?" But he grabbed my arm. I had a short-sleeved shirt on. I had marks all over my arm. He said, "You might as well be dead." He said, "How did it happen?" So we talked and I tried to explain to him. I had tried to minimize the feelings I had, but it was so good to be able to tell somebody about it, to let him know how awful I felt and how really scared I was. He said, "What are we going to do?" I said, "Oh God, I don't know. I want to stop." He said, "Tell me the truth, if you don't want to stop nothing is going to do you any good." We talked and talked. Before he'd even come to me he'd inquired and found a sanitarium in Orange County, and they said they'd take me in. He made sure the police wouldn't hear about it; I wouldn't be reported. He said, "Will you go to this place?" I was afraid because I was afraid to kick, and I was afraid I might goof, and I didn't want to disappoint my dad. I felt miserable when I saw how miserable he felt. He said, "Anything I can do, no matter what it costs, don't worry about it. Don't worry about anything-I'll take care of you." That's when he started crying, and we hugged each other, and we were in this bar, and it was really strange, but I felt wonderful because after all these years I felt that I'd reached my dad and we were close. And so he asked me if I'd go to the sanitarium, and I saw that he wanted me to real bad, and so I said yes, alright, that I would go.