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 m
usically 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.
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 mone
y 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.
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