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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

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CONTENTSCONTENTS

CLUBS, CONCERTS, EVENTSCLUBS, CONCERTS, EVENTS 13 Calendar of Events, Concerts, Festi-

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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)


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



“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




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.



“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


http://www.jazzstandard.com


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.


“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

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Robert Edwards - Afternoon Jam Session; Fukushi Tainaka Quintet; Noah Preminger Quartet; Philip Harper Quintet, Small’s

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The New Standard, Maurice Brown, James Francies, Ben Eunson, Rashaan Carter, Marcus Gilmore, Christie Dashiell, Jazz Standard

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Wednesday April 12 Tom Harrell (trumpet) Ralph Moore (saxophone) David Virelles (piano)


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Christian Mcbride’s New Jawn with Josh Evans, Marcus Strickland,

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Robert Rodriguez’s Noche de Boleros featuring Claudia Acuña and Melissa Aldana, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola

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Thursday April 20 Scott Colley Quartet, Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet, Tue-Fri) Ralph


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Friday April 21 Scott Colley Quartet, Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet, Tue-Fri) Ralph


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Sunday April 23 Scott Colley Quartet, Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet, Tue-Fri) Ralph


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Craig Brann Quintet; Ari Hoenig Group; Jam Session, Small’s (Continued on page 17)

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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.

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Sanah Kadoura Group; Carlos Abadie Quintet; Jonathan Thomas -

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Bill Stewart Trio, Walter Smith III (tenor sax) Larry Grenadier (bass) Bill Stewart (drums), Village Vanguard

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David Bixler Quintet; Anthony Wonsey Quartet; After-hours Jam

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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


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Sunday April 30 Bill Stewart Trio, Walter Smith III (tenor sax) Larry Grenadier (bass)


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“...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

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- Winston Churchill

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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


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-

[email protected]

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.

“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world

and moral courage so rare.”

— Mark Twain

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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

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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.


“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


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




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


“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.”



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




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.



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-


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.”


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.”


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?


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.”


Sheila Jordan

Photo by Ken Weiss


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


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.”


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



“”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



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.



Sheila Jordan


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



“”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.”


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-


Sheila Jordan


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?



“[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


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.


Sheila Jordan

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