we are filming for the hamilton college jazzarchive on the hamilton campus today. it's an extreme pleasure for me to welcomeed shaughnessy for actually part two of our interview series. es: didn't get enough before, eh? mr: no i just need another helping. it's been like two years, or three. es: i think it might be three. yeah. mr: and how many colleges have you visitedsince then?
es: oh i don't know. i'd hazard a quick guess and say twenty maybe,about. mr: it seems to be a big part of your careerto visit colleges. es: yeah, it is a big part, and i'm very pleasedwith it because most of my stuff really comes in on recommendation. you know like one teacher will tell anotherteacher. i'm sure that's the way it happens becausei don't have an agent out there hustling work for me. i really don't.
so you really do it kind of by reputation. and as you know in that kind of work at colleges,and i do some high schools too, it's as much i think about your ease or ability at workingwith the kids as much as it is anything about your playing. i mean they assume you're going to play okay,but i really think getting along with the kids and trying to leave a good, inspirationaland educational message, is an important part i do. mr: you had said something, i was re-readingour last conversation, that you enjoyed working with kids at this age because they haven'tsmelled the money yet.
es: yeah. i feel very strongly about that. i find that they represent what i was likeat that age, in the sense of playing the music purely for the music and for the enjoymentand the pleasure and the thrill of it all. and you know i'll meet a high school guy,it's not uncommon for me to meet a high school guy ten years later, and sometimes he's theband director who hires me which is really cute. he played trumpet with me in the so-so highschool band and now he's a band director at either a high school or a college.
and that's really fun. and he'll say, "you know we had the best timewhen you were at our high school." i say, "did you really?" he says, "man, you know i've remembered thatnight all through the years because the band was really up and we were swinging and-" wellthose are the kind of things, i mean it honestly gives me a thrill to be able to tell you aboutit because that's so far away from commercialism and that whole area. it's what music is supposed to be about. mr: well i was observing in the hall lastnight, i should tell our viewers that we did
a festival here and you played with byronstripling and so forth, and the kids were just going down the hall with their eyes wideopen, like "oh, that was unbelievable." so those kids will have that same moment thatyou're describing. es: sure. yeah that stuff is really what i think bringingpros to campuses is about. i think that's what it's supposed to be about. it's supposed to be something deeper and moremeaningful than "gee he played great." i mean that's fine and that's inspirational,it's always inspirational to hear someone that plays great.
but i think if you've got some other stuffgoing where you're talking with kids and rapping with them a little bit and stuff like that,and trying the best you can to answer their questions, that means a lot to them, it reallydoes. it's the whole package. mr: you said as a kid you were a bit of anut when it came to the drums. es: yeah, i was a bit of a nut, but i findout, you know the longer i'm in the business and the more that i talk to other people,i find i was a rather common nut. i mean there's pretty much a thread that seemsto run through. i'll give you an example.
i knew tony williams quite well and i misshim very much with his very sad early demise. but tony told me he himself has told me, althoughi've seen it in interviews too, it was nothing for him to practice six or eight hours a dayon weekends when he was going to school. and it was nothing for him to practice threeand four hours on school days. and elvin jones has said he used to practiceeight hours a day any time that he could. so i don't think the fact that i tried topractice a great deal and play with guys in my neighborhood, i think it was pretty averagefor a guy who is really carried away with the music and his instrument. i found out i wasn't quite as much of a lonernut as i thought see.
mr: well it's not a coincidence that thoseguys you named, including yourself, are the people at the top of their profession. but sometimes you think, i think when i wasyoung i thought that maybe - of course naturally i'm older than tony williams would be now,and elvin's just a couple of years older than me. but i think sometimes when you're growingup you think that some of these great people, maybe they didn't work so hard at it practicing. they just rolled out of bed and it came about. but you find out later that with rare exceptionthat's not true.
they have worked a lot at it, really a wholelot at it. so yeah, i was kind of like that. but i was as much a fanatic to go to hearthe music in new york. i've already told you before so i'm not goingto recant that whole thing, but the fact that i could get from jersey to new york on a tencent subway token was very advantageous. if i lived out in the middle of ohio or something,i couldn't have had that see. so i've always thought i was a lucky guy tohave great jazz in proximity right up in all these little clubs in the famous 52nd streetthat you know a lot about, and that a kid with very little money could sneak in thoseclubs and learn how to hide in a corner and
that, and hear charlie parker and art blakeyand max roach. just think about that, i mean i'd say it'san unprecedented situation. and i don't know if it will ever exist again,mostly because if you go to the blue note today, a guy just told me, be prepared toput down twenty-five to thirty bucks to get in, and then you've got a couple of drinkminimum. i haven't been to the blue note by the way,but it's like a lot of high priced clubs. mr: i can attest to that. es: you can testify to that, right? i imagine you wouldn't want to go in therewithout eighty dollars in your pocket by the
time you got out and with a tip and everything. see that's the difference. mr: do you think that jazz is doing itselfa disservice with that kind of price thing? in fact i know that, i won't mention names,but a young, definitely in the category of young and up-coming artist i looked into gettinghere. and this particular person was charging morethan people who'd been in the business for forty years. just to come. es: you mean if you want to hire him.
mr: yes. and i'm wondering well how did this happen? and are we pricing the music-es: well baseball is all i can tell you. maybe they're talking a leap from professionalsports. i don't know. i'm not wise enough to know. i know that you can price yourself out ofthe business, that's been shown by a few people in the past, where they put such an astronomicalprice on their services that they start not to get called.
but i'm really not that smart about the businessend of it to tell you yes they are or nor they're not. i would say this, that i think in jazz, unlessyou're an unusual guy where the offers are just pouring in, and that doesn't seem tobe most people, i think you'd be rather foolish not to play more for your own playing's sakethan to hold out for that great big pie in the sky money. i mean i admit freely, i've told you thisbefore, if i'm getting a call from a high school with very limited funds, i do the besti can to get the selmer folks to help out, they're very good, or the sabian cymbal peoplehelp out, and i try to find a price that i
think is fair for me but at the same timei'm adjusting it downward because they're not one of those high schools in an uppermiddle class area of the rich suburbs. i mean they're not. and it's sort of the same kind of a thing. and i'd rather go and play and i'd rathergo there then not go there. you could sit at home and just say if i don'tget x amount of dollars i'm not going. it's a free country. mr: i keep coming across your name, the morei read about you, the things i didn't know you did, with charlie ventura?
es: yeah, that was my first national exposure. mr: and jackie and roy were on the band? es: oh yes. i would put his popularity at that time ona par with chick corea at his zenith, or any other group that you know had a zenith coupleof years, you know what i mean by that? he was in a sense a very hot attraction. he was definitely a jazz band but he had thatcommercial tinge by the two kids singing the doodley, doodadly, beedeley vocals. and we would open like the chicago state theater,i mean we would be the not opening act, we
would be the closing act there, which wasa very big theater, or any of the new york theaters that we played, we were the closingact. so for a period of about two to two and ahalf years, it wasn't very short-lived, it was very short-lived because jackie and roywent off by themselves, and he never quite regained the same height that he had withthem. but to make a long story short, that was myfirst public exposure. i had been out with a couple of lesser bigbands and toured around the country from the age of 17 for about two years, and then charlie,i sat in and played with charlie a couple of times on 52nd street.
and when he was forming this group he calledme. so that was a really good job because he wasa very nice man who encouraged you. conte candoli, we were the two babies in theband, the two young kinds. conte is about a year older than me so welike so say we've worked - now check it out - conte and i are always telling people we'veworked together for six decades right? 49 right? the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties,and we're now in the nineties. and it's true, we've actually played togetherfor six decades. we kind of think that's hip.
see we caught the forties by one year. 49. yeah one more year you'd say only five decades. and conte and i are still playing togetherwith doc's band. i mean it's kind of fun, isn't it, to havea long association like that? mr: absolutely. and he still sounds good, too. es: oh he sounds wonderful. he sounds just great.
by the way, the charlie ventura stuff hasbeen reissued on cd. it's never been on cd, you either had thebig twelve inch lp's or you didn't have it, and it just came out. and i talked to a guy, do you know who genenorman is? es: that's the producer of jazz concerts duringthe 50s and 60s. well he put out the first half of a program,it was a live concert at pasadena. it's the best thing we've ever recorded becauseit's really hot, imminent, you know you can hear the people and it swings real good. and i don't like everything that i've recorded,you know there's plenty of things i wouldn't
even bother telling you about. but this i liked. it had a good, hot quality, and so i saw genenorman in a night club two years ago and i says, "boy you're some guy." he said, "what the matter with you?" i says, "why don't you put the second halfof our concert out?" he says, "oh, that's right, i have a secondhalf." i said, "yeah, and people all over the countryliked that, i'm signing the albums, why don't you put out the second half?"
he says, "boy you're really on your horse." i said, "yeah, it was a good band, you'vegot to admit." "oh," he said, "it was a very good band, wesold a lot of records." so about a year ago, the guy says, "hey thesecond half is out" conte said the second half is out. so i hope i had a little result, yeah. i heckled him real good, like what a bad guyyou are, you know, only putting out half a concert. that's a good record if you ever hear it.
it's got a really good, hot quality. you know who benny green was? the fine black trombone player? he's passed now. he was a wonderful player, quite original,had all the bebop stuff down but he kind of played it his way. he wasn't a j.j. clone, he wasn't a cloneof anybody. he had a completely different style of playing. mr: you've probably played on numerous albumsover the years that you're name wasn't printed
on. es: oh yeah. mr: or the names of the musicians weren'ton. if i might interject it's annoyed me thatthe two best albums i made with basie were called "broadway basie's way," and "hollywoodbasie's way," two separate albums on command records. byron has them. he thinks they're great basie records, 'causeroy eldridge was on one of them. and they have taken them both, and they'veput them, i think decca bought them up, and
they've put them into a double album. i'm not talking cd now, i'm talking aboutlp. and a couple of years ago i spotted it ina store called showtime instead of broadway and - but there's not one person mentionedon the album. and i mean with due credit to all the finesoloists, not just myself. so somebody i know bought the album and said,"oh did you record with basie?" i said, "yeah, i did five albums with basie." he said, "you know i just picked up a basiealbum, 'showtime.'" that meant nothing to me.
he says, "you know what i love about the drumson that album?" i said, "what is it?" he said [sings] strangers in the night [scats]. i said, "that's me playing." he said, "i thought it was sonny payne." i says, "that's a nice compliment, but nothat's me, i made "'strangers in the night.'" so they have no idea whether it's me, andfor people that don't know lockjaw davis, who was a great tenor player at the time withthe band, they won't know it's roy eldridge unless they know their jazz history.
so i'm giving a very long answer i hope youdon't mind but you're absolutely right, when they don't list personnel, and they don'teven list the period of time when it was made, this is important to a lot of people. the personnel particularly is important, andto you the sideman it's important. i'm proud of those albums. they are some of the best things i've evermade, really. not just 'cause it's count basie, but becausethey came out very well and the feel was good, and basie was happy. mr: and the sound was great.
es: yeah the sound was good, and it's toobad when they do that, when one company buys them up like that that they decide we won'tgive any information, just a generic double count basie album. they took them and put them in one, two disks. so i hope sometime they'll correct that. mr: well i have it. es: you do have it. mr: chico o'farrill arrangements. es: yeah, chico o'farrill you have the original"broadway" and "hollywood."
mr: yes i do. es: okay. you and byron [stripling] are the only twopeople i know beside me. one thing i did, i was so knocked out withthose, i enjoyed making them so much, it was a thrill of a lifetime. i don't mind telling you it was one of thegreat thrills of my life to record with basie's band and have it go good, and he was happy,and the band was happy, and i was happy, that i did something i never did before, i ordereda dozen of each of those in a box, and i still have at least four of each after giving themto relatives and friends.
and am i glad i did that you know. mr: yeah. mint condition as they say in the record stores. es: well in a way, yeah, the cellophane'sstill on them, sure. because sometimes if they go out of print,you'll never get them again. or if they go into that "showtime" thing,well that's fine but there's no identification of you on the band or anything like that. mr: that's right. they sometimes make odd decisions when theyre-release things.
es: yeah, give me, that's my story, but giveme from your point of view as an archivist. do you have this problem sometimes when they'llrepackage something? a lot of times they're just leaving out namesand the dates. i mean in talking to other archivist and soforth - i don't even consider myself one yet -es: well let's say you're working at it. mr: that the dates may be messed up, and alot of times when they do the cd things i have - one of my favorite albums was withcannonball and nancy wilson. es: oh that's a nice album. mr: capitol records.
and when the album came out they had vocal,instrumental, vocal instrumental, vocal, instrumental you know. when the cd came out, they put all the vocalsin a row, and they put all the instrumentals at the end. and it really destroyed the continuity ofthe album. it was like you were at a club when you listento it, and the singer would come up and do a tune, then the band would do a tune. es: yeah, that sounds like nice pacing actually,the idea of instrumental, vocal. mr: right.
so i don't know who's in charge here. es: yeah there are some very funny things. and then you'll get the reverse, you'll getsome of the companies that are very good and fastidious and they'll give you like the threeouttakes on "how high the moon" with the false starts and, i'll mean they'll really get downto it like that. but they'll do that. like some of the new miles davis packagesthat are coming out. they'll give you four versions of a certaintune and things like that. i don't know if that's overkill.
i guess to the student it's not, they mightlike to hear the variations you know. but i just don't think they should. i think jazz is such a personal music thati think it is unfair to not list the personnel, i really do. i mean i'm not just speaking for myself alone,but some kid listening to that record, and he hears this great trumpet solo and says,"gee that's nice, i wonder who that is?" well that trumpet solo, if it was on "here'sthat rainy day" i think was roy eldridge. you know, the one and only time that roy eldridgeever recorded with the basie band. that's what byron said.
"hey man, that's history." that's what byron liked. i said gee little jazz played so good, andit's unusual because he only was with the basie band that short period of time. and they do a disservice i really do think. it's not such a big deal to just list thenames. if you don't want to do all that annotationas they call it, about every tune, i wouldn't argue about that so much, you know. but i do think the personnel, with jazz stuffespecially, it's a disservice to not list
people. mr: you know if your father hadn't broughthome that drum set on the subway that day, do you think you would have continued withthe piano? because you said that you didn't love thepiano. es: no i didn't love the piano. i didn't hate it but i didn't love it. well i don't know because i had one otherlittle connection to the drums. i was a boy scout and my scoutmaster, whoi adored, i thought was a wonderful guy named joe rider.
joe taught drums, and he wasn't a sit downdrum set player, he was a rudimental drummer. he had come out of drum corps and all of that. and i watched joe once or twice when he wasshowing guys stuff on a drum pad before i played. and i was starting to get kind of curiousabout that. so i'd like to think that if my dad hadn'tbrought home the drums i might have started in because joe rider the scoutmaster was teachingone or two guys in the troop. but i can't really tell you. if somebody said to me "if he had broughthome a tuba do you think-" i said i don't
know. it is funny. somebody told me the same thing, who justtold me was it one of our guys. have you interviewed houston [person] yet? did he tell you how he got the tenor? mr: i don't think he did. es: well it's worth repeating because it'slike the shaughnessy story of the drums, right? he said "we were all supposed to play pianoin my family so i did a little piano. then one day a sears and roebuck tenor saxophoneshowed up for me.
i said "you mean they just got it?" he said "they just got it." and he started. now he didn't ask for it. i said "you're like me and the drums." so i told him the drum story and he thoughtthat was great. he said "man, it was given to us." he put a nice meaning on it. it was given.
i said "that's right, houston, it was givento us." but it was as abstract in a sense as my dadbringing a couple of old drums home in lieu of a debt. because i said to houston, i said "houston,didn't you say to them 'buy me a sears and roebuck saxophone?'" he said "no i never did." mr: so curious. es: it just showed up here. mr: here's a hard question for you.
sometimes music is hard to put into words. es: what's the secret of life? mr: well that's easy compared to this. i looked in the webster dictionary this morning,under "swing." it says "jazz music, especially from 1935to 45, characterized by a strong driving rhythm and improvised counterpoint." are you able, in talking to students or anybodyin fact, to put what swing is into words? es: i finally think i can do it. i struggled with it for a long time.
but i really think i can do it. the thing is before i do it i want to sayto you how often swing is used as a noun representing the type of music. right? they'll say the swing bands of the 30s and40s, right? and they played swing. we're going to deal with it as - really howwould you describe it if i'm going to go about swing as a feeling? would we say it's still a noun but it's- imean if i say "it swings" that's like an adjective,
isn't it? okay. well i just want to make this clear to anybodywho watches this tape. because what i find the problem is sometimesis that youngsters, and even oldsters, they mix up the terms "to swing" and lock it inexclusively to jazz music. now i think bluegrass music swing like hell. it swings. now what is that swinging i'm talking about? without drums, right?
it's infectious. the main thing i think that swing means, forme, is that it's an infectious beat that makes you want to move, whether it's to dance orto sit and tap your foot or to tap your hands, but it makes you want to move in a sense,and in a response to it. it brings something out in you. it gets into you. maybe it makes you happy. but mostly it makes you want to get with it. infectious is the best word i can use.
that's why i don't like the fact that someone,who is very hard-headed about anything other than jazz, like if i say to them sometimes,well you know some of james brown's funk rhythms would swing you out into bad health. "well i don't like rock & roll." i say look man [scats] - i say if you couldhear that and you can't move yourself, you are dead, they should embalm you see? but that's a form of swing, do you know whati'm saying? if you hear a bunch of africans playing [scats]and they're playing that twelve-eight stuff like the watusi people do, and even if youdon't see them dancing, if you hear that it's
infectious. it gets you going too. so to me, any music, like bluegrass, or jazz,or funk music or watusi music, it's infectious and communicates to you rhythmically, andgets a visceral thing going. that's what i think swing is about. and i don't think it's an exclusive propertyof jazz. however, some people will play jazz and itdoesn't swing. that's the part that i think people shouldunderstand. to be swinging is a certain feeling.
you can have jazz people playing but it ain'tswinging too good see. so i think - i'm not going to say the mistake- but i think the error sometimes is to feel that if you're playing jazz it's necessarilyswinging. no it's not necessarily swinging. you know? it might be a little cerebral, a little abstract,and you don't feel very much of that visceral communication. it might be very good, it might be very technical,but it isn't kind of getting to you. that's the absence of swing.
that doesn't mean other things can't be there. improvisation can be there. imagination can be there. and feeling can be there. but i've heard for instance a bass and a drummer,both of whom were very good well known, and they don't play good together. they are not compatible. it never settles into a good, unified pulse. so it isn't swinging too good.
see? mr: it's so curious the way-es: that's a good definition, don't you think? mr: i like it, i love the word infectious. es: i'm not saying because it's mine, buti mean infectious is really what swing is about. hey, yes. [snaps fingers] when i see audience, and i'mplaying and i see some of that, it doesn't have to be everybody, if i see just a smatteringof that, i think we're getting it across. and if i see nobody moving, i don't thinkwe're getting it across.
mr: no, last night, a couple of times i'dlook out and i could see some of this, and i'd say well, it's happening now. es: that's right. mr: is it harder these days, because we don'tplay for dances that much, for kids to learn swing, because the dancing seemed to be verymuch connected with swing music at that time. es: well i don't know, that's a very goodobservation, i haven't really given it very much thought, but i think it's a good observationfor the reason that you're mentioning, and that is the music of prior years that wasstill associated with dancing had to have a good feeling to make the dancers feel good.
i'll give you a short story. i'm playing with lucky millinder at the savoyballroom in the early 50s. and he says to me - i may have told you thisstory i don't know, i can't remember. mr: it doesn't sound familiar. es: but i think it's a fun story, enough torepeat. and we're playing at the savoy and it's myfirst week with the band and i followed art blakey, a hard chair to fill. and i'm like, what am i 22 years old? but they liked the way i played, blah-blah-blah.
and i'm good enough that they didn't roastme. they let me learn. so we're up there the second or third night,and lucky looks up at me, lucky was an entirely self-taught musician, didn't read a note,and was one of the best band leaders in the business. he knew how to pace that band for that crowd. keeping the savoy crowd happy was a skill. if you didn't do it they would come towardthe bandstand and grumble and talk to you. that's the way they were.
lucky knew how to do that stuff. he stood in front of the band with a littletambourine. had time like a metronome, you know what imean? he had that groove going with that tambourineand he just knew what to do. so he looks up and he says "boy" - which heloved to say to me, boy, kiddingly - "boy, you're going to play a whole chorus on thedrums in the middle of this tune." the tune was "idaho" [scats]. you may remember, it's a very old standard. i said uh huh.
and he said "boy, if they stop dancing, you'redead." i said "yeah, okay, right lucky." he says "don't forget, if they stop dancing,you're dead." so man i started out, and i went [scats] ididn't care what i played as long as it was swinging. and i probably played real simple, traditional[scats], man i wasn't going into no heavy bebop or anything a little more technicalor abstract, and nobody stopped dancing see? and afterwards he went [claps] okay. but that was a good lesson - "boy they'd betternot stop dancing."
see 'cause that was the big part of up there. by the way when we worked up there, therewere two bandstands next to each other and the music would continually go. there wouldn't be a five minute break. we'd finish our last note, the echo, the nextband starts up see. so that was good training ground up there,because lucky had a heavy band. they played swing jazz, you know that typeof stuff, like standards, but they played rhythm & blues too and that was a good trainingground for me to get that kind of funky, shuffely - it's not rock & roll but i call it the fatherof rock & roll.
'cause it had that backbeat built in and ithad a little heavier feel. you had to play more bass drum. you couldn't get away with just playing thelighter swing feeling. you had to dig into the drums more, whichis why blakey played it so good, because he had a really deep beat, you know a reallydeep sound. but that was a good experience. i worked with that band, i traveled down southwith that band, and found out how they lived in houses instead of, they couldn't go intothe hotels. not in the 50s.
they couldn't go into hotels. did i tell you this whole thing about thehouses? mr: no. es: i don't think i did. mr: so in the 50s you traveled in the southwith- es: yeah i traveled in the south with lucky'sband. at that time i believe i was the only whiteguy in the band. at other times we had one or two other whiteguys in the band. but i think i'm actually - we did what's calledthe "chitlin' circuit" which was a group of
theaters that they referred to as the "chitlin'circuit." you would do the royal theater in washington- the howard theater in washington, the royal theater in baltimore, and i think there wasone in philly and i can't think of the name, and these of course were in predominantlyblack areas. and then you'd finish at the apollo. so the "chitlin' circuit" was sort of a fourtheater circuit and you would do, generally i guess we did, i don't know if we did a weekor maybe three or four days in each theater. but what i learned, that i thought was sointeresting, and i think unless you travel with a black band you wouldn't really knowthis unless some black friends told you about
it, but because they couldn't get into goodhotels, they had a whole circuit set up throughout the country, i mean all bands, not just lucky's,where you stayed in a private home with two or three other guys. you had a nice - these are the kind of womenthat kept meticulous houses, believe me. you had a lovely, clean room of your own. for a dollar at that time you could get anall-you-can-eat home cooked meal in the kitchen, you'd sit around a big table, and the ladywould always say "hey honey if you come in late tonight there's a little cold chickenin the ice box," literally like be at home here.
and even other amenities like if you neededa button sewed on the lady would do it, i mean never take money or nothing. and i thought to myself many times, out ofadversity i lived better with lucky's band than i had with charlie's band. because even though charlie was very successfulto a degree, we weren't making the huge money, the side men, that you could stay at the verybest places you know. i won't say we stayed at bad places either,but in a way i liked the house thing better. it was more like a home environment you know. and they had a lot of these strung out throughoutthe country that the black bands would stay
at. and i thought it was a very enterprising thingthat they did so that they didn't have to stay in really bad places. mr: did you ever get any grief, of being theonly white fella. es: no. i never did. mr: never. es: i think that's why the polarization thathas taken place to some degree in later years bothers me maybe a little bit more becausei, luckily, worked in a period of time when
if you played well, that was the badge ofacceptance. and things started to change in the 60s, naturallywith the social revolution that went on and this and that, and you know a white drummerin a black band wasn't popular at that time, it really wasn't, and i don't want to go intoa great big diatribe about it, but it would be unfair to not say it's happened. it's even happening today to some degree. and i don't think i could have the same opportunitytoday that i had then. i honestly don't think so, and i'm sorry thatit's that way because back then, even though we know there were many social ills and thingsthat were very bad for black people, there
was the advantage, for a white guy like me,to gain acceptance on the basis of playing only. it wasn't unhip for me to be in the band. but i know of - i'm not going into details- but i know of at least three or four situations where even the regular white drummer who hadrehearsed with black groups has not been taken on tour, and he's been told quite franklyit wouldn't be considered too hip today for him to do that. oh yeah. i mean these are situations that i've beentold personally.
mr: certainly a disservice to the music. es: yeah, it's a disservice to the music,and you know, it's one of those things, i'm sure many black people if they look at thistape would say well we've certainly had enough problems in the past and this and that. but i love a thing that abbey lincoln saida couple of years ago. somebody was talking about the predominanceof black players in jazz. and i think anybody that knows jazz wouldsay that's true. fine. if you want to say 80%, i'm going to go realhigh, let's say we're going to make a general
quote of maybe 80% of the most influentialplayers have been black. i don't know if that's right. this is just an example. and abbey said "yeah, i know, we may havehad a lot to do with it but we don't own it." and i thought that was a very good statement. and abbey was very politically active in the60s. i know abbey a bit. i knew max when she was married, max roachwhen she was married to him, and she was quite active politically as was max.
and i've always admired them both for thatbecause it wasn't easy on their careers to really stand up for what they thought wasright you know, for black people's rights. but i liked what she said about we don't ownit, meaning i can't sit here and say kathleen battle shouldn't be in the opera house, becauseshe's not a middle-european descendent. you know what i mean? hey they own opera. wouldn't that sound stupid? or to say anything leontyne price has done. "well it's negated by the fact that she'snot a middle-european."
and you're laughing because it's so silly. mr: and like basketball was invented by awhite man. es: yeah right, that's right. you know it's kind of like that. it's kind of like that. and that's why it makes me a little bit sadto see some of the polarization that's going but don't forget, i'm sure you know, the polarizationis beyond music right now, it's in a lot of areas of life. i'm sure you know that.
you know on certain college campuses there'squite a polarization of people, the way they hang out, the way they- i mean i was in oklahomaand in the cafeteria everybody was sitting mixed. there was black, white, green and yellow peopleall mixed up. and then i was in a more northern college,and i can't remember literally which it was and it doesn't matter anyway, and everybodywas in clusters. there was a black table, there was an asiantable, and then there was a whatever table and it was such a stark difference. obviously there everything is group-wise.
and in the oklahoma college, which used tobe called maybe more of a southern college, man it was a rainbow mixture. so that's just the times we live in. but i hope that we'll see a little more ofthe relaxed atmosphere. our music, jazz music, was always sort ofdifferent in that respect. a lot of black and white guys got along likereal brothers under the skin because of the music. and i always thought that was a great thing. i just, i did.
i was lucky enough to live through that periodof time when i even think a lot of the music was good with the inter-mixture of people. a lot of the groups that i belonged to thati thought were the best were the ones that were black and white. there was a great mixture of styles and thingslike that. mr: talking about mixtures of styles, couldwe talk just for a moment about when rock & roll came along? were there particular drummers that seemedto catch on to the rock & roll thing? when i listen to some of the early chuck berryrecordings it's really curious because chuck
is definitely into the rock & roll, but therhythm section is trying to like feel out what's going on here. they're pretty much still playing swing. es: well i wouldn't call myself at all a rock& roll historian, therefore i'll speak from the limited knowledge i have. i'm not a rock & roll historian, and i canonly say what i've seen and witnessed and experienced. but what i saw happen was that a great manydrummers and bass players couldn't cross over. what i mean by that is a lot of them who hada strictly jazz background couldn't get into
the straight eighth and sixteenth feel. some of them, many of them, didn't try hardenough. in my case, i came up strictly as a jazz drummer,right? and i wasn't thrilled by bill haley and thecomets at all. i mean to me it was real troglodyte rhythm,and you know so simplistic, i not only didn't pay attention to it, but i really didn't thinkit meant very much. no offense to bill haley, but that's justcoming as a jazz drummer, you know, that was way down the line to me. then as the music got a little bit more sophisticated,especially with stuff like james brown's rhythms
and drummers, that really caught my ear becausein a way it almost had sort of the improvisational stuff going on. the drummers were making up some really interestingbeats, you know, sophisticated, based on the rock & roll straight feeling. and when that came along, as a defense, i'mnot going to say i did it because i'm so altruistic, but i said i think i'd better get on the wagon,because the wagon is getting bigger. and i used to sit up in my little studio innew york where i taught on saturdays and other days of the week, and i'd buy james brownrecords, i'd buy sly and the family stone, and i would sit and work with it.
i'm not going to tell you, monk, that i justsaid to myself hey i think i'll play some rock & roll. when you're used to going [scats] with thejazz twelve-eight feeling, to get into [scats], it's another thing, believe me. and i've got a pretty good ear and i catchon fairly fast, but i don't think anybody playing one style for let's say fifteen years,is all of a sudden just going to push a button and say hey, now i'll be a rock & roll drummer. so in my case, i liked the newer stuff soit wasn't as hard to practice it, and i put a lot of time in on it.
because it's funny but i'm glad i did becausewhen i got on the tonight show, this was before the tonight show, in the 60s, when i got onthe tonight show, in the very early 60s, and i got on tonight show i started in '63, i'dbeen doing this for a couple of years, on record dates and things. i was not a first call rock & roll drummer,there were plenty of other people like bernard purdie would have been a first call. that was his meat. he was the boss of that stuff. and very, very deservedly so, one of the greatdrummers.
but i mean i had played a lot of gigs andworked where i had to play half rock half jazz. they called me for that. and then when i got on the tonight show, wedefinitely had a lot of funk acts and a lot of rock acts, so i'm kind of glad i brokethe ice and did it for a couple of years. and quite frankly, that was a requisite onthat show. if you were a drummer that only played verygood jazz and you didn't play very good rock, you couldn't have that job. i couldn't even call some subs that were wonderfuljazz drummers but they didn't play rock well,
doc [severinsen] says don't call them. i had a complaint last night from an act becauseit's a rock act and they don't play the style. so, seriously. i'm just saying that was a requisite of thejob, because you had to play equally well. you didn't have to be a genius but you hadto play professionally well. you had to understand it. mr: of course. well if he had a jazz guest on the show andyou had a person in the drum chair who could just do rock stuff, they would say the samecomplaint.
es: they would say the same thing. yeah, that's a very good point. that's right. i couldn't call a guy who was a straight rockplayer either, because his jazz stuff would be too weak. and big band jazz i think you really haveto have a little more experience at than small band jazz. what i mean is you have to have had also somebig band jazz experience, not just combo experience. because most combo drummers don't speak witha big enough sound for a big band.
they don't know how to get a bigger sound. it's not a case of louder, it's a case offuller. like a good lead alto player, what does heneed? a good, full sound, right? it's sort of like that. or a good lead trumpet player. you have to know how to generate a fullersound for that. so anyway, our original question, i hope wedidn't wander off it, was that yes, some players adapted, and i'd say some players did not.
and the players that did not soon found thework was really trickling away from them because there was such a little bit of jazz goingon, even around new york. i mean the jazz clubs were all closing up,and it was a kind of a different scene that was going on. mr: was there a period of a number of yearswhere, as you look back on your career, that were the toughest? es: the toughest? mr: oh let's say it was a struggle to findenough work. es: well i'm a very lucky guy because theonly time that i had that was in the beginning.
i worked at the phone company, i'd had a coupleof day jobs, and i only worked a few gigs at night, and i can honestly tell you thatfrom the age of less than 18, about 17-1/2, i was earning a living at music. it was a small living, but i didn't have towork a day job anymore. see i graduated high school at 16, so i workedat the phone company from 16 'till about 17-1/2, and i put in my union card. you had to establish residence in new york. so i got a little one room, cold water flat,and i lived there and worked at the phone company and you had to put in residency fora year.
you had to really live there. they'd come and check on you and all that. and i really feel very lucky. once i started out with a couple of thesetraveling bands, like randy brooks and bobby byrne who were second or third layer bands,good bands by the way, quite good musical, played in tune, good bands and good leaders,they just weren't the dorseys and the goodmans but from about 17-1/2 i really never had totake a day job, but i did have to collect unemployment a couple of times in betweengigs. i'm not going to say i was on the gravy train,i wasn't.
but i think once i got on charlie's band andi got national attention, i don't think i had to collect unemployment. so i think after about 19 and 20, i was startingto earn my living pretty good after that. mr: do you think your father was pleased thatthat little drum set he brought home that day turned into a career for you? es: i'd love to give you a happy ending tothat, but my dad left home, he and my mother broke up. it's not like he walked out, deserted, theydecided to split about, i think when i was 16 and i was just starting in really studyingthe drums.
so he never really, i don't know what he knewlater, i never saw him after that. not once. mr: no kidding. es: i tried to and, i don't know, i thinkmy mom had told him it would be better to stay away and he and i always got along. he wasn't an abusive father, nothing likethat. he was an alcoholic but not an abusive man. but i'm sorry to tell you i tried to lookhim up once or twice, he had moved and you know i'd like to think that maybe he knewthat i was successful at drums because he
brought the drums home, but i actually can'ttell you. it's one of those things you know. kind of lost in the past. mr: you fellas on the tonight show must havebeen monstrous readers. es: oh yeah, you had to be a cracker jackreader, yeah. because the music came in at 3:15. you had a chance to play the tune once tomake sure there was no wrong notes and kind of make sure there were no problems. then the artist would go out at the mic asif it was the real show, without their costume
on, and they'd put the lights on and everythinglooked like a show, and we'd play it a second time, and then the third time was during theshow. so i'm not saying we couldn't play it anothertime, but on the average we played it twice before you heard it. that's the average. so everybody had to be a cracker jack sightreader, and again, good at shifting styles. because one tune tony bennett would be on,boom you'd play a swing type tune. maybe the next act would be anita baker [scats]. did i tell you the story about anita baker?
do you remember a story about anita baker? es: well i'll give you - this is what i calldefensive listening, right? i'm not doing this to blow my horn but youhad to do this. i used to do defensive listening in my car. instead of putting in a jazz tape, i wouldturn on the radio and listen to the pop radio stations. not my favorite music at all. but i'd listen a lot, get the feel, right? so anita baker comes up, and she's got thistune that's quite popular at the time, i can't
remember the name. and i remember the way it goes, so i playthe beat that's on the record, but it ain't on the music. the music is real simplistic, like one andtwo and you know. and i'm going [scats]. and she turns around. and after we get done she comes up to me andshe says "you heard the record." i says "yeah." she says "thank you."
she says "they still haven't changed thatdamn part and if there's anything i hate it's to hear [scats]. but i played the beat that i heard on therecord. so that's how defensive listening sometimeswould help you see? and i was pleased. because you know your job, it's like milthinton says, "when you're at gigs like that, you're performing a rhythmic service." that's what milton calls it. and it's true.
i mean you're there to help them to soundgood. you're not there to blow your own horn see? so i always loved that. because she came up to me as if she was goingto scold me, and she says "ahhh, you heard the record." like sneaky you know? that's a good story. but anyway, you're right about having to be,everybody in every chair had to be a very good reader.
that's why kids that i see at clinics giveme all this nonsense about, you know, why should i bother to read, and so-and-so doesn'tread. i say that's fine and so-and-so isn't tryingto go into a lot of areas of work that he can't do. he couldn't do the tonight show. that doesn't mean he's not a wonderful drummer. it doesn't matter who we're talking about,but there are a few guys that don't read out there. i say fine, but the point is you get morework if you can read.
it's as simple as that. it's like let's say you can't read a bookor you can't read an application, i mean yes there are some jobs, you could bag groceriesthe rest of your life or you might move up the ladder if you could read. it's the same thing. it's not that you can't get along, but whyshould you limit yourself? mr: yeah, that's a pretty old fashioned thing,like if i learn to read i'm going to lose my spontaneity. es: yes or will it hurt my jazz is the oldline.
i don't want reading to hurt my jazz. but you'd be surprised, some kids love tocatch on to that because they don't want to have to want to bother. so you know what i say? 'cause the example that was given for yearswas buddy rich see. so i would go at clinics "well buddy richdoesn't read, why should i read?" and my rejoinder is: "do you think you'reas talented as buddy rich? if you are, you shouldn't be here you shouldbe out earning like he did, at the age of four years of age."
a thousand dollars a week in 1921. you think you're that talented? the highest paid, second highest paid childstar in the world? do you think that you're as talented as hewas? that's when he was alive. and they say ohh. i say well see that's the difference. he could get by without reading because hehad way more talent than most of us. and i of course say "most of us" because imean it.
natural gift. he was the second highest paid child starto shirley temple i think. mr: i didn't know that. es: or jackie cooper. mr: as a dancer and-es: he was a dancer, he was a drummer, and he was little traps and he toured australiaand the world and he made a thousand dollars a week, which at that time i wouldn't evenwant to say how much money, and it was 1921, because he was born in 1917. and it was in like the guinness book of recordsthat he was the second highest child star
in the world. now that's a real, that's a mozart prodigy. doc [severinsen] used to call him the mozartof the drums. so that's what i try to use, you know, whenthey give me that thing. today they might say it about another guyor two that i know who are very good drummers who don't read. but i keep saying to them, okay, i wonderif you're as good as so-and-so? now i'll use those names because buddy's kindof gone you know, and i'll say "do you think you're as good" as so-and-so.
"well i don't know." i say "well if you're not well maybe you'dbetter read just in case you're not as good as him, see? mr: didn't they pull some stunts on him whenhe got on the tonight show a few times? es: oh yeah, i had to make up a drum headon the big floor tom-tom that sits over here, you know the big tom? i had to make it up out of paper, and in betweenthe rehearsal of course and the show. so he played on it, it was fine, and i hadthe guys make it days before, and we'd put this on, it looked just like a real nice drumhead.
and he never looks at anything. when he sat down, this is a rented set youknow. and the first time he hits it he goes rightthrough it and his whole arm went down and he turned around off mic and said "you sonof a bitch shaughnessy." he knew who did it, yeah. that's true. and another time i had them make up a cymbal,it looked just like a real cymbal, up on the left crash thing here? and they made it out of a plastic.
they baked, they sort of baked a plastic thing. it looked just like a cymbal i swear. i don't know how they did it. i think they took the mold from the real cymbal. and the first time he hit it it exploded intoa million things. we did both of those. well he was a terrible prankster himself see? so you had to be able to take it, oh yeah. mr: did he ever get back to you?
es: no, not really, i think he liked it, tobe honest. it made so much laughs, so much fun you know. mr: they had a classic muppett episode hewas one where he basically played the stage. es: right. and in the middle he stops, he says "wheni play a room, i play a room." es: i promised bernard purdie that i wouldgive him a copy of that, he doesn't have it. and i saw him recently. i did a clinic with louis bellson, i arrangedtwo drum deals you know, and we were up in manchester, connecticut about three weeksago, and bernard said "oh that sounds like
such fun." so i said "i'll make you a dub and send itto you. mr: what's in the near future for you? i know you're doing occasional tours withthe tonight show band. es: yeah, we're doing either three or fourtours a year with doc severinsen and the tonight show band, and that's a lot of fun, becausei have a lot of old friends in the band you know, and the band sounds great. and let me think, i've got, well i alwaysdo my two weeks of summer teaching at skidmore college up in saratoga, new york.
i look forward to that, that's a lot of fun. and generally i'll just keep doing what i'mdoing, which is, i'm really back to doing what i did in the beginning, a freelance jazzdrummer. i mean seriously. i'm kind of - the circles come around. the phone rings so you've got an a&p storeopening, i come, they've got you booked at a bar mitzvah, i come, and i'm doing that,and i'm enjoying it. i like the variety of it, it's a lot of fun,and i have that mixture where i teach enough that i enjoy the teaching part of it.
and it's about, i'd say 70% playing, 30% teaching. and i like that. and i'm happy with the mix. i don't really have any unrealized ambitions. i wish i'd get a little more work for my quintetthat i have, but a lot of places that used to hire us like schools don't have quite enoughmoney to bring five guys across the country, the air fares and everything are very prohibitiveso we only do a couple of gigs a year. i wish we could do more because everybodylikes the group and i have got guys that do good clinics, like on brass, reeds, piano,bass and drums.
i like to do more with that group. but you just can do, even phil woods toldme he's working more as a single now than he is with his group. as great as he is, and as wonderful a nameas phil had, but he told me lately he's been out more single. same thing. air expense. you deal with that all the time of course,trying to bring people in, don't you? well i want to compliment you on your professionalismtoo, as far as just dealing with business
stuff. it made it much easier for me. es: well thank you. mr: i mean just little things like here'swhat i need to do, here's what it costs, and you can get your own plane ticket and thatkind of stuff. es: yeah, well i always think it's just aseasy to do it because in a way it's good for me, i can leave a lot of time that's goodfor me, you know, i know when our traffic jams are for instance. silly things like that but it's true.
if you leave just a little bit earlier inl.a. you get ahead of all that madness, and i'd rather get up earlier and get ahead ofthe masses and stuff. but i'm glad, i hope it does help you. i'm pleased that you had us come out for this,this was really nice. and i know the kids enjoyed it a lot. i could tell by their reaction. in a way that's the most important part, right? they have a good time and they learn something. now one drummer stopped me and he said "man"last night, after it was all over, he said
"man, i'm going to go home and practice sohard, you've really inspired me." i said "that's the best thing you can sayto me. i'd rather hear that then how did i play." he said "oh you played wonderful." i said "no, i didn't say that, i'm not fishingfor you to tell me. i'm telling you that the best thing you couldsay is that i inspired you to go home and practice," because i said "that's what guysused to do for me." i'd hear some great drummer play and say "oh,i've got to go home and practice, i've got to get better."
what a good example that was, of drumming. so that's the best compliment. it's great that that circle is-es: yeah that's what you hope to leave is a little inspiration, absolutely. how about you? i'm going to be devil's advocate and turnit around. do you have any ambitions with your archivesor anything like that that you hope to realize soon or in a while? mr: well first of all to get it open to thepublic, you know that's the first thing.
it will be soon. we're figuring out how to disseminate theinformation in a way that honors the artist and so forth. there's just a lot of questions these dayswith the internet and all that about putting all this stuff out there, keeping copyrightissues in mind. es: yes, it's a little touchy, isn't it. mr: it gets more confusing as you go along. i have been very blessed with this projectto associate with all my people that i listened to as i came up.
listening to these records and i'm alwaysthe type of person who loved to read the liner notes. es: i always did too. mr: who played on who? es: oh i always like to read the liner notes. mr: you know and now snooky young's with thisband and- es: oh yeah i always like to read the linernotes, in fact i was always disappointed they didn't have good liner notes or extensiveliner notes. mr: so now to get to talk to all these folkshas just been a real treat and it's inspired
me to write some new compositions that downthe line maybe i'll record. es: so that's inspired you a little bit? es: that's terrific. just let's say generally speaking, have youhoped to possibly make your archive stuff accessible on the internet possibly? i'm just saying possibly. mr: i think the plan is right now to put samplingsout with some visuals perhaps, you know, have to get a web site up and put samples of thingsand of course list the people we have. es: yeah it seems to me that that would bethe right step.
i mean the idea of having everything availableon the web, i mean first of all it's such a huge undertaking that i couldn't conceivehow long it would take. but putting samplings to show people who mightbe interested, who might like to come, that would be what it's aimed at, isn't it? to show what we have, the kind of stuff thatwe have? that would really give you exposure as theysay. we've been contacted from down beat magazineabout perhaps using, they have a satellite thing set up where the might beam stuff downto some schools that don't have music programs. mr: so that' sounds like something for us.
es: now that's kind of good, yeah, isn't thatwonderful, to places that don't have anything much in the way of good library books on jazzor any source of history, huh? i'll tell you, as we all know, there's nolimit to the good stuff that the internet can do. it's even done a few good things for me. i've told you i've found guys that have tapesof albums that i've lost or given away or something, and they're nice enough to sendthem to you. gee it's terrific. i had a guy from scotland send me an e-mailand he says "we're the jimi press" j-i-m-i,
they're the biggest jimi hendrix fan clubin the world. we know, now check this out, we know thatapril 19, 1969, you played with jimi hendrix when his drummer got sick. now i know i played with jimi hendrix, doyou think i could have told you what year it was? much less what day it was? "and we wonder if you would be kind enoughto write a few paragraphs, and either e-mail or mail us for our jimi press, a monthly publicationsee? so i get back to them by e-mail and i said"sure i'd be glad to do that for you guys,"
i said jimi was a very colorful characterand i can give you a couple of cute anecdotes, you know, leopard-skinned pants and me sayingto doc severinsen, "i ain't playing with no jimi hendrix and a suit and a tie." and he said "no, you don't want to do that,"so i took off my tie, took off my jacket, rolled up my sleeves, and you know at leasti fit a little better, with jimi hendrix's snake-skinned pants and rainbow shirt andall of that. and anyway, the story is that i did do thisfor them, i wrote a couple of paragraphs out about what transpired that day and what tunesi thought we had rehearsed, and they corrected me on one of the tunes.
i mean they've got some stuff. and then do you know what they did? they said "you've been so nice," and theypublished it and they sent me a copy, and they sent a note with the magazine and theysaid "you've been so nice about helping us out with this, that we're going to trace downthe bootleg copy of you playing with jimi hendrix that is around europe in a few places,not video, because they didn't have video cameras. and last week, the tape arrived from london. they found a guy in germany and he ran a copy,he's a jimi press fan, sent it to them and
they sent it to me. now that's what i mean. the web has got such good positive stuff likethat you know. now i haven't listened to it, you know i wasbusy and i've been traveling, but it's fun to have it. i mean where else would i have found a tapeof playing with jimi hendrix? just through these guys, right? they know everything. i mean jesus.
they knew johnny carson was off that nightand flip wilson was the sub host. i don't remember that. you know, i did over five thousand shows,am i supposed to remember who was hosting april 19, 1969? these dudes know, don't ask me how they know. and everything they say is right. oh by the way, you played "lover man" too. i had said we played something with fire inthe title, a famous jimi hendrix tune, fire something.
and they said "that's right and you also played'lover man,'" which i had forgotten. mr: did it swing? es: i don't know. i'll tell you, they say it sounds real good. mr: wow, fascinating. es: oh yeah, and jimi blew out all the wiresin the nbc main cable by stepping on an effects pedal that they told him not to hit. in rehearsal he touched it and everythingwent cheeew. and they said "jimi, don't use that pedal,because it's an overload on the main cable."
and during the show he got hot and i thoughtto myself i'll bet he's going to hit it. and he went yahhhhh, and he blew out thatline, and we stopped and they had to put in a new line, and then we went on again. that was a funny incident, it really was. that's why i liked charlie mingus, i thinkthat's why i got along with him. he was kind of a real independent, i don'tknow, it's hard to describe, but if you knew charlie mingus, that was, jimi was like that. you just deal real direct with him, real straight,this, that, "play a lot on this and give me a lot of cymbals, ed."
i said, “okay, jimi, i'm going to do thebest i can." he said, "i heard you play with charlie mingus,it's going to go fine." that's the way it was, it made you feel good,relaxed. mr: cool. well listen, thanks for your time today. es: my pleasure. thanks for having me. it's great to be up here with you and seewhere you keep all your records man, with the spider's webs on it all.
mr: guess what we got in here. all right. we'll see you again i'm sure. es: i hope so, monk, thank you.
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