Pepper Adams Archive

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Happy New Year! I was able to fit in a trip to New York over the Christmas holidays. In anticipation of finally delivering the first batch of Pepper Adams materials to William Paterson University’s Living Jazz Archive, a few weeks ago I emailed the following announcement to my jazz research colleagues around the globe:

I'm very pleased to announce that in the next few weeks I will be delivering to William Paterson University the first batch of Pepper's materials from his estate. My goal was to make his materials available somewhere in the New York City area, where far more researchers would have access to it. Furthermore, the idea of pairing his materials with Thad Jones' was irresistible. Many thanks to David Demsey for making this possible.

Mostly LPs and 78s are all I can squeeze into my little VW this time around. On subsequent trips north, I will deliver his papers, photographs and ephemera, plus my research notes and many rare audience recordings and broadcasts. Some of Pepper's documents have already been posted at my Instagram site: https://www.instagram.com/pepperadamsblog/ 

Additionally, all of my interviews with and about Pepper, about 275 at last count, are being digitally preserved by Worcester Polytechnic Institute's Jazz History Database: http://jazzhistorydatabase.com/index.php  Available to anyone with internet access, all of the audio should be available starting this summer.

Happy holidays!

Gary Carner

Pepperadams.com

Also, while editing the final draft of the first half of my Adams biography, I sent the following excerpts of my galleys to my good friend Anders Savnoe. He’s the author of Bluesville: The Journey of Sonny Red, (Scarecrow, 2003), the study of Detroit alto saxophonist Sonny Red. I knew he’d appreciate reading all my references to Red:

Donald Byrd met the alto saxophonist Sonny Red in 1945 at the Hutchins Intermediate School. They had classes together, played school dances, and were in the orchestra and concert band. 

Charles Boles, Claude Black, Sonny Red, Donald Byrd, Paul Chambers, Doug Watkins, Teddy Harris and Tommy Flanagan all attended Northern High. Its program was run by Orvis Lawrence, who had played with Glenn Miller and the Dorsey Brothers. “Claude was in the choral group with me,” remembered Charles Boles: 

We all did the Messiah every year. We were very good. They had a very good [voice] teacher there, Claire Weimer. . . . I couldn’t play in the concert band because I couldn’t read as well as Donald Byrd’s sister, Martha Byrd. She was a classical pianist. So I ended up playing bells in the concert band, and then I played piano in the dance band. They very rarely played any dances. We just played jazz tunes, and blues of course. In that band were people like Donald Byrd and Sonny Red, Paul [Chambers]. Paul and I used to eat lunch together every day. When he got to the 10th Grade, he went to Cass. Him and Donald Byrd both.

Claire Roquemore is still another Detroit legend. “There was this great trumpet player named Claire Rocquemore,” wrote Miles Davis in his autobiography. “He was one of the best I ever heard.” “He could play anything,” remembered Charles Boles:

He’d wear Miles out. He’d wear anybody out. Donald [Byrd] didn’t want to get on the bandstand with him. He ended up being strung out, and he didn’t go anywhere. He would always be around, when he could keep it together, and kick everybody’s butt. He was at Barry’s house all the time.

Roquemore “was a wonderful, young, Caucasian-looking trumpet player,” recalled Roland Hanna. “He was very fair-skinned, blonde-haired. He probably had a white mother and a mixed father. He looked white but he wasn’t white. He was mixed. Whenever Claire had a gig, he’d use Pepper.” When Charlie Parker came to town, he would ask, “Where’s ‘Roque?’” Teeter Ford, yet another obscure trumpet player who never fulfilled his immense potential, replaced Roquemore in Barry Harris’ group (with alto saxophonist Sonny Red) in the early 1950s, According to Frank Gant, he had a better tone than Rocquemore, but not Roquemore’s extraordinary breath control. Harris believed that Ford would eventually become jazz’s greatest trumpeter.

When Frank Foster moved to Detroit in 1949, he taught many of the young musicians, including Barry Harris, how to work with tritone substitutions. “I think Frank Foster was probably one the best things to happen to Detroit when he came,” said Barry Harris. “He knew a lot about music. He was our biggest influence.” In turn, Detroit shaped Foster. “When I came to Detroit,” Foster told the audience at Thad Jones’ memorial service at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York City, “I could play. But Detroit taught me how to swing.” In 1950 or so, before he joined the U.S. Army, Foster would meet with some of the budding Northern High School musicians. “He was becoming a pretty astute arranger,” said the pianist Teddy Harris. “He would get Donald Byrd, Sonny Red, and myself and Claude Black, and take us to his house, where he would teach us how to read his arrangements.” 

Detroit’s musicians revered Harris as much as they feared his mandates for self-improvement. After high school was out an any given day, some of Detroit’s most dedicated young players went to either Barry Harris’ house or Bobby Barnes’, depending on how they were faring with Harris’ jazz assignment from the previous week and how much courage they possessed. “At Bobby Barnes’ house,” remembered Charles Boles, “Roland Hanna was the piano player, Gene Taylor was the bass player, Claude Black played trombone, and Bobby Barnes played the sax.

Sometimes we’d go to Bobby Barnes’ house, who lived on Russell on the North End, or we’d go to Barry Harris’ house. Sonny Red would go back and forth. . . . We would come out of Northern High School — me and Paul Chambers and Sonny Red — and we’d catch the Woodward bus. . . south, downtown to, say, Warren, and then you’d catch the crosstown bus to Russell. And then you’d catch the Russell bus to Barry’s house. . . . At Barry’s house, it was almost a situation where it was either Doug [Watkins] or Paul. They were in fierce competition. . . . When we went to Barry Harris’ house, more than likely you’re gonna get slaughtered! You know what they do? They would egg you on, and do everything they could do to get you to play, and then they’d play something like “Cherokee” or some hard-ass tune. Of course, they’d play it at some ridiculous speed, but you couldn’t keep up. So you’d go home and you’d practice that all week long, and you go back and they’d play it in “A,” or play it in some other ridiculous key that would have nothing to do with the tune at all. They’d say, “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m in ‘A.’” Whatever you practiced would be null and void. You could barely play in B-flat! When you get your butt kicked at Barry Harris’ house, then you’d slink on over to Bobby Barnes’ house the next two or three days. You wouldn’t dare show your face at Barry Harris’ house when you got killed already. He was a master teacher, though. I tell you what: If you continued to go there, he would help you. He would teach you how to improvise.

Biography Update

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

READ BELOW!

It’s been a busy month. Updating the entire Pepper Adams Interviews section of

pepperadams.com took a ton of time, mostly because I needed to listen to all of

them again in their entirety. I wanted to be sure that I didn’t overlook any important

facts that Pepper mentioned which might be a valuable addition to my Adams

biography. Also, it was necessary to add some mouse-over text for the user and fix

some previous errors. As of now, all fourteen interviews have been posted. All that

remains is seeing if we can improve the digital skips in the John Reid interview.

For several weeks, on and off, I’ve continued to wrestle with the opening section of

Chapter One of the Pepper bio. I just wasn’t entirely happy with it. I think now I’ve got it

where I want it.

I’m happy too with the rest of Chapter 1, and 4, and I’ve been editing Chapters 2 and 3.

Moreover, I’ve rewritten the Prologue and that’s done.

I did finish going through a stack of notes and quotations from various interviews that I

did with Johnny Griffin, Bill Watrous, Bill Perkins and others. Now that the pile of info is

sorted out, I’ve turned to my 46 microcassettes (as much as 92 hours of interview) that I

need to hear before I feel comfortable that I’ve gotten everything that I need from them.

Once finished, probably by early September, I can edit Chapter 5 and move on to Chapter

6, my final chapter.

Regarding Chapter 6, I already have 60 pages of notes and an outline. I’m hoping I can

breeze through it, then make some valuable concluding comments.

As for the publishing the first half of the bio soon, I think that this will be pushed ahead to

early next year. I just have too much work to do before I get to that point. Before it’s done,

I’ll be establishing a mailing list, very long overdue, at pepperdams.com

Below are some recent interview excerpts I hope you enjoy that I’ve added to my notes:

Pepper Adams to Ben Sidran:

“If you play everything legato, and don’t use the tongue -- and don’t outline where the
note is going to hit -- everything tends to run together because it is lower pitched. It has
no rhythmic impact, or impulse, behind it. I’ve tried to use a legato tongue so that there
is differentiation between the notes. I’ve tried to do a lot with articulation because that
has a lot to do with what the time feeling is going to be. And, if you fail to articulate on
baritone, or particularly on lower pitched instrument, it is going to be one constant rumble
after a while.”

Bill Watrous to Gary Carner:

“Every time he played, it was an adventure,” said Bill Watrous. “His ideas, and his
conception of the stuff that he was trying to play, was totally original. I would say, more
so than anybody else [who] ever played that instrument.”

“Pepper had an angularity about his playing, like a jagged sort of approach, that was very
much like the way Sonny Rollins approaches the instrument. Sonny goes at the instrument
from all angles -- from the left, from the right, and under, and goes that way. Pepper,
basically, did the same thing. Pepper had incredible technique. Pepper didn’t just run the
changes. Pepper played all over the changes. I think they sort of approached their music
from a similar direction.”

“The sense of humor was amazing! Pepper would play: I found myself laughing to myself a
lot when Pepper would play some of the things he would play.”

Bill Perkins to Gary Carner:

“He’s one of the true giants of jazz. He stood out in that rare group of jazz soloists, the great giants
of all time, people like Bird and Prez. And John Coltrane has become that. I think that Pepper was
that on his instrument. And Diz. They’re in an area where very few have done the creative work that
they’ve done.”

Johnny Griffin to Gary Carner:

“He was never a pushy person. Maybe that’s what kept him from being more of a giant, as
far as the public is concerned, because he was never aggressive.”

Ron Kolber to Gary Carner:

“He would send me a tune, an old tune,” said Ron Kolber. “Every time we’d see each other, he’d
say, ‘You know this one?’ We used to try to stump each other with old tunes. One his favorite tunes
was a tune by the name of ‘Says My Heart.’ It’s an old tune. Always digging for old tunes; that was a
little hobby with him. He said that some of the early tunes were really great. . . . He had great interest
in the old-timers. Any of the old-timers. He would listen to all of the old records. He said, ‘That’s where
we’re from.’ He said, ‘If we listen to that, we’re gonna get to where we are, and maybe beyond, but
you can’t start in the middle and go. You gotta go all the way back.’”

Finally, here’s three clips of tunes that Anders Svanoe performed at his recent concert dedicated to
Pepper, and a video of Pepper conducting an after-concert interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybB-Rpnzx8A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRtmIVKJ9EI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXdFEEnkq5M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ovuEbDv8YQ

Romping through the Midwest

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

















READ BELOW!

I left for my tour of the Midwest on April 8 and returned on the 23rd. I needed a full week to catch my

breath upon my return. After two solid years of writing Pepper’s biography on top of (or in between)

work, the trip really took its toll. I drove more than 1,000 miles from St. Louis to Macomb and back, and

then from Minneapolis to Madison and back. Half the trip was a vacation in Minneapolis with my old

college buddies, and there was a lot of carousing.

Before I left, one of my loyal biography readers encouraged me, once I got some distance, to reread the

first half of my forthcoming Pepper biography. He said that my writing had improved over the last two

years and that I’d probably find some things to tweak that no longer would seem acceptable. He said,

“more work equals a better book.” He was right! A few days after my return, I started reading my

opening paragraph of Chapter 1 and immediately saw things to alter. Accordingly, for the next few weeks

or longer, I’ll be editing the first half of the biography for publication this summer as an e-book. More

details will follow, once I’m done and figure out the vendor, etc.

I still have five more interviews on cassette, a handful of radio interviews, and about fifty interviews on

microcasette to listen to before I can make my final additions to Chapter Five and possibly the rest of

the book. What I’ve found by listening to these interviews is the unexpected gems here and there that,

when stripped into the text, add meaning and context to the text I’ve already written. I discovered some

of these today in my interview with the trombonist Bill Watrous. In some cases, as with my interview the

the drummer Eddie Locke, I’ve had to write new paragraphs that I wasn’t anticipating because of the

importance of the testimony.

On my journey throughout the Midwest, I came to the conclusion that I’d prefer to put off doing the

hardcore listening of Pepper’s recorded work from 1956-1977 until next year. That work will be

discussed in two separate appendices, as I’ve already done with the some fifty pages of text I wrote

about Pepper’s recordings during the period 1977-1986. All of the tunes I discuss in the appendices will

include links to YouTube so that the reader can immediately listen to the music. Much of it has never

been heard before.

Putting off the listening allows me to complete the biography this year. Because I’m on a roll and only

one chapter away, it’s far more gratifying to have that (as one wag once described a hemorrhoid) behind

me.

I’m especially grateful to the wonderful hospitality that I was shown on my trip by my gracious guests. My

first visit was to Western Illinois University, to visit with my co-author, John Vana, and then speak to his

graduate class, “The Big Three: Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Pepper Adams.” At the St. Louis

Airport the following day, my flight got delayed for nearly three hours due to the snow storm that was

moving through the Midwest. The Minneapolis Airport was closed during that time so they could clean

the runways and catch up on all the delayed flights. I was indeed lucky to land in Minneapolis at 7pm and

still have some fun there, rather than be placed in an airport hotel and fly out the next morning. I think the

flights after me were grounded.

The following Sunday night, I met the alto saxophonist Jeff Erickson for dinner, where I proceeded to

download for hours the essence of my two years of Pepper research. Thanks, Jeff, for listening, and for

allowing me to get that out of my system! The following day, I lectured to his jazz survey class at the

University of Wisconsin/La Crosse. Then I drove about a half hour up the pretty Mississippi River to

Winona, where I had dinner with the drummer, Rich MacDonald., Afterwards, I lectured about Pepper to

his class.

The following day, I drove some 200 miles to Madison, then spent the evening with the baritone

saxophonist Anders Svanoe. Svanoe did one of the first books for Scarecrow. See

https://sonnyredmusic.com/ for all his work on the Detroiter. Obviously, we had a lot to discuss. After

eating some rather average food in LaCrosse and Winona, it was great to eat Nepalese, Laotian and

Mexican food during my stay. Svanoe took me around the main campus of the University of Wisconsin,

and the following day we looked over his Red memorabilia, then drove to Beloit College, where I lectured

to his jazz class.

That night Svanoe did an impassioned set of Pepper Adams tunes with a tasty rhythm section at

Madison’s Arts and Literature Lab. It’s an intimate setting for music, and we had a small but enthusiastic

turnout on a Wednesday night. My pre-concert talk to the audience and Anders’ performance was

captured on video. It will be posted soon at pepperadams.com. Many thanks to Thomas Ferrella, for his

support of the center and his wonderful hospitality. I hope more folks support it:

https://artlitlab.org/events/the-life-and-music-of-pepper-adams-reading-and-concert   

The last lecture I gave was to Chris Merz’s class at the University of Northern Iowa. Chris studied with

Yusef Lateef and had been waiting for the right time for me to visit. Fortunately, we fit it in this time around.

I drove 200 miles to Cedar Falls, leaving Madison at 6:45am, to get to his class in time. Fatigued but

undaunted, I found his class to be among the most spirited of any class I’ve taught about Pepper. I was

excited to go there, because over the past twenty or so years Chris has built the finest program in the

state of Iowa. Sure enough, his students, especially the saxophonists in attendance, were very engaged

and it was a memorable experience -- for me up there with Eastman, Brigham Young, and only a few

others.

That night, after we had dinner in Cedar Falls, I heard Merz at a jam session. He’s a very fine tenor

player. He was worried because I told him how displeased I was with Joshua Redman’s performance in

Hopkins MN a few days before. After the gig, I told him how much I loved his playing; how much joy he

exuded, how his lines swung so logically. Like Pepper once said, try to tell a story by getting conversation

going.

Part of my vacation I stayed with my webmaster, Dan Olson. We discussed pepperadams.com at

length, coordinating the future post with Svanoe, and charting the site’s future. We spent hours sorting

through the remaining Adams interviews that still needed to be posted. Right after I returned home,

“Danno” made some significant updates to the site. Due to a discovery I made after hearing an interview

with Pat Henry, the San Francisco deejay and the producer of Mel Lewis’ very first date as a leader, the

longstanding riddle about the publisher of “A Winter’s Tale” has mostly been solved:

https://www.pepperadams.com/Compositions/compList/index.html

Significantly, the Adams Interviews page has been updated and nearly completed:

https://www.pepperadams.com/Interviews/index.html

We will be changing the contact email from info@pepperadams.com to this blog so that we can drive

some more traffic and so that folks who email additions, etc, get replies in a timely manner.

Lastly, I’ve made some new additions to Pepper’s Instagram site, with some other photos forthcoming. Hopefully, I don’t repeat too many posts already on the site.

https://www.instagram.com/pepperadamsblog/

As always, I welcome your comments, and continue to be very grateful for all your support.