February Doings

 

February was a productive month, even though the great

bulk of my Adams work is now completed. First,

pepperadams.com continues to grow as an amazing

research and performance tool. The transcription page

(https://www.pepperadams.com/Transcriptions/index.html)has now exceeded 100 solos with the addition of new ones

by John Vana and Pete Lukas. And you can expect more to

come, too, as Vana continues to study Adams’s entire oeuvre

in preparation for his Pepper book. It will be added to my

biography and also available individually in time for Adams’s

centennial in 2030. 

I’m excited to report that Dan Olson, my trusty webmaster, is

busy revamping the transcription section of the site so that each

transcription is paired with the complete performance of the tune.

In that way, musicians can get deeper into each performance by

having both the PDF of each solo and Pepper’s performance of

it at their fingertips. I hope to see the new page posted soon.

Leif Bo Petersen recently alerted me to a photo of Charlie Parker

at the Mirror Ballroom

(https://www.instagram.com/p/CadUnM0prRE/ ).According to his research, this is the actual performance that

Pepper saw in mid-April, 1949. The photo will be added to the next

revision of my ebook. Also, Petersen wrote a very perceptive review

of Reflectory that will be published in Danish in Jazz Special. See

the English translation below.

For those who have access to “Hot Sounds on Zoom,” Jazz History

Database’s weekly internet show, I’ll be on from 5-7pm Eastern this

Thursday, March 10. I’ll be reading from my Pepper biography and

playing tunes included as links in the book that have never been

heard by the public. I hope to see you there. 

Time: This is a recurring meeting; we meet here every Thursday

afternoon    

     

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Pepper Adams Biography

Jazz historian Cary Carner, perhaps best known for his documentary

compilation The Miles Davis Companion (1996), is in the process of

creating a comprehensive work about the American baritone \

saxophonist Park "Pepper" Adams (1930–86) together with alto

saxophonist John Vana. The first part, a biography written by Carner,

was published in 2021 and is now available in a revised version. The

second part, containing musical analyses, written by Vana, will be

published in the run-up to the 100th anniversary of Adam's birth.

 

Carner's work is based on many years of thorough research based on

an extensive material of interviews with Adams. These are complemented

by an impressive collection of interviews with musicians who have played

alongside him and other individuals who were part of his life.

I have no doubt that the  work will stand as a definitive monument

over Pepper Adams, and it will undoubtedly create a broader interest

in and understanding of his music. Personally, before reading, like

many others, I had only a sporadic knowledge of Pepper Adams. He

was mostly a name that I often confused with west coast saxophonist

Art Pepper.  When Pepper Adams himself was subjected to such

confusion, his comment was: "My sax is bigger"  or " No, I never spent

time at San Quentin."  The lacking recognition of Pepper Adams' position

is probably due  to his main instrument, the baritone saxophone, which

as a deep-sounding instrument often has stood in the shadow of the

other saxophones. Baritone saxophonists have therefore mostly been

confined to the role of sidemen in big bands and combos.

Having now listened more carefully to his music, I have become convinced of

the merits of the status he is granted in the book: a jazz improviser in the upper

league, a musician who, like others such as Bud Powell, Wardell Gray, Fats

Navarro, and J. J. Johnson, with point of departure in Charlie Parker's musical

language, managed to make this flourish on their own instrument without being

an epigone and fully integrated into a personal expression.

 

The first part of the book covers the years 1930–56. Adams' upbringing and the

factors that led to his decision to become a jazz musician is treated in four

chapters. Here important factors are the possibility to listen to jazz music on

the radio and at concerts, but not least an American school system that

emphasized and allowed for musical expression and education.

At the same time, these chapters give a thorough insight into the social

background he grew up in Rochester, NY, and Detroit, MI. He lived here as

an only child together with a mother who had twice in quick succession

become a widow. She was overprotective and very controlling even after he

returned  to Detroit after completing military service in Korea at the age of 23.

You also get a thorough introduction in the musical environment in Rochester

and specially in Detroit, which in the 40s had a jazz scene that created excellent

modern jazz musicians, such as Howard McGhee, Lucky Thompson, Wardell

Gray, Milt Jackson, and Hank Jones.

Pepper Adams got his musical maturation in Detroit in the company of a new

great generation of musicians such as Barry Harris, Donald Byrd, Tommy

Flanagan, Frank Foster, and the brothers Thad and Elvin Jones.

The composition of the four chapters is unusual, starting with his and his

mother's move to Detroit in 1947 and their lives there until his military service

started in mid-1951. It works fine and provides a more varied reading experience

than a traditional chronological presentation.

 

The second part of the book, covering the years 1956-1986, deals in 7 chapters

with his career as a professional jazz musician and his achievement of the status

as an highly outstanding soloist on the baritone saxophone.   In this connection

we also we get a thorough introduction to the hip neo-bop environment in

Greenwich Village, NY, in the 1960s.

Here, too, the composition of the chapters is unusual. Starting with the final year

leading up to his death, the following chapters move backwards through his life

and career ending with his arrival in New York in 1956. It again provides a varied

reading experience, but after reading you are left with very kaleidoscopic overall

impression of Adams' life and career.

Told chronologically, shortly after his establishment in New York, Adams gets

a longer engagement with the Stan Kenton orchestra, which for a time takes

him to the West Coast. He returns to New York in 1957, where he starts a

career as a combo musician first in the company of Donald Byrd, Bobby

Timmons, and Elvin Jones.  In the early 1960s he had gigs with Benny

Goodman, Thelonious Monk, Lionel Hampton and Charles Mingus. In 1964

he began a combo collaboration with Thad Jones, and when the Thad

Jones/Mel Lewis orchestra was formed in 1965, Adams became a permanent

member for the next 12 years. The orchestra did not exist on a full-time basis,

so during this period he also worked alone as a soloist both in the United

States and in Europe.  Although he was successful as a big band musician,

e mostly saw this activity as a survival strategy: "Certainly, there was very

little pleasure involved, except for rehearsals.   I always like rehearsals with

a big band 'cause you've got something to react to: When you're seeing the

music for the first time and learning to play it, and getting the blend within

the section and with the other sections. All the stuff you can do at rehearsals,

that's fine.... If I stay in a big band for too long, once I have all that covered,

then it becomes hack work and is no longer interesting. The next thing is to

memorize all the parts and see if you can play all night with your book closed

– and get dirty looks from the bandleader. After you have that covered, the

only remaining challenge is to see how drunk you can get and still play the

book accurately. That can be bad for you after a period of time."

Adams left Jones/Lewis in 1977 to concentrate on his soloistic career, which

developing in the following years unfortunately ended abruptly when, in

December 1983, he  was accidentally run over by his own parked car and

sustained a serious leg fracture.  This kept him out of work for a while, and

when he finally got started again in mid-1984, he  wassoon after diagnosed with serious lung cancer. He died in 1986 after

unsuccessful radiation and chemo treatment.

The book is published exclusively as Ebook, a choice made because the market for

such a book in physical form these days is limited. I have become increasingly

accustomed to reading books and other written material in digital form. This has

the advantage that the price of the materials is cheaper and that there is more

possibility for the author to write a comprehensive book and to publish revised

editions.  Some will probably find the level of detail thus obtained for exaggerated

and distracting, while others will perceive it as an asset seen in a jazz historical

research context.

Along with the book you get hundreds of hours of music with Pepper Adams from

the period 1947–1986 in the company of Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Elvin Jones,

Roland Hanna, Tommy Flanagan, and many others. It is a big plus that the text

continuously contains links to the music that is described, so you can easily

combine reading and listening.

Gary Carner, Reflectory: The Life and Music of Pepper Adams (revised edition 2022).  559 sider. $ 24,99.

The book can be purchased here: https://www.pepperadams.com/Reflectory/index.html

Pepper Adams Biography is Finished!

 

I’m thrilled to report that the Pepper Adams biography 

is now officially done! It’s quite a moment for me, after

37 years of work and a particularly grueling stretch

the last four years. I just spent the last eight hours

today proofing the first half, adding captions to photos, 

checking music links, and wrapping it up. This after

doing the same yesterday to the second half. 

The manuscript has been sent to my trusted webmaster,

Dan Olson, who is finishing the formatting before he

submits it to Lulu for processing. I’m not sure how much

time they’ll need before they ask us to sign off on it before

publication, but I’m hopeful that it can be released before

month’s end. 

Here’s the complete Advance Praise page:

Advance Praise for Reflectory

 

 

 

 

Gary Carner’s deep and painstaking research into the life and music

of Pepper Adams, coupled with his sure feel for this underappreciated

jazzman’s complex personality, has yielded an absorbing biography

that also reveals much about the jazz life writ large. Carner’s nimble

narrative captures Adams as a man of reserve and sensitivity thrown

into the always bracing, sometimes exasperating tumult of jazz’s post-

bop Detroit-to-New York vector. Reflectory is jazz history of the first rank.

– John Gennari

Author of Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics

 

 

Most jazz biographies are predictable chronologies of gigs and

recordings, friendships and rivalries, kindness and cruelty. We know

how they start; we know how they end. Carner’s admiring multi-

dimensional portrait of Pepper Adams is a delightful corrective.

Irresistibly, it floats from story to story. I couldn’t wait to find out

what happens next. Even if readers know Pepper only as a bracing,

lovely sound, before we are ten pages in we are happily encountering

him as a fully-rounded person, reading Yeats, eating ribs, impatient

with cliche, searching and finding wherever he goes. It takes lung

ower to play the baritone saxophone: this biography has the breath of

life.   

– Michael Steinman

Author, Jazz Lives blog

 

 

Gary Carner has been stalking the life, music, and legacy of the brilliant

baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams (1930-86) with an Ahab-like

obsessiveness for 37 years. The great news for the rest of us is that Carner

has landed his whale. Reflectoryis a meticulously researched and insightful biography of one of the defining

modern jazz musicians of his era and one of the key products of Detroit’s post-

war bebop explosion. We need more books like this in jazz historiography and

more authors willing to dig this deeply.

– Mark Stryker

Author of Jazz from Detroit 

 

This comprehensive and insightful study of a major music master fills a yawning

gap in the writing on Detroit’s jazz scene in its heyday. Even within a constellation

of huge talents, Pepper Adams shone with his own distinctive light.

– Mark Slobin

Author of Motor City Music: A Detroiter Looks Back

 

 

 

 

Pepper Adams was a heartbreakingly great musician who never got the love from

the jazz press that he deserved, which, in a way, makes him even more important in

the history of the music because it represents an experience that happens all too

often and places Pepper firmly at the heart of the jazz life.  As Johnny Griffin once

said, “Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite

of conditions.” But to limit Pepper to the jazz life would be a mistake. He was a man

of literature and culture, a great reader and thinker, as were many of his heroes,

notably Charlie Parker, and Gary Carner’s loving tribute to him finally delivers some

justice to the man and to the whole range and span of his too short and underappreciated

but brilliant career.

– Ben Sidran

Author of Talking Jazz: An Oral History and There Was a Fire: Jews, Music and the American Dream

 

 

Gary Carner’s biography about Pepper Adams honors one of America’s great musicians.

It is a joy to read and reread, and worth waiting for all these years. Having known and

worked with Pepper from 1955 until he left us, reading this biography makes you feel

that you are there with him. His humor, wit, and devotion to music are all written about

in a way that Pepper himself would have loved. Gary Carner has kept this story real.

– David Amram

Author of Vibrations: The Adventures and Musical Times of David Amram 

 

Pepper Adams was a consummate performer on the unwieldy baritone sax. Perhaps

he was insufficiently valued by fans of the music, but never by fellow musicians.

The dedicated research of Gary Carner has uncovered a huge amount of detail about

his life, documenting his opinions and his recordings, both official and unofficial.

– Brian Priestley 

Author of Mingus: A Critical Biography and Chasin’ The Bird: The Life and Legacy

of Charlie Parker

Author Gary Carner must be commended for dedicating much of his life to

documenting the legacy of the great baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams. Adams was

a major contributor to the sub-genre of jazz known as hard bop and his many

influential recordings pulsate with excitement and originality. Reflectory: The Life

and Music of Pepper Adams represents a monumental effort to examine every aspect

of Adams’s career and the research that has gone into it was carried out in a manner

suggesting that no stone has been left unturned. This book exemplifies the best in jazz

biography.

–  Noal Cohen

Co-author of Rat Race Blues: The Musical Life of Gigi Gryce

Reflectory: The Life and Music of Pepper Adams is het overtuigende portret van een

ernstig onderschatte jazzgrootheid. Gary Carner’s indrukwekkende levenswerk

(decennialange research, inclusief 250 interviews) heeft geresulteerd in een uitgebreide

biografie die fascinerende lectuur vormt.Reflectory: The Life and Music of Pepper Adams is the persuasive portrait of a seriously underrated jazz giant. Gary Carner’s impressive

work of a lifetime (decades of research, including 250 interviews) has resulted in an

extensive biography that makes for fascinating reading. 

– Bert Vuijsje

Co-author of Rita Reys: Lady Jazz and Ado Broodboom Trompet

Før læsningen havde jeg, ligesom mange andre, kun et sporadisk kendskab til Pepper

Adams. Dette skyldes måske at hans hovedinstrument var baryton-saxen, der som dybt-

klingende ofte har stået i skyggen af de andre saxofoner. Efter nu at have lyttet mere

indgående til hans musik, er jeg blevet overbevist om den status han i bogen bliver givet:

en jazz improvisator i den øverste liga; en person, der i lighed med musikere som Bud

Powell, Wardell Gray, Fats Navarro og  J. J. Johnson formåede at få Charlie Parkers

musikalske sprog til at blomstre på deres eget instrument uden uden at fremstå som epigoner.

Before reading, like many others I had only a sporadic knowledge of Pepper Adams. This

is perhaps due to his main instrument being a baritone sax, which, as deep-sounding, often has

been overshadowed by the other saxophones. Having now listened more in depth to his music,

I have become convinced of the status he is given in the book: a jazz musician and improviser

in the top league; a man who, like musicians such as Bud Powell, Wardell Gray, Fats Navarro,

and J. J. Johnson, managed to get Charlie Parker’s musical language to blossom on their own instrument without being epigones.

– Leif Bo Petersen

Co-author of The Music and Life of Theodore “Fats” Navarro: Infatuation