Kind Words about Reflectory

 

A few days ago I received a wonderful Facebook

message from Tony Wolton regarding Reflectory:

I'm going through the book for a second time, a must have

item not just for lovers of Pepper Adams and his music, but

anyone interested in the Detroit/New York jazz scene 1950's

onwards. Before the book, what little I knew about him came

from LP liner notes and anything I might glean from a magazine

or two. The man was a genius. One reference from the book

and then I'm done: In 1968 (or thereabouts), Miles Davis played

first set at a gig so he could get off early. Don't forget Miles was

getting into strange stuff by then, but held back in the wings to

hear the whole of Adams' set. He dug what Pepper played. How

many others would Miles Davis have hung back for?

 

Here’s a link to the book, where you can read some about it and

buy it: https://www.pepperadams.com/Reflectory/index.html 

 

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

Blowin' Hot and Cool

 

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

Happy New Year everybody! We made it through 2020. A few days ago, on

New Year’s Eve, I sent my final draft of the first part of the Adams bio to two

readers for final comments and edits. After emailing them, in a rush of excite-

ment, I commanded my new Amazon Echo to play Pepper Adams, and, lo

and behold, the first tune it played was “Time on My Hands.” How prophetic!

In recognition of finally concluding my work on the biography, last week I de-

cided, as a kind of rite of passage, to finally read John Gennari’s exhaustive

study of jazz criticism that he published in 2005. I figured it’s the least I could

do, considering all the time he spent reviewing my Adams manuscript. If

nothing else, I thought, I could catch up on various topics, such as gender,

black, and literary studies, or the vicissitudes of the various culture wars, that

have ensued since I walked away from academia in the nineties. Maybe, too,

I could use snippets here and there as a clever way to do some fact-checking

on my bio, or even buttress some of my commentary with a few of his pithy

quotes? 

I say pithy because I’ve known John since around 1990, when I invited him to

write an article on the history of jazz criticism for an anthology of articles about

jazz literature I was editing for the Black American Literature Forum. Pithy, also,

because his keen intellect, expansive knowledge of jazz and American culture,

and wonderful prose style, I felt, was bound to reveal some clever turns of

phrase I could grab, or interesting perspectives to reconsider, for my bio at the

eleventh hour. 

Since the publication of his terrific article, Gennari spent the next fifteen years

researching the field, reading widely, and writing about his many observations.

The result is Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics, one of the most

important books ever written about jazz. Jazz fans love to talk about “desert

island records,” the handful of indispensable recordings they would want with

them if they got marooned on a desert island a la Tom Hanks in Cast Away,

Similarly, Gennari’s book is definitely one of a handful of books that I’d want

with me if I was washed up somewhere. I recommend it to anyone who wants

a much fuller appreciation of the art form.

What Gennari has achieved is no less than a dazzling literature review of

jazz’s history, but as seen through the writings of many of its most distinguish-

ed English-language commentators. So many of the early jazz histories that

he discusses and comprised my very large and now defunct jazz library (that

I donated to Georgia State University) are books I’ve never had a chance to

read. Gennari summarizes each work with depth, showing how they in-

fluenced jazz discourse, commerce, and subsequent generations of writers.

Written with wit, unprecedented erudition, and an impressive command of the

subject, I was blown away by its breadth. To his credit, this monumental book

is not a history of jazz’s recordings or musicians per se, though the author

discusses many. Instead, unlike all other studies of jazz, he has moved the

focus from musicians to, as he writes, “the channels of distribution to make a

less static model of jazz.” In this manner he discusses how jazz critics served

as middle-men arbiters between the musicians and their audience, and he

analyzes their many sectarian arguments and how they influenced the history

of the music, all the while bringing to bear his deep understanding of gender,

literary, political/historical, and American cultural studies. 

Thumbing through the book, it’s amazing how much ground Gennari covers,

and it’s clear why he needed fifteen years to finish his exhaustive study.

There’s just nothing like it. Here’s someone who has listened widely, thought

deeply, and probably read more thoroughly about jazz than anyone before or

since. With his singular focus, he’s certainly a man after my own heart.

As a biographer, I greatly enjoyed all of the biographical portraits in the book.

Some, such as the ones about Leonard Feather and John Hammond, for

example, are rendered at considerable length and crafted with tremendous

grace. In the great Whitney Balliett tradition, they give the book a real sense

of immediacy, and nicely counterbalance some of his more weighty intellectual

forays. Further, they served as a source of nostalgia for me, rekindling my past

associations with a number of prominent jazz writers, most notably Martin

Williams, Nat Hentoff, Dan Morgenstern, Gary Giddins, Stanley Crouch, and

especially Albert Goldman, but also others I’ve come in contact with over the

years, such as Barry Ulanov, John Szwed, Bob Blumenthal, and Francis Davis.

It made me recall the time John Hammond popped in one day as a guest of

John Lewis’s, who was teaching the jazz history survey class I took at City

College of New York in the early 1980s. It also rekindled my memory of the

only experience I had with Nat Hentoff, when I needed to get his permission to

republish a piece he wrote on Miles Davis. How cranky and miserable a person

I felt he was; what a difficult shit, I was left thinking.

In Gennari’s description about record collectors’ zeal for hunting down obscure

recordings, I remembered those times in my teens when I took hour-long bus

rides from the northern New Jersey suburbs to the Port Authority bus station,

then walked to 42nd Street to comb record stores for obscure blues records

recorded by Arhoolie, Delmark, and other independent labels. In the 1970s,

42nd Street was really dicey. I always walked the streets really quickly and

moved with a palpable unease until I reached my destination.  

In the end, yes, Gennari’s book did help me ground some of the comments I

made in Reflectory, my forthcoming Adams bio. I added a few new quotes to

further contextualize my points, some regarding “The White Negro,” and how

the rock/youth culture affected jazz after Pepper Adams moved to New York

City.

As I get my ideas together for a six-week jazz history class for college edu-

cated Georgian adults, I wonder how Gennari’s book will inform me. The class,

“Jazz Lives,” borrows its title from Michael Steinman’s blog, in which he says

that “lives” is both a verb and a noun. Will I lean towards the deification of four

or five jazz figures I’m covering? Will I present portraits of their lives? Maybe I

will come up with my own synthesis? I’m not sure, though the class begins on

January 13. One thing that still sings for me, and will serve as a kind of mantra

for the class, is this from Blowin’ Hot: “Because jazz demands that musicians

find their own sound and stamp their performances with a singular individuality,

those who succeed in music tend to be distinctive, singular individuals.”