Detroit Jazz

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

First, a happy July 4th holiday to all. Over the last few weeks I’ve been busy making significant refinements to Chapter 1 of my Pepper Adams biography. My final reader suggested numerous changes to the chapter. Fortunately, Chapters 2 and 3 remained unscathed!

Mostly, my long and somewhat tangential history of Detroit from 1694 to the mid-1950s, “Detroit Drives the Nation,” has been removed. It’s now posted at pepperadams.com: http://www.pepperadams.com/Detroit.pdf  in the place of “Videos.” That was an internal redundancy on the web site that we retained for a while. All the Pepper Adams videos are now available by clicking the YouTube icon on the top of the page: http://www.pepperadams.com/Compositions/compList/videos.html

I made other, more subtle improvements to my manuscript. I think the first chapter is now much tighter and better focused on Adams. As of now, only my Preface needs some work before I can finally add a few last things from the interviews I conducted with a few Detroiters. Then it’s time to begin the second half of the bio, 1956-1986.

In addition to the new article posted about Detroit, other upgrades have been made to http://www.pepperadams.com/ since May’s blog. The Dedications page (http://www.pepperadams.com/Dedications/index.html) has been further fleshed out with new postings. Added are those dedications to Pepper Adams written by

Bernie Senensky  http://www.pepperadams.com/Dedications/PeppersGone.html,

Glenn Wilson http://www.pepperadams.com/Dedications/AdamsPark.html,

Jeff Holmes http://www.pepperadams.com/Dedications/SaltAndPepper.html,

and Brian Williams http://www.pepperadams.com/Dedications/SongForPepper.html

Thanks to all of them for providing the music samples and lead sheets. All that now remains is posting four remaining pieces: Thad Jones’ dedication, “Two As One,” and those done by Alain Cupper, Osian Roberts and Pete Lukas. If anybody else out there has written a dedication to Pepper Adams, please let me know and we’ll post it.

In a few previous posts I promised to share some of the comments about Pepper that were made by the saxophonist Doc Holladay and the drummer Eddie Locke in interviews I conducted many years ago. Here’s a few gems from Holladay:

Pepper was a very talented cat. He knew he was talented, I think. I always had the feeling that Pepper really knew how talented he was, and it was a frustration for him to realize that people didn’t appreciate him.

I personally feel he was the greatest ‘change player’ in the world, as far as playing changes. I don’t know anybody who could touch him. . . . He could play twenty or thirty choruses without ever repeating himself.

On gigs with Holladay. Pepper liked to play a blues, and cycle through all twelve keys, each chorus in a different key (F to B-flat to E-flat, etc). It was just phenomenal!

Pepper used the Service as a school, in a sense. Pepper would get his horn out and he would spend a lot of time in the barracks. His routine was he got a fakebook. He’d pick a tune, and he would learn that tune to where he really had it by memory, and then he’d start playing the tune. We’re talking about the melody now. He’d play that melody, and he’d start playing it in all different keys. So he had that tune in all kinds of keys and be comfortable with it. Then he’d start playing off the changes of the tune, and he’d start doing that until he’d get the changes down to where he could run the changes on the tune, and then he’d start to run that in all the keys. He would digest a tune, just take it apart, make it his own, and then he would go on to the next tune. All the time he was in the Service, in the band where I observed him, he was constantly doing that. A new tune every day or two. He could play for hours. The rest of the guys would go out to hang out and party, and Pepper would be in there taking a tune apart.

I don’t think I ever heard him run patterns as such.

As for Eddie Locke’s comments, here are some of his observations about Pepper and Detroit in the 1940s and 1950s:

You were always trying to get to the big joints: The Flame, The Frolic, the Chesterfield Lounge. Those were on John R. Chesterfield: Pepper played in there. Roland Hanna used to play in there . . . When you played on John R, that means you were getting established. You were jamming no more.

Sam’s and Joe’s Record Shops on Hastings St. had some recording studios in the back where they cut records.

A real jazz man will play his instrument no matter what. He’s gonna play. He’s not gonna make an excuse for not playing by saying, “Something is wrong. I can’t play.” If you love it so much, it doesn’t make any difference. No dollars, bad musicians, good musicians, mediocre musicians. You’re gonna blow!

Pepper just happened to also be a great player. But he was a real jazz man. That’s something different, even being a great player. . . A real jazz man is rare. That’s a lifestyle. That’s not just going to school, and that’s what Pepper was about. In Detroit, you played in the joints -- slop jobs in those old, funky places. That’s a jazz man. He wasn’t trying to play in Carnegie Hall every night. He was just going to play some music because he loved to play. . . . People wanted to play with him because he was jazz man.

There were so many scenes, different kind of bands, and it all becomes a part of you when you’re around it.

Detroit Cats and Clubs

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

Here's some random historical information about Detroit's jazz history that I've collected from my many Pepper Adams interviews. It pertains mosty to Detroit in the 1940s and '50s. Because it's not likely to be used in my Pepper Adams biography, I'm posting it here to make it available to researchers.

Elvin Jones:

"I used to peep in the window [at the Blue Bird] and watch him. I always used to tell him, 'Keep the curtain open so I can watch you and see what you're doing.' And he did. I was watching him because the drums were right there by the window. (Roy Brooks used to stand out there sometimes.) I think he was playing more then than he was later on in life. He didn't have more chops. He had more swing and more drive. He began to get it together there. Billy Mitchell told me that when Elvin came out of the Air Force, his right hand was weak. When he'd be playing the ride cymbal, instead of getting a clear ti-ti-TING, he'd get a ti-TING, ti-TING. So Billy Mitchell told him, 'Look, your right hand is weak. Fill in with your left hand.' And that's what he would do. Elvin, and all of the Jones', had an uncanny sense of time--like Thad. So, Elvin too, it seemed like he was playing in three a lot, but you don't know that because the four is there too! Elvin was dynamite!" - Frant Gant

Clubs/Regions:

"The Paradise Valley was a cluster of many clubs. . . A gorgeous place to be, safe, everybody had a ball going from place to place. It was downtown, about four or five blocks from the heart of town. All the entertainment was there. That's where all the big stars went. Hastings Street bordered it. It was between Hastings Street and Brush Street, bordered by Adams and St. Antoine and Gratiot Avenue, that whole area of six or eight blocks square." - Maurice King

The Valley was really buzzing before 1938, when Maurice King arrived in town. It stayed that way until 1943, when the riot broke out. After that, wealthy whites stopped visiting. Then, the clubs moved north, closer to Wayne University, such as the Flame Showbar, which looked like a Las Vegas club. Two others within a block or two were the Frolic Showbar and Chesterfield Lounge.

"In the early '40s, there were many clubs in The Valley: small clubs where there was music, all up and down Hastings Street, extended all the way to the north end, which became Oakland Avenue. Later on, the clubs started moving to the west side, like the Blue Bird, like Klein's on Twelfth Street. Hastings more or less died. In fact, there is no more Hastings now. It's the Chrysler Freeway. City planning changes the complexion of cities. That's what happened." - Yusef Lateef

“The Valley was only maybe two or three or four blocks long, from Hastings Street and Adams to, say, John R and Adams.” - Charles Boles

"There were many bars, all of which had live music. The first beginning of it was the Sportree's, a club. It started from The Valley, going up Hastings Street. The most famous place on Hastings Street was the Cozy Corner. That was the most plush nightclub. It had a Copa atmosphere. Just a place where people would go to dance. They had a cover charge and had dinner. It was a supper club." - Maurice King

Hastings Street had prostitution. “It had all the evils that any major city had.” - Charles Johnson

The Club Sudan was downtown. Kenny Burrell played there.

The Flame was on John R and Garfield.

The El Sino and The Three Sixes (666) were near each other in The Valley.

When Thad and Billy Mitchell had their band in 1949-1950 or so: "The jazz scene was hot during that time. The Blue Bird was going six nights a week and it was packed every night." - Bob Pierson

"I got into Bizerte and Royal Blue occasionally when underage. - Bob Pierson

The Pine Grove, the Black Hawk: little bars on the Near West Side; Clarence Beasley and Pepper Adams played at these clubs after 1948.

"We first began to hear Sonny Stitt when we were still going to dances as teenagers." -Clarence Beasley

Sonny Stitt's father was a minister and he allowed all these aspiring youngsters to jam at his church. At that time, Stitt played the Iragon Ballroom on Woodward, near the Mirror Ballroom (where Bird played). Beasley and his cohort hung out at the Iragon from their middle teens until around 19 years old, when they started branching out and getting their own gigs and moving away from the dance scene.

The Brady Bar was going on the East Side in 1955. Barry Harris played there, as did Pepper Adams.  Harris' nickname was "Little Bud."

Gigs in Detroit took place from 9-2. After the gig, all the musicians in town used to congregate across the street from the Bowl-o-Drome (12707 Dexter Blvd. near Davison or Burlingame) at the Esquire Restaurant for breakfast. Roland Hanna, Barry Harris and Harold McKinney, however, didn't hang out. They were very studious.

The Paradise Theater in Detroit: "They had the best black talent in the world. It was another Apollo. In fact, it might have been a couple degrees above it. You go see a movie and then you stay and see the stage show. You could stay as long as you wanted." - Oliver Shearer

Local musicians:

Eddie Jamison, a great local alto player, "had a distinctive sound," according to Clarence Beasley. "It was soulful."

Willie Anderson: "So many big names tried to get him out of Detroit and he would not go. He never had the confidence in himself because he never had the formal training, the building blocks that he could use. He simply refused to go out of town with these bands. He didn't want to be pigeonholed or whatnot, but, my God, did he have a reputation for being one of the finest pianists locally. He was a fantastic jazz player." - Clarence Beasley

"Hugh Lawson had a very fine, strong left hand." - Clarence Beasley

Tim Kennedy was a very fine Detroit drummer, about five years older. He played with Illinois Jacquet.

- Clarence Beasley

"Johnny Allen was a really good pianist on the scene and a fantastic arranger. He was from Chicago and went to school with Nat Cole but relocated in Detroit. He played the Silver Slipper with Tate Houston when Eckstine worked there."  - Clarence Beasley

Willie Wells dissipated with drugs, and was sad to see, but a great player on the scene.

Joe Brazil hosted jam sessions at his house that Wells and a lot of the youngsters played.

Jimmy Glover, a real good bass player out of Detroit. - Bob Pierson

"A lot of guys never made it. There was Will Davis, a real good piano player, and Bu Bu Turner, another good piano player. . . . There were some real good tenor players. Tommy Barnet, and Lefty Edwards--they were a little bit older, more mature." - Bob Pierson

Abe Woodley: "Abe was something! I'll tell ya, next to Milt, he had the best feel I ever heard on vibes and he could play some great bebop piano too!" - Bob Pierson

Bu Bu Turner: "Great player, great accompanist, too, for a horn player, and he could burn his ass off playing jazz." - Bob Pierson

Art Mardigan sound: "He had a great feel and you could hear the beat of the stick on the cymbal. He had the best sound out of the cymbal I've ever heard and I've heard them all. Art had that, and a lot of guys that played around Detroit got that from him. They all got the nice sound out of the cymbal." - Bob Pierson

Warren Hickey: "A tenor player. A wonderful player." - Bob Pierson

Other fine Detroit players, as per Bob Pierson: Leon Rice (dm), Willie Wells (before junk got to him), Gus Rosario.

Tate Houston had a nice sound.

Lefty Edwards was a good tenor player.

Claire Roquemore: “couldn’t stay out of jail.” - Charles Johnson

Roquemore: "He was a wonderful, young, Caucasian-looking trumpet player. 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." - Roland Hanna

“The great Claire Rocquemore? He could play anything. He’d wear Miles out. He’d wear anybody out. Donald 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.” - Charles Boles

"There was a guy named Benny Benjamin. He was a guy that went with Motown. He was a bad sucker! He could play in any kind of groove--bebop, or the blues. He had the feeling. He was a bitch! Wilbur Harden, this trumpet player [moved to Detroit in 57 and played with Yusef, was sick for four years then played with Curtis], and Teeter Ford [in Barry Harris' group in the early 50s, replacing Claire Roquemore, with Sonny Red.] - Frank Gant

                                              (Elvin Jones)

Charles Boles Looks Back

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

I had a wonderful, hourlong conversation yesterday with Detroit pianist Charles Boles. Boles attended Northern High School with Paul Chambers, Donald Byrd and Sonny Red, and studied privately, as so many of that era did, with Barry Harris. Boles witnessed and participated in Detroit's Golden Age of Jazz. His career spans seven decades and he's still performing in Detroit. Boles has worked with a who’s who of musicians, including Aretha Franklin, John Lee Hooker and B.B. King. Many thanks to Ken Kellett for setting up the FaceTime call and for participating as an amused and valuable observer. Rather than summarize my conversation, I'm going to let Charles speak for himself:

Miles at the Blue Bird in the summer of 1954:

Miles didn’t want to see Thad come in there because Thad would eat him up! . . . Miles would come to work and he would ask the owner even before he hit a note, ‘Can I get $50?’ Clarence Eddins would say, ‘Well, you gotta play at least one tune!’ So Miles would go up there and say, ‘Blues in F.’ He’d hit one note and then he’d walk off the bandstand and say, ‘Gimme $50.’ While the band was playing, [with] this guy ‘No Neck’ (who was a frightening looking guy), they would come out of the Blue Bird, go to the corner. (There was a light at the corner of Tireman and Beechwood.) They’d just be waiting for any car that would come along where the door was unlocked and they’d just get in. ‘No Neck’ would say, ‘Take us downtown.’ They’d go down to this hotel. I think it was called the Hotel Theresa then. It was right there on Adams and Hastings. They would go into this hotel to get high, and they’d come back outside of the hotel, after they got high, and they’d repeat the same scenario: Go to the corner, wait for a car to come along with an unlocked door, and they’d open the door and just get in and say, 'Take us to the Blue Bird.’

Pepper Adams:

I saw him all the time. I saw him at Barry’s house. He’d be always at the World Stage but he’d be at Barry’s house a lot. It was on Russell, upstairs over a grocery store.

Paradise Valley:

The Valley was only maybe two or three or four blocks long, from Hastings Street and Adams to, say, John R and Adams.

Northern High School:

Of course, we were there for band rehearsal, and to go to Choral at Fifth Hour. Claude [Black] was in the choral group with me. We all did the Messiah every year. We were very good. They had a very good music teacher there, Claire Weimer. . . . I couldn’t play in the concert band because I couldn’t read as well as Donald Byrd’s sister, Margie 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 Tenth Grade, he went to Cass. Him and Donald Byrd both.

The reason why Paul Chambers and Donald Byrd went to Northern High School the first year of high school was because Northern started in Ninth Grade. Donald Byrd was a neighbor of mine, maybe three or four blocks from me in Detroit, in the North End. Paul lived on the East Side somewhere. . . In that class at Northern was Claude Black. . . He was switching from trombone to piano, and there was Sonny Red there. He was in the band. There was Donald Byrd, Paul Chambers, Bobby Barnes. . . . The teacher was Orvis Lawrence, a barroom, stride piano player, if you will. A very good Teddy-Wilson-type piano player. A very good musician. He could really tell you what to do musically. He was knowledgeable. He kept a bottle in his desk drawer and he’d always go back there and get laced. The best thing about that era--and even after Donald Byrd and them left--was at the Seventh Hour there would always be people like Tommy Flanagan, Bess Bonnier, Roland Hanna. These guys showed up every day at the Seventh Hour to jam. What you didn’t know you could learn from hanging out with these guys. . . Orville Lawrence would allow you to continue to stay there and play until maybe 4 o’clock. School got out at 3 o’clock. 

We would leave and go to one of two houses after school. At Bobby Barnes’ house, 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 (the Woodward bus ran north and 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. I tell you what: 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.

Legendary trumpeter Claire Rocquemore:

The great Claire Rocquemore? He could play anything. He’d wear Miles out. He’d wear anybody out. Donald 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.

Kenny Burrell:

He and I went to the same church together. I knew his mother and his grandmother. It was a church in Greektown called Second Baptist. The oldest black church. 200 years old.

Doug Watkins:

Doug was around at Northern too. Definitely at Barry’s house. It was almost a situation where it was either Doug or Paul. They were in fierce competition.

Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris:

Nobody could be like Willie Anderson. Everybody tried to be like Barry. . . . Here are two different guys that played the same style but in a different way. My explanation of it is that Barry is a direct link from Bud whereas Tommy Flanagan is a direct link from Teddy Wilson. It’s a difference in the touch, the way they play. . . In the beginning, Barry really wanted to be like Art Tatum but he didn’t have the strength. Tatum played really light but he was fleet. . . . The competition was so fierce here. You’d be around people like Barry, you’d be around people like Tommy Flanagan. These guys were like mythical!

Roland Hanna:

Roland was completely different. I went over to Bobby Barnes’ house and there was Roland. He and Gene Taylor had drank up a half a gallon of wine. Every day they would get together at 10, 11 o’clock playing classical music. I never knew where Roland went to school. Roland said to me, ‘I wanna be a classical pianist. I don’t want to play jazz.’ He could read fly shit. He was scary to be around.”

Hastings Street Scene:

I played on Hastings Street, which was a red light district. I played on that street for ten damn years. The cops came down on Hastings Street. The deal was that you either got, ‘Give me some head or give me some booty, or give me all your money.’ I saw them shoot a prostitute in the back and kill her. Her name was Charlene. I’ll never forget it. Killed her dead, right? And the people know the police did it but they got away with it because she refused to give them any money and she wasn’t going to give them booty that night. She was tired of screwing the police for free. That was in the fifties. I played on Hastings Street off and on from 48 to 58. The deal was you give up some booty or you give up some money, or else you’re going to jail.

                       (Charles Boles)

Genealogical Breakthroughs and Other Ephemera

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved

What did the week bring about regarding Pepper Adams? Two significant developments and another possible one. First, was the receipt of an audience tape from Dave Schiff. It's a performance from June 21, 1974 of Pepper with Roland Hanna and several students at the Wilmington Music School in Wilmington, Delaware. (Another CD, from either 1968 or 1969 with Thad Jones, is forthcoming!) Adams and Hanna perform Thad Jones' "Quiet Lady" and Adams' "Civilization and Its Discontents" in a quartet and quintet format respectively to begin the concert. This is the only known time that Adams and Hanna performed these tunes apart from their recording of them on Adams' masterpiece LP, Ephemera, recorded the year before. "Civ" also has Schiff playing the melody on flute, which I believe was unknowingly a dry run for the Bill Perkins recording of the tune four years later. 

Two other tunes on the audience tape, "Straight, No Chaser" and "Royal Garden Blues," follow more of a jam session format, giving some the Camp's students a chance to show what they learned that week. It's possible that trombonist Wayne Andre was on the faculty and on the recording. I'll need to listen again, but not in my car, so I can finally make sense of some of these things.

I also had a email conversation with Schiff this week regarding his recording of "Civ" and my plans for the CD reissue of Ephemera. It turns out that Schiff recorded "Civ" as a tribute to Pepper, not knowing the title of the tune. His rendition will be added to pepperadams.com soon so you can hear his arrangement. 

As for the reissue, an engineer friend of mine in Los Angeles, Jim Merod, is about to do post-mastering work on the date to try to improve the sound of the piano and to increase the volume of Mel Lewis' drums-- especially his brushwork on "Quiet Lady," that remains virtually inaudible. For his part, Schiff is also considering whether he can produce the reissue on his label. We may decide to do a modest Kickstarter campaign to pay for the first round of CDs. I hope we can rely on you, my faithful readers, to help with this project. Although Ephemera is one of Pepper's greatest recorded achievements, it's never been issued on CD!

Otherwise, I've been working with Jocelyn Ireland, a librarian in Utica, New York, and a genealogist colleague of hers, Keith Gerland, to try to make some sense out of the allegation that Pepper lived in Utica from the Summer of 1935 until the Summer of 1937. I was first given an anonymous tip about it in an unsigned email. (Who was that "masked man?") So far, however, nothing has turned up in the 1935 Utica city directory or any census information. I'm awaiting word as to whether there were 1936 or 1937 directories for Utica and if anything turns up. 

This from Ireland: "You mentioned doing a search for the family in Rome. We don't have any of their directories but I think Ancestry.com may have some digitized. I'll have to check if they have Rome, NY around 1933-34. There is also the possibility the family stayed with Park F. Adams' parents in Oriskany, NY. I believe Oriskany may have been listed in Utica City Directories in the 1930s -- another thing I'll have to check. . . . I will check if there was any Adams in Oriskany, NY and if Rome's directory is on Ancestry.com."

Jocelyn has been great thus far. From what I gather, Pepper Adams and his mother moved to Rome in the Summer of 1934 to reunify with Pepper's father after a three-year separation due to the lack of work during the worst of the Great Depression. They lived in Rome at 806 Jerris or Jervis Avenue from that summer until the Christmas holiday, when they moved to Rochester. They may have lived briefly in Oriskany with family, a small town between Rome and Utica, while searching for a place to live.

Jocelyn also found these links for grave sites, two with obituary information:

Grave and obituary of Pepper's father, Park Frederick Adams:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=12500616&ref=acom

Birth:  1898 Rome Oneida County New York, USA Death:  May 19, 1940 Rochester Monroe County New York, USA Utica Daily Press 1940 Park Adams, 44, a native of Rome, died May 19, 1940 of a heart attack in his home in Rochester. He was born in Rome, son of the late Nathaniel and Frances Adams. He married Cleo Coyle in Detroit, Michigan. He had lived in Rochester four years, where he was a manufacturer's representative. He went to Rochester from Detroit. He was a member of the Christian Science Church in Rochester, the Masonic Lodge and Knights of Templar in Detroit. He leaves a daughter, Mrs. George Gifford, Rochester, a son, Park Adams Jr., Rochester, three sisters, Mrs. Fred Weaver and Mrs. Roy Johnson, both of Los Angeles, and Mrs. Rita Head, Oriskany, and a grandchild. The funeral will be conducted in Rochester tomorrow with burial in New Union Cemetery in Verona Mills Family links:  Parents:   Nathaniel Qunicy Adams (1858 - 1929)   Frances Cleveland Adams (1863 - 1940) Burial: New Union Cemetery Verona Oneida County New York, USA

Added by: Bea Lastowicka Cemetery Photo Added by: Tombstone Hunter   Photos may be scaled. Click on image for full size. REPOSE EN PAIX! - quebecoise  Added: Oct. 9, 2006

Grave and obituary of Pepper's paternal grandmother, Frances Cleveland Adams:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=12500616&ref=acom

Birth:	1863 Mohawk Herkimer County New York, USA
Death:	Jan. 26, 1940 Los Angeles Los Angeles County California, USA
Rome Sentinel January 27, 1940 Mrs. Frances Cleveland Adams, widow of Nathaniel Quicny Adams, a former resident of Rome and Oriskany, died Friday at a hospital in Los Angeles, California. She had gone to California a year ago last November to make her home with her daughters. She was born in Mohawk, a daughter of Abel B. and Abbie J. Cleveland. About 62 years ago she was married to Mr. Adams who died about 10 years ago. Her married life was spent in New London, Churchville and Rome before coming to Oriskany 25 years ago. For a number of years, the Adams operated the Temperance Hotel, S. James St., Rome. Mrs. Adams was a member of First Methodist Church, Rome, and later of Waterbury Memorial Presbyterian Church, Oriskany. She was a member of Queen Esther Rebekah Lodge, Rome. She was also a member of the Maccabees and served through the offices, the organization later becoming the Women's Benefit Association. She was also a member of Oriskany Chapter 524, OES and had served as chaplain and in other offices. Survivors are three daughters, Mrs. Fred R. Weaver and Mrs. Roy H. Johnston, both of West Los Angeles, California, and Mrs. Rita Head or Oriskany, a sister, Mrs. Emma Callahan, Rome, seven grandchildren, including Francis Head, Rome and Mrs. Lee Kite, Lowell, and five great-grandchildren.

Grave of Pepper's mother, Cleo Coyle Adams:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=27629332&ref=acom

Birth:  1899 Death:  1971 Burial: South Park Cemetery Columbia City Whitley County Indiana, USA Plot: 2-26-1 Created by: Jim Cox Record added: Jun 17, 2008 Find A Grave Memorial# 27629332

Added by: Just Dave Cemetery Photo Added by: vcrusaderfan   Photos may be scaled. Click on image for full size.

Obviously, I now have a whole new world of research to pursue regarding Pepper's ancestors. I'll let you know of my progress. I did do a search regarding the Coyles. So far, it seems that Pepper's mother is the only child of Charles (1869-1916) and Minnie B Coyle (1872-1941). I'm trying to determine if/how Eloise Coyle was related. She lived in Columbia City, Indiana (in Whitley County) in 1935 (just after Adams and his mother left for New York), and was married, as of the 1940 U.S. Census, to Carl Banning (born c. 1920). Her age makes her a possible first-cousin.

Pepper and Fish

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

My interview last Sunday with Delaware tenor saxophonist Dave Schiff was absolutely groundbreaking! Much of it will be included in my forthcoming Pepper Adams biography because Schiff goes into great detail about Pepper's approach to playing. Apart from Curtis Fuller and others that Pepper may have mentored in Detroit, it turns out that Schiff was very likely Pepper's only student after Pepper moved to New York at age 29. How Schiff knows so much about Pepper is that his memory is razor-sharp about many of the important things that Pepper taught him when he was an aspiring teenage saxophonist.

Schiff was fifteen when Pepper, Thad Jones, Roland Hanna, Tom McIntosh and a few other top New York-based jazz musicians came to Wilmington, Delaware, beginning in 1968, to do five-day workshops with young students from the area. Pepper was an instructor at the Wilmington Music School each June from 1968 to 1970, then again one last time in 1974. At the School, directed by Schiff's father, Hal Schiff, Pepper had a chance to work with small ensembles and individually with students. Some were very promising inner-city students who couldn't afford tuition. For them, Schiff's father arranged scholarship money, underwritten by the Dupont and Hercules corporations. Dave Schiff was one of the lucky students who studied individually with Pepper.

One year, in the late '60s, after Pepper finished teaching at the Wilmington Music School, he invited Dave Schiff (whom he regarded as a very promising instrumentalist) to New York to study with him for a day. By then, according to Schiff, he had become quite close with Pepper. Schiff and his dad (also a tenor player) took the train early on a Monday morning from Wilmington and were greeted by Pepper at either Penn or Grand Central Station. Pepper assured Hal that he would look after him and all would be fine. Hal went home on the train. Pepper and Dave went back to Pepper's one-bedroom apartment at 84 Jane Street, and they studied together for much of the day. 

That night Pepper brought Dave with him to the Village Vanguard, ostensibly to hear the band. Pepper told Schiff to bring his horn. For the last tune of the last set Pepper asked Schiff to sit in on Back Bone. Schiff was petrified, but Pepper assured him it would be OK. Schiff would only play two choruses after Pepper's solo, he'd first sit next to Pepper on the bandstand and play the chart with him, and he'd do fine. Schiff already knew Thad from his Wilmington experience, but that hardly calmed his nerves. Schiff told me, "I was so scared I thought I was going to vomit." Before they played the tune, Pepper introduced Schiff to Jerry Dodgion, who, as always, was very warm and welcoming. "Very nice meeting you," said Dodgion to Schiff. "I'm looking forward to hearing you play." As it turned out, Schiff got through the experience. Another challenge for the young player was overcome and Pepper's lesson was learned. That is, always play when you're invited.

Schiff, nicknamed "Fish" by Pepper, thought he might move to New York and become a professional musician. He certainly had an important ally in Pepper, he thought, and he would seek out other players his own age and develop that way. But the Vietnam War changed his plans. His father, worried that his son would be drafted and would have to fight overseas, got his son enlisted in the Navy Band in 1972. 

Not entirely unlike Pepper's Korean War experience, I still don't know if Schiff had a tour of duty or, instead, if he stayed mostly at the base at Annapolis, Maryland. Schiff did stay with the Navy's Commodores band for about 20 years and later was also a member of Bill Potts' Big Band that had a long residency two weeks a month at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C. Interestingly, Schiff was in Potts' band on 11 October 1979, the night Pepper came in, as a guest soloist, at Frankie Condon's Supper Club in Rockville Maryland. Schiff made corrections to that entry in Pepper Adams' Joy Road (pages 384-85). The changes will be posted in the next few months at "Discographical Updates" at pepperadams.com.

Obviously, I look forward to transcribing the Schiff interview and following up. Schiff was the first person to describe the inside of Pepper's apartment on Jane Street. Most importantly, of course, was Schiff's extremely important observations about Pepper's approach to playing. Although I've done more than 100 interviews, no one has presented these kinds of insights. 

Why "Fish?" Pepper was a voracious crossword puzzle enthusiast. When Pepper was dying at home, he passed the time doing New York Times crossword puzzles and reading the Flashman Papers, a series of twelve novels written by George MacDonald Fraser. Moreover, as Curtis Fuller put it about Pepper's playing, "Pepper was a speller." My theory is that Pepper heard "Schiff" and amused himself by reversing Schiff's surname as a kind of pseudo- reverse homonym.

So far, I only know of two other summer music camps for whom Pepper taught. One was the National Band Camps, based at Millikin University in Decatur IL and the University of Connecticut in Stoors CT. As such, he was in the forefront of jazz education in the U.S. He enjoyed working with young players, and I understand the compensation for clinicians was quite good. Additionally, Adams enjoyed doing college workshops, where the pay was even better. Two such programs he did late in life were at Eastman in March, 1978 and the University of North Texas in November, 1982. At one National Band Camps residency, one of his young students was Boston-based guitarist Jon Wheatley. In the Eastman jazz program was pianist Dave Loeb (see Joy Road, page 324 and "Discographical Updates.") At UNT was tenor saxophonist Chip McNeill.

About Pepper's disinterest in having private students, I think Pepper really prized his time alone, reading fiction, listening to Ellington and classical music, and nurturing his other hobbies, such as reading about fine art or watching sports on televsion, particularly football and hockey. For the most part, Pepper was busy enough to support himself by playing, and his mother's inheritance allowed him a measure of comfort. He bought his house in Canarsie with cash from her estate, acquired some furniture (his dad's kitchen table, mom's spinet, etc), and he freed up the rent money that he was paying for his flat in Greenwich Village. 

The only other time I know of that Pepper had a private student was when he was already quite ill with cancer. Montreal-based baritone saxophonist Charles Papasoff got a grant from the Province of Quebec to study with Pepper. Unlike with Schiff, the situation was quite different. Pepper needed the subsidy because his medical benefits were dwindling and, with his cancer treatments, he wasn't able to work as much as he needed to support himself. Although I interviewed Papasoff years ago, I don't recall the nature of their interaction. That's just one of many interviews I need to review. I do know they became friends. I can't imagine Papasoff not asking Pepper a million questions about technique and his life in jazz but my recollection is that he and Pepper mostly hung out, and Pepper might not have even pulled out his instrument. Papasoff did help Pepper on his last visit to Montreal--a very poignant experience for all. Check out pages 505-507 of Joy Road regarding Adams' very last performance, with Papasoff and Denny Christianson's commentary.

                                            (Dave Schiff)