Pepper Biography News

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

Somehow this past week I wrote a complete first draft of Chapter 2 of Pepper's biography. I had so many pages of notes from other times that I wrote about him or prepared college lectures. The chapter covers the period 1930-1947 and also dives into (as I discussed last week) Adams' parental genealogy. On the genealogy, I added more details about the derivation of the Adamses, all the way back to the Eleventh Century, and some more information on just how tough a dude his sixth great-grandfather, James Adams, was: how he survived the Battle of Dunbar, his march and incarceration, the voyage to the New World and his servitude. James Adams' grit and determination is part of Pepper Adams' DNA.

Here's how the chapter falls:

1. Father's history

2. Genealogy

3. Family music history

4. History of Rochester, New York

5. The move to New York, 1931-1935

6. Pepper, 1935 to his father's death in 1940

7. Rochester war effort

8. 1940s Rochester jazz scene

9. Pepper, 1941-1944

10. Duke Ellington and Rex Stewart at the Temple Theatre; its many implications

11. Raymond Murphy taks about Pepper

12. Jack Huggler talks about Pepper

13. The Elite

14. Isolation

15. John Albert talks about Pepper Adams

Here's an excerpt from the chapter (without footnotes):

Although Adams was still playing in the New Orleans style, his taste in music was already very well developed in 1944.

I was studying more classical music at the time. Although I enjoyed jazz, which I listened to on the radio, which is what you did in those days, it was really classical music which interested me first. Then, when I started to hear Ellington and all those chords and voicings I knew immediately: . . . Debussy, Ravel, Elgar, Delius, the tonal palettes of twentieth-century music were all there. You know, the rough kind of excitement of the Basie band could be a lot of fun and I certainly liked them as soloists but Duke’s band was an entirely different ball game.”63

“Don’t put them next to nobody else,” cautioned Skippy Williams about the Ellington band.

That band, you couldn’t touch them! [Duke] would go back and get some old tricky things like “Caravan” and those kinds of things. He could put some chords on you. They would put some double augmented chords on you, six-note chords, and they would stretch it out in such a way, man, it would sound like five bands were swinging. He would change the chords and make them much heavier. Say, for instance, if you’re making C double augmented it would be C-D-G flat-A flat-B flat and he knew just where to put them to broaden the sound.64

“I was at a restaurant next door to the theater there downtown in Rochester,” said Williams. “Pepper came in and he told me he had heard me play and he liked my playing. He said he played tenor sax. . . . Back when I met him,” Williams continued, “I had taken Ben Webster’s place in Duke’s band. He was very enthused about that.”

I spent as much time as I could. He was working at a shoe store or something. . . . He was asking me about my tone and I told him some certain tricks, how to build his chops up. Well, see, a lot of guys, they try to use their lip a certain way. They don’t let the horn get the right, true sound. You got to let the reed do more vibrating. You have to know how to blow and how to use your belly. . . . He said, “Can I bring my horn by?” I said, “Sure. You can come by any time. . . .” He asked me, “How do you memorize all those things? I never see you looking at the music.” I said, “Next time, come up and look.” He looked up there. They had comic books. We carried about thirty or forty comic books at the time. People think, well, we’re reading Duke’s music but we’d be up there playing like hell and everybody’d be reading comic books.65

Pepper Adams Biography

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

Happy Mother's Day to everyone in the U.S. Woefully, mine passed away seven years ago. Life hasn't been the same since, but it rolls on nonetheless. 

For me, the biggest thing now in my life is writing Pepper Adams' biography. After many fits and starts over the last five or so years, about two years ago I finally completed the book's Prologue after wrestling with it for over a year. I had concluded that I needed an argument to present to those who didn't know anything about Adams. Why should they care to read a book about this guy? I wrote the Prologue in two parts. The first section was about Adams in crisis, giving notice to Thad and Mel, then going out on his own as a "single." It turned out to be a great decision for him. From 1977-1983 Adams wrote nearly 20 compositions, made a number of superb recordings as a leader, toured the world, was nominated for four Grammy Awards, and essentially burnished his legacy. Then came the fall: his bizarre car accident, his cancer, the dissolution of his marriage, and his death at age 55.

The second part of the Prologue discusses my personal association with Adams. How I met him, the work we did together on his memoirs, what I witnessed, and so forth. I figured the reader would be interested in that and I wanted to, in a sense, get me out of the way of the book. Nevertheless, I wanted to further my case for how important Adams is, listing a few additional reasons why I feel he's a worthy subject and to set up a few themes in the reader's mind.

Now, several years after writing the Prologue, I'm finding that the writing is really flowing out of me, that I'm on a roll. I've written the first 5-10 pages of Chapter 1. It may not seem like much production but it takes so much time to polish and fully refine each point. I begin with Pepper seeing Charlie Parker for the first time in Detroit at the Mirror Ballroom in 1949. For him, it was a magical moment. Then I write about the transition from Rochester to Detroit: how his relocation came to be and why it was so life-altering. Then, I include a section about Adams' pivotal four-week experience in New York City studying with Ellington tenor saxophonist Skippy Williams. 

My first chapter is entitled "What Is It?," taken from one of Pepper's compositions (from the arcane 1969 MPS date Muses for Richard Davis). Chapter 1 is all about Pepper's Detroit experience. That's the core of his being and where he became a great musician. I just now decided that I'll have a separate chapter on his Korean War experience, unless I feel there's not enough material to make it into a full chpater. Continuing the concept of using Pepper's colorful compositional titles as chapter headings, for the Korea chapter do you prefer "Witches Pit" or "Etude Diabolique?" 

That presupposes a separate chapter for his return to Detroit, 1953-55, before he leaves for New York City. Since I like the title "Urban Dreams" for the New York City chapter, what should I call his three-year period in Detroit? "Joy Road?" "Excerent?" Twelfth and Pingree?" I kind of prefer the third one. As it stands, there will also be a separate chapter on his experience growing up in Rochester, New York. That will be entitled "Inanout."

Working on the Detroit chapter, I've had to go through a ton of material I've accumulated over the years. The last few days I've been sorting stuff germane to Detroit from the rest of it. While doing so, I've found some things worthy of posting on my Instagram site. Have any of you seen it? There's a wealth of material there. You can always get to it by clicking the Instagram icon at the top of pepperadams.com.

For those of you who didn't see the following posted on my Facebook page a few backs ago, here's a quote from Detroit pianist Willie Metcalf (brother of Freddie "Freddie Froo" Metcalf) about Pepper and Sonny Stitt. 

"From roughly 1953 to 1955, Stitt was traveling with three horns including baritone sax. At the Blue Bird one night, Stitt was the featured soloist with a local rhythm section and Pepper Adams. Clarence Edding, the Blue Bird owner, preferred having local horn players, along with the house rhythm section, perform with a guest soloist. This gig would have likely been in the second half of 1953 or 1954, after Adams was discharged from the Army and returned to Detroit for two and a half years. Metcalf said to me in an interview, "Sonny was playing the baritone then, and Pepper was giving him so much static on the baritone. Sonny said, 'Shit, I better put this motherfucker down and pick up my alto!' I heard that [Metcalf said, laughing]. Pepper is just so fluent!" Can we assume that Pepper is one the reasons Stitt dropped the baritone and reverted back to just tenor and alto?"

To a question I asked Metcalf in my interview with him about whether it was ever awkward for Pepper as a white guy in the 1940s and 50s to play in Detroit almost exclusively with black musicians, Metcalf said, "Not the fellas, but more so on the white musicians, because they would comment. I never heard it personally but people have said that some of the white musicians have said 'he played too black.'" About Pepper, Metcalf said, "He was a for-real cat."

Blood Brothers: Pepper Adams and Bob Wilber

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

My  apologies to any readers who expected a post yesterday and were disappointed not to see it. For more than a year I've dutifully posted every Saturday. This weekend, however, I needed a slight reprieve. Better to supply something of value than rotely produce drivel just for the sake of a deadline?

I was very pleased this past week to hear from Pug Horton, Bob Wilber's wife. Here's what she wrote:

"Sorry to have taken so long to get back to you--we have been on the road. Are you in NY? We will be coming to NY Sept 26th. Hopefully seeing Mike [Steinman] around that time too. Let me know how we can get together & Bob would love to talk about his relationship with Pepper. He talks about the time in Rochester quite a lot…He hated it except for the time he spent with him!!!"

My reply:

"Thanks so much for your email. I left NYC in 2004 and currently live in Atlanta. I'd be thrilled to speak with Bob again, either by phone or Skype, at that time. I'm heading out of town on Sept. 27th to celebrate my 30th anniversary, back on the 30th, but I'm sure I can grab an hour if those days are best for him. Just let me know. 

Did you see my blog post?: 

http://gc-pepperadamsblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/william-paterson-university-and.html

Thanks,

Gary Carner

pepperadams.com"

In 1987 I interviewed Bob Wilber about Pepper Adams. It's the only time we ever spoke. There's much I'd still like to ask him about his brief time in Rochester and about his subsequent work with Pepper. As I've written, I believe that Wilber was the single most important influence on Pepper as a young player. I only came to that conclusion by virtue of my research this summer into Pepper's early life. I've had a chance to listen to many hours of interview I conducted in the late 1980s with some of the musicians who were on the Rochester scene in the mid-1940s and knew Pepper--most importantly Raymond Murphy, John Huggler, Everett Gates, Skippy Williams, Ralph Dickinson, and, of course, Bob Wilber. I'd like to ask Wilber if he remembers any specific advice he gave Pepper, such as exercises, fingerings, pieces to play, or any kind of technical advice on getting around the horn. Besides that, anything new he can tell me about Pepper as a 14- to 16-year-old would be fascinating! Wilber, much like Raymond Murphy and John Huggler, was almost three years older than Pepper. In a way, all three of them functioned as Pepper's big brothers and, to some degree, as a prosthetic family after the death of Pepper's father in 1940, when Pepper was nine. I'd like to ask Wilber about that too, or at least his perception of Pepper's sense of loneliness.

Regarding Bob Wilber and the very strong bond that he and Pepper established in those formative early days, it's not surprising how their paths continued to cross as both became in-demand professionals. I've already written how the two of them spent a good amount of time together during Wilber's one semester at the Eastman School in the Fall of 1945. Here's a summary of their very early experience, from pepperadams.com:

1945

cAug: New York: Adams and his mother travel to New York and meet Bob Wilber at a Max Kaminsky gig at the Pied Piper in Greenwich Village. The Pied Piper was later renamed the Cafe Bohemia.

Sept: Rochester NY: Adams begins 10th Grade at John Marshall High School and plays in the school band throughout the year. See http://instagram.com/p/tyuB3PJntF/?modal=true. On Saturday afternoons, Adams, John Huggler and Bob Wilber have sessions at Bob Wilber's apartment, playing along with jazz records. See cJuly 1944. (Wilber was attending Eastman, but only that Fall semester.) Wilber goes to Adams' place to play along with jazz records and have dinner. Wilber also visits with Adams and Huggler at Raymond Murphy's house.

Oct: Rochester NY: Adams in 10th Grade. On Saturday afternoons, Adams, John Huggler and Bob Wilber have sessions at Bob Wilber's apartment, playing along with jazz records. See cJuly 1944. (Wilber was attending Eastman, but only that Fall semester.) Wilber goes to Adams' place to play along with jazz records and have dinner. Wilber also visits with Adams and Huggler at Raymond Murphy's house.

Nov: Rochester NY: Adams in 10th Grade. On Saturday afternoons, Adams, John Huggler and Bob Wilber have sessions at Bob Wilber's apartment, playing along with jazz records. See cJuly 1944. (Wilber was attending Eastman, but only that Fall semester.) Wilber goes to Adams' place to play along with jazz records and have dinner. See cJuly 1944. Wilber also visits with Adams and Huggler at Raymond Murphy's house.

Nov 29-30: Rochester NY: A serious snow storm paralyzes the city. Adams is likely homebound.

Dec: Rochester NY: Adams in 10th Grade. On Saturday afternoons, Adams, John Huggler and Bob Wilber have sessions at Bob Wilber's apartment, playing along with jazz records. See cJuly 1944. (Wilber was attending Eastman, but only that Fall semester.) Wilber goes to Adams' place to play along with jazz records and have dinner. See cJuly 1944. Wilber also visits with Adams and Huggler at Raymond Murphy's house.

I'd especially like to know if Wilber studied or hung out with Eastman professor and clarinetist Jack End. End, against tremendous institutional bias, fought to have jazz at least played by students at Eastman in the 1940s and early '50s, though at that time it was not accepted as an official part of the curriculum. Wilber, it's clear, hated his time at Eastman. Might have an association with End at least made it marginally palatable? Did Wilber introduce Pepper to End? I'd love to know more about what End dealt with at Eastman and more about End and his playing on the Rochester scene.

Unless Pepper saw Wilber in New York on a visit south to the big city, Pepper may not have seen Wilber again from January, 1946, when Wilber left Eastman, until Pepper moved to Detroit in June, 1947. That's because, much to Pepper's mother's credit, on their way west to Detroit, Pepper and his mother lived at the Hotel Edison in Manhattan for a full month. It was then that Adams and Wilber reunited. By then, Wilber was living with Sidney Bechet. Talk about getting close to the source! As musicians, Adams, Murphy and Huggler, with Wilber, had strived, in their listening and practicing, to get as close as possible to the true source of New Orleans music--"from the horse's mouth," as Huggler told me. Now, Adams could finally meet Bechet and see that Wilber was indeed living the dream. Here's my citation about that time:

1947

July: New Yor: Adams moves with his mother to New York City for a month while their belongings are transported to Detroit. They live at the Hotel Edison on 47th Street in the Theater District before moving to Detroit. Cleo Adams decided to relocate because elementary school teaching jobs paid far more in Detroit than in Rochester. Pepper meets Sidney Bechet, probably through Bob Wilber. Pepper studies saxophone with Skippy Williams, the tenor saxophonist in Ellington’s band who he met at the Temple Theatre in early March, 1944 and who first replaced Ben Webster in Ellington's band. See 3-5 Mar 1944. Adams attends rehearsals of the Joan Lee Big Band (based in Hershey PA) at Williams' apartment on 48th Street. Lee's band was an all-white, all-female group that Williams was rehearsing.

After Pepper moved to Detroit, it's not known if Wilber and Adams saw each other or remained in contact until Pepper moved to New York City in early 1956. I'd like to ask Bob about that, if they didn't speak at all for ten years, and whether Bob attended any of those heady loft-jam-sessions around New York City that were taking place when Pepper first arrived. 

The first band that Adams and Wilber actually worked together in as professional musicians was Benny Goodman's. The two of them had this tour:

1959

Apr 1-5: New York: Benny Goodman rehearsals. Later, the Pepper Adams Quintet at the Village Vanguard. See 24-31 Mar. See http://instagram.com/p/sApVGBpniG/?modal=true. 

Apr 6-9: New York: Benny Goodman rehearsals.

Apr 10: New York: Benny Goodman rehearsal. Later, Benny Goodman "Swing Into Spring" telecast.

Apr 11-21: New York: Benny Goodman rehearsals.

cApr 22: Troy NY: Benny Goodman Orchestra begins its three-week tour. The band boards a bus that morning (in front of the Hotel President on West 48 Street in New York) for its Troy gig that evening, then stays in Albany.

cApr 23: Rutland VT: Benny Goodman Orchestra's second gig of the tour.

Apr 24: Hershey PA: Gig with Benny Goodman, probably at Hershey Park. Herb Geller and Pepper Adams are featured, with the rhythm section (Russ Freeman, Turk Van Lake, Scott LaFaro, Roy Burns), on Bernie's Tune. Other band members are Taft Jordan and Bob Wilber. Dakota Staton and the Ahmad Jamal Trio are also on this General Artists tour package.

Apr 25: Off/travel?

Apr 26: Montreal: Gig with Benny Goodman at the Forum, then Adams and Herb Geller sit in after hours at the Little Vienna with trumpeter Herbie Spanier.

Apr 27: Montreal: Off day for Goodman tour. Adams does small group gig at Vieux Moulin with Herb Geller, Scott LaFaro and Roy Burns.

Apr 28: Toronto: Gig with Benny Goodman at Maple Leaf Gardens.

Apr 29: Buffalo: Gig with Benny Goodman at Kleinhans Music Hall.

cApr 30: New York: Gig with Benny Goodman at Madison Square Garden.

May: Indianapolis: Adams, Scott LaFaro and Bob Wilber sit in with Wes, Buddy and Monk Montgomery at the Missile Club. 

May: Dallas: Adams rooms with Taft Jordan and shares an elevator ride in their hotel with Lassie, the celebrity TV collie, who was in town on a promotional tour.

May: Iowa City IA: Gig with Benny Goodman at the University of Iowa.

cMay 13: Pittsburgh: Gig with Benny Goodman at the Old Mosque.

cMay 14: New York: Returns from Goodman tour.

After the Goodman tour, I don't know to what degree they saw each other in New York or even worked together. There is this gig for the Duke Ellington Society, then the very fine Bobby Hackett date Creole Cooking, for which Wilber wrote the arrangements: 

1966

May 22: New York: Bob Wilber gig for the Duke Ellington Society gig at the Barbizon Plaza Theatre, with Shorty Baker, Quentin Jackson, Jackie Byard, Wendell Marshall, Dave Bailey and Flo Handy. See http://instagram.com/p/sA3ydoJnrT/?modal=true. 

1967

Jan 30: New York: Bobby Hackett date for MGM, with Bob Wilber, Bob Brookmeyer, Jerry Dodgion, Zoot Sims, et al. Later, possible double appearance with the Joe Henderson All-Star Big Band and Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra at the Synanon Jazz Benefit at the Village Theater preceding the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra at the Village Vanguard.

Mar 13: New York: Bobby Hackett date for MGM, with Bob Willber, Bob Brookmeyer, Jerry Dodgion, Zoot Sims, et al. Later, Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra at the Village Vanguard.

Mar 30: New York: Bobby Hackett date for MGM, with Bob Wilber, Bob Brookmeyer, Jerry Dodgion, Zoot Sims, et al. Later, Elvin Jones gig at the Five Spot. See 28-29 Mar.

After the Hackett date, I'm not sure if Adams and Wilber recorded or worked any gigs until the interesting 1972 project below for Music Minus One. The label's concept was to provide a backing band for the practicing soloist, well before Jamey Aebersold started his series. Wilber did tell me about his writing for saxophone quartet (two altos, tenor and baritone). Wilber held rehearsals at his New York City apartment, possibly in the late 1960s. Other than Wilber and Adams, someone I forget played tenor and possibly Rudy Powell played the other alto part. I don't know precisely when the rehearsals took place, if any were recorded, nor over how long a stretch of time the rehearsals lasted. 

1972

June 8: New York: Bob Wilber rehearsal, probably for 19 June.

June 15: New York: Bob Wilber rehearsal, probably for 19 June. See 8 June.

June 19: New York: Bob Wilber date for Music Minus One. Later, possible Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra gig at the Village Vanguard.

In 1974, Wilber put together a band to play Ellington tunes:

1974

Apr 26: New York: Bob Wilber gig at Carnegie Hall, with Taft Jordan and Quentin Jackson, perform a tribute to Duke Ellington.

Apr 28: New York: Bob Wilber gig at the New York Jazz Museum, with Quentin Jackson, Taft Jordan, Larry Ridley and Bobby Rosengarden.

In 1977 Adams and Wilber were in a band together, led by Dick Hyman, doing a tribute to Duke Ellington:

1977

July 17: Nice: Dick Hyman gig at La Grande Parade du Jazz, broadcast on FR3 television. Also, Thad Jones sextet gig at La Grande Parade du Jazz. Later, a third festival gig: Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra at La Grande Parade du Jazz.

The Hyman gig for me has special significance. It gives me a chance to hear Pepper with the Ellington big band repertoire and imagine what it might have been like had he actually subbed for Harry Carney. I've written before that Pepper was Carney's designated sub in the Ellington band. Yet, in fifty years Carney never missed a gig! Well, I slightly exaggerate: He missed one two-week stretch of work--just once! Pepper told me that it was easier to reconstitute the Ellington reed section and slide Russell Procope or someone else from the section into the bari chair, then hire a local sub for tenor or alto, than to get Pepper to the gig.

The Hyman performance has additional significance. There's two especially wonderful Adams/Wilber moments. On the very first tune, Ellington's original theme "St. Louis Toodle-Oo," Pepper takes the first solo--classic, harmonically inventive Pepper all the way--and Eddie Daniels and Bob Wilber are both visibly amused by the incongruity of it. Later in the show, Wilber (on alto) and Adams have another beautiful moment together, playing the two opening 8-bar "A" sections in the theme of Ellington's "Blue Goose." (You can see Billy Mitchell totally broken up over how Pepper navigated the passage.) How far Adams and Wilber have traveled since the 1940s!

I'm especially enthused about this concert because I recently acquired a rare video of the TV show. I'm trying to get it uploaded to YouTube so everyone can see it. How about that sax section?: Bob Wilber, Eddie Daniels, Zoot Sims, Billy Mitchell, Pepper Adams.

In 1978, Adams and Wilber were able to play in several venues together in Nice. They were already touring together as part of an all-star 50th Anniversary Lionel Hampton commemorative gig:

1978

June 28-30: New York: Rehearsals with Lionel Hampton.

June 30: New York: Lionel Hampton gig at Carnegie Hall, with Charles McPherson, Bob Wilber, Ray Bryant, et al, recorded by Sutra. 

July 1-2: Saratoga NY: Hampton gig at the Performing Arts Center, with Charles McPherson, Bob Wilber, Ray Bryant, et al.

July 3: Brooklyn NY: Off?

July 4: Travel. Departure for France. 

July 5: Travel. Transfer to Nice. 

July 6: Nice: Off. 

July 7: Nice: Hampton gig at les Jardins des Arenes de Cimiez, with Charles McPherson, Bob Wilber, Ray Bryant, et al., at La Grande Parade du Jazz. Recorded by Radio France. 

July 8: Off. 

July 9: Nice: Hampton gig at les Jardins des Arenes de Cimiez at La Grande Parade du Jazz. Recorded by Radio France. See 7 July.

July 10: Nice: Hampton gig at les Jardins des Arenes de Cimiez, with guest Dzzy Gillespie, at La Grande Parade du Jazz. Recorded by Radio France. See 9 July.

July 11: Nice: Hampton gig at les Jardins des Arenes de Cimiez at La Grande Parade du Jazz. Recorded by Radio France. See 10 July.

July 12: Nice: Dick Hyman gig, "Tribute to Count Basie," at les Jardins des Arenes de Cimiez, at La Grande Parade du Jazz. Recorded by Radio France. 

July 13: Nice: Hampton gig at les Jardins des Arenes de Cimiez at La Grande Parade du Jazz. Recorded by Radio France. See 11 July.

July 14: The Hague: Hampton gig at Prins Willem Alexander Zaal, with Charles McPherson, Bob Wilber, Ray Bryant, et al., at the Northsea Jazz Festival. Recorded by AVRO television. 

July 15: Orange, France: Hampton gig at Theatre Antique, with Charles McPherson, Bob Wilber, Ray Bryant, et al. 

July 16: Nice: Hampton gig at les Jardins des Arenes de Cimiez with guest Stephane Grappelli, at La Grande Parade du Jazz. Recorded by Radio France. See 13 July. 

July 17: Salon-de-Provence, France: Dizzy Gillespie gig, at Cour du Chateau de L'Empri as part of the Festival of Jazz, with Kai Winding, Curtis Fuller, Charles McPherson, Ray Bryant, Mickey Roker, et al. Recorded by Radio France. 

July 18: Perugia: Hampton gig, with Charles McPherson, Bob Wilber, Ray Bryant, et al., and guest Dizzy Gillespie, at Umbria Jazz. Recorded by RAI. 

July 19: Travel. Hampton band arrives from Italy, possibly by bus. 

July 20: Travel. Hampton band arrives in England. 

July 21: Middlesbrough, England: Hampton gig, with Charles McPherson, Bob Wilber, Ray Bryant, et al. 

July 22: Comblain-au-Pont, Belgium: Hampton gig, with Charles McPherson, Bob Wilber, Ray Bryant, et al. Later, a nearby gig with the Georges Arvanitas trio. 

Did Wilber and Adams see each other again after this 1978 tour? Did Bob reach out for Pepper when he heard that Pepper was dying of cancer? Pug Horton told me that Wilber greatly admired Pepper. I think she was referring to both personal and musical admiration. These are just some of the questions I'm eager to ask Bob Wilber. More soon! Have a great week.

                                            (Bob Wilber)

       (Adams in London, at the Ephemera 

            photo shoot, September, 1973)

Rex Stewart and Young Pepper Adams

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

On March 3-5, 1944 thirteen year old Park Adams skipped school three nights in a row to attend Duke Ellington's entire run at the Temple Theatre in Rochester, New York. Adams was already playing piano, saxophone, clarinet and enjoying jazz programs on the radio. Starting in 1936, six-year-old Adams listened to Fats Waller's daily 15-minute afternoon radio show. In 1938 Adams tuned in to John Kirby's program featuring his sextet. And in 1940 he caught Fletcher Henderson's late night broadcasts originating from Nashville. 

Though Adams' parents didn't play musical instruments, they owned a piano and a broad selection of 78 rpm records. Because of that, Adams was exposed very early to both jazz and classical music. By seventeen he was familiar enough with the history of the classical repertoire to get hired in the Classical Music Record Department of Grinnell's in downtown Detroit. 

Adams was especially drawn to the symphonic music of his era and at a young age developed a taste for dissonant harmonies. Although Adams was still playing in the New Orleans style, his taste in music was already very well developed in 1944. One can imagine how excited Adams must have been to hear the Duke Ellington Orchestra in a concert settting. 

The Temple is a movie palace built in 1909 at 35 Clinton Avenue South in downtown Rochester. On the third and final evening of the Temple engagement, Ellington trumpeter Rex Stewart was curious about the enthusiastic, short-haired white kid with horn-rimmed glasses he noticed sitting by himself each night in the balcony. Intrigued, Stewart made his way upstairs, introduced himself, then brought a no doubt exasperated Adams backstage to meet Ellington's illustrious musicians, including Johnny Hodges and Harry Carney. While there Adams overheard Frederick Delius recordings being played by Ellington that commentators have reported Duke was listening to at that time.

                               (Photo by Valerie Wilmer c. 1966)

It's hard to overstate how valuable this encounter was for Adams, or the role Rex Stewart assumed as a lifelong father figure and influential elder. Should we assume Stewart sought out young Park Adams because he was sitting by himself or presumably an anomaly in a mostly black audience? While maybe part of the equation, I believe Stewart was honoring this provocative teenager, who at the time must have been from Stewart's perspective a very special young man for going out of his way to scrape together enough money to attend the Ellington orchestra each night. Stewart was also continuing the important tradition of an elder musician supporting a young aspiring one, something that (to its detriment, I think) has mostly died off in jazz.

Consider for a moment the context. Just a few years earlier, Adams' father had died at the age of 44. Adams, an only child, was already a survivor of the Great Depression like so many who were born after 1929. His father's death, when Adams was nine, only intensified the ordeal.

The Depression had destroyed Adams' parents' way of life. It robbed them of their Detroit home and separated them for nearly four years while his father traveled throughout the U.S., looking for any work he could find. Worn down by the strain of scratching out a living, his father suffered his first heart attack in 1934 in Rome, New York, partly from the excitement of his family finally being reunified. In theory, it was intended to be a time of great joy. Instead, Adams' father lived out the remainder of his life a frail and unfulfilled man. 

At the Temple Theatre, Rex Stewart's profound act of kindness--his mentoring of Pepper and adopting the role of a father figure--must have filled a void in Pepper's life. It was certainly the most transcendent event of his boyhood. Very soon after meeting Stewart, Adams took a few tenor sax lessons with Skippy Williams, the tenor saxophonist in Ellington's band that Stewart introduced Pepper to backstage. Williams was the saxophonist who first replaced Ben Webster, prior to Al Sears. (I interviewed Williams, by the way, and hope to share that with you in a later post.)

That night at the Temple put in motion Adams' lifelong love affair with Ellington and Strayhorn. (Listen to Pepper's original ballads, such as "I Carry Your Heart," and you'll hear Pepper's profound debt:
http://www.pepperadams.com/Compositions/compList/ICarryYourHeart/index.html#anchor) 

Pepper's close friend Gunnar Windahl told me the following about Pepper:

"Every day, I think, he listened to Duke Ellington. Duke Ellington meant a lot to Pepper. I remember we were in Gothenburg. After a gig there we came into my room. I had a half a bottle of whisky and we sat talking. With my blue eyes, and as an overreacting person before such a star as Pepper Adams, I managed, 'Who is the best musician in the world, Pepper? Who do you consider the most interesting and underrated?' He said the most interesting and underrated musician in this business is Rex Stewart.' I was a bit taken aback. Then Pepper said that he seen Rex just before he died and that Rex was very disappointed that he wasn’t more recognized. I think Pepper identified with Rex’s destiny."

Pepper's life mirrored Rex Stewart's. Rex had success in the mid-1930s and '40s as one of Ellington's great soloists, then languished. Adams, according to bassist Percy Heath, was a sensation in New York when he first arrived in early 1956, created a similar stir in California in early 1957, had an influential quintet with Donald Byrd from 1958-1961, then languished. I don't mean "languished" as a pejorative term related to their musical growth or achievements but simply as a term for how much they struggled financially and how little attention they received from record companies and the international press. 

Pepper, for obvious reasons, identified with struggling artists, whether it be Rex Stewart, the painter Lyonel Feininger or the composer Arthur Honegger. For Adams they were all very special because, like himself, they were unique, accomplished, had struggled financially throughout their careers and were overlooked.

Other than his very close bond with Stewart, what is it about Stewart's playing in particular that Pepper Adams admired? His off-the-wall humor, for one thing, with oblique phrases coming seemingly (as Pepper put) "out of left field." You can grasp Stewart's almost wacky sense of humor in his most well-known Ellington feature Boy Meets Horn: 

http://youtu.be/zitswiZzTq4

Stewart was technically brilliant and harmonically adventurous. Listen and watch these three clips:

1. Duke Ellington's 1938 Braggin' in Brass: http://youtu.be/M_bFnaiyAZM 

2. Nick Travis and Rex Stewart perform "There'll Never Be Another You" (1958) from the TV show Art Ford's Jazz Party: http://youtu.be/mzsJUbKwIN8 

3. Also, from the legendary 1957 CBS TV show "The Sound of Jazz" Rex takes his solo on "Wild Man Blues" just after the 8-minute mark. It's replete with numerous musical paraphrases. Perhaps that's another Rex Stewart influence on Pepper? Rex's irrepressible joy is obvious throughout, especially when he openly laughs after his first four-bar statement: http://youtu.be/vo7qiXkTu4s

Also, check out Stewart's book Jazz Masters of the 30s.  It's a collection of his writings that were collected posthumously. Like Pepper, Rex Stewart was very literate:

http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Masters-The-Macmillan-Series/dp/0306801590

Pepper Adams was always very guarded with his emotions. According to his widow, Claudette, Pepper used music to get his emotions out and was not one to readily share the intimacies of his feelings with anyone. But Rex Stewart's death in 1967 was too much for him to contain. According to Montreal radio host Len Dobbin, Pepper broke down and wept when Dobbin told him that Stewart had died.