Utah State Does It The Right Way

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

I arrived in Logan, Utah on a Monday, just before dinner. Logan is a college town, the home of Utah State University. The drive north from Salt Lake City is picturesque, especially breathtaking on Route 89 as you drive up and over the mountain pass about twenty minutes outside of Logan.

Baritone saxophonist Jon Gudmundson (http://music.usu.edu/faculty/faculty_directory/Gudmundson) invited me to Utah State. He runs their jazz program. The occasion of my two hour journey from Salt Lake City was to fulfill Jon’s vision of a Pepper Adams celebration at Utah State.

Several years ago in an email to me, Jon said he’d like to produce a big band concert of Pepper Adams charts to feature both his students and a guest soloist. Also, he thought I should participate in some way. Jon’s idea was an outgrowth of purchasing Tony Faulkner’s charts in 2013 as part of my Kickstarter campaign.

Fast forward to 2016. I wrote Jon to tell him that my daughter had moved to Salt Lake and I’d be in Utah at least once a year. That brought Jon’s idea for an Adams celebration back to the foreground. Moving ahead, Jon invited baritone saxophonist Jason Marshall (http://jazzbarisax.com/marshall.php, http://www.pmauriatmusic.com/us/artists/artist/14-jason-marshall ) to be the soloist with his two student big bands. And he asked me to lecture about Pepper Adams to his jazz history class and do a pre-concert interview about Adams with Utah deejay Steve Williams as a way of kicking off the show.

                    (Jon Gudmundson)

Apart from the Pepper Adams agenda, the week was made even more interesting by the presence of guitarist Peter Bernstein (http://peterbernsteinmusic.com/). Since Bernstein was passing through on his way back to New York, he too was invited to do a clinic and perform a concert at USU’s beautiful Performance Hall. This confluence of heavyweight New York musicians way out west felt like a Smoke reunion. (Both play there on a weekly basis.)

Sitting in on Peter’s concert were Jason Marshall and guitarist Corey Christiansen (http://music.usu.edu/faculty/faculty_directory/Christiansen ). The concert consisted of standards and it revealed a more introspective side of Bernstein’s artistry than I expected. His playing throughout showcased the harmonic inventiveness and technical range that has made him one of the world’s foremost guitarists.

The following morning I lectured on Pepper Adams in Jon’s class. It was comprised mostly on non-music majors. I only had 75 minutes. Much like my lecture at Brigham Young University the previous week I needed to keep my comments brief. Unlike BYU, however, I was able to read to the students part of my Prologue to my forthcoming Adams biography and interlace two YouTube videos for context: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCnWKm5uYhs and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfI6ljMgvuQ).

During my lecture, Jon Gudmundson said that he and Jason Marshall were talking about Pepper. Marshall questioned whether Adams on ballad performances ever stayed in a tender mood for an entire tune without double-timing. Partly on Marshall's behalf, Gudmundson asked me, “Does Pepper always scramble eggs?” “Yes,” I nodded. I mentioned that Adams in some ways was a frustrated soloist, spending too much time with big bands and not nearly enough recording or playing on his own with small groups. Jon, understanding my reply, said in summation, “He had a lot of notes inside that needed to come out.”

In addressing Jon and Jason’s question further, I then played for the class “Star-Crossed Lovers” from Adams’ great recording Encounter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie3hWHklEG0&list=PLEE675BC1DD76B95E) to show Adams’ interest in a more sublime, lyrical aesthetic. On that, unfortunately, Pepper only embellishes the melody. Much like Coltrane’s “Naima,” Pepper doesn’t take a solo, instead giving it to Tommy Flanagan as Trane did with McCoy Tyner. I thought to next play Pepper’s solo on “East of the Sun” with Toots Thielemans from Man Bites Harmonica but the class was coming to a close.

After the talk I thought more about the issue of Adams as an “extreme player.” Does that detract from what he does? Some musicians, such as bassist Major Holley, would ask him why he plays so many notes. Did they ask Art Tatum the same thing? Does that suggest a double standard? Is there a different aesthetic expected of piano soloists than saxophonists or low-pitched instrumentalists?

I remembered something Gary Smulyan once said to me about the audience perception of baritone playing, something he’s been trying to get away from as his career continues to evolve. He told me it’s always expected that he play aggressively. If he doesn’t, his fans are let down. Perhaps Pepper Adams felt the same pressure?

Basically, it seems to me that Pepper’s playing is characterized one way based on the bulk of his commercial recordings. Yet some of his little known audience tapes show an entirely different side to his playing. If Pepper, on commercial recordings, preferred a bravura, virtuosic style of playing, is that necessarily a bad thing?

I thought first about medium tempo Pepper solos, such as the audience recording “Bye, Bye Blackbird” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC2vilxFqpk ) where Adams strikes a perfect balance between behind-the-beat, swinging eighth-note choruses and double-timing. But then I remembered some commercial recordings. There’s this early Pepper solo on “A Winter’s Tale”: http://www.pepperadams.com/Compositions/compList/WintersTale/index.html#anchor

Pepper plays very lyrically until he doubles up at the end as a climactic denouement. How about his great solo on Excerent?: http://www.pepperadams.com/Compositions/compList/Excerent/index.html#anchor Do you have any lyrical Pepper solos you can recommend?

Back to Marshall and Gudmundson's point, how about Adams’ ballad playing in particular? Did Pepper ever hold back and not double-time? This ties into a criticism that Lewis Porter once articulated to me about Adams. He said, after listening to a Pepper solo at my house in the mid 1980s, that Adams is “an anxious player.” Do you in any way agree? Is he too quick to double up, too eager (= anxious) to slowly build up a solo? Do some of his lines, or his rhythmic patterns, add an anxious sensibility, especially when they’re staccato? Does Martin Williams’ comment to me many years ago about Pepper--“He’s playing Coleman Hawkins paradiddles”-- have any merit?

Lip scoops. Remember Brian Williams’ comment a year or so ago about Pepper’s overuse of them? Is this unique to Pepper? Is it part of his articulational concept?

Apart from all the time I spent thinking about the implications of Jon and Jason's observation, one of the highlights of my Logan experience was a jam session held at Jack’s Wood Fired Oven. Mostly an enthusiastic Tuesday night hang for Utah State music students and their retinue, the night was made particularly exciting thanks to the added presence of Jason Marshall, Peter Bernstein, various Utah State faculty, and especially Detroit trumpeter Kris Johnson (http://krisjohnsonmusic.com/), who drove up from Salt Lake with one of his bari students to see Marshall (his old Count Basie Band buddy). All took turns sitting in and Johnson was dazzling!

Equally enjoyable was my opportunity to speak to the large pre-concert audience on my final night in Logan. For thirty minutes I was asked a handful of questions by Steve Williams before an appreciative house prior to USU’s “Tribute to Pepper Adams.” At the Tribute (see program), Greg Wheeler conducted two Tony Faulkner charts: “Mary’s Blues” and “Trentino.” Later, Jon Gudmundson conducted three others: “Bossallegro,” “Doctor Deep” and “Etude Diabolique.” 

Featured soloist Jason Marshall played beautifully throughout the night. He had a chance to work with the USU faculty small group (Aggie Music Project) on two tunes between the big band sets, and added an absolutely exquisite surprise ballad duet, backed by piano. He prefaced it by saying (and I paraphrase), “I want to play something pretty. We need more pretty in our lives. It delays the oxidative process.”

Lecture Notes

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

I was off for much of the week, enjoying a few rounds of golf with a good friend. Because of that, the second part of my review of 50 Years at the Village Vanguard will be delayed at least a week. Thanks for your patience.

As of yesterday, I began preparing a new Pepper Adams lecture for at least four talks I'll be giving in Utah over a two-week period starting March 27. I've been invited to Utah State University for a few days as a guest of professor Jon Gudmundson. I'll be speaking about Pepper Adams in a classroom setting on April 4, and again at a pre-concert talk on April 5. The latter will be before a concert by the Utah State Jazz Band. They're performing some of Tony Faulkner's big band charts of Pepper Adams tunes, with Jason Marshall as the featured baritone saxophone soloist. The previous week I'll be lecturing to mostly music students at Westminster College (3/28), Salt Lake Community College (3/30) and Brigham Young University (3/31).

As I always do, I try to bring something new to these lectures. Apart from choosing different videos and music examples, I've tried to further refine why Pepper Adams remains overlooked. After all, why am I standing before these people, and why have so few in attendance not heard of him? Below is part of what I'll be presenting. (For one class I'll need to truncate my talk, hence the bracketed thing about Detroit.) I'm interested in your feedback. Am I on the right track? 

PEPPER LECTURE #4: PEPPER ADAMS (1930-1986)

Thank you, ________. It's great to be here. Today I'm going to discuss Pepper Adams' contribution to American music [ . . . and I'll touch on why his postwar Detroit generation of musicians is unique in jazz history.] 

Before I begin, do you have any burning questions for me about Pepper Adams or about my work about him? Have any of you seen pepperadams.com, my Instagram site, or my blog?

Before my lecture here was announced, how many of you had even heard of Pepper Adams? . . . 

There's no doubt that among jazz musicians during Adams' lifetime, and for many insiders up to this day, Pepper Adams is viewed as a jazz titan, an icon. Nevertheless, he still isn't widely known as a musician of significance, as I think he should be, nor even discussed in any depth in jazz histories that really should know better. Despite the reverence he commands among musicians, Adams still lingers as somewhat of a footnote to history. That disconnect, albeit gradually improving over time, is something I've dedicated my life to changing.

I've been working on Pepper Adams for 33 years, since I met him in the summer of 1984. I knew him during the last three years of his life, two during his terminal illness. I'm continually struck by how much he's overlooked as an innovator. Part of this, I think, is due to the sheer complexity of his style. There's a lot going on, a lot to grasp, when you hear a Pepper Adams solo! 

Another reason, as I see it, is the bias in the way jazz history is told and the way it's sold. For me, they are two sides of the same phenomenon. If you look through the histories of jazz, you'll likely notice that so much of it discusses bandleaders and their recordings. Those who led jazz bands have historically made the most well-known recordings because they are the ones most promoted by record companies, PR firms, radio and TV, and other affiliated industries. Such bandleader recordings in turn have gotten the most press and continual airplay. So, around and around it goes in a circular, self-aggrandizing cycle of promotion and acclaim.

Yet, I'd like to point out that there's a lot more to the history of jazz than music made only by bandleaders. The way they've been anointed as the core history of this amazing music is myopic and unfortunate. For one thing, there's the overlooked history of music made in major cities such as Detroit. Fortunately, this kind of localized scholarship is really beginning to flower. 

Then there's the issue of sidemen. Some of the greatest jazz musicians, such as Pepper Adams or Sonny Stitt, to name just two saxophonists, preferred to tour as soloists, playing with pickup rhythm sections throughout the world. They didn't want the responsibility of leading a band and running a business. Being a sideman doesn't make them any less important as players, nor, as I've said, shouldn't marginalize them in term of their historical influence. It's simply a business decision they've made, though it certainly has its implications, doesn't it? Even Charlie Parker, by the way, though extremely well known, also spent much of his career touring this way. 

So, part of Pepper Adams' lack of recognition is due to issues related to commerce, as well as the common narrative sold by the media and told in jazz books. In addition, he played the baritone saxophone, an instrument that before him was thought to be cumbersome and unwieldy; a low-pitched instrument that early in the Twentieth Century was somewhat of a novelty instrument. One of Adams' great contributions to music is the way he brought the level of playing on the baritone saxophone up to the level of all other instruments.