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)

Love Letters

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

Much of my week was spent reading hundreds of letters that Pepper Adams kept and I scopped up at the time of his death. Many of them are from women--I guess you could call at least some of them groupies--who are enthralled with Pepper and are somehow hoping to inspire him to write them back. Others are from longtime Detroit friends of his, such as Frank Foster, Bob Pierson, Sheila Jordan, Rudy Tucich and Tommy Flanagan, or from various Korean War buddies. I can't begin to say how happy I am that I got through them. Most of the letters were tediuos and felt utterly interminable!

One letter, though, from one of Adams' admirers, cut through the rest. It was an undated letter from the late '60s or early '70s, judging from the date of some of her other letters. At one point she writes to Pepper, "Golly, you must like me! Do you like me as a person and not just as a woman? That would be nice." It's not known if Pepper ever responded to her question, or if he even gave it a minute's thought. Her question for me cuts to the core of Pepper's intimacy issues with women, something I'll be writing about in the biography. This little moment stood out from all the chatty letters, mostly informative in nature, always with the request that Pepper please write back and show some interest in them.

I've retained a few piles of letters from a handful of women who were significant in Pepper's life. I'll be consulting them later on as I get deeper into the biography.  The rest are going in a bin with other estate materials.

A few of the letters, despite the tedium, helped me pinpoint some Adams gigs. That's always helpful and it helped sustain my interest throughout the process. I made the corresponding updates to the Chronology. They will be posted at pepperadams.com on the next round of updates.

In a few cases I did find some of the correspondence significant enough to post at my Instagram site. One was a postcard from Blue Mitchell.

Another was a letter from Transition owner Tom Wilson.

Still another was a letter from Kenny Davern.

Another one was a letter from Pete King at Ronnie Scott's.

Still another was a letter from Friedrich Gulda's office.

Here's a letter from Chick Corea. Or a letter from Tommy Flanagan and Frank Foster.

One thing I did learn is that Pepper took an active role in trying to obtain overseas gigs for himself as early as 1961. That flies in the face of one of Pepper's outer myths: that he didn't know how to promote himself. True, he wasn't aggressive about it, but, as the letters show, he wasn't passive either.

I also spent time looking at about 500 Kodachrome slides that Pepper took in Korea while serving in the U.S. Army. I found three really nice candid shots of Pepper at age 21-22 that I'm transferring to digital images. From the many others I did get a sense of the terrain and experience. It was rocky, mountainous and cold.

As for last week's concern about my Pepper Adams biography, all is OK. I stated the core tension--becoming a virtuoso on the baritone-- in the very first sentence of the book. It's something that he's working on at least until he gets to New York in 1956 and that I'll be discussing. Conflicts, self-doubts, and the like are being developed too. I'm still happy with it thus far and I will return to writing.

To Write or Not to Write: That Is the Question

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

I hope everyone had a great week. I took the week off from writing the Pepper Adams biography to catch my breath, instead go through scads of Adams material, and assess how things are going. I have much of Adams' pre-Korean War life sketched out already and I'm poised to move ahead. Nevertheless, I decided to step back and question a few things. First, am I zipping through his life too quickly, without exploring any core tension and building the book around it? In other words, am I sufficiently writing about Adams in conflict with himself, society, or both? Has the book suddenly become too much of a chronicle without enough interpretation? Yes, sure, I do have wonderful first-hand interview material that I'm using, but has the book suddenly become too dominated by long quotations? Pepper's intelligence and ambition stand out but what about his self-doubts? Biographers are supposed to keep their hero in trouble to sustain the narrative and function dramatically. Am I doing that?

Biographers are advised to write with the ending in mind. I still don't have one. I'm improvising as I go. Although I'm happy with it thus far, where is the book going? When will I infuse it with narrative devices, such as flashbacks or flash forwards? When will I introduce Adams talking about himself and in what fashion? Am I too focused on his quest to become a great player and not enough on what made him such a unique human being? 

So far, lots of questions and no answers. That's because up until yesterday I had two gigantic piles of notes, clippings, reviews, articles, memorabilia--basically, 35 years of stuff-- that took over my week to sort. Much was discarded, much became useful scrap paper, some helped me with future writing. I sorted it into three categories: Pre-1956 Detroit, Pre-1948 Rochester, and Other. That way I'd have all the materials ready to use for my first two chapters on the period 1930-1955, with the rest saved for later. 

Additionally, I've been going through everything in my Adams archive, including several other buckets of stuff, sorting it into my things and other stuff that belongs to Adams' estate's. Over the years, everything has become commingled but I'm in the process of moving to a much smaller place and I want to keep my own things intact and be able to get the estate's stuff to an archive so others can use it. Better to do it now, while I can make sense of it and before any of it gets lost.

John Vana and I have gotten all of Pepper's music digitally preserved. I've done the same with some of my interview material. The long-term plan is to post everything we discuss in our book on YouTube, with links to it in the book so the music we discuss can come alive for the reader. As for some of the photographs and documents, they too can be linked to things at pepperadams.com. I've been active yet again this week posting more things on my Instagram site. Please take a look. Many other things, such as Pepper Adams' 8-track and cassette tapes, 78rpm records, photographs, letters, and various ephemera I no longer need. Where should this stuff be housed? The Institute of Jazz Studies? William Paterson University? Let me know if you have a good suggestion.

As for pepperadams.com, I'm pleased to report that much new material has been posted in the last few weeks. The most significant update is the overhaul of "Complete Compositions." All 150 or so samples of every commercial recording of Pepper Adams' compositions are once again available. Also, I decided to give Pepper's autobiography its own identity. It used to be subsumed by "Reminiscences." Now "Adams Autobiography" is available at the top of the site for those who need a biographical alternative to Wikipedia. A significant update of about 10% more data has been posted to "Early Years," one of the five sections of the "Adams Chronology." Some minor updates have also been made to "Dates as Leader," "Videos" and Photos (the same as Instagram; see above link). 

By next week at this time I hope to have some answers for you about the direction of the Adams biography.

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."