Showing posts with label Ben Sidran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ben Sidran. Show all posts

Sunday, February 5, 2023

Pepper Adams Paperback and Zoom Panel

 









I’m thrilled to report that my paperback version of Reflectory,entitled Pepper Adams: Saxophone Trailblazer, is now submitted in final form to Excelsior Editions. It took

about two solid weeks of intense work to finish the index,

after another two similar weeks close-reading the manuscript.

“Jimmy Health”? That’s one typo that for so long snuck under

the radar but is now fixed.


William Paterson University has cataloged my and Pepper’s

materials, and they are now available for study. Another box of

tapes and videos will be sent sometime this year from my

webmaster. And a large load of five or so large boxes of scores

and ephemera still sit in Atlanta. I’m not sure how they will make

it to Wayne, New Jersey, but I’ll drive it there in 2024 at the latest.


Disappointingly, Worcester Polytechnic University has yet to

digitize my interviews with Adams. They’ve had them for three

years, but no news yet on when they will be available at their

website.


Now that my Pepper Adams work has come to a close after 38

years, I’m free for hire to do other jazz projects. I just finished

writing liner notes for Paul Tynan and Aaron Lington’s forthcoming

recording Bicoastal Collective, Volume 6.


To keep Reflectory current, I’ve convened another Pepper Adams

Zoom panel. On February 26, the following will discuss Adams

solos. It will be posted on YouTube and at pepperadams.com

sometime in March:


Paul Tynan: “Clarion Calls” (1959)

Ben Sidran: “Little Rootie Tootie” (1959)

Aaron Lington: “Each Time I Think of You” (1961)

Andrew Hadro: “Incarnation” (1963)

John Vana: "Azure-Te" (1963)

Logan Ivancik: “Once Around” (1966)

Frank Basile: “Currents/Pollen” (1973) and 

     “Wind from the Indies” (1977)

Adam Schroeder: “Three and One” (1975)

Kenny Berger: “Reflectory” (1978)

Kevin Goss: "My Shining Hour" (1980)

Courtney Wright: “It Could Happen to You” (1980)

Noah Pettibon: “Three Little Words” (1981)


Lastly, check out this new discovery: Pepper Adams in Rome with

Franco D’Andrea’s trio, January 20, 1979:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr70HvIbexQ


Sunday, September 5, 2021

Pepper Adams Biography is Finished!

 












I’m thrilled to report that the Pepper Adams biography 

is now officially done! It’s quite a moment for me, after

37 years of work and a particularly grueling stretch

the last four years. I just spent the last eight hours

today proofing the first half, adding captions to photos, 

checking music links, and wrapping it up. This after

doing the same yesterday to the second half. 


The manuscript has been sent to my trusted webmaster,

Dan Olson, who is finishing the formatting before he

submits it to Lulu for processing. I’m not sure how much

time they’ll need before they ask us to sign off on it before

publication, but I’m hopeful that it can be released before

month’s end. 


Here’s the complete Advance Praise page:


Advance Praise for Reflectory

 

 

 

 

Gary Carner’s deep and painstaking research into the life and music

of Pepper Adams, coupled with his sure feel for this underappreciated

jazzman’s complex personality, has yielded an absorbing biography

that also reveals much about the jazz life writ large. Carner’s nimble

narrative captures Adams as a man of reserve and sensitivity thrown

into the always bracing, sometimes exasperating tumult of jazz’s post-

bop Detroit-to-New York vector. Reflectory is jazz history of the first rank.

John Gennari

Author of Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics

 

 

Most jazz biographies are predictable chronologies of gigs and

recordings, friendships and rivalries, kindness and cruelty. We know

how they start; we know how they end. Carner’s admiring multi-

dimensional portrait of Pepper Adams is a delightful corrective.

Irresistibly, it floats from story to story. I couldn’t wait to find out

what happens next. Even if readers know Pepper only as a bracing,

lovely sound, before we are ten pages in we are happily encountering

him as a fully-rounded person, reading Yeats, eating ribs, impatient

with cliche, searching and finding wherever he goes. It takes lung

ower to play the baritone saxophone: this biography has the breath of

life.   

Michael Steinman

Author, Jazz Lives blog

 

 

Gary Carner has been stalking the life, music, and legacy of the brilliant

baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams (1930-86) with an Ahab-like

obsessiveness for 37 years. The great news for the rest of us is that Carner

has landed his whale. Reflectoryis a meticulously researched and insightful biography of one of the defining

modern jazz musicians of his era and one of the key products of Detroit’s post-

war bebop explosion. We need more books like this in jazz historiography and

more authors willing to dig this deeply.

Mark Stryker

Author of Jazz from Detroit 

 

This comprehensive and insightful study of a major music master fills a yawning

gap in the writing on Detroit’s jazz scene in its heyday. Even within a constellation

of huge talents, Pepper Adams shone with his own distinctive light.

Mark Slobin

Author of Motor City Music: A Detroiter Looks Back

 

 

 

 

Pepper Adams was a heartbreakingly great musician who never got the love from

the jazz press that he deserved, which, in a way, makes him even more important in

the history of the music because it represents an experience that happens all too

often and places Pepper firmly at the heart of the jazz life.  As Johnny Griffin once

said, “Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite

of conditions.” But to limit Pepper to the jazz life would be a mistake. He was a man

of literature and culture, a great reader and thinker, as were many of his heroes,

notably Charlie Parker, and Gary Carner’s loving tribute to him finally delivers some

justice to the man and to the whole range and span of his too short and underappreciated

but brilliant career.

Ben Sidran

Author of Talking Jazz: An Oral History and There Was a Fire: Jews, Music and the American Dream

 

 

Gary Carner’s biography about Pepper Adams honors one of America’s great musicians.

It is a joy to read and reread, and worth waiting for all these years. Having known and

worked with Pepper from 1955 until he left us, reading this biography makes you feel

that you are there with him. His humor, wit, and devotion to music are all written about

in a way that Pepper himself would have loved. Gary Carner has kept this story real.

David Amram

Author of Vibrations: The Adventures and Musical Times of David Amram 

 


Pepper Adams was a consummate performer on the unwieldy baritone sax. Perhaps

he was insufficiently valued by fans of the music, but never by fellow musicians.

The dedicated research of Gary Carner has uncovered a huge amount of detail about

his life, documenting his opinions and his recordings, both official and unofficial.

Brian Priestley 

Author of Mingus: A Critical Biography and Chasin’ The Bird: The Life and Legacy

of Charlie Parker



Author Gary Carner must be commended for dedicating much of his life to

documenting the legacy of the great baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams. Adams was

a major contributor to the sub-genre of jazz known as hard bop and his many

influential recordings pulsate with excitement and originality. Reflectory: The Life

and Music of Pepper Adams represents a monumental effort to examine every aspect

of Adams’s career and the research that has gone into it was carried out in a manner

suggesting that no stone has been left unturned. This book exemplifies the best in jazz

biography.

  Noal Cohen

Co-author of Rat Race Blues: The Musical Life of Gigi Gryce



Reflectory: The Life and Music of Pepper Adams is het overtuigende portret van een

ernstig onderschatte jazzgrootheid. Gary Carner’s indrukwekkende levenswerk

(decennialange research, inclusief 250 interviews) heeft geresulteerd in een uitgebreide

biografie die fascinerende lectuur vormt.Reflectory: The Life and Music of Pepper Adams is the persuasive portrait of a seriously underrated jazz giant. Gary Carner’s impressive

work of a lifetime (decades of research, including 250 interviews) has resulted in an

extensive biography that makes for fascinating reading. 


Bert Vuijsje

Co-author of Rita Reys: Lady Jazz and Ado Broodboom Trompet


Før læsningen havde jeg, ligesom mange andre, kun et sporadisk kendskab til Pepper

Adams. Dette skyldes måske at hans hovedinstrument var baryton-saxen, der som dybt-

klingende ofte har stået i skyggen af de andre saxofoner. Efter nu at have lyttet mere

indgående til hans musik, er jeg blevet overbevist om den status han i bogen bliver givet:

en jazz improvisator i den øverste liga; en person, der i lighed med musikere som Bud

Powell, Wardell Gray, Fats Navarro og  J. J. Johnson formÃ¥ede at fÃ¥ Charlie Parkers

musikalske sprog til at blomstre på deres eget instrument uden uden at fremstå som epigoner.


Before reading, like many others I had only a sporadic knowledge of Pepper Adams. This

is perhaps due to his main instrument being a baritone sax, which, as deep-sounding, often has

been overshadowed by the other saxophones. Having now listened more in depth to his music,

I have become convinced of the status he is given in the book: a jazz musician and improviser

in the top league; a man who, like musicians such as Bud Powell, Wardell Gray, Fats Navarro,

and J. J. Johnson, managed to get Charlie Parker’s musical language to blossom on their own instrument without being epigones.

Leif Bo Petersen

Co-author of The Music and Life of Theodore “Fats” Navarro: Infatuation




Monday, June 3, 2019

Biography Update









© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.













READ BELOW!












It’s been a busy month. Updating the entire Pepper Adams Interviews section of

pepperadams.com took a ton of time, mostly because I needed to listen to all of

them again in their entirety. I wanted to be sure that I didn’t overlook any important

facts that Pepper mentioned which might be a valuable addition to my Adams

biography. Also, it was necessary to add some mouse-over text for the user and fix

some previous errors. As of now, all fourteen interviews have been posted. All that

remains is seeing if we can improve the digital skips in the John Reid interview.


For several weeks, on and off, I’ve continued to wrestle with the opening section of

Chapter One of the Pepper bio. I just wasn’t entirely happy with it. I think now I’ve got it

where I want it.



I’m happy too with the rest of Chapter 1, and 4, and I’ve been editing Chapters 2 and 3.

Moreover, I’ve rewritten the Prologue and that’s done.



I did finish going through a stack of notes and quotations from various interviews that I

did with Johnny Griffin, Bill Watrous, Bill Perkins and others. Now that the pile of info is

sorted out, I’ve turned to my 46 microcassettes (as much as 92 hours of interview) that I

need to hear before I feel comfortable that I’ve gotten everything that I need from them.

Once finished, probably by early September, I can edit Chapter 5 and move on to Chapter

6, my final chapter.



Regarding Chapter 6, I already have 60 pages of notes and an outline. I’m hoping I can

breeze through it, then make some valuable concluding comments.



As for the publishing the first half of the bio soon, I think that this will be pushed ahead to

early next year. I just have too much work to do before I get to that point. Before it’s done,

I’ll be establishing a mailing list, very long overdue, at pepperdams.com



Below are some recent interview excerpts I hope you enjoy that I’ve added to my notes:


Pepper Adams to Ben Sidran:


“If you play everything legato, and don’t use the tongue -- and don’t outline where the
note is going to hit -- everything tends to run together because it is lower pitched. It has
no rhythmic impact, or impulse, behind it. I’ve tried to use a legato tongue so that there
is differentiation between the notes. I’ve tried to do a lot with articulation because that
has a lot to do with what the time feeling is going to be. And, if you fail to articulate on
baritone, or particularly on lower pitched instrument, it is going to be one constant rumble
after a while.”

Bill Watrous to Gary Carner:
“Every time he played, it was an adventure,” said Bill Watrous. “His ideas, and his
conception of the stuff that he was trying to play, was totally original. I would say, more
so than anybody else [who] ever played that instrument.”

“Pepper had an angularity about his playing, like a jagged sort of approach, that was very
much like the way Sonny Rollins approaches the instrument. Sonny goes at the instrument
from all angles -- from the left, from the right, and under, and goes that way. Pepper,
basically, did the same thing. Pepper had incredible technique. Pepper didn’t just run the
changes. Pepper played all over the changes. I think they sort of approached their music
from a similar direction.”

“The sense of humor was amazing! Pepper would play: I found myself laughing to myself a
lot when Pepper would play some of the things he would play.”

Bill Perkins to Gary Carner:
“He’s one of the true giants of jazz. He stood out in that rare group of jazz soloists, the great giants
of all time, people like Bird and Prez. And John Coltrane has become that. I think that Pepper was
that on his instrument. And Diz. They’re in an area where very few have done the creative work that
they’ve done.”

Johnny Griffin to Gary Carner:
“He was never a pushy person. Maybe that’s what kept him from being more of a giant, as
far as the public is concerned, because he was never aggressive.”

Ron Kolber to Gary Carner:
“He would send me a tune, an old tune,” said Ron Kolber. “Every time we’d see each other, he’d
say, ‘You know this one?’ We used to try to stump each other with old tunes. One his favorite tunes
was a tune by the name of ‘Says My Heart.’ It’s an old tune. Always digging for old tunes; that was a
little hobby with him. He said that some of the early tunes were really great. . . . He had great interest
in the old-timers. Any of the old-timers. He would listen to all of the old records. He said, ‘That’s where
we’re from.’ He said, ‘If we listen to that, we’re gonna get to where we are, and maybe beyond, but
you can’t start in the middle and go. You gotta go all the way back.’”

Finally, here’s three clips of tunes that Anders Svanoe performed at his recent concert dedicated to
Pepper, and a video of Pepper conducting an after-concert interview: