Showing posts with label Lionel Hampton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lionel Hampton. Show all posts

Sunday, April 30, 2017

Researching Utah Gigs






© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

Here’s a snapshot of how some of my days go by when tracking down Pepper Adams data. Look at the volume of correspondence below to simply try to pin down one Byrd-Adams gig. It's kind of incredible where it eventually leads, isn't it?

On March 31, 2017 I spoke with Lisa Chaufty at the University of Utah’s Music Library regarding the Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams Quintet’s only known performance in Salt Lake City. I think I first learned about it from a Down Beat performance listing. I tried not to bias her about the actual date. Later in the day Lisa replied:

Hi there,

After searching online, it looks like the quintet was performing here from August 30-31 and September 1-4, 1960. I've been looking through digitized copies of the Salt Lake Tribune from those dates and haven't been able to find any articles or advertisements. From what I can gather, the main events advertised in the newspaper at that time included movie showings and groups like the Four Freshmen at Lagoon. Lagoon actually hosted many big names: Louis Armstrong was there the weekend before Labor Day that year.

There are no columns about local music that I've been able to find in the relevant dates that I browsed.

Sorry I can't be of more help! I would need more time to research; but I'm headed out of town this afternoon for a conference.

Best,
Lisa

I then sent the following email to Allison Connor, at a different division of the University of Utah:

Hi Allison: I'm trying to find anything--a clipping, an advertisement, a concert review--regarding the August or September appearance in SLC of the Donald Byrd/Pepper Adams Quintet. Often, it was billed as Donald Byrd's group, since he had the record contract with Blue Note. If you can find anything, I'd be very much in your debt. I'll discuss the quest to find it in my upcoming blog post (see pepperadams.com).

Thanks so much for any help you can offer,
Gary Carner

PS: More specifically, I'm showing these:
Aug 30-31: Salt Lake City: Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams Quintet gig with Duke Pearson, Laymon Jackson and Joe Dukes.
Sept 1-4: Salt Lake City: Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams Quintet gig. See 30-31 Aug.

Here’s the email I received back from her:

I have started work with Ron Bitton and Lezann Keshmiri, this type of material is their area of expertise. We will let you know what progress we are making. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you,
Alison

Some time later, Bitton replied:

Having looked over the Salt Lake Tribune for August 1960 and September 1-4, I’m sorry to report that I couldn’t find any press coverage or advertisements for the Donald Byrd/Pepper Adams Quintet. This isn’t unusual; aside from one brief mention of an upcoming performance by Johnny Mathis and another for the Four Freshmen, no popular music performers received any press coverage during this time period, and at the time popular music performers weren’t reviewed. Advertisements for upcoming performances were only slightly less sparse. The August and September 1960 Tribune is available on microfilm for public checkout, so you may want to double-check our search. But I regret to say this doesn’t look like a promising avenue of inquiry.
All the best,
Ron Bitton
Curator, Historical Maps and Newspapers
Marriott Library, Special Collections

Additionally, since I also reached out for a reference librarian at the Salt Lake City Public Library’s, I received this from Stephanie Goodliffe:

Mr. Carner,

I wanted to let you know that I am working on your reference request. I should be back in touch with you in the next few days.

Stephanie

A few days later, Stephanie wrote back:

We narrowed the dates of the performances by looking on Pepper Adams Chronology (https://www.pepperadams.com/Chronology/ByrdAdamsQuintet.pdf). I searched the Salt Lake Tribune for the dates surrounding the August 30-31 and September 1-4 performance dates for advertisements or reviews. I did not find any. If you would like, I can also search the Deseret News, our other local newspaper. These are the only resources that we have which would contain that type of information.

Sincerely,
Stephanie

I guess I should be happy that all these research specialists are using pepperadams.com as their source?

As I also contacted a librarian at Utah State, I received this, too, from Rachel Wishkoski:

Hi Gary,
Thanks for your message! I took a spin through a few newspaper databases and haven’t turned up anything yet. Unfortunately, the Salt Lake Tribune isn’t indexed going back that far in our subscription newspaper databases, so I can’t run a search there. Your best bet is probably to consult the microfilm of the Tribune from the week prior and following the concerts. (I also looked in Utah Digital Newspapers to see if Salt Lake County newspapers other than the Salt Lake Tribune had covered the performance. No luck there either.)

Do you have any further information about venue(s), radio broadcasts, or other locations the quintet might have performed in during this 1960 tour? Those might give us other ways to search. I’ll keep digging, but let me know if you can share more details or if you are in a location where you can get your hands on the 1960 microfilm of the Salt Lake Tribune.
Best,
Rachel

My reply:

Rachel: Thanks for all your help! I'm traveling back to SLC today after a terrific visit to USU. I'll reply soon. I learned last night that Lionel Hampton played USU in either 1963 or 1964. Any info on that? February through April 1963, or January through July, 1964 seems to be the likely timeframe.

And here’s my reply to her first email:


Rachel: I have this info from the Byrd-Adams tour. Not too many venues are listed herein:
Aug 2-14: Chicago: Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams Quintet gig at the Bird House, with Duke Pearson, Laymon Jackson and Lex Humphries. After Humphries unexpectedly leaves the band, Byrd replaces him with Harold Jones for the rest of the engagement, then Joe Dukes is added for the remainder of the tour.
Aug 15: Chicago: Off?
Aug 16-21: Minneapolis: Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams Quintet gig, probably at Herb's, with Duke Pearson, Laymon Jackson and Joe Dukes. Aug 22: Travel.
Aug 23-28: Dallas: Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams Quintet gig, with Duke Pearson, Laymon Jackson and Joe Dukes.
Aug 29: Travel. Aug 30-31: Salt Lake City: Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams Quintet gig with Duke Pearson, Laymon Jackson and Joe Dukes.

Sept 1-4: Salt Lake City: Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams Quintet gig. See 30-31 Aug.
Sept 5: Travel.
Sept 6-18: Denver: Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams Quintet gig, with Duke Pearson, Laymon Jackson and Joe Dukes. On the 8th, Oscar Pettiford dies in Copenhagen at age 37.
Sept 19: Travel. Sept 20-25: Detroit: Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams Quintet gig at the Minor Key, with Duke Pearson, Laymon Jackson and Joe Dukes. Adams meets Claudette Nadra, who he would marry fifteen years later. See http://instagram.com/p/rhfCQXJnmi/?modal=true.

About the Lionel Hampton query I sent Rachel, she replied:

Hi Gary,
I’m glad you had a good visit to USU! I had a chance to look into the Lionel Hampton question with some success. I started by looking through the 1963 and 1964 digitized versions of the USU Buzzer yearbook.
If you look on page 50, it talks about Lionel Hampton playing Junior Prom that year (unfortunately, no pictures of him):
“The mythical land of "Misty" was the theme of the 196# Junior Prom. America's leading vibraphone player, Lionel Hampton, was featured. Kim Webb and his committee spent hard hours making this the biggest dance of the year.” To see if I could find more info, I looked at the 1963 issues of our student newspaper, the Statesman. While there is no concert or event review, there are two articles promoting prom and a pre-prom concert:
·         January 30, 1963, vol. 60 no. 39, “Hamp” Concert to Precede Prom (front page)
·         February 1, 1963, vol. 60 no. 40, Junior Prom Set Saturday Night (front page)
Prom was held on Saturday, Feb. 2. There’s a promotional photo of Hampton in the Feb. 1 article. Hampton give a concert in the USU Fieldhouse at 8 pm on Feb. 2 prior to prom so that students and public who weren’t attending the dance could hear him play. Admission was $1 for the public concert. Perhaps this concert was covered by the local Logan newspaper?

I also searched Hampton’s name in Utah Digital Newspapers (https://digitalnewspapers.org/) and found a few results, including this one from the Utah Daily Chronicle (the University of Utah’s student newspaper): https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/details?id=639258  Looks like he played the U’s prom on Feb. 1, 1963 (the night before USU’s). Hampton’s papers are at the University of Idaho (http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv46578/op=fstyle.aspx?t=k&q=%22lionel+hampton%22#overview ) and they might contain more details.

Best,
Rachel


Then, on Apr 18, 2017 Stephanie Goodliffe wrote back:
I have checked the Deseret News from August 29-September 5, 1960, but I did not find anything that mentioned this quintet.
Sincerely,
Stephanie

I wrote back: Thanks so much for checking! It looks like a dead end, at this point. Perhaps a subsequent write-up in Denver might yield something? That's for another day. 
        All best wishes,
        Gary Carner

For those of you who want to know about the contents of the Lionel Hampton Archive, see this:

Hello Mr. Carner,

Thank you for your interest in the University of Idaho Library Special Collections and Archives.The papers in the Lionel Hampton Collection include business records for Lionel Hampton's record and music publishing companies, arrangements, lead sheets, and sheet music rather than specific tour or performance information. A detailed list of the contents of the collection is available here: http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv46578

If I can be of further of assistance, please let me know. Thank you for your inquiury.

Darcie Riedner
Archive Assistant
Special Collections & Archives
University of Idaho Library

Such is the ebb and flow of a jazz researcher’s life! It’s what I’ve been doing for more than 33 years. Fortunately, the process led to the discovery of two new Hampton postings for the Chronology
(see http://www.pepperadams.com/Chronology/Journeyman.pdf ). They will be posted soon. Many thanks to all the Utah and Idaho librarians for their extraordinary help!


Sunday, January 29, 2017

Biography Update







Here's my first post of 2017. I caught the flu in late December while on vacation, then got blogged down in catch-up activities for much of the new year.

Apart from my day job, I'm happy to report that things have been moving ahead on my Pepper Adams research. My focus throughout 2017 is researching and writing the section of Adams' biography regarding his time in Detroit. Pepper considered himself a Detroiter through and through, so this is a very important part of the book. In order to make sense of it, I've had to read several books and articles, and comb my notes for things germane to that experience. I've also been listening again to all the personal interviews I conducted with Detroiters.

A few weeks ago I conducted an hour-long interview with Bennie Maupin. That was quite interesting. Maupin came of age in the fifties and was influenced by Adams, Yusef Lateef and Joe Henderson, among other Detroit musicians. Generally speaking, I've stopped doing interviews about Pepper, except those related to the Detroit experience. A forthcoming interview with Detroit pianist Charles Boles will likely be my last one this year.

It's not just the world Adams inhabited that intrigues me. It's also the music culture of Detroit. How did it come to be? How is it that so many great jazz musicians (and musicians of all styles) come from that city? No one has really pinned it down. Additionally, what was it about Pepper's amazing generation of musicians that brought it to fruition? How unique in jazz history is it? I'm pleased to say that a picture is beginning to emerge.

In the great biographies, I commonly see some kind of sweeping historical context conveyed about why and how its subject fits into its milieu. There's an explanation of the city he grew up in, for example, and how that informed his experience. It's this kind of narrative that I'm after for Pepper's biography, and he certainly deserves no less. That's why I've been reading all these books. Here's the ones most important so far:

Austin, Dan. Lost Detroit: Stories Behind the Motor City's Majestic Ruins. Charleston SC: History Press, 2010.

Bjorn, Lars; Jim Gallert. Before Motown: A History of Jazz in Detroit: 1920-1960. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2001.

Goldstein, Laurence, editor. "Detroit: An American City." Michigan Quarterly Review, Spring, 1986

Lemann, Nicholas. The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America. New York: Vintage, 1991.

Lewis, David L.; Laurence Goldstein, editors. The Automobile and American Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1991.

Martelle, Scott. Detroit: A Biography. Chicago: Chicago Review, 2012.

Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton: Princeton University, 1966.

I'm currently reading my last book about Detroit: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor by Nelson Lichtenstein. I was very impressed by, and highly recommend, the documentary film Brothers on the Line (2012), directed by Sasha Reuther.

During the last month or so I also took two left turns to read Michael Segell's wonderful The Devil's Horn: The Story of the Saxophone, From Noisy Novelty to King of Cool and Vladimir Simosko's Serge Chaloff: A Musical Biography and Discography.

For context, I also watched again two TV shows about Pepper's friend, the great American poet Phil Levine. He's interviewed by Bill Moyers here: https://vimeo.com/82438969; and by Jeffrey Brown here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment-jan-june10-levine_01-12/

I'll be summarizing my observations about Pepper Adams' great generation of postwar musicians in a few lectures I'll be doing in Utah in March and early April. Maybe I'll see you there? I'll be at Utah State in Logan for a few days as part of a residency, and also at Westminster College and Salt Lake Community College. A few other schools are possibilities too. At Utah State, the university big band is performing big band charts of Pepper's music, arranged by Tony Faulkner, featuring guest soloist Jason Marshall.

For those of you who haven't seen my recent Facebook posts, these two amazing Lionel Hampton videos were just posted on YouTube:



Both are from 1964, Pepper's first trip to Europe. They include two magnificent solos and are his earliest known videos (at age 34).
                                                            (Bennie Maupin)

Saturday, August 8, 2015

Rochester Jazz in the 1940s



© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

Several weeks ago (or was it a few months ago?) I promised a final post about my research into the jazz history of Rochester, New York. What follows is a completely random listing of material taken from my notes, some of which will be reshaped in my forthcoming Pepper Adams biography. 

1940s music scene in Rochester:

1. East Avenue: Piano bars. Some of the more commercial places were along East Avenue. The 5 O'Clock Club, O'Dell's Taproom, the Diamond Bar, the Chandelier and The Willows were clustered on East Avenue.
2. Downtown Theaters: Big bands played the Temple (for example, King Cole, Benny Carter and Lionel Hampton), Loews MGM (Krupa played there), occasionally the Palace (Nat Cole and Louis Prima played there). The movie theaters downtown had programs throughout the year and were where big bands would perform. Musicians after hours would drop into the Bartlett, especially those playing the Temple Theatre and staying across South Clinton Avenue at the Seneca Hotel. The Seneca in the 1920s was known in the 1920s for its paranormal activity, with seances and so forth
3. Downtown Clubs: Squeezer's on State St, Ottman's on Front St. The Park Lane was on Chestnut Street and featured trios. Vibist Ken Purtell played there.
4. Northwest Part of Town: The Sports Arena in Edgerton Park was behind Jefferson High School. It was the kind of park that could accommodate a county fair or rodeo. Larger bands played there, such as Ellington, Charlie Barnet, Gene Krupa, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey. The Sports Arena attracted a racially mixed audience.
5. Ballrooms: Stardust Ballroom in Edgerton Park or hotel ballrooms.
6. East Side: Pierre's had out-of-town bands, such as Coleman Hawkins. It was on Ormond and Kelly Street in the black section of town. The Highland Inn was a club after World War II on South Goodman St. Hank Berger played the Citadel on Smith Avenue.
7.West Side (Clarissa Street/Third Ward): The Colored Elks had name groups. The Elite was a dance hall on the second floor in a racially mixed neighborhood. Pepper Adams felt that the Elite band was the best band in town. It was certainly the most authentic small jazz group and the most swinging band of its time. The Pythodd (much later, at Clarissa and Spring, near the Elite) was next door to the Black Elks. The Elite was next to, or across the street from, the Old B&O Building on West Main. Nick's Hots was there. The area of the Elite had many speakeasies and, well before that, opium dens.
8. West Side (but really Southwest): Bartlett's was a nightclub (near Plymouth Avenue and Jefferson, between Third and Nineteenth Ward).
9. Midwinter Fireman's Ball or Policeman's Ball: It may have had its origins in the Rochester militia units and volunteer fire companies that held balls as far back as the 1840s. In March, the Policeman's Ball would have acts such as Harry James. They'd play at the Main Street Armory or Masonic Temple. According to Raymond Murphy, this attracted name groups such as Armstrong's Big Band, Basie (without Prez), Ellington in 1943 with Ben Webster. Events were held in Edgerton Park's Stardust Ballroom or in other hotel ballrooms.

Other:
10. Some after-hours clubs or private parties had music after the bars closed. One club on State Street had the prohibition speakeasy vibe, with the sliding panel in the front door.
11. The Triton started around 1946. East Main Street on the East Side had some local talent, but, generally speaking, larger, more commercial acts from out of town.
12. 1940s music scene in suburban Rochester included Manitou Beach, strictly in the summer. It was a big dance hall. Ray McKinley with Will Bradley played there.

Key Jazz Musicians in Rochester in the Early 1940s:
Several important musicians would have been on the scene when Pepper was evolving in Rochester as a young musician. The most important of these are pianist Herbie Brock, organist/pianist Doug Duke, and clarinetist Jack End.

Herbie Brock
Brock, a blind pianist and part-time tenor saxophonist, was arguably the dominant small-group musician in town. He was, according to Raymond Murphy, an Art Tatum disciple who was finally recorded first by Savoy in 1955. A piece done by Marc Myers on Brock (see http://www.jazzwax.com/2014/07/herbie-brock-brocks-tops.html) discusses Brock's recordings and his adoption of a Bud Powell type of pianism. From the little I've heard, Brock—much like Hank Jones, Barry Harris and other Detroit pianists of that period—moved away from an overt late-stride, advanced harmonies, Tatum sensibility to a more streamlined, less orchestral, swinging, right-hand-dominated approach more akin to Powell.

Brock was the local star player. He played solo piano and also with small groups. Brock played at the House of Foran before the war. Jimmy "The Lion" Stewart was a white pianist who played at the House of Foran too. He was obliquely related to Herbie Brock by marrying Brock's sister. Stewart played at the Elite with Pepper Adams. Brock and Tatum got together in the mid 1940s in Buffalo to play duets. Bassist Al Bruno drove him there. Brock was born in Rochester. On tenor he played with a big sound. Brock's father and brother were also blind.

Ottman's on Front Street (mostly in the 1940s) was a former meat market, a narrow room with terrazzo tile floors. They had great quality meat, according to pianist Fred Remington, and they threw the scraps in the Genesee River. Herbie Brock often played at Ottman's. According to Lowell Miller, Ottman's was a place that musicians, especially those playing in the 'straight show' bands, would go to when their gigs were over.

Doug Duke
Inventor of the Hammond organ with Leslie. Originally, Duke would play spread-eagle, reaching an organ with his left hand so he could play melodic lines on a piano with his right hand. Obviously, incorporating both into a three-keyboard instrument was far less burdensome. Duke liked to alternate between the two textures of the organ and piano, as if to intimate two separate instruments or players, or to affect a sense of accompaniment.

Pianist Doug Duke returned to his hometown of Rochester in early 1942, after traveling with bands since the mid-1930s as a teenager. He had been traveling in the Orient when Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941. The U.S. Government advised all Americans to return home. Duke was denied entrance into the service due to a medical condition, possibly a burst eardrum. Instead, he worked in 1942 with Gene Leonard, then a longer stint with Shep Fields. Upon the recommendation of stride pianist Dick Mullaney, by late 1944 or early 1945 Duke took up a residency as the pianist at O'Dell's Taproom. Odell's, along with the 5 O'Clock Club, the Diamond Bar, the Chandelier and The Willows, were some of the piano bars clustered on East Avenue. According to Mullaney, Duke played in a Tatum style and stayed at O'Dells until possibly as late as 1946. During this time he also had a weekly radio show on WSAY.

Duke also played Breaker's near Ontario Beach sometime during the 1940s.

Pepper may have sat in with his band c. 1947 at Squeezer's, a club in downtown Rochester. "Doug Duke," a stage name for Ovidio Fernandez, was Argentinian by birth and came to Rochester in 1922, his mother's hometown, when he was two years old. Duke was the son of a concert violinist father and a vocalist mother.

I think he was a better organist than pianist, because he had more control over his right-hand figurations with the easier action of the organ. He deserves a ton of credit for innovating the Hammond with Leslies, creating a new thing for jazz and spawning a legion of followers. His penchant for using the piano and organ interchangeably to add more color and texture to his playing remains quite unique.

Apparently, there was less of a demand for nightclub entertainment in Rochester in the period after the war ended in September, 1945. Could that be due to families more focused on reuniting, dealing with adjustment issues (post-traumatic stress), etc? Squeezer's resuscitated Duke's career, before which he was inactive and on his heels.

Duke was an important jam session guy at Squeezer's. It's not known at what point he started playing both piano and organ, though it seems he focused more on organ by 1947, when he possibly started his very popular gig at Squeezer's. Duke played Squeezer's 5-6 nights a week. He was the headliner and was packing them in. Jams often took place on the weekend. Joe Strazzeri sat in occasionally at his own club. 

From John Dunlap, piano: "Squeezer's brought in everybody. He had a headliner every week. Joe "Squeezer" Strazzeri was a really good pianist." 

From Leo Petix, trumpet: "Squeezer's was a place to jam at almost every night of the week. Pepper used to stop in there and just get on the 'stand.' He was around town. He was looking to get with a group and get on the road." Joe Strazzeri Sr. ran the club at 420 State St., across the street from the Kodak office. It was a bar and lounge and was open from the mid-1940s through the mid-1950s. 

Squeezer's had a U-shaped bar and there was a doorway connecting the bar area with the dining room. Duke was placed in the bar but close enough to both rooms so he could be heard in both rooms.

Paul Preo about Joe Squeezer's: "It was a small place but it was very popular. Joe was a very nice man. He had a phone booth, but it was inside the building, opposite the bar. When Doug came in and set up his equipment, the only place that seemed logical to put up his two Leslie speakers was next to the phone booth. So he had them piled up, one on top of the other, next to the booth. Nobody gave much thought about it because who wants to call during the music?" Except that Doug Duke, much like Charles Mingus years later, expected an audience to listen attentively and make the music paramount. If he felt the musicians were being disrespected, he'd stop playing. Or, "every once and awhile," said Paul Preo about Duke at Squeezer's, "he'd wait until [patrons] went into the booth, close the door, and he'd play the loudest chord you could think of. People inside, you couldn't believe it! They'd come out blanched white from the sound. . . . It was fun for the rest of us." 

The U.S. Patent for the Duke-a-Tron (Duke's combined piano and Hammond organ with Leslies) was officially approved in 1949. He built the Duke-a-Tron in the dining room at Squeezer's. It had a piano harp built into the Hammond chassis, with two keyboards for the organ and a full set of organ pedals. Sometime at Squeezer's, Duke was building the instrument, part by part in one corner of Squeezer's dining room. The patent issued in August, 1949 refers to the instrument as a "Piano Organ" but Duke and others called it a "Duke-a-Tron."

From Hank Berger, trombone: "He was a mechanical person too. He rebuilt an organ, a Hammond, into what he called a 'Duke-a-Tron.' He had a couple of Leslies. It really had power. It was fantastic, really! Duke played Squeezer's for a long time."

From Chris Melito, trumpet: Duke may have gone to New York between his O'Dell's and Squeezer's gigs. Both Melito and Al Bruno feel that Duke couldn't have played Squeezer's until 1948 at the earliest, and maybe 1949 or 1950, after he left Hampton.

After hearing Duke play a gig in Harlem in 1949, Lionel Hampton added Duke to his group, beginning with an engagement at the Apollo Theater. Duke's playing influenced the entire lineage of jazz organ playing to this day. Milt Buckner, then Hampton's pianist, took up the instrument after Duke left the group in 1950. Buckner in turn influenced Wild Bill Davis and Bill Doggett, who influenced Jimmy Smith and all organists to follow.

From Paul Preo: "The Hammond that he played, as I recall, had been tweaked up a little bit too. Electronics was not new but it was coming along in spurts. You didn't experiment too much because everything then was vacuum-tube technology." Duke's M-3 Hammond sounded like no other, said Preo: "sharper and harder, approaching the B-3 up to a point. Of course, he almost doubled the output so he could run his Leslies and really blast if he wanted to--and he loved it loud."

The electric organ was first invented in 1934 by Laurens Hammond and sold in 1935. Doug Duke was the father of the jazz organ. He was first musician to play the instrument in a jazz band, as such liberating it from its pipe organ roots as commonly heard in churches, movie theaters and skating rinks. 

Duke's instrumental invention--taking the Hammond M-3, incorporating electronic modifications to boost power and adding Leslie speakers--created jazz's first modern Hammond organ. 

Jack End
Along with Brock and Doug Duke, the third leg of the early 1940s Rochester-musician stool is Jack End. A clarinetist and graduate of Eastman, who led his own band, jammed with the musicians such as Brock and Duke, got back on the faculty of Eastman, and pushed the Eastman envelope to begin to embrace jazz. He was the pivotal, prime mover at Eastman that paved the way for Everett Gates to roll out a jazz curriculum. According to pianist Dick Mullaney, an Eastman graduate, in around 1945 Jack End began jazz studies at Eastman: "Jack End was the fellow who originated and sold Eastman School on jazz studies. They didn't recognize jazz studies until Jack End." End had a small commercial dance band of six pieces that he could expand up to sixteen pieces. He used Sal Sperazza and Ted Betts on trumpets, and Joe Sperazza on drums.

From Fred Remington, piano: End was the intermediary step between no jazz at Eastman and Everett Gates' first bonafide program. President Howard Hanson of Eastman allowed Jack End, an Eastman graduate, to run a jazz band at Eastman. In this way, Hanson indulged him at Eastman. My sense is it wasn't a part of the curriculum but, rather, an outlet. I believe it was End that convinced Eastman to bring Benny Goodman to Eastman for their first jazz concert. I was a huge success. At one point, End's student jazz band played a jazz version of a theme from one of Howard Hanson's symphonies with Hanson in the audience. End wrote an arrangement of it for a performance at Eastman's Kilbourn Hall.

Great Musicians on the Scene in 1945-1947:

Dave Remington, trombone: He may have played as a teen in dance bands around town but left for the Navy in October, 1944, returning in October, 1946. He would have been on the scene in late 1946-1947. Teagarden wanted to take lessons from him! His style was inspired by Teagarden, Lou McGarity and Bill Harris. Remington played in late '46-'47 with Chris Melito in drummer Jerry Santoro's band. According to his cousin Fred Remington, he sat in with Thad Jones/Mel Lewis and said about it, "I finally realized the goal of a lifetime."

Hank Berger, trombone: Berger had a jazz band (he played valve trombone here) from 1938-42 at the Corner House Hotel in Greece. The band was all 18-year-olds. He returned from Air Force in c1947. Berger played the Citadel. According to bassist Lowell Miller, he sounded like an early Carl Fontana. According to Berger, there were three important jazz groups in Rochester right after the war:

1. John Albert. Albert has a bop band, probably the first in Rochester. He played Woody Herman things with six members (2 ts; tb (probably Berger); rhythm section.
2. Hank Berger band. Straight-ahead jazz band until 1951. Joe Romano joined in 1948/49. Romano was a few year younger than Pepper and the same age as bassist Lowell Miller.
3. Dixieland Ramblers. Run by Max McCarthy. Berger, who didn't care for Dixieland, broke up his band in 1951 and joined to run the group. They were based at the Golden Grill in Charlotte on Lake Street, one block from Lake Ontario.

Lowell Miller, bass: Miller played with Joe Nolan's band (non-union) in the 1940s. They played every Friday night at the Immaculate Conception Church in the Third Ward/Plymouth St. He sat in with Gus Mancuso and Joe Mancuso, Joe Romano, and Tommy Acquino (who moved to Detroit). In the 1960s he toured with Al Hirt and Pete Fountain.

Joe Strazzeri, piano
Al Bruno bass (house bassist at Squeezer's)
Barney Mallon, bass
Eddie DeMatteo, bass
Sal Sperazza, trumpet
Sibby Brock, bass. Born as Sebastian Viavatni. A fine bass player, according to Lowell Miller.

What was Everett Gates doing up until 1948? He played viola in the Rochester Symphony while studying for his masters degree at Eastman. Gates also played saxophone and did gigs on occasion.

Two other good non-union bands were led by drummer Bill O'Brien and trumpeter Bob Lang. Both were 14- to 16-piece dance bands that played in the mid-1940s at churches and other social events. Joe Strazzeri played drums in Lang's band in 1943 or 1944.

Dance band musicians who played in the commercial bands of the 30s and 40s:
Syl Novelli, Sax Smith, Gene Zacher and Darrell Gifford led commercial dance bands in the 1930s and 1940s. They performed at proms, balls, nightclubs and country clubs, especially the tony Genesee Valley Club, sometimes for Saturday afternoon dances. Smith played White City in the Windsor Hotel in Summerville. Dances also took place in Long Point Park in the nearby Finger Lakes, mostly in the summer. Carl Dengler led a society band, in the style of Guy Lombardo, at Odenbach in Manitou Beach. The repertoire of these bands ranged from "sweet" music in the Lombardo style to that of Glenn Miller or Benny Goodman. The brothers Sam and Russ Musseri were great saxophonists at this time. They played in some of these commercial dance bands, and ultimately in the Glenn Miller Band led by Buddy DeFranco. These bands were successful in Rochester until after the war, when big bands disbanded.

The Elite Club (pronounced Eee-Light):
From Ralph Dickinson, alto sax: "It was a big hall, probably a meeting hall for unions, with a stage and some folding chairs around the side. People mainly came to dance. All of the arrangements were head arrangements we heard other groups play. Bop was just beginning to get started. We tried to do some things like that, not too much: "How High the Moon," because everybody played that, and some of the standard blues figures that the guys could think of to play. We were playing more blues-type of things, kind of a jump band. As far as swinging, I think we were the swingingest thing in town." 

"It was upstairs. West Main Street, at Ford Street, near Broad. The building isn't there any more because of the Inner Loop. It was a black neighborhood. We played for dances. They would charge at the door. I think they did have some "pop," but there was no alcohol. Jimmy 'The Lion' Stewart's band: He was a piano player and the leader. He was a pretty old fellow. Jim 'Smitty' Smith was in the band. He was a trumpet player. I was playing alto. I had just come out of the Army. The bass player was Walter Washington. He was a good bass player. He had been playing years ago with Lucky Millinder. The drummer's name, I think, was Frank Brown. He was kind of old too. Now and then we'd have a guitar player. He had a nickname, "Spoons." Here's the strange thing about this cat: He played good jazz guitar at that particular time--and blues--and he used a dime for a pick. He had a long cigar hanging out of his mouth and he could get off on the guitar real good. You'd think it would bust the strings!"

"[Pepper] wasn't a full member of the group but he'd be there every week. His mother used to come with him all the time. She didn't dance. She'd sit off to the side. It was a little strange but we didn't ostracize her. I don't know if this was out of fear to protect him. This was a black club. He was 15, 16 years old. He was able to play but he didn't play very well. He was only playing soprano at that time. He didn't sound too good, he was just learning. More Dixieland type, at that particular time. He was kind of fumbling to get started. We gave him solos. He was trying. Tell you the truth, I never thought he'd be able to play. Made a fool out of me! As far as I'm concerned, he was a much better baritone player than any of them out there! His ideas were really hip."

"He was very quiet, like a young person that's around older people. He was thin. He stood overly straight, almost like a soldier. He'd just come to play, we'd get through, divvy up the money and he'd go on his way. I'd imagine it was $5 or $6--it wasn't a whole lot. At that time, if you made ten bucks, you'd be rich! I think he got more by listening. He had a good ear. Some of the things we were playing, he'd pick up on easily--at least the lead part of it, beginning figures."


Pepper Adams' Time in Rochester (from Interviews):
It appears that Pepper Adams only took a handful of paying lessons at either Columbia Music or Levis Music. Columbia Music was owned by Morrie Silver, after whom they named Silver Stadium in gratitude for him saving the Red Wings baseball team from bankruptcy. As a widowed school teacher, his mom was pretty short on money. That's one of the reasons they moved back to Detroit. He mostly learned by practicing with older friends, on the bandstand, and from established musicians. One notable teacher was Ellington tenor saxophonist Skippy Williams. Skippy helped Pepper in New York City, when he was in between Rochester and Detroit. Williams only gave Pepper lessons once or twice. Adams' great strides were made after he moved to Detroit. It was like going from the minor leagues to the majors. Pepper immediately fell in with that great clique of Detroit musicians of his generation--Elvin Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris, Paul Chambers, Curtis Fuller, Kenny Burrell, Louis Hayes, Yusef Lateef, etc--that changed music forever.

Morrie Silver (from Wikipedia):
In 1937, Silver founded a school, the Columbia Music Store. He later opened a music store that was very successful during the postwar recorded music boom, the store at one time becoming the highest-grossing record store in the United States.

John Albert Letter to Gary Carner (7/15/88):
By 1947, sixteen-year-old Adams had a conception of what he was doing as a soloist, even though he was far from being an accomplished player. Pianist John Albert heard him once in a Rochester club and told me the following:

"He was playing soprano sax. The rhythm section (I don't remember who they were) responded to his playing. He was a good 'time' player and left holes they could fill in. That's what I remember most about his style. He would blow a single note or a phrase and then wait for the rhythm to come to the next change or even go by it, and then he would dig in and catch up, with great time and ideas. This, to me, was different than the other horn men; they seemed to stay on top of the beat and didn't seem to use the rhythm section to their best advantage, or let them have some fun too on the chorus. What I heard that made him different and new was a thinner, biting sound. He played more notes and more interesting melodic flights, and used the rhythm section like Miles Davis."

Chris Melito (trumpet):
Chris Melito and Pepper both took music lessons at Columbia Music Store. Pepper took sax lessons, Melito took trumpet. Pepper's mother dropped him off for lessons and picked him up. The lessons took place in booths at Columbia. Pepper and Chris would wait outside a closed door for their lessons with John Wade. Pepper possibly only went to Columbia for six months or a year. "I remember him as being very enthusiastic about music, really a joyful kid," said Melito. "Whereas most kids start taking off in music and they become timid in their approach to things, he came across as being more, 'Well, I can do it, I'm gonna do it, and here it is!' He was one of the very few kids who played without squeaking too much." He may have started first on a C-Melody saxophone.

Melito was hired at the Columbia Music Store so he could listen to the records. Pepper followed a year or so later. Pepper, according to Melito, was "very thin and fragile. He was just a guy who was enthused about music and wanted to learn the instrument. He was never disrespectful. In his language, it wasn't dirty or anything like that."

Regarding Pepper's sound, approach and technique:
He wasn't tentative or worried about mistakes, according to Melito. He just went for it with a measure of confidence.

About Rochester race relations:
"I'm not saying there was a lot of love. It was tempered a bit, but we got along."

"There were three or four music stores in the city that gave music lessons for a dollar. You rented a horn from them and, eventually, someone would come around and try to sell you the thing. A lot of kids started off that way, and later either went on to Eastman or private lessons. At public school you usually got the odd instruments, like tuba or bassoon, that no one else wanted," not tenor sax, alto, or trumpet. "I don't remember school bands having soprano saxophone." That's why it's likely that Pepper rented and later bought his soprano.

Lowell Miller, Bassist, About the Rochester Scene:
"When I was a kid, I had the full run of the Eastman School of Music. I could walk from high school, take a bow and a resin bag, walk up to Eastman, grab a bass off the wall--they had all these school instruments--and just play in any of the millions of rehearsal orchestras they had going on. So, I was able to get a free concert training. When I was thirteen, I was playing jobs and taking lessons at fifty cents a lesson from all these whizzbangs that were with Glenn Miller's band and in the Service. . . We were just kids and we had that type of training. When jazz came on the scene, we had all sorts of technique. It was a great place to grow up. There were some great players around here: The Mancusos (Gus and Joe), [pianist Tommy] Acquino, Herbie Brock, Sibby Brock. Joe Romano was a giant here. I had a hell of a background because of that. It seemed like it was exploding with people, and then we had the influence of the Eastman guys coming in and out all the time. There wasn't much jazz being played at Eastman. In fact, if you did that, you were some kind of scumbag." It was in this kind of environment that clarinetist Jack End worked to establish a presence for jazz at the Eastman School.

Raymond Murphy:
Murphy and Adams listened to standard Dixieland type things, the Condon Gang, Pee Wee Russell, Commodore Recordings, Coleman Hawkins. Pepper had an "all-encompassing interest in jazz. "He was serious about it from the word 'go.'"

When they first met at Columbia Music Store in the summer of 1944 on Clinton Avenue in downtown Rochester, Murphy was eighteen years old, in between his senior year of high school and his first year of college at the University of Rochester. He was working as a mail order clerk there. Pepper, thirteen, didn't know that much about jazz at the time.

Post-1947 or Later Information about the Rochester Scene:
See http://www.attictoys.com/Rochester_jazz/Rochester_jazz_music.php

1. The Ridge Crest, on Ridge Road, stated around 1954. It was a commercial nightclub. Billie Holiday played there.
2. The Pythodd was also started around this time. It was at Clarissa and Troup. 
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/local/rocroots/2015/06/19/whatever- happened-pythodd-club/28939711/
3. Roy McCurdy was from Rochester. Joe Romano also.
4. Sal Nistico was from Syracuse but played a lot in Rochester.
5. Top of the Plaza ran in the 1970s at Midtown Plaza.
6. Spencer Walker, a bass player, possibly played the Pythodd before Ron Carter. 
7. Frank Strazzeri, piano.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Joy Road Updates

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.


Here's new updates to Joy Road. In discographies, as many of you know, things are always changing! This update will post at pepperadams.com sometime this weekend.




I've been amassing corrections and additions since the August 2012 publication of Pepper Adams’ Joy Road. As you will see, there are some very exciting new Pepper Adams discoveries. The 2013 paperback edition gave me a chance to overhaul the Index. For reasons I explain below, it’s vastly superior to the index in the hardcover version. But those are static changes, fixed in the manuscript. Discographers know that their databases are instantly obsolete upon publication. New commercial recordings continue to get released or reissued. Audience recordings are continually discovered. Errors are unmasked and missing information slowly but surely gets supplanted by new data. That’s why discographies in book form are now a rarity. With the steady stream of updates that are needed to keep a discography current, the internet is the ideal medium. When Joy Road goes out of print, in fact, my entire book with updates will be posted right here. In the meantime, please send any corrections or additions to info@pepperadams.com.



Correction:
STAN KENTON - VOICES IN MODERN
570304, page 32

Personnel should reference 17 January 1957, not 17 January 1956.


Correction:
DAVE PELL - A PELL OF A TIME
570320, page 34

The two-line note about Walter Bruyninckx should be deleted.


Addition:
BOB KEENE - SOLO FOR SEVEN
570321, page 34

The tune Solo (from Andex LP: A-4001) should be added.


Correction:
AUTHOR'S NOTE, page 52

See 731216 should be See 731217.



Correction
BUD SHANK - THE JAMES DEAN STORY
570813
13 August 1957, Radio Recorders,Hollywood CA: Charlie Mariano, Herbie Steward as; Bill Holman, Richie Kamuca ts; Pepper Adams bs, bcl; Claude Williamson p; Monty Budwig b; Mel Lewis dm; Mike Pacheco bongos; FEATURED SOLOISTS: Chet Baker tp; Bud Shank as, fl.

a Lost Love
b People
c Rebel at Work

Regarding Bill Holman and Johnny Mandel’s participation, on July 29, 2104 researcher James Harrod emailed me this: "The [AFM] contracts just list the musicians. Holman might have retained the charts that he arranged. I believe that he has placed most of his archive with the LOC. He received arranger credit on the 14th only. Mandel is not listed as arranger on the 13th. He might have had a direct agreement with Dick Bock for his services. The back liner of P-2005 notes that Mandel arranged The Search, Jimmy's Theme, and Success; with Holman arranging the other selections. Mandel might have retained his charts as well." Harrod also told me that Chet Baker was listed on the LP as co-leader merely as a marketing strategy to boost sales. Also, Johnny Mandel likely functioned as a conductor at both sessions.


Correction
BUD SHANK - THE JAMES DEAN STORY
570814
14 August 1957, Radio Recorders, Hollywood CA: Same as 13 August, add Ray Linn, Don Fagerquist tp; Milt Bernhart tb; Mike Pacheco bongos; Chet Baker voc*.

a Jimmy's Theme
b Fairmount, Indiana
c Let Me Be Loved
d Let Me Be Loved*
e Hollywood

-b: Omit Pacheco.
-c is an instrumental version.
-d is a vocal arrangement, featuring Chet Baker voc.
See 570813 notes.


Correction
PEPPER ADAMS - CRITICS' CHOICE
570823
23 August 1957, Radio Recorders, Hollywood CA.

Pepper’s second date as a leader was done on one day, from 1-6pm. The LP cites the 22nd of August as the recording date but this is incorrect as per Jim Harrod’s American Federation of Musicians contract research in 2014.


Correction:
SOUL OF JAZZ PERCUSSION
600400
Spring 1960, Bell Sound Studios, New York: Donald Byrd tp; Pepper Adams bs; Bill Evans p; Paul Chambers b; Philly Joe Jones dm; Earl Zindars timpani, perc.

This was likely recorded between 9-18 April or in May-June.


Addition:
PEPPER ADAMS - MOTOR CITY SCENE
601115, page 107

All tracks on Bethlehem CD: BCP-6056.


Correction:
PEPPER ADAMS-DONALD BYRD - OUT OF THIS WORLD
610125
between 25 Jan- 5 Feb 1961, New York: Donald Byrd tp; Pepper Adams bs; Herbie Hancock p; Teddy Charles vib*; Laymon Jackson b; Jimmy Cobb dm.

Sometime between 25 January and 5 February 1961 the Donald Byrd-Pepper Adams Quintet record their date for Warwick. This was Pepper Adams’ eighth date as either leader or co-leader. New research reveals that, with the exception of a 13-20 December gig at Curro’s in Milwaukee (see 601213), the Quintet worked steadily in Chicago for nearly two months (from 22 November 1960 until 22 January 1961). Assuming a long travel day back to New York on 23 January and the opening of their week run at the Five Spot on the 24th, the band likely recorded no earlier than 25 January. As yet, no known information exists on band gigs for the period 1-5 February, prior to the group embarking on their two month tour of the Midwest and Eastern Canada.


New Entry:
DONALD BYRD-PEPPER ADAMS
610616
16 June 1961, TV broadcast, Cleveland: Donald Byrd tp; Pepper Adams bs; Herbie Hancock p; Cleveland Eaton b; Teddy Robinson dm.

The Quintet appeared on the program The One O'Clock Club while in town working at Algiers. The show was broadcast by WEWS (Channel 5), hosted by Dorothy Fuldheim. It isn't clear if either the audio or video still exists.


Addition:
DONALD BYRD-PEPPER ADAMS
610624, page 115

Also performed at Jorgie's was Out of This World (VGM unissued).


Correction:
LIONEL HAMPTON
611209
9 December 1961, Metropole Cafe, New York: Dave Gonsalves, Virgil Jones, Floyd, Richard Williams tp; Vince Prudente, Harleem Rasheed, Lester Robinson tb; Bobby Plater, Ed Pazant as; Andy McGhee, John Neely ts; Pepper Adams bs; Kenny Lowe p; Billy Mackel g; Lionel Hampton vib; Lawrence Burgan b; Wilbert Hogan dm.

a At the Metropole Glad-Hamp LP: GHLP-3050
b Encore (= Greasy Greens)
c After You've Gone Glad-Hamp LP: GHLP-1005
d They Say It's Wonderful (1)
e It's All Right with Me
f Take My Word
g McGhee

(1) Hampton and the rhythm section.
-c, -e, -g on Hindsight CD: HCD-242.


Correction:
JIMMY WITHERSPOON
630700
c. Summer 1963, CBC TV broadcast,Toronto: Dizzy Reece tp; John Gilmore ts; Pepper Adams bs; John Hicks p; Ali Jackson b; Charli Persip dm; Jimmy Witherspoon voc.

a Evenin'
b Ain't Nobody's Business
This program was entitled Sixty Minutes with Spoon, produced by Daryl Duke. Thirty minutes of it
was broadcast on 11 February 1964 on the program "Quest."


Addition
LIONEL HAMPTON
640723
23 July 1964, probably ORTF TV broadcast, Antibes Jazz Festival, Juan-les-Pins, France: Martin Banks, Benny Bailey tp; Bobby Plater as, fl; Ed Pazant ts, cl; Pepper Adams, Cecil Payne bs; Billy Mackel g; Lionel Hampton, vib, voc; Lawrence Burgan b; Floyd Williams dm.

a Hamp's Boogie Woogie
b unknown blues
c unknown blues
d Stardust
e Flying Home
f Our Love Is Here to Stay
g unknown blues
h unknown blues
i Air Mail Special
j Midnight Sun
k Air Mail Special
m The Man I Love
n Sophisticated Lady

See 640707, 640724, 640725 and 611209 notes. 


Correction:
AUTHOR'S NOTE, p. 145

The Thad Jones-Pepper Adams Quintet’s first known gig took place at the Clifton Tap Room in Clifton NJ on 26-27 March 1965.


Correction
JOE ZAWINUL - MONEY IN THE POCKET
660207

This was Pepper’s only recording that day, thus the change from 660207a. Adams was not at the Village Vanguard for the opening gig of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra. See Author’s Note directly below.


Author's Note
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS ORCHESTRA
660207b

Pepper Adams was not on this date. As per new research, it’s now confirmed that Marv Holladay is the baritone saxophonist. George Klavin was the engineer for the live recordings at the Village Vanguard and he still owns the tapes. Fortunately, he wrote the personnel on the tape boxes. CDs of this performance are held at the Thad Jones Archive at William Paterson University. The following are the tunes at the Archive, cross-referenced with those tunes released as a bootleg by Alan Grant on the CD "Opening Night."

a All My Yesterdays (unissued)
b All My Yesterdays (released by Grant)
c Back Bone (unissued)
d Big Dipper (unissued)
e Big Dipper (unissued)
f Mean What You Say (released by Grant)
g Mornin’ Reverend (released by Grant
h The Little Pixie (released by Grant)
i Willow Weep for Me (released by Grant)

According to saxophonist Jerry Dodgion, the tunes hadn’t yet evolved into what they eventually became. For example, The Little Pixie became a chase for the entire saxophone section. Here, though, only Jerome Richardson solos on the tune.

Mel Lewis told Michael Bourne in Jazz Journal International (Vol 42, No. 4, April 1989, p. 14) the following about Thad Jones’ big band arrangements and the early band book:

"Thad left Basie [in 1963]. We were thrown together in the Mulligan band. We’d been friends
for years. He’d just started writing for Gerry's band. Thad was experimenting. He was going to
bring things in for Gerry's band but he never got around to finishing anything. Thad was 
searching at that point. Basie commissioned Thad to write an album, 11 or 12 charts, and Thad
did them. Thad and I were still just hanging around with each other, still talking about a band of
our own. Basie rejected the arrangements. They were such a drastic change from what the Basie
band was all about. Thad called me and said, 'I’ve got some arrangements. Let’s have a 
rehearsal.’ We started our band with stuff written for Basie. Basie’s name was on the charts 
when we made our first rehearsal, but that became us. When we opened at the Vanguard a
month later, that first Monday night, we only had nine charts. We just hadn’t gotten around to
doing all of them. We played those nine charts and stretched them out. That’s where the whole
style with long solos and riffs happened. That was the band with Brookmeyer and Snooky Young.
We had all that experience in the band. Anything could happen."

Correction:
Pages 152, 203, 205, 253, 254, 263, 275, 287, 292, 305, 330, and 740312 

According to David Demsey, Curator of the Thad Jones Archive at William Paterson University, the correct title of Thad Jones’ tune Back Bone is most likely two words, not one. See 660318, 690902, 690908, 690909, 730814, 730815, 740313, 740712, 750915, 751111, 760113, 770727.


New Entry:
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS
660321
21 Mar 1966, private recording, Village Vanguard: Thad Jones flh; Snooky Young, Jimmy Nottingham, Bill Berry, Jimmy Owens tp; Bob Brookmeyer vtb; Garnett Brown, Jack Rains tb; Cliff Heather btb; Jerome Richardson as, ss, cl fl; Jerry Dodgion ss, as, fl; Joe Farrell fl, ts, ss; Eddie Daniels ts, ss, cl; Pepper Adams bs, cl; Hank Jones p; Sam Herman g; Richard Davis b; Mel Lewis dm.

a Once Around BMG (NZ) CD: 74321-51939-2
b Don’t Ever Leave Me
c Lover Man
d A--That’s Freedom   unissued
e All My Yesterdays
f Back Bone
g Big Dipper
h The Little Pixie
i Low Down
j Mornin’ Reverend
k Willow Weep for Me

The following is excerpted from a 26 April 2014 post at my blog "The Master" 
(http://gc-pepperadamsblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/double-trouble-alan-grant-george-klabin.html):

Since the 2012 publication of Pepper Adams' Joy Road, the first of two books I'm doing on Pepper Adams, a controversy over what constitutes the first performance by the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra has remained. My information was based on Pepper's itinerary, interviews with musicians in the band and also what I could infer from the CD "Opening Night." At the very least I wanted to know if Pepper Adams or Marv Holladay was playing baritone, since both are listed on the cover as participating musicians. Thanks to new information from my recent interview with engineer George Klabin, plus the efforts of saxophonists Frank Basile and David Demsey, I'm able to report some changes to the historical record.

First a little background. In 2000, DJ and impresario Alan Grant released a CD called "Opening Night" that purported to be music from the incredibly important first appearance of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra at the Village Vanguard on 7 February 1966. But others, such as saxophonists Jerry Dodgion and Bill Kirchner, contested that what Grant suggests (and partly what I wrote in my book) about the gig is not entirely true. Dodgion was in the band from its inception and Kirchner had been researching a book about Thad Jones with fellow saxophonist Kenny Berger. Detroit journalist Mark Stryker, too, in his research for his forthcoming book on Detroit jazz, also takes issue with Grant and some of my assump-tions. Like Dodgion and Kirchner, he disputes that all the tunes on Grant's CD are from 7 February and says there are two separate dates. The reason for the discrepancy mostly stems from all of them having heard recordings of the band made at the Village Vanguard that exist at the Thad Jones Archive at William Paterson University. 

In Joy Road (pages 150-52) I discuss the situation as I saw it just prior to publication in 2012. At that time I owned the Alan Grant CD but hadn't known about the two CDs at the Archive. Moreover, based upon the excellent recording quality of Grant's CD, the fact that Grant had a show on WABC-FM that routinely broadcasted live performances in New York City clubs, and that Grant was also actively promoting at that time on his show Pepper, Thad and Mel, I felt that the music likely emanated from ABC Radio. It turns out, however, that a nineteen-year-old self-taught engineer, George Klabin – who at the time (1965-69) had an evening jazz radio show on WKCR – recorded Thad and Mel's performance at the Vanguard. 

I interviewed George Klabin on 23 April 2014 to find out more about the recording's pedigree and to once and for all try to solve the riddles that remain about this great music. Klabin now lives in Los Angeles and runs Resonance Records (resonancerecords.org). His company specializes in releasing historically important jazz recordings, many that Klabin recorded live in clubs and for which he still retains legal ownership. Klabin developed a reputation around New York in the mid-60s for recording jazz musicians well and affordably. He would lug his own equipment into nightclubs, record musicians, then play some of it on his radio show. Klabin promoted these recordings to his listeners as music they'd never hear anywhere else. One of the first things he recorded was Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden for George Avakian that became an important early Jarrett demo. Another is a Bill Evans date. See the label's web-site for a roster of recordings.

Alan Grant and George Klabin were DJ colleagues in New York City. One day in early 1966 Grant called Klabin. He told him there was a new all-star big band that was playing their first gig at the Village Vanguard. Grant needed a recording. Would Klabin do it? Sure. Klabin brought six mics and was given two cocktail tables near the pole where Pepper Adams sat (at the far stage-left side of the club) to set up his Crown two-track stereo 7.5 ips recorder. He mixed everything live in his headphones. After the gig, he gave Alan Grant a copy and that was it. I doubt Klabin played any of the music on his own radio show. Klabin did confess that he was "completely blown away" by the band. He knew right away that this was a band unlike any other. 

A few weeks later Grant asked Klabin to return to the Vanguard on 21 March to record the band a second time. For that gig Klabin used 10 mics. Klabin said the band sounded even better. More polished, for one thing. For both gigs Klabin ended up with several hours of music.

Fast forward 34 years. To make a fast buck Alan Grant decides to bootleg a bunch of tunes from these two nights. Although Klabin owns the rights, Grant never got permission from Klabin to release it, never credited Klabin as the engineer and never paid the musicians. Essentially, Grant did an end run and went to BMG/New Zealand to print 2,500 copies. Jason Blackhouse (from Auckland), not Klabin, is credited as the engineer, and liner note verbiage throughout only trumpets the 7 February recording date. As David Demsey, director of the Thad Jones Archive has pointed out, the implication is that Blackhouse was the engineer on hand at the Vanguard. Furthermore, misleading listeners into believing that all the material derives from the band's first gig was equally duplicitous.

When Klabin learned about the release he was furious. He hired a detective to find Grant, who was living in Florida. Klabin telephoned Grant and said bluntly, "What's going on here? How can you do this without giving anyone credit?" Grant replied contritely, "I know, it wasn't a good idea." Miffed, Klabin left it at that.

Grant's bootleg is long sold out but a copy exists at William Paterson. Two CDs worth of Klabin's original tapes, presumably given to Thad Jones by Alan Grant, have been transferred from reel-to-reel and are there as well. A third reel may be missing, says Klabin, but he believes he still might have even more material. Fortunately, personnel for each night is specified on Klabin's tape boxes. 
Thanks to the work of David Demsey, who meticulously compared all the recordings, here's what's on the two Klabin CDs versus Grant's bootleg (listed as parenthetical comments):

7 February 1966
CD #1:
1. All My Yesterdays (unissued)
2. All My Yesterdays (released by Grant)
3. Back Bone (unissued)
4. Big Dipper (unissued)
5. Big Dipper (unissued)
6. Mean What You Say (released by Grant)
7. Mornin' Reverend (released by Grant
8. The Little Pixie (unissued)
9. Willow Weep for Me (released by Grant)

21 March 1966

10. Once Around (released by Grant)

CD #2:
1. A--That's Freedom (unissued)
2. All My Yesterdays (unissued)
3. Back Bone (unissued)
4. Big Dipper (unissued)
5. Don't Ever Leave Me (released by Grant)
6. The Little Pixie (released by Grant)
7. Lover Man (released by Grant)
8. Low Down (unissued)
9. Mornin' Reverend (unissued)
10. Willow Weep for Me (unissued)

What else does Klabin have and did a third reel he recorded get lost? What's the derivation of three tunes from Grant's CD – Big Dipper, Polka Dots and Moonbeams, and Low Down – that Demsey asserts is neither on Grant's or Klabin's CDs? What's the complete personnel of each date? Klabin has promised to clear up the remaining mysteries. Fortunately, since our interview he's already had the time to look at his tape boxes from 7 February and 21 March to at least confirm that Marv Holladay, not Pepper Adams, was on the 7 February date. Conversely, Pepper appears on the 21 March date in place of Holladay. 

According to Jerry Dodgion, Klabin has wanted to produce these important recordings since Grant's release to correct the historical record and get the music out the right way. Hopefully Klabin will release his definitive version soon, in its original running order, especially with Thad's announcements, and maybe even with Alant Grant as emcee? For Klabin, these brilliant Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra performances remain the greatest recordings he's ever made.


Correction
JOE WILLIAMS AND THAD JONES - SOMETHING OLD, NEW AND BLUE
680423
23-27 April 1968, Los Angeles: possible personnel: Thad Jones flh; Snooky Young tp, flh; Garnett Brown, Jimmy Knepper or Benny Powell tb; Jerome  Richardson as; Eddie Daniels ts; Pepper Adams bs; Roland Hanna p, org; Kenny Burrell g; Larry Bunker vib; Richard Davis b; Mel Lewis dm; Joe Williams voc; string section.

Delete Hallelujah I Love Her So, Nobody Knows the Way I Feel This Morning, How Sweet It Is and Evil Man Blues.


New Entry:
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS                                                                          
680720
20 July 1968, audience recording or radio broadcast, Pit Inn, Tokyo: Thad Jones flh; Bob Brookmeyer vtb; Jimmy Knepper, Garnett Brown tb; Cliff Heather btb; Jerry Dodgion as, fl; Jerome Richardson as, cl, fl; Seldon Powell ts; Eddie Daniels ts; Pepper Adams bs; Roland Hanna p; Kunimitsu Inaba b; Mel Lewis dm.

a Lover Man
b Bachafillen
c unknown title
d Don't Git Sassy
e Back Bone
f   Don't Ever Leave Me
g St. Louis Blues

 -c is a solo piano feature.
According to bassist Richard Davis, in a 2014 email to the author, Davis left the gig early and Inaba took his place. Because the Pit Inn was a small room for a big band, it's conceivable that Thad Jones scaled the band down to twelve pieces and Davis left the club along with the entire trumpet section before the final set.

This is the only known recorded gig from the band's first "tour" of Japan. Elvin Jones' future wife, Keiko, had agreed to put together eleven days worth of gigs. There was a great deal of excitement because this was the band's first overseas trip. An itinerary of events was given in advance to members of the band. On the morning of 11 July the band, along with seven of the musicians' wives, waited at JFK Airport to board a plane but the promised tickets never arrived at the gate. Thad Jones and Mel Lewis were left with no alternative but to charge the tickets on their American Express cards, without which the orchestra might've dissolved. To make matters worse, despite the itinerary, only one gig was arranged for the band in advance. The orchestra was in limbo each day until gigs could be acquired. The photographer K. Abe lent his life savings to pay for airplane tickets to get the group back to New York. After Mel Lewis returned, he paid Abe back by leveraging his residence with a second mortgage.

According to Jerry Dodgion, Jerome Richardson made the trip and the trumpet section on the tour was Snooky Young, Jimmy Nottingham, Danny Moore and Richard Williams. Richard Davis remembered the following musicians: Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Richard Williams, Garnett Brown, Bob Brookmeyer, Cliff Heather, Eddie Daniels, Pepper Adams and Roland Hanna.


Correction:
DUKE PEARSON - NOW HEAR THIS
681203

Pearson on p and e-p.
Randy Brecker and Marvin Stamm tp and flh.
Correct title is I'm Tired Cryin' Over You. Pearson on e-p here only.


New Entry:
DUKE PEARSON
690427
27 April 1969, Famous Ballroom, Baltimore: Burt Collins, Joe Shepley, Jim Bossy Donald Byrd tp, flh; Julian Priester, Joe Forst, Eddie Bert tb; Kenny Rupp btb; Jerry Dodgion, Al Gibbons as, fl; Frank Foster, Lew Tabackin ts; Pepper Adams bs; Duke Pearson p; Bob Cranshaw b; Mickey Roker dm.

a Hi-Fly Uptown CD: UPCD-2772
b New Girl
c Eldorado
d In the Still of the Night
e Tones for Joan's Bones
f Straight Up and Down
g Ready When You Are C.B
h Night Song

Recorded by the Left Bank Jazz Society. See 671215.


Correction
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS
690909

According to historian Bert Vuijsje, the broadcast also featured the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band and Boy Edgar's Big Band, not the Kurt Edelhagen Orchestra. Video of the broadcast does still exist.


Addition:
RICHARD DAVIS
691209

Reissue on Polydor (J) CD: POCJ-2164.


Correction:
DAVID AMRAM - NO MORE WALLS
710701

George Mgrdichian, not Mrgdichian, is the proper spelling.


Correction:
ELVIN JONES, page 239

See 720713 should be deleted.  Although that 13 July 1972 session produced three other tracks (Soultrane, Gee Gee, and One’s Native Place), Pepper Adams is not on them, therefore the session isn’t listed in the text.


Correction:
RICHARD ROUNDTREE
720216
16 February 1972, New York: Overdubs: Thad Jones tp, flh; Joe Dupars tp; Garnett Brown tb; Jerry Dodgion as; Sonny Fortune, Billy Harper, Andy Gadsden ts; Pepper Adams bs; Joe Farrell bcl.

a Gets Hard Sometimes MGM LP: SE-4836
b Peace in the Morning
c I'm Here
d Street Brother
e Man from Shaft
f Tree of Life
g Lovin'
h Sagitarian Lady
i The Letter

All tracks on MGM (UK) LP: 2315-121.


New Entry:
RUBY BRAFF
19 July 1972, audience recording, Half Note, New York: Ruby Braff cornet; Pepper Adams bs; Dill Jones p; George Mraz b; Dottie Dodgion dm.

a unknown blues

This recording was discussed in Michael Steinman's blog "Jazz Lives" (http://jazzlives.wordpress.com/author/jazzlives), published on 5 August 2014:

I will close with my single Pepper Adams sighting. In 1972, several friends and I followed Ruby Braff to gigs.  Although Ruby was unpredictable and unreasonably given to rage, he was always pleasant to us and allowed us to tape-record him. On July 19 of that year, my friend Stu and I came to the Half Note to record Ruby with the Welsh pianist Dill Jones, bassist George Mraz (then working with Pepper in the Thad Jones – Mel Lewis ensemble, and Dottie Dodgion on drums.  About two-thirds through the evening, where the music had been very sweet, with Ruby’s characteristic leaps through the repertoire of Louis, Duke and Billie, a tall man ascended the stand with a baritone saxophone, was greeted warmly by the players, and the quintet launched into an extended blues in A-flat. I remember Dottie Dodgion being particularly enthusiastic about the unnamed musician’s playing, who packed his horn and went off into the warm Greenwich Village night. Who was that unmasked man? The subject of Carner’s book, and yes, the tape exists, although not in my possession.


Correction 
PEPPER ADAMS, page 241

The correct recording date of the Oslo gig was 29 October 1972 and the rhythm section was Christian Reim p; Sture Janson b; Ole Jacob Hanson dm.


New Entry:
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS
17 Sept 1973, audience recording, Blighty's, Farnworth, England: Thad Jones cornet; Jon Faddis, Steve Furtado, Jim Bossy, Cecil Bridgewater tp; Jimmy Knepper, Billy Campbell, Steve Turre tb; Cliff Heather btb; Jerry Dodgion ss, as, fl; Ed Xiques ss, as, fl, cl; Billy Harper ts, ss, cl; Rob Bridgewater ts, cl; Pepper Adams bs; Roland Hanna p; George Mraz b; Mel Lewis dm; Dee Dee Bridgewater voc.*

a Us
b 61st and Richard
c Suite for Pops:
Meetin’ Place
Only for Now
The Farewell
d The Second Race
e Fingers
f Bye Bye Blackbird*
g How Insensitive*


Correction 
PEPPER ADAMS - EPHEMERA
730910
10 September 1973, EMI Studios, London: Pepper Adams bs; Roland Hanna p; George Mraz b; Mel Lewis dm.

This account of the date was provided to the author by Tony Williams, owner of Spotlite Records, on 13 November 2014:

The Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Band were working the Ronnie Scott Club at 47 Frith Street in Soho (Central London). As I was a good friend of baritonist Cecil Payne, when I went to hear the band I intro- duced myself to Pepper and he asked me if I would record him with Roland, George and Mel. I had only started Spotlite and was beginning to record American musicians – for example Joe Albany, Cecil, Duke Jordan, Red Rodney, Al Haig, Ben Webster, Jon Eardley, Dexter Gordon and Lockjaw Davis. I do recall, when Lockjaw approached me about doing an album I said I couldn’t afford him. He smiled and told me not to worry about that and things could be amicably figured out!

I agreed to fix a recording date with Pepper and got things set up at EMI Studios on Sunday, September 9th. Pepper’s Quartet made some recordings but Pepper was not satisfied with the results so the Quartet was recorded again the following day, September 10th, 1973. Pepper was well pleased with everything that was recorded that day which, apart from a few false starts, was done all in single takes. Pepper did ask me not to keep anything from the previous day which, out of respect to him, I did not. . . No photographs were taken but Pepper did get some photos to me of himself that were taken by Jill Freedman. He and I selected a couple to use on the LP sleeve. The LP was issued in 1974 and I got copies to Pepper to give to the other guys in the Quartet.



New Entry:
SADAO WATANABE
740311
c. 11 March 1974, FM-Tokyo radio broadcast, Tokyo: Sadao Watanabe as; Pepper Adams bs; Roland Hanna p; Eizo Honda b; Fumio Watanabe dm.

a Wistful Moment
b When Lights Are Low
c Ride On
d Ephemera
e Oleo


Correction/Addition:
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS
740312
12 Mar 1974, Yubin-Chokin Hall, Tokyo: Thad Jones cornet, flh; Jon Faddis, Steve Furtado, Jim Bossy, Cecil Bridgewater tp; Jimmy Knepper, Billy Campbell, Quentin Jackson tb; Cliff Heather btb; Jerry Dodgion ss, as, fl; Ed Xiques ss, as, fl, cl; Billy Harper ts, fl; Rob Bridgewater ts, cl; Pepper Adams bs; Roland Hanna p; George Mraz b; Mel Lewis dm.

a Mean What You Say Nippon-Columbia (J) LP: YX-7557
b Don't Ever Leave Me Nippon-Columbia unissued
c The Little Pixie Nippon-Columbia (J) LP: YX-7557
d Once Around Nippon-Columbia unissued
e A - That's Freedom
f Willow Tree
g Back Bone
h Don't Git Sassy

-d is likely a spliced version of this take and -a from 13 March 1974.
Takawa Isizuka should be Takao Ishizuka.


Addition
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS ORCHESTRA
740312
12 or 13 March 1974, Yubin-Chokin Hall or Toshi Center Hall, Tokyo: Add Dee Dee Bridgewater voc.

a Don't Ever Leave Me
b A-That's Freedom
c The Little Pixie
d Bye Bye Blackbird
e Get Out of My Life
f unknown title
g Fingers
h The Little Pixie

Dee Dee Bridgewater on -c and -d.
According to information posted at rhythmhouse.co.jp, these are alternate tracks that were recorded by Nippon-Columbia. The site doesn't specify what tunes were performed on either night.

Correction/Addition:
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS
740313
13 Mar 1974, Toshi Center Hall, Tokyo: Same as 12 March 1974, add possibly Dee Dee Bridgewater voc.*

a Once Around Nippon-Columbia (J) LP: YX-7557
b Kids Are Pretty People Nippon-Columbia unissued
c Say It Softly
d 61st and Richard
e A Child Is Born
f Back Bone Nippon-Columbia (J) LP: YX-7557
g Bachafillen Nippon-Columbia unissued
h I Love You*
i The Farewell
j Fingers
k The Intimacy of the Blues

-a is likely a spliced version of this take and -d is from 12 March 1974.
-h might be a feature for Dee Dee Bridgewater. The band also performed it as an instrumental.


Correction:
THAD JONES
740728

Walter Norris, not Roland Hanna, is the pianist on this date. Roland Hanna's last international tour with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra band was the band's trip to Japan in February-March 1974. Hanna's last recording with the band was in New York on 8-10 May 1974. By 27 June 1974 (the beginning of the band's 1974 European summer tour) Walter Norris had permanently replaced Hanna, ending Hanna's eight year tenure with the band. Hanna was the longest serving pianist in the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra's history.


Addition
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS ORCHESTRA
751026
26 October 1975, FM-Tokyo radio broadcast, Tokyo: Add Juanita Fleming voc*.

a Once Around
b Thank You
c Mean What You Say
d A Child Is Born
e Bird of Beauty*
f Fingers


Addition:
FRANK FOSTER - GIANT STEPS
751113 

Foster also plays ss.
-a and -b on Denon (J) LP: YC-7567-AX.


Correction/Addition:
FRANK FOSTER - GIANT STEPS
751117a 

See 751113 for personnel.
-a and -b on Nippon-Columbia-Denon (J) LP YX-7576 and Denon (J) LP: YC-7567-AX.


New Entry:
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS
751215
15 December 1975, audience recording, Village Vanguard, New York: Thad Jones flh; Al Porcino, Waymon Reed, Sinclair Acey, Cecil Bridgewater tp; Billy Campbell, Janice Robinson, John Mosca tb; Earl McIntyre btb; Jerry Dodgion, Ed Xiques ss, as, fl; Frank Foster, Gregory Herbert ts, cl; Pepper Adams bs; Onaje Allan Gumbs p; George Mraz or Steve Gilmore b; Mel Lewis dm.

a Big Dipper
b Kids Are Pretty People
c Bachafillen
d Samba con Getchu
e Giant Steps
f Thank You
g A Child Is Born


Correction:
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS
751217a, page 303

Love and Understanding should be Love and Harmony.


Deletion:
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS
760113

Ed Xiques took Pepper's place on this three-week winter tour that was intended mostly to open the new Domicile in Munich. It's likely that Adams declined going on the trip because the tour ended two weeks before his wedding on 14 February.


Deletion:
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS
760125

On this WDR radio broadcast from Cologne, Ed Xiques subs on baritone sax for Pepper and takes two baritone solos on tunes that are customary Adams features. It's possible that Adams didn't make this somewhat brief three-week trip to Europe to open up the new Domicile because the tour ended two weeks before his wedding on 14 February and he was needed to help with wedding arrangements.


Correction:
PEPPER ADAMS
770222
22 February 1977, audience recording, Restaurant La Redoute, s'Gravenwezel, Belgium: Pepper Adams bs; Tony Bauwens p; Roger Vanhaverbeke b; Freddy Rottier dm; GUESTS: Eddy House as*; Johnny Kay p+.

a Pepper Adams
b A Child Is Born
c What Is This Thing Called Love
d On the Sunny Side of the Street*+
e Misty*+
f Scrapple from the Apple*+

-a is the first public performance of Tony Bauwen's dedication to Adams. Although it was untitled at the time of its premiere and tentatively named "P/A. . . Pepper Adams," by 1984 it was retitled "Pepper Adams" for the big band arrangement of the tune that was recorded by the BRT Jazz Orchestra.


Correction:
PEPPER ADAMS
770228
28 February 1977, BRT radio broadcast, Witte Hoed at the Royal Anderlecht Sporting Club Bar, Anderlecht, Belgium: Pepper Adams bs; Tony Bauwens p; Roger Vanhaverbeke b; Freddy Rottier dm.

a Mean What You Say
b A Child Is Born
c Ephemera
d Pepper Adams

Regarding -d, see 770222 above.


Correction:
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS
770502
c. 2 May 1977, audience recording, West Virginia University, Morgantown WV.


Correction:
THAD JONES
c. 3 May 1977, audience recording, Kilcawley Center at Youngstown State University, Youngstown OH.


Addition
JOHN SPIDER MARTIN - ABSOLUTELY
770600
According to Dave Loeb, pianist Bill Dobbins wasn't available for the date so Loeb subbed for him. At the recording session, after Martin and Adams had discussed whether a certain take was acceptable, they learned from the engineer that the take had been erased. Adams said that this was the most unprofessional thing he had ever seen in his thirty years of recording.

The day after the recording, most of the group worked a gig in Rochester. After the gig, Pepper stayed at Loeb's house rather than at a seedy hotel in downtown Rochester. Loeb and Adams stayed up all night listening to records. Except for Bud Powell, Pepper refused to listen to any jazz and would only listen to classical music. Asked whether Ellington might've been another exception, Loeb said he didn't have any Ellington in his collection at the time.


Correction
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS
770625

This Carnegie Hall concert, part of the Newport Jazz Festival, took place at midnight on Saturday. It was a salute to the Jones Brothers (all three of whom performed two tunes with the addition of Rufus Reid) and Dizzy Gillespie. The final two numbers featured Gillespie with Thad-Mel and Elvin Jones replaced Mel Lewis. Because Elvin had sat in twice before with Thad-Mel and one occasion broke one of Mel's calf drum heads, it's likely that Elvin's drums were brought in to replace Mel Lewis’.


Correction:
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS
770730
30 July 1977, private videotape, Copenhagen: Same as 9 July 1977, omit Rully:

a Once Around
b The Little Pixie
c My Centennial(1)

(1)Thad Jones and some bandmembers play various percussion instruments.

The band performed a free concert in a public square, probably near the Stroget. In the film, Dexter Gordon walks across the screen. Gordon had a gig that night at the Montmartre Jazzhus.


Correction:
THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS
770800B
29-31 July, 1-6 August, or 11 August 1977, DR TV broadcast, unknown outdoor square, Copenhagen: Thad Jones flh; Earl Gardner, Larry Moses, Jeff Davis, Frank Gordon tp; Billy Campbell, John Mosca, Clifford Adams tb; Earl McIntyre btb; Jerry Dodgion, Ed Xiques ss, as, cl, fl; Richard Perry, Dick Oatts ts, cl, fl; Pepper Adams bs; Harold Danko p; Rufus Reid b; Mel Lewis dm, Aura Rully voc.*

a Fingers
b Route 66*
c My Centennial (1)

(1) Thad Jones and some bandmembers play various percussion instruments.
Dexter Gordon is in the audience.  This might be a public square near the Stroget.


Addition:
PEPPER ADAMS-KAI WINDING
780804

See note on 760714 regarding the HNITA Jazz Club.


Addition
VLADIMIR COSMA
771019
19 October 1977, film soundtrack, Paris.

This date has been reissued on Pomme (F) CD: 950-222. It includes an alternate take of Jalousie-Blues but does not include -f (All My Evening Birds). -f was previously issued on Larghetto (F) CD: 0015163 and has been reissued on Larghetto (F) CD: 004- 3760002133478-17CD.


Correction
HELEN MERRILL - CHASIN' THE BIRD/GERSHWIN
790306
6 Mar 1979, RCA Studios, New York: Pepper Adams bs; Dick Katz p; Rufus Reid b; Mel Lewis dm; Helen Merrill voc.

a     It Ain't Necessarily So (1)       Inner City LP: IC-1080
b     Summertime       
c     I Can't Be Bothered Now (2)
d     Someone to Watch Over Me    
e     My One and Only         Trio (J) LP: PAP-9160
f But Not For Me (3) Inner City unissued

See 790309.
(1) Reid, Lewis, Merrill only.
(2) Katz and Merrill duet.
(3) Pepper, Katz and Merrill only.           

Raymond Ross photographed this session and no photos are taken of Puma in the studio with the band on 6 March. Since Puma was added on only three of nine tracks, it's likely he attended only the 9 March session. See 790309. 


Correction
HELEN MERRILL - CHASIN' THE BIRD/GERSHWIN
790309
9 Mar 1979, RCA Studios, New York: Pepper Adams bs; Dick Katz p; Joe Puma g; Rufus Reid b; Mel Lewis dm; Helen Merrill voc.

a     Embraceable You/Quasimodo     Inner City LP: IC-1080
b     I Got Rhythm/Chasin' the Bird        
f I Love You, Porgy

Raymond Ross photographed this session and the first Merrill session of 790306. Ross sent me contact sheets of his work and each strip of photographs are dated. In all, 126 photos were taken. Puma only appears in photos taken on 9 March. Considering this, and the fact that Puma was added on only three of nine tracks, it's unlikely he attended the 6 March session. See 790306. 


New entry
PER HUSBY
790325
25 Mar 1979, audience recording, Kristiansund, Norway: Pepper Adams bs; Per Husby p; Bjorn Alterhaug, Espen Rud dm.

a     Just Friends       
b     Quiet Lady       
c     Eiderdown (1)
d     Embraceable You    
e     Three and One        
f 'Tis           

(1) Rhythm section only.
Sponsored by the Kristiansund Jazz Society.
Correction:
PEPPER ADAMS
790907
7 September 1979, audience recording, Jazz Forum, New York: Pepper Adams bs; Bob Neloms p; Wayne Dockery b; John Yarling dm.

a It Could Happen to You
b In Love with Night
c Blue Champagne
d 'Tis
e Claudette's Way
f Pent-Up House
g I Carry Your Heart


Addition:
PEPPER ADAMS - THE MASTER
800311
11 March 1980, Downtown Sound, New York City.


Correction:
PEPPER ADAMS
801017

The guest on this date is Marv Holladay.


Addition:
PEPPER ADAMS-AL JARREAU
820224

On 24 September 2012 historian Dan Morgenstern discussed this television broadcast at a press party held at New York's Jazz Gallery. The event was held to celebrate the publication of Pepper Adams' Joy Road and kick off the first week-long celebration of Adams' music ever organized in New York. According to Morgenstern,

I had the pleasure of getting to know Pepper a little better, other than having admired him as a player and seeing him many times. We were together for a while in the Recording Academy, and he was one of the few jazz musicians who became active in the Academy. The upshot of that was one of the finest moments in the history of the Grammy television show, which was when somehow we managed to get Pepper on the show and, not only that, he was the climactic attraction at the end. He played "Shining Hour" and it was marvelous! It will never happen again on the Grammys that jazz has such a prominent part of it.


New entry
PEPPER ADAMS
830000
c1983, audience recording, Petit Opportun, Paris: Pepper Adams bs; Georges Arvanitas p; Jackie Samson b; Charles Saudrais dm.

a Pent-Up House


Correction: 
DANNY D'IMPERIO
830930a
30 September 1983, audience recording, Eddie Condon's, New York: John Marshall tp*;
Pat Rebillot p; Reggie Johnson b; Danny D'Imperio dm; GUEST SOLOIST: Pepper Adams bs.

a Have You Met Miss Jones
b Scrapple from the Apple
c Body and Soul
d My Ideal*
e Hellure
f Star Eyes*
g Minority*
h Lover Come Back to Me*
i Just You, Just Me
j Blues for Philly Joe/Billie's Bounce*

The band played two sets, each concluding with a blues (-e and -j). This was the club's first late Friday afternoon "Twilight Jazz" engagement. It was slotted in to precede Condon's customary 8:30 traditional jazz band set.


Correction 
PEPPER ADAMS, page 448

The Gershwin medley is comprised of only two tunes: My Man's Gone Now and I Loves You, Porgy.


Addition: 
DENNY CHRISTIANSON
841023a
For this CBC Studio date, Christianson hired a few subs to replace missing members of his big band. Apart from drummer Guy Nadon replacing Cisco Normand, these subs remain unknown. Delete Paul Picard perc.  Otherwise, personnel (see 860224 and 860225) is mostly correct.


Correction: 
PEPPER ADAMS, page 456

The correct name of the album is Exhilaration.


Correction 
PEPPER ADAMS, page 477

-e and -f: Gary Smulyan on both tracks.
-g is more properly called The Theme and Adams doesn't solo on it.


Correction: 
PEPPER ADAMS
851029
29 October 1985, audience recording, Pellerina Bar, Turin, Italy: Pepper Adams bs; Ricardo Zegna p; Dodo Goya b; Paolo Pellegatti dm.

a Falling in Love with Love
b All the Things You Are
c There Is No Greater Love (1)
d I Can't Get Started
e 'Tis
f Bye Bye Blackbird
g Bossallegro
h Just Friends
i 'Tis
j Old Folks (1)

(1) Rhythm section only.


Correction:
ORANGE COUNTY COLLEGE BIG BAND
860320

Song for Pepper was written by saxophonist Brian Williams, not Bruce Johnstone.


New entry
PEPPER ADAMS
860321
21 March 1986, audience recording, Orange Coast College, OCC Jazz Festival, Costa Mesa CA: Pepper Adams bs; other musicians.

According to collector Andy Katell, this was a clinic that Adams did for students attending the Festival. Katell's brother, Gabe, attended the clinic then took Pepper out to lunch in nearby Garden Grove.


Correction:
PEPPER ADAMS
860323a
23 March 1986, private videotape, Orange Coast College, OCC Jazz Festival, Costa Mesa CA: Pepper Adams, Nick Brignola bs; Claude Williamson p; Art Davis b; Carl Burnett dm.

a All the Things You Are
b Isn't It Romantic
c After You've Gone
d unknown ballad (1)

(1) Adams and rhythm section.


Correction: 
PEPPER ADAMS, page 511

The August, 1982 recording date that is cited is in conflict with the session's 790716 alphanumeric code. Although the drummer believes the date took place in August, 1982, Pepper's chronology for that time makes it impossible. The original 16 July 1979 date is more likely because that's when Pepper first wrote "Binary," that they recorded at that session.


Correction:
INDEX, pages 521-552

Hundreds of changes – mostly incorrect page references – were made to the index for the paperback edition. (These are the only updates that were made to the paperback.) Due to the malfunction of my printer very late in the camera-ready-copy process, it was necessary to use a new printer after much of the manuscript was already printed. This changed the pagination of the original manuscript that had already been delivered to the indexer.