Pepper Adams Biography Release Date

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.




The exciting news this month is that I’ve decided to release the first three chapters of my Adams biography as e-books. Once John Vana and I came to the conclusion that we are better off releasing the book digitally, it became obvious that there’s no reason to wait any longer. Getting the chapters out in early 2019 will help bridge the gap between then, the near future when I release Chapters 4-6, and some eight or so years from now when Vana starts publishing his musicological analysis.

The plan at this point is to release the chapters individually at $4.95, or the first half of the book for $9.99. I’d love some feedback on whether this approach makes sense, and especially if you have any advice about what vendors to choose, how I should go about it, etc. I’ve heard good things about iUniverse, and I’m aware of CD Baby and Amazon as two other options.

This week I’ll be sending to the Jazz History Database three large reel-to-reel tapes that contain the entire contents of all of my interviews with Pepper Adams. I started interviewing him in June, 1984, and only some of the material was excerpted by Cadence in their four-part series in 1986. The idea, of course, is to make all of this material available, and to link it to pepperadams.com.

I’ve spent most of my free time this month listening to Pepper Adams solos, trying to find some more of those incredible gems that reside within the many audience recordings I’ve catalogued in Joy Road. I’ve been focused mostly on the period 1983-1986. There’s so much great material, and I did find a few things that are truly special (see below). Before I started listening a few weeks back, I was under the impression that Adams, because of his bizarre car accident in December, 1983, had lost some of his facility due to his long layoff. I was led to believe that principally because of the way he sounded on a gig or two in New Jersey and elsewhere. After listening to his first gig back (at the Detroit Institute of Arts in June, 1984) once ambulatory again, and to other dates later that year and afterwards, however, I realized that there was no diminution of his playing at all. If his playing suffered at any time, it was toward the very end of his life, when he was very deep into his cancer, battling secondary infections, and physically quite weak.

Below is a roster of the samples you can expect to hear in the coming months at pepperadams.com that I discuss in Chapter 4 of my Pepper biography. While some are obscure audience recordings, others are landmark commercial releases. Have a great month and Happy Thanksgiving!


Chapter 4:
Pepper Adams, Montreal Jazz Festival (1986)
[“Dobbin’”]
Denny Christianson, Suite Mingus (1986)
[“Lookin’ for the Back Door, “My Funny Valentine,” “Fables of Faubus”]
Pepper Adams, Plays the Music of Charlie Mingus (1963)
[See Chapter 6]
Joshua Breakstone, Echoes (1986)
[“It’s Easy to Remember,” “Bird Song,” “My Heart Stood Still”]
Pepper Adams, The Adams Effect (1985)
[“Binary”]
Pepper Adams, Encounter (1968)
[See Chapter 5]
Pepper Adams Live (1977)
             [“How Long Has This Been Going On?”]
Nick Brignola, Baritone Madness (1977)
[“Donna Lee”]
Pepper Adams at Gulliver’s (1978)
            [“Half Nelson,” “Time on My Hands,” “Three Little Words,” “Chelsea Bridge,” “‘Tis,”    
            “Apothegm,” “A Blue Time,” “Body and Soul,” “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “‘Tis,” “I’ve Just
            Seen Her,” “What Is This Thing Called Love,” “I Love You”]
Pepper Adams, Eastman Theater (1978)
             [“Body and Soul”]
Pepper Adams, Reflectory (1978)
[“Reflectory,” “Sophisticated Lady,” “Etude Diabolique,” Claudette’s Way,” “I Carry Your
Heart,” “That’s All”]
Walter Bishop Jr, Cubicle (1978)
            [“My Little Suede Shoes,” “Summertime,” “Cubicle,” “Now, Now That You’ve Left Me”]
Sture Nordin (1978)
[“Straight, No Chaser” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5jQMY4dbU4  “Day Dream”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHXa-WrFw98]
Curtis Fuller (1978)
            [“Four on the Outside”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rsx8oN2HRE
            “Suite-Kathy” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xVwaCW7Dj4
             “Hello Young Lovers” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNf0I_o2SIg
             “Little Dreams” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoD4yPwp0BI
              “Ballad for Gabe-Wells” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAm2zUS2uek
              “Corrida del Torro” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpB71ceky4M]
Pepper Adams in Montreal (1978)
  [“Dylan’s Delight,” A Child Is Born,” Mean What You Say,” I Carry Your Heart,” “Bossa
  Nouveau,” “In Love with Night,” Three Little Words,” “Claudette’s Way,” “Oleo”]
Bill Perkins (1978)
  [“La Costa,” “Dylan’s Delight, “Civilization and Its Discontents”]
Dick Salzman (1978)
  [“Mean to Me,” “Love Walked In,” “My Little Suede Shoes”]
Helen Merrill, Chasin’ the Bird/Gershwin (1979)
               [“Summertime,” “Embraceable You/Quasimodo”]
Pepper Adams at the Pizza Express (1979)
  [“Bye, Bye Blackbird,” “Civilization and Its Discontents,” “Oleo,” “’Tis”]
Oliver Nelson, More Blues and the Abstract Truth (1964)
  [See Chapter 6]
Jimmy Witherspoon, Blues for Easy Livers (1966)
  [See Chapter 6]
Pepper Adams at the Jazz Forum (1979)
  [“I Carry Your Heart”]
Pepper Adams, The Master (1980)
[The entire date, plus alternates]
Pepper Adams at Far and Away (1980)
[Falling in Love With Love, “How Long Has This Been Going On,” “What Is This Thing
            Called Love,”  “Three and One,” “A Child Is Born,” Mean What You Say, “Urban
            Dreams,” “Happy Birthday,” “I Carry Your Heart,” “I’ll Remember April”]
Pepper Adams at Far and Away (1981)
[“In a Mellow Tone,” “Confirmation”]
Pepper Adams at Far and Away (1982)
[“What Is This Thing Called Love,” “Shuffle”]
Pepper Adams at Far and Away (1983)
[4/16: “Times Have Changed,” “The Days of Wine and Roses,” “Rue Serpente”]
[9/30: “That’s All”]
[10/1: “Time on My Hands,” “Times Have Changed,” “Witchcraft”]
[11/19: “Falling in Love with Love,” “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,” “Bye, Bye
            Blackbird”]
Noreen Grey at the University of Bridgeport (1984)
[“A Woman Is a Sometime Thing”]
Pepper Adams at Far and Away (1984)
            [“Three and One”]
Pepper Adams at Far and Away (1985)
            [850112: “Witchcraft”]
            [850413: “In Love with Night”]
Pepper Adams at the Downtown Athletic Club (1980)
[“My Funny Valentine,” “Blues in the Closet”]
Pepper Adams with the Skymasters Big Band (1981)
[“The Preacher”]
Pepper Adams at The Flags (1981)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na-jnzMTQpQ
Pepper Adams, Urban Dreams (1981)
[“Urban Dreams”]
Pepper Adams at the Bull’s Head (1982)
[“Isn’t It Romantic,” “Witchcraft”]
Pepper Adams at Nick’s (April 1, 1982)
[“I Carry Your Heart”]
Pepper Adams at DeFemio’s (1982)
[“If You Could See Me Now”]
Hank Jones at the International Jazz Festival (1982)
[“Urban Dreams”]
Nobby Totah in Westport (1982)
[“Get Happy,” “Urban Dreams,” “Take the ‘A’ Train”]
Pepper Adams with the Metropole Orchestra (1982)
[“Urban Dreams,” “Linger Awhile,” “I’m All Smiles,” “Witchcraft,” “Gone with the Wind”]
Pepper Adams at Nick’s (December 10, 1982)
[“My Little Suede Shoes,” “Reflectory,” “No Refill”]
Pepper Adams at Struggle’s (1983)
[“Chelsea Bridge,” “Pent-Up House”]
Pepper Adams at the OCC Jazz Festival (1983)
[“Oleo” (solo only)]
Pepper Adams at the Four Queens Hotel (1983)
[“A Child Is Born”]
Elvin Jones at the Village Vanguard (1983)
[“Island Birdie”]
Hank Jones at the Stockholm Jazz and Blues Festival (1983)
[“Doctor Deep”]
Pepper Adams at the Ottawa Jazz Festival (1983)
[“What Is This Thing Called Love,” “Bossallegro”]
Pepper Adams at DeFemio’s (1983)
[“Alone Together”]
Danny D’Imperio at Eddie Condon’s (1983)
[“Have You Met Miss Jones” (with D’Imperio’s intro), “Scrapple from the Apple,” “My
            Ideal,” “Hellure,” “Star Eyes,” “Minority,” “Just You, Just Me,” “Blues for Philly Joe” (full
            take)
Ray Alexander at Eddie Condon’s (1983)
[“Green Dolphin Street,” “In a Sentimental Mood,” “Bernie’s Tune,” “Witchcraft”]
Pepper Adams, Live at Fat Tuesday’s (1983)
[“Doctor Deep” (8/20: track -w, p. 436 of Joy Road]
Denny Christianson at the CBC Radio Studios (1984)
[‘Autumn Leaves,” “A Pair of Threes,” “Reflectory,” “Claudette’s Way”]
Pepper Adams at the Singapore International Jazz Festival (1984)
[“What Is This Thing Called Love,” “Bossa Nouveau,” the concluding half-chorus (directly
            after the bass solo) and cadenza to “Body and Soul”]
Pepper Adams at the Bull’s Head (February 5, 1985)
[“Isn’t It Romantic”]
Pepper Adams at the Bull’s Head (February 18, 1985)
[“My Shining Hour”]
Pepper Adams at the Ship Hotel (1985)
[“Lady Luck”]
Michael Weiss at the Angry Squire (1985)
(“If You Could See Me Now,” “Milestones”]
Pepper Adams at the San Remo Jazz Festival (1985)
[“Doctor Deep”]
Pepper Adams at the Pellerina Bar (1985)
[“Bye, Bye Blackbird”]
Pepper Adams at the Artists’ Quarter (January 15, 1986)
[“Three Little Words,” “Quiet Lady,” “The Days of Wine and Roses,” “Pent-Up House,”
“’Tis,” “Hellure,” “Bossallegro”]
Pepper Adams at the Artists’ Quarter (January 16, 1986)
[“How Long Has This Been Going On”]
Pepper Adams at the Artists’ Quarter (January 18, 1986)
[“Three and One”]

Reader Responses

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

I want to thank Jon Wheatley and Kevin Goss for their perceptive Facebook replies last week. I hope others feel free to reply to future posts, if only on Facebook. I'm happy to cut and paste, understanding it's often easier for folks to respond on Facebook while they're there. Can someone please tell me if it's hard to post replies directly on Blogspot? Thanks again to the intrepid Peter Landsdowne for doing so.

So often I think of Adams as a complex soloist and forget how difficult his tunes are to play. Other than playing a few of his lead sheets on piano, the only Pepper tune I've ever played on my instrument is "Rue Serpente." I did that in the mid-1980s, while working on my Pepper Adams thesis at Tufts. I put together my own arrangement for solo guitar. It sure took me a long time to work it out.

During that time, I studied briefly with guitarist Jon Wheatley. His perception of Pepper's original tunes having melodies that are not easily singable is interesting and certainly deserves more scrutiny. Is that unusual in the jazz canon? Is that a reason to exclude his (or anyone's) tunes from the standard repertoire? It seems that "Muezzin'" and "Freddie Froo" are the only Adams compositions to ever make it into a fakebook. Please let me know what you think about this.

As for Wheatley's claim that Pepper played his own, difficult material, yes, that's true chiefly once he went out as a single in 1977, after leaving Thad/Mel. As drummer Ron Marabuto told me, after Pepper made the move he focused on organizing a book he could take around with him. His wife, Claudette, said Pepper at that time spent a lot of time composing at the piano. Fortunately, Pepper's two dates for Muse (Reflectory and The Master) gave him an outlet to record some of his new tunes, as did two subsequent dates on Uptown and recordings as a sideman with Bill Perkins and Hod O'Brien.

Even though by 1977 Pepper had already written and recorded more than twenty original compositions, he didn't play many of them on his own gigs. For those, he might pull one out from time to time, answer a request, or chose a favorite Thad Jones tune. More often, though, Adams played standards. 

Adams was careful with his repertoire. Let's not forget that non-American rhythm sections really varied in terms of quality before the 1980s or '90s.  As he put it, Pepper didn't "want to show distain for the audience" and downgrade a performance by calling a tune that a rhythm section couldn't handle.

As for Pepper's tunes being difficult to play, trumpeter Red Rodney said in my interview with him that Valse Celtique was "tough" and he would have appreciated some rehearsal time with it before a Barry Harris concert, when Pepper pulled it out to play. More recently, drummer Mike Melito, between tunes at a 2015 Rochester, New York concert he led of Pepper's music, said to the Bop Shop audience, "This music is really hard." Melito's superb band of Eastman guys (including pianist Harold Danko) played the music impeccably, by the way. I wish I had a tape of it. Many years ago, bassist Rufus Reid told me that some of Pepper's tunes were "too intellectual." Did he in part mean they were tough to play?

I thought I'd shoot an email to Mike Melito and ask him to elaborate on why he feels Pepper's music is hard to play. He wrote right back with the following:

"Hey Gary:

Here are some thoughts on why I think Pepper's tunes were difficult from the drums' standpoint.

Pepper Adams' compositions were masterpieces but posed many challenges for musicians to play them. As a drummer, you need to be able to play the ensembles of tunes but not just play generic time. You need to know how to make the melodies of compositions come alive, otherwise everything will sound the same. Pepper's tunes can not be played by a chump drummer who doesn't know how to deal with the ensembles. Pepper wrote certain tunes that were hard rhythmically. You need to be able to deal with that in a musical way. For instance, you need to know how to make short sounds for short notes in the melodies. But you also have to know how to make longer notes in the melody BUT also play around the rhythms without clashing with the ensembles, and knowing when to leave space. Developing this is not an easy task! 

One of my favorite Pepper tunes is "Cindy's Tune," originally recorded on his record Encounter with Zoot Sims. First off, the melody of this tune is tricky for the horns so you can't get in the way. When you come across a composition like this, you can orchestrate it in different ways. Elvin Jones, the drummer on Encounter, brought his brillant organic thing to the melody. He played around the melody, outlining it but having such a wide beat. Being Elvin, it worked great. There is only one Elvin Jones, though, so as a drummer we have to come up with our own way of playing the difficult melodies Pepper wrote. What works for one guy may not work for another. That is one of the biggest challenges as a drummer when playing Pepper's music: knowing how to make the melodies come alive."

Great stuff from Mike Melito! Thanks so much for your insights. Aside from the various comments about Pepper's tunes being difficult, I found Kevin Goss' comments about audiences "listening with their eyes" really fascinating. For one thing, Pepper just didn't care that much about how he dressed. Some musicians, like Bobby Timmons, would get on his case in the late 1950 and 60s for his raggedy sport coat (possibly the one worn in the photo on pepperadams.com's homepage), or how indifferent Pepper was to dressing up for a gig. Even later in life, when his wife and step-son tried to get him au courant by wearing a leather vest and dress shirt (see the cover to Live at Fat Tuesday's below), Pepper's white tee shirt always seemed to peek out of his wide-open collar. To see another one of Pepper's informal outfits, see this performance with Clark Terry in Sweden. Pepper, with his flannel shirt, almost looks like he could have just milked a cow: 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k5jQMY4dbU4 

There were some notable exceptions when Pepper did show some concern for appearance on the bandstand. In 1960, Pepper came to his gig at Montreal's Little Vienna wearing a bow tie and criticized pianist Keith White for not wearing socks. The Little Vienna had a completely unpretentious coffee house like vibe that in no way approximated a white-table cloth supper club, nor was it a place where the audience would dress up. White's response to Pepper's criticism was, "This is the Little Vienna, not the Waldorf Astoria."

Regarding Pepper's looks, if you check out some of the photos of Adams as a child on my Instagram page (https://www.instagram.com/pepperadamsblog/), you might agree with me that Pepper was quite a cute kid. Somewhere along the way, he was stigmatized about being ugly. Being branded with the nickname of "Pepper" in the Seventh Grade certainly didn't help. He said repeatedly over the years that Pepper Martin (to whom he was compared by his schoolmates, and nicknamed after) was "an ugly son-of-a-gun." 

In one interview I did, I was told that Pepper was quite sensitive about his looks. His Princeton haircut of the 1950s and 60s--close on the sides and almost a Mohawk on top--certainly made him look rather eccentric in some photographs. In 1985, during intermission at a gig in New Jersey, Pepper joked about his crooked front teeth (that he couldn't afford to fix), that were damaged by playing hockey in Rochester. About them, he said to me with a twinkle in his eye, "Do you think they grow that way?" Despite his misgivings about his looks, from what I can tell there never seemed to be any shortage of groupies and women around him. Musicians really have it made, don't they?

This past week I also heard from saxophonist/arranger Frank Griffith and saxophonist Frank Basile. Both wrote me about how much they enjoyed what Tony Inzalaco had to say a few weeks back. Tony is a really special person. Anyone in the Anaheim area should try to catch his group, hear him while he's still going strong, and get to know him.

Saxophonist Aaron Lington also emailed me about the first 50 Years at the Village Vanguard post, saying it's a great book. My review of the book's contents is still forthcoming. I want to give it the attention it deserves. Unlike many jazz picture books, there's a considerable amount of text. Lington, by the way, is in the midst of an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. Please help put him way over the top: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bicoastal-collective-chapter-five-jazz#/

A few other things of interest took place this week. I got a wonderful email from tenor saxophonist Osian Roberts. He said he was enjoying the blog. I immediately wrote back telling him how much I appreciated he and others giving me feedback, that intermittent reinforcement from readers is so important to my psyche to keep all this Pepper work going. 

In part, too, Osian was consoling me for not getting my Detroit proposal approved for the 2017 Darmstadt conference. Looking back, I was a tad naive. I should have first asked around about what kind of language they usually look for in these proposals. I was just too excited about the prospect of traveling abroad and presenting my research on 1950s Detroit. In turns out that they give preference to those with academically germane jargon. Not being a member of "the club," I wrote it in plain English. No big deal. It helped me get some Detroit work done. But I wanted to get to Prague and hear Osian play some Pepper tunes with his small group and big band.

In Osian's email, he told me about his recent tour with Detroit pianist Kirk Lightsey. I'm hoping to interview Lightsey by Skype sometime soon. Lightsey currently lives in Paris and he knew Pepper as an elder on the scene. I'm especially interested in Kirk's remembrances of growing up in Detroit.  

Roberts wrote that Lightsey on their tour spoke of "how smartly dressed Doug Watkins was," and "the picture he painted of the music scene [in Detroit] when he was growing up and the standard of the musicians was vivid and impressive. What struck me was the fact that all the musicians he mentioned were studying classical music to a very advanced level (enthusiastically I should add!), whereas jazz was mainly learnt at friends' houses such as Barry Harris' and so forth. The fact that [Lightsey] majored on oboe (which he played in the symphony orchestra with Paul Chambers), but could play all the woodwind instruments from clarinet to bassoon, gives you an idea of how thoroughly trained and accomplished these guys were. Apparently, [Lightsey] was in an Army band with Joe Henderson on bass (and he was excellent)!"

As I'll be traveling for the next few weeks, lecturing about Pepper Adams in Utah, this post will be my last in March. The next installment will be on April 16. I hope everybody in the U.S. gets their income taxes done. 

I'm going to close with the stunning discovery that the webmaster of pepperadams.com, Dan Olson, made just three days ago. A few months ago some of you marveled at the discovery of the triumphant and previously unseen 1982 Pepper Adams TV performance on the Grammy Awards telecast. Amazingly, Olson just found a much better YouTube version. It has better resolution, includes John Denver's introduction for context, and most importantly has a completely unsulllied version of Adams' cadenza. All known versions beforehand had a defect on Pepper's concluding "funny note." We now have a complete two-minute take of the entire thing with the rhythm section, and how it then dovetails into his two-minute version of "Blue Rondo a la Turk" with Al Jarreau. As Pepper told me, his uptempo arrangement of (appropriately enough) "My Shining Hour" allowed him to at least get a chance to improvise. Finally seeing his complete comedic routine, beginning with the "Muppets Theme" and ending with him looking into the bell of his horn, is something I've waited over thirty years to see. As Pepper told me about that experience, a limo picked him up at the airport, everything was first-class. "Two minutes in the big time," he said.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nfI6ljMgvuQ 

William Paterson University and the Influence of Bob Wilber

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved

I woke up today thinking about the William Paterson University lecture I'm giving on Monday, October 19 for David Demsey's class. I've spoken there once before but what can I do that's new and different? William Paterson's students are among the best in the U.S. Its graduates include Alexis Cole and Eric Alexander, to name just two. Thad Jones first established Paterson's program, and subsequent directors include Rufus Reid, James Williams and Mulgrew Miller. That should give you some indication of the program's excellence. Yes, I'd like to do something different for those kids, to try to inspire them to give me some feedback on Pepper so I can learn from them.

At first, it occurred to me that it's still a little strange that so few have heard Pepper's playing. I thought maybe I'd start with the introduction to Charles Mingus' "Moanin'" to remind them that they probably have already heard Pepper, though they might not know it? Pepper's plaintive, iconic intro is undoubtably the most famous, widely heard thing he's ever done. It's been used as theme music on radio and in films such as Bowling for Columbine and Jerry Seinfeld: Comedian.

Since I'm busy writing Pepper's biography, I also thought maybe I could read them part of my Prologue, to share some of my work and use it as a way to introduce Pepper's life and as an organizing principle for the lecture. I could pick a few tunes that I reference, such as Pepper's brilliant performance and arrangement of "That's All" (from Reflectory). I could also play videos of Pepper on "My Centennial," to show him at his time of crisis while edging out of Thad-Mel, and Pepper's triumphant performance on the Grammy Awards telecast.

Then I started listening to some private material from the early '80s, when he played so freely, and, lastly, "Chant" and "Cecile" from Live at the Half Note, just to hear his wonderful sound and that wonderful band. It's been quite a morning of listening! I'm still not sure what I'll pick, but, unlike my usual approach, which is pretty scripted, I think I'll shed the teleprompter and keep the lecture very loose so I can give the students as much space as possible to respond to the music.

                

                                                                           *

Over the last few days I've been thinking a lot about Bob Wilber. I originally thought he came to study at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York in the Fall of 1946 but I was mistaken. It was actually a year earlier, when Pepper was 14 and in Ninth Grade. Wilber was a huge influence on Pepper and his three-man jazz clique of woodshedding musicians--Pepper, Raymond Murphy and John Huggler--who every weekend got together to play along to the latest Commodores and Blue Notes. 

Pepper met Wilber at the Pied Piper (later renamed the Cafe Bohemia) in Greenwich Village sometime in the summer of 1945. Pepper traveled down from Rochester with his mother to hear Max Kaminsky. Wilber told Pepper at the gig that he'd be coming to Eastman to study that coming Fall. It turns out that Wilber visited with Pepper all the time that semester, staying for dinner and listening to records. Wilber would also sit in with Pepper's practicing threesome every weekend that entire Fall until Wilber quit the program to move to New York City to study and live with Sidney Bechet. (See this great photo of Wilber and Bechet in 1947 at Jimmy Ryan's.)

To give you an indication of how good Wilber was at age 17, just a year after he split Eastman he was recording with Bechet in New York. Wilber has always had tremendous facility on the alto, soprano and clarinet. He blew into Rochester for little more than four months but no doubt shaped Pepper. At that time, Adams was a struggling 14-year-old instrumentalist. Wilber, on the other hand, was already a formed player whose playing, even then, exhibited a playfulness and joyousness along with tremendous momendum and drive. His solos always swung hard, built up logically and exhibited a lot of heat. Adams had never been around a wind player of that quality on a consistent basis for many months in a row and it had to have rubbed off on him as a great example of how to play jazz. I believe that Wilber's example spurred Pepper to continue to develop, and it paved the way for him to improve throughout 1946 and 1947 by playing in the working band at Rochester's Elite Club. 

I don't know if Bob Wilber instructed Pepper to work on specific things or not but I wrote this email to Wilber's wife, Pug Horton, to see if I could learn more from them about that time:

Hi Pug: I got your email from Michael Steinman. I'm Pepper Adams' biographer. I'm currently writing Pepper's biography, the second of two books I'm doing on Pepper. My research this summer has me very involved with the early jazz history of Rochester NY (pre-1948). It's becoming quite clear to me, despite Bob's modesty, that Bob was the single most important influence on Pepper before he moved to Detroit. After all, they practiced together every week for four months in the Fall of 1945. Pepper was a struggling clarinetist at 14-15 and Bob was 18 and very advanced. If he can remember anything they played together with John Huggler and Raymond Murphy, besides playing along to records, I'd like to include that in the book. Perhaps Bob suggested things for Pepper to practice? Certain techniques, etudes, scales, breathing advice, whatever? Please ask him for me?

I'm also writing because I interviewed Bob in 1988 at the Sticky Wicket. He told me he had for a while a saxophone quartet rehearsal band in NYC that he was writing charts for that included Pepper, him, someone I can't remember on tenor, and an alto player whose first name began with Rudy but whose last name he couldn't remember. Please ask Bob if it was Rudy Powell and whether any tapes exist of these rehearsals?

Thanks,

Gary Carner

pepperadams.com

Hopefully I'll hear back soon. In the meantime, check out Wilber's autobiography, Music Was Not Enough, and his performance at the 2013 Newport Jazz Festival with the great Bill Charlap Trio. Wilber still sounds great at age 85!:

                                          (Bob Wilber)

I Remember Pepper: Gunnar Windahl Remembers Pepper Adams

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

Swedish psychoanalyst Gunnar Windahl was one of Pepper's dearest friends. His recollection below gives an extraordinarily rich and detailed portrait of Pepper Adams. Windahl tape recorded his remembrances and sent me a cassette in the late 1980s. I transcribed it about 10 years later.

I was invited to come over to the U.S. I think it was in April, 1979. That was the first time I was in the U.S. Pepper and I were supposed to go within a few hours of each other from Kastrup in Copenhagen. Pepper was on a tour in Norway and he showed up rather early in the morning when I was in the bar. I saw immediately that he was very tired, to say the least. I offered him schnapps and so on. Suddenly I saw that he was heavily drunk. He was in a good mood and somehow we came onto the topic of Oscar Pettiford. He told me a good story about when he and Oscar Pettiford were out riding in Long Island or somewhere and Oscar said that they should go to his Indian friends. (He was an Indian.) So they ended up in an Indian tent drinking “firewater.” It was a long and interesting story that the bartender was caught up in; he forgot serving the other customers at the bar. It was very early: nine in the morning or something, but Pepper had no sense of the time. His timing, when it came to playing, was impeccable. When it came to drinking it could slide away a bit. 

Pepper was supposed to go a few hours before me. We went out to the gate a bit swaggering. When we came to the gate Pepper’s plane was overbooked so he couldn’t go. Pepper yelled at the hostesses and they were terrified. I heard expressions I never heard from him before or since but he couldn’t get on the plane. He had to fly to Stockholm, stay overnight at a hotel and return the next day. My plane was not overbooked so I flew ahead to Kennedy Airport, where Claudette fetched me. We went to their house at 8715 Avenue B in Brooklyn, where I got introduced to Claudette’s son, Dylan, a very nice kid. The next day we picked Pepper up at the airport. 

I stayed for five or six weeks and I had a good opportunity to study his routine. It was not always joyous. You could see he had no job for long periods of time. He went smoking around, reading and so on. When we approached the cocktail hour his frowning forehead cleared up and he went deep into the Kentucky bourbon bottle. Just two drinks before dinner: that was a very rigid rule in that house. Really, it was like two bottles of hard liquor! He could really pour a drink, I assure you. I was not accustomed to a very fast drink. I was deadly drunk when I came to the table.  

Sometimes I was very sad because he had no job and you saw that he longed for a call. But now and then he had a gig and I went with him: to Washington, up in Connecticut and, of course, in New York City, but not the main places. I think Pepper was very disappointed that he wasn’t invited to play at Fat Tuesday’s more often, at the Village Vanguard, Seventh Avenue South. We talked about that when we were a bit drunk. Otherwise, I didn’t dare take up the topic. 

Claudette had alimony from her ex-husband and I think they lived a lot upon that. I don’t think Pepper was happy about it but he never mentioned anything to me. Still, they were very happy together and we had a very good time. I really liked it there. Claudette prepared very delicious food. I think Pepper needed to have a family at that time. It meant a lot to him. A few years later it broke. That was terrible. 

It was interesting to stay at Pepper’s house. He had a very good record collection and I taped a lot of them. Every day, I think, he listened to Duke Ellington. Duke Ellington meant a lot to Pepper. I remember we were in Gothenburg. After a gig there we came into my room. I had a half a bottle of whisky and we sat talking. With my blue eyes, and as an overreacting person before such a star as Pepper Adams, I managed, “Who is the best jazz musician in the world, Pepper? Who do you consider the most interesting and underrated?” He said, “The most interesting and underrated musician in this business is Rex Stewart.” I was a bit taken aback. Then Pepper said that he seen Rex just before he died and that Rex was very disappointed that he wasn’t more recognized. I think Pepper identified with Rex’s destiny. We say in Sweden that you must have “elbows” to get into the front but Pepper didn’t have that and he knew it. He would never push himself. He expected people to phone him. I think he felt a lot of dishonesty from fellow musicians that didn’t hire him and took other musicians at a lower rate. 

I recognized, of course, that he had a very good book collection. He read a lot and was very versed in literature and art. He was a very intelligent and clever man. I learned a lot from him. In a way he was a bit too much taken aback by me being a professor. Many times I tried to tell him, “You shouldn‘t take that so seriously.” He was much more into history than I was. I told him so. I think it meant a lot for Pepper to get confirmation that he was an intellectual. He mentioned often that his parents were poor and couldn’t send him to college. I think he, all by himself, became “professional,” besides just the music. I was very much impressed by his knowledge of many things. He was a fantastic man.

I arranged a tour in Sweden for Pepper in the summer of ’79. It was no big deal. I fixed gigs in Malmö, Gothenburg, Stockholm and so on. Claudette and Pepper stayed in my apartment in Malmö. We had a very good time then. Of course the booze could be a problem for Pepper. Once we played at a place called Stampen in Stockholm. He was drinking schnapps during intermission and he was very drunk during the last set. I didn’t like that. It was like having your own father drunk before other people. Sometimes Pepper was like a father for me but he didn’t care. But Claudette was, of course, not very happy about it. Al Porcino told me once that Claudette accompanied Pepper during the tours in Europe and when she left for the U.S. he started drinking with Thad. Sometimes they had to change the “book” when Thad realized that Pepper was drunk, that he couldn’t play any solos. 

Pepper spoke more freely after a few glasses of liquor. He was no easy-speaking man when he was sober. It was not that easy to get in touch with him. A few sentences, then he picked up a cigarette and lit it. But after a few glasses he thawed and was very easy to speak with. He very generously presented good stories from his fantastic life. That Claudette had to behave like a policeman sometimes so he didn’t drink too much was, of course, a problem. When it came to my part, it was sometimes a bit difficult if I should present a new bottle or should refrain.

Pepper exposed me to other musicians. For example, if he had Rex Stewart as his favorite musician, another musician high up on the list was Tommy Flanagan. I can’t remember how many times he tried to remind me that Tommy Flanagan is “the best.” Of course, Pepper’s other favorite pianists were Sir Roland Hanna, Hank Jones, Jimmy Rowles. He admired them very much and we played them often in his house in Brooklyn. But sooner or later he came back to Tommy Flanagan. It was very interesting that he knew so many people. 

When he was out playing, I got the impression that other musicians liked to hear him. I remember once Sam Jones telling me how much he admired Pepper. It was more backstage talk in some sense. It was not said explicitly but they admired him. 

Sometimes Roland Hanna would be confused about Pepper, I think. Pepper was too much for Roland. I think Roland was never safe with him. Pepper was too clever for him or something. When I presented the lead sheet for “Doctor Deep” to Roland he was a bit embarrassed, I think. He didn’t want to play it on the piano. Sometimes I see that with Tommy too. Maybe they were uncertain about my relationship to Pepper, how close it was. Maybe that, I don’t know. But I think it’s something else. I think he was a bit of an enigma for them. He knew very much outside the usual areas of the jazz musician’s world: politics, literature, art and so on. I think they were a bit uneasy about it. I think no one musician was very close to him. He had no real friends among musicians, at least at the time I knew him.

Pepper was in Sweden in 1983. He was playing in Stockholm at Skeppsholmen with Monica Zetterlund. I don’t know but I think they had a relationship in some way. We met at the Korsal Hotel, together with Charlemagne and Hans Fridlund. Pepper was rather drunk and I remember I was with a friend of mine. That was the first time I saw him really drunk. 

At that time I got a letter from Claudette that upset me a lot. His blood counts were not very good and he had to stop drinking. But I couldn’t see any of that when I met him. That was the first sign of their relationship getting worse. There I was, not very optimistic about the future when it came to his marriage, but we had a good time in Stockholm. He played very well there. 

That was the last time I saw him, as far as I could see, as a “whole” person. The next time I saw him in Sweden was the disastrous time when I discovered his cancer. Before that, of course, he got his leg broken. At that time I understood that their relationship deteriorated very much. When I called him, when he sat there in his wheelchair, he was not very happy. I didn’t understand what was going on. Claudette didn’t write me. As I understood, she was not in the house. He came to Sweden afterwards, walking with a limp. He wrote me long before he was supposed to be in Stockholm in March, ’85. He wanted me to come down and see him. He was supposed to play in Mosebacke and I arranged a gig in Boden up where I live. I took a few days off. I went to his hotel, knocked on the door around noon and was taken aback when he opened the door. I saw that something was wrong with him and it couldn’t just be the leg. He greeted me as a long-lost friend and I asked him how things were in his life. He complained that he didn’t know if he had any house or belongings when he went back to the U.S.  I tried to get some clear information about this but he refused. 

I didn’t like his look. His eyes were burning. Now and then he coughed, and it was a terrible cough like one with pneumonia. So I said to Pepper, “We must look at that when you come up to Boden.” He was supposed to be there in a few days to play at the local jazz club. They were quite excited about such a star up there among the polar bears! He would come up, I’d fetch him at the airport and he would live at my apartment for a few days. I said, “I have a good friend up there, Chief of the Thorax Clinic. I’ll arrange an x-ray of your lungs and we’ll see what shape it is.” He was very, very grateful for that. He looked relieved. 

Then a friend of mine didn’t show up. I had nowhere to sleep in Stockholm so I took the other bed in his room. I woke up very early in the morning and I saw him still asleep. I saw that he slept very uneasily, very much dissimilar to his usual calm way. He hadn’t been drinking. He had slept very well the night before, as far as I could understand. But now he slept with some hectic way of breathing. I was very much alarmed about the situation. Something was wrong. 

We got around in Stockholm, though he had difficulty walking. I invited him to restaurants. He played with Rolf Ericson, among other guys there, and he played very well. I went to Boden before him and he came up after a few days. He took a nap in the day. That got me anxious too. He never would like to do that. Before the gig I served a very nice dinner for him with specialties from the Lapp area like reindeer. He very much liked that. Then he played at the local club. We went home, having a few beers, but he didn’t want to drink because of the meeting with Dr. Haugstød. 

In the morning he woke me up and we went to the Thorax Clinic. I just lived a few blocks from the hospital. I worked there. I left him there and went home. I took a cup of coffee and half an hour later Pepper showed up and said, “I have cancer in my left lung.” I’ll never forget the reaction I had. I went to the fridge, took a few export beers and drank them down and took a few other beers and drank them down. I didn’t know what to say. He looked at me in a way I had never seen before. The whole thing was terrible. I was supposed to take him to the airport. He was supposed to go to Stockholm and be in a program for the Radio there with just Hans Fridlund and then I think he went to Malmö. I don’t remember exactly what was going on. I was too drunk to get him to the airport so I put him in a taxi. That was the last time I saw Pepper Adams, my old friend. I paid the taxi in advance and ordered the driver to help him with his instrument. He sat laughing in the back seat, not very much alarmed on the surface at least. But I was alarmed. I’m not a medical specialist but I have a lot of friends who are and I knew time was short. In my drunkenness I called Fridlund in Stockholm and told him that Pepper had cancer. 

I think when he was in Malmö I talked to Pepper. I was crying on the telephone. I was still drunk. He said, “Pull yourself together, Gunnar. I’m not dead yet.” But I said, “You are my friend and this is terrible.” “You haven’t got a cold,” I told him. “This is serious.” He had the x-rays with him to show his doctors in the U.S. I got in touch with Claudette and she was stunned. I was a mess.   

He called me back a month later from the U.S. and wanted to give a report to Haugstød of what they had found in the U.S. I tried to write down all the Latin words. Once I said, “I didn’t catch what you said. I didn’t catch it, Pepper.” “Don’t catch it, for heaven’s sake, don’t catch it!” he said. He was funny. “No, no, I won’t catch it,” I promised him.

When I went to Doctor Haugstød, my friend, and told him that they found oat cell cancer, he shook his head and said, “They shouldn’t treat that. Put him on a steamer to the South Sea where he can play and enjoy some women or something.” He told me, “You can never cure that.” Of course I was very sad about hearing that. I read a lot about that kind of cancer. It’s a diffuse kind of cancer. No one recovers from it. They started the hard treatment in the U.S. We phoned each other now and then. Mostly, I phoned him: “How are you, Pepper?” He said, “Fair, fair.” He was not exaggerating. Once I called him and he was heavily drunk or sick. 

He tried to cheer me up all the time. I couldn’t conceal that I was very sad about everything. I was a very close friend. Pepper once told me that I was his closest friend, as close as Elvin Jones was. He had very tender feelings for Elvin. He mentioned him many times. But I think he was disappointed with Elvin too, that Elvin left him and never hired him for a gig. He never told me that but I could read between the lines.

Pepper wrote me a letter then that he was supposed to perform in Zurich a half a year later. I had difficulty getting free to go to Switzerland and meet him. I phoned and said, “Maybe I’ll show up, maybe not.” Pepper tried to persuade me, that this was a fantastic place to play, that they have very good food and so on. I had a lot of things to do and it was not that easy to leave patients and people behind. But of course I should have gone. I regret every day that I didn’t go there because I think he needed me. But I wasn’t strong enough to go. When he came back to the U.S. he wrote me a letter and I could see that he was disappointed with me that I didn’t show up.

One of the last calls I had with him he told a story of a man who left a scribble of paper on his end table. The man was found dead in the morning but the bit of paper said, “I didn’t wake up this morning.” He told such jokes. It was marvelous. He wrote me with a lot of stories. I think I tried to hide them because it was touching to read them and I’m not good at that. The last time I heard him on the phone was just three or four days before he passed away. Claudette answered the phone and then Pepper tried to say something brief. There was not much left and I didn’t know what to say. I just said, “I can’t do anything for you, Pepper.” “I know that. I know that, Doctor Deep. Thank you for calling.”  That was that and a fortnight later, I think, I called Claudette and she said that Pepper had passed away very quietly. I had plans to go overseas for Flanagan’s memorial concert in September ’86 but, again, there was something preventing me from doing that. I don’t know what. It was too much, I think. 

He didn’t complain during this time. He said sometimes it was terrible. He had a hell of a headache. But he was marvelous, I think. He never complained and I felt very much ashamed when I couldn’t put myself together and was crying a bit. But he was firmer. I think he was stronger. Claudette told me that too. He was really brave.

I warned him many years ago of contracting cancer because of his smoking. He did smoke really heavily. He had no filters on his cigarettes. Pepper did have some blind spots. He didn’t like to see that he smoked too much and drank too much. He didn’t take it in. He looked very destructive to an observer. 

When it came to admiration, besides Rex Stewart he mentioned very often Joe Henderson, especially the early Joe Henderson on the Blue Note label. For example, Inan’out and Inner Urge were records Pepper liked very much. Of course, I think the musician he most admired and wanted to live up to was Thaddeus Jones. I remember once when he and Thad had left the band—I think it was in Germany—for a few gigs in Malmö and Copenhagen and Claudette had gone back to the U.S. After playing together in Malmö, Pepper and I sat there drinking whisky. Suddenly he confessed that he felt very much a small little boy compared to Thad and he elaborated upon that topic a bit. He often said that Thad was too much for him in a way. Sometimes he was a bit scared of him, I think. 

Pepper took up some pieces Thad wrote very early in the ’50s: “Quittin’ Time,” “A Bitty Ditty.” He went back to Thad’s early production, which he considered masterpieces. But there was a tension between he and Thad. Thad admired Pepper too a lot, I know. Thad told me once that he thought Pepper marvelous, very erudite. When Pepper left Thaddeus’ band, on the surface he said that the reason was that he wanted to play, to be on his own. But I think he was a bit disappointed with the band after Roland left. I got the impression that Pepper didn’t like the last two years or so. I think he considered the band degenerating a bit but he wasn’t explicit on this point. 

Of course, Elvin Jones meant a lot to Pepper. He considered Elvin a very close friend and admired him very much. He told a lot of jokes—memories from when they lived together in the Village. Pepper told me how he placed any book in Elvin’s hands and he read it without pause. “Read this, Elvin” and Elvin read it! He read everything. When I first met Pepper in the beginning of the ’70s he was a bit uneasy about Elvin’s shyness and considered him drinking too much. He told me that it was very difficult to get in touch with Elvin. He was very withdrawn.

We, of course, discussed Pepper’s records. Reflectory, I think, he thought was his best. He talked about the main title from Ephemera. Pepper once mentioned to me that he thought it was underrated, that people didn’t see that the structure was something like Coltrane’s “Giant Steps.” He was very proud of that composition. 

In 1982 I was in the U.S. and I showed up at this spot in New York City. Pepper played there with Jimmy Cobb and Albert Dailey. They were very unfriendly with Pepper. I went into the club just before the first gig was about to start with a lot of eminent psychoanalysts from New York City. It was not the regular crowd that evening! Pepper played, unexpectedly, “Doctor Deep” and I was quite taken aback. I didn’t know he had composed it. I think there’s a lot of love in that piece. There I really feel that Pepper loved me. I play it very often. It’s a beautiful thing.

About the name “Doctor Deep,” I met Jimmy Rowles many years ago. When he heard that I was a doctor in philosophy he mentioned a medical doctor in California he called “Doctor Deep” that used to cure tired musicians. I mentioned that to Pepper. I said, “Maybe I should frame myself with that name?” Pepper laughed very much. After that he named me “Doctor Deep.” Whenever he called me up he said, “Is ‘Deep’ there? How are you doing, Deep?” “Deep” was something that caught him. 

When Pepper was in the Army, Charlie Parker sent him a telegram saying that his mother had passed away so he must come home for the funeral. It was, of course, a lie. Pepper was supposed to show up and play with Charlie Parker in Saint Louis. When he came there, there was no Charlie Parker. He told me that story very often, especially when he was drunk. He was very proud of that invitation. 

It’s strange: Pepper didn’t have a lot of self-esteem. He often named important jazz musicians he had played with and so on. He had played with that one, he had talked with that one. It was almost like a fan. As a clinician I realize that, when he did that, he had no high regard of himself. Yes, he was very uncertain sometimes. He had his funky spells now and then. 

I think he never was satisfied with his own playing. We often sat up in the night talking about how to improve. That was something Pepper came back to again and again: “You must improve, you must improve and get better.”

Pepper had no regard for the avant garde. He didn’t like late Coltrane. He resented that kind of music. In a way, his heart was in the Duke Ellington Orchestra, with Harry Carney. Harry Carney meant a lot to him. He mentioned him very often. He thought Cecil Payne was a very good baritone player. He didn’t like Nick Brignola. He was very much dissatisfied with that record Baritone Madness. 

One of the last times Pepper was in Sweden with Thad Jones-Mel Lewis I gave him a record, Don Byas Live at the Old Montmartre. I don’t know why. It was a present. He wrote me back very soon after coming back to the U.S. and said what a fantastic record it was. That record really got him excited. It was something he found much joy in. Then I understood that Byas always was very friendly with him and reacted like he had met a long-lost friend when they met. Pepper thought that it was a two-way influence, a confluence, between Byas and himself, and I think there’s something in it. He admired Don Byas very much. We played Don in my apartment and we often talked about Byas. I taped everything I had and sent it to Pepper. I think he admired Byas because he too was never satisfied to be caught or fenced in a certain style. He always improved and developed. And then, I think, Pepper admired his enormous drinking capacity. I’ve seen Byas drink and that’s something out of the ordinary. Ben Webster he liked too, but he had a brotherhood thing with Don Byas. They build up their solos in a very similar way.

To the end Pepper sent me tapes of himself with highlights from his recordings: from Montreal, Holland, and so on, which I’m very proud of. Pepper was maybe the closest friend I ever had. We were not alike but something got us together. I’m awfully sorry that he and Claudette had a bad time those last years. I don’t think one can blame anyone. I think the relationship just broke. Of course Pepper had his “sides.” He was sometimes drinking too much and I think he could be a bit nasty. He was never with me. When we drank together we had a lot of fun. It was never base drunkenness in a bad way. We talked to each other, into the fog. I heard a lot of things then. We always kept in line with intellectual conversation but sometimes you could feel that he was very close to losing control. He was so controlled, otherwise, when he was sober. An introvert. 

He has given me many good things. I got interested in art and literature thanks to him, the kind of literature I never knew of. He introduced me to artists, painters and so on that I never knew of, so I’m very grateful to him for that too. I think he is very much underrated. I think he suffered a lot from that. He knew that he was number one on his instrument but he had no “elbows.” He wasn’t angry enough, aggressive enough to be in the “front line.”