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, August 1, 2015

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


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)







Saturday, July 25, 2015

Genealogical Breakthroughs and Other Ephemera




© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved



What did the week bring about regarding Pepper Adams? Two significant developments and another possible one. First, was the receipt of an audience tape from Dave Schiff. It's a performance from June 21, 1974 of Pepper with Roland Hanna and several students at the Wilmington Music School in Wilmington, Delaware. (Another CD, from either 1968 or 1969 with Thad Jones, is forthcoming!) Adams and Hanna perform Thad Jones' "Quiet Lady" and Adams' "Civilization and Its Discontents" in a quartet and quintet format respectively to begin the concert. This is the only known time that Adams and Hanna performed these tunes apart from their recording of them on Adams' masterpiece LP, Ephemera, recorded the year before. "Civ" also has Schiff playing the melody on flute, which I believe was unknowingly a dry run for the Bill Perkins recording of the tune four years later. 

Two other tunes on the audience tape, "Straight, No Chaser" and "Royal Garden Blues," follow more of a jam session format, giving some the Camp's students a chance to show what they learned that week. It's possible that trombonist Wayne Andre was on the faculty and on the recording. I'll need to listen again, but not in my car, so I can finally make sense of some of these things.

I also had a email conversation with Schiff this week regarding his recording of "Civ" and my plans for the CD reissue of Ephemera. It turns out that Schiff recorded "Civ" as a tribute to Pepper, not knowing the title of the tune. His rendition will be added to pepperadams.com soon so you can hear his arrangement. 

As for the reissue, an engineer friend of mine in Los Angeles, Jim Merod, is about to do post-mastering work on the date to try to improve the sound of the piano and to increase the volume of Mel Lewis' drums-- especially his brushwork on "Quiet Lady," that remains virtually inaudible. For his part, Schiff is also considering whether he can produce the reissue on his label. We may decide to do a modest Kickstarter campaign to pay for the first round of CDs. I hope we can rely on you, my faithful readers, to help with this project. Although Ephemera is one of Pepper's greatest recorded achievements, it's never been issued on CD!

Otherwise, I've been working with Jocelyn Ireland, a librarian in Utica, New York, and a genealogist colleague of hers, Keith Gerland, to try to make some sense out of the allegation that Pepper lived in Utica from the Summer of 1935 until the Summer of 1937. I was first given an anonymous tip about it in an unsigned email. (Who was that "masked man?") So far, however, nothing has turned up in the 1935 Utica city directory or any census information. I'm awaiting word as to whether there were 1936 or 1937 directories for Utica and if anything turns up. 

This from Ireland: "You mentioned doing a search for the family in Rome. We don't have any of their directories but I think Ancestry.com may have some digitized. I'll have to check if they have Rome, NY around 1933-34. There is also the possibility the family stayed with Park F. Adams' parents in Oriskany, NY. I believe Oriskany may have been listed in Utica City Directories in the 1930s -- another thing I'll have to check. . . . I will check if there was any Adams in Oriskany, NY and if Rome's directory is on Ancestry.com."

Jocelyn has been great thus far. From what I gather, Pepper Adams and his mother moved to Rome in the Summer of 1934 to reunify with Pepper's father after a three-year separation due to the lack of work during the worst of the Great Depression. They lived in Rome at 806 Jerris or Jervis Avenue from that summer until the Christmas holiday, when they moved to Rochester. They may have lived briefly in Oriskany with family, a small town between Rome and Utica, while searching for a place to live.

Jocelyn also found these links for grave sites, two with obituary information:




Grave and obituary of Pepper's father, Park Frederick Adams:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=12500616&ref=acom


Birth: 1898
Rome
Oneida County
New York, USA
Death: May 19, 1940
Rochester
Monroe County
New York, USA

Utica Daily Press
1940

Park Adams, 44, a native of Rome, died May 19, 1940 of a heart attack in his home in Rochester.

He was born in Rome, son of the late Nathaniel and Frances Adams. He married Cleo Coyle in Detroit, Michigan. He had lived in Rochester four years, where he was a manufacturer's representative. He went to Rochester from Detroit. He was a member of the Christian Science Church in Rochester, the Masonic Lodge and Knights of Templar in Detroit.

He leaves a daughter, Mrs. George Gifford, Rochester, a son, Park Adams Jr., Rochester, three sisters, Mrs. Fred Weaver and Mrs. Roy Johnson, both of Los Angeles, and Mrs. Rita Head, Oriskany, and a grandchild.

The funeral will be conducted in Rochester tomorrow with burial in New Union Cemetery in Verona Mills

Family links:
 Parents:
  Nathaniel Qunicy Adams (1858 - 1929)
  Frances Cleveland Adams (1863 - 1940)
Burial:
New Union Cemetery
Verona
Oneida County
New York, USA

Park Adams
Added by: Bea Lastowicka
Park Adams
Cemetery Photo
Added by: Tombstone Hunter
 
Photos may be scaled.
Click on image for full size.


REPOSE EN PAIX!
quebecoise
 Added: Oct. 9, 2006



Grave and obituary of Pepper's paternal grandmother, Frances Cleveland Adams:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=12500616&ref=acom



Birth: 1863
Mohawk
Herkimer County
New York, USA
Death: Jan. 26, 1940
Los Angeles
Los Angeles County
California, USA



Rome Sentinel
January 27, 1940

Mrs. Frances Cleveland Adams, widow of Nathaniel Quicny Adams, a former resident of Rome and Oriskany, died Friday at a hospital in Los Angeles, California. She had gone to California a year ago last November to make her home with her daughters.

She was born in Mohawk, a daughter of Abel B. and Abbie J. Cleveland. About 62 years ago she was married to Mr. Adams who died about 10 years ago.

Her married life was spent in New London, Churchville and Rome before coming to Oriskany 25 years ago. For a number of years, the Adams operated the Temperance Hotel, S. James St., Rome.

Mrs. Adams was a member of First Methodist Church, Rome, and later of Waterbury Memorial Presbyterian Church, Oriskany. She was a member of Queen Esther Rebekah Lodge, Rome. She was also a member of the Maccabees and served through the offices, the organization later becoming the Women's Benefit Association. She was also a member of Oriskany Chapter 524, OES and had served as chaplain and in other offices.

Survivors are three daughters, Mrs. Fred R. Weaver and Mrs. Roy H. Johnston, both of West Los Angeles, California, and Mrs. Rita Head or Oriskany, a sister, Mrs. Emma Callahan, Rome, seven grandchildren, including Francis Head, Rome and Mrs. Lee Kite, Lowell, and five great-grandchildren. 



Birth: 1899
Death: 1971
Burial:
South Park Cemetery
Columbia City
Whitley County
Indiana, USA
Plot: 2-26-1

Created by: Jim Cox
Record added: Jun 17, 2008
Find A Grave Memorial# 27629332
Cleo <i>Coyle</i> Adams
Added by: Just Dave
Cleo <i>Coyle</i> Adams
Cemetery Photo
Added by: vcrusaderfan
 
Photos may be scaled.
Click on image for full size.




Obviously, I now have a whole new world of research to pursue regarding Pepper's ancestors. I'll let you know of my progress. I did do a search regarding the Coyles. So far, it seems that Pepper's mother is the only child of Charles (1869-1916) and Minnie B Coyle (1872-1941). I'm trying to determine if/how Eloise Coyle was related. She lived in Columbia City, Indiana (in Whitley County) in 1935 (just after Adams and his mother left for New York), and was married, as of the 1940 U.S. Census, to Carl Banning (born c. 1920). Her age makes her a possible first-cousin.

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Growing Up in Rochester, 1935-1947


© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.


For the last few weeks I've been reading Blake McKelvey's history of Rochester. McKelvey, one of America's greatest urban historians, wrote, among many books about Rochester, his definitive four-volume study: Rochester: The Water-Power City, 1812-1854; Rochester: The Flower City, 1855-1890; Rochester: The Quest for Quality, 1890-1925; and Rochester: An Emerging Metropolis, 1925-1961. Fortunately for me, late in his life, McKelvey abridged his roughly 1600 page study into one 300-page volume, Rochester on the Genesee. I read this book up to his account of 1929, then turned to the original fourth volume, that I read from 1929 until mid-1947, when Adams left Rochester for Detroit. What I was after was a basic understanding of Rochester's origins as a city, but I wanted the specificity that the original study would give me about Pepper Adams' time in Rochester and how the Great Depression was navigated by its citizens beginning slightly before Pepper arrived.

I've learned much about the derivation and makeup of Rochester, but McKelvey's accounts of what went on during Pepper's boyhood is really fascinating. Even as a young grade-school student (ages eleven to fourteen), Adams wouldn't have been immune to all the things going on in Rochester on behalf of the war effort. Here's some of my notes about his Rochester experience, in no apparent order:

With Defense Department orders coming into Rochester factories in the late 1930s as a response to war in Europe, the last traces of the Great Depression ended. By late 1940, as the United States clung to its neutrality while Hitler invaded countries in Europe, Rochesterians were involved in numerous war relief drives, and the sale of defense bonds and scrap drives. According to McKelvey, "the first scrap metal drive collected over twenty tons of aluminum. A paper-salvage campaign quickly eliminated all danger of a shortage in that field. Awakening to the value of scrap metal, the City Council halted its plan to cover old trolley tracks with asphalt and undertook the more laborious task of salvaging them for scrap."

As a ten-year-old boy, Pepper Adams would have heard, observed, read or participated in all sorts of activity taking place around him in response to the war. Many citizens listened to President Franklin Roosevelt's "fireside chats" throughout the 1930s and Adams likely heard some of these with his parents as they continued throughout the war. 

Virtually every organization in Rochester was eager to help with the war effort. The Boy Scouts and Automobile Club helped itemize cars that could assist in an evacuation of the city, the Society of Engineers surveyed buildings suitable as bomb shelters, the League of Women Voters distributed information about various defense provisions and devised an example of a "blackout room," county staff drew up contingency plans for the evacuation of 20,000 Rochesterians, and school children were asked to fill out a questionnaire indicating if they needed special assistance in the event of an evacuation. A series of practice exercises took place in Rochester to test blackouts.

As per McKelvey: "The technical facilities of many Rochester firms attracted a flood of defense contracts exceeding $75 million in total value by the end of August, 1941. . . . Defense contracts brought a surge in employment." 

After the invasion of Pearl Harbor, many Rochesterians joined the military and, according to McKelvey,  "local officials hastily stationed emergency police at several vital points--notably the airport, the reservoirs, and the New York Central Bridge across the Genesee River. Defense industries increased their guards; 400 legionnaires voluntarily manned a series of air-raid posts; both the city and county defense councils engaged full-time staffs and prepared to operate on a war basis. When a hastily announced blackout demonstrated some of the inadequacies of the earlier civilian defense provisions, jittery residents readily backed measures for improvement; some called for an effective roundup of all enemy aliens. . . . With the outbreak of war, the President designated all Japanese, German and Italian nationals as enemy aliens and required them to turn in to the police all cameras, shortwave radio sets, and firearms. . . . The city and county war councils sprang quickly into action." 2600 volunteered for air-raid duty, 500 as auxiliary firemen, 1000 as aircraft-spotters, 1000 as auxiliary police and 400 for a civilian air patrol. The Red Cross were tasked with training nurses for possible emergencies. Volunteers prepared thousands of first aid kits and a blood bank was established. 

Unlike the war-bond drives in World War I that were intermittent, Adams would have recognized the incessant war bond drives of his era. As a citizen, he would have participated in the scrap-metal drives too, though it's not known to what extent school children participated. In 1941, Rochester collected of 20 tons of aluminum; in 1942 the city exceeded 1000 tons. Rubber salvage netted 300 tons. Rochester barbers collected in two months 240,000 used razor blades. Some 200 tons of tin cans were collected. Besides metal and other common scrap, housewives were also asked to salvage fats from its garbage.

According to McKelvey, "It was in the great scrap-metal drive of October [1942] that the community as a whole outdid itself. A skillful newspaper campaign, featuring the achievements of other communities, prepared the way. The Junior Chamber enrolled several hundred volunteer scrap sorters who turned out on five holidays to help speed the metal to hungry foundries. Because of the great number and generous size of the curbstone scrap piles, the scheduled collections, on October 24, was prolonged over a period of several weeks." 

Rationing was another effect of the war. Sales of tires and sugar were limited, as were the sale of meat, shoes, new cars, typewriters, bicycles and other scarce items. Ration books were distributed, and hundreds of teachers and volunteers scrutinized more than a half a million applicants for coffee, gasoline, building materials and other items. Because of gas rationing, bus traffic became more common as a form of transportation.

Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Year's celebrations were observed quietly at home, McKelvey writes, due to the continuing war effort and out of respect to returning servicemen.

Nine blackout tests took place in 1943.

The summer of 1944 attracted high-school students and teachers to help with harvest as labor for the war effort was siphoning off all able-bodied men, women and even POWs.

Even despite 7000 of its employees working for the war effort, Eastman Kodak expanded its operation during the war. By December, 1944 it employed 29,000 workers.

Red Cross and Community Chest drives were also successful in raising funds and collecting used clothing for war relief.

A victory-garden program enrolled 30,000 volunteer gardeners in 1943 and 1944 to alleviate any food shortages.

The Rochester park system, one of America's best, was maintained at full capacity during the war, even with a budget austerity in place, as seen in other city programs.

A severe snow storm, the worst in 40 years, took place on December 11-12, 1944.
Another winter storm paralyzed the city on Nov 29, 1945.

Rochester was very proactive and ahead of the curve regarding its unemployment situation after the Crash of 1929. In February 1931, Kodak and thirteen other large Rochester companies established unemployment insurance for its workers. Relief work for the unemployed was established in 1931 and again in 1932, with matching funds from the state. 250 acres were given to 2000 families as "self-help gardens" to grow food. The program was sustained the following year and for years to come. A large bond was supported by local banks for relief work and city services after Franklin D. Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933. All of this was established before Roosevelt's New Deal reforms were rolled out in the U.S.


                (Acclaimed historian Blake McKelvey.)


Saturday, July 11, 2015

8-Tracks Galore!


© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

How about a break from Rochester, New York? Although my work continues, and it remains continually fascinating to me, I thought I'd take a diversion and revisit an old thread from a few months ago. Do you remember my discussion of Pepper Adams' 8-track collection? I wrote about it in conjunction with the Rex Stewart material that Pepper recorded to amuse himself. Pepper's 8-track collection provides all sorts of clues into what he liked, what was in his collection, and what he liked to listen to while cruising around from gig to gig in around 1965-1975.

Here a guided tour to his collection, that I eagerly scooped up with his Wollensak 8-track player (see https://instagram.com/p/rm4zHfpnj3/) when his widow, Claudette, allowed me to take anything I wanted as she was disposing of Pepper's belongings in late 1986.

COMMERCIALLY RELEASED 8-TRACKS:
It's hard to determine what ones Pepper actually purchased and what ones he might have obtained along the way. If there's any one he would have bought, however, it's Flanagan's 1975 solo recital on Pablo of all Ellington/Strayhorn compositions!

1. Duke Ellington, Greatest Hits (with Solitude, Caravan, Mood Indigo, The  Hawk Talks, Sophisticated Lady, The Mooch, VIP Boogie and Accentuate.
2. Donald Byrd, Street Lady.
3. Coleman Hawkins, Sirius.
4. Miles Davis, Filles de Kilimanjaro.
5. Yusef Lateef, Suite 16.
6. The  Trumpet Kings Meet Joe Turner.
7. Chick Corea, Light As a Feather.
8. Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain.
9. Jean Sibelius, Symphony No. 6 and 7.
10. The Definitive Jazz Scene, Vol. 1 (Impulse)
11. Tommy Flanagan, Tokyo Recital.

REX STEWART:
There's one overview of early Rex Stewart material that Pepper put together and would have originally enjoyed when he was growing up in Rochester (1935-1947). All of the material is pre-1945 work, mostly with Ellington. I discussed this in an earlier post: http://gc-pepperadamsblog.blogspot.com/2015/05/from-wollensak-with-love.html

CHARLIE PARKER:
Here's six tapes Adams prepared, four from air checks.

1. Scrapple from the Apple, Groovin' High, Anthropology, Now's the Time, Bird of Paradise, Ornithology, Koko, Cheryl, Dizzy Atmosphere, This Time the Dream's on Me, 'Round About Midnight, Move, Out of Nowhere, Cool Blues, 52nd Street Theme, Scrapple from the Apple, Moose the Mooche.

2. Blue 'n Boogie, Anthropology, 'Round About Midnight, Night in Tunisia, Shaw 'Nuff, Hot House, Groovin' High, Slow Boat to China, Be-Bop, Ooh-Bop-She-Bam, Scrapple from the Apple, Be-Bop, Hot House, Cheryl, Salt Peanuts, How High the Moon, Big Foot, Salt Peanuts, Out of Nowhere, Parker's Mood.

3. Dial recordings: Drifting on a Reed, Out of Nowhere, Moose the Mooche, Bongo Bop, Cheers, Bird of Paradise, Dexterity, Bongo Beep, Dark Shadows, Scrapple from the Apple, Relaxin' at Camarillo, Klactoveesedstene, Don't Blame Me, Dewey Square, Ornithology, Out of Nowhere, Bird Feathers, Quasimodo, Hallelujah, Bird of Paradise, Dexterity, Bongo Bop, Klactoveesedstene, My Old Flame, Bird's Nest.

4. At the Cafe Society Downtown: Just Friends, April in Paris, Bewitched, Summertime, I Cover the Waterfront, Gone with the Wind, Easy to Love.
At the William Henry Apartments: Half Nelson, Cherokee, Scrapple from the Apple, Star Eyes, Bernie's Tune, Donna Lee, Out of Nowhere, Half Nelson, Fine and Dandy, Little Willie Leaps, All the Things You Are
In Malmo: Lover Man, Cool Blues, Anthropology 
With Milt Buckner: Groovin' High.

5. Bird at the Pershing Ballroom (Chicago, 1950): Indiana, I Can't Get Started, Anthropology, Out of Nowhere, Get Happy, Hot House, Embraceable You, Body and Soul, Cool Blues, Stardust, All the Things You Are, Billie's Bounce, Pennies from Heaven.

6. Dial recordings: various well know titles, including Dewey Square, The Break, Embraceable You, Cool Blues, How Deep Is the Ocean, Crazeology, Relaxin' at Camarillo, etc.

THAD JONES
Here's the contents of two 8-tracks that Pepper prepared. The first five cuts of #2 are from The Magnificent Thad Jones, Volume II.

1. Compulsory, All of Us, Zec, Alone Together, Cross Purpose, Scratch, Forever Summer, Let's, Blue Room, Tiptoe, Zec, Played Twice, Brother Peabody, Black Light.

2. April in Paris, Billie-Doo, If I Love Again, If Someone Had Told Me, Thedia, Lady Luck, You Don't Know What Love Is, Osie's Oasis, I Mean You, Balanced Scales = Justice, Ill Wind, Quince, I'll Remember April.

TOMMY FLANAGAN:
Six tapes of solo, duo and trio recordings.

1. with Reggie Workman and Joe Chambers: Pent-Up House, Condado Beach, Let's Call This, So Sorry Please, Ballad, Milestones, Softly As in a Morning Sunrise, Night in Tunisia, Some Day My Prince Will Come, Autumn Leaves, It's All Right with Me, Angle Eyes, Straight Mo Chaser;
with George Mraz and Elvin Jones: Cup Bearers.

2. solo and trio: Parisian Thoroughfare, In Your Own Sweet Way, Like a Butterfly, Here's That Rainy Day, Alone Too Long, Maybe September, Strollin', Glad to Be Unhappy, No More, That Old Devil Called Love, Barbados, Some Other Spring, Easy Living, Woody 'n' You, Star-Crossed Lovers, Jump for Joy, Blue Bossa, Peace, Friday the 13th

3. Flanagan solos, as a sideman, with: 
Eddie Davis: Straight Ahead
Pee Wee Russell Memorial
At Ease with Coleman Hawkins
Introducing Kenny Burrell
Coleman Hawkins-Clark Terry
NY Jazz Sextet
Howard McGhee: Dusty Blue.

4. with Ron Carter and Roy Haynes: 52nd Street Theme, Smooth as the Wind; Passion Flower; Muffin; Ruby, My Dear: Verdandi; Bess, You Is My Woman Now; Hustle Bustle; Lament; Bean and the Boys; In Walked Bud; Ultima Thule; The Very Thought of You, Dignified Appearance.
with Keeter Betts and J. Smith: Something Borrowed, Something Blue; West Coast Blues; Groovin' High; Bird Song; Good Bait.
with J.J Johnson: Blue Trombone.

5. with Joe Benjamin and "Doc": America, Lonely Town; Tonight, It's Love; Lucky to Be Me; Glitter, Be Gay; Make Our Garden Grow.
with Hank Jones, Kenny Burrell, Paul Chambers, Arthur Taylor: Yesterdays, You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To, Chasin' the Bird, Dear Old Stockholm, The Theme, Confessin'.
duet with Hank Jones: Our Delight, Autumn Leaves, Robbins' Nest.

6. Super Session (with Red Mitchell and Elvin Jones): Django, Minor Perhaps, Too Late Now, I Love You, Rachel's Rondo, Things Ain't What They Used to Be.
Plays Howard Arlen (with George Mraz and Connie Kay): Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, Over the Rainbow, Sleepin' Bee, Ill Wind, Out of This World, One for My Baby, Get Happy, My Shining Hour, Last Night When We Were Young.

Any one know who the drummer "Doc" is in #5 above? Next week, or whenever I resume this inventory, I'll get deeper into Pepper's collection. Have a great week!

                         (Tommy Flanagan)


Saturday, July 4, 2015

Letter to Noal

© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.



Here's a post in the form of a letter. I sent it to Rochester drummer and author Noal Cohen, who has helped me with my research of early Rochester jazz. Cohen currently lives in New Jersey, but worked with Chuck Mangione and Ron Carter in Rochester when he lived there in the late 1950s. He's the esteemed coauthor of Rat Race Blues, the biography of Gigi Gryce.



Hi Noal: I'm making great progress on the early days. I'll be doing one last interview tomorrow night with 88-year-old Fred Remington, Dave Remington's first cousin. He was a Tatum-style pianist who became a psychiatrist. He knew all the cats in the 1940s, including Herbie Brock. I'm hopeful he can put a useful spin on that time and answer some of my remaining questions. 

With my various interviews, I now have a composite of those times, including how bop was slowly incorporated into Rochester's music. I'll be writing it up in a blog post. That post will also include some other research I've done about Rochester jazz in the early 1950s--not germane to my Pepper biography, of course--but it will include a mention of a clique of musicians, Jon Hendricks among them, and so forth.

It doesn't sound like the Frederick Douglass Voice covered the jazz scene. In my interview with saxophonist Ralph Dickinson, who read the paper then, he said that his six-month gig at the Elite wasn't mentioned in the Voice. Considering that, it seems doubtful it ever was mentioned during the time Pepper played in the band. Because of that, I've decided not to visit the Rochester Museum and peruse back issues. I have descriptions of the Elite from two different sources and that will suffice. The building and general area was torn down to build the Inner Loop [highway], so I'm not even visiting it to take photographs. I also get the sense that Howard Coles' radio shows were gospel oriented and inspirational in nature, plus I guess he relied on his sources and his newspaper work to also speak about affairs of the day? 

The radio shows that would interest me are Raymond Murphy programs on WRNY in 1946 and '47, if any exist, because Pepper had some input into their preparation and listened to them while in high school. I've been told that a large collection of old radio programs are housed at St. John Fisher College. I'm researching that to see if they possibly exist, but it's a long shot indeed. 

I've also been in touch with a blues harpist, Tom Hanney, who is on the faculty of RIT and is doing original research on the blues scene in Rochester. It looks like it doesn't go back that far, but, very significantly, Son House lived in obscurity in Rochester from the early 1940s until he was rediscovered by Alan Wilson of Canned Heat in the mid-1960s. I've asked Tom to try to determine whether House got any press or even occasionally surfaced to do a gig here and there when Pepper lived in Rochester. At this point, it seems doubtful but we'll see.

The series from the D&C [newspaper], "Whatever Happened to . . . ," gives me all sorts of color about what Rochester was like in the first half of the century. I'll be relying on that to give my chapter some more depth. There's a monograph written by Curt Gerling called Smugtown that was published in the 1940s in the American Journal of Sociology that I'd like to see. It measures the moral index of Rochester (disguised by the euphemism "Gorge City.")

An important urban history of Rochester was written in four volumes by Blake McKelvey, originally by Harvard U. Press. That's also something I'd like to check out. Volume 4 seems like the one I want. 

Lastly, I'll be getting a thumb drive of info from Doug Duke researcher Sheron Dixon Wahl with all sorts of data on it. Clearly, Duke was one of the pioneers of the jazz organ and important in that way. He played for many years at Squeezer's.

I'll write my last historical blog post about Rochester, then send you the link. I'd be pleased if you could add it with my other ones to your site. It will in some ways be the core of my RIT talk on October 21.

All the best,
Gary Carner




                                     (Drummer Noal Cohen)

Saturday, June 27, 2015

The Frederick Douglass Voice and Other Ephemera


© Gary Carner. Copyright Protected. All rights reserved.

The family is away for a few weeks, giving me a great opportunity to get lots of Pepper work done. The first thing to do is to prepare for a follow-up interview with Dave Schiff, about whom I wrote a few weeks ago. Also, Im going to listen again to my Rochester interviews to prepare for an interview with Paul Remingtons father, Frederick. Frederick is Rochester trombonist Dave Remingtons first cousin and a fine Tatum-influenced pianist in his own right. Frederick Remington was on the scene in the mid-1940s when Adams was in Rochester. He knew a lot of the important musicians, including pianist Herbie Brock. Additionally, he trained as a psychiatrist. As a musician and a student of behavior, he might have insights regarding the personalities of that time. 

Along with Brock and Remington, the third leg of the 1940s-Rochester-musician stool is Doug Duke. Im receiving from researcher Sheron Wahl a set of interviews that she did about Duke, most significantly with Paul Preo and Dick Mulhaney. Both knew Duke in 1945. Heres what Wahl told me about Preo:
At some point along the way I met Paul Preo, a Kodak engineer who lived in Rochester NY and who discovered Doug Duke at Squeezers back in 1945. Paul loved tinkering with the latest recording devices available. He began recording Doug while he still worked at Joe Squeezer’s and continued to record him until shortly before Doug’s death. Discovering Paul Preo along with his hundreds of recordings and memories was like discovering a gold mine. Paul and I worked together gathering materials to develop the Doug Duke page.  
Trying to learn more about that time in Rochester, and to contextualize everything that went on, Ive been working to locate a run of the Frederick Douglass Voice, the most important Rochester black newspaper of the 20th Century. Thanks to University of Rochester research librarian Melissa Mead, whos been extraordinarily helpful, I reached archivists at the Rochester Museum and Science Center. The Museum houses what seems to be a complete set of the newspaper. Generally referred to as The Voice, because it changed names several times, heres an overview of its incredible 63-year pedigree:

The Voice: October, 1933- November, 1942
The Rochester Voice: June, 1943- December, 1947
The Voice of New York: January, 1948- November, 1949
The Frederick Douglass Voice: January, 1950- July, 1960
The New Negro Voice: December, 1960- January, 1961
The Rochester Voice: October, 1961- March, 1967
The Frederick Douglass Voice: July, 1967- May, 1996

One of the Museums librarians sent me a Finding Aid to their Coles Collection. From the Coles website is this description of Howard Wilson Coles: The legacy that Coles has left through this collection is unparalleled, not only in this community but also in the nation. It sheds light on the remarkable career of a trailblazer in human rights activism, journalism, history and culture, and at the same time offers a sweeping look at 20th century America.
See Coles Collection and

Because jazz researchers dont know about this Collection, as my tribute to Howard Coles and the astounding (and probably little known) work he did, heres an excerpt from the Finding AidHistorical/Biographical Note about him (with footnotes deleted and lightly edited):


Howard Wilson Coles was born on November 12, 1903 in Belcoda, New York. His family came to the Rochester area from Culpepper, Virginia in the 1880s. Howard was the grandson of the Reverend Clayton A. Coles, former “body servant” of Confederate General Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson and later founder of the Second Baptist Church of Mumford in the 1890s. Howard was one of two sons born to Charles and Grace Coles. Howard spent his childhood in Mumford, New York, [not far from Rochester,] and attended Scottsville High School. By his own admission he was not interested in an education and left at the age of fifteen to work and earn money to buy his own things. (He later regretted his decision and earned a diploma in June, 1947 from East Evening High School in Rochester, New York.) After traveling throughout the Northeast in the 1920s, working as a hotel bellboy and a waiter, Coles returned to Rochester in the early 1930s and settled there for the remainder of his life.

Coles borrowed $2,800 from his life insurance policy in the early 1930s and with the help of Elsie Scott Kilpatrick established The Voice newspaper. Coles published and distributed the newspaper throughout Western New York from 1933 through 1996 and, at its apex, circulation reached approximately 10,000 copies. Throughout the newspaper’s life he worked as a real estate agent, insurance sales agent and court attendant to earn enough money to support the publication of the newspaper. The Voice helped chronicle the lives of African-Americans throughout the Twentieth Century and has been recognized as the longest continuously published African-American newspaper in Rochester history.


In 1938, Coles became Rochester’s first African-American radio personality at local radio station WSAY. Over the next forty years, Howard developed several radio shows such as The Vignettes, The Gospel Hour, The Bronze Trombones, and The King Coles Show. These shows provided entertainment and served as a sounding board for relevant issues in the African-American community.

The unhealthy living conditions in Rochester under which some African-American families were forced to survive during the late 1930s may have started Coles on his lifelong activist role. The New York State Legislature credited Coles in 1938 with conducting the first documented housing survey of Rochester’s low-income families. Information he presented to the New York State Temporary Commission of the Condition of the Urban Colored Population was later published in the 1939 report. City Manager Baker appointed Coles to the City Wide Housing Committee of the City of Rochester to help alleviate the poor conditions documented in the survey. 


In 1939, Coles published the City Directory of Negro Business and Progress, which documented the socioeconomic progress of Rochester’s African-American community since 1926. He also authored The Cradle of Freedom, a history of Rochester’s African-American community, which was published by Oxford Press in 1941. Coles compiled “The Negro Family in Rochester,” documenting the African-American community’s progress during a century of living in Rochester, and “Nomads of the South,” illustrating the journey of various migrant groups to upstate New York. Neither work was published in book form but there is evidence that both ran as serials in The Voice newspaper. . . . 

Coles married publicist, dramatist, and journalist Alma Kelso in 1940. The two worked diligently on The Voice and collaborated on several other projects until they divorced in the late 1940s. . . . 

On December 10, 1996, Coles died of complications from pneumonia. Mayor William A. Johnson, Jr. and several other ministers eulogized him at the historic Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, located in Rochester, New York. Coles has been called a “trailblazer” and the heir to his hero, Frederick Douglass.


Ive yet to determine the extent of Coles coverage of Rochesters black entertainment scene but Im intrigued by its possibilities and encouraged by the fact that Coles had several radio shows. It looks like Ill be spending some time at the Museum when Im in Rochester!




                          (Howard Wilson Coles in the studio of radio station WSAY)