It was embarrassing, and we felt bad, so Bill said, "Let's go down and look around for a car. I'll give you an advance. We'll work something out." This was in '58, and we found a '57 Lincoln that was just beautiful. It was a convertible. It had a fantastic maroon paint job and a white top. Inside there were fur rugs, actual fur, and every single thing had a push button. It had been made for the shah of Iran. He'd ordered eight cars, all special, but two he hadn't taken, and this was one that had been used by somebody in Palm Springs and then traded in. It was in perfect shape. I told Bill, "God, I'd love to have that." I was afraid he wouldn't go for it but he said, "Well, you don't have anything else to spend your money on. Okay. If we can get it through, great." He signed for me. We got the credit, and the payments were ninety-nine dollars and fifty cents a month. At that time that was really high. I stayed on that job for quite a while, and Diane and I were getting along pretty good because there's nothing like success.
And then-I forget what happened-I think Bill's mother got angry at him. At any rate, she cut him off; he blew the hotel; and it ended the job. We had to go back to Los Angeles.
When we got back to L.A. we moved out to Studio City into a motel, and I looked in the newspaper for a job because I wanted to keep the car; I was really in love with it. I became an accordian salesman. I'd go to people's houses and give the kids musical aptitude tests. I'd play a note and then another note and ask them which one sounded higher. I'd ask them little rhythmical questions. I'd put this pretty little accordian on the kids, the keys all mother-of-pearl; they'd fall in love with it.
My territory was East Los Angeles, downtown L.A., Glendale, and Pasadena, a pretty large area. I'd get three leads a night, and if I sold the kid, if I could get the parents to give me ten dollars, then the kid got a certain number of lessons and he'd use one of those accordians for a while. I'd keep the ten dollars. After he finished this series of lessons the high-pressure salesman went out. He'd say he's taking the little accordian away, but if the kid wants to continue, he can march in the Rose Parade and all that. And the salesman would show him a great big accordian that cost a fortune. The kids would cry, and the parents, who were just scuffling and starving to death ... It was really sad. But in another way it was good because some of the kids really did have musical talent.
I did that for a while and did fairly well. I remember my first time out I sold all three leads and got thirty dollars. But it was hard work, and it became harder and harder to mantain the payments on the car, and a Lincoln, it costs a lot of money to get them repaired. You have to keep them up. Fortunately, instead of starting to use again we continued with the Cosanyl. I was getting fat, and people saw me and thought I was clean. Finally, this guy Steve White-who is kind of a legend around L.A., extremely talented and likable but totally crazy-I ran into him; he was playing with a rock group from North Carolina and he asked me if I wanted a gig-replacing him on tenor with that group. So I started working at this club in the valley called the Palomino.
Then Les Koenig asked me to do another album. I was really down with the tenor so I made Art Pepper plus Eleven playing alto, tenor, and clarinet. Marty Paich wrote all the arrangements. They were modern jazz classics, and I used large bands, well-known people, good musicians. When I did that, things started to open up for me. Diane and I moved from the motel to a nice little house in Studio City. I got a job at the Lighthouse working steady. Marty Paich started using me on a lot of Mel Torme's things and with other singers.
THE RETURN OF ART PEPPER by Jack Tynan
Hollywood-For Art Pepper the long, lean years are over.
Fast reestablishing himself as one of the most important altoists in modern jazz, busy with Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars five nights a week and Sunday afternoons, the 35-year-old musician today has put his troubled times well behind him and is now seeking greater expressiveness as an artist.
So busy is Pepper, in fact, that it is hard to believe that only a year ago, he was selling accordions-along with lessons on the instrument-to make a living. He had no work to speak of, and had become a stranger in the recording studios where his name had been linked with the foremost experimenters a scant five years previous. To those musicians with whom he occasionally came in contact, he seemed a ghost of his old self. He appeared to have lost all interest in jazz and the playing of it.
"It's true I was pretty disinterested in music at that time," Pepper admits today. "But I began to put down the music rather than the circumstances."
In Art's case, the "circumstances" stretch a long way back. They cover his youth in Gardena, Calif.; his early days of sitting in with jazz greats when Los Angeles' Central Avenue and Main Street were swinging with all-night sessions; his first big break with the Benny Carter band when, as a 17-year-old, he sat alongside the late trumpeter Freddie Webster and trombonist J. J. Johnson; the great days with the Stan Kenton orchestra, and the oblivion that followed.
All these "circumstances" added up for the sax player to a total sum of disillusionment with music and a jazz world that did not seem exactly ready to welcome back Art Pepper with open arms. There was a brief period of recording in 1955-56, and an alliance with tenorist Jack Montrose that came to little but scattered night club engagements. The albums that emerged in that period were uniformly good, mostly quartet discs that showcased Pepper's flexible and dynamic style. The last of the quartet sessions, recorded for the Aladdin label, was never released on LP, though it is available on Omegatape. It is of special interest due to the presence on the date of the late pianist Carl Perkins. It was Perkins' final recording.
Withal, the deadly "circumstances" found their mark. Pepper became more depressed at the lack of recording calls, and at the repeated attempts to launch his own group in a town of clubowners ready to buy music for clowns. And so he withdrew from music, retreating into a personal shell that was made a little less lonely by his wife, Diane.
Today Pepper can say, without undue display of emotion, "Diane's understanding saved me; I owe so much to her." And it is true that in Pepper's darkest hours, when making a living in music seemed nothing more than a bad joke, Diane stiffened his will to endure and, finally, to return to jazz more eloquent than ever. down beat, April 14, 1960. Copyright 1960 by down beat. Reprinted by special permission.
THINGS were getting good. I bought a dog for Christmas for Diane. Actually, I bought it for myself. It cost three hundred dollars, a little champagne poodle, and we named her Bijou. I got more and more work. I got a call from Andre Previn at MGM to do the soundtrack on The Subterraneans, and I got to play a lot of solos. Then I got a call from Mickey Whalen, the music director at MGM, and I did Bells Are Ringing. I was drinking the Cosanyl, which is very fattening, and I was steadily putting on weight. I went from a hundred and fifty up to a hundred and ninety-five. People would see me and say, "Boy, you really look great!" And, "It's great to see you clean!" Between the two of us Diane and I were drinking three pints of this stuff a day and I was juicing heavy, but all our bills were paid; there was money in the bank; and 1 still had the Lincoln.
I had gone through a crisis and survived. Now I had a tenor, an alto, a clarinet, and a bunch of suits. I had just about everything I wanted, but I wasn't happy with Diane, you know, because I never had loved her. I married her because-I don't even know why now-I felt I owed it to her and I thought maybe, maybe I could just learn to love her, but it never happened. Right at this time Les wanted to do another album so he got another Miles Davis rhythm section: Wynton Kelly on piano, Jimmy Cobb on drums, and Paul Chambers, the only holdover, on bass. I was really prepared for this album, Gettin' Together, and it was excellent. I played great, and I wrote some of the arrangements. I wrote a tune that I recorded for Diane. Well, I wrote a tune and named it "Diane." It was a dream of somebody I would have liked to have had, and I called it "Diane" because I figured it would make her happy, and it did. The tune was way too beautiful for her, but what was a name?
I had the world by the tail. There w
as no end to what could have happened for me at that time. One night I had a record date-I forget who it was with, a singer-and after the session I was riding home on the freeway from Hollywood to Studio City, which is a very short distance; I was riding in my Lincoln, and I had the radio on, and I remember Ray Charles was singing "The Outskirts of Town," and all of a sudden I got very sad, I just got very sad, and I thought, "This isn't it. Something is wrong." I took my turnoff on Whitsett and turned left under the freeway and, without even thinking, I just made another left turn back onto the freeway; now I was headed toward Hollywood to the Hollywood freeway, which goes to the Santa Ana freeway, which goes to East Los Angeles, which is where all my old connections were, all my friends from my heroin days.
I turned the radio up and drove. I took the cutoff on Brooklyn Avenue, and there I was. I drove to this broad's pad that I used to know, Rachel. She and her brother, Boy, still lived at the same place, and they were so happy to see me. It was really a homecoming. They said, "Wow, look at the car!" Hora le, Art!" They were talking Chicano to me, and I was talking Chicano back, and I asked them if they had any stuff. They said, "Yeah, what do you want?" I said, "Can you still get a quarter for fifty dollars?" I had a whole pocketful) of money. I reached in my wallet and gave them fifty dollars. Boy said, "I'll go. I'll be right back!" He came back with a condom with a quarter of an ounce of heroin. I said, "You got a 'fit, pistolo?" He got it out, and I said, "Let me go first, then you can go." I took a fix and I said, "Wow, this is it!" I was happy again. I stayed there bullshitting for a long time, and then I took the shit. I said, "You got an extra spike?"
I went home, and as I drove up the dog started barking. I parked the car and walked in, and Diane said, "Where've you been? I've been worried." I took the condom and threw it on the table. I threw the outfit out and I said, "Go ahead." And that was it. The beginning of the end. Six months later I was busted, on my way to San Quentin, and Diane was in the Orange County Hospital on her way to death.
ART PEPPER
Art Pepper Plus Eleven-Contemporary M 3568: Move; Groovin' High; Opus De Funk; 'Round Midnight; Four Brothers; Shawnuff; Bernie's Tune; Walkin' Shoes; Anthropology; Airegin; Walkin'; Donna Lee.
Personnel: Pepper, alto, tenor saxophones, clarinet; Pete Candoli or Al Porcino, Jack Sheldon, trumpets; Dick Nash, trombone; Bob Enevoldsen, tenor saxophone, valve trombone; Vince DeRosa, French horn; Herb Geller or Bud Shank or Charlie Kennedy, alto saxophone; Bill Perkins or Richie Kamuca, tenor saxophone; Med Flory, baritone saxophone; Russ Freeman, piano; Joe Mondragon, bass; Mel Lewis, drums.
Rating: * * * * *
This is a highly satisfactory album for which Marty Paich, who conducts and did the arranging, deserves a full measure of credit.
The tunes read like a jazz hit parade of the '40s and '50s, and Paich has treated them with the reverence and seriousness they deserve while still retaining wit and a freshness of view. Pepper, in the context of this group, turns out one of his best performances on record. As an altoist, he immediately assumes his place again in the front rank with the added virtue of successfully escaping the tyranny of Charlie Parker's spirit and still keeping that full-blown swing. He is surprisingly sensitive and moving on clarinet (Anthropology of all things!), and if he ever gets seriously down to work on that instrument as his major, there's room to believe he might be the one to bring it up to the point of development of the other solo horns.
On tenor he is a solidly swinging, toughminded soloist, but it is on alto, still, that he shines. The whole album is in excellent taste, the solos by Freeman here and there are a gas, too, and Lewis provides a fine, swinging foundation. (R.J.G.) down beat, February 16, 1960. Copyright 1960 by down beat. Reprinted by special permission.
(Marty Paich) In the fifties, when I first came across Art, shortly after World War II, when we had a quartet in town, it seemed like there wasn't that much anxiety as there is today. That is, people played, and they enjoyed themselves. Today there's such an emotional stress on performers; this total commitment to try to be number one has really destroyed a lot of artists, and record companies and agents and managers have sort of manipulated the artist, trying so hard to make him number one. It has become very difficult. With so much money in the music business today, so many people are pressing, and it has a definite effect on the artist.
When I first met Art he was the greatest saxophone player that I had heard. Far above anybody else. I couldn't believe how beautifully he played. And at that time there was the battle going on: a lot of writers were writing about East Coast Jazz and West Coast Jazz. Art to me was the sound of West Coast jazz, that melodic style he played, rather than the harddriving, New York style that a lot of players were playing. I just fell in love with him the first time I heard him. And then eventually we worked together.
I didn't work with Art for a long time, until he went over to Contemporary and he wanted me to do some writing for him. I was with Shorty Rogers at the time, and Art used to come and sit in an awful lot, and I was starting to write a lot of arrangements in the early fifties. Art liked certain things I did, and that's when he asked me to the Art Pepper plus Eleven. We collaborated on that album. Incidentally, that album got five stars in down beat. It was an incredible album, and I got a lot of letters from people talking about that album, and they still are talking about that album.
I felt, and I feel to this day, that Art is the number-one saxophone player around for my particular taste. I liked him so much; well, we were doing a lot of commercial sessions. I started to get very busy arranging, and I had a lot of albums to do. At that time, I was working with a lot of singers so I'd bring Art just in by himself. On Jesse Belvin's album; I think he played on Lena Horne's album; he played on several albums that I did at RCA Victor when I brought him in just to hear him play. Then we became good friends. Of course, my direction at that time was going more and more into arranging, and Art still had his quartet, so we really didn't see each other too much except when he was in town. I'd try to get together with him and call him and have him come down and play.
Art was, he looked like a movie star to me. He was in good shape, pitch-black hair; he looked marvelous, you know, he looked like Tyrone Power; he was so handsome, and he had a lot of poise, very quiet, a lot of class. When he came on, people quieted down, and when he played he played with such authority. There was standing room only for Art when we played a lot of clubs or when I went into a lot of clubs to hear him. And people just loved to be associated with him. Everybody loved to be in his company. When Art was in the room there was a certain magic that was happening. If he was there, that's where the action was. When the word got around that we were going to do Art Pepper plus Eleven, I had innumerable calls from practically everybody in town, top players, wanting to be on the session because they had the feeling that ... It was just electrifying all the time Art was around. I can't say enough about him. And when he called me to do the Plus Eleven I was just elated that we were going to work together. We spent a lot of time together, and I really gave my all as far as writing is concerned. I felt I had to prove myself to Art. I wanted to try and come close to his stature, you know what I mean, and that's where we were at that particular time. There have been saxophone players that have come and gone, but Art's in a class by himself. There isn't even anybody close.
Art is just a simple human being. Simple, artistically, and very easy to understand, for me. He just wanted to play. His personality was just beautiful all the time. I didn't associate with him too much, I'm talking about socially, but when we worked together I found I never had any problem with Art Pepper, never one small disagreement. He said to me, "Just do what you think." And he did what he did, and I made suggestions, and Art would say, "Fine." Very soft-spoken, very laid back, never any problem. Whereby today, if Art and I were young kids working, there might be disagreements because of the way things are, the stress. A lot of players today are so concerned with the success factor. In our situation, we were striving for the artis
tic thing rather than trying to think of agents and managers and a lot of money, which is involved today. In those days, we didn't even think about the money aspect. We just wanted to play and to write. Today guys half play, and then the other half of it is money right away. And the minute money enters into it, it's a totally different ball game. Art and I just hit it off, and it has always been that way, and everybody I knew felt exactly the same way. And not too long ago, when we used him on Melanie's album, he just came in; fifteen years had gone by and he was exactly the same way.
I was never involved with drugs myself. Certain players striving for total excellence, trying to go as far as they could artistically-a lot of them felt they needed it, most of the players that I knew. Well, like I say, I didn't get involved in too many of their lives socially, you know. I could only stand by the side and hope it wouldn't happen because in the end it has a devastating effect. I never was around Art when I thought he was out of control. He always had that same composure and played beautifully, and I couldn't tell whether he had been on drugs or if he was straight. There were one or two times that Art showed up late on my sessions, but I understood what the situation was and it didn't bother me at all. I just loved him so much that I sort of bypassed it and worked around it because I knew when he got there, everything was going to be fine. And this came later. Not in the earlier times. It was later that the problems started to happen. But, you know, people in this town at that time: if you showed up late, it got to be a scene, and the word would get around, and things like that, but, listen, that is nothing compared to today. Today players show up two or three hours late with nothing said, so, you know, signs of the times.
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