MR: My name is Monk Rowe and we are at Hamilton
College and it's commencement weekend '03, and I'm really pleased to have part two with
Bucky Pizzarelli. BP: Thank you. MR: Welcome. And congratulations on your degree. BP: Well it's a big honor. I'm overwhelmed, really, I don't know what
to say. MR: Well, it's going to be great. It's going to be great. You're in good company with some of the other
folks I've seen, and it's nice to have you back here. You've been here a number of times. BP: Yes. With Kenny Davern and company. MR: Yes. And we have some fireworks going on in the
background, because everybody's celebrating. I kind of wish we had been taping during our
dinner just before this, because you were saying some great stuff. I was fascinated by your description of your
family life and being a young person during the depression. BP: Yes. My folks had a grocery store in Paterson,
New Jersey, founded by Alexander Hamilton. MR: There you go. BP: And we struggled through the whole thing. And everybody ate, we had a good time, and
we struggled right into World War II. You know we struggled out of the depression
into the World War. But we had a lot of fun in between. We listened to a lot of big band music and
we had a lot of music within the family circle. My uncles played guitars and banjos. My father played a little mandolin. And that was our entertainment, to take our
minds off the depression. Then we also had the big bands on the radio,
we heard broadcasts from all over the country at different times. Sometimes four different bands the same night. MR: Was that what they called the Saturday
Night Dance? BP: Well they were remotes, you know, on non-commercial
radio shows. The radio companies would go into the Meadowbrook
for instance, and set up mics, and you really didn't know that you were on the air if you
were in a big band, you were just playing your normal set but it was going over the
air. MR: I see. BP: Sometimes coast to coast. MR: Did you learn a certain work ethic from
your parents? BP: Oh yes, yes. With me, I get up early every morning to correct
whatever I did the night before. MR: To correct-
BP: Yeah. Usually if I worked the night before and I
goofed up some little thing, I correct it the next morning. MR: I see. Something in the grocery stores or at home
work? BP: Well the grocery store, the same thing
with the grocery store, we had to take the vegetables out in the morning, and I had to
run to school after that. And then when I went to school we had a little
- not a little, it was a great orchestra - we had like 14 violins. And we had the best time of our lives playing
before school hours and playing after school hours, just on our own hook. MR: You mentioned some street dances they
would do. BP: Yeah. And during the depression the WPA and the
NRA - National Reconstruction Association or something like that, and the other one
was the Works Progress Administration - would hire musicians to play block dances on your
street. There weren't many cars in those days. So they would block off the middle of the
block, rope it off, and have seven musicians play for dancing in the street. MR: And they would be playing what kind of
music? BP: Regular pop music. MR: Which was what at the time? BP: Well whatever, "The Music Goes Round and
Round," [sings] and it comes out - and whatever the big bands were playing they would play. MR: That's neat. Were you a dancer? BP: No, no. I was only a little kid in those days. MR: That's right 'cause this was -
BP: I'd stand behind the ropes and watch. Watch the band more than anybody else. MR: Right. BP: And then we also had a big armory in Paterson
that would house the troops that were guarding the factories in Paterson. We had the Wright Aeronautical Company made
airplane engines, and they were going like four years without stopping, just a roar. And they put artillery up on the mountains
surrounding the town. Because Paterson was in a valley, Passaic
Valley they called it. And on Sundays the bands from New York, the
Meadowbrook up in Teaneck, New Jersey, would come down and entertain the troops. So I distinctly remember watching Glen Gray's
orchestra, Jerry Wald and Stan Kenton, all on the same day. We'd sneak in, we'd get in, and listen to
the bands, and it was a lot of fun. I was very impressed. MR: So even as a kid you had a sense of what
you wanted to do. BP: Oh yeah. That's what I wanted to do. Even though it was almost mandatory that a
male student had to take courses having to do with wood shop, tin shop, machine shop,
printing shop. I hated that. But I had to go through it. Manual training and all that stuff. But I wanted to play. MR: Did you have a reputation, let's say in
high school, as musician? BP: Oh yes. Small really. I'd play weddings. I had a few guys who would call and I'd make
two or three dollars, which was big money in those days. MR: Two or three dollars, yeah. BP: Yeah that was a lot of money. MR: What was the amp situation like? BP: Oh there weren't any amps. We didn't have amps. We didn't have amplifiers yet. We'd sit and hit those strings like there
was no tomorrow. I didn't get an amp until I was like second
or third year in high school. And then I played so loud that the bandleader
told me to shut up. MR: It's funny how what's considered loud
has changed over the years. BP: Yeah, oh that's right. MR: Because back then if you were just playing
acoustic, people wouldn't necessarily have thought of it as playing really soft. BP: Well I know my uncles that played all
these weddings, and I see old pictures of the bands that they played with, in Paterson,
no amplifiers, no microphones. They played acoustic. In a dance hall. MR: Hmm. You kind of long for some of that to come
back. BP: Yeah. And it's very funny, about three weeks ago
I went out to Long Island to listen to a guitar get together. And I saw Billy Bauer and Don Arnone, a lot
of the old timers that I used to work with in the studios. And when Wayne Wright got up to play there
was something wrong with his amplifier so he says, "I'll play without the amplifier." He sounded marvelous. MR: And the band adjusted, right? BP: There was no band, he was playing by himself. MR: Okay. BP: He played an acoustic guitar, it sounded
great. I'm saying what are they fooling around with
those amps for? MR: Right. The transition from high school into Vaughan
Monroe, we talked last time a little bit about him. And your parents were supportive of that? BP: Well they were in a way because my mother's
brothers were on the road - a brother was on the road - with a lot of different bands,
Clyde McCoy, Buddy Rodgers, Raymond Scott, Teddy Powell, played with all the bands, played
just rhythm but he was very good at it. Bob Chester. And I was on Christmas vacation, I was just
about to graduate from my school and a lot of the big bands were losing men to the draft. And Vaughan Monroe almost gave up the band
thinking that he was going to be drafted, but he didn't. So he said let's get the band back together
again. And there were a lot - about seven or eight
chairs open for anybody. So my trumpet friend called me and says "come
on, come with the band." So I jumped on a bus and played Binghamton
- no Scranton, Binghamton and Rochester, and went back to school the following Monday. MR: That's neat. BP: But the funny thing was my father gave
me 15 bucks out of the cash register, and I came back with change. MR: And you were buying meals and the whole
thing? BP: Well that was the era of the dime tip
and the blue plate special you know. You couldn't spend any money. Everything was a buck. MR: But do you recall thinking of that as
really inexpensive? BP: No I didn't. MR: Because everything was relative. BP: Fifteen dollars was a lot of money. Three five dollar bills. Then I came home with change, and a steady
job. So I graduated the week after, and I went
on the road with Vaughan, and we played about ten weeks of theaters, just a week at a time
- you know, Cleveland, Baltimore, Boston. Placed like that. Pittsburgh. And I got a geography lesson at the same time. And it was very thrilling for me. And I think there was a strike going on in
those days. We did play, we made V-disks for the troops. Do you remember those? MR: I have a few. BP: Yeah. And we even made those big ones, they were
like 15 minute transcriptions. And it's like direct to disc. That's what it was. And we had to play 15 minutes without making
a mistake. MR: How bad a mistake would someone have to
make to do the whole thing over again? BP: Well playing on a trumpet I would say
miss a high note or something, and then you'd start all over again. But I remember those days and it was very
exciting, even to be in a recording studio. And then we also used to do the Coca Cola
Bandwagon or the Fitch Bandwagon, Fitch Shampoo. And we did a few of those and I met Slam Stewart,
Slim and Slam, and - who else was on it - Benny Goodman Trio with Joe Bushkin and the drummer,
Louie Bellson. And we even had - well we did our own, we
did the Camel Caravan, with the Count Basie rhythm section. That's a thrill. MR: I'll bet. The rhythm section. BP: That's right. MR: The Count Basie rhythm section. BP: Still champs. They're still reigning champs. MR: How come? What was it about them? BP: Well you know when you have four rhythm,
and you know what you're doing, the guitar is the last guy to be hired and the first
guy to be fired. But in Freddie Green's case, without Freddie
there's no band. Because he gave that rhythm section - and
Count Basie played sparingly, never overplayed, he just played in the cracks. And that's the big difference. MR: Yeah. Is there some distinguishing thing about what
Freddie Green did that's possible to verbalize? BP: It's very hard to describe what he did
but he played a four-four beat with an accent on two and four, and he just kept chunking
away. And if you study, I have, the music of Count
Basie, the rhythm section never played figures with the band. When they played eighth-quarter-eighth, you
know, they just kept chunking away through the whole thing. And it works better that way. The minute everybody's doing the same thing
it doesn't work. It's like a drummer hitting figures with the
brass section. It's terrible. MR: It's a little hard to tell the drummer,
look, you don't need to do that. BP: No. Because the rhythm - Claude Thornhill had
a band too that had a rhythm section that loved the Basie rhythm section. It was Barry Galbraith and Billy Ecksner on
drums. Barry played guitar. Joe Shuman. I followed them a lot. And Claude played sparingly as well, and they
almost matched the Basie rhythm section. And the band played exceptionally soft. They had two extra clarinets and a sax section. They had six reeds. And a great brass section that would swell,
and come right down again. Really, it would take your breath away. So I followed guys like that. And when I was doing Vaughan, we didn't play
like those bands but I put that to use when we did radio shows. I used to - the bass player and I would have
somebody take off the program and make a record. We called them air checks. And we'd go back and for a few bucks we'd
listen to what we did on the program and then the next week we'd try to do better. MR: Wow. That's being serious about your work. BP: Oh definitely. We knew about George Van Eps and we know about
Allan Reuss, all the guys who knew how to play rhythm like that. But they were doing like studio work and recordings,
freelancing in Hollywood in those days, with Paul Weston and all those Sinatra records. Great rhythm sections. MR: In the book that I was reading about you
there is a short bit about a fire on your bus. BP: Oh yeah. MR: How did that come about? BP: Well you know we had the brakes fixed
on the bus. And somehow in hot weather, if you used them
too soon they explode - not explode, they expand. And we were in West Virginia and we were going
up and down and up again and all of a sudden one of the trumpet players in the back, Sleet,
said, "Hey there's flames coming out of the back." The bus driver said, "You're crazy." "No," he says. We stopped the bus and sure enough. We were playing cards. We all jumped off the bus in our tee shirts. And the bus burned down in about 15 minutes,
right down to just the four wheels. And we had a gig that day. So we waited for a Greyhound to come in, jumped
on the Greyhound and went to the theater in - not Wheeling - some little town. And they had no backstage to the band had
to go right down the center aisle, the way we looked. No uniforms - the uniforms were gone. Luckily the instruments were saved. They went in another truck. MR: I see. I was going to ask you - when you say we played
a theater, what exactly does that mean? BP: Well the bands used to play theaters. Like similar to the Paramount for instance. Now they'd play an opening number and they'd
bring out the singer, then they'd bring out a juggler or a comedian. And we'd play a couple more numbers, then
they'd put the picture on you. But you'd do that four or five times a day. MR: Ah. Did they have a screen that came down? BP: No the band came out of the pit. First they would show the news, a newsreel. And that's when the band would assemble in
the pit. As the newsreel was finishing the pit would
come up and you'd see the newsreel and the band, you know, briefly. And they'd go through their act. Sometimes we'd play for a big singer, like
some other singer, like Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra. MR: Okay. Someone that wasn't in the band but you would
play their charts. BP: Yeah. And we had an animal act too. It was funny, a funny situation. A juggler. MR: You learned to do just about everything. BP: Yeah you had to play that show. But when you do that for ten weeks, it gets
a little crazy. MR: Did you ever have any train wrecks? BP: Oh yeah. Yeah. Once we were playing a monkey act and the
monkey came out on one skate. "Due to gas rationing my partner was a little
late." So all he did was sit there in a chair while
he did an act with a little dog that did all the tricks. But the act was that the owner would turn
around and yell out "Frank Buck" and the monkey would go [motion]. Frank Buck was the guy that brought all the
animals over from Africa. MR: Oh my God. I see. BP: That was a no-no. And once down in Philadelphia when he came
out on one skate, there was a cat came up from the pit see? And he saw the cat and he chased the cat right
down the center aisle. He didn't care about the act or nothing. Then once during that one tour with this,
it was a chimp really, the saxophone players would put candy on a string so as he came
out he would scoop it up and eat it. Then when they had the string they pulled
it and he wouldn't get it see? He'd miss it. And he jumped on the whole sax section trying
to get that candy. MR: I bet Vaughan Monroe loved that. That's a good story. When did you decide to move into New York? BP: Well I didn't move into New York, I just
started doing gigs. When I left Vaughan's band luckily I had made
connections, unknowingly, with all the violin players that I worked with on the Camel show. And most of them were contractors. And the rock & roll thing was hitting in New
York and they were hiring a lot of guitar players. And one of the cello players, Maurice Brown,
told me, "hey they need a guitar player over at NBC, want to go up? He says "I'll recommend you. So he did. And I got the job. I started the job the following Monday. And I played a whole year with her, five days
a week, on network television, NBC staff. MR: These would be for live TV shows? BP: It was a live TV show. And then while you were doing that, other
people knew you. Then the rock & roll thing started to hit
with - every recording session had four guitar players. MR: That makes me curious how, on a typical
date with four guitar players, did you guys have roles that you kind of specialized in? BP: Yeah. One guy played rhythm, another guy did what
they call "chinks" with the electric, real tight. Another guy went [scats], and another guy
did whole tones with a vibrato [scats]. And after a while we could do it in our sleep. Now you do this and I'll do that. MR: And how many passes did you usually get
at a song? BP: As many as they needed. Sometimes the artist couldn't get it so we
did a lot of passes. MR: Okay so it was live. BP: So if it got to that point we used to
make a track and say come back tomorrow night and you can do it on your own. MR: So they did have overdubbing, as far as
the vocal end of the thing. BP: Yeah. MR: Now you played with Dion and the Belmonts. BP: Yeah we did a lot of that stuff for them. MR: Yeah. At the time did you ever have a sense of,
well that song we did today, I think that is probably going to catch on? BP: No. Well once in a while I would say well there's
a hit record you know. And sure enough it would be a hit. But with Dion, I never knew that. The first six records we made with him were
like million sellers. "The Wanderer" and "Teenager in Love." But when I was with Vaughan Monroe we made
a recording of a tune called "Riders in the Sky." It was a different kind of rhythm. It was [scats] with the guitars. It was made in Chicago. And when we played a one-nighter in Detroit
a few days later Vaughan played it about three times that night. Because the people went bananas. They wanted to hear that song. And it was a big smash, like in one night. MR: You never quite know what's going to catch
the public's ear. BP: No. You never know. Yeah. But in those days a hit record was a glorious
thing to have, for an artist to find some - Patty Page had a thing called "Doggie in
the Window." MR: "How Much is that Doggie in the Window." BP: Yeah, we made it in the last five minutes
of a three hour session. So how do you know? I think Doc Severinsen was playing trumpet
on it. MR: I mean I can just picture you going home
and saying hey man, guess what we did today. BP: Yeah, and "Itzy Bitzy Bikini." MR: Were you on that? BP: Yeah. MR: "Itzy Bitzy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot
Bikini." Oh my God. That was Brian Hyland, wasn't it? BP: Yeah that's right. That's right. And another thing, I made, here's a funny
story. I made Ray Charles' "Georgia on my Mind." And it was so busy - it was with Ralph Burns,
but it was one of those busy weeks where he was farming everything out. And we still don't know who wrote it, Bobby
Brookmeyer or Al Cohn wrote the arrangement. So we do the arrangement. Smash hit. Big, big hit. Thirty years later I'm doing the Dick Cavett
Show. And Ray Charles is going to sing this tune. And the conductor comes up to me and I'm with
Bobby Rosengarden's band. And the guy said to me "don't play the guitar
on this record, because it was a certain kind of guitar playing on there" so he was afraid
I didn't know. So I laid out. MR: That's priceless. BP: Do you believe that? MR: I can't believe that. I'm the guy. BP: I didn't tell him. MR: That's great. I'm glad you didn't because it makes for such
a great story. He's got the original guy. That was like Ray's conductor? BP: Whoever it was, it was just straightforward
rhythm, that's all, it was simple. But in those days that was foreign to a lot
of guys. MR: Wow. And what would a typical three hour session
pay back then? BP: You're going to laugh. Forty-one and a quarter. MR: Um hum. But you were doing three, sometimes four a
day? BP: We did three, like three sessions a day. MR: That's amazing. BP: Yeah. MR: And most of the guys were from the jazz
and the swing- BP: Everybody was. Everybody was a jazz - I mean mostly all the
guitar players, when we started doing those rock & roll dates, every one - Mundell Lowe,
Billy Bauer, Chuck Wayne, Tony Mottola, Al Caiola - all great players, playing three
chords. MR: That's cool. How did you handle the business end of it? You know in these days of agents and cell
phones and pagers and all that kind of stuff it's a little different. How did you get the word to report to a certain
place, and how did you set your dates. BP: Well they would call my house, say at
midnight, and say we're doing a date tomorrow at two, two to five. I'd say I'll be there. A contractor would call me. MR: He'd call your house at midnight? BP: Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes a contractor would call on Sunday
night and give you like four dates for the week, all at Columbia Records see. This one, this one and that one. Okay, I'll be there. MR: And if you weren't available then he'd
go down to the next person? BP: Well he'd get somebody else. Yeah. MR: Was there some kind of - I forget the
name of it - some kind of service that, maybe that's what you're talking about. BP: Oh well that was a telephone service. Radio Registry. MR: Yeah that's what I-
BP: If you had Radio Registry, there was so much work around that the contractor would
just call Radio Registry and tell him who to call see? And then they would call you. So I was with Radio Registry too you know. But then it got a little mixed up because
sometimes they'd call other guys instead of calling you. They'd tell the contractor well he was busy
and I wasn't you know. MR: Hmm. Wonder why they were doing that? And did you actually live in New York? BP: No. MR: Oh you never lived in New York? BP: Well a few weeks. But I live in New Jersey and I drove in. I have a trunk full of guitars, classical
guitar, a bass guitar, an electric guitar and a rhythm guitar. So when I pull up to the studio I could have
used every one of them, every one of those instruments. MR: Did you like playing the bass guitar? BP: I did, very much. It was not the Fender bass, it was a six string
guitar an octave lower. And it was written in the treble clef and
it helped me in my reading, because I'm playing notes instead of a rhythm with chord symbols. And sometimes they wrote some pretty tricky
stuff you know. MR: That's cool. But you decided not - why didn't you live
in New York? BP: I don't know, I was too close - I grew
up in Jersey and I liked it. MR: Okay. You're a Jersey guy. BP: Yeah. I said it's nice to get out of New York so
I was the first one out. When that job was over I was back. MR: In your experience in those days, the
racial scene was probably progressing or changing. BP: Oh it was for the better, because they
had the drummers from all the big, good bands, were hired, rightfully so because they were
good. And we had Jimmy Crawford, Panama Francis,
Osie Johnson, they were the best. And we had Milt Hinton and George Duvivier. The rhythm section were all black. But you never knew it on the record. They didn't put names on the record. But that was a must. I remember I played a record date one night
with Frank Duvall for Tony Bennett, and the drummer was Jo Jones. MR: Was there a certain place that you guys
would hang in between? BP: Well Jim and Andy's, and Charlie's. Two spots. Then it evolved to Jim and Andy's. It was on the first floor of the same building
that A&R Records was, A&R Studios. So they were forever calling down "we need
a trumpet player - we need a drummer" you know. There was always somebody down there. They'd run upstairs and do a record date. MR: I guess that's a good reason for not like
drinking too much while you're there. BP: It didn't work that way. MR: Wow. What was the lifestyle like? Were guys able to - I'm not sure how to put
this - remain healthy? BP: Oh, well a lot of the guys were married
and they lived on Long Island. There were very few single guys. So in order for them to make a living, I know
the big thing was drinking in those days, more than anything else. And if they didn't straighten out it caught
up with them too soon and they were out of the business. Because once you screw up, being late or - they
didn't use you anymore. Because there were too many guys around. There were a lot of guys to pick from. It was really - we used to call it a surplus
business. If they couldn't get you they got somebody
else who played half as well as you did. They did the same job. MR: I see. What was it like trying to be a father and-
BP: Well that was a hard thing to do. But in those days all my kids were going to
school, four of them, and I'd see them in the morning and I'd see them on the weekends,
because there was nothing going on on the weekends, although there were some record
dates, recording sessions, special occasions we had to go in and do. But luckily they were all going to school
and I saw them as much as I could. But I used to take them into New York too
to see some of the sessions, whenever they were off, in the summertime and all that. And it was that I was home every night that
was the most important thing I think. That I always came home. I was in New York for like twelve years doing
that kind of work. MR: So in one sense you were home more regularly
than going on the road. BP: Oh that was the most I've ever been home
was that little stretch there. MR: Okay. BP: But then I went away with Benny Goodman
in 1970, I went away for six weeks, with Ruth. I thought it was important to go with him
because I always wanted to play with him. I had done a few gigs with him at the Waldorf,
but this was a serious gig and I says let's do it. So Ruth's mother took care of the kids, sent
them off to school. And all I had to do was leave in the morning
and come back, and then six weeks later we were home and that was -
MR: Right. It was a win-win. BP: Yeah. MR: Yeah. Well you seem to have a great relationship
with him for, what almost twenty years? BP: Oh Benny was the king, the king. I loved Benny Goodman. He was a teacher, he was almost like a father
to me. We discussed a lot of things and we knew where
each - I knew where he was and he knew where I was. And we always had a good time. MR: You knew what he wanted? BP: Yeah. I told you, I said he never - he rarely counted
off. He would start the number and that was the
tempo you had to pick - know where that second beat was. See? And I was so close to him, I'd watch his foot
all the time, so I knew exactly where he was. MR: It's good that he was one of those people
that tapped the way they are playing. BP: Yeah. He was a little on top of it, but you knew
where he was. Yeah. MR: Why did so many people have a tough time
with him? BP: They didn't understand him. You know they knew that he was tough, and
then they would get smart with him, and then they'd start bumping heads, and Benny was
the type of guy that was a sideman like they were, two times over. So he knew all the jokes and he always got
the last word in. Always. One time we were going down south, and I won't
name the trombone player, but when they got there he said, "Benny, we've got time to play
golf." Benny said, "That's a good idea, let's go." They went to the golf course and played some. And when they got to the gig that night Benny
introduces the trombone player to play a solo. The trombone player goes up to the microphone
and says, "Well you all know this leader here as being the King of Swing, I played golf
with him today, and his name is now the King of No Swing." Everybody chuckled and laughed. Now the guys playing a solo, and at the end
of the solo, trying to hit a high note, and he's struggling to hit the high note, see? And Benny gets the clarinet and hits it for
him, and he says, "All you gotta do is keep your head down." MR: He was pretty quick I guess. BP: Oh yeah. I saw his lawyer the other night, he sat in
with me. A good clarinet player. MR: His lawyer? BP: Bill Highland. Yeah. He was the Attorney General in New Jersey
at one time. And he became very friendly with Benny. He told me a story, Benny was playing one
night and they're doing a dance job. Benny took the clarinet out of his mouth and
handed it to him to play, and he danced with his wife. MR: That's great. When did he pass away? Was it '86 or something like that? BP: Yeah. Well that was a big loss because they don't
make 'em like Benny Goodman anymore. No, he was one of those guys, he supported
like a whole family of ten kids, I don't know how many but he had a lot of them. He supported the family when he was a young
guy. And he did everything. Anything he had to do in the music business,
he did it. MR: Your kids have done well for themselves. I'm wondering if you've gotten to the point
where you learn anything from them? BP: Oh yeah. Yeah. They come up with some good stuff. Tunes - I know John is about to make an album. He does a lot of research on it. I used to tell him listen to this guy, listen
to that guy. He does a great rendition of a certain tune
you ought to look into. That's all. That's as far as it goes. But he's got a hot trio. They're very good. MR: Yeah. He's got a good personality on stage. BP: Yeah. Well he works at it. MR: When they were kids did they have a sense
that what you did was a little bit different than what other people's fathers did? BP: Oh they know that. They know that. They know what I did. When he hears an old record he says, "That's
you playing" he says, "I can tell you a mile away." MR: Is that right? BP: Yeah. He can. And Zoot Sims used to come over a lot so they
met all the characters. Even Benny you know, or Joe Venuti. Slam Stewart lived at the house for a while
and we did gigs together so they got a good cross section of what happened 20 years before
they did. MR: That's really neat. BP: And they remember every line, every joke. John even taped something of Joe Venuti telling
a story and it's priceless. But I'm glad they got that education from
the big guns like that, especially Zoot, Zoot Sims. MR: Let me test your memory here. This is something that you played on, and
I wanted to ask you about it. And I just lost it, so see if I can start
again. A guy we were talking about earlier. BP: Oh, Joe? MR: Okay. Because I wanted to ask you how you did this. I'm going to turn it up here as soon as I
find the spot. [audio interlude]
BP: Oh I overdubbed the melody. MR: Okay. That's beautiful. Joe always comes up with these interesting
little tunes to do. BP: Oh I know, I know. MR: When he comes up with a song like that,
does he bring in a chord chart? BP: No. He might have a lead sheet. MR: Lead sheet? Um boy. That's where the extra string comes in nice,
huh? BP: Yeah. MR: That's lovely. What's your schedule of recording dates like
these days? BP: Well there's not much going on, but what
I have been doing, I did something the last two weeks. I don't consider them studio dates you know,
I consider them people you know that hire you. I did a thing with Harry Allen and Scott Hamilton
with four rhythm that came out real good. And then the week before we did something
with John Bunch doing all Tony Bennett songs, and mostly all piano and I just played rhythm
behind them. Jay Leonhart and myself. MR: You know we were talking earlier about
jazz education, and if you could teach a course, would you include some things that you think
aren't being included right now? BP: Oh definitely. I think the history of whatever you're talking
about has to be known by the student, before he understands what he's about to do. Because he's liable to come and say hey lookit
I'm doing this. It's been done before. And the other time they go in blindly and
not know that you can do it with a lot of chords, you can do this and you can do that,
you have to know what preceded you. And the guitar being the newest instrument
of all the instruments, you're not going that far back, I'd say 1933, '32, something like
that. And pay a little attention and listen to what
went on. Eddie Lang, Charlie Christian. It's all different. Carl Kress. And there's a lot of history there. And George Van Eps, I mean there's some stuff
that those guys did that will never be repeated. They did it off the cuff. And you have to understand that. Just to go in blindly and start playing the
guitar is not going to help you. Because later on in life, you go 20 years
from now, and they miss this whole thing. George Barnes for instance, another great
artist, single string player. Every guy had a different style. But you could tell by one note who it was. That's the secret, and its greatness. MR: Yeah and a lot of people recently have
said they think the students coming out of the music schools now sound sort of the same-
BP: Oh yeah. MR: How do you get them to be individuals? BP: Well you have to bring them down a little
bit, and say look you're doing the same thing the guy over there's doing and he's doing
the same thing, and the only guy that's winning is the fastest guy. And that's not the name of the game. It's not speed. It's finesse and you've got to know the chords,
the harmony and the bass notes. If you don't understand that, or you don't
know how to accompany anybody, you're out of the picture. You put yourself out. You can't just say I can play single string
and that's it. That's not it. The guitar is an accompaniment instrument
and you have to know how to pick it up and play the bass note and a chord for a soloist. And the next thing you have to do is just
to play rhythm in a rhythm section, which everybody fluffs off today. They call it old fashioned you know. MR: Well is part of that then being able to
subdue your ego? BP: Yeah the ego has a lot to do with it,
but it's just in general education. If you're going to play an instrument, learn. You've got to know where it started. It's like classical guitar. Sergovia took the guitar and he came to that
tuning and he transcribed all of Bach's and the great masters for the guitar, and he created
that whole system. MR: Would you say that jazz has become a little
too angry these days? BP: Definitely. Yup. MR: Is there a reason for that? BP: I don't know. I don't know. It might be the guys who are putting it out. There's no room for that. Jazz is supposed to be happy. If you want to send a social message, do something
else. But don't take it out on music. MR: Don't take it out on music. BP: That's right. Because you're supposed to get the people
going, they've got to like the melody and they've got to like what you're doing, and
you're going in the wrong direction when you start
making speeches with music, on a soapbox. There's no room for that in my-
MR: Well do you recall hearing things like "Ascension" and "Free Jazz," Ornette Coleman,
those kinds of things in the 60s? BP: I heard it, yes, but I didn't like it. And what can I do about it? I can still play "Honeysuckle Rose" you know,
and make everybody happy. Or it makes me happy. And I've been playing it all my life since
I was ten years old. And who says you can't do it over and over
again? You know Zoot Sims played seven or eight tunes
that he was known for. And it was better each time, each time. And he'd play tunes he didn't know and it
always came out right. And Benny Goodman, look how many records Benny
made. MR: Yeah. BP: You don't hear Benny putting everything
in the ground you know. And when you hear those old bands playing,
they're playing with a little pepper, zip, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom. They're playing the hard stuff. Listen to the brass section behind Frank Sinatra. They're blowing their hearts out for forty-one
and a quarter. MR: Let me toss a couple of names at you here,
and get some personal comments. Tony Bennett? BP: Oh Tony. I made a lot of recordings with Tony. With about five or six different leaders. And I still see Tony on the street once in
a while and we talk. In fact when we did the Tony Bennett songs
with John Bunch, we called him to come to the studio see? And he wasn't home so John left a message. We're over at the Nola Studios, you know,
Steinway Hall, on 57th Street. And we finished the session and went home. Two minutes later Tony Bennett walks up to
the studio. Where are the guys? They went home. MR: Oh. That's too bad. BP: So they gave him a copy of the record
to listen to. So he and John got together, I don't know. He sort of liked it. MR: Good. Is he a pro in the studio? BP: Tony? MR: Tony. BP: Oh yeah, yeah. He knows exactly what he wants. MR: How about Rosemary Clooney? BP: Rosie, we just went to her favorite restaurant
last night to celebrate her birthday, all her friends. Rosie was a master at singing the melody. Now if you know any girl singers that want
to learn how to sing, just get a Rosie record, get a Jo Stafford record, Peggy Lee record,
and Margaret Whiting. She was there too. They sing the melody on the beat, no dragging
behind and no bebopping and doing everything that - I don't know why they do that. You don't know where the beat is they're singing. It drives you crazy. When you hear Jo Stafford sing, "Heart to
Heart" it puts everybody away. Sarah Vaughan was great. She was great. Ella Fitzgerald. But it's not that simple, just to play the
melody and interpret it. Frank Sinatra interpreted the melody just
right. MR: You've played almost with everybody. I'm wondering if there's anybody that you
felt you missed. BP: Well I missed Bing Crosby. I never played for Bing. I wish I had but that's a great history there. Eddie Lang played for him. But I followed him every step of the way. I heard all the records that he made and I
always enjoy them. And the next best thing was Frank. And I made some records with him. I played at the White House with Frank and
Perry Como. And we put a program together for Reagan,
you do this and you do that and we had fun putting it together. Same with Benny. Benny had no music with the sextet. We played the White House with Benny with
Buddy Rich playing drums and that was fierce. Because he never liked Buddy you know. He was a big Gene Krupa fan. And when he heard him that night, his eyes-
he said boy this guy can play. MR: Is there something generally in your career
that you are most proud of? BP: Well, for playing with all these people
you know, especially Benny and Zoot. It's something that just happened to me. You know all of a sudden you find yourself,
hey you're playing with Zoot, you're playing with Benny, you're doing this. That's the way the music business is. It's not like somebody calls you, "You want
to play with Benny Goodman?" You find yourself, all of a sudden, in a situation. And that's the way my whole career was. MR: But it wasn't undeserved. I mean you didn't maybe realize it but you
were building up to those things with every experience. BP: Well let me give you an example. I've done a commercial with a conductor and
I walk into the studio with my classical guitar and he's got written out now, in freehand,
this classical piece I've been playing all my life. And so I says I know this thing by heart,
and I played it. It came back, if I never practiced the piece
I'd bomb out. Now on the first day I was with Benny Goodman
he had a habit of just playing with you. He'd come over the start - hey you know this
one - and he played a tune called "Like Someone in Love." I've been playing it all my life. And I said I know it. And that's luck, right? And how things like that happen. A tune that you've been playing everyday practically. You have favorite tunes you play on the piano,
and two times in my life I knew it because I was practicing it the day before. MR: That's great. BP: But that means you're on the same wavelength
and all of a sudden you can do no wrong. Because that opens the door, and then once
you've got the door open you can do anything you want. And that's the way it goes. The music business is goofy. MR: It's goofy. BP: Yeah. It is goofy. MR: What's the goofiest thing that ever happened
to you in the music business? Is it possible for you to remember that? BP: Well I don't know goofy, but I played
Tiny Tim's wedding you know. MR: You did? BP: Yeah. MR: On The Tonight Show? BP: Yeah. MR: That's right. God I remember that. BP: Yeah. I tuned his ukulele for him and all that stuff. MR: You tuned his ukulele? Oh. How do you tune a ukulele? BP: Oh, my dog has fleas. [scats]
MR: I can imagine that scene. The guys in the band must have been like -
BP: Oh I know. Another thing on the soap opera "Ryan's Hope"
once I did, I got called to play for Helen Gallagher or somebody, one of those great
actresses that used to do the show. And the producer had me come in with my guitar
and he says, "Well can you find another guitar that looks like yours?" I says yeah. I went down to Carol's and looked for something
that matched. So I was playing the guitar and they showed
my half of my body playing the guitar and the other half was the guy who wasn't playing
the guitar. MR: Are you serious? BP: I'm not kidding. I did that. Yeah. Yup. When you saw him playing, and then they'd
shoot to him while he was singing and I'm playing the guitar. I was playing all the way through the whole
thing anyway. MR: And somehow they-
BP: Yeah they did all kinds of tricks. They don't do that today though. MR: Yeah, right. That's a good one. What's coming up in the near future? BP: Well I'm going in I think September I'm
going to Germany for a couple of weeks. I'll come back for a while and then I'm going
to Japan with Scott Hamilton and Harry Allen. They are fierce. Two great tenor players. MR: Oh that's a good match-up. BP: I mean it. That was one of the most thrilling records
I ever made with those guys. And then I've got some - I do some pop dates
once in a while with Skitch Henderson. I do some with Palm Beach Pops. I'm going to do something in Syracuse this
summer. MR: Right. With the symphony, that's right. BP: I'm looking forward to that, yeah. MR: And then you're coming back here don't
forget. BP: Oh yeah I'll be here. I'm here. I know how to get here now. MR: Well any words of advice for up-and-coming
musicians? BP: Well you know I always tell the kids if
you're going to play an instrument, learn the chords that you're doing, just the chords. And then when you improvise the melody you
can throw the chords in there. You've got it mixed up. You know if you play a single note instrument. If you're a guitar player, learn the bass
note and the chord. And that's what everything is. What do you think Johnny Mandel and these
great arrangers, they've got maybe a better set of chords than you have see? They've got a substitute here. But it's all the same. Now when you're playing the guitar when you
use a substitute, my theory is your fingers on the fingerboard. Forget about everything you learned in school. You don't have time to say to yourself E minor
seventh flat five. By the time you say it it's past you. It's you and the hands on the fingerboard. And then when you throw in a substitute, you
know where the substitutes are, the guitar does the work for you. It's not you doing it. The guitar is doing it. MR: Do you have to pay extra for this guitar
though? BP: No, no, no. I mean it. MR: It's an interesting theory. BP: You play a G seven and you know that a
D flat nine fits in there. MR: Yeah. BP: So when you put your hand, or play a run
in that thing it's going to sound, hey I'm out of space, it will sound real good. So if I do something chordally, which I know
how to do, it's even going to sound better because it's going to sound wild. You know, it's going to fit in so beautifully. But that's all it amounts to. And I always say when you're putting an idea
to use, play the blues or play "Lady Be Good" or something, and put those - they're not
tricks - put those chords in there and overkill them. Just play it to death. If it's a quote, do it as many times as you
can using the right chords and the substitutes. See? And then when you're ready to use it you subtract. I'm not going to use it here, I'll use it
once, boom, it's there. And it pays off. MR: You're kind of editing yourself. BP: Yeah but the first thing is overkill. Do it 'till you're blue in the face and then
all of a sudden when you have to use it it will work. It's fingers on the strings. And if you hold a chord this way and that's
your substitute that's what you've got to remember. I'm playing with G seven, there's a D nine. That's all it is. And if you play it chordally or single note,
it's going to sound beautiful. And you do that as many times as you can,
every which way. Backwards, forwards and do it on the Blues
or like I said "Lady Be Good" or some easy rhythm tune, it will work great. Common tones are big. "Lady Be Good" or "I've Got Rhythm," G seven,
flat five, G seven with a flat nine, C seven with a raised fifth. You've got the same note in there. And the last one F seven with a raised ninth. You've got the same high note. MR: Yeah. And it's going to sound really hip. BP: Oh yeah. What's doing it? Your fingers. See? MR: Almost makes me want to take up the guitar. Well you know I wanted also to congratulate
you on your upcoming fiftieth anniversary. BP: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah that's right. MR: It sounds like she's been a great help
in your career. BP: Oh very big, yeah. Sometimes she sits in the audience and tells
me when to change the chord. MR: She's a good listener then. Does she handle some of your business? BP: All the time, yeah, everything. You know I wake up in the morning and you
know I don't realize it but every morning we've got a stack of mail, we've got this
and that, and by the time it's twelve noon and we still haven't made four phone calls. But it's good that way, I'm not complaining. MR: Right. It means you're busy. BP: That's right. MR: Well it's been a pleasure-
BP: Well thank you. MR: -as usual. And I look forward to our ceremony tomorrow
and congratulations. BP: I've got to run back on Sunday because
Monday I've got to play in front of City Hall, Saddle River City Hall. MR: You mean-
BP: In Saddle River. I'm going to play "My Buddy" or "America"
or something. I do it every year. MR: That's nice. Sounds like you've got good small town roots
there. BP: Oh yeah, well I love that. And then she says, "You want to march in a
parade or we'll put you in a car?" I said, "Well where's the parade going?" She says, "it's going from the City Hall to
the fire house." I said, "That's a block away." I says, "No I'll play and get out of there." MR: All right, well thanks a lot. BP: Well thanks a million, thank you, thank
you, Monk. (c) Fillius Jazz Archive -19-
