We are filming today for the Hamilton College
Jazz Archive and it's a great pleasure to have with us master clarinetist Buddy DeFranco,
who just described his instrument as an "agony pipe." BD: I got that from my sister Maryanne. Maryanne always called it an agony pipe. She says that's what it sounded like when
I was practicing. And she was right. It's the strangest instrument. MR: Difficult. One of the more difficult instruments I think. BD: Difficult, and I would say in line with
the bassoon, oboe, French horn and harp. It's in that category. It's agonizing. You must squeak on a clarinet for years before
you begin to play anything. MR: And it strikes me like a violin in that
there is no such thing as a mediocre violin or clarinet. It's either you're really good or if it's
mediocre it's awful. BD: It's pretty bad. We've got a problem though in jazz, of too
many mediocre clarinet players who insist on playing. MR: Yeah. Well they figure I can play sax, I can play
clarinet. Well you've had quite an interesting career
and we want to talk about some of the things you've done. Didn't you start out winning a contest? BD: Monk, I did, yes. I was fourteen, and won the Tommy Dorsey Swing
Contest. And Tommy had this national broadcast from
the major cities on a Saturday night. Every week he'd be in a different city. It had four contestants, and it was the Tommy
Dorsey Swing Contest. And I was pitted against three other guys,
we were the four finalists. Let's see we had a cadet who played trumpet,
and a vibraharp player who was quite good, and someone else I forget - oh a trombone
player I'm pretty sure. But I was in line, and I was fourteen and
I wanted to win of course, and my teacher, Willy DeSimone at the time, played in the
pit in the theater, in the Earle Theater in Philadelphia, which is where they held the
broadcast. They had the broadcast and the contest. And Willie was determined that I would win. So he said, "For the contest you will wear
short pants, because the people love that. You'll look so young, and the clarinet will
look real big." And I was very skinny at the time. And then he showed me a trick with the clarinet,
it's really almost common with old time clarinet players, to hold the clarinet like this with
one hand and play a note. And he said, "At the end of your solos," he
said, "you're going to play 'Honeysuckle Rose' because everybody knows the song, and at the
end of the solo play your E like that and put out this hand so the people know that
you're playing with one hand, you know the people can see it. And he was in the pit and I was scared to
death, but I was playing and I watched him signal - one hand - and I did. Well those other guys had no chance you know. They had to lose, no matter how good they
played, you know. MR: You were set up. BD: I was set up, yes. But Tommy liked it. But he saw something in my playing, he really
did. What it was I don't know, but he did. He said, "Stick around kid, someday you're
going to play in my band." MR: And that's what happened, right? BD: That's what happened. In fact, many years later, I don't know how
many, ten, fifteen years later I auditioned for his band and got in. MR: Did you grow up listening to the kind
of music that you eventually played? Radio? No? BD: No. We started, my grandfather was an opera buff
and liked classical music, symphonic music, and that's what we listened to first and that's
what I played first. And I was fairly good at it and played in
a junior symphony in Philadelphia and Symphony Club in Philadelphia, as I was twelve, eight,
eight to twelve years old playing in that. And then I took a music course at the vocational
school, Mastbaum in Philadelphia. In fact Joe Wilder was here with us - Joe
Wilder? He and I were in the same class together back
in Philadelphia. We had a great time and we learned. They had two really dedicated teachers. One in particular, Mr. Lavenneu, conducted
the orchestra. I think he was, well he was the 1936 version
or 1937 version of Mr. Holland. That's him. Except maybe more severe and more intimidating. But we accepted that. Now it seems like band directors and orchestra
conductors can't get away with being so volatile. They have to be careful, they'll get sued
or something like that. But in those days if he heard, you know if
he knew that the third trumpet player or the second string violin, if they were playing
wrong notes, he'd throw the baton in that direction. But we loved him, we loved him. We knew that he knew and he was directing
us in the right way. MR: Yeah. He cared enough to get angry I guess. BD: Yeah. He cared enough to get angry. And so that was a great experience. Then I heard Benny Goodman. Oh I heard Johnny Mince first. He played with Tommy Dorsey's band. And my brother and I would go to the Earle
Theater in Philadelphia and sit there all day on a Saturday, five, six shows, and see
every show. And I watched Johnny Mince play with Tommy
Dorsey and I thought I'd really like to do that, play jazz. And then of course Benny Goodman, and then
Benny Goodman was, I would say responsible for putting the jazz clarinet on the map. Then Artie Shaw. And Artie Shaw to me was, he might still be
my favorite today. So one thing led to another and I wanted to
play jazz. I told my grandfather who flipped out, "crazy." Although he began to like Benny Goodman. In fact I used to tell Count Basie this story
all the time. Basie loved - no matter how many times I'd
tell Bill the story, he loved it. I'd come home from a long trip with one of
the bands - Johnny "Scat" Davis or Gene Krupa's band or Charlie Barnet. And my grandfather would greet me at the door
and he'd say in Italian dialect, in an Italian accent, "Okay Biga shota" Biga shota he called
me. "You're looking pretty good - I seen your
picture in the paper - what do you got in the pocket?" MR: Did you have anything? BD: No. He says, "You hear Benny Goodaman? What do you do?" He loved Benny Goodman. And Bill Basie would flip every time I'd tell
him that story. MR: What was it like being on the roads with
those bands? BD: I think an invaluable experience, just
great to be on the road. Even at that early age we appreciated that. We liked the idea of being involved in that
kind of music and swing music and playing, and the discipline of playing in a band was
unequaled. Also you experience life in different ways
and you get to meet different people and some of those bands like Johnnie "Scat" Davis or
Gene Krupa, Charlie Barnet, they both had some of the finest players. All three of them had some of the finest players,
who later became excellent studio players or first or second chair in a big bands, some
in symphonies. And it was a great experience because you
would meet the young fellows who were coming up, and all fired up, and you'd meet some
of the older guys, experienced, and they could teach you a lot. And then that gray middle section of boozers
and dopers that were really on their way out but still could play fairly well but you knew
they were sinking, which was a great lesson because we knew to avoid that gray area, as
young people. Well most of us anyway, not all of us. Stay away from that and try for that top guy,
you know try to be like him. MR: So the first couple of bands, Krupa-
BD: Scat Davis, Krupa, Charlie Barnet, Ted Fio Rito, and Boyd Raeburn. I don't know if you ever heard Boyd Raeburn. MR: I've heard of him. BD: It was really the first outside band,
the first space music band. Most songs were totally unrecognizable with
those arrangements. We loved it and it was a great experience,
it was like going to school to play these arrangements. We had George Handy arrangements, Johnny Richards. In fact the young fellow that was singing,
Jay Johnson, used to announce the band, the Rayburn band, backstage. And he'd say, "From the Planet Mars, here's
Boyd Rayburn." And it was like that. And I tell my audience every time, that band
was so far out we could empty a room in two minutes. We did. Nobody liked it. MR: How long did it last? BD: It lasted about a year and a half. MR: Yeah. BD: Well he made a lot of noise in inner circles,
you know music circles. MR: Yeah. Would they book you for a dance though? BD: Unfortunately they booked the band for
dances too as well because you had to fill in. In those days you couldn't consistently play
concerts. So it had to be dances as well. MR: They danced out of the room, right? BD: Danced out of the room. MR: What was it like, did you notice different
responses in different parts of the country? BD: No actually the amazing thing about swing
and big bands was it was accepted, generally, in every area of the country. And even some areas where, you know, Dubuque,
Iowa - you'd say Dubuque, Iowa, why? You'd play there, five thousand people or
whatever, all jumping up and down, and five hundred in front of the stage just listening
and the rest all dancing. Just incredible. In Dorsey's band for instance, every guy in
the band had his fan club. And we played some stadiums, and it was so
jammed with people that you just couldn't get off during intermission, they'd have to
pass up the Cokes and water up to the band from the police, and the police would do that. They would just be so tightly wound around
the bandstand. Couldn't get off. MR: It was the pop music of the day. BD: It was the pop music of the day and also
a lot of people wondered why jazz didn't stay in that focal point, in that high area. When we started playing bebop, I say "we"
because I was a part of the Bebop Era. And of course I heard Charlie Parker and that
was it, I had to be a part of that. And rhythmically it was a little different
and harmonically, and so we divorced seventy or eighty percent of the dancers. They could not dance to bebop. They could dance to straight swing music,
that was jitterbug. But when we got to complex rhythms and all
that, they couldn't, their brains couldn't handle the intellectual development of bebop
and their feet couldn't handle the thematic development, so they reverted to Neanderthal. They had to. MR: They found something else. BD: They found something else. They had to go back in history and find the
simple way to do it. So we lost out that way. That's part of it anyway. MR: Your first experience in bebop, where
did that take place? Back in New York? BD: Yeah. Back in New York. I had not worked with Charlie Shavers at the
time but we knew Charlie pretty well and met him on Broadway. When I say "we," Dodo Marmarosa, who was quite
a piano player. I would say at fourteen years old he was one
of the best in the world, jazz piano player, who also recorded with Bird and was on all
of the bands that I've played with including Tommy Dorsey. He was with Artie Shaw as well. Dodo Marmarosa. Artie loved his playing. But he and I ran into Charlie Shavers. And Charlie Shavers said, "There's some guy
up in Harlem that I heard last week playing alto." He said "I don't know what he's playing, but
it's completely different and it's pretty wild stuff. You ought to hear it." So we made it our business to go and hear
Bird when we found out where he was going to be up in Harlem, which was I think Minton's
at the time. And when we saw him he had borrowed a saxophone,
he didn't even own a saxophone at the time. But I am proud to say from that time on I
said I've got to try to learn to articulate on the clarinet like he does on the alto. I was one of the first and I'm very proud
of it. And then just a short while after, Dodo Marmarosa
said, "Why don't you play clarinet like Charlie Parker?" So I did. I did. And I was really the first, successfully the
first bebop clarinet player in the business. All the guys were gravitating toward that
but I was the first. MR: It takes an awful lot of facility to pull
that off. BD: Yes indeed it takes a lot of facility. And I was lucky because I had all that early,
excellent training so I could do that. And Charlie Parker and Art Tatum to me are
the two that stand out for genius in this business. Absolute genius. Everyone else, as good as they are - and this
includes Oscar, and Oscar will tell you this, Oscar to me was the epitome of pianists - would
tell you that the first, one of the innovators was Art Tatum. Nobody played like him before that. But after that everybody tried. Charlie Parker was the same. Charlie Parker influenced every musician in
the world that plays jazz. From his point on, even now, we all live in
Charlie Parker's shadow. MR: Someone had a quote about that. If he could sue people for what they've taken
from him. BD: From what we've all taken - we had to. And what the strangest thing is is that some
of the most commercial type bands, we used to call them "Mickey Mouse bands" and even
the rock groups, unconsciously are playing a lot of those figures that Bird originated,
and are not even aware of it. And you can go to Bapooh Japan and see a little
guy get up and play tenor, and he's maybe ten years old and he's playing bebop. You know he's playing Charlie Parker oriented
music. MR: What did the record companies, what did
they think of bebop? BD: Most of them didn't like it. They didn't understand it or they didn't like
it. It's only when bebop caught on with Dizzy
and Bird and Jazz at the Philharmonic that record companies began to say well maybe there's
something there. Norman Granz had his own record companies
and began selling records like mad. And so they got in on that. But most of the company executives, in almost
any area, didn't know what they were recording. I hate to say that, but it's pretty close
to the truth. Very few. Very few really knew, good or bad. MR: What to market and what not to market. BD: Yes, exactly. What to market and what not to market. Yup. That's really what it amounts to. The amazing thing about that era was that
even though - it never died - it just kind of faded and then other music came in. Even though it faded, it never lost hold. It was always there, always consistent, we
always had a loyal following around the world. A very loyal following. True a narrow corridor, a narrow section of
the public, but very loyal, and always came to see us. MR: There wasn't that much room but if you
were at the top of your game, then maybe you could get enough chances to play. BD: Yeah. And even when things were really fading here
for bebop so to speak, or modern jazz, we could go to Europe, and we're always recognized
in Europe. Seventy percent of my income was in Europe
for many years. 1950 around that area is when I decided I
wanted a big band, but Willard Alexander came to me and said, "I'm putting together a small
group for Count Basie because big bands are kind of folding." Which I didn't want to believe. I wanted my big band because I idolized Benny
Goodman and Artie Shaw. But he was right. So he put me with the Basie Band in 1950 and
the guy I told you about, Lenny Lewis, he was managing, he was the manager. MR: No kidding? BD: Yeah. MR: So this was in Chicago, when they got
together? BD: It was at the Brass Rail in Chicago, yeah. MR: Seven - six or seven pieces? BD: It started out Clark Terry and Bobby Graf
from St. Louis, a tenor player, myself on front line, Bill Basie and Jimmy Lewis played
bass and Gus Johnson played drums. And shortly after that, Freddie Green joined
and that was fantastic. It really made that group. MR: You had to have Freddie, right? BD: Huh? MR: I mean Freddie was such a part of -
BD: He was a part of Basie, and Freddie came by a couple of times and just sat in because
he wanted to play, and Bill realized as well, this is the rhythm section. It was great to work with them. It was like going to swing school. And then Bobby Graf left shortly after we
organized and Wardell Grey. And he was great, he was just great. He was a great player. So that was quite a group. That quintet was quite a group, sextet. And on Sunday afternoon, a young fellow by
the name of Joe Williams would come and sit in and sing, because he loved Bill Basie. And after the second time that Joe came in
and sang, you'd see Bill's eyes light up, this is the guy that can sing today. It wasn't long, then he hired Joe. MR: What kind of material was Joe doing at
that time? BD: Well he was doing mostly the swing era
stuff and the blues. Because he had followed Jimmy Rushing, who
was really the blues singer of the big band era, the top guy in fact. But of course Joe Williams had that little
extra something that added to his performance with Basie, the sound and robust voice he
had, plus the fact that he could handle the ballads very well. So that made him an extra feature. And that was great, I enjoyed that. MR: And how long did that group hang together? BD: Hard to figure. I would say about a year and a half or so. Basie found Lenny Lewis stealing and fired
him. I found out also that Artie Shaw chased - before
all this happened Artie Shaw chased Lenny Lewis down Broadway one time for some odd
reason. But he was brilliant. I can't put him down. Lenny Lewis was brilliant. MR: A good promoter. BD: A good promoter, and Basie will tell you
the same thing. I'll tell you working with Count Basie was
like, we were a family, it was actually a family. As loyal as a family, maybe more so. And it was one of the happiest experiences
of my whole career. For instance, playing with Tommy Dorsey was
a great experience. But that was almost a terrorizing experience
in many ways, because Tommy was bigger than life and he could fire you at a drop of a
hat you know. He was generous, he was, and I'll quote Zoot
Sims, you may have heard it, Tommy Dorsey was a great bunch of guys. So he was all those things. But Bill Basie was one of the nicest people
in the whole world. And it reflected in the group, in the way
we got along. MR: Was there ever a problem with the racial
mix in that group? BD: Not in the group. Never -
MR: Not in the group but - BD: Well yeah. We used to consider the people on the outside
who had problems with the race combination "civilian." We did have some problems, and then I got
in some difficulty in Chicago because while I was with Basie's band I stayed at the Croydon
Hotel, I always stayed there. And Harry Belafonte, we worked together a
lot opposite each other. He would come over and stay at my place for
overnight or two days if they had room there. And then I began to receive phone calls from
anonymous people, "we don't want him around here - no blacks around here" -you know. At one time I was accosted almost by a group
of guys in Chicago for playing with black people. But in the Basie band, it was never a consideration. And I loved Bill for that reason. Bill Basie looked at you as a player. And a human being. And that was it. It's a strange thing too, I almost during
that time because, with some of the experiences with the civilians on the outside I almost
became anti-white. Yeah. And with good reason, you know, at the time. MR: I mean the music you were playing, it
was so connected with black culture and there you were in the middle of it. BD: That's right. And half, maybe more than half of jazz, was
created by white people. And Dizzy spelled it out pretty well, we had
- utilizing African and Latin rhythms and Caucasian and Asian harmonies, and put that
together and play jazz. So that was you know a conscious effort to
work together, and it worked. So there was no room for a differences of
races. Once in a while you might experience that
in the music business but rarely, rarely in the jazz field, in those days. It changed you know. But in those days it was either you played
or you didn't play. MR: So shortly after that group, Basie was
able to, economically I guess, add his people back. BD: There again, Willard Alexander said the
time now is right for the big band and I think Bill Basie is the kind of a guy that could
spearhead this kind of thing, and he knew he had Joe Williams with Basie's band, who
was a plus factor, not only musically but commercially. And he said to Bill Basie, "Time for the big
band." And everybody in the business, including Norman
Granz, said better not take a chance, you know. Big bands are finished. But Willard said no, let's go ahead, let's
go ahead. And they did and they soon made a couple of
records and they made one "Every Day" with Joe Williams, and that was a smash. Big, big hit. So it catapulted Basie right up to the top
again. And it also brought the idea of big bands
back into focus and as a result of that, and guys like Woody Herman and Stan Kenton, some
others that kept on operating, they've instigated perhaps more than thirty thousand big bands
that are operating now in schools. Which nobody knows about, but that's a lot
of people. That's a lot of bands. MR: You got into some jazz education early
on. BD: Oh yeah. I still am, well with a recommendation from
Stan Kenton. Things were very rough and I wasn't doing
too well and I was griping and moaning at Stan, and Stan says "well that's true, things
are bad, why don't you do what I do? Let's get into the schools and try to salvage
something from the young people in the schools. We know we're not going to do much good with
the older people, but let's get in the schools and get the young people and see what we can
do." And I did. I started going, teaching and doing these
clinics and master class sessions in schools, which also instigated a lot of interest in
not only bands, but the clarinet. Yeah. Because the clarinet really almost died as
a jazz instrument. But we kept it going. MR: Did a good job too. I mean it's still happening now. BD: Oh I think there are more clarinet players
now then there have been in twenty years, which is great. MR: And for a few years you were leading the
Glenn Miller Orchestra? BD: I did for eight years. '66 to '74. MR: I saw you in Rochester, New York. BD: Did you really? MR: I think it was '66. BD: We had a good band. In fact, in fact, in fact, last week we received
a CD that's just released in Japan of the band, actually the last group that I led,
the last Miller band. We recorded in Japan. It's taken twenty-four years to release that
record. But we got a copy of the CD and it's a great
CD and the band is just terrific. And you could hear that youth and fire in
that band. Yeah. So we proved something there also. When I say "we" we kept the idea of that big
band and swing going. And it turns out the Glenn Miller Band is
probably the most popular band in the world. That includes Japan. Number one band there, the Glenn Miller Orchestra. MR: In Japan. BD: Yeah. MR: Boy that's saying something. BD: And he was remarkable. Because it seemed like he really knew how
to turn out hit records. He did. One after another. I can't think of any other band that has as
many hit recordings as Glenn Miller. MR: I guess it took him a while to find his
sound but once he found it he really took it and ran with it. BD: Well actually it didn't take him that
long. I would go through the annals and the files
of the Glenn Miller offices, and the archives, and I'd read scores of Glenn. Actually "Moonlight Serenade" was not "Moonlight
Serenade" when he wrote it. He wrote it, he called it "Glenn's Theme"
and he wrote it as a graduation piece for Schillinger orchestration method and that
was it. It was that lead clarinet with the saxes. And according to Dave Mackey, who was the
executor for the Glenn Miller estate, he tried to sell that sound to Ray Noble, I don't know
if you've heard of Ray Noble, big band popular? And Ray Noble told him, not good, will never
make it. But he just kept it until he got his own band,
and he made it. MR: We should pair that guy with the people
who turned down the Beatles I guess. BD: Well not many people did. Or Madonna. I think it all has its place in the scheme
of things as long as it's not for instance, here I go again, I don't want to get up on
the soapbox too much, but since I have the cameras -
MR: It's the time to do it. BD: It is the time to do it. A guy or a girl gets to be a big star, movies
or other. Big star, big, big, big, big. All of a sudden, every word that that person
utters, politically, religiously, whatever, is the word. They are an authority on everything that happens. And I found out that's really not true at
all. I found out also that great talent in music
has nothing to do with intelligence. It's another part of the brain that's operating. But whoever gets really, really big and popular,
they're the ones who become the guru or whatever, and people accept everything they say. It's really too bad they shouldn't. It really shouldn't be that way you see? But there's a place for everything. So therefore, back to my original premise
- you may not be a good musician, but you are an entertainer, and you have the charisma. That's it. Don't label this person a musical genius. All right? MR: Because we know there's only two of them
now. There was Parker and Tatum, right? BD: Well I think there might have been more,
and you know, Peterson, Oscar Peterson is in that area, John Coltrane, Chic Corea and
today Cecil Taylor I think. Cecil Taylor is probably the ultimate jazz
creator today, the ultimate in modern jazz, modern jazz. Not commercial I don't think. MR: No. I wouldn't book him for a dance. But this must have been a fun record to make. BD: Oh, yeah, this is great. MR: Oscar Peterson. BD: This is funny because Norman decided that
since so much time had passed, he decided to title this "Buddy DeFranco meets the Oscar
Peterson Quartet." When we actually met in the 50s and played
together at the Jazz at the Philharmonic. Night after night. And recorded several albums before together,
including one of my favorites, the "George Gershwin Songbook." Russ Garcia arrangements, the big orchestra,
that's one of the nicest. But this was fun. It's always fun to work with Oscar. Always. Because he's so dynamic and has impeccable
taste in music I think. He knows when to play what. Probably the most, probably one of my favorite
pianists to work with, because he knows how to play for the clarinet especially. MR: Interesting statement. How to play for the clarinet. BD: There's a certain way, certain registers
of the instrument, the piano, that you can utilize behind a clarinet that makes it sing
or brings it out, and Oscar is number one in that area, as opposed to say, I love, as
I told you Art Tatum was one of the original geniuses of jazz, like Louis Armstrong, like
Bix Beiderbecke. But very difficult to play with. And he did not enhance the clarinet, Art Tatum. He was really on his own and you played your
clarinet to suit him. It was his ball game, as opposed to Oscar,
who really made you sound good. MR: That's very interesting. What is in the future for you? BD: More of the same. Festivals and concerts and clinics in schools,
and I wrote, I recently finished a book, I got a bright idea, I think it's bright and
I've managed to get it through the copyright office, and I transcribed 20 of the Hanon
piano exercises for the clarinet. But I transcribed them in all keys, all twelve
keys. Which was remarkable. I'm working on being able to play them now,
but it's great, it's great. And we plan to put that book out very soon. And I did a thing with Rob Pronk, a thing,
I did four radio shows with Rob Pronk, and with Hilverson, with a big orchestra. He wrote the charts and Van Overloop conducted,
and some of the most beautiful arrangements ever, and we're going to release those here
as an LP, as a CD rather. MR: Are you working with any particular record
label right now? BD: Not right now. The last one was "Chip Off the Old Block"
that I did for Concord. Carl Jefferson suggested I do another album
pretty soon, unfortunately Carl is gone, so I don't know, that's in limbo. I did an album recently with Al Rahman's band,
a big band in Philadelphia, some nice stuff in there. I've done a lot of recording activities. Many re-issues as well as what I've done recently. Many re-issues. MR: It sounds healthy. BD: Very healthy and I keep practicing and
try to make it less an agony pipe, and I'll never forget Horowitz I believe it was, they
said, "You're 82 years old and you're still practicing?" And he said, "I think I'm getting better." MR: You know we don't usually ask technical
questions, but we may have a few clarinet players who might ask you about your instrument
and the odd looking barrel- BD: The odd looking barrel? Well let's see from top to bottom this is
my creation, this mouthpiece and it's put out by Bari, they release it, Bari mouthpieces. MR: Bari? BD: B-A-R-I? Yeah. MR: I play their reeds. BD: Yeah, right. They put out the BDF mouthpiece. John Denman, by the way, John Denman makes
excellent clarinet reeds, he's in Tucson, a fine clarinet player. Bob Wiban ligature, from Kansas, and this
is a Accubore barrel, which is made of metal, not wood, so that it doesn't change so much
from different areas and climates. And it's a Yamaha clarinet, and I've played
Yamaha clarinets, what 24 years. This is about the best system I've worked
out to play what I do in modern jazz. MR: The least agony. BD: Yeah you always try to get away from the
agony. Well I'll tell you those Hanon exercises will
teach you about agony. MR: Can you swing 'em too? BD: Well you actually can. I think unconsciously that's why I chose them
because they can lend themselves to lines that you would play in jazz. MR: And tomorrow, you're playing in the Kansas
City group. BD: Yeah. That's named I guess because it would simulate
the Count Basie small group, and Clark Terry is on that thing and Clark and I go way back. We were really buddies. He was one fast story about Clark and myself
because Clark and I were contemporaries in 1950 when we joined Basie's band, and the
first rehearsal I will never forget because Clark and I had abundant technique on our
instruments, both of us. And we both wanted to show off. So we did. Practically the first song we played, we played
everything we could imagine into the first song, and enough for three symphonies. And Bill Basie stopped us. He says, "Well wait a minute, we're going
to get there, honest, we're going to get there. Take it easy. Not too many notes." And he started plunking at the piano the way
he does. And before you know we got the idea. There it is. There's the tempo, there's the feeling. Yeah. Of course Clark got it a little faster than
I did I would say, because I was always a show off you know, technique, I wanted to
show everybody. But it was a good lesson, right in the first
rehearsal, a good one. MR: Yeah. Because that's what his music was about was
the feel of it and how to play inside that. BD: And I never realized how everything we
played emanated from Bill at the keyboard. And if you isolate everything else and listen
to the way he engineered every chart, every arrangement, there was certain ways to play
chords and cues and figures. It was just marvelous the way he did it. He knew how to bring a soloist in. How to bring a big band in to the last chorus,
everything. And when he and Freddie Green got together,
all you had to do was zero in on those two guys. MR: We've asked a number of people, what made
the Basie rhythm section what it was. And they agree with you. BD: Absolutely. Without a doubt. MR: And Joe, I've read about Joe, he would
talk about hearing his cues from Basie. When he heard Basie play something, he knew
he had eight bars or twelve bars to get up there. BD: Basie had a cue for everything. He even had to cue for the audience, a feeling
for what they wanted at that time. So he had a little cues we finally picked
up on. And he even had a little cue for good looking
girls that came in. That was Bill. MR: Well this has really been fascinating
talking with you. BD: Thank you. Thank you. MR: And as our leading exponent of the jazz
clarinet, I hope that you keep it up forever. BD: Thank you. I'm going to try because I think I'm improving. MR: Well on behalf of Hamilton College I'd
like to thank Buddy DeFranco so much for joining us today. I wish you a good concert tonight. BD: My pleasure.
