We are filming for the Hamilton College Jazz
Archive today in San Diego, which has become a much more desirable city to live in, because
Chubby Jackson lives here now. CJ: Thank you. MR: And instead of giving my normal, brilliant
introduction, I think we should turn to Duffy Jackson. CJ: What are you referring to? MR: I'm referring to one of your offspring. [audio interlude]
MR: Did he learn that from you? CJ: You know when he was this big, and we
would drive in the car together, like raining like it is, with the windshield wiper, I was
always scatting because I was thinking blues. And so I think if I remember back, he was
this big and he started [scats], and I'm saying "yeah, yeah, yeah." [scats] And he can scat now, have you heard
him? MR: Oh yeah. Checking it out. Well I've been looking forward to this time
to talk with you. CJ: Me too, Monk. MR: And the things that I read, they always
mention of course that you were a stellar bass player, but that you always brought a
great deal of energy to whatever you did. Have you always been a person with high energy? As a kid, were you one of those kids? CJ: Well right up to date I notice I can cross
my legs just the same as you do, and when I was real fat it was always like this, you
know. But now, look at that. MR: I'm not sure your nickname fits you anymore,
but I think you're stuck with it. CJ: No. I'll tell you that was so wild. After losing 109 pounds, Monk, getting back
into the swing of things, I'd run into people and they'd say, "Hey Chubby." And I had to go through a whole period of,
"Don't call me Chubby, I'm next to gorgeous." But turning that whole thing around, when
I was with a band at one time by the name of Raymond Scott - does that - at any rate,
my first name is Greig - G-R-E-I-G. And we were rehearsing in a place in New York,
Nolo Studios. And the drummer, Andy Picard, dropped his
brushes. So I leaned over and handed it to him. And he said, "Thanks, Chubby." Well I went absolutely berserk. Because all through the high school, if anybody
would say to me "Fatso" or "Chubby" you know, I'd feel like the left guard on the defensive
team. And so I said, "Don't do that man, please." A trombone player on the other side of the
drums said, "Whattsamatta, Chubby?" So we went to work that night, and Raymond
Scott introduced me to come out and do whatever terrifying number that I did. He introduced me as Chubby Jackson, and I
decided I was going to give my notice. So we get in the bus and I don't really rant
or rave. I mean that was what my reputation was, happy
monster. But I was upset about that. I don't want to get a reputation as Chubby. So this guy I'm sitting alongside of, I can't
think of his name, but he said, "Whattsamatta?" He said, "Lookit, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman,
Buddy Rich, whattsamatta with Chubby Jackson?" So I said okay. And from that moment on, it helped. Because it was more of the character that
I attempted to be on stage, and off stage too, than just Greig Jackson. So that name has stuck through all these years. And in a lot of ways I'm very grateful for
it. MR: It has a certain ring to it, and a lot
of the musicians of that time, I mean Pee Wee Russell, I don't think his mother named
him Pee Wee. And it's funny because he wasn't a tiny man,
was he? He was kind of long and lanky. CJ: No, he was about, oh I would say about
five-ten, and he talked like this, real slow you know. I don't know. You know that the slow talkers, getting back
to that, you know Shorty Rodgers, remember him? Remember Al Porcino? Can you imagine those two having a conversation
together? Shorty talking like that, and Al Porcino would
say, "That's right Shorty." Can you imagine how interesting? I mean that could be something to think about. MR: So what brought you to the bass at a fairly
young age? CJ: Oh yeah, well Arnold Fishkind, who is
a bass player, my closest friend, he was 15 or 16 and he was playing with Bunny Berigan
already, you hear? And I used to go hang out in Long Island,
some club, I can't think of the name, where Bunny's band played, and I became Bunny's
gopher, you know, "Get me a pack of cigarettes" and that was the first nickname, it was Bunny. But I was so attracted to the musicians, the
way they talked, the way they attempted to live. Down deep in my heart I wanted to be an actor,
be in plays or whatever else could come from that. But I was recommended to go to New York and
audition for a play called "Brother Rat." Well I walked into the room and all these
people from the theater, they were all in one of these, "Hello Jim, how are you - well
Mary darling, come over here." And I didn't feel comfortable in that area,
because I'd been hanging out with Georgie Auld and Joe Lipman and George Wettling, and
Arnold of course. And so before I even was given the opportunity
to read the thing, I backed off and walked out of the room, and that's the entry. And Arnold knew that I needed to play something. So he sold me Bessie, my first bass, for three
dollars. But the interesting part, I played a club
date that night, on drums - I mean on bass - but here's the beauty of it, I didn't have
any idea where any notes were, but I learned something immediately. If I don't know where notes are, shake my
you-know-what and smile. And I played that whole night playing notes
like this, and guys were coming over and saying, "Hey, man, I didn't know you could play like
that." I've lived a career of that. I have. And you know I've talked to Milt Hinton about
this, because my nickname for him is "Smiley." No matter where he's playing, if he's playing
with a jazz group or a polka band, you can count on it, he's one of these. So recently, well not recently, I met Jay
Leonhart out here, and Bob Haggart and Milt Hinton, and we were all talking together,
and I said, "You want to know the real truth behind bass?" And we were sitting there like this. I said, "When you get lost, hit a B natural
on the A string. Because like you get to the release of a song
[sings] hit a B natural. Because then you've got a breath that - well
you could slide up to the C, or you could slide back to the B flat, or you've got the
open strings. It gives you that extra breath. And when you get right there, give it one
of these things [scats]. And everybody goes, "Wow, that bass player." And these guys flipped out. Because we all knew exactly what I was saying. They've all been - every bass player I've
ever known in my life is playing up there like this, and then some guy calls out a tune
and you go ohhh. And you get to the middle part and you know
everyone, the saxophone player's playing beautifully, and you have a choice to play maybe the way
they play today a lot [scats], which can give you another breath to find out what the next
note is. But that is funny. The B natural sequence. Isn't that lovely? MR: I'll have to remember that. And I feel sorry sometimes for the bass player. It's like at these parties, you know they're
calling all these tunes, and it seems like you can never know every tune. CJ: That's right. MR: And the bass player's got to be on top
of it. CJ: Yeah, right. MR: You know? I mean a saxophone player can kind of -
CJ: Noodle. MR: He can noodle, that's right. CJ: Or take the mouthpiece off and change
the reed. MR: It's not working here. The microphone's off, like I can't play you
know. But that's a good little thing to remember,
because you can slide down, or you can slide up. CJ: With a big smile. And this. And so everybody just says they don't care. This is a D flat seven, and the release, who
cares? But I've got even a worse story, if you can
listen to this for half a second. This is before the nickname of Chubby. I was living in New York and I went to a little
night club where they were having welcoming home Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, and Hot
Lips Page, and Slam Stewart and Nat Jaffe. And I went there, Mr. Hip, and I'm listening
to them play and they're my idols. And the second set is getting ready to play
and all of a sudden Hot Lips Page comes over to me and he says, "Hey man, Slam is in the
dressing room and he's not feeling good, something's wrong, he's got a pain in his stomach." He says, "Can you fill in for bass?" And I went oh man, you know, that's another
thing, when somebody pushes you, and here you're playing with your - at any rate, I
got on the bandstand - see I have to remember these things, I can't remember yesterday,
- but I can remember the first tune was "Chinatown." I got completely lost, didn't know where I
was, and Nat Jaffe, the piano player, was looking at me with a four letter word called
hate. He's looking, he's playing piano like this
going what the hell's the matter with this guy, you know? And this time I remember [sings] Darn That
Dream, and that's why that's never left me [humms]. I got lost with every chord. I was like sweating. I died. How I got through that set, I'll never know. I walked off and my friend drove me back up
to Washington Heights where I was living. I cried all the way home. And that's the only time in my life where
I got handed that. But it happens to all bass players. As you said just a moment ago, we don't know
all the tunes. I remember when Roy Eldridge was playing on
52nd Street. All the comfortable tunes. All the tunes we all know, yeah, sure. Let's play some blues. Or let's play blah blah blah - sure. But Dizzy was now new at his game. So he'd get on the bandstand and he's call
some tunes that nobody knew you know. And not only Roy Eldridge, but the piano player
and the bass player, the drummer just played some time. But there was a whole period at that time
of musicians absolutely not knowing where they are. And at least I had that in the earlier part
of my career, where like, let me go home. After that, you get a certain amount of nerve,
you practice quite a bit, you jam, you get out the reading glasses, you do what is necessary
to become a major league player. And even up until today, you can get on the
bandstand and some guy just to be cute will call out some tune and you don't even know
the first chord. But I think that people should know that poor
bass players have - they've always been the little hidden guy on the bandstand. Am I right? MR: Yeah. CJ: Now follow me. They're playing like this - that was the bass
player. Well I decided from the first night that I
played out on Long Island, that - was the answer. Because you know what it is? It's like an equation, Monk. It's like X plus Y equals Z. X is your playing ability, Y is the way you
present it, and Z is the resultant of a good performance, right? And oh I was accused many times because Woody's
band used to advertise me "the baffoon on the bass." And I remember Al Mastron, trombone player,
see I joined Woody's band when it was still the band that played the blues. Well shortly after that the herd started to
play. But when we played the Paramount Theater,
oh how I remember this too. I'd be up there tuning up, and the news would
be on the screen, and Al would come walking over to go over to his place for trombone. And as he walked by me it became a feature. He'd go, "Hi there actor fella." Yeah. I was getting a reputation amongst standard
musicians as an actor fella, because I performed. And I noticed that if I did perform and I
sweat and I moved, that I would get attention. Whereas before, the other bass players who
were standing like this, a lot of people didn't even know there was a bass player up there. MR: I wanted to read something to you. This is Leonard Feather's book from the 1960s. It's quite a long listing of you. And it says, amongst other things, "Most significantly,
an able bass player, he was important as the catalytic agent or cheerleader whose personality
sparked the Woody Herman band. His personality and comedy attracted attention
without upsetting the musical value of the group." CJ: Yeah. MR: You know, so somebody was hip to what
you were doing. CJ: Well it was very important to me. See my mother was in vaudeville for 42 years. My real father died at an age of 29, he was
in a Broadway show at the Wintergarden Theater in New York called "A Girl From Brazil." So I came from a family of performers. But I loved the actual growth of improvisational
music. I was so in love and in awe of everybody. But I also knew that in order to gain attention,
I had to do something, because bass solos at that time were not quite as audible. There was no amplifier. And bass solos to me were never - if I had
my way I would have as soon played alto. Alto sax. I was furiously in love with alto sax. And so to play bass, the note used to die
right away. Now what if I want to play [scats] - because
that's what's in my soul. It doesn't come out of the bass. Of course, now with
the amplifier, you can go [scats]. I mean that was a different instrument helped
by the electronic situation. But in those days, I never was that attracted
to a bass solo, until I first heard Jimmy Blanton play. Because before that, bass players to me, like
Basie's bass player, what the heck was his name? MR: You mean from the All-American Rhythm
section. CJ: Yeah, with Freddie Green, and -
MR: I can't believe I'm a blank on this. CJ: Well anyways, almost coming down chromatically
[scats]. Somewhere you had to be in the chord, right? The chromatic player. And so see of course Freddie Green was always
going [scats]. So when I heard Jimmy Blanton play, he would
go [scats]. And I said hey, that's cute enough to be a
solo, and he breathes enough in between notes to make it sound like a solo [scats]. Who was the bass player in Denmark? Niels Hedding Pedersen? MR: Yeah. CJ: I think he is absolutely so fantastic. I have a video at home of him with Oscar Peterson. And I met him over in Holland, he was with
Oscar, I was with Lionel Hampton's big band. But I studied the way he plays great time,
because I'm a time bass player. I mean that, I think I had the reputation
for being a time bass player. And so I studied Niels, then he starts to
play a solo and he would breathe between notes. [scats] And all of a sudden it all started
to make sense, and of course Oscar Peterson's backing him was lovely. And a lot of bass players today, they're up
in fourth, fifth, sixth, twelfth position, you know, like up in here [scats]. To me I think that playing - bass is bass. I spent some years playing with Davy Tough. Monk, he taught me how to play bass. Oh boy, you know what he did? First of all he said - he tuned his drums
to a C major cord. MR: No kidding. CJ: His cymbals to a C. He had a special cymbal
for tenor when Flip would play, he had another cymbal on that same cymbal with Bill Harris,
he had an ensemble cymbal, you know the one with the nuts and bolts in it. He'd taken it all out but one. And he'd make like he was cutting a piece
of pie, and it didn't have that [scats], but it had [scats]. That's the ensemble. He'd say to me, "When Flip is playing a different
thing, stay with him, right in here, then to make it more obvious and more exciting,
go underneath Flip for a while, way down in here." Then as he started to get a little excited,
go up and come down, medium, and then jump from here, and then go down, with his eyes
he's telling me this. And when it's the ensemble, stay low. Because when you get up high, you're up in
here somewhere. I mean I know that's today's version of bass
players showing off. Believe me. [scats] All right Jim, like could you see
the position he was in? The sixteenth position. Yeah. Played two notes at the same time. Down here. You'll find out if you listen to some bass
players who are playing down low, pay some attention to it, and you'll find yourself
getting a little more excited. You'll say hey. Because that's where it really -
MR: Grabs you. CJ: It is. Because this was an absolute version of showing
off. You know? MR: Well listen, from that first gig you went
out, the first day you had your bass, you played a gig that night. CJ: Yeah. MR: Probably you said to yourself I have a
few things to learn, right? So how did you go about that? I mean -
CJ: After that? MR: Yeah. CJ: Well it was shortly after that that I
just graduated high school, so I went out to Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio. And I met - I can't think of his name now
- but I started studying with a legitimate bass player from the school, and he had a
good sense of humor and whatnot. And I was a little frightened by it. But little by little, okay. The man that really taught me was a gentleman
by the name of Homer Mensch. He was a bass player with the New York Philharmonic. And he was like six foot three, big long hands,
and if you'll notice, I have very short hands but wide hands in here. And when I first got to him he said, "Pick
up the bass." And I did. And he said, "Is it comfortable?" "Yes." He taught me how to play the way my body looked,
the way my hands were, my arms, like he wasn't saying well look you're a bass player, here's
what you've got to do. Shorter arms. He worked around my physical being and knew
- I told him in front that I loved classical music to a certain extent. I loved let's say I love city eastern music
instead of country and western. You frowned there, you didn't know what I
was going to say. But anyhow, he knew I wanted to play jazz. So when I used to go there every Thursday
afternoon, he would point out different ways, and he would say, "You can play this up in
this position if you want" blah blah blah. And little by little, certain things started
to come to me about the fingerboard. But playing with Davy Tough, he took that
knowledge that I had received from Homer Mensch, and told me what areas to play, the strong
area, when the ensemble's going don't go crazy, but get into a thing where it's walking. And this little guy, he had feet this big,
and he used to wear these black shoes with no laces in it, and I was in the early 20s
in the Herman band, and Dave was 41, which to all of us was like an older man, old, yeah. And he was so cute. Because like after a show he would come by
and he'd say, he used to call me Snuggy. He'd say, "Snuggy, did I play okay? Was I all right?" I'd say Dave - boy . He did a thing at the
Paramount Theater I've never heard in my life. I have to tell you this because it may groove
you. I was out front doing my bass number. You follow me? Tempo about here, okay? And then there's three - it's a blues - so
there's three twelve bar phrases with the band and Pete Candoli's gleaming, and I'm
playing [scats]. It comes to that thing, and all of a sudden
I'm playing and the tempo dropped. And I got like, did I do that? But while I was playing, I said I feel like
I'm hearing 25 trumpets, and 30 trombones. I said the band is expanded. So woah. I got back, and when the pit was going down,
I went to him. I says, "Dave, what was it?" He said, "Did you dig that, Snuggy?" And I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Look, when the thing is going,"
he said, "and if you get it down here," he said 'it catches on and it gets broader and
wider." And he said, "The same thing," well he said
"I haven't done this before," but he said, "I just wanted to try it with you." He said, "Look, when the band is right here,
and we're getting in two last choruses, we're going to scream and run through that wall"
he says, "take it up this much," and he said, "the tempo gets sharper and wilder and furious." And he said, "It's the change of tempo." From that day on we were changing tempos all
over the place. And it made so much sense. No band has ever done that since Dave was
in that band. And I recall it as if it were ten minutes
ago. Because I was playing next to him. See if I'm playing this way, and you were
Dave, I was right here. [coughs] Oh, I need one of those cookies. MR: Need some water? CJ: No. MR: Need one of these? CJ: Yes, yes, yes. You don't mind, Tim, if I-
MR: I'm sure you'll return the favor. CJ: Thank you. You don't mind if I do that, do you? Kind of add the wild look. At any rate, I learned so much about that
way to play, and what a feeling. Can you imagine now, say when you get back
home and you're able to stand in front of a band or you're with a band, and you know
how the arrangement - arrangers used to write, and they weren't aware of the fact that you
could change the tempo. Because band leaders as a rule always wanted
it to end where you start. That's not human. MR: Well was that partly because of the dancers? CJ: You mean why they wanted to end at that? MR: Yeah. They didn't want to mess with the tempo because
of the dancers? CJ: No it was an unwritten law, that if I
beat the tempo off one-two-three-four [scats], that it should end at the same thing. But that's not life. Dave would explain it to me. If you're walking down Broadway, and coming
at you are three or four people together, you're walking and you've got this tempo going,
right? All of a sudden they get there and you have
to slow down to let them go by and you walk around them, and you get back to your tempo,
but you may be walking a little faster, or slower. That's life. And he'd say to me, same thing goes with music. An arranger writes something and it gets very
exciting. So let's change the tempo here, and all of
a sudden the band gets another feeling. You hear? Just for fun, try that, and just think of
Dave and think of me. Because I would like very much to see when
and if the big bands return, that they can have that facility, that reason for playing
that way on a bandstand. It's a rhythm dynamic, where you play soft,
intense, loud, screaming. Why not give the rhythm section the opportunity
to take you and put you in different tempos. If you're playing saxophone and it comes out
of the ensemble into you, why not, with your permission, take you right here now? Groove tempo. And you're saying hey, that's cooking. And when it comes back into the ensemble,
move up in here somewhere. Why not? MR: Makes sense. CJ: Sure it does. MR: Makes sense, like life, as you said. I'm always impressed by the physicality that
must have been required to be an acoustic bass player at those times. CJ: Oh yeah. MR: When I listen to this-
[audio interlude] I think of you back there, with like you said
very little amplification, driving that whole band. Did you ever like experience any physical
harm? CJ: Oh yeah. A lot of times your arms get numb, your fingers
too. You're playing and all of a sudden they start
to shake because your whole body is carried away with what's expected of you. But physically at that moment, you're not
up to it. You know what I mean? Because everybody else in the band has a moment
to sit with the horn in their lap, until the end of time. I said the end of time, you like it? MR: But I picture some of those jam sessions,
you know, where the horn players are lined up, you know, and everybody's playing "I Got
Rhythm" and they come up for four or five choruses, next guy. And you guys are back there. CJ: Yeah. And then someone looks at you and said, "Take
one." Jez. Take one. That's the laugh of the century, when somebody
points to the bass player, after twenty-eight choruses have been in front, and your hands
are in one of these. You know you walk around. I had hands on me that were so ugly, I used
to keep my hands in my pockets all the time. You know from playing. This is still not straightened out and whatnot. But Carnegie Hall, Everett Hull walked in. And I was the first bass player to play with
an amp. He was going to go on at eight o'clock, and
at four o'clock in the afternoon he took my whole bass apart. I died. You know, ask any bass player, don't touch
my bass. Because every bass player has a different
set of strings' height, this and that. He took it down to the sound post. So he set it up and I said [scats]. So he said something to me that I pass on
to every bass player that is playing an electric bass. Don't turn it up too high. Why? It plays you. You're not playing it. It destroys intonation of the whole band. You're playing [scats] what happens to the
intonation of the band? It struggles. The time struggles in the band. So turn it up so you can just hear it. Yeah, that's nice. But not [scats]. Because that's why rhythm sections are not
swinging that hard anymore. The notes you hear, one hangs on to the other
[scats]. And the drummer's playing like this. It should be [scats]. Now they're like a married couple, a man and
a woman I mean. MR: I got ya. CJ: Oh well. And when they swing and cook together, the
whole band, if they're all good musicians, they can have a sense of knowing how to feel
crazy. Like yeah. If the bass and drums are swinging, the band
cooks. You know? MR: Yeah. CJ: I'll tell you, I've been playing but I
just wanted to show you this, I brought it. I'm writing. I just finished a book and it's called The
Happy Monster in fine print. Isn't that the lowest? MR: Explain that picture to me. CJ: Well it's very difficult. Because it's really nuts. I mean the guy took a picture and I've always
been this. I did a dumb thing. Igor Stravinsky came up to the Paramount Theater
backstage, to rehearse the Ebony Concerto, and this is wild, it really is-
MR: First sentence: "I have to admit that musicians are strange people and so are their
credit ratings. CJ: Yeah. That's so true. At any rate, Stravinsky, I got the bass parts
two weeks before. It was like this. First note, one-two - four. I said you know I've been playing all these
Ralph Burns things, Neil Hefti. I said look at this bass part. He came on, this little guy, and went, "von-two-three-four." I got lost in the first bar. You know why? He didn't have the rhythm section together. The drums are playing [scats] over here, the
guitar player was off in left field somewhere shagging flies, and the piano player was hitting
[scats]. And I'm going bump - I fainted. But then, after the thing was over - oh, you
know he wrote a hard thing for Flip Phillips. So Flip is struggling through the thing. So he stops the band, this little guy, Igor
Stravinsky, and he said to Flip, "My goot fellow, what you are playing is vedy nice,
but what I have written is much better." That did it. The whole band collapsed. Flip was sitting there smiling. And so naturally, what I'm getting to is Stravinsky
came over and he's going around the band and he finally got over to where I was, and here
I've got the five string bass, you know, with the C on top? And so he took the bass, so the guys, the
photographers were taking pictures. I should have stood there, you know like Chief
of Staff. Hi there. Instead I did one of these. Well I've tried for forty years to see if
I could find some way to find a connection to get a picture of him standing there, Stravinsky. They wouldn't let me have it. Because I had overstepped my bounds, which
I've done many times in this life of mine, I have to admit it. But all those things were very exciting. We played Carnegie Hall with Walter Hendl
playing, and that was such a victory for all of us. And the next night we played the Lyric Theater
or something in Baltimore, and we're playing Ebony Concerto, and there was somebody else
- Walter Hendl couldn't make it. So one of Stravinsky's pupils, sidemen, whatever
you call it, came in. The band got completely lost, and for the
first time in my career, we got booed. Imagine? The night before it's one of these. We walked down Seventh Avenue and Broadway
like we owned it. The next night we were booed. Shows you what life is, huh? Cheers, boos, cheers, boos. All through life. I don't mean booze, I mean boos. Thank you. MR: It seems I had read about when you were
working on that concerto that you guys were also working at night? That you were playing gigs at night? And then during the day you'd have to go up
and you know struggle through this music with him. It must have been a real challenge. CJ: He wrote a part for Woody that was pretty
difficult. His conception was, if you're the leader,
you've got to be the best player in the band because you know, that's why you're leader. Woody was going [scats]. He finally got it because he decided - I'll
tell you, I can't tell you too much or talk about Woody without saying this man was the
nicest, most gracious man I have ever worked with in my life. He had interest in us. He let every one of us play what we felt. I mean like Bill Harris. You like playing it that way? Go ahead. Flip. Where other leaders tell you, this is the
way I want it to sound, and nasty in a lot of ways. Woody, we used to call him Mr. Shrug. If disaster would come, he'd go - I mean recently,
this is funny too. I write a column for The Herd, you know The
Herds that A.J. Julian has, it used to be in Boston? It's all about Woody. I mean and he's got a huge audience, I mean
all Woody's fans. And I write once a month for the band, and
I wrote two times that I saw Woody get upset. Milwaukee is his home. The band is number one. We get to the Riverside Theater and the manager
of the theater is a man, I can't think of his first name but Wisefelt was his last name. He remembered Woody when he was this big. All through the week he was coming back to
Woody's dressing room, "The band stinks. I mean it's too loud, we don't need that,
and what do you think you are." And here's Woody, he's with the top band,
and being raised - brings back the idea you can never go home. At any rate, the last show - oh I'm playing
"Holiday for Strings," he turned the bass mic down, I didn't hear myself and of course
the band is playing ensemble behind me. So Woody got on the microphone and said, "Ladies
and gentlemen I'm very thrilled about being home, but this is the last time I'll play
this theater. This gentleman here is a very good friend
of mine, he knows my mother and my dad," but he said "he made it so hard for me and my
band this week." That's one time. At The Metronome, in New York, he had his
band and they hired me to have a small group in between the sets. So we're just finishing and Woody's walking
around. So I put the bass down and I walk over and
he's fixing his reed like that, and a big hug. And the boss comes over, and he's a New Yorka,
talks like dat dere - you know the New York sound here? And the guy says, "Hey. Woody Herman. Get on the bandstand here." He says, "Look, come on now," he says, "I'm
paying for the band here." And Woody was saying, "Excuse me, sir, I mean-"
He says, "Don't give me none a dat excuse me, Sir, just get on the bandstand." So Woody said, "Look, if you say that again
to me, I'll tell the whole band to go home, go to the hotels, see you later." Of all the years that I've spent with Woody,
that's the only two times I've ever seen him just get - Guys used to not be able to come
to work and you'd think a leader would get - Pete Candoli's not here? Leave it to one of us. And we'd have somebody there, and he'd just
look up at the new trumpet player and go - What an attitude. MR: Well it's interesting too that the two
instances you pointed out, he didn't even explode, right? He just calmly stated his peace of mind. CJ: Yeah. I learned a lot from him with that. Of course in this business, it's like a yoyo
being set free in an elevator. One minute - it's up and down life. One, hey, how are you everybody, the next
day you're like this, at the bottom of the thing, looking for the back door to leave. And he just, although we saw him, my wife
Margo and I went to someplace in Florida to see the band. And this was shortly before he got sick. And I saw that he was tired. You know, after all, seven nights a week,
because he owed the government, which was a big drag. Not that owing the government is a drag but
I mean I was with the band when the manager was taking all of our, what is it, social
security, and betting on horse races all over the United States. And he got caught and was put in jail, seven
years. All of a sudden, Woody gets a letter from
the IRS saying you own a million and a half dollars or something. And it forced Woody to keep working. And he was tired. After all, he got a bunch of younger guys
in the band all saying, "Hey man, what's happening." We started that. "Hey man, what's happening?" Right? So he didn't have anybody to relate to really,
where he could sit with and be himself. You know? He had the younger generation with him in
the band, which were great, but there was nothing between them. I mean when I say nothing, there was a lot
between them, years. And it just didn't work that well. MR: Well 1945 and '46 and '47 were pretty
big years for you. You won the Down Beat poll and Esquire magazine. CJ: That's a funny story. This friend of mine, two friends, and this
happened a week ago, his name is Leo Adelman, trumpet player, and another one is called
Lou Mitchell. Lou Mitchell found this and Leo Adelman xeroxed
it for me. It's the 1946 Esquire All-American band, of
which they had a Gold Award, Silver Award and a new starter. Do me a favor, read the Gold Awards up there,
while I sit here and play with this toy. MR: Well we have quite a line up here. On trumpet Cootie Williams, Bill Harris on
trombone, Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins on saxophones, Benny Goodman on clarinet,
King Cole, piano, Oscar Moore, guitar, Davy Tough, drums, Chubby Jackson, string bass,
Red Norvo, vibes, and vocalists Louis Armstrong, Mildred Bailey, Ella Fitzgerald, with Duke
Ellington arranging. CJ: How do you like that? MR: I can't imagine you could get any better
than that. CJ: No. I had forgotten all about that. But you know something so wild about this,
Monk? This whole thing was responsible and was the
birth of what is now known as "The Great Day in Harlem." MR: Right here? CJ: Yeah. Because all these guys were in that photo. And that wasn't called "Great Day in Harlem." And a lady by the name of Jean Bach put this
whole thing together, a lovely lady, too, and whoever was available - I mean Woody was
not there because he was out of town, Lionel wasn't there, Duke wasn't there. But if you see that picture, I have a little
picture of that with me- MR: Yeah, we have it. CJ: Oh you have it? At any rate, it all of a sudden became "A
Great Day in Harlem." And then, this is wild, two years ago, they
sent for Margo and I to go to New York City, to meet on the very stoop in Harlem that the
original picture was taken in. There was only, well, ten of us there. And the rest of them were all gone, and it
was a very wild get together. The next day, at the Silver Cup Studios in
New York, they much have had a hundred thirty or so, around that area, of all the greatest
musicians in the world showed up, to take more pictures. MR: Including your son. CJ: Yeah. Well I brought Duffy in, and when we were
getting ready for the pictures, I said, come and stand right alongside of me, you know. And so I held on to him. So nobody came over and said, cause he was
younger. And well I'll tell you, Duf, any way you look
at it, deserves to be anywhere at his talent. He not only plays, like to me the best big
band drummer, I mean it, but he plays marvelous bass, he plays great piano, plays vibes, he
scats, he sings, and at this moment, he has a big band in Florida. As a matter of fact tomorrow night they're
doing a concert, because he called me yesterday, and I told him I was coming down here to see
you all, and he said say hello. And yeah, he's very, very artistic. He's been like that since he was four and
a half, five years old. I was doing a record date in Chicago, and
I brought in Don Lamond on drums and Bill Harris on trombone. So Don stayed with me for a week. And he noticed that Duffy - I had a bongo,
I don't know, somebody gave me. I hate bongos. You know why? It covers the bass note. MR: It covers the bass note. CJ: Yeah. You hear those bongos [scats] and you don't
hear one note of bass. MR: Stay out of my way. CJ: Yeah, right. As a matter of fact, never once did I play
with a [scats] Woody's theme? Of course it's [scats] I mean it covered every
bass note, so what did I - I'd just stand there and wave. Hi there. You know? That's another thing. Don Lamond said, look at the time this kid
has. So he went down to some drum company, one
of the big ones, and he got him some little second hand set, and I'm assembling them. And then I do remember that he told Duffy,
and I can say this to every drummer, because what a thing of learning this was, he said,
"When you hit with the thing, don't let it bounce back, you lose control. Hit, and hold it. When you hit with the bass drum, boom, hold
it. Don't let it go" [scats]. Boom. So I've held on to that training for a drummer,
and so, it's like we grew up together, Duffy and I. And I watched him, and he used to come in
and sit in when I'd be playing when he was ten years old, eleven years old, and upset
the whole place. You know he was just a kid but he loved his
music so much, and he certainly has quite a history now. He's played with just about everybody. And he goes over to Europe quite a bit, because
that's a very good place for a jazz musician to go. I wouldn't say live, because I don't know
that much about it. But just to go over there, you make some big
bucks, and everybody loves you, ha, ha, ha. And he lives in Pompano Beach, Florida, which
is very lovely. And he calls me every now and then, "Daaaad"
and I say uh oh, here it comes. I'm in one of these, yeah, that's right, um
hum, yeah baby. um hum. Oh, is that what happened. So finally I got with Duff, this is a couple,
three hundred years ago. I said, "Duff, do me a favor. I love you so desperately. Don't call me on the phone and lay all of
that on me." I said, "I'm another person," and I said. "I've got my directions of woe, and I've got
my places where I trip and fall and skin my nose. Don't step on me while I'm bleeding." "Oh, okay Dad." The phone would ring two weeks later "Daaaad." So finally it got to the point, he understood
me. My daughter in Hollywood last year wrote a
sit com which she's presenting around, you know the name of it? "Don't Tell Dad." MR: All right. CJ: In other words, I have two daughters,
right? And Duffy. And they're together. I said, "Don't you think he's going to tell
you, look leave?" And then there's, "Shhh, don't tell Dad." So isn't that a cute idea? MR: Well you were into T.V. yourself. CJ: Oh yeah I had a T.V. show. MR: Tell me about Chicago a little bit. CJ: Well I'll tell you, Duffy was born, he
was four or five weeks old, and I was with Louis Armstrong at the Chicago Theater. And I couldn't leave my wife. And Nina was two years older, little babies. So I had to tell Louis that I couldn't go
to London with him. So all of a sudden I got an offer to go on
staff at ABC in Chicago, to be the bass player on "Kukla, Fran & Ollie." You dig this? [scats] And that's all bass
I played. With all the bass I've ever played in my life,
that's what I had to play on the network show. Well one night, or the day before, Burr Tillstrom
came to me and he said, "It's you and me tomorrow." He said - what's the name of the girl that
was on the show - well anyhow, I want you to give Beulah Witch a bass lesson. So it's got the little, you know - we rehearsed,
we got on the show, we did exactly the opposite of what we'd rehearsed, and it got funny. MR: This is live, right? CJ: Yeah, live. And all I need is to push a button and say
go nuts, and that's just it. MR: Oh really? I hadn't noticed. CJ: So all of a sudden I get a call from a
gentleman program director, Danny Shufman, he called me that night and said Burr Tillstrom
just recommended you, see we're bringing in a show called "The Little Rascals," you know
with Spanky and all of them. And okay. So about the end of the first week I was doing
"The Little Rascals" and the guy brings in a commercial. I'd never done a commercial. Silvercup Bread. And so here we put the bread in, toast it. So the old man that's holding the cue cards,
he had the cue card turned upside down, with the commercial on it, and I knew I had to
put the bread in so I pushed the bread in, and all of a sudden it popped out and fell
on the floor. The commercial I did should go down in history. Because I might as well have been talking
about like a Studebaker car you know or something. But I started to learn how to time myself,
and guys like William Bendix, the Lone Ranger, Betty White, they were all guests on the show. And I'd never done that before. Jerry Lewis came on, and Jerry Lewis sat there
like this. I've known Jerry for nine hundred years. He was like this with me. Like, "Go ahead, you're the host." And I'm squirming to be funny. And all of a sudden little Duffy, who wanted
to meet Jerry Lewis so badly, of his own volition, walked on and stood in front of Jerry like
this. You know? And Jerry says, "Who is this?" So I said, "This is my child." Well for the next five or eight minutes left
in the show, it was a big scene between Jerry and Duffy, which got me off the hook. So as I look back at it - oh yeah, in Chicago,
I got nominated for the Best Kiddy Show, and won it. Would you believe it? I'll tell you why. It wasn't my fault. Now I mean this. We were on from four to five. And all of a sudden at five o'clock, on comes
Mickey Mouse. When you're on television, if you have a rating
of 2.3 you're a genius. My rating, from 4:30 to 5 was 26.5. Yeah, because of people tuning in to see Mickey
Mouse. So that's what helped it. So with that, they sent me to New York at
ABC. So a combination of 13 years of doing a kiddy
show, all the theatrics that I learned, I was finding that I could progressively learn
of how to act, how to know a 60-second bit, know what cameras to look at, how to get cute. I mean things, and it was all live. None of it is taped. MR: Do you have any of that video? CJ: Somebody here in San Diego has a tape. He was a band leader out in Huntington, Long
Island. And I ended up having high school bands coming
on the show as guests. And he was one of them. And last year I ran into him and he says,
"I have a tape of yours with 'The Little Rascals' from New York." He says, "I'll get it to you." And that's the last -
MR: Oh you've got to get that. CJ: Isn't that wild? MR: Let me ask you about a couple of little
things that I read and I often wondered if they could possibly be true. Something about Trummy Young hiding in your
bass case? CJ: Oh yeah. That was with Charlie Barnet's band. This is true. We were playing, and backstage, we're on stage,
and backstage there are two guys with a vest, and they really looked like who they were. They were C-O-P-S. And Charlie went off the stage while the band
was doing something, and he's talking to them. Of course he was probably afraid the band
was in trouble of some sort you know. And that's beside the point. But at any rate, the next tune was "Mood Indigo." And on account of that, all the lights come
down, and lights from the bottom come up. And word was passed through to Trummy to get
off the bandstand very quietly. And I had one of those big, black plastic
bass cases. And it fit him. And he got in and pulled the cover on him,
and then the lights came on and we finished the show. And where's Trummy? Ha ha ha. So that was the truth. We all cracked up. I mean when that happened it was all over
the trade, as everything else gets all over the trade, that Trummy was hiding in my bass
case. That was true, yeah. MR: You and Bill Harris had -
CJ: Oh man, my favorite musician. You know he looked, we had a band together
called the Jackson-Harris Herd. I was supposed to be the idiot, right? Right? Bill Harris is the six foot three and a half
- we used to call him the mortician. You know, can I stand up? Show you Bill Harris? He never moved a muscle, right? We were playing the Blue Note in Chicago and
Dave Brubeck was the other band. Here's Bill Harris' whole life, he's playing
[scats]. That feeling he had - the vibrato from the
mouth and all that. And his pants dropped down to his ankles. The whole place went nuts. To this day Dave Brubeck looks at me and goes
[scats]. And of course the next night one of the waitresses
brought him in and he had long underdrawers, you know the white things? With long white legs. He had that kind of silly sense of humor. Mine was outgoing. You know if I say I'm going to run through
the wall, you can bet I will. Bill would, oh man -
MR: What's this thing with the slide, the trombone that he could play out to the side
or something because he had a little crook in the mouthpiece or something? CJ: I don't remember that. Well it could be. But one thing that always killed me about,
you remember "Caldeonia?" We recorded it and none of us really noticed
at the moment, he was playing valve trombone. None of us ever saw him play valve trombone. Where the hell did he come up with valve trombone,
you know? He was the one guy that when it came to Letter
K where it's time for the trombone to play, we were all like this. Because every time, every night, he'd play
something different, Monk. Not the comfortable attitude of a musician,
say I play [scats] - no. And play it every night? We were like this. And me, the cheerleader, right? Yeah Bill. And the whole band was going yeah Bill, baby. And I'll tell you he's played some things
- I have tapes and records at home that there's one thing that Neil Hefti wrote and I can't
think of the name of it, but we did record it but it never got anywhere, but it was so
beautiful, oh. And I have to admit, that I am the worst button
pusher in the world. I push a button and the place either explodes
or decides to leave town. Like I was playing one, and I pushed the button
and I erased the first eight bars. This is the favorite thing of mine with Bill
Harris. Something that - you know the tune "Everywhere?" Like it's so beautiful, and when I hear him
play, and it's such a simple melody. I mean it seriously, the fun-loving Chubby
starts to get tears and cry. That's how much Bill Harris got to me. We'd known each other, oh man, close to twenty
years, and we never had an upsetting word with each other, which is normal. You're with each other every day and night,
after a while you've got to do something, you get - wait a minute. You know what I mean? But never with Bill. MR: Oh man. You had an unbelievable line-up in 1945. There's a little quote here about the rhythm
section. "By mid-year the brilliant rhythm section
of pianist Ralph Burns, bassist Chubby Jackson, guitarist Billy Bauer and drummer Dave Tough
was in place." And I guess if there was a rhythm section
to give the Basie a run for their money, it was probably you guys. CJ: Yeah. Well that's because as I said, the credit
really I feel goes to Davy. Because as I've mentioned before, he taught
me how to play bass. And he would capture my enthusiasm and put
it in place. You know what I mean? And oh boy - Billy Bauer is so cute. He's built like this, all right. At any rate, we'd be playing theaters, and
an act is on from like a comic. So here's Billy that's got a build like this
right? And all of a sudden he'd go, "Chubby" - he
had a voice up in the soprano, big Billy. And I'd say, "What?" "Did you hear that?" And I'd say, "What?" He said, "One of the stage hands just said,
'what's that bald headed guitar player playing with a bunch of young men for?'" I said, "I didn't hear that." All right? We'd go on, the next tune, "Chubby? Chubby? Did you hear that?" I say, "What?" He says, "Somebody in the audience is making
fun of me." I say, "Oh Billy." Well I finally got a hook on it. "Did you hear that?" I'd say, "Yes I did." Oh man, they shouldn't talk like that, Billy. But look, forget them, they've got their own
way of life, they're in a lot of trouble." And he's sitting there like this. Because that was Billy Bauer. Like he was always like that. He's got that New York sound, and he'd talk
like - And here he is, he's 81, he teaches, he's a good teacher, he's got a big studio
out in Albertson, Long Island, and he just recently put out a book called The Side Men. He put out a book. One of his students, a lady, a literary artist
of some sort, put together a book. But man if you would hear or rather read,
some of the stories, like and his grammar is like, "So I said me and Chubby" and this
one and that. That's the way he talks, it's bad grammar,
but he's telling stories, endless stories. Margo and I were hysterical. He sent me one of the books. In the back he's got a section of how many
records he'd been on. And I'd be looking at them, and I'm on almost
every one with him. I'd forgotten all about who I recorded with,
when they were recorded, and I'd say hey I'm on that record. And the thing is going fairly well. And so Don Lamond, now there's another goody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know what I have a nickname for him. Don Lamond, right? I call him "Ichekeboom" [scats]. He's always playing Ichekeboom. Any time there's a fill it's an Ichekeboom,
ching cha ching. So he just wrote a book and it's doing very
well. So I said look, if they're all writing books,
I'll write one, The Happy Monster. I have another one, and some day I must just
show to somebody, which I frankly doubt, but it's got a beautiful title. It's called Live With It and Shut Up. You like that? MR: Yeah. CJ: See I am afraid to send things to publishers
because the publishers, like the readers, probably just graduated Cornell. And here I am at my age and stage and I'm
writing with my flare of humor and they'd read this and say ohhh, yilch. MR: I don't know. CJ: And I'd get a Dear John letter from him
saying very nicely done there, uh, yeah, Chubby, right. But you know I won't ruin my life for that. You know what that would do to me? MR: I know you couldn't stand that. CJ: I mean a Gold Award and they tell me I
can't write? MR: I can tell you have such a fragile ego. CJ: Yeah, well yes, in a way. But I am basically a swell guy. MR: Well listen, you brought one more thing
here - CJ: What's that? MR: This little tape. CJ: Oh yeah. I'd like to show you something, yeah. This is fun because you know I learned something
too from Neil Hefti. He was rehearsing the band one time, and we'd
get to Letter H or something, and he stopped the band and he said, "Look, brass, take it
this way" [scats]. And I was used to hearing scat singing from
the older days, Cab Calloway, some of Louis Armstrong's things, Danny Kaye [scats]. You know? So when I heard Neil do that, I said he's
sounding like an instrument. So I started studying that - trombone a little,
or alto, whatever. And it's [scats]. Well you've got it there, so you want to go
[scats]. Make it sound like it's an instrument playing
and you're really joining the instrumental side of the band rather than being the vocalist. You dig? So there's a tape I have. MR: I have it right here. CJ: Oh you've got it in there? It's just a rhythm section. Duffy's playing drums. Just play the front part and I'll show you
what I mean. MR: Okay. CJ: It may take ten bars before it gets there. MR: Well nothing like a little silence to
build tension. [audio interlude - Chubby scatting]
MR: All right. That is out there. CJ: It's fun. MR: That's great, man. CJ: I'm always doing that at this age. MR: I don't know if you can teach that or not. CJ: Yes, I'll tell you, yes. You know whenever I perform, I say all right,
everybody get - come on, let's get into it. So I'll do a thing like [scats]. And they never scatted in their life. And while they're going [scats], I'm going
[scats]. And here's a whole audience, like two, three
hundred people, going [scats]. And the looks on their faces, like I never
did this is my life. You know? And it's fun. And I think really seriously, that scatting
should become part - can you picture the vocal department in any college, any university,
that could take blues riffs and say [scats], like that kind of take? I did it once when I was teaching in New York,
and there were about sixteen, eighteen people there, male and female. And I sat them around me in a box form, and
I had them singing [scats], and this over here [scats]. And this over here [scats]. And it was like an ensemble. Now if you can picture, for the first time
in a music department - you know the difference sometimes between the vocal end of it and
the instrumental end of it. They're friends, but they're in a different
world. They really are. Yes. Right. But can you see putting those two worlds together? If the band is playing something and you've
got a choral group there, and they're scat singing. And I have all the syllables written down. Bo da, Dodela, Dlaa is D-L-A-A. And so it's teaching them to go [scats]. And the band is playing [scats]. If they could get together, like what a thing
in the future. Huh? MR: Absolutely. I think you ought to find a position, as head
of music somewhere. CJ: I would love it. I think that's good. Have I got time to tell you what I think of
the big band that's coming? MR: Please do. CJ: Okay. Picture this, huh? I sound like "The Golden Girls." Here's the stage, right? And right in front, one, two three, three
different rhythm sections. Huh? A raised level of six people on each thing
with a rhythm section. No sections, where it would be like five trumpets,
four trombones, five saxes. No. You have a lot of trumpets infiltrating that
look, but what it is now, you've got that raised platform, right? All right? Now we come up to this platform, and we've
got three more sets of like tenor saxophone, trombone, soprano sax, trumpet, trumpet. And all different molds of instruments. No section. And you've got three tiers. And it starts off like this rhythm section
is playing, and you've got little, like where you can step down, and so guys are moving
from different sections, walk down and join this mic in front, this one comes up here,
there's movement, action, that's what I'm trying to - X plus Y equals Z. And it's in a stadium somewhere, like in the
half of a Superbowl game, with the choral group out front singing and scatting like
mad. And some dancers out there, the people that
do those - when you've got people in the shoulders and doing all those triads. And these guys are playing. Now picture when the band is playing ensemble,
all of them together, with the three rhythm sections playing, and if you can just visualize
the sound that would come out of that band that's got all different horns alongside of
it. In other words it's like a small band made
large. Like 53 musicians and you write all these
things, and this section plays a little something over here, and all of a sudden this section
plays and that rhythm section jumps in, and it's a movement back and forth, or there's
the rhythm section, and this band's playing and this guy's playing, and the whole ensemble,
Monk, I dream of this at night. I even talked to Neil Hefti for one hour on
the phone about it. And he was giggling, he says, "Oh that's you,
Chubby." He said but don't put it down, because if
that could happen, it changes the entire, is the word "venue?" MR: Yeah, sure. CJ: I mean the whole scene becomes a different
looking scene. Guys are standing. Nobody's sitting. Everybody's standing up like this. And moving. And playing the horns. And then walking down to the next level or
walking back up. And there's action going on all the way through. And the music doesn't have to be written like
sixteenth notes all the way through. Al Cohn once said to me, "Can't anybody play
a whole note anymore?" Like laaaaa. Why does everybody got to [scats]. I mean that doesn't make any sense. It shows off. It's like the bass player playing it in sixteenth
position. But that's a thought. And if you can put it in your mind, if you
ever have a chance to try anything like that, just close your eyes and try to envision what
we talked about here today. Because I'll guarantee you, you'll blush. Because this could be the next century. MR: Quite a vision for the future. CJ: Yes. It's just a thought. MR: Great. CJ: But we have to have people thinking. Like the big band, sure. Five trumpets, well yeah that's great to have,
it's all in sections, and there's a limitation to that as of now, but not with these kind
of instrumentations. Different instruments. You know what I mean? Like you'd have French horns, you'd have anything
in there. But somebody who knows how to write, like
to me, Johnny Mandel and Neil Hefti and Ralph Burns. We just had lunch, Margo and I, with Ralph
Burns. MR: All right. CJ: Yeah. He came down from Florida - not from Florida
- from Hollywood to do a thing on, I don't know some guy. And he called us up and we went out. He's too much that little guy. MR: Well listen, I never myself am going to
look at the equation X plus Y equals Z the same again. CJ: Thank you. It makes sense though, doesn't it? MR: It does. And this has really been absolutely a fascinating
hour and a half or whatever. CJ: Well thanks, Monk, for me too. MR: I have a feeling if we get out this way,
we're going to have to do Part Two. CJ: I'd love it. I'm very grateful and thankful for the opportunity
to say things, because you know age is starting to pile up, and if I have an opportunity every
now and then to be something which was Chubby. You know, it's a groove for me too, man. MR: Well you're looking great. CJ: Gee thanks. MR: Thanks so much for your time. CJ: Oh, man it's been a pleasure, Tim, everybody. My wife is the inspiration of my life.
