We are filming today for the Hamilton College
Jazz Archive. My name is Monk Rowe, and it's a great pleasure to have Dave Pell with us.
Saxophonist and photographer, record producer, publisher. All of those things.
DP: A lot of hats. A lot of interests. And all coming from music so it's all surrounded
in that creative world of our dreams of being able to play in bands and being able to play
and enjoy. And it's been a lot of fun. MR: A lot of times in the music business you
need to wear a lot of hats I think. DP: I guess so. I always did and I kind of
think the guys in the bands always resented it a little bit because I had so many hats
on. Yeah I was playing with them but he is also the contractor and he is also making
double what we're getting paid, and he's also running the record company and he's also editing
out our good solos and saving his good ones. So I always had a reaction from the guys,
but I was still one of the guys enough to be able to get more out of them then the normal
kind of record company or a producer. MR: From a musician's standpoint, you maybe
have a better handle on what's really good than a non-musician.
DP: Taste is hard to acquire. You get taste from sitting next to great players and listening.
I remember when I was real young, I mean 16 years old, I played in a band called Bob Astor,
and my roommate was Neal Hefti. And the drummer in the band was Shelly Manne. And I remember
going and playing in Boston. And we were the relief band and then there was another relief
band and there was a show band. It was at the Boston Club called - oh I don't even remember.
But Les Hite was the other band, and Dizzy Gillespie was on the other band. And he and
I were just kids together. And between shows we'd play chess. And we had a great time playing
chess. And then at night he'd say, "come on kid," and he would take me down to the Ken
Club where he and Charlie Parker were working at night. We did this thing and then late
at night we'd go to the Ken Club. And then he'd sit and play this stuff and we'd - "what
was that?" And then I'd try to ask Dizzy, like how do you teach jazz? You can't teach
jazz. It's impossible. But Dizzy tried to explain what he was thinking when he played
certain things. When you play in the key of C you play in F. And all of the things that
he was thinking as he did it, and then he'd give us a couple of things to think about
and to play, and it was incredible. And then of course he'd sneak us in the club and we'd
sit there all night long until four or five in the morning, with he and Charlie Parker,
right at the beginning. And that's how you learn. That's where you learn. That's where
you learn taste, and learn what the guys are thinking and what they're playing and that's
where you get in good habits or you get in bad habits. You know if you're really interested
you learn. If you're not interested you have a great time.
MR: Talk about learning from the masters. DP: Oh, it was fun. But a lot of players that
you play with, I was in Bobby Sherwood's band and I took Zoot Simms' place. He moved to
first alto and I played his tenor chair. Well I'm sitting next to Zoot all night. I mean
what could be bad about that? We're both kids you know. This was in the 40s. And I quit
the band I was with in the 40s and stayed on the West Coast and got the job in the relief
band. And Stan Getz, myself, you know, great players were sitting in the relief band, a
Latin band. And we're having a great time. But you're learning from the guy, like Stan
was the greatest dressing room player that ever lived. He'd get out front and he'd choke.
MR: No kidding? DP: Oh he was terrible. He was so insecure
and such an introvert that he couldn't get up like me, no, I don't give a damn, I'm going
to get up and play you know. MR: For our students that will watch this,
can you explain relief band? DP: A relief band is - the main attraction
has got to go out and get a 20 minute break, and they don't want - not like now, where
they play records or something like that. There you had to have a live band on stage.
And usually a different kind of band so that you could do the rhumba, like we had a Latin
band playing a Four Brothers type tenor book. And then we'd play Freddie Martin style and
then we'd play Latin and then we'd do this and then the other bands, whoever the name
band was at The Palladium, which was every four or five weeks, we'd just sit there and
said hello the guys and you know it was great. But I stayed in L.A. and I didn't have to
go on the road so I really enjoyed it. MR: And then you went with Tony Pastor later
on? DP: No I was with Tony Pastor getting there.
And the story about Tony Pastor, I get to California and I say, "Gee Tony, this is great.
Good-bye. I'm quitting." He says, 'you can't leave me in L.A., this is wilderness. There's
no guys. I can't get a guy that'll leave California, they don't want to come here." I said, "good-bye."
And so he says, "well stay with me until we leave California and then you can quit. So
six weeks later I left the band. But I had fun with Tony because I'd run out the microphone
to beat him to his own solos. Because he didn't really like to play. But the only way I could
get to play was to be a cocky kid and run up to the mic when he's ready to play and
I'm up there playing already. "Sorry, Tony." MR: Sounds like you didn't lack for self confidence.
DP: Oh, no, I was a smart ass, it was terrible. I was just terrible. But that's kind of a
thing that you have to do. It's almost like the sidemen on the band, they keep watching
the leader. And watching all the mistakes he makes. And all the wrong things he does.
Because in the back of his mind, I'm going to be a leader some day and I ain't never
gonna put myself - I mean Les Brown, I had a great time with Lester's band and played
on every tune, you know I had a great, great book to play, and we had [Don] Fagerquist
and all the good players. And I remember as I went out every time to play a solo out front,
we'd just didn't stand up, we'd go out front - show biz. And I remember kicking over Lester's
horn at least once a night. "Oh, I tripped, ohhh, I'm so sorry, Oh, Les I'll fix it later."
Well he didn't play too well. And we didn't like him playing in the band with us, because
the saxes sounded so good. But when he played he played awful. And so if his horn didn't
work, he wouldn't play. And Les after years and years he finally figured out I was doing
it on purpose. You know, "I'm so clumsy, Les, I'm sorry." But I was kicking over his horn
so he wouldn't play. Terrible, terrible. But I always wanted to be a leader and you know,
even in the worst way, you want to be a leader somehow, and you want to be able to so, "no,
no, my tempo." And then the drummer in the back says, "no, Dave, that's the wrong tempo,
you've got to kick it up here." MR: Well when you became a leader I assume
you kept your horn out of the way anyway. DP: Oh, yeah. I was handy. I could fix my
horn. MR: When did the first octet come about?
DP: Well we were all from Lester's band. I stayed in California in the 40s. I stayed,
and played around, I played the relief band at the Paragon Ballroom for Lawrence Welk,
we were in the secondary band again. I played with Tommy Dorsey out there, I played with
Bob Crosby out there, I played with - all trying to stay home, get off the road, you
know. I took Eddie Miller's place on Bob Crosby's band, because then he couldn't read and they
were doing a radio show at the time. And he didn't have his doubles, and I was starting
to play oboe and he was showing in those things. The greatest part about that bringing up was
that we still wanted to stay in L.A. You know and Les's band was great because we'd do "The
Bob Hope Show" and we'd work Tuesday night on the radio show and then work Saturday,
maybe Friday and Saturday, but all within the area. So we were still off all week long,
we had a great income and we went on the road for the summer. We did one-nighters all summer.
And then of course television came about and we did one of those a month, and that was
enough to live on. It was great. And I started my octet from the guys in the band. Les Brown
had a sound of the whole brass section and amplified guitar underneath it all, playing
single string, underneath the brass section. So there was a little electronic sound and
then the regular saxes and everything else. And they would play maybe mutes and the guitar
would be underneath it and it was a very different sound. And Shorty Rodgers and I talked about
it, and I say, "I want to take the solos away from Les" of which he got pretty mad at me,
"I want to take the soloist out of the band, and Fagerquist and Ray Simms on trombone and
Ronnie Lang, and the rhythm section, and I want a small band." We had this idea. And
Shorty came up with the idea of putting electrified guitar and Charlie Christian's sound in unison
with the trumpet. MR: Okay so it wasn't a strumming guitar.
DP: Never played rhythm. MR: It was a melody.
DP: I hate rhythm guitar. So his part never had rhythm at all. And he only played, and
you couldn't get any guitar players who could read. Nobody read single string. It was impossible.
And as I grew and as I did album after album, every guitar player in the world used to call
me, "can I borrow the book?" They didn't know how to read single string. And not fast. You
know you're playing "Mountain Greenery" [scats] and guitar players can't play that, and they
learned. And Tony Russi was on the band and then later on I had Tommy Tedesco, who could
read because he was a fiddle player. So he could play all these things. And it became
a sound that was the only reason that the octet was interesting, is that - why does
the band sound so big? And it was because the guitar underneath trumpet, and then tenor
and trombone and baritone all playing against it, it gave it togetherness like a Basie type
thing, and then interesting like Marty Paich would write like a fugue or Shorty would write
things like that. It was an arranger's band. Believe me. The arrangers loved the band.
I mean hundreds and hundreds of arrangements, I still get requests every day for people
to, schools, that want to borrow the charts, because it teaches the kids how to write.
There was something about it. So when I started John Williams in the music business, John
was working for me, I was an A & R man at Tops records, a buck 49 in the supermarkets,
and John wrote the first two albums he ever wrote for me, 50 bucks a chart, and it was
the great John Williams who is my favorite and great, great jazz player too. He wrote
some albums for me, he wrote a John Kirby album for me which was incredibly written
with some beautiful things and Benny Carter played on it. So I've had a lot of fun, but
my group originally was a octet of arrangements by Bill Holman and Marty and Shorty and you
know, Bob Florence. So that was interesting to me.
MR: Well it's important to try to establish a sound, like Shearing did, you know he had
- DP: Same thing. The left hand is playing with
the guitar underneath. And it was all that kind of sound. And it was a very commercial
sound. We could do albums of Rodgers and Hart and Berlin and Jimmy VanHeusen and all those
things like they're doing now, we did them 45 years ago, which was, they said, "oh, Pell,
you're so commercial." I said, "yeah, but I'm home every night, I'm not on the road,
I work every weekend, I work college dates, we do a jazz concert, but we also do a dance.
We behave." You know when Jack Sheldon came on the band, and I'm trying to behave, and
he's such an unbridled character, and I'm saying, "Jack, play the melody." And he says,
"oh, what is this? I want to play jazz, what is this?" "No, Jack, we're playing a prom,
everybody's dressed out there, they're going to remember this all their lives, and here
you are." And he got up one time and started playing a solo. And he says, "key of F" and
you know everybody plays medleys, Med Flory would get up and sing, Ray Simms would play
and sing and Jack calls out a tune, "three flats." And the piano player modulates into
three flats, and Jack sits there and plays about bup-bup-bup-bup. And he does a whole
chorus of just bup-bup. And afterwards we said, "well what tune was that, Jack?" He
says, "Jumpin' at the Woodside" the third trumpet part. And we died you know. And here
you are in a lovely prom and everybody's so dressed up and everything, and here's this
great jazz player playing bup-bup. MR: You know since we are on camera, can you
explain this to our students? [hand gesture] DP: It's in three flats because down is flats
and if you are going to play in four sharps, like Lester, or seven sharps like Lester,
he always did that kind of number, so you'd figure in all the sharps and then flat the
fifth. And there's a story about Ray Brown. We were doing a show one day and they were
playing the blues, we were not even paying attention. And they're playing the blues,
while the cameras are being set up, the bands always used to do films you know and things
like that. And Ray Brown is playing the blues and they're cooking, boy. And he said, "okay,
Dave, let's go." And I get up and play and I realized all of a sudden they're playing
in E, which puts you in an F sharp on your horn, and I says holy mackerel, what are you
doing? And I fumbled and fumbled through a couple of choruses and sat down, and Ray Brown
looks at me and says, "I told you you are a twelve handicap saxophone player." Because
we play golf together all the time. But see Lester did that, Lester Young. If everybody
was playing "Lady Be Good" in F or G, he would play it in G, and then all the horn players
had to play in A. And that's very tough to play on certain horns. Or in E, which is great
for guitar, but terrible for the horns to play in. And Lester did that on purpose. Half
the time he played "Lady Be Good", no, no, "let's play it up a tone," and oh, everybody
else around him died. MR: They're falling out and he's exciting,
right? DP: He doesn't think sharps and flats, he
hears it and plays it. He doesn't care. He didn't care. But it was very interesting.
A lot of guys did that, out of meanness you know.
MR: The cutting contest. DP: Well one other thing that Lester did that's
kind of, I'm thinking about it, Lester would do, if you were going to play a thing where
you play one chorus and you know, Chu Berry was on Basie's band, and Chu Berry is playing
a chorus on "Lady Be Good." And it's a delight. It is a delight. And Lester is sitting there
getting pissed. And he's burning. And he's getting mad. And he starts thinking man, I'll
show these assholes. Lester used to come up with these things which I'm going to play
in the band today, things where he would do things out of meter [scats] and the thing
is cooking like this [percussive scat]. And he'd do [scats] a relaxed feel kind of thing,
and only he would know where he's at. And all of a sudden the rhythm section would look
at each other and come back, oh, yeah, that's cool. But he would do it to screw up everybody
else around him and show that he was going to be cuter than the next guy. He was funny.
He was a funny man. His dialogue was funny, he named everybody around him, and in retrospect
that's how he got the name Prez is because he named Billie Holiday "Lady Day." He called
Sweets Sweets. And Lester became Prez because she said he was the President of all saxophone
players. So it was kind of fun. MR: Were you under his influence coming up?
DP: I think I played like Coleman Hawkins when I was in my 13 and 14 and 15 year old
"Body and Soul," that kind of thing, and Ben Webster. And then all of a sudden, this other
sound came about with Zoot and Stan and some of the guys who were playing and they were
playing like Lester. And I started saying, oh, that's a delight. It's so melodic and
so pretty, and I always had a very thin tone, a very minute tone compared to a big saxophone
like Frank Wess is playing today, it's a big sound. And I had this pea shooter tone. And
it fit what I was trying to do. In my mind I was thinking of Lester Young. And you start
listening to Lester and as you listen to Lester and listen to all the solos he played and
I did see him in person a lot and met him and all that, it was amazing how great, but
he was very careful in what he played. He didn't have the chops of all the guys that
could play uptempos like it meant nothing. He would just play anything, but it was always
melodic, it was always great you know, I loved him.
MR: In the presentation you're doing tonight, this much have been a real labor of love to
put that together. DP: Bill Holman. I went to Bill Holman and
said, "let's do 'Supersax' but with Lester. And let's do the three tenors and baritone
sound of the four brothers." That way I could play lead and we could have that marvelous
warm sound that Jimmy Giuffrie set up with Four Brothers. And Lester was easy to do because
normally he would start the first chorus down. He'd like to build to something. So when he'd
play the first chorus down, all the tenors and baritone all play in unison. Then as you
get into the second chorus, all of a sudden he starts flowing and now you can harmonize.
And it was a delight to play. And half of the guys, we did the first album with Sweets
and Sweets started crying the first time he heard the tune. Fun. It was fun. And then
we did one album with Sweets and then we did, Bill Holman and I decided let's do a vocal
album and we asked Joe Williams to join us. And Joe says, "yes, love it, but don't change
any of the keys, I want to do the things where Lester played them. I as a singer have learned
to sing in many facets, you don't have to give me MY key, wherever it lays right for
everybody else, I'll work it out." And so we played things and there are a lot of bad
keys for Joe but he is such a pro. But the charts that Bill Holman made as background
with the Prez sound, felt like Prez had just played it. All the solos were Prez, and written
out. And as we got to work with Joe a lot, Joe would never leave the stand when the saxophones
were playing because he wound sing in unison. I mean he knew every song like you could depend
- you'd see Joe sitting and he'd just finished singing, and now he's singing [scats]. And
it was fun. Joe called me once, "come out to Chicago, we'll play golf every day, but
we'll get a Chicago band, just bring the books and we'll play a Prez Conference." And the
Prez Conference was Bill Holman's name by the way. He had a tune called "Prez Conference"
he wrote for Woody a long time ago. But Joe just thought isn't this fun, having Lester
Young solos all night long and I get to sing with the band. And it's a nice sized band.
Now it's too big for anything. Eight men, can't afford it. Bring a trio in. So it was
a lot of fun at the time because Joe is a good musician, and when he scats, I never
knew he could scat like he does. I mean we did "How High the Moon" and he sang [scats]
you know he would sing that part, but he also you know had his own thing that he went with,
and he was great, just a marvelous singer. Marvelous guy. We play golf all the time.
And my best friend is Lester Young's brother, Lee Young, a drummer. He used to be with Jazz
at the Philharmonic, and we play golf every Friday and Lee tells a funny story. Here he
was conductor for Nat Cole the last ten years of his life. And Lee is a marvelous cat, a
marvelous guy but a great golfer. And he used to beat me up every time on the golf course.
And Lee - all right already. So he's doing an interview once, somebody's telling stories
about the Nat Cole Trio and playing with Lee Young, and Lee says, "well I'm kind of retired,
I do have some income." And the guys says, "oh, well, you want to talk about it?" He
says, "yeah I send a limo every week and we pick up Dave Pell and bring him to the golf
course and beat him for 50, 75 bucks every week and I live off that so it's kind of nice.
So I can't report it, but that's how I make my living now." And it's a lot of fun. We
play, Ray Brown and I play against Lee Young. The two of us stand our two balls against
Lee Young and he still kills us. And the man is 83 now, last week he had a 78 and an 81.
That ain't shabby. MR: So many musicians play golf. I've noticed.
DP: Well it's a good place to be in Shangri-La in the middle of the world. In the 50s I was
a 6 handicap. And I played golf every day of the summer trip. We'd drive 500 miles after
the gig at night, get to a town, six o'clock in the morning, go on the golf course to play
18 holes, go back to the room, get a nap, and then go and work the gig. But we could
make the road trips a dream. I knew the whole country by golf courses. You know some guys
know the steak houses? I knew the golf courses. I had a couple of guys on the band that played,
and it's a great way to make a terrible existence. It was never terrible, it was always fun,
but a great existence on the road with the band with all the booze and whatever was going
on, you made it livable by being on the golf course or playing tennis. So some of us really
tried to take care of ourselves and it was fun.
MR: Do you remember when Joe first started with the Basie band and that record came out
and that whole thing? DP: Well he had excitement that Witherspoon
maybe didn't have or the guys that were singing with Basie, that he had something that was
different. He was a good looking cat, but he swung pretty good. And I don't know if
he ever played a horn, I don't know if he played piano, but he was a good musician.
He never got lost, he never was in need for a bell note or to come in in the right key,
he was, boom. Point him to the microphone or to the camera and say, "okay" and he sang.
He never liked to rehearse. He'd do a session, at the Prez Conference I did an album with
him and one of the saxophone players squeaked on one of his solos, and Joe says, "great,
man, it's so great." I says, "oh, come on, let's do another take." The guy doesn't want
the thing out with a squeak on it. Joe says, "sure." He did another take, and of course
we used the one with the squeak, because he never sounded that good again. He didn't want
to do it and he felt that the feeling is more important than anything. I mean, just to get
a feeling on a tune, that is marvelous. And that's what he had with Basie. He had a feel,
he had a great kind of thing. And he is a pretty good golfer, too.
MR: Yeah, he'll tell you he is, too. DP: Oh, he's the best, he's just great. Right
down, strong player, and as we get older we have seven woods and things - golfers will
know what I'm talking about - instead of hitting a five iron or a four iron, we go to an easier,
or an old man's club. But he could really work it. He is a great player. He lives on
the golf course in Vegas. So you'd come to his home, "where's Joe," "oh he's out in the
back chipping." He'd be out there playing. Musicians like to practice. That's why we
play good golf. You get as much out of golf as you put in it, and musicians, you can't
make friends with the horn just because you played well at one point in you life. You
know it looks back at you and says, "uh uh. You ain't going to pick me up once a month
and think I'm going to play for you. You better put some more time in playing." Like yesterday
I played baritone on Frank Capp's band. MR: We heard.
DP: The first time in 45 years I played baritone. MR: Is that right?
DP: I never play baritone. I hate baritone. Terrible instrument. And the only thing bad
about playing a horn that's in a different key is that you're picturing, you're playing
a note and you're not hearing that note. A different note is coming out. Because you're
so used to playing tenor where you play, oh, I play by whatever comes to your mind, it
just comes naturally. Now I'm hearing a fifth below or above, and I'm going crazy. I'm saying
oh, yes, I'm playing baritone. I've got to remember that. And I was telling my lady I
said, "you know what I'm dying?" And she says, "what do you mean?" I said, "my pinkies hurt."
"What do you mean your pinkies hurt?" I said, "my hands are killing me. These pinkies are
killing me." "Why?" Well on baritone you're always playing the bottom. The low B and the
low B flat and the low C. And they gave me a terrible horn to play. I was going to bring
mine from California, but no they gave me a horn to play. It was a Bundy. The worst
one I ever played in my life. Terrible horm. And they give me this horn to play and no
bottom. You had to really squeeze. So every time I wanted to play the bottom, my pinkies
were killing me. "How did you do last night, Dave?" "Well I'm fine except I can't move
my pinkies." MR: Now there's a unique occupational hazard
I guess. I don't know if you can get Workman's Comp for that or not.
DP: Sure, I think so, I think so. A bad horn. MR: And one more question about the Prez thing
and, from an arranger's standpoint, he must have done certain things on his solos that
kind of went out from the chord structure. And from a harmonizing standpoint, it must
be quite a challenge to put something underneath that.
DP: But they're never out of the chord structure, they were cutely rounded around it. He would
always come back into something. Lester was the comedic saxophone player. He was funny.
When he played [scats] now you write that out in music and when Bill Holman had to say
"I want you to play [mnemonic] na-na-na-na-na," how do you write that? So it was kind of cute.
And every time Bill, being a saxophone player himself, he'd say, "don't use your D this
way, play side D; don't play E flat the regular way, play side E flat. Because I want that
sound." And then a lot of times Lester would go [scats] and one was side and one was closed,
to give him a different - he was a funny character. A lot of times on my part would be a thing
called "C B." I says, "okay, Bill what's a 'C B'?" He says, "I want you to do a Charlie
Barnett." You know when you play B flat and you get that thing where the note goes up
and down in your throat? Well that's a "C B." On B flat only, he wanted that sound.
And then a couple of times Bill would say after a long phrase, he'd put a notation on
my part that says, "okay, now think." So all of this is fun. You know when you do music
that Bill Holman or Bob Florence do or Shorty, they were all characters because they wrote
things and then Lester, doing Lester after listening for so long of all the things he
played and then seeing it in writing, oh, it was so different. It was such fun. He is
a marvelous, marvelous personality. And as he got sicker and closer to his passing, he
still had the values of swinging and he was like an arranger playing saxophone. We have
"Sometimes I'm Happy." The last eight bars of "Sometimes I'm Happy" is a dream to play.
It's like an arrangement. Somebody putting a button or an ending on a song. And that's
what Lester did. He wrote arrangements. He'd start here, end here and do - you know, never
showed off, but he was always a good arranger. And it was great. It was great. And I've never
enjoyed anything as much. I think the guys playing Charlie Parker got mad at him after
a while because he played so marvelous but so hard. And Lester didn't do that. Although
it's funny, one of the guys here in town, Kenny Soderbloom, who played with a lot of
bands and everything, he says, "there's one bar in 'Symphony Sid' I haven't figured out
yet." And I said, "well I don't think anybody figured it out because Lester just plays it.
If you read the notes, you can't do it, you can't play it." He says, "but we got harmony,
you got the easy part. You can play the melody and you can just do something." I said no,
no, no. You just have to flow with Lester. Lester was a guy that I'm going make you laugh,
I'm going to make you smile. And that's what he did every time he played. You know he did
things that were funny. MR: I'll bet he's looking down on this whole
thing and loving it. DP: He loved it. He was a kind of - he was
funny and I tell stories and Lee tells me stories - every week he's got another Lester
story. He wants to say, well you know Lester, when we were in Kansas City we did that, and
when we had our own band, we did this, and uh, I'm on the floor. I love the guy as a
friend but he also tells all these stories that area great. Joe tells it, if you can
get Joe up, he's a great storyteller. He's funny.
MR: Wow. That's great stuff. How did you get into photography?
DP: I was a very bad amateur, but I was available on "The Bob Hope Show" when I was on Les Brown's
band. I always had my camera here, so when they'd come over to rehearse in front of the
band, I'd have four bars out and I'd take some shots and everything, and then I brought
them by all the time and was giving Bob Hope and Bing Crosby and Jerry Collona and all
these people, all these copies of the stuff I was doing that nobody else was getting,
because I was in this position. So we go to Korea and there's no room on the plane for
the NBC photographer. So NBC says, "you cover it for us and we'll pay for your film and
your-" And I says, "okay." And then Chesterfield who was the cigarette sponsor, they came to
me and says, "well there's nobody on the plane, can we have half the rights to the shots that
you use that you're shooting for NBC?" I said, "I'm a professional." I'm sitting on the band.
And everything I shot was great because I'd shoot from the aircraft carrier into the guys,
because I was back here, and I'd go on trips with Bob Hope that nobody else went with,
because we could play the hospitals, and we'd play - in Korea we'd go guitar player, bass
player, myself, and go in all the wards with him, so he could sing, and while he's talking
we'd be in the other wards playing. And you couldn't take a piano around, so guitar, bass
and me would go and play. And I did all this in photography, and I came back with stuff
that just exquisite. And so I became a professional. And then I started doing album covers. I've
done 400 album covers. But that's all luck. You get on a session, while they're rehearsing
you do all the shots and then when they're shooting the thing or doing a take you back
off or you go in the other room and get out of the way. But nobody resented having me
there because I knew when to shoot and everything. And everything was existing light. The first
Gerry Mulligan cover with those four guys looking up, that's mine. So I've been involved
in a lot of album covers for a lot of photography and you know I still shoot a lot. I'm shooting
this weekend for Ken Posten, the producer, because he wants all, not the shots that everybody
else is going to get, he wants the shots of the rehearsals and stuff like that. And I
like the camera. It's a good, creative, it's like playing "How High the Moon" in a different
key, just trying to find out if it would be interesting. Photography kind of is creative,
it's fun, I'm down to cameras now - because I can't see - that focus automatically, which
is nice. It's a crutch but I still shoot a lot. I always have the camera with me. I have
thousands of pictures. A guy in Spain that owns Fresh Sound Records is going to put out
a photography book on me. MR: All right. Excellent.
DP: So it's been a lot of fun. So I had a photography business. I have a studio, I make
CD masters. I'm kind of telling you that there's not much playing activity in jazz and you
really can't make a living in jazz but you sure can use and improvise the things around
it. So I do a lot of jazz companies, I do a lot of producing and I've produced hundreds
of albums. I was the head of, I was fired from eleven record companies. Now that's,
in the record business, this is very good. Because when you are fired from a record company,
it's that you've been changed with the whole personnel of the head of company who was also
fired, and then all of his people go with him. So I've had my own record company and
I've had a lot of fun in the record business. I found a girl named Vicki Carr and produced
eleven of her albums, and I've had a lot of hit records. I was the first head of Motown
on the West Coast. I signed Lionel Ritchie - was that his name?
MR: Yes. DP: And I had a lot of fun. You know I did
a lot of things. I produced, now I have a little studio in my home and I take old masters
and make them sound like they were done today. I have two or three hundred Kenton things
from the guys in the band. The Kenton band used to have, when they were just starting
at the Rainbow Ballroom, they had a little Webcor tape machine recording as they were
getting the feed in to "Monitor." Remember the NBC show "Monitor?" It was a great show
where they used to record a lot of bands for broadcast. And I have all of those masters
and I've been kind of in that record industry type thing for a long time. Produced a lot
of jazz albums. I like producing. I like playing. Playing is fun. Playing, I'm doing more playing
now because I'm enjoying it more. I find that, "oh yeah, this is fun, I don't have to charge
for this, I can just go out and sit in in the band." I walked in the other night because
we were coming here and I want to play a little, and I walked into a club where I've been going
to see this gal sing and there's a good piano and bass player. And I wanted in sheepishly
with my horn and I said, "don't say a word, I'll just stand behind the piano." And she
says, "you can't do that" and she loved it. You know it was one of those things, we had
a great time and I played all night, but just stood behind the band, and again the marvelous
things that happens is that you find out well boy, what a nice way to make a living. Oh,
okay. Jazz is great. It's introduced me to a world of things that I would have never
had. And I've played with all the bands. I played with Benny Goodman, I played with Harry
James, you know. And that was a great era. And then when I started my band, I got more
into jazz and I enjoy that. But I also got into more studios because I was home, I was
in L.A. and the oboe and English horn got us to play on "West Side Story" and got us
to play on hundreds of movies. I did a lot of things from Mancini when he was writing
at Universal he was just a 300 dollar a week arranger/conductor at Universal and look where
he is - oh, no, that's wrong. But those are the kind of things you grow up in and then
as it kind of slows down in that area, then you go back into playing because people keep
on saying to me, "can we borrow your charts?" You know, and I get invited to Vegas or something
and they say, "we have a band here called the Dave Pell Octet, would you mind playing
with us?" You know, "would you come up and listen to us and then sit in with us?" Being
a book of three or four hundred songs of all these great arrangers, I've had more fun with
schools because they all want to play, "what do you mean, these 40 years later sound good.
Why is that?" You know like Basie. It sounds the same, sounds good, you can't explain it.
Why? And so I've had a good time. MR: It sounds like a marvelous career, my
goodness. And in the immediate future is another golf game with Mr. Cole?
DP: Well I manufacture golf clubs. MR: You are doing that too?
DP: I manufacture golf clubs. I found out that I hit the ball and I miss the shot, it
can't be me it's got to be the equipment. So I've changed the driver and I changed the
shaft and then I got to know how to do this - improvising again. I look at your golf swing
and I can tell you what kind of club you should have or you should be swinging, and I do - sorry
about this - but I do the rip off of the clubs that are being sold. I do clubs that look
like the Cadillacs and look like the Cobra. Because there is a whole thing about this
being available from Taiwan. We buy the heads and I put the heads with some different shafts
and now titanium is the big thing. So I learned how to make golf clubs and now I'm in the
business of golf and I'm manufacturing a putter called the Level I putter which is a little
carpenter's level and I've embedded it into a plastic putter. It's all plastic. There's
some metal in the club to give it some weight. And you look down at the putter at the level
and it tells you that you're holding your club correctly. And the USGA says, "ut uh.
It ain't legitimate. You can't use this, it's an aid to the golfer that's illegal." So I
have a putter that you can pull the level out. Somebody complained, said, "you're sinking
too many putts and it's illegal." Oh, I'll take it out for when I hit the ball. So I'm
involved with manufacturing that and again, improvising, and trying to figure out how
to - so I have a very good golf business going, and that gives me the terrible excuse of going
to a Thursday tournament because all the guys in the tournament are playing my club.
MR: Eh, you can write it off as research. DP: Write it off and give me more, every week.
It's another new titanium bubble or shaft and so I am having more fun. And it keeps
my health good. I'm tan, I don't have any wrinkles, and I hate to tell you how old I
am, but I feel good and young women, and it's just a lot of fun.
MR: It's been fascinating. Man of many hats. DP: I loved it. I think I would have been
happier just playing. But it wasn't enough for me. It wasn't enough of a challenge. I
figured it's like sitting there in the band and watching the leader and then realizing
all the things he did wrong, and saying I'm going to be the leader now. All right I'm
the leader, now what? Well I got 30 albums. Well now what? You know? You keep on wanting
to spread out. It's like improvising. Exactly like improvising. It's making something happen.
So it's fun. It's great. MR: Well on behalf of he college, we would
like to thank you for that really marvelous hour of reminiscing and I can't imagine what
the next thing for you is going to be? DP: Well I'll tell you -
MR: We'll do Part two in a few years, and we'll see what else you're into.
DP: And see where I've gone. MR: Well on behalf of Hamilton I want to thank
you for joining us today, it's been a real pleasure.
DP: I've enjoyed it. I hope I haven't talked too much.
MR: Beautiful. Thank you.
