Master Class: Percy Heath Backstage Interview

we've done a few of these things John Jimmy and you know essentially what are we gasps masters or what yeah right but no Jimmy's been doing it for years he's a teacher I'm just a bass player so I don't really have much to tell the kids other than the fact that I've been trying to play an instrument for since 56:19 246 yesterday almost 60 years so 58 years or so but till they ask me questions about how to do this knot I really I'm not a teacher all I can do is say what I think the role of the bass is in a formation but recently the basis come to the front as the solo instrument and very proficient young people of just going over the bass like it's a guitar smaller instrument and they they've studied systems that help them to do that like Scylla fire well when I first met Scotty he was playing tennis in a dance band and out of Detroit I forget a moral or somebody dance banner and he came to my room he said home mass neat I think I want to play the basement and about two years later he had transposed all that tenor facility onto the base using several fingers which Mingus used quite a few in right-hand - but I mean brown man we just go for sound with two fingers maybe but but Scotty perfected this system of very bad and go Eddie Gomez he's one of those picky picky people you guys too but that that's not my concept of the base I all my years I've devoted to getting a sound there's the role of the of the bass the string bass you know John came about replacing the tuba the marching band had a tuba but then when they had a stage presentation they brought in is the string bass to which they couldn't walk with it ray but they brought in a string bass which sought a substitute for the tuba but not only was it required to have the ground bass under the harmonic structure of whatever the composition was but also it became a rhythm instrument too for the pulsation so it had a dual role in the stage band or the jazz presentation and that role was expanded by Jimmy Blanton in Duke Ellington's obviously because he was very proficient soloist rqo and otherwise too and his concept changed the whole basic function of the bass in jazz and when he was barely 21 years old he died but he revolutionized the concept so all the bass players after JV were influenced by him and if I were if I find a young bass player who doesn't know about Jimmy blend I'm not even going to talk to it if he's gonna be a jazz player and he doesn't know about Jimmy bland he hadn't done his homework and he doesn't know where the whole thing changed but my concept was not the sole old and my role in montage quartet which was conceived by John Lewis as being four voices going along counterpart idli with separate line is that interwove and made sense structurally chord wise so that's where I always stayed was on the ground bass was me and all those years that's 40 some years that's where I put all my energy in creating a melody to go along with the other four instruments and have a melody of my own which indicated the bassline the movement of the course from chord to chord and that's it and that's where purse but now here lately I've been trying to make some solos with it's johnny-come-lately stuff though John John I started out so professionally so young I mean as far as playing the instrument a couple of years after I bought the bass I was playing professionally already and miles like what did he like about me was the time I didn't know too many fancy notes anything but I I knew like one time in Birdland miles me and Bohannon went out Art Blakey we went out around 54th Street and somebody handed us this joint from Chicago man we went out and said we lit up this thing around and said hey Dave we used to call him say hey Dave when we come back we're gonna get you out the hole that's what art blakey used to say get out the hole up there you know and we did this strange reefer man came back in out of the cold January night and the heat hit us in and my mouth was dry lips sticking to your teeth if you know that permanent smile from that dry mouth smoking his stupid reefer and we have with miles knew we would out of it you know and he kicked off his thing of George cheering but whatever constellation of some constant was passed to and we were scrambled eggs back there and every smiling at each other Myles Turner I'll sit now now you go get me out all now and we couldn't even answer it was just mixed-up rhythm back here which is another thing kids don't try to play high but and yeah when he came off he said I couldn't find one Percy where was one so look one two three four you gotta find one before you so that's what I mean about P but to play with each drummer there's a marriage that must go on and some you have to hold back like Max has a tendency to rush Art Blakey had attended him since they rushed but it was swinging on up the whole thing you know and Connie K was exactly like a metronome so when Kenny left Kenny Clark left I had to readjust to somebody who was not obtrusive he was just another instrument up there and the quartet whereas Kenny Clark was an innovative his own first time I played with Kenny came in sat in I was I've been playing about a year of Louisville on them at the downbeat in Philadelphia on the house basis and these people who come to town would come through and sit in it come to this jazz club and play and sit in scared me to death man I didn't know where to play with Kenny Clark and anybody six months later I was in Paris with Howard McGhee and in between times somebody told me don't listen to those bombs those accidents listen to the cymbal King ticketing that's where the beat is and me and clue got together on with that and we became two all-america rhythm section we want so many records man together I had so much fun believe yeah I really miss him and I was so lucky to be involved with these giants early and I credit it to the fact that I did know where one was from Baptist bringing up bringing in the Baptist Church where my mother my grandmother were choir singers in early age we had a gospel quartet called a family for so I learned where that hand clap was a long way back man and that that's what got me out there early but then doing subsequently I learned more humming in whatnot John Lewis was a excellent teacher after Jimmy got me started is when he was learning came home from Dance ban in the Midwest nat Tolls August when he heard Charlie Parker and he left that ban and came home and he we got an upright piano in the living room in my mother's house and while he was learning to harmony I was just learning the bass so that was my first teacher Jimmy except I went to Granoff School of Music for a few bass lessons with just this old guy who put his hand up that you could hardly see his finger moving quintella what oh what a gentle that's my foundation hood I was in the service door I was down at Tuskegee 43 too late 45 so I was I didn't hear anything until I got back home from Philadelphia went up from Oh Godman field Kentucky I I went through the flight training as a Tuskegee Airmen downtown I was second lieutenant and I've completed advanced fighter training in the p-47 I flew before this and all those other little planes to get to that but my roommate who went through the whole thing would be to hold two years of training he got killed at Godman field Kentucky in an accident with p-47 and mama was a nervous wreck she was proud of me of you know becoming an airman I was quite a thing of it only through about four or five hundred guys at that time who completed that program amid all the adversity that they didn't really want us to have that schooling but the the outfit was one of the greatest outfits in the war and the the reputation is well known now but at that time when my roommate got killed and these guys were coming back from your first lieutenants and captains with missions not it so and then they dropped the bomb on those cities that atomic thing and I wasn't too proud of that so and mama was a nervous wreck so I got out and bought a base that's 46 so I hadn't heard of anything except maybe some Louie Jordan or some other blues things down there's some clean heads Benson or something down in the south they didn't know anything about jazz and bebop that whole time I was down there so I was indoctrinated right away with my wife I met in 1947 I've just been playing about a year and she knew about dizzy and the music and had gone to concerts and whatnot and she was managing a record store and Philadelphia and she used to call up down house I got the latest Charlie Parker because she'd ordered that because they had other Western classical music recordings in the shop that she managed on Midtown to love you so that's how I got into and Jimi had come home to be involved in that music and while he was learning the harmonic structured and copying Arrangements off of the recordings of Billy Exxon's band he had a 17 piece band that sounded like Dizzy's bands trade all the Rangers tad darlings and rays and Jimmy could copy it off so he's a professor that's what I told you in the beginning man I I'm not a teacher Jimmy he says we've been calling him professor all the time because he was a student of the music and hung out with Dizzy and learned a lot from so he's a dizzy clone but no I wasn't exposed to it until I bought the bass my father thought was a subtle little guy and mama was a real mom was a church-going acquire singing and pop would you could get poppy go to church if you held a gun on him Edom and I'm preaches a full of hokum you know he used to say he would even go see us do a little Easter thing I love jesus wept you know a little speeches pop wouldn't even go sis he'd get us new little Easter clothes now he worked hard man what oh but he the Karner plan and Elks marching band the segregated Alex I never would join those I'd be the independent Elks in them and they'll the segregated Masons and I wouldn't even join them organizations supposed to be philanthropic based on Solomon the black man Solomon and it's segregated I couldn't never understand that man and I'll pop was a generous soul and he loves Souza's marches and those things in it played his little clarinet on a weekend the appointed Monday morning to get 50 cents a dollar something like that the paid he's old 15 cent insurance people would come money morning pop work man so hard and supported not only us for kids and mo mama but cousins and everything else who mooching off pop poverty dedicated little guy man but he was he at us that's a human way he one time when the astronauts landing on the moon pop said oh gee boy I'm guys in Hollywood they're on a set doing it believe it on the moon dancer well I got so much love from him he told me he never taught us to hate anybody because we're kind of mixed up the heath of genetically you know in Caucasian and Native and everything else afro so in jeans all mixed up and he never said to hate any part of us so he was a loving little guy man I miss them too but we used to please have some fun top we used to go down there from Philly I tell you I was born in Wilmington but then they moved to Philadelphia when I was 8 months old Jimmy was born in Philadelphia Trudy was born 12 years later and my sister she must have been born in Wilmington - because she's a year and a half old and nine but my grandmother my paternal grandmother bribed me when I was in going to high school with a bicycle she said because we used to go down in the summertime and take our shoes off and run around in this dirt streets like city kids you know visiting my grandparents because Maddie's my father's mother Maddie her husband I love Fisher which was a later marriage had a grocery store in Wilmington over in that black district and they were quite well often we used to leave Philly in the summertime and go down to South Bend and visit our grandparents so Maddy bribed me wants to stay down there when I was just about high school I did one year high school in Philadelphia and she said if you stay down here person I'll buy you buy your bicycle so she bribed me with this Dixie flyer nice bike and Jimmy of course I'm going to stay down there he's going to stay down there too so as he finished high school down there too but I went two years down there he was 11th grade down there for high school so I finished school and I was just turned 17 but early years when my great-grandmother was living down there and my great-grandfather Stanton B Heath whose name we have the family and he used to have a Dre you know what a Dre is John it's a two-wheeled cart drawn by a horse or a donkey oh and he's the whole cotton from the bales of cotton from the boats in Wilmington to this place called the Cotton Exchange down that way they used to store all cotton before they stole it coming in on went out on boats and whatnot and we used to wait for him to come by every day at noon he'd come by on the way to for lunch and we jump on the back of this Dre and ride two blocks away where my great-grandmother lived from my grandmother's house where we were staying and get this ride on the back of this thing and run back in that noonday Sun and brown would burn your feet maybe you had to run and find a little patch of grass which was cool on the bottom of your feet the grun back these two blocks we used to do that every afternoon but anyhow but santan B had a little candy shop down there and he used to sit around he's very intelligent he's to sit around and read the daily newspaper to all these old guys that used to sit around analyzing new good the daily the news and Camela a great grandmother sold peanuts she roasted him in his wood stove man poor lady was dripping around sweat down in her 90s and she'd get this big bag of peanuts from my grandfather's grocery store and roast them and sit out on the porch and sell them and kids used to come from miles around because mrs. ease would have a glass that she measured this little pin is worth opinions be nice and put in his bag and she look at the kid and the kid be standing there like a she reaching thought you were she gave away something nice lady but she gave away so many peanuts the kids come from miles around again and she made some brown dog candy but that peanut I wish I hadn't let that us too much sugar but we said and let that recipe get away but that was carmella and she was more hawk a picture of her and Maddie in my house out there I got from my grandmother's house but they're all gone now from down there but I have fond memories of Wilmington and two years of high school down there and I was what was idle the state president of the highway organization and you know this little Christian wise thing and making speeches and means boy I was a city slicker you know moving down there this took over more that and Jimmy's that's where he got in the bath and he chosen Alto at that time and he stayed down they had to stay down a year so after I left after I graduated but he was in the band down there I won oh shoot about 93 and 92 or three when I was 12 and 19 when I was 12 I must have been 1934-35 somewhere in there in your great-grandmother you is my great-grandma Camela was that old she was 97 Mattie only lived to be mug my father's mother only lived to be 86 pop only made it to 72 mama was the owner Nancy she never got over pop died after all those years ago she had this was a hardening otter is summoned all she could says your father left me and didn't even say goodbye so we lost our parents in the seven in early 17 1970 to be exactly 71 but actually a question he saw us all individually become successful musicians which he you know he bought me a violin when I was seven years old or something I used to play at church teas and things like that when I was singing in that family gospel thing and then he sing on the kitty aya sofya kitty how in Philadelphia that's when I knew Joel why allah jalla was 13 I was 12 he was playing his trumpet on the Sunday morning broadcast from it was Parisian tailors it was a ready-made clothes on south street in the ghetto affiliate as opposed to the de sponsored by horn and Hardart Kitty out for the other kids you know but it was partly going I had tap dancers and singers on there and I was to see Fiat ikana is to sing potatoes the cheaper now the time you know all that kind of stuff in Peter Parker picked up a cup there you know kind of suit but I was on that show and that's how I got to go to the Lincoln Theater which was connected to that show in Philadelphia which was on the chitlin circuit people from like Scott and Patterson and yogi visit and and people like Mraz that were the Mraz was a violinist versi and I don't know what Patterson plug played before but he plays the bass like it's a smaller instrument to he's all over then that facility and that use of several Finn Mingus was pretty fast too but at the time when I first bought the bass Ray Brown showed me how to hold a bass I was grabbing the neck like this which Pettifer did but it didn't matter to him because he had person you know but proper positioning Brown said P you gonna have to get your spider together then is he walking around like us over the fingerboard but this right hand concept of reproducing what the left-handed you know that's where the tonality the the best sound of the bass that I learned was the pressure with the left hand and the balance between the physics the pull with the right hand there's some pictures of me in a way back in the beginning when I had one string pulled all the way over to the other string man I would go reeling in the base but years with the quartet and when I acquired this instrument it's in the background that nice 300 year old Italian instrument which some young bass players may not have the advantage of having the sound reproduced like this instrument that I was fortunate to find in 1956 I got it but not only a quality instrument but any instrument the balance between the two hands to get a pizzicato tonality of the best tone that you get and then the position of the hand the distance between the bridge and where you play with the right hand is a different sound everywhere in that whole range of maybe to two feet alone which changes it is a project oh it's softer con uh a softer contact you know the initial ping and John didn't like it me to play down close to the bridge it was too who knows and he wanted me to play up us Lobo he wanted me to soften the attack which I learned to come up I undo and but the the fast players play this way and they get a pinkie pinkie pinkie pinkie sound but I like the guts the instrument you know the balls if you excuse me but I asked that he Gomez once so any why you play up there all the time up in the thumb position he said oh it's easy up there oh I never knew that because I never go up there you know I said well he's throwing away the whole base to get up there to play ping I said why don't you get a cello but it is a good fair to all these guys you know each player I want to tell it young people if they want to play that instrument they have to listen to every bass player that they could because everyone um has something for you to learn from I listen to every bass player on record and some of those I was privileged to go here in person like some of those good Philadelphia bass players out there now Boyd Christian and and and oh boy a lot of them that I listen to and say oh man I wish I could do that you know but I never attempted to do those things so what I tried to do is leave a good foundation about keeping that swing you know do government said it don't mean a thing cuz so if you plant Tiki pinky pinky pinky and you ain't got no swing in there you could be a hell of a musician but jazz you had that's it you got to tap your foot and nod your head when you listen to this as far as I'm concerned but if you want to throw that away and be a tremendous virtuoso on them on the bass that's privileged student a choice that one makes but I'm stuck with that other thing man it's too bad I probably lost out on a lot by concentrating on the 101 thing I used to follow McKibben around when he was with dizzy after Brown left and I'd hear something on a record I say hey man what did you do there you know oh man that ain't nothing I just did I said well when you played so insulting so I'm picking their brains everybody I listen to all the page-width Count Basie and this record I made way back was oh man blue haze or something move Bob wise I said I'll put the lights out and let's play a slow blues and mile said Percy you playing walk a couple of courses in front and what I've walked I walked a couple of lines a couple of courses using Walter Paige's baseline from Count Basie but embellishing in with some in between notes and somebody wrote it up in a downbeat and analyze that is that oh and here he did I said no I did what and he he analyzed it for me but all my concept was the certain notes strong notes in the court and a triad should be for instance if you want to establish a court a tonality the strongest known as the tonic in that chord the second beat in jazz is emphasized as far as the hand on the two and four so they don't require a strong a note as one and three so you can have a leading tone of a weaker note in the end and not weaker but a lesser note in the harmonic structure of a court and leading tone into the next beat which me the strength of the note so this is my whole concept about keeping that swing is also through the tone that you choose to be a leading tone and a strong tone in the in the 4/4 measure and if you can keep that in mind when you create your line it's going to swing and it's going to also indicate where the progression changes you know and where it needs strengthening like when a on it want me to make us record with him way back at and I said look on it unlike what you were doing with Charlie Haden and you know him they used to look each other I had know exactly where they were going but these little turns and I said I said on that when a change comes for that certain bar I'm changing that's what I want you to do Percy don't want you to do what you do but I didn't want to interfere with his freedom to make these little transitions and that they did so well man it was amazing when I first heard them he and Don Cherry and Charlie Haden and I think Billy Higgins was there too earlier in blackwell but they and Moffat to all the drummer's you know but the swing was there and it sounded to me as Ornette had heard Charlie Parker and absorbed that and everything else before that and came he had come up with a concept utilizing which is the you got that's what I meant about telling the kids listen to everybody who went before you had the advantage of recordings and from every one you can learn something some of them even learned what not to do too you know first the first mounted escort that record we made we went to Japan right after that and just disc jockey Terry I forget his last name he took us to this place on the Ginza where they had a little jazz quartet same instrumentation and they played they played the first recordings that we made including the mistakes and I just sat there's that nice day but I was hoping I'd never hear that note again even on record here's the sky copy that he smiled at me playing the wrong note oh no not wrong but the note that I wish I hadn't played so you copy you know absorb things but you don't have to make the mistakes if the professional guy like Mill Jackson used to hit a crack but he could turn it into he could turn it into the note he intended to that it's antonius Lee and that's that's with it and then they used that word genius I hate to do it but that man sure was fun that vibe I love him man he he had delusions about the financial reward he should have gotten which rightfully so he should have been a millionaire but yeah I was making enough to raise my three sons and my wife and have a house and I didn't need any more than that but Jackson always felt that we were the best in the world man who you know we don't he was looking at it differently as a as a business more than the creating of the art form was he was a man he was so he could make that cold instrument warm he's a beautiful plant man and I'm those years between in between him and John and I was getting paid man god damn luck again a man be you know oh boy I miss those guys there's another thing about playing and notes buku buku that's ok but to learn after you cut out of music school and you go through all the sequences and all the scales move and you run through the instrument like it's nothing I told Nils to one Henny I said man why don't you take a breath sometime and years later he said hey you hear me I'm breathing Percy but I see some you just play but a little bit we're running on a phase Brown stuff you played Pettifer stuff everybody just as good in the notes note so but then Webster never played a note that this means I'm in his whole life that I heard this you have to learn all those notes and scales and everything that's beautiful foundation but then you have to spend a lifetime find out what to leave out because just plan all those notes and it comes in maturity I guess when you live a little and you have some expression to give through the music which is what you supposed to be doing expressing your life or that's what a jazz musician does like all the real players from years before you could identify them by their sound and their voice their statements and if you don't have anything to say other than you practiced a lot of scales and things then you're going to have to learn what to throw away and how to pick out Lester could pick out one note and stay more than most players could say in two courses you know but that's the that's what you want to do to become a jazz player a instrumentalists and a soloist find out how to say something some emotion or some kind of statement say something don't just play it identify with somebody out there play two notes that this man feels or that woman feel you know this is the challenge of improvising yeah well I was lucky enough to afford to be a jazz player which is a lot of players sacrificed for the love of the music but never did receive a financial reward of any kind you know from it may not even a decent livelihood some of them then they subsequently got involved with drugs and depression and everything but they gave their life probably to the development of music so I would say to a young person if he's looking to be financially successful jazz player he might but then he might not or she might not so if you don't love the music and want to dedicate your life to it to the onward continuance of the art form and to be a player and learn to express that feeling a jazz all that jazz that they used to put down if you're not prepared to sacrifice like that don't look to jumping in and and be no Rockstar millionaire forget it but if you want to dedicate your life to the continuing of the art form go ahead man because you could a lot of families of parents have discouraged kids even in the black community to say well you want to play that jazz um no money you know in this so it's a constant dilemma to choose a life of dedication to the music and maybe you make enough for a living I'm I'm cool you know I'm back in when that's in after two first twenty two years or something like I was we were making $600 a week whether we worked or not you know all every week of the year which was tremendous but we had two decades of working up to that at that time and was still one enough a milk like we spoke to about before because it was enough for me I had my wife June and the person Jason and and Stuart my three boys I wasn't no we moved to Montauk in the summertime from our house in Queens and spent those weeks that I told my DKR man you look man when school is out forget it don't book me nowhere because I'm going most of the year to make that six on dollar a week so when school's out forget it I got a family you guys took anyway you hang your hat is home you know so June and I started going to Montauk for ten weeks which was one of me I'm lucky to be able to make that kind of life out of and so if you're looking well the first few years I remember we used to make $1,000 a week - for the quartet to drive back and forth to fill up $800 a week to play every night in the club and come back overnight John was still in school you know so it started out not that lucky ERISA but then we ended up flying first class in America business class overseas if we had a corporation we formed it was a partnership and everything was divided equally we each had a job John was a musical director Jackson was a published publicity dude most of the time he talked about himself but that was cool he deserved that but then Connie was Bob in charge of transportation and I handle the money from all over the countries I could count payout the guys in every country we went to but we persevered and did but if a young player you might not get started and then let your family take care of you while you get started man say hey pop one of these days I want to be famous support me well no it's it's difficult choice to make done but like I said the love of the music is a rewarding enough well it just make enough to eat and keep a roof over your head you'll be lucky man but then you can make a bubblegum pop racket and and I don't know if you could you're satisfied with yourself but you could make a better living than trying to be a purist it ain't easy

Channel: ArtistsHouseMusic

Views: 33,710

Rating: 4.9658847 out of 5

Keywords: interview, historian, jaz, master class, Heath Brothers, Interview

Id: ew-spMuMqK4

Length: 43min 12sec (2592 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 26 2012