Phil Schaap Interview by Monk Rowe - 1/9/2003 - Toronto, Canada

my name is monk row and we're in Toronto with Hamilton College jazz archive I'm extremely pleased to have Phil ship with me here I'm just gonna call you a keeper of the jazz flame we can we can talk about the things you've done you were just talking about before the cameras were rolling your teachers and you mentioned they see alumnus yeah well alumni actually Joe Jones yeah only people calling Papa Joe Joe Joe Jones Papa Joe Jones when I met him were his children and some of them were pretty young a couple of them were not born yet and he was significantly younger than I am now I'm 51 and he was 44 that's significant and Earl Warren the leader of the reads I mean I don't know whether it was coincidence or because of their camaraderie which once I intersected with it facilitated more bassy i'ts being involved with the nurturing of me as a child jazz enthusiast into someone who could perhaps handle off some of the information they gave me to subsequent generations of largely listeners not not performers but from the trumpet section buck Clayton and less sweets Edison because when I was very young he moved to California so he wasn't a full-timer but I knew sweets well and he always was sweet to me from the trombones Dicky wells and Eddie Durham and Benny Morton I believe I met many last but perhaps heard him perform first then from the reeds Earl Warren buddy Tait I met Lester Young a few times as a child but I didn't really have a relationship with him I'm still close to his family his widow Mary and children Lester and have that in particularly Lester Junior and but Mary young more than any who I met when I was five when they were in the neighborhood when she got her library card at the Jamaica Public Library and my mother was the I believe she was the chief librarian by them but that wasn't such a big deal because we were I was sitting at her desk there wasn't you know child daycare yet and lady came in for an i a library card and it was mrs. Lester young so why she my mother said to mrs. young always your husband the saxophonist some Basie band she said yes they said you seem to know about us and well my little boy here knows more about it I'm sure with that and you were five yeah maybe for probably five okay I mean it's a mid fifty story yeah how come I mean because the music attracted me and I was had access to it yeah because if your father well why the music attracted me is probably something inside me that is not explainable why I had access to the music is probably a combination of my parents let's not forget Margery shop and the the proximity of the musicians who were making jazz to the Hollis Queens neighborhood where we moved on December 4th 1956 although we moved into my mother's parents home they've been in Hollis going back a long ways I mean to colonial times so we're rooted in on my mother's side in an area which became the bedroom community of jazz in the earliest of my you know scholastic years I mean elementary school and so on a daily basis it seemed it really couldn't possibly have been daily but the people I had just found out about and become enthusiastic about instantaneously became neighbors and that's really the formula oh that's great I'm just trying to picture you know four and five year old pursuing Basie albums and that kind of thing it's a neat picture well enthusiasm among children isn't unusual it's that I was enthusiastic about jazz that you're finding unusual you know I probably was just as enthusiastic about sports at that time could probably tell you as much about at least statistically about the major sports in those years as I could about jazz as they were competing for my my enthusiasms in jazz 1 and somewhere in the middle of my adolescence but I you know every now and then a student of mine will be like from some city let's say Pittsburgh and I'll tell them everything about the Pittsburgh Pirates from roughly 1950 to 1965 maybe or three and then it will disappear and they won't understand it you know oh why does it disappear the answer is because I'm teaching you jazz I see yeah was this swing based music of the Basie band something that your parents like - oh they were huge bass enthusiasts but that doesn't mean they weren't huge Benny Goodman enthusiasts weren't huge Fletcher Henderson enthusiasts I would say that I would say they didn't have a Basie preference to my knowledge I would say that my befriended more Basie alumni than say the Ellington people remember the Ellington people some of them still were in the van and therefore were not full-time residents of New York City much less full-time residents of the Hollis area but I knew Russell Procope well but he was largely gone I eventually became quite close to Sam Woodyard but this was later I mean then it was the Basie i'ts and then through me having these unusual extra parental associations I would say that my parents became more basic or because when I emerged professionally that's the my first idea was a group of these Basya Lum nigh playing the early Basie repertoire to give some context to these gigs and to play repertoire the bass himself was largely no longer using for you what was it about the bassy sound that made it distinctive well the that it's an orchestra that is able to incorporate without everyone being a genius the rhythmic Revolution of the 1930s but I don't think I could have told you that in 1956 I mean that in other words that the innovation the suppleness of the beat that is elasticized and making more fluid the energy of swinging jazz rhythms is that the rhythmic revolution that's what I'm calling the rhythmic revolution yeah of the of the 30s is an innovation of genius Roy Eldridge Billie Holiday Charlie Christian Benny Carter Benny Goodman Teddy Wilson Lester Young if I haven't said him of course and and a few others but the transference of it to others and the coherence of it as an ensemble display where the parts are combined apple and examinable separately I hear that that merger in the Basie band first other than an individual display Billie Holiday displayed it on her lonesome but the Basie band displayed it as an aggregation and I think that that attracts me and and and and clinches or adds musical substance to a an emphasis that I place because I knew these I mean buddy tape of the inner core musicians who raised me and trained me I mean I was fortunate in that none of the primaries died until I was nearly 30 I would say Russell Procope was the first close friend extra family extra father to die and he died in January of 81 and I was 29 in January of 81 so I was pretty lucky in that regard considering how wide open I was to such setbacks and emotional challenges and then with Buddy Tate's death in February of I guess 2001 I lost the last one doesn't mean that they're different than the musicians who I can't say that about it's just that they had Hansel on operation with me as a child and that I formed these bonds and now I'm kind of out on my own right how did you find them over hours as people well everybody's different and I can separate their identities I believe there is a reason why Basie got this group together I believe they are individuals who created a connectable core to each other I find the camaraderie of the Basie guys it's a moot point now I except maybe in some larger sense but there was a buddy system there that's different from but there were all different Eddy dorm for instance probably was this musically the most smart best trained clearly a genius I would go so far to say that door must be the most underrated musical genius of the 20th century he's the first electric guitarist he arranged in the mood for Glenn Miller he wrote the original Basie band book you know he taught all these people he wrote Topsy he wrote co-wrote the one o'clock jump he you know really created the formula and he was very very very not so much introverted is incredibly quiet and had no arguing desires in his like a window I used to have these things I would mention to Eddie and he would tweet them for me in the sense he would correct me and then I would stick with my answer and he would say okay fell but of those there's only one left in which he was not right and I was not wrong and I believe a that I am right which would be the only time which is a small point because there were thousands that he was right about and be I'm not positive it's provable but he still thinks is that pigeon walkers at Posen it's one of the other it's probably pigeon walk by the Lunsford Dan recorded in Los Angeles in the fall of 37 he still thinks it's he the guitarist and not Allen Norris on it but he's not on that record and I believe that what Norris had done had taken the lessons and was able to in this one instance fake out the creator to think that it was himself but stays staying on the line would pigeon walk when I first found this record which you had to find I believe on 78 it's so long ago I was alright or it might have I don't think my father mother had that in their collections I had their libraries my additional library and I got a lot of 78 when stemming with this you remember the LPS demise in the CDs trove so lp's got real cheap right well when they were clearing out the shells to the 78 it was the same deal bought a lot of them by the pound there was one record store Triborough records in Jamaica Queens they just had a little scale for 78th and then get rid of a man yeah yeah we're charged on a thing and I actually recognizing that the vinyl light seventy-eights of post-world War two both weighed less and sounded better mm-hmm therefore one could get more records at this thing I think that's really where the start of my bebop interest is rooted because I've suddenly had money more bebop seventy-eights and my father a mother would have had they would have few and I suddenly had been not a balanced percentage at this early juncture plus Ross Russell intersected favorably with me and at the age of 4 or plausibly 5 but I think it's four because we was still living in Astoria an area of Queens where we had an apartment before my grandfather retired and my father mother bought the house and we and they went to Florida and we went Luke to Hollis but Ross Russell was friendly with my parents and when he closed down the warehousing of the defunct dial record company I guess he had gone broke is what happened because he's staying you know there's my bed and there's a rollaway continent's Ross Russell's in our apartment you know that doesn't really sound you have a nice luxurious little staying place here in a nice hotel he New York City has nice hotels but he's staying and my parents I think took it as a holiday to go out and date a lot you know with themselves I mean because yeah yes babysitter right and he let me watch The Tonight Show which I think it just started mm-hmm which had a lot of jazz on it Danny let me stay up as late as possible fond memories this the Steve Allen days if I'm not mistaken or pre Steven I think it Steve Allen and death it was Steve Allen and Ross Russell left behind a stack of of yellows labeled dial 78 for me which you know got mixed in with the golden records in my Lester Young 78 and the ones that you know I Richard and so I have fond recollections it's sometimes hard for me on the air to point out that you know he's guilty of many outright fictions when he clearly could have known better in writing his you know histories yes was a teenager you had this boy didn't finish the door think I'm sorry so Eddie Durham yeah so I got this pigeon walk which is what set us off on this course so I got it and I immediately noticed hey that's the introduction to timeout which you know and they're both written by Eddie Durham mm-hmm so uh and I said look there's imagina sorry I met Eddie dorbz so I ran with the record you couldn't make it on a cassette or you although reel-to-reel tape existed I didn't have access yet I got one of those in 61 so this is probably 61 or earlier and although this conversation happened again and again and I said so Eddie you know it's the same thing so I've got a lot of trouble over that and then he said in you know and there's even a third title fill the original title we didn't call it timeout we called it count nine and I said count nine so I listened to the introduction of timeout and being not just inferior to Eddie Durham but just an inferior musician I counted temps I said don't you mean countin Eddie they said okay Phil because the point was it had this earlier thing but now I can't even reach myself how to get it to ten its count nine he's right I'm wrong this would be the first of the I don't know whether you've ever you know gotten damn Morgenstern before this but if you do and you choose to bring this up it would be a small point in his life you got love is a very obscure 1931 Bennie Moten record which he purports and he's a very wise man I mean this is no challenge to Dan Morgenstern's Magne Magne Magne facin sin his majesty but he says that's an uncredited Hot Lips page vocal the first Hot Lips paid focal known let me listen to the record it makes a hell of a lot of sense I played a fatty Doris phase Jimmy rushing Jimmy rushing you can tell Jimmy rushing can you go play the game and you make your own choice and we'll come back and we'll talk so so he listened no no Jimmy rushing Nisan no clips no Jimmy rushing I said okay and he never would debate it again with me because he's to get him to go three or four times was unusual he must have either like me or dislike me you know it's because he's going the extra yard and it's Jimmy rushing I'm wrong no longer wrong if Dan still says it slips he's lookout Dan wrong and Eddie Durham is once again he completely backed off I didn't mean anything but he was right how did you finally determine that I learned in you know the this is the the punch line of studying for a lifetime I know I know now I'm not anywhere near any dorm but I'm better than I was when I was eleven okay and it's it's Jimmy rushing oh that's Jimmy rushing singing on you got love knot lips Paige Eddie dormers they said they're like 60 of these little things and obviously I can't give them all to your camera but of the 60 so all 60 I thought I was right all 60 I thought Eddie door was wrong as it stands now Eddie dorm is right 59 times I'm wrong 59 times and the one outstanding issue which I do you know pacce Eddie Durham Sol I do believe this time that he's wrong which is the pigeon walk if it is pigeon walk I think it's pigeon boy okay the guitar solo by Allen Norris it's a Hollywood recording I believe from November 15 to 37 and Eddie Durham couldn't have been there I see well I get you I hope you get to keep that one I hope I lose it that means are still learning it does it also means Eddie dorms as great as I say it okay is he is so is Eddie Dorman the trombones and Denny Morton and Dickie wells I wasn't too close with Vic Vic was kind of he was shy I bet you and you know to get two children into his inner circle he liked to talk to musicians in adults you know and and so and I had such a friendship with Dicky Wells who you know took me all around Dickies my meal ticket my ace my see and he was so brilliant and Dicky Wells was wise to but Eddie Durham was the genius who wrote all that stuff and then Earl Warren led the reads and he was the one I was closest to me because he was a leader mm-hmm and he was a teacher and he was uh he was a father and he did something that I don't know how much teaching you do but he did something with young people that I'm still trying to do much less do as well he's the only one I've ever seen do this I talked with went Marsalis a lot about this because he doesn't know he knows our warrant and he realized if he led the reads in that band he must be great and I was asleep on him so tell me about him you know like he so that's really my function I I hung out with Earl Warren for 35 years and you get to hear about it because you can't that's the formula that's why this is such a great thing that's going on if if any of this is great and if I can convey it wealthy or suitably but a warrants most amazing talent to meet an independent of his musical greatness was that he could when you know adolescents is rebellious they're not necessarily political or socially oriented I mean I think the youth movement concept is a little bit overrated it happened in my generation in America and perhaps even internationally but it doesn't always have them but rebelliousness in the fighting off the direction in which demand pontification z' of the elder generation that battle grandma's been around according to Aristotle at least 3,000 years and earl warren is the only person who wind it's a cold line in the dirt you're on that side I'm on this side you're the young person or Warren and he could say listen I understand where you come from let me explain this to you and and do it and explain it so that everything calmed down and that he could explain to the student or the youngster why they were wrong and get them to accept it to understand that it wasn't just some browbeating coming down from on high and to adapt it in some way to synthesize it and I've never seen anyone do it as well as their a Warren it's an absolutely outstanding ability to explain complete difference of opinion over a generation gap and when when it's not a competition he knew that to explain it and to find common ground and good action from both sides started quite a talent you know I've never found it again I'd like to have it how did you and let's not leave out Jo Jones was the original the babysitter you know I'm the hey you know I was going to Jo Jones apartment learning that's you know jazz lessons from Jo Jones it's a tough struggle but uh-huh you know I knew him and he was great kind of things did he teach you how to listen to records so you didn't say something stupid yeah that's important lesson him in al Hitler you say you can say monk who do you think's play an alto on this records and you'd say well I don't know you can't tell monk no I can't wanna sir tell you what here's the record listen to it for we come back next Saturday morning but if you can't tell me next out any morning give me back the record and don't come here no more that's a tough teaching that's their method I hope I'm not that mean but they weren't mean to me I see we're parents thrilled that you were getting this yes okay no my mother was eventually thrilled she she was fighting the sports and music thing I mean her idea was I wanted to learn an instrument and it was violin or nothing so I said nothing she she said violin or nothing yeah okay she may not have I may be making her out to be more true if she was just a zany bohemian jazz lover okay but she she didn't want I guess she wanted the best for me and she had to figure out what the best was you know at the time so I have got involved in singing goodbye boys soprano in the major music program of New York City public school systems which was an excellent program in those days but always yearning tippy and the instrumental program and the enriched program they call it SPE in or they call that I gather I have no idea whether they still exists in New York City public school system but SPE is it's a special program for good gifted students but the e meant there be some music opponent enriched is what it's good for and you either went into the ban or you went into the chorus and I wanted that band bad but I've been singing on an enriched music program with this boy soprano fourth fifth and sixth grade because I done okay in the record a class they give you some four quarter lessons and I know I did okay so I got and then I passed some listening tests which probably I shouldn't have passed it cuz I'm not that good and they wouldn't let me take an instrument so I started studying trumpet on the side on my own in adolescence but you know my mother's you know my grandfather was a very excellent her father was an excellent musician an organized church organist but he was a lawyer and my father's father was a lawyer and lawyer you know she they discovered this memory you know when I was two I could do the presidents forward and backward with their death dates I still can do it but I do it slower than I did in 1953 and it's not just because of their more Traut president since Truman yeah it's that some of them are more forgettable okay and you know so she wanted that and you know I love those Brooklyn Dodgers and she who don't take my son to baseball games you know that she really didn't want me to go to the sports things and ah fortunately for me if warding that is important was that my illustrious cousin you know hit big-time sports right then and started like free ticket city that would be Dick Schaap yes he died sure just slightly more than a year ago right and he went with the Newsweek and sport magazine right around the time I entered elementary school and the next until he was city editor of The Herald Tribune which would be like 16 three or four it was Sports heaven and are in a shap house any shap household I mean you what does Billy Crystal say they're pretty tight Billy Crystal of my late cousin we're very fuzzy what's the first thing you think of when you think of dick schaap and and boy you know he wasn't in the family and it's funny you know during that time I knew Billy Crystal's father he's stunned I mean Billy Crystal's close friends of this area of our family the chef family via their Tyson but I knew jack crystal and Bernhard crystal Jack's brother who still lives and I you know I only met Billy Crystal and spoken with him largely about his father and Unni I actually have something that Billy Crystal wants from me no I have no jack crystal used to let me into the central plaza for cheap yeah I don't think he let me in for free but he let me in for cheap and and Billy Crystal said did you saved his ticket stubs and my mother was a she was half pak-rat in half insane throw out ur so the autograph collection in their programs you know my Scotty laughs our autograph and all the others gone but one ticket stub I must have put it in the wrong place from the central plaza and he said he wants a central plaza ticket stub I always said this Dixieland club very close to where the Fillmore was a few years later that the jack crystal after he he didn't really break with Milt Gabler after all they were brother-in-law's but he got he got out of the Commodore music shop and and he was nice to me Jack crystal was nice to me and Billy Crystal likes that Dick Schaap like that because was so odd to and uh and in Bernhardt he can't believe I'm the only guy he meets who doesn't know his famous nephew and does know his late brother really but your father liked the fact that you had all these associations with yes my mother's who I mean we went to the events but the person who I'm leaving out from a family thing is that so my father mother you know took me to these things and I went out and they know the musicians took me to some of these things but my cousin bill bill shaft dicks younger brother he stepped into the breach and started i piggybacked on his enthusiasms and and goodness i mean he's a good guy and you know his wife stopped answering the telephone because i took him out of the house and she i guess she didn't like jazz he took me to see everything we even booed Dylan at Gerdes folk city which wasn't called Gerdes yet it was just folk city I think it was before they took over Tony pastors joint before they moved and and the only reason why I know was Dylan who we booed is because he became famous so quickly after because they would have a the new folk singer you wanted to be the next Pete Seeger I guess or or Dylan would probably say what he got free right and they would be the MC but they would do a few songs at the start of the show and I really wasn't into the do versus hootenanny craze yes sure so we're the same tribe yeah yeah yeah you'll you seem to know as much about the 50s very close yeah so um but it it was cool with me but I mean it wasn't cool and so so if you wanted to go to folk city to see a blue Zac because they had blues acts like Sonny Terry who is my neighbor nice to hit homeruns wiffle ball home runs into his yard I think he lived on lived at the corner of Kino and Pompeii and in Hollis and you didn't want to hear this unknown folk singer mm-hm and do his thing you know so you boot him to make sure he didn't do it on Cory merely oh yeah oh it didn't matter what it was Dylan or not whoever was you booed I mean if you let's say you know this is the bill you know I'm not saying this was the Billy Joel Baez you know Pete Seeger Peter Paul and Mary Benny Goodman and an unknown folk singer and so I went to that I went to hear Benny Goodman even though Peter Paul and Mary and Joan Baez and all these other famous people I'll tolerate them because they're famous I want to hear what they have to do but I'm gonna be sitting on my hands for three hours waiting for the Benny good whatever Sonny Terry and brownie McGhee which I want to see many times that's what I want to see so I'm not going to encourage an encore you know I'm trying to get rid of this thing but because he became famous so fast I remembered it was sure well he had a pretty distinctive sound at the time too you know yeah but that wasn't it was just he was the guy and you moved him I moved others whose names I don't know I know him because he became famous I'm great every time I went to folk city was to see the Blues Act never wants to see the country the folk act not once it doesn't make them bad it doesn't hopefully make me bad but I went to see the Blues Act and so the the new hootenanny wannabe who was the emcee got short shrift from me my cousin bill and one time it was done okay well you got into the radio through Columbia universally yeah and through my sound career but when I got to Columbia most of the people infernal the dormitory I lived then they didn't really know what I was playing but they knew it wasn't what they were used to listening to and they vaguely understood it was jazz and everybody kept saying I should go see Jamie cats and Who Lived - well I was on 1006 Ronald and he lived in some slip like it was interconnected I think it's 7 32 33 34 they reconfigured the doors but not the rooms in that building so it's all loop now anyway but he was down on the seventh floor him one night I went down there and I knocked on his door and he blindfold tested me really so the first thing he played actually he almost couldn't get me got me but I knew it I knew was McCoy so I smoked I know he says pretty good I'm gonna give you a hard one now and then he played I've even know the record he was playing I told him I knew the record I didn't see it I mean he was blindfold test me but it was count basie would Benny Moulton's band I mean he went you know he's sort of like the Briar Patch story Oh so I said well that's Count Basie playing a little combination of fat smaller in old Heinz and his early records impending Bolton's Kansas City Orchestra the Jones law Blues in small black and that was you know you know so so then he says now I'm gonna play another record he said I want you to tell me the piano players I know you'll recognize the others because you seem to know this stuff so he puts on further definitions Benny Carter impulse records and so oh the piano player that's together yes he goes hey oh you know that I said what Richard Aaron cats March 13 1924 Baltimore Maryland played a lot with Tony Scott and was well known for an association with Horan keep newsing milestone record and I don't know whether he had started his association with Helen Merrill at that time but if he had I would have known about it I would have said something and he's hauling penny Carter's from the definitions records and also played Bach Clayton at the Newport Jazz Fest which I should have said actually he played with the JJ johnson band if the Newport Jazz Festival they happened to make a record would but Clayton but that's how I knew him from that period and then I said of course he's Roy Eldridge his piano player uh-huh and I stopped with that oh he said oh yeah that's my father and of course Oh was DJ yeah that's a son yeah oh my which is why he was okay well then you won't we you were winning some points yeah but I mean like if you didn't know it at the 10 Oh cats is very common last name kmt's easy how the last name in New York City I wasn't thinking what Jamie's last name was anyway I was thinking I got to get these questions right I see so I said who did cats was and there was you got a show were you uh pretty much at liberty to play what you wanted complete Liberty that's why I'm still there yeah as I summon was telling you men to be no point to it right I mean if it's you know like somebody's gonna tell me what Basie records the play this kind of silly I mean if Joe Jones told me to play it that's funny but I mean that's weird I mean I yeah I mean Hershel Evans died before I was born everybody else I met most of them were close friends mm-hmm I mean I even met Walter Paige it's six and I think I met Jack Washington when he was in town when I was seven who was real hello goodbye quick with Joe Jones but I was there I remember them on the page on the street no idea what street this man this is mr. page we call him big um you see hello mr. page I said hello mister I said hello mr. page he shook my hand and that was it but that I remember that's great that's great um when did you have an opportunity to do some writing and liner notes and all those kinds of things well I wrote some papers on jazz in in college and I worked well in high school that's why I left the major music program in the New York City public school system I had a he actually thought I could play trumpet he was wrong I believe his name was Ralph Stein he was my music teacher Jamaica high school and he let me do my paper on Chick Webb in my sophomore year of high school and I did a good job and he gave me a good grade and then he got in trouble and I said let me out of here because of the subject matter he never do yeah they didn't bring me and could hurt when he got in trouble and I said that's it let me out of here I'll never take another music horse in this school system and that probably plants the seed of preventing me from overcoming my inferiority which was for the best and Hector you know but I mean I was you know going off on my own at I guess I was 15 there would be 15 and intentionally curtailing the music program in the New York City public school system for a righteous and accurate correct reason as mad as hell yeah cuz I'm obviously because they wanted you to do Bach or Beethoven or something inappropriate right thing is the teacher had approved the topic so it was him who got into trouble not me the great stuff but he I said I'll never take another minute close and I was a side three more years you know two and a half yeah I never did and I was mad and they wouldn't let me talk about Duke Ellington in the classroom either that continued it at Columbia so I said later for the music major Columbia and American history department was hiring me to teach jazz and their American history seminars I said oh okay aha I'm switching okay well that's what I did that's what my teaching career story so the music department didn't want to know about it but the history department recognized that they hired me hired me off the street is an eighteen year old to come in and do guest lectures at Columbia University and although they gave me it's only a little pay so or something like that I was paid that wouldn't happen again for twenty years not quite that then then it was a magazine such an obscure publication that if you were to search for it even on the internet for the rest of your life I'm sure you'll find no mention of it called moon shadow and I reviewed the Newport Jazz Festival first New York when it came to New York in 72 for it and I guess that would be my first formal jazz publication that wouldn't over 30 years ago and probably the September 72 issue of Moonshadow if you want to really torture yourself do you have it I found it I found it in 1997 almost over 25 years after his publication and I was terrified I've always thought if I ever find this again I'm gonna realize what a jerk I was when I was 21 I was 21 when I wrote that review and it's a good review please I give myself I'm hard on myself you know as I'm you know you see it since there's no other comparison but I'm putting on your your films record I mean I was ready to tear me here to shreds if I'd like miss took one misstep uh-huh and I took no mister yeah what attracts you I'm skipping ahead years but what attracts you to take on a reissue project well the importance of the music the ability to make it a superior presentation to contemporary and potentially future audiences from the way it was initially presented mm-hmm is it to document the information you know that might otherwise not be preserved okay so those are three real reasons and is it something that you usually initiate or is it a record company coming to you well originally I offered my services as a provider of an of the rarer stuff with the ability to convert it into a suitable sound for their reissues or first-time issues and you know like I had I had actually a completely different system of doing 78 transfers in the mid-70s which I wonder if I ever again will be able to do and then find out if there was anything to it but I used to do my me mastering KCR at that time was still off the air that's how long ago was because I'm sure it's over 25 years ago whose off the air for a couple of hours in the middle of the night in those years it wasn't yet 24 hours a day and I would do my remastering then on the premises and would throw it through up to the exciter there's the thing that triggers a transmitter having enough powered thing it's sort of like a preamp for radio and I would throw it through the exciter and then download to use a modern term that has not used the time transfer right tap off now we bring it across from the exciter to you know a fairly good skully two-track machine which was to track model of course yeah I wish I had actually if I was really smart of what I've done at full track model that they were model and that was my system then and and I'd had so little and then you know they said well you really know about the music you write the notes so I did a couple of liner notes I did a couple of transfers and then eventually I did a couple where I did both on the same project and I would say there was a very small component of my career it was not you know happening that often for another reason why I was so small was literally small as well as it was a small act because I was doing the radio is trying to teach I was trying to I was still running the West End which we haven't talked about a nightclub that had jazz seven nights a week for 17 years with the very heavy hitting people like Joe Jones and others and Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Carter and others and and then I think the CD age is responsible for that because suddenly there was going to be more reissuing and by this time my reputation I was a little bit older I must have been my early 30s now and so there's a guy who's got the rare stuff we don't have who can do the audio work who can write and also has producer capabilities well that's one step shopping let's do hit and I think that's how it happened I see can you recall the first time you heard Charlie Parker you mean on record yeah I think a night in Tunisia would not on a yellow doll label when Ross Russell came to close up things in 1955 mm-hmm if it was 55 yeah to make a particular impression on you at the time I liked that one record that's the one that I pulled out of the the records that he gave me I kept aside and didn't really get into until I was in junior high school but a 19 each was in my regular stack I see so there might be more dizzy story but he's not on the record the trumpet players Miles Davis and it's a 78 that tells you who's on the record the personnel Vaughn label yeah Trey Dre in the circle there yeah yeah so you felt compelled to find out more about it well if the angle we're heading towards this wide bird you know why does Charlie Parker become such a focal point for my career I think I can explain that to you and I think it's two parts one is my discovery that he's a good way to push jazz cuz you were mentioning a Hamilton College alumnus Al Vollmer he doesn't like bebop but he likes Charlie Parker interest and the guys at Casey are who I was trying to get them to like the music that al Woma liked they liked Ornette Coleman but they like Charlie Parker I said see how that goes okay so that's part one and then one of these people was a fellow named herb shank ler and he really produced the Charlie Parker Festival on KCR because I really lit a fire for Byrd now he lit it himself let's let's give her Franklin 100 percent of the credit but the Charlie Parker festival is the turning point of key CCR's history and that has a lot to do with Lennie Tristano cuz when Tristano is he Tristano Tristana and I are great friends now that he's in dead for a quarter century when he was alive and you're getting some pride I mean I was I think I would not only we're scared of him I don't think I liked him no now I mean they're they're actually some doctoral theses that find us to be great friends and I guess we are because I say so and he's not here to say whether we're not but it was a very very you know touchy situation that finally was resolved this thing resentment I have a being yelled at by Lennie Tristano for basically the entirety of my adolescence and young adult life everyday yell why would you want to listen to Dexter God when you can listen to bed Dexter is totally derivative i play my bear listen to bear such a nice young fella happen package why waste your time you know and then I got on the radio and it got worse yeah I never thought he was stupid I thought you were beautiful care but that shows you did today Sonny Rollins play bad you know and it's a character turn now I could have any invoice yeah 30 years ago I mean in fool you fool the coments well I did fully oh yeah yeah I can't now it's just a joke right okay but Tristano recognized the significance of the Charlie Parker festival and started a musicians Network largely his students telephone game and he single-handedly in this regard I think probably added 10 to 20 thousand listeners of a devout nature to the KCR experiment because of our week-long celebration of Charlie Parker in August and September of 1973 at the time when I was at Columbia I had graduated by this time but when I was at Columbia my day gig was in the ID office I did refereeing and in the end the day gig and the ID office became my proverbial day gig to pay for my jazz life until August of 1984 7 years that's how I paid my bills so and it was registration for the fall semester of 73 Columbia University while the Charlie Parker Fest was going on and there used to be a fire exit we used to walk out of the back door to quickly hit the street from kzr so I was playing I just dropped the wreck and and we scrambled it from the Apple the see take November 447 and it's on the air and it's like a so brick and I love my mother's favorite Charlie Parker record and Ben Webster's favorite Charlie Parker records so there you have it and the records grooving me and I'm thinking about it I'm hearing it you know and then I leave the station I hit the fire exit in the records gone but the records still in my brain cuz I'm playing it in my brain and then I hit the street and the record was back not just in my brain because it was very hot it's summer in air-conditioning wasn't so endemic so people had their windows open and they were playing the Charlie Parker Festival on the radio we had the jackpot and then there was a guy from WABC you run out of time here would you film not yet WABC Stephen King nano is his name and you see so the Charlie Parker festival this is the turning point of KCR I started February 2nd of 70 I'm doing what I did already but only a few people are listening one of them's Tristano and he calls me up to yell at me but then I did the Charlie Parker Festival or really earth Shanklin did the Charlie Parker Festival using my Charlie Parker chops I'm the the guy he's the producer said that's a fair operation yeah and responses and so he calls the student he says I'm calling you you call five people I don't know you know and then by whatever was I was sitting on a park bench with Howard McGhee on August 30th 1973 and we listened with Charlie Parker festival eating ice cream because you could hear it in the streets I said we hit the jackpot so but does it did it have legs so that's where we come December 73 I did the Fletcher Henderson Festival and okay fine thank and I get this phone call says I am Stephen King you know and I do this WABC who had a radio network at the time I'm in charge of you know Arbitron is one thing but we do our own radio listings and I need to talk to you I'd like to come to wk CR and check out your operation so you know I'm 22 at the time just could be big you know he's not the police I'm not gonna get arrested or what could he do to me so I go yes so he shows up he literally sniffs around the joint and finally he tells me with the bottom I says well you know I am Stephen King you know he always said his name that the four times I heard him say his name with the middle initial I'm Stephen King Nano and I do these you know in house ratings for the WABC radio people and I had to see this for myself you see in the first week of December of 1973 the seventh most listened-to radio station in New York City was a radio state on a radio station I never heard of a radio program I'd never heard of about a person I had never heard of a broadcast by a person I had never heard of and I got his attention and it's yeah I mean you know KCR had never popped up in his chart you know I mean what's this case er you had go look in his FM code book to find mr. Columbia University FM station first of all FM stations didn't pop up too often in the chart yet or you couldn't you know so what are they doing here they had a Beatles Festival you know whatever he thinks you know personally no it's not the Beatles it's not the Rolling Stones it's not a Jimi Hendrix memorial it's the Fletcher Henderson festival okay who's Fletcher Hennessy maybe a come and pop college star you know I'd better find out about him no the broadcast was by a college guy Phil shab oh well who's he well who's Fletcher Henderson what's a Fletcher Henderson festival how did they pop up seventh you've never been on our listings ever I mean you never even liked him a subscriber however they no one ever said wkc are to us and this week we got seven your seventh the seventh most listened to radio show that week in New York City who the hell are you and what is this all about and then I knew that we you made it Wow the bird Festa was in August and September 73 Fletcher Henderson Festa was the first week of December 73 and that was no that's that's the thing in birds Fletcher Henderson proved it the bird did the work wow that's great my name is Donna and herb Shanklin and you're in year 31 now no I was 22 when that happened 73 so how many years have you been I've been on the air from February 2nd of 70 up to three and a half years I've been a case er yeah at this transition and from then it's big timing yeah it's a big deal well before we and that's bird like I said yeah bird is the bird seems to be soived welt on that and never relinquished you know the desire to continue letting him be the crusader what's obviously we're gonna have to do another part two or part three here but i wanted to ask you about this a couple things and one was your definition of the rhythm section oh yeah John Hendricks went crazy over that this morning here at the I hae so I now realized that is he wants me to put it down on paper so hey I'm to mail it to him but nicey you're getting you're getting fern you're getting everything so this is really you know I was raised by Jo Jones the drummer in the Basie band and someone we haven't mentioned yet which is Lawrence Lucy the rhythm guitars he actually goes by Larry but he knows that everyone knows it's Lawrence was he he just turned 95 and most of this is Lawrence Lucy it's a little bit Joe Jones in a little very little bit me I'm sort of but it's got a stamp of approval from jazz people including this morning Joe Jones I'm one of the mysteries of will hi jazz had a rhythm guitarists rhythm sections were different in those days most people don't understand that and couldn't duplicate it not because musicians aren't good just because there's no way you're going to be able to repeat that rhythm section concept with no understanding so this is and this is a little bit too harsh I'm cutting things and it's too concise to Pat doesn't leave enough room for the obvious exceptions that prove numerous other rules but this is the story so you got four guys you got piano bass guitar acoustic guitar and drums okay the bass the bass player is in charge of four meaning he's in charge of four for the four four feel that's the bass players job it's got to be four for easing the guitar player is in charge of it's not in to four but two four is always being played inside the four four that's the guitar players gig the guitar players in charge of two four even though he's playing in four four as well but he's in charge of not only the two four field that's within the floor for field there's sort of like to field boom boom boom boom boom except I was doing more on one in three and that's the difference I was singing a bass player from the 20s instead of a rhythm guitarist okay thirties the guitar player stings two and four but subtly yeah that's what I want to tenth can't be too it can't be too bad it has to be subtle it has to be there so the bass player is for the guitar players to for the bass players for for the guitar players to for the guitar players in charge of those unusual syncopation emphasises on two and four okay the drummer's in charge of swinging you know he's swinging you better swing or he's no good okay the bass player and the piano the bass player and the guitar player combined are in charge of making sure the drummer doesn't rush since he's got to be so busy making sure it swings and the piano players in charge of the music I'll be darned that's today you know I have to think about this one for pretty good yeah pretty good pretty good and again it there's so many exceptions I mean so what does a drummer do to make sure he's swinging that's up to the drummer you try to sound like Joe Jones especially well I'm glad we got that first yeah you got it first yeah it's going there two things that I got to do for John Henderson yeah get back to New York he wants that written out so you just sent me a transcription you're saying I don't know you know and the second thing is he wants a very obscure Dizzy Gillespie record because he's he said some brekkie ryx - Shahrzad that that deemed ah bah bah bah bah I can't sing it right now because I was thinking of someone else and I don't sing well but and dizzy is on a pop record where somebody had set lyrics to it gazillion years ago with a organist and playing odd figures behind it he's apparently John's got a gig and a record coming up so he needs to hear that so I'm could he hit that to him and the rhythm section thing that's the two things he wants he's a great man yeah I tell me about the Buckshot marching kazoo Orchestra all of yeah this is my connection to Hamilton when I was first launched the councilman the Basie Alumni band yeah I briefly we had a good first year if I thought that that was going to be the best year this interview would never happen and one of the things is I created a college circuit for us so we would go to these colors right around the time the concept of the college circuit which had fortified among other things Louis Armstrong the all-stars and Dave Brubeck and blah blah blah was about to disappear but I didn't know that or at least I wasn't willing to admit it so I was up in Hamilton in conjunction with a person I knew who was thinking of going to Hamilton and when I got there I had my trumpet with me because I was still in the Columbia marching band and we were known for being zany and weird and Columbia band was really known for doing some outlandish stuff in my day I mean way before I went to school for instance Kennedy showed up John Kennedy at the Harvard Columbia game in November of 63 early November 63 and they just rewrote the entire halftime show on the spot is a political satire and with the president gold silver water was Bill the the country will go forward and then they marched backwards off the field playing some weird song and Kennedy loved it of course why wouldn't he but I mean it wasn't the playing or the song but the whole riff and so that's the banding we columbia university marching band is known for launching what is now a little bit more known which of these novelty orchestras that get pretty wild and non-musical that you know that the the intellectual colleges do for their halftime shows and when I got the Hamilton I discovered that they had one too and it was even a little bit more skiffle than ours it was the Aaron Burr lucky shot marching in kazoo orchestra and I thought that was funny I thought it was a great name great concept and I had my trouble with it they said I said I don't know any of your music and they said we don't have any music there's oh yeah all right let's have fun anywhere I went out there I don't was Hamilton playing Cortland State they were playing I think it was Cortland State and I went out there and I played with the Aaron Burr lucky shot marching in kazoo Orchestra of course Alexander Hamilton went to Columbia you know so we have our own feelings about this too I see and in what year was this again this would have been the fall of 1973 okay we'll have to tell some people about that school in between in between the Charlie Parker festival of the Ferguson Festival I went to Hamilton New York and played at a football game as a member of the Aaron Burr lucky shot marching in kazoo Orchestra wow I wonder if it's on film waiting Tim huh boy that'd be something if we had a film of that yeah I doubt you have a film in the halftime show that'd be great laughter look in the archives okay um let me run a couple names by you mm-hmm Joe Williams well if he was the reason why I met Joe Jones when we were at the Randall's Island Festival in 1956 The Count Basie band was plenty hot they had every day I have the Blues which was a hit single and the album April in Paris which I believe had come out was the big selling record and my mother and I got backstage and she was like holding my hand and this man started talking to her in retrospect I now realized that he was probably hitting on my mother you know you know and he said well this is all very well I'm good you know we're we're backstage you know here Count Basie but if you play your cards right I can get you further backstage and you could actually meet Joe Williams so my mother completely pops his ball along so well that's all very well and good but of course Jimmy rushing was the only singer for the Count Basie Orchestra poof he disappears Joe Jones taps my mother from behind on the Sheldon system madam I heard that that was wonderful you seem to know about our Orchestra not as much as my little boy here okay mister I was five I would be another 15 years before anyone would ever call me mister again okay mister who's Prince Robinson the tenor player in McKinney's Cotton Pickers I didn't have that voice my Joe Jones announced my mother.this she had required a new babysitter Joe Williams doesn't have too much doing that story but he's the triggering mechanism that bend cuz they were roaring yeah and I like the the the the wrap on cannonballs on stage I certainly came to understand that it was a little bit more packed than I wished it you know and yeah in the early sixties I thought that was that lived I'd like to think that but it probably was it wasn't yeah you know by the late sixties I'm catching a couple more sets yeah now maybe it was ad libbed in the early sixties and then it was Pat okay but I thought he was far more thoughtful about the music then his fame in the Ramsey Lewis area kind of yeah Jack allowed people to know you know he's sort of seen as one of the spring boards of the the pop fusion developments that are going to occur nowhere near as important as miles but it's he's he's there and he's last until 75 and his band did go a little bit electric and of course you know it had its Mercy Mercy Mercy hip but I saw him as one of the green intellectuals who were also roaring roots players it is the ultimate combination mm-hmm from a Jazz Studies point of view you don't have to intellectualize this music but if you want to study it you got to know something about that kitty record accountable day that's killing yes how come you know so much you talking to me yeah well I'm a saxophone player you can hear Oh cannibal kitty Rick I have it you're a heavyweight I have no you just so you went up sixteen notches okay there's a building here with 7,000 people there who think they know that record and they know well I have my heroes there cannonball Kitty record yeah you you know you're one of my new heroes no gosh well that's that's saying a lot and you know I really hope that we'll have to get together again I come to New York on occasion all right and you know I really wish I could pick up your radio station where we live yeah but we're having a lot of problems you know you know we won the World Trade Center and yeah I'll leave something on the record here because I feel that strongly about it all but I'll make it a joke I'll close with a joke so I'm jazz musicians like to do that wk CR has been mistreated by Columbia University the FCC and Osama bin Laden and then Laden is in third place all right enough said well get well maybe next time around will understand why yeah well I want to thank you for all the things you've done in this in this business did you get what you wanted from Yuri for your kid for part one okay well I talk too much then I guess apologize but that's that's one of my trade right so you prove that I'm me okay thank you so much thanks

Channel: Fillius Jazz Archive at Hamilton College

Views: 1,185

Rating: 4.878788 out of 5

Keywords: 1930s jazz, Count Basie, Papa Jo Jones, Earle Warren, Charlie Parker, Lennie Tristano, WKCR radio, Greenwich Village folk scene, Al Sears, Walter Page, Cannonball Adderley

Id: h-K_9jRFDmY

Length: 64min 45sec (3885 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 17 2018