Yesterday was the 88th birth anniversary of master drummer Arthur Taylor (1929-1995). I got to know “A.T.,” as he was familiarly called, when I had an opportunity to engineer a number of Musician Shows that he conducted at WKCR during the mid- and latter ’80s, and subsequently when he asked to transcribe a number of interviews for a prospective volume two of his essential Notes and Tones, which never did get published. These included conversations with Red Garland, Billy Higgins, and a number of other greats. During the last 5-6 years of his life, AT put together a tight, ferocious group that included such outstanding musicians as Willie Williams, Abraham Burton, Jacky Terrason and Tyler Mitchell. In 1992 I had an opportunity to turn the tables on AT and interview him on a Musician Show together with drummer Walter Bolden, the transcript of which I’ve appended below.
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Arthur Taylor/Walter Bolden (11-11-92) – (Musician’s Show):
[MUSIC: Taylor’s Wailers, “Mr. A.T.”, Coltrane, “Good Bait”]
Q: Now, you’ve reconstituted Taylor’s Wailers over the last couple of years, and you’ve been associated, particularly in terms of writing, with Walter Bolden, another superb drummer. You’ve really been on the scene together ever since you emerged. Your careers span just about the same amount of time, I think.
AT: Yes. Well, we have similar feelings about drumming, and our styles of drumming are similar. We’ve been friends since Walter came to New York. He came out of Connecticut. To get from that point to this moment, his writing, to me, has the same flavor as Horace Silver or Gigi Gryce, who are two great composers in my estimation. I later found out that they had studied together, so maybe that’s the reason why rhythmically… Well, Walter’s a drummer, so what he would write would be interesting for a drummer in the first place.
Walter wrote the title song of Taylor’s Wailers’ latest CD, which you heard, “Mr. A.T.” I went to visit Walter one afternoon, and I walked in, he was playing the piano. He said, “Yeah, T, how do you like this?” — and he started playing this song. I said, “Yeah, I like that, man. That’s fantastic. I really like that.” He says, “Do you really like it?” I said, “Yeah, man. You know I wouldn’t jive you. I really like it, you know.” He says, “Yeah? Well, that’s for you. And we’ll call it ‘Mr. A.T.'” Now you tell them about it, Walter.
WB: That’s exactly the way it happened, too. I had written the piece, and I was wondering who I was going to give this piece to that I thought could really do it justice, the way I would like to hear it played — and I thought Arthur Taylor and Taylor’s Wailers would do a wonderful job with this. So I had named the tune “Mr. A.T.” because it was really especially for him. And I was very-very-very pleased with the job that they did on it.
Q: Well, Walter Bolden, tell us about your impressions of A.T. back when you first met him. When was it, anyway?
WB: Well, this goes back to December 1950 on into 1951.
AT: You even know the month.
WB: [LAUGHS] Well, I have a knack for that. Of course, naturally, I didn’t read it off the record jacket right here! But ever since then we have been very, very good friends. We used to hang out a lot together, and be on some of the same scenes, and we had the opportunity of playing with some of the same great musicians through our career.
Q: Who were you playing with at that time?
WB: Well, before I left Hartford, I was playing with Gigi Gryce, studying with him, and Horace Silver, and a bassist named Joe Calloway, and an alto player by the name of Harold Holt who was up there, and a trumpet player by the name of Richard Taylor. Horace Silver formed a trio with Joe Calloway and myself. We were working around Hartford and up in Massachusetts, and different little towns in Connecticut. We were working at a club called the Club Sundown up in Hartford, and Stan Getz was booked there as a single to work with our trio. He liked what we were doing, and he talked to Horace about hiring the trio to go back to New York with him and work — at which we were very, very elated. And this is what really got us out of Hartford, working with Stan Getz.
Q: You recorded with him for Roost, and the results are on a recent set called Stan Getz: The Roost Quartets. But you and Horace Silver go back a long way. About how far back do you go?
WB: Let’s see. We go way back, I guess to ’47.
Q: So since your late teens, basically?
WB: Right.
Q: And you were working around Hartford as a teenager?
WB: Sure, I did. I was in a band of Gigi’s that had Joe Calloway in it, and a piano player by the name of Gene Nelson. We used to go down to New Haven, and hook up with Horace Silver and Keeter Betts and different people from that part of Connecticut. At that time, Horace was playing tenor saxophone — which he leaned towards the Lester Young type of sound and feel, very, very warm — and he also played piano. But the three of us, Horace, Joe Calloway and myself, got together, and we decided that we would just get into a trio type thing. That’s how that happened. We were working all over the place at that particular time.
Q: How long have you been playing the drums, and who were the first drummers you liked and modeled yourself after?
WB: I started playing professionally around Connecticut at 16 or 17 years old.
AT: You’ve been playing since you were 16? Hey, wait a minute, now…
WB: [LAUGHING]
AT: I don’t like this disadvantage in here. This stuff is getting serious, now!
WB: Well, it was right around Connecticut, you know, which was great. A lot of musicians used to come through Hartford. In fact, the State Theater was the big band theater there, where Count Basie and Duke Ellington used to come through from New York. When I was a kid, we’d sit down in that theater all day long, and listen to these people.
Q: So you’d see all the drummers from the big bands.
WB: All the drummers, you know, from Lucky Millinder, Chick Webb, I would say Jimmie Crawford…
AT: You saw Chick Webb.
WB: Sure.
AT: You’re a lucky man.
WB: [LAUGHS] You know!
AT: Yeah.
WB: Sonny Greer…
AT: I saw him, too.
WB: I know you did.
Q: When did you first see Chick Webb, A.T.?
AT: I saw him at the Apollo, the Apollo Theater, yeah. That’s when he had Ella Fitzgerald, she was a star, a child star, like.
Q: So it sounds like he really impressed you, as I’m sure everybody who had the good fortune to hear him in person.
WB: That’s right.
AT: I would say the young Tony Williams.
WB: That’s it. Very, very fast hands, and his concept, everything. Beautiful. Beautiful to watch, too.
Q: So those were the drummers who affected you when you were coming up.
WB: Early, right.
Q: Walter, when you and Horace Silver were playing together, it was after World War Two, and Charlie Parker’s records had come out. Did those really turn you around when you heard them, and Horace as well?
WB: Of course! It was really a totally different thing with Dizzy and Charlie Parker and Bud Powell. Now, Horace and Joe Calloway and myself used to model a lot of things we did in our trio after the Bud Powell trio, with Max Roach and Curly Russell, which recorded in 1947.
Q: You can hear that in some of Horace’s trio recordings in the early 1950’s, too, which are very much in that style.
WB: Right.
Q: But I interrupted you.
WB: So we were influenced very much by that. And Kenny Clarke, Max Roach, Art Blakey, you know…and on up! [LAUGHS]
Q: Now, did you get to hear these guys in Hartford? Would they come through Hartford and play?
WB: Max did. And Art Blakey used to come through with Billy Eckstine years ago. I used to sit down in a hall up there called the Footguide(?) Hall, where all the big bands used to come when they had dances and whatnot. I remember Art Blakey with Billy Eckstine’s band. He used to roll up his pants leg on his beat-a-ball, [LAUGHS], on the bass drum, you know, and I thought, “Why does he do that?” Then I found out later on that if you roll your pants leg up, your pants leg won’t get caught in that ball when you’re playing. [LAUGHS]
AT: That’s a drag, isn’t it?
WB: It happens, you know?
AT: It’s a drag.
Q: Now, A.T., growing up in New York, in Harlem, you had a chance to see just about everybody who came through in person as a teenager. Is that what you did? Were you able to hear a lot of music when you were a teenager?
AT: Yeah. Well, I think I was very lucky, because my father would take me to the Apollo Theater. I don’t know whether he liked it that much. Maybe he was just trying to get out the house or whatever he was doing, but it was really groovy. So he’d take me the Apollo Theater, and I’d see Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Duke, Charlie Barnet, Buddy Rich, oh, all the big names. Oh, I mean, all the big stars… I mean real stars. I’m talking about real stars. You know, when these people do their stuff, they’d turn the place out every time from the hearts. So that really impressed me.
And seeing all those drummers, you know… Then I saw Buddy Rich. That was impressive. Then we’d play hooky from school and go to the Paramount Theater to see Gene Krupa and people like that. But my real day was the day I saw J.C. Heard. I couldn’t be-lieve that. I’d seen Chick Webb and I’d seen Buddy and I had seen Gene Krupa, but when I saw J.C. Heard, I said, “Well, that’s it. That is it!” And I have modeled my drumming after J.C. Heard. Most people don’t know that.
Q: Well, now they do.
AT: I don’t know. Is anybody out there? Do you think somebody is listening to this show?
Q: Well, you can give us a call on the next break. You still remember the phone number, right?
AT: No, man.
[LOTS OF LAUGHTER]
Q: Was this before you heard Max Roach and Kenny Clarke?
AT: Oh, yes. This was before I was even interested in drums. I was supposed to be an athlete.
Q: You were supposed to be.
AT: Yeah, I was supposed to be an athlete.
Q: What did you play? What was your sport?
AT: I was a heckuva center-fielder, a heckuva second-baseman, and I was not too bad a guard in basketball.
Q: Could you hit?
AT: I could hit. It’s funny. I’ve only seen out of one eye all my life, but I could meet the ball. I can’t figure that out today. I could always meet the ball. I could drive it sometimes, but I could always meet it. And talking with the boys I grew up with now and the people in my family, I’ve found out I was better than I even thought I was. But at that time, in professional athletics, they didn’t allow Negroes in, you know, so there was no future. My parents would say, “Are you crazy?” Everybody else in the family was going to Columbia University and all that kind of stuff, and here I wanted to play baseball. They said, “You must be out of your mind! Get out of here, boy!”
Q: What got you interested in playing drums as a profession?
AT: I’ll tell you what it was with me. I went to a jam session is, where Lincoln Center is, where I am playing tomorrow night, where the Walter Reade Theater at 8 o’clock, Taylor’s Wailers will be performing… Almost on the exact spot I went to hear…went to a jam session. And playing in this jam session was Fats Navarro and Miles Davis and Big Sid Catlett and Max Roach and Bud Powell and Freddie Webster — and I can go on and on and on. What really impressed me was the joy and the pleasure the people were having, and all the beautiful ladies there were…you know, thrills with their shit. I thought about that, and I said, “This is good. You don’t have to get up in the morning either. You can sleep late…”
WB: [LAUGHS]
Q: You go to bed whatever time…
AT: You can go to bed when everybody’s getting up, you know. So I said, “Yeah, that looks like that’s for me.” So that’s really how I got into it. Seeing Big Sid and Max that day, I said, “I have to try it.”
Q: Were you self-taught, or was there somebody showing you the fundamentals?
AT: I was basically self-taught. I had a teacher, but he couldn’t stand me, you know, so that didn’t work. He was a very fine teacher. He became a big union official in Local 802. His name was Aubrey Brooks. I didn’t have enough discipline for him, so he didn’t go for me too much.
Q: Walter Bolden, what got you interested?
WB: Well, growing up in the State Theater, when all the bands used to come through. But there was music in my family. See, my mother played piano, my father played the French horn, one of my brothers played trumpet, one played piano, and the other one played guitar. I used to fumble with the various instruments in the house, but I didn’t want anything that was there. I wanted something that wasn’t there, and that was drums. And I was influenced by the drummers that I saw at the State Theater and the drummers that used to come in through the clubs up there in Hartford.
Later on, Kenny Clarke and Max Roach and Art Blakey and Roy Haynes really got to me in my way of thinking about playing drums. See, before that it had been like, Chick Webb, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, as A.T. mentioned, J.C. Heard, people like that…Jimmie Crawford, you know…
AT: Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm.
WB: The new music at that time really grabbed ahold of me.
[W. Bolden with Getz/Silver/Calloway, “Split Kick,” “Strike Up The Band” (1950); H. McGhee Sextet, “Ittapnna” (1953)]
WB: “Ittapnna” is Patti Ann spelled backwards.
Q: [ETC.] Our guests are Arthur Taylor and Walter Bolden.
AT: You’re a guest also, Ted.
Q: I’m a guest?
AT: Yeah, you’re my guest.
WB: [LAUGHS]
Q: Thank you. Are you doing the Musician’s Show with me?
AT: I’m gonna interview you.
Q: I can hear radio sets clicking off around New York City as we speak. Boring the audience in New York! But maybe we can put you back in the role of Musician Show host with Walter Bolden. How about that, A.T.?
WB: Well, we think along the same lines.
Q: I remember the type of questions you would ask. I’m sure people would like to hear a little set.
AT: Yeah, well, Walter, what do you feel about Love and Marriage?
WB: Oh, my goodness. [LAUGHS]
Q: We can ask Sammy Cahn, and then…
WB: [LAUGHS] That sounds like “Tones In Bronze” or something.
AT: “Tones in Bronze”!
WB: [LAUGHS]
AT: Why don’t we just continue?
Q: Okay, we’ll continue. Then I’m going to get into ordinary biographical stuff. Look, A.T., around the time Walter Bolden’s first composition came out, I think you were working with Bud Powell…
AT: What year was that?
Q: 1953. That was June 8th of ’53.
AT: Yeah, I was working with Bud then.
Q: Was that your first real professional gig?
AT: Oh, no!
Q: What were the events that led to working with Bud Powell?
AT: Okay, let’s see if I can get it in some kind of chronological order. My first real… Well, I used to play the neighborhood with Sonny Rollins and Jackie McLean. That was real as you can get — even then, you know. As I was telling some people today, they were talented then and could play then. It wasn’t like that they were young and couldn’t play. They could play. They were great musicians at that time, too.
Q: Did you meet them in high school? Did you meet them around the neighborhood?
AT: We lived in the same neighborhood. We lived on Sugar Hill in Harlem. We were all interested in the same thing, which was, like, Charlie Parker, Bud and Dizzy Gillespie and people like that. They were the tops.
Q: And you were uniquely advantaged, because you were able to go and hear them frequently.
AT: Yeah. Well, Bud lived right down the street from me. I was telling some people today, we would go to Bud’s house, and he’d sit down and play Bach and Beethoven off the top of his head. It would frighten you, you know, like it was nothing — without any music. It was unbelievable. Well, Kenny Drew was a Classical musician anyway, first of all. Sonny Rollins had taken me to hear him and his sister do a Bach duet. I said, “Is this the guy I’m gonna play with? Shit, he’s playing Bach duets…” [LAUGHING] We all know what a great musician Kenny Drew is, I’m sure, also, at the same time.
We were in the same neighborhood, and some of the guys went to the same school, which was Benjamin Franklin, which was a very fine school in Harlem, and produced some really great musicians. Rollins came out of there, I think McLean went there, Percy France went there, I think Gilly Coggins went there — I mean, really fine musicians came out of that school. And we were in the neighborhood, and we had this little band. We were burning, playing for all the dances. People were able to dance to the music, then.
Q: That’s another thing. There were a lot of dance halls. People often said that Bebop was something that people couldn’t really dance to, but I think that’s really not the case, is it.
AT: No, no. I played many dances with Charlie Parker. Many dances. The Audubon Ballroom, Rockland Palace, the Renaissance. I played several places with Charlie Parker for dancing.
Q: Did people develop new dances for Charlie Parker?
AT: No, you just had to swing. You had to be able to swing. If you could swing, it’s all right, yeah. But then the music got a little different. You can’t dance to it. You’ve got to have a computer to figure it out, have a pencil and a piece of paper and everything. Which is all right, it’s okay, it’s good. I hope they keep doing that. Because I’m not going to play like that. [THE A.T. LAUGH]
Q: But we’ll get back to the places where you would play dances, though. Because I did interrupt you.
AT: Well, I told you the places. The Audubon Ballroom was our main spot. At that time, musicians were producing, you know. Art Blakey used to produce every Sunday afternoon at Rockland Palace, and that was the event. People would come from Jersey, Connecticut and everything. The biggest event of the year would be when he and Max Roach had the drum battle. People would come from all over, they’d come from Boston to see this. This was the show of all shows.
I was born in Harlem and I lived in Harlem, and I didn’t have to go out of Harlem to work. I had plenty of joints there to work, and I’d always get a Sunday afternoon once in a while at Art Blakey’s thing — once a month or something I’d get a gig over there with Art.
Q: When did you first meet Art Blakey?
AT: Ah, gee, I don’t know. Art was always very active in helping young people. We were young fellas, and we used to go and visit Art when he lived at 117th Street and Lenox Avenue, and it was just a thrill just to sit there and look at him — if he didn’t say anything, you know. Just to be in his company, you’d learn something about something, or music at least! Or something. You learned something. He was so beautiful. He was one of our greatest, and one of the major contributors to modern improvisation. As far as I am concerned, if anybody, it’s Art Blakey, yeah.
Q: What I want to get to is how it came to be accepted that you could and get the jobs. Was it just through working around the neighborhood, people hearing about you…
AT: No. I’ll tell you how I got accepted. Lockjaw Davis was the bandleader at Minton’s, and if you couldn’t play, you had to get off the bandstand. When we went down there to play, Lockjaw gave us an invitation to come and play any time we felt like playing. That’s the highest point that I have ever reached in music! When Lockjaw Davis told me I could go and play any time, I didn’t even speak to myself! I may not even speak to you any more! Ha-ha. Because nobody knows about that. They have some guys over here, and somebody says they’re great, but when Lockjaw said “you can come and play,” that means you can go and hone your craft on the bandstand with guys who are better than you! And you can’t ask for more than that. For me.
Q: So when did the gig with Bud Powell come about? How did that happen?
AT: That came about in 1951. I had been playing with Coleman Hawkins. I played with Coleman Hawkins for a year with Kenny Drew, Tommy Potter and Harry “Sweets” Edison, which was a very fine group. The musicians that I play with now, I try to teach them some of the things that Hawk taught me.
Q: Such as?
AT: How to be able to maintain your stuff without being a dummy, without acting stupid, acting with humility, to have good manners, but don’t take anything from anybody at the same time. Because we’re exposed when we play this music. Anybody can walk up to us and say anything. They walked up and shot Lee Morgan down! It’s hard to get to people when they’re big stars, but musicians in improvised music, it’s…you know, you’re exposed.
Where was I… We were talking about…?
Q: Coleman Hawkins.
AT: Okay. My first job was with Howard McGhee. He took a band with Kenny Drew, Sonny Rollins (I got the job through Kenny or Sonny), and Percy Heath and myself to Utica. That was my first trip on the road.
Then, I started working with Hot Lips Page. Hot Lips Page, he was a rough man. He was a rough man. They need a guy like him around here now. Because he’ll punch you in the mouth if it don’t sound right. He’ll knock you out. And maybe you can beat him, but I don’t know, because he was a big, strong guy, rough — a rough, mean man. So I’d like to see… We need somebody like that around here now, and a lot of people wouldn’t be acting as tough as they think they are — physically.
Then after that, my main job was with Oscar Pettiford. I made my first record with Oscar Pettiford. We made 36 takes of “Love for Sale,” got in a car and drove in a snowstorm to Chicago. Super hip stuff, you dig it? [LAUGHS] 36 takes. If I’m on the bandstand now, if somebody calls “Love For Sale,” I get a cringe up my back. And I was the one messing up.
Q: It was you?
AT: It was me messing up. And every time I made it, I was getting worse, I was getting more nervous and getting worse and worse and worse. He was ready to kill me. Oscar was a perfectionist. He was a master. Oscar was a master.
WB: Hell, yeah.
AT: Oscar was a master. If you talk about bass, oh, man, wait a minute. [LAUGHS] Oscar Pettiford!
WB: Cello, too.
AT: Yeah, that’s right. Oscar was the first one to use an electrical attachment on a string instrument, as far as I know, in this field of improvised music. And the way the basses sound now, with the electrical attachment, that’s the way he sounded when he put the electrical attachment on the cello in Paris.
Anyway, after Oscar Pettiford, I got the job with Bud Powell, which is what I wanted. If I never did anything else in my life, that’s the only thing I wanted to do, was play with Bud.
Q: You worked with Bud Powell for five or six years.
AT: Yeah, for three years straight, and then off and on many times. Yeah.
Q: What was his manner as a leader?
AT: He never said anything. The only thing he’d ever say to me was, “‘Peanuts,’ Arthur.” That was my big solo. I had the introduction to “Salt Peanuts.” That’s all he said.
Q: That’s all he said to you in five years?
AT: Yeah, that’s about all. I would always say, “What do you want me to do?” And he would say, “Don’t worry about it, you’ll dig it.” I said, “I’ll dig it! Are you crazy?” [LAUGHING] I’ll dig it? Man! I don’t know what it was. I don’t see any reason for him to have that much confidence in my ability. But for whatever reason, he said I would dig it. So we made dozens of albums. They’re still classic, and people like them, too.
Q: I think we should play something with you and Bud Powell later, but right now we have cued up something from a wonderful Kenny Dorham session from 1961 titled Showboat.
AT: Yeah, I love Kenny Dorham. He’s one of our great… Well, he writes like Bud Powell. His writing is similar. Yeah.
Q: Did you first meet him at this time, too?
AT: Well, Kenny lived up on the Hill. Other people, too… Kenny lived on the Hill. Denzil Best lived on the Hill. And they were like gods, you know. Kenny Dorham! Because Kenny Dorham used to play with Fats Navarro. That’s enough right there, if you never heard him! [LAUGHS] That’s enough right there, if you played with Fats Navarro.
That’s a funny thing. You know Allen Eager, the tenor player? Some young guys were getting smart with him one day, or something about something. He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I played with Fats Navarro. I don’t know what you did.” [LAUGHS] That’s pretty rough.
Q: We’re with Arthur Taylor and Walter Bolden on the Musicians’s Show, and Taylor’s Wailers is performing Thursday night at the Walter Reade Theater. By the way, we haven’t mentioned who’s in the group yet.
AT: Well, we have Jacky Terrason. He’s from Paris. I heard him in France about two years ago, and he’s really developing. I think he can develop into one of the finest pianists around. So I’m looking for very fine things from him within this decade. I would figure by the end of this decade he should be at the top of his form. Because it takes fifteen years to get your stuff together to start with; you know, to get your own sound, where you develop your own sound where you don’t sound like nobody else, and everybody can recognize that it’s you. That takes fifteen years.
Q: Do you think that’s always been the case? A lot of the people who were your idols, say, in the Forties, were just in their late twenties at that time.
AT: Well, I didn’t figure that out myself. In talking with Freddie Hubbard… As a matter of fact, it’s probably in my book, Notes and Tones, where we were talking about that. Freddie was saying (and I agree with him, which is why I repeat this) it takes fifteen years to get your own sound. It’s not like you’re going to say, “I’m going to get my own sound, and sound like me!” or something like that. This comes through practice and experience and discussion and listening, and you arrive at your place — and it’s you! It’s nobody else. It can’t be anybody else but you. And some people never arrive. Some people never get it. Ha! That’s one of our songs we’re going to play tomorrow night, too, “Some People Never Get It.”
Q: Who wrote that one?
AT: That’s my piece, and then…
WB: [LOUD LAUGH]
AT: [LAUGHING] Then we’ll follow that with a piece by Walter Bolden, where we’ll say, “Some people never get it, because they’re all stressed out.” [LAUGHS] It’s all right if they never get it. That’s true! Some people never get it. It’s just like that. Everybody doesn’t get it, you know. But the Sun shines on everyone.
Q: But at any rate, after Jacky Terrason, you have two very talented young saxophone players.
AT: Yes. First of all, at the bass we have Tyler Mitchell. We have Tyler Mitchell on the bass. He’s a fine bassist. He’s been with me the longest of all the musicians in the group. We used to go to Europe and do tours with Steve Grossman, tenor player Steve Grossman. We did tours with him, and I would have Tyler on these gigs, so that we got familiar with each other. He has developed tremendously over the last two years. He’s just got to do a little more, and he’ll be all right.
Then we have Willie Williams on tenor saxophone. Willie was known for playing with Dollar Brand and different groups like that. What impresses me with Willie is his sound. He’s got a sound, you know. I’ve always played with saxophone players who can play loud. That interests me most if they can play loud. Gene Ammons can play loud. Jackie McLean can play loud, and Hawk can play loud, and Bird could play loud… You could hear Bird in Chicago if he was playing on 42nd Street, boy! He’d be loud, man. Anyway, you have to be heard before anything can happen. And at that time, they didn’t have all these sophisticated electronic things for your sound. So you had to blow. You had to put some air in those horns. You don’t just be foolin’ around. So Willie has a large sound, and he has a piercing sound that cuts through, too, which is what impressed me about him first of all.
Then we have Abraham Burton on alto saxophone. He’s a protege of Jackie Mac, my old friend, Jackie McLean’s. And he has a powerful… He’s a powerful guy. I mean really. They’re both powerful, you know. I mean, I’m amazed sometimes. I said, “Man, these guys are powerful!” And when the two of them play together, you know, when we play the ensembles, I said, “God…”
WB: [LAUGHS]
AT: Am I right or wrong?
WB: That’s right!
AT: Let Walter Bolden tell you about that, now. Because he’s written five songs at least that we use in our repertoire regularly. Since we’re talking about the saxophone, let’s talk about the power of these two young men, please.
WB: Yes. Willie and Abraham, when they play together, they get a sound that’s big. It sounds like a brass section. You don’t miss the trumpet. It has depth, and it’s wide-open. But being wide-open, it’s still warm. They have a knack of playing very, very mature even right now, although they have a little bit more to offer, I’m quite sure. But they are two of the strongest musicians out here that I have heard in a long time, really. Wide-open sound.
AT: That’s pretty rough, huh? Wow.
WB: Wide-open sound, right.
Q: The drummer is Arthur Taylor.
AT: Yeah, the drummer, man. I just go along.
Q: What do you think of him, Walter Bolden?
AT: Oh, it’s gonna get funny now….
WB: Well, you know….
AT: It’s gonna get funny.
WB: When you have two guys on the same instrument…
[EVERYONE LAUGHS]
WB: A.T. and I, we used to practice together on the pads, you know. A.T. has a way of playing musical drums. You see, a lot of people play drums, but just patterns and so forth and so on. He has his dynamics, you know. He knows how to pull the sound out of the drum instead of beating the sound into the drum.
AT: Beat it out!
WB: He pulls the sound out. He pulls it out. And it’s amazing, some of the things he does, his coordination — it’s tremendous.
AT: I told him to say that, you know.
Q: He memorized all that? You wrote that? That’s beautiful. That’s great.
[EVERYONE LAUGHS]
[MUSIC: KD/J. Heath/Kenny Drew/AT, “Make Believe” (1961); Gene Ammons, “Canadian Sunset” (1960)]
Q: I know that Gene Ammons, A.T., was one of your very favorite of all musicians.
AT: Yeah, Gene was great. First of all, my mother was a big Sonny Rollins fan for this piece, “This Love Of Mine,” that he did at one time — I think Blakey and Kenny Drew and I think Percy Heath was the personnel on that. She loved that record. But when she heard “Canadian Sunset,” Gene Ammons got her. She loved Gene Ammons. So I had to play this record. I’d have something on, and I’d have to put “Canadian Sunset” on. She liked that piece.
Gene was one of those saxophone players, you could hear him in Brooklyn when he was playing in Manhattan. He had that big sound, you know. God, he had this big sound. And he would tell me, “When we get to the end of the chorus, I want you to drive me and kick me and spur me on and everything.” It was a great learning experience, because he was so much more experienced and so much older. I learned so many different things from Gene Ammons. Plus, he was such a sweetheart, one of the sweet guys of the music business.
Q: Well, you did a lot of recordings with him.
AT: Quite a few.
Q: You recorded on those jam sessions in the mid-Fifties.
AT: That’s right. Coltrane played alto on some of them. Jackie McLean used to be on them, and Art Farmer, Donald Byrd. We had a lot of great musicians. Doug Watkins used to do a lot of those things with us.
Q: When did you first hear him? On one of your first trips to Chicago?
AT: Yeah, I heard him in Chicago. They used to have the all-night jam sessions. And I had known of Gene Ammons, but to hear him in person and electrify the people… When he’d play a ballad, you just went, [SIGHS]; you’d just melt, you know, with the sweetness and the power at the same time. It was so beautiful.
Q: He was a star musician in Chicago since his early twenties, and he’d been performing since his teens.
AT: That’s true. And the Billy Eckstine year also. What about Jug? What about that sound? Let’s talk about sound. What about that sound he gets on that instrument, the texture of his tone?
WB: Well, T, I’ll tell you. With Gene, for me, like his sound was so broad and so warm, when you would hear him in person, you could feel it in your stomach. That’s the vibration. It was just that broad. You could feel it in your body with him. And his ideas. And the way he used to hold back on his phrases and things like that. It would just take you over. Pull you right into him. For instance, there’s a song I really like by him, and it’s called “Didn’t We,” where he…
AT: An original piece or something?
WB: No, it goes, [SINGS REFRAIN], “Didn’t we girl?” You remember that?
AT: “Didn’t we girl?”
WB: [LAUGHS]
AT: Wait a minute, I heard that!
WB: No, that’s the way the lyric goes!
AT: Oh, yeah, okay-okay-okay…
WB: If the man sings it. “Didn’t we, girl,” you dig? But he did a tremendous job on that. And he did so other wonderful performances. To hear him in person was like a magic…
AT: He had a persona (is that the word?) on stage.
WB: That’s right.
AT: He was such a big man, and he had this big sound.
WB: He had a presence that was… Oh, man, it was something else. Really-really-really something.
Q: Well, it seems like most of the saxophone players you played with were players with the big sound. John Coltrane had a huge sound, Sonny Rollins…
AT: Yes, that’s true.
Q: So what else do you want to talk about, A.T.? Bring up some topics!
AT: Well, Gene Ammons is… He’s quite a topic right there, you know, because he’s not spoken about that much these days. We would be on those record dates, you know, with Jackie and Coltrane and all those people, and Gene…I mean, whatever he said, nobody questioned anything. Because he was a master musician, first of all, plus he was a great, great creative person and a great improviser, had tremendous imagination. Looking back, I can picture it in my mind right now, these sessions we would do with Jug. Everybody was so thrilled just to be in his presence. And to be on the record date with him, that was a big thing in itself.
Q: We have cued up “Appointment In Ghana,” a sextet track by Jackie McLean, A.T.’s long-time partner, who you recorded with extensively in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
AT: That’s a piece that I like. I think we’re going to put in our book. That’s one of the new pieces we’re going to put in our repertoire. [SINGS REFRAIN] Tina Brooks, he was a heckuva saxophone player, too.
WB: Oh, yes.
Q: He was on this, and Blue Mitchell on trumpet.
AT: Blue Mitchell, oh, wow!
Q: And we have Kenny Drew and Paul Chambers…
AT: Oh, my goodness! Oh!
Q: You recorded with Paul Chambers on about eight thousand sessions.
AT: Oh, don’t get me…
Q: He’s going to say a few words about Paul Chambers.
AT: Oh, Chamb, Chamb, Chamb… Well, you know, Chamb’s favorite expression, I use it a lot of times with people, Paul Chambers would… I would say to Paul, “Oh, Paul, that was so beautiful, what you played, man. I love you so much. And he would say, “It’s only Chambers’ music, T,” and “We’re going to speed on to victory.” Whatever that meant, you know! He was a sweetheart. He was a sweetie.
Q: [ETC.] Arthur Taylor and Walter Bolden want your phone calls. They want to see the phone lines flooded.
AT: At 8 o’clock. If somebody’s out there. Anybody out there listening? I don’t see… Nobody’s calling. It’s just the three of us talking here, seems like to me. Nobody calls or anything. What’s going on?
Q: I don’t know. Maybe they don’t know the phone number.
AT: How many listeners do you have out there usually? Two or three or four?
Q: Maybe at most.
AT: Five.
Q: Maybe at most.
AT: Six.
Q: Possibly, if we’re lucky, on a given night.
[MUSIC: J.McLean/B. Mitchell/AT, “Appointment In Ghana” (1960); R. Garland/PC/AT, “Hey, Now” (1959); PC/H. Jones/AT, “Yesterdays” (1958)]
AT: That was “Yesterdays” by Paul Chambers, with Hank Jones, Kenny Burrell and Arthur Taylor on the drums. And I will be performing with Taylor’s Wailers…tomorrow evening…at 8 o’clock…at Walter Reade Theatre…in Lincoln Center — and we’re gonna wail. And we’re waiting for you to call us. Now, we’re getting a coupl’a calls, but they’re all from guys. There are no ladies out there listening to this music? I mean, this stuff is getting strange now. I can’t handle it. You know, it’s getting out of hand. It didn’t used to be like that, you know, but it’s getting strange now. So I want to see… First, I wish you people would call and let us know you’re out there. Well, we’re sitting here with Walter…
Q: Well, the number, A.T. Give them the number.
AT: Well, you tell them the number. [ETC.]
Q: Why the theme Autobiography In Rhythm for this concert, A.T.?
AT: You want me to be honest?
Q: I wouldn’t want you to lie.
AT: Oh, okay. It’s a tricky situation, because Lincoln Center wanted me to do a program of Bud Powell’s music, and I love Bud Powell as much as anything I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. One of my greatest thrills is playing music with Bud Powell, and all of us, people like Walter Bolden and myself, we have a great regard and a great respect and love for Bud Powell, and his music, and his artistry — and him as a person also. But things like that have been done already. I had done that already at the United Nations, and I had done it at the JVC Festival. It’s been done. And I’m really most interested in promoting and developing the band that I work with, Taylor’s Wailers. We incorporate the music of Bud Powell, Horace Silver, Walter Bolden, Monk, Jimmy Heath, Jackie McLean. We play the music of all the master composers of Modern Improvisation. And just to put it in a box that you’re going to play this one type of music was a little too much. That’s how that came about. And even though I rejected it, they went ahead with it anyway. The opening piece of the program tomorrow night is that “Some People Never Get It,” you know, and then the second piece by Walter Bolden, “They’re All Stressed Out,” you dig, and then we can get into Abbey Lincoln’s “You Made Me Funny” — you know, “you’ve made me funny, you’ve made me sneaky…” I don’t want to be that way. I mean, I talk about it, but I don’t want to be funny. Do you know what I mean? Does that cover that question?
Q: I guess it does. A.T., I’d like to ask you if, in that last batch of phone calls, any topics came up that you’d like to discuss with Walter Bolden.
AT: Yes, well, one gentleman called and said, “Yes, you’re talking about a lot of musicians and this and that, but you haven’t said anything about Elmo Hope or…” He mentioned another pianist, I can’t remember…
Q: I think he mentioned Richie Powell.
AT: Richie Powell, that’s right, Bud’s younger brother. He used to play with Clifford Brown and Max Roach. The gentleman was correct. Those are wonderful musicians. Now, I never played with Richie, but I played with Elmo, and Elmo was, PSHEW, unbelievable. Unbelievable. Elmo Hope was something else. He was really something else. He epitomized the artistic manner of accompanying, of imagination and quick thought. I mean, from the brain right to the hand, immediately, at the right time and the place, the right note, the right chord, the right time, where everybody says, “Ah!” Where you don’t say, “Grrr,” you say “Ah!” — a sigh of relief, you know.
Q: He was a contemporary and a close friend of Bud Powell.
AT: That is correct. That is correct. I would see him at Bud’s apartment sometimes, quite a bit. Yeah, Elmo was quite a musician.
Q: A very distinctive style of writing…
AT: Yes.
Q: …and many enduring compositions.
AT: Definitely. But for me, his main thing was the way he would comp. Unbelievable. He was one of the masters, along with Bud and Red Garland, Wynton Kelly, and others also I can’t… The list goes on. But it’s not that long either now!
Q: It’s long enough, though. Of course, you played in hundreds of rhythm sections, with many bassists. I would guess (I have to hear it from you) that Paul Chambers epitomized maybe the ideal bass player.
AT: Well, I did most of my work with Paul. A lot with Doug Watkins, too. Paul was masterful. Like, when you go on the bandstand and start to play, you know what I mean, you go in a trance. I mean, you’re out of it. I mean, you’re only involved in what the other musicians are doing. Well, that’s the relief of playing music, because when you can play music, and if you really get involved in it, and you love it and you enjoy it, and you enjoy and respect the people you’re playing with, there’s nothing like that in the world. There’s nothing like that.
Paul epitomized that. He’s like a guy that goes in a trance. He’s right there, you can look in his eyes, but his brain is only in the music and only what the other musicians are doing and what he is doing. That requires a great deal of concentration. You have to be sympathetic. You have to be understanding. You have to be friendly, mean, nasty, cold-blooded and everything at the same time, you know — without being hateful, though. Paul was just a sweetheart. He was a sweetheart.
Q: Was the Red Garland Trio working a lot in terms of gigs, or was it primarily done for recording dates?
AT: This was primarily recordings. We would do gigs sometimes, but that was occasional, because Red and Paul were playing with Miles Davis at this period, just like John Coltrane was playing with Miles Davis at this period. But there were a certain group of guys, I guess you could call it a clique. It was like a clique. And it was hard to get in that clique. Pianists like Red and Tommy Flanagan, Wynton Kelly, a couple of people like that, and the bassists were Doug and Paul, and the drummers were Philly and myself, and then there were other people, too, like Louis Hayes was in there…
Q: Sam Jones recorded with Red later.
AT: Sam Jones. That was later, though. That was later. Jackie McLean and Donald Byrd. Joe Gordon, the trumpet player, a great trumpet player who died — Joe Gordon. Those are some of the main guys. And we would work with Gene Ammons, like I said before, and Art Farmer. So there was like a circle of musicians at that particular time. It was very difficult to get into that, because you really had to be playing, first of all, and second of all, the people had to like you, or it didn’t make any difference — you were out! Heh-heh.
Q: Of course, Red Garland and Paul Chambers were playing together all the time.
AT: Yes.
Q: But they sound like it was, you know, a working trio with a book, as though they were on the road or playing gigs like the Ahmad Jamal Trio or other trios of the time.
AT: Yeah. Well, Red was a very sensitive man, you know. I met Red when I was playing with Coleman Hawkins, and he had taken me to his apartment in Philadelphia. He said, “I want you to hear this,” and I sat down and listened to him play. He said, “Yeah, when I get to play with Miles, I’m going to use these chords; these chords are going to set him off.” It’s like you train yourself to play with another musician. And it was really like that, because you know, Miles would say, “Oh my God, do you hear that stuff Red’s playing? That’s too much, isn’t it?” He said, “I don’t have to play. I just stand there, you know.” And Miles was serious. “I don’t really even have to play. Because he’s doing so much beautiful stuff there, I can just do almost anything and it works.”
[MUSIC: W. Bolden, “Gift Of Life” (1978); Monk Big Band, “Friday The 13th” (1959); Bud Powell Trio, “My Heart Stood Still” (1953)]
Q: That was a Rodgers and Hart composition, “My Heart Stood Still” performed by the Bud Powell trio, with George Duvivier on bass and Arthur Taylor on drums. That was a working trio at the time.
AT: That was a working trio, yes.
Q: Speaking of great bassists you worked with, George Duvivier was one of the consummate masters of the instrument.
AT: Marvelous. I couldn’t figure out how he followed Bud. It was something else. It was incredible. It was really incredible. I would be amazed every night.
Q: Would Bud play something different every night? He didn’t have set…
AT: Every night. Bud was a real improviser, you know. He was never the same. Never the same. That’s what real improvisation. Every night it was different. He’d play the same song every night, but it was like another song, heh-heh — every time. People knew this, too. So that was nice also.
Q: So people would come every night because they knew it would be a different set.
AT: Every night, that’s right.
Q: Prior to that we heard you with Thelonious Monk…
AT: Thelonious! Yeah.
Q: The Thelonious Monk Big Band at Town Hall.
AT: That was quite an evening, yes, with Thelonious. The great Monk.
Q: Some drummers have said it was very hard to play with Monk. Philly Joe Jones talked about the difficulty of following him.
AT: Well, it was difficult. But we all had a great respect and a great regard for Monk because of his knowledge of music, and he was original at the same time, too. Nobody sounds like Monk. There’s nobody! Nobody sounds like that. Even when somebody plays some of his riffs, it doesn’t sound…it’s not Monk. But he was original. And as far as playing with him, I found it very difficult. That was my most difficult job.
Q: Why was that?
AT: Because Monk’s tempos were in between. It was just a fraction in between, which was the hardest tempo to play. It’s harder to play slow than it is fast, because when you play fast, you make errors going by so fast, you don’t know the difference. But if you’re playing slow… This is just my opinion, now; it’s not no gospel truth or nothing like that. But it’s harder to play slow. I could play something fast, at a great rate of speed, and I could mess up…
Q: Supersonic, as you like to say.
AT: Supersonic speed, that’s right, and mess up five hundred times, and nobody would know the difference, I wouldn’t know the difference even, it’s going by so fast. But when you play something slow, and you make an error, it stands out like a sore thumb with a big bandage on it, you know.
Q: [ETC.] We’ll end with a version of “Bullet Train,” from A.T.’s recent release, Mr. A.T.
AT: On Enja Records, which is available at all the record stores in the city. Go buy the records, because when you hear it, you may like it — and go buy it. Because we need the money.
Q: Now, I’ve heard somebody else say that before. “Tell your square friends,” right.
AT: We’re using some of Art Blakey’s stuff. We’ll use his stuff, too, you know, because he’s a master, and you have to use things from the masters also.
Q: [ETC.] Before we conclude the show with “Mr. A.T.,” we’re going to hear you on a recording with someone who was one of your closest friends, I would guess, you recorded with him frequently and played with him in Europe for many years, Johnny Griffin, from a 1962 recording.
AT: Oh yeah, the Little Giant. That’s my man, Johnny Griffin. Rough musician. He had one of those big sounds. You could hear him in Brooklyn when he was playing in Manhattan.
Q: I can hear you in the Bronx when you’re playing in Staten Island, too!
AT: [LAUGHING] Even when he’s playing fast.
Q: This is kind of an obscure recording.
AT: Yeah, I haven’t heard it. I forgot about that. We did that when he was leaving for Europe the next day. He hasn’t come back yet. He was leaving for Europe the next day, yeah.
Q: We’ll hear an original blues by Griff called “Slow Burn.” After that we’ll hear the short version of “Mr. A.T.” from your recent release on Enja…
AT: Actually, I’d like to hear the long version.
Q: Well, we don’t have time to play the long version. We played that at the start of the show.
AT: How long is the long version?
Q: It’s eleven minutes.
AT: But that’s what we’ve got. Exactly eleven minutes.
Q: No, but I have to play this, and then the short version.
AT: Is it necessary for you to play this?
Q: Yes, it is!
AT: [LAUGHS]
Q: We played the long one at the top of the show.
AT: Okay, compromise. You always have me in a compromising position. It’s okay. I just hope everyone enjoyed the show, sitting here with my buddy, the great drummer Walter Bolden and my good friend, Ted Panken. It’s really been a pleasure being back here at WKCR for a short visit this evening. And I’m thinking about you, Mo!
WB: And I’m very, very thankful to be invited here, especially with A.T. It was really-really-really a pleasure.
[MUSIC: Griffin, “Slow Burn” (1962), AT, “Mr. A.T.”]
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Today Is The Question: Ted Panken on Music, Politics and the Arts 