Trumpet Style in Jazz

Trumpet Style in Jazz

Geraint Ellis

Copyright 2013 Geraint Ellis

Smashwords Edition

Transcribed Interviews (recorded in the 1970’s and 80’s) with world-renowned trumpet players

For Matthew and Robert

Product Description

If you are a musician, a non-musician, a jazz-fan, a social historian or a researcher of American music, then this book will prove invaluable to you, for it contains a series of entertaining face-to-face discussions between the author and leading performers of the day, from: Jimmy McPartland – who in 1924 at the age of 17 replaced Bix Beiderbecke in the Wolverines Orchestra in New York and afterwards shared a room with Bix, through to Dizzy Gillespie, one-time colleague of Charlie Parker, with whom he created and led the Bebop movement of 1940’s Harlem.

‘It is no accident that some of the greatest artists and composers were the ‘rebels’ least shackled by the traditional rules of their art’ Glen Wilson, Professor of Psychology, Times Higher Education Supplement, 1st November 2012

The Fountainhead

Louis Armstrong was great, not only because he single-handedly created trumpet style in jazz, but because – without the hindrance of formal training, he made his instrument produce sounds never before imagined or anticipated. In his hands, the trumpet came of age and abandoned for all time its traditional role of symphonic punctuator.

‘What I wanted to play wasn’t in the books … … I had to go and get it’ Dizzy Gillespie, in conversation with the author at The Ronnie Scott Club, London, 9th August 1976

Copyright © 2013 Geraint Ellis. You may not alter, sell or plagiarise the words of the interviews. For Educational, Research, or any other purpose, quotations from the interviews must be duly cited and specifically acknowledged, naming the person, the date, the venue and the publication.

[Any profit from the sales of this eBook will be donated to the Musician’s Benevolent Fund, UK]

Introduction: The interviews which follow are unique in that the questions posed are almost entirely to do with style: who their main influences were, how they approach the challenge of jazz extemporisation etc., all of which is intermingled with a review of technical matters, technique, breath control, repertoire and so forth. We also discover the opinion held by many of the players towards the playing of other jazz playing colleagues, (Miles Davis in particular) and how (in 1976) they felt about the future of jazz.

In the main, the discussions avoid the realms of the biographical, discographical, or the larger-than-life ‘Band Stories’ that are part of the profession, for this kind of information is readily available in other books and the world of the internet. It is for this reason that the interviews are unique, in that they (the original cassette recordings, of which this is a reduced transcript) provide us with an ‘aural snapshot’ of the openly-honest opinions of each player at that time and, on occasion, a glimpse into the way great artistic minds are often torn by self-doubt …

‘… a lot of the time you don’ get no inspiration … the band don’ inspire you, the people don’ inspire you … … nothing inspires you’ … … … Dizzy Gillespie

Content Jimmy McPartland

Wild Bill Davison

Billy Butterfield

Ruby Braff

Dizzy Gillespie

Clark Terry

Thad Jones

Howard McGhee

Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison

Ken Rattenbury (author of ‘Duke Ellington, Jazz Composer’ Yale University Press, 1990)

Kenny Baker

Henry Lowther

Bill Dean-Myatt (co-author of ‘Bix, Man and Legend’, Crown publishers, 1974)

Jazz Trumpet Transcriptions

Film Footage

Audio-Visual Links

Author Profile

Excerpts from the interviews:

Humour: I look at Dizzy Gillespie’s crooked trumpet and ask, ‘So what happened to your trumpet then?’ He replies, ‘It got broke’. Undaunted, I ask another; ‘Were you ever influenced by the European Classical Composers?’ He replies, ‘No … … They don’t play like us’.

The gin that Bix, you and the banjo player drank: Was it distilled by a couple of spinsters living nearby? ‘Yes; and one of them had a wooden leg’. Wild Bill Davison

‘And we called him (Roy Eldridge) … … a little … a little - Hey, is that thing still recording?’ I tell him it is. ‘Yeah, we called him a true Ambassador! …’ Jimmy McPartland

Influences

‘If anyone says that they were not influenced first by Louis Armstrong, well then, they are telling a lie.’ Clark Terry, at the Brussels Hilton Hotel, 12th August 1976

(Of ‘Embraceable You’) ‘That was the most beautiful chorus I ever heard on an instrument. Bobby Hackett played that.’ Harry Sweets Edison, The Crown Jazz Club, nr Wolverhampton, 11th June 1977

‘Piano players.’ Thad Jones, Leeds Town Hall, 19th September 1976

‘Lester Young.’ Clark Terry

‘I was enthralled with Bix’s playing.’ Jimmy McPartland

‘Charlie Parker was the main influence of my present style.’ Dizzy Gillespie

Cutting contests: (musical one-upmanship on the bandstand is not an attitude that is restricted to jazz)

[‘I believe that Cambini, an Italian maestro here, (Paris 1778) is at the bottom of the business. For in all innocence I swept the floor with him’. Mozart, in a letter to his father]

‘No, I never did have that feeling … … Now Roy (Eldridge) was from that school. And back in those days they used to go and wake cats up and say, ‘Hey man; there’s a new cat in town’ – ‘Ok, I’ll be right down’, and get out of bed just to carve him you know!’ Clark Terry. ‘What did I know? I was 18. I’d go and look for him. And I’d just go up to the bandstand and say, ‘Can I play?’’ Thad Jones.

Technique: ‘I used to practise from a clarinet book because it had a lot of …’ (sings demi-semi-quaver passages) Clark Terry

Teaching: ‘When I’m teaching, I use the golfing analogy … the flugel is the putter, the trumpet the driver’’. Clark Terry

‘I use ‘circular breathing’ … Circular Breathing is a process whereby you are able to expel air through the medium of jaw and throat – like this …(demonstrates) while at the same time taking a short inhalation of air through the nostrils simultaneously, like this:’ (Blows out while breathing in) Clark Terry

Technical:

‘It’s a King cornet and I use a 10 ½ c Vincent Bach.’ (Mouthpiece) Wild Bill Davison

‘I play a Giardinelli mouthpiece – it’s like a Bach 7c.’ Billy Butterfield Southport Arts Centre, 27th November, 1985

‘Sound isn’t just tone-colour; it’s where and how you place those notes.’ Harry Sweets Edison

‘You could maybe slice the mouthpiece rim and place it on a shallower cup?’ Jimmy McPartland

‘Talking of mouthpieces: Bobby (Hackett) had about five hundred of them! ... Jack Teagarden as well. Jack would play three of four mouthpieces a night.’ Billy Butterfield

‘Miles is renowned for using a Heim mouthpiece.’ (Designed by Gustav Heim, Principal Trumpet, St Louis Symphony Orchestra) Harry Sweets Edison

‘Yes I do use the regular deep cup on the flugel.’ Clark Terry

Perspectives:

‘One time, when I was really beat, and I was coming off drugs, and I was standing at the bar of ‘Birdland’ … … Miles walked in.’ (They talk briefly, then Miles says,) ‘Come by my house tomorrow’. He gave me 600 dollars and a new trumpet … I didn’t have no horn … That man was beautiful to me.’ Howard McGhee, Leicester, 19th September 1976

‘Paul Whiteman! That man’s name should never have been associated with jazz. Never! Never’ Thad Jones

‘Many areas of the USA are not allowed to even use the word ‘Jazz’. Clark Terry

‘Gangrene had set in. And Bobby (Hackett) was going to have one foot – or maybe both, amputated … in the end … so … so if Bobby hadn’t died, well it would have been tragic, awful … but nobody told him … so’… Billy Butterfield

‘We hit Normandy Beach ‘D-Day plus 4’’… Jimmy McPartland

Background:

That’s how it was, then. The scenario will not be familiar to many now, for in the mid-1970’s, the government of the day had imagination. I already had a job with enough salary for my family to live on, great holidays, and a generous pension to look forward to in old age. But as I said; the government of the day had imagination. It was not enough that life for us in the Education sector constantly glittered, or that we were ever-easy in the cosiness and abundance of all that was, for the government of the day had imagination; they wanted us to have more. So in that now unfamiliar climate of goodwill to all men, the government of the day agreed to my request to ‘get away from it all’, ‘chill-out for a year’, and maybe ‘listen to some live jazz now and again’. And in doing that, the government of the day insisted not only on paying the University fees and full board accommodation, but they continued paying my full salary and safeguarded the incremental increase at the end of that academic year. As I said; the government of the day had imagination. That’s how it was, then.

(This explains why most of the interviews were conducted during the academic year 1976/77, for they formed part of an MA thesis I’d undertaken at the University of York. Three further interviews were added after this period and are included in the transcriptions that follow.)

But as I said; the past is as it was, then. I was young and had no fear of failure: It was a time when one could knock on the dressing-room door, shout, ‘Hi Dizzy, it’s only me’, walk in, and start interviewing. One session was in the noisy bar-kitchen of a crowded English pub, (Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison) another in the plush bedroom suite of Clark Terry at the Brussels Hilton. (In that instance I had travelled to Brussels by rail and boat, taken a taxi to the hotel and told the receptionist I’d come to do ‘the interview’ and that I was from the University of York. Nearly two and a half hours later, Clark Terry and I were still talking jazz on the pavement outside the hotel as he waited for a taxi to take him to the next gig) Two or three interviews were conducted on the stage area where I would ambush the player before they could disappear backstage or get to the bar. (My apologies to Billy Butterfield and Thad Jones) But, whatever the location, all but one (Jimmy McPartland) of the interviews with American players was conducted without prior arrangement. As I said; that’s how it was, then.

Jazz Archives The original recordings of these interviews are, at the time of publication, in the process of being donated to the Archives Department of a major American University. When the process is completed, access to the recordings will be made available to members of the public.

Acknowledgements

I thank those wonderful people, the performers, who gave their time so willingly and sympathetically. At the time of the interviews (mainly 1976) I felt that one or two players showed signs of the kind of fatigue that is the inevitable result of a life spent ‘on the road’. In fact, two players freely admitted (after the interviews) that they now had to ‘pace’ themselves to get through an evening’s performance. Their willingness to participate in an interview – often in the middle of one of those evenings, is therefore all the more poignant. Put yourself in their position:

This interviewer (me) catches you off-guard. You’ve never met this guy before. For all you know he’s crazy. And even if