[Dixielandjazz] Stan Levey - obit

[Steve barbone]

>From the West Coast Jazz List, courtesy of Steve Voce. Long, but full of
information about this great drummer & wonderful man. As well as stories
about others and the music business. (Goodman, Norman Granz, et al.)

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


This piece appears in today's The Independent.
Steve Voce

STAN LEVEY

Dizzy Gillespie was berated by his fellow black musicians in Philadelphia
for having Stan Levey a white drummer, in his band. It was 1942 and Levey
was only 16. ³Show me a better black drummer and I¹ll hire him,² said
Gillespie.

Bebop was beginning and working for Gillespie meant that Levey was at the
heart of it. He, Max Roach and Kenny Clarke were the first drummers to drive
bands using the eccentric Bebop accents. Levey was entirely self-taught.

³That¹s why I play left-handed, although I¹m right-handed. It just felt
easier that way.²

But it wasn¹t just a question of being in the right place at the right
time. Levey was one of the greatest of all drummers, who could grace a
Charlie Parker Quintet as well as he could drive the massive Stan Kenton
Orchestra.

He was possibly the most tasteful drummer ever and a prince amongst
musicians. By the time he walked away from the music business he had played
on countless albums, had been a key instrumentalist on the soundtracks of
more than 300 films and had appeared on over 3,000 television shows.

Aside from his work in jazz groups, Levey was, from 1943, a successful
heavyweight boxer who had boxed at Madison Square Gardens and had appeared
on the same bill as Joe Louis. ³I carried on fighting until 1949 and I boxed
a lot of very good fighters, who beat the crap out of me!²

He had worked regularly as an accompanist with Ella Fitzgerald, Frank
Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday Barbra Streisand,
Bobby Darin and many more. He also played in George Shearing¹s Quintet.

³In the early Sixties I worked with Victor Feldman, one of my favourite
musicians, backing Peggy Lee. She was a very nice lady, a great musician and
a terrific singer. I also toured the world with Ella Fitzgerald. I toured
Japan with Pat Boone, but I¹d like to forget that.

Whilst working with Norman Granz¹s Jazz at the Philharmonic group in the
late Forties Levey was called back to New York to settle a legal matter.
Granz refused to let him go and wouldn¹t give him the back pay owed so that
Levey could pay his rail fare. Levey knocked Granz out with a standard lamp,
took the money and returned to New York. Never one to hold a grudge, Granz
forgave him and Levey worked regularly for the promoter in later years.
 
Levey had driven the big bands of Kenton, Benny Goodman (³he never spoke
to me²), Woody Herman, Billy May, Henry Mancini, Quincy Jones and others.

With Gillespie¹s encouragement, Levey moved to New York when he was 17 in
1944. He met for the first time and was influenced by another drummer, Max
Roach. Levey joined a small band led by Coleman Hawkins that included the
young Thelonious Monk and made his first record, although he had tried to
leave the studio from fright, with the formidable pianist Art Tatum. He also
played for Ben Webster and on and off during 1945 with Woody Herman¹s First
Herd, where he was called in to replace the frequently indisposed Dave
Tough. During that year he was also a member of Charlie Parker¹s Quintet.

When Dizzy Gillespie was invited to take the first Bebop group from New
York to play a season at Billy Berg¹s club in Los Angeles, he chose Levey
and Parker to go with him. Parker was already mentally ill from excessive
drug and alcohol abuse.

They went by rail and on the coast to coast trip the steam train needed to
stop in the desert for a couple of hours to refill its tanks with water.
Idly looking out of the window Levey suddenly saw a naked Parker running off
into the desert. He rushed to tell Gillespie.

  ³You go and get him,² said Gillespie.

  ³No, it¹s your band,² retorted Levey.

  ³But you¹re his friend,² said the ever crafty Gillespie.

  Levey hared off into the desert and corralled the unfortunate Parker.

When the job was over Levey had to search Los Angeles to find Parker and
give him his ticket for the flight back to New York. He was unable to find
him and, whilst the rest of the band left, Parker subsequently set fire to
his hotel and was incarcerated in the Camarillo mental hospital.

³It was a year before we saw him again in New York,² said Levey.

Levey returned to Philadelphia in 1951 where he led a quartet of future
stars made up from tenorist Richie Kamuca, pianist Red Garland and bassist
Nelson Boyd. They played on their own and accompanied any of the star
singers that visited the city. Stan Kenton was impressed by the quartet when
his band played there in 1952 and when he left he took Levey and Kamuca with
him.

In many ways the drummer is the most important member of a big band. He
must learn the band¹s music and method and be able to move the whole band in
the direction he wants. Stan Kenton used Levey to replace a weaker drummer
and, with Zoot Sims, Lee Konitz and other stars in his ranks brought
together what was arguably the finest band he ever had. It toured Europe in
1953 and boatloads of its British fans sailed to Dublin (the band was not
allowed to play in Britain) for two inspired and historic concerts. One of
the band¹s appearances in Paris survived and Levey can be heard at his
finest, driving the band to perfection.

Kenton subsequently broke the band up in 1954 after an appearance at the
Shrine in Los Angeles. About to leave the city, Levey was called over the
airport address system. The call was from Max Roach who was playing at the
Lighthouse, a long-established Los Angeles jazz club. Roach was under
contract but wanted to leave to form what became the classic quintet with
trumpeter Clifford Brown. But the management wouldn¹t let him break his
contract unless he could find a drummer of similar calibre to replace him.
Levey fitted the bill and joined the Lighthouse All Stars for the next five
years.

He played at the club all night and worked in the studios during the day.

³Norman Granz used to book a studio for a week,² Levey told me during a
broadcast, ³and he¹d sit me, Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis and Ray Brown in
there as the rhythm section. The he¹d parade his soloists through ­ Coleman
Hawkins, Ben Webster, Sonny Stitt, Stan Getz ­ and we¹d record albums with
them. By the end of the week you lost track of who you were accompanying.²

Levey¹s last jobs in music were working on the film ³Rosemary¹s Baby²,
which he hated, and composing and conducting the music for five one hour
Disney documentaries.

He had been working part time as a photographer since the end of the
Fifties, his work published in Harper¹s Bazaar and other magazines. He now
exploited his hobby and became a successful commercial and industrial
photographer, taking many pictures that became the covers for albums by the
musicians he had formerly played with.

³I cut out the drumming and I don¹t miss it at all. I never played again.
The music business changed and I went on to other things.²

Stan Levey, drummer, photographer: born Philadelphia 5 April 1926; married
Angel Neylan 1951, three sons; died Los Angeles 19 April 2005