[Dixielandjazz] Buddy Rich - music reader?

[Jack Tracy]

  Bill Sargent wrote:

  ... It is certainly hard to believe Buddy (Rich) could  
  not read music, given his performances........

  Bill:

  I assure you it is true. I produced several albums with Buddy and knew him well and can give several examples of his inability to read.

  One, for example, occurred when we were doing a vocal album on which his accompaniment included a vocal quartet backing him up. They all had vocal parts to read, Buddy just had the lyrics in front of him. I had a booth production part. During one playback of a song in which we were having some difficulty getting the ending correctly, I held up my score and pointed to the spot and said to him, "See, here is where you should go down from F to E so that you won't clash with what the singers are doing."

  He just looked at me and said, "I can't read that shit. But I hear where the trouble is....we'll be o.k." And we were on the next take. 

  On big band dates he has sat with me chatting while the band ran down the arrangement for the first time, with a standby drummer sitting in and reading the drum part. Buddy would then go in, sit down, and play the  arrangement perfectly. He had incredible ears. And was an incredible drummer.