[Dixielandjazz] REtrospective Bob Brookmeyer-- Jazzwax blog

[Steve Voce]

Hi Norman,
I wrote many pieces on Bob Brookmeyer over the years and di broadcasts with him.
Here's part of a piece I wrote last year.
Cheers
Steve Voce


    I suggested to Bob Brookmeyer that the fashion for recreating other people’s music from the past – Ellington, Basie and so on, was an empty essay.

    ‘I think it is! I don’t like to presume to judge it. The movement for playing the old music on the old instruments, that was nice. But I still don’t think
  that they played the music like it was played 400 years ago. We don’t play Mozart like Mozart was played in Mozart’s time. We can’t. We play Mozart
with an orchestra that sounds to us like it should be played.

    ‘So if we’re going to go back and play Duke Ellington...  Duke Ellington hired me to play with the band. We were friends. I was hired in ’62 but I was
unfortunately getting a very difficult divorce, so didn’t go. Knowing Duke, he put all his hits in one medley so he could satisfy all the audience’s need for
his great hits. And in ten minutes everything was all done and he could go ahead and do what he was doing “now” as opposed to “then”. I think that Duke
  or any of these people that they lionise or want to recreate would be the first people to say “Knock it off!” The music was just done one time and with special people.
You’ve got Wynton of course, or David Baker but no Duke Ellington so they can’t do it. They are not genius musicians like Duke was. They should understand
  what he did and go from there. In a way it’s like Maria (Schneider) taking what she got from Gil and making that her own. And what she got from me.
  She began to be a composer when she worked with me.’

    Would the experience of playing in the Ellington band have made a great deal of difference to you? I asked.

    ‘Yep.  I never knew of anyone that played with Duke that came from outside of his sphere that wasn’t changed. Bill Berry’s a good example. I would have
been the lead trombone player and John Sanders, who played valve trombone in Duke’s section, and I were great friends. This had been talked about for about
  five years. I would have taken John’s place in the band. Jimmy Woode would tell me “We’re talking about you again. Duke would really like to have you.”  So the
time came that Duke figured it was time for me to join. It would have changed me, of course, but in what way I couldn’t say. It would have been something to go t
hrough that would have been almost a spiritual education. To be around Duke and to know him would have been unique.

    ‘I’ll tell you a relevant story. Bill Finegan the great arranger and I got to know each other and by 1960 we were friends. From time to time he would get stuck and
he would call me to sub for him because he knew my work so I sent in a piece for him and then I became his ghostwriter. We never talked about music per se, but
being around this man! He was so powerful, his technical skill so encompassing and his knowledge so profound that by osmosis, in a year and a half my own powers
expanded greatly so by the time I did the “Gloomy Sunday”) with the big band my orchestration was much more colourful than it had been before. The band was great
and the people that were around me and wrote for it were wonderful.’ (Gloomy Sunday And Other Bright Moments is coupled with a fine Gary McFarland album on Verve 314 527 658).

    ‘So I wrote three or four things for Sauter-Finegan and my colour powers went WOOF, just by being around this man. It was amazing. You can imagine what it
would have been like being around Duke and the people in that band.’

    Bob had told me that he had been with Woody Herman for about ‘six unhappy weeks.’ I asked him to explain.

    ‘Well Urbie Green had a band in Alabama or Georgia, some god-awful state like that. For some reason I began to write for his band so we became friends. I used
to send him letters with arrangements so Urbie got to like me. Woody had a band with Doug Mettome, Sonny Igoe and so on after the Four Brothers band. That’s the
band I would liked to have joined, but I was due to go in the army. So Woody knew I’d like to join but he didn’t know when he could have me. I got a call from Frank Isola
to come and join Stanley (Getz) because Jimmy Raney had left but I’d promised to join Woody’s band – a dream come true. Well, the first night I thought this is not the band
I wanted to join.

    ‘When I made the piano duet album with Bill Evans I had left Giuffre and I was freelancing. I had become a studio trombone player, which was a big step, you know.
When you’re a valve trombone player you needed to triple. Manny Album helped turn me into an accepted studio player.  By ’58 I was being hired to play lead trombone on
TV shows. It was satisfactory for me. So by ’59 I was a hard-nosed studio player. Late and drunk one night Bill and I had played on one piano, four hands with Wilbur Ware and
Elvin Jones. The record producer Jack Lewis – we called him Mad Jack – had heard us on a tape. He could do many things and he fixed us a quartet date with Percy Heath, Connie
Kay and Bill and I. We walked into the studio and there were interlocking grand pianos! Two of us on one piano drunk was OK, but normally I would not dare to sit down and play
at two pianos with Bill. So we looked at each other. I said “Do you wanna try it?” and Bill said “OK,” so we sat down, played one tune and then we did the whole album.

    ‘When I saw Bill a couple of years before he died he said “You know I rather liked what we did then.” That was a tonic for me! I wish that I could do it now, because I play better
  piano now and I know more now. I made a piano trio album that will come out in the spring.’ (Holiday: Bob Brookmeyer Plays Piano, Challenge CHR70103 recorded in Copenhagen
in June, 2000).

   Another pianist that Bob had befriended was Thelonious Monk.

   ‘Frank Isola and I were in Paris with Mulligan when Monk was there. I have a nice picture of Frank and me with Monk in the middle all smiling at the camera. Thelonious wasn’t happy
with the French rhythm section and he wanted Gerry to let him use Red Mitchell and Frank Isola. Somehow we wound up playing as a quartet in a club after work. I was a latecomer
to Monk but when I did I was a big enthusiast and by the time of Paris I knew all his tunes and how he played them. We had a good time and we played together again the next night
and the night after that. By now they were advertising it – whilst charging us $8 for a packet of cigarettes. Very good! Typical French. So by the fourth night we were instructed that as
they were advertising it and paying us nothing would we please stop, so we did. But Monk and I went to parties and played there. I really admired him because he was who he was.
We were at a society party where they were all drinking champagne and talking French. Monk was just standing around watching them and eventually he took a lovely bottle of
  French brandy and left. He did what he wanted to do and it was just a gesture.

    ‘About a year later we had a concert with Stan Getz at Carnegie Hall and I had a bad hangover and bad flu and I just felt terrible. I went up on the roof and there’s Monk standing
waiting for me.

   ‘Now I had never been hugged by another man in my life and not all that many women. Monk gave me a giant hug and he felt me stiffen, I guess, but he kept on hugging for a while.
The he stopped and said “Oh. You’re your own man, I see!” So the first test I’d failed.

   ‘Then he wanted me to go in the men’s room with him. I thought oh God, he wants to do some heroin. I don’t use heroin but he wanted me to go and smoke some dope. So that was
two strikes. Over the coming years we gradually repaired that and I would very often go to where he was playing and we’d go out at intermission and have a drink and talk.

   ‘I loved him very much and whether he was dancing between tunes or standing in the corner in the band room looking at me I treasured being around him because we were friends.’