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<DIV>Grady Tate, Jazz Drummer Turned Vocalist, Dies at 85 </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>by Richard Sandomir</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>New York Times, October 12, 2017 </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Grady Tate, a jazz drummer who was known for his work with Peggy Lee,
Quincy Jones, Ella Fitzgerald and many others and whose warm baritone led to a
second career as a singer, died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was
85.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>His wife, Vivian, confirmed the death and said he had had dementia.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Mr. Tate started drumming professionally in the late 1950s and eventually
became one of the busiest sidemen in jazz, recording with stars like Jimmy
Smith, Stan Getz, Clark Terry and Billy Taylor.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>“Listen to Quincy Jones’s famous recording of ‘Killer Joe,’” Loren
Schoenberg, a saxophonist and founding director of the National Jazz Museum in
Harlem, said in a telephone interview. “Listen to Grady’s drums. It’s just
phenomenal timing and rhythm that’s almost transparent. He was there to serve
the music without the imposition of a defined personality or style.”</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The bassist Christian McBride recalled the first time he saw Mr. Tate
perform, at the Manhattan nightclub Indigo Blues with the pianist Sir Roland
Hanna. “Mr. Tate is one of those rare, unsung heroes of the drums who you rarely
kept your eye on when he played because you were busy dancing, moving and
grooving,” Mr. McBride said in an email. “Like a truly great rhythm section
player, you noticed his absence more than his presence.”</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>On records, Mr. Tate accompanied a wide range of singers, from Lena Horne
and Aretha Franklin to Bette Midler and Paul Simon. He was also heard on the
soundtrack to the original “Twin Peaks” series. The All Music website lists more
than a thousand recording credits for him.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Peggy Lee, whom he accompanied on tour and on recordings, was a favorite of
his. Mr. Tate told one of her biographers, Peter Richmond, that the real shows
began after their nightclub gigs had ended, when the band jammed with her in her
hotel suite.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>“There were some performances you wouldn’t believe,” he was quoted as
saying in “Fever: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee” (2006). One night, he
recalled, “I heard this voice, and the song that she was singing, whatever it
was, she sounded more like Billie Holiday than Billie ever sounded.”</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Miss Lee encouraged Mr. Tate’s desire to sing publicly. She had him sing
“The Windmills of Your Mind” in 1968 as part of her set at the Copacabana in
Manhattan.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>“You know, that was not only a great thing Peggy did for me, it was also
unprecedented,” Mr. Tate told Downbeat magazine in 1971. “Singers are a funny
lot. The stage is all theirs and as a result, quite often they don’t want
anything that has the remotest chance of upstaging them. That’s why the music is
geared just so, the lights just so. But Peggy is a beautiful lady.”</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>He released several albums as a vocalist, starting in 1968 with “Windmills
of My Mind.” He also sang “I Got Six” and “Naughty Number Nine” on “Schoolhouse
Rock,” ABC’s long-running series of short educational cartoons.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>“When you’re playing as a drummer, everybody’s playing and nobody cares a
thing about you,” he told the pianist Marian McPartland on her NPR show “Piano
Jazz” in 2009. “Everybody’s out front and the drummer’s in the back and you
don’t get the play you should get.”</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In contrast, he said, singing “is something that gets directly to the
person.”</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Grady Bernard Tate was born on Jan. 14, 1932, in Durham, N.C. His father,
also named Grady, was a stonemason. His mother, Elizabeth, was the dean of women
at a local business school. He played drums and sang, but when his voice changed
he stopped singing.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>At 13, he had an odd if inspiring experience watching the jazz drummer Jo
Jones perform at the Durham Armory, he told the website All About Jazz in
2008.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>He recalled being mesmerized as Mr. Jones, “the craziest man I’ve ever seen
in my life,” played with unalloyed joy. Afterward, Mr. Jones invited him onto
the stage and asked if he had brought his drumsticks with him.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>“No, sir,” Mr. Tate said, and Mr. Jones offered his own pair but whacked
one of his hands with them. “That’s just a tiny bit of the pain that you’re
going to get,” Mr. Jones said, “if you’re gonna pick these damn things up and
use ’em.”</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In the Air Force, Mr. Tate played in a 21-piece stateside band, where he
worked with the trumpeter and arranger Bill Berry. After his discharge, he
graduated from North Carolina Central University with a bachelor’s degree in
English and drama and then moved to Washington, where he briefly taught at a
high school and worked in the post office.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>One musician he knew in Washington, the saxophonist Herschel McGinnis, took
him to see the organist Wild Bill Davis play. Emboldened, Mr. Tate asked Mr.
Davis if he could sit in for one number. It proved to be an epiphany.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>“I hadn’t played drums in so long,” Mr. Tate said in a 2005 interview with
the newspaper Port Folio Weekly. “I just exploded. When we finished, it was like
the cleansing of my life, everything was out.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>“The next day the phone rang. My wife said, ‘It’s Wild Bill Davis!’ He
said: ‘I was wondering. Would you like to work with my band? We’re opening in
Pittsburgh Tuesday night. Are you in?’ ”</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>He stayed with Mr. Davis for a few years and then took a detour, moving to
New York City to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Ultimately, he
said, although he loved acting, he did not pursue it because he felt that the
instructors and other actors were insincere.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In 1962 another saxophonist, Jerome Richardson, intervened to bring Mr.
Tate back to music; he was with Quincy Jones’s big band, which had lost its
drummer as it prepared to go on tour. Would Mr. Tate play with the band for a
while? He went to a rehearsal, where Mr. Jones “seemed to call all the tunes
that I knew,” he recalled.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Working with Mr. Jones led Mr. Tate to decades of studio work. He was also
a member of the “Tonight Show” band for several years before the show moved from
New York to California in 1972.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Grady Jr.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In his later years, Mr. Tate sang more and played the drums less.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>“I had never thought of singing as a career, which it is for me now,” he
said in 2005. “I don’t know how it happened; I just go with the flow. And I find
that to be totally acceptable.”</DIV>
<DIV>-30</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000"><BR><BR>Bob
Ringwald piano, Solo, Duo, Trio, Quartet, Quintet <BR>Fulton Street Jazz Band
(Dixieland/Swing)<BR>916/ 806-9551<BR>Amateur (ham) Radio Station
K6YBV<BR><BR>When giving directions to Joe Garagiola to his New Jersey home,
which is accessible<BR>by two routes:<BR>"When you come to a fork in the road,
take it."<BR>Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra, B5-12-1925,
D9-22-2015<BR></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV><div id="DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2">
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