- an opinion. It is a music that cries out for expression. Most of all, it is a music about freedom. Freedom
- of expression, of spirit, and of a lifestyle of the people who play jazz because they love it. One time
- somebody asked me why, why do I play out in the park on Sunday afternoon and this and that. I just said
- for the joy of swinging.
- The legacy of today's jazz goes back to the turn of the century when a new music swept the Midwest.
- That music was born of traveling musicians and black banjoists who worked, listened, and played while
- spreading its rhythmic vitality in the streets, parks, and at world fairs. That music was ragtime. Well,
- Indianapolis was no different than any other ragtime center. They took basically a march, which they
- had learned from Susan from the bands in the park, and they played it off the beat.
- If you hear the beat in the left hand, the oompa of the tuba going like this. They simply added some
- cornets and trumpets in the right hand and played slightly off that oompa sound and it came like this.
- Now that is Joplin, but it was the basic device in ragtime. It was called syncopation.
- And it existed all over the country. It was followed here in Indianapolis. It was practiced by the Striden
- piano players in New York and the pianists out in Kansas City. Indianapolis's great virtue, I think,
- was that they had a lot of publishing here. They were able to write down their music. They were able
- to get it out and get it played across the country. Indianapolis was the center of the bouncy rhythms,
- but other cities like Fort Wayne, Hammond, Lafayette, Marion, and Decatur also reveled in this new exuberance.
- Ironically, at a time when blacks were relegated into teaching, preaching, and performing, their music
- with its Afro-American tradition emerged into American society. Recordings in the 1920s, and of course
- remember that the industry was very young then, the records that were considered real jazz records or
- records that came out of the kind of jazz background, blues, what have you, were not considered genteel enough
- for white people to listen to. One example of a recording by a black artist was done by Jesse Crump
- at the Jeanette Studios in Richmond. Jesse Crump played at the Golden West Saloon up on Indiana Avenue.
- Now, he and Herb Duerson and some others are sort of like bridge figures between ragtime and the great
- blues era of the 30s when you had some tremendous blues players there right on Indiana Avenue. So they
- play something that's sort of in between.
- In New York, we probably would have called it stride piano. But out here, it's still ragtime. Mr. Crump's
- rag is very fast, very pyrotechnical, lovely piece. And that was a bridge figure between ragtime and
- the blues. Another composer was May Afterheide, who studied classical piano and published 19 songs in
- her career.
- Julie Niebergahl composed three swinging rags, but she chose performing over composing and played piano
- at movie theaters like the Colonial. Another Indiana notable was J. Russell Smith. He played at the
- Severn Hotel with his band that included Reginald Duvall and Noble Sissel. Sissel formed a lifelong
- association with UB Blake, and Smith went on to New York to work with W.C. Handy and James P. Johnson.
- Indiana's most famous son, Hoagy Carmichael, was inspired by Duvall. Instead of him, he was high-brown,
- long-fingered, played a lot of piano, and helped me gain my first conception of harmony and jazz. Hoagy
- promoted tours for the famous Wolverines that featured Bix Beiderbecke. This is Hoagy Carmichael's band
- from IU, and it made a record in Richmond, Indiana in 1928. I'll play a little bit of it, but you can
- see how the college influence came on.
- That's kind of an arrangement in the head. They call those head arrangements. So everybody knew his
- part, but they played the same way every time, pretty much. Jeanette Records in Richmond acted as a
- magnet for all eager orchestras. The first group to record jazz was a white group called the original
- Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917. But it had nothing to do, I think, with the fact nothing to do
- with it being predominantly a white phenomenon. The thing is that the major exposure for jazz in the
- early years was for young white players. The original Dixieland Jazz Band, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings
- and groups like that. But certainly King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong were all very,
- very big in the so-called race record market. So that
- while the major exposure might have gone to the young white players. Basically the music, its genesis
- was within the black community. Ballrooms, dance halls, and river boats constantly vibrated to the rhythms
- of the Charleston, the jitterbug, and the foxtrot. Yet it was a time when the temperance movement was
- pushing for prohibition. It was also a time when young men and women pulsated to the pleasures of jazz.
- jazzy rhythms were also heard on college campuses. I have a theory and I guess it's borne out by some
- facts I discovered when I was doing a book on jazz. I made it on Indiana jazz in particular and I followed
- very closely the story of the college bands and I thought that the college musicians were probably
- responsible for a great deal of the carrying on the tradition as you say because they were able to be
- together and owe
- long periods of time over a whole year at least before somebody graduated and they were replaced. And
- the net effect was that they were able to play a lot together, experiment. They didn't always have to
- please a public or please dancers, although they did play for dances. But they could practice on their
- own and develop new things. And as big bands or other bands came to campuses to play dances, they would
- go and sit in with these other musicians and they would trade
- what they used to call borass sessions in college. Everybody who I've talked to remembers the borass
- sessions. And what it amounts to is what we call a rap session today, a musical rap session. So there
- was a trade between the college men and the professional union musicians who were coming in and playing.
- So they were influencing each other all the way.
- Other groups in the swing era included the Parisian Redheads, who relied on henna and wigs to keep their
- namesake accurate. Other all-girl bands toured around the Midwest, too, but the Redheads played ballrooms
- like Chicago's Aragon and Trinon. Most every group, though, fell victim to the grinding road tour with
- changing club dates, low fees, and broken down vehicles. But they also enjoyed great musical pleasure.
- From the 30s to the 40s, Indiana bands flourished in the musical styles of Benny Goodman, Paul Whiteman,
- and Fletcher Henderson. While others kept their bands segregated, one man thought an interracial band
- would work. During that era around, just before prior to World War II,
- I made up in my mind that I was going to have an interracial band, because during the war, most of the
- musicians were being drafted into service. And it was the shortage of musicians. And then I also figured
- this, that why not? Because I was the type of fellow, regardless of your color, creed, or race, I was
- at the top.
- And several of the fellows told me, said, it won't work. I said, why not? And they said, it still won't
- work because Indianapolis has never supported an interracial group. I said, well, I think it's going
- to work. And it did. Brothers experienced the grueling hardships of a musician's life. Well, to be perfectly
- frank, when it wasn't organized, nowhere near organized.
- like it is today, see. It was just a struggle. Catch-is-catch-hand type of bases, see. It was really
- a struggle, really a hassle. And we just didn't have the opportunity. And a lot of times we had jobs,
- had a chance to get a job out of town, didn't have any money. How we gonna get there? You know, getting
- there was a problem. We could get back because we'd get paid, but then getting there, I mean, we had a,
- It was a hassle back in the 30s. It was really a hassle. The end of World War II brought about many
- changes in American life. Music was one change, and jazz was about to surface in a new and exciting
- form. With the advent of the Second World War,
- It was no longer feasible for big bands to travel as much as they would have at another time simply
- because of the war effort which meant limited gas supplies. It meant that there were that you had also
- a basic problem with manpower because the young people who were a certain age were of course
- being conscripted and going into the service. You also had the fact that the recording industry was
- seriously curtailed simply because the same
- same raw materials that made records were the things that you used to make war products also. Couple
- that with the fact that then there was a 20% tax levied on all entertainment that went into clubs or
- went into theaters if there was dancing or singing as a part of the thing. In other words, you know,
- entertainment in the largest sense. So what many club owners did was
- go then to strictly small group performances with no dancing or what have you as a way to circumvent
- that particular problem. All of these things ultimately led to the demise of the big band. Yeah and
- bebop of course separated everything. That's where the public got separated and everything from jazz
- because the bebop was more mental and not as just human sounding as some of the music in the 40s. When
- the bebop came along it was more abstract kind of music.
- took more imagination to listen to it, so there was a kind of a separation in the public. When I came
- out on in 46, bop was a thing. So nobody had heard Bird. I had some
- beautiful musicians in the Army, they never had heard of Charlie Parker. And I was trying to tell them
- how they can't play it and they just couldn't believe it, you know. So after the war was over and everything,
- they got to hear him, you know. In the case of bebop, jazz musicians were by and large disenchanted
- with the large ensembles that afforded them very little opportunity to actually improvise.
- Also, they were playing primarily for dancing, which meant a certain length solo, what have you. And
- a lot of this was taken somehow or another offset by the jam sessions at the time. But it was just something
- in the air. New ideas about rhythm, new ideas about how melodies work. Some jazz musicians found their
- old values threatened with the advent of bebop.
- others were eager to explore this new language. It's a language which I find to be a very romantic language.
- Bebop also has like certain kinds of sociological implications in that it was the music, it was the
- period in which jazz musicians began to first perceive of themselves as artists rather than entertainers.
- I'm not sure it was to the same degree of the same degree of
- art-for-art sake that was to happen in the 1960s with groups like the New Jazz People, the Avant Garde,
- but certainly a time when jazz musicians were very aware of their stature and who they were and the
- importance of the music. I started playing with Jimmy and Cole in 1948. I believe it was. We were going
- to Butler University, playing a science, a nightclub,
- On Meridian Street. I can't remember what the block was. 1110. 1110 Meridian. And we had a small group
- and then from there we went to Cincinnati for a short stay at the cotton club. I had to come home about
- five or six months
- We've been playing together for a long time. In the 40s, there were any number of large bands, I think
- immediately, people like Jimmy Coe and Eldridge Morrison. And of course, J.J. had come through these
- same bands when he left Christmas Alex in 1942 to go to New York. But in the late 1940s, there was a
- proliferation of both jazz clubs and young players coming. I mean, you know, coming on the scene.
- For instance, on Indiana Avenue, from roughly down around City Hospital, which it was called at that
- time, down to the corner of Indiana and Ohio Street, there were countless clubs, I think, of places
- like the Red Keg, the Onrays, the Sunset Terrace, the Cotton Club, and it went on and on, where jazz
- was gaining a foothold, where you had
- sessions that went on virtually nightly, where most of the things we have come to see as the Renaissance,
- you know, as basically the bebop era. You know, these were happening in Indianapolis, just like they
- were happening all over the country. During the 50s, we were playing big band music with the trumpet,
- alto, tenor, baritone, sax, and three rhythm, because we had some very good players, including Pookie,
- Joe Mitchell, Bill Boyd on baritone,
- We had a great drummer, Earl Fox Walker. We had a piano player who is now a noted organ player, Jack
- McDuff was in the band. The way Jack got in the band, Earl Grandy was supposed to go to Cincinnati with
- us, and at the last minute, he couldn't go, so we took Jack McDuff as a substitute. But like I say,
- we played big band music with a small group. And that was our bag. It made good solos. Solos would have
- leaned toward the bop thing, because that was what was going on then.
- The state of Indiana is still one of the foremost states in producing top-flight jazz musicians.
- You know, where else are you going to find a Freddie Hubbard and a Virgil Jones, you know, coming out
- of the same town? Or go back further than that to a Roger Jones, who was like one of the really great
- trumpet players, or still is. And then you look up and then there's a Wes Montgomery, you know. And
- that doesn't even talk about the fact that Jennings, Bill Jennings, who was the great left-handed guitarist, was also
- working in and around Indiana and Floyd Smith. Now that's three of the seminal guitar players in one
- city. Look at the fact that in 1962 when J.J. was acclaimed the number one trombonist in the country
- in the critics' poll, two of his disciples, Sly Hampton and myself, were the new stars. You know, that's
- another set where you got three people from the same city, you know. So we're in good shape, man. And
- I think that, of course, the universities
- in the area have done much to help perpetuate the myth of Indiana jazz. Learning jazz wasn't easy, and
- the approaches to learning jazz were as varied as the player's personalities and circumstances. I first
- got into jazz when I was a trumpet player.
- which was my first instrument I played. I listened a lot to Miles Davis, people like that. Later I became
- interested in the bass, and there was a player here for the music school who was actually a classical
- major, but he's a great jazz player named John Clayton, who later played with Count Basie, Monte Alexander,
- and others. And he really set me right as to certain fundamentals of playing good jazz, and I'm very
- much indebted
- to him more than anyone. Not to be redundant, but there's a piano player in Indianapolis named Claude
- Sifferlin that I feel like I've learned more from since then, since John, than anyone else. 43rd Street,
- the village, cats on the corner, you know, that's the school, the school was.
- get out there and see it and hear it with your own eyes and ears. That's what scared me. I wasn't influenced
- by a music school at all. I don't think there's any best way to learn jazz. I think there are a lot
- of different ways. It turns out that one of the most expedient manners of which one might learn jazz
- is via an institution. Simply because now things have been codified. There are ample books. There are
- plenty of records. There are people who have the know-how to communicate
- in a very short period of time, a year, perhaps, what it takes people in the street, 10, 15, 20 years
- to learn. I can teach in a year what it took me 20 years to learn. Maybe that's why my books are so
- expensive. But it doesn't really matter. The main thing is that that's one way. There are other people
- who learn strictly in the streets. Also they had the, which I think a lot of us have forgotten, they
- started the National Stage Band Camp here in Bloomington at Indiana University. Ken Morris had one that's
- been about 22 years ago.
- where students could come young and old and learn to play in the big band. And then for a week,
- you know, and then a couple years later, Stan Kenton kind of got hooked up with that. I don't know if
- you remember that or not, but there was a lot of people like Gary Burton and Keith Jarrett and so forth
- who attended those camps. And they all started right here in Broomington. It was very early, the first
- ones, the band camps, jazz camp. Then I started teaching in about the, gee, 60s, I guess. And then from
- there, I realized there was a need for kids to practice at home.
- which records and things like John and I practice with now, so we started putting out the play along
- records. That was the beginning of that. That was the reason for it. If I hadn't been involved in those
- summer camps, I don't think I would ever be doing what I'm doing now. It seems as time goes on, things,
- the business scene and the commercial scene becomes more and more, has a greater hold on the music scene.
- There's so many,
- A lot of people that were my idols at one time have pretty well gone commercial, and it's a bit difficult
- to understand. I mean, obviously, they're going for better money. There's very little money to be made
- in jazz in performing. A few make a lot, and the rest make very little, I would think, if you could
- agree on that.
- To me, jazz has always been a rebellious music and a very intelligent one, if I might say. And I'm a
- little disappointed that it is being commercialized today because to me that was a very philosophical
- issue that jazz was trying to make. We're so conditioned by Top 40 Radio that most people just aren't
- exposed to jazz enough. They're not exposed to a lot of good things in the arts enough.
- because if you listen to Top 40, it's music to be thrown away. It's disposable music. It's like,
- you know, recyclable aluminum cans. You know, Top 40 rock, that's what it is. You're supposed to listen
- to it once or twice for about three weeks and listen to it a lot for three weeks and then never hear
- it again. Whereas this music, I mean, I'm playing right now, Billie Holiday, 1956. This record is 26
- years old, almost to the day. It was recorded two days before today in 56.
- And you're going to be listening to this record in 100 years if we're still around there are record
- players. We're in a period which I think is one of synthesis. I think every 10 years or so you get a
- period where it's, you know, the upheaval, the turmoil, the catalysts of the new generation. And then
- we go through a period where it's like kind of an assessment, a kind of a synthesis. And I'm not sure
- where we are now, but we're in a period of coexistence where
- There's a kind of symbiosis between all of the kinds of jazz music. There are the revivalists like Warren
- Bache and even musicians around Indianapolis who are still committed to earlier styles. Then you've
- got the stronghold of the bebop players, which is essentially what Indianapolis is by and large. But
- then you've got like at the same time free jazz, you've got fusion music, you've got punk rock, you've
- got it all.
- The original material written by our guitar player, our keyboard player, it's kind of a cross between
- funk and contemporary jazz, traditional jazz, blues, you know, just whatever what we feel, you know,
- is basically what it boils down to. Most of us have a second job. I don't think we rely on our music
- as our primary income, and I think we all have that in common.
- second job situation. I think Bloomington doesn't have that demand for jazz where you rely on it as
- a permanent source of employment.
- It's not possible to really make a living playing jazz in Indiana, and it's not really possible in most
- places in the world. New York City might be one of the exceptions, but even there it's difficult. So
- essentially, if you want to be a full-time musician, you have to do other things and branch out into
- other areas, such as playing in Indianapolis, for example, the Starlight Musicals, or playing in the
- studios, or playing in a variety of rock bands and anything that comes along. But it is more and more
- possible to play
- jazz purie for the art of it and the enjoyment of that art form. The other problems are merely communication.
- Many of the gigs that we've been doing down here are not people who are all from Bloomington, so we
- have communications hassles and also transportation hassles. If somebody is coming up from Cincinnati or
- from Fort Wayne or sometimes like I say, you know, people coming in from out of town or whatnot. It's
- a little difficult and financially it's difficult for this kind of gig to pay enough money to even cover
- those traveling expenses. The beautiful thing about jazz is that the full life expectancy or the full
- life length of jazz has been because of the quality of the music and because of what the music is.
- without support of anybody. In the recent years, it has started to be subsidized and somewhat supported
- by the government of this country. But it lives on its own quality and its own strength. Jazz is a city
- type of music, but I really enjoy the environment out here in the country.
- breathing fresh air. It has a lot to do with improvisation and how improvisation you encounter things
- that you don't know about what's going to happen. And you just plod your way right through. And life
- and jazz have a lot of similarities like that. But also, this type of life is just a whole lot more
- enjoyable to me than the rat race of a city.
- And playing jazz is something I enjoy quite a bit also.