Читать книгу Stan Levey - Frank R. Hayde - Страница 10

CHAPTER 3

FIFTY-SECOND STREET

I’m about seventeen, still working for my old man in the daytime selling cars, fighting when I get a chance. Before he left, Dizzy and also a very light-skinned black guy named Carl Warwick, great guy—we called him “Bama”—they told me I should come to New York, that they’d help me once I got there. I’m really ready to go.

I’m a pretty strong kid. I always looked older than I was. I’m big. I’m walking down Market Street, which is the main drag where the Earle Theater is. Then I turn onto Eleventh and I’m just strolling into midtown, and as I’m walking by, there’s a guy. I don’t see the guy, but I hear, “Hey, get over here!”

I just hear it, I don’t know what he’s talking about. “Hey, get over here!” Like that, so I turn my head to see what’s going on. “Who? What?” And he says, “You!” This guy—big guy, a starker—standing in a doorway with a hat on, a snap-brimmed hat, and I look at him real close and he says, “Yeah you, come here.”

So I don’t move. I freeze. I’m thinking, “What the hell is this?” So he comes over to me and I’m still standing near the curb. I haven’t answered him. I don’t know who he is. He says, “Get over here, now.” I see the look in his eye. I’m starting to get worried.

He grabs me. He puts his arm around my neck and somehow gets my left arm bent up in my back, that kind of a hold, and he’s struggling with me, and I say, “What the . . .” I can’t believe what’s happening to me. Can’t believe it. I yell, “Who are you? What are you doing?” I can’t believe this guy. He says, “Shut up!” Everything races through my mind. Am I being held up in broad daylight? People are looking, people are stopped and looking. I’m saying, “Get off of me, you son of a bitch!” He says, “Shut up!” He doesn’t identify himself. Nothing, nothing, zero.

We’re struggling and struggling. I’m a strong kid, and we work each other down to the ground. As we hit the pavement, we’re half on the curb, half on the street, and he’s got a chokehold around my neck. I’m thinking, “I’m gonna die, I can’t get any air. I’m being murdered. This guy is crazy.” I have my right arm free, but I can’t breathe, I feel his body right up behind, so I take my right arm back and I hit him a shot in the ribs, God, I really give him a shot. With that, his hands release on my neck.

In my mind, at that second, I know I’ve got to kill him ’cause I’ve got a man that’s trying to kill me. I turn around. I’m very quick, and he’s on the bottom, with his legs on the street, body on the curb. I’m looking at him. Do I know him? I work my way up to my knees and he’s still hurting pretty good but he’s still got a hold of me. He’s got me by my collar and I can’t get away, and I see that he’s lying halfway down. His knee is on the curb and it’s half on the street, and see, there’s only one thing I can do. My legs are free and I bolt upright and I slam my foot down on his leg and I hear a crack. I break his leg, man.

I get up and I’m trying to get my breath, can’t believe what is happening. Now I’m getting out of here, I don’t want to know who he is. He says, “Stop! Police!” And he’s hurting. He goes inside his coat, he’s fumbling, and he pulls out a badge. He says, “Stop or I’ll shoot!” Now everybody hears it, everybody splits and I start running down Eleventh, and he shoots. Creased me right here on the ankle. He could’ve killed somebody. I’m bleeding pretty good. In those days, that’s what they do. Could’ve killed me if he hit me right. He never identifies himself. I must look like somebody in a poster. God knows, that’s all it could be. I don’t know him, he don’t know me. If he says, “I’m a policeman, let’s go downtown,” fine, let’s go downtown, there’s no problem. But they don’t do that. They do whatever they want in 1943.

That shakes me up. It was the worst thing that had happened to me in my life, up to that point. I know I’m in trouble. He doesn’t know who I am, but I’m scared to walk downtown. They all have a description, they’re looking for that description. Regardless of whether I did anything before, now I did something.

I’d been planning to leave anyway and this is a definite exit number. My friend, Ellis Tollin, we’ve been talking about it. He wants to go to New York. I say, “Fine, let’s go.”

When I tell my mother I’m going to New York, she does a fake, “Ohhh, you can’t go, that’s a terrible city. You can’t go.”

“I’m leaving Thursday, and you’ll hear from me.” And I just go. And I know she does a sigh of relief once I leave.

Ellis is ready. Good buddy. He has a nice drum set. His father drives us to New York and we take a top-floor room in the Schuyler Hotel on Forty-Sixth. First thing I do is hit “The Street.”

Fifty-Second Street evolved from a row of gangster speakeasies into the jazz capital of the world in the 1940s. Clubs lined both sides of the street between Fifth and Seventh Avenues. None were particularly plush. Most were bare-bones basements equipped with cramped bandstands and tiny tables, but on any given night, the bright marquees were lit with the biggest names in jazz, all within less than two blocks. Fifty-Second Street represented the pinnacle of the jazz district, the culmination of Storyville in New Orleans and Eighteenth and Vine in Kansas City. For Stan Levey and other teenage arrivals like Quincy Jones, it was a cup of overflowing excitement.

Inside every doorway was one of my heroes. It was pulsating and alive. Electric. That period in the 1940s, the years when bebop was surfacing, creativity and the excitement that goes along with it were at a really high level. The music was just as pure as it could be.

“We were some of the luckiest people alive,” Quincy Jones said, “because we got a chance to not only participate in some of the best music that was ever made, but also to hear some of the best music ever made—the Birds, the Lesters, Basie and Ella and Sarah. Duke and Dizzy, Miles . . . I wouldn’t trade this time when Stan and I came up for any other time.”

So Dizzy introduces me to Specs Powell. Says to Specs, “This guy can play!” Specs is drumming for Ben Webster, but he has another gig, so he arranges for me to audition for Ben. I go into the Three Deuces and Ben is big and mean-looking. Intimidating. I try to play Spec’s drums but he tunes them too soft for me. I don’t play well. Everything was soggy and Ben doesn’t like it and he doesn’t hire me. My first audition in New York—a disaster. Now my confidence is real low.

But then Diz introduces me to Oscar Pettiford, who needs a drummer. Diz says to Oscar—and this is the kind of guy Dizzy is—he says, “Here’s your new drummer.”

So Oscar hires me on the spot for a week-long engagement at the Tick Tock Club in Boston. So I steal Ellis’s drums and off we go to Boston, where we play a lot of Dizzy’s music, which I already know how to play. It was a hell of a band, with Flip Tate on trumpet. The tenor man was Johnny Hosfield. Oscar liked to drink and, being an Indian, he could get pretty rough. But with me he was always just a great, beautiful guy.

I learn a lot and they really like me. At the end of that gig at the Tick Tock, who comes in? Billy Eckstine’s band with Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Gene Ammons, Sarah Vaughan . . . they were the hippest band playing this very heavy music. Art Blakey was beginning to get into a modern groove. Technique-wise, he was a diamond in the rough, but he had that hard swing that could swing you right off the bandstand. I was on top of the world.

It was a grand gesture on the part of Dizzy Gillespie. Oscar Pettiford was the most highly regarded bassist on the scene. By vouching for the teenage drummer, Dizzy was staking his reputation with the A-list of American musicians. It bespoke a confidence in Stan that the drummer never forgot. For the rest of his life, Stan would give credit to Dizzy Gillespie as his most influential figure and his greatest teacher.

After returning to New York from Boston, Stan landed a gig subbing for Denzil Best in Coleman Hawkins’s band, a sextet that included trumpeter Benny Harris and Thelonious Monk on piano.

The bass player—nobody knows about this guy—was one of the best I’ve ever heard. His name was Eddie Robinson, and they called him “Bassie.” He got into trouble . . . I think it was guns and drugs. But that guy could really play.

I learned so much listening to Monk and Hawkins. People thought Monk was crazy, but part of that was a façade. Monk looked totally unaware, like a space cadet, but he was aware of everything. Hawkins was like a prince, with his perfect clothing. The younger musicians were in awe of him. His ears were always open to new music, and he always urged you on to play better. He was very competitive. He’d show up at a jam session and say, “I was just walking by and happened to have my horn.”

Thelonious Monk and Coleman Hawkins were formidable influences, but it was Max Roach that Stan studied for ideas and inspiration on the skins. The most iconic of the bebop drummers, Roach was two years older than Stan, and was creating a sensation with Dizzy and Pettiford at the Onyx Club. Roach would have countless disciples over the next fifty years, but Stan was his first “student” and his most ardent fan.

When I heard Max, it was like lightning had struck. I almost passed out. I went crazy. I got as close to the bandstand as I could; I had to get a better idea of what he was up to. The ferocity of the playing was new to me. I had never heard time split up like that.

Max’s playing had music within it. Whenever I could, I got up very close to him in a club and observed. Max was breaking things up between his hands and feet in a manner that, at first, was puzzling. Those techniques had not been used in just that way before. When you finally caught on to what he was all about, it was a revelation. He changed the course of drumming. Because of him, a drummer had to offer something extra—color the music, and give it a more well-rounded feeling.

Max was responsible for developing my concept of music. He had an underlying intensity and spirit, particularly on the up-tempo things, that I tried to capture in my own work. Now, I emulated him, but I didn’t copy him. We shared an apartment for a while and became very close friends. I got to know his mother well.

Stan would remain fiercely loyal to Max for the rest of his life and would tolerate no denigration of Roach’s playing. The two young drummers spent the rest of the 1940s trading jobs in the hippest bands on Fifty-Second Street, but unlike Max, who studied the instrument formally, Stan relied on his natural aptitude and ability to absorb ideas quickly.

“He was like a sponge,” said Stan’s wife, Angela. “Later, when we moved to California, he had never associated with neighbors before. He had never engaged in that type of social life. He just watched me and before long he was everybody’s favorite.”

Stan’s self-taught style epitomized the “feel” associated with jazz. His innate rhythm gave rise to a natural sound that seemed effortless and free. He played fast tempos with a fluidity that allowed soloists to fly on steady currents of unwavering time, uncluttered by bombast or affectation, yet strong with the potent accents of modern jazz. Dizzy Gillespie said of Stan, “He had the most feeling of any of those white drummers who picked up on modern jazz early, guys like Shelly Manne, Irv Kluger, and Dave Tough.”

I turned away from certain kinds of drummers—the bangers. They were machinery, hardware. I wasn’t interested in players whose pulse didn’t flow. There had to be a sense of motion. I didn’t want to plod through four beats of each bar just to get to the end of the tune. I wanted everything to swing. When musicians looked back and smiled, I knew I was doing it.

I’m a big one for simplicity. Unfortunately, a lot of drummers go into overkill when there’s a short solo to be played or a space to be filled in a chart. I believe in keeping things pretty straightforward. You tend to be more efficient that way. There’s no need to throw a whole career into a break. It’s really very distracting. It slows the momentum of the band and doesn’t enhance the swing in any way.

Stan’s first steady job on The Street was with Barney Bigard, who made a name for himself as Duke Ellington’s clarinetist. One night in 1944, Stan was working the Onyx Club with Bigard when Sugar Ray Robinson, future middleweight champion of the world, came in and asked Stan if he could sit in on drums.

He’s not great, but the hands work and he does pretty good. We talk about some of the people we know. We don’t mention Palermo or Frankie Carbo or anybody like that. You don’t talk about them.

Years later, Stan and Hoagy Carmichael Jr. went to the Los Angeles Sports Arena to see Sugar Ray fight Gene Fulmer for the NBA middleweight title. “Robinson was near the end of his career,” said Carmichael, “and they called it a draw: a decision that both Stan and I felt was predetermined.”

Then I get a call from Leonard Feather, the well-known English critic and record producer. He recognized me as an up-and-comer and called me to do a record date for the Black and White label.

Wow! My first record date! Just tell me where and when! I borrowed Ellis’s drums and went into the Reman Scott Studios on Fifty-Second Street, near Sixth Avenue. I went up there, got off the elevator, went into the studio, and stopped cold in my tracks.

There at the piano . . . sitting there playing . . . was Art Tatum.

A more musically intimidating figure did not exist. Described as “superhuman” by his peers, the blind pianist played like a man possessed, transforming a keyboard into a full orchestra with his ambidextrous hands and supersonic ears. Tatum could tell the type of coin dropped on a table by the sound it made.

With his head-spinning technique and avalanche of improvisational ideas, Tatum’s early recordings made young pianists like Hank Jones and Oscar Peterson think two or even three people were playing. Even to this day, Tatum remains in a class by himself, separate from the continuum of jazz pianists whose innovations were absorbed by younger generations. “First you speak of Art Tatum,” explained Dizzy Gillespie, “then take a long, deep breath . . . and then you speak of the other pianists.”

I did a one-eighty and started walking out. Leonard Feather said, “Where are you going?” I said, “I cannot play with Art Tatum. I wouldn’t even think of it. He’s way above my ability.” He says, “Get back in there. You can do it.”

I went back in and I set up. It was kind of a mish-mash of a band, Georgie Auld, Joe Thomas, the guitar player was Chuck Wayne. I played very softly and tried to just fit in. Art came over—he was blind—and he put his arm around me. He said, “You did real, real good.” Boy did that help me in this career that I had . . . I’ll never forget him for that.

Stan’s next gig was with the most exciting pianist since Art Tatum himself. Erroll Garner couldn’t read music and had to sit on a telephone book to reach the keys, but his enchanting and highly individualistic playing made him one of the top-selling jazz artists ever. Fresh from Pittsburgh, Garner mesmerized many a musician in his first performances on The Street—including Stan, who approached Garner after a set and landed a job with him that same night.

Between his work with Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Pettiford, Art Tatum, and Erroll Garner, the self-taught kid from Philly was quickly establishing a quality résumé. Work became plentiful, with Stan drumming for a variety of ensembles, including the George Shearing Trio. After his stint with Shearing, Stan joined Henry Jerome’s band, notable for its oddball but auspicious personnel.

“It was by far the best band I ever played in,” remembered tenor saxophonist Alan Greenspan. “A surprising number of my fellow musicians and our successors went on to memorable careers. Johnny Mandel, one of our trombonists, went to Hollywood and wrote ‘The Shadow of Your Smile’ and the theme music for M*A*S*H and won an Academy Award and four Grammys . . . Stan Levey later played with Charlie Parker. Larry Rivers became a major pop artist. And my fellow sax player, Lenny Garment, became President Nixon’s lawyer.”

In his book Crazy Rhythm, Garment took credit for bringing Stan Levey to New York after meeting him at a jam session at the Downbeat Club in Philly. Stan remembered Garment as a very good tenor player and Larry Rivers as “completely crazy . . . he was cuckoo then, and he’s nuts now. The guy’s wacko, but a great artist.” Alan Greenspan, of course, went on to become chairman of the Federal Reserve, and was widely labeled as one of the most powerful men in the world during his tenure. Not surprisingly, he doubled as the band’s treasurer and paymaster.

Stan was also doing double duty. When the opportunity arose, he would take a fight at Sunnyside Gardens in Queens or back home in Philadelphia. Like many other journeyman fighters of the preliminary ranks, Stan sometimes fought under different names—such as the alias Joe Levy, with a record of three wins and four losses in fights held in New Jersey, Brooklyn, Hartford, and at the Valley Arena in Holyoke, Massachusetts. For boxers who threw the occasional fight, pseudonyms helped avoid the scrutiny of regulators. For Stan, they also served to keep his two careers separate from each other.

I’m doing both the fighting and the music but I never let one know what I do on the other end of it, because the musicians say, “Hey, this guy’s a fighter,” and I don’t want that. I’m a drummer. And the boxers will say, “Hey, a musician—put your dress on!” To the musicians, this guy’s scary. He’s a fighter. They don’t want to have him in the band. “Might get strange. Who knows, if he gets mad he might dump someone.”

I have to eliminate that, which I do. Not their business, it’s my business. It’s how I make some money. I think Dizzy knows. I’m not a full-time fighter. They get me a match, the money’s kinda right. I’d have a couple of weeks to get in shape and do the best I can.

On October 18, 1944, opening for a main event featuring his hometown hero, Ike Williams, Stan fought under the name “Sam Levey” in front of six thousand people at Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo, New York. Stan and Ike were both victorious, with Williams knocking out Johnny Green and Stan dropping Ben Tyler in the second round of a four-round fight.