Straight Life - Art Pepper [121]
I went home, and as I drove up the dog started barking. I parked the car and walked in, and Diane said, "Where've you been? I've been worried." I took the condom and threw it on the table. I threw the outfit out and I said, "Go ahead." And that was it. The beginning of the end. Six months later I was busted, on my way to San Quentin, and Diane was in the Orange County Hospital on her way to death.
ART PEPPER
Art Pepper Plus Eleven-Contemporary M 3568: Move; Groovin' High; Opus De Funk; 'Round Midnight; Four Brothers; Shawnuff; Bernie's Tune; Walkin' Shoes; Anthropology; Airegin; Walkin'; Donna Lee.
Personnel: Pepper, alto, tenor saxophones, clarinet; Pete Candoli or Al Porcino, Jack Sheldon, trumpets; Dick Nash, trombone; Bob Enevoldsen, tenor saxophone, valve trombone; Vince DeRosa, French horn; Herb Geller or Bud Shank or Charlie Kennedy, alto saxophone; Bill Perkins or Richie Kamuca, tenor saxophone; Med Flory, baritone saxophone; Russ Freeman, piano; Joe Mondragon, bass; Mel Lewis, drums.
Rating: * * * * *
This is a highly satisfactory album for which Marty Paich, who conducts and did the arranging, deserves a full measure of credit.
The tunes read like a jazz hit parade of the '40s and '50s, and Paich has treated them with the reverence and seriousness they deserve while still retaining wit and a freshness of view. Pepper, in the context of this group, turns out one of his best performances on record. As an altoist, he immediately assumes his place again in the front rank with the added virtue of successfully escaping the tyranny of Charlie Parker's spirit and still keeping that full-blown swing. He is surprisingly sensitive and moving on clarinet (Anthropology of all things!), and if he ever gets seriously down to work on that instrument as his major, there's room to believe he might be the one to bring it up to the point of development of the other solo horns.
On tenor he is a solidly swinging, toughminded soloist, but it is on alto, still, that he shines. The whole album is in excellent taste, the solos by Freeman here and there are a gas, too, and Lewis provides a fine, swinging foundation. (R.J.G.) down beat, February 16, 1960. Copyright 1960 by down beat. Reprinted by special permission.
(Marty Paich) In the fifties, when I first came across Art, shortly after World War II, when we had a quartet in town, it seemed like there wasn't that much anxiety as there is today. That is, people played, and they enjoyed themselves. Today there's such an emotional stress on performers; this total commitment to try to be number one has really destroyed a lot of artists, and record companies and agents and managers have sort of manipulated the artist, trying so hard to make him number one. It has become very difficult. With so much money in the music business today, so many people are pressing, and it has a definite effect on the artist.
When I first met Art he was the greatest saxophone player that I had heard. Far above anybody else. I couldn't believe how beautifully he played. And at that time there was the battle going on: a lot of writers were writing about East Coast Jazz and West Coast Jazz. Art to me was the sound of West Coast jazz, that melodic style he played, rather than the harddriving, New York style that a lot of players were