Straight Life - Art Pepper [125]
I don't remember the intervals between the lessons. I think it was every week, and I think I only had four or five lessons. I had met an older guy who was studying with Art also. This guy was in his twenties, a good tenor player, a serious, dedicated musician. He was the one who said, "You know, I think Art is on heroin. There's a lot of funny stuff going on. I'm going to stop studying with him soon because I don't want to get involved with that." And I thought, "Hmmmm." I think I only had one lesson after that. I got real nervous about this dope thing. I drank, but the dope thing was totally-foreign to me and it really bothered me. I think what happened was I just didn't call Art back again because I couldn't decide what to do. And then he got busted. That was the end of it. He didn't recognize me when we first met again playing in the Magruders' rehearsal band. Maybe it's the beard.
Art didn't play like anybody else. He wasn't a technician. He chose the notes. His lines were beautiful. He had a whole different approach to alto. The sound he got, the phrasing. I always got the feeling the notes were, like, bouncing out of the horn, and it was the way he was accenting and phrasing them. I dug his tenor playing, too. It was a very fat, dark, different sound. The album that I really loved was Art Pepper plus Eleven. He played alto, tenor, clarinet. I have that on tape in my car. Still. That's about eighteen years and it's still ... I used to wear that album out. The charts were great; the band was great; and the clarinet solo on "Anthropology! "-the way he built that solo still knocks me out. The first chorus was all down in the low register, kinda laid back; the next chorus was kinda in the middle; the last chorus he played up on the high part of the instrument. It started somewhere and it went somewhere, like, I'm gonna get in the car and go from my house to yours, and I know I'm gonna get there, and Art was playing that solo, and he knew where he was going, and he got there. That's the way all his solos hit me.
I wasn't into changes then. Probably if I'd kept on studying with him, we'd have got there. So, I wasn't hearing the changes in an intellectual way. I was hearing it on a purely musical level: the sound, the notes, the whole thing-the excitement, the beauty, the music!
I don't know if this was true or not. I was at somebody's house, somebody that knew Art and knew what he was doing, and he explained-the few of us that were there were on the ground, dying laughing-about what Art had to go through to get up in the morning. It was, like, a pint of vodka that he'd have at the bed and drink that. Then some scotch. Then he would get up and head for the beer. He would drink more booze in the first hour of his day to get the strength to go out the door and score than most people drink in a month. But I never saw him drunk or strung out. His manner then was the same as it is now.
I've noticed with Art ... He probably saw Perk and Coop and all the guys who used to make albums with him-they're all doin' studio work now. Suddenly Art's saying, "Wow, man, I've got to play piccolo and flute!" Runnin' around buyin' all these horns. "I'm fifty years old. What am I gonna do?" He says, "Hey, Steve, how do you do this? Who can I call up to play flute duets?" I guess he's come out of that now. But it's easy in this town to be influenced that way. Like, I never set out to become a doubler. I never figured I'd take up flute, piccolo, buy a bass clarinet, get into the bassoon. It just turned out that way. My whole musical scene has been "I want to work on those changes but I'd better practice the flute." I ended up being a doubler, never really getting into jazz playing like I wanted to. And in this town, if you're doing studio work, you're a success. If you're not, you're not a success. Of course, also, that's where the money is. But, when