Straight Life - Art Pepper [25]
I had started out playing cowboy songs, "Home on the Range," things like that. Then, somehow, I happened to hear some Django Reinhardt. That was really incredible. I still have some of the records-78s. I listened to them over and over and tried to copy all his licks. I started taking down beat magazine, listening to all the big bands, and going with the other guys to hear people like Coleman Hawkins and T-Bone Walker when they were in town. We'd get friendly with them and they'd tell us, "Hey, man, we're going to go down to this after-hours place and jam, do you want to come?" Of course we'd go. We'd stay all night.
Well, Art started going out with us, going to bars to play. We didn't even have a car; we'd walk sometimes for miles. Zoot Sims was one of the guys then. We used to call him Jackie, Jackie Sims.
Art was a very clean-looking, Italian-looking kid, normal height, good weight, very, very healthy, good-looking. He was a very exciting kid, kinda naughty, you know, a raise-hell kinda kid. One night we went to a club to jam and all of a sudden I turn around and here's Art having an argument with an old guy. Maybe he wasn't so old; he seemed old to us. The next thing I know, Art's rolling on the floor, fighting with this guy. Art was a very energetic kid. Always jumpin' around.
WHEN I was nine or ten I liked the big bands that I heard on the radio-Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Charlie Barnet. After I got my clarinet, I started buying their records. It became my goal to play Artie Shaw's part on "Concerto for Clarinet." Finally, after I'd been playing for a few years, Mr. Parry bought me the sheet music. I practiced all alone and with the record, and I was finally able to play it. It was a difficult piece.
Johnny Martizia was a guitar player; Jimmy Henson played trombone. I got together with them at their houses to play. Johnny would strum the guitar. He told me, "These are the chords to the blues, which all jazz emanates from. This is black music, from Africa, from the slave ships that came to America."
I liked what I heard, but I didn't know what chords were. Chords are the foundation for all music, the foundation jazz players improvise on. I said, "What shall I do?" He said, "Listen to the sounds I'm making on my guitar and play what you feel." He strummed the blues and I played things that felt nice and seemed to fit. We played and played, and slowly I began to play sounds that made sense and didn't clash with what he was doing. I asked him if he thought that I might have the right to play jazz. He said, "You're very fortunate. You have a gift." I wanted to become the greatest player in the world. I wanted to become a jazz musician.
I ran around with Johnny and his friends. We'd go into bars and ask if we could play. Sometimes they said yes. I was fourteen or fifteen. These guys took me down to Central Avenue, the black nightclub district, and asked if we could sit in. The people there were very encouraging.
I played clarinet in the school band in San Pedro but when I got to Fremont High I stopped playing in school and started working more jobs. I had been playing alto saxophone since I was twelve, and now I got a job playing alto with a trio at Victor McLaglen's. I began going by myself to Central Avenue. I met a lot of musicians there. I ran into a bass player, Joe Mondragon, who said he was going with Gus Arnheim in San Diego. He asked me if I wanted to go with the band. I was still going to school but I wasn't going regular. I went to San Diego and stayed for about three months.
Gus Arnheim was in a big ballroom down there. It was a very commercial band and I didn't fit in because there were no jazz solos to play-you just read music. It was good practice, but it got tiresome, so I left, came back, went to Central Avenue