Straight Life - Art Pepper [275]
I learned how to do my job from experience and from two terrific women. During the hellish '77 New York experience, Keiko Jones (Mrs. Elvin) lectured me nightly in the kitchen of the Village Vanguard. She told me how to act, how to dress, and how much power to take: All of it. She told me to take control of the money. Later, Jill Goodwin, Phil Woods's partner, gave me practical tips on touring: If it's costing you this much, you have to make this much. Carl Burnett, our drummer, a seasoned traveller with many bands, was always a source of calm and of good advice and information. And I learned about the business of music from two marvelous men, both lawyers, Jimmy Tolbert (who kept Art from going to jail in Chapter 24), and Al Schlesinger, who did us countless kindnesses. Before he died, Les Koenig showed me how to affiliate Art with BMI as a writer, so that he could finally collect performance royalties on all the songs he'd written. By the time Art signed with Fantasy, Art and I were publishing the songs he wrote, and he was collecting 100% of mechanical royalties on them.
In July of 1980, we met young Don McGlynn, just out of U.S.C. film school. He wanted to make a documentary about Art, and we agreed. He raised $30,000 and made a 48-minute film. Art Pepper: Notes from a jazz Survivor seems to me a good, intelligently (and cleverly) made, honest film. It won some awards and gave Art great satisfaction.
But the biggest event, for Art, of his last years, after STRAIGHT LIFE, was the ballad album, Winter Moon.
Our contract with Fantasy was supposed to guarantee Art a ballad album with strings. As it turned out, the contract didn't include that stipulation, but Ralph Kaffel, with some urging from his Japanese licensee, decided to underwrite a ballad album anyway.
Ed Michel was living in an idyllic little country town in Northern California. Art and I drove up and stayed there for a week in the only motel. Every day we drove to Ed's house and listened to successive installments of a great big compilation of good ballads-almost all performed by vocalists-which Ed had put together for Art to listen to and choose from.
For the first couple of days, during the listening sessions, Art kept nodding out. I don't know why. He swore he wasn't taking anything besides his methadone and coke. Maybe he was just staying up too late sniffing while I slept. Ed got annoyed. He'd done all this work and here was Art, on the nod. Ed finally made some too tactful remark about what drugs Art was or wasn't using. Art took offense. There was a quarrel. I tried to make peace. Back at the motel, Art sat down and drafted a contract for Ed to sign. He wanted Ed to guarantee that he wouldn't say a word to Ralph about Art using drugs. As he prepared it, he asked me to help him with the wording of it: "Is Ed the `defendant' and am I the 'plaintiff,' or is it vice versa?"
Art went out to the roadside phone booth, called Ed, and read the contract to him. Ed said he wouldn't say anything to Ralph, but he refused to sign any formal agreement without first consulting his attorney. "Art bought that," Ed told me, laughing, years later. "That made sense to him." Art was impressed by Ed's caution and reassured on the subject of Ed's silence, and the next day they solemnly shook hands. Art, mysteriously, woke up and selected the tunes he wanted to play.
Ed chose Bill Holman, whom Art knew and admired, and Jimmy Bond, with whom Art was acquainted, to write the arrangements. Art wanted to do the record date live. Common practice these days is to overdub. The strings come in on Monday and lay down their written tracks. On Tuesday or next year the soloist comes in and plays his part or improvises over what the strings have