Straight Life - Art Pepper [61]
(Coop) I always felt that Art's major influence was Lester Young; that came out more clearly when I heard him play tenor a few times. Maybe not so much now as in his early days. And to transfer that beautiful sound to the alto! He was really the only one doing that at the time, and I think his sound was by far the best alto sound at the time. Since then there have been other marvelous alto players, but I think that perhaps Art was a major influence in their sound. I always enjoyed his solos; naturally, one of the highlights of the band was Art's solos. And I still think that the solo piece Shorty Rogers wrote for Art is one of Stan's best records. It's a lovely record. It'll probably last for all time.
(Sammy Curtis) The Innovations band was great. It was one of Stan's bold moves in music. It was a very aggressive thing he did. He added a big string section and French horns, and the band had a physical structure kind of like a symphony orchestra. At that time no one was thinking in those terms. The band was playing great music, and there was a very brotherly feeling among the musicians. We felt we were participating in something very important. There were a lot of string players who weren't, you know, "us" jazz guys, and they loved it. They felt it was important to them to be part of it, too.
Stan was a very devoted musician. The orchestra, it was so big, a lot bigger than other bands; they had to build special risers to set the band up on and carry all this equipment on the road. I could be wrong, but I've been told by a lot of people that would have to know that Stan was financing the thing out of his own pocket, which, the final line in that story is, he lost a lot of money. But that's the kind of guy he was. He believed in it so much, he put himself into it physically, spiritually, just to the hilt, and that's where he was coming from. He was beautiful.
Art was ... His music was number one to him. That's all he talked about. We were very close. We'd go and hang out after work, go blow in clubs. Art had a lot of solos in the band; he was featured on a lot of things, and if he'd had a really good night playing, he felt great, but some nights he felt he could have done better, and he'd just get depressed. What he did in his music kind of dominated the way he looked at the whole world.
Art was and is a great player. I'm not going to say the greatest in the world because I don't feel any one guy is. But at the top of the gang is a select group of five or ten, just a few guys. When you get up that high on the ladder, you can't pick one as better than the other. That's where I place Art. He's one of those special guys. As to what made his playing so special, that's a hard question, and the only way I can answer it, to be honest with you, I think it's a gift of God. I think it's not something that Art did. God loved him and gave him this gift.
If you were Art's friend, he loved you. He would, I feel, have done anything I asked. Not that I asked anything special, but I felt that kind of brotherly thing. And he respected my work in music, and that was a part of it. You know, I may sound like I'm trying to make something special out of myself because I was not that nice a ., .. I wasn't walking with the Lord then and I was a different kind of guy.
There were a lot of Monday night sessions around town in L.A., and guys'd just drive around in cars and go to clubs and sit in. Art would call me up and say, "Hey, you want to meet me, and we'll go sit in at this club, and then, if there's time, we'll go to another one?" It was just fun to hang out. Chet Baker would come and Jack Montrose, at that time; Jack Sheldon was one of the guys; Shorty Rogers, Hersh Hamel. We'd fill the whole car up and drive to a club.
Something that sticks in my mind-it shows a part