Straight Life - Art Pepper [64]
Miles Davis is basically a good person and that's why his playing is so beautiful and pure. This is my own thinking and the older I get the more I believe I'm correct in my views. Miles is a master of the understatement and he's got an uncanny knack for finding the right note or the right phrase. He's tried to give an appearance of being something he's not. I've heard he's broken a television set when he didn't like something that was said on TV, that he's burnt connections, been really a bastard with women, and come on as a racist. The connections prob ably deserved to be burnt; they were assholes, animals, guys, that would burn you: give you bad stuff and charge you too much, people that would turn you in to the cops if they got busted. Most of the women that hang around jazz musicians are phonies. And as for his prejudice, not wanting white people in his bands, that's what he feels he should be like. He's caught up in the way the country is, the way the people are, and he figures that's the easiest way to go. One time he did hire Bill Evans for his band, but people ranked him so badly and it was such a hassle that I think he became bitter and assumed this posture of racism and hatred. But I feel he's a good person or he couldn't play as well as he plays.
Billy Wilson plays like he is. When I knew him, when he was young, he was a real warm, sweet, loving person. And he plays just that way. But if you listen to his tone, it never was very strong; it's pretty and kind of cracking. It's weak. And when he was faced with prison-because he got busted for using drugs-he couldn't stand it. He couldn't go because he was afraid, and when they offered him an out by turning over on somebody he couldn't help but do it. He's a weak person. That's the way he plays. That's the way he sounds.
Stan Getz is a great technician, but he plays cold to me. I hear him as he is and he's rarely moved me. He never knocked me out like Lester Young, Zoot Sims, Coltrane.
John Coltrane was a great person, warm with no prejudice. He was a dedicated musician but he got caught up in the same thing I did. He was playing at the time when using heroin was fashionable, when the big blowers like Bird were using, and so, working in Dizzy Gillespie's band, playing lead alto, he became a junkie. But he was serious about his playing so he finally stopped using heroin and devoted all his time to practicing. He became a fanatic and he reached a point where he was technically great, but he was also a good person so he played warm and real. I've talked to him, talked to him for hours, and he told me, "Why don't you straighten up? You have so much to offer. Why don't you give the world what you can?" That's what he did. But success trapped him. He got so successful that everyone was expecting him to be always in the forefront. It's the same thing that's happening to Miles right now. Miles is panicked. He's stopped. He's got panicked trying to be different, trying to continually change and be modern and to do the avant-garde thing. Coltrane did that until there was no place else to go. What he finally had, what he really had and wanted and had developed, he could no longer play because that wasn't new anymore. He got on that treadmill and ran himself ragged trying to be new and to change. It destroyed him. It was too wearing, too draining. And he became frustrated and worried. Then he started hurting, getting pains, and he got scared. He got these pains in his back, and he got terrified. He was afraid of doctors, afraid of hospitals, afraid of audiences, afraid of bandstands. He lost his teeth. He was afraid that his sound wasn't strong enough, afraid that the new, young black kids wouldn't think he was the greatest thing that ever lived anymore. And the pains got worse and worse: they got so bad he couldn't stand the pain. So they carried him to a hospital