Straight Life - Art Pepper [65]
So being a musician and being great is the same as living and being a real person, an honest person, a caring person. You have to be happy with what you have and what you give and not have to be totally different and wreak havoc, not have to have everything be completely new at all times. You just have to be a part of something and have the capacity to love and to play with love. Harry Sweets Edison has done that; Zoot Sims has done that, has finally done that. Dizzy Gillespie has done that to a very strong degree. Dizzy is a very open, contented, loving person; he lives and plays the same way; he does the best he can. A lot of the old players were like that-Jack Teagarden, Freddie Webster-people that just played and were good people.
Jealousy has hurt jazz. Instead of trying to help each other and enjoy each other, musicians have become petty and jealous. A guy will be afraid somebody's going to play better than him and steal his job. And the black power-a lot of the blacks want jazz to be their music and won't have anything to do with the whites. Jazz is an art form. How can art form belong to one race of people? I had a group for a while-Lawrence Marable was playing drums, Curtis Counce was playing bass-and one night I got off the stand, we were at jazz City, and a couple of friends of mine who were there said, "Hey, man, did you realize what was happening? Those cats were ranking you while you were playing, laughing and really ranking you." I said, "You're kidding, man!" I started asking people and I started, every now and then, turning around real quick when I'd be playing. And there they were, sneering at me. Finally I just wigged out at Lawrence Marable. We went out in front of the club and I said, "Man, what's happening with you?" And he said, "Oh, fuck you! You know what I think of you, you white motherfucker?" And he spit in the dirt and stepped in it. He said, "You can't play. None of you white punks can play!" I said, "You lousy, stinking, black motherfucker! Why the fuck do you work for me if you feel like that?" And he said, "Oh, we're just taking advantage of you white punk motherfuckers." And that was it. That's what they think of me. If that's what they think of me, what am I going to think of them? I was really hurt, you know; I wanted to cry, you know; I just couldn't believe it-guys I'd given jobs to, and I find out they're talking behind my back and, not only that, laughing behind my back when I'm playing in a -club-!
There's people like Ray Brown that I worked with, Sonny Stitt, who I blew with, black cats that played marvelous and really were beautiful to me, so I couldn't believe it when these things started happening. But you're going to start wondering, you're going to be leery, naturally, and when you see people that you know ... I'd go to the union and run into Benny Carter or Gerald Wilson and find myself shying away from them because I'd be wondering, "Do they think, 'Oh, there's that white asshole, that Art Pepper; that white punk can't play; we can only play; us black folks is the only people that can play!'?" That's how I started thinking and it destroyed everything. How can you have any harmony together or any beauty when that's going on? So that's what happened to jazz. That's why so many people just stopped. Buddy DeFranco, probably the greatest clarinet player who ever lived, people like that, they just got so sick of it; they just got sick to death of it; and they had to get out because it was so heartbreaking.
But all that happened later on. In 1951, musically at least, I had the world by the tail. That was the year I placed second, on alto saxophone, in the down beat jazz poll. Charlie Parker got fourteen votes more than me and came in first.
At the end of 1951 I quit Kenton's band. It was too hard being on the road, being away from Patti, and I grew tired of the band. I knew all the arrangements by memory and it was really boring. I didn't get a chance