Red hot chili pepper.

What would Charlie Parker sounded like if he’d lived to be an elder statesman? Questions like these regularly pop up in the jazz freak community. If you ask me, I’d rather have seen Bird quit the game and go play go games with Chinese friends in the park. He’d said all, full stop. Brave men dare to call it quits, remember Don “Captain Beefheart” van Vliet? Switched to painting and walking in and out of laundry shops. Bravo.

Of course, you can’t blame those that battle on. Certainly not Art Pepper, who was in jail for long periods of his career and strived to make up for lost opportunities. So, with guys like Art Pepper, the question may be superfluous, though he never reached the age of the typical elder statesman. But another common jazz question arises, namely what period in his career do you prefer? So nice of you to ask!

Well, actually, I think that Art Pepper played better, or better said more beautifully,  in the last stage of his career, free from habits, demons (more or less, I guess), paranoia, manhunt. I’ve been reading a lot of old Downbeat issues from the 1950’s lately, and in a period of two years I’ve come across three interviews with Art Pepper, all focusing largely on his addiction. It probably was regarded as a good thing back then that these issues were openly discussed (at least, in a niche magazine) but even to today’s media standards, one could argue, isn’t this overkill, and, what’s with the melodrama. Bird never talked about drugs, only thing he said to his friends was, don’t do it, please. Mostly in vain.

Enough of that. I veer to late Pepper largely on account of live footage on YouTube and Thursday At The Village Vanguard. (Plus Friday, Saturday and More Or Les from the same tenure at the legendary New York club from 1977) Featuring George Cables, George Mraz and Elvin Jones. Pepper’s richly varied ideas keep coming at you like refreshing raindrops and sweet-hot sun beams and he’s not afraid to jump out of his flexible story with sudden bursts of weeps, singing on his horn. Plainly beautiful highlight of his career.

So, I’ve always thought that flexible and dynamic Art Pepper was one of the top alto players arriving on the scene in the 1950’s, just like Bud Shank and Phil Woods, but that there was something inhibited in his playing, that he was not really himself. (Regardless of excellent albums like Modern Art, Smack Up, Meets The Rhythm Section – the latter’s special because of the East Coast line-up Garland/Chambers/Jones, though not the masterpiece it’s cooked up to be in my humble opinion, an opinion that agrees on one real highlight, the superb fast version of Birks’ Works; by the way, I’ve always loved the obscure release The Art Of Pepper, though largely on account of the fantastic pianist Carl Perkins)

Curiously, while continuing my scrolling through Downbeat issues, I stumbled upon an interview from 1960. It turned out that, actually, Art Pepper wasn’t all too sure about his playing in the past at that point, that he said things that confirmed my intuition.

Call it a hunch, the hard-boiled detective would say. I’m not priding myself on it or anything, it’s simply a case of serendipity and the world of jazz freaks may disagree. Agree to disagree, right, hard to come by these days.

Paraphrase: (Downbeat issue of April 14, 1960, article titled The Return of Art Pepper) In the late 1950’s, Art Pepper, who’d served a jail sentence from 1954 to 1956, was in bad shape. The former successful Stan Kenton-ite had resorted to playing in a rock & roll band and selling accordions (!) to make a living. But he was feeling good now, playing with the Howard Rumsey All-Stars at The Lighthouse. He was unhappy about his playing in the past but happy with how + Eleven, partnership with his old pal Marty Paich, had turned out.

Quotes: “That Eleven album is written with a lot of taste, and the voicing is excellent.” Pepper was inspired by Coltrane, Rollins, Coleman, Miles and Monk. “Doing something you like and not worrying what anybody will think about it.” This realization of artistic purpose was frustrated in the past. “Because of the white environment on the coast, I was forced into set ways of playing that I didn’t really feel. I’d go somewhere and play the way I wanted, freely, and the guys would like at me as though I were crazy. See, if I felt I wanted to honk once in a while, then I’d do it. I’d honk or squeal or do anything I felt like at that moment. But the other cats just didn’t accept it. So I began to conform to the kind of playing that was acceptable an I fell into lethargy – and out of music.” 

Subject: + Eleven. Great modern jazz compositions, Denzil Best’s Move, Dizzy Gillespie’s Groovin’ High and Shaw ‘Nuff, Horace Silver’s Opus De Funk, Thelonious Monk’s ‘Round Midnight, Jimmy Giuffre’s Four Brothers, Gillespie/Parker’s Anthropology, Sonny Rollins’ Airegin, Miles Davis’ Donna Lee, Richard Carpenter’s Walkin’, Leiber/Stoller’s Bernie’s Tune and Gerry Mulligan’s Walkin’ Shoes. The latter two songs are good but I prefer the bebop and hard bop tunes, bouncy and enthusiastic like dogs in the park.

+ Eleven swings like mad and the line-up is top draw West Coast, including drummer Mel Lewis, bassist Joe Mondragon, pianist Russ Freeman, trumpeter Jack Sheldon and saxophonists Bill Perkins, Bud Shank, Richie Kamuca. Marty Paich provided an alluring bottom of trombones and French horn and sinuous secondary motifs and dynamic switches between big sounds and rhythm section, a saucy stew that challenges Art Pepper, who makes the most of it, weaving in and out of the changes of these short, punchy classic songs with limber lines, at ease as if he’s the star player of the L.A. Dodgers in top form, and, most of all, on fire. His work on alto saxophone, his true voice, is outstanding, but his other features on tenor and clarinet, his first instrument, are superb as well. Trumpeter Jack Sheldon, mind you, also meets the challenge, giving his fiery and flexible all.

One day I will browse through Downbeat issues of the 1960’s and I will stumble upon another Return of Art Pepper. Because, unfortunately, soon after + Eleven, Pepper would be arrested again and serve long sentences from 1960 to 1965. He kicked the habit in 1969 and enjoyed a decade of fruitful recording and recognition until his lamented passing in 1982 at the age of 56.