Jazz Yarns

Every field has its share of amusing, enlightening, and sobering stories. Here are some that we've collected about the jazz scene in Champaign-Urbana.

Pete Bridgewater, bass player, bandleader, radio host
Clark Terry came from St. Louis, to Peoria, then here. He and I worked some gigs together before he left and went on to New York and joined the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands. He was a younger kid, good trumpet player. He stayed around here for a number of years. Matter of fact, I paid for his first week's rent at the Columbia Hotel on Poplar Street here in town. He said to me one day, "Hey Pete, I've gotten behind in my rent, and I've got an offer over at a club in Danville, and I'm gonna have to leave." He said, "I've got my suitcase and they won't let me leave 'cause I gotta come down the stairs that go right by the paying office." So he said, "I wonder if you could give me a ride in your car over to Danville." I said, "Yeah, Clark, no problem." He said, "I'll drop my suitcase out the second story window and I'll jump out there." And he did! Years later, after he got on the big time, he came back to town and I interviewed him and I said, "You still do windows?" And he said, "Windows? I've never done windows." And I said, "The hell you haven't! You jumped out of the window in the hotel that day!" and he just fell out laughing.

Candy Foster, harmonica player and leader of Shades of Blue
When I was a kid learning how to be a singer, Brother Jack McDuff's wife, a jazz singer, offered to help me. She told my mother to bring me on over to the house. She got McDuff and his band up early after they'd been playing all night. I remember McDuff sitting there in his pajamas at the piano looking at me like, 'I could kill you little boy.' " (Excerpted from the WILL-FM web site: www.will.uiuc.edu/fm/programs/mcduff.htm.

Lonnie Clark, WBCP radio station owner
Jack McDuff was a classic. Boy, Jack was something. He always liked to start stuff going. We were down at the Elks, the old Elks Club, and he was playing down there. And this lady who was named Minnie Haha—well Minnie was a trip! And she loved to have showtime. She couldn't sing or anything, but she liked to dance and get the crowd going. Jack was starting to play some music, kind of funky. She'd get out there dancing and stuff, and everybody would say: "Jack, would you stop that? Don't egg her on." So he'd back off and she'd go sit down. Then he'd hit it again, saying: "Come on Minnie Haha." And she'd jump back up and boy, people were just falling out laughing… He would just do that. Jack was mischievous.

Don Heitler, jazz pianist
Before there was a U of I jazz band, on campus every Thursday night from 7-9pm you had Jazz-U-Like-It. It was held in the commons of the Union, down in the basement. The leader of the group got $14, sidemen got $7. But all of the sidemen subsequently became leaders, so when it was your turn to take the money, you did. We didn't have an infinite number of jazz players—Ron Dewar, Denny Zeitlin, Joe Farrell, the drummer was Dickie Borden and the assist was Harry Rudman. That was a kind of working combo. We would do Jazz-U-Like-It and we would play the fraternities and sororities. (Note: this would have been late 1950s and early 1960s.)

Pete Bridgewater, bass player, bandleader, radio host
Guys that I have played with are guys that basically I sat in with; didn't play with them permanently. I don't know whether you ever heard of the great bass player out of California, Charlie Mingus. I was living in San Diego, California and I heard that Gerald Wilson was organizing a big band to go to Hawaii. So I thought, "I'm a young, energetic bass player." I had what they called a flat-back bass—it didn't have a swollen back, didn't have the tone that I really wanted. So I borrowed a friend's car and drove to Los Angeles and I parked right around the corner on 43rd and Central by the Down Beat Club where they were rehearsing. I could hear the band just cooking in there. So I went to the bar to sit down. The bartender said, "You here for rehearsal?" I said, "Yeah." "What do you play," he asked. I said, "Bass fiddle." He said, "You know the big guy down at the end of the bar there? That's 'Baron' Mingus." They called him "Baron." And I knew darn well that if he was up for the rehearsal, then I didn't have a possible chance. I finished my drink and got in the car and went right down on Central Avenue and hocked my bass fiddle for $50. I never did pick it up. I went back to San Diego and bought me a new one.

Pete Bridgewater, bass player, bandleader, radio host
Had an incident happen to me at the Clover Leaf Club one time. Guy come up to me and said: "Pete, boy, I really enjoy your band. I was here last night, and I want you to play a tune that you played for me last night. Play "Deep Purple" again for me." I said, "But are you sure you want me to play that for you again tonight?" He said, "Oh yeah." I said, "That isn't the woman you were with last night." And he screwed up his face and said, "Oh my god, that's right!" I had to do their thinking for them, see.

Kim Richmond, saxophone/reed player, composer, educator
I was just contacted by a guy named Allen Saul. He found some tapes to a concert the [University of] Illinois jazz band did with Eric Dolphy's quartet. That was my last semester. He's contacting everybody that was on the program, and I was in the band at the time. [Allen Saul] wants to put the out [on CD]; mainly Eric Dolphy's music. I remember that instance well because it was another breakthrough for me personally. At the time I had bee trying to figure out some chord voicings on the piano that I heard on records, ad I couldn't decipher what they were. I just couldn't grasp them. I had been searching on the piano at home for a long time and all I could figure out was root voicings. So during this concert rehearsal, Eric Dolphy's group was there waiting in the wings to start rehearsing. We got through with our portion, so I went over to the piano, and I was fiddling around trying to find these chords. The piano player from Eric Dolphy's group came over and tapped me on the shoulder. He said: "Would you like me to show you some voicings?" And I said, "Oh, great." So he sat down and he showed me: "OK, here's what McCoy Tyner's doing." And I'm saying, "Wow! Is that what I've been hearing all these years?!" The piano player was Herbie Hancock. Herbie spent about five minutes with me and showed me these things, and I was able to go on from there and find out other things on my own. But I needed that boost, and it really helped me get to a new plateau. (Excerpted from an interview in Saxophone Journal, September/October 1998)

Jeff Machota, WEFT jazz host and past president of the CU Jazz and Blues Association
Guido Sinclair schooled people in a lot of aspects of jazz, including how to get ripped-off by an old jazz guy. Over the years, a lot of people stopped playing with him because he got them angry. But that was part of the lesson. Guido tried to live by music down here, so he hustled lots of different bands. He left an impression—whether it was positive or negative or both—and he was an important figure for a long time. The last week of Nature's Table I wanted to put together a Guido Tribute—he was stroke debilitated by then. So I contacted some of the guys from his last working band, mostly undergrads at the University, and they agreed to come play but they didn't want to call it a Guido Tribute because he'd pissed them off so much. But we did it. Someone picked up Guido from the nursing home and he was sitting there with a beer—even though he couldn't drink it—and a big smile on his face. And Kevin Engels announces "this one's for Guido" and calls out one of Guido's tunes. The guys were playing their hearts out but by the end of the song Guido had gotten up and wandered off somewhere. It was a perfect Guido moment! A lot of stories over the years involved Guido—most of them I'm not going to tell!

Dan Perrino, saxophone player; founder of Medicare 7, 8, or 9; educator; U of I administrator
The jazz spots where most of the college students played—we used to call playing those places "bean jobs." You played for your meal. The fellows would play from 5-8pm and they'd get a light supper.

Ron Bridgewater, saxophone player, educator
My brother called me when I was still in school; it was about one-in-the-morning, and he said that Thad Jones and Mel Lewis were looking for somebody to take a spot to go on tour to the Soviet Union, and wanted to know if I wanted to audition for the band. In my sleep and stupor I said "Yeah, I guess." I ended up in the band for 3-4 years. I moved to New York then and stayed for 18 years. I played with everybody that I dreamed of playing with: Horace Silver, McCoy Tyner, Max Roach. And I came back here after I got to the point in New York where I was trying to make ends meet by driving a taxi cab.
And here's Cecil Bridgewater's version of the same story
Thad had talked to me before a trip to Russia in 1972 and said that one of his saxophonists couldn't make the trip. He wanted to know if I knew of a saxophone player who could play clarinet as well. And I said "yeah, my brother." So I called Ron on a Monday night after we finished playing at the Village Vanguard—it was two or three o'clock in the morning. He answered the phone, we talked and I asked him if he'd like to come and join the band. And he said "sure!" But I know Ron. So the next day I called him again and he did not remember the conversation at all because he was really asleep even though we were talking. So I had to explain it all to him again. We pulled him out of school to come join the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra.

Morgan Usadel, Discount Records/Record Service/Figaro's
The Chick Corea band played in the Nonesuch Concerts at Channing-Murray that Rich Warren organized, and the band came over to my house for dinner. Rich wanted to make a kind of homey thing, so he asked me if it would be OK if we could set up some kind of a dinner and make a big pot of stew or something like that. My son Gabriel was about five months old, I think, and we had it in his room! We put up a big table and it worked out great. Let's see, it was Chick Corea, Lenny White on drums, Billy Connors on guitar, and Stanley Clark on bass. And I remember playing King Curtis records while we were eating and they were really impressed by that. Good eating music.

Jon Faddis, trumpet player, leader of the Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra, educator
I played for four years with Cecil Bridgewater in the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Band. We used to have some pretty tough charts and they called one that I was playing the high part on—way up there, all these notes—and Cecil was playing the low part. I looked over at Cecil, he had his head down and was just (demonstrates buzzing his lips)—he was just resting his lips. Just made me laugh.

Jerry Tessin, trumpet player with the U of I Jazz Band, U of I School of Music Events Director
Paul Vandegheynst was from New York, had that New York attitude, very aggressive. He played a trombone with a slide that, instead of going straight out, went off at an angle. He was quite a talker and was just known as "The Vander." Normally you get a personality like that into a band and it's disruptive. But somehow John [Garvey] made everything work. The Vander was the kind of guy that was always into something. One of the years at the Notre Dame jazz festival, the bands shared a common backstage. So the band that was all set to go onstage would be back there, and the band that would follow them would be back there, and there was the stuff from the band on the stage. And there was only one bathroom. The Indiana band [major competition for the U of I band] was going on before us, so The Vander went into the bathroom and locked the door so nobody from the Indiana band could go to the bathroom before they went onstage.

Rich Warren, radio host, Nonesuch Concerts
When the Nonesuch Concert Series was just getting going at the Channing Murray Foundation, Morgan Usadel of Discount Records, who followed the jazz scene, said "I heard a rumor that Weather Report is playing in Bloomington and is looking for a gig. Why don't you put them on in Channing Murray?" I couldn't believe that I could get a big famous group like that to play at this little 200-seat church. But I called their manager and asked if Weather Report would like to play in CU. "He said "Yeah, we're looking for a gig. What can you guarantee?" This was a non-profit series and we weren't even incorporated yet, so it was all very informal but I was scrupulously honest. So I said "I'll give them 80% of the gate. We can have two performances, the place seats 200 people, and we'll charge $2 a seat." And the manager said "Super! Now can you put them up while they're there?" And I told him we could have them stay with people, but that we couldn't really afford a hotel or anything. So I farmed out all these famous musicians to people's homes and dorm rooms! But all the people in Weather Report were terrifically nice human beings, incredibly bright, and incredibly nice. I remember Joe Lex lived in this basement room on Coler Street, and there was Wayne Shorter staying with him! But Weather Report loved the Channing Murray Foundation and thought the acoustics there were great. In those days, the church had this grand old pipe organ, and that became a key to the whole night. So in the middle of the set, Joe Zawinul got up from his electronic keyboard, walked over to the pipe organ, turned it on, and started to play. And the whole 200 people in that chapel levitated a foot off their seats. The whole band just sort of stopped. I mean these musicians didn't ever get the opportunity in a jazz club to play a full-sized, acoustic church pipe organ. That does not sound like a keyboard! The house was sold out and people were outside just waiting to get in to the next show, and it was just a magic night.

Jeff Machota, WEFT jazz host and past president of the CU Jazz and Blues Association
When Nature's Table went down, people felt like they had to do something. That's when the Jazz and Blues Association started—in 1991. We started a Jazz and Blues Hotline, working closely with WEFT to promote gigs happening in town. We wanted to promote the local music, all the things happening in town; we wanted to show that jazz and blues are living art forms, whether it's playing music of the past or bringing new music to life. My email list is the last vestige of the Jazz and Blues Association.

Cecil Bridgewater, jazz trumpet player, composer, arranger, educator
Donald Smith and I were part of the U of I band in 1968 when it went to some of the Iron Curtain countries and Eastern Europe. We ended up in Vienna at the same time that there was a George Wein drum tour traveling through Europe. And Donald and I were out for a walk and happened to see signs for a concert that was coming up two days later and a jam session that was that night. So we decided to go to the jam session, and that's where I first met Max Roach, Art Blakey, Horace Silver, and Sonny Murray. Sonny was kind of picking up musicians as he went along, and he asked Donald and I to play in the concert. Bu we just walked over to these guys to say hello and they wanted to know why we were there. They were very warm and nice. As a matter of fact, that night, Max Roach invited Donald and I to come by his hotel room the next day so that we could chat. It was a great thrill, a great thrill. That was my first contact with him, and that association has lasted now for 30-some years, working together and so forth.

Dan Perrino, saxophone player; founder of Medicare 7, 8, or 9; educator; U of I administrator
There was a place called Robeson's Roof Garden and that was on the roof of Robeson's Department Store. It went on from 1928-1938, and it was very popular for dancing on Friday and Saturday nights only. For a quarter you could get in the dance hall, and you could buy a Coke for a dime. We interviewed a person on the radio once, and he said that in 1938 he took a date to the Robeson's Roof Garden—and if you could take a date there, you were really something! And he said: "It cost us ten cents each to get on the bus to go downtown, so that was twenty cents. It was twenty-five cents each for tickets, and then two Cokes brought the total tab up to ninety cents. I only had a dollar so we had to walk home, but I had ten cents left." But out of the Robeson's Roof Garden came the jazz people, the people who played jazz in small ensembles, improvised music rather than Big Band music that you had to read in an ensemble. And in order to make a living, you had to play in the dance band, and then you could play jazz later in the evening.

Dan Perrino, saxophone player; founder of Medicare 7, 8, or 9; educator; U of I administrator
Medicare was developed during the period of unrest when we entered the free speech era and were trying to break the tension between the students, administration, and faculty on campus. And you know, if I had planned it, it wouldn't have worked; it just sort of happened. We decided to have something we called a Dialogue in Dixieland. None of the musicians had ever played together before, but we chose old tunes that you could improvise with. It started out with about 70 students, most of them sitting on the floor. We were playing this kind of happy music, and we talked to them and told them that we had never played together but were just going to try these things out. And we started walking around and the students formed a snake-line behind us. A student from the Daily Illini came up and took a picture, and later on asked what we called the group. And I said: "Well it's not really a group; it's just a bunch of musicians and this is the first time we've been together. We've never had a rehearsal, but jazz musicians can do this. We don't really have a name." Then Stan Rodney, one of the other musicians was looking at all of our gray hair and bald heads and said: "I guess we could be a Medicare kind of group." So the student said: "how many in your group?" And I just threw off, "I don't know, seven or eight or nine, depending on who shows up." So the next day the caption in the paper says: "Medicare 7, 8, or 9 plays for students." And we never changed the name. That was in 1968. I think that first group included Stan Ron on clarinet, John O'Connor on cornet, Morris Carter on trombone, Larry Dwyer on piano, Chuck Braugham on drums, Art Proto on banjo. I've forgotten the name of the bass player. (Note: and Dan Perrino on saxophone)

Paul Wienke, WILL producer and program host, vice president of the CU Jazz and Blues Association
I first met Jack McDuff at a gig at Buddy's. Jack was a one-of-a-kind guy. He was very determined about what his music was going to sound like. At one of those gigs at Buddy's, he was coming to town by himself and he was expecting a drummer, a guitar player, and at least one, if not two, horn players. And an organ. The organ was no problem, because he and Russell [Cheatham] were old friends and he'd just call Russell and Russell would bring his organ over. So I went to that gig and started setting up. I had most of my stuff ready to go when Michael Powers showed up with his drum kit. And I asked him "Where are the rest of the guys?" And he said: "I don't know. I was just told to be here to play drums with Jack McDuff." So I had the drums and the organ mic-ed and ready to go. Then McDuff showed up and he asked "Where's my band?" I sort of gestured and mumbled "drummer." Jack was not happy! He argued a bit with the owner, but agreed to start playing when the owner said he was going to the airport to pick up the other guys. I heard that, and I thought "Oh man, that's a big lie. This is not happening." So McDuff sat down at the organ, and he and Michael Powers started playing. They played for about half-an-hour and McDuff had enough. He went over to the bar and said "I'm going to sit here and wait for the band to show up." Well McDuff's niece, Vicky Capo, was there, and she asked if I could hook her up a mic so she could sing with him until the band arrived. I had a mic, but no PA, and without a house PA nobody was going to hear her. But we tried to rig up a split off of the microphone into the house system, but you couldn't get away from feedback in the room. It was a nightmare, and again, McDuff was unhappy. Finally, he left for about an hour to get some dinner, and when he came back, there was still no band. That was an adventure. But I kept in touch with McDuff over the years, and we'd touch base every once in awhile. One year, we asked him to be the headliner for the Jazz and Blues Association Blowout. I made arrangements for a band to play with him. He asked for Ron Bridgewater, plus a guitar player and a drummer. It was a killer show and the recording of it came off great. McDuff was beside himself. It was at the Holiday Inn and the place was packed. The show didn't start until 8pm, and there were five or six bands before McDuff was to play, but people started showing up at 2pm, and they wanted to know which stage McDuff would be playing on (the Blowouts had a stage at either end of the room and would alternate jazz and blues acts) so that they could stake out their seats. And that end of the room stayed full the entire evening because people wanted to hold those seats. And a lot of the black community came out, a lot of the old timers came out, because they hadn't seen McDuff play in town in a nice setting for quite awhile. It was tremendous.