We used to go out playing all the time. Go over to the east side, play at different places. Sometimes, out of seven nights in the week, we’d be playing five nights, and we had a different place for each night. Even if we weren’t working we’d be, like, together, as a group of guys: myself, Jack Montrose, Art, Sammy Curtis, sometimes Chet Baker, sometimes Jack Sheldon, Bill Perkins, Gene Roland, Bob Braucus, Bob Neal. Sometimes Shorty Rogers even came along.
Some nights we’d play at a place called the Samoan in East L.A., right in the Barrio, off Whittier and Atlantic. We knew the owner there; he was very mellow, and he liked us to come in. He knew Freddy. Al Leon had a place for us to play in El Cerrito. And the Mexicans loved Art. I think they thought that Art was part Mexican; he has that Latin look. I don’t think they realized he’s more Italian than anything else. He was just a hero to them. They’d come in and take us outside and get us high.
At that point Art was just drinking and smoking pot, maybe a diet pill from time to time. And he could always drink me under the table. I remember one night we were at the opening of a record store in East L.A. It was about ten at night, the grand opening, and we played, like, a jam session. The owner asked us to. They closed up the store at about one and we played until four in the morning, and Art, while I was standing up playing my big bass fiddle, Art was pouring this gin down my throat and it was running down my neck. Well, I got so drunk! Art drank more than I did, and I got terribly sick. Art didn’t really even show the effect. He was drunk but he wasn’t drunk drunk, like I was. He took me home, and my clothes were all screwed up, and Patti washed my clothes and cleaned me up. I was a mess. It was a lot of fun. It really was. The point was, Art was able to consume a lot of stuff, no matter what it was, and show very little effect from it.
About that period, Art went back on the road with Kenton, and the way I heard it from Art was that he was initiated to heroin while he was on that tour. I remember he came back and he was involved with heroin. It seemed like he got involved pretty fast and pretty deep. When Art wasn’t on the road with Kenton, he would do some things by himself, and I remember he was down at a place on Sixth and Western called the Surf Club. Hampton Hawes was down there with him, and I remember how loaded Art was on the gig, really zonked. I remember going down to see him and being disturbed about him being so stoned while he was working. His playing was fine, but it seemed like Art began to feel like he couldn’t play good enough unless he was on heroin.
Art’s really a gifted and talented player. He’s given his great talent to jazz, his style. And he did retain himself through all the Charlie Parker years, some pretty rough times. I remember there was a club near Hollywood Boulevard where we used to go play sessions after hours. This must have been 1960, something like that. I was standing outside the club and Art was going in and Joe Maini was going in and somehow there were words between Joe and Art. Joe said something: “Hey, faggot!” About the way Art played. He didn’t mean Art’s demeanor as a person. And they got into a fistfight and were rolling around on the concrete hitting each other over the style of Art’s playing. Art was defending his playing by engaging in fisticuffs with Joe.
You know, there are Charlie Parker influences in Art’s playing but Art was able to retain himself; whereas most of the alto players emulated Charlie Parker and therefore they didn’t have as much of themselves to give as Art did. I think that’s a great thing.
(Freddy Rivera) At that time, I was completely lost. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I wasn’t even close to having an idea of what I was doing. In reality I was doing nothing. Getting drunk. Running around the streets. Screaming. At times it was enormous fun, but much of the other time it was frightening, really, not knowing what the hell’s going on. Art was frightened, too. He was frightened of life. At one time, we went into a shopping center and people were going in and out of the doors and he said, “They’re making it. Those people are making it.” One time we were in a car and we were talking and somebody said, “You know, a lawyer makes eighty thousand a year. You, Art, you’re not making anything at all. You should be making as much as a successful lawyer or doctor.” It was the truth, too. Art was making, what, twenty dollars a week? Of course, when he was with the bands he was making more money. But he was capable of making eighty thousand. He rationalized it, “It’s a rotten world. People are cold and conniving. They won’t give a person a chance. There’s no justice.”
I met Art when I was nineteen, around 1946. I was a drummer. I met him through Al Leon, the piano player; he brought him over to my house. We went out to this place in Bell; they had sessions over there. Zoot was there most of the time and Jim Giuffre, Stan Getz. The sessions were usually on Sundays. And we used to hang out, ride around, smoke dope, drink, talk.
Art and I were able to talk to one another. When two people like one another, sometimes they don’t even know why. I guess there was some kind of empathy there as far as emotions, attitudes, feelings, sensitivity. And, of course, another factor was youth. When you’re young, you can be very open. You make friends more easily.
Art’s attitude toward music is difficult to describe accurately. He’s a marvelous musician, always has been. Very exact, with the right sound, whatever that means. The sound I like. Marvelous vibrato. But very exact. Does it right. And of course a lot of guys can do it right, but they can’t swing. And there’s depth in his music. Insight. When I think of Art, I think of Lester Young, and I think of Mozart, too. The quality—it appears to be easy, but it’s never easy. If it were easy anyone could do it. I think there’s a strong classical feeling there. I’m using the word to mean a feeling for form and for proportion and whatnot. He’s just naturally a musician. He came out of the womb a musician, and I’m positive he always had a commitment to it. But you wouldn’t find him, like some guys, practicing eight hours a day, constantly trying to get connections, get ahead, get the gig, achieve power, fame. He was afraid of any responsibility. He just wanted to fuck around.
Patti was a friendly person, an emotional, warm person, but she wanted Art to be more active and to seek success more vigorously, go after it, take care of business. And I imagine, as his wife, she wanted security, whether it was expressed immediately in more money or whether it was expressed in his attitude and in his ability to take care of himself, so she could at least feel that she was with a secure person who had a sense of direction, control of his life. Patti was very attractive. Physically, she was an exciting-looking woman, erotic in appearance, although she had something of the, you know, clean-cut, midwestern look about her and considerable charm. I think Art felt a need for her, an emotional need to draw upon her. I would think he had a strong feeling of physical attraction, emotions of abandon with her.
Art was very sensitive and I would say cunning in many ways. A real paradox. He had an inability at times to really take care of things and deal with his life in a forceful, direct way, to change things, but at the same time he showed a cunning in his relationship with people. The cunning was a result of great natural intelligence, but it was really a form of childishness. Instead of taking the form of advancing his career and getting work, which he had every right to have, it was diverted into the manipulation of flunkies: “Take me to the job.” “Bring me home.” “Yeah, come on over. Bring a jug.” And people did this, of course—out of admiration for his talent. And I know what they got out of it. Feeling like nothing themselves, not having any identity, they were able to incorporate themselves into something else that was larger, that was great. So they more or less had themselves swallowed. And Art—I don’t think that anyone could benefit from that. It’s almost a hundred ten percent self-destructive because everything is false and there’s no room left to grow and to do things for oneself, to actively walk into the world: “I am going to drive myself to the gig. I can do it.” But Art was emotionally very young. The child must be take care of. He must be given things. Infantile gratification. For an infant it’s perfectly appropriate; he’s weaned in three years.
One time we were at a place and I bought him a pizza and then I wanted to take a bite. He wouldn’t let me have any! Hahahaha! What would you call that? That was