Straight Life: The Story Of Art Pepper. Art Pepper

was Anita’s, “Her Tears Flowed Like Wine.” I don’t think Stan ever cared for singers really, but at that time he felt he needed one. I was sitting in the reception room. I would have sat there all day long on the assumption he would be there, and he finally came in. I gave him my little test record. He played it and said, “I’ll let you know in a couple of days.” I never suffered so much as I did during those two days waiting to hear from him. He finally called and said, “Well, we’ll try you out for a few weeks and see what happens.” Years later—we used to do all those disc jockey shows because they were important in those days—we were coming back from one of those things and I said, “Stan, you never did tell me, am I permanent?” I’d been with the band for about eight years! “Tampico” was my first record and it was, I think, one of the biggest hits the band ever had. I got paid scale for it. I’d been with the band for only a few months when we recorded it. I hated that song.

      We used to joke about ‘The Bus Band in the Sky” because we never seemed to get off the bus. There were a lot of times we didn’t have the time to check into a hotel and we’d have to do the gig and then get back to the bus and go to the next job. And particularly for a girl it was not too much fun because I think a woman has a little more to worry about, to look good, to get her hair done.

      (Coop) But you were the envy of most of the girl singers around at that time. The band was very popular, and singing jazz .. . To quote the late Irene Krai, she said that when she was in high school she could hardly wait for the band with June to get to town so she could watch June and hear her sing: “That was the hippest shit in town.”

      (Christy) That was one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received.

      (Coop) Of course, the itineraries, they just went month after month, sometimes with no days, no nights off. And if we did get a night off, it might be traveling on the bus all night long. After a few years it got very tiring. Especially after we got married. Then it was even more of a chore because we were looking forward to settling down and having a home and so forth. It was tough, no doubt about it.

      (Christy) And if we hadn’t liked what we did so much, there was no way we could have done it.

      (Coop) The particular bus I enjoyed the most was the first Innovations tour. We had two buses.

      (Christy) That was when we had the strings and so on. Stan was really out to prove something.

      

      (Coop) Our driver was Lee Bowman, and we had such a good time on his bus, at the end of the tour we bought him a watch for tolerating our drinking and stopping in the middle of the night to go into a bar and get more beer or whatever. It was called “The Balling Bus.”

      (Christy) And the other bus was called ‘The Intellectual Bus.” And we, as a matter of fact, were quite sure that we were far more intellectual than they, or else why would we be on the right bus?

      Whoever booked that particular tour was out of his mind, though, because he should have realized that you can’t get that many people into a hotel all at once. We usually arrived all at the same time, and people got very mean and fiendish. We have a picture of some of the guys actually leaping over the registration desk in order to get there first so they could get to their rooms first. I learned a great lesson from that. I used to just sit in a corner because I figured I was a little too short to fight all of them. I did a tour a while after that with the Ted Heath band, and that tour was a rough one also, but when the bus stopped at the hotel the gentlemen of the band stood by and said, ‘Oh, Miss Christy, you must go first.” That’s when I first learned that it’s awfully nice to be a lady and to be treated like a lady. I don’t mean to imply that the guys in the Kenton band were not nice to me, because they certainly were, and by the same token I respected their privacy. If I felt that it was dirty joke time or something like that, I would go and stand by the bus driver and allow them to have whatever privacy you can have on a bus.

      To tell you the truth, the band was kinda, like, clannish. That’s the best word I can come up with, and I think Art was a little reluctant to join the clans for some reason or other. I think he was a bit withdrawn. Art was—I haven’t seen him for so long, that’s the reason I’m saying “was”—he was a very attractive young man, and I’m sure everyone else felt the same way. Art was a very good-looking guy, but some of his illness began to show up at certain times. And, as we all know, when you’re ill, you don’t look quite as good. It didn’t show too much in his playing, but it did in his attitude. He became even more withdrawn.

      

      I think Art is one of the greatest jazz musicians alive today. I say that because I believe it. I haven’t heard him play for a long time. I haven’t seen him. But with the Kenton band . . . My experiences listening to him . . . I honestly feel that way about him. Art didn’t have a chance to be exposed with the band as much as he might have been, which is a tendency of Stan’s. He likes the full, big-band sound, and he’s reluctant, really, to let anyone be the star, so to speak. The musicians appreciated Art’s abilities, but he wasn’t featured with the band that much. Maynard was, and of course Vido Musso. I’ve never been able to figure that out. It’s perhaps because I’m married to one of the finest saxes that there is and I always felt that Coop should be featured as much or more than Vido.

      (Coop) I always felt that Art’s major influence was Lester Young; that came out more clearly when I heard him play tenor a few times. Maybe not so much now as in his early days. And to transfer that beautiful sound to the alto! He was really the only one doing that at the time, and I think his sound was by far the best alto sound at the time. Since then there have been other marvelous alto players, but I think that perhaps Art was a major influence in their sound. I always enjoyed his solos; naturally, one of the highlights of the band was Art’s solos. And I still think that the solo piece Shorty Rogers wrote for Art is one of Stan’s best records. It’s a lovely record. It’ll probably last for all time.

      (Sammy Curtis) The Innovations band was great. It was one of Stan’s bold moves in music. It was a very aggressive thing he did. He added a big string section and French horns, and the band had a physical structure kind of like a symphony orchestra. At that time no one was thinking in those terms. The band was playing great music, and there was a very brotherly feeling among the musicians. We felt we were participating in something very important. There were a lot of string players who weren’t, you know, “us” jazz guys, and they loved it. They felt it was important to them to be part of it, too.

      Stan was a very devoted musician. The orchestra, it was so big, a lot bigger than other bands; they had to build special risers to set the band up on and carry all this equipment on the road. I could be wrong, but I’ve been told by a lot of people that would have to know that Stan was financing the thing out of his own pocket, which, the final line in that story is, he lost a lot of money. But that’s the kind of guy he was. He believed in it so much, he put himself into it physically, spiritually, just to the hilt, and that’s where he was coming from. He was beautiful.

      Art was . . . His music was number one to him. That’s all he talked about. We were very close. We’d go and hang out after work, go blow in clubs. Art had a lot of solos in the band; he was featured on a lot of things, and if he’d had a really good night playing, he felt great, but some nights he felt he could have done better, and he’d just get depressed. What he did in his music kind of dominated the way he looked at the whole world.

      Art was and is a great player. I’m not going to say the greatest in the world because I don’t feel any one guy is. But at the top of the gang is a select group of five or ten, just a few guys. When you get up that high on the ladder, you can’t pick one as better than the other. That’s where I place Art. He’s one of those special guys. As to what made his playing so special, that’s a hard question, and the only way I can answer it, to be honest with you, I think it’s a gift of God. I think it’s not something that Art did. God loved him and gave him this gift.

      If you were Art’s friend, he loved you. He would, I feel, have done anything I asked. Not that