PC: SO ONE OF THE THINGS I'M CURIOUS ABOUT IS HOW DESMOND IS PERCEIVED AS FITTING IN TO THE WHOLE JAZZ SCENE?

DT: Well that's a good question. Isn't it? I don't know cause he was sort of all by himself. He wasn't like anybody else was he? He wasn't part of a school or anything. I don't know how he'd fit in. I don't know if he fit in. He was sort of a thing by himself, to me anyhow. Like he didn't play like anybody else, no matter what was going on, all the different terms and schools of playing going on, and he'd still play that way. He sort of had a way of playing that was his own thing and he stuck with it.

PC: IS HE HIGHLY REGARDED IN HISTORICAL TERMS? I DON'T MEAN IN TERMS OF RANKING, HE WASN'T A CHARLIE PARKER, AND IN FACT BRUBECK CLAIMED THAT WAS THE BEAUTY OF HIM, IN THAT ERA HE DIDN'T TRY TO PLAY LIKE CHARLIE PARKER.

DT: Well surprisingly Charlie Parker named him as his favourite alto player in an interview. So that counts for a lot. He also told me he beat Charlie Parker in a game of chess once, which he said was the proudest moment of his whole life, when he beat Parker in a game of chess. Yeah I guess they were pretty good friends. But Bird really loved Paul Desmond's playing, most people do. A lot of guys...I don't know he was such a pure, perfectly pure melody player, that people, musicians are always amazed by that. Real musicians, students maybe not because they don't hear what they want to hear, like a whole bunch of notes and a lot of flash, they don't hear all that high energy stuff, so they're not so impressed. But real musicians are. Serious musicians are because they hear these perfect melodies coming out one after another forever. And that's amazing to me. It's amazing to anybody who's really a musician, that anyone can be as consistently perfect as that.

PC: BECAUSE OF HIS CONNECTION WITH BRUBECK HE SEEMS PART OF THE WHOLE WEST COAST SCENE THAT WAS GOING ON, THAT WAS NOWHERE AS BIG AS WHAT WENT ON IN NEW YORK...

DT: Yeah there was I suppose. I never liked that kind of music very much. I never liked Brubeck's band either. So until I actually worked with Paul, I hadn't really heard him very much, because I didn't like the Brubeck Quartet. I even had some of their records when I was a kid. I'd listen to Paul. I actually wrote some of them out for the saxophone player in my band in high school, who played alto. So I'd write out Desmond's solos for him off the records. But I never liked the band, so I never got too interested in it. But then when I played with him I just couldn't believe it. It was perfection.

PC: IT SEEMS FROM THE READING I'M DOING THAT THERE WERE A LOT OF PEOPLE, CRITICS ETC WHO DIDN'T LIKE BRUBECK, DIDN'T LIKE THE QUARTET, AND ALWAYS FELT THAT DESMOND WAS A BETTER PLAYER...

DT: Well I guess they were all probably good musicians, but I sure didn't like that music. It sounded tired and boring to me. I heard them a few times and I just couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. And it irritated me so much that I really couldn't get interested in Paul, because of all this racket that was going on. So it just wasn't interesting at all.

Some of the records he did with Jim Hall, those records are great. They were really beautiful, and some other things that I've heard, that he did apart from the Brubeck band are really good.

PC: THERE'S A RELEASE OF HIM IN CONCERT WITH THE MODERN JAZZ QUARTET.

DT: Yeah, that's a beautiful record. I like that one. Some of the things Creed Taylor did I like.

PC: WELL THE FIRST RECORD THAT I HEARD OF HIS WAS SKYLARK.

DT: Yeah I don't have that one, but I have heard it. I don't have very many of them. Paul gave me some and the best one of all I leant to Rob McConnell and never got it back. I don't even remember what it was called. But I got about three or four of those records from Paul, and some of them are really like short tracks and they really pop her in. But there was one I really liked and I loaned it to Rob. I guess he really liked it too.

PC: HOW DID YOU COME TO PLAY WITH HIM?

DT: Well, Bourbon Street. Were you around?

PC: DOUG COLE'S CLUB.

DT: Well their policy was they'd bring in a visiting artist and provide a local rhythm section. And so when they asked Paul to come up he didn't want to come unless he could get Jim Hall to play guitar. Of course Jim didn't want to do it. So Jim persuaded him, Jim convinced him that he would like Ed Bickert's playing. So Jim Hall I guess was responsible for talking Paul into coming up and working with us. I think at that point we'd already worked with Jim. So he knew me and he knew Ed. He's known Ed forever. I think that's how it came to be. The original drummer, Terry Clarke played with us the first time around, but it didn't work out because he was too strong for the music and just overwhelmed everything. So Paul had to get someone else to play drums, and it wound up being Jerry Fuller. But that's how that all happened.

Paul was real nervous. He hadn't played at all for a heck of a long time, when he came up the first time. He didn't know me or Ed or anybody. So he was just sort of going on Jim Hall's say so that it would work out. So the first night he was really worried about it. But it like worked out really beautiful. So he wasn't worried for long.

PC: SO THAT WAS AROUND '73 OR '74 THAT HE FIRST CAME UP HERE?

DT: I guess it would have been. Yeah that's right, Creed wanted to record him, but he didn't want to use me and Jerry so he used Ron Carter and Connie Kay, none of them recorded live. We recorded tons of stuff live. We recorded for about three weeks, every night.

PC: AT BOURBON STREET FOR THE DOUBLE ALBUM?

DT: And theoretically we would have had enough music for about 20 CD's, the only thing was we were playing the same tunes every night. So what we ended up with was about ten takes of every tune. So then it was just a matter of picking & choosing the best takes.

PC: IS THAT HOW IT WORKS WHEN SOMEONE LIKE HIM COMES UP HERE. YOU SIT DOWN AND FIGURE WHAT TUNES YOU ALL KNOW?

DT: Yeah basically, but not always. Some guys, like Frank Rosallina? When he came up, we played different tunes every night. We recorded for two weeks every night and... god I can't believe it, we actually did it, because it's not that easy to do. But he came in the first night and said, "I don't want to get a bunch of takes of the same tunes. We're going to play different tunes every night." For two weeks. And we played twelve nights and we didn't repeat a tune. And he didn't tell us what they were either. He'd just announce them from the microphone like, "Ladies and Gentlemen we're now going to play BODY & SOUL in A-flat." or whatever it was and he'd count it off. So they found out at the same time as we did what it was going to be. And we played maybe 15, 16 tunes a night for twelve nights.

Well Paul didn't do that. He had a set repertoire and then we played it. It was really nice too. They were all really good tunes. There was quite a few of them. But we didn't do what Rosalina did. Hardly anybody does that. Milt Jackson might do that, but not very many people.

PC: SO WHAT WAS HE LIKE TO PLAY WITH?

DT: Oh he was great to play with. He was very easy, because harmonically there was a real clear logic in everything he played musically. The harmony was always right, the melodies were always right. His time was amazing. You don't think of Paul Desmond as a real swinging musician, he's not famous for that. But he had really great time feel, he really did swing beautifully. Playing with him,you really couldn't go wrong. It was really easy to play.

The tunes were all tunes that we knew real well. He had little arrangements. He had little things that he would do. Like we'd talk about things like cues he'd give us for stop time. Little things like that. And we figured out some endings and introductions for a few things. But basically it was pretty spontaneous. Like he'd just say we're going to play SQUEEZE ME in E-flat or whatever. Almost everything was in E-flat. I couldn't believe it. When I listen to the tapes now, just about everything was in E-flat. He played NANCY WITH THE LAUGHING FACE in E-flat. He jokingly said the reason he played that tune was it gave him an excuse to play BODY & SOUL in E-flat, because it's the same chords for the first part, the bridge is different, but the A section's the same as BODY & SOUL. It was very easy to play with him.

PC: GOING BACK TO THE EARLY ALBUMS, THERE'S ONE TUNE ON THE OCTET ALBUM THAT THEY RECORDED AGAIN ON THE DUET ALBUM IN THE MID-70'S.

DT: Oh yeah, once they found a tune they liked... Like he played TANGERINE and that was a real hit with the Brubeck band. Like we played it all the time. I've got a take of TANGERINE that we didn't put on the record that's just amazing. Oh boy, it's really great. Like you could take his choruses and write a new tune. each chorus is like a brand new tune. It's that perfect.

PC: HE WAS APPARENTLY QUITE WELL KNOWN FOR QUOTING STUFF.

DT: Well yes, he liked to do that. And he could do that, but it wasn't blatantly obvious. Some guys will quote it like in a really obvious way. Paul would always do it in a really wierd way. Like he would start a quote half-way through a bar or half-way through a phrase, in a different key or twist it around and make it work that way. It was very clever the way he did it, sometimes it can be very boring that stuff. Cause guys will just play another tune for a minute, and then another tune and an other. And that stuff is really boring but the way Paul did it wasn't. It was really interesting. It was really funny actually cause he'd put them in the weirdest places.

PC: SO DID YOU ONLY PLAY WITH HIM IN TORONTO?

DT: No we went to California and played out there. We played the Monterey Jazz festival and we played in a club in San Francisco called the Matador. In fact we closed the Matador. We were the last band that ever played there, which is kind of strange.

PC: WHEN WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN?

DT: When did he die? It was very shortly before that, he was really sick actually.

PC: HE DIED IN '77.

DT: So that would have been '76. Seems to me he died in the spring of '77.

PC: YEAH, MAY 30TH.

DT: Yeah, that's right cause I was out in Winnipeg. I'm going to Winnipeg this weekend. I was out there when I found out. So it would have been the fall before that the September before that. We played the Festival and he really wasn't well at all. And then we played the club. He was really weak at the beginning of the gig but he got better. By the end of the gig he was pretty strong.

PC: YOU WONDER HOW SOMEONE WITH A CIGARETTE HABIT LIKE THAT COULD HAVE BLOWN A SAX THAT LONG.

DT: It was strange. Because he called me after he'd been to the doctors and found out he had cancer and he said, "The good news is my liver is in perfect shape and they told me I can drink all I want." And he was saying also that every one of his doctors was a chain smoker. And he couldn't get over that. Here he was, found out he had lung cancer and all his doctors were chain smoking. That was really strange.

One funny thing I remember about that gig was... You know the tune WENDY?

PC: YES IT'S ON THE ALBUM.

DT: Well when we first started playing WENDY, like we played it for a long time, like for quite a few gigs before it had a name at all. It started off just being FOR ALL WE KNOW. He'd call that tune FOR ALL WE KNOW, and he'd start playing and it turned out to be just, like he didn't play the melody... he started playing this other melody, and it wasn't quite formed yet. But every night he'd call FOR ALL WE KNOW, and every night he'd start playing this other thing and after about a week he actually had a new tune. And he didn't have a name for it so Ed, I think, or somebody said we can't call it FOR ALL WE KNOW, because you got a new tune there, you gotta come up with a new name for it. So he said OK I think I'll call it PITTSBURGH. So it was PITTSBURGH for a week or so and then next time we played he said I don't know if it's PITTSBURGH, it might be called WENDY. So it would be WENDY and the next night it would be PITTSBURGH. And he called PITTSBURGH and it was PITTSBURGH for awhile and then it became WENDY, and then we recorded it. So then it was WENDY. And then we went out to California and we were playing in this club, and one night he comes in with this real pretty girl and she looked like she was about twenty, black hair and everything and he brought her in and said, "Don I want you to meet Pittsburgh."

PC: SO THERE REALLY WAS A WENDY?

DT: Oh yes, she was actually the daughter of one of his old girl friends. That was kind of funny.

PC: WELL FOR ALL WE KNOW IS A SONG THAT THEY RECORDED, HE AND BRUBECK DID.

DT: I don't know that record. But I remember the TANGERINE one. I guess it was the tunes he liked. These were the tunes he really knew and he really knew them, backwards and forwards.

PC: WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO PLAY TAKE FIVE WHICH HAD BEEN SUCH A MONUMENTAL HIT?

DT: TAKE FIVE was alright you know. It turned out to be a bass feature for me, I don't know why. Actually the main reason why was Ed didn't want to play on it. Ed Bickert didn't like playing on it so he just didn't play it. So it wound up being a bass feature for me, which is okay I guess. We still play it every now and then. I still talk Ed into playing it. We were just in Kansas last weekend and we were playing some concerts and we were playing TAKE FIVE. Ed still doesn't like playing it, he played it reluctantly, sounded good too, but he still doesn't like it.

PC: WHO PLAYED THE HORN PART?

DT: Well I was playing vibes. Ed would play the melody. He can play it he just doesn't like too. It's not his favourite thing. I don't even know if it was Paul's favourite thing but people sure liked it though. We'd just have to play that introduction and everybody'd start clapping.

PC: IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE IT WAS SUCH A HIT.

DT: Well that even had a funny kind of a thing. Because Paul really had a funny sense of humour. I was playing my solo one night and I can't remember what happened but Ed started doing a wierd thing, I'll show you on the piano... and he started playing all that stuff behind my bass solo, and after, I was playing my solo and Desmond came over while I was playing and I was playing my solo, sort of toying away doing my act and Paul comes over and he says, "I can smell the camels from here." I started to laugh and after that every time we'd play it he wouldn't say TAKE FIVE, he'd say CAMELS. So it became THE CAMEL. That's what it was called after that. One night I decided for some stupid reason to play my solo with the bow. And I picked it up and was playing along with the bow and Paul comes over and goes," They told me you were a colossal bore." While I'm playing. He'd have a cassette running all the time and then he'd write the titles on the box and then he'd make his little notations about each take and it would always be the same, "Alto solo rotten. Guitar solo great. Bass solo great." Every one of them would be the same. There'd be ten tunes. They'd all be the same, "Alto solo rotten, guitar solo great, bass solo great." Except on that one where I played with the bow he said, "Alto solo terrible, bass solo colossal." So he really did have a funny sense of humour.

PC: DID HE SIT IN ON EDITING SESSIONS OF THE TAPES?

DT: The first time yeah, he was there. I fact he was really critical too. A lot of those things that came on the second record, he didn't, he found things that he didn't like about them himself, little things. The slightest little thing would go wrong and he would negate it. He was really a perfectionist. So like things had to be just perfect, before he would let them go on the record.

PC: I'VE READ THAT ON STUDIO STUFF HE WAS REALLY PICKY ABOUT THE WAY HE WAS MIKED.

DT: I'll bet he was.

PC: HE LIKED THE BELL MIKED. HE LIKED A REALLY CLEAN SOUND. DIDN'T LIKE BREATH.

DT: We spent a lot of time on the sound. He brought his own mike. He had a dandy mike. I fact I ended up buying one myself. iT was really a great mike. That's what we used on him anyhow. He'd had some kind of encounter with someone from Studer/Revox, and got to be friends with him in kind of a strange way, and so this guy told him, if he ever needed anything at all, just give me a call. So the next day he phoned him and got himself a very nice Revox tape recorder and some nice microphones. And this was the mike he liked on the alto so that's what we used. Oh yeah he knew exactly what he wanted.

There were some really nice tracks on the second record. I really liked the second record. But there were things that for various reasons, he didn't, he just sort of negated them himself. And when I listen to them, I can't for the life of me figure out why. Cause I can't hear anything wrong. Also we had more than we needed. I mean we hadn't thought of making a second record. maybe they were just things we didn't need. I can't remember now what tunes were on either one of them. It'd be pretty hard to figure out why we didn't use these tracks originally. I think there's a funny ending on TOO MARVELOUS FOR WORDS.

Ah here's the lead sheet for WENDY. This is in all the fake books now.

PC: NOW WHAT DID YOU SAY IT STARTS OUT AS FOR ALL WE KNOW.

DT: Yeah the chords are the same.

PC: YEAH IT'S ON ONE OF THE REALLY EARLY CONCERT ALBUMS THEY DID, CONCERT OF THE PACIFIC.

DT: See we did another take of WENDY too. We had some fantastic takes of that tune. Just beautiful. But we actually did one for the record, which isn't that short either now that I look at it. But we did a short version which is 7 minutes and 29 seconds it looks like and like originally when we were playing it, it would come in at 11 or 12 minutes, cause everyone would play big long solos. A couple of those takes were just great. I've got one that I really like a lot better than this one. But it was too long, like we actually couldn't fit it on. Now with CD's of course you can put anything on.

PC: ANY CHANCE THAT THIS STUFF (THE LIVE ALBUMS) WILL GET RELEASED ON CD.

DT: I don't know. I know that A&M/Horizon is putting things out. Now whether they'll release this or not I don't know. Like this is a good record. The Artist House one I really doubt. All though you never know. Now John Snyder is working for a new company in New York now. I can't remember what they're called now. I just did a record for them. we just did an album and he produced it. Jim Hall. So he's got all the masters, so he might just put that out again. It's hard with these cause, putting an LP out with homemade tapes is one thing, but putting out a CD is a whole other thing. You really have to get the sound better than that for a CD. I don't know if they can do it.

PC: HE WASN'T MARRIED I GATHER?

DT: Not to my knowledge, no. I don't think so. I'm not positive of that though.

PC: THIS MUST HAVE BEEN THE SAME YEAR THEY DID THE DUETS ALBUM. HE DID THIS ALBUM WITH BRUBECK ON A CRUISE SHIP.

DT: I have that record around somewhere. I have a test pressing for it actually. I haven't listened to it for a long time. Sounds really nice as I remember.

PC: HOW OFTEN DID YOU PLAY WITH HIM?

DT: Quite a few times. I couldn't say how many times, probably at least four times at Bourbon Street, I would think. And then we did a couple of other things. We also played in Edmonton at a concert for CBC in Edmonton once. That was nice too and if you're interested, there's a hilarious interview that I have on tape with Desmond. Some CBC guy interviewed him in Edmonton and it's a very strange interview, cause it was after the concert and Paul started to drink during the interview, like he had more drinks and the interview got stranger and stranger. It's really interesting, but it's really kind of funny. There's longer spaces after the questions and then it gets real quiet and then he'll answer. And then finally he says something like, "I think this has gone on long enough, don't you?" Or something like that. If you're interested, I could probably find that. [This interview is listed elsewhere on the page.]

PC: WAS DESMOND A VERY SOCIAL PERSON? YOU SAID HE WAS A LITTLE HARD TO GET TO KNOW?

DT: He was very quiet. He didn't talk a lot. Dean Riley's still around, he'd probably know him. There's probably lots of guys around San Francisco that would know Paul.

It's not that he wasn't... I think he wasn't famous for being a swinging player. Like Zoot Sims, everybody thinks about Zoot Sims, they think about that swinging Zoot Sims sound and all that kind of stuff. Well with Paul, he wasn't famous for that, he was famous for his sound and his melodies and all that kind of lyricism. But he swung real good. He really did swing beautifully. It's just that that wasn't what he was known for. But it was certainly there. cause when you play with someone, you know right away if it swings or not. It was just so easy to play with him. He could play with just his saxophone and a bass all night, no problem. He didn't need drums or anything. Didn't make any difference if the drums were there or not. Like everybody can't do that. But he was just so right. Every note was in the right place.

He could play the saxophone too. Like he knew about the saxophone. He knew all about the high end of it, and all the funny fingerings to go way off the regular range of the horn and all that stuff. He knew all that. A lot of people don't think about that either, technically just how much he actually knew about how to play the horn.

PC: IN JAZZ MASTERS OF THE FIFTIES THERE'S A CHAPTER ON DESMOND AND HE'S QUOTED AS SAYING THERE WAS TECHNICAL THINGS HE DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO DO ON THE HORN, AND IT LIMITED HIM.

DT: Well, most people probably feel that way. That's not uncommon I suppose. Coltrane probably felt that. These guys spend there whole lives practicing, and then there's always things they can't do, so that's why they practice. I think Paul probably felt that way too. He did know how to play the horn though. He seemed to be able to play what he wanted to, most of the time anyway.

PC: ORIGINALLY THE QUARTET WAS THE PAUL DESMOND TRIO.

DT: I didn't know that. Did he give it over to Dave 'cause he couldn't be bothered?

[PC EXPLAINS TO THOMPSON ABOUT THE EARLY YEARS OF THE BRUBECK OCTET & TRIO.]

PC: DID YOU THINK ALL THE YEARS ON THE ROAD WITH BRUBECK WAS WHY HE DIDN'T PLAY MUCH IN THE LATER YEARS?

DT: Everybody gets tired of travelling. I sure did and most guys do so I wouldn't be surprised. i don't know if the band broke up or not. But when he left the Quartet, he didn't play for a long time, at all.

PC: FROM WHAT I CAN GATHER BRUBECK BROKE THE QUARTET UP. JUST IN '67 DECIDED HE WANTED TO COMPOSE MORE THAN PERFORM.

DT: Well Paul went quite a few years without playing apparently. He got quite interested. Like he really wanted to do some things. He was really excited about the Quartet that we had and he really did want to do some things. And then he got sick and that was that. He kept calling me. There was a club down in the village where he wanted to go and play and he called me a few times about that and if I wanted to do it, even after he was sick. One of the last calls I got from him was about playing in this club, about me and Ed going down to play with him in this club. And he said he was getting better and the treatment was working and all that stuff. And then about a month later he died. And he knew he was going to die, but he wasn't about to tell me. But yea he really wanted to do some things. He wanted to play New York with that Quartet and it never happened. It was too bad, because he really wanted to do that. But travelling is a drag, nobody likes that, after awhile.

PC: DO YOU THINK HE WANTED TO DO THAT BECAUSE IT WAS NEW YORK? THAT HE COULD STILL DO IT?

DT: Oh definitely. People really liked Paul, he would have been great in New York. People would have flocked to hear him to. Because he was Paul Desmond.

PC: WAS HE THAT WELL KNOWN?

DT: Oh yeah. People really liked Paul. Musicians, everybody liked Paul. Another interesting thing, when we were in San Francisco. I used to work with John Handy, like a long time ago I worked with John Handy in '65, '66, '67. And then when I went out with Paul to play at the Matador, in '76, '77. Whenever that was we were playing at the Matador and I'd actually played there with John Handy at the Matador about ten years before that. So when I was in town I called John and we got together. John Handy is a black alto sax player that used to play with Charles Mingus. He's a fantastic, unbelievably beautiful saxophone player and his music is really strong, avant garde and all that stuff. Like he's from Charlie Parker only he goes out from there. Right now I don't think anybody plays any better than him. So I called John and we got together and he was teaching out at San Francisco State College. So I went out to the school and he asked me to do a class and sort of talk to the kids. So we were out there and John was lecturing. And half the kids were white and half the kids were black in his class. And so he's talking about what's important about playing. And he says, "Now you've got to be trying to find your own way of playing and not to be playing the same dumb things. You don't want to playing the same dumb shit all the time. You got to find some new ways of playing and try to find your own way of doing things." And he'd already introduced me as playing with Paul Desmond and told the whole class, "You gotta go up and hear Desmond." And that I'm playing with him and I used to be in his band. So, after he says that one young black kid puts up his hand and says, "You're talking about playing your own thing, well isn't Desmond just playing the same old things all the time." And John says, "He's not playing the same old things. Those are his things, he invented those things. Lets face there's only so many 'Supermen' in the world and he's one of them." And he nailed this kid to the wall, he just let him have it. And the kid just sat down and shut up. I mean I couldn't believe it, the kid was obviously trying to score some points.

PC: YOU SEE THAT'S WHAT I CAN'T GET A FEEL FOR. WHAT IS HIS REPUTATION AMONG MUSICIANS. I KNOW BRUBECK DESPITE HIS COMMERCIAL SUCCESS WAS NOT REVERED BY THE CRITICS.

DT: No or musicians either. He's not taken very seriously. But Desmond certainly was. And I mean John Handy when he came out in Paul's defense, like that. And Charlie Parker in an interview which I haven't seen, apparently Charlie Parker named Desmond as his favourite alto player.

PC: ON THE OTHER HAND MILES DAVIS WAS QUOTED AS SAYING "AN ALTO SHOULDN'T SOUND LIKE THAT."

DT: Well that's alright, Miles is entitled to his opinion. A lot of people think a trumpet shouldn't sound like him. Miles can say what he wants.

PC: WHY WOULD HE HAVE STAYED 17 YEARS WITH THE QUARTET?

DT: I guess they were making a ton of money. They had a trust fund that Paul talked about, and all their money went into a trust fund and it would keep them going for quite a long time after the Quartet broke up. Actually if you get Ain's show, there's an interview with Paul where he talks about the money and the trust fund and he says, ironically enough, he says, "It runs out in the year 1984, if I should live so long." Then of course he didn't. But I remember him saying that in that interview.

PC: SO HE DIDN'T HAVE TO WORK?

DT: No. That's right he didn't have to work. He had money. I think at one point he got asked to play one concert at one of the Newport Festivals or whatever it was, it keeps changing names. But he was offered a fortune to play "Take Five" or something at a concert in Central Park. But it seems to me he said that by the time he actually got there and pushed his way through the crowds and found the bandshell and everything, the concert was over. So he just turned around and walked back home again.

PC: THEY GOT BACK TOGETHER AND DID A 25TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR.

DT: Oh yeah he told me about that. He called it "The Over The Hill Gang". That's what he referred to it as.

Apparently on that concert, they were doing a tribute to Ellington and it was at the White House, there was Paul and Jim Hall and I think Connie Kay and I think Milt Hinton was playing bass. I'm sure it was Milt or Percy Heath, one of those guys anyhow. Whoever it was playing bass they were playing the tune "Chelsea Bridge" which is an Ellington tune, and Duke is there and the President and the whole thing, and they're playing "Chelsea Bridge" and they get to the middle of the tune and the bass player got lost. This is on the concert in the White House. And the bass player got completely lost and things got so messed up, and Jim and Paul both told me this, they almost stopped playing, they almost fell apart on stage and had to stop. But somehow they pulled it together in the end. But it was the biggest shambles. And Paul, have you seen the movie "The Young Frankenstein". Well remember the character called Frau Bluker, every time her name was mentioned the horses would whinny and act scared. So Paul started likening the tune "Chelsea Bridge" to Frau Bluker. Because in the movie all you had to do was mention Frau Bluker's name and there'd be this terror that would happen and like the horses would whinny and everyone'd get all scared. So Paul said after that you just had to mention "Chelsea Bridge" and he'd go into this stark terror and he'd go (whinny) and he'd whinny like a horse and any time of the day or night if you'd see Paul, you just had to say "Chelsea Bridge" and he'd go (whinny). And he'd whinny like a horse. And this was one of Paul'd jokes and it went on for years. So then right after we played Edmonton, we played the Edmonton concert and came back to Toronto, and the very night we returned I was supposed to be playing in Bourbon Street with Jim Hall. So Paul was in town but Jim didn't know Paul was there. So we went down and we started the first set and we're playing and Desmond came down after we'd already started and he sits down right beside the stage and Jim doesn't know he's there. So we're playing and Jim's playing, and Paul's sort of behind him. So then about three tunes into the set we go into "Chelsea Bridge" and I see Paul get up off his chair like this... and he starts walking up to the bandstand and Jim's playing along with his eyes shut and were playing a really soft song. And then Paul goes right over about this far from Jim's ear and Jim still doesn't see him and he goes (whinny). And I can see Jim start to laugh. The whole thing was hilarious, and Terry Clarke didn't know what was going on, he didn't see Paul come up either. And he hears this horse whinny. And as soon as I saw Paul, I knew he was going to do it, even before he stood up I knew what was going to happen. It was hilarious. Jim of course, he knew the story. He was a very funny cat.

PC: HOW LONG WOULD HE COME UP FOR?

DT: We did two weeks. The first time is was only one week cause he didn't want to do the two weeks. But after that, it was two weeks.

PC: WERE THERE REHEARSALS?

DT: No. There was nothing to rehearse really. Ed and I knew the tunes so there was nothing left to do.

PC: BUT BICKERT HADN'T DONE THAT ALBUM WITH HIM YET?

DT: Yeah, that was after.

PC: AND IT WAS ALWAYS THE SAME GROUP? NO YOU SAID TERRY CLARKE STARTED.

DT: No after Terry it was always Jerry Fuller. Yeah Terry just didn't work, he was too loud and too busy and everything. He just didn't understand what Paul needed, either that or he just didn't care. Because it was over-powering the music all the time. Jerry played well. He was good for the man. He was good.

PC: I UNDERSTAND DESMOND COULD PLAY PIANO.

DT: I'm sure he did. He had that nice piano in his apartment. I never actually heard him play piano, but I'm sure he did. I've been told that too. He never though that I heard. They have his piano in Bradley's now. He left it in his will. He left it to the club Bradley's. I was just in there a couple of weeks ago, when I was in New York, there's Paul's piano.

PC: I WONDER WHERE HIS HORN IS?

DT: I don't know whatever happened to his horn. It's nice that he left his piano down there. They had a terrible piano and he had quite a nice one, a Baldwin grand, about the size of this one. It was really nice. And they take care of it too, you can't put a drink on it, you can't lean on it.

PC: OH DESMOND WOULDN'T LIKE THAT. HE WAS FAMOUS FOR THAT. THERE'S SOME CRACK HE MAKES ABOUT JIM HALL. THAT JIM HALL WAS A GREAT GUITARIST EXCEPT HE GETS MAD OCCASIONALLY BECAUSE DESMOND LEANS ON THE GUITAR DURING BREAKS.

DT: There is an interview with Paul Desmond interviewing Charlie Parker. And I've got that around somewhere, all though I'd really have to hunt for that. Pat Labarbara laid it on me and I dubbed it off Pat's cassette. I'd have to really hunt for that. It's real short and neither one of them talk very much. Paul sounds like he was so in awe of Bird that he could hardly talk at all. It's interesting that he did that. They must have been pretty good friends, because on the cassette they sound like they were friends. It's really nice the way they talk to one another.

PC: I WONDER WHEN THAT WAS DONE?

DT: It must have been a long time ago, I mean really a long time ago.

PC: BECAUSE BIRD DIED IN '55 OR '56.

DT: Yeah, and I don't know how it ever came to be. They talk and play some records and stuff.

PC: THERE'S A RECORDING OUT OF THE QUARTET AT BIRDLAND IN '53, A RADIO TRANSCRIPTION. THE OTHER REFERENCE TO AN INFLUENCE IS PETE BROWN. BUT I HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO FIND ANY OF HIS STUFF.

DT: Yeah I used to have a record in high school with Pete Brown. He was good too, but I don't remember much about him. Lester Young was the obvious one. Like when I listen to Paul, that's the obvious one. I don't know who else, maybe a little bit of Lee Konitz.

PC: WELL THAT'S THE OTHER NAME THAT'S MENTIONED. THERE'S THREE NAMES. KONITZ IS APPARENTLY ALSO CONNECTED WITH DARIUS MILHAUD, WHOSE WORK I DON'T KNOW.

DT: I don't know much about him either. It's just a name. I don't think I've ever heard his music at all.

PC: BUT LEE KONITZ IS ON THE MILES DAVIS "BIRTH OF THE COOL" STUFF.

DT: Well Lee really went out. Like musically he's very strange, now anyhow. I don't really like what Lee's doing now. But like then he was great. He was really great then. He still is I guess, it just makes me mad now he's so wierd. He's weirder than necessary.

(c) Copyright 1991, Mirus Communications Inc.

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