Part 2 of 4 part legendary Art Pepper "Blues For the Fisherman" sessions at Ronnie Scott's, London 1981 with Milcho Leviev, Tony Dumas, Carl Burnett BOTH NIGHTS COMPLETE for the first time.

11 MP3 Songs in this album (64:44) !
Related styles: Jazz: Bebop, Blues: Funky Blues, Featuring Saxophone

People who are interested in Charlie Parker Lester Young Miles Davis should consider this download.


Details:
The Twelve Bars Of The Decade
by Laurie Pepper

âThe twelve bars of the decade.â Blues for the Fisherman (Disc 4, track 10) was hailed by one jazz journalist as just that when four of these tracks were released in the U.K. in 1980 by Mole Jazz. The LP remained at the top of the British jazz charts for more than a year, so Mole eventually released a second album from the same session. Fans all over the world have worn those LPs out and have been clamoring, yes, clamoring, for 30 years, to hear it all, everything that happened during those two nights at Ronnie Scottâs. I may have taken their requests too literally, but here is, finally, almost every bit of it.*
And thereâs a logic to releasing everything. Art was a storyteller. Every tune was a vehicle, a way for him to express his life of pain and glory. He loved to talk about it, too. Communication, soul to soul, was what he aimed for. As we listen to these sets, we hear a narrative. In the music and between the tunes Art keeps us, the audience, informed. He lets us track the skill, persistence, anguish, and exhilaration of the process of performing, the story of an artist at work. From the stage he tells us what is and isnât working as he sees it at the moment. He reveals how nervous he is and how grateful for a sympathetic crowd.
England
And he is nervous. In 1977, in New Yorkâs Village Vanguard, he coped with the anxiety around his first live recording by approaching it in a state of delerium, massively self-medicated. He succeeded in spite of himself. In Japan in â79 (the Landscape session), sober and afraid, he just soldiered on. At Ronnieâs in 1980, heâs terrified again but knows the Brits are on his side: He reminisces for the crowd about his days as an MP in London, a soldier in fact, in the allied forces during WWII. he recalls the riotous reception given him the previous year during brief gigs in Hammersmith and Birmingham. So this album is also the story of a relationshipâa courtship and a happy marriage, Art and England.
Mole
The owners of Mole Jazz, a record store, decided to begin their own jazz label by recording Art live at Ronnie Scottâs for their first release. Peter Bould, producer, and our contact with the company, was told at first, probably by me, that Artâs contract with Galaxy Records made it impossible for Art to record as the leader of a band. So Milcho Leviev, Artâs marvelous pianist, was selected to be leader. There was another difficulty. Artâs contract also prohibited him from recording for another label any tune heâd recorded for Galaxyâfor five years from release. Since Art had a number of favorites, new and old, he liked to play in performances, but which heâd recorded recently, he had to alter the sets to be recorded at Ronnie Scottâs to suit the situation. Bould gave Art a list of preferences to play, instead. I note that Landscape, Patricia, and Over the Rainbow, which had been played nightly during the previous two weeks at Ronnieâs, werenât played on this final weekend. On the second night of recording, Art tells the crowd, at last, heâs going to play a non-playlist song âanywayâ: The Trip. In the end, Mole released Make a List though itâs on Galaxyâs Straight Life album. And on Moleâs second disc, True Blues, they ignored the problem completely and released âforbiddenâ tunes, True Blues and Straight Life.

The Fisherman
Chris Fisherman was Artâs best friend and he was with us on this trip. He helped work out our deal with Mole. Art talks about him to the crowd. Chris was a canny businessman and lawbreaker, and Iâve written at length about him in my Afterword to Straight Life, the autobiography Art and I wrote together. During Artâs last years, Chris was a friend, indeed, and though he couldnât save himself from the law, on one occasion he saved Art:
One night Art got stopped for a traffic violation. The police searched the car and found something suspicious. Art was jailed, arraigned, and sent home with a court date. Our lawyer was out of town. Chris told Art to go to court, and if âthingsâ didnât work out, he said, âAsk for a postponement.â Chris said, âIâll meet you there.â Art went to court and found Chris dressed in a suit and tie and carrying a briefcase. Chris got Artâs case number from the bailiff and read the paperwork.
Chris told me later,âIt said something about âparaphernalia.â I read further and it said, âa straw containing cocaine residue.â I went to the D.A.âs office. She was a gorgeous woman¬¬âtall, blonde, with the face of an angel. I said, âDonât make me make you look ridiculous.â
âShe said, âWhat do you mean?â
âI asked her, âHave you read this thing on Pepper?â
âShe said, âNo, not really.â She was very nice. I told her what she had was a case that was built on a straw. She laughed. She read the paperwork.
âShe said, âThereâs got to be more to it than this.â
âI said, âMr. Pepperâs a famous musician. Heâs got obligations. Heâs got two big tours coming up. Donât make him wait around for something this stupid.â
âShe read the report again. She said, âYouâre right. Okay. Itâs off the docket.â
âI hurried back into the courtroom, grabbed Artâs arm and said, âLetâs go.â
âArt said, âWhatâs happening?â I said, âIâll tell you later, man. Letâs just GO!ââ
Chris told me, âI never actually said I was a lawyer.â
We did have a couple of tours coming up, and Chris came along for the ride. In May of 1980, he joined us for a U.S. tour, and in June, Chris came with us on our first real European tour. We did these two weeks at Ronnie Scottâs in London where Art recorded the blues that ends the final nightâand named it Blues for the Fisherman.
During this tour, the band did festivals and clubs all over the Continent. Chris had some brief criminal business to do in Florence; he was vague about it. He was either buying or selling a hot Madonna (he showed me a color slide of the painting). Otherwise, Chrisâs function seemed to be to show us how much fun we could have. He managed to meet and introduce us to interesting people: Marianne Faithfull, for one (she and Chris sat up all night and wrote a song together), and he took the band out to the best restaurants.
Chris got busted three days after we got back from Europe. The charge was âconspiracy to distribute narcotics.â He was held on 1.5 million dollars bail. When the bail was reduced, he was able to get out while he fought his case, but he spent the last year of Artâs life (and seven years after that) in federal prison, just up the coast in Lompoc, where Art and I, together, and then I, alone, visited him as often as possible. He spent part of his time there making wood-framed clocks in a prison workshop, giving them away to all his friends. (Clocks while doing time!) And he continued to write briefs and study case law. He swore he was innocent, and Art never reproached him with failing to give him a taste. Chris died a few years after his release from Lompoc.
When I spoke with Milcho, recently, about Chris and this session, he asked me suddenly if Chris had left me any money. âYes,â I said. âMe, too,â said Milcho. Chris was nearly broke after all his lawyersâ fees, but because I was his friend, and because Milcho had come with me to the prison, once, to visit him, Chris had chosen to remember usâand many othersâ in that way. He was a classy guy and a loyal friend.
FRIDAY NIGHT: SET 1
Milcho lives in Greece now, and I sent him unedited copies of the tapes from these two nights at Ronnieâs, so we could discuss the tracks. Again and again during that conversation, Milcho talked about the way Art âsearchedâ for what was there inside the music. He talked about Artâs daring. He said that was one thing he loves about these tapes: the quality of exploration and Artâs ânakedness,â in the midst of it, how unrelentingly self-revealing he was, all the way through and how that came out in performance. Milcho didnât mention Artâs perfectionism, which was a scourge to him, and youâd think, because of it, that Art would play it safe. He never did; he was, above all, brave. What comes through is the excitement of that perpetual tension between what is and what can be.
Art begins the set with what was a usual opener for him in those days, a delightful medium up-tempo blues heâd written for one of our two cats, a stray weâd picked up, Blanche DuBois. It swings, and you can hear the satisfaction in Artâs voice as he reflects on pets and people. Then he stops to say that âWeâre recording.â He says, âSo. You might see some nervous things happen.â Heâll continue on this theme of his nerves in his onstage talk during the next two nights.
The second tune is one of my absolute favorites, Ophelia, written as Art says, about women. It was inspired by his obsessive, suicidal second wife, Diane. In turn, the song is wistful, raging, sweet again, so sweet! and so on, and Art carries that structure through into his solo. As does Milcho. Ophelia is complex but swings. It works well here and inspires Art to share his satisfaction with the audience, thanking them for showing upâfor his own sake, of course, but his worries about any gig always included worries about the club-owner or the promoter. Art felt responsible; he had to earn his keep. At Ronnieâs, he played to packed houses every night for the two weeks the band performed there.
Then comes another favorite of mine: Make a List. Itâs hard for me to listen to it without dancing. Art wrote it the previous September for his Galaxy album, Straight Life. I still remember how it blew me away when I first heard it. He had written it at home, as usual, sitting on the bed with some sports broadcast in the background on TV, and he debuted it at an L.A. club where Milcho played it perfectly at sight. No other pianist ever did that. Itâs a tricky chart, and the great Tommy Flanagan had a terrible time with it at the Straight Life session. Listen to the assured âIâve got all the time in the worldâ attitude with which Artâs solo begins and how it intensifies and catches fire. Milchoâs does the same. Artâs comment at the end reveals both how new the tune was and how much he liked playing it.
Art rarely played Milchoâs Sad a Little Bit, a pretty, hummable melody with an unusual flavor. It stays in your head. It sounds to me like an Eastern European samba. It sounds exactly like its name. Itâs sad. But just a little. (It was here, at Ronnieâs, that Art and Milcho nearly came to blows. Art felt Milcho played too many notes behind him; Milcho, sick of being told to âlay out,â challenged Art. They reconciled, but it was the beginning of the end of their relationship.)
When I wrote, above, about Artâs bravery I was thinking of the next tune of the set, the Anthropology attempt. As a child he played the clarinet. Later he played it occasionally in bands and successfully on the Art Pepper Plus Eleven album (Contemporary) in â59. But he hadnât played it seriously for years when he started tootling around the house in 1978. Well, now here he is in London, 1980, on the spot and under pressureâas he will keep reminding usâpicking up the clarinet! Both Chris and I had tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldnât listen. And though the acoustics in Ronnieâs werenât conducive, and he couldnât hear himself, and had to put it down in the middle of the song (grabbing for the alto as if for a life raft), and though he tells the audience he was crazy to try and will never play the clarinet again, he will pick it up again tomorrow night and triumph playing In a Mellow Tone. (And he played the clarinet in concerts from then on, until he died.) At this point, he shrugs off what he sees as failure by strutting into funky: his tune Red Car. In Synanon, the drug treatment program where I met him, Art was playing tenor, and he really liked playing so-called jazz rock for dancing (Art disdained categories when it came to music). Red Car is a happy echo of those days. Milchoâs solo is terrific.
And then Art plays the blues. Art played a slow, a talking blues. In this one he just starts telling us about it, all of it; his life, this night, this set. As Milcho says of it, itâs raw and amazing. He said, âThis is the top!â Art stutters, gasps, he laughs and moans, he squawks, he squeeks. He lets us have it, and so ends the set.
FRIDAY NIGHT: SET 2
Only a few people paid to see every set every night, so this is a new crowd for Art to impress, and he starts out, fresh, with a lighthearted, lively uptempo original blues which has had different names. Here itâs called Untitled #34. Art copied all his originals carefully in ink, inserted them into plastic page protectors, numbered them and put them in order into folders for each band member. He had a master list, and called tunes out by number. At least that was the plan. This blues just happened to be listed as #34 before it got a title. Later, Art named it for a Japanese producer, Yasuyuki Ishihara, Y.I. Blues.
After the tune and before his usual introduction of the band, Art treats the audience to a glimpse inside his extravagant imagination, his fears and worries. Thereâs a humming noise coming from a speaker. He says, it might be âfatal.â He tells us heâs making a record, saying anything he plays that isnât perfect will come back to âhauntâ him. Did he use these dire predictions as a goad, subconsciously, in hopes the energy he got from his anxiety would make him better? Or else magically protect him from the dangers he imagined? As his longtime producer Ed Michel said, Art was an adrenaline junkie. Fear and adrenaline are partners, right? Anyway, this morbid frame of mind leads him to A Song for Richard, written by his friend Joe Gordon who âdied in a fire.â
This lovely song was frequently the second piece Art played in an average set. Art tended to start off basic, swinging (#34), then ease into something pretty but complex, multilayered, like Ophelia or something with a different beat: The Trip (6/8), or a Latin tune or waltz. But Art often prefaced Richard by telling his audience exactly how horribly Gordonâwho nodded out with a lit cigarette (as Art had done, himself, innumerable times)âdied in that fire at the age of 35. After a fraught opener, Art moves into an airy, happy space and pretty much stays there where Milcho joins him, adding just a little drama. The fours are wonderful, the mood is gentle, and Art wonât break it until the very end where he lets fly.
Art then talks about how much he loves Monk, even though, he remarks, his own writing may not reflect that influence. I donât know about his writing. I think his playing does reflect itâoftenâwith its shards and stops and implications. Then he goes all out for Rhythm-A-Ning, and his playing here maintains the Monkish style, and how it grooves! Milchoâs solo is spectacular, as well. Spectacular. What a terrific track.
The next tune is Rita San, and I adore it. Art named it after me when weâd given me a middle name. Something that Iâd never had. I chose âRita.â Later I realized that my first name and my brand-new middle name were now both unpronounceable by the Japanese, despite the âsan.â Rita San represents a type of song Art called a âshuffle,â and which I think harked back to his teenaged days on âCentral,â jamming in the black nightclub district of L.A. before the war. Junior Cat (The Trip: Contemporary) and Mr. Big Falls His J.G. Hand (One September Afternoon: Galaxy) were others. (A friend told me he heard Junior Cat played behind the action in a porno flick. That seems right.) The âshufflesâ knock me out, but Art gave up on them, because no âmodernâ band could play them quite as slow and dirty as required. Anyway, this one starts too fast, so Art stops and counts it off again. Itâs still too fast, but itâs still wonderful.
Almost every set Art ever played had at least one ballad set inside it like a jewel, and Iâve never heard him play one less than beautifully. I believe him to be the best ballad player in the world, ever. At least for me. Nobody else is as soulful and lyrical at the same time. Nobody else is, as Milcho said, as naked. Art doesnât âplayâ a ballad. He speaks and sings our inarticulate hearts. This Whatâs New? is no exception.
The closer is a killer Iâll Remember April. From Milchoâs dashing intro on, the pace is dazzling, really fast, but it stays right in the pocket during the eights and fours and to the end, it doesnât matter, it just swings like mad. This is so great, and youâre in for another astounding April during the second set, tomorrow night. Possibly because both performances ran long (really long for an uptempo tune, showing just how much Art enjoyed them), neither of these were issued by Mole.
And so Art says goodnight as only he can say it, âSee you again. I hope.â
SATURDAY NIGHT: SET 1
New night, new blues, and Art saunters confidently into True Blues, swinging, grooving, giving us a real good time. He offers, in his perfect solo, a little downward patternâwith which he finally ends it. Milcho picks right up on that and uses it to go on into a Monkish series of lines and breaks, equally perfect, a nice start for the last night at Ronnieâs, the last night of recording. Afterward Art tells the new audience that âTonight is going to happen.â He told me he could often tell, by how the first tune felt, whether it was going to be a good night or not. He felt good enough after this one to indulge, during the band intro, in one of his fantastic stories about how Milcho left Bulgaria. This is a good oneâwith some elements of truth.
Art introduces Ophelia by saying that there are certain things he wants to play but canât. I refer you back to the beginning of this note and the possible meaning of this speech. But Ophelia was a tune Art often played at this position in the set, and now Mole had two takes to chose from. Two marvelous takes. Iâve said I love this tune. I love both takes, but this one maybe just a little better. So did Mole.
On the other hand, Mole chose Make a List from the first night. Iâm nuts about the other, but I like this one best. Thatâs me you hear screaming in the audience after Artâs solo. And Milchoâs solo starts misterioso, with such lovely lines, and itâs wonderfully complete, a composition. I could listen to this track forever.
Because some other ballads were off limits, Art chooses Stardust here, and itâs lovely, but Art declares to the audience afterward, âWeâve got three out of four, so far,â saying thatâs not a bad average for a ballplayer. This kind of talk shows how stringent Artâs demands on himself were (and how intensely competitive he was, how sports-oriented he was). I asked Milcho, whether, in saying that, Art was calling Stardust a failure. Milcho said he felt that Art, and in fact the whole band, was searching for something through that song and maybe couldnât find it. Then, Milcho-like, he stated, âThatâs whatâs so great about it.â So is this a âwalk to firstâ? The audience liked Stardust, fine, and so do I.
At the beginning of this repeat of Red Car Art raises the stakes, saying that if this version is any good theyâll name the album after it. âDo or die!â he declares. Dissatisfied with how the song is going, he stops, apologizes, starts again. He opens easy and then gets so funky while maintaining, all along, those crisp bop runs. Milchoâs solo is a pure delight. When itâs all over, Art, indirectly, tells us it was good: âLook for the album: Red Car!â In fact the tune wasnât used on either Mole release. No other pianist captured the kind of rolling sound Art wrote into the chart for the piano (itâs all about a car!) as well as Milcho did.
Critics have said about Artâs performances of his original, Straight Life, that itâs amazing how fast Art plays it while keeping it so perfectly defined, so lucid. His stunning solo here shows just exactly what they mean. The whole thing is ridiculously fast, and pristine, gorgeous. Art uses this opportunity to plug our book, Straight Life, already on sale in the U.S.âwith U.K. publication coming up.
The band has one set left. Art tells the crowd, âSee you soon. Next time weâll really get it together.â
SATURDAY NIGHT: SET 2
The last set is kicked off with another version of #34. Relaxed and swinging, itâs the one Mole used on their second release, the album that they called True Blues. Then, cheerily, Art starts reminiscing, and he tells the crowd, âThis is our last night, and Iâm already getting homesick.â He means homesick for this stint in London, Ronnieâs, and the cozy Indian hotel we stayed in on Great Russell Street (just above the left shoulder of the T-shirt on the cover of this album) and the sweet, welcoming crowds. He takes this opportunity to introduce Chris Fisherman as his friend and fellow convict at San Quentin. After that, perhaps because of Chris, he decides to play The Trip, a tune Art wrote in prison, which, he says, is not on Moleâs preferred playlist.
In Artâs day, in prison slang, a âtripâ was a story. It was an escape. To me, this hypnotic tune has always seemed, unlike Artâs usual to-the-marrow-deep, emotive compositions, a true escape. Itâs a voyage, moving, mostly lightly, on dark seas or in a camel caravan across the desert. Too fanciful? Oh well, this is my note, and thatâs the way I feel about The Trip. (I told Art and Les Koenig, when I first heard it, it ought to be called âA Voyage to Byzantium.â They didnât think that was a good idea, and now the memory makes me blush at my pretentiousness.) Itâs meditative with occasional moments (during the bridge) which seem to talk about a destination. And there is a destination, and Art arrives there with a victorious, delectable finale. Those high-pitched shrieks out in the audience are mine, again. Iâd been too nervous (right along with Art) to âcommentâ as I usually did, but now (along with Art) I knew that all was well. Art said he loved my screams of encouragement. You can hear him verbally prodding Milcho, much more quietly, of course, during Milchoâs solos.
When Art next speaks, he says heâs accident prone, and he displays his bandaged hand. (He probably did this particular damage with a razor blade, cutting up cocaine.) But a certain amount of gore, with Art, at crucial moments, seemed to be inevitable. For my own peace of mind and based on my experience with him, I devised a personal superstition that âthe accidental shedding of blood before an enterpriseâ was good luck. And this backs up my comment at the top about adrenaline: The harder something was to do, the greater the perceived obstacles, the harder Art strove. Sometimes I thought he made the obstacles himself. Unconsciously. It was simply more exciting for him to play an important session with fingers cut to the bone.
And then we come to April, again. It starts out so wonderfully, so swingingly in what Art called a montuno, a repetitive vamp which perfectly resolves into the boppy standard he always played so well and with so much joy. You can hear my screams of approval and pleasure during and after his solo. Milcho is inspired and playful, and the fours carry on in that delicious mood.
Goodbye comes next. Art first played that ballad at the Village Vanguard Sessions in 1977 (Contemporary)âas a grieving send-off for his old friend, Hampton Hawes, whoâd just died. At the Vanguard and here, this ballad is easily the centerpiece of the session. Art at his best. And itâs obvious even Art thought it went well. Thatâs why he introduces the band at the end of it; heâs grateful to themâand to the composer, too: âItâs a great song,â he says. âA great song.â
Then with trepidation Art picks up his clarinet again. After what had happened Friday, he was scared. But like I said, heâs brave. And this time heâs successful. Artâs bald comments at the end are true. âEverybody told me not to play it.â He was pleased and proud.
Heâs ready for the last tune of the evening, and you can hear me yelling in the background, interrupting him with âPlay the blues!â
And so he does.
When he played the blues, Art went back. All the way backâto what he heard on âCentralâ growing up, a blues out of the South, out of Chicago, a peroration from the great black churches. He went back to his bitter, lurid childhood, to the wartime failure of his young romance, to the deaths of friends and all his own disasters. He also played his joys and dreams and pleasures, you can hear that in the funky honks and shimmering runs. If this album is a narrative, hereâs the conclusion and a summing up, both musical and verbal. He goes back into his life, where fears are routed, and he triumphs. Here it is, he says. âThe Twelve Bars of the Decade.â The twelve bars of a lifetime. Every time. And then, for the first time I ever heard him say it to an audience, he tells the rowdy, gracious, gathered Brits, âI love you all.â