soulpope "Ever Since The World Ended, I Don`t Get Out As Much"
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PLAYING WITH THE TEDDY EDWARDS GROUP IN THE LATE 1950s
About the Teddy Edwards Documentary on PBS
This is about one of the many jazz groups I played guitar with in the popular late 1950s hot LA Jazz scenes…I believe this documentary was shot some years ago, and probably released earlier, but I didn’t know this film existed until last night when it was shown on PBS. It has some names on there too describing Teddy, namely his friend, Clora Bryant, fine trumpet lady (who learned from Dizzy Gillespie), someone I also worked with early on, next door to the Lighthouse in the late 1950s
I worked quite a few 1950s bebop jazz gigs on guitar with Teddy and was in his group when producer Bumps Blackwell walked in the Beverly Caverns Jazz Club and hired me for guitar fills on some Sam Cooke stuff in 1957. This was when I was soloing all the time, having a blast working every night with the different jazz gigs all over town.
Teddy we all knew, was from NY, but originally came from Mississippi, same area where Ike Turner is from, heart of the really tough racist areas of the South, tho‘ he never talked about it
He was one of the best saxmen around, one of the best I consistently worked with, tho‘ I loved Joe Maini, who was the „monster“ saxman in Hollywood/LA areas, and the wonderful Harold Land – I worked with them also, others too who were all excellent etal. When playing bebop jazz gigs, you work with everyone…jazz was played at Bar Mitzvahs and weddings too…as well as the prolific jazz nightclubs where you played with everyone. Seemed like back then, that every nightclub in town, including some bowling alleys were jazz clubs and that included some tea houses and strip-tease places. Many of the current rock clubs on the Strip were former jazz haunts inc. comedy clubs on Melrose etc. So. LA especially was loaded with fine posh Jazz clubs, people wore suits & beautiful dresses to come hear music – all of South L.A. was thriving ,due to millions working in the many huge aircraft co’s, building jet planes, missles etc….was the national center for aircraft building….and WW Two vets loved real Jazz, sometimes the NYC Jazz icons flew out to do some nice gigs too, they loved the weather, the geniality, and the pretty ladies
The 1950s jazz area after the Main St. era, was the South LA area and it was hoppin‘! So many great jazz clubs, people dressed to the 9s….clubs all crowded ALL the time, it was an exciting time for fine jazz to be played and whites were welcome in So. LA…the era was exciting and friendly tho…..if you were caught trying to play when your playing wasn’t up to par quite yet, you got the „LOOK“ (get off the stage now if you want to live!) – fortunately I never got the „look“ and it was fun all the time, tho‘ it never paid anyone enough money to raise a family with….so musicians married women who worked — I had to work a day job too for my family, it was double-duty so I tho’t studio work would supply the extra money I needed and it did, I kept working jazz clubs tho‘ less and less as studio work increased.
Anyway…..it was good to see Teddy on his documentary, he finally „made it“ tho‘ we all knew he worked through those rough years of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s barely making a dime …..a good example (between he and Hampton Hawes, newly out of jail in the middle 1960s, he was the BEST) of what we faced if we didn’t record the rock and roll in the studios…..we were the lucky ones tho‘ we didn’t think so at the time – that feeling of „success“ came later on …. it was a business and we worked. That was what mattered to for our families we took care of.
Teddy’s tenor work was exciting since he broke away from the then-popular Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins sounds, switching to tenor when playing with Charlie Parker, to be the first to play bebop jazz (sub chordal patterns — what you have in your „Pro’s Jazz Phrases“ book etc.) on the tenor (Bird and Sonny Stitt were doing it on Alto)….catch this doc if you can, it’s a piece of our jazz age when the only technological advances were the touch-tone phone and the pre-fax machines in the offices.
It was more of a „feeling“ era back then, and music was very profound and real. The great Billy Higgins (mr. „Time“) was always on drums, and it was a group where Ornette Coleman would sometimes come down to sit in with us, but little by little, the rock and roll took over all the 100s of jazz nightclubs here in LA, it all broke up and the handwriting was on the wall. I worked with Billy quite a bit in various groups during 1956-1960 or so….as well as with other fine drummers like Bill Goodwin, Frank Butler, Jack Sperling etc.
Others like fine jazz saxman Curtis Amy went into some studio work for awhile but disappeared, Jay Migliori of course is on some of the top recordings (BB’s etc.) and went back out to play in the Palm Springs and San Diego areas after he retired to a home on the beach; Plas Johnson of course did well in the studio work, Monk Higgins was big in the studios for awhile and finally moved to Africa.
Bob Cooper long a Lighthouse fav, did a lot of movie work as did Bud Shank – and Bud was smart, making very nice commercial (yet jazz) albums too, I played on some of his nice stuff…..which I also did for Monk Higgins, and for John Klemmer, some nice commercial jazz recordings, some nice recordings.
Bill Green the gentleman star of jazz sax out here in LA, quickly made himself at home doing a ton of studio work, and did a great share of teaching fine jazz too (rip, he passed about the time I moved back here)…..teaching Ernie Watts, etc….
Fine jazz drummer Frank Butler kept up with the scene, hanging in there with the tough jazz era of the 1960s-70s died tho‘ early on after a lifetime of addiction to heroin sadly – he was highly respected and just a fantastic drummer and good person; Another jazz drummer great who lived out here for a short while in the 1950s was Bill Goodwin, terrific drummer, lived in NY where he has long been a fav with the fine Phil Woods group for years, recording with Phil and others and never quite getting his due imo….he, Max Roach, Billy, and others were the tops in jazz in NYC.
John Guerin came later after a thriving jazz career in San Diego and the road, hitting it big in the middle 1960s for a hot studio career, later appearing live with the Byrds (pop tour) and the fusion Tom Scott-led LA Express, etc….and Earl Palmer had a huge jazz career along with his studio career in New Orleans since the late 1940s, but once Earl got here in 1957 he was almost too busy to play jazz, just going out occasionally, yet he played more jazz around LA as he got older and helped jazz clubs like Charlie O’s get started with his Tuesday night jams, encouraging younger musicians also – Earl was a warm and great musician, and played on some fantastic recorded hits in his #1 studio career as well as TV shows, and movie soundtracks.
Larry Bunker was HOT in the movie studios after a great career in jazz drums and once in awhile stepped out live (if he found the time), ditto for Alvin Stoller, Stan Levey (one of the original Lighthouse drummers!), Ed Thigpen, Jake Hanna, Nick Ceroli, Harold Jones, and the great Mel Lewis moved back to NYC in the 1970s (he didn’t like LA as saxman Jerome Richardson moved too, in the early 1980s he moved back to NYC)…
Trumpet jazz great Jack Sheldon is still playing! He did a great money-paying stint as a featured artist playing and singing and doing his special comedy (he’ll have you on the floor laughing) of the Merv Griffin Show along with carrying on his great jazz career out here, did some recording and he overall did well, is still active, god bless him…..Sweets Edison did some good studio work, mixing it up with his big-band jazz career and small combo jazz work too, what there was of it in the 1960s-70s and did more into the 1980s….a notable in the trumpet world as was Oscar Brashear on the Johnny Carson TV show, and Cat Anderson (with the Duke etc.)….
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