Ethan Iverson hat ein langes Interview mit Mickey Roker geführt. Er redet über Blue Note, über seine Zusammenarbeit mit Gigi Gryce, Duke Pearson, Junior Mance (Dizzy und Boleros), Mary Lou Williams, Ella Fitzgerald und Norman Granz, über den Rhythmus von Sonny Rollins und Stanley Turrentine, über die Bass-Drum von Vernel Fournier, die gute Bezahlung bei Nancy Wilson, den mühsamen Umgang mit Ray Brown… auch C Sharpe wird mal noch erwähnt. Und natürlich Dizzy Gillespie und Bob Cranshaw, zudem Bassist Arthur Harper und Drummer Edgar Bateman. Eine sehr lohnenswerte Lektüre!
Hier ein paar Auszüge:
EI: You had a close relationship with Duke Pearson. You are on almost all of his records and some of the other ones he arranged for Stanley Turrentine and Donald Byrd.
MR: He was an A&R man for Blue Note and I was one of the drummers he would call. Billy Higgins, Al Foster, me and Al Harewood. They did a recording every week and I was blessed to be on quite a few of them.
EI: How much would you rehearse for a date like this?
MR: We rehearsed two days. We rehearsed Wednesday and Thursday and we recorded on Friday. We rehearsed for about three or four hours each day. We would rehearse for two hours and take a break or something. Get coffee and come back for another hour and a half or hour and fifteen minutes. Every Wednesday and Thursday we would rehearse at a place called Lynn Oliver’s. It was on 89th right around Broadway. It was between Broadway and West End but it was closer to Broadway.
[…]
MR: I was a practice fanatic back in those days. I had the kind of drums that were pads called Fipps. They were practice pads and I could play on them until midnight if I wanted to.
EI: What did you practice?
MR: Just rudiments and rhythm. Single strokes, double strokes, triplets. Just practice different things utilizing those beats. I practiced rhythms like the bossa nova rhythm and practiced playing in ¾ time and in 5/4 time. I just practiced whatever I couldn’t do that well.
EI: Where there any books that were particularly helpful?
MR: When I first started reading I had Ted Reed’s Syncopation. That book was good. I had all of the horn players reading Syncopation when they came over the house. George Coleman, Sonny Redd, Blue Mitchell. We used to exercise together every morning. Not Sonny Redd so much. But Blue Mitchell, strong dude, boy. Him and George Coleman. George Coleman was Superman! Strong dude. He could do a handstand and push ups with his feet up against the wall. And he ain’t a little guy.
[…]
EI: I believe it. I bet Dizzy didn’t pay as well as Nancy Wilson.
MR: No. Nobody paid like that. Most of those guys are selfish guys. Lee Morgan paid me more money than Dizzy Gillespie, and that’s a shame. Them guys are cheap. Bags, all of them were cheap. Sonny Rollins was generous. Stanley Turrentine: cheap! Most of those guys paid us as little as they could. (Laughs) I worked with guys with lesser names and make better money than I do with the guys with the names. It’s selfish.
EI: It’s a drag.
MR: Yeah, but they are greedy. Like a tapeworm. But they play so good! Milt Jackson, I would have paid to play with him. He played so good, I never heard him sound bad. That cat used to make me smile every night. Milt Jackson could play a ballad…I can’t say what I want to say. (laughs) He would play a ballad and it would get really exciting.
[…]
EI: Shirley Scott sounds great too.
MR: Shirley’s bad, man. When I first met her she was playing organ. She was a piano player first. She’s from Philly but I didn’t know her until I went to New York. She was married to Stanley Turrentine and a drummer named Walter Perkins was playing with her a club called Count Basie’s. He couldn’t make it so he had me to take his place. That was beautiful, I went on tour with them and after that tour is when I met Nancy Wilson. Buster had been calling to try and get me to play with Nancy. I said, “I don’t want to be playing with no singer.” (Laughs)
Stanley and Shirley used to argue on the bandstand. I hated that. I just endured. We did two weeks in Chicago at the Plugged Nickel. When those two weeks were over I had already set up to stay in Chicago and play at a place called Mister Kelly’s with Nancy. So they got held over, because the joint was packed. That was a hell of a trio with Stanley and Shirley. Stanley would make you join a church if you listen to him. (laughs) So they held us over but I said I couldn’t do it. I wanted to get away from that anyway. I like to be happy on the bandstand. I don’t like to be around all of that arguing. They were married then and Stanley was extremely jealous.
EI: She was beautiful.
MR: Yeah! Shit. But I wouldn’t give a shit what she looked like, she was beautiful the way she played! (Laughs) But she was a very attractive woman. Strong woman, she didn’t take no teeth from a fever. She didn’t take no shit off of Stanley. Sometimes everything ain’t what it seems to be, so that was the end of that but I still did a lot of records with Stanley and with her.
[…]
MR: Man, let me tell you about Richard Davis. When he plays pizzicato he can be kind of avant garde like Jymie Merritt. But when he plays with the bow, he’ll put tears in your eyes. It’s so beautiful, it sounds like he can sit in a symphony orchestra. He is very advanced musician.
He is a hell of a musician but some people are trying to find something different. There ain’t nothing different! What ever you do has been done a million times. He’s a hell of a bass player. In fact he was in Thad Jones‘ first big band with Roland Hanna.
EI: Tootie told me that they said Richard Davis played Chinese music on the bass on that album with the Thad and Mel big band. (Laughter)
MR: I had a gig one time with Andrew Hill and Richard Davis. We played a house party someplace. I fit like two left shoes cause them muthafuckers were out to lunch and I am talking about (sings a swinging cymbal beat). So Richard turns around and says, „You’re swinging too much!” (Laughter) That’s the first time someone told me that I was swinging too much. I didn’t know what to do. I just started sweating and trying to figure out something crazy to play.
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #153: Enja Records - Entdeckungen – 11.06., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba