Biographical and Contextual Materials
This chapter contains the contextualisation of Williams’ biography within the
intellectual community that operated as the modernist bebop movement in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s and traces Williams’ development through the 1960s until the postmodernist onset of post bop and jazz-rock music that took precedence in the 1970s. To begin with, I will outline the environment in which bebop originated, and then complete the chapter with a biographical account of Williams’ development from his birth in December 1945 until he left the Miles Davis Quintet in late 1968.
In gathering information about the origins and ideals associated with jazz music from 1940 to 1954, I relied primarily on the historical accounts contained in David H. Rosenthal’s Hard Bop (1992); and a compilation of interviews with jazz musicians, Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya, edited by Nat Hentoff and Nat Shapiro (1955).
Bebop in America Prior to 1945
Tony Williams made his musical contributions within a community of like-minded peers and mentors that dates to 1941. This group of peers established an informal intellectual home in New York City’s Minton’s Playhouse during the late-night jam sessions that took place there. Located in Harlem on 118th St, Minton’s was, according to modern jazz folklore, the birthplace of Bebop music (Rosenthal 1992, 10) and
played host to an impressive array of well-known and highly regarded musicians. Some of the well-known musicians who took part in the early experiments at Minton’s are drummers Kenny Clarke, Max Roach and Art Blakey; pianists Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell; trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Kenny Dorham; saxophonists Charlie Parker, Sonny Stitt and Dexter Gordon (12); as well as vocalist Carmen McRae and Billy Eckstine; bassist Milt Hinton, pianist Mary Lou Williams; clarinettist Tony Scott; multi-instrumentalist and band leader Teddy Hill; banjoist Danny Barker; trombonist Benny Green; and pianists William “Count” Basie and Earl Hines (Hentoff and Shapiro 1955). These were professional musicians who had their training in the swing music of the 1930s. They would perform professionally in downtown New York venues such as the Apollo Theatre early in the evening before frequenting Minton’s after-hours to participate in the jam session that took place nightly.
According to vocalist Carmen McRae and bassist Milt Hinton, prior to Minton’s
becoming the central focus as a late-night jam venue, veterans of the swing generation such as saxophonist Lester Young, pianist Art Tatum as well as many of the personnel of some of the most well-known big bands of the time, such as the Benny Goodman Orchestra and Artie Shaw’s big band, would listen to drummer Chick Webb with his orchestra at the Savoy Ballroom before congregating at Puss Johnson’s at 130th Street each night. Young, along with Goodman and Goodman’s guitarist Charlie Christian, bassist Jimmy Blanton (from Duke Ellington’s band) and others began making their way to Minton’s after it became established in 1941 (Hentoff and Shapiro 1955, 299-319).
Drummer Kenny Clarke insists that there was no name originally designated for the style of music played at Minton’s until after he was drafted into the US Army in 1943. When the music was given a descriptive term prior to 1943, it was simply referred to as being “modern” music (Hentoff and Shapiro 1955, 311). Upon returning from the armed services, Clarke observed that the term “bebop” was in common usage. The origin of the term “bebop” is a story of conjecture and is perhaps elucidated by trumpeter Oran “Hot Lips” Page’s suggestion that pianist Fats Waller coined the term “bop” when he would shout, “’Stop that crazy boppin’ and a-stoppin’ and play that jive like the rest of us guys’”, as it seems many of the younger musicians who would sit in with the band were unable to play fluently and would rest for eight to twelve bars in between their phrases (312). As will be expounded later in this chapter, pianist Teddy Hill suggested that the label “be-bop” evolved out of the name “Klook” that McRae recalled was unofficially given to Clarke, phonetically mimicking some of the figures Clarke played on the drums. The notion of onomatopoeically naming musical phrases was common practice and, according to Billy Eckstine is reflected in several of
Gillespie’s song titles, such as Oop-Bop-Sh’Bam and Salt Peanuts, which are based on drum and bass motifs that Gillespie would often hum (311).
Gillespie, who was significantly influenced by trumpeter Roy Eldridge appears to have been obsessed with a rare enthusiasm for creativity in that he was constantly striving to produce something new in his music. Clarke seems to have shared a similar
enthusiasm and began to change his playing style in 1937 when playing in Teddy Hill’s band. As he recalls:
It was with Teddy when I really got the thing together that I wanted to play. I was trying to make the drums more musical instead of just a dead beat. As far as I was concerned, the usual way of playing drums had become quite
monotonous. Around this time, I began to play things with the band, with the drums as a real participating instrument with its own voice. I’d never heard anyone else do it before. (Hentoff and Shapiro 1955, 309)
Here Clarke gives evidence of being in a state far from equilibrium in his drive for creativity, a quality essential to agents in a complex adaptive system as described in Chapter One. Prior to Minton’s, Clarke’s initial idea for change was sparked when saxophonist Joe Garland provided him with only a trumpet part to interpret on the drumset instead of a drum chart:
That’s where I hit upon the idea of playing like that all the time. He’d just leave it to my own discretion to play the things out of the part that I thought the most effective. What I mean is, I played rhythm patterns, and they were
superimposed over the regular beat. (1955, 310)
By interpreting Garland’s trumpet parts, Clarke began to develop a method for playing the drumset melodically by setting up a dialogue between the snare drum and bass drum, a method that was not prevalent in any way during the swing era. Clarke is also credited with being the first drummer to state his reiterative time feel on the ride
cymbal instead of the practice of playing it on the hi-hats that prevailed in the 1930s: …it was chiefly through Roy [Eldridge] that I began to play the top cymbal— superimposing rhythms with the left hand—and that helped me develop my ideas all the more. I’d seen most guys who’d played drums with Roy before just leaving their left hand idle, but I just had to find something to do with it. So I began to write out parts for myself which today they call co-ordinated
independence in jazz percussion. All the drummers up to this time had been mostly copying Jo Jones and playing sock [hi-hat] cymbal. Actually, I’d begun playing the top cymbal before I joined Roy, and the guys used to ride me for not playing the sock cymbal on the after-beat like Jo Jones. (1955, 310)
Clarke’s new approach to the drumset would enable him to play melodically
syncopated figures on the snare and bass drums whilst keeping time on his ride cymbal. Although Eldridge enjoyed and encouraged this new approach, not all of Clarke’s
colleagues were impressed. Clarke was eventually fired from Hill’s band because Hill believed Clarke “broke the tempo too much” (Hentoff and Shaprio 1955, 310). Clarke asserts however that
[Hill] wasn’t listening, because I was really keeping a beat going all the time. By my improvising with the left hand, I guess he got kind of confused. (1955, 310)
As stated earlier, Gillespie was influenced by Eldridge and so it is not surprising to find that Gillespie echoed Eldridge’s support of Clarke’s new ideas for the drumset whilst the two played together in Hill’s band. Clarke appears confident of Gillespie’s support in his assertion that Gillespie taught his subsequent drummers, including Blakey and Roach to play in his style (1955, 310). Upon being queried about this in an interview many years later however, Roach denied being taught by Gillespie, stating:
That’s not true. The people who were responsible for me playing what I played on drums were Chick Webb, Sidney Catlett…not horn players or pianists. They don’t know anything about the instrument! Let’s get that together. The people I listened to in order to learn how to play this instrument were Chick Webb, Sidney Catlett, the Kenny Clarkes, the O’Neil Spencers, these folks. That’s where I learned to play this instrument. Not from Dizzy Gillespie or from Miles Davis or anybody else! (Fish 1982, 52)
Perhaps the practice of nick-naming people and compositions onomatopoeically that I referred to earlier reflected an effort to make reference to musical notions that were difficult to put into words. Even Clarke’s nick-name “Klook” was difficult for Carmen McRae to describe. She recalls that “Kenny got called Klook. It really should sound
like Kloog, because of something he used to do on drums, sort of a riff that sounded like klook-a-mop”. Clarke’s nick-name could also have resulted from Hill’s inability to comprehend the new sounds Clarke was eliciting from the drumset. Hill stated that
Kenny Clarke kept playing those offbeats and little rhythmic tricks on the bass drums. I used to imitate him and I’d ask him, ‘What is that klook-mop stuff?’ That’s what it sounded like, and that’s what we called the music they were playing. Later on we called it be-bop. (Hentoff and Shapiro 1955, 310)
Ironically, after disbanding his own band in 1939, Teddy Hill became the manager of Minton’s in 1941 and it was he who ultimately put a band together that included Clarke on drums as well as pianist Thelonious Monk. He then delegated to Clarke the responsibility of leading the band (1955, 302).
The younger and lesser musicians whom, as I mentioned earlier, Waller shouted at in response to their seeming ineptitude were ostensibly confounded by the difficulty of the music that was being played by the more superior musicians. According to Dizzy Gillespie,
there were always some cats showing up there who couldn’t blow at all but would take six or seven choruses to prove it.
So on afternoons before a session, Thelonious Monk and I began to work out some complex variations on chords and the like, and we used them at night to scare away the no-talent guys.
After a while, we got more and more interested in what we were doing as music, and, as we began to explore more and more, our music evolved. (1955, 300- 301)
We often talked in the afternoon. That’s how we came to write different chord progressions and the like. We did that to discourage the sitters-in at night we didn’t want. Monk, Joe Guy, Dizzy and I would work them out. We often did it on the job, too. Even during the course of the night at Minton’s. We usually did what we pleased on the stand.…As for those sitters-in that we didn’t want, when we started playing these different changes we’d made up, they’d become
discouraged after the first chorus and they’d slowly walk away and leave the professional musicians on stand. (Hentoff and Shapiro 1995, 301)
In 1943, Gillespie was employed by pianist Earl Hines alongside Parker and Benny Green. Hines remembers that, “They were very conscientious about it…. They used to carry exercise books with them and would go through the books in the dressing-rooms when we played theatres” (1955, 313).
The constancy of these daily study sessions in concord with nightly experiments on the band stand suggest that a high degree of social and musical entrainment occurred between those who took part and, to the extent that they were entrained with one another conceptually, their bonds grew tighter whilst filtering away people who
became less entrained. One possible explanation for the “no-talent” as Gillespie put it could be that these people were operating closer to a state of equilibrium and, as
Gillespie and company were clearly in states far from equilibrium, no such entrainment could have eventuated in their proximity with one another.
What can be gathered here about the community that developed in and evolved from its origins in Minton’s Playhouse in the 1940s is that it was made up of a well-
networked aggregate of like-minded individuals operating in states far from equilibrium who made a meritocracy out of the pursuit of excellence as well as high technical and
theoretical sophistication in improvised music that characterises the ideals of modernism under the stylistic name of bebop.
Tony Williams’ Cultural and Musical Milieu
This section presents an exploration of the cultural and musical milieu Williams was born into in the mid 1940s featuring a character portrait of Williams at this time according to his own testimony. The main thrust of interest in painting such a portrait is in highlighting Williams’ constant heutagogical adaptation as a key learning trait that led to his contribution of many musical and artistic novelties throughout his career. I also draw out the most prevalent characteristic attitudes and behaviours indicating Williams’ autotelic personality and outline the entrainment generated in the informal fraternal mentoring he received whilst situated within the well-networked community of many of America’s most esteemed and proficient jazz musicians of the 1950s and 1960s.
Boston, 1945-1962
Williams moved with his family to Boston, Massachusetts at the age of two after being born in Chicago, Illinois on 12 December 1945. By making this cross-country
geographic move, Williams’ family may represent a part of the movement of the Second Great Migration that occurred in the United States between 1940 and 1970 when over five million African American people moved from southern states to states on the coast and in the mid-west. Williams’ father, Tillmon bore an African heritage
whilst his mother, Alyce Juanez was of Portuguese-Chinese descent making Williams of “African-American-Euro-Asian” descent (Tony Williams Interview 1995 - Full 1995, 11:37 – 12:32).
By the time he could walk, Williams was exposed to a wide variety of live music during frequent outings to nightclubs with his father, a weekend alto and tenor saxophonist who played cabaret and club gigs (Taylor 1993, 160; Woods 1970, 17). Bebop had just emerged and was the music of the day in the Williams’ post-war Boston household. Williams recalls from his earliest youth that his father was very interested in music and had been playing all the current records of the time. Through this Williams was
exposed to recordings such as those made by Billy Eckstine, Nat King Cole, Louis Jordan, Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons (Cox 1970, 33; Macdonald 1990, 41; Woods 1970, 17). Williams’ mother also had a large record collection and exposed him to classical music at an early age including Tchaikovsky and Wagner (Tolleson 1986b, 36; Macdonald 1990, 41).
Long-play (LP) microgroove recordings were introduced by Columbia in 1948. These played at 331/3 revolutions per minute (rpm), allowing up to twenty-two and a half minutes per side, or forty-five minutes in total. Live recordings were first made by Norman Granz in 1945 with lukewarm reception that later capitalised on the nature of how jazz music is made, chronologically placing Williams in an ideal situation to benefit from the new technology. Magnetic tape was improved by 1956 and, although
jazz recordings doubled in sales in 1957, Elvis Presley and pop artists were selling many more units than jazz musicians at this time (Anderson 2007, 35).
Williams said he was “just drawn to the drums” as a child and realised he wasn’t going to be a saxophonist after his father gave him the opportunity to try the instrument (Woods 1970, 17). Williams would sit in the audience at his father’s engagements and remembers realising after watching the drummer play that “if he can do that, I know I can do that…that’s just something you know” (Ephland 1989, 20). In the summer of 1954 (Macdonald 1990, 41), when Williams was eight years old, he asked if he could sit in with his father’s band one night in a club. When granted permission to choose which instrument he would like to sit in on, Williams decided upon the drums. When he sat in on this occasion, he performed on the drumset for the first time in front of a live audience, without having received any formal tuition. There is however some factual inconsistency in Williams’ recollection of precisely when he first began playing the drums, and indeed when he first received instruction in drumming. In his Jazz- Rock Fusion: The People, The Music interview, Williams recalls that he attended a rhythm and drum class for children when he was in his third or fourth grade in school and that this was first time he had some drumsticks (Coryell 1978, 116). This took place prior to Williams sitting in with his father’s band (Woods 1970, 17). In any case, following Williams’ debut performance with his father’s band, Williams’ father
continued to take him to more and more Boston clubs with a frequency that made Williams well-known enough by the club owners and managers that he was allowed in to the clubs without any parental accompaniment by the time he was twelve years old.
The music on these occasions often required Williams to play shuffles and backbeats and his father danced while playing the saxophone (Woods 1970, 17). One incentive that may have fuelled Williams’ desire to continue developing his talent is revealed when he recalls that “all the people in the place would really like it, a little kid playing the drums. So they would give me money, and at the end of some of the nights I’d have more money than the guys in the band. I’d get thirty-five dollars in one night, and the guys in the band were working for fifteen or twenty dollars” (Coryell 1978, 116).
Williams’ father bought him an old Radio King drumset around 1956 consisting of a large 28” or 30” bass drum, a 16” tom, a snare and some 12” or 13” hi-hats with bells that were about 9” in diameter (Wald 1978, 6).
Alan Dawson
One of the most important influences in Williams’ early mentoring was the tutelage and chaperonage of local Boston drummer, Alan Dawson (b. 14 July 1929, Marietta,
Pennsylvania; d. 23 February 1996). Williams’ father had played music on occasion with Dawson and, despite Williams recalling that he met Dawson around 1954 or 1955—when he was nine—Dawson recalls meeting an eleven-year-old who “looked about nine” in one interview (Bouchard 1980, 11), and “this ten-year-old kid, sitting behind what looked like a 28” bass drum” in another (Scott 1989, 34). If Williams’ father had bought Williams his drums in 1956 and Dawson recalls seeing Williams at that large bass drum, it may therefore have been some time in 1955 or 1956 that
Williams and Dawson met. Once in the Williams’ attic with Dawson, Tillmon began playing the saxophone and Tony played along. Dawson recalls that “This baby started to cook, playing beautiful time and fills. Believe it or not, this youngster had good time, good taste and good feeling—everything but chops!” (Bouchard 1980, 11).