WALTER RADCLIFFE: Boston, MA, piano, Hammond B3 - born May 21st, 1919, died May 22nd, 2014, at 95 years and one day old.
Referred to by Sonny Stitt as "my man who knows all the right changes," Walter accompanied many of the greats when they were in Boston. Sonny Stitt, Benny Golson, Booker Ervin, Joe Henderson, Sam Rivers, and countless others at the Big M, Hi-Hat, Pioneer Club, Slades, Connolly's, and Wally's.
Walter with Sonny Stitt and Harold Layne at Connolly's Stardust Lounge.
Walter with Sonny Stitt and Harold Layne at Bill Russell's Slades.
Horace Silver playing tenor saxophone, Walter on piano.
Walter grew up in New Haven, CT and was influenced like most pianists in that day, by Fats Waller.
He served in the Marines during WWII. He was about to be sent to Northern Africa but ended up stationed in the Pacific. He was in the assault on Guam and Okinawa. When asked about it, he said plainly, "there were a lot of dead people." His recountals are more reminiscent of "Apocalypse Now" than "Flags of Our Fathers."
When he returned, he played with his close buddy, Horace Silver. Horace was playing sax at the time, and Walter was playing piano (I believe Walter is the only pianist to ever accompany Horace). An aneurism put an end to Horace's saxophone career. As Walter put it, "Horace disappeared for 6 months, and came back smokin' on the piano!" Walter clearly had an influence on Horace's harmonic approach, particularly in accompaniment.
Walter left New Haven for Boston where he ended up sharing an apartment with Tillmon Williams, a Boston saxophonist. He held a job in an auto repair shop, a job he held until his retirement, while moonlighting as a musician.
Walter remembers Tony Williams, T Jr. sitting-in on the drums at age nine, playing "all kinds of stuff we couldn't even imagine!" Walter, Sam Rivers and young Tony gigged frequently on the Cape during the summers. Sam Rivers led the house band at Connolly's. It was at Connolly's where Jackie Mclean discovered Tony. The rest is history.
Around December, 1962:
"The place as far as I was concerned was Connolly's Stardust Room on Tremont and Ruggles Streets in the South End. Maybe because
it was the first place I was old enough to get into... The only time I ever saw Eric Dolphy was there. Herbie Hancock
played piano. Dexter Gordon, Horace Silver Quintet with Junior Cook and Blue Mitchell, Yusef Lateef, Roland Kirk (Horace Parlan
on piano), all played there regularly. Sam Rivers led a house band with a young, sixteen-year-old drummer, Tony Williams. I remember
when Jackie McLean came in to play and Tony was on the gig. Jackie kept looking behind him to see where all of this music was coming
from. He looked out at the audience and told us he was going to have to take this kid to New York. He did just that."
.....Steve Schwartz (WGBH in Boston) posting to Jazzcorner's Speakeasy
Thirty years later, long after it's
heyday, I played there every week, on gigs and jam sessions. The place exuded jazz history. You could feel it as soon as you walked in.
Well-known Lee Tanner photos from the club's golden years hung on the walls, and the neighbors lived, breathed and spoke jazz.
It's well known that Tony studied with Alan Dawson. He also studied with a local drum legend named Bill "Baggie" Grant. Baggie is on a recording with Charlie Parker at the Hi Hat,. He traded ideas with Kenny Clarke before the bop era began, and in the 50s played in a trio with Red Garland. When tapped by Miles Davis to join his band, Baggie refused to go and instead, held a job at the post office and raised his family. Talk about restraint. I often saw many of today's young-lion drummers from Berklee, New England Conservatory and the Boston Conservatory stop by our gigs and jam sessions to check out Baggie. Walter played often with Baggie who, according to Walter, was the first Boston drummer to play in an organ group. They played together regulalry for over 40 years.
Walter maintains he always played piano and organ as a hobby, i.e., he always had a day job. And he insists that he's always been an acompanist first, a soloist second. But I beg to differ. Walter possesses an exquisitely melodic extemporaneous block-chord technique based on big band arrangement, which is too daunting for younger players like me to learn. Like Sonny Stitt said, "my man who knows all the right changes."
RAY COPELAND: NYC, trumpet, born July 17, 1926 - died May 18th, 1984
In this photo Ray explains to Charlie Rouse, Phil Woods and Johnny Griffin, fellow members of the Thelonius Monk Octet, how to play through Thelonius' tune Oska-T. The band, including Monk himself, was in a fix. (See video below) The Octet was unrehearsed. Ray's arranging skills were in evidence. Where the band was lost, including Monk, he knew where everyone was supposed to be.
Ray was shy, astonishingly humble, genuine, patient, knowledgeable, and deeply compassionate.
He's on the legendary Riverside record date with Monk, Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, Art Blakey and Gigi Gryce and Wilbur Ware. also played alongside Booker Ervin and Clifford Jordan and Eddie Blackwell in Randy Weston's group. He premiered his Classical Jazz Suite in Six Movements at Lincoln Center in 1970, and wrote arrangements on a regular basis for Broadway shows. He had plentry of bragging rights; he never let it go to his head.
Ray also played with the Savoy Sultans in the 1940s, known among big band musicians in the know as the true best big band, outplaying the Basie band, the Lionel Hampton band, and the Ellington bands.
During a gig at an art gallery opening in the early 80s Ray took out his flugelhorn and blew so fiercely and clearly, that the rest of the band seemed to vanish into thin air. He was showing us the way. When the tune was over, I looked up at Ray and exclaimed "Ray, I didn't know you could play like that!" He leaned over knudging me with his elbow and with a big grin chuckled "heh, heh, that ain't but half of my potential." In that moment I understood what it meant to be a "heavyweight" jazz musician.
Ray was my college advisor. He died in the middle of my final project. In an extraordinarily callous and indefensible move, my college failed to sign him on as a full time professor, even after he fulfilled the requirement of obtaining his PhD. It broke his heart, and ended his life.
I, and others, can only guess at how this affected our careers. The absence of his guidance was an immeasurable loss. He would have been here for me now, just as he was here for the members of the Thelonius Monk Octet back in 1968.
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF REHEARSALS - Setting the record straight (10:14 min)
I asked Ray about this now famous incident, where a disgruntled Monk cut off Ray's solo and stopped the band in front of a large audience in London. Monk forgot the arrangement. Ray told me he was ready to punch Thelonius out. Instead he stared in disbelief, which is how many musicians reacted to Monk.
On the bus ride to the gig, Ray was terrified. Without any rehearsals, the band was lost, a disaster waiting to happen. Ray, a consummate professional, couldn't believe what he'd gotten himself into. His concern is palpable - the camera catches a quick glimpse of Ray staring blankly out the front window of the bus on the way to the gig. He was probably trying to memorize the charts. Meanwhile, Monk was sitting behind him, taking a nap.
ARCHIE SHEPP, NYC , tenor sax, born May 24, 1937
"You can hear every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day, of every month, of every year a musician spends practicing his horn, in a ballad" Archie Shepp
I was in Shepp's lab band. After years in high school spent listening in absolute wonderment to Marion Brown's recording of his composition "Fortunato," there I was, in the same room week after week with this iconic figure, running through his compositions and arrangements. He introduced himself to me one day as I was seated at the piano warming up with the band. He walked into the room, dapper as usual in a blue pinstripe suit, stared inquisitively at me, put his baritone together (he never played tenor with us), walked over to me, aimed the bell of the horn at my head and honked, squealed and peeled off a phrase so rich in texture and color that I momentarily left the planet.
Miles called him a "no playing motherf....ker." To me Shepp just paints sound with a different brush...a much fatter brush, like the one you paint your house with. His recording "Goin' Home" with Horace Parlan is a good example of what I mean.