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Sound Signatures
Elvin Jones
The Formative Years
Part 2
By Chip
Stern
How did you
get into the band in junior high school?
Volunteered for the drums, did you?
Well, no, I just knew what I wanted to play, so
there was no question about handing me a clarinet or any thing like that [laughter]. And there must have been at least sixteen
drummers in that.
Max Roach and Elvin Jones
Facing Off
At The Keystone Corner
© Tom Copi
They had two bands, the first and second, beginners
and more advanced, and of course naturally I had to be in the beginner
band. I didn’t have a snare drum of my
own, so I was told to buy a pair of drumsticks and a drum pad and a book, and
we had to learn the twenty-six rudiments and practice them for at least four
hours per day. And the bandleader made
us believe. He used to tell us how “If
you don’t practice one day, you will know it, and if you don’t practice for two
days, then I’ll know it, and if you don’t practice for three days, then
everybody will know it!” So it was with
that in mind that we enthusiastically practiced our rudiments [laughter].
How enthusiastic was your family about you practicing the rudiments for
four hours a day?
Well, I practiced more than that; I practiced five,
six, sometimes eight hours a day. First
I would go from one to twenty-six; then I would try to use three or four
rudiments per hour and just slowly work on trying to gain some control, and do
it back and forth like that for a month or two.
And then, of course, there were the rolls. In fact, one is never able to roll to your
own satisfaction—ever, I don’t think—but I tried to be able to control
the rolls, which gave one a better understanding of how to control the rest of
the rudiments and to apply that to the exercises and to the marches we had to
play, and try to understand how to translate rudiments into what the beats and
rhythms were in the marches and that kind of thing. And to me it was fascinating. And, well, I’ve never grown out of that; I’ve
always been fascinated by what one can do with the rudiments. And I used to play the rudiments backwards [laughter]
or turn the books upside-down and read them like that or from right to left,
from bottom right up to the top left, and all kinds of tricks just to try to be
able to recognize things from any point of view or from any angle.
To be able to play anything backwards or forwards, to start phrases
with either your right hand or your left hand and not get yourself all tied up
in knots.
Yes, exactly. So that takes a little time, you know. And so I practiced diligently. I always kept a pair of drumsticks in my
pockets. When I worked in my uncle’s dry
cleaners, there were a lot of scars on the counter that can attest to the slack
moments, yeah, and on the pressing machine.
So there were a lot of opportunities to practice, and I didn’t waste
very many of them.
The rudiments are pretty
much the fundamental language of parade drumming. But how do they relate to jazz? How do you make the rudiments swing?
Well, they swing because they’re put into a rhythmic
context, because they’re in a tempo that is
consistent. As long as the tempo is
consistent, the things will swing and you can apply most of the rudiments, like
a flam or a ruff. You see, they are the
natural accents to playing. A flam is a
natural accent. And so, for instance,
when you’re using flams, no matter where it may be it is always a sort of a
rhythmic accent that contributes to the propulsion of the rhythm, and that, of
course, is what swings to me. And if one
can be consistent and evenhanded and not try to rush the sixteenth notes then
it’ll fall right into place and in the meter and the time pattern that one
happens to be playing in. It’s just a
matter of consistency.
Do you feel the rudiments
are applicable to jazz playing on the kit, to four-way coordination?
Most of them are,
depending. Now, if you’re going to take
a solo, for instance, then the rudiment in itself will help, certainly, because
it helps you maintain a certain amount of control, but to play a rudiment…like
for instance Gene Krupa used to play solos exclusively with rudiments, which
was fine, you know, and I thought Gene Krupa was a good, swinging drummer.
Gene Krupa, Louie Bellson, Buddy
Rich
“A Talent For Speed…”
But that didn’t work so well with me, because Gene
had a talent—like Louie Bellson and Buddy Rich—for speed, and it sounded
beautiful when they did it. I 
don’t think everybody can do
that; I think only certain people who have that kind of facility can make the
drums swing like that—exclusively with rudiments.
I sort of associate certain
drummers with that kind of natural gift for playing very technical patterns
with singles. But, to my ears, when you
get into to the doubles and everything in between—all of those different drags,
buzzes and press rolls—that’s where you start to elicit another level of colors
and textures from the drums.
Exactly. Fortunately, I got to know Gene Krupa, and he was a wonderful guy, a sweetheart, and it was fascinating to watch him work up into that whole complex of patterns. That was very, very fascinating.
Right. It seems as though American
drumming is a conglomeration of all sorts of impulses, remembered or forgotten,
from the African traditions and the Afro-Cuban traditions and the South American
traditions and the Caribbean traditions and the blues traditions as filtered
through a military sensibility, sort of coming out almost in spite of the
military thing.
Well, sure.
All the military drumming is in strict time; it’s a very strict cadence,
usually it’s [a tempo of] one hundred-twenty, and so it’s very
predictable. It’s predictable in that
sense like certain African rhythms are very predictable, although they can be
complex and all that, but they’re also very strict and very strictly applied,
with not much room for…I suppose now they must be a lot different. But when I first heard them, I think it
wasn’t as sophisticated, things were not as sophisticated as they are now, and
at least jazz certainly had not progressed to a point where drummers were
recognized as…
Musicians…
[Laughter]. Yeah, I heard that so much, and I didn’t
believe it until I was playing in a club and a man came up to me, and I could
see he was having a good time, and he had his fist full of money, and he laid a
couple of dollars on my drum and said, “I want you to make some noise.”
Rhythmic Innovator Kenny Clarke
Klook-A-Mop
So you see, I knew what he meant: he meant that he wanted to hear a drum solo. But just that kind of expression, meaning that it didn’t have anything to do with the music at all, is just something else. He wanted to hear something exciting, to hear a drum solo, and to him it was just noise, controlled as it might be and certainly something that he could appreciate in a certain way. But that’s as far as it went. So you know, that thought process was very revealing in a lot of ways.
Curious isn’t it.
Because it seems like in American music every time there’s a significant
musical advance, the drummer is at the very least a vital co-conspirator. I mean, Louis Armstrong had Baby Dodds and
later on Big Sid Catlett; Lester Young and Basie had Papa Jo Jones; Charlie
Parker and Dizzy Gillespie had Kenny Clarke and Max Roach; Monk had Art Blakey;
Gerry Mulligan had Chico Hamilton; Miles Davis had Philly Joe Jones and Tony
Williams; and of course John Coltrane had Elvin Jones.
Well, I’ll tell you, when I
heard drummer like Chick Webb, Big Sid Catlett, Jo Jones, Kenny Clarke and Max
Roach I was completely inspired. I
never did see Chick Webb, but I sure did hear him. One of my favorite
recordings is Chick Webb’s “Liza”. I
thought that was the most fascinating drum solo I’d ever heard, and I don’t
think there’s anything to compare with that.
Man, Chick’s playing
choruses and he’s phrasing like a harmonic-melodic instrument, he’s going past
the bar lines and…
Chick Webb Throws Down On “Liza”
“The Most
Fascinating Drum Solo I Ever Heard…Absolutely Classic.”
He’s doing everything! He’s completely avant-garde! And the tonality of the drums…you know, the
texture of his sound was so beautiful, that even with the bad technology of
those recordings I can imagine what it would have sounded like with the naked
ear. I think it’s one of the greatest ever. It’s a classic, absolutely classic.
Chick Webb’s choruses on
“Harlem 
Chick Webb,
and Big Sid. He idolized them. When I first heard Big Sid’s solo features “Steak
Face” and “Mop Mop” with Louis Armstrong, it was simply miraculous to me—his
dynamic range was just immense.
Everything he did was so delicate, then all of
a sudden he’s hitting you up with those big singles!
Yeah, he was master, like a wizard. Yeah.
Great humor, too: all of those coy cat-and-mouse things he did
with his mallets.
Big Sid Catlett
“Big Sid
Really Fascinated Me With The Brushes.”
Well he really fascinated me with the brushes. I heard a lot of good people with the brushes. Max Roach of course. Philly Joe Jones was a great brush man. And Papa Jo, naturally—I don’t think anybody could touch Papa Jo—but Big Sid made this really vivid impression on me when I first heard him. And I didn’t think there was anything like that, because I really hadn’t heard any recordings of modern drummers at that point in my life.
Do you know what Papa Jo’s comment was to me when I
first showed him that famous picture of Art Blakey and you watching
appreciatively as he played brushes during one of those Gretsch Drum Nights at
Birdland? “Here I am with a Gorilla and
a Chimpanzee.”
[Laughter] Oh, my goodness…hahahaha—well,
that’s Papa Jo for you.
© Francis Wolff/Courtesy
Mosaic Records
Grant Green’s Street Of Dreams Session
For Blue
Note
“EhEhEh…”
When you were born?
Around 1950, right?
[Laughter] September
9, 1927.
Hmmm, so in terms of the time frame in which you
began hearing all of these cats, by 1940 you were in junior high school, and so
that would be…
No, this
was in 1947, and I was in the Army, sitting around in the barracks. I wanted to
go in the Army, you know, it was just one of those things. Patriotic, I guess [laughter]. Why not? I never graduated from high
school. I used to go up to the library
instead. I went to work when I was
fifteen years old. But at any rate, when
I was eighteen I joined the Army and then I started to have a chance to be in
the band, of course. I listened to all
these…well, some of the fellows had some recordings, and so for the first time
I heard Charlie Parker, for the first time I heard Max Roach, I heard Kenny
Clarke, I heard Big Sid—and these were the records that we had. And so it really changed my life at that
point, because I was taking timpani lessons from Rags Ragland—he was the
percussionist in the Columbus Philharmonic Orchestra—and studying vibes and
xylophone and all that from him, and so when I heard all of these great
drummers, it was really inspiring. You
see, one of my motives for joining the Army was to get out of
© Chuck
Stewart
Art Blakey [L] And Elvin Jones [R] Dig On Papa Jo Jones’
Wire Brush Extravaganza
Gretsch
Drum Night At Birdland, Late 1950s
“I Don’t
Think Anybody Could Touch Papa Jo.”
They weren’t teaching that in any of the local
colleges, however.
Nowhere [laughter]. You had to be where all the new, young
musicians such as Dizzy and all these guys were leading; on the leading edge of
all of what was new in music at that time—so I was captivated by that. And I’m still caught in the net [laughter]. So it was an enlightening experience for
me. And fortunately, there was one other
drummer there in the Army, my buddy, who was…oh, man, this guy was so good that
he could listen to anybody, no matter what they were doing and no matter what
the tempo was, and he’d say, “Oh, that’s what he’s doing right here.” And he’d write it out, and tell you what
rudiment it was based on, break it all down and analyze it just as fast as the
guy could play it. And so I was
fortunate to be around him and learn as much as I could through him. It seemed as though we were always
together. In our free time we’d listen
to this music together and talk to each other about it. And we got to the point where he would write
a book, and then I would write one and challenge him with it and see if he
could play it; and he’d write one and give it to me and see if I could rise to
his challenge. Well, we did that a lot,
just practicing. And so I was fortunate
to have somebody with that kind of a mind to bounce my ideas off and to learn
from and to carry on a dialogue of musical study with. So I was very fortunate.
How did you apply all of
this to the kit? Because
the manner in which you hear the drum kit and apply all of these rolls and
rudiments is so unique, so unmistakably Elvin. Way too many drummers are all hands and no
feet—they just have no concept of the totality of the kit or how to make music
on it. They're like drum-store wizards
who can play single strokes with incredible velocity, but then they can’t play
steady time without speeding up or closing down, and they couldn’t swing from a
rope.
Yeah, well, that's true, too. The thing is I still didn’t have a drum set,
so the next-best thing was for me to learn as much as I could and to try to
study as much with what was available as possible.
You mean all these years when you were practicing eight hours a day,
you didn’t even have a snare drum let alone a drum kit?
No.
Wow! When did you finally get a
drum kit?
Well, when I got out of the Army. I’d been stationed at the Lockbourne Air
Force Base in
What’d you get?
Well, I bought a set of
W.F.L. Ludwigs, very good, very beautiful drums, 
I thought, white marine
pearl and all that, you know [laughter]…anyway, they were my
treasures. And so then I had to learn
how to use them, and all of the theory in the world can’t teach a person how to
play an instrument until you actually have the instrument, and then you have to
try to apply some of those things that you learned and discard those things
that you don’t need and learn how to use the instrument itself. So that’s what I’ve been doing ever since
then [laughter]—trying to learn how to use the instruments. Naturally
I had to learn the pedals and how to use my feet. But I’m not saying I had a hard time of it,
because I was enjoying every second, every minute of it, you know.
You always seemed like such
a natural on the drums to this innocent.
Well, I’ve always been fascinated by the drums; I’ve
never really wanted to do anything else. And I
thought I had prepared myself at least to start to learn how to play—how to
play the instrument—and I never looked at it as “pedal this” or “this is with
the right foot” or “left hand.” I always
looked at it as a total, a complete instrument.
And I think that’s what helped me at least begin to use what I knew, to
apply my mind to the instrument in that way, as a totality—as a single
instrument rather than a bunch of components.
What did you matriculate in
while you were studying on the drums?
On the
Hoffman Pressing Machine [laughter]. I worked at my uncle’s cleaners and several
other places around the city, because one thing that was absolutely necessary,
and I always knew this—and my mother and father drummed this into us—is that if
you’re going to do anything, first thing you have to do is learn how to take
care of yourself, and then perhaps you can do something else. But that’s the criterion for life…for
living. You have to believe,
certainly, in yourself, and trust in your abilities. Nothing has ever been handed to me on a
platter, so I think we all have to do a certain amount of agonizing to get to
where we want to be—to achieve things.
To do what we’re supposed to
do. If it were all that easy we wouldn’t
have any character.
You wouldn’t have any character; you wouldn't enjoy
it after you got it anyway; you couldn't appreciate it—it wouldn’t have any
value. I think things should have value,
so that it’s not just some disposable
thing.
Did you always have that sound which you ultimately manifested with
Coltrane in your mind’s ear? Or were you
always working towards finding the right context where you could implement your
conception of how to hear the band? For
instance, on those
Sonny Rollins
On Sonny’s music, your
playing is very combustible and exciting. I was always very inspired by the manner in
which you and [bassist] Wilbur Ware handled the vamp and release transitions
from an Afro-Cuban vamp to a swing release on “Old Devil Moon.” That’s a wonderful performance, but it sounds
as if you’re sort of reaching for it; it didn’t sound like in your own mind
that everything you were hearing you were quite able to get to.
Well, I tell you what, it’s interesting that you
should say that, because I didn’t even know they were recording, and this
happened at a time when I’d just gotten fired from J.J. Johnson’s band [laughter],
the greatest thing that ever happened to me.
May I ask if he gave cause?
Well, we just didn’t get
along. That’s enough cause for me [laughter]. We just didn’t get along. These are marvelous musicians, certainly, and
he’s a fine man; I like him otherwise, but to work as a sideman, it always
seemed to be rubbing him the wrong way and vice a-versa. So anyway, it didn’t work out. We’d made this year tour in
J.J. Johnson
Modern
Jazz Master Of The Trombone
“We Just
Didn’t Get Along.”
And first of all, I bought another new set of drums
then and I borrowed the money from J.J., and of course I had to pay him back
weekly, like half of my hundred and fifty bucks a week I had to give back to
him, so in eight weeks or so I gave him back the three hundred and then
some. And so I was living in
And so I came back to
Pete “LaRoca” Sims
A Heart And Soul For Swing
“Those
Were Pete LaRoca’s Drums.”
© Chip
Stern
And we came out there on
I’ll be damned. That’s the exact opposite of what I thought—I
thought Pete was sitting in on your drum set and that it was your gig. Because when I heard him play, I thought, “Well,
Pete tunes his drums high but he doesn’t tune them that high. That must be Elvin’s kit.”
No. I was just sitting in. And when I looked up I saw Rudy Van Gelder sitting there and Frank
Wolff was standing around or Alfred Lion or somebody…maybe both. And I said, “Well, I’ll be damned—they’re
recording.” So that’s how that came
about. They gave me exactly seventy-five
whole dollars for that. I should have
had it framed, but I needed the money [laughter].
Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff
Devotional Auteurs of The Blue Note Recorded Legacy
“Well,
I’ll Be Damned—They’re Recording.”
Live and learn. That's interesting. You know, there are some drummers who take a
backbeat approach where they syncopate in a vertical manner around the closed
hi-hats, and then there are other drummers who proceed from a linear jazz
conception based around a flowing ride cymbal pulse. Whereas to these ears, Elvin Jones is one the
few drummers who sound as though he’s juxtaposing both approaches: someone once
characterized you as having a jazz top and a blues bottom. In a jazz context, there are a lot of guys
who basically play one phrase with the ride cymbal, and they have certain
characteristic phrases and fills they do on the snare and the bass drum. But in listening to you over the years, the
perspective was always shifting around, so that the moment a listener focused
in on any one thing it would kind of diffract; and what you were playing on the
ride cymbal would all of a sudden be on the snare—and then your bass drum
syncopations were so radical, so exciting.
[Laughter] I just try to play the
compositions, not so much imposing any particular kind of rhythm on any
particular tune or composition—but to try and interpret the composition as if
I’m an accompanist, fundamentally. And in
addition to that, I’m responsible for the consistency of the tempo. And in addition to that, one has to try to
give impetus and support and dynamic support to the different soloists and not
to overwhelm them in some way that would make them uncomfortable with
themselves and with the music in itself.
So I’ve always thought that what’s primary is what we do in the
totality—the total interpretation of the composition—and that's what I think
about mostly. And the rest of it is
mostly because I’ve studied and worked and trained and taught myself to be
disciplined. I can do a lot of those
things subconsciously, so it’s not a conscious effort to do them. And they’re not so automatic that I do the
same thing every time. So there’s a
certain amount of flexibility as well, because I think that’s important and
it’s necessary. And I hate to be bored [laughter],
and I’m sure other people hate to sit up and listen to a group or band or
drummer who is always playing the same kind of licks where you could make bets
on it [laughter], and win practically every time.
Where the only thing that’s missing is a monkey with
the cup.
Yeah, right.
So I think that’s basically my approach.
I don’t say it’s a concept; it’s just a way to approach the music and
to get the most out of it—to make people enjoy it. People have to enjoy what you’re doing…people
should, and that’s what it’s all about, you see: not being an entertainer per se, but
certainly for the enjoyment of all, so that people can have an experience with
the music.
Well, for me you’ve always
communicated the total joy and excitement of swing. You inspired me to try and play the instrument, and to participate in the creative give and take
of jazz…and I can’t think of a higher compliment. I guess what I’m trying to say about your playing
is that there’s a very powerful groove element, and yet it’s extraordinarily
loose and textured and impressionistic.
Especially your bass drum feel.
You kind of spoiled me for other drummers, Elvin. I mean, I once told Mel Lewis that I thought
playing four-to-the-floor on the bass drum was cheating. Mel laughed and said, “That’s not cheating,
Chip—that’s swinging!”
Actually, my feet are always going on four. But for some reason I have a light touch on
the bass drum and it doesn't always project—because I don’t want it to
project. I don’t think it should, and so
that’s probably the reason why you don’t think that I’m playing four on the
bass drum all the time. I’m not, of
course, but most of the time it is. It’s
just subdued and dynamically pulled back.
Right, right. Getting back to the whole
process of coming of age on the
Exactly. Kenny Burrell was very instrumental in
sustaining one particular event, because he was one of the principles. There was this theatre where they featured a
repertory company. And Monday nights the theatre group was off, so we would
stage concerts. It was very
reasonable. I think they charged
twenty-five cents at the door. And all
the musicians would gather there, and it was like a big session. And of course that was the one time during
the week where most of the musicians who knew each other could see each other
and play together.
Deee-Troit
“Detroit
is a swinging town, you know…”
And we’d pick groups that would play half an hour or
forty minutes to an hour or so, and then another group would come on. And so we all got a chance to work with each
other in that way. These concerts were
always enthusiastically supported, and we learned a lot from each other that
way: for one thing, to be friends, you
know. There wasn’t any of that envy and
if a person got too egotistical it was very easy to say, “Okay, go on, play
with Barry, play with…[laughter] and see how if
you’re gonna be egotistical you must teach us something.” So that usually took the wind out of the
egotist’s sails. And it was good for all
of us—everybody benefited from that.
Were you playing gigs other
than that, like straight jazz gigs where you were part of the house rhythm
section?
Yes, as much as we could. I was working at the Bluebird most of the
time, and other clubs. There was another
place called the
During this period, did you
get to travel to the other cities and other principalities and states,
Not so much, not so much. I didn’t.
The
People tend have a kind of a
heliocentric view of the universe, like things only happen here in 
conceit they tend to see
Yeah, right [laughter]. That's a wonderful analogy.
When you're describing the
experiences you had coming up, is there anything comparable to that for young
musicians today?
Only if they seek it out. I think everyone has to learn how to cope
with life—with their own lives. If you
want to be something; if a person wants to be a drummer or any other kind of
musician, then whatever the instrument happens to be, if you want to get
involved in music then it’s certainly easier now to learn the history now than
when they didn’t have CDs and LPs and things like that. Everything was 78s or tapes and all this
stuff. That was all very new, and the
technology wasn’t very clear. Some of
the tape recorders sounded so bad I didn’t like to listen to them, because they
were not clear at all. It was like the
wire recordings—the sound just wasn’t true.
But now all these things are in the library; there are books all over
the place; you can study even without a teacher, for crying out loud. You can go and listen to the tapes that are
electronically filtered of early Charlie Parker—all this stuff is in the public
library, so there’s really no excuse for someone saying that there’s no way for
him to develop. There’s more material
now than ever. But you have to seek it
out. I think it’s a matter of personal
ambition in that respect. You’ve got to
be willing to do the work.
Of
course it’s not easy. Places like the
Apollo Theatre no longer have showcases any more. Everybody can’t live in
Hank Jones And Elvin Jones
The
Pianist And His Baby Brother
The Great
Jazz Trio Sessions
Avatar
Studios, May 2002
The whole point in development is to get to a
standard that one can sustain and never to lose that, never to go below
that standard of professionalism. And
then it’s the love and the compassion and working with your peers and
colleagues, and loving one another and making the music the primary reason for
you being there rather than being there to have an individual fashion
show. The thing is that now it’s so easy. In the early days, certainly, when I was
around that age, I always tried to do my best, and all he people I knew had
that same attitude. And that was a
general attitude. Of course there
were a few punks and assholes, as always, but they were in the extreme
minority. For the most part, everybody
strove for some excellence, for some high standard, and the music was what we
were all serving, and the music is the master of us all—and we had to be
subservient. Everything is under that;
everything has to come under that umbrella.
I mean, the whole thing just makes for a general improvement: if the
music is on a high standard, then everything else will come up to it, you know,
and people will appreciate it that much more, and they’ll go away feeling that
they have heard something and they have enjoyed the evening out and enjoyed the
music and all the rest of it. And that’s
what it’s all about. And that doesn't
happen because somebody writes about it or because the tout is out there making
his spiel. It happens because it has to be done and done properly and
done correctly and done with some integrity and honesty. That’s all, just as simple as that.
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