Drummer Donald Bailey article

[duaneiac]

Jazzman Donald Bailey overcomes adversity

By Jim Harrington
San Jose Mercury News

One of Donald Bailey's favorite lines is "I'll never forget that." Sit with the Oakland drummer long enough and he's apt to repeat that sentence a half-dozen times.

There are, indeed, many things that the 75-year-old jazzman hasn't forgotten. He can describe in detail the nine years he spent setting the pace in Jimmy Smith's legendary group in the '50s and '60s. Those were high times, certainly worth remembering, and the resulting albums are now regarded as soul-jazz masterpieces.

It's when the conversation moves to the recent past that Bailey's memory gets foggy. In particular, the last 10 years are hard for him to recall — and, for the most part, not worth remembering.

"The last 10 years have ust been miserable," says Bailey, who has experienced three major seizures, leading to significant memory loss. He's also been in the hospital for back surgery, while his marriage, his career and financial situation all fell apart. He now lives in the small apartment of friend and admirer Jay Rose, the 84-year-old owner of Oakland's Acme Music.

Now, though, the tide may be turning.

Bailey, one of the countless sidemen that have been lost in the pages of the jazz history books, will receive some long-overdue recognition when Yoshi's at Jack London Square in Oakland hosts two tribute shows to the influential drummer on Wednesday and next Thursday. The celebrations will feature Bailey performing with such admirers as saxophonist Charles McPherson and guitarist Bruce Forman.

These concerts will also double as de-facto release parties for Bailey's new CD — the third volume in the "Blueprints of Jazz" series from San Francisco's Talking House Records label. It's Bailey's first-ever release under his own name.

"There are a lot of guys that want to be instant stars," says the drummer, known in the jazz world by the nickname "Duck." "I say, 'Man, it took me 50 years to have my first CD!' "

Born March 26, 1934, Bailey grew up in the music-rich city of Philadelphia and showed interest in jazz at an early age. His father had been a big-band drummer before Bailey was born, and the youngster would get to see many national touring acts.

"In order to get money to go to the show, I'd clean my grandmother's house — the whole house, from top to bottom — and I'd get a dollar," Bailey says. "The show would cost 75 cents."

He remembers sitting at the kitchen table as a young boy, slapping his hands on wood and imitating the moves he'd seen Gene Krupa make in the movies. "My mother said, 'It looks like you want to play the drums,' " he says.

Bailey would get his own kit and play throughout high school. He ventured into Philly's thriving jam-session scene, and word spread about this promising young drummer. Then, he received the call from a friend that would change his life: "He called me and said, 'Jimmy Smith needs a drummer just like you.' "

The Hammond B-3 maestro was just establishing himself as a major presence. "He was the item at the time. Everyone wanted to play with Jimmy," Bailey says. So he jumped on the tip from his friend and rang up Smith, who — without ever hearing the drummer play — hired the untested Bailey.

"I assumed he liked (my playing), because he kept hiring me," Bailey says. "Next thing I knew I was in the studio at Blue Note."

It was an incredibly prolific time for Smith, who recorded some 40 sessions in just eight years (1956 to 1963) at the legendary Blue Note label. The best of those albums —such as 1958's "The Sermon!" — prominently featured Bailey and are now considered landmark recordings.

"The Jimmy Smith records set the standard for all jazz organ records to follow," remarks Peter Williams, artistic director for Yoshi's. "They are grooving, fun jazz records, and Jimmy's trio influenced most every organ combo that followed."

Bailey's drumming, in its own way, would be every bit as influential as Smith's organ work. Musicians listened to Bailey's beats, and what they heard, in many cases, was something new. On those Blue Note records, Bailey originated what would become an oft-imitated style of drumming; a basic swing-era shuffle that incorporated a conga-style beat.

"With Jimmy, everything was different every time we played," Bailey says. "So the opportunity was there for me to be expressive."

After his time with Smith, Bailey would go on to perform with such stars as Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan and Peggy Lee. "Duck worked with a lot of singers," Williams says. "It's easy to hear why they liked him; he's a sensitive, tasteful drummer with good ears."

The drummer, who also plays harmonica and trombone, eventually moved to Japan, where he'd be featured on more than 30 albums. Then, in 1982, Bailey was drawn by romance, and eventual marriage, to move to Oakland.

Musically speaking, his time in the Bay Area has been relatively low key; health-wise, it's been anything but.

"I've been in the hospital so much the last 10 years," Bailey comments. "People think I work there."

While the back surgery has limited what he can now do on the drum kit, the three seizures have proved even more troublesome. The severity of his memory loss, as he explains it, is downright shocking. At one point, he says, he couldn't even recognize his family members.

He's also gone through a divorce and financial hardships. The latter situation may improve with the release of his CD with "Blueprints of Jazz," which spotlights under-recognized, but deserving talents, and with the upcoming high-profile gigs at Yoshi's.

Bailey is trying to remain upbeat.

"I know that music is a healer — jazz music, that is, for me," he says. "I'm here today because of jazz music."

http://www.mercurynews.com/eye-headl...nclick_check=1

[Justin V]

His Blueprints of Jazz, Vol. 3 album is great. Odeon Pope absolutely kills on it, and it has Charles Tolliver on a couple tracks. Bailey really drives the band. I wish him luck.

[peterdubya]

Ill health doesn't beat drummer Donald Bailey

Lee Hildebrand, Special to The Chronicle

Sunday, November 8, 2009
Oakland's Donald Bailey, Duck to his friends, is struggli...

Drummer Donald Bailey was sick, on temporary leave from Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, when he cut "Blueprints of Jazz" in March 2006 for the fledgling Talking House label in San Francisco. It was the second album he'd made under his own name during a prolific recording career that spans more than a half century. The intense back pain he's suffered for more than a decade was not evident in the powerful polyrhythmic currents he stirred up behind the torrential tenor saxophone of Odean Pope, a childhood friend who'd flown in from Philadelphia for the session.

By the time the disc was finally released in March, Bailey was in no shape to do any CD-release engagements to help promote it. He'd only recently found a place to stay after a period of homelessness, and he no longer owned a set of drums.

"I don't know what happened to 'em," Bailey, 76, says while sipping coffee at a shop around corner from the apartment in Oakland's Laurel District that he now shares with fellow drummer Jay Rose. "When you have seizures, you don't remember anything."

Besides the back problems, for which he's undergone several operations over the past 11 years, and periodic asthma attacks, he's suffered a series of seizures that caused both long- and short-term memory loss. "It's a horrible thing to have," he says, "and I'm just about now recovering to where I can remember things."

The drums are gone, but the precious 22-inch K. Zildjian cymbal Art Blakey gave him in the 1950s, when Blakey was recording for Blue Note Records with his own Jazz Messengers and Bailey for the same company with organ innovator Jimmy Smith, is being kept for him in Southern California by Donald Bailey Jr., one of his eight adult children.

"The condition has affected my memory for people, but for jazz I think my mind has even opened up more, for some strange reason," Bailey, a native Philadelphian who has lived in the Bay Area since 1982, says. "When you really love something, you just never forget it. I think I know about all the songs that were ever written."

Even though some of the unique rhythmic patterns Bailey developed during his 1956-64 tenure with Smith influenced such well-known drummers as Grady Tate and Tony Williams, his was never a big name among jazz fans. He's loved and respected by many musicians, however, and some of them, including alto saxophonist Charles McPherson, guitarist Bruce Forman and organist Chester Smith, will join Bailey on Wednesday and Thursday at Yoshi's in Oakland for a tribute to and benefit for the struggling drummer.

In addition to his numerous albums with Smith, many of which remain in print, Bailey also has recorded with McPherson, George Benson, Dave Frishberg, Hampton Hawes, Harold Land, Blue Mitchell, Mark Murphy, Red Norvo and Esther Phillips, among others.

"I like drummers who co-create with the horn player when the horn player is soloing," says McPherson, who first recorded with Bailey in 1983. "I like for them to rhythmically fill in all the little spaces, and I like the way Donald does it."

Guitarist Kenny Burrell, who played with Bailey on several Jimmy Smith albums in the late '50s and early '60s, calls the drummer "one of the real unsung heroes in the jazz world who has never gotten the credit he should have for his great musicianship."

Burrell recalls having first encountered Bailey playing with Smith at a Pittsburgh club around 1956. "When he played a solo, it just knocked me out because I had never heard anything sound like that," the guitarist says. "It was a whole new sound coming from the drums, and he had his cymbal so high I couldn't see his face."

Bailey, whose friends call him Duck, not only has a distinctive style, but he also sets up the drums like no one else, his cymbals towering and his snare drum cocked at a 45-degree angle as he sits high on a bar stool.

He is also a master of jazz harmonica. Toots Thielemans gave him some early pointers, and he practiced the tiny instrument while on the road while Smith drove from gig to gig in a bread truck that accommodated his Hammond B-3 organ and Leslie speakers, Bailey's drums and Thornel Schwartz's guitar and amp. The first album to appear under Bailey's name, made in Japan in the early '80s, featured him on harmonica, not drums, and his current CD closes with a lyrical harmonica reading of the ballad "Blue Gardenia."

Trumpet, trombone, saxophone and piano are among the other instruments Bailey plays. "I attempt to play all these instruments to better my drumming," he explains. "If you know something about the instruments, you know how to support them. When a guy's taking a breath, you know when to breathe with him."

Bailey plans to start teaching at Acme Music, an East Oakland store owned by his roommate Rose. "I would like to teach the kids to get 'em out of these streets," the drummer says. "I can teach the trombone, trumpet, saxophone, drums and stuff like that on at a beginning level." He does not, however, teach advanced drums because, he explains, "I don't think I could play by myself." He says he needs a band, or at least a record, to play along with.

Using borrowed drums, Bailey in recent times has played for tips with bassist Dewayne Oakley on Maiden Lane in San Francisco and also worked with Senegalese guitarist-singer Pascal Bokar at Savanna Jazz on Mission Street. He hopes to work more frequently and even go on the road again.

"Right now, I've got one fusion and one disk replacement," he says as he pulls from his bag an X-ray showing the clamp that holds his back together. "It looks pretty good, where I'll be able to travel." {sbox}

Donald Bailey performs at 8 p.m. Wed.-Thurs. Yoshi's, 510 Embarcadero W., Oakland. $20. (510) 238-9200, www.yoshis.com.