Clark Terry and the St. Louis Sound
by Doug Beach
Clark Terry played with Charlie Barnet, Charlie Ventura, and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson before joining the Basie Band for three years. After eight years with the Duke Ellington Band, he worked as a staff musician at N.B.C. and performed with valve trombonist Bobby Brookmeyer. One of the early figures for jazz education, Terry appears at clinics, festivals, and jazz camps.
Who inspired you to pursue a career in music?
As a kid in St. Louis, I came from a big family. My dad wasn’t able to afford lessons for me, but I wanted to play jazz. My oldest sister was married to Cy McField, the top tuba player around, and he let me sit in and listen to his band when they rehearsed. Because I didn’t have the education I should have, I asked a lot of questions and got a lot of stupid answers. The old-timers would say, “Let’s get rid of this little whippersnapper, he might be a threat to us.”
Because of that attitude I was told many wrong things. I asked one old gentleman how I should develop my tone in the low register because I was having problems down there. He said, “Sure son, first you go home and sit in front of a mirror and you wiggle your left ear and you grit your teeth. That will do it.” I was young and I really wanted to play well so I went home and practiced what he told me. It didn’t help, but people would say, “Look at that kid wiggle his ear.” With that in mind I always said that if I ever had the opportunity to impart knowledge to young people, I would bend over backwards to do it. If there was one person, though, who inspired me to get involved in jazz, it was Cy McField.
Was trumpet always it, or did you start on something else?
My first instrument was valve trombone because Clarence Haydn Wilson, my high school band director, told me to play it; he didn’t have any trumpets. I didn’t like the valve trombone, but at least I learned the fingerings. I tried to make a trumpet out of a piece of garden hose by putting a kerosene funnel on one end as the bell and a length of lead pipe on the other as my mouthpiece. I couldn’t make music, but I sure could make noise. The neighbors got tired of listening to that so they chipped in $12.50 and bought me a trumpet from a pawn shop.
I’ve seen it referred to in articles that both you and Miles Davis have that nice, round St. Louis sound. What is the origin of that sound?
Joe Gustat, a marvelous player and great teacher, played first trumpet in the St. Louis Symphony and taught at the St. Louis Band and Musical Instrument Company. He insisted that all his students play Heim Mouthpieces, which were wafer-thin with a deep cup and a wide-open backbore. I was never able to study with him, but Miles was one of his students.
A buddy of mine studied with Gustat. After lessons, he’d say, “Man, Gustat really told me something today.” “He didn’t teach you nothing, man,” I’d say. “Don’t tell me he didn’t teach me nothing,” he would say. “Show me what he taught you,” I’d say, and he would repeat the whole lesson for my benefit. My old man just couldn’t afford lessons for me, but I was slick enough to get them anyway.
It was Gustat, then, who laid down the sound that everybody copied?
He insisted that all the people who studied with him have that kind of sound. In fact, the most beautiful sound I ever heard belonged to a Gustat pupil named Levi Madison. He played so beautifully, but he was a little off in the head. All of us kids gathered around the apartment where he lived just to hear him practice. He’d play a few phrases and then he’d laugh for 15 minutes. He had this same kind of sound. All the people who were directly or indirectly touched by Gustat came by this sound. It’s a thing with St. Louis trumpet players.
What led you on your professional career?
I entered the Navy in World War II and I immediately became involved with musicians who had been in the big bands: Willie Smith, Joe Wilson, and Big George Matthews from the Basie Band. We had a pool of musicians at Great Lakes, and whenever the Naval Base needed a musical group, we’d put together a band from the pool. We had sessions all day long every day. That’s where I learned all the tunes in all the keys, and aside from that, I had time to practice. Being in the Navy with all those players made me want a career in music.
Schools teach students to read well and to zero in on sound. College students have great backgrounds in theory and harmony, which is the wat it should be, but it is in elementary, junior high, and high school that students’ ears should be developed.
You’ve said that playing with Ellington was really an education. In what way was this true?
I refer to my years with Duke as that period in which I attended the University of Elingtonia. Duke had so much to offer because he was so beautifully endowed with magnificent ideas in theory, harmony, and counterpoint. Playing his music was a great education, and so was hearing the way he voiced things and how he used the players in his orchestra. He used them as individual voices and would write parts especially for them. There were no 1st, 2nd, or 3rd trumpet parts; each one had a guy’s name on it. Duke knew the areas in which certain people were interesting. Rex Stewart had a way of depressing his valves and playing a concert D. He’d get the note and a guttural sound to go along with it. Whenever that note would come up in a chord, Rex would have it.
Written especially for them make players want to stay with Ellington?
I’m sure it did. Ellington knew how to use players to the greatest of their abilities. In fact, he was such a great psychologist that he’d get things out of you that you didn’t think you were capable of. We recorded an album called Drum Is a Woman that was all about Mardi Gras. Duke said to me, “I want you to portray Buddy Bolden, New Orleans’ first great jazz trumpet player.”
“Maestro, I don’t know anything about Buddy Bolden.” I said. “You don’t even know that much about Buddy Bolden.” “Oh sure I do,” he said. “He was dapper and suave and he always like to have himself surrounded with gorgeous ladies, and he had such a big, fat sound that when he tuned up he could break glasses across the river. He could bend notes like you never heard before in your life. ‘Bend me some notes,’” he said. Duke’s portrait was so convincing that I thought I was Buddy Bolden, and that was exactly what Duke wanted. He could put Harry Carney on the top of a solo and put Ben Webster or Jimmy Hamilton on the bottom and come up with a unique sound. That’s one of the reasons why bands playing the same charts as Ellington cannot sound like the Ellington Band; they don’t have those personalities.
Where did you work after leaving Ellington?
After almost nine years with Duke I went with Quincy Jones on a European tour. While in Europe N.B.C. contacted me about playing with the Tonight Show Band.
Why did you become involved with jazz education?
I realized that many professionals were not kind to young people, and I thought that was a rude way to treat people who were interested in the perpetuation of our craft. I bend over backwards to spend time with young people who are earnest and want to learn. I love being associated with them. A lot of guys who are excellent players can’t relate to kids, though.
What qualities should an aspiring jazz player have?
I would tell him to be conscientious and sincere, to work hard and put in as many hours practicing as he could. Practicing is just like going to the bank. If you ask to withdraw $150, and the teller laughs because you only have 12 cents in your account, then you didn’t put anything in. If you put the money in regularly, it’s always there; and if you put enough in, you collect interest. I try to motivate students to dig in and not accept mediocrity, to rise to the top of the heap.
I’ve found that there are two kinds of kids: those who want to be hip and those who want to be knowledgeable. With hippies, you have to get down to their level; I tell them that it’s cool to be hip and nobody wants to be a square, but let’s not be too hip because two hips make an ass. That registers with them.
What should kids learn to be able to play jazz well?
In school kids spend more time with theory than they do with ear training. The old-timers didn’t know anything about theory, composition, or counterpoint; but they knew that if they played a tune for the first time, they could improvise a chorus on it by using the melody as a guideline. They called it getting off instead of improvising because they would get off the melody. Sometimes ids are so preoccupied with the square root of a Bb chord that they can’t hear simple chord changes. A college graduate who was studying in New York once asked if he could sit in with me at the Village Vanguard. I saved a set for him, but when I called the first tune, he didn’t know it. He didn’t know any of the tunes I called that night. He learned from that, though, and went home and learned every tune there is. Now when he sits in, he knows them. You have to know the repertoire before you step on anybody’s bandstand.
Besides knowing the tunes and having the skills to sound good, players should know the history of jazz. Kids aren’t fair to themselves if they don’t find out what happened before they came in the scene. Jazz education is healthy today because we have two forces coming together: people who know how to impart knowledge and those who are successful performers. It takes a lifetime to learn to teach and another lifetime to become an accomplished jazz artist. The combination of the two in jazz education is great for kids today.
You can be the best player but that doesn’t guarantee that your phone will ring; people have to know about you. It doesn’t matter where you come from. If there is someone on the scene who knows that you’re qualified, then you’ll get the gig.
If working to develop students’ ears is something we should improve in school training, what are schools doing well?
Schools teach students to read well and to zero in on sound. College students have great backgrounds in theory and harmony, which is the wat it should be, but it is in elementary, junior high, and high school that students’ ears should be developed. Once they get past high school, it is too late to change the way they listen. Let kids play tunes and soon they will hear intervals, then articulation and phrasing.
During your career musicians learned by playing in big bands. Are today’s kids missing something because this experience is no longer available?
In those days the jazz language was passed on through osmosis. Even now it is difficult to describe how to play a jazz phrase. You have to sit next to the old-timers who created the jazz style. The only way to learn jazz interpretation is to soak it up from guys who know it. Jazz musicians have different expressions that convey what they want in jazz phrasing. For instance, we call an extra gust of air from the abdomen a body huff. Sometimes you don’t tongue notes, but instead start them with air. You might even see “body huff” written on the music.Tadd Dameron coined the term oo-ba phrasing. Oo is a soft attack and ba is loud. There are many charts with that oo-ba feel and much of Dizzy Gillespie’s repertoire is built on the oo-ba concept. Sometimes you want a note played with a certain attack and drop off so you say HOW! There’s no way you could play that unless you’ve heard it. You need the concept of jazz phrasing in your head. The same applies to the fast and slow shake. Sometimes you can shake on a brass instrument by pushing the horn towards your lips, or you can shake with just the lip. It’s good to know both ways; if you’re following a lead player, you have to match his shakes by playing them the same way he does.
How do you teach a beginning student to improvise?
I use the concept that the old-timers used. They knew that they could play a series of notes called the blue notes, which was the tonic, the minor third, and the flatted fifth. They didn’t know whether these notes had names, but they didn’t care. If you can find those blue notes from any given note on your horn, you can play with the greatest rhythm section in the world. You’d be surprised what you can do with those three notes. I tell the kids at my jazz camps that anybody who plays anything other than these three notes owes me a quarter. This immediately instills in them the discipline that is necessary to play jazz. After they are restricted to those few notes they see how a blues scale fits together. Beginners are told to listen, but if a kid sits down with Coltrane records, it doesn’t get him anywhere. Kids should learn the basics. It’s like building a house, the deeper you dig the foundation the higher up you can go. Beginners have trouble with an eighth note followed by quarter notes. The longer the phrase, the faster they play it; it’s like a runaway train. I try to teach them to lay back and get the true jazz feeling.
Do you come across many kids who just want to play jazz, so they ignore the basics of trumpet playing?
Yes, unfortunately there are still a lot of kids who want to build a house and start on the fifth floor. They don’t want a basement. I tell them that every facet of playing is as important as the jazz. In Mexico young Mariachi players aren’t allowed to touch a horn until they first master all their tunes on the mouthpiece.
For a long time people thought to make it in the jazz world you had to go to L.A. or New York. How should a player prepare for a career in jazz?
A player should prepare himself to do whatever he has to do. If a kid is going to be a saxophone player, he should be able to handle the flute and clarinet. You don’t dare consider yourself a saxophone player and not play clarinet and flute, too. If a kid masters his craft, then he should settle in the geographical area of his choosing. There are many things that are important besides playing, though. You can be the best player but that doesn’t guarantee that your phone will ring; people have to know about you. It doesn’t matter where you come from. If there is someone on the scene who knows that you’re qualified, then you’ll get the gig.
What direction do you see for jazz education?
I see a more thoroughly prepared student emerging, and as jazz education continues, we will produce better teachers. I remember a contest I once judged where the judges ate lunch with the band directors. I happened to be at the table with a director whose band was the next one to play after lunch. My duties were to listen to the bands, and after they finished playing I was to critique them. This gentleman said to me, “Now listen, you’re going to be here for today, but I’m going to be stuck with these little idiots for a long time, so don’t you go up there and say anything that’s going to make me look small.” His band was the worst in the whole festival. He was one of these guys who kicks off a band, “One, two, cup mutes, three, four.” After they played and everybody was waiting for my comments, I just asked for the next band. I told the officials that this man did not deserve to teach these kids. He was out of the system the next week. That was the best thing for those kids, and as jazz education continues, there are fewer directors like him.
In the 1930s and 1940s young people listened to big bands, and jazz was the popular music of America. Do you think we will ever see a period like that again?
The popularity of television makes me dubious about seeing another big band era. In the ‘30s and ‘40s people looked forward to a night out with entertainment and dancing; now most people spend their night out looking at television. I’m sure many positive things will come from our present jazz education scene, though. It is always rewarding to play in a no name town and hear about a little trio that really smokes down at the Holiday Inn; it’s so much better than listening to a pianist play all the wrong chords on “Stardust.” This is jazz education at work. We are turning out enough people to play those gigs and sound good, and they, in turn, are educating the public.
At every collegiate jazz festival I hear people remark at how much talent is present and then comes the usual, “But what are they going to do for a living once they graduate?”
I’ll tell you one thing: people with negative approaches to life always bring that thing up. I like to approach life with a positive attitude. I don’t know any musician who has risen to the top of the heap, who plays better than everyone else, and who is unemployed. Young players have to rise to the top and not settle for mediocrity; those who have enjoyed success from this business should guide them.