11 minute read
Jimmy Cobb by Alvin Carter Bey
Legendary Jazz Drummer, Bandleader, Educator JIMMY COBB
January 20, 1929 – May 24, 2020
ACB: We have Jimmy Cobb on our live line. Good afternoon, Mr. Jimmy Cobb. JC: Good afternoon, my brother, how are you doing? ACB: We’re doing great now that we have you on the telephone. Talking to you is such a thrill for me, here on WHBK, and streaming online at the www.whbk.org. So how have you been? JC: Pretty good. First of all, I would like to say, seasons greetings to all your listeners and you people in Chicago. I had a lot of fun, when I used to come here a lot. ACB: Yeah, the first time I saw you was at the Civic Opera House in the 1950s. Do you remember that set? How old were you? JC: In 1950, I was 21. JC: I was 27, when I was with Miles. ACB: What type of drummer are you? JC: I’m the guy who tries to make the rest of the band sound good. I try to be a part of the whole band. I give up what I can to be complicit with it. ACB: You began your career in the 40s? JC: Yeah, I started to play when I was a teenager. I started late, unlike other guys. I started when I was a teenager in Washington DC. ACB: Who were some of your influences? JC: I listened to Billy Eckstine’s band. There was the sound of biddy bop. I listened to Max Roach. Billy Eckstine had Art Blakey on drums. There was a whole lot of guys including Gene Grouper and Buddy Rich. There were 18-20 large bands that you could hear with good drummers in all of them. I listened to all of those guys. Also, there was Syd Catlett and Kenny . . . ACB: Kenny Clarke? JC: Yeah, and I’m trying to think of all the other people who were around then. There were a few guys in my town that I played with. One of them was Max Simpkins, who was my age or a little older. He was the youngest prominent be-bop drummer in the town, except for an older guy, George Dude Brown, who had been out on the road with some big bands. He was with Louis Armstrong’s band. Those guys were available at that time. I can’t think of their names, now, so many of them. ACB: I understand. Was Miles the first major performer that you performed with in the 1950’s? JC: No, no. I went on the road at 21, with Earl Bostic, who worked with Dinah Washington. That’s how I met Dinah. When she sang, she traveled with a pianist Wynton Kelly. When we played for her, Keter Betts and I played with Wynton but not with her. Later on, we formed her first trio. Before that, she didn’t have a trio. She traveled with musicians to different places and picked up others. She traveled with a piano player and picked up a drummer. Unless she was married to a drummer, at the time, she picked up the musicians that she needed. ACB: Were you Dinah Washington’s music director? JC: Yes, I could say that. ACB: You were her husband, right? JC: Yeah, probably what happened, she made most of her husbands the music director. ACB: So, you weren’t the first music director, I would assume? JC: No, I remember seeing her with a drummer named Teddy Stewart. He was the music director. ACB: On this piece we just played, Someday My Prince Will Come, tell us about that set. How was it working with Coltrane and Miles Davis? Was that setting difficult? Was Miles a herethere, start-stop type of artist or band leader? JC: Miles was okay. He could get along with people that he liked. So, it wasn’t a problem, if he liked you. If he didn’t like you, it might be a problem. ACB: [Laughing.] JC: If he liked you, it was cool. ACB: Yeah, I’m pretty sure he liked his band members? JC: Yeah, he probably didn’t hire anybody he didn’t like. ACB: I remember reading a story about how Philly Joe Jones just left because you replaced him in the band. Is that correct? JC: Yeah. ACB: Philly left because of health problems, so Miles had to find someone else. So, how did that happen with you coming on-board? JC: While I was with Dinah, I went to Florida and met Julian
Cannonball Adderley. We were talking and, eventually, he wanted to come to New York. Prior to that, Charlie Parker died. Cannonball figured he had a spot, if came to New York and played. All of those guys, Lou Donaldson and the regular alto players around town did not do too much when Charlie Parker was there. After he died, he figured it cleared out a little bit and he might have a chance. So, that’s what he was talking about, coming to New York. He was a band teacher in Fort Lauderdale and wanted to come to New York. So, that’s how met him. Cannonball came in town and found me. We talked about what the guys were doing in New York. Where everybody was working and who was there. So, he was interested in coming to New York. A little later, he got a band and this manager, John Levy, wanted to hear the band. So, he brought guys from Florida that he was working with down there. They consisted of Junior Mance, who he had been with in the Army, his brother Nat Adderley on saxophone, and a drummer that I never knew his name but they called him St. Mary or something like that. He was West Indian and his name was Sam Jones, I think. So, he brought that band to New York to audition for John Levy, who said, “The drummer is kind of weak. You probably need to get another drummer and we can do something. He knew about me because we had talked and played a couple of times when he came to New York. I was working someplace and he would come by and play. So, he told Miles about me. When he got in Miles’ band, Philly Joe was there with Paul, Red, and Coltrane. They were a quintet, until Cannonball made it a sextet. Philly Joe was having problems and, sometimes, he wouldn’t show up for the gig. Julian wanted to keep the gig and stay with Miles. So, he said to me, “Joe isn’t showing up, sometimes. Why don’t you come by and sit in with us? If Joe doesn’t show up, you can play. So, I did that a few times. I sat through the night and listened to the band and the arrangements. One time, Joe didn’t show up for a record date. They were doing Porgie and Bess and Joe had done half of it. This particular day, 25 guys were sitting in the studio, waiting for Joe to show up. ACB: You’re talking about Philly Joe Jones, right? JC: Yeah, they were waiting for Joe to show up. So, Miles looked at me and said, “Okay, you got it.” I said, “Okay.” So, that’s what happened. I finished the other half of the recording date. A little while after that, Miles called me, one night, and told me that I was in the band. It was 6 o’clock in the evening, New York time, and the phone rang. It was Miles saying, “I want you to come into the band because Joe is not going to be here anymore. We talked about where I was working. We never talked about money, just where I was working. He said, “I’m working tonight.” I asked where. He said, “In Boston.” I didn’t know, but he was probably in Boston while he was talking to me. I said, “What time do you start? He said, “9 o’clock.” I reiterated that, “It’s 6 o’clock in New York, now right? How am I going to make it tonight? He said, “You want the gig don’t you.” I said, “Yeah man.” There was a shuttle plane from Washington, DC to New York in 55 minutes and New York to Boston in 55 minutes. I packed my bag, caught a cab to the airport for the shuttle. I was up there in 55 minutes. When I got there, they were on the bandstand playing at the Storyville Club owned by George Weems. Miles figured he better start on time so he could get his money. They were playing ‘Round About Midnight. Quietly, I crept up there, while they played, and got the drums set up in time to play the part in the tune that goes, “Bop bop baaaa bop bop.” ACB: Yeah! JC: “Bop dong bop!” I played that with them and I was in the band. ACB: How was it playing behind Coltrane, when he would really get off and go to firing? JC: Well, it was something that you had to play with because he was searching for what he was trying to do. He used to play for a long time and you had to lay with him. I was lucky enough to have the stamina to do that. It took some stamina because he would play 20-30-minute solos, ya know. After that, he would go stand in the corner. He did that in Chicago at the hotel, where you were standing outside in the snow. ACB: North Park Hotel? JC: Wasn’t the North Park, it was the other one, what’s the other hotel? ACB: The Southern? JC: Yeah, The Southern, yeah, The weather was so bad that, when I got off the train, I stepped off the train in some Italian shoes with snow up to my knees. When we got to the hotel, there were people around the block. You said that you were one of them? ACB: Yes, I was. JC: We got inside, set up, getting ready to play. Across from the lobby was a travel agent booth. The electric wiring had done something funny and started to smoke. We thought the place was on fire because it got smokey. But nobody left. You could have hollered “Fire!” in there but
nobody left. So, I got up and made them leave. We were there two weeks. It was so cold that I didn’t come out of that hotel. ACB: What was the story about you almost hitting Coltrane with a stick? JC: Well, it’s about John playing a long time. I start perspiring right after the first tune. So, by the time he gets to play, I’m already wet. The stick flipped right out of my hand and flew right over his head. When we came off the stand, he said, “Damn. I didn’t know what was happening. I thought you threw a stick at me for playing too long.” I said, “No man, that was an accident.” ACB: You were with Miles for five years. How does the music you played then compared to the music Miles was playing, after you left? What music was more influential for today’s artists? The music that you were doing or the music Miles played, later on, in the 1970s? JC: It’s an interesting difference. I think it’s a personal thing, I think the music I was doing probably appeals more to people that were my age now, back then. I remember when he changed. Miles got with Sarah Vaughn and she said, “I don’t know why Miles changed his way of playing. I used to like the way he played.” She didn’t care for what he was trying to evolve into. He was always looking to do something new. He never wanted to look back. He was always trying to find something different. After I left the band, he had Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Wayne Shorter. I left when George Coleman was there. George was searching, trying to find himself. For a moment, he was trying to play what we were playing, but they were
playing it faster. Until Miles found something that he could do, he was searching for things. He evolved to all the things you heard after that. ACB: Well, the man was a creative genius in different time frames and elements. JC: What he used to say, he thought about how he hired guys. He would not hire anybody that he heard but didn’t get anything from. He said, “You see, I can bounce some stuff off of them and they can bounce something back. If they bounce something back and I like it, that’s how he hired guys.” That’s probably how he hired Herbie. He used to ask people, “Who should I hire?” He would get the consensus of opinion. The guys would tell him Herbie Hancock, “Why don’t you get Herbie?” He had a few people say that. Then, he said, “Yeah, maybe.” He listened to the consensus of opinion for all the people he picked. ACB: We’re talking to the great Mr. Jimmy Cobb. It was a pleasure to talk to you Jimmy Cobb. You know you are a hero to a young man by the name of Vince Welborn, Jr.? JC: Yeah, I know Vince. ACB: Vince said that you are his hero. He loves Jimmy Cobb. JC: I see him, every now and then. He’s very busy with what he does, I guess. ACB: Yes. JC: He’s taking care of business. ACB: Yes, he is and doing a great job of keeping the man’s name alive and the whole Miles Davis philosophy. Hey listen, Thanks very much, Jimmy. I appreciate your time. JC: Okay, brother. Have a nice night. Nice talking to you ACB: Peace to you. Bye, bye.
