Music was not Enough PDF
Preview Music was not Enough
MUSIC WAS NOT ENOUGH MUSIC WAS NOT ENOUGH by BOB WILBER Assisted by Derek Webster M MACMILLAN PRESS Music Division © Bob Wilber 1987 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987 978-0-333-44418-4 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1987 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Wessex Typesetters (Division of The Eastern Press Ltd) Frome, Somerset in 10/12pt Caledonia British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Wilber, Bob Music was not enough.-(Macmillan popular music studies). 1. Wilber, Bob 2. Jazz musicians-United States-Biography I. Title II. Webster, Derek 785.42'092'4 ML419.W5 ISBN 978-1-349-09605-3 ISBN 978-1-349-09603-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-09603-9 Dedicated to my wife, Pug, who has made everything I've ever dreamed of (including this book) possible Contents Prologue 1 Part I. Aspirations l. Early years 4 2. Out on my own 18 3. Studying with Bechet 23 4. The Nice Jazz Festival 35 Part II. Despair 5. In Bechet' s shadow 43 6. Oblivion isn't so bad 59 7. Clarinet ala King 71 8. A cry for help 87 Part III. Hope 9. Picking up the threads 101 10. Rediscovering Bob Wilber 119 11. On the road 139 Part IV. Happiness 12. At last 153 13. Jazz education 169 14. The Cotton Club 177 15. Hope fulfilled 189 Selective discography 201 Index 206 Prologue This is the story of an angry man. I looked into the mirror on my 50th birthday. I didn't like what I saw. Gazing back at me was the mild mannered, easy-going Bob Wilber the jazz world knew, but the real Bob Wilber was an angry and frustrated man, wondering why he felt that way. I went over my usual targets, my list of scapegoats: my parents who hadn't prepared me for the rough and tumble of life; the unsupportive, uncaring public who had destroyed my self-confidence; the short-sighted, greedy, insensitive critics, agents and producers who hadn't appreciated what I had to offer. Talking to myself in the mirror on that momentous day, I was able to say for the first time, "Wait a minute, Wilber. Who is really to blame for your lack of success? You are, my friend, so stop blaming everybody and everything else. You haven't dealt effectively with life, and only you can do something about it. So get busy man, move!" On that grey March day, the beginning of my 50th year, I took stock of my life. I knew in my heart that it was really my own fault I hadn't attained the goals I had sought when I first started playing jazz. I was well aware of the fact that I had made my life far more difficult than it ought to have been. What had become of the much talked about protege of Sidney Bechet, the curly-haired teenage clarinet player, leader of the Wildcats, the youngest American to appear at the first postwar International Jazz Festival in Nice, France? He didn't even rate a listing in the Dictionnaire du jazz, published in France in the I960s. A lack of self-confidence, an inability to deal with people both at business and social levels, and a mild and almost self-apologetic demeanor in a world that demanded dynamism and charisma were real and painful problems that had combined to bring me to a point where I neither felt good about myself nor liked the person I had become. I had been an insecure, shy lad, dominated by an over-achieving father and protected by a loving and caring mother, a combination not exactly conducive to producing an aggressive and assertive character. At the age of 13 I had taken up the clarinet, and I immediately made an astounding discovery: I could play jazz! Crudely, perhaps, but well enough to earn the appreciation of fellow jazz fans in my home town, and I felt I had finally achieved something. I was flattered by their interest in me. They were all a couple of years older than I, in my sister Mary's class at school; they were people I admired and looked up to. When they 2 I MUSIC WAS NOT ENOUGH started inviting me to jam sessions, referring to me as "Kid Wilber," their great new find on clarinet, I was elated. I had been accepted by these older, smarter, sophisticated guys. I belonged! I convinced myself that music was the true answer to my problems and would provide all the happiness and self-esteem that I hadn't felt up till then. From that point onwards, all my attention was focused on music. Music was the thing: to hell with boy scouts, sports, studies-and who needed girls, anyway? The normal, healthy progression into adulthood became stunted and suspended by my obsession. Looking back, I realize what had happened: I had found something I could do better than my father. Music was an addiction, and my dependence on it as a hiding place from the world was total. I had discovered jazz. It seemed to me to celebrate the very joy of being alive. How different from the rest of my life! I felt stifled in the staid environment of Scarsdale, the suburb of New York City where my family lived. I was fascinated by the backgrounds and life styles of the musicians I admired so much - Louis, Bix, Benny, Fats and the Hawk. I became acutely aware of how difficult the struggle to gain recognition had been for these jazz greats, and contrasted it with the security and affluence of my own life. The comparisons troubled me. It is not difficult to appreciate how the poverty and deprivation of Louis Armstrong's childhood presented barriers that for most people would have proved well-nigh insurmountable. It says a lot for Louis's resilience and character that he overcame them in the way that he did. It is much more difficult to understand how a privileged childhood, in which I had seemingly been surrounded by love and had wanted for nothing, could have produced problems that in their own way were just as severe as those facing a boy growing up in the back alleys of New Orleans. Yet that was the situation in which I found myself. I was filled with the excitement of learning about jazz. I wanted to tell the whole world about this wonderful music, to persuade everybody to love it as much as I did. The more involved I became, the stronger those feelings grew, yet I felt frustrated. Scarsdale seemed to be the very antithesis of that exciting world I had discovered. The calm, orderly gentility of the place was in such contrast to the kaleidoscopic color and excitement in the world of jazz. The town assumed a mantle of grayness, and like Dorothy, I dreamed of escaping to my own land of Oz, where life would be one long continual jam session. I loved the title of Ma Rainey's blues The world is jazz crazy and so am I. Unfortunately the world wasn't jazz crazy-it was just me and a few of my buddies. My poor parents didn't know how to deal with their rebellious offspring. A firm hand on my shoulder coupled with parental advice might have helped temper my enthusiasm with a more realistic view oflife, but I probably wouldn't have listened anyway: like all young rebels, I knew best. Nothing would deter me from immersing myself totally in jazz. I embarked on the long path that led up to that look in the mirror, when I faced the fact that music had not provided the answer to all of life's problems - that indeed, music was not enough. Part I. Aspirations ONE Early years I made my entrance into the world on 15th March 1928 to join my sister Mary Margaret, my mother Mary Eliza and my father Allen Sage Wilber, a partner in the publishing firm ofF. S. Crofts, a small company specializing in college textbooks. At that time we were living on Sullivan Street, just south of Washington Square in Greenwich Village, New York City. I was little more than a year old when Dad took us all out to California to visit my mother's parents, to show them their new grandson and to attend to some publishing business. He had planned to leave his family with his in-laws for a few weeks while he visited colleges in the Midwest. Shortly after leaving California he was shocked to receive a telephone call from his wife's sister, Margaret, telling him that Mary Eliza had been taken seriously ill. He returned immediately by train, only to learn that she had died less than 12 hours after Margaret had talked to him. His grief must have been particularly intense because his wife had no history or indication of illness at all. Many years later a close friend of the family told me that my father came back from California to announce in an almost stoic manner that his wife had died "riddled with cancer." From that day onwards my father was never to mention the subject again until shortly before his death, some 55 years later. Looking back, I often wonder what it was that could have allowed Dad to display to the world such an unemotional far;ade despite the deep grief that must have been within him. I often wonder, too, about my mother and how she had successfully concealed not only from family and friends but also from her dear husband the fact that she was suffering from cancer. She may not have knO\vn what it was, but it is hard to believe she had no inkling that something was wrong. I suppose that even then, at that formative stage, I was subconsciously receiving my first lesson in the art of disguising one's true feelings. If only my father had allowed his grief to pour out, how much more honest and open would our future relationship have been. Dad returned to New York with his two young, motherless children. I remember little of life on Sullivan Street other than a succession of nannies and governesses, one of whom treated us very badly until Dad found out and dismissed her. He eventually engaged the services of Miss Breed, who was a kindly, genteel, professional nanny, and life was very happy with her. In later years I found out that one of our Sullivan Street neighbors at that time was John Hammond, fresh out of college and already beginning to make a name for 4 I MUSIC WAS NOT ENOUGH himself as a dedicated promoter of jazz. In fact, John's apartment was the one next to ours, and I have often wondered if the first jazz I ever heard was from John's phonograph next door as I lay in my crib. In 1931 we moved to a lovely large apartment in Gramercy Park, between Third and Park avenues. Gramercy Park is now, as it was then, a London-style park square ringed by charming and beautifully kept houses dating from the mid-1800s and recalling the elegance and gentility of a bygone age. I attended kindergarten at Friends Seminary, a Quaker school just a few blocks away. Our family were not Quakers; Dad hailed from a long line of Presbyterians. His father and his uncle, a twin brother, had both been ministers, whilst his mother was the organist in her husband's church. Curiously enough, my mother's father, grandfather Clark, was also a Presbyterian minister, along with his twin brother, Edward. We've had no more ministers in the family since-nor any more twins for that matter! I first became aware that there was a new lady in my father's life when Mary Margaret and I were introduced to Miss Margaret Alder. As a young woman from an upper-middle-class background, she had graduated from Wellesley College in 1920 and was employed as a lay-out artist for the magazine Review of Reviews. She was very kind to my sister and me, and clearly wanted to get to know us. In November 1933 she married my father and became the only mother I have ever really known. This beautiful, gracious lady is still alive and well at the age of89. The marriage took place at my stepmother's home in Montclair. It was a very grand affair, and when at school on Monday morning we children were asked what we had done over the weekend, I proudly announced that I had attended my parents' wedding! The teacher could hardly suppress a smile. After the marriage we continued to live in Gramercy Park. That winter, Dad, while watching his two young children attempting to slide down the two-foot high incline around the statue of Edwin Booth on their new Christmas sleds, decided that it was about time he gave his family a country environment. He rented a house in Scarsdale and so set the scene for all the factors that had such a profound effect upon my life. Scarsdale is a suburban community to the north of New York, from which people in business commute some 40 minutes to the city by train each day. It is a community of wealth and privilege, of country clubs and gracious socializing, an Ivy League enclave. During the time I was growing up there, the population was predominantly WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant). After the war, as Scarsdale grew, many people of Jewish background moved up from the city; recent years have seen an influx of Japanese families as more executives with Japanese corporations maintain offices in New York. To this day, there are very few black people living in Scarsdale. When we moved there in 1934 it was a very desirable environment in which to grow up, and I can remember being very happy; my father's affluence provided us with everything children could want. Dad was an achiever. He had graduated from the University of Kansas a Phi Beta Kappa, gone to business school and entered the publishing world with Macmillan in 1913, eventually forming his own company with a colleague, Fred
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