JazzCore1/part four

JazzCore1/part four

Greet Danny Campbell, the fourth of five St. Louis jazz musicians playing in JazzCore1. Your comments invited at the end of the set.

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The scene was the [1965] Newport Jazz Festival.  The ’happening’ was a confluence of drummers: Elvin Jones, Louis Bellson, Art Blakey, and Buddy Rich….  Rich played the final solo in this gathering of eagles.  ‘That was the time,’ he told me. ‘That was THE time.  When those other cats were all done, I sat down behind my drums and began.  I’m telling you, I did things that day I didn’t even know I was capable of playing.  I actually astonished myself! When I was finished, I laid the sticks down on the large tom, stood up, and walked off.  I had said it all, man.  Like I had never said it before.’ Then he added, ’Or since.’

     Mel Torme, Traps/ The Drum Wonder: The Life of Buddy Rich (1991)

Danny Campbell

Being a jazz musician requires lots of study.  It’s a hard, hard music…. There’s no one method for someone to teach you how to play the music.  You have to search on your own, you have to feel your way through the music and find yourself, which is very hard. 

The best thing you can do is learn your instrument because jazz is going to require you to express yourself in many different ways.  If you want to play jazz, listen to the music and transcribe the music, because you have to be able to swing and have the pulse and feel of the music.

I see myself a kind of a keeper of the flame.  I’m not out there actually making a living, but not everybody has to….  Sometimes we need people who just know how to direct others to get to the music.  We know basic things--kind of just to keep the flame going.  We have small embers.  We don’t have a big torch or a big pyre, like some of the jazz musicians.  Some knowledge of jazz is important even though I don’t make a living at it.  It’s not about the money; it’s just about doing what you really love to do.

Being right in the zone and focused is what we want all the time.  I try to have that whenever I play.  It doesn’t always happen.  I get the critical voice that comes...but it’s not always there, and when it’s not there, it’s wonderful.  The band is playing together, your tone is together—at that point, you’re just saying to yourself, ‘Okay, what do I want to play?  I can play anything.  I’m going to take a chance.’

     ---Danny Campbell

Jazz improvisation thrives on the unpredictable--those unplanned moments in an improvised solo when you surprise yourself.  Say you’re doing “Whisper Not” for the fifth, or tenth, or hundredth time.  You know the tune and the changes, and yet, midway through improvising, you play a line or lick you’ve never played before, never planned or thought about, but there it is, new and satisfyingly just right.   

That’s the sweet side of jazz and unpredictability.  The darker side is more mundane but still important: When will I work?  What’s my next gig?

How does a jazz musician plan their life and remain creative in the face of such livelihood risk and uncertainty?  One answer: Control what you can. Be musically versatile and prepared, just as the soloing musician who is in shape seems more likely to come upon those surprising moments of creativity.  Do the learning so you’re ready for the earning when—if--it comes.  Take the chance, but do it with competence.

Trumpeter Danny Campbell has done that.  He has also known the challenges and the limits of doing that when work as a jazz musician seriously lags, and he has to navigate the tension between his art and everyday uncertainty. 

Three men who made music a key part of their lives have inspired Danny to learn.  His father was the first and most powerful of the three, a model of the musical but not music-dependent life:  “My dad played piano, so I always fiddled around with it,” the kind of fiddling that can lead somewhere, begin unlocking the legacy.

Dad was “a classical player” who earned his doctorate in education from Washington University and taught at both the secondary and college levels. Danny remembers: He  “didn’t go off playing professionally.  But he learned how to play the piano in like two or three years….  He learned very fast.  I still have the little brochure that he gave out at his concert.… He did all this literature—Beethoven, Debussy, and Tchaikovsky—within less than a three-year period.  They left the window open at East St. Louis Lincoln Senior High so he could get in and practice for hours and hours--learned how to play piano, gave a full recital when he came out of high school.  He was very focused.”

His father hoped to pass on both the music and the focus, and, in Danny’s case, he succeeded.  “He made all four of his kids play music, and I’m the only one who stayed with it.” 

One other key difference: “He didn’t make me play piano like he did my brothers and sisters.” Maybe Danny’s father saw the connection that Danny had already formed, young listener that he was:  “A buddy down the street, I heard him playing the trumpet when I was in third grade. Sat down and played his trumpet, and it sounded so good, it blew me away, and I said, ‘I want to play that, too, when I’m in fourth grade.’ So when fourth grade came, I auditioned and tried out to play the trumpet--and stuck with it ever since.” The attraction, the connection, the deep hearing.

Danny’s father noticed.  In fourth grade, when Danny was 9 or 10, his father “bought me a little trumpet—a little student trumpet—and he let me go a year with the school band, feeling my way through, and then, time to get lessons.  ‘It’s the only way you’re going to get better.  Got to have lessons.’  So he arranged private lessons for me…. I was learning how to play a trumpet, period—no particular style, just learning how to play a trumpet—basic lessons.”

(The piano came back much later, when Danny enrolled at University of Missouri-Kansas City to study jazz performance and had to choose a “secondary instrument.”  He took three semesters of basic piano and one of jazz piano.  “You can use a piano for understanding chord structures and seeing them all at once as you play them….  You can do interval training with a piano. So it’s very important to learn piano.”)

For two or three years beginning in eighth grade, Danny‘s father took him to the old Baton Music on Delmar to study trumpet with Charlie Rose, the second key figure in Danny’s music life and, says Dennis Owsley in City of Gabriels, one of the “highly trained music teachers in the black schools of the St. Louis region” (9).

Danny’s father shared the legacy and nurtured his son’s talent in another way:  Playing records for Danny by the likes of Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis and engaging him in “a lot of listening” to jazz, especially trumpet.  “I’ve listened to it since I was maybe in the fourth grade,” when Danny’s father also bought him that first horn.  Then, in eighth grade, under Charlie Rose at Baton, “I got introduced to playing jazz by working with those little play-along recordings like Jamey Aebersold’s. So it’s been over 30 years attempting to play jazz.”

Building his versatility, Danny went classical, too. In high school at Roosevelt, he entered the honors music program.  “I guess no one particular school had a good music program, so it was kind of a program that the public schools put together for all the kids in the public schools to go to this one place….  A lot of my early education came out of that program.”

Danny’s third teacher: Jim Bovinette, with whom Danny studied in high school. He was “probably one of my biggest influences, because he was a philharmonic, classical guy.  He wasn’t with the St. Louis Symphony, but if they needed someone to fill in, then they’d call him.” He was “the union guy, did the show bands. Those guys are like samurai on the trumpet.  They can play anything, right now.  Any show that comes in town….”

The honors program focused on classical training—but not entirely. “They had the jazz band, so it gave us a little taste,” and Danny welcomed it—but you had to be good enough.  “Once we got somewhat proficient on our instrument, then we could try out for the jazz band….  You had to play your instrument somewhat decent to play in the jazz band at honors music because they didn’t let you just come in and play with the jazz band. How well can you play your instrument?  How well are you learning to play your instrument? So that was important in the honors music program.”

Yes, “jazz eventually,” Danny remembers, but what mattered more was playing well in the competition with the other trumpet players in the program—as many as 12 of them. “We had to compete with each other to play whatever music it was.  If it was classical, then how well can you play it and how accurately can you play it?  That was the competition.  Can you sound good?”

Dad was a source of focus in another vital way.  Danny’s parents divorced when he was two years old.  “Dad lived in the city, and I moved in with him at 14 because I was getting kinda bad.  I was running with the bad crowd, trying to be tough with the guys.  My dad said, ‘Now get down here and learn that instrument and get on your school work.’  So he helped me focus on school.”

It worked: “I was a National Honor Society guy when I graduated, 3.4-3.5 grade-point average.  The second semester of my freshman year, I took lessons from Bovinette, and a year later I had a four-year scholarship to Jackson State University.  We had an Omega Psi Phi classical audition contest--piano players, violin players--and I whipped everybody.  I didn’t go to the school, but I won that scholarship,” Danny recalls with a laugh.

He didn’t go because, he says, they wanted him to join the marching band. “I didn’t believe in marching.  I was adamant. I wasn’t going to march in any band.  At that time I figured I was a jazz musician, I was going to be a jazz musician, and if I was to march, I would bump into somebody, and that would ruin my chops for the rest of my life, so I was always against marching bands.”

Danny’s father passed away in 2004.  “That’s actually when I came back to St. Louis.  I was then at Northern Illinois University.  I was in my senior year—my last year—and he had cancer.  He told me not to come home.  He said, ‘Don’t come home without your degree.’  That’s what he said.  But…I came home, and I was kinda scared. After a week or two, I saw him.  He was sick.  He didn’t say anything like, ‘I told you not to come home.’  It didn’t really matter.  It was just being with him…. I came back in March, he passed away in May.“

One lasting but challenging gift his father gave Danny was encouraging him to seek a life in music and the playing prowess that it required.  In high school, Danny’s “first little gig was a 30-minute church gig—I think it was at Morningstar Baptist Church—paid twenty-five dollars.” He had told his father, “‘I want to work at McDonald’s’…’No, you’re not going to work at McDonald’s.’  He wouldn’t let me work a job—like at McDonald’s or at a clothing store.  He said, ‘You’re going to work on the trumpet.  You get a gig, get a gig playing trumpet.’”

“I think that got me a little spoiled, because when you did music gigs, you got paid for it.  It was euphoric.  ‘Oh, paid for services rendered.  I’m going to go practice some more and get better.’  He’d say, ‘Now you have to be better the next time you play!’  So he would encourage that.  ‘Work on your horn’ as opposed to ‘Go out there and just work at McDonald’s.’ Because he felt like if I got used to that, what, hundred and twenty bucks that they give, then I would say, ‘Ah, forget the trumpet, I can go make a hundred and twenty bucks working at McDonald’s.’  Yeah, he was actually against that.”  That issue—music gig vs. day gig—would continue to challenge Danny as it has other musicians.

From his father and from teachers such as Charlie Rose and Jim Bovinette, Danny learned a key lesson: playing well, jazz or classical, was what counted, and he played both through high school.  “So it didn’t matter…music was music.  It didn’t matter what style.  That’s what I loved about Bovinette.”

But “jazz eventually.”  Danny went on to play with “the big band in high school” and then the Jazz Edge big band, which Robert Edwards formed and Danny joined when he was coming out of high school.  “That furthered our education.  Playing in the big bands, learning to play in the big bands, reading.”

 His listening furthered it, too, as he began to create his style as a player, hearing and building on the legacy history that spoke to him.  “I listened to a lot of Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Kenny Dorham, Blue Mitchell--yeah, most of the bop guys.  The swing era, right after Louis Armstrong…I didn’t listen to much of those guys. I didn’t listen to a lot of Louis until later. Something about the bop guys that really sticks with a lot of us—being able to rip fast notes, you know.  But just to play those lines like Charlie Parker…those were my main heroes.”

“I think one of my biggest influences would be Lee Morgan…because of his very bold, sassy, brassy sound.  Clifford had a smoother sound--I like Clifford a lot—Miles had a softer, subdued sound.  He was very, very dynamic—more dynamic than some of the players.  I think I’m more like Lee Morgan.”

But Danny has matured into the kind of stylistic flexibility and awareness that a professional player needs and his father would have appreciated:  “Lee Morgan can’t exist everywhere. No, it’s depending on the music.  I try to fit the style of the music including with my improvisation….  If we’re playing some Duke Ellington, like ‘Cottontail’—that’s more a swing era tune, not too be-bop, so I try to think more of those guys right after Dizzy but before Clifford…Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison, swing guys like that….  So I try to fit the style.  I won’t try to play like Woody Shaw over a Duke Ellington piece.”

What matters is  “trying to maintain the integrity of the style of that era.  I definitely try to go for that.  There was a time when I didn’t.  We didn’t care, we just played as many notes as we could cover…even if the song was a ballad, it didn’t matter.”

What changed Danny’s connection to history and style? “Taking music classes, history classes—jazz-music history—and, of course, listening to the music…. Plus having good teachers to direct you, so…if you were playing something wrong or out of style, they would be there to correct that, get you in the style of the music.  ‘Listen to this guy.’  So, that helps…direction from teachers.” Legacy learning.

After his father’s death, Danny lived the musician’s life, playing for a living, discovering and trying to master the challenging unpredictability of that life:  “You never know what’s going to happen.  Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, but just the whole adventure of it, it’s exciting.  Sometimes it pays well, things are really good, sometimes it’s not, but it’s maybe the hope for…finding some balance, some consistency of living the life as a musician—not being rich, not being famous, it’s not even about that.  It’s maintain this living, paying your bills, just by playing music.  It’s hard to let go of music, it really is.  I’ve tried, I still try sometimes….”

In 2009, Danny tried.  He was back from Northern Illinois University, not yet with a degree, and music wasn’t paying the bills. “I just needed any job at that point,” Danny recalls, so he took a part-time job driving a van. After a year of that, he realized that “since I’m driving, I might as well get a job that’s paying more for driving.” He got his commercial driver’s license and took a job driving a bus for Metro in St. Louis.   He drove part-time for about eight months, which still allowed him to do music gigs, and then, after a layoff, switched to full-time for four years—his “first, real full-time job.”

The work was demanding, partly because it was “totally the opposite of music, nothing to do with music,” and, Danny recalls,  “that was a struggle for me. Eight to 12 hours a day—so, yes, totally the opposite of music.  Of course you can’t listen to music.  It’s very important that you get people safely where they want to go….  Customer service, safety, so there’s no room for music there.  Eight hours to 12 hours a day—no music, no headphones, nothing.”

So Danny would drive the bus, and “it would get to a point where I was singing songs in my head.  I had to make up my own music, which is not good when you have to concentrate on the road and monitor 30, 40 people on your bus and traffic and things like that.  It was a stressful job.”

After a day of driving, Danny would get home, watch some TV, and go to bed.  “Not listening to music had become part of my life as opposed to constantly listening to music.” Another challenge: Driving the bus by day and playing gigs at night or on weekends. “I might have a job that started at 10 o’clock at night and might be done at one o’clock in the morning, but I have to get up and be at the bus station at 3 in the morning. I used to do that a lot, but it got to a point where the job is…important enough that it deserves the respect that you have to get those people where they need to be safely, so you can’t come on the job sleepy.”

Danny’s practicing—that critical state of preparation--waned, too.  Before Metro, he played his horn at least three hours a day.  “When I was driving the bus, it was haphazard.  It might be five minutes today, and then three days later I might play for 15 minutes.  So there was no consistent schedule of practice.  My technique and my chops just got worse and worse.”

 When he got called for gigs, Danny recalls, “I became less able to perform. You work an eight-hour, 12-hour job, and you come home and you don’t want to really deal with your horn.  Maybe it’s after 10, and you stay in an apartment.  You can’t play your horn.  It’s too late.  There’s a loudness ordinance, you can’t play loud after a certain time, so that plays a part in my inability to practice.”  Yes, “every Friday I had a big fat check in my account, so it was like, I can’t really play this music job, I haven’t been practicing that much, but I’m okay because I have a check in the bank. So I started to slack off.”

In 2014, after 4 years of driving, Danny left Metro, taking the risk just to see what would follow, embracing the unplanned:  “I wanted to leave there and explore my music more and see if I could make something happen.”

Danny gave up the certainty of that regular pay, and he has since made a number of good musical things happen in his life, but are they enough?  “I took a loss, money-wise, pay-wise.  I don’t get a check every weekend, but time-wise I’m more free since then.” 

If not “regularly,” music work does come, and the fact that, as he says, “I play different types of music” helps him get closer to “making a living off the music.”  Danny’s playing now ranges from wedding and salsa gigs to choice Bistro engagements such as his recent “Art of Blakey” quintet performance and two splashy Jazz St. Louis Big Band jobs:  “Ellington’s Nutcracker” and the Whitaker Jazz Speaks Series event, “Duke Ellington & Film.”  Danny’s daily practice time has returned to its pre-Metro level of three hours minimum.

He also teaches trumpet students both through Jazz St. Louis and at Grand Center Arts Academy. And he gets hired from time to time to help set up audio equipment and instruments for visiting groups performing in St. Louis. “Say if the Temptations come to town, I might get picked to help organize the music equipment--put up the drum set or the microphones.”

So, for the moment, Danny continues to take the chance, solo into uncertainty.  He lives a music-centered life that is satisfying but still unpredictable.  Yes, he’s been “making it,” but  “it’s been hit and miss,” and “there’s always the risk of those dry spells when a gig is not coming through. Because the bills keep coming.”  While “some months might be good,” work “can still…drop off, work can drop off in two weeks.” Danny sees clearly:  “I’m older now, and if something happens…if I break an arm or a leg or if I get really sick, at my age, then what? I’m already close…on edge, so anything like that would just totally wipe me out.”

He still holds out hope for what he calls  “the balance:  Got to find the balance between steady money—and maybe a pension, medical insurance, stuff like that—and still be able to do music.” He knows well, as his father often told him, that finishing his NIU degree is key, and that remains a possibility.  So does finding an agent to help him with the business side of getting gigs.

And, yes, so does returning to non-music work. Negotiating between the real and the ideal is hard: “If I didn’t do music, I wouldn’t have a problem like driving a bus, because that’s all I can do.  And it’s the only way I can make my money.  Music gives you this other option.  You can make money, but then again there’s the other side where it can be rough.”

Danny recently completed two more choice music gigs through Jazz St. Louis: playing in the orchestra for the three-week St. Louis run of Bud, Not Buddy, with a jazz score by Terence Blanchard, and joining the band for another Whitaker Jazz Speaks Series event at the Bistro, “Harlem’s Renaissance.”

 Now, though, he will have to decide: “I could potentially go back to Metro, but I thought that, instead of staying at Metro, I can really go anywhere.  I can drive somewhere where I like to drive, somewhere maybe warm, like Las Vegas.  So the option for doing that and making a living, keeping food in my mouth, is still there.  But music is my love, so…. I don’t have kids, so I can afford to take chances.  I can afford it because it’s just me—I don’t have dogs or cats or anyone who depends on me.  It’s just me.”

He still hears his father’s voice: “’You’re going have to work.’  That’s what my dad used to always tell me.  ‘I can’t live your life for you.  You’re going to have to make your own decisions, and you’re going to have to work for the rest of your life.  Now where you want to work and in what capacity you’re going to work is dependent upon you.’”