57Veterans CommitteeHall of FameBy Ira Gitler[Editor’s Note: A number of important jazz artists who are no longerwith us clearly deserve to be included in the DownBeat Hall of Fame.Our Veterans Committee, designed specifically to rectify that situation,recently voted to induct two historic jazz legends who have been overlookedin the past.]Oscar PettifordBassist Oscar Pettiford was a driving force who illuminated the jazzscene through the 1940s and ’50s. He picked up the torch fromDuke Ellington bassist Jimmy Blanton, who had brought theinstrument into the modern era through his pizzicato, hornlike solo linesbefore meeting an early death in 1942.Pettiford was born on an Indian reservation in Okmulgee, Okla., onSept. 30, 1922. One of 11 children, he played in a family band that touredall over the Midwest and the South. By age 10, he was fronting the band,singing, dancing and twirling a baton. Pettiford played piano, tromboneand trumpet before moving into the ensemble as a bassist at age 14. Notenamored of bassists who did a lot of slapping or rode the instrument as ifit were a horse, he gravitated toward “serious instrumentalists”—playerssuch as Milt Hinton with Cab Calloway, Billy Taylor of Ellington’s band,Jimmie Lunceford’s Mose Allen and Fletcher Henderson’s Israel Crosby.Hinton came to Minneapolis with Calloway in 1942 and foundPettiford working in a war plant. The family band had shrunk to fivepieces and was scuffling. Hinton encouraged Pettiford to not let his talent“go down the drain” and convinced him not to be afraid of New York.When Charlie Barnet’s band came to town two months later, Barnet hiredPettiford and took him to New York. There he worked with TheloniousMonk at Minton’s and Roy Eldridge at the Onyx Club on 52nd Street.Pettiford joined Dizzy Gillespie at the Onyx in a co-led quintet that wasthe first group to play the music that soon would be called bebop.One of the numbers Pettiford contributed to the book was “For BassFaces Only,” which Gillespie recorded with his big band in 1946 as “OneBass Hit.” Other well known pieces of his include “Something For You”(also recorded under the titles “Max Is Makin’ Wax” and “Chance It”),“Tricrotism,” “Swingin’ Till The Girls Come Home,” “Bohemia AfterDark” and “Blues In The Closet.”After playing in California with Coleman Hawkins’ group and BoydRaeburn’s big band, Pettiford joined Duke Ellington’s orchestra in the fallof ’45 and in the next three years established himself as one of the topbassists in jazz. In ’49 while with Woody Herman, he broke his arm duringa game with the band’s softball team. During his convalescence he took upthe cello and came up with a dextrous pizzicato that was imbued with thefeeling of Charlie Christian’s guitar style.From ’52 to ’58, Pettiford led small groups and an innovative 13-pieceband that was formed for a Town Hall concert and went ont to play severaltimes at Birdland. In ’58, Pettiford left for Europe and settled inCopenhagen, where he exerted a strong influence on the talented teenageDanish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen.On Sept. 8, 1960, Pettiford died at the hands of what doctors describedas “a polio-like virus.”Pianist Dick Katz, who played in Pettiford’s small groups and bigband, said: “If I had to sum up Oscar, I would say that he should beranked with the select group of great jazz artists, beyond merely one ofthe great jazz bassists.”DOWNBEAT ARCHIVESOscar PettifordTadd DameronDOWNBEAT ARCHIVES34 DOWNBEAT August 2009
Tadd DameronBorn Tadley Ewing Peake in Cleveland, Ohio, on Feb. 21, 1917,Tadd Dameron was a self-taught pianist who learned jazz rudimentsfrom his saxophone-playing brother, Caesar, and washeavily influenced by Duke Ellington and George Gershwin.His first professional playing took place during his high schoolyears as a singer with trumpeter Freddie Webster. When the band’spianist quit, Dameron became the emergency replacement. He leftOberlin college in similar fashion when Blanche Calloway’s orchestracame to play a prom and its pianist, Clyde Hart, fell ill. Tadd filled inand left town with the band. From Calloway he went to Zach Whyte’sband, replacing Sy Oliver. In 1940 he moved to Kansas City, wherehe wrote for Harlan Leonard’s Rockets. This is when he first met andjammed informally with Charlie Parker. Then, Dameron did war plantwork in Chicago and Lima, Ohio, before coming to New York in ’42to write for Jimmie Lunceford, later contributing to the books of theBenny Carter and Teddy Hill bands.Dameron met Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and KennyClarke at Minton’s and sat in with the Gillespie–Oscar Pettiford groupat the Onyx Club on 52nd Street. In the next few years his compositions,such as “Cool Breeze” and “Our Delight,” were played by BillyEckstine and Gillespie’s big bands. In ’47 he led his own quintet on52nd Street with Fats Navarro on trumpet and recorded for Savoy. Hisbig break came in ’48 when he led a sextet that was in residence as thehouse band at the Roost on Broadway and recorded for Blue Note. Byusing wide voicings, sometimes four octaves apart, he made the trumpetand two-tenor saxophone front line sound like a larger ensemble.His writing for large orchestras was also unique. Dexter Gordon,commenting on playing Dameron’s charts in the Eckstine band, said,“The parts he writes are so melodic in themselves. It’s almost as ifevery part was lead, in that sense. Usually when a cat writes the secondaryparts ... they vary as to the sound and the interest and so forth.But with Tadd, his parts were always beautiful. A lot of times I’d playthe fourth parts and they were beautiful ... Tadd is really the romanticistof the whole period—he’s a poet.”Dameron was a mentor to many, including Sarah Vaughan (whorecorded what perhaps is his most beautiful song, “If You Could SeeMe Now”), Clifford Brown and Benny Golson (both of whom playedin Dameron’s nonet that recorded for Prestige in ’53).In the early ’50s Dameron became involved with heroin, andalthough he continued to record, his career was interrupted intermittently.In ’58 he wound up in the Federal Narcotics Hospital inLexington, Ky. During his rehabilitation he wrote the music for trumpeterBlue Mitchell’s LP Smooth As The Wind for Riverside, whichcame out in 1961. In June of that year, Dameron was released andresumed his life in New York. He was able to conduct the orchestraon his last album, The Magic Touch, and also subsequently wrotematerial for recordings by Milt Jackson, Sonny Stitt, BennyGoodman, Tony Bennett and Vaughan. Cancer took his life onMarch 8, 1965.Dameron was an urbane, well-read man who once characterizedhimself by saying, “I’m the most misplaced musician in the businessbecause I’m a composer. I’m not an arranger or a pianist. They forcedme to be an arranger because nobody wanted to play my tunes unlessI would write them out. I don’t like to arrange music. I like to directthe band, I like to rehearse the band. I like to supervise a date, to bringout the beautiful things that are happening in other arrangers.”In 1953, while rehearsing his band for a recording date, he said,“Make those phrases flow. When I write something it’s with beauty inmind. It has to swing, sure, but it has to be beautiful.”With Dameron long gone, his music lives on: “Hot House,” “LadyBird,” “Our Delight,” “Casbah,” “On A Misty Night” and“Soultrane,” just to name a few. Many fine musicians continue hislegacy by putting their own spin on these classics.DBAugust 2009 DOWNBEAT 35