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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