He says, “Come on in, don’t worry about the owner, just come on up and sit next to me.”
And I do that. Go in and listen to the band, and once in a while sit in a little bit. Sometimes he shows me something, he says, “Do this, try this.” Diz is a marvelous teacher. I never saw anybody that open and willing to give his knowledge to people. So encouraging—freely gives of himself to young musicians. He was loved all over the world for that.
He takes me aside and executes what he feels should accompany his music. “Did you ever hear of Shadow Wilson?” Of course, I hadn’t. I’ve never heard of anybody. He sits down and plays something from Shadow. Diz’s drum technique isn’t great, but he can illustrate exactly how to do things and he’s an excellent sight reader. I’m only sixteen and thrilled with our relationship. He almost forces my talent out into the open. He has so many terrific rhythmic ideas. “Salt Peanuts”—the tempo is almost impossible. Diz works out the patterns and spoon-feeds the whole thing to his drummers. After you play it for a while, it doesn’t seem difficult at all.
One night Dizzy’s drummer, Jerry Gilgore, says, “I’ve got this gig, I’ve got to go.” And Dizzy says to Jerry, “Go ahead, man, make some money and good luck.”
I don’t think I’m up to it, but Dizzy says, “Well, Stan, want to try it?”
“Yeah.”
Nervous, but I get through it and he likes it. He always encourages me, all through my life.
So I get the job! Eighteen dollars a week! Join the union. We play six nights a week. Oscar Smith, the bass player, is a schoolteacher, and the pianist is Johnny Acea. The owner is Nat Siegel, a clarinet player who plays in the pit band at the Earle Theater. He’s a good guy. He likes Dizzy. Once in a while he plays a little clarinet—not too good, but he owns the place. Short, bad leg, dark hair, very scattered type of talk. He’s okay.
Diz would keep giving me advice: “Get up in the front line. Make a statement. Play against the horns. Improvise a little. Play in a musical way.” He wanted the drummer to be freer, more creative, to listen and do things to help the other players. He showed me the old ways wouldn’t work with the new music. Four clops to the bar were out. Dizzy wanted the drums to punctuate, as in a paragraph, to punctuate what he was doing musically. This music was flying. It had wings.
One night she comes in—my mother—sits at the end of the bar, has a blast then splits. Of course, I’m worried about her behavior. But she leaves early. She knows I’m playing and comes in, just shows up.
Oscar Smith, Dizzy’s bassist schoolteacher, remembered Stan as “a white guy who played well and sort of passed for black.” Stan’s time in the Spring Garden Gym had apparently acculturated him well for his entry into the African-American art form of jazz. His job with Dizzy boosted his confidence and gave him a taste of his own earning power.
When he turned seventeen, Stan lied about his age to the boxing commission and started casting about for his first paying fight.
But even before that, another seemingly impossible musical opportunity opened up for young Stan. Shortly after joining up with Dizzy, the teenager was invited to play an engagement with the number-one band in the nation.
So now I’m working at the Downbeat with Dizzy when one night this guy comes in. He says he’s Benny Goodman’s manager and they’re over at the Earle Theater and Benny needs a drummer. Zoot Sims is in Benny’s band and he’s been coming to the Downbeat every night and Zoot, who’s not much older than me, loves the way I play.
The King of Swing needs a drummer. The manager hears me and he likes me and he wants to introduce me to Benny. I say, “Sure, let’s go!”
They take me backstage at the Earle. I’ve never been to any backstage in my life. The lights, the curtains, Benny Goodman. I’m gonna meet him! They take me to his dressing room, with a star on the door. Benny looks like a tailor, medium size. He has his back to me. I walk in, and . . . he’s urinating in the sink! You see, the King don’t walk to the bathroom! He turns around and he puts out his hand.
What do I do? I want the job—I gotta shake his hand.
I shook.
I go home and I’m all excited and I say, “Ma! I’m gonna be playing with Benny Goodman tomorrow morning, nine o’clock!” You see, he was so popular he could play these engagements of five shows every day for one or two weeks, and the first show started at nine o’clock in the morning.
She says, “Shut up and go to sleep.”
She doesn’t believe me. How could she believe me?
So I go in the next day and I play the first show. The lights come on, the curtain goes up. I’m sixteen years old, I’ve never played with a big band, I’ve never read music, I don’t have my own drums and I’ve never even been on a real stage before. I was an unguided missile, but here I am playing with Benny Goodman, the number-one band in the country!
I fake it all the way through. What the heck am I doing up here? The lights, the Pearl drums. The Earle is one of those big palaces. Big facade, owned by one of the studios in Hollywood—they owned the movie theaters at that time. It’s beautiful. Beautiful box office. Big marquee with the lights: “Earle Theater” in big bulbs. The foyer is beautifully carpeted. Open seating. Big stage, real big stage. Good lighting, theater lighting, very ornate, rococo, big balcony, big theater, fifteen hundred seats maybe, the balcony curved around. And they have a pit band, too, a sixteen-piece pit band that plays during the intermissions and during the newsreel. The pit band plays three or four numbers, then after ten minutes of that, Benny Goodman starts his theme and everybody says, “Hey Benny!” Then the curtain slowly opens and you start your show. Guaranteed sold out.
After that first show, I call up my mother again and I say, “Ma! Come down, I’m playing with Benny!”
“Will you stop?”
So, finally the second show goes on. And there in the front row is my mother, and her mouth is open three feet. “Benny Goodman! You? What!” Usually, every time I see her, my heart stops, I want to crawl inside the bass drum. But this one time, her mouth never shuts, and I keep looking at her. Benny turns to the band and introduces each of the players, except me. Then I hear my mother pipe up, “Hey Benny! Who’s the drummer?”
Benny kept me on through the engagement but he never once looked at me. Not once did he announce my name to the audience. After we were introduced in his dressing room, he did not say one word to me. I found out later he didn’t really like drummers.
Later he had a guy with him in New York by the name of Jumbo Brown—never to be heard from again—but they’re playing in front of twelve or thirteen thousand people at the Paramount Theater. Benny goes into his trance. The drums are up on a riser, and he walked around and unscrewed the beater ball from the bass drum, takes it out, looks at it, and puts it in his pocket. That’s the kind of stuff he did. Weird guy. He couldn’t remember the names of his own family. He called everybody “Pops.” He calls his kid: “Hey Pops, come over here.” Calls his wife: “Come here, Pops!”
After the engagement, Benny’s brother Irving issued train tickets to all the band members except me. He comes to me and says, “Benny says you should go home.”
But at sixteen—even if only for a week—I played with the King.
Without more than a few scattered drum lessons, Stan was playing with the nation’s most popular orchestra and its most innovative trumpet player. If he was hurt at being ignored by Goodman, Stan was buoyed by his growing relationship with Dizzy, who was a strong role model even beyond music.
“He was a master teacher,” said Stan, “and he was voracious in his desire to succeed. He was a musician and a businessman.”
Nickname notwithstanding, Dizzy was focused, responsible, and in a committed marriage. For a teenager like Stan who came from a fractured family, Dizzy Gillespie was someone he trusted and admired like an older brother.
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