BOB BURFORD

 Terry Andresen If you don't mind, this is an anecdote from my "Anecdotes" BOOK FOUR you might find interesting.

Barrett Deems

This would have been circa 1978 in a jazz club on the near south side of Chicago. Ed’s? Ted’s? I can’t remember. We had a one-night engagement at the club so I recruited the best musicians I could find for the money. In that group were an upright bassist and a vibes player I had used a few times before for country club / yacht club / wedding reception dates in Michigan.

I hired a drummer from South Bend. That would be an easy drive – a straight shot west – and about one hour driving time. He arrived at the venue with time to spare and began setting up. My gear was already set up and I was sitting at the bar with my back to the bandstand. 

Barrett Deems, an absolute jazz legend, a well-known fixture in Chicago, and author of much of the history of jazz in America, came walking into the club, walked straight over to us and had a seat at the bar beside me. Barrett had played with all of the jazz legends and was drummer for Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong for years. It was said about him that metronome manufacturers used him to check the accuracy of their products. He was a human metro­nome. If the tune starts at 120 bpm, it ends at 120. Not 119. Not 121. But 120.

He would take a sip of his drink – milk! He was drinking milk! – and then sit up a little taller and stretch his neck to see over my shoulder. I didn’t think anything of it at first. But after he did that three or four times, I was about to ask him what he was looking at, but he beat me to the punch. “What the hell is he doing?” he asked.

“What?” I asked as I turned around to take a look-see. Oh holy bejeezus! It was the drummer. He was trying to tie one of his hi-hat cymbals to his foot. I excused myself to see what the hell was going on. I’d never seen anything quite like it. 

Some drummers don’t bother to use cases. That’s usually because they endorse manufacturers of their instrument and can have new products just for the asking. But this drummer was one of the breed who used cases. One of the cases is called a trap case. It holds all of the hardware the drummer needs to set up all of his gear. And, apparently, he had left his trap case sitting on his driveway in South Bend.

I sat down with Barrett again and explained what was happening. To which he responded, “Betcha didn’t know this gig was going to be an adventure!” 

Well, nope. And I really was not in the mood for such an adventure.

So Barrett asked me what I was going to do. Of course, playing such a gig without a drummer was not all that rare, so I could have simply sent the guy back home to South Bend and worked the gig without him. I really didn’t want to do that, though. The music genre was swing. But there was no way in hell I was going to have a dude on the set with me with cymbals tied to his feet!

The vibes player and the upright bassist were both seniors in the jazz program at De Paul University. Surely they would know a drummer they could call. I mean, what college student couldn’t use a few extra bucks? I was talking to myself about the very few options I had and was not prepared for what happened next. 

Barrett says, just as casual as you please, “I have an idea. How about I play the gig? We won’t even talk about the bread (money). I’m here. Drums are in the car. Ain’t got nothin’ better to do.”

Barrett Deems would … and could … make “Amazing Grace” swing. And for that you needed a drummer who could swing. That would be Barrett Deems.

Well, that was settled. So we got up from the bar to go haul his drums in. We were joined by a couple of guys who had joined our conversation. The four of us carried all of Barrett’s drum set into the club making one trip of it.

Almost immediately after we had played the last note, Barrett raced out of the club, leaving the rest of us to wonder what was going on. About two minutes later we found out. Barrett came walking back into the club with box – obviously heavy – set it on the bandstand and opened it up. Albums! Vinyl albums!

He got everyone’s attention – of course, that  talent is what makes a drummer a drummer – and proceeded to sell every album in the box. I’m not real clear about this, but I think it was an album of some major importance to the jazz world that he had recently recorded. 

The job paid an even $1000 -- $200 per man. So I paid off all of the guys and decided to take a hit and give my share to Barrett. When I handed him $400, he counted it. “I saw you pay the other guys,” he said, handing $200 back to me. “I take no more than them.”

[I could have written this using the jazz musicians’ hipster language but decided against it. Barrett Deems was totally fluent in the hipster language. For the uninitiated, it might just as well be written in Greek. Jazz fans (hipsters) had a unique slang (jive) using terms like “cat” (musician), “dig” (under­stand), “cool” (approval), “groove” (rhythm), “chops” (technique), “bread” (money / pay) and “hip” (in the know). And that’s just skimming the surface, using the most common terms.]