Pepper Adams - Part 2

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“Every one of his recordings is a gem, defined by taste, swing and a dazzling technique that was always in the service of telling a story.” – Donald Elfman

“In the modern age, there’s no doubt that – after Harry Carney – he was the most influential baritone player in jazz. But the great thing about Pepper is that he wasn’t just into music – he was interested in everything: poetry, people, books, movies – he just devoured everything.” – Len Dobbin

Not surprisingly, and so characteristic of Jazz as a studied art these days, there actually exists a doctoral dissertation on Pepper. It was written by Aaron Joseph Lington, B.M., M.M and is entitled THE IMPROVISATIONAL VOCABULARY OF PEPPER ADAMS: A COMPARISON OF THE RELATIONSHIP OF SELECTED MOTIVES TO HARMONY IN FOUR IMPROVISED SOLOS [Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS, August 2005].

Pepper is also the subject of a Master’s Degree Thesis on him done by Gary Carner entitled “THE LIFE AND MUSICAL TIMES OF PEPPER ADAMS.” [City College of New York, 1985].
Thankfully, Gary followed up this MA thesis by publishing as a four-part interview in Cadence Magazine [January-April, 1986], the oral interviews with Pepper which he had used as source material for his discourse.

Luckily, for those of us who love his music and wish to know more about it from his perspective, Pepper also left us with an extended interview which he gave to Peter Danson in the April, 1983 issue of CODA Magazine, as well as, a briefer interviews with Philip Hanson in the January, 1980 edition of Jazz Journal International and Lee Jeske in the August 1982 edition of Down Beat Magazine, respectively.
Ironically, these major writings about him from 1980 to 1985 came during the last six years of his life as Pepper died on September 10, 1986. And along with all of this late-arriving, written recognition, there are also a number of excellent recordings by Pepper that he made during the last decade or so of his life.

As a lead-in to this second part of this feature on Pepper, let’s use the Introduction and Biographical Sketch which open Aaron Lington’s dissertation as a way of recapitulating Pepper’s career, before turning to Aaron’s description of “Selected Motives to Harmony” as the basis for beginning a review of some of Pepper’s recordings.