There have been a select few of extraordinary drummers who knew how to drive a big band and make it ten times the sum of its parts. For me, no one drove a big band like Sonny Payne drove the Basie orchestra. He swung like hell, made every accent and every cue in the chart, threw in amazing, inspiring drum fills and was tossing and twirling stick the whole time. A truly brilliant madman behind the drums. Check out this ten-minute drum feature from a 1962 European concert.

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by Nat Hentoff The Jazz Review, Vol. 1, No. 2 (December 1958) (posted by http://jazzstudiesonline.org/ )

Miles lives in a relatively new building on Tenth Avenue near 57th Street. The largest area in his apartment is the living room. Like the other rooms, it is uncluttered. The furnishings have been carefully selected and are spare. Miles has a particular liking for “good wood” and explains thereby why his Down Beat plaques\u2014and even his Four Roses Award from the Randall’s Island “festival”\u2014are all displayed. He has a good piano and an adequate non-stereo record player.

The idea of the afternoon\u2014the first of a series of observations by Miles to be printed at regular intervals in this monthly\u2014was to play a variety of recordings for him and transcribe his reactions. This was not a blindfold test, for while I find those adventures in skeet shooting entertaining, I doubt if they serve much purpose except transitory titillation.

First was Billie Holiday’s 1937 / Must Have That Man with Wilson, Clayton, Goodman, Young , Green, Page and Jo Jones. “I love the way Billie sings,” Miles began. “She sings like Lester Young and Louis Armstrong play, but I don’t like all that’s going on behind her. All she needed was Lester and the rhythm. The piano was ad libbing while she was singing, which leads to conflict, and the guitar was too loud and had too much accent on every beat.”

Miles was asked whether he agreed with most of the writers on jazz that the Billie of 20 years ago was the “best” Billie and that she is now in decline. “I ‘d rather hear her now. She’s become much more mature.

Sometimes you can sing words every night for five years, and all of a sudden it dawns on you what the song means. I played My Funny Valentine for a long time\u2014and didn’t like it\u2014and all of a sudden it meant something. So with Billie, you know she’s not thinking now what she was in 1937, and she’s probably learned more about different things. And she still has control, probably more control now than then. No , I don’t think she’s in a decline.

” What I like about Billie is that she sings it just the way she hears it and that’s usually the way best suited for her. She has more feeling than Ella and more experience in living a certain way than Ella . Billie’s pretty wild, you know.

“She sings way behind the beat and then she brings it up\u2014hitting right on the beat. You can play behind the beat, but every once in a while you have to cut into the rhythm section on the beat and that keeps everybody together. Sinatra does it by accenting a word. A lot of singers try to sing like Billie, but just the act of playing behind the beat doesn’t make it sound soulful.

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By day, in this video, Gil Evans and his musicians bask and stroll in the Umbrian sun in Perugia. At night, Evans and his band, with Howard Johnson, Billy Harper and Hannibal Marvin Peterson upfront, wail before the grand fountain in the Piazza at the Umbria Jazz Festival. Sweet. Or should we say, dolce? 

-Nick Moy

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Andy Bey and sisters Salome and Geraldine worked together in the mid ’60s and recorded several albums for Prestige. They always seemed on the verge of success, but never quite got there. This unusual clip is from a 1964 Paris appearance. They perform Arnett Cobb’s “Smooth Sailing” with none other than Kenny Clarke on drums.

-Michael Cuscuna

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