Seventy-five-year-old drummer Donald “Duck” Bailey has an anomalous
presence on the artist roster at Talking House Records, which otherwise
includes prominent indie bands like Loquat and the Lovemakers. Bailey
is, in fact, a living legend, known both for his musical
accomplishments (he backed organist Jimmy Smith and singer Carmen McRae
for many years) and his eccentricities (he came to a recent interview
with a necktie fastened around his waist). But for one reason or
another, he spent most of his life dwelling in obscurity. Only recently
did a startup record company “rediscover” the old drummer and begin
documenting his work.
It’s a weird twist of fate. Bailey moved around a lot — from
his birthplace in Philadelphia to Los Angeles in 1965, then to Japan
before finally settling in the Bay Area — so it was pretty easy
to lose track of him. He doesn’t use the Internet and he never bothered
with self-promotion. Thus, it was kind of surprising when Talking House
producer Marc Weibel thought to recruit him for a noble — if
unprofitable — project called Blueprints of Jazz, meant to
highlight older musicians who never quite got their due. (The series
contains three records; the other two feature saxophonist Billy Harper
and drummer Mike Clark.) It marked the beginning of an odd popularity
streak for Bailey, who is now one of the last remaining specters of the
be-bop generation.
“When we talked about doing this project, he was blown away,” said
Weibel, who found Bailey four years ago when he was leading the house
band at San Francisco’s Savannah Jazz club. “He was like, ‘Here I am,
an old man, and this is the first time anyone’s asked me to do an
album.'”
Apparently, Bailey recorded one other album as a leader while living
in Japan. But he didn’t play drums, he played harmonica. Called So
In Love, the joint dropped in 1977, got a fine reception in the
rarefied world of harmonica players, and fizzled out. In the meantime,
Bailey eked out a living as a sideman. “These jazz musicians scrape by
their whole lives,” Weibel said. “It’s amazing they’re able to do what
they’re able to do.”
Born in a working-class neighborhood in South Philly, Bailey came
from a musical pedigree. His older brother Mars played saxophone and
collected jazz 78s. His father also played drums, but retired at the
behest of a religious mother who thought jazz was “the devil’s music.”
At a young age, Bailey started listening to swing drummers like Gene
Krupa, Buddy Rich, and Papa Jo Jones, mostly on a radio program called
“Danceland,” and sometimes live at the Earle Theater in north Philly.
He would clean his grandmother’s house on Saturdays, earning just
enough money to ride the 23 trolley downtown and catch the
Saturday-night variety show for 75 cents. “Duke Ellington, Count Basie,
Stan Kenton, whoever was there — you would see ’em on this one
show,” he said. “We used to hide behind the seats, trying to duck the
ushers so we could see the second show. I get excited just thinking
about it.”
Bailey started playing drums as a preteen by practicing along with
his brother’s records. His timing couldn’t have been better: Be-bop had
become the avant-garde, and Philly was a veritable hotbed of it. John
Coltrane, Bud Powell, Lee Morgan, Stanley Turrentine, Buster Williams,
Jimmy Smith, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker all lived in Philly at
some point in their careers — and that’s only a partial list.
Unknowns like Bailey would hobnob with these elder statesmen at places
like the Blue Note Club and get whatever they could get. At that time,
the scene was more of a meritocracy, said Bailey. “Nowadays, anybody
can get up on the bandstand and play. We couldn’t do that when I was
coming up,” the drummer said. “You just couldn’t do it. You would
either be too embarrassed or they would embarrass you. They would take
you by your pants and throw you out the door.”
It took strong guts and musical genius to withstand that trial by
fire, and Bailey apparently had both. He was good enough to apprentice
with pianists Bud Powell and Hasaan Ibn Ali. Ultimately, he was good
enough to back Jimmy Smith for eight years. Bailey got his big break
while working in a brass factory at age seventeen. He had narrowly
avoided the Korean War draft because he had asthma. “I was making
ashtrays and stuff like that,” said Bailey. “I got a call from another
drummer named Zip. He said, ‘I think Jimmy Smith needs a drummer like
you.'” Bailey wound up drumming on all of Smith’s classic Blue Note
records: Home Cookin’, Back at the Chicken Shack,
Prayer Meetin’, The Swingin’ Shepherd Blues, and The
Sermon (where he traded off with Art Blakey). He would later wind
up on the liner notes of many famous albums, including McRae’s
You’re Lookin’ at Me, Sarah Vaughan & the Jimmy Rowles
Quintet, and Esther Phillips’ Confessin’ the Blues.
Which was how Weibel found him, years after the drummer had
flickered off the scene and fallen prey to health problems, including
seizures and severe memory loss. Weibel had just devised the Blueprint
series as a way to highlight some of the older, unknown jazzmen in his
record collection. It was a risky venture, indeed, but one that would
help establish Talking House as a label that cared about something
besides paper returns. As he was scouring his own record collection,
Weibel kept coming across the name “Donald Bailey.” “I couldn’t find
any info on him, but I didn’t find any info that he’d died, either.”
One day, Weibel saw a newspaper listing for a session at Savannah Jazz,
led by a drummer named Donald Bailey. Weibel went down and watched the
set. The drummer was obviously in his early seventies — a little
stooped over, with a gray mustache and narrow, fine-boned face. “I’m
like ‘Oh, that must be him,'” said Weibel.
The actual recording session didn’t happen until March 2008, after
Talking House secured a distribution deal with Fontana and gave Bailey
enough time to choose a band and get his set list together. The drummer
recruited saxophonist Odean Pope, one of his old friends from Philly,
and let Pope bring the rest of his regular quartet — bassist
Tyrone Brown, pianist George Burton, and trumpeter Charles Tolliver.
They recorded nine tracks over three days in a Fruitvale studio.
Several were written or cowritten by Pope, a couple by Brown, and one
by Donald’s brother Morris. Bailey also included a blues number by
Hasaan Ibn Ali and closed out with a delicate interpretation of the
ballad “Blue Gardenia,” on which he played harmonica. It’s a very
modern-sounding jazz album, but the drumming is heavy bop. Bailey’s
zig-zaggy rhythms recall the style that Max Roach popularized back in
the 1950s.
So far, the album has sold about a thousand copies (roughly
commensurate with the other two Blueprints), which means Talking House
is still in the hole financially — for that project, at least.
But Weibel doesn’t regret doing it. He’s proud to be the one who really
consecrated Donald Bailey, an unheralded legend who — to this day
— still earns his keep as a sideman. “He’s just eking out a
living,” said Weibel. “He’s on all these great Jimmy Smith records, and
Jimmy Smith was a groundbreaker. Donald was right there with him the
whole time.”
