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Playing Like?Pat Crumly  This interview took place at The Spice of Life in the West End as the Ronnie Scott Legacy Band was setting up. Among others, Pat has worked with Jack Jones, Jimmy Witherspoon, Ronnie Scott, Eric Burdon, Lulu and Salena Jones. For the last few years he has led his own bands and currently has a quartet with Nick Weldon, piano, Tim Wells, bass and Mark Fletcher, drums. Interview by Jack Kenny. Why do you play jazz? It is one of the things that I do best, I think. I?ve been doing it ever since I can remember, in my head at least. I had a relation who played saxophone and clarinet; that was my first exposure to live music. I used to listen to him rehearsing when I was a small child.  Tell us about the young Pat Crumly.Born in Oxford, educated at a grammar school in the town. I left school at sixteen. I was ready by then; I already had it in my head that I was going to be a musician. By the time I was seventeen I bought my first saxophone, a Conn underslung. I couldn?t believe it. My parents had bought me a clarinet, I was in school and I'd studied that for a couple of years which is how I learned how to play. I came from a working class family in a small town. I did GCE music, everybody did but I learnt by doing. Didn?t go to music college but people like Don Rendell helped me. What were your early influences? I discovered my first recordings, things like the Ted Heath Orchestra. I heard Bird for the first time where I was about fifteen and that was it. I did not know what he was doing but I wanted some of that. It was a ten inch album Live at the Royal Roost with Red Rodney. I remember taking it with a friend of mine to the local pub , which was the only place we knew where they had a record player. The landlord played it for us and I knew that I wanted to play like it. At seventeen I had my own seven piece dance band. . This was about 1960/61 and I started to hear stuff and see it live: the Basie band, Jazz At The Philharmonic and Miles Davis at the Gaumont State in Kilburn. All that was a springboard to me. So how did you manage in those days? My first paid job was at Blackwell?s bookstore in Oxford. In order to get close to the music, I worked in the music department but I only lasted there about two years. When I left I was asked by theatre director Braham Murray to play and act in ?The Connection?, the Jack Gelber play, at the Experimental Theatre Club. Braham at that time, he is at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester now, was an undergraduate. We got good reviews for the music but not for the acting. Then I had a number of jobs and I got married for some reason to someone I had known for a long time. I had a steady job in the rag trade and all the while I was playing at the university and on American bases. It was like four nights a week in Suffolk and turning up next morning for work and probably at that time earning very good money with the two jobs. I was just surfing along really. In the late sixties, still in Oxford, I was playing with Spike Wells, Brian Priestley and a bass player called Andrew Evans. We had all the London guys coming down to guest with us. I got to play with Ian Carr, Tony Coe and Kenny Wheeler. That is where I learnt so much. When was the first big break? In 1973 I was talking to someone who was fixing the Dankworth band and I said I could sub for Don Rendell on that and he said ?OK! You?re in. that was the turning point and I was introduced to a lot of other guys, made a lot of other contacts. In 1978 John?s fixer was working on a show with Jack Jones. He phoned me and asked if I was free, I said I was between jobs. He offered me a tour of the UK with some weeks at the Palladium with John and Cleo and suddenly it all kind of opened up. T hat was the change for me from semipro to a more professional career. I suppose it was a strange path but I got there in the end. I moved to London in 1980 and started to get myself established with the jazz and the R and B people: Zoot Money, Eric Burdon, Chris Farlow and Roger Chapman. I worked through all of that whilst doing my own bands. Tell us a little about your relationship with Ronnie Scott. Ronnie and Pete first hooked on to me when I played for the first time at Ronnie?s in 1980 with Zoot Money. ?Who?s the alto player?? Ronnie asked. I struck up a kind of relationship with Ronnie and when Ronnie used to get double booked, which was often, they would ring me and ask if I could fix a band. Ronnie was never one to boast, he should have done because he was a fantastic player. He would say to me, ?Hello Patrick, how are you, got any jokes, any drugs?? He had depressive periods. But I respected and liked him. When Ronnie started to have problems with his teeth I was called to dep for him on a number of ooccasions. The crucial one was right towards the end. I had cut short a tour of Germany with Chris Farlow because they asked me if I could come back and do the season. The day I came back Ronnie died. It put me into a privileged and very tricky situation. That was eight years ago and I had to be stronger as a player than I really was at that time. You must have heard more than your fair share of his jokes. Do you have a favourite? So many but I don?t have his timing. Two rabbits escaped from a laboratory and on the first day out they find a field full of clover and fresh grass and they have a wonderful time. On the second day they find a warren full of beautiful does. They cannot believe their luck. On the third day one rabbits says to the other: ?It?s no good, I?ve to get back to that laboratory. ?Why?? said his mate. ?I haven?t had a fag for three days.? Everybody has influences. Who are yours? Bird clearly! Bird led me to Sonny Stitt and Phil Woods. If I had to narrow it down: Phil Woods, Cannonball and Art Pepper all had a distinct influence on me. In my own playing, I hope you can hear Pat Crumly. You will hear the influences from time to time, that is unavoidable. You can probably hear Joe Henderson when I play tenor. I?ve tried to be Pat Crumly all of the time. Sarah Vaughan too was one of the big influences on my whole musical approach to songs, to phrasing. The sound of her voice is amazing and if I could get that on the saxophone I would be happy. Sarah was unique; no one came close to her. Might people think that the band is a tribute band? The Ronnie Scott Legacy Band is not a tribute band because we have carried on doing what Ronnie did. All these guys have worked with Ronnie; we are sustaining his memory. You can call it a memorial band but not a tribute band which is a pastiche and I don?t think we do that. I don?t play like Ronnie. What is the work that you are most proud of? I am most proud of still being in the business and able to sustain a career. I did an album in one day with a sextet in 1984 called ?Third World Sketches?. I wrote all the music. At that time I was between being a standards player and trying to be a more contemporary player. I did a gig with Pete Saberton and Tony Oxley and that was like driving a Porsche at 160 mph. It made me realize that I am still very much in the older tradition. Some people argue that jazz has died, the giants are gone. The great classical music sounds timeless and I think that applies to the best music. If anything is good enough then it doesn?t matter how old. The thing about the newer musicians is that they have listened to a lot of stuff and they have a much broader canvas. There was a time in the nineteen eighties when some of the younger players were critical but now jazz is global, we have a global music, and it is listened to on its merits. What do you listen to? Wayne Shorter?s Alegria and Stefano di Battista. Someone gave me a Zoot Sims recently. Michael Brecker means a lot. I am just trying to learn more whenever and wherever I am. There?s a lot of stuff I can?t do and I listened to some of the younger players and I think I?d like some of that. Though, there are things that I do that they can?t do. What comes next? We are preparing a new album with the quartet that I have with Nick Weldon. We?ll have some guests and it is going to be called Love Songs. It will be Victor Young music. I am entirely enthralled by his songs; they are so simple and so timeless. We want to do them a bit differently, a fresh approach to that area of music. I heard recently that you are a Buddhist; would you care to say something about that? Buddhism comes from your inner self; it is about being aware. In Buddhism there are two realities: one that comes from your lower life states where you are negative and apathetic. There is the one that rises above that, a different reality for optimism and potential. You only have to meet people like Herbie and Wayne and Buster Williams and you will see the things that emanate from that positivity. It is not about skill, it is about heart and life. It changes everything in the way I play. I don?t play from my brain, I play from my experience. It is about caring who hears me, about making connections. It is a long way from the time when musicians would say: I?m clever and I don?t care what you think. I do care what you think.  1) This Heart of Mine (Harry Warren) 2) Let Me Count the Ways (Victor Feldman) 3) Tuned Into You (Georgie Fame) 4) You Don't Know What Love Is (Raye/DePaul) 5) Excuse Me, Do I Know You? (Pat Crumly) 6) Carib Blue (Pat Crumly) 7) Little Tear (Deodato/Valle) 8) Nippon Soul (Julian Adderley) (7.39) 9) Back in Love Again (John Critchinson) 10) Weaver of Dreams (Victor Young) 11) Seven Steps to Heaven (Feldman/Davis) 12) Ssh! Ronnie's Talking FEATURING - John Critchinson - piano; Pat Crumly - alto and tenor saxophones and flute; Mark Fletcher - drums (except tracks 5 and 10); Leon Clayton - double bass; Martin Drew - drums (tracks 5 and 10 only) PLUS GUESTS - Georgie Fame & Flora Rurim ? |
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