Steven A. Cerra
Over the years, I’ve seen and heard Mel Lewis play in a variety of settings.
Night after night, I’d run around town to listen to him play drums in an assortment of big bands: Stan Kenton’s Orchestra, the Terry Gibbs Big Band, the Bill Holman Big Band, the Marty Paich Tentette [recording sessions], the Gerald Wilson Orchestra.
And when he wasn’t playing in big bands, I’d go hear him in small groups like the one he co-lead for a while with baritone saxophonist for Pepper Adams, or the quintet he co-led with Bill Holman or as a member of pianist Claude Williamson’s trio.
In 1963, when he permanently moved to New York to continue as a member Gerry Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band, I caught him in concert in The Big Apple with Gerry’s marvelous band. Thereafter, I heard him play with the orchestra he co-led with Thad Jones. And when Thad left to go to Europe and Mel headed up his own orchestra until his death in 1990, I also checked out that band on a number of occasions.
During each of his performances, I’d stare a lot trying to figure out how he did it what he did.
But he “did” so little that while watching him all I actually saw was the minimalist action of his hands barely moving above the drums while he popped the accents, dropped bombs and drove the band mercilessly in what drummer Kenny Washington once described as Mel’s “rub-a-dub style.”
There was no flurry of technique on display in his drumming, no aggravated animation in the motion he used in getting round the drums, no complicated fills, kicks and solos.
Watching Mel as closely as I did for as long as I did, I came away with the same impression as the one that Burt Korall formed in the following description after seeing Davey Tough with the Woody Herman band perform its famous arrangement of Apple Honey at New York City’s Paramount Theater, in 1945:
“He went about his business with little of the grace of a Krupa and Jones, and none of the fireworks of Rich. But the excitement built as Tough, without physically giving the impression of strength, manipulated the band much as an animal trainer would a beautiful hard-to-control beast, making it respond to him. He cracked the whip under the ensemble and brass solo passages adding juice and muscle to the pulse and accents. Each soloist got individual treatment – a stroke here, an accent there, a fill further on, all perfectly placed.
He moved the band from one plateau to another, higher and higher. By the time the band was about to go into the final segment, the audience was totally captured. There was a point during this last section when it felt as though the band would take us through the roof.
When the piece came to an end with four rapid bass drum strokes, I couldn’t figure out what he had done. He had been in the foreground only once during a four bar break, …, otherwise his was the least self-serving performance I had ever witnessed. I turned to my friend. ‘He has no chops. How’d he do it? What happened?’
He smiled, not quite as puzzled as I. ‘It might not have seemed like much,’ he said. ‘But whatever he did, he sure lit a fire under that band.’”
That’s it, Mel lit a fire under the band! But how? - the editorial staff at JazzProfiles
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