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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Other Places: Cerra On Feldman

December 12, 2008 by Doug Ramsey

CerraJazz - 3D Gird.jpgIn his Jazz Profiles blog, Steven M. Cerra’s stock-in-trade is thorough examinations of the careers of important jazz musicians. His current project is Victor Feldman, the late, astonishingly talented drummer, pianist and vibraharpist. Steve just posted the third of three parts about Feldman. In the first installment, he tells of going to The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, California, in the late 1950s when Feldman was playing piano and vibes with the all-star group led by Howard Rumsey. 

As an aspiring Jazz drummer, it was late on one of the sparsely attended week nights that I summoned the courage to go up to Stan Levey, always an imposing figure, to ask him a question about some aspect of the mechanics of playing the instrument.

The band members usually congregated along the back wall of the club between sets. When I approached Stan and asked my question he replied: ” you don’t wanna talk to me about that sh**; I’m self-taught. The guy you want to talk to is sitting over there [nodding toward Victor sitting alone at an adjoining table]. He even knows the names of all the drum rudiments!”

At the time, I had no idea that Victor played drums. I soon found out as he thoroughly answered my question as well as demonstrating the answer. Shortly thereafter, Victor Feldman agreed to offer me lessons.

Victor Feldman - Roy Harte 1.jpg

Victor Feldman, ca 1957

Cerra details Feldman’s career up to and beyond his celebrated and regrettably brief time as Miles Davis’s pianist. To read all three segments, click here. I suggest scrolling down to part one and working back up. Along the way, you’ll find a Cerra appreciation of pianist Dado Moroni, also worth your time.

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Comments

  1. john johansen says

    December 13, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    Thanks for the great link! I was unaware of Jazz Profiles, looks like a excellent site.

  2. John Birchard says

    December 15, 2008 at 2:17 am

    Thanks for calling readers’attention to the Cerra series on Victor Feldman. I’ve been a Feldman fan ever since first hearing the Shelly Manne Blackhawk recordings – “Poinciana”in particular. Reading the series prompted me to order “The Arrival of…” and I now eagerly await its delivery.
    Feldman’s great talent helped bury forever (I believe) the notion that non-Americans couldn’t swing.

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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