AprilCadence2013

Slim and Him Bob Rusch Interview
describe is what I heard in my head, if it didn’t have to go through my brain,
and it could have gone right to my fingers, I might have been successful.
But, to play like Benny Goodman or Johnny Dodds, or something like that
you just got to have almost instinctual understanding of what you are doing.
Charlie Parker, I mean, I’m sure Charlie Parker didn’t analyze what he was
playing. He talked like you and I are talking right now.
S: So, when you took up the clarinet, are we talking pre-teen?
BR: Not post-teens, teens.
S: And that was unsuccessful, but did you think for a second about taking
up the saxophone when Charlie Parker came on the scene?
BR: No, not at all. Clarinet I thought was something that, when you talk
about a Yahoo moment. One day listening to the clarinet and saying, “that’s
a beautiful instrument. It should be played that way.” It’s not my favorite
instrument today.
H: There are a lot of bandleaders in that era in the 40’s-Woody Herman
BR: Benny Goodman, Woody Herman.
S: It’s interesting how the clarinet in the Swing period was sort of the king
of the instruments, and then when Bird and bop came out it turned to the
saxophone. But, now at least for the stuff we’re listening to clarinet has sort
of made a reemergence in an avant-garde sense.
BR: Not as much as trombone. Trombone was big in traditional jazz, not as
big….
H: I think the sound of the clarinet is more easily heard over an orchestra
than a sax.
BR: Yeh, it probably is because it’s higher.
H: Then you think what happens with bop-you got smaller combos. It
makes sense, right?
S: Well, what’s hard for me to imagine is just at one point the sax was sort
of a background instrument in jazz until Coleman Hawkins and some of
these guys started soloing and then it became sort of the main thing. It’s
interesting that it wasn’t always that way, to me if you say something about
jazz, 9 out of 10 people will probably say “saxophone.”
BR: Well, saxophone is a jazz instrument; classical people have got into it
afterwards-not before. What I really wanted to play was drums.
S: So tell us about your emergence into playing drums.
BR: First of all my friend played drums and he played them very well. He’s
unfortunately died from “rock drugs.” He played them very well, or at least
to me he played them very well. We’d sometime have sort of jam sessions
in the house with some musicians that went on to be solid jazz musicians
today. But, my parents found it annoying enough my tapping and jiggling
my foot on everything. When I’d go to the country find some sort of sapling
and make a pair of drumsticks out of it.
S: It sounds like early onset of what now they call ADD.
64 | CadenCe Magazine | april May June 2013