Jim
Chapin is a New Yorker born and bred. He was a relatively late
comer to the drums, taking them up at eighteen after two
inconclusive years of college. Jim left William and Mary in
early 1938 after having cut classes regularly in order to obey a
massive compulsion to batter a set of drums that a classmate had
left set up in the gymnasium. Thanks to understanding parents,
he was allowed to buy a set that spring, and in June was
fortunate enough to get a summer job in the mountains with an
eight-piece band called “Georgia Dons” at the “Purling Palace”,
a night club schedule: seven nights a week, 8 p.m. to 4 a.m.
weekdays, 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays 5 p.m. to 3
a.m. one had to learn something on jobs like these if only
general survival procedure.
Jim was lucky enough to have excellent
instruction almost from the outset. He studied first with Ben
silver or New York and then with the fabled Rudimentalist,
Sanford A. Moeller. Jim feels that he also was fortunate in that
New York in the late ‘30’s was full of fine drummers whose
playing was readily available to the ears of the young
enthusiast. Jim recalls that during one brief period he heard
Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton with Goodman, Dave Tough with
Dorsey and Goodman, Ray Baudac with Bob Crosby, Cozy Cole with
stuff smith, Jimmy Crawford with Lunceford, Sonny Greer with
Duke, Jo Jones with Count Basie, Check Webb with his own band,
Sid Catlet with Louis Armstrong, O’Neill Spencer with John
Kirby, Slick Jones with Fats Waller, Arthur Herbert with Pete
Brown, Buddy Rich with Joe Marsala, Bunny Berigan and Artie
Shaw, Cliff Leemans with Shaw and Charlie Barnett, Razz Mitchell
with the Savoy Sultans, Chris Columbus with his own band, Ben
Thigpen (Ed’s father) with Andy Kirk, J.C Heard with Teddy
Wilson’s big band and small band, Zutty Singleton, Tony Spargo,
George Wettling and Danny Alvin at Nick’s in the Village
(incidentally, Nick Rongetti gave Jim his first night club job
as leader when he let him bring in a Kansas City-styled group on
several Monday nights during 1939).
During the period Jim strove mightily to
catch up technically with the drummers who had been playing for
longer periods. The Goldbetter Rehearsal Studios in the old
Roseland Building was the scene of much activity and when
sessions weren’t in progress Jim would sometimes practice six or
eight hours at a stretch, and began to develop from the left
hand “shuffle” rhythm, his independent technique. By the
beginning of 1940, Jim had worked quite a few jobs and gathered
some much needed experience, and his hands, thanks to Moeller,
were excellent. The young “house band” at Goldbetter Studios was
an early Basie-styled band with arrangements by Vic Hunter, that
had a wonderful young drummer named Lou Fromm. When Lou left to
join Frankie Newton, Jim took over for the few college dates the
band did that spring, 1940. Also, Jim Worede a couple of dates
with Babe Russin’s group at the Dancing Campus of the World’s
Fair before taking a band of his own into a joint on W.52nd
Street known as the Ha Ha club. The “Street” at this time was
primarily a jazz street, but the Ha Ha was the same kind of clip
joint one finds there today with the single exception that the
female entertainers were “singers” instead of “dancers.” The
Primary duty of the band was to play loud when a customer was
presented with a check. Jim stayed until midsummer, then turned
the job over to his trumpet player, Roy Stevens, joined the
“Music Goes Round and Round” orchestra of Mike Riley and Ed
Farley, and went back to the World’s Fair Dancing Campus for the
rest of the summer. Gene Krupa , at the peak of his power and
popularity that summer, was the featured band for most of the
Riley engagement there. Gene, of course, featured fabulous drum
arrangements and Jim said that Riley, a great clown, would often
walk off the stand, leaving Jim to play a solo, motion the rest
of the group to get off too, look at us watch and say “Play for
about ten minutes, kid. Gene’ll be back pretty soon. Late that
year Jim left Riley to rejoin Babe Russin for a Miami job at
Slapsy Maxie’s, that folded in mid-February 1941 because of
gambling difficulties. That June Jim played a few weeks with Van
Alexander and then spent the next six months with Tommy
Reynolds, an up-and-coming name at the time. In December ’41,
Jim decided to get off the road for a while, so he got a job at
Child’s Paramount with Henry Jerome, who was just starting to
change styles from commercial to jazz (a trend rapidly reversed
after the war) and stayed there until Flip Phillips and Larry
Bennett persuaded his to join Bennett’s group at the hickory
house in early June of ’42. Jim had a ball with this small group
which, during that year worked as a unit with Wingy Monone in
Boston and again with Wingy and Mildred bailey in Georgia before
returning to the hickory house for the spring of ’43. By this
time, Jim’s preoccupation with the “stuttering” left hand was
attracting some attention and Jim and flip would often carry on
a musical Morse code conversation between tenor snare drum.
Larry was drafted in the summer of ’43 so the group dissolved
and Jim soon went back with Henry Jerome who’s band was now a
full sized Roarer with Billy Bauer on the guitar, Chauncey Welch
on trombone, Charlie Genduso on trumpet and jobs at the pelham
heath inn, the Lincoln hotel and Loew’s state theatre. Jim
thanks to Flip also started rehearsing with red Norvo’s coca
cola band, a USO idea that never really got off the ground.
Jim’s draft board got to him about this time, November ’43 and
in spite of sons age 2 and 1 shipped him off to fort Dix where
he spent several weeks playing in a band with George Duvivier,
George Koenig and wild Bill Davison, protected from the horrors
of K.P. by captain HY gardener. Finally he was sent to the band
at Morris field, where for a year and a half he fort the battle
of charlotte, N.C., thence to lake Charles, Louisiana in June
’45, where he remained until discharged in November.
These were not overly rewarding years
musically but Jim does feels very lucky that at least he had his
instrument with him and a good deal of time to practise. He
feels that he might not have carried the theory of independent
coordination so far had he been engaged in more satisfying and
demanding swinging the winter of ’45 – ’46 was a time of
development and Jim came back to find Jazz music irrevocably
changed. The skills that he had developed were now something
that could be more freely exploited. Characteristically,
however, he did little to push himself into the Jazz scene and
instead took a job at the Acadia ballroom that lasted till late
’46. At this time he joined the closely knit rhythm in the
resurgent casa loma band. This great section, which included Joe
shulman or Barney Spieler, Bass, Tommy Morganelli, Guitar, and
Tony Nicoletti, Piano, only did about six months with Glen Grey,
but Jim stayed on until the band broke up for the first time in
December ’47. Then, following the sun and close friends to
Atlanta, Georgia, of all places, he put in one of the least
lucrative but happiest periods of his life, playing with bassist
Red Wootan and pianist Freddy Deland, with various horn men
upfront. Most important, perhaps, he met Lew Swain, and
executive of the Ozalid Company, which makes reproduction
machines for printed matter. Lew persuaded him to put his long
deferred book into final form, and offered help and the use of
his machines to publish his book. Returning to New York in
September 1948, Jim began to teach at the Brooklyn conservatory
of modern music. When he first showed his new book around, he
always had to carry drumsticks in his pocket. The frequent
comment was “Man, who’s gonna play this?” (By now quite a few of
the greatest names in drumming have played or are playing it.)
Jim was always ready to oblige with a concert on newspapers,
Knees or car fenders, Jim soon tired of the New York bustle and
in the fall of ’49 returned to Atlanta for a year and two months
(just long enough to lose all of his New York contacts.) This
time he says, some of the playing was the best he had done, and
most of it was the worst. Coming north again in coming ’51 he
worked with Barbara Carroll for a while then went to the coast
for the summer with Tony Pastor where he did a few dates at the
light house at Hermosa Beach with Howard Rumsey, Shortey Rogers
and Jimmy Giuffre. Meanwhile Red Wooten by that time with Woody
Herman, had Woody get Jim as Sonny Igoes substitute for four
months that autumn. A brief episode with Tom Dorsey in the early
spring of ’52 and Jim went back with Tony pastor in May and
stayed until November 1953. Finally getting sick of the “road”
Jim organised a sextet for some jobs that never came about but
one Monday night in Birdland in late ’53 lead to twenty or
thirty more over the next four years. Mainstays of the group
were Phil woods, Don Stratton, Sonny Triutt and Chuck Andrus.
Frequent participants included Urbie Green, Billy Byers, Johnny
Williams and Nat Pierce. Luckily, the group recorded, before
dispending, and may be heard on classic Jazz LP cj6, featuring
arrangements by Jim, Phil Woods and Sonny.
In early ’54 Jim started teaching at Hartnett
national studios and started also to work some dates for the
Lester Lanin office. Later that same year Lanin developed a
format for his debutante parties that included a Jazz show at
some time during those evenings’ proceedings. This usually meant
that Jim and Jonah Jones would arrive at the party about 2am,
Solo furiously for about twenty minutes and then leave, at which
time the band would revert to society tempo till unconscious.
These outbursts were a regular feature of the December and June
seasons for several years until Jonah came out into his own. Jim
also did a few musical shows mainly for Peter Matz, including
the “amazing Adele” and extravaganza that’s perished after
Philly and Boston. Recently Jim has been with Marshall Grant’s
trio, a hard to define group that has worked such diverse NY
spots as the maisonette of the St Regis, the St Moritz and the
embers. Jim describes it whimsically as a “hard bob society”
group. Jim has a particular taste for the locals that Marshall
Picks: Southampton, long island in the summer and Palm Beach in
the winter. “Name” bands he says it was always Memphis in July
and Montréal in February.
