Stan Levey - The Beginnings of Bebop
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- Опубліковано 20 січ 2020
- Legendary jazz drummer Stan Levey was not only on the scene for the birth of bebop music, he also played a significant role in its delivery. This documentary is a fascinating inside look at a musician who was both a participant and an observer, whose briskly swinging skills as a drummer were matched by an insightful understanding of the jazz history-making surroundings of his youth. Featured are commentaries from Stan and his contemporaries such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Quincy Jones, Hank Jones, Terry Gibbs, Nino Tempo, Bill Henderson and Charlie Watts. This is a non-profit video strictly made for the enjoyment and education of you the viewer. Produced by Arthur Shelby Pritz & Stan Levey. Directed by Arthur Shelby Pritz. All of our UA-cam jazz videos are strictly non-profit and we do not receive any payments from UA-cam.
Wow! Stan Levy was surrounded and played with so many "giants of jazz". All he had to do, was mention Charlie Parker, which would have been enough for one person's lifetime! But here we had, a white boy living in the SAME apartment complex as Billie Holliday, Sarah Vaughn, Miles Davis, Ben Webster etc. And he played with everyone! What a guy! Now, THAT'S A STORY!!!
Dizzy said, out of all those white boys, Stan Levy was the one who could play the music. When I was in high school, in the 50's I used to go down to the Lighthouse on Sundays to listen to Stan Levy. He was the most powerful drummer that I'd heard at that time. He drove that band like a locomotive. I met him in the 70's, when I was playing a wedding gig and he was the photographer. He was very complimentary and kind to me. I value his comments and his taking the time to talk to me.
I think Diz also had a great liking for other white musicians, which is why Al Haig played piano behind Diz and Bird. But Dizzy's greatest contribution was his encouragement of all musicians, be they black or white. However, Stan was undoubtedly a uniquely talented drummer and his book, Stan Levey - Jazz Heavyweight, is a great read and can still be found if you just look around.
Great story, thanks for sharing that :)
The OTHER Stan could play the music too. 🎷
Miles always said that when the majority of the white guys who came through the black jazz bands left and started their own bands, they generally hired white guys exclusively.
Stan Levey was jewish, not White ✡️
Born too late. Imagine seeing Bird in one club, then just cross the street to hear Ben Webster.
And as a corollary, Anthony, how unfortunate that the last couple of generations didn't and don't have the incredible culture of the 52nd Street of the '30s, '40s, and '50s. What a shame it doesn't still exist for the jazz musicians and their audiences today...
Stan was one of my Dad's best friends! We had lots of dinners together at the old family house. Such a sweetheart !!! God bless everyone :) ps: My Dad played tenor sax, and also struck up a friendship with Stan Getz and Georgie Auld. All the old jazz guys.
What was your Dad's first name Michael?
@@angelalevey9981 Boris !!! (Angela, my pen name is "An'gileo." Please send my kind regards to the whole family.)
You are blessed man! That's a who's who of my favorites. Stan Getz Early Autumn got me through detoxing and terrible withdrawal.
I just want to say that Stan had had 7000 rads of radiation before these videos and with his hilarious sense of humor he said, 8000 you turn into a toad. He was very brave to do all this talking because he didn't talk as well as he used to and it burned his saliva glands out and he had to chew gum. I think he would like that I mentioned that
Respect ✊🏾 how is he now?
@@cozeeetv Stan passed in 2005, much too young and life has never been the same, thanks for asking
Stan passed away in 2005@@cozeeetv
@@angelalevey9981 We mourn his loss as we continue to listen to his wonderful music. What an wonderful person he was.
@@ronniecohen5668 Stan didn't like to complain and we didn't talk much about it but he had a condition in the palm of his hands called Dyputren's Contracture and he just couldn't play with the fluidity that he was used to
I just started watching this. I saw the wonderful doc about Charlie Watts and Stan Levy's time together a couple years ago. Now both of them are gone. Thanks for letting me find this film as well!
I always tell drummers I work with, especially when its a trio "I don't need a metronome, I need him to be musical. play with me, don't make me have to play you. some get it, some don't. This guy was a true natural....
On the flip side, a soloist needs to be able to lay back off the beat without the drummer lagging along with.
Wow. This does my heart good. There's not much film put together covering this transitional era in music and the stupendous stars it produced. I was a boomer and should have loved rock 'n roll, but no. I wasn't wrong looking one generation back to the great bebop era. It produced America's greatest artistic period and was food for the brain and heart as well as the groin.
This Stan Levey material is a revelation. You never hear or read about him, but he's on all your records. This whole thing brings a tear to my eye. Great contribution guys.
You are so right. I got into rock n roll first, and still love the creme de la creme, but jazz was right around the corner, first up was Ellington!
Well done! Stan Levey is certainly known amongst jazz drummers but certainly was never a household name amongst Roach Blakey PJJ or even later Buddy Rich. However, this fact neither diminishes his talent nor his role in the history of jazz and jazz drumming.
This is such a great story. Stan Levey so inspiring.
First time I heard the BeBop I thought..
"There must be a white guy behind all this."
🎶
Exceptional Americans creating a new American art form. Opening the treasure chest. They raised the ceiling for all of us.
Always liked Stan Levy. Tasteful supportive musician.
This is such a valuable film. Already 23 years old. I was unaware of Stan’s key role in the those early days. I’m reading Miles’ autobiography and Stan gets (the autocorrect wants to write Getz!) a lot of mentions.
My first real sense of Stan was with Getz, Mulligan, Lou Levy and Leroy Vinnegar. So I had Stan nailed as a West Coast player. I should have looked more closely at the personnel!
My favourite of Stan’s anecdotes is the Billie Holiday one, despite the hustle of 52nd st, when Lady Day stepped into that pinhole light… Fantastic.
My mouth was agape through the entire video. I recognize each and every name because music historians and journalists noted these players in the late 70s and 80s and 90s. What I think I know - lucky enough to have Amiri Baraja as a musicology tutor once a week for 5 or 6 or 7 weeks - was confirmed here. I even recognized the name of the subject. Seeing and hearing Charlie Watts was the cherry on top. Seeing and hearing Miles Davis was Thanksgiving dinner.
Got here following the passing of Charlie Watts, who was a big fan. I'm not very knowledgeable on the genre of Jazz, but I'm getting there. Cheers Charlie!
What a great story, I love it.
Thank you so much!!! Wow! Mr. Levy it is an honor!
OMG! Fantastic cannot begin to describe this gig. I shall repeat with oen and paper to take notes ad I did when I first saw Ken Burn's Jazz documentary when Napster first came out. Man oh man what a fabulous jazz education that way baby! So here we go again 30 years later and I now own a bar and restaurant where this music really helps us swing and sell good food and booze and good times. God bless the greats of jazz and thank you so much for your beautiful contribution to the world of music and my success as a restaurantuer.
You dont need money to have a rich life its about doing what you love cant buy it these guys were magic .
Amen!!!
So so true
This video is so rich , it's priceless
Brilliant! Thanks for posting.
Thanks for posting.
"That was the most fun I had with my clothes on"😂😂
Miles Davis
Amazing video - thanks for this.
Great documentary.Love everything Stan Levey was involved in.
yeah ! the whole docu ! so so so great ..........
Stan was sooo modest in this video. "They liked me." Some call it luck but the truth of the matter remains he could flat out play!
This is a good doc.
Thank you for sharing this vital info, to your viewing audience.
This is a fantastic video. Thank you
Loved every minute....... Thanks and Blessings!
Thanks for sharing… priceless memories!!
Great documentary! A MUST watch! Thank you for sharing.
Really great documentary, thanks for uploading this!
Glad Stan told his story with so many great musicians who gave him due credit. His luck was phenomenal at both ends of life... Starting out by chance with Gillespie and Parker, and ending with the foresight to personally tell his story just in time. God Bless you, Stan.
This an incredible gem of a video, Thank you!
Had a great time with these interviews, thank you very much"
Utterly compelling documentary.
Extraordinary!
A Heart full of thanks!
What a gent, many thanks.
MAN, Obviously the Most Experienced and Humble of Them ALL ☝🏽 Mr. Stan Levy .. I'm So Grateful for Your contribution and your Candor ! I've read Many MANY verbal historians who are Musicians (Swing To Bop) for instance Especially With the Modernists of the Day 30' s , 40's and So On , Bravo to You ALL and Hope to Get Inspired by the Wonderful Rhythms of This Era and I can Continue to Pay Homage in My OWN Way👁️ 👆🏾🙏🏾🎨🎶🖼️🖌️✍🏾📝 as Much as I Can Do until I Can Do No More 💓😎👍🏽🕊️🛐
One of the greatest strongest who ever lived... Just an incredible artist who was admired by all who played with him !... Including bird
a great film with an amazing story about a man who was born knowing himself. and that aint the half of it. thank you.
Thank you 🙏
that was wonderful - hearing the guys that did it talk about it - loved this!
Wow I could watch about 5 more hours of that.
You can watch all of our Stan Levey videos here - ua-cam.com/users/TubeworksVideoChannel
So enjoyable! As a jazz musician myself (alto sax and guitar), steeped in the bop tradition and having spent decades absorbing and appreciating the contributions of ALL the musicians mentioned in this video, I found this impossible to stop watching.. the commentary, clips, stills, anecdotes, and the entire flow of this was extremely well done.. a beautiful tribute to a music that is still vital today. I only hope younger players today will discover the recordings of that era (roughly 1945-1955) and be as electrified and transformed by it as I was when I discovered it in the late '70s and 1980's.. Bebop Lives!
Lovely film, highly recommended!
Thanks for the fantastic information and document
Glad you enjoyed it!
I've been spellbound sitting here listening to this. It's excellent.
The train from NY to LA is stopped somewhere in the SW to take on water. Stan happens to look out the window and notices their strung-out saxophonist Charlie Parker wandering into the distant desert. Bandleader Dizzy Gillespie sends Stan out to hurriedly fetch Parker before the train leaves without him. When Stan catches up to Parker, he asks him where he's going, and advises him that "There's nothing out there that's going to help you." Sweet, sad story.
Addiction is a muthafuckas worst nightmare. Because you can stop one thing and replace it with another addictive behavior.
How cool this is, wonderful to hear these stories!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I really enjoyed this documentary! Thanks for posting it.
Our pleasure!
Great documentary. Thank you!
Thank you too!
So glad you uploaded this!! I can't believe I can hear such direct stories of the greats.
I never heard jazz until I was 17/18 and I haven't been able to listen to anything else since. Parker, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Coleman Hawkins, Herbie Hancock, Armstrong, I take it all in. I'm not the best musician and I probably never will be since I started listening and playing very late and don't have that much talent, but it's still a pleasure to even play at 1% of their skill.
Great look at greater listening! I loved all of it. It helped to establish my life work in jazz
What a drummer musician man legend never forgotten for sure thank you for video I've seen it before never tiring
Awesome!!!
Thanks for the awesome vid. 🎶🔥
outstanding documentary. thanks
Glad you enjoyed it
Thank you for preserving and posting this incredible history !
Another beautiful documentary about one of the jazz greats from that time.
Great to hear all these folks, and see these great images. Thanks for this great upload. Stan Levey seems like such a cool guy.
He was a cool guy, funny, kind and everybody loved him
Stan was the coolest. I’ve never met anyone cooler.
Fabulous. Never knew anything about Stan Levey. Now I do.
Stupendous
Thank you so much for this incredibly well made movie. It’s done from the point of view of a musician whose name I had only heard and seen in passing. It was refreshing to hear the story of this great music thru the eyes Stan, who was lesser known but well loved by the masters that we are all quite familiar with.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for the vid! Oh, what an important time in American history. Magical!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Fantastic! One of the best Jazz docs ever!
Bird’s hair was sticking straight up like Don King’s.
That’s a funny description.
Great little documentary.
Great film, thank you so much for posting this. :-)
Glad you enjoyed it
This is a great documentary on history of jazz . Especially on bebop
Wonderful reminiscences of unprecedented times. The talent of these people in relation to their commercial success was inversely proportionate to today's talent (or the lack thereof) and the riches that are acquired. Criminal. The experimenting back then, pushing boundaries and one's peers to do better, indicates it was all about the love of the music. What an era to be in the midst of it all ...be it a player, or a civilian.
I thoroughly enjoyed this video !!
loved it thank u!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for uploading.
Just when I thought I knew all the bigs.
I get lucky, again.
It appears that this was made in 2004 (timely since Stan Levey passed away in 2005). Thank you @TubeworksVideoChannel for uploading this superb documentary.
Brilliant documentary. Thank you for producing it and sharing this vitally important history with us. I read the name "Stan Levey" on all those classic record jackets and never knew anything about this great artist other than a few passages in the biographies and histories. Great job all the way around.
@@ronniecohen5668 This great documentary inspired me to order the autobiography of Mr. Levey. So much good material being written about jazz over the past fifteen or twenty years.
Great Story! Be Bop Lives!!
What a treasure, this wonderful and soulful document, so beautifully made. I wish to the heavens that my old buddy Ted Gerike was still here to supply me with more of his anecdotes about these greats. But I'm here now, and it's a thril to encounter this mindblowingly expansive talent thoroughly realized and ready to roll out so early iin his youth.
Thank you so much for this. More viewings and much listening are ndeed in order.
4:40 “all built in” love the spirit in this
Thank you Angela. Love to you and your kids for putting this together. All heart.
Thank you for your kind thoughts however this video was a joint effort produced by Stan and myself originally published in 2004 as part of our DVD documentary “Stan Levey The Original Original”.
@@TubeworksVideoChannel Apologies and thank you for pointing me in the direction of the original video. I'll certainly look for it. I was lucky to meet Stan when I was a kid. He was with Ella. the rhythm section came to our house on a few consecutive years. They were playing the Fairmont Hotel circuit if I have it right. Beautiful guys. He was an original...
You're welcome anyway LOL
Jazz lovers lament he was out with the Woody Herman band.
Superb! Many thanks for posting this wonderful documentary.
Glad you enjoyed it!
I remember max roach at jacks drum shop in Boston he gave a few of us young drummers a masterclass as it’s called now in the 50 s
Great video. This is really interesting.
Glad you enjoyed it
Great doc!! Thanks
beautiful!
I met Stan Levey when I was in High School in Van Nuys Ca. In 1971. His son played piano and sax and played in our blues band called "Blues Conception".
Did Stan have his camera?
I always heard about o many of the great drummers, some how never heard of Stan.What a Ledgend.This cat played with so many heavyweights. Never heard anything about him until now.Thank you so much for posting this video.
Sorry to have to say this, but there were many excellent white jazz musicians who were never recognized. Care to guess why?
@@silva777 Stan got out of the business and became a photographer. Shove you a-hole ness.
This Wonderful film brings me back to Sunday evenings 7 pm 1960 in Ireland, listening to steve race jazz hour I was 14 and this music came into my soul
My mothers uncle had been in N York in the 30ies,40, 50ies and brought a Hugh collection of records including. Jazz. I wore them Out playing them on our old phonograph ..”his masters voice”I suppose for me in a positive way it’s the ultimate nostalgia or a longing to return to the innocence of that time...🇨🇮⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️❤️
Many thanks. Gives good inside in what really happened besides all the legend talk.
Best movie on Jazz right here
thanks for sharing💙
What a time - wish I could've been there just to experience the magic
Fantastic
That shot of Zoot Sims is awesome. This covers a lot of turf. Marvelous.
This was a great document into early jazz in first hand testimony.
I hope this is a series, I will seek it out.
Thanks for the upload, cheers and Godbless.
Thank you for the kind words. You are welcome to view and subscribe to all of the videos on our channel here: ua-cam.com/users/TubeworksVideo
Man what a video...a history lesson of American music
The guy near the end gets it perfectly--today's drummers are no longer musical, just percussive. They drag every piece of music through THEIR groove and nothing else matters. A shame.
@Drummer J.L.H. Very well stated. I agree with your choice of Jeff Hamilton. Right in there I think I would also put, perhaps Peter Erskine as a true understated player and good listener. Anyway, you made some excellent points. Great job.
I kinda disagree - the drummers of today are actually quite sublime!
@Drummer J.L.H. Ok cheers, Virgil Donati. Love him! Saw him twice with Holdsworth here in Paris. Great "Heavy Handed Power Drummer" no doubt. However I was thinking more of the subtle, absolute Musical master drummers of today - Bill Stewart, Marcus Gilmore, Brian Blade, Kweki Sumbry etc..etc....(there are loads more!!). Erskine (fantastic unique drummer) is also to my ears heavy handed compared to the swinging agility of guys like Jeff Tain Watts, Dejohnette. Hey, I'm not really wanting to compare all these guys cause I Love them ALL !!! I'm not a drummer myself but Drums make my world go round. Cheers x
@@joecaroselli5858 I know both Jeff and Peter, but would add the younger Willie Jones III.
I first became aware of Stan Levey from Ken Burns' "Jazz" series. Besides being a great drummer he's a likeable personality.
😮❤ok😂
Beautiful History…
Absolutely fantastic and heart warming documentary!