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Bill Moody
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Bill Moody's background as a musician and his talents as a writer have made the Evan Horne Mysteries a favorite of jazz aficionados and crime-fiction fans alike. Investigating the death of Chet Baker, a major cult figure in the world of music, brings out the best in both the author and his pianist sleuth, Evan Horne. Looking for Chet Baker is his fifth Evan Horne mystery.
Interview Topics A fascination with unsolved mysteries The Evan Horne Mystery, Bird Lives The mystery of Chet Baker's death
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JJM You are the creator of the Evan Horne Mysteries, the most recent of which is Looking for Chet Baker, the fifth book in the series. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got fascinated by the story of Chet Baker? BM I have always been familiar with his music, and always liked it from the days of his quartet with Gerry Mulligan. Over the years, being active in jazz, I heard all of the various stories and mythology about him. I always had it in the back of my mind to write something about him. I ended up on this gig in Las Vegas with two musicians who had worked with him extensively - Carson Smith, who was the original bass player with the Mulligan/Baker Quartet, and Jack Montrose, the saxophonist and arranger. We spent time talking during the breaks, and stories were told about Chet. The more I heard, the more intrigued I was about getting first hand information from people who knew him well. I subsequently met Russ Freeman, who was Chet's pianist for five or six years. He was very helpful in relating more information about Chet. When I moved to northern California, I ended up on two different bands with people who had known Chet very well, because he spent a lot of time in the Bay area, and I continued to get more and more information. It just seemed like it was all meant to be, because I kept running into these people, either meeting or playing with them. I began to seriously think about using it as a vehicle for Even Horne, because his death, of course, was one of these never resolved things. That is how it really got started. JJM The fascination with the unsolved mysteries is one that begins with the very first Evan Horne book, and continues with this one. BM Yes. That is where Evan Horne is a lot like me. I am fascinated by unsolved mysteries. It is hard to accept that these various events happen and take place. Nobody knows what happened and they have never been resolved. As a writer, it is a fascinating thing for me to investigate.
JJM I want to ask you about your interest in the jazz expatriates. In fact, you have been there. You told me in an earlier conversation that you spent three years in Europe. Can you talk a little about that? BM I was working in a group in Boston with a Czech bass player, who was on scholarship to Berklee Music College. He was on leave from a big band in Czechoslovakia, based about 100 miles north of Prague. He said that his bandleader always wanted an American drummer with the band and asked if I would like to come over and play at the Prague Jazz Festival and do some recording. I had never been to Europe, so I went. I ended up staying there for a year. They were really wonderful people and treated me very well. While I was there, I started running into these American musicians who were living in Europe. They were musicians who sort of disappeared from the scene here, and you didn't hear anything about them. It turned out they were living in Europe and doing very well. In some cases, they were being treated like celebrities. I became fascinated with the expatriate musicians. I got to meet and play with some of them, and began compiling interviews. I began discovering why they had come to Europe and why they stayed there, and understand their feelings about going back to the states. That got me very interested, and I kind of wove that part of it into the Looking for Chet Baker book. JJM I know you have dealt with jazz expatriates in your book The Jazz Exiles, which is a non-fiction, scholarly book. Who were some of the people you interviewed for that? BM They were people like trumpeter Art Farmer, the pianist and songwriter Bob Dorough, singer Jon Hendricks, the saxophonist Bud Freeman, who was part of the original Austin High gang in Chicago with Dave Tough and that group. He was living in England for several years. Mark Murphy, the singer, lived in England for 10 or 12 years. There were many others I didn't get to talk to, but heard about through other people or did research on, people like Dexter Gordon and Johnny Griffin. In particular in the 60's, there was almost an exodus to Europe by American jazz musicians. Some of them stayed for short periods. Phil Woods, for example, stayed for five years and came back. Others stayed for the rest of their careers, like the great bop drummer Kenny Clarke, and saxophonist Don Byas. It was a very wide cross section of American musicians that stayed over there.
JJM You weave this deep interest and expertise of expatriates in Looking for Chet Baker via the character Fletcher Paige. I was impressed with all Paige's reasons for leaving and staying and playing. Can you tell us a little about how that is a reflection of African-American expatriates? BM Fletcher is a fictional character, but he is a kind of composite of Dexter Gordon, Ben Webster and Johnny Griffin. Some of the things he says are things these musicians told me when I interviewed them for Jazz Exiles. I remember particularly Art Farmer, who lived in Vienna from 1968 until he died a couple years ago, who said that he never experienced a single racial incident there. He said sometimes people would look at him, but in a way one looks at a new model car. There wasn't any negative aspect to it. Johnny Griffin said that even when he lived in New York and worked at Carnegie Hall, he often got disrespectful treatment from some of the stagehands, even though he was there as one of the featured soloists. He found that when he went to Europe, audiences there didn't have that attitude. The racial thing was gone, and they were able to be treated as true jazz artists, and pursue careers and make a good living and be treated with the kind of respect that symphony players would be given in this country. So, I tried to compile a lot of that information into Fletcher's remarks when he is interviewed in the book. JJM He is a very articulate character… BM Like Mark Murphy told me, you don't realize how much of an American you are until you live in another country. So, in addition to working in another country, playing American music, you are also living in a foreign country. The result is that you become a bit more politically aware, and you see things from a distance and end up with a different perspective. JJM What did you like about living abroad, and what did you miss about the States when you were there? BM It was certainly interesting to be able to travel around to various countries, and see completely different cultures in a very short trip. It is like going from one state to another in this country. The way that music is cherished and the way I was treated as a musician. Europeans generally look upon jazz as an art form, and the players are artists. So, you are treated accordingly, whether you are famous or not. The interplay with European musicians was interesting too. I met and played with many European musicians, and I found that very interesting, as well as the general differences in the cultures. What I missed about the States, and some of these other musicians told me too, were chili, popcorn and pro football, but I think almost all of those things are available now. JJM After 20 years, has the scene changed quite a bit? BM Yes, it has changed a lot. It has become very corporate and the hotel chains are running everything, so a lot of the live music is gone. Some of the big production shows, like the Casino de Paris and the Follies are all on tape now. Where there used to be an 18-piece band playing for the shows, it is all prerecorded. A lot of the lounges have closed to add more slot machines and poker rooms. There is only a fraction of the live music that used to be there. JJM It is interesting because Las Vegas makes the pitch that there is more to do than just gaming, but experiencing live music, especially jazz, isn't necessarily one of those things. What was your favorite Vegas show? BM I tried to avoid the Strip as much as possible, since I was working. Some of the production shows had excellent bands. The drawback to that is that you play the same show the same way every night. For the dancers, the music has to be pretty precise. Some of those productions were very pretty. You can imagine, as a tourist, flying into Las Vegas, going to one of those showrooms, seeing a big production show with a big band. That was pretty exciting entertainment that you were not going to find in Iowa or Nebraska or someplace like that. JJM I must confess that I was conflicted in reading that book about, shall we say, whether or not the killer should be caught? Or caught right away, anyway…I am probably not alone in that… BM I took a copy of Death of a Tenorman to James Moody. He asked me what the next one was about. I explained the premise to him, about a serial killer killing off smooth jazz musicians. He thought about it for a minute and then asked if there was any reason the killer had to be caught? So, I think that was at least the fleeting thought among a number of musicians. JJM Writing Looking for Chet Baker enabled you to look at the facts of Chet Baker's death in 1988 in Amsterdam, which was never completely resolved. During the course of your research, did you uncover any clues? What were the most surprising things you found?
JJM Baker biographer Jeroen de Valk, also interviewed by Jerry Jazz Musician, talked a lot about an interview he did with Baker in 1987. He made some attempts to retrace what he did during his last days. Was that kind of research helpful to you? BM Actually it was. His book was helpful, as was a film done by Dutch television called "Chet Baker: The Final Days." JJM That shows up in the book. BM Yes, it is in the book. They piece together what they think may have happened. It was a strange circumstance. He had a concert to play on May 12, a Thursday. He came to Amsterdam and it was a holiday, so the hotels where he usually stayed were full. Consequently, he just picked the first one that had a room, and it happened to be this particular hotel. The concert promoters knew how Chet was, that he was always late, and that sometimes he didn't show up until way after the gig was supposed to start. So, they weren't that concerned about it until it got to be close to the concert time. They called the hotels where he normally stayed. Of course, they couldn't find him. They didn't know where he was, or even if he was in Amsterdam. Then, they got a call from the police after they discovered the body and identified him as Chet Baker. It was actually Friday the 13th when he died. It was a strange set of circumstances. JJM Earlier today, I was listening to Chet Baker and theme music to the James Dean Story, with Bud Shank and Russ Freeman. In Looking for Chet Baker, you write as Evan Horne, "We look for a hero who dies young dramatically." That certainly fits for James Dean, but as you say no so for Baker. Yet, Baker has a tremendous fascination for a lot of people. What do you attribute that to? He didn't exactly go out in a blaze of glory in a '55 Porsche… BM I don't know. There has always been this mystique about him, and his off stage life was as dramatic as his playing life was. He served a long jail term in Italy, was in and out of trouble with the law in this country and others, yet he continued to make all this great music. It was not just a straight-ahead musician playing, there was all this stuff surrounding him. Of course, when he was very young, he was compared to James Dean and he was even up for some movie roles, which he screwed up by not showing up for. One movie that I know about was a movie that Robert Wagner ended up getting the part, a film called All the Fine Young Cannibals. That was supposed to be Chet's role. That could have been the launch pad for a movie career. But, I think given his involvement with drugs, it would have been a constant struggle between Chet and the Hollywood establishment trying to keep him straight. Unlike James Dean, he stayed around for another 40 years, and died a strange kind of sad death, falling out the window of a hotel.
JJM Was it easier to live "outside the law" for Baker and other expatriates in Europe than in America? BM Yes. It wasn't legal, but the attitude about drug addiction was much more regressive. Drugs were more readily available in places like Amsterdam. It has been cleaned up, but he had a much more difficult time in the States. His contemporary, Art Pepper, is an example of someone who didn't get the breaks in the States, because he spent a lot of time in prison here. He was in San Quentin a long time. Chet dodged that bullet by staying in Europe as long as he did. The Europeans, I think, treated jazz musicians as artists, much more so than they were in the States. Stan Getz stayed in Scandinavia a long time before he came back. When the musicians did come back, they seemed to take their cue from Europe. Since they were successful in Europe, it became easier for them to find success in America too. JJM You could put together a jazz expatriate all-star group that would be a fantastic collection of musicians. One of my favorites was Brew Moore. BM Brew Moore is someone that has been suggested to me to have Evan Horne look into. He apparently fell down the stairs and broke his neck and died. Apparently his thing was alcohol. I talked to musicians who were just amazed he could stand up, let alone play. JJM Is there anything I haven't touched on that you would like to share? BM My purpose in these books is to write an entertaining story, but to try to weave in as much about jazz as I can. It is kind of a fine line to walk. There are going to be people who read these books who are not big jazz fans. I try to follow a couple of authors I admired who do things with different subjects. Tony Hillerman, for example, writes about a Navajo reservation policeman. You can't read Hillerman without learning a lot about the Navajo legend and mythology. He does it in such a way that is woven into the story. Another one is the English author Dick Francis, who writes about horse racing. Francis was a jockey himself, so whenever you read his books you learn an awful lot about horse racing whether you want to or not. He does it in such a way that it doesn't detract from the story, it only enriches it. That is what I hope to do with my books. JJM Last question…If you could choose one event in jazz history you could have attended, or, as a musician perhaps you could have sat in on, what would it have been? BM One thing that comes to mind right away is the recording of Kind of Blue. I would have loved to play with that group, when it was Miles, Coltrane, Cannonball, Wynton Kelly, Jimmy Cobb, Bill Evans and Paul Chambers. That was such a landmark recording, it would have been really great to be there for that. To play on it would have been the ultimate!
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Bill Moody products at Amazon.com
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This interview took place on April 10, 2002 * If you enjoyed this interview, you may want to read our interview with Chet Baker biographer James Gavin.
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