MUSIC THIS WEEK
Bernie Carroll says a good jazz drummer needs “big ears” plus the ability to listen.
His latest combo is the Bernie Carroll Project featuring Doug Wicken, flute; Dave Wiffen, tenor sax; Ralph Hetke, piano; Al Richardson, bass; and Carroll on drums.
Collectively, the band represents over 150 years of playing jazz in all its formats, from duos to 18-piece big bands and everything in between.
Initially, Carroll was not interested in the drums.
“My neighbours next door, a pair of German kids, were into music before I was. One played the accordion and the other one played the saxophone. I was attracted to the accordion,” recalls Carroll with a husky laugh, adding his parents weren’t quite ready to buy him an accordion.
At that time, visiting music teachers were leading music classes once a week in Kitchener’s elementary schools including St. John’s Separate School. Carroll’s first teacher was a nun. “Her name was Sister Stanislaus and we used to call her “Sister Santa Claus,” says Carroll with another laugh.
“At school, I discovered that I could study the drums. All I would need was a rubber practice pad, a set of sticks and a few books. The lessons were free. I started semi-private lessons once a week with Sister Stanislaus. There were three of us and I really wanted to do well so I was working really hard at it. I started getting ahead of the others and (the other music teacher) Mike Bergauer suggested private lessons with (bandleader/musician) Trev Bennett.”
At 13, Carroll got his first drum kit. “All I had for years was the practice pad,” he says. “Then one day I saw my dad coming up the driveway with this blue bass drum and I recognized it immediately. My family has a friend who was a drummer — a guy called John Benin. I guess Johnny was replacing his kit and my dad bought it for me. I was in seventh heaven. I finally had a real drum kit.”
Armed with his blue-sparkle drum kit, Carroll scored his first high school weekend gig with a band called Frankie and the Glow Tones — a late ’50s rock and roll/ rockabilly band with lead singer Frank Koebel — which also featured a young tenor sax player named John Tank.
Tank, now a famed sax/flute player based in New York, was taking private lessons with Mike Bergauer. “We became immediate friends,” notes Carroll, who has known Tank since he was 14.
Tank and Carroll have shared many musical adventures including a Glow Tones 28-hour music marathon for the Kiwanis Club at The Casino dance hall (now Golf’s Steak House). The band played non-stop from Friday night until midnight Saturday.
“By the end of that gig, my right leg was almost crippled from playing the bass drum. I don’t know how Tank did it playing tenor,” says Carroll.
Carroll, also a teacher, has played with a huge cast of musicians in various music genres over the years from being on the road with early rock bands and retro bands, to several popular jazz outfits including the Barry Wills Trio featuring late pianist Barry Wills, and bassist Doug Wicken, in addition to shows with guitarist Dave Thompson, sax players John Tank and Andy Klaehn, and guitarist Dave Thompson.
In the mid ’90s, Carroll assembled the local jazz band Continuum. Carroll says the band’s name was stolen from “Star
Trek.” The band consisted of Dave Wiffen, sax; Ron Schirm, trombone; Dave Thompson, guitar; Mark Heine, bass and Carroll on drums.
Continuum played gigs galore from a regular Sunday-night gig for five years at the old Pogo’s Restaurant in Waterloo to university noon-hour concerts and jazz festivals.
But eventually Carroll put down the drumsticks “as life happened.”
In 2016, Tank encouraged Carroll to resume the jazz beat.
The Bernie Carroll Project features the music of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter and Freddie Hubbard, in addition to original compositions by Wiffen and Wicken.
Carroll’s favourite drummers are Elvin Jones (John Coltrane), Tony Williams (Miles Davis) and Jack DeJohnette (Keith Jarratt), a.k.a. The Three Wise Men.
“I recommend to every musician [to] take the focus off yourself and listen to everyone else,” notes Carroll, adding a lot of guys trying to play jazz are “metronomes.”
“If you listen to the Wise Men, you don’t hear that,” he states. “If the jazz music is played properly everyone in the band plays time. No one is worried because everyone’s got their ear to the time and that frees the guys up front to be adventuresome in their soloing. It is very basic,” he explains.
“I try to focus on what they are playing. Most of the time my eyes are closed. That is a not conscious thing. That just happens because I am trying to focus on the music going on around me and what I can add without getting in the way of what the lead players are doing. That is the conversation that happens in jazz music if it is well done.”