Chuck Redd: the circle remains unbroken

BY MITCHELL TROPIN

Jazz is amazing for its continuity. One generation passes to another, creating an unbroken circle that keeps the art form alive and well. Chuck Redd, Takoma Park native and resident, is part of that living connection. A drummer and vibraphonist, he continues to create and perform the same great Jazz he learned from such giants as Charlie Byrd, Dizzy Gillespie, and Mel Tormé. Redd also can call those same legends his friends and family.

Redd headlines the Takoma Park JazzFest on June 14, and there is an element of the unbroken circle to this appearance. He performed at the first JazzFest eight years ago as drummer for then-headliner Charlie Byrd, the legendary guitarist who gave him his first break. Now, the protégé will emulate the mentor.

Redd's father, a radio engineer for Voice of America, was a friend of Byrd. Redd said his father filled the house with music, especially Byrd's records.

"It was part of the soundtrack to my childhood," he said.

Redd's father encouraged Chuck and his brother, Robert, to enjoy music. Both are professional musicians. Robert plays piano with legendary bassist Keter Betts.

One evening, when he was 16, Redd was driving around when deejay Felix Grant announced that Byrd was opening his own Jazz club in Silver Spring near Colesville Avenue and Fenton Street.

"I drove over there immediately, and purchased the first ticket to the place," Redd said.

When he heard Byrd play live he was spellbound, and became a frequent visitor to the club. About that same time, the young Blair High School student was learning the drums.

Then one Tuesday night, with about seven people in the audience, Byrd noticed Redd, remembering him from his friendship with the teenager's father. Byrd invited Redd to perform with him. After watching Byrd perform so many times and listening to his records, Redd knew all of the arrangements.

Accepting the offer, Redd found himself playing with the Jazz legend.

"I was kind of shaky, but I knew what was happening," he said. "I knew when to start and when to stop."

A year or so later, Redd was attending Montgomery College and playing drums several nights a week when Byrd called, saying he needed a drummer for a tour of Australia with a stop in New Orleans. Suddenly student/musician Redd was a full-fledged professional Jazz drummer.

"For my first gig outside D.C., I found myself smack in the middle of New Orleans during Mardi Gras," Redd said.

Redd said Byrd as a quiet, approachable guy.

"I learned so much from him," Redd said. "He rarely told me how to play, and let me develop. Twice a year he would say something that stuck to me the rest of my life."

The relationship with Byrd would span over 10 years and 18 albums.

Redd also enjoyed a special relationship with Dizzy Gillespie, first meeting the trumpeter in Geneva, Switzerland.

"Dizzy loved drummersespecially good drummers. Without being asked, Dizzy invited me to his room to show me all these complicated rhythms and how to play his songs correctly," Redd said. "He probably did that for thousands of drummers; he was a very giving and education-oriented person."

A few months later, Gillespie was playing at Washington's Blues Alley. The club's manager remarked that Redd's mother was a terrific cook. Remembering Redd from Geneva, Gillespie, without hesitation, phoned Redd.

"I remember calling my mother and saying, 'Can I bring Dizzy Gillespie home for dinner?'" Redd said. "It was quite a scene. There was Dizzy, sitting in my parents' living room with members of his band, while my mother was cooking for everyone. I was completely overwhelmed."

That initial get-together became a tradition, with Gillespie coming by for dinner whenever he played in Washington.

Redd has toured and performed with Red Norvo, Marian McPartland, Bucky Pizzarelli, and Susannah McCorkle. He also performed for six years with Mel Tormé. Performing with legendary artists, many who were twice his age, was a double-edged sword, Redd discovered. Older performers did not hesitate to offer what Redd calls "constructive criticism." Such remarks were devastating, he said, but good critiquing "thickens your skin and makes you better."

Redd thought he would be always be devoted to drumming, but that changed as a teenager when he heard a record featuring vibraphonist Milt Jackson.

"It turned my head around completely. That was when I decided I wanted to play the vibes and make those beautiful sounds."

Other vibes musicians such as Lionel Hampton play the instrument more like percussionists, but those players didn't impact him the same way, Redd said.

"Milt Jackson transcended the instrument," he said. "He made it breathe; he made it lyrical. Milt made it a voice, and that's what drew me to it."

Redd finally got to know Jackson when they toured Japan at the same time. They would share meals together, and Redd shared his apprecation for Jackson.

"He could tell how much I loved him, and was nice about it. I didn't think of Milt Jackson as a vibes player. He was a Jazz musician whose vehicle happened to be the vibraphone," Redd said.

In the late 1990s, Redd heard Jackson play in New York. It was to be Jackson's last performance before he died. The musician's skills never diminished, Redd said.

"I got the same thrill as I did when I first heard him on that record as a teenager," he said.

The vibraphone, Redd points out, is one of the few instruments used almost exclusively in Jazz. It uses metal bars made of a secret alloy. ("They won't tell me what it is made of," Redd said.) Under the bars are resonator tubes, and between the tubes and the bars are disc-shaped fans that rotate, to give the instrument a pulsating vibrato effect.

"The vibrato is what takes the vibraphone from being a dry, cold-sounding, metal instrument to more of a breathing sound," Redd said. "What made Milt Jackson's music sound so luxurious was that he used a slow vibrato."

After playing on dozens of other artists' albums, Redd has started recording his own CDs for Arbors Records. His first album, Stomp, Look and Listen, is another example of how music has been an unbroken circle for Redd. Performing with him is mentor Charlie Byrd, and Tommy Flannagan, long-time pianist for Ella Fitzgerald.

Redd's most current CD is All This and Heaven Too. He heard the title track, written by Jimmy Van Heusen, on a Mel Tormé collection given to him by his brother.

The CD includes songs made famous by Duke Ellington and Frank Sinatra, but Redd makes them his own. For example, he takes the Ellington-Sinatra classic, "Indian Summer," and adds a bossa nova beat. Other songs on the CD reflect Redd's fondness for great American songs, such Irving Berlin's "They Say It's Wonderful."

Redd draws on his past for other songs. "I Know Why (and So Do You)," written by songwriting greats Harry Warren and Mack Gordon, was a favorite of Redd's mother. The album also includes an obscure Henry Mancini composition, "Once is Not Enough," which is not available on any other record.

Because the Jazz club scene has diminished, Redd performs at untraditional venues, such as the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History's Imax and Jazz clubs.

"It may not the best listening place," he said, "but people who wander by get the chance to hear Jazz livemaybe for the first time."

Redd is performing an all-Brazilian concert on June 13 at the Smithsonian's Imax Café. The show will explore the wide diversity of Brazilian music, spotlighting such great composers as Milton Nascimento, Sergio Mendes, and Antonio Carlos Jobim, who wrote "The Girl from Ipanema," one of Redd's favorites.

For the June 14 JazzFest 8, Redd will be playing with guitarist Frank Vignola, who performs with Les Paul, and Joe Byrd, brother of Charlie Byrd and an outstanding bass player.

Redd hopes to bring live Jazz to Takoma Park on a regular basis and is exploring alternative venues, perhaps house concerts. Redd lives with wife, Gail, who works for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. They met when she saw him perform at a concert on the C&O Canal.

Redd has a son, whose nickname, Charlie, is homage to Charlie Byrd. The 11-year old has been playing guitar for several years. When young Charlie started to learn the instrument, Byrd gave him one of his own to play.

The circle, it seems, will remain unbroken.