Doc: Art Pepper - Notes From a Jazz Survivor

Loneliness on the road and the dread of performing live in the early 1950s drove Art Pepper to snort heroin. What followed was a lifelong addiction. As he said regarding his stage anxiety, “I'd get sick to my stomach, and the only way I could handle it was getting loaded." It's hard to believe when you listen to Pepper play that he could be hampered by nerves. Such anxiety was more common than not, not only among jazz musicians under creative pressure but also mega artists such as Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra.

The hours before musical artists take the stage is always the most harrowing. Rattling around in their heads is the dreaded fear of forgetting notes or lyrics, of wiping out, the difficulty of playing in certain keys or reaching certain notes in key, and the eternal worry of wiping out in public and the shame that follows. Anxiety is a greedy and destructive force that thrives on inactivity and fear of the unknown.

Remove the live audience and such fears subside somewhat. Listen to Art Pepper here on Holiday Flight in 1957...



Here's Art's Opus in 1956...



And here's Henry Mancini's Swing Lightly from Combo! in 1961, with a clarinet solo by Pepper...



Now to the point of today's post on Art Pepper: Notes From a Jazz Survivor is one of jazz's most honest, open and searing jazz documentaries. Originally released in 1982, the documentary directed by Don McGlynn was later re-issued on LaserDisc in Japan with concert footage from Pasquale's in Malibu, Calif., and from Boston in 1986. The quartet featured Art Pepper (as), Milcho Leviev (p), Bob Magnusson (b) and Carl Burnett (d) performing Red Car, Patricia, Miss Who? Our Song, Mambo Koyama and Ophelia.

Here's the documentary...