By C. Michael Bailey

Art Pepper: Notes from a Jazz Survivor
Directed by Don McGlynn
Shanachie SH 6316
Playing Time: 50:00

The Art of Pepper. Notes from a Jazz Survivor has just been re-released after languishing for several years in the discontinued bin. Directed by Don McGlynn and released in 1981, Notes is a searing portrait of Art Pepper, one of Jazz Music’s most distinctive voices and enduring archetypes. The production of this documentary took place between the release of Art and Laurie Pepper’s Autobiography, Strait Life in 1978 and Pepper’s Death in 1982 and offers unique and no-frills glimpse of Pepper at the height of his re-emergence in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

The Beautiful, The Brilliant, The Doomed. Notes has a great deal in common with Bruce Webber’s 1987 documentary “Let’s Get Lost”, a film that addressed the life and creation of trumpeter Chet Baker. The similarities include both content and myth. These films were produced at the end of the two musician’s turbulent lives. The majority of footage was from the musician’s later periods. Both films portray attractive, talented and tragically self-destructive West Coast musicians who endured their self destruction into their 50s, enjoying a certain commercial success during the period surrounding the films.

The similarities between the films stop short of the stylistic characteristics. Where Webber’s Let’s Get Lost is an ethereal Calvin Klein commercial featuring Baker as the dark American romantic, Notes is a jolting, straight-ahead rendering of a wasted, yet in the end, triumphant life featuring Pepper and his third wife, Laurie. Notes reveals a violently honest Pepper who is relatively sober. Let’s Get Lost in the end finds Baker where he has been for most of the previous 30 years, deluded and high.

Laurie. The tonal center of the documentary is Laurie Pepper, Art’s wife whom he met while rehabbing at Synanon in the late ‘60s. She is warmly empathetic with Pepper when regarding his genius and ironically obtuse when regarding his weaknesses. When interviewed by Terri Gross for Fresh Air many years later, she was a bit more introspective and honest about the challenge of living with and managing a such and egocentric as Pepper. Nevertheless, Ms. Pepper is single-handedly responsible for the succinct documentation of this musician’s Life.

Performance. Notes captures Pepper leading a trio in a club date in Malibu playing “Red Car”, “Patricia”, and “Miss Who?”. The performances are characteristic of Pepper’s playing in his later period. Gone is the dry ice tone of the ‘50s. It is replaced with an incandescently emotional performance that must be the closest thing to musical self-emolation as one can get. The tunes may be found in other performance on Pepper’s Galaxy Box set, a collection of mostly alto-lead quartet recordings.

During the performance of his famous ballad, “Patricia”, one can catch a glimpse of that beautiful and handsome face that stares out from Art Pepper + Eleven—Plays Modern Jazz Classics. Notes for a Jazz Survivor offers a scene form the end of the road for a preeminant altoist. This is how Pepper should be remembered…at the top of his game.