Jim Pepper

Jim Pepper (1980s)

Jim Pepper (born June 18, 1941 in Salem (Oregon) as James Gilbert Pepper II , † February 10, 1992 in Portland (Oregon) ) was an American jazz musician (saxophonist, flautist) and Indian singer.

Live and act

His father Gilbert, a Kaw Indian, was a baker, musician and often an excellent award dancer at Powwows , his mother Floy, a Muskogee , worked as a teacher. At the age of 15, Jim Pepper learned the tenor saxophone through self-lessons and with the help of his father . In 1964, he moved to New York City to become a jazz musician, having previously played with Pharoah Sanders in California . Together with Larry Coryell , he founded the band Free Spirits , which - as a forerunner of jazz-rock - experimented with jazz improvisations using rock or R&B rhythms.

Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry encouraged Pepper in his attempts to combine traditional Indian music with jazz. On his record Pow Wow (1971) he recorded Indian songs, including the newly arranged traditional peyote cult singing Witchi-Tai-To, which made it into the charts. The album was economically no more than a respectable success, so that Pepper withdrew from the music business and became a professional fisherman in Alaska. Despite receiving a press award in 1974 in San Francisco , he returned to Alaska, where he met the singer Caren Knight , who became his partner. There were occasional performances with West Coast -Jazzern in Juneau and Anchorage , but also to invitations to California.

It was not until 1979 that Pepper returned to the jazz scene on the initiative of Don Cherry, toured with him through West Africa and played in the Liberation Music Orchestra and in the bands of drummers Bob Moses and Paul Motian . On his own record Comin '& Goin' (1984), Pepper was able to better implement the concept of Pow Wow and, together with Don Cherry, Naná Vasconcelos , Collin Walcott and also John Scofield, adapt nine Indian pieces into a contemporary jazz context in such a way that they retain their spirituality stayed. Pepper supported the American Indian Movement and also played, sang and danced on traditional powwows.

Since his return to the stage he has played regularly in Europe, for example with Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra . There it was also documented on disk in different contexts. He formed a working band with drummers John Betsch and Ed Schuller , some of which were expanded into a quartet with Marty Cook , Claudine François and Mal Waldron . Pepper's playing on the tenor saxophone was characterized by its own melody with unmistakable patterns and high-energy, but relatively short overblowing "arrows".

Jim Pepper died of lymph gland cancer at the age of 51. Don Cherry gave a speech at his grave, and a memorial concert with numerous participants took place in New York. In 1998 the composer Gunther Schuller paid tribute to Pepper's music by rearranging it for a jazz ensemble and symphony orchestra. Pepper's work is traced in the documentary Pepper's Pow Wow (1995) by Sandra Sunrising Osawa. According to Wolf Kampmann, his early death prevented “the rise of the saxophonist into a leading figure in ethno-jazz ”.

In 2005, the Oregon State Parliamentary Assembly honored Jim Pepper and his musical legacy. On April 7, 2007, Pepper's saxophone was presented to the National Museum of the American Indian during a ceremony that performed Pepper's music .

Lexigraphic entries

• Leonard Feather , Ira Gitler : The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. Oxford University Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-19-532000-X .
• Wolf Kampmann (Ed.), With the assistance of Ekkehard Jost : Reclams Jazzlexikon . Reclam, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-010528-5 .

Web links

• The Jazz Legacy of Jim Pepper with detailed discography (English)
• Detailed obituary by Manfred Hamal

See also

• Witchi-Tai-To (jazz album, 1974)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ National Museum of the American Indian ( Memento of the original from June 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.