Above all else, music and musicians remained constant anchors throughout Gale Madden’s life. She had no end to the stories of musicians with whom she had been associated. Like the one where Bird came by her pad in the Village, and finding her away, left a note in her typewriter that read: “‘Was here. You were not.’ And he drew a little bird.”
Speaking of musicians, the Don Manning interview is rife with anecdotal lore. She tells her tales with plenty of colour and always places herself at the centre of the action. Take her version of that Prestige record date in 1951. “I went into the studio, and I had my rhythm section… Walter Bolden and Phil Leshin, and I was playing maracas because Big Sid [Catlett] helped raise me, and I loved Big Sid’s sizzle cymbal sound. So I’m playing the maracas and getting a sizzle cymbal sound, and Gerry Mulligan says in an interview that I was getting things out of that rhythm section that was [sic] a breath of fresh air to jaded ears… And then Mr. Big [possibly Bob Weinstock’s father] comes in, Mr. Prestige, and he said ‘What’s going on in here?’ It’s obvious that he had a problem with females that could think and chew gum at the same time.” She concludes the story, saying “All I did was play maracas on two tunes,” implying she would have made a larger contribution were it not for Weinstock’s obtuseness.
We also hear the familiar story of how she and Gerry Mulligan hitchhiked together from New York to L.A. in early 1952, though she insists that Gerry had “followed her”, not the other way around. Once she gets warmed up, there’s no holding her back. She tells of encounters with the legends – Miles, Max, Mingus, Dizzy, Dexter, Bird and Monk, all of them – and remembers the not-so-famous as well, relating tales of hanging with the likes of Shadow Wilson, Karl George, Joe Mondragon, Buzzy Bridgeford, Fred Greenwell and Sonny Berman. She literally knows everyone in the business, from Bird to Igor (Stravinsky).
Speaking of which, her Dumbarton Oaks story is classic Madden. Of course, it was she who introduced Bird to Stravinsky’s Concerto in E-Flat that he took to as an addict to heroin. And wouldn’t you know? The story begins with Gale taking a private lesson from the maestro himself: “I took a lesson from Stravinsky, and in order to take a lesson from Stravinsky, you had to know all of his published works, read everything he ever wrote, before he’d even take you, so that’s one of the things I like to brag about.”
Then she arrives at the crux of the story. “Bird would come by [my apartment] every day, and I’d go to the gig every night… So I said, you heard this Dumbarton Oaks, Bird? I played it for him. He didn’t leave… it would be over, and he’d go ‘Dumbarton Oaks, Dumbarton Oaks’… and put it back on. He played it a hundred times at least. I said ‘That’s it!’ And this was five stories up… so I just took the damn thing and opened the window and sailed it out, and he practically jumped out the window [laughs]. Bird.”
But it wasn’t all hijinks on the highway for Gale. Plenty of poignant moments are recalled during the radio interview with Manning. A sympathetically hip former drummer who had worked with Claude Thornhill and jammed with Bird back east, Manning induces Gale to lay some fine old chestnuts on us. So we hear how in the 30s, when the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra played the Trianon in Seattle, Joe Thomas used to pick her up and set her atop the instrument cases so she could see better, poor vision being a lifelong issue for her. “My mother used to drop me off”, she remembers, “and they [Lunceford’s men] were my babysitters.”
One of the programme’s most affecting moments occurs when Don and Gale discuss their memories of Charlie Parker. Don sighs, saying “Gosh. I miss him,” to which Gale wistfully responds “I miss a lot of my babies… Some days I wake up and I can’t believe that they’re gone.”
After my chat with Gale, I was sceptical of her claims of influence and shelved the interview. Then, in 2018 I began transcribing my long talk with her thinking I would submit it to a publication such as Cadence. Wanting more information on her, I tracked down her musical associate and student Maxx Fanucchi in Bellingham. Maxx was able to tell me things about her I could never have known. First and foremost, he informed me Gale had passed away in 2015, aged 97, following a bad fall and a move to assisted living. While admitting Gale could be a notorious name-dropper, he had great praise for her abilities as a creative advisor and teacher. When I asked him if she had been a good teacher, he replied “She was a master teacher regarding many subjects.”
My correspondence with Maxx prompted me to regard Gale Madden in an entirely new light. At the time of my interview with her, I recalled something she said about when her protégé, Maxx Fanucci, had taken her to Western Washington University in 1998 for a master class with Max Roach. She told me that after the class with Roach and bassist Chuck Israels (head of Western’s jazz department), Max had introduced Gale to the participants, signalling her out as one who had “taught everybody” on the New York scene in the 40s.
When I asked Fanucchi to tell his version of the incident, he laid this bombshell on me: “This was a turning point in how I had to think about what always sounded like a put-on from an eccentric old lady in Bellingham, Washington. Even during the master class with Chuck Israels on bass, she was giggling about what Max was doing… she’s telling me how the counterpoint demonstration with the ostinato figure he was playing on kick and hat was her idea, her influence. Basically, a result of her explaining Bach to him and encouraging him to express that on drums.
“So by now I’m almost annoyed. Always with the tall tales, taking credit, teaching. So in the lobby, Max is there at a table, signing things. Gale is really animated, ‘Oh, man, when he sees me!’ I don’t know what to think, assume the worst. He stands up, and this is a big lobby with lots of commiserating. He quiets the place down and addresses everybody: ‘Hey, everybody, this is Gale Madden. She taught me, she taught Charlie Parker, she taught everybody.’”
After hearing this, I listened to portions of our 2002 conversation with a fresh set of ears. The tales seemed too detailed, the characters too real to be entirely made-up creations. Many she had not told Manning. I heard about encounters with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Ray Wetsel and some of the Kenton men, Stravinsky, Woody Herman, Ray Charles, George Wallington, Horace Silver and so on. This bit explaining how she recruited drummer Walter Bolden for a rhythm section she put together in New York is representative. Stan Getz, Gale told me, found Bolden and Horace Silver playing at the Colored Elks in Hartford and brought them to Birdland for a gig. “He [Stan] says ‘You got to come down to the gig.’ I said ‘I wouldn’t miss it.’ So I’m at Birdland, sitting at the table by the kitchen, the musicians’ table, and he gets off the stand, and he brings his drummer and piano player over, and he says ‘Straighten them out.’ Horace was playing all over, trying to be Art Tatum, or somebody.” Says Gale to Horace: “Just think that you’re at the Colored Elks, Saturday night, and it’s midnight, and play like you would.” Gale continued “So after the [next] set, Stan comes over to me and says ‘I don’t know what you told them but you told them right.’”
Do I believe every word Gale says? She did have an undeniable ability to cast herself in the best possible light. And at times her dates don’t match up. Is it the fog of faded memory, or is considerable embellishment going on here? Perhaps she believed it all herself, imagining an entire cosmology with her at the centre. But in retrospect, even her claim of influence on Ray Charles isn’t so much a stretch when you consider the context. It’s well documented that the soul legend got his start in music on Seattle’s Jackson Street scene in the 40s at which time the Nat Cole influence dominated his vocal style. We know Gale – a Washington State native – was an old hand on the Seattle scene. A thriving hub of jazz, its smallness ensured any musician on the scene would be known to everyone in the community. Is it really so hard to imagine Gale sitting and talking with Ray in a Seattle nightspot, discussing vocal styles, and suggesting he might benefit by adopting “a badder attitude”? Whenever I’m inclined to doubt her, I have such thoughts, and entertain a mental picture of Max Roach standing up and announcing to a crowded room: “She taught me, she taught Charlie Parker, she taught everybody.”
Coda:
As I was putting the finishing touches on this article, I came across a doctoral dissertation on Mulligan written by Richard S. Fine. Based on 26 hours of oral history recorded by Ken Poston, months before Mulligan died, it contains the fullest account I have read of his relationship with Gale. Gerry credits Madden for helping him kick the heroin habit, though he relapsed after they parted ways. Fine also reports that Gale’s friendship with Bob Graettinger led to an opportunity for Mulligan to work with Stan Kenton as an arranger and composer.
Gerry also speaks of her influence on him musically: “I was always playing the piano hard and she said, ‘You don’t have to play the piano so hard, easy.’ And in a lot of simple ways, she opened up my perspective about music, and more than that, about my approach to music.” The pianoless idea began while Gerry and Gale were still in New York. Writes Fine: “The idea, Mulligan recalls, originated when Madden helped him assemble a tentette to play his new arrangements. They wound up using [George] Wallington on piano because they liked the way he played.” Continues Mulligan: “It was her experiments that helped me when I got to L.A., since [by then] I already had an idea what would and wouldn’t work [with respect to using or not using a piano].”
Fine concludes his treatise by summarising the contents of 23 CDs’ worth of Mulligan interviews. On the final disc, he supplies a list of 19 people Gerry says “were important to him”. First are his parents, followed by teachers, friends and musicians he worked with. Number 19 – the last name on the list – reads “Gail Madden”.
See part 1 of Tracking The Mystery Woman Of Jazz: Mama X Plus
