Remembering Artt Frank

 I found out about Artt's passing on Facebook. Initially Artt was my personal connection to jazz immortal Chet Baker. Artt was a hall of fame jazz bebop drummer who played with Chet, Miles, Dizzy, Bird, all the immortals. Once during a visit to his home in Green Valley Arizona, he showed me a personal Christmas card from Dave Brubeck. But I'm just dropping names here. Artt was a strong, authentic, passionate human being who generously shared his musical history with me, and in the process created with me a deep and  very human personal connection.

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Artt was a personal friend of Chet Baker. I found contact info for him on a Chet Baker fan page and with much trepidation called him and began a series of phone dialogues with him. 

I found that they used to watch Bruce Lee and Japanese samurai moview together. This was of interest to me as I am an Aikido instructor. Artt also expained his name to me in another personal anecdote. He was with Chet once and Artt asked him why he didn't call more often. Chet said to him it was because he got the phones numberts confused with another jazz great, Art Pepper. So Chet had a personal book of phone numbers and he put an extra t on Artt's number to eliminate the confusion with Art Pepper. And my understanding was that the next day Artt had his name legally changed from Art to Artt.

Just little things like that made me feel included in a flow of time that connected me to their world and through that to the world for want of a better term of bebop. To the music of a prior age. Artt would give me tips, such as concentrating on the looooong tones. I was playing "Line for Lyons" and he humourously told me that the way I was playing made it sound like a Mickey Mouse tune. Then he got me to settle into the long tones. What I learned was the long tones give you a sense of space. Which creates time. And once the space is created you chop the notes into changes, beats, and sub-beats. He told me once that I had a great understanding of time. Being a martial artist I was expressing it mainly in motion. But it was a very helpful tip. It was like Steph Curry explaining the grip on the basketball in the shooting motion.. Authentic, Real. Can't explain it more than that.

And when I play these days I feel him soooo close. Poignant. Loving. Real. He once told me that Chet was a musical genius. I told him I thought he, Artt, was every bit as much a musical genius. He was totally an ear and heart player. In fact the last conversation I had with him on the phone I told him I had trouble learning new songs, because I couldn't really play a song until I FELT it. And his replay was,"That's because you're an ear and heart player, just like me and Chet."

The following was recorded in 2019 and posted on my June 9th birthday.