best overall
Story By Mike Overall

First, this caveat: With some sense of trepidation, I confess that what follows is of a more personal nature, and some may say far too self-indulgent, than the columns I write for this magazine. While I do not intend for it to dwell on me, I can hardly recuse myself from the story it relates. Just be assured that I will resist engaging in cloying sentimentality, in nostalgia just for the sake of dwelling in the past, which now escapes me at an ever-increasing pace as I grow increasingly longer in the tooth.

So, with a humble attitude leavened by a dash of humility, I submit this literary snapshot from my past, not because I wish to indulge myself in any delusions of grandeur, but rather out of a desire to pay tribute to a creative genuis with whom I once had the great good fortune to rub shoulders.

Half a lifetime ago, when a small coterie of supporters deferred to me as President-for-Life of the Jonesboro Jazz Society, the organization sponsored a first-rate jazz orchestra whose musicians came from a multi-state area. We played numerous concerts for the public, conducted educational forums for young musicians, and on a regular basis, brought to Jonesboro world-famous jazz musicians who performed with the band.

One of those jazz giants who played with us was the creative genius Louie Bellson, the virtuoso jazz drummer/composer who, during a stellar career that spanned 60-plus years, played a seminal role in revolutionizing the art of jazz drumming.

Bellson died last month at the age of 84. Married for many years to the Broadway star of “Hello, Dolly” fame, Pearl Bailey, Bellson performed with the greatest musicians in the world, among them Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. At the drums he combined the wizardry of his amazing technical prowess with his innarte sense of musicality, an artistic pairing that still ranks him as one of the greatest exponents of his craft.

When I read of Bellson’s death, I shed more than a few tears, and not just because a giant of American’s Classical Music was gone. I also wept as my memories took me back to a time when, as a much younger musician, I was afforded the unique ­– and terrifying, from my perspective – opportunity to engage in solo exchanges with Bellson, at a concert in the old Wilson Auditorium at ASU.

Louie Bellson was a kind, giving, ever-so-gentle man who, the first time I met him, suggested, in his own quiet and princely way, that we play solo duets during the concert. My reaction was one of sheer apoplexy accompanied by a growing feeling of dread. I felt as if I had just begun walking the last mile, the one that would lead to my musical reckoning. There I was, a very good player but hardly a creative genius of a drummer, just hours away from exchanging percussive patterns with an artist whose “drum battles” with his old friends and musical soul mates Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa, had long been the stuff of jazz legend.

“Oh no, Mr. Bellson, I couldn’t possibly do that,” I said, my voice quivering with fear as my hands began to shake like two leaves caught in the throes of a violent Arkansas thunderstorm. “I’m just, uh, a regular drummer who’s never done anything spectacular.”

The physically diminutive Bellson would not take no for an answer. “Forget all that spectacular stuff, Mike, and just remember this: You and I are going to have some great fun playing music on an instrument we love with all our hearts. We’ll have a great time together, playing for people paying to hear good music.”

Yeah, I recall thinking, paying their hard-earned cash to hear Louie Bellson, the man who had pioneered the use of two bass drums in his setup configuration, play that very instrument with a brilliance that had thrilled audiences at home and abroad for longer than I had been alive. The audience certainly wasn’t paying to hear the likes of me, a workaday drummer who deliberately avoided playing long solos because I did not possess the technical prowess to pull them off in, shall we say, a musically-thrilling manner.

“Just relax and you’ll be okay,” Bellson said, the admonition in his voice gentle but firm. “I promise you, we’ll have a blast.”

And we did, on that memorable spring night so long ago, in front of an audience that gave us – him – the standing ovation he so richly deserved.

My greatest reward was simple: For a few minutes, I played duets with the man Duke Ellington once called “the greatest drummer in the world.”

Louie Bellson: a supreme talent for the ages and a prince among men; worth remembering.

Requiescat in pace, Mr. Bellson.