Major Holley

Be-deep bee deep be-dee-deep; dop, dop, bee-doo-bee.

This short phrase from a long forgotten bass solo is one of the fundaments of my musical life.

I was a real jazzbo at age 13, so my parents bought me a couple of Music Minus One records. These were a thing before Americans had heard of karaoke. A single track was removed from a performance - like magic! - so you, at home, could play that part.

In this case, it was "The Music of Fats Waller", and some of the best players of the century were on the recording. I played along many hundreds of times, wearing out the record, and you can't convince me I didn't actually play with those guys hundreds of times. I'd come home from school, pour myself a couple fingers of juice, hoist trombone to mouth, and take the stage with Zoot Sims, Dick Wellstood and a fantastic bass player I'd never heard of named Major Holley, to play buttery, primal, urbane swing. I took youthful credit for discovering Holley (much as, at around the same time, I took pride in my discovery of international violin superstar Ruggiero Ricci).

Holley had played with Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, and most everyone else, without ever making much of a name with the general public (which sort of sums up my own career, as well). And while bass solos are rarely the best part of the song, well, bus drivers don't normally give out bubblegum, either. I remember every note of every one of his solos; every micro-nuance. You could create a higher-fidelity recording by outputting my memory than you could with the original studio tapes.

Let's cut ahead years and years and years. It's the late 1980s, and I've been lucky enough to work with and befriend many great players. Out of nowhere pops up an opportunity to sit in with....Major Holley!

Major is playing in duo with a pianist, who asks me what I want to play, so I call one of the Fats Waller songs from the record, and, in my solo, I allude to The Foundational Lick, which, of course, Major doesn't even vaguely recognize from a blizzard of lifetime record dates. I don't care. The circle is complete. I'm sharing the stage with my old colleague again, only now 1. I'm actually good and 2. he's actually there.

Major's shtick was to sing along with his solos, creating a thunderous, rip-snorting effect. I'd developed a multiphonic technique, myself, so, between the two of us, we were a quartet. This tickled Major no end.

This wasn't, as you might think, a kid sucking up to an aloof veteran. We were two kids, one of whom happened to be 65. Major shared my eagerness because I was utterly adapted to his ecosystem. He was an odd-shaped screw and I was the matching nut. From that moment forward, whenever he gigged in New York, he'd ask me to come by and sit in.

We had little in common, superficially. And he wasn’t what you’d call a super-nice guy. I remember leaving a club with him one bitterly cold night when a young homeless black guy launched his panhandling spiel to the dapper, dignified bassist, starting "Hey, brother...." Major shut him down very fast and very, very hard. I learned something about black generational differences that night. In fact, I've had few black friends since my elderly circle vanished; I just couldn't help viewing the hiphop generation through their grandparents' disapproving eyes.

His hard-assedness didn't matter. I didn't need Major Holley to be "nice", or to validate me, or to teach me anything. I simply wanted to play as much with him as humanly possible, because that's what I'd spent the previous couple of decades preparing for. That's what I was made for. And he felt it. We were the most kindred of musical spirits, thick as thieves, and nothing else came close to mattering.

The last time I saw Major, he said he had big plans for me, and would be in touch when he got back from his European tour. He fell ill on that trip, and passed away soon after his return, exactly thirty years ago today. I began to stray into writing, eventually going all in on Chowhound, and never was a musician again.


This wasn't the only hero who died shortly after vaguely mentioning big plans to me. British writer Michael Jackson, who singlehandedly launched this entire beer craze, was an eating buddy, and I had a voice mail from him asking to meet on his next trip to the states to discuss some scheme. He never made it. And there was a good chance I’d be slated to play a trombone/mandolin duet with bluegrass legend Bill Monroe when he kicked the bucket. Moral of the story: do not make plans with Jim Leff!