Every jazz fan in the world knows Billy Higgins
from reading record label credits if nothing else.
He's played drums behind the biggest stars in music,
helping them glitter for half a century.
But on this soft spring night in 1998, the
starmaker was with his homeys in Leimert Park, where
he lived on the south side of Los Angeles, lending a
little glitter to the people who could use it the
most.
"You always come in last," he said to one
of the guys, who was wearing a conical Tibetan hat
over his dreadlocks. "You must have a job."
THAT
BROUGHT LAUGHTER from the roomful of drummers
and singers and other amateur players -- children,
women, young men and old -- each of whom had enjoyed a
good long moment in the spotlight since the
evening at the World Stage Performance Space began at
7 p.m.
Higgins had made sure of that, cajoling and
pleading and praising in the most persuasive way. He
knows how to get people to shine, you could see that.
"No use coming all this way if you don't
play," he said to this new pair, just as two or
three more came in. "Come on up here."
Higgins nodded to a youngster in the front row, who
raced upstairs and brought back Higgins' talking drum
that he got in Africa, and a half-dozen drummers were
off for another hour of deep and soulful rhythmic
discourse, drums only, playing till everyone except
Higgins was exhausted and replete.
"YOU
GAVE those guys a lot," someone said to him
later.
"Oh, yeah, well, you know, everybody can come
away with something," Higgins said. "Very
seldom is that able to happen, you know, and it's a
chance to make a bright moment. That's what we're
supposed to be about, I think.
"It's a place where young people can feel
comfortable and learn. And older people too, we got
kids from 4 to 80. That way, everybody can learn from
everybody.
"I enjoy seeing young people being interested
in what they can do," said Higgins, who has six
children and three great-grandchildren. "That's
the most important thing to me. Not just younger
people but older people, too, because the drums are
that kind of instrument where people are not
intimidated. You know the drum was the first
instrument besides the human voice."
WORKING
WITH the poet Kamau Daaood, and with the
sponsorship of actress Marla Gibbs, Higgins began to
develop the World Stage eight years ago. In addition
to the Monday night drum workshop, there's a writers'
workshop on Tuesday, a poet's workshop on Wednesday, a
jam session on Thursday and a concert series on Friday
and Saturday.
"It's beautiful," Higgins said.
"There's no place like that in Los Angeles. And
there really is no place like that in New York where
they have that much going on. So we're really blessed
to have that."
Higgins behind the drums at the
World Stage.
BILLY
HIGGINS was one of the most versatile and
omnipresent drummers in jazz, certainly the one with
the best smile. He was 64 when he died on May 3, 2001,
at Daniel Freeman hospital in Inglewood, Calif., after
a long period of liver illness.
His intuitive genius and infectious buoyant drive
brought him gigs for 50 years with the greatest
players in the game. These included Thelonious Monk,
John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Milt Jackson, Dexter
Gordon, Jimmy Heath, Harold Land, Hank Mobley, Steve
Lacy, Joshua Redman, Jackie McLean, Art Pepper,
Clifford Jordan, Joe Henderson, Cedar Walton, Cecil
Taylor, Herbie Hancock, Sun Ra, Donald Byrd, Lee
Morgan, J.J. Johnson, Slide Hampton and Pat Metheny.
A Los Angeles native, Higgins took up the drums at
the age of 5. He played as a teenager with such
R&B stalwarts as Amos Milburn and Bo Diddley. He
also backed the intimidating Sister Rosetta Tharpe,
the blues singer who sang "Baibee!" on the
Ray Charles record of "Nighttime is the Right
Time."
Soon he was working with the bassist Red Mitchell,
and he co-leading a pioneering group called the Jazz
Messiahs with Don Cherry and James Clay, the Texas
tenorman who was a contemporary of Dexter Gordon and
Wardell Gray.
HIGGINS
WAS A CHARTER MEMBER of the Ornette Coleman
quartet in its garage days, and that was him on drums
during in the legendary New York debut of Coleman's
radical group in 1959 at the Five Spot. He backed
Cherry and Charlie Haden on the momentous Coleman
"Free Jazz" album for Atlantic.
After 15 busy years in New York, he returned to Los
Angeles in the late 1970s where he lived with his six
children, still fulfilling his bulging engagement
calendar. He traveled the world for jazz festivals in
Europe and Japan.
In the late 1980s, he and the poet Kamau Daaood
opened a storefront in Leimert Park as the World
Stage, a performance enclave where Higgins presided
over heavily attended Monday night drum workshops like
the one written about above.
His friends in the jazz world, such as Ron Carter,
Kenny Barron, Barry Harris and Geri Allen, donated
their services for weekend concerts and workshops in
the 50-seat auditorium, and he helped develop such
groups as the B Sharp Jazz Quartet and Black/Note.
Higgins was a member of the jazz faculty at UCLA
and was awarded a Jazz Master's Fellowship in 1997 by
the National Endowment for the Arts.
