July 1977 - Modern Drummer - Alan Dawson

ALAN DAWSON ... chops and brains equal a Boston master by PETE DANCKERT

"Yeah, Alan Dawson", Max Roach reflected recently. "I consider him to be a key man. Alan was the drummer we had to contend with whenever we played New England", Roach chuckled, remembering. "Man, we trembled when we knew we had to deal with him." Dawson hears of Roach's praise midway through a lesson with one of the 30 students he teaches each week in the studio of his rambling split-level home in the Boston suburb of Lexington. "That's real nice of Max", he says with his typical half-smile. He turns back to the student, a twentyish man facing him across a wide practice pad. "Hey Patrick", Dawson trembling".

cracks, "you're not

Patrick looks up from his six-stroke rolls just long enough to laugh; he's only got an hour with Dawson and he wants to make every minute count. But on his way out, he confides to a visitor, "Alan is a monster. For ten years I thought I was playing, but I really just started when I began studying with him". Those two appraisals-one from an awed disciple, one from a long-time idol of Dawson's-tell much about how far the 47 year old Boston drummer has come in doing what he loves: playing and teaching. As a performer, he has long since won the respect not only of legendary drummers like Roach, but of an astonishing array of jazz instrumentalists he has backed live and on records. Apart from his recently completed seven-year stint with Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, and Jack Six, Dawson has recorded with Phil Woods, Jaki Byard, Richard Davis, Booker Ervin, Illinois Jacquet, Al Cohn, Reggie Workman, Lionel Hampton, and other luminaries on more than 35 albums. His live performance credits are more staggering still. From 1963 to 1970, Dawson's steady gig as house drummer at Lennie's, the late, lamented Boston Jazz Club, had him backing diverse talents ranging from Roy Eldridge to Mose Allison. His appearance at George Wein's Festival of Jazz in Nice, France last July found him in the company of similar giants like Kenny Clarke. But despite his travels (the Brubeck gig included 50 road concerts a year), Dawson has called Boston home since his f a m i l y moved to the Hub shortly after his birth on July 14, 1929 in Marietta, Pennsylvania. Emerging from a childhood spent banging away on any available table or chair, he got his professional start playing with the Basielike riffs of Tasker Crosson's local band

in 1943. The only formal instruction of his career followed in 1947 when Dawson began four years of fundamental study with Boston percussionist Charles Alden. Army duty in 1951 ended his private lessons, but began Dawson's long association with top jazz names of the post-bebop era. Dawson's short-lived job with Lionel Hampton's band would seem to have been his first big break. But he discounts that stay with Hamp as "three months that seemed like 15 years". His 1950 - '51 gig with Gigi Gryce and Joe Gordon in Sabby

Lewis's eight-piece group was what made him in Boston, says Dawson. Yet even local renown and nationwide rumors of his prowess couldn't give Dawson steady work in what he calls, "those years around 1956 when that terrible rock of the SO's took over". Regardless of his stature among his peers, Dawson's name crops up less often than those of younger stars like Cobham or Mason. Part of the reason stems from his reluctance to quit the Boston area for longer than the time taken up by brief tours, clinics, and his numerous New York recording dates. "If somebody ever calls from California and says I can do one three-hour date a day for $200,000 a year guaranteed for ten years, then I'll go", he chuckles. But his influence is everywhere. When you hear Joe La Barbera, Joe Corsello, or any of the drummers produced by the Berklee College of Music in Boston, you're hearing more than a bit of Alan Dawson. He was the famed school's original drum instructor, teaching there for 18 years before resigning in 1975 to pursue a lighter, private teaching schedule. His decision to limit his teaching to 30 hours a week has spawned an ever-growing waiting list of students anxious to learn first-hand the coordinated freedom and lightning chops that are the hallmarks of the Dawson style. It is an oversimplification but no understatement to say that listening to Dawson is like hearing four drummers at once, each devoting all his energies to do the work of one hand or foot. Sure, some guys may have their bass drum together and others have made a religion of freeing the left hand or knocking out hi-hat accents. But Dawson has come as close to achieving ultimate hand and foot independence as any drummer now sitting a stool. Once more, he can switch complex polyrhythms among his four limbs, play them fast, slow, loud or soft and make it all flow out in one logical, musical groove.

If that weren't enough, he swings his tail off. That he makes it look easy testifies to his musicianship. But his approach with his students makes it obvious that he's put in almost as much time figuring out how to teach the instrument as how to play it. So, because he's thought through the different technical methods-innovating some and improving others-Dawson has most answers at his fingertips.

And, he relishes clear explanations. Developing coordination Dawson style is a case in point. He uses Ted Reed's Syncopation for The Modern Drummer and George Stone's Stick Control according to their original purposes. But . he's added a few wrinkles of his own.

"I've got about 35 or 40 different ways to study the Reed book", Dawson says casually.

"One of them involves playing the snare drum line with the bass drum while the hi-hat