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Louie Bellson
Percussionist, composer

As one of several famed jazz bandleaders who employed the pioneering percussionist Louie Bellson, Duke Ellington had high praise for his longtime bandmate: "Not only is Louie Bellson the world's greatest drummer, he's the world's greatest musician!," Ellington was quoted as saying by Don Heckman in the Los Angeles Times. Ellington's enthusiastic evaluation was only slightly excessive. Generally recognized as one of the greatest drummers in the history of jazz over a career lasting more than 70 years, Bellson had a versatile talent that extended from the big band drumming with which he began his career to the leadership of bands of his own. He appeared on more than 200 recordings. Bellson also composed more than 1,000 pieces, including several jazz standards.

Louie Bellson was born on July 6, 1924, in the small northern Illinois town of Rock Falls, near Moline. His birth name was Luigi Paulino Alfredo Francesco Antonio Balassoni, and his parents were first-generation immigrants from Naples, Italy. His father, Louis Sr., owned a music store and gave lessons on the instruments he sold. "He knew every aria from every opera," Bellson recalled to the Daily Gazette of Sterling, Illinois. All the Bellson children were required to study musical instruments, but they were allowed to focus on the ones that interested them the most. For Louie that decision came early: at age three he pointed out the drums in a parade, and soon after that he was taking lessons.

Tap Danced in Debut
With his father's music store as an educational home base, Bellson broadened his musical experiences. Bellson's father insisted that he study piano, which he resented at the time but later credited with his development as a composer. A Moline watering hole called the Rendezvous introduced Bellson to nightclub work, both as a drummer and as a tap dancer, a skill also possessed by Bellson's contemporary Buddy Rich and several other jazz drummers. The blues pianist Speckled Red, in residence at the Rendezvous, spotted the youngster's talent and offered him regular chances to sit in. Bellson also took lessons from his father and then from the Chicago drummer Roy Knapp, the teacher of Benny Goodman Orchestra percussion great Gene Krupa.

When he was 16 or 17, Bellson entered the Slingerland National Gene Krupa drumming competition, a national elimination tournament that began with 40,000 contenders and ended in New York, with Krupa himself as judge picking Bellson as the winner. Soon Bellson had joined the Ted Fio Rito orchestra, and he traveled with that group to Hollywood in 1941. There he attracted the attention of Freddie Goodman, the brother and manager of clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman. Bellson joined Goodman's band in 1942, put his career on hiatus while he served in the military during World War II, and rejoined the Goodman band in 1946. In the late 1940s Bellson did stints in the big bands of Tommy Dorsey and Harry James. He was a special favorite of Dorsey, who liked to show off his young drummer's ferocious appetite by ordering him six T-bone steaks in a restaurant; Bellson had no trouble finishing them all.

Bellson had devised the unusual technique of using two bass drums while he was still a high school student, and the technique would influence drummers even beyond the jazz sphere. But the emergence of the bebop style in the late 1940s demanded a lighter touch, as saxophonist Lester Young explained to Bellson. "I was used to driving a big band—four solid beats on the bass drum," Bellson said in a JazzTimes interview quoted by Heckman. "Coming from that to bebop, I still liked to drop bombs now and then. Then Lester Young came to me once and said, ‘Lou, just play titty-bop, titty-bop and don't drop no bombs.’ That's when I got it, putting all that energy up into the right hand, playing on the cymbal. And I loved it." The new variety of techniques helped Bellson emerge from the big bands into small groups that he fronted himself, and beginning in the 1950s he recorded prolifically under his own name for Verve, Pablo, Concord Jazz, and other labels.

Joined Ellington Orchestra
While performing with James's group, Bellson met veteran trombonist Juan Tizol, who had recently returned to the Duke Ellington Orchestra. The meeting had two important consequences for Bellson. First, Bellson became one of a group of musicians who moved from the James group to Ellington's famed big band around 1951, and a long relationship between the two musicians began. Bellson not only got the opportunity to apply his skills to the Ellington group's sophisticated arrangements; he also contributed creatively in the form of compositions of his own that Ellington performed and recorded. Two of the most notable of these were "Skin Deep" and "The Hawk Talks."

The other consequence of Bellson's encounter with Tizol was his first marriage. The trombonist suggested that Bellson should meet vocalist Pearl Bailey, and the two said hello at an Ellington band engagement in Washington, D.C. Bellson took Tizol's advice to heart, and he and Bailey were married in London, England, after a courtship lasting a mere four days. The marriage would endure until Bailey's death in 1990, and their union produced two daughters, Dee Dee and Debra. As an interracial couple, Bellson and Bailey were a rarity at the time, and even Bellson's presence in the Ellington band still raised eyebrows. Bellson was Ellington's first white musician, and during some dates in some Southern cities, Ellington would claim that Bellson was of Haitian background.

Appeared on Jazz at the Philharmonic
In 1953 Bellson left Ellington temporarily to become Bailey's musical director. His activities in the 1950s and 1960s included an association with the Jazz at the Philharmonic concert series, in which he accompanied top soloists such as pianist Oscar Peterson and vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, as well as appearing solo or in spectacular percussion duets with Rich. Bellson toured with the Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey big band and the Count Basie band, appearing in Europe as well as the United States. He made special appearances with Ellington and made a more extended return to the Ellington band in 1965, appearing as part of Ellington's First Sacred Concert that year.

By that time the big bands had a diminished presence on the touring scene, but Bellson's career never really slowed down. He continued to record frequently, assembling a re-creation in 1993 of Ellington's suite Black, Brown & Beige, but he also focused on his own compositions in some of his later work. He extended Ellington's sacred music experiments with The Sacred Music of Louie Bellson, forming his own label, Percussion Power, to showcase his accomplishments. Bellson's composition The Jazz Ballet featured a unique mixture of big band, strings, and chorus. With trumpeter Clark Terry, he released his last album, Louie & Clark Expedition, Vol. 2, in 2007. Bellson also composed several instructional books and pamphlets, including Guide to Big Band Drumming (R. Brown, 1975). Depressed after Bailey's death, he married computer engineer Francine Wright two years later. He earned several major awards in later life, including a Jazz Masters award from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Living Legend award from New York's Kennedy Center. His career was slowed only at the very end of his life by a broken hip. Bellson died in Los Angeles on February 14, 2009.

Selected discography
Louis Bellson and His Drums, Norgran, 1954.
Louis Bellson Quintet, Norgran, 1954.
The Driving Louis Bellson, Norgran, 1955.
Drumorama!, Verve, 1957.
Live in Stereo at the Flamingo Hotel, Vol. 1, Jazz Hour, 1959.
The Brilliant Bellson Sound, Verve, 1960.
Around the World in Percussion, Roulette, 1961.
Louie in London, DRG, 1970.
The Louis Bellson Explosion, Pablo, 1975.
Louie Bellson's 7, Concord Jazz, 1976.
Dynamite, Concord Jazz, 1979.
The London Gig, Pablo, 1982.
East Side Suite, Music Masters, 1987.
The Best of Louie Bellson, Pablo, 1990.
Peaceful Thunder, Music Masters, 1991.
Air Bellson, Concord Jazz, 1996.
The Art of Chart, Concord Jazz, 1998.
The Sacred Music of Louie Bellson/The Jazz Ballet, Percussion Power, 2000.
Sticks on Fire, Ocium, 2003.
(With Clark Terry) Louie & Clark Expedition, Vol. 2, Percussion Power, 2007.

Sources
Periodicals
Daily Gazette (Sterling, IL), February 17, 2009.
Guardian (London, England), February 18, 2009, p. 32.
Independent (London, England), February 18, 2009, p. 32.
Jet, August 1, 1994, p. 32.
New York Times, February 17, 2009, p. B9.

Online
"Louie Bellson," All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (April 30, 2009).
"Louie Bellson dies at 84," Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-louis-bellson17-2009feb17,0,3130907.story (April 30, 2009).
"1994 NEA Jazz Master: Louie Bellson," National Endowment for the Arts, http://www.nea.gov/national/jazz/jmCMS/master.php?id=1994_01 (April 30, 2009).

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