Jazz Musicians and Cannabis

[diggity]

ya ya ya, a lot of greats were complete drug addicts...however, as you may know many of them were marijuana enthusiasts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D44pyeEvhcQ

^^^^ there's a video of Cab Calloway doing a song called 'Reefer Man'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmVhlPviOxY&mode=related&search=

^^^ this is a video of Gene Krupa, a marijuana enthusiast, and one of the most original drummers in history. (drum solo is around the 1 min 30 sec mark)... enjoy

 

[Sheriff Bart]

"if he trades you dimes for nickles and calls watermelons pickles
then you know you talking to that reefer man!"
love cab calloway. and gene kruppa is one drummer!

 

[nobodyknew]

Louis Armstrong made it a point to toke every day.....
He viewed it as his "assistant"
He had a room in his house set aside specifically for smoking cannabis....
Now you know why he was always smiling.......

 

[Rosy Cheeks]

You'd actually make it easier for yourself if you singled out those great Jazz musicians that didn't/don't smoke pot, or took/take some other mind expanding drug.

"When I came to New York in 1937,' Dizzy Gillespie recalled in his autobiography, 'I didn't drink nor smoke marijuana. "You gotta be a square mutha****a!" Charlie Shavers said and turned me on to smoking pot. Now, certainly, we were not the only ones. Some of the older musicians had been smoking reefers for 40 and 50 years. Jazz musicians, the old ones and the young ones, almost all of them that I knew smoked pot, but I wouldn't call that drug abuse."

http://www.friendsofcannabis.com/friends/count_bassie.htm

http://www.friendsofcannabis.com/friends/dizzy_gillespie.htm

http://www.friendsofcannabis.com/friends/gene_krupa.htm

http://www.friendsofcannabis.com/friends/thelonius_monk.htm

 

[ngakpa]

yeh, RC is right there - the easier, quicker list would be the great jazz musicians who didn't smoke

my guess would be Clifford Brown may not have been a smoker - arguably the greatest jazz trumpeter of the lot, and seriously under-hyped compared to the likes of Miles Davis, Lee Morgan and the usual bunch

I think there's a chance 'Pres' may not have been a smoker, as he already nuts after WWII - same goes for Bud Powell who was also mentally ill after being beaten up by a gang... think Powell was a junky

Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong were both famous 'gage' smokers, and mayber two of the best known jazz greats

 

[diggity]

Yea, Charlie Parker was a junky though. He was not a marijuana enthusiast, like Armstron was.

 

[ngakpa]

really? think you'll find you've got that wrong fella - yes, Parker was most famous for his heroin habit, but he was certainly a big 'marijuana' smoker

http://www.pbs.org/jazz/exchange/exchange_festivals.htm

www.birdlives.co.uk/content/view/6/8/ there is a cached version on google - talks about Parker having a pillow full of the stuff etc. etc.

Sidney Bechet wasn't, it sounds like from that article - and I'm also wondering about Duke Ellington - perhaps he didn't smoke either...

a large number of jazz musicians in the post War period and the '50s were also heroin users
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/183/3/255

 

[Rosy Cheeks]

Yea, Charlie Parker was a junky though. He was not a marijuana enthusiast, unlike Armstrong.

You probably meant "like Armstrong".

This concerns the DEA:s file on Duke Ellington, among other things. I suppose it doesn't mean squat though, whatever the DEA says. Kind of like asking my mum what I was up to when I was 14

She didn't have a clue

http://www.ukcia.org/potculture/48/anslinger.html

 

[diggity]

Anslinger was such an ass