Past Events
August 24, 2006 - Charli Persip  

Master drummer Charli Persip’s earthy humor and tales of recordings and live dates with master leaders of jazz over the past 50 years delighted the audience of admirers and well-wishers in the offices of the Jazz Museum in Harlem on August 24, 2006.

His commented on his unique art of big band drumming, in which he plays with power along with the looseness usually heard in small ensemble drumming since the bebop era.

Born in Morristown, New Jersey to Francis R. Persip (of Portuguese and Pequot Indian heritage) and Doris Mary, he began playing a tin drum at 3 years old, and progressed to a parade drum, with which he won “a church talent show at the age of 7 or 8.” He began taking drum lessons, joined a marching band as a high school junior, and the stage band in his senior year.

After attending the Hartt School of Music in New Jersey for two years, Persip began his professional career with R&B bands; his first jazz gig came with Dizzy Gillespie. During this period Kenny Clarke took him under his wings, and drove around Harlem, “instructing me on the pitfalls of the music business and New York. Clarke also urged him to marry the woman who has been his wife for 50 years. Persip’s verbal acknowledgement of his love for his wife moved all with its glow of romanticism.

Shadow Wilson was his early major influence. He loved Wilson’s loose rhythms on cymbals and his rhythmic accents on the bass drum. He recalled seeing Philly Joe Jones at the Café Bohemia with Miles Davis, and his playing of a brush solo so stunning that the noisy crowd shut up: “Man, you could hear a mouse piss on cotton,” he said. He also recalled a magical moment when Ben Webster brought a clamorous Jazz Sunday audience to rapt attention within the first four breathy bars of “You Are Too Beautiful.”

He gave insights into the mastery of virtually every major jazz drummer, and told anecdotes about Billy Eckstine, Art Tatum, Elvin Jones, Charlie Parker and  Papa Jo Jones, whom he remembered wiping out Max Roach, Roy Haynes, and Art Blakey and himself with just a hi hat and brushes at a tribute to Gene Krupa.

Kenny Washington and previous Harlem Speaks guest Rudy Lawless were in attendance, and Washington told all that “Persip was one of the black drummers that dispelled the idea that black drummers can’t read music.”

Among the lasting insights shared by Persip was the importance of using your imagination to the fullest and that listening is an art, not only as a drum accompanist but in life itself. And when dealing with an unruly audience, don’t be belligerent, just “let your artistry quiet them down.”
The Harlem Speaks series, supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced by the Jazz Museum in Harlem's Executive Director, Loren Schoenberg, Co-Director Christian McBride, and Greg Thomas Associates. The series occurs at the offices of the Jazz Museum in Harlem, located at 104 East 126th Street, between Park and Lexington Avenues, from 6:30pm-8:00pm.