Pepper Adams' 1980 Selmer Baritone sax

[sycc]

Selmer made Pepper Adams 9 baritones down to low Bb to choose from in 1980.After sampling all of them for I believe a week,he picked one. What was his baritone???? A mark VII???;Mark VI???? 1980 was too early for super action 80 baritones. Was there ever a Mark VII baritone????And did Marke VI baritones run into the early '80s. His original baritone was a balanced action(I think 1947).

[Dave dix]

Selmer never made a mk7 bari, they continued the mk 6
Dave

[sycc]

Thank you for your reply. That's intersesting Pepper went from a balanced action to a late model VI(he really had no choice though).

[BayviewSax]

Pepper's decision had only to do with the age of his horn. He was not comfortable travelling with that balanced action (he travelled A LOT!). What you may not know is, he was back playing that horn again because a short time after getting the new horn, he had an accident involving a flight of stairs. True story.

[Michael Ward]

I remember reading an interview with Pepper in Coda magazine about his Mark V1 Baritone. Selmer didn't actually make him nine low Bb baris rather they called in from outlets all the existing ones to give him a big choice. I remember him saying he narrowed it down to three that were almost the same. His BA had been repaired so many times it was fragile and he joked that Selmer didn't make them that well. He also asserted in detail his belief that the Bb was superior to the low A particularly in the second register. It was around this time his Berg gave up the ghost and he ended up on a Lawton.

[Merlin]

IIRC, Pepper played a Dukoff before the Lawton. He told me the last time he was in Toronto that the Bari plastic reeds he was using wore down the facing of the Dukoff really fast.

You can see pics of him in the last recordings he did with Denny Christianson in Montreal that he was using the Lawton.

[kevvieg]

If you want to hear what pepper sounded like on the Duck-off, listen to "Urban Dreams", recently released on CD on the Quicksilver label. Pepper plays some fantastic music, but the sound of the Duck-off really detracts. I liked him on his Lawtons.

[KeithL]

I just bought this CD at Borders a few days ago. I have no other Pepper Adams albums to compare it to - though I agree it isn't the type of bari sound that I like most. However, you gotta admit the cat could get around on that horn -he takes some of those tunes smokin' fast for any horn much less bari.

[kevvieg]

No Argument. Pepper deserves total kudos for having developed his own vocabulary on the axe. I don't have a favourite baritone player, as such, but all of the greats had one thing they did best. Nobody was prettier than Mulligan; Nobody was as authoritative as Papper. Nobody could swing like Brignola, Nobody could command like Carney; Nobody plays latin/funk better than Cuber.

That's all my opinion, and all of the above could play pretty, swing, etc, but what makes the pantheon great is the sheer diversity of styles out there for a baritone lover.