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Bishop Norman Williams, bebop alto player, passes away December 8, 2010

Bishop Norman Williams passed away a few days ago, back home in Kansas City, Missouri, near his mother, Edna Mae Rollins, his brothers and sisters, and their families.  We’ll miss him out here in San Francisco, but are glad he was with family that cared for him very much.  He was a kind and generous man, always totally devoted to the music and his friends — the musicians — that played it with him.

Bishop was born in Kansas City in the spring of 1938, making him 72 when he passed.  He started playing in Kansas City in grade school, and bought his first horn, a C melody sax, when he was 15 — that would be in 1953.  Bishop told pianist Don Alberts in an October 2008 interview, “I had me a C melody and all the kids used to make fun of me… But then they came and saw me at the best club in Kansas City, the Mardi Gras.  They said, ‘oh yeah, we knew him when he wasn’t nothin’.’”

“Everybody used to go to Kansas City.  You know, to see Count Basie, Lester Young.  All those kinds of people.”  So that was the era and the place where he first began to learn the music.  He said, “they had a cat named Richard Prank.  He was my idol in high school.  He’s still living.  He was my idol, so I switched to baritone.  Then went to alto.”  Bishop talked about playing then, and later in San Francisco and New York, with Jimmy Lovelace, a couple years younger than him,  “I could tell he was going to be a great drummer.”  Lovelace, who passed away in 2004, was indeed a key New York player for decades.

When asked, without hesitation he cited Kansas City educator Leo Davis as his best teacher, saying, “He used to teach Charlie Parker in high school.  He said, ‘Oh yeah, I couldn’t teach that boy nothing.’ So, Leo was my teacher in high school.  Charlie had a natural gift.  He could read real good.  He taught himself how to read.  Good ear.”

“My mother introduced me to Parker’s Mood,” Bishop said.  “And so I started mimicking that sound on alto.” 

Alberts: “You had a knack for it that the other cats didn’t have.  You got that sound right away, you always had it.  Not easy to do.”

Bishop:  “You got to be practicing.  You got to study that stuff.”

And that’s what Bishop did, constantly.  Like all the great bop-influenced musicians we’ve met, he played and thought about the music constantly — whether alone at home, or on the bandstand with his colleagues.

He told Alberts, “my first gig was with a cat named Rudy Diamond.  I showed him how to play the piano.  Showed him how to play chords.”  Steven Meyers in an April 2008 interview heard the name as Rudy Darling; and elicited that the gig was at the Professional Club at Twelfth and Central.  “That was my first real gig,” Bishop said.  He told Steve he left KC at age 15, and moved first to Omaha and then to Chicago.  Along through that stretch, he toured a lot with pianist Phineas Newborn, playing often with saxophonist George Coleman and drummer Max Roach.

In 1961, he arrived in Los Angeles, playing there with Sonny Clark, Frank Butler (also from KC), and others at The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach and other spots, before going briefly to Las Vegas.  Vegas didn’t suit him.  “Vegas was really slow, man.  Not a lot of work.  People up there, they’re sophisticated, you know?  They didn’t really like jazz there.”  He says, “I had my own band.  Guys from there.  Then I moved from Vegas (back) to LA and then from LA to San Francisco.  And I’ve been here ever since.”

On reaching San Francisco in late 1961, Bishop immediately landed a gig at Soulville, on McAllister at Webster; Don Alberts, who arrived on the scene from San Jose in 1960, was on that gig.  And from that stint, Bishop particularly remembered Wilber Brown, “Bald-headed cat.  He played so good man, he played so long, would make people mad.  Yeah, I’ll never forget him.  He was from L.A.” 

And then, Bop City.  He led the band there from 1961 to 1964, playing from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m.  Stories from that era abound, and aren’t hard to find!  It was a golden age for a lot of folks you can still hear play around the Bay Area… And there are dozens of active young musicians around town, “young lions” schooled by Bishop, BJ Papa, Henry Irvin and others in the ’80s and early ’90s at the Gathering Cafe in North Beach and on jobs all over… find a good young bebop cat in his/her mid-20s to mid-30s and you’ll likely find they’ve got a first person story of Bishop, his teaching on the bandstand, and his influence on their playing…  You don’t have to look hard, either, for some of Bishop’s contemporaries out of Kansas City, like drummer Achyutan, and younger KC-born players like trombonist Angela Wellman… 

So pay tribute to Bishop by getting out and hearing some good live jazz somewhere in the Bay Area this Christmas!

So long, Bishop!  It was good to know you!  You’ll be with us always!