Searching for Billy Bean

A limited discography tells (almost) all about a reclusive figure

The first time I heard the name was from John Scofield.

It was the end of a phone interview, and as I was thanking him for his time, I mentioned that I was moving from Miami to Philadelphia to work for the Philadelphia Inquirer and I’d hope to talk to him again there.

“See if you can find Billy Bean,” he said, in that cryptic way collectors have of name-dropping an obscure figure they know – and they’re pretty sure you don’t. His only clue: “Not the baseball player.”

The second time was from Pat Metheny.

Same thing but with a tiny bit more information. Bean, he said, was a guitarist who recorded on the West Coast for a while then moved back to his hometown and pretty much vanished. Metheny intimated that he and other accomplished jazz guitarists – people like Joe Diorio, Mick Goodrick and others  – revered Bean’s bob-and-weave approach to bebop.

This was the pre-Internet days, so research involved seeking clues from all sorts of people one on one, in real time. Record store clerks knew of him but never saw him; labels were not yet reissuing the albums by Paul Horn, Herbie Mann that featured Bean as a sideman. The Inquirer’s clips library only contained a few mentions; the story was about the same at the defunct Bulletin. I asked older musicians about Bean; most had heard of him but not many knew him. One told me he lived in Northeast Philly and was no longer playing.

That’s how it went before Internet search, one crumb at a time. Tracking down any semi-obscure artist or truly obscure record was a game of happenstance. You could find out who was playing on a record by holding it in your hands, or reading about it in a book or magazine. Or if the DJ happened to share the personnel over the airwaves.

I eventually stumbled onto a copy of The Trio, originally issued by Riverside, at a record store in Washington D.C. That kicked my interest into high gear. Here was an entirely different bebop lexicon: Bean played strings of eighth notes like every other Charlie Parker disciple, but his note choices were not stock, not patterned after anything that might be termed “jazz obvious.” He resisted every easy resolution. In this drummerless setting, he exhibited fierce attention to the pulse, framing his ideas with a precise articulation that now sounds to me like a signature trait: You can tell it’s Billy Bean by the way the note begins. Firmly, with intention and drive behind it.

Fast forward some years, into the ‘90s. The Inquirer was beginning a push into “online journalism”; critics covering the arts were tasked with developing narrative stories that could be told through short audio and video clips. On my list of possibilities was Billy Bean, and for some reason the video producer thought this was the perfect first piece. I tracked down Bean’s number, and began calling at the same time every afternoon; on day five or six he picked up. Speaking slowly and with evident irritation, he made clear that he was not interested in any interview. But he invited me to stop by his house to talk further.

I turned up at his townhouse, on a tidy street with young families in Northeast Philly, at the appointed time. Nobody answered the door. Resumed the phone ritual and we set another date. This time Bean invited me in. He was thin, looked guarded and not used to visitors. There was a guitar in the corner of the living room but he didn’t play it. The conventional assessment was that he’d struggled for decades with alcoholism, but on this evening he wasn’t drinking. Wasn’t talking much, either. In his mind this meeting was a conversation about having a conversation on the record – no tape recorder was allowed. I asked him about his time in L.A., prodding him to recall dates with Horn, pianist John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet and others. He claimed to have little memory of these. Asked about playing in Philly, which he did with some regularity in the ‘70s; he dismissed the club gigs with a wave of his hand, as if to say “next question.” (Some of these were recorded and have been posted on YouTube; I’ve linked one here but because of the low-resolution sound, ask that curious listeners start with the studio recordings, to hear Bean’s mastery of tone and the many nuances of the electric guitar first.)

Before leaving, I pitched Bean pointblank about telling his story. We could do an interview in an afternoon, and really for the first time make a case for his contribution to music, using his recordings as leader and sideman to underscore his recollections. This didn’t persuade him.

I reported all this back to the online producer, telling him I’d failed to secure the interview and thinking that was the end of it. A week later I got a call from Bean. He was angry because the producer had visited his house twice, once with a video camera, attempting to goad him into talking. He asked me politely to stop the harassment.

That was the last time I spoke with Bean, and after a good high-decibel profanity-laden rant, the end of my work with that producer.

Thankfully, Bean did eventually share his story before he died in 2012: In the preface to his book Billy Bean: The Life and Music of a Jazz Guitar Legend (Red Note Press), guitarist and musicologist Dr. Seth Greenberg describes a near-heroic effort to earn Bean’s trust. He eventually convinced Bean to speak for attribution; the book offers the only detailed account of Bean’s life and music, chronicling his early studies with jazz education pioneer Dennis Sandole (whose other students included John Coltrane) and career highlights (he was nominated as Best Jazz Guitarist in the 1961 and 1962 Playboy magazine poll and spent time in the house band for The Mike Douglas Show).

Greenberg’s sleuthing expanded the known universe of Bean recordings. Most Beanologists know the records he made with the Charlie Ventura Quintet; fewer know that he toured with Les Elgart and took part in sessions for Buddy DeFranco’s Cross Country Suite (1958), Carmen McRae’s Carmen for Cool Ones and Tony Bennett’s To My Wonderful One (1960).

Bean moved to Los Angeles in early 1958, and right away began recording in an interesting two-guitar configuration with John Pisano – first Makin’ It (1958) and then Take Your Pick, both mixing small group tracks with more lavish, almost schmaltzy arrangements for studio orchestra.

Pisano was the organized half of the duo; he recorded their rehearsals and jams, many of which took place in his kitchen. These have been released in several forms over the years – West Coast Sessions adds several duo tracks pairing Bean with studio ace Dennis Budimir. Here’s an excerpt from “Airegin,” with Bean’s brain-breaking solo:

Among the sidemen on Take Your Pick was the young Paul Horn, who brought Bean in for his Plenty of Horn (1958). That opened other doors: The next year Bean recorded with vocalist Annie Ross and saxophonist Zoot Sims for the World Pacific release A Gasser!  and with woodwind ninja Bud Shank for Slippery When Wet.

Though (per Dr. Greenberg) he was apparently not enamored with bossa nova, Bean shines on two early Herbie Mann records, Brazil, Bossa Nova and Blues (1962) and Right Now (1963). Here’s “O Barquinho” from the latter:

Listening to Bean in these settings and others – he shines in the margins of John Lewis’ lavishly detailed Essence: John Lewis Plays the Compositions and Arrangements off Gary McFarland (1964) – an understandable first reaction is to lament: Here’s a musician of extravagant talent, who always sounded poised and under control, who sparked awe in his listeners and fellow musicians. The kind of awe that traveled by word of mouth around the practice rooms of Berklee and the clubs where jazz lives. Until, that is, he abruptly didn’t spark awe or much of anything anymore. Vanishing into the databases when the personnel on obscure recordings are kept on file.

In this situation, we want the story to end with the troubled figure being rediscovered and celebrated widely for his contributions. What we got, instead, are the frayed and disconnected threads of a career that, despite the editorial attempts to corral it, eludes all the documentary narrative cliches. Exactly the way Billy Bean did when he played.