Pre-Bop and Post-Op : Music Helps Jazz Drummer Ed Slauson Cope With Cancer

On a recent Sunday morning, sunlight streamed through stained-glass windows at P.J.’s Abbey, a former Baptist church turned restaurant on a quiet street in Orange. Where choirs once sang hymns, a jazz combo now plays to a faithful following.

In a halo of colored light, drummer Ed Slauson and his band perform songs dating to a time when jazz was branded by some as “the devil’s music.”

Devil or not, the group performs with all the spirit and reverence of sacrament. The 44-year-old Slauson, a lanky, serious sort with large, soft eyes, introduces the numbers as he knows them, from their recordings.

“Here’s one Bing Crosby recorded around 1932,” and the group jumps into “Sweet and Lovely.” “Bobby Hackett recorded this one in 1938,” he announced before the drummer’s brushes stirred up “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You.”

Slauson might understand the magic of music better than most. After the removal of a cancerous lung last summer and extreme chemotherapy treatments, he has found strength in his chosen music, what he calls “pre-bop jazz.”

Slauson, the father of 6-year-old twins, played the night before he had surgery and performed as much as possible during his months of chemotherapy. Saxophonist Roger Neumann, a frequent associate, was there the night before the operation.

“We couldn’t believe it,” Neumann said. “He was going in for this serious surgery the next morning, and he decides he’d rather play than sit around at home. It was an amazing evening; he played great, and the band all hung together during the breaks. Ed talked about what he was going through.

“Even more amazing is that today he’s playing better than ever,” Neumann added. “It’s as if it’s cleared his head and let him focus on what’s important.”

Slauson remembers a day last fall between chemotherapy treatments when he covered two jobs, the last his regular engagement at El Pollo Inka restaurant in Torrance.

“I told the guys in the band, ‘I don’t think I can make it. If I have to leave, just keep playing.’ But within 10 minutes of getting up on the bandstand, I was feeling OK, and it lasted through the whole gig. It was such a powerful thing. When I play with good musicians, my pain is gone.”

Slauson rotates a number of veteran horn players through his appearances, most frequently saxophonist and bandleader Neumann; onetime Woody Herman-Benny Goodman-Charles Mingus saxophonist Dick Hafer; and trombonist Dan Barrett.

“I only use guys who are true fans of this music,” Slauson said.

Slauson, who was born in Long Beach, became devoted to the music of the ‘30s and ‘40s--and to recordings of Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and others--long before his medical ordeal.

He was struck by the idea to become a drummer while watching the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” but, with too many drummers already in the grade-school band, he settled for cello. The family moved to Cypress just about the time the sixth-grader, who’d worked diligently for a year studying rhythm on a practice pad, convinced his parents that his interest in drums, unlike in the cello, was sincere. They bought him a drum set.

His conversion to jazz came earlier, when he was 10: He’d seen a picture of Joe Morello in a Ludwig Drums ad, discovered Morello’s name on a jazz album by some pianist named Dave Brubeck and coaxed his mother into buying it.

“I didn’t even know who Brubeck was, but that was it,” he said. “The sound of [Morello’s] drums, the way he played. I stopped listening to pop stuff. No one around our house listened to jazz. My parents would let me choose one album a year for my birthday, and I’d ask for Buddy Rich or Gene Krupa. I slowly started getting into it.”

The drummer’s first experience with pre-bebop jazz came from a recording of the Benny Goodman Orchestra’s landmark 1938 Carnegie Hall concert. “I loved the feel of that music,” Slauson recalled. “That’s the album that got me interested in swing music.”

While playing a Sunday afternoon traditional-jazz meeting as a member of the Fullerton College Jazz Band, Slauson discovered another major influence--Dave Tough, who played drums for Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Woody Herman. “Some old guy came up to me and said I sounded just like Dave Tough,” Slauson said. “I was blank. I’d never heard of Dave Tough.”

Still, it didn’t take Slauson long to find Tough, who died in 1948, on an album of Woody Herman’s greatest hits. The feel of Tough’s playing again swayed him.

“I was so impressed about the actual sound he got from his drums,” Slauson marveled, “and the way he used the cymbals.

“Like all the other young drummers, I got into Buddy Rich first and was always trying to play along with his records and do this impossible stuff. And when you’re trying to play like Buddy Rich and still learning, it means you’re playing too loud, and too busy, and not keeping good time because you’re trying to have everything revolve around the drums.”

Slauson then discovered Jake Hana and went to Donte’s, Carmelo’s and other Los Angeles clubs to sit by the drums and watch Hana work his magic, especially with brushes.

“Jake’s got the same quality as Dave Tough; he plays for the band instead of drawing attention to himself,” Neumann said. “Not many drummers get a good sound playing brushes. Jo Jones had the best sound I’ve heard, and Shelly Manne was good with brushes, but Jake has the best technique.”

Through the years Slauson has worked with a wide range of groups--including the Bill Elliott Swing Orchestra, Dick Carey’s Tuesday Night Band, Conrad Janis & the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band, Ray Templin’s Chicagoans and the Mills Brothers--and such recognized individuals as swing-era guitarist Howard Alden, bandleader Tommy Newsom, pianist and Basie arranger Nat Pierce, guitarist Doug MacDonald and singer Connie Haines.

But when he leads his own band, Slauson plays his music. “Ed is such an honest guy and an honest player that when a club owner tells him to do something that doesn’t fit his style, Ed will say, ‘No, we don’t do that,’ ” Neumann said.

Neumann, who has played with Slauson about five years, said the drummer is a no-frills player who enjoys older, straight-ahead music. “He has such a relaxed, swinging feel,” Neumann said. “And he listens to the soloists, catches all the accents. Very tasteful. He’s not just crashing and banging back there.”

Slauson’s dedication to period music often puts him between a rock and a hard place. “The bigger hip clubs won’t book me because my music concentrates on pre-bop jazz. And the traditional-jazz societies think we’re too modern because we’re not playing Dixieland.”

The current swing revival has given Slauson more opportunities to work. Still, Slauson said, the revival has had a corrupting influence on the music. “I’ve always considered myself to be a swing drummer. But when the [swing] revival started, I realized that what young people are calling swing is not really swing.

“They think it’s all Louis Jordan and Louis Prima and Cab Calloway. Guys like Brian Setzer with a rock influence are real successful, but they’re bashing people over the head with the beat.”

Despite making two and three appearances a week under his own name, Slauson doesn’t consider himself a leader. “I don’t have amazing chops or the personality to tell jokes,” he said. “My talent is putting together a good group of musicians, picking nice material and then taking care of business.”

Recently, doctors have told Slauson that there are signs his cancer, in remission since November, may be stirring.

“I was down for four days with the news,” Slauson said. “But I won’t let it get to me. The music is my saving sanity; it’s my main distraction. With my family and the music, I enjoy so much; there’s a lot to stick around for.”

* The Ed Slauson Jazz Band with guitarist Doug MacDonald plays Tuesday at Triangle Square, 1870 Harbor Blvd., Costa Mesa, 6-9 p.m. The band plays Thursdays at Chanteclair (with Bobby Gordon this Thursday), 18912 MacArthur Blvd., Irvine, 6-9 p.m. (949) 752-8001; and Sundays at P.J.’s Abbey (with Roger Neumann on Sunday), 182 S. Orange St., Orange, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. (714) 771-8556.