“I started taking lessons at
16 or 17. Basically, I got my chops up and, after a while, I
could really read pretty well. I didn’t realize that
drumming was just on one line, so I would get all these gigs
playing in the theatres because nobody could read music. The
drummers couldn’t read music. They would always have to
bring somebody in from New York to Springfield. But they’d
say, ‘We’ve got this kid in Springfield, he can read!’ So
all through high school I played in shows, I played in
‘Music in the Round,’ I played in these Catskills-type clubs
with a singer, dancer, and comedian every night.”
Drummer
Eddie Marshall performed around the world, with pop and
jazz greats ranging from Toshiko Akiyoshi and Stan Getz
to Dionne Warwick and Bobby
Hutcherson. Photo by James
Hall
When the Noe Valley
Voice first spoke with jazz drummer Eddie Marshall
21 years ago, he was seated in his back yard on Day Street,
responding to the surrounding birdsong and to his internal
muse by tootling on his second favorite instrument, an alto
recorder. On Sept. 7 of this year, Eddie suffered a fatal
heart attack. He was 73.
Eddie had grown up in modest
circumstances in Springfield, Mass., a town whose regional
accent he retained. His grandfather had drummed with the
influential Fletcher Henderson Orchestra in the 1920s, and his
father let young Eddie sit in on piano and drums with his own
dance band. By high school, Eddie had formed his own bop band.
Moving to New York City after graduation, he worked with
Toshiko Akiyoshi and Charlie Mariano before getting drafted,
and with Stan Getz after his discharge.
Eddie first visited the Bay Area
with Dionne Warwick and relocated here in 1967, founding a
fusion band and anchoring the house band at Keystone Korner on
Vallejo Street. His swing and tastefulness made him the go-to
drummer for visiting jazz and pop greats, as well as for local
luminaries such as fellow Noe Valleyan Bobby McFerrin and
Peninsula vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, with whom he
recorded. Eddie also spent time on major national and
international tours. Still, he always left his heart in San
Francisco.
“He didn’t long for the New York
lifestyle so much,” testifies Sue Trupin, Eddie’s widow and
longtime co-producer. “And he never traveled anywhere where he
wasn’t wishing he’d come home soon.”
In 1981, home for Eddie became
the picturesque Day Street house in Noe Valley occupied by
Trupin. “We’d met at Bajone’s, the nightclub on Valencia
Street,” recalls Sue. “Rob Fisher, the bass player, introduced
us. I had two kids and a job as a nurse at the San Mateo
County Jail, and Eddie was living in Oakland with his kids.”
Noe Valley “wasn’t as clearly desirable then as it is now. It
was more working-class and families.” Purchasing the property
was “the only good financial decision I ever made in my life,”
says Sue.
Tall and casually elegant,
Eddie, wearing a skullcap and a smile, was a familiar sight at
Drewes Bros. Meats, a couple of blocks from his home, and
along 24th Street. Sue recalls his perambulating habits. “He
worked in the morning and evening, and often when I would be
at work at S.F. General [where she’s still employed
part-time], Eddie would take off and wander the neighborhood,
but with a list of errands. He was more talkative than I, very
chatty with everybody. Then, on weekends, our favorite walk
was going up Noe, from near 30th all the way to 18th. You
could do the whole thing in 35 minutes and feel like you had a
great workout.”
Eddie practiced drumming in the
studio he’d set up in the basement of the Day Street house,
but “he never did it after 9 or 10 at night, or very early,
and there was no negative feedback” from neighbors. The studio
was also his place to compose, for which he’d recently and
easily acquired computer-assisted skills. He’d played the
recorder since he was a pre-teen, but he started adapting the
low-key instrument for jazz (a rarity) on the advice of a
doctor, after undergoing a bypass operation in the mid-’80s.
He suffered from congenital heart disease.
Extending music to the young was
a prime directive for Eddie. He was on the founding faculty of
the city’s School of the Arts, initiated a music program in
the Bayview District, and participated in the San Francisco
Symphony’s Adventures in Music series. Several of his and
Sue’s five sons attended SOTA and became professional
musicians.
But Eddie himself “didn’t have
an inflated sense of himself as an artist who could break
boundaries other people couldn’t,” says Sue. “He just wanted
to play good music. And he made a good living out here for a
long time, so he was very proud of what that meant.”
Eddie Marshall was honored by
family, friends, and colleagues, including Bobby McFerrin
and Bobby Hutcherson, on Sept. 11 at a word-of-mouth
gathering at the Jazzschool in Berkeley, where he’d taught.
No public memorial had been announced by press time.
