Time on My Hands/Sweet Georgia Brown
Gulliver’s was a very intimate, truly great jazz club on McBride Avenue in West Paterson, New Jersey that was run by Amos Kaune, former owner of the Clifton Tap Room. The club sat along the Passaic River, and, for a time, both Gulliver’s and Three Sisters (a stone’s throw away) presented top-flight jazz acts. Gulliver’s was a mostly rectangular shaped room, dominated by a square bar (with red vinyl covered bar stools) and the bandstand on its northern wall. People would go there to listen, and I went there a lot when I lived in New Jersey (though, somehow, I never saw Pepper Adams perform). On a wintery night in 1978, (former Columbia University English professor turned writer) Al Goldman lugged his reel-to-reel to the club to record Pepper Adams and Tommy Flanagan. With them that night was bassist Frank Tusa and drummer Ron Marabuto, son of San Francisco pianist John Marabuto. History owes a great debt to Goldman, since this is one of only two known audience tapes that exist with Adams and Flanagan. The other tape was also recorded by Al Goldman at Gulliver’s, on 17 May 1975. From the later performance, you’ll hear two dazzling Pepper Adams solos: Time on My Hands and Sweet Georgia Brown. Pepper at his best, recorded on 18 March 1978.