Doug Watkins

By Ken Waxman

One of the many jazz musicians unfortunately killed in an auto accidents, bassist Doug Watkins’ death on February 5, 1962 was particularly tragic since he was only 27 and had spent the previous six years after his arrival in New York from Detroit establishing himself as a first call player. Not only had he already been a member of two of the era’s seminal groups, The Jazz Messengers and the Horace Silver Quintet, but had notable sideman gigs with a cross section of major players from Gene Ammons to Donald Byrd. In fact three months before his death in an auto accident, when Charles Mingus decided to record an entire album on piano (Oh Yeah), it was Watkins who filled the bass chair.

Born in a non-musical family in 1934, he first took up the bass while attending Detroit’s Cass Technical High School. Another bass student, recently arrived from Pittsburgh was Paul Chambers, a year younger than him. Chambers who would later find fame with Miles Davis’ first quintet, and Watkins were such good friends that many contemporary accounts erroneously claiming they were cousins. Chambers too died young at 33 from tuberculosis.

The 1950s saw a jazz explosion in Detroit with such players as Donald Byrd, Pepper Adams, Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Burrell and others on the scene, and soon Watkins was involved. He and Chambers studied with pianist Barry Harris, went ton the road with other bands and like most of the others relocated to New York in 1954. Within a year he was a member of the initial cooperative Jazz Messengers with Art Blakey, Hank Mobley and Horace Silver. Within a year after that  he and Silver left the band and formed the original Horace Silver quintet. The reason was simple, both the pianist and bassist were clean and they were weary of being hassled as suspected drug users like the other band members

Drummer Louis Hayes, who first met Watkins at a Michigan after-hours club, impressed Watkins enough with his playing that the bassist convinced Silver to hire the drummer. Even so, Watkins and Haynes only recorded together on 6 Pieces of Silver and in 1958 on Mainstream with John Coltrane (Savoy).

Another saxophone giant Sonny Rollins used Watkins on probably the bassist’s most high profile session, Saxophone Colossus, alongside Flanagan and Max Roach. This 1956 album, cited by musicologist Peter Niklas Wilson as “one of the classic jazz albums of all time”, made Watkins better known, though his only other Rollins recording was 1957’s Newk’s Time. The dates seem to have happened by fluke. Rollins, who had not worked with or even seen Watkins play beforehand recalls “We – the guys my age – were giving Doug a chance to meet the guys and get into the habit of playing with older fellows.” As for following up, the saxophone says: “There were other young guys coming to New York that deserved to play with somebody famous. It was Doug’s turn and then it was somebody else’s.” Rollins does praise Watkins’ skills though: “It took a while before we got to any real deep playing, but he did well for a youngster”.

Doing well may be an understatement since Watkins never lacked for work in New York. As a freelance bassist he recorded prolifically for independent jazz labels like Prestige, Blue Note and Savoy, with leaders ranging from Ammons and Billy Taylor to Adams, Yusef Lateef, Jackie McLean and Red Garland and even seven with Mobley, around 75 in total. In 1958 when Watkins made his only overseas trip to Europe as part of Byrd’s band with Belgian saxophonist Bobby Jasper, pianist Walter David Jr. and drummer Art Taylor.

His status as a freelancer was also inadvertently a cause for his death. In February 1962, filling in for the band’s bass player, Watkins was part of the quintet of Philly Joe Jones, with whom he had played on Newk’s Time, was sharing cross country driving duties with the other band members when on Route 66 a few miles east of Holbrook, Arizona, Watkins fell asleep at the wheel, crashed into a pickup truck and was killed instantly.

Oddly enough for a musician who recorded so prolifically Watkins led only two sessions. One, 1956’s Watkins at Large (Transition), now reissued by Blue Note was mostly a blowing session with among others Burrell, Mobley and Byrd. Soulnik from 1960 on New Jazz, a Prestige sub label was much more progressive and notable. Besides Hugh Lawson (piano), Herman Wright (bass) and Lex Humphries (drums) the front line was Yusef Lateef, another Detroiter on flute and oboe, with Watkins playing cello. Although dismissing linear note supposition that Watkins had never played cello before this session – and was never known to play it elsewhere – Steve Siegel, whose excellent article on Watkins for the blog Jazz Profiles was a profound source of information –  points out that “Watkins never plays with his bow and must have chosen the cello primarily for its six-octave range, versus four octaves for the bass, which allowed him the much more expressive presentation necessary in his role as a front-line player. “ As well, Haynes insists that “Doug played the bass and cello equally well.”

Another perplexing detail that Siegel reveals in his article, is that according to several sources, at the time of death Watkins was carrying an airplane ticket to Japan. Although the Jones’ San Francisco gig was  closer to that country and while the Japanese were known for their interest in jazz, whether the bassist wanted to visit Japan or establish a musical career will never be known. In fact, Hayes says “I have no knowledge of him planning to move to Japan.”

This and other happenings in Watkins’ short life remain mysteries, especially now almost 55 years after his death. But we can listen to his high quality bass work on the discs he left behind. As Haynes states: “Doug had a unique sound and interpretation of the music. He made many famous recordings with other people, and I’m sure he would have made more on his own.”