There is hardly a role in the jazz industry that Bruce Klauber has not played.
He’s been a singer, a drummer, a publicist and a concert producer. He’s been a journalist for Jazz Times and Down Beat magazines, the biographer of jazz legends Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich and the technical adviser for the 2014 Academy Award-winning film “Whiplash,” starring Miles Teller as a young drummer and J.K. Simmons as his hard-driving teacher.
Klauber, 71, is a jazz man and has been for more than 60 years. On June 10 at the Mandell Theater, he will be honored for it. Drexel University’s Mediterranean Ensemble, led by Klauber’s friend of 50 years, Bruce Kaminsky, will put on a Mediterranean Pop concert “featuring and honoring” Klauber, according to an event poster. But the jazz man, true to form, is going to perform the music of two jazz greats, Frank Sinatra and Louis Prima.
“He’s been involved in pretty much every aspect of music. I think he deserved the recognition,” said Kaminsky.
Klauber is Jewish and had a bar mitzvah at Adath Israel in Lower Merion. But ever since he was 8, his true religion has been jazz. It was at that age that he watched a Saturday afternoon TV show called “Summertime on the Pier,” based in Atlantic City and hosted by local television personality Ed Hurst.
One Saturday, the famous jazz drummer Gene Krupa appeared on the show. Krupa was known, and left a legacy as, “the man who made the drums a solo instrument,” Klauber said. As the future jazz man watched him that day, he said, “I got to get some of this for myself.”
He started taking drum lessons and listening to jazz records from Count Basie, Duke Ellington and others. Klauber’s favorite was Basie, the Red Bank, New Jersey, native whose complex style, which grew to include multiple saxophones and big bands, inspired countless musicians.
“Listening to what drummers did with him, that’s going to college by itself,” Klauber said.
In 1961, on a Saturday morning, Klauber got a call from a local band leader named Stu Harris, known for playing at Jewish weddings and bar mitzvahs. Harris’ drummer for the evening had dropped out, so he started calling around to people. He dialed Klauber’s neighbor, who told him about Klauber, a 9-year-old.
Harris called him.
“’Can you play different rhythms? Can you play a hora? Can you play cha-cha?’” Klauber said, recounting the conversation.
“Sure, whatever you want,” the kid answered.
“OK, I’m picking you up. Have your parents put you in a dark suit,” the band leader said.
At the Benjamin Franklin Hotel in Center City, Klauber played for four hours, earning $45. He wasn’t nervous, even though he was surrounded by bandmates in their 40s.
“It was like I was born to do it,” he said.
After that, Klauber only got nervous one time, when he got the chance, at age 16, to play with one of his idols, Charlie Ventura, the saxophonist with Krupa on and off for 30 years. But at a Philadelphia club called Saxony at 12th and Walnut streets, Klauber played well enough to earn a spot with Ventura’s band for three months.
Each night, he improved, he said. Later, Ventura told him that he had been slowing down a little that first evening, which is what drummers do when they’re nervous, according to Klauber. But the gracious saxophonist did not mind.
“He was very patient. I love that man. I still listen to him every day,” Klauber said. “It wiped away any insecurities that I might have had. It was a goal of mine to work with this man, and having achieved that at a pretty young age, I was utterly confident no matter what.”
The drummer became part of a jazz trio that performed at Philadelphia-area clubs and parties for 50 years. He would sometimes play six nights a week, and then work during the days as an editor and writer.
And he’s still playing. On May 26, Klauber started the second season of his Atlantic City residency performing Sinatra’s music. In July, he will play at Chris’ Jazz Café on Sansom Street, something he does four or five times a year.
“I hear in my head the way I want it to come out,” he said. “If the day comes and I hear something in my head that doesn’t come out, then I’m through.”
