Howard Chichester
Howard Chichester – a native Washingtonian and professional drummer –played with a number of groups over the years, and retired in 1979. He came out of retirement at the request of a trumpet player that he had recorded with in 1979, and he gave his last public performance in 2012. In his November 2017 interview for the Washington DC Jazz Oral History Project, Chichester discussed the joys of growing up with music, having his own group in the 1970s, and performing at the Top of the Foolery Club.
“I started [playing professionally] in 1960, and over the years I was always playing with other groups. I wasn’t the bandleader. I was always in the rhythm section playing drums, up until 1979. Then, for the first time in my career, I had my own group.”
“It was just a piano, bass, drums, and a vocalist, at a club called The Top of the Foolery on Pennsylvania Avenue. We stayed in there about a year or a year and a half, and it was really great. The music was good. In fact, I think I played better then than I had ever played,”
“I started playing drums when I was about five years old. Back in the 40s, my parents bought me one of those little toy sets that had cardboard drum heads, drumsticks about as long as a pencil, and a little tin pie-plate kind of cymbal. I used to stand up and put the radio on WOOK AM, and play along with the records that came on the radio. Then, when I was about 12, my aunt bought me a semi-professional set.”
“I was always a little guy, so with a drum seat, I would have been off the floor. My legs weren’t long enough to reach the bass drum pedal and the hi-hat, so I stood up until I was about twelve years old playing the drums.”
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