Clarence “Tootsie” Bean is without a doubt Bermuda’s most successful drummer. No other Bermudian drummer has achieved his level of success. He has backed numerous music greats and shared the stage with countless others, including his idol, drummer Max Roach and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis.
Most notably, he played drums for Ruth Brown, the great rhythm and blues singer and Atlantic Records star, for 11 years. Bean’s career has spanned 60 years and has taken him all over the U.S. as well as to Canada, Japan, Brazil and Europe.
He was well into his middle age when he left Bermuda for the bigger stage of New York, but he had a hand in making music history long before that. He played drums on the first recording made by Island Records, the label that introduced Bob Marley to the world.
For four years during the winters, beginning in 1957, Bean played at the Half Moon Hotel in Montego Bay, Jamaica as a member of Lance Hayward’s quartet. In 1959, Island Records founder Chris Blackwell heard the group, liked their sound and recorded Lance Hayward at the Half Moon.
Unlike Blackwell and his record label, neither Hayward nor Bean achieved international stardom. But both men worked steadily as full-time musicians for most of their careers, winning acclaim and respect both in Bermuda and abroad. Bean is an unassuming man who is modest about his own achievements. He is effusive in his praise of Hayward, his contemporary and friend who was his mentor and helped open doors for him when moved to New York in 1979. Bean said Hayward was “the greatest musician Bermuda has ever had.”
The youngest of seven children, Bean was raised by his older sister Erminie Simmons and her husband Maxwell at Till’s Hill, Pembroke. He was mesmerized by the gombeys and their drum beat as a child and would imitate their moves and sound. His brother-in-law Maxwell Simmons, a tap dancer who was well known in entertainment circles, recognizing a talent in the youngster, sent him to big band leader Ernie Leader for drum lessons.
By the time he was in his early teens, and while still attending Central School, Bean was playing in professional bands. His first gig was at North Village Band Room, a popular spot for dance sessions. He soon graduated to hotels and nightclubs.
When Bean left school, he worked as a carpenter and a van driver, but opportunities for Bermudian musicians during the 1950s and 1960s were so plentiful he was eventually able to give up his day job. He played with the leading bands of the day, including those led by Al Davis and Ernie Leader, and also with calypsonians Hubert Smith and the Talbot Brothers.
Working with top local musicians as well as overseas professionals who performed here during Bermuda’s heyday as a major tourist destination was an education in itself, and Bean absorbed that all he could.
Around 1950, he went to New York where he stayed for about three months and expanded his musical knowledge by taking drum and vibraphone lessons. On his return home, he got a spot in Al Harris’ band. He later joined Lance Hayward’s band. Hayward, a pianist and arranger, became a major influence. When Hayward advised him to further his music education, Bean went to respected musician and Berkeley Institute teacher Joseph Richards for lessons in music theory and to Olivette Morris for piano lessons.
During the winter of 1957 he headed south to Montego Bay, Jamaica, where Bermuda impresario Don Gibson had opened a nightclub, with the Hayward Quartet and the Esso Steel Band as main acts. The nightclub floundered within weeks, but Hayward and his band landed a job at the Half Moon Hotel, which is how Chris Blackwell came to hear them play Lance Hayward at the Half Moon was not a hit, but it launched the iconic record label. In 1984, Blackwell flew Hayward and Bean to London for Island Records’ 25th anniversary celebration.
Bean continued to perform with Hayward and other groups during the 1960s. He had a calypso trio with guitarist Milt Robinson and bass player Maxwell Smith. At one point, he ran a music school and also taught in public schools.
In 1968, after Lance Hayward moved to New York, Bean joined Johnny McAteer’s band at Inverurie Hotel. His 11 years at Inverurie gave him the opportunity to work alongside visiting musicians who were brought in to back international acts.
Those contacts, along with his friendship with Hayward, who had moved to New York ten years earlier, proved invaluable when Bean made his own move to the Big Apple in 1979. One of his first jobs was with The Countsmen, a band comprised of musicians who had played with Count Basie. He later landed gigs as a drummer for singers Irene Reid and Etta Jones.
Landing a place in Irene Reid’s band proved fortuitous. He played alongside Bobby Forrester, the organist for both Reid and Ruth Brown, as well as Brown’s long-time bandleader. Forrester brought him into Brown’s band.
Ruth Brown’s string of hits in the 1950s were instrumental to the success of Atlantic Records. She stepped back from the music scene during the 1960s, but the 1970s and 1980s saw a revival of her career. During his 11 years with Brown, Bean toured the U.S., performed in Italy and Japan and at Atlantic Records 40th anniversary show at Madison Square Garden, New York in 1987.
When he returned to Bermuda in 2007, Bean could look back on a career that had taken him to celebrated clubs, among them Village Gate, Blue Note, Birdland and the Apollo, and Ronnie Scott’s in London, famed music halls such as Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, and legendary musical festivals such as Chicago Blues Festival, JVC and Telluride.
He performed at the Smithsonian as part of U.S. president Bill Clinton’s inauguration celebrations in 1993, made appearances on The Tonight Show and Good Morning, America, played on two movie sound tracks Bright Lights, Big City and That Rhythm, Those Blues and recorded with Brown, Bobby Forester, Lance Hayward and others.
Singers he has backed in addition to Ruth Brown include Jimmy Scott, Dakota Staton and Arthur Prysock. Clark Terry, Junior Mance and Jonah Jones are among the musicians he has played with.
Bean’s wife, the former Stella Olney whom he married in 1952, remained in Bermuda when he was based in New York. The couple, who live in Devonshire, have two daughters and one son, Shelton, who is also a drummer. Bean has two other daughters.
Bean can’t imagine a day when his drums will be silent. Drumming has been a daily discipline for years. He continues to accept the occasional gig that comes his way and also plays at Heard Chapel AME Church on Sundays.
And he wouldn’t have it any other way.
