In honor of the master vibraphonist Joe Locke’s birthday, here’s a new post with the transcript of a WKCR Musician’s Show that we did in 1998 and the final, edited version of our 2015 Downbeat Blindfold Test.
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Joe Locke Musician Show (10-21-98):
[MUSIC: Locke, “Slander,” “Saturn’s Children”]
TP: What was the impetus for you to play the vibraphone? It’s not that common an instrument, not the easiest thing to lug around.
LOCKE: I’d like to think I had a more romantic story about how I started to play the vibes. But the truth of the matter is, my mother wanted me to play the glockenspiel in the marching band. This is the sad truth. She saw an ad for a set of vibes in the paper for 200 bucks, and I can still remember her saying to me, “Joe, the vibraphone, that’s something like a glockenspiel, isn’t it? Let’s go have a look at it.” That’s how it happened. If she had her way, if there was an ad for a glockenspiel, I probably wouldn’t even be sitting here talking to you now. I’d be playing in a marching band somewhere in Iowa. I’m not sure.
TP: But you’re not from Iowa. You’re from upstate New York.
LOCKE: But I think of marching bands and Iowa being synonymous for some strange reason.
TP: What sort of scene was there once you got the ABC’s of the instrument down?
LOCKE: Actually, there was a thriving jazz scene in Rochester, New York, where I grew up.
TP: Probably in some part due to the presence of Eastman School of Music.
LOCKE: Probably. There was a healthy scene there, but there was a real healthy scene on the street in Rochester at the time. Steve Davis, the bassist who had been with Coltrane’s group, was someone I used to play with all the time, from the time I was about 15 on, and also Vinnie Ruggiero, who was a fantastic drummer who unfortunately passed away. Vinnie played with Bud Powell, and subbed for Elvin in Trane’s band one time in the Vanguard when he was about 18 or 19, he played with Slide Hampton’s Octet. He was a big influence on me. Also people like Joe Romano, a saxophonist who played tenor and alto. He made some records. He made a record with the Jazz Brothers, with Chuck Mangione on Riverside in the early ’60s, and he’s still a fantastic player. Sal Nistico used to come through town. So it was a real thriving scene at that time. So by the time I was 15 years old, there was a real scene happening. So it was a good place to grow up.
TP: Is that how you first got interested in listening to jazz? Or was it through studying vibraphone and discovering great jazz players? What was that path? Was that in your house?
LOCKE: I played drums in a Rock band. I remember that being a thing. I was listening to David Bowie and whatever. I think of David Bowie, because I think of a record, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.
TP: Were you involved in like the Glam-Rock kind of thing?
LOCKE: No, it was more like Procul Harem and bands like that. But I was maybe 12 and I was playing drums in a Rock band. The first album I heard was Mike Mainieri’s Journey Through An Electronic Tube. I don’t think I ever told Mike this story, but that was the first… I was at a friend of my sister’s house, and we were hanging out, and she played me a song from Mike’s record, Journey Through An Electronic Tube, and I really loved it, and she said, “Oh, you like that? Do you want to see something?” She took me up in the attic, and her father had a set of vibes up there. That was going way back to when I was maybe 8 years old, but it stayed with me. I got the vibes at 13, and started slowly listening…just like most people my age, started getting from Rock, kind of got into Weather Report and Return to Forever, and then after listening to Weather Report, picked up some Wayne Shorter records and some Blakey records with Wayne on them, and it just went from there.
TP: So it was a backward process from Rock, Fusion, into Jazz, as it were. And how did that develop? Did you go to some music school?
LOCKE: Yeah, I was going to the Hofstein School of Music, and I was studying Theory and Drumset. I started to play the vibes, I was pretty much self-taught, and when I was 15 I got a job with an organ trio. So I was kind of going to high school in the daytime and at night I was working with a bunch of grownups.
TP: What sort of organ trio? Greasy, Soul-Jazz type of thing?
LOCKE: We were playing standards, and I remember doing some covers of the Crusaders… There was a version of “Eleanor Rigby” I think that maybe the Crusaders had done, or stuff off… Kool & the Gang had a record called “Kool Jazz.” There was an interesting thing happening there. Ronnie Laws and stuff was happening, but we were playing Eddie Harris tunes like “Compared To What,” but I was also getting my feet wet learning standards, and we’d be doing tunes of the standard songbook.
TP: This was around Rochester?
LOCKE: Yeah, this was in Rochester. It was great. I was in heaven. It was a funny thing playing with these musicians and really learning a lot. I got a gig with Spider Martin, who was a tenor player. I went on the road with Spider when I was 17, after playing gigs professionally for a couple of years, and recorded a couple of records; people were on the records like Billy Hart, Jimmy Owens, Pepper Adams, Steve Davis. I came back from being in Spider’s band for a while, and someone called “Rhythm” changes on the stand, and I didn’t know what they were. I was developing, but there were (as there are now) huge holes in my education.
TP: So you’re developing as an ear player but then theory caught up to your ear knowledge.
LOCKE: Yes. Then after playing with Spider… He was concerned with things like… He taught me a lot about music, but I also learned a lot… I learned more perhaps about dealing in the adult world and the ins and outs of being on the road and stuff like that. When I got back to Rochester, there were some real serious cats dealing with the music, like, of different Miles bands, and playing “Rhythm” changes through the keys and stuff like that. That’s when I really started to say, “Wow, I’ve got a lot homework to do.” That was at about the age of 18.
TP: Was the homework something you just went in the shed by yourself and did? Did you go to school?
LOCKE: I studied a little bit. Actually, when I was a kid, I studied a little bit with Phil Markowitz, who is a pianist on the scene, who works with Dave Liebman and still works with Bob Mintzer’s band and is a good friend of mine. I studied privately a little bit with Bill Dobbins, who is a fantastic musician and educator. But my education was I think primarily pretty much going in the shed and lock the door. That guy Vinnie Ruggiero who I spoke about, who I can’t stress enough the importance of him in my life, he… I used to take the Andrew White solos, the Coltrane transcriptions, and try to learn them, and then Vinnie, who was a drummer, but knew the music inside and outside, would come to my house and say, “No, you’re phrasing that wrong,” “No, this is how it’s supposed to go,” “no, there’s a wrong note in there and you have to fix that up.” I was working on stuff like “Ah Leu Cha” and “Two Bass Hit” and “Dr. Jackyll” and stuff like that.
TP: So you weren’t taking it easy on yourself.
LOCKE: I was real fortunate to have some people around me who really knew this music.
TP: And pushed you, too.
LOCKE: And pushed me. I just did a record date recently with Vinnie’s son, Charles Ruggiero, who was living here for a while. He’s back up in Rochester for a while; I hope he comes back here. It was amazing to see him playing and sounding fantastic and sounding a little like his Dad and the mannerisms he had that were like his father, that made me really see how the music continues from generation, from father to son and from teacher to student. That’s a great thing to be a part of now.
TP: In the process of gathering musical knowledge, were you also being influenced by vibraphonists or assimilating other people’s vocabulary, or did that come incidentally to your gathering knowledge about music?
LOCKE: It’s a funny thing. I think when I really started to get seriously into acoustic, straight-ahead music, what we consider to be the body of work called jazz, I was influenced much more by saxophonists and trumpet players. Not even piano players. That came much later. But I was really influenced by Hank Mobley. He’s the first person I’d say I was influenced by.
TP: How did that translate to the vibraphone?
LOCKE: It translated to me because his solo were so swinging and so melodic, and easy to…not easy to hear, but I was able to hear what he was doing. And when I tried to cop what he played off the records, I was able to get to it, and even though sometimes it was really hard for me to get to, I was able to slowly digest where Hank was coming from moreso than I would… I could hear what he was doing, people like Hank and Jackie McLean to a certain extent. Those are people I really dug.
TP: Regardless of that set of influences, coming up is a set of vibraphonists, and we’re going to start off with Milt Jackson.
LOCKE: It’s a thrill for me to be here, because it’s a great chance for me to think about who influenced me. One person I’m very indebted to as a vibist is Milt Jackson. I was speaking with Monty Alexander one time, and told him I’d heard him and Bags once at a club out by the airport in Miami, and it was fantastic — “I just love what you do with him.” Monty said, “Milt doesn’t play the Blues; he is the Blues.” That’s the most aptly, succinctly put description of Milt Jackson, is that everything he plays has this incredible natural feel. He’s just incredible. And to hear him now, he’s playing better than ever. I think this cut is Monty with Bags.
[MUSIC: Bags, “Here’s That Rainy Day” (1969); Bobby Hutcherson, “Little B’s Poem” (1975); Dave Pike, “Cheryl” (1961)]
LOCKE: It’s so great to come up here and play three of my favorite cats on the radio for all the people listening. These happen to be three of my favorite cuts of all these wonderful vibes players. There are points in Milt’s solo on “Here’s That Rainy Day” that have a quality… Not to get overly intellectual about it, because I’m not able to anyway! But there are points in that solo where every time I hear them there is a crescendo reached, like an emotional kind of climax reached that hits me the same way every time I hear it; the release in the end of the second half of the tune, there’s one point in his solo that hits me the same way every time. It’s what I look for in music, and he really hits it in that solo, and it hits me the same way every time I hear it. Bags is unbelievable still to this day. When all is said and done, he’s one of those artists that another one of him will never happen. Vibes players will come and go and be great, but there will never be another Milt Jackson. It’s an amazing thing to be an artist of that caliber.
TP: The same thing could be said for improvisers like Bobby Hutcherson and Dave Pike.
LOCKE: It’s really funny. We’re talking about the instrument I play, but if these guys didn’t play vibes… What I’m hearing that I love in all three of these guys is themselves coming through their chosen instrument. It happens to be the vibes.
Dave is someone whose rightful place in history hasn’t been set yet. I think he’s a very important vibist, and he’s someone who took the language of Charlie Parker and Bud Powell and translated it to the vibraphone, which is an instrument that’s really hard to do that with — to make the metal sound like it’s not metal, and make it sound flowing. It’s Time For Dave Pike was his first album, he was 23, and his playing was so swinging, so in the moment. It sounds like he’s playing lines like what Bud would play or what the best saxophone players of the day would play. I just love to hear it; it’s the stuff that excites me about the instrument. The vibes per se don’t excite me, but that language excites me, and when I hear someone playing that language successfully on the vibes — and I don’t think there are that many people who have done it successfully.
TP: The language of Bebop.
LOCKE: I guess I would have to say the language of Bebop. But even if it isn’t Bebop, it’s expressing yourself over a set sequence of changes and then telling a story over them. That’s what gets it to me.
TP: I guess that’s what all improvisers, especially in Jazz, are aspiring to.
LOCKE: It doesn’t have to be Bebop to turn me on, but these guys really do it.
TP: Well, Bobby Hutcherson is someone who extended the language not only of the instrument, but musically in a total sense as well.
LOCKE: Of all three of these guys, Bobby is the one that really does it for me. Milt I almost put in his own place, because Milt is so important. Bobby is the one resonates in me the most, I guess because of some of the language he was playing. I think in the way that Milt really took the language of Bebop, the language of Charlie Parker and put it on the vibes, Bobby took the language of Trane and the innovations that were being made in the ’60s by some of his contemporaries, and translated it onto the vibraphone.
TP: he’s someone who seems to be able to blend the percussive, drum-like approach to the vibes with a real flow as well. He sounds like almost a drum choir sometimes, overlaying rhythms and the way he seamlessly weaves them together.
LOCKE: Yeah, it’s amazing. You’re exactly right. Bobby can play really-really pretty, heartbreakingly pretty, and then he can get into a thing where he’s playing really percussively and exploring like the rhythmic aspects and the percussive, drum-like aspects of the instrument. But his harmony is deep. So when I think about Bobby, I don’t even think of the drum aspect as much as I do the depth of the harmony. Some of his contemporaries, like Freddie Hubbard, who were really like hanging out with Trane and learning the stuff he was doing, like superimposing harmonies on top of harmonies, Hutch was putting that onto the vibes and experimenting with different modes and scales and Eastern stuff. You can hear in “Little B’s Poem,” which is mid-’70s, that slowly he’d been building the language where now, in the mid-’70s, there is a superimposition of harmony where you’re trying to get from Point A to Point B, but now Point B isn’t a bar away or even a couple of bars away; Point B might be half a tune away or maybe 8 bars away, and he’s going to make his own path to that next place in the harmony of the tune, and he does it in a really exciting way where he’s finding new ways to get from Point A to Point B. I just hear so much… There’s so much that excites me about him. How he transcends the bar line, how he makes the vibraphone… He does these things where he staggers his phases, where he’ll be playing a sequence or pattern that if you were to sing it slowly would sound like [SINGS ASCENDING REFRAIN], but he plays them against the time in a very quick way, and it creates a feeling almost of flowing water. Yet, in that, the harmony is intact. It’s very deep. I know sometimes I’ll play some of Bobby’s stuff, and the saxophone player will go, “What’s that, man?” I’ll say, “That’s Bobby Hutcherson’s stuff.” I hear saxophone players play stuff sometimes that I know is coming from Bobby. And it’s those staggered sequences when you’re getting to the next point in the tune in a sequential way, but that he really had and has a genius for finding his own root. Every time I hear him, he excites me. It’s just hearing the mind of someone brilliant at work, and yet someone who’s having a lot of fun, too.
TP: And you mentioned that he studied with Dave Pike coming up as a kid in Los Angeles.
LOCKE: I talked to Dave about that and I talked to Bobby about that. He took some lessons with Dave when Dave was in Los Angeles and Bobby was just starting out. So it’s kind of interesting to see the continuum happening. Dave is still playing great, and Bobby of course is still playing incredibly. I’m just happy that all these guys are still kicking it and still playing at the top of his game.
[MUSIC: Joe Locke, “Song For Cables”]
TP: A lot of musicians now in their thirties and forties are starting to approach the popular music of the ’70s and ’80s that was in the air when they were coming up in a serious jazz way, and trying to play it with the same level of sophistication and with that standards were approached by their idols as well. Let’s discuss the full range of music you were listening to and playing. We had you in Rochester playing in organ trios and serious hard-core jazz. Let’s get you to New York.
LOCKE: Backing up on the music of the ’70s and the stuff that we were influenced by, a perfect example is this. Last week I was in the studio with Diane Reeves, and I did an arrangement on a song by Joni Mitchell called “River” from the album Blue. I had actually done it from my own head. I’d wanted to do an arrangement of the song. I’d heard a way of doing it in my head, and I went into the studio and demoed it — with sort of a West African flavor to it, with background harmonies and hand percussion and a marimba and vibes. I sent it to Diane, and she called me, and then I got a call from George Duke, and they said they wanted to do it on the upcoming album with Diane. It was a total honor for me, number one, because Diane is my favorite singer of the younger generation of people who are dealing with the music now, and I’m a huge fan of hers. I believed in this arrangement of Joni’s tune I had done, and to do it with Diane and George Duke as producer was a real honor for me. Also, we respected that music, and to do it justice…I think we can do it justice. There’s a lot of depth in some of the writing that was happening then from people like Joni, and to do it with Diane, someone who respects that music, was really something. We did it with Mulgrew Miller on piano, Reginald Veal and Brian Blade and Romero Lubambo. There was a feeling that this music is music that is worth of being done now. To sort of play with people of that caliber and to feel the meat being brought out of the tune.
The point I want to make is that there’s a lot of music that means stuff to us, people of my generation, that people are going to be hearing more of as time goes by. I’m recording songs that were done by non-jazz artists of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, and we do it because we love the music, and for no other reasons — artistic reasons, not commercial.
TP: Let’s address the progression, the chronology of events that brought you to New York. Did you just decide to take the plunge?
LOCKE: I just decided to move here, yeah. I just jumped in with no money, and had a couple of friends here. The interesting thing is, when you come here, your vision of what… My vision of what I expected the experience to be…it was different. The people who gave me my first breaks were musicians who I wouldn’t have expected. Some of the first things I did in town were with Byard Lancaster and J.R. Mitchell and Yusef Yancey and guys who were considered outside players, which I didn’t have any experience with, and it was an ear-stretching experience for me. It’s interesting, you don’t know what your story is until it’s already told. So that was a fascinating thing for me, to play with some people whose frame of reference is completely different than mine. I got a chance to play early on with Bob Moses, who had me playing with his nonet, and that was an amazing experience to play some music on a high level and get my butt kicked. I played on the street with George Braith and C. Sharpe and Tommy Turrentine. We played out on the street for ten hours every day, and I’m still really thankful to George Braith for the whuppin’ he gave me on a steady basis. It was an amazing experience to go out there, set up at 8 o’clock in the morning and play all day long. You’d be playing “Cherokee” for an hour. That was New York to me. It was an amazing experience. Those were some of the things that were really important to me.
TP: The comment you made, “you don’t know your story til it’s told,” is peculiarly applicable to improvisers in jazz, because you have to be prepared to intersect with almost any other personality. That’s one of the fascinating things about it. As you developed your own concept, talk about some of the affiliations you made. The first recordings I remember are around ten years ago on Steeplechase.
LOCKE: Well, the first recording I made was when I was 23. It was an album called Live In Front of the Silver Screen with Phil Markowitz, my former mentor, Eddie Gomez on bass, and Keith Copeland. Then I didn’t record for quite a while. Then I did a thing on Cadence Records in 1986 with Jerry Bergonzi, Adam Nussbaum, Andy Laverne and Fred Stone on bass. But I didn’t start recording on a regular basis until Steeplechase. At that point I’d been recording with Eddie Henderson, then the label asked me to make my own record. I went in the studio with Kenny Werner, Larry Schneider on saxophone, Ron McClure and Ronnie Burrage — and I was a nervous wreck, man. It was a test of having to make music under the microscope, and I remember how I felt then as opposed to how I feel now working in the studio. The studio, gratefully, has become more of a home for me.
TP: I guess doing a bunch of records for a label like Steeplechase, where you can get a bunch of top-shelf New York musicians without a lot of pressure because it’s all being done in eight hours or less… It maybe doesn’t seem so great when you’re doing it, but at the end, you know a lot more about what you want to express in the studio.
LOCKE: I’ve always said that those of us who make records for labels where you have to get it done direct-to-two-track immediately, and have it done in 5-6-7 hours… You have to be able to play to do that, where there’s no fixing — fixing it in the mix, as they say. You have to deal, and you have to deal with the consequences. You have to stand by what you recorded. I listen to some of those earlier records, and I cringe, but it was the truth for the time. It was a true document for what was happening then. I was really fortunate to be with musicians like Kenny Werner, Ron McClure, people who really helped lift me and carry me along. It’s like they’d lift me and carry along; it’s like they’d take me and lift me up and set me down on the grass at the end of the song. I was in fast company with those guys, but they were very supportive and loving.
TP: Back to other music and Joe’s comments. We had a caller who was anxious to know Joe’s feeling about Lem Winchester, who was also a Sheriff and died under odd circumstances relating to his job.
LOCKE: He was a cop in Wilmington, Delaware. He actually died from a gun accident that was self-inflicted, a very sad story. He was a wonderful player, and I appreciated the caller, because he felt it was important to acknowledge this master. I was first made aware of Lem Winchester through a trio album with Shirley Scott, and I believe it’s the only album trio of vibe, organ and drums, if I’m not mistaken. The instrumentation hasn’t been documented very much. I heard someone who was really swinging. As I said about Bags and Dave Pike, this is someone who’s really playing music on the vibraphone. He’s not attacking it in some sort of vaudevillian way, but someone who’s making very thoughtful, swinging music on an instrument that happens to be the vibraphone. Just an amazing player who we lost way too soon.
[MUSIC: Lem Winchester, “Skylark”; Roy Ayers/Jack Wilson, “Shosh”]
LOCKE: It makes me laugh to hear Roy. He’s swinging so hard. That’s as good as it gets, man. And people who know Roy, as I did, from Ubiquity and the Acid Jazz stuff he’s doing now, and the crossover stuff with him singing, which is all very cool, I like that aspect of Roy also… But to hear him deep in the pocket, playing straight-ahead blues, he’s killing it, man! It cracks me up to hear it. I just want to laugh, because it’s so deeply swinging. Roy’s another one of a handful of people who really got it. It’s just amazing. If you’re out there, Roy, you’re beautiful, man. And he’s still playing his tail off. I love that track, because he’s playing all that language. He’s like a saxophonist playing vibes. He’s great. And the thing about Roy, that he came from this place where he was really deep in the tradition of this music, and you can hear Bird and Bags and all the influences, and he went on to do something different.
Another vibe player who did that who I owe a tremendous debt to, as to any vibe players who are really conscious about what we’re doing… Well, I shouldn’t say that; we all have our influences. But to me, he’s an important influence — Mike Mainieri. I listen to some of Mike’s older stuff… I have an album called Blues From the Other Side which I think he did in 1962 when he might have still been a teenager, 19 or 20, after leaving Buddy Rich’s band. So he had already done all that stuff. He’s swinging so hard coming out of a Bags kind of thing, a Milt Jackson kind of thing, and he’s someone who can deal with all that language and frame of reference. Mike went on to really open some doors, not just for the vibraphone, but for music. This is a guy who could have stayed in the pocket of being a straight-ahead player. He was hearing something different, saw what was happening with the scene… It’s a question you’d have to ask Mike. But he found another way through. Some stuff was happening with Rock music at the time. As I understand it a rehearsal band called White Elephant started, which was like a studio band of all the studio guys who would get together and play after their studio work, and some really interesting music came out of that. Then Mike had a band called L’Image with Tony Levin and I want to say Warren Bernhardt and Steve Gadd, with composition and stuff that was happening in American Pop and Rock music, and playing some very interesting stuff…
TP: He’s one of the first to start creating a sound out of electronic augmentations on the vibes also.
LOCKE: The thing about Mike, if I’m not mistaken… I use a system when I play electric called the K&K Midi-System, and I think Mike Mainieri is in large part responsible for that technology even being in existence. So really an amazing thinker, a conceptualist, someone who gets an idea and just sees it through to its end, to its fruition.
[MUSIC: Mainieri, “Los Dos Lorettas”; Burton/Corea, “Native Dancer”]
TP: We had a caller who wanted very much to know your feelings about Gary Burton’s musicianship, his very distinctive place as an improviser and creator in the music.
LOCKE: I think Gary Burton is one of a kind. In his own way, he’s like Milt, in that when Gary moves on from this sphere no one is going to come along again who approaches the instrument like he does. I mean, it’s freakish how comfortable he is with four mallets playing music on the vibraphone. Gary devised a technique of playing the vibraphone that suited what he needed to express, and he did it in a way that… I think the outcrop of it was that he really messed with a lot of vibe players who came after him, in a different way but similarly that Trane messed up a lot of saxophone players who came after him. I’ll explain that. He devised a technique that for him was like breathing or drinking a glass of water. It was second nature. He worked hard on it, but it’s something that he does naturally. As we speak, there are vibraphonists at home and in conservatory practice rooms, practicing 12 hours a day, trying to do what Gary Burton does. I know for a fact that Gary Burton hasn’t practiced for 20 years. He doesn’t pick up the mallets unless he has something…unless he’s playing. I don’t think he’d mind me saying that. I think it’s common knowledge. It’s unbelievable what he does and how musical he is. And something I respect even more, that I’ve come to appreciate more as I’ve gotten older, is that Gary went his own way. If you listen to him with Stan Getz or with George Shearing in his early years, when he was a teenager, he’s got all the Bebop vocabulary, he’s got all that stuff at his fingers. And he chose to play a different way, because he was hearing something inside that he wanted to express.
TP: To get a tiny bit technical, how would you describe that way that he chose?
LOCKE: Improvisationally, Gary’s playing became less chromatic and more diatonic. He was dealing with modes and scales, and the languages was I think coming from a more European and, at the same time, a more Americana kind of place, but it wasn’t coming from… The place he decided to go to was less of a chromatic Bebop approach. But when you hear him play Bebop or standard tunes, it’s unbelievable. I’ve been working with Eddie Daniels lately, and my first gig with Eddie Daniels’ band was kind of subbing for Gary on the music of Benny Goodman — Benny Rides Again. We did the Ravinia Festival this past summer. I got the music from Eddie, and had to shed this Benny Goodman music, and I got the CD of Burton with Eddie Daniels playing the Benny Goodman music. I know what it’s like to play that music, and it represents some challenges. Lots of fast lines in thirds with the clarinet, and lots of diminished things. Burton plays the stuffing out of that music, and he’s swinging — like unbelievably swinging. So I just can’t say enough about him as a player.
The thing is, there seem to be camps now, people who are into straight-ahead music and people who are into ECM recordings. To me, it’s all music, and if it’s on a high level there shouldn’t be… I don’t have a problem stylistically.
TP: He’s certainly been exploring a lot of areas on his recordings for Stretch. He’s reexplored Astor Piazzola’s music with veterans of Piazzola’s band, then there’s a date of all standards, then duos with Chick Corea…
LOCKE: When I started to play the vibes I was really into Gary Burton. Actually Good Vibes was an album that was one of my first…
TP: Is there a machismo aspect to playing four-mallets for you, that four-mallets is something you have to master?
LOCKE: I went back and forth, from two to four, back to two. I did a duo record with Kenny Barron, and I went back to two mallets. Now I play with four mallets again. Mainly when I’m soloing, I’m holding four, but I’m playing with the two inside ones, and I have the outside ones in case I want to punch up some chords. I can work up some four-mallet stuff, but Burton has taken it to a level that’s incredible. And you know what? He’s got it! He’s amazing. He’s just excellent. He’s doing some amazing things still, and he sound better than ever — just like Mike Mainieri does. These guys who are older than I am, yet when you hear them play they have an exuberance and a youthful vitality that I can only hope I have when I’m their age.
[MUSIC: Locke/Billy Childs, “Blue”]
TP: In this hour we’ll get away from the vibes and hear personal favorites of Joe. Jackie McLean.
LOCKE: This is actually Let Freedom Ring, Jackie’s record, which turned me around and made me want to pursue this music. It really got me into the Blue Note catalogue. When I heard this recording, I felt a change. I felt I’d pursue this music even further. The ballad “I’ll Keep Loving You” is very important to me. I got a chance to meet Jackie when I was a teenager, and it was a big thrill for me. This is the record that sent me on my way. At the time I was listening to more electric stuff and kind of getting in. But this record is really important to me. This is the first album I thought of playing.
[MUSIC: J. McLean, “I’ll Keep Loving You”; Wayne Shorter, “Yes Or No”; John Coltrane, “Crescent”]
LOCKE: Once again, when I thought of coming here, Juju is a record I immediately pulled out along with Let Freedom Ring, because it was an album early on, when I first started to get into acoustic jazz, that really affected me. I played it over and over again. I probably had the copy of the LP three times. And “Crescent,” because that band was so important. I transcribed a lot of Trane’s solos early, and I got a lot of the saxophone language — which actually translates to my instrument, the vibes, quite well. Like, a lot of the stuff he was playing on tenor on that solo I can’t begin to fathom, but the stuff I could actually lays real well on the vibes.
TP: You said you emulated a lot of saxophonists and horn players, but not all of it, I assume, lays equally well on your instrument.
LOCKE: No, it doesn’t. But a lot of stuff, lines that I borrow from Crescent lay easily, meaning you can execute them by playing simple alternate stickings — left-right, left-right, left-right, without having to do a lot of doublings and crossing your arms in front of the other ones and getting into a lot of gymnastics.
TP: Not that there’s anything wrong with that, to quote the TV show.
LOCKE: Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it surprised me that a lot of that saxophone language could be played on the vibes, because I hadn’t heard it done a lot. Then at that point, too, after checking out Trane on Crescent and realizing I could play some of that stuff, I started to check out Steve Grossman, who was coming out of Trane, and his stuff could be executed on the vibes — and that was real exciting to me. It’s funny to look back on this period my of life and education that I was really-really into saxophone players. It makes me kind of take pause.
[MUSIC: Locke/Handy/Roney/G. Allen, “Wise One”]
TP: Our last set will include recordings by two contemporaries who aren’t as widely known as they should be in the jazz world at large. Walt Weiskopf’s Song For My Mother from 1995, and Darrell Grant from a 1993 recording called Black Art, both on Criss-Cross.
LOCKE: I chose these as recordings from a pair of my contemporaries who I think have an original voice and who I have a lot of respect for. I think Walt is an amazing musician who plays himself on his horn. What they have in common is that they both express themselves so well through their music, and both are wonderful composers. There are lots more of my peers I would like to play. This show actually could have been all my peers and people I respect and admire and have learned so much from.
[MUSIC: Weiskopf, “Three-Armed Man “; Darrell Grant, “Tillman Tones”]
TP: Your first two Milestone dates were concept type records.
LOCKE: I’m really happy about Slander, which is the coming full circle with this band. It has some covers of other people’s music, but it focused primarily on my writing, which wasn’t exhibited in the last two. I’m happy to have that aspect of my voice heard on this CD.
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Joe Locke Blindfold Test (First Edit):
Equally comfortable navigating Cecil Taylor’s complexities, Eddie Palmieri’s grooving Afro-Caribbean flavors, vertiginous chamber jazz with Geoff Keezer and Tim Garland and hardcore swinging blues and bebop, Joe Locke, 56—whose expansive 2015 release, Love Is A Pendulum, is his 34th album as a leader or co-leader—is a generational avatar of vibraphone expression. This was his first DownBeat Blindfold Test.
Bobby Hutcherson
“I Am In Love” (Mirage, Landmark, 1991) (Hutcherson, vibraphone; Tommy Flanagan, piano; Peter Washington, bass; Billy Drummond, drums)
Someone influenced by Bobby Hutcherson. Oh, it is Bobby! He’s playing very signature lines. It sounds like it’s in a recording studio, but he’s so in the moment he’s playing like it’s a gig. This is the album Bobby made with Tommy Flanagan, Billy Drummond…and the bass player sounds great…it’s Peter Washington. I love this period, which started in the ’70s, when Bobby got into playing structures that ascended and descended, parallel shapes that he’d climb up and down. He developed his own language, and it’s coming through loud and clear. Many of us have aspired to and been inspired and influenced by this combination of incredible harmonic depth and poetic playing. I didn’t feel the vibes sound was recorded well—4½ stars.
Chris Dingman
“Same Coin” (Waking Dreams, Between Worlds, 2011) (Dingman, vibraphone; Fabian Almazan, piano and Fender Rhodes, Joe Sanders, bass; Justin Brown, drums; Erica Von Kleist, flute; Mark Small, bass clarinet)
The pianist reminds me of Ed Simon, though it’s not. My first thought is Stefon Harris, who plays with a great sense of melody, like he’s singing through the instrument. This player has that lovely quality, too, and a nice sound. I like the matching of flute, bass clarinet and vibes with the piano as a carpet underneath it—a lovely conception. The piano solo is beautiful. The vibes solo is terrific—an original voice and much sincerity. 4½ stars.
Stefon Harris
“Thanks For the Beautiful Land On The Delta” (African Tarantella: Dances With Duke, Blue Note, 2006) (Stefon Harris, vibraphone; Steve Turre, trombone; Anne Drummond, flute; Greg Tardy, clarinet; Xavier Davis, piano; Junah Chung, viola, Louise Dubin, cello; Derrick Hodge, bass; Terreon Gully, drums)
Stefon. African Tarantella? That melodic, singing expression I talked about with Dingman comes through loud and clear here. Not sure if there’s a bass trombone, but the low end is palpable; the piece is emotionally resonant. Beautiful orchestration and arranging. There’s a big, wide-open half-time feel—the drummer knows how to sustain that good feeling and not get in the way while keeping things interesting. I don’t know if Terreon Gully had come on the scene then, or if it’s Eric Harland. 5 stars. It’s exciting to hear a vibes player who transcends the instrument, and makes music on those 37 cold bars. Stefon’s playing has poetry and fire, intellectual rigor, and the blues are intact.
Dave Samuels
“Resemblance” (Tjader-ized, Verve, 1998) (Samuels, vibraphone; Eddie Palmieri, piano; Joe Santiago, bass; Bobbie Allende, Marc Quiñones, percussion)
Cal Tjader? It sounds like something I recorded with Eddie Palmieri when we re-did the El Sonido Nuevo album on KUVO in Denver. The vibes have crisp, precise, beautiful articulation like Gary Burton. A very strong linear improviser. Ah! Dave Samuels. That sounds like Eddie on piano. They’re playing beautifully together. 4½ stars.
Warren Wolf
“Annoyance” (Wolfgang, Mack Avenue, 2013) (Wolf, vibraphone; Benny Green, piano; Christian McBride, bass; Lewis Nash, drums)
[after 4 bars] Warren Wolf. Warren’s phrasing is beautiful. The combination of almost childlike consonance, and then little dissonances thrown in as though something is encroaching, is an interesting compositional device. Besides being a wonderful melodic improviser, Warren has the blues in his playing. His dazzling chops and speed impress people, but what hits me most is his soulful delivery. Warren makes it sound easy, but if that were easy to do on the vibes, more people would do it! 5 stars.
Dave Holland
“Amator Silenti” (Critical Mass, Dare2, 2006) (Holland, bass; Steve Nelson, vibraphone and marimba; Chris Potter, tenor saxophone; Robin Eubanks, trombone; Nate Smith, drums)
I’ll guess Dave Holland—and Steve Nelson—because of the instrumentation. It’s a heartfelt, romantic track, showing a side of the quintet that I miss in some other writing for it. It goes from that very consonant, open, beautiful sound into the freeway, from the most inside to the most outside within a few minutes! Steve is the composer? When he writes, it’s a good one. You can tell they’ve made a lot of music together by the way they’re dialoguing, speaking with one voice. I like the colors created by different instrumental combinations. Stunning. 5 stars.
Jason Adasiewicz’s Sun Rooms
“Bees” (Spacer, Delmark, 2011) (Adasiewicz, vibraphone; Nate McBride, bass; Mike Reed, drums)
After 16 bars, Jason Adasiewicz. An album called Sun Rooms. I don’t consider this avant-garde, but it represents an aesthetic that’s thriving in Chicago. I’m not moved by him as a linear improviser, but I love what he does sonically. On this track, for example, he speeds up and slows down the motor for an aesthetic effect, which Matt Moran of the Claudia Quintet does. He’s exploring textures in a cool way; it’s valid to use all the possibilities at your disposal on an instrument whose possibilities are inherently—or ostensibly—very limited. I wouldn’t go back to it to get my head right on any given day, but I appreciate it. That I could identify it as Jason means he has a voice. 3 stars.
Dave Pike
“Forward” (It’s Time For Dave Pike, Riverside, 1961/2001) (Pike, vibraphone; Barry Harris, piano; Reggie Workman, bass; Billy Higgins, drums)
Dave Pike. The Bud Powell of the vibes. It’s Time For Dave Pike? So it’s Barry Harris. One of the greatest bebop vibes records ever. I’m surprised I didn’t know it at first, but this track didn’t ring a bell. It doesn’t get any better. Dave Pike is a great, eloquent bebop improviser, on the level of Sonny Stitt, but doing it on the vibraphone—and he sounds very different than Bags. 5 stars.
Today Is The Question: Ted Panken on Music, Politics and the Arts 