A 1992 WKCR Interview with Ira Sullivan, Who Turned 82 Yesterday

Just noticed that yesterday was the 82nd birthday of Ira Sullivan, the magnificent multi-instrumentalist who has inspired several generations of South Florida musicians since moving there from Chicago more than 40 years ago. I had an opportunity to interview the maestro on WKCR in June 1992 while he was in residence at the Village Vanguard with a quartet, and am presenting the transcript below.

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Q:    It’s my pleasure to introduce a musician who is really beyond category, a virtuosic instrumentalist on trumpet, fluegelhorn, soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, flute…and what am I missing?

IS:    Oh, I don’t know.  I play some drums if I have to.

Q:    Did you ever do a record as the whole band?

IS:    I’ve been asked…

Q:    You once did a record where you played all of the instruments.

IS:    Yeah, I have never heard that.  I have heard about it.  But I have been asked to do that, but I haven’t planned anything yet.  The only time I think I did any overdubbing was on that Bernie Brightman Stash record with Hank Jones and Duffy Jackson.  We went in, and we had seven hours; we did seven tunes in seven hours.  I went back another couple of hours.  I left the holes open, you know, so I could go in the next day and overdub the fluegelhorn parts.

Q:    And there are some sections where you do exchanges with yourself as well.

IS:    Right, right.  That was interesting.

Q:    Anyway, we haven’t even introduced you.  The person I am talking about, as many of you may already know, is Ira Sullivan, and he is appearing at the Village Vanguard at the helm of a quartet this week, featuring pianist Reuben Brown, bassist David Williams, and drummer Steve Bagby.  When was the last time you led a group in New York playing your music with this type of a band?

IS:    Well, I always feel I’m the leader, because I only have myself to contend with, you know.  I have never believed that man needed a leader.  I have always thought that to be starting so young, the leader was Christ.  Jesus is the leader to me, and everything else is just superfluous.  I mean, we just do…we bring all our talents to what we do, and do it.  I never think of pecking order, you know.
I play with different people so much.  See, growing up in Chicago, when I’d get a job for a quartet, I’d get calls from 12 or 18 musicians saying, “Hey, I hear you got a job this Friday night.  I’m available.”  Well, you can only hire three other guys.  So I always had this wonderful wellspring of great musicians to choose from, that’s what I’ve done all my life.  I’ve never really kept a band together for a long time.

Q:    When did you start performing professionally in Chicago?  How old were you and…

IS:    I was 16 when I started playing at the jam sessions.

Q:    Was that about 1948?

IS:    No.  I was still in high school then.  I think 1948 is when I got out of high school.

Q:    What was the situation that led up to you performing?  You’ve been playing since you were three or four years old.

IS:    I started when I was 3-1/2, yes.

Q:    On a record you did for Horizon, there’s a picture that shows you playing the trumpet, and the trumpet literally is almost as big as you are.  Was that your first instrument?

IS:    Actually, as you notice, I’m almost resting it against my knee there.  The trumpet was my first instrument, yeah.  I never picked up anything else until I was in high school and I had to for the school band.  I became a trouble-shooter.  You know, when somebody was absent, I got the call.  My father had a record by Clyde McCoy called “Sugar Blues” that I wanted to play.  I wanted to work the wah-wah mute, the little Harmon mute on the end that makes it sound like a baby’s cry.  So he got me one of the little short German cornets, a little fat cornet that you’ve probably seen some guys in the early bands play.  I think Joe Thomas used to play one in Basie’s sextet.  And so I could work that wah-wah mute.  But the trumpet you saw was a long, full-sized trumpet, and that was my first instrument and it remained my first instrument until high school.

Q:    You grew up in what part of Chicago?

IS:    The North Side of Chicago, and then later the South Side.

Q:    And your father I gather was an avid listener to music and collector of instruments.

IS:    My father was from a family of fourteen children, and they all played instruments.  One uncle was with Souza’s band, and another was in what I guess they called Ragtime at that time — you know, free Dixieland.  He was an improviser.  He was the first one who taught me about playing Free, actually, way before Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor and all those fellows.  He taught me about playing impressionistic music when I was ten years old.

Q:    What was his name?

IS:    Tom Sullivan.  Thomas Sullivan.

Q:    Did he play professionally?

IS:    Yes.  He was in the Jazz band I talked about.  I had never heard him, but he was an improviser.  My Dad played.  He had beautiful chops and a very good tone, and he just played for relaxation when he came home from his business.  He was like a Charlie Spivak, Harry James, very clean, you know, straight melody — he didn’t improvise.  In fact, when I was five and six and we used to play together he always would turn to me and ask me, “Ira, where are you getting all of those extra notes?”   See, because I’d be putting little obbligatos in and stuff.

Q:    And was that coming from your imagination at that time?

IS:    Yes.

Q:    So there was always music around you, from the very earliest part of your life.

IS:    Always.  Always.  Our family reunions were meals, the women cooked all day and then we had dinner about 4:30, and then we played the rest of the night.  All the neighbors would come in.  Every one of my aunts played.  One played violin.  One just played a snare drum.  She had a snare drum with brushes, and she would come in and keep time.  And the gentlemen all played, and another aunt played piano.  So we had quite nice family sessions then.

Q:    Were there records in the house also?

IS:    Oh, sure.  I was firmly steeped in the music of Harry James before he was a popular bandleader.  He was quite a Jazz player, you know.  I had that record of him with Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, you know, playing Boogie-Woogie, and I was fascinated, because I had only heard Harry with the big bands.  I listened to Basie, and really just to every kind of music.  I discovered Classical on my own, because we had it around the house.  But nobody forced me, and said, “Oh, listen to this, listen to this — this is what you should listen to.”  I was given complete freedom.

Q:    Did your parents take you to hear music, the big bands at the theatres or anything like that in the 1930′s and 1940′s?

IS:    Yeah, after I asked them.  Yeah, later on, I’m sure… Well, see, that was a beautiful thing about Chicago.  When you went to see a movie in Downtown Chicago, you got a live band performing.  It could be just Glenn Gray and his Casa Loma Orchestra, or even just a dance band.  But I was always thrilled, you know, when the curtains opened.  And one day I remember, I was 14, I saw Woody Herman’s band, with that theme song, you know, they’d come out with.  That was really a very exciting time in my life.  It was common then.  Now it’s hard to find big bands, you know.

Q:    And in these years (we’re talking about, I imagine the years before high school and the early years of high school), which instrumentalists really impressed you?  You mentioned Harry James.  Who apart from he?

IS:    Well, remember I was only a five-year-old child!  Well, I grew on Harry James.  There was Clyde McCoy and Henry Busey, and Muggsy… I heard Dixieland players; I didn’t know what they called it.  I didn’t ever hear the word Jazz until I was 16 and in high school.  To me it was music.  I didn’t call it Swing or Funk or whatever labels they put on.  Then when I got in high school, a senior in high school introduced me to some records I had never heard before, such as Coleman Hawkins on Commodore with young Dizzy Gillespie playing trumpet [sic], then we moved from that into Dexter Gordon and Allen Eager, Charlie Parker — which all gave me another musical direction.  I was definitely intrigued.

Q:    So that turned your head.

IS:    It certainly did, yeah.  And as I say, it set me off in a new direction.  I wanted to learn that language, that Bebop language.

Q:    What sort of musical education was available to you in high school in Chicago?  I know you were already a proficient musician.  But I think it was much more prominent in the schools then than it is today.

IS:    Oh yes.  Yes, that’s the bane of my existence, to go around and talk to these poor musical directors in the schools the people who are trying to promote music, and realize they have trouble actually getting a little band together, whether it’s a stage band to play modern arrangements or just a concert band.  When I was in sixth grade, I had a 90-piece orchestra, 90 to 135 pieces, depending on how many children were graduating and moved out of the school.  So it’s quite thrilling to play with an orchestra when you’re that young, you know, and hear violins and clarinets and everything.  And they weren’t that badly  out of tune.  We had a very good director, as I remember.

And then when I went to high school, I moved right into the concert band in my freshman year, and had certainly enough music… I had two periods of band every day, and I was playing trumpet, and two days of the week I went upstairs to the orchestra room, and got to play with the orchestra.  So it was quite nice.  And of course, I also had a double period of Art.

And it breaks your heart.  Because when I see schools in Florida that can’t even get a music program started, and I realize how kids respond… We did clinics at this Pennsylvania festival.  We start Friday night, and then Saturday morning we do clinics with the high school kids around there.  And we had a young boy who was about 10 years old, Jonathan, and he’s in sixth grade — and you should have heard him play alto.  He went out and played with the high school band.  He’s very precocious now.  When you see children like that, it’s great if they have an outlet in school.  I mean, imagine little children who grow up and they already love, say, poetry or creative art and music. And then the teachers find them falling behind in their other subjects.  Education has lost the idea that if you give a child something that his little heart desires, his spirit is bursting to produce, it might straighten out the rest of his or her’s mental outlook towards the process of education.

Because God, I think, He imbues us each with a unique spirit.  We don’t all love the same things, the same foods.  And what we want to do with our life I think a lot of us know very young.  As I say, I went from crib to the trumpet.  I never asked for anything else in my life to do.  I was quite happy, as long as I could play music.

Q:    [ETC.] We’ll create a set of you performing on trumpet.  We’ll hear “That’s Earl, Brother,” which I imagine you heard at the time you were first introduced to Bebop.

IS:    Actually the first time I heard it, it was by Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Stitt with a rhythm section, and then later I heard it with Dizzy’s big band.

[MUSIC:  "That's Earl, Brother (1977)," "Angel Eyes (1968)," "Everything Happens To Me," "Our Delight"]

“Angel Eyes” comes from Horizons, which was issued in the Eighties on Discovery, featuring I guess the band you worked with in Miami at the time, shortly after you moved there from Chicago in the 1960′s.

IS:    Yes, it was.  1968 that recording was originally done.

Q:    Tell me about your early experiences with Bebop.  Did you hear it on records, or hearing musicians that came through Chicago?

IS:    Well, I started hearing musicians coming through Chicago, as you say.  You were asking earlier about concerts.  I remember when I was 16, my Dad did take me to see… We went to a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert, one of those early ones at the Chicago Opera House.  That was quite exciting.  Then, of course, I heard Dizzy Gillespie’s Big Band.  Then when I was about 18, I went to my high school prom, and Gene Krupa was playing in town, and that’s when I met Red Rodney, who was the featured trumpet soloist.  Charlie Ventura was still in that band.

Then, as I say, in high school, I met this gentleman who turned me…had some Dexter Gordon records.  He was a Jazz collector; he had Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie with “Salt Peanuts.”  It threw me for a loop, because I had always been able to, as they do in college now, transcribe solos.  Now the fellows sit around and transcribe the solos off the record, write them down, and then play them.  But I didn’t use this process.  I just memorized the solos, and would try to recreate the phrasing and the breathing that I heard from Roy Eldridge or Buck Clayton or any of the Jazz trumpet players.  Again, reminding you I didn’t know they called it Jazz.  It was just music.  So I just tried to reproduce what I heard.

But then when I heard the Bebop idiom, I could not get near to that at all.  The rhythmic concept, the syncopation, the fast triplets…

[END OF SIDE A]

…or the writers that this will never last, a bunch of silly symphonies, and it’s not going to be around long, and then 20 years later it was so assimilated into the culture, I heard Bebop licks coming out of Lawrence Welk’s horn section, because these young arrangers had grown up and were slyly sneaking some of it in — you know, it was wonderful to see it become part of our culture.

Q:    Of course, you were one of many young musicians in Chicago who were assimilating and developing very individual artistic statements out of the Bebop idiom.  When did you begin to interact with that broader Chicago community of musicians?

IS:    In the jam sessions.  By the time I was 18, I had met a lot of the… Lou Levy, who we used to know as Count Levy in those days, who played with Stan Getz and Peggy Lee, and he’s one of the finest young… I still call him a young player.  He still is, because he was 19 when I met him.  I was out playing with these fellows, and then I finally sort of built a little reputation.  But I noticed they always called me for the jam sessions and not enough for the gigs, see.  So then I had to change that a little bit.

Q:    Now, when did you start incorporating the saxophones into your repertoire?  Were you doing that at this time as well?

IS:    Through being a trouble-shooter with the band.  Well, I didn’t mention my mother also played piano and alto saxophone.  So I always had a saxophone around the house, but I never was really interested in them.  Then in the high school band, as I say, we had 19 trumpets.  So we lost our baritone horn player; he graduated.  So I said, “Well, let me try the baritone horn.”  I started playing on that, and then I took it out to a couple of sessions.  A month or so later, we had a Father’s Night concert, as they called it, in the auditorium.  We had 35 clarinet players and only two tenor saxophone players, and one of them got a cold and was absent.  The band director said, “I don’t what we’re going to do; we need a replacement.”  I said, “I think if you let me take that tenor home, I can handle the part.”  Because tenor saxophones in a concert band, they have nothing to do but long tones, you know.  I took that tenor home, and I sat down, put my Lester Young record on, you know, sat down and just played one… You know how Lester would just get one note, DI-DA-DU-DAH-DOOT… I said, “Gee, I think I can do that.”  So I sat there with my one note all day long, phrasing, getting the rhythm phrasing.

Then I fell in love with the tenor.  I said, “This is quite a horn.”  I started fooling around with it.  It was just nice to be holding a tenor, because now I’d been listening to… I knew they called it Jazz now, and I had been listening to Allen Eager and Dexter Gordon and, of course, Lester Young and fellows around.  So the tenor became fascinating.

And then, when I was about 18 or 19 and started working in Chicago, I couldn’t get a job with a trumpet with a quartet.  You’ve got to remember, now, Chicago is a tenor town.  They had Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin, Dexter Gordon was around, Sonny Rollins spent some time there, Sonny Stitt, and you had Tom Archia, Melvin Scott — great tenor players all over the place.  Don Lanphere was there.  He was one of my early heroes.  I mean, he could play faster on a tenor sax than anybody I’ve ever known.  Kenny Mann was around there.  So it was a tenor town.

So I took that tenor, that borrowed tenor from school, and I started getting in the shed, as they say, and practicing on it — and I learned three tunes.  I learned the Blues, and I learned “I Got Rhythm,” and my fast tune was “Fine and Dandy.”  That way I got a gig.  Once I got a gig…

Q:    ”I Got Rhythm” will get you through a lot of jam sessions.

IS:    Get you through a lot of jam sessions.  And the Blues will, too; I mean, you learn them in two or three different keys.  And then I went out, and like I say, we got a job with a quartet.  But then, when I pulled my trumpet out, the club-owner was quite impressed.  He’d say, “Hey, I’ve got a triple-threat man.”  But I could not get hired with a trumpet and a rhythm section.

Q:    Well, how about your history on the alto saxophone?

IS:    Well, as I say, my mother had an alto saxophone at home, so then I started… Well, once I fell in love with Bird’s sound, that naturally would make you curious about the alto.

Q:    When did you first hear Bird?

IS:    I think the first recording would be… I remember the intro: [SINGS REFRAIN]

Q:    ”Now’s The Time.”

IS:    ”Now Is The Time,” right.  And the other side was “Billie’s Bounce” probably.

Q:    When did you first hear Bird live?

IS:    That would have been at the Jazz At The Philharmonic concert.

Q:    Now, Bird was frequently in Chicago.  Did you get to know him at all, or play alongside him?

IS:    I got to know him after we played together at the Beehive in ’55, actually, which was the year of his demise.

Q:    That was only a couple of weeks before he passed away, I think.

IS:    About a month.  Because he had asked me to come to New York.  He wanted to send for me and bring me to New York.  So I was considering the possibilities of that.  But at the time I could see he was also quite ill.  Not so you’d know it, but I mean, when you’d hang out and talk to him, there were things happening in his life.  His daughter had passed away a year before, and I think that still was taking its toll.

Q:    So you met him at a low ebb.  But musically, what was the experience like?

IS:    Oh, musically it was great.  He had found a doctor who was taking care of him a little bit, and getting him to feel a little better, and giving him the proper medication.  I think they got him full of Vitamin B-12, and sort of… I remember he came in the second night, and he had his usual libation, and he looked at me bright-eyed after the second set, he says, “Strange, I can’t get drunk.”  But he was feeling good, you know, and he was playing good — and we had a really nice time there.

Q:    Who was that band?

IS:    I was just going to say.  I think Norman Simmons was on piano, Victor Sproles on bass, and Bruz Freeman on the drums — Von Freeman’s brother.

Q:    Another tenor player who was prominent in Chicago.

IS:    Oh, Von was another one that I got to play with in the early days.  So it was like growing up with Bird.  It’s like they say, you reveal from one spirit that God had, and when you’re in Jazz, you find that the spirits are one.  We all have individual statements, we’re all trying to get our own voice on our instruments, but the common bond…. For instance, I was just reading some of these liner notes on my albums which I’ve never seen, and I talk about going over in Europe, meeting people over there, they don’t speak the language, but once you sit together in a session, you just mention a tune and you’re off and running.  So that’s one universal language we know that never fails us.

Q:    Well, Chicago in the 1950′s is almost universally described by musicians as one big workshop, where everybody could get their creative self together, so to speak.

IS:    Exactly.

Q:    Just describe the scene a little bit.  There was music on almost every major crosswalk on the South Side, I know.

IS:    Well, yes, and on the North Side, too, as I said before.  We spoke about those big bands.  I mean, you’d go down and see a movie, and you got an hour-and-a-half movie, but you also got a stage show with a great band, and maybe singers, jugglers, dancers, comedians, whatever — but my focal point was always the bands and the musicians.  And there were a lot of clubs to jam in, different clubs where trios were playing.

You had a lot of clubs in downtown Chicago, little bars where there would be a single piano player or a duo or a trio or a quartet.  Downtown, I remember there was a place called the Brass Rail upstairs and the Downbeat Room downstairs.  Henry “Red” Allen had a band there with J.C. Higgenbotham.  Red Saunders was the drummer.  The trumpet player Sonny Cohn was there.  It was really interesting.

As a youngster, I would go downtown, at 16, 17… I remember I’d wear my Jazz coat, and one night I painted a false moustache on with my mother’s eyebrow pencil, you know, so I’d look older.  Naturally, I couldn’t get in; they spotted me right away.  But I went downstairs.  There was a fellow that had worked at my father’s restaurant, and he was now working at the Downbeat room.  So he opened the fire door, and through the fire door, in the mirror there, I could see Henry “Red” Allen and Higgenbotham up there, and I could just catch the two of them.  He let me stand up there, but he said, “Now, if anybody comes by, close that door and get out of here!’  So there I was with my phony moustache and my tweed coat down there, soaking up the Jazz.

Q:    I’d like to ask you about a couple of the musicians in Chicago who have somewhat passed into the realm of legend because they were insufficiently recorded.  Did you ever have a chance to play with the drummer Ike Day behind you?

IS:    Oh, yes.

Q:    Can you describe his style a little bit?

IS:    You’d have to hear Guy Vivaros, who is a gentleman who is quite alive, travels with me a lot, does concerts with me.  Guy was Ike’s second nature.  I mean, that’s all Guy did.  Guy and I have known each other since we were about 17.  Guy got together with Ike Day, and Ike loved Guy, and Guy loved Ike, and Guy had given all his time, just like many teachers do now with young students, and they hung out together, and they just were inseparable.  And he gave Guy as much as he could of his stuff, this phenomenal and quite unusual method of drumming.  I mean, drummers certainly can appreciate it.  You say it to the average person, they wouldn’t tell one drummer from another.  But Ike had something that nobody else had, and Guy is the closest living representative I know who plays something like Ike.  But nobody can duplicate what it is.

Q:    Do you have words to describe what was special about Ike Day’s style?

IS:    Well, see, I played some funny sessions… You were asking me about the scene around Chicago.  I mean, a lot of us, we’d go jamming the blues clubs if there were no Jazz clubs open that night.  We just wanted to play.  So once in a while there would be a session after the Blues band had finished playing, and the Jazz fellows would go in, and we’d set up.  And Ike, one time I saw him play, he had literally a pie pan for a cymbal, and another gold cymbal that had a big chunk broken out of it, and no sock cymbal, and a hat box for a snare drum that he’d play with the brush, and then a regular tom-tom, and then a big bass drum with a Hawaiian scene painted on it, a waterfall scene from Hawaii painted on it.  And he played that set, and at no time did you know that there wasn’t anything… It could have been a brand-new set of Slingerland drums behind you.  So that was some of his magic.

Q:    I’ve heard that from a couple of drummers who had heard him, that he could play magically musically in tune with the band with almost anything, or a minimum of equipment.

IS:    Yes.

Q:    Others say that Buddy Rich actually used him briefly as a second drummer.

IS:    Yeah.  He also used Philly Joe Jones as a second drummer.  You’d have to hear Ike to know.  They say, “You’ve seen one drummer, you’ve seen them all,” but when you heard that inside magic that Ike had…
Ike used to play without his shoe, take his shoe off so he could get the feel of the wheel a little better.  One night he was playing at a long… In those days at the sessions there may be ten or twelve horn players on the stand, tenor players, maybe there would be one or two trumpet players, a couple alto players, all waiting in line to play — and the tunes would go on interminably.  I’ve actually seen a bass player where there was a phone the bar, pick up the phone and dial another cat, stop playing under a chorus, and say, “Hey, you want to come down here and get some of this?”  He’d been playing thirty-five minutes on the same tune, probably “I Got Rhythm,” and call another guy that was in the neighborhood to come over and relieve him.    Well, Ike took his sock off one night and played a tom-tom solo with his toes.  I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.  He just put his foot up on the tom-tom, and you could hear his…

Q:    Well, that’s really some independent coordination.

IS:    That’s some coordination I don’t think many drummers have tried yet.  But I wish Ike had been recorded just a little bit.  I think he is on a record, Tom Archia…

Q:    He is on a record, Tom Archia and Gene Ammons…

IS:    But not well…

Q:    It’s submerged to the point where it’s almost indistinguishable.

IS:    Right.

Q:    Would you say a few words about Wilbur Ware?

IS:    Oh, he was another one.  You know, the symphony players from the Chicago Symphony used to come to hear Wilbur when we played out at the Beehive, which was the going Jazz club then, where a lot of us worked in and out of.  I was always sort of brought in as the extra added attraction.  They’d have a quartet with Wardell Gray, and I got to play with the late Wardell Gray there, or Roy Eldridge and Art Farmer and Sonny Stitt, and so they’d bring me in as a trumpet player.

And one of the outstanding musical experiences of my life was playing with Wilbur Ware.  Wilbur Ware had… He told that his father had made his first bass out of an orange crate and thick inner tubes cut to different sizes of the strings and they played on the street and stuff like that.  But he had a touch unlike any other I’ve heard.  Very light.  He didn’t play heavy… Of course, the bass players of today sound heavy because they now have amplifiers.  Wilbur just played a wooden acoustic bass.  But he had this gorgeous, beautiful tone, just like with a feather touching the bass, and the sound that came out was wonderful.  I think a good example is that Sonny Rollins, Live At The Village Vanguard, where there is no piano, and you can really hear Wilbur outstanding.

And I used to watch these symphony players come down and be fascinated and watch him, because he had this almost legitimate technique — but he was definitely a self-taught musician.

Q:    Also, he often was not on what you’d call even close to a first-rate instrument…

IS:    Oh, no.

Q:    …and was yet able to elicit a tone.

IS:    Right.  He’d get up in the morning… We’d be rooming on the road, and he’d get up in the morning, at maybe 11 o’clock after the gig, and pick up his bass, before he’d even taken his pajamas off or brushed his teeth or had a cup of coffee; he’d pick up his bass and start playing “Cherokee” at a breakneck speed, you know, and just play… And he wouldn’t disturb anybody in the hotel.  You couldn’t hear him beyond the room.  Just… [SINGS RAPID WILBUR WARE LINE SOFTLY]  He’d just be working off the little patterns and everything.  It was wonderful, the love that he had for the instrument.

Q:    What were the circumstances that led to Art Blakey calling you and Wilbur Ware to join the Messengers in 1956?

IS:    Well, I guess because, as I say, I was always around jamming with everybody in Chicago, and when he’d come in, if I had a chance I’d get up with Art.  We had met, and everybody met, and so he’d call me, “Come on up and sit in, Ira.”  Then one day he just called me, and asked me if I’d want to go with the band, and brought Wilbur and I up at the same time.  Kenny Drew, Senior, was the piano player then.  I have to say Senior, because his son is around and performing.  He’s been up in Sarasota, Florida, for quite a while.  So Kenny Drew was in the band, Donald Byrd was the trumpet player — so I originally went in to play trumpet and tenor.  That’s when that terrible tragedy happened with Clifford, and Donald Byrd was given the call from Max to come in and replace Clifford Brown in the Max Roach-Sonny Rollins Quintet — the Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet actually they called it.  So then the next young trumpet to come in the band, after we went through Philadelphia, was Lee Morgan, who was 17 years old at the time — and I was playing tenor then.  Then a gentleman who was in last night to see me at the Vanguard, Danny Moore, was on trumpet for a while with that group when we left, because Lee was, I think, still in school, hadn’t quite graduated yet.  So we left Philadelphia and we got Danny Moore…

Q:    Lee Morgan joined Dizzy Gillespie at the end of that year, I think.

IS:    Yes.  As soon as he was out of high school.  Then Idrees Sulieman came in the band, which was quite interesting to most people, because as we got announced, it was very hard for them to tell the difference between the names — Ira Sullivan on tenor, Idrees Sulieman on trumpet.

Q:    Did you play exclusively tenor with the Messengers, or would you get into trumpet battles?

IS:    Well, I played some trumpet, but I always had to be careful with sensitive souls who… And I’d feel a little sensitive, too, because I felt like I had an act together or something.  You know, when I’m on my own and I can make my own choices, and pick up a trumpet or a flute or a saxophone when I want to, it’s something else.  But it’s not quite fair to a trumpet player, no matter how they good they are, to come in the band, and here I am playing tenor and trumpet.  Well, now, immediately you’re going to garner some attention.  So I sort of opted to just play tenor in the band, and Art Blakey and I talked about it, so…

Q:    Will you be playing a lot of trumpet and fluegelhorn this week?

IS:    As much as I can handle, yes.  It all depends on what my face can do on that particular night.  I have to always consult my face first.

[MUSIC: "They Can't Take That Away From Me," "Stella By Starlight," "Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most," "Sprint."]

IS:    A lot has changed around us.  We used to read about pioneers, but in a way we’re pioneers, too, because our mores, our society is changing, even as we speak around us, you know.  So you always have to figure it’s an exciting time that you live in, mainly because you’re breathing in and out.

Q:    Well, you certainly seem to be a musician or personality or spirit that creates excitement around you wherever you bring your instruments.

IS:    I don’t know whether I create it or just sort of nudge.  Somebody says, “You’re a wonderful inspiration.”  I say, “No, I’m sort of a nudge.”  I just open up and let these young people play, and let their natural talent come out.  I think a lot if it is, even as in school, when we teach, overcoming that temerity, to realize, “Hey, man, you can do it; just get out there and do it.”  Most of them have the talent and they’re ready.  You just have to give them a little nudge.

Q:    Which of your instruments do you have this week?

IS:    Well, the tenor, trumpet and flugelhorn, which I always carry, and alto flute and soprano sax, which is enough to keep me busy.  People ask why I play long sets, and I say, man, it takes me at least three hours to get each horn in a proper playing shape, and as I say, get my face to play them all.

Q:    It seems unimaginable to many musicians that you can actually pull off a set because of the different embouchures and musculatures involved.  What do you do?

IS:    Well, you just do.  You have at it.  You keep going for it.  You have problems every night.  Every musician who plays just one horn knows it’s not the same every night.  You always have the physical problems to overcome where your musculature is and your mouth that day, or your face.  As I say, it’s not easy.  But the more I do it… It’s easier when I play six nights a week, constantly, as I was doing in Florida.  Several clubs I played in, I’d stay there two or three or four, five years.  And that six nights a week, that regularity makes it a lot easier.  Now I play festivals on the weekend, then I may not play for three or four days, and then I get in a setting like this where I’m playing six days, and it takes a little time to do it.  But I keep doing it until I get it right.  And sometimes it comes off.

For Freddie Hubbard’s 75th Birth Anniversary, A DownBeat Piece From 2001

In 2001, I had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours with the late Freddie Hubbard for a DownBeat profile. It took a bit of negotiating, but Freddie met me at the appointed hour, and spoke at length about his life and times. In this case, I have to depart from the  “raw and uncut” policy I’ve followed for the most part on the blog, and will decline to print the verbatim conversation—it’s a bit too real and profane, and he named names. But I was able to distil from it for print what I thought was a reasonably compelling first-person account, which I offer on the occasion of his 75th birth anniversary.

* * *

During his lengthy prime, Freddie Hubbard embodied excellence  in trumpet playing.  He had a big sound, dark and warm, almost operatic.  His breathtaking facility allowed him to play long, melodic lines of saxophonistic complexity; depending on the situation, he’d cover all the changes or navigate lucid paths through soundscapes comprising the most abstract shapes and timbres.  In every situation, Hubbard projected the persona of trumpeter-as-gladiator, an image of strength, force and self-assurance that told several generations of aspirants, “I’m Freddie Hubbard and you’re not.”

Hubbard blew out his upper lip in 1992, and has since lived through a hell-on-earth that might make Dante pause and reflect.  The recent recording “New Colors” [Hip Bop] — Hubbard on flugelhorn fronts the New Jazz Composers Octet through well-crafted David Weiss arrangements of seven choice Hubbard originals — makes the problem clear in the most poignant way.  Hubbard’s ideas sparkle, but he plays tentatively, with a palpable lack of confidence, and has trouble sustaining his sound for any duration.

At a conversation in the coffee shop of New York’s Mayflower Hotel last May, Hubbard retrospected candidly on his life and times.

* * *

My sister played trumpet, and I picked it up as a competitive thing. I followed her to Jordan Conservatory, and studied privately with Max Woodbury, who played first trumpet with the Indianapolis Symphony. I wanted to play like Rafael Mendez, able to triple-tongue and so on. My brother played piano just like Bud Powell. He had all the records, the Dial Charlie Parkers and so on, and he got me interested in this music. The record that really turned me around was Bird’s “Au Privave.”

Wes Montgomery lived two blocks from me, across the railroad tracks, and to get to the conservatory I had to pass by his house. I’d hear Wes and his brothers rehearsing, and one day I stopped and went in. At the time, everything I knew was reading, and it amazed me how they were making up the music — intricate arrangements, not jam stuff — as they went along. After that, I was at his house every day, and then Wes started inviting me to a Saturday jam session in Speedway City. The Montgomery brothers didn’t care about keys. At home I was practicing in F or B-flat, but at the jam session they’d play in E and A — the funny keys. Practicing in those keys opened me up, made me a little better than most of the cats.

My brother had the records by Mulligan and Chet Baker, and we played the solos that were transcribed in the books. That motivated me. Then I heard “Musings Of Miles,” with Philly Joe Jones, Oscar Pettiford and Red Garland. That record made me start skipping school. Miles’ style was melodic and simple, and I could hear it. Then I started listening to Fat Girl (Fats Navarro) and Dizzy, which was quite a contrast. Then Clifford Brown. Clifford was a conservatory type of cat, and I tried to play like him. I’d sit with James Spaulding, who lived up the street, and transcribe Clifford’s solos and play Charlie Parker’s tunes.

Indianapolis was a bebop town. It was a filler job for guys on their way to Chicago. Charlie Parker might come through, or James Moody, or Kenny Dorham. I invited a lot of musicians to my house, had my mother wash their clothes and and give them a good home-cooked meal. We had a nice house. My father worked hard in the foundries, and everybody was clothed and clean and had money. Whatever I wanted, my mother tried to get for me. She took me to the music store in downtown Indianapolis for a trumpet. I said, ‘Mama, we’ve got no money for this.’  She said, ‘No!’  She told the guy, ‘Let him take it home and practice on it.’  She was a very strong lady; they KNEW that they would eventually get their money.

While I was going to Jordan Conservatory, Spaulding and Larry Ridley and I formed a group called the Jazz Contemporaries. We worked gigs all over town, all the weddings and concerts, until I got busted on suspicion of burglary. I was on a date with this white girl, a nice girl — we were just friends. I’d been aiming to be a teacher, but I had to leave school. Hearing Clifford’s music kept me going. It made me say, “Forget it. I can’t let this stop me. The music is forever.”

A friend named Lenny Benjamin, who was from the Bronx and wrote for the “Indianapolis Star,” told me he was going back to New York, and offered me a ride and a place to stay. I’ll never forget coming into the Bronx. It was July, and it was hot. It was like “The Blackboard Jungle.”  I’d never seen so many brothers and different people in the street.  For the first five days I didn’t come out of the house, I was so scared. I just looked out the window. I saw anything imaginable — robberies, cutups, shootups, a couple of attempted rapes.

After a while, I moved into a small pad Slide Hampton had in back of the Apollo Theater. I used to follow everyone backstage — James Brown, Wilson Pickett, even Moms Mabley! — and hang out. At the time Slide was working with Maynard Ferguson. I would watch him write out arrangements without a piano; it helped my reading. Then he got enough money to buy a house on Carlton Avenue in Brooklyn, and I moved there with him. The house was like a conservatory. Eric Dolphy was in there blowing on his horns; also [trumpeter] Hobart Dotson, and “Prophet” Jennings, a painter.

I was in California with Sonny Rollins when I first met Eric. He was working with Chico Hamilton. He sounded like Cannonball then; it surprised me in Brooklyn how much he changed his style. Maybe he wanted to play like that all the time; in California he invited me to his house, and the music was so weird his mother made him practice in the garage!  Eric could play some Funk and get deep down and play some Blues, but he didn’t want to. He really wanted to get into Ornette’s thing. He was a better musician than Ornette, but he didn’t have that swing that communicates. Some stuff he wrote sounded square, like kindergarten music. But the way he would play it!  He was such a jubilant, happy guy. I liked his spirit. A lot of people wouldn’t give Eric gigs. They thought he was trying to be weird on purpose.

Sonny had heard me at Turbo Village, at Reed and Halsey in Bedford Stuyvesant, where I started playing four nights a week shortly after I came here. Philly Joe Jones lived in Brooklyn; he’d come by the club to play, and he started inviting everyone to come listen to me. One night he brought Bud Powell to sit in; the next thing I know, Sonny was coming by. I stayed there about a year and a half, I met all the other musicians — Hank Mobley, Paul Chambers, Walter Davis. Those were the beboppers, and by me liking bebop so much, we hooked up.

Sonny called me right before he quit. He didn’t have a piano, and he was still playing songs like “Ee-Yah” real fast; he played “April In Paris,” which sounds weird without a piano, and I had to learn the chords. I learned so much about being on my own, playing by myself. Sonny’s way of playing is rhythmic. He would practice by going over and over his ideas, and he taught me how to do that — make it stronger. He brought my chops up. Coltrane’s concept was more linear. I’d take the subway to Trane’s house every day he was in town. I had a headache when I left there because he was practicing so much.

I thought trumpet players weren’t able to express themselves as freely as saxophone players. Playing like a saxophone is harder on the chops, but it opens you up; saxophone isn’t so brassy and doesn’t attack your ear. I figured if I could mix it up, it would make me sound different from Dizzy and Miles. I was expecting Newk and Coltrane to play Charlie Parker’s stuff, but they’d learned that, and they were studying books like Slonimsky’s “Thesaurus of Scales,” which Coltrane introduced me to. You can’t compare them. They had strength in different ways. But for some reason, I leaned more towards Sonny.

Philly Joe was the first one who hired me to work at Birdland. It was a Monday night session, and we were playing “Two Bass Hit.” I had copied Miles’ solo note-for-note. When I opened my eyes, I saw him sitting down at the front of the stage. I almost had a heart attack!  I knew he was thinking, “Who is this motherfucker playing my solo?”  Anyway, he saw me make up my own ideas, and right there in Birdland he told Alfred Lion to give me a contract. Sure enough the next day, Ike Quebec called me.

I’m the only one from VSOP who wrote a song for Miles — “One Of Another Kind.”  Miles was one of the strangest, most arrogant individuals, but so beautiful. I’ve never seen anything black that pretty. He glowed. That’s the way his sound was to me. He wouldn’t speak to me for a while, but after he heard me with Sonny, we became tight. I’d go by his house, and sometimes he’d let me in and sometimes he wouldn’t. I think he liked me in a funny, uncanny way, even though he started messing with me. Did you ever read that article in Downbeat, ‘Freddie Who?’  When I asked him about it, he’d say, “Do you believe everything you read?”  It was like he wanted to keep me at a distance. Which I can understand. I mean, the man’s been great so long, then comes along a young whippersnapper and all of a sudden he’s going to jump?

When Booker Little came to New York, we started hanging out. He was a nice, clean-cut cat with nothing bad to say about anyone. I’d met him at jam sessions in Chicago around 1956-57 when Spaulding and I would drive up from Indianapolis to sit in. After I heard him play, I said, “I’d better go in and practice before I mess with that.”  He was like a machine. I mean, he had a way of playing so FAST, man. I used to try to play out of the books with him, but I never could play those duets. I wasn’t that advanced!  We ended up working together around town with Slide Hampton’s Octet. Every night it was good to go to work because there was going to be a challenge. We’d try to kick each other’s behind, but we liked each other.

Same thing with Lee Morgan. Lee was ahead of both of us, because he had been with Dizzy, played with Coltrane and Clifford Brown. That boy could play. He had a bigger name, he was from Philadelphia, and he was cocky. I could relate to Lee better than Booker, because we had more of a street thing. Lee knew how to SWING; Booker never got to the swing like Lee. When you’re young and up-and-coming, people start comparing you, and there was a competitive thing between me, Booker and Lee at that time around New York. After a while I thought: Why am I beating my brains up trying to out-do Lee Morgan?  Let me work on MY thing. I took some of Sonny’s stuff, some of Trane’s stuff, put it into my style and made myself different.

I’d go to Birdland every night to hear Lee and Wayne Shorter with Art Blakey. They were blowing so hard that when Art asked me to join, I wondered if I was ready. Art took a lot of younger trumpeters out; the harder you played, the harder he played. Art taught me about uniformity, that the group must be presented as a GROUP. It was like old show business. And he made us all write something. He’s a Messenger, a Muslim, and he said, “Here’s what your message is.”  We’d rehearse a piece, he’d listen and then come up with a drum feel hipper than what you can think of. He knew dynamics from playing in all those big bands. The difference between Art and other drummers is that he could go down and come up. A lot of people think Art was crazy. I mean, he had his periods. But almost everybody I know that worked with that man became a leader. I’m still a Messenger.

One of my dreams was to play with Max Roach. Like I said, my main influence was Clifford Brown; I carried the records he made with Max anywhere I went. I wanted to play like Clifford Brown played with him, stuff like “Gertrude’s Bounce,” but I guess Max didn’t want to play no more of that. Max got me into a thing where I stopped liking white people. I’m basically a country cat, and I think everybody’s nice until they fuck with me. But going back to what had happened in Indiana, I was getting ready to explode!  I was hanging out with the Muslims, and I almost joined the Nation. Being with Max — reading the books he suggested, meeting people like Nina Simone and Maya Angelou at Abbey and Max’s place — gave me a consciousness. We were the guys who were not trying to say that we aren’t aware of what’s happening to us as a race. Max enlightened me as far as life. But I couldn’t work with him because he was too intense. Art could get intense and get loose. He was down to earth, and he knew all the same things; he’d been hit on the head, too, on racial stuff.

I did a lot of avant-garde stuff with Archie Shepp, Sam Rivers, Andrew Hill and guys like that. They were kind of militant, too, trying to voice their protest. There was a whole movement in the Village. I was a mainstream cat, trying to make some money and get famous. But when they talked to me, I went over to see what was going on. Me coming from Indiana, I knew what they were talking about, and it was a chance to voice my opinion. It was good musically, although I knew some of that stuff wouldn’t work — I don’t care how good they played it. There was no form. I had met Ornette and Cherry in California with Sonny Rollins, before they came to New York. I had no idea where they were going, but their music didn’t seem that avant-garde to me. I could hear melody and form. When Ornette did “Free Jazz,” I think that’s when he wanted to break out. Free. No bar lines, nothing set except what he and Cherry knew. I went to Ornette’s house to practice. The first thing he did when I came in was play all of Bird’s licks. And he had that Bird sound.

I put two tunes on “Breaking Point” in the style of Ornette, and one funk tune that got radio play. I’d brought Spaulding and Larry Ridley to New York, and recruited Ronnie Matthews and Eddie Khan, and we practiced for about six months until we went out. We went to this club in Cincinnati, and the place was packed. Like a dummy, I opened with a free thing. The people got up and started RUNNING, not even walking toward the exit. I said, “Is there a fire in here?”  I don’t think we got any money for the week. We kept that group together, but made the music more mainstream.

Atlantic was my funky period. That’s when a lot of people got confused with me. One minute I want to do one thing, then I want to jump over and do something else. Then Creed Taylor brought me to CTI. Creed got my recorded sound to my liking, made it stand out. I’ve had people who know nothing about jazz tell me how pretty and clear my sound is on ‘First Light.’  Creed made me more popular to the masses, but I got a lot of flack from the musicians because I jumped out and started thinking about making some money.

I got even more flack when I started making records at CBS. A couple of them sold, “Windjammer” and that stuff. I was at the Roxy, and playing venues in New York that no jazz cats ever played. The money went way up. I was getting ready to get a divorce from my first wife, and she was messing with me, coming to clubs. I decided to move to California. People said, “Man, Hubbard, don’t go out there. Ain’t no Jazz out there. You’ll get fat and die.”  I think it was a mistake. Ever since then, my playing went down. But I was doing movies, making record dates with Elton John, earning good money and living the way I wanted to live, up in Hollywood Hills with my new wife. We’re still together.

During the ’70s Herbie, Tony, Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson and Chick Corea all moved to California. Everybody was trying to include Pop and Fusion. In California, everybody’s spread out; you get projects and see each other in the airport. In New York, you’re close, you can go to somebody’s house. When I went to California, it was party time, and I got hung up in that. Which was cool. I wanted to hang. But it had nothing do with maintaining embouchure and playing good.

In the ’80s, I had together whatever I was going to do. It had become a Freddie Hubbard sound. I was a free agent, sinking or swimming, doing a lot of singles, making dates where I’d play 16 bars and get 3500 bucks. I was making ten a week just myself. I was so busy recording in the studio that I wasn’t practicing as much as I should, and I started playing licks, not trying to come up with no new shit. I thought it was automatic, that I didn’t have to warm up, like when I was young. Though I started thinking like that, I was still trying to play all the high stuff and play real hard. By the late ’80s, I was going to Europe and Japan every month by myself for some all-star group or clinic. I was doing too many different things. I was switching styles so much, one time I woke up and said, “What am I going to play today?”  Keeping that schedule, plus going out to hang — it waxed me!

I saw it coming, but I decided I’d continue and make as much money I could. I should have stopped and got some rest, worked on some new ideas. But if you were getting $3500 for an hour’s work two or three times a week, what would you do?

I was playing so long and so hard that my chops got numb!  They didn’t vibrate. It got so bad that I didn’t think I would ever play again. Now I’m beginning to get the vibe back to want to play. I’m beginning to get a feel. Whenever I pick it up, I’ve got to get over the feeling aspect of it. Is it going to hurt like it did before?  It gets progressively better.

If you want to play like Freddie Hubbard, I don’t know what to tell you. It took me about ten years of hanging out with the people I hung out with, picking up certain ideas and putting it into my thing, to develop that style of playing. Young people will never get a chance to do that. They’re able to jump right in behind a certain style, but they weren’t here when the styles had to be developed. I used to have gigs with Maynard. I’d be trying to blow high notes, acting a fool, and luck up, and hit them!  How would a young cat know what I know from hanging out with Maynard?  Who you going to get to fuck with Maynard?  Clifford?  Miles?  Dizzy?  They were so strong!  Donald Byrd, Kenny Dorham and Blue Mitchell were right here, too. Woody Shaw went through it. He was so worried about me, he finally had to break down and say, “Fuck Freddie Hubbard; I’m going to go and do my thing.” I spent half my life trying to develop something to make it me.

For Tommy Flanagan’s 83rd Birthday Anniversary, A 1994 Interview on WKCR

On the 83rd birthday anniversary of Tommy Flanagan, justly nicknamed the “Jazz Poet” in his lifetime, here’s the full transcript of an interview that I had the honor to conduct with him during a Sunday Jazz Profiles show on WKCR in November 1994.  At the time, Flanagan was in his third year leading a trio with bassist Peter Washington  and drummer Lewis Nash, one of the most creative and virtuosic groups of the ’90s; Flanagan never played anything the same way twice, often didn’t decide on set lists until the first note of the set. He was soft-spoken and witty, and is very much missed.

The text includes the selections played during the show, with dates — for further detail/info, check the Tommy Flanagan Discography Project (http://www.jazzdisco.org/tommy-flanagan/discography/)

Tommy Flanagan Profile (WKCR), 11-20-94:

[MUSIC: "Minor Perhaps" (1980); "Love You Madly" (1994); "Come Sunday" (1957); "Mainstem" (1975); "Star-Crossed Lovers/Jump For Joy" (1977); "Caravan" (1989); (w/ Hank Jones) "Rockin' in Rhythm" (1983); "Thelonica" (solo) (1983); "Friday The Thirteenth" (1978); "Ruby My Dear" (solo) (1975); "Off Minor" (1983); "52nd Street Theme" (1975)]

TP:    I’d like to start by asking you about your beginnings in music in Detroit, which was such a fertile musical community at the time you came up.  Was there a piano in  your household?  Were you always around the piano?

TF:    Yes, I was.  There was a piano in the house, and I had an older brother, Johnson Flanagan, who I took lessons from.  He was a teacher, and he taught in a school.  The woman that he studied with first, and who I studied with also, Gladys Wade Dillard, opened a school, and he was a teacher in that school.  She just passed away last year at the age of 84 or something like that.  She was wonderful.  She was active until her death, and she taught a lot of students all over Detroit.

TP:    Did she teach privately or through the public schools?

TF:    She taught privately.  She had four children of her own, and they all studied a little bit, but they never became known.  They didn’t take it seriously like we did.

TP:    What made her a special instructor to you?

TF:    Well, she took a lot of time with me, and I guess she didn’t discourage me.  I had small hands when I was young, and a lot of people thought I wouldn’t be able to do certain things.  She never discouraged that.  She said, “Just practice, and you’ll be all right, and you’re at a growing stage anyway, so don’t worry about that.”  But she was wonderful.  She took her time with me, and gave me a nice curriculum to go by.

TP:    What sort of curriculum did she give you?

TF:    She just gave me the roots.  But she frowned on Jazz.  No, she wasn’t into Jazz.  She loved it, but she didn’t want to encourage me to go that way, because I guess she knew that there was more to playing Jazz than people give credit for.  And she knew that I had heard Art Tatum, so I guess that kind of ruins everybody.  Well, that’s Classical Music, and it’s Jazz at the same time.

TP:    Did you hear Art Tatum or other pianists on record or around the area?

TF:    I heard him on record first.  But he played in the Detroit area a lot.  He lived in Toledo, which is almost next door to Detroit.

TP:    He was in residence a number of times in Midwest cities, in Toledo, Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit at various stages.

TF:    Right.  I guess he loved being in the area.  I guess his sight was a handicap for him, so he didn’t do extensive traveling.  But the man was a genius from a very young age.  He did a lot of his work in Detroit playing on radio, I guess when he was in his early twenties or maybe before.  But there are recordings of him at that time, and it seems like on Art Tatum’s first recordings he sounded just like he did at the end of his life.  He possessed that incredible, phenomenal technique and range of musicality.

TP:    Who are some of the other pianists, Jazz pianists, stylists you heard when you were young and who impressed you?

TF:    Well, first of all, it was local musicians.  We had a lot of people that could inspire you.  We had a gentleman named Willie Anderson, who was a self-taught musician, but he played with impeccable technique and taste.  He styled himself after Tatum and Nat Cole.  He had a trio kind of based on Nat Cole’s trio, with guitar and bass.  Kenny Burrell’s brother was the guitarist in that group.  He was a fine guitarist himself, Billy Burrell.

TP:    Was this in the early Forties, let’s say?

TF:    Yeah, you could say that.

TP:    You were 12, 13 years old?

TF:    Right.  When I first met Kenny, hearing Willie Anderson’s trio, we as kids had this inspiration we could hear them live, you know, hear them practice.  We had the Nat Cole recordings, and they were very close to that style.  Willie Anderson could certainly cover most of the things that Nat Cole played.  He was very original, too, even though he needed to get that inspiration of how to get through these technical things through listening to Tatum and Nat Cole.  But a beautiful musician.

Another musician who lived close by to where I lived, Earl Van Riper, is a wonderful pianist, very clean and more in the school of Teddy Wilson — clean-cut pianists.  He went on to play with Cootie Williams’ band and Cleanhead’s orchestra.  It was a good band.  He finally settled in Indianapolis.  I guess he wrote out some of the first things that Wes Montgomery did; Wes didn’t read himself, but he had someone that could write his music down and send the charts to his musicians.  When he first came to New York, he had his music, and I was fortunate enough to be on that date.  But this music being such a small circle that it is, that music came through Earl Van Riper, who I was inspired by at an early age.  He was the first kind of a professional pianist that I saw up close.

TP:    One thing that’s interesting in Jazz is how specific areas seem to engender particular styles.  In Chicago, a lot of the pianists were influenced by Earl Hines and went in that direction.  Is there anything that would characterize the pianists who came out of Detroit, some common strain that marks the way they developed musically?

TF:    I suppose from Tatum being in the area so much, a lot of the pianists were inspired…you know, the ones that could attain that, could grasp it, they were more influenced  by Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson.  Teddy spent a lot of time around Detroit, too.

TP:    When he first came north, before he moved to Toledo where he met Art Tatum, and then went on to Chicago.

TF:    Right.  When I got to know Teddy years later, here in New York, he used to tell me about the early days in Detroit, things I didn’t even know about.  He used to call streets, you know, that I knew as St. Antoine, he used to just say Antoine Street.  This man had been around!  But Teddy was a lot of fun to know, and he was just a master musician, as we all know.  There’s a lot of inspiration there.  Teddy inspired me a lot through records; my first meeting with him was through records.

TP:    In the biographies of you it says that your first gig was with Dexter Gordon.  How old were you when that happened?

TF:    That’s not true.  I think somebody got that mixed up.  I always think they get that mixed up with Lucky Thompson, because I played with Lucky.

TP:    Was that a teenage band?
TF:    Yes.

TP:    Describe that.  And describe the community of like-minded young musicians.  Because so many great stylists of Jazz came up out of Detroit around the same time.  Milt Jackson, Lucky Thompson, Billy Mitchell, Barry Harris, you, and the list goes on.

TF:    Yes.  Well, as a young musician, Lucky left Detroit early.  So we didn’t know him until he came back to settle in Detroit for a while.  I think he’d even been to Europe, and he did the West Coast scene with those bands out there.  When he came to Detroit, I guess I was like 17 or so.  Lucky formed a band with Pepper Adams, Kenny Burrell and myself — I can’t remember all the other players.  He was a wonderful writer.  It was a seven-piece band, a septet, and he wrote some beautiful arrangements, and really got me interested in how to voice music, and got me interested in trying to arrange — although I never did get that far into it.  But he was a big inspiration, and he helped us a lot in learning how to play music on a professional level.  He certainly was in a class with Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster and Don Byas, just a notch under them, and he certainly was cut from the same cloth.

TP:    Did you and the young musicians meet each other through school, or through hanging out, practicing and rehearsing?  Were you able to go to clubs when you were underage at all and hear music, or go in the back and hear it?

TF:    Well, a lot of us met in school, through early school, and going… All the great big bands came through Detroit on the circuit, and when they would come to town, we all would go to see them.  So we kept seeing the same people at these engagements, and it happened to turn out to be some of the guys you went to school with and from other schools, and we got to know each other.  Soon we had heard that there was a thing like jamming, jam sessions, so we used to meet in certain people’s houses, homes, in certain neighborhoods.

TP:    Whose house was a center?

TF:    It depended what side of town you were living in.  I mean, there are so many sections in Detroit.  On the West Side, Barry Harris used to have them.  In the area I was, Hugh Lawson; we used to gather there.  There was a big group of musicians who lived in that area.  We had the cream of the crop in bass players.  We had Paul Chambers and Doug Watkins right there in the neighborhood.  Not that there weren’t more, but I mean, they come to mind because they were so exceptional.  And at that time, Hugh was a young tenor player himself; he loved the tenor.  People don’t know that.  There were so many, they don’t come immediately to mind.

TF:    Right.

TP:    Did you go see all the big bands?

TF:    I saw them all.  If I was too young to go somewhere alone, my older brother would take me.

TP:    What did your brother play like?

TF:    He liked Teddy and Tatum.  He was in that school.  He had good taste, but he didn’t really develop it in… He didn’t really carry it through.  I guess he was maybe more of a teacher than a practitioner.

But as far as seeing all the big bands, he took me to see them, and I was always impressed.  I even saw Fats Waller live when I was about ten years old.  He came to the Paradise Theater, which was the main theater in Detroit, which everybody in the circuit came through.  Anybody that was anybody came to the Paradise Theater.  I saw Bird there with strings.  I saw Louis Armstrong’s big band there.  I mean, these shows were star-studded.  They’d always have a comedian, a dance act and a headliner, a big band with a powerful singer.

TP:    Would the comedian be local…?

TF:    No.

TP:    They’d be coming in on the circuit.

TF:    They’d be on the circuit.  People like Redd Foxx.  Before Redd Foxx was really a big star, he was in a team with Foxx and White, Slappy White and Redd Foxx…

TP:    Out of Chicago originally.

TF:    I guess so, or St. Louis.  There was a lot of Midwest action going on.  So all these people, the comedians and the dancers, they all knew each other and they depended on each other for support.  Oh, it was just a wonderful time.  I saw Ellington…oh, through the years.  I saw Ellington when he had two bass players; he had Oscar Pettiford and Al Lucas at one time.  I saw Jimmie Lunceford’s orchestra there, which I only saw once, but it was a wonderful orchestra.

TP:    Well, there was no television, so I guess it was very special to go see these great musicians whose records you were hearing.

TF:    Right.  I even long for it now, that it could still happen.  There’s just a few big bands left that are… Well, the names are not there any more.  But it’s just great to see that there are still a few big bands left.

TP:    Well, the time when you were beginning to organize your music is when the new trends in music were being heard, Charlie Parker’s and Dizzy Gillespie’s records.  Were you onto that right away?

TF:    Yes, I was.

TP:    Did you get “Woody ‘n You” in 1944, or Bird’s first records?

TF:    Yeah, I had that.  I was just waiting for something new to happen.  I mean, it was in the air.  You knew something had to happen.  Then when we first heard Charlie Parker, even some of the records before he was really known in small groups, you could hear that sound in the Jay McShann band, like “Hootie Blues.”  Well, goodness, there was an alto solo in there that wasn’t like Johnny Hodges.  It was really different.  It wasn’t like something from our age or something.  We could spot someone that was a shining light to follow, which Bird was certainly, and Dizzy.

TP:    Well, when did you first hear Bud Powell?

TF:    I think I heard Bud… I wasn’t even sure it was him, but I assumed it was.  I saw Cootie Williams’ band, and the pianist played in the style that was more like what I heard coming from Charlie Parker and Dizzy.  Later on I just said, “That had to be Bud Powell” — and it was.  But that’s the first time I heard Bud, with Cootie Williams.

TP:    I know he had a big impact on the way you think about music and improvise.

TF:    He did.

TP:    Talk about that a bit.

TF:    Well, like I say, he did for the piano what Bird did for the alto saxophone and what Dizzy did for trumpet.  Our spokesman for piano was Bud Powell right there.  I loved Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson, but we were favoring the style of music of Charlie Parker and Dizzy, and Bud was right there in the forefront, playing the role of the piano, the figure that you should follow.

TP:    Did you hear Monk at this time also, in the late Forties, or was that a little later?

TF:    I didn’t hear Monk.  I just heard his compositions.  I didn’t know much about him until I went to New York.  The first time I really saw Monk live was in New York.

TP:    I’m sure you were listening to Tadd Dameron’s compositions and arrangement style as well at that time.

TF:    Well, I heard him on recordings, too.  Another man out of the Midwest!  There was a lot of rich music at the time.

TP:    And tremendous creative energy that seemed to go into everything that was happening then.

TF:    Oh, fertile minds were just… It was a great time to be alive, and to be there while it was in its growing stages.

TP:    We haven’t really talked about Thad Jones in this conversation, but he’s very important to you.  You’ve just recorded a whole CD of eleven Thad Jones compositions, and his compositions mark just about every record you’ve made for the last number of years.  I thought we’d put together a set of Tommy Flanagan’s performances of Thad Jones’ music over recent years.  Before we do that, I’d like a few words about Thad Jones, your first meetings with him and his brother Elvin, and your relationship over the years.

TF:    Well, that was happening early…when I first started playing gigs around Detroit.

TP:    He was about seven years older than you.

TF:    Yes, probably seven.  Elvin’s a little older than me, too, maybe a couple of years.  Thad was really an advanced musician for his age.  The way he wrote compositions was just extraordinary, his gift for melody and ideas for orchestration.  Oh, what a trumpet player he was — and cornet player.  His talent was so apparent in writing and composing that they forget what a great trumpet player he was.  He was very individual; I mean, he had a voice that was just as distinct as any of the top trumpet players I know.  I can tell Thad immediately when I hear him, just as I can Dizzy or Roy or Clark Terry.  He’s just in the forefront of those trumpet players.

Anyway, one of my first gigs in Detroit was at the Bluebird with Thad.  It’s where I first met him.  This was like 19…late…

TP:    1949 is the date I’ve read.

TF:    Yes, I think so.

TP:    You were all of 19 years old.
TF:    Yes, I shouldn’t have been there.  Anyway, this moustache helped me out.

TP:    It got you through a lot of difficult situations!

TF:    And my receding hairline helped me, too.

TP:    Well, that’s the way to turn a disadvantage into a positive.

TF:    Anyway, I met Thad about that time.  And some of the music that we played on the collection we recorded, called Let’s, on Enja, like “Elusive” and “Zec” and “Scratch,” we were playing then.  It takes a lot of playing to play these songs the way they should be, to capture everything that’s in there, to capture all the notes!

TP:    What are the characteristics of Thad Jones’ writing that are so distinctive?

TF:    Well, it’s so rhythmic.  The melodies are kind of like Monk’s things.  They have so much syncopation in the melody.  If you play that, you’re well on your way to being able to construct your own style.  The music is so strong that it just comes through.  I mean, if you play one chorus of “Lush Life,” that’s all you actually need to play.  You don’t need to improvise on that.  It’s all in the composition.  It’s the same with Thad’s pieces, except for his more rhythmic things.  It just calls for you to play more, get into that rhythm.

[MUSIC: "Let's" (1993); "Zec" (1956); "Like Old Times" (1986); "Elusive" (1993); "50-21" (1990)]

TP:    When we left off, Tommy was in his first residence at the Bluebird in 1949-50-51.  That was one of the main clubs in Detroit then.  Describe the ambiance in the Bluebird.   Who went through there?  How was the place configured?  Who was the house band?

TF:    Actually, it was a very small club.

TP:    Evidenced by the photograph on Beyond The Bluebird.

TF:    Yeah, there it is.  That’s the front of it, and it looked kind of like a candy store.  It was right next to a grocery store and a supermarket.

TP:    There’s a big supermarket, and on the other side of it is a collision service, an auto repair shop.

TF:    Right.  So we had our collisions inside.  There was a good kitchen in there.

TP:    What kind of food?

TF:    Soul food.

TP:    What was the specialty of the house?

TF:    Mmm… Goodness, I don’t know.  I didn’t eat there that much, because I was living at home.  Anyway, speaking of the Bluebird, there was an interesting call.  A man called and asked about Terry Pollard, and was she as good as they say she was.  I’m here to tell you that she was better than what maybe you’ve heard on records.  In fact, Terry had the gig at the Bluebird before I did.  Oddly enough, she’s a little younger than me, so I guess women can get away with it!

TP:    They mature earlier.

TF:    [LAUGHS] I’ve heard.  Yes.  But she was always a fine pianist, and advanced for her age.  She held her own.  In the last ten years or so she had a stroke that took her out of commission, it paralyzed her, both arms… She got the use of one of them back.  But the therapy was very costly, she couldn’t keep it up, so she hasn’t been back to working since then.  But she was a wonderful pianist.  The last time I heard her working with her group, she was working with Sonny Stitt, and I think once with Milt Jackson.  She played great vibes herself.  Well, she did work with Terry Gibbs for a while, and they used to do some two-vibe things together.  She held her own there on the vibes, too.  She was a masterful musician.

TP:    Was the Bluebird the place where musicians would come to play for musicians, the place where people would come to jam and so forth?

TF:    That, too.  Yes.  And a lot of people came through there after they got off their gigs.  It was kind of a forerunner of Bradley’s!  For instance, Bird would stop through the Bluebird…

TP:    He even wrote a blues in its honor, which you recorded for Timeless records.

TF:    Right.  Bird came there.  There are some bootleg recordings of Bird at the Bluebird.  Wardell was in residence there for a long time.  Miles Davis was there for about two or three months before he came here and formed that great quintet that he got together.

TP:    Is that where he met Paul Chambers?

TF:    I believe so.

TP:    So through your years at the Bluebird is really where you met the musicians with whom you made your mark on so many great recordings during the last thirty-forty years.

TF:    A lot of them, right.  I met…oh, people like Joe Gordon, Clifford Brown, Richie Powell, Harold Land on times off when they were in the city.

TP:    Where would they play when they were in Detroit?  The Baker Lounge?

TF:    It would either be Baker’s, or there was another club in River Rouge called the Rouge Lounge, where Tatum used to play — a lot of people.  I played there once with Carmen McRae, now that I think about it.  Kenny Burrell and I played there with Carmen as youngsters, before she had a group that she traveled with.

TP:    By the way, that brings up another aspect of the experience of a Jazz pianist, which is that I’m sure you were playing with many singers around the Detroit area as well, when you were 19, 20, 21 and so forth.

TF:    Well, one of my first gigs was working with a singer in Detroit, a steady gig.  I was about 19.  I shouldn’t have been on that gig either, but she used to stand really kind of close to the piano and hide me, if anybody was looking for anybody underage in there.  I was just out of high school.  But it was one of my first gigs.

TP:    Who was she?

TF:    Bobbi Casten(?).  Locally she had a big record in the area, one called “Call Me Darling.”  That’s an old tune that few people know about, “Call Me Darling,” and “God Bless The Child” was the other side — which everybody knows that.  But her big hit was the “Call Me Darling” side.  She was a deep-voiced, kind of contralto voice.  She ended up here in New York, but didn’t work any important gigs.  She ended up working some strange gigs down in the Wall Street area.  There were a couple of clubs down there in the mid-Fifties or late-Fifties.

TP:    That’s how you accumulate a repertoire, I guess, working with singers and so forth.

TF:    Yeah, it helps you.  They all have different songs they like to sing and specialize in doing.  She had hers.  All the singers do.  Of course, Ella had several…hundred.

TP:    I think you mentioned 800 on the liner notes of the recent record.

TF:    Yes, that’s when I was with her.  That was ’78 when I last worked with her.  She kept performing until just a few years ago.  I imagine her arrangement book must be near a thousand or maybe over.  And that’s not to say about the small-group arrangements.

TP:    Well, I’ve certainly noticed that if you hear several of Tommy Flanagan’s sets during a week at a club, you may never hear the same tune twice.

TF:    Yes.

TP:    Unless you’re really interested in it that week.

TF:    Right.  Then you might come there eight times in eight days, and you might hear the same program.  Which disappoints a lot of people, but I don’t look at it that way.  If I’m trying to get some material for an upcoming project, we have to live with that.

TP:    Were the older musicians very supportive of young musicians when you were coming up, when you were doing that first stint at the Bluebird, from 1949 to ’51?

TF:    Oh, yes.  Yes, they were very encouraging.  For instance, Miles would come through, coming from the West Coast, and he would relate what was happening out on the West Coast, people that I hadn’t heard.  I had never heard or seen Carl Perkins, but he described the way Carl Perkins played, like, [MILES' VOICE] “he played like this,” like with his elbows, playing notes in the bass.  He had a very descriptive style, Miles did.  Well, it’s good to be around people like that, like him.  People have a description of him or they think that they knew him because they saw the side that he wanted to show, which was not too friendly to them.  He showed a lot of his back to people.  But he was really a loving and caring person — I found him to be.  He and Wardell Gray were very encouraging.

TP:    Say a few words about Wardell Gray.  He spent a lot of time in Detroit.

TF:    Yes, he did.  I don’t know if his brother is still alive, but he had a brother that lived there, who was a bass player, Harry Gray.  But Wardell, oh, he was a wonderful tenor player, and I guess he inspired a lot of people.  There was a style of piano playing in Detroit, and I think Wardell inspired a lot of tenor players in that area, Detroit.

TP:    Would you be a little specific about that?

TF:    Well, of course, Wardell’s style was a lot like Dexter Gordon.  When Wardell hit the scene, a lot of musicians were  patterning their style after Dexter.  Rightly so, because I guess he was like the next step between Prez and maybe Trane.  I mean, the sound and the phrasing is in Coltrane, the way I hear it.

TP:    So would you say Wardell Gray was sort of in the Prez line of descent, and let’s say Billy Mitchell and Lucky Thompson were more in the Coleman Hawkins line of descent?

TF:    Well, I think Billy is more like in that Wardell Gray… Although he’s a contemporary of Wardell, so he had his own thing.  But they had similar kind of sounds, and their styles were in the Bird school.

TP:    Well, talk about Bird coming through Detroit?  Did you have the opportunity to play behind him at all at the Bluebird?

TF:    Not at the Bluebird.  But I did play with him.  We used to do Saturdays at the Broadway Capitol theater in Detroit. It was a pretty large-sized theater, and we used to get a nice crowd.  We’d pack it in.  A well-known disk jockey named Bill Randle, who had the distinction of introducing Elvis Presley, of all people, ran these concerts.  They used to have special guests, and this particular Saturday they said, “Our surprise guest this evening is Charlie ‘Yardbird’ Parker.”  And we all looked at each other dumbfounded!  “What, Bird?”  This cat’s got to be kidding!  Sure enough, Bird comes out of the wings, walks by the piano, says, “Give me eight bars of Moon, G,” and I fumbled through an introduction of “How High The Moon” in G!  It was my first time to play with Bird.  He never played long choruses; he played a couple of choruses, and we stood around, like, looking to see who was going to play next.  It was Billy Mitchell’s group, he was the senior member, and of course, he had known Bird, so he played next.  And after that we felt at ease, like we had come of age.  We’d played with Bird!

He was around Detroit quite a bit, too.  He has a son that was born in Detroit, Leon.  I don’t think Leon is a musician.  But I know that Bird had a son in Detroit that looked a lot like him.  He used to come to see Bird when he was… Bird played the Neal(?) Ballroom.  That’s a ballroom where people used to really come to dance to the music.

TP:    And dance to Bebop music.

TF:    Dance to Bebop music, right.  Bird was in Detroit quite a bit with small groups, and he came there with strings also.  He played another ballroom, the Forrest(?) Ballroom, with strings, and also he played the Paradise Theater with strings.  He was a big influence on a lot of Detroiters.  All musicians, not only the pianists or saxophonists, but he was the most influential musician on anybody’s instrument, I think.

TP:    Did you meet Sonny Rollins in Detroit?  He’s someone, of course, you’ve recorded with and performed with recently as well, and the recordings go back to Saxophone Colossus.

TF:    That’s right.  I don’t know what the occasion was, but I know I knew Sonny before I came to New York.

TP:    Now, did you stay mostly in Detroit?  Did you go out on the road, or were you pretty much in Detroit working a lot?

TF:    I mostly stayed in and around Detroit until… I did a few gigs, like over in Toledo, which is really close, and Cleveland and Pittsburgh, Toronto — all these cities are close to Detroit.  But I spent most of my time during the Forties and the Fifties in Detroit, playing between two or three clubs.

TP:    There was more than enough work for you and a couple of other pianists, I take it.

TF:    Oh, yeah, there was a lot of work in Detroit.  There were several clubs, in every part of the city, and a lot of good pianists in every part of the city.  So nobody was lacking work.

TP:    And very hip audiences, I gather, in Detroit.

TF:    Yeah.  Rough, too.

TP:    Real critical?

TF:    Yeah.  When you weren’t up to par, like, they’d say, “hey…”  They’d call on somebody else.  “Why don’t you let so-and-so sit in, then, if you don’t know that tune?”  It’s almost like an audience at the Apollo on Amateur Night.  If you’re not there, man, you can get the hook!  But Detroit was a very musical and aware city.  I mean, in my family I had a lot of critics!  I was one of five brothers and a sister.  So they expect you to come up with something.  I mean, it hasn’t changed.  Last Sunday I played a concert in Detroit.  They’re still like, “Hey, come on!”  I had a niece who said, “Come on, let’s get busy.” [LAUGHS]

TP:    What were the events, then, that brought you to New York?  We’re talking about Tommy Flanagan’s days in Detroit, but he’s a New Yorker!

TF:    Yes.

TP:    You’ve been here for a good chunk of the last forty years, although not all of them.

TF:    Not all of them.  But I came here in ’56, and just except for a few years…

TP:    You were on the West Coast for a while.

TF:    Yes, in Los Angeles and Tucson, Arizona, for a while with my family; we lived there for a couple of years.  I don’t know, I get bogged down in time…

TP:    At any rate, getting to New York.  What I gather from the biographies: You were in the Army for a couple of years, and then you and Kenny Burrell hooked up in a group… But I’m vague on all of the particulars.

TF:    Yeah.  Well, Kenny and I played a lot in Detroit.  Actually, we met as teenagers, and I’ve known Kenny since he was 12 years old.  We’re a year apart.  We’ve been off and on, you know, playing through the years, all that time.  We’ve played in Japan together, and a lot of other places.  The recording that we did, Beyond The Bluebird, was done in a studio in Holland.  Actually, Kenny wasn’t a regular member of the Bluebird band.

TP:    Who formed that band?  Who were the bass and drums?

TF:    The drummer was Elvin Jones, and the bass player was James Richardson, whose brother you might know better, Rodney Richardson, who was one of the Basie people.

TP:    What did Elvin sound like in the early 1950′s?

TF:    He was just a little rawer version of what he is now.  I mean, he’s really a polished drummer now.  He was finding his way then, but still, he had the fire and all the potential to be the drummer that he has become.  He was a joy to play with.  But you had to count, you know, when you were with Elvin.   You take those fours, you know!  He had some complex rhythms that he would play.
TP:    He was exploring them then.

TF:    Yes, he was.  Those were interesting and informative years.  I mean, it was great playing with Thad Jones and Billy Mitchell then.  Everyone seemed to be on the top of their game, or getting there.  After Billy and Thad left to join Basie’s band, I was still a member of the rhythm section.  Yusef Lateef became the tenor player there, and I forget who the trumpeter was — it might have been Donald Byrd.

TP:    In any case, let’s talk about how you got to New York.

TF:    Right.  Well, Kenny was going to New York.  I think he had in mind to settle there.  I wasn’t so sure.  But it was a free ride, so I went along with him.  Little did I know that as soon as I got there, there was work to be had!  Right away I recorded that New York-Detroit Junction album with Thad and Billy and Kenny, and that was the start of some things.  That was in February, I believe.

TP:    Why did you decide to go?  Did you just think, “Well, now I have to try my luck in New York and see what happens”?

TF:    Well, I wanted to see what was happening, because things were kind of getting…not stale, but Detroit, the city was getting tired.  The attitudes and atmosphere was not very conducive to being creative.  So yeah, I thought it was a good time to go to New York, since I knew a lot of people there by now.

TP:    They’d all played with you for the last seven years.

TF:    Yeah.  So it was a good time.  And through them, I learned more… There were a lot of sessions in New York at the time.  If you felt like you really had to play, there was a place to jam every night of the week.  All over the city there was somebody.  Up in Harlem there was a place to play almost every night.  The 125 Club, Small’s, there was Count Basie’s, there was…oh, there was no lack of places to play and people to meet, and you met a lot of young musicians, new people, they found out you were on the scene, you were available.  So a lot of work became available to me.  It was great.

TP:    You started working with Ella Fitzgerald that year, didn’t you?

TF:    The year of ’56?  Yes, in the summer.  She was on a break, and somebody introduced us.  Somebody from Detroit, I believe it was Billy Mitchell, was in Dizzy’s band, and she was working an engagement at the place that’s called…what do they call it… It went from the West Side to the East Side.  A big club.  Ralph Watkins was the manager of that club.  I can’t think of the name of the room!  A big room.  It was right between 52nd and 53rd…

TP:    You’re not talking about Birdland or the Metronome.

TF:    No, not Birdland.  Anyway, she played an engagement there with Dizzy’s big band, and she was just about ready to go on her vacation.  She usually took off for August or something.  But the month before, her pianist became ill or he left or something, and then she needed a pianist.  Billy Mitchell knew I was in town, knew I wasn’t working, so there was an opening for me.  So she called, or the office called me, and I started working with her.  I worked with her just briefly, for about a month, before she went on her break for the summer.  That was the summer of ’56.  The first time I played Newport, that was one of the important things.

TP:    I guess you’d had ample training in Detroit to prepare you for a major gig with a singer like Ella Fitzgerald.

TF:    Yeah.  Well, really, even though I thought I was prepared, it was still scary.  I mean, this was the biggest star I’d ever worked with.  You know, when you’re the pianist with a singer like that, you also become the musical director.  Now, here’s the two veterans here, the bass player and drummer, Gus Johnson, that know the book and everything better than me, and here I am all of a sudden the musical director.

TP:    I guess you had to think that if she wanted you to do it…

TF:    Yeah.  Well, I did it.  It was a good learning experience for me.

TP:    You also hooked up with J.J. Johnson that year, and that was really your first regular touring group.

TF:    Right, right.

TP:    You did several records with J.J. as well.

TF:    Right.

[MUSIC:  "Lady Be Good" (1994); "How High The Moon" (1994); "So Sorry, Please" (1957)]

TP:    We’ve been grilling Tommy about his history, his formative years as a musician, the musicians that he knew and performed with.  I’ll stay on that track for a little bit more, and then we’ll chat about the present.

Around 1959-1960, you started working with some of the older generation of musicians on a regular basis, with Harry Sweets Edison, Roy Eldridge and Coleman Hawkins.  I’d like to know a little bit about your relations with them, how those gigs came about, what you got from them, and things like that.

TF:    Well, I guess I first met Coleman Hawkins in the old Birdland.  As a matter of fact, Miles introduced me to him.  Miles has a way of introducing people.

TP:    How did he do it?

TF:    He says, [MILES] “Coleman, do you know Tommy Flanagan?”  Coleman said right away (like, I had never met him before), “Yeah, of course.”  I didn’t know him, and I was kind of taken aback.  I was glad that he said that.  I don’t know where he heard me.  I know he had an affinity for pianists from Detroit.  He loved working with…

TP:    Barry Harris.

TF:    Yes, Barry, Roland Hanna…

TP:    Maybe he heard that Teddy Wilson influence.

TF:    Whatever it is.  Anyway, you said the older generation of musicians.  Well, Coleman and I had a record date, the first one with Coleman, and he was impressed with me.  I knew his repertoire pretty well, because I’d been listening to it all my life!  He and Roy Eldridge used to play together, they were doing some things at the old Metropole on Seventh Avenue.  We worked there together, and then we went on a tour, one of the early JATP things to England for about six weeks, so we got to be a tight little group there for a while, with Major Holley and Eddie Locke and myself in the rhythm section.

I had so much admiration for Coleman Hawkins’ musicianship.  He was just a world of musical information.  The things that I would see him do!  We used to go on record dates with sheet music, and he’d just read any clef.  He was reading parts from anywhere in the score.  And these are one-take things.  I always found that tenor saxophone players are really prepared when they come to a date; they usually don’t like to play more than one take of whatever they do.  Coleman Hawkins was one of those people.  I’m sure that’s how they got “Body and Soul.”  That was probably one take.  I don’t know how you could do that twice.

TP:    I’m sure he was still playing that when you were with him.

TF:    Yeah, he played “Body and Soul” a lot.

TP:    Now, did he change it every night?  Did he play it differently?

TF:    Yeah, of course.

TP:    Did he play everything differently every night?

TF:    The thing that would be mostly the same would be the end, the coda.  [SINGS IT] I mean, that’s the only thing that would separate it from all the rest of the song.  But what a musician!  He was so open to younger musicians.  I mean, he knew that Monk was somebody to listen to and to learn from, and I guess he was one of the first people to expose Monk to a wider audience.  I love Coleman Hawkins for that; we’d have lost a lot of Thelonious Monk if hadn’t been for him.  Of course, he incorporated Dizzy and Fats Navarro and Miles and a lot of the younger musicians, and gave them a good exposure to the music.

Off the bandstand, he was kind of a model person, too.  He would teach you how to drink, how to dress. He was an impeccable dresser.  He had very good taste in liquor.  He’d show you how to hold your own when you’re holding more than one!   He was really a marvelous person.  I really learned a lot from him musically and on and off the stand.

TP:    You were a ubiquitous presence on many dates, particularly for Prestige and Moodsville during those years as well.

TF:    Yeah, that’s right.  It kind of surprises me sometimes, when I look at that roster, and see that I recorded with Buck Clayton, and also Pee Wee Russell, Coleman and Joe Thomas, some Jimmy Hamilton…

TP:    Well, you were obviously very well versed in what they had done.  I mean, you’d been checking them out since ten years old and earlier.

TF:    Yes, exactly.

TP:    Were you aware of all these musicians as a youngster, as the individual personalities who were involved in music when you were 8-9-10 years old?

TF:    Yeah, I could tell who they were just by the sound.

TP:    So you were really attuned to it from the very beginning.

TF:    I really was.  I tuned into them right away.  I mean, I knew that was the direction that my ears wanted to go.  Then I tried to get my hands to catch up to my ears, what I had remembered all that time.  Well, you never catch up to what you really think you know!  So I’ve still got a lot to learn and to play.

TP:    Staying on that track, Tommy Flanagan has put together an incredible series of recordings over the last years.  I’d like to talk to you about how you organize and select material.  I guess the composers you choose to interpret are self-evident, because they come out of your history.

TF:    Right.

TP:    But what are you looking for in the tunes you play?  I guess it’s a mix of things you’ve done on the bandstand, things that intrigue you?

TF:    Well, that.  I like to pay tribute to people because I can focus better on the material.  For a whole collection of songs, I find that the music is more revealing in terms of what I have to give to it.  Sometimes you go with nothing in mind, but just to play some tunes or something.  But if my real goal is to play the best of Thad Jones, or what I think is some of the best, well, he has so much music and I’ve recorded so much of it in the past that I’ve tried to get to some things that I haven’t done before, and not over-record certain songs.  But I find that I’m doing that more!  Not because I haven’t done my homework, just because I’ve run out of work to do.

TP:    How do arrangements take shape?

TF:    I work on them.  If I play them long enough with the group, we work it out together.  But I usually have an idea of how I want to play a tune.  Of course, with some people’s music you don’t have to go too far.

TP:    It’s self-explanatory.

TF:    Yes.

TP:    Well, you seem to like to work with very dynamic drummers.  In the last few years, Al Foster, Kenny Washington, Lewis Nash.

TF:    Mmm…well, yes.

TP:    Can you talk a bit about working with a drummer, what you’re looking for from the drummer in your bands?

TF:    They’re dynamic, but I’m looking for a person that can listen, too.  I mean, I need those dynamics because the music I play uses a lot of dynamics.  It doesn’t matter who the composer is.  That’s what I want to bring to it anyway, is the dynamic part of it, especially in songs by Ellington.  I mean, there’s the soft side and the romantic side.  And strange as it seems, drummers possess all of these qualities, even though they don’t always show it on the surface.  But they have it in them musically, and I try to bring that out.  And I know it’s there.

TP:    What are you looking for in a bass player?

TF:    Oh, it’s very musical.  It’s good to have good intonation.  Steady rhythmically, and has something to offer as far as solos.  But that’s not really the necessary part.  It’s being able to work close with the drummer, and work as a team.  That’s the important part, to make a good team with the drummer and the bass.  And if I can work with the two of them, we’ve got a lot of accomplished.

TP:    I gather you don’t always tell everybody in the band what the sequence of tunes is going to be on a given night.  You sometimes like to surprise the drummer and bassist with…

TF:    Yeah, I like to surprise myself also.  I don’t know what I’m doing sometimes.  I do know what I’m doing, but I don’t know what I’m going to play at any certain time.  Because a lot of things can run through your mind at once until you weed it out at the last second, to figure out something by some of these off-the-cuff intros that I start.  It takes me different places.  Sometimes I might end up with a ballad or a fast tune from the same introduction.  So I have to be alert myself, and I’m just hoping that they’re listening to me.  And they are.  Because I can see them looking at me!  I guess I got that from hearing a lot of Erroll Garner.

TP:    Talk about that a little bit.

TF:    Well, he was the most surprising pianist I know.  If you just hear an Erroll Garner introduction, you don’t know what’s going to come next.  Not that I try to do that, but I think it’s the same kind of surprise.  He likes to surprise himself, and the music is full of surprises — and Erroll Garner certainly had it.  His teammates used to watch him very closely, because you didn’t know what to expect after those intros.  When I was very young, I heard Erroll Garner when it seemed like he was at his peak in Detroit; I saw him at very close range.  I guess it’s important sometimes to be close to a pianist, although I used to not care about it.  For example, most people play “Cherokee” in B-flat, and to be sitting close and to hear Erroll play it so effortlessly… The way he was playing it, I thought he was in B-flat, but you’re looking, and then you tune your ear, and you say, “That’s not B-Flat; that’s B.”  But he did everything in the key of B that he would play in the key of B-Flat!  Somebody that’s naturally gifted like that, it doesn’t matter what key you play in.  Art Tatum was like that.  If the piano didn’t respond, if there were broken keys, he’d play in a key that he could avoid those things.  Erroll Garner was the same way, except that he would do that on a Steinway Grand that was in perfect condition.  He was amazing that way.

TP:    What were some of the concepts that influenced you in terms of how a piano trio should sound?  You mentioned coming up in the Nat Cole piano-bass-guitar type of thing, and Ahmad Jamal was pretty much a contemporary of yours.

TF:    Ahmad Jamal’s concept is orchestral.  He has a wide knowledge of the keyboard, and he uses all of the keyboard all of the time.  He’s very rhythmic and very dynamic; that’s his trademark.  But he has a well-defined trio style, as did Erroll Garner.  Tatum had another kind of style.  I guess he used his rhythm section just, hmm, to give pause between his notes.  He had so much to play, he never could stop himself.  But there is another style of playing, and Nat Cole certainly had a beautiful soft side to his trio playing.  Bud Powell brought another dynamic into trio style playing.  There are really a lot of models out there to listen to.

TP:    [ETC.] How did you tackle the version of “Cherokee” that we’re about to hear on the latest release on Verve?  You were mentioning Erroll Garner, so you got yourself into it here.

TF:    Well, I played it safe, and played it in B-flat.  I don’t know how safe it is for me to play it.  It’s been explored so many ways and so many times, and so many great people have played it.  It’s a landmark for Bird, you know.  There are some things I can’t get away from — maybe quoting some of Bird.  That’s all I can say about it.  And hope for the best from “Cherokee”.
[MUSIC:  "Cherokee" (1994); w/ L. Thompson, "Happy Days Are Here Again" (1964); Trio, "St. Louis Blues" (1989); (solo) "Bean And The Boys" (1978); "Barbados" (1991); "Eclypso" (1957); TF/Mraz "Blue Twenty" (1978); Trio "Alone Too Long" (1993); (Solo) "The Very Thought of You" (1978); (solo) "Willow Weep For Me" (1989); (trio) "Woody'n You" (1977); "A Blue TIme" (1977); "Naima" (1982); (w/H. Jones) "Afternoon in Paris" (1983); "Three In One" (1993)...]

[-30-]

Two Interviews with Pianist Chris Anderson from 1986 on his 87th Birthday Anniversary

A few months after I joined WKCR for what would be a 23-year run, I made it my business to interview pianist Chris Anderson, who, despite the dual handicap of being both sightless and brittle-boned, made an enormous, underground impact on piano vocabulary as a person who famously influenced, among others, Ahmad Jamal, Herbie Hancock, and Denny Zeitlin as young pianists on the Chicago scene. You could still hear Chris play at this time, and he continued to have it together, as evidenced not only by the duo album with Charlie Haden titled None But The Lonely Heart, but also a terrific trio date for DIW titled Blues One with Ray Drummond and Billy Higgins that followed a memorable week at Bradley’s in 1991, which was also documented on a 1994 date on Alsut.

Chris and I had two long conversations. The first took place in his apartment; the second  comes from an in-person “Musician Show” at WKCR. In honor of the 87th anniversary of his birth I’m appending the complete transcripts below.

* * * * *

Chris Anderson (3-16-86):

TP:    Chris, let’s start with the basic facts.  Are you originally from Chicago, Illinois?

CA:    Yes, I was born there.

TP:    What year was that?

CA:    1926.

TP:    Tell me about your beginnings in music.  How old were you when you first played the piano?

CA:    It would be easier probably… I loved music, and I listened to a lot of it on the radio, the standard fare of the day, on the Jazz station — it was called Black Music or Race Music in those days.  But I found myself trying to pick out… I found that I could pick out melodies on piano.  And the harmony that goes with it, I knew in my head…I knew what it was — if I could just find it on the piano.  It’s like taking off boxing gloves.  I knew it would take a minute.  Because I knew I had an ear for harmony and melody, particularly harmony.  So I always knew from the get-go that I was going to play, was going to be a musician.

TP:    Who did you hear on the radio?

CA:    Oh, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, but mostly, oh, the popular singers of the day — Bing Crosby, Perry Como, all of them.

TP:    And they’d be on the radio, and that’s how you…

CA:    Yeah.

TP:    Did you ever get out to hear live music in Chicago when you were a youngster?

CA:    When I was a kid, no.  When I was really a kid… What got me into going places was when I got involved in music, got playing music, and then it forced me to meet people to play some kind of… I knew some people… They used to have things called tramp bands, with a guitar, bass, stuff like that.  The bass fiddle would be a washtub with a stick and a rope nailed up to it.  You’d turn the tub upside-down on the ground, and you’d nail a stick to it vertically from the ground up, and then you’d pass the stick up around the top, and you’d tie a big knot in the end of the string, and with the hole in the center of the tub, you’d pull it through that tub from the underside, you know, exerting tension on it — like a saw, the same you’d play a saw.  And you had your bass fiddle.

I got to know these people, and some of these people graduated into being professional musicians.  A professional bass player, a professional guitarist, stuff like that.  And they told me about places where music was played.  They said, “If you’re interested in music, you ought to go and hear some people play.”  And they took me.

TP:    Do you remember where they took you?

CA:    Oh!  That’s when I started learning about the… What’s the name of the place that Earl Hines played…?

TP:    The Grand Terrace.

CA:    Yes, the Grand Terrace, places like that.  A place called Old-Timers on 47th and Cottage Grove.  I don’t think there were too many.  Oh, and of course on the West Side.

TP:    What did you remember about Earl Hines’ band in the 1930′s and early Forties?

CA:    Well, see, as far as Earl Hines is concerned, I didn’t get to know a lot about Earl Hines then.  And Swing, as far as black people were concerned, was on its last legs.  Bebop was getting ready to be born.  The Grand Terrace closed for  a while, and that was Earl Hines’ stomping grounds.  And the War, World War Two closed down so many big bands because they couldn’t afford it any more.  Everybody was going away, going into the Service.  Everybody was putting together small combos.

That’s the only thing that gave me a shot at music.  I remember asking my harmony teacher in high school if I could play professionally, and he said, “No, not unless you surround yourself with musicians who can get the jobs.”  But being just a teacher and not a musician, he didn’t understand that the big band… The people in the sections had to read, but reading wasn’t necessarily going to be the most important thing for a while.  So a lot of people got to learn and so forth.

TP:    By the way, I didn’t hear where it was that you went to high school and primary school.

CA:    I went to Douglas Grammar School in Chicago, and I went to Philips High School for a while, and then I also went to Marshall High School.

TP:    Who was the bandmaster at Phillips High School.  I know that’s where Walter Dyett had taught before he went to DuSable.

CA:    Yeah!

TP:    But who was there when you were there?

CA:    Let me see… I don’t remember his name.  He was German.  He was a German teacher.  He was a character, too; he was a real character.  I can’t remember… The (?) was in the band, but I couldn’t remember his name.

TP:    What years are we talking about?

CA:    I graduated from grammar school in ’41, now that I think about it.  So ’41 to…

TP:    Then when you first played professionally, were you still in high school or was that after you graduated from high school?

CA:    I didn’t graduate from high school.  Now, I had one more semester to go, and I got a chance to go on the road with a guitarist named Leo Blevins, who was very much a part of the Chicago scene.  You having talked to a lot of people, people could have told you about him.  He introduced a lot of people to a lot of other people.  Anyway, I got a chance to go to Denver, Colorado, with Leo.. Well, it wasn’t his job.  It was a bass player named Louis Phillips.  And he had a chance to go to Denver.

No, my first gig actually was in Chicago at a place  called the Hurricane on 55th Street, next to the Rhumboogie.  I remember one of my first gigs, next door, a great guitarist who used to play with… I can’t remember his name either.  He used to play with (?)Billy Slack(?), who had a very popular national hit — Billy Slack.  A Blues guitar player…

Anyway, that was my first gig.  Then after that, I went to Denver, Colorado for about two weeks.  We were supposed to be gone longer than that, but the bass player got very ill, an illness that he never recovered from.  I came home.  Leo stayed a few weeks longer, until the bass player’s family could come get him home.

In fact, one of the reasons I left Denver to go back, couldn’t stay out there, I decided, “Well, I’ll go back and finish my last semester of school.”  I got back the first of September, got home, and started over, and decided not to go back.  I decided pretty much that music was going to be my livelihood, and you don’t need any education but music.  [CHUCKLES] You understand?  So I didn’t finish.

TP:    What kind of music were playing in that band when you went to Denver?  Was it Jump band type music?

CA:    Yes…

TP:    Was it sort of precursors to Bop?

CA:    Well, from Jump to Bop… It was quite a thing from there.  It was not like people in New York were doing, see. Because all the musically literate people were in New York, people that really were studying.  Everybody else was just like playing cafes, or parties, or played strip joints.  Just Jump and the Blues.  And most of these people didn’t know many tunes.  They just knew seventeen different types of Blues, and make it sound different, or some “Rhythm” changes, and they knew a few standard tunes — the people that I met in Chicago anyway.  There were a lot of old standards.  There were a lot of old-timers who knew a lot of real old tunes.  These were the ones who knew a lot, the ones who were a lot older and had been around a lot longer, so they were the ones who were more likely to have been locked in the style of the late Twenties and Thirties, see.

That’s why I say making that jump, the music… In Chicago making that jump into Bebop was quite a thing.  The young Turks coming along were… Well, they weren’t quite in the music, just on their way into the music.

TP:    In Chicago in 1943, Earl Hines did have Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, although I know they were traveling and Chicago was just the base.  But did you ever get to hear that band?

CA:    Unh-uh.

TP:    No.

CA:    I was just beginning to get into music then.  I didn’t know anything about Charlie Parker.  I didn’t know anything about Bebop!  I didn’t know anything about anything.  And I hope the point of your question is not “What do you know now?” because I’d have to say I don’t know very much!

See, with Earl Hines… The thing is, the advantage of the big band, you could solo a little bit and you could kind of make it, but the big thing is that all you had to do was learn the discipline of reading, being professional, and they just took care of the business for you.  And the exceptional people that would come along, like Charlie Parker, who were going to make an art in their generation, make a new art form, out of a solo style that doesn’t need… In fact, a big band would get in their way most of the time.  Even Satchmo, as much of an innovator as he was in his time, didn’t play enough notes to get in the big band’s way.  Not that Charlie Parker would get in a big band’s way now.  He’d play across it.  He could play right across it.  But it’s kind of… It was a different thing.  People were beginning to look… Plus, the war years had gotten people used to listening to something else besides the big bands, so soloists had to do more as part of their playing and part of what they wanted to do, too!

I didn’t get a chance to hear any of that… Before 1945?  No.

TP:    When you got back from that ill-fated trip to Denver, Chris, did you begin to gig around Chicago?  What was your process from that to working somewhat regularly?

CA:    Well, the process was cementing relationships, developing relationships.  I knew what I was going to do, or at least I didn’t have anything else to do.  I found myself being with musicians for a good part of my time.  That’s how you make contacts, and if you’re a go-getter and you hustle and do all these things (I never was a great hustler), then sometimes you just …(?)…

Music was developing, people were hearing about Bebop.  The music was beginning to come alive in Chicago.  For instance, there was a place in Chicago on 29th and Indiana called The Hole.  And that’s where everybody would meet, experimenting with this new music.  It was an after-hours joint, and it opened at 12, from 12 until about 7.  So everybody who was interested in music would be there, you know.  And that was where we began to find out about this music.  We already had a feeling before we were there.  But the thing is, with everybody in the same spot, you got to know everybody!  See?

TP:    Who were some of the people that you remember getting to know at that time?

CA:    Well, I had heard of Wilbur Ware, a young bass player who I’d heard around.  This fellow Leo Blevins, that I was telling you about, told me about Wilbur Ware.  Leo introduced me to so many people and introduced other people to so many people.  He was the kind of person who if he would walk in here now and tell me that the most unlikely person that I could imagine was a good player, I’d have to believe it.  It seems that at that time, right then and there, Wilbur was in Milwaukee with Little Jazz; he wouldn’t be in town for another week.  And I waited, and looked forward to it — and he was a person that was part of Chicago, one of the people I was most impressed with all of my life.  That started it.  I’d see many of the people who were going to be the mainstays, people who you’d look up to just as part of the music.

Shortly after that, Sonny Stitt came to town.  He lived there for a while.  I got to know him.  He worked around.  As good as he was, as great as he was… Well, he was one of the pioneers; a pioneer, you know, in Bird’s footsteps.  But there was another fellow there named Henry Prior, and he was great, too, but he met a very untimely death, very early — about 1945 or ’46 maybe.

Anyway, the first gig I ever really had… I worked with Sonny Stitt with other people, in other people’s bands there.  The first gig I had with Sonny Stitt was on an Easter, about ’47, I think.  It was the Bird at the Pershing Ballroom.  And that’s how I got to meet Bird.  I worked with Bird a total of three times.  And that was amazing.

Well, actually, it was Leo who introduced me to Sonny Stitt.  We worked at another gig at a place called the…it was on the West Side…

TP:    You and Sonny Stitt worked a gig on the West Side before you went into the Pershing?

CA:    Yes.  As part of his rhythm section.  It was a famous club, I think on 47th and Western or something.  We worked opposite Jackie Cain and Roy Kral.  I remember that.

TP:    Were you working with a regular rhythm section at the time, and you’d accompany people?

CA:    No, we’d just put the rhythm section together for that particular gig.  It was just two weekend gigs.

TP:    And shortly thereafter you went into the Pershing?

CA:    Mmm-hmm.

TP:    I’ve read that you were part of the house rhythm section at the Pershing Ballroom, and you played there with Bruz Freeman and Leroy Jackson, that you were the standing rhythm section to back up the soloists.

CA:    Standing… Try sitting.  Because it just worked out.  You could say that.  People get strange… There were a couple of… The last two appearances I made at the Pershing with Bird, one was with Von Freeman’s group — Von, Bruz and Leroy and so forth.  The other was with a tenor player who used to be there named Claude McLin.

The one with Von wasn’t Von’s gig.  I don’t remember how it came about.  The pianist on the gig was named Prentice McCrary.  I happened to come in, and they let me sit in.  And somebody recorded it.  They had a wire recorder.  In fact, the way they recorded this thing, they had a back room behind the bandstand at the Pershing, and they had a speaker on the wall back there.  They recorded this off the speaker.  And they put this out on a record.  And doing the research for this record, the people were going back in their memory, because this wasn’t… They didn’t try to get the documentation and stuff together.  This was in the Seventies!  They went to Bruz Freeman and a few other people, and they told them I was on the gig.  I was not on the gig!  I just happened to be sitting in.  See?

So what I’m getting at is the information concerning this, because being part of the expanding house band… It was the luck of the draw.  Let me show you how much it is a luck of the draw, things can happen to you.  The third time, the last time I worked there with Claude McLin, this session was recorded, too.  In fact, it was put out in about 1975 or something like that.

I was raised in a foster home.  And I went to school with some kids who became close friends of mine, about three or four of them.  They kicked around in foster homes, too.  And they were brothers.  So for a time we lived together in different spots.  And we figured out… Like, the oldest brother that looked after them, he said, “Okay, I’m working; I’m going to take care of this aspect.  Chris, I want you to take care of his cultural needs.”  They knew I was a musician and so forth, and knew a few things in terms of Black culture, or whatever else there is to learn at that particular time.  They wanted to keep him out of trouble.  You know what I mean?

So this Sunday we were sitting around, we haven’t got any money, and I wanted to go hear Bird so bad!  And I wanted to take him to hear Bird, because he hadn’t heard Bird.  He had listened to his records.  He was a sensitive(?) kid, bright, and liked good music.  He just  liked to move his foot.  He liked to stomp his foot to music.  So anyway, I’m really disappointed, because I told him I would like to hear Bird, and he would like it… It didn’t annoy him that much.  But it annoyed me.  I was getting pretty depressed about it.  And he was trying to make conversation with me, and I’m not listening.

We were living in a rooming house.  So someone came and knocked on the door and told me there was a phone call for me.  I went to the phone, and it’s this guy Claude McLin, who said, “Look, what you doing?”  He said, “Look, my piano player can’t make it.  I’ve got this gig here with Bird…” [LAUGHS]

So that’s how I got on that one.  You know?  There was no standing rhythm section.  They didn’t have no standing… A lot of times you’d work there with different people, then they’d call you standing.  It’s not like the owner of the Pershing would say, “Well, you work every week with this guy and this guy,” you know.

But the people who worked there were people like Von Freeman (he worked there quite often) Claude McLin (he worked there sometimes) and a few other people.  And there not a lot of pianists there!  So that increased your chances.  See?  So everybody was getting a lot of the same events.   You see what I mean?

TP:    Another person you were associated with who was very prominent at the time and not that widely known about, one was the great drummer Ike Day.

CA:    Yes.  The first thing… You’ve heard a lot said about Ike Day, so I won’t be redundant…

TP:    Well, I’ll tell you something.  I haven’t heard a lot said about Ike Day, so I don’t think anything that you say about him will be redundant.  I’ve heard a little bit about Ike Day.

CA:    Okay.  First, Chicago in the Forties, as I told you, before Bebop everything was Blues Swing… Before they called it Rhythm-and-Blues, it was just Blues — Supper Blues, Steak(?) Blues, whatever you wanted to call it.

This had to be about 1943.  I had to still be in school — yes, of course; I was still in school.  And I joined the big band… Because it was like the way… Just take a bunch of musicians in any high school in this land, whether it’s the Music Department, they learn to read, and somewhere in the high school or on the fringes of the high school, someone puts together a swing band.  These musicians aren’t very good.  And then they had this big band that most of the kids would end up in.  A lot of the kids made it out of Phillips High School in the school band and so forth.

We worked a few places, like in community centers and stuff like that.  I remember the first gig I had at the community center; I got paid a whole fifty cents!  One night we got a gig called the Apex out in Robbins, Illinois. It  happened to be Ike’s home base; Ike and his mother lived out there.  And we went into this club.  On the way we heard a strange noise.  “What’s that?”  We heard a drop(?).  “What the hell is this?  What’s going on?”  We’d never heard anything like this before.  The first thing that comes into our head, what’s wrong with these guys… Well, we’re late in the first place.  We’d never been out there before.  The driver didn’t know where we were going.  We were late.  So I said, “Oh, they hired another band.”

We walk in the other door, it’s no other band — just Ike Day.  It turns out they had been running… They had a floor show there, and on this floor show they had this Blues guitar player named Johnny Shines.  He was like Muddy Waters to me.  Pure Blues, you understand?  They had a shake dancer, and for music they had Ike Day playing.  But the thing is, they were all separate acts.  They thought so much of Ike Day out there, and Ike Day was so great, that Ike Day came in there and worked, just playing drums!  And he used to have to play a little solo for about twenty minutes, then he was through for the night.  He might play for the shake dancer if he wanted to.  He didn’t play for the guitar player.  The guitar player played by himself.

That’s how great he was.  It’s as if… Someone once asked Earl Weaver about Brooks Robinson as a third baseman.  You know how great he was.

TP:    Yes.

CA:    Okay.  He asked Earl Weaver, “How great is Brooks?”  He said, “You know, he plays third base as if he came down from another league.”  That’s the way Ike was.  He played drums like… He didn’t play loud drums.  He was just so… Everybody was so awed, in awe of him, he was so great… Everyone was around him all the time, because he was just great.  You know?  He just was!  You see?  And I didn’t know what anything was about yet!  [ETC.]

You think about how you assess things when it first happens to you, and the only thing that may make it valid are the changes thirty or forty or fifty years later; you can look at it, and you seem to still feel the same way.  That was the darnedest thing I have ever seen!  I have never seen anything like this.

This man was… And they had a lot of professional people coming in and out of this club, working at different times.  You know?  But just what was going on then… Man, we used to tease our drummer in our band, our big band — because this was a big band, about 12 or 13 or 14 pieces.  We said, “Well, how long do you think you’re gonna last?” –  we teased him!  “You’ll be playing…”  Or during intermission or something, he’d come back and find a cymbal missing, somebody had taken it and hid it.  We teased him all the time.

In about two weeks, our drummer got the word that we can’t afford to have two drummers.  So Ike wound up playing with our band for a while.  Of course, the only thing our band could play were leaders’(?) arrangements and stock arrangements, Basie band, Jimmy Dorsey and stuff like that.  That was the fare in those days.  The change hadn’t been made yet, see.  That’s why I tell you that ’43-’44 is what I’m talking about now.

TP:    But you knew Ike Day over the years, though, until he passed.

CA:    Oh, yes.  I was in the hospital when he passed.  I had a broken hip.  Oh yes, I was in the hospital.  He died of tuberculosis.

TP:    And you played with him also over the years in any number of situations, small groups and larger groups and so forth?

CA:    Small groups.  I never got to play with him in large groups, no.

TP:    Well, one thing, there’s a picture I’ve seen on the back of a record jacket, a Chess compilation of Chicago tenor players.  And there’s Max Roach and Kenny Dorham all standing right over Ike Day and watching him play, and Max Roach has a look of rapt concentration on his face.  Was this the kind of impact he made on everybody?

CA:    Pretty much.  Pretty much.  Well, you see, people like Max and people who are sure enough great… And there was not only him.  People like Jo Jones, Papa Jo Jones.  When he knew he was going to retire, he tried to get…he wanted Ike to take his seat in the band.  But Ike wasn’t thinking about going out on the road.  Buddy Rich, all the drummers… All the drummers knew about him, and all the other musicians knew about him.  But they didn’t all rhapsodize over him that much, because you took him for granted.

Ike was good with people, too.  See, that’s another thing.

[ETC.]

Vernell Fournier had a stool that belonged to Ike Day, a drum stool that belonged to Ike Day for years.  He wouldn’t let anyone touch that stool.  I don’t know if Vernell still has it.  But he revered it so much, he kept that drum stool for years, all those years, because Ike Day sat on it.

TP:    So I guess you were playing around town in these various situations in the late Forties and early Fifties.  Would you go on the road with people for brief periods of time, or were you mainly just around Chicago?

CA:    I stayed on Chicago.  Going on the road… Me being handicapped was a problem.  Besides, it wasn’t something that I wanted to do anyway.  I went on the road for very short periods, two or three weeks at the most.  And that was in the late Fifties.  In the mid to late Fifties I did it for a while, with just one person, a guy named Cozy Eccleston, who had a rhythm-and-blues band in Chicago.

TP:    Cozy Eccleston?

CA:    Yeah!  I went out with him.  In fact, for a rhythm-and-blues band, he had one of the hippest rhythm sections that the world has ever seen.  He had Wilbur Ware and a drummer named Dorel Anderson, who was part of the scene there (he   was a great drummer who died also), and me.   We went out a couple of times.

TP:    That was in the latter part of the Fifties?

CA:    Yes.

TP:    Were you able to stretch out at all in any of those situations you played in?

CA:    Well, he would love to go do his thing, and then he’d go sit at the bar drinking, listening to us! [LAUGHS]

TP:    I don’t blame him.

CA:    [LAUGHS] We didn’t get to stretch out a lot.  It was his band and his program.  He wouldn’t let things get out of hand.  The thing is, the (?) stuff, we found a way to loosen it up.  You know?  We’d take it gently by the hand and make the music a little more endurable.

TP:    There’s another story (tell me whether this is true or not) that you were in the rhythm section at the Beehive during Charlie Parker’s last appearance in Chicago.  Is that correct or not?  That was around February 1955.

CA:    That I was working?  No.  I think Norman Simmons worked that job.  Norman Simmons and Victor Sproles had that job at the Beehive.

[END OF SIDE A]

TP:    What were the circumstances that brought you to New York?

CA:    I got a chance to come out on the road with Dinah Washington.  Joe Zawinul had just left her to go with Cannonball.  And she had this club that had been called the Roberts Show Lounge; she bought it and changed it to Dinah-Land, and she worked there for a while.  And while they were there, Joe Zawinul handed in his notice, because he’d made a commitment to Cannonball.  So she tried a couple of local pianists there, and nobody really wanted to go on the road that much, and nothing was happening for me.  So Eddie Chamblee and Leo Blevins, again, this guitarist again, told her about me.  This is what I was telling you about.  He’s a person who really helped a lot of people there.  It was really because of him I got that job.

So I came… Let’s see.  I think it was exactly six weeks.  We went to Philadelphia first for two days at Pep’s.  We went to the Howard in Washington for a week, then we went to the Apollo for a week.  Then we went to Town Hill in Brooklyn.  And she was coming back to Chicago, and I decided I wanted to stay here in New York.  Well, everything can’t be perfect, but I don’t want to deal with any negatives now.  Thanks to her, I got here, you understand, and I stayed here.

TP:    Did you have work when you first got to New York?

CA:    No.  But, let’s see, I got work… I went through a very bad period there for a couple of years.  I broke some more bones, and I was kind of out of it for a while.  I had to really get my act together.  I never did do a lot of working in New York until three or four years ago actually.  I’d get a gig now and then, but I only had a few.

TP:    You did record, though, in 1961.

CA:    Oh yes, when I first got here.  Well, see, the reason why that came about, Orrin Keepnews was connected with Riverside at that time, and he happened to be in Chicago.  Johnny Griffin had told him to come hear me.  He wanted him to record me.  And he came by to see me and said, “If you’re ever in New York, let me know, and we’ll do a date with you.”  So I happened to be here.  So I called him and told him, “Well, I’m here.”  So he gave me a date.  So that’s how that came about.  That was through the good offices of Johnny Griffin.

TP:    Another one of your old running mates in Chicago?

CA:    Yeah.

TP:    Can you pinpoint when you were first aware of Johnny Griffin, when you first heard him play?

CA:    My memory of first hearing him is kind of vague, because the music was in the midst of change, and I was hearing a lot of other people.  But he was fresh out of high school, came out of Captain Dyett’s band, like so many great people, like Jug, Gene Ammons, and like…

TP:    Well, your friend Clifford Jordan came out of DuSable.

CA:    Clifford Jordan.  And what’s this great bass player…?

TP:    Richard Davis.

CA:    Richard Davis.  Victor Sproles came out of there, too. And Gene Ammons, as I said… Anyway…

TP:    Von Freeman also went to DuSable.

CA:    Von Freeman, yes.  Von, Bruz, George — the whole family.

Anyway, you asked me about him being called Little Giant.  My memory failed me; I didn’t connect it at first.  I consider it apocryphal.  But there may been a reason for it.  I can trace it to a time… And I heard about this more.  I didn’t see it happen.  But I didn’t know… When he… The thing that brought Johnny Griffin to the attention of the world, he got a chance to go with Lionel Hampton.  And that was a time when Arnett Cobb was with him.  Arnett Cobb was big.  And that’s back in the days when you had these saxophone battles, the same way as in those days they’d have these big band battles.  Johnny Griffin happened to join Hamp during an engagement at a place called the Rialto Theatre.  The Rialto Theatre was a strip joint, but they changed it to a theatre.  And Lionel Hampton was the opener; he opened that place.  By the time Lionel Hampton and these two cats, Arnett Cobb and Johnny Griffin… They excited people so they threw people out, three fell out of the balconies… It was a riot!  They closed that place after about two or three performances — the place couldn’t stand it!  They turned it back into a strip joint!

And the clash, the battle between David and Goliath… See what I’m getting at?  And out of this, I think Johnny Griffin got the name the Little Giant.  Well, everybody wants to go for the underdog, you know.  The new music was just beginning.  But Griffin, he was into everybody else’s thing, Arnett Cobb honking and playing… But Bebop, the new music hadn’t filtered through.  They’d play a few notes, but the new music hadn’t been born.  But as far as sound was concerned, he held his own with Arnett Cobb!  Everybody goes for the underdog.  But he was the underdog only in size, so they called him the Little Giant.

TP:    You played with Johnny Griffin quite a bit, though, around Chicago — yes or no?

CA:    Not a lot.  No.

TP:    But at any rate, he of course knew you and you’d known each other a while, and that’s why he referred you for this date.

CA:    Yes.

TP:    I’d like to ask you about some of the tunes you did on the date.  I don’t know if you remember it; if not, I’ll refresh your memory.

CA:    Oh, yes, I remember.

TP:    Were these tunes that you’d been playing for many years?  Is the material on Inverted Image representative of the type of set you would play in Chicago?

CA:    No.  No, because… Well, the title of the album was decided upon pretty much before we… I don’t remember who came up with the idea for it.  I think it was Orrin Keepnews who came up with the title, and the idea of the Rorschach thing.  He said, “Okay, this should have a song for it.”  So I wrote a kind of upside-down Blues; half the changes were upside-down, or inverted — I turned them around.  So it all sounded like the Blues, but the (?) bars go in different directions, and you don’t know what it is until the last two bars.  So that’s the inverted image.

Now, I wrote that, but Bill Lee wrote most of the rest of it.  He wrote the ballad called “Only One.”  There were   a lot of standards.

TP:    There’s also a collaboration called “See You Saturday.”

CA:    No, that’s no collaboration.  That’s Bill Lee’s tune.

TP:    And everything else is a standard.

CA:    Right.

TP:    ”Lullaby Of The Leaves,” which Johnny Griffin did a great version of once on a record, “My Funny Valentine”… These were tunes that you’d been playing for quite some time, that were part of your standard…

CA:    Yes.

TP:    Von Freeman, when I interviewed him, said that you had the greatest harmonic ear that he had ever heard.  Do you feel that you had any impact on other pianists who came up in Chicago during the Fifties?

CA:    There are a couple of people who I influenced in Chicago, I know for sure.  But I don’t think anybody else I influenced at all.  They were going their own way and doing their thing.  Because to really be influenced… Well, what I mean by influenced, a pianist to influence another pianist, you’ve got to spend time with him.  Or if he plays something a little bit like you, in a song he finds a change or finds a way to voice something, that’s okay, but it’s not no big thing.

But to influence somebody, what I call influence, is maybe… As far as piano is concerned, there is only one pianist in Chicago that I have influenced, and he doesn’t live there any more.  His name is Billy Wallace.  The reason being we spent a lot of time together.  We got into each other’s heads.  I know what he knows, he knows what I know.  And we know why.

TP:    Billy Wallace played with Max Roach for some time…

CA:    Yes, he did.  And there was a bass player there named Bill Lee.  He can play the piano and he arranges.  But I’m talking about influencing him not so much on piano, but  musically, in terms of every facet of it.  People like John Young, Jodie Christian, Willie Pickens, the piano players that were there?  No, I didn’t influence them at all.  Muhal Richard Abrams?  No.

[PAUSE]

There was something I wanted to tell you about this album, Inverted Image.  It really didn’t sell very much.  In fact, for a while, everybody I knew had got the album, they went by Riverside and got a free copy!  I didn’t know anyone that ever bought it.  It didn’t sell well.  They didn’t promote it, of course.  And to my mind, it’s not indicative of the thing I do the best.

And lately, the last four or five years… There was a thing we went through in the Seventies where there was no pianos to play, so you had to buy an electric piano, or even worse, before that, you had the organ in the Fifties and so forth — and they had such lousy pianos.  Now they’ve got good pianos in most places, they have a grand piano.  And more than a bebopper, I’m a sort of painter, in a sense.  My friends have put me in the kinds of situations that allow me to do what I do best.  Some people say I’m trying to be a Classical pianist, and that’s a painter, you know.  Or you can call me a house painter!  I’ll accept that.  I’m still painting.  Sometimes I like to play by myself.  I like to paint around singers.

[-30-]

* * *

Chris Anderson (4-9-86) – (WKCR):

[MUSIC: BIRD IN CHICAGO, PERSHING BALLROOM]

TP:    In the first part of the show we’ll focus on musicians Chris was involved with in Chicago, where he was an active member of the scene for about a 15-year period, wasn’t it, between 1946 and 1961 or so.

CA:    Yes, that’s about it.  Actually a few more years than that.  But professionally, yes, you could say fifteen years.  But I started playing around in the mid to late Forties.  So it’s really more like twenty years.  But yes, 1945 to 1961 professionally.

TP:    Chris, tell us about working at the Pershing Ballroom.  You played there quite frequently and different people would come in.  What was the set-up like there?

CA:    Well, the Pershing Ballroom was just that.  It was a ballroom, a dance hall.  They gave dances.  But the thing is, in dealing with Jazz, dance halls were just used as a place for people to stand.  People really began to listen more… Jazz was changing from something to dance to, to a music to listen to.  You’d have a place like this with maybe, oh, twenty-five hundred people, nothing but wall-to-wall people.  It was quite a thing.  It was a dance hall in name only, because there was no room for anybody to dance in most cases.  And even when they were, it was just… A stand-up nightclub, that’s all it was.  That’s the best way to explain it.

TP:    The Pershing also had an upstairs and a downstairs room.  They would book two different bands at one time.  Is that not right?

CA:    Yes.  Well, they had a place called Budland in the basement.  Well, they had something there every week.  That was dealing with the local musicians more than having big names come in.  Big names would only come in once in a while, you see, so it wasn’t really quite the same thing.  And there was the Pershing Lounge, so really there was three places in the same building.  And that’s where Ahmad Jamal would hold fort for a long time, and put the Pershing on the map.

TP:    Tell us about this date with Bird.  What were the circumstances of that evening?

CA:    You want to go through that again.

TP:    Well, we went through it before, but that’s all right.

CA:    Remember we were talking about the fact that I was supposed to be part of the regular house rhythm section there, and I explained to you that it didn’t happen that way at all.  The saxophone player, Claude McLin, his piano player couldn’t make it for some reason.  And I wanted to go so bad, I didn’t know what to do.  I was sitting around the house depressed.  And I got this call from Claude McLin, who asked me to come, and I got to hear Bird, and not only hear Bird, but to play with him.  Of course, I had heard him before I played with him, once before, but at least it got me in.  I had to work a little, but it was a pleasure.  That’s about all there is to that.

[MUSIC: JUG-STITT, "Saxification"; JUG, "Down The Line"]

A strange incident happened to us once when we were working in Chicago.  I teased Jug about it for years!  I have to explain to you first, Chicago is known for the Blues, and there was a time that Blues was much more alive as Jazz than it was Rock-and-Roll before Rock-and-Roll came in.  This was before Blues players made a lot of money.  They made no money.  So the Blues players were in a certain section of Chicago, called the West Side.  They stayed on the West Side, while we stayed on the South Side.

TP:    The Jazz musicians stayed on the South Side and the Blues musicians on the West Side.

CA:    Yes, and never the twain shall meet.  So a gig came along, and Jug having a name, we went over there.  A friend of ours, a guitarist I’ve told you about, was very important in my life.  His name was Leo Blevins.  Now, he came from a Blues background… What I mean as Blues, he came from that genre, he could fit in just as well with Muddy Waters, Memphis Slim, anybody who played Jazz… In those days musicians did some of everything, and they did it with feeling.  Whatever was going on, they did it with feeling.

So we had this gig.  It was a Blues house.  There was not many people in the house, oh, maybe ten people.  It sounded like three, the way it was scattered around.  And we went into playing the Blues, what I mean, the Shuffle Blues.  The rhythm was like ta-CHONK, ta-CHONK, ta-CHONK.  It would be like what Memphis Slim was doing or something like that.  Back in those days, guitar players would get down on their knees, I’ve seen bass players lie down on the floor and play their bass.  They were required to be very entertaining.

So we finished this number.  And everybody said, “Hmm, so this is a Blues house, huh?  This ought to take care of them.  That ought to fix them.”  All of a sudden we heard a voice way in the back: “When you gonna play me some Blues?!”

And we stood there just dismayed, just stupidly!  We hadn’t done a thing.  And I teased Jug about this for years.  I never would let him forget it.  Sometimes people have a little antipathy toward each other anyway, and I teased him with that from now til Doomsday.  I always think of that when I hear Jug play the Blues.  But he was a wonderful Blues player; it was just a different thing.

TP:    When did you start playing with Jug?  How did you meet him?

CA:    I don’t even remember how I met Jug.  That’s something I could not tell you.  See, I was not close to Jug.  I was not close to Jug in the least.  He had a name.  He was in and out of town quite a lot.  He was not a part of the Jazz scene when I got into it — or a regular part of the Jazz scene.  He was in New York and traveling and stuff like that, so I didn’t get to know him that well.  See?  Just in the latter years that I was there I’d see him occasionally, work with him or something.  But I don’t have a memory of when I met him.  I don’t.

TP:    [MUSIC OF JOE WILLIAMS]

CA:    There is something that has always bothered me, it’s annoyed the hell out of me! — excuse the expression.  When Joe went with Count Basie…  This ties up a great deal with what I was saying about Jug and the Blues, and so forth.  When he went with Basie, all of a sudden I was hearing this reputation coming back.  I would hear it from disk jockeys, establishment disk jockeys; I presume critics wrote it up that way; “The greatest Blues singer in the world.”  So when I think about Blues singers, I think about Blues singers.  Joe Williams, as far as Jazz is concerned, singing, I guess he’d have to be the greatest Blues singer, because that’s all they knew about him from Basie.

But the thing about Joe, the reason why I’m annoyed by it… The first time I had the pleasure of having an exchange with Joe… A singer named Joe Evans called me to accompany him on a gig in a little after-hours spot in Chicago.  I had never been there before, I had never seen it — I didn’t know the place existed.  Sometimes you think you know all about your environment, you think you know where everything is, you think you’re pretty hip.  Okay, I go down to this club and go in there… Remember, I don’t know this place exists.  Who’s there?  Joe Williams, Duke Ellington, Al Hibbler, Dinah Washington was there, another famous singer in Chicago whose name was Lillian Hunter, and a few other people that I can’t think of.

Okay.  They asked Joe to sing a song with me, put me right on the spot.  He says, “Look, can you play Pagliacci for me?”  Well, the famous…the part of Pagliacci that everybody would know, the part that was written for Puccini, it was written for a tenor.  Okay, he adapted to it, because he has a bass voice.  And he gave it beautifully!  He scared me death!

And I hate the thought of anybody thinking of him as a Blues singer.  He’s just a wonderful singer.  And as a ballad singer, he has no peer.  I picked this particular track to give you an example of what he can sing like without a large orchestra.  “Young and Foolish,” I think it is.

[MUSIC: Joe Williams, "Young and Foolish."

TP:    We'll hear next some music by Von Freeman, another person Chris was associated with for quite some time.

CA:    Mmm-hmm.  I probably worked longer with Von than... Probably!  I know I worked longer with him than anybody I have ever worked with.  I spent five years in and out of his bands.

TP:    Tell us about the band.

CA:    Well, the band consisted of Von, his two brothers George and Bruz... George is a guitarist.  In fact, he's the guitarist on that album with Bird you played.  Bruz Freeman was a drummer.  And we worked at different clubs around Chicago, and went on short tours to nearby states, and so forth, maybe for one-nighters.

TP:    What was the repertoire of the band?  What sorts of things did you play?

CA:    Back then we played practically all standard tunes, some things that were written, new lines to old chord progressions, things like that -- but pretty standard.  All the new Bebop tunes weren't on the scene yet.  See, we're talking Forties.  We're talking '47, '48 and '49...'51.

TP:    Can you talk about what Von's sound was like in the late 1940's?

CA:    His sound was very much like Ben Webster's.  You could always hear the air coming the side of it.  You could always hear that.  That's one description.  It was pre-Bebop.  It fit Bebop, but... It fit then and it fit now.  It fit Bebop the same way Don Byas or Paul Gonsalves would fit Bebop, so correct and so right.  So when Bebop came in, all he had to do was alter a few lines; he'd do that, too.  The basis for it was there already.  Or he doesn't have to do that.  Because if he'd deal with Bebop and think of it as such, he'd wind up playing certain cliches and lines, and it's hard to get out of it sometimes.  It's not really thinking; it's doing what you hear, and what you hear is quite often what you've heard somebody else play, not something that you've put together.  You may think you're putting it together; I guess you could say you are.

But Von wasn't just a wonderful instrumentalist, he was a wonderful musician.  He knew a lot!  He could sit down at the piano and play things, so I knew he knew about harmony.

If I go on about him, it's because we have a mutual admiration society going for sure.

TP:    I know that, because Von has said about you that you have the greatest harmonic ear he's ever heard.

CA:    He's one of my favorite people.  He knows it. [ETC.]

[MUSIC: Von, "White Sands," "I Can't Get Started," "Sweet and Lovely"]

TP:    Chris says that Von has been playing “White Sands” since 1946 or 1947.

CA:    Yeah, that’s true.  As I said before, back in those days they were just really starting to write new melodies to old changes.  Well, that’s not true either, I guess, because they were already doing that to “I Got Rhythm” and writing different melodies to Blues.  But they hadn’t extended out much further than that.  They hadn’t taken too many standard songs with a lot of changes and so forth, and redoing them.  At least not in Chicago.  Chicago’s another place…

TP:    Well, how about the younger breed?  How about someone like Henry Prior, a young alto player in Chicago, who passed away too young, but…

CA:    Now, see, I was talking about Henry Prior being one of the… I remember I told you that most of the people had to wait for Bird to make the next record, because they didn’t know what to do.  And I was saying that Henry Prior was one of the few…one of the people that had the light.  But I forgot to add, he was from New York!  He brought the message from New York.  He was not born in Chicago.  He moved to Chicago.  He knew what it was all about, as far as Bebop was concerned, the technical aspect of it.  He just died too soon.  He died too soon.

TP:    That’s the case for a lot of musicians of that generation.  There were a lot of perils involved, and it was not the safest time for a lot of people.

CA:    No, it wasn’t.
TP:    But the people who survived came out very, very strong.

CA:    A friend of mine gave a birthday party for me a couple of years ago.  His toast was, “We’re celebrating Chris just because he’s still here.”

TP:    [ETC.] We’ll hear now “Two Bass Hit” by Dizzy Gillespie’s Big Band.  I know Chris has some things to say about it.

CA:    I certainly do.  When Dizzy had his big band, it was the first time I really… For bass players… This was before I met Wilbur Ware.  But in the earlier years, the great bass players were Oscar Pettiford, Jimmy Blanton and so forth.  But this is for their solo work, keeping in mind the technique of recording back in those days was not too good, and the music was such that…the music the bass players played as a background, playing behind people, you didn’t hear very well, and there wasn’t much to be said for it, I assume.  But when music changed…

Well, the short of it (never mind the lecture), when I first heard Ray Brown, it hit me… I even remember the thought that I had.  I had this thought three times in my life — “that’s how bass should be played.”  And it just fit so well with the band.  I’m not talking about his solo work.  That’s phenomenal.  I’m talking about just the way he sounded with the band.  It just threw me completely.

And Dizzy… I never had the pleasure of playing with Dizzy, doggone it, but you know what he is to music.  I keep thinking what makes Dizzy so different than the rest of the trumpet players — the fact that he’s such a great musician, or is it his personality, or what it is.  And it hit me.  He has music down… I heard him in an interview where he was explaining about him and Bird.  The interviewer was trying to put Dizzy up as having a great personality as such, a good style.  He explained that Bird was the one that had the style.  What Dizzy, in all his humility, would not say (you don’t say this about yourself) the fact that he could arrange, he could write — he brought the music to everybody.  In his first band, he used to teach everybody what everything was about.  The trumpet players, the arrangers, so they would know what it was all about.

All the great trumpet players, coming down from Fats Navarro, Dizzy, Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Wynton Marsalis, they have to take the music so serious, they all had something to prove, being the greatest.  It’s quite a thing when you don’t write and can’t see the whole picture.  And I had never heard any of them once… Dizzy is the only one I ever heard approach music with a sense of humor, and it’s no joke.  He can have fun with the music.  It’s so right, he can do anything with it.  He will always be the boss.

And this record here was one of the first records that I ever heard that really impressed me.  I am putting that wrong; they all impressed me.  But this is the first record that I was really impressed by.  Just his writing and Ray  Brown’s playing, it pinned it down for me.

[MUSIC: "Two Bass Hit," Griff, W. Ware, "Woody 'n You"]

TP:    Listening to Johnny Griffin and Wilbur Ware brings up a host of memories for Chris Anderson, who played with both of them pretty extensively.

CA:    Yes.  That’s asking me to tell you about a lifetime.  Listening to Wilbur… Wilbur was not only a great bass player, he was good with people.  He was good with kids, he was good… Everybody loved him.  He had a laugh that you’d never forget.  And don’t let him get to know you well, know your weak spots, he will get to you one way or another.

I remember an incident, he was working down at Pee-Wee’s, at a place on 11th Street, a club.  The owner used to be the emcee at Birdland for a long time.  Keep in mind, any family where you deal with each other all the time… I say “family” because that’s what we were.  So we were making a fuss about something.  I remember a time when I had a grievance against Wilbur, real or imagined.  It wasn’t much.  To show you how little it was, I went down to the club to hear him, which I don’t do that often.  I decided, “Okay, I’m not going to even talk to him.  I’ll ignore him.  I’ll talk to everybody else.”  He yelled at me, “Hi, Chris!  Hey, Chris!”  I wouldn’t say anything to him.

The bandstand was about three feet off the floor, so he was up there.  He said, “So you’re ignoring me.  Okay.”  And after a while he called me again; I wouldn’t say nothing to him.  He was coming at me from the other direction.  So what he did, he took the bass and put it on the floor.  And the bandstand maybe was 7 or 8 feet from the tables where I was.  And he put that bass… All that music went out of the bass down through the peg, across the floor, through my shoes, up my legs, and through my body… Maybe I could tune out my ears if I wanted to, but… That’s the wonderful thing about acoustic bass.  When it was played right, it felt right, and you could not ignore it.  I must have looked up and said, “All right, I give.”  I said, “I got it!  I got it!”

TP:    Wilbur Ware had one of the most distinctive sounds of any bass player around, I think.

CA:    Yes, indeed.

TP:    Again, this may be an impossible recollection, but do you recall the circumstances of first meeting Wilbur?

CA:    There’s something I was telling you in my interview, Leo Blevins telling me… There was this place in Chicago called the Hole, where all the Jazz musicians would meet…

TP:    Where was it?

CA:    29th and Indiana.  And Leo was telling me about this great bass player, Wilbur Ware, that was coming to town, and he wanted me to hear him.  Leo turned me on to everybody I ever met, and also was responsible in some way… I mean, he introduced me to somebody that introduced me to, at least!  He was only twice removed from me meeting them, at least — not directly responsible.

Wilbur was in Milwaukee.  He was in Milwaukee with Sonny Stitt.  And when Wilbur came back, Wilbur and Sonny Stitt came to town for the first time, too, and lived there.  I didn’t remember that before when we were talking about it.  So I got to meet Sonny Stitt at this time.  Wilbur lived in Chicago, of course; he was just out on the road.  And when they came back, Sonny resided there.  This would have to be ’47, ’46 or ’47.  Let’s say ’47.

TP:    You mentioned in the interview also a time with a Rhythm-and-Blues singer who liked to go to the bar and hear the rhythm section.

CA:    Cozy Eccleston, yes.

TP:    Would you do a lot of those type of gigs, not just Jazz, but Rhythm-and-Blues singers and Bluesmen and so forth?  Or was it never the twain shall meet?  What was the environment for you as a working pianist in Chicago?

CA:    Listen.  Remember, I was saying a while ago, musicians, they worked a weird assortment of gigs.  You’d never know what was… The same thing I was telling you about Ike Day. He had this gig playing drums, no band, no nothing.  Well, musicians, whatever there was to do or play, they did it.  And Wilbur could play drums, he was a dancer, he was a drummer.  He learned the entertainment business.  He just happened to be a great bassist, that’s all.  He played rhythm-and-blues gigs, he played Blues gigs, Blues gigs, b-l-u-u-z-s gigs.  He played for singers, he played some… Everything that could be played, he played it.  And to think someone like him graduated from a tub, a stick and a rope.  That’s what he learned on.
TP:    His foster father built him a homemade bass, I believe.  Isn’t that right.

CA:    Yes.  That’s what we’re talking about.

TP:    The Reverend Turner.

CA:    I don’t remember… Yes, wait a minute.  Yes, I do.  I only got to know about him shortly before Wilbur died.  We were talking about it, but I’d forgotten about that.

TP:    The music we’ll hear next features Wilbur Ware in company with another tenor player who spent not that much time in Chicago, but the time he spent there seems to have been quite significant for him, Sonny Rollins.

CA:    Yes, he was there a couple of years, I think.

TP:    I think it was late 1950, early ’51, and then 1954-55.

CA:    I think it was ’54 or ’55.  Because he had a gig at the Beehive in Chicago.  That was his last gig, then he left and came back to New York.

TP:    I also read that he was there in 1950-51, and he played with Ike Day and jammed with Johnny Griffin and so forth.

CA:    Oh yes.

TP:    Anyway, what do you remember about Sonny Rollins in Chicago at that time?  Anything in particular?

CA:    He was warm.  He was a wonderful musician.  And being who he was, he helped the musicians out to learn.  But he worked all the same kind of gigs that we worked.  He worked gigs that you wouldn’t believe he’d be on, for his stature.  But he was in the salt mines.  He worked the Blues gigs, rhythm-and-blues gigs… There was even a place… There was a place outside Chicago called Calumet City that had a bunch of strip joints.  We worked those even; we had to.  He worked them, too.

TP:    So Sonny really blended into the scene, and became part of the community.

CA:    Exactly.  It had to do with doing what you had to do.  That’s a fact.

[MUSIC:  S. Rollins, Wilbur Ware, Elvin Jones: "Softly As In A Morning Sunrise" and "All The Things You Are"]

Incidentally, that’s the second time I had the thought that that’s how bass should be played.  Whoo!

TP:    Wilbur Ware is such a heavy figure to talk about, we forgot to discuss Johnny Griffin, whose playing we mentioned before.

CA:    I don’t know how I could forget to talk about Johnny Griffin, because he was responsible for me getting to record, too, as well as having many other jobs in Chicago, and a lot of things.  I haven’t had a chance to see him much since I’ve been in New York.  In fact, I’ve only seen him twice since I came to New York in ’61.  But he wasn’t in town a lot…

TP:    He lived in Europe, and didn’t come here for more than a decade.

CA:    Yes.  In fact, I think it was about ’79 or so, he did a concert at Carnegie Hall.  I remember Wilbur and his wife Gloria went, and Wilbur was so debilitated at the time, he had to go up in a wheelchair.  It was so difficult; I remember that.  And I think I was ill or something; I didn’t get to go to that performance.  So I didn’t get to see him then.  And he was at the Grant Park once, and we were supposed to go…

TP:    Grant Park in Chicago?

CA:    No, not Grant Park.  I mean, Grant’s Tomb in New York.  He was finished playing, and I got to see him just for a second.

TP:     I guess I keep asking you the same tired question…

CA:    That’s because I don’t answer it.

TP:    No, I’ll ask you one more time, as I have for various other musicians we’ve played, what were the circumstances by which you first met Johnny Griffin in Chicago?

CA:    I don’t remember.  It’s just like I’ve always known him.  I can’t remember my first meeting with him.  For the life of me, I’ve tried.  Because you asked me in that interview, and I haven’t been able to come up with any more. It’s like Jug.

TP:    What do you remember about playing with him?

CA:    Oh, that I enjoyed it.  It was fun.  I can’t remember any particular incident that stands out.

TP:    Did you ever hear Griff play alto sax?  He started off as an alto player.

CA:    I don’t remember… Yes, I did see him play the alto.  There was a club called Swingland; there used to be a Cotton Club in Chicago, and they changed it to Swingland.  Now, that was during the late Fifties.  Now and then he would switch to alto.

[ETC.]

[MUSIC:  Sonny Stitt, "Casbah," "Idaho"]

TP:    Did you play with Sonny Stitt on sessions?

CA:    Yes, I played with Stitt, I worked with him… The  first time I played with Sonny Stitt was Easter of 1947.  We were supposed to work a gig at the Pershing Ballroom with Bird, the first time I worked with Bird.  Sonny Stitt was supposed to be on that gig, but he got sick, and we worked some gigs…

Sonny Stitt by then was part of the local crowd, the same way we talked about Sonny Rollins.  Sonny Stitt was in that same situation.

TP:    In ’47, ’48, ’49?

CA:    Yes.  I worked a lot with him.  I worked as much as any other piano players with him.  I could say I worked a lot, as much as there were gigs.

TP:    What was a standard set by Stitt like?  A lot of standards, substitutions, Bop tunes?

CA:    Well, there were a few originals, like “Ray’s Idea” that was coming on the scene, some things written on Blues and some things written on “Rhythm.”  But there were not a lot of complete originals, with completely different chord changes yet.  So they played things like “Idaho.”  This is one they played back then.   I haven’t heard anyone play this tune in maybe over twenty years now.  They don’t play it any more.  Things like “Fine and Dandy” and “The Way You Look Tonight,” those were the standards that they used in those days?

TP:    Was he playing any alto at that time, or was it exclusively tenor in the late Forties?

CA:    Oh, no.  He played alto a lot.  In fact, he played alto mostly.  It would depend on which one he wanted to play, which was most convenient for him to play at the time.  He had horns in different places.  He might have used an alto last night, and it might have been too inconvenient for him, or he’d forget the tenor so he played alto — or vice-versa.  Rarely did he switch.

TP:    He was also playing baritone at the time in Gene Ammons’ band and other situations, I recall.

CA:    Yeah, for recordings.  But generally speaking, he didn’t do it too much.

TP:    Do you have a preference for his alto or tenor?  Or is that not a fair question?

CA:    It’s a fair question.  I prefer him on tenor.  This medium, Bebop, to my ears, fits the tenor better.  The only people that I ever heard fill up an alto, I mean sound-wise, were Bird and Cannonball.  And alto players, despite their technical achievements out of the horns, I get a picture of a little-bitty horn when you play alto.  But the tenor, it fits the medium a lot better with the things that they play on it.  Most people, if they get a real big sound, it sounds like the sound is bigger than the horn to me.  It seems to me like Bebop was made more for a tenor.  It takes a special person to play it easily and get a big sound on alto.  That’s just my opinion, that’s all.

TP:    [ETC., STATION ID]

CA:    I would like to put in a disclaimer here, so that I don’t get shot.  Now, I know quite a few alto players still.  Some of my best friends play alto, and they play it well and they do the job.

TP:    There’s a wonderful record you’re on by Frank Strozier, for instance.

CA:    Yes, indeed.  And there’s C. Sharpe; he really plays.  George Coleman switches from alto to tenor.

TP:    And many others, and I’m sure they all know who they are if they’re out there.  No offense intended.

CA:    But they are the exceptions.  That’s my feeling.  More tenor players are going to sound good playing Bebop than alto players.  That’s what I think I’m saying.

TP:    [ETC.] A lot of what Sun Ra was doing in Chicago in the late Forties and Fifties is obscure, but I know he had a rehearsal band in the late Forties and early Fifties, and he was doing arrangements at the Club De Lisa, I think, and in the rehearsal band were people like Von Freeman, Red Holloway, Wilbur Ware… What do you remember about Sun Ra at the time?

CA:    You see, before he got into this experimental music, doing things, Sun Ra was an arranger for the De Lisa Club band.  This was a big show club, they had dancers…

TP:    Red Saunders’ band was there.

CA:    Red Saunders’ band, exactly.  And he did his arranging with that band.  But he did not have his rehearsals and stuff over there, to my knowledge.  He rehearsed down in Budland, in the Pershing Hotel, where the Pershing Lounge was.  That’s where they had the rehearsals.

TP:    Do you happen to recall any of those rehearsals, what was happening in them?

CA:    Well, first, to show you how experimental and how out he could write, one day I was talking to him on the telephone, and he played a tape of something.  It was called “The Devil Dance.”  And it scared me over the telephone!  It really did.  I had never heard anything like this in my life.  But as far as his big band, it was quite a band; in fact, everybody would be in it at one time or another.  Wilbur Ware and Victor Sproles would be in it, for bass players — I think even Israel Crosby did it for a minute.

TP:    Von Freeman said that having played with Sun Ra made it possible for him to play any type of music anywhere.  He wouldn’t be daunted by anything!

CA:    Yes, that would do it!  That would do it.  We had the most wonderful exchanges, because we were into different kinds of music.  And he’d have these rehearsals, performance rehearsals on Sunday afternoon.  At this particular time, I was living in the Pershing Hotel.  I came in one day, and he turned around and said to me… Because he’d been asking me to come down, but  I’d never managed to get down there, because I was doing something, or not doing, or too lazy to come down.  And he turned around, and he said… Everybody was looking at me.  He said, “Well, you finally decided to come down, huh?”  I tried to think of something to say: “Yeah.  Well, I heard you were going to walk the water today; I thought I’d have to come down and see this.”

But he could really write.  And one of the wonderful things about him, he took some musicians who couldn’t read too good, and taught them how to read, and made them stand up and be men.  And he had a lot of these people in his bands for years.  So he’s contributed a lot to the music.

TP:    Some for thirty years, and the band is still going strong, except for Count Basie and Mercer Ellington, I suppose.

CA:    That got to be quite an organization.  Because even now, they… They all stay together.  They’re a very close-knit group.  He owns a big house up in Philadelphia, and most of the band members live there.  So he has a way of keeping a band together.  And that’s what you must do if you’re going to have any longevity as a bandleader.  Because things aren’t going good all the time.  Because he kept the band together, but that doesn’t mean that they worked all the time in this country.  Sometimes they go to Europe, sometimes… They’ll work anywhere.  But he still manages to keep them together.  Keeping a band together, it gives the implication that they worked all the time and they worked regularly.  This is not the case.  He had other things going for him, and he found a way to keep his band together.

TP:    And I hear that band rehearses like crazy.  They rehearse all day long, every day to keep that discipline going.

CA:    Yeah!  Not only did it keep the discipline going, it kept a lot of people out of trouble, which was very important during those early days.  That’s very important.

TP:    ”Young and Foolish,” as the song goes.

CA:    Yes.  What in the world were we thinking of?

TP:    [ETC.] …Barry Harris’s record For The Moment, on Uptown Records, recorded live at the Jazz Cultural Theatre.

CA:    Let me say one thing about this album.  I didn’t know Barry  had made this album, but I knew he’d made a lot of live albums.  So I heard a cut one day on the radio, and something told me… I was listening to the cloud sounds, and something told me this was made at the Jazz Cultural  Theatre.  I don’t know whether it was wishful thinking or what it was.  But when it turned out that it was, I was shocked.  I have quite a thing about ESP and the supernatural and stuff like that.  Anyway, it really surprised me.  Maybe I think everything’s at the Cultural Theatre, because that’s been a home for me.  It’s a place where I’ve been able to hold forth, thanks to Barry and… Well, I’m not going to talk much more about this, but…

TP:    The piece we’ll hear is “To Monk With Love.”  Barry Harris spent much time with Monk in the last years of Monk’s life, and absorbed a great deal, after having absorbed the vocabulary of Bud Powell.  [ETC.]

[MUSIC: Barry Harris, "To Monk With Love," C. Anderson with B. Harris & Choir, "Come Sunday."]

CA:    Barry Harris is so wonderful.  He’s a great player, he’s a great arranger, and talking about good with people… He’s a wonderful teacher.  He had these classes that they started at the Jazz Forum.  And putting this thing together was something amazing to watch.  There were days when we didn’t think it would work, human beings being what they are.  The choir consisted of professionals, semi-professionals and so on, all the musicians were professionals.  I had done some Symphony Space concerts with Barry before, but doing something in Town Hall was something special to us.  And the feeling about the whole thing, it was amazing.

One of the reasons I wanted to play this, forgive me, this was one of the greatest nights of my life, bar none — and I have Barry Harris to thank for it.  And I want him to hear it publicly.  I’m always thanking him, but it will never be enough.

TP:    [ETC.] The next two selections will focus on two tenor players who are very important to Chris, George Coleman and Clifford Jordan.  Both LPs feature Billy Higgins on drums, and he’s a close friend of Chris.

CA:    He certainly is.  He’s one of my very closest friends.  I remember asking him one day, “How many records have you made?”  He made an attempt to answer, and he scratched his head, and he said, “This is ridiculous.  I don’t know!”  He didn’t have the faintest idea he’s made so many, because he’s recorded with so many people.  But in the 1970′s he’s been the main man in Cedar Walton’s trios and quartets and quintets and so forth, but he has recorded and played with other people.  He is just the greatest drummer… He has so much taste.  He’s the personification of taste.  There’s not enough I can tell you about Billy Higgins.  And as a person… He’s the kind of person you go up to Grant’s Tomb, and people from all over show up from different facets of his life.  He’s another one of those people that just attracts people.

George Coleman?  Now, he’s one of the greatest phenomenons I’ve ever seen in my life on the saxophone.  I met him when he came to Chicago from Memphis, him and Booker Little and Frank Strozier — two of them came together and one came later. I don’t remember how it was.  I think Booker Little and Frank might have come first, and then George (I’m not sure) shortly behind.  It was a case of saying, “You go ahead; I’ll be right behind you,” I’m sure.

But George, the first gig we had the Roosevelt College in Chicago, I remember thinking, “This man is going to go somewhere; he’s really going to go somewhere.”  And he has so much talent.  Sometimes I think one of the only things that may have slowed him up when he was getting off the ground… He has such phenomenal technique, I’ve had people tell me… You know, he practiced a lot.  Like, Sonny Stitt in his early years was a practicer.  Every time you’d see him, he had his horn in his hand.  He didn’t have a natural talent for technique; he acquired it.  But George seems to have this natural technique, and understanding of harmony and the melodic line.  He understands it all.  And he’s become a great arranger.  He’s a complete musician.  He’s just not a saxophone player.  He’s just one of the most phenomenal men I’ve ever met.  And he stands tall, he knows how to take care of business.  He’s what he is.  He’s always been the same.

And he’ll be standing tall fifty years from now.  He’s the kind of musician (which is unusual for a musician), he gets up and runs in the morning.  He gets up at five o’clock.  He’s always been like this.  So you got a health nut that’s a great artist, too!  So he can sustain himself.  He got involved in circular breathing along the way.  So he had to keep himself in good shape.

[MUSIC: Eastern Rebellion (GC), "5/4 Thing," "Clifford Jordan, "John Coltrane."]

TP:    Chris, you say Bill Lee is the third man who makes you think “That’s the way the bass should be played.”

CA:    Yes.  And I said a lot more, because he got to be quite a part of my life.  All the great people that you know that play, there’s somebody you identify with more than others.  It has nothing to do with greatness.  See, he got to be a part of me.  I know what he’s about and he knows what I’m about.  I have to say he’s my favorite bass player in the world.  He has some albums out on Strata-East, big band things.  He’s a great arranger.  He’s just a great musician.  Poet… He does everything.  I could be talking all night about him, so we’ll have to skip that.

TP:    Clifford Jordan you’ve played with quite a bit.

CA:    Yes, quite a bit.  Cliff Jordan lived in Chicago, too, but I didn’t get to know him really until I got to New York.  I got to know him starting in the Seventies, and played with him a lot.  I’ve used up all the superlatives on George Coleman, but they apply to Clifford Jordan just as well, just as evenly.

TP:    One of the most distinctive sounds in all of Jazz.

CA:    He doesn’t just play Bebop.  He doesn’t play cliches.  He plays.  I’m proud to know him.  I can’t say much more than that.

TP:    [ETC.] We’ll close the show with someone who comes from a similar line to Chris Anderson, but took the music in a different direction in Chicago, and was responsible for fostering a whole school of creative music, improvised music, Jazz if you will, in Chicago in the 1960′s.  I’m speaking of Muhal Richard Abrams.

CA:    He taught musicians how to write their own music, arrange, arrange their own concerts, take care of their business.  He made complete musicians out of men.  He brought about a new breed of musician.  He really did.  That’s what this generation is about.

[MUSIC: "J.G."]

[-30-]

A 1999 interview with Teddy Edwards

Several people have asked why I’ve kept the blog mostly inactive lately, to which I can only respond a blend of inertia and too much work. However, a Facebook post on Teddy Edwards from a friend prompts me to share this interview I did with him in 1999 for  a liner note for a two-tenor date that he did with Houston Person. He went deeply into his personal biography, but what’s interesting to me is that this recounting came about almost free-associatively, in response to questions about his relationship to each of the tunes. On the top is the liner note, followed by the verbatim interview — I had closely read an oral history that Patricia Willard conducted with Mr. Edwards for the Institute of Jazz Studies, which I had transcribed some years earlier — I’d love to share that as well, but am not at liberty to do so.

* * *
Though Teddy Edwards, sixty-two years as a professional musician under his belt, knows a thing or two about the cutting contest function, he claims that it was never a context he favored.  “I used to do it,” says the 74-year-old tenor saxophonist, “but I was never really a warrior.  I’d rather make love to the horn than fight with it.”

Which is not to say that Edwards wouldn’t enthusiastically tie it up with the fastest company back in the day or the here-and-now, nor that circumstance mightn’t occasionally raise the Taurus bull within him.  Iconic tenor champions Edwards locked horns and matched wits with in venues ranging from lowdown after hours joints and prestigious arenas include Gene Ammons, Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, Paul Gonsalves and legions of the famous and obscure.  In 1994, Houston Person, the tenorman with the mammoth sound who doubles as a producer, jumped on an opportunity to bring Professor Edwards into Rudy Van Gelder’s studios for a friendly encounter.  That was “Horn To Horn” [Muse 5540], and it came off so well, they decided to do it again.

Each tune is a memory-raiser, evoking complex webs of associations and relationships for the tenor cohorts.  Edwards’ recollections date to the early 1940′s, when he played a major part in codifying the vocabulary of post-swing tenor saxophone.

Consider the spirited version of “Twisted,” an ebullient Wardell Gray line from 1948 which inspired a still-hilarious lyric by Annie Ross (“my analyst told me that I was out of my head…”).  Edwards and Gray met as teenage alto saxophonists making their way up the ladder in Detroit.  “We first worked together in 1942 at the Congo Club in Detroit’s Norwood Hotel, ” Edwards recalls in his hotel room following at week’s engagement at New York’s Iridium.  “It was a great job, a great place.  Howard McGhee, Bernie Peacock, Big Nick Nicholas, Matthew Gee, Al McKibbon and a lot of great players came out of that band — Sonny Stitt, Rudy Rutherford, Milt Jackson, Hank Jones and Lucky Thompson were also in Detroit during those days.  We had a chorus line and we’d get the top acts for the week after they left the Paradise, Detroit’s black theater.  Wardell and I were partners in Detroit and later in California; we studied together through the years, practicing the various saxophone books, playing duets, developing our facilities.  Wardell was very thorough at what he did.  Every morning he’d take that saxophone out of the case and put it on the bed.  He was a light-hearted, joyful type of guy with a good sense of humor and a good spirit.  He had great confidence in what he was doing because he prepared himself.  If he was going to play in a jam session at night he’d get up early in the morning and get his thing together!”

Edwards arrived in Detroit in 1940, a 16-year-old professional who’d already worked four years in big bands arouind his native Jackson, Mississippi.  “When I was a kid in Jackson, I learned about harmony, which gave me a lot of security.  I was 12 when I met my father, a strong reading musician who played with Silas Green’s tent show (about the strongest one out there), but he had left an Orem harmony book on our piano, and I started listening to it as well as my cousin’s piano book.  All of the bands came through to play Jackson, which had over 100,000 people — it wasn’t a little whistle stop.  It had a lot of fine musicians.  We had two good big bands in Jackson, with good arrangers, and 19 miles away was Piney Woods College, which had several bands — the Sweethearts of Rhythm came out of there.  My grandfather, Henry Carson Reed, was one of the early upright bass players, so all of the guys knew my family, and they encouraged me and brought me along.  The people who ran the dance-halls knew me and what I was doing as a kid, and they let me come hear the bands.

“Some musicians in my first band talked about how a fellow who came through Jackson had chopped everybody down playing in a chordal style, and I started looking at the chords real seriously.  I learned to transpose them verbatim as fast as the piano called them to me.  I ran up and down the chords, until eventually I learned how to hook them up and make statements.  That’s the way I learned to play, not from records.  I loved Johnny Hodges, Willie Smith, Hilton Jefferson, Tab Smith and a lot of others, but I never copied them.  I learned how to improvise, turn the chords around, and make them melodies.  You learn how to choose the notes you want to make your statements out of these different sound bodies, which is what I call chords.  They aren’t numbers; they’re groups of sounds, and you reach in there and pick the notes you want to get the colors you’re looking for.  People have always responded to me, as far as I can remember.  When I was 12 years old I could always satisfy an audience of adults.  I was born with that.  I generate the feeling within myself, and then it goes out.  You put a little timbre on those chords, you can put some stuff on those notes, man!

Gene Ammons was famous for doing precisely that; he had an early ’50s jukebox hit with “Pennies From Heaven.”  Edwards met him playing with King Kolax at the Champion Bar on Hastings Street, where Detroit’s sporting crowd held office hours.  “I was young and full of fire,” he laughs, “and I’d go there and sit in with Jug and Lank Keyes, who were just getting their thing together, and fire it up!  Gene Ammons had that big sound and wonderful feeling.”  Edwards and Person take it at the camelwalk clip that drummer Kenny Washington likes to call the grown-up’s tempo.  “I like the song,” Edwards continues.  “It’s a good vehicle, and especially on rainy days and nights I play it as a perky thing, talking about the ‘pennies from heaven, and good fortune’s blowing all over town, even if your umbrella is upside-down.’”

Edwards switched from alto to tenor when he landed in Los Angeles in 1945.  “Howard McGhee decided to stay after he finished an engagement with Coleman Hawkins at Billy Berg’s,” Edwards told Patricia Willard in an interview for the Oral History Project of the Institute of Jazz Studies.  “He was searching around, trying to find a tenor saxophone player that he liked, and he couldn’t find anybody.  So he asked me to switch and hook up with him, and I thought it was a good idea.  I was able to transfer my knowledge of how to get through the chords.  I always had my own sound on both instruments.”

Edwards’ solo on “Up In Dodo’s Room,” a 1946 Spotlite recording, was significant in the evolution of swing-to-bop tenor vocabulary.  “I didn’t realize that the solo had any significance until I met Fats Navarro in 1948,” he told Willard.  “‘Look,’ he said, ‘do you realize that you changed the course of history?  That solo was the first solo by any tenor saxophone player that didn’t come from the Lester Young or the Coleman Hawkins school.’  If I remember correctly, the solo had all the half-steps; it had the major-seventh, which was just beginning to get popular; and it had the flat nine.  I played all the hip stuff that they call hip today in 1945.”

Back at the hotel, he continues: “The main thing I learned from Bebop in terms of harmony was the use of the flat-five, which Howard McGhee pulled my coat to.  You can’t be a bebop player if you don’t know how to alternate it.  It was a natural evolution, just going with the flow.  I moved into it as the music progressed, and fortunately I was in these different scenes as it was happening.  Naturally, environment plays a part, and the songs open your eyes to different things.  Charlie Parker, like Dizzy said, showed us how to really phrase that music.  But I had this knowledge that I carried with me all the time, and everything else became easy, especially once I got my hands to where I could play fast.”

At the time Edwards switched, Chu Berry, Illinois Jacquet and Lester Young had put their stamp on “Ghost Of A Chance,” a popular vehicle ever since for tenor players of the romantic persuasion, as Edwards and Person are.  It’s primarily a feature for Edwards, who vocalizes his horn to the max, a sour-sweet, been there-done that, never-jaded tone, extracting every bit of emotion from the lovely theme.

Person puts his trademark plush tone and intense melodicism on “Little Girl Blue,” his feature.  “It’s a saxophonist’s song,” says the 64-year-old South Carolina native.  “I’m a big Hank Mobley nut, and he did one of my favorite versions of it, so this was done with him in mind — I just played it like I play it.”

Which is the spirit they bring to “Blue and Sentimental,” a song rife with tenoristic implication since Herschel Evans recorded it as a tenor feature in 1938 with the Basie band.  “I never heard Herschel play in person,” Edwards states, “but the records I remember very well.  This was one of my favorites.  Herschel was in the Coleman Hawkins school, and he had a beautiful touch.”

“I was into Lester Young, and didn’t hear Herschel Evans until later,” Person recalls.  “That was my first song ever in my college band.  They had another saxophone player who played it great, but he was a senior and was leaving, so I got the spot.”  College was South Carolina State, where Person began playing the saxophone after years of diverse listening that spanned Charlie Parker and Illinois Jacquet (his main influence) to Stan Kenton to the Fisk Jubilee Singers.  “We had a piano in the house, which my mother played, and I had experience with the youth choir in church, but that was about it for me until my father got me a saxophone for Christmas late in high school.  I just liked the sound of it.  On the tenor saxophone it just seems you can get all the different sounds that you want.”  Person enrolled in the Army in 1956 and was stationed in Germany, where he encountered Eddie Harris (“he gave me a lot of helpful help”), lifelong friend Cedar Walton, and Leo Wright.  After his discharge, he enrolled at Hartt College of Music in Hartford, Connecticut, and began his distinguished career playing all manner of gigs on the New England circuit.

Person often heard soul tenor king Willis “Gatortail” Jackson play “The Breeze and I,” Ernesto Leuconia’s Latinate line which ends the session.  Edwards’ notey, swooping style contrasts nicely here with Person’s blues-shout-style locutions.

Both have played the familiar refrain of “Night Train” — purloined from Duke Ellington’s “Happy Go Lucky Local” by Jimmy Forrest — thousands of times over the years.  “I became very familiar with this song when I worked in the burlesque clubs in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the early and middle ’50s,” Edwards says.  “To eat and support a family, you had to come up with something.  But I learned a lot.  In the first place, I always felt that you make every experience pay off for you, regardless of what it is.  Now, the biggest thing I got from playing for those strippers was learning how to play the melody real well, because I had time to think.  You could build your strength, because you usually didn’t have a bass.  All those things make you strong.”

Teddy Edwards and Houston Person are self-made men, individualists who found their sounds by inner conviction and diligent work.  “There was a lot of do-it-yourself when I came up,” Edwards states, “because you didn’t have a lot of good teachers to go to like you have now.  You didn’t have play-along records.  On the other hand, you came up through bands which trained you.  That was before television, which took away the stages where things would come along naturally.  That’s when bands would travel on the road, really practice, have section rehearsals and get things down.  Now everything is wrapped up in a package for you.  I know some real famous musicians who I can tell didn’t have band training when I hear them play.  Something about coming through that band era gave you another thing.”

Neither got where they are by looking backward.  As Person puts it, “Cutting contests were a great ritual back then, and it was all done in advancing good musicianship and people trying to establish their turf, so to speak.  But this date isn’t a cutting contest.  We got together with an appreciation for what’s gone before and what’s happening now, trying to pay homage to guys who made contributions.  We tried to show mutual admiration for each other, and tried to have fun.  Everybody’s adding company to the legacy.”

* * *

Teddy Edwards (3-22-99):

TP:    With “Twisted” we have to think about Wardell Gray.

EDWARDS:  He was my first partner.  We first worked together in 1942, and we worked at a club called the Congo Club in Detroit.  It was a great job, a great place.  Howard McGhee came out of that band, Matthew Gee came out of the band, Bernie Peacock, and a lot of great, great players.  George “Big Nick” Nicholas…

TP:    You mentioned also the lead alto player with Lunceford.

EDWARDS:  Ted Buckner.  He came into the band after he left Jimmy Lunceford’s band.  He inspired me to… I was 18 years old, I was playing lead alto, so I said, “Well, I’m going to have to give up this alto chair, this lead chair” when he came in.  He said, “Youngblood, you’re doing fine.  You just stick to the lead, it’s okay; we’ll split the lead little,” and I sat next to him and heard him play.

TP:    And Kelly Martin was the drummer, right?

EDWARDS:  He was the original drummer, but we had two or three drummers while I was there.  Vernon Brown was another fine drummer, and Johnny Allen became a leader… During that time a lot of guys were getting drafted.  Al McKibbon was with the band during the time we were there.  We had a chorus line and we were getting the top acts when they left the Paradise Theater in Detroit.  They had a black theater chain where the bands would go to different theaters…

TP:    In Detroit they’d play the Paradise.

EDWARDS:  They’d play the Paradise Theater in Detroit.  When they’d go to Chicago…

TP:    Was the Congo Club analogous to the De Lisa in Chicago, a similar type of room?

EDWARDS:  Well, I imagine you could say that in the sense that they had a band and a chorus line and different kinds of acts.  But the Congo Club was something very-very special.  It was a beautiful room in the Norwood Hotel at 555 E. Adams in (?) Detroit.  But we were out in California when Wardell made “Twisted,” and then “Stoned” and what’s that other thing…”my analyst said”… [LAUGHS]

TP:    That’s “Twisted.”  It still sounds good.

EDWARDS:  Oh, that’s a great line.  I remember when he made that line.  That was in ’48, when he left Los Angeles to go to New York to record for Prestige Records.  We were real partners.  We studied together through the years.

TP:    You were all playing alto at that time.

EDWARDS:  In Detroit.  But when we got to California we were all playing tenor.

TP:    I know why you switched to tenor.  It was circumstances, because Howard McGhee had been with Coleman Hawkins…

EDWARDS:  He liked the sound.

TP:    Why did Wardell Gray switch to tenor?  Because Charlie Parker was taking up too much space?

EDWARDS:  No, it wasn’t that.  I think he switched to tenor because he liked it.  I think he switched to tenor with a band called Benny Carew, one of the Midwest bands.  But he just liked the tenor, like a lot of guys.  I don’t think it’s that Charlie Parker ran you off your instrument.  He didn’t run me off mine. [LAUGHS] But I think he just picked up playing the tenor.

TP:    You said that the two of you practiced together all the time.

EDWARDS:  We practiced in the books, the saxophone books, playing duets, all the Singerland stuff, developing our facilities.

TP:    You also said that I think the contractor for the Congo Club band helped you with your sound.

EDWARDS:  Oh, Stack Walton.  He was a tenor player.  He inherited the band.  The band was changing pretty fast in those days, the personnel.  When I first came into the band actually some of the guys preferred Sonny Stitt and Rudy Rutherford who were a little more advanced than I was in playing the saxophone and the clarinet.  But he liked what I was doing; he said, “I like what you’re doing.”  We were playing in a shell; man, that shell was eating my little sound up, so he showed me how to develop my diaphragm.  And I practiced real hard.  I practiced before the gig and after the gig…

TP:    Were you like a big sound alto player, like Willie Smith or Johnny Hodges?

EDWARDS:  I had my own sound.  I’ve always had my own…

TP:    Can you describe your sound on the alto.

EDWARDS:  Well, it’s hard to describe your sound.  You have to hear it.  But I’ve always had my own sound on the alto and even on the tenor.  I think it’s just a matter of me doing it my way, the way I learned how to do it.  I never tried to copy Johnny Hodges or copy Willie Smith, but I loved those guys.  I loved Hilton Jefferson, I loved Tab Smith, I loved a lot of them.  But I didn’t sit down and say “I’m going to try to play like this.”  I never did.

TP:    It was all functional for you.

EDWARDS:  Right.

TP:    Playing a situation…

EDWARDS:  Right, and learning.  Just learning.  Fortunately I learned about harmony real early, so that gave me a lot of security.  My father had left a harmony book on the piano.  I never saw him until I was 12 years old, but that Orem harmony book stayed on the top of our piano all those years, and then I started listening to it.  Then I’d look in my cousin’s piano book and think about what was going on with the music.  Then I heard the guys in my first band talk about a fellow who came through home playing a chord style named Devarney from Milwaukee.  They were talking about how he chopped everybody down playing these chords, and I started looking the chords real seriously.  I learned to play the chords verbatim.  I could transpose them verbatim as the piano called them to me; as fast as you called them, I could transpose them.  I’d just run up and down the chords, until eventually I learned how to hook them up and make statements.  That’s the way I learned to play instead of listening… I listened to the records, but I didn’t just copy off the records.

TP:    You had a very good opportunity as a kid to play with these very good, professional bands.

EDWARDS:  We had two good bands at home, with good arrangers.  We had two good bands in Jackson, big bands.  So I was very fortunate as a kid.  My grandfather was one of the early upright bass players, so all of the guys knew my family, and they encouraged me and brought me along.

TP:    It sounds like when you were a kid you needed a 36-hour day.  You were working pressing clothes, practicing, playing gigs, going to school and doing pretty well.

EDWARDS:  Right.  My aunt had a cleaners.  I used to press clothes in the morning, I’d clean clothes in the morning and go to school, come back and practice, and go do some more work at the cleaners, and then come back and rest and go to my night gig.

TP:    Say a few more words about Wardell Gray personally.

EDWARDS:  He was very thorough at what he did.  One thing that I saw him do first thing every morning, he’d take that saxophone out of the case and put it on the bed.  That way you’d pick it up.  You see?  First thing in the morning he’d take it out of the case and put it on the bed.  That’s what he would do.  He read all the time; he read all kinds of things, you know.  Every night when we got off, he’d get the newspaper.  He loved to read.  Hampton Hawes loved to read, too.  He had his way about him.  We were good friends.  He was light-hearted and kind of a joyful type guy.  He had a good sense of humor and a good spirit.

TP:    you can hear it in his playing.

EDWARDS:  Oh yeah.  Good spirit, a lot of spirit.  He had great confidence in what he was doing, because he prepared himself.  He really prepared himself, much more than I did, in a sense.  Because if he was going to play in a jam session at night he’d get up early in the morning and get his thing together! [LAUGHS] Get his stuff together to bring to the jam session.

TP:    Let’s move on to “Ghost of A Chance.”

EDWARDS:  During the ’40s, “Ghost of A Chance” became popular amongst the tenor players.  Illinois Jacquet had done his recording on it and Lester Young had done it.  So it was kind of a good vehicle for tenor players, popular among the tenor players.  So I was just another (?) to “Ghost of A Chance.”  And it’s a great song.  In fact, I should do it more often.

TP:    Well, for your sound it’s really custom-made.

EDWARDS:  [LAUGHS] Yes, I should do it more often.  I’ve done it once or twice maybe since I did this record.  But it’s such a great vehicle.  It’s got good room for you to work.

TP:    Let’s get back to your being an original stylist even though you were in the middle of things.  Lester Young had such a profound impact on people, and Coleman Hawkins on a lot of the Detroit guys like Yusef Lateef and Lucky Thompson…

EDWARDS:  Well, they came off that tree.  I think Ben Webster and Don Byas later on influenced Lucky more than Coleman Hawkins.  But they came from Coleman Hawkins.  They’re off that tree.  The big tree was Coleman Hawkins and the next big tree was Lester Young.  From Lester, Stan Getz, Wardell, Dexter, Gene Ammons and all of them leaned heavily.

TP:    But for you, what was your relation to that music?  I know you admired it.

EDWARDS:  I admired it.  I listened to all the great players, altos and tenors or whatever.  But when I changed from the alto to the tenor, I just transferred my knowledge.  I knew how to get through the chords.  And that’s been a very-very valuable thing to me, even to today.  I’m so thankful that I learned as a kid about the chords, how to improvise and turn them around and try them…

TP:    Make them melodies.

EDWARDS:  Make them melodies.  You learn how to choose the notes you want to make your statements out of these different sound bodies.  That’s what chords are.  I call them sound bodies.  You reach in there and get what you want.  You might not want but one note out of this one, or you might want three or four of them, then you might want to alter them, learn how to alter the chords, add to them and find the common tones that will work… In fact, I wrote a song called “April Love” that I can play one note all the way through the whole song; just one note is common to every chord in this whole song.  You look for these kind of things when you’re playing.

TP:    So chords correlate to sounds and colors for you.

EDWARDS:  Oh yes.

TP:    They’re not numbers. They’re sounds.  They’re vivid.

EDWARDS:  They’re not numbers at all.  They’re sounds.  I call them sound bodies, groups of sounds.  You pick what you want out of the sound.  I can run up and down, naturally; that’s how I learned how to play.  I can go down… But then I like to alter them, you know, sharp this or flatten that, or add this to it.  It might be a VII chord and I add a IX, or maybe a XIII to it, or raise the V or inflect the IX — anything to get the colors that I want to get.

TP:    Were you into that level of harmony by the time you got to California?

EDWARDS:  I was pretty much in it.  You know, the main thing I learned from the Bebop era as far as harmony was concerned was about the use of the flat-five.  I didn’t know that one.  Then Howard McGhee pulled my coat how to alternate like the V-minor VII to the chord, the VII chord and alternate it.  You can’t be a bebop player if you don’t know how to alternate it.  You’ve got to learn how to work it.

TP:    What you’re saying is that the really revolutionary thing in bebop was the way rhythm was approached and not so much the harmony?

EDWARDS:  Oh, the harmony was very important.  And the speed that you needed to play.  Guys were playing fast.  You needed good chops, good technique to play, and we practiced to have that.  No, the harmony was definitely strong.

TP:    Why for you was it such a big break?  Did you align yourself firmly as someone who was a Bebopper as-opposed-to, or was it just a natural line of descent?

EDWARDS:  It was just a natural line of descent.  I just moved into it as the music progressed, and fortunately I was in these different scenes as it was happening.  Naturally, environment plays a part on you, and the songs open your eyes to different things.  Charlie Parker, like Dizzy said, showed us how to really phrase that music, how to get the phrasing out of it.  But it was just a natural evolution, more or less.  Just going with the flow.  But I had this knowledge that I carried with me all the time, and everything else became easy, especially once I got my hands up real good where I could play fast.

TP:    Did you know Lester Young well?  I know he had a house in L.A.

EDWARDS:  Not real well, no.  But I had occasion to meet him.  In fact, he played my horn one night in San Francisco at Bop City.  But I met him after he had come out of the Army, and he was kind of…oh, what I say…

TP:    Introverted.

EDWARDS:  Introverted.  He didn’t want to have too much to do with anybody, because the Army had really…

[PAUSE]

TP:    Let’s talk about “Night Train.”  We can talk about Ellington and big bands and “The Happy-Go-Lucky Local,” and we can talk about Jimmy Forrest and that way of playing the horn.

EDWARDS:  Well, I first heard “Night Train” around ’44 when it first came out.  I was in Seattle, Washington, when I was playing a dance with Ernie Fields’ Orchestra, and I heard it on a jukebox.  Everybody was putting their nickels on this song, and it was very strong, very popular.  But it wasn’t exactly in the vein that I was in.  I was closer to the Bebop vein.  He had the Bebop knowledge thing going himself, Jimmy Forrest, but he chose to make this record, “Night Train,” which later on I found was almost a direct copy of Duke Ellington’s “Happy Go Lucky Local.”  Some might say he’s very fortunate that Duke Ellington didn’t sue him about it, which I don’t think he ever did bring a case against him — because he had a clear case as far as the copyright issue is concerned.  Then Buddy Morrow came along and put his twist to it, and he had a big record on “Night Train.”

Now, I used to play this song when I worked in the burlesque clubs for the dancers.  “Night Train” was one of the themes; they’d make their bumps and all that stuff.  The strippers had about four or five tunes that they really took a liking to.  I used to play it, and that’s how I became very familiar with the song.

TP:    You were still in Detroit?

EDWARDS:  I played in some burlesque places in San Francisco and Los Angeles.  When you had to eat and had a family, you had to come up with something.

TP:    In the later ’40s and early ’50s.

EDWARDS:  Mostly part of the early ’50s and some of the middle ’50s.

TP:    You’d be behind the screen?

EDWARDS:  Well, you would be off to the side.  You wouldn’t be hid behind the screen, but off the scene completely.  But I learned a lot by playing in those burlesque places.  In the first place, I always felt that you make every experience pay off for you, regardless of what it is.  Now, when I played for those burlesque dancers, I studied playing the melody.  I had to play the melody real well.  That’s the biggest thing I got from that, was learning how to play the melody real good, and I’m thankful for the burlesque clubs! [LAUGHS] I had time to think about the melody we were playing.  You could build up your strength in your playing, because you usually didn’t have a bass.  You’d have drums and a piano in those places, and sometimes you’d play two of you at a time, maybe just you and the drums playing 15 minutes and you and the piano player playing 15 minutes, then you’d play 15 minutes all together.  All those things make you strong.

TP:    you’ve been working since you were 12, right?

EDWARDS:  Right.

TP:    In this oral history, after about 3 hours of it, you’re up to age 18.

EDWARDS:  [LAUGHS]

TP:    There’s an obvious difference between the musicians of your generation and the people who are under 40, say.  Talk about that do-it-yourself quality.

EDWARDS:  During those days there was a lot of do-it-yourself, because you didn’t have a lot of good teachers to go to like you have now.  You didn’t have play-along records to play with.  On the other hand, you had bands to come up through and train.  That was before television.  That’s when bands used to really practice and rehearse and get the things down real good.  Traveling on the road together, you’d have section rehearsals, and before they’d put the band together… You don’t have much of that any more now.  Everything is so wrapped up in a package for you.  I know some real famous musicians who I can tell when I hear them play, like on their records…I can tell they didn’t have band training.  Something about them coming through that band era that gave them another thing.  I could tell.

TP:    It seems for a lot of the guys who came up during your time and a little before, a little after music was a religion.

EDWARDS:  Oh, that’s what it was.  See, television changed things a whole lot.  Television took away the stages.  Every little club had a little stage, and they’d have a tap dancer or something.  Television wiped all that out.  Television took away a lot of things that were coming along naturally.  If you were a dancer and you wasn’t dancing on television, you wouldn’t have nowhere to dance.  You see what I’m saying?  Then the music got that way.  If you weren’t sitting in one of those studio bands recording, you’re not getting too far, unless you’re a big star who can get out here and make it on your own.  But I would never aspire to be a musician, even though I played for the studio; they’d call me when they want what I have — in special situations.

TP:    They want your sound.

EDWARDS:  Right.  Like, I played on the movie, Jane Fonda…

TP:    They Shoot Horses, Don’t They.

EDWARDS:  I played on that one, too.  That was Johnny Green.  I did it for George Donen, who did Any Wednesday with Jane Fonda.  He had the contractor call me.  The contractor said, “Teddy Edwards?”  I said, “yes.”  He said, “Mr. Donen wants you on this soundtrack.  There’s a 60-piece orchestra.  Mr George Donen, who wants you on this soundtrack.”   He said, “Do you read music?”  I said, “I’ve been reading it all my life practically.”  “Well, he said he doesn’t care whether you read music or not.  He wants you on here, because he wants your sound on this movie soundtrack.”  Then he had me playing a special thing on clarinet, which I had no idea, with my name on my part, you know, to play this special clarinet part for this movie.

TP:    A customized part for you.

EDWARDS:  He liked my sound.  He had heard my playing with Gerald Wilson, and he loved the sound I got out of the horn.

TP:    Gerald Wilson’s band must have been a nice outlet for you over the years.

EDWARDS:  Oh, that was a great band.  That was one of the finest bands ever been, that’s for sure, the band of the early ’60s — the real band.  We had probably the finest reed section I played with; I liked the way we sounded.  We had Jack Nimitz on baritone, Harold Land on the other tenor, Joe Maini playing lead alto…

TP:    Did you meet Gerald Wilson in Detroit?

EDWARDS:  No, I didn’t really meet him.  He had left when I came there.  I’m trying to think of the other alto player.  He was a good alto player; in fact, I got him a contract with Contemporary Records.  [Jimmy Woods.] Anyway, we had a great blend in that reed section.  I played with Basie, with the saxophone section, but sitting in there it didn’t have that… It was a great section, but it had a lot of individual… Everything is individual in that reed section.  Even though when it comes out, it came out great.  But we were on a one-mind kind of thing with the Gerald Wilson saxophone section.  We were on the same thinking plane as far as the sound of the music.

TP:    And that seems to be a thing that you see throughout with guys from your period, who came up then, probably because of that band training.

EDWARDS:  Oh, it was a big help.

TP:    Now, in Jackson, it would seem kind of a backwater, but a lot of bands came through and you were able to keep up with a lot of music.

EDWARDS:  All of the bands came through Jackson to play Jackson.  Well, we had over 100,000 people in Jackson.  We had a 22-story building when they only had 12 in Los Angeles.  You know what I mean?  It wasn’t a little whistle stop.  It had a lot of fine musicians.  Then there was Piney Woods, down 19 miles at Piney Woods College where they had several band.  They had the male bands, then they had the Sweethearts of Rhythm, the first all-girl band which came out of there.  The Daughters of Rhythm came out of there.  So a lot of excellent musicians were in that vicinity.  Plus the bands that came through playing the dance, and the people who ran the dance-halls, they knew me and what I was doing as a kid, and they let me come up and hear the bands.

TP:    Well, you had a story of being able to hear the Ellington band through the grace of one nice guy.

EDWARDS:  One nice guy, yeah.

TP:    Which we don’t have to repeat here.  But you did say that Johnny Hodges was your early idol.

EDWARDS:  Well, he was the first one who really got to my ears.  But the first song I learned how to play was Wayne King’s theme song, “The Waltz You Sing For Me.”  That was the first song, from the radio, where I learned how to play it.  Then Johnny Hodges came, and I loved that sound and that feeling that he had, even though I never copied him verbatim — but he influenced me.  Then I heard Hilton Jefferson with Cab Calloway, and that was another thing of beauty to me.  He’s not the most famous saxophone player, but he was beautiful, Hilton Jefferson with Cab Calloway’s band.  There were a lot of different guys who came through. Tab Smith.

TP:    You had to have heard Budd Johnson with Earl Hines’ band which came through the south.

EDWARDS:  Oh, I heard Budd with Earl Hines’ band.  That’s when he had Billy Eckstine.  This was in the ’30s.  Billy Eckstine was with the band, he had George Dixon, the baritone player, who was the guy who played jazz on a flute.  A lot of guys claimed later, but he was the first guy…

TP:    George Dixon, huh?

EDWARDS:  George Dixon.  He was the baritone player with Earl Fatha Hines.  He had the great singer Walter Fuller singing with him, and Madeleine Green singing, and Keg Johnson playing the trombone.  Earl Hines had some fantastic bands.

TP:    But also, you mentioned you heard the beginning of the Earl Hines band that had Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in Detroit.

EDWARDS:  Oh, right, the first gig.

TP:    Bird left McShann in Detroit and joined Earl Hines.  Do you have a memory of the band?

EDWARDS:  Oh, it was great.  In fact, that picture in the book that Francis Paudras wrote about Charlie Parker… Opening up the book, they’ve got a picture of Sarah Vaughan in that band playing piano back-to-back with Earl Fatha Hines.  They had two white grand pianos back to back on the stage.  I was sitting there when that picture was taken.  I said, “Damn, I was there when that picture was made.”  I was at the opening show. [LAUGHS]

TP:    That’s when you first met Charlie Parker, was in Detroit at that time?

EDWARDS:  I met him the week before, when he was with McShann.  But I had listened to him on his recordings with McShann, like “Hootie Blues” and “Sepian Bounce” and “Swingmatism,” those great solos that he played.

TP:    so you knew right from the top that he was doing something special.

EDWARDS:  Oh, he was doing something special, no question about it.  He had a little tinge of Lester Young in him back then, a little tinge of Lester Young on that alto.  If you listen to him close.  Lester Young was his idol, you know.

TP:    When he did the few things on tenor, you can hear it.

EDWARDS:  The few things on tenor.  But I’ll tell you, he hadn’t played the tenor long enough for his embouchure to get right for the tenor.  It would have been brighter.  It was kind of dark because his chops hadn’t come up to that tenor thing.  It’s another kind of thing.

TP:    Talk about the difference, what the challenges are.

EDWARDS:  The big challenge is that if you play one, your ear gets set to that one.  If you’re playing a tenor, your ear gets set to the tenor, then when you pick the alto up, it’s a fifth away.  So your ear has got to make the adjustment, you see.  But now, if you play them both all the time a lot, then it’s easy.  It becomes natural.  But if you stay with one and go to the other… Then what you have to do, like in my case… You have to use your mind.  I know that this chord goes because I want to play this chord.  I can use my mind that way, see.  But it’s an ear thing, where your ear knows where the notes are.

TP:    A lot of alto players say it’s harder to play the alto than it is to play the tenor.

EDWARDS:  It’s not harder to play.  They have different demands on you.  Controlling the pitch of the alto is a little more delicate than the tenor, because it’s higher.  The soprano is really rough to control.  But the you’ve got to have more wind down on the tenor.  So they have their differences.

TP:    Let’s go to “Blue and Sentimental,” with a real Basie connotation.

EDWARDS:  I first heard Herschel play that with the Basie band on the records.  I never did hear him play in person, but the records I remember very well.  It was one of my favorites, and Lester played 8 bars on the clarinet on that recording of “Blue And Sentimental.”  Herschel was on the Coleman Hawkins school, but he had a beautiful touch. [SINGS REFRAIN]

TP:    Big and gentle.

EDWARDS:  yeah, he was something beautiful.  Died real young.

TP:    Were you as much into the Basie band of that time as you were Lunceford and Ellington?

EDWARDS:  Oh yeah.  Man, when Basie came along, that was a revelation.  When Basie came along with that all-American rhythm section, they had Lester sitting on one hand and Herschel on the other, they had Harry Edison sitting on one corner and Buck Clayton sitting on the other one.  Goodness me.  That was power-power-power.  Papa Jo Jones sitting back there on the drums.

TP:    On the previous record with Houston Person, you were dealing with a little later repertoire, like you did “Equinox” and Richard Wyands put “Moose the Mooche” on the intro to “Lester Leaps In.”  This one puts you more in the older school.

EDWARDS:  I guess so.

TP:    So if someone’s listening to this record, they won’t necessarily know what you’re a modernist player…

EDWARDS:  I imagine they’d be surprised.  Because I had most of the leads in the “Night Train” thing.  I thought about my burlesque days.  That’s going to be a strong song on this record, too.

TP:    Again, I don’t want to put you back as someone who stopped at 1952 in a burlesque house, because I know what you did.  Talk to me about how your repertoire… Do you work all over with a touring band, or do you pick them up when you come to town?

EDWARDS:  Well, mostly I’m picking up bands, because I’m not a big commercial item.

TP:    You’re someone for the connoisseurs.

EDWARDS:  Yes, more or less, the collectors and all those people.  And I gain all the time new people.  My problem has not been with the audience.  If I have a problem, it’s been with the negotiators — the agents and the managers.  They’ve never taken a liking to me.  But people have always responded to me, as far as I can remember, when I was 12 years old.  I could always satisfy an audience.  I never lost that.  I got that.  I was born with that.  Nobody can ever take that away.

TP:    you were born with that.

EDWARDS:  I was born with that.  I can make the people feel what I’m doing.

TP:    And when you were 12 years old…

EDWARDS:  I could do the same.  To adults.  I could do it then.  That’s just a thing that was natural to me.  Well, I understood in later years why I was that way.

TP:    Why?

EDWARDS:  It’s a case of… I’d compare it to a radio set.  You’ve got a transmitter and a receiver.  The audience is the receiver.  The artist is the transmitter.  Now, in order to transmit, you have to generate, and you generate it within yourself.  You see, I generate the feeling within myself, and then it goes out.  And it’s going to get through.  You can be sitting at the bar talking, but I’m going to get through to you in your subconscious.  I’m going to get through to you most of the time.  Because that’s the way I am.  I can project the music that way, because I can build it within myself.  And I know, because these sound waves can go through this building!

TP:    What sound does to people.  And chords are sound.

EDWARDS:  Oh yeah.  You put a little timbre on those chords, you can put some stuff on those notes, man.  It gets real deep.

TP:    Another guy who was like that was Gene Ammons, who I associate with “Pennies From Heaven.”  He had a little hit on that, didn’t he?

EDWARDS:  Oh, yeah, Jug did.

TP:    You met him in Detroit, too, with King Kolax.

EDWARDS:  Yes, with the King Kolax band.  He was playing at the Champion Ballroom on Hastings Street, and I used to go over there and sit in with him.  Because I was young and full of fire.  Jug and Lank Keyes and them, they were just getting their thing together, and I’d go over there and sit in with them and fire it up!  Yeah, Gene Ammons had that big sound and that wonderful feeling.

TP:    But you and he also had that good-natured cutting contest type of attitude… Not cutting contest, but matching sounds or wits or whatever you want to call it.

EDWARDS:  Well, that was going on.  I used to do it, but I was never really a warrior.  I’d rather make love to the horn rather than fighting it.

TP:    That can be a battle, too.

EDWARDS:  [LAUGHS] But that was the thing.  We were doing it.  Okay, let’s tie it up here.  Like, Stanley Turrentine still talks about the time he heard Paul Gonsalves and me in San Francisco.  He said, “I never will forget that as long as I live, the night I heard you and Paul get together.”  But you get together sometimes and the thing will be working.  And it’s good.  I did several tenor things.  I did a tour with Buck Hill and Von Freeman in Holland, on which we had a lot of fun.  It was a friendly fight going on between us.  And Dexter… All the guys through the years, we would tie it up there, and… A tenor player, Joe…

TP:    Joe Alexander.

EDWARDS:  No.  He was a white kid.  Played real good.

TP:    These days?

EDWARDS:  We made a record with Frank Butler together on Xanadu.

TP:    Oh, Joe Farrell.

EDWARDS:  Right, Joe Farrell.

TP:    From Chicago also.

EDWARDS:  Yeah, he was an excellent player.  Now, we kind of got off on a bad leg, but we got close.  I was sitting in the studio waiting on everybody to come in.  But he didn’t know me really.  I’m sitting there when he came in, I spoke to him, and he barely spoke!  So I said, “Okay.  We’ll see about this when they turn the tape on.” [LAUGHS] He didn’t know me.  I could have just been a chair sitting there as far as the way we talked about a greeting.  It kind of raised that old Taurus bull up in me a little bit. “Okay, when they turn the machine on, we’ll straighten all of this out.”  We became real close.

TP:    I was mentioning my associating Gene Ammons to “Pennies From Heaven.”  What was your association to it?

EDWARDS:  Well, I like the song.  It’s a good vehicle, and especially on rainy days and rainy nights I was would play it as a good perky thing, talking about the “pennies from heaven, and good fortune’s blowing all over town, even if your umbrella is upside-down.”

TP:    Do you sing in performances now?

EDWARDS:  No, I never went into singing too much.  I sing on Blue Saxophone, “Hymn For the Homeless,” but anybody could sing it.  It didn’t take a great singer to sing that.

TP:    But you’re a lyrics man, obviously.

EDWARDS:  I’m a lyrics writer.  Yes, I’m a lyricist.

TP:    When you play these tunes, you know the lyrics.

EDWARDS:  I have an idea about most of them.  I might not know what all… But I know what the lyricist is talking about.  I know the subject matter, and that’s important, to help you to express the song and know what it’s talking about.

TP:    Talk a bit about playing with Houston Person.

EDWARDS:  Oh, Houston’s a joy to play with.  He’s just like a big baby boy.  In fact, when he got his job producing with Muse Records, I think he might have been the very first person he called.  I was under contract to Polygram, which killed that, but then later on when we talked again I said, “I can record as a sideman or co-leader for another label, but I can’t record as a leader under my contract.”  He said, “Good, let’s make one together; we’ll co-lead it.”  That’s how we made Horn To Horn.

TP:    Tell me about the rhythm section guys.  Kenny Washington.

EDWARDS:  Oh, Kenny’s a beauty.  He’s steady as a rock.  I always enjoy playing with him.

TP:    He knows what to play, knows what not to play.

EDWARDS:  Oh yeah.  Well, in the first place he’s a music historian.  Not just jazz, many forms of music.  He’s an historian, and he knows what goes where.  He’s very knowledgeable about the subject.

TP:    Ray Drummond plays beautifully on this record.  His solos are like Paul Chambers.

EDWARDS:  He has that sound.

TP:    And Stan Hope?

EDWARDS:  Well, that was my first time playing with him.  The reason he made the date, somebody couldn’t make it, so Houston said, “We can use my regular piano player.”  I said, “If you like him, he must be good.”  And he was wonderful, played great.

[-30-]

For the 84th Anniversary of Art Farmer’s Birth, A Few Interviews From 1994

In 1994, I had the privilege of conducting three interviews with the magisterial flugelhornist Art Farmer on WKCR, one during a quintet engagement at Sweet Basil on which he shared the front line with Jerome Richardson (Clifford Jordan had recently passed), and was promoting a two-trumpet recording with Tom Harrell on Arabesque, followed a pair of 5-hour Sunday Jazz Profiles where he was present for the entirety. In honor of the 84th anniversary of Mr. Farmer’s birth, I’m posting the complete transcripts of the interviews.

* * *

Art Farmer (WKCR, 11-27-94, 12-18-94):

[MUSIC: Jazztet (1961), "Farmer's Market"; (1993) "Turn Out The Stars," (1992) "Modulations",  (1991) "Isfahan"; (1953) w/ Clifford Brown, "Keeping Up with Jonesy", (1953), w/ Sonny Rollins "I'll Take Romance", (1954) w/Gigi Gryce, "Blue Concept"]

TP:    You’re originally from Iowa, and grew up in Arizona.  What were your earliest musical experiences like?

AF:    I started off studying the piano, because that’s the first instrument that I ever heard.  My mother used to play the piano with her father’s church choir.  At that time it was very customary to have a piano in the house, and someone played it.  There were a lot of music students in our family, and it just seemed the natural thing to take piano lessons.  Then after that, when we were living in Phoenix, Arizona, a man gave me a violin, and I studied that for a couple of years.  Then I switched from the violin to the bass tuba.  I was playing with a marching band that was part of a church organization in Phoenix.  I heard some of the older guys in the band jamming around one day, and I wanted to play a horn, like I said, but the only horn available was the tuba.  Then the War started.

TP:    So by this time you were 12 or 13…

AF:    Yes, about that.

TP:    …and sort of going between the violin and the brass instruments.

AF:    Yes, right.

TP:    Who taught you?  Did you get instruction in some sort of organization, or private teachers?

AF:    I had a teacher for the violin, who was employed by what then was called the WPA, the Works Progress Administration, to see that everybody had a job in the United States.  That’s the only teacher that I had.  I also had a teacher on the piano who was employed by the school system out in Phoenix.  So teaching was rather scant, I would have to say.

TP:    So you got your experience basically picking up from other people and playing in different situations?

AF:     Right, picking up from other people.  Well, Jazz was on the radio.  There was a lot of airplay for Jazz then,  big bands playing for dances, and all kinds of wonderful things happening.  The first live music that I heard actually was the real Country Blues.  I used to sell papers, and I would walk around in the migrant workers’ camps and sell them papers, and after work they would be sitting around, playing and singing, playing the Blues on the guitar or whatever.

But I heard all this Big Band Jazz on the radio.  Then when the Second World War came along, there was an Army camp around Phoenix, and I heard the Army dance band.  There was one guy in the band by the name of George Kelly, who is still around here in New York, and he used to come around to our rehearsals and help us out.  He was a great guy.  He used to write arrangements for us.  But that’s the first time I heard a big band live, was the U.S. Army band.  Then the traveling dance bands started coming through on one-nighters, like Jimmie Lunceford and Erskine Hawkins, Buddy Johnson, people like that.  The greatest thing in life that I could imagine was to hear these bands.  It was so exciting that it never has left me.  My brother, Addison, myself and our friends, we would go around and introduce ourselves to the musicians, and ask them to come by the house to have a jam session — and they were very nice, and they would.

TP:    Your brother, Addison Farmer, was your identical twin and a bass player.

AF:    Right.

TP:    Was he pretty proficient at this time also?

AF:    Well, he was, but at this time he really hadn’t gotten into it as much as I had.

TP:    I think you mentioned Roy Eldridge particularly as turning you around.

AF:    Right.  Well, Roy came to town with the Artie Shaw Band, and I met him then, and I have to say he was really very kind.  He came by the place that I was playing on a night off, and he sat in and played the drums.  Then after about a set of that, he went back to his room and got his horn, and came around and played.  I didn’t know anything to ask him, really; it was just sort of a listening thing.

TP:    Now, you said he came by where you were playing.  By this time were you working locally around Phoenix?

AF:    Yes, I was.  I was working with some friends of mine at a place that was the kind of place that we would then call a bucket of blood, heh-heh, sort of a rough place.  But that’s all the town had to offer.  We were frankly very ignorant about what was going on with music, didn’t know left from right or 3/4 from 2/4, but we knew that we liked music and we knew that we wanted to play, and I guess that’s what Roy heard.  So he was gracious enough to come up and play the drums, because he was a drummer also, and he enjoyed the situation enough to go back to his room and get his horn.

TP:    Would you be playing mostly Blues at this time?

AF:    Yes, mostly Blues, very simple riffs, riff-type tunes based on “I Got Rhythm” or “Honeysuckle Rose,” something like that.

TP:    And at this time you would have been 15 years old, let’s say?

AF:    Yes, around 15 or 16.

TP:    Who were some of the trumpet players who were shaping your idea of how the trumpet should sound?

AF:    Well, the most dominant trumpet player that you would hear in a small town like Phoenix then would be Harry James, because he was on the air all the time.  Harry James was a very fine trumpeter.  Of course, his style was much different from what really grabbed me later on.  But at that time, why, he was the man.  Even Miles said when he started trying to play, he was captivated by Harry James.

TP:    When you heard Roy Eldridge over the air, that grabbed you?

AF:    Oh, sure.  Certainly.  Then later on, I heard other people when the bands came through, say, Erskine Hawkins, where there was a trumpet player named Dud Bascomb who took a solo on a very successful record called “Tuxedo Junction.”  Also there were other fantastic trumpet players with the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, like Freddie Webster, for instance.

TP:    Andy Kirk for a brief moment had Howard McGhee and Fats Navarro in his band.  Did they ever come through Phoenix when you were there?

AF:    No.  They never came through Phoenix.

TP:    So you didn’t have a chance to hear them right away.

AF:    No, they never came through Phoenix, nor did Billy Eckstine.  A lot of bands didn’t come through Phoenix.  Phoenix was relatively a small town.  Billy Eckstine never came through, Earl Hines never came through, Duke Ellington never came through, nor Count Basie.  But I certainly remember the ones that did come through.  When I heard Jimmie Lunceford’s trumpet section, well, I knew what my life was going to be instantly.

TP:    Why is that?  What was the sound of that trumpet section like in person, up close?

AF:    Well, if you’ve only been playing trumpet just by yourself, and suddenly you hear four guys that are really playing a nice arrangement, then it’s such a big difference.  It’s like a revelation.  You hear the trumpet players playing their solo with the band in the background; well then, that sort of shows the way to you.

TP:    When you were 16 or 17 years old, you and your brother went to Los Angeles and finished your last year of high school there.

AF:    Yes.  We actually went there supposedly on a vacation.  We had had our little day jobs and saved our money, and we went over to Los Angeles for a couple of weeks.  But the music scene was so alive on Central Avenue in Los Angeles, and we heard so many people, it just seemed senseless to go back to Arizona.  So we decided to stay there and finish our high school there, and support ourselves by whatever means were possible.

TP:    Did you have family in Los Angeles?

AF:    No, we didn’t.  We didn’t have any family there.  But the school didn’t know that.  Our mother told us, “Well, if this is what you really want to do, go ahead and do it, but at least graduate from school.”  So we did.  And we wrote our own excuses and things, so the school never knew.  If we didn’t want to go to school, we would just write an excuse supposedly from our parents, which was accepted by Jefferson High School.

Now, there were some teachers that were very helpful to us — music teachers.  There was one man in particular by the name of Samuel Brown, who also taught Dexter Gordon.  Because Dexter went to the same school, although he was a few years in front of us.

TP:    What was Mister Brown like as a teacher?

AF:    Well, anyone who came to town that he knew, he would ask them to come over and play some, and talk to the students, and that would be the students’ first time able to talk to real professional musicians.  He organized what is now called a stage band, and we would go around and play assemblies in other schools in the Los Angeles area.

TP:    What sort of repertoire were you playing?

AF:    Well, it was a repertoire with, for example, “9:20 Special” written by Buck Clayton, and “Take The A Train,” and something by Woody Herman.
TP:    Dance band things.

AF:    Yes.  Dance band things that were popularized by the big bands.  It was mainly big bands, because there were also people in the school orchestra who were already writing arrangements.

TP:    Like who?

AF:    Well, I can’t remember the names right, because this was a long time ago.  Besides Dexter, some of the other active players were people like Sonny Criss and Cecil McNeely, who later turned out to be a great Rock Star by the name of Big Jay McNeely.  Hampton Hawes was around.  I figured that I should have been there a long time before I was.  I got there for my last year.  If I’d been there two or three years earlier, it would have been a lot of help.

TP:    Was Samuel Brown helpful to you in developing your brass technique?

AF:    No, he wasn’t a brass teacher at all.  I didn’t have a brass teacher.  I had never had a brass teacher up to this point.  Up to then, I was just sort of hit and miss.  Mostly miss.  Trial-and-error.

TP:    There was another teacher in Los Angeles, Lloyd Reese, who taught privately…

AF:    Yes, I heard about Lloyd Reese, but I never went to him.  Lloyd Reese was a professional teacher, and you had to pay him, and I didn’t have any money to take lessons.

TP:    You arrived in Los Angeles at the time Bebop was first starting.  Howard McGhee was out there and…

AF:    That’s right.  That’s the first time I heard Howard, and Howard with his group was really a revelation to me.  That sort of pointed me in the direction for my life.  He was moving around on the horn more than the usual soloists in the big bands.  They were playing what were then called ride solos, where you’d just sort of Jazz the melody, and you don’t actually move around the horn that much.  That’s what most of the guys were doing when the solo time came.  Players like Dud Bascomb and Ray Nance came along and created their own things, and they were so interesting and beautiful.  But then Howard came along, and he was much more fluid than them.  Much more.  I heard Howard McGhee’s group before Dizzy and Bird came out, so that was the first so-called Bop group that I heard.  They had a wonderful tenor player named Teddy Edwards in there, who became a close friend of mine.  We worked together later on.  I didn’t meet Howard, but I used to go out and listen to them play every night.  I was amazed at the way he was able to play the instrument, because I hadn’t heard Dizzy or Miles or Fats or Kenny Dorham at that time.  He was the first one that I heard who could get around the horn like that.

TP:    Who were some of the other players in Los Angeles who impressed you?

AF:    At this time, I don’t remember any local trumpet player that impressed me anywhere like Howard did, and then, shortly after that, when Dizzy came out with his group.

TP:    And did you go to Billy Berg’s to hear the band?

AF:    Yes, I’d go there, and when I was able to get in, I’d get in.  Sometimes someone was on the door who said, “Well, you don’t look like you’re old enough,” so I couldn’t get in.  Then Miles came out with Benny Carter’s band, and I met him; we used to wind up at jam sessions together, and I would get a chance to listen to him.  I used to go around with Charlie Parker, too.  I wouldn’t play, but I would just listen.  A tenor saxophone player that became very influential in my life, Wardell Gray, came out there with Earl Hines’ band; I went around and met him — later on we wound up working together.  Wardell was a very nice man, a very intelligent man, and it was really a tragedy, not only to him, but to all of us who knew him, to have lost him at such an early age.  He was very kind and very helpful, and I was very glad for the chance to work with him, and also with Dexter at this time, because the two of them organized a group, and we worked around the Los Angeles area.

TP:    What other work did you get in Los Angeles at this time?

AF:    I worked for a group that was led by a drummer by the name of Roy Porter, who used to work with Howard McGhee.

TP:    Roy Porter had a big band, too.

AF:    Yes, he had a big band, and actually we did some recording for the Savoy label with this big band.  Eric Dolphy was in that band.  Also I worked with a big band that was led by Horace Henderson, Fletcher Henderson’s brother.

TP:    Horace Henderson was supposed to be very adept at organizing a band and getting a good band sound.

AF:    Right.  Well, that worked.  He had a very fine swing style trumpeter by the name of Emmett Berry.  Emmett could play.  Emmett gave me some tips and some pointers.  Still I had never had a trumpet lesson.
TP:    How much Bebop were you able to play as a youngster in Los Angeles?

AF:    I would say not very much. [LAUGHS] I was mostly captivated by it.  But see, playing Bebop is not the easiest thing that you can find to do! [LAUGHS]

TP:    It sounds like you had a lot of the new ideas in your mind while you were playing gigs that required other things from you.

AF:    Well, Bebop came out of the Swing Era.

TP:    Talk a little bit about that.

AF:    Well, everybody that was involved with Bebop, as far as I know, the main guys played with the big bands.  I mean,  Miles and Dizzy and Max Roach and J.J. Johnson, all did, and Dexter Gordon — all these guys came out of big bands.  Where else would they come from?

TP:    And because of World War Two, there were openings for young musicians in those bands.

AF:    Right, there were.  There were openings for guys of my age.  The older, more proficient players were mostly in the Armed Forces.

TP:    Los Angeles was a thriving musical community at this time, with clubs everywhere and lots of work for musicians.

AF:    Yes, there were a lot of clubs.

TP:    Talk about what an average night might be like on the Central Avenue strip.

AF:    Well, you could just walk up the street and go from one club to the other.  Within an area of about 20 blocks there would be like five or six clubs.  These clubs were forced to close by one o’clock because of wartime restrictions, but then there were some other clubs that would open up.  I don’t think they were quite legal, but they got away with it some way.  They would open up when the first clubs closed, and they would stay open until maybe six or seven o’clock in the morning.

TP:    Were there places that had breakfast dances also?

AF:    Yes.  But these places were called breakfast clubs.  There wasn’t a lot of dancing going on at these clubs, but there was an audience there for listening at this time.   There was no big play on it from the press.  No Jazz Critics ever came around, and you never read about it in Downbeat or nothing like that.  But the players came around, and after they had finished their big band gigs, their dance gigs, why, then, they came over and sat in and played.

TP:    That was sort of graduate school for a lot of musicians at that time.

AF:    Yes, it was.  Graduate school, that’s what I would call it.

TP:    When did you first go to New York?

AF:    I first came to New York in 1946 with a band that was led by a drummer by the name of Johnny Otis, who had a big band that was working on Central Avenue.  The band was patterned after the Count Basie Orchestra.  In fact, Count Basie used to send us some arrangements that he didn’t want to play.  It was a good band, a straight-ahead Swing band.  The tenor player Paul Quinichette was in the band.  I was able to get the job with Johnny Otis, because some of the people who had been playing with the Otis band didn’t want to travel.  That gave me a chance, and I came with them to New York.

TP:    How long were you here?

AF:    Well, I was here that time for a couple of weeks.  We were on tour, and we played a place in Chicago called the El Grotto which was owned by Earl Hines.  We played there for about ten weeks.  Then we played at the Apollo Theater for  a week, and then we played the Paradise Theater in Detroit for about week — and then Johnny Otis fired me.

TP:    Was this your first time seeing the country?

AF:    Yes, it was my first time.

TP:    What was Chicago like then?

AF:    Oh, that was great.  The El Grotto was very nice.  Such a nice club, with a chorus line and showgirls and comedians.  It was really a nightclub, which there is nothing like that now.  It was a big show.

TP:    Chicago had a number of clubs with elaborate shows then.

AF:    Yes.

TP:    Did you get around in Chicago?  Is that where you met Gene Ammons, let’s say?

AF:    No.  Gene was on the road with Billy Eckstine at that time.  I didn’t meet Gene until I recorded with him for Prestige in the Fifties.

TP:    What was your first impression of New York?

AF:    Oh, New York was a great place.  It was another city compared to now — completely different.  But there was a lot of music going on, and music was all around the town.

TP:    Where did you go to jam?  I’m assuming that you did.

AF:    Well, no, I didn’t go to jam at that time.  I would go to listen.  I went down to, like, 52nd Street, and to Minton’s up in Harlem.  This is after the job.  We were playing at the Apollo Theater, and our last show would be finished close to midnight, and so then we would go out to other places — like I said, 52nd Street or Minton’s.

TP:    And you heard everybody who was creating the new music at that time.

AF:    Well, everybody was on the Street.

[MUSIC: AF w/G. Russell, "Ballad of Hix Blewitt", "Concerto For Billy The Kid" (1956); AF w/H. McKusick, "Alone Together" (1957); AF w/Horace, "Home Cookin'" (1956); AF/Jaymac/S.Clark, "Sippin' At Bells" (1958); AF/Gerry Mulligan, "Blueport" (1958), AF/H. Jones, "Nita" (1958)]

TP:    In our last conversation segment, Art Farmer was on his first trip on the road with Johnny Otis, when he worked in Chicago and New York for the first time.  But basically, I gather you stayed in Los Angeles pretty much until joining the Lionel Hampton band in the early Fifties?

AF:    Yes.  You see, there was an institution called the Sunday afternoon jam sessions, which happened in Los Angeles and New York and other places, too.  I used to go around to these clubs for the jam sessions, and one Sunday I went there, and there were some guys from Lionel’s band.  Quincy was there, Buster Cooper was there, for instance.  A couple of days later I got a call from a friend of mine, saying that he was going over to talk to Lionel, that Lionel wanted him to make an audition, and he had heard about me and would like for me to make an audition, too.  I think Quincy had something to do with it, really.  So I went over there, and the audition wasn’t to see how well you read the music or played the parts, but to see how well you could play in general.  He said, “Okay, let’s play ‘All God’s Children Got Rhythm,’” which is a real testing tune for young players.  So I did it, and then he said, “Yes, well, if you want the job, you’ve got it,” and that was it.

TP:    What was the salary?

AF:    Oh, it was around $17 or $18 a night when you played. [LAUGHS]

TP:    When did Clifford Brown come into the picture?

AF:    Clifford came in about a year later — less than a year later, because I was there only a year myself.  When I came in, Benny Bailey was still there.  The reason why Lionel Hampton hired me was because a very great trumpet player by the name of Benny Bailey was getting ready to leave.  So when I came in the band, I was the sixth trumpet player, and then Benny left, so I was the fifth.  Then there was a guy named the Whistler, who was called the Whistler because all he played was high notes all night long, and he left, and Brownie took his place.  It was, say, in the summer of ’53 when we were playing in New York at a place called the Band-Box, and we were getting ready to go on a tour over in Europe, where we made all those records.  Gigi Gryce had come in the band, and James Cleveland, and Alan Dawson also…

TP:    What was your immediate impression of Clifford Brown?

AF:    [LAUGHS]

TP:    I know it’s sort of a softball question, but…

AF:    Yeah, that’s really… [LAUGHS] Everybody had the same impression of Clifford Brown.  The nicest impression was what Louis Armstrong said, “It sounds like you got a mouthful of hot rice.” [LAUGHS]

TP:    But you were up next to him every night, I guess, for a number of months.

AF:    Yes.

TP:    Did that have an impact on your conception?

AF:    Yes, it did.  I would say that from the standpoint of style we both came from the same inspiration, which was Fats Navarro.  But Clifford was much more proficient than I was, and he was able to do what I really wanted to do, and he could do it perfectly, and be completely relaxed and creative, and improvise.  He was just wonderful.  There were a whole lot of people that wanted to do the same thing, like Idrees Sulieman, for instance, Ray Copeland, and other people, too.  We all said, “Well, this is the guy who really got it together.”

TP:    Did your proximity to Clifford in any way inspire you to work out a niche for yourself, a certain sound that nobody else would get to, such as what, making a rough analogy, Miles Davis faced with Dizzy Gillespie?

AF:    No, it really didn’t.  It just inspired me to get the best sound that I could get.  I certainly loved Brownie and Fats, and Ioved a whole lot of trumpet players, and still do.  A lot of younger guys, the guys like Brownie and Fats and Miles, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, you’d listen to  these guys, and you’re not going to say, “Well, if I could just sound like that, I’d be happy for the rest of my life.”  I would say, “Well, if I could just sound as good as that, and then whatever came out that I figured sounded as good or sounded nearly as good, at least I’d figure like I was pointed in the right direction.

TP:    Back to your experience with Roy Porter, a caller was interested in your having known Eric Dolphy as a very young musician.

AF:    We were very good friends.  Eric was the same way with Charlie Parker as I was with the leading trumpet stylists at that time.  If you listened to him, you could tell immediately that he loved Charlie Parker.  But the difference between Eric and Charlie Parker was that Eric… Eric was more like John Coltrane.  He lived for the saxophone.  That’s all he thought about, was the saxophone all the time, all the time, and whatever he could do.  The first inkling I had that he was going in another direction than just playing Bebop was that he started imitating the sounds of birds.  He’d listen to birds, listen to what the birds sing, and then go home and play it on the horn.  That was happening when I was still living out there, before I left Los Angeles with Lionel Hampton in the Fall of 1952.  But even then, he was consumed by music.

TP:    By the way, did you encounter Ornette Coleman at all in Los Angeles?

AF:    Yes, Ornette came on the scene while I was still there.  We didn’t think much of him, because he would get up on the stand at a jam session, and he would play, like, licks that were associated with Charlie Parker, but he would play them in the wrong place.  He had a hair style that made us call him “Nature Boy.”  There was a tune called “Nature Boy” written by Eben Ahbez, and we called Ornette “Nature Boy.”  We really didn’t realize the contribution that he was going to make to the music — which he made a great contribution.  At that time, when he would get up on the stand, a whole lot of guys would leave the stand.

TP:    You mentioned taking the music beyond Bebop, and indeed, when you came to New York in the mid 1950′s you were associated with a lot of composers who were involved in stretching the form somewhat.

AF:    Well, when I came to New York after I’d left Lionel, and settled down here, then for some reason I got a reputation as a guy that was willing to really try to play people’s music, no matter what it was.  There were a lot of people that were not playing Bebop at that time.  Well, not a lot, but there was George Russell, Teddy Charles, for instance, and they would call me when they had a gig or something to do.  And I would give the music my best shot, and take it home, and study it.  There were some guys that just didn’t care that much about it.  So that was the start of my reputation around there.

TP:    That must have kind of a mind-bender for you, and certainly must have taken you to a lot of interesting places.

AF:    Yes.  Well, I wound up in some interesting places, like playing a concert with the New York Philharmonic of a concerto that was composed by Teo Macero, who later on wound up to be main record producer of Miles Davis.  He wrote this symphony called “Fusion” that was to be performed by a symphonic orchestra with a Jazz group.  So those were the kind of things that were happening.  We played things by creative composers who were not completely in the Jazz idiom, but were using it as best they could, at the same time using their Classical background.  This is not to say that I was a Classical player by any means, but still, it was just a matter of being the guy around town that could sort of straddle the ditch.

TP:    Now, you said that let’s say up to 1950 or so, you hadn’t had a brass teacher.  By this time had you been getting some formal tuition?

AF:    Yes, I had by then.  After I came to New York with Johnny Otis, and my deficiencies came to the front, and he wound up firing me, and I decided to stay in New York and get some professional help.  I worked around here for a couple of years as a janitor in the theaters, and at that time I studied with a teacher by the name of Maurice Grupp.  He didn’t have anything to do with Jazz at all.  But I started taking lessons with him every week, and practiced every day, and at night-time I would go to 52nd Street and listen to the guys who were doing it.  I was supposed to be on my job at 12 o’clock.  Sometimes I was late, because I was busy listening to Miles and Dizzy, etcetera.  I used to work at Radio City Music Hall and a place called the Criterion Theater, and other places like that, cleaning up, because that was the only way that I could stay here and study.

TP:    You did what a lot of artists do when they’re organizing themselves in their earlier years.

AF:    Well, sure.  You’re glad to have the opportunity to do it anyway, any way you can.  I remember some nights I would be late getting to my job because I just couldn’t leave the Street.

TP:    After leaving the Hampton band, you began working around New York with fellow band-member Gigi Gryce for several years.

AF:    Yes.

TP:    Talk about the formation of that group and its evolution.

AF:    Well, after leaving the Hampton band, I was able to get some jobs because I had recorded a tune that was subsequently named “Farmer’s Market” out in California with Wardell Gray.  Ira Gitler gave the tune its name.

TP:    What was your name for the tune?

AF:    I didn’t have a name for it!  So Ira decided to call it “Farmer’s Market,” which he did me a great favor.  So I came back here, and went over to the Prestige company, and introduced myself to Bob Weinstock, who was the owner of the company.  I said, “I’m Arthur Farmer.”  He said, “Oh yes, you’re Art Farmer.  You’re the guy who made that record with Wardell Gray.”

TP:    No wonder you’re sick of that one song!

AF:    Yes.

TP:    Gigi Gryce himself was a very ambitious composer.

AF:    Yes.  Gigi was a great composer, a great arranger, and a great saxophone player, and he’s one of the people that we lost too early.  The music has lost a lot because he wasn’t around.  He was from the generation of Quincy and myself, and his contribution was lost, other than a very few things that he did for me, and, oh, yes, he had a group with Donald Byrd, but this didn’t show his full capacity as a player or a writer.  If he had just been able to hang on a bit longer, then I think he would have had a great influence on the music.  Just like Freddie Webster; I think he would have had a great influence on the music if he had been able to hang around longer.  Some people just leave too early.
TP:    You did some wonderful recordings with George Russell.  How did your relationship with him begin?

AF:    Well, it was during a time when I was in the studio with anybody who figured that they had something unusually difficult to be played, and they would call me.  I met George at a record date with either Hal McKusick or Teddy Charles, and after that, when he decided to do his own record, well, he called me.  After that I studied with George for some time, and still he is one of the greatest factors in my playing.

TP:    Would you be a little more specific about the applicability of his ideas?

AF:    Well, it’s a matter of being able to use the harmonic form in a certain way that you always know where you are and you know how to handle yourself.  There’s no point to go into musical terms about it, because I’m not speaking to musicians at this time.

TP:    Later in the Fifties you worked with Gerry Mulligan in a group that stretched form in a lot of different ways.

AF:    Oh, yes.  That was a very important time for me, and a very important occasion.  I learned a lot working with Gerry.  Just before I worked with Gerry, I had worked with Horace Silver, and Horace is a very dominant pianist.  When you’re playing with a group that Horace is in, well, then, you have to respond to what he’s doing.  There’s no way you can ignore him! [LAUGHS] Anyway, I went from Horace’s group to Gerry’s group.  Well, we probably had a couple of weeks’ rehearsal before we went to work, and then I remember the first night that we worked was at a place in Westbury, Long Island, called the Cork and Bib.  We got up on the stand and we played, and I felt like I was up there with no clothes on.  Because I didn’t hear Horace’s piano.  I didn’t hear any piano.  I just heard this baritone saxophone and the bass violin behind me.  It was a completely different environment.  But it worked out.

TP:    Had you heard his pianoless quartet back in Los Angeles in the early Fifties?

AF:    No, I didn’t hear it there.  The first time I heard it, actually, I think I was in Philadelphia, working with Lionel Hampton, and I went to a club, and he had the quartet.  Chet had left by then, and Bobby Brookmeyer was with the group.  And it sounded comfortable, it sounded musically interesting, but it wasn’t the thing that I was really pointing towards.  It was a little bit too laid back for me at that time, and I wanted to bash.

TP:    Well, the group with Gerry Mulligan that you were in sounds less laid-back than those earlier groups.

AF:    Yes.  It sounds less laid-back, and I guess that’s what I brought into it.

[MUSIC: AF 5, "The Touch Of Your Lips" (1958), "The Very Thought Of You", AF Tentet, "Nica's Dream" (1959), "April In Paris" (1959), AF 5, "Mox Nix" (1958); AF/B. Golson, "Five Spot After Dark" (1959)]

TP:    Benny Golson had his hand in that last set quite a bit.

AF:    Yes.

TP:    Your musical lives, careers, and I guess personal lives have been intertwined now for about thirty-five, almost forty years.

AF:    Yes.  Well, Benny is one of my musical brothers, and we love each other dearly.  I don’t know where I would be without his tunes.

The first time that we met was with Lionel’s band.  Benny was there for a short time, but then he decided that he didn’t want to stay with the band.  He’s told me many times after that he was really sorry that he didn’t, because this was the band that had his good buddies Clifford Brown and Gigi Gryce and Alan Dawson, James Cleveland and people like that in it.

TP:    When that band got going, it must have been a real powerhouse.

AF:    Well, it was a musical band, when the music called for it, and when the music called for entertainment, it could do that, too.  Lionel is a great musician and he is also a great entertainer, and some people who would be unable to absorb, to appreciate the musical side of it, could appreciate the entertainment side of it.

TP:    I guess you’ve played with a lot of bands like that, and indeed, that was the situation for many musicians of your generation, to get their functional experience and make a living.  That was sort of the side of the music you had to deal with.

AF:    Yes, you had to deal with it somewhere.  But being a trumpet player, about the most entertaining thing I would say that we did, we would just march through the hall.  Actually, when we were playing at the Band-Box, which was next door to Birdland, I remember one night, Lionel marched us out in the middle of the street, and stopped the traffic, and then he was going to march us downstairs into Birdland.  Billy Eckstine was singing there.  The doorman held up his hand and wouldn’t let us go in.

TP:    What did Benny Golson sound like in the early Fifties?  Was his sound already formed at that point?

AF:    I think his sound was formed at that point.  I don’t think that he had found his own unique identity, but he was very much influenced by Don Byas, I think.  Not that he was playing the things that Don Byas played, but it was just that type of playing.

TP:    Were you aware of his writing at that time?

AF:    At that time, no.  When I first him, I was not aware of his writing at all.  The first time that I became aware of his writing was when I heard Miles Davis’ recording of “Stablemates,” which I think may have been the first one of his pieces that was recorded.

TP:    What are the distinctive aspects of his writing that suit you so, his characteristics as an arranger?

AF:    Well, the thing that really attracted me to Benny was the warmth of his ensemble writing.  That was one of the things that you could hear in the Jazztet.  With three horns you could get a certain depth that you couldn’t get with two horns.  Nobody was writing for three horns until Benny came along and started writing for the Jazztet; other than him you’d have to go all the way back to John Kirby, whose group was in existence in the late Thirties into the mid-Forties – after that it was all two horns and a lot of unison writing for two horns.

I’m just thinking of Benny now as an arranger.  As a composer, why, he was able to write melodies that sounded like melodies, didn’t sound like something that came out of an exercise book.  Benny is a master musician, a consummate artist who recognizes the value of a melody, and he can construct a melody that sings and that stays in your head once you hear it.  Tunes like “Whisper Not” or “I Remember Clifford” are real songs.  That’s just not la-de-da-da-da-dah-da-dah. These songs don’t just go in one ear and out the other.  He’s also able to construct a harmonic framework that the improviser feels very comfortable with; not that it’s always easy, but feels very comfortable with to construct their own melodies during their improvisation.

I think Benny is a very rare person to be able to do this so well.  Because we have a lot of writers, who are not bad writers, but a lot of them are weak on melody, and then when they get to the harmony, the harmony is just not compatible to improvise on.  It’s either too many chords or too little.  They might have two chords all the way through or 222 chords. [LAUGHS]

TP:    I guess a lot of his conception came from the small group writing of Tadd Dameron.

AF:    That’s right.  He would be the first one to tell you that he learned a great deal from Tadd Dameron.  I was just talking to Benny a couple of days ago, and he mentioned that he learned a great deal from Ernie Wilkins also.  Ernie used to write for Count Basie’s band.

TP:    Speakking of Tadd Dameron, I’m sure he always had the sound of Fats Navarro in his ear.

AF:    Oh yes.

TP:    And I’m sure you must be one of the major sounds that Benny Golson is hearing in his ear when he’s writing his tunes.

AF:    Yes, no doubt about it.

TP:    Prior to the Jazztet, Benny Golson had been with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and, as he tells it, had really organized the Messengers into the Messengers…

AF:    Yes.

TP:    …and sort of given them an approach that lasted for the next thirty-plus years.  Was the Jazztet kind of a conscious effort on his part to do something similar with a group of young, contemporary musicians, less drummer-oriented?  How did it come about?

AF:    Well, I never thought about it that way.  How it came about was, as you said, Benny had been playing with Art Blakey and I had been playing with Gerry Mulligan for the year prior to the organization of the Jazztet.  Then Benny decided that he wanted to do something that would have more of his imprint into it.  Mulligan was getting ready to organize the Concert Jazz Band, and at that time I didn’t feel like I wanted to be part of a big band, so I was looking for something to do.  Benny and I had been running into each other in New York at various record dates and things, either I was playing on his date or he was playing on mine.  So I was thinking about calling him and asking him if he would like to work with me, when he called me.  I said, “I was just getting ready to call you.”  So we said, “Okay, then let’s work together.”  That’s how the Jazztet came about.

Trombonist Curtis Fuller had worked with Benny for an extended engagement down at the old Five-Spot, so he was the first sideman Benny suggested, to which I said, “Fine,” because I had worked with Curtis on various record dates, and we knew each other and we got along well.

TP:    He was also a very strong acolyte of J.J. Johnson…

AF:    Right, very strong!

TP:    …and a very strong musical personality in his own right.

AF:    Yes, in his own right.

TP:    McCoy Tyner was the pianist in the first Jazztet.

AF:    Right.  Well, Benny recommended McCoy to me…

TP:    Did he know him from Philadelphia?

AF:    He knew him from Philadelphia.  In fact, working with the Jazztet was the first job that McCoy had outside of Philly.  As I said, Benny recommended McCoy, and he recommended him so strongly that…when Benny recommends someone that strong, well, you can trust that recommendation.  So I said, “Okay, let’s go with it.”  McCoy was interested, so we brought him over, and that was his introduction to the world of Jazz other than in Philadelphia.

TP:    The Jazztet was known as group that combined hard blowing with discipline, almost in the space, say, between the Messengers and the MJQ.  That may be an inaccurate way of framing it, but it’s a roundabout way of talking to you about the repertoire of the group.  Did it have any sort of a laboratory quality?

AF:    No, it didn’t have a laboratory quality, as far as I can remember now.  Benny wrote the arrangements, or whoever wrote the arrangements, we would rehearse them, and if there was something that didn’t work, we would take it out.  But that happens with any group.  What it didn’t have was, it wasn’t the type of situation where you get five or six guys together, and they play the first chorus, and then everybody plays a ten-minute solo, and then they play the first chorus again, and take it out.

TP:    Then the set’s over.

AF:    [LAUGHS] It wasn’t like that.  It was like you didn’t have all night to say what you wanted to say, because you had to make way for someone else.  We had it that way on purpose, because we didn’t want any boredom to set in, but we still wanted people to have enough time to say what they wanted to say.
TP:    Which I guess also reflects your early experience in big bands, jump bands, and so forth and so on.

AF:    Mmm-hmm.

[MUSIC: AF 4, "Kayin'" (1961); A. Farmer/O. Nelson, "Street of Dreams" (1962); AF 4, "Lullaby Of The Leaves" (1961), AF 5, "Happy Feet", AF/J. Hall, "Swing Spring" (1964), AF/S. Kuhn, "I Waited For You" (1965); AF/J. Hall, "What's New"; AF 4, "Die Salde Sin Hemmin" (1966); AF/JJ, "Shortcake", "Euro #2" (1966); AF/J. Heath, "The Shadow Of Your Smile," "Blue Bossa" (1967); AF/O. Nelson, "Raincheck" (1962); AF/Vienna..., "God Bless The Child"]
[MUSIC:  Jazztet, "Serenata" (1960); Jazztet, "Wonder Why" (1960); AF/Jazztet, "My Funny Valentine" (1961); "Django" (1961); "Rue Prevail" (1962)]

TP:    On the 1962 performance of “Rue Prevail” you played the flugelhorn, and in 1960 you were playing the trumpet.

AF:    Right.

TP:    You subsequently became identified very much with the flugelhorn.  What was happening during that time?  Because changing your sound is really the most personal thing an improviser can do.

AF:     Well, I started around that time playing the flugelhorn, but not limited to the flugelhorn.  I would play it on tunes that I felt the flugelhorn was the best horn I could play it with.  Other than that, I would play the trumpet.

TP:    When did you start working with the flugelhorn?

AF:    Oh, it must have been around 1962.

TP:    What inspired you?  You weren’t getting the sound you wanted on certain things?

AF:    Yeah, on certain things, certain times.  In certain rooms the trumpet sounded very brassy and piercing, and it just didn’t blend in the way I wanted it to do.  I remembered that I had heard some other people, like Clark Terry, for instance, playing the flugelhorn, and I had heard a recording that Miles had done playing the flugelhorn, and I felt, “well, I should give that a try.”

TP:    So how was it initially?

AF:    Oh, it was fine.  The sound was there right from the start.  But when you ask a little bit more of horn, when you want the projection that the trumpet has, well, then you come up sort of lacking, because the flugelhorn does not have that.  So most guys double, and they go back and forth between the trumpet and the flugelhorn.

TP:    Why didn’t you?

AF:    Well, I found it inconvenient.  You see, when you put one horn down, it cools off, and then you pick it up and start playing it, and it’s flat for the introduction and maybe part of the first chorus, and that sort of gets things off to a rocky start.  So I would rather just stick with one.  So I wound up sticking with the flugelhorn with the Jazztet, and then shortly after that the Jazztet broke up, I organized a quartet that had the guitarist Jim Hall in it.  Jim Hall is not a loud player, and it seemed to me that the flugelhorn was more compatible with his sound than the trumpet would be.  So I wound up playing the flugelhorn exclusively, and I guess I kept the trumpet in the case for about two or three years.

TP:    Well, what did you have to do to elicit as full a complement of sound projection from the flugelhorn as you could?

AF:    Actually, it’s not possible to fully get the projection.  You can approximate it, but you don’t really completely get to it — you just go in that direction.  Sometimes, if you go into the high register, the flugelhorn can have a tendency to sound like a squealing [LAUGHS] instead of playing.

TP:    Well, I guess if that happens with Art Farmer, he’ll make it musical somehow.  But in the last several years you’ve performed on a customized instrument that hopefully blends the attributes of both the trumpet and flugelhorn — the flumpet.

AF:    The flumpet.  I hate that name, but I’m stuck with it. [LAUGHS] That was made by a trumpet-maker named David Monette, who makes trumpets for a lot of very fine trumpet players, such as Wynton Marsalis, for instance, and the principal players for the Boston Symphony and the Chicago Symphony and the Chicago Symphony, etcetera.  I asked him to make me a trumpet, and he made it, it was very fine, and I started really working on the trumpet.  Then he got the idea that it didn’t really sound like me, but he wanted to make a flugelhorn for me — so I told him to go ahead and do it.  Then he called up one day, and he said, “Well, I made it very carefully and put every part in order, made it by hand [because everything is made by hand], but it sounds like hell, and I really don’t like it.  But I have another idea.”  So I told him to go ahead and make it.  Then a couple of months later, he called  and said, “it’s ready.”  I went to Chicago, where I was booked, and he brought it on the gig — and right from the start, it sounded like the  answer to my prayers.

TP:    How so?

AF:    Well, you could go one way or the other on it.  You could approximate the warmth of the flugelhorn or you could approximate the projection of the trumpet.  If you really wanted to put a note out there, you could do it, and if you wanted to be more intimate, you could do that also.  So it seemed like what I was looking for.

TP:    [ETC.] In the next set of music, we’ll hear some incarnations of the Jazztet’s second life, between 1983 and 1987 or so.

AF:    Some time around there.

TP:    I guess reorganizing the Jazztet was just a natural thing to think about at a certain point.

AF:    It came about because a Japanese promoter came up with the idea of getting the Jazztet back together to make a tour of Japan.  Then someone else in Europe heard about this idea, and said, “Yeah, we like that idea, so why don’t you make a tour of Europe first and then go to Japan?”  So that’s how we got it back together.  We brought Curtis back in the group, too.  Then we were able to get some dates in United States also.  I think that we kept the Jazztet going the second time for about two years.  During that time we didn’t work all the time, so I would work with my own group also, and Benny would work with his own group.

TP:    Apart from all of you being twenty years older, with that level of maturity as musicians, were there any changes in strategy, orientation or approach of the group?

AF:    Yeah, there were some changes.  We wanted the group to be more loose, where the members still had more space to be themselves without being hampered by obligations to play backgrounds and interludes and things like that.  Although that was certainly part of it, too, but we didn’t want people to feel that they were hampered by that.  We still wanted the players to feel free.  That was the only change I could think of.

[MUSIC: Jazztet "Moment To Moment" (1983), "From Dream To Dream," "Are You Real?" (1986)]

TP:    Around the time the Jazztet was reformed, you organized a tremendously creative quintet with Clifford Jordan, which first recorded in 1984. Did you first meet Clifford during your time together with Horace Silver around 1956-1957?

AF:     No, I first came in touch with Clifford Jordan around 1951 or ’52, when I was still living in California. Clifford had come out there to spend some time with some family members of his.  I met him through a personal friend of the two of us, a mutual friend. I was introduced as a trumpet player, and Clifford said, “Oh, yeah, you play the trumpet.  Well, I used to play the saxophone.” [LAUGHS] He wasn’t playing at the time.

TP:    He used to play the trumpet, too.

AF:    Yes.  He started off with the piano, actually.  Then he went to the trumpet, and then he went to the saxophone still in Chicago.

TP:    When did you first hear him play?

AF:    When I first heard him was with Max Roach, after Sonny Rollins left Max Roach.  I heard him in that context, and then he came with Horace, who I was working with at the time, and that’s the first time I played with him.

TP:    You played side by side for about a year.

AF:    Right, for about a year.

TP:    Describe Clifford Jordan’s personality.  He was a very witty and…

AF:    Well, he was very witty.  But his middle name is Laconia — and he was very laconic.  You know, there was a certain style about him, especially about what he would say.  It was like it was serious and putting you on at the same time.  You had to know Clifford to know what he was really getting at.

TP:    There must have been a lot of musical jokes on the stand as well.

AF:    Well, there were some, but we usually didn’t joke that much about music. [LAUGHS]  We might joke about the people and about the various situations that one would find oneself in.  But the music we didn’t joke too much about, unless you find yourself in deep water.

TP:    Well, as two very quick-witted improvisers, I’m sure you could find your way out of that.  What was the impetus for the Art Farmer Quintet Featuring Clifford Jordan?

AF:    I had been living in Europe, and I had been coming back and forth, working over here with quintets and quartets, mostly quartets.  I always liked the way Clifford played; I always liked the way he played very much.  I found myself in a situation where I could add another horn, and he was the first one that I thought of.  I had done quite a bit of work in the mid-Sixties with Jimmy Heath, who is another great tenor saxophonist, but Jimmy was working with the Heath Brothers.  To make a choice between Jimmy and Clifford was very hard to do.  You’d choose who was available, and be glad that one of them was available.  I was very glad that Clifford was available.

Clifford was a saxophone player that had his own personal sound, especially by that time, and there was no one better at giving you this feeling that you were listening to an individual player, that instead of listening to the tenor saxophone, you were listening to an individual person.  That’s what Clifford had that is so hard to find.  You know, you can find musicians, especially tenor saxophone players, it seems like there are so many of them that are so great as far as mastery of the horn.  And once they master the horn, they’ve mastered the whole thing.  They have ideas galore, and they play the tune inside, outside, up and down and around.  But when it comes to an individual speaking to you, Clifford does that better than anyone I know.

[MUSIC:  Art Farmer/Clifford Jordan, "Smile Of The Snake" (1988); w/ Horace "Moon Rays" (1957); AF/Cliff, "Raincheck" (1987), "The Summary" (1989), ""Prelude #1" (1984)]

TP:    I’d like to ask you about the qualities of certain writers you favor and how they fall on the horn.  This is sort of impressionistic and maybe not so easy to put into words.  But for instance, in selecting an album of Strayhorn compositions, it’s a kind of complex decision…

AF:    It is complex, because those songs were created for big bands, and then to record them with a five-piece group is not a very easy thing.  You have to try somehow to maintain the color, the harmonic color of the piece with two horns instead of twelve horns.  So you have to be careful.  Some tunes just don’t work out, so you have to find something that you can work with.  Luckily, Billy Strayhorn was such a great composer that even with the simplest line, it could happen.  But then, if you go into a tune like “Bloodcount” [Contemporary] where you want to get the color on it, then you have to be careful what you do.  Of course, we like to play ballads, so we were very careful.

This “Prelude #1″ [Soul Note] was written by the Classical composer Frederic Chopin, and there certainly was no idea that it would be recorded with a Jazz group, with a quintet.  It was arranged by the Austrian pianist that works with me, Fritz Pauer.  He’d just brought it in.  It was written just for the left hand of a pianist.  I liked it.  I liked the way it was treated.  It just worked.  Some things work and some things don’t.

TP:    Well, in the case of Thad Jones, “The Summary” [Contemporary], you were dealing with a composer who was also a great…

AF:    Oh yes.  A great trumpeter.  He was really a monster.

TP:    Talk about his writing.

AF:    Well, his writing was some of the greatest writing that has ever happened for a large group.  I haven’t heard as much of his writing for small group as I would like to.  When I first came east with Lionel Hampton’s band, that’s when I heard him with his group.  He had a group out in Detroit, he and Frank Foster and Billy Mitchell, and I think Tommy Flanagan was in the group, too, and Elvin Jones.  That was great music.

The first time I heard Thad, I was playing with Jay McShann in the late Forties, maybe ’48 or ’49, something like that.  We were in Oklahoma, either Tulsa or Oklahoma City, and we had a night off, and we were jamming one night.  In comes this guy with an Army uniform on, he was like a Lieutenant or a Warrant Officer or something like that, and he takes out his horn and starts playing it — and I said, “Who is that?”  Because he was playing like only Thad can play.

TP:    That sounds like a scene one might have thought of from Kansas City in the 1930′s.

AF:    Well, this was in the Forties, in the late Forties, maybe ’48 or ’49, something like that.  I never had heard about any Thad Jones.  I had heard about Hank Jones, but Thad Jones, well… And he really just blew anybody away.

TP:    You didn’t mention earlier that you’d played with Jay McShann.

AF:    I played with Jay McShann for a year or two.  We didn’t make any records as the Jay McShann Orchestra.  I think there was a record ban on or something.  We made some kind of record backing up a singer, called “When I’m In My Gin.” [LAUGHS]

TP:    Was he doing any of his older repertoire?

AF:    Yes, he was then, sure.  “Jumpin’ The Blues.”  You know, you can’t get away without doing “Jumpin’ The Blues” and things like that.  That was a great experience playing with McShann.  I never will forget that somebody told him, “Mister McShann, when you play those Blues, you sound just like Art Tatum,” and he said, “No, Art Tatum sounds like me, sonny.”  Because he was the master of playing the Blues on the piano.

TP:    How many pieces was that band?

AF:    Oh, maybe it was about 14-15 pieces, something like that.

TP:    Hearkening back, you were in a lot of these type situations in your apprenticeship period — Johnny Otis, McShann, Horace Henderson, Lionel Hampton.  I guess all of these experiences really accrue and become part of what happens to you as an improviser.

AF:    Certainly.  I just thank God for the opportunity of playing with Jay McShann.  I played with Benny Carter in the late Forties and early Fifties; not traveled, but just in the Los Angeles area.

TP:    Playing with Benny Carter, as well as with Horace Henderson, must have been a real learning experience, as far as playing in section and musical discipline.

AF:    Yes.  The music wasn’t easy.  I was lucky to be there.  And the more experienced sidemen that were there were very helpful.  That’s one thing about the music business, is that when people see that you’re serious about learning, well, then, they’ll bend over backwards to give you a helping hand.  That’s what keeps the music alive, I think.

TP:    Passed down from generations.

AF:    That’s correct.  That’s the best way you can learn, sitting next to someone who knows what’s happening, who’s been there, and they’ll steer you right.

TP:    Well, it certainly seems to be a principle you’ve followed in your groups.  For at least fifteen years you’ve employed top young musicians, and…

AF:     Well, it’s to my advantage.  I mean, I’m not doing anybody any favors.  People are there because they should be there.  If I can tell them something, well, fine.  But they’re there to fulfill a function.

TP:    We spoke earlier about the long process of finding a sound.  Was your style formed exclusively from trumpet players, or did you listen to other instrumentalists and try to get some of their qualities?

AF:    No, you listen to everyone, and you try to get some of their quality.  I certainly listened a whole lot to saxophone players — Johnny Hodges and Charlie Parker and Ben Webster and Lester Young — for dynamics and for phrasing, and just getting around the music.  The last thing a person should do is just listen to their own instrument, because that limits you so much.  It’s just unnecessary to put yourself in a situation where you’re dealing with that kind of limitation.  It’s like you’re just listening to half of the world, like you don’t want to…you’re just saying, “I don’t want to know anything else.”  There’s no point in that.

I listen to pianists, because I like the way pianists are able to play a line of notes, and all you hear are just the notes, nothing in between.  I would like to execute on the horn the way, say, Bud Powell would execute on the piano, for instance.  The saxophonists I listen to for the warmth of the sound.  The alto for the clarity, and the soprano saxophone for the emotion that comes through that horn so easily, comes right at you; if you listen to John Coltrane or Clifford Jordan, Jimmy Heath, and people like that, it’s right there.

I would say that the main thing about playing is listening.  You have to really concentrate on what you’re hearing, because you can easily think it’s one thing, and then it’s something else.  Sometimes when we go around and participate in classes, we’ll play something and ask somebody to play it back, and they’ll play something quite different from what was really played because they hadn’t really listened close enough.  Then I’d say, “Well, that shows you that you have to get your listening chops together, so you can be sure that you’re playing what you heard.”

Jazz is not just a matter of what’s on the paper, but it’s a matter of what you hear.  That’s how you learn.  Some guys, guys who are really well-trained, have well-trained ears, you play something one time, they got it.  They can throw it right back at you as fast as you can play it.  Then some other guys, their ears are not that well trained.  You have to take a thing and break it apart and play it note by note by note for them to get it.

TP:    Where do you stand?

AF:    I’m somewhere in the middle!

TP:    When we were chatting while the music was on earlier, you said that you wanted to talk about the individuality of some trumpet players.  So I’m going to throw some names at you, and please speak about them at whatever length you’d like.  I’ll start with Freddie Webster, who you’ve mentioned already.

AF:    Well, if Freddie had lived longer, I think he would have become just as influential as Dizzy was.  And I’m not taking nothing away from Dizzy.  Freddie was a great player in his own way of playing.  He had the sound, as Dizzy would say.  I remember one time when I first came to New York and I went to talk to Dizzy about getting a job with his band, and Dizzy said, “Well, what I’m looking for is a trumpet player with a sound like Freddie Webster.  I can do everything else myself.”  That was the main thing, the timbre of the sound and the emotional content that he was able to project.

TP:    Miles Davis admired him tremendously also.

AF:    That’s right.  Well, they were buddies.

TP:    Now, he wasn’t recorded that much.

AF:    No, he wasn’t.

TP:    In person what did he sound like?

AF:    I never got a chance to hear him in person.  I met him, but he wasn’t working at the time.  I just never got a chance to hear him.  So all I had to go by was what I heard on the record, and with the recording technique as it was then, there was no way that that sound could be embellished.  What you heard was what was there, and nothing else.  But I heard him on the live broadcasts with the Jimmie Lunceford band.  He played this tune, “Yesterdays,” and it just blew me away, as it does many people.  I heard him on some recordings with Sarah Vaughan.  The sound was there, the broadness of the sound.  No one else had a sound like that, as far as I can remember.

TP:    Did that quality of sound sort of enter your mind’s ear as something to strive for?

AF:    It certainly did.  If you want to have a broad sound, I don’t know anyone who had a sound broader than that.  And he was able to make it work for him.  He was one of a kind.  If he had been able to stay alive longer, and to make more records where he had a chance to play, I think his influence would have become very great with horn players, and all of us would have benefitted.  I think the person that benefitted the most from Freddie was Miles Davis, because he really listened closely to Freddie.

TP:    Well, let’s make Miles Davis the next trumpeter we talk about.

AF:    Well, Miles is very special, because in my opinion, he’s the first trumpet player that came along that…it’s very hard to hear Louis Armstrong in Miles’ playing.

TP:    And why is that important?

AF:    That’s important because Louis Armstrong was the well, heh-heh, where you go to for the water.  You know, he was the source.  And if somebody could come along and say as much as Miles said, and you couldn’t hear Louis Armstrong in it, that was really a miracle to me.  I’m certainly not putting down Louis Armstrong.  As I said, I haven’t heard anything greater than Louis Armstrong, nothing as far as an individual instrument.  The emotion that he could get out of that horn, there’s nothing around like that.

TP:    You first met Miles around 1946 when he came out to California with Benny Carter.  Did you maintain a pretty good relationship with him in New York?

AF:    Well, we didn’t hang out, but I would run into him sometimes.  I used to see him, like, on the Street (when I say the Street, I mean 52nd St), and then sometimes just run into him, you know, uptown or downtown.  We were always friendly.  He never had this attitude that he’s famous for, or that people always attribute to him as being hard to talk to.  That’s not the Miles that I know.

TP:    I gather that he had quite a bit of respect for your playing, and Thad Jones as well.

AF:    Yes, I guess so.  He was always very approachable and helpful.  I can’t think of any negative thing that ever happened with Miles.

But I’d like to break into this conversation and say that one of the greatest trumpet players, who was virtually ignored during his life, was Kenny Dorham.  He was playing at a time when there was a lot of traffic out there, you know.

TP:    Talk about a distinctive sound, I’ve never heard anybody with a sound quality quite like his.

AF:    No, it was personal.  A personal sound.  It didn’t  sound like he was copying anyone.  He just had his own sound, and that was it.  It wasn’t a big, broad sound.  It wasn’t the kind of sound that I was trying to get.  But it was a unique sound, and he could use it very well.  He always sounded very hip, the way he could phrase and the inflections that he could put on a note which identified him right away.

TP:    I’m going to ask you now about the three sort of major voices of the period you came up in — in no particular order: Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie, and then subsequently, Clifford Brown.

AF:    Well, you could hear Fats.  Fats had a big, fat sound.  No pun intended, but he had a great sound.  He was a master trumpet player, and he sounded like he could do anything he wanted to do on the trumpet with ease.  But still, without Dizzy, there would have been no Fats Navarro as we know him.  No way.  He was very strong on harmony, but the way he used harmony, you could hear where it came from.  So I’m saying that the credit has to go to Dizzy, because that was the main influence of a great trumpet player.

TP:    Indeed, Dizzy Gillespie’s harmonic and rhythmic innovations are the fount for a lot of things still happening today in Jazz.

AF:    Still.

TP:    I’d like you to talk about your early impressions of him.  Now, you heard the band that came out to Billy Berg’s in 1945 as a 17-year-old.

AF:    Yes, I saw Diz and Bird.  But I have to say this.  One night I was playing in a place in Paris, and a lady who used to book some dates for me, said, “Dizzy is coming down tonight.”  So I’m thinking, “Well, I’m going to play something that doesn’t have anything to do with Dizzy at all.  I played and I played and I played, and it seemed like everything I played I could trace right back to Dizzy!  It was very frustrating.  I wanted to play something unique.   But I could see my sources then for sure.  Like, if you just play and don’t think about where this comes from and where that comes from, you might start thinking that you’re doing something original.  But that’s very rare.

TP:    Were you familiar with the early Charlie Parker-Dizzy Gillespie records when they came out to the West Coast?

AF:    Yes.  You see, when I was still living in Arizona, before I came to the West Coast, the first time I heard people playing that way was on some of the Billy Eckstine records.  Dizzy took a solo on one thing, and Dexter and Gene Ammons took a solo on something else.  Then when my brother and I moved to Los Angeles, some kids our age played these quintet records that Dizzy and Bird made, and that turned everything over for me.  Because I was hearing intervals and notes that I never had heard anyone else play before.  Dizzy was in another universe as far as picking notes to play.  In the quintet, the solos had more time to play than in the big band, so I could really hear what was going on.  It just grabbed me.  And I’m still where I was then.

TP:    Well, not quite, I wouldn’t think.

AF:    [LAUGHS]

Q:    I’m sure you hadn’t heard anybody play at that velocity.

AF:    No.  But I had heard a lot of the Jazz greats, like Roy Eldridge.  I had heard Johnny Hodges and the wonderful trumpet players with Duke Ellington’s band, and Buck Clayton and people like that.  The Ellington trumpet players were the ones that really got me, because they all sounded different.  Everyone there sounded different.

TP:    Of course, Ellington put them in situations where their individuality could be most fully exploited.

AF:    Yes, absolutely.  But Dizzy got all the kids.  Because the kids, when you grab a trumpet, the first thing you want to do is play up high, and see who can play the highest.   But Dizzy could play up high, and play something, too.  He wasn’t just screeching out a note, the way you hear some people do it, trying to see how high they can play.  But he was playing melodic ideas, with the swing and the clarity; his attack and intonation, everything was there.  He was really a harmonic pioneer for a horn player.  There had been pianists who were playing great notes, like Art Tatum, but Dizzy was the first one I heard that really was playing notes like that on a horn, and that, as I said, before, turned me upside-down.  So he had us all right from the very start.

Going back to Miles again, you have to give him credit.  When I first heard him, he was under the influence of Dizzy, but then he found his own way, and it was quite different.  Somehow he had managed to put it together and really talk to people through what he played on the horn — you know, get to the heart.

TP:    You spoke earlier about Clifford Brown, who you sat next to in Lionel Hampton’s trumpet section for a year, which I’m sure was a simultaneously enlightening and probably somewhat humbling experience as well.

AF:    [LAUGHS] Yes, it was.  Lionel liked to have battles, tenor battles or trumpet battles, whatever.  When Brownie came in the band, I had already been there for maybe about a year, and I was taking almost all the solos.  So then Brownie comes in the band, and Lionel, instead of taking some solos away from me and giving them to Brownie, he just opened up the arrangement, so I would go up first, and then Brownie would come out and play after me, or vice-versa.  But any time I went out first, I would figure, “Well, this guy is breathing down ny neck, and I’d better play the best I can play, otherwise he’s just going to wipe me away.”  We had the same influence.  We both loved Fats Navarro very much.  But he was much more developed than I was, and he could really take care of himself on the horn.

I learned a lot being there, and being able to listen to him every night.  There’s no words to describe how great he was, playing that horn consistently.  He could do everything.  He had technique and harmonic knowledge, a big fat sound.  He was able to articulate on the horn no matter what the tempo.  Even with all these great things, he had a great feeling, and he played musically.  He’s not a guy who was just running notes just to be running notes.  He’d put together a string of notes just like a string of pearls.  Each one matched the other in the string.  He could play ideas.  He could play with humor — which is very rare.  It’s very rare to find someone who can play with humor and still be playing musically, but he could do this.  He could play ballads.  He’d play race-horse tempos.  I don’t know anything that he couldn’t do.  He really had it together.  He sounded like he had been playing a hundred years.

TP:    Old soul with young chops.

AF:    Yes.

TP:    I’d like to now ask you about some of the trumpeters from the generation that followed you.  My mind makes the leap from Clifford Brown right to Booker Little.  Were you at all close to him?

AF:    No, I wasn’t close to Booker.  Of course, we knew each other, and I heard him play.  He sounded like he spent 23 out of 24 hours on the horn.  He really died too soon.  He had gotten the technique on the horn, and these records that he and Eric Dolphy made, the live records down at the Five Spot, were very good and very interesting, but I think that if he had lived longer…

TP:    They were the beginnings.

AF:    Yes, they were at the beginning as far as Booker Little was concerned.

TP:    Well, two trumpeters who were born in the same year as Booker Little who went on to make huge impacts were Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan, who were also deeply influenced by Clifford Brown and Dizzy Gillespie.

AF:    Mmm-hmm.

TP:    Were you paying as much attention to the younger trumpeters…

AF:    Oh, certainly.  I was paying a lot of attention to Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan.  I used to hear Lee every night, because he was playing with Dizzy’s big band at Birdland, and I was playing with Lester Young’s Quintet there opposite Dizzy.  So I listened to Lee every night.  And I know Lee was a master on the trumpet.

You know, the trumpet is an instrument that really makes people suffer.  It makes the listener suffer sometimes!  It makes the player suffer almost all the time!  — you know, to master that thing.  The trumpet is the Master, and it makes you suffer to get to the point where you can do anything with it at all.  And you hear someone like Lee Morgan come along, who is really a kid, and he plays it with nonchalance, and he plays it, “Oh, well, it’s just a trumpet.”  That’s the attitude that comes out when you hear him playing all these things, things that I would never dream of being able to do.  He was just playing with such ease.  He’d take the mouthpiece out and play the horn just with the leader part.  It seemed like he could do anything with the horn.

TP:    It seems like trumpet players are sort of divided between ones for whom the technique of the instrument isn’t really a problem and ones who create their style out of their limitations.

AF:    Yes, that’s right.  Some people have some sort of a gift for playing this horn, and Lee was one of them for sure.  Then Freddie Hubbard came along, and he sort of upset the whole thing, because he was so great, with such strong emotion and such power.  He had a certain fierceness in his playing which was kind of rare at that time, because people were under the influence of Miles.  Freddie was completely different.  He was unique in that respect.  He was like…the first word that comes to my mind is, I would say “gladiator.”  When he took that horn out, it was like somebody had taken out one of these chains with a big metal ball on the end with spikes and stuff that he’s gonna knock anybody down that got in his way!  Don’t mess with Freddie!  Because Freddie could do it all, too, but he had a certain masculinity in his playing that was like he’s the greatest one around here, and if you don’t believe it, he’ll show you.

TP:    Were you friends with or close to Woody Shaw?
AF:    I wasn’t really close to Woody, but we were certainly friends, because all trumpet players are friendly competitors.

TP:    Well, he took the trumpet into a somewhat different direction than Freddie Hubbard.

AF:    Oh yes, he certainly did.  He was another one that went another way, like Miles went another way.  Everybody does.  But he was successful.  He brought something into the trumpet that wasn’t there before, as far as the way he constructed his lines.  There was no one that was any place near him with the trumpet, and you would have to go to John Coltrane to find anyone who was able to deal with pieces harmonically the way Woody Shaw was — and Woody Shaw died, and there’s no one doing that now.  It seemed like it was just impossible.

It’s so difficult to play that way.  You know, the way I play is completely different from Woody Shaw.  I’m looking for pretty notes, to put together some notes and get a pretty phrase.  But Woody never played that way.  That was not what he was about.  He was looking for something that was really interesting to the ear, something that your ear had never heard before.  That’s what you would get from Woody Shaw.  You got that from Woody Shaw more than anybody else, including Lee Morgan or Freddie or Kenny Dorham or anybody you want to name.  Nobody could put together a string of notes like Woody Shaw, and he did it over and over and over again, consistently.  He was a miracle.

TP:    Who among the younger trumpet players who have emerged in the 1980′s has caught your ear, and why?

AF:    Well, everyone I hear catches my ear.  I haven’t had the chance to hear as many as I would like to hear.  The last one I heard was the trumpet player Roy Hargrove.  He’s a great Jazz player.  Then the trumpet player that was the stand-in for Miles at Montreux, Wallace Roney.  I heard him a couple of years ago on a tour, and he certainly caught my ear.  What he is able to do, what the young guys, in general, are able to do, to me it’s miraculous.  The things they play are so difficult, and they’re in such control of the horn.  Like I said, Brownie sounded like he had been playing a hundred years.  Well, these guys, they sound like that, too.  The stakes have risen.

TP:    All that literature, of course, is available to them, and many have had the tuition to be able to learn how the masters did it.

AF:    Yes.  Well, the educational possibilities are certainly much better now than they were fifty years ago.  But it’s more than that in the game.  Because if it was just a matter of education being more available, then you would have a hundred times the players that you have now.  So these guys, I have to say that they have done a heck of a lot of work to be able to do what they do.  I can’t name all of them, but I haven’t heard one yet that couldn’t play.  I haven’t heard a single one that sounded to me like I would say, “Why don’t you go home and get in the shed.”  They just don’t sound that way.  They sound like all they have to do is live a little longer, live life, and transfer that into the music.

[MUSIC:  Art Farmer/Jim Hall "I Want To Be Happy" (1964), "Embraceable You" (1962); 'Big Blues" (1978)]

TP:    On the face of it, Mr. Farmer, it would seem that you and Jim Hall would be a perfect front-line match in your sensibilities and the way you think about music.

AF:    [LAUGHS] Oh, that’s funny.  The crux of the whole thing is that Jim can make anything sound good.  Anything I would play, he is so quick to do something with it.  If I played a wrong note, which I certainly easily would do, he could make it sound right.  And there are few people who can do that or even would take the trouble to do it.  Jim is just a beautiful player.  Always has been.

TP:    I guess he came to you after working with Sonny Rollins for a few years.

AF:    That’s where the idea of this group came from.  Sonny had taken a vacation for a year or so, and then he organized a quartet with Jim Hall, Walter Perkins and Bob Cranshaw, I think.  Jim and Sonny sounded so beautiful in this setting and so loose, that…

TP:    You stole him?

AF:    No, not quite.  Sonny decided to make a change in his style of playing, and he got Don Cherry in the group and Jim came out.  So I asked Jim if he would like to do some dates with me.  But the whole inspiration of it was from what Jim and Sonny did.  They were reacting to each other in such a spontaneous but musical way.

TP:    I would imagine that not having a piano would have had an impact on your approach to your solos..

AF:    Well, it gives you more freedom.  But I had gotten used to that working with Gerry Mulligan.  That’s the first time I had worked in that type of a context.  You have to get used to it.  As I said before, the first time I played on a job with Gerry Mulligan, I felt like one of those nightmares where you find yourself walking down the street with no clothes on.  I was bared.  There was nothing there to hide behind.  You had to do something that made sense without this harmonic background behind you, which can be a great help.  If you have someone playing harmony behind you, playing a group of notes, well, then, that’s going to enhance what you do, and give it a sense of direction and meaning.  But if you’re just playing one note and the bass player behind you is playing one note, well, then, it’s hard to relate what a person plays on top, because there’s not enough there to relate to.  So you get help out of someone playing a chord instrument like a guitar or a piano.  When you go out there by yourself, you have to make sense by yourself.

TP:    I would imagine that this was the first time you led the same group for a sustained period of time.

AF:    Yes.

TP:    Comment on how that impacts the music, however it does.

AF:    Well, it should impact the music, but I don’t remember it impacting the music when we played.  We just got up and played whatever we wanted to play.  That’s all I can think of.  Sometimes I might ask Jim what he felt like playing, but usually I would call the tunes, and the way I called the tunes was based upon what I feel I can do best at that time.  Trumpet players have to consider the physical part of playing more than other people do.  You have to play something that you feel you can get through without too many blooies.  If you overdo it on one tune, then you have to back off a little bit on the next tune.

TP:    Is that the case now, too?

AF:    It’s always the case.

TP:    How do you work it?  Do you have a book of maybe 30-40 tunes that everybody’s familiar with, and then you select from it?

AF:    Yes, that’s right.  I have a book that has maybe around a hundred tunes in it, but at any given time I would probably be using about 30 of those.  You can’t play the same tune all the time, week-in and week-out.  You have to give these tunes a rest.  Sometimes you give them a rest and never come back to them.

TP:    So within that book of a hundred, you might be adding ten to that and dropping ten…

AF:    Yes, right.

TP:    …and within like two to three year cycles, say.

AF:    Yes, I always bring in some new tunes from time to time.  That sort of keeps you awake.  If you play the stuff that you know all the time, you can get bored on the job.

TP:    Your groups perform an extremely venturesome and challenging repertoire.  How do you go about selecting tunes?

AF:    Well, usually guys in the group just bring the tunes in, and I run them down.  If it seems interesting to me, if it seems like it’s worth working on to perfect my playing in it, then I would say, “Yeah, okay, let’s do it.  Let’s go for it.”  Then I’d take it home and go in the woodshed with it, and stay there until I feel able to play it in public.

TP:    It seems that the challenge of performing very difficult music in some ways is what keeps you fresh.

AF:    Yes, certainly it does.  Because you have to keep learning.  If you play things that don’t give you any challenge… It’s hard to learn anything on these standard tunes.  But some of these tunes like on this disk that  you’re getting ready to play now, you have to be on your toes.  Of course, like I said, I would listen to the tune, and if I could hear myself in it and thought that eventually I would be able to play it, well, then, we would start working on it.  That would go for the other guys as well.  But you don’t want to spend your lifetime on one tune.  It has to show some reward somewhere, I guess you’d say light at the end of the tunnel or something like that somewhere.  You don’t want to just work on a tune forever and ever.  But  sometimes it winds up that way.  I’m working on a tune now, and we’re playing the tune in public sometimes; I’ve been working on this same tune for about four or five years.  I still haven’t got it where I want it to be.  But I’m going to hang in there.

TP:    Although you haven’t written many compositions, what’s there is choice.  Talk about your attitude towards writing.

AF:    Well, first of all, you have to like the tune, and then, you have to figure out that you can learn it well enough that you can play it and bring something to it.

As far as writing tunes was concerned, well, I never have had reason to consider myself a composer.  A tune might come to me sometime, but if I don’t get it from beginning to the end in a short period of time, that means I never will get it.  So I just leave it for the scrap that it was, and that’s it, and go on to something else.  I am really not a composer, and there are enough good composers around and enough good tunes around that I don’t feel obliged that I have to rely upon myself.  Some guys only play their own tunes, and usually no one else plays their tunes but them, and the only reason why they’re playing the tunes is because they wrote them — you know, it’s some sort of ego or royalty trip for them.  But that’s not the way I think about music or business.  So I just can’t do it.

TP:    I would imagine that preparing for records is a way of bringing in new material as well.

AF:    That’s right.  But a lot of times I find myself playing tunes on the record, and I never play them again.  But then sometimes it works out the other way.  But in order to make a record on a tune that you come anywhere near doing something you like, I have to do it so many times, that sometimes I never want to hear it again.

TP:    I hope that’s not the case with the tracks we’re playing on this show.  Though I gather from the liner notes that you did something like 47 takes on the version of “Embraceable You” that we heard…

AF:    [LOUD LAUGH]

TP:    …(I’m joking) before you found one that you were happy with.

AF:    I was laughing, because I remember one time I was on a date that Benny had written and arranged.  It was called Brass Shout.  Philly Joe Jones was the drummer.  Now, I didn’t know that this was supposed to be my date.  I just called up Benny from the airport.  I was working with Mulligan, and had some time to kill.  He said, “Where are you?”  I said, “I’m at the airport.”  He said, “You’re supposed to be in the studio today.”  I said, “What?”  Then he explained that we are recording today, what became an album called Brass Shout.  Lee Morgan was on the album, and a lot of great players, just brass players and rhythm.  During the course of the date somebody said, “Well, you know this is your album.  You know that.”  I said, “No, I didn’t know that at all.”

We played a ballad, “April In Paris,” and we made we the first take, and I said, “I’d like to do it again.”  Philly Joe says, “No, that’s good enough, that’s good enough.  You don’t have to do it again.”  I said, “Man, I want to do it again.”  He says, “Well, so what, you want to do it again.  It’s good enough.  It’s good enough.  You don’t have to do it no more.”  I said, “Well, look, man, it’s my date, and I want to do it again.”  He said, “What?  It’s your date?  If I had known it was your date, I wouldn’t be here.”  I said, “You’re right.  If I had known it was my date, you wouldn’t be here either.”  We just looked at each other and laughed.  Of course, we did it again, though.

TP:    I’d guess the nakedness of the lone improviser is most evident in a quartet date.

AF:    It is.

TP:    And because of the chops thing for a trumpeter, a quartet date (apart from trios) must be a tremendous challenge.

AF:    Yes, it’s a challenge.  Because you’ve tried to keep from doing something that you would cringe when you had to go to a Jazz show on the radio and listen to it, and feel like just sneaking out the door, if you have too many blooies on the thing.  So you have to be careful.

TP:    The next set will focus on Art Farmer as featured soloist, and then we’ll return for more conversation.  This track comes from the release that you said was your favorite record, done for Argo, entitled, simply, Art.

AF:    Right.

TP:    What is it that makes a date be able to go well?  I guess one thing is that Tommy Flanagan is the piano player.

AF:    Yeah, that’s one of the most important things.  He made such beautiful intros.  He set you up so wonderful that when you started to play, you just had to follow him.  So that made it happen.

But it was just one of those things where everything fell in line.  It was very simple.  What I did was, I went to the music store and bought some sheet music.  Take a song like “Younger Than Springtime,” I would buy one copy for me, one copy for the bassist and a copy for Flanagan, then I would transpose my part and go in the studio and do it.  We had no rehearsal.  Just put the sheet music on the stand, and go ahead and play it.  But the feeing was so good because the rhythm section was so nice, with Tommy Flanagan and a great bassist who doesn’t live any more by the name of Tommy Williams, who was a remarkable player.

TP:    He was with the Jazztet.

AF:    Yes, he was with the Jazztet at this time.  And Tootie Heath on the drums.  But Tommy Williams played great on this record.  After playing with the Jazztet, he went to work with Stan Getz, and worked with him a couple of years, then  he got out of the business.
TP:    This one has seven standards, music by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Gershwin, Irving Berlin.  In your style, in improvising, do singers have an impact?  I know you worked with Lester Young, who was a big advocate of knowing the lyrics for all the material.

AF:    Right.  Yes, they certainly have an influence on me.  Certainly.  Not as much as I would like to, because the ones that I love, like Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae, are just thousands of light years away from me in what they were able to do with a tune.  They could really bring a tune to life, and that’s what I try to do.

The first thing you have to do is get a good tune.  And the guys who wrote these tunes were songsmiths.  They really knew what they were doing.  They could write a song, and the words meant something.  Not just “Oh, I love you, baby, and I’m feeling so blue.”  They’d say more than that.  The songs were fun to play.  I had worked with Lester Young, and I heard the way that he would treat a song, and I tried to do some of that, too, have it loose and free, put yourself in it.  You have to believe in the song.

[MUSIC:  AF4/Flanagan, "Younger Than Springtime" (1961), AF/Cedar, "Brownskin Girl In The Calico Gown" (1975), AF/Hank Jones, "Nita" (1958), AF/O. Nelson Orch, "Fly Me To The Moon (1962), AF/Hamp Hawes, "I Can't Get Started" (1976), AF/Flanagan, "That Old Devil Called Love" (1961)]

TP:    One thing that set brought out was the presence of so many the great piano players, the great solos, and the relationship between you, the soloist and the pianist.

AF:    These guys play so good, they could just fall out of bed and play that way.  All of them are just fantastic, and you couldn’t find anyone better than them to play with.  Tommy Flanagan, Hank Jones, Hampton Hawes.  Hampton and I, we grew up together out in California, and we used to go over to his father’s church and try to figure out what was happening.  But he certainly figured it out very well.

TP:    There are some very early recordings with Wardell Gray in the early Fifties, not only the original “Farmer’s Market,” but also a recording on Xanadu that captures you at some length in a club.

AF:    Oh yeah, that was unknown.  We didn’t even know that had been recorded, and I wish it hadn’t been, but you have to live with those things.  But Hampton certainly found his way at a very early age, and he was the king out there of the pianists.  Like what I said about Jim Hall earlier, Hampton was able to make anything the soloist did sound better than it would sound without him.  That’s the way these guys are.  You couldn’t find anybody better to play with than Tommy Flanagan, Hank Jones and Hampton Hawes.  They’re just great, you know.  The solos, comping, introductions… Like I said about Flanagan, when they play an intro, all you had to do was just follow them.  It’s like they’re saying, “Here’s the way; just follow me.  Everything is going to be all right.”  They set it up so well.  You couldn’t get any better introduction with a 60-piece orchestra than you can get from a good rhythm section.

TP:    Speaking of which, it seems you’ve always worked with extremely dynamic drummers.  In the last set we heard Billy Higgins, Roy Haynes, Tootie Heath.  Talk a little bit about what you’re looking for in the drummer when you’re playing over an ensemble.

AF:    Well, I’m looking for a drummer to give me some help.  I remember one day I was talking to Miles, we ran into each other on the street, and we were just talking, and he said, “Yeah, you and I, we need strong drummers.”  It’s true, to really put some fire underneath the line.

TP:    And you can sort of float on top of it, feint in and out…

AF:    Mmm-hmm.  The drummers keep it going.  And that’s very, very important.  I like to have drummers that bring some fire to the thing, because then I can lay back and sort of come in a little bit after them.  I don’t have to worry about keeping the thing alive.  You can’t lay back too much, but it gives you some room.  And if you lay back too much, you’re making the work too hard for the drummer.

TP:    I guess Lester Young, your former employer, was one of  the great masters at doing that.

AF:    Yes, he certainly was.

TP:    It sounds like your time with Lester Young was very valuable for you.

AF:    Oh, it was.  It really was.  We never had a rehearsal.  He just called up and said what time the gig started.  He had a contract with Birdland where he would do a certain amount of weeks each year, and he wanted to have another horn on the stand other than just him, because the nights were very long — we used to do either five or six sets a night.

TP:    35-minute sets?
AF:    Well, sometimes it was 35, sometimes 50, sometimes an hour.  It varied, so everybody wound up doing the same amount of time.  But the last set finished at 4 o’clock.  So it was a long night.  If you were playing with just one horn, the night gets longer.  Lester would say that you hire people that play, and if they can play, well, that’s what you hired them for.  If you’re not going to let them play, you shouldn’t have them there.  You should have someone else.

TP:    In all those combos he used trumpet players, like Jesse Drakes, Shorts MacConnell.

AF:    Unless he went out on the road, and then it was just a rhythm section.  But anyway, it was a great experience, because there was no rehearsal, and very little ensemble play.  He would usually play the melody, unless you were playing something like “Lester Leaps In,” which is just a riff, really, where everybody would play at the same time.  But when he’s playing the melody on the first chorus, well, then it was my chance to listen to how melody should and could be played.  So I look to keep that forever.  Then when the time came for his solo, he wouldn’t… You had to come to him to hear him play, to hear what he was doing.  He wasn’t going to get into some sort of honk-and-scream tenor thing.  He could do his own way of honking, which he used to do with Basie’s band, but in the context of a small group, he was usually pretty laid-back and cool, unless he took some breaks on “Lester Leaps In” or something like that.  But he showed how to get intensity without what we used to  call flag-waving.

TP:    I remember in the famous late interview with him, he was talking about getting the horn some days to sound like a baritone, a clarinet, and that he’d try to evoke a wide range of color and dynamics out of his horn.

AF:    Yes, right.  He would play low on the horn and play up high on the horn sometimes, too.  I know a strange thing, when he would come to work, he would take that horn out of the case and he would play so soft that you couldn’t hardly hear it.  That’s the way he would warm up.  It was like he was coaxing a sound out of the horn, like he was saying, “Come on, now, you know you can do it.”

People thought that he was weird and strange, but he wasn’t weird, he was just individual.  He had such a great sense of humor.  He would walk sideways on the stage.  He was really a character.  One night I was playing, and he sensed that I was getting ready to stop playing, and he sidled over to me and whispered in my ear, and he said, “I wouldn’t stop now, Prez.”  I never will forget that, because he called everybody “Prez”.

TP:    Did he nickname you?

AF:    No.  I think he called me Lady Farmer.  He called everybody either “Prez” or “Lady.”

TP:    The next set of music we’ll hear brings out an aspect of Art Farmer’s musical experience over the last twenty-five years, which are recordings made in Europe.  You’ve been in residence in Vienna for quite some time now.  So I guess the first question is what led you Europe, to Vienna, and then I’ll ask you about certain aspects of your musical experiences there.

AF:    Well, I went there to participate in a Jazz competition as one of the judges, along with J.J. Johnson, Cannonball Adderley, Ron Carter, Mel Lewis and Joe Zawinul.  This whole thing took about three weeks, and while I was there got to meet some of the local musicians.  There were some very good players there, and they told me that the radio was in the process of organizing a Jazz band — and they asked me if I would like to become a member of it.  The conditions were very lenient, because I would only have to work about ten days a month, and I would be free to do what I wanted to do the other time.  So that sounded too good to turn down, because I found myself spending more and more time in Europe, and I just thought, well, maybe I should get away for a couple of years, because things were at a certain state here…

TP:    How so?  This was the mid-1960′s.

AF:    Yes.

TP:    Talk about that a bit.

AF:    Well, the places where I could play were usually in what is called the ghetto area of the town.  There was a lot of civil strife going on, and a lot of fires and riots and things, and people were scared to go out at night — they didn’t know what was going to happen.  This was at the time when Rock really took over, the Beatles and everything like that took over the popularity that should be spread among all kinds of music.  So Jazz was way down on the totem pole.  Not too many were going out, and they were afraid of whether or not they were going to be able to get home.  All kinds of things were happening.

So I thought it would make sense to get away from here, and get some place where I could think more about the music than be forced to think about other things that didn’t have anything to do with the music at all.  So I took them up on it.

TP:    What was the climate like in Europe in the mid to late 1960′s?  Now, you certainly weren’t the only prominent American improviser to take up residence in Europe.

AF:    Yeah, there were a lot of guys over there — Dexter Gordon, Kenny Clarke, Ben Webster.  Even going back to the New Orleans days, Albert Nicholas was living there, and I got to hear him play; I never heard him play here, but I got to hear him play there.  Don Byas.  I’m going around playing on concerts with people like that, who I wouldn’t come in contact with here.  It was educational from that point of view.  So I really enjoyed being over there.

TP:    One thing that’s almost a commonplace about Europe is that the rhythm sections there weren’t quite up to par vis-a-vis American rhythm sections.  Was that true?

AF:    Well, it was true in many cases, but it wasn’t true all the time.  Even going back to the Sixties, there were some players who could really take care of the job.

TP:    In Vienna were there…?

AF:    In Vienna there were some who were close enough that you didn’t feel like walking off, certainly.  Everybody wasn’t straight here either, you know.

TP:    Well, the group you currently work with in Europe is very strong, as New Yorkers were able to hear at a recent engagement at Sweet Basil.  I guess Fritz Pauer is the one you go back the farthest with.

AF:    Yes, Fritz was the first one that I met.  I was invited over to participate in a jazz competition which was organized by Friedrich Gulda, and Fritz was one of the competitors — actually he won First.  Since he lived in Vienna, I got to know Fritz quite well.  We’ve worked together many times throughout the year, and I have played and recorded a lot of his songs, because in my opinion, he is a great Jazz composer.  His songs are really in the idiom.  They really sound like Jazz songs.  It doesn’t sound like Third Stream or semi-Classic or half-Jazz or Crossover or anything like that.  It’s just Jazz, and it’s fun to play it, and I learn a lot from playing it.  That’s most important to me.

TP:    Harry Sokal is the saxophone player.

AF:    Well, Harry was introduced to me by Fritz, and the other players I think Harry introduced to me.  The bassist is actually not from Europe; he was born in South America, but he lives in Germany now — Paolo Cardoso.  The drummer, Mario Gonzo(?), is Austrian-born.  His father was a bass player.  Gonzo is one of the most outstanding drummers in Europe, as far as I know, and I would be happy to have him playing with me any place that I can get him.  We’ve played together quite a bit over in Europe.  As you know, this is the first time that we’ve been able to come over here.  Our trip was sponsored by the Austrian Cultural Institution.  I guess they felt that it would be nice for it to be known that Jazz was also honored and respected in Austria, although Austria is one of the strongest homes of Classical European Music.  But there is a large audience for Jazz there also, and I guess they thought that the other places should know that there is something happen over there.  So I’m glad that it was made possible for me to bring the group over here.  That’s certainly not to say that the groups that I play with here are not great in their own right.  But just to have a little bit of difference, there’s no harm in that.

TP:    It seems like Jazz had a special meaning to people who lived through the Second World War.  Jazz had a certain political meaning to Europeans, it’s been written about by a number of people.  Can you comment on that?

AF:    Well, it seemed like the idea of Jazz would be more freedom, you know, where a person is able to do what they want to do, but they’re still thinking, as opposed to over here, where the idea of Jazz that we’ve had to fight for a long time was that Jazz was just an entertainment music, and you really don’t have to listen to it.  That’s the American idea, that as long as you’re paying your money to get in, you don’t have to listen to it.  You can talk and holler and scream, shout at each other, and bang your glasses on the table, whatever.  You’re there to have a good time, and you’re paying for it, so nobody better not say anything about “be quiet!”

TP:    That’s not so much the case in the European clubs?

AF:    No, it’s not the case.  It might be the case in some club where someone is playing music that induces that type of behavior.  But I can’t say that it’s the case in the places where I play.  You can’t hear a pin drop when you’re getting ready to solo!

TP:    Do you think it’s a better educated audience?

AF:    I think it must be, because they are really very attentive.  Which makes a lot of sense.  It’s crazy to think that people go into a club where you have a fifteen dollar music charge, and drinks are eight and nine and ten dollars a piece, and you have to have two drinks each set.  If you have a date with you, you’re getting into some real money.  Now, you’re going to sit there, and you’re paying for something that you’re not even listening to.  And other people sitting next to you are hollering and screaming, and it’s just like if you go in restaurant and order a nice meal, and then somebody comes along and spits in your food.

TP:    Now, I assume you’ve experienced rowdy crowds from your apprenticeship days.

AF:    No.  But some music encourages that kind of thing.  Some people feel that if there’s not a lot of noise going on, they’re not having a good time.  That’s the style of  restaurants.  They make the noise part of the ambiance.  If it’s too quiet, people say, “Oh, this is a dead place, let’s go some place else.

TP:    Vienna has been a fount of European musical culture over several hundred years, and its musical history is legend.  How much has that tradition seeped its way into your aesthetic, your outlook on music?

AF:    Oh, not much, because I already had that before I got there.  That’s the way I felt about music.  Music has always been a very serious part of my life, as far as I can remember.  I didn’t have to go to Vienna for that.  But it was certainly nice to go to a place where people like and respect music as much as they do.  That doesn’t mean everyone does, but the people you see at the concerts certainly give you that idea.

TP:    It seems that since you’ve been there, and this apparently is partly the responsibility of your pianist, Fritz Pauer, a couple of generations of very talented young Jazz musicians have emerged in Vienna and Austria.

AF:    Oh, yes.  There are some.  There are some that are really doing it, and I’m sure that there will be more, because people do take the music seriously, and they know that if you really want to do something, you have to put your energy into it.  It’s just not going to happen by itself.  You just can’t talk about it but you have to do it.

TP:    [ETC.]

AF:    Thank you very much.  It’s been my pleasure, otherwise I wouldn’t have stayed here so long.  And I never sit down and listen to four hours of my records.  It’s the first time in my life.

TP:    How has it been?

AF:    It hasn’t been too bad.

TP:    One or two things you cracked a smile on.

AF:    A couple of winces there, but that’s about it.

[MUSIC: A. Farmer/S. Shihab/K. Drew/Thigpen, "Passport" (1981), AF/J. Heath, "Cocodrillo" (1970), AF/F. Pauer (duo), "Azure" (1987), AF/R. Mitchell, "A Bitty Ditty" (1974), A. Farmer/T.Harrell, "Santana" (1992), AF/Cliff, "Blame It On My Youth" (1988)]

* * *

Art Farmer (WKCR, 8-10-94):

Q:    A few words about the present, the new CD at hand, and the group that you’re performing with.  The two-trumpet concept, particularly one dealing with an improviser as lyrical and creative as Tom Harrell, who reminds a number of people of you, I think, in his approach to improvising.
AF:    Well, the first time I did an album with another trumpet player was during the time I was playing with Lionel Hampton, and Clifford Brown was in the band, and we did some  recording over in Sweden and some recording in Paris, and then later on in New York two trumpets with Donald Byrd, and then a little later on with three trumpets, with Idrees added.  It  seemed to be always something that wakes you up, when you listen to another trumpet player and you want to clearly define your own voice.  You want to sound like yourself, so people can tell the difference, certainly.  And I think one of the greatest records of all time that I have heard, and I never stop enjoying it, is “Double Talk” with Fats Navarro and Howard McGhee.
Q:    How did this recording come about?  How did you decide on Tom Harrell, first of all, and doing the two trumpet format, second.
AF:    Well, I decided on Tom because I have been an admirer ever since I first heard him, I would say, maybe twenty years ago with Horace Silver.  Not to say that there aren’t other fine trumpet players around that I’d be very happy to play  with.  But Tom was here, and he seemed to be very enthusiastic about the idea, as well as myself.  So that’s how it came to be.
Q:    After the second formation of the Jazztet disbanded, you’ve been working steadily in New York with various quintets, always with a saxophone in the front line, Clifford Jordan for many years, and now Jerome Richardson.
AF:    Yes.
Q:    I’d like you to say a few words about the very creative band you’re working with this week, which includes some of the strongest young players performing in Jazz right now.
AF:    Yes.  Well, we’ve been working with this same line-up for a year or so, especially the rhythm section.  Jerome has just taken the place of Clifford.  It was certainly wonderful to play with Clifford, because he and I went back many years.
Q:    You were the front of…
AF:    Horace Silver’s group.
Q:    …almost forty years ago.
AF:    Yes.  And  Jerome and I first played together with the great Oscar Pettiford, but not in a small group.  Well, we might have done some gigs at some clubs down in the Village, Cafe Bohemia or something like that with Oscar.  But the group that we have now, that I usually have, is the same group that’s on this record and that’s at Sweet Basil now, with an amazing pianist, Geoff Keezer, the truly also amazing Kenny Davis on bass, and Marvin Smitty Smith on drums.  I can’t say how much of a pleasure it is to play with these people.
Q:    One thing I’ve always been impressed with is how much leeway you give the performers in the group.  You always seem to have very creative players, give them free rein to express their ideas, and you just go right with it, say your piece… Talk about your philosophy of group-leading.
AF:    Well, I learned this actually from Lester Young when I was working with him.  He said, you know, you hire people that play, and if they can play, well, that’s what you hired them for.  If you’re not going to let them play, you shouldn’t have them there.  You should have someone else.
Q:    I said I wouldn’t talk about the past, but you brought up Clifford Brown, Lester Young and the old days for Prestige.  Did you play with Lester Young when you were living in Los Angeles?
AF:    No, never.  Never.  Never saw him there.  I played with him here exclusively at Birdland, because every time he went  into Birdland he brought in another horn.  The original trumpet player was Jesse Drakes, and Jesse called me up one day and asked me did I want the gig, and I said, “Sure.”  Lester had a contract for a certain amount of weeks every year, and when a date would come up he would call me and ask me if I could make it.
Q:    This was ’53-’54-’55, something like that?
AF:    No, it was just about the same time I was working with Horace.  So it was in the Fifties, the mid-Fifties.
Q:    According to the information I’ve read, you got to Los Angeles when you were about 17 years old, and you were born in Iowa and raised in Phoenix, Arizona.  Just a few words about your origins in music.  You seem like the type of person who has been playing ever since you could pick up an instrument.
AF:    Yeah, that’s true.  At that time it was very customary to have a piano in the house, and someone played it.  There were a lot of music students in our family, and it just seemed the natural thing to take piano lessons.
Q:    Your parents?
AF:    Yes.  My mother played the piano in the church choir.  So I had been hearing music ever since I could hear.  I started with the piano because it was there.  Then someone later on gave me a violin, so I played that some, but I didn’t hear anyone playing Jazz on it in Arizona, so I gravitated towards horns — and that’s how it happened.
Q:    How did the sound of Jazz enter your ears?  Was it just around you all the time?
AF:    No.  It was on the radio.  There was a lot of airplay for Jazz then.  They had big bands playing for dances, and all kind of wonderful things happening.  The first live music that I heard actually was the real Country Blues, because I used to sell papers, and I would walk around in the migrant workers’ camps and sell them papers, and after work they would be sitting around, playing and singing, playing the Blues on the guitar or whatever.
But I heard all this Big Band Jazz on the radio.  Then when the Second World War came into being, there was an Army camp there, and I heard the Army dance band.  There was one guy who is still around here in New York now by the name of George Kelly, and he was in the band, and he used to come around to our rehearsals and help us out.  He was a great guy.  He used to write arrangements for us.  But that’s the first time I heard a big band live, was the U.S. Army band.
Q:    Were you playing trumpet by then?
AF:    Yes, I had started.  And some of the traveling bands would come through on one-nighters.  The greatest thing in life that I could imagine was to hear these bands.  It was so exciting that it never has left me.
Q:    You mentioned specifically in the liner notes for an older record being impressed by the trumpet section of the Lunceford band.
AF:    Right, the Lunceford band was great.  They had some fine trumpet players.  But just the sound of their section was…it just blew the top of my head off!
Q:    When you began to improvise on the trumpet, who were the people who inspired you in forming your own mode of expression?
AF:    Well, people such as Dud Bascomb, Roy Eldridge — the ones who came there.  Then I heard Dizzy Gillespie on a record with Billy Eckstine, and that really turned me around completely.
Q:    You were about 16 years old then.
AF:    Yeah, around that age.
Q:    Along with many other people who were born around when you were, who came up right under the excitement of this whole group of musicians.  A few words about the impression that it made on you.
AF:    Well, it’s hard to express my excitement in a few words, but…
Q:    You play so concisely, I’m sure you can do it!
AF:    But I had heard the Swing trumpet players, like I mentioned, Dud Bascomb and the people who played with Lunceford and Jay McShann and Tiny Bradshaw, etcetera.  When I heard Dizzy, that was completely a revelation.  I just wondered where he found those notes, you know, that sounded so different from what everyone else was playing.  And it’s not to say that the other players were not playing good, but he was into another universe as far as picking notes to play.  A lot of guys, me included, were certainly excited. And his great technique, the fact that he could play so high and play so clearly.  But if you slowed down, you could hear that the notes were something that no one else was doing.  He was really a harmonic pioneer for a horn player.  There have been pianists who were playing great notes, like Art Tatum, but Dizzy was the first one I heard that really was playing notes like that on a horn, and that, as I said, before, turned me upside-down.
Q:    Had you heard that before you went to Los Angeles at 17?
AF:    I heard the records but I didn’t hear Dizzy until I went to Los Angeles.
Q:    So you heard the group at Billy Berg’s and so forth at that time?
AF:    Yes, I went there.
Q:    And that really turned you around, I gather!  You decided to stay in Los Angeles and finish high school there.
AF:    Yes.
Q:    A few words about that process.  You and your brother, Addison, went to Los Angeles for a vacation, the story goes…
AF:    Yes, we went there for a summer vacation in 1945, and  the scene was so active that we decided just to stay there.  Our mother said it was okay with her as long as we graduated from high school.  So we enrolled in a great high school by the name of Thomas Jefferson that had a wonderful teacher named Samuel Brown.  There were other active players such as Dexter Gordon, who went to that school a few years in front of us, and others such as Sonny Criss and Cecil McNeely, who later on turned out to be a great Rock star by the name of Big Jay McNeely.  Hampton Hawes was around.  So they were very interesting young guys to run around with.
So we just went to school there.  We would write our own excuses, just as if we were living with our parents.  And so we developed a very good reputation like that!
Q:    I guess being in Los Angeles at a time like that, when so much was going on, must have just been the best for a young musician.
AF:    Oh, yes.  Well, as far as being in the right place at the right time, I’ve been lucky all my life.  I’ve been very lucky to be in Los Angeles at that time, and then to be here — looking back, to be able to have played with the people that I’ve played with.
Q:    It seems like there was a little design involved in that process as well.
AF:    There was some.  When I played with Lester, when I played with Coleman Hawkins; you know, it’s just fantastic to look back on experiences like that.
Q:    Also you got to meet Charlie Parker when you were out there.
AF:    Yes.
Q:    It seems that that had an indelible effect on your aesthetic.
AF:    Well, the Jazz community was like an extended family, and if you were in there with them, you would meet whoever it was in there.  The people were very nice to younger people.  If they saw that you were serious and what you were doing, why, then, they would help you in any way they could.  You didn’t have to feel hesitant to ask them any questions.  So long as you knew the questions to ask, they would be there.  And there wasn’t any attitude, “Well, I’m too busy to bother with you.”  And that goes for Charlie Parker and Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie and all the guys that I had the good fortune to meet.
Q:    It seems coming up and listening first to the trumpet players from the Swing bands must really have given you a sense of melodic necessity…
AF:    Yes, certainly.
Q:    And it seems that your distillation of Parker and Gillespie has concentrated on that aspect of what we do.  Can you comment on that?
AF:    Yes.  Well, if you listen to guys like Roy Eldridge and Dud Bascomb, you certainly are going to have a sense of melody.  Because they were basically very melodic players, especially Dud Bascomb, who was a real story-teller if there ever was one.  You never hear his name, but I remember Miles used to copy his solos note for note — of course, not only Miles.  But he really spoke when he played.  So that’s where the urge to create melodic solos came from on my part.  Because at that time there were trumpet players who were called Ride Players.  The ensemble parts that say “Ride Solo,” where you just sort of Jazz the melody.  But then when players like Bascomb and Ray Nance came along, well, they really created their own things, and they were so interesting and so beautiful.
Q:    Art Farmer seems never to have discarded anything that he’s picked up, and it all seems to come together every year in something new, different tunes and so forth.  We’ll hear a tune that’s sort of the antithesis of what Art Farmer seems like to me.  It’s called “I’m Old Fashioned”, and it’s taken from a recording on Enja called Soul Eyes that was taken I guess live to DAT at one of the Japanese Blue Note clubs in 1991.
AF:    Yes.
[MUSIC: "I'm Old Fashioned" (1991), "TGTT" (1994)]
Q:    You’ve been recording Ellington always, and there’s one amazing album of all Strayhorn compositions done for Contemporary with Clifford Jordan, and another from the Seventies with Cedar Walton, Sam Jones and Billy Higgins.  “TGTT” you said comes from the Second Sacred Concert.
AF:    Yes, this was made aware to me by Geoff Keezer, and it was recorded by the Ellington Orchestra, the Second Sacred Concert, as a vocal with the singer Alice Babs singing, and it was done in 3/4 time.
Q:    Were you able to see the Ellington band much as a youngster?
AF:    No.  No, not that often.
Q:    But were you very influenced by it, though?
AF:    Oh, very much influenced by the Ellington band.  I saw the band, first of all, in Los Angeles at the Million Dollar Theater, and since then I saw the band every chance I had.  Of course, I don’t see it now because they don’t work in New York any more.  But it certainly was an education to me, and I liked the way the trumpet players played very much.
Q:    They were all true individualists in that trumpet section.
AF:    Yes, very much so!
Q:    [ETC.] Did you work with Mingus in the late 1940′s and early 1950′s in Los Angeles?
AF:    No, I never worked with him there.  Shortly after I went there, then he left.  He had one period where he didn’t work as a musician, then he went to work with the Red Norvo Trio, and after that he settled down here in New York City.
Q:    You did share an employer, though, Lionel Hampton…
AF:    Yes, but…
Q:    Of course at a different time.
AF:    I worked with Mingus here in the City on various projects, so we knew each other and were pretty good friends.
Q:    I just want to ask about a couple of the people you’ve encountered and played next to over the years.  One of the first you mentioned coming up here was playing alongside Clifford Brown in the Lionel Hampton Band in 1953, I guess.
AF:    Yes.
Q:    A few words about Clifford Brown, and your relationship.
AF:    Well, Clifford Brown is known for being a person that no one has ever found a bad word to say about him.  He was really exceptional.  He was just a warm, beautiful person.  And he played so good, he didn’t have to say that he was good.  He didn’t have to say that anyone else was bad.  He just went ahead and played.
Q:    Would you say his sound was pretty much fully formed around the time when you were together?
AF:    Yes, I would say so, certainly.  He was already recorded, and every record I ever heard he made was a masterpiece.
Q:    Gerry Mulligan, who you worked alongside for several years in a pianoless quartet and who wrote a commissioned piece for you in last Friday’s concert at Lincoln Center.
AF:     Yeah.  Well, Gerry is playing better than ever.  Some people I know were amazed at the way he was playing Friday night.  He’s always been a very good player, but now he’s an example of somebody who never stops…who just doesn’t find their style and just go through the motions, but he’s always stepping forward.  I just find the things the does very creative, and certainly it was a pleasure to play with him. It was a pleasure with him again, just as it was a pleasure to play with Benny Golson again.
Q:    That’s the next name I was about to mention.  That’s a relationship that goes back 35 years or more.
AF:    Right.  Well, I also met Benny through working with the Lionel Hampton band.  I have to say that Lionel Hampton has  been a great benefactor to Jazz music in this world, in the fact that he has given a start to so many people such as myself, and given us a chance to meet other people of our ambitions.  Working with the Lionel Hampton Band was a key to the Jazz Universe, in a certain sense, you know, working with Brownie and Gigi Gryce and Quincy Jones and Monk Montgomery, James Cleveland.  I don’t know where I would have gotten such a chance to work alongside these guys every night as with Lionel Hampton.
Q:    I think that may be one of the distinguishing things that separates musicians who came up around when you did from people who came up after, that there were still functioning big bands where you could get that type of night-after-night practical experience.
AF:    Yes, that’s right.  That’s very rare now.  That’s very rare.  Maybe you could count them on one hand.  Other than Count Basie, it’s hard to think of anyone else who’s out there.
Q:    Extending from Benny Golson, another superb composer, not so well known in the States, but who you work with frequently in Europe, in Vienna, is Fritz Pauer, who you will be bringing here in November.
AF:    Yes.  He is scheduled to come over with us in November.  Well, Fritz is very well known to Jazz musicians who tour Europe and happen to go to Vienna, Austria.  Everyone who has had a chance to… He’s played with everybody over there.  I mean, Don Byas, Dexter Gordon, I can’t think of anybody who ever did a thing that Fritz didn’t play with either in Vienna or in Berlin.  He’s a great writer.  He’s one of those guys like Gigi Gryce who write all the time.  You know, you don’t have to tell him to write something.  I just let him write whatever he wants to write, and he brings it in.
Q:    He knows you.
AF:    Yes, we’ve known each other for quite a while now.
Q:    Again, you live in Vienna a good chunk of the year, and tour for part of it.  How does that work for you?
AF:    Well, I spend about 40 percent over here, and I would say about 30 percent I’m at home in Vienna, and other times I’m traveling somewhere else.

A 2007 Jazziz Article and Four Interviews with Roy Haynes, who Turns 87 Today

Roy Haynes, who turns 87 today, is the living embodiment of the notion that, for certain human beings, age is nothing but a number. Haynes continues to astonish with his brilliance and creativity at the drumkit. I’m posting below an article that I wrote about the maestro for Jazzizin 2007, the interview that we did for that piece, and three prior interviews—from 2005, for a birthday piece in the New York Daily News and an article I wrote for Downbeat about the  emergence of modern jazz in Greenwich Village; from 2000, for an old webzine (http://community.musiciansfriend.com/docs/DOC-2453); and from 1996, when Mr. Haynes joined me live on WKCR for about three hours of a five-hour Jazz Profiles show devoted to his work.

* * *

Jazziz Article (2007)

“I am old school with a hip attitude,” Roy Haynes announced from the front of the Birdland bandstand, head cocked, jaw jutting upward, his eyes darting around  the room. He had just concluded a pithy, precise and forceful variation on the form of “Trinkle-Tinkle,” a notoriously involved Thelonious Monk line that Haynes first encountered close to half-century ago on an extended gig with Monk at the legendary Five Spot in Greenwich Village.

Haynes wore boots of soft calfskin leather, visible in a narrow crescent beneath flared black velour pants with buttons up to the calves, into which was tucked in a trim black t-shirt underneath a flowing, open tan shirt. He swayed, rocking on the balls of his feet.

“I’m playing the same stuff I played a long time ago,”Haynes continued. “And it’s working.” Suddenly he rat-a-tatted a sequence of syncopated steps, ending with an emphatic left foot stomp. He laughed at his audacity .

With a hoofer’s elegance, Haynes, three months shy of 82, pivoted to his drumset, each of the toms encased in white pearl. He lifted his Yamaha 14″-by-5½” signature snare drum, made of hand-hammered copper, cradled it, and presented it for the house to admire. After further banter, he returned the snare drum to his stand, sat on his stool, and sticked crisp triplet variations on the snare. He answered himself with a complementary bass drum pattern, and responded to that with a rumbling dance on the toms, interpolating hi-hat splashes to decorate the ever-surging rhythmic puzzle, subdivisions piled upon subdivisions. Bassist David Wong stated a vamp, pianist Martin Bejarano played dramatic altered chords, and alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw stated the insinuating melody of Cole Porter’s “My Heart Belongs To Daddy,” which Haynes had recorded with Charlie Parker in 1954. Bejerano uncorked a whirling, ascendent solo that launched Shaw into a high-intensity declamation that channeled the spirit of John Coltrane, whose quartet Haynes propelled on numerous occasions between 1961 and 1965 when Elvin Jones—himself deeply influenced by Haynes in his formative years—was unable to make the gig, including several recordings that rank high in the Coltrane canon.

During the preceding fifty minutes on this middlingly attended Thursday evening first set, Haynes had propelled his group of twenty-somethings,  titled the Fountain of Youth Quartet, through repertoire that represented a sort of musical autobiography—Parker’s “Segment,” Wayne Shorter’s “Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum,” Pat Metheny’s “James,” and Billy Strayhorn’s “Chelsea Bridge.” Strayhorn was the only composer with whom Haynes had not performed or recorded during his sixty-plus years as a professional musician. It’s a linkup that might have been had Haynes accepted Ellington’s job offer in 1952.

“I was with Bird and we’d just finished playing a double bill with Duke at Carnegie Hall,” Haynes related a few days before. “Duke called me, but I knew that the horn players, the older guys, would have had a problem with my style.” Some twenty years later, Haynes played a Jazz Vespers concert with his group, the Hip Ensemble, at New York’s jazz church, St. Peter’s, on the anniversary of Strayhorn’s death. “I used to come out of a drum solo and go into ‘Lift Every Voice And Sing,’ which was known as the Negro National Anthem back in the day,” Haynes recalled. “As we went into it, and I went into 3/4 time, I noticed Duke and his doctor, Arthur Logan, standing up with the whole congregation. I had many highlights during my career, but that one stands out in my mind.”

Ellington is one of the few jazz immortals with whom Haynes did not perform—he mentions Benny Carter and Ornette Coleman as two missed opportunities. Hence, his strategy of performing tunes to which he has a direct connection—in addition to the aforementioned, Haynes references the likes of Lester Young, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Stan Getz, Oliver Nelson, McCoy Tyner, and Chick Corea, all employers at various points—imparts a sense that one is hearing entire history of jazz from an insider’s perspective. Indeed, while earning a living as a first-call sideman, playing the function at hand in an idiomatic, team-oriented manner, Haynes contributed consequentially to almost every stylistic development of the idiom—bebop and postbop, piano trios and singers, Coltrane’s energy music and the more chamber-oriented aspects of the ‘60s avant-garde, the jazz embrace of the beats of Africa, the Caribbean islands, American dance music.

“Once in Chicago, a lady came over and said that my music reminded her of the four seasons,” he remarks. “I thought that was a compliment, because I try to express a bit of what was happening in the different seasons of my life.” Those seasons represent a timeline in which Haynes links King Oliver and Baby Dodds (in 1945, Haynes left Boston, his hometown, to join pianist Luis Russell, Louis Armstrong’s musical director throughout the ‘30s) to such potential stars of 2040 as FOY members like Shaw, Bejarano, and Marcus Strickland, or Haynes’ grandson, 19-year-old drummer Marcus Gilmore, who currently plays with Corea.

“With Roy, you never feel you’re listening to a player whose style is locked into a certain period,” says bassist Dave Holland, who recorded on the 2001 Haynes “all-star” project, Birds of A Feather, on Haynes’ superb 2002 studio album Love Letters, and on a 1998 Gary Burton-led quintet with Haynes, Corea and Metheny entitled Windows. He also played on Question and Answer, a 1990 Pat Metheny album that brought Haynes to the attention of a post-Boomer audience.

“I see a lot of similarities between his playing and Miles,” Holland continues. “Roy developed a way of playing drums that, at the core, was essentially him, but transposed into being able to work in many different contexts. It’s an open, fluid way of playing that gives you a chance to really get inside the dialogue.”

“Miles cut it off in a slick way,” Haynes acknowledges of Davis’ break with his roots in the plugged-in ‘70s. “He dressed like his audience, so to speak — dressed better than them, of course. But when he was playing the mute, he was still playing his regular shit, surrounded by the other things. That’s where he tricked motherfuckers. That’s packaging.”

Unlike Davis, a close friend with whom he shared a taste for fast cars and contemporary threads, Haynes shapes foundational vocabulary to suit the here-and-now while still honoring his origins. “Sometimes I’m still playing a little TITTY-BOOM,” he says, referring to an apocryphal story in which Lester Young, with whom he debuted on a dance gig at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom in 1947, tells him, “don’t drop no bombs on me, Lady Haynes, just give me a little TITTY-BOOM.” “I’m still playing DING-DA-DING, DING-DA-DING on some of the stuff, but not everything. It varies. The song says ‘nothing stays the same…’

“Some people tell me I’ve changed, but I don’t agree with that one hundred percent. I may approach some things differently, but I had all of these things in mind a long time ago, when I was playing with a lot of people. I didn’t do them then, because I didn’t know if they would fit.”

During his 1947-49 tenure with Young and over the next four years with Powell, Davis, Getz and Parker, Haynes differentiated himself from the pack and made it fit, sustaining an intense four/four swing groove with a kinetic, non-metronomic ride cymbal beat, punctuating with bass drum interpolations, not relying on second and fourth beat placements on the hi-hat as a security blanket. “I can’t even do that if I tried,” Haynes said. “Now, sometimes I just put my foot on the side, and play it when I want to play it, rather than keep a continuous beat on the hi-hat. Which I didn’t do too much, although certain people liked that or wanted that.”

By eschewing that rhythmic grid, Haynes was able to create a continuous flow and avoid cliched patterns. “I dance around the 2 and 4, but it’s still there,” he says. “But some people depend upon the drummer for the time; maybe they go against the time and wait for the drummer to let them know where it is. But I like to play with people who have a built-in drummer. Coltrane had it. His notes were so even. Miles was hip to it, and so was Gene Ammons. When I was with Luis Russell, playing the Regal Theater in Chicago in 1946, I’d walk down State Street to a place called Club Congo to sit in with Jug. He could play with a drummer. Same with Lester Young and Bird and Monk and Chick. The time is right there. All you have to do is design around it. I tap dance on the drums sometimes. I’m always thinking about rhythms and beats, even when I walk, which dancers do.”

“Roy has a way of  looking down a long line of rhythmic permutations, 32 or 64 bars ahead,” says pianist David Kikoski, who played regularly with Haynes between 1984 and 2002. “He’s feeling it. He can count it if he wants, but he does it in a very natural way. He jumps around, but it all works. He plays more odd time phrases than anyone. On his solo drum sections, he does a lot of groupings of 5 and 7. But he might not know that he’s playing in 7, or he might not think of it as that.”

As drummer Lewis Nash points out, Haynes has long used all the tools at his disposal to express these ideas. “Roy wasn’t just comping with his left hand,” Nash says of his early-career recordings. “He comped pretty much with all four limbs, and wasn’t afraid to do things that highlight the basic pulse rather than stating it. Nobody else was doing this to the degree he did. Jack DeJohnette and Tony Williams and others who came along in the ‘60s and wanted to be considered modern and fresh, were building on things that Roy was doing. Now, Roy had a strong concept of swinging, and if you really digest him, you won’t miss the stuff that Max Roach or Kenny Clarke did before him, because it’s in there. But you will in addition get some other, more adventurous ways of approaching timekeeping.”

In developing his approach, Haynes—who regards ‘30s big band swingers like Jo Jones, Chick Webb, and Sonny Greer as early models, met Clarke, Roach and Art Blakey in Boston during the early ‘40s, and admired Chicago drum legend Ike Day—may have drawn inspiration from Ubaldo Nieto, a Puerto Rican drummer who played with Machito, a frequent presence at the original Birdland. “He had timbales, a bass drum and no hi-hat his setup,” says Haynes, who is himself of Barbadan descent. “I listened to him all the time,  and I was always going up the street to the Palladium to hear Tito Puente and all the other bands.”

“Roy incorporated elements of the Afro-Cuban thing way before it was fashionable,” says bassist John Patitucci, who joined pianist Danilo Perez in a brilliant Haynes-led cross-cultural trio between 1999 and 2001 “By the early ‘50s, he was combining funky straight eighth note playing with triplet-based swing, which is indicative of New Orleans music and other African music. Every drummer’s calling card is their ride cymbal feel, and Roy’s is incredible, with a great forward motion, but loose, not nervous  at all. It propels the music with incredible buoyancy and a beautiful force, and hip as it was, I never felt like I was being covered up. That kind of relaxed burn is unusual. Also, he can play very dense at a lot of different volumes. That’s virtuosity.

“Once I told him that it drives me crazy when drummers play all this incredible stuff behind the soloists, and when it comes time for the bass solo, all of a sudden it’s TICK-TICK-A-TICK-TICK on the hi-hat, real soft, with nothing happening. He said, ‘Wait a minute. You watch. I got some special stuff on the hi-hat for you, too.’ He proceeded to shatter my whole theory that you can’t play hi-hat behind the bass and be hip. Again, it wasn’t overpowering but it was really slick.”

Towards the end of the ‘60s, Haynes discovered Carnaby Street fashion and brought straight eighth feels and odd-meters more explicitly into his sound, first in Gary Burton’s pathbreaking Jazz-Rock unit, then with the Hip Ensemble, a wild band that included outcats George Adams on tenor saxophone and Hannibal Marvin Peterson on trumpet. Haynes introduced them on a gig behind a singer covering Beatles repertoire at the Scene, a West Side disco.

“Jimi Hendrix saw us there, and came up on the stage, though he didn’t play,” Haynes recalls. “Chick Corea was living in Queens then, and I rehearsed at his house. He came to the club opening night, and he said, ‘Roy Haynes, you really can form a band.’ We played some funk, too; I was doing a lot of stuff in 7/8. We had a regular piano, but an electric bass, and I was using big baseball bat drumsticks that belonged to the drummer in the other band. Billy Cobham was checking us out, and Chick came to my house to get a cymbal, the flat ride that all the drummers had to play when he started Return to Forever.”

“Roy has an open mind to many different things,” says Kikoski. “He knows the lyrics to songs by the Doors or by Paul McCartney; different kinds of music through all the generations. That’s why he still sounds so contemporary. He’s drawn from all the different cultures and mixed them together in his style, some consciously and some I’m sure unconsciously. With his Barbadan roots, he definitely has that island groove thing happening. You also hear the 12/8-ish African thing. Then you hear the East Coast hard-swinging kind of thing.”

“They’re all within what I play, but I don’t particularly analyze it as such,” says Haynes. “It’s in my walk. It’s in my strut. I’m not a metronome, and I don’t play in a way that everything has to be metered down to the numbers. I probably wouldn’t be able to keep that up. My mind would start wandering, and I’d be in another meter somewhere else. I never got into the rudiments. If I did, I probably would sound like everybody else—maybe. I did a thing called Drum Festival in Montreal. A lot of drummers there. Now, if I played rudiments, they’re hip to that. But  I come up with the Roy Haynes shit, and it blew all of their minds. I breathe the way I breathe and sneeze the way I sneeze. I think there can be a poem there!”

He refers to a kaleidoscopic drum solo from his latest CD (Whereas [Dreyfus]) entitled “Hippidy Hop,” a spontaneous polyrhythmic meditation on vernacular dance steps from tap to hip-hop. “I can go into another gear, sometimes one that people are not aware that I can go to,” Haynes says. “I recently participated in a Drum Roundtable where it was played at the end, and I was screaming. I didn’t practice that solo. I said, ‘Man, I’m going to learn that,’ but I’ll probably never be able to play it again.

“When I get behind the set, sometimes I don’t know what direction I’m going to go. It’s like an abstract painting, adding certain things and leaving out others as you proceed. I try to let the music stroll. I get up more than I used to, and let it breathe. Sometimes I take chances. I’ll go overboard. We can play the same song all night, make something different happen within it, and take it to the moon. You won’t know where we are. When you get that kind of understanding on the bandstand, it’s the greatest feeling. Talk about eating some good food or having some good sex! It tops all of that.”

* * * *

Roy Haynes (Dec. 11, 2006) – (for Jazziz):

TP:   Didn’t Sugar Ray own a club?

ROY:   Sugar Ray had a bar on 7th Avenue, yes. Sugar’s Ray’s.

TP:   Did he have music there?

ROY:   Later on he did. When would it have been? Maybe late ‘50s.

TP:   Did you play there?

ROY:   No, I never played there.

TP:   Did you box ever?

ROY:   Not really. I had a bag. It’s in Vegas now. I bought a place in Vegas in the last few years, since 9/11. I’ve got a house in Vegas with a pool and everything…all of that crap. It’s something I wanted to do, and I did it.

TP:   What the editor wants me to do on this piece, roughly, is what everyone else does when they talk to you these days. It’s the cover story for an issue of which the theme is traditions. He want to talk about traditions, continuity, and looking into the future. Now, any interview with you is about traditions, continuity and looking into the future. Now, at this point, I’ve done three fairly comprehensive interviews with you. Once on WKCR, you talked a lot about your early life. We did one that’s on the Internet where you talked about the way the drums have changed and drum styles have changed. And we did this interview two years ago for the Daily News.

What does the word “tradition” mean to you at this point? Does it have any meaning to you? Is it a meaningless term?

ROY:   When I hear the word “tradition,” it makes me think of a long time ago. It makes me think of something that happened a long time ago. That’s the way it grabs me.

TP:   My impression is that you have a very good memory for things that happened a long time ago.

ROY:   I hear that a lot of old people do. I hear a lot of old people say they can remember what happened twenty years ago, but they can’t remember what happened last night.

TP:   it doesn’t seem to be that way for you, though.

ROY:   A little bit. The last few years, man, I put down something, and man… A lot of that’s happening.

TP:   First I’d like to talk a little generally drums and you in relation to drums. What got you interested in drumming? You mentioned that your parents knew that you were interested in drumming, and they got you lessons with a guy on your block in Boston…

ROY:   Herbie Wright.

TP:   Herbie Wright, who’d been in the Jenkins Orphanage. He taught you mama-daddy and all this…

ROY:   Right, right. You’ve got a good memory yourself.

TP:   What got you interested in doing this? What kind of guy was he? Just how the notion of being a musician entered your consciousness.

ROY:   Well, ever since I can remember, I was banging. I was playing on things. Rhythm. Listening to a lot of music. On the radio… They had good radio stations in Boston.

TP:   Even in the ‘30s?

ROY:   Definitely, man. That’s when I heard Artie Shaw, naturally, Basie, Duke, singers like Billie Holiday, Fats Waller—all of that was on the radio. Basie made a tune called 9:20 Special. I guess that was on the dial, the 920 Club. Man, I heard everything there, ever since I can remember.

TP:   Were you always paying attention to the drummers? Were the drums coming through on the radio?

ROY:   Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a drummer. So I was listening to the drummer… Everything. Listening to the singers and listening to the lyrics. I learned lyrics early, a lot of the old songs. I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I wanted to play drums…

TP:   Well, 9:20 Special was about 1937 or 1938, so you would have been 12 or 13.

ROY:   Yes.

TP:   And you were interested in the drums before that.

ROY:   Yes, I had that rhythm. I was a natural drummer, as they said in those days. That was a term they would use when somebody just woke up and started playing.

TP:   How many siblings did you have?

ROY:   Three brothers. Two older and one younger.

TP:   One of them studied music though he wasn’t a professional musician.

ROY:   That was Douglas, the oldest one.

TP:   Did you have a brother who was a minister.

ROY:   Yes, Michael, the one who’s younger than me. He’s still in Boston.

TP:   Was it a family where music was part of the network of family relations, part of the overall thing?

ROY:   No, not necessarily. Because my mother was very religious. She didn’t like the idea of me playing all my records, especially on Sundays. And I played them all the time—Sunday, Monday and Tuesday!

TP:   Branford Marsalis told me that when he was in Boston, he met your brother who admonished him not to go to New York…

ROY:   Really? I haven’t heard that. I’ve heard Branford say many times that my brother told him not to play jazz. But my brother doesn’t seem to remember that. I mentioned that to him. Branford must have mentioned it to quite a few people.

TP:   Was it just an accident that you became a professional musician? Do you ever remember wanting to be anything else?

ROY:   I never remember wanting to be anything else. When I was a teenager, I started playing gigs, making a few dollars…

TP:   A guy named Tom Brown, a Charlie Christian style guitarist.

ROY:   You remember that. Yeah. Tom Brown, and a pianist who played with us also named Hillary Rose. He probably was the older one. He could hustle and get gigs. Naturally, all pianists can always get gigs—trios or solo or whatever. So I was working with them when I was pretty young. I think the first gig I got paid for was with those guys.

TP:   Who were your models? You mentioned as your idol. You dug Cozy Cole, too…

ROY:   You’ve read it! Cozy Cole. I met Shadow Wilson a little later. J.C. Heard. Jimmy Crawford I didn’t meet until I got to New York. He was the drummer with Lunceford. I didn’t really get close to Sonny Greer until I was much older, here in New York, when we got very close.

TP:   What I’m aiming towards is how you started to form your approach to the drums? Was it a meticulous, analytical thing? Was it more of a flow?

ROY:   I would think it’s more like a flow. I was naturally listening to Art Blakey a lot when I was a teenager…

TP:   You knew him, too.

ROY:   Oh, yeah. We got very close. He used to call me his son back when he was in Boston. He came to Boston with Fletcher Henderson a couple of times. One time he came with Fletcher and stayed there. Then, naturally, I was listening to Max when he first recorded. I think he recorded with Coleman Hawkins; that was the first recording I heard him. Then, BOOM!

TP:   Did the things they were doing seem logical to you as a young guy? Did it make sense to hear the way the drummer on Woody ‘N You was approaching things, or on Bird and Dizzy’s first records? Did it immediately make sense to you?

ROY:   It made sense to me right away.

TP:   Why did it make sense?

ROY:   I don’t know. Being the age… I’m a year younger than Max, and I never did know Art Blakey’s age until… What year was it?

TP:   I believe it was 1919.

ROY:   He would have been 87. A year younger than Hank Jones.

TP:   He’s six years older than you.

ROY:   That last question you asked was a hard one.

TP:   But I think it’s an important question.

ROY:   Ask me the question again.

TP:   As a young guy and a student of the drums from very young, and also because of the functions and requirements of the gigs you were playing, you had a certain way of hearing what you were supposed to do. It was supposed to swing and make people move their feet, and probably not be too loud so the guys… Drummers should be felt and not heard type of thing.

ROY:   Oh, you read that. I’ve said that many times.

TP:   You were coming up within that. A lot of drummers of your generation felt the drums were being muffled, held back, and the idea is that many things that happened after WW-2 were a flowering of rhythmic self-expression, unchaining the drums. Since you’re so articulate about what you do and your memory is so strong, and since what you’re doing now is so Right-Now  and not Then, I think it would be an interesting launching point to bring you back to your mindset at 16-17-18.

ROY:   That’s a hard one. But, what they told me I did have was… The word “swing” had somewhat of a different meaning during that period. That was really the feel that you had. That’s the word that would be used today, would be the feel — “you’ve got a good feel.” But to swing mainly was with that right hand, BING-DING-DA-DING, DING-DA-DING, and whatever I had, it was really loved by most of the older musicians at that time, such as Lester Young… I played a little with Coleman Hawkins. I used to play a lot with Pete Brown, the alto player, when he would come to Boston. The guy who used to help me with my drums, Scottie, he often said that Sweets Edison said, “Roy Haynes is the swingingest motha…” Heh-heh.  He was with Basie, and Basie was known as the King of Swing. Well, they called Benny Goodman the King of Swing, but then they nicknamed Basie the Jump King of Swing. They called Benny Goodman the King of Swing, but we know… But that thing is what a lot of the older players liked in my style of playing, and I know that’s what gave me a lot of gigs. I joined Prez in 1947…

TP:   That was two years after you came to New York.

ROY:   Yeah. I came to New York in 1945. I joined him at the same place I joined Luis Russell, the Savoy Ballroom, where people were dancing while you’re playing. There were always two bands there. Prez loved it. After a couple of tunes… I’ve said this many times; I won’t even repeat it now…

TP:   He said, “Prez, you sure are swinging.”

ROY:   Exactly.

TP:   But he didn’t say “give me a little titty-boom.”

ROY:   He didn’t say that, no. That’s the way he would talk anyhow. But he didn’t suggest anything to me, what to do. Because I knew what he wanted, and I was still dancing with my left hand and my right foot back and forth, and I was giving him that.

TP:   Could you have given him that in 1943 or 1944?

ROY:   Of course.

TP:   So your right hand conception of the cymbal was together when you were 17-18 years old.

ROY:   I had that, yeah.

TP:   Did Art Blakey ever talk to you about drumming, aesthetics, dos and donts?

ROY:   Art Blakey always used to tell me about…what’s that drummer’s name from Chicago…

TP:   Not Ike Day.

ROY:   Ike Day!  Art Blakey was telling me about Ike Day when I was very young. You know, sometimes you’d come and play your heart out, but there was always someone else telling you it was great, but you should hear BUM-BUM-BUM.

TP:   He was the baddest of them all, according to some people.

ROY:   He was something!

TP:   did you hear him?

ROY:   Yes. Oh, I met him. In fact, when I was with Sarah, playing the Chicago Theater, he was in the hospital then, and he snuck out of the hospital with his hospital clothes on to come backstage to see me—to ask for something. Heh-heh. When I replaced Max with Charlie Parker, which was 1949… Well, you heard that story, too. I was playing with Miles, and Miles used to say that Charlie Parker stole his drummer. So I was still playing with Charlie Parker at the Three Deuces, and they always had two groups there. After Max left… I never knew until maybe a few years ago that Max wanted to come back. He said, “Roy Haynes took my gig and never gave it back to me.” I said, “oh, I was supposed to?” Anyhow, he comes into the Three Deuces with Bud Powell, and I was playing with Bird. I had his original gig. In the meantime, Slim Gaillard was coming into Bop City from California, and he had Ike Day. Maybe before he opened, the night before (he got in a day early), he came to the Three Deuces. Max was playing with Bud Powell and I’m playing with Charlie Parker. Max had him to sit in, and Max grabbed me by the arm and said, “Okay, we’re both going to sit down and check him out.” I’ll never forget that. It was pretty wild. Everybody loved this guy, man.

TP:   Can you give some appoximation of his style?

ROY:   He could swing. All the drummers from the West… I’m not talking about the West Coast; I’m talking about Chicago or Kansas City. Most of those drummers could really swing. They had that thing. I wish I could have heard him more, or if he had recorded then I could listen to that and explain his playing. But he was a younger guy from Chicago who was very hip.

TP:   Was he breaking the rhythm?

ROY:   That I don’t remember exactly. But I’m sure he was playing little things.

TP:   Someone told me that someone hired Ike Day similar to what Buddy Rich did with Philly Joe Jones… Maybe Woody Herman.

ROY:   Could have been.

TP:    But Art Blakey was telling you to check out Ike Day. I’m sorry to keep harping on the ‘40s…

ROY:   No problem.

TP:   But it’s such a direct connection… If the drum vocabulary is a language, then you have a direct connection in a way that hardly anyone else has now, to the way people were speaking on the drums in the ‘30s and ‘40s, when the function was very different. The way we think about drummers in the ‘30s has to be very different than what it actually was because of recording technology. When you were at a ballroom, it had to be a different thing to hear Jo Jones and Jimmy Crawford right there than on one of their three-minute records.

ROY:   But that swing thing was the main thing.

TP:   Did drummers take liberties with the drums, with the timbres within the kit…

ROY:   Some drummers did. A good guy for that was Sonny Greer. He had a kit. He had the chimes and the timpanis and wooden blocks. Chick Webb had temple blocks, three or four or five of them.

TP:   So some of these guys were playing a whole percussion orchestra behind their kit in real time.

ROY:   Oh, yeah.

TP:   When did people start to play tempos at the velocities that became more common after World War 2?

ROY:   Fast tempos? That was happening at the jam sessions like Minton’s. I started going there in ‘45 when I got to New York. It was happening moreso here in New York than on a lot of recordings way back, until Bud Powell and Bird… Heh-heh.

TP:   Those ‘45 recordings like Shaw Nuff and Ko-Ko. Between ‘45, when you were with Luis Russell, and ‘47, when you joined Prez, I guess you probably on the road a lot. Did your conception of the drums change then? Did playing in the big bands affect your ideas vis-a-vis combos?

ROY:   When I joined Luis Russell, I didn’t realize that I had changed the sound of the band. Nobody told me. But they told my brother. That’s when I realized. I said wow. I didn’t realize I was that hip. But I guess my concept that I was hearing and had in mind was there. But the big band, I did two years. That was great. But the slick thing to do now, with this new music, so-called bebop, was to play with small groups. So I wanted to leave the band and go down to 52nd Street, which is what I did anyhow.

TP:   Did you set out deliberately to differentiate yourself from Max and Kenny Clarke? Did it just come out that way?

ROY:   I think it would come out that way rather than deliberately try to do something else. Max Roach often told he heard something and he thought it was him! Unless he was just joking. But my notes on the cymbal were different than his. That part was different anyhow. So automatically it just happened.

TP:   You mean the way you struck the cymbal was different?

ROY:   The space that I would leave. How I would do it. Yeah, that was me.

TP:   In this interview with Josh, he spoke about how, when he was playing with you, he noticed he was getting the sound he associates with bebop drumming, and you had your foot on the hi-hat but weren’t actually hitting the hi-hat, so you were getting the groove and the sound without actually using the techniques more commonly associated with this style of drumming. You were impressed that he caught this, and you quoted Miles Davis’ comment about “itchin’.”

ROY:   See, that’s hard. Like, IT-CHY-BOOM, IT-CHY-BOOK, IT-CHY, ITCHY-BOOM, ITCHY-BOOM, ITCHY-BANG, ITCHY-BANG. ITCHY, ITCHY-ING, DING-DA-DING, DING-DA-DING. What word did Prez use now?

TP:   Titty-boom.

ROY:   TITTY-BOOM, TITTY-BOOM. It’s still BOP-BA-DAH, BOP-BA-DAH, BOP-BA-DAH, ITCHY… There’s a certain thing I was doing that Miles said, “Well, Haynes is itchin’.” It was just a term. The hi-hat was not the itchin’ part of it. It was still the right hand. Everybody was playing 2 and 4 on the hi-hat. I can’t even do that if I tried. I can’t even keep that up. So now, sometimes I just take my foot off, put my foot on the side, and play it when I want to play it, dress it up periodically, rather than keep a continuous beat on the hi-hat. Which I didn’t do too much. Sometimes playing with certain people, they needed that or they wanted that. Some records I know I did that. At Rudy Van Gelder’s, he would always put a mike at the hi-hat. So that would be your highlight or something. Like Arthur Taylor… Jackie McLean said, “I wanted to take the hi-hat away from Arthur Taylor,” because it was continuously on 2 and 4.

TP:   So it would sort of put a grid on the music.

ROY:   Yeah.

TP:   You didn’t do it, so it created more of a flow.

ROY:   Exactly.

TP:   When I talk to Dave Holland about you, or Pat Metheny’s quote, they say “the father of modern drumming.” That’s a generalized statement. What exactly does that mean? Well, maybe it means that you’re able to sustain the swing and the groove and play in a manner apropos to all these different situations. So maybe that predisposition of yours allowed you to be so relevant to all those situations, that you didn’t fall into those patterns.

ROY:   Yeah, it could be. That’s a good way of putting it. I like it to flow. I don’t always like to… I don’t want to call the saxophone player’s name, but he’d be clapping his hands on 2 and 4. Sometimes that’s within us anyhow. I just dance around that, but that’s there. But some people want to hear that.

TP:   The back…

ROY:   The backbeat. Is that what you started to say? If you play with the right people… That’s one thing I liked about playing with people… Miles was hip to that, too. Gene Ammons. When I was with Luis Russell, playing the Regal Theater in Chicago, I used to walk from the Regal down the street to a place called the Club Congo. I couldn’t wait to sit in with Gene Ammons. I’m talking about 1946. He could play with a drummer. Coltrane had that thing. Prez, naturally, had it. Some people are depending on you to give them that. But I like to play with people who have that within them. Every now and then we can state it, but we just dance around it.

TP:   Bird was like that, too, of course.

ROY:   Well, Bird! It’s sort of a freer way.

TP:  On Billy Hart’s website, there’s a long interview with Billy Hart, where he says that you and Max were listening to a lot of timbales players, that you were playing like a timbalero. Was Afro-Cuban music important? Were those drummers important to you?

ROY:    I’ve mentioned that many times, especially in the last few years. Some of my solos were into that timbale-type thing. In fact, Mongo and Willie Bobo talked about that many years ago, my concept on my solos. It was there, definitely.

TP:   Was that innate? Did you go to the Palladium to hear those bands…

ROY:   Man, you could just walk from Birdland on Broadway to the Palladium outside and hear the drums playing. Birdland had Machito’s band there a lot, or Tito, and I was checking it out a lot. I was into that. I loved that.

TP:   Would you sit in or guest with those bands?

ROY:   Yes. I played at the Village Gate on Monday nights.

TP:   I suppose you elaborated those rhythms and approach more specifically in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, when you had the Hip Ensemble.

ROY:   Yes. I used a conga player most of the time anyhow then. I did a lot of that.

TP:   But for a lot of people, I think, what you were doing in that band is a kind of bridge into using eighth rhythms and so on that entered the general vocabulary. I remember once you came up to WKCR with Graham, and we were playing Anthropology from an aircheck at Birdland, and the tempo, as Arthur Taylor liked to say, was completely supersonic. Graham asked you how you did it! So we have you doing things with Bud Powell and Bird. Playing the function with Sarah. This complex music with Eric Dolphy and Andrew Hill. This incredibly intense energy music with Coltrane. At the same time, you’re playing with Stan Getz, which is another thing, and Chick Corea, which is something, and the Hip Ensemble, where you’re bridging the dance rhythms of the ‘60s and ‘70s and transmuting it into your own thing. There are all these different flavors, but always you…

In the ‘50s, when recording quality gets better and people can really start hearing what drummers are doing on records, you’re with Sarah… What happens between in terms of your ideas between 1953 and 1959? You come off the road when you start having kids and moving to another phase. Are you thinking differently during those years about what the drummer can do?

ROY:   When you say the ‘50s, it could have been… I left Sarah in ‘57 or ‘58. Sarah would take off maybe four weeks during the summer, and when she did that in ‘57, I did something with Sonny Rollins. Other than that, I didn’t do too much.

TP:   The Sound of Sonny.

ROY:   But I made a gig with him in between. But he fired all of us.

TP:   Sonny Rollins fired you?

ROY:   Yes, Sonny Rollins fired me. He fired the whole band. That’s when Pete LaRoca first came on the scene. He hired Pete LaRoca.

TP:   Did he ever tell you why?

ROY:   He fired the whole band, man. It was Kenny Dorham. We rehearsed with Sonny. He got a studio and he rehearsed. This was the first time he went in the Vanguard in a long time. When we got to the Vanguard, he didn’t play anything he’d rehearsed. I could analyze on it more, but I don’t want to… He fired everybody, man.

TP:   but to fire YOU is different than firing some people.

ROY:   Yeah, but… Heh-heh. Then we did a record after that… [“Grand Street”] Hank was supposed to make The Sound of Sonny, but something went down and Hank left, something went down with him and Percy, and Sonny Clark did it. Sensitive as Sonny is now, I don’t want to hurt his feelings. But he was uncomfortable. When he came back, he was fighting musically what was going on. He played the Jazz Gallery. It was his first gig after The Bridge. People were waiting, they didn’t have no airconditioning… He came in there, man, and… He’s a nervous wreck, and he can’t stand too much against him. He used to come to my house when he was with Lester Young. I didn’t even know he played a fuckin’ instrument! Sonny Rollins sometime when I lived on 149th Street. He’d come there with a friend of ours who wanted to be a pianist, but never was. So I knew him way back.

TP:   He was probably in high school. He lived there.

ROY:   I know he lived there. He was probably out of school, but I didn’t know him that long. I was playing with Prez when he came to my house.

TP:   He said Monk gave him his first gig in 1947-1948 at Club Baron.

ROY:   Monk was hiring on all those kind of gigs.

TP:   When did you first work with Monk? Not until the Five Spot thing, or before that?
ROY:   We may have played a hit someplace before that. I don’t remember where it was exactly.

TP:   Let me do what a lot of people do and ask you to speak spontaneously about some of the people you played with. Let’s start with Monk.

ROY:   Monk. Man, that was something special to be around. Not on the bandstand even. Just to be around this guy. It was a trip. I loved every moment of it, man. The two most original people I ever met that I can remember is Lester Young and Thelonious Monk.

TP:   How so?

ROY:   The way they talk. What they talk about. How they describe things. They were just original. Lester had a lyric… Oh, man. Two years with this guy. I laughed.  It was enjoyable. $100 a week for two years. And they took out tax. I go ninety-something dollars. That didn’t even bother me. I enjoyed every moment. With Monk, at the Five Spot, it was $100 a week. Shit. But to go to work every night… Leroi Jones in the audience, a lot of the hippie guys, the poets and… Oh, man! They had a guy who used to make hamburgers. The Five Spot on the Bowery, that was a funky place! And we’d enjoy those hamburgers, man! It was dynamite. But man, those two guys… What can I say?

TP:   How about Bud Powell?

ROY:   That’s a whole different situation, with the mental thing. But there was a period… He lived on St. Nicholas Avenue and 141st Street. He even went off with the big band around that period. We would walk to his house, and he would put on the latest record that he had just recorded (it wasn’t out at the time) with Max and… He also would play his latest compositions. He’d like play a concert for us. That was a great period, too. I’d go over with this same guy who used to go over, named Leonard Montanez, Charlie LoSista… His father was a big man in Harlem. You know, up on Sugar Hill, most of the younger guys, their fathers either were great musicians or something big. We had a lot of that on Sugar Hill. That’s where Sonny Rollins and Arthur Taylor, Kenny Drew, and those guys were from. Most of those guys were younger than me.

TP:   You were already established.

ROY:   Yes. That was a helluva period. A lot of those guys, we’d just go over to Bud’s house, and he would perform. He’d be in his bathrobe, and just like a genius… I’ve said this in many articles. I’d go over to his house, ring the bell, and knock on the door. He’d look at me and say, “Close the door. We don’t want no geniuses in here.” Then he’d open the door back and say, “Come on in, mother…”

TP:   But you’re the drummer on a couple of his best records… By the way, have you ever heard these March 1953 broadcasts from Birdland? The tempos you’re playing are…it’s like a magic carpet, so fast but so smooth… Did you practice those tempos or did they just happen?

ROY:   Good question. I’ve been saying for the last 10-15 years, I’m like a doctor on the gig. I’m practicing then. That’s my feeling.

TP:   So even back then, it was a total gig thing… You told Joshua that you weren’t a rudimental drummer at all.

ROY:   That’s coming up a lot, man. We did this drum roundtable thing a few weeks ago for a German magazine and Modern Drummer, and that came up. I may have brought it up, the rudiments shit.

TP:   Well, you said Herbie Wright taught you Mamma-Daddy and the roll…

ROY:   That’s the first time I ever heard Mamma-Daddy. I never even got that shit good. That’s the first time I heard the term.

TP:   Art Blakey had the story that he played for Chick Webb, and Chick Webb cursed him out because his rolls were sad, and told him to practice, and hence he developed his press roll. Perhaps some embellishment, but a little truth to it, too.

ROY:   Ha-ha! Knowing Art Blakey. I still never got into the rudiments. But if I did, I probably would just sound like everybody else—maybe. Know what I mean? So to keep some interest… I did a thing they call Drum Festival in Montreal. A lot of fuckin’ drummers there. Now, if I played rudiments and all that shit, they’re hip to that shit. So I come up with the Roy Haynes shit, man, and it blew all of their minds, man.

TP:   You also told me that you’re sort of tap dancing when you play drums, that’s what you’re visualizing.

ROY:   Well, some of the stuff. I get into that period. I can shift gears. I can go into another gear. Sometimes I’ve got to go into a gear where people are not aware that I can go into it.

TP:   What sort of gear might that be?

ROY:   Well, the latest one. Hippidy Hop.

TP:   I was just listening to that this morning?

ROY:   [GETS UP] I got to get up for that one! They played it at the Roundtable thing. That’s what they closed with. Man, that shit… They had me fuckin’ screaming. I’m not a guy who practices, so I can’t say I practiced that. Sometimes I come min, and if I feel it… Man, I listened to that shit. Hippidy-fuckin’-hop. And there’s two segments. I don’t know which segments they played at the drum thing. I said, “Man, I’m going to learn that shit.” But I’ll never probably be able to play it again. THAT shit…

TP:   You have another solo piece, Shades of Senegal

ROY:   Oh, yeah, I used to do Shades of Senegali. I recorded that a few times.
TP:   But those solo drums things, is it just a completely spontaneous thing?

ROY: Hippidy Hop, yeah, that’s a feeling I had at that moment, that time. Plus, something to make me feel good about it, they nominated it for a fuckin’ Grammy, man! Somebody’s checkin’… To get into that… There’s really no theme… Shades of Senegal has a melodic theme. This was just some school…

TP:   You used to have that Snap-Crackle tune, that you recorded on Out of the Afternoon and on a direct to disk thing with Flanagan.

ROY:   Tommy says “Roy Haynes” on both of those, though.

TP:   What’s your attitude to drum solos? Were you soloing a lot in the ‘40s and ‘50s?

ROY:   Well, with Luis Russell I had a spot where I would do a drum feature.

TP:   Would it be spontaneous?

ROY:   Well, I probably would have a theme in mind then.

TP:   Was it very different than what what you did on Snap Crackle 18 years later.

ROY:   Snap Crackle doesn’t have a lot of drumming on it. It’s a minor blues, 12 bar.

TP:   Were you doing things with that sort of touch and attack, that kind of crisp thing, with Luis Russell…

ROY:   No.

TP:   Were you tuning your drums differently then?

ROY:   I probably was. With Luis Russell I had Slingerland drums. It was a whole different thing, a whole different period. I went with Ludwig when I was with Lester Young.

TP:   How were they different?

ROY:   I was much younger, in my twenties. I don’t know if I spent a lot of time tuning the drums, even though I had certain things in my head and my mind, how I wanted them to sound. In fact, somebody gave me a record, in London I think…or I bought a record I was on with Luis Russell’s band. I had it on a CD. Moving, I lost a lot of things; I know it’s in here someplace. My grandson and I listened to it. I played probably a 4-bar break in there. I said, “Wow.” Go back to the memories of that period and that time, that approach. I probably was still more into Art Blakey. At least that’s the feeling I got from it.

TP:   Did Art have a stylistic influence on you early on?

ROY:   Yeah, he had an influence, but not that much. The big band, the way he would build into a phrase or something; some rhythm things, the way he would build, go into it. I got a lot of that from listening to him. We were very close. I used to hang out with him all the time. When he was with the big band, they used to play up in Harlem with Billy Eckstine’s band, I’d go hang out with him for the rest of the night.

TP:   That was the master of the hang.

ROY:   Oh, man. The last few times I saw him, I had to sneak away from him. When he was talking to a lady, that’s when I’d sneak away.

TP:   You spoke to me once about how the dimensions of your drumkit were different. The bass drum was bigger, and so on…

ROY:   They didn’t even make small ones. I had a 26″ bass drum, I think, when I was with Luis Russell. I think it was a 26″. That was supposedly small compared to a 28″. Coming up, 28″ was the fashionable thing with the old-timers. I was a younger guy then. So when I got a 26″… I went from a 26″ to a… I got one of the first 20s when I was with Lester Young, I think.

TP:   So the size of the drumkit got smaller and more streamlined, in some ways?

ROY:   Well, it got smaller, because I didn’t have no automobile when I was with Lester Young, so I was on the subway sometimes going downtown with just a snare drum and a bass drum, with your traps and the rest of that stuff.

TP:   You’d be carrying all your stuff.

ROY:   Or taxi. You could get a taxi. But sometimes you’d play those gigs, man, all the girls were gone by the time you’d take your drums. I didn’t have a roadie. With the big band I had a roadie, but when I was with Prez, I had to take them down most of the time myself.

TP:   But by 1960, for instance, when you’re making Far Cry with Eric Dolphy or with Coltrane, did the dimensions of the drums, the technology of the drums have anything to do with your approach or the flow you were projecting?

ROY:   Well, I started tuning the drums a lot. Don’t ask me what notes I was tuning them to. I would search for different melodic sounds, notes that I thought would fit what I was trying to do in the music that we were playing during that period. 18″ bass drums started getting popular during that period. In fact, I had a small sports car, and I put a certain rim on there so it would fit into the trunk on some of those Firebirds I had.

TP:   So it was purely functional.

ROY:   Yeah. The hoops on a bass drum, most of them are wooden, and they’re a couple of inches. I said that in order to save about an inch, I would get a metal hoop which is maybe an inch, so I would save another inch, and that would fit in my car good. Drummers like Tony Williams would come up and say, “Roy, why do you have that metal hoop on the bass drum?” I said, “It’s only because it fits in my car.” People thought it probably had something to do with the sound, but I was looking for it to fit in my car.

TP:   That makes me want to talk about you as an influence. Elvin Jones was into you. He checked you out microscopically, I’d imagine. There’s a story that he’d meet you at the train station in Detroit?

ROY:   He took me to the train station. Yeah, he checked me out, of course. He said that himself.

TP:   Tony Williams definitely did, and was explicit about it…

ROY:   In fact, Miles asked me that once. He said, “Did Tony say anything about you?” I always wondered why Miles asked me that. He would come by my gigs when I would go to Boston, very early, and sit there, of course. One day I asked him to sit in, and he did a roll. I was impressed right away.

TP:   Sam Rivers told me that Tony could play one tune exactly in the style of Art Blakey, another tune in the style of Max Roach, another like Philly Joe Jones, another in your style… He’d taken everyone apart and put together his own conclusions. But in the early ‘60s, were you checking out Elvin with Coltrane, Tony with Miles?

ROY:   When you say “checking them out,” what do you mean?

TP:   Checking out their styles.

ROY:   I never bought any… Well, I bought Coltrane records. I never bought records to listen to the drummer later on. Maybe when I was very young, I did that. But I would check them out in person as much as I could, of course.

TP:   Did you pick up vocabulary ever from drummers who were influenced by you…

ROY:   When you say vocabulary, you mean stuff to play.

TP:   Stuff to play on the drums.

ROY:   Maybe subconsciously. Intentionally, I can’t think of any incident. But subconsciously, the mind… The mind is something, man. Years ago, I was listening to Max, and he played something, and I said to myself, “I thought of that same thing, too. To myself. I didn’t say it to anybody. But I’m thinking, “Man, I could have thought of that same shit.” But lots of time, you hear somebody do something in a band, and sometimes it gets a little confused in there, and confusing to the next guy, especially a younger guy coming after you who will hear somebody do something that they got from somebody else—someone else was doing it a long time ago, but they heard this person do it, and they think that’s where it originates. A lot of people are quiet about that. Once in a magazine I talked about how drummers would come up to me and tell me that they were influenced by… I’d hear that a lot of times, guys who come up and say that. But then when I read their favorite drummers, I would see some other names. I’ve said that in a magazine. One guy, he didn’t know who it was… I was talking mainly about Joe Morello. But I got a call from a guy in Boston who grew up in my neighborhood, Alan Dawson. Alan thought it was him. I wasn’t talking about him. He told me he thought it was… That’s kind of weird. A lot of people aren’t hip to what Alan… Alan was listening to a lot of stuff that Roy Haynes was doing, but he did it another way. He was more rudimental-sounding.

TP:   Well, he did all those Prestige dates that Don Schlitten produced.

ROY:   Right, he was like a house drummer at Prestige for a minute. But I’m talking about when we were teenagers. Even when I was at a camp that we went to, I had a little wooden drum that I had someone send down to the camp. When it was sent down, he was the first one to check it out. That’s before I had a set of drums, so he probably didn’t have a set of drums at that time.

TP:   When did you get your first set of drums?

ROY:   I bought them piece by piece. There was a store in Boston on Huntington Avenue called Rayburn’s. I think there’s still a Rayburn’s up there. They would have cracked cymbals on sale, new cymbals from the factory with a crack. I didn’t have no money, man. I would buy a little cymbal here, a little… When I had my first gigs, I didn’t even have a hi-hat. There was a trumpet player who used to say to me, “When are you going to get a hi-hat, motherfucker?” In other words, I had to play the ride cymbal like a hi-hat. I was showing that to a drummer. I went over to Birdland when there was a Dixieland band there, and I saw the drummer playing, and I said, “Motherfucker, you reminded me of when I was a kid.” But he had a hi-hat. I can show you how I used to play it maybe before you go.

TP:   Maybe that has something to do…

ROY:   I didn’t have a hi-hat. In other words, I had to use the left hand with a stick in it to say TCHIK-TE-SHHH… Open it up with the thumb. So when I had to make a break, I either had to make a break with one hand or take the hand off the cymbal and make a break and then go back to it. I didn’t have…The trumpet player used to say, “Man, when are you going to get a fuckin’ hi-hat?” I was making $12 a week at that gig.

TP:   How much did cymbals cost in the ‘30s?

ROY:   I don’t even remember. Probably $20-$30. So on my first gigs, I didn’t even have a complete set of drums. Then I bought one piece… That piece went to that same summer camp… Oh, that’s where I bought my bass drum. The same summer camp that I used to go to as a kid, and the money I made there, I bought a bass drum. There was a war on, and I wanted it to be pearl, but all they were selling was wooden shit then, on account of the war. I took some imitation leather and covered the heads and everything to try to make it look slick! That same drum was on my first gig when I played with Frankie Newton in Boston at the Ken Club. That’s where I met George Wein, too. Warrington and Fremont Street, a downstairs joint. Cozy Cole came in one night, when he was playing with Cab Calloway, and I had him sit in. Somebody took a photo. I have my initials on the bass drum as big as you could see! That same little wooden bass drum, the snare drum that someone gave me somewhere—probably stole it or some shit.

TP:   Let me jump in time. When did you first meet Coltrane?

ROY:   It was probably was when I was with Bird, of course. I don’t really remember. He was no big name. All those guys would come to the club. Jimmy Heath, all them guys in Philly. He was among all of those guys, so he wasn’t outstanding that I would remember him. But I remember seeing him. He used to drink a lot during that period. In fact, at one period we were kind of messing with the same girl. I talked about that, too. I probably met him in the late ‘40s-early ‘50s, when I was with Bird.

TP:   when did you start to notice him as a musician?

ROY:   I started to notice him when he was with Miles.

TP:   When you did those records, you were up on what he was doing, I guess. Were you up on the developments of the late ‘50s, Coltrane’s evolution and Ornette, and were you interested?

ROY:   Ornette came to the Five Spot while I was there. I was still around. In fact, we had jammed way early, at the Five Spot. I think only one set that I can remember during that same period.

TP:   What did it seem like to you in 1959?

ROY:   I could still hear Bird. He had that plastic horn. I’d been with Bird when he had the plastic horn, so right away I knew that he was into Bird, regardless of whether he’d admit or not, and in some of the lines of his tunes I heard a little Bird anyhow. Abstracted. I dug it. I dug his audiences. His audiences were so sincere, I could go down there, yeah.

TP:   So it hit you.

ROY:   Yeah.

TP:   When you heard him or Eric Dolphy…

ROY:   Well, I knew Eric before Eric played like that. I knew Eric when he was playing all Bird licks. We knew each other a long before we recorded.

TP:   You said he used to come to your house.

ROY:   He used to come to my house, and when he was in California I couldn’t get rid of the guy. When I was in my last days with Sarah, or on a big show playing with Bud Powell, Eric was always there. He’d hang out with me… We were close until he died.

TP:   But it sounds like the situations you were placed in during the ‘60s with Dolphy and with Coltrane, were very intellectually stimulating for you.

ROY:   That was a very stimulating period. For me, I was more excited about Coltrane than Eric. Eric was a young guy who was searching. Coltrane was searching, too, but he was searching DIFFERENT. I didn’t rate Eric with Coltrane. Maybe some people did.

TP:   Well, Coltrane was only a year younger than you.

ROY:   I know. But he was a late bloomer. Know what I mean?

TP:   And you were not a late bloomer!

ROY:   Well, a lot of people were not hip to me because I didn’t… Mine was laid back for a long time. Maybe that’s why I’m so anxious to play. People would describe Roy Haynes, like maybe Billy Taylor would say, “A musician’s drummer” or “a drummer’s drummer.” A lot of drummers all over the world were always hip to Roy Haynes. I know guys who’d come on the boat from England…traveled on the boat and came to New York to buy some Roy Haynes drumsticks. Ludwig made a Roy Haynes drumstick even before Slingerland. So I had all that stuff a long time ago. But now what is so great, like, the world can learn more about me, and that’s been happening in my travels. Ladies in the audience sometimes say to me “I never heard a drum solo like that” or all those type of things. I love it, man. That’s very inspiring to me.

TP:   Let’s talk about some of the Baby Boom musicians you… I gather you met Chick Corea with Stan Getz and got involved with his projects later.

ROY:   I met him before Stan Getz. I knew his father played an instrument, too. His father knew me when I was the youngster around Boston.

TP:   The record Now He Sings, Now He Sobs was very influential on a lot of pianists. As for that matter, is Reaching Fourth…

ROY:   That’s a quiet one. A lot of people aren’t hip to that.

TP:   Both are core records for any pianist under 50.

ROY:   Only a few people are hip to the one with McCoy.

TP:   Well, all the pianists know it. Let me put the question another way. When you were doing these things in the ‘60s… I don’t know how much you would have been gigging with Chick. But was there a sense that you were doing something new? I’d imagine that back in the ‘40s and ‘50s, there had to be the sense that you were in the artistic vanguard. Was there also that sense in the ‘60s through your associations, and was that important to you?

ROY:   That was important in a lot of ways. Not only the music, but the scene. You could just feel everything changing. And to be around and feel it… The audiences were different. That’s when people started wearing their hair long. Everything!
TP:   You said you couldn’t wait to get out of the suit.

ROY:   I was so goddamn glad, man, to get out of it, to have a tie on…

TP:   Those Andover Clothing stores…

ROY:   I was wearing the slickest shit out, and custom. Me and Miles… George Frazier and I went to the same tailor, the Andover Shop, in Cambridge, Mass.

TP:   You and Miles got out of those suits with a vengeance.

ROY:   Oh, Miles! Well, in the ‘60s he couldn’t wait, man! All that crazy shit. I mentioned Carnaby Street in London. I used to go there and buy shit. I’ve still got shit probably in boxes downstairs that are from Carnaby Street. It don’t fit me now. I got some boots some Carnaby Street. But yeah, it kind of felt like there was some different stuff happening.

TP:   Is it still important to you, that notion of having what you do be…

ROY:   Well, when you talk about those two records, it has to be something that’s important. It’s all over the world, man. All over the world people are talking about that still.

TP:   The one with Chick, Now He Sings…

ROY:   Yeah, that one, man… There’s not a week that someone in the audience doesn’t bring that up.

TP:   It’s a universal landmark for jazz piano players.

ROY:   Yeah. But there are a lot of people who didn’t play piano. Well, Herbie Hancock, that was the first time he heard me playing like that. He just complimented me to death.

TP:   What musicians always mention is the openness of your mind, to be able to place yourself in all these contexts in a very free-thinking way. I know you rarely play as a sideman any more, but you did through the mid ‘90s… Except with Chick, I guess.

ROY:   That’s one of the things that sort of brought me out when I stopped playing with a lot of other people, though, and playing with certain people. Because there are a lot of things that I had in my mind before to do, but I didn’t do it. Some people say, “You changed” or… I don’t agree with that 100%. There may be a different approach to something, but I had all of these things in mind a long time ago, even though I didn’t know where they would fit. So that’s why, doing my own thing, I do what I want to do. Sometimes I may feel over-anxious and overdue, but I know what should be done and how to do it.

Sometimes I take chances. One time I told a guy who was interviewing me, “I’m a gambler.” He didn’t know what I was talking about.” He thought I meant I wanted to go to Las Vegas and gamble.But I’ll go overboard. You talk about playing free or something. That’s part of the beginning of playing free, not playing the hi-hat on 2 and 4 and letting that stuff be loose. You don’t have to play anything in 7/8 or 6/8. It’s all there anyhow. You divide it up and you try to surround yourself with people who are going to understand that, and we take it to the moon, man. We can play the same song all night and make something different happen within it, and you won’t know where we are. When you get that kind of understanding on the bandstand, man, you can lift that. That’s one of the things that Coltrane had. Sometimes I get it with my young groups, and I work on it, and man, it’s the greatest feeling. You talk about eating some good food or having some good sex! It tops all of that.

TP:   It’s up there.

ROY:   It’s up there, when that happens. And when the whole house feels that, and… What’s happening on the bandstand, we’re giving it to each other, and as a group we give it to the audience. The audience gets it and gives it back to us. Man, you can’t beat that.

TP:   A lot of things that people are hearing from you since about 1990, when we start to hear about one record every 18 months or two years… You were thinking about those ideas farther back than when you started playing. Did a lot of those ideas, though, develop when you had the Hip Ensemble? That’s the band that people know less about now (probably because the records are out of print) than some of your other things. Can you discuss that experience a bit. When I was younger, I’d listen to WRVR and Ed Beach, “Roy Haynes and the Hip Ensemble,” and it just seemed very, very hip…

ROY:   Those were some wild days. Wild days. Oh, man, the first band with George Adams and Hannibal, I think the first recording we did was entitled Hip Ensemble. I think some of those are going to come out in this box set that they’re talking about. A lot of stuff is going to be licensed. That’s the big talk these days. There’s some stuff I did with Ray Charles, a big band that I expect to be in there.

TP:   So let’s talk about those years, since it’s pertinent. Those years obviously were a bridge to what you did later, forming the bands with Ralph Moore and David Kikoski…. What sorts of ideas were you thinking about in the ‘70s? Bringing out contemporary dance rhythms…

ROY:   It was some of that. At some points, I recorded with the electric piano, the fender Rhodes… We would travel with the fender Rhodes. The first guy was Carl Schroeder, and I had a guy who went with Miles—Cedric Lawson. He was a very talented guy. A little poco loco. A lot of the guys were poco loco in those bands. That was a very wild period. We couldn’t do… Everything had to be…

TP:   You mean drugs.

ROY:   Oh, yeah, man. The first gig with the Hip Ensemble was at a place in New York called The Scene on the West Side. This was an Acid Rock joint. How I got the gig in there, I had to accompany this singer who was singing Beatles songs. I forget his name. Jimi Hendrix came to see us there. He didn’t play. He came up on the stage with us. All of those guys were hanging around the scene. But opening night… I rehearsed at Chick Corea’s house. Chick was living in Queens then; maybe I didn’t have a piano or something at that time. He came down to the club opening night, and he heard the Hip Ensemble. This was before he started Return to Forever, if I started correctly. He said, “Roy Haynes, you really can form a band.” He took that out early. We stayed there for two weeks. A lot of people don’t know… Acid Rock. We played some Funk, too. I think I needed some drumsticks, and there always was another band there, and I was using the other drummer’s drumsticks. Man, I said, “Oh, this is a secret; you can really play slick with these big baseball bat drumsticks. I’m playing loud, I’ve got an electric… We had a regular piano in there, but we had an electric bass. My bass player at the time was… We had a couple of different guys.

TP:   Did you use a bigger kit?

ROY:   I must have had an 18″ bass drum. Oh, I had a lot of drums then, I think; I had a lot of melodic drums, yes.

TP:   Is this before Billy Cobham started bringing out all those drums? Do you think those guys were checking out the Hip Ensemble?

ROY:   You named one. He was, man. Billy Cobham. In fact, he’d come to my house to get something. Chick came to get a cymbal, the flat ride that he used when he started Return to Forever, that all the drummers had to play when he played acoustic piano. I don’t know if you’re aware of that.

TP:   No, I wasn’t.

ROY:   Well, that was the case.

TP:   Were you incorporating new rhythms, experimenting with new rhythms?

ROY:   Experimenting, of course. Definitely.

TP:   What sort of new rhythms.

ROY:   I was doing a lot of stuff in 7/8. I had a group before the Hip Ensemble at Slugs with Wayne Shorter. I had Cecil McBee and the pianist was…he died. Wayne talks about it in his book. That was still in the ‘60s, and a lot of crazy stuff was happening. They had sawdust on the floor at Slugs.

TP:   Do you think a lot of the things you were experimenting with in the Hip Ensemble in the ‘70s then became part of the Roy Haynes style that we hear in the last twenty years?

ROY:   Maybe some of it. None that I can think of offhand.

TP:   The attack. Playing harder…

ROY:   If I want to turn it up a bit, yeah. In that period, it was fashionable to put your cymbals high in the air and all that stuff. I got ‘em down, where I can talk to them a little more.

TP:   It’s fair to say that the Hip Ensemble had a lot to do with bridging you…

ROY:   The Hip Ensemble had something to do with it. I don’t know if it was a lot. Maybe. Things like that I don’t really…

TP:   Of course. But if you have any ideas.

ROY:   Well, the Hip Ensemble was very important.

TP:   Why was it important?

ROY:   Well, for those reasons. Sometimes I don’t know why or how it was important. But it was. It was important. We were doing that stuff before it really was that popular! I did something maybe a little after the Hip Ensemble that was being played on rock stations only—Thank You, Thank You. George Cables was on it.

TP:   Everyone knows that in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the jazz market had declined a lot. How much of your doing that had to do with just needing the work, and how much had to do with your actual interest?

ROY:   I don’t think I did it to get jobs. Maybe I did, and didn’t realize it. Because I could get gigs. I was known for getting gigs. Whether it was the Hip Ensemble… Maybe I felt that that’s the direction I want to go at the time. I want to express that feeling. Sometimes I don’t know why I do things. But I know every now and then that word comes up, the Hip Ensemble, and somebody says it with some feeling, so I think there must have been something to it.

TP:   Well, it was the greatest name for a group. I mean, it’s the HIP Ensemble.

ROY:   [LAUGHS] One time a guy wrote about it, when the record first came out. He started out saying, “Being hip was always one of Roy Haynes’ problems.” He probably meant it as a compliment—I hope!”

TP:   Do you feel that doing dates like Question and Answer helped bring your name out… In other words, that advocacy of you by younger musicians…

ROY:   Well, we did Question and Answer with Pat Metheny anyhow. That was the title of a CD. I heard something many years ago. I used to play a place in New Jersey called Gulliver’s. It was during the period before they started charging per show. It might have been after the Hip Ensemble; the Hip Ensemble wasn’t working in there. I was getting younger audiences, so they weren’t drinking a lot. They were going outside between shows and doing whatever they wanted to do. They weren’t drinking. And late at night, a lot of the “boys,” so to speak, as they were called, would come in and they wouldn’t have no place to sit because all these young people were staying and not drinking. I took that as a compliment. I’m getting these younger audiences. I had to use it. I kept doing certain things, and people started mentioning it. “Roy, I noticed something; you’ve really drawn a young audience.” And it’s grown. If I play Question and Answer now, somebody can relate to that in the audience, regardless of whether they know the name of the tune or if they realize it’s a Pat Metheny tune. Some do and some don’t. Also, I get some older people who remember me and want to check me out. So it’s an interesting mix when you come to some of my performances, to see the people. So I can’t answer that, but maybe that’s why.

TP:   Well, that’s a good answer. This brings me to another point, which is the way you set up sets and the repertoire you use, which touches on all of your associations, and brings them into real time, as it were.

ROY:   There you go.

TP:   Something from Prez, something from Bird, something from Monk, something from Sarah, something from Getz, something from Chick, something from Metheny, something from Coltrane, something from Oliver Nelson.

ROY:   Then I’ll hook up and play Hippity Hop.

TP:   Or things like Praise. But how did you evolve that strategy, as it were? Was it a strategy?

ROY:   I think you could use the term “strategy.” It’s what I’m feeling. I had a lady in Chicago once, who wasn’t particularly young… I don’t know her age. But I was standing in the lobby as the people were coming out, and she stopped and told me how she enjoyed the music and how it reminded her of the four seasons. I took it as a compliment. Not the group the Four Seasons… The spring, summer, fall, winter.

TP:   You took her on a trip.

ROY:   Yeah, evidently. So that’s kind of hip. You say, “Wow, she’s getting all this…” She happened to be an actress. That’s what she got from it. You know what she said then? She said, “How are you going to the airport?” I was leaving the next day. She said, “I’ll send a limousine for you.” Now I can’t get rid of her. She shows up, sends limousines… Something is working.

TP:   WBGO is on. Do you keep your ears open to what a lot of the younger drummers are doing?

ROY:   I always listen. There are so many damn drummers! There’s a lot of drummers out there. A lot of musicians. But there are a lot of drummers. I mean, more than ever. Every other month I’m hearing about some new guy, and I’m checking him out on a record, and I’m liking them. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference, who’s who. A lot of them sound alike. In the old days, we could usually hear somebody and tell who it is. One thing I read about myself recently, in a couple of bars…

[PAUSE: BATHROOM BREAK]

TP:   You were talking about a couple of things. Younger drummers, they’re good, you can’t always tell them apart…

ROY:   Well, I don’t really want to say that. It’s kind of hard for them now, anyhow, to… They’ve got everything to listen to. Everybody. They can listen to all the old shit, and they can see whoever is left.

TP:   They can also hear all the rhythms from other parts of the world. All that stuff is quite accessible.

ROY:   Yeah. And they’ve got schools, and some of the teachers are players. That wasn’t when I came up. I had a guy, Karl Ludwig, at Boston Conservatory for a little while. All he could say was [SINGS ROLL] BRRPPP, BRRPPP. He was a German guy. I had him for a short while.

TP:   You learned to read music and so on…

ROY:   Well, I was familiar with a lot of the writers, the guys who wrote the music. That was the thing. When you’re a natural drummer, if you didn’t read that good, which I couldn’t anyhow… Now I can’t… I could read better years ago.

TP:   Your eyesight.

ROY:   I’ve got these goddamn spy glasses. But I don’t want to read shit. Somebody can hire me for what I do…

TP:   For your sound.

ROY:   And for my imagination as well. They have to be a writer that’s into me. That’s why Chick and I were so cool, and even Pat.

TP:   Why?

ROY:   Because they’re into what I’m trying to do. I’m not a guy for hire. I know I’m an individual, and my concept is what it is. That’s the way I feel. I’m not a guy on call, that you can call to do this project. No-no. Never was. But worse now. You’d be surprised… Some years ago, a singer would call me up and tell me she’s a singer and wanted me to record with her. I said, “Look, I played with Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. Leave me the fuck alone.” Not like that, but almost. That’s not nice to say. They act like they’re doing me a favor. When I was with Sarah Vaughan, man, I was buying a house then. My first house, boom. It’s different now. I don’t want to do that shit now. I did it. Diddit and diddit and diddit. Ever hear that joke? Chick Corea was the first one to tell me the joke. He said, “Max Roach did it, Art Blakey did it, Philly Joe did it, but Roy Haynes did it and did it and did it and did it.” [STOMPS THE TIME] DIDDIT-AND-DIDDIT-AND-DIDDIT-AND-DIDDIT. That’s Roy Haynes’ shit.

TP:   So with your band, you’re referring back to the 60 years of experience every night, really, every set, because you’re playing this material…

ROY:   Sometimes there’s something left out, and it may come to me on the last day, or never come to me during that gig if it’s a weekend or week or whatever. Periodically, something will come to me that I may associate with Louis Armstrong when I played with the big band for a week. I may think of something related to that.

TP:   Or Nat Cole, you played with.

ROY:   Yeah-yeah.

TP:   but more or less, within your set, that’s your orientation. It covers your whole…

ROY:   Yeah.

TP:   How do you work out arrangements in the band? Who does them…

ROY:   I usually do. I usually rearrange, or change, or add something to them. We’ve got one of Chick’s that we do that, I do it a different way… Bud Powell. There are certain little riffs that I handle different than the way he wrote it.

TP:   Another one you do a lot is Green Chimneys.

ROY:   I haven’t been doing that too much. A lot of other people have recorded it.

TP:   It’s on the 2002 record, but Bemsha Swing is on the new record.

ROY:   Yes. See, the new record was not really a record date. It’s not recorded good or anything. A friend of mine is a drummer; he has this place in St. Paul, and he had arranged with the Mayor to have the Roy Haynes weekend. That’s paying off for him. His place has a nice size. And he got the Roy Haynes snare drum and that whole thing.

TP:   Also the group Birds of a Feather is like that.

ROY:   That was mostly Bird, though.

TP:   The point being that you’re always referring to the foundation of your career and your aesthetics. But most people who are 60 and 70 and 80 look at those times…

ROY:   As past tense?

TP:   Or from a certain point, they stop evolving their perspective. Even Max in a lot of ways. It seems like you’re in both places at once. You’re back then…

ROY:   But still now?

TP:   Yes, still now. That’s a hard trick for people. Miles dealt with it by cutting it off in a lot of ways.

ROY:   He cut it off in a slick way. But he still… When he was playing in the mute, he was still playing regular Miles, but he was surrounded by the other shit. He’s playing Miles. That’s where he tricked motherfuckers. He’s dressed like his audience, so to speak — dressed better than them, of course. But he’s playing the same shit.  That’s packaging.

TP:   But you’re not playing the same shit.

ROY:   Well, no. But sometimes I’m still playing a little TITTY-BOOM. It’s the way I’m playing TITTY-BOOM, though. I’m still playing that, DING-DA-DING, DING-DA-DING on some of the stuff, but not everything. It varies. The song says [SINGS] “nothing stays the same…”

TP:   Are you playing 9/4, 7/4, odd meters?

ROY:   Like I tried to explain earlier, all that is within what I’m playing anyhow. I don’t particularly analyze it as such. It’s in my body. It’s in my walk. It’s in my strut. So it comes out. It doesn’t come out evenly number-wise. No, I don’t play like that. I’m not a metronome. I don’t think like that.

TP:   That puts you right in with what people are doing now. It’s the age of people doing songo, the 7/4, and people doing 5 real slick…

ROY:   You don’t breathe the same way. So if I’m going to play it some way that everything has to be metered down to the numbers… [1:43:43] That’s not me. Then I probably wouldn’t be able to keep it up. I wouldn’t be able to keep it up anyhow. Because my mind would start wandering, and I’d be in another meter somewhere else. So that’s the way I play. Just because it may seem fashionable… Although a lot of the youngsters can really do that now, because they’re learning that in the schools. Like I said, we didn’t have those schools earlier. I wouldn’t want to do it like that anyhow. I breathe the way I breathe and sneeze the way I sneeze. I think there can be a poem there!

When I get behind the set, sometimes I don’t know… I’m reminding myself of Adderley. Cannonball. “I don’t know!” I don’t know what direction I’m going to go when I go on stage, and I start… It’s like somebody painting an abstract picture, an abstract painting, and as they go, they add things and they leave certain things out. What I try to do now with the music, I let it stroll. I get out of their way. Sometimes I just get up. That’s part of my thing now. I get up more than I used to, and let them just go, and let it breathe. For the listener, that’s interesting, too. They’re hearing it come in at a certain point.

TP:   That painting notion, do you see… A lot of musicians see rhythms or sounds as colors. Do you?

ROY:   Oh, yes. One guy, Morgan Harris, he’s not living now, who was an artist, and he’d talk about the colors when he’d come to my sets. He’d tell me, “you’re using a lot of blues there.” I’m into the earth tones.

TP:   That’s how you’re dressed now. Khaki shoes, khaki pants, the pattern on the shirt is an earth-tone black-brown-gold.

ROY:   Feels good, man.

* * * *

Roy Haynes on 80th Birthday for Daily News + for Jazz in Greenwich Village Article (March 1, 2005):

TP:   First, you’re coming from Louisville, and you’re about to go where?

HAYNES:   I did tell my audience that I was catching a plane to go back to the U.S., back to the States. They all got offended, I heard. Not all of them, but that’s the message I got. They thought I was calling them hicks, but I do that periodically. I said I was going back to the States. It was just like a humorous thing, and people from the college called my agent. That’s what I heard yesterday. The hotels were screwed up, too. So I talked about it…in a loving way.  They were hurting, I heard, afterwards.

TP:   You’ve always been known to speak your mind.

HAYNES:   Well, I think when you’ve been on the Planet Earth awhile, what’s the sense of being fictitious?

TP:   Do you travel often with this band?

HAYNES:   I travel periodically, yeah.  I don’t know if you’d call it often. This band, we went to Chicago three years in a row. We’ve been doing that Charlie Parker thing in August. And we’ve been to Boston. I think I went to Europe the year before last. Newport with the band one year. We’re going to Boston soon.

TP:   And have you also been working a fair amount with Birds of a Feather?

HAYNES:   Every now and then I do something with Birds Of A Feather. We’ve got a few things coming out. I’ve been trying to do less of it, but I guess they get calls for it.  My agent loves it, naturally, because he gets a pretty good chunk of that.

TP:   But it’s a helluva band. By the end of a week, it’s something to behold.

HAYNES:   Well, we haven’t been doing too many weekly gigs with Birds of a Feather. We did the Blue Note, I think, with the full personnel.

TP:   But Fountain of Youth is the continuation of a format that you’ve been working in for years, the quartet format. Just so I’m clear, it’s going to be Marcus Strickland, Martin Bejerano and John Sullivan. How long have they been playing with you?

HAYNES:   As I just said, we’ve played in Chicago three years in a row. But we don’t go steady, because Marcus does a lot of other things with a lot of people, and Martin had been playing with Russell Malone. So there are times when I don’t see them for quite a while, and then we get back together. It works good that way.  Years ago, I had a band and I kept the same personnel and tried to work steady.  Now I don’t particularly try to. It just happens.

TP:   You had a long time band with Dave Kikoski and Ed Howard…

HAYNES:   Dave has been with me for a lot of stuff. He started with me over 15 years ago.

TP:   Twenty years.

HAYNES:   It could be! I don’t keep track. I don’t try to. But I was one of the first bands he started playing with.

TP:   You’ve been working in that format for over forty years.  Different drummers who’ve led bands have tried to present themselves in different ways. Max Roach was trying to do a certain thing, Art Blakey… What qualities are you trying to bring out in the bands you lead.

HAYNES:   Well, naturally, top quality.  But I’m not always looking for one certain thing. Well, when you use four instead of using five, you cut down on the expense. Also, you don’t have to really rehearse-rehearse. If you have two horns or something out there, naturally, if you want them to be tight, you’ve got to concentrate on that more, and if you can’t always get the same personnel, it’s going to be pretty involved. So with a quartet… Then, it sort of reminds me of the certain days with… Well, Bird was mostly two horns. But with Trane, the times I would fill in, it was one horn. I don’t really plan it. It just seems to happen itself. I don’t have one certain thing in mind.

TP:   For instance, the way you select repertoire, are you selecting pieces to represent different  aspects of your tonal personality? Is it just that a piece appeals to you?

HAYNES:   It’s a combination of the whole thing. Sometimes I play certain tunes that I know the musicians enjoy playing. But after you play them for a while, you’ve got to do different things on them. I’m into the spring-summer-fall-winter… Once a lady told me… When I was playing in Chicago, after I had finished a set, this lady came over to me and said that my music reminded her of the four seasons. I thought of that as a compliment. Because I tried to express a little bit of what was happening in the different parts of the season, and in my life… I am connected with some tunes I love that maybe Bird had played or Trane had played. I like the guys to be comfortable.

TP:   You also play tunes by Chick Corea. Tunes associated with Sarah.

HAYNES:   There you go. A lot of people that I’ve been associated with.

TP:   So is it kind of an ongoing… This is probably going to seem kind of far-fetched, but a kind of ongoing personal autobiography?

HAYNES:   Ha-ha. It could be.  But sometimes I stretch out and go to some people whom I haven’t even played with.

TP:   Are there people you haven’t played with?

HAYNES:   Well, I’m sure.  Benny Carter used to say that to me. He used to say, “Roy, when are we going to play together?” That’ s something to come from an older great guy like that. I never worked with Ornette.

TP:   There’s still time.

HAYNES:   You’re damn right there’s still time. It’s on him, man! He doesn’t seem to like to work too much. I’m sure there are other people I haven’t played with.

TP:   Again, remember I’m doing a piece for the Daily News as I ask these questions.

HAYNES:   Really? The Daily News is hip to Ornette and Benny Carter.

TP:   How do you keep your energy going? You always play at a very high level of energy, every time I’ve seen you.

HAYNES:   Well, I imagine that comes from the heavens. Sometimes when I go for a long period without playing, I am like a goddamn tiger in a cage. I try not to overplay, I try to restrain myself and work up to it. But I look at every time I go to the bandstand, every time I play, it’s a very serious affair with me.  And as I get older, it becomes more serious. So I just try to put my all in it.

TP:   Do you think you might be playing with more energy now than forty years ago?

HAYNES:   Energy is a funny word. Heh-heh. You say forty?

TP:   Let’s say 45 years ago, when you left Sarah Vaughan, in 1958.

HAYNES:   Well, I was with a singer. Naturally, I’m  playing with more energy now. In fact, I didn’t even hear the term “playing with energy.” I think I started hearing that more with the rock business.  But before… Then, by me being a leader of most of the groups I’ve been playing with, except… Okay, with Chick, we did that Remembering Bud Powell thing. There were three horns on most of that, so I think that calls for a little energy. Denzil Best used to tell me years ago, “Play like it’s the last time you’re ever going to play.” He used to say that to me in the ‘40s, way when I first came to New York. Which was 1945, by the way. I started playing around 52nd Street a little after that, but I met him even before I came to New York, in Boston.

TP:   So not only is this your eightieth birthday coming up, but your sixtieth anniversary as a New Yorker.

HAYNES:   Yeah, that’s interesting.

TP:   Where did you live when you first came to New York?

HAYNES:   I lived up on Sugar Hill. I lived at 149th Street between Amsterdam and Broadway. It was a brownstone. 526 W. 149th Street.

TP:   What was the neighborhood like at the time?

HAYNES:   The neighborhood was beautiful. You could stand on Amsterdam Avenue looking west towards the Hudson River, seeing that sun come up in the evening, walking… I loved it. I still drive by there periodically to look at the house where I used to live.

TP: Do you remember the address?

HAYNES:   526.  I loved it from day one. In fact, on that same street, there were so many  musicians, older musicians that lived around there. Miles lived around the corner.  Miles lived on 147th between Broadway and Amsterdam. At one point, Kansas Field, the drummer, lived there.  John Simmons lived at 149th Street. I think they lived in the same building. One of the trumpet players that played with Basie lived there, not Buck or Sweets…

TP:   Sonny Rollins and Jackie McLean talk about the neighborhood…

HAYNES:   Well, they grew up there on Sugar Hill.

TP:   Coleman Hawkins lived there.

HAYNES:   He lived on 153rd Street between St. Nick and Amsterdam, I think. I remember the name of the building. King Haven Apartments. I loved it up there.  All those guys did, too.  Jackie still talks about it.  A.T. talked about it until the end.

TP:   You play like someone who lives completely in the present, but I know that the past must give you a lot of sustenance, having had all those experiences.

HAYNES:   That’s true, of course.  There’s a lot of the past that’s naturally still in me. But I’m trying to think ahead a little bit and stay in the mix.

TP:   But it seems people have always noted you for doing that. Prez didn’t have any problem with anything you did, Bird…

HAYNES:   It was so beautiful to have played… I remember the first night playing with Prez, at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. I’ll never forget that. He just went along. He was into what I was trying to do.

TP:   Apart from playing at the Savoy, did you ever go there to dance or for your own entertainment?

HAYNES:   I was dancing on the bandstand, of course. But that’s where I joined Luis Russell, too. And joined Prez there, two years later.

TP:   There are probably too many highlights in your career to ask about the highlights, but…

HAYNES:   [LAUGHS] I can tell you. There’s one I remember. When I had the group, the Hip Ensemble, we were doing a Jazz Vespers. The church then was on Lexington, but it wasn’t the same one. Gensel, naturally, was there. It happened to be the anniversary of Billy Strayhorn’s death. When I had the Hip Ensemble, George Adams and Hannibal were my front line, I’d come out of a drum solo and go into “Lift Every Voice And Sing,” which we recorded for Mainstream. When we went into “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” Duke Ellington happened to be in the audience, and his doctor. Dr. Logan. Dr. Logan was a very tall man. They were sitting near the back, and I noticed when I went into it in 3/4 time, they stood up, and the whole congregation stood up. That was known as the Negro National Anthem back in the day. That was one of the highlights that I always remember. Naturally, there were many more.  But that’s one that stands out in my mind.

TP:   What does New York mean to you?

HAYNES:   Oh, man!  New York means a lot of things to me!  Just to come to New York was like going to heaven. In fact, there were people up in Harlem who used to say, “I wouldn’t leave Harlem to go to heaven.” Harlem is part of New York. [Yahwk.] But New York is my home, even though I was born in Boston.

TP:   How long did you stay in Harlem?

HAYNES:   I stayed in that house five years. Then I went back to Clarement Avenue, near where Juilliard is now. In fact, I was a few doors from Juilliard.  I stayed there for a couple of years. Then I went to Boston for the winter and came back. I think at that point I stayed in hotels. I bought some property in Queens.  Now I live in Nassau County, but I still have property in Queens where my children hang. Really why I got out of Manhattan (I still love Manhattan) I started owning automobiles, and the garage bills and starting to get tickets… I knew I had to get a house with a garage.

TP:   What was your favorite car over the years?

HAYNES:   I think the one I’ve had the longest is that Bricklin, with the gull-wing doors. It’s been on the news and TV. I’ve had it on tours. I had it in quite a few car shows back in the days. I still have it.

TP:   How many cars do you have?

HAYNES:   I have four.

TP:   Are they all fast cars?

HAYNES:   They’re all fast. I’ve got one of those Magnums. It’s fast as hell. I had one Eldorado in Vegas. I have a place in Vegas. And I have a Benz; one of the coupes.

TP:   You were also an Esquire Best-Dressed Man, weren’t you?

HAYNES:   Yes.  The article was written in the ‘50s, but it was used, I think, in 1960. It was titled “The Art Of Wearing Clothes” by a writer named George Frazier. They had forty American men, along with people like Fred Astaire, Walter Pidgeon, and Miles Davis, Roy Haynes. We were the youngest, Miles and myself, and the only musicians and the only blacks who were in it!

TP:   What sort of threads were you wearing in the ‘50s? Miles was wearing the Italian suits…

HAYNES:   He started the Italian suits I think a little later than the ‘50s…I’m thinking.

TP:   How about you?

HAYNES:   Well, let’s see. Actually, George Frazier and I had the same tailor, which was the Andover Shop in Cambridge, Mass, and Andover, Mass. Yeah, Miles and I used to talk a lot about clothes. In fact, during that period, there were a lot of guys our age that we were talking about a lot of clothes all the time.

TP:   What are some of the biggest changes you see, if any, between young musicians today, like the guys in your band, and when you were their age, or when you were in your forties… Do the young musicians today have a different mindset from those of your day?

HAYNES:   I can’t speak to their mind.  But their whole world is so different. People coming up now, it’s almost automatic. But there are some serious young players out there, some very serious GOOD players.  But everything is so different now. I would think a lot of the younger musicians coming up now, they really don’t have to pay dues that were paid back in the old days.  The idea of traveling and making maybe $20 a night and living in hotels when there was maybe three people in a room… With big bands, I’m talking about. That whole thing as far as paying dues. It’s a whole different thing now. Guys come out of school, they’ve got their own projects, they’ve got their own bands. That didn’t happen back in that period when I was coming up. So it’s really hard to compare those times and the musicians now to the musicians then. The whole world is different.

TP:   How about when you were just going out on your own as a bandleader, which started to happen in the early ‘60s, a time of social tumult and change in the music. Can you generalize about attitudes then vis-a-vis younger guys now? Then you played with Andrew Hill, Joe Henderson…

HAYNES:   Some of them were lucky. Andrew Hill had a deal with Blue Note right away.  I think I remember him saying that Alfred Lion was going to buy him a piano. We weren’t that lucky before that. So even that was a little different. The ‘60s was a happy period, a helluva period.

TP:   A few sentences on some of the people you played with. Sarah Vaughan.

HAYNES:   I had heard that record that Charlie Parker and Dizzy and Sarah… First thing, I was always into lyrics and checking out good singers. I loved that.  And she was such a great musician that, BOOM…! It was hip to be with Sarah then. I didn’t realize that I would stay there for five years, but I went there and got comfortable. I started going to places I hadn’t been. I think it was the first time I went to Europe, was with Sarah. So it opened some doors.

TP:   Coltrane.

HAYNES:   [LAUGHS] I’ve got some stories. But some of them are too long. Too lengthy.  I was once asked what was it like to have played with Coltrane, and I said playing with Coltrane was like a beautiful nightmare. My niece said, “Uncle Roy, how can a nightmare be beautiful?” But when you have to try to explain that to somebody… I can’t explain it. That’s what I said then.

TP:   It’s a poetic image, that’s all.

HAYNES:   Yeah.  And it was something. The drums just seemed to go when I was there.

TP:   Monk.

HAYNES:   Monk. Misterioso.  That’s the title of one of his tunes, and I think it’s the title of a CD of his that was made live at the Five Spot.

TP:   With you.

HAYNES:   Yes.  Monk was cool. Monk used to say, “Roy Haynes…” He used the expression, “You’re a bitchin’ drummer.” Did you ever hear that word, “a bitchin…?” He used to use that term. But it was quite interesting to play with Monk. Playing with Monk at the Five Spot, man, there was no money made at all.  But it was such a memorable occasion. I used to love to go to work. Sometimes the place would be packed, and Monk would probably come in maybe two or three hours after we had been waiting, walking past, and go right to the kitchen, and lay down on the table and go to sleep. There were some really exciting moments with Monk. The set would start, I guess, when they would get him up. But it was a kick. I loved playing with Monk.

TP:   I’ll move this to the Five Spot for a minute. What was the atmosphere like in the Five Spot? Always very intense and stimulating?

HAYNES:   Yes, because first of all, that’s when the word, maybe even before it started popular, beatnik… Words like that. That’s when the audiences started…the look was changing. People started wearing their hair long.  That was about the period when they really started doing it. The late ‘50s going into the ‘60s. A lot of writers.  Leroi Jones, as he was known at the time, he used to be around there. It was a kick to go to work every night.

TP:   Both Randy Weston and somebody else told me that the place was filthy. Dirty.

HAYNES:   Listen, it WAS dirty.  But I’d be back there in the kitchen. They had a guy who made…

TP:   Bob, making funky hamburgers.

HAYNES:   We used to be back there eating them. I didn’t care about the dirt. It was dirty.  But a lot of places were dirty. Well, let’s see, before… When places like Birdland opened, that wasn’t dirty particularly. And on 52nd Street, you had to be dressed up. That was a whole different thing. In those days, we wore ties… When I worked the Five Spot with Monk, we were wearing suits and ties and jackets.  But sooner or late, that all stopped. I couldn’t wait to take off a tie and play drums, man! After all of those years… Because when I started out as a teenager, you had to have a tuxedo.

TP:   Was the piano any good at the Five Spot when Monk was there?

HAYNES:   The piano sounded out of tune, but it was fashionable for pianos to sound out of tune. They weren’t as particular as some of the pianists today. Now, guys say, “Oh, that has to be tuned right away.”

TP:   Did you ever play with Monk and Coltrane?

HAYNES:   Yeah. It’s on that record. But I didn’t play with them much. I think there may have been only a night or two when Coltrane was in there.

TP:   What can you tell me about the experience of playing with them?

HAYNES:   First of all, it was a short experience. I can’t really hardly remember. When I listened to that record, I said, “Wow, yeah! Listen to that!” But I have no particular memory, because it wasn’t lengthy. Sonny Rollins was in there, too, in the Five Spot a little bit. I played with him and Monk during one of those long… We were in there a couple of times, for 18 weeks at a time.

TP:   But not with Sonny and Monk for 18 weeks…

HAYNES:   Johnny Griffin was there the longest when I was there.  But maybe some nights… I don’t remember if it was before Johnny started that Sonny was in there.

TP:   Well, you recorded with Sonny in 1957 on The Sound Of Sonny.

HAYNES:   I used to go down there and catch Monk and Trane and Shadow Wilson. That’s where I got the idea of playing the theme of Misterioso like I did, when Shadow did something similar to that during the theme.

TP:   Back to these impressions of people. Bird.

HAYNES:   Ha-ha. Bird. Ha-ha-ha. It was up and down. Some nights when he was really feeling good, you couldn’t beat that. It was a hell of a period and a cool thing to be on the bandstand with Bird. It’s hard to describe.

TP:   Did being with Bird make you raise your game? Or was your game already right there?

HAYNES:   Well, I came to New York…a bandleader had SENT for me. Luis Russell, who played with King Oliver. Luis Russell never heard me. That’s a helluva thing, a guy just turning 20 years old and being recommended by Charlie Holmes, who played with Louis Armstrong and King Oliver and those guys. He was a saxophone player. During the war, we played together in New London, Connecticut. He told Luis Russell about me. I got this special delivery, “start with Luis Russell.” In Boston, even before I joined him, if someone needed a drummer or a band came to town, it was usually me. But there were some great drummers in Boston during that period. There was a guy named Joe Booker. He could swing you to death. One time he got the call to fill in for Shadow Wilson in the Basie Band.

TP:   You answered that question well.

HAYNES:   Did I?  I just went around the block. I just came to New York, man, and I didn’t realize it, but I had changed the sound of the band. Because the people in the band told my brother that. They didn’t tell me that. But Luis Russell believed in me, and I learned a lot. Then I started hanging around 52nd Street. During my nights off, I’d stay out all night, down on 52nd Street.

TP:   Who did you first play with on 52nd Street?
HAYNES:   It wasn’t Bird… I was still with Lester Young, and he went out with Jazz at the Philharmonic. That was the summer. I think I went in the Three Deuces with Kai Winding, Red Rodney, Curley Russell on bass, and George Wallington on piano.

TP:   So you were in New York for four years before you had a steady gig on 52nd Street, because you were on the road so much.

HAYNES:   Well, we used to play off-nights. They always had two groups. So I did that before I worked steady on 52nd Street anyhow. But that would have been the summer of 1949.

TP:   You joined Bird in ‘49.

HAYNES:   Yeah. I was with Miles before that. Miles used to say that Bird st0le his drummer. Those were his exact words. That’s the period when I really started working on 52nd Street.

TP:   You said you didn’t play the Bohemia…

HAYNES:   No, I didn’t play there steady. I don’t even remember playing there one night.  But I used to go there and hang. It was a dynamite place. It had a long bar, and then the bandstand was straight ahead as you walked in. The owner, Garofalo, I remember  him good. He seemed like a jolly guy. Well, from what I could see. He was well and happy and… I remember one night there, with my wife; I don’t even know if we were married at the time. We were all at the bar.  I was still with Sarah then. I remember I was getting ready to open in Chicago. And Dinah Washington said, out loud, “Roy Haynes, we’re going to hang out when we get to Chicago!” My wife naturally got an attitude behind that. Dinah Washington was known for doing things like that.

TP:   I just read her biography. She was very forthcoming.

HAYNES:   Tell me about it, man. She loved drummers, too.

TP:   Tenor players, too, I’d think, since she married one.

HAYNES:   True.

TP:   Were you in the vicinity when Cannonball Adderley made his New York debut?

HAYNES:  I’m not sure.  When I was on my last gig with Sarah, we were playing the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach. Richard Davis was in the band. I had my notice in. That’s when I met Cannon and his brother. They took me and Richard Davis to some down-home restaurant that had a jukebox, and they put money in the jukebox and said, “I want you to hear his record.” It was Ray Charles on his early records, that still sounded good, and that was my first introduction to Ray Charles.

TP:   They must have known him from Florida.

HAYNES:   Well, they knew of his records. I don’t know if they knew him. Because they were two square guys.

TP:   There’s the famous story of how he made his big splash in New York. He comes to town, Oscar Pettiford’s playing there, he sits in, Oscar Pettiford takes the tempo way-way-way up on Cherokee, and Cannonball nails it, and within a week he had a recording.

HAYNES:   I could have been there. Like I said, I used to hang out a lot.

TP:   Did you ever hear Miles and Coltrane at the Bohemia?

HAYNES:   Of course.

TP:   You also said you played the Half Note a lot.

HAYNES:   A lot from the late ‘50s going into the ‘60s. What I didn’t like about it was that the bandstand was way up in the air. It was in the middle of the club, and they had two sides.  The bar would separate one side from the other side. The bar was in the center of the place, and it was sort of up in the air, and you were sort of over the bar. It was really weird. But I played there a lot, and I used to enjoy it. They made the greatest sandwiches, because they were right near Little Italy, and they’d bring in the bread.

TP:   I get the feeling the Half Note was a place where musicians used to enjoy hanging out.

HAYNES:   Oh, yeah. Al and Zoot used to play there. I played there with them, and had my own projects there. I don’t think I played there with Trane.

TP:   Was it just Birdland that you played with Trane?

HAYNES:   I’m thinking. Just Birdland, I think. I went to the Vanguard to catch them one night, and they happened to be recording. I think Elvin hadn’t shown up. That’s why I turned up on something live from the Vanguard.

TP:   Do you have any memory of that?

HAYNES:   Well, I was just hanging out. I didn’t go down there prepared to play. But Eric was there then. Before that period, around that same period, I had a group with Eric… It couldn’t have been the same time, because I had a group with Eric, and we were working at a place on West Fourth Street. I forget the name. I had Eric Dolphy with me, Jaki Byard was there for a while on piano, splitting the gig with Richard Wyands, and on bass was Reggie Workman. Trane was working the Vanguard. After he’d finish his gig, he would be right over to my gig sitting in a corner. When we would get off the bandstand, he was there.  And he hired all them guys to join him!  That’s when Reggie joined him. And Eric.

TP:   What was the appeal of the Village?

HAYNES:   The Village was hip. Even the Lower East Side, as it was known in those days, it started moving from the Village over to the Lower East Side. All around there, it was exciting as hell. It felt European or something. The mix of the people, and just the whole atmosphere. It was different than… Well, I played the original Birdland at 52nd and Broadway. It was loose. You didn’t feel like you had to be dressed. Ha. Even though we were into dressing.  But we were dressing down in that period. It was just an exciting feeling in the Village.

You had Slugs. You didn’t mention Slugs. Talk about someplace that was dirty!  They had sawdust on the floor. But I loved it!  It smelled like an old, old saloon. You know, back in the day they used to have saloons where the women were not even allowed. That’s what it smelled like. Not that I went to those places. I was too young. I didn’t even drink until later on. But I had a gig in Slugs with Cecil McBee on bass, I had Wayne Shorter for a few weeks, and there were some reel-to-reel tapes from that period that I think got lost.

TP:   Would  that have been around ‘66 or so, when Miles was off for six months or so?

HAYNES:   It might have been in there.

TP:   Randy Weston said when you played in Harlem or Brooklyn, you had to satisfy the audience. There was the feeling you could be more experimental in the Village?

HAYNES:   Yeah. That comes from playing the Apollo Theater, man. You can’t fuck around. You had tough audiences. Black audiences were tough.  And they knew the deal.

TP:   So in the Village, it wasn’t that the audience was ill-informed, but perhaps they were more tolerant of some diffefent stuff, or…

HAYNES:   Well, you could experiment more in the Village. Because a lot of the audience were poets or writers, or people who wanted to be writers or wanted to be musicians.  You had hipper audiences.

TP:   A few more impressions. Stan Getz.
HAYNES:   I start to get serious now. Stan Getz.  Good musician. Could be an asshole at any moment. There was a period when I was with Stan, we were playing a place on one of the main streets of Hollywood… We were scheduled for a few weeks, and we followed Miles Davis into the club, and Miles was packing them in. When Stan got there, the business was not too good. So they cut it down. I think we were doing maybe six nights a week, and they cut it down maybe to three. We just started doing weekends. I’m staying at a hotel right close to the club, and one of the days that I was off, Coltrane comes by the hotel. He’s getting ready to open at a club in the other part of town. I don’t know who told him where I was or that I was in town or that I was off! He got me to play the first part of the week. Elvin didn’t come in til later. It was like a relief to play with Coltrane and express what I had in me to express. It was nice playing with Stan, but Stan sometimes would be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. For that period, I had to play with both guys; the first part of the week with Coltrane and the second part of the week with Stan.

TP:   It sounds like Coltrane was a kind of soulmate for you.

HAYNES:   There is something there. There’s a tape that I think Ravi has which was supposedly at the Showboat in Philadelphia. McCoy was on the gig, but he was late a lot during that period, and Trane was playing… I don’t know if the bass player was on the stand, but it sounds like a top quality recording, so you could hardly hear the bass. It sounded like a duo between Coltrane and myself. A lot of people have been hearing it lately and telling me about that. I think my son played it for me. I may have a copy of it here, even though I understand I was supposed to give it back to Ravi.  That was kind of early.

TP:   How about Pat Metheny?

HAYNES:   The interesting thing about Pat and some of the other people whom we haven’t named: He used to come hear me play before I knew him! I never knew that til later. I remember once when they had the Kool Festival, as they used to call it, he was playing at Lincoln Center with Jaco Pastorius. I loved the stuff they were doing, so I went to check them out, and I enjoyed it, not even realizing that he was hip to me and we would playing together later. So there’s something there, in the air, like this guy is checking me out a long time before I’m realizing it, and then I’m checking him out, and then we play together years later.

TP:   In jazz, if you go through that degrees of separation process, from what you’ve told me, you’re connected to King Oliver.

HAYNES:   Yeah, isn’t that something? From King Oliver to Pat or Chick or the guys in my young band.

TP:   They’re going to connect you out to 2050. Marcus Strickland will certainly be around.

HAYNES:   Sometimes I’m in a club, and I say to the audience and also to the guys on the bandstand, “I wonder what Charlie Parker would say and think if he walked in here at this moment and I’m playing with these guys, and he’s checking it out.” I often say he would just… [END OF SIDE A] When you have to do a lot of talking, it’s going to take longer for the person to get it.

TP:   You just said that some of these younger players, they’ve just got it. Marcus has got it.

HAYNES: When you have to try to explain something, explain it! When it just happens naturally, it’s an amazing thing. And that’s what can happen with this music. And some nights when it happens, oh, man, you can’t beat that!

TP:   I’ve heard it happen many times with you.

HAYNES:   This will be the first time going in the Vanguard in a matter of years, and it’s got to be a special thing.

TP:   You have a grandson with whom you played on the bandstand at the Rose Theater, and he’s playing great. How does that make you feel?

HAYNES:   Oh, man.  That’s a serious dream. That’s heavy. On top of it… That’s magical, man!  I could go into that so deep… I only have one daughter. Two sons and one daughter. When he was born, when she went to the hospital, my daughter’s words were, “Daddy, I wanted to give you a grandson.” She gave me granddaughters. I have granddaughters.  But that’s what she told me when I went to see her the day she was born. “I wanted to give you a grandson.” That’s heavy. And he turned out to be like this. He goes to Manhattan School of Music, which is where the old Juilliard was. His dorm is right next door to where I lived when I was with Charlie Parker. I told him what floor I was on. When he passes there, he looks. Right next to where he’s staying. On top of that, to end it, he was born in the first house I bought.

TP:   Did you teach him directly?

HAYNES:   He was learning probably even before I realized it. He was checking.

* * *

Roy Haynes Profile (WKCR, March, 1996):

TP:    I guess the first and obvious question is your origins.  Is the drums a lifelong interest?  Can you ever remember a time when you weren’t drumming?

HAYNES:  Not really.  I’ve been trying to play drums ever since I can remember.  Way back.  Mmm, I don’t remember how old I was when I picked up a pair of drumsticks at home.  A long time ago.  And I had the feeling before that to want to play.  So the beat continues to go on.

TP:    In your house I gather there was quite a bit of music.  You had a brother who studied music formally.

HAYNES:  Right.  My older brother Douglas Haynes was really into the music.  He would leave Boston, where we were living, come to New York, go to the Savoy and check out the battle of the bands, with Basie and whatever other band was battling.  He’d always come back and tell the stories about it.  He had all the records.  And he had some drumsticks at home, and that was my first affair with the drumsticks.

TP:    What did he play?

HAYNES:  He didn’t really play professionally.  He went to New England Conservatory and studied theory.  He had trumpets, a ukelele.  I remember him playing.  He knew all the songs.  He knew everything.

TP:    But he was able to go to New York when you were still an adolescent or…

HAYNES:  Oh, when he was very young he lived in New York with some of our relatives.  Later he worked on the railroad, so he’d travel on the train.  He came back and forth after that.

TP:    What are your first memories of listening to Jazz music?

HAYNES:  I heard it on the radio at home.  I heard a little of everything.  There were a lot of shows in Boston when I was growing up.  One was called “The 920 Club”; I guess for 920 on your dial, with Benny Goodman’s “Goodbye” as the theme; I wanted to hear that every day, just to check that out.  They played all kinds of music — Basie, Duke, Tatum, Artie Shaw was very big around there, naturally Goodman and Krupa.

TP:    So all the bands came through Boston, and there were local and national broadcasts.

HAYNES:  Exactly.

TP:    Do you remember noticing the drummers in those bands?

HAYNES:  Sure.  Interlude.  Drummers, a lot of them.

TP:    Talk about some of those drummers, the people who inspired you when you were knee-high, as it were.

HAYNES:  Well, so many of them.  If they played anything good, it would knock me out.

TP:    For instance, did you get to a point of being able to analyze drummers that you heard?

HAYNES:  I didn’t analyze.  Whatever I heard I guess automatically was going into my system.  I didn’t try to figure out, really.  But naturally I was into Jo Jones with the Basie band, and Jimmy Crawford was with Jimmie Lunceford, Sonny Greer was with Duke Ellington — on and on like that.

TP:    When did you start going to see the big bands around Boston?

HAYNES:  I didn’t start to go in the nightclubs until I was a teenager, maybe 17 or 18.

TP:    So that would have been right before you left Boston.

HAYNES:  I was 20 when I left Boston to join a big band.

TP:    When did you start working in Boston?

HAYNES:  I started working in Boston when I was still in high school, so I was probably 16 or 17 years old.

TP:    What were the circumstances?

HAYNES:  In Boston there was a guitarist by the name of Tom Brown.  He was into Charlie Christian.  Tom Brown knew all of his solos on whatever records, and he would play those same solos.  I started hanging around with him and making gigs.  On my first gig, I didn’t even have a complete set of drums, maybe just a ride cymbal and a snare drum.  That was with Tom Brown.  I got a few dollars; I don’t remember exactly how much.

I started playing with a lot of people, and I started working steady while I was in school, then I didn’t feel like waking up to go to school in the morning — like that, heh-heh.

TP:    Were there ever lessons in school, by the way, or was this strictly a self-taught proposition?

HAYNES:  No, there were no lessons in school with the drums.  But my father knew I was interested in playing drums.  A lot of drummers lived on our street, though not at the same time, including one named Herbie Wright.  I think he was from South Carolina.  He had the high cheekbones, very dark-complected.  There was a band from the South that Jabbo Smith was involved in young called the Jenkins Band.  They’d come through the neighborhood at different times of the year and would play outside.   Herbie Wright sat in with them, and I was impressed.  He had a thin-looking metal snare drum.  My father started to give me drum lessons with Herbie.  They were very loose, not formal.  I remember him teaching me to play mamma-daddy, learning to roll and all of that.

TP:    Describe, if you will, what the audiences were like at those neighborhood gigs in Boston.  I’d imagine the music was just everywhere at that particular time.

HAYNES:  Music was.

TP:    And the people who listened were really knowledgeable, it would seem.

HAYNES:  They were.  Yeah, you really hit on that right away.  I didn’t go out of Boston much, other than gigs around New Hampshire and Vermont and Connecticut.  But the audiences there were really into the music.  They knew what was happening.  It wasn’t like today, a lot of questions.  The people could feel the music and would groove with it.  Later on, when I started working steady, the wars were on.  I started working in downtown clubs, where there were a lot of servicemen — sailors and soldiers.  They were happy just to be hanging out, so they dug the music in another way.  But when I would play with people like Tom Brown and Sabby Lewis and other local people around neighborhood places in Boston proper, man, it was unforgettable.

TP:    Well, Boston is a town with a great musical legacy, from Harry Carney and Johnny Hodges to Charlie Holmes, who I think is the guy who recommended you to Luis Russell.  Were you very conscious of these other Bostonian musicians?

HAYNES:  Probably, but moreso later, I think.  I knew about Johnny Hodges and Harry Carney  and a lot of people I was around, their mothers knew him — a lot of the young ladies.  Yeah, I was aware of all of that.

TP:    When you started playing professionally coincides with when in New York things were really starting to pop at Minton’s, and the new way of playing music was coming about.  When did you first become familiar with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke, Max Roach?  Did you hear about them in Boston, let’s say, in 1942?

HAYNES:  Certainly.  I heard about them.  I met Kenny Clarke in Boston in 1942 or ’43 when he was with Red Allen, before I was familiar with the word “bebop,” when I was playing some of my first jobs.  I’d heard about Charlie Parker with Jay McShann.  I had the record Dizzy and Bird made together, “Groovin’ High” and all that, before I got to New York.  I had some Coleman Hawkins.  I think Max came to Boston with the Benny Carter Big Band.  I was on top of all of it.

TP:    So as ideas about rhythm and time and how to elaborate them were coming through, you were right there and playing the full 360 degrees of what music was at that time.

HAYNES:  Well, maybe. [LAUGHS] I was trying.  See, in Boston, a lot of the older musicians were very strict, especially with drummers, especially a young person coming up.  During that period I was the youngest in all the bands I played with.  But I was very positive on what I wanted to do, and I think I did it in the best way.  As far as drummers breaking the rhythm, that was almost a no-no back in the day.  That was the term they used when you’d get away from the beat and put some extra stuff in with the bass drum and whatever — which became almost my trademark, so to speak.  They were strict, but I tried to do the right thing in what I was playing — and it worked.

TP:    Were there any younger musicians you hooked up with in Boston who had similar ideas in the modernist vein, as it were?

HAYNES:  During that period?  Maybe not, when I first started.  Like I say, I was usually the youngest.  In one band they called me “the Kid.”

TP:    Let’s talk about your leaving Boston, then, and making your way as a professional musician.

HAYNES:  Phil Edmond(?) had the last band I worked with there.  He had maybe six or seven pieces, a lot of arrangements.  We played in a club called Little Dixie, which was at Mass Avenue at the corner of Columbus Avenue.  That was one of the hang parts of town.  I think Big Nick was in the band then, too.  We had a job for the entire summer in Martha’s Vineyard in the summer of 1945.  I got a special delivery letter from Luis Russell.  I had joined the black local, 535, when I was 17.  Luis Russell sent the letter there, asking me to join his band, telling me about the band, the places he played, and the different type of salary scales at the different theaters.  I sent back a telegram telling him that I was interested, but I couldn’t join until after Labor Day — I wanted to finish this job I was on.  Then he wrote me another letter, and it went on like that.  I sent my drums to New York, and did my first New York gig with the band at the Savoy Ballroom.

TP:    What do you recollect about that night, the crowd at the Savoy, the New York atmosphere?

HAYNES:  [LAUGHS] Well, I was young and very exuberant!  Luis Russell loved what I was trying to do, and it worked.  That was really my first big band, I mean, 17-18 pieces.

TP:    Were you familiar with who Luis Russell was…

HAYNES:  I’d heard the name.

TP:    …and Paul Barbarin and that aspect of drumming?

HAYNES:  I had heard about him.  I didn’t know too much about him.  But I knew enough that he was connected with Louis Armstrong… You know, I went to London a couple of summers ago with my band.  This wasn’t the first time going to London, of course.  But there was a man waiting to interview me there, and he had all kinds of photos of the bands.  He knew what year I was with Luis Russell, he knew the records I’d made, which a lot of people in our country don’t know anything about.  I learned that Luis Russell was hooked up with King Oliver!  I didn’t realize that then.  I think I met Paul Barbarin when I went to New Orleans with the band.  He was one of the great drummers.

TP:    You said Luis Russell dug what you were trying to do.

HAYNES:  They told me later that I changed the style of the band.  One of the trumpet players in the band told that to my brother, and my brother told me.  They didn’t tell me.  I wasn’t aware.  I knew what I was trying to do.  Mainly I knew how to keep the beat and how to give that feeling, that swing.  They had a certain Savoy beat.  I learned a lot there.  The Boston saxophonist Charlie Holmes told Luis Russell about me, though I don’t think he’d ever heard me play with a big band.  He wasn’t in the band either at the time.  Evidently I was doing something that they wanted.

I stayed with Luis Russell one year, then I got tired of traveling on that bus going all through the South.  I had never been in the South before until 1945.  The furthest south I had been was New York, Harlem!  And that’s north. That’s uptown.  It was like what you read and hear about.  I don’t really want to get into all of that.  But at least they told you! [LAUGHS] They told you what was on their mind down there.  They’re a little more sophisticated up North; they didn’t tell you, but would stab you in the back.  But I went back with the band in 1946.  Lee Richardson was a young vocalist with the band at the time, and his first record with them, “The Very Thought Of You,” was a hit, a big seller.  They couldn’t use his name for some reason, so he went by “Mister X”.  It had nothing to do with Malcolm either!  So Luis Russell had a hit record.  I remember playing a week at the Earle Theater in Philadelphia that year.  A lot of girls were coming out to check out Lee Richardson, and the Nat Cole Trio was headlining — the original trio with Oscar Moore and Johnny Miller. I had to play with them that week, too.  I always talk about the great singers I’ve played with, especially the big three, but I’d forgotten about that all these years.  Now I can put it in my bio.  He was out of sight

TP:    He was a real rhythmic master, too, wasn’t he.

HAYNES:  Yes, that’s right.  He had that rhythm.  He could play.

TP:    Did he have a lot of interplay with you?

HAYNES:  Well, he was singing the ballads and so on, so he didn’t do much of that.  But he did some up-tempo things.

TP:    What were some of your activities in between temporarily leaving Luis Russell, then rejoining him?

HAYNES:  Downtown on 52nd Street wherever.  Hanging at Minton’s.  Just hanging out.  New York was very exciting during that period.

TP:    Do you remember your first night on 52nd Street, and where it was and who you heard?

HAYNES:  I do remember the first night on 52nd Street.  My other brother, Vincent, who is still living in Boston, had gone into the Army.  He was going to have his first furlough, and we hadn’t seen him.  My father and my brother’s wife come on a train all the way to New York — and they miss him.  He didn’t have a furlough, for some reason.  So they came the following week.  The following week I went with them, which I think was my first trip to New York.  My brother, his wife and I take the train down to 52nd Street.  I couldn’t believe all the names, all the people who were appearing, who I’d heard about and had the records, like Don Byas and Art Tatum and Billie.  Everybody was down there!  I couldn’t believe it.  Walking around was like a dream.

TP:    The first night you played on 52nd Street.

HAYNES:  I remember the first night going moreso than remembering the first night I played.  They used to have off-nights Mondays and Tuesdays, so that could have been the first time.  It could have been with Don Byas.  But the first time I had a steady job on 52nd Street was with Kai Winding at the Three Deuces in 1949.

TP:    But you had joined Lester Young several years before that.

HAYNES:  Well, that’s when I left Lester.  And the only reason I left Lester was because he went with Norman Granz, and naturally the band didn’t go, so I had a lot of time off.

TP:    How did he find you?

HAYNES:  He’d heard about me.  Dense (Argonne) Thornton was with the band then, he was around Miles and Bird during that whole period, and I was hanging around at Minton’s and all that stuff.  I first remember meeting Prez in Detroit when I was with Luis Russell’s band, but I don’t know if Prez remembered me from then.  I listened to him talk, with his high voice… [LAUGHS] He was very comical, a very comical guy.  I joined him also at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, and I’ll never forget the first night.  I played the first couple of tunes, and he dug what I was doing.  I knew he was sensitive, and I was busy with the left hand and the right foot, as usual, but I just kept the rhythm going.  And once you do that, and you’re not too obtrusive… It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.

TP:    Within that time, I’d imagine, between hanging out at 52nd Street and being at Minton’s, is when you met and got to know Bud Powell and Charlie Parker and so on…

HAYNES:  Well, I met a lot of people in Boston.  I met Bud there while he was with Cootie Williams.  We were all about the same age.  He was always very fiery, man.  Fast tempos.

TP:    When did you first meet Charlie Parker, if you recollect?

HAYNES:  I don’t remember.  When I used to go to 52nd Street and listen to him, I was never introduced.  In those days, a lot of the time you didn’t even have to be introduced, especially if you had something to say musically on your instrument.  That took care of it for you.  Somebody would know you, or… There were less of us then.  There was a place on 52nd Street, around the corner, called the White Rose Bar.  I didn’t even drink in those days; I used to be in the White Rose Bar.  So that was the hang.  Between shows everyone’s in there.  You could meet anyone.  [LAUGHS] Ben Webster and Don Byas, they could hang in the bars a lot.  They’d have their mouthpieces, blowing at each other just with mouthpieces in the White Rose Bar.  Then at Birdland there was a bar upstairs.  There were all these places to hang.  So it’s hard to remember how you met somebody during that period, at least in my case.

TP:    How about drummer talk?  I assume you knew Max Roach and Art Blakey and so forth?

HAYNES:  Yeah.  I met Art when I was a teenager in Boston.  He came through there with Fletcher Henderson.  Then he decided to stay in Boston for a long period, and we were hanging out every day.

TP:    What did Art Blakey sound like in the early 1940′s?  This must have been before he joined Billy Eckstine and encountered Dizzy Gillespie.

HAYNES:  It was.  In fact, he joined them in Boston.  He sounded very fiery, as always, and… Hmm, he sounded almost the same!

TP:    Talk a little bit about the ambiance at Minton’s, and getting on the stage and so forth.

HAYNES:  That was quite a place.  There was a long bar when you walk in, and all the sporting crowd, naturally, was at the bar.  They’d come in the back, too.  Lots of times when the music was really hot, a couple of guys would always get on the floor and start dancing by themselves, and everyone would try to cut each other dancing, improvising different steps.  Oh, man, the music was always hot.  Monday nights was the night for the jam, and lots of nights you’d have drummers waiting in line to sit in.  When I first came to New York with Luis Russell 1945, Buddy Johnson and his big band was always playing at the Savoy, with Teddy Stewart, who was from Kansas City, playing drums.  We joined our respective bands around the same time.  One night we got back to the Savoy Ballroom, and Teddy says to me, “Did you go to Minton’s last night?”  That was the first time I heard about Minton’s.  Even though I had been through there during the day.  Before I came to New York to live, I went there to meet Pete Brown, who I played with in Boston.

I started going to Minton’s a lot on Mondays, sitting in.  The musicians would get free food usually, biscuits made from scratch, not that stuff that you get today.  Those were the days of all of that.  Good food and all of that.

TP:    And at Minton’s it would go to 5-6-7 in the morning?

HAYNES:  4 o’clock legally.  Many years later they had a downstairs; that’s where they would go all morning.

TP:    Are there any anecdotes about Lester Young you’d like to share that are particularly telling about him, how you felt about him and so forth?

HAYNES:  I can’t think of anything right now.  There are a lot of things I could talk about, but right now I’m not in the mood to.

TP:    I won’t press you.

HAYNES:  Well, go and ask and see if I can deal with it.

TP:    There’s a story I seem to recollect that may be with you, it may be apocryphal or not, “just give me titty-boom, titty-boom…”

HAYNES:  Never.  He never suggested anything.  I know that story about Prez, “the little titty-boom.”  He loved what I was doing, and he never told me anything like that.  He may have had to tell a lot of people, you’d think he would have, but I think I knew how to handle it.  Swing ‘em to death, man.

TP:    That sounds like your philosophy all the way, is do whatever you want but always swing within it, and make everybody happy.

HAYNES:  Yeah, in most cases. [LAUGHS] Somebody made a record recently, I think a drummer, that says, “It don’t mean a thing if all you do is swing.”  Maybe he’s listening!

TP:    In ’49 you made that incredible date with Bud Powell.  Were you working a lot with him also?

HAYNES:  He didn’t work steady during that period.  We made an appearance at the Orchard Room, which was changed from the Onyx after they changed managements.  That was just before Birdland opened, and everyone was coming there.  Charlie Parker was working across the street, he’d come over — the place was packed.  Bud was burning.  He was on fire.  Much fire.

TP:    You left him, joined Kai Winding, and I’d imagine you joined Charlie Parker shortly after that.

HAYNES:  Right.  But I was with Miles in ’49 before joining Charlie Parker.  Miles used to say Charlie Parker stole his drummer.

TP:    Was he right?

HAYNES:  Well, a lot of these things happened in 1949, so who’s to say who belongs to who?  And who worked really that steady back in those days, to use the term “my drummer” or “my pianist” or… No one belongs to anybody.  Miles had left Charlie Parker first, and I went with Miles’ band.  There was a place in Brooklyn called Soldier Myers, in the Brownsville section. That’s where I met my wife, in fact, in Brownsville.  Miles sort of opened the room up with a jazz policy.  I think we had Tadd Dameron first on piano (it ended up being Walter Bishop later), Nelson Boyd was on bass, Sonny Rollins was there for a minute, and Sonny Stitt was there for a minute playing alto.  After that gig had finished, Max left Charlie Parker.  Max was from Brooklyn, so he was going to Brooklyn and Soldier Myers, and he suggested I replace him with Charlie Parker.  Then Charlie Parker came over to the Onyx, the Orchard Room, and asked me himself, and I made it.  I did most of the period between 1949 and 1953.

TP:    Did you do much traveling with Charlie Parker?

HAYNES:  I used to go to Boston with him, St. Louis, Chicago.  We used to go to Chicago quite a bit.

TP:    Was the repertoire pretty consistent?  Would he bring new material into the group, or was that mostly for records?

HAYNES:  When we did new material it was probably during the period of the strings, when “Repetition” and all that stuff had come out, and some of the ballads, like “Autumn In New York.”  That was one of the things he did with strings.

TP:    Would he play for a long time, or did he generally play with the type of brevity that happens on the records?  I heard a story where he told someone if he played more than four choruses he was practicing.

HAYNES:  During that period nobody really played long — during the late ’40s and ’50s.  They didn’t play long solos the way some of the artists do now.  That was great.  I didn’t mind that at all.  In Philly, for instance, you played something like 40 minutes on, 20 minutes off, usually five sets.  Then he would have to stick with that.  There were some times when he didn’t feel up to it, but some nights he’d come in and burn all the way through.

TP:    Was he very loose about the way you played?  Was anything you did just fine, or did he give you input?

HAYNES:  Very seldom.  One thing I remember Charlie Parker telling me, when you go into a new place, like a new hall or something like that, where you haven’t played before, sort of feel it out, rather than just go in with your usual volume or whatever.  I take that all the way with me, every place I go now.

TP:    He was such an incredible rhythmic player.  When he’s soloing you never hear the same rhythmic phrase for more than 4 bars or 8 bars.  It must have been very stimulating to play with him.

HAYNES:  Right.  He could turn things inside-out, take it and turn it around.  Oh boy, what an experience.  He was playing the drums when he was playing all the time. [LAUGHS]

TP:    You joined Sarah Vaughan in 1954, but I read in a liner note that maybe around 1948 you were at the same venue as she with Lester Young, and she mentioned she’d like to have you in her band.  Is that true?

HAYNES:  I think that’s true, yes.  I played with Lester at Chicago’s Blue Note (I think we were there as long as three or four weeks sometimes), and sometimes I would accompany Sarah Vaughan.  Her husband-manager then was George Treadwell, and eventually he sent me a note at a place called the Downbeat on 54th Street, asking me to join Sarah.  That’s how it started.

TP:    Now, was that a gig that took a lot of rehearsal and dealing with arrangements?

HAYNES:  Depending on what project.  We did a lot of big band stuff and some record dates with big band.  We travelled a lot with the Basie Band.  They put together shows called the Birdland All-Stars of whatever year it would be, with a whole package — Nat King Cole, Billy Eckstine and different bands.  She would always use big bands for those type of gigs.  Yeah, we would have to rehearse.  Then sometimes when she was getting ready to do new material, we’d rehearse.  We had some really slick trio arrangements that were not written, but developed over time.  Man, they got so tight.  When Jimmy Jones was there with Joe Benjamin and myself, it was like heaven.  Jimmy Jones had some kind of trick with the pedal — I don’t know if it’s something he got from Art Tatum — where he would sound like strings and harps.  Oh boy, he was involved.

I enjoyed my five years with Sarah, especially after being with Bird for a long time.  Like when we worked in Philadelphia with Bird (I know I’m changing the subject a little), he’d commute from Philly to New York, and some nights we’d wait until daylight to get paid — the union man would be there.  Now, all that was great.  I always got all of my money.  But I just enjoyed being with a singer, even if we were wearing sometimes bowties or whatever.  We were playing the Waldorf-Astoria, traveling all over the world, the West Indies, Europe.  I got comfortable there.  Lots of times I’d drive my own car to Chicago just to hang out and enjoy life.  And like I said once, I stayed too long at the fair.  Before you know it, it was five years, man.  When I left, it was time to leave.  I never stayed any place else that long.

TP:    You did the famous Five-Spot recordings with Monk in 1958.  Did you meet Monk at the same time in Minton’s, too?

HAYNES:  No, I met Monk in Boston.  It was Coleman Hawkins’ gig, and Denzil Best was there; Al McKibbon may have been playing bass.  Coleman Hawkins had Don Byas playing with him, one of the greatest tenor players in the world using another great tenor next to him.  That knocked me out.  That’s when I met Monk.  For long periods, Monk didn’t play any gigs in New York, like Bud Powell; probably it was the cabaret card.  Monk reminded me of Lester Young a little.  He didn’t say much, but when he did say something, he would say it.  One time we were standing backstage at the Apollo Theater at 126th Street, which was the only time I played the Apollo with Monk.  We’re standing on one side of the street, Monk takes a coin out of his pocket, walks across the street, hits the lamp-post with the coin, and comes back to me and says, “I thought so.”  It was a certain note he had in his head, a certain pitch maybe.  But he was like that.

TP:    How much did you play with Monk apart from these sessions at the Five-Spot?

HAYNES:  I think we did it a couple of times at the Five-Spot, two or three times, and it was always lengthy — one time the whole summer.  Sometimes Monk would be there, sometimes he wouldn’t.  Sometimes he’d come in at midnight.  I’ll never forget when the Jazz Gallery, a bigger place than the Five-Spot, opened on St. Mark’s Place a bigger place.  The first night they opened with Monk, or maybe Monk and Coltrane, but it was like a double-bill.  It was during the summer.  They didn’t have air-conditioning, and it was loaded with people.  We had to wait all night for Monk to show up! [LAUGHS]  People would wait him in those days.  Now probably they’d be asking for their money back.

TP:    I’ve heard comments from drummers that it was very difficult to play with Monk because his rhythms come in such odd places, so unexpectedly.  What was it like for you?

HAYNES:  Oh, it’s very true.  It was very interesting.  Monk would say drummers can only play a few tempos.  You take them out of those few tempos that they like to be comfortable in, and then they’re uncomfortable.  He was kind of slick.  He knew a lot. But really, it was easy to play with him — to some extent.  It was a challenge.  Shadow Wilson played with him.  That was it!  And Art Blakey, Max, Frankie Dunlop, Ben Riley, who came in after me, all sounded great with Monk.

TP:    Fantasy put out a box-set of the complete Eric Dolphy recordings, and you’re on eight dates with Dolphy and Oliver Nelson almost continuously between 1960 and 1961.  Were you working with Dolphy in a band, or were those dates where the producer would call you to come into the studio?

HAYNES:  Probably a combination of both.  When Oliver came to New York, we worked a lot together in the studio.  I guess he dug the direction I was going, and he wanted me on most of his dates.  Eric as well.  I did Eric’s first date, Outward Bound.  When I would be in California during the ’50s, Eric was always hanging with me.  Even when he came to New York (I think he came to New York with Chico Hamilton), he was always over at my house.  When he did his first date he wanted me to be on it.  In California, he was more into Bird, but he went in a different direction when he got to New York.  He said he always loved listening to the birds sing in his yard in California, and he was into that with his horn as well.  He was really into the music.  It seems I like him more on the bass clarinet than the alto — it’s more mellow.

TP:    You made two recordings with Andrew Hill that rank among the classics of that time, Smokestack and Black Fire.  Were you working with him on gigs?

HAYNES:  I never did work with Andrew.  In fact, I remember him asking me to do the date.  Seems like a lot of writers think if you recorded with somebody that you worked with them, but that was not the case.  Sometimes somebody just wanted you to make a record, and you did it.

TP:    He seems to be able to set up a very dynamic rhythmic situation, and you’d seem to be the ideal drummer for him.

HAYNES:  His music was different.  He was somewhere else as well.  He reminded me…a little Monkish, but not.  He was really somewhere else during that period. [LAUGHS]

TP:    Talk about the challenge of playing with Coltrane.

HAYNES:  You really had to keep your mind on what you were doing with him, because the feeling would go in different directions.  I once said in a magazine that playing with Coltrane was like a beautiful nightmare.  People ask what I meant by that.  I guess some nightmares can be beautiful.  It reminded me of sort of a Pentecostal Church.  It was very spiritual.  I found that John Coltrane had a built-in drummer, and all you had to do was accompany him.  That’s the way it was in my case.  A lot of things that I’d thought about doing when I played with some of the other great innovator saxophone players, I could do with him.  The ’60s was a different period anyhow for life in general.  People were taking more chances, whatever.  We were talking earlier about Charlie Parker playing only a few choruses.  Coltrane may be one of the few artists who could play a lot of choruses and keep you listening.  I mean, he’d come to one climax, build and come to another, very intense, and have something to say.

Earl Bostic used to do it a long time ago.  I think that’s where Trane got it.  One time Trane played something, and when we got through with that set I was thinking of what he was playing.  I said, “Where did you get that from, Coltrane?”  He said, “Earl Bostic.”  Yeah, Earl Bostic used to play.  I remember jam sessions in the Bronx.  There was a place on Boston Road called the 845 Club.  I remember Sunday afternoon sessions there in the late ’40s, Earl Bostic would be there, he would play lengthy, and he would satisfy the people.  He had something.  So maybe some saxophone players should check out Earl Bostic, like Trane did.

TP:    Well, he was in Earl Bostic’s band, and Johnny Hodges…

HAYNES:  Yeah, he was in his band and Johnny Hodges.  Maybe that’s why he could play ballads so damn good.  You’re listening to it right there, you know.

TP:    He referred to you and Elvin Jones as being able to…

HAYNES:  Spread out the rhythm.

TP:    Right.  I don’t know if I have a specific question about that.  Do you have any thoughts on that?

HAYNES:  I hadn’t heard that term before, but I thought he described it very good — “spreading the rhythm.”  I would never have come up with it.  Someone else can sometimes describe what you’re doing or trying to do better than you.

TP:    So the things you did with Coltrane were almost like the demands of the music.  You had to do them to execute what you heard in your mind’s ear…

HAYNES:  You didn’t have to do any one special thing except keep it burning for him.  I was in my car stuck in traffic in Manhattan once listening to “One Down, One Up”, and at one point McCoy was playing, then Coltrane came back in and he was screaming!  I said, “Something must have happened.”  I was in my car, by myself driving, and people probably thought I was going crazy!  Oh, man, he had me.  Evidently, I may have had him to help him to scream as such.

TP:    Would that sort of thing happen, let’s say, with Lester Young or Charlie Parker?

HAYNES:  Not that way.  Sure, it would happen, but not quite like that — because of a lot of things.  The ’60s, man, whoo — it was a serious period.  I was very wild in the ’60s.  What can I really say?  It happened, and I’m glad it was captured.

TP:    During that time you were part of Stan Getz’s working band.  You recorded with him back in 1949.

HAYNES:  That’s very true.  At one point, speaking of Stan Getz I’m in California, we were doing six nights in a club on Sunset Boulevard when John Coltrane was there.  They cut us to three nights, just the weekend, so I did the first part of the week with John Coltrane.  That was in the ’60s.  It was a helluva period, to play with these two different guys, both so great.

TP:    Well, some of your freest playing happened with Chick Corea in the late ’60s, not like with Coltrane, but extremely open and spacious.  That concept of spreading the time I think really flourished in that trio.

HAYNES:  Okay.

TP:    Did that relationship begin through Stan Getz?  He played with him briefly.

HAYNES:  We did play together with Stan Getz.  Yes, that’s the first time we played together.

TP:    What was your impression of Corea’s music?  You’ve recorded his compositions on almost every record.

HAYNES:  Oh, I always liked his writing.  Like Coltrane, he is a drummer.  In fact, I just learned this year that he was making some gigs on drums when he was in New York, on the East Side, different places.  You walk into his house, the first thing you see sometimes is a set of drums.  I never heard Trane talk about drums or anything like that, but in his playing he had a built-in drummer.  He feels it.  His notes are so even.  Some people depend on the drummer for the time, they go against the time maybe and wait for the drummer to let them know where the time is.  But with Trane it wasn’t so.  You’re just there.

TP:    Was that also the case with Charlie Parker and Lester Young?

HAYNES:  Sure.  Different period, though.  Lester Young, when he says.. [SINGS CHORUS FROM "Jumpin' With Symphony Sid"], one-two-three — it’s right there.  All you’ve got to do is design around it.

TP:    That’s a very nice word you used, designing the rhythm.

HAYNES:  Yeah, man.

TP:    The implication there is dance.

HAYNES:  Tell me about it.

TP:    No, please tell me about it.

HAYNES:  [LAUGHS] Now that you’re talking about Prez, at the Savoy Ballroom they danced sometimes when we were playing.  When I had the Hip Ensemble, a few years back, I was playing a gig outdoors in Harlem, and when I drove up there was a young guy waiting for me who I didn’t know.  He says, “I’m waiting for you.”  This guy danced all during my drum solos, improvising.  I was amazed to see what this guy was doing.  I’m playing all these breaks, and he’s dancing through all of them. It’s marketable.

TP:    Speaking of which, did you ever play with tap dancers on these shows?

HAYNES:  Oh yes.

TP:    Like Baby Lawrence.

HAYNES:  I sure did.  When I was 16 or 17 years old in Boston, a lot of those gigs I had, I had to play for tap dancers.  I used to try to tap dance — at home only.  I tap dance on the drums, you know.

TP:    Is that part of what you’re thinking about when you play?

HAYNES:  I guess I’m thinking about it in my subconscious mind.  I’m thinking about rhythms, even when I walk.  I’m thinking constantly about rhythms and beats, which dancers do.

TP:    You even sit at the drum-kit differently than most drummers.  You sort of half-stand and you’re dancing at the drum kit.

HAYNES:  Well, hey, I try to be in it, inside of it.  Yes.

TP:    I’d like to talk to you about the way you organize your bands.  On your records you seem to record music by people who have been significant to your career.  Every record has a Chick Corea tune, every record has a Monk tune, there’s always a ballad, probably Sarah Vaughan sang, there are things by Coltrane and things Charlie Parker recorded.  Can you comment?

HAYNES:  Sure, it’s influenced by the different artists.  I mentioned the drum thing Coltrane and Chick have, and Monk, with his special quality, his special tempos and very unique writings.  These things stayed with me from being around these people.  Charlie Parker, of course.  Some of the tunes I try to include in our repertoire are tunes not often played.  Usually, after we play them a while, then they become a little more popular, especially if they are being played on the air and whatnot, and then we play them in person.  But those are things that feel fresh to me, and I like the feeling of the way the tunes lay.

TP:    There’s also been for a long time an aspect of Caribbean music and Caribbean rhythms.  Your parents I believe were Barbadan, yes?

HAYNES:  That’s correct.

TP:    Was the Caribbean music something that was always there in the household, or…

HAYNES:  No, it was not in the household much.  But maybe just listening to them talk with their accents, it’s naturally there.  Not the tunes themselves, but the feeling of it.  I love it!  I go down there a lot.

TP:    Have you dealt with hand drumming much, or with hand drummers?

HAYNES:  A little, not too much.  I went to Senegal a couple of times.  There’s a lot of great drummers, but one in particular, Dudu Rose.  One time when I had the Hip Ensemble, we had to do two concerts.  One was a free concert, and we were to play together at some point.  I thought he was going to sit in with my band, but he didn’t speak English and we didn’t talk about it.  When I got there, word was that I was to sit in with his band.  He had all drummers.  They played with one stick and one hand.  I sat in with them and we played.  There was nothing rehearsed and we didn’t discuss anything, but at one point we just started getting down on the instruments.  I had to feel it and listen for when certain people would be playing solos.  At one point they were playing something that sounded like a background, and they were all looking at me, which made me think that it was my time to solo, and they were backing me up.  Man, we got involved, so involved that everybody was screaming.  They speak sort of French with a dialect, and when I got off I could just hear, “Roy Haynes!”  Somebody told me I could have run for office and won right away.  So yeah, I’m into hand drums, and I listen to all different types of drums.

TP:    Do you practice a lot with your moves?  Probably not now, but at an earlier point did you do a lot of practicing?  Or was it always an on-the-stand type of thing that was in function with the music?

HAYNES:  I am constantly practicing in my head.  In fact, the teacher once in school sent me to the principal, because I was drumming with my hands on the desk in school.  My father used to say I was just nervous.  I’m constantly thinking rhythms, drums.  When I was very young I used to practice a lot; not any special thing, but just practice playing.  I’m like a doctor.  When he’s operating on you, he’s practicing.  When I go to my gigs, that’s my practice.  I may play something that I never heard before or maybe that you never heard before.  It’s all a challenge.  I deal with sounds.  I’m full of rhythm, man.  I feel it.  I’m thinking summer, winter, fall, spring, hot, cold, fast and solo, and colors.  But I don’t analyze it.  I’ve been playing professionally over 50 years, and that’s the way I do it.  People do it different ways.  I do it like that.

TP:    What are the qualities somebody needs to be part of the Roy Haynes circle?

HAYNES:  I don’t know always.  You’ve got to have some feeling and imagination, and there has to be some warmth in whatever instrument you’re playing.  It has to be not rigid, not tight; the music is tight but it’s still loose.  I don’t look for things.  I try to adjust.  Usually one guy will recommend another guy that maybe he went to school with or something like that.  I’ll listen to those guys, then I’ll try to put together what I’m feeling from them.  I try to understand their concept, then I take it all the way out and see if they’re going to understand my concept.  I feel it back and forth.  I don’t put it into words, and it’s not an audition.  I’m not into all of that.  First of all, I don’t want to work steady.  Years ago I was saying I was semi-retired.  I don’t have to say that any more, because they took me out of my little semi-retirement.  But I work, and then I cool out and I think and I dream and go throughout the world, and it’s great.  I don’t like to analyze everything and put everything in a certain position and it has to stay in that position.

TP:    Do arrangements form themselves in the band?

HAYNES:  To some extent, but I structure them like riding a horse.  You pull a rein you tighten it up here, you loosen it there.  I’m still sitting in the driver’s seat, so to speak.  But I let it loose, I let it go, I see where it’s going to go and what it feels like.  Sometimes I go out, and sometimes I’ll be polite, nice and let it move and breathe.

TP:    Very unpredictable sets.

HAYNES:  Maybe, to some extent.  But still in the pocket and with feeling.

TP:    Do you try to surprise yourself in every set?

HAYNES:  I do surprise myself.  The worst surprise is when I can’t get it to happen!  Then I go the bar.  But usually it comes out.  I don’t play for a long period, and I’m like an animal, a lion or tiger locked in its cage, and when I get out I try to restrain myself.  I don’t want to overplay.  A great musician told me he came to hear me, and I played a whole set without playing a solo.  I kind of doubt that.  Sometimes I play my solos at the end.  I don’t always trade 4′s or 8′s with the guys.  I like them to trade and just keep it moving, and spread the rhythm, as Trane said.  Keep it moving, keep it crisp.

* * * *

Roy Haynes (for Drumworks):

TP:    Do you still practice.  And if you do still practice, what do you practice?

HAYNES:  My practicing now is like a doctor practicing.  When they say a doctor is practicing that means he’s operating on you or doing his thing.  I’ve been doing that for years; on the gig is my practice.  Sometimes I may sit behind the drums, because I was taking long periods when I wouldn’t play at all.  Those have become a little shorter, though now and then I cool out for a month or so.  But I’m always thinking drums.  I’m walking drums.  That’s my whole rhythm thing.  But naturally you’ve got to keep that blood flowing and the juices in your body, so you can be loose enough to play.  So I don’t really sit down and practice.  What I was doing some years ago, I would invite certain people out to my house and we would just play.  Like, Kevin Eubanks would come out when he was playing with me, and Ralph Moore, and all those guys; David Kikoski still comes out.  And that’s my practice.

TP:    You practice by playing.

HAYNES:  Exactly.  Because I don’t know what to practice.  I never was into the rudiments and all of that stuff anyhow.  I’m not a rudimental drummer.  Not really.  I’ve got my own rudiments.  I never learned that even hand stuff.  I tried at it; I was never good at it.

TP:    I gather you were pretty much self-taught, and there was a drummer on your block named Herbie Wright who gave you some lessons.

HAYNES:  Yes, Herbie Wright.  He was an older guy.  He played with the Jenkins Orphanage Band in South Carolina that Jabbo Smith and Cootie Williams was in.  Herbie Wright was a short guy, and I imagine that he was from North Carolina because he had high cheekbones, very dark skin.  But we just did some informal things.  He had a snare drum in his living room someplace, and my father knew him.  I went up to him a couple of times, and that was it.

TP:    So other than that it was pretty much learning by doing.

HAYNES:  Exactly.  Which I’m still doing.  I’m still learning, you know.

TP:    That leads me to ask who are your drumming heroes.

HAYNES:  Well, Papa Jonathan [Jones] was my main guy, even though I was into Cozy Cole, because I had that record, “Crescendo In Drums,” that he made with Cab Calloway.  I had a record of Chick Webb, whom I never did see in person.  Some of the younger guys later, such as Kenny Clarke, whom I met in Boston in the early ’40s.  I met Art Blakey in Boston when he came there with Fletcher Henderson.  I didn’t meet Max when he came through with Benny Carter, but I caught him, and I had the records he was on with Coleman Hawkins and Dizzy and all of that.  Shadow Wilson I met when he was with Lionel Hampton, and later he was with Earl Hines.  All these guys were part of my thing.

TP:    You also said that you’d go to hear the big bands, and you’d hear Jimmy Crawford and Sonny Greer and the others who came through.

HAYNES:  Yeah.  I couldn’t get close to them, though, in terms of meeting them.  Later in life Sonny and I became very cool.  But Jo Jones, he was open.  In fact, when I went to the RKO Theater in Boston where the Basie band was playing, I went backstage and told them I was his son, man, so I got right in.  The guys in the band got a kick out of that.  They said, “Here’s your son, man!”  I was ahead of the time as far as the word “Papa Jo” was concerned!

TP:    Did you emulate these drummers in forming a style, or a sound?

HAYNES:  Well, I tried.  But I wasn’t too comfortable trying to do that.  It didn’t work for me.  So I had to go out and dig for myself.

TP:    Well, who are some of the young drummers today you most want to know about…

HAYNES:  You know what?  I get that question all the time.  I can’t answer it.  There’s a lot of great talent out there.  A lot of the youngsters are really into it, and I’m going to leave out somebody.  I’ll say that there are some pretty hot ones. They’ve got good hands.  I don’t know if I dig where they put things.  I don’t always dig their imaginations, but they’ve got a lot of stuff to work with.

TP:    So if there’s anything lacking in young drummers, it’s their imagination?

HAYNES:  I wouldn’t even want to say that there are things lacking.  Even though there may be, you know.

TP:    What do they most want to know about when they talk to you?

HAYNES:  I get all kinds of questions in general.  They ask me all kinds of things.  I can’t think offhand of one thing.  A lot of them, not only the drummers…. Well, this is a drummer’s thing.  But just musicians ask me questions in general, not particularly drummers.  They try to check out things and…

TP:     Well, obviously they watch you and try to emulate.

HAYNES:  Some of the guys write down some of the stuff you play.  And a lot of that stuff is hard, I’m sure, especially the direction I go now, which is soloing.  It’s elastic, it’s back forth, there aren’t always measures to count.  That’s my concept now.

TP:    How does your current band facilitate that concept, with Danilo Perez and John Patitucci?

HAYNES:  Well, a lot of people want to play with me, naturally, because I’ve become the link, so to speak.  They want to be associated with people I’ve played with; for instance, pianists like Monk or Bud Powell or Chick Corea.  They want to be part of that.  But what I am trying to do at this stage of my life is to do anything and everything that comes to mind, but try to place it in a place where it’s going to mean something.  Years ago, when I played with those people, I didn’t do everything that I was capable of doing because it wouldn’t fit.  So now, whatever I do, if I play with somebody else, they sort of have to go in my direction, because there’s no telling what I’m going to do.  And these guys are up for it.  I’m stretching the beat, I’m going fast and slow…taking it fast and slow and hot and cold.  And it seems to work.  There’s an audience for it.  They seem to love it!

TP:    Well, Danilo Perez almost seems like a second drummer.

HAYNES:  Well, he’s got a lot of rhythm!  So it can work.  Sometimes we meet up with the same thing, the same beats — not even trying to particularly.  It happens spontaneous.  That’s what they were thinking of calling the trio record.

TP:    And this record, like all your records of the last decade, surveys your career and your connections and the people who played with.  There’s a Monk piece, a piece associated with Bird, one with Bud, one with Sarah Vaughan, one by Chick Corea, and so on.

HAYNES:  Exactly.

TP:    Your style was so beloved by singers, and you played with Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, and even once for a week with Nat Cole.

HAYNES:  I did a week with Nat Cole in 1946 in the Earle Theater in Philadelphia.

TP:    What’s the art to backing a singer, from your perspective?

HAYNES:  I guess I was just learning then when I was trying to do it, and whatever it is, I think I captured it.  I can’t always put it into words.  It’s still that thing of listening and being sensitive.  When I played with Billie Holiday, sometimes I wasn’t sensitive enough maybe.  But I know what you have to do.  I knew what they wanted.  I said recently in an interview that playing with Sarah Vaughan was like playing with Charlie Parker.  She had that kind of mind.  She was ready for new things.  Playing with Billie Holiday was like playing with Lester Young.  And playing with Ella Fitzgerald was like playing with the Basie band.  She’d work you to death, Ella Fitzgerald, man!  She’d sing long and she’d scat but she was SWINGIN’ in there.  So I had a taste of all that.  I recorded with Ray Charles, too, and Carmen and a lot of different singers.  I played with Lee Wiley up in Boston.

TP:    Are you someone who knows all the lyrics?

HAYNES:  I know a lot of lyrics.  I didn’t particularly learn them playing with the singers.  A lot of people say, “Yeah, you played with Sarah Vaughan…” I knew lyrics before that.

TP:    Do you sing?

HAYNES:  All the time! [LAUGHS]

TP:    What do you remember most from your time with Coltrane, and was there anything in particular that he wanted to hear?

HAYNES:  Well, Coltrane had with him one of the greatest drummers ever — Elvin.  Each time I played I was sort of filling in for Elvin.  It wasn’t really the same, but Elvin was familiar with me from the period when I was with Bird.

TP:    So I hear.  I gather he used to meet you at the train station.

HAYNES:  Yeah, he talks about that.  That’s when I was with Ella Fitzgerald, because Hank and I were playing together then.  So a lot of people haven’t realized that he was hip to me way back before they were — “they” meaning maybe some of the writers and journalists and historians.  But I think they’ve learned that since then.

But what did Trane want?  Trane didn’t say too much about what he wanted.  There was something in me that I guess he was familiar with, and that I just had to lay back a little and let it happen.

TP:    You told me that Coltrane was one of the very few artists who could play a lot of choruses and keep you listening, which you said he got from Earl Bostic.

HAYNES:  Well, yes.  Earl Bostic was very long-winded.  He’d play a lot of choruses.  Trane may have got that from him.  I remember one time Trane was playing something, and afterwards I hummed what he was playing to him, and I said, “Man, where did you get that?”  He said, “Earl Bostic.” [LAUGHS] He told me that himself.  He worked with Earl.  During 1946 there were a lot of jam sessions around New York.  There was a guy named Johnny Jackson who is not living now.  He used to give sessions in the Bronx, at the Club 421 I think the name of it was…or maybe not the 421… It was something on one of the main streets.  Earl used to be part of that, and I used to play with those guys.  I was usually one of the drummers.  Sid Catlett was the drummer on some of those sessions.  So I got a taste of all of that, too.  And I learned later how important Earl Bostic was.  He was a crowd-pleaser, plus he was very musical.

TP:    Plus an incredible technician, a scientist of the saxophone.

HAYNES:  There you go.

TP:    Coltrane also had the phrase “spreading the rhythm” in reference to you.

HAYNES:  That’s the term he used describing Elvin and myself.

TP:    It’s an interesting term.  Do you feel it’s something that got unlocked in you from playing with him, or is it something you were doing all along?

HAYNES:  I would think that’s something that I was about.  Because even back when playing the hi-hat, the sock cymbal on 2 and 4 a lot, I didn’t really do a lot of that.  Sometimes on a record I would do it, because certain musicians needed or wanted that.  But I sort of played loose.  That’s one thing that really got me with Lester Young.  He liked that looseness.  It’s still swinging.  I’m still doing a lot of little accents with the bass drum in my left hand, even in my early career, and it could work with somebody if they could play, if they had the rhythm.  I’m talking about the person you’re accompanying.  Some guys needed that whole thing all the time for you to give them the 2-and-4 feeling.  But with Trane, all I could do is just swing and play.  With Lester Young, too, and Charlie Parker.

TP:    You’ve referred to Coltrane as a drummer, Bird as a drummer, Chick Corea as a drummer, Lester Young, Monk… You referred to them all as drummers.

HAYNES:  Yes.  They have a drummer inside them.  All you do is accompany them, man.

TP:    You said all you have to do with them is design around it, designing the rhythm.

HAYNES:  Yes.  Mingus used to say, “Roy Haynes doesn’t always play the beat.  He suggests the beat!”  That’s somebody describing me, and maybe to that extent he was right.

TP:    Which sounds like choreography, choreographing a tap dance to a certain extent.

HAYNES:  There you go.  I used to try to tap dance years ago at home, not in public.  Every now and then I still… I’ve got more of a right foot than a left foot, though!  But even now, I’m into checking out Savion Glover.  And Jimmy Slyde is my buddy; he’s still around dancing, and we sort of grew up together,.  Also when I started playing as a teenager, I played for a lot of tap dancers through my early career.

TP:    You can kind of hear it in your attack, too, because your strokes are so crisp and your punctuation so precise.  Is clarity of ideas always your goal and focus?

HAYNES:  Sometimes.  I guess maybe most of the time in solos.  It’s like having a conversation, or telling a story, painting a picture.  Sometimes it’s abstract; sometimes it’s right there to the point, right in the rhythm; sometimes it spreads out.  That’s what I try to do.  I try to make it say something.  Take you someplace.

TP:    You mentioned that even when you were very young, you were always playing the drums in your head, always thinking about drums, always thinking about rhythm…

HAYNES:  Yes, playing with my thumbs even at school, with the desk.  The desk had an opening.  The desk was made like a drum; it was hollow on the inside where you could put your books and everything.  So I liked the sound of it.  I would do that, and the whole class would be listening to me rather than listening to the teacher — and they would throw me out!  They sent me to the principal’s office in high school.  Because I was always playing with my little nervous hands.  You know what I mean?  I was always drumming, man.

TP:    You’re playing very free and, as you said, you’re soloing all the time, but there are structures within the songs, and certain arrangements, whether they’re loose or tight or whatever, and I’m wondering about how you guide the flow of a performance.

HAYNES:  It varies.  It may depend on my mood, or it may depend on the song itself.  Usually, when I have, say, my quartet, I don’t always solo.  I wait for a while.  I have to really feel relaxed or comfortable enough.  I have to be comfortable around how I’m sitting, how the audience is, if they’re loud or attentive.  That’s when I figure I’m best at soloing, when I’m ready to, rather than have to play with somebody who is going to tell me when to solo — they’re going to trade here or they’re going to trade there.  I don’t usually like to do it that way.  Lots of times, when I have a saxophone, I’ll have the saxophone and the piano playing fours against each other, and I’ll just be designing around them.  I don’t always like to play fours.  I did that with Prez back in the ’40s; I don’t always like to do that.  So I like to solo when I’m ready, and it seems to work, because the audience really seems to eat it up that way.  There’s an audience for what I’ve been trying to do, I’m finding out, all over the world.

TP:    You started out playing for dancers a lot.  When you came to New York, your first gig was at the Savoy, and you’ve referred to how the Savoy beat imprinted itself on you.  What’s the difference between playing for dancers and playing in a sitdown concert situation, which is how life is in the jazz business these days?

HAYNES:  Well, there’s a certain thing that you have to do to keep the people dancing.  I’ve had some times when the people won’t dance until you get a certain… Or sometimes you play a melody that they like, then once you get them on the floor, man, you can take them where you want to take them — to some extent.  But there’s an art to doing that.  I did a lot of it, and I tried to get away from that, and just play concerts for people listening.  But I know how to do it.  I know how to handle that.  I can still do it if I wish.

TP:    You’ve always had a very distinct snare drum sound.  Why do you tune it high and tight with lots of crispness?

HAYNES:  It seems to be effective.  It seems to work.  I don’t always know why I do things, but there sure is a reason up there.  But whatever the reason is, it seems to really get over.  It seems to work!  I don’t know why, though.  I just found out last night, when I was doing a soundcheck… From night to night you go to different places, and your drums may change.  Danilo was telling me I always get that same note.  There are two notes; I get one or the other.  He would hear me hit the drums playing a melodic thing, then he would hit them on the piano.  I knew what I wanted in my head all the time, all these years!  And he says it’s always the same notes, either one or the other — one of two notes.  That’s pretty good.  I tried for that.  That’s what I tried to do.  Now, he answered without me even asking.  “Yeah, Roy Haynes, you always get that note, man.”

TP:    You also have a real wide-open bass drum sound.  It’s instantly recognizable for certain drummers.  They hear one stroke, and they know it’s you.

HAYNES:  How about that.  That’s interesting.  In fact, it’s so wide open… It may have been wide open at Birdland, sometimes maybe too much for the bass player.  It’s an 18″ bass drum.  I don’t like bass drums all cluttered up, unless I’m just playing a whole Rock thing — but I’m not a Rock drummer.

TP:    What does it mean, you’re not a Rock drummer?

HAYNES:  Well, that speaks for itself.  I’m not.  Someone was asking me earlier about the technicians today in the studio and studio playing.  I’m not always comfortable in a studio.  Everything is geared toward that Rock-Funk thing, mostly.

TP:    Is it too mechanical?

HAYNES:  It’s very mechanical.  It’s a very mechanical sound.  Most of the drummers that play today, they all sound alike.  Their drums sound alike.  I’ve never wanted to sound too much like anyone else, ever since I’ve been an adult.

TP:    So being an individual has always been your animating imperative, really.

HAYNES:  Somewhat.  One year I had bought a new convertible, and one of my buddy drummers was in the car, and he says, “Roy Haynes, what are you trying to do?”  I said, “I’m trying to be myself!”  I said that then, in 1950!

TP:    I need to know the components of your kit.  If you don’t want to go into it, tell me who I should ask, so I can get the accurate information.

HAYNES:  Joe Testa at Yamaha.  He’ll give you all the details.  I have different sets.  I have two floor toms, and I don’t always use them.

TP:    What do you have with you now?

HAYNES:  I don’t know all the sizes.  An 8″-by-10″, I think, and a 9″-by-12″ rack tom, as they call them now.  I have one I think 14″ or 16″ floor tom; I’m not sure which.  I have two crash cymbals.  A flat ride cymbal that was sort of copied after the cymbal that I used on “Now He Sings, Now He Sobs,” which has become very classic and very popular.  In fact, the cymbal that I used on “Now He Sings, Now He Sobs” with Chick Corea was a flat ride Paiste, which is when they first started making them.  I had one of the first ones.  I may have been the first drummer to record with it.  When Chick Corea started Return to Forever, he came over to my house and borrowed a cymbal, and kept it all of these years.  Then last year, I think, he took that same Paiste cymbal and brought it to Zildjian and had them try to copy it — a sort of cloned cymbal.  They gave me three or four, and they gave Chick a few of them.  So that’s what I’m using right now, and it really worked with this trio.  It’s only an 18″ flat ride.

TP:    Why does it work so well with this trio?

HAYNES:  Well, John Patitucci, most of his stuff is pretty light on the acoustic bass.  He likes to play light, so this cymbal works with him, along with the piano.  Even though I know the bass drum sometimes probably can get a little boomy in there!  But sometimes I don’t play it, or sometimes I just let him play solo without the drums.

TP:    And you do a lot of exchanges on the record.

HAYNES:  Oh yes.  We did some 12s on “Sippin’ At Bells” and some of the other stuff.

TP:    How has drum equipment changed over the years, from when you were playing with Lester Young and Charlie Parker to today?  Is it a much more efficient instrument?  Have the materials changed your sound in any way?

HAYNES:  Well, not too much.  Except they started making all of the drum stands and the cymbal stands and the drum throws and the seats…they started making them heavier.  I guess a lot of the Rock drummers were breaking up the stuff, so they started making everything stronger and heavier, which cost me a lot of money traveling.  If I’m the leader, that comes out of your expenses — the overweight.

But let me say this.  When I was with Lester Young, which was 1947 to 1949, I think my drums had got stolen.  I think I had a 22″ bass drum, because I came from the Luis Russell Big Band to Lester Young.  Then I had one of the first 20″ bass drums in 1949.  Then after that they started making smaller ones, so I got to the 18″, and I’m pretty comfortable with the 18″.  So it went from the 22″ when I was with the big band, Luis Russell… 22″ was considered small because a lot of people had 24″ bass drums, and 28″ was standard for a bass drum in the ’40s, or at least the early ’40s.  Then I had this small snare drum, 3″-by-13″, which we called a bebop snare.  That’s in that famous picture with Monk, Mingus and Bird, taken at the Open Door — that little snare drum.  I still have another one at my house in Long Island.

TP:    Are cymbals similar to what they were then?

HAYNES:  Well, everything has improved.  They last longer.

TP:    A lot of drummers, when they talk about you, describe you as having an internal clave.  It’s not explicit, it’s almost implicit in the way you…

HAYNES:  It must be Latin drummers who talk about that.

TP:    No.  They’re drummers who are interested in Latin music, but not Latin drummers.  Could you talk a bit about your relations to Latin music and diasporic music within your trapset style?

HAYNES:  I was always into the Latin music.  My folks were from the Caribbean anyhow — Barbados.  And I always listened to it.  When I first came to New York, there was a lot of great Latin music — uptown, all over Manhattan.  When places like Birdland opened, and the Royal Roost, Machito’s band was very popular.  He had a drummer named Uba, and we were always checking Uba out.  He didn’t play with a complete trapset.  He had timbales in his set, and a bass drum, and no hi-hat… I forget exactly his setup.  But I used to listen to him all the time, and Tito Puente and those guys, way back in the day.  I was very close with Willie Bobo.  Mongo and Willie Bobo were living in the same complex in the Bay Area when they were playing with Cal Tjader. They had checked out my concept way back then on records and from in-person appearances, and they would say that I approached the drumset like timbales.  They were telling me that in the late ’50s and early ’60s.  So there was some relation.  And that was my approach.  I felt that.  I was into that on a lot of solos and everything.

TP:    I guess Danilo Perez must really relate to that in your band.

HAYNES:  Oh, man, he loves it.  All night long he’s telling me, “You’re the only one, man!  You’re the only one!”  Jack Hooke and Symphony Sid used to present Monday Latin Night at the Village Gate, and sometimes they would feature a jazz guy with one of the Latin bands.  When Jack called me to do it, I was to play with Tito Puente’s band as a guest.  And man, we got hooked up so heavy there with the rhythms that Tito… The lead trumpet was the musical director of the band, and, man, we got so involved, he gave them the cue to take it out.  It got too hot!  Tito was my buddy.  We knew each other from the late ’40s.

Two Conversations With Eddie Palmieri, Who Turns 75 Today

To observe the 75th birthday of maestro Eddie Palmieri, “El Rey de las Blancas y las Negras,” I’m posting a pair of interviews conducted, respectively, in 2003 and 2005. The first is the raw transcript of a conversation with Mr. Palmieri and Arturo O’Farrill for Downbeat in 2003 — trumpet master Brian Lynch dropped  by and joins the conversation towards the end. The second was conducted for the press materials for Palmieri’s 2005 album, Listen Here, on which he convened guest improvisers Michael Brecker, Christian McBride, Regina Carter, David Sanchez, John Scofield, and Nicholas Payton, as well as Lynch and Donald Harrison and Conrad Herwig from his Afro-Caribbean Octet, one of the truly underrated bands of the ’90s.

Eddie Palmieri-Arturo O’Farrill (Birdland, 9-22-03):

TP:    I wanted to start with a comment for Eddie.  I’ve been thinking a lot about you in the last couple of years and listening to a lot of your music.  And it occurs to me that you’re from the same generation as Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner.  You’re a little older, actually, than all of them, but only by a few years.  And all of them within the last decade or so have been revisiting roots, their roots in the music and the things that initially inspired them, with fresh ears.  It seems you’re doing the same thing these days, particularly with La Perfecta and with El Rumbero del Piano.  It seems this last decade has been a period of consolidation.  It’s not a specific question, but could you take it and offer some reflections on what you’ve been doing in the last decade.

PALMIERI:  Well, what happened, after the dance genre really ended, in a sense, of the music called Salsa, then I started to record Latin Jazz.  That’s when I was working with Brian Lynch, Conrad Herwig and Donald Harrison.  We did three CDs, Palmas, Arete and El Vortex.  That was the move.  We started to travel to Europe and started doing concerts, playing Latin Jazz.  What happened was that the last two CDs, which were recorded for RMM, the label company of Ralph Mercado…and we analyzed that to see if we could get back into our main genre, which was, again, the dance orchestra.  Because it’s essentially a dance orchestra.  That’s where you have El Rumbero Del Piano.  After El Rumbero Del Piano, which closed the 20th century, then to open up the 21st century Tito Puente and I did Masterpiece. But Tito passed away, and we were never able to travel or do concerts, which we naturally had planned.  Then I decided to go back… The idea came from a conversation with Conrad Herwig.  He was doing some transcription work on Frank Rosolino, the trombonist, who was his idol, and he said that we should do this for Barry Rogers, who was the co-partner with Jose Rodriguez on the trombone.  That’s where it started.  Then we started to do the work for La Perfecta.  We did the first album, La Perfecta, II. We were quite fortunate to have the flute player Eddy Zervignon, and we took that conjunto to Europe, and it was well received.  Then on the second CD for Concord, Ritmo Caliente, we brought back some of those compositions as well and recorded them again.

TP:    You wrote new music as well.  Was it inspired by the same idea, the same notion?  Did you use the older compositions as a springboard for the new work as well?

PALMIERI:  Well, the old work, as far as the compositions that had been recorded, they knew what we were going to do there.  The new work that was created was from a ballad that we had written, then a gigue    of Bach that I always had in mind, and I knew we could work it out — by adding the batas, it became quite exciting.  That’s how we were able to get some new compositions and mix it with La Perfecta on Ritmo Caliente.

TP:    You just brought up a point that I think is very pertinent for both you and Arturo as bandleaders dealing in this idiom.  This is dance-driven music.  But there aren’t so many venues, I wouldn’t think, for you to play for dancers any more.  I don’t know how many jobs either of you do in a year for dancers, but I wouldn’t think it’s too high a percentage.  Can you address the impact of the function, of the situation on the music that you play and the music you conceive?

O’FARRILL:  It’s funny, because there aren’t really that many great dance halls left.  That’s one of the problems.  In the heyday, during the ’50s and the ’60s, there were a lot of dance halls.  Also, I think this is true.  People don’t know how to dance any more! [LAUGHS] They don’t know how to dance.

PALMIERI:  Yeah.

O’FARRILL:  They’re not taught to dance.  The few dances that I’ve played, I look out on the floor, and there’s no style, no elegance.  So I think there’s an absence of really fine dancing, and that has a lot to do with it.  It has a lot to do with the fact that there’s also no dance clubs.  We played the Copacabana this year with the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, and it was very disappointing, because we didn’t get out as many people as we would have liked, and the dancing was… I mean, it was very lovely, but I think that it’s a lost art.  I think we need to have dancing schools, so people can learn how to dance again!

TP:    When La Perfecta was formed, I’d imagine most of the songs were written and conceived for dancers — and for the greatest dancers around!

O’FARRILL:  You can’t listen to those records without moving.

PALMIERI:  Well, it certainly happened that it was the time and it was the location of the Palladium, and there were the greatest dancers.  To be able to play the Palladium, you had to have an orchestra that was… It was like a challenge between the dancer and the orchestra, who could outlast who, in a sense.  And to be able to get into the Palladium… Then once you got in, then the word of mouth… We were a dance orchestra, and how we presented that with the two trombones and flute was quite interesting and very exciting to dance to.

TP:    It’s the same process as the old big bands, the jazz dance bands, who played with chorus line dancers or played at the Savoy or the Apollo.  A lot of the music, which is an untold story, was done in response to the dancers.  What were the first principles for your compositions?  Rhythmic?  Harmonic?  A combination of both?

PALMIERI:  At the time, it was following the Cuban structures that I heard in the different orchestras that were coming out of Cuba in the ’50s and ’60s.  It never ceased to amaze me how it would excite me to listen to them.  At that time, you could record only within 2 minutes and 45 seconds.  How they were able to get you!  I dedicated all of my time and my career to listening to the structures that were coming out of there.  Once I learned them intuitively, then I learned them scientifically — why they excite.  There were reasons.  There’s a tension and resistance within the forms, and the rhythm section and how it has its own form so it can reach that climax.  That’s what made it interesting for me.

O’FARRILL:  That’s an interesting word — “tension.”  When I listen to your music, man, to me it’s always eminently listenable and eminently danceable.

TP:    And intellectually challenging.

O’FARRILL:  Intellectually challenging, and always with a heavy attention to exactly what you’re talking about — the tension.  The dancing.  The groove.  There’s very few people in the world who have ever achieved what Eddie has done, to make music really intelligently and eminently groove.  I mean, the groove is the factor, too.

PALMIERI:  Thank you.

TP:    Do you think that having intensively played timbales in your early teens… You’ve said that you copied all of Tito Puente’s solos.

PALMIERI:  Oh, yeah.  As a youngster, me and all my friends, we all wanted to be another Tito Puente, and by 13 years old I was playing the timbales with my uncle, who had a typical folkloric orchestra — a conjunto.  For two years.  Then after that, I gave him back the timbales, or sold it to him, whatever, for the next drummer who was coming in.  But that certainly helped me to be able to comprehend what I was listening to later.  In 1955, I went with Johnny Segui.  In 1956 is when I came into the orchestra with the conjunto of Vicentico Valdes, who was also Cuban.  The conjunto that he was presenting was extremely exciting, and the rhythm section was what was happening.  So I was able to capture that also.  After that, I worked with Tito Rodriguez for a couple of years.  By late 1961, then I formed La Perfecta.

TP:    So you had a long apprenticeship.  Your concepts didn’t just come out of nowhere.  You had a lot of time to think about it, and you’ve been playing since you were young.

PALMIERI:  Oh yeah.  And certainly, the different orchestras that I was able to work with and comprehend…

O’FARRILL:  I think it’s very important for all musicians to play some kind of percussion instrument, especially Latin musicians — especially Latin Jazz musicians.  You should be able to play timbal, on the conga, or whatever it is.  To get that concept, you have to play it.  I’m the kind of person who learns by doing.  I can’t learn by rote or by hearing it.  I have to do.  So playing timbales, that has to be a heavy part of your development.

TP:    What percussion instruments do you play, Arturo?

O’FARRILL:  Conga.  That’s it.

TP:    And is playing the drums important to your identity as a pianist, to your tonal personality?

O’FARRILL:  It’s difficult on my hands.  As a pianist, you don’t have to have calluses on the bottom of your fingers.

TP:    You’d better pick up some sticks.

O’FARRILL:  Well, I wish I had thought of that! [LAUGHTER] No, you want the calluses on the tips of your fingers.  But at least for the fingers to have a thorough understanding of the different patterns that come into play in a rhythm section.  A lot of people take Latin Jazz and do a generic thing.  But to really know what each instrument plays, that’s where you begin to have an understanding.  And as a player, you begin to pick up on things.  You can land in places rhythmically, because you’re aware of what the timbal is doing or the bongo.  It’s very important stuff.

TP:    Your approaches to the piano are so different, and yet come from such a similar root.  Arturo is a very florid player.  You play a lot of notes, there’s a lot of facility and elan…

O’FARRILL:  I have to say that’s true.  But when I’m playing… We did this record called… It was a Machito tribute, “Live at Hostos.”  And one of the highlights of my life was that I sounded like Eddie Palmieri! [LAUGHS] On a Papo Vasquez composition.  For a minute there, I had his groove.  It felt so good!  Florid, whatever.  But to have that kind of command of the groove, that to me is very important.

TP:    Where I wanted to take this is: Arturo, even though your father is one of the seminal composers and arrangers in the idiom, you yourself came out of a jazz head and then moved back into the structures of diasporic music and Afro-Cuban music.

O’FARRILL:  Yes.

TP:    And Eddie began as a rumbero type of personality, and then moved to jazz later.  You’re quoted as saying that you hated jazz at first.

PALMIERI:  Yes, I never comprehended it.  Not that I never comprehended it, but I really concentrated on the structures for dancing.  That’s where I really stood, as a dance orchestra leader.  What was I going to do with an exciting orchestra to make the people dance?  But sure enough, then we certainly had to go into the world of jazz harmonics and go into the Latin jazz, as we did on those four CDs.

O’FARRILL:  See, I came from a different background.  It was probably because I did the typical rebellious son thing.  My father was a very great Latin composer-arranger, so I rejected that.  You know how kids are.  You reject what your father does.  So my first influences were Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and that’s all I played.  It wasn’t until many years later that I started listening to Latin music and playing it.

TP:    What were the challenges you faced in adapting your style to the rhythms and structures of Latin music, coming from the orientation you had.  What are the challenges for a jazz-oriented person in adapting themselves to Afro-Cuban music?  Conversely, what are the challenges for someone who is immersed in Afro-Cuban structures to adapt themselves to jazz sensibility and expression?

O’FARRILL:  It’s very different.  There’s a tradition in Latin piano, and you have to respect it.  You have to really understand and know the great pianists, to be able to play in that style without losing your identity.  First of all, it’s a different technique.  Your hands have to move differently.  It’s not florid.  It’s not Bud Powell.  It’s a different concept.  And I think that if you play enough right-handed, heavy, florid, 16th note type stuff, you lose that percussive sense.  Also, it’s a very Cuban kind of piano style that you have to adopt.

TP:    Elaborate on that.

O’FARRILL:  Well, Rene Hernandez.  Peruchin.  That’s the kind of school you’re coming from, with the octaves, thirds… You’re playing stuff that you can’t really do with 16th notes.  You have to really play that stuff with a heavy touch.  And if you grow up playing Bud Powell, that’s not the school.  Bud Powell is the school of 16th notes in the right hand and spare comping in the left hand.  So I had to basically retrain myself to really be able to play that.  And I had to grow up.  I had to get past my teenager crap, and come to love this music.  Because it’s who I am.

PALMIERI:  And for me, like Arturo said, it was the octave playing, which came from the players… Rene Hernandez was one of the greatest arrangers that we had here, naturally, and his father, Chico.  And when we’re playing in the Latin area, the minimal harmonic changes is…we land up, more or less, on tonic and dominant, I-II-V-IV chord changes.  When you get into the jazz, that really was a whole other world for me, and I had never experienced that.  Because I listened to the jazz artists earlier, but never gave it the time and the effort that I gave the dance orchestras.  So then, it was quite difficult for me.  And still, to work out that different… How to change the style of fingering also, to play certain things.  Because when you’re playing in octaves… And that was a time when there was no mikes, so you had to play really…

TP:    You had to play loud.

PALMIERI:  That’s really the worst position, because the extensions are locked in.  So sure enough, I had to get back to some basic fundamental exercises, thirds and minor thirds and sixes, and double note techniques, so that I could be able to play in a different style.  It’s still difficult for me to go from one to the other.

TP:    Arturo, is going from one to the other complex for you as well?  Because both you record and perform in both areas of the music.

O’FARRILL:  Ideally, you want to blur that line.  You don’t want to have that big a changeover.  What I try to work towards is having the two styles be transparent, so that you can play.  As Eddie was talking, I was thinking that there’s a thing in Latin music that we call “timba.”  It’s a lot easier to fudge and fake jazz type stuff than it is to fake “timba.”  Because when you’re playing in Latin music and you’re not really grooving, people pick up on that — especially dancers!  So you can do all this fast stuff, and that’s like nonsense to me.  But when you’re playing a really heavy groove, you’re playing “timba,” that’s a lot harder to fake.  I don’t think you can make it.  I think it really has to come from your soul.  So the thing that I work with is to blur the line between Jazz and Latin, and kind of come out of this fast kind of stuff right into “timba,” right into a heavy, groove-oriented, clave-aware style.

TP:    Eddie, you’re not just a pianist, but I would think there must be an orchestra in your mind all the time when you’re playing.  Is that how it is for you when you’re soloing?

PALMIERI:  What happens, again, it’s how I’m able to go and extend, if it’s a variation, within the chordal structures that… They’re not variant.  For us to lock up…Arturo said the word “timba.”  For me, it’s always, again, holding onto a dominant, and how am I going to be able to extend on that, what was I going to do on that.  That’s where it started to extend, harmonically or whatever, I was able to perform in the sense of what I was playing.  Whole tones came in, and different kinds of tension chords within the structures that I play.  I still keep working on it and keep developing it.

O’FARRILL:  Eddie plays with a lot of texture.  Eddie plays with what I call sound waves.  He plays with the texture of the piano.  It is orchestral.

TP:    I would imagine that 98% of what you’ve recorded has been your own original music or your own arrangements on music in parallel to what you do.  Which is one reason why, when you played on Conrad Herwig’s “The Latin Side Of John Coltrane,” it was very interesting to hear you improvise on “Africa” or “Impressions.”

PALMIERI:  [LAUGHS] Right!

TP:    So I was wondering if for you playing the piano equals composing?  What’s the relation between improvising and composing for you?

PALMIERI:  To compose for me is what I’m going to be able to…what theme I’m going to work on, what am I looking for.  For me, the majority of the work in Latin was also with the vocalists.  So what theme was going to be on it, what’s the story going to be about.  And naturally, I was more interested always to write constantly more original music, and keep it that way.  That’s why I never ventured into recording with many other artists, except what I recorded on my own.  And then, in improvising, it’s based on those structures that I create within that composition, and what I do with that, and how I move it around is quite enjoyable to me! [LAUGHS] I’m very fortunate that it’s been accepted.  So between the two of them, it’s a great combination, like the composing and the improvisation.

TP:    Were you composing before you left Tito Rodriguez?

PALMIERI:  No, I started really when I formed La Perfecta.

TP:    How many compositions have you published over forty years?

PALMIERI:  I’d say we’re close to maybe 200.

TP:    And how much of that is in the book of your band at any given moment?

PALMIERI:  Well, there’s different books.  I have the enlarged orchestra, you know, with three horns, with five horns, and that’s one book.  Then we have the Latin Jazz.  Then I have the Perfecta work, which is not in its entirety. But the majority of that work, what I’ve written, is unplayed.

TP:    So now you’re revisiting a lot of things, and setting a precedent for going back.

PALMIERI:  I’m bringing some of them back.

TP:    Arturo, you lead the Chico O’Farrill Big Band, which has access to the entire body of work of your father, who was composing as far back as the early ’40s in Havana.  In Ira Gitler’s “Swing To Bop” he said that after he heard “Salt Peanuts” in 1946, he started writing charts for a band he had in a Havana club, and had it for six months.  So from 1946, he was aware of modern jazz.  And he’d arrange for his band and was also an arranger for hire.  So you have a huge repertoire at your disposal. When he formed the big band again in the mid-’90s, how did he choose older repertoire to play?  How did he make his choices?

O’FARRILL:  He chose pieces that were suggested to him.  There’s an old saying that the great composers always have four or five great themes, and they regurgitate them over the years.  Chico has rewritten a lot of music.  So something from the ’40s might show up in the ’90s as a different piece.  It’s smoking. But it has its roots there.  I think it’s a process of working out your ideas that you may not have worked out fully in 1948.  Certainly, a lot of the stuff that we play now… Some of my favorite Chico O’Farrill is from the ’50s.  Some of that stuff is classic.

TP:    The things he did for Norman Granz?

O’FARRILL:  “Almendra,” “The Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite.”  What always strikes me about his writing is that it’s very simple.  It’s not cluttered.  It’s linear.  So over the past three records that we did, people suggested to him what stuff might be brought out of the closet, and then he would rework it.

TP:    Your father did a lot of writing for hire and for studio bands, which is different from Eddie’s experience.  You were always in the Ellington position of having to sustain a performing orchestra and create music for it, and to play for dancers.  Arturo, from your perspective as a bandleader and someone who analyzes music, can you talk about the dynamics of Chico O’Farrill’s music vis-a-vis Eddie Palmieri’s.  Very different perspectives on similar roots.

O’FARRILL:  Right off the bat, you have to remember that Eddie is a monster pianist, too.  My father didn’t play anything.

TP:    He was a trumpet player.

O’FARRILL:  Believe me, as soon as he figured out that he had to practice all the time, he gave it up.  A lot of the music that Eddie writes is for Eddie, and specifically for the unbelievable performance that he gives.  Chico’s music doesn’t do that, because he didn’t create it for himself to perform.  Also, he made the decision early on in his life; he was 21 or 22 when he said, “I can’t play music; I just want to write!”  For him, it was an easier way to be a musician.  It was an easier way for him to work out his musical battles.

TP:    Arturo, you’re obviously influenced in many ways by the example your father set for you, from your teenage rebellion against Latin music to your embrace of it.  I’m sure Eddie was influenced by your uncles who played, but I’m sure the deepest influence for you would have been your older brother Charlie, because you had to follow in his footsteps in bands!

PALMIERI:  Right, Charlie.  And he was the one that would recommend me to the different orchestras.  My brother was nine years older.  We had no other brother, no other sister.  It was just Charlie and I.  So he was certainly my great inspiration as far as his form of attack on the piano.  He really went at it!  That certainly came into me.  I could never really thank him enough for showing me that road.  My brother was quite an exceptional player.  He knew Arturo’s father, Chico O’Farrell, more than I.  I believe I met your dad when he was already elderly; I didn’t know him before.  But Charlie had.  So that was an tremendous asset to me in my playing.

TP:    Arturo, within the last year, you’ve taken on the position as Director of the Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra at Lincoln Center, which is an institutional position, and one that involves a lot of responsibility, because you have to accumulate a lot of repertoire that’s representative of this tradition.  How does Eddie’s music, which is so personal… I mean, it’s hard to think of anybody else playing Eddie’s music, because your sound and your vibration is so fundamental to it.  Is there anything you can say about that?

O’FARRILL:  There’s a whole controversy about repertory orchestras.  People always ask me why they exist, and it’s a very good question. Because the people who created this music left an indelible stamp on it.  I just believe that musicians are organic.  They bring to the music a whole nother vibe.  There’s never going to be an Eddie Palmieri. This is the cat!  But to have Eddie’s music continue, whether Eddie’s playing or just sitting in the audience, is very important.  Machito is gone, Mario Bauza is gone; does that mean their music shouldn’t be performed?  Hell, no.

TP:    Which of Eddie’s compositions would be your choices?

O’FARRILL:  It’s a daunting task.  And I’ve got to talk to Eddie, because we’ve got to get some of your music in the book!  Eddie played on the Benefit Gala at Lincoln Center.

PALMIERI:  Yes, I remember.  We had the two orchestras, I think.

O’FARRILL:  The two orchestras side-by-side.  How do you choose?  That’s like asking me…it’s like the kid in the candy shop.  There’s just an amazing amount of music that I would play as a regular part of the canon.  Now, it’s a funny thing, because it’s a very important position…but it’s not. What it is, is just bringing this music forward, bringing it out.  That’s more important than the position or the institution.  And Eddie has been all over the world, playing this music in Finland or in Japan or in Des Moines.  That’s what it’s about.

PALMIERI:  One of the greatest dancers we’ve seen, we saw in Pori.

O’FARRILL:  We played in Pori.  They LOVE his music in Finland.

TP:    One thing about leading a band for forty years is that people come through it and go on to make original contributions of their own.  So in the early ’70s, you have Los Diabilitos, the Gonzalez brothers and Nicky Marrero and people like this, who all went on and added to the vocabulary, Conrad Herwig and Brian Lynch, Richie Flores and Giovanni Hidalgo.  I’m wondering if you can discuss how the vocabulary of Afro-Cuban music has evolved during your career.

PALMIERI:  For me, it’s on the rhythm section side.  But certainly the music that harmonically has been composed going into the Latin Jazz world has extended.  I find it very interesting what’s happening… Again, what we do with it.  How we’re going to present it, where we’re going to present, and how important it is to be presented properly.  It’s a constant challenge.

TP:    How has musicianship changed over the years?

PALMIERI:  They certainly have extended in their preparation, compared to the younger players when… When I started, for example, the elders were very well prepared.  And what I find now, coming out of Puerto Rico, for example, are incredible trumpet players and saxophone players.  Percussion has reached an incredibly high degree.  I have to say that.  Before we would have just a conga player and the bongo who were there to accompany.  But now we have incredible soloists.  You talk about a Giovanni Hidalgo or a Richie Flores, who each came through my orchestra.  I call it my Hispanic Jazz Messengers, with all the different artists who came through my different orchestras.

TP:    Arturo, one of the defining events in jazz over the last 15 years has been the influx of musicians from all over the world who are familiar with jazz and bring their own culture to the music.  How do you see this movement affecting the vocabulary of jazz as a whole?  It seems there used to be more separation between jazz and Latin music.  Now things seem to be converging more. Does that sound right to you?

O’FARRILL:  I think so.  I think you have to be very well equipped to compete in the traditional Latin Jazz world now.  You really do have a wide variety of styles.  You’re talking about Danilo Perez and Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and then there’s people also like Papo Vazquez, and Bomba and Plena.  That’s why the world of Latin Jazz is no longer, and actually hasn’t been for many years, just Afro-Cuban. That’s very important to me, because Cuba was very central to the formation of these styles, but now the thing has really gotten quite large.  I mean, you’ve got Chano Dominguez in Spain, and you’ve got… So the world is really opening up for Latin Jazz.  And it’s still Latin.  It still comes from our corner of the world.  But it’s very much more open, very flexible.

The thing I’m proud of is that our musicians tend to really love jazz.  I mean, the ones that come out of our tradition are really very well trained in jazz.  I haven’t quite found that parity in jazz musicians.  Jazz musicians aren’t as well trained in Latin music.  They don’t really research it as much as Latin musicians tend to learn about jazz.  I think it’s a very exciting time for Latin music and jazz to interact.

TP:    It just seems to me that things that used to be considered (and I’ll use the word in quotes) “exotic” in jazz 15 years ago — maybe Dizzy Gillespie was applying them — are now part of the mainstream. Every musician is supposed to know it, basically — at least in New York.

O’FARRILL:  Well, it’s funny, because I run into… Twenty years ago, ten years ago even, drummers…you’d talk about cascara, and they’d look at you like you’re from Mars.  Now every drummer coming out of every conservatory that has a conservatory is learning about cascara and about clave and all these things that were considered exotic 10-15 years ago.

TP:    Eddie, how do you observe this with the musicians who come into your bands?  You do have steady personnel.  How do you see the musicianship?

PALMIERI:  It’s tremendously rounded now.  As Arturo says, we have players coming from all over, and making it quite… For example, from the Afro-Cuban it went to Afro-Caribbean, with the Puerto Rican (?) in the ’60s.  Now it’s Afro-World.  And now it’s all over.  The talent just keeps pouring in.  On my end, I’ve been carrying lately a band of certain personnel.  So it’s not as varied as it was before.  I used to have different musicians coming in and out of the different orchestras.  But now I’m hanging on to certain personnel.  We have Brian Lynch, who comes in and out and performs with us.  But I see it as quite exciting, very educational with the intermixture that’s happening now.  They’re all different players, and they’re interested in the Latin music, and where we’re going to be able to present it and where we’re going to be able to take it.

TP:    In bringing a new piece of music to the band, how do you go about it?  Do you sit down with the drummers and go over their specific parts with them, and ditto with the brass, or is it something they’re expected to know and it evolves over time?

PALMIERI:  Well, with my rhythm section, when we’re doing a recording, they know what they have to do as far as the structure of what we’re playing, and the horn players have their music, and then we gel it together whenever we’re able to have a rehearsal for recordings.  I don’t have that many rehearsals constantly. But when I have new material that’s going to be recorded, certainly I need it.  The problem I’ve had, in a sense, is that in the last certain amount of years I’ve had different types of recordings, and that certainly has hampered the situation of the personnel.

TP:    Well, these days it seems like you’re accessing your whole corpus of work.  You can go to La Perfecta, you can go to the more open ended things of the ’70s, and the vocabulary you built up in the band with Brian and Donald and Conrad.  All those things are there for you, and now you’re consolidating all of them in some sense.

PALMIERI:  Right.  But lately, in the last few years it’s been just the typical La Perfecta orchestra.  When we have certain engagements, the Latin Jazz, we bring out certain other compositions.

TP:    Arturo, you’ve been in the enviable position of having the same big band for many years with very constant personnel.  Talk about how playing every week builds the growth and identity and sound of a band.

O’FARRILL:  There’s no substitute for having a regular gig.  Also, I’m very blessed in that the musicians I have are bona fide Latin players.  They understand how to phrase.  It’s very subtle, it’s very different.  You can’t walk in off the street and be a straight-ahead jazz player and play this music.  You have to be aware of clave, you have to phrase, you have to be aware… Victor Paz once said to me, “You do not wear a tuxedo to the beach.”

PALMIERI:  That was his form of identification.

O’FARRILL:  That’s a very Victor Paz thing.  But what he meant was that you get players who understand Latin music and you put them together, and it’s an invaluable thing.  I am very lucky, very blessed.  I have wonderful musicians who have been doing this for a long time.

TP:    Have either of you been able to do any amount of playing in Africa at all?  Eddie, have you brought your band to any of the African nations?

PALMIERI:  No.  I haven’t been to Africa.  As far as I’ve gotten, we went to Algiers.  Another problem is that to get into an African country, you need shots, and I always wanted to stay away from the shots — at that time.

O’FARRILL:  We went to South Africa.  I’ve been there several times.  The last time we went… They have a Northsea Jazz Festival in Capetown…

TP:    My God, that’s the real extension of imperialism.

O’FARRILL:  You better believe it!  Talk about colonial imperialism!  I was amazed.  I was there with Papo Vazquez, and they loved it.

TP:    Eddie, was listening to African music ever part of your early experience, or was it all Cuban?

PALMIERI:  It was Cuban.  But I knew that the fundamental, naturally, was African.  But it was the music that was coming out of Cuba.  That’s where I really centered my education on.

TP:    How would you describe the difference between the Afro-Cuban approach to these rhythms and the African approach to these rhythms?

PALMIERI:  I think it’s the evolution and crystallization of these rhythmical patterns.  They were certainly coming from Africa, but when the “mulattoes,” so to speak, were born in Cuba, it became a mixture of Spaniard and the African, along with the native who was there, and that combination… They took it into another direction, in my opinion, and it was really more eventually from their religious “abacua,” that was strictly African (naturally) and their religious belief to the dance orchestras that then started to come out from Ignacio Pinero earlier, and his Sexteto Habenero from the ’20s and the ’30s, then they started to use those patterns for people to dance.  That’s where I come in.

TP:    So it’s a stylization of the folkloric, or as you once put it, of the primitive.

PALMIERI:  Exactly.

TP:    Arturo, how influenced was your father by the African aspect of Cuban life?  Was he very involved in the rumbas and the folkloric rhythms, or less so?

O’FARRILL:  He grew up in a pretty rural part of Cuba.  Undoubtedly, he heard a lot of ritualistic music.  I think it influenced him greatly.  That kind of music gets in your blood.  It kind of becomes a part of you.  I remember the first time I heard Los Munequitos.  Man, I started bawling!  I was weeping, man.  Because I’d never heard that profound a sentiment, and a sentiment expressed in rhythm, as when I heard those guys.  That’s such a central feature of “Latin Jazz” — and I use that word in quotations.  It has to be folkloric.  It has to have its roots, and it has to respect its African roots.  It has to respect it in terms of its instrumentation and in terms of its textures.  You can’t just slap a conga on something and call it Latin Jazz.  Whether or not my father transcribed the crostic rhythms of the Gon people… He did not do that!

TP:    But he got Machito’s players, who could put their own stamp on anything he might give them, if he wanted that feeling.

O’FARRILL:  I don’t know how much of that stuff is an oral tradition and how much of it is actually transcribable.  Anybody can write these rhythms.  It takes somebody who really knows that stuff to play it well.

TP:    But Eddie, when you were a kid learning Tito Puente’s solos, or hanging out and soaking up Cuban music with Manny Oquendo in the ’50s, was it an oral tradition?  Were you writing it down or learning by doing?

PALMIERI:  Well, naturally, by listening.  That was the main direction.  And then, when I went on to play timbales, I listened to the older records.  Because the orchestras that were recording here were really happening!  Machito, Tito Rodriguez and Tito Puente, who had conjuntos at that time.  Conjunto meant without the saxophone.  So certainly, by listening to them, that was my guide.  Then eventually, I started to do the same when I got hip to the Cuban recordings.  The main time was when I was with the orchestra of Vicentico Valdes.

TP:    Is it different for you playing for dancers vis-a-vis a seated audience?  As a kid, from the age of 13 or 14, you were playing for people who were dancing.

PALMIERI:  Well, it’s certainly a great feeling when you’re performing and you see some great dancers.  That’s something that gives you balance.  It’s absolutely wonderful.  But again, as the genre changed and the art of dancing is lost now, and mostly what we do when we’re presenting the orchestra is have concerts.  On the concerts, certainly everyone is thinking about how do you excite them, get them moving in their chairs and making them feel… When you’re playing one of the jazz rooms, it’s another kind of feeling.  But again, it’s a musical and rhythmic challenge.

O’FARRILL:  You can’t be a musician in New York without playing dances, salsa gigs and whatever. I’ve been playing for dancers since I was a kid.  To me, there’s something slightly artificial about playing for a seated audience!

TP:    And you play for them a lot.

O’FARRILL:  Oh, I do all the time.  When you’re playing this kind of music, invariably, somebody will get up and shake a little bit, and I think that’s what you want. Cabaret laws notwithstanding, I encourage people to get up and dance whenever they feel like it.  You can’t do that at Alice Tully Hall sometimes.  But that’s the real deal.  That’s what this music is about, and getting people moving is central.

TP:    But the pool of musicians now comes primarily from conservators. They’re very technical.  A lot of jazz we hear now has very complex rhythms, but it’s also a very technical thing.  So it’s an interesting challenge, I’d think, to keep that feeling in the music given the climate of the times.

O’FARRILL:  Yes.  There’s the old saying, “You can be very well trained or you can be very well trained.”  A lot of musicians are coming out of conservatories who can play, but that’s a small part of what music is.  My father always said, “Okay, so you can play an instrument.  So what?”  That’s a small part of it.

TP:    Eddie, are you still doing a lot of composing?

PALMIERI:  I haven’t been writing since the last CD.  I stopped since “Ritmo Caliente.”  But there are a few things now that are starting to work up, and I’m seeing what I can do now to prepare for another CD when the opportunity comes with Concord again.

TP:    Has your process in writing been a project-oriented thing, or is it something that’s just part of your everyday life?

PALMIERI:  Well, sometimes I’ve had a project presented to me.  I did the Ballet Hispanico work, and that music was never recorded.  I have it at home.  But usually, it’s when I get inspired by some theme that I want to present or make a statement on, and once I get that, then I start working from the bass line up, and start layering, putting the structures on to write the arrangement.

TP:    Do you make use of the new technology?

PALMIERI:  No.  I haven’t been able to comprehend that.  I leave it alone!

O’FARRILL:  I can’t make heads or tails.  I’ve had Finale for many years. I still prefer pen and pencil and paper.  I can’t cope with it at all.

TP:    And how much composing and arranging do you do?

O’FARRILL:  I do quite a bit.  And still, I can’t use sequencers or samplers or notation software.

TP:    Is it project-oriented for you?

O’FARRILL:  It’s always project-oriented.  For me, deadlines are crucial.  I have to have something presented, where I have to come up with a project or a writing assignment, because left up to my own devices I’ll just procrastinate forever.  So it always has to do with a project or a deadline that is looming.  My father was very much the same way.  Now, Chico had the unusual ability to churn out an arrangement in an hour-and-a-half, three hours — he would do it in pen!

PALMIERI:  Amazing.

O’FARRILL:  He would do it transcribed.  The instruments would be in their proper… So he was kind of a freak that way.  It’s very different for me.  But he also had to have a deadline, and he had to have a specific goal and a real articulated project for him to be able to do that.

TP:    For many years, you’d go to hear an Eddie Palmieri performance, and he’d be playing a keyboard.

PALMIERI:  The reason is that when I play you can’t amplify the acoustic… The feedback is on it.  For me, it’s the feel of the instrument.  That’s why the keyboard was put on top.  I’ll play solo piano first, and then come in with the keyboard.  I get complications with it, too, because of the volume and complaints, but it’s the only way I feel I can cut through.  It’s very seldom you can find a great engineer… We just did the Monterrey Jazz Festival, and they had two Marcus Berrys, I think, so I got the microphones they had, and the acoustic was quite wonderfully amplified.

O’FARRILL:  That’s rare.

PALMIERI:  But still, when I play with the orchestra, if I can’t be stimulated, then I have a problem to stimulate the band, in my opinion.

TP:    So it’s to hear yourself.  To hear yourself think.

O’FARRILL:  The clarity.

PALMIERI:  Yes, and to hear myself play, so I can cut through with the band.  The rhythm section is quite heavy also.  And we use three horns or five horns. So I use the keyboard on top.

TP:    Arturo, you’re basically leading two bands.  There’s the Chico O’Farrill Orchestra.  Is the repertoire expanding for it?

O’FARRILL:  The repertoire is expanding.

TP:    And where are you getting repertoire?

O’FARRILL:  Original music from the members and from myself, and we’re digging out stuff from Chico’s archive.

TP:    With Lincoln Center, I guess you’re cherrypicking from everywhere.

O’FARRILL:  Absolutely.

TP:    How are you conceiving that?  Where are you getting material from?  How big is the book now?

O’FARRILL:  Some of the stuff we’ve had to transcribe, because it’s impossible to get the actual scores from the sources.  For example, the Machito stuff I can find.  It’s irreplaceable.  The scores are gone.  So we pay a transcriber to do that stuff.  And there’s a lot of material that exists.

TP:    How has leading these bands influenced your own personal growth as a musician?  It’s a huge responsibility, and there’s so much more involved than just playing.

O’FARRILL:  It’s funny.  I’m not a happy bandleader, because I find it very difficult to deal with all the issues.  There’s the issue of playing and there’s the issue of creating music, and then there’s the difficulty of dealing with people’s schedules and people’s idiosyncracies.  I don’t have patience for that, to be honest with you.  But certainly it’s expanded me as a musician.  Being responsible for an evening’s performance and a set group of people has heightened my musicianship, my sense of… When you’re rehearsing a band, you want to make sure the trumpets blend, and you want to make sure the dynamics are honored and the people aren’t stepping on one another. That’s pure musicianship.  That takes a lot of skill.  So all that has honed my musical skills.  It’s also created a larger sense of my understanding of this music, which is invaluable.  I’ve had to listen to a lot of music.

TP:    So it’s made your musicianship richer and imparted more depth.

O’FARRILL:  Yes.  And not as a pianist.  As a musical concept.  As a mind.  As a pianist, I’ve tried to stay out of the way.

[PAUSE]

TP:    Brian Lynch is here, and I’m sure he has a few comments or questions for Eddie.

BRIAN:  How has jazz been something… What has the weave been between… You may not describe yourself as a jazz musician per se, but I think jazz has always been a counterpoint.  I always feel one of the unique things about you is the way you’ve epitomized jazz, even though a lot of times you do music that may not be termed as much.  But you seem to exemplify the jazz attitude in a lot of ways that I see it.  The spirit of improvisation, the spirit of doing things differently each time instead of staying in the same place, the rawness of a lot of your music.  I think you’ve attracted a lot of unique personalities.  The one who comes to mind, of course, is Barry Rogers, who came from being a jazz musician, but I think you and him had the same way of thinking — you came from different sides of the street, so to speak, and you met in the middle.  Has jazz always been something that’s been on your mind, no matter what you’ve been playing?

PALMIERI:  Well, jazz phrasings for sure, in the work we did with Barry.  Then that led to… Well, definitely, when I met you, we went into the Latin Jazz, starting the work of “Palmas.”  Once that came in, that was my inroad to the work I did.

BRIAN:  You’ve spoken of listening to some of the jazz greats in the early years, both in person and through the medium of records, and I remember you saying that you had to make a conscious decision about which way you wanted to go, whether to follow jazz or to follow however you want to term the music you’re playing.

PALMIERI:  Right.  What I followed was definitely the dance orchestra.  That’s where my heart was. But certainly, I developed an orientation from my early listening to records by Art Tatum, Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock.  We heard the Count Basie band… Remember, the original Birdland was right next door to the Palladium, so the exchange was quite exceptional.  But it’s certainly helped me in terms of how I structure, how I think of the phrasing and the harmonic changes I want to use — it comes from the jazz idiom.

BRIAN:  Arturo, maybe I can ask you something. I feel that so much of the Cuban music I hear you could call jazz.  If you apply the same criteria that you’d call Count Basie or Benny Goodman or that style of jazz: This music is played for the dancers, it’s got improvised solos, it’s got swing — all these qualities.  Do you feel sometimes people kind of miss the point?

O’FARRILL:  I’ve always maintained that the music that came up in Cuba in the ’20s and ’30s paralleled the music that was taking place in the States in New Orleans and Kansas City.  It’s another branch of the roots.  Just like you have your Kansas City school and St. Louis school and Detroit school, you have a Havana school growing at the same time.  I think where people goof is that they don’t accord it the same kind of stature.  You’re right.  The roots of improvisation are there for both musics.  There’s a similar instrumentation style and orchestration style.

BRIAN:  I think it has to do with the appropriation of a certain word, and the appropriation is the word “American.”  That America means just the residents of the United States of America.

O’FARRILL:  That’s very narrow-minded.

BRIAN:  Well, if you talk about jazz being a music of the Americas, instead of American music… I think a lot of things get left out.  The genesis of jazz, in a lot of senses, is pan-Caribbean.

O’FARRILL:  I’m sure if you visited Congo Square in New Orleans at the turn of the century, you’d hear a lot of clave-inspired music.  Guess what?  New Orleans is the Caribbean!

BRIAN:  I was looking through a book of photos by James Van Der Zee and found a picture of Sexteto Habenero in Harlem in the late ’20s.  It looked for all the world like a picture of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five.  All these things are very much together.  So there’s a case for saying that this is all jazz.

TP:    One thing I could bring in is that musically, the styles may be different branches of the same tree, but I think the scene, in certain ways, was more stratified when Eddie was coming up.  A lot of jazz players played in Latin bands, but I think the musics were seen more as very separate.  With the notable exception, of course, of Dizzy Gillespie, who was fifty years ahead of his time.

BRIAN:  I think in 1945 or 1950, the typical jazz musician knew much more about playing Latin rhythms that he did in 1970 or 1980.

O’FARRILL:  Yes, there was a moment there when it fell out of favor.

BRIAN:  Maybe we’re just about back now to a certain… It’s still the same thing.  Back to what you were saying, “jazz musicians” don’t do their homework as much about Latin music as the other way around.  A lot of times they’re missing something in their comprehension of what the requirements for jazz is.  And this maybe gets back to what we were talking about before, about having an incomplete analysis of what jazz is and what it means.

O’FARRILL:  Well, that’s the $64,000 question.  What is jazz?

BRIAN:  What is jazz.  Or what is swing?  I know in my own experience, playing Latin music helped my straight-ahead swing immeasurably.

O’FARRILL:  Oh yeah.  I have to agree with you there.  Your whole rhythmic concept is broadened in Latin music.  Your ability to hear eighth notes and sixteenth note sequences in a flow.

BRIAN:  And also the idea of consensus and playing a groove together.  I came to town in the early ’80s, and sometimes it seemed that swinging was kind of a lost art back then.

O’FARRILL:  Yeah.  It might be a lost art today!  I would add to what Brian was saying.  I think that to look at jazz as separate from Latin is a real fallacy.  Human beings love to categorize things.  They put things in boxes and make understandable that which is not.  The idea that Latin Jazz is so popular is both a blessing and a curse these days, because it further delineates the differences that people have in their mind about the two.

TP:    What did your father think about it?

O’FARRILL:  I don’t think he gave it much thought.  I think he looked at life as a musical challenge.  The only thing that bothered him was that Latin musicians tend to get paid less, and the music is less well received and not accorded the same respect.  It’s basically an economic issue.  To this day, I think, Latin Jazz tends to pay less, just in terms of economics.  I think my father didn’t care.  He was just a consummate musician.  He just wanted to write music.  He didn’t care if it was Count Basie or Machito.  He just loved what he did.  I don’t think he saw one or the other.

BRIAN:  Jazz is an attitude and a procedure to what you’re doing.  It’s about improvisation.  It’s always about wanting to extend something.  I think a proper relationship with your material is, as Eddie was talking about, extending folkloric materials of one sort or another.

TP:    We were talking about how sophisticated everything has gotten today, and yet the folkloric element is still so fundamental.

BRIAN:  Well, you’re seeing a lot of this trickle back into straight-ahead jazz.  A lot of the polymetric kind of wizardry that’s going on and a lot of the sophisticated bands is kind of coming in through the back door through Caribbean and Afro-Cuban music.  The fact that drummers have a much more pronounced emphasis on the 12/8 in their beat I think has to do with some of that, too.

Eddie Palmieri (for bio for Listen Here) — (Feb. 24, 2005):

TP:   What I think we should do is try to give something to the press so they can see what you think about jazz, why you doing a jazz record is different than what you normally do, and what your relationship has been to jazz, as well as the songs on the record. Plus the different instrumentalists. What’s so interesting is that you have some of the most distinctive personalities out there, and they all sound within your music.  They follow the logic and they’re immediately part of your world. It’s a sort of magic.

EDDIE:   Regina Carter just fell right in.  I had met her, but I wasn’t aware that she also had played Latin music, with charanga bands. So the piece I wrote for her, In Flight, she blew it away.  Her soloing was incredible.

TP:   She played a little pizzicato, almost a tres sound, on “Nica’s Dream.”

EDDIE:   I’ve never done compositions of the jazz artists, because I don’t know the jazz repertoire. But I do know the jazz phrasings and jazz harmonies that I utilize for my own compositions. This time, we utilized some of the compositions like “In Walked Bud,” which we did with Brian Lynch, Conrad Herwig and Donald Harrison. It was going to be for Nicholas Payton, but that composition was just finished, and I gave him another composition, called “E.P. Blues,” on which he plays with the three horns, the band. Nicholas also plays on “Nica’s Dream.” Michael Brecker and Christian McBride just blew me away.

TP:   Let me ask you systematically, tune by tune. Then I can interpolate questions.

EDDIE:   I didn’t use the full rhythm section, which I always do. I missed it in some of the compositions because of the form of the writing, which I turned into more of the Latin flavor.

TP:   Explain how the rhythm you used for this, the drums and conga, is different than using timbales, bongo and congas.

EDDIE:   It wasn’t a major problem. It’s just that when I use the drums, I call that Jazz Latin.  Latin Jazz, if I may, would be when I use my full rhythm which I always had—bongo, conga, and timbal.  But in my opinion, when you put a drummer within that whole rhythm section, the drum is very heavy. He just holds the weight, and it’s very difficult in the mixing.  But usually, when we do it, I either tone down the drum, bring down the volume, or we just eliminate him in certain sections. But I wasn’t going to do that to El Negro; I wanted him to play. Between him and Giovanni, they have a rapport. They did an excellent job. So I left it like that, without the timbales. But in some of the compositions, I missed having my full rhythm section, the conga, bongo and timbales. Just a few of them. The rest were fine. If you notice, we did a duo, we did trio, we did quartet, which I haven’t done.

TP:   Also new, except for the overtures you’ve done. So “In-Flight” was for Regina, and it seemed you were playing with some familiar changes.

EDDIE:   Yes. I came up with the melody, and I figured with the violin it was going to sound real interesting, and that she’d blow it away. Not only the melody, but her soloing on “In-Flight” is extraordinary. I’d met her in Europe, but I hadn’t heard her. I certainly didn’t know she had played in Latin bands. That helped a lot when we started to play.

TP:   I think you told me that you had to change your fingering system to play jazz, that it requires you to alter your actual approach to the instrument.

EDDIE:   Right.  The way you always play in Latin is in the octave, the full octave, and that locks the hand.  The reason for playing the octaves was that there really was no amplification at that time, and hitting four C’s, for example, and lining them up that way so it had a lot of power.  But what happens is you’re not using the fingering the way you would for jazz. So when I went into Latin Jazz, then I had to do some exercises and a different approach of technique to be able to play the Latin Jazz.

TP:   Is there a process of unlearning that goes into this?  You spent so many years creating this unique sound, always with jazz in mind. But this seems to culminate a decade of moving back to a certain element of your early years.

EDDIE:   It was really to let go the form of attack. My soloing, for example. And also, comping behind the jazz players on the Latin Jazz CDs that I did—Palmas, Arete and Vortex. That was a great experience for me at the same time, and I brought it into this CD. So it worked good for me. At the same time that I let go of the other approach in my form of attack, this one helps me in another way. I use more fingering in one of the numbers with John Scofield. I solo…

TP:   “In Flight” is your composition, and there are some changes you work, probably subconscious. “Listen Here” is an Eddie Harris tune. You selected it?

EDDIE:   My son wanted me to do it. We used Michael Brecker and Christian McBride. Michael hadn’t played in a while, and when he came to play, he REALLY played. I had met Michael Brecker with Randy many years ago, from when Barry Rogers was in the orchestra, and they eventually made Dreams together. But I saw them playing once with Horace Silver. Randy had recorded with me at times, but not Michael Brecker. He came and he played incredible in that company.

TP:   Eddie Harris in the ‘60s was one of the most proficient guys at using vamps and boogaloo, which is a sort of pan-Latin-backbeat unity thing. Can you talk about you responded to that in the ‘60s when it was happening? Also, did you know Eddie Harris?

EDDIE:   No, I didn’t know Eddie Harris. But the time of the boogaloo, that was also going into the late ‘60s. There were certain vamps, and then they were singing in English, a few of the young bands coming out at that time.  But in the Eddie Harris compositions I’ve heard, he always simplifies in the harmonic structures, but they have a natural swing ride to them like Listen Here has. And between Michael Brecker and Christian McBride, they certainly had it riding. Then I was right in there in the middle with them.  It turned out great

TP:   What’s it like working with a jazz bass player like Christian McBride?

EDDIE:   He and I met in Aspen. He’s the musical director of the Festival up there. I saw him doing seminars, and he was excellent.  Then we talked about recording. He is tremendous!  His father played with Latin bands in Philly, and one of the Latin bands here… He knew Mario Rivera, people like Cortijo and so on. His Dad was involved in there. He even told me, “My Dad will be jealous that I recorded with you and not him.” But he’s an incredible bass player. You know what he does in jazz.  But he can grab a Latin tumbao and ride that, too. I know because we did a thing together for Donald Harrison, one of my compositions called “Snow Visor.” We did an intro together, and then we played the whole composition.

TP:   Did you have to give them much instruction?

EDDIE:   No instructions. They certainly knew what to do.

TP:   “Vals Con Bata.”

EDDIE:   That has John Scofield and David Sanchez, with Giovanni playing the bata drums.  That’s more or less into the Jazz Waltz, and it came out also… That one was going to be pulled, because it was giving us a lot of trouble in the recording. But we held it for last, and worked on it, and were able to put it on the CD.

TP:   Did you think of it with Scofield and David in mind?  Didn’t David come out of Puerto Rico with you?

EDDIE:   Yes.  He went to Montreux. We closed a show for Miles Davis; Miles didn’t like to close. At the end of his career, he’d rather open and then leave. Then we followed him.

TP:   I wouldn’t want to follow your band.

EDDIE:   [LAUGHS] But David left with me from Puerto Rico. After that, he’s held his own, and he’s very respected in the jazz field and a pride of Puerto Rico.

TP:   Were all the tunes composed for the date?

EDDIE:   “Vals Con Bata” was already done, and I decided to pull it out because I needed a jazz waltz. I love them. It worked fine. John Scofield plays electric guitar, and David solos excellent.

TP:   I guess the jazz waltz is another point of connection between jazz and Afro-Caribbean music because of the triplets. Is that one of the things that appealed to you when you were younger?

EDDIE:   Yes. I always dedicated myself to listening to the Cuban music, and that was really my forte. But if I was ever going to do anything in jazz, it would be in a waltz type thing. I felt very comfortable there. I love them. I’ve recorded 3/4 on certain CDs. I have one called “Bianco’s Waltz,” another is “Resemblance,” which I did with Cal Tjader.

TP:   “Tema Para Eydie” is for one of your daughters.

EDDIE:   One of my daughters who’s here tonight. That turned out to be a duo between John Benitez and I.  John was great, because he can comprehend the Latin playing, and he’s become quite a jazz bass player in his own right, and a great soloist. It was written for the CD.

TP:   Break it down for me a bit.

EDDIE:   It was going to be done like a ballad. On the last CD, I did one called “Tema Para Reneé,” my oldest daughters. This is my second oldest; I’m doing them one at a time. This one was going to be like a ballad with the whole rhythm section. But we were having some complications, not in the recording itself, but in the numbers that were being selected to be done and a few that might change from the instrumental point of view… So instead of doing this one as a ballad with the horns and rhythm section, I decided to do it as a duo. I said, “Instead of playing piano alone, I’ll play with John,” and we did it as a duo.

TP:   Has working on the different fingerings made this a more acceptable thing for you to do on record? Your fans who are into jazz like things like “Cobarde” or “House On Judge Street,” where you make these long, grand intros. But these are a bit different. And what you did with David at Le Jazz Au Bar was also different. Can we say this is something you’ve been evolving to?

EDDIE:   We’re working towards it. Eventually it will be like solo piano, which I do sometimes on sets…

TP:   I wish you’d recorded the opener on this set. And if you do a solo record, I hope it’s on a Bosendorfer. Your left hand deserves it.

EDDIE:   I love the Bosendorfer. I’m working on that. But then the duo made it comfortable for me. At one time, I would never even have attempted to do it. But because I’ve been working on a few things, I thought it should be a duo. And I was very comfortable with John Benitez.

TP:   What makes this the time for you to start working on this. Your place in history would be pretty secure if you weren’t doing this. What was going on in your mind ten years ago that made you start taking this direction.

EDDIE:   Because the dance genre had changed, and my wife said, “the writing on the wall is going toward Latin Jazz.” That’s when I decided to do the Latin Jazz CDs, and then changed my style of playing more. Once I started with the fingering, then I wrote a couple of ballads, like Bolero Dos and Tema Con Reneé, and another one that Brian Lynch put strings on for me. I started to work on other ballads, and that made it more pianistic, more pianistic in my approach to the recording, and played ballads.

TP:   So ballads is more jazz for you… Up-tempo 4/4 swing isn’t really your thing, but playing these beautiful rubato ballads…

EDDIE:   Yes, which I enjoy very much. And then the 3/4, which I use for the jazz waltzes.

TP:   “Tin Tin Deo.” Was Dizzy Gillespie very important to you in the ‘50s.

EDDIE:   [LAUGHS] Dizzy was something special with me.

TP:   Didn’t Jerry Gonzalez go from him to you?

EDDIE:   I don’t know if he went from him to us. The brothers came in around 1974, when…

TP:   Jerry’s on the Puerto Rico concert.

EDDIE:   That’s ‘71. But when we do Sentillo is when we really started to meet. Then Jerry plays congas on one of the compositions on Puerto Rico. Because there was another conga player, [tk]. In the Sing-Sing album also, the brothers were on. As a matter of fact, I wrote the compositions at Andy’s house. I came up with it right there. I said, “I have this in mind,” and then we did it before we went to play at Sing Sing. So in ‘71-‘72, we already were playing together.

TP:   But had you always been aware of Dizzy…

EDDIE:   Yeah. Dizzy went with me to Riker’s Island once. He knew the gentleman who was musical director there, named Carl Warwick. He came with his camera… He was my MC that day. Matter of fact, before he brought me out, he said, “Before I bring out my Latin soul brother, Eddie, have you ever seen such a captive audience?’ That’s how he brought me on to the stage. Then we played and blew them away.

TP:   Let’s say something about Dizzy Gillespie to give the press something. Everyone knows his connection to Afro-Cuban music and what he did with it. But was it personally important to you in the ‘50s and early ‘60s.

EDDIE:   Well, the most important thing for me with Dizzy was the importance of how he got together with Chano Pozo, that one percussionist, coming out of Cuba, was able to change the characteristics of a jazz orchestra. Then that worked, it became very important in the Latin Jazz. So credit must be given to him to the highest degree.  Plus what he did on his own with the jazz bands that he had constantly, and his form of playing. Then how he ended his career with the international band, that he brought in more Cubans. He brought in Arturo Sandoval and Paquito D’Rivera, plus Giovanni and Danilo Perez. They all were in that orchestra.

TP:   So it was more his overall accomplishment than the specifics of his compositions?

EDDIE:   Yes.

TP:   That being said, how did you approach “Tin Tin Deo?”

EDDIE:   Well, I gave “Tin Tin Deo” a Latin intro, and I worked it more like a montuno type thing, the cha-cha-cha type approach to it, a Latin flavor type thing for David Sanchez. Then David took over, and brought that number home.

TP:   So David’s personality is the thing.

EDDIE:   He plays beautifully. You can hear his tone and feeling in the number. It was excellent.

TP:   That’s another jazz characteristic. Not only jazz.  But writing for personalities. You wrote for Barry Rogers… I don’t know what you did when you were writing for Tito Rodriguez. But is that an appealing thing about jazz for you?

EDDIE:   Yeah. Barry was really great, because not only did I write with him in mind and what he did, but we worked together. Working together was great, because I would bring in the composition, and then Barry would add the harmonies of the two trombones, and change them around, and then when we got into different orchestras, he also orchestrated incredibly well. On Santillo, for example, or the composition Puerto Rico. Then when we did The Sun of Latin Music, the Dia a Bonito(?) was a great collaboration between Barry Rogers and I.

TP:   Let me bring this to the ACJO. Have you been influenced by the way that Brian, Donald and Conrad play? Have they inspired your compositional direction?

EDDIE:   In the Latin Jazz, for sure. When I met Brian Lynch and he started to play, he’s the one who was the stimulus for me to write for them. I already had been using Conrad in the Latin orchestra. So between the two… I said, “Well, I’ll write a composition.”  How do I satisfy the personal desires of the jazz player and their changes, and how do I bring it then in the same composition to satisfy my rhythm section desire, which is more Latin and less chordal changes? In the three CDs, I was able to achieve that.

TP:   So really, having them, plus the practical necessity of moving to a different sound, combined to move you toward jazz.

EDDIE:   Right.

TP:   How about “In Walked Bud”? Was Monk someone you paid attention to?

EDDIE:   Sure. Thelonious Monk… In fact, Willie Bobo years ago called me the Latin Monk because of the dissonance playing that I did. But I never did any of the jazz playing, not even Thelonious Monk, until this one.  Richard Seidel sent me certain compositions, and when I was looking at “In Walked Bud,” I liked it. It was a natural to do it in an up-tempo. It came out all right. Even “Nica’s Dream” later on is in an up-tempo also.

TP:   Were you paying attention to Monk in the ‘50s?

EDDIE:   Well, Barry Rogers also made me very aware of him. We’d exchange LPs, and he brings me a Thelonious Monk LP, the one with the stamp, where he does “Tea For Two,” which is a classic. I exchanged that for a Celia Cruz-Sonora Matancera. He also brought me Kind of Blue, maybe for Chappotin or something like that.

TP:   When Fort Apache did Rumba Para Monk, did it make sense to you? Do Monk’s compositions flow easily into Afro-Caribbean rhythmic structures?

EDDIE:   Certain numbers, yes. I met Thelonious Monk once, when I was playing at the Corso, and he came up to hear the orchestra. He was brought up by a bass player named Victor Venegas, and he brought him upstairs. He blew me away.

TP:   Where was the Corso?

EDDIE:   That was a dancehall on 86th Street off Third Avenue.

TP:   What did he say?

EDDIE:   He didn’t say much. But he enjoyed the band, and that was great.

TP:   Did he dance?

EDDIE:   No. He just sat and listened.

TP:   “La Gitana” is a trio with Scofield on acoustic guitar and John Benitez.

EDDIE: He played beautifully. The instrumentation was originally for a larger band, and we rehearsed it, but it didn’t come in.

TP:   So it became a trio track by accident.

EDDIE:   Right. First it became a duo in the studio, and then a trio.

TP:   “Nica’s Dream.”

EDDIE:   Many years ago, in the ‘60s, I bumped into Horace in the street. I knew he liked Latin music, and I’ll never forget that he asked me, “Are you hip to ‘Nica’s Dream?’” I was walking on Broadway, right by Birdland. The Palladium was right next to Birdland. We were going like this, then he said hello, and I said how much I admired him. I wasn’t into jazz until later on, until I had Barry in the band. Then he brought me to Birdland on a Sunday, and I saw the original John Coltrane quartet also. Which by the way, when I started here on Tuesday, McCoy Tyner was at the soundcheck, and we had a nice talk.

TP:   So Horace Silver was another connection for you.

EDDIE:   Except that I met him. So when Richard Seidel sent me the tunes, I said, “I’d like to look at Nica’s Dream.” We did again up-tempo, a little bit more, and then we wrote a Latin thing at the… For that and “In Walked Bud” I was going to use the Latin rhythm section I like later on, but we didn’t do it, and I left it just drums and conga. But we put a mambo ensemble in there, because I changed the chord structures toward the Latin. That’s what I solo on.

“Mira Flores” is a place in Spain called “En Cortijo a la Mira Flores.” I just used the words “Mira Flores.” That’s where I heard and saw the original crushings of the olive to make the virgin olive oil. It was the historical museum, and then they turned on the machinery, because it worked, and the machinery… It gave me an idea again, and another 3/4 rhythm, which I wrote. There Christian McBride and Brecker exchange solos,  and I accompany them. Michael Brecker told me, “Eddie, it’s a beautiful composition,” and I told him, “If you play it and put it in your repertoire, I’ll be quite honored.”

TP:   So it’s a recent composition as well.

EDDIE:   Right.

TP:   “E.P.  Blues” was also for the session?

EDDIE:   I had Nicholas in mind for In Walked Bud, but he falls on this one, and he exchanges with Brian and Conrad and Donald. He was great. And he was comfortable here.

TP:   By the way, does Donald Harrison’s presence in the ACJO have an impact on you?

EDDIE:   Oh, yeah. He can play drums, and he’s a Big Chief. Now he has his own tribe, since his father passed away. Not only that. Donald can dance, he loves Latin rhythms. That’s why he wanted to come play with us. He told Brian, “I’ve got to get into the Eddie Palmieri band,” and he stuck with me for a while. We did the three CDs. I happen to love Donald Harrison very much. He’s not only a great, great player, but he’s a gentleman to the highest degree, an incredible human being.

Conrad is my compadre. I baptized his son Glen. Conrad to me is the greatest trombonist that I’ve ever met. Conrad is an incredible trombonist. He can execute the instrument, and knows about the structures of how to play it, and how to explain it to the students. Now he’s in a great position, because he’s also a professor at Rutgers.

Brian is an extraordinary talent. He’s one of the greatest trumpet players I’ve ever met. How he is able to comprehend… He’s very well known in the jazz world. But when he came into the Latin thing, I saw him make it his business to buy, like Barry did, for example, the essence of these Latin rhythms from the Latin records…to be able to get the right recordings. Brian Lynch has fulfilled that. He comprehends Latin very well, and that’s very difficult to do.

John Benitez is an incredible bass player. His roots are Latin from Puerto Rico, and he knows that, and he’s also become one of the top jazz bass players. He’s rounded.

TP:   Had Negro played with you before?

EDDIE:   He played here with me along with Richie Flores for a whole week. Negro is an extraordinary drummer. At the same time he plays his jazz, he knows his Cuban music. He gives another unique style that only a few drummers can do.

And Giovanni left with me for Europe as a young man, in 1984. His first tour to Europe.

TP:   You end “E.P. Blues” with a solo. You have the last word. Do you always have the last word on your bands?

EDDIE:   Yeah, sure.

TP:   Was it intended to be the set closer?

EDDIE:   Well, it was the most exciting number.

A Jazziz Feature on Nicholas Payton From 2001

Although “never assume” is a motto I try to abide by, I would be surprised if anyone who checks out this way-station is unfamiliar with the latest firestorm that Nicholas Payton has combusted with his always thought-provoking blog with the statement that “jazz died in 1959.” I tend to agree with the notion that no art form is dead if best-and-brightest practitioners of the idiom continue to play it. But terminology is personal, and Nicholas stands in a line of world-historic artists — Max Roach, Duke Ellington, Roland Kirk, the Art Ensemble of Chicago — who take issue with the notion that “jazz” signifies the totality of musical production.

I’ve followed Nicholas’ own musical production with interest since he emerged on the international scene in the mid ’90s, and presented four or five interviews with him during my tenure at WKCR, beginning in 1995 (a Musicians Show from that year is posted at the bottom of the page). In 2001 I pitched and was given an opportunity by Jazziz to write a feature about him, which appears immediately below.

Nicholas Payton Article for Jazziz (2001):

On a muggy September Tuesday afternoon in a third-floor rehearsal studio nestled between the two bus terminals of Manhattan’s Port Authority, Nicholas Payton is running down a series of Duke Ellington small band transcriptions with a 10-piece unit culled from the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, including tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano and singer Diane Reeves.  It’s two nights before opening night of a 23-concert tour called Duke in Small Doses, and Payton is guest musical director for the project.  He’s dressed for the part, dapper in a well-tailored grey suit that contours his compact, powerful frame.  The soft-spoken trumpeter doesn’t need to say much; the ensemble has internalized the music’s groove and flow. while Reeves is fine-tuning her interpretations of songs like “Mood Indigo” and “Azure.”

Payton calls “Poor Bubber,” Rex Stewart’s 1941 paean to Bubber Miley, the King Oliver disciple whose assortment of signifying growls, smears and vocalisms established the tone of Ellington’s ’20s “Jungle music.”  With an embouchure that seems to begin at the back of his neck, he projects an immense, thrilling sound, warm and round and enveloping through the full range of the trumpet.  Never in a rush, he milks the elemental line, creates melodies, sings his song, telling a story that channels Miley’s animating spirit while sounding fresh and in-the-moment.  It’s the kind of performance Payton — now 26 — has been pulling off since he was a teenage phenom in New Orleans, when his ability to infuse Classic Jazz repertoire with idiomatic authority and life force elicited a comment from the late trumpeter Adolphus “Doc” Cheatham — who played with the seminal masters in the ’20s, and was 91 when he recorded with Payton in 1996 — that Payton, born two years after Louis Armstrong’s death, came as close to the Armstrong essence as anyone he had ever heard.

Not that it preoccupies him, but as his career surges, Payton draws skeptical scrutiny from observers who confuse his virtuosic navigation of older styles with a sensibility drenched in atavistic revivalism. It’s the same critique numerous jazz scribes hurl at the oeuvre of J@LC Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis, who a decade ago, as a sign of his regard, sent his 15-year-old homie a trumpet.

The charges don’t hold up. Consider Payton’s diverse 1999-2000 activities, which bespeak an ample comfort zone with the full jazz timeline.  He’s just finished mixing “Nick@Night,” the fourth album by his highly interactive quintet, which has worked steadily since 1996, and sounds like it.  The intricately composed tunes cohere like an extended suite; they explore the polarities of nighttime experience — restfulness and peace versus the spirit of partying.  The orientation is optimistic, decidedly Modernist; references include Bebop, the collective improvisation and harmonic alliteration of post-1965 Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter, the sophisticated grooves of CTI-period Freddie Hubbard, and a range of R&B tropes.  Now Payton’s pondering the next record, a Y2K Armstrong Centennial project featuring a group of Armstrong tunes scored for a 12-piece band, concurrent with a Winter 2000 J@LC commission for an original composition exploring the rhythms and sounds he grew up hearing in New Orleans.  Then there’s the still unrecorded 8-9 piece electrified funk group (he adds an effects unit and wah-wah setup to his arsenal) with world-class local musicians that he leads during his increasingly infrequent New Orleans downtime.

You might call Payton’s ancient-to-future aesthetic a birthright.  His family lived across the street from Louis Armstrong Park, once known as Congo Square, the 19th century locus of the slave trade, perhaps the only place in the Antebellum South where Africans were allowed to play the drums.  Located in the Tremaine district, the neighborhood was home base for numerous seminal New Orleans musicians.  During formative years, Nicholas played in the Young Tuxedo Brass Band, a unit formed at the turn of the century which specialized in traditional repertoire, and also in the All-Star Brass Band, a group of peers deeply influenced by the rhythmic and harmonic extensions introduced to local vernacular by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.  He soaked up the feeling of Second Line and Mardi Gras Indian rituals.  His mother, Maria, was a former operatic singer and a classically trained pianist who eschewed a career to raise her family; his father Walter, a bassist-tubist and retired educator who is a mainstay of the thriving Crescent City trad scene, would take his young son to Bourbon Street gigs.

After the gigs, Walter Payton would call midnight rehearsals at the house, and from his earliest years Nicholas heard the nocturnal sessions, soaking up music, experimenting on his father’s expensive German bass, the family piano, and drumkits left by drummers like Herlin Riley or James Black, who didn’t care to lug them home in the wee hours.

“He just sat there like a little sponge, observing, absorbing information, not making a lot of noise,” Riley — the nephew of cornetist Melvin Lastie, a pathbreaking figure in the city’s R&B scene, and the grandson of Frank Lastie, a drummer who played in the 1910s with Armstrong in the foundling homes — recalls fondly.  “He was very mature, with a whole package that showed his  potential to blossom and become a great artist.  I think Nicholas is the spirit of Louis Armstrong, Buddy Bolden and those kind of people; it lives in him more than any other trumpet player from New Orleans.  He was raised into a TRADITION.  The sound of New Orleans traditional jazz was part of his upbringing; that’s where his roots are.  It wasn’t something he had to reach back for; he took his roots and extended beyond.”

As the youngster entered his teens, he got calls to play in a variety of R&B horn sections, and attended numerous jam sessions at which postbop was the operative lingua franca.  During those years, Payton attended the New Orleans Center of the Creative Arts (N.O.C.C.A.), where Clyde Kerr — a fourth-generation musician whose father, also an educator, hosted ’40s workshop rehearsals attended by important New Orleans musicians like Red Tyler and Alvin Batiste — took him under his wing.

After telling me that he and Walter Payton played their first Mardi Gras parade together in 1960, Kerr recalls his amazement at hearing a 10-year-old Nicholas on trombone with a young brass band “playing lines like a trumpet player would play.  I used to go to those late night rehearsals when Nick was 8 or 9, and he would sit beside me on the sofa and try to play the music.  It might have been over his head, but he approached it from a very serious perspective, the way it should be done.  By the time he was at N.O.C.C.A., he had a vast repertoire of traditional music; I asked him where he learned it all, and he said, ‘Man, I don’t know.  I just know it.’ It made me think a bit about reincarnation, that he’d been here before.  Then also, I did a record called ‘No Compromise’ where I play a solo where I’m stretching, trying to find new sounds, approaching the trumpet like a saxophone — Nicholas was able to sing it verbatim as a young guy.  Once he hears something, he never forgets it.”

Payton credits progressive New Orleans elders like Kerr, drummer Alvin Fielder (he appeared on Roscoe Mitchell’s paradigm-shifting 1966 recording Sound) and saxophonist Kidd Jordan (the father of flutist Kent Jordan and a world-class speculative improviser with close ties to Chicago’s AACM) as mentors who imparted to him the notion of a global aesthetic.  “When I was at N.O.C.C.A., Clyde Kerr never taught us patterns,” Payton recalls during a lengthy conversation in his hotel room the night after the rehearsal, “When he caught us doing it, he would put us in check, saying, ‘No, the heart is what counts.’  He told us to feel.  His manner of teaching and his expression still impresses me.

“New Orleanian musicians have always had a hip thing about the way they play; some of the world’s best musicians live there — you walk up the street and there they are.  A lot of attention is focused on the pioneers — Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Sidney Bechet and Jelly Roll Morton.  But New Orleans produced great, forward-thinking musicians, such as Ed Blackwell or James Black, who were innovators of the drumset.  James Black was swinging out in straight-ahead 5/4, not playing 3/4-2/4 patterns; he referred to Elvin Jones and Ed Blackwell and Max Roach, but had his own conception of the drum.  He lived right around the corner from us; he’d come to our house like at 3-4 in the morning and play, and I would sit at the piano and he would try to show me these things.  I was only 12 or 13 around the time he passed,  but I learned a lot about composition from him.  He’s one of my heroes.”

Not that Payton’s taking his music to the outermost partials, but he shares the iconoclastic sensibility of his mentors.  “I loved science, particularly chemistry, when I was in school,” he declares.  “I contemplated studying to be a chemist, but by high school I knew I wanted to be a musician, and nothing interested me more.  Music is a science.   What’s similar is the feeling of exploration from mixing and combining the bits and pieces of different elements towards an infinite number of possible outcomes.  I like to think for myself.  I’m not the kind of person who can memorize an end result and regurgitate it.  I have to understand the source, so I can create my own perspective, and not go by someone else’s interpretation.  In school I’d want to know why a particular theorem took its form, what a concept actually meant, and I’d get frustrated when people couldn’t explain those things to me.  I spent a lot of time in the library researching the information, and I would challenge the teachers, which got me in trouble sometimes.

“In music I realized early on that I wanted to stay away from the books with patterns and chord changes, from ‘play this on a C7.’  I felt it was too easy, that it wasn’t a way I could get at what I heard on the records at my house.  I wanted to find my own notes, to find the feeling.  So I went to the records to research what Miles Davis was doing on a particular tune on Four and More, which is the record that made me decide I wanted to play jazz, or to investigate Lee Morgan or Clifford Brown or Kenny Dorham, and tried to formulate my own idea about what actually was happening.  It’s almost like I started in the ’60s, then worked my way back to New Orleans.  When I began to play, I was doing a lot of traditional New Orleans gigs and playing in the brass bands, so I wanted to listen to something different.  It took me a couple of years to get back to Louis Armstrong and King Oliver, and study them in depth.  I feel very comfortable and liberated playing that music — I grew up doing it, it’s quite natural for me, and I can do so without feeling like I’m not free.  I’ve tried to understand their trumpet styles so well that I’d avoid replicating their solos and not play cliches within what they did.

“I love playing in different styles; to me it’s not old or new, just a different means of expression.  Whenever I play, regardless of the context, I’m inspired by that moment, and I try to fit in.  The music of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five won’t sound right if you play some pentatonic tritonal substitution.  I’m all for updating arrangements on old tunes, but it works better when you play within that specific style.  You can be just as creative and free in that sound as in an Ornette Coleman kind of sound.  There’s no harmonic or any other limitations in playing the older music.  You’re not going to play anything Louis Armstrong didn’t play, or think differently about rhythm.  Things that cats calculate now, he was doing naturally years ago — playing 5-over-4 or 3-over-4, playing flat-IX over a major-IX chord or a major-VII over a dominant VII chord.  All we’re doing is an extension of those things, and there’s greatness in all of it.”

Like many musicians of his age group, Payton is fascinated with rhythm and its connective permutations.  “It’s interesting how African rhythms blossomed differently according to what region slaves were brought and what culture they were mixed with,” he reflects.  “You can hear the clave in all the Caribbean rhythms, and even in New Orleans rhythms; there are so many different transmutations of that same thing.  Now, I’m not keen about the term ‘world music’; there’s been a trend to put a big umbrella over a whole range of sounds which are specific to certain cultures and regions, which neglects the depth and nuance and complexity of each entity.  But jazz was always a hybrid and mixture of numerous influences.  In New Orleans, the African and Indian rhythms were mixed with the European classical influence among Creole families, which you can hear most notably in the contrapuntal improvisation of someone like Sidney Bechet or the compositions of Jelly Roll Morton — and then the Blues and Spirituals.

“I don’t want to clutter up my music, because to me the most important thing is a strong melody.  I’m a harmonic freak.  Sometimes the guys in the band get on me, because the more I write, I keep sticking in chords, and it’s not that easy to play.  I just love a beautiful chord and the way harmony moves, and I love Classical music, particularly the Impressionist composers like Debussy and Ravel.  But I love rhythm, too, because I grew up playing in the brass bands with that bass drum and snare drum.  Kenyatta Simon, the percussionist who plays with my funk band and has worked with me on my Louis Armstrong project, has turned me on to the rhythms of Mali and Ghana and shown me a lot about using percussion.”

Asked what he’ll listen to on the road, Payton animatedly pulls out CDs by a pan-diasporic array of ambitious composers, including Brazilian visionary Hermeto Pascual and Pascual’s associate Carlos Malta, as well as Gil Evans, Claire Fischer, the late ’80s orchestral recordings of Wayne Shorter (“his music contains everything”), Ralph Irizarry’s up-to-the-second Salsa, a variety of Afro-Cuban records — and Frank Zappa.  “I have all of Zappa’s records — ‘Jazz From Hell,’ ‘Yellow Shark,’ ‘Studio Tan,’” Payton exclaims.  “He wrote things for symphony orchestra that are unbelievable, and did amazing things metrically, contrapuntally, harmonically.”

Impeccably performed like his three previous quintet recordings, “Nick@Night” lays a tantalizing beat behind Payton’s learning curve; like the others, it’s a remarkably candid document of his personal work-in-progress.  “In a way I was searching to tailor the music more for the personalities of the guys I work with, and let them speak, in the tradition of Ellington,” he noted last December in a follow-up phoner.  The virtuoso band — suave early-30s saxophonist Tim Warfield, who offers breathe-as-one precision in the ensembles and passionate tone and convincing narrative in his solos; 28-year-old pianist Anthony Wonsey, an immaculate comper and spot-on soloist with pristine touch who studied with ’30s Armstrong arranger Zilner Randolph as a Chicago youngster; Reuben Rogers, a fluent big-sound bassist with Swiss watch-precise time; and energetic drummer Adonis Rose, Payton’s N.O.C.C.A. classmate — rises to the occasion.

“My career actually has been a slow process, which is what I think allowed me to grow and survive and keep a band out there,” Payton remarks.  “All the major labels approached me about signing from when I was 15 or 16, and I put it off for four years.  I didn’t want to jump on that whole young lions bandwagon.  I wanted to take the time to learn what I needed to learn and develop a foundation so that I would have something to rely on.   When I started touring with my band, we had maybe two weeks worth of gigs the whole year.  My second record was received pretty well, didn’t sell that great, but there was a lot of buzz.  When I performed and played, we tried to give people something personal, and they didn’t forget it; the next time they brought somebody, and the next time they told someone else — and then I was working 9 months out of the year.  It wasn’t some big media blitz.  It was just from me trying to play good, honest music.

“I want to maintain that throughout my career.  No matter how far we stretch out, which we like to do, I think it can be done in a way that doesn’t alienate people.  We can play something that grooves, something that totally burns out, even something totally free; people can see the history, how everything is tied together, and they dig it.  The audience is and always has been very important to me, maybe because of my roots in New Orleans, which is very people oriented.  For me there’s not even such a thing as playing for myself, because if it doesn’t move anyone else it does nothing for me.  Nobody wants to be alone in this world.  Nobody wants to be not appreciated.  Now, that doesn’t mean you have to compromise yourself or your artistic vision.  This music is vast, and I don’t like to box myself into any particular style.  I like to present how I’m feeling and what is real to me at that moment, and I always want to do that.  It’s worked for me thus far.”

It’s certainly working at an exuberant second-night concert at Alice Tully Hall; Payton — part and parcel with his holistic conception — pays strict attention to the function.  “To me Duke Ellington’s music is as modern as it gets,” he declares.  “Here we’re playing arrangements on tunes that probably weren’t played live, because the small band recordings were primarily studio  projects; the voicings that sound as fresh and hip as if somebody wrote it yesterday!”  By the tour’s 23rd and final concert a few weeks later in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the band is crisp, playing with spontaneous heat and joyous beat, caught up in the ebullient spirit of the music; “Poor Bubber,” set up as a down-home blues feature for Payton and Lovano, brings down the house.

A few months later, Lovano — who spent about 30 days on the road with Payton in 1999 in encounters including a winter 10-concert Japanese tour with the Ray Brown Trio on which the two were co-equal guest soloists as well as the subsequent “Duke In Small Doses” junket — is happy to offer a considered, cut-to-the-chase encomium.  “Nicholas is a total musician who draws from a rich vocabulary,’ the tenorman begins, “Though he loves all kinds of music and is up on everything happening today, he embraces the whole history, not just the way certain people played at his time.  You can hear that he grew up studying the personalities that emerged in jazz, how they played as well as what they played.  There’s a deep-rooted concept of feeling in his sound, not brash and edgy, but filled with warmth and beauty, no matter what tempo or what kind of tune it is.  You feel his sound at the mention of his name.  Nicholas plays from a beautiful place, and beauty is a rare thing — it either happens or it doesn’t.

* * *

Nicholas Payton Musician Show (3-15-95) — (WKCR):

TP:    What’s impressed me and a lot of other people since I first heard you is the quality of your sound, your ability to project a real volume from the instrument while keeping a capacious burnished tone.  It’s the type of sound you’d associate with brass players from New Orleans historically, where you’re from.  I think I could tell without knowing you’re from there.  You’ve been playing the trumpet almost from birth.

PAYTON:  I’ve been playing since I was 4 years old.

TP:    Let’s talk about your early years and your family history and so forth.  Both your parents are musicians, and your father’s a professional musician.

PAYTON:  Correct.  I asked my father for a trumpet at age 4.  I’d always been fascinated with the trumpet.  It symbolized some sort of strength or whatever.  The trumpet player usually played the lead or the melody, and I just liked the sound of it, moreso than the instruments.  I was fascinated with the trumpet the most.

TP:    Now, when you’re saying that, the implication is that you were seeing trumpet players already through your father’s activity, I would assume.

PAYTON:  Yes.  Well, my father used to bring me out on gigs with him and there were many rehearsals at my house.  I grew up listening to trumpet players like Leroy Jones, Wendell Brunious, Clyde Kerr, Jr., Teddy Riley.  So there were a lot of great trumpet players.

TP:    Now, in New Orleans, for reasons that combine economics and culture, there’s a lot of traditional music and older styles of playing are active and current and in the air moreso maybe than in other places.

PAYTON:  Right.

TP:    So you were hearing a wide range of approaches to trumpet, I suppose, from that early age as well.

PAYTON:  Definitely, from the early beginnings of the music all the way up through to now.

TP:    Talk about the dynamics of the New Orleans scene, how the older music intermingles with the newer, and the sensibility of the players.

PAYTON:  New Orleans is basically a tourist town, so the entertainment industry is geared toward older styles of music basically because people who travel to New Orleans expect to see a certain thing.  That’s good, in a sense, because that helps perpetuate that music, but in another sense a lot of the players who are more interested in more modern forms of the music don’t get as much of an outlet to perform and work in New Orleans unless they go elsewhere.

TP:    Another aspect of the music in New Orleans is the perpetuation of the second line and marching bands, some of which have been going on for several generations, some back to the time of Louis Armstrong, which is another source of continuity.

PAYTON:  Definitely.  It still goes on til today.

TP:    You were playing in marching bands from what age?

PAYTON:  I started doing that I guess around 9.

TP:    So what was happening with you between the ages of 4 and 9?  Your father, Walter, is a bass player, and your mother, Maria, is an operatic singer?

PAYTON:  Yes, she’s a former operatic singer.

TP:    Talk about your earlier musical career?  Was it a natural thing?  You picked it up, you did things, they said, “here, if you do this, you can achieve such-and-such”…

PAYTON:  No.  I mean, the first time I learned how to play I was extremely sad.  Everyone, my father and other musicians, encouraged me to play.  Throughout that period they were very supportive of me.  I remember the first gig I did, where I was hanging out with my father while he was getting ready to do a second-line parade (he plays tuba as well).  He took me out with him, and I had my trumpet with me.  So the musicians asked me to play, and I did the whole parade,  It was like two hours we were walking, and I was extremely tired, but I hung in there, and at the end of the gig all the musicians chipped in and gave me a little bit of money, like ten dollars.  I thought I was rich!  But that was like my first experience as far as being on the gig.

TP:    How about formal tuition on the trumpet.  I know you studied with a very strong trumpeter in New Orleans named Clyde Kerr.

PAYTON:  Right.  I studied with him.  He was one of my early influences.  I remember having rehearsals at my father’s house; Clyde would be on the gigs a lot of the time.  I used to sit by him and play his parts with him, or just watch him.  He knows a tremendous amount about the music and the trumpet, and the love and the beauty of the music in terms of… He has a real lyrical sense, and he really turned me on to Clifford Brown and a lot of different things.  I’m always grateful to Clyde for that.

TP:    One thing about the older musicians in the New Orleans area is their combination of functionally having to play the traditional music, and mastering it and respecting it, but also being very interested in contemporary music and new developments.  People like Kidd Jordan and Alvin Batiste and various visionaries have come through there.  Louis Armstrong himself combined that sense of being rooted in the vernacular and creating something entirely new, and we’ll start out the Musician Show with two classics by Pops.  Now, you’ve been pretty much immersed in performing his music publicly in the last six months to a year, and I’m sure way before that.

PAYTON:  Well, I didn’t really get into the music of Louis Armstrong until later in my playing, when I was 17 or 18.  Before that, I was just really into Miles and Clifford Brown and Fats Navarro and Lee Morgan.  Then I started listening to Louis Armstrong.  I took that style of playing for granted because I had grown up in New Orleans, and I had heard it a lot, but I didn’t really see the beauty of Louis Armstrong’s playing until I started listening to the recordings.  Then I saw how great he was.  I had an image in my mind of Louis Armstrong just being an entertainer and joking around.  I didn’t take him seriously as a trumpeter.  When I went back and started listening to his recordings, I realized how great he was.

TP:    This has been done ad infinitum, but I’d like you to briefly talk about the characteristics of his style that are pertinent today, to you.

PAYTON:  First, he had a huge sound, a very great sound.  It was very personal and very distinctive.  He had tremendous amounts of endurance.  A lot of the pieces that he played, especially in the ’30s period with the big band, like “Swing That Music” and “Jubilee” and “Chinatown,” where he takes these extended solos where he plays all these high notes and ending on like F’s and G’s.  I mean, a lot of people say, “Well, Louis Armstrong didn’t have the technical training” or whatever.  But I’d like to see trumpet players play that now.  It’s incredibly hard.  Rhythmically, he took the music years past what was before him.  Also harmonically.  As Miles Davis was quoted saying once, you can’t play a note on the horn that Louis Armstrong hadn’t already played, and that’s true.  I mean, a lot of things he played with phrases like bebop musicians played later on and whatnot.  So he’ll always be the definitive voice in jazz forever, regardless of how far the music goes.  His place in history can never be denied.

TP:    Now, you’ve had to both replicate his solos and improvise on the solos as well, I guess…

PAYTON:  I never replicated his solos.  I just…

TP:    Okay.  But what are the challenges of playing Louis’ solos for you?

PAYTON:  Well, I guess I’ve sort of gotten accustomed to it because I’ve listened to it so much.  I grew up listening to that style of music, so it wasn’t as hard for me as it may have been for some to approach the music.  But to me, when you’re learning a person’s music or style, it’s not so important to me to know exactly what they’re playing or learn every solo when you’re playing in that style, or to play exactly what they played.  To me, it’s always been more important to get their concept and where they were coming from.  Why did they play this here?  What actually were they doing?  What was his mindset when he was actually playing that.  To get the concept.  That way, when you’re playing in that style, you can be free in whatever you’re doing, and be creative and bring yourself into it, rather than give some kind of recreation of what it is.  Because it’s never going to be as great as what has already been documented.

TP:    Well, Pops came up under King Oliver and formed a lot of his ideas from hearing him play, but of course it’s something very different, and the recordings they did in the early ’20s.  We’ll start with “Dippermouth Blues.” Before we hear it, a few words about King Oliver.

PAYTON:  King Oliver was a great trumpeter.  He had a real hip, bluesy feel.  He influenced a lot of trumpet players, especially with the wah-wah conception that people like Bubber Miley and Rex Stewart and Cootie Williams later employed.  This solo here is one of his most famous solos.  Trumpet players such as Louis Armstrong, Harry James, Rex Stewart…when you play this tune, you almost have to play these three choruses, because it just becomes monumental.  When you play this tune…all the trumpet players who have really played, play this strain when they’re playing this blues.

[MUSIC: Pops/King Oliver, "Dippermouth Blues" (1923); "Potato Head Blues" (1927); Roy Eldridge, "Body & Soul" (1935)]

TP:    Nicholas, would you address what Roy Eldridge did that’s jumping off from Pops, and his own conception.

PAYTON:  Well, one thing is that Roy Eldridge, along with being heavily influenced by Louis Armstrong, was also very influenced by the great Coleman Hawkins.  As you can see, Roy is playing a lot of the longer, linear lines, like Coleman Hawkins was dealing with in the ’30s.

TP:    Trying to play like a saxophone.

PAYTON:  Exactly.  Yet he still has the punchiness and the attack like Louis Armstrong, and was heavily influenced by both.

TP:    What’s interesting is that Coleman Hawkins sat next to Pops in the Fletcher Henderson band in the mid ’20s and was very influenced by him.

PAYTON:  That’s correct.

TP:    You have a piece on your new record that’s very much in the idiom and vibration of Roy Eldridge, a version of “Taking A Chance On Love.”  Talk about the dynamics of his style.

PAYTON:  Roy bridged the gap between the older style, the real straight style of playing, to playing lines more flowingly, more of a linear conception of playing the trumpet.  And he influenced a whole generation of trumpet players, mainly Dizzy Gillespie, who really was influenced by Roy.  Especially on the real early recordings you can tell how much he was into Roy.

TP:    That interaction was memorably record in 1954 for Verve on 9 tracks bringing together Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie.  Nicholas selected “Algo Bueno.”

PAYTON:  You’re about to hear some great trumpet playing.  It’s history being recorded.  These two trumpet titans are really… It’s a good experience to hear where Dizzy was heavily influenced by Roy, but he took that thing and made it his own, and these two trumpet players playing their own style… Stylistically, there’s a difference between them, but Roy wasn’t that much older than Diz — maybe four or five years older.  But they were both great trumpet players.

TP:    One aspect of Dizzy Gillespie’s impact wasn’t just his harmonic innovations, but his rhythmic innovations as well, bring the Afro-Cuban sound into the idiom.  But in New Orleans there’s an implicit Caribbean aspect as well.

PAYTON:  There’s a lot of multicultural influences in New Orleans, being that there were different settlers from all over.  You had French, you had Spanish settlers, you had the Indians.  So a lot of different cultural expressions all culminated into that.  All that goes back to the meetings on Sunday in Congo Square, where the people would get together and play.  That all comes out of that.  The second-line street beat comes out of all those influences.  It comes out of the influence of the march and… Sometimes you see those things where it’s the piccolo and the drum, or also the Afro-Cuban rhythms… It’s all mixed in, and it all comes together…

TP:    That lives on also in the Mardi Gras Indian bands.

PAYTON:  Exactly.  That comes directly out of all that.

[MUSIC: Roy-Diz, "Algo Bueno" (1954); Bird-Fats, "Street Beat" (1950); Clifford Brown, "Donna Lee" (1956)]

TP:    Again, put on the professor’s hat and talk about Fats Navarro and Clifford Brown, the evolution of trumpet sensibility.

PAYTON:  All those trumpet players came out of Dizzy Gillespie.  Fats came out of Dizzy, but he had a different thing, a real personal sound.  He had a huge sound.  He played very lyrically but at the same time being very virtuosic in being able to play long, complex phrases, while at the same time he utilized space and also played lyrically, which is beautiful, which is something that Clifford Brown was very influenced by — the playing of Fats Navarro.

TP:    Talk about playing melodies.  You’ve been quoted — and I can hear this, too — that you always create a melodic phrase even out of very convoluted type of harmonic lines.

PAYTON:  To me that’s the beauty of music.  That’s what it is for me.  Just being able to play a clear, sensible melody is one of the hardest things you can do.  And that’s something I think all the great jazz musicians strive to do over the course of their lives, is just be able to deliver the melodic line.

TP:    How long have you been composing for groups?

PAYTON:  I’ve been composing seriously for three years?

TP:    Do you do it off the piano, off the trumpet?

PAYTON:  It’s a combination of things.  Sometimes I’m sitting sat the piano and something might hit me, and I go on and write it from there.  Sometimes I hear something in my head, and I go to the piano and work it out.  But I never try to write from an instrumental or theoretical standpoint.  I try to hear something that’s singable to myself in my head, something that someone who doesn’t necessarily like jazz or know anything about it could maybe come to the gig or hear it on record, and it’s something that will be singable to them, that could be catch, maybe they’d be whistling on their way home.  I try to think of melodies in those terms.  And I try to write melodies that lead the tune.  I don’t write changes.  I don’t try to write complex changes and then fit some kind of contrived melody over it.  I write the melody to lead where the progression of the tune is going.

TP:    You’ve recorded some standards as well on In This Moment, like “Taking A Chance On Love” and “You Stepped Out Of A Dream.”  Do you follow the dictum of knowing the lyric and keeping it in mind?

PAYTON:  Definitely.  I don’t feel I’m really playing a tune unless I know what the lyrics are and what the meaning of the tune is.  Then you can do whatever you want with it.  I find a lot is lost when you don’t know the melody for yourself as a reference.  I mean it’s good to know what other jazz musicians have played on tunes, definitely.  But you need the score really to see, so you can bring whatever you can bring to it, instead of just getting someone’s interpretation of an interpretation of an interpretation, and by the time you get it the whole melodic structure of the tune may be gone.  So you need that as a reference point, I feel.

TP:    I’d like to talk to you a little bit about sound as well.  At the top of the show I said that I think the one thing that strikes everyone on hearing you is just the breadth and warmth of your sound.  Is it a sound you’ve had in your mind’s ear?  Is it a quality of combining hard work and embrochure and so forth?

PAYTON:  Well, sound is something you always are working on.  As a musician, you’re always trying to develop your sound.  And your sound matures as you grow older.  To me, sound is the most important aspect of playing.  Because that’s the thing that people can most readily identify with — your musical sound.

TP:    It’s your voice.

PAYTON:  That’s right.

TP:    Was this very expansive sound in your ear from your early years of hearing brass bands and other music?

PAYTON:  Well, it’s a culmination of different experiences and different influences.

TP:    We’ll leave it at that, and turn to a trumpet player with one of the most beautiful sounds, Joe Wilder, who spent most of his career in the studios, but has recorded a number of extraordinary small group albums where he improvises at wonderful length, and one was done in 1956 for Savoy, a trumpet and rhythm date with Hank Jones on piano, Wendell Marshall on bass and Kenny Clarke on drums.  We’ll hear “Cherokee.”

PAYTON:  When I first heard this, I didn’t really know much about Joe Wilder.  I had heard his name before.  I knew he had been a member of several different big bands.  But he hadn’t been involved in a lot of solo projects, or really gotten out there. This is an example of some of the great musicians who have been in our music but have never really gotten the opportunity to get their due.  He was a great player, and I think he deserves to be listened to.

[MUSIC: Joe Wilder, "Cherokee" (1956); Clark Terry/OP, "Brotherhood Of Man" (1963); Sweets/Ben Webster, "Did You Call Her Today" (1961)]

TP:    What came to mind hearing those tracks is that all three trumpet players had mastered and assimilated modern harmonic developments, but kept the phrasing and pace and feel of an earlier generation.

PAYTON:  Well, they sort of fit between the mold of the old-style Swing period and the Bebop period.

TP:    A few words about each.  Harry Sweets Edison has a very vocalized style, almost like he’s having a conversation with you.

PAYTON:  Sweets was a truly great trumpeter.  What I love about him is he has great time.  He really gets into a rhythm.  He can swing one note to death.  A great phraser.  Plays beautiful melodies, too.

TP:    Clark Terry is really a total musician.  Miles said because he heard him in St. Louis in the early ’40s, when he went to 52nd Street nothing he heard surprised him.  He seems able to play every area of music with a totally personal conception.  And you’ve had a chance to associate with him in the last few years.

PAYTON:  Clark has helped me tremendously.  Besides me, he’s helped many young instrumentalists.  He’s a great educator, and he’s very patient with young students of jazz.  Besides being a great musician… I’ve stood on the bandstand with him many a night and listened to recordings.  He’s just another one of those great musicians who never really was able to get established on his own, which is really unfortunate.  Clark influenced many musicians, like Miles…he’s just great…

TP:    He’s a musician who played in the big bands, then stayed in the studios because of the economics of raising a family.

PAYTON:  Yeah.  He was one of musicians’ favorite trumpet players, even though he never got exposed to the masses.  Duke Ellington and Count Basie were quoted as saying that he was their favorite trumpet player.  So he had the respect of the whole musical community.

TP:    I’d like to talk a bit with you about phrasing.  On the one hand, people who come up in different times and are affected by what goes on around them think and phrase in different ways, and yet that type of phrasing we heard with Sweets and Clark Terry is classic, part of the idiom.  Let’s say you were approaching that type of material.  Is putting yourself in that frame of mind something you have to think about, or does it come naturally with playing the piece.

PAYTON:  I think I just try to play that way, period.  I always try to think in terms of phrasing, regardless of the period.  To me, it’s all jazz and they all consist of the same elements.  There are differences within different styles of music, but the foundation is always the same.

TP:    With Mulgrew Miller, Peter Washington and Louis Nash at this Vanguard this week, you have a rhythm section that’s capable of both playing extremely creatively in their solo aspect and also totally supportive.

PAYTON:  They’re great.  Mulgrew and Louis are two of my favorite musicians playing today.  They’re both very tasteful and supportive, but at the same time being very great individual soloists.  I couldn’t think of too many people I’d rather work with than those guys.

TP:    Coming up is Miles Davis, a piece we heard you play last night, albeit under its original title and not the royalty-avoiding one.  This is George Shearing’s “Conception,” which Miles Davis recorded in 1951, then subsequently in 1954 as “Take-Off” for Blue Note.  Within your own personal framework, how does Miles Davis come in?

PAYTON:  Miles has been a tremendous influence on my playing.  He totally changed the concept of the trumpet.  Once Miles Davis’ playing came in the picture, that added a whole new thing to the art of jazz trumpet.  He’s a masterful musician, a master of lyricism and phrasing and timing — and had a wonderful sound, of course.

[MUSIC: Miles, "Take Off" (1954); "Old Folks" (1961)]

TP:    We’ll hear three performances featuring trumpeters with Duke Ellington, two of them by Ellington trumpet players.  Nicholas, you’ve had a chance to play quite a bit of Ellington’s music now with the J@LC.  Ellington used his trumpets in so many different ways, had trumpeters with different personalities, and wrote and arranged for the personalities of those personalities, going back to Bubber Miley and Cootie Williams and Freddie Jenkins and Rex Stewart.  Was your first exposure to Ellington’s music as a kid listening to records?

PAYTON:  When I started listening to Ellington, I didn’t realize the magnitude of the great music he composed.  To me, Duke Ellington wrote “Take The A Train” and “Satin Doll,” and that was my extent of my knowledge of what he did.  It wasn’t until later on, when I got into a lot of his extended works that he and Billy Strayhorn both worked on, like “The Far East Suite,” “The Perfume Suite” and all those type of pieces… I remember talking about the Ellington days with Clark Terry, and he shared a lot of memories.  He said, you look at the Ellington band, and you can take the trumpet players who went through that band and get the whole history of trumpet playing practically, just out of the trumpet section, different people who passed through there.  So there’s a lot of rich history in the Ellington band, not only with the trumpets, but all the instrumentalists as well.

TP:    It must extremely useful to you as an improviser to be able to play the music of the great classic composers of jazz, more or less the music’s building blocks, within the Lincoln Center Orchestra, and then come out as a contemporary improviser with your own sound.

PAYTON:  Yes, I’m very fortunate to get an opportunity to play a lot of this music.

TP:    You get involved in its inner dynamics.

PAYTON:  Definitely.  I mean, it’s great listening to it, but it’s a totally different thing when you’re right there in the middle of the band and you can really hear all the parts clearly and really see what’s going on, and you can really see yourself the range of difficulty this music entails.

TP:    And I think what you want to make clear to people is that it’s not imitative, it’s a processing, then filtered through your consciousness, and something contemporary and new is coming out.

PAYTON:  Yeah.  And that’s what Duke Ellington’s thing was about.  When Clark Terry came in the band, he didn’t make him play like Rex Stewart or anybody.  He let him be Clark Terry and based the band around that.  And I think any great leader has the ability to do that.  Like Miles,  To be a leader doesn’t mean to tell your sideman what to do.  It simply means you create an outlet for the player to express themselves, and let them bring whatever experiences and talents they have into it to make it great.

TP:    One of the great individualists in the Ellington band was Ray Nance, who had the trumpet chair for many years, and we’ll hear a feature for him from 1959, “Pie Eye’s Blues.”

PAYTON:  Ray Nance is a great trumpeter, another who was very respected among musicians but never could really get too much out of the big band circuit.  He was a master of muted playing, and also playing with the hat, and had a gorgeous sound.

TP:    We’ll also be hearing a Shorty Baker feature on “Mood Indigos” from Indigos.

PAYTON:  Shorty was a great phraser.  He had a very sweet, sensual tone.

[MUSIC:  Ellington/Nance, "Pie Eye's Blues" (1959); Ellington-Baker, "Mood Indigo" (1959); Ellington/Diz, "UMMG" (1959)]

TP:    We’ll program a marathon set featuring four trumpeters — Kenny Dorham, Freddie Hubbard, Booker Little, Art Farmer.  You recorded one of K.D.’s compositions and performed during last night’s first set — “Fair Weather.”  We’ve spoken of individual voices on the trumpet; no one was ever more so than Kenny Dorham.

PAYTON:  Yes, he was definitely an individual with his own conception of sound.  Unfortunately, again, he’s another one of the trumpet players who never got very wide recognition but was very well respected in the musical trumpet.

TP:    As Miles Davis said, he was playing his own thing and was original.  He developed his own conception, as evident on his recording.  He also influenced Freddie Hubbard, who came up here once and said that K.D. had been a saxophone player earlier and had developed a lot of his attitude from his saxophone experience, as you mentioned earlier about Roy Eldridge.

PAYTON:  Freddie is one of the greatest, personally one of my favorite trumpeters.  He has all the aspects of trumpet playing I like.  He has a warm, big sound.  He has a pile of chops.  Is capable of playing very complex lines that are virtuosic, but at the same time has a  beautiful, lyrical quality about his playing.

TP:    Almost operatic in his scope when he’s really on, from lovely ballads to gladiatorial type trumpet pieces.  Born in the same year as Freddie was Booker Little, and they emerged at the same time.  But we’ll never know what Booker Little would have done since he died at the age of 23.  But people are still grappling with what he did.

PAYTON:  Yeah, he was amazing.  Again, an amazing technician as well as a great trumpet player.  He was very virtuosic, but at the same time played lyrically, as you’ll hear.  The way he plays over time is so free and flowing, but at the same time you could still hear the continuity of the piece within his freer time even though he’s playing over the beat.  Booker Little never really developed his full potential because of his untimely death, but all the trumpet players at the time, when Booker Little came, were frightened by him.  I heard Freddie telling about Booker Little, that when he first heard him he was scared.  He said he’d never heard anyone play trumpet like that.  He was great, as well as a great composer.

TP:    Talk a bit about what was great and distinctive about his compositions, and the implications of what those compositions might subsequently have been.

PAYTON:  His music was very intellectual, but at the same time a lot of the melodies were very  simplistic while being complex, which I love.  He had the ability to appeal to people’s highest sense, but at the same time, it’s something someone could relate to on the most tangible level.

TP:    Kenny Dorham also had a lot of trumpet players note his slickness, his ability to go in and out of phrases, and connect…

PAYTON:  Yeah, he was a master of playing turnarounds and stuff like that.

TP:    Finally, concluding the set, we’ll hear a 1964 performance by the Art Farmer Quartet with guitarist Jim Hall on “Stompin’ At the Savoy.”  We’re talking about another of the great individualists of the trumpet, and someone whose every note seems clear as a bell, whose thought process you can hear.

PAYTON:  Yeah, Art Farmer was and still is a great melodist, a great trumpet player.  He was a big influence on my playing.  One of the tracks I do on my record, “It Could Happen To You,” which I do with guitar and bass and drums, comes right out of the quartet stuff we’re going to hear.

TP:    Another thing about Art Farmer is that he never stops challenging himself conceptually and compositionally.  He’s always bringing in new material, and it seems that the harder the piece, the more he wants to play it.

PAYTON:  Yeah.  He has no limitations or any hangups about playing material.

TP:    Well, Nicholas Payton seems to be going in that direction himself, and he’s at the beginning of what promises to be a very interesting career to follow, which I’ll certainly be doing.  You can hear where he is right now at the Village Vanguard.

[ETC.]

[MUSIC: KD, "Lotus Blossom" (1959); Freddie, "One Finger Snap" (1964); Booker/Max, "Garvey's Ghost" (1961); Art Farmer, "Stompin' At the Savoy" (1962)]

R.I.P. Paul Motian, 1931-2011

When I launched this blog last May, I was looking for apropos material to post. As it happened, Paul Motian was at the Village Vanguard that week (it was one of his eight scheduled 2011 engagements) helming a  newly-configured quartet with vibraphonist Steve Nelson, and I decided to share the unedited proceedings of a Blindfold  Test we’d done in 1999.

I last saw Paul towards the end of September, when he was at the Vanguard in a marvelous unit with Greg Osby and Masabumi Kikuchi. He played with characteristic focus and creative energy, and was looking good. But when I spoke with Paul after the set, he told me that he’d been feeling poorly, that his energy was low, and that it had been difficult for him to make it through the week. So when I went onto Facebook yesterday and saw numerous posts from several dozen of the world’s most prominent improvisers, drummers and otherwise,  stating their sorrow about his passing (the cause of death was myelodysplastic syndrome, a blood and bone-marrow disorder) and expressing their heartfelt feelings about his brilliance, it wasn’t entirely a surprise. But I’m deeply saddened.

Still, all in all, it seems like Paul Motian split on his own terms — a life in which illness precluded him from playing music may not have seemed to him like a life worth living. Furthermore, by expanding his circle over the last decade on one-offs with such luminaries in his peer group as Hank Jones, Ron Carter, and Chick Corea, and a good chunk of the best and brightest of younger generations from several continents, he ensured that his spirit would continue to inform the music timeline after his body had left us.

I got to know Paul during the early ’90s when he joined me on WKCR to publicize a gig by the Electric Bebop Band at Sweet Basil in Manhattan. As the decade progressed, more radio meetings ensued, and we learned how to speak with each other.  Our last public conversation was in 2008—I’m posting the proceedings below (it appeared on http://www.jazz.com in 2009). There will follow a DownBeat feature article that I wrote on him the week for 9/11/2001 to mark the release of his second run on ECM.

* * *

Paul Motian (WKCR, Sept. 4, 2008): (Jazz.com)

“I think rehearsing takes away from the beauty of the music,” says Paul Motian. “I’ve been playing long enough to know what I’m doing at this point of my life! I’d rather depend on my skills and intuition to play well when the time comes.”

At 77, Motian is an iconic figure, his laid-back, minimalist parsing of rhythm and timbre a fixture on the jazz landscape..

“Just one strike of the cymbal, there’s something transcendent in his sound,” Brian Blade observed earlier this decade. “A lot of people miss how Motian moves the music and gets inside it. He possesses an amazing lyrical looseness, but at the same time keeps a swing and pulsation that injects the music with a good feeling.”

That feeling seduced a number of drummers who, like Joey Baron, came of age aesthetically in the early ‘70s, when Motian propelled Keith Jarrett’s influential trio and quartet,  more than a decade after he attained international visibility playing drums for several editions of the Bill Evans Trio between 1956 to 1963.  “At a certain point,” Baron once remarked, “I started hearing interplay that wasn’t necessarily about stating 4/4 all the time, but a floating kind of time, more like a circle than a straight up-and-down hard groove. It’s the way Paul Motian would really PLAY a ballad; he made it interesting rather than just a straight boom-chick, which a lot of drummers did.”

Motian’s contemporaries feel similar enthusiasm for Motian’s clear, pellucid beats and unremittingly in-the-moment focus. “Paul always played like someone who listens and interprets what he hears immediately,” noted Lee Konitz, who first shared a bandstand with Motian more than half a century ago. “He’s an idea man as opposed to a language man,” added pianist Paul Bley, who helped Motian transition into a speculative improviser during the early ‘60s. “I hear him play one idea on the drums, and there is a silence, and then there is another idea. It’s way beyond accompaniment per se. He’s playing as many ideas as the people he’s playing with, and sometimes more vividly because of the silences.”

That quality of musical conversation permeates all of the bands that Motian leads. There’s the increasingly dense and complex Electric Bebop Band, comprised of two saxophonists (they’ve  included Joshua Redman, Chris Potter, Chris Cheek, and Pietro Tonolo), two guitarists (among them Kurt Rosenwinkel, Ben Monder, Steve Cardenas, and Brad Shepik), an electric bassist (often Steve Swallow, and also Anders Christensen). Initially a vehicle for off-kilter blowing on core bebop repertoire by Parker, Dameron, Powell, and Monk, Motian now uses it to showcase increasingly involved arrangements of his original material.

There’s also Trio 2000, in which bassist Larry Grenadier triangulates Motian and Japanese pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, a master of rubato improvising at achingly slow tempos, in a dialogue with saxophonist Potter on the 1998 recording Trio 2000 + 1 or, as on the 2007 album Trio 2000 + 2: Live at the Village Vanguard, with Potter and alto saxophonist Greg Osby, both Winter & Winter releases.

No Motian project has more deeply impacted the sound of 21st century jazz than the Paul Motian Trio, a super-group with guitarist Bill Frisell and tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, who were just beginning to make their mark when they recorded It Should Have Happened A Long Time Ago [ECM], the PM3 debut, in 1984. Motian no longer travels, and for the last five years or so, the trio has convened only for an annual fortnight run around Labor Day at New York’s Village Vanguard. Without soundcheck, completely in tune from the first note of this year’s run, they spun out collective improvisations of the highest order.

“Every time Paul hits the drums, he has this way of surprising even himself — and of course, it surprises everyone else,” Frisell said. “We’ve been playing 25 years, and I still don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Nor does Motian. “Red Garland once told me that if you have an idea in your head, somehow it will come out on your instrument,” he told me in 2001. “That’s what I do. My eyes are closed, I play what I’m hearing, I play musical ideas, and when they come out, I find myself doing technical things on the drumset that I’ve never done before in my life. Sometimes it might be awkward; maybe if I studied what I was thinking about, I would figure out technically the best and easiest way to do it, and do it differently.”

On night three of the Trio’s Vanguard engagement, Motian joined me at New York’s WKCR to speak about its history, its two most recent recordings (I Have The Room Above Her and Time and Time Again [ECM]), and many other things.

—————————–

PM:   We did the new trio recording, plus our trio recording about two years before that, in one afternoon, five or six hours. I go in with new music, and Joe and Bill are great—they can read the stuff right away, and we make little changes now and then.

TP:    Your custom over the last decade or so, since everyone’s schedule got even busier, is to get together after a long hiatus, and just hit, even with the barest soundcheck.

PAUL:   We’ve been playing together for such a long time. Now we do two weeks every year at the Vanguard, around this time in September. I don’t think we do anything in between. We don’t rehearse. I came in with a new tune last night, “Olivia’s Dream,” that Joe had never seen before. I put up the music and he played great.

TP:   How did you assemble the group?

PAUL:   I had a gig  in Boston, and Pat Metheny was playing with me. I said, “I’m putting together a group; can you recommend some guitarists?” He told me about Bill—he mentioned another guitar player (I can’t remember his name now), but he said he thought I would like Bill. Bill came over to my apartment, and we played, and we got along great. That was in 1980, I guess. So I started with Bill, and then I think Marty Ehrlich came in, and we rehearsed as a trio for a while. Then Marc Johnson, the bass player, came by, and we rehearsed with him for a while, and then Marc recommended Joe—or maybe it was Ed Schuller. Then Joe recommended Billy Drewes. Anyway, that quintet came together in ‘81 or so, and the trio thing happened three years later.

TP:   Was it a matter of strategy or circumstance?

PAUL:   It just happened. We were playing a gig with the quintet, and at one point during one of the songs, the bass laid out, and it was just Joe and Bill and I playing, and right then, that’s what I heard. I said, “Gee, I could get away with this, guys.” Economically it made sense, plus the music was really happening. So I stayed with that.

TP:   You’ve worked with many powerful bass players. The Bill Evans Trio with Scott LaFaro, Gary Peacock and Chuck Israels. David Izenson in your own trio. Charlie Haden in the Keith Jarrett Trio and Quartet. In Oscar Pettiford’s bands in the late ‘50s. More recently in Bill Frisell’s trio with Ron Carter. Can you speak about the dynamics of playing with a bass player vis-a-vis playing without one?

PAUL:   That was going through my head last night as I was playing. Without the bass, I can do whatever I want. I can change the tempo. I can play free, without a tempo. I can play free for a while, and then play in tempo for a while, and not play, and lay out. I’m totally free, and it’s totally open for me to do whatever I want. Now, it’s got to make sense to me, and it’s got to be musical. With the bass, sometimes I can almost do the same thing, but of course, the bass makes a big difference.

TP:   The Paul Motian Trio with Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano toured extensively in the ‘80s and into the mid ‘90s.

PAUL:   I got burned out. That’s why I don’t tour any more. It just got ridiculous.

TP:    Not just with them, though. You developed a number of groups by the end of the ‘90s.

PAUL:   Yeah, plus I was playing with other bands, other people. People would call me from Europe, and I’d go to Europe or Japan, and play with people there. It’s ridiculous.  Now it’s worse than ever, I understand, from when I talk to people now.

TP:   It’s been said that you don’t like to leave the environs of New York City, and would probably prefer not to leave Manhattan Island, if possible…

PAUL:   Well, no…

TP:   Not entirely true.

PAUL:   I mean, sometimes I’ll see a film of maybe a small town in Paris that looks really great, and I remember having a good time there, and I miss that. I played all over Italy, and I miss friends and people, and great food sometimes. Not all the time! Sometimes. But I love New York. I’ve been here forever.

TP:    But you haven’t been wanting to travel so much for the last couple of years.

PAUL:   No. It’s a hardship, man. Plus, I don’t take my drums, so I’m playing a different drumset every night, playing in a different hall every night. You don’t know what you’re going to come up with. Plus, they gave me a hard time on the airlines. When I was playing with Keith Jarrett and we toured, I would take my own drums. When I started with my own trio, with David Izenson and Charles Brackeen, I would take my drums. But after a while, it got harder and harder, and they charged more and more money. People used to take basses on the plane for free! Put it on a seat and strap it in. Free, man. Now you can’t even take a bass on a plane. Then I would just take my cymbals. Then they started giving me a hard time with my cymbal. “What’s that, mister? You can’t take that on the plane.” Blah-blah-blah. So I said goodbye.

TP:   Is it important for you to play with your own drums?

PAUL:   Sure. Yeah.

TP:   Did you ever feel happy with how you played not on your own drums?

PAUL:   Very seldom. Occasionally, I would come across a good drumset.

TP:    Would the difference in quality not be discernible to anyone but you and other drummers?

PAUL:   I feel that it would be. People have told me that I still sound like me, and I’m able to play like me and sound like me no matter what the drums are. But I don’t agree!

TP:   What do you use?

PAUL:   It’s a Gretsch drumset that I bought in a drum shop here in New York about 30 years ago. I love the sound of those drums and I love to play those. I’ve been playing the cymbals that I use for quite a few years now. They’re a mish-mash of different companies. I gave my old drumset to Joe Lovano.

TP:   Tell me about playing with Thelonious Monk.

PAUL:   I played with him a couple of times—a week in Boston, and earlier at the Open Door at Lafayette and Third Street. Lou Donaldson came to the Vanguard the other day, and we were talking about that, because Lou was in Monk’s band—with Donald Byrd and I don’t remember the bass player—the first time I played with Monk. I knew Monk was playing at the Open Door with his band, and I went to hear the music. The promoter, Bob Reisner, knew I played drums—he had seen me around town. When I arrived, he said, “Paul, Arthur Taylor hasn’t showed up; if you go home and get your drums, you can play with Monk.” Man, I ran home, got my drums, and came back. Monk paid me ten dollars at the end of the night. When I told Lou Donaldson that story, he said, “Oh, yeah, that’s all he paid anybody.” Donald Byrd once told me he’s got a picture of me playing with Monk on that date. I’d love to see it. That had to be 1955 or 1956. Then in 1960 I played for a week with Monk in Boston with Scott LaFaro and Charlie Rouse.

Monk said that he liked one take, and Charlie Rouse also talked about it. If there was anything more than, say, a take-two, they would just move on, go on to the next thing. Once you’re into the second take, it’s like a copy somehow. It doesn’t sound real enough. You’re trying to correct something, man. I remember doing record dates, not my own, like just somebody called me to do a recording, and talking about take 15 and 16. That’s ridiculous.

TP:   On one of the Bill Evans Trio dates, Portrait In Jazz maybe, from 1959, you’d done a month at a club called the Showplace, finished the run on a Sunday, then went in the studio to do the session.

PAUL:   That was a club on Third Street. That’s the first record we did with Scott LaFaro.

TP:   But fifty years ago, long runs were more commonplace.

PAUL:   Oh, yeah. There was a club on 52nd Street called the Hickory House. I played in there for three months with Bill Evans, and for three months again with Joe Castro, a piano player. I remember playing 10 weeks with Lennie Tristano at the Half Note. Nine weeks at the Vanguard with Bill Evans and Gary Peacock. One or two weeks or more at the original Birdland. That’s the way it was, then.

It slowed up for jazz around the mid ‘60s. I don’t think I played with Bill Evans after 1964 or so, then I started with Keith Jarrett around 1968. Those couple of years in there, I was doing commercial gigs. I played at a nightclub on 72nd Street with acts coming from Israel. I played with a Hungarian violinist and a Romanian piano player. Great shows!

TP:   Was that a valuable time for you? Did it affect the way you heard music?

PAUL:    It paid my rent. That was it.

TP:   But between ‘63 and ‘68, your personal aesthetic seems to have changed in certain ways. You played with much more radical players.

PAUL:   True. There was a wonderful piano player in Boston named Lowell Davidson, who isn’t around any more. He was very original, and played great. I used to go up to Boston just to play with this guy. There were different bass players. We did a concert of his music at a church I think in 1976, and the bass player was a guy named Jon Voigt, who was the librarian at Berklee School of Music. Lowell Davidson recorded it, and I had a ¼” reel-to-reel tape in my closet for about 20 years. Finally, I told Manfred Eicher at ECM about it, and he said, “Well, give me the tape, and maybe we can do something with it.” I was ecstatic that maybe this could finally be a record, because the music was incredible. I loved that stuff. But now Manfred tells me now that they don’t know where the tape is!

But anyway, I did things with Lowell, and played with Paul Bley and Gary Peacock at a club in the Village with Albert Ayler and John Gilmore. That was a helluva gig!

TP:    So in 1963, you’re playing with Bill Evans, and in 1964 you’re playing with Paul Bley, Albert Ayler and Gary Peacock. Opposite ends of the spectrum. Why did this happen?

PAUL:   I don’t think of it as being that far apart. They were gigs, and it was music. Just playing music, man. Continuing, going forward.

TP:   But if my recollection is correct, you weren’t too happy with the way things were going with Bill Evans. Didn’t you leave mid-gig?

PAUL:   I left Bill Evans. We were playing at Shelley Manne’s club in California, and it seemed like I was playing softer and softer until I finally felt like I wasn’t there at all. So I said, “Bill, I’m leaving.” He begged me not to quit, but I did. I paid my own way back home. He got Larry Bunker to play drums. They went up to San Francisco, and then they went to Europe for the first time. So I wasn’t happy with the music. I just felt I wasn’t playing.

TP:   Was that because of his own direction, what he was asking you to do, or did it just seem that this was where the music was taking you?

PAUL:   I had started playing with different people in New York, and the music for me was going in a different direction—the Jazz Composers Orchestra and with Paul Bley. I wanted to be part of that. I felt like this was the way to go, and with Bill I felt I was standing still.

TP:   In the late ‘50s you were one of the busiest drummers on the scene. I’ve seen your gig book. You were working 330-340 days a year, sometimes twice in a day.

PAUL:   Yeah, I was. I missed that photo shoot of Great Day In Harlem. I had three gigs that day, man. I was told about the photo shoot, that I should go, but I couldn’t make it. I think I played a wedding, a parade, and a gig. One time I was at the Musicians Union, and I was going up the stairs and somebody was coming down. He said, “Hey, Paul! You’re the house drummer at Birdland.” I wasn’t, man, but he just had seen me there a lot.

TP:   A lot of the gigs you were doing demanded you swing and keep really good time, but not a whole lot else.

PAUL: Sometimes. I did a rehearsal with Edgar Varese that was recorded. That had to be 1955-56. There was a tape, and Teo Macero told me that he had it. I don’t know what happened to it. I had a drumstick in one hand and an iron pipe in the other, and I had music in front of me. There were staffs, but not notes. There were open-ended triangles placed in different parts of the staff, and you were supposed to play according to what you… Art Farmer was on it, Hal McKusick, Billy Butterfield, the tuba player—an 8- or 9-piece band. I don’t know how come I got the call to do that, but I did.

TP: Well, you got a lot of calls.

PAUL:   Yeah. Somehow. I don’t get it.

TP:    When did you hit the New York scene?

PAUL:   I was in the Navy during the Korean War, and for a year I was stationed at Brooklyn Receiving Station, across the street from the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I had an apartment in Brooklyn. It was like going to a day job. In the morning, I’d go in to a band rehearsal, and if there was no function or no dignitary to play for or anything, I’d go home, then get my drums and find someplace to play. Go play somewhere. Every day, if I could. I got out in September 1954.

TP:   It  was such an active time. For one thing, with the G.I. Bill, a lot of musicians were studying…

PAUL:   Well, I went to Manhattan School of Music on the G.I. Bill for a semester. Then in the middle of the second semester, I got a gig with George Wallington and Teddy Kotick at a club called the Composer Room on 58th Street off of Sixth Avenue—sort of a trio room. Teddy got me the gig; I’d met Teddy through Bill Evans, who I met pretty early on. I started falling behind in my studies, so I quit the school then.

TP:   Was your experience there valuable for you?

PAUL:   Sure. I was studying tympany and xylophone and piano and all of that.

TP:    So you learned something about theory and orchestral percussion, and it refined your skills, I guess.

PAUL:   Oh, yeah. I’d go in for a tympani lesson, and the first thing the tympani teacher would say was, “Sing A.” I never got it right!

TP:   No perfect pitch.

PAUL:   No, not me.

TP:   Do you hear the drums as a melodic instrument?

PAUL:   Yeah, definitely. It can be an orchestra, if you want to. You’ve got cymbals, you’ve got different tuned drums, you could have a string section, or whatever. But you’ve got to put that in your head. If you put it in your head, it can become real.

TP:    What drummers were your modeling yourself after?

PAUL:   Kenny Clarke, number one. I used to go the Bohemia, which opened in 1955. Charlie Parker was the first player they booked to play there, they had his name out front, but then he died. Before that, I went to the Bohemia to play jam sessions. No money. There was no band there. You’d just find some people to play with, then go to the club and say, “Is it okay if we play?” “Yeah, sure, go ahead.” Then people started to hear about it, and it became a club. Anyway, I heard Kenny Clarke playing there with Oscar Pettiford, George Wallington and different people. I was there every night.

I loved Kenny Clarke. His time, his feel. Did you ever hear the movie Miles Davis did the music for, Elevator to the Gallows? Boy, there’s some great stuff on there. Kenny Clarke’s playing brushes on snare drum, really fast tempo. Just the snare drum and brushes, man. It’s great. It’s swinging like a…I don’t want to say it, but you know what I mean?

TP:    We did a Downbeat Blindfold Test on which you also expressed your admiration for Shadow Wilson.

PAUL:   Sure, Shadow Wilson, but also Philly Joe Jones. I was at the Bohemia nightly to hear Miles Davis with Coltrane and Philly Joe. I’d also go to Birdland to see Art Blakey with his bands. Art Blakey, Philly Joe, Kenny Clarke—those were the people I was listening to, who were playing a lot. Roy Haynes wasn’t on the scene that much then. He was with Sarah Vaughan, so I didn’t get to hear him that much.

Lately, I’ve been listening to drummers from the ‘20s and ‘30s. I mean, Jimmy Crawford with the Jimmie Lunceford band, is a motherfucker, man. They used to call him Craw. Great. Manzie Campbell with Fletcher Henderson. There are drummers from that period who nobody talks about or knows about any more, but they were great drummers. I have a recording of Papa Jo Jones playing a duo with Willie the Lion Smith, and a trio with Teddy Wilson and Milt Hinton. Incredible. Simple, but just incredible music.

TP:   Were you listening to those older musicians at the time?

PAUL:   No. It’s only been lately I’ve been listening to all that.

TP:   How did you become interested in the drums in the first place?

PAUL:   There was a drummer in the neighborhood.

TP:    The neighborhood was in Providence, Rhode Island.

PAUL:   Right. I was friendly with his younger brother, who was sort of my age, and this drummer was maybe 16 or 17. He used to play in his house, and a lot of kids used to sit out front, listening to him. One day I went with my buddy to hear him play, and I fell in love with it, and asked if he would give me lessons.” I guess I was around 11. That’s how it started. He wasn’t really a teacher, though. He gave me some drumsticks and pulled out a practice pad, and he played me Gene Krupa doing “Sing, Sing, Sing” with Benny Goodman, then he gave me some sticks and told me how to play a roll or something like that.  After that I found a teacher, and went on from there.

TP:   Did you start playing in bands soon after?

PAUL:   Right after I got out of high school, I went on the road with a big band around New England, like one of those territory bands, playing Glenn Miller stuff. Perry Bourelly and his Orchestra. Also I used to play with other musicians in the neighborhood. I remember going to someone’s house and playing with an accordion player and a guitar player, playing popular songs from the ‘40s and so on.

TP:   Were you listening to records also, checking out drummers?

PAUL:  I’d hear records on the radio, and send away for them. I sent away for Count Basie records and things with Max Roach, who I also heard on broadcasts from Birdland.

TP:    You were coming of age right when when bebop was getting a lot of media attention.

PAUL:   Yes. When I was in high school, someone took me to a record store and played me a Charlie Parker record. It freaked me out. I didn’t know what was going on.

TP:   According to your gig book, you first worked the Vanguard maybe at the end of ‘56?

PAUL:   ‘57. With Lee Konitz. That was the first time I played there.  In those days, they’d have two bands. The Bill Evans Trio opposite the Miles Davis band. We played opposite Mingus. They’d have comedians—I played there with Bill Evans opposite Lenny Bruce. The place was never that full! One night with Bill and Scott LaFaro, there were only three people in the club. Now it’s packed. It’s unbelievable. It’s quiet, and they clap when you walk on stage. That never happened in those days!

TP:    Over the last few years, I’d speculate that your different bands occupy 6-7 weeks a year on the Vanguard schedule.

PAUL:   I think it turns out to be two months total. I’m going to go in there with Bill McHenry’s band at the end of this month, going into October. I think Ben Street is the bass player, Duane Eubanks on trumpet, and Andrew D’Angelo on alto saxophone.  Then I’m with Trio 2000 + 2 at the Vanguard the last week of November. I’m in the Vanguard in February with the trio of Jason Moran and Chris Potter, which we did last year. Jason Moran was saying that should be recorded live, so maybe I can talk to ECM about it and see. Also, in January I’m doing a week at the Blue Note with Bill Frisell and Ron Carter in January.

TP:   Are you under contract…

PAUL:   No-no-no.

TP:   Each record is a one-off situation?

PAUL:   Right.

TP:    So ECM and Winter & Winter split your time more or less evenly?

PAUL:   Pretty much. I do whatever comes up.

TP:   Your history with ECM begins with Tribute in 1972, doesn’t it? I guess your interest in bandleading began while you were with the Keith Jarrett Quartet.

PAUL:   I was playing with Keith, maybe in Boston, in 1976, and I told Keith’s booker that I was thinking about putting together something of my own, and asked if he’d get me a gig if I put a group together. That’s when that company got me a gig in Minneapolis with Charles Brackeen and David Izenson, opposite Earl Klugh. I wanted to do my own music, and I started taking piano lessons and composition lessons. That got me started.

I started playing with Keith around ‘68, coming out of that period with Paul Bley and Lowell Davidson—one thing grew into something else. We rehearsed a little bit, I remember, but not all that much. He didn’t dictate to do this or do that, or play this way or that way. It was open for everybody to play how they played, and everything fit. I left Keith when I started the trio with Charles and David. Actually, Bill Evans called me then and said, “Philly Joe Jones just quit on me; would you play with me again?” I said, “Well, I would love to, but I just started my own trio, and we’re about to do a European tour.” So that didn’t happen.

TP:   Did you get to play with him any more before his death?

PAUL:   No. After I left him in ‘64, the only time was at the Vanguard, when he was playing maybe with Eddie Gomez, and I sat in and played a couple of tunes. I felt very uncomfortable. It seemed like the music was on the edge of a mountain and we were about to fall off. It almost felt like it was speeding up or something. But it wasn’t. We ended up at the same tempo we started with. Miles Davis was in the club that night, and he drove me home, and he asked me how I felt about it. I said, ‘Man, it was okay, but the music just felt like it was speeding up.” He said, “Well, man, it’s only a trio; you got to push with a trio.”

TP:    In the ‘90s, you started developing a number of bands, the Trio+2 being one of them, and also the Paul Motian Electric Bebop Band. The Bebop Band evolved from a unit with odd instrumentation that played standards into a forum for expansive arrangements of your compositions.

PAUL:   Boy, that thing keeps growing and growing. The last time I played with it at the Vanguard, a few months ago, it was like an octet plus a piano player—nine people. I guess I felt like just playing with the trio with Bill and Joe wasn’t enough somehow. Also Bill and Joe started doing a lot of their own stuff, and I felt I wasn’t busy enough. Pretty soon, I started throwing in my music. Now it’s mostly my music; it’s hardly any bebop at all. I feel like you have to keep going on, keep doing stuff, try to do better and better, and try to grow. I’m still trying to grow. I’m still learning.

TP:   You employ a lot of young musicians, people under 40, even under 30.

PAUL:   It’s usually by recommendation. Somebody plays with me, they recommend somebody, and somebody will recommend someone else. I’m not thinking about age or whether they go to school or how they learned to play. Then, when they play with me, if I hear something I’d like to play with, I give them the gig. What’s interesting is that the young players who play with me go on to become bandleaders themselves. Chris Potter started playing with me right after he left Red Rodney. I think he was 23 years old. Kurt Rosenwinkel wasn’t much more than 20 when he came to my house the first time. Now these guys have their own bands.

TP:   We’ve talked about a lot of things.

PAUL:   I’ve been around a long time, man. There’s a lot to talk about.

* * * *

Downbeat (article from 2001)

“I think rehearsing takes away from the beauty of the music,” says Paul Motian. “I’ve been playing long enough to know what I’m doing at this point of my life! I’d rather depend on my skills and intuition to play well when the time comes.”

For Motian, 70, making music is as natural and necessary as drinking water; his laid-back, minimalist parsing of rhythm and timbre is a fixture on the jazz landscape. Consider how next-generation drum-masters Brian Blade and Joey Baron regard the drum icon.

“Just one strike of the cymbal, there’s something transcendent in his sound,” Blade observed  several years ago. “A lot of people miss how Motian moves the music and gets inside it. He possesses an amazing lyrical looseness, but at the same time keeps a swing and pulsation that injects the music with a good feeling.”

That feeling seduced a number of drummers who, like Baron, came of age aesthetically in the early ‘70s, when Motian propelled Keith Jarrett’s influential trio and quartet, more than a decade after attaining an international reputation as the drummer in the Bill Evans Trio from 1956 to 1963. “At a certain point,” says Baron, “I started hearing interplay that wasn’t necessarily about stating 4/4 all the time, but a floating kind of time, more like a circle than a straight up-and-down hard groove. It’s the way Paul Motian would really PLAY a ballad; he made it interesting rather than just a straight boom-chick, which a lot of drummers did.”

Hard swingers and hardcore abstractionists alike favor the clarity of  Motian’s beats and unremittingly in-the-moment focus. Every moment is fresh. “Paul always played like someone who listens and interprets what he hears immediately,” says Lee Konitz, who first shared a bandstand with Motian 50 years ago. “Every time Paul hits the drums, he has this way of surprising even himself — and of course, it surprises everyone else,” adds guitarist Bill Frisell, who received his “Miles Davis phone call” from Motian in 1980. “People say he plays like a little kid. At the same time, he’s a virtuoso, so deft and with so much technique, but the music always overshadows the instrument somehow.”

“Paul is an idea man as opposed to a language man,” says pianist Paul Bley, a partner since the early ‘60s. “I hear him play one idea on the drums, and there is a silence, and then there is another idea. It’s way beyond accompaniment per se. He’s playing as many ideas as the people he’s playing with, and sometimes more vividly because of the silences.”

Bley’s description precisely suits the ambiance of the 12 tunes that comprise I Have The Room Above Her [ECM], the [tk] album by the Paul Motian Trio with Frisell and tenor hero Joe Lovano since Motian’s previous ECM date,  It Should Have Happened A Long Time Ago, from 1984. On the day after Labor Day, they convened at the Village Vanguard to begin a sold-out fortnight. They needed no soundcheck: Completely in tune from the first note of “Good Morning Heartache” – they wove collective improvisations of the highest order, springboarding off of Motian’s pellucid ideas, pristinely executed with no excess strokes.“We’ve been playing for 25 years,” Frisell says, “and every time we play, I still don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Red Garland once told me that if you have an idea in your head, somehow it will come out on your instrument,” Motian said. “That’s what I do. My eyes are closed, I play what I’m hearing, I play musical ideas, and when they come out I find myself doing technical things on the drumset that I’ve never done before in my life. Sometimes it might be awkward; maybe if I studied what I was thinking about, I would figure out technically the best and easiest way to do it, and do it differently.”

Often, it seemed, Joe Lovano took timekeeping responsibilities. “That’s true,” Motian responds. “They played some of my stuff for one drummer on a Blindfold Test, and he said, ‘That’s bullshit. Anybody could do that.’ He didn’t get it. On one record we played ‘My Man’s Gone Now’ and the pianist and bassist played the time in 3/4. I’m playing maybe double or half what they’re doing in three, or playing in four, or maybe playing completely free. But I know exactly where I am in the song. I won’t do anything that interferes with what they’re doing. I’ll just try to make some music out of it without being locked into playing a certain thing.

“I remember when I played with Scott LaFaro the first time with Bill Evans. I’d worked with Oscar Pettiford, Tommy Potter, Curley Russell, Wilbur Ware, who played straight-ahead 4/4 time, but never a bass player who played like that. All of a sudden, the time started to break up. Maybe that’s when I started to realize that the time was already there; you don’t have to play it all the time. Maybe.”

“Paul knows how to accompany in any direction and any style,” notes Lovano, who recently matched the drum elder with Hank Jones and George Mraz on his straightahead Blue Note dates I’m All For You and Joyous Encounter. “He plays with total feeling, and creates amazing texture within the form of a tune. Paul plays with all different elements within the music. He plays like a pianist, where he’s playing the melody, the changes, the rhythm—he doesn’t have to just play a repetitive beat. He leaves a lot of spaces. A lot of counterpoint happens. He’s one of the most creative musicians in jazz.”

[BREAK]

“I wanted to try stuff, and I wanted to get it right,” Motian says of the trio’s early years. “I didn’t know if people who were going to play my music would like it. Is this music valid? What the hell am I doing? So we rehearsed a lot.”

Motian was almost exclusively a sideman until his early forties, when he acquired Keith Jarrett’s grand piano, took composition lessons, started writing tunes, made his first records, Conception Vessel and Tribute,  for ECM, and began his second career as a bandleader. “I began to realize that you could write little ideas and have people interpret them,” he says. “Manfred Eicher told me that I could record my own stuff, and that kicked my ass.”

The son of Armenian emigrants who settled in Providence, Rhode Island, Motian draws heavily on Anatolian and Persian melodies that he heard as a child.

“To some extent, Paul’s Armenian-ness comes through in his sound,” says Jarrett, who recruited Motian for his trio in 1968. “He plays like he’s on a caravan! Paul isn’t particularly jazzy, and I think he contributed a feeling of openness that wouldn’t have been there if he were a hip jazz drummer. Paul definitely was not going to play like any other drummer, nor could you force him to at gunpoint. It’s almost like he has no choice. Paul has kept the doors open. It’s as though he’s purposely eliminated stylistic sophistication in order to stay pure.”

Motian learned the tradition inside-out before setting it aside. As a Providence teenager, he rapidly developed skills on dance gigs with talented local peers and through intense study and emulation of the Savoy and Dial recordings by Charlie Parker and Max Roach. At 19, he enlisted in the Navy, and wound up in a band that joined the Admiral of the Sixth Fleet on his various postings. Posted to the Brooklyn Navy Yard after two years of sea duty, he moved to New York in 1953.

For the next few years, Motian hung out and jammed with a vengeance. “Wherever anybody played, I was there,” he relates. “Every chance I got, I’d take my drums on the subway.” At Birdland, the aspirant soaked up Art Blakey with Horace Silver and Curley Russell or Max Roach with Clifford Brown and Richie Powell; at the Bohemia, he dug how Kenny Clarke “got so much music out of a little amount of equipment” with Oscar Pettiford and George Wallington. “I thought it was par for the course,” he notes dryly. “Everything was like that.”

In the fall of 1954, shortly before his discharge, Motian attended an audition held by clarinetist Jerry Wald, and was impressed by the piano player. “Someone said, ‘Oh, that’s Bill Evans from New Jersey,’” Motian recalls. “I was hoping we’d both get this gig, and we did. We toured to Puerto Rico and different places on the East Coast during 1955. Then somehow, [clarinetist] Tony Scott hired us, and we went on tour with Tony. That was the beginning.

As documented in his gig books, yellowed pocket-size calendars chronicling the names, venues, and wages that comprise his career, Motian spent the next several years swinging for the likes of Eddie Costa, Oscar Pettiford, Don Elliott, Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, George Wallington, Lee Konitz, Lennie Tristano and Bill Evans.

“In those days, we played from 9 or 10 at night until 3 or 4 in the morning,” he recalls. “I didn’t see the sunlight. You never went out of town. You spent $2 in a taxi to get to a gig, it took half-an-hour to get there, and you played for 6 hours or more.”

On Thursday, November 5, 1959, Bill Evans called Motian to sub for drummer Kenny Dennis on a trio engagement at Basin Street. By the final week, Motian had the job, as did LaFaro, a new arrival from the West Coast. The trio developed their sound during a subsequent month at the Showplace, on Third Street, after which they spent 9 hours in the studio recording Portrait of Jazz, Motian’s favorite of the Bill Evans Trio recordings, on which his symbiotic connection with LaFaro is already evident. In the ensuing 18 months until the bassist’s fatal motorcycle accident in the summer of 1961, Motian began to reconceptualize his approach. “Scott played the bass like no one ever had heard or played,” Motian states. “Of course, it made a strong impression. I always play from what I hear, and I tried to incorporate what he and Bill were doing into my playing.”

Word reached Thelonious Monk, who hired Motian and LaFaro for a week at Boston’s Storyville during the second week of 1960. Otherwise, Motian committed himself to the trio even when times were less than flush. “At a lot of our gigs we didn’t have full houses and people screaming and clapping,” he says. “I remember playing in the Village Vanguard with only four people in the club, and asking Max Gordon if we could go home. He said, ‘Oh, no, you’ve still got a table of people and you’ve got to play another set.’”  Still, Motian didn’t budge when Evans fell ill in late 1960, taking sporadic gigs and drawing an unemployment check for the hefty sum of $427 for 9 weeks.

“We were pretty busy from the beginning of 1961 to the summer,” he sums up the conclusion of his first career peak. “We were hot!  Then Scott got killed. Then it went on from there.”

[BREAK]

The ascension of the Bill Evans Trio occurred against a New York backdrop of Ornette Coleman’s hellraising at the Five Spot, the ever more intense form-stretching of Charles Mingus, the politicization of Max Roach, the spiritual blossoming of John Coltrane, and the growing visibility of a cadre of young musicians with an avant-garde sensibility. LaFaro and Motian wanted Evans to test those waters, but the leader was reluctant to shift his parameters, and Motian felt the first stirrings of aesthetic restlessness.

The breaking point came during a lucrative January 1964 engagement with Evans and Chuck Israels at Shelley’s Manne Hole in sunny Los Angeles, on the heels of a 1963 itinerary that included time-keeping gigs at Manhattan’s Hickory House with Evans, Martial Solal and Joe Castro. “Every day the music was going downhill,” he remembers. “I felt like I was playing a club date. I was playing brushes, barely touching the drums, and everything I did was too loud! I got pissed off, and I quit and went home. I’d been playing in New York with Paul Bley and some other people, and music was changing. It was getting exciting.” On his return, Motian happily took a $5 a night gig with Gary Peacock, Bley and John Gilmore at Take III, a Bleecker Street coffee house.

Excitement waned during the lean years that followed. Motian became involved with Boston-based pianist Lowell Davidson, whose sound he describes as “like Cecil Taylor with a Bill Evans touch,” and with the Jazz Composers Orchestra; for rent he played floor shows at Café Sabra, a West 72nd Street Israeli nightclub. In 1966, on a Monday off-night, Tony Scott called him to play at the Dom, a club on East 8th Street. “When we walked in,” Motian recalls, “this young guy was playing ‘The Song Is You’ with Henry Grimes on bass. I said, ‘Tony, who’s the pianist? Cat sounds great!’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s Keith Jarrett. I discovered him.’ Tony always said he discovered everybody. We hooked up, and toured the country with Charles Lloyd after Jack deJohnette left the band. In late ‘68, when Keith wanted to put together his own trio, he called me and Charlie Haden; he said he’d always liked my work with Bill Evans and Charlie’s work with Ornette, and thought it would be a good combination.”

Jarrett first heard Motian with Bill Evans at Boston’s Jazz Workshop. “He looked like a businessman in his suit, sitting pretty still, using brushes,” the pianist recalls. “Then I heard a tape of him with Lowell Davidson, and what struck me is that I didn’t know who the drummer was nor who it could be. The enormity of the difference between how he played with Bill and with Lowell made me think that he was not one of those players who would decide ahead of time what he liked and what he didn’t. He doesn’t seem to have a thing about categories. Paul likes good songs; he is probably the most vivid example of a drummer who likes music above his own involvement in it. He would request that we play ballads in the early trio with Charlie! We listened to Bartok together. We’d listen to whatever was good.”

With Jarrett, Motian saw an opportunity to pursue ideas that gestated during the LaFaro-Evans years. “My first record with Bley and Gary Peacock was a turning point,” he recalls. “I started playing a little more open, a little freer. I never thought so much about sound before; I realized how much sound turns me on—I’ll do something on a drumset and that sound will make me do something else, which will grow into something else. Anyway, the way Keith played seemed perfect for me. It seemed like that was the way to go—an improvement, an evolution. Let’s play!”

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Thirty-seven years later, “Let’s play” remains Motian’s mantra. Burned out from decades of road work, he no longer travels, allowing the world to come to him in New York City. “I don’t go on vacation,” he says. “I go to the Vanguard!”

In June, the hallowed basement hosted Motian’s  exploratory unit Trio 2000 + 1, with Chris Potter, Larry Grenadier and pianist Masabumi Kikuchi. In August he displayed his pellucid touch with tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry’s quartet, including bassist Reid Anderson and guitarist Ben Monder. The latter has worked extensively with Motian’s Electric Bebop Band, which plays the Vanguard in January. Formed in 1991 with Josh Redman and Kurt Rosenwinkel, it’s a sextet with a signature configuration (two saxophones, two electric guitars, and electric bass) whose evolution from a crisp not-quite-a-cover band – the repertoire includes compositions by Monk, Parker, Bud Powell, Tadd Dameron, Charles Mingus, Herbie Nichols, and Motian – to a creative ensemble is evident on a just-mixed ECM recording set for a 2006 release. Also new on ECM are meet-in-the-studio New York trio dates with Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson and with Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava and pianist Stefano Bollani.

“I trust Manfred Eicher 2000 percent, especially during the mix,” Motian says of the producer who encouraged him to begin his journey as a leader. He notes that James Farber, who engineered these records as well as I’m All For You, “is really good at getting my sound.”

“On trips to Europe, I had to deal with whatever drumset I got, although I still managed to play how I play,” Motian continues. “But the sound I really love is my own drums, and by playing and recording just here in New York I’m able to use them. It’s the way they’re tuned; the intervals between each individual drum and a kind of bottom sound that I love. It makes a lot of sense to me. It’s very musical.”

“The things people ask me and say make the stuff more important than it really is to me somehow,” concludes the man who was drummer of choice for two pianists who rank high on the influence tree of modern jazz, and whose various groups inspire several generations of improvisers. “I started playing drums at 12 years old, and I just went and took the gigs. I love to play, and I love music, and I would get involved with anything I thought was musical or great—except the commercial, but that was so I could survive and eat. Now I can play bebop, which I love, and play my music, which is open and free. I can do what I want. I’ve got the whole world right there. How good can it get?”