For Donald Harrison’s 55th Birthday, a Downbeat Feature From 2002

Best of birthdays to the magnificent alto saxophonist Donald Harrison, who turns 55 today. For the occasion, I’m posting a feature piece that DownBeat gave me an opportunity to write about him in 2002. (The restaurant, unfortunately, went out of business a few years ago.)

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The alto saxophonist Donald Harrison is particular — make that very particular — about his gumbo. After two decades in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene-Clinton Hill district, the 41-year-old son of New Orleans had never found a decent local version of his hometown delicacy, and a new spot on Fulton Street called Restaurant New Orleans has piqued his curiosity. There we sit on a crisp December afternoon, and as we wait for our bowls, he discusses Congo Nation, a smallish Mardi Gras Indian krewe of musicians that he founded a year ago and represents as Big Chief. Adorned in elaborately detailed, brilliantly colored regalia, this year’s edition — including iconic Crescent City drummer Idris Muhammad, masking for the first time at 60 — will parade, sing and dance through the streets of New Orleans during Mardi Gras festivities on February 12th. Harrison has been shopping for Muhammad’s costume, and will begin to sew it when he returns home to New Orleans a few weeks hence.

Black New Orleanians began to mask as American Indians in the 19th century, and the ritual chants and steps of this tradition descend in a more or less uninterrupted line to Congo Square, where African slaves were allowed to congregate and play the drums on Sundays. Harrison learned both the moves of the game and its cultural context from his father, Donald Harrison, Sr., himself a widely respected Big Chief of several tribes, including Creole Wild West, the Wild Eagles and the Guardians of the Flame. Mr. Harrison passed away in 1998, carrying with him a comprehensive knowledge of Mardi Gras Indian folklore, a keen sense of its African origins, and a clear vision of what it might contribute to contemporary culture. Erudite and charismatic, he not only walked the walk but talked the talk, able to communicate his message as effectively to the man on the street as in the halls of academe.

He imprinted the message on his son, for whom the spectacle of Mardi Gras Indian ceremonial is part and parcel of earliest memory. “I see it in the back of my head,” Harrison says as the gumbo arrives. “I was in my outfit, and I could see the other Indians running and their feathers moving up and down fast; I remember hearing the music and the singing. I grew up in it, and I know the inside stuff — how to sew, how to dance, how to sing, how to meet another chief, what to say, what to do. For me it’s the same sort of mindset as a jazz band, because you’re supposed to take the whole thing and sow your own fruit, tell your story within the context of your tribe. I’ve been in what we call a circle, and that takes you to another level. You’re in touch with all those elements — spiritual, warrior, the music, the art, the dancing, the fear, the courage. Every emotion is right there, and they’re all present at the same time. It ties together what you know now with things that were happening at the inception of everything.”

This having been said, Harrison digs into his gumbo, a savory roux infused with crab and shrimp. “I can relate to this,” he smiles. As we eat, let’s bring his story up to date.

Mr. Harrison bought Donald his first saxophone in elementary school. The aspirant tried it, liked it, put it away, then became serious for keeps at 14, learning second-line and traditional repertoire in Doc Paulin’s brass band and finding work in local funk bands. “Donald had a good feel for music from being around the Indians,” recalls outcat saxophonist-educator Kidd Jordan, his primary instructor during those years. “When he was playing by ear, before his technique was straight and he learned about changes, I thought he was going to come up with something in the style of Ornette Coleman. He was hearing some real creative things. I could hear a rawness that knocked me out.”

A few years later, Mr. Harrison put Charlie Parker’s “Relaxin’ At Camarillo” and “Kind of Blue” on the turntable, and converted his son to hardcore jazz religion. He enrolled at the New Orleans Center of Contemporary Arts (NOCCA), where such faculty as Jordan, Ellis Marsalis and Alvin Batiste taught such students as Branford and Wynton Marsalis, Kent Jordan, and the slightly younger Terence Blanchard.

“The first time I heard Donald, I was amazed at his level of maturity,” recalls Blanchard, a 15-year-old sophomore when Harrison was a senior. “He never had a problem getting around his instrument or with chord changes. You didn’t hear any young guys in the city playing like that on the alto.”

Several distinctive characteristics marked the Harrison sound when he arrived at Berklee School of Music — by way of Batiste’s program at Southern University — in 1979. His technique featured a seamless five-octave range and fluid fingering, as though the saxophone were an extension of his arm, while his style blended the grand harmonic partials of John Coltrane, the soulful oomph and precise articulation of Cannonball Adderley, and phrasing that recalled the fleet rhythmic displacements of Charlie Parker. “Donald had a freeness to his playing that was beyond the bebop thing,” says Blanchard. “He had so much ability to go in different directions that you could hear him changing his mind in the middle of his solo.”

Spending as much time in New York as Boston, Harrison sat in at every opportunity, landing a gig with Roy Haynes and — at Miles Davis’ instigation — buffaloing a Fat Tuesday’s bandstand occupied by Freddie Hubbard, George Benson, Kenny Barron, Ron Carter and Al Foster. Elders and peers took notice; in 1982, Branford Marsalis recommended his homie to Art Blakey for the Jazz Messengers sax chair. Until 1986, Harrison and Blanchard — who in 1982 released New York Second Line [Concord], debuting Harrison’s penchant for framing modern jazz with second line and Mardi Gras Indian rhythms — played alongside each other in a dynamic Messengers unit. When it was time to cut the cord, the tandem combined their surnames and signed a three-album contract with Columbia.

“Unless you’ve done something, you won’t think of it,” Harrison remarks, gently daubing hot sauce over a second course of lightly fried catfish. “I can tell a story from being an Indian. I hear guys doing second-line music who were totally against it initially, so I know our music influenced them or turned them around to think differently.”

“New York Second Line sounded delightfully strange to me when I was in high school,’ says pianist Eric Reed, 31, who produced and performed on much of Real Life Stories [Nagel-Heyer], one of three Harrison-led recordings due for 2002 release. “It became apparent to me that a new sound was taking place. The way Donald and Terence were interpreting their New Orleans influence was profound and amazing; on Nascence [Columbia] the way they had Ralph Peterson incorporate the second line into an updated backbeat, syncopated-offbeat feeling was nothing short of genius. They did everything that Wynton’s group was doing with Branford and Tain, except, again, they made the New Orleans core of it so hip! — and they were doing it before Wynton had decided it was hip to do. The music was accessible and felt great because the groove was so strong. There was nothing pretentious about it, just two young guys who were playing their experience, saying whatever it was they needed to say through their instruments, and they didn’t feel a need to intellectualize or over-explain the process.”

“Donald functioned wonderfully in Art Blakey’s band, but you could hear he wanted to do his own thing,” Blanchard says. “Our band seemed to be more of a perfect fit for him, because it was truly a workshop, and he could work on his concepts. He was always trying to mix things, compounding different rhythms on top of each other or playing in different registers simultaneously in a pianistic manner, with a melody in one register and an accompaniment in another. He had a big influence on my sound.”

In 1989 Blanchard — then developing a new embouchure and finding opportunities to write film music — left the partnership, a circumstance Harrison describes as “messy, but no hard feelings.” Partly for financial reasons, the altoist retreated to New Orleans, and soon was masking with his father’s tribe. Fortified by experiences garnered from a decade traveling the world and invigorated from immersion in the ’80s Brooklyn scene, where Reggae, Soca, Calypso, Haitian, Salsa, Go-Go, Hip-Hop and various African musical and dance styles coexisted and intermingled, Harrison reconnected with his roots from a mature perspective.

“I went out with my father and the Indians at Mardi Gras, and a light switch went on inside my brain,” Harrison says. “I started hearing the swing ride cymbal pattern that Art Blakey and Papa Jo Jones played inside of the African rhythms that the tambourines and drums were playing. Mixing the Indian rhythms with the swing beat led me to put funk and reggae rhythms with the swing beat, which I call Nouveau Swing.”

Joined by his father, Dr. John, Indian percussionist Howard “Smiley” Ricks, and jazz youngbloods Carl Allen and Cyrus Chestnut from the second iteration of Harrison-Blanchard, Harrison presented his hybrid concept on Indian Blues [Candid], a 1991 classic that links “Two Way Pocky Way” to “Cherokee.” The following year, trumpeter Brian Lynch, a close friend and fellow Messenger alumnus, recruited Harrison into Eddie Palmieri’s Salsa-Jazz ensemble.

“Eddie plays from a dance perspective, he knows how to write rhythms so everything is in place, and listening to that music every night deepened my understanding,” Harrison states. “I had to develop techniques to make slides and smears on the saxophone, and learn to play the rhythms in the right clave. The rhythms were natural for me; I always knew how to dip and dive into them even if I didn’t know the specifics. But Eddie helped me to be able to speak in that music, and it carries over to what I write and play now.

“If I’m writing, say, a second line song, I know the dance, what my feet and shoulders are doing to lock up to the different rhythms of the drums. If you listen to the drummers of the Samba and look at the feet, you know it’s matching up. Certain things interlock in Classical music, too. Miles Davis told me, ‘You hear something; to make it yours, just change it up a little bit.’ It is a language, and you can change the language and add different words. I hear the kids in Brooklyn adding new words to the English language all the time! ‘Whattup, Ma?’ They’re saying hello to a woman. They keep changing, and always know what they’re saying. You can change the music, too; the traditional part is making sure everything matches up. When you write from that perspective, it’s always locked in.”

Harrison demonstrates his point on Real Life Stories,” his fourth melody-rich document of Nouveau Swing since 1996. He’s worked with bassist Vicente Archer and drummer John Lampkin — both “young guys who understand the modern texture and can play it in the context either of a jazz band or a dance band” — for several years, and each is intimate with Harrison’s fine-tuned, elegantly worked-out grooves. The altoist plays with relaxed abandon and perfect time, soaring soulfully through the attractive, gospelized “Confirmation” changes of “Keep The Faith,” spinning a sinewy statement over a funky Latin feel on “Night In Tunisia,” playing with the harmonic contours of “Oleo” as though engaging in advanced mathematics. There’s a tinge of barely restrained wildness in his tone, evoking memories of ’80s flights that distinguished Harrison’s tonal personality from his peer group.

“I used to get dogged by the critics and some musicians,” Harrison recollects. “I wasn’t inside enough for the mainstream players and I wasn’t out enough for people who liked avant-garde. But I know my peer group listened to the records with Buhaina and Terence; a lot of young saxophonists then were quoting my solos without even realizing it. I’m comfortable with what I’m doing now; I’m getting back to the way I thought when I was 19, before I began to listen to people and worry about what they said. Once I started listening to Bird, I took the approach that this music is evolutionary, which means that in order to understand it and be a master, you have to study the whole history.”

Harrison spears a final forkful of catfish. “Each person is unique,” he concludes. “The beauty of jazz is to find the things that are truly you, tell a story, and touch people. That’s why I say it’s all about love. I enjoy going out in this world, watching people, being around people, seeing the joy that what we do can bring to them. Besides all the intellect and high thinking that we put in the music, when it’s all said and done, what do you feel?

“I was never trying to be the greatest. I always felt that if you could be one of the cats, you did a great job, because the cats were so great. We do the best we can and keep moving on. Like Art Blakey used to say, ‘Light your candle and hope that somebody will see it.'”

For Monty Alexander’s 71st Birthday, a Downbeat Feature From 2010 and a Separate Interview

In acknowledgment of pianist Monty Alexander’s 71st birthday today, here’s a feature I wrote for DownBeat in 2010. I’ve appended below an interview that I conducted with Monty for a Ray Brown tribute that appeared in DownBeat after the bass grandmaster passed away in 2002.

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Monty Alexander Downbeat Article:

The adage “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” coined to convey the kindling effect of separation on romantic ardor, applies with equal measure to pianist Monty Alexander’s ongoing obsession with the music of Jamaica, his homeland, whence he migrated to Miami in 1961, at 17.

As a Kingston youngster, Alexander recalled, “I soaked up everything—the calypso band playing at the swimming pool in the country, local guys at jam sessions who wished they were Dizzy and Miles, a dance band playing Jamaican melodies, songs that Belafonte would have sung. I was fully aware of the rhythm-and-blues, my heroes on piano were Eddie Heywood and Erroll Garner, and, above all, Louis Armstrong was my king. I had one foot in the jazz camp and the other in the old-time folk music—no one more valuable than the other.”

Once in the States, though, Alexander compartmentalized, sublimating roots towards establishing a jazz identity. By 1970, he was a distinguished voice, with a c.v. citing long-haul trio gigs with various New York A-listers, as well as consequential sideman work in Los Angeles with Milt Jackson and Ray Brown. By the late ‘70s, when he closed the books on his 300-days-a-year-on-the-road trio with John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton, he was an upper-echelon stylist, referred to by Oscar Peterson, himself descended from St. Kett’s and St. Croix, as “my little West Indian counterpart.”

“You come to America, you try to blend in and do what they do,” Alexander explained. “At first, I was even trying to speak like American people”—he demonstrated several voices—“so they wouldn’t keep asking, ‘Where do you come from?’ But as the years went by, I started expressing myself by claiming my heritage more. I said, ‘Wait a minute, home is as good as it gets.’”

In Orvieto, Italy, for a five-concert engagement at Umbria Jazz Winter 2010, Alexander spoke in the high-ceilinged sitting room of his hotel, which evoked a ducal mansion. With him for the week was a band comprising an acoustic trio with bassist Hassan Shakur and drummer George Fludas and a plugged-in Jamaican contingent—Wendell Ferraro on guitar, filling both soloistic and comping roles, Glen Browne on bass, and Karl Wright on drums.

Dubbed the Harlem-Kingston Express, this instrumental configuration—documented on the 2011 release, Harlem-Kingston Express (Motéma), comprising live dates at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola and in Europe—is the most recent iteration of a series of Alexander-conceptualized efforts over the past few decades to coalesce “things that reflect my heritage as an English-speaking Caribbean person” with the principles of hardcore swinging jazz. “I was bummed out after it ended with John and Jeff because I’d gotten used to that precision, that projection,” he said. “Although other people were fine and good, no one came close to that, and I’m not one to go scouting.” To recharge, he began spending quality time in Jamaica. “I’d go to the studio with Sly and Robbie, who know me from way back. It’s simple music, two chords—but life is in those two chords.”

Later in the ‘80s, Alexander—whose first Jamaica-centric dates were the still-sampled mid ‘70s MPS groove albums Ras and Demento—started to present units with which he could incorporate Caribbean flavors, including an “Ivory and Steel” ensemble with steel drummer Othello Molyneaux and hand drummer Bobby Thomas “married to whatever bass player and drummer I had at the time.” After signing with Telarc in the mid ‘90s, he embarked on a succession of recordings on which he reunited with musicians he’d known since teen years, among them several dates with guitarist Ernest Ranglin, and one with Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare. Four other recordings—Stir It Up and Concrete Jungle reveal Alexander’s take on Bob Marley’s music, while Goin’ Yard and Playin’ Yard address a broader Jamaican spectrum—hearken to mento, Jamaica’s indigenous calypso, descended from the French quadrille music to which English colonists danced in the nineteenth century. Mento evolved into, as Alexander puts it, “a deep country Jamaican thing” with African retentions—a banjo, a rhumba box that is akin to a bass kalimba, hand drums, and often harmonica, fiddle or pennywhistle. It spread throughout the island, and, as the 20th century progressed, cross-pollinated with rhythm-and-blues and jazz, evolving into Ska.

As Alexander delved ever deeper into these rediscovered interests, he found it increasingly difficult to convene a single ensemble in which he could satisfactorily convey them. “I would have a trio of jazz masters, and when I’d want to play something that reflected Jamaica, whether calypso or Bob Marley, I couldn’t get that thing because that’s not what they do,” Alexander said. “Conversely, the Jamaican guys didn’t relate to the jazz experience. I wanted to give myself an opportunity to share my two loves, which is one love, to coin Bob’s phrase.”

This feeling had permeated the previous evening’s concert. Alexander came to the piano, positioned stage center to the left of Shakur and Fludas. He opened with Ellingtonian chords, and launched a chugging train blues, transitioned to the changes of “Blue and Boogie,” then returned to an Ellington medley that resolved into “Caravan.” After brief remarks, a brisk stomp through “Sweet Georgia Brown,” and some nachtmusik chords, the Rasta-dreaded Browne and Wright, who wears white driving gloves when playing, entered stage right, and laid down phat Reggae riddims. Playing percussively, Alexander soon segued into Ernest Gold’s “Exodus,” blew a melodica, quoted “let my people go” within his solo, returned to the piano bench, and ended with a flourish. With the trio, he played a shuffle blues, then a hard-swinging blues—midway through the latter, he stood, pointed to the Jamaicans, and orchestrated a metric modulation, quoting “Manteca” in his solo, before seguing into Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry.” The back-and-forth proceeded for another half-hour, before Alexander concluded with a romping “Come Fly With Me” and a melody-milking rendition of “All The Way.”

“Recently I’ve been doing this with more commitment than before,” Alexander remarked of the real-time genre-switching. “I’m fulfilled, because it’s my own life experience. It’s like Barack Obama music. We are all cut from the same cloth.”

[BREAK]

Perhaps twenty years ago, Alexander got angry at someone, intended to hit them, thought better of it, punched the wall instead, and broke his hand. “Ever since that day, I don’t play as fast as I used to,” he said. “But instead of playing twenty notes that may or may not mean that much, I started playing six or seven that hopefully are soulful or meaningful. Sometimes I’m playing and the muscle tightens, and I look like a kid who takes one index finger and goes PLINK-PLINK-PLINK. I think, ‘Shit, that must look terrible to the audience, this so-called ‘good’ piano player playing with his index finger.’”

The chops are abundant on Uplift (JSP), a deeply swinging navigation of the American Songbook with bassist Hassan Shakur and drummer Herlin Riley that follows the 2008 trio dates, The Good Life: Monty Alexander Plays the Songs of Tony Bennett and Calypso Blues: The Music of Nat King Cole [Chesky] as companion pieces to his excellent 1997 Sinatra tribute, Echoes of Jilly’s [Concord]. Rather than abstract the tunes, Alexander hews to the iconic arrangements, illuminating the music from within, deploying effervescent grooves, lovely rubatos, a killing left hand, an innate feel for stating melody, well-calibrated touch, harmonic acumen, and an ability to reference a broad timeline of piano vocabulary stretching to pre-bop. Each interpretation embodies a point of view. Like his “eternal inspiration,” Erroll Garner, Alexander gives the hardcore-jazz-obsessed much to dig into, while also communicating the message to the squarest “civilian.”

“In our home, Nat Cole was the voice of America,” said Alexander, who experienced a transformational moment in 1956 when he saw Cole play on a package concert in Kingston with Louis Armstrong. “I grew up learning his songs, without knowing the titles, even before I knew about Sinatra. My awareness of his piano playing came later; it was just that smooth voice. At first I confused him with Gene Autry. I was always connecting one thing with another—‘Wait a minute, that sounded like that.’ That’s why for me, even now, it’s one world of music. I try to remove all the lines.”

By 1956, Alexander had already spent half his life entertaining people with music. “I’d emulate people my folks knew who played old-time stride,” he said. “I was playing boogie-woogie from the getgo, rockin’ the joint. I just had fun at the piano.” Later, he would extrapolate a conceptual framework from Ahmad Jamal’s 1958 classic, “Poinciana.” “It was a merging of two worlds,” he said. “Sophistication on the piano, harmonic wonderment, and the nastiest jungle rhythm going on in the background. That’s Jamaica. It’s about dancin’, it’s about groovin’—it’s all one thing.”

Such formative experiences gave Alexander a certain ignorance-of-youth confidence when he started playing in “tough guy clubs” in Miami Beach, where hookers congregated and alcohol “flowed like crazy.” Within a year he was working at Le Bistro, a two-room joint where he shared the bill with a Sinatra impersonator named Duke Hazlitt. One night after a concert at the Fontainebleau, Sinatra came through with an entourage, including Sinatra’s consigliere, Jilly Rizzo, and Rizzo’s wife, Honey.

`“I’m playing, minding my own business, trying to behave, not to be too noisy,” Alexander recalled. “But I must have been kicking up a storm, because apparently Honey came in and told Jilly to come hear this kid play. In those days, I’d come in with all guns blazing. She told me, ‘We’ve got this club in New York, Jilly’s, and it would be nice to have you play in there, kid.”

About a year later, midway through 1963, Rizzo finally brought Alexander to his eponymous West 54th Street tough guy bar, which doubled as Sinatra’s late night office. Just 19 and residing a few blocks away in the Hotel Edison, Alexander joined Local 802, situated directly across the street from the club, and assumed his place among New York’s jazz elite. Within a few years, he was also working uptown at Minton’s Playhouse, “before a different crowd of tough guys; drug people and hot goods,” and at the Mad Men era Playboy Club.

“I remember sitting at Jilly’s piano bar, a few feet away from Miles Davis and Frank in deep conversation,” Alexander reminisced. “My crowning point was when Miles came to me and said, ‘Where did you learn to play that shit?’ Next thing, he writes his phone number on a little matchbook, and we’re hanging out at his house or going to the fights. Miles told me, ‘You got the right complexion.’” Alexander noted that his bloodline is an admixture of Lebanese, Spanish and African strains, and that the ambiguity as to his racial identity had a great deal with to do with his ability to comfortably navigate various circles in Jim Crow Miami as well as New York City. “At Minton’s they’d say, ‘What’s this Puerto Rican guy doing who can play jazz like that?’ When I first saw Ray Brown’s picture on an Oscar Peterson record cover, I saw the smile and the teeth and said, ‘Damn, Uncle Jim!’”

More than the familial resemblance, Alexander was drawn to Brown’s consistency, his tone, the truck-coming-down-the-road surge of his beat, and he tried to be around him whenever he could. “One night Ray was in town with Quincy Jones to make the album Walking In Space, and I asked him if he wanted to go out,” he recalled. “I took him to the Half Note to hang out with Coleman Hawkins and Major Holley. After he hung out with Bean, he said, ‘What’s going on uptown?’ ‘There’s a little bar called Docks, and Wynton Kelly and Sam Jones play duo there.’ ‘Ok, let’s go.’

“I got to know Ray better. I went to see him in L.A. at the Gaslight. When I got there, nobody’s listening, nobody cares, it’s the last set, and they had to play one obligatory tune. Frankie Capp walks to the drums, Mundell Lowe picks up the guitar, but the piano player is boozed-out at the bar. I asked Ray, ‘Can I play a tune?’ Within two choruses, he’s screaming, he’s groovin’ and I’m groovin’, and we’re as happy as kids in the candy jar. He said, ‘Where are you going to be this summer? I want you to play with me and Milt Jackson.’

“When you’re in company with people who are at a certain level, it upgrades your musicianship. I’d been smitten with the MJQ since I saw a record with these four dignified black men on the cover—they looked like funeral directors. I learned about the connections—John Lewis and Ray with Dizzy’s big band, Hank Jones telling Dizzy about Ray. I took that personal thing on the bandstand. I felt like I belonged to that crowd of people.”

[BREAK]

In spontaneously orchestrating the Harlem-Kingston Express band in live performance, Alexander seemed to be paralleling the bandstand procedures by which both Ahmad Jamal and Duke Ellington deployed their units to convey their intentions in real time. The pianist concurred.

“It’s a kind of joyful, loving dictatorship,” he said. “That’s why I use musicians who are willing and easy-going, who give me their trust and confidence and won’t question what I’m doing.”

Moreso than instant composition a la Jamal and Ellington as an m.o. for following the dictates of the moment, Alexander focuses on serious play. “I don’t read music and I play by ear,” he said. “You can chalk it up to a certain amount of laziness, because if I really wanted to read, there’s no reason I can’t. I took lessons with an older white lady from England who slapped my knuckles to play the scales. I learned to love her, because she meant well and she saw my talent—that taught me respect for the instrument and to get a sound, so the music starts to fly. But when I see paper in front of me, man, I start sweating. That part of my brain doesn’t function well. I don’t know how to play music that’s not coming from my instant, make-it-up stuff.

“I get bored with a planned format. I can’t repeat the same thing twice. I’m always reaching for now, live in the now, present tense, and I look for inspiration from wherever.”

This blank slate attitude inflects the aforementioned trio projects. “I just went in the studio,” Alexander said, referencing the 2008 Nat Cole tribute. “‘Haji Baba’ is from a movie with Nat, and I used to sing walking down the street when I was nine—I listened to the bridge on that and on ‘Again’ to make sure I had it right. But for the most part, when I play music, I smell it and see colors. Every song has its own personality, its own soul, and if I can’t feel it, I can’t play it with feeling.

“I don’t understand what it is that makes me different, but I feel I have very little in common with anybody else. I seem to be my own strange character. If I’m right in my motivations and attitude, amazing things happen.”

 

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Monty Alexander on Ray Brown, 2002:

TP:    When did your association with Ray Brown begin?

MONTY ALEXANDER:  It began around 1966 or 1967.  I saw him on several occasions, and he saw me as a tiny kid who just wanted to get to know him better.  He didn’t hear me play music or anything; I just phoned him and started hanging out with him, and he welcomed me into his social life, and he came to New York, and I remember we met, and I took him to a club with mutual friends of ours, and I was talking about Wynton Kelly and Sam Jones, and I took him to see them play at a little bar.  I saw the camaraderie between them, and we hung out and had a lot of laughs. Then I took him to see Coleman Hawkins down at the Half Note, and he saw his old friends… So he liked it, and I ended up being in his company.

Then I saw him in Los Angeles a few months later, when he was doing the “Joey Bishop Show,” which became later the “Merv Griffin Show.”  I went to say hello, and he invited me to hang out with him again.

But the real association happened one evening when I went to where he was playing.  They were on an intermission, and when the time came to play a tune, just to sign off for the night… Because they weren’t really listening to the music; it was a sort of Hollywood club.  The pianist had one drink too many (I won’t call his name), and I said, “Can I sit in?”  Ray said, “Yeah.”  We started playing.  And in a few bars, I could hear his joyful sound, and mine too.  It was the beginning of knowing Ray Brown in music.  We just played some blues.  Then I got off the bandstand, and he asked me if I could join him in (?) that summer, just like that.  This was 1968.

TP:    When was the last time you played with him?

ALEXANDER:  We made what probably was his last recording.  He and I and Russell Malone have a release coming in October on Telarc.  We were all very happy to be together.  We had toured Europe last year, then we made this album, just the trio, and had all these dates in October and November, and next year we were going to tour Europe.  We were just happy to be together, and everybody loved the band — and we loved the band.

TP:    And you played with him with varying degrees of frequency and consistency between 1969 and early this year, then, on various gigs and recordings.

ALEXANDER:  With varying degrees of consistency is a great way to put it.  Because for a while, there was a lot of activity, and then I just went off doing what I do, and he started touring more and playing with Gene Harris and a trio.  He would have a trio.  Before that, Herb Ellis and I and Ray played in a group that everybody called The Triple Threat.  We made about five CDs for Concord.  We were playing and having a good thing.

TP:    Over the 34 years of knowing him well, did you hear him evolve as a musician?  Did Ray Brown in 1968 sound different than Ray Brown in 2002?  I assume the answer would be yes, but I wonder what the quality of his evolution would be.

ALEXANDER:  Ray Brown was like Art Tatum.  I’ll tell you why.  The first time you hear Art Tatum play, it was so incredible… I mean, his first recordings, whatever he did, to many us that heard it, it was as incredible in his latter days as in the beginning.  So it was already beyond words.  And Ray Brown was that.  Ray Brown was a continuous circle of beyond normal.  There was nothing on the planet… And I’m not just saying it out of emotion and sentiment.  In my opinion, what he stood for, just when he laid that rhythm down, it was like… I used to conjure up terms to try to explain how it was, and it was a Mack Truck with a Rolls-Royce engine.  That’s what it was.  I mean, that’s just my little parlance.

To me, the last times I played with him, every time from the beginning there was that sense of excitement that I would get, that I’m playing with this guy who is like a royal duke.  He’s a king.  He’s not a normal level of bass player.  He had something in him that was brilliant, just brilliant.

TP:    It seems he would play exactly in the right manner for any situation, and always make his personality shine, and yet never make himself outshine the situation.

ALEXANDER:  He was the greatest support player, and yet he was so strong with what he did, and you knew it was him.  He wasn’t about to be just a nameless character in the background, just doing the pedestrian work.  He was definitely so unique, that sound he got just from those fingers on the strings and what he heard.  A musician plays what he hears, and Ray heard this thing.  It was just a fat, beautiful tone.  I think as the years went by, it wasn’t so much an evolution; it was just a matter of, as you age, you don’t want to pull the strings as hard — so maybe he lowered the strings a little on the fingerboard.  Maybe.  But I couldn’t prove it.  I was always astounded.

TP:    Why do you think he went to younger bands in the last 10-12 years of his life?

ALEXANDER:  Well, the old guys were fading away also.  Whether or not he used young guys is not the point.  The point is that there weren’t that many older men that he would lock in with that would have the enthusiasm or spirit or the spirit of swinging that he was all about.

TP:    So it was because of his own exceptional energy that he wanted someone to match that and sustain it.

ALEXANDER:  Exactly.  And you have a better shot when you get a young, growing, fine musician who is also so desirous of matching his strength.  Which, by the way, was still leaps and bounds in terms of endurance.  Because whenever I saw him playing with anybody, it was like they were trying to keep up with him.

TP:    As someone who started off as a student and evolved into a peer, what would you say were the greatest lessons he imparted to you that impacted what you do as a musician?

ALEXANDER:  Well, I was never a student.  When I got on the bandstand with him, I felt like I was right there shoulder to shoulder.  That was my attitude in music from the beginning.  I was just so stubborn and ignorant!  I would say in many ways his mentoring to me was more about life and attitude than how you play.  Because he sensed in me from the beginning that I understood why and what he was, and I would play… When I played with him…  And I think Benny and Jeff would say the same thing.  We didn’t play with him; we played for him.  It was like we played together.  At least, that’s what I saw and heard.

TP:    So his lessons to you were life lessons.

ALEXANDER:  Yes.

TP:    Comportment and sustaining yourself within this big sharkpit.

ALEXANDER:  You said it well.  It was about fortitude and straight-ahead, and no matter what, don’t stop.  It’s like the way he played.  In other words, if the stuff is falling apart, keep on rockin’!  That’s what he did.  You hear that bass, from the first time you heard it, you knew it was this exceptional thing.  He told me, “Man, I got tired of playing out behind all them horn players at Jazz at the Philharmonic.”  The horn players would take 50 choruses apiece, no matter who they were.  Enough was enough.  And as he got older, he didn’t want to do that any more.

TP:    I’m sure that kind of pretty formulaic for him after a while.  But it would seem like no matter how formulaic the situation, he would never sound…

ALEXANDER:  The point is, no matter what he had to put up with, if he had to put up with it, it would never sound like there was any kind of backing-up.  He never backed up a thing.

To me, whatever note Ray played was like the first and the last note of his life.  He played like his life depended on that note.

I can’t get over the fact that man isn’t alive.  Because he was larger than life.  Most of us couldn’t consider the fact that the day could come he wouldn’t be alive!  This is emotional and personal.  He was almost like an uncle, a father, a big brother.  But he was so larger-than-life that it’s like… He was a survivor, and he… With all the new technology… Ray didn’t have a cell phone.  I mean, he finally got one, but he didn’t use it.  He didn’t do email, he didn’t do all this stuff.  But yet, he was so busy.  Larger than life, man.

For Jerry Gonzalez’ 65th Birthday, a “Directors Cut” Jazz Times Article From 2009 and an Uncut Downbeat Blindfold Test From 2003

In acknowledgement of master conguero-trumpeter-conceptualist Jerry Gonzalez’s 65th birthday, here’s a “Director’s Cut” of a feature piece I wrote for Jazz Times in 2012 about Jerry and bassist Andy Gonzalez, his brother, and an uncut, animated 2003 Blindfold Test with Jerry. (Here’s a link to my post last year of an uncut Blindfold Test  that I conducted with Andy in 2001.)

 

The Gonzalez Brothers: The Apache Way (Jazz Times) – 2012:

 

In control central of Andy Gonzalez’ compact apartment on 209th Street in the Bronx on the third Friday of October, the 60-year-old bassist and his brother, Jerry, 62, had some catching up to do.

In town from Madrid, his home since 2000, Jerry removed one CDR after another from his bag, presenting each offering with an enthusiastic “check this out.” A Symphony Space-produced DVD of an homage to the brothers by the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra the previous weekend ran on a large monitor, which shared a wall obscured by stacks of electronic gear. A narrow corridor separated these holdings from less accessible piles of vintage audio equipment; boxes filled with 8-track tapes, printed matter, and bric-a-brac; several shaky metal shelving units piled with ancient LPs and ‘78s; and a couple of chairs.

As Andy burned duplicate disks, the brothers assessed the concert. It comprised 13 numbers, programmed by ALJO Artistic Director Arturo O’Farrill to convey the scope of their complementary careers, spanning close to half-a-century. O’Farrill commissioned fresh arrangements from the book of Jerry’s Fort Apache band, whose cusp-of-the ‘90s recordings Rumba Para Monk, Earth Dance, and Moliendo Café, set a paradigm for coalescing the vocabularies of swing-based hardcore jazz and clave-centric Afro-Cuban idioms. Two charts (the Pedro Flores standard “Obsesión” and Larry Willis’ “Nightfall’) and two original compositions illuminating the trumpeter-conguero’s current activity in Spain’s gypsy flamenco scene came from Spaniard Miguel Blanco, the guiding force behind Jerry’s well-wrought 2006 CD, Music for Big Band, who was on site to conduct.

The orchestra played impeccably, and the concluding section—kinetic, 13-horn performances of three staples from the book of Conjunto Libre, the salsa unit co-founded by Andy and the late timbalero Manny Oquendo in 1974, shortly after both left the employ of Eddie Palmieri—had the patrons dancing in the aisles. But Jerry and Andy Gonzalez are tough customers, and neither was entirely satisfied with this representation of their musical production.

“If it had been the Fort Apache band together, with ALJO surrounding us, it would have come out better,” Jerry said, before acknowledging that contractual issues (Fort Apache had an imminent booking at Newark’s NJPAC, which wanted metropolitan area exclusivity) forestalled this circumstance. “The band was like in the air. We touched upon some things, but it didn’t have the ferocity. That bugged me, but I went through it.”

“It was nice to be honored,” Andy said gently. But he noted the omission of the mid-‘70s records Concepts in Unity and Lo Dicen Todo by Grupo Folklorico y Experimental Nuevayorquino, a rumba ensemble that addressed historic Cuban and Puerto Rican repertoire with idiomatic authenticity and a funky South Bronx attitude.

“We’re talking about forty years of playing all kinds of different music in different bands,” Andy said gently. “We’ve done so much, it’s hard to make a representation of everything we got to do.”

“Andy and Jerry changed the face of Latin Jazz—in fact, they defined that hybrid,” said O’Farrill, who recalled 1970s listening sessions “at Andy’s house to Arsenio Rodriguez recordings that nobody had, or Bill Evans recordings that nobody had.” He added: “They’ve investigated, immersed themselves in, and appropriated each style.”

In a separate conversation, Jeff Watts—who met the brothers via pianist Kenny Kirkland at the cusp of the ‘90s, and has subbed several Apache gigs—cosigned that assessment. “Their music is definitely a reflection of their experience,” said the drummer. “There’s always something on Jerry’s hot list, which might tie into his perspective at the moment. He’ll play some old Cuban stuff, and show you how he’s incorporated a portion of that theme into an arrangement he’s working on.”

Then Watts offered this encomium: “What makes their thing special is that the jazz side is so well-informed. Listening to the Apaches over the years, you can hear the swagger and vibe of the Jazz Messengers at moments, the resonant spiritual side of Coltrane’s music, the heavy drama of Miles’ quintet, and of course what they do with Monk and Wayne. They have an intimate knowledge of how to achieve the moods associated with jazz. They’ve been successful with their hybrid without being blatant about it, just from trying to render the song with a certain dance feel. The Apache way is a template that you can use for combining a lot of different musics, by paying respect to all the music you’re trying to mix. They could get more credit for that. I think a lot of musicians refer to them as an example, whether they know it or not. But I don’t see a lot of people saying it.”

[BREAK]

“It’s Nuyorican,” Jerry said, pinpointing the sensibility that Watts described. “I listen to Trane, and I hear Muñequitos de Matanzas simultaneously in my head. It interfaces naturally. I heard how Monk would sound on the record before we did it.” He elaborated. “Our version of ‘Evidence’ is a combination of Frank Emilio and Muñequitos and Monk, together.”

This “bilingual” aesthetic stance gestated when the Gonzalez brothers were kids in the Edenwald Projects on 225th Street, home base until their teens. Their father was a gigging sonero and hi-fi buff, who passed down his old equipment to the boys when he upgraded, enabling them to listen closely to Tito Rodríguez, Arsenio Rodríguez, Tito Puente, Machito, Cortijo with Ismael Rivera and with his own combo. On Symphony Sid’s Latin-focused radio show, they heard Cal Tjader and Mongo Santamaría. In elementary school, Andy learned bass and Jerry learned trumpet; in eighth grade, home-bound with a broken leg, Jerry taught himself the beats by practicing to those recordings on a borrowed conga. Soon, the listening got up-close-and-personal—downtown at the Village Vanguard, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins, and the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra; crosstown at Slugs, Sun Ra, Freddie Hubbard, Tony Williams, Chick Corea, and Lee Morgan (Jerry was playing in a teen band with Rene McLean, whose father, Jackie, helped him get past the gatekeeper). Uptown and downtown, they checked out Mongo and Carlos ‘Patato’ Valdéz, and heard Machito at a low-ceilinged boite on Westchester Avenue in the Bronx called Eva’s Intimate Lounge. By high school—Manhattan’s High School of Music and Art—they were entering the fray, first in Latin Jazz, later in típico contexts.

“If you look at the back page of Music and Art’s 1967 yearbook, there’s a photograph of a school desk on which somebody carved the words ‘Latin Jazz’,” Andy said.

“That was me,” Jerry interjected with a raspy, protracted laugh. “I graffitied ‘Latin Jazz’ every place I sat.”

“But that represents what we thought about the music,” Andy continued. “I didn’t start playing more dance-hall music until I got with Ray Barretto.” This transition occurred when Andy was about 17, not long after the brothers met ethnomusicologist and collector René López, who gave them access to his treasure trove of mid-century Afro-Cuban recordings, initiating them to the codes of rumba and helping them, as Andy puts it, “filter into that circuit little by little.”

“We refined our technique for that circuit,” Jerry said. “Before you even can sit down, there’s a certain way to do things. You need to know what the tumbao is, and what the quinto does, and how it matches in with the clave, where to phrase and where not to phrase. Now, the rumba shit wasn’t open publicly. Religion was one thing that separated it, but also family—if you didn’t know someone close to that circle, you couldn’t get pulled in. We got enough from the outside, listening to records. But playing in the real deal present, you find out how what you do is wrong or right. Do something wrong, they’ll tell you right there, man. They’ll give you a little bop on the head.”

As Andy “understood more about the role of the bass in the dance band form,” he coalesced an approach grounded in the earthy sound and fluid tumbaos of bassist Bobby Rodríguez with Tito Puente—and, subsequently, Cuban maestro Israel “Cachao” López—that blends, as Watts puts it, “bass player logic with heavy hand drum knowledge—he’s kind of the Ron Carter of this music.”

Jerry’s development of parallel tonal personalities on trumpet (“more intellectual”) and congas (“more physical and intuitive”) was a somewhat more complex process. “It was a shared experience,” Jerry said. “Congas is what I first played professionally, but I soon caught up to that level on trumpet, because I knew what I had to practice to get it together. On congas, my goal was to try to play like Los Muñequitos by myself—which isn’t easy. I was trying to figure the shit out—it was constant practice, constant focus, constant listening. And enjoying—it made me feel good all the time. I listened to a broad taste of drummers—Philly Joe, Roy, Elvin, Bu, Tony Williams, Jimmy Cobb. But I couldn’t play jazz congas. I like to superimpose my stuff on top of the swing. If it’s real, it just fits right in. If it’s corny, it don’t make it.”

The brothers made further refinements during a year with Dizzy Gillespie, who recruited Jerry in 1970, and hired Andy soon thereafter. The no-trapset quintet’s single recording, Perception, on which Gillespie plays at a peak of melodic inspiration over a melange of understated diasporic beats, does not hint at the “burning rhythms” the unit attained in live performance. “We were laying down our open Latin Jazz kind of playing,” Andy recalls of their 18-month run. “Dizzy came over to me a few times and whispered, ‘Where’s one?’ Maybe the rhythms were a little too intricate.”

Three years with Eddie Palmieri sealed the postgraduate education. “We played for the best dancers,” Andy said. “They need a good beat, and those who hold the best beat get the most respect. Your beat communicates to the dancers, they dance better, and that’s communicated to you. We were both coming from the Cuban school, so it was a perfect fit. Eddie was still wearing three-piece suits, but we were stretching, and he started hippieing out, doing long piano interludes between tunes.”

“I was playing a lot with Rashied Ali then, breaking all the clave rules on conga,” Jerry relates. “So one night with Eddie after a típico, I decided to do some crazy shit when it was time to solo. He started shaking his head, going ‘No. No! No!!’ ‘What the fuck—it’s my solo; I can do whatever I want.’ At the end of the night, when they were paying everybody, he wouldn’t talk to me. He told someone, ‘I never want that motherfucker to play in my band again.’ I was hurt real bad. It made me go home and study my tumbador playing so I could try to come up to the level he wanted. When I got the gig again, he made me use just one drum for a whole year. I just played tumbao and wouldn’t riff at all. That discipline illuminated how powerful it is to just play time when it grooves.”

By now, the Gildersleeve Avenue house to which the Gonzalez family had moved-on-up midway through the ‘60s was a destination for a Pan-American cohort of the famous—Gillespie, Machito, Dorham, McLean, Patato, Ali, Larry Young, and Rubén Blades—and obscure, attracted by the brothers’ global perspective. Devoid of ethnic chauvinism, they treated the idioms not as separate entities but as extensions of each other. “Even people who never went there, say they were,” Andy jokes. “We’ve always been able to surround ourselves with people who played well and wanted to involve themselves in the things that we were doing.”

These informal sessions begat Grupo Folklórico, which followed a process analogous to the Kansas City era Basie band’s practice of spontaneously generating riffs for dancers out of shared experience with vernacular materials.“We created a lot of music without a sheet of paper,” Andy said. “We weren’t just playing folklore. We were experimenting with it.”

Further workshopping ensued at New Rican Village, a multidisciplinary venue at 7th Street and Avenue A, which named Andy musical director in 1977. Proximity to the vibrant East Village culture mix—the space was within striking distance of contemporaneous “loft jazz” presenters like the Tin Palace and Studio Rivbea, as well as The Kitchen in Soho— brought wider visibility and caché from outsiders.“Nobody was playing this kind of shit downtown,” Jerry says. “When jazz people would come up to play, they didn’t know how to deal with it.”

On these sessions, as well as shows at Soundscape, a loft at 10th Avenue and 52nd Street, Jerry worked out the repertoire documented that year on Ya Yo Me Curé, on which the first, 12-piece edition of Fort Apache—trumpet (Jerry), saxophone (Mario Rivera), two trombones (Papo Vazquez and Steve Turre), electric guitar (Edgardo Miranda), piano (Hilton Ruiz), bass (Andy), a lead vocalist (Frankie Rodriguez), and four percussionists— navigated Monk, Ellington, Shorter, and three rumbas of various flavors. Although he continued to gig and tour with this configuration throughout the ‘80s, as documented on The River Is Wide and Obatalá [Enja], Jerry—whose gigging circle was expanding to include such varied jazz voices as McCoy Tyner, Kirk Lightsey, Jaco Pastorius, Kirkland, and Charles Fambrough, and was beginning to make his presence felt at mainstream jazz rooms like Bradley’s and Sweet Basil—gradually developed a smaller, more jazz-centric, booking-friendly iteration. Joining the brothers on Rumba Para Monk, from 1988, were tenor saxophonist Carter Jefferson (formerly with Woody Shaw), pianist Larry Willis (who was sharing Jerry’s large Walton Avenue apartment), and trapsetter Steve Berrios, who could articulate a jazz-to-clave rhythmic lexicon as encyclopedic as Jerry’s—their turn-on-a-dime breaks from clave to swing feels, executed with grace and slickness, remain a key signature of the Fort Apache sound.

[BREAK]

Since Jerry’s relocation to Madrid, the Apaches have convened only sporadically. Still, at an August one-off at the Blue Note, and October concerts in Hartford and Philadelphia (a freak snowstorm wiped out the Newark show), with MacArthur Grant awardee Dafnis Prieto at the drum chair, the forceful precision and head-spinning rhythmic flow were intact. Nor did the leaders’ intensity seem at all diminished by the travails of aging—the toes on Andy’s left foot were amputated in 2004 due to complications from undiagnosed diabetes, his health is intermittent, and he is often in a wheelchair; Jerry, who walks with a pronounced stoop, has recently had surgeries for a hernia and fused vertebrae, and his fingers are gnarled and swollen from years of striking the drums.

“Congas is like running a marathon,” Jerry said. “You’ve got to have endurance, and there’s a certain way you have to hit the drums to get the sound crispy, the way you want it. Then after I’ve been beating the drums, I’ve got to come in with the hand and grab the horn real quick, and get my oxygen back, and be in there, automatic, instantly.”

“Sometimes the adrenaline takes over and you forget you’re sick, and just play,” said Andy, who had been in the E.R. with a fever on the morning of the Symphony Space concert.

The brothers’ abiding bilingual stance and mono-focused perfectionism are two reasons why the Apache personnel has remained relatively stable over its quarter century. Another is an ornery, take-no-prisoners attitude to music-making reflecting the wild west ambiance of the South Bronx barrio during formative years.

“The Bronx had a gritty edge in the ‘70s, and Fort Apache was a band of pirates and swashbuckling raconteurs,” O’Farrill says. “If you played in it, it means you understood the clubhouse gang atmosphere. If you could PLAY, Jerry would say, ‘Yeah, you’re an Apache.’”

Some Apaches were on the fence about whether to welcome Prieto to the club. “Everything changes when one person isn’t there,” said Jerry, noting that Prieto, while one of the truly innovative drummers of this period, does not share Berrios’ deep assimilation of the codes of swing as articulated by the likes of Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones, and Arthur Taylor. “Dafnis is coming from somewhere else, and it’s a big difference. Not everybody in the band agrees with it.”

“It will evolve into another flavor of Fort Apache,” said Andy.

A new recording on Sunnyside, Jerry Gonzalez y El Comando de la Clave, documents several parallel flavors that Jerry has developed over his Spanish decade. The “Comandantes of Clave” are a quartet of Madrid-based Cubans—Javier “Caramelo” Masso on piano; Alaín Pérez on electric bass; and Kiki Ferrer on drums. All get ample room to stretch. The group feels looser, more contemporary than its American counterpart, discoursing in a manner that sounds like a more refined edition of Grupo Folklórico cojoined with a less hardbop-oriented Fort Apache, playfully transitioning from guaguanco voice-and-drums passages to balls-out blowing and elegant, soulful balladry. Behind Jerry’s on-point solos, Ferrer plays homegrown Afro-Cuban grooves and textures with exemplary force and finesse, while Pérez, a quality sonero who also possesses prodigious bass chops, uncorks a formidable string of solos, which Jerry propels on congas as he did on not-infrequent but undocumented interactions with Jaco Pastorius during the ‘80s.

For the set-closer, Tito Rodríguez’s “Avísale a Mi Contrario,” Jerry brings in vocalist Diego “El Cigala” and Ismael Suárez “Piraña” on cajón, continuing an ongoing dialog with the best-and-brightest of Spain’s gypsy nuevo flamenco community that was first documented on the 2004 date Y Los Piratas del Flamenco [Lola], which also included guitarist Niño Josele. “Jerry gets inside the flamenco rhythms,” says pianist and flamenco-meets-jazz pioneer Chano Domínguez, who did a series of concerts with Gonzalez in 2003. “People in Spain love his music, and love him, and he wants to play with everyone he can. He can play any standard in any style. When I heard Moliendo Café in the early ‘90s, it suggested a way to put together flamenco and jazz, and made me feel that I was on the right path.”

“A lot of people in Spain tell me, ‘Thank God you came and stayed here, because you put a chip on everybody’s ass and made them strive for more,’” Jerry said, evincing no false modesty.

Asked to sum up their achievements, both brothers cited the “strive for more” trope as much as their extraordinary music. “Generations of people have learned from the things that I’ve done, and became better musicians through my mentoring,” Andy said. “You can’t ask for better than that.”

“I’m a nice guy, a sharing person, a serious musician—and I can get evil if you fuck with me,” Jerry concluded. “At Symphony Space, I was brought to tears at moments. I never expected something like that to happen. We’re still alive. We’re lucky they caught us in time.”

* * *

Jerry Gonzalez Blindfold Test:
1. Art Blakey, “Drums In The Rain” (from DRUMS AROUND THE CORNER, Blue Note, 1958/1999) (Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones: drums, tympani; Roy Haynes: drums; Ray Barretto: congas; Lee Morgan: trumpet; Bobby Timmons: piano; Jymie Merritt: bass) – (3-1/2 stars)

Unh-oh. UNH-oh!! That’s Candido, that’s for sure. I’d recognize Candido anywhere. The man of a thousand fingers! Ha-ha! That’s Candido, that’s for sure. For as old as he is, he still burns. I remember, we played Lincoln Center, man, with Chico O’Farrill, and he walked his drums over from his house to Lincoln Center. He walked them over! Rolled them! He had them on stands. I said, “Lincoln Center, you should ashamed of yourselves for doing that shit. You should have had a limo for his ass, and a roadie to pick his shit up.” [It’s not Candido.] It’s not Candido? That’s Ray Barretto, then. [I’d know Ray Barretto anywhere.] I do, too!! Yeah, I was gonna say that. But he was imitating Candido. That was Ray Barretto. This the Drum Orgy shit. This is Art Blakey. Yeah. With Donald Byrd? [It has a way to go.] Okay, we’ll find out. Now it’s starting to sound like Elvin. That is Elvin, huh? Not A.T. But that one is Bu. There is more than one drummer. Or was it Art Blakey all the time? Yeah, Bu, go ahead! [There are two other drummers, and you know them both well.] Is it the one that played with Dizzy’s Big Band? [It isn’t Charlie Persip.] No? Max? [Max isn’t on this date.] Is it Roy Haynes? I hear some of Roy Haynes. Ha-ha! I hear Art Blakey and Roy Haynes. They’ve just got their language that I know. Now, that sounds like Max, but it ain’t. Who the fuck is that other drummer? I know that’s Bu’s hi-hat! Bu, Roy Haynes… Come on, give that Cozy Cole shit…that “Topsy” shit. That’s the one I don’t know. The third one got me stumped. I can’t figure that. Well, at least I got two out of three. [AFTER] I liked it. I’ll give it 3-1/2 stars. Because this is when they were first starting to do that drum shit, they were first starting to record that stuff. I think the first percussion stuff that was recorded was TP. Tito Puente did the “Top Percussion” record, and I think that was the first time that any Afro-Cuban percussion was recorded on record just solely for the sake of the rhythms. It wasn’t an orchestra or nothin’ like that. I think they were recorded on RCA. And I think it’s the first time that America got a little taste of some drum stuff from the Afro-Caribbean in a real high quality performance and organization. After that, Sabu Martinez hooked up with Art Blakey and was trying to push him to do the drums orgy stuff. So around that time, this was like late ‘50s-early ‘60s, those things were starting to come out. People were starting to do rhythm records, just rhythm… [Art did a ton of them.] Yeah. [“What did you think of the way they organized it?] I think it was cool. It was organized well. There was some good dialogue going on. I’m still stumped on the third drummer, man. [It was Philly Joe Jones.] Oh, goddamn!!! ‘Scuse me. All right. Well, I could have guessed that one, but I just lost the words. DRUMS AROUND THE CORNER? I haven’t heard it.

2. Conrad Herwig, “Impressions” (from THE LATIN SIDE OF JOHN COLTRANE, Astor Place, 1996) (Eddie Palmieri: piano, arranger; Conrad Herwig: trombone, arranger; Ronnie Cuber: baritone saxophone; Brian Lynch, Ray Vega, Mike Ponella: trumpet; John Benitez: bass; Adam Cruz: drums; Jose Clausell: timbales, percussion; Milton Cardona: congas) – (2 stars)

That’s a Conrad Herwig record, Coltrane… Yeah. He’s got Palmieri on this, right? Go ahead, Eddie. Palmieri. I was telling him to do this shit when I was in his band. And this motherfucker said, “No, I don’t want to play that.” I was saying, “You’ve got to do some stuff for the horns, give them some meat to play on. That little montuno vamp…” I was telling him to do “Giant Steps’ back when I was in his band, and he wouldn’t pay no mind to me, man. I was just a little young kid, man, who was coming to play drums. I didn’t know nothin’, supposedly. He didn’t know my head. But after YA, YO ME CURE came out, he found out where my head was at! It surprised him. But I was trying to talk to him, and he was just like, “Get away, young kid, you’re bothering me” kind of shit. I said I had some ideas that could hook this band up in this groove way before this happened. But he wouldn’t listen, so I just had to do it myself. It’s cool, but I don’t hear the rhythm section. Where is the conga on this record? No conga in that mix. You dig? You hear Palmieri, you hear the timbales a little bit, the trap drums you hear a lot, but the conga is gone. Where is he? And who is he? Because if I can’t hear the conga, I can’t hear who it is. The trumpeter is cool. That’s Brian. At least Eddie respected Brian enough to listen to Brian, because Brian was talking to him about that. But I had about ten years on Brian. I told that shit to Eddie ten years before Brian started. Maybe even more, 15 or 20 years before. Because I was 18 when I was playing with fuckin’ Eddie. He was a turkey, though. He burned everybody, man, for their money and shit. He still owes me money, that motherfucker! [LAUGHS] I want Eddie to read this shit so he’ll know that I had some shit for his ass, but he wasn’t ready for it. Too little, too late with your shit. It’s all right for “Impressions,” but I would have taken it and put the drums up front. 2 stars. The piano solo is probably going to get 4 stars. But sorry, he ain’t got no rhythm section in here, man. I’ll give it 2 stars. He left the congas out of it. You got to know how to mix this shit. [Who do you think is playing congas?] I would think Richito is playing it. But I don’t hear it, so I can’t tell. [Milton Cardona.] Okay. Bad rhythm section. I mean, bad like bad, not too good. Adam Cruz is cool. He’s gotten a lot better; he’s kicking ass now. But Clausell and Milton…not a good mix. He’s lucky he got Eddie playing on this record. That’s an old Eddie lick from Azucar Patie(?). That tag is Azucar Patie(?). That’s Eddie’s shit. Conrad, I love you, but I got to tell you to put it down where it’s at! Ha-ha, ha-ha-ha. You jumped on the bandwagon late, Jack! But it was a nice track. It was a good idea. He just didn’t pull it off. Yeah, I got some rumbas for everybody’s ass. Because I do want to do a couple of more Monks, a rumba for Duke, a rumba for Wayne Shorter, a rumba for Coltrane. I got rumbas for everybody’s ass!

3. Ron Miles, “Still Small Voice” (from LAUGHING BARREL, Sterling Circle, 2003) (Ron Miles: trumpet; Brandon Ross: guitar; Anthony Cox: bass; Rudy Royston: drums) – (4 stars)

I like the trumpet. Nice sound. I can’t recognize this right now. It’s probably because I don’t know him. Because I’ve never heard this; I don’t know who it is. I haven’t bought too many new releases of anything. But I like it. So far, I like it. He’s did a little tweety thing in there, man, that sounds just like Wynton does it. I got a little confused. But then the rest of the sound is not like that. He’s got a little Chet Baker kind of sound. He sounds like a little Chet with Wynton and shit! Nice sound. I like it. Just guitar-bass-drums-trumpet. [AFTER] Stumped me with that one, Ted! I liked the sound, I liked the tune, I liked the concept. I like the man on trumpet. I don’t know who he is. Who is he? I’ll give him 4. [AFTER] Never heard him. The tune had that kind of Colorado feeling. Ron Miles. Uh-huh! Anthony! Great bass player. Too bad he left town. New York is hard for some people, you know.

4. Diego Urcola, “Blues For Astor” (from SOUNDANCES, Sunnyside, 2003) (Diego Urcola: trumpet; Juan Dargenton: bandoneon; Guillermo Romero: piano; Hernan Merlo: bass; Oscar Giunta: drums) – (3 stars)

Unh-oh, some TANGO shit!! Ha-ha! The only thing I could think of right now is that this is the cat that plays with Paquito; the trumpet player that plays with Paquito’s band – an Argentinean cat. Diego Urcola. That’s the only cat I know that could be playing tango shit. He’s a good player. So I nailed this. This is Diego Urcola, a tango record. But I couldn’t tell you who the other players are. Oh, not that shit! Everybody’s trying to get that Wynton sound. Go ahead, Diego! [Sings tango lick.] That’s a tango thing. For me, it would work just being straight tango. Playing jazz on top, but the rhythm, instead of trying to do the rhythm a little jazzy – that back and forth. To be committed more to a typical Argentinean folklore tango, and then play the way they play on top of it, I would have dug it better. The drummer is like too crossover, you know. It’s cool if it was combined – for me. [Do you think they’re Argentine or American musicians?] There might be a few Argentine and a few American. They’re all Argentine? Well, they’ve been listening. They’ve got a groove. At this point, most of the musicians in the world are tuned in, and they’ve caught up, or trying real fast to catch up. Now they don’t hire Americans any more! At the international jazz festivals, they’ve got their own people now. They don’t call Americans to play jazz any more. Everybody else is tuned in. I guess once the world found out that the Japanese had it first, they had to catch up! I’ll give them 3 stars. [AFTER] Diego’s cool. Pablo Ziegler. Federico Lechner. A lot of those cats split Germany and went to Argentina, and became Pablos! I liked Ron Miles better. His sound. I liked his sound.

5. Caribbean Jazz Project, “Against The Law” (from BIRDS OF A FEATHER, Concord Picante, 2003) (Ray Vega: trumpet; Dave Samuels: marimba; Dario Eskenazi: piano; Ruben Rodriguez: bass; Dafnis Prieto: drums, timbales, composer; Robert Quintero: congas, percussion) (4-1/2 stars)

The only thing I can think of is the Caribbean Jazz Project. Only because of the marimba. [Which version of the Caribbean Jazz Project?] I don’t know yet. I don’t know the versions. I don’t know which versions they are. I’ve actually never heard them. [DRUM BREAK] Oh. Ha-ha! I’ve never heard any of their records. I just know that they exist. Is Dafnis playing on this? I can tell it’s Dafnis. I know his sound. I like Dafnis. I love him a lot, man. He can swing his ass off, too. I’m trying to figure who the piano player is. The piece is interesting. It sounds like something Dafnis wrote. [Very good.] Ha-ha!! Yeah, Dafnis is a talented young man. I don’t know who the trumpet is. It almost sounds like Diego. I like him. That’s Ray Vega?! Go, Ray! He was a student of mine a long time ago, when I was teaching at the Johnny Colon School of Music. He was in my class. Go ahead, Ray, you got some shit! That’s the best I’ve heard Ray play, man. He sounds good, man. Keep it up, bro. This is Dave Samuels, right? He had something way back before he got into the Latin thing. The Latin thing seems to be the place where, if vibraphonists are going to someplace, they’re going to go there. Because there’s not too much vibraphone happening anywhere else. But it has a natural place in this Latin thing – vibes and rhythm. Who’s the conga player? Robert Quintero? Oh, he’s a Venezuelan cat. I know him. I was going to say it might have been a Venezuelan cat. [Why would you say that?] Just the way he plays. He’s functional. He puts the right shit where he’s supposed to do it. A solid drummer. From Venezuela, he’s one of the only ones there doing the shit like this. I’ll give this one 4-1/2 stars, for my man, Ray Vega, and for Dafnis.

6. Wayne Shorter, “Angola” (from ALEGRIA, Verve, 2003) (Wayne Shorter: tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone; Brad Mehldau: piano; John Patitucci: bass; Teri Lyne Carrington: drums; Alex Acuna: percussion) – (3 stars)

I like this!! Ha-ha! Is that bass clarinet? It’s got a bass clarinet kind of sound. It reminds of Dolphy, when he did “It’s Magic.” That’s the sound. But it’s a tenor, but it’s got another sound to it. It sounds like a tenor-bass clarinet. It doesn’t sound like a bass clarinet, but it’s got that tone. It almost reminds me of Bobby Pinero’s writing. Bobby Pinero was writing like that before anybody – that kind of stuff. [Any idea who the tenor player is?] I don’t know. I can’t recognize the sound. This isn’t Bobby Pinero? It sounds like some of his shit. [Soprano enters] It’s Wayne Shorter. He did some different shit there on the tenor to the sound. I wouldn’t have recognized that tenor sound. I never heard this tune before. But this is Wayne’s shit now. It’s Wayne’s harmony. But that’s definitely Bobby Pinero’s rhythmic shit. He’s from here, man. From Coop City! But I recognized Wayne’s sound, man, quickly. I have no idea who’s playing percussion. Once somebody I knew was playing congas with him, and Wayne said, “We don’t want none of that Fort Apache shit here!!” Thanks a lot, Wayne! Ha-ha! I remember when I first met Wayne, I was playing with Tony, and Tony goes, “Come here, Jerry, I want you to meet Wayne.” And I went, “Oh, yeah, Wayne!” He was one of my heroes. I went, “Wayne, man,” and stuck out my hand to say hello, and the motherfucker just stared at me, like, deadpan, and I’m waiting for him to take my hand and shake my hand. Nothing. I just said, “All right, man, sorry.” He just turned around and walked out. I said, “This motherfucker is out!” But I love you, Wayne, any fuckin’ way. Jive motherfucker. Should have hired me to play with your ass, and not my students. But you got to pay my like a motherfucker! Ha-ha! Been a long time I haven’t heard some new Wayne shit. It’s okay. But it reminds me of Bobby Pinero. The only thing that sounded like Wayne in there was his saxophone, his soprano sound. That’s why I was able to nab your ass. But Bobby was writing this kind of shit way before Wayne. But nice track. I’ll give it 3 stars. [AFTER] I like Bob Sadin a lot. He’s always been an Apache fan and a supporter. Sadin’s a good man. I wish I could get some collaboration with him, because I’ve got this idea for doing… Since I’ve been living in Spain the last three years, I’ve been checking out a lot of flamenco, man, and there’s some shit we’ve got to do that’s beyond SKETCHES OF SPAIN. I’ve got to get this Spanish project out. I’ve been living there, I’ve been paying some dues for this shit now, and now Chano goes and plays at Lincoln Center and Wynton sits in with him, and all of a sudden they’re going to try to do a Sketches of Spain thing, and I’ve been thinking about this before them, and I want to get the first punch out. I want to beat you motherfuckers to the punch with this shit. I’m already talking to people about a collaboration of Fort Apache orchestration and the gypsies and me to do another version of Sketches of Spain, but with another vision. I’d like to collaborate with Larry Willis and Sadin with orchestration, and Javier Limon, the cat that was the engineer on the record I did with the gypsies. He’s a great composer, a great lyricist, and he’s got some great ideas. And he knows all the Spanish rhythmic shit; he’s got that stuff down. So between the three of them – Sadin, Willis and Javier Limon – we could get some shit happening like a motherfucker. And even if they do beat me to the punch, I’m gonna kick their ass. Easy.

[Villa-Lobos piece.] Threnody for the victims of Wally Cleaver! Wally Cleaver seems to be the President now. We got a real Wally Cleaver for President! But he’s deadly, Wally Cleaver. He’s betrayed by his father, Dracula. He’s Nosferatu. No, Nostra-dumb-ass! Ha-ha!!!

7. The Conga Kings, “Descarga De Los Reyes” (from THE CONGA KINGS, Chesky, 1999) (Giovanni Hidalgo, Candido Camero, Carlos “Patato” Valdez: congas; Joe Gonzalez: bongos; Jose Francisco Valdes: clave; Guillermo Edghill: bass) (3 stars)

Yeah, this is Candido. The first hit. That’s him! Is this the Conga Kings? Nailed it!! Giovanni. Patato-Patato-Patato! That’s Candido. Patato and Candido are the most melodic conga players on the planet. They sing with their congas. Giovanni machine-guns. [Do you think that has to do with when they came up and when Giovanni came up?] Well, both of them played melodic instruments. Patato played a bass and he can play a tres, and Candido does, too. Because of that, they sing on their congas. They don’t just play rhythmic slickness. They play melodic slickness. [You play machine guns sometimes.] I don’t think I was ever a machine gunner. I ain’t got the chops for a machine-gun. Ah, that’s Giovanni. That’s an old Tito Puente break, from TOP PERCUSSION. That was cool. I’ll give it a 3. Well, I’ll give it 5 because Patato and Candido and Giovanni are dealing with it, but for musical content I’ll give it 3.

8. Woody Shaw, “Dat Dere” (from IMAGINATION, Muse, 1987) (Woody Shaw: trumpet; Steve Turre: trombone; Kirk Lightsey: piano; Ray Drummond: bass; Carl Allen: drums) – (3-1/2 stars)

Dis-here, dat-dere. Bobby Timmons. Sometimes I get confused between Timmons and Weston because of that “Hi-Fly” thing. It has the same kind of groove. Freddie. He’s got the phrasing. Lee? Oh, that’s Woody! Ha-ha! Go ahead, Woody! See, Woody got all that shit. He got the Lee shit, he got the Freddie shit, and he got his own shit. So I figured it was in there. I loved Woody, man. He’s one of my favorites. In fact, the favorite. Aside from Lee, him and Lee, you know… Before that, it was Booker Little. That’s Steve Turre. Conch-head! So then I imagine this is Victor Lewis… No? Oh, I know. The drummer played with me on AFRICAN VILLAGE with James Williams. Carl Allen. Is the pianist Onaje? It sounds like an older cat. But I don’t know who it is. [It’s someone you know well.] Larry Willis? Ronnie Matthews? Damn! There’s too many cats on the Rolodex. But if I could have listened again, there’s a thing he does… 3-1/2 stars for the music. 5 stars for Woody. Woody showed his Freddie showed his Freddie Hubbard kind of shit, he showed his Lee Morgan shit, and then he came into his own. He did a little graduation of the thing. It was nice. Very hip phrasing. I loved it.

9. Irvin Mayfield, “Latin Tinge” (from Los Hombres Calientes, VODOU DANCE, 2003) (Irvin Mayfield: solo, lead & 2nd trumpet, composer; Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez: drums; Bill Summers: percussion; Ronald Markham: piano; Edwin Livingston: bass; Aaron Fletcher: alto saxophone; Leon Brown: 3rd trumpet; Leon Brown: trombone) – (5 stars)

Is that Wynton? He’s got his Louis Armstrong and Charlie Shavers shit down. I love this! Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead!! Who the hell is this? Is this Nicholas Payton? Go ahead. It ain’t Faddis. [LOUD LAUGH] He’s a bad motherfucker, whoever he is! I can’t get it, though. I’m trying to figure it out. He’s GOT that Louis shit. I should know this guy, huh. [END OF BREAK, BEGINNING OF MONTUNO] Ah, ha-ha, ha-ha!! Ah, what was that?!! That was some funny shit, man! I didn’t expect that to happen. This ain’t Brian? [Do you know who’s playing trap drums?] Horacio. I can tell Horacio’s playing. He’s cool. I like the trumpet playing. He’s showing his history. He’s got trumpet players’ things in there. He’s got the Charlie Shavers, the Louis Armstrong shit, and a little bit of Roy Eldridge in there, too. But damn, I can’t figure this cat out. I don’t know who it is. But this is all trumpet. The rhythm section I don’t like. Nothing happening. Horacio is cool. But the way the piano player is playing, I don’t like it. He could be playing some other shit instead of just the montuno. Sometimes they think because it’s Latin, they’ve got to play a montuno, and it’s not necessary all the time. Because then they get stiff when they just play a montuno. If they were playing themselves, it would be hipper. I don’t know the trumpet player is. Irvin Mayfield? I never heard him. I’ve heard of Los Hombres Caliente, but I’ve never heard the music. He’s a bad motherfucker. New Orleans. That had to be a New Orleans player. Well, New Orleans is hooked up with the Caribbean shit. A lot of the cats in the Preservation Hall Band were from the Caribbean – Perez, Rodriguez. Great trumpet player. I enjoyed that. Irvin Mayfield. Never heard of him before. I liked it. I’ll give him 5. He’s playing some shit. That 5 stars is all the trumpet. The rest of the shit, you know, it’s all right. It’s just too plain. But the trumpet was the special shit on it. I’ll give the 5 stars to my man on trumpet. The music, I’ll give it 2. He’s got to figure out what to do with the piano. They don’t have to play a montuno all the time to identify something Latin. He got to learn the piano styles of the cats of the ‘20s and the ‘30s. They’d be playing a montuno, but it would be all over the place. It doesn’t stay in a corny, locked cell.

10. Kenny Dorham, “My Ideal” (from QUIET KENNY, Prestige, 1959) (Kenny Dorham: trumpet; Tommy Flanagan: piano; Paul Chambers: bass; Art Taylor: drums) – (5 stars)

Ah, Kenny Dorham, I love you, man! I hung for many years with Kenny Dorham. [SINGS SOLO] Is this with Charles Davis and… Oh, it’s another record. He had such a sweet sound. Ha-ha. Lyrical as a champ, too. Go ahead. Hit like a motherfucker. Underdog like a motherfucker, K.D.! I love him. God bless him. His sound brings tears to my eyes. Yeah. I’m not bullshitting either. I’m wiping them, jack. That’s Flanagan on piano. I’ll give that 10 stars. I was very fortunate to hang out with K.D. for three years. We went to New York College of Music together. In fact, that’s how I met him. I was doing an audition for New York College of Music, and K.D. was there. So I’m practicing in the room, and K.D. walked in the room. I didn’t know what he looked like then. He had these big sunglasses on. He looked at me and said, “you sound nice, man.” So I said, “I’m Jerry Gonzalez, how are you?” He says, “Well, I’m Kenny Dorham.” I hit the floor. I said, “Oh, no shit! What are you doing here?” He said, “Well, I’m taking an audition, just like you.” I said, “What? You should be teaching here. You should be a professor already. What do you mean, coming here as a student, auditioning?” I went with him to the Newport Festival in 1969, and that’s when I first saw Count Basie, Duke Ellington, everybody, with the original members. I was hanging with K.D. all the time, man, and I was very fortunate to have been around that wonderful trumpet player. God bless him.

11. Steve Coleman, “Ascending Numeration” (from ALTERNATE DIMENSION SERIES 1, MBASE, 2002) (Steve Coleman, alto saxophone; Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet; Pedro Martinez, percussion; Sean Rickman, drums; Yosvany Terry, clave; Anthony Tidd, electric bass; Regg Washington, acoustic bass).

Steve Coleman. I’ve been into this shit a long time, and he never acknowledged anything. When he went to Cuba, he got his head turned around. I was telling him about this shit long before that, but he was still in another space. The communication wasn’t that open between us. What can I tell you? He’s a late bloomer on this. But this is cool. Got a little scientology shit in there. It got that vibe in it. [You mean mathematical?] Yeah. Is that Anga on conga? Is the trumpeter Graham Haynes? I like the trumpet player. I’m glad Steve discovered the drum thing. Trumpet players I don’t know personally, I haven’t heard them, so I’ve got to figure them out. It’s a good trumpet player, he’s playing some interesting shit. He’s actually looser than Steve. It’s not Richie Flores. It’s not Giovanni. I don’t know who it is. Oh, Pedro! He plays with Puntilla. I’ve played with him. Pedrito’s a bad motherfucker. Sings his ass off, too. I’ll give it 2-1/2 stars. It’s interesting. But it stays in that Frankenstein mode. I like to feel some happy shit every now and then. When you get some rhythm shit, you’ve got to be happy. You can’t be too dark. When you get dark, Frankenstein comes out.

12. Dizzy Gillespie, “Con Alma” (from AFRO, Verve, 1954/2003) (Dizzy Gillespie: trumpet, composer; Alejandro Hernandez: piano; Robert Rodriguez: bass; Jose Mangual: bongo; Candido Camero: conga; Ubaldo Nieto: timbales; Rafael Miranda: percussion) – (5 stars)

Dizzy Gillespie. My papa! “Con Alma.” This is with Candido and the Machito rhythm section. That was some futuristic shit. The Machito band was a futuristic band. Even in its beginnings. Stan Kenton even acknowledged that, said that they were playing some super advanced music. Rhythmically it influenced him. Yeah, drum thing! The drum is so important. This ain’t the ’49 one. This is later. The ’49 one was Mongo and… He did the “Manteca” with Mongo. Alvaro Vega, Peraza, Mongo and Patato, they all came at the same time, and then they stayed. Dizzy first was Roy Eldridge. That was his model. Then he broke into his own voice from there. Dizzy was a drummer and dancer at heart. I remember him showing me the shim-sham-shimmy when I was with his band. One time we played with Dizzy… I was 18 when I played with Dizzy. That was before I even played with Palmieri. A lot of people forgot I played with Dizzy, because we didn’t record anything significant with that band. I wish that we had, because when they have those tributes to Dizzy and all that, nobody ever calls me to come down and play. They call all the new cats who were in the band, David Sanchez and Danilo and Giovanni, but I was in way before those cats. And they never give me any light on that. It pisses me off a little bit. I learned a lot from Dizzy. But when he found out I played trumpet, he used to try to put me out to play then, and I was scared because I didn’t have it together then. I said, “No-no, I’ll sit down and play my conga and take my trumpet lessons from you, and when I’m ready I’ll let you know.” So maybe 10-15 years passed, and I had the Fort Apache band, and we had Dizzy as a guest with us once at the Village Gate. I have that recorded. This was like ’84. It was Machito’s band with Fort Apache and then Dizzy playing with both bands. That was a great night. Jaco Pastorius was there hanging with us, and he wanted to play, and I didn’t want to let him play because he was a little…not-cool, you know. So he ran out and he bumped into Herbie Hancock that night, and brought him down to check us out, and Herbie sat through the whole set. At the end of the set, Jaco tells me, “Hey, man, I want to introduce you to Herbie.” So he introduced me to Herbie, and then I sat there and said, “wow…” Before I met Herbie, the plan was for the second set we were going to open up with “Nefertiti,” and Herbie goes, “Could I sit in with the band?” And I went, “Goddamn, yeah! Sure.” Dalto was playing piano with the band at the time. So I said, “Well, guess what. We’re going to play ‘Nefertiti’ for the first set. You were on the original, man. You’re gonna have FUN with us.” And sure enough, Dalto was playing the first solo on “Nefertiti,” and then he announces Herbie Hancock, and then Herbie takes the whole thing out and then plays the whole night with us. I have that recorded, man. It was deep. “Caravan” time! 10 stars.

13. Arsenio Rodriguez, “Kila, Quique y Chocolate” (from ARSENIO RODRIGUEZ Y SU CONJUNTO: 1946-1950, Tumbao, 1950/1993) (Arsenio Rodriguez: tres, composer; Chocolate Armenteros, Felix Chappotin, Carmelo Alvarez: trumpet; Luis Martinez: piano; Lazaro Prieto: bass; Felix Alfonso: conga; Antolin Suarez [Papa Kilo]: bongo)_

Arsenio Rodriguez. This is “Kila, Quique y Chocolate.” Ay tumbao bongo! Arsenio Rodriguez with Papa Kilo on bongo, La Chocolate on conga… Bad motherfucker. This is still fresh as today. In fact, it’s hipper than some of the shit from today. The professors know this, that our rhythm lacks something. Tin-GOR! So when you got the bongo of Papa Kilo and Chocolate, you know, here’s what they say. Yeah, “the people are always asking to dance to tumba bongo”! This was a prophetic tune. It was telling you what’s coming for the future, what the people want. Tumba bongo! And this was 1950, man, so they were sounding the alarm way ahead of time. It took Steve Coleman a long time to catch up! This was like really early. I was fortunately born into this. This was like first conga lessons! This is not machine gun conga. This is playing tumbao with some grace and slickness. It’s deep, man. A lot of young cats miss that essence. A lot of young cats miss this era. They’ve got the Giovanni era, and the speed machine guns, but they didn’t get to this. This is before that, and this is slicker. It has more essence than the machine gun era. This is definitely classic. 10 million stars! Ha-ha, ha-ha! Yes.

Yes, sir. Thank you, Ted. That was a great one. Yeah, you had some goodies for me, man. I enjoyed that Blindfold Test.