It’s the 89th birth anniversary of James Moody (1925-2010), the brilliant alto and soprano saxophonist, flutist and humanitarian, whose 65-year career in the jazz business took numerous twists and turns, all of them linked by Moody’s unending quest for knowledge and self-expansion. In 2000, DownBeat gave me an opportunity to write a feature piece on Moody, for which I conducted three interviews, all of which are included below the article, which comes first in the queue.
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Compact, bearded, owlishly bespectacled, spotlit stage-center at Avery Fisher Hall, James Moody is bending back, blowing on his tenor saxophone with a vengeance as he bobs and weaves through the jagged changes of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Birks’ Works.” Moody screams in the horn’s higher register, roars gutturally through its lower depths, displacing the rhythms with dazzling panache, shaping an elegant, soulful statement that caps a succession of spot-on declamations by an honor roll of Gillespie disciples — Jimmy Heath, Jon Faddis, Paquito d’Rivera, Slide Hampton, Kenny Barron. They, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and a packed house that spans about five generations and comprises a living rainbow coalition, are helping Moody celebrate his 75th birthday.
In 1996 Moody recorded Young At Heart [Warner], a lyric recital of songs associated with Frank Sinatra; as the applause and whoops wind down, educator David Baker takes the stage to deliver an eloquent encomium that explains why the title is so apropos to Moody’s persona. Baker notes that Moody is the paradigm of a man who is “ageless, perpetually young,” that he never stands still, that “unlike many musicians who develop a personal style early in their career and perpetuate it, his vision keeps evolving.” He praises Moody’s avid predisposition to exchange information with his peers, and mentions that he is an incessant practicer who continues to follow a lifelong dictum to learn everything he can from any source. Concluding, he observes that Moody sustains an open, humane attitude to all comers, regarding “everyone who crosses his path as a child of the Creator.”
A quick scan of the program bears out Baker’s claim; the material, representing Moody’s 54-year musical journey, reflects the span of his quotidian repertoire. He showcases his dry, minimal vibrato soprano sound on a modernist Gil Goldstein arrangement of Henry Mancini’s “Slow Hot Wind,” a showpiece of his most recent album, Moody Plays Mancini. He addresses the ’60s with John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” and Eddie Harris’ “Freedom Jazz Dance,” and reprises a pair of iconic hits, “Last Train To Overbrook” and, for perhaps the fifty thousandth time, “Moody’s Mood For Love,” replaying his iconic improvisation with utter conviction. And he dives head-first into a challenging admixture of Gillespiana, with “Things to Come,” “Manteca,” “Con Alma” and “Emanon,” tunes that, like Moody, reveal new layers every time you hear them.
“Moody is way into altered scales, different kinds of harmonic devices, use of fourths, of pentatonics, of compound scales, of bitonals,” says Todd Coolman, Moody’s bassist of choice since 1984. “He’s aware of every so-called advanced harmonic device, he has them in his ear and he can play them. At the same time, if you want to play a blues in B-flat, he can play the traditional vocabulary as well. At heart, I think ultimately as a tenor player he just wants to be a singer of melodies.”
“I remember saying to Diz one time, ‘I wish I would have gone to school and studied music,'” Moody had recalled the previous afternoon in the sitting room of his hotel suite, the crepuscular light illuminated by gigantic bouquets courtesy of Bill Cosby and Peter Jennings. “Diz looked at me and said, ‘Moody, you ain’t dead.’ That lightbulb went on. I immediately went and bought some music books.”
Over the course of three conversations, that pithy anecdote was the only personal reminiscence I could elicit from Moody about the man with whom he toured incessantly between 1963 and 1970 and who featured him as the primary tenor soloist in the first iteration of the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra from 1946 to 1948. “There are people who elaborate, and it really amounts to nothing but a hill of beans,” Moody says. “Then there are people that say it was a relationship that I will value as long as I live, because of its importance and profoundness.”
Fittingly, Moody opened the concert with “Emanon,” a medium-tempo Gil Fuller blues that Gillespie recorded for Musicraft in 1946, on which, with one 16-bar solo, Moody established himself — along with Dexter Gordon, Teddy Edwards, Wardell Gray, Lucky Thompson and Sonny Stitt — as a pioneer in translating the vocabulary of bebop to the tenor saxophone. “Moody’s ‘Emanon’ solo was very exciting to all the saxophone players around Philadelphia,” Heath recalls. “It was different than any blues solo that you had heard, similar to what was coming out of Charlie Parker. He had the bebop sound. The way Moody accented was much faster than other saxophone players; when he played an eighth note or sixteenth note line, the accent was always on the AND, the one that was off the beat, which gave it a different kind of float.”
Moody recorded “Emanon” five years after his Uncle Louis, who was in attendance at the concert, presented him with his first saxophone, an alto; although he could read music, he was playing by ear at the time. The son and namesake of an itinerant trumpet player whom he did not meet until the age of 21, he spent his early years in Reading, Pennsylvania, and came of age in Newark, New Jersey. His mother was a jazz enthusiast, and the youngster absorbed her collection of Chick Webb, Jimmie Lunceford and Count Basie records, supplementing them with pioneer deejay Martin Block’s offerings on New York’s WNEW radio. A devotee of Lester Young (not to mention Georgie Auld and Ben Webster), the 16-year-old Moody attended a Count Basie concert at Newark’s Adams Theater expecting to hear his idol, only to be confronted with the virtuoso tenor tandem of Buddy Tate and Don Byas. Two years later his mother supplemented the aspirant’s arsenal with a tenor saxophone, an act which proved prescient once Moody enrolled in the Air Corps that year.
“I was at Basic Training Center #10 in Greensboro, North Carolina, where three-quarters of the base was Caucasian and one quarter was Negro,” Moody relates. “The Air Corps was segregated (German prisoners-of-war could go downtown and eat, and I couldn’t), and they wanted the Negro part of the base to be self-sufficient, which meant they wanted you to stay on your side. I was being trained to be a soldier, and they wanted to have a Negro band. They said, ‘Has anyone here got a horn?’ I said, ‘I’ve got one.’ They said, ‘Send for it.’ They didn’t ask if you could play it. So I sent for my tenor, and luckily for me I was able to get in the band — if it had been a regular band, I wouldn’t have been able to cut the mustard. As time went by, they had the musicians from the official Air Corps band come over and help the ones that needed the help. I appreciated their help. Dave Burns and Linton Garner, Erroll’s brother, were in the band; so was Pop Reeves, who I think wrote some arrangements for Benny Goodman.”
Sometime in the spring of 1946, not long before Moody was due to be discharged, Dizzy Gillespie, in the middle of a long string of Southern one-nighters, played a concert at the base. By this time Moody had listened “over and over and over” to seminal Parker-Gillespie sides like “Hot House,” “Shaw Nuff” and “Salt Peanuts,” and was a convert. “Dizzy told me and Dave Burns that he was going to form a new band when he got back to New York, and told us to try out for it, which we did,” Moody relates. “I didn’t make it, although Dave did; Walter Fuller, the band director, said I didn’t play loud enough. I had a gig, though. I was working at Lloyd’s Manor in Newark on weekends, and my pockets had the mumps. A couple of months later I got a telegram from Dave that said, ‘You start with us tonight at the Spotlite.’
“The first night I was there, Thelonious Monk was the piano player, Ray Brown, Kenny Clarke and Milt Jackson were in the band. Clark Monroe, the manager, was a Negro, so he was probably fronting it; he dressed well and took care of business. The club was very small, and it was jammed every night; all the different people I’d heard on the radio — Coleman Hawkins, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman — would be in the audience. It was a thrill sitting there playing the music. Dave Burns showed me the line of ‘Things To Come’ just before the gig, and I played it. It was a breeze; I could read a little bit, and with time I learned to read more and more.
“We’d go on the chitlin’ circuit, what they called Around-The-World, the Apollo Theater in New York, then the Royal Theater in Baltimore, the Howard Theater in Washington and the Earle Theater in Philadelphia. If you could make it in those theaters, you could make it anywhere. Then we went on tour down South with Ella Fitzgerald, which was a drag, because you couldn’t eat in restaurants and the bus driver, who was Caucasian, had to get sandwiches for you. We played dances where there would be a rope down the middle of the hall, with Caucasians on one side and Negroes on the other side; some places had two dances, the first maybe for Negroes with White spectators, and then a Caucasian dance with no Negro spectators.”
In October 1948, Moody took an octet of Gillespians into the studio and recorded ten sides, including “The Fuller Bop Man,” “Moody’s All Frantic,” “Tropicana” and “Tin Tin Deo.” The latter two featured Art Blakey and the legendary drummer Chano Pozo, with whom Moody roomed a few times while with Gillespie in Los Angeles. “Chano had a couple of bullets in him, and some nights when he was playing he would feel good and some nights he wouldn’t. He’d tell me, ‘Moody, feel here,’ and I could feel the bullets. One time Chano cracked me up. You remember the phrase people used to say, ‘Boy, that’s some deep shit’? Chano came to me looking real perplexed, with his face kind of frowned-up, and he held his hand up high and said, ‘Moody, Moody, what ‘deep shit’?’ People were saying, ‘boy, that’s some deep shit,’ and he was looking for some deep shit somewhere. I tried the best I could to explain it to him. I’m telling you, it was funny, man.”
At a certain point it became apparent that Moody was embroiled in some deep shit of his own. On the interminable bus rides with Gillespie, he relates, “I’d be in the back, with the hoot-hounds, talking with Dave Burns; the pot-hounds rode in the front.” By 1948, he was drinking to excess, “just drug and everything — my uncle, who was living in Paris, told my mother to send me over for two weeks to cool out. I stayed for three years.”
Ensconced comfortably in his uncle’s Paris apartment near the Eiffel Tower, Moody began to blossom into the voice that defined the first stage of his career. He free-lanced around Europe at his leisure, hung out frequently at the Club St. Germain, where he once jammed with Django Reinhardt, and interacted with the likes of Don Byas, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, and Bill Coleman. He got married, had a daughter, and moved to an apartment across a courtyard from Sidney Bechet. He recorded over 90 sides for a variety of labels, producing statements on a series of ballads, blues and bop tunes that remain models of melodic invention. These include a remarkable spring 1949 session with Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron and Kenny Clarke, four tunes with Charlie Parker’s working band under Max Roach’s leadership, and an innocuous Fall 1949 session in Stockholm with charts by Swedish saxophonist-arranger Gösta Thesalius on which, using a borrowed alto saxophone, Moody improvised a solo on “I’m In The Mood For Love.” It became an instrumental hit, and in 1952, when King Pleasure recorded Eddie Jefferson’s lyric to the solo, “Moody’s Mood For Love” entered the realm of legend, imprinted in public consciousness like Coleman Hawkins’ solo on “Body and Soul” and Illinois Jacquet’s solo on “Flyin’ Home.”
“When I play a song, I don’t know the lyrics,” Moody claims. “All I know is the melody, and if I like the melody, I’ll play it.” Enough people liked the melodies Moody conjured during his European stay that savvy associates back home urged him to return to capitalize on the interest. “I wasn’t going to set foot on American soil again, because I was pissed off from what had happened to me in Greensboro,” Moody relates. “But I figured I’d come back, make the money, and then go back to playing in Europe. When I got here I said, ‘I was born here; why should I let them run me away from where I belong?’ That was it.”
Moody formed a septet, four horns and rhythm, commissioned arrangements from John Acea and Quincy Jones that captured the ambiance of Thesalius’ charts, hired the ur-hipster Babs Gonzalez as his band singer, and began a grueling regimen of touring through all corners of ’50s Afro-America.
“We worked all the time,” Moody says of the band that influenced the sound of Ray Charles’ seminal ’50s unit. “The only time we were off was traveling to the next gig. In the wintertime we worked in the northern cities and in the summertime we worked in the southern cities. Like my mother would say, everything was bass-ackwards. I did all the driving; I didn’t trust anybody else. After Babs Gonzalez left, I hired Eddie Jefferson to sing with the band, not knowing that he was the one who wrote the lyrics. I told Eddie, ‘I’m going to make you the manager, you’ll have a clicker, and after you get finished singing you go and keep clicking the numbers as the people come in.’ It was the same old shit as before I left, but only smoothed over with whipped cream.”
Perhaps in response to the pressures of incessant road life, Moody became increasingly dissatisfied with his playing during these superficially successful years. “The way I came up musically was wrong, I think, from the standpoint that I thought improvising was spontaneous,” Moody reflects. “I was playing by ear, and I thought you just did it; I didn’t realize that you had to practice changes. I started drinking, because people were saying how great I was, and I couldn’t play crap. It’s like I was flying an airplane but I didn’t know what the route was. If you don’t know the changes, you’re skimming.
“My music thing started changing later, when I started trying to find out about chords and theory. I’m 75 years old, and I haven’t reached my peak chord-wise, because I’m still trying to find out how to play the changes. See, the young cats come up and they learn this from the very getgo; I mean, they can play the hell out of them. The musicianship is much better with these younger musicians. They have the books and the teachers; if you feel like you want to learn something, you can learn it, from the bottom up. If you get a good teacher, you can play real quick. If you have a bad teacher, you’ll still be scuffling, years upon years upon years.”
After a six-month dryout, Moody returned to the road for a lengthy U.S. tour on which he spent the endless bus rides not drinking, but learning the ABC’s of harmony in intense sessions with band trombonist and chief arranger Tom MacIntosh. He disbanded for good in 1962, played a succession of three-tenor gigs with Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, and finally replaced Leo Wright as reedman-flautist in Dizzy Gillespie’s quintet, the chair he held for the remainder of the decade. Newly armed with harmonic knowledge, augmented by intensive study of John Coltrane’s harmonic system, Moody brought his playing to new levels of complexity and abstraction, never losing sight of melodic underpinnings or the necessity of a humorous overview. In 1973, recently married and with a young daughter, Moody moved to Las Vegas, opting for the security of a steady job in the reed section of Hilton Hotel house band. In the ’80s, after a stint with Gillespie bandmate Mike Longo’s group, he resumed the freelance life of a solo artist; since 1985, he’s toured with a series of quartets and made the guest star appearances that jazz giants make in their golden years.
“Moody started off with a gift, and he developed it,” Jimmy Heath says. “As an ear player, he was already extremely advanced; right now, he’s one of the greatest players who ever lived. I admire his tenacity and focus. If he hears you play a lick or a sequence that he hasn’t heard, he’ll ask you what it is, and once you show it to him, man, Moody takes it into his own style and elaborates on it, turns it inside-out, and does everything possible with that idea to make it his own.
“Over the years, Moody has become so free — not in a random fashion, but a scientific freedom — that he can do anything he wants with the saxophone. His sound has gotten real smooth and mellow with his old age, like wine. It’s not harsh and brash. It’s very soft until he wants to imply these certain emotional hollers or screams. If he wants to play in a bluesy fashion, he can do it. If he wants to play in a straight bebop way without the blues or just the changes, he can do it. He has true knowledge. He is in complete control.”
“Moody is constantly searching for things that are new to him, trying to find different things to do and say,” remarks Kenny Barron, who was 18 when he first played with Moody at the Five Spot, and two years later was recruited by Moody for Dizzy Gillespie’s band to replace Lalo Schifrin in the piano chair. “It’s never ending with him. Behind all of that, there’s still his sense of fun. One minute he’s playing all these strange fourths, really looking for it, but on the other hand he plays these real humorous things. That’s what gets me, along with his energy, and the fact that he’s constantly trying to improve.”
“I need to practice!” is how Moody sums it up. “You play one horn because you like its sound, then you play the other horn because you like its sound and you want to play certain things on it, but then you play the other horn and you like ITS sound and you want to play certain things on it…finally you want to play everything on everything. So you start trying to do that, and when you look, it’s time to go to bed. Then you get up and try something else; you look, and it’s time to go to a gig.”
Asked if music keeps him youthful, Moody concludes: “Let’s say the biggest secret is God. The next secret is my mother was 86, and my Uncle Louis is 86. And not to say that you always get to do what you want, but when you’re doing something that’s fairly like what you want to do, it makes everything in your system work fairly well. And my wonderful wife, Linda, who keeps me going. Being in love helps. When you don’t have that, you kind of fade away. When you do, you kind of want to stay in.”
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James Moody (3-31-00):
TP: In all the biographies I’ve seen it says you were born in Savannah, Georgia, came to Newark at a certain point and got a saxophone when you were 16. How old were you when you left Savannah?
MOODY: I was only born in Savannah. My father played trumpet, and he was playing with a circus band. We were living in Reading, PA., my mother and I. My father was with the band, and he didn’t come back to Reading, so my mother went down to Savannah to look for him, because that’s where his mother and father were. He wasn’t there. And while she was there, I was born. She recuperated and came back to Reading. I didn’t meet my father until he was 21. His name was James Moody.
TP: So you’re James Moody, Jr.?
MOODY: No, I’m just James Moody. And I was raised in Reading, Pennsylvania and Newark, New Jersey.
TP: Was the time you got the saxophone your first exposure to music? It couldn’t have been…
MOODY: No, it wasn’t my first exposure to music. The point is, I was exposed to music on the radio and of course my mother playing records. I’m thankful that she liked jazz, because she liked, like, Chick Webb, Jimmie Lunceford, Count Basie, like that — Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey. That’s the kind of music she played, and that’s what my ears became acclimated to. I’m thankful for that, because the other music was that doo-wop music, and I could have maybe come up… I don’t think so, because I always liked Music, something with some substance. And to me, that was Jazz and the so-called Pop music of the day, which was Music at that time.
TP: In Reading when you were a kid, did the bands come through?
MOODY: Oh, in Reading I was a kid. I didn’t know anything about…
TP: You weren’t taken to any of these.
MOODY: No, I didn’t know anything about the music thing at all until I was actually in my teens. Then I knew about bands coming somewhere or something, or seeing some musicians. But I had never…
TP: What early bands do you remember seeing?
MOODY: The only band I remember seeing was a group playing… Pancho Diggs in Newark, New Jersey. Pancho Diggs had a band, and his hit song was “Swanee River.” Pancho Diggs, and there was another band there led by Mandy Ross. Finally, they started bringing bands to the Adams Theater in Newark on Park Place…
TP: Ellington’s band broadcast from there, and there are other broadcasts I’ve heard from there.
MOODY: Oh, I don’t know. But I know that’s where I saw Count Basie, because I liked Lester Young, and I wanted to see Prez play. But when I got there, Prez wasn’t there, so it was Buddy Tate and Don Byas who were playing tenor. I had an alto, and I wanted to play tenor, too — I liked that. So anyway, when I was drafted into the Air Corps, my mother got me a tenor. I got a tenor. Because then, we had a couple of bucks that we could put down, I guess, to buy a horn. But my Uncle Louis got me my first alto.
TP: That’s when you were 16?
MOODY: I was about 16.
TP: And that’s around when you saw Buddy Tate and Don Byas?
MOODY: Mmm-hmm.
TP: Were you a very quick learner on the saxophone?
MOODY: Well, I wouldn’t say that.
TP: Let me just say that five years after you get your first saxophone you’re recording your solo on “Emanon” with Dizzy Gillespie. So it sounds like you were pretty quick.
MOODY: Well, I was in the band. But I had a lot to learn. I don’t know. Maybe somebody could have done it in three years. Know what I mean?
TP: Maybe so. But were you a kid who memorized a lot of Lester Young solos and Coleman Hawkins…
MOODY: No.
TP: You hadn’t done that sort of thing.
MOODY: No, I hadn’t done that. All I did was just listen to things, and I liked them, and there would be certain pieces of something I liked, and I would go with that.
TP: Because a lot of people from your generation would memorize Chu Berry’s “Stardust,” or “Lester Leaps In” or Coleman Hawkins’ “Body and Soul”, they’d learn the solos and go off from there.
MOODY: Yeah.
TP: But it was a different process with you.
MOODY: I didn’t do that. Because in the first place, I didn’t know the musical scene. I didn’t know what it was to learn music. I didn’t know how to go about learning. As a matter of fact, I used to go around asking, “What are chords?” It’s funny, because when you ask someone and they don’t know, it’s like the blind leading the blind. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to help me. It was just that they didn’t know and I didn’t know. So for the longest time, I just went not knowing. Then finally, when I got with some people that did know, then I had to start trying to learn.
TP: Was that in the Service?
MOODY: That was when I had my septet.
TP: Oh, so not until the ’50s.
MOODY: Yes, that’s when I had my septet that I started getting with the chords.
TP: I read in one of the liner notes that Tom McIntosh had a lot to do with that.
MOODY: He’s the one. He’s the one who taught me my changes.
TP: Let me take some steps here. You’re saying that you really didn’t know how to play, but obviously you did in some sense…
MOODY: I played by ear.
TP: Tell me about your Service experience.
MOODY: I was in the Air Corps. I was drafted in ’43 and discharged in ’46. I was in the Air Corps, and it was segregated at the time, and so they wanted a Negro band, and that’s how I happened to get in the band. Actually, where I was, it was BTC #10, Basic Training Center #10. So I was being trained to be a soldier, and they wanted to have a Negro band. So one quarter of the base was Negro, the other three-quarters was Caucasian. So they said, “Has anyone got a horn here?” So I said, “I’ve got one.” They said, “Well, send for it.” They didn’t ask if you could play it; they just said, “Send for it.” So I sent for my horn, and they formed a band and I was in the band. Dave Burns was in the band. Pop Reeves who I think wrote some arrangements for Benny Goodman. Erroll Garner’s brother, Linton, was in the band. And as time went by, what they did was, they had the musicians from the official Air Corps band come over and help us, the ones that needed the help, and they helped. I formed a friendship with a couple of the guys that were in the band, because they… Afterwards, when I came out and got with Dizzy’s band, I would look sometimes and they would be in the audience. We’d be playing a dance or something, and they’d be standing down front. People used to do that. It was just nice to see them again. And I appreciated their help, too.
TP: Were you playing alto or tenor in the Army?
MOODY: Tenor.
TP: A lot of musicians who were in Army bands say it was a great experience for them, they’d practice every day and their whole day would be music, and it helped form them as musicians.
MOODY: Well, that’s the case now. But at that time it wasn’t like that, because you didn’t have the Jamey Aebersold books, the David Baker books, the Gary Campbells or Jerry Cokers — we didn’t have those. So we’d just try to get a look at whatever it was and try to play that, and if you learned it, that was about the extent of…
TP: Did you hear Charlie Parker during that time?
MOODY: Oh yeah. Charlie Parker, that was it. Charlie Parker and Dizzy, that was the stuff that you listened to.
TP: Did you hear Bird when he was with McShann or subsequent?
MOODY: No. I heard him afterwards.
TP: Do you remember the first record you heard? Was it live or a record?
MOODY: It was a record. I don’t know what it was. It might have been “Now’s The Time.” But in those days, one record would come out maybe every five or six months. Now 20 million records come out every second. But in those days you’d get a record, and then finally everybody would say, “Hey, man, have you heard the latest thing by Diz and Charlie Parker, man? You’ve got to listen to this. It’s called ‘Now’s The Time.'” I said, “Wow, what’s that?” Then the next thing you know, there’s “Salt Peanuts.” That came out. They didn’t have albums; there was just one record with two sides.
TP: So you’d memorize…
MOODY: So you just listened to that and say, “Oh, man.” Yeah, you’d play it over and over again.
TP: Where were you stationed?
MOODY: Greensboro, North Carolina.
TP: Was that a situation where you could go off base and hear bands coming through?
MOODY: You could go off-base and hear… I heard Benny Carter play there. But then Dizzy came on base and played at the Big Top for us. But he played for us, because like I said before, it was segregated. That was the place where I went… I guess you know that they had the German prisoners-of-war on the base there, and they would go into town and go into restaurants and eat, and they could socialize and do whatever they wanted, eat and whatnot…
TP: The prisoners-of-war could.
MOODY: The prisoners-of-war. And they wouldn’t let me… I couldn’t go in a restaurant.
TP: Is that where you met Dizzy?
MOODY: Yes.
TP: Did he give you a phone number and say…
MOODY: No, what he said was… He was playing at the Big Top, which was a big tent where we had our entertainment. He told me and Dave Burns that he was going to disband the band that he had, and when he got back to New York he was going to form a new one. We told him that we were going to be discharged in a few months. So he said, “Well, come on by and try out for the band.” And that’s what we did.
TP: When did you get to New York?
MOODY: Well, after a few months, when I was discharged, then I came back to Newark, New Jersey, where I was, and then I went and tried out for the band. I didn’t make it. Walter Fuller, who was the band director at the time, said I didn’t play loud enough. Then about two or three months later, my mother was ironing clothes and she had a smile on her face, just a look, and I asked her “What’s happening?” And she pointed onto some sheets that she had ironed, and under there was a telegram from Dave Burns that said, “You start with us tonight” — at the Spotlite on 52nd Street.
TP: Were you gigging after the Army?
MOODY: Oh yeah. Well, I had a gig. I was working at Lloyd’s Manor in Newark on weekends, man, and my pockets had the mumps. I was making some bucks.
TP: Was it bebop…
MOODY: It was a jazz gig! Piano, bass, drums and me.
TP: But were you playing the new music, or a mixture…
MOODY: I was playing what I was playing, and what I was playing was what I liked, so whatever it was, that’s what I was doing. But it wasn’t Dixieland, for sure.
TP: So you were with Dizzy for about 2½ years with one interruption when you went with Howard McGhee…
MOODY: No, I didn’t go with Howard McGhee. I was with Dizzy, and I did a recording with Howard McGhee. I was with Dizzy up until the time I went to Paris. I went to stay for two weeks and stayed for three years.
TP: That was in ’48.
MOODY: Yes, in ’48.
TP: Within that time you were some records with Dizzy and that wonderful session for Blue Note with Gil Fuller…
MOODY: Yes, “Tropicana”…
TP: Right, and “Fuller Bop Man.” And Chano Pozo was on the date as well. I’m sure you’ve been asked these questions about 8 million times, and I’m sorry you have to deal with them again. But had you ever dealt with Afro-Cuban before being in Dizzy’s band?
MOODY: Well, Mario Bauza was the one who hipped Dizzy to Chano, and Mario Bauza was aware of the Afro-American thing, and he played with Cab Calloway. I think he had something to do with Dizzy getting in the band. So Diz always had a big respect for Mario Bauza. In the interim I think he hipped him to Chano Pozo. So Dizzy got Chano Pozo in the band, and started writing like “Manteca” and different things, and Chano would be playing on it.
TP: Was that feeling something you had an instant affinity for?
MOODY: Well, it’s another feeling. Because if you’re feeling a straight 4/4 on the drums, CHICK-A-DING, CHICK-A-DING, you know, and then you get BUNCK-GOO, BAHK-A… It’s another feel. It’s another rhythm, another feel and it’s another lesson.
TP: Was Dizzy very proactive in breaking it apart…
MOODY: Dizzy was adept at it. I mean, he just loved it. He just went for it.
TP: One thing that seems to have been maybe his most lasting contribution was his ability to convey information to other musicians in a very specific way and break down music to its primary fundamentals. How did that apply to your experience with him during those years?
MOODY: Oh, I learned a lot from it. And my wife has heard me say this a lot of times, like, “Ah! That’s what I meant.” Even now I look back at certain things, “Oh…okay.” So it was a good learning experience. And Dizzy would take the time, and he would sit down at the piano and explain what something was, or he’d beat a rhythm and say, “See, this goes with this; listen to that.”
TP: So there was an aspect of school and you were really in the forefront-cutting edge of what was going on in the music at the time.
MOODY: Well, life was a school. That’s what it was. So right along with it; that’s what it was.
TP: Paris. Talk about your time there. You went there with Dizzy for the Salle Pleyel concert?
MOODY: No. I went to Paris mainly because I had a bout with alcohol. I had a bout with alcohol, and I was just drug and everything. So my uncle, who was living in Paris at the time, told my mother, who was his sister, “Well, send him over here for a couple of weeks, just for relaxation. Maybe that will do him good.” And I went over for two weeks and stayed for three years.
TP: This is the uncle who gave you an alto saxophone.
MOODY: Yeah, my Uncle Louis.
TP: Was he a musician?
MOODY: No. He worked for the government, the civil service. He wanted to be a dentist, but he couldn’t because we never had enough money for him to go to college.
TP: Talk about the way things got set up in Paris? Someone wrote you recorded something like over 90 tunes in a few years, which seemed hard to believe.
MOODY: No. You mean when I did 11 tunes in Sweden.
TP: Some are classics, and one is a song you still have to play…
MOODY: “Moody’s Mood For Love.” No, I did 11 sides. Anders Burman… I was down jamming at the Club St. Germain one night, and Anders Burman, who is a drummer, came in and sat in and played. But he also had something to do with the Metronome Record Company in Stockholm, Sweden. So he said, “Would you like to make some sides with us?” Like, 12 sides to be exact. I said, “Sure.” He said, “Okay, I’ll send you a plane ticket; you come up and record for us.” So I went to Stockholm and I played there a week and recorded.
TP: Then you another bunch of sessions two years later.
MOODY: Where?
TP: In Sweden? Well, there are sessions from ’49 and sessions from ’51. Prestige just put out a CD with 24 sides recorded in 1949 and 1951 with the Swedish musicians. Lars Gullin is on the latter sessions.
MOODY: That was in France. What was funny was, I didn’t know that “I’m In The Mood For Love” had become a hit. And all of a sudden, everybody in France was calling me. They wanted me to record for them. And I didn’t understand what was going on, because my mother didn’t have a telephone and I wasn’t telephoning home. You didn’t do that; you’d just write cards or something. And now, when I look back, what it was, was they wanted to get a hit, too. It was a hit already. You know what I mean? So when I look back I say “Ah.” If people want you, then they want to use you.
TP: You have such a lyric style, and within the modern harmonies, and I was wondering if you were influenced by singers in the way you approach…
MOODY: No.
TP: Not at all?
MOODY: No. And when I play a song, I don’t know the lyrics.
TP: Really.
MOODY: No.
TP: That surprises me.
MOODY: No. I don’t know the lyrics. All I know is the melody, and I like that; if I like the melody, I’ll play it.
TP: Did somebody put those songs in front of you, or were the songs your choices? Like “I’m In The Mood For Love” or “Pennies From Heaven.”
MOODY: No, I set “I’m In The Mood For Love” at the time.
TP: Were you gigging throughout the three years you spent in Europe?
MOODY: No. I wasn’t doing anything. I was just living there. My uncle was taking care of me. [LAUGHS] I didn’t have to work.
TP: So you came back to the States in ’52?
MOODY: I’m not sure what year I came back, but I came back reluctantly. I say that because of how I was treated when I was in the Air Corps. But when I got to France it was different. I said, “Oh!” Because I always thought something was wrong with me, and then when I got to France and saw what was going on, I said, “Ah, I see it isn’t me; it’s them. It’s the government back here.” I said, “I’m never going back there.”
TP: What brought you back?
MOODY: Well, they kept insisting that I come. I said, “I’m not going back.” They said, “Yeah, but come back and make that money, man.” I said, “All right, I’ll come back and make the money and then go back to playing.” But then when I got back here I said, “Why should I go back when I was born here, like I’m letting them run me away from where I belong?” So that was it.
TP: So you’re back here in the ’50s, and you put together a septet, and it works with an interruption or two until about ’61 or so, a similar format. And it was very influential. One of the first pieces I did for Downbeat was with Hank Crawford and Fathead, and they both were emphatic that the sound of your band influenced the sound that they were getting with Ray Charles and what he wanted.
MOODY: Yes.
TP: I’d like to talk about how you conceptualized the sound of that band, and what you did, and that experience.
MOODY: What happened with the sound of the band, the idea came from the sound that Gösta Thesalius did in Sweden for the “I’m In the Mood For Love” date. See, we had done all the sides with the strings. So we had a couple more to do, and so we did “I’m In The Mood For Love.” So Gösta Thesalius went into the john and sat down and sketched the harmonies out, and it was one take on a borrowed alto saxophone — from Lars Gullin. Then when I came back, I had to have those arrangements done so that they would sound similar to the record. So Johnny Acea, Quincy Jones, Gene Tease, Jimmy Boyd, they wrote the music for me. They wrote it, and it had that sound. It was a good little band, too.
TP: A fabulous band. The bass player was great. John Lathan.
MOODY: John Lathan. He had good time. The first time I heard John Lathan he was in Cleveland, Ohio, playing with a band called Gay Crosse, and that’s the first time I heard John Coltrane, who was playing alto — because he was living in Cleveland at the time, playing with Gay Crosse. I said, “Man, who IS that?”
TP: You I liked him right away, huh?
MOODY: [LAUGHS] Immediately. Before that.
TP: You were in Europe when he was with Dizzy, so you didn’t…
MOODY: No, I didn’t know him.
TP: And the drummer was really swinging, Clarence Johnston. On the hottest tempos he’s swinging.
MOODY: He’s from Boston. He studied with Alan Dawson.
TP: One thing that’s so interesting about that band is that it’s as modernist as music would get harmonically at that time, but it’s also a very communicative band.
MOODY: Oh yes.
TP: One reason why you’ve been so popular and loved by people over the years is being able to blend that very serious concert attitude to music with a very communicative thing. I wonder if you could comment on that.
MOODY: Actually, I guess I must say that I was probably just fortunate. Because you see, I didn’t do anything purposely to say, “Well, I want to do this and get a hit.” I was doing it because I liked the way it sounded.
TP: I wasn’t thinking of it in terms of getting a hit…
MOODY: But that’s what most people think. They think, “He wants to get a hit, so maybe he can scream on this” or do this or that. Do you know what I mean? But that wasn’t it. It was just something I liked, and so it was done.
TP: How much did that band work?
MOODY: We worked ALL the time.
TP: Any time off at all?
MOODY: No. All the time. The only time we were off was traveling to the next gig. In the wintertime we worked in the northern cities and in the summertime we worked in the southern cities.
TP: The easy way, huh?
MOODY: Like my mother would say, everything was bass-ackwards.
TP: And you had let’s say two cars or something?
MOODY: Yes, a station wagon and a car.
TP: And Eddie Jefferson was the band manager for most of that time?
MOODY: What happened was, after Babs Gonzalez left, I hired Eddie Jefferson to sing, and then as we would play these dances, we would go and there would be a certain amount of people… Say there would be 1000 people in the dance hall, and the guy would tell us there were 300 people. You know what I mean? I got Eddie. I said, “I’m going to make you the manager, and you’ll have a clicker, and after you get finished singing you go and keep clicking the numbers as the people come in.’
TP: And did the singing evolve out of his being in the band, or was it also part of it…
MOODY: No, he was a singer, and I was looking for a singer. He was a singer and a dancer, you see, and so I hired Eddie Jefferson to sing with the band, not knowing that he was the one who wrote the lyrics.
TP: Oh, you didn’t know it.
MOODY: No, I didn’t know that.
TP: When did you find out?
MOODY: When I found out, I said, “Wow!” His girlfriend had telling me this for the longest time. Her name was Tiny. She said, “Oh my old man, he loves your music; he put some words to your music, and you’ll hear him one day.” Then when I met him, and then when he told me about Tiny and then I saw them together, I said, “Ah!” Then two and two made five.
TP: So those bands, you were playing dances, clubs…
MOODY: Dances, clubs, yup.
TP: Mostly black clubs?
MOODY: Naturally, sure. Mostly Negro clubs. The reason I say that is, what color am I?
TP: Very deep brown with probably tints I can’t even tell.
MOODY: Red tints, but not black. Right? You see what I mean? This is black, that watchband. I read a thing, the guy says, “When I was in the Air Corps I was colored, then when something else happened I became a Negro, then when I got to such-and-such again I’m black.” Know what I mean? I just like “Negro” better, even though it means black in Spanish. I prefer “Colored,” really.
TP: So throughout that period you would play for Negro audiences.
MOODY: We would play for Negro audiences, and then sometimes we would play for Caucasian audiences. Then sometimes they would have two dances. They would have a rope down the middle, and the Caucasians would be on one side and Negroes on the other side.
TP: So it was still the period when that happened.
MOODY: Yes.
TP: Did you change repertoire when you did that?
MOODY: No! We played the same things we had! Played the arrangements that we had. That was it.
TP: And you recorded so many classics during that time for Prestige and Chess. Do you ever listen back to those old records?
MOODY: To be perfectly honest with you, Ted, I don’t have to do that. If I have time, I’ll listen to somebody else — steal as much as I can get. But my wife, she collects them all. We’ve been in Europe and she says, “Wait, I want to get this!” She gets it. I say, “Honey, forget it. That’s done.” But she has the collection herself. But I don’t want to hear them.
TP: So you get to hear him play night after night and practice and the records!
LINDA: Yes, but he doesn’t really have a lot of time to listen to music when he’s home. He has so many things to do, to play catchup and do what he wants to do.
TP: So we take you through the ’50s with the Septet, and then you rejoin Dizzy in ’62.
MOODY: I’m not sure when I joined Dizzy, but I joined him and stayed for eight years.
TP: How was it the same? How was it different?
MOODY: Oh, it was different then because it was a quintet, and then we were together more. Because in the band, you’re never… You won’t be around too much together. But then with the quintet we started hanging out more together being together. It was a smaller group.
TP: So that’s when you became closer.
MOODY: Closer, yes. As a matter of fact, after a while the band was Rudy Collins, Lalo Schifrin and Chris White, then Leo Wright left and I came in and took his place. Then after a while Lalo left, and when Lalo left, Dizzy wanted a piano player, and I told him to get Kenny Barron.
TP: How did you know about Kenny?
MOODY: Well, Kenny had been with my sextet. See, I had a sextet at the Five Spot in New York. Kenny was 18 years old then. And do you know what? Out of all these years… Kenny is almost 60 now. Do you know, I’ve never heard him make a mistake? Never, ever… I mean, he’d play a solo, and each solo, no matter what it was, it would sound as if it were a painting. I’ve always said that Klenop. I always say that when I see him.
TP: Also, during those years, you were doubling alto-tenor by the late ’40s, and then in the ’50s you added flute. I’m not sure when the soprano became part of what you do. I’d like you to talk about the challenges of multi-instrumentalists. Because another thing I think people are so impressed by is your ability to project a very individual and distinctive voice on each instrument, to make each instrument sound like your main one and not just a section sound. So anything you want to say about the different instruments.
MOODY: I need to practice them! Yeah, I need to practice them. That’s about the size of it. You play one horn because you like the sound of that, but then you play the other horn because you like the sound of that, and you want to play certain things on that, but then you play the other horn and you like the sound of that and you want to play certain things on it, then you play another one and you play that, and finally you say you want to play everything on everything. So you start trying to do that, and when you look, it’s time to go to bed. Then you get up and try something else; you look, and it’s time to go to a gig.
You know, if I had $40 million, do you know what I’d do? I think I’d give a concert every now and then, but I would be in school every day, practicing, and my wife would be sitting, whatever she wanted — there would somebody just fanning her, bringing her whatever she wanted.
LINDA: Sitting down. [LAUGHS] Oh, you’re so cute.
MOODY: You know what I mean? But mainly all I would do is practice, and give a concert every now and then. And of course, I’d want to help some people, too, buy some horns for some kids and help them get by.
TP: There’s a story, I don’t know if it’s apocryphal, that you got the flute one day from someone in Chicago and played it on the gig the next night?
MOODY: Not the next night. But I got it, and then I recorded in a week or so with it. And it sounds like it, too! [LAUGHS] But I would never do that again, the way I got the flute. I bought a hot flute, and I would never do that. I guess I was young and dumb. Because when you buy a hot flute, you’re stealing it from somebody. So why do that? I’d never do that again. So I’ve asked forgiveness for that.
TP: Without asking any particular specific question about Dizzy, but when you look at the people who are performing in it, he had a huge impact on just about everyone who’s performing in it, one way or another.
MOODY: Dizzy had an impact on every musician, he and Charlie Parker, I would think. Because who do you know didn’t play with Dizzy?
TP: Not too many people.
MOODY: See that? So that’s about the size of it. And it wasn’t because somebody was pulled into him. It was that they wanted to be around him, or be in his band or something. And for me, it was a good lesson. The only thing is I wish I would have been more spongy. I wish I would have absorbed more quicker. But then you look back in that respect, and a lot of times you say you wish you would have done, so I’m going to keep in mind what Dizzy told me before. Because I never will forget, I told Diz, “Diz I wish I would have gone to school and study music, because I never studied.” And Dizzy looked at me and said, “Moody, you ain’t dead.” And a big lightbulb went on in my head.
TP: Did he tell you that during the Sixties?
MOODY: I don’t remember what year it was…
TP: Was it during that second time?
MOODY: He told me when I told him I wished I’d have gone to school for music. Ever since he told me that, you know…
TP: Let me just ask you about some of the personalities you’ve encountered over the years who my impression would be you were close to in one way or another — or don’t, if you don’t want to.
MOODY: Yes.
TP: Kenny Clarke?
MOODY: Klook was wonderful. When I joined Dizzy’s band at the Spotlite in ’46, Klook was the drummer. But I got to know him even better in Paris when I was living there, because he was living in Paris — and we played together.
TP: Any particular reminiscence about him?
MOODY: No. Just nice being around him.
TP: Gil Fuller.
MOODY: Gil Fuller was a brilliant person. He was brilliant, but he was detrimental to himself, in a way, I would think. But a brilliant man. Brilliant but…I don’t know. A little more spirituality would have been good for him, I think.
TP: Lester Young. Did you get to know him?
MOODY: I knew Lester a little bit, yeah.
TP: Because he was one of your first idols.
MOODY: Yes, he was one of my first idols. I didn’t know him to be around him all the time, but I liked the way he sounded. He was just one of my idols.
TP: Did you get to know Bird?
MOODY: I didn’t get to know him, but we had dinner together one time together in Detroit, at a Chinese restaurant. I was staying at Sonny Wilson’s Hotel, which was a Negro hotel, and when Charlie Parker and I got finished having the dinner, I drove him back… I had my car. I drove him down to the hotel on Woodward Avenue in Detroit. Charlie Parker was in this splattered white t-shirt, some blue bermuda shorts, white silk stockings that came up above his calves, and looked like black patent shoes or something. I took him down to this hotel, and it was strange to me because he got out and said, “Thanks, Moody,” and it was strange to me as he walked down this hall, as I’m looking at him, through the lobby downtown, because Negroes couldn’t stay in the hotels downtown in Detroit. So my assumption was that the gangsters said, “This is Charlie Parker and we want him to stay there,” and that’s it.
TP: That’s quite an image you just painted.
MOODY: Yeah, that was it.
TP: A couple of other names. Was Don Byas somebody you were close to?
MOODY: Don Bayez. That’s the way they called him in France. He was in France when I was there, along with Bill Coleman, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge. I got to know them all. It was nice. Don was from Oklahoma, you know — Muskogee. Coleman Hawkins, it was nice to know him. It was nice. A lot of saxophone playing going on over there, boy. Don Byas, boy, was bad! I mean, Don knew those changes, boy. Hawk knew changes, too. Hawk was like WHOO-DOOD-LOO; Don Byas was like WHOO-DOODLEOODLE… And I loved Roy Eldridge.
TP: When I hear you now on these recent records… I realize it may be totally impressionistic and have nothing to do with what’s happening. But for some reason, Don Byas is what I’m thinking of. I don’t know why.
MOODY: Well, I don’t know. Maybe something subconscious is there.
TP: It’s probably just me.
MOODY: Oh, okay. All right.
TP: So you were with Dizzy throughout the ’60s. Then you spent the ’70s in the Hilton Hotel Orchestra in Las Vegas?
MOODY: Yeah, I was at the Las Vegas Hilton.
TP: That was an economic decision?
MOODY: Well, that was an economic decision mainly because I wanted to see my daughter grow up. I had a family, and I wanted to see my daughter grow up. I didn’t want to be going on the road and… I saw her when she was born and I said, “I’m going to watch this daughter grow up.” Because I have a daughter coming from France now, she’ll be here for the party with her husband, who I didn’t see grow up.” She’s in her forties now, and the one I saw up until she was in almost her teens she’s 31. So I wanted to stay in one place, and work and come home, work and come home. That’s when I did all the shows, like Liberace, Ann-Margaret, Connie Stevens, Milton Berle, Elvis Presley, Glen Campbell, the Rockettes, the Osmonds — I played all those shows.
TP: You just played a functional section man or…
MOODY: No-no-no! I was in the Hilton Orchestra. They had 40 pieces or something, had a string section and all that, and I had a book they put the music in and I had to play my part — that was it.
TP: Did you garner anything from that musically?
MOODY: Oh, definitely. Because I was used to play with Dizzy, with big band stuff. But when you play the show music it’s something altogether different — the intonation, everything. And they tell you exactly the way it’s going to be. You look at it – BAM. [LAUGHS] Boy, it was a lesson. A good experience. If I had to do it all over again, I would.
TP: What’s the name of your daughter who’s 31 now?
MOODY: Michelle Moody. The other one is Maryvonne, and she’s in her forties.
TP: In the ’80s you did a group of records for RCA-Novus all very different, each with its own personality. Did your decision to start touring and going back on the road as a solo artist coincide with your daughter graduating high school or getting older?
MOODY: Oh, no. I was divorced. I got a divorce before she even got into her teens. I was divorced and I left again, and I started playing with a quartet. I played with the Mike Longo trio, then finally I got another group, and I’ve been doing that ever since. I recorded with RCA…
TP: Kirk Lightsey was on one.
MOODY: Kirk Lightsey was on one…
TP: Kenny was on another.
MOODY: Right. Kenny, and Tom McIntosh did the arrangements. And you know something? I think those were nice records. I think they were nice musically. I think so. But it’s a funny thing, and I’ve always said this, and I hate to have to say it. The record companies want to make the records and they want you to sell them. And it should be the other way around. They should let you make the records and they sell them, because that’s how it should be. But they think they know what sells and what doesn’t, and I’m sorry to say no one does.
TP: No one knows what sells and what doesn’t.
MOODY: No. Like, good music, I would think, would sell.
TP: You’d think.
MOODY: Sure. And you know something? I’ll tell you what sells. A little public relations and stuff behind it? Bang, it sells it. Because nothing really sells itself unless it’s in a position to sell itself. And things aren’t in that position, because you listen to the radio, you hear what people play. So I still maintain musicians should be able to make the music.
TP: Did you have that freedom on the RCA records? Those seems like pretty personal dates.
MOODY: There was a certain amount of freedom that was given to me, and I’ll give credit where it’s due. Certain things. But do you know what my thing of freedom would really be? To go in a studio with the musicians that I want, wouldn’t anyone be in there but me, them and the engineer. That’s it.
TP: Otherwise is there a vibe on you that…
MOODY: Well, then you can talk to the guys and say, “You know what? I’d like to do so-and-so. I don’t think I want it like that” or “Yeah, I like that.” And I’m a one-take person, maybe two. But when you start three takes, four takes, that…
TP: Is that what happened?
MOODY: Well, what happened is, you’re gung-ho and everything, and the second take…I mean, by the fourth take you’re talking about ho-hum.
TP: Are you still with Warner Brothers?
MOODY: No.
TP: There are two records of your own and the two-tenor thing with Mark Turner. Both are excellent and I thought you were in wonderful form. For the purposes of this article, this those closest to the fact, tell me a bit about the Sinatra record and the Mancini record. Was the Sinatra date your concept?
MOODY: Well, what happened was, they wanted a concept, so we came up with Sinatra, which was okay, because Sinatra, he was singing the good songs, so you can’t go wrong with that. Then Henry Mancini wrote good music; you can’t go wrong with that.
TP: And Gil Goldstein set up the arrangements, you came in and…
MOODY: Oh, Goldstein’s a wonderful arranger, a wonderful musician. Nice guy. My buddy, too.
TP: What are you looking for in the musicians who are in your bands? Since Mike Longo, your pianists have been Lightsey, Mulgrew Miller, Mark Copland; the bassist is always Todd Coolman for years; a bunch of drummers, including Teri Lyne Carrington…
MOODY: They all can play. They play their buns off. That’s it. Play their buns off and punctuality.
TP: Got to be on time.
MOODY: Be on time, yeah. I’d rather have a musician that didn’t play as well but could play, and would be punctual — and that’s it. Because there are no stars. The only star that I know is Jesus. I mean, you have to be on time, because no matter what it is, everything is business. Business, business, business. Then when you have your own time, you come and go as you feel like it. But when you have to deal with other people, you have to be on time.
TP: Do you keep abreast of what the younger musicians are doing?
MOODY: As best I can. As best I can. Because there are a lot of people I haven’t heard that I wish I could hear, and then you hear them and you say, “Boy, wow, they sound beautiful!” Because so many records come out. Who do you listen to? It’s like a bookstore. I mean, how many books can you hear at once? You hear this person and say “Wow!” That’s why it’s good for jazz, because you can have a whole lot of jazz clubs, because one person can’t work all the clubs at the same time. So it’s good for clubs to be there so everybody can work.
TP: Among some of the younger musicians you’ve come in touch with, who are some who’ve particularly impressed you?
MOODY: All of them. Sure.
TP: Let me phrase it more generally, then. Things obviously have changed socially and politically since you came up. But musically, how do you see the generation of musicians from the Baby Boom on? Do you think highly of the musicianship…
MOODY: The musicianship is much better with these younger musicians. Why? Because they have the books and the teachers now that really… Jamey Aebersold and David Baker, like I said before, and Gary Campbell, Jerry Coker — all of these playalongs. Not only that, the schools.
TP: Sure. You can study with Jimmy Heath or Donald Byrd.
MOODY: Right. You see? If you feel like you want to learn something, you can learn it, from the bottom up. And if you get a good teacher, you can play real quick. And if you have a bad teacher, you’ll still be scuffling, years upon years upon years.
TP: A lot of people who have written about you in liner notes from the ’50s and ’60s remark on you having self-doubt and never being satisfied with what you do…
MOODY: Sure.
TP: Is that something…
MOODY: No. I have a doubt, but it’s not a self-doubt. My doubt before was that like I was flying an airplane but I didn’t know what the route was. You see? What it is, if you don’t know the changes, you’re skimming. I might skim now, but at least I know I’m skimming. I skimmed before, but I didn’t know I was skimming.
TP: Are you saying that until you did these busride sessions with Tom McIntosh and your subsequent studies, you were sort of walking the edge every time that you played?
MOODY: Right. And I can also say that still, even at 75, I haven’t reached my peak, because I’m still trying to find out how to play the changes. See, the young cats come up and they learn this from the very getgo; I mean, they can play the hell out of them. See, I’m a little slow with them, but at least I know things that I have to learn and I’m trying to learn them. So I’m going to sound different one time or other, because I’m going to be playing some of the changes. It’s not going to be the same as not playing them.
TP: What are the advantages of being an ear player?
MOODY: How about the disadvantages?
TP: Are there any advantages?
MOODY: Well, let’s look at it this way. Like, if you’re an ear player and then you learn the changes, what was advantageous about not knowing the changes? That’s where the self-doubt is, see? You’re playing by ear, but you’re saying, “Damn, I don’t know this, and I’m scuffling. Was that it?”
TP: Another person I’d like you to say a few words about is Tom McIntosh.
MOODY: Wonderful musician. Nice trombonist, too. Wonderful orchestrator and writer, and a wonderful human being.
TP: When you had those sessions with him, how did he approach it with you?
MOODY: It was very simple. He would say, “Moody, this is a C-scale. This here is a C-Major Triad, and you flat the third here. This is a C-Minor Triad. This is a C, E, G, a B-flat, and that’s a C7. C, E, G, B, that’s a C-Major-7. C-Flat-7, Dominant-7. And he’d be telling me that… Then after I learned them I said, “Oh, boy, I got that.” So I wanted to play a song, and I’m looking at them, [SINGS REFRAIN FROM “Cup-Bearers”] I said, “Yeah, but it doesn’t sound like that when they’re playing. Because you can’t hit tonics and play. You have to start on 3rds and 2nds and 5ths. You know what I mean? And you have to be able to weave and bob and come up half-steps below and half-steps above… But at least I’ve got an idea of what it is now.
TP: Did you get hands-on instruction in that regard from Dizzy in the ’60s? Specific harmonic information?
MOODY: Hands-on?
TP: Well, by “hands-on” I mean did he sit down with you and break things down?
MOODY: Well, he told me about the minor VII-flat V chord. That was one of his things. That’s why when he wrote “Woody ‘n You” and those things… He liked Monk a lot, because Monk had those minor VII-Flat-V chords, and Diz always called them… He said, “I like to look at them as minor-VI.” [SINGS THE SOUND] Diz looked at it as a minor-VI. He used to call a minor VII-flat V a minor VI chord. He looked at it that way.
TP: Also, Zan Stewart who wrote liner notes for a reissue, talked about your having immersed yourself in Coltrane’s harmonic system.
MOODY: Oh, yes, man! [LAUGHS]
TP: You’re one year older than Coltrane. Talk about the impact he had on you.
MOODY: Well, the first time I heard Coltrane, like I told you, was in Cleveland, Ohio. He was playing alto with Gay Crosse. I heard him and John Lathan. Boy, they were playing “Our Delight,” and I said, “Man, who is that guy, because he sounds phenomenal.” And I was down the street at another club, and as soon as we finished I’d break over and run over to the other side to listen to what he was doing!
TP: But later on, when he’d developed his concept, were you friendly? Did you talk to him?
MOODY: I didn’t see Coltrane that much. But I did take him from Chicago… I think he was working at the Sutherland Hotel, and he wanted to go to Elkhart, Indiana.
TP: To the Selmer Factory?
MOODY: Right. So I drove him to Elkhart. And he was playing that stuff then, and I was saying, “What is it?” and he said, “Oh, man, it’s nothing.” And he really meant it, that it wasn’t nothin’. Then he got this soprano, and a few months later is when he came out with “My Favorite Things.”
TP: Did that inspire you to play soprano, or were you already doing it? Was the soprano the last of the instruments you added to your arsenal?
MOODY: Well, I played the soprano I guess because everybody else started playing it. So I got one, and I liked the sound of it. Because when I was living in Paris, Sidney Bechet lived across the courtyard from me, and he played soprano. But I didn’t necessarily feel like I wanted to play it at that time.
TP: Did you get to know Sidney Bechet?
MOODY: Well, I knew him, but not as a… I saw him, because he lived across the courtyard from me in Paris. Just like with Django Reinhardt; I played with him one time in the Club St. Germain, but I didn’t get to know him. But he seemed like a nice person, and so did Sidney Bechet.
TP: Talk about what it was like in Paris for those years.
MOODY: Well, in Paris it was like I could go anywhere I felt like going, and it was like you were accepted anywhere you went, as long as you acted like a gentleman. It was different, especially after being stationed in Greensboro, North Carolina.
TP: Or being on the road as a professional musician and dealing with all the bullshit.
MOODY: Being on the road, and going on the bus and having the bus driver to get you sandwiches and things because you couldn’t go in the restaurants and eat.
TP: I’d like to talk a bit about this concert. Say a bit about the different people who are appearing.
MOODY: Like what?
TP: Like, what do I want you to say?
MOODY: No… Well, you’ve got Jon Faddis. I remember Jon when he was 12 years old in San Francisco. We were working at the Jazz workshop with Dizzy. Jon came in, a tall, lanky kid, a nice kid. We liked him. I liked him from the jump. And it’s nice to see him now, doing what he’s doing. I remember Wynton when Wynton was with Art Blakey, when he first came to town. I like to see him doing what he’s doing now. Paquito D’Rivera, I remember meeting him when he first came from Cuba, and he’s doing okay. Of course, Tito Puente is my man. I’ve known Tito for a long time.
TP: In the ’50s when you were off the road, did you play with the great Latin bands of the ’50s?
MOODY: No, I didn’t. But when Jack Hooke was there, I used to play Salsa Meets Jazz, and I’d be featured down there at the Village Gate. I did some of those.
Slide Hampton, man. I call him Slick Slide, boy, because he’s got a whole lot of music under his belt, boy. He’s a wonderful arranger and trombonist. Jimmy Heath — “Section.” I’ve been knowing Section for a long time, man. Fantastic arranger and composer and saxophonist.
TP: Did you meet him as a kid in Philly?
MOODY: yes.
TP: When he had that big band which was based on Dizzy’s big band.
MOODY: Yes. And his brother Tootie and Percy.
TP: Will this concert cover the various musical situations you’ve moved into? For instance, with Paquito there, will “Tropicana” or…
MOODY: We’ll play “Manteca.”
TP: Will there be a lot of Dizzy’s arrangements.
MOODY: We’ll play “Manteca” and we’ll probably play “Emanon,” “Con Alma”…
TP: And the vocalists will do vocals to some of your solos…
MOODY: Mmm-hmm.
TP: And your own small group will play some of it.
MOODY: We’ve got Renee Rosnes, fantastic pianist. Todd Coolman, a fantastic bassist. We’ve got Kenny Barron, who like I told you, I’ve never heard make a mistake. We’ve got Mike Longo.
TP: Adam Nussbaum is your drummer these days. Helluva drummer.
MOODY: Tell me about it.
TP: I’m looking at you and I can’t believe you’re 75 years old. I might think you were 60…
LINDA: He’s going on 18.
TP: Well, 60 anyway. Is music the secret for you? Is music what keeps you young?
MOODY: Well, let’s say the biggest secret is God. The next secret is my mother was 86, and my Uncle Louis is 86. But the music… You know, when you’re doing something and you like what you’re doing… Not to say that that there are times when you do things…you don’t always get to do what you want to do. But if it’s fairly like what you want to do, it makes everything in your system work fairly well. Happiness…when you’re happy… And then especially to have a wonderful wife, to be in love, that helps, too. When you don’t have that, you kind of fade away. But when you do, you kind of want to stay in.
TP: And you’ve been married since ’89?
MOODY: Yes, 11 years.
LINDA: You have done your homework, Ted.
TP: Oh, I always do my homework.
LINDA: It’s refreshing, I have to tell you.
TP: How did you meet?
LINDA: Would you like me to tell you? We met in a club in Los Angeles called Catalina. I drove my friend from San Diego to Los Angeles so that she could hear Moody. I didn’t know who he was, had never heard him or of him or anything else. So I took her, and then the next year he came to San Diego to play and she and I went to hear him on opening night — and three months later we were married. During those three months, he was gone for a month in Africa with Dizzy doing a State Department tour. So he called me every day from the different embassies where he was. He would be out playing tennis with different heads of state, and they would say, “Oh, come and use our phone to call Linda; it’s so much easier.” And he sent me love faxes every day.
TP: So it was love at first sight.
LINDA: Well, at second sight, mmm-hmm.
MOODY: I sent her dozen roses every Monday.
LINDA: Since our first date. I still get them.
MOODY: She still gets them.
LINDA: I still get them.
TP: And there are flowers in the hotel room. There’s about a 100-pound bouquet from Bill and Camille Cosby on the coffee table in front of us.
LINDA: I’d say it’s about 150 pounds.
TP: And Peter Jennings by the TV.
LINDA: Peter and Kaci, his wife. This is from Jazz at the Lincoln Center, and that’s from the hotel, and the sales department who took care of all of the reservations for all of our friends and family who flew into town. It’s just been one big collaboration and help, and everybody’s been so kind.
TP: And how long has this concert been in the works?
LINDA: We’ve been working on it for about a year, but intensely since about last October.
TP: Are there special commissioned arrangements?
LINDA: David Baker did the big band arrangement of “Last Train From Overbrook,” and that’s a new arrangement. And Lalo Schifrin did an arrangement of “Happy Birthday.”
[PAUSE]
TP: The waiter just came in bringing champagne and a huge basket of fruit.
LINDA: The other two big band arrangements of “Slow Hot Wind” and “Young At Heart,” Gil Goldstein did those. Then several tunes Moody’s going to do with his quartet, and of course the LCJO with Wynton.
* * *
James Moody (5-20-00):
TP: In our first interview I spoke with you about your beginnings on the instrument, and I wanted to ask a couple of more questions. You said you got your first horn when you were 16, and you went to the Adams Theater because you wanted to hear Lester Young play, but instead you heard Buddy Tate and Don Byas. Were you playing any music in the years before that?
MOODY: No, I wasn’t playing.
TP: You started playing that year?
MOODY: Mmm-hmm. When I got the saxophone.
TP: Before you went in the Armed Services…
MOODY: I like Air Corps. Because when you say “Armed Services,” nobody knows where, but when I say “Air Corps” they know exactly where I was
TP: That said, were you working with people your age? Were you doing little gigs around Newark? When did you actually start playing before a public?
MOODY: Oh, I didn’t start playing before a public until I got out of the Air Corps.
TP: So was it that you were basically practicing on the saxophone, woodshedding on the saxophone, maybe playing with some friends, you get in the Air Corps and you volunteer…
MOODY: No-no-no-no. I wasn’t jamming or doing anything. In other words, I didn’t know the instrument. I learned the instrument in the Air Corps. I wasn’t jamming. I didn’t have that in Newark. They might have had it, but I didn’t know anything about it.
TP: And so you learned it in the Air Corps, and you knew some of the music by hearing it on the radio and starting to buy records.
MOODY: Right.
TP: You said you liked Prez. Who were the saxophone players that were your favorites and probably were in your mind when you were starting to formulate your vocabulary?
MOODY: You mean from the very beginning? From the beginning was Jimmy Dorsey.
TP: On alto saxophone.
MOODY: Yes. And I guess the reason for that is because in those days they had a radio station in Newark, New Jersey, WNEW, and on Saturdays there was a guy by the name of Martin Block who come on and play a half-hour or an hour of jazz. When you say “jazz,” it would be like Benny Goodman or Jimmie Lunceford or Count Basie or something like that. And I heard Jimmy Dorsey on the radio like all during the week or something like that, and then finally I heard Charlie Barnet, and I liked Charlie Barnet better than Jimmy Dorsey. Then finally I heard Rudy Williams, who was an alto guy from Newark, and I liked him better. Then I heard Count Basie and I heard Lester Young. I said, “Oh, wait a minute, I like this.” I heard Georgie Auld. I liked him. And I heard Coleman Hawkins.
But my thing that I liked at the beginning was Lester Young, because of I guess that feel he had and the swing [SINGS PREZ REFRAIN] Boy, that used to knock me out. Even though Coleman Hawkins, when I look back now, was playing more changes. You know what I mean? But that wasn’t the thing. All I knew was what I felt and what made feel good. So I heard Count Basie was coming to the Adams Theater in Newark, and so I went down there hoping to hear Lester Young, and when I got there Don Byas had taken his place. So the two tenor players were Don Byas and Buddy Tate. Anyway, that was that.
Then when I heard Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, that really put an end to everything. I said, “That’s it; this is it.” So that’s how that went.
TP: Just so I get it straight when you heard Buddy Tate and Don Byas, you had just gotten a saxophone at that time?
MOODY: No-no, no-no. I got my saxophone when I was 16 years old. I used to go and listen to… Like, if anybody played a saxophone anywhere, I would listen to it. So there weren’t that many people for me to listen to, at least that I knew of in Newark. So when the band would come to the theater, naturally I would go and listen, because it would knock me out. That’s the first time I heard Georgie Auld, was when he played with Artie Shaw. And Artie Shaw had strings in his band, I never will forget, and Georgie Auld played “Body and Soul.” Boy, that was beautiful. At the Adams. Then I liked him. Have you ever heard of Georgie Auld?
TP: Yes, I’ve heard some Georgie Auld.
MOODY: He was from Canada.
TP: And your uncle got you an alto, and then you got a tenor before you got into the Air Corps and your mother sent it to you?
MOODY: My mother sent it to me. She sent it to me because when I was drafted into the Air Corps, they wanted to form a Negro band. But at first, I was just drafted in the Air Corps, and I was in the basic training center. They were training me to be a soldier. I don’t know what they were training me to be, but the point was, they wanted to have a band, a Negro band. Because three-quarters of the base was Caucasian and one-quarter was Negro, and they wanted the Negro part to be self-sufficient. What self-sufficient meant was they wanted you to stay on your side.
TP: They wanted a segregated band.
MOODY: That’s it. And they had it. So lucky for me, I was able to get in it. Because if it had been a regular band and all like that, I wouldn’t have been able to cut the mustard.
TP: So you had a rudimentary knowledge of the saxophone at that point, and being in that band you were able to practice and work on the horn…
MOODY: Well, being in the band, what they did was, they had the men from the official Air Force Band come over and teach us. They would show us things, at least the ones that needed it. It’s funny, because three years later, after I was discharged and I was in Dizzy’s band, a lot of those guys were my friends afterwards, because they would come and see me, and said, “Boy, it’s nice to see you, Moody. Yeah, man.” Because I was with Dizzy Gillespie then.
TP: That’s why I’m picking on this subject so much. Because when you said you knew nothing about the saxophone before going in the Army, then three years later you’re taking the solo on “Emanon,” it just seems remarkable that you were able to do it, apart from your innate talent.
MOODY: Well, that’s the way it was. That’s the way it happened.
TP: When you were in the Air Corps, is that when you first heard Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker?
MOODY: Well, I think I heard a little bit of it just before I was drafted. I was drafted in ’43, and I heard something of it. Then when I got to Greensboro, North Carolina… You know, in those days the records didn’t come out as often as they do now. So when they came, everybody had it or everybody was listening to it. So I heard Dizzy and Charlie Parker good, boy, and I would listen to that stuff over and over and over.
TP: Well, their first records I think were “Shaw Nuff” and “Salt Peanuts”…
MOODY: The Dials.
TP: The Dials were in ’46 and the Savoys were in ’45. I asked you previously if you had heard Bird with McShann, and you said, “No, later,” then I asked you what the first record you heard by Bird was, and you said it might have been “Now’s the Time,” but you weren’t sure.
MOODY: No, the first time… I heard Charlie Parker with Jay McShann when he played “Hootie Blues,” and the guy was singing, “Hey, baby, don’t you want a man like me” or something like that, and Charlie Parker played the chords or something on that. That’s the first time I heard that. But I think the first time I heard him was “Shaw Nuff” or something.
TP: So that must have been towards the end of your stay in the Air Corps, mid or late ’45, just based on when the things came out.
MOODY: I suppose so, because I’m very bad with dates.
TP: Right. I’m not trying to pin you down on the dates. I’m trying to deal with your aesthetic in some way.
MOODY: Sure.
TP: Can you describe the impact Charlie Parker had on you in some specific language?
MOODY: Well, the impact was that I liked him better than any other saxophone player that I heard?
TP: And why?
MOODY: Because of what I heard. That’s why. It’s very simple. If you look at it chronologically, the way I said, I said the first one I liked was Jimmy Dorsey. Right? Then I continued on with different people, Ben Webster, you know, then Lester Young. Coleman Hawkins I wasn’t too thrilled with. I didn’t like the way he sounded. But when I look back now, he was playing more changes than all of them. But then when I heard Charlie Parker, wow.
TP: Well, he was playing all the changes, and then he had that flowing, fluid thing you liked in Prez.
MOODY: He what?
TP: His harmony was as sophisticated or more than anyone, and then he had the fluidity Lester Young had, too.
MOODY: Who?
TP: Charlie Parker.
MOODY: No, wait a minute. No, I think you’re mixed up there with it. What I’m saying is, I heard Lester Young. Lester Young wasn’t playing the changes like Coleman Hawkins. But Coleman Hawkins didn’t do anything for my soul at that time the way Lester Young did. Then when I heard Charlie Parker, he did more for me than either one of them.
TP: Dizzy Gillespie first came to Greensboro to play a concert, which is where you met him.
MOODY: He played a concert on the base, at a place called the Big Top, which was a big tent.
TP: And you’d heard Dizzy by then.
MOODY: Mmm-hmm.
TP: So you knew that sound, and that sound had captivated you.
MOODY: Oh yes.
TP: If let’s say “Algo Bueno” or “Dizzy Atmosphere” were out by that time, could you play those by the time that you…
MOODY: Heck, no. But when I got with Dizzy’s quintet and stuff, I could play it.
TP: But Dizzy heard something in you and he wanted you to play with him.
MOODY: Well, what it is is word-of-mouth, I guess. We went and tried out for the band, and Walter Fuller said I didn’t play loud enough. My friend David Burns — we were in the Air Corps together — made it. About a couple of months later I got a telegram from Dave that said, “you start with us tonight at the Spotlite.” That was it. Because they probably needed a tenor player, and Dave probably said, “Get my guy Moody.” That’s how guys get in the band. You get in the band when somebody needs you… When I was with Dizzy’s band and Lalo Schiffrin left, and Dizzy needed a piano player, I said, “Get Kenny Barron.”
TP: What do you remember about that first night?
MOODY: The first night I was there, Thelonious Monk was the piano player, Ray Brown, Milt Jackson. The club was very small, but all the different people who I heard on the radio before were there. Coleman Hawkins, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, they would be in the audience. It was a thrill sitting there playing the music.
TP: Were you rehearsing intently?
MOODY: No. We were playing! When I went, the band… It was a gig!
TP: I meant, within the big band was it a thing where you’d learn and internalize the music by playing every night, or were there a lot of rehearsals as well.
MOODY: Oh, yeah, we rehearse. You’d rehearse a tune and then play it. But that night I had to just look at the music and go from there. What it was, my friend Dave showed me the line of “Things To Come” just before the gig, so I’d play that. so it was a breeze.
TP: It was a breeze!? Because you said you were playing by ear pretty much at that time and for the next 12-13 years.
MOODY: Right. I was playing by ear, but I could read a little bit, and then I learned to read more and more. The more you read, the better you read. then when you don’t read, you get rusty, and it’s hard.
TP: The Spotlite was the club that Clark Monroe owned, the guy who had owned Monroe’s Uptown House, and that was his joint on 52nd Street.
MOODY: It was either his or he was managing it or something. He was a Negro and he probably was fronting it. I don’t know.
TP: Was he around?
MOODY: Yeah.
TP: What was he like?
MOODY: Well, he was like a Negro guy who dressed well and took care of business.
TP: Do you remember on that first engagement with Dizzy if there were large crowds and the crowds were enthusiastic?
MOODY: Oh, there were a lot of people. Every night.
TP: Were people very excited by it? Did it seem like something totally new and…
MOODY: Very-very-very excited. Everywhere we went, places were jam-packed and everything. You’d look up and you’d see Lena Horne and Ava Gardner. It was jammed.
TP: What was it like going on the road with the band in terms of the audience reaction in the provinces in the South or Midwest?
MOODY: Well, we’d go on the chitlin’ circuit, and the chitlin’ circuit was like… If you could get over in New York, you could get over anywhere. So the chitlin’ circuit was New York, the Apollo Theater, then the Royal Theater in Baltimore, the Howard Theater in Washington and the Earle Theater in Philadelphia.
TP: They called that the Around-the-World.
MOODY: Right. And if you could make it in those theaters, you could make it anywhere. Then we went on tour with Ella Fitzgerald, and we went down South, and that was a drag, because you couldn’t eat in restaurants and the bus driver had to go get sandwiches for you. The bus driver could go in the restaurants, but you couldn’t because he was Caucasian. But that was the same thing when I was in Greensboro, N.C., because the German prisoners-of-war could go downtown and eat, and I couldn’t.
TP: But the audiences were enthusiastic?
MOODY: The audiences were very enthusiastic. We played dances where there would be a rope down the middle of the hall, and there would be Caucasians on one side and Negroes on the other side. Then they’d have two dances at a place, like a dance tonight and a dance the next night. The first would be maybe for Negroes with White spectators, and then when they had the Caucasian dance there would be no Negro spectators.
TP: But you played the repertoire you were playing. You didn’t compromise on the repertoire.
MOODY: No, we played the band.
TP: In our earlier interview, you said to you went to Paris in late summer of ’48, a few months before Dizzy went and played the Salle Pleyel concert that got recorded. You were living with your Uncle Louis, who got you the alto, and you said he worked for the U.S. Government.
MOODY: Yes, he worked for the U.S. government.
TP: You said, I think, that Sidney Bechet lived across the courtyard from you?
MOODY: My uncle lived near the Eiffel Tower. But later on, when I got married, I was living in another apartment where Sidney Bechet lived across the courtyard from me.
TP: What part of Paris was the apartment you lived in when you were married?
MOODY: I’m not sure now, but it was a nice area. I forget which Arrondissement it is. Where I lived with uncle, it was Avenue Chanfoucault(?), and I could open up the veranda on the balcony and look out, and there was the Eiffel Tower right in front of me. The maids quarters were upstairs. It was nice.
TP: And Paris for you was a wonderfully liberating experience, you said, because you could just be you and not have to worry about White and Black.
MOODY: Well, the point was that I always had a thing there was something wrong with me, and I didn’t know what it was, except the way I looked. I was wondering why I was disliked so much. So when I got to Paris, then I found out it wasn’t me. I said, “Ah, I see what it is. It’s the people. It’s them. They’re going by a color thing.’ Then when I looked back at it, I said to myself, “Damn, the majority of those people who are hating me aren’t worth two dead flies and even me worrying about them.
TP: Well, you said you went there originally to cool out some because the pressures were getting to you.
MOODY: I went to cool out for two weeks, and stayed three years.
TP: I just want to talk about the music in Paris. It seems like such a rich time, because so many great American musicians were there, not to mention Django, and that’s when you did the sides that endure today. I’d like to talk about your musical evolution while you were in Europe. Do you feel like you grew a great deal musically during your three years there?
MOODY: No, I don’t think I did. What happened is… You see, the way I came up musically, I came up wrong, I think, from the standpoint that I thought improvising was spontaneous. In other words, I thought you did it, and I didn’t realize that you had to practice, you had to practice changes… I didn’t know any changes. I didn’t know. I was playing by ear. So when I came back from Europe and started trying to find out about chords and things like that, then my music thing started changing. I started drinking, because people were saying how great I was, and I couldn’t play crap. Why are they saying I’m great? I’m not great.
TP: This is after you’re touring with the septet and becoming famous.
MOODY: yes.
TP: And you felt insecure about it.
MOODY: Yes. So now, when I look back at it… I’m 75 years old, and you know, I haven’t reached my peak chord-wise, because I’m still trying to study and learn how to put things where, and trying to become a better musician. And it’s pretty good, too. Because I’ve got a whole lot to learn, boy!
TP: I guess it gives you the feeling that there’s a lot to wake up the next day to, whatever you’re going to discover.
MOODY: Not only that, but I know which way I’m going, too. Whereas before, I didn’t know which way it was.
TP: That said, could you describe the scene in Paris? Were you gigging in Paris and in Europe?
MOODY: No, I didn’t have to. If I wanted a gig, I’d take it. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t.
TP: But you could if you wanted to.
MOODY: I could if I wanted to, yes. And so what happened was, like, I would just go out every night to the Club St. Germain and listen to different people. But they only had two clubs. One club was called the St. Germain, and that one was jazz, and the Rue Columbier was Dixieland. I wasn’t a Dixieland person. Claude Lutere played there all the time. That’s why Hugues Panassie and Charles Delaunay fell out, because Panassie was a Louis Armstrong freak, and Delaunay was a Dizzy Gillespie freak.
TP: Well, he was a Modernist.
MOODY: Yes. So when Panassie died, Delaunay said he was sorry that it was like that . But that’s the way it goes.
TP: You made one famous bebop session there, the “Prince Albert” session.
MOODY: Yeah, I did that with Kenny Dorham and Max Roach. I was played with Miles while I was there, too.
TP: You came back, you said, because “Moody’s Mood For Love” became a hit, and you had other popular cuts, and people told you that you could make some money here.
MOODY: That’s the only reason I came back. Other than that, I wasn’t going to set foot on American soil again. Because I was pissed off from what had happened to me in Greensboro.
TP: It sounds like when you came back, what you found in America fulfilled what you might have expected, the reasons you left, that it matched your worst fears about it.
MOODY: Well, not my worst fears. What happened was, I came back and it was the same old shit, but only smoothed over with whipped cream. And the funny thing about it is, when you look at it, you look how the government… Excuse me, Ted. I have to say this the way I have to say it. Excuse me. But you see how the government fucked up a whole race, generations of one race, fucked them up to where they had no history, they had no chance of anything, and they didn’t give them anything, they lied to them, they cheated to them, they killed them. Then when it was time for them to get paid, they lied and said that they were owed rather than them having to pay them. When you look at this, I mean, that’s a Holocaust in itself. There’s a book out now by Randall Johnson called The Debt, and America, not only America but the world owes a debt to the Negro, mainly because every country in the world has screwed over the Negro race. If you think I’m lying, how do you think systematically the Third World countries are all dark? And how do you think that all these places have diamond mines, gold mines, and they don’t have one iota of anything to show for it. They wouldn’t let them get an education, and now they want them to be educated. Negroes have been hollering discrimination for years and years. Nobody says shit. And as soon as two Caucasians said, “Hey, wait a minute, they wouldn’t let me get a job,” they say, “No, we can’t have this discrimination stuff. That’s wrong.” You see? So they have more than three or four or five standards that they go by, and you can rest assured that the Negro’s ass is always going to be at the bottom.
Frankly, I’m not angry with any individual about it, but I think the Government in America is full of shit, and it sucks because of what they do, and the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is full of shit because they don’t do shit. They only talk about superfluous stuff instead of getting down to the business and saying, “Look, we have to do right and we have to be honest.” And the first way to be honest is to give an apology to all the Negroes, and then repay them for the work that was done and was never paid for. And I’m not saying, “Give each Negro some money.” I’m saying, give them an education. Quit that bullshit about color-blind. You can’t be color-blind because you see what colors you see. They are there. Never mind the color. Just be fair. That’s what I’m saying. That really bugged me. But it doesn’t make me hate anybody. Like, Ronald Reagan. I can’t stand the son-of-a-bitch. But if I could raise my hand to make him well, I’d do it. My wife. Blonde, green eyes. You saw her. But we have the same blood type. So what’s that shit about Negro blood and White blood? That’s bullshit.
TP: Well, in this country it’s all mixed up.
MOODY: Listen, this country started this shit. It’s all over the world now. Mainly because when economics is involved, there has to be a scapegoat, and there is no better scapegoat than someone who doesn’t look like you, supposedly. But if you look… See, people don’t see the forest for the trees or the trees for the forest. But if you were to look at an individual, you would see ears, nose, eyes, hair, no-hair, if it’s male or female. But they don’t see those similarities. All they see is, “oh, look at that color.” But how many people do you say, “Oh, look at the yellow rose,” “oh, look at the white rose,” “oh, look at the red rose.” It’s “Oh, look at the roses.” Same thing with tulips or any other flower. I’m sick of all these ignorant assholes with the shit that they talk, who stand up saying one thing and meaning another thing. Look at McCain. He got up there and spoke about that flag, the Confederate flag, and said, “I think the people should take care of it.” Then later on, afterwards, when he was out of the race and he said he had to be truthful about it, he said it was wrong to have the flag up there. And it is, too. First of all, slavery was wrong, and it was wrong to fight for slavery, and I don’t give a shit who fought to save slavery. If they fought for it, they were fighting for the wrong cause. Take the fuckin’ flag down.
All of that pertains to music. Because music is a feeling. You feel what you play. You see things, you feel something and you play. No matter what you do, you do it from your feelings. So consequently, whatever it is that you feel, it comes out. But the thing with me is that my anger through music… Like, I want music to be loving. So my anger comes out in a more beautifying way. Because I want to spread love, not ignorance, like all these people that…I don’t want to say sons-of-bitches in this…
For the longest time, I can tell when they think they’re giving me the boot. Because a lot of Americans grow up thinking they’re better than certain people. So you mean to tell me if you’re this color, you’re better than them, so that’s it. Even down South, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, we taught them all we know,” and they ain’t shit.
TP: Let me ask you something. In the ’50s, it sounds like you were taking out that anger on yourself and you were drinking…
MOODY: No. The anger was coming from no knowledge.
TP: No knowledge of music?
MOODY: Yes.
TP: So in ’58, when you get out of Overbrook, and Tom Macintosh starts running down the ABC’s of harmony, it sounds almost like a new life for you…
MOODY: Of course.
TP: Then you join Dizzy in ’61. Is that when you start to accept Bahai?
MOODY: No. Dizzy didn’t tell me about the Bahai or anything. First of all, Tom Macintosh… I was out there, and people were giving me fish, and Tom Macintosh taught me how to fish, and I’ll always be indebted to him for that. If a person is hungry and you give him a fish, you give him a fish for a day. But if a person is hungry and you teach him how to fish, you’ve fed them for life, haven’t you. That’s what I’m saying. Check this out. Here’s a fish. You cook it and you eat it. Now, how are you going to get another one?
TP: You have to fish.
MOODY: There you go.
TP: I’d like you to talk about how you arrived at your faith and how it affects your music.
MOODY: When Linda and I were married, we were married at a place called Faith Chapel. That’s another thing got me, too. See, Sunday is the most racist day in America.
TP: Sunday is.
MOODY: Yeah. The White people go to their White church and Negroes go to their…because God is White and all that bullshit. And it’s a bunch of malarkey, because all of the religions come from the Far East or somewhere else. Anyway, my wife and I would go to Faith Chapel in San Diego, and when I would be sitting in the pews, the minister would be saying, “And Jesus said ‘do right,'” Every Sunday “Jesus said ‘do right.'” And I would be counting, let’s see, there are 28 women in the choir and 28 men. How many letters in that word? There are 35 lightbulbs over there. That’s what I’d be doing. Because he wouldn’t be saying a damn thing. Nothing. Then Martin Luther King’s birthday came up; they didn’t say anything about that. So one day my wife overheard me say to somebody, “I’m so sick of counting people in the choir and the lightbulbs,” and she said, “Honey, I had no idea you felt that way.” I said, “Honey, they never say anything. Nothing!” I mean, they say the same shit over and over again, which doesn’t mean anything. Suppose I see you every day, Ted, and I say, “Good morning, Ted.”
TP: “Good morning, Moody.”
MOODY: Good morning, Ted. And there we go. Shit, there’s more to that than… “Good morning, Ted. How are you? Hey, Ted, how’s the family?” Whatever it is. So my wife looked in the papers and saw there was something at the Bahai thing. So she said, “Honey, would you like to go to this thing?” I said, “Sure.” It so happened that it was a feast. We went, and when I walked into the place, right away it felt altogether different. Now, Faith Chapel, where we went, like there were Negroes, Caucasians, everything. But the vibe was a bullshit vibe, where people raise their hand, “Oh, Jesus!” and getting tears in their eyes, calling me a nigger today and then repenting, then coming back next week to…
TP: Two-faced.
MOODY: Yeah. So the thing at the Bahai place, there was Spanish people, Caucasians, just everything, and they were saying prayers in Hindu and Spanish or Persian. I said, “Wow, man.” It just felt nice there. And they didn’t have a minister. You just sat down and everybody talked. Did you know that I could marry someone because I’m a Bahai? Myself. Me.
TP: You can perform the ceremony.
MOODY: Yes. And I like that. Do you know why? Because that stuff about the minister standing up talking…man… Oh, and another thing about the Bahais is… When I went into the Air Corps they said, “What religion are you?” I said, “I don’t know. I think…” “Well, what was your mother?” I said, “I think my mother is a Baptist.” They said, “Then you’re a Baptist.” I said, “No, I’m not.” With the Bahais, a child cannot become a Bahai until the child investigates the religion and wants to become a Bahai. It’s beautiful. And the Bahais believe that Mankind is One, and Earth is one country. They had a convention at Carnegie Hall, and man, they had Bahais from all corners of the earth, and we played. I was looking out there, and I said, “Now, see, this is the way the world is.” You go to one church and you see all Caucasians sitting up there talking about “Oh, Jesus,” but they don’t want a Negro or a Chinese in there. Listen, man, the Negroes and the Chinese, they built this country. But this country and didn’t get paid for it. They promised the Negro 40 acres and a mule. Any time the Negro asks for something they say, “These black son-of-a-bitches are always asking for something. Why don’t they get out and work?” Well, shit. If they hadn’t worked, there wouldn’t be a White House, there wouldn’t be Germany, England… There wouldn’t be a lot of shit.
And that stuff about Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves? It’s a lot of bullshit. None of that stuff had anything to do with freeing the Negro. There’s a wonderful book called Forced Into Glory by Lerone Bennett. He really tells about Abraham Lincoln was a racist. He loved nigger jokes.
TP: So you came to the Bahai faith about thirty years after playing with Dizzy, if it was 1989. But you said in the earlier interview that you became much closer to Dizzy the second time around.
MOODY: Oh yes.
TP: It seems there must not be another musician who had more impact on you than Dizzy Gillespie.
MOODY: We had a wonderful relationship. It was wonderful being around him. I could talk to Diz and he could talk to me. It was just a good feeling being together; we liked being together when we were. I’d be in Sweden or somewhere, the phone would ring, and it would be Diz, calling me from Paris. When Diz was sick, every chance I could get… When I came from California, I would get a car and pick him up and take him out for a ride. It was just a good experience. Nice.
TP: He was so famous for passing on and sharing information, and I wondered what your experience was like in that regard.
MOODY: Oh, he shared information with me like that. He showed me things. I remember looking at him one time and saying, “Diz, you know what? I wish I would have gone to a music school and studied music.” And he looked at me and said, “Moody, you ain’t dead.” A light went on. That did it.
TP: I’ll conclude this conversation. But this week you’re playing with Mark Turner who is about 40 years younger than you. You do a lot of education. You made a comment in the earlier interview that musicians today are better than ever because they have access to such good education. I think that jazz music is unique among the arts because there’s a real-time interaction, real-time storytelling or narratives going on on the bandstand. They can be 80 and 20, they can be from Australia or Chicago, they can be from anywhere, and they’re still sharing a common language and moving things forward. I think what goes on this week on the bandstand would seem to bear that out.
MOODY: When you look at it, you have to remember. You have to have some musical knowledge. You can say musicians can get on the bandstand because they’re musicians, but not all musicians can get on the bandstand together. Because some people know songs that other people don’t know.
TP: So jazz is a meritocracy as well. You have to know something.
MOODY: Yeah, you have to know something, sure. Then when you get in, it’s an exchange of ideas. What’s happening is, literally I’m learning as much as I can learn. I don’t know what Mark is doing, but I’m stealing as much as I can steal or get or hold.
TP: So for you, every exchange is an opportunity to learn and take your stuff up another step.
MOODY: That’s it for me. I’ve played with Stan Getz, Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons, Dexter Gordon…
TP: Let me ask you about a particular week. Was there a week in Chicago around 1961 where you and Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons played a three-tenor week at McKie’s?
MOODY: Yes. It was just one of those things. Every time I looked, they threw us all together all the time. It was one of those things — bang.
TP: So it was another event within the long ride of your career.
MOODY: Yes. And you learned… I look to learn. The young kids today are very well schooled. It’s something where you have to… I’m trying to study on my own. Not only that, but I get things from Mike Longo, David Baker, Nathan Davis, Mark Turner… I’ll ask anybody a question to try to learn something.
TP: Do you listen to recordings, to music regularly apart from your practice?
MOODY: Well, I can’t say I listen to it regularly, because I don’t have regular times. But when I get a chance to listen, I do. I like to listen.
TP: Any particular area of music, or do you listen to everything?
MOODY: I try to listen to what’s going on today.
TP: In jazz.
MOODY: Yes.
TP: What have you been hearing in the last month or two…
MOODY: There are so many young musicians, that I don’t even know some of them, but they all sound good. If I go somewhere now and I hear somebody and they don’t sound good, I’m disappointed.
TP: That didn’t used to be the case.
MOODY: No, it wasn’t the case. Because people weren’t in school.
TP: So the rise of jazz education, of people being in school the past 25 years has been of incalculable benefit to jazz music.
MOODY: Without a doubt. 250,000 percent. Because whereas it would have taken somebody four or five years to start doing something, now you can do it in two years. You know what I mean?
TP: I’m being a Devil’s Advocate here. A lot of people talk about musicians of your generation having very individual sounds and very personal voices, and you can recognize someone in four notes, and that that isn’t so with the young musicians these days. Do you think there’s anything to do that?
MOODY: Let me say this. I always said when I was younger that I would never say that about a younger musician when I got older. Mainly because a young musician is like a colt. A young colt is running and ripping and dashing and darting. So the older musicians used to say, “Oh, they play too fast.” Well, see, before I can complain about anything or before I can criticize something, I should be able to emulate it. I should be able to do it. Then I have a license to say, “That’s no good.” If you say, “Why?” “Because of this.” “Can you do it?” “Yeah, here it is. Bam.” But you notice that people, they can’t do it, and if they can’t do it, then other people shouldn’t be doing it. So, man, young musicians are taking their music… Because what I hear, I hear. But because I hear what I hear…see, somebody else is hearing something else. When we’re all walking down the street together, we don’t see the same thing. The same thing applies to music. And if a younger musician is studying… Like, see, all these different rules that they’re making in music, they’re only made to be broken. Because things do not stay the same. Everything must change. And I say if the change is for the better, that’s beautiful. I think there are a lot of young musicians who are taking things, and they get the good stuff right at the beginning, and they’ve got it and they can just build up on that. It’s like habits. If you get a bad habit and then you build up on it, now you’ve got to break that habit and try to do a new one. Well, imagine the person who had the good habit at the beginning and they’re building. They’re way ahead of your ass. So the thing is for you not to be discouraged, to just go ahead and study. Study and try to get better. And quit talking about somebody, and listen for the good that everybody is doing. Because everybody can see bad if you want to, but look for good, and try to give good.
[-30-]
* * *
James Moody (8-26-00):
TP: I wanted to ask you about your current professional life. One thing is repertoire and handling a week in a club, like you’re doing now. How many tunes do you draw from with this band? Is it an infinite number? Is it a similar set every night, a different set every night?
MOODY: It’s different. What you do is you’re constantly trying to learn another tune, a different tune. But then, don’t forget, it’s Charlie Parker’s birthday the 29th of this month, and tomorrow is Lester Young’s birthday, so you would play a few of Charlie Parker’s things and a few of the numbers he was associated with, and then you’d play a couple of things you’re trying to learn. That’s how it goes. It’s constantly a learning process. If I played “Pop Goes The Weasel” every night, I would never be able to play as much as I could play on it. With a musical composition, you could play it… Say, if you were born and you could only play one number for the rest of your life, you would never be able to play everything that could be played on that composition. Do you see what I mean?
TP: Do you mean that every composition holds within it infinite possibility?
MOODY: Definitely.
TP: So when you play “Moody’s Mood For Love”…
MOODY: But hold it. There’s a difference. I don’t improvise on that. I’m playing that theme. See, if you play a theme, that’s one thing. Now, when you start improvising, the possibilities are infinite.
TP: So in your performance, you have themes and tunes that you improvise on.
MOODY: Right.
TP: And the themes might be “Moody’s Mood For Love” and “Bennies From Heaven”…
MOODY: No-no, “Moody’s Mood For Love” I don’t improvise on. Because “Moody’s Mood For Love” was the improvisation that I did.
TP: But just like Coleman Hawkins would play “Body and Soul,” though he would play it differently, and Illinois Jacquet would play “Flying Home,” you play “Moody’s Mood For Love.”
MOODY: Yes. But the only thing is, “Moody’s Mood For Love” is a song. That melody is the same melody that I played. Whereas that was a solo that I took, and I wouldn’t play that same solo over and over again, and it became a hit and that’s what the people want to hear.
TP: Also, you play it with such conviction, that if someone hadn’t heard it before they might not have any idea that you had played it about 25,000.
MOODY: Yeah. Or maybe 50,000. I still don’t know it.
TP: But apart from those pivot points within a set, everything else is open and fluid around it for you. In other words, all the other material and what you choose to play and what you select is an open, fluid learning process.
MOODY: Well, hopefully. When I play, I’m performing and I’m also practicing. You’re also practicing, because you keep in mind to hold your mouth correctly, you want to breathe right, you want to finger the horn right, you want to play something. If you play something and it didn’t come out, you do it again. The people might not dig it, but you’re doing it. In other words, you’re trying to give the people the best you can give them, and when you’re doing that, you’re being honest.
TP: Do you find that that sort of concentration focuses you in a mood for improvising at your best because it puts you in that honest frame of mind? What I’m thinking about is how you put yourself in the frame of mind to be fresh every night, every performance after playing for so long.
MOODY: Well, after playing for so long, you want to try to play something fresh if you can. See, actually there’s really nothing fresh. What it is is just put in a different way. And after playing for so long, if you don’t know how to put something in a couple of different ways, you might as well give it up.
TP: It always has seemed to me that if you weren’t a musician, you could have made a career as a comedian because your timing is so precise.
MOODY: I don’t even like to dwell on that. Because that’s like a little icing on the cake. If I care to say something, I’ll say it. If I care not to say anything, I’d like for it to be that way, too. Sometimes I just want a musical thing going. Know what I mean? And sometimes I feel it conducive to say something. But then a lot of times, guys start writing articles about it, and they put the lines I say… It wasn’t an offense, but the point is, you gave away who the survivor was.
TP: Who the survivor was? What do you mean?
MOODY: You don’t put the two and two together? What I say is when you give punchline away, you gave away who the survivor was. You say who won the million dollars. Didn’t you hear about that show?
TP: No, I’m sorry. I didn’t see the show.
MOODY: Now two and two makes four, right? But now, if I get ready to say something or somebody is playing the number… Like, a guy that was really aware of something like that would say, “his choice of music or the compositions was very profound, I thought, and I think when you go and listen to them, hopefully you’ll feel the same way I felt about them,” rather than saying, “Well, he played ‘Mood Indigo’ and the he played ‘Jump Off The Bridge, Mama,’ and then he played so-and-so.” I’m not saying you. I’m just saying that would be good if people would do that.
TP: I’d heard most of the jokes you told at that concert before, but you still got me. So I don’t think you have to worry about giving away the punchline. Have you in this year gotten hooked up with any record label or any recording I should know about?
MOODY: No, I didn’t. But I was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Berklee School of Music, and they presented it to me at Umbria, Perugia, in Italy this year. Wasn’t that nice. Me and Dave Holland got one.
TP: Will there be any records forthcoming at the end of this year or next year?
MOODY: I don’t know. What I want to do is, I want to do something that’s James Moody. All me. I want to do it myself. I want to do everything on it. I don’t want anybody to have anything to do with it or have anything to say about it. I want to just, bang, do it and put it out.
TP: What would something that was all James Moody be that was different?
MOODY: Look at it this way. It would be different because I would be doing it. That’s what would be different. I would be doing it and I would pick who I wanted to be on it, and be able to play what I wanted to play.
TP: Can I jump back with you? In our first interview I asked you to tell me a few sentences about some of the people you’ve encountered, which segued into something else. I’d like to state some names, you tell me whatever you want. Babs Gonzalez. It seems to have been a very close relationship at a certain point.
MOODY: Babs was aware of how things went as a road manager, and things on the road. Al Cooper of the Savoy Sultans was the one who recommended Babs to me, and that’s how we got together.
TP: Do you have anything to say about Babs’ wit and verbal virtuosity?
MOODY: Well, see, wit to you is not wit to someone else, and what someone says might knock you out but it might not knock me out. So Babs was Babs, as far as I was concerned.
TP: He was your road manager for a while, then he left, and Eddie Jefferson came in.
MOODY: He left and I hired Eddie Jefferson.
TP: And you told me the story that you didn’t know he’d written those lyrics until his girlfriend told you. What year did Eddie Jefferson join you? Can you remember?
MOODY: No, I don’t.
TP: Was it after a couple of years of the septet?
MOODY: I’m not good with names at all.
TP: His first recordings with you are in ’55.
MOODY: Well, I know he joined me in Cleveland, Ohio, because I was looking for a singer. That’s when he came to join me.
TP: You got paired a lot in the ’50s and ’60s with Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt for various jam sessions. A few words about each of them.
MOODY: Oh, it was wonderful, because Jug was a helluva player and so was Sonny Stitt. Every time I came to Chicago, they always stuck me in between those two guys.
TP: Any particular anecdote about either one?
MOODY: No. We were just always playing. And it was always enjoyable. It was always a good learning experience for me.
TP: Tell me about what they call “cutting contests” or “tenor battles.”
MOODY: That term gets on my nerves. I’m so sick of that. First of all, when I’m playing music, I like to play a certain way I play. Then they want to put 20 million playing with you, “I want to hear these people together.” Well, when people are making love, they don’t ask someone else to come in there with you to help you to do that. I’m not really particular about them. If there’s a thing and somebody’s playing, and you’re playing on a stage and they hired you for something, okay. But in a club or things like that, I’d rather play with my quartet or something, and let it go at that, and express myself, and that’s it.
TP: Are you very interactive with the different musicians in your band? Do they find things to surprise you and take you in different directions?
MOODY: Well, the thing is, I never tell anybody how to play. See? That’s the very reason I don’t do it. Lots of people have ideas, and I don’t want to stifle anybody, just like I don’t want to be stifled.
TP: In your improvisations are you picking up on information they’re giving you and taking it in unexpected directions?
MOODY: In other words, what you’re talking about is, am I listening to the group. I listen all the time. I hear everything. I listen, and if it goes over my head enough times, it will come to me another way.
TP: Let me ask you about Chano Pozo. You’re about the only person I can think of who recorded with him outside of Dizzy. Were you friendly?
MOODY: We roomed together a couple of times in California, in Los Angeles. He had a couple of bullets that were in him from… He wrote a song or something in Cuba, and it was a good-seller, and he wanted his money from the publishing company, and the publishing company told him to come back at 1 o’clock, but the guy wasn’t there with the money, and when he came back at 1 o’clock there was a guy waiting there, and he shot him. So the guy shot him a couple of times, and the bullets lodged in him and they couldn’t take them out. So Chano Pozo some nights he would feel good and some nights he wouldn’t feel good when he was playing. And some nights he’d tell me, “Here, Moody, feel here,” and I could feel the bullets in him.
Another thing was, one time Chano cracked me up, because… You remember the phrase people used to say, “Boy, that’s some deep shit”? Well, one day Chano came to me looking real perplexed, and he says, “Moody, Moody, what ‘deep shit’?” And he held his hand up high as if to indicate “shit” up high. Boy, I cracked up laughing. I tried to explain it to him as best I could. But he couldn’t understand when people were saying, “boy, that’s some deep shit.” He was looking for some deep shit somewhere. I’m telling you, it’s funny, man. And that look on his face when he was saying it. His face was kind of frowned up, like… Because he really wanted to know, and he didn’t know… Deep shit! And then he had his hand raised up high, like “Deep shit!” So anyway… [LAUGHS]
TP: Subsequently, over the years, you said you played a lot of Latin gigs, guest-starring, with Machito’s band or Tito Puente…
MOODY: Oh, Tito Puente was wonderful. Tito Puente and also Ray Barretto.
TP: And being with Dizzy, who more than anyone else was responsible for bringing the rhythms of the world together in a jazz context, and people seem to be picking up on that thoroughly in the last ten years or so…
MOODY: See, there’s a difference in playing a band that’s playing [SINGS LATIN GROOVE] and then playing with a Latin band. There’s a difference in the rhythms. What the difference is, it has to do with the way the Latin people play the rhythms and sing and then the way they play the jazz, and the way the jazz play the jazz and play the Latin. There’s a big difference. I can’t be more specific about it because of the rhythms. I’m not hip to the rhythms. If I could explain it to you, I would. But I know what’s happening. I can feel it. Like, there’s a guy who falls off a building, and when he’s killed, they say, “Can you tell me what velocity he fell? Can you tell me how many miles it was and how many inches did his head bash in? I don’t know all that, but I can tell you he fell.”
TP: That’s very well put. You said in our first interview that you first heard Coltrane in Cleveland, he was playing with Gay Crosse, and then you once met him in Chicago and drove him to the Selmer factory in Elkhart, Indiana.
MOODY: To pick up his soprano saxophone. I drove him to Elkhart, and he was looking at these saxophones and so forth, and that’s when he got this soprano, and a couple of months later is when he made “My Favorite Things.”
TP: You started playing soprano in the mid-’60s or so?
MOODY: Oh, I don’t remember what the date was. But I started playing soprano late, I started playing flute late, and I started playing everything late.
TP: Someone was telling me the other day that soprano saxophones are manufactured so much better now that intonation isn’t the problem it used to be…
MOODY: I can agree with that.
TP: Do you think that’s true in general, that instruments are much better made these days?
MOODY: Yes.
TP: And you’ve said very emphatically several times that you think the young musicians are extremely equipped…
MOODY: Yes. There are more schools. As far as I’m concerned, they have a better chance than I had when I was coming up for getting their knowledge, and getting it quick.
TP: Let me ask you about John Lewis. You must have met him 54 years ago.
MOODY: I met him with Dizzy Gillespie. Monk was there one day, and then a couple of nights later John was there. We roomed together a couple of nights in St. Louis. We see each other. In fact, I saw John in Perugia. We were on a panel together. We don’t stay in touch, but when we see each other we can look back at something and think, boy, what a wonderful memory that was.
TP: Did you have other dealings with Coltrane?
MOODY: I didn’t have any other dealings with him. None at all, other than he seemed like a nice, kind guy and so on. And he was a helluva musician.
TP: But you were very taken with his ideas and the conclusions he came up with.
MOODY: Of course. His impact on the music was phenomenal, and I’m still learning from it. Like, when the guy went to the moon and he said, “One big step for mankind.” Well, Coltrane was one big-great step for music-kind.
TP: It’s Lester Young’s and Charlie Parker’s birthday coming up.
MOODY: Lester Young was one of my idols. First I liked Jimmy Dorsey, then I liked Charlie Barnet and Georgie Auld, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and them. But then, when I heard Lester Young, that did something else. There was something about that that got me, and I wanted to play like that. Then I heard Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, then I wanted to play like that.
TP: But you never forgot anything you did before. It’s just additive.
MOODY: Well, I hope not.
TP: You said when you heard Prez and Bird, you wanted to play like that? Did you memorize their solos?
MOODY: What it was, I didn’t copy any of their solos from the standpoint of transcribing them. What I did was, there would be something in a solo that I would like and I would just copy that part, and I would do it with my ear. I would listen to it, play it over and over and I’d have it.
TP: Have you always had that ability to translate what was in your ear to moving your fingers on the saxophone from very early?
MOODY: Any musician can do that. That’s not such a big deal. Like I always say, “if you can’t sing it, you can’t play it.”
TP: So if you can’t sing it, you’re not going to be a musician.
MOODY: You’re not going to be a player, right.
TP: Kenny Clarke.
MOODY: Klook was wonderful. He was in Dizzy’s band when I joined it, and in Paris I got to know him better. We played together. I remember one time either I invited them over or they invited me over… I had a son and he had a son, and they were both in the bathtub for cribs, and we had a spaghetti dinner in Paris. I remember that.
TP: It seems like in Paris you met all the people a generation older than you who were living there.
MOODY: When I was in Paris, Coleman Hawkins was there, Don Byas was there, Roy Eldridge was there. A lot of those guys were there then.
TP: Did it have an effect on your attitude towards music, just being around those guys…
MOODY: Well, it wasn’t a musical thing. First of all, I was living with my uncle. I didn’t have to work. I wasn’t working. I went over there to stay for two weeks and stayed for three years. After I found out how the people were over there I wasn’t coming back to America, because I had been discharged, and I had been on the road with Dizzy, and I saw how the racism was down South. I had experienced all of that stuff, like Colored fountains and Colored waiting rooms. The bus driver had to go see if we could get food. He would have to go get sandwiches for us. We couldn’t stay in the hotels. If we went to a rooming house, if it was two dollars, it would be five dollars when we got there. There was a whole lot of crap down South. When I got to Europe it was different, because I thought, “Why do people hate me so much? What have I done?” Then when I got to Europe I said, “Ah, it’s not me; it’s them.”
TP: But was it different for you than when you were in Dizzy’s band and traveling around and being on 52nd Street, or did you feel a sense of collegiality with the older musicians during the years before you went to Europe?
MOODY: No, I didn’t. Because I looked up to them. It was a different feeling.
TP: But in Europe you felt a sense of collegiality with them.
MOODY: In Europe it was still a different feeling. It was a little better than it was in America, but it was still the same thing. You kind of have the respect for, like, Roy Eldridge or Coleman Hawkins, Don Byas.
TP: You were at the hotel in Las Vegas for how long?
MOODY: The Hilton International for seven years in the ’70s. I did Liberace and Connie Stevens, Elvis Presley…
TP: You told me you weren’t a soloist, you were in the section.
MOODY: I was in the band. I was in the saxophone section, the woodwind section. That was it.
TP: What did it do for your musicianship?
MOODY: It made my reading very good at the time. At the time, I could read much better. It got better and better. Now my reading is slow. Because if you don’t use it, you lose it.
TP: And for the last twenty years, since about 1980, you’ve been a touring musician, either with your own band or with a rhythm section or special projects?
MOODY: Yes, twenty years.
TP: Are you satisfied with doing that?
MOODY: I’m not satisfied with what I’m doing, because first of all, I don’t have what I want, the way I want it. I would like to have a permanent group, permanent, so that I could work with it and have it like I want it, to travel with me all the time.
TP: So the band with Todd Coolman and Renee and Adam Nussbaum doesn’t go with you everywhere now.
MOODY: No, they can’t. If I could have them like I wanted to, all the time at my disposal, and I could or subtract what I wanted to from it to put certain things or something… That’s what I would want.
TP: During this year and the last few years you’ve had a lot of honors, some highly produced, elaborate tribute concerts, things like this. Is there any situation you would aspire to do that hasn’t come your way over 54 years as a professional?
MOODY: Yes. I would like to have a nice, lucrative record contract where I was the producer and I was able to do whatever I wanted to do, the way I wanted to do it, when and how I wanted to do it. James Moody. I would like to be able to do it, to show that if James Moody was able to do what James Moody wanted to do himself, James Moody would be a great success.
TP: Please talk to me a bit about your relationship with Dizzy. I know you’ve discussed this 800 million times and spoke to the guy earlier for the book…
MOODY: It’s very simple. You can only be… There are people who elaborate and it really amounts to nothing but a hill of beans, and then there are people that say it was a relationship that I will value as long as I live, because of the importance of it and the profoundness of it.
TP: Would saying more about it trivialize it?
MOODY: Yes. Because that’s it. There are times you feel like saying things, and then there are times you just want to say what you say.
TP: You said one very specific thing, about a particular harmonic figure that h wanted, and you told me twice that you were bemoaning to him that you hadn’t gone to music school and he said, “Moody, you’re not dead.”
MOODY: No. What I said was, “Diz, I wish I would have gone to school and studied music.” And Diz said, “Moody, you ain’t dead.” And that lightbulb went on. I immediately went and bought some more books, music books.
TP: In the band in the ’60s, did you do a lot of rehearsing? Your unisons are so precise. On some of them, like the “Groovin’ High” date, you sound almost as good as Dizzy did with Charlie Parker in the ’40s…
MOODY: Look at it this way, Ted. You’ve got to say this. Did you rehearse? Yes, we did rehearse. Some people can rehearse one time and get it perfect. Some people can rehearse it two times. So just say we were sufficient with the rehearsals.
TP: How many days a year would you say you worked with Dizzy in the ’60s? Half the year? 210 days a year?
MOODY: I don’t know. We worked when we worked, and we worked a lot of times just on the road.
TP: You spent a decade doing about half the year on the road with Dizzy.
MOODY: I don’t know. I’m not good at that. I’m not going to say “I’m 20 days here and 30 days off.” I’m not like that.
TP: If I say in the story that “in the ’60s Moody toured incessantly with Gillespie”…
MOODY: That would be sufficient.
TP: And that your friendship blossomed in that period in a way it couldn’t when you were with the big band, that would also be sufficient?
MOODY: No, I wouldn’t say it blossomed the way it couldn’t. It blossomed more because we were closer in the quintet.
TP: Were you close when you were in the big band?
MOODY: No. In the big band you’d be in the bus. Dizzy would be down front talking to other people. I’d be in the back of the bus, talking with Dave Burns. The bus was called… The hoot-hounds were in the back and the pot-hounds were in the front. Hoot is drink.
TP: So the drinkers were in the back and the ones who were smoking pot were in the front. Sounds like you had a lot of fun on the bus.
MOODY: Well, it depends on what the stuff did for you when…
TP: I guess you were trying to blur the reality of being on the goddamn bus.
MOODY: Yes.
TP: You’re still on the road a lot. What is it like? Does it feel like second nature? Is it something you have to endure?
MOODY: Well, it feels a little better from the standpoint that I travel first-class. There’s no other way. First class by airplane, and that’s it. Because I think I’ve earned it. It’s even better when my wife is with me. Everything, whatever I do, it’s always first-class airplane tickets if they want me. If not, don’t hire me. Because I am not going any other way.
TP: But it’s nothing like when you had your septet with the car and drove to the northern cities in the winter and the southern cities in the summer.
MOODY: I was doing all the driving. All the driving and everything!
TP: You did all the driving, too?
MOODY: I didn’t trust anybody else. And I said, “Lord, if I ever get a chance, I’m going to fix it so…” That’s where I got so I like to travel alone. Because traveling all the time bunched together and everything… I said, “Lord, if I ever… I’ll give everybody their plane ticket. You go when you want, you go when you want, and I’m going when I want.”
TP: I guess when you’re traveling with a bunch of characters in the band, it can get a little hairy…
MOODY: You get sick of the same old shit. Because there are other things going on, a lot of beautiful things going on, like the twelfth planet, stuff like that.
Do me a favor. You’ve got to put down who keeps me going, and who I love more than anything in the world. That’s Linda Moody.
TP: I may print what she said about how you met.
MOODY: Okay.
TP: I think it’s interesting how someone in their seventies keeps going, keeps stays fresh and youthful, and you said it there. It’s because you’re in love and have something to look forward to.
[-30-]
* * *
James Moody Colleagues (Kenny Barron, Jon Faddis, Jimmy Heath, Todd Coolman, Talib Kibwe, Mark Turner):
TP: Moody said that he brought you into Dizzy Gillespie’s band?
BARRON: Yeah, that’s true. When I first came to New York I wound up working with Moody, and when he went with Dizzy, which was about a year after that, I happened to run into him one day on Broadway… Dizzy was working at Birdland, and I ran into Moody, and he told me that Lalo Schiffrin was leaving, and he asked me would I be interested in the gig. And of course. I’d just gotten married, wasn’t married. So I went to Birdland to talk to Dizzy, and he hired me without even having heard me just on Moody’s recommendation.
TP: What were the circumstances of your working with Moody when you got to New York?
BARRON: I was staying on East 6th Street, next door to my brother, Bill, which was walking distance from the Five Spot, where Moody was working. I went to hear him, and since he knew Bill, he allowed me to sit in. I guess I must have made a favorable impression, because I started working with him. He had a nice sextet, with Dave Burns, Tom Macintosh on trombone, Edgar Bateman on drums, and Steve Davis on bass. Most of the music was Tom Macintosh’s, very nice sextet kind of stuff. It was mostly his music.
TP: What was he like as a bandleader? You were very young. What was his manner toward you?
BARRON: He was very gracious. Which he is today.
TP: He said he’s never heard you make a mistake in 40 years.
BARRON: Well, I have — plenty of mistakes. But Moody was very gracious, very generous, and he hasn’t changed since I’ve known him. He’s always been a very sweet person.
TP: He noted that towards the end of the ’50s is when Tom Macintosh started teaching him music theory, that before that he’d been playing more or less by ear, and that his life turned around from learning to read music. It got rid of a lot of his insecurities, and so on. It would seem to me that around the time you got with him is shortly after that process started happening.
BARRON: For me, when I first started working with Moody, he was incredible! [LAUGHS]
TP: It seems unbelievable that this guy who was playing all this stuff says that he was playing by ear and so on, but so he says.
BARRON: Yes. And even today, I can recall working not with his band, but I think during one of those tributes to Dizzy or at Lincoln Center. We were going over some music, and he kept asking me to run over the changes for him, which he didn’t feel comfortable. Which I knew wasn’t true. He may have felt uncomfortable. But he played more stuff than I could ever play! He’s still like that. He’s very humble. He’s always been like that.
TP: Had you listened to him a lot before you joined the band?
BARRON: Yes, I did. I wouldn’t say he was an influence, but he was very popular.
TP: You were growing up when the septet was big. Can you talk about how he was regarded by musicians in the ’50s and the impact of the band?
BARRON: That’s kind of when I first started listening. But everybody… Moody has always been very well-respected by his peers. I think he’s always been known for… Moody is very adventurous and a very adventurous player. Although the band he had during that time kind of a very…not almost commercial, but it was a very accessible band. They played nice music. I remember some of those records on Prestige. Actually, my sister had a lot of those records. She lived around the corner from me, and I used to go over there just to listen to her records. I remember one tune in particular, “A Sinner Kissed An Angel” where he had John Lathan on bass, Gene Keyes was the piano player, Clarence Johnston on drums.
TP: Hank Crawford and Fathead said that the sound of that band influenced the sound Ray Charles started to use, that it was influential in the way popular music was being constructed.
BARRON: I can believe it. Again, I was young then. I remember hearing some of Hank Crawford’s band when I was with Dizzy, and I’d think about some of those recordings of Moody’s, and I’d think about how Ray Charles’ band sounded. It was very close.
TP: Talk about your relationship developed with Dizzy’s band?
BARRON: We became very close. We were roommates for a while. We’d be in San Francisco. Especially after Chris White and Rudy Collins left the band, we’d be roommates a lot of the time.
TP: Was he very much a mentor to you? Kind of another older brother?
BARRON: I kind of looked at him that way. He may not have looked at me that way. But as I say, he was a very kind of person, and I very seldom saw him get upset about anything.
TP: He has a very even temperament?
BARRON: Yes. Except for smoking. [LAUGHS] And we both smoked during that time. But other than that, he always took care of his health… These are things I remember. He was very conscious of his health; although he did smoke at the time, he eventually stopped. And he was always practicing. Again, he was a very-very kind of person. Sometimes we’d work in Boston at Lennie’s on the Turnpike, and at the time I didn’t have a car. He lived in Forest Hills, and my wife and I would take the subway to Lefrak City, where he lived, and we would ride up to Boston with Moody and Allison. One time I had my baby with me; my daughter was an infant. He was always very cool that way.
TP: He said that he and Dizzy became very close during those years. Because it was in a big band before, they really hadn’t gotten to know each other that well, but during the ’60s, because of the proximity in the small group, they became quite close then, or their relationship cemented itself.
BARRON: I think that’s kind of true. They were very close. The relationship was very healthy. It was a lot of fun also. I mean, I could see that between the two of them.
TP: It was a lot of fun because they both have a sense of humor.
BARRON: Yes. And it wasn’t put on. I mean, it was really like that. And musically…I won’t say musically they were like minds, but in terms of stage presence. I think they both looked at music as being entertainment as well.
TP: The purpose of it being to communicate maybe.
BARRON: Yes. And they really did that very well together on stage. So it made it really work.
TP: Is there any particular anecdote about, say, their humor that sticks in your mind?
BARRON: I can’t think of any one particular thing involving the both of them together. Of course, a lot of it was very spontaneous. And it affected the whole band sometimes. I remember playing a matinee at the Lighthouse in L.A. Between tunes all of a sudden Chris White starts screaming, “Okay, it’s time for me to reveal my true identity,” and took off his shirt and had on a Superman shirt. Little things like that.
TP: Everybody became a comic.
BARRON: Everybody became a part of it. That’s because Dizzy’s and Moody’s sense of humor was infectious. One time we were going to San Francisco from New York, and Dizzy had on these long, flowing African robes that he wore on the plane. When we got off the plane in San Francisco, people actually thought he was an African dignitary. And Moody kind of played it up as just a valet or whatever.
TP: “Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac”, were they working that out during the time that you were in the band?
BARRON: No, that had been done before.
TP: You say you don’t know whether they were necessarily of the same mind musically. Can you elaborate?
BARRON: They certainly came from the same period. But I think Moody may have been a little bit more adventurous than Dizzy was.
TP: In terms of dealing with the up-to-the-minute stuff that was going in the music, like Coltrane?
BARRON: Yeah. I think Moody was a little more into that.
TP: I guess Dizzy was complete unto himself, wasn’t he.
BARRON: Right. Which wasn’t a bad thing.
TP: Not if you’re Dizzy.
BARRON: Right! Because there were some incredible moments that I heard during the four years I was with him, and listening back to some of the older tapes and recordings that I did with him, they’re unbelievable — the whole band. But Moody was obviously… There’s a tape from the BBC, my very first trip to Europe, and Moody played so much stuff, it’s just unreal.
TP: If you were going to describe Moody’s sound to somebody who hadn’t heard him… Well, maybe you’d tell somebody to go buy the damn record. But if they weren’t in a position to do so, how would you describe it?
BARRON: I don’t know if I could. The quality of his sound. And it depends on the kind of music. Because on the very up-tempo things his sound can be very percussive, a very rough sound, and in the kinds of things he might choose to play, a lot of strange intervals. So that’s one particular kind of sound. I mean his sound is actually…I wouldn’t say harsh, but hard. Then I’ve also heard him play ballads (I’m talking bout tenor now) where his sound is very deep and warm. It depends on the mood.
TP: Sounds like more of a blues-informed player on the more up-tempo, technically complex stuff, more vocal inflection on the notes or whatever.
BARRON: Yes.
TP: Then you continued to play with Moody on and off. You worked with him for a minute in the ’80s, I recall. Two of what I consider his best records you’re on. One is Feelin’ It Together and there’s another on RCA. How do you see Moody’s concept having evolved in the period since Dizzy?
BARRON: Well, he’s constantly searching. You can see that. Constantly searching for things that are new for him. And he’s constantly on his horn, trying to find different things to do and say. It’s just never-ending with him. And behind all of that, it’s still his sense of fun. I mean, I just saw him not too long ago at the Charlie Parker thing. As usual, he sounded great. It was him and Jon Faddis which is almost like listening to him and Dizzy. But Moody is unbelievable. And when I think about how old he is and his energy… That’s what gets me, his energy, and the fact that he’s constantly trying to improve.
TP: Is there any particular point about Moody’s persona that you would hone in on as the most salient thing to know about him?
BARRON: In terms of his music, a couple of things. His sense of adventure and his sense of humor. I really like those two things about his playing. One minute he’s playing all these strange fourths, really looking for it, but on the other hand he plays those real humorous things. He changes the sound of his horn so it sounds real old. He does all kinds of things.
TP: So he’s a wizard of the saxophone.
BARRON: Yes. In terms of his personality, he’s a great human being. That’s basically it. He’s a really great human being.
TP: Another thing is that he’s so strong on alto sax and soprano, but that he has a personality on those instruments.
BARRON: Yes, alto sax and the flute. Although he plays tenor most of the time now. When we were with Dizzy he played alto a lot more, and quite a bit of flute. For me he’s probably one of the better flute players among multi-instrumentalists. People who just play flute exclusively obviously play a bit differently than someone who plays all the reeds. But for me, Moody is probably one of the best flautists.
TP: But when you think of Moody, it’s primarily a tenor sound you hear.
BARRON: Now. That’s interesting. Again, when I thought of him years ago I always thought of alto. I don’t know why. But when I think of him now, I hear tenor.
* * *
TP: I guess you first met Moody when you met Dizzy. You’ve known him now for thirty years.
FADDIS: Over 30 years. I would say that Moody is one of the warmest people of all time and he’s also very smart. He’s really, really intelligent, and I think that’s reflected in the style of playing that he does.
TP: By “style of playing,” do you mean the consistent quest for new challenges, which seems to be the thing that animates him and keeps him going, the search for new ways of expressing himself.
FADDIS: Well, that. But also there’s a certain logic to his playing. I don’t want to say his playing is intellectual, but it’s very intelligent and logical. And he’s like Dizzy in that regard, in that he can sit down and tell you… You say, “What was that he played, and then he’ll sit down and tell you and say, “here’s what it is.”
TP: So he has the ability to break everything down into its components.
FADDIS: oh yes.
TP: He said that in the first phase of his career, he was flying blind. He said he couldn’t read music, he didn’t really know what he was doing, he was playing by ear, and it led to various insecurities, going as far to say that part of why he had his drinking problem at that time is because he felt like he was treading on such thin ice. So it’s interesting he’s developed such a comprehensively analytical (?).
FADDIS: He never really told me that! I knew he had a drinking thing, but I didn’t know that was the cause behind it. But then again, Dizzy must have heard something!
TP: He said he started playing alto at 16, didn’t really start until ’43 when he went into the Army, and he comes out three years later with Dizzy! If you had to describe his sound in some impressionistic way, what language would you use?
FADDIS: I wouldn’t say impressionistic. I would say pointillistic. I’d put it this way. It’s like that painting by Seurat, “Sunday In The Park With George” at the Art Institute of Chicago. When you look at it up close, it doesn’t look like much. It looks like a lot, because you see all these details, and it seems sort of disjointed. But when you step back, you get a much clearer picture of the connection and the great work of art that it is. To me, that’s something like Moody. Sometimes you can stand next to him for a while and almost take him for granted. But then when you sit in the audience and listen to him, you say, “Oh my God.” You step off to the side of the bandstand and say, “Oh, man, what is he playing.” Because a lot of times when you’re on the bandstand, you’re a part of the music, even if you’re not playing it. Moody is always full of surprises. But when you’re on the bandstand, you might not notice them as much as if you would step back a little bit.
TP: Is that because he makes himself blend into the ensemble in a certain way?
FADDIS: I don’t know if that’s something he does consciously or unconsciously. But I’m speaking as somebody who has stood next to him on the bandstand, and what that’s like being next to him on the bandstand.
TP: I guess you’ve been aware of Moody from your earliest years of listening, just from having been involved with Dizzy’s music so much. Can you talk about how you hear his sound having evolved from those early years to how he approaches things today?
FADDIS: Well, his sound, or his style. I would say more his style. As far as his sound, the only thing he did which I didn’t really care for was his use of plastic reed. I thought he sounded better with the wood reed. But his style has evolved quite a bit, and it’s become I think a lot more harmonically advanced, but within that development it still retains a sense of melody. It’s still melodic playing.
TP: How is it being a leader on a session where he’s a guest artist, such as Dizzy’s World?
FADDIS: It’s fun. Moody is very humble. He’s not in the practice or coming into a gig and just reading any more, as he was when he was in Dizzy’s band or when he was in Vegas for all those years, when he had his reading chops up. He’s not in the habit of doing that much any more. So when we did that Dizzy’s World thing he was like, “Oh, man, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” It’s really funny.
TP: Was he very personally supportive of you when you were young? I’d imagine you met him when you met Dizzy?
FADDIS: Yes, he and Dizzy both. But the thing that surprised is when I first met Moody… He started giving me advice the first night that I played with Dizzy, and he said, “Man, whatever you learn to play, learn how to play it backwards.'” That’s one thing he said that I can remember. One thing that felt good to me and felt very warm is that I was playing with Mingus in Nice in 1972, so at that time I was 18, almost 19, and hanging out with Dizzy a little bit backstage, and Moody was there, and he remembered me, and he gave me a hug and said, “Yeah, I remember you sat in with us at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco; how you doin’, man?” I was like a long-lost son or brother or something.
TP: So he has an embracing personality. People almost universally talking about how warm and open he is, and his penchant for sharing information.
FADDIS: The one thing about that embracing which no one really talks about. See, Moody had this cologne made up for him. Did you know that? He had this James Moody cologne. And when Moody sees you in the morning, going on the bus or at the breakfast, you get up and he’ll always insist on a hug on both sides. But when he gives you that, his cologne sort of rubs off on you! And it carries with you throughout the day. Which can be okay if you don’t carry your own. So usually if I’m on the road with Moody, I’ll avoid putting my cologne on.
TP: This is what being a jazz veteran really means, is knowing when to wear the cologne and when not.
FADDIS: Something like that.
TP: Would you talk about his relationship with Dizzy, and your speculations on what drew Dizzy so closely to Moody? Moody said that they didn’t really become close until they traveled in the ’60s.
FADDIS: Well, I wasn’t there in the ’40s. I know that in the ’60s, that’s also one of my favorite bands that Dizzy had, the one with Moody and Kenny Barron and Chris White and Rudy Collins. Moody would talk about things that Dizzy told him back in the ’40s that he is just starting to understand what Dizzy meant. That’s how deep Dizzy was. I know they must have been very close, because Dizzy was Bahai and then Moody became Bahai.
TP: Although Moody said it had nothing to do with Dizzy. It happened after he got married.
FADDIS: I don’t mean close in that he was copying Diz, but that they shared the same outlook on I guess the spiritual aspect of life. There was a book about Dizzy last year by Alan Shipton, and he asked me what I thought of the book, because they asked me to do a little blurb for the back cover, and I refused to do it. One thing he mentioned in that book is that Moody, in his opinion, during the ’60s, was just acting as a comic foil to Diz. I’m saying, “how can he say that?” Then he cites a couple of tracks on a recording where it wasn’t Moody doing the stuff! It was Chris White.
But Moody would always talk about the things Dizzy would tell him about life and about music. I guess the first time that Moody really seemed grounded and satisfied with his life is after he married Linda.
TP: He makes no bones about that.
FADDIS: I think that’s something very important with him. She provides him with a lot. He had gone through some other relationships, and he would sit down and talk to me about them and shake his head. He’d say, “Isn’t that strange?” I’d say, “Yeah, that’s strange.”
TP: I don’t see comedy as denoting any superficiality at all. I think one could say that even with you a bit because you have a penchant for broad or drier humor. I noticed at his concert in April that he was telling the same jokes he’s been telling for 30-40 years, but you still laugh because his timing is so perfect. Do you hear that humor in his playing also?
FADDIS: Oh yeah. He’s one of them cats like Picasso who can make you laugh out loud at some of the stuff does. “Oh my gosh, where did that come from?” He can really touch you deep down with I guess the subtleness of humor in his playing. It’s not a more evident type of humor, like, say, somebody like Clark Terry. It’s a little more subtle.
Call Kenny back and ask him about the blue uniforms they used to have with the piping…
* * *
TP: Let me take you back to the beginning. When do you remember meeting Moody? Must have been the first time you saw Dizzy Gillespie’s band.
HEATH: Right.
TP: Can you pinpoint it?
HEATH: It was probably 1946. I think they came to Philadelphia, and Moody was in the band. If it wasn’t ’46, maybe he can correct me. But I remember we invited the whole band down to my mother’s house. John Lewis was playing at that time.
TP: Was Kenny Clarke the drummer?
HEATH: Yes. We invited them all down to the house, and a lot of the band members came, Moody and Dave Burns… I don’t recall everybody that was there. But that was my first time to meet Moody.
TP: I guess he’d done the “Emanon” solo then.
HEATH: In Philly we had heard the “Emanon” solo, and all the musicians around Philly were crazy about the Dizzy Gillespie band, period, and the new music, Bebop, and the solo was very exciting to all the saxophone players around home.
TP: Let me ask a moron question. Why was the solo exciting at that moment in time?
HEATH: Well, Moody played very fast on tenor. He doubled up. And the solo was different than any blues solo that you had heard, similar to coming out of Charlie Parker and the bebop sound. He had the bebop sound.
TP: So along with Dexter Gordon…Moody and Dexter Gordon and Teddy Edwards were the first who articulated that on the tenor sax.
HEATH: And Sonny Stitt. He was one, too.
TP: Then your first acquaintance with Moody is 1946; you’ve known him 54 years. I would imagine you kept in fairly close touch with him over the next few years.
HEATH: Oh yes.
TP: What do you remember about his manner and his personality as a young man?
HEATH: Moody has always been a very nice person, and everybody knows that. He was very interested in learning as much as he could about the music. He actually was basically playing by ear at that time when he played “Emanon.” Later on, when he had his group with Johnny Coles and Tom Macintosh, some of the people like that convinced Moody he had to learn his changes and play by changes. I don’t know why…
TP: Moody says he’s eternally indebted to Tom Macintosh for that. He says that before it was like flying blind, and it caused him all sorts of anxiety and inner turmoil.
HEATH: Well, there were things within himself he couldn’t do. Because if you don’t know the insides of the music and the changes, there’s a limitation put on what you play. As a player by ear, he was already so far advanced, it didn’t take much concentration — but I guess it did. It took a few years. Because Moody began to play so good by changes, until… He recorded one of my songs in a later year, “A Sound For Sore Ears,” which had kind of difficult changes, and man, he ate that stuff up then! Because Johnny Coles and Macintosh were… Particularly Macintosh. He was a schooled musician from Juilliard. He was a writer, and he knew a lot about the harmony. And when Moody decided that he was going to do that, the result is obvious, that he is one of the greatest players who ever lived — now. Moody, right now.
If he hears you play a lick or a sequence that he hasn’t heard, he’ll say, “What is that, Section?” He calls me “Section.” We call each other Section from playing in reed sections together over the years. If he hears you play something and he asks you what that is, once you show it to him, man, Moody takes it and takes it into his own style and elaborates on it, turns it inside-out, and does everything possible with that idea to make it his own. I know on one occasion, Moody and I made a record with Bags. The record is called Big Bags for Riverside. Tadd Dameron wrote half of the music on it and Ernie Wilkins wrote the other half. It’s one of the greatest big band records I’ve ever been a part of. The reed section was wonderful. What I was getting to is the fact that on some of the things someone was playing lead alto, but then on Tadd’s arrangement on “Round Midnight” Bags asked Moody to play the lead. And man, that is one of the most beautiful sounding lead performances that I’ve been involved in. And he’s playing alto. But Moody mostly played tenor all of his career. But that was one experience, and the others are numerous.
TP: Let me take you back to the ’40s for a second. You came in Dizzy’s band after Moody had moved to Europe.
HEATH: Right.
TP: Were you in actually to replace Moody?
HEATH: No. I didn’t replace Moody because I was playing alto. Coltrane and I played alto in the band. Jesse Powell was one of the tenor players, and Rudy Williams, known as Bones, and then Paul Gonsalves was in the band.
TP: Where I was going with that is that Moody is just one year older than you and Coltrane. Did he seem much older to you at that time, or was he musically that much more advanced, or was it just a matter of circumstance?
HEATH: He was advanced because he was around Dizzy. He was in the first big bebop band that recorded. So that made him a person for us to idolize, in a way, because we…
TP: You aspired to that.
HEATH: Yeah. We had never gotten to the point where he was.
TP: Do you have any memories from your perspective at that time of the relationship Dizzy and Moody had in the ’40s, of their interaction, or is that something you just don’t know about?
HEATH: I just know that Dizzy really dug Moody. Of course, in the long career that followed afterward, you can’t separate Moody from Dizzy.
TP: Moody said they became closer in the ’60s when they had more proximity.
HEATH: Well, they played in a smaller group together. In the big band, Dizzy had a lot of personalities that he had to deal with. But Moody was one of his main people, and probably, like you said, they got closer when the big band broke up and they were always on the road and everything.
TP: Part of the thing about Moody is that he has this photographic memory and exceptional musical intuition on top of the hard work he’s put in. Particularly in his ear-playing days.
HEATH: Well, he had a gift that he developed. He started out with a gift, and he developed it. One thing technically is Moody’s tone. The way he accented on the saxophone was much faster than most of the other saxophone players, and distinguishable in that. Moody used to tell me that when he played an eighth note line in the bebop tradition he would be thinking to himself, “tit-a-little, tit-a-little, tit-a-little,” [SINGS PHRASING REFRAIN], that accent on eighth notes which was… The bebop language included a lot of eighth notes or sixteenths. The accent was always on the AND, “uh-dah, uh-dah,” on the one that was off the beat. It gave it a different kind of a float.
TP: Did you follow the septet he organized when he came back from Europe?
HEATH: Yes. They used to come to Philly to the Showboat, and when I was there I used to go see them. One of my good friends was in the band playing trumpet, Bill Massey. Bill Massey was the person who introduced me to Coltrane. They were in the Navy together. We had a lot in common because we were interested in both composition and playing… No, sorry. I’m wrong about that. Bill was with Gene Ammons. Johnny Coles was the one. But they used to go to Philly and play the Showboat, and I would go hear Moody. Moody and I played together on several occasions. But whenever Dizzy was around and Moody and they would come around, if I wasn’t working, I would go see them.
The thing I admire about Moody is his tenacity and his focus. When he was out in Las Vegas playing as a kind of studio musician, he called me once. “Section,” and he started playing the clarinet. He was practicing the clarinet on the phone and showing me how he had been able to get to the clarinet. He was always a great flute player. To me, he is the epitome of the Bebop flute player. He is not the Western Classical traditional flute player. It doesn’t sound like somebody who has been trained in Western Classical Music. But he could play with the Bebop style on the flute, and it’s distinguishable.
TP: I did an interview with Hank Crawford and Fathead, and they said that when Ray Charles was forming his band and his sound they were paying close attention to the sound of Moody’s Septet, the John Acea arrangements and so forth. Do you recollect that as an influential band in defining a certain type of sound?
HEATH: Was it a sextet?
TP: A septet, four horns.
HEATH: I don’t remember that band that much. Except things he did, like… Was that when he did “Last Train From Overbrook” and all that stuff?
TP: That was later on. Then all the things with Eddie Jefferson in the mid-’50s.
HEATH: Right. I know Moody was having trouble drinking wine or something. He said he went to the police station and told them to stop the green men from chasing him.
TP: He didn’t tell me that, but he attributed what caused him to do to playing by ear and the anxiety it caused him on a nightly basis.
HEATH: Well, guys were coming along with great chordal knowledge, and Moody wanted to be like them. He wanted to play with the same knowledge of the other guys who were playing at that time. I didn’t know that was the reason he was drinking. The road, man. The road is rough when you’re traveling all the time.
TP: And he was traveling all the time. He said the northern cities in the winter, the southern cities in the summer, and he didn’t let anyone else do the driving. He didn’t trust anyone else to do the driving.
HEATH: Well, see, all that kind of wear and tear, that leads to drinking and smoking or whatever you do. So he was drinking a lot, which…
TP: And he had the presence of mind to take care of it.
HEATH: Yeah. And the thing about Moody is that he’s a giving person. He’s always giving. I got a straw hat that Moody gave me. If he finds some books that are interesting, he sends me books. He may find books about health or vitamins. He carries a ton of vitamins on the road with him. He has a suitcase full. “Section, have you ever tried this?” He will hand you… He’s just a person that gives all the time. We went on tour with…they had two bands on tour with Philip Morris, and we had about three or four weeks in all different places, the Philippines, all over the place. Moody will… I don’t know when he started that. He adapted just a way of kissing everybody. He would get up in the morning and go to breakfast, and you’d be there, and he’d kiss you once on one side, once on the other side. Everybody! Everybody that he meets. He’d kiss them once on each side. If you come back to lunch together, Moody would kiss you on both cheeks. “Hey, Section!” Boom! And then if you come to dinner together, BOOM. To leave you at night, he kisses you. So I eventually said at the Blue Note when they were having the birthday or something for him, they asked me one statement about Moody. I said, “Moody got more kisses than Hershey’s.
TP: Talk about the evolution of Moody’s sound, specifically on the tenor, or the phases of his sound in the time you’ve known him.
HEATH: Well, there are certain things that are identifiable with Moody. I don’t care how his sound would change, and what mouthpiece and what equipment he’s using. There’s James Moody in there. I can always tell. Moody has his own sound. You can identify Moody when he starts. I can tell if he plays four bars; I know that’s Moody. There are certain things that he does. Jumping up in the higher register and screaming in a certain way. But over the years, his development now is…he has become so free, not in a random fashion, but a scientific freedom, that he can do anything he wants (that’s what I think) with the saxophone. Speed has never been a problem with him. He’s always been a fast player. So when he wants to slow down, he slows down. But usually, he’s going to play fast. So he had great technique. His sound right at this point (and having played with him for the last four or five days together in Pittsburgh with Jon Faddis) is real smooth now. He’s gotten real smooth and mellow with his old age, like wine. He’s mellow. It’s not harsh and brash. It’s very soft until he wants to imply these certain emotional hollers or screams.
TP: When I heard him it was the Charlie Parker birthday, not at Tompkins Square but at Iridium, and he started off with “Groovin’ High,” and he played so much blues on it, putting so much vocalization on it, and it always seemed like the most difficult interval was when he’d put the most vocal emphasis.
HEATH: I think he can do anything… If he wants to play it in a bluesy fashion, he can do it. If he wants to play it in a straight bebop way without the blues or just the changes, he can do it. He has control. He has true knowledge. He is in complete control. Moody’s flute playing and his saxophone are so mature at this point. The way he acts…his personality is what I was trying to get at. The fact of being with Dizzy Gillespie, who is the mentor for both of us. That’s my man. Birks was the guy. His sense of humor, his stage presence. I think he learned a lot of stage presence from Dizzy also, not only music. He learned how to be a nice guy, or he felt it after he straightened his habit out…how to be a nice guy. That’s what Dizzy was. A down-to-earth human being with a tremendous sense of humor. Moody is a very funny guy.
TP: His timing is unbelievable. You can hear tell a joke you’ve heard 15 times, and you’re still going to laugh.
HEATH: Yes. Moody is one of my dear friends. He’s been that since the ’40s. We had so much fun last week as we do every time we get together. I just look forward to being in his company. He’s got more kisses than Hershey’s! That’s got to be in this.
* * *
TP: How long have you been playing with Moody?
COOLMAN: Since ’84 or ’85. Precisely I don’t know. But I met him around that time, and started playing with him shortly after that.
TP: This is a few years after he left Las Vegas and the studios, and was out again as a solo artist. Was he working then primarily as a solo artist, picking up rhythm sections and trying to gather a more or less permanent working band by that time?
COOLMAN: Yes. I know he had a band, Rufus Reid and Harold Mabern… I’m not sure if the drums were stabilized by that time, but I know that those two other guys were working with him more times than not, that they were doing things together for at least a couple of years prior to my being involved with him. All during that time he still was doing things with local rhythm sections when he would go on the road some. He didn’t seem able to always have those guys with him when he traveled. So he was hoping to get a band together, I think.
TP: What were your impressions about him before knowing him and meeting him?
COOLMAN: I first heard Moody, believe it or not, after I had finished college and was living in Chicago in the ’70s. He played on a television show on a PBS station. The show was Dizzy, Bags, Al Haig, Ray Brown, Kenny Clarke, Sarah Vaughan…
TP: That has to have been in ’76, when Kenny Clarke came here, and played the Showcase with Al Haig.
COOLMAN: It probably was. I got wind of this show, and they wanted an audience, and you could get free tickets by calling or something, and I did that. I went down and heard Moody for the first time. I was amazed by how fluent he was. I remember how easy he made everything seem. It seemed like he had no problem playing anything he wanted. And of course, I associated him then with those other players, because I didn’t know if he had a band or who he was working with, but I figured, “Gee, if he’s with these people, he must be that great.” But besides that, besides having a great respect for his playing, I didn’t have any lasting impressions. I never got to meet him. I heard him play in clubs a couple of times around that time, too, but not as a bandleader. I always heard him in these all-star things. I think Joe Segal would have him come for what he called “Charlie Parker Month”. I knew he was a great player, but besides that I had no real impressions.
TP: So you’ve been with him straight through those 15-16 years as his bassist of choice.
COOLMAN: I think so, yes.
TP: What has it done for your playing, playing with Moody?
COOLMAN: The main thing is that Moody is so interested in music, in the learning process as well as playing, that he has always encouraged me to really play a lot, and leaves a lot of open space for the rhythm section to solo in, and he’s very encouraging to have you develop and do what you do. I think part of it is because he’s just really generous; that’s part of it. And the other part is because he really wants to learn from the people he’s around. It’s very unusual, I find, that he’s so curious as to what other people are doing. It probably serves two purposes. One is that he wants you to feel like you can express yourself, but he also wants to learn what you’re doing. He’s always looking for things to use as raw materials for things he wants to develop. So he’s extremely curious about music.
TP: So he’s giving you a lot of space to just go where you will as long as it’s within the context of what he’s going.
COOLMAN: Yes. Not just that, but he’s just been real encouraging. He’s a very positive, nurturing, encouraging person. I guess a bandleader is not obliged to be that way and not obliged to have you develop your own voice. If you’re serving the music the way the bandleader wants, and if that doesn’t mean you’re developing as a player…if you’re serving his needs, that’s enough.
TP: How do you see Moody’s playing in these all-star situations vis-a-vis what he does in the band?
COOLMAN: That’s a good question. I would say that when he plays in a band, with people that he’s more familiar with, his playing is a bit more exploratory and a little bit more searching, where he’s working out ideas. I think when he plays in these all-star things, he pretty much… I don’t know if the word is “conservative,” but he plays…
TP: More of a recital maybe.
COOLMAN: Yeah, a little bit. More like he knows…he’s fully in command of what he’s doing, and he’s not really searching so much as he’s just establishing his voice — that sort of thing.
TP: Well, he made a distinction, even in the band, between the things he does that are recitals, more or less like “Moody’s Mood” or “Pennies From Heaven,” and playing.
COOLMAN: Oh yes.
TP: He was very clear about it. You can see it even in his comments. His account of how he met Dizzy, which obviously he’s had to tell people 8 million times, is almost word-for-word exactly the same in the Dizzy Gillespie autobiography as what he told me. It’s really interesting. And he tells the story so well. When you hear him tell these jokes, you’ve heard him say it… You hear them all the time. I’ve heard them before, and I still laugh at them. Like the Joe Frazier…
COOLMAN: Yeah-yeah. [LAUGHS]
TP: I mean, he has such incredible timing.
COOLMAN: I think all that stuff, the humor and even “Moody’s Mood For Love’ and all this stuff which is part of what I guess you might call his routine, in some way I’ve always thought that that was patterned after his years in Vegas, that somehow the idea of music being entertaining and being a show that has sort of a theme… Somehow I think he’s incorporated that as a bandleader. It works for him in clubs, because I think it helps him reach the less initiated. That’s the thing about working with him that’s kind of interesting, that at any club on any given night you have aficionados and you have virgins! He has a way of reaching everybody. Because the routine has some sort of universal appeal, I think. Then the other, more venturesome side of his playing is going to appeal… If Jimmy Heath is in the audience, he knows that he’s going to hear something he hasn’t heard before, somewhere, if he hangs with it.
It’s a very subtle thing. A lot of people have said to me that they’ve noticed over the years that he plays a lot of the same repertoire and tells some of the same jokes and this-that-and-the-other, and “don’t you get tired of that?” Well, not really. Moody pointed out to me long ago that if it wasn’t for “Moody’s Mood For Love,” maybe he wouldn’t be working today. So his attitude is very pragmatic. I’ve never felt once that he did that with any sense of regret or boredom or resignation or anything. He just views it as part of keeping working.
TP: Well, it seems also, apart from Vegas, Dizzy Gillespie had a lot of routines as well, and I think his ability to blend the two things is why he was so successful. So I’m sure he learned that from Dizzy.
COOLMAN: Yes. There’s no question that the whole humor angle and the sort of clowning-around and all that came from Dizzy, without a doubt. And yet, I think that it did… It’s all part of what makes the thing work. Actually, I think if Moody just played, if you want to call it just a strict set of like art music, then that, too, would mean the audience is just artists, and that would be very appealing on a certain level. But he is very sensitive about the fact that he wants to play for the public. He is just as eager to play for the guy next door as he is for, say, George Coleman. I’ve always admired that about him. There’s something very non-condescending about that approach to performing.
TP: You’re a music educator, and I’d like you to put on that cap for a second and talk about him as a tenor player, the things he does as particularly as a tenor saxophonist that distinguish him among the universe of tenor saxophonists.
COOLMAN: The answer is real simple, and it’s an answer I don’t think anyone would give you. I really believe people are sleeping on this about Moody! But despite the many things he does just as a player, the thing that I think is his strongest trait is his sense of time and his pulse. I mean, I put him up with Sonny Rollins and all those people as far as how he plays time and how he swings. What’s interesting is that that has nothing to do with the notes he plays. The music students come down, or his peers come down with their little notebooks, writing down patterns that he’s playing. They’re missing the boat. The boat is how he plays time.
Now, having said that, the thing I love about his playing, even from an academic point of view, is it’s a beautiful sort of chronology of tenor saxophone vocabulary that goes back to Coleman Hawkins, and it’s thoroughly, at the same time, contemporary. So his playing is well-versed in the whole bebop language, but it incorporates post-’60s language. So he is way into what we call altered scales, different kinds of harmonic devices, use of fourths, use of pentatonics, use of compound scales, bitonals. So in other words, every so-called advanced harmonic device, he’s aware of them. He has them in his ear and he can play them. But at the same time, if you want to play a blues in B-flat, he can play the traditional vocabulary as well.
TP: Do you feel he is able to shape the advanced devices into a melodic type of framework, or is it more academic?
COOLMAN: That’s a good question. I think the answer ultimately is yes. But part of that has to do with his stage of development, with a particular sound. Sometimes he’ll hear somebody play something, and he’ll figure out theoretically what’s going on. He’s actually asked me, “Write out the scale that’s the basis of that. What is that scale called?” Then I’ll hear him practicing that or practicing patterns based on that scale, and even bring them to the gig that way, and play a more patterned, academic approach to it initially. But I hear that sort of morph over the nights into something that becomes very strongly melodic actually, and eventually evolves away from the mechanical toward the more artful. At heart, he’s a singer, really. So he can’t lay with material that’s not song-like for very long.
TP: He’s a helluva singer.
COOLMAN: Yeah! And I think ultimately that’s where he’s at as a tenor player, is he just wants to be a singer of melodies. So yeah, on any given night you’ll come down, and I think you’ll hear him play very melodic things, and then in other cases I think you’ll hear him play very patterned…quite frankly, it almost sounds like he’s practicing at times. But he’s working something out. That’s another interesting thing about him, now that I think about it, is that very few artists are very willing to do that. They’re only willing to play things that they know sound good. They don’t want to run the risk of not sounding good. There are nights when Moody will play certain tunes or work on certain material that he doesn’t have together. On the bandstand he’ll do it. Then he’ll come up to me later and say, “Man, I just don’t have that together yet, man. I have to practice that, because that’s not working the way I want it to. But there’s a sound in there. There’s something in there, and I know I can get to it. I’ve always been inspired by that, because he’s been playing seriously since he was about 16. So after 50 or 60 years of playing, this guy wants to learn something and he wants to work it out. That’s unbelievable.
TP: He says that’s what keeps him going.
COOLMAN: I believe that. I know that. It’s the quest. It’s the curiosity. And he’s always looking for another way to say something. So it’s inspiring, really.
TP: I went to hear you at Iridium the night of the Charlie Parker birthday. He starts off with “Groovin’ High,” and it’s one of the most amazing solos you’ve ever heard, he’s like shouting on the most extreme intervals, so much dynamics, then all of a sudden it’s “Moody’s Mood,” and then he plays “Confirmation” on flute for 15 minutes. I just said, “Goodness, I’m glad I heard ‘Groovin’ High.” Which is what you were saying.
COOLMAN: Yeah. But I think in common parlance, he wears his heart on his sleeve, and he really plays the way he feels. If he’s struggling with music, he’s not afraid to show it. Somehow, I think he wins people’s sympathies by the fact that in every set they’re going to hear a “Groovin’ High” moment. [LAUGHS] So people cut him a wide berth, and say the reason he’s so great is because he has a work shit out.
TP: With the band, is he a real taskmaster? Is he very open? It doesn’t sound like anything is very heavily arranged.
COOLMAN: Well, in 16 years or so of being with him, I can’t remember… I think we may have had one or two rehearsals.
TP: Does he give you charts?
COOLMAN: On occasion. Over the years, for some recordings, he’s had people write arrangements on various things. And sometimes he’ll want to pull those out and revisit them. Then there will be charts. Even at that, now that I’m thinking about it, most of the charts he has…
TP: Are pretty schematic?
COOLMAN: Yeah. Of late, we haven’t been dealing with them very much. But occasionally we’ll pull them out and revisit them for one reason or another. But it’s not really… No, I’d say that “taskmaster” is not one word that comes to mind when you think about him. He really is as interested in people’s input as he is like having something go a certain way. So he’s very open, and he seeks information and input all the time.
TP: He has a real reverence for his past, but he seems totally non-nostalgic for it.
COOLMAN: Well, more than not-nostalgic. He has a morbid fear of sounding old or old-fashioned. It’s beyond not-nostalgic. But you know what? He’s always aware of his musical surroundings, too. So when he’s with an all-star thing… Let’s say he’s up there playing with the Golden Men of Jazz or whatever he’s doing. He’s always aware of his surroundings, and he’s aware of what will fit in a certain context.
TP: Because he’s pragmatic
COOLMAN: Yeah. But basically, he doesn’t want to sound old. He wants to sound like he’s growing and that he’s developing new vocabulary.
TP: Right up until the end, that’s what he’ll be doing.
COOLMAN: Oh yeah. No question in my mind. I think that the last solo he ever plays will have as many surprises in it as the first one does. Because he’s not satisfied with status quo and he’s not interested in looking back. I remember one night on the bandstand, we were playing a slow blues or something, and the drummer started playing a backbeat, and he made him stop doing that. After the set he explained that the backbeat makes him feel like it’s old and made him feel like it’s 1952 again. He said, “I just don’t want to go back there.” He has certain idiosyncracies, and certain musical devices don’t appeal to him. In this case, I think it reminds him of another era, and he doesn’t want to be associated with it. Which is interesting. On certain tunes, he will play bebop-oriented, real inside material. But he does it in such a fresh fashion that he doesn’t sound old doing it. He’s preoccupied with sounding “modern,” whatever that means.
TP: I think as a subtext, he was very seared by the racial climate of that time. That had a lasting impact on him. He keeps referring to being in Greensboro and the German POWs being able to eat in the restaurant and he couldn’t, then coming back here and the various bullshit on the road. So I think a lot of that attitude may have its root in that situation, associating the music of the time with the physical and cultural environment of the time.
COOLMAN: Could be.
* * *
KIBWE: I’m 47 now. I met Moody when I was 18, when he was playing with Eddie Jefferson, and we’ve been friends since then. Every time I see him, he gives me things. In July we played together in a big band Don Braden had in Litchfield, Connecticut. I was sitting next to Moody, who was special soloist. Paquito was playing lead alto and clarinet, I was playing second alto, Moody was to my right, Paquito to my left, and Slide Hampton was right behind me on the trombone. That was another time when he came up and said, “Check this out on ‘Giant Steps.'” He’s so open! I began working on that in July.
TP: So he’s always sharing information.
KIBWE: Always! He’s a true master. To give you an example: He got to the gig a half-hour before we hit because of the transportation screwup, and he didn’t make any rehearsal. So he was like, “Man, I want to look at the music.” I said, “Oh, Moody, there ain’t nothin’ but some whole notes and half-notes.” Yeah, right! So we get on the gig, and I think the second tune was a Braden original, a swingin’ tune, a killin’ tune… It was based on a minor blues, but it had some definite alternate changes up in there, and it was an extended bridge… It was a very involved piece. I’ll put it to you this way. It’s not a piece of music that if somebody played it for me once and asked me to solo without looking at the changes I could do it. I’d have to look at the changes. So Braden wanted Moody to solo on it, but he was a little apprehensive, because Moody hadn’t even looked at it. First Braden said, “Okay, Moody, you take the first solo.” Then he said, “No, you’d better wait. Let the piano solo, then so-and-so, and then you solo.” Moody said, “Okay, whatever, I’ll try my best.” Then we play. Now, he hasn’t looked at the changes. He just started counting it off. Now, he’s playing his part. He ain’t got time to look at no changes because he’s got to get to the ensemble part. Then we get to the solo, and for some reason Braden pointed to him first. And he stood up and played and never looked at the music. I was like, “Oh, shit!” So I was sitting next to him, you know… Actually, he was so close to me, he was playing, and literally his tenor was touching my shoulder. I said, “Great. I’m just going to absorb all of this shit.” But he killed it!
TP: I think the most interesting thing is that he’s 75 years old, and he has this perpetual curiosity.
KIBWE: Oh, it’s incredible. He was just telling me, “Pick up this book.” He had a book based on Coltrane’s harmonic progression on “Giant Steps.” But when I first met Moody, he showed me stuff on flute. He gave me some advice. You know what he told me? He said, “Man, I want you to become a Jehovah Witness and I want you to join the Navy Band.” I was 18. That sounded like the most crazy thing for me to do. But years later, as I was thinking about it, I thought logically it made sense. He looked at it from the point of view, you know, he didn’t want to see me out there struggling for a living. He figured if I joined a Navy band, after 20 years in the Navy you can retire and you have a pension and you can do your thing. I asked him about why did he want me to join the Jehovah’s Witness. He said, well, because one time he was in New York, and this guy was trying to rob him, and had a gun or something and wanted to shoot him or whatever went down. But he just said, “Jehovah,” and the guy just walked away and didn’t mess with him. I thought that was really heavy.
TP: If you were going to talk about him analytically, his role in the music, the dynamics of his style as a saxophonist and on the different instruments.
KIBWE: The first thing that comes to mind is that he was one of the first doublers who stood out in my mind — cats that played tenor, alto, flute extremely well. What also sticks out is that he was probably the first saxophone player with his own voice coming out of the Bird era. If I had to sit down and analyze it, I could say it in musical terms. But just his sound and hi conception of how he soloed and how he played his instrument… He had his own voice. He didn’t sound like Bird. Whereas when I heard Stitt, even though Stitt said he didn’t study Bird, but he sounded to me like Bird a lot. Cannonball in the beginning, even Eric Dolphy for that matter… All those cats in the beginning sounded a lot like Bird. But Moody didn’t sound like Bird to me.
TP: But he still had the modern vocabulary.
KIBWE: Oh yeah, he always had a modern vocabulary. But he didn’t have a Bird sound. I mean, all the other cats, Charles McPherson, Jackie McLean, even Jimmy Heath, had that Bird vibe. But Moody was the first cat for me who didn’t have the Bird vibe.
TP: Maybe it’s because he started playing alto before he heard Bird, and then when Bird came along he was playing tenor.
KIBWE: Then he played flute! I have books of his solos, and I’ve been studying his shit for years. Moody has some very heavy tritone things happening in solos that I’ve been checking out. He does a lot of tritone substitutions. He does a lot of stuff going in and out of the chord. Like, there might be a C-Major-VII, but he’ll be F#. But the way he resolves that shit is so slick. His vocabulary is so immense musically. Like on his solo of “Bebop” he plays “Giant Steps.” Now, the A-section of “Bebop” is a vamp on F-minor. He was able to put “Giant Steps” through that shit! He modulated but it fit. Yeah, he’s… Oh, man, Moody! No, he’s bad. As opposed to Benny, every phrase of Moody is an exercise. Benny’s is connected… Moody is connected, too. But you can take a solo and take 2 bars of this… Like, I’ve been taking two bars of his solos, and I have an exercise.
TP: Does that make his playing sometimes overly technical, or is the warmth always there?
KIBWE: No, I’m not trying to say it makes it overly technical. His stuff is so deep that you can take segments of his playing and turn it into an etude, turn it into an exercise to where you can study that and modulate it and extract from it and play it across changes, and utilize it, interpret it that way. That “Bebop” that I have, I’ve gotten maybe 10 to 12 phrases out of that solo that I can use just as technical exercises to help me develop my facility. When I hear a cat play something like that, that I like, I’ll take it through the keys, and then maybe add a note here or there to personalize it.
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TP: How did the collaboration happen? Was it just a record label project that turned out well and so you did subsequent hits?
TURNER: Yes, that’s exactly it.
TP: How did you prepare for playing with Moody? It wasn’t necessarily the most obvious pairing on the surface.
TURNER: That’s true. Well, there were supposed to be some other saxophone players on the date, and they fell through, so it was just me. Everyone brought in tunes they wanted to play.
TP: What were your impressions of Moody before going in there?
TURNER: I had studied a little bit of him, but not that much. I would say that early on I did. In high school I was into his playing, especially some early recordings when he was in France. I learned quite a bit from those recordings. There was something about his tone quality which I haven’t heard in other saxophone players in that period, partially because at that time he was playing…I guess he always did play with rubber mouthpieces. So it had that kind of a Lester Young quality, though Lester didn’t always play with rubber mouthpieces, but it had that kind of thing, whereas a lot of other tenor players (except for Stan Getz) who were playing bebop-oriented music have… It’s not as dark of a sound, a warm, woody… That’s why I gravitated to it, because that’s a lot of what I like. Warm and woody but with still a strong core. That and also he had that… The distinction, if you want to make it, between the bebop players and the post-bebop players… He was in that camp to me, the bebop camp, of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and those people, more clearly towards that sound, and one of the only tenor players that I know of. Because the others I usually hear after that in vocabulary and phrasing and sound and in the way he improvisers. In other words, not quite so codified yet, as opposed to these horn players.
TP: In working with him, you addressed quite a span of vocabulary. It was very collaborative, and he didn’t particularly play the star on it. How was it working with him in the studio? How was he with you?
TURNER: He was very amenable, amiable, straightforward, and ready to get down to business.
TP: And how would you describe his style within the contemporary framework?
TURNER: It’s great, because he’s still like really-really playing, to me. And he’s definitely always trying to… He’s really curious. He has that curiosity, and it’s in his playing, and he’s always trying to keep it fresh for himself.
TP: People who work with him say he’s always finding information, bringing people books… This incessant quest.
TURNER: Exactly.
TP: Was he very interactive with you?
TURNER: Somewhat. Yes and no. A little bit of that and a little bit of not. I wasn’t sure how much he was into that. Because when it went there, he didn’t seem to be that into it, at least not the way I was doing it.
TP: Were his solos from night to night on the same material different?
TURNER: Definitely.
TP: So it wasn’t like a recital. It was art music.
TURNER: No, he’s definitely improvising on the same songs.
Today Is The Question: Ted Panken on Music, Politics and the Arts 