For pianist Kirk Lightsey’s 87th birthday, I’m posting a liner note that in 2006 for a recording session that he made with his old friend Marcus Belgrave for Criss Cross in 1991, and an interview that he did with me for a long piece that I wrote for Downbeat about the piano room Bradley’s, where he frequently performed during the 1980s and early 1990s.
Liner Notes for Lightsey to Gladden (Criss Cross – 1991)
Few New York jazz pianists were as busy as Kirk Lightsey from 1979, when he moved east from Los Angeles after joining Dexter Gordon for what would be a five-year run, through 1993, when he relocated to Paris, where he continues to reside and flourish. In addition to sidemanning outside of Gordon’s orbit—dates with Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, David Newman, Jim Pepper, James Moody, Ricky Ford, and Clifford Jordan from those years are highlights of Lightsey’s discography—he primarily made his living in the trenches as a solo and duo pianist. He was a fixture on New York’s piano saloon scene, performing regularly at such boites as the Knickerbocker, Zinno, and Bradley’s—according to a sessionography compiled by Bradley’s proprietor Wendy Cunningham, he worked more than 40 one-week engagements between the first week of January, 1980 (a duo with Rufus Reid), and Christmas week of 1993 (a trio with trumpeter Tom Harrell and bassist Dennis Irwin) at the latter venue. Two years prior, he played there for a week in trio with guitarist Kevin Eubanks and bassist Rufus Reid, his partners on the 1990 Criss-Cross date From Kirk to Nat, and another week with bassist Cecil McBee and trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, the latter his partner on the 1986 Criss-Cross date Kirk and Marcus and the until-now unreleased follow-up Lightsey to Gladden, from 1991.
“During this time, Marcus and I were working together a lot,” Lightsey recalled over phone from Languedoc, in the south of France. “He was one of my favorite trumpet players anywhere, because of his fluid technique, his phrasing was also fluid in the way he handled the changes and the mood of the pieces, and all of that. During our week at Bradley’s, Wynton Marsalis came in with Stanley Crouch just about every night, and joined us.”
Lightsey and Belgrave met in the early ‘60s when Belgrave, originally from Chester, Pennsylvania, came off the road with Ray Charles and moved to Detroit for work in the Motown studios, where Lightsey, himself a son of the Motor City, had found steady employment after returning home from several years playing piano in an Army band at Fort Knox. That followed a tour with the pre-Motown Four Tops—several members were Lightsey’s former high school classmates.
“I’d been attending Wayne State University on a clarinet scholarship, which I had as long as I played clarinet in the band or orchestra—or both—and I got tired of that,” Lightsey says. “Yusef Lateef was there, and so was Joe Henderson. We went on the road to Las Vegas for three months in 1958 with [drummer] oy Brooks and Clarence Shell, a bass player who was playing with the Windsor Symphony. At the time, the Four Tops were singing like the Four Freshman. Motown forced them to become the Four Tops that you know.
“At the time, there were clubs all over Detroit, and everybody had a band and was working. We had a band with Beans Bowles, who was in Motown, who was a baritone player with Maurice King’s band in the Flame Show Bar, which was the top show club in town. I was working down the street at the Frolic Show Bar with Joe, Clarence, and Albert Aarons, who played later fourth trumpet with Count Basie. Earlier in the ‘50s, on Tuesdays, which was everybody’s off-night, I had a chance to mix with older players like Elvin Jones, Paul Chambers, and Yusef at the World Stage, where Kenny Burrell and Barry Harris were in charge of the music. Later on, we got a chance to replace the players in Yusef’s band and other bands in town. We’d go to Barry’s house every day until his wife would throw us out—that was with Charles McPherson, Lonnie Hillyer, Ira Jackson…oh, lots of players. I had a classical background, and I was less interested in playing the staccato bebop style, like the Bud Powell approach. I prefer a more legato style. I think orchestrally as much as posible in approaching the piano—fluid piano lines, as much as I can make them! I was thinking more along the lines of Tommy Flanagan—and later, Hank Jones.
“Marcus was the greatest player around. He’s a great reader—maybe because he’s short, he could put the music on the floor and read it standing up! We were the band in residence, and we made several recordings in Motown’s jazz department—Pepper Adams, George Bohannon. We played for all the hits that came out at the beginning of Motown. The sound of Motown was James Jamerson, and when the drummer, Pistol Allen, couldn’t come up with the beat that they wanted to go with James Jamerson’s thing, they would call in Little Stevie Wonder, who might have been 13, to play the drums. When Little Stevie would come in, they’d always get it right away.
“Marcus stayed in Detroit after I left town, but I was coming back and forth to Detroit a lot, and every time I came back he’d be the first guy I’d want to play with—so we sustained our musical friendship. I would try to get Marcus to move to New York, but he never would. He’s Detroit. But we did start doing tours in Europe. That’s when Gerry Teekens heard us as a group, and decided that he wanted Marcus and I to do a project. It turned out to be two projects, since we couldn’t finish all the material.”
Belgrave plays with such consistent harmonic invention, rhythmic ingenuity, and vocalized soul that it seems unnecessary to comment on any single solo he takes on the program—although please note his keening duo with Lightsey on David Durrah’s “Moon”. His front line partner is Craig Handy on tenor saxophone and flute. Then 27, the baby of the group, Handy belies his tender years with a burly sound, superb ensemble playing, and solos that weave into the flow of the group—to name one, note his introductory tenor bray on Lightsey’s set-opening blues, “Donkey Dance”, foreshadowing a surging declamation; to name another, the thoughtful deliberate buildup to his rousing statement on Wayne Shorter’s “Pinocchio.” Not particularly known for playing flute, Handy also uncorks authoritative solos on that instrument on the swingers “Working Together” and “Everyday Politics” (the former containing a connotation of “Beautiful Friendship,” the latter reminiscent of Dizzy Gillespie’s late ‘40s ditties), as well as on the ballad “Midnight Sun” in duo with the leader.
Bassist David Williams, best known as Cedar Walton’s bassist of choice since the early ‘80s, is the foundation of it all, while Eddie Gladden (1937-2003), Lightsey’s partner with Gordon, and the record’s dedicatee, propels the proceedings with an explosive, oceanic beat on the drums and cymbals.
“We played for five years together, all over the world,” Lightsey recalls of the Newark-born drummer, with whom he shares a 1937 birth year. “He had my favorite swing cymbal beat of all. It was amazing to play with him. He was so forceful. In fact, the music was so forceful that I had problems with tendinitis and that kind of stuff along the way, but I managed to play through all of that. At the time, there were still Blakey and Elvin and all sorts of other people, but Eddie was my favorite drummer to play with.”
“I first met Eddie in L.A., where I moved at the end of the ‘60s, when I worked with O.C. (“God Doesn’t Like Little Green Apples”) Smith. He was at the Concert of the Sea there with Dexter. I first met Dexter in Stockholm in the early ‘70s, when I was there doing a TV special with O.C. Smith, We were taken to the club, which was called Ernest, where Dexter was playing with the local guys, and he didn’t like the piano player that night. They had told him we were coming, and when we walked in, they just rushed me up to the stand. From then on, Dexter knew me. At the time I met him and Eddie in L.A., Rufus Reid—who was an old friend from when Rufus was living in Chicago—was thinking about me to replace George Cables, who was leaving the group. I couldn’t do it right away, because I’d promised to do a month with O.C. Smith on a little tour that ended in New York. That’s when I walked into the Village Vanguard, after appearing with O.C. Smith at the Playboy Club, and they led me up to the stage again. That began my playing with Dexter in the band.
“Eddie had Dexter figured out. Dexter had several ways of building tension, even on his being late to the gig. Then, when he’d start to play, we would have to stay on top, and he would start his solos almost falling backwards on the time, on the meter, and we would have to keep on it until he caught up. When he would just catch up and play it right on the beat, he would get a standing ovation. Eddie Gladden figured out how to just NAIL him when he’d jump on it. We could hold him on the road, and be there with him when we took off and take him with us. That’s when Dexter said, ‘I think I’m getting too old for this shit,’ because he couldn’t fool us any more.”
In 1993, Lightsey himself decided he’d had enough of New York City, and decamped to Paris with his wife Natalie, herself a native Parisienne. “”New York is a wonderful city for jazz musicians, but it’s a tough city, too,” he told a reporter several years ago. “The greatest achievement of my career was living there for 30 years. It’s a city where you can play all the time, and where you actually have to play all the time, because if you don’t play regularly, you drop out of the race.”
No longer needing to race, Lightsey remains a first-call pianist for hardcore jazzfolk across the European continent (he worked frequently with the late Johnny Griffin in recent years, as well as expat tenorist Ricky Ford, and also Nathan Davis in the collective group, the Roots)—he can afford to be selective about the engagements he accepts with his trio, in which he works with such talent as bassists Gil Naturel and Reggie Johnson and drummers Doug Sides and Don Moye. He’s made some recordings since 1991, but not many, and none that capture the New York attitude that he so abundantly displays on every track of this date, which, had it been released contemporaneously, would be among the highlights of his discography. Criss-Cross proprietor Gerry Teekens is to be commended for finally making it available.
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Kirk Lightsey on Bradley’s (Part 2 – June 5, 2006):
TP: The first time you went to Bradley’s, you were in town at I think you said at the Playboy Club with O.C. Smith, and wound up there. What was your impression?
KIRK: My impression was one of a big family, and… Well, I met Bradley Cunningham, and I understood why the family was so close, because he was that kind of guy. Plus, he played the piano. I mean, he knew more verses than most pianists, except Tommy Flanagan and Hank Jones and Jimmy Rowles. So we’d have a round-robin quite often.
TP: the first night you were there, you said, you played late and he took to you.
KIRK: Yes. He liked what I was doing, and I hung out. But during that same time I hooked up with Dexter Gordon, and Bradley had booked me just out of the blue…
TP: After hearing you that night.
KIRK: Right. He booked me for… Maybe somebody had cancelled or something, but he gave me a gig right away, but I had to cancel the gig because I went with Dexter Gordon. He talked about that forever.
TP: He told you that you owed him one.
KIRK: Oh, you bet. Yes, he did.
TP: Describe Bradley’s personality.
KIRK: He was a great guy. He loved having fun, and he just loved music. He was a soft kind of guy. All of his friends were really true friends. They were there every night, all the time, until, as they called her, “the widow” took over.
TP: Do you recall who was playing the night you went there the first time?
KIRK: I don’t. It could have been… Mmm! No, I don’t. I have no idea.
TP: When did you first actually work at Bradley’s?
KIRK: After that? Rufus Reid and I went in there when we were off with Dexter, and then I started going in with Red Mitchell, and one of the learning experiences was going in with Homes.
TP: You mentioned Santi, Cecil McBee, Bulldog…
KIRK: This was way before that.
TP: Oh, Sam Jones.
KIRK: Yes. He took being there as very artistic, and he took the artistic license of being a bit late, playing exactly what he wanted to play… Well, that’s what it became anyway. And he took playing there with that point of view. I liked it. I liked playing there with Sam Jones. That was the only time I played with him.
TP: Did Bradley have any input into the type of repertoire? Was there a sort of lingua franca repertoire there, as it were?
KIRK: Well, you could play what you wanted to play, but if you were playing anything wrong, so to speak, or not in – heh-heh – a good way, you would hear about it from all the people, especially from Bradley and from all of his buddies, because they knew what it was. They became my live audience, all of Bradley’s buddies. They were there this week at the Jazz Standard, a lot of the people from Bradley’s. It was like an old Bradley’s week. Four days there. Really great. To show you how the family was so tight at Bradley’s, the first night I was at the Standard, all the waitresses who had worked at Bradley’s joined forces and came in to see me the same night. That was great.
TP: In our earlier conversation, you were talking about having an audience of pianists and your peer group, and the people who played there would also come to hang out. Talk about who those people were, and how their presence influenced how you would approach a gig at Bradley’s.
KIRK: Well, to hear Hank Jones or Tommy Flanagan, or Jimmy Rowles or Fred Hersch or Roger Kellaway, and to go there when Red Mitchell, who was doing two months at Bradley’s with a different pianist every week or every few days, it was always delightful and exciting. You never knew what to expect when Red was there, although he liked to use a lot of the same pianists — Kenny Barron, me, Kellaway, a lot of people. But it was always a real charge to know that you were being accepted by all the New York players, the people who might have been ahead of you in the pecking order of pianists in New York. There was definitely that. But when they would all show up to hear you, that was great!
TP: That was a good feeling. That wasn’t an intimidating feeling.
KIRK: No, indeed not. Well, it might have been at some point. But if you played there one night, you’d get past that.
TP: Let’s talk about the crowd. You said that the audience would let you know just by the volume of the conversation, and if you quieted them down, you knew you had succeeded.
KIRK: Oh, yes, indeed. Everybody had their own way of doing this. At Bradley’s, because the listeners were such high level listeners, being that they knew the music, they knew the history, they knew the musicians, they knew everything… I mean, for the most part. And the people who came there, they either discovered under magical conditions the music, or they were there because they were a part of the family.
TP: You were saying you’d have a big audience… Can you change on how the audience would change as the night went on.
KIRK: At the beginning of the night, there were shirts and ties and coming from work and having dinner, and very spiffy kind of people. But as the second set progressed, there would be less of them and more of our family, kind of people that you saw all the time. Robert John was there all of the time. He was there sketching or painting, he wrote poems… He wrote music, too. I still have a piece of music of his. These people would be the people that I would direct my people to, because they were there all the time. If you got them, then you got everybody.
TP: So it wasn’t necessarily all musicians, but there was a certain group of artists and writers who had settled primarily in Greenwich Village who would gravitate to Bradley’s.
KIRK: It was a home for all those people, and definitely for all the musicians who were playing.
TP: Talk about the late set.
KIRK: Oh, boy. The late set is when everybody left all the other places. They would leave the Vanguard, they would leave the Blue Note, and wherever it was from all over town, and gather at Bradley’s. For one thing, the musicians, if you’d been out of town, you’d go there just to check in, to tell everybody that you’re there. Because somebody might just be looking for you for a record date. This was the meeting place, the happening place. It kept you working, because you saw the people who were looking for you or who were glad to see you… “Oh, man, I got a date. Wow, it’s so good to see you. Can you make the date tomorrow at 3 o’clock.” Or a rehearsal or whatever. But that was the point of tomorrow’s focus.
TP: The office.
KIRK: Yes, indeed.
TP: You had some anecdotes. One had Chet Baker walking in with a paper bag.
KIRK: Oh, yeah. He had his horn in a paper bag. It wasn’t a jam night. It was kind of quiet, but there was a lot of people, half-full or something, seats around, and Chet just came and sat in the seat across from the piano. A lot of people didn’t know who he was. He pulled out of this paper bag his trumpet, and proceeded to join us with whatever we were playing. Of course, Chet and I went back a long way to the old recordings on Prestige. So he sat down and we continued to finish the set that I had begun, and the people were just mesmerized by Chet Baker just joining us and the purity of his sound. People were just in tears, it was so beautiful. Then when we finished, he put his horn back in the paper bag, under his arm, and left.
TP: That sort of sitting in was not an uncommon thing at Bradley’s.
KIRK: Well, it was one of my favorite things to do, so as to, at some point in the night, turn it into a party, where I would call up other players to play, people whom I knew were in the audience. Some pianists. Sometimes I would be so tired by the fourth set, I would need help, so I’d call up John Hicks or I’d call up anybody I saw there, and they would help me finish the night. At some points, it was very necessary.
TP: You had a story about Tommy Flanagan and your version of A Child Is Born.
KIRK: Oh, boy! Well, for me, A Child Is Born just keeps going up, it keeps progressing, until you get to the turnaround at the very end. Well, that to me just stops forward motion of the song. So I’m sure Thad had a reason for doing that, but I had my reason for taking out 2 bars. Tommy Flanagan was in, listening, with his wife and a whole group of pianists and musicians in there, and everybody was enjoying it. But when Tommy came in, I was playing A Child Is Born and leaving out the turnaround. He looked at me, and he focused, and he listened, and when we finally finished the set he rushed over to me, and said, “Son…” I called him “Father,” so he called me “son.” He said, “Son, you owe me 2 bars.” I don’t think he ever collected the 2 bars.
TP: You also had some George Coleman stories.
KIRK: Oh, Coalman would come in. Especially when we were playing Never Let Me Go, he would pull out his horn and come up and start playing, and it would be just magical. These kind of things happened in Bradley’s. There were times with Marcus Belgrave, who I didn’t realize at the time was so close to Wynton Marsalis… He was like his godfather in playing the trumpet or something. I was playing with Marcus and Cecil McBee, and Wynton came in with Stanley Crouch every night when we were there, and joined us…or stood with his trumpet in his hand listening to Marcus. Well, those were very touching moments in Bradley’s.
TP: One thing I asked you was how playing in Bradley’s affected your pianism. You spoke of getting used to not playing with the drums, the rhythmic component.
KIRK: Certain people I played with never had trouble with that. It wasn’t a new thing for us. Like, with Rufus and Cecil… Although hearing the way different pianists approached the duo setting, it was a learning thing to listen to other people approach the way they dealt with a whole night in duo playing Bradley’s. It was a development, though, because as the crowd changed… Early in the night also, when the suits and ties would be in there, you’d have to play straight-up kind of material, things that a lot of people knew. But as the night went on, the material would be further out, extended, and on the last set, you could pull out all the stops and be right on time.
TP: Had you done much duo playing before?
KIRK: Actually, I had. In Detroit, I had done solo playing and all kinds of playing, and Detroit was quite a high-level place to play the piano, as per all the stellar pianists who came out of Detroit. Tommy or Hank Jones said it was the water from the Detroit River! Oh, my. Hugh Lawson, even Geri Allen, so many… But playing for a week, sometimes two weeks… We would play at Bradley’s for a whole two weeks, and this would be the perfect place to develop your material, to live the music that you’re playing, and for the people to realize that you’re really working on your craft, you’re really doing it.
TP: After Bradley died and Wendy Cunningham took over the place, the culture of Bradley’s changed somewhat, and you had a number of things to say about that. You were talking about you and some other veterans advising her, and you talked about the influx of younger musicians who came in.
KIRK: That came a little later. Well, Roy Hargrove kind of started a whole flow of younger musicians coming into town, and when people came into town, of course, they had to come to Bradley’s, because this was the last watering hole, and it was a great one. You could buy a house in Bradley’s. You could sell your car. You could buy anything at Bradley’s! This made it such a magical meeting place.
Bradley’s tight friends (I mean, he had a house full of them, all of his old buddies), they seemed not to like the widow. That’s what they called her. So when Bradley died and they saw that she was going to run the place, they didn’t help her. They just stopped coming. The musicians, we owed it to Bradley to help her try to run this place properly, because it was our home! This wasn’t just a bar down the street. This was the world-famous home of all the great musicians. So we helped her as much as we could.
TP: What kinds of things did you tell her to do and what did she wind up doing?
KIRK: We told her about people who were available, or who could be with other people. Policies that she had, or started, that we didn’t see the sense in. We’d help her choose some policies, and… Well, some things… Well, she learned good, and she had her own idea about things, and she was the owner of the place, so what could we do? But she was amenable. She was, as far as I’m concerned, a great friend.
TP: She wound up booking trios, quartets, she brought in drummers…
KIRK: This was after the policy changed in the club.
TP: I think that’s the time Wynton was in, too, with you, Marcus & McBee… It was 1989.
KIRK: I’ve forgotten when Bradley died.
TP: I think ‘86 or ‘87. You said that Roy might have sat in with you on his second night in New York.
KIRK: That’s what it sounded like. Wendy came one night and asked me if I would let him sit in, and we just proceeded to have a ball. There he was. So from that night, he kept coming all the time. So he would play mostly the last sets, or end up finishing the night with us, which would be great.
TP: He developed a lot, because he would get his ass kicked and come back for more. I remember him sitting in with Walter Davis and George Coleman, and the next set he’d come back. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
KIRK: He’s quite a talent.
TP: You made a comment about why Bradley’s became less attractive to you as time went on. You said the younger musicians had a sense of entitlement maybe, or things like that.
KIRK: Yes, they had discovered our old home, and they wanted to… Well, they were more prevalent. They were working there. We started at a certain point that when some people would be there, we would hang out somewhere else. It shifted… The age level, the magic, the intensity somehow shifted. Well, it changed.
TP: Things do. You did the song Everything Must Change. Was there a Bradley’s style, a broad overarching style? Was it just the quality of the musicians, or the quality of piano playing? Was there a certain approach to music-making that resonated with the room?
KIRK: It was a sound that had been set by Jimmy Rowles and Tommy and Hank Jones and all the stellar pianists who played in there. John Hicks. All of them. When you played at Bradley’s, you had to come up to a certain brilliance, or they’d just make so much noise you couldn’t be heard. But when you were on, they were on — or they were off, talking. They were on your every note, every sound, every emotion.
TP: But it wasn’t so much a style of playing as an attitude to what you’re doing…
KIRK: Well, the attitude of being responsible for the musical enjoyment of all your peers. It was a level that you approached, or tried to every night. Sometimes you didn’t make it. But when you didn’t make it, they were all right with you; they would be there the next night to see what you were going to do that night.
TP: Because who knew who would be there, or what you would find…
KIRK: Yes, indeed.
TP: Is there an ultimate Bradley’s pianist for you?
KIRK: Oh, Hank Jones for me. He was the ultimate. Tommy was next for me. I saw Willis last night. He was ultimate for me because of the quality that he’d reach when he’d play there. A funny story about Larry, he was trying to make both gigs in the same week — at Bradley’s, then he would run over to Zinno’s… We laughed about that last night at John’s memorial. But that’s just like Larry Willis.
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