Pianist Larry Willis — a Harlem native and alumnus of Music & Art — turns 71 today. To denote the occasion, here’s the unedited version of the Blindfold Test he did with me in 2006 and the liner notes that I wrote for his excellent album Blue Fable (High Note) from that year.
Larry Willis Blindfold Test:
1. Gonzalo Rubalcaba, “The Hard One” (from SUPERNOVA, Blue Note, 2002) (Rubalcaba, piano; Carlo Enriquez, bass; Ignacio Berroa, drums)
I can’t quite pinpoint who this is. But whoever it is, the way he plays lines, the note ideas, he’s obviously listened a lot to Herbie. I hear a lot of that in this. Some of it might remind you a little bit of Randy Weston. But I say that rhythmically. He’s got great facility. I’m going to give this 4 stars. I like the approach. It goes everywhere. So everybody is obviously thinking about how to deal with this rhythmically. That’s the thing I like about it. I like both the rhythmic and harmonic approach. But I have no idea who it is. [AFTER] Boy, what a fantastic pianist he is. He’s a very welcome addition to today’s jazz piano. Besides, he’s a really nice kid. [He’s 43.] Well, he’s a kid to me. I got him by 20 years. The composition rubs me a little bit on the negative side. I honestly feel… The Cuban part I like, but it’s very difficult for me to focus in on anything. There’s just a little bit too much going on for me.
2. Michael Weiss, “Walter Davis Ascending” (from MILESTONES, Steeplechase, 1998) (Weiss, piano; Paul Gill, bass; Joe Farnsworth, drums; Jackie McLean, composer)
I don’t know who it is, but the touch is so reminiscent of Hank Jones. Maybe not so much the ideas. Maybe Lewis Nash on drums. But it sounds awfully good. I’m having difficulty trying to hinge the tune. I love the composition. The left hand is not quite in that style, but I hear Bill Evans also. Compositionally, it sounds like something that Bill might play. Is this a contemporary of mine? [No.] Older? Younger. He’s a teenager. I’m going to step out on a limb. Is this Kirk Lightsey? This is this tune written by somebody that I know very well. It’s Jackie’s tune. 3 stars. It doesn’t quite grab me. It’s good, but it’s not exceptional, as far as I’m concerned. But the performance of it is good.
3. Chano Dominguez, “No Me Platiques, Mas” (from CON ALMA, Venus, 2003) (Dominguez, piano; George Mraz, bass; Jeff Ballard, drums)
It’s a nice waltz. I don’t think it’s him, but the touch and harmonic approach remind me a lot of Ray Bryant. But I don’t think this is something Ray would play. Then here again, I don’t know who could be playing. I love the sound of the trio. It’s very well-integrated, everybody’s listening to everybody, and I like the approach, the concept of what they’re doing. It’s quasi early Bill Evans trio. The bass player is playing very loose, the drummer is not playing time so strictly, and I like the approach. Could the bassist be George Mraz? Yeah, it sounds like Bounce. We call him the Bouncing Czech. Is this Richie Beirach? A lot of Bill Evans here. Could this be somebody like Denny Zeitlin? You got me. 4 stars. [AFTER] I don’t know him, but I know who he is.
4. Denny Zeitlin, “Bemsha Swing” (from SOLO VOYAGE, MaxJazz, 2005) (Zeitlin, piano; Thelonious Monk, piano)
“Bemsha Swing.” One of the problems that I’m having is that Jazz, as far as the growth and development of the art, has reached an impasse. I’ve heard no new voices, particularly at the piano, no new schools of thought since 1968, and I think a lot of that has had to do with the way the record industry has crept into this, and basically destroyed a lot of the bands where young players could serve apprenticeship. When I came along, there was the Jazz Messengers, there was Miles’ band, there was Trane’s band, there was Horace Silver’s quintet, a lot of working bands where you could develop. But that doesn’t exist. So what I’m hearing is a lot of retread. [In this performance?] In general. This sounds like Randy to me. But here again, I don’t know who it is. I love what he’s doing. I’m going to give it 5 stars. He plays enough of the piano to let you know that he knows what he’s doing at the instrument, but the whole thing just comes off. I like the harmonic approach. The ideas are nice. I know where it’s coming from, but I can’t tell what records he’s listening to. Let’s put it that way. I like that. He’s put some thought into what he’s doing. [Older guy? Younger guy?] Maybe my age. The concept. He plays good stride. I like how he’s interpreting Monk. Understanding that music is not necessarily something that falls out of a tree. And he doesn’t play too much. Let me put it this way. The element of taste is very prevalent here. What he’s doing, everything seems to be in the right place; he does it at the right time. When he starts to stride, it adds instead of making me feel he’s doing it just to show you that he can. All this is integrated into the music. [AFTER] Denny Zeitlin? Makes a lot of sense to me.
5. Martin Wacilewski, “Plaza Real” (from TRIO, ECM, 2005) (Wacilewski, piano; Slawomir Kurkiewicz, bass; Michal Miskiewicz, drums; Wayne Shorter, composer)
This is a nice trio. I don’t know who it is. Harmonically I love it. Also, the piano is really well-recorded. He’s listened to Bill, that’s for sure. That last little run is a Bill Evans run! He was a very influential piano player! But there’s also a lot of Herbie’s harmonic approach. Right there! I like it. 4½ stars. [AFTER] They should keep doing what they’re doing!
6. Dave McKenna, “C-Jam Blues” (from LIVE AT MAYBECK RECITAL HALL, VOL. 2) (McKenna, piano; Duke Ellington, composer)
This sounds like it might be two piano players. Sure is covering a lot of ground. There are two piano players. [Who are they?] Is it Hank and Tommy? No, that’s not Hank. Or Tommy. I haven’t a clue. [Are you sure it’s two piano players?] Yes, I’m sure. Or at least somebody overdubbed something. [It’s one piano player.] Wow. [Live.] Live?! The lines are good. They’re not great. But to play that much with just two hands is doing a lot. It’s not Oscar. I haven’t a clue. 3½ stars. It just doesn’t reach out and grab me.
7. Jason Moran, “Out Front” (from PRESENTS THE BANDWAGON, Blue Note, 2003) (Moran, piano; Tarus Mateen, bass; Nasheet Waits, drums; Jaki Byard, composer)
There’s something almost Steve Kuhn-ish about this—approach, concept, touch, ideas. But I know it’s not Steve. I like it. He’s got a lot of chops, whoever he is. [Are you familiar with this tune?] No. But for some reason, the name of Jaki Byard is sticking in my head. It sounds like some music he’d play or some music coming from him. It just rubs me that way. I love the treatment. But I can’t figure out who it is! Sounds like they’ve been playing together for a minute. Sounds like a younger player—the sound of the instrument. It doesn’t sound like an older personality. I’m almost going to step out on a limb and say it’s somebody like Marcus Roberts. There’s a lot going on. There’s a lot of information here to decipher. [Do you like that?] Yes and no. I’ve always been one to think that less is more, and because the piano is such a complicated instrument, the 88-to-10 odds empower me to be more simplistic in my approach. I think sometimes piano players get so involved in the 88-to-10 odds that the music takes somewhat of a back seat. That’s happening here. It’s more of a show than music. 3 stars. It isn’t bad! If it gets below 3, that means I don’t like it.
8. Edward Simon, “Abiding Unicity” (from UNICITY, CAM, 2006) (Simon piano, composer; John Patitucci, bass; Brian Blade, drums)
The bass player is great. It’s not George. It’s not Eddie Gomez. Is it Richard Davis? I’m trying to think of how many bass players have that kind of arco technique. Is the pianist from outside of the United States? [Yes. But he’s lived in the States for a long time.] I asked because of the approach to rhythm. [What part of the world is the piano player from?] He’s either from Europe or he’s from Japan. How can I put this? Because I’m an American and jazz comes from here, and I’ve been listening to it for a long time from an American perspective, the whole concept of playing inside the pulse framework is a little deeper here than I hear coming from other places, and I think… It’s not a putdown. It’s just that if you don’t grow up in a culture, it’s very difficult to assimilate the little subtleties of whatever that is into your playing if you haven’t experienced it. [That affects how you’re hearing this.] Yes. But let’s back up. It affects me in this context. What I am trying to say is not a bad thing. That’s just how it is. For example, as close as he came to being involved with an American approach to playing jazz, I still hear that difference in somebody’s playing like Joe Zawinul, for example. There’s always a tendency to… It sounds like it’s on the surface almost. The piece is okay. It started out great, and then it went someplace else that I didn’t particularly care for. If it started like what he’s doing now, then I might feel more compelled to… It just doesn’t get inside my body. 3 stars. [AFTER] Patitucci and Blade always seem to be together. I heard them with Wayne, I heard them with Herbie…
9. Oscar Peterson, “Sweet Lorraine” (from FREEDOM SONG, Pablo, 1980/2002) (Peterson, piano; Joe Pass, guitar; Niels Henning-Orsted Pederson, bass; Thelonious Monk, composer)
I like the piano player. It’s a very nice, refreshing treatment of this song. Whoever it is, they’ve certainly paid attention to the Nat Cole Trio—or the King Cole Trio. I like this. I’m almost going to say Mulgrew. Is the guitar player Russell Malone perchance? Is the guitarist an older player? [Yes.] Older than me? [No.] Well, it’s not Cedar. It doesn’t sound like Barry Harris. Now, that sounds like Hank right there. Whoever it is, they’ve really listened to Hank’s approach to playing the instrument. Hank’s got one of the cleanest, clearest, prettiest sounds coming out of the piano in the history of this music, I feel. And whoever this is, I like very, very much. Harmonically, technically, just the general approach to playing the instrument. He’s got a great sound. 5 stars. [AFTER] [LOUD LAUGH] Okay.
10, Bebo Valdes, “Lamento Cubano” (from EL ARTE DEL SABOR, Blue Note, 2000) (Bebo Valdes, piano; Israel “Cachao” Lopez, bass; Carlos “Patato” Valdes; congas)
An older pianist. From Cuba. Bebo Valdes. The sound, concept, touch. That’s Bebo! He’s a really unique player. First of all, as a pianist, he’s assimilated the world’s concept of playing the jazz piano and formulated it into a very unique concept of playing the piano—and playing that music, playing Cuban music. I love him, first of all, because he’s got a great sound from the piano. Then, his minimalist approach pleases me immensely. In a sense, he reminds me, if I can make an analogy, of Ahmad Jamal, for example. He shows you just enough technique to let you know that he’s got it, but the rest is focused on playing some music that will allow you to assimilate it. 5 stars. I asked Miles one time… There’s a great story about him going over and hearing Clifford Brown, and then just saying to him, “Brownie, why are you playing all of those notes? Nobody hears that.” I asked Miles about it, and he said, what it is, when you’re playing music for people other than musicians, they can’t assimilate and decipher all that information and have it come out music that touches their souls. So a lot of what you play gets wasted on just you showing off and how much technique you have. Oscar doesn’t do that, and he’s got a world of technique. Art Tatum didn’t do that, and he had a world of technique. But a lot of players play too much. Too much information. The ultimate objective of all of this is not to be the greatest… I’m not trying to be the greatest piano player in the world. I want to be the best musician I can be. Because the instrument is there for you to play music on.
11. Chick Corea, “Celia” (from REMEMBERING BUD POWELL, 1997) (Corea, piano; Bud Powell, composer)
It sounds like Barry Harris playing “Celia.” Or somebody from that generation. [It’s someone from your generation.] They really understand the concept of bebop, the bebop school of thought as far as playing the piano is concerned. Kenny Barron? He’s listened to bebop quite a bit. He’s played it quite a bit. Hmm. From my generation? 4 stars. [AFTER] Okay. All right. Aside from the music that he’s been able to come out with and has been so successful with, there’s a bit of a chameleon in Chick as far as playing the piano. I’ve heard him play duets with Herbie, and he’s got one face there. I hear this, it’s another face. I hear what he does, for example, with Return to Forever; that’s another face. I heard him with Stan Getz; that’s another face. Yes, Armando!
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Larry Willis (Liner Notes, Blue Fable):
“He was my mentor, my friend, my advisor, and my second father in many respects,” says Larry Willis of the late John Lenwood “Jackie” McLean, to whom the 64-year-old pianist dedicates Blue Fable, his second High Note session.
“Jackie was one of the most interesting composers I’ve ever met, very complicated but simple at the same time,” says Willis, who played off and on with the alto saxophone hero between 1962 and 1966. “He used to present youth concerts in the bandshell on East River Drive, not far from his place on Avenue D and East Houston, and I played there with his son, Rene. Jackie noticed something about me that he liked. We forged a relationship, and he decided to ask me to play with him. He came all the way uptown on the D train to ask my mother’s permission to take me on the road.”
That tenure included the 1965 McLean Blue Note recording Jackknife, on which the title track, “Blue Fable,” first appeared.
“The sound of that song is reminiscent of the style and attitude and social body language that jazz musicians had,” Willis continues. “It’s the beard-wearing, sunglasses, hip-walking, hip-talking kind of thing, except that it’s got all of the compositional sophistication of whatever was going on at that time. It has very interesting harmonic movement and rhythmic infusion and whatever else. It was just fun to play. My memory was tweaked back to that session with Jackie, Lee Morgan, Jack DeJohnette and Larry Ridley, to how much fun I had playing that piece of music.”
Forty-one years later, Willis and his all-star cohort evoke the as-serious-as-your-life aesthetic of soulful, fiery excellence that suffused New York jazz during the ‘60s. “New York had indelibly stamped the jazz world as the mecca,” Willis states. “I met Clark Terry then, and he asked where I was from. I told him New York. He smiled and said, ‘Well, New York is the place that makes you decide whether you want to play or not.’”
Raised on 153rd Street between Eighth Avenue and McCombs, several blocks from McLean’s boyhood Sugar Hill home and two blocks south of the old Polo Grounds, Willis, a teenage choir singer, heard Kind of Blue during his senior year at Manhattan’s High School of Music and Art, caught the jazz bug, and taught himself to play the piano. Within several months he was gigging in a trio that included a freshman named Eddie Gomez.
“At the time, Eddie was heavily influenced by Ray Brown, and I was heavily influenced by more bluesy bebop players, most predominantly Wynton Kelly,” Willis recalls. “Through Kind of Blue, I started listening to Bill Evans. Eddie and I were playing a lot of little gigs around town, and I started to try to play like Bill—then, in the process, came Scott LaFaro. Subsequently, as providence would have it, Eddie played with Bill for about ten years.”
In point of fact, Willis recruited Gomez for Blue Fable at the suggestion of drummer Billy Drummond, who has frequently partnered with the bassist in trios led by pianist Steve Kuhn, a Willis contemporary.
“I need a bass player with virtuoso chops, which Eddie has in abundance, and also a certain musicality,” Willis says. “A friend who is very knowledgeable about this music made an astute observation after listening to this. He said, ‘I didn’t even know that Eddie was there until it was time for him to play a bass solo.’ That’s how supportive he was. His choice of notes, his ability to swing—he brought so much to the table.
“Billy swings his rear end off, which I have to have from that chair, and his sense of dynamics and his fire contribute tremendously to whatever format I’m dealing with. No ego trips. No attitudes. And he has a very broad conception about playing drums, not your usual extension of the bebop concept. I wouldn’t even really call him a drummer in the true sense of the word. I’d call him a percussionist. There are sounds involved; he plays the drumset as a musical instrument.”
Willis speaks similarly of alto saxophonist Joe Ford, a long-time colleague in the Fort Apache Band. Recalling Ford’s first appearance with the seminal Jazz Latin unit at an upstate New York engagement, he recalls, “The first note I heard Joe play reminded me deeply of Jackie in one respect, but in another respect, I’d never heard anybody play the alto saxophone who sounded like that. He is one of the most intelligent, articulate musicians I have ever met. He has what Miles used to call ‘the keys to the kingdom.’”
An alumnus of the Hartt School of Music who served high-level apprenticeships with McLean, Art Blakey and Chick Corea, trombonist Steve Davis first came to Willis’ attention in a McLean-led band with Rene McLean, Hotep Galeta and Nat Reeves at the cusp of the ‘90s.
“He was this quiet kid, with a beautiful, J.J. Johnson-Curtis Fuller-like sound,” Willis enthuses. “As I continued to listen, I discovered just how much command he has over the trombone. There are only a handful of trombonists I can stand listening to, and Steve is of that caliber.”
In the manner of McLean and all the other aforementioned heroes, each bandmate projects a sound entirely their own, a principle that Willis took to heart after a conversation with Miles Davis during the ‘60s.
“Miles was always very encouraging,” Willis says, emulating the famous Davis rasp. “He told me, ‘Willis, you got a lot of talent, but get your own sound. Then you can play whatever you want to play, because it’s yours. But if you try to play like somebody else, you’re going to play their mistakes, too.’”
The “you can’t join the throng until you play your own song” principle is at play from Billy Drummond’s opening fanfare and melody statement on Thelonious Monk’s Rhythm-a-Ning, which Willis previously recorded on a 1988 quartet track with Kenny Garrett, George Mraz and Al Foster and on Rumba Para Monk, the classic Afro-Caribbean-tinged Fort Apache Band date from that same year on which he established himself as one of the great Monk interpreters. “I have a very cosmic attachment with Thelonious,” says Willis, whose parents hail from Scotland Neck, North Carolina, 24 miles due east of Rocky Mount, Monk’s birthplace. “It’s a jazz warhorse, and we approach it differently, with Eddie and I joining Billy on the bridge to play the melody.”
Individuality remains the watchword on Nardis, the Bill Evans composition (Miles Davis appropriated compositional credit) that Cannonball Adderley debuted when Willis and Gomez were forming their trio 47 years ago. On the opening bass vamp, Gomez references Miles Davis’ “The Ghetto Walk” from In A Silent Way before the trio launches a poetic, swinging improv on the melody.
Willis describes Insidious Behavior (“it’s a tongue-in-cheek joke about Fort Apache”) as “just a 12-bar blues with some changes that move.” The ebullient melody references Jimmy Heath’s A Song For Sore Ears, debuted by Milt Jackson in 1969 (Memphis Jackson) and recorded by Heath on The Gap Sealer from 1972.
Immortalized by Nat Cole in the ‘50s, Never Let Me Go was a staple of Willis’ repertoire at Bradley’s, the legendary University Place piano saloon that terminated its music policy in 1996. “I played there three or four weeks a year, and for a while in the early ‘80s I played there every Sunday with George Mraz,” he recalls. “It’s where I learned how to control an audience and was challenged to interpret standard repertoire in a personal way. I play this song the way I do largely because of something that my teacher once told me. He said, ‘Larry, if you want to play good ballads, you need to learn the lyrics. Because a ballad, by definition, is a story.’ The lyrics to this are quite stark. For example, ‘because of one caress, my world was overturned; from the very start, all my bridges burned by my flaming heart.’ Besides that, it’s a pretty song.”
“I asked Joe Ford to write something for the date,” Willis says of Landscape. “It moves harmonically in a very unpredictable way, but the way it sounds makes all the sense in the world. It’s like Monk, in a sense; you don’t expect Monk’s pieces to go where they do, but they make complete sense wherever they go.”
Willis first recorded Who’s Kidding Who, a ballad waltz by pianist Gerard D’Angelo with a bittersweet, sardonic connotation, in trio with Mraz and Foster in 1988.
On Steve Davis’ evocative Prayer For New Orleans, Willis evokes the dire aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, drawing on an August trip to the Crescent City (“the lower 9th Ward looks like Baghdad, but the French Quarter is up and running—business as usual”). After a long statement of the anthemic melody, Davis, Ford and Willis each say their piece, using notes and tones to say what words cannot, reinforcing the bedrock that supports the leader’s closing thoughts.
“I am not aspiring to be the greatest jazz pianist that ever lived,” he says. “I want to be the best musician that I can be.”
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Larry Willis (for Blue Fable notes) (Nov. 8, 2006):
TP: Let’s talk about why you decide to put this record together this way — quartets, quintets and trios. Different flavors.
LARRY: One reason why I approached this record this way is, I of course have a burning desire to expand my musical vocabulary, and to continue to grow, and that ever since I decided to lead my own groups, I have been playing in either the quintet or trio format. Part of it is artistic. Part of it has to do with business. These two avenues are areas that I have chosen to perform in. I wanted to make both entities available in some sort of way to my public.
TP: How are you expanding your vocabulary on this record?
LARRY: Well, certainly not so much on this record, but I have been doing a lot of writing lately, particularly for larger ensembles. About three years ago, I was commissioned to write a piece of music for the symphony orchestra at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, where Nat Adderley was the artist in residence. It’s a concerto for jazz trio and orchestra. It afforded me the first time to attempt to write for instruments that are not necessarily indigenous to the jazz orchestral format, such as harps, french horns, oboes, bassoons, piccolos, and so on. Although this certainly isn’t represented on the CD, it is certainly part of the same philosophy. I wanted to surround myself with players who are sympathetic to that. For example, in the trio format, most jazz trios don’t sound like trios; they sound like rhythm sections that play songs. I wanted to pick players that were sympathetic to whatever I am trying to do musically who come with their own distinct voices. Certainly, I have known that about Eddie Gomez ever since high school.
TP: You did go to Music & Art. Talk about the relationship.
LARRY: Aside from being an astute virtuoso player, Eddie is also one of the nicest human beings I’ve ever met in my life, and we have always had a very compatible musical relationship. When the discussion came up about personnel… I basically had been sold on Billy Drummond, and out of the clear blue sky Billy said, “Have you thought about Eddie Gomez?” The two of them had been doing a lot of playing together with Steve Kuhn. They have a musical simpatico with one another, and certainly I have with both of them separately. It was just the logical conclusion that I should go with them. We played a gig together at the Kitano maybe two weekends before we recorded, and from the first note it was just magic. I mentioned this earlier to Joe Fields, and he said, “The bass player you’ve been playing with is good; Eddie Gomez is great.”
TP: You played Kitano two weeks before the session with this group. That’s the day we did the Blindfold Test. What are you looking for from the bassist and drummer? Are you very proactive with them?
LARRY: Very proactive. First of all, I need a bass player who has virtuoso chops (Eddie certainly qualifies vehemently in that area) and a bass player who comes with a certain musical simpatico. I played some of this for some friends who are very knowledgeable about this music, and they made one very astute observation after listening to it and listening to Eddie. They said, “I didn’t even know that he was there until it was time for him to play a bass solo.” That’s how supportive he was in all of this. His choice of notes, his ability to swing… He just brought so much to the table. It’s very difficult to describe in words just how much I have enjoyed this musical experience, playing with both him and Billy.
TP: What does Billy bring to the table?LARRY: First of all, he can swing his rear end off. That is something that I have to have. Whatever I do, I have to have somebody in that chair who can swing. Plus, he has a very broad concept about playing the drums. He=s not afraid to play when it’s time for him to play. His sense of dynamics and his fire are tremendous ingredients to bring to whatever format I’m dealing with. On top of that, he as a human being is such a great contributor to the whole vibe of what we’re trying to do. No ego trips. No attitudes. He, Eddie, Joe and Steve, when they come, they come to play.
TP: You say he has a very broad conception of how to play…
LARRY: It’s not your usual extension of bebop concept that he brings. He sounds… In the true sense of the word, I wouldn’t even really call him a drummer. I’d call him a percussionist. There are sounds involved. And he plays the drums not necessarily as a percussive instrument; it’s a musical instrument.
TP: Can you recount your relationship with Eddie, going back to the trio you had in high school. Also, how much did you play together in the intervening years?
LARRY: Not really that much. There were several times, for example… When I finally got out of Music & Art… I’m two years older than Eddie. He was I believe a freshman when I was a senior. My interest in jazz started to become nurtured in my senior year. He’s a genius. Eddie could play when I first met him. He was also the bassist in the Newport Youth Band, with Jimmy Owens and Mike Abene…
TP: You’re both New York guys. Reading Pierre’s bio, I realized I don’t know so much about your early years. You were initially a singer, a vocalist, and then taught yourself to play piano.
LARRY: That’s how I started out. Once I got to Manhattan School of Music and had really developed a passion for the music, I met a guy who has been my life-long friend, Hugh Masekela, who felt I had some potential. He said, “What you have to do is stop singing and concentrate on playing this music, because I see you have an ardent passion for it, and you have talent. So I=m going to introduce you to John Mehegan,” who was a famous piano teacher and musicologist. I started studying with John, and he taught me for two years, until he decided to move away from New York…
TP: Was that ’61 and 62?
LARRY: I started studying with John in 1962 and studied with him until 1964. I recorded with Jackie McLean in 1965.
TP: Can you discuss some of the influences that were in the air for you and Eddie as formative musicians, and how they inflect what you do now.
LARRY: We talked about this either at the rehearsal or at the recording session. At the time, Eddie was really heavily influenced by Ray Brown, and I was heavily influenced by more bluesy bebop players, most predominantly Wynton Kelly. Of course, listening to Miles Davis, and having Kind of Blue be the record that had the maximum infusion into my desire to play this music, I started listening to Bill Evans. Eddie and I were doing a lot of playing together, little gigs we’d come up with around town, and I started to try to play like Bill Evans — and in the process, here comes Scott LaFaro. As providence would have it, Eddie wound up playing with Bill for about ten years.
TP: You have a long-standing relationship with Joe Ford. Does it precede the Fort Apache Band?
LARRY: The Fort Apache Band is where my knowledge of Joe first happened. We had a gig I believe in Binghamton, New York. Carter Jefferson could not make the gig, and Jerry Gonzalez knew Joe, and we asked him to make the gig with us. I had never heard him play before. I did not know that he had been playing with McCoy — or anyone else, for that matter. The first note I heard him play reminded me so much of Jackie in one respect, but in another respect, I’d never heard anybody play the alto saxophone who sounded like that. For me, he had what Miles used to call “the keys to the kingdom.” Miles was always very encouraging to me, and one time he told me [RASPS], “Willis, you got a lot of talent, but get your own sound. ‘Cause if you got your own sound, you can play whatever you want to play, because it’s yours. But if you try to play like somebody else, you’re going to play their mistakes, too.”
TP: You took that to heart.
LARRY: Yes, I did. On top of that, as I got to know Joe, he is one of the most intelligent, articulate musicians I have ever met. He is an extremely gifted composer. He can orchestrate. He just knows music. He understands what music is.
I first met Steve Davis and heard him when he was playing with Jackie McLean. Jackie had a band with Rene, Hotep Galeta and Nat Reeves.
TP: Before the ’90s band. He was playing with him in Hartford.
LARRY: Yes. I think was even before Eric McPherson was playing in the band. First of all, he was just this little quiet kid, with this very beautiful, J.J.-Curtis Fuller-like sound on the trombone. As I continued to listen to him, I found out just how much command he had over the trombone. There are only a handful of people who play that instrument I can stand listening to. J.J., Slide, Curtis, some of the younger players, like Andre Hayward. People on that level. Steve certainly is of that caliber. We started to talk, and I said, “One day I want to play with you.” Evolution took place; we ended up playing a lot together. When I had gigs that I wanted to use the quintet, I’d always call him. In addition to which, he=s a great composer and arranger. I have to have all these elements around me as a bandleader, because these are elements that I pursue. I am not aspiring to be the greatest jazz pianist that ever lived. I want to be the best musician that I can be. Whatever areas that embodies, that’s what I’m trying to express when I say I want to broaden my musical vocabulary and boundaries.
TP: Does the content of this record reflect this expansion of musical boundaries in any way?
LARRY: Certainly, a track like Rhythm-a-Ning, which is an old jazz warhorse, but which I approach in a different way, by having the drums play the melody. Eddie and I join Billy on the bridge, and we play the melody. The way we approach, for example… Usually, when you split 8s or 4s or whatever interchanges you have with the drummer, it’s always the lead voice or the solo voice that’s making the exchange. It just sort of happened at Kitano that Eddie and Billy would play 8s and 4s together.
TP: It’s an interesting way to start a record. Unless it’s a record about that sound and vibe, I can’t remember something starting that way. It’s a radical, dramatic thing.
LARRY: I wanted to have the record start off with some kind of impact.
TP: Usually I’ve heard you play Monk in an Afro-Caribbean context with Jerry. Can you talk about how your experience with that band reflects the musician you are.
LARRY: First of all, I grew up in Harlem, on 153rd Street between 8th Avenue and MacCombs Place, two blocks south of the Polo Grounds.
TP: Are you a Giants fan?
LARRY: No, not at all. I have a baseball that was given to me in 1954, that my parents took away from me… My father ran a garage at 165th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, and he used to park the cars of two New York Giants ballplayers. One was a utility player, an infielder-outfielder named Hank Thompson, and the other one was the center-fielder, Willie Mays. The Giants were at home… In those days, because of TV revenues and trying to have a fan base, the National League would organize the schedules so that whenever the Giants were at home, the Dodgers were usually on the road. I grew up during the Jackie Robinson era, and there was a gentleman who married a lady on my block who would come to the block to visit his in-laws every time the Dodgers would play the Giants at the Polo Grounds, or if they were in post-season just across the bridge at Yankee Stadium. His name was Roy Campanella. All of us, because of Jackie Robinson in major league baseball, were Dodger fans. We could have given a hoot about the Giants. But my father took the baseball away from me… It was autographed by the entire 1954 Giant team, and it’s worth a lot of money. I have a good friend who was a teammate of Willie Mays who made me get that ball appraised. His name is Orlando Cepeda. He’s a big Fort Apache fan.
TP: You did a tune for him.
LARRY: That’s right. When we played Iridium a few weeks ago, he was in town, and he came by. We talk all the time. Tommy Davis of the L.A. Dodgers is a very close friend. I’m close friends with Boog Powell, Ron Swoboda… Ron lives in New Orleans now, and he is the announcer for the New Orleans Zephyrs, which is a Triple-A franchise now of the New York Mets. Last year, at the Ryko Convention there, I saw Ron, and he took me to the Lower 9th Ward to see the devastation. That’s one reason why I wanted to have Steve Davis’s tune on this record.
TP: So you grew up two blocks south of the Polo Grounds. But I was asking how the Fort Apache bands inflects… There are no explicit references to that sound here.
LARRY: I guess A Prayer For New Orleans is the closest I would come. Certainly, the Monk influence as a result of Fort Apache is a sort of addendum, an extension of what I was involved in before. I have a very personal relationship with Monk in this sense. My parents are from North Carolina, a little town called Scotland Neck, which is 24 miles due east of Rocky Mountain, which is where Thelonious was born. The first time I ever got drunk was with Monk. I was playing with Hugh Masekela back in 1965. At the time, Hugh and Miriam Makeba were husband-and-wife, and we were playing at the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, California. We got off early, and the bass player, Hal Dotson, and I went into town, and Thelonious had just come back from a world tour and was playing at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco. Right next door to the Jazz Workshop was a Japanese restaurant. Between sets, Thelonious went over to the Japanese restaurant. Of course, Ben Riley and I have been friends (and he’s one of my mentors) for ever so long. I was all of 22 years old, so involved in my hero worship, and Ben introduced me to him, and we went next door to the Japanese restaurant — and before I knew it, I had too much sake. Not to coin a phrase from a Horace Silver tune! But I ended up in my hotel room the next day, in bed with all my clothes on, not knowing how I got there.
TP: Monk knew about your geographic connection?
LARRY: I don’t believe he did. I worked opposite with him at the Village Gate some months prior to that as an accompanist for a South African singer who was being sponsored by Miriam Makeba, by the name of Leta Mbulu. As a matter of fact, Eddie Gomez was in that rhythm section as well. Years later, as a matter of fact, the day Miles Davis passed away, I was making a record with Fort Apache at Clinton Studios, the Moliendo Café record. I’d been in Atlanta the week before subbing for Marian McPartland at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead, which had a jazz room. I couldn’t regulate the airconditioning in my room, and I thought I’d caught cold. As it turned out, the next day I ended up in the hospital, battling viral pneumonia. During my stay in the hospital they were doing all these tests, bronchiostrophies and all kinds of stuff, because at first the doctors couldn’t come up with any diagnosis. Around the fourth day I was in the hospital they took me for this examination, a bronchiostrophy, where they stick tubes up your nostrils and down through your trachea into your lungs, so that they can snip off little pieces of tissue for a biopsy. After I was done with this, they wanted to do another chest x-ray. So they wheeled me to radiology. I noticed this guy walking around in the radiology area, dressed with the doctor’s long white coat and official hospital data on his lapel, and he looked very much like Horace Parlan. But I wasn’t paying too much attention. Back in my room at Roosevelt Hospital, there was a knock on the door, and this guy came in my room. He looked at me and said, “Are you Larry Willis?” I said, “Yes, last I looked.” He said, “Are you Larry Willis, the piano player?” I said, “Yes.” “My name is Thelonious Monk.” I said, “Come on, man. I’m here lying in this bed, and you’re here cracking jokes.” He said, “No, I’m not cracking jokes. I work here in Radiology, and I have my uncle’s name. Here’s my card. If you need anything, just give me a call.” So the day I got out of the hospital, that night, I was so happy to be alive, first of all, and second of all, so happy at the opportunity to play again… That week I had already been booked into Bradley’s, and George Cables subbed the first two nights for me, and I went to work that night, oddly enough, with Larry Gales and Ben Riley. It was a very cosmic kind of attachment I have with Thelonious.
TP: I guess we don’t need to talk about Fort Apache and how it…
LARRY: No.
TP: Insidious Behavior.
LARRY: It’s my tune. It’s a blues, and it got its title… It’s sort of a tongue-in-cheek joke about Fort Apache.
TP: You can’t get away from this.
LARRY: No!
TP: Nor would you really want to.
LARRY: No. It’s a very important part of my life and career.
TP: Anything to say about it formally?
LARRY: It’s just a 12-bar blues that’s got some changes that move, and was basically influenced by a blues that was written by Jimmy Heath, though I forget the title.
TP: I guess with Eddie Gomez on the date, you’ve got to do something related to Bill Evans — thus, Nardis.
LARRY: Besides that, I love the song. The way we came up with it was a sort of head arrangement that happened… You don’t need to mention this; I want to keep it separate. I recorded this arrangement, though not quite this way… It’s got some little ruffles that sort of happened when we decided to play this at Kitano… I recorded this song some years ago on a Steeplechase record called Let‘s Play with Santi DiBriano and Victor Lewis. I decided to revisit it with this new infusion of players. This is what we came up with it. The intro is basically a takeoff on a little vamp… I forget the name of the song, but it=s a vamp I heard on Miles Davis’s In A Silent Way.
TP: Blue Fable is from Jackknife, the Jackie McLean record that wasn’t released until the ’70s. I’m assuming this piece is an homage to Jackie.
LARRY: This whole record is dedicated to his memory. The name of the record is Blue Fable. Initially, Joe wanted to call it Insidious Behavior, and I said, “That’s not quite the message I want to send!”
TP: How long did you play in Jackie’s band?
LARRY: I started playing with Jackie when I was 19, and I played with him off and on for the next four years. I made three records with him. The Jackknife album is a compilation of two records, and Right Now, which is the first record.
TP: Jackie had a large impact on a lot of people for various reasons, his playing, his personality, the essence of his being. To me, as a New Yorker, there’s something about him that embodies something about New York in that time period…
LARRY: Well, first of all, Jackie grew up in New York, not far from where I lived. New York had really indelibly stamped the jazz world as the mecca. I remember about that time, I had met Clark Terry for the first time, and he asked me where I was from, and I told him New York. He kind of smiled and he said, “Well, New York is the place that makes you decide whether you want to play or not.”
I actually met Jackie through Rene. He used to work for an organization called Mobilization For Youth, and he would put on these little youth concerts in the bandshell on East River Drive, not far from where he lived on Avenue D and East Houston Street. I came down to play with Rene. As a matter of fact, Rene has some pictures from there. Jackie heard me play, and obviously noticed something about me that he liked. So through my friendship with Rene and coming down to the house, Jackie and I forged a relationship, and then he made a decision to ask me to play with him. I remember him getting on the subway, coming all the way uptown on the D train, to ask my mother’s permission to take me on the road. That’s how my relationship got started and was nurtured by Jackie for certainly those early years, and needless to say, our friendship and our family ties and relationship continued to this day. In fact, I spoke with Dolly yesterday — and Melonae.
TP: Describe this tune a bit. It seems characteristic of one aspect of his repertoire.
LARRY: First of all, Jackie was one of the most interesting composers I’ve ever met. Very-very-very complicated but simplistic at the same time. There’s a sound about that song, Blue Fable, that was very reminiscent of the style and attitude and social body language that jazz musicians had. It almost brings to mind the kind of imagery that you find from a song like Killer Joe, except that Killer Joe wasn’t a jazz musician. It’s the jazz musician, the beard-wearing, sunglasses, hip-walking, hip-talking kind of thing. Except that it’s got all of the compositional sophistication of whatever was going on at that time. It has very interesting harmonic movement and rhythmic infusion and whatever else. It was just fun to play. My memory was tweaked, going back to that early session with Jackie and Lee Morgan and DeJohnette and Larry Ridley, how much fun I had playing that piece of music.
TP: Never Let Me Go is a song you played often at Bradley’s.
LARRY: Yes. Largely because of something that my teacher once told me. He said, “Larry, if you want to play good ballads, then you need to learn the lyrics. Because a ballad, by definition, is a story.” And the lyrics are quite stark. For example, “because of one caress, my world was overturned. From the very start, all my bridges burned by my flaming heart.” Besides, it’s just a pretty song. I first became aware of it by hearing Nat King Cole sing it.
TP: Landscape is by Joe Ford. A tune from each of the front line guys.
LARRY: I asked Joe to write something for this record, because I have so much respect and admiration for his abilities as a composer, and I knew he’d come up with something interesting. It’s hard! It’s very unpredictable in terms of the way it moves harmonically, but the way it sounds makes all the sense in the world. That’s the challenge. It’s sort of like Monk in that sense. Monk will write a piece of music, and you don’t expect it to go where it does. But wherever it goes, it makes all musical sense to your ears.
Who‘s Kidding Who is by a very dear friend of mine and a brilliant pianist — Gerard D’Angelo. It’s a ballad waltz. [SIDE B OF CASSETTE TAPE] …to the administration of George W. Bush.
TP: As is Prayer for New Orleans on some level.
LARRY: Well, Prayer for New Orleans is Steve Davis’s tune. It was written not only because of the ire that was raised in all of us at the way the state and local governments and FEMA did not react, and still hasn’t reacted to this. I was just in New Orleans in August, and the Lower 9th Ward looks like downtown Baghdad. It’s virtually deserted. You don’t see any effort to reconstruct that place. You see lots full of uninhabited FEMA trailers. It’s a shame. But you go into the French Quarter, and it’s business as usual. That’s up and running.
TP: Anything else to say about Jackie?
LARRY: He was my mentor, my friend, my advisor, and my second father in many respects.
[END OF CONVERSATION]
Today Is The Question: Ted Panken on Music, Politics and the Arts 